Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

On Juggling

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jugglingIrene, my 15 year old, has decided to become a master juggler. (I blame Baroness Susan Greenfield who told her class that juggling makes you clever).

And now the air is full of the swish-swish-swish of juggling balls.

And as for me, words and ideas which might have been sublime (one can always dream!) slip away with that swish-swish-swish!

“Irene, stop juggling within earshot, or I’ll confiscate those balls.”She looks at me pityingly.

“I am 15, mum. You can’t confiscate things anymore.”

Can’t I? Apparently not.

I return to juggling words.

Juggle. Juggle. Juggle. Coloured balls, words, ideas.

Hopefully something will emerge from all this juggling–cleverness, a blog post, a book…

* * *

 And here’s a muscular poem for your Sunday from a master word-juggler

 

Digging

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

 

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

 

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

 

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

 

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

 

Thoughts on my Twenty-Fifth Wedding Anniversary  

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wedding 1Scan0020_cropped_luckySo Roy and I have been married for 25 years.

It’s customary to dispense advice on such occasions, but I have little to give.

The things that have worked for us have evolved slowly. And conversely, some advice from the marriage books—“Always go to the bed at the same time,” have wasted time.

* * *

 Barbara Brown Taylor made famous the question, “What is saving your life right now?”

Well, here are some things that are saving our marriage.

1 Getting a weekly cleaner. Oh yes!

2 The weekly date. Or perhaps a walk together several times a week.

3 Deciding that throwing things is a very expensive way of resolving an argument. Tweet: Deciding that throwing things is a very expensive way of resolving an argument. http://ctt.ec/V9eeY+ From @AnitaMathias1

4 Forgiveness. A mental act of balancing. I know Roy would do most things for me, within reason, and often without reason, and when I am very angry, I place that against my reason for rage!!

I remember that I have committed to love him, and that my discipleship of Christ isn’t worth much, if I can’t love the person who loves me most.

5 Travel. Ah, travel! Travel saves our marriage (a FACT hotly disputed by my other half!)

It gives us time to be together, to see new art and architecture, to experience history, to revel in nature, to eat new foods, and laugh at (and with) new people.

It’s time out that we’d be unlikely to take at home, given our busy-bee, workaholic driven natures.

Travel is a major source of happiness, as is our garden.

6 Learning that not every criticism needs to be voiced. I now quietly think, “My, isn’t he being annoying!!” For perhaps the first twenty years, I’d declare, “Roy, you are being very annoying!” Now I roll my eyes, and return to work.

Okay, I guess most people learnt this in kindergarten, but in many ways, I am a late developer!

In fact, much of this probably sounds so blindingly obvious to any mature adult that if you stop reading right now, I’ll forgive you!

7 Me, I increasingly do life by prayer, but for years I omitted to pray faithfully for Roy, and I often still forget. Mea Culpa, and I repent.

8 When our partner felt far too infuriating for any rational adult to endure, we got help, separately, and together, from some superb Christians. We are specially grateful to our dear friend Paul Miller, author of the excellent A Praying Life for discipling us over five years.

* * *

When Ruth, spunky wife of Billy Graham, was asked if she had ever contemplated divorce, she famously said, ‘Divorce? No! Murder? Yes.’

Divorce wasn’t an option for us, either. Ah, we’ve sat in exhaustion, sighed, and said brightly, “Let’s–get–divorced!!” and grinned happily and, in that instant, it seemed as if with that act all our problems would waft away, especially what seemed like our biggest problem: each other.

But then Roy remembered that I probably would get lost on the way to the grocery store or burn my dinner, and I thought he would let the house get SO messy and lose everything in it, while he played chess all day, and he thought I would be crushed by life’s practicalities, and I thought he would get too sad without me and live on oatmeal.

And so we checked the name of our marriage certificates, discovered that apparently we were married to the right person, and so we continued.

And our marriage has got better year after year.

And so it should, so it should, for Christians, who if they are half-way, quarter-way decent at following Christ should be growing each year in mercy, pity, peace and love.

