There are three teenagers in my family now, and as the month of June swiftly approaches, the topic of summer jobs has come up several times. Me to college son: “Aren’t you going to look for a summer job?” (He cites summer classes and travel plans as an obstacle.) Or daughter at the dinner table, “I’ve gotta find a job this summer. I need money.” (She needs to fund her weakness for sushi.)
While discussing job options, I shared that the teens’ father bussed tables during high school summers, which prompted my youngest to ask, “What the heck is bussing tables?” It was a curious question, how the “bus boy” got his name, and the Word Nerd had to research.
“Bus boy” was cited in print as early as 1902, and the term “bussing tables” is seen in print from 1945. In those days, the waiter’s assistant was almost always a boy or man, but now women also perform this work, so the term “busser” is used more often.
Did you know where the term bussing came from? Do you have any other curious words about summer jobs to share? Cheers to summer, and hopefully, summer employment!
I’ve always said the month of May is crazier than Christmas. End of school year activities bombard my calendar, and I often feel like I’m treading water with bricks tied to my ankles. However, this May, the schedule is just as bad, but my attitude is better. I recently had an epiphany after receiving the same message three different ways in one morning.
It came first via my morning devotional from the book I’ve Been Thinking… Reflections, Prayers, and Meditations for a Meaningful Life by Maria Shriver. It’s a collection of devotions on everything from grief to fortitude. In the segment, “When life throws you a curveball”, Shriver writes, “’Going internal’ – pausing, reflecting, meditating—allows us to bring sanity into our daily lives. It makes us better people, better professionals, and better leaders. It’s better for our brains and our bodies. It’s better for our self-respect. It’s better for the creative spirit that lives inside all of us.”
I took a deep breath and held those words close to my soul. Shriver’s recommendation to “go internal” was just what I needed before I left the quiet of my bedroom to start the day’s, and the month’s, many, many tasks.
Then later, with my sons, I read from Mother Teresa’s book Everything Starts from Prayer: Mother Teresa’s Meditations on Spiritual Life for People of all Faiths. The passage said, “Man needs silence. To be alone or together looking for God in silence. There it is that we accumulate the inward power which we distribute in action, put in the smallest duty and spend in the severest hardships that befall us. Silence came before creation, and the heavens were spread without a word.”
I’ve heard words like this before, but this time, I didn’t just hear them. I embraced them, because I needed them.
Interior silence is very difficult but we must make the effort. In silence we will find new energy and true unity.
Mother Teresa, Everything Starts from Prayer
Finally, late that morning, the message hit me a third time. I was lying on a massage table, and the therapist found a tight, angry muscle that ran along my spine from my shoulder blade to my hip. “My goodness,” she said. “What did you do?”
“Life,” I replied. I’ve been doing life. I’ve got four kids, one husband, and an overflowing mind. I exercise, eat my veggies, but I rarely pause. Silence is hard for me; stillness even harder. But Maria Shriver, Mother Teresa, and my massage therapist were all telling me the same thing: slow down. And finally, I’m wise enough to listen. I need to balance “doing” with “pausing” because, quite frankly, the alternative doesn’t work.
In the past, during frantic times, when I’ve chosen all chaos and no silence, I’ve ended up crashing physically and mentally. I’ve gotten so overwhelmed with doing that I’ve lashed out at the very people I’m doing all the stuff for.
Make time to pause and embrace silence.
This May is going to be different. When I feel my chest tighten or my stomach twist or the urge to rush frantically into a long to do list, I will heed the whispered call to “go internal”. I will give myself permission to pause, even if it’s just for five minutes, and immerse myself in quiet. I will trade the spiraling, self-depreciating script of “I can’t do this, there’s too much, I’ll never get it all done” for silence.
I’m a week in, and so far, this balancing thing is going well. How about you? During this busy month of May, will you give yourself permission to find some silence?
We’ve all felt loss. We’ve all been lost. And that, plus the gorgeous writing, is the appeal of I Have Lost My Way, Gayle Forman’s most recent young adult novel. The three main characters couldn’t be more different. One is a young black singer, one is a dutiful son in a Muslim family, and one is a white visitor to New York City on a tragic mission. But they all share one thing: a devastating sense of loss. Yet in that loss, they find each other.
