The Tomorrow Trunk ~ Revisited

On this last day of 2012, I am revisiting the Tomorrow Trunk.  As momentary and fleeting as the years may seem, the first manuscript of the Tomorrow Trunk was drafted twenty years ago in 1993.  The Tomorrow Trunk was copyrighted in 1999, and I completely re-drafted the original text in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina and wrote the story from a child's perspective.  I started blogging about the process at the advice of a literary agent on October 19, 2010.  Parts of the Tomorrow Trunk have been read to and read by thousands of people over the years.  I have read the children's stories at schools and libraries.  I have shared the journaling/storytelling/writing process with book clubs and creative writing classes.  Plus, I have spoken to various adult groups about the importance of recording today's best stories.

And yet, the Tomorrow Trunk is not just a manuscript you hold in your hand or read on a page.  For me, the Tomorrow Trunk is the invisible family member at the table, the unseen observer in the room, and the surprise witness ready to testify an accurate account of the most important story of the day.  The Tomorrow Trunk has taken on a life of its own.  On days like today, I reach for something deep inside its internal parts. Almost immediately, I am connected.  I am crying, or laughing, or pausing.  Most importantly, I feel immortal ~ as if what I am experiencing is not subject to loss, or time, or death.

In that moment, I fully understand the enduring value of the Tomorrow Trunk.  Even while everything around us changes, stories are never-ending.  When summoned, these stories that we tuck away have a phoenix-like spirit that resurrects right within our midst.

So as an old year dissolves and a new year evolves, I resolve to be immortal ~ perennial, everlasting, evergreen.  Just take today, tuck the best of it away, and keep it for tomorrow.

Happy 2013!

Dianne ; )

THE TOMORROW TRUNK

On the day I was born, my momma gave me the tomorrow trunk.

She gave my two sisters the tomorrow trunk when they were born,

but their trunks are not like mine.

No one has a tomorrow trunk like me.

The tomorrow trunk is always different for every child.

I take the tomorrow trunk with me wherever I go.

I can not leave it behind or forget about it.

The tomorrow trunk is never full.

There is always room for something new.

The tomorrow trunk does not have any toys in it,

but it does have surprise birthday parties

and midnight visits from Santa Claus.

There is no money in the trunk,

but there are trips to the ice cream shop,

(thanks to the Tooth Fairy)

and a summer’s worth of dreams

at a lemonade stand.

It does not have a bike in it, but it has a bunch of bumps and bruises,

two skinned knees, and one bad wreck (that was my sister’s fault).

It does not have a baseball or a bat, but it has that one bad call,

and my first over-the-fence homerun,

and my sister’s purple shiner (that was my fault).

The tomorrow trunk does not have any books either, but it has lots of stories.

Scary tales and fairytales, bedtime stories and secrets.

It has stories stacked up high like the tower of dirty dishes

after Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house –

that disappear before breakfast the next morning.

The tomorrow trunk is never full, but it is stuffed

with March winds for flying kites,

the smell of skunk spray so bad that it burns your eyes,

the buzz of a chimney full of bees,

the light of a hundred fireflies in a jar,

and the best scream ever!

(Thanks to one big bullfrog in my sister’s bed.)

The tomorrow trunk never loses anything.

It remembers the names of eighteen dogs, ten cats,

and two turtles that will always be my best friends.

It holds the best days spent in a seven story tree house,

a sunflower house in Grandma's garden,

and a real house that disappeared in a day.

My momma says that the tomorrow trunk is what we make it.

She says that what we do – not what we have – is what we carry with us.

We just take today, tuck the best of it away, and keep it for tomorrow.

Then, when we have to say good night to today,

the tomorrow trunk is always there…

and best of all, it is always mine.

Copyright 1999/Revised 2010, Dianne B. McLaurin.

The Other Christmases

Symbolic of the way we live, Christmas has always been feast or famine at our house – too, too much of everything or absolutely nothing at all.  I remember one Christmas in particular when Matt and Katie became totally frustrated with the entire gift-giving process, because they had so many presents to unwrap.  Whenever we tried to take away one toy so they could open another, the two toddlers lay out in the floor and screamed, “I don’t want to open anymore, Mommy!”  We have the entire chaotic scene on video.  Of course, their older sister happily obliged, as she enjoyed opening their presents as much as she did her own.  I also remember a snow-covered Christmas in Memphis when our grown-up daughters showered us with gifts.  We unwrapped presents for hours in an upscale apartment that looked and smelled as if Martha Stewart designed the decorations and Paula Deen prepared the food.

