Amanda Dickson

This is the way it’s been for more than 40 years.  His arm around me. There have been bumps in the road, of course.  For any two people who have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you can’t escape a few bumps in the road.  But at the core of it, this captures us.

My big brother and me.

I was blessed to be with him this week.  As we sat together that first night, the first time we had been in each other’s company in far too long, he asked me, “How are you, Manda? How are you really?” Dave has never pronounced the first “A” on my name, a loving nickname that only he and his beautiful wife use.

I poured out my soul to him in the minutes that followed.  We spoke as if no time had separated us.  That’s how it is with brothers and sisters and true friends.  It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been apart.  When you’re reunited, time and space have no meaning. “We’ve surfed the edge, you and me,” he said with a sly smile.

We just sat there, feeling the emotion of being with someone you loved nearly more than yourself.

“Good things are coming, Manda,” he said. “Good things are coming to you. You can bank on it.  It’s just in your nature.  It’s who you are.”

Other people have tried to give me similar words of encouragment in recent months, but for some reason, the truth of what he said sank in all the way the bone.  Good things ARE coming.  It IS my nature. I have been trying to push away my nature for some time, see a darkness or lack that simply isn’t who I am.  It took hearing the words from the man who is my brother, the boy in the chair all grown up, to hear the truth of it.

Thank you, my brother.

My brother and my father used to sign off letters when I was young and away at school, then later emails as that became our means of communication, “It’s a good day to be a Dickson.” A proud sign-off, to be sure, but I loved the sentiment.  We felt strong as a family, bonded to each other, one in our fate and devotion. As my brother flies back to Pennsylvania now to attend to his business and his wife and my father, caring for the people we both love so much, he leaves behind a sister who is more able to care for herself and her family because of his words.

It truly is a good day to be a Dickson.

I was waiting for a prescription at Target the other day, just sitting on a bench next to the pharmacy, too tired to read or text or pay attention to much of anything.  So I just watched people.

A mother with one toddler in the cart, one hanging off the handle trying to bend back as far as she could without falling.  Another mother threatening a toddler that if he didn’t sit down in the cart there would be no action figures for him.  Two teenagers dragging along, seeming to look at nothing, or everything. A middle-aged man taking his time in the cold and flu aisle.  I worried that he was sick, or maybe his wife was sick, or child.  I sent him love in my thoughts.

Further down I could see into the card aisle.  There was a young man, smartly dressed, who took his time looking for a card.  For a girl?  For his mother? Whoever it was for was someone he cared for, someone important, someone he wanted to find just the right words for.  Lucky person to be thought so much of.  When he finally selected one and walked off in his expensive looking jeans, he was smiling.  I hoped the recipient appreciated the thought he put into that selection.

Then another mother, dressed in a T-shirt I can only imagine was not her best with a whining 10-year-old behind her. I thought, “That girl just wants some attention. She doesn’t really want the purse, or the earrings or the makeup.  She just wants you. Take her to Starbucks after and just sit down with her awhile.”

Then I smiled to myself.  No one should ever take parenting advice from me.

I remembered a day some months ago, one of the lowest days in my life, when I had stopped in a grocery store.  I had not had a kind word from another human being the whole of that day, and as I went to leave the store, a woman, who no doubt was paid to do so, told me to “have a nice day.” I’ve heard that greeting a thousand times from a thousand strangers, probably deemed it insincere more times than not, but from this tall, thin, brown-haired woman, it felt like a life-line.

There is kindness in the world.

I nearly stopped and hugged her, but I didn’t want to scare her.  I settled on thanking her instead.  And I have never meant the words “Thank you” more than I did on that occasion.

Ahh.  My prescription was ready.

“Do you have any questions for the pharmacist, Amanda?”

(How kind that she noted my name.) “No, thank you.”

I have a friend named Shela.  Shela with no “i”.  I have never known someone to embody this Mother Teresa quote so fully. She truly has no time to judge people.  She is too busy loving them.

Shela eases suffering.  She soothes fevers of all kinds.  She takes care of the children.  She brings air and peace into every room she enters.  She is one of the few living angels I have met on earth. 

It is not an exaggeration to say Shela has saved my life.  I cannot count the number of painful nights she has helped me through, only to make pancakes in the morning.  She would hate my praising her here because she sees herself as far from perfect, but in my eyes, she is pure beauty, and I am filled with gratitude for her this weekend.

