The invisibility cloak of the elderly

It turns out that I am no different than many Americans.

I have limited appreciation for the elderly.

Perhaps this is because I have little experience; I have been separated from the elders in my family since I was in my teens and my parents divorced and my mother in her shame moved us hundreds of miles away and never looked back. My own parents died young.

Perhaps it’s because connecting with the elderly brings not only their aging and mortality into focus, but mine.

Perhaps it’s because I am afraid that, if I start talking to an older person, in her loneliness, she won’t stop.

And then the other day, I found myself in the depths of the parking lot at the wonderfully popular indoor Farmer's Market in Kent. 

This is a very tight, very crowded parking lot on a Saturday morning. And if you find yourself driving through, looking for a parking space, only to find none, and so you need to get back out again, good luck. There is no back entrance, and it seems impossible to turn around, especially when the lot starts filling with other cars in the same fix. 

To the market’s credit and FYI: There is another, huge parking lot right across the street. But we learn these lessons the hard way, n’est-ce pas: One must get stuck in the small parking lots of life first. 

Indeed, this past Saturday during the jingly, lovely, magical holiday market, I lumbered all the way through the lot, looking for a space, with other cars hovering in various states of disarmament and disarray all around me. There were no spaces. But with all the other cars stuck in there, I found I couldn’t turn around. And so I drove all the way to the skinny back of the lot where I did what amounted to an 11-point turn, taking a few tumbleweeds with me. 

Finally, I was headed out in the right direction. Only there sat another car, with apparently no way out or no way in either, driven by a man who might well have been Ebenezer Scrooge or maybe Silas Marner. 

His shoulders were hunched over the steering wheel that he gripped, his face a crumple of wrinkles. The age in his skin suggested at least 90 years of living, while the look on his face suggested abject confusion, anger, frustration, fear, I don't know.

“Oh, no, I’m never going to get out of here now,” I thought.

I thought maybe I should get out and help direct him so we can all get out of this mess. And then I saw a younger woman in her car, apparently trying to vacate a parking space next to his car. 

"Hm. If she leaves first and heads straight out, he can back into her parking space and drive away. And then I can, too," I thought. 

I made eye contact with her and held up an index finger in the universal No. 1 and then pointed at her. “You go first and then he can get out after you,” I mouthed. 

She shook her head in understanding, and then proceeded to drive her car out, at which point the elderly man, with no small amount of effort an 11-point turn of his own, backed his car in. 

All the while, with the most pained look on his face. 

I thought he might cry, and then, suddenly I felt the same.

This could one day be my own son. 

One day, God willing, my son will be 90. And I will no longer be here to bolster and protect him. He will have lived a full, rich life. But now he is alone in a beat-up old car, trying to find a parking space among the whipper snappers surrounding him so he can go inside the Farmer’s Market and buy potatoes for his soup. 

As I steered my car past the man and his car, I turned my face to make eye contact with this living soul who shares the planet with me. 

I gave him a thumbs-up and the biggest smile of love and compassion that I could muster. 

What I got back was an even bigger smile. His face seemed to glow with that smile. For one shining moment on that day in December 2012, he was not invisible.

Deep-fried cereal and humanity

My head was hurting, my heart was pounding, my mind was reeling when I found this awful bad-information story on Yahoo! news about the latest food sensation showing up at county fairs across this land is  your land: deep fried cereal

OMGOMGOMG.

As I shared this story on my FB page, I couldn't quit feeling overwhelmed, duped and mistrustful of the entire plant Earth and the entirety of humanity.

Despite everything we know about obesity, diabetes and food addiction, we are still INVENTING NEW CONCOCTIONS made of sugar, fat, flour and deep-frying, which might as well be arsenic laced with DDT. What.is.up.with.this?

I was so upset that I thought to start a new FB page entitled "What's Wrong With America Today."
I even typed in the words and sat looking at them.

And then I saw a post scroll by on the news feed: Twenty-one pictures that will restore your faith in humanity.

