Monthly Archives: April 2026

The Bamboo Field and 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 our little ones do both. This happy insight struck me when my daughter shared a scene from her morning, her retelling evidence that she indeed took to heart a parable I told her when she was growing up and also watched me tackle large tasks with its inspired lesson.

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,” Dallas said, “I woke up feeling exhausted even though my two young daughters actually slept in and I was able to get a decent amount of sleep. As my husband got them dressed, 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.

“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 only actually happens 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, Maya and Auden, miraculously, were entertaining themselves in the playroom. 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 one single stalk of bamboo being cut down is how Chi Chi’s father started his daunting task.

“Just one piece, every night,” Chi Chi emphasized, concluding with a smile: “The very next spring, we had corn on our dinner table. The Bamboo Story, to me, is the secret to success.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody 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.

Music Between Sightseeing Highlights

by Woody

“The music is not in the notes,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is widely attributed to have noted, “but in the silence between.”

Similarly, the magic of travel is sometimes surprisingly found between landmark sites and famous sights.

So it was on a recent trip My Much Better Half and I took to New Zealand and Australia. The magic began in the airport, in a terminal restaurant, in a booth next to a father having dinner with two of the most adorable children imaginable – a daughter perhaps age 5 and a son surely not yet 1.

This family of three was just a delight to watch; the father held the boy lovingly in one arm as he ate with the other; the daughter, sitting across the table, had the manners and charm to match the princess-like dress she was wearing; when her brother, wearing a bow tie on this obviously special occasion, began to fidget, she made him giggle with an elixir of dancing facial expressions and a voice on the edge being a song.

Many, many years ago, on a trip when my daughter and son were not much older than this pair, a sweet stranger secretively paid the restaurant tab for us. Now, alas, the server said their bill had already been settled. Instead, I could only offer the father a compliment on his beautiful family.

And here came the real magic, for he said, nodding at the boy: “We just got him today.”

Was this an adoption homecoming trip? I did not ask, but I knew this: Our trip Down Under had just begun with our lips turned up into smiles.

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A bookend airport scene filled with love occurred two days later, for we skipped a full date in flight, upon our arrival in Auckland.

As MMBH and I crossed the threshold into the arrivals reception area, a man I guessed to be in his 50s raced ahead of us into the open arms of a similarly aged man eagerly awaiting him. It was a vision out of a movie, complete with a long embrace that lifted one of the two off his feet; an embrace that went on and on; an embrace that was accompanied by wet eyes.

It was, I surmised initially, a lovers’ embrace. Or, perhaps, two long-lost old friends reunited? No and no – siblings, it turned out, for as I walked by I overheard one call the other, “Little Brother.”

My new smile widened further when I imagined, half a century from now, the young girl from the LAX restaurant running through an airport to happily and tearfully embrace her little brother.

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Of the many unexpected sounds of music between the notes on this trip, here is one more.

New Zealand is renowned for its wines, and so MMBH and I toured a handful of wineries. The smallest one, off the beaten path, proved to be our favorite.

Its wonderful nectars, however, were not the reason.

With the seating all taken, we found an open spot against a wall to stand and sample two flights. Before either of us had finished our first small pour, a young woman walked across the room to invite us to join her party of four at their table.

“Party,” literally, because these friendly Kiwis – two sisters, one brother, and a husband – were celebrating a 30th birthday. The birthday boy kid brother, naturally, was the playful target of much laughter, and it was a joy to be included in this special occasion.

Indeed, singing “Happy Birthday” was more unexpected music on this trip.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody 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.

Ghosts in the Dressing Rooms

by Woody

The only thing special about the doorway was how un-special it appeared. Yet to enter was to pass through a portal as magical as the wardrobe in the beloved novel by C. S. Lewis.

Instead of traveling to Narnia, I not long ago stepped across a threshold from 2026 into 1878.

A white sign above the entryway, in a simple print font in black, read: “AWAY Dressing Room.” Along with its antiquated “HOME” counterpart, the visitor’s quarters are located inside the original Members Pavilion of the historic Sydney Cricket Ground and date back to the first cricket match played in the stadium 148 years ago. Nearly unchanged now from then, both Spartan rooms are still used by today’s stars.

The away dressing room is not a locker room for it has no lockers. Instead, wooden cubby units, each about a foot wide and five-feet high with one shelf at the top, line the walls with uncomfortable wood-slatted benches between groupings of two. Above every bench are three simple metal hooks, a modern upgrade from once-upon-a-time nails.

The cubbies are not without some magic for they are adorned with names and initials carved by pocketknives or scratched with nails, and also written in pencil and markers of blue and red and black. One can almost feel ghosts in the room and imagine not only yesteryear, but yester-century.

The rectangular dressing area is about the size of a wealthy man’s walk-in closet and connects, up four red-tiled steps, to a smaller room with showers, sinks, toilets.

The brick walls throughout are covered by layer upon layer of paint, thick as face makeup on an aging stage actress, the current color being the same cream as throwback cricket flannels.

A couple windows and a single fan hanging from high overhead serve as air conditioning. The ceiling, covered with pressed tin tiles, also features bare metal pipes running along two sides. Only a short florescent tube light betrays the 19th century.

The home dressing room and showers are larger, but not grandly so, although it does have true locker stalls and padded benches. “The home-team advantage,” our tour guide said unapologetically.

My favorite piece of nostalgia was a piece of yellowed paper, slightly larger than a placemat, displayed proudly and prominently above the doorway to be seen when exiting the home dressing room. It is a note, protected behind glass, handwritten by Sir Donald Bradman, the Babe Ruth of Australian cricket players. In easily legible cursive, in blue ink, with his underlined one-word signature “DGBradman” and date “10/12/28” at the bottom, it reads:

If it’s difficult / I’ll do it now

If it’s impossible / I’ll do it presently

The movie “Dead Poets Society” instantly came to my mind, and heart, specifically the scene when English teacher John Keating, played by Robin Williams, addresses his male teenage students in front of a venerable trophy case. The youthful faces in the century-old photographs within were once just like them, he says, full of passion and hopes and dreams and feelings of invincibility, but are now “fertilizing daffodils.”

“We are all food for worms, lads,” Mr. Keating continues, then memorably concludes by telling the boys the Latin term carpe diem – seize the day.

I imagined Sir Bradman, and the other star lads whose names adorn the wood-paneled lists of batting and bowling feats hanging in the two timeless dressing rooms, back when they were young and in their prime hitting “sixes” and throwing “jaffas” before becoming worm food.

Carpe diem. Do it now. Do it presently. The daffodils may bloom tomorrow.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody 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.