Category Archives: Columns

Dear New Graduates, Be ‘Stonecatchers’

by Woody

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

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With graduation season upon us, I would like to share with the Classes of 2025 an excerpt from my novel “The Butterfly Tree.”

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“Where’re we going, Grandpa?”

“It’s a surprise,” Tavis told his nine-old twin grandsons riding in the backseat.

“Give us a hint,” Moswen pleaded.

“What’re we gonna do when we get there?” Lemuel joined in.

“Catch stones,” Tavis said, sunshine in his voice. “You’re gonna be Stonecatchers.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Lem said warily.

“And fun!” Mos animatedly added.

Tavis glanced in the rearview mirror at the boys; their smiles contagiously jumped to his lips.

“Grandpa, are you a Stonecatcher?”

“I try to be,” Tavis said.

“Do you catch the stones with a baseball mitt?”

“We didn’t bring our mitts.”

“You won’t need your baseball gloves,” Tavis assured.

“Who throws the stones?”

“Do they throw ’em hard?”

“Are the rocks big?”

The questions came like pitches in an automated batting cage with too little time between for answers.

“Time out, time out!” Tavis interrupted. “Listen up and I’ll tell you all about the mysteries of being a Stonecatcher.”

Mos and Lem leaned forward against the restraint of seatbelts, eager to hear a magical tale.

“Stonecatchers don’t actually catch stones,” their grandpa began. “Well, I suppose a long, long time ago they did and that’s where the name comes from. When someone hurled a stone at a person who was unable to defend him or herself, the Stonecatcher jumped in and caught the flying rock.

“But nowadays a Stonecatcher is someone who helps another person who is defenseless or in need – like protecting them from a bully, or buying a homeless person a meal, or donating blood to save someone who’s ill. You can think of a Stonecatcher as a Good Samaritan.

“Lem – Mos – you boys come from a long proud heritage of Stonecatchers.”

“We do?” they said in stereo.

“Oh, yes,” Tavis resumed. “Your many greats-great-grandfather, Dr. Lemuel Jamison, was a Stonecatcher who adopted identical twins when they lost their mother and father. He had actually saved the twins’ lives when they were born and thus they were named Jamis and Lemuel – your namesake, Lem – in his honor.

“Those twins’ real father, Tamás – that’s where your middle name comes from, Mos – was a Stonecatcher by helping your five-times-great-grandfather, Sawney Jordan, escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad. Sawney, in turn, was a fearless Stonecatcher because he swam into bullet fire trying to rescue Tamás who had been shot.

“Yes, the Jamisons and Jordans have been filled with Stonecatchers. Your Grandpa Flynn was a Stonecatcher for America in the Vietnam War. And Grandma Love was a Stonecatcher for your daddy when he was young and lost and needed a roof over his head – and, most of all, needed some love.

“I’m definitely proud of the Stonecatchers your parents are. They’re always helping others in big ways and little ways – sometimes it’s the small acts that turn out to be the biggest ones.

“For example, it’s hard to imagine a simple Hello, how’re you doing today? being important. But to someone who’s having a bad day, that small gesture can mean the world.

“I read a story about a boy who was planning to run away from home because he had no friends. That very day at school, during lunch, a classmate saw him sitting off by himself and went over and ate with him. They had a nice conversation and the dejected boy changed his mind because he no longer felt so lonesome. You see, being a Stonecatcher doesn’t always require bravery – sometimes kindness is all that’s needed.

“Mos – Lem – I expect you boys to be Stonecatchers. I want you to go sit with the person who’s all alone. I want you to cheer for the teammate who rarely gets off the bench. I want you to stand up to the bully who picks on others.

“And right now, I want you to help me paint the kitchen for a lovely elderly lady. Her name is Jewell. That’s how we’ll be Stonecatchers today.”

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Dear newly minted graduates, as you venture out into the world and pursue your dreams, please be Stonecatchers along the way.

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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.

Beautiful Mosaic of Memorial Rocks

by Woody

Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Some people have rocks in their head.

Others have hearts of stone.

And then there is a recent visitor to Ventura, a man of Baby Boomer age and reportedly from New York, who was caught on video proving he suffers from both sedimentary maladies.

Imagine a vandal toppling gravestones in a cemetery and you get an idea of what this king of jerks from Queens did at the memorial rock garden that graces a raised cement planter along our beach promenade.

