Blog Archives
365 Reasons to Smile – Day 22
Growing up, my family didn’t watch a lot of television. 
By the time my brother and I were in school, my parents limited us to seven hours of television a week.
Because of that, we had to choose carefully, but we always chose to watch The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights.
In the days before cable television, movie rentals or pay per view, we always looked forward to watching the movies in the comfort of our own home.
My parents would pop popcorn, and we’d settle in to watch an old Kurt Russell movie like The Strongest Man in the World or an even older movie like Fred MacMurray’s The Shaggy Dog.
Times have changed dramatically since the mid 1970’s, but my love for those movies never will.
They always make me smile.
Day 22: The Wonderful World of Disney Day 21: Puppy love
Day 20 Personal Theme Songs Day 19: Summer Clouds
Day 18: Bartholomew Cubbin’s Victory
Day 17: A Royal Birth Day 16: Creative Kids
Day 15: The Scent of Honeysuckle Day 14: Clip of Kevin Kline Exploring His Masculinity
Day 13: Random Text Messages from My Daughter Day 12: Round Bales of Hay
Day 11: Water Fountains for Dogs Day 10: The Rainier Beer Motorcycle Commercial
Day 9: Four-Leaf Clovers Day 8: Great Teachers We Still Remember
Day 7: Finding the missing sock Day 6: Children’s books that teach life-long lessons
Day 5: The Perfect Photo at the Perfect Moment Day 4: Jumping in Puddles
Day 3: The Ride Downhill after the Struggle Uphill Day 2: Old Photographs
365 Reasons to Smile – Day 17
The summer I was 15 was one of the best periods of my life. 
That summer, I was away from my parents for an extended period and made life-long friends and life-long memories.
That’s also the summer that Prince William was born. I remember the speculation about his name. I also remember thinking that Princess Diana was only six years older than me and she was already a mother.
This summer, my son is 15 years old, and I don’t think he’s particularly interested that Prince William is now a father.
But I can’t help but appreciate the synchronicity.
I also can’t help but note how quickly time flies.
But the arrival of a new baby is always the best reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
And that always make me smile.
Day 17: A Royal Birth Day 16: Creative Kids
Day 15: The Scent of Honeysuckle Day 14: Clip of Kevin Kline Exploring His Masculinity
Day 13: Random Text Messages from My Daughter Day 12: Round Bales of Hay
Day 11: Water Fountains for Dogs Day 10: The Rainier Beer Motorcycle Commercial
Day 9: Four-Leaf Clovers Day 8: Great Teachers We Still Remember
Day 7: Finding the missing sock Day 6: Children’s books that teach life-long lessons
Day 5: The Perfect Photo at the Perfect Moment Day 4: Jumping in Puddles
Day 3: The Ride Downhill after the Struggle Uphill Day 2: Old Photographs
365 Reasons to Smile – Day 15
One of the first beauty products I owned was an Avon honeysuckle perfume stick. I’d never before smelled honeysuckle, but the perfume was a gift from Ruby, a family friend whom I absolutely adored. 
Ruby sold Avon, and I loved looking through her lipstick samples and flipping through the small catalogs she always carried with her.
But most of all I loved that perfume because it reminded me of her.
I now live in a neighborhood full of honeysuckle, and one of the main streets is even called Honeysuckle Drive.
A few weeks ago, the air was simply rich with its scent, and I breathed it in as though I were breathing in my childhood.
And I smiled because the scent of honeysuckle always makes me smile.
Day 15: The Scent of Honeysuckle Day 14: Clip of Kevin Kline Exploring His Masculinity
Day 13: Random Text Messages from My Daughter Day 12: Round Bales of Hay
Day 11: Water Fountains for Dogs Day 10: The Rainier Beer Motorcycle Commercial
Day 9: Four-Leaf Clovers Day 8: Great Teachers We Still Remember
Day 7: Finding the missing sock Day 6: Children’s books that teach life-long lessons
Day 5: The Perfect Photo at the Perfect Moment Day 4: Jumping in Puddles
Day 3: The Ride Downhill after the Struggle Uphill Day 2: Old Photographs
Writing is a Very Dirty Habit
Some days, writing simply serves as my own muddled version of confession.
I wish I always came to the keyboard with the honorable intention of making people really think.
