Paint, pie crust, and parentage

The pie-crust gene skipped me

I’m dreading it, again. Another paint job looms in our near future. We’re remodeling our bathroom, which is awesome, but now we have to repaint it. Unfortunately, after being a homeowner for almost 25 years, my painting skills are still dreadful. Oh, I’ve learned a few tricks (only get the bottom half of the brush wet, tape the edges first, and always use a dropcloth—no matter what). But I’m still messy. Very messy.

I think it’s genetic. My husband lovingly attributes my speedy way of doing things to my "Tanner zest.” No matter how hard I try to be neat when I paint, I still splash and splatter, drip and drop. Every paint job is an exercise in being patient with myself and forgiving my mistakes. 

I wish genes would work in my favor. Evidently, some of the good ones skipped a generation. At least they skipped over me. Making pie crusts, for example, is an art my mother perfected early in life. She could whip out a pie crust in nothing flat. In fact, because she was so speedy, making the filling for her signature lemon cream pies slightly annoyed her. Standing still at the stove was torture to her, so she usually roped one of us kids into stir-stir-stirring until the filling got thick. 

Mom pie-crust tricks were no secret. "Use very cold water," she'd say, "then add it slowly, stir with a fork. Most importantly, don’t handle the dough too much!" 

I’ve tried and tried to follow her instructions and replicate Mom’s flaky crusts. You would think all those years of my hanging around her kitchen would count for something! But even private tutoring from my expert baker friend using her failproof crust recipe hasn't helped me overcome my bad genes. 

Alas, my pie crusts are still tough. I can’t make them look deceptively delicious either because I’ve never been able to master that pinching-and-crimping thing around the crust’s edges that seasoned cooks seem to do with ease.

So, I’m resigned to eating store-bought pies. I mean, who needs delicious homemade pies anyway? And painting? Well, there’s always someone willing to put on a second coat, right? 

No excuse for ignorance

My children face virtually no roadblocks to education

Pop, my husband’s now-deceased grandfather, did not even finish second grade. Instead, at age nine, he was given his own team of horses and expected to plow the fields, literally becoming one of the family’s breadwinners before he had lived even one decade. In the end, Pop lived for almost eight decades, and during that time the world changed dramatically. 

Always thirsty for knowledge, he read everything he could get his hands on. But, a century ago, access to print materials was very expensive and extremely limited in Eastern Oklahoma, and iPods and online courses had not yet been imagined. Such was the fate of many hard-working Americans just a couple of generations ago. Fortunately for Pop, however, he came across a magazine advertisement for a “correspondence course” in radio technology. Enrolling in that class marked the official beginning of his adult education, providing him with the know-how and skills to become a much-sought-offer radio and television repairman. 

My own grandfather, also an intelligent, self-educated man, touted the virtue of education incessantly: “Get an education and be your own boss” was his oft-repeated paternal advice to his two sons. Both went on to become doctors of sorts. 

Today my children stand on the shoulders of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers who, through determination and sacrifice, scraped together education for themselves. To those men, the chance to learn was important enough to give up time, money, and convenience. 

With three children already enrolled in college (and the last two making plans to attend), I am relieved and pleased that all of them consider learning opportunities vital to a bright future. In contrast to their grandfathers, however, they face virtually no roadblocks to getting an education. In fact, they would be hard-pressed to not be learning something all the time.

We live in a time when information is everywhere, and we can usually get it when, where, and how we want it. Case in point: almost everyone in the U.S. owns a cell phone (90% of Americans) and has access to the Internet (100% of schools were connected by 2005). This phenomenon is due largely to Moore’s law, which states transistor density doubles every couple of years. Consequently, information and its delivery mechanisms are available exponentially—and at decreasing costs. It turns out Moore was right, and his calculation has proven itself over and over again—not just during the one decade he predicted it would but over almost five decades—and is expected to continue for yet another decade.

Without question, we are all swimming in a sea of knowledge and could easily feel overwhelmed by this data deluge. Fortunately, however, working in tandem with this information explosion are multiple outlets for collaborating. 

