I know I risk sounding like my father did at age ninety but this past evening has made me question why we think technology has made our lives easier.

I remember when you went to the grocery store and things were priced correctly. People actually stamped the price on items when they were placed on the shelves. Today items come ready priced (I guess) with a bar code. Sometimes they are correct.

I remember when the grocery clerk used a cash register and individually entered each item and its price and noted when something seemed amiss. Now the store clerk swipes it across a magnetic screen that reads the item name and price. He has no clue what milk costs and would never recognize an error.

I just got home from the grocery store where I picked up a half gallon of milk marked clearly $1.79.  I also grabbed a container of soft cheese because it was on sale for $3.99 and a two-pack of Hostess Cupcakes only because they were 99 cents and I hadn’t had one in years. If you are any good at math, you will catch an error when I tell you that it came to $10.00. Even with nearly 10% tax that doesn’t add up. Only I was tired at 8:30 at night and simply pressed my phone number into the keypad so it would give the sale price, swiped my ATM card which now means I don’t have to carry cash or a checkbook, pressed debit for how I wanted to pay, pressed in my secret pin number, pressed No I did not want additional cash, pressed Yes to confirm the amount, corrected the young man who mispronounced my name and left the store.

Back home, I glanced at the receipt. Yep, the $3.99 soft cheese rang up at $6.99. This will require a second trip to the store tomorrow for a refund or a return. It will use another gallon of gas which now costs $3.45 per gallon. And I didn’t need a $7.00 cheese.

Earlier in the evening I looked for my cat lady’s e mail address. She takes care of my cat Hermione when I am out of town. In the good old days I kept an address book where I penned in everyone’s phone numbers and addresses. It sat in a drawer and was handy to grab. Today we keep our information on our computers. Except that my computer crashed a few months back and I lost my contact list. My cordless phone will keep track of anyone who calls me and it also allows me to program in phone numbers, and I’ve done a few. People I call the most – my five or six good friends and my family. But the cat lady? No. That left me with one last option. My cell phone. Luckily at some point I must have saved Verna’s phone number and was able to retrieve it. That small task took a half hour.

I turned on the TV tonight. It is computerized as well. I have a Blue-Ray player and a large screen HD Sony with surround sound. I have sixty some channels through my cable company to choose from. Sixty channels of nothing. Re-runs, cop shows, sex and radio stations. I didn’t have a DVD to put into the Blue -Ray and didn’t feel like driving five miles to rent one. I could watch something on my computer; you can do that these days, but if there is nothing on the set, why would there be anything on computerized TV? I sat and read a book from the library.

Cordless, digital, cellular, computerized, high def…  really?  It has taken me two hours to accomplish three tasks that still require an additional trip to the store in the morning. What else is coming down the pike that will require me to spend money, learn a new process and slow me down even further? Please don’t tell me………

At least the chocolate cupcakes helped.

It might be easier to write about my dad if he fit into a category. Some dads are playful, and fun and teach you to play ball; some are super intelligent and teach you everything about math and science and history; some are go-getters, taking on the world, professional, wealthy, and admired; some are quirky, artistic, moody but unique.So as I write today in memory of my father, I can’t find a category to fit him. Not really.

He was a man of few words, a hard-working man who, with a grade school education, gave us a home, food, clothing and a lot of love. He fixed everything himself; he built everything by hand; he pinched pennies and he knew nothing about raising two girls. Had we been boys we might have known a different man. I’ve wondered about that recently. I grew up in the 50’s and was a girly girl – baby dolls and buggies, play kitchens, paper dolls and dress up.  I remember once serving him tea with my miniature china tea pot and cups. He’d have been happier I’m sure to have taught me to hit a baseball or throw a football around the yard.

But instead, he taught me to ride a two wheel bike, how to drive the car, and he put my roller skates on my shoes a hundred times a day when they fell off and I couldn’t use the key. He taught me to fish though he had to bait my hook. He put together a metal swing set with monkey bars and saved me more than once from falling to my death. He took me to the park and pushed me high on the larger swings. He drove us everywhere we could drive in two days and could find a cheap motel. He never complained when I slept through the entire trip on the pallet he made between the back and front seats or when I grumbled about being wakened to see the hot springs or monument or vista.

When I was fifteen he let me wash his car. This was no small thing. My dad’s cars were his pride and joy. Each Sunday after church and the fried chicken dinner he cooked each week, he would wash and wipe and wax every inch inside and out. I had to prove to him I could do it. He had taught met step by step when and how much to soap before rinsing, how to keep it wet until you wiped it down with the chamois, how often to ring it out to the right wetness to do the job with no streaks, how to use an old tooth brush on the rims of the tires, a q-tip along the vents and radio, a clean damp cloth on the dash, newspaper to clean each window. It was a minimum two hour process, but when it was waxed and buffed it looked like new.

Each year my dad put in a garden with endless tomato plants. And every 4^th of July, he hand-cranked home-made ice cream in the old wooden bucket and tin freezer. Those became his legacy – tomatoes and vanilla ice cream.

They say I “got” the Poole temper, the Poole eyebrows, thick hair, dark skin, brown eyes, my dad’s quiet reserve. I’d like to think I also “got” his work ethic, his family values, his money management, and his faith. I’d like to hope that he was proud of me in my later years. The one thing I am certain of is that he loved us unconditionally.

(Oh, and dad, I forgive you the habit of driving an extra ten miles to save a penny a gallon for gas! He will understand.)

The other day a friend said something to me that I had never heard in quite the same way. She said, “It isn’t the despair that kills us; it’s the hope.”

