Not Just Blowin’ Smoke

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Jan C. Johnson

Good old Palestine—not the Middle-East version, but my East Texas home town, pronounced “Palesteen.” For several months I had been catching up online with some of my sister’s high school friends, whose older siblings happened to be my friends. As familiar-sounding names came up, I often dipped into my junior- and senior-year annuals to refresh my memory. (Let me just pause right now and give thanks to my Creator that I no longer look like that!)

Amen.

So Robert, the “point man” for the group, told me about a campout that some of the guys enjoy every April. He invited us to stop by since we expected to be in town for a bike ride the same weekend. However, he warned me that they mostly slouch, eat barbecue and smoke cigars or some such. None of the girls would likely be there, since they would not be caught with the sorry likes of them, and so on.

I imagined half a dozen scruffy, disreputable-looking guys propped up around a fire ring with several hot dogs grilling over it, a tarp, and maybe two pine-sap-encrusted logs to sit on. And my expectations dropped with each subsequent comment from Robert.

When we arrived at the meeting point, Robert’s wife led us in to the property. We followed her car down a dirt road through a thick cloud of dust, just hoping that we were still behind her. Brent muttered something about an instrument rating. Then we came out of the woods and bumped across a wide meadow toward a cluster of… wooden structures?

Yes, there at the edge of some trees stood two solidly-built open-air shelters. Padded cots were lined up under the larger one, but the hub of the operation was the smaller shelter. It had a back wall and housed one of those big ol’ redneck smokers, which as we approached was sending out a miraculous combination of aromas.

In the excitement of reuniting with the now-grown-up teenagers I remembered from 30+ years ago, I almost forgot about the yummy smoky smells. Then Robert let us peek inside the smoker. Not a hot dog in sight – instead we found a brisket, a double row of potatoes (each slightly smaller than my car) and a whole… pineapple? I think there was some other stuff in there but the gently browning pineapple distracted my attention.

But there was more to the camp. Robert opened the door of what looked like a tool shed but which turned out to be a fully-appointed bathroom, complete with curtained window, antique-style tub, sink, and actual flushing toilet. The walls, painted a tasteful dark green, were decorated with deer antlers in all sizes. One conveniently-located pair of antlers held two rolls of toilet paper. I studied the decorative glowing lights strung around the walls just below the ceiling. “Are those… shotgun shells?” I asked.

“Yep, shotgun shell Christmas lights—I saw those at Sears and couldn’t resist,” Robert said, adding modestly, “We ran electric and water out here awhile back.” A roofless, corrugated-metal enclosure next door proved to be a shower stall. Turning back toward the shady central area, which was surrounded by a picnic table and camp chairs – not logs – I saw a staircase leading up to some sort of loft at the end of the shade structure. Two porch swings hung from the shelter’s beams. Then I noticed the two refrigerators in the back of the kitchen shelter.

I’m pretty sure my mouth hung open for the first ten minutes we were there. This place was waaaaay more civilized than I had been led to believe. Why, Robert even wore a button shirt. He looked better than I did.

We all sat down to visit in earnest, and I got acquainted with Daisy. Daisy is a long-legged, goofy-but-lovable tan dog with a lower jaw that sticks out like a kitchen drawer and fails to adequately contain her yard or so of wet tongue. Rumor has it she can lick the back of her own head.

Then guitars started coming out of hiding, and we had an impromptu serenade / jam session. There is nothing like homemade music played in a setting of absolute quiet. I sat in the shade with Brent and our old friends, a breeze ruffling the highest branches, soaking in the tunes and occasionally sharing thoughts with one or another of the guys. I relaxed from deep inside me as I had not done all year.

When it was time to start home, Brent and I took turns in the bathroom. That’s when I saw the poster above the toilet. “You might be a redneck,” it advised, “if you have deer mounted in your bathroom.”

Well, now I know.

Thanks for reading!
Jan
PS: I am linking up with my even-more-civilized Company Girl friends at Home Sanctuary!

Posted in I Remember When... (my OWN stories) | 7 Comments

Why I am Such a Slow Writer

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Jan C. Johnson

I try not to envy people who can write quickly, creative juices flowing as they spend hours “in the zone.” But it’s tough; after conducting an interview I can spend two days just kicking little rocks and trying to decide where to start the story. After much deep thought, however, I think I’ve figured out why! (C’mon, you knew I would.)

