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deb roush

Stories about life, family, dogs, anxiety and whatnot.

  • Suffering Loss

    We all have the things that folks will say about us when we’re not around. “How long have you known Deb?” someone might ask as I walk away to grab my fourth glass of Chardonnay in order to endure the Pampered Chef party I have attended, having violated my personal policy of avoiding those shindigs – candles, make-up, lingerie, fake silver jewelry – where you are forced to buy something just because you know the hostess.

    “Deb, yah, I’ve known her a couple of years. She’s pretty fun to be around. She’s got good kids; her daughter babysits for me sometimes. She’s in public relations for the school district and is fairly active in the community. I think the worst thing about her is that she’s just so opinionated.”

    Let me tell you, that last part just isn’t true. Sure, I am opinionated, and I admit to offending my fair share of acquaintances. It’s a trait I come by honestly. I’m the preverbal acorn sitting on the ground two inches from the trees. Growing up, it wasn’t Thanksgiving dinner unless we were debating the welfare system or arguing the need to regulate fuel emissions. Loudly. A conservative ex-reporter who follows politics and is a news junkie, whatever the topic, I’ve got some thoughts on it.

    But the worst thing about me isn’t being opinionated. It’s that I lose things.

    When I was about 12, and Lacoste was the all-the-rage brand name that graced our polo shirts, my dad, thoughtfully, bought me a solid gold alligator charm that I could wear on one of my gold chains. I lost it within an hour in the chaos of the Christmas wrapping paper. Years later, as an adult, my mom paid hundreds of dollars for a gold charm bracelet she presented to me for a special birthday gift. Unbeknown to me, it fell off my wrist in the parking lot of my office building. I posted a reward for it but it was never found. My wedding ring, over a carat in diamonds, disappeared around the holidays several years ago. My son Kyle, then about eight, had spent his own money on my Christmas gift, a ring that was colorful costume jewelry from the “sale” at his elementary school. I remember removing my wedding ring to try it on. By January, when my finger had turned a solid shade of green from its “gold” wearing away, I checked my jewelry box for my wedding ring. Gone. I blamed Christmas wrap again, but maybe that was just the alligator experience rearing its ugly head.

    Mostly, the things I lose are not valuable, except to me. In high school, I had a favorite royal blue sweatshirt that said “Malibu” across the front in a sassy, white font. I thought it made me look Baywatchish as it hung off my shoulder in kind of a sexy way. I left it at an out-of-town track meet. I would say more of my socks disappear from the dryer than anyone else in the family, but I might just be paranoid. It has gotten to the point that when I make a purchase, I sometimes consider if the item is worth buying because I’ll probably lose it.

    A few weeks ago, I was traveling with my dear friend Suzanne when I began diligently searching for something I had just put down in the hotel room and couldn’t retrieve for the life of me. “You must have too many things if you are you’re always losing them,” she suggested. That made me stop and think. Maybe I do have too much stuff and always have. Or possibly I just don’t value stuff. Maybe I move too fast, am always thinking of the next thing and don’t pay enough attention to the task – or thing – at hand. Either way, I’m not sure it’s something I’m going to be able to change. Or even want to. To be candid, it has never bothered me that I lost my wedding ring. Insurance covered it, and my husband bought me a pretty new diamond. Even better, my dad gave me his mom’s band and I now wear that. To me, the most important thing is that I have my husband. There’s even a silver lining in losing things – occasionally I find the things I lose. And every single time it’s a gift. I’m elated, my heart races a little and it brings joy to my day. I even give a little silent shout-out to God. Just today, after walking into the office building I had to return to my car because I had left my travel mug filled with coffee in it – again. And as I reached in and glanced over to the passenger seat I noticed, with a little thrill and smile, that wedged between the seat and its back was the gorgeous green Peridot earring I had been missing for several weeks.

