Three years ago I was spending a grayish, overcast morning on Facebook perusing the events of my friends’ lives. It was the first week of November, and lots of my parent friends were posting pictures of their munchkins in costume and confessing that they’d been raiding the Halloween candy. However, one post from my friend Jamie caught my attention:

“Gratitude Day #4: I’m thankful for the friends who helped me rescue a litter of kittens yesterday. Two of the litter already found homes!”

Small wonder it caught my attention. I love gratitude, friends, and kittens. It was a 3-for-1 winner! But more than that, I was intrigued. I looked at Jamie’s previous messages. Every day of November she had listed a specific moment or item for which she was thankful—her daughter’s smile, an unexpected phone call from a friend, the results of a new recipe. None of the items were huge. Instead, they were moments of simple joys that might flit away through the winds of an otherwise hectic life. But Jamie was using the month of November to cup her hands around these delicate moments, to wonder at their beauty and, by sharing her process, to encourage others to do the same.

That encouragement worked. Beginning that very moment, I used Facebook to record one moment of thanksgiving in my own life. I continued each day of that month, and each day of each November since. And since that time, I’ve noticed a couple of results:

1. A different kind of beauty. As the colors of October fade to somber browns outside, my life becomes more colorful, tinted with a vast collection of joyful moments that provide different textures and hues to my frame of mind.
2. No more holiday blahs. I used to feel that I was scrambling after an elusive feeling of Thanksgiving (and Christmas)that I could never quite achieve. However, after a month of practicing daily gratitude, that holiday spirit is no longer a fleeting shadow. It’s very real.
3. Gratitude is a hard habit to shake. After November 30^th, I may stop broadcasting my gratitude moments to my friends, but that doesn’t mean I stop noticing those moments. Quite the contrary—gratitude has become the best habit in my life. And it’s with me all year.

Don’t get me wrong. It took more than 30 moments or items to establish my habit of gratitude. All my life I’ve practiced prayer and meditation. Further, folks who know my parenting style know that every bedtime I have my kids list moments during their day for which they are thankful. But November’s online gratitude journal is like going back to thanksgiving boot camp for me. It is reaffirming. And it’s easy.

Today I am thankful that I get to share this idea with you, and I encourage you to give it a go. Yes, November is already underway—that doesn’t matter! Start now. Keep your eyes and your heart open today for a fleeting moment of happiness, of peace, of rightness. Cup it gently in your hands. Acknowledge it. Be thankful for it, and release it. If you feel like it, share that moment with a friend or loved one. Do it and I promise November will become one of your favorite months, too.

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime book No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder. She welcomes feedback at www.AngelaDove.com.

These old general stores, reputed site of a shoot-out, are on the same property as the house owners believe is haunted.

Many people would consider live music a bonus to living in a house. The problem, so far as Diana Gates of Sandy Mush, NC, sees it, is that this particular music isn’t coming from the living.

On the day a guest heard guitar music playing upstairs, there was nobody else in the house. Nobody.

Gates, who married the property owner and moved into this 1890s farmhouse 12 years ago, reports other signs of haunting. “Two years ago I saw a zig-zag ball of light over my son’s crib disappear through the ceiling,” she said during a recent phone interview. Other people in the house have seen a similar light, or have found items in a different place than they left them. A year ago Gates saw “a large shadow” come through the front door and move down the hallway; at the exact same instant, her Chinese pug (that had been snoozing peacefully) “started barking like crazy.” But the final straw came just a few weeks ago, says Gates. “I was coming out of the laundry room and saw the shadow of a person’s arm and shoulder reaching for the back door handle.” No one else was home.

Now convinced the property was haunted, Gates was faced with the decades-old question: Who ya gonna call?

She called Tony Ruff, founder of the Cold Mountain Paranormal Society. And since Tony knew I was hoping to write a column about ghost-hunting, he invited me along. (See last week’s article for the backstory, including tales of my and Tony’s brushes with the paranormal.)

I was excited about the offer but had no idea what I was getting myself into. CMPS has investigated over 35 different sites, mostly at the owners’ behest; I was the newbie here. In desperation, I turned to television. A few episodes of “The Ghost Whisperer” and “Ghost Hunters” demonstrated the keys to a successful hunt were (1) ample cleavage and (2) repeated use of the question, “Dude, did you hear that?” I was ready!

