Category Archives: Columns

Golden Thoughts and Green Flashes

by Woody

In “Tortilla Flats,” John Steinbeck’s first novel of critical acclaim, the great author wrote: “Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”

As are my thoughts while running any time of the day.

Late afternoon is my preferred time to be fast afoot, after finishing my writing day at the keyboard, and therefore my slow and deep and golden thoughts often stretch into the golden hour of sunset. It is difficult to imagine a day, even one that has already been a masterpiece—but especially a salt-in-the-coffee kind of day—not being made sweeter while savoring a sunset during a run when the sky becomes a child’s finger painting in progress, a kaleidoscope of grape and strawberry colors swirling and flowing Van Gogh-like.

My favorite sunsets are seascapes. Of these, the most magical—and which I have seen only twice, both times while pausing during beach runs—feature a “green flash” when, at the exact instant the sun fully melts into the water’s horizon, there truly is a rare bright-green pinpoint flash of sunlight.

A sunset in Hawaii, albeit with no green flash…

On each occasion—the first running barefoot on the bronze-hued sand in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; next in training shoes along a two-lane beachside road in Kona, Hawaii—I resumed my run feeling like I had a rising trade wind at my back and Hermes-like wings on my ankles.

On the same run that I saw the green flash in Kona, I momentarily watched two fishermen—one was a fisherboy, actually; grandfather and grandson, I surmised, the latter maybe ten years old. Though they were surfcasting, my thoughts turned to fly-fishing because it is the angling art my grandfather favored and gave me instruction in when I was a fisherboy.

The lessons were less than fully successful as I never mastered the rhythmic ten-to-two-o’clock ideal casting motion of the rod tip. Or, perhaps, what I learned simply took a good long while for me to appreciate because I now think running is my version of fly-fishing, affording respite from life’s busyness; a slice of quietude in a loud world; a brief escape from what needs escaping; time to myself for thoughts that are slow and deep and golden.

When I am out running on a beach or bike path, road or grass field, I am my father’s father patiently casting a hand-tied fly into a brook or stream or pond or lake. “The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent fishing,” Grandpa Ansel liked to say, quoting an old proverb, and this is my adopted rationale as well for my hours spent running—for which I celebrated my 23rd “Streakiversary” earlier this week of having run a minimum of three miles every single day since July 7, 2003.

Playful epigram aside, from time to time I ask myself: Is time spent running time well spent? After all, as Ernest Hemingway poignantly added in a postscript to a letter to a friend: “Time is the least thing we have of.”

My daily hour or two dedicated to running is not precious time misspent, the gods would agree with me I have come to believe, because it leaves me, as Walt Whitman wrote of walking, “enriched of soul.”

More angler wisdom, this time from Henry David Thoreau: “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

My own flash—green flash!—of insight from my Streak: it is not entirely the run I am after.

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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.

Appreciating What You Will Miss

by Woody

From my column archives, originally running in July of 2012, now updated slightly…

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“My kids. Nick. Spring. Fall. Waffles. The concept of waffles. Bacon.”

These are the first few things writer-filmmaker Nora Ephron listed in her short essay titled “What I Will Miss” in her fine, and final, book: “I Remember Nothing And Other Reflections.”

Also: “A walk in the park. The idea of a walk in the park. The park. Shakespeare in the Park. The bed. Reading in bed.”

It is a superb essay, like all of Ephron’s writing, but when I read it – not in bed, for I am not an in-bed reader – I remember thinking it seemed out of place; she was too young; this piece was for a future book.

I had missed the clues that seem so obvious now, such as the previous essay “What I Won’t Miss” (“Dry skin. E-mail. Funerals. Small print…”) and the Acknowledgements page that concluded, “And also, of course, my doctors.”

Like the marvelous writer she was, Ephron had told us without telling us. She was battling leukemia. A battle she lost the first week of summer in 2012 at age 71.