Specifically, The Jerk ruthlessly threw into the ocean some of the beautiful rocks decorated to honor lost loved ones. Watching the detestable act, posted widely on social media, made my heart feel like it had been stung by a hundred jellyfish.

If you have never visited this special garden of stones, you are missing out. It is one of the loveliest little jewels of a place you can image, affording a view of the ocean and the music of breaking waves and this sunny greeting on a tiny sign: “Welcome to Haole’s Memorial Rock Garden / Please leave memorial rocks for all to enjoy!”

Haole was a dog, a Yellow Lab albeit with white fur, who was famous because he surfed. Indeed, Haole once appeared on “Good Morning America” and also stars in a book, “Ride the Wave: Love Sofia and Haole the Surf Dog,” which is the true story of how he helped teach a little girl with Down syndrome to “walk on water.”

After Haole died five summers past, the memorial garden was planted with its first rock and today blooms with many hundreds, if not a thousand or more. The mini-markers come in many sizes and shapes, although most are round or oval, and more than a few are heart-shaped. Almost all are pleasingly smooth as if selected with great care.

What makes these stones true gems is they are hand-painted with flowers and hearts, sunsets and rainbows, paw prints and palm trees, angel wings and crosses, with R.I.P. wishes and other heartwarming messages along with the names of loved ones – pets, yes, but also human moms and dads and spouses and siblings and friends. Many are true works of art and all are works from the heart.

Together, this colorful avalanche creates a mosaic worthy of comparison to a stained glass window in a church, which is fitting because this comely corner of the seaside seems like an outdoor temple. As such, it is common to see people – pedestrians and cyclists and rollerbladers; alone and in couples and small groups – stop and visit, pause and ponder, remember and pray. Some search for the rocks they have previously left here while others leave new stones now.

One rock in Haole’s memorial garden is especially dear to me because I know its honoree as well as the artist, my 6-year-old granddaughter, who lovingly decorated it. When Maya learned that my good friend Nick’s dog recently crossed the rainbow bridge, she found a stream-polished rock, palm-sized and oval; cleaned it and painted on swirls of deep blue and sea-glass green, and added white stars; then, in her neatest kindergarten printing, in black marker wrote: “Henry.”

Coincidentally, Henry’s rock was placed at the southernmost tip of Haole’s garden, precisely where The Jerk committed his briny desecration. I went to check and was relieved to find “Henry” still resting in peace in view of the Ventura Pier. I hope the memorial stones that were tossed into the ocean can be, or have been, retrieved at low tide.

One Jerk cannot wipe out Haole’s four-legged legacy.

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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.

Charlotte’s web proves mesmerizing

by Woody

Woody’s bebut novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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On the French Riviera, in little Villefranche-Sur-Mer, which is a short train ride from Nice, there is a seaside bar – or brasserie – appropriately named “The Good Mood” because how could one not have some helium in their heart while enjoying a glass of wine or pint of beer at an outdoor two-top table overlooking a postcard bay filled with sailboats aplenty and a few swimmers, with gentle waves rolling onto a picturesque beach populated by frolickers and sunbathers.

And so, were I asked to describe the café or pub or brasserie with the most-beautiful view I have ever experienced, I would be strongly tempted to answer The Good Mood or else a good-mood-inducing bar on the beach in Kona, Hawaii…

…but, at the risk of seeming overly provincial, I would ignore these temptations and offer forth MadeWest Brewing Company’s location atop the iconic Ventura Pier with its sweeping panoramic view of the ocean and Channel Islands afar, and near shore surfers doing their water dancing and beachgoers strolling and kids building sandcastles and teens tossing Frisbees and adults playing volleyball and on and on. And, oh yes, a sunset on the French Riviera is, in my experience, a pale imitation of the painter’s palette of colors routinely brushed across our coastal sky with Anacapa and Santa Cruz islands turning purple in the background.

In a good mood myself recently as I savored this masterpiece scenery and sipped an award-winning Hazy IPA, my focus unexpectedly narrowed and nature’s beauty became lost on me like someone turning a blind eye to a museum’s showing of Monet masterpieces.

What stole my attention was Charlotte. Now, I do not know if that is really her name, but I imagined it to be. I do know that I stared at her for the longest time, rudely long, long enough to have a second pint largely as an excuse to keep from taking my eyes off her.