***

At our wedding, the celebrant outlined all we had going for us. We were highly educated, with Oxbridge undergraduate degrees and US advanced degrees, intelligent enough, young, healthy, with at least one profession between us.

But we had liabilities too: intensity; type-A personalities; drivenness; hot, hot tempers… In many ways, we were too like each other.

We’ve had adventures. Married in Binghamton, NY; a year in Cornell, Ithaca, New York for a post-doc for Roy; another year at Stanford, Palo Alto, California another post-doc; and then two years in Minneapolis, Minnesota yet another post-doc; then 12 years at The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia where Roy became a professor of mathematics, and then Roy won a prestigious mathematical prize and the world opened up, and there were job offers, and he was a visiting professor at the University of Manchester, and then at Oxford, and then got a chair at the University of Birmingham.

And I wrote, moving from poetry to prose, and then improbably started a business which within 3 years grew too big and too complex for me to run alone.

“20 years is far too long to be a mathematician.” I said, and Roy frowned.

Nah, I never saw the point of maths, just as he never saw the point of poetry…

And Roy quit maths to run the company I founded, morphing from a mathematician to an entrepreneur—something I can definitely see the point of!!–and I morphed from a poet to a memoirist and a blogger, writing about us on the world wide web, no doubt much to Roy’s embarrassment.

Our hair was black; now, there are shades of grey.

We were barely Christian; now we are thoroughly Christian. Yeah, we’ve come a long way, baby!

We’ve had two daughters, Zoe and Irene, happy and clever.

zoe_church_luckyIrene_french_prize

We’ve owned three homes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Williamburg, Virginia, and Oxford, England (not at the same time).

We’ve had five dogs in the course of our marriage, all from rescues, except our current adorable, but not yet fully-trained Merry the Labradoodle.

anita_merry

We’ve travelled in so many countries. Too many to count, and we can’t, since we don’t know where our old passports are. (We’ve each changed citizenship three times, India-US-UK for me, and NZ-US-UK for Roy.) But let me try: Israel, Japan, Mexico, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Malta, Luxembourg, oh most European countries…

Too much travel. Probably!

* * *

Marriage is a place of belonging and acceptance. It can also be a purifying fire, a place of rapid growing up, of growth in grace, in mercy, in forgiveness and wisdom

And what comes out of the purifying fire?

Eventually gold refined until impurities vanish.

The gold of a long marriage.

* * *

Sometimes at the end of a marathon, while the completers are savouring their iced lemonade and smuggery, and the cheers have almost died down, you see a couple emerging from the mist, arms draped around each other, staggering towards the finish line.

There they are, they have done it, they have limped their marathon, they have hobbled, but they have completed it.

And here they are, ridiculously grinning, so pleased with themselves, quite oblivious of the fact that others have long finished and are now napping at home.

And that too is success of the kind. The success of persisting.

Ah, see them now, the big smile on their faces. Against the odds they’ve finished that race, they’ve kept the faith, they are ready for the next marathon.

So Happy Twenty-fifth Anniversary, Roy. Happy Twenty-fifty Anniversary Me. Happy Twenty-fifty anniversary, Us.

roy_anita_selfie_lucky

* * *

 Tweetables

What’s saving your marriage right now? Thoughts on my 25th wedding anniversary from @anitamathias1 Tweet: What’s saving your marriage right now. Thoughts on a 25th wedding anniversary. from @anitamathias1 http://ctt.ec/bcsTa+

Lessons learned from 25 years of marriage from @anitamathias1 Tweet: Lessons learned from 25 years of marriage from @anitamathias1 http://ctt.ec/XUgo2+

The Gift of Limits. The Gift of Learning to Say No

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Here’s a striking story from The Emotionally Healthy Church by Pete Scazzero.

Rabbi Edwin Friedman tells the story of a man who had given much thought to what he wanted from life. After trying many things, succeeding at some and failing at others, he finally decided what he wanted.

One day the opportunity came for him to experience exactly the way of living that he had dreamed about. But the opportunity would be available only for a short time. It would not wait, and it would not come again.

