Lisa Wingate's Blog

After a summer at home working on the next book, it’s time for a short fall book tour. If you’re in NC, SC, or GA, I’d love to meet you and share the real-life history behind Before We Were Yours. For event details, Click Here.

A Bit On Hurricanes and The Dragonfly Principle…

One last thought before I go pack my bags. As I leave on the book tour, coastal areas farther south in my home state brace for the impact of a monster hurricane. Even if the mildest predictions come true, hundreds will face uncertainty now and the grueling task of cleaning up later. They’ll need help. Lots of it.

Years ago, a tour guide on a bus in Mexico told me this about storms:

“Before the hurricane,” he said, “I do not know my neighbor. We come and go and I look at him but I do not see him. Then the storm comes, and my neighbor walks to the fence. He gives me candles and matches, and I am not in the darkness. I give him cans of meat and crackers, and he is not hungry. After the storm, I never again come and go without seeing my neighbor.”

If you’re reading this, please take a moment. Say a prayer, send a check, make a call, open your home to someone who needs a place to wait out the storm. By mattering to someone else we make our own lives better.

I call it The Dragonfly Principle.

Why?

Not so long ago, I noticed a dragonfly flailing upside down in a puddle outside my office window. I put down my work and went out to rescue him. I don’t know why. Quite honestly, he seemed pretty well beaten. He was wet, and bent, and his delicate wings were missing a few chunks. I doubted he’d ever fly again. I let him hang around on my thumb a while, anyway. I like dragonflies.

The longer he clung there, the better he looked. His body unfolded, his bent wings moved back into alignment. A breeze wafted by and he tested them out a little. And then, he flew off, just as easy as you please, damaged wings and all. A little miracle.

Who knows, maybe he’ll make dozens of little dragonflies this summer and next year one of his progeny will eat the mosquito that was carrying a deadly disease onto my porch. Maybe in reality, by saving him I saved myself.

The Dragonfly Principle. You can’t do good without doing yourself some good. Maybe a lot of good.

I don’t remember one other thing I did that day. Not one. Not what project I finished or which big tasks I accomplished. But I do remember those seemingly insignificant fifteen minutes.

The fifteen minutes I saw my neighbor.

— Lisa

Thanks to dedicated reader friends, Before We Were Yours is now a multi-week New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestseller.

Sometimes, the most colorful bits of a story are the ones you stumble across completely by accident. They’re like brightly-colored wildflowers growing alongside the path you thought you’d take. You can’t help but stop and gaze in their direction and contemplate wandering off course to get a closer look.

Such was the case of Kingdom Arcadia, the Foss family’s little shantyboat home in the novel. Originally, I thought the children in Before We Were Yours might be farm kids, snatched (as were many victims of the Memphis Tennessee Children’s Home Society in real life) from ramshackle, dirt-road homes outside Memphis. Early in the research phase of the novel, I came across an old FSA photo of a shantyboat family:

From this photo, Rill and her five siblings sprang magically to life. They arrived with names and ages and personalities. Four girls and a boy—Rill, Camellia, Lark, Fern, and Gabion. Little stairsteps of twelve, ten, seven, four, and two years old, free-floating down the wide, muddy river, their lives controlled only by water, and wind, and seasons.

Were there really families like the Foss family? Absolutely. During the Great Depression, an estimated 50,000 people lived the drifter’s life on the water, and yes, shantyboat families camped along the waterfront were among those who lost their children to the black market adoption ring run by Georgia Tann and her Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

In honor of the Foss children and their waterborne home, the Arcadia, I give you the shantyboat people:

Photo from the Library of Congress

FSA photographer Marion Post Wolcott, who photographed, among many others, the lives of the shantyboat people. The FSA photographers and Federal Writers of the Depression era have fascinating stories of their own. If you’re curious about them, check out my 2015 novel, The Sea Keeper’s Daughters, which follows the journey of a Federal Writer and FSA photographer in Appalachia.

Notation from back of photo: “Would have pictured the entire family – but the other six members were asleep in the spare room and I did not like to disturb them.”

