Monthly Archives: June 2021

Father’s Day Takes A Special Turn

by Woody

How was my Father’s Day? Thank you for asking.

For starters, my daughter and her family, who live in the Bay Area, moved into the first home of their own earlier in the week. Hence, they were quite literally boxed in from making the trip south to celebrate with me.

My son, meanwhile, spent the week in San Francisco on a work trip and was driving home to the South Bay on Sunday. He hoped to make it to Ventura for a dinnertime visit.

Oh, yes, my wife was also up north babysitting our 2-year-old granddaughter during the chaotic days following the big move-in. She was driving back with our son, enjoying a nice long chat in the car, turning the day into Mother’s Day for her.

So how was my Father’s Day you ask again? To borrow from my favorite John Wooden-ism, it was a masterpiece day!

Jess made my Father’s Day special with a “Pops” Date.

To be sure, I missed being with my dear daughter and second-to-none son-in-law and grandest of granddaughters, but we visited on video chat which hands down beats a phone call. And my son and wife made it home for dinner, and not just any dinner, but mouth-watering lobster rolls from Maine.

Still, the truth is that my Father’s Day was extra special precisely because circumstances left me home alone. Actually, that is a half-truth. Because I was going to be alone, my son’s fiance drove two and a half hours to spend the afternoon with me, just the two of us, like the “Daddy Dates” my daughter and I still enjoy.

Call this one a “Pops” Date for that is what my future daughter-in law calls me. I in turn fondly call her JB, which is short for Jessburn, which is a story for another time. While having the whole family together is magical, there is also a rare gift in one-on-one time with loved ones.

JB and I talked, and laughed, for hours on end and capped our Pops Date with an el fresco happy hour at a downtown pub. Even after knowing her for two years, I learned much more about JB and her family; about her work in the tech world and about her worldly travels; about her dreams and her dream wedding in the planning for next summer.

“What’s your favorite thing about GB?” – short for Gregburn, which is one of my numerous nicknames of endearment for my son – I asked JB at one point. Without even a wine sip’s delay to think, she replied beaming as brightly as her engagement ring: “He’s the genuinely nicest person I’ve ever met.”

So says the person who once, when my wife and I were visiting them for a pandemic picnic, literally went out of her way by walking alone two miles roundtrip to a specific pizza parlor because I love their slices and had been looking forward to them but deliveries had unexpectedly been canceled that day.

Honestly, I would have been happy with bread and water because spending time with GB and JB was truly what my wife and I were looking forward to. Looking back, it is just one example of JB’s genuine niceness.

But I need not look back nearly that far – back to Father’s Day and how she again went out of her way for me is far enough. Actually, I need only look back to earlier this morning (as I write this) to JB’s text wishing me a good day and telling me to have a nice run later this afternoon.

How was my Father’s Day? Pops Day was a masterpiece!

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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

2021 Commencement Address

by Woody

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of (2021): Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.”(1)

“The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don’t do it. I have been out there. It is a mess.”(2) “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go for it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”(3)

“Find your Passion with a capital P!”(4) “The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.”(5) “You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.”(6)

“Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.”(7) “Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.”(8) “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”(9)

“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”(10) “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”(11) “Always, always, always, always, always, always, always do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”(12) “Fortune befriends the bold.”(13)

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”(14) “You can’t achieve mountaintop dreams with downhill effort.”(15) “And will you succeed? Yes! You will indeed! 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.”(16)

“Make today your masterpiece.”(17) “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”(18) “You can’t do anything about yesterday, and the only way to improve tomorrow is by what you do right now.”(19)

“Do not judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”(20) “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”(21)

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”(22) “Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.”(23) “When you get, give; when you learn, teach.”(24)

“Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn’t always have to be their top priority.”(25) “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”(26) “If you don’t make an effort to help others less fortunate than you, then you’re just wasting your time on Earth.”(27)

“There is a good reason they call these ceremonies ‘commencement exercises’ – graduation is not the end, it’s the beginning.”(28) “When you leave here, don’t forget why you came.”(29) “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”(30)

“When you leave home, you take home with you.”(31)

(1-Mary Schmich. 2-Russell Baker. 3-Howard Thurman. 4-Wayne Bryan. 5-Eward Koch. 6-Dale Carnegie. 7-James M. Barrie. 8-Anthony J. D’Angelo. 9-Ralph Waldo Emerson 10-Ray Bradbury. 11-e.e. cummings. 12-Emerson. 13-Emily Dickinson. 14-Edmund Hillary. 15-Woody Woodburn. 16-Dr. Seuss. 17-John Wooden. 18-Mark Twain. 19-Wooden. 20-Robert Louis Stevenson. 21-Nelson Henderson. 22-Henry David Thoreau. 23-Wooden. 24-Maya Angelou. 25-William Arthur Ward. 26-Winston Churchill. 27-Wayne Bryan. 28-Orrin Hatch. 29-Adlai E. Stevenson. 30-Dr. Seuss. 31-Angelou.)

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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

 

The Bamboo Field & Sink of Dishes

by Woody

“Don’t worry that your children never listen to you,” essayist Robert Fulghum wisely wrote, “worry that they are always watching you.”

Sometimes, of course, our little ones do both. This happy insight struck me when I read a recent essay by my daughter, the best writer in the family, truly. Her words were evidence that she had taken to heart a parable I told her when she was growing up and also watched me tackle large tasks with its inspired lesson.

