Lee Woodruff's Blog, page 2
April 22, 2013
Those We Love Most in Paperback
Spring is busting out all over - and that means the paperback edition of "Those We Love Most" is coming out. Hot off the presses.
It's a perfect "book club pick" and a discussion guide is included in the back.
Scroll down for a list of public appearances and if I'm in your area I'd love to see you and your friends. You can find out more information about these venues on my Events page and for information on the book you can click here those-we-love-most.
See you soon! Lee
Speaking & Signing Events
April 30 Washington DC - In Conversation with Marc Adelman, Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, 7pm, www.sixthandi.org
May 2 New York City, NY -Colgate Women Alumni Group, 6:30pm
www.colgateconnect.org
May 5 Providence, RI -Temple Beth-El, 4pm,
www.temple-beth-el.org
May 7 Dallas, TX -Dallas Women's Club Reading, 11:00am
-St. Michael's Women's Exchange, 1:30pm
st-michaels-womans-exchange.com
May 8 Greenwich, CT -Perrot Memorial Library, 7:30pm
www.perrotlibrary.org
May 10 Morristown, NJ -Junior League of Morristown, 11am
www.jlmnj.org
May 11 Hadley, MA -Johnny Got His Gun, 7:30pm
www.olddeerfieldproductions.org
May 15 Brookline, MA -Brookline Booksmith, 7pm
www.brooklinebooksmith.com
May 16 Eatontown, NJ -Brain Injury Alliance, 31st Annual Seminar, 12pm
www.bianj.org/annual-seminar
May 21 Princeton, NJ-Woman Space Barbara Boggs Sigmund Award, 5:30pm www.womanspace.org
May 22 New York City, NY -Eileen Fisher, Flatiron store at 166 Fifth Ave (between 21st and 22nd Streets), 6pm
www.eileenfisher.com
June 4 New York City, NY -NY Women In Communications Event, 6pm
www.nywici.org
June 6 Bedford, NY -Bedford Post Inn, 11:30am
www.bedfordpostinn.com
June 12 Westport, CT -Wine, Women & Wisdom Event
www.connectionspublicrelations.com
April 10, 2013
Digging in the Dirt
Most young children compete with their siblings for their parent’s affection. My sisters’ and my rivals, however, were my father’s plants. He adored lush ferns and bright colors, lipstick red summer geraniums and the bold purple of miniature lobelia. Our lawn was golf-course green and weed-free (and he was not above employing a few chemicals to keep it that way). Watering, fertilizing, clipping and weeding were his sports arena, his temple and his escape.
When I ultimately had my own home, yard and children, I discovered that growing things, digging around in the soil, was a balm for me, too.
The plants and trees I nurtured existed in a separate sphere from the sometimes routinized and often chaotic world of mothering four children, now ranging in age from 21 to 13.
I am drawn to my summer garden in the dawn, before anyone stirs inside. In springtime, I prepare the beds and start my dahlia bulbs and herbs in pots of kitchen compost soil. By August, the flowers are a tangle of bright colors. But in October, as I cut back my dahlia stalks, dig out the tubers and turn over the earth, I am reminded how the seasons of a garden mirror those of our lives.
And so it was natural, 18 years ago, when I lost a baby at 14 weeks that I turned to the land to make sense of my grief. The pain of losing that child was sharp, unlike anything I had experienced. I had pictured my baby, imagined him in our family’s silhouette. There were mornings I didn’t want to lift my head off the pillow, days I forced myself to simply get through, and tend to the needs of my two living children.
Grief craves ritual, and that summer, I was determined to plant a tree to memorialize our son, to root him in our land and fix his place. I felt a primal need to make something thrive after something so precious had perished.
Feeling barren and broken, I chose a small but sturdy Japanese maple with deep burgundy pointed leaves. We were a transient family in those days, moving from town to town every few years for my
husband’s job as a journalist.
The place we call our “constant home” is on a lake in the Adirondacks to which my family has returned for five generations each summer. It was there, in a simple ceremony of poems and prayers, that we planted the tree under the spread of a giant fir. As I covered the roots with loamy soil, I felt the barest flicker, a hope that my battered heart might begin to heal.
Throughout each summer, passing the tree in my walk between beach and house, it’s impossible not to wonder what our family would have looked like with a different configuration. We were thrilled with the birth of our twin girls in 2000, but a loss doesn’t get erased by joy, only diluted. That sorrow is buried within now, marked in our trunks like the inner rings of a tree. The maple reminds me that life is indomitable. We may never get over losing those we love, but we can navigate through it.
In 2003, the war in Iraq claimed the life of a friend in a very sudden way. It was our first close brush with the death of someone my age and it hobbled us. In the autumn after his funeral, a group of friends planted hundreds of white tulips on the grassy bank near his house for his widow and daughters. The activity connected us all and joined our grief in one supportive web. That spring, the riot of color that bloomed filled up some space, it lessened the ache.