Eager to take advantage of this open pathway, the man started on his journey. With each step, he moved faster and faster. Each time he thought about his goal, his heart beat quicker; and with each vision of what lay ahead, he found renewed vigour.

As he hurried along, he came to a bridge that crossed through the middle of a town. The bridge spanned high above a dangerous river.

After starting across the bridge, he noticed someone coming the opposite direction. The stranger seemed to be coming toward him to greet him. As the stranger grew closer, the man could discern that they didn’t know each other, but yet they looked amazingly similar. They were even dressed alike. The only difference was that the stranger had a rope wrapped many times around his waist. If stretched out, the rope would reach a length of perhaps thirty feet.

The stranger began to unwrap the rope as he walked. Just as the two men were about to meet, the stranger said, “Pardon me, would you be so kind as to hold the end of the rope for me?”
The man agreed without a thought, reached out, and took it.

“Thank you,” said the stranger. He then added, “Two hands now, and remember, hold tight.” At that point, the stranger jumped off the bridge.

The man on the bridge abruptly felt a strong pull from the now extended rope. He automatically held tight and was almost dragged over the side of the bridge.

“What are you trying to do?” he shouted to the stranger below.

“Just hold tight,” said the stranger.

This is ridiculous, the man thought. He began trying to haul the other man in. Yet it was just beyond his strength to bring the other back to safety.

Again he yelled over the edge, “Why did you do this?”

“Remember,” said the other, “If you let go, I will be lost.”

“But I cannot pull you up,” the man cried.

“I am your responsibility,” said the other.

“I did not ask for it,” the man said.

“If you let go, I am lost,” repeated the stranger.

The man began to look around for help. No one was within sight.

He began to think about his predicament. Here he was eagerly pursuing a unique opportunity, and now he was being side-tracked for who knows how long.

Maybe I can tie the rope somewhere, he thought. He examined the bridge carefully, but there was no way to get rid of his new- found burden.

So he again yelled over the edge, “What do you want?”

“Just your help,” came the answer.

“How can I help? I cannot pull you in, and there is no place to tie the rope while I find someone else who could help you.”

“Just keep hanging on,” replied the dangling man. “That will be enough.”

Fearing that his arms could not hold out much longer, he tied the rope around his waist.
“Why did you do this?” he asked again. “Don’t you see what you have done? What possible purpose could you have in mind?”

“Just remember,” said the other, “my life is in your hands.”

Now the man was perplexed. He reasoned within himself, “If I let go, all my life I will know that I let this other man die. If I stay, I risk losing my momentum toward my own long-sought-after salvation. Either way this will haunt me forever.”

As time went by, still no one came. The man became keenly aware that it was almost too late to resume his journey. If he didn’t leave immediately, he wouldn’t arrive in time.

Finally, he devised a plan. “Listen,” he explained to the man hanging below, “I think I know how to save you.” He mapped out the idea. The stranger could climb back up by wrapping the rope around him. Loop by loop, the rope would become shorter.

But the dangling man had no interest in the idea.

“I don’t think I can hang on much longer,” warned the man on the bridge.

“You must try,” appealed the stranger. “If you fail, I die.”

Suddenly a new idea struck the man on the bridge. It was different and even alien to his normal way of thinking. “I want you to listen carefully,” he said, “because I mean what I am about to say.”

The dangling man indicated that he was listening.

“I will not accept the position of choice for your life, only for my own; I hereby give back the position of choice for your own life to you.”

“What do you mean?” the other asked, afraid.

“I mean, simply, it’s up to you. You decide which way this ends. I will become the counterweight. You do the pulling and bring yourself up. I will even tug some from here.”
He unwound the rope from around his waist and braced himself to be a counterweight. He was ready to help as soon as the dangling man began to act.

“You cannot mean what you say,” the other shrieked. “You would not be so selfish. I am your responsibility. What could be so important that you would let someone die? Do not do this to me.”

After a long pause, the man on the bridge uttered slowly, “I accept your choice.” In voicing those words, he freed his hands and continued his journey over the bridge.

* * *

Ironically, the closer you come to crossing the bridge to your dreams, the more people will appear jumping off the bridge, insisting that you and only you can save them from drowning.