(Photos from the Dave Thomson Collection)

It looks like a beautiful life, doesn’t it? It’s the sort of life twelve-year-old Rill speaks of as she describes a perfect day on the Arcadia:

“The sun is warm, and the song sparrows sing, and the fat bass jump out of the water. A flock of white pelicans flies over in a big old arrow pointing north, which means the whole summer’s still ahead of us. There’s not a paddle-wheeler, or a flatboat, or a tug, or an oil barge in sight anywhere. The river is ours. Only ours.”

I’ll leave you there for now, floating along on the Arcadia’s deck with the fat bass jumping and the song sparrows filling the air with river music.

— Lisa

To learn more about Before We Were Yours, read an excerpt, or to order the book CLICK HERE

Thank you to Nori Muster and Steamboats.com for preserving river history and to the Dave Thomson Collection for the use of the beautiful turn-of-the-century shantyboat photo.

One of the joys of the writing life is in the lasting friendships formed with other writers. Judy Christie is as good as they come. This interview was originally for Judy’s column in the Shreveport Times. I thought you might like to pull of a chair and sit on the porch with us a while, too. — Lisa

Judy Christie: You and I often visit about our writing process, and readers ask me how that process works–do I stare at a blank computer screen and get easily distracted, or am I able to pour out the stories? Every writer is different. I would love to be more consistent in my daily writing rhythm. I tend to be more of a binge writer and love to escape from my daily routine and immerse myself in a story. That can work well—or it can feel like a brick on the head. Like most writers, many ideas come to me and most of them excite me. So, I make a list of every story I’d like to write—then ponder which is most important to me. That helps me stay focused. A key question I ask before I start a new project: If I could only write one more novel, what would I want it to be?

So, Lisa, I’m always fascinated by how other writers’ novels come to be. How did you discover the idea for Before We Were Yours?

Lisa Wingate:

It’s an illusion, really. To be honest, writing seems to be more of a challenge now than it was when I started.  That’s counterintuitive, because Before We Were Yours is my thirtieth novel, so I’ve been at this a while now. It should be getting easier, right? When I started writing full time, I had small children, so I was juggling my writing schedule around diapers, naptimes, and school activities. The reality is, though, that the writing business has grown more complex and time-consuming over the years.

Fifteen years ago, when my first novel came out, keeping in touch with readers entailed answering daily email or letters, and speaking at banquets or book events from time to time. Now, there’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and the list goes on and on. There are writers’ loops to follow, promotional groups to participate in, and a wide, wide world of people to keep in contact with.  It’s easy to spend hours tied up with these things and never find writing time. Meeting deadlines is a matter of a scheduling for myself and sticking to a daily word count. It’s difficult, though, when there’s an actual person on the other end of the cyber communication, awaiting your response. Staying focused can be a challenge.  There’s a silent intimation that if we can’t do everything, be everything, and have everything all at once, we’re somehow failing.  For me, the key to not driving myself crazy is in facing the fact that I’m just me.  I’m not Wonder Woman, and that’s okay.

For years I did write at a computer, but through a series of happenstances and trial and error, I have discovered the magic of dictation. For the last couple years, I’ve been doing much of my writing via dictation on my iPhone or iPad.  This can look and sound fairly insane, but it has been a wonderful tool for me and very freeing in the creative sense. There’s an analytical level of thought that goes into typing, and that is completely removed when I dictate a story.  Aside from that, dictation via the phone allows me to put on a headset and write literally anywhere.  When I find myself getting stale, I’ll wander to the back pasture for a walk, or spend some time in the exercise room and dictate parts of the story.  Sometimes a change of scenery or physical activity is exactly what I need to get the words flowing again.

What keeps me going is the pure love of story and letters from readers.  There is nothing more powerful than knowing that words on a page affected a life, helped to inspire growth, illuminated a hidden piece of history, or inspired others to tell their own stories.

Thanks for porch sitting with us a while today.  — Lisa

To learn more about Before We Were Yours, read an excerpt, or to order the book CLICK HERE

About my Porch Pal:

Author Judy Christie has had 17 books published, including 10 novels, and her fiction has received praise from such publications as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Romantic Times. “Wreath, A Girl,” the first novel in Judy’s coming-of-age series, has been optioned for film/TV.  For more information, see www.judychristie.com or connect with her on her author page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JudyChristieAuthor/.

