The road unraveled...

Last weekend, I was out of town, celebrating the 18th birthday of my youngest child. It is a big milestone in life, not only for my daughter, but also for me. I have started in earnest the transition away from being her teacher, traffic controller, cook, and chief organizer to being her mentor, friend, and cheering section, and it's quite an adjustment for both of us.

Seeing your baby transform from a child to an adult is a disconcerting event, to say the least. I know from experience (she is not my first child to turn 18) that I will continue to see my newborn/two year old/six year old/ten year old/ early teen whenever I look at her. But I have also recently realized, especially when I see her in photos, how others see my little girl, and she is not so little any more.

Suddenly, she is in charge of her own life and dealing with her own issues; more effectively than I do, in some cases. She is smart, competent, capable and fully functional in the adult world. In other words, the day she has been dreaming about since she uttered her first word has become a reality, and she is now A Grown Up. Sort of.

It is interesting to watch your child become an adult. It has, at least for me, prompted a certain amount of soul searching about my own life; how I got to where I am, and where I would like to be if I was master of my universe. I have made more mistakes along the road than I care to remember, things I wish could have done better, along with the things I am proud of and which I feel I did well.

My daughter and I had a conversation in the car a few weeks ago which prompted some of the recent self-examination. We were talking about some of the big mistakes I have made in my life, and it quite naturally led to the phrase I have often heard people utter, "If I could do [X Event] over again, I would do it differently and get it right." It's a pretty human reaction when things turn out differently than you expect in life.

But when you are talking to your child, it puts those words into a different context, if you really consider what you are saying. The more I thought about it, I realized I had it backwards. We do not have a crystal ball to guarantee that life would have been better if only we had made another choice. We can only know where are, we cannot know where we would be if we had done things differently.

That led, in natural progression, to asking myself a totally different question, one that turned out to be more important to me. What would I be willing to give up in my life as it is now to go back in time and have a second chance to get it "right?"

That is a big question, one that cuts to the heart of your life regrets. Because if you had done things differently, you might have some benefits, it's true, but you would also have a cost. I think, while we are moaning about what is wrong, we owe it to ourselves to also acknowledge what is right, and to recognize that even bad decisions can have positive outcomes.

It is easy for someone who is divorced, for example, to carelessly say that if they could go back and do things differently, they would make a better choice in life partners. I would like to think that I have learned from my mistakes, and have frequently voiced that very opinion.

But, in light of my new vantage point, I turned that around, and asked myself what, in my current life, I would be willing to give up to have that second chance. That answer is much harder, because I value greatly most of what I have now, and I wouldn't be willing to give up much in order to have those years back.

If I had made a different decision when I was 23, first and foremost, I wouldn't have my children. Most parents will say they wouldn't trade their children for anything, of course, and I feel the same way. But if I had never married their father, and hadn't stayed in a marriage that was fairly dysfunctional for too many years, I wouldn't have them.

They have pointed out that if they had never been born, I wouldn't know the difference. But how much would I have missed out on not having my particular quirky, goofy children around? And what would the world have missed out on without them in it, as well? That puts an entirely different price on the cost of having a different outcome, one that would not be worth paying when seen through the lens of my current experience.

All of the consequences don't have to be life and death, of course. I would also have to give up the traveling I've done, the house I live in, the friends I have. I would be a totally different person, because the person I am today is the culmination of my life experiences, both good and bad. There would probably be another house, other travels, other friends, and other experiences, but would they mean as much to me? I don't know. All in all, I'm not so sure I would want to find out.

I could have made a decision to be a working mom while my kids were growing up, and we probably would have been better off financially when the divorce inevitably happened. But would I be willing to give up the many years of being a full time mom to my kids? How would that have changed their lives, and their opportunities?

Would my son be a Ph.D. candidate now if I hadn't been there to push and prod and work with the school to be sure he got exactly what he needed when he was younger? I don't know the answer to that, but I would not want to give up the opportunities he is now enjoying to find out.

My daughter and I have as close of a relationship as any mother and daughter I know. Would we have that kind of relationship if I had not been her room mother six years in a row? Would she be as proud of me, and I of her, if we had not gone through everything we have experienced together for the last five years? I don't know that, either, but I wouldn't give up the relationship we have today for anything.