And it is a lie.

While as Christians we are called to love our spouse, our children, and a few others, we only have two hands and finite time and strength, and so we need to be careful about which of the many ropes tossed to us we choose to hold. Which of the many calls on our time and compassion we answer. How many coffees we serve, cakes we make, meals we deliver.

* * *

Michael Hyatt writes brilliantly about this in a post called Success and Accessibility.

He writes, “The more successful you become, the more other people will demand of your time. As a result, if you are going to maintain margin for your most important priorities, you will have to make some difficult decisions about your accessibility.

He quotes Andy Stanley, who writes,

“The harsh reality is that the more successful we are, the less accessible we become. So then we are faced with the dilemma of who gets my time and who doesn’t, when do they get it, and and how much of it do they get.”

 Hyatt continues, “Your time is a zero sum game. When you say yes to one thing, you are simultaneously saying no to something else. The more successful you get, the more difficult this becomes. You find yourself saying no to good things—worthy things—in order to say yes to your most important priorities.

 After all, from the perspective of the one asking, it is not a big request. But to agree to their requests would require a major investment of my time. Add all the requests together, and I am soon eating into the time allotted for my own projects, friends, family, and health.

Hyatt suggests

1. Acknowledge your resources are finite. This is a fact. You have 168 hours per week. No more, no less. Every time you commit to something, you are depleting your available time. Your other resources are also limited, including your attention, money, and energy.

If you ignore this, it will eventually catch up with you. You will pay a high price when that happens—perhaps an emotional breakdown, a divorce, wayward kids, a business failure, or a health crisis.

2.   Determine who needs access and who doesn’t. Not everyone needs full access to you. They may think they do, but they don’t. Therefore, you must prioritise your contacts and relationships.

Remember: once you let people in, it is hard to ask them to leave without creating misunderstanding or hurt feelings. Be intentional.”

* * *

“Hold the rope or I will drown.” The call comes to us from in many ways, and from many people.

Questions to ask: Will this person truly drown if I don’t hold the rope, or will they learn to swim? Will they drag me down, or will I pull them up? Is this person willing to change if I hold the rope, or do they want an audience for moaning and lamentation? Am I the only person who can hold the rope? Does God want me to hold the rope for this demanding person, or to cross the bridge to the destiny to which He has called me?

If you feel huge anger and resentment at this rope you’ve been tossed, if God has not called you to hold this rope as your unique call in life, Fail Quickly. Let go!

P.S. They will probably learn to swim, or find the next passer-by to fling their rope to.

 

On Tiger-Mothers, and Good-Enough Christian Mothers

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So I read through Amy Chua’s  article, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger-Mother, and feel I have failed as a mum. (This, of course, is the uneasy reaction the sassy book was intended to evoke.)

“Zoe and Irene,” I say dramatically. “I have failed as a tiger-mother.”
Zoe snorts. “You never were a tiger-mother, Mum. Especially now. You spend too much time with imaginary friends on your blog.”
“Zoe, cyber-friends. NOT imaginary friends.”
She, “Whatever.”
Irene nods absently. She is playing a game on her iPod. Thus highlighting my failure as a tiger mother!!  I have a strict rule: Only educational games, but, apparently, the word educational has multiple meanings. Who would have thought?
* * *
Amy Chua, however, is not a failure as a tiger mother. Her article at The Wall Street Journal subtly and modestly titled, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” commences as it continues,

“Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do: 
 • attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.”
                                                                       * * *
Oh dear!
Readers are either impressed or disgusted.
My list would be closer to a Western parents’ than to Chua’s. My kids have certainly done playdates, school plays and sleepovers. They choose their own activities, with input from us, and we don’t require that they be better than other people, which is a wholly unfair requirement, in my opinion.
Irene, my younger one, is chipping away at the strict rules we put in place. We never had TV at home for the first 17 years of Zoe’s life, but watched lots of carefully chosen documentary DVDs, and movies. But since I bought an Ipad last autumn, Irene has started watching what I consider frivolous TV and disapprove of. It’s just hard for me to be constantly vigilant and omnipresent!!
Computer games were banned for Zoe, and reluctantly permitted for Irene, in limited quantities at her persistent insistence. However, her joy in these games equals our joy in our work, and when we retreat into our zones of private joy, she retreats into hers, and plays them more than I approve of.
                                                     * * *
I have often felt that there is a saving grace to ambition. I never wanted to waste my life, and so have never taken drugs, never been really drunk, etc. Irene likes to achieve academically, and this year got an A1:5, the highest possible mark in every subject, and the school’s award for achievement, given to those with the highest marks. And this desire to do well at school has helped her cut back on computer games.
Chua says it is selfish, careless parenting to allow your children to waste time on computer games and Facebook. I agree with her on that. We banned Facebook for Irene until she was 13, and then, blessed decision, she decided she didn’t want it. I think it’s a brilliant decision as the Facebooks of 13 year olds cause more unhappiness than joy, I’ve decided from checking up on my older daughter’s FB in her mid-teens.
                                                  * * *
Chua’s parenting is incredibly unbalanced, as she knows, no doubt. The goal is success. To work very hard as a child to get a pleasant job as an adult later.
This is a common attitude in Asia, and among Africans, and other immigrants to the West.
There is something to it. The Polgar sisters were pulled out from school and made to practice chess for 8 hours a day, 50 hours a week. All of them became grandmasters, I believe. They say “We worked hard as children and now have more leisure and opportunities and fun as adults. Our friends did not work as children, and now work hard as adults.”
Hard work as a child can give you a pleasant, gratifying job with less grind and drudgery and more interesting opportunities as an adult.
                                             * * *
What annoys readers, and the flaw in Chau’s parenting, is its obvious egocentrism. When she won a second prize at a school assembly, her father was furious. “Never ever disgrace me like that again,” he said.
Sorry, disgrace whom? Chua’s parents came to America as poor immigrants; they attempted to achieve their dreams through their children. She says, “Knowing the sacrifices they made for us makes me want to uphold the family name, to make my parents proud.” Was it impossible for Chua’s parents to do something themselves of which they could be proud? Why burden her with having to bring them honour or disgrace?
Chua has been condemned to a treadmill in which she is a disgrace unless she does something spectacular so her parents can be proud. She condemns her children to the same treadmill–20 practice tests every night if they ever get the second highest grade, three hours of violin practice every evening. She condemns them to a life of having to be the best, compensating for any deficiencies in intelligence by hard work, and more hard work.
And what if they encounter another tiger cub, who is naturally smarter, but works equally hard? Sounds like a recipe for a nervous breakdown to me.
The flaw in her plan is that her children, who are not allowed playdates, sleepovers, gym, drama, TV or computer games, will naturally do better than children with equal intelligence who lead a more balanced life. They will therefore get into a better university and get more prestigious jobs than they would have—alongside with smarter, more naturally gifted children, who have led a balanced life. And then, they’ll have to jog very hard on the relentless treadmill of overwork to keep pace.
It seems a pretty pointless life, dominated by fear, pride and competitiveness.
                                                  * * *
All this comes close to the bone with me, as with most mothers who read it.
Roy, my husband, was unusually gifted at math and chess. He was the national high school chess champion in New Zealand where he grew up. Both our daughters are good at both these, as well as being very verbal.
We taught Zoe chess somewhat late, at 8, after she was housebound after breaking her leg in a freak accident. (I believed board games are a waste of time compared to reading, but she was housebound and sad, so we taught her chess.)
Irene at 3 watched us play, played against herself, first, then with us, and emerged as a fairly formidable player by 5. At 6, coaches noticed her talent. She has played at a city, county and national level, and has won prizes in all these, about two shelves of prizes, 50-60 of them. For several years, she was among the top two girl players of her age in the UK, and among the top handful of all players her age.
She loved chess when it was fun, just loved it and lived it. When, however, she reached the stage at which it was estimated to take 1-3 hours a day of practice to be competitive at a national level, and when, 6 or 7 days a week, she was spending her evenings at chess clubs or tournaments, and was away most weekends at tournaments around the country, she began to lose interest. She did not want to practice as much as she needed to.
Chess is brutal. The games were three hours. A momentary flicker of concentration in the end game, and you could lose a game you had so carefully and brilliantly played.
Your opponent can take up to 15 minutes to think–or more–and this is torture for a quick-thinking, mercurial child.
And she loves reading. She has a stable of books she knows almost by heart–the entire Little Women series, the entire Anne of Green Gable series, Harry Potter, Alice, some George Macdonald, Narnia. She has read and re-read them, and listened to them again and again on her iPod. Reading was being compromised for chess. I was sad about that.
We fought epic battles over whether she should continue chess or give it up. I thought she was instinctively preternaturally good at it, judging by her success with very little practice. I thought chess was part of the story God was writing in her life. I did not think an extraordinary talent should be so lightly given up.
We shouted, screamed, cried, both of us. And eventually she won. Because her will was stronger than mine. Because she cried at the thought of day-long tournaments, and said the sight of a chess-board made her feels stressed.
And so with much sadness on my part, and no doubt, some sadness on Irene’s part, we surrendered something which had been part of her identity, life, friendships, self-image for 6 years. And only because that was her desire, I hasten to add, assuaging the last of my tiger-mother guilt.
                                                            * * *
 So, what’s my conclusion? Chua is partly wrong.
Tiger mothering is not a secure foundation to build your life on. It is psychologically dangerous to live your life through your children, forcing achievement for bragging rights, seeking brilliance from your children so as to impress your peers, and be the envy of mouse-mothers. It makes it harder to let your children go, and to recover your own life and interests once they leave.
The best gift we can give our children is not to be the best at whatever they do. They may meet a more naturally gifted Siberian tiger, who also puts in the necessary hours, and so let competitiveness and jealousy poison their existence.
I honestly believe the best thing we can do for our children as Christian parents is to give them a solid, durable faith foundation beneath their feet, and to introduce them to a personal friendship with God.
Apart from that, the best thing we can do is to help them discover their “shape,” and their sweet spot—the things they are naturally interested in and good at.  And this will help them find life-work they love, enjoy and are good at.
And helping them find such work is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. For as the wise King Solomon said, “There is nothing better for a person than to enjoy the work at which he toils at under the son.” (Ecc 3:22).

