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Freedom

I was waiting to board the plane from Salt Lake City to Dallas/Fort Worth, and I saw a woman dressed in fatigues. An older gentleman walked across the waiting area, took her hand in both of his, and thanked her for her service.

I always tell my kids that we should be thankful for our troops and their sacrifice. We should shake their hands and graciously thank them for their service. A few parents at the kids' school are in the military. I see one father in particular nearly every afternoon, dressed in his fatigues, meeting his kindergartener. I've never had the opportunity to thank him from my minivan in the pick-up lane. And it would be unseemly, no matter how well-intentioned, to race up the lawn and fist-bump the poor man.

Back in Salt Lake City, the man walked back to his group. I turned to the woman in fatigues and quietly asked her where she was headed today.

"Afghanistan," she replied.

She couldn't have been much older than 20.

I reached out my hand and shook hers. Her hand was small and tiny and slightly trembling, and, somewhat astonished, I weakened my grip and let go.

"Wow," I said awkwardly. "How long will you be there?"

"Until March or April."

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

"You're welcome, ma'am."

Oh, like, WOW! He'll be Homecoming King and you'll be Homecoming Queen!

I was almost 16 when the phone calls started. I don't know why. I don't recall handing out my phone number or asking him to call. He just did. Every single night at 9:00 P.M. Sharp. Regardless of where he was or what he was doing, he always called.

Sounds rather creepy when I type it out, but it was all rather sweet in reality.

I don't remember a single thing we talked about. Just that the conversation didn't seem forced or uncomfortable. After all, we were both nerds, technically. He was a Jock Nerd, so the Quiz Bowl and Math Bee stink didn't stick to him as much as it did to me.

My parents allowed no dating until 16, so my first boyfriend was limited to his nightly phone calls and nothing more. Until October 14, 1988, when I was officially four days old enough to go out for dinner and a movie.

He came to my house in his father's Suburban. He was a little bit older than me and already had his driver's license, but his father didn't trust him to drive his Suburban. Or maybe his father didn't trust a teenage boy on his first date. Regardless, the doorbell rang and there he was.

My First Date.

His father drove us to Southern Hills Mall, way out on the other side of town. He dropped us off, and we shared an unabashedly romantic first date meal at Taco John's in the food court.

No beans. Although I've never been one of those girls who chooses salad over a big juicy steak, it was my very first date and I was taking no risk of avoidable embarrassment.

He bought two tickets to "Cocktail". You must know (if you haven't already guessed) that I was quite the naive young lady at 16. Or 15 and 4 quarters, if you really want to be realistic. I'm sure you've all seen the movie, a Tom Cruise/Elisabeth Shue classic.

Put yourself in my movie theater seat, just for a moment. And be thankful that theaters are dark places where people can't tell if you're flaming beet red or just pleasantly rosy. I have a hard time watching that movie NOW, nearly 21 years later. And it's not just because of the horrible acting and cheesy premise. It takes me right back to 1988 and Southern Hills Mall Cinema.

I don't remember if it was between the "Kokomo" or the Tom Cruise/Gina Gershon romp to the beat of "All Shook Up", but I managed to look over at my date, and I was even more disturbed by what I saw next to me that what I was seeing on the screen. My first date? Digging for gold. That's right. DIGGING FOR GOLD. Um, excuse me? I may have had my eyes squeezed shut for most of this movie, but you REALLY think you can get away with such SERIOUS DIGGING? Dude! I can totally see you!

Well, after the disturbing movie and the disturbing revelation of my date's bad habits, I was so ready to go home. I was torn between feelings of disgust and young love. For once, after all of our nightly hour-long phone conversations over the past month, I was rendered completely speechless.

It was a long ride home in that Suburban.

He walked me to the door, and I think he thought he should kiss me. But with the glare of the brightly illuminated front porch most likely hiding my parents' watchful eyes from his view coupled with his waiting father in the Suburban, he opted for the handshake. The handshake! Now, I KNOW he didn't wash his hands. And this was way back before the invention of hand sanitizer (By the way, thank you, Mr. Purell, wherever you are.) But I had no choice. He HAD taken me to Taco John's AND a movie at the big theater.