I live in Kansas City because my ex-husband's job brought us here. I am enriched immeasurably by my life here, from my friends and neighbors to the work I do, all because of the decision I made 25 years ago. Would I be willing to give it up to have a different life experience now? That would be a pretty big sacrifice, and I'm not sure it would be worth it.

When we focus on what is wrong in life, [and rest assured, there is plenty wrong to focus on in mine at the moment,] it is easy to think that I should have done things differently or made better choices. But I am reminded, when I look at my beautiful 18 year old daughter, that even bad decisions can have good results, and for every mistake there is usually a silver lining.

As my daughter launches into her adult life, I wish many things for her. I wish her happiness and success, of course, along with wisdom and courage for what surely lies ahead. But I also wish her the comfort of knowing that whatever goes wrong can also work out all right, and that when you look for the silver lining, sometimes you find a whole jewelry store.

When you reach the inevitable fork in life's road, you have to choose one way over the other, or you will never get anywhere. There is no way to know what would have happened if you had taken the other option, no matter how things turn out. But you can rest assured that even the wrong way can lead to the right end.

Happy birthday to the greatest gift life can bring - my darling and much loved daughter. I wish you many more happy stops along your own path, and a life filled with all good things. When you reach the same vantage point where I currently find myself, I wish you the peace of knowing what is important to you, and the wisdom to spend your time looking forward instead of back.

Don't come crying to me....

When my children were young I was fond of saying, "Well, you can do [whatever stupid thing you are about to do that I, with my superior knowledge gleaned from greater life experience, have already told you will not end well,] but don't come crying to me when [whatever dire thing I have predicted] happens." My kids hate that phrase, but I have always felt it was important for them to recognize when someone with better information is warning them off of the action they are about to take, they should listen. And if they choose not to, they are, in fact, the architects of their own demise.

Just to be clear, that doesn't mean I won't be standing there with them to help them pick up the shattered pieces. Of course I will. I am their mom, and I'm in it with them, for better and for worse, for the rest of their lives. I will be that little voice in their heads, whether they want me there or not, and that is where I will stay.

If there is one thing I find intolerable in our current narcissistic culture, it is the inability of virtually everyone to take responsibility for their own stupid mistakes. There is no bad outcome for which blame cannot be assigned to someone else, no matter how small or big the transgression. It seems to be endemic in our culture, systemic in everything from government to sports to education.

Believe it or not, this little rant does not arise courtesy of the Tiger Woods dramatic presentation for this week. [Truth be told, I genuinely cannot comprehend why an overpaid prima donna athlete behaving badly off the course corresponds to multiple international press conferences to explain what we already knew - he is human, he has too much time and money on his hands, and he has used it unwisely. To everyone, I say, don't come crying to me. See how well that works?]

No, the straw that broke this particular camel's back can be laid at the feet of yet another elite athlete exhibiting a monumental breakdown of common sense. And the only thing more stupefying than the international revelation of his poor sportsmanship is the collective yawn that his own particular world has issued upon hearing from him at this inopportune point in time.

The Olympic games are, above all, supposed to be a display of the world's greatest athletes coming together in unity for the sake of some greater good. Peace, harmony, higher level endorsements - take your pick, it's a bonanza of blessings with plenty for all. Whatever else happens, though, the Olympics are, in a sense, supposed to embody the joining of hands around the world's campfire while we all sing Kum Ba Yah and share s'mores.

There are spotlight events, certainly, which are eagerly anticipated by people across the globe, and which receive the lion's share of the televised attention. [Since these events are the money makers, they probably deserve the greater televised time commitment and attention, and I don't suppose anyone is complaining about that.] But there are lesser events, also, shown on a national stage once every four years, and which probably survive on the brief, but financially critical exposure they receive. I for one, applaud that, because there should be room enough for everyone at the round Olympic table, if the Olympic spirit means anything at all.

Unfortunately, that uneven attention also gives athletes who are inexperienced at being the focus of the world's so-called hard news press corps unequal power in making remarks on that same international stage. We are not talking about professional athletes who have microphones shoved in their faces after every weekly televised performance, who have advice and guidance on handling that attention, and often still screw it up. We are talking about mostly young, impulsive athletes, risk takers by nature or they wouldn't be elite at such a young age, who are normally guided and shielded from the moment they get up in the morning until they retire at night, suddenly unleashed on their own to say whatever they may really think without someone to put the right words in their mouths.