I have known Shela for more than half my life.  There is something about a friend who “knew you when.”  A friend who knew you before you were anybody, not that you’re all that much to brag about now.  A friend who knew you before you were married or a mother or a homeowner or any other thing.  A friend who knew you when your car had no air conditioning and your future didn’t look so bright.  That friend, who has always seen magic in you, is a miracle. 

She never spent time focusing on my mistakes, even the big ones.  “Everyone makes mistakes,” Shela says with such ease and clarity, as if I’m missing the most important point.  “I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t.”  And with that, she is done judging and back to loving.  And lifting.  And inspiring.

I have a friend named Shela with no “i”.  And when we are sitting on my couch or at Starbucks or any other place on earth, holding hands, feeling each other’s hearts, I know Aristotle had a friend like her when he said a friend is a “soul in two bodies.”

Thank you my friend.  May I serve you humbly all the days of my life.

I heard a cover of the old Stones song “Wild Horses” the other day in Barnes & Noble.  I’ve been singing it in my head ever since . . . “No sweeping exits or off stage lines could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.  Wild, wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”

This is love.

This is Aaron.

I am loved by a man who is so steady in his devotion to me that I marvel.  He is simply incapable of hurting me.  He stands with me; he walks with me; he kneels with me; he cries with me.  And then he tells me it’s going to be alright, even when I can’t see it.

We have five children, Aaron and I, three of his from his first marriage who we call our “bigs” and two of our own who we call our “littles.”  Our bigs and littles and us, holding hands, we are a family.  An unorthodox family, to be sure.  A family that has walked through fire, admittedly, and suffered greatly, but still a family.  And for that, we have one person to thank.

Aaron.

Lesser men, weaker men, would have given up on me – and have – but not Aaron.  His love is too strong.  “They’re just clouds, Amanda,” he tells me. “And now that they’re passed, I can see your sunshine again.”

This is a love letter, I guess.  An awkward one, I know.  But it’s his birthday, my husband, and I wanted to share with you what a beautiful man he is, what a blessed woman I am, when wild horses are no match.

One of the smarter things I did when I hit mid-life (I did plenty of dumb ones) was make a bucket list.  Someday before I die I will travel to Scotland and see the land of the Dickson plaid.  Someday, God willing and more self-discipline in play, I will live debt free.  And someday I will stand on the rim of Cedar Breaks with my father, take in that stirring view, and then see a play at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah.

There are some other things on the list, like see Paris and learn Spanish, but, for now, I want to celebrate the checking off of one of the things on my list.

Papa and I stood at Cedar Breaks.  We felt the powerful breezes.  We turned our cheeks to the red spirals stretching out endlessly in the valley below.  We talked to the park rangers and lingered as long as we could before the heat of the day pushed us back to our car.  I remember saying to myself, and possibly out loud, more than 20 years ago when I first stood at that rim, “I wish Papa could see this,” but I never believed he ever would.

It was so far to travel.

It was so far.

Until it wasn’t.

At the age of 83, my father made the long journey from Bloomsburg to Salt Lake City, where I now make my home.  From there, we drove the 250 miles south to Cedar City and realized one of the dreams of my life.  I impose upon you now by sharing this personal story because my father turns 84 this week, and when I thought of the occasion of his birthday, I knew there was nothing I could give him, no tie or book or smart phone, that would convey the love I feel.

Nothing except a love letter.

My father loves this newspaper.  He has since I was a child growing up in Berwick and later Bloomsburg.  I can remember him reading it when he’d get home from work while my mother was making dinner.  I remember him reading it on Sunday mornings while Meet the Press was on.  I remember his pointing out interesting articles to my mother and sometimes, when I got older, even to me.  He would sometimes submit information he believed of sufficient interest to the paper, usually on the subject of table tennis, his greatest love other than his children.

I am quite sure he would not consider his birthday to be a topic of sufficient interest to warrant an article in the paper.  Normally a birthday would not be.  But for David C. Dickson, Jr., one of the oldest practicing attorneys in the state of Pennsylvania, and certainly in Columbia County, I was just audacious enough to think a few of you would feel the tenderness toward him that I feel.  Some of you might know him from his 50 years of law practice.  Some from his half a century of promoting and playing the sport of table tennis, or his recent years of teaching at Central Columbia Middle School.  Some might know him as the tall, thin, white-haired gentleman who has a warm “Hello” for everyone he meets as he walks the streets of downtown Berwick running errands for the law firm that bears his name.  Some may know him from his support of the annual Run for the Diamonds event.  When I attend that event with him, I still marvel at the greetings he receives near the starting line, “Hello Dave!”  “Hey Dave.”  “Good to see you, Dave.”

