In high school, I was somewhat of a wallflower, afraid to take any steps forward or, perish the thought, step apart and outside any socially-approved box.  Yet my proclivity to whimsy eventually gave me away in my senior year’s art class when the teacher noted that my sculptures – while exhibiting a rather orderly framework – still possessed a “whimsical quality”.  Through his pair of greatly thickened eyeglass lenses, he had perceived my soul’s gasping for air.

My college art teacher was the first to explain why we students were so sensitive to criticism regarding our artistic endeavors…  “These are your babies. You created them. Because they come from within you and are an extension of your own hands, you will naturally be protective of them.”   So, we learned to listen carefully, weathering the stinging critiques from peers and mentors, as one might glean some new direction for a future work.

Of course, I did better when I kept my glasses off and used the watercolors to wash the shapes and block images in place…we were painting along the estuary, so the sailboats and docks were far more interesting when I stopped looking at all the details and captured only their essence.  So, too, were the Victorian homes that we painted on location the next week’s assignment.

“Keep your glasses off, Annette” was my teacher’s friendly admonition.  Thus, I followed his advice and discovered a freedom that corrective lenses had long denied me.

These days, I am emerged in the practice of creating; this time as a writer and soon to be published author.  As in anything I perceive worthwhile, I tackle the task head-on with a child-like optimism, followed by learned self- doubt, then a convicted “I can do this” on to a more cautious “I must be crazy to think I can pull this off!”  I am reminded of a story shared in English class about the relationship between the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda; on days when her mental acuity often lingered on the fragile precipice between real and imagined, threatening imagery, she was comforted by her husband’s assurances that it was indeed the world that was crazy, not she; not his beloved!  The guy was obviously pure genius.

Most hours are spent in unending repetition:  edit; edit; proof; rewrite; edit; toss; rewrite; edit; walk away; edit; bury for twenty-four hours; reread;  edit; , proof some more… Eventually, the essence makes itself known …and Voila!  Like my watercolors years earlier, images slowly emerge and juxtapose with some surprising happenstance of words.  To write is to find out what one thinks.

So, I The Implementer – the one who has walked others’ ideas from beginning to end, breathing life into others’ goals –  is now at the helm; it is my turn to be The Visionary.  My first collection has gone to print; I have successfully communicated a “vision” and, with God’s hand, found an illustrator who could translate my words into a breathing pallet.  We “meshed” and her paint brush picked up where my pen left off.  Such is the grace of God watching over the smallest of our human endeavors.

Thirty plus years later, I still remove my glasses often, so that I may cull the necessary from the excess weeds constantly blurring my thoughts; hoping again to find the right words to cut through into that whimsical realm of my soul…

 

 

 

As it was after any three-day weekend, the following week was just another big blur of Mondays… 

Americans are optimists so, when any previous Sunday showed the slightest promise of Spring, the would-be campers could emerge from their winter berths,  pull out the old camping gear, and take stock of what equipment still worked and hadn’t rotted or mildewed over the winter. 

Memorial Day was around the corner! The great outdoors was calling!

The first long camping weekend of the American vacation season had officially begun. Thankfully, a majority of campers experienced good weather.  Others were not too happy, never mind that they picked up the tent on the same cashier slip that listed the buns, canned beans, hotdogs and marshmallows!  As a manager of a call center, I could plot the calls coming in by areas of the country, depending upon where the sun has peeked from behind a cloud and whispered ‘Summer is coming”.  I could also plot the patterns of “just a little wind” or “a light rain” but that’s another chapter.

Some consumers using their break/lunch hour continually dial the same 800 numbers, hold for a short period of time, then forget about their initial mission of the week. Call centers are slammed for the first seven hours of an eight hour Monday; Tuesday is busy too, but calls tend to taper off by late afternoon.  By Wednesday’s “hump day”, people’s priorities have changed.  Work and family events take over, because the numbers drop to a predictable sum in the middle of most weeks.  Thursdays just slip by.  Whoa! It’s already Friday …time to pick up the phone and complete this honey-do before going home for the weekend! 