One of the joys of the writing life is in the lasting friendships formed with other writers. Judy Christie is as good as they come. This interview was originally for Judy’s column in the Shreveport Times. I thought you might like to pull of a chair and sit on in on the conversation, too. — Lisa

Judy Christie: Like you, I enjoy writing about characters who meet the challenges in front of them. And, the idea of home and family is important to me, and I wanted to explore those themes with my character Wreath Willis in Wreath, a Girl. Wreath is just a few years older than Rill Foss in your story and–much like the children in Before We Were Yours—she finds herself in dire circumstances. When Wreath’s mother dies, she must survive alone in a junkyard until she can graduate from high school. In Before We Were Yours, Rill Foss must find a way to survive and protect her siblings after they’re taken from their family and placed in one of Georgia Tann’s notorious orphanages. I loved Rill’s determination, her strength, and her deep goodness.

Why did you decide to tell the story through Rill’s voice, Lisa? Did she just come to you or did you have to search for her?

Lisa Wingate: After researching the Tennessee Children’s Home Society scandal, my first question was, Whose story is this, really? Is it a story of parents––both biological and adoptive? Of greed, falsified records, and political corruption? Of one woman’s unconscionable actions in taking thousands of children from poverty-stricken families and brokering them in adoptions-for-profit?

In the end, though, the voices that whispered through my mind where the voices of the children. What was it like, I wondered, to be taken from everything you knew, with no explanation or understanding of what was happening, and placed in the care of someone like Georgia Tann?

That question and historical images like the page above from a Tennessee Children’s Home Society advertising brochure gave life to twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four young siblings, Camellia, Lark, Fern, and Gabion. Growing up on their family’s tiny Mississippi River shanty boat, the Foss children live an almost magical life, until, as was so often the case in reality, a random twist of fate causes their path to intersect with Georgia Tann’s. Rill’s story is like the stories of so many children who fought not only to survive and adapt, but to reclaim their lives, their family bonds, and their stolen identities. What I admired and treasured most about Rill in the end was her grit, her enduring love for her siblings, and her ability, against all odds, to cling to her sense of who she was.

(Images are courtesy of Preservation and Special Collections Department, University Libraries, University of Memphis and may not be reproduced or posted elsewhere without permission)

To learn more about Before We Were Yours, read an excerpt, or to order the book CLICK HERE

About Judy:

Author Judy Christie has had 17 books published, including 10 novels, and her fiction has received praise from such publications as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Romantic Times. “Wreath, A Girl,” the first novel in Judy’s coming-of-age series, has been optioned for film/TV.  For more information, see www.judychristie.com or connect with her on her author page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JudyChristieAuthor/.

For any story you can write, there’s someone who’s lived it. I’m convinced of that. While writing Before We Were Yours, I often felt that I was inventing Rill’s world onboard the family’s tiny shantyboat, the Arcadia. You see, not that much had been written about shantyboat people, or if much had been written it hadn’t survived the long years since the once-vibrant shantyboat culture faded from America’s rivers. I read Harlan Hubbard’s writings on his experiences, building a shantyboat with his wife and taking to the river. But his travels were post World War II, a far different time than Rill Foss’s Depression-era family would have experienced.

Even so, the Arcadia came to life in my mind, with its covered front porch and wrap-around deck. I smelled the little coal stove that drove winter’s chill from the cabin, felt morning fog creeping ghostlike through rusted window screens, heard river kids counting lightning bugs flickering at dusk.

In my mind, Rill called herself a river gypsy. It seemed like a logical term for those who lived the drifter’s life of winds and currents.

Long after the novel was finished, I stumbled across these few paragraphs from an 1895 issue of Harper’s Weekly.  Only the first page of the article has survived—that anyone knows of, anyway. This treasure from over a century ago is safely enshrined in the Dave Thomson Collection. He was kind enough to let me share it with you here.

The writer’s words describe exactly the world Rill took me to when she came to life in my mind. Looking at the photos was like looking through her eyes. If you’ve read Before We Were Yours, perhaps you’ll recognize this world too.

THE SHANTY-BOAT PEOPLE

by Charles Buxton Going.

1895 Harpers Weekly (page 231)

Beginning of an article by Charles Buxton Going

Between high and low water, mark of the Western rivers—and that means a wide range in those erratic streams— is a stretch which might well be termed ” No Man’s Land.” For months in winter and spring it is, indeed, no land at all, for the boiling yellow waters roll over it; as they fall, foot by foot the slope of oozy clay appears, bristling here and there with a stubble of naked willow shoots, and littered with.drift left by the receding current.

