For Want of a Nail: How Women Succeed

Cliff and I faced buying a new car recently. We drove several and talked with the salesman. When things started sounding serious, he called in the money person. She presented options. The conversation finally ended.

He handed us his business card.

She scribbled her phone number on a post-it note.

Over several days, Cliff called both of them with questions. They were equally friendly and knowledgeable. The paperwork began. When we returned to sign, we didn't see him at all. We sat in her office: Holly Brownell, Finance Manager.

I remained silent until the last T was crossed.

Then I leaned across her desk and said, "Holly, here's the most important thing to me. You need business cards, and you need them now."

She froze.

I explained that for someone with her title, a colored paper square did not inspire confidence and made her seem slipshod. An after thought. It was an unspoken indictment of professionalism.

I asked her to realize the message she was sending, not only to adults, but to children sitting in her office with their parents. It showed a boy that women did not qualify for the same status--especially in an environment where all the men had cards. It showed girls they had no right to expect the same privileges. They could aspire to the title but not the respect.

A business card, all 2 x 3.5 inches, confirms equal status.

It forces the point.

The dreams of children begin with something small, something tangible. Who can say what little girl will be inspired as a woman pulls that bright card from the drawer?

Holly understood and said she'd get right on it. "And I expect you to send me one," I said as I left her office. She did, too. She told me she was proud to have them and said, "It's because of you, Karen."

That's the charge for all women. To rally, to advocate, to challenge, to cheer each other on. We have a collective mission. Not every success is played out in mile-high venues. But each inch forward expands the reward column. Nothing that supports women is insignificant.

The powerful proverb "For want of a nail" illustrates the value of small, necessary things.

Nails count.

So does every Holly.    

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Something's in the Details

If you look up the expression, it's either God or the Devil in those details.

It was God in my house. My mother always said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well." She ironed sheets and pillowcases, each bed made with six inches of top sheet folded neatly over the blanket. Her garden was an elaborate summer production of caged tomato plants clipped to topiary perfection.

You won't be surprised, then, to know I scrubbed and ironed Maggie's toddler shoelaces."Why, Mama?" she asked when I sent her off for the Tide-To-Go pen to erase grass stains.

Cliff used to question my decisions, too. In our first year of marriage, he decided it was the Devil smirking at him from my detail quest. No sofa was correctly placed until I insisted he relocate it again and again and again. Every time we moved to another city, the new yard needed one more shrub or cluster of something fluffy. Then another. Then something tall by the oak...

One night as we watched the evening weather report, I pointed to the map and said, "There. Right there. See how the yellow encircles the blue? That's the print I'm looking for in a shower curtain."

"Karen," he sighed. "There's medicine for this." 

True.

Details can be maddening. Except when they're not.

When we moved to Milan a year ago, many unopened boxes sat in a storage room jumble. So Halloween passed undecorated. No one said a word. It was clear I was inundated at that point. But I felt the emptiness of an unheralded holiday. I'm pretty sure they did, too.

Knowing Maggie would arrive Friday for her college fall break, I organized the decor. With her garden witch swinging in salute by the garage, I could see we needed more details beneath her, true to my mother's logic. We added chrysanthemums and pumpkins in several colors. "She's back! My witch!" Maggie said joyfully as she pulled in the driveway. 

Cliff smiled when his lighted spooky houses emerged from their cardboard shadows to reside on a burlap landscape. Every year we recount the tales behind each accessory. The three of us are a solitary unit, having lost familiar connections over the years of moving from one state to the next. Our details are our relatives, revisiting us like familiar cousins.

And the smiling pumpkin, purchased by my mother for Maggie's first Halloween, glows beside her bed through the night while she's home.

Cliff carried those boxes without being asked. He patiently dug holes to plant the flowers. He drove me through the countryside to find perfect pumpkins.

No eye rolling or sighing or questioning.

Some details are as precious as breath itself. In a life's landscape, they're the stepping stones whispering behind us, all the while assuring us we can step forward. Safely.

Nothing matters more.

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Cliff: The Pied Piper

In my years with Cliff, I've seen this happen numerous times in public places.

A tearful child will walk up to him and announce: "I can't find my mommy."

Cliff gets down on his knee and says, "We'll find her." Then he takes that small hand and looks for the information counter or customer service. Cliff stays right there, holding on until the mother arrives.

He never knows these children. He doesn't wear an official badge.

They see him and know he's the guy. It's some kind of attraction thing, a nameless but constant lifeline to seekers of all shapes and sizes.

Shortly after we moved here, he tackled the picket fence. I call it the infinity fence because he can never get to the end of it. There's always one more rotten rail or picket to replace. No matter how long he paints, there's a missed edge that requires attention.