My children are older now, and I’ve come to that place in life where I’m parenting my parents. The seesaw has tipped for my sisters and me as we head toward the inescapable fact that we will lose them both. Yet I cannot quite grasp what it will feel like once they are gone. When I am unable to hear my mother’s voice on the phone, or loop my arm through my father’s on a walk, I imagine it will throb like a phantom limb.
I’ve not yet decided how I will honor my mother, but I know what I will do to memorialize the man who loved to put his hands in the dirt. I will plant a White Birch, the lavender pink bark etched with whorled black lines in the shape of God’s eyes. We will place it near the shores of the lake he loves, by the dock where he spent his afternoons. And when I cover the roots of the tree with earth, I will know that a little piece of my father will live on there too.
This blog was published in Martha Stewart Living Magazine, April 2013, pg. 170
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
March 18, 2013
Sisters Offer Support On All Occasions
Guest Blog by my sister, Nancy McLoughlin
The Hawaiian island of Kauai has a wild native weed that grows on its shores. Its roots dig 30 feet into the lava soil, intertwining with those of their neighbors to form an unbreakable net, anchoring this groundcover to the earth. It is hard to tell where one plant begins and the other ends. Without this ancient weed, harsh tradewinds and storms would have blown away the island soil, flattening the island terrain and making it uninhabitable.
My sisters and I are like that weed. The three of us wrap together into each other’s soil. We support and sustain the lives of nine children, three husbands and five aging parents between us. It is often hard to tell where one family breaks off and the other begins.
In times of need, we form our own root like net around the ailing. In times of abundance, we share the spoils of a happy occasion or holiday. It would be hard to imagine it any other way, yet friends comment upon how unusual it is for siblings to choose to spend vacation time together at the expense of other new opportunities.
My oldest sister had the idea to drag the other two of us across the world on a solo-sisters celebration in Hawaii. She billed it as a gift to ourselves and from ourselves. I have never been very adventurous, and spending 12 hours on a plane crossing into a new time zone is asking a lot from me. I weighed the heavy thought of all those collective sneezes and coughs in recycled airline air like one big billowing tornado of disgust. I like my routine and my health, but I like being with my sisters more, so I forged ahead.
After much grousing and last-minute attempt to cancel on my part, we were off. It was a full day and night of travel. A youth behind me babbled in Swedish and kicked the back of my seat. Her father took off his socks and propped his bare foot up on the arm-rest in front of him (next to me).
The three of us shared a room at our hotel. That’s the fun part about being sisters. The bickering and sarcasm about who should sleep where began almost instantly. After losing a brief firefight, I relinquished the two queen-size beds and staked my claim on the roll-away cot. My bed became known as “the Hannibal” due to its likeness to the hand cart that wheeled notorious Dr. Lecter in the “Silence of the Lambs” thriller. It spent its days standing upright in the corner like an authoritative figure. The Hannibal had straps and restraints just like the one in the film, and when I slid on my black eye shade for sleep, the image was complete and my sisters howled with laughter.
Even with my white noise machine humming, the room was anything but silent. Lying awake in the Hannibal, I felt a shift in the mantle I had been wearing for all my mothering years. As I drifted off to sleep, I was less of a wife and a mom. I transformed back into a full-time sister all over again.
Megan Lucier, Nancy McLoughlin & Lee in Kauai, Hawaii
It had been 25 years since my sisters and I had slept in the same room, yet the identity was as comfortable as my own skin. Until marriage and kids, these sisters were the closest human beings I had ever known. I could almost hear the beating of their hearts in the room, slowing down and speeding up in sync with my own. After all these decades, the DNA worked together in a sort of musical harmony once we were together.
On the trip, I was reminded that sisters “said” things to each other that no one else could say. “You really didn’t need to get up at three in the morning and make the last trip to the bathroom,” my Boston sister informed me after the first night. “It wasn’t warranted. You just need to tell your bladder that it isn’t feeling full, because it didn’t sound at all to me like it was.” It was nice to know that there was a late-night listening audience.
Sisters had contests like the one we shared on a beach walk.
“Who do you think wins in the “in-law competition?” stated the oldest introducing a favorite topic of ours.
“Well, I think the answer to that has changed over the years,” I added. “I would have answered one way a few years back, but I think you have put your blinker on and zipped into the left lane, passing us all on that one recently,” I told her.
I was referring to her father-in-law’s propensity to lie down in his driveway and “take naps.” This was such a frequent occurrence that the neighbors had taken to tiptoeing over and sliding a pillow under his head, waiting for him to wake as they phoned the kids to let them know.
The athletic component of our trip (matched in enthusiasm by the dining segment of each day) unfolded with an excursion. Traveling up the mountain of an old sugar plantation, we donned headlamps, rubber gloves and water shoes before inner tubing through five flooded miles of irrigation ditches (which were quite muddy). It was meant to be informative and fun.
Part of the “thrill” was a series of five completely pitch-black caves that we floated through with our headlamps turned off, as directed by the tour guide (ideally so we could bash into the rock ledges and spin dizzily in our tubes in complete and utter blackness).
