Living Out Loud volume 26: Tempting fate

My father moved to Virginia from North Carolina in 1964 with only a cardboard box worth of belongings and looked for a place to rent here in Ocean View. There was a man renting apartments in the neighborhood. Daddy met him at his house and rode over to the apartment. In the short drive, it came out that Daddy worked construction and it was obvious the guy considered him unreliable and didn't want to rent to him. Daddy didn't even look inside but just told the man to drive him back. The next day he ended up renting a small upstairs apartment in a house on the corner that was cheaper and closer to work. It was while living in that little apartment that he noticed a single mother living in the house across the street with her five year old son. That single mother was my mom.

Mom's sister (Sissy) pestered her that she needed to go to officer's clubs to meet men. Sissy insisted Mom's next husband wasn't just going to walk up and knock on her door. As fate would have it, Daddy wandered over and knocked on her door to introduce himself. After a few years of doing whatever carpentry work in her house he could invent as an excuse to come over, they were married and haven't left that corner. Eventually, in 1981 the whole family (all five of us at that point) moved across the street to get that extra land and bigger house. It's that same house I went to visit this evening with their grandson.

What would have happened if Daddy rented that apartment a few miles away? I pass that little box of a building several times a week. Would he have noticed Mom at the grocery store? I don't think he would have worked up the courage to talk to her then. Dad is many things but he is no Casanova.

Is there such a thing as destiny? How large of a role does fate play in our lives or is it just the name we give for the magic of how things come about? If we were to hop into a DeLorean and keep my father from moving in, would we offspring just have some other cute story about how our parents met? Have you ever looked back and realized how close you came to not getting where you are now? I keep mentioning my old boss Harry, but he once said that if his friend hadn't lost his leg in the Wheel of Death, Harry would never have become a librarian (it makes sense if you hear the story, really).

I'm so pleased to be organized enough to have our Living Out Loud topic already! Tell us about how strong a part fate has played in your life. Have you dodged any bullets (actual or metaphorical)? I'm not a big Robert Frost fan, but what was the road you took that was less traveled by?

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each prompt above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. Remember, if you don't email me, I'm likely to forget to include you in the recap!

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, March 6th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

We're back on schedule for the first Sunday of the month so that gives you a solid three weeks to ponder your destiny, past, present and future.

Recap of Living Out Loud volume 25: Always Learning

You all rock. I wrote about wanting to garden and Harry sent me a long email with tips on how to plant corn. I'm excited! Harry also sent me this:

About 1,000 B. C., Solomon wrote: "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh." (Ecc. 12:12, KJV and ESV)

In 1994 A. D., I wrote: "What joy to awake every morning in a world so filled with things to learn."

In 2005 A. D., my granddaughter (then age 2 years, 8 months) said: "Granddaddy, there's so-o-o much to learn!"

This was a great topic to write about and read, so without further ado, let's see what you all are going to accomplish!

Rachel's You Learn That list sounds exciting! And yeah, learning to type with only a single space after periods has been hard for me too, but Twitter and the iPhone have helped with that. :)

Peg's NO Flash Photography! It's funny you say that because I turn my flash off most of the time and rarely use it. :) I'll email you some tips on how to get better pictures with no flash. Photography is a hobby near and dear to my heart!

Erin's I love a piano Great choice! Rich wants to do the same thing and we've found tons of great pianos for sale or free on craigslist from people just wanting them out of their house. My dad says we should get a keyboard to save space, but I don't think they feel the same.

SuziCate's The Fine Art of Unlearning Pottery! I want to do that too! (one day) And I have done so many dumb things with my sewing machine for lack of knowing better but it gets done one way or another. I thought of my father when you said you have to unlearn to learn. He is convinced that computers today are just bigger faster versions of the ones from the early 90s and it's painful to try to tell him otherwise! He could use some unlearning.

Deb's Always Learning Oh my heart goes out to you because my mom just had to take those damn tests for work and it wore her out! They asked the most bizarre things! You can do it - I have faith.

Megan's Grabbing the mechanical bull by the horns I think it's a great quality to be willing to try anything. I think I've also lost the ability to worry about making an ass out of myself. And we're better off for it! Now to find a mechanical bull around here ...