    After further inspection, it looks like the most awful thing about me – that I lose things – really isn’t all that bad. Doesn’t it say much more about me that, glass-half-full, I revel in the finding and don’t suffer the losses?

    That’s my opinion, anyway.

  • Nationally Certified

    Here’s one of the first photos with my new 1.8 50mm camera lens … the birdhouse in my backyard, recently certified as a natural habitat by the National Wildlife Foundation.

  • Why my Daughter has Gone to the Birds

    As the chief public relations executive for the local public school district, I’m the first to tell you that what you learn early in school dictates success in life. Still, for me, as a kid growing up in the early 1970s in Southern California, most of what I needed to know was learned outside of the classroom – in a chicken coop.

    Yes, you heard me right. My grandparents, immigrant farmers from Belgium, Rene and Anna Moyens, settled in sunny Southern California. Eventually they set up shop in a suburb of Los Angeles — Sylmar, specifically — where, unconventionally, they transitioned into much of what they did in their motherland. They grew citrus trees and raised birds. Including my beloved chickens.

    It wasn’t that I adored the chickens so much as I relished the time working side-by-side with my grandfather, Rene. A known late sleeper, I would rise before dawn to work side-by-side with him – cleaning the coop – which housed about 20 birds. With a large paint scraper I would carefully lift droppings, meticulously sliding them into a bucket, then transporting my collection to the nearby compost pile. Then I would carefully sprinkle fresh smelling sawdust over the coop’s floor to ensure picking up the droppings would be easy the next time. I gathered the chickens’ fresh, brown, warm eggs in a basket and fed the cluckers their grains and greens.

    And while Grandpa appreciated my help – and my early rising – he didn’t let me miss a step. He pointed out when I missed a dropping – teaching me it was critical to do a job right.

    When a favorite hen suffered an eye injury from what could only have been a jealous fellow bird, she was allowed free reign of the small, backyard “farm” area. Grandpa and I tended to Helen (who I named for Helen Keller, having recently finished reading her autobiography) by knocking our knuckles on her wooden feed dish so she would find her food. Grandpa taught me that it was important to tend to the “least of these” and care for the hurt or less fortunate.

    I was terrified of Grandpa’s feisty and frankly, mean, rooster who thought he was top boss. Grandpa taught me to look him in the eye and show him who was top dog. It’s a skill I have executed many times since, albeit not with roosters. In the end, if I ran from the ferocious rooster, Grandpa saved me, scooping him up and reprimanding him in his native Flemish, sending me the life lesson that my family always had my back. That I counted and came first.

    Grandpa loved his birds. And he loved me. That relationship was the grounds for choosing him, in fifth-grade grade, as the topic for my all-important paper to be titled, “My Hero.” It was then that I “interviewed” him, learning that as Belgian, my grandfather had been captured by the Nazis in World War II, but escaped their work camp using counterfeit Czechoslovakian papers. Grandpa was a true hero in every sense of the word, and that impressed me. Still, not as much as his ability to cluck and coo at a rambunctious cluster of chickens early in the morning, quietly calming them – and me.

    Many years later, when I visited Grandpa in the hospital as struggled with colon cancer, he did what did what so many others who have spent a stretch of time on pain medication do: He hallucinated. And there was a plastic spray bottle in the room – with a trigger. I remember like it was yesterday Grandpa pointing at it and smiling. “It’s my chicken,” he said, seeing the trigger as the wattle under his bird’s chin.” I laughed. I cried.

    It was in Grandpa’s beloved chicken coop I was prepared for success in life, by a man who most likely didn’t even know the effect he had on me. And while, perhaps, I didn’t recognize that influence until very recently, I must have know it subliminally. After all, my daughter, who was born in 1997, is named after him.

    She is Rene Roush.

About Me

I’m Deb. I write for a living but not enough for fun, so that’s why I’m here. I want to share my stories and read yours here on Wordpress. Click on one of my recent posts below and let me know what you think. xoxo

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