On Imagination

My terrarium is a joy. Houseplants that require a drop of water every couple of months can flourish under my care. I’ve managed to keep a peace lily and a Christmas cactus limping along for over a decade, and an aging philodendron languishes in the basement, but they haven’t grown in a while now, and I realize that such existence is not natural. It isn’t that I don’t love my houseplants, for I love most living things (notable exceptions being poison ivy and Japanese beetles). I merely forget to water them.

Forget is not the correct term. I know plants require water and I see them every day. Time races by so fast, however, that when I see the peace lily drooping and gasping, I ask, “Didn’t I just water you day before yesterday?” If I was a planner, I might have a monthly checklist that orders me, “Water houseplants every Tuesday,” and I would cross out the assignment and know if it had been several Tuesdays since the wilting lily and the patient philodendron had a drink.

Unfortunately, I was born with the genetic defect “Planning Deficit Disorder,” or PDD. I cannot accommodate, much less control, future events. Now is all there is. Although PDD mystifies (or more often exasperates) planners around me, the condition is not all bad. One has up-to-the-minute flexibility, and unpleasant tasks and decisions can be delayed indefinitely. Folks with PDD are able to save a lot of time, or at least devote that time to what we want to do now. Once I saw a greeting card that said, “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.” I snatched up the card to give to the daughter who inherited the PDD gene from me. She opened it at her birthday party twenty minutes later, and loved it. We often share this truth with frustrated planners who are pressing us for action when it is far too early to be thinking about anything but the problems and opportunities of now. But enough about my PDD- I realize other people’s medical and psychological issues are not nearly as fascinating as one’s own.

In my thriving terrarium, I placed a miniature English cottage- one of those trinkets that someone somewhere probably collects, but in my hands seems to have no origin or purpose. “Where did I get this? What do I do with it?” Too nice to toss in the trash, to useless to give away, this humble bit of clutter found meaning as a fairy house nestled among the succulents.

My favorite six-year-old immediately noticed the addition. “You put a little house in here!”

“Yes, I did!”

“What if a fairy came to live in it?”

“Do you think one might come?”

“No, because she can’t open the door.”

Ah, the yawning chasm between imagination and cold, hard facts. I had a conversation once, when I was about six, with my daddy, the parent from whom I inherited the PDD gene. A kid in the neighborhood had made the outrageous allegation that the tooth fairy was not real. He claimed he had proof. He scoffed at fairies in general and even doubted, (stopping short of complete denial), the existence of Santa Claus. Was his heresy to be believed? Had I been duped? Was the magical world of tiny, laughing, winged girls and boys singing and dancing in the flowers all a lie? It seemed that something rare, fragile, and beautiful, like Tinkerbell, was fading – hovering on the brink of death. I determined to ask my daddy. He was the smartest person I knew, an unfailing bulwark in crisis, and I was sure that he believed in fairies, because he told me stories about them. I was waiting when he pulled in the driveway and opened the door of his pickup truck.

“Are fairies real, Daddy? David says they aren’t. Not even the tooth fairy.”

What does a hard-working father do when he comes home after a long day in the gritty world of the small-town, family-owned home and auto store of the 1960’s- a real, hard world of sales tickets and credit applications, finance plans, accounts payable, and tire changes? He expects a kiss and a hot supper, but instead faces an impossible question from a tender, imaginative child who must inevitably grow up, whether he is ready or not. I am quite certain my father did not plan for this important moment. Now is all there is, you know. He answered from his heart and his own experience.

Kneeling, Daddy looked into my eyes. “Well, Debbie, fairies may be real; and they may not. But isn’t it more fun to think that they are?”

Imagination and hard facts can live happily ever after, with the right amount of water. Too much rots the roots and too little hardens the ground and withers the leaves. A lot of truth can bloom in a story, and the world of imagination is a lovely place to visit, as long as we remember where the boundaries lie and we know when it is time to come home.

“Yes, Daddy, it is more fun. And Zoe, if she can’t open the door to the fairy house, perhaps she could fly in the window.”

Hello World!

Entering “Blog-World” feels like taking up residence in a foreign country.