It was posted by a young woman named Emily who lives around the corner from me.  I see her outside sometimes. She always waves. Despite the wheelchair she is in because of cerebral palsy, I see her about town in other places, sometimes with the dog she just got who is a lead dog for people in wheelchairs: She even came to my most recent photo exhibit. She also just shaved her head in support of children's cancer research.

I switched screens to see that link she posted.

And I found myself moving from the heat and anger of that awful bad-information story to joy, compassion and utter humility at the depth of humanity. I cried four times, not in despair, but with joy, looking at these pictures that so touched my friend, Emily, a woman who has had more than her fine share of suffering.

There's a lot of icky ugly stuff in this world and this ridiculous flap with Chic-Fil-A is some of it. The whole thing -- all of it -- makes me sick to my stomach.

But there is also so much flipping joy in this world.

Like seeing Emily with her new dog.

And the face of Abby Greer last night when TimeBank gave back to HER.

Like the macrobiotic dish she spent hours collecting ingredients for, then making for me, for last night's potluck.

And the community-- including the Mama carp herself --  that rallied around me last week when I had to make this really scary, really daunting macrobiotic fish stew -- head, tail, guts and all - last week to help strengthen my blood.

Like the fact that I get to go to the Farmer's Market to buy Thrive sushi this morning.

And the six-week yoga program I committed to taking under the tutelage of my friend Cheril Walker starting in a couple of weeks.

Like that stunning split by Gabby Douglas in the USA gymnast competition this past week

And the fact that Aug. 15 is the 25th wedding anniversary of one of the most heroic married couples on the face of this planet

Like the fact that all three products of that marriage are in town today.

And that the sun has risen yet again on another day in my life.

Aren't these the feelings I want to spend my time concentrating on? Aren't these the things I want to spread around in my world? Why, yes, muse, I believe they are!

Will I never rant again? Doubtful. But is finding and sharing rants really the way I want to spend my time?

Nah, nope, not.

I am looking today, Aug. 4, 2012, to see what's right with this world in which we live.

Stay tuned. Better yet, join me?

Going Macro: A very quick primer

People have been asking me about macro and how I do it, and how I manage the time it takes and what are the basics. And so here is a very short primer that I hope won't overwhelm.

The essence of macro is balance -- balance in the way you cook your foods, in the taste of the food and in the very foods themselves -- which can take a lifetime to embrace, understand and practice

Meanwhile, the physical picture of macro, if you will, is the makeup of the plate, and how we respond to it:

1. Half the plate is whole grains sprinkled with mineral-rich sesame seeds, the other half is two or three veggie dishes and half a cup of beans -- all flavored with sea vegetables, really good sea salt and soy, all three full of minerals and vitamins.

This was my husband's favorite meal, and mine, too, just last night. I think all five tastes were represented. (See No. 6 below.) This is corn chowder, so sweet and yummy, made with butternut squash, corn, onion, carrot and sweetened with a broth made by simmering the actual corn cobs, stripped of corn. You wouldn't believe the yummy broth this makes. Miso was added at the end. The grain is barley. The beans are adzuki, so full of nutrition, and cooked, again with butternut squash to sweeten and mellow. Brussells sprouts are steamed and drizzled with lemon. The other vegetable dish was so yummy, I thought I was at a gourmet restaurant. Really, this is good food, I swear. It was bok choy, leeks and green beans (from my garden!), sautéed in a half teaspoon of high=quality sesame oil and drizzled with  soy sauce. So yummy, honest, for real. I licked my plate. Not really.

2. The meal is accompanied by a soup that is flavored with fermented paste, called miso. The meal is also accompanied by a small, very small, amount of something fermented, like a small pickle or unpasteurized sauerkraut, which helps jumpstart the enzymes.

3. No sugar,  very little fat and only high-quality, very little fruit and then only seasonal, no dairy, no meat (except if you want, fish a couple of times a week), some nuts and seeds for snacks, no flour products (although high-quality is occasionally allowed), no nightshade veggies (potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants leech calcium) or tropical fruits (doesn't compute in our non-tropical bodies). No caffeine or alcohol. The idea is balance and stimulants are avoided.