Think about Facebook, Twitter, and Digg; consider StumbleUpon and LinkedIn. Many still regard these social media platforms as extraneous and peripheral, but they are becoming increasingly mainstream and even essential to those trying to stay abreast of trends and working to make contributions to all disciplines. Young people understand this. Just ask a teenager what his first step is when doing a school project. I guarantee it won’t be “I go to the library.” Instead, he'll first connect with others, usually online. 

Today, rather than gathering and carrying knowledge alone, we can quickly find others who know what we need to know, giving new meaning to the phrase, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." 

Nowadays, we all stand on each others’ shoulders to learn. Meanwhile, we should be shouldering our own portion of the responsibility by being informed. We have no excuse for ignorance. 

Fitness buff

Jack LaLanne, "The Godfather of Fitness"

He was exactly twice my age, and I’m no spring chicken. Jack LaLanne was so old that all my early memories of him are in black and white. About the time I was born, he began his career as the nation’s fitness coach. So, I can safely say Jack LaLanne spent my whole lifetime promoting America’s health.

LaLanne died this week, leaving behind a legacy of jumpsuits and jumping jacks, often mocked by many-a couch potato. But LaLanne got the last laugh. Evidently, he enjoyed great health for most of his 96 years, something very few aging Americans can claim.

Dubbing himself “The Godfather of Fitness,” LaLanne was the unrivaled pioneer of the health and fitness industry. However, unlike thousands of modern fitness trainers who appeal to the narcissism in each of us by emphasizing individual strength and beauty, LaLanne appealed instead to patriotism. Literally tugging on the American flag, he insisted that our collective health as a nation was directly correlated to making America “the greatest nation on the face of the earth.”

When he warned us, “We are going to be losing our place as a first-class power if something isn’t done radically,” I don’t think he was talking about just our physical power. In fact, he considered our health to be our greatest economic asset, as he asserted in his slogan, “Your health account is your wealth account!”

Anyone who exercises knows that working out makes minds sharper, senses keener, endurance stronger, and general well-being better. Wanting these benefits, I try to work out five or six days a week. Because of my exercise pattern, one of my friends called me a “fitness buff.” Hardly a buff! 

At the gym, I see many people far more dedicated than I am. They arrive before I arrive and leave after I’ve left; they run farther; they lift more weights; and they do more sit-ups, pull-ups, and pushups. Unfortunately, however, even though our country's gym memberships are up, so is our nation’s obesity rate, growing from 13 percent when LaLanne began his career to 34 percent today.

Clearly, many Americans didn’t take Jack LaLanne seriously. Even decades ago, he observed we had “become soft” because we had “too much of everything in this great land of ours.” No matter how much we have, though, all it takes is getting sick or injured for most of us to realize the truth of the old saying, “Without your health, you have nothing.” 

So, if I can live with the same verve and health as the real fitness buff Jack LaLanne, then, as he said, “Long live living long!” 

My Impression Journal

Writing helps us remember

Last year for about a month and a half I very faithfully kept an “Impression Journal.” Now I wish I had been more diligent about continuing that habit because, as I scan the impressions I received, I see patterns and rediscover gems I’d forgotten. Here are some of the (less personal) ideas that came to me during that time:

"Lather. Rinse. Repeat."

By nature, work can be repetitive

“Lather. Rinse. Repeat.” Those circuitous directions have been printed on millions of shampoo bottles for decades, leaving us wondering when the repeating was supposed to end. Work—especially the work of cleaning—seems to be, by nature, a very repetitive endeavor.

Repetitive work can lead to greater efficiency. Hoping to prevent boredom, I used to create job charts for my kids that would rotate them through a myriad of household jobs in a week’s time. Then another mother told me she gave her children the same job for an entire month! As it turns out, the repetition turned her kids into experts. They became both proficient and efficient at completing one specific task quickly and well.

Hands

Babies come wired to connect through their hands

As a child, I would lay my head in my mother’s lap during church and play with the veins protruding from her hard-working hands. I was fascinated by the way those veins, no matter how many times I would press them down, would spring back up to form bumpy, crisscrossing lines. Even 40 years ago, Mom’s hands were a bit gnarled and weather-worn from doing more than her fair share of manual labor. In fact, they were already beginning to show some age spots. But hands such as hers were underrated and undervalued.