It's a recipe for catastrophe. Spoiled individuals who would otherwise not have a forum from which to make stupid remarks are suddenly caught in the limelight, and they cannot resist the temptation to justify themselves at the cost of whomever gets in their way.

It is one of those athletes who has cast his narcissistic pall over what otherwise appears to have been as successful an event as is possible where a participant was killed right before the opening ceremonies. [A brief disclaimer here - I have not watched more than a few minutes of the entire spectacle this year, because I swore off the Olympics some years ago in the wake of a judging scandal which has soured me on my former favorite sport, ice skating, pretty much forever.]

The athlete in question is a Russian figure skater, and it is not his remarks themselves that I would question, nor his right to make them. I believe that a sport is shaped by its participants, so who better to determine the future course than one who has been elite in the performance of that discipline?

But, as my mother used to say, there is a time and a place for everything, and the Olympics is neither the time nor the place to complain about the standards for performance, especially after the medal has been won by someone else. I could have told him his complaints would fall flat. I suspect, if he shared his intention to reveal his own narcissistic vision of reality to anyone else, they probably did.

Unfortunately, his diarrhea of the mouth ran unchecked, and he became the poster child for everything that is wrong with our society in one ill fated moment. According to him, he did not earn the second place silver medal he was awarded, despite leaving the competitive arena for three years and trying to make his come back a scant few months before the main event. No, instead the sport should be changed to fit his particular strengths, and the athlete who was awarded the top prize was not worthy.

In other words, it's not FAAAA-IR. Wah.

I am sure many second place athletes have thought that before. I imagine more than a few were even correct in that opinion. We have seen athletes walk away from the podium and throw their floral bouquets or even take their medals off in a display of petulant poor sportsmanship which was usually roundly disparaged.

But never, in my memory, has an athlete on so privileged a stage had the classless lack of grace to insinuate that he lost because the broken eggs in the sports basket he chose were more valuable than the dozen that were delivered safely. And I am stupefied that anyone, to say nothing of the people in the highest levels of his sport, would not only not solidly condemned him, but even defend his rotten public behavior.

Timing is everything, and this was not it. If you want to change the nature of men's figure skating, then have an international conference and argue it out until you come to consensus. Cover it, don't cover it, talk about the rules, don't talk about them, whatever.

But do not, in the wake of losing the event, come out at the Olympic games and deliver a sanctimonious condemnation of the judging which pointed out that some of your eggs were broken. If he were my kid, I would call him a spoiled brat, and tell him to apologize to the winner, who has been wronged most greatly by his selfish actions.

The Olympics are not about one sport or one country or one person. The Olympics are about international peace and cooperation through sport. The Games themselves are the important thing, and they transcend the petty differences of the usual, every day world.

It is for that reason that they continued, despite the murder of athletes in the Olympic Village. Because Jesse Owens threw down the gauntlet for racial tolerance in the face of the world's most well known bigot on the stage of the Olympic games, it was the beginning of change. It was because of the transcendence of the Games over the individual that the Opening Ceremonies were celebrated a few hours after the tragic death of an athlete who dreamed his entire life of reaching that pinnacle. It is a testament to the dream of international unity that the games go on no matter what obstacles are thrown in the path. That is what makes them special.

It is disappointing that the highest officials in one of the most visible and popular sports at the Games didn't have the common sense to rein in their cranky athlete and send him back to the podium to make at least a superficial apology to the gold medal winner of the event. This apparently officially sanctioned temper tantrum will certainly come back to bite them down the road.

It is not only the sport of figure skating that suffers from this particular form of myopia, of course. It seems like wherever we look these days the media, and our own personal lives, are filled with people refusing to accept the consequences of their bad decision making. Whether it is fixing a speeding ticket, lying to parents or cheating on a spouse, passing the buck at work, or glorifying an athlete who takes steroids, we want to be conscience free. The end justifies the means, unless we get caught, in which case, it is everyone's fault but our own.

Perhaps the sport of figure skating should take a hint from Tiger, after all, and realize that the first step back to relevancy comes with an apology, whether sincere or not. And the second step is all about the actions. Nothing less than the legitimacy of the sport itself is at stake. If they fail to grasp the consequences, they have only themselves to blame.

If that happens, we can only hope that they won't come crying to us in the end.

Oh, my martyred saint....

