Doors that aren’t closed are open. Even though they might look like they’re not. But what do you do with a sliver so slight that it mocks you in real time? 

The answer is simple but not easy. Find a way to hang around.

Coach said simply, “These guys are uncommon.”  Multi-colored confetti was still floating as a sea of cameras clicked on the boys standing just behind the logo in the center of the floor. The sweaty, happy hoopers looked like a band of brothers who had just run the court on the asphalt at the corner of 13th and Shartel. That they were and that they weren’t. Therein lies the beautifully juxtaposed magic of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA’s newly crowned Western Conference Champs.

Beginnings and endings are rolling around like the hands of a clock these days, each intermittently bopping me on the top of the head as it clunks. Friends to my right and left are exiting lifetime careers, leaving the lane that’s almost conformed to them to the care of others. I clap for them at farewell parties, then run home to write a letter of recommendation for another, freshly credentialed, who is vigorously venturing out. As graduates stand awash in pomp, their audience exuberantly twists and shouts while young parents deal with the circumstance of filling out pre-school pre-enrollment cards in the prickly privacy of their kitchens with a lump the size of Texas in their throats. 

There’s taking off and landing. A baby comes, a parent goes. I have funeral outfits and wedding get-ups with interchangeable parts.

Occasions of commemoration dot the days of the weeks of my months, and I wonder, “What gives the ones that take up the most space in me their girth?”

It all started at a 7-Eleven in west Texas.  This is the way goodness often goes. No elaborate intention is set. No detailed business plan is hatched. An instinct just makes it past the gate of the soul and BOOM! All kinds of lives get changed.

When athletic phenom, Serena Williams, decided to walk away from professional tennis at the age of 40, she couldn’t say the word “retire.”  “Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution,” she told the press.

I like it. She had somewhere (that may or may not have been clearly defined at the time) to go.

Retirement is a sleepy word with implications of a hard stop. We “retire” at the end of a long day. We “retire” shoes that have a broken heel, clothes that no longer fit, hats that have gone out of style. A baseball team, once they acquire three outs, is said to “retire the side.” Inferring, of course, that the batters no longer get to bat. The word “retire,” per definition, means to leave, to cease or to withdraw. 

It seems odd to me, sometimes, that a single day is set aside to honor mothers. Or fathers, for that matter. Or Jesus (for Heaven’s sake!) though, technically, I guess he gets two. 

Mothers are given a deep-breath recognition on one day out of THREE-HUNDRED-SIXTY-FIVE. It hardly feels sufficient. 

And, yet, I have a plastic shoe box filled with homemade cards and trinkets that begs to differ.

I can say from experience, however, that the real prizes come randomly. Rarely wrapped. Sometimes not distinguishable until time has its way with them. But the crate full of “I Love You”s and “You’re the GREATESTEST”s  with intermittent backward letters mark time. Sentiments piled upon paper butterflies rolling around in a container full of flowers fashioned out of clay serve as a conduit to the days that birthed them. 

I’m grateful someone somewhere once decided we should pause to raise a glass.

In honor of Mother’s Day week, the following is an excerpt from “The Compost File: Stories for the Striver in Us All”—along with a photo and a song that wouldn’t fit in the book.😉

The final challenge of the high ropes course was to pair up and scale a 60-foot telephone pole, stand together on the tiny wooden platform on top, then jump. “Face your fears!” “Do what’s hard!” “Trust your buddy!” “Trust your body!”  “Find a way!” My team’s 6’6” center and I stared up at the pole’s metal stakes designed for use as handles and steps, doing our best to breathe, naturally, not as if the intake could well be our last one.

Like most Americans, I remember exactly where I was on the morning of April 19, 1995. I couldn’t, if I wanted to, forget. This past weekend Oklahoma honored, as it has done annually since the horror in the heartland, the lives lost and the lives changed forever on that tragic day. On Saturday from the memorial grounds, a 91-year old man who had lost his wife in the blast and had returned for the ceremony of commemoration said, “It was 30 years ago, but when I return to this spot, it feels as if it was 30 seconds ago.” 

 Time. We cannot pin it down.

The following essay is an excerpt from my latest book The Compost File: Stories for the Striver in Us All.

Scottie Scheffler leads the world in birdies after bogeys. For those who might not be familiar with golf’s scoring ways and words, that means that, most times, when he finishes one hole one stroke over par, he finishes the next hole one stroke under par.  One step back, followed by an immediate step back forward. Trip, stand-up and walk. Trip, stand-up and walk. Trip, stand-up and walk. This is how you keep from ever falling far behind. It’s also how you end up way ahead.  