Here is what I hope, that Ephron wrote “What I Will Miss” long before she first became ill, under a different title, perhaps “What I Love Now.” Such a list is something we should all write, right now, whatever our age, to help us more fully appreciate these things today.

In this spirit here is a short rundown, off the top of my head, of “What I Love Now”…

My four young grandchildren. My two kids and their spouses. My wife. Family and great friends – and Murray, our boxer, who is both. (Murray, sadly, is now on my “What I Miss Now” list.)

The beach. The ocean. “The Old Man And The Sea.”

The Ventura Pier. The Channel Islands. A Pacific sunset with clouds painted in the sky the colors of flames.

Yosemite Falls. Niagara Falls. The fall colors.

Summer. Daylight Saving Time. Watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.

The smell of sunscreen, the smell in the air after it rains, the smell of Thanksgiving all afternoon long.

Fleetwood Mac. The Beatles. The Who. James Taylor.

Running along the beach, any beach; in a park, especially New York’s Central Park; in the sun, in the rain, in a road race; and the adventures of running in a new place.

Every book by my hero John Steinbeck, my daughter Dallas Woodburn, and my dearest of friends Ken McAlpine.

Newspapers. (Sadly, again, these are rapidly joining my “I Miss” list.)

A hot shower. A warm bed. A cold pint. Not in that order.

John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” and my favorite Wooden-ism: “Make each day your masterpiece.”

The last moments awake in bed after a long, full, masterpiece day. Even better with the sound of rain on the roof.

The sound of Vin Scully on the radio. (“I Miss.”)

Date nights. Van Gogh’s Starry Night. A personal museum of paintings by my son.

The simple grace and quiet strength of trees and rivers – and some people. People who have empathy and authenticity. Curious people who never stop learning.

Chocolate-chip ice cream. Chocolate-chip cookies. Chocolate chips. Chocolate.

Finishing writing something that I feel is as good as I can do.

Movies, which for this list today seems fitting to pick three by Nora Ephron, even though I get them confused: “When Harry Met Sally”, “Sleepless In Seattle”, and “You’ve Got Mail.”

And yes, waffles instead of pancakes, definitely.

My grandchildren. My kids and their spouses. Lisa. I know I already said this, but I want to emphasize it.

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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.

Wheels of Fortunate Kindness

by Woody

Three short stories, all taking place recently and involving wheels, but linked even more so by kindness.

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My writing desk in an upstairs loft overlooks an orchard and a well-traveled road. Every now and then I look up from my laptop and enjoy the view, and so it was the other morning I saw an SUV pull over and stop on the dirt shoulder abruptly enough to raise a small dust storm.

With the hazard taillights blinking, a woman driver got out and walked to the passenger side where she stood with phone in hand to her ear.

A short moment later, far too quickly for the person she had called to already arrive, a car so clean it could have just come from a car wash – and certainly would now need a rinse – stopped on the side of the road directly behind the SUV.

A male driver, seemingly middle-aged like the woman, got out and talked with her. From afar, they did not seem to know each other, much less be a husband coming to his wife’s aid.

He was, I believe, simply a Good Samaritan who had stopped, and stayed until a tow truck arrived, then left without a quick kiss or hug goodbye one would expect from a couple.

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A second tale, also involving four wheels, this time on a grocery cart.

Instead of a clichéd lone wobbly wheel, it was a lonely gentleman pushing the cart who seemed a little unsteady. This was certainly to be expected because, judging from his “World War II Air Force” ball cap, he was well into his 90s.

As I walked toward the store’s entrance, I watched across the way as the veteran returned his cart, quite far, to the return rack, a slow walk that seemed to take great effort.

It is said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who return their carts and those who don’t. When I exited the grocery, I learned there is a third category: a rare person who returns multiple stray carts, for the WWII vet was now bringing back a cart back from a different area of the parking lot.