I was creeped out.

He called on Saturday night and Sunday night, as I'd come to expect. But it was more difficult to visit with him with the knowledge that he was a Gold Digger.

On Monday at school, one of my most obnoxious classmates practically tackled me wanting all the inside scoop on my first date. You know the movie "Grease"? Patti Simcox ring a bell? Look it up. Astonishing resemblance, minus the poodle skirt, plus the acid-wash jeans.

"OOOOOH! Tell me EVERYTHING!!!!!!" she squealed.

I know my enthusiasm didn't even approach the same galaxy where her enthusiasm resided, so I got this:

"You KNOW, that when YOU TWO are seniors, he is SO going to be Homecoming King, and that means YOU are SO going to be Homecoming QUEEN! That's so AWESOME! OOOHHHHH!!!!!"

Really? Gold Digger over there is handsome, talented, smart, and all that. But he PICKS HIS NOSE.

He called Monday night, and I could tell he could sense my distraction. At some point in the conversation, he went for it:

"So, what's the status of our relationship?" he asks me.

I think I dropped the phone. I recovered long enough to stammer something about having to erase all my math homework and start from scratch because I couldn't turn it in with my handwriting in its present state, punctuated with a very curt "Goodbye!".

I was such a chicken then. Granted, I was a child. But if only I could travel back in time as the person I am now, I would have been so much smoother than that. Come to think of it, that would make me a cougar then, too. Ew.

So that's the story of my first Real Boyfriend. My first Real Date. And my first Breakup.

It's kinda cute, really, don't you think?

And about that Homecoming thing? Fast forward four years, and yes, he was up for Homecoming King. And her? Wouldn't you know it? She was up for Homecoming Queen. They both lost. He probably couldn't have cared less. Her? I still can see the raw expression on her face when they announced the winner. Her best laid plans for the past two or so years came crashing down as hard as her jaw.

Yes, that was me, watching from the audience. At least a tiny bone of security in my enormously insecure body, at peace with the fact that I didn't sell out for a glittery plastic tiara.

I survived

I did it.

I got on an airplane. Not once, not twice, but four separate times. I did it all alone.

And I didn't even die. Not one time.

My fear of flying is deeply embedded. My first flight was to Washington, D.C. the summer before 7th grade. My Dad flies all the time and never shows an ounce of fear because, well, he's not afraid. My Mom? White knuckles, all the way. I couldn't reconcile how Dad was so nonchalant while Mom was practically hyperventilating with her eyes squeezed shut for a solid two and a half hours.

The flight wasn't actually that bad. The return trip? A little rougher. We flew over a thunderstorm, and the pilot kept climbing to avoid severe turbulence. I vividly remember coming down with a nauseating headache over a breakfast of sliced oranges sprinkled with toasted coconut. (I'm getting sick thinking about it now!) Then we sunk down through the clouds and were practically skimming the Missouri River into Eppley Field.

My Dad? Totally cool. Probably embarrassed by the ridiculousness of his girls.

Next up was a flight to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. (Yeah, I was cool like that.) We flew a prop plane to Minneapolis from Sioux City. The first (and hopefully, last) time in one of those. No flight attendant, unless you count the person in yellow sweatpants who hopped on the plane to shuffle our luggage around to distribute weight more evenly. The flight wasn't as horrible as I suspected, but I couldn't help but fixate on the vision of Jessica Lange smashing into that mountain in "Sweet Dreams" the entire time.

We made it to Minneapolis and connected in Memphis. Nothing spectacular. I remember the Memphis airport being all decked out in pink and blue neon, celebrating Elvis as only an airport can celebrate Elvis.

Memphis to Pensacola was a totally different story. By now, it was nighttime. We were on one of those regional jets that are just a step above prop planes. And we ran into some nasty weather.

Needless to say, I was a wreck.

We hit severe turbulence, the kind that jars you around as if you were on a sick and twisted roller coaster ride. Lightning all around, just like that one episode of "The Twilight Zone" where William Shatner's character keeps seeing Sasquatch hopping on the wing. Thank God for my kind friend, Kelly, who kept reassuring me that turbulence was just like cars going over tire tracks.

