Monthly Archives: May 2021

Story From An Enchanted Keyboard

by Woody

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” Oscar Wilde famously wrote, but sometimes it is indeed the latter.

For example, my novel in progress features an enchanted typewriter upon which things that are typed magically come true. To illustrate how this imitates life, let me share something I typed three decades ago:

“The storm clouds are clearing. From here on out it is going to be rainbows for Dallas. Life will be an endless string of tap-ins for birdie, 40-serving-loves, proms and roses and four-leaf clovers.”

The computer keyboard I wrote that column on proved enchanted. Sure, there have been some stepped-on thorns and stepped-in cow pies in her field of four-leaf clovers – but mostly it has been a Rose Parade and Disneyland and a sunset beach walk for my daughter who was born three months prematurely weighing 2 pounds, 6 ounces.

My little preemie Dallas and and her daughter Maya.

She came into the world by an emergency Cesarean section because my wife’s preeclampsia, a life-threatening collection of syllables for both mother and fetus, spiked rapidly out of control. Santa Maria did not have a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit so a four-person team of specialists flew from Fresno to perform the dicey delivery and – if prayers were answered – take the newborn back with them.

Lisa pleaded for anesthesia as she did not want to be awake and NOT hear a newborn’s cry, but because she recently ate before the abrupt turn of events this was not possible. Holding her new daughter also proved not possible because mother and child both required continued emergency care.

All the while, my hours passed like days before a doctor finally came out to tell me I had a daughter. “She’s a real fighter,” he added and she would need to be.

While Lisa remained in the Operating Room, an NICU incubator-on-wheels was rushed to the ambulance bay for a siren-fast ride to the airport and a flight to Fresno. En route, however, the four superheroes in scrubs stopped briefly in the hospital’s hallway.

In one of the kindest acts I have ever experienced, and surely ever will, a surgical nurse opened one of the round portals and told me to place my hand on Dallas’ tiny, delicate, skinny torso. In the coming days and weeks, I would have to scrub my hands with disinfecting medical soap for a full three minutes before visiting Dallas in the NICU in Fresno, but presently there was no time for that.

The angelic nurse explained, calmly but quickly, that Dallas had not yet felt skin-to-skin contact because Lisa had been unable to and the medical team of course wore surgical gloves. The nurse emphasized that such real touch is vital.

Her grave tone and penetrating eyes delivered an unspoken cold truth as well: “This might be the only opportunity your daughter will ever have to feel skin-to-skin touch.”

Thermal air rose out from the open portal as I timidly reached into the high-tech Plexiglas womb, carefully avoiding numerous wires and monitors, and ever so gently placed my hand on Dallas’ stomach. Her skin was warm and supremely soft and wondrous. It remains, to this day, arguably the most magical moment of my life.

That 15-1/2-inch baby girl now stands 5-foot-10 and has no heart or lung ailments as “extreme preemies” often do in adulthood. Indeed, she ran track and cross country through high school.

Too, Dallas has enjoyed proms and roses and four-leaf clovers; her own book signings and wedding day and motherhood; and today, May 29, a healthy and happy 34th birthday.

Yes, my enchanted keyboard worked some real magic.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

It’s In The Cards: ‘You Are Amazing!’

by Woody

In my wallet I carry a small card John Wooden gave me bearing his father’s “Seven-Point Creed”:

“1. Be true to yourself. 2 Help others. 3. Make each day your masterpiece. 4. Drink deeply from good books. 5. Make friendship a fine art. 6. Build shelter against a rainy day. 7. Pray for guidance, count and give thanks for your blessings each day.”

Of less famous heritage, but no less inspirational, I have another business card-sized memento. It is a “You Are Amazing! And So Am I” card and the brainchild of a friend I will call “Josh” to protect his privacy.

The cards Josh hands out are all the more amazing because he oftentimes feels he is the least amazing person on earth. Indeed, Josh, who lives in another state now, has wrestled with many demons, from mental illness to homelessness, which are often two sides of the same coin, and other hardships as well.

Josh also has an enlarged heart – not medically, but figuratively. He has literally given the coat off his back in cold weather to someone he felt had a greater needed for it. With his last twenty bucks, he has been known to buy groceries or a hamburger and fries for hungry strangers.

And he has given out thousands of his “Amazing!” cards in an effort to lift people up when they are feeling down.

In full, the front of the light-blue card reads in various fonts and bright colors: “You Are… Love Happiness Strength Understanding Beauty Respect Compassion Joy Teamwork Peace. Together We Are The Solution.”

The backside further encourages: “Create Kindness. Make Kindness. Become Kindness. You Are Amazing! And So Am I! Thank You For Being You!”

“I believe that the more someone believes they are amazing inside, the more they will project out their amazing-ness,” Josh told me. “So I began telling everyone around me they were amazing or awesome. Then I thought, what better way to remind someone, no matter what they are going through, than a card and – Bam! – the ‘Amazing!’ cards were born.”