One afternoon a local we didn't know stopped by with his grandson. "Need a hand?" he asked, as Cliff struggled with the new gate. Over two hours later, Darrell, Hayden, and Cliff were finished (and friends for life, by the sound of all the good-natured joking). Cliff asked, "What do I owe you?"

"Nothing," Darrell said. "Consider it your Welcome to Milan gift."

He's returned several times to help with difficulties that crop up in a 150-year-old house.

He was here once to relocate two doors, but it ended up involving mice.

I don't know how long they'd been around when I finally spotted their presence. Cliff was running errands, so I asked Darrell if I had guessed correctly. He agreed and looked in the basement for a nest, thinking they were climbing up the wall into the kitchen.

"Set some traps and get rid of them," he said casually and turned to leave.

"I don't want them to die," I replied, the tears starting.

He turned back and changed his tone. "Now, Karen, I know you write children's books and want to make friends with the mice, but that can't happen. You don't want them to settle in and have babies."

So I told Cliff, who headed for the hardware store. He did not return with mousetraps. He bought a contraption that lured them in and snapped its doors shut so he could release them unharmed.

Night after night, it worked like a charm.

When we reported our successes to Darrell, he slyly asked, "Are you marking them? It might be the same darned mouse over and over." 

When Cliff related all this to Maggie and how he took them to the creek at the bottom of the hill, she was amused and created a scenario about their encampment in the woods.

"Look! It's Aunt Louise come home to us!" they'd shout, leaping up from their tiny campfire.

"Who's that man?" they'd ask.

"I don't know, but he has Ritz crackers!" Aunt Louise would explain to a chorus of ooohs. "Under his sink is a cottage where you can get peanut butter. You reach for it, and the doors shut tight so you can eat in peace and get a good night's sleep."

They nod enviously.

"Then he wakes you up in the morning and carries you home!"

They ask how to find this storybook place.

"I'm not sure, but you have to climb a hill," she replies.

I don't know if mice distinguish north from south, but they could end up at Marcia's instead. She can get Ritz crackers and peanut butter.

But she won't have Cliff. To the everlasting regret of those dreamers at the encampment.

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Snapdragons

My mother-in-law Mary Jo and I had one common reference point: Cliff. Her son, my husband.

Even then, we would have disagreed across the board on his welfare. Pick a topic, any topic. We were decidedly different women.

However, I did learn something valuable from her.

She told me once about a lost opportunity with her oldest granddaughter. She'd always planned to take the little girl to a local restaurant known for its afternoon teas. All lace and frills and classical music, she thought it would be fun, a treasured memory.

But she never got around to it and didn't seem to know why. I urged her to follow through, even though the girl was in college at this point. "Take her by surprise," I suggested. "There's still time. She's not too old for your attention."

But she didn't. She chose to carry that regret.

In all fairness, I understand what she didn't say and probably couldn't have accepted anyway. My

mother-in-law lived a paralyzing life of restraint, suspicion, traversing a never-ending trail of domestic sharp edges marked by her husband's edicts and selected Old Testament scriptures for warning signs.

Cliff has always called the situation "walking on eggshells." He would know, having grown up in that house.

So I did my best to avoid taking moments for granted when we brought Maggie home from China. Give her life's lovely details, became my mantra.

One day my mother Betty was in our living room, watching as I sat on the staircase beside Maggie. At 18 months, she wanted to descend on her own. Terrified to hold the rail and walk down, she bravely scooted on her bottom, gripping my hand in hers. It took quite a while.

Carrying her down would have been so much quicker.

But we would have missed so much, too--her squealing giggles, her wiggling confidence when we reached the last step. My mother clapped for her.

"Honey," my mother said, "you're a much better mother than I ever was." I shook my head and reminded her of that beautiful, spotless house. "Dust covers everything in here," I admitted.

"Our house never had to be that clean," she said.

Again, regret. Watching us, step by step, had offered a silent space for perspective on years of lost experiences. But also, a surprising glimpse of me as a mother. I understood, then, she clapped for me as well.

So this summer, as I looked at the blank expanse of our garden, I thought about what to plant and remembered showing Maggie, when she was a toddler, how to make snapdragons "talk" by squeezing the petals at a garden store. She was as enchanted as I had been when my mother, who grew an annual bed of snaps, as she called them, showed me. Sweet alyssum always graced the edges.

Easy as it would have been, I never planted them for Maggie. I was focused on creating some other floral effect.

So this summer I planted snaps and alyssum for Maggie. They weren't as lusciously perfect as my mother's, but at least I didn't stop in my tracks because my collegiate daughter is long past yard playing.

They simply grow for her.

And for Mary Jo and Betty, their regrets buried beneath the summer blossoms.

