Tradition

Remember the wonderful song from Fiddler on the Roof called Tradition? A childhood friend of mine was married over the weekend to a guy who's made her exceptionally happy over the last several years. She's Jewish and he's Chinese. Their ceremony, performed by a refreshingly outgoing Rabbi, contained the typical elements of a Jewish wedding but also a charming Oriental tea serving tradition which the bride and groom shared with their parents.

The reception, however, was refreshingly not totally traditional. Instead of a best man toast, the bride and groom took to the microphone themselves to impart a few words of wisdom and a short statement of thanks for those who'd gathered in their honor. They did have one expected dance, the hora, apart from their first dance as a married couple, but that was it. The rest of the time they played music that they loved (me too!) which catapulted us back into the 70s and 80s when we were carefree kids with no mortgages or full time jobs or car payments or elder care issues.

If my desires carry any weight, I wish them a long and happy life together.

Music and Passion

When I look back to my childhood, I recall a seemingly endless series of attempts to fight my own emotional demons, and social struggles to become "mainstream" if you will. I wasn't allowed to study a musical instrument because my father traveled a lot and my mother didn't drive; and anyway, my family dynamic was not particularly supportive of kid activities because it was so rooted in the vicious cycle of conflict avoidance and then conflict management etc. But I have always loved music. And I love watching and listening to my own children pursue their music.

Last night I attended one of the spring concerts at our high school. My ninth grader sang in the mixed chorus. The orchestras also performed (chamber and symphony). I was pleasantly shocked by the performance of a soloist on bassoon, with the chamber group in the background. My seventh grader started bassoon this year, and I know it's a difficult instrument to play, but I had no idea that a senior in high school could do all the 32nd notes and the trilling I heard last night. Gorgeous. We also heard a Mendelssohn concerto performed by the first chair violin, accompanied by the full symphony orchestra. The sounds and the bow work were reminiscent of a pro, not a 17-year-old kid. She was dressed in a floor length red dress, which added to her overall appeal. Not surprisingly, she received a standing ovation.

It is amazing to me what some of these children achieve by the time they don the high school graduation cap and gown, particularly in contrast with the lack of achievement of other teens who spend just as much time playing video games and "hanging out" doing nothing focused. How many adults whine that they simply didn't have a chance to complete household projects or work on their stated goals for the month or the year...but watched enough American Idol to participate fully in any water cooler debate about the finalists?

Last night provided some good material for my own reflections about that Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "Life is what you make it." Some of these youngsters really have it going on. Focus, drive, passion...inspiring!

What Is a Life?

Some think that living is just subsisting from day to day. How sad not to have hopes and dreams and goals in mind. I recently saw a Gail Sheehy quote which drove this point home:

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

Effective Advertising

Are you old enough, as I am, to remember the "plop plop fizz fizz" commercials for Alka-Seltzer? And I think it was Ny-Quil for the blah-blah-blah-so-you-can-get-some-rest TV ad, or something like that. The Mucinex cartoon with the green blobs is very cute, and I'd heard the product was very good.

Well, I've been fighting a cold my kids gave me...congestion...bit of a cough, and I took Mucinex DM for the first time last night. Oh...my...stars! Within minutes I could feel like all the mucus inside my sinuses dried up. Only woke up once coughing during the night, and was able to get right back to sleep. I think they should make a commercial where the green blob merely says: "Congested? Coughing? This stuff works!"

What's in a Donut?

Yesterday afternoon, while running errands before dashing home to take a kid to a soccer game, I realized that I hadn't eaten lunch and wouldn't get the chance...so allowed myself the guilty pleasure of stopping in at the donut shop next to the supermarket.

One of the trays had a round chocolate enrobed model with a cutesy name, so I asked the server what was inside. He shrugged and called to his manager. After a long pause, manager said it was like a Boston cream. I agreed to try it. As the server was ringing it up, the manager came back and said that it was jelly (which I hate!). Momentarily repulsed, I asked them to switch it for a real Boston cream variety. Unpleasant taste sensation averted.

At that moment, however, a thought struck me. What if the manager hadn't caught the mistake in time, and I'd had a food allergy? (We do have allergies to certain fruits in my family.) Another thought struck me: the young cashier and his fairly young manager both seemed to be blissfully unaware of how clueless they appeared, being completely unfamiliar with their store's product line. Both of them also seemed not to be bothered at all by this. I wonder whether this is a breach of their responsibility as franchisees of the international enterprise.

I remain completely underwhelmed, and relieved that this was in a completely different neighborhood than my own. In my book it's a double customer service fail! Well, at least the donut was yummy.