It seems Valentine's Day cannot be ignored. Believe me, I've tried. It can't be done. It is ubiquitous, obsequious even; everywhere.

The media are full of stories on everything from the cost of flowers and online dating to finding the perfect Valentine's gift, which will win the heart of your Valentine and bring true love to your life. The stores have rolled out candy and cards to commemorate your timeless feelings. Facebook has gotten into the act by asking you to spill the details of your love story with everyone else. We are inundated with the trappings of the holiday. Cupid is pervasive, and the celebration is complete.

Except I know a number of people for whom that goal has been elusive.

Some have given up entirely. I, for one, thought I had grabbed that brass ring, but it turned out to be fool's gold. I'm not eager to be made the fool once again, and I'm not too fond of merry-go-rounds, either. Others, waiting for their own Godot, look hopefully into a future that never seems to arrive. For a few, they have loved and lost too soon, and there is no replacement for the soul mate that is gone.

Whatever the reason, there are a lot of people looking through the window at the party for which they didn't receive an invitation. It can be hard, painful even, to be left with your face pressed to the glass, invisible, watching everyone else have all the fun.

I was thinking about Valentine's Day this week, and started to wonder why the celebration got started, and who Valentine really was. After extensive research (which actually means I wiki'ed it this morning,) I have learned a few interesting facts.

Saint Valentine was a person (or possibly several people) who may have lived a few centuries after Christ, and could have been a martyr for his Christian faith. It's a little cloudy as to whether he was even real, but if so, there seems to be some agreement that he was probably beheaded. [So far, this sounds a lot more like divorce than love - after a lot of pain and anguish, you aren't sure any of it was even real.]

The early Catholic church didn't recognize him as a saint, but somewhere along the line, he was added in as a "generic" martyr. To make a short story even shorter, that means they have no idea who he was or what he actually did, but there was a legend out there, and they were covering all their bases, just in case he was real and God was especially fond of him.

Thus was born the story of Saint Valentine, who was martyred for his love of a Saviour that the world of his day didn't recognize. Even if he wasn't real as a person, he made a terrific stand-in for all the true Christian martyrs of that time, so the legend became reality.

The holiday of love that we associate with Saint Valentine today seems to be a medieval concoction. It is commonly attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, an English writer of the 14th century. Chaucer glorified the tradition of courtly love and chivalry in his writing, and may have referred to St. Valentine's Day in his Parlement of Foules, although scholars disagree on that point. It seems clear, however, that the traditions of romantic lovers exchanging gifts came into common practice sometime during the mid to late Middle Ages, and have been in place ever since.

In the current incarnation of Valentine's Day, the expressions of love have expanded somewhat to include classmates, parents and children, friends, and co-workers. We decorate our homes and desks with hearts all pink and red, and the flower industry goes into overtime to provide the tributes that will be exchanged. There are classroom parties, private dinners, and valentine cards and candies traded all around. The cynic in me believes this expansion of the holiday is more about a love of retail than a love of people. But the net effect is that the window to the party has been thrown open, and everyone who loves someone is free to join the festivities.

There is a movie, "Love Actually," which the director has attributed to a delayed flight. While he sat in the airport, he watched people arriving and departing, and he made the interesting observation that love is not the stuff of fairy tales and glamorous moments. It is not elegant, and often not eloquent. It is messy and raw and real. Love is experienced in the moments when one person needs another, and finds someone there for them.

Whether you have A Valentine, the soul mate of fables and dreams, or many valentines in your life, as Hugh Grant said in the movie, "Love actually is all around." In a cold, hard world filled with grim reminders of how evil humans can be to each other, I think that is something worth celebrating.

Happy Valentine's Day to one and all! Enjoy your celebration of love, whatever it may be.

An Apple a Day....

The internet is an amazingly powerful tool that seems to have tentacles stretching into every aspect of our modern lives. We do everything in cyberspace and cybertime, from paying bills and conducting business to networking and staying connected with the friends we don't have time to see. (Not to throw stones from inside my glass house here, but possibly if we spent less time connecting on the net we would have more time for connecting in the real world. Or maybe that's just me....)

Everyone is on the internet, from my 85 year old uncle to toddlers playing simple games. It's a part of life, and for me, it has enhanced and enriched my life immeasurably.

