Grab a life. Make it a good one.

I am enjoying life more today than ever.

Oh, sure, I remember those days when the house was filled with our children, full of energy, running everywhere with their friends, and that was fun. But it was also stressful because while we were enjoying those times, I was always thinking of ways to provide more for our family, to get ahead.

For years, it seemed we kept repeating the cycle of starting to get ahead,  changing jobs and instead of building on what we had, it seemed we were just going back down to the first rung on the ladder. I was in the ministry so we usually moved when the church wanted us to, not when we wanted. 

Then I changed careers. It was very stressful at first but then we started building our lives.

We are still not rich but there is a sense of satisfaction. It seems we can have a life instead of just making a living.

I'm not sure if grandchildren give that satisfaction or grandchildren come along at the time when we have built our lives to the point life is good. 

I liken it to riding a bicycle. You ride and you fall. You ride and you can't get the hang of pedaling with your feet while using your handlebars. Eventually, it all come together and you're riding and you cannot remember what it was like to not be able to ride. 

I feel that I have learned how to ride that bicycle called life and I wouldn't want to go back to that awful time of almost making a living and then starting over. 

When I was 5 years old, we were visiting my grandfather in Winamac and one evening I saw the neighbor boy and his friends start a fire in the middle of the driveway that separated Grandpa's house from theirs. This was in the late '50s and no one called the fire department. 

The neighbor boy's dad was in the middle of the action. He was notching the end of a dowel rod. Grandpa and I were on his open front porch watching what was going on. I would have loved to have been in the midst of the action but they were all big kids and so I had to be content to stay on the porch and watch. 

Soon, the most spectacular thing happened. The dad and the boy next door built a ramp and soon all the kids were riding their bikes over the ramp and jumping the fire! How exciting!

I soon found out why the dad had been working on the dowel rod. The guys painted their faces like Indians and shot homemade arrows at a target on the neighbors' garage. It was just at dusk and I could see sparks flying as the guys rode their bikes through the flames. 

No wonder I wanted a "two-wheeler" for my sixth birthday. 

I remember the smell of the new tires on my bike as it set on our enclosed front porch the next winter. It was the smell of adventure and freedom -- and it reminded me of the guys riding through the fire with faces painted as Indians. 

I recently lost a well-respected friend. He often spoke of the writings of the apostle Paul in the New Testament and about the trials during Paul's life. We had a memorial service for him last week. 

I treasure memories of Gerald and the "Indians" when I was little and all the good people who have crossed my path. 

So, I recently picked up the phone and called the best man in my wedding from nearly 40 years ago. He was my best friend going through college and I haven't talked to him for years. We didn't part in anger the last time we spoke. I was just too busy trying to get ahead. 

That conversation with my friend last week made me thankful I have arrived at a place where I am not pushing, pushing, pushing to get ahead. 

I know I will not get a Pulitzer Prize. The Chicago Tribune, Indianapolis Star or New York Times won't be trying to recruit me and that's OK, though at one time I was working as hard as I could to try to get ahead.  

I am thankful I can enjoy my children, my grandchildren and spend time every day with my wife, whether it's just watching TV while reading a book or eating a quiet lunch together. 

I am thankful I can do what I love to do for a living and even dabble in writing books. 

I'm thankful to have friends. Speaking of which, we plan to visit my old college friend who lives in Illinois this summer. 

I look in the mirror and wonder who is that old guy with gray hair and whiskers who sneaks into our house every morning and climbs into my mirror. I know I'm no longer 30, but I feel like it. 

That old guy in the mirror reminds me of someone I once knew, but he does not look like me. It should not be my reflection, but something tells me he is me. 

People can continually preach, "Stop and smell the roses," but there is something about guys -- maybe the testosterone -- that makes a guy push, push, push to get ahead. But at some point we seem to lighten up and realize nice and easy gets the job done just as well and we have to control only what is in our ability to control. 

As I say, life is good and I'm thankful to be able to enjoy it.

Grandchildren love stories

We're watching "Santa and Pete" about a grandpa who tells his grandson a fable about St. Nicholas and his helper.
Sounds like our grandkids' grandpa.
This year I was reading a book to Rose and there was a shark in the story.
"Grandpa, that's not the shark's name," Rose said.
I double checked. I read the name again.
"Grandpa, when you were at our house and we were playing a game, what was the shark's name?"
I had made up the game about all of us being on the ocean, in a small boat (the recliner), staying out of the water and away from the shark. What was the shark's name? Finally I remembered.
"It was Bruce," I said.
"That's right,' Rose said. "His name is Bruce."
And her voice indicated that was final.
So, this grandpa loves to tell stories and I suppose Disney will just have to rename the shark in "Finding Nemo" to "Bruce."