While I had only bought a single bag’s worth of groceries, and thus had no cart to return, I was now inspired to retrieve what appeared to be (for now) the last orphaned cart.

When I crossed paths with the nonagenarian, he offered me a handshake and said, “You’re a good man.” Surveying the parking lot, he added: “It looks much better. I think I’ll go home now.”

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A third scene, this time featuring a two-wheeler.

The bicycle was of the e-bike variety that are, too often, ridden too fast and too carelessly. Kid e-cyclists, especially, seem to make drivers hit their brakes and pedestrians jump from harm’s way.

And yet the other day I saw a gang of teen e-bikers riding around at a local park, safely and sanely, laughing contagiously and bothering no one.

The best part, however, was when one of the kids peeled away from his friends and raced across a soccer field; jumped off his e-bike almost before it had come to a compete skidding stop; looked both ways for traffic; then ran into the street to retrieve an errant soccer ball before a car flattened it.

The teen boy hopped back on his e-bike, fully inflated rescued soccer ball under one arm, and delivered it to a youth player on the field.

I am certain the WWII vet would have given him a handshake.

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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.

Father’s Day: Experiencing Poetic Role Reversal

by Woody

This Sunday will be my son’s third Father’s Day and one of my own greatest joys as a dad has been watching him as a dad.

Truth be told, I actually got a glimpse of my son as a father a decade ago when a line of poetry by William Wordsworth – “The Child is father to the Man” – played out when I was visiting him, then 27 years old, in New York City.

I embraced this turnabout as happily as I embraced him at the airport. In fact, his surprise greeting at baggage claim was the beginning of our role reversals.

I had planned to take the subway from JFK and meet my son at his apartment in Lower Manhattan. Worried about me navigating the subway system, he covertly trekked out to meet me. A very father-like thing.

This played out again and again the rest of my visit: my son insisted on carrying my luggage; gave me his bed; lent me the jacket off his back when the night air turned cold.

Father and son-turned-father and his son…

The most dramatic way my Child was father to this Man occurred when, in similar fashion to how I used to take him to Ventura’s now shuttered H.P. Wright Library, he took me to the venerable New York Public Library.

On the way there, I was jostled in a rugby-like scrum getting on a crowded subway car and my right index finger got sliced open, as if by a long stroke of a potato feeler, by the closing door. Firm pressure with a napkin largely stanched the bleeding.

We exited at the next stop and my son located a pharmacy and bought Band-Aids and tape. But when I removed the napkin the red floodgates reopened.

“I’m taking you to get stitches right now,” the Child-turned-father-of-the-Man demanded.

At Urgent Care, my son signed me in and did all the necessary paperwork. He even accompanied me into the treatment room as had I with him numerous times long ago.

The first anesthetic injection made me curse and the second was even worse, bringing tears to my eyes. The whole while my son held my other hand and told me how brave I was being. He then distracted me with laughter – kept me in stitches, if you will – as I received 18 sutures.

To be honest, the painful mishap was worth the experience of seeing this side of my boy-turned-man.

For the remainder of my visit he kept the tables turned. He changed my bandage. He focused our itinerary on me. He led and I followed.

At a jazz club one evening, my son and I arrived early and were rewarded with the best table in the joint. Moments before the performance began, however, the manager asked if we would consider changing places with an elderly couple too feeble physically to sit on tall stools in the rear of the room.

Because my son and I are tall, the manager felt we could still see the show but emphasized: “You really don’t need to. I just wanted to ask.”

Without a beat’s pause, my son replied with enthusiastic sincerity: “Of course they can have our seats.”

We went from first row to worst row – and I could not have been happier or more proud.

Wordsworth’s poem also includes this stanza: “My heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky.”

So, too, does my heart leap up beholding the kind of Man my Child has become, and the rainbow of a father Greg is to little Jayden and his big sister Amara.

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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.