Megan, Lee & Nancy
There was no reason to think that anyone would like wearing the obligatory smelly rubber shoes and gloves that had been on the bodies of strangers prior to mine. My sisters watched in hysterical giggles as I tried to overcome my revulsion enough to get dressed in the loaner gear. I spent much of the water tour plastered to my tube in a frozen stillness that was not out of fear for my safety, but horror.
I wanted to touch the germ-infested tube in as few contact points as possible. I would have felt less contaminated perching inside King Kong’s open mouth on one of his molars than on the rubber tube. I did it without complaint. My crablike position rocketed me to the head of the pack, placing me farther away from my sisters, who craned their necks to catch a glimpse of my misery and roar with glee.
The river trip seemed to go on forever, but the sisters holiday did not. It was over before I knew it and I was back on the plane next to a mouth breather who alternately snoozed and sipped cocktails for most of the journey.
When I look back on the trip, I think about the holiday season. I am reminded about gifts that have a lasting value as I make my own Christmas list (new knives for the kitchen) and try to fill the needs of a family of Internet shoppers.
I know my sisters are the best presents my parents ever gave to me. After 50 years, I marvel that the three of us could briefly leave our grown-up lives behind and travel to a faraway place to find ourselves together again laughing like little girls on spinning inner tubes. The trip is over, yet the value of the experience is not.
When our mother called to hear about the trip, I could hear the smile at the other end of the telephone. “You girls have done this all by yourselves,” she answered when I thanked her for having had the good sense to deliver three daughters in three years on purpose. “There were times I thought I couldn’t last another day when you were all very young and your father traveled all the time for work. I wished so much that I had a sister to talk to. I was exhausted, and you three could be wild together.”
“Still can be wild together,” I thought as I chuckled about the river tube trip. Like the weed in Hawaii, strong families and healthy generations grow out of roots that are set down by sisters who have woven themselves intentionally into each other’s lives.
Nancy, Lee & Megan
Sisterhood is a gift that keeps on giving, even if there is a weed or two involved.
By Nancy McLoughlin
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
March 5, 2013
Living His Art
“I just found these oysters on the tree behind your shed,” he asked causally. “There are tons of them. How about if I cook them up for the dinner?” Lightly sautéed with herbs from the garden, they were the most delicious mushrooms we had ever tasted. It was only later he shared the story of four friends, one an expert “forager” who had all been poisoned by one errant wild woods mushroom at a dinner party.
As I came to know Barney and his wife Susan, I grew to admire not only his artistic talents with paint and furniture, but also the way they live. Untethered to “things,” they are in constant motion, retreating comfortably into nature’s wombs to recharge and discover elements for his furniture and artwork. Barney is considered by many to be the preeminent living rustic artist, and he only accepts limited commissions, preferring instead to follow his own creative process.
Like many artisans, Barney chooses to make his pieces one at a time. His upstate New York studio is full of found and foraged items and he makes a point of always working with apprentices, to teach others the finer points of his craft. And while industry executives have tried to convince him to replicate his designs on a more mass level, he has always politely declined, despite the financial opportunity. More than anyone else I have ever met, Barney knows how to live in the moment.
The seasons are his guide for where he will go and how long he will stay. Summer and late autumn find him in his beloved Adirondack Mountains gathering knobby root burls, twigs, salvage metal and flea market finds, moving from camp to camp and to art shows. He heads to Montana in September, for fly-fishing when the already-quiet state gets even quieter. Then it’s the Florida Keys in March, which were the inspiration for a line of furniture related to cigar boxes. In the winter he takes all of the objects and natural elements he has collected back to his studio in Mayfield, N.Y. and spends those cold months creating.
“If I like it, I figure other people will like it,” is his philosophy. And he has a very keenly honed sense of form with function.
[image error]Wood fish by Barney Bellinger
Painting by Barney BellingerBecause his furniture and paintings will always be on my list of desired objects, I wanted to interview Barney to understand how he approaches his craft and ends up doing exactly what he wants to do.
Q- You’ve had an interesting journey to become an artist, can you describe it?
A - I started detailing motorcycles and building custom bikes. I’d go down to Daytona Beach in the 70s for bike week and I’d pinstripe bikes all day. A fire ravaged my business and I lost all my equipment and 23 bikes. That put an end to my company.
Q - Fire places a significant role in your life. How do you explain that?
A- There have been eight fires in my family. I can’t figure it out. My father was burned severely, my business, I lost the use of an arm for an extended period in a fire two years ago. It must mean something but I haven’t figured it out yet.
Q – So what happened after your business fire?
A- I started a hand-painted sign business in the Saratoga Springs area. And that just evolved into creating paintings and then creating my furniture. When you are an artist, the only limitations you have are the ones you put on yourself.
Q –So, you’ve never been tempted to “go Starbucks,” never wanted to turn your work in to mass production or take on tons of apprentices?
A – No way. No interest. I can think of a number of times I’ve turned a check back to a client who had gotten too overbearing about the creative process and tried to give me too much direction. I respect the integrity of my pieces and the people who are going to possess them. I want them all to go to good homes. I like people’s input, but it’s hard to work when someone is trying to control my output.