I got my first computer in 1985, when my son was all of two months old. I didn't realize it at the time, but we were probably in the first wave of people to get a personal computer for home use. They were very expensive, I paid more for that first computer than all five of our current computers put together, and at that point, were regarded by most people as more of a glorified typewriter than a machine that would someday run the world.

My justification for the expenditure was that I needed it for compiling data for my graduate thesis, because I was working with thousands of statistics and every time there was a change it was a click of the keyboard, instead of retyping hundreds of pages. My university department already had several on hand, and I was expected to turn in drafts on floppy disks for my advising professors to work with, which saved huge amounts of time and resources on all sides.

I got a small grant to help me pay for that first computer, Apple's way of ensuring their immediate future, a strategy that didn't pan out very well for them in the long term, but worked out very well for me at the time. In the interests of full and honest disclosure, I was also trying to make my life easier, since it was difficult to stay at school to use their computer when I had a new baby at home and no money for daycare. [No money to be having a baby either, I know, I know. I was 24, what can I say?]

I am not usually one for the speedy decisions, but I made this one in record time. I saw the future, and I did not want my son [okay, or myself] to miss a moment of it, because even then, it was clear that computers were going to be a revolutionary tool. So before he could even crawl, he had a computer waiting for his eager fingers to start tapping the keyboard.

It was an Apple IIc, cutting edge back then, a sophisticated upgrade from the stodgy IIe, and the first "portable" computer. Well, if, by portable, you meant you wanted to pick up and move the combined keyboard/integrated 5.25 inch floppy drive unit, the shockingly heavy but state of the art color monitor, and the additional external floppy drive you needed to efficiently run a program, all of which took up the entire desktop, even without the printer. Looking back, it seems silly to call that portable, but at the time, mainframes were still occupying large rooms at major universities, and the personal computing revolution was in its infancy, with the future on the horizon, but still cloudy.

As I was making the decision about which computer would take us through the next 20 years [yes, kids, I really thought that,] Apple was just about to come out with a new model, an upgrade of the original Macintosh, which had everything integrated into one compact unit. I vividly recall the salesman telling me that the horrendously expensive Macintosh was a passing fad, and we would be better off sticking with the II series, which was a proven winner. I hope that guy never played the stock market, because he would be throwing his money away, based on that track record.

Until then, monitors were tiny little green screens, flickering eerily in your face. They were hard to read, and gave you eye strain when you spent too much time in front of them, hypnotized by that flashing cursor. The newly released color monitor, a major upgrade Apple had just released for the II series, cost a lot more, but enhanced the experience enormously. That was one enhancement I couldn't live without, and probably delayed our next computer decision by several years.

There was a variety of software available for the IIc already, and more being released all the time, especially when color monitors came into being. It spoke the ProDos language, and it was easy and fun to program it to do simple tasks, but even then, computer people spoke a language all their own. Fortunately, you never needed to speak a single command in order to put your IIc to good use. I blame AppleWorks, which came with a rudimentary spell check, for sending the nation rapidly down the path to illiteracy.

I still have that computer system, by the way, and it still works. I pulled it up not too long ago, and everything clicks along just like clockwork, with nary a blue screen of death to be seen.

You could technically connect to a modem back then, but the functionality was limited, consisting mostly of university discussion boards and gaming opportunities. In those early days, the internet we take for granted was the stuff of science fiction, and required some technical knowledge to navigate. The World Wide Web seemed a million years away to most of us, if we thought of it at all - I would have openly scoffed if anyone had projected how it would look in ten short years. The genius of people like Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Steve Case was not just in the nuts and bolts of the machinery, but in having the vision to see the possibilities, if they could put a computer into the hands of ordinary people.

Ten years later, around 1995, we had been left behind in the computer revolution, and we finally upgraded to a fancy Gateway desktop PC. The day the boxes arrived, with their black spots on the white background, was more exciting than Christmas. We pulled each new piece from it's packaging, thrilled with the possibilities just waiting for us. The charts and instructions were complex, but fortunately, with some natural mechanical ability, I was able to put it all together, and we were once again part of the modern world of computing.

It was amazing, the power and speed of that new computer. Windows 95 made it simplicity itself to work with. We were wowed by all the bells and whistles and everything it could do, so much more than the faithful old Apple. Then, at long last, we joined the online universe by signing up for AOL dial-up service.