Commencement Address for Classes of 2026

by Woody

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of (2026): 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 cannot 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)

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(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-Ralph Waldo Emerson. 13-Emily Dickinson. 14-Edmund Hillary. 15-Woody Woodburn. 16-Dr. Seuss. 17-John Wooden. 18-Mark Twain. 19-John Wooden. 20-Robert Louis Stevenson. 21-Nelson Henderson. 22-Henry David Thoreau. 23-John 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-Maya Angelou.)

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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.

This, That, The Other And More

by Woody

As coincidence would have it, just as I finished another personal lap around the sun I also finished filling a notebook with thoughts about this, that, and the other – mostly my own musings, but some quotes from other people as well.

This particular notebook – journal is more accurate, I suppose – is roughly the size of a pocket paperback and bound in leather of deep-sea blue hue with a hundred or so pages and came from the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.

Since I was in need of a column for today, and since serendipity smiled, here are some Woody-isms from its pages . . .

If someone asks if your glass is half-full or half-empty, a good response is: “You want half of the half?”

A small kindness from a friend is nice, but sometimes it is even more wonderful and heartwarming when a kindness comes from a stranger.

Note to self: Try to be a kind stranger more often.

I believe this is a proven scientific fact beyond challenge: Leftovers taste best cold out of the refrigerator, straight from the container, while leaning over the kitchen sink.

An eagle builds its nest stick by stick by stick, flight by flight by flight – building a dream into reality requires the persistence and patience of an eagle.

Leftovers for breakfast are the best of all.

Today is a steppingstone to tomorrow; you cannot skip any stones on your path to building your own eagle’s nest.

Sometimes one of the nicest favors you can do for someone is to ask a favor of them.

Spreading rumors is bad, but listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” remains great.

I do not fully believe in small acts of kindness because I don’t fully believe any act of kindness is small.

It is a lot harder to climb a mountain with heavy regrets in your backpack.

A better Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto your children – or, better yet, your grandchildren.

Sometimes, oftentimes in truth, my favorite adults resemble are kids who have simply grown tall and old.

When it comes to cold food, pizza is even better than ice cream.

One’s character can be a puddle, pond, lake, or sea – strive to be deep.

It is better to express condolences awkwardly than to say nothing at all – if it comes from the heart, even clumsily, it will reach the heart.

Courage is making your first guess in Wordle a one-vowel word.

You cannot achieve mountaintop goals with downhill effort.

At a holiday gathering, or any gathering for that matter, the dinner table always(!) has room for one more.

In the heart there is also always(!) room for one more.

Sometimes the ocean churns or has a dangerous riptide, but always(!) the ocean sings again with pleasure – so keep swimming through hard times.

You don’t raise up others by raising your voice – other than cheering(!) on the side of the marathon road or in the bleachers.

Love and dreams will carry you far in life – especially love.

A good daily goal: Learn something worth sharing – and then do so.

Grace is to forgive someone not just for what they have done, but also for what they have failed to do.

I have a dear friend who is a terrific writer, yet his heart and grace exceed his art and that is no small thing – I want to be more like him.

Hemingway, coming full circle, said “courage is grace under pressure” but courage is also doing a crossword puzzle in ink rather than with a pencil.

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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.

Story From An Enchanted Keyboard

by Woody

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

For example, my novel in progress features an enchanted typewriter upon which some things that are typed magically come true. To illustrate how this art imitates life, let me share something I typed in the spring of 1987:

“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 QWERTY keyboard I wrote that column on proved enchanted indeed. Sure, there have been some stone-stubbed toes and stepped-on thorns in Dallas’s 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.

Walking my preemie “fighter” down the wedding aisle!

Dallas came into the world by emergency Cesarean section because my wife’s preeclampsia, a life-threatening collection of syllables for fetus and mother alike, spiked rapidly. Santa Maria did not have a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, so a four-person team of specialists flew in 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 had recently eaten this was not possible. Holding our new daughter also proved not possible because mother and child both required continued emergency care.