Q- You have some pretty heady clients?
A- I never name names but yes, my pieces are in the homes of some of America’s most well known families, heads of businesses and in many great lodges in Montana and camps in the Adirondacks. But you never forget where you come from. I think of all of my clients the same way, even the person who paid me for a piece in $20 dollar installments for years.
Q- Where are you most at home?
A –On a remote Adirondack pond, like the West Canada Wilderness Area or on a backcountry stream in Gallatin National Forest in Montana.
Q- What do you see in buying patterns now as a reflection of the economy?
A- I‘m fortunate that people still want to buy my work but what I’m seeing is “purposeful purchasing.” Before the economic downturn, people would buy any piece I had finished, regardless of whether or not they had a place to put them. Now they are buying specific pieces or paintings they have an exact place for in mind.
I hope you get a chance to see a Barney Bellinger piece in person sometime. Like most great works of art, the photos can’t do them justice. Here is a quote from Barney about the philosophy of his work:
“I do not paint to please critics but rather to record my travels. Information and inspiration is derived through my lifestyle of exploring backwoods ponds, lakes and mountain trails. Lean-to’s and tent camps provide shelter. Foraging for raw materials is always an opportunity to study natural forms and color. Painting for me is a privilege.”
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
February 18, 2013
FEVER BLISTERS AND EX BOYFRIENDS
Background: This isn’t some prom date kind of boyfriend. This was my first serious college relationship, my first adult love, the kind of solid, healthy relationship I’d wish for all of my daughters.
Disclosure: We’ve remained in touch for years, and my husband loves him. I love his wife. The four of us lived in Northern California back when they first met and before we had kids. So, if you imagined me starving myself for two months to get down to some kind of skinny jeans fighting weight, it’s not like that. This is a guy who lovingly cleaned my meatloaf splattered vomit off his record collection (and my face) after my 20th birthday celebration. This is a good guy, the kind of guy that has prompted my husband to regularly remark “You had good taste.” I’d like to think I still do.
Regardless, 15 years without seeing someone and you might be hankering to put your best foot--- or face—forward. But here was the thing. A few days earlier I had booked a facial laser treatment, to scrub off all those pre-cancerous sun spots and hope for some new collagen and a more youthful visage. Clearly, I had not thought through the timing of the recovery.
So, sit back for a moment and imagine meeting your old love. Now imagine your face, red and puffy like a broiled tomato, two small, hard, raisin eyes. If the swelling and the irritation weren’t bad enough, somewhere on the flight across the country my immune system had begun to respond to the procedure the way it does to an extreme sun burn, by forming a fever blister. Except that my face thought this was Armageddon.
This was no one little boo boo. This was a blooming beard of blisters, a veritable Fu Manchu of herpes tattooed around my lips like a ring of fire. Have I traumatized you enough yet? Because let me just lay on the last visual. The top layer of my skin had begun to peel, which was the desired result of the treatment. But don’t picture tiny little flakes off the bridge of a nose. I want you to imagine a full Komodo dragon molting, big patches of dry skin hitting the ground with leper colony speed. Yes, you are probably thinking, these are not optimal conditions under which to see your old boyfriend? All that was missing was a dowager’s hump and a black tooth.
Naturally, I was quick to explain. Luckily, he is a doctor. So he was somewhat sympathetic to my plight. At the very least he understood the human body. I did tell him that I’d been considering an eyelid lift for some time and if he knew anyone in Denver maybe we could book it right now and I could get all the ugly healing drama over with at once. Adding insult to injury, envision how desperate you have to be to ask your old boyfriend to write you a prescription for cold sore meds. Did I mention the swollen, burned face and oozing blisters were uncomfortable? Did I mention it was actually his wife who kindly called it in and drove me to the pharmacy to pick it up? Did I also mention how much I like her?
All of the above either takes a giant pair of stones or a total lack of vanity, neither of which are particularly desirable qualities in a woman. So I’m not quite sure what this story really says about me. The visual alone is unsettling.
If it seems odd to be in that kind of touch with an old boyfriend, I’m in the camp who believes it’s a gift to know people from your past. Yes, yes, if your ex turned out to be a serial rapist or an Internet porn king, you might want to cut ties. But I’ve actually kept up with a number of old boyfriends. There was a solid reason I was attracted to them in the first place and in most cases those reasons are still valid.
Listen, I get it. I understand why people don’t keep in touch. I know there are sickos and stalkers and people who change dramatically or never get past high school. I’ve seen those movies. Lord knows I dated a few ratfinks. But for the most part, I’m happy to have kept in contact with the good eggs.
We move on, we grow up; we begin to define ourselves and figure out what we want and need in a partner. And all of the people we meet along the way are part of that process of discovery. There is a sweet nostalgia in connecting with the people we used to be, that freer, younger, less encumbered version of our present selves. People from our past help us to do that, in admittedly both positive and sometimes negative ways. Old loves helped to bring us to the place we are now. My sister calls past boyfriends “the first pancake” – the one you cook and then throw out, the one you use to temper the skillet for the real breakfast.