For people used to instant everything, AOL dial-up is a quaint recollection, the pinging, the dinging, the anticipation of when it would finally go through, and you would be in touch with the outside world from inside your own home. In retrospect, I think we must have been early devotees of the internet, but at the time, it seemed like we were the last people on the planet to get online, and it opened up the whole world to us. It was awe inspiring, at least for me [I can already see my daughter smirking and hear my son saying, "Oh mom...,"] to realize that we were on the same internet that people were using on the other side of the world, and although that seems like provincial thinking now, it was mind bending then, because it was all so new.

E-mail was my favorite thing about the internet back then - instead of waiting days to hear back from someone, it would be a few hours, and their reply would be in your inbox the next time you signed on. Suddenly, I joined the social universe; "You've Got Mail" was not just a great movie [still my fave,] but personal and real.

Then I discovered Instant Messaging, chatting in real time, which was even better. For someone who hates the phone, and would rather write my thoughts than talk about them, IM was a life changing development.

Since those early days, we have upgraded many times. Computers are faster, smaller, and better all the time; these days we have five computers for the three members of our family, all in use for different things at the same time. Ironically, although I love my little laptop for its genuine portability, I prefer my desktop for working day to day. As they get smaller they get cheaper, making them available to more people all the time, expanding the cyberworld while shrinking the real one.

Computers have become one of the most powerful tools of our day - we work on them, we use them for school, we communicate with them, we play on them, they provide us with everything from advice to entertainment to conversation to support and when we are without, it becomes as much of a crisis as losing any other vital piece of our daily lives.

It has been an unbelievable transformation in only 25 years - from being one of the first people I knew to even have a home computer to everyone having one, and being connected all the time. It has been as revolutionary as the invention of the car or the telephone or the light bulb. While as a child I had a hard time imagining a world without indoor plumbing or the television, my own children would not recognize a world without cyberspace.

I am grateful for the online world, because it allows me to work from anywhere. This past week, I sat in a parking lot to check my e-mail between appointments during my working day. My office is located inside my laptop, and I have everything I need at my fingertips wherever I am, at any moment of the day or night. I am able to respond to urgent messages and phone calls immediately, even when I'm not at my desk, because my voice mails are online, and my e-mail is waiting whenever I want to pull it up. Instead of making my clients come to me, I can make house calls and offer them the personal service I prefer, but never be out of touch with what is going on back at the office.

That same connectedness applies to my personal life, as well. I can talk to people who are hundreds of miles away any time I want to, and we know what is going on in each other's lives in a way that would be impossible without the instant communication the internet affords us. I can chat with everyone from my mother to an old friend from high school, and be a part of their lives without ever leaving my home in Kansas. I can communicate with someone in Asia in an instant of time, and know what is going on there through the unfiltered words of a live person, instead of the media or their government's official statements.

Twitter may have influenced events in Iran, and China, for all it's efforts, may not be able to raise the bamboo curtain again on its people, when those people have cell phone internet service even in the furthest reaches of the globe. The internet is everywhere, and for better or for worse, it is changing everything we do. From daily life, to politics to global awareness of disaster, the internet is ever present, giving us unlimited insight and information, if only we are willing to open our browser and look.

One of the interesting things about approaching my 50th year of life is the more informed perspective I now bring to the table. I have an awareness of the world's transformation, and it is stunning to see how things have changed in so short a time. The world has gotten smaller as the internet has gotten bigger, and it's been amazing to be a part of it, no matter how insignificant my part may be. I can only wonder what is ahead in the next 25 years, and how our world will transform again in ways that we can't even imagine now. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to the journey.

Time capsule....

Thirty seven years ago, on January 26, 1973, my dad passed away unexpectedly, and his funeral was on the 31st of January. So quite naturally, he's been on my mind some during this past week. Obviously, his sudden death changed my life, and I'm not gonna lie, it was not really for the better. But in each and every experience I go through in life, I try to take something positive from the episode, so at least it's not a dead loss (no pun intended, though you can laugh if you want to.)

Although it can be difficult sometimes to find the positives in a bad situation, it can be done if you are sincere in your efforts, and this week something has occurred to me which seems worth commenting on, if only for the purpose of communal therapy. (Cheaper than the real thing, and often just as effective!)