It’s the KIND of work I’ve been doing. I write assigned magazine features, working from my own interview notes and the voice recordings which I often make as backup. The whole time I’m trying to refrain from putting every interesting detail in the first sentence, and to string the loose parts of the story into some sort of logical, coherent order, my target word count is glaring at me, defying me to go 25 words over. Mind you, this is not a word limit but a tiny bulls-eye that I must strive to hit. 1,099 words is NOT okay; it must be 1100. I can go a bit over, but 1115 is pushing it.

Now, these limits are fine and dandy, all part of the job of writing and revising. My downfall comes in with just four little words. You probably didn’t even notice them lounging nonchalantly in the second paragraph, first sentence.

The words? “Interview notes” and “voice recordings.”

No kidding, I spend more time trying to find stuff in my notes than doing anything else, except perhaps for making and drinking coffee. And kicking rocks. And that’s just when I can read my own writing and remember my little abbreviations, which is not always.
B DL, for instance, probably translates “born in Dallas” … or I may have meant “big deal.”

It’s even worse when I know my subject said something funny about the subtopic at hand, but I didn’t write it down so I play back the voice recording. Now I have to listen to 20 minutes of myself laughing, the ceiling fan chain clinking, and somebody outside running a leaf blower while I follow the conversation and try to catch the remark.

So, that’s magazine feature writing. Academic writing was little better. When I was in school doing literary analysis papers, I often typed my notes directly into a document on my laptop. So then later, as I pulled my evidence together, I could find a half-remembered phrase by searching for a key word or two. Unless, of course, I had originally typed a quote from, say, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and then later when I needed the phrase I might absent-mindedly search for “Gilligan’s Island” (Usually my search terms were closer to reality, but just one letter off and you still get “no results.”)

The same problem of trying to narrow my focus cropped up in academic writing just as much as it does in feature writing. I remember walking the mile from my afternoon class to my car one day, deep in thought over what topic I would choose for my next World Lit paper. As usual, I wanted a unique approach, an unexpected angle. Suddenly several random bits of the story of Oedipus connected in my mind, so as to form an avenue of inquiry. I stopped in my tracks, sat down on the curb — right in front of the campus police station, I believe — fished a notebook out of my backpack and scribbled down the gist of the ideas before I could forget them. I’ve learned the hard way: once a focus hits me, I can’t afford to trust it to memory.

So yes, I waste lots of time trying to find information in my own interviews or research. But that’s when I am working with serious, factual stuff. What about fiction, or my goofier more lighthearted blog posts? Well, in either case it’s a different story.

With fiction, so far I have worked from either a prompt (a scenario, such as I got in class for the twin scenes about Yvette and Martin) or from an idea or concept that I tried to illustrate in story form. For the goofy blog posts, I am armed with my own double propensity for (a) laughing at myself and (b) unintentionally providing myself with plenty of material.

I have found that when I am free to play with a story, I get just as much into “the zone” as those other writers I envy. For example, in my class, once I thought of a plausible cause for the confusion described in the prompt, “Yvette” and “Martin” were born. They rapidly matured into a single-minded preschool director and… well… an engineer. I snickered my way through the evening, each read-through suggesting ways to make Yvette more determined and Martin more clueless.

Maybe I’m not too outrageously slow, after all.

Thanks for reading!
Jan

Soli Deo Gloria sisters: I wanted you to know the smiles are not gone. Thanks for standing around me!

Posted in I Remember When... (my OWN stories), Near As I Can Figure..., Uncategorized | 16 Comments

It’s Only a Pen…

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Jan C. Johnson

Gel pen + legal pad = bliss!
…. but it’s my favorite kind: a lovely, extra-fine-point black gel pen with a soft grip. Easy on the fingers, smoooooth dark line. It never skips, never blobs.

Some pens make me scribble for miles on a piece of scratch paper until they decide they are ready to flow. But this pen never holds out on me. No games. The pen just … writes.

It is always reliable, always faithful, always nice to hold. (Sort of like that good-looking blue-eyed guy I married!)

And THAT is a Simple Pleasure.

I’m linking up with Dayle at Simple Pleasures this morning. You are welcome to stop by and see what my friends are enjoying today!