Oh, I should mention that Charlotte was a spider. She was on the other side of the window directly before me, as close to my eyes as my computer screen is as I write this, and was building a new web. She began by rappelling from an eave, like an expert rock climber, while spinning a bridge line to serve as the anchor.

Charlotte proceeded to move up and down, and back and forth, adding thread after thread in all directions. She did this seemingly with the innate calculations of an MIT engineer, even accounting for the salty breeze to swing her sideways; with the skill of a Chiricahua basket weaver; with the grace and pace of Picasso filling a canvas.

The easy onshore winds, while adding difficulty to her chore, might also prove advantageous by helping guide flies into the finished death trap. The location was further ideal because, come evening’s darkness, the lights inside the window might attract moths.

I do not know what Charlotte dined on that night, but I did stay long enough to see her delicate tapestry woven to masterful completion. In the span of barely more than an hour, the central hub grew from the size of a beer coaster to big as my splayed hand to larger than a dinner plate.

And here is the most amazing thing about this Charlotte’s web; just as author E. B. White’s famous Charlotte wove the messages “Terrific”, “Radiant”, “Humble”, and “Some Pig” into her web, my happy hour buddy spun into hers “Better View Than The French Riviera” and “Some IPA.”

Admittedly, my vision was by now a little Hazy.

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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.

Advice for Easter Egg Hiders, Seekers

by Woody

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

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From Woody’s column archives, April of 2011…

Word to the wise from someone who learned the hard way: always, always, always triple count the Easter eggs before hiding them. An errant tally can result in the belief that all of the dyed eggs have been found only to discover, thanks to your complaining nose, one overlooked-too-well-hidden rotten hardboiled egg a few months later.

My second piece of advice for this coming Easter Sunday festivities is aimed not for adult egg hiders, but rather for little egg hunters. It is wisdom shared with me more than half-a-century ago by my two older brothers.

Growing up in the 1960s most everything my big bros did I wanted to do. I idolized them even more than I did Batman and Superman, no small thing considering I used to wear a bath towel pinned around my neck like a superhero cape to kindergarten.

In many ways, Jimmy and Doug were father figures to me. How to hold the laces just right and throw a football spiral, they taught me. How to shoot a basketball with backspin and block out for rebounds using your butt and elbows, they taught me.

How to ride a two-wheeler, they taught me that, too, taking turns running beside me holding the seat to help me balance until after a while—and without me realizing it—I was wobbling on my own down the sidewalk as they watched and cheered me on.

Around the block I continued, solo, but when I triumphantly came back around, Jimmy and Doug were gone. Mom had called us all inside for dinner. Unfortunately, my brothers had neglected to give me instructions on how to use the coaster brakes and stop. So around the block I went a second time, and a third, and still no one was waiting to help me safely stop without falling.

Falling, of course, is how I eventually braked and, knee scraped, broke into tears. It was not the first, nor last, time my brothers played a role in my waterworks. One memorable time was when they convinced me I had “upside-down ears.” My anguish was magnified because their description was pretty much on target. They even stuck ears wrong-side-up into Mr. Potato Head and declared it my new twin.

While Jimmy and Doug picked on me at times, they would not let anyone else get away with dong so. Indeed, I always knew they had my back in big ways and small. An example of the latter was the annual Easter Egg Hunt at our elementary school where the huge playground field was awash with Styrofoam eggs in rainbow colors plus a few rare golden ones that earned a special prize.

As you can imagine, when the whistle blew there was a mad dash and instant mayhem 20 strides from the starting line as youngsters greedily swarmed to gather up the first eggs they came to.

I would have joined this early feeding frenzy had Jimmy and Doug not coached me to race straight to the far fence, a hundred yards away, as fast as my 6-year-old legs would carry me because they knew from experience that was where the prize-winning eggs always lay. Sure enough, while other kids filled their baskets with way more bounty, I triumphantly—and annually—came back with a coveted Willy Wonka Golden Ticket egg.

So, kids, listen to my big brothers and sprint to the far end of your Easter egg hunts. The young me was certainly glad I didn’t let this sage advice go in one of my “upside-down ears” and out the other.

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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.

Column Reader Is A Real Clown

by Woody

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

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To extend the metaphor from this space a week ago, my email inbox spilled over with responses about my column headlined “Having a laugh over spilled milk.”