But then, there were 'the other Christmases', as I have called them – those Christmases when money was short, gifts were few, or family was separated.  This holiday distinction is not necessarily a pitiful or resentful declaration, but more of a seasonal disappointment. No matter how we lived the eleven months leading up to December, we always longed for a grand Christmas with all the trimmings. So having experienced more than our share of the other Christmases, we just simply did what we do best – what the strongest, fittest survivors of our species do – find a way to adapt.  Not only did we adapt; sometimes we thrived.

I remember one year in 'the big house' when we decorated Christmas trees in five rooms and did not fill a single stocking.  My entire extended family had gone to the mountains together, but David had just started a new job and was not eligible for time off.  My son spent Christmas with his girlfriend’s relatives, and my oldest daughter spent the holiday with her boyfriend’s family; so David, Katie, and I slept late, ate a big breakfast, and went to the movies together. We shared the cinema with a dozen people for whom we gave stories about why they were watching movies on Christmas Day.  We ate popcorn, sugar babies, and hot tamales, and we ended up seeing back-to-back movies, none of which I can remember!

I will never forget the almost treeless Christmas.  That year, David decided to be Daniel Boone and take the kids into the woods to chop down a cedar tree with an ax. We owned a hundred acres of open pasture surrounded by deciduous hardwoods, long leaf pines, holly trees, and cedars; so for the kids, the tree-hunting excursion seemed like a wilderness adventure.  They actually found a tree that was a perfect height with a nice shape; however, the cedar was neither bushy nor full.   At the time, we had three house cats named Christopher Columbus, Balboa, and Ponce de Leon – three curious explorers whose purpose in life was to navigate every inch of our house, including the newly-discovered Christmas tree.  Every morning, I awoke to a toppled-over cedar, broken ornaments, and a bucket of spilled dirt which had been mistaken for kitty litter!  

After a few days, we decided to remove the scrawny tree altogether; we would decorate a Christmas quilt instead.  So I spread out a handmade green and red holiday quilt, outlined it with garland, positioned a few lights and ornaments, and placed our presents on top.  The kids, who were between the ages of six and twelve, hated that quilt.

On Christmas Eve, the kids and I made an eleventh-hour stop at the grocery store.  Leaning against the outdoor wall of the store was one remaining Christmas tree.  I told the kids to stay in the car while I bought a few basic ingredients.  When I walked inside, I asked the cashier if the tree had been sold.  He said no, and I bought it right on the spot.  I asked the bag boy to carry it to my car.  Aimee told me later that when Matt saw the tree, he said in the most pitiful voice, “I wish we had a Christmas tree.”  When he saw the bag boy pick up the tree, he shouted, “Look, somebody bought the last Christmas tree!”  Then, when he saw the young man headed to our car, he started screaming, “Mom bought the last Christmas tree!”  That Christmas Eve night, we decorated the last spruce pine on the lot, and the tree actually survived three climbing cats for the next three weeks!

The leanest one of the other Christmases that I remember (and we have had several) – happened the year that David closed his paper recycling business.  Most of his large cardboard accounts had purchased their own bailing equipment, so they could sell directly to the mills.  His computer paper accounts were becoming obsolete with each new advance in information technology.  The family-owned business that had provided a lucrative six-figure income for years was closing its doors.  David knew that he had to sell the equipment, trucks, and remaining paper inventory in order to break even.  Also, for the first time in his adult life, he had to look for a public job.  When Katie and Matt were born one year apart, I had left my position as a newspaper editor to be a stay-at-home mom. Until this turn of events, everyday life for our young family had been almost perfect.

After a sober reality-check, we faced the inevitable sale of our first family home and an impending move to a more affordable alternative.  Also, we would have to learn to live on about one-fourth of the income to which we had been accustomed.  The materialistic celebration of Christmas that we had come to expect was pretty much non-existent.  During all of our discussions (and I am almost embarrassed to say it now), the harshest reality for me was that my two daughters would not be getting their American Girl© doll collections.  Aimee was reading the American Girl© books, and Santa had promised each one of the girls a doll collection for Christmas. The girls had literally worn the catalog paper-thin as they dreamed of Christmas morning. Now, Santa couldn’t even afford one doll, much less an entire collection.