Grace's Always Learning Your two lists made me smile. I love the diversity of them both (and I have a similar wish list for talents too). I never thought about it from the aspect of being an expert on something for the recognition in addition to the mastery itself.

And my own This land is my land

I loved everyone's entries this month, but Grace's stuck with me the most. First her lists of things she wants to master make me crack up. And I just kept thinking about learning for its own sake versus just being about the recognition of the accomplishment. Her writing was really honest about what she thinks motivates her.

So Grace wins our prize this month! She'll get a $25 Amazon gift card (which I will email shortly versus slack on like I have in the past). I'm also excited to say I already know the topic for the next LOL and it should be neat. I'll hopefully post that by tomorrow.

Thanks for sharing, everyone!

This land is my land

As Kim lamented, it's hard to pick just one thing I want to learn because pretty much everything interests me! I got my hair colored and cut yesterday. When my hairdresser James started adding some liquid to the bowl already containing the color for my head, I asked "what's that for?" He looked at me indignantly (he does indignant well) and said, "Don't you trust me? Don't tell me how to do my job!" followed by a big grin. I told him I wanted to learn. "I might need to be your assistant one day and need to know how to mix color!" James rolled his eyes, "Oh, Lord, that's just what I need is one more person to work with!" and grinned again while he applied this mystery goo to my hair.

I've been going to a new chiropractor that we affectionately call my witch doctor. The details of those visits are a whole other story (and a really good one) but needless to say he does something new and wacky each week to help me feel better and every week I keep interjecting "what does that thing do?" or "how is that gonna help?". He soon learned I wasn't questioning his judgement but just genuinely wanted to understand. So he smiles and patiently explains how all these parts of my body work. Maybe I"ll be an applied kinesiologist one day. If nothing else I understand more about what voodoo he does.

There are tons of things I've forgotten and wouldn't mind re-learning. I know just enough music theory to be dangerous, but I'd really like to branch out from 1-4-5-1 chord progressions one day. I am a decent cook, but I'd love to have a wider repertoire of recipes up my sleeve. I watched Julie and Julia the other evening (thanks for the recommendation, Harry!) and it made me want to really grasp the science of baking powder versus soda instead of just blindly following a recipe.

I took horseback riding lessons long ago and thought it would be a fun hobby. I've learned that horses are more of an obsession than a casual hobby and it's hard to squeeze that into my week in the city with everything else. But maybe I'll live on a farm one day and need to ride horses out to check on the fences. Not likely, but you never know! My father assumes that everyone knows the basic of internal combustion engines. I'm not sure where he thinks I should have learned this, since it's not really something they teach an AP class on in high school and he did all that work himself in our house. You can only learn so much while "holding the light" for him. So I know enough to not flood the lawnmower but can't really troubleshoot it on my own. Cars have become too complicated for me to really care about maintaining, but I could get some joy out of being smarter with our yard equipment.

Pretty much anything I come in contact with I want to know more about. Curiosity helps us evolve. And most of my previous examples are things that I know enough to get by but would like to learn more. One thing lately has really grabbed my attention and I am completely ignorant of it.

I want a garden. I want to learn how things grow. I want to till the ground myself, I want to figure out how to get water back to that part of the yard. I want to know how many tomato plants we really need versus the 50 my brother tenant farmed in my yard last year. I want to know when squash is in season and if it's worth the trouble to grow corn.

I know absolutely nothing about horticulture, though, other than water and sunlight are good. I had a spider plant once but even that didn't last but so long. Despite that, I'm excited about having a basil plant versus paying $5 for a bunch at the grocery store. I want fresh mint for mojitos. I want tomato sandwiches this summer. I'm also excited about being involved in the creation of our own food. I'm not going to mill my own flour and I'm not going to hunt and slaughter my own meat, but I can handle the fruits and veggies.

I'm looking forward to the learning process. It will be hard not to have my father "help" a little too much, but I want to screw up on my own. I want to look out back and be proud of the things I grow. I made a person, I should be able to nurture and grow a damn cantaloupe.

I've got a piece of land. I've got a book on vegetable gardening. I've got a shovel. That's enough to start. Wish me luck!