You Need to Eat a Little Something

Posted: November 9, 2025 in family, Food, Jobs, Life, Society, Uncategorized
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I was in my 20’s and a year into my dream job when the wire service I worked for declared bankruptcy for its domestic operations. Twelve hundred people were laid off, four hundred every Friday for three weeks. It was the third Friday when my pink slip arrived.

It’s never a good time to lose a job but the timing was especially bad for us. Jeremy had recently quit a full-time job and was preparing to move to the other side of the state for vocational school for five months. We were counting on our savings and my paychecks to keep us going until he graduated and got another job.

Except now there was no paycheck and the savings couldn’t carry the full load.

I was taught that when times get tough, you do what you have to do. Jeremy gave up school and picked up work where he could. I juggled three part-time jobs – retail warehouse worker, clothing store clerk, and video lottery casino cashier. We both looked for full-time jobs that paid close to what we’d been making; a job that also offered benefits (which I lost in the lay-off) was a bonus.

When the budget gets tight, you prioritize. You pay the rent to keep a roof over your head. Utilities to keep the lights and water on. Car payment because you need transportation. Fuel oil when turning down the heat and throwing on another sweatshirt wasn’t enough. You give up the extras – at that time, cable TV, long distance phone service, fast food, nights out, random purchases that you WANT but don’t NEED. As for groceries, you get what you can afford with the money you have left. And sometimes, that isn’t much.

About three months after I lost my job, two bags of groceries showed up on our front steps with a note that said, “Things will get better. Pay it forward when you can.”

Two bags may not sound like much but it was more than we could have purchased ourselves at that time.

I’ve paid it forward many times over the last 35 years, once just earlier this week.

I’d walked into Walmart to buy groceries and noticed just inside the door, a large donation box for food items for area food pantries. The box held two cans of black beans and a lot of empty space. On my grocery list, I scrawled down some of the items the food pantry listed as being needed.

On my way out, I put a bag with pasta, canned meat, canned fruit, and Pop Tarts (technically not a listed item but sometimes you need one) next to the cans of black beans. To the person or persons who get something from that bag at the food pantry, I want you to know: things will get better. Pay it forward when you can.

Some Day We’ll Make History

Posted: March 17, 2024 in beginnings, endings, family, History, Inspiration, Life, Relationships, remembrance, storytelling, Uncategorized
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I’m 57 years old and nobody cares what my ACT score was. Including me. Which made the results an easy toss into the shred box during the Great Hampton Street Purge of 2022-2023.

We moved my elderly dad out of his house into a memory care unit in July of 2022. It took almost another full year to clear out his home on Hampton Street and sell it. I can’t tell you how many boxes we hauled to the thrift store or garbage bags we dragged to the driveway or dumpsters we filled. I can tell you how many shredders we went through: three.

Was it hard? Yes. His house was 370 miles away from where we live so going there each month took planning, time, and money. Our clean-up crew was largely Jeremy and I, with occasional help from Brian, the neighbor across the street, and my best friend, Lynnette, who’d drive down from the Cities when she could. And there was just so much stuff, from four generations of our family, and because it was all mixed together, we couldn’t randomly toss things out for fear of trashing some document or family heirloom that needed to be kept.

Our family history, including my own, was packed into a ranch-style house, three garage stalls, and a metal storage shed. And we emptied it. All of it. I still wonder if I did it right.

When it’s your turn, if it hasn’t been already, this is what I want you to know:

Every family has secrets. They’ll reveal themselves through letters, pictures, cards, newspaper clippings, official documents, artwork, and random notes stuffed in Bibles, boxes, and drawers. Not all secrets are bad. Some are enlightening and may actually help you make sense of some family dynamics that you couldn’t quite figure out over the years.

Sometimes stuff is just…stuff. Your family likely worked hard for the things they had and tried to build the best home they could, for their generation and the generations to follow. Not everything is worth keeping, it just isn’t, and when you’re looking to sell things, most of it won’t have the value you think it does. Use your head AND your heart. Great grandma’s handmade quilt should go to a family member who’ll appreciate it. Three shelves of mismatched Tupperware can go to the dumpster.

Let it go. If you’re currently the keeper of family historical items and your kids are adults who have homes and families of their own, consider handing down those items now. You’re not just passing down the heirloom itself, you’re telling the story behind it and why it matters to your family. That’s how family histories go on. If the current generation gets it after someone dies or succumbs to a disease that robs their memory, they have no context to relate things to. And they’ll end up passing down boxes with photos that say “Aunt Pearl and some guy” on the back because they don’t know the story or the people. Pass the items down now, see them displayed in your kids’ homes, and know that your family history will live on after you’re gone.

Rediscover who you are. If you’re one of those people who had your life planned out since you were six and everything is going exactly as planned, I applaud you. With sincerity not sarcasm. I’ve strayed from the path I thought I was on many times over the years, even veered off the road and into the ditch a couple of times. When you’re unearthing the mysteries of your family during a purge, look for clues about yourself, too. In cleaning out my Dad’s house, I found reference letters and notes and awards and newspaper clippings from my life from birth through college that were pretty good reminders that there were people who believed I would do amazing things with my life. Sometimes when we get older, we need to be reminded of that once in a while.  