The big task of clearing a bamboo field happens one stalk at a time…

The story, shared with me long ago by golfing legend Chi Chi Rodriguez while recalling his childhood in Puerto Rico, goes like this: “When I was a young boy we had a little field that was overgrown with bamboo trees. My father wanted to plant corn, but clearing the bamboo would have taken a month. He didn’t have the time because of his job. So every night when he came home from work my father would cut down a single piece of bamboo.”

Chi Chi paused, dramatically, then emphasized: “Just one piece.”

Before his conclusion, let me share my daughter’s similar tale.

“This morning,” she wrote, “I woke up and felt exhausted even though my two-year-old daughter actually slept in and I was able to get a decent amount of sleep. As my husband changed her diaper, I got up to make coffee for him and tea for me.

“The kitchen was filled with dirty dishes from not just last night’s dinner, but from the past few days. I looked at those dishes and thought: Ugh! I CAN’T EVEN right now.

… juts as a cluttered sink of dirty dishes gets cleaned one dish at a time.

“My mind immediately began filling with excuses and reasons to ignore the dishes, yet again, until later. As if by putting them off until later some magical Dish Fairy would sneak into our kitchen and do them all for us. (Which does actually happen when my parents or mother-in-law or sister-in-law come over!)

“But the coffee strainer was dirty, so I had to wash that. Plus, I might as well wash my favorite mug so I could use that for my morning tea. Waiting for the kettle to boil, I did a few more dishes. And it wasn’t that hard to slot a bunch of dirty plates and bowls into the dishwasher. Already the counters looked much cleaner.

“I poured the hot water into my mug and still had a few minutes of waiting for the tea to steep, so I figured I might as well do a few more dishes. I took a sip of tea. Mmmm. Already I was feeling better, less groggy, more ready to face the day.

“My sponge was still soapy and I hate to waste some good soapsuds, so I scrubbed more pots and pans, then dried them and put them away. Meanwhile, our daughter was, miraculously, entertaining herself in her crib. This far in, I figured I might as well keep going and finish the job. And that is what I did.

“Looking around the clean kitchen, I felt so much better about the day, my life, myself. It might sound silly, but my clean kitchen made me feel more confident and capable and cheerful. Instead of a sink and counter full of dirty dishes, I now had a clean slate. And it almost didn’t happen. It started with just washing one little dish.”

Just as the bamboo field started with cutting down just one stalk.

“The very next spring, we had corn on our dinner table, “Chi Chi Rodriquez concluded with a knowing smile. “The Bamboo Story, to me, is the secret to success.”

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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

Notes, Quotes, T-Shirts and Smiles

by Woody

There is a photograph I came across recently I wish you could see. It is of a bus stop in Montreal with an elderly couple seated and waiting for their ride.

Specifically, the wife is looking at her husband with mirth on her face and even though his head is turned away from the camera, I cannot help but imagine he is also smiling with merriment because …

… they are sitting not on a bench, but on side-by-by seats of a giant swing set and have their feet up as they sail to and fro like kindergarteners.

I think the world needs more swing-set bus stops.

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            Also, I think the world needs more of us to display the attitude emblazoned on a T-shirt that basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar created in collaboration with the estate of Bruce Lee to celebrate what would have been the late martial arts movie superstar’s 80th birthday.

In college at UCLA the two were good friends who came into focus quite differently: Kareem stood 7-foot-2 while Bruce was 5-foot-8; Bruce was Asian-American and Kareem is Black. All of which makes the photograph of them clinching hands together in smiling friendship on the T-shirt with this quote from Kareem more powerful:

“Make a friend with someone who doesn’t look like you. . . you might change the world.”

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“Ganbatte” is a Japanese word I came across this week that would make for an empowering motto on a T-shirt.

Translated, “ganbatte” (gan-bare) means “do your best” and is frequently used by cheering crowds during marathons. But “ganbatte” is more than a passing encouragement for good luck – it is an exhortation centered on the idea of hard work and perseverance in the face of adversity.

In other words, “don’t give up.”

Or, to paraphrase Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s coach in college, John Wooden: “Ganbatte (success) is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”

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            Far too long to fit on a T-shirt, this unattributed wisdom made me smile – all the more so because my grown daughter and son were both home for the long Memorial Day weekend and brought some laundry with them…

“Come home and bring your laundry. I don’t understand the whole ‘I got them to 18’ method as a parent. Having children is a LIFETIME commitment. Maybe I’m just different, but I want my kids to come take groceries and toilet paper out of my cabinets when they are 25. I want them to stop for dinner when it is their favorite meal at age 34. I want to watch their eyes sparkle when they are opening gifts they wanted for Christmas at 40. I want them to know I’m one call away and it doesn’t stop at age 18. They are forever my kids, not temporary assignments!

And, yes, my wife cooked our 34- and 31-year-olds their favorite meals – a fancy chicken dish and comfort-food mashed potatoes for the girl; cheese-stuffed pasta shells and meatballs for the boy – and we sent them home with groceries.

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On the recent May 25th birth date of Ralph Waldo Emerson I came across this gem of his that should be taught to kindergarteners on playground swings and reminded to senior citizens on bus-stop swings: “You cannot do a kindness too soon because you will never know when it’s too late.”

Similarly, it’s never too soon to do your best – ganbatte! – to make a friend with someone doesn’t look like you.

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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