Lessons Upon Lessons

Sometimes it takes a while to understand and embrace our unexpected life lessons. We keep thinking SURELY we’ve got it, surely we don’t need another time around.

Many of our favorite characters share this experience. We empathize with them. It’s not that they’re unintelligent–they’re simply human.

With no warning, things happen. We get surprised, as I did a little over a month ago walking to my vehicle after picking up the mail. Whamo! My toe hit a narrow piece of stump left in the ground, my keys, the mail, and my billfold flew through the air, as did I. And I discovered how unforgiving this rocky soil can be.

An ER visit later (thanks to friends who transported me), I began babying my left arm. Poor humerus bone–so sorry! Interesting how our total focus coalesces on one ailing body part at such times.

Since then I’ve flown round-trip to Iowa for a funeral and accomplished some one-handed writing and editing–while practicing caution at every turn.

But honestly, before this fall, I was already trying to be careful!

Can anybody identify?

Life happens, they say. And of course this could have been far worse. With more than one friend fighting for their life right now, by comparison this is minor. I’m also very grateful I can use my right hand, that no surgery was required, and for Lance’s unfailing help.

Still, injuries like this really hurt! Bless my retired Physician Assistant friend who wrote, “Bone pain is the worst.” Somehow, that makes me feel better.

But embracing my lessons? Still working on that. One thing: I’m pretty sure this fresh experience with a big owie will enter into a novel one of these days. (:

Seems I must’ve needed to learn a thing or two . . . again.

Renovations and Resolutions

This past year has renovated some aspects of our lives. Well, at least ALTERED them. Usually we plan and welcome renovations, but boy, can they ever make a mess!

The idea is to keep our eyes on the goal…what looks like a disaster can only be temporary, and as they say, the only way to accomplish anything is to begin. Right now, our carpenter has begun a HUGE project that involves chopping down a weight-bearing wall above a basement stairway, plus a whole lot of rebuilding.

With plaster pieces launching across our dining room like rockets, it’s reasonable to wonder, “Is this worth it?” But the goal, to open up the floor space so heat from our pellet stove can reach the rest of the house, is no impetuous one. My husband has desired this for many years.

The end result, increasing all-around efficiency, will make a big difference. So we’re plunging ahead, keeping our eyes on the target. Isn’t this similar to entering a new year?

The only way out of 2020 is moving into 2021, right?

We hope this new year satisfies the deep longings brought to light by the troubles of the old one. Universal yearnings: truth and justice, health, safety, joy and peace.

As the old hymn goes, “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail…with peace on earth, good will to men (and women and children.” (When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned these words, I’m pretty sure he was including everybody in his mind.)

The beginning of a renovation parallels the New Year’s resolutions I used to make. We all want to be kinder, more serene, more patient. to develop stronger character (and characters!) But amid the actual tests that strengthen us deep down, the drills, hammers, and brute force of renovation can be daunting.

Along the way, we may discover weak spots badly in need of repair and requiring more work than we thought. After some time, we pause and look back at our progress and realize it’s all good. In spite of our struggles we clean up pretty well.

After quite a few decades of resolution-making, I take a less strictly defined approach. One day at a time, one of the hallmarks of Al-Anon. And always, gratitude.

So we enter a new year. I appreciate all of your support throughout this extra looooong one, and hope to see more of you again in person during 2021. We’ve done our best, we’ve made it through, but it’s simply not the same!

Those Special Days

Yesterday Lance gave me these flowers for my birthday.

Notice the message on the mug: CHOOSE JOY. What a perfect instruction for one of those big DECADE birthdays that makes you consider how quickly time passes.

Tonight we watched the Queen’s Royal Marine’s at the Guards’ parade ground just behind Whitehall and next to #10 Downing Street. How fun to watch them perform again, as we did in person two years ago when we celebrated our fortieth anniversary in England.