The water has hardly fallen away, however, before little green things begin to come up; first, cockle-burs, ragweed and water-hemp, then bur-marigolds and morning-glories; followed by wild sunflowers, which nod in the river winds, and fling out their long yellow-rays with all the grace of golden lilies; finally, if the season be long enough, these give way to a wealth of brisk little asters. All enjoy their life estate; if the river remain low, but all are regarded by the capricious stream as mere squatters, to be driven out at will, and its notice of ejectment is a summary drowning.

Nature takes the chances of such a residence freely, but man will generally hesitate, and the more substantial his interests, the less he will entrust them upon so uncertain a tenure; yet the river-bank has its human fauna as characteristic as its flora.

These are the shanty-boat people, the gypsies of the river, and if their domain be limited literally to the river “bottoms,” it extends in length from the Gulf to headwaters, where the shallow stream ripples over its rocky floor. Hidden from their fellow-men by the edge of the steep bank, out of sight and out of mind of the busy world above, they drift silently from town to town and slip irresponsibly from State to State . . .

The gypsies of the river. Yes, they were. They really were.

For every story you can imagine, there’s someone who’s lived it. I’m convinced.

— Lisa

To learn more about Before We Were Yours, read an excerpt, or to order the book CLICK HERE

(Thank you to The Dave Thomson Collection for letting me share this treasure and to and Steamboats.com for lovingly preserving the history of the river.)

One of the joys of the writing life is in the lasting friendships formed with other writers. Judy Christie is as good as they come. This interview was originally for Judy’s column in the Shreveport Times. I thought you might like to pull of a chair and sit on the porch with us a while, too. — Lisa

Judy Christie: Lisa, like you, I’m drawn to strong, resilient characters. In my Wreath Willis novels, I explored the life of a teenager who lives alone in a junkyard. The idea came when I drove by an abandoned junkyard in rural Louisiana several years ago. What if someone lived there? Could they go undetected? What if it was a strong, smart girl who needed help but couldn’t ask for it?

So, Lisa, I’m always fascinated by how other writers’ novels come to be. How did you discover the idea for Before We Were Yours?

Lisa Wingate: For me, every piece of fiction begins with a spark. From there, the story travels on the winds of research and imagination. Before We Were Yours had the most unexpected kind of beginning.

I was up late one night working on materials for a different story and had the TV on in the background. A rerun of the Investigation Discovery: Dangerous Women cycled through at about two in the morning. I looked up and saw images of an old mansion. The front room was filled with bassinettes and babies. I tuned in and immediately became fascinated by the bizarre, tragic, and startling history of Georgia Tann and her Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. I couldn’t help but dig into the story. That was the spark that ignited Before We Were Yours.

Georgia Tann

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann brokered the adoptions-for-profit of thousands of Tennessee children. At the height of her power, Georgia and her Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society were untouchable. She operated in socially privileged circles, owned a lavish mansion, threw extravagant parties and tooled around Memphis in a chauffeured limousine.

Georgia Tann at her country estate,Tannwood, one of her many lavish acquisitions.

Publicly, she was lauded as the “mother of modern adoption.” Politicians, wealthy families, and Hollywood celebrities such Joan Crawford, June Allyson and husband Dick Powell, and New York governor Herbert Lehman adopted through her. Eleanor Roosevelt sought Georgia’s counsel on matters of child welfare.

Behind Georgia’s fame hid a dark truth. Many of the children she offered were not unwanted waifs or orphans––they were the loved and wanted sons and daughters of single mothers and poor families. In order to satisfy Georgia’s “inventory” needs, countless children in Tennessee were stolen from their birth parents––sometimes plucked from hospital maternity wards, welfare aid clinics, ramshackle front porches, and country roads while walking home from school––only to be hidden away in orphan houses around Memphis and brokered in a complex scheme of adoptions-for-profit. They were advertised in newspapers as “Yours for the Asking” and “Perfect Christmas Presents” and eventually sent to adoptive homes all over the country.

After researching the story, I couldn’t stop wondering about the thousands of children who had been brokered by Georgia Tann. What became of them? Where are they now?

Children offered in Georgia Tann’s “Christmas Baby” giveaway.