On the night of the hunt about 20 of us caravanned out to the property. The owner’s niece was there to show us the old general stores on the

This photo taken by CMPS members shows mist and orbs, both believed to be supernatural in origin.

property, where it is rumored there was once a deadly shootout, as well as the farmhouse. The property was haunted chic, with just the right amount of creaky stairs, old family photos, and creepy dolls. (In fact, Diana Gates refers to one room as “the creepy doll room.” If you’re going to name a room that, you’re asking for trouble.)

The investigative crew, scrambling from cars and trucks, fell into various categories. The techno-geeks fiddled around with electromagnetic field (EMF) meters, night vision goggles, heat sensors, and even iPhones loaded with various ghost hunting apps (I’m not kidding) such as Ghost Radar, an electromagnetic sensor and word-generator designed to aid ghostly communication. Self-professed psychics were already calling out information they were receiving: A female spirit in the store used to be a seamstress! A little boy who had died of fever was peeking at our group with interest! There used to be a shed here! A stream! Some Cherokee! Lights flashed as photographers rushed to areas indicated by the psychics, hoping to capture images of orbs or mists.

(“Those could be light leaks, lens flares, refractions from direct flashes, any number of things,” Professor Cathryn Griffin, head of Western Carolina University’s photography program, told me during a recent phone call. “We’re inclined to see pictures where there are none.” However, these photo glitches speak of a whole different reality to ghost hunters. To see pictures from this night, including possible shapes in the mists and orbs, find Cold Mountain Paranormal Society on Facebook and click the “Like” button.)

I entered the sitting room of the farmhouse with approximately half of the group. They set out their various electronic doodads and stood or sat around in a circle. The only light was from the hallway and the EMF reader, which blinks a spectrum of light running green to yellow to red, depending on emissions levels. One psychic informed any spirits in the house of our intentions to learn about them, and how they could use the gadgetry to communicate with us. Then the group got down to business.

“Is there a spirit here with us?”

EMF blink.

“That’s a Yes!” someone called out.

“I’m getting a male,” said the psychic.

“Gun,” called out the guy reading from his iPhone app.

“Were you a soldier?”

“Hide,” said iPhone guy.

“Were you a deserter?”

“Yes!” EMF girl said.

And that’s how it went. The questions lasted a long time as we moved from room to room. Conflicting information was chalked up to there being more than one spirit in the room. Through this process, the group determined that one spirit had come with someone from the group (a deceased uncle and war veteran), while another was a man of African descent who had been accused of stealing fuel from the general store. A female ghost had lost a child to illness and enjoyed watching the current children of the homeowners. (Perhaps the light above the crib?)

During the 4 hour investigation, I watched in fascination. These people were having a blast, but they were always respectful of each other and of the unknown, trying to make sense of a world many of them had glimpsed through near-death experiences, or accidentally, or an amalgam of belief and curiosity. Did we discover and define the supernatural in the farmhouse that night? That doesn’t really matter to me. Like Professor Griffin indicated, our minds will always try to find meaning in the chaos. The search for answers, in my mind, is an integral part of living.

And isn’t it nice to think there’s an app for that?

# # #

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime book, No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin Group, 2009). She welcomes your tales of the supernatural either here or at www.AngelaDove.com.

Julie Woerner outside her home in Holiday, FL.

For most people interested in the paranormal, there was a defining moment in their lives—a moment when everything they believed was thrown off-kilter in light of an unexplainable experience. For me, that moment occurred in the early morning hours of a December day in 1993.

My husband, Ira, and I were living in Chapel Hill while he attended UNC School of Law and I worked as an editor at a nearby independent press. On this particular winter night I awoke to find my husband had cocooned himself in our comforter—again!—leaving me nothing but sheet. I was cold, and I was irritated. (It was a good thing we were newlyweds or he would have gotten an earful right then and there!) I sat up and saw Ira’s grandmother, Julie Woerner, standing at the foot of our bed. She was smiling down at his sleeping form with a look of pure love.

For some reason, this didn’t strike me as the least bit odd. Not once did I think, Hey, aren’t you in Florida recovering from your surgery? Instead I did a huffy breath and said, “He always steals the covers!” Then I grabbed a corner of the blanket, spread it evenly over both of us, and went back to sleep. She was still standing there when I closed my eyes.