4. Sounds like a lot of nos, initially, but the number of yesses far outweigh the nos, and I swear to the heavens -- honestly and for real -- you get used to it. I know i now find butternut squash and also corn on the cob to be about as sweet as anything I know.

5. Behavior around the food suggests calm. Chew slowly, partly to slow yourself around eating, but to turn the food to liquid, so that you truly are digesting the food to become part of you. Macros believe in chewing each bite 50-100 times, which means you really have to sit down, slow down, to nourish your bodies. Cook with stainless steel or cast-iron cookware. Drink spring water or filtered tap water. Macros also believe in 30 minutes outside every day, walking, moving the body, not for aerobic benefit, but because the body simply wants to move. Bring plants inside the house to get chlorophyll.  The macro diet is surely a diet, but it is also a philosophy and can be approached from a Christian or Buddhist perspective. It is also said to be very close to Tao.

6. This is very, very important to grasp, something I still can't believe is happening. I don't crave food anymore. This is because I am moving toward balance. I try to represent all five tastes on my plate: bitter, sweet, sharp, salty, sour. I also feel this balance because every single thing I put in my body, from the salt that I used to salt the food, down to the sea vegetables, is good for me. I feel like I am pouring a river of food into my body that is moving through my body, dumping all the good stuff right where it needs to be. My macrobiotic counselor told me I am in the process of recreating my blood every time I eat. It takes about four months of good macro practice to completely change all the red-blood cells in the body. Now, eventually, some people move back into eating things like ice cream here and there, or having a beer. That can be part of a macro practice, too. For now, I am avoiding.

Here's a really, really good, basic web site and also a really, really accessible book, Modern Day Macrobiotics, with lots of beautiful illustrations, to start with that mostly embraces the food part, which is the part that gets you on the way to the balance part. In the two months since I have learned to cook, quietly and calmly, taking lots of time cutting vegetables, I have learned much about myself and the world.I am sustaining myself as I am cooking. There's something meditative and whole about taking time to nourish your body in the best way possible that brings you into harmony with everything around you.

One other thing, people also ask me all the time how I find time to do all this. It does take time, there is no doubt. But you learn when to find the time and where to cut time. You also learn to love your time, cooking, tending the very essence of yourself and your being. I get up very early in the morning, before everybody else does, and do some of my cooking. When I'm being really, really smart about this, I do a lot of the day's cooking in the morning, so that most of what I do the rest of the day is warm things up. I do indeed find chopping vegetables to be meditative, and that helps. I like chopping.

Please let me know how I can help. I am no expert by any means. Even the experts aren't experts. This is why they call this a macrobiotic "practice."

With love and hope

Bringing Up Mommy: A Summer Reunion to Remember

By Debra-Lynn B. Hook

Bringing Up Mommy

Special to McClatchy Newspapers

The split between my mother and father came like a boulder off the South Carolina mountains when I was 14, splintering the road ahead without warning.

My three sisters and I went with my mother, to New Orleans.

My father’s family, including 17 cousins, all but disappeared into the hills.

From infancy to adolescence, the cousins had helped each other forge a strong sense of self, our collective identities rooted in Aunt Margie’s beehive hairdo and Uncle Kenny’s way-too-long blessings over large Sunday gatherings. 

We had grown up side-by-side like best friends -- only, family -- hiding Easter eggs under Grandma’s porch and listening to Uncle James cackle as he taught us to ski behind his boat on Lake Greenwood.

Now suddenly all this was gone.

My mother’s smaller side of the family was still there for us.

But they only constituted half of me. 

And there were no cousins.

When I got to be in my 20s and 30s, then, I started sending Christmas cards back home, to each of my father’s seven brothers and sisters and their families. I didn’t know what I’d get in return. My father’s siblings idolized their baby brother and vilified anybody who wounded him, including, I knew, my sisters and me. My sisters and I were guilty by association with our mother, who they never forgave for instigating divorce.

