Children are really helpless at the hands of adults. If you have ever been a child, you can identify with the feeling of absolute powerlessness and the feelings of hatred it can induce in children.

Yesterday, my daughter and I tried to get my little granddaughter dressed and into the car for a fun trip to Old Salem. Fun for whom remains under discussion.

Anyway, Bea did not want to go. She resisted getting dressed, had to be carried to the car and forced into her carseat. All the time she was weeping and saying she wanted to stay at home.

Well, we got about halfway to Winston-Salem, and finally gave in and took her back home. Turns out she really was sick and there was plenty of evidence of that that I will not go into here.

My daughter and I have been cursing ourselves for the past 24 hours for making Bea go when she so clearly did not want to. We have apologized over and over to her. We have groveled. We have been very angry with ourselves for imposing our will on her.

This brings up a lot of memories for me that I would rather not go into here. The thing is that I am learning, learning, learning. There are times when children have to do what their parents tell them to do, and there are times when the parents need to back off and listen to the children.

We have decided to delay the day trip to Old Salem for Bea for a couple of years. As Amy says,

"Bea doesn't know from Moravians!" Oh, isn't it so?

And Amy revealed that she was only going to Old Salem to please me. She doesn't really care deeply about the Moravians, either. Who knew?

My biggest mistake is assuming that people are as interested in history or whatever as I am. I just have to get over that. And it's definitely OK not to care about the Moravians. Care or don't care, it's OK! Was this vital lesson worth a lost day's vacation? You bet!

Footprints

Wow, October.

The kids are taking one more weekend at the beach, as the autumnal colors are
already beginning to show on the Piedmont. I love the dry spareness of autumn and winter, after the lushness and humidity of summer.

My son-in-law Tim has been doing some work on my house this week, enclosing the laundry room that used to be open on one side to the raw underpinnings of the house. Looking over there at the view from under the house used to be very scary. There could be snakes or spiders living over there--or worse yet, ghosts.

We leave footprints wherever we go, as well as other traces of ourselves. A camera with a heat detector can photograph the very air that we warmed with our bodies after we've left the scene. If you watch CSI, you know that DNA and loose hairs and fuzz from our clothes can prove clues to where we have been. A lot of criminals have been caught that way, by a careless fingerprint or a discarded paper coffee cup left at the scene of the crime. "Be sure your sins will find you out," is a saying that I grew up on. Best then, to just be good all the time.

If my life were seasonal, I'd be in Autumn now, for sure. I can feel the colors ripening in my spirit, even as my skin and hair fade to shades of winter. If I were a vegetable/fruit, I guess I'd be a pumpkin. Or maybe a gourd, with a lot of loose seeds to rattle.

And I'm very conscious of the footprints that I'm leaving as I travel through this world. Others have traveled before me, and shown me the way. I honor them, and I try to be worthy.
This week I watched a documentary on Harlan County's (Kentucky) tremendous and history-changing miners' strike of 1974. I felt as though I were watching my kin.
The people in my family who were grown-up when I was a child were a lot like the Appalachian folk who appeared in the documentary, gold teeth, missing teeth, lanky build, pale skins, salty language, and all. I am like them. They are me.
My great-grandfather Frank Reed was a farmer in the summer and a miner in the winter. He had six children and a wife to feed. I know that he struggled. My grandmother has told me about seeing the miners come down the road in the predawn hours with their headlamps shining. They left some big footprints for me to follow.

We are responsible for doing all the good we can in this lifetime. The Universe will guide us if we let our consciences be clear and open and innocent, like children. We know what we ought to do. God help us do it!