Let’s Talk
“Boo! Just checking to see how you are doing.” Those nine simple words changed my life. Throughout my life there have been wise words, and some not so wise ones, that have influenced my life. But those nine words so positively changed my life that I have them engraved on my heart.
People could probably accuse me of being full of all kinds of things but these are probably not two of them: pride and overconfidence. The funny thing is that I can see so much potential in others, but when it comes to myself I often feel the need to work just a little harder than the next guy just to keep up. One of the biggest byproducts of this feeling is that I tend to think of myself as just an average guy that even has to struggle to stay there. I usually excel in anything I set my heart to, but since I don’t usually call attention to myself I often just blend into the crowd. If you don’t get noticed every once in a while, though, your value, at least in your own opinion, drops.
I’m sure a lot of this has to do with the way I was raised. I get it from my Mom. My Mom is really quiet, but she is one of the hardest working people I have ever known. For example, my Mom would buy a card for a relative or friend, sign it for the whole family, and mail it. People would thank my Dad for the card. My Dad has one of the bubbling, outgoing personalities that loves attention. Not that he would ever take anything away from my Mom’s hard work, at least not on purpose, he would often get so caught up in the attention he received that thoughts of lifting her up would sometimes allude him. The next time the event came around, and it required another card, my Mom was right there again repeating the cycle. My Mom instilled in me, by her example, that it wasn’t important who got the credit. What was important was that the work got done no matter who got that credit. Besides, one should leave it to others, and not one’s self, the job of reaping praise.
That lack of recognition does wear on you, though. You come to the realization that there are some people who are destined for glory and there are others whose job it is to get them there. You place your worth under those with the golden crowns.
I was really nervous. I walked into the restaurant not knowing what to expect. She looked absolutely beautiful. I knew I was out of my league. I figured she took one look at me and realized this was a waste of her time. She was very polite as the waitress set us at our table. She ordered a salad and spoke very little. I appreciated her at least making the effort to get through the dinner. We finished and I walked her to her car and we said our good byes. I turned to my car and thought about the night. At least I had dinner with a very pretty girl. I had graced the land where my feet did not feel worthy. That, in my mind, seemed to be the end of it.
It was a few days later when I received the short email from her with the message at the beginning of this blog. With my courage built up I asked her out on a second date, which went much better. I then asked her on a third date, and a fourth, and a fifth. I kept asking her out until I wore her down and she agreed to marry me. She is the best thing that has ever happened to my life.
“That’s Barbara Pierce,” Jack Wozencraft replied to Poppy’s question. In her pretty red and green holiday dress, she was the prettiest girl Poppy had ever seen. Barbara was the third of four children of Marvin Pierce, an executive of McCall Corporation, a publishing company. “Do you want to meet her?” Jack asked. “That’s the general idea,” Poppy replied to his obvious hint.
They did a little dancing, but when the band switched from the fox-trot to the waltz, Poppy decided they should sit down. You might say, “Poppy don’t do the waltz.” They decided to talk. The talk lasted fifteen minutes. Poppy asked Barbara if she might want to go out the next evening. Barbara said she already had plans. What neither of them realized was they were actually crazy for each other. Barbara even went home and told her mother that she had met “the nicest, cutest boy, named Poppy.” Poppy would tell his mother he had met “the niftiest girl at the dance.”
Poppy decided to crash the dance that he found Barbara was going to attend the next night. He had it all planned out. He borrowed the family Oldsmobile because it had a radio. He wanted to be prepared in case there were long moments of uncomfortable silence.
Poppy would go up and ask Barbara to dance. She agreed. In the middle of the dance, Barbara’s brother, Jim, tapped Poppy on the shoulders and said he wanted to have a word with him when he finished that dance. When the dance was over Jim, and his Rye High School basketball team, challenged Poppy and his preppy friends to a game. Never one to back down from a challenge, Poppy accepted. Jim and his Rye teammates won the game, but it was a great opportunity for Poppy to get to know Barbara’s family.
It was January 8, 2011. The silence was eerie. They loved to talk to each other. They were both good listeners, too. He would confess that she usually did 60 to 70 percent of the talking, though. Today was so much different. It would be him who would now control almost all of the conservations.
They first met waiting for a plane flight in the summer of 2003. There were no romantic sparks, this was a business trip for both of them. Because of their jobs, each was asked to attend the National Committee on United States-China Relations which was being held in China. This organization invited professionals and rising stars from both countries to share their unique cultural experiences and ideas. Actually, it was his brother, who worked at the same place he did, who was invited and accepted the invitation. They were twins. But soon after receiving the invitation, his brother looked over his schedule and realized he had a major conflict. His wife was expected to give birth that week. He was happy to go in his brother’s place. It was a free trip to China after all.
He had no romantic interest in her because he was already in a struggling marriage (they had already filed for divorce once, but tried to reconcile, but they were preparing to file again). The last thing he wanted was to start another relationship. Besides, he had two daughters and he was so concerned about them. She was also dating someone else. This was just like all the hundred other times he had these business commitments. As they waited for the plane they found they had a lot to talk about. They talked and talked. After the conference was over, they each headed on their separate ways.