That didn’t keep me from trying. Christmas after Christmas, year after year, I sent long, handwritten notes about the wonderful things I was doing with my life, and, as I began to raise my own family, photographs.  

I wanted to impress them. I wanted them back -- not just for me. I wanted my children to know the bounty of a large extended family. I wanted them to have the same sense of belonging I once did, to gain a full understanding of who they are and from whence they came.

Apparently, the pain of my father’s pain was too much for his brothers and sisters, the tales surrounding his children and his ex-wife too big for one daughter to overcome. 

During all those years, only two aunts ever responded to my cards and letters, both of them wives of my father’s siblings.

I tried to forgive and forget. I wrestled over continuing to send the Christmas greetings, especially after my father died. And then one July, two summers ago, one of the aunts who had responded to my cards, passed. I always said when Aunt Jane died, I was going back to South Carolina for the funeral, no matter what. 

And so it was there, in the 100-degree July humidity of a Southern Methodist funeral service that the tide turned on the generations. 

The aunts and uncles, many of whom had died along with both my mother and father, were no longer the story, I realized, as my sister and I walked arm-in-arm to the graveside ceremony where my aunt’s three children and our other cousins had gathered.

While the previous generation’s mythology wilted with the roses on my aunt’s mahogany casket, the eyes of the cousins lit up with recognition. 

While the grudges and half-truths, the fabrications and folk tales of  the adults became ashes to ashes, the cousins began to share a remembering of water skiing and Easter eggs, Uncle Kenny’s long blessings and Aunt Margie’s beehive -- the stories of sweet innocence and childhood. 

It’s been two years now since the funeral, and I have become best friends with Pam, the cousin I was closest to in age. From my home now in Ohio, I have rekindled relationships with several other cousins and become friends with their children via social media.

I also helped this summer organize a family reunion. The remaining two of my father’s seven siblings, all in their 80s now, came. But mostly it was cousins -- 30 of us cousins and the children of cousins and the children’s children of the cousins. 

Cousin Gary made barbecue. Cousin Jimmy’s wife made baked beans. Uncle Kenny prayed too long and afterwards gathered us in the front parlor to tell in his baritone Southern accent the story of his “grandfathah” trudging barefoot from Mississippi to Tennessee so he could go to college.

It was as I remembered Bledsoe family gatherings from decades gone by -- covered with that same familiar sense of belonging, those same longed-for feelings of comfort and unconditional love that comes from being with the tribe that knows you.

This time, I also felt relief.

Not just for me. 

Not just for my three children, sitting side-by-side on the fireplace hearth in the parlor, their eyes turned upward to this new great uncle and a history and heritage they could only imagine before. 

But for an entire family. For the mending of a circle. For the aunt who loved my father best, who hadn’t spoken directly to me in 20 years, who stood at the door as my children and husband and I were leaving, waving and shouting “I love you” until we were well on the road back home again. 

--Journalist Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio (www.debralynnhook.com), has been writing about family life since 1988 when she was pregnant with the first of her three children. Read her blog at http://debralynn-bloopbloopotter.blogspot.com; e-mail her at dlbhook@yahoo.com or join her Facebook discussion group at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Debra-Lynn-Hook-Bringing-Up-Mommy/195642263780710

Bringing Up Mommy: The Teenager's Room: It Takes a Village

Published with McClatchy Newspapers

While our 15-year-old son was away at summer camp, his father and I managed to peaceably co-clean and de-clutter his personal storage bin, otherwise know as his bedroom. 

This is surprising, considering my husband’s idea of cleaning up means throwing away, while I like to save 89-cent Easter baskets. He fashions himself a minimalist, while I say, “Yes, Benjie still needs all six of those posters on his walls.” He has no interest in playing a game of remember-when, while I want to sit cross-legged on the floor and sing lullabies as we sift through old elementary school pictures and feng shui his underwear drawer.