We’d been walking in St. James Park and happened to notice someone selling tickets to some event. When we realized it was the Royal Marines, we were hooked, and so enjoyed the performance that evening in the stands with Londoners who’d come out for the show. Watching them again tonight is a way to cherish the memory…to choose JOY.

Someday, we might return to England, and I have quite a few other items on my bucket list. I’d like to viisit another American air field we couldn’t get to on our first trip and many other places.

It would be so meaningful to be in Portsmouth again, right on a D-Day anniversary…or across the Channel the Allied troopsD-Day crossed on June 6, 1944. We’ll see.

But whatever memories I make as the years come and go, I hope to make the MOST of them!

Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg

Welcome to Char Jones, one of my favorite book reviewers. Here, she reminds us how FaceBook, while not perfect, has changed our lives.

This Thanksgiving I am especially grateful to Mark Zuckerberg. For his genius creation, Facebook, has enabled me to reach 60 countries in just two months as a literary reviewer! 

Using Facebook as my platform, I started blogging exclusively as a book critic in July, when, through a combination of sweat equity, alchemy and social media mastery, I was able to reach the maximum number of Friends — 5000 — in two and a half weeks.

My Friend mix is heady, including authors of two favorite historical fiction series — Susan Elia MacNeal, who writes about WWII spy Maggie Hope, and the mother-son team Charles Todd, who spins tales of Great War nurse Bess Crawford. 

Other esteemed friends include President Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis, a fine writer herself, and the CEO of Kensington Publishing based in London, England.

My world expanded exotically the night I discovered I had a Friend in Casablanca, Morocco, site of one of my all time fave movies.

And the path through the global thicket became even clearer through connection with Canadian author/illustrator Hélène Desputeaux, whose charming children’s picture books I had reviewed. 

Hélène and I became Facebook Friends, and one evening looking at her FB page I decided to check out her array of Friends, who turned out to be …. no surprise … illustrators! And not just Canadian artists, but artists from across the globe. I extended many Friend requests and to my great surprise and delight, many accepted. My world reach grew quickly from there.

The illustrator world seems an especially small one, so as I add another Friend from that amazing clan, I search for new Friends in countries I’ve not yet reached. 

This week alone I added Friends in Austria, Columbia, Costa Rica, Finland, Iceland, Jordan, Syria, Thailand, and Wales.

My Facebook Friends offer joy daily. Aussie author Anna Campbell suggests fine music. Writer Riham Adly from Giza, Egypt, and I share a weakness for books with medical themes and Anthropologie fashion. Malcolm Roscow from Bournemouth, England, serves as my Facebook Knight in Shining Armor ever since an online dweeb became a detractor. And so it happily goes. 

During this season of gratitude, therefore, I give thanks for my glorious global friends. Mr. Zuckerberg, I count you among them!

Char Jones blogs about books, movies, music, fashion, and life on Facebook as Literary Soirée. A past entertainment writer and healthcare executive, she can be found plinking away on two Apple devices simultaneously, Bose headphones atop her curls, cat Gracie snuggled against her, while her patient husband calls her for yet another missed meal. Her Facebook blog can be accessed at

https://m.facebook.com/profile.php

NO SMALL MOMENTS

Stacey Pardoe has such inspiration to share…enjoy.

There Are No Small Moments

I’m on my knees, camera lens inches from a dwarf ginseng, its tiny snowflake head bobbing in the breeze, when I realize we’re not alone.  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” the khaki-clad elderly gentleman greets, and I’m drawn from my small moment with the ginseng.

“Sure is,” I say, somewhat embarrassed by the black dirt on my knees and elbows.

“Did you see the trout lilies?” he asks, and I notice the camera strapped over his neck.  I’m less embarrassed.

We talk for a long while about trillium and bluebells, and he finally meanders off along the path. Returning to my photo shoot with the ginseng, I remember the way I once looked at thirty-somethings with cameras and wildflower books.  At twenty-two, I kept track of miles logged and elevations reached, not dwarf flora, like violets and ginseng.  At twenty-two, I mostly lived for big moments – summit moments, and the thought of bending low for small moments seemed nothing short of condescending.