Sure, cars. Cars 30,000 feet in the air with nothing underneath but a steep drop and solid ground to break your fall.

The analogy was lost on me, and I started to freak out as the plane jerked more violently. The flight attendant was strapped in towards the front of the plane, facing us. I needed Dramamine, horse tranquilizers, ANYTHING, and Kelly motioned for his assistance. But he was busy with his death grip on his seat. He fervently nodded, "NO!", refusing to unbuckle. Kelly took matters into her own hands and started to walk towards the flight attendant, intent on getting some water for me to wash down some hallucinogens. The plane jerked, Kelly tripped and fell down the aisle, and I think that's when I started screaming, "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes, I really am that fun.

The turbulence kept at it, but we finally broke through the clouds. I saw happy twinkling lights below where happy families were happily on the ground.

Then blackness.

We were over the Gulf of Mexico, looping around for landing. But all I could think was that the plane was not only going to crash in the ocean, I was also going to be devoured by sharks on top of it.

I was not happy.

Finally, we landed without incident. I felt rather sheepish for being so dramatic. Until we deplaned onto the tarmac. The staid business commuters who shared that flight with me actually knelt on the ground and kissed it.

See? I wasn't kidding. It was pretty bad.

I begged to take a train home, drive, even WALK. I DID NOT, by any means, want to get on another plane, EVER. Of course, I had to fly back from Huntsville to Memphis to Minneapolis to Sioux City. And I'm typing this now, so you know I actually made it. But my fear of flying was all the more cemented, and it wasn't budging for anything.

I mentioned my Dad travels a lot for work, and my family and I always had the opportunity to tag along. Montreal was a big trip. Didn't go. He flies to Arizona and California and Florida quite frequently, in the winter, too, but guess what? Never went. Colorado? Only by car. New York City? Are you kidding me?

I missed out on many adventures, but I told my adventurous self that I didn't need to go anywhere that badly. I denied my wanderlust and convinced myself that an adventure consisted of three-hour interstate drives.

I flew to Orlando once in January. We left Omaha covered in snow, the temperature hovering below zero. And while Orlando wasn't much warmer that time, it was novel to be out of parkas. I allowed myself to enjoy that one.

And then our dear friends were to be married in the bride's hometown of Juarez, Mexico. We bought the tickets, we were ready to go. It was going to be an absolute blast.

But a full week of night terrors and absolutely horrendous anxiety kept me on the ground. Joel went without me. I couldn't even go near the airport. He was gone for a week, updating me daily with all of his adventures. And there I was, the one in the relationship who could actually speak Spanish, sitting in Des Moines at my cubicle, missing the wedding of a lifetime all because I was a wimpity-wimp afwaid to be on a pwane.

I felt so embarrassed. And 13 years later, I still feel it.

Joel insisted I fly on our honeymoon. It was only to Miami to hop on our cruise. It took tranquilizers this time, something that I was really ashamed to admit, but something that did help. What does it say on the prescription? Don't mix with alcohol? I was so terrified that I ignored instructions and drank on the plane, thinking that would magnify the effect. And it certainly did. I was everyone's best friend on that flight and the one returning home. At least in my own fuzzy mind.

As young newlyweds, Joel and I decided that we wanted to move across the country. I encouraged a compromise to Dallas, and he agreed. Our Juarez-married friends had relocated there, and I sort of felt like I would be making it up to them somehow by flying to stay with them there.

And that was the very last time I flew.

Before 9-11. Before all of the new rules. Before three kids and a mortgage and car payments. In other words, before I actually became a grown-up.

Last June, opportunity arose for me to fly to Salt Lake City for the Digital Scrapbooking Experience, a convention put on by Creating Keepsakes. Nancie, the owner of ScrapArtist, threw it out there that I might want to go. I justified not going one hundred ways to Sunday, but by August (and with a lot of prodding from Joel) I bit the bullet and, with much reservation, made my reservation.