But the real bone of contention has to do with the very phrasing:

“I am cleaning my child’s room.”

My husband thinks if a child is old enough to walk, he’s old enough to clean his room. Cleaning one’s room teaches responsibility and order. Cleaning one’s room is payback for rent. 

I believe today’s teen-agers have enough to figure out, what with hormones and teachers, what with soccer schedules and college applications already, what with girls and social media, hair gel and deodorant. Asking a teen-aged child to clean his room, really clean his room to Hampton Inn standards, is like asking the devil to perform random acts of kindness. 

“Dad, you have to understand,” my son said before he left for camp. “I’m a teen-ager. Cleaning my room is just not a priority.”

Such adolescent pith 50 years ago would have have earned Benjie daily military inspection for the next six months, and 500 pushups in the dirt at dawn to go along with it. But in our house, where the kids are otherwise pretty good people, my son has a point. 

As does his armchair lawyer mother. To be clear, I reminded my husband, we’re not talking about picking the towels up off the floor and throwing away the candy wrappers. We’re talking about deep-cleaning and reorganizing a very small room that we helped clutter with stuff for the last 15 years. There’s a reason the adolescent comic strip “Zits” approaches the messy teenager’s room like it’s an institution. It takes a few policy wonks to make it run efficiently.

And so, as a gift to ourselves (our bedroom is next to his) and to our son, who would soon be returning home with a mildewed footlocker that would create an even more hospitable haven for grandaddy long-legs, we put aside our differences.

Armed with brooms and dust cloths, we made a pathway through the fortress and took up stations. I found stuff for my husband to throw away. He stepped aside while I re-taped posters to the wall. He moved the bed. I swept behind it.

I also put a big bin in the hallway into which my husband put all the stuff he really wanted to throw away. 

It was only after my husband left this weekend to retrieve Benjie -- that I sat on the floor and boo-hooed over old baby pictures and Harry Potter wands.  And, with the exception of a small box of trash, I found a place for every single item in that bin. This, by the way, is one of those facts of family life Dad never needs to know. 

Meanwhile, guess what the camper exclaimed when he saw his room anew?

“I’ll never mess it up again!”

Famous last words, but it sure sounded good.

--Journalist Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio (www.debralynnhook.com), has been writing about family life since 1988 when she was pregnant with the first of her three children. Read her blog at http://debralynn-bloopbloopotter.blogspot.com; e-mail her at dlbhook@yahoo.com or join her Facebook discussion group on this column: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Debra-Lynn-Hook-Bringing-Up-Mommy/195642263780710.hjyuti7867

Going Macro: Month 2. Traveling back to balance

Everybody knows you shouldn't make a major life decision when you're depressed, hungover or mad at your husband.

Same with Going Macro. You can't essentially turn your life upside down while doing something else major at the same time -- like staying in five different hotels in eight different Southern cities while visiting relatives and friends, some of whom you haven't seen in 40 years, some of whom have a history of holding you personally responsible for family dysfunctions dating back to 1972.

My counselor tried to tell me: Being on the road while eating macro, especially while trying to get used to macro, is downright antithetical to the philosophy. Macro means harmony, balance, miso and stainless steel cookware within reach. Macro means having access to a variety of beans, grains and vegetables in your own kitchen, not burgers and fries on the turnpike.  Macro means chewing your food 100 times in your back yard while birds trill around your calm self.

Where I usually eat my macro meals

Clearly, I knew this might  be hard to pull off while we were traveling 800 miles to a family reunion in the South where the operatives are barbecue, potato salad, sweet tea and cousin Gary.

But this trip, which has been in the works for about 10 years, just happened to butt up against my decision to go macro on May 22.

And, well, being the can-do person that I am, I thought I could do it.

I tried really hard. I packed up all the right stuff -- miso, unpasteurized sauerkraut, umeboshi plums, brown rice vinegar, several different kinds of seaweed.  I made up a couple of Pyrex containers of brown rice, beans and veggies and put them on ice in a cooler.