Hours crawled by with my fears rising before a doctor finally came to tell me I had a daughter. “She’s a real fighter,” he added assuredly and she needed to be.

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

In one of the kindest acts I have ever experienced, and ever will, a surgical nurse opened one of the round portals and told me to place my hand on Dallas’s tiny, spindly, delicate torso. In the coming days, for two months, 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 such time to spare.

With urgency, yet calmly, the angelic nurse said Dallas had not yet felt skin-to-skin contact because Lisa was 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 time your daughter ever feels skin-to-skin touch.

Thermal air escaped the open portal as I timidly reached into the high-tech Plexiglas womb, carefully avoiding a web of wires, tubes, and monitors, and ever so gently placed my hand on Dallas’s 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-inch-long 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 and is an avid hiker today.

Too, Dallas has enjoyed proms and roses and four-leaf clovers; a wedding day and motherhood and dreams achieved; and today, May 29, celebrates a miraculously happy 39th birthday.

Yes, my enchanted keyboard induced some real-life magic.

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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.

“And therefore He made mothers”

by Woody

More than a century ago, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May a national holiday in honor of mothers.

Along with moms, two big beneficiaries were a pair of fledging companies, both founded four years earlier: Florists’ Telegraph Delivery Association, better known as FTD, the country’s first flowers-by-mail service; and Hall Brothers Greeting Cards, which would later rebrand as Hallmark.

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother,” Abraham Lincoln once said, a sentiment worthy of gracing a Hallmark card for the rest of us to share with our own moms.

The great writer Rudyard Kipling perhaps put it best of all: “God could not be everywhere and therefore He made mothers.”

Motherhood, like God, is in the details. There are more examples of angel mothers’ godliness in small things than there are stars in the Milky Way, but here is one: Any sandwich tastes better when it is made by your mom for she always adds one extra ingredient – love – and, of course, knows if you prefer it cut in half diagonally or straight across.

The magic touch of moms extends far beyond sandwiches. Even when you are an adult, you will sleep sounder in a bed made by Mom; even when the same laundry detergent is used, clothes smell and feel better when Mom washes and folds them; and no hug can top Mom’s!

Yes, a mom’s love is in the details. One more example, from Mother’s Day a year ago. Our son and his young family came to visit, and my wife Lisa remembered that Greg and his lovely bride Jess favor a certain brand of non-alcoholic ginger beer that is hard to find. Lisa did not fail to find it.

Being a mom, Lisa also bought an extra six-pack for them to take home, along with two grocery bags filled with a cornucopia of favorite foods of theirs, and one-year-old Amara’s too.

While packing up to leave, Greg accidentally dropped a bottle of ginger beer on the kitchen floor and it exploded like a hand grenade with amber glass shards and bigger shrapnel flying everywhere. As messes go, it was a non-boozy doozy.

Lisa, bless her mommy heart, just laughed and asked her little boy if he was okay; asked him to step away carefully so he did not cut himself; told him not only that she would clean it up, but that she had been meaning to mop the floor anyway; all in a voice as sweet as when Greg was five and still called Greggie, for she did not want him crying over spilled milk – or spilled ginger beer.

Making the memory truly magical, however, is what happened next: Lisa’s little boy shooed her out of the kitchen so she would not get hurt, then swept up the glass and mopped the tile floor. The greeting card and flowers he had given her were nice, but this was the sweeter gift.

With this Sunday being Mother’s Day, let me close with another Hall Brothers card-worthy quote, from early-20th-century author Dorothy Canfield Fisher: “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”

Wise words figuratively, yet sometimes literally leaning is wonderful. I say this after recently watching Greg, a little boy grown into a 6-foot-3 man, lean down and wrap his mom in a cocoon-like hug while resting his chin on her head. Lisa’s smile and eyes closed in contentment were evidence that any day with a child is a mother’s special day.

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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.

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.”

* * *

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.