Roll with the emotions. Sorting out generations of your family history and deciding what happens with it is emotional. You’ll laugh, cry, swear, scream, throw up your hands in frustration – and that’s just while emptying out the dresser in the guest room. Life is a rollercoaster of emotions every day and when you’re purging a house, it’s life you’re sorting out. Let it all out.

I kept a few things from this experience, things that probably won’t mean anything to anyone else in my family. I don’t have kids to pass them down to but I’ll have them with me until I go, to remind me that this is who I come from and this is who I am. It’s worth the work to know that.

One of the items I kept from one of the people I most respected in my life.

Peace and Perseverance

Posted: April 16, 2023 in endings, family, Inspiration, Life, Music, remembrance, Society, Uncategorized
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My sister, Great-Grandma Christine, and me on our last visit

My Great-Grandma Christine was a small, slightly stooped woman who talked in a soft Southern drawl and wore house dresses and hand-knitted cardigans. She was almost 70 when I was born and nearly 90 when she passed away in 1986.

She raised 10 kids in an unpainted wooden house that didn’t have an indoor bathroom until her sons came home from World War II and Korea and built their parents one as an anniversary present. It did have a porch swing, and on Sunday evenings at dusk we’d swing on it with Great-Grandma and watch the long line of traffic on the highway from Myrtle Beach to Pamplico. People heading home from a weekend at the beach, she said.

We saw Great-Grandma Christine every summer when we went to South Carolina to visit our Dad’s family. Growing up, I knew my Great-Grandma loved music, liked flowers, cooked good low country food, gave heartfelt hugs, and had the most beautiful smile.

I met her again, a few days ago, 37 years after her death.

Her eulogy was in the pile of paperwork I’ve been sorting through as we clean out my Dad’s house. I’ve been a eulogist twice. It’s hard, not only because of the circumstances but because of the duty you have to get it right, to tell the truth about the person you’re remembering. I don’t know who delivered her eulogy but they certainly got it right.

The two simple pages contained many wonderful memories about Great-Grandma but there are two passages that I will carry forward with me. The first is as relevant in our world today as it was in her lifetime:

“Christine Poston had the serenity of a woman at peace with the world and in the world. In the midst of violence and hatred, pain and suffering, she said we should choose the path of peacemaker, and that the world is a place to which you and I owe peace.”

The second is proof that we all have the power if we choose to use it:

“When she first took piano lessons, she couldn’t afford a piano so had nothing to practice on. So she went home, found a piece of board, and painted the white and black keys on it…then listened to the music in her mind and played it on that old board, her fingers walking across the wood. How the angels must have danced across the stages of her mind to the music that whirled in her thoughts that the rest of the world didn’t hear but that to Miss Christine came alive on that wooden board piano.”

What stops us from being the people we could be? Maybe we think we don’t have what we need to do it. Maybe that’s because we’re not looking in the right place – we’re looking out when we should be looking in. I’m glad Great-Grandma Christine reminded me of that.

Tick, tick, tick…BOOM!

Posted: May 30, 2022 in beginnings, endings, Life, Society, Uncategorized
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The day I turned 30, the longest margarita bar in Las Vegas was closed. Not in my honor but because the ice machines had broken down.

My expectation had been that my 30th birthday would be a milestone to remember, as much as it could be once I drank my way down the longest margarita bar in Vegas. The reality was much less exciting.

Milestone birthdays are meant to mark turning points in our lives. At five, you’re off to kindergarten. At 16, you get a driver’s license. At 21, you can legally drink alcohol. You expect these milestones to be joyous occasions and generally, they are. But not always.

When I turned five, my grandparents were on their way to my birthday party when they were hit head-on by a drunk driver. They spent months recovering from their injuries.

My friend Jason turned 21 on 9/11 – THE 9/11. There was no big party.  

When my husband Jeremy turned 30, the limo we were taking to his birthday celebration hit a deer. The driver was so shaken, he wanted to turn back and go home.

Big expectations. Real disappointments.

It isn’t just us that have expectations for these milestones; the world around us expects something from us, too. By 30, you should be partnered up with someone, if not married. By 40, you have your own home. By 50, you’re firmly established in your career. By 60, you’re surrounded by grandkids and planning for a fabulous retirement. Nothing like a little pressure.

My current circle of friends contains a number of people celebrating milestone birthdays, mostly 50 and 60. But one of them recently turned 30 and was initially less than excited to celebrate. While she’s meeting her personal goals and is happy with her life as it stands right now, society was insinuating that she was falling short of where she should be at 30. She clearly isn’t and since she just started her 30th year, who knows where she’ll be at 31?

Do our lives really have such strict schedules? Should they? We all need goals to move us forward but isn’t it up to US to set them? And it’s our prerogative as to when the deadlines, the milestones, should be. The only deadline we don’t really have a say in is our own death.

I turned 56 this past weekend. I have a husband, a dog, a mortgage, a job that doesn’t always suck, and a small but amazing circle of friends. Is my life what I thought it would be by this age? No. But then, I’m not done living it yet, am I?

Are you hitting your personal milestones as you get older? If not, how do you feel about that?

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