Archive for April, 2010

Lyn Riddle

On connections to last a lifetime

by Lyn Riddle

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Apr
30

Six childhood friends.

Those who went to college chose different schools.

One married soon after graduation.

Two got jobs.

All but one left their hometown of Martin, Tenn., after graduation in 1971. They ended up in Greenville, St. Petersburg, Fla., Knoxville, Memphis.

Yet, at least once every year – sometimes more often than that – they spend several days together relishing each other’s company.

These women in their mid-50s are touchstones for one another. Despite the differences in the lives they have led, the men they married (and, for some, divorced), the children they bore or not, the money they earned, they have stayed together just like the characters in Cassandra King’s novel “Same Sweet Girls.”

Greenville optometrist Brenda McGregor – her friends call her Pug – is one of the women.

She is back from the annual trip – this year they went to Treasure Island, near St. Petersburg.

“One girl picks a date and we go,” McGregor said. “This year she surprised us with this beautiful waterfront home owned by a doctor. We felt like we were in Architectural Digest.”

McGregor talks about the women with such joy and intimacy it’s easy to feel you know them, too.

Janet: who arranged for the house, divides her time between St. Pete and Franklin, N.C., married her high school sweetheart, divorced, remarried and is now retired from the insurance business. Her father picked the girls up in a Silver Cloud Rolls.

Louisa: also lives in St. Pete, is a widow with deep spirituality, the exotic one who does yoga and has a gift for seeing meaning in things others overlook.

Bonita: worked three jobs to raise her children during a difficult marriage, is remarried and lives in Knoxville.

Carol: sold a hotel renovation business two years ago, the most creative of the bunch who can wrap a present so beautifully you don’t want to unwrap it – “Our Martha Stewart.”

Donna: lives in Martin and is a funeral director with grandchildren she adores.

Pug: got her name because her brother upon her birth said “Uncle Joe’s pug is cuter than that baby” and describes herself as the “boring one,” married 30 years to an engineer, retired two years ago from her practice.

There is a litany of information about the value of long-term friendships. Journalist Jeffrey Zaslow wrote a book about 10 women from Ames, Iowa, who have virtually the same experience. No distance or passage of time diminishes the bond.

It might be seen as an oddity in these times as people move all over the country chasing dreams and jobs. The false ties of texting and e-mail and most assuredly Facebook are not stand-ins and, in fact, probably keep folks from forging true bonds.

It’s not that the women of Martin, Tenn., did not change. It’s that they changed in ways that were expected and they have a rich history to hold onto. No need for explanation. Comfort. Fun. Sometimes pain. Always a profound connection.

This year the Martin girls played board games and prepared exquisite dinners. They walked the beach every morning. And of course had their time together where they tell each other what has happened in the months since they last met. Nothing is held back. This year offered two major surprises, but they’re not for public consumption.

It was a year to rejoice because Bonita marked the important fifth year as a cancer survivor. They gave her a pink necklace and bracelet designed by Emily Ray, whose mother died of breast cancer and who donates $5 of every sale to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Each year someone is honored for something special that’s happened, a shower for a grandma to be, a retirement, a marriage. The rites of passage through life shared with someone you’ve known almost as long as you’ve been lived.

And there’s an added benefit.

“We’re all a hoot,” McGregor said.

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Susan Simmons

Fallout from the health care bill

by Susan Simmons

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Apr
3

Last week, when the combat over Obamacare had reached the hand-to-hand stage in the House, a friend asked me, “Who’s telling the truth?”

I thought about everything I had read about health care reform – for months, to a degree that is neither healthy nor sane – and answered, “I don’t know.”

Nobody does. Truly, nobody does. This bill-turned-law has been manipulated, massaged, tortured and spun for so long that no one in the White House or Congress – on either side – knows the sum total of what it contains, or what it will ultimately do.

Part of that haziness can be racked up to the simple fact of unintended consequences: no one can predict every single outcome of any change, much less one that consumes 2,800 pages and takes 10 years to implement.

But a major part of the fog is a deliberate political choice.

Just for fun, I went through some old files and unearthed a few columns written back in 1994, during the heat of Bill and Hillary’s fight for health care reform. The spin was vertigo-worthy then, too, but what struck me most was the amount of detail out in public long before the voting began.

It was possible to actually read the Clinton plan, to quote specifics by page number, to compare what its backers said against what the proposed law would in fact do.