 

Where 90% of marital problems begin (according to my pastor)

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About a decade ago, Roy and I presented ourselves for marital counselling with the very busy senior pastor of the mega-church we attended in Williamsburg, Virginia.

He had a three session rule. He’d solved your problem in three sessions, if he could, and then decide whether to embark on extended counseling with you, or refer you elsewhere.
And so, we described the presenting issues. Well, very soon dishes, and laundry and shopping and cooking and childcare and cleaning and who did them entered our conversation.
And he asked “How is your sex life?”
Sex?
 
Give me a break. We had come because we each secretly hoped that the other would agree to do more of the dishes and laundry and shopping and cooking and cleaning and childcare. What did sex have to do with it?
And then said, “90 percent of problems in marriage begin in the bedroom with an unsatisfactory sex life.
But, alas, sex is only ten percent of the solution, since you can’t spend your lives in bed.”
We stared hard, again.
He was a very proper Southern gentleman. And he wasn’t kidding.
Well, we had three sessions.
* * *
And ten years later, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that he was right.

Only A Like Button

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I was musing aloud to Roy, clarifying my thoughts through the process of talking as many extroverts do, when, suddenly, he contradicted me. What? Contradicted the truest truth. “Don’t contradict me before hearing me out, Roy,” I said crossly.
“Don’t you wish I were your Facebook with only a Like Button?” he rejoined.

 

Irene and Anne of Green Gables

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Irene and I were swimming together at David Lloyd’s, her chattering animatedly as usual. Finally, I said, facetiously, “Irene, let’s be quiet for a bit. Let me meditate on my sorrows.” “Oh, don’t,” she said, “You’ll become morbid!” What? “Where did you learn that from, Irene?” “Anne of Green Gables.” She has listened to all 8 Anne books & Anne is her general source of wisdom and knowledge. What competition!!