Before We Were Yours was born from the process of wondering about the children who passed through Georgia Tann’s orphan houses. It’s a story of family, of sibling bonds, of one little girl’s fight to retain her identity. Her experiences are based on those of survivors. More than anything, I wanted to tell the stories of the children, the stories told in the smallest voices or, in many cases, never told at all.

Georgia Tann supervises as Baby Lucy is prepared for adoption.

 (All historical images are courtesy of Preservation and Special Collections Department, University Libraries, University of Memphis and may not be reproduced or posted elsewhere without permission)

I hope you’re intrigued by this peek into the world of Before We Were Yours. I’ll feature more clips from my chat with Judy in the coming weeks. — Lisa

To learn more about Before We Were Yours, read an excerpt, or to order the book CLICK HERE

About Judy:

Author Judy Christie has had 17 books published, including 10 novels, and her fiction has received praise from such publications as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Romantic Times. “Wreath, A Girl,” the first novel in Judy’s coming-of-age series, has been optioned for film/TV.  For more information, see www.judychristie.com or connect with her on her author page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JudyChristieAuthor/.

Sometimes, the most colorful bits of a story are the ones you stumble across completely by accident. They’re like brightly-colored wildflowers growing alongside the path you thought you’d take. You can’t help but stop and gaze in their direction and contemplate wandering off course to get a closer look.

Such was the case of Kingdom Arcadia, the Foss family’s little shantyboat home in the novel. Originally, I thought the children in Before We Were Yours might be farm kids, snatched (as were many victims of the Memphis Tennessee Children’s Home Society in real life) from ramshackle, dirt-road homes outside Memphis. Early in the research phase of the novel, I came across an old FSA photo of a shantyboat family:

From this photo, Rill and her five siblings sprang magically to life. They arrived with names and ages and personalities. Four girls and a boy—Rill, Camellia, Lark, Fern, and Gabion. Little stairsteps of twelve, ten, seven, four, and two years old, free-floating down the wide, muddy river, their lives controlled only by water, and wind, and seasons.

Were there really families like the Foss family? Absolutely. During the Great Depression, an estimated 50,000 people lived the drifter’s life on the water, and yes, shantyboat families camped along the waterfront were among those who lost their children to the black market adoption ring run by Georgia Tann and her Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

In honor of the Foss children and their waterborne home, the Arcadia, I give you the shantyboat people:

Photo from the Library of Congress

FSA photographer Marion Post Wolcott, who photographed, among many others, the lives of the shantyboat people. The FSA photographers and Federal Writers of the Depression era have fascinating stories of their own. If you’re curious about them, check out my 2015 novel, The Sea Keeper’s Daughters, which follows the journey of a Federal Writer and FSA photographer in Appalachia.

Notation from back of photo: “Would have pictured the entire family – but the other six members were asleep in the spare room and I did not like to disturb them.”

(Photos from the Dave Thomson Collection)

It looks like a beautiful life, doesn’t it? It’s the sort of life twelve-year-old Rill speaks of as she describes a perfect day on the Arcadia:

“The sun is warm, and the song sparrows sing, and the fat bass jump out of the water. A flock of white pelicans flies over in a big old arrow pointing north, which means the whole summer’s still ahead of us. There’s not a paddle-wheeler, or a flatboat, or a tug, or an oil barge in sight anywhere. The river is ours. Only ours.”

I’ll leave you there for now, floating along on the Arcadia’s deck with the fat bass jumping and the song sparrows filling the air with river music.

— Lisa

Thank you to Nori Muster and Steamboats.com for preserving river history and to the Dave Thomson Collection for the use of these beautiful photos.

With Before We Were Yours hitting shelves in June, it seems appropriate to talk of sibling bonds—what they mean and how deeply ingrained they can be. As was the case with many children who, in real life, found themselves caught up in the Memphis Tennessee Children’s Home Society’s corrupt system of orphan houses, Rill Foss, the twelve-year-old narrator in the novel, struggles to preserve not only her individual identity, but her collective identity as part of a river gypsy family, as one of seven tightly knit siblings.

I like imagine that even the youngest of the Foss children—those theoretically too young to have remembered their time together on their parents’ little Mississippi River shantyboat—would have in some way known who they really were. I can’t help but think, as in the true story below, they would have felt the perpetual and mysterious pull of the invisible. Of sibling bonds and something missing, a heritage of love waiting to be found.