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Crazy Corn

I'm a Midwestern girl through and through, having lived in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. With all three states side-by-side on the American map, I grew up believing we were the cornfield coastline. Folks in seashore states gazed at the ocean from their lawn chairs, but on my relatives' farms, outdoor seating faced the fields.

We watched corn.

Far more than a scenic landscape, it was an unspoken religious experience, rewarded with abundance in good times if we were lucky. Yet we knew natural catastrophes could destroy those fields at any moment. Every growing season was a test of faith.

Our cupboards held agricultural rosaries of a sort. I inherited my grandmother's dish for baking cornbread shaped like tiny ears of corn. My mother gave me dishes for the sole purpose of eating corn on the cob. I suppose these were our mystical trinkets to encourage the blessings of a golden harvest.

One of my earliest memories, when I was probably three, involved my grandparents' cornfield. I rocked alone in a wooden swing while a rainstorm approached. Advancing black clouds erased the blue sky, as the wind rhythmically lifted and leveled the green rows. Like ocean waves, the shooshing stalks and leaves rustled and crashed before me. When thunder rolled in and lightning cracked overhead, I thought the whole field was coming to get me.

Fear paralyzed me until my grandmother threw open the porch door, holding tightly as the wind tried snatching it from her right hand. "Get yourself in here, Chicken Little!" she called, stretching her other hand toward me. I ran and buried my face in her apron. "There now. Don't fret. Granny's got you," she said.

I was never afraid of stormy cornfields again.

Until yesterday.

I stopped to buy corn at a roadside stand on my way home from town. The farmer and I spoke pleasantly about crops and weather. Nice as you please, he placed perfect ears in a bag, mentioning he'd never seen me before. My explanation of our recent move from St. Paul, Minnesota, must have triggered a link in his brain to the perils of big cities because his kind demeanor disappeared.

He quit making eye contact, stepped away, and began speaking of our nation's decline. His voice grew increasingly louder as he waved his arms and rattled on about drugs and Muslim men with six wives each whose sole purpose for sneaking into the United States was to brainwash their children into killing Christians until no white people would have enough power to set things right again.

American citizens would have no food or shelter or medical care because the Muslims would seize it all.

I glanced at the cornfield behind him, fearing an ugly wind was about to bend those stalks and their taunting leaves at me. But the sun was shining on the motionless rows of corn, corn waiting for me to collect my courage. When he paused to breathe from his tirade, I took a chance.

His thundering hatred wasn't going to get me.

I said something he never could have seen coming.

I told him my husband had retired from a school with many Muslim families who were nothing like he described. I said my daughter had Muslim friends who were delightful, considerate, and studious. He turned deathly silent. I was certain he'd never known a Muslim or anyone who had actually encountered one. He struggled to fit my truth into his red-hot paradigm. 

I paid him, wished him well, and walked toward my car. Unfortunately he stepped in front of me, winding himself back up in a rant about abortion. I was momentarily frozen, wondering how to escape his menacing rhetoric.

Then I remembered my grandmother holding the door in the storm, calling me in to safety. She couldn't help me now. I had to save myself, and all I had was corn--the only thing he and I had in common.

I held up my bag and said, "In this heat, I need to get this refrigerated so I don't lose the goodness."

This was a man who would have argued bitterly about any reasonable thing I said.

But not about corn.

He stepped aside to let me pass.

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Finding a Flashlight

I know what you're thinking.

My last post spotlighted the flaw in Maggie's first grade language arts program and her teacher who  couldn't/wouldn't/didn't care to offer options.

So how did Cliff and I turn things around? 

It took years.

There's rarely a quick fix where children are concerned.

We knew being turned off to reading would be a major stumbling block for the rest of her life unless we helped her overcome it.

We had to re-connect her to the book magic she'd once known.

So on Saturdays, Cliff let her wander the branch library shelves without regard to reading levels. That's how she learned to approach the school library, discovering more titles about similar subjects. She went through a rock phase, repeatedly bringing home the same three books for months. She started a rock collection on our carport ledge. We never drilled her on geologic terms. We never organized the piles.

They were hers to experience however she chose.

We asked her to write thank you notes when she received gifts. Even though her spelling was occasionally vague, people were often so charmed that they wrote back to her. She discovered writing linked her to a reciprocal happiness.

She helped me write grocery lists. When she couldn't imagine how to spell something, I encouraged her to draw a picture of the word. Perched in the shopping cart seat, she read the list out loud to me and marked off items as we found them.

When getting ready for school became a daily scramble, Cliff suggested she design a morning checklist. He attached them to a Hello Kitty clipboard kept at her bedside. She loved tracking her activities, right down to waving goodbye to me.

Every. Single. Night. we read to her.