I told my mom about the situation.  Two or three days later she called me.  She said that she could not afford to buy the collections, but she had an idea that might work.  I purchased a large five-dollar trunk (of course, there had to be a trunk involved) and two dollar store dolls for ten dollars each.  The plastic dolls stood about two-feet tall, had movable limbs, and were actually quite beautiful.  Mom and I took the catalog and the dolls to my Aunt Mary Jane, who used fabric material scraps to sew complete clothing collections for both dolls – almost identical to the clothes in the catalogs (even two sets of pajamas).  Next, I bought barrettes and bows, combs and brushes, and any other accessories that could be used for the dolls.  I cut out pictures from the catalogs and decoupaged them onto the trunk.  Finally, we stuffed the trunk, placed the dolls back into their packages, and wrapped everything for Christmas morning.  Altogether, thanks to Aunt Mary Jane’s time, labor, and use of fabric, we had spent fifty dollars on the girls’ Christmas doll collections.  Both dolls had fancy Christmas dresses which they wore to dinner, when they joined us at the table for their first Christmas meal.  My girls played with those dolls and that trunk of clothes for years.

Over the next few months, we faced many changes as a young family; however, after that Christmas, I knew for sure that unexpectedly good things were going to happen to us along the way. This past year, my adult girls took a trip to New York City and visited the American Girls© Store.  All the excitement and wonder was just as palpable for them as it had been twenty years earlier.  They have even started making plans for a return trip with their one-day daughters.  Still, neither of them will ever forget the other Christmas when they learned what it meant to be real American girls.

I guess no one wants to roll out the red carpet for the other Christmases.  None of us want to 'celebrate' compromised or lowered expectations.  And yet, I am reminded of the other Christmas that we sometimes forget during this season of shopping and sales.  No matter where the long journey takes us or the disappointment we may experience with each closed door; in the end, we might find something positively perfect in the most unexpected place.

Dianne ; )

Olly's Day Off

P.D. James once said, "It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life."

While most people are spending their December days inside shopping malls and discount stores, I have spent the past two days outside raking a football field of fall leaves.  This week's weather has been an ideal combination of winter chill and warm sunshine.  This morning, as I gathered my rake, gloves, and wool scarf, I noticed a lonesome little elf on the shelf.  I haven't been especially naughty or nice, so Olly hasn't had any real news to report to Santa.  With just twelve days until Christmas, my holiday helper joined Riley and me for an absolutely perfect day of playing in a pile of leaves. No magical trips to the North Pole or official elf responsibilities today ~ it's Olly's day off!

 Hands behind my head, leaves piled high, 

sunshine on my face, bright blue sky!

 I'm King of the Mountain today!

Riley and me...side by side;

find a secret place to hide!

Take a ride on the rake

and in a bicycle basket.

Open Christmas cards...jolly fantastic!

Dianne ; )

Meet Olly, The ELF on the SHELF!

TODAY'S BIG STORY:  The postman made a very special delivery to me ~ The ELF on the SHELF!  Meet my Jolly Olly...

I was so excited when I opened the package, which came attached with the following packing slip:

I thought you could use a little helper this holiday season. Merry Christmas! Katie :-)

So...to begin our December adventure, I introduce Olly to Riley.

 Riley makes Olly feel right at home. 

Riley thinks Olly looks like a doggie treat.

OOPS!!  Riley wants an ELF on the SHELF to eat!

Olly meets Monkey ~ Riley's favorite toy.  Olly thinks Monkey is creepy.

Next, Olly is ready for his first road trip...

...to the Walnut Grove Public Library.

"We belong together, " Olly says. "It's a Sign!"

Olly helps choose the books to read at the Kindergarten Christmas Program!

Dream Snow by Eric Carle is his favorite.  

He likes to push the button in the back of the book.  

Olly thinks the button is magic.

Olly has a fun day at the library.  

Tonight, he is flying back to the North Pole to tell Santa all about his adventures.  

Tomorrow, Olly and I are going to a birthday party for Jasper!

Dianne ; )

The Next Year People

Most often, I don't have a clue who reads my blog.  I am not tech-savvy or market-minded; I just write and post.  When I sign-in to compose a new post, I naturally take notice of blog views; however, I don't understand what makes one post really popular and another post less successful.  If I over-think the process, I start to second guess my purpose ~ which has always been to write today's big story for The Tomorrow Trunk.

Still, I do know the identities of a few of my readers; they are my friends and family. They are the followers who don't technically follow me at all.  They simply read my blog on occasion and then call me afterwards to ask a question, make a comment, give a compliment, or correct my punctuation. After my most recent post about My Last Best Nest, one question was on the minds of everyone who called:  When and where are you planning to build?  While I am still unsure about the where part of the question, I am hopeful that the when answer is next year.   "If everything goes as planned, we hope to start building next year," I replied again and again.