In the ancient civilization where I grew up, interaction with the wide world was slow, limited, and usually written longhand, on paper. A set of World Book Encyclopedias and the telephone book served as our Google. The impossible-to-refold map we picked up at the gas station was our navigation system, and we learned the events of the day by reading the newspaper or watching Walter Cronkite on the console television set, in living color. In those halcyon days of typewriters, instamatic cameras, and rotary telephones, people wrote letters, with practiced penmanship, on carefully chosen stationery. They signed, sealed, and mailed them, and waited patiently for a reply. Our private lives were neither “out there,” nor did we wish them to be.

Those who live long enough find that the world changes. Communication is now constant and instantaneous. Information is infinite, if not always accurate. Thoughts leap “out there,” ready or not- and everyone joins the conversation (posting the picture they snapped a second ago). Blog is a familiar, versatile word- a noun, a verb, and adjective- (though the term is only a few years older than my dog and certainly does not appear in my World Book Encyclopedias), and blogging is something a writer-a blogger– is required to do.

A suspicious few of my generation clutch relics of our fading culture, taking pride in obstinate refusal to budge from comfortable (and therefore right) ways of interaction with the world- disdaining texts, impervious to tweets, and holding hashtags in contempt. Others embrace new technologies, or at least give them a whirl, with various levels of enthusiasm and success. Carried by currents of time, I drifted into the latter category, by increments throwing useless (though beloved) baggage overboard. I read blogs, thinking that blogging would be fun- and I determined to put the scribbling in my college-ruled notebook “out there.”

With rudimentary skill and a credit card, I navigated unfamiliar seas, gazed with fear and wonder on widening horizons, puzzled through unintelligible maps (wait, nobody uses maps anymore- they were tutorials), asked directions from a millennial, and arrived at the harbor of my new domain. Hello, Blog-World! It’s time to step out.

I have chosen to call my new territory “All Uphill.”

Though the name may sound daunting, I don’t intend to lead my friends to a steep trail, load their packs, set a hard pace, and leave them gasping for breath. I like All Uphill for a different set of reasons:

As a hiker, I prefer the uphill track. The upward trail offers possibilities, camaraderie, heart-pounding challenge, unexpected vistas, then…the grandeur of the summit! (And lunch).

As a faith-walker, following Jesus is a journey to the loftiest heights. Although the trail sometimes wanders through barren places and tests endurance, our good Guide assures us that He is leading us “all uphill,” for He is the door to the dwelling place of God.

Long ago, my dad clipped a poem by an unknown author from a newspaper. The words aptly expressed my optimistic, resilient, hard-working father’s philosophy, and I heard him quote it many times.

“There’s a beautiful view from the top of the hill

If you’ve but the will to climb.

There’s always a lift and a rift in the clouds

To disclose the peaks sublime.

The road may be rough, you may blow and puff

But never you mind, you’ll be scaling the bluff.

Then yours is the view from the top of the hill

If you’ve but the will to climb.”

Why settle for lowlands when the pinnacle rises ahead?

When I mentioned to friends and family that I had figured out how to create a blog and was on the cusp of becoming a blogger, some were amazed. Others were amused. A few offered congratulations. Many asked, “What are you going to write about?”

The details of my own existence are not noteworthy, even to me. I have many interests, but merely “piddle” at them. Any attempt to pick one and create a blog around it would be unsustainable and no one would read it except my sweet mother, who still believes that everything I do is remarkable. But I have lived; I have seen and done noble, reckless, creative, exciting, and stupid things- and I have experienced consequences. I enjoy a long, happy marriage, and somehow raised three hard-headed children into thoughtful, kind, super-cool adults. I have loved simple, ordinary folk who are in reality complex, extraordinary immortals, and I treasure years of friendship with compassionate, intelligent, good people. I read books. I go places. I think. I laugh. I can tell a story. So- what am I going to write about? I plan to write about life- you and me- the common trail we share. Who knows what we may encounter around the bend?

Follow the trail with me – through remembrance and imagination, observation and insight, humor and wisdom, muddling through the mundane, and reaching for a dream.

It’s all uphill!