Holding on and letting go

"You cannot always be torn in two." Frodo Baggins

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m thinking again about what my goals should be and what my life will be like in 2011. Change is imminent for many people close to me whose life changes will affect mine. 

In three days, my two college boys will leave for school; in the same week my dear friend of over 20 years will move to Southern California; six weeks later my daughter will leave for her 18-month mission in New Zealand. Other changes, though not quite as clearly marked, have been ongoing and will also affect next year. My mother-in-law, once the lively hub of our extended Perry family, has had a series of strokes and is now content to be waited on almost entirely. Her husband, once the quiet, independent patriarch who now shoulders all the caregiving, accepts with alacrity any offer of help.

"Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful"

We "come and adore" in many ways

Every Christmas Eve my siblings and I used to put on a live nativity for our parents, an audience of two. We spent most of our practice time running around the house, dredging up old costumes or articles of clothing that could pass as costumes. Because of all the last-minute preparations, we rarely had time to actually rehearse the play. So, although we always used the same Luke 2 narrative, ad-libbing and other elements of surprise livened up the show from year to year. 

Making big cities feel small-town

Fremont, California is the fourth largest city in the Bay Area

I’ve lived in this city for more than half my life, and yet it still doesn’t feel quite like home. Don’t get me wrong: Fremont is a great place—it has been the hometown of my adult years where I have raised all five of my children—but it’s a big place with lots of people.

Fremont, incorporated in 1956, spreads over almost 77 square miles and is home to almost 220,000 people, giving it the dubious distinction of being the largest suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

In striking contrast, South Pasadena, my hometown in Southern California, is almost 125 years old. It covers less than three and a half square miles and, since I left home 30 years ago, has only grown by a few thousand residents. My hometown houses only about one-tenth the number of people who live in Fremont. And, although it sits just 10 miles from the heart of Los Angeles, this sleepy little bedroom community feels worlds apart from the mega-metropolis.

In Fremont, loyalties are divided among five high schools, whereas in South Pasadena, a town small enough to have just one high school, everyone roots for the same football team and most know the name of the quarterback. Consequently, small hometowns like mine have the good fortune of growing two layers of loyalty—one for the school and one for the town itself—and they are often expressed as one and the same.

Besides a strong tradition of school pride, South Pasadena to this day boasts only one library, one fire station, one police station, one post office, and one theater. When you live in a town that size, paths cross often. Folks shake the mayor’s hand at a Boy Scout Eagle Court of Honor, and they share their opinions with school board members at pancake-breakfast fundraisers.

Instead of chain stores, the streets of my hometown were lined with stores carrying the names of real people, like Tom’s Market and Balk’s Hardware. 

Street names were important, too. Tell someone from South Pasadena that you lived on Milan Avenue or Huntington Drive or Buena Vista Street, and they could probably tell you which of the elementary schools you lived by or may have attended, and they might even be able to name a few of your neighbors. In fact, just a few weeks ago I met a colleague in Colorado who does most of her work in Hawaii and Nevada—all places far flung from Southern California. So, imagine my surprise when told me she was from South Pasadena. “Where,” I asked? “Monterey Hills” (neighborhood) “just off Via Del Rey” (street). These pinpoint markers helped me quickly make sense of where she came from and launched us immediately into a discussion of landmarks and people common to both of us. Though we both now live many miles away from South Pasadena, for a few moments our small town bonded us.

So, what’s a small-town girl like me to do living in a big city? Although Fremont will never shrink to the size of South Pasadena, I have found a few things that can help big cities feel more small-town: make friends with your postman, talk to the neighbors, and go to church.

When our youngest son Mark was five years old, he made a habit of waiting for the mail truck to arrive, but it wasn’t the mail he was after; it was the rubber bands. You see, he had made friends with Mario, our mailman whom he counted on to give him a big wad of rubber bands every day. That simple connection was the beginning of our family’s friendship with a fine man. Over several months through brief conversations we learned Mario was an immigrant from an Eastern European country, now seeking the American dream, who lit up whenever he talked about his own three children. He thanked us politely when we gave him drinks of cold water in the summertime and smiled shyly when he discovered little boxes of chocolate and other small presents we left in the mailbox during the holidays. One day, we were saddened to hear about his wife leaving him, and soon after he told us he was being switched to a different mail route. Unfortunately, we lost track of Mario; however, just this week Mark told me he had been “thinking about Mario” who once made his little world a more interesting, fun place.