(Yes, for those of you following along at home, I met my brush with the paranormal by whining about bedding. Yup.)

The next day we learned that Grandma Woerner had suffered a post-operative stroke that had left her unresponsive. Forty-eight hours later she died without ever regaining consciousness, surrounded by her husband and her Florida family. To this day I believe Grandma spent her last few hours visiting those she loved. I also believe spirits can and do walk this world.

Since that time I’ve heard many stories of a similar nature. Uncle John stops by in his army uniform shortly before word arrives of his death.  A woman hears her sister say her name at the same time as her sister’s fatal car accident. In fact, I’ve heard so many of these stories I wonder why we call these experiences para-normal. They seem pretty normal, especially in the South. (“You might be a Southerner if you cook your cornbread in a cast iron skillet and have seen a ghost!”)

While searching for a topic for a Halloween column, I thought about my experience with Grandma Woerner. Why not go on a ghost hunt? I knew one of my Facebook friends, Tony Huff, spearheaded a group called Cold Mountain Paranormal Society. I’d even attended one of their meetings last year while doing some research for a fiction project. I knew property owners called them to come investigate possible hauntings. Would they let me tag along? I gave Tony a call.

During the course of our conversation, I learned that Tony’s “defining moment” happened in December 2009. He and his girlfriend had recently moved in together and decided to take the girlfriend’s upholstered chair—inherited from grandma—from the living room to the basement in order to make room for a Christmas tree. A few days later Ruff was moving quickly through the basement when, as he puts it, “I passed an old lady sitting there in the chair. She had white hair, a plaid dress, an apron.” He laughs. “You know, I probably took about 10 paces before it suddenly struck me what I’d seen. I turned around right quick, and she was gone.” When he described the woman to his girlfriend, she said it sounded just like her grandmother. She retrieved an old family photo from storage, showed it to Ruff and, sure enough—it was the same woman he had seen in the chair.

Ruff started Cold Mountain Paranormal Society soon after, and since that time the group has investigated over 35 different sites, most at the owner’s behest. “In fact,” Tony said, “We’ve got an appointment to go out to an old general store in Sandy Mush. Why don’t you come along?”

After making sure he wasn’t kidding about a place called Sandy Mush (seriously?), I agreed. Hot diggity. My first ghost hunt.

To be continued . . .

[Insert creepy music here.]

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime book No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin Group, 2009). She welcomes your stories of the not-so-paranormal at www.AngelaDove.com

“C’mon, Mom! We’ve only been in the maze for three minutes!”

My children ran ahead, heedless of my desperation.  “Don’t get too far ahead,” I called as they scampered ahead, laughing gleefully. “I’ll never see you again! And don’t call your mother a weenie.”

OK, so it wasn’t as bad as all that. Our first trip to a corn maze was going pretty well. The Eliada Children’s Home staff and volunteers had done a fabulous job turning 12 acres of rolling hillside just outside Asheville into a kids’ autumnal paradise. Tractors pulling flat beds and something called a cow train (plastic water barrels painted like cows for the little tykes) carried families across the open meadow. A gaggle of mostly boys waited in line for a chance to shoot slices of corn cob through an air pressure cannon toward targets below. Off to the right was the “Field of Screams,” closed until the dusk brought thrill-seeking teens and adults to its cobwebbed entrance.

From within the pirate ship corn maze, somewhere on the middle-length path (just over a mile long), I tried to orient myself by glancing toward the afternoon sun. The sky was stunning–puffy white clouds against a Carolina blue sky. A crisp breeze rustled the dry corn stalks around me. A dragon fly zoomed passed me down the path, showing off his aviation skills. Maybe my daughter was right: forget the map. We had plenty of time to lose ourselves in the maze.

That feeling lasted about 90 seconds as I followed my kids around a bend I was pretty sure we’d already covered. Then I stopped and took the map out of my pocket. I scrutinized it. We’d come in down by the hull of the ship shape (so to speak). Then we’d gone forward and leftish. Where the heck were we?

My friend Anna came up beside me and barely glanced at the map, then put her finger near the ship’s main sail. “We’re here. See? We just passed this intersection.”

“Um, yeah, of course,” I said, nodding knowingly. I glanced around at the myriad paths surrounding us. “So that means we should go, er—“

“Ahead and to the right,” said Ms. Living Compass, taking her toddler’s hand. “Come on, Mackenzie.”