The best of the best don’t land with a splat on a bed of concrete when they fall, they bounce.

I remember when (I suddenly sound like my Granny) we used to have to be at home on Thursday nights at 9:00 PM if we wanted to watch Grey’s Anatomy. We couldn’t consume Meredith and Derek with all their accompanying angst on a Sunday afternoon when our hearts had enough bandwidth for absorption of their twisty lives -- it was Thursday night or bust. And if it was “bust,” we’d arrive the next Thursday night at 9:00 PM painfully in the dark. Now, we can watch a whole season on a dawn-to-dusk Saturday, if we’re so inclined. Or we can catch the latest episode at halftime of the Super Bowl, if we choose. 

Our world is built like Furr’s cafeteria. We can order up exactly what we want.

On my inaugural jaunt into the world of publishing, the literary agent I contacted said she wasn’t sure what my collection of stories (that ultimately became “Rooted to Rise”) was, but she did believe it was something. While we were trying to get a handle on that, she said I needed to get some of my writing “out into the world” before she shopped a book. She implored, “I need for you to do two things: Get active on social media and start writing a weekly blog.” 

One outta two ain’t bad.

In the front of the auditorium where our church family gathers on Sunday mornings, a sign hangs high and bold summarizing Ephesians 4:11-16. It says very simply, “Do Your Part.” The flag flies at the top of the baptistery marking the symmetrical center between two ginormous screens, but I have to think it hangs there for reasons beyond balance.  The message that is clearly being sent is “get involved.”  Get involved with the activities the leaders of the congregation have planned, but probably—maybe even more so—get involved with leading others to Jesus Christ, via the baptistery below.  “Do Your Part” it says, echoing the gist of the Bible.

I wondered, “What’s my part?” And, “Whose job is it to decide?”

“What separates the ones who make it?” I am asked by a parent in a group of parents who really want to know.

“What does ‘make it’ mean?” I bounce pass back, in search of clarification. Success wears all different kinds of eclectic clothes.

“You know, not just the players that are good enough to go on to play in college, but the ones who, once they’re there, become like household names.”

“I looooove the cover!” a considering reader says as she picks up and thumbs through my latest book. 

“Me, too,” I tell her. “The story that birthed it is every bit as good.”

Then with eyes that hold the door agape, she invites me to go on. 

Every gameday, prior to tip-off, my assistant coach would print off a bare-bones paper we called “Post Game Thoughts.” We passed these out to our players in the locker room immediately following their sprint up the tunnel after games. 

The house I grew up in was always stocked with red rags. We had them in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, the corner of the laundry room, the bathroom floor next to the plunger (just in case). But we didn’t only keep them there. The ever-absorbent automotive staples were also stacked knee high in tenuous towers on the floor of my dad’s painting shed. A sack stuffed full of them rode around with us behind the bench seat of his Ford Ranger, a few bumped along in the trough of his golf cart, and one was often hanging halfway out of the back pocket of his jeans. Before the days of disposable everything, these industrial towels were our clean-up go-tos. We never knew when we would need one, but a red rag was within reach in case we did.

And like the Energizer Bunny, they lived on and on and on.

Values drive decisions. Big ones in hairy times. Small ones when no one’s looking. Gnarly ones deeply embedded beneath shrouds of bells and whistles and tangled tresses. What we really believe in the core of our gut serves as our navigational rudder. It keeps our heads clear, allowing us to move quickly. Act consistently. Find our way through the mud and the muck. Our principles function as both a lighthouse and a compass to help us make our way. 

When we keep them top of mind, that is.

The official tossed the ball, supposedly straight but slightly sloping toward the visitors’ side of the half-court line. Our center, perched in the supreme ready position, her dominant arm crooked like a statue’s ready to unfurl and reach, took full advantage of the gift in an alien gym. Rising to meet the ball at the top of its flight, she tipped the leather prize toward our wide-eyed teammate who was posted-up on the edge of the circle, hand extended like a catcher’s mitt.  The tip-off  was soft and right on target. Our eager teammate pulled it in, then spun on her opposite foot, simultaneously pushing the ball off the floor in front of her as she raced toward the open goal. It only took two bounces to get to the rim where she cleanly kissed it off the glass for the first two points of the game.

The jam-packed gym went wild.

Start with the socks.  That’s what Coach Wooden said to do. Put them on attentively. Get the stitches on the toe-line straight then pull them tight, smoothing the cotton insulation to and around the heel before securing the ribbing snuggly above the ankle. “You want to make sure they stay in place,” said the Wizard of Westwood. 

Wrinkles pass their problems up. 

A few words from my favorite author, Anna Quindlen…