Write on! It's the right thing to do for your family

Everyone needs to write.Not everyone will be the next famous writer. Not everyone will pass high school English but for your family's sake, you need to write.
It's important you tell your family, your children your grandchildren, about your life. It's important to them. If you don't want to write, try dictating stories that you remember into a recorder. Most cell phones have the ability to record sound and if you have a phone you don't mind talking into it, do you?
Today I visited in the home of a 90-year-old lady who recently made a very generous donation to a local non-profit group.
During the course of the interview (which I recorded, by the way) she told me she "can't write" but she is jotting down her memories for her grandchildren.
She retrieved a big plastic bag filled with various sizes of paper on which she had written many things that have happened over the years.
She plans to have her daughter type the information into a computer to save it for posterity.
What a wonderful idea!
Young reporters sometimes complain they don't have anything to write about.
"Close your eyes and open a phone book to any page," I tell them. "Put your finger down on the page and call that number."
If someone answers and will talk, I promise they will have at least one interesting, entertaining story to tell. Everyone has a story!
The lady's husband wrote a series of letters for his grandson, talking about how much different the boy's life will be from the grandfather who grew up during the Depression.
There was another gentleman in the room while I interviewed the lady. They were not related.
He told me he learned his father was adopted as a child. His mother could not afford to keep both he and his sister so she agreed to pay a family friend a small amount of money each year until she got back on her feet financially. It never happened and the boy eventually changed his name.
What a great story! I hope he records it in some form for his children and grandchildren.
While I was in the lady's home I tried to remember why her deceased husband was so familiar to me.
"You wrote about him when he died" she said. "You put his story on the front page of the newspaper."
I try to write about all the prominent people at their passing so that was no surprise.
"I have that front page ganging on the wall of my study," she said.
I was dumbfounded!
Then she led us down the hall to a bedroom converted into a study.
There, hanging on the wall, laminated to preserve it was the front page from a 2005 edition of our local paper.
It had been hanging there 10 years and I had no idea.
"You're a good writer," she said.
Relatively speaking, maybe.
It was the subject and the story that made her hang the front page of our paper on her wall.
Not long ago I found a letter my mom wrote her dad when I was first learning to set up. I couldn't talk but I laughed at everything my dad's mother said, mom wrote.
Just like my son!
I gave the letter to our son and he later texted me about it. I'm sure he appreciated that little bit of family history.
You don't have to be"a good writer. The fact that you are writing about family will be enough to make it special.

Nogood-niks set bad example for our children

OK. I'm over it. It's time to move on.
When the Colts lost to The Evil no good-nik Boris Badenov Patriots and we learned that the Pats balls were under inflated I was incensed.
The Pats perhaps didn't do it intentionally but suspicion indicates someone in the organization was responsible, so I went to social media and expressed my outrage.
"Boycott the Super Bowl," I said.
A few in that Twitter/Facebook court of no appeal agreed with me.
"Make a dent in that god of TV sports, the ratings," I said. "That is the only way to say we don't condone cheating." 

I doubt it made any difference. A half dozen or so people retweeted what I wrote. About 20 people read it. Many others expressed similar outrage but what is that against millions of Super Bowl fans?

I did see one story that indicated last year's Super Bowl ratings had dipped slightly from the year before and I wonder why.

If you watched the Super Bowl this year I hope you had a good time. Linda and I watched Episodes III and IV of "Star Wars" in protest of #deflategate. 
I really don't care if you watched the Super Bowl. But we should care about the message we send our kids. There has been a lot of illegal drug use in professional sports. In more than one instance, players have beaten women and committed other crimes.

What are we teaching our kids and grandchildren about making wrong choices? I don't mean what we say. What are they learning from our example?

Some of the bravest people on Earth

Some of the bravest people on earth are breast cancer survivors. I know. My wife is one of them.
 In 2008 she went through multiple surgeries related to breast cancer, including one surgery that was made necessary because she was dismissed from the hospital too soon after an operation.
Various images flash across my mind: Linda telling her family on Christmas Day at our house that she had a biopsy. Talking to her on the phone as I was driving down a country road in Fountain County, looking at the bridge ahead as she said, "It's not good." Seeing her on the table as they wheeled her into surgery at St. Vincent's hospital in Indianapolis. The feel of her lips as we kissed. The day her parents were visiting and Linda could only sleep in the chair and I called one of her doctors, who prescribed a patch I placed on her neck. The doctor said, "You might have to take her to the local hospital if this doesn't work."
I remember going to church without her one Sunday and only wanting to sit near the pulpit and pray. Instead, an old friend, plopped down next to me and wanted to chat, totally oblivious to my concerns.
After church, another old friend asked me what was wrong. I told him about Linda's health and he promised to pray for us.
She survived all that. I also think about her welcoming four grandchildren into the world since her surgery and the two grandchildren who were born before her cancer was detected.
All these thoughts were brought on in the past week as I began writing a series of stories about people who were affected by breast cancer for a special section The Brazil Times published.
What marvelous people with superhero attitudes and faith are these cancer survivors! Their stories are inspiring; they reveal people who are noble, brave in the face of disease and possible death.
I realize I am biased but let's do all we can to fight this terrible disease!

 Frank Phillips is a freelance writer and a blogger. He can be contacted at frank.phillips@gmail.com. His blog is frankphillips.blogspot.com and his novel, "Living In Victory" is available in paperback at Amazon.com and lulu.com. It is also available as an e-edition at lulu.com.