If No One Else Volunteers

I never encouraged my son to join Scouts. Maybe it was because my brother had set his bedroom on fire the night he was to advance to Bear Cub. My only other Cub Scout memory was helping my mother make Royal Canadian Mountie hats from brown grocery bags and round cardboard pizza liners for her den. When six-year-old Robert came home with a flyer announcing the Cub pack sign-up rally at his elementary school, I informed my husband Jim, “I’ll be PTA Mom—you can be Scout Dad.”

The plan worked perfectly for nearly four years. Then Robert’s den mom resigned and the new leader needed an assistant. “I’ll do it if no one else volunteers,” I half-heartedly offered. I pause here to explain something to anyone under thirty reading this. “If no one else volunteers” is equal to stating that you’re planning to do the job. No one hears anything after the words: “I’ll do it.” So that is how I came to be a Cub Scout den mom.

This is not a drill.

When Robert was in the fourth grade our Cub pack was invited to the scout council’s big Spring campout. Jim had to be out of town and I was forced to go along as Robert’s designated parent. Scouting is very particular about mandatory parent participation, especially with the younger scouts. Prior to this I had managed to duck out of anything involving a tent, a cot, or a campfire. Mind you I had backpacked with Jim in the foothills of Southern California in the 1980’s—once. The bones in my heels have long since been covered over by new skin growth.

Before being allowed to take responsibility for our brave little son on our first campout together, Jim insisted that Robert and I perform tent-raising drills and packing exercises in the back yard. He bought me an inflatable air mattress, so this campout was shaping up to be much more luxurious than my backpacking adventure. On the big day, Robert and I joined the other Cub Scout families in the parking lot of the church where we held our pack meetings. We pulled all the SUV’s and minivans into a circle and planned the route we would take into the wilderness.

Wagons dustward.

Sid Richardson Scout Ranch, or “Sid,” as it’s called in the scout world, is a 2500 acre scout camp on a vast, working cattle ranch in north Texas. From the main highway, a winding, gravel road takes campers past working oil wells, over cattle guards, and through the dust of thousands of years of Texas droughts and dirt storms. Hundreds of vehicles caravanned through the ranch, spinning up so much light brown sand and dust that you could barely see the tail lights of the vehicle ahead. The trees and brush on either side of the road were covered like a Michigan forest after a winter storm—only it was a blanket of dust, not snow. Even with the windows of my SUV rolled up and the air vents closed, the dust came in and choked us, making it difficult for Robert and me to talk to each other. When we finally arrived at our campsite it was almost impossible to tell what color any of the vehicles had been before they became the color of Texas dirt.

Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart!

There were two other moms in our group, both den leaders, and the rest were dads. After setting up our tents, Mary, one of the other moms, and I carried our air mattresses to our cars to inflate them. I was startled at the heckling we took from the men as we hiked back to our tents with our mattresses on our heads to avoid puncturing them on the mesquite and cactus needles. I assumed Mary was a novice camper like me until I learned that she and the other mom were the quartermasters (cooks) that weekend. They were like Bobbie Flay and Rachel Ray working out of a minivan. They amazed me with their chuck wagon skills, and even the cubmaster bowed to their authority. When I asked them how they came to know so much about camping, they both replied, “We’ve been to training.”

Oh starry night, with a moonlit sky, take me away…Anonymous

Whether it was the camaraderie I felt with the other adults, the glow of the campfire’s last embers as they died away, or the billions of stars in the clean, crisp April night sky that won me over, I don’t remember. By the time my son became a Boy Scout, I was a camping and scouting devotee. I attended nearly every training class I could and in a short time I became an assistant scoutmaster. By the time Robert became an Eagle Scout, I was teaching camping skills to other adults.

I don’t regret one single hour of the thousands of hours I spent working with the scouts. There were signs that it was time to retire though. At a pack meeting one evening a tiny little Cub Scout looked at my graying hair and asked: “Are you the leader of all the Cub Scouts in the world?” I didn’t volunteer for that.