But more often than not, I write when people disappoint, frustrate or simply anger me.
Fortunately for others, I don’t usually share those thoughts publicly in writing. I do, however, write about them. I’ve always just been compelled to transfer most of my emotions and all of my opinions into the written word.
I scribble them in the margins of meeting agendas when the person speaking is a blowhard. I jot them on notepads when I’m on the phone with someone who is obviously making excuses. And I type pages and pages when I’m forced to sit on the sidelines while someone blatantly lies, manipulates and abuses his position.
I admit there are times when I’m able to quietly call out these people by surreptitiously weaving them into my blog. But, for the most part, I simply let my written words and the space they occupy clutter my desk, my computer, my brain and my life.
And if that clutter weren’t enough, the time I spend writing far exceeds the time I spend cleaning up those or any other messes.
For the record, I do clean. I simply do just enough to ensure my house will never be featured on an episode of Hoarders or that my family isn’t forced to wear dirty and stained clothes.
To me, the task of cleaning is comparable to cooking. While some people take pride in their spotless homes and fabulous meals (as they should), I only see a lot of time spent doing something that won’t last. Clean houses always require more cleaning, and meals that take hours to prepare can be gone in minutes.
Writing can last forever…or at least as long as someone is willing to read what you wrote (even when the reader and the writer are one in the same.)
I know my life would be less messy if I spent more time cleaning and less time writing. It just wouldn’t be as memorable.
I have a box full of diaries dating back to second grade. The spelling is sometimes amusing, but the narrative is always entertaining. The diaries chronicle my life from the first entry (a meeting with Senator Bob Packwood that ended with a reprimand from my mother for offering him my left hand to shake) to the angst of adolescence and the wonder of emerging adulthood.
I have drawers full of cards and letters sent in a time before emails.
And I have bags of notes that were passed between friends and classes in high school. These notes could be an exhibit about an art form that was lost forever with the advent of text messaging.
These items take up space.
Writing takes up time.
And life takes up emotional and physical energy.
We are all defined by how we spend those resources.
Recently, a friend was recalling an obituary published in the Washington Post several years ago. The name in the obituary had been forgotten, but a description of the deceased was seared in my friend’s memory: “She loved to vacuum.”
This statement and the obituary struck a chord in my friend. “Will people remember me because I vacuum or will people remember me for being passionate about something?” she asked.
For me, I hope the answer is easy. I’d rather be remembered for my passions – and even all the emotions they elicited – than to be remembered for whether or note there were dust bunnies under the beds.
Writing, after all, can be a very dirty habit.
A Leap From The Top Step
On May 14, 1972, I got my first real lesson in fear.
That’s the day my uncle, my mother’s only sibling, was killed in a plane crash.
That’s also the day I stopped leaping from the top step.
Before that day, I loved jumping off the front steps of our small rental house on the Indian Reservation where my father worked. The joy of the 
jump was partly due to a sense of flying and partly due to the risk I was taking. More often than not, instead of landing on my feet, I’d land on my hands and knees. But the scraped knees and elbows were a small price to pay for bragging rights.
According to my brother and his friends, walking down the steps was a sign of weakness. Jumping was the only acceptable means of getting off the porch, and the jump had to be from the top step. Even jumping from one step down was considered cheating and a more egregious offense than forgetting to jump at all.
So, every time I walked out the front door, I would hurl my short, five-year old legs over five steps and land in various positions on the sidewalk. Then, I’d brush myself off and walk away with a sense of pride.
That all changed when my uncle crashed his twin-engine plane.
That Mother’s Day started in an ominous way. It began when my dad and mom, a burgeoning journalist, woke up my brother and me before dawn and bundled us into the back of our red, Ford pickup. There had been a train wreck, and we were going to the site. My dad, brother and I stayed in the truck while my mom, notepad in hand and camera around her neck, wandered off to interview people. Sitting in the truck, my imagination ran wild with thoughts of who and what Mom was encountering.
Hours after we had returned, the phone ran, and my mother disappeared for a long, long time, When she finally returned to our living room, she told us “Uncle Lowell was in a plane crash.”
My imagination, already quite stirred up from the morning’s adventure, envisioned all of the injuries he could have sustained. For some reason, I became fixed on the idea that he had, at a minimum, broken his leg. The possibility that he’d died never crossed my mind, and I don’t even remember how or when my mother finally told us. I do know that by the time she did, I’d so worked myself up about the horrors of broken bones that dying seemed like a great alternative.