Still, I have a hard time understanding people who are jealous of their spouse’s past relationships, especially the people who predated them. I am grateful for my husband’s former experiences, his old loves. He got some great practice time in the field. The way I think of it is – I won the prize. I got the ring. Relax; I want to say to the haters. But I guess I’m not a very jealous person by nature and neither is he.
Recently, I was reminded that my kumbaya approach to the past is not shared by all. I agreed to meet an old high school and family friend (note= not a boyfriend) for a quick drink during his business trip to New York. My husband knew where I was, but it was obvious the next morning that he and his wife didn’t share the same level of open communication.
I woke up to a series of psycho emails, the Internet equivalent of a jealous woman scrawling lipstick threats on your mirror. She had clearly been reading his email and monitoring our back and forth as we chose a restaurant location and bantered around some stupid inside jokes from high school. As I opened each email I read with growing dread the comments she had edited into our correspondence, phrases like “don’t you know he’s married?” or “isn’t this cute that you are meeting.” Cue the Hitchcock soundtrack.
The level of crazy was so preposterous for a harmless 45-minute beer that at first I was convinced my friend was playing a joke on me. And then I realized this was dead serious. Radio silence from my friend. He may still be tied up in a basement bomb shelter somewhere with a pillowcase over his head. Suffice it to say that kind of behavior was a good reason to cut ties with the past.
After I returned from the Denver trip, still slightly swollen but with the fever blisters medicated down to milk moustache size, my friend’s wife sent a copy of what their youngest daughter had written as an exercise in school that next day. “…then I swimmed at the pools and ate S’mores and then we had to go home and see my Dad’s girlfriend Lee.”
I can still picture it now, the look of astonishment on his daughters’ sweet faces as I walked in their house, hot sauce-red face, squinting like Popeye minus the corn cob pipe. I could see their young brains processing how in the world their beloved father had ever given this raggedy assed woman a second look, let alone dated her for two years. Perhaps it was an act of grace, his eldest daughter must have concluded. Like a “Make a Wish” foundation experience.
And as three sets of eyes flicked between their mother, and me I could almost see the cartoon bubbles above their beautiful heads…. “Thank Heavens Dad picked Mom.”
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
February 4, 2013
Marital Checklist
The run up to Valentines Day offers eternal love for couples. Flowers, chocolates, hearts-- even birds chirping for those lucky few. But the reality of any relationship is hard work. And not everyone is going
to hit every box on the marital check list. Sometimes the reality isn't quite as sexy, but being there for the long haul, through the good and the bad, is much more satisfactory. Watch here...
January 16, 2013
Call Me...Maybe?
Set aside my skepticism at clutching a mobile device to our brains or the loony appearance of those blinking Vulcan blue earpieces. What I hate about the phone when conducting business is the socially required chitchat, the lubrication, the “how are the kids” banter that doesn’t allow for cutting to the chase. Wasn’t this precisely why Al Gore created the Internet --- so we could all be more efficient?
But lately it seems that even email is failing me. I’m drowning in the sheer volume, suffocating in the volleys. Some conversations and decisions seem to require so many back and forths, so much cc-ing and reply-all-ing, that my knickers are twisted. We are a society of over- communicators. We text while we paint our toenails, we tweet while we’re getting frisky. We feel a sense of rising panic if we haven’t responded to someone in 24 hours.
Good old-fashioned email can plunge you into hot water, if you’re not careful. The written word lacks tone or inflection, there’s no indication that you are joshing (other than that silly smiley face symbol). Even a well-intentioned breezy missive can sound like you are dead serious, and a serious email can read as if a razor is poised at your wrist.
Ooops. It seems I’ve just offended someone with my sloppily dashed email. But OMG, WTF? I’d used LOL, added a smiley face and plenty of exclamation marks to lighten it all up. Sigh. More time spent on clarification, apologies and back–pedaling. Now a phone call to hear our voices, palpate the hurt, define the intentions and un-do the damage. And finally, are we good? We’re good. OK. Thumbs up. We like each other on Facebook again.
Suddenly I’m nostalgic for my old black cord phone, the one I pulled into my childhood bedroom to whisper about cute boys. A phone call back then had weight, carried a certain importance. It was almost the equivalent of a written letter now, as quaint as composing your Santa list from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue.
One of my favorite Nora Ephron essays is “The Six Stages of E-Mail.” In the first stage she describes her excitement and infatuation at the new method of communication. This gives way to her confusion over excessive spam for retail and personal growth opportunities like penis enlargement. Note - my husband once changed his email address for this reason and let’s not go into the understandable insecurities this can breed when you’re a male recipient. In the next stage, Ephron is overwhelmed by her email and finally the last section is simply entitled “Call Me.”
Clicking on my email icon is like powering up a ball machine on a tennis court. My returns are faster and the replies now shorter. Anyone who emails me has to live with the fact that I don’t take the time to spell check. It’s my tiny stab at insurrection, a minimal but important time saving device. To me, email is the written equivalent of a verbal response. Of course there are exceptions, but you know you’re a friend if you have to read my messages fone- et-i- call-ee.