A friend of his who worked at a printing company helped Josh design the card and, showing her own Kindness and Amazing-ness, printed up 2,000 cards at a discount price. He quickly needed a second run, and another, and to date has passed out more than 10,000 ‘Amazing!’ cards.

“I purposely have no name on the cards because it isn’t about the giver, it is about whoever is reading it,” Josh noted. “I believe that as they read these words they are flipping their negative perspective to the positive. I think it’s also awesome that there is no religion attached to the cards – just a belief in oneself, each other, and the kindness that links us together.”

In that vein, in addition to the cards Josh has organized some “You Are Amazing! And So Am I!” outings where community members do random acts of kindness such as cleaning the homes of elderly citizens.

“These acts are a way of reminding people there is hope in one another and in believing in ourselves,” Josh says.

Even during times he has lost belief in himself, Josh says he tries to focus on “spreading love and kindness to others.”

“I love seeing people’s reaction to the cards,” he continued. “People are so encouraged. They really do smile and you can see a change in their heart. People would thank me and even ask (before the coronavirus pandemic) for hugs.”

Coming full circle, when it comes to the “Seven-Point Creed” Josh certainly measures up Amazingly!

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Two Readers Put Tears In The Writer

by Woody

“No tears in the writer,” Robert Frost famously noted, “no tears in the reader.” The reverse is true as well, as two readers recently proved by making my eyes well up to overflowing.

The first email came from Susanne Hopkins, from Maine, in greatly belated response to a column I wrote back in October of 2018 about Audrey and David Mills and their enchanting lecture about lobsters at the tiny Mount Desert Oceanarium Lobster Hatchery in Bar Harbor.

More than crustaceans, however, my column was really about an octogenarian couple that had been married 62 years yet still came into focus like honeymooners. “The lobster couple,” I wrote in conclusion, “is actually a pair of lovebirds.”

“Lobster Couple” Audrey and David Mills were married 64 years.

Two and a half years later their love affair that had now celebrated 64 wedding anniversaries touched me again when Susanne wrote a few weeks ago: “Dear Woody, I am the granddaughter of David and Audrey Mills – my grandfather went to be with his Heavenly Father last Tuesday. My daughter and I stumbled across your column during a Google search and I read your words to my grieving grandmother this morning and it brought happy smiles to our faces.

“I’m so grateful that you visited the Oceanarium and that you could see the beauty in not just their museum, but also in my very special grandparents. As their granddaughter, I am so proud of the lives they touched in the 46 years they ran their aquarium. Your column was a beautiful testament to who my grandfather was. He always let us know how much he loved us, and I think in this world that can be quite unusual.”

Tissue, please. I felt like I had tossed a bottle with a message corked inside into the ocean and after more than two years it came bobbing back in the waves and washed up onto the beach with the loveliest reply imaginable.

Shortly later, a second bottle washed ashore and I needed another tissue. This time the message came from much nearer, from Ventura, from Joyce Rieske. She also emailed belated in reply to a column, this one from more than a year ago, headlined “The Beauty of Sunsets.” In short, I marveled over our local coastal sundowns that often seem to have been painted by Monet using a palette of flames; mixed oils of reds, golds and oranges.

Wrote Joyce: “Dear Woody, My husband Cornelius – Connie – and I have always looked forward with anticipation to our Saturday Star. As long as his vision was good enough, Connie read your column himself each week. However, when his eyesight began failing, I read the Star and especially Woody to him.

“Last year, on February 9, 2020, I reread him your lovely column of February 8 about our wonderful Ventura County sunsets as Connie was experiencing his final sunset. That final sunset was a ‘pyrotechnic display’ as you wrote about and I was actually reading your words at his passing. You gave us the perfect ending to a perfect life of 62 years of marriage. Thank you for being a part of our life together.”

The misty-eyed thanks truly is mine to Joyce. Learning that one of my columns provided new widow Audrey Mills a moment’s reprieve from her ocean-deep grief was one of the most touching compliments I have ever received, but to imagine my written words being the final thing Connie Rieske heard, and in his beloved wife’s sweet voice, I will never receive a higher honor.

Nor will I ever take a Monet-like sunset even the least bit for granted.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Complaint Department Is Closed

by Woody

If you were expecting 600 words of grumpiness, griping and cantankerousness today, read no further – The Complaint Department is temporarily closed. Seeing so many vaccinated smiles, naked of masks, safely out and about outdoors has chased away the stay-and-shelter blues and put birdsong in my heart.

Speaking of birds, the other morning I saw a blue jay perched upon a tall succulent plant – a cactus of some sort is my non-botanist guess – in my front yard. This made me a smile for three reasons: a dear friend says a blue jay sighting is a visit from a guardian angel; thus, I thought about my friend for a while; and, lastly, until that contemplative moment I had not fully appreciated how lushly filled in and attractive the drought-resistant landscaping we replaced our front lawn with a year ago has now become. I wish you could see it – with your own blue jay sighting included.

Blue Jay photo by Scott Harris

Our front desert garden in turn made me think of another of my friends who, when his own Complaint Department becomes exhausting, likes to say: “Sometimes I just have to walk away and look at a flower.”