That post dated November 15th. Three days later, on November 18th and 19th, I watched the Ken Burns' documentary, The Dust Bowl, which aired on PBS.  To my knowledge, I have never missed a Ken Burns' documentary on PBS, and I have never been disappointed.  I am convinced that great storytelling is not just telling a great story.  To me, great storytelling is the ability to transfer ownership of the story so that a shift occurs.  Any storyteller can assimilate and deliver facts, interviews, and images through a  medium of choice; however, the great storyteller understands the conductivity of the story.  The great storyteller uses his medium as a conduit ~ a connective channel that harnesses the power and potentiality of the story and streams it through the corridors of time.  Ken Burns has an amazing ability to bring a present-day relevance to a historical past ~ at full strength.

I always watch a Ken Burns' documentary with a journal or notebook at hand, and I have pages of quotes from each one.  The Dust Bowl tells the story of great ambition, a great drought, and the great suffering that followed during the 1930's on the Southern Plains. So much of the story revolves around the unwillingness of the farmers to accept their situation as hopeless, even though their money-making wheat crops turned into monster-making dust clouds. In the first episode, these farmers referred to themselves as "next year people" ~ so nicknamed because they were steadfast in their belief that the rain would come next year.

In one interview, Ken Burns states that "next year people" portrays a sense of sort of stoic American frontierism.  It also represents a kind of stubborn resistance to change....I think "next year people" is a double-edged sword.  I like the ambiguity of  it. The hard-core "next year people" who stuck it out endured and survived a cataclysmic drought which lasted ten years and which also included plagues of rabbits, grasshoppers, black blizzards, and death.  Driven by a false assumption of plenty, the farmers held onto the belief of perpetual returns no matter how much they overworked the land. Ken Burns calls the dust bowl "the greatest man-made disaster in American history."

In a National Geographic interview, Burns addresses their denial mentality. We always think, "My house value will always increase. The stock market will always go up. If I just make this deal, if I just expand here, everything will work out fine."  And then we have this foolish thinking that "rain follows the plow" ~ that the act of cultivation actually increases rainfall or that (the climate) has undergone a permanent change ~ which is just insane. It's the same idiotic nonsense that we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that our hopes for the future are the same as the reality of the future.

I have never experienced a dust bowl; but I have endured many of my own man-made storms. I am one of those "next year people" who, at times, has "hoped against hope" ~ which is to hope for what we can not see. The philosopher Frederick Nietzche denounced  this kind of hope as a malady ~ an affliction of the worst kind.  According to Nietzche, "Those who suffer must be sustained by a hope that can never be contradicted by any reality or disposed by any fulfillment ~ a hope for the beyond."  He references a lesson from Greek mythology which teaches us that "hope is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of Man and because of its ability to keep the less fortunate in continual suspense."

And yet...I always have hope; I am afflicted to the core.  No matter what Herculean task I face, I do so with a Herculean hope.  Just this past weekend, I heard my Herculean husband express hope with one short phrase, "Maybe next year."

I understand the "next year people" and their denial mentality.  While Ken Burns calls it the "idiotic nonsense that we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that our hopes for the future are the same as the reality of the future", I tend to side with Merriam-Webster who defines hope as "to cherish a desire with anticipation; to expect a certain outcome with confidence."  Mr. Webster also reminds us that the antonym of hope is despair.

Dr. Barbara L. Fredrickson, a professor at the University of North Carolina, states that "hope literally opens us up...removes the blinders of fear and despair and allows us to see the big picture, thus allowing us to become creative and have belief in a better future."

That's exactly what happened to the "next year people" of the dust bowl. They survived because of fearless abandon, unrelenting tenacity, and creative solutions.  They experienced nature's harshest punishment upon this country, and they feared at times that God Himself had unleashed His judgement upon the entire Southern Plains.  As they waited for the rains to return, their losses were all-consuming.  Still, they did not lose hope. The Bible proverb states, "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."

One of the earliest references to hope is found in the story of Pandora's Box (or Pandora's Jar).  The story of Pandora is a fascinating Greek myth which tells of the "pithos" or box that contained all the punishment of mankind for stealing the fire of Zeus.  Even though she receives the box as a gift, Pandora is instructed to never open the box.  Unfortunately, her curiosity could not be tamed. In the end, she opens the box and unleashes great evil upon the world ~ hate, anger, poverty, sickness.  Yet, at the very bottom of the box, Zeus had placed a small hope.  Because Pandora hastened to close the box, hope remained trapped inside.

I have my own version of that tale.  I am confident that in years to come, my children or my children's children will also have the curiosity to open The Tomorrow Trunk.  In the trunk, they will find many stories of  struggle, survival, success, and selective insanity; however, if they look deep enough, at the very bottom of the trunk, they will find hope. Cartoonist Charles M. Schulz once wrote, "A whole stack of memories will never equal one little hope."

So...when do I plan to build My Last Best Nest?

Next year...I hope.

Dianne ; )