So began the call center race each week. The Caller’s Objective: to reach a real live representative in less than 5 minutes.  In the consumers’ minds, there were hundreds of phone representatives just waiting for someone to talk to. But more often than not, there were only a half-dozen –   COUNT THEM! – six workstations inside of time worn cubicles, the majority filled with unsuspecting individuals working the consumer service lines for the first time. Some of them wised up over the years, and became seasoned reps among the fold.  Others lasted only a season; my personal peeve was that some of the best and the worst were cut from the same cloth: all had previously sold cell phones; they had learned to use their gift of gab to “sell up” rather than fix any minor problem.  Cell phone types were never seriously regarded as keepers in my long-term, managerial perspective.

In a customer service scenario, the ability to problem-solve was imperative.  As a manufacturer, we provided both the human connection and the physical part(s) to make one and one’s product “whole” again. Hence,

Defective was the only word most callers voiced.  Comprised of more than four letters, defective was a surefire adjective meant to satisfy the reps’ ears and our data base criteria.   

This is covered under warranty, right? 

What do you mean you can send parts?

We depended on reading updated, accurately prepared specs… But even then, servicing our clients was an extremely Neanderthal process, failing to offer us a means from which we could click our mouse and “presto” make our caller happy…

Please hold for one moment, Sir. (He’s not happy, he’s asking questions… )

Any unusual scenario was considered on a case by case basis; the many repetitive descriptions that implied there could very well be some type of legitimate flaw jumped from the reps notes onto my spreadsheet!  There was little coincidence, but much that was considered anecdotal at best.   It promised to be another long summer.

Among the majority of seasonal temps, anyone who had an intelligent quotient of ten points above a tree could only stomach one season. If they managed to return again the next year, chances were good that they couldn’t get a preferred job elsewhere or had decided they could bluff their way through the eight hour day with little attention.  

Not so their illustrious leader – me – who retained a yearly optimism that our corporate systems would improve, as would not only the seasonal temps but also the callers’ expectations!  The optimism each season was infectious! We’d have a better run this season; of course we would! 

Nevertheless, I remained on the phone and on emails,  tracking down the last major parts orders, dealing with the wrong parts received,  and succumbing by the end of the season to a personal depression; was I really this trusting? (I hesitated to insert “stupid”, but with hind sight, one could substitute for the other).

Relatively few details escaped discovery in our service center.  Scripts, and many hours training to pursue the correct course of questioning normally satisfied a normal, run of the mill caller’s situation.    

·      Did you review the contents of the box to make sure everything was complete?

·        Did anyone practice pitching the tent before leaving?  

·        You sprayed it with what?

We customarily asked questions and in turn hoped that we were “educating” the consumer in a polite, albeit often too late, manner.  Didn’t anyone read Consumer Reports anymore? Or simple care instructions?

Yep, that all-in-one vacation package promised the outdoor experience of a lifetime; so much so, that when the unsuspecting purchaser read the bullet point sales pitch and assured his significant other of a fantastic week in the wild for her and the kids, she was game!  Now, which aisle has the hot dogs and the chips???

The next Monday, it was obviously OUR FAULT (as the manufacturer) that their dream weekend had become a nightmare. Never mind that two layers of cloth won’t protect campers from most freaks of nature;  nor that the weather warnings that had predicted thunderstorms were dismissed by the campers who had braved rains back in the day. Now, lesser issues were often involved, including a tent bag full of bad judgment calls that piled up like proverbial straws to finally break the camel’s back; enough so that Wednesday’s Hump Day smiles disappeared entirely from our summer season’s work week. 

Ultimately, educating the masses was downright idealistic, especially when hundreds of dollars spent on camping equipment didn’t guarantee a successful experience; the entire exercise had burned a distasteful hole in pocket books and taste buds.  “Teaching callers” via a taped greeting was optimistic at best. The Labor Day Holiday ended the season, but a closed Monday always overwhelmed a normal Tuesday’s call volume; lines overflowed and calls backed up; once again, optimists chose to hang up and redial…there was no end to explaining how they had lost their place in the main queue. 

On a brighter note, the next seven months would again include only one Monday per week…

Dear Readers,

The month of May brings attention to our fallen; and additional families each year endure the Memorial Day Weekend in a new and solemn light, when a loved one has only recently joined the ranks of those honored at the end of this month.

It is because of the never-ending toll that strips away our country’s youth that I humbly submit this tribute.  While I wrote this piece for a specific young man, I hope that sharing it now will – in some small way – bring a sense of comfort to the many military families forever blanketed in sorrow each year on Memorial Day.