Donna

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

When I was around six years old, my younger brother John and I wanted to give our mother a very special gift for Mother’s Day. We had no money since there was no such thing as an “allowance” in my family, and we were certainly too young to have jobs. We were just little tykes, but we were resourceful.

Our home was an old, converted cottage on Portage Lake, a small summer resort area about fifty miles west of Detroit. By converted I mean that the walls were insulated, a furnace was installed, and the place was inhabitable twelve months a year. Most of the structures on all sides of our home were still summer cottages; we only saw the owners from June, when school let out, until the beginning of September when school started again. During the winter months we would snoop around the vacant cottages and peek in the windows, and even play on their porches.

Good fences make good neighbors.

There was no such thing as a fence between the cottages, but owner’s planted beautiful garden borders that served as a kind of property line between the yards. Our next-door neighbors had a way with tulips. Now that I think of it, they were probably Dutch because their last name was Van-Something-Burg. Brother John and I knew true beauty when we saw it, and we knew those tulips would make our mom smile. Besides, I reasoned, the Van-Something-Burgs wouldn’t even know their tulips were missing since it would be another month before they arrived for the summer.

That was probably the first time I was ever aware that people could cry and laugh at the same time. John and I each presented Mom with armfuls of the loveliest, fresh-ripped tulips you can imagine. And she kept saying, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” through her laughter and her tears. Of course the Van-Something-Burgs came out to the lake, (we always said the city folks “came out”), soon after Mother’s Day to get the cottage ready for summer—and probably to admire their tulips. Poor Mom. She never punished us, but she did tell us years later that it was one of the most wonderful horrible days of her life.

Your turn.

Now I’d like to read your stories about your mom, being a mom or step mom, or any mom you know, love, remember, or miss. Please try to keep your story under 500 words. I know you can’t condense a lifetime of love into one short piece, but please share one especially touching, funny, or sad incident with us. I'll be posting your stories, for everyone to read, from now until Mother's Day. Thanks.

Send your story to me at donna.hodgson@gmail.com. (Copy and paste this address).

I think of my mother often; and always when I see tulips.
Donna

Susan Boyle: It's Never Too Late

If you haven’t already seen it, check out this YouTube video of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent 2009. Embedding was disabled for this 12 million plus viewed video, so you’ll need to click on the colored, underlined text to see it. While you’re watching, check the faces and expressions of the judges and the audience and think about your own first reaction to the contestant.

I confess that I was as skeptical as the audience and judges. You know if 12 million people check out a YouTube video in a week, there’s something incredibly good or bad about it, one way or another. When Susan Boyle began to sing, tears came to my eyes. My next reaction was that perhaps it was a hoax. “How could someone with that voice not be discovered?” I asked my husband Jim. He suggested that maybe she had been living out her life in a little village and never had a chance to pursue a career.

It turns out Jim was right on the money. Susan, 47, had lived with and been caring for her mother in the village of Blackburn in Scotland. Her dream was to offer a tribute to her mother who passed away a year or so ago. You can watch a video interview of her on CBS’ Early Show. What a wake-up call!

We all know the axiom “never judge a book by its cover.” Susan Boyle also reminds us of that other wise old saying:

“It's never too late to be who you might have been.”
George Eliot
English novelist (1819 - 1880)

Donna

The LP 66ers

“For a few days, once a year, the atrophied souls of grown-ups are filled again with that spirit which inspires the wisdom of fools and children.” The Lake Park 66ers.

For their 60th birthdays, they each received their own personal scrapbook with photos and notes from each member of the group. At their last reunion, each was presented with a beautiful, professionally bound yearbook-style photo album chronicling their years together. They travel from around the country to be together once a year, and more often when weddings, anniversaries, and other of life’s milestones justify it. They call each other “my chosen family,” and they, along with my husband Jim, graduated in 1966 from Lake Park High School in Medinah, Illinois.

In August of 1997 two of Jim’s former classmates ran into each other at a Chicago area restaurant. It had been ten years since their last class reunion and they agreed that another reunion was necessary. They made some phone calls to get a small group together for a planning meeting. The group grew a little and they had so much fun together that they continued to meet long after the reunion.