Brotherly Love

Contributed by: Virginia Rush

For years, deep inside my heart I felt I had a brother. In reality, there wasn’t one but my heart still longed for that bond. After almost a half century, I found out I was half adopted. My biological mom gave me up to my dad the day I was born. I always, always knew something, someone, was missing.

When I found out part of the truth I began my journey to find my birth family. It took several years of opening doors and closing others. The night my brother heard about me, he called at 10:20 p.m. and we talked for forty-five minutes. He and his wife came to my house at 12:30 the same night and stayed until 3:30 in the morning. The bond was instant. Our hearts knew each other and it was awesome.

Virginia and her brother Paul

When he got out of his car, it was like in the movies, he ran toward my porch and I flew off of it into his arms. We cried, hugged, laughed and hugged some more…with his sweet wife standing by with a big smile on her face. I gained a sister that night too. The pieces of the puzzle started falling in place. Especially when they showed me a picture of their son as a baby. I looked at the picture, then at them, then the picture again.  I thought they had a picture of my son.

After that night and before they knew each other, their son was called by my son’s name twice even though they lived in totally different cities. Once when my nephew came to our house, someone saw him walk out the door and called him by my son’s name. These young men look so much alike that they could pass for twins. We’ve had twelve years together now and every time I see my brother, joy explodes in my heart. All those years, my heart knew the truth. I thank God every day for his goodness.

-Virginia Rush

Thank you for sharing your story, Virginia. May it continue to inspire those who are still searching. — Lisa

Author Bio: Virginia is a proud sister, mom, and story teller! 

Happy St. Patrick’s week, everyone!  Since it’s that time of year again and I am proudly Irish on my red-haired mother’s side, it occurred to me that, aside from “He was the patron saint of Ireland,” I really don’t know that much about St. Patrick or why we celebrate the holiday in the way that we do. I hope you’ll enjoy learning the answers as much as I did. — Lisa

The Legend of St Patrick

Born to wealthy British parents in the year 387, the man who would become St. Patrick was originally christened Maewyn Succat. By all accounts Maewyn seemed destined for a privileged existence, but his life would take an unexpected and seemingly ghastly turn when the family estate was attacked by pagan Irish raiders. Spared from death, Maewyn was taken prisoner and transported to Ireland, where he would become a slave, sent to work as a shepherd far from other people. Frightened, lonely, and in a foreign land, young Maewyn found God his only companion, and he turned to his Christian faith as solace, becoming devout as he prayed alone and guarded his master’s sheep.

After six years, Maewyn had a dream in which he believe God told him a ship would return him to his home in England. Following the message in the dream, he escaped and eventually found passage on a ship. In England, now a young man, Maewyn began his religious training, a course of study lasting over fifteen years. A dream again foretold his future, leading him to believe that he would one day return to Ireland as a missionary. In 432, he was called to Rome, made a bishop by Pope Celestine, and commissioned to travel as a missionary to Ireland. At that time, he was given the name “Patritius”, stemming from two Latin words, meaning “father of his people.”

Patrick, who felt that Ireland was his home, as this was the place he had originally found his faith, came to his new position with the advantage of knowing Irish myth and culture. In order to help bring in converts, he chose to use traditional Irish symbols in his teaching. To help Irish pagans understand the importance of the cross, he superimposed a sun around the cross, creating what is now known as the Celtic cross.

Legend has it that St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one leaf symbolizing each portion of the Holy Trinity, and the fact that all three were bound together symbolizing “three in one.” The shamrock, sacred among the Druids and known as the national flower of Ireland was given a completely new meaning.  St. Patrick’s use of it as a symbol of the Trinity explains the incorporation of it into today’s St. Patrick’s Day lore.

St. Patrick spent 28 years spreading the gospel in Ireland before dying at 76 in Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, on the 17th of March, 461 A.D. There were few Christians when he came to the island and he succeeded in converting almost the entire population to Christianity. We celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on the 17th of March, the anniversary of his death.

And that, my friends, is the legend of St. Patrick. Quite a story. Quite a testimony to the ability of one life to make a difference in many.