“I knew that,” I muttered. “Hey, wait up! Don’t leave me!”

We made our way through, pausing long enough for all the kids to mark their treasure maps at each of nine little stations hidden in the maze. (Not hidden to Anna of course. “Number seven is just ahead. Take the second left!”) Once we exited the maze, the kids turned in their treasure maps for genuine pirate booty, if pirates sail the high seas in search of temporary tattoos and Jolly Ranchers. Then we went over the kiddie haybale maze so Mackenzie could do crayon rubbings of different animal tracks. (Love those learning opportunities!)

So if you’re looking for something to get you outside on a gorgeous fall day between now and Halloween, head on over to the Eliada campus (www.FieldsOfFun.org) or one of the area’s other corn mazes. No matter your age, they’ve got an activity for you. And if you have a friend who reads maps, by all means, invite them along.

# # #

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime book No Room for Doubt. For more information visit www.AngelaDove.com.

I was asked to help direct a funny series of skits on the naming of various town and communities in our county (Haywood, NC) to be performed at the historic Herren House this Saturday night. And I was thrilled at the invitation. Watching actors strut their stuff never tires me. As a writer, I’m also fascinated by the process of the written word being slipped on like a new skin and coming to life for the duration of a performance. And finally, these actors, many of whom have a long history with HART (Haywood Arts Regional Theater), are simply fantastic. For example, Hugh and Dot Burford could captivate a crowd by reading aloud from a phone book.

Hugh: “Alexander. Bob, Brenda, David—“

Dot: “Frank, Mrs. Janet—“

Me (in audience): “Good Lord. I’ve got to meet these Alexanders! They sound fascinating!”

But here’s a confession: Whenever I direct, part of me secretly hopes something goes amiss. Not horribly wrong. No injuries. No burning humiliations. But a little hiccup during the show, dealt with, smoothed over, decidedly ignored . . . I admit it excites me and makes me cheer all the harder when the curtain closes.

Allow me to illustrate.

A few years back I directed a skit about the story of Job for our church’s Wednesday night supper. Our actor playing Job did a wonderful job. He was experienced enough not to be bothered by the clip-on microphone and scratchy costume. He moved convincingly without turning from the audience. And, for purposes of this gig, he could wail and prostrate himself like nobody’s business.

On the night of the performance, the voice of God (likely played by Hugh, our county’s caucasian  grandpa James Earl Jones) boomed from offstage, “Sure, Job, you’ve suffered through a bunch of calamities. But I’m God. Who the heck are you to question me? Art thou a whinypants?” (I paraphrase here.)

Job threw himself into Prostrate Position 3 (grovel with a half-wince) and drew in a breath to confess his whinypantsness to the Almighty when his cell phone, nestled unfortunately close to the lapel mic and now activated during the prostrate maneuver, called out in a soothing femalebot voice, “State voice command!”

From my position in the audience just right of the stage, I saw a few eyebrows raise. A child snickered and was shushed. But our Job missed nary a beat.

“Oh, Lord, Thou art right! How could I complain just because my family’s dead and I’m homeless and have a totally gross skin condition?” (paraphrase)

Once Job was given his upgraded family and home and some celestial Leprousy-B-Gone, the audience went wild. It wasn’t just for the performance, I knew. It was especially for our Job, who shouldered technological adversity with aplomb. Here was his reward, and it remains my favorite memory of the night.

So during this October 1 performance by the HISTORYonics (not paraphrased) , will someone flub a line? Miss a cue? Injure another via petticoat? I’m not worried at all. At the curtain’s close, I’ll be clapping all the louder.

# # #

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime memoir, No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin Group). Find out about author events at www.AngelaDove.com.

Or “How I Almost Died on my Summer Vacation”

Nothing about the day indicated that we might die.

On the way home from our last trip of summer before school started we were making good time, thanks in part to my minivan’s onboard DVD player that cut my kids’ boredom stops to a minimum. The weather was bright and mild. Even with vacation traffic and a stop for lunch, I figured we’d be home before dark.

Two hours later I was staring at black clouds on the western horizon. The leaves on the trees began stretching toward the sky and thunder grumbled discontentedly. My mom, sitting in the middle row of backseats, looked up from her magazine. