A three-seater

Not a car, or amusement park ride, or a row on an airplane. The three-seater I’m talking about is an outhouse. My Girl Scout troupe went camping at two different campgrounds. I don’t remember their names or if we went to one in the spring and the other in autumn. I do remember that one of them had a three-seater outhouse and the other only a double.
 

The current generation doesn’t know about that faraway building with the crescent moon on the door and the roll of toilet paper in one coffee can and a supply of lye in another. Oh, and the smells that the lye did nothing to dispel. Today we all recognize various Port-a-potty closet-sized facilities which use different chemicals that really do make the plastic enclosure odor-free. And private.

The two- and three-seaters had no dividers. Just holes in a wooden bench over holes dug in the ground. Because the outhouse was far from the campground’s large cabin where we slept on cots lined in long rows against the rustic walls, the buddy system was enforced. No one went to the outhouse alone. And, with the 3-seater, we could even take another scout.

I was reminded of this experience the other day in the library when I entered the washroom and heard someone talking. Yes, there was a woman in a stall, having a very private conversation on her cellphone, while doing something private. Clues indicated a woman close to my age, which, I will say, added to my surprise. The dark and distant outhouse was a perfect place for girl’s secrets, even with the stench. The private few feet of a closed door in a public bathroom? Not so much.

You may have had a similar experience, but mine took me back to those long ago Memorial Day weekends at a campground, with friends and patriotic songs around a campfire while making s’mores. It was sweet innocence of the true meaning of the day, of the wars to come, of the rapid changes to our norms on all fronts, changes that would even make outhouses obsolete. It was time for giggles and secrets in the dark, for ghost stories, and holding hands on our way to the three-seater.

Marilyn

Perfect Attendance

My generation has awards for showing up. Our early report cards had a place for a gold or silver star depending on the number recorded in the Attendance box. Mr. Timby, our Sunday school superintendent, proudly wore a pin with many small bars hanging down, each representing a year with no absences from church. At the end of June he handed out similar prizes to children and adults who had been in class every Sunday since September. In college we were told the number of allowable misses for classes and chapel, but the norm was that they while permitted, absences were not acceptable. From Day One at my time at Illinois Bell and AT&T we were told to be at our desks, regardless of the bugs we freely shared with co-workers. The monthly corporate newsletter listed all those with a year’s perfect attendance and there were special gifts should you manage the five or ten year mark.


I never had perfect attendance at school.  I did try, but had to give in to mumps, measles, tonsillitis, and other childhood maladies. There were a couple of years when I didn’t miss a day of work, but occasionally things like the flu or pink eye kept me home.
 

Attendance was just one area where I tried and failed at perfection. You see, the problem is that somehow early on I equated perfection, whether in attendance or anything else, to love and acceptance. Failure was guaranteed, which sure complicates life. This played out particularly in two major areas: the mother-daughter relationship and the God the Father-child connection. Try though I might to be the perfect daughter, I wasn’t, and therefore never felt truly loved or accepted. I’ll describe it this way: I might find the perfect present for my mother, but her look told me I had wrapped it in the wrong paper. The sad thing is that she wasn’t satisfied with our relationship either, but no big bridges got built while she was alive, though I think we both made attempts. In terms of being a child of God, well, Miss Goody Two-Shoes failed there miserably as well. In both arenas, my offering – from attendance to a present to living a godly life – was never perfect.

Things are very different these days. At work my colleagues successfully argued that sick and vacation days do not belong in the same accrual bucket as that encourages people to come to work sick, leaving more days for vacation. There are many more things to attract our attention on a Sunday morning, and while I don’t know about school attendance, I somehow think that the gold and silver stars have lost their impact.

I’ve also learned that, despite what I thought in my youth, no one had the perfect parental relationship. Whether son or daughter, mother or father, few of us were the parent or child that the other needed even most of the time, but each of us has muddled along into imperfect human beings who can find love and acceptance with one another. And once I replaced the concept of religion with spirituality and the white-bearded iconic Santa Claus with Creator, I realized that as long as we show up in some way even with all of our imperfections, the connection is there, ours for the taking. My main lesson? Sometimes good enough is much better than perfect.

Marilyn

The Fifth Season

Is there something you wait for all year that when it comes it feels like it is its own season? Car enthusiasts know when new models are revealed and sports fans wait for the weather that’s ideal for baseball or football season. People anticipate the holidays. We’re in the midst of awards season for entertainers and entering summer months of reruns. Kids, parents, and teachers can long for school to begin – or end. Folks sanitize jars in preparation for canning time.

I was at a luncheon last week for Save the Children where the phrase ‘Hunger Season’ was introduced. While farmers that you and I may think of know planting, harvesting, and lambing times, there are farming communities worldwide who routinely have a Hunger Season. It’s the time of year when the crops are gone and the larders are bare.  There is no black market of food because there is no money with which to purchase anything imported.

Hunger Season is their norm, from generation to generation. Hunger Season comes every year and even knowing that, there is not much they can do about it. It comes routinely, either as part of the cycle of nature or because the militia has come through and burned the land. Whether the farmer is the mother or the father, when Hunger Season arrives ,they feel that have they failed in their profession and they believe they are failures at providing for and protecting their families. Hunger Season means the whole community is united in physical deprivation and psychological pain.

As someone whose relationship with food is as friend and consoler and who has never missed a meal, even when what was on the table was sparse, hearing of this fifth season had a profound impact on me. There we were, eating our upscale chicken dish with strawberries and raspberries in a parfait, while Hunger Season stories were being shared.

You know how you can hear or read something many times but suddenly the reality of what you are seeing or listening to finally sinks in? Like you, I’ve seen pictures of starvation in foreign places and have responded to a particularly eloquent appeal. I know that a high percentage of children here in the U.S. go to sleep hungry so I regularly take food to our local pantry. But, Hunger Season? I’m still mulling on that. Perhaps, now, you will too.

Marilyn

What Dashboards Don't Tell Us

Businesses have developed diagnostic tools based on the model of a car’s dashboard. Like all the gauges and icons that assist a driver, a business’s dashboard is designed to present an ‘at a glance’ picture of the health of the organization. Similar to a driver’s ability to keep their vehicle moving forward, executives are able to react to what the graphs and charts on their dashboards tell them.

As someone who drove a lime green bug named Sherbie for a decade, I believe that a car can have a personality; however, its dashboard, even with a flower in a vase, does not. It cannot tell you that there is an ambulance coming up behind you or that a soccer ball just bounced in the street 30 feet ahead.  A dashboard misses the squeaky windshield wipers even as it flashes that a tire pressure is low. A company’s dashboard can reflect trends but doesn’t document what years of experience can tell the manager about those trends. It cannot indicate whether people enjoy coming to work or what the buzz is around the water cooler.


Doing research on my organization’s dashboard got me thinking about what I would include on a personal one. What types of graphs would I use? Would I create a pie chart of my bank account or figure out how to diagram joie de vivre? Do I care about whether I meditate or is it more important to know that when I do, it helps my well-being? Where and how would relationships fit in a box and would each be color coded? Knowing me, I would get caught up in thinking there is a right way to do this rather than just living well as I take periodic inventory of key elements. But, dashboards can be helpful, so, after some contemplation, I reduced my original list of eight daily questions down to these three and will track the Yes/No answers this week to Did I:  

• Experience some private or shared joy?
• Do something helpful outside of myself?
• Do something healthy for my body and soul?

A different exercise would have me mapping the details, but for now, this will be enough. Will you join me in some similar simple dashboard that will record your week? Maybe we can meet over coffee and compare.

Marilyn