Sadly, from the looks of my inbox, email is here to stay. And after years of attempting to be a nice, polite girl, dutifully answering even unsolicited emails, I’m getting ruthless. I’m teaching myself to resist UFR (unnecessary further response) and to press delete when I see the FNOD’s (Forward to ten friends Now - Or Die a mysterious death within 24 hours). I no longer send replies that say “great”, “OK,” “done,” “thank you” or “really?” It’s liberating. And frankly, do these people even remember they had the last word? Did they care? And don’t get me started on RAA (reply-all abuse). Emailing someone is like accessing porn on the Internet. Even a child can do it.
I’m not sure exactly how I’ll solve this. It’s unrealistic to assume I can throw my devices out the car window and walk away from the burning wreckage. But I’m working on a healthier balance.
But the next time we’re trying to set up a lunch date and its taking seven replies, don’t be surprised if you hear the phone ring. That will be me— and please don’t be offended if I fail to enquire about your parent’s health.
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
I Miss You Ma Bell
Set aside my skepticism at clutching a mobile device to our brains or the loony appearance of those blinking Vulcan blue earpieces. What I hate about the phone when conducting business is the socially required chitchat, the lubrication, the “how are the kids” banter that doesn’t allow for cutting to the chase. Wasn’t this precisely why Al Gore created the Internet --- so we could all be more efficient?
But lately it seems that even email is failing me. I’m drowning in the sheer volume, suffocating in the volleys. Some conversations and decisions seem to require so many back and forths, so much cc-ing and reply-all-ing, that my knickers are twisted. We are a society of over- communicators. We text while we paint our toenails, we tweet while we’re getting frisky. We feel a sense of rising panic if we haven’t responded to someone in 24 hours.
Good old-fashioned email can plunge you into hot water, if you’re not careful. The written word lacks tone or inflection, there’s no indication that you are joshing (other than that silly smiley face symbol). Even a well-intentioned breezy missive can sound like you are dead serious, and a serious email can read as if a razor is poised at your wrist.
Ooops. It seems I’ve just offended someone with my sloppily dashed email. But OMG, WTF? I’d used LOL, added a smiley face and plenty of exclamation marks to lighten it all up. Sigh. More time spent on clarification, apologies and back–pedaling. Now a phone call to hear our voices, palpate the hurt, define the intentions and un-do the damage. And finally, are we good? We’re good. OK. Thumbs up. We like each other on Facebook again.
Suddenly I’m nostalgic for my old black cord phone, the one I pulled into my childhood bedroom to whisper about cute boys. A phone call back then had weight, carried a certain importance. It was almost the equivalent of a written letter now, as quaint as composing your Santa list from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue.
One of my favorite Nora Ephron essays is “The Six Stages of E-Mail.” In the first stage she describes her excitement and infatuation at the new method of communication. This gives way to her confusion over excessive spam for retail and personal growth opportunities like penis enlargement. Note - my husband once changed his email address for this reason and let’s not go into the understandable insecurities this can breed when you’re a male recipient. In the next stage, Ephron is overwhelmed by her email and finally the last section is simply entitled “Call Me.”
Clicking on my email icon is like powering up a ball machine on a tennis court. My returns are faster and the replies now shorter. Anyone who emails me has to live with the fact that I don’t take the time to spell check. It’s my tiny stab at insurrection, a minimal but important time saving device. To me, email is the written equivalent of a verbal response. Of course there are exceptions, but you know you’re a friend if you have to read my messages fone- et-i- call-ee.
Sadly, from the looks of my inbox, email is here to stay. And after years of attempting to be a nice, polite girl, dutifully answering even unsolicited emails, I’m getting ruthless. I’m teaching myself to resist UFR (unnecessary further response) and to press delete when I see the FNOD’s (Forward to ten friends Now - Or Die a mysterious death within 24 hours). I no longer send replies that say “great”, “OK,” “done,” “thank you” or “really?” It’s liberating. And frankly, do these people even remember they had the last word? Did they care? And don’t get me started on RAA (reply-all abuse). Emailing someone is like accessing porn on the Internet. Even a child can do it.
I’m not sure exactly how I’ll solve this. It’s unrealistic to assume I can throw my devices out the car window and walk away from the burning wreckage. But I’m working on a healthier balance.
But the next time we’re trying to set up a lunch date and its taking seven replies, don’t be surprised if you hear the phone ring. That will be me— and please don’t be offended if I fail to enquire about your parent’s health.
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
December 20, 2012
Christmas Past and Future
I’m one of those people who never reads a book twice or doesn’t like to see a movie again. But twenty years into my marriage, I broke my rule to re-read “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner.
The book had originally been a bridal shower gift from a friend of my in-laws, and I’m embarrassed to say I can no longer remember who she was. But I vaguely recall that the accompanying note said it was a mandatory tale for anyone embarking on marriage; a simple story of commitment and friendship amidst the backdrop of life. It sounded banal enough that I set it aside and in the throes of wedding planning, it was left behind with my in-laws. The day after our September wedding, my new husband and I left for China.