May God continue to Bless and Keep our Military Families in His care,

Annette Brochier Johnson

 

 

 

 

THIS SOLDIER HAD A NAME

“Another soldier fell this Friday” and the broadcast continued on;

This time the news became surreal, for the war had touched us, too.

This soldier had a name.

For those of us without a son, the past had met the present

Releasing a stream of déjà vu.

His son would be well cared for, as would his little girl.

Friends and family would come forward

To reassure each other as a generation had before.

“I’ll share my room with my

Cousin, Mommy. I’ll share my daddy, too.”

This soldier had a family.

Ever resilient, the ever constant family values

Were embedded on the hearts of all who shared this surname;

A covenant simply scribed in red, white, and blue.

Camping trips are a summer tradition;

This year will be no different, as summer will not hide.

The campfire will burn and crackle

When branches again entwine,

Sharing growing pains with Siblings,

Watching Cousins meet anew,

Recalling Grampa’s keyboard melodies,

And laughing at what campground antics bring!

This soldier had a voice.

Let each heart in its own tempo listen closely,

So that occasional off-keys and tears may soon transform

To joyous song and comfort all in reverie…

Save a chuckle for that chorus when you congregate and sing!

Peace within will bring forth smiles,

Finding solace now in small hands clasped

Tightly ‘round the photos of One of America’s Finest.

He is forever their very own soldier.

Remind them that there are others, too, who thank God for soldiers like their daddy

Whose service and sacrifices keep us safe in a world of war-torn strife.

This soldier had a mission.

And in serving, he shared The Word with whom he shared a common fellowship and duty.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.   John 3:16 KJV

Seems like the American media never miss an opportunity to take a tragedy and embellish upon it for later publication. Obligatory markers are a priority, and sadly, JFK’s Assassination is no exception. 

This is the fiftieth anniversary; the media’s obsession and fascination with unanswered questions, conspiracy theories and the renewed cold war climate has again spun its web around our hearts, luring us into a personal time capsule to endure another painful return voyage. 

My journey always begins on the entrance steps of one junior high school in the Bay Area; we were seventh grade “scrubs”, so enjoying the sunny, mid-day lunchtime break was just another Friday with my friends at our usual spot. I remember no faces, just a mass of chatter spilling out of the cafeteria, spreading the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

The president would want us to go on…

How did my gym teacher know what JFK would want?  None of us sitting there in our gym clothes were able to fully comprehend, let alone focus, on the class requirements before us. The few minutes between the principal’s announcement in the cafeteria and the beginning of fourth period was certainly not long enough for any of this horror to sink in; we were still in disbelief and few details were known. Our president assassinated? In our own country? In Vice President Johnson’s Texas? How were we supposed to run laps and play a game as though nothing had happened?

Until that noon hour, we students were an innocent but idealistic bunch, having been inoculated two years before with the Ask Not serum: 

Ask not what your country can do for you;

Ask what you can do for your country.

 

JFK’s quote hung in our school’s front showcase. Many of us were planning to join the Peace Corps when we were eligible; or, at the very least, become teachers and serve the needs of children on our own soil.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was 43, the youngest man and the first Catholic to take the oath of office; handsome and somewhat boyish charm aside, he was also a WWII Navy Veteran.  Put a man on the moon by the end of the decade?  It was within our grasp because this was America, where anything was possible if one believed and envisioned it so.  JFK’s youthful exuberance represented all that was historic and bold and fresh about the American Dream. 

Mom had the television on when I came home from school. The black and white screen repeated the same footage all evening:

There was the young President and First Lady walking along the airstrip fencing, shaking hands and greeting loving well wishers; the handsome couple smiling and waving in a motorcade; and then the distortion of confusion in a shaking, hand-held camera, capturing the indefinable moment. 

News reels would always follow with photos of people crying in the street, discarded roses lying on the floor of an abandoned limousine, and eventually, Walter Cronkite’s tearing up and wiping his glasses on camera as he completed the official pronouncement that President Kennedy had died.

In between the broadcasts, we reminisced: Mom remarked how JFK had “pardoned” the traditional White House Thanksgiving turkeys just a couple of days earlier; what had been a light-hearted presidential photo op now, in hindsight, seemed eerily foreboding; our president had received no such pardon.  