Thanks for reading,
Jan

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Truest Life… Epilogue

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Jan C. Johnson

Martha (left) and Jan clown in the kitchen, 1982

The purpose of this post is to thank everyone for the kind, sympathetic and supportive comments I received on Truest Life, published March 15. As my thank-you gift to you, I thought I’d share how the piece came to be, and interpret where it might be a little ambiguous.

~~~~~~~~
I had known since November that my sister’s cancer had spread, but she had not uttered the word “terminal.” The fact was there, behind her matter-of-fact reports of scan results and symptoms. Though it pushed itself at me, somehow my mind deflected the word, refusing to allow it to stick. After all, in many ways Martha seemed unchanged. We still laughed about the latest family happenings and sympathized with each other’s concerns. Admittedly, she did sound sort of tired, and she often had trouble thinking of the words she wanted to use. That was from the lesions on her brain stem, she said. The cancer also caused occasional panic attacks and confusion.

Still I could not accept the idea that she would not overcome this illness as she had overcome so many challenges in life. That simply could not be.

Oh, but it could. Early in March, my niece called to let me know that her mom was in the hospital. She had been admitted with panic attacks, and had decided to discontinue chemotherapy and go into a hospice. I spoke with Martha by phone the next day, and she was as calm as ever. She said she didn’t feel up to seeing our other family members, and gave me messages for them. We cried on the phone and poured love into each other’s hearts.

I went to see her a couple of days after she was settled in the hospice, and felt shocked at her decline. She moved and spoke in slow motion, and did not seem to focus on anything. Her last ten days or so found her increasingly withdrawn and confused, finally just sleeping nearly all the time. I went to sit with her, wishing I could tell her all about my latest work or run some ideas by her. A writer herself, she had always been my best supporter. I felt disappointed, almost hurt, that she was no longer able to care or respond.

One day as I sat with Martha, I thought about that detachment, common with a terminal illness but in her case magnified by the cancer attacking her brain. As she faced the hugeness of eternity, it was only natural for the most legitimate concerns of her earthly life — her work, the plans we had made together, daily routines, even our relationships with other people and her illness itself — to fade into insignificance. I tried to create a picture of our different viewpoints as the things I still cared most about simply stopped registering with her.

Physically, she was sinking into oblivion. But I knew that, in another dimension, her spirit would continue to live. The analogy of one child, outgrowing childhood before her friends do, seemed the best way for me to express the transition from both our perspectives.

Several of you commented that the post was “beautiful,” and I deeply appreciate that. But the darker side — the pain and struggle my sister went through, and our own struggle to deal with her cancer and the coming separation — nothing can make that beautiful. So I just left it out. I did not intend to romanticize terminal illness, just to isolate and preserve the concept that the person who dies will go on to live apart from us. It is the logical next step after his or her time on earth is done. And for the believer in Jesus, that life will be full of beauty, joy and adventure that we cannot imagine from this side. And I will one day join her again.

Cancer is ugly, but my sister was beautiful.

Just being around her was beautiful.

Thanks for reading, but above all, thanks for caring.
Jan

PS: Today I am linking up with my Soli Deo Gloria sisters. I so appreciate their coming alongside me with comfort and understanding.

Posted in Grief Anticipated | 16 Comments

Selective Frugality, Part 2

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Jan C. Johnson

Howdy! My first post about Selective Frugality was “One Cent Cheaper,” published on February 11. Here is a follow-up.

My friend Joey is a first-grade teacher with a delightful style and a heart full of love. Not long after I posted “One Cent Cheaper,” she blogged about the travails of keeping her classroom prize box stocked. You know, with prizes for good behavior. (This “essential and beloved component of every well-managed elementary classroom” was unheard of back in my grade-school days, but then, we didn’t have air-conditioning either. In Texas, no less.)

I thought that while we are brainstorming about frugality I would share Joey’s post, which any teacher in America will love: Miss Frugal And Her Prize Box. (On second thought, it may not apply to high school or college instructors… but you’ll still love it, I bet.)

For Part 3, I will post about setting personal priorities for your hard-earned cash in “The Joys of Guilt-Free Spending.”