“Peking” in 1988 was still a relatively backward city. Residents wore Communist Mao suits and bicycles were the major mode of transport. Bob was teaching at the Chinese Law University and our living conditions were Peace Corp poor; a concrete dorm room, jungle toilets down the hall and no potable running water.
If at first this all felt like an adventure, by December, I was missing my family desperately. One of my sisters was pregnant, and this would be the first Christmas I wouldn’t be there. The fun of paring our lives down to the basics had worn off with the advance of the holidays in our drab and secular surroundings.
When our first big package arrived by sea from Bob’s Mom, I enthusiastically assembled the foot-high fir tree with attachable ornaments, and hung the stockings she had included. Snuggled under a few holiday music cassette tapes was the paperback “Crossing to Safety.” I was eager to open it, desperate to connect with anything familiar back in America.
The tale of a husband and wife on the cusp of their new life together and their burgeoning friendship with another couple quickly absorbed me. The novel moved from Wisconsin to the apple orchards of Vermont, familiar territory for me growing up in the Adirondacks. And then, with time, the challenges began, the things that life often hides under its skirts when we first take our vows.
The simplicity of the story and the sparse eloquence of the writing captivated me. There was no sex or violence, no swear words, dystopia, or green aliens. It was a tale about life the way it is really lived, with loss and love, successes and failures, disappointments and triumphs. The characters came alive with Stegner’s beautiful prose.
Two decades later, I was a seasoned wife with four children in various stages of leaving the nest. The world had left its mark on us all. When my journalist husband was injured in the Iraq war, we were all tested. We celebrated in his recovery, while coming to terms with the preciousness of time together and the importance of resilience. We were no longer the doe-eyed couple who believed that one’s path in the world could simply be forged from the sheer force of good intentions and hard work.
I had decided that re-reading “Crossing to Safety” would be a wonderful way to honor our twenty year anniversary and yet I was slightly worried that it might disappoint. This second time, I was determined to re-read the story without any rose colored glasses.
Devouring the novel as a young bride far from home, I had originally identified with the young newlywed couple at the beginning of the story. Twenty years later, it was the older couple, the road-tested version of the newlyweds, with whom I felt a kinship.
I empathized with what life had thrown at the characters, the medical scares, the dings and dents, the disappointments, the strength of the women’s friendships, the determination to go the distance and see things through. The gift of “Crossing To Safety,” I understood in hindsight, had been receiving a blue print for life. At the time, I had simply been too young to comprehend.
Looking back now at that first Christmas with Bob, I am nostalgic. Life in China was simple and unencumbered. We had no children or mortgages, no mound of bills, savings or possessions, just the strengthening foundation of a growing love. We would need to call upon that in the years to come, to summon up what we had worked hard to construct. But as I write this, 24 years down the road, I am grateful and proud that we have done more than simply survive.
I can still see that stark Beijing dorm room, feel the thrill of devouring a great book that has more than stood the test of time. Although I couldn’t have imagined then what course our lives would take, as I now prepare to gather the brood for another family holiday complete with traditions, music and food, I wouldn’t trade places with my old newlywed self for all the tea in China.
Happy Holidays and may they be filled with remembering what's important.
Lee
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
December 3, 2012
Knocked Out: But A Christmas Baby Keeps on Singing
by Guest-Nancy McLoughlin
My son Collin McLoughlin was born on Christmas Day, which was not at all my plan. There is nothing like that holiday birthday to ensure that your child doesn’t become a diva. But as the very first grandchild in our family, there was much fanfare leading up to the event. The Christmas holiday that year dovetailed with the arrival of my two sisters, who did a lot of “what does it feel like?” during the labor.
Although I failed, I spent life determined to spare any offspring the doom of a December birthday. My own is December22nd. I know what it means. All my own childhood parties were combined and shared with sister’s Lee and Megan in their birth month of May. When the grass is green, no one is as exhausted, strapped for cash or busy. It was like being a birthday foster child. No one really took it seriously and sometimes people forgot to bring the third gift, because honestly, why bother?
But having a December birthday builds character. I see that now. It breeds fighters and lowers expectations about what the world owes. It is one more secret weapon for life’s journey. And so when our Christmas baby Collin landed a slot on the current Season 3 of “The Voice,” NBC’s #1 rated show, it was cause for celebration among us. The challenge brought the old feeling a child has when Santa Claus just might be coming.
Collin, Lee & Nan
After 100,000 singers tried out, Collin made it through two NY City auditions and then on to a pre-audition in California before an invitation to the blind auditions in L.A. There were lots of hurdles to jump through. Ultimately he made it on, and selected Adam Levine as his coach. Later he was stolen by Blake Sheldon before exiting the show.
The program format includes a taped series of episodes, (two thirds of the season) followed by the live portion which will end sometime right before Christmas. In other words, it is a LONG time. For months during the tapings I waved away discussion about “what’s to come” for my son Collin.