We walk farther down the trail, kids running ahead in search of toads and moths, and I consider these changing seasons.  When did small moments begin to take on such an authentic kind of glory?  It must have been before I dug the wildflower books out of the dusty boxes in the attic of the garage.

I remember when I started taking pictures of tiny mushrooms and sphagnum moss.  I believe that was the moment.  The moment I pulled out the camera and committed to capture the miracles I miss every day when I brush past in all my hurry, with my large-moment focus and my desire to prove something.

What if we could all live like we have nothing to prove?  What if we never again needed to prove our worth through demonstrating our intelligence, beauty, humor, and talent?  What if these things were simply gifts with which we blessed others, and we were fully content to live in the midst of our quiet moments in utter contentment?

Have I really learned the secret of being content in any and every situation?

What if there really are no small moments – just quiet moments . . . And what if the quiet moments are worth every bit as much as the loud moments performed before the multitudes?

I think long on it, while the kids build castles along the sandy creek, and I’m sure of it: These quiet moments of walking with children in the woods, baking cornbread, stirring scrambled eggs with a rubber spatula, folding tiny T-shirts, and wiping down dusty furniture are the moments that will make up the bulk of our lives.  There may be loud moments, platform moments, and moments that are broadcast before the world, but these big moments won’t make up the majority of our lives.

So what are we doing with our quiet moments?  Because the quiet moments are the ones that seem small, but they’re really the ones that comprise the essence of our lives.

Sitting along the water, I commit to live with more gratitude.  I commit to recognize the gifts that surround me and magnify God through naming them: dwarf ginseng, blue phlox, garlic mustard, and wild geranium; sandcastles at the creek, lunch on a hilltop, holding hands along the road; the mounds of dirty laundry that remind me of the gift of my family, the meat simmering in the crock-pot, the green crayon on the living room wall.  I won’t write these things off or roll my eyes.  I’ll embrace them and give thanks.

I commit to speak life.  I commit to ask direct questions and bite my tongue when I’m in a bad mood.  I remember to tell the kids that I love them just because they’re mine, that their mistakes will never define them, and that they make my world a better place.

I commit to live intentionally.  We role play the whole way home from the creek, and Bekah thinks of responses to every playground dilemma I can conjure up.  We read Bible stories before Caleb naps, and I pray specific prayers over each of them before he sleeps.  We turn off the TV and dive into imaginary play on the carpet with our assortment of mini characters.  I make some calls and send some cards.

When the sun sinks low that evening, Bekah and I put together a pocket guide of wildflowers from our sanctuary at the Wolf Creek Narrows Natural Area.  We find Latin names and study the history of each plant. It all feels a bit small, but when she looks at me with dancing blue eyes, filled wild with life and passion, I know for sure that none of this day was small at all.

Bio: Stacey is the wife of a handsome lumberjack, mother of two blue-eyed beauties, a freelance journalist, mentor, and certified special education teacher.  She writes weekly at www.staceypardoe.com

 

 

 

 

 

As July Fourth Nears…

Summer is a-bustin’ out all over.

A father cardinal stays mighty close to his fledglings in their nest just outside our back door.

Yes, and flowers display their fragile glory everywhere we look:

And here come the begonias near our front porch–wish you could all come and sip a cup of tea out there.

Now, take a look at our granddaughter’s team last week, the night they won their sixth grade softball championship. One of those magical moments filled with gratitude. I’ll cherish these smiles marking the GOOD KIND of pride for years to come! (Can you tell which one she is?)

Last but not least, I’m still basking in memories of our trip to England, often recalling Winston Churchill’s grit in an almost impossible position. I know, I know, you may be getting sick of me mentioning him…can’t help it, though. I’m SO SO very grateful for how he played his role in history.