A year would pass before their paths would cross again. The same group was meeting in the United States this time. She invited the group to her home state of Arizona. She wanted to show off her state – the Grand Canyon, the Red Rocks of Sedona, the charms of Tucson. He was now divorced. There were still no romantic sparks flying when they met up. He would state, “For one thing, I thought she was way out of my league.” Things started to change when she took the whole group to a cattle roundup. The ranch owner offered any one of them his ranch if they could lasso three cows in a row. He lassoed two and just missed the third one. This really impressed her and it was the start of a beautiful relationship. They would eventually get married.
Mark Kelly’s whole life changed on January 8, 2011. The woman who commented on his rodeo performance: “So you can fly space shuttles. You can lasso cows. What else can you do?” laid there in silence struggling for her life. His wife, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, had been shot at a Congress on Your Corner meet and greet in front of a Safeway in Tucson. Mark was in Houston at the time, but he rushed to be near his wife.
When Gabby was in fifth grade she sang the title role in Tanque Verde Elementary School’s production of Annie. Months later the family went to Mexico City to see a version of the play in Spanish. “Tomorrow” became her Mom’s and her theme song. Whenever Gabby was disappointed or struggled, her mother would pull her close and they would sing “Tomorrow.” It was a song that built a confidence that despite how bad it seemed, there was a bright rainbow called tomorrow that brought with it sunnier times.
As Gabby started to recovery from the assassination attempt, it became clear that there was a very real possibility that Gabby would never speak again. Gabby would start to speak a word here or there, but she picked the wrong words. She might say the word “spoon” when shown a picture of a wooden chair. It was decided they would try a different approach. It seems the brain is a funny thing. One side of the brain, the left side, is where words come from. On the right side is where our minds pull the music from. The bullet entered her brain on the left side and did its damage there, which explained why she was having problems with her words. They were going to try to trick Gabby’s brain into thinking words by first getting her to sing songs. Her Mom was there to help and “Tomorrow” became the first song Gabby was able to sing. Today Gabby is much better at speaking.
My wife and my paths first crossed at an Oyster Roast her church hosted. Her church used the funds raised to help a family whose medical bills had piled up. Year after year she would man the coleslaw table. The hairnet, gloves and apron hid her true beauty. I’m sure I looked like a real hunk in my hairnet and gloves, too. This year her church chose a little boy with muscular dystrophy who happened to go my church. Our church asked for volunteers to help at the Oyster Roast. I signed up and was assigned the task of cooking/frying oysters. Little did I know that my future wife would stand just a few feet in front of me dishing out coleslaw.
I don’t think there were any great fireworks that went off at this first crossroads for either one of us. Somehow a few months later we got hooked up again. We decided we would meet at a restaurant and I described that encounter above.
On December 7, 1941 Japan bombed the United States Naval Base in Hawaii and the United States had no choice but to enter World War II. Poppy, like so many Americans, was so upset that he, and a lot of his classmates, signed up to join the fight. Because he was attending a prep school, Andover, he was starting to learn how to fly. He signed up with the Navy and became a pilot. He was very concerned that Barbara, his perfect girl, would never be willing to wait for him, but his sense of duty to his country far outweighed his personal wants. So he became a combat pilot.
Poppy was assigned to the USS San Jacinto. Thirty-one days later his ship would join a fleet at Majuro Harbor, in the Marshall Islands. It was now time for Poppy to go on his first bombing mission. There would be many more.
It was dawn on September 2, 1944. The mission was code-named “Baker.” Poppy was called to duty again. His crew was called upon to bomb Chichi-Jima, a Japanese outpost 150 miles from Iwo Jima. Their mission was to destroy a radio tower. Poppy’s plane was hit and he knew he was going down. He didn’t give up on his mission and they successfully completed their mission. Then he radioed to his two crew members to bail out of the plane because it was going to crash into the Pacific. Poppy was sure the two bailed, but when he was in the ocean he never did see them. They were never found. Poppy was fortunate enough to be rescued by the USS Finback, a US submarine.
Poppy would lose his nickname when he went into the Navy. He would now go by his given name: George, George Herbert Walker Bush, our forty-first President. Bush would go on leave after he recovered from his plane crash and he would marry his dream girl Barbara during that break.
Barbara Bush, George’s wife, recalled the fear George had that second night of their date. “He was so afraid we would sit in stony silence and have nothing to say to each other,” she said. She continued, “For years he has teased me that there was no silence that night and I haven’t stopped talking since.”
Because there are so many different translations of the Bible it is really hard to get an exact count on how many words are actually in the Bible. Most sources put the Bible word count at over 750,000 words, though. That’s a lot of talking that God communicates to us. Sometimes this is hard reading. Other parts hit too close to home. But God wants to communicate with us. God doesn’t want us fearing that it will be like that first date where not much is said or understood. He doesn’t want us to think it is going to be like that second date where we might worry even less will be said or understood, either. He wants us to keep trying to have a relationship with Him. He wants us to keep reading. What would happen if one side lost communication all together? Now that would really be sad because we both would miss out on something really special. Pick up your Bible today and start a conversation with God.
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Thank You so much for the wonderful wife you added to my life. Thank You that we have learned to communicate so well with each other. Please continue to be with Gabby Giffords and let each word out of her mouth be an inspiration to those who cross her path. Thank You for George Herbert Walker Bush and that his life has been blessed with such a wonderful wife, too. Thank You so much for giving me Your words through the Bible. Amen.