Before proceeding with one note in particular that tickled my funny bone, let me backtrack and quote that column’s meandering opening sentence to set the stage for what will then follow:

“Imagine a tiny car in a circus where clown after clown after clown climbs out, a veritable boxcar’s worth of clowns emerging in all, and you get an idea of what happened when I carelessly knocked over a tall drinking glass while reaching for the breakfast menu and a tsunami of iced tea, a gallon wave impossibly squeezed inside a 16-ounce plastic tumbler, washed over the entire tabletop before cascading onto my lap and vinyl booth seats and tile floor.”

Tim Torkildson, who lives in Provo, Utah, came across my words after Googling the keyword “circus” as he routinely does, and kindly responded: “Dear Mr. Woodburn, I congratulate you on your colorful and whimsical comparison of a clown car with a tall glass of cascading iced tea. It summons up a fetching image that I enjoyed. So thanks for that.”

Here is where his letter, and fine storytelling, made my cup runneth over with mirth…

“As a garrulous retired professional circus clown I cannot help sharing the briefest of memories with you of the real clown car. The one I was stuffed, crammed, and pummeled into at Ringling Brothers some fifty years ago.

“It was a Gremlin hatchback, and after stripping the interior we managed to fit fifteen clowns into it. As one of the tallest buffoons in clown alley, I was assigned the very bottom-most tier. With fourteen other bodies piled on top of me.

“It was a mobile Black Hole of Calcutta. Those above me wriggled, sweated, belched, and farted. Since I was the first one in, I was naturally the last one out. And believe me, when my turn came at last I shot out of that benighted Gremlin like a bat out of purgatory. Gasping and panting, I was knocked on the head with a foam rubber truncheon by the whiteface constable and then smacked in the kisser with a shaving cream pie.

“It was a cramped and messy entr’acte, repeated twice a day and three times on Saturday. The day I left Ringling Brothers to join an international pantomime troupe in Mexico I hooted out loud like a maniac loon at the thought of no more buttocks thrust willy-nilly into my mug.

“And now, a half-century later, with bad knees and a bad back, as I recline in my Barcalounger, I kinda miss it…”

I further learned that Torkildson, aka Dusty the Clown, is the son of a bartender; grew up in Minneapolis; and in high school, during his senior year, was accepted to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

After his Ringling Brothers heyday and Mexico nights, Dusty says he performed as a “merry andrew”—a person who amuses others by ridiculous behavior—at countless venues, from schools and prisons to Disneyland and even played Ronald McDonald, “to keep bread on the table and the wolf from getting too far inside the door.”

Just as the happier image of a Gremlin door forced shut with 15 big-shoed clowns shoehorned inside made me laugh, Dusty’s lovely closing to his note made my heart spill over with nostalgia as I felt 8 years old again and under the Big Top for the first time: “May all your days be circus days.”

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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.

Laughing, Not Crying, Over Spilled Milk

by Woody

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

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Imagine a tiny car in a circus where clown after clown after clown climbs out, a veritable boxcar’s worth of clowns emerging in all, and you get an idea of what happened when I carelessly knocked over a tall drinking glass while reaching for the breakfast menu and a tsunami of iced tea, a gallon wave impossibly squeezed inside a 16-ounce plastic tumbler, washed over the entire tabletop before cascading onto my lap and vinyl booth seats and tile floor.

And yet—here is the surprise twist—the blunder actually enhanced a most wonderful morning of a day that was a masterpiece by noon.

Already, you see, I had been to the dermatologist because my pale and troublesome Irish complexion requires frequent precautionary screenings.

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating,” Winston Churchill quipped, “as to be shot at without result.” Personally, I think the man nicknamed “The British Bulldog” was barking up the wrong tree—nothing in my life is so exhilarating as to have a history of various skin cancers and then get a checkup without result.

This examination worthy of celebration was capped off when, as I was leaving the office building, a teenage boy a few strides ahead of me went out the glass front doors, suddenly stopped and spun 180-degrees like a basketball star making a swift and graceful pivot move, and came back to hold the door open for me—a small nicety, to be sure, but also a welcome one that is too rare.

Onward next to brunch at a gem of a café I had never before been to, to meet a dear friend who was in town briefly from across the country. Arriving early because my dermatology appointment went so well, and so quickly, I had time to cause the ice-tea waterfall. In two ways this mishap added to, not subtracted from, the goodness of my morning.