Premise
Freya is a rising young singer with a studio contract and tons of followers on Instagram. But just when she should be recording her music, her voice stops working. Her manager sends her to doctors and specialists, but nothing brings her singing voice back. If she can’t sing, she will lose her career, and she’s already lost her father and her sister.
Harun lives in a family of devout Muslims who do not know that he is gay. He cannot bring himself to tell his parents the truth about himself, and because of that, he has lost the one person who understood and accepted him – James.
Nathaniel grew up in a “fellowship of two” – just him and his dad in a house in the woods. Unfortunately, Nathaniel’s father suffered from untreated mental illness, and Nathaniel spent his life caring for and protecting his father. He has recently discovered the cracks in the world where he and his father lived, and he can see only one future — and it’s not a happy one.
Freya, Harun, and Nathaniel collide in a freak accident in Central Park and spend the rest of the day discovering each other and finding what they’ve been so desperately missing.
What I Liked
Foreman effectively uses multiple points of view to lay out an interesting story. All three characters have distinct compelling voices, and it’s easy to follow who is thinking and doing what. The switching POVs add tension and interest to a quiet story that emphasizes character development.
Although they come from very different lives, the three characters connect in realistic ways because of one common experience: loss. It’s a theme much needed these days, when differences seem to overshadow the similarities between people.
There is a lot of emotion in I Have Lost My Way, but Foreman’s writing never feels melodramatic. She uses effective description and metaphors to make readers care for her characters. Here’s a good example:
“And secrets crave fissures, until the fissures become trenches, and the trenches become channels, and the channels become crevasses, and suddenly you are alone, on a block of ice, separated from everyone you care about.”
Or this:
“To be the holder of other people’s loss is to be the keeper of their love. To share your loss with people is another way of giving your love.”
Overall, Foreman’s writing is clear, and her imagery beautiful. I enjoyed her older novel, If I Stay, but I think the writing in I Have Lost My Way is better. It’s smoother and feels more authentic.
I Have Lost My Way has a happy ending, although everything isn’t neatly tied up. The characters do not necessarily get what they want, but they do get what they need, and they see the value in that.
Recommendation
I Have Lost My Way is a great read for people who like contemporary realistic fiction, especially if they are looking for diversity.
Notes on content
I Have Lost My Way includes scenes with intimacy that is described tastefully. There’s some swearing. And one of the characters is gay and wrestles with coming out to his family.
Are you a fan of Gayle Foreman? Have you read If I Stay or any of her other books? Can you recommend similar books with diverse characters wrestling with real life challenges?
When was the last time you read a poem? Can’t remember? That’s a shame, because poetry is a powerful medium. It channels emotions into brief lines and phrases. For me and Word Nerds everywhere, poetry offers a fascinating study of the power and passion of words.
So we all need to read and write more.
Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, a celebration of poetry started back in 2002 by the Office of the Mayor along with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education. It’s become an important part of National Poetry Month, an annual event sponsored by The American Academy of Poets every April since 1996.
This year, I’m sharing “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limon. It’s perfect for this season in my life. I love the colors of spring, the promise of the bright green leaves, the faith of this poem that so nicely voices the theme of my last blog post, The Ones with the Most Faith Win.
When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty.
Ada Limon, “Instructions on Not Giving Up”
I don’t think I’m legally allowed to share the whole poem. You can find the entire piece, only 14 lines, here at poets.org. It’s lovely. Please read it and share it, or some other poem you find inspiring. I’d love to see more!
Have you heard of Poem in Your Pocket Day? What celebrations of poetry have you come across this month? What’s a poem you’d like to share?
It’s been an exciting week in our house. In the past three days we’ve celebrated grand prizes and basketball victories. My beloved ‘Hoos are National Champions and my beloved daughter is taking her science fair project to Phoenix to compete with students from all over the world in the International Science and Engineering Fair.
The trophies and medals are nice, but they aren’t what’s most important to me. What I love, and what I hope people will remember, are the stories behind these victories and the character behind the stories.