And when Americans realized the promises were a lot sunnier than the restrictive reality, a majority rejected the plan and Congress voted it down.

Now fast forward to 2010, and Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” As if the controversy was the problem, rather than the pig-in-a-poke feel of her massive, secretive, blatantly partisan bill – which it was, no matter which side you rooted for.

And whether you’re happy or terrified now depends on whether you think massive government intervention is the best way to solve the nation’s problems or the best way to make them massively worse. You will find me in the latter camp – not just because I prefer representative over paternalistic government, but because I think Nancy Pelosi has it exactly backwards.

On reform this radical, “trust us” is not enough, not when it will cost our country $940 billion over 10 years – and that’s with an accounting gimmick that starts the taxes and fees four years before the real costs kick in. Not when it transforms something that so intimately affects our families, our personal solvency and potentially, our very lives.

Americans know this, which is why promises shouted through a fog of controversy would not comfort or satisfy. But instead of specifics we could weigh for ourselves, Congress and the president gave us a furious blur of logrolling, procedural tricks and gamesmanship that seemed to intensify in direct proportion to the public outcry against it. The majority of Americans did not want a pig-in-a-poke bill. We got one anyway, in the dead of night, by the thinnest of partisan margins.

And as we learn what’s in it, maybe we will love it. Maybe it will give us all we were promised through the fog and more. Discoveries like the $10 billion for 16,500 new IRS agents to enforce the new premium and fine structure suggest more is the right word.

But what I will remember is the shot of Pelosi walking through the crowd of protesters surrounded by her lieutenants, her head thrown back in triumphant laughter. The gavel in her hand was huge.

Elections do have consequences – but so does political arrogance. The verdict on this vote is still to come.

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Lyn Riddle

On raising children

by Lyn Riddle

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Apr
3

When my children were growing up, I often wished I had a handbook for raising children.

Something like when they do this, you do this and all will be well with the world and the children will grow up happy and healthy.

Sure there was Dr. Spock and one I can’t even think of the name now that were must reads in the 1980s.

I just googled looking for the name and can’t find it, but I see today’s young parents have “Raising the Spirited Child” and “Raising Children who Think for Themselves” and even “Raising the Vegetarian Child.”

It just wasn’t easy, but then it never is, in any generation. Especially with the first child. You analyze every action and wonder if I do or say this will I cause him irreparable harm. I convinced myself for the longest time that I stifled my oldest son’s creativity when at 4 I refused to buy him red tennis shoes. Red? White was so much better.

All this to get back to my main point: This morning the associate pastor at my church handed me a single page of information that could have served as my playbook for childrearing. It was from Search Institute, a Minneapolis based non-profit whose mission is to promote healthy children.

On this sheet of paper was a list of 40 developmental assets children should have to be successful in life. Things like family support, caring school climate, service to others, creative activities, motivation, positive values, decision making, sense of purpose.

And of course there is self-esteem, which so many well-educated yet misguided people have mocked in recent years.

The list seems like common sense stuff. Tell the truth. Read for pleasure. Be creative. Serve others.

But here’s the rub.

Researchers were careful to say there was no magic number for how many attributes children need, but the data showed 31 of the 40 were “worthy, though challenging.”

Eight percent of the children studied had 31 or more.

Seventeen percent had zero to 10.

The average was 18.

And the number got worse as the child aged. In sixth grade, the average number of assets was 23, by 12th grade it was 17.8.

The research also showed it made no difference where the child lived – rural, suburban or urban. Socioeconomic status mattered not. Neither did race.

Here’s some more stats:

Of the children with zero to 10 attributes, 45 percent had problem alcohol use, 62 percent were violent, 38 percent used drugs and 34 percent were sexually active.

On the other end of the spectrum, 3 percent of children with more than 31 attributes had problems with alcohol, 6 percent were violent, 1 percent used drugs and 3 percent were sexually active.

As we try to teach our children, all action – parental and otherwise – has consequences.

The associate pastor gave me this information because he was telling me about the meeting of the General Assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship at our church, Pelham Road Baptist, April 23 and 24. The overarching theme of the meeting is being intentional about student ministry.

That means making student ministry a congregational effort rather than a department in the church. One session for student ministers is based on Search Institute’s study. The meeting planners know churches cant compete with new media and television and video games, but they can compete when it comes to relationships. Several of the assets Search Institute identified had to do with children having relationships with adults other than their parents.

It’s yet another stab at living that age-old African proverb: It takes a village to raise a child.

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