First, this mishap sent my thoughts back in a flash to a lunch when my daughter was 5 years old, possibly 6, and for the second “Daddy Daughter Date” in a row she toppled a towering glass of lemonade while coloring the kids’ menu. Sensing her rising chagrin and embarrassment, I reactively—and purposely—knocked over my own drink and fairly sang, “Oh, silly me! I made a bigger mess than you did!”

The only tears over our spilled milk, so to speak, were from us both laughing so fully.

I did not spill a second glass at Café 126, I am happy to share. I am happy to share, too, that my server could not have been kinder in downplaying the extra work my clumsiness created for him. Instead, he promised it would not be the last such accident of the day while cheerfully mopping up the mess.

Enter my friend to a welcoming hug and a clean and dry booth, never the wiser of my goof; followed by good food and a gooder (not a word, but should be) visit that flew by much too quickly; and, goodest (again, should be standard usage) of all, was when her eyes misted up while telling me how deeply she enjoyed my novel “The Butterfly Tree.” She being an author of acclaim, her praise was birdsong to my soul.

As I finish writing this I will soon be heading off to a happy hour with my goodest friend, by coincidence he is also a gifted writer, and it seems like the perfect bookend to a masterpiece day would be if I accidentally—or accidentally with a wink—spilled my first pint.

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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.

Airborne Kites Make The Heart Soar

by Woody

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

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From Woody’s column archives, June 2019…

On a recent afternoon with springtime in the rising breeze, something else wonderful was in the air: a kite.

Shortly, a second kite took flight as well.

Like bookends separated by a row of volumes, these two park scenes played out with an hour sandwiched between. Each vignette made me smile. Together, they made my heart soar to the clouds.

Before proceeding, a third kite bears mention – this one flown a quarter-century ago by my daughter, then age four. It was her first kite and she had impatiently waited many days for the wind to be steady enough for a maiden flight.

If memory serves, and I am certain it does for this remains a cherished image, My Little Girl skipped to the park while happily singing from the film “Mary Poppins” these happy lyrics: “Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring. Up through the atmosphere. Up where the air is clear…”

After getting her 99-cent rainbow kite airborne, I handed the string to My Little Girl and her reaction, along with a beaming smile, was this: “Daddy, it feels like catching a big fish in the sky.”

This was a wonderful observation considering My Little Girl had never yet felt the tug of a fish.

Which returns me to the first kite I sighted this spring. Another little girl, perhaps six years old instead of four, was flying a triangle decorated with a unicorn instead of a rainbow. Watching from afar, I readily imagined she also was likely thinking of fishing in the sky…

…because instead of holding a spool of cotton string, this little girl controlled her kite with nylon line spooling out from a fishing rod. What an ingenious father she has, I thought.

Too, I thought back to climbing a tree to retrieve My Little Girl’s rainbow kite after the cheap string snapped and it fluttered into the clutches of a high branch. After the rescue, we promptly went to a kite store and bought nylon “rope” as she called the heavier string.

Time passes, but not all things change. The little girl with the unicorn kite tethered by fishing line seemed as excited as if Christmas morning arrived on a shining June afternoon. When the breeze held its breath too long, she skipped off to retrieve her fallen unicorn; held it overhead; then giggled when her father got the kite back up where the air is clear.

I could have watched this all afternoon, but too soon the happy pair departed hand-in-hand.

Not five minutes later, a second kite flyer arrived and the contrast could hardly have been more striking. Now I watched a gentleman, in his seventies I guessed, and alone, sailing a stunt kite without a fishing reel but with multiple strings that allowed him to make it zigzag and spin and even dive to within inches of the grass before soaring again.

Again, the fishing metaphor was clear for the gentleman was wearing a flannel shirt, stained pants, and brim hat that begged to be decorated with tied flies. Sitting in a folding beach chair, he seemed to belong lakeside or on an ocean’s pier.

As the gentleman flew his kite, seated patiently as if waiting for a big fish to strike his line, my mind returned to the little girl I had just seen; and then to My Little Girl; and in turn one more lovely thought…

…I imagined the gentleman’s mind was also wandering, carried back in time on the spring breeze to memories of flying a kite with his own little girl.

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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.