And for the first five days, I did really well. I ate what I had on hand, as my superbly helpful family never once complained about having to replenish the ice in the cooler we dragged from hotel to hotel. I cooked up oats at my goddaughter's house in Columbia. I made halibut, brown rice, miso soup and sautéed collards at our rented condo on the beach. I found macro restaurants and cafes in Asheville, where I got dishes to go.

Tempeh salad from the Laughing Seed in Asheville, N.C.

The Green Sage Cafe in Asheville has brown rice, miso
and steamed kale to go

But right around Myrtle Beach, right about the time I saw a sign for "Boiled peanuts," this is where macro turned micro. It didn't take long before I was eating store-bought hummus straight out of the plastic, BPA-leaching container and watermelon by the handsful. One day I ate so many sunflower seeds that I didn't have a bowel movement for three days. And I drank beer. Twice. OK, so  this may not be a teenager's idea of rebellion. I didn't consume barbecue or six margaritas with Morton's table salt. But, still, the way I was eating was not macro. And I knew it. What's more, I felt it.

Today, finally, I'm back.

With the help of a new compassionate counselor,  Francois Roland in Cleveland, I am back to eating the foods that truly feed not only my cells, tissues and blood, but my heart, soul and nature. I am back to remembering how I felt those first 17 days of Going Macro -- lighter, cleaner, more alert. I am back to believing this is the way of life and eating I've been looking for all my life.

This is what we have to do -- what we CAN do -- when we find ourselves out of balance.

Not beat ourselves up.

Just gently move ourselves back.

I am back, not just back home in Ohio, but back, with gratitude, to balance.

Lunch today: Miso soup with soybean miso paste, green onion, burdock root, rutabaga and wakame sea flakes. Grain dish with rye berries and brown rice sprinkled with fresh lemon and toasted sesame seeds and sea salt. Sauteed veggies (in a cast-iron pan brushed with olive oil) are daikon radish, famous for removing fat and mucus; dandelion greens; and green onion, sprinkled with umeboshi plum vinegar. 

Judging people on the beaches of South Carolina

I am going to eventually blog about going home to South Carolina, where my family and I valiantly marched from the mountains to the sea and where I: consumed radical vegetarian fare in Asheville with the priest who married me and my husband 25 years ago; took my kids to see the Girl Scout camp where I got homesick 45 years ago; introduced my family to relatives in Boiling Springs I haven't seen in 40 years; watched my uncle who is 85

tell a whole new crop of cousins about his grandfather who is my great grandfather and my children's great-great grandfather; surprised my old newspaper buddies from The State Newspaper in Columbia; enjoyed brunch with my soulmate, lifelong amazing first babysitter of my children, while watching her now with her own babies,

 and watched my children hold her babies,

and felt the circle of life in the estuaries along the coast.

But first I'm going to write about a ping moment I had on the beach.

This post is brought to you by me, prompted by my moment, but forced into words this morning, this first morning back in Ohio, by the writing of my friend Colleen in her hilariously brilliant and tender The Family Pants.

I, like you, Colleen, work hard at not judging people.

I had a mean-as-a-snake grandmother who was orphaned in the back hills of SC who talked about everybody like she was perfect and they were not. There was something wrong and bad about everybody she knew.

I have been determined not to be like that.

Meanwhile, there are categories of people I do not like -- namely, rednecks and very wealthy people.

So there I was in the land of the Confederacy this past week. We stayed at a high-rise in Garden City

at the edge of Myrtle Beach and if you've never stayed at Myrtle Beach or close to it, you will never know how many people there are to judge.

One morning, I forced myself out of bed go to down to the beach at 6 a.m. to take sunrise pictures with my big honking Nikon equipment. I am patient. I am kind. I am sitting in the wet sand and lying in the surf. My PJ pants are soaked. I'm shooting and adjusting settings and working the OM of the sea as I  wait for the sun.