A little less noise there, a little less noise! (Peter Pan)

In August of 1998, the last whole-class reunion, referred to as “The 11th Anniversary of Our 21st Reunion,” was celebrated. I don’t remember why I didn’t go with Jim, but I was probably camping with the Boy Scouts that weekend. On the night of the reunion, this small group of responsible, professional, mature adults managed to get themselves complained about and removed from several areas of their hotel—for being too noisy.

It was during that August weekend they discussed the idea of an annual get-together. The next year the 66ers held their own small reunion at a lodge in Wisconsin, where they once again got in trouble for too much noise. That’s when they decided what they needed to do was “rent a place as far away from others not fortunate enough to appreciate our energy and senses of humor, not to mention music, dancing, loud voices and laughter.” From then on they rented large vacation rental homes and bed-and-breakfast-type places around Lake Michigan for their gatherings.

We became us. I like us. (Can’t Buy Me Love, 1987)

As the next few years sped by, Jim attended the annual weekend reunions whenever he could, even if he only had a day to spend with the other 66ers. Because our son Robert was heavily involved in sports and Scouts, Jim and I were parenting in shifts through those years. If one of us was on the road, the other needed to be home with Robert, so I never went with Jim. He would come home and show me photos and slide show CD’s and shake with laughter while he tried to tell me something that someone had said or done that weekend. I was always glad he had so much fun, but I never got it since I wasn’t part of it.


The 66ers often had a theme or an organized event such as a murder mystery dinner game, a gift exchange, or a golf tournament planned for their annual reunions. It wasn’t always possible for everyone to make every gathering, and occasionally Jim would mention another classmate joining them for the first time. Sometimes a newcomer didn’t come back again because he or she just didn’t seem to appreciate the group wit.

It’s well-organized anarchy.

They appear to thrive on pure anarchy, but Pam is the chargé d’affaires. With everyone’s help, and flurries of emails, she solicits the wants, needs, and opinions of the approximately twenty 66ers, organizes the information, and keeps everyone in the loop. A couple of years ago, Jim and I were stuck in Chicago after a snow storm closed O’Hare. Our hotel was close to Pam’s home, and she set out on the snow-covered streets that night and met us for dinner. Even though I had only seen Pam once or twice at their tenth and twenty-first class reunions, I felt like I’d always known her. At the restaurant she said to me, “We have so much fun at the reunions, why don’t you come?” Her daughter Traci’s wedding was planned for the following summer, and that time I went along.

So much fun it hurts.

I’m neither exaggerating, nor bragging here, but I danced so much the night of the wedding reception that I was unable to move when I woke up the next morning. At a birthday party the next year I laughed so hard that my jaws ached the next day. After the fun at the wedding and birthday party, I had no doubt about attending the next annual gathering. We traveled to a bed-and-breakfast in Winchester, Indiana, where we ate, drank, danced, laughed and relaxed for three solid days.

Younger, happier, lighter in spirit.

At the 66ers’ reunions, you check your troubles at the door and forget them for a couple of days. They tease each other without mercy and no one is safe from razzing and ribbing. However, when one of them is hurting, the rest are right there for comfort and support. These ordinary people have the extraordinary gift of timeless and ageless friendship that makes you forget your aches and pains and imagine you really can dance all night again. As Pam puts it: “After a weekend together, we always leave feeling younger, happier, lighter in spirit.”

It isn’t a feeling you get about them. It’s the way you feel about yourself when you’re with them that is so good. I can’t wait for the next reunion.

Donna

Goodbye, Krista.

The last four days have been long and difficult, ending sadly. Our friend, Krista Magnusson, suffered a stroke over the weekend and has passed away. Our beautiful Krista was only fifty-eight years young, exuberant and full of life.

Our deepest sympathy to her husband, Bobby. Krista, you will be missed by all.
Your American Airlines Flight Attendant Family.

Donna