His wisdom naturally reminds me of the late golfing legend, Walter Hagen, who similarly and famously advised: “You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry, and be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”

Better yet, don’t just smell the flowers but pick some, too. For example, no matter what your political views are the series of photographs taken last week showing President Joe Biden bending down to pluck a dandelion and then handing it to First Lady Jill surely had to make you smile.

Seeing these photos caused the high-definition digital video in my mind’s eye to instantly flashback all the way into grainy Super 8mm film, for that is how old this memory was of my 5-year-old self picking a fistful of dandelions on a warm summer day and giving them to my mom who, naturally, reacted as if they were two dozen long-stemmed roses.

One more flower-powered smile comes from an Instagram posting I saw the other day reading, unattributed: “My grandpa has Alzheimer’s so he has no idea who my grandma is, but every day for the last three or four months he brings her flowers from their garden and asks her to run away with him and be his wife; and every day she says she already is; and every day the smile my grandpa gets on his face is the most beautiful heartfelt thing I have ever seen.”

Here is another beautiful heartfelt thing I saw recently, again on Instagram, attributed to Ann The Distracted Gardener. “My 8yo in the car today: ‘Do you want me to throw the confetti in my pocket?’

“Me: ‘No not in the car! – why do you have confetti in your pocket?’

“8yo: ‘It’s my emergency confetti. I carry it everywhere in case there is good news.’ ”

60yo Me: Raising kids has been compared to tending a garden and Ann The Distracted Gardener certain has not been too distracted to raise a red rose of a son. Also, I must try to be more like this unhurried 8yo who obviously stops to smell the flowers and is always ready to celebrate each day like it’s New Year’s Eve.

Lastly, the image of that young boy reaching into his pocket and pulling out a fistful of confetti and then throwing it with delight reminds me of something my friend/mentor/hero Wayne Bryan likes to say: “Throw kindness around like it’s confetti.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

A Farewell To A True Inspiration

by Woody

Louie Zamperini, the American Olympic distance runner and indomitable POW during World War II, is without question one the most courageous and inspiring people I met during my three decades as a sports columnist.

Alvin James Matthews is undeniably another. “Unbroken” is Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling biography about Zamperini and that title equally described Alvin, who passed away in his sleep at age 50 on April 17.

Alvin was not famous, but his fortitude was measureless. The Ventura native ran two-dozen marathons around the globe in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and the North Pole, which had a race-day temperature of minus-27 degrees Fahrenheit that made even the polar bears shiver.

Alvin Matthews after finishing the 2016 Los Angeles Marathon.

But the most amazing race by the 1989 Buena High graduate was reaching the finish line of the far-warmer 2016 Los Angeles Marathon because he did so powered by his arms rather than his legs.

Two years earlier, Alvin slipped off the rooftop of his apartment and fell three stories. He landed on concrete, on his neck, suffering a “catastrophic spinal-cord injury at levels C5 to C7.” Translation: quadriplegia. Doctors called his survival “a miracle.”

But Alvin did more than survive – he thrived. Through numerous operations and endless physical therapy, he regained movement in both shoulders, arms and hands, albeit limited.

His tenacity, however, was limitless. “Pedaling” a recumbent three-wheeled racing handcycle Alvin navigated the L.A. Marathon escorted by two friends, Mike Pedersen and Brian Dao, running by his side.

“Before the race I was worried, ‘Can I do this?’ and I didn’t want to let myself down,” Alvin admitted to me afterward. “But as the race went on, I knew I couldn’t let down all these people who were supporting me.”

While the cheering from friends and strangers alike warmed his heart, Alvin’s body temperature was at constant risk of overheating because paralysis robbed his ability to sweat. Out of necessity, Mike and Brian doused him with water every mile until Mile 23 when a steady downhill to the finish line allowed the entrant in bib No. 307 to pull away from his two-man entourage.

Magically, wonderfully, unexpectedly, Alvin soon gained two new speedy escorts when his boyhood friends Chris Pryor and Roge Mueller sneaked onto the course pedaling beach cruisers. Together, the trio shared a joyride the final two miles and crossed the finish line as the race clock ticked 5 hours, 34 minutes.

            In a photograph with the shiny finisher’s medal draped proudly around his neck, a neck once shattered and the reason he was laying supine in an aerodynamic handcycle, Alvin’s smile is golden and beatific. It is the jubilant smile of a boy in a Matterhorn sled at Disneyland for the first time. A smile of triumph, not tragedy.

“My accident has brought me closer to my mom and my brother,” Alvin shared then. “It has given me new friends. There is so much bad stuff in the world, but I’ve found there is also so much good. So many people have come out of the woodwork to help me, even strangers and anonymous angels. They have all helped me realize I still have a great life.”

Shortly before his great life far too soon ended, Alvin and I talked about getting together after our vaccinations for a Happy Hour for the first time since the pandemic began. Instead, I toasted his memory alone on a cheerless day.

And yet here is an amazing thing about Alvin: I could not help but smile thinking about his ever-present smile – and imagining him now running on healthy legs again.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com