I immediately took issue because hope seems so positive and necessary to survival. However..

She went on to explain. Despair is a very strong feeling but it ends once we release it. It has an ending and that ending can take time or it can happen very quickly depending on the situation. But hope—  ah, that is another issue entirely. Despair is finite. Hope can be infinite. If we continue to hope that things will be different, we hang on to both hope and the despair that often accompanies it.

When we hope that the situation will change, hope that the other person will change, hope that eventually, down the road, soon . . . it will be different, we don’t release. Once we release the hope, we feel the despair and it dissipates.

I had to think on it for awhile . . . had to put it into situational perspective; but once I did, I had to agree. It is the hope that keeps us tied to the pain, the pain of not being able to change something or someone who is hurting us. Once we reach that point of letting go of hope, we feel the pain of despair for a finite amount of time and we move on.

Hope has a positive connotation but when we really think about it, once we release any situation and turn it over to a higher being, our load is lifted and we can feel peace. Particularly in hurtful or negative situations, hope can keep us in pain for way too long. Better to feel the tears and rage of despair for a short while and find peace more quickly. 

Sometimes being a woman, a counselor, parent, friend and a Christian bring up confusing issues for me. Last night I talked with a confidante about boundaries. She and I have been counselors for many years. In marriage and family counseling, classroom presentations, and drug/alcohol support groups for parents, I have often stressed the importance of good strong boundaries. When to say “enough”, when to let go, when to leave, and where to draw the line in the sand.

I’m not a theologian and that will probably be painfully clear to anyone reading this. My internal struggle is wrapped up in 1Corinthians 13.4 – Love is very patient and kind. As a Christian and as a counselor I also teach unconditional love. Someone more knowledgeable with the Bible can certainly e mail me back and quote some scripture that may help me with this dilemma.

The problem is – this has become personal as of late, and I find myself trying to find balance and understanding. Instead I find myself going to one extreme and then the other. Giving way too much, accepting way too much, getting hurt way too often. I think this means I need tighter boundaries. So I tighten those up only to find myself understanding the other point of view, understanding my role in whatever issue has arisen, being patient and loving unconditionally and saying “it’s ok.”  We have a therapeutic term for that as well: sending mixed messages.

In the church bookstore this past Sunday I picked up a book that opened itself to a page I needed to read. I find God doing that quite often in my life. On the page was a quote to use with someone you love. I found a notebook and pen in my purse and scribbled it down.  It said, “I love you too much to allow you to treat me this way. It isn’t good for you or me.” Wow. Boundaries with love. I liked it.

It’s now on my refrigerator, a piece of paper in my wallet, and on my nightstand. I welcome additional thoughts from you on this difficult issue we all face, and I give you this quote in case God needed for you to read it today as I needed to read it on Sunday.

            In twenty minutes the line of blue, black, or red nylon robes will begin marching into the stadium, caps at various angles, and tassels on the left. The first strains of Pomp and Circumstance will choke the throats of every parent in the stands of the stadium.  Moms will swipe away the first of many tears; dads will appear calm and stoic until their son or daughter’s name is announced over the P.A. system, when they will let loose a shrill whistle or a loud ‘that’s my kid’.

            I will not be in those stands tonight but my heart will be there. For ten years I felt like the adopted parent of a third of those students and I shed my first tear with the beginning march and beamed with pride at each and every name announced.  On those nights I had three hundred children, three hundred reasons to applaud and praise.

            I had spent four years with each of them and I knew them all. I knew their doubts and fears, their frustrations with teachers, their stressed out anger when their grades dropped and their smiles of pride when they succeeded.  I dried their tears when love fell apart, I counseled their decisions and hoped they’d make the right one. I pushed them to take the challenge of advanced classes, nagged them to study harder.  I threatened them when they skipped classes. I raced them to the school nurse and accompanied them to the hospital when they over-dosed. I stepped them through their parents’ divorces. I touched their hand when they had a positive pregnancy test. I cried with them and held them when class mates died a tragically young and senseless death.

            I dragged them to the school resource officer when they didn’t want to “narc” or press harassment charges and called child protective services after checking out bruises and black eyes. I met them outside the support group meeting and shoved them through the door to their eating disorder group. I listened to them rage at a parent’s incarceration. I bid them good-bye when they were forced to return to their country of origin. I carried balloons to classrooms and loudly announced scholarships and college admissions. I bragged on their role in the school play, the best dance performance of their careers, the winning touchdown, and the half-time performance of the marching band.

            I pushed, pulled and prodded thousands of students and sometimes felt I knew them better than the parents they lived with.

            And senior year, I counted their credits a dozen or more times making certain their grades and courses would culminate in this last night of their high school careers.

            In my mind, I watch with pride and tears as they walk across the stage, accept their diploma with their left hand, shake the hand of the principal with their right, and move their tassel to the left side of their cap as they walk back down the stairs, cameras flashing, horns blaring, friends and family calling their names. I grin; they were listening after all.

            Tonight I will not be there but I can visualize it all.  Every graduation is the same from start to finish. I can tell you that at 8:20 the principal will give his final speech following the two students chosen to speak to their classmates, after the introductions of the school board members, the pledge, the class gift to the school.  And at 8:30 he will say the same words he said last year and all the years before that. I am proud to present these graduating seniors and vouch that they have fulfilled all the requirements of the state of Arizona. The first student whose last name begins with ‘A’ will step forward; each row will rise and sit at the same time.  A half hour later caps will fly, parents will rush the field, sad graduation songs will play, and my heart will be there.