When I began writing Sweet Moon Baby, I often held her on my lap at the computer. By watching me write, she learned the value of words and punctuation. We read the pages out loud together, discussing the choices. She saw and heard  how reading and writing happen. We congratulated ourselves for every improvement to the tale.

One of Maggie's favorite TV shows was Scooby Doo. From writing with me, she understood a story needed a problem and a solution. These shows had a definite plot line she could follow, noting how the characters interacted to catch the villain through ensuing hijinx.

So by golly, we wrote our own episodes. Maggie brainstormed mysteries, usually centered around a favorite thing that could go missing. We rummaged through closets to gather props and costumes. Rehearsals happened in our kitchen because its open floor plan provided space for our Siberian husky, who played Scooby, to run with us from clue to clue. Cliff was the appreciative audience for our hijinx. (I was always Velma, by the way.)

But at school, she remained mired in weekly soul-crushing reading assessments, making literature a force-fed academic operation.

Finally I told her how I used to hide when my mother, who wanted me to be more athletic, sent me outside to play. I'd slip out with a novel and a snack and hide in the backseat of our garaged car to read. Maggie thought it was funny but a great idea. So I placed Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn Dixie in the back of our SUV in the carport. I told her I couldn't read it because I was afraid the dog might die. She volunteered to find out for me. I supplied pillows and snacks. I sent out a flashlight because evenings were coming early. She loved spending hours in her fort with a book she came to love with all her heart. She eagerly delivered plot reports at dinner until she finished. At the end, she proudly assured me the dog didn't die, adding, "Read it. You'll like it, Mom."

Even better news? She took more novels to her backseat reading fort.

When we moved to Minnesota, where DiCamillo lives, Maggie and I attended her author events. Our daughter experienced the real person who wrote the novel that turned a corner for her. Far more than a charming story, it carried her to a new level of confidence. Her world bloomed.

She's been reading ever since.

In short, Cliff and I removed the drudgery of skill and drill language arts programs where only ONE acceptable way is allowed. 

Sometimes schools and teachers get it wrong. They funnel everyone through the system, insisting perfect scores on multiple-choice tests are the ultimate goal of reading.  If you're lucky enough to have a round child who fails to fit their square hole, consider yourself blessed.

Try and try again to support that young heart.

Point toward the magic that defies the A or B or C response.

Because a child's dynamic future is greater than any of the above.

Find a flashlight.

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Fill-in-the-Blank Education

I haven't taught in more than twenty years, but I think about classrooms all the time. I've decided there are two ways to teach.

Focus on the answers.

Or focus on the students.

Either way earns the same paycheck.

I once worked with an English teacher who was a fascinating person but gave mind-numbing tests and assignments. She bragged about her multi-paged exams that were a snap to grade. They read, as one colleague joked: The ____ of the ____ is the ____.

"Does that tell you if they really understand Shakespeare?" I asked her.

She shrugged and said, "At least they've read it." But I knew many of them hadn't. Secretly they read Cliffs Notes to grasp the plot points for daily quizzes. Then, prior to the test, they memorized all her classroom pronouncements: "The three themes in Hamlet are...."

No muss no fuss.

I saw the effects of breezy teaching on Maggie when she entered first grade and brought home the Power Book, announcing it was her nightly homework and had to be done at a desk with a lamp.  Faithfully she set up shop at my grandparents' hundred-year-old radio stand upon arrival from school each day. Every page had an illustrated three-sentence story with three follow-up questions to be written precisely like the sentences. It went something like this:

Jenny likes apples.
Jenny climbs the apple tree.
Jenny picks four apples.

What does Jenny like?
What does Jenny climb?
How many apples does Jenny pick?

By Thanksgiving, she'd stacked up perfect scores but complained about the monotony of these stories, pointing out they weren't really stories at all. Keep in mind, this was a girl who, at three years old, pointed to punctuation marks on the page of the picture book I was reading to her and asked, "What are these things?" One night when she was five, she interrupted my reading aloud and flipped several pages back and forth, asking, "Wouldn't it better if this picture came before that one?" She was absolutely right. She also liked creating different endings to her favorite books.

"She has the stuff of an English major," I told Cliff early on.

So we were devastated that her classroom language arts program was an annoying grind that overlooked any sense of independent thinking or imagination. Because of his administrative role at the school, he suggested I speak with the teacher about our concerns and a possible approach to re-engage her mind.

I met with the teacher and proposed that Maggie write her own scenario with an illustration and questions. I assured him she was capable of writing more than three sentences. He stared at me and said that would be inappropriate because it wasn't the point of the program. There would be no way to assess her work because she couldn't be adequately compared to her classmates. "How would we determine her reading level?" he asked.

I recently asked Maggie what she remembered about the Power Book. She said, "It was the first time I understood why people hate school."

So there you have it.

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