In honor of St. Patrick, as well as his devotion to his faith and to Ireland, I leave you with a traditional Irish blessing, which I hope will follow you in the coming year:

May the Irish hills caress you.

May her lakes and rivers bless you.

May the luck of the Irish enfold you.

May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.

— Lisa

Around here, the weekend started out with a good, slow rain, which we desperately needed. For me, that water song is sweet music anytime. I am a lover of water and have always been. I grew up along a little creek, waking, and sleeping, and playing, and dreaming to its changing rhythms.

After a rain, the man-children and I can never resist checking to see if “their” little creek in the back pasture has risen to temporary river status. These days, we just stand on the bank and look, but there was a time not so long ago when those water levels were critical, all-important, all-consuming. No water meant no swimming hole, no campouts, no fishing, no long afternoons of campfires and hotdogs and s’mores until dark.

Even now, when I visit this place alone on my evening walks and stand and listen as the water passes by, I hear voices. I hear high-pitched laughter and double-dog dares. I hear the splash of inner tubes. I hear, “Mama, I got a fish!” I hear the rapid breaths of a child running back to camp with a treasure found among the river gravel — a fossil, an arrowhead, a lizard captured in two hands. The very first lightning bug of evening. Do we have something we can keep him in? Or should we just set him free?

This place is alive with memories, but even more than that, it’s alive with something deeper. Something longer-lasting. A river teaches lessons. Those lessons become the bones, and blood, and marrow of children raised near water, and earth, and sky. I hope they’ve been passed to the next generation, these lessons from a river.

Take time to sit and listen. Stop. Stop rushing. Close your eyes for a moment. Listen. What lies beyond the constant white noise? They are there, the transient sounds of life. A bird flitting by, a breeze stirring leaves, a doe passing in the shadows of the wood. The sounds change moment to moment, never the same twice. Everything is passing. The water, the creatures, the day. Each moment is unique along a river. Each moment is unique in life. A moment unappreciated is a moment lost.

Don’t be afraid to jump in with both feet. Go for it. Don’t let fear keep you on the bank. Trust the water. Trust yourself. To experience something new, to soar, to fly, you must first let go of where you are now.

Look beneath the surface. Don’t be fooled by what’s on the outside. Look beyond the ripples and mirrored reflections. So much hides beneath the surface of a river. The skittering of tiny creatures, the silver flash of minnows, an ancient license plate washed from somewhere far away, a shimmering quartz crystal, a bit of fool’s gold. The truest form of all things is found beyond what can be seen at first glance.

See with new eyes. The river is always changing. It changes with the seasons, with the days, with the hours, with the cycles of drought and flood, with blooming and dying, and blooming again. Where there was bland gravel yesterday, today there may be gifts — a fossil washed ashore, a wild rose bursting forth, a butterfly. Don’t assume that what was ordinary yesterday will be ordinary again. Give each day and each season rapt attention. Expect something extraordinary.

Take a friend along. Value your solitude on occasion, but when possible, share your time with old friends and open yourself to new ones. Reveal your secret hiding places, invite others in, offer shelter, offer beauty, offer comfort and companionship. An experience shared is an experience multiplied, a memory made. It is in connecting with others that we broaden ourselves beyond one life into many.

Value the journey. Don’t rush. Don’t focus far ahead. Look down. Look at where you are. Don’t be afraid to walk aimlessly, to feel the water, to let the current slow your steps. The goal isn’t to reach the end of the river as quickly as possible, but know the river for what it is, to take in all that it has to offer. Understanding a river takes time. Devote the time that’s needed.

Don’t be limited by what you can see. Dream, imagine, pretend. Take a creek and create a river. Take a twig and create a boat. Take a log and create a raft. Sail not from bank to bank, but from far sea to farther sea. Take a dragonfly and fashion a dragon. Climb aboard and soar. It is never too early or too late in the day to daydream.

These are the lessons I carry with me as a sudden rain shower dabs the river’s surface, chasing us up the banks yet another time. We hurry home, laughing, these man-boys and I. We leave river and know in some innate way that we’ll never see it again. We will come back to this place, but when we do, a new river will be waiting. Water coming, water going, leaves drifting, something growing, something fading.

It is impossible to step twice in the same river. The river is always changing. It cannot be preserved, other than in memory.

But the lessons are ours to keep. And in the end, it’s the lessons that matter most.

Lisa