I am the youngest of my father’s three children, a graduate of Central Columbia High School Class of 1981.  I am a parent myself now, mother of two sons and step-mother of two daughters and a son.  I know the challenge of being a parent, let alone an inspired one.  And on this occasion of my father’s 84^th birthday, I just want to tell him, in front of his neighbors and friends, that if there is anything good in my life, it is because of his love and example.

I love you, Papa.

Happy birthday.

When you’re sad, do your kids know it, or do you hide it from them?  Is it our job as parents to hold the painful emotions somewhere up on the top shelf where they can’t reach them and “put on a happy face” for them? I have always believed that it was, although I have failed from time to time, slipping into tears, pushing them away with “Mommy’s alright.  Let’s make cookies.” 

I need your wisdom today on how to keep your emotions in check when your children are around.  Do you have any tricks?  Those of you who know me know that I have a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve, which I suppose has been both a blessing and a curse in my life, as so many things are.  Now that I have other little psyches to be concerned about, I want to make sure that I’m not burdening them with the weight of grownup emotions too soon.  I want them to enjoy their childhoods, keep them as carefree as possible, and let them come to understand certain kinds of pain only when it’s necessary, if it’s ever necessary. 

It’s definitely not necessary yet. 

How do you protect your children?  When your heart aches, how do you keep their sensitive little spirits from sensing that?  And when they do sense something, do you dismiss them with “It’s nothing” or “There are things mommies have to worry about that little boys don’t have to, and this is one of those things.  Let’s read a book.”

Life is so messy, so imperfect, so not what we plan.  And so filled with love, especially for the children.  I write this blog on the day before Ethan’s 6th birthday, filled to overflowing with gratitude for him, remembering the day before his birth 6 years ago.  I have never been so humbled by another human being as I was – am – by Ethan.  He is a force of nature.

My constant prayer on this eve of his special day is – let me love him better.  Let me protect him and his little brother from the things I can, accept the things I cannot protect them from, and give me wisdom to know the difference.

It wasn’t my idea.  (None of the good stuff I do is.)  My sister Deirdre saw me wallowing in a dark place, and she said, “Manda, you should write a bucket list!”  It was the last thing I could imagine wanting to do.  I didn’t want to get out of bed, let alone dream of doing great things.  I didn’t want to think big thoughts.  I didn’t feel capable of them, or worthy.  I didn’t want to embrace life in the way writing a bucket list requires.

Until I did.

Wanna see it?  There’s nothing special here, a lot of cliche, but here are a few.  (I’ll leave out the TMI ones.)

See Paris.  See Rome.  See London.  (Eat, pray, love.)  Have a novel published.  Donate a million dollars to something I believe in.  Run a marathon.  Shop on 5th Avenue with no care for the price.  Take the kids to the Hyatt on Kauai. Learn to speak Spanish.  Pay off all debt.  Owe nobody an apology.  Go back to Exeter with my Dad.  Read the classics.  Teach my children how to love.  Be happy with my body.  See Scotland and the land of the Dickson plaid.  Ride a train anywhere overnight.  Stay at the Grand Hotel.  Help someone else’s dream come true.  Feed the homeless and not be afraid.  Learn yoga.  Stand on Point Loma with a peaceful heart and renew my vows.  Hold newborn babies at the hospital in the middle of the night.  Teach my children who their grandmother was.  Stay at the Plaza Hotel.  Take my Dad to the Shakespearean Festival.  Take the kids to the Jackson Lake Lodge.  Travel with Cameron to Dubai (the place he most wants to see). Feel comfortable investing in the stock market.  . .

It’s a start.  Have you written one of these?  They aren’t goals, necessarily, but they could be.  They don’t feel concretized like goals can.  They feel lighter, more like dreams, ones that will bless my sleeping and my waking.  I highly recommend the exercise if you’ve not done it.  And I recommend it in a reckless way (as I do most things.)  Don’t edit your desires.  Don’t censure with whether you think you’ll be able to accomplish the item or not.  Think.  Dream.  Write.

After I wrote the list, I had an old friend invite me to dinner in Paris.  Ahhhh.  Thank you Tony.  What a sweet sentiment.  I think I’ll start a little smaller. 

I’m off to yoga class.

I am a spectacularly bad gift giver.  Okay.  That may be a little drama queen. (Who, me?)  But I am seriously not good at it.  I gave my husband an expensive watch when we were first married because he didn’t own a watch.  I thought that was an obvious first year present.  That was before I knew that the reason he didn’t own a watch was because he didn’t like watches.  I gave a dear friend an expensive Tiffany necklace in silver when she only wore gold.  I gave Wolfermann’s muffins, different ones each month for a year, to a friend who was just embarking on a diet.  I suck at this.