Grasping for some comfort, Mom and we girls took turns leafing through the magazines stacked on the fireplace wall shelves; midst the keepsake newsprint inserts from the weddings of Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, and Margaret Truman were some Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, and other periodicals with Jackie on the cover; color photos of a loving mother with her two darling little ones were rampant, as was the genteel coverage about her maternal fragility. Jackie had been plagued by difficult pregnancies; she had recently lost their third child.  Any woman’s magazine worth its salt had taken a turn extolling the virtues of this young, refined and well-educated thirty-something who had become our youngest First Lady.

Like many families, we had accepted all the hype and the story lines, including the media’s making of a pill box styled Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.  This was the era when Washington as well as Hollywood deleted any scandals from the story lines that might implicate repetitive or rampant undignified behavior by our government leaders; the Kennedy Administration was no different. 

I remember the initial telecast of asides from grief-stricken public figures.  Ladybird Johnson mistakenly remarked that the most terrible travesty was that the assassination had occurred in her beloved Texas.  She later apologized for this faux pas, clarifying that the most terrible travesty was the loss of our beloved president.

The swearing in of Lyndon Johnson by necessity took place on Air Force One.  The new widow insisted on attending, so the ceremony was delayed until Jackie’s arrival. The historic snapshot conveyed a grief-stricken assembly of figures; the viewers’ eyes eventually focused on the blood-stained skirt in the foreground. Some reports suggested that aides had encouraged Jackie to change her clothes for the historic ceremony, but Jackie had refused.  She reportedly responded, “I want them to see what they did to Jack”. 

I had much admired Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy as First Lady, but her words struck me to the core.   I absorbed them completely. I waited for some type of explanation or retraction, but I never heard the First Lady apologize for that which in my sensitivity was a deeply punitive remark.  

We prepared ourselves for the weekend’s continual coverage; maybe new reports would offer some of the missing details.  We were glued to the screen the entire morning when we witnessed in real time Jack Ruby walking up to Lee Harvey Oswald and shooting him at close range. 

Dear God! What must we endure next?

We were all in a daze; even the solemnity of a four day weekend of national mourning didn’t close the door on the restlessness or fear inspired by these two indescribable acts. 

Images…the boots facing backward in the stirrups, the black bunting across the White House windows, the little guy saluting his father’s caisson… I had expected historic precedence to console… now, one man’s visions had been diminished to an eternal flame, extinguishing a fountain of youthful promise.

There was little consolation from the Warren Report.  I quickly caught the cynical virus from the adults.  I couldn’t then and still can’t break away from my initial skepticism that the historical summation by the Warren Commission was a political assessment rather than conclusive of either guilt or trajectory findings. The report at best rubbed salt in our intellectual wounds; few Americans accepted its findings as convincing; and the government’s decision to seal the documents for fifty years fed our doubts and fueled every conspiracy theory that later arose.

Some years I managed to set the painful memories of November on the back burner. But American journalism’s insistence on commemorating a Camelot that never really existed made forgetting the story’s tragic ending impossible.  They stirred the pot enough so to keep us somber and close to a  seems like just yesterday awareness.

Not that we needed any reminders. Poignant images presented themselves with or without the help of the media; they were permanently embedded in our common psyche. Each November 22^nd , we who were old enough to remember that day recalled where we were… and when we heard… and how we as a country mourned. 

I do not exaggerate when I state that a part of my own emotional maturity was frozen in place on that blackest of Fridays; but I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that JFK’s death was only partially to blame; my brother’s nervous breakdown in September had already altered some of the family dynamics.

Neither my brother’s vulnerability nor JFK’s death would fade away very quickly.  From my eleven year old eyes, I wasn’t sure of anything that autumn of ’63 except that my immediate future held more sorrowful weeks ahead.  I sought escape where I could, and burrowed even deeper into my school studies, managing to accomplish a fair amount of distance during waking hours before going to bed and shutting myself away from my family’s personal heartache.

Historic events come and go; unfortunately, the more dramatic ones languish much longer than we wish, lurking in the shadows like smears of glue that have yet to dry clear, leaving unwanted traces marring an otherwise precious entry in our life’s scrapbook…