I watched takeoffs and landings on YouTube over and over again. I learned as much as I could about how planes work, including the fact that not a single plane has ever dropped out of the sky because of turbulence. I steeled my nerves, convincing myself that if someone as formerly mousy as me could kickbox, then I could probably fly.

I was flying solo, so no drugs. No alcohol. And certainly no mixing of the two. I didn't want to wind up hungover in some Dumpster at the airport.

As my departure day approached, I felt butterflies more and more. But I kept telling myself I could do it. I promised myself that if I could get over this then we could take more interesting family vacations. I could stop talking about all of the places I want to go and actually go to them. I could check one big huge thing off my list.

Joel dropped me off at the Des Moines airport very early Wednesday morning, before the kids were even thinking about being awake. I felt sort of like a big girl just then, dependent on myself. I went through what has become quite agonizing security since my last flight 12 years ago. What you have to endure for a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer is pretty amazing.

I made my way to the gate at the end of the terminal and waited. And used the bathroom. And waited. And used the bathroom. And waited. And used the bathroom. My biggest fear at that point? Losing control of my bladder/bowels. Seriously. I started to perspire in weird places, like the tops of my feet and behind my knees. I had little fleeting moments of doubt that I would actually be able to walk and board. I was terrified to actually be strapped into the plane with no choice but to endure whatever the flight was going to entail.

But I did it. I got on that plane. I buckled my seatbelt. I looked around at my traveling companions and quietly promised them I wouldn't puke or scream or otherwise torture them with my insecurities.

The plane sped up. It left the ground. My eyes were closed, and I just kept breathing like I was at Farrell's. I told myself I kick things for exercise and this was absolutely no big deal. The plane shuddered a little bit on ascent, but nothing major. And before you know it, I looked out and got a bird's-eye-view of Valley Stadium, Jordan Creek Town Center and other familiar landmarks. A few minutes later and we were flying over the Missouri River. Not long after that, Kansas City. Then Kansas.

Before you know it, I saw the Red River and we crossed into Texas. I could make out our old neighborhood, using Grapevine Mills Mall as a reference point. And I actually started to tear up a little bit as we landed in Dallas. It was at that moment I realized how much I'd allowed irrational fear to guide so many of my choices over the years. I felt awfully regretful. I felt like apologizing to anyone and everyone to whom I'd ever exhibited my ridiculousness. But then I felt a little more strident, a little more fearless, a little more confident in myself.

Happy to land, but happier still that I'd made it so far.

The leg from DFW to Salt Lake was on a larger plane, more people whom I realized God probably didn't want to slam into the ground today. We flew over the clouds and as the sky cleared I saw snow-capped mountains. The Wasatch Mountains. I have a big thing for mountains, and seeing them from high above is just something you don't do every day unless you're a pilot. Then I spied a huge copper mine, Provo, and then the Great Salt Lake.

I landed, I was alive, and I went to sleep that night dreaming about all the places that had just opened up to me in the world.

I flew back home the same way, SLC to DFW, DFW to DSM. And I didn't lose control of myself or any of my internal organs. Not once.

The best way to conquer your fears is to face them head-on.

Now for that pilot's license...

Before-n-after

I know from experience with my own family that treasured family photos are hard for some people to part with, even if the person requesting them only needs to make a digital copy. (I'm still in my, oh, fifteenth year of waiting patiently for some additional Rice family photos, but who's counting? *grin*)

Sometimes, I feel a little sheepish asking if I can make copies, especially if I'm only a relative by marriage.

So what's a girl to do?

Use her camera!

The LeMar cousins had many photos on display yesterday at the family reunion. It was a dizzying array to a self-appointed family archivist like myself. So instead of fussing over the logistics of making hard copies, I just took pictures of the pictures.

Now, this works well in some circumstances, not so much in others. But it certainly doesn't hurt to try.


This handsome devil is Joel's uncle, Cliff LeMar. The photo on the left is the raw image, straight from my camera. The photo was hanging on a corkboard inside the shelter at Grandview Park. I only took one shot. Multiple shots are preferable.

