An excerpt from my memoir, Pools

This fall I had set a goal to finish the first three chapters of Pools of Blessing, my memoir, by the end of September. And today, Whoop! Whoop! I got ‘er done.

Below you’ll find a little excerpt from the newly finished Chapter Three; To Be or Not to Be—A  Daddy’s Girl. 

A little background here; Growing up I was a Daddy’s girl. I followed him everywhere—many times to my own detriment. This excerpt from Pools shares two memories I have of spending time with Dad. Hope you enjoy it. 

There are many good memories I have of working with Dad, though at the time, they seemed anything but good. One Saturday, Dad wanted help cleaning out our backyard shed.  This shed also served as a dog house , though no pampered dog of ours ever actually lived there. Since I was deathly afraid of spiders and mice, it took Dad awhile to convince me to help.  

“Nic, there’s no mice in there.  You’ll be fine,” he assured me.  

I trusted him, mostly.  So I set out to sweep the inside of the pen. Thirty seconds later I was screaming at the top of my lungs, “Dad it’s a mouse, it’s a mouse! Help!”  

The little rodent and I were trapped in the same small space. I panicked. Backing myself into a corner, I held the broom in front of my face—staring the little pest down. Hearing my scream, Dad came to my rescue. He chased the mouse out of our shed, and I begrudgingly continued sweeping.   

You’d think after awhile I would figure out that working on Dad’s projects wasn’t always in my best interest.  

 

I found other ways to spend time with Dad.  In fact, following him around became a full time past time. I even went so far as to go hunting with him. 

It was dove hunting season and, when Dad asked me to go, I decided it would be fun. Well, if you can call laying in a field at  five am in the morning; peeing behind trees every thirty minutes, (hey, I had to drink something to stay warm); and watching poor helpless birds fall from the sky then, yes, I had fun.

But my sensitive side couldn't take the carnage happening all around me. When I saw the soft, warm, fuzzy little things lying helplessly on the ground, I had this fleeting idea to try mouth to beak CPR. Needless to say, I never went hunting with my dad again.

It feels good to have reached a goal that I set for myself. I’m hoping to stay on track. My goal is to have the book ready in the spring--to be professionally edited. Wish me luck!

Regret. Yes, that’s what I was supposed to be writing about this week. Funny thing, I actually had to look back at my first blog about “the big three” to remember what the third one on the list was. Kind of regret that. Yes, that was my lame attempt at cracking a joke. Hope you don’t regret reading this. Okay, I’ve really got to stop and get to the serious stuff.

Regret, there it is. The last of “the big three”. When I look back on my life, there are a lot of things I regret. The big one that comes to mind is adopting my husband’s sense of humor. But there are plenty of others, so, I thought I’d make a top ten list of my biggest regrets in life.

My Top Ten Regrets

10. Buying glasses in the third grade that matched Estelle Getty’s from the show “The Golden Girls”.

9. Letting my husband see pictures of me wearing those glasses.

8. T.P,’ ing my high school science teacher’s front yard. Yup, got caught. By the police.

7. Skipping, for the first time ever, my last period of the day and running into my mom when I was filling my car up with gas.

6. Trying to fry a steak in my college roommate’s brand new skillet. (Still feel bad about that one.)

5. Letting the dog sleep on our bed.

4. Letting the dog sleep on our bed. I so strongly regret this one that I had to list it twice.

3. Introducing my kids to the cartoon, Wow Wow Wubbzy. seriously. regret. that.

2. Buying the little black dress that fell apart when I tried to wash it. (Hmmm, maybe I wasn’t supposed to wash it.)

And the number one biggest regret in my life . . .

1. Spending too much time regretting my decisions.

So, I guess there should be some gravity to this silly post. What do we do when we’ve made a mistake that we regret? Since I dogged him at the beginning of this post, I’ll make it up to my husband. Bad humor or not, he does give some pretty good advice.

Shortly before we got married, I made a mistake. Though I don’t even recall what I was stewing about, I distinctly remember the advice that my, then fiancé, gave to me. Don’t look back. Learn from your mistake and keep going forward. I don’t know why, but that day, the advice he gave kind of set me free. He was right. I didn’t need to regret the past; I just needed to learn from it. When you think about it, regret is a little bit like guilt. It’s a feeling, a fear, that just holds us back. So, learn from your mistakes and keep moving on. Best advice I ever got from a man whose sense of humor is questionable, but whose advice is always sound.

 

Neither go back in fear and misgiving to the past, nor in anxiety and forecasting to the future. But lie quiet under [God’s] hand having no will but His. ~ C.S. Lewis