Thanks for reading!
Jan
Today I am linking up for coffee with Rachel Anne and my “Company Girls”.

Posted in Everybody Has a Story, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Do I Hafta?

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Jan C. Johnson

This post originally appeared at my friend Ashley Pichea’s blog on January 17. Here is the Link. I hope you will go by and visit Ashley, one smart and creative mom!
And today, I am linking up with Jen and my Soli Deo Gloria friends. Stop by and be blessed!

Maybe you have fallen into the same trap I have: Important things fall by the wayside because something else seems more urgent. Both men and women (but especially moms with young kids, I think) seem prone to this. Even as an empty nester I find myself neglecting the truly important. How do you know you are over-committed and over-scheduled? If you find yourself rushing around, saying sentences that start with the words “I have to…” then this could be you! And it can be contagious, infecting even our children. Here’s a flashback from my world…

“Hey, Kid — it’s time to come help me with dinner,” I said.

My son didn’t look up from the game he was playing. “Just a minute — I have to play until I win a round,” he told me.

My eyebrows went up. I have to, huh?

Who says? Not me, and I’m the mom. That “have to” was strictly self-imposed.

I could get mad, and maybe I did, but he probably got the “I-have-to’s” from me.

To be fair, sometimes the “I-have to’s” sneak up on you because your schedule genuinely becomes unmanageable. Like the Spring semester of 2007. I took three college courses, a load that had proved easy enough in the past. But the required “English Major Boot Camp” course turned out to be filled with overlapping and simultaneous assignments. The pressure was relentless. Things at home… well… didn’t get done.

But it is all too easy to passively let “I have to” take the place of making conscious decisions about how to use our time. At those times, “I have to…” begins to sound like an excuse. I remember saying things like “I can’t play with you right now, Sweetie, I have to wash these dishes (or finish the laundry, or start dinner, etc…)” or more recently “I don’t have time to read my Bible this morning, Lord; I have to meet this deadline first.”

Oh, really? Who says? Not God, and he’s the Lord. (Okay, I don’t actually say that last excuse in words. But that’s what it amounts to.)

A few years ago, a crowd of “conflicting duties” frustrated me. But when I thought about it, I realized that there are no conflicting duties. God can count; He would never assign more than 24 hours’ worth of stuff to do in one day — including sleep! So, if I’m trying to squeeze in 28 hours’ worth of activity a day, that indicates four hours of unnecessary stuff that I have imposed on myself. When the schedule gets really pinched, I need to ask myself, do I really have to do this? Maybe some of my duties are obsolete, or I’m being too much of a perfectionist about them, or someone else needs and wants a chance to serve in my place. It’s time to step back, sift through those things that keep me too busy, and ask the Lord whether I should let go of some of them.

One helpful tool I learned about from my college adviser is the “week-at-a-glance” time budgeting chart. She recommended using it to figure out whether you can realistically manage your proposed course load. It is just a table that has seven columns and enough rows to show half-hour blocks of time, from your usual rising time to your latest likely bedtime. My adviser handed me one of these and told me to block in my scheduled obligations first (like classes and work), then time for meals, study and travel, and then optional activities like my social life. (Although at my age, my social life consisted mainly of family time and was NOT optional!) Using this to assess how you are already spending each day is also a worthwhile exercise.

I don’t know about you, but I could use a “filter” for items before they go on my calendar (or before I realize I have just spent an hour on some unplanned and time-wasting diversion!) Here are some questions I try to remember to ask myself…

1. Does this activity benefit me, either physically, mentally, spiritually or emotionally?
2. Does it benefit others, especially those for whom I am responsible?
3. Does it support my God-given purpose and either a long- or short-term goal?
4. Does it balance with other things I am doing, or does it tend to make my schedule lop-sided (too heavy in one area of life while neglecting another)?

Bear in mind: I do NOT advocate packing your schedule with drop-dead-serious endeavors. Quite the opposite! If you don’t have time to laugh, pray, rest, eat, exercise and feed your soul with the beauty of art or of God’s creation, then let go of some of the serious stuff. Seriously. It’s okay — and healthy — to say “Enough.”

I hope this perspective from an “older mom” will encourage some of my younger sisters. I welcome any comments and questions you may have.

Thanks for reading!
Jan

Posted in A Page From My Journal, Uncategorized | 18 Comments