A pertinent digression here. [I've tried to be better about not haring off on tangents lately, really I have, but this one applies, I promise.] Recently, someone I know heard that I write a blog, and said, somewhat derisively, "Oh, so you write your diary online." I was somewhat non-plussed by that assessment, never having thought of it in quite that way. It is always interesting to hear another point of view when you think something is clear cut and self-evident.

His implication, [okay, it was based on more than just the blog, I'll admit,] was that I am just another crazy person in cyber-space, and since that is an analysis I leave to others to judge, I didn't have much of a response. But in my mind, it's not really a diary, not a day to day one, anyway, so that unexpected characterization made me think about whether or not this weekly exposition is simply the narcissist in me revealing itself, or if there is a greater purpose.

My hope is that ultimately I can give comfort or at least a laugh through our common experience, and by revealing pieces of myself, we can find each other. That desire goes to the heart of my blog today - by reaching out with my experience, I hope that others will be positively affected from knowing they are not alone, even if I don't know them, and they don't know me.

[So now I have my answer for my friend if it ever comes up again, and more importantly, I have reaffirmed the answer for myself, too. It's good to look inward periodically to make sure you understand yourself, even if no one else does, I think.]

Anyway, getting back on topic, I don't honestly recall a lot about my dad's funeral, because I was lost in a haze of incomprehension at how quickly life had changed, and it had been a bit difficult to absorb in such a short time frame. But I do recall one thing from the sermon our pastor gave which has stuck with me all these years, and really informed my adult behavior in a permanent way. It was, in a sense, my dad's true legacy to me, one thing that I can point to and acknowledge as his ongoing contribution to who I became as an adult.

But first, a background note. [As differentiated from a tangent, this is critical information to know in making sense of the story. Definitely not just another side track.] As Minnesota Lutherans, we don't talk ourselves up very easily, and we extend that to the members of our immediate families, as well. We can be inwardly as proud as anyone, but we don't talk about it in public, because that is just, well, Not Quite Nice. So even though I know my dad frequently did things for others and touched a lot of lives, I didn't really hear about it much, because he would never have talked about himself that way.

I can easily envision my mother, then, in planning my dad's funeral service, asking the pastor not to make the sermon a big eulogy for my dad. She would be uncomfortable with that kind of thing, like we were bragging or something. Rather, knowing her, she would use the service as an opportunity to present the Christ centered life my dad led to those present, his final gift of himself to us, in a way.

[Yes, Mom, I will be sure your service is handled in a similar way when that time comes. We will not spend a lot of time talking about what a fabulous person you have been your entire life, or how much you meant to us.... Ya right. I am cut from a different cloth, and it will be all about you, for once, and there is nothing you can do about it!]

As I said, I don't recall most of that sermon. (I don't recall a word of the message from my wedding, either, so obviously, I am not to be relied on for recall after stressful major life events!) But I do remember part of the message was about how you may do some small thing and influence other people without ever knowing it, and my dad exemplified this in a positive way.

Somewhere in the back of my head, that idea hit home for me. It prompted a lifelong awareness that we don't live in isolation, and what we do in life is important, not only to us, but to those around us, even if we don't know it. From that moment was born my mantra - if I would be embarrassed to have my mother or my children know what I'm doing, I probably shouldn't be doing it.

The flip side of that, however, is an awareness that sometimes you are influencing people for good without knowing it, as well. You may never hear about it - very few people have the time or awareness to come back later and tell you how you made a difference for them without even trying. But rest assured, those people are out there, and those incidents matter deeply.

One of the stories I do know about came to us much later, years after he passed away, from a young woman who had met my dad by chance when she was having trouble in her life. The details don't matter, but many years later, she had the opportunity to tell my mom that it was because of my dad's influence that she became a Christian and reclaimed her God given life. Hearing that made us feel so good about him, knowing that he was so lovingly remembered by someone we weren't even aware of, and that he had been such a positive influence in the life of someone he barely touched.

I have thought of that story this week, as I was thinking about my dad and the legacy he left me, as his daughter. That legacy includes many of the same things that all good fathers leave their children, of course, and I don't mean to give those qualities short shrift. He was a wonderful person in the ways that count most, and we were richly blessed by the time we had. The full church at his funeral was a tribute to the number of lives he touched, and it gives me great pleasure to know that he is remembered well by so many people.