And We Thought Women Were Brutal

At the dinner table last night, hubby and two sons went off like a series of bombs because the other son was wearing a pair of shorts that he'd obviously outgrown. Scathing descriptions of the body parts that were bulging (you can just imagine) with vulgar naughty suppositions (recall that I have two teens now, a teen wannabe, and am married to someone who still yearns to reclaim his teen years). By the end of the meal, we were scrambling to get shoes on so we could scamper away to Target and buy some new shorts. Yeesh.

Let's Hear It for CVS!

On Saturday, I took Son #2 to the ears/nose/throat specialist because he'd stayed home from school the previous day due to congestion, coughing, and overall malaise. Sure enough, sinus infection...so we got a prescription for liquid augmentin (the usual). The doctor's assistant was nice enough to call it in, because we had plans to go to the Ducks game in a couple of hours and wanted to maximize our chances of getting a dose of medicine in him beforehand.

Wouldn't you know it, the computer system at our CVS was down, and they took my cell number with the promise to call once the prescription was ready. Well, we went to the ball game and forgot all about the prescription temporarily. About halfway through the game, my cell phone rang. It was Frank, from our CVS. He explained that he was calling me not because the medicine was ready to be picked up, but because CVS was still in a state of corporate wide computer outage and he didn't know when he could promise the medicine. He had seen that we called the prescription in, and he'd tried to get back in touch with our doctor, but hadn't been able to reach the office. He was hoping that we could try again on Monday and was nothing but apologetic.

What Frank didn't know is that I had the script in my possession, so was able to go to another pharmacy and have it filled after the ball game was over. He was relieved that we'd get the prescription filled that evening instead of waiting until Monday. He told me that he hated to lose our business but he would hate even more to see the child go without his medicine. (!)

At this point, I paused and told him that he'd pretty much guaranteed our long term business by taking the time and effort to do all he'd done. He seemed genuinely surprised and grateful to hear that. I thanked him and wished him luck with the computers.

Because I work in customer service, I like to catch people doing it right...and I try to have more of this kind of story than the negative kind. Please feel free to retell this one for me. And I hope you will have plenty of your own "caught someone doing it right" stories.

Nyah Nyah You Can't Make Me

I have to laugh at some people's definition of "professional staff." My definition includes: maturity, intelligence, education, and experience needed to handle a variety of situations in a reasonably high level job with a fair degree of autonomy, doing your level best to advance the company's business goals. Every once in a while I see someone who seems to have the intelligence, education, and experience, but lacks the maturity even though s/he is plenty old enough to have grown it. Granted, a "professional" position means you probably don't punch a clock or account to management for your rest room breaks, but it also means that you have those freedoms because you're expected to exercise good judgment and are expected to cooperate with management's requests without suffering daily threats of being bounced if you step out of line.

That being said, I find it really annoying -- particularly in today's economic situation -- that so-called business professionals pick and choose from the list of management directives in passive-aggressive fashion, deciding which ones they will flat out refuse to do -- AND they actually get away with this nonsense. I have even heard some of them bragging about their refusal to accept direction, in meetings and at the coffee maker. Management's response should be something along the lines of "Are you kidding me? You're collecting a paycheck for this. Now would be an excellent time to wake up, grow up, or both!"

Maybe we wouldn't have so much trouble running our businesses, and, for that matter, our government, if so-called grownups weren't so busy drawing lines in the sand, and spent most of their time trying to figure out how to expand common ground instead. Leave the "nyah nyah" at the nursery school where it belongs.

Now What?

I agree that it is a good thing that the terrorists' leader is no longer alive, and that his associates know their home base will be vulnerable to our country's forces, and that we will never give up defending ourselves. Fine to all of that.

But do we think that their organization is unlike organized crime in other parts of the world? Will their structure crumble like a house of cards, or will there be countless wannabes and second or third fiddles who have been dreaming all their lives of rising to the top of the organization? I believe the latter is true. And I believe that the violence will never end unless methods of negotiation are radically overhauled.

Differences in ideology and economy do not mean that groups have to go to war. But I don't mean to trivialize the huge effort it would take to prevent war. I can't even prevent it in my own family with my three boys. But it takes an immense amount of wisdom, forethought, maturity, and energy to continually reframe every conflict as an opportunity and a challenge to figure out a better future.

And right now we're tired. Tired of war. Tired of political Romper Room nonsense. Tired of struggling in a failing economy. Tired of seeing our culture and our language and our environment polluted. Tired of seeing any remaining good torn down by others who have a different set of priorities and are looking for a fresh conquest. Can we somehow effect a sea change when we're all so tired?

Maybe we will find it in ourselves to take the steering wheel and, in a desperate last-ditch effort akin to an addict who hits rock bottom, yank it in the other direction. Why can't I hang on to a tiny shred of hope that my children will see a better tomorrow? If you've ever prayed for anything in your life, pray for this.