Photoshop to the rescue! I started with a Levels adjustment layer. I fuss with this sometimes, but I just opted to go with the Auto adjustment. Then I used the Warp tool to pull in the sides a bit and give dear Cliff better posture. The photo had been trimmed to fit in an oval frame, so I begged, borrowed and stole from around the portrait to fill in the corners. Basically, I used the Lasso tool with a good feather of 3px to copy a good section, then I moved the patch over the blank area and blended it with a layer mask and a soft brush. I also needed the Clone Stamp tool and the Patch tool to aid with the blending here and there.

The tricky part was filling in the cut-away parts of Cliff's suit. I used the same process as above, but I was much more particular in lining up textures and shadows.

The before photo has an obvious yellow cast to it, and the Auto Levels adjustment layer took care of much of it. But I used another Levels adjustment layer, using Cliff's shirt, which was presumably white in real life, to sample with the White eyedropper and jazz up the rest of the colors. I merged all of the layers I'd created so far into a new layer, and I performed a Variations adjustment on this new layer, making it a teensy bit more blue.

Et voila! A "copy"! Sure, a bit more effort than had I just asked if I could run them safely over to the westside, scan, and run them back. But this way everyone feels safe.

I have a few more to Photoshop, and now I can share copies with all of the LeMar cousins.

Now for those Rice relatives...

Socks

I was putting away some laundry the other day, and as I was making room in Joel's sock drawer I put my hand on the socks. The first pair of grown-up's socks that I'd ever knitted with my own ten fingers.

Joel's never worn them. It's not a critique of my knitting skills, it's just that they're wool. Soft-ish sock alpaca/silk, a beautiful taupe skein from a bonafide yarn store in Plano, but wool nonetheless. Slightly itchy. No Gold Toe. But Joel keeps them because I made them. He's a bit of a sucker like that, even though he's all tough and manly on the outside.

Regardless of the lack of action they get from his feet, those socks are beautiful. I took them out of Joel's drawer and unfolded them. I marvelled at the idea that the tangle of stitches, increases, decreases, heel flaps, and Kitchener stitch all came from uncoordinated me and a fistful of double-pointed needles.

As usual, some other random thought strikes as I'm folding the socks back together.

"He" asked me to knit a pair of socks for him once. "He" being my high school sweetheart, the boy I just knew (at the wise old age of seventeen) that I would marry someday. I used to fantasize about signing our checks and Christmas cards with my first name and his last name.

Yes, it was true love indeed.

(And I rarely write checks anymore and barely issue Christmas cards, so that really was some fantasy.)

I had never knitted a thing in my life at seventeen. I tried to crochet a sweater once out of a book from the library. I scored a couple of skeins of squeaky white Wintuk from Shopko and forced myself to decipher the pattern into wearable art.

Three weeks later, and I'd barely gotten beyond the foundation chain.

When I was little, my dear neighbor, Hope Harbeck, latched on to my interest in anything crafty. She made it her mission to pass on the feminine arts that her own grown daughter had never given a passing glance. I used to follow her husband, Orville, around their garden. I liked digging up the carrots, which of course he let me wash and eat right there. But after all of that dirty work and vegetable consumption, Hope would wrangle me to sit with her while she tried to help me grasp the concept of casting on.

When "he" asked me to knit socks for him, I took on the assignment with the fervor only a lovestruck adolescent could possess. I ran like a bullet train to Northwest Fabrics and bought a skein of the "good stuff", something like 20% wool.

I was out an entire $3.95, but like I said, this was true love.

I knew that I needed more than two needles to accomplish this sock knitting thing. I settled on a pattern (an old one from Hope, if I remember, complete with cables) and I cast on all of the stitches required for the first row onto one of the slippery Size 5 double-points. The pattern instructed me to divide these stitches onto four needles, being careful not to twist the stitches. All I could do was twist the stitches. I unraveled the cast-on stitches and tried again. And again. And again. I kept trying until the yarn was so over-cast-on that it lay limp and frazzled in my hands.

I gave up.

He was not meant to be with me. The socks were not meant for him.

They were meant for Joel.