And I’ve done it again.  I’ve given someone something she kept for less than five seconds before giving it to someone else she thought might actually use it.  When she first told me, it took a minute to sink in.  “Wait.  What?  You mean, I saved all that time to get you that gift and you just . . . gave it away?  Just like that?  But I wanted you to use it and love it and think of me and . . .”

I know.  I’m a slow learner.  We cannot control what people do with the gifts we gift them.  Otherwise they’d be loaners, not gifts.  When we give a gift, we give the recipient complete control to take the gift, use it, cherish it, love it, or chuck it, give it away, sell it, do whatever they want to because . . . yep . . . it belongs to them.  The problem is, our hearts are attached for a second to the gift.  But that’s not where they belong.  They belong in us. 

Which gets me back to the Hallmark Card moment.  We love schmaltzy things, despite how cool we try to be, because they’re true.  The gift IS in the giving.  From the minute we give something, we are blessed – blessed with the chance to love.  Isn’t that why we’re alive?  We’re here to love, to give everything, to lay it all out there, and when we come to the end of our lives find we have spent it all.  Isn’t that it?  So give it!  Give to people who will love what you give.  Give to people who will throw away what you give.  And give to people who could care less.  It doesn’t matter.

Give it all away because, fellow human beings who are too cool to admit it, the gift is in the giving.

I am a person who has never had trouble starting . . . anything. I can start a project, a relationship, a book, dinner for seven, all with that reckless beginner’s enthusiasm. But stop? Just stop? That is a challenge.

My sister Deirdre got me to thinking this week about how I hide in productivity. I work and work, write books, say “yes” to any request, and sometimes those yes’s are good and helpful to my family, and sometimes they are just to keep from feeling what I’m feeling.  Feel frightened? Start researching a new book or business relationship. Feel pain or regret? Clean the whole house, top to bottom, throw away everything that isn’t tied down. Feel guilt or shame?  Bake.  There’s always baking.

I find myself in a place now, a place that scares the hot chocolate out of me, where everything is stopping, and I have to feel. I may be breaking out in hives as I write these words –  it feels that uncomfortable. But I’m trying to stand in the fire and see what it has to teach me. I read this week that the answer to pain is in the pain. I’ve just never let myself feel it long enough to hear what it’s trying to tell me.

I feel like I have no tools for stopping. All my tools are for starting. Get up.  Get going. Get ‘er done.  I am a self-starter, not a self-stopper. But here I go anyway. Stopping.

The silence scares me. There’s no rush of wind passing. No applause for stopping, for not doing something. There is no newness, no boldness or adventure.

Or is there?

The three most beautiful words a person in Afghanistan can hear when her base is under attack are “I’ve got you,” said strongly by a Marine with gun drawn at the door to your bunker. That’s what my sister told me last week when she got back from a couple months’ work in Kabul.  This is Connie, standing with my sweet father and me in the cemetery where our ancestors are buried in Berwick, Pennsylvania.  We went there to listen to our father tell stories.  We went there to give thanks for the strong stock we come from, for their courage and dedication and love.

Over a turkey prepared as only our loving sister Deirdre can do, so moist and flavorful it must be bad for us, Connie told us about riding in gunner trucks, where the driver would turn around and say to her in the back seat, “Should we come under attack, we will defend you.  And should we be killed, please press this button.”  Silence.  We looked at each other around the table.  I couldn’t concentrate on anything but Connie’s beautiful face, and how grateful I was to be able to see it again. 

She felt peaceful there, she said, trusting that she would come back safely to her husband, who cares for her as well as any husband has ever cared for a wife.  I loved looking at them, watching the easy way they are together, the comfortable way they seem to be in their own skin.  She pours him a glass of milk to go with his Oreos.  He rinses and does the dishes so quietly the rest of us don’t notice until we get up to start the job and realize it’s already done.

With a husband like Jeff, I’m quite sure she’ll never need me – but if she ever did – I want to be able to say to her with complete confidence and calm, “I’ve got you.”  I’ve got you, Connie.  If your beautiful and blessed life should ever need me, I’m here.  My home, my heart, all that I am I pledge to your well being.  I feel more renewed after a few days of watching how you live than any time at a spa could ever leave me.

Oh, and by the way, happy birthday on this beautiful first of December.