 

A happy Fourth of July to you, and a little publishing news. I submitted a new manuscript to a publisher last week, something from World War II, of course, but a little different…it’s Glenora Carson’s story: she was one of the women who got their hands greasy during the war years doing a man’s job. More to come on this novella, with the title Kiss Me Once Again.

Also, I submitted my next novel to an agent. You just never know what might happen …never a dull moment, though.

 

Thank You For Going

Chautona Havig, a loving soul desiring to inspire the hearts of others, is today’s guest author. Service in the military is a large part of my family’s story, and I am grateful for her thoughtful words to all of those who have served in whatever capacity.

Thank You For Going

I’ll never forget the moment I read L.M. Montgomery’s glorious words in Rilla of Ingleside. I hadn’t been fond of the book, but those words (and a second reading a few months later) gave me a greater appreciation for it. The scene is the train station where many in Anne’s town are sending their boys off to WWI—to fight for Canada. For King and country. One snotty mother gives Anne Blythe a dig that would tear at the heart of any soldier’s mother. It goes like this:

“I don’t know how you can stand this, Mrs. Blythe. I couldn’t if it was my pore boy.” And mother—oh, mother could always be depended on! How her grey eyes flashed in her pale face. “It might have been worse, Mrs. Drew. I might have had to urge him to go.” Mrs. Drew did not understand but Rilla did. She flung up her head. Her brother did not have to be urged to go.

Memorial Day—the day we remember anyone who has fought and died for this country we call home. So amid the cookouts, the ball games, and the swimming pool parties, I just want to take a moment to do what this day is all about. Remember.

To every mother who gave birth to an American soldier, God bless you. May God give you peace when your child is so far away.

To every father who taught that soldier honor, sacrifice, and duty, thank you for your example. Those daily choices to do what’s right, to do without all the toys, to go to work… again. They were worth it—so worth it.

To every teacher, preacher, neighbor, mentor, recruiter, and drill sergeant who made a difference in that soldier’s life, I respect you for your influence. Investing in one person’s life often ripples through generations. Thank you.

To the wife or husband who kept the home fires burning, so to speak, thank you for YOUR service. Our servicemen and women could not do what they do without the confidence in knowing that all is well at home.

To the children who grow up knowing that their parent may miss holidays, important events, and milestones, we’re so sorry. We pray they return soon and safe—to you.

To everyone who says goodbye and watches loved ones leave as youths, knowing they’ll return as soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines, say goodbye with the knowledge that they’ll never be the same—and they’ll always be the same person you’ve always loved.

And to every soldier who has served, fought, died, or is serving, fighting, and might die, there are no adequate words, but thank you.

Thank you.

I think I’ll go read that amazing scene from Rilla of Ingleside again. Imagine the flash of Anne’s eyes, the buoying of her spirit as she says, “I might have had to urge him to go.”

To all who serve in our military. Thank you for going—even without our urging.

 


 

Author of the Amazon bestselling Aggie and Past Forward Series, Chautona Havig lives and writes in California’s Mojave Desert. With dozens of books to her name, Chautona spends most of her time writing, but when she takes the rare break, she can be found reading, sewing, paper crafting, or sleeping and dreaming of finishing the dozens of books swirling in her overly-active imagination at any given moment.


Connect with Chautona: 
Website  //  Facebook  //  Twitter  //  Pinterest  //  Instagram

Scents and Sense

Here it is, September. Yesterday was the anniversary of the day my husband asked me to marry him. This will be our fortieth year of bliss/blessing/blundering on together. And something about the slip in the seasons–any Midwesterner can feel it in the air–makes me nostalgic.

Today I took some photos of the scents around me.

Rosemary, a heavenly aroma so akin to lavender.

Parsley, that clean drift in the wind.

Sage, bringing autumn flavors to mind. What would stuffing be without sage, and who wants to wait until Thanksgiving to enjoy it?