For some reason, the next time I attempted to knit socks, I understood the pattern. It was like looking at that optical illusion where you can see two faces or a vase, and this time I saw the two faces instead of the vase or the vase instead of the two faces. Sure, I made a few mistakes, but it didn't seem like reading Chinese upside-down like it had so many years ago. I knit a fine pair of socks, worthy of my soul mate's feet.

To everything there is a season. Socks included.

Betsy Wetsy

My son, Ben, is the proud owner of his very own...

BETSY WETSY.

Ben is now three-and-a-half years old, and he is extremely resistant to toilet training.

Of course, Elizabeth was potty-trained at two, with very little effort on our part. We pointed to the toilet. She went. Done deal. Never made it past Size 3 Pampers.

Sam was a bit more difficult, but very determined. I vividly remember him coming down with a vicious case of the flu that left him dehydrated to the point that we wound up in the hospital on an IV. He was wearing Pull-Ups, but he asked me if he could go potty. I told him he could just use his Pull-Ups this one time because he was so sick. But he insisted on walking down the hall to the restroom. There he was, my little man, shuffling through the ER wheeling his IV stand all the way to the toilet. It was an heroic thing to witness.

Sam's threshold? Size 5. Barely broke into the box, but we had crossed the line.

Ben? Size 6 and counting. I even went all Mommie Dearest and switched from Pampers to Huggies, assuming that Pampers were far too absorbent and therefore too comfortable for Mr. LeMar. After Size 6, our only other option will be Depends. I have nightmares that I will have to sneak Ben into preschool, sliding under the radar of the no-underwear-no-shoes-no-service preschool standard, only to be turned away after he soils his adult incontinence undergarments and rats himself out.

True story. We stopped at a rest area on our way home from Sioux City before Ben was born, and I witnessed a frustrated mother changing her SEVEN-YEAR-OLD son in the restroom. She was trying to reason with him. If you are having an existential battle with your child regarding diapers, it's gone too far.

Ben is *this close* to "too far". We introduced the concept as soon as Ben expressed interest, just like parents are supposed to do. But I have this feeling that as the baby he knows he's getting exclusive time with Mom and Dad because we have to change his diapers. Trouble is, the older he gets, the more the deposits evolve. Without getting into too much detail, the days of "sweet-smelling" breastfed-baby jobbies are long, long, long gone.

(And whomever decreed breastfed babies have sweet-smelling diapers must have been smoking something sweet when they wrote that. Comparatively? Maybe. But there's nothing sweet about Numero Dos. Ever.)

We've rewarded Ben by trucking the entire family to Dairy Queen when Ben merely sits on the potty. He doesn't even have to do anything but sit, and he earns ice cream. The promises have become grander and grander, if only Ben would actually put something in the potty.

I think we're up to a supermodel girlfriend and a Lexus at this point. Honestly, I've lost track.

So a co-worker of Joel's leads Joel to (of all places) DrPhil.com. Dr. Phil professes a fool-proof method of toilet training that he swears will work on the most resistant of subjects in a single day. Buy a doll that wets. Load up the doll with bottled water. Let the subject put the doll on the potty. And celebrate profusely when the doll performs as requested.

Dr. Phil promises that Ben will want his own "Potty Party" so badly that he will fling his diapers to the margins for all eternity.

We had to run to Wal-Mart this afternoon to fill in the missing blanks on our school supplies lists, so we checked out the toy aisle and found such a doll. She's a girl, and Ben has christened her "Lily".

(As a side note, Wal-Mart had two versions of the same doll on the shelf. One had pursed lips and seemed entirely too grumpy, the other had a pleasant smile on her face. Ben chose the "happy baby".)

Lily is now sitting on our kitchen counter, waiting for her training to start tomorrow morning. Believe it or not, Ben is JAZZED about taking care of Lily and teaching her how to go potty.

Dr. Phil? If this fails, I have you down for a Costco-sized box of Huggies, Size 6, possibly a pallet of Depends. I've never been one to put faith in you before. I'm calling on you now.

Dude, I'm at my wits' end. This better work.