I’d also decided that, based on my lack of coordination, the next time I jumped off the top step, I would most certainly break my leg.
That fear ate at me, and the next time I had to go down the steps, I couldn’t jump. I was frozen, and the ground seemed to be a long, long, long way down. I eventually jumped from the second step from the top, but I would never leap from that from the top step again.
Now, forty years later, a five year-old’s leap, or lack of a leap, seems insignificant. But it’s not.
That experience taught me about regret and about how inane decisions are made out of fear, limited information or both. It’s also taught me that sometimes we get so wrapped up in an imaginary fear that we are blinded from seeing the genuine and more critical facts.
I still fall into the trap of letting unfounded fear affect my decisions. But more often than not, I remind myself of the joy that comes from leaping off the top step and the pride that comes from going outside my comfort zone.
And then I jump.
My Lifetime Battle with the Big, Yellow School Bus
This Monday, my son starts high school and my daughter starts middle school.
I could grieve how quickly the years have flown. I could pull out baby pictures and wallow in nostalgia. I could reminisce about how, just yesterday, my son was starting kindergarten.
Or I could celebrate that, because both of my children are attending school out of district, my epic battle with the big, yellow school bus may just finally be over — permanently.
The battle began when I was in first grade. Having spent kindergarten walking to school, I was ecstatic that we had moved to a house that required riding a school bus.
My enthusiasm didn’t last long.
The problems started on the first day of school when I thought I could handle the bus ride all by myself. And I did. Going to school was simple. The bus picked me up in front of my house and dropped me off at school. My biggest challenge was getting to my classroom.
Going home proved a bit more difficult. I got on bus number 25, rode it to my street and rode it to my house. I then rode it past my house because my timid calls to stop weren’t heard over the din of bus chatter. Even though the bus failed to stop at my house, it did seem to stop at almost every other house in the county. When her route finally ended, the bus driver turned around, gave me a pointed look and asked me where I lived.
I proudly declared my well-memorized address “1910 Bean Drive.”
The bus driver did not look happy. “We went right past there. Why didn’t you get off?”
“Because you didn’t stop,” I replied.
Without a legitimate comeback, the bus driver had to make a decision. She’d take me home on her next run. Surrounded by kids two or three times my age and size, I finally made it home to an almost hysterical mother.
I wasn’t used to my mother being so worried. I was used to my mother being in control of every aspect of my life… including what I ate. And while I pined to have a lunch box with a bologna sandwich on white bread and ding dongs like all the other kids, my mom packed a very different lunch. Ever day I carried a brown bag (that she ask I bring home to be recycled) with a peanut butter (no added sugar) and honey sandwich on home-made wheat bread, carrot sticks, an apple and powdered milk in a square container with a lid (no thermos for me).
I hated that milk. I never drank that milk. But day after day, my mom packed it in a brown paper bag and day after day I carried the brown bag and the container still full of milk home from school.
Then, the inevitable happened, and I dropped the bag onto the floor of the school bus. The milk, which was already at room temperature, spilled everywhere. The bus driver was not at all pleased with me, so I should have known the situation would get even worse. And it did.
Only weeks later, my mother put her car in the shop near my school and needed a ride home. Being practical, she arrived at my school just as classes were ending and climbed onto bus number 25 with the first and second graders. At least she tried to climb on the bus, but the driver wouldn’t let her.
My mother insisted that there was plenty of room and the bus was going right to our house anyway. The driver told her no. After what seemed like the longest argument (and one of the most embarrassing moments of my life), the principal finally came over to settle the matter.
My mother had to find her own way home.
I’m pretty sure that was the day my name was officially added the national school bus “beware of this student” watch list. (That’s the list distributed nationwide to every single school bus driver.)
The list is the only explanation as to why, even after I moved across the country, the new school bus driver didn’t like me either.
In that case, the feeling was mutual. I had no respect for a woman who, instead of looking at the road, was constantly looking in the mirror to see what the kids were doing. After a few very close and dangerous calls on winding, West Virginia roads, my friend and I decided we’d had enough and organized a protest. We told everyone on the bus to duck down below the backs of the seats. The next time the driver looked in the mirror, her bus appeared empty.