Fort Knox I am not known to be and it was challenging to keep the secret, for the better part of a year. My two sisters, proved a trusting place to park such valuable information. They were my vault and by confiding in them, I could still adhere to the “only family can know” interpretation of the rulebook.
During the tapings in L.A., we understood that we might be monitored, even taped at all times. With no way to confirm when and even if big brother was listening, my sisters and I developed a simple sister code phrase that only we could break. We were gone for nail biting weeks at a time, and the sisters were eager for updates on Collins progress after each challenge. We settled on our own phrase, equivalent to a “thumbs up, he made it to another round.” It hails from a time in our history, an era of elephant bell bottoms and Bonnie Bell lip smackers.
A neighborhood baseball game went sour when the batter drove a hit right down the line and it slammed into my younger sister Meg’s forehead. The term traumatic brain injury hadn’t yet been invented and neither had the MRI. But the word concussion had.
The pediatrician instructed my parents to wake Meg up at intervals during the night and ask a pre-arranged question to which she was to deliver the correct pre-arranged answer. If she seemed confused and did not recall the phrase, then the family Buick Skylark was going in gear to the hospital for observation.
For our secret sister Voice updates, we used the same phrase from Meg’s concussion night. My nerves were fraying from several nine hour audition marathons and a west coast time difference, but I dialed the phone and uttered the code into the voice mailboxes of the sisters. After that it was their problem to keep the secret as they went about life in a small summer town where everybody knows everything.
Sister Lee and Collin forged a bond very early in his life because he belonged to all of us in the way that very first children do. I am glad we named him Collin, avoiding the advice of some who thought Christmas Day was a great naming opportunity for “Nicholas,” or “Jesus” or “Noel.” Collin was a chip off the old aunt block and had terrible colic, (like Lee did). It was so intense, Lee was the only one we could trust to babysit without beating him, or overdosing him with cold medicine as one baby nurse did.
Blood curdling screams and infant barf were her reward for harrowing hours that felt like a gift for us to safely run away from. Surely it curtailed Lee’s initial desire to rush in and start a family of her own, especially since our mother always lamented how horribly colicky she was as well. Thanks to Bob’s gene pool, none of her kids suffered with it. Just mine.
At Lee and Bobs wedding Collin wore his very first suit, making a celebrity appearance as only the first grand-baby can. It was a large scale social event at which Collin showed early promise as a performer. We had to leave early, rushing off before the bouquet was thrown, exhausted and disheartened after Collin refused to quiet down. At the time we could have cared less if his commotion would someday morph into a healthy set of vocal pipes. We were barely getting through.
Collin, Nan & Lee
The day after Hurricane Sandy hit our home, we huddled in darkness hoping only for a glimpse of that evening’s “Voice episode. The town was without power or cable TV but the universe eased up enough to comply with a mother’s desire to witness a son (for the last time) on his network T.V. journey.
Trapped by fallen trees we snuggled under blankets. With an hour to spare, my husband drained the last of our gasoline into the portable generator and discovered a way to rig our ancient satellite box to receive just one TV channel, (and in some quirk of electronics, it would have to be the last one viewed before the power was lost)!
NBC was what we wanted and that was what we had. After a full day of jaw dropping storm coverage, Brian Williams took a break from his extended news report and turned the airwaves over to the singers. Despite rain and wind and the stuff that makes disaster on TV hard to turn away from, NBC made a local programming decision to suspend the sadness for a showing of that evening’s episode of The Voice. We all knew what was going to happen for Collin but there is a huge difference between “knowing” and “seeing.”
Collin watched his Knock out round live (no one has a preview of how things are edited) and made a graceful exit from the competition after Michaela Paige a feisty high school rocker with a pink rooster comb was designated the winner of their elimination round. Their battle was like pitting Kermit the frog against a popular and trendy Pokeman character. They are both so different.
Despite the sputtering generator and spotty service, Collin fought to send the obligatory “thank you” twitter to his fans, timed appropriately and coordinated by the show along with his exit. ”Darn, it isn’t going through,” he said concerned it might appear that silence indicated a case of poor sportsmanship rather than storm constraints.
Collin Mcloughlin at The Voice
The Voice is not over for our family. Sequestered, gagged, and gossip-neutralized for months after the taped shows, we can now sing to the rooftops because anything can happen in the live shows and we have no more secrets to share.
What a wonderful experience it has been, a fantastic way to tap into America’s continued fascination with its newest top sport. The McLoughlin family has by no means lost its Voice. We have lots of new friends left to root for in the competition. I can still join in on the e-mails of other cluck clucking moms on the show, some of who have singers that are finished and others who still have some distance left to run, and Collin is headed back to L.A. to spend some time rooting for his friend at the end of the Voice from backstage.
On behalf of every mother that sat through years of school shows or singing pageants that made their ears bleed, I say “thank you” to shows like the Voice who give the aspiring musician a way to be heard. It does take a village. And “thank you” to a home town, and to an extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and sisters who embraced an opportunity to cheer from the sidelines, making every play feel like a wonderful holiday celebration.
www.leewoodruff.com facebook.com/leemwoodruff twitter@LeeMWoodruff