But as my parent, and as a person, I think the greatest gift my father left me was his positive example of a shared life well lived, not because he thought someone was keeping score, but because that is who he was. It is an example I try to emulate every day, with an awareness that no matter how long or short a time we have on this rotating rock, we can make a difference for someone else, and that is the most important thing we will ever do.

Not every chance meeting has to be life changing, of course. Most, in fact, are fleeting incidents that make little difference other than in the moment, here and gone without another thought. Sometimes, it's as simple as making someone smile in the midst of a hard day, or giving a helping hand when someone needs it. But I think it is important to be aware that there are times when we do something life changing for someone else and we don't even know it, and that it matters, to them and to us, how we live our everyday lives not only in our time, but for all time.

I have no patience for these silly celebrities who issue statements that they are not role models, and shouldn't be taken as such. Usually, these foolish statements are presented as the self-indulgent excuse for something stupid they have done for which they have been rightfully called out, but for which they do not want to be held accountable.

Apparently, it is obvious to everyone but them that there is a price to be paid when people are shelling out a lot of money for them to do what they do, and they are receiving all sorts of ego-feeding attention and special treatment because of it. Their cost is that people have the right to an expectation of a certain standard of behavior, which is moderated by the type of fame you have, and to comment upon it when you fall short. Different benchmarks are going to be applied to Tiger Woods or Miley Cyrus or John Edwards than are applied to Alex Rodriguez or Charlie Sheen or Bill Clinton, because the audience expectations are different in each situation.

But for better or for worse, they are all role models to a very wide audience, and they need to realize that with the money and the privilege comes scrutiny. If they don't like the negative judgements, then behave. It really isn't that complicated.

Just like celebrities, we are all role models to those whose lives we touch, whether we want to be or not. The decision is not ours whether we will be the role model, that judgement falls to those who are watching us. We can only control what type of model we want to be, and how we influence others by our choices. That is the bottom line, and it's a solid one, not dotted or wavy.

I have heard, on occasion, where something small and unintentional that I have done has made an impact on someone else, and it is always surprising to know that someone as insignificant as I am, in a planet full of people, can make a difference. I don't mean that in the way of false humility, of course I have my place, and it is important to those who are close to me. But in the general scheme of the world, I'm a teensy little cog, and I never really imagine anyone is paying attention to me.

And yet, my actions affect other people all the time, whether I am helpful or hurtful, happy or sad, pleasant or angry. It is impossible to know whether the smile you flash at the unhappy clerk might not just change their outlook for the rest of the day, but it has happened. You will never know what accident you may have averted by simply allowing another car in, or not taking offense when you could have. You are modeling adult behavior for your children and their friends all the time, and you never know what lessons they will learn from watching you.

My dad was not perfect, and he made his mistakes, some of which were bigger than he would have liked, I'm sure. But when he left us, he also left an example that was worth emulating, and which has served me well over the years. I would encourage you to think hard about how you want to influence people, because you are doing it every day, whether you know it or not, regardless of your intention.

I have been blessed in my life by too many people to enumerate here, from teachers and bosses to friends and relatives, and to begin would be to leave someone out, which would cheapen the entire effort. Besides, my list is not yours, and it is your own life list that I want you to think about. Consider those people who have, in some way, moved you or reached you or touched your life, and think about how many times those actions were insignificant on the surface, but meant everything to you in the moment.

My dad's memory is a living one, because he lives on through his example in me and in my brother, and beyond us, in our children. Although we still miss him all these years later, I think he would be pleased to know that those he touched have touched someone else, and the circle didn't close with him, but has been expanding ever since.

Every time I write a blog post, I am aware that people I do not know will read it, and I sometimes wonder how my words will affect someone who doesn't see my intentions clearly from my body language or my tone of voice, or just from the basic knowledge of who I am and how I generally live my life. It is always my hope, whatever the topic, to move people in a positive direction, and to uplift those who are hurting through the realization that they are not alone in their experience, even if they disagree with my conclusions.

I wish everyone had the perspicacity to know just how valuable they are in someone's world, even if they are a little cog like me. You are making a difference to someone, you can count on it, because the life we lead touches that of too many others not to. However you make your mark, be sure it's the one you want it to be, because time is a capsule that follows you into the future, and forever is a long time to be remembered for the wrong reasons.

Thanks, Dad, for being the kind of person who filled a church with your goodness. I hope that when my time comes, I will leave your legacy untarnished.