Striking up neighborhood conversations makes a big city feel a little friendlier, too. My husband Ken has a knack for this. Even when he is busy rushing from work to home and out again to meetings, he takes time to greet our neighbors. He makes jokes or inquires about a child, thereby building bridges with those who live nearby. He looks for ways to serve our neighbors, too. For instance, years ago on a stormy night, the power went out in our court. Fortunately, beforehand Ken had spent a few minutes welcoming into the neighborhood a young couple who had recently moved here from Oregon. So, in the emergency, he was able to supply them with batteries, flashlights, our phone number, and a little reassurance. We’ve been good friends ever since.

Formalizing these neighborhood connections is not a bad idea either. About ten years ago, our family decided to start participating in National Night Out, a program originally designed to fight crime by helping neighbors get to know each other. The first year we intended the event to be a simple potluck barbecue in the court, but our neighbors got excited and decided to make it a real party, complete with a mariachi band. Kids climbed in and out of the visiting fire truck and police cars while parents collected names and phone numbers to make a neighborhood map. What I remember most about that first year, though, was having one neighbor thank me for organizing the event. He followed up by quoting someone as saying, “We can send people to the moon, but we have a hard time walking across the street to talk to a neighbor.”

Finally, one of the most effective ways to make any big city feel smaller is by going to church. In our church, the size of congregations tends to hover right around 500 people. Try anything smaller, and staffing the church with a lay ministry becomes tough. Try anything bigger, and you run the risk of marginalizing some of the members because they won't all be needed. Interestingly, the company Gore, famous for its durable outer gear and one of only a few to consistently appear on the list of "100 Best Companies to Work For," seems to also understand 500 is an organizational tipping point. It has a long-held policy of splitting teams when they become bigger than 500 people. Although we’ve moved within the city boundaries a few times, during our 24 years in Fremont, we’ve managed to keep many familiar faces within our circle of church friends. Naturally, some have come and gone, but working and worshiping alongside some of the same people week after week and year after year has given our family a sense of stability and consistency, much like what I felt in my hometown congregation.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first printing of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my all-time favorite books. 

Atticus, the novel’s moral hero and father to Jem and Scout, does his best to explain racial prejudice and other complicated issues to his children. However, it is largely the Maycomb County stereotypes, such as Miss Stephanie (the gossip), Miss Maudie Atkinson (the wise but sharp-tongued widow), Boo Radley (the misunderstood recluse), and even Bob Ewell (the white-trash drunk) who actually help Jem and Scout begin to make sense of an adult world interlaced with both injustice and undeniable goodness. Similarly, such characters in small church congregations can help children navigate their way to adulthood. Fault-ridden though they may be, these kinds of people who know us well and worship with us weekly can offer advice, correction, and reminders of family reputations, and at times their mistakes can be even more powerfully instructive than Sunday School lessons.

“It’s like Mayberry,” my friend said of South Pasadena, still claiming his residency there. Indeed, the city’s website concurs, bragging that “Few cities in California are better recognized for the quality of its small-town atmosphere and rich legacy of intact late 19th and early 20th century neighborhoods and residences.” Even though I realize Fremont will never be South Pasadena, I’ll keep working to make it feel like home. 

It's all downhill

Relationships forged in difficulties outlast the challenges

A couple of nights ago I needed to get out for a walk, but it was kind of late and it was darker than usual because of the Daylight Savings Time change. My husband was relieved when my teenage son Mark was willing to tag along and keep me safe.

We have a regular little route, Mark and I, where we take our walks. He likes to ride his skateboard while I try to keep up, clipping along at my usual walking pace. Most of our path is relatively flat with the exception of the last half mile or so which has a gentle downward slope all the way back to our house. So, at the end of our walk, encouraging him to go on ahead of me, I called out, “It’s all downhill from here, Buddy. Enjoy!” Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if, from here on out, his life would be a downhill ride he could just enjoy? But, alas, going downhill is a temporary thrill, a hiatus from all the uphill climbing required for us to grow.