First Day of School Goodbye Tears

by Woody

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

From Woody’s column archives, August of 2012, the sentiments resurfacing recently while dropping his daughter Dallas off at the airport following a solo visit home from the Bay Area where she now lives.

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When it comes to saying hello to a new school year, the words of 19th Century French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr seem perfectly apropos: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

On her very first “first” day of school—at Ventura’s TLC Preschool—my daughter cried when I dropped her off in the classroom. It was a good 10 minutes before she was finally able to release me from her tight sobbing hug.

While the morning goodbyes slowly grew from tearful to cheerful as that school year progressed, the first day of TLC the following year was once again a messy runny-nosed red-eyed event.

Her first day of kindergarten at Poinsettia Elementary School was barely easier; fighting to hold back her tears with all her might, she failed.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Her first day of first grade was tearless, but certainly not fearless. Second grade was a little smoother still; her first day at Cabrillo Middle School better yet; and the first day of her senior year at Ventura High was a dancing cakewalk, but on her first day of college, or rather Move-In Day, my then-18-year-old daughter once again became a tearful 3-year-old preschooler. Instead of emblazoned with “USC” her sweatshirt could have read “TLC.”

My wife’s salty floodgates opened in turn, but I managed to maintain my composure as we walked away down the hall. My mistake was pausing to look back, hoping to see an empty doorway and thus my daughter inside her room having happily begun her college life. Instead, she was still in the hallway waving at me, her face sad and wet, her eyes red and puffy, her nose runny—and never have I seen her look more beautiful, unless it was on the first day of a school year when she was 3 or 4 or 5.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Do not be mistaken by her homesick hugs. My daughter is strong and confident and accomplished and embraces adventure. She has traveled extensively and thrice studied abroad. She loves arriving at new places—it is just she also hates leaving familiar old ones.

Yes, she has always been great at hellos and lousy at goodbyes and this is a lovely quality. Her tight hugs of greeting make one feel deeply loved; her wet envelopments upon parting somehow even more so.

Things change. Instead of a school bus, my daughter took an airplane this year on her way to her last first day of school, at Purdue, where she enters her final year of its M.F.A. creative writing program.

Things stay the same. At the Rubicon for passengers to continue on into the long security line at the airport it was a good five minutes until my daughter released me from her sobbing embrace. Over the years we have tried pulling-the-Band-Aid-off-quickly, but such hurried goodbyes causes more tears, not fewer. And so we linger, aging father and Daddy’s Little Girl Still.

After we eventually parted and I walked away a short distance down the terminal hallway, I did what I always do: I turned around for one final glimpse at her. I can never resist. Usually, she is well into the security line by then and can only smile and wave.

This time, however, she was not yet trapped. A grandmotherly woman watching the scene unfold said aloud, but not unkindly: “Rookie mistake. Never look back.”

I disagree. I was rewarded with seeing my 25-year-old daughter age 3 again as she rushed over to give me one last wet-and-wonderful first-day-of-school hug goodbye.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

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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.

Some days glow with ‘Moonlight’

by Woody

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

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In one of the all-time great movies, “Field of Dreams,” one of the all-time great cinematic characters, Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, recalling the one and only game he appeared in in the Major Leagues, a game that ended with him on deck without getting his first big-league at bat, makes an all-time wise observation:

“We just don’t recognize life’s most significant moments while they’re happening. Back then I thought, ‘Well, there’ll be other days.’ I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”

Yes, hindsight often affords the clarity to see that a seemingly common day was an “only day” that sparkled like midnight moonlight on a mirror-smooth pond.

Indeed, seven months after my eldest brother passed away, with the thick fog of mourning slowly burning away by the sunshine of warm memories, I realize the bright rays that are dearest to me are not the big moments – not graduation days or birthdays or weddings, even when I was his best man.

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wisely wrote. “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year and this time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

The best moments, the most significant memories with Jimmy, were summer days swimming in a rural pond and nights catching fireflies; him teaching me to ride a two-wheeler and drive a stick shift; playing Euchre and laughing, playing board games and laughing, playing pranks on Mom and laughing; shooting pool and throwing darts and racing slot cars and HO trains, all in our basement; and so on, the ordinary coming into focus across time as special; halcyon day after day being an “only day.”

With this in mind, I recently wrote the following day in my heart, an ordinary day that even down the road I cannot imagine looking back at as being a day of significance, yet thanks to an Emerson-ian frame of mind it was a “very good one.”

