Out of luck
by Deborah S. Roberts
Silver skin shining like moon glow, it would have seemed more in place skimming the fast curves of Monaco than crawling the streets of my small American town. The driver saw me staring and noticeably puffed up. We don’t get many Porsches around here, and he was enjoying what he perceived as my vehicle-envy.
I was thinking: DEATH CAR.
Diamonds from coal
by Deborah S. Roberts
From King David’s ancient psalms
What sets apart portrait painter Samuel Morse
Tripping over land mines
by Deborah S. Roberts
Like a lot of people, I was wary about wading into the waters of social media. What would I find? Who would find me? But after a few weeks, it had been a wholly positive experience of reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. Then one night my cousin Karla posted a note to me on Facebook that made me realize reconnecting can come at a price.
She’d just heard from someone she hadn’t seen in years. Naturally, her old friend had asked about her children, specifically her eldest son. “You think everyone knows, then you realize they don’t,” Karla wrote. Her 22-year-old son was killed on New Year’s Eve 2001.
Tags: anxiety, Facebook, grief, Personal Development, Self-Improvement, social media, survival, tips | 
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Starting a revolution
by Deborah S. Roberts
Sometimes it feels like I was born in the wrong era. I’d love to have marched with suffragists at the turn of the last century, campaigned for better labor conditions in 1930s factories, or helped stage sit-ins on college campuses in the 1960s. Oh, I’ve participated in my share of marches and worked for many causes. But I always yearned to do something more dramatic … until an unlikely hero reminded me you don’t have to start a revolution to make a difference.
“Johnny” was exceptional … but not in a way that usually suggests leadership qualities. He had Down’s Syndrome, and working as a grocery bagger for a Midwestern supermarket chain was likely as far as his skills would take him.
To shoe or not to shoe?
by Deborah S. Roberts
If there’s one thing all children in the American South
Somehow Southern kids manage to walk, run, tumble, skip, jump rope, ride bikes, and even play baseball and football in our bare feet. But then we grow up, put on a few pounds, decide to get in shape, and suddenly it’s all about THE SHOE.
Speaking your truth
by Deborah S. Roberts
Recently my brother and I were swapping stories about our childhood peccadilloes and the punishments that usually followed. One thing was certain: When Mom and Daddy caught us in our misadventures and promised to tend to us later, they kept their word. We not only learned that actions have consequences, we learned our parents meant what they said.
Most people seem to take a more ambiguous approach to life than our parents. They’ve discovered the easiest way to avoid conflict is to avoid making firm commitments or saying anything meaningful. Instead they waffle and warble, acting out the advice Rolling Stones’ front man Mick Jagger
When life’s not fair
by Deborah S. Roberts
My niece is about to enter the second grade, but as Robert Fulghum
“What’s not fair?” I asked.
“They took it!” she said of the restaurant staff that had thrown away her prize.
“You left it on the table, and they picked it up with the rest of the trash. Why isn’t that fair?”
Because!
Critical reaction
by Deborah S. Roberts
Britain’s official royal poet was in a bit of a snit. Sir John Betjeman
After the poet left in a huff, his agent explained to reporters, “He is very upset that it is being treated as a poem when in fact it was never intended to be. It is a hymn.”
Whatever literary critics and politicians thought, when Betjeman’s “hymn”—sung to a composition by Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen’s Music—premiered later at London’s Royal Albert Hall, it was greeted by long and thunderous applause. Clearly the public overruled the critics.
Is your life off-kilter?
by Deborah S. Roberts
As a small child, I was so afraid of heights I was scared to go up on a teeter-totter. So I only got on with children much smaller than I was. That way I could control the experience, keeping myself in the middle and bottom ranges and sending the other kids soaring to the top. Naturally, they were thrilled with the view from on high. The view from the bottom wasn’t so great, but at least it didn’t come with a panic attack.
The other day, I realized I’m back on the teeter-totter, sitting at the bottom and hating the sucky view. Only this time, I don’t have the same level of control. That’s because the teeter-totter is my life, and I’ve somehow seesawed out of balance
Fearless pursuits
by Deborah S. Roberts
Children are much more influenced by what their parents do than what they say. Sherry Lansing is a perfect example.
When Sherry chattered about becoming an actress, like other stereotypical moms in the 1950s, Margot Heimann Duhl told her daughter to focus on becoming a housewife. But necessity had forced Margot off traditional paths. When she’d fled Nazi Germany for America at 17, she’d had to be self-reliant, learning to speak English and working as a dressmaker. And when Sherry’s father, real-estate investor David Duhl, died of a sudden heart attack when she was nine, Margot stepped up again. The grieving widow went to his office and announced she was taking over the family business. On being informed by a male office manager that she couldn’t possibly do that because she didn’t know anything about real estate, she replied, “Teach me. I can do it.”