We though this was hilarious. Our bus driver didn’t. In fact, she was so angry, she stopped the bus and marched up and down the aisle taking names and phone numbers Once she got mine, she seemed satisfied in learning that the girl on the national watch list was the culprit. What she didn’t expect was that my parents sided with me. They didn’t, however, think the incident warranted a life-time pass from riding the school bus, and I was still forced to ride for a couple more years.
But now, my days on the bus have come to an end, and, except for a few field trips, they have ended for my children as well.
Like so many other parts of childhood, all that is left are the memories and the lessons learned. Now it’s time to make more memories and learn something new. I’m just glad that neither is likely to involve a big, yellow school bus.
Moving On, Missed Opportunities, and Making Memories
My brother and I in the Shaniko Jail in the 1970';s
Apparently, I’ve never been very impressed by men with power. If I had been, my life may have changed forever when I was seven years old.
But I wasn’t, it didn’t and all I have to show for my brush with fame is yet another story about how headstrong I can be.
There are a lot of those stories, but only one about my brief encounter with Hollywood.
A television crew had arrived near the small town where I lived in Central Oregon. At the time, my mother was an enthusiastic newspaper reporter who never missed an opportunity to combine her job with the opportunity to expose her family to a world bigger than the one where we lived.
As I recall, I was already impressed with the world around me. But then, my memory may be a bit biased. One of the advantages of living thousands of miles from your childhood home is that distance enhances the warm fuzzy glow of nostalgia.
And when it comes to my childhood, I am a completely nostalgic for everything that isn’t part of my adult life: sagebrush and juniper trees, cattle drives and rodeos and, most of all, ghost towns.
I loved visiting Shaniko, the ghost town near our home. I loved the stagecoach. I loved the jail. And most of all, I loved the old hotel with the wooden Indian standing guard next to the front door.
Apparently Hollywood felt the same, because Shaniko was the site of an episode of the short-lived television show “Movin On.”
(Thanks to the internet, evidence of that event still exists at http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/875245. I’m even convinced my dad is
The Shaniko Stagecoach
in the third to last photo standing just to the left of a sign that says ‘Home Style Cafe.)
At first, I was excited about the opportunity to be on the set of a national television show, but my interest was short-lived. Watching the television shoot was tedious and boring. The actors and crew just repeated the same short scene over and over and over again.
And while I was completely bored, my brother sensed opportunity and tried to seize the moment. Every time the cameras started rolling, he started coughing. There was no doubt he was determined to get his voice heard on national television.
The director was just as determined that it would not be heard.
And the battle between the two became epic. At one point, the frustrated director took a break to mingle with the crowd.
But he didn’t do much mingling.
Instead, he headed straight for my family.
I was hoping that he was going to ask us to leave or at least give my brother a muzzle. Instead, he focused all his attention on me and serenaded me with “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” He ended the song by kissing me on the forehead.
I should have been in awe. I should have been gracious. I should have seized the opportunity to suggest that I join Ron Howard’s brother, the kid from “Gentle Ben”, who was a cast member for that episode. Instead, I gave him what, in my adult life, has become known as “the Trina look.”
That look said it all: I didn’t want a song; I didn’t want a kiss; and most of all, I didn’t want to be watching this boring television show.
Our family left shortly after the incident.
Since then, I’ve often wondered if the director had recognized potential in me. I like to think so, although he probably just felt sorry for me because I had such an annoying brother.
Whatever the reason, he singled me out, and I didn’t provide the reaction he was most likely hoping for. Because, even back then, I didn’t like feeding the ego of people in positions of power. I still don’t.
But I’ve also come to recognize all the opportunities I’ve lost because of that.
Acknowledging their power, or perceived power, doesn’t mean I’m giving up mine. When I’ve rushed to judge people who seek the limelight , I’m most likely the person who is losing something. After all, the television director in Shaniko didn’t need to sing to me to build up his ego. He probably just saw a little girl in a crowd and wanted to make her feel important too. And I didn’t give him that chance.
And I’ll never have that chance again.
But other opportunities may arise, and when they do, I’m hoping the memories I make don’t end with “what if.”
Because a life with “what ifs” is similar to a ghost town: a shell of what could have been with few opportunities to make new memories.
I’m planning on making a lot more memories.
Just So You Know 