First story: the Virginia Cavaliers
Last year, the Cavaliers had a winning season with just two losses. They defeated North Carolina in the ACC Tournament to claim the title of ACC Champions, and they were unanimously picked in coaches’ polls as the number one seed going into the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
They lost in the first round. To a 16th seed. No team had ever done that before. They made history in the worst way and in the national spotlight. The team endured criticism and scorn, and even, according to a post written by Virginia shooting guard Kyle Guy that I found on Facebook a few days after the devastating loss, death threats. The team needed extra security when returning to their hotel.
Can you imagine how hard it would be to come back from that?
In his speech after the 2019 championship game, Bennett said, “I played a song for them today called ‘Hills and Valleys’ by Tauren Wells and it just means that you’re never alone in the hills and the valleys and we faced those this year.” He also shared a team motto: the most faithful wins. “These guys stayed so faithful,” he said. And because of that, they made history again – as the greatest redemption story in college basketball.
Too often in a culture that emphasizes success, we don’t see the opportunities hidden in failures. Thanks to the example of the ever humble and gracious Tony Bennett and his team, we will embrace the reality that success and failure don’t define us. Attitude, habits, and character do.
My daughter’s story
To reinforce this point on a smaller scale: last fall, my daughter had an idea for a science fair project. She wanted to study plastic bags and how they interact with heavy metals in the environment. She reached out to professors at area universities to develop her project. She changed her method and focus several times. She put in hours researching plastics, performing her experiment, and analyzing her data. She got significant results that indicated plastic bags could be potentially dangerous, and that more research is indicated. Everyone, from her sponsor to her parents, told her how great her project was. She took it to the school fair, hoping to win a prize.
She didn’t. Not even honorable mention. We were shocked and disappointed. How do you explain to your child that sometimes hard work doesn’t get recognized? How do you encourage her to keep trying?
You tell her to stay faithful, to keep putting her work out there and trusting someone will eventually recognize it. (You also hope that other people, like her teachers and sponsors, will tell her the same thing, because, let’s be honest, sometimes the words of a mother just don’t resonate. Thank goodness, her sponsor was one of her biggest cheerleaders.)
Look at that smile!
And she was faithful. She took her project to regions, where it won its category and was nominated for grand prize. Then she took her project to the state science fair, where it again won the chemistry category and second grand prize out of over 250 projects from across the state. She earned a spot at ISEF, which, she confided to me later, was her goal all along. It’s kinda like the national championship of science fairs. She, like my ‘Hoos, has had a fabulous run.
I’m not telling this story to brag about my child. I just want her and everyone reading this post to remember: the ones with the most faith win.
What have you learned from March Madness this year? Do you have a redemption story to share?
My friend Dane is using fractal burning to make beautiful and unusual charcuterie boards. So much to learn from this! First, what is fractal burning? And what the heck is a charcuterie board, and better yet, how do you pronounce charcuterie?
Fractal burning patterns
Fractal burning combines art and science to create “Lichtenberg figures” – branching patterns burned into damp wood by running a strong current through it. They are named for Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, a German physicist who discovered and studied these patterns.
They are beautiful, but the process is dangerous (hello, water + electricity = danger), so don’t try this at home. Seriously, people have died. Dane assures me he is very careful and doesn’t touch the probes while the electricity is flowing. To learn more about fractal burning, visit FractalBurn.com . If you’d like to see more of Dane’s wood art, follow him on Instagram @voltzwoodworx.
It’s like hitting wood with lightening! I love the color Dane has added.
Now, if you were to get one of these charcuterie boards, you’d have to know how to pronounce it. Here’s what Merriam Webster told me:
charcuterie: \ shär-ˌkü-tə-ˈrē \ or \shar- ku-ta- REE\ noun, from French chaircutier pork butcher, from chair cuite cooked meat;
a delicatessen specializing in dressed meats and meat dishes
the products sold in such a shop
And if you learned to say the name and got yourself one, what would you use it for? According to The Reluctant Entertainer, charcuterie means cured meats, and an epic charcuterie board features cured meats, cheeses, olives, nuts, crackers/ bread, dried fruit, and jelly or jam. You can use them to serve dinner to the family or appetizers to guests at a party.