The day started with a banana that was, to my taste, perfectly in the ripeness sweet spot – not a little too green and firm and slightly bitter as the day before; not a tad too brown and soft as would be the case tomorrow.

Next, at the keyboard, words flowed from my mind to my fingertips to the screen as effortlessly as water down a swift stream. Later, on my afternoon run, the miles flowed as easily as the typed words had and running an errand soon thereafter my car flowed through traffic like a flying magic carpet.

After initially just missing a left-turn green arrow, I altered my route home and went straight ahead when the red light turned green…

… and proceeded to make every single traffic signal, 17 greens in all, in a row, impossibly. (I counted the lights the next time I drove the route, faring much worse.)

Admittedly, twice I gamed the situation a wee bit by tilting the pinball machine, so to speak, slowing down noticeably so as to still be rolling along when a red light in the distance turned green by the time I reached it. All the same, it was remarkable and put a smile in my heart.

The rest of my day was similar, not because of big things worth recounting here, but rather, I suspect, simply because I was in the frame of mind to appreciate the moonlight shining upon small things.

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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.

Still Trying To Be Like My Grandpa

by Woody

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

(One year ago today, Feb. 28, my father died at age 97. In his honor, from my archives in 2019, here is a column he greatly enjoyed about his own dad. The ending paragraph has been updated.

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Grandpa Ansel, the only grandparent I knew, died when I was only 7, yet he lives on clearly in my memories.

That my son’s middle name is Ansel goes a long way in telling you how much I loved and admired Grandpa. An art assignment when I was in the first grade further fills in the picture.

Grandpa and me and my two older brothers…

“And who is this?” asked Miss Bower, studying my crayon portrait response to her prompt: “Who is the most important person in the world?”

“My grandpa,” six-year-old-me replied, matter-of-factly, as though it were so obvious no answer should have been required.

“All your classmates drew portraits of President Johnson,” Miss Bower noted, adding: “Your grandpa must be very special.”

Me: “Yeah, he’s pretty ginchy.”

To be honest, the thought of drawing a portrait of the President of the United States never crossed my mind. In truth, I wondered why my friends had not drawn pictures of their grandpas.

After all, it wasn’t the President who patiently showed me how to bait a fishhook. Certainly the President had never set down his fly rod to calmly help me untangle a bird’s nest of fishing line in my backlashed spinning reel.

It wasn’t the President who taught me other important things a boy needs to know, like how to skip flat stones across the water; how to whistle; and how to pound nails without bending them.

The President never gave me a ginchy handcrafted wooden toolbox for my fifth birthday – or taught me funny old-fashioned words like “ginchy” which means “cool.”

“Grandpa, how come you don’t use worms like I do?” I once asked while “helping” him tie a fly in his basement fantasyland workshop of tools and endless jars filled with fishhooks, feathers, fur and other thing-a-ma-stuff.

“Oh, it takes a mighty skillful fisherman like yourself to catch a fish with a worm,” he answered. “That’s why you always catch big fish while I catch the little ones. I’d better stick to using flies if I want to have a chance to keep up with you.”

“Okay, Grandpa – but if you change your mind, I’ll share my worms with you.”

Grandpa shared lots of important things with me, like how to look a man in the eye when you shake hands; The Golden Rule; and that little boys in Russia are the same as little boys in America, this being during the Cold War.

“Which way is the wind blowing?” I would ask Grandpa whenever we went fishing. Before answering, he would moisten his index finger in his mouth and then dramatically extend it high in the air as I mimicked him.

Upon seeing which side of his finger-turned-weather-vane dried first, Grandpa would whistle-hum happily before responding: “I do believe it’s blowing from the west.”

Always, the wind was blowing from the west.

Always, this excited me and I would then recite by heart a poem Grandpa had taught me:

“When the wind is from the north, / The wise fisherman does not go forth.

“When the wind is from the south, / It blows the hook into the fish’s mouth.

“When the wind is from the east, / ’Tis not fit for man nor beast.

“But when the wind is from the west, / The fishing is the very best.”

Growing up, I wanted to be like Grandpa Ansel; six years ago, I truly became like him – a grandpa. With fishing as a metaphor, whenever we are together, I want my dear granddaughters Maya, Auden, and Amara to always feel like the wind is blowing from the west.