Just as the timeless ball of life comes dripping up from the horizon, this 60-something, doughnuts-eating couple walks into my field of vision. The woman has her hands in her pockets casually and is trailing her toes in the water while her husband is behind her snapping pictures with a pocket camera. You can see the woman skirting the edge of this photo below, while I try desperately to compose the sun with the sea without getting a single one of her hot pinkie toes in the frame.

I keep attempting pictures, while feeling dumbfounded that these people have waltzed into my picture on the only day I will wake for the sunrise. I think to myself I should just go up to this intruder and ask her politely to move. Instead, I march 50 yards to the left of her, so I can clear my path to the sun. I am empathetic enough, even though I'm also pissed - and judging of their doughnut-silly-camera-obviously-ignorant-uneducated-don't-get-nuance selves -- not to get right in THEIR line of vision. Meanwhile, they can't help but see me. I shoot a few, then turn my camera back toward them to get shots of the pier. And I see that they are suspended in action. They are staring at me without moving. I turn my camera back to the sun.

Next thing I know the man is standing beside me.

I have no idea how this is going to go.

But the man is smiling.

"That one of them cameras you can see right away in?" he asks.

"Why, yes, it is. Do you want to see?"

We stand there quietly for a few seconds looking together at my photos.

"My wife and I were watching you and we thought, 'Boy, she's got some kinda lens there. I bet she's getting some nice pi-churs.' These are real nice."

I thanked him, and then, offhandedly told him what I'd been thinking to myself -- that I had an even bigger lens in my camera bag on my shoulder, but that I was afraid I'd miss the sun if I took the  time to change lenses.

"Well, it's s'posed to be a clear day tamarrah, too," the man reassured me, smiling. "You can always try again with your other lens."

What a good thought from this man I pronounced as having no educated thoughts in his head.

I saw his wife, standing off in the distance. She waved and smiled and it occurred to me, right then and there, that some people are, yes, rednecks. Some people are rich.

But everybody is part of the human condition. Everybody has a soul and a life that precedes my chance encounter with them. Everybody has thoughts and feelings, a mother and a father and a a story.

I walked along beach that morning after my encounter, looking very differently at the other human souls who -- just like me, though perhaps for different reasons --  had risen that morning before dawn to watch the heralding of a new day.

 I took pictures of a woman collecting shells with a little girl with an orange bucket.

I took pictures of two doughnut-eating men fishing in the sea.

And then I thought, what would it be for me to not just take their pictures, but listen to their stories? And so I went up to the shell-collecting woman. She had very few teeth in her mouth, even though she was maybe about 40.

"Good morning," I said. "Y'all collecting shells?" I asked.

"Yep. This is our first trip to South Carolina and I told my niece we'd get some shells."

She told me the little girl was 11, they were from Baltimore and this was their first trip to South Carolina. The little girl was so excited, she roused her aunt at 5:30 to get up and get out into the day.

"We're going to make a collage," she said, explaining how she was going to glue the shells to some hard board and frame it.

"Good luck," I said. "Have a wonderful day."

I went up to the fishermen on the beach.

"Whatcha fishin for?" I asked.

"Perch. Whiting."

"Do you eat 'em?" I asked.

"Yeah, if they're big enough."

He showed me the shrimp he uses for bait and told me the worst thing about fishing with shrimp is that it gets pulled off the hook in the surf.

I asked if he and other man were brothers.

"He's my son. Forty years old," he said.

"Wow, you don't look old enough to have a son that old," I told him.

He didn't. He was a handsome man with the prettiest blue eyes over his tank top and big belly.

He got to chattering them, asked me if I heard about the crazy guy in the car flying through the parking deck last night. I asked him if he heard about the golf cart wreck down at the state park. We told our stories and then we both said to the other "Have a nice day."

I went on up to my room after that, with hopes that this would last,  that I would be a better person, a richer person, a more learned person for more than just the moment. I went out to the balcony overlooking the ocean. The man was down there, looking up at me. I waved. He waved back.