20170903_165100_resized 20170903_164936 20170903_164802 20170903_164626

 

 

 

‘ 

 

 

 

 

Peppermint, adding a little more pizazz to an end-of-summer breeze and some gorgeous blossoms, besides. Ahh…our sense of smell has delights to offer during this season.As writers and readers, sometimes we can let one of our senses go wild. Wish I could bottle these up and send them your way!

 

 

 

Catching Up With Daylight -MASSIVE GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to the WhiteFire Publishing Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to go back to stop #1 and collect all the clues in order. Once you have them all, you’ll have uncovered a secret message. Turn that in at the final stop for a chance to win one of THREE amazing prize packages!

The Hunt begins at Roseanna White’s site

  • Take your time! You have all weekend to complete the Hunt—entries will be counted until Monday June 26—so have fun reading all the posts along the way and getting to know each author
  • Lots of extra prizes! Many of the authors are featuring unique giveaways as well, for even more chances to win!
  • Submit your entry for the grand prizes back at Roseanna White’s blog.

On an evening flight from Des Moines, Iowa to Colorado Springs, the man in the seat behind me quipped, “We’ll be catching up with daylight on this trip.” Voila! The perfect title for my memoir.

A few years later, WhiteFire Publishing issued me a contract for this manuscript, a compilation of essays, quotes, and women’s stories. The process of nurturing this work to publication taught me so much about life, even though I was a late bloomer with my writing.

I learned that memoir borrows some fiction techniques, such as grounding the reader in each new chapter. And of course, the genre requires imagination

IMG_8097

 

You may be singing your heart out like this little wren in our back yard, but must alert the reader to the whys and wherefores.

 

Memoir relays one’s unique journey, but mine definitely benefitted from editors’ objectivity. In the end, the published books delivered to my door one day gave me deep satisfaction. I believe I may have hugged the Fed Ex man.

CUwD 3D3

IMG_4608

Taking the journey is one thing, but turning your private writing into public writing entirely another, and I’m so grateful WhiteFire gave me the opportunity.

From there, the road has stretched on to writing World War II fiction focused on characters’ journeys. Their joys and sorrows become as real to me as my next door neighbor’s.

But for me, memoir needed to come first – making meaning of my own experiences.  Eudora Welty wrote, “To imagine yourself inside another person…is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.”

Here’s the Stop # 7 Scoop:

You can order my book at: http://amazon.com/author/gailkittleson

Clue to Write Down: imagination

Link to Stop # 8, the Next Stop on the Loop: Joy Palmer

Need the full list of stops?

 

Roseanna M. White

April McGowan

Cara Luecht

Christine Lindsay

Debra Marvin

Dina Sleiman

Gail Kittleson

Joy Palmer

June Foster

Melody Carlson (hosted)

Nelson Hannah

Rachelle Rea Cobb

Sara Goff

Susie Finkbeiner

Susanne Dietze

Suzie Johnson

All finished? Submit Your Entries!

And now, for my own little giveaway! I’m adding a World War II replica flour sack dishtowel to our group giveaway, since that era affected my childhood so much, and therefore plays into Catching Up With Daylight.

20170617_100642

Jot a comment here, perhaps about how memoir has touched you, and leave a LIKE or a smile on my FB author page (if you’ve already LIKED it) to qualify.

 

Never Too Late for Friendship and Thanks

I just spent some extended time with a new friend, and she shared this little saying with me. We don’t know the author, but she/he certainly coined a powerful metaphor.

20170301_075817_resized

Note the essential elements:

focus – concentrate on a task or need

capture – this reminds me of “Carpe Diem”, seize the day

develop – use our creative abilities

The final verb, “take”, comes into play when plans go awry, as they often do. I hope to waste far less time bemoaning my failures and mistakes during the rest of my life than I have in the past. What a waste!

And I’d also like to practice gratitude far more faithfully. I can start easily this week: Thank you to everyone who helped me by hosting me on their blog or left an encouraging comment, posted a review, or bought my new release, With Each New Dawn, I’m truly grateful for all the support.

Just as it’s never too late to develop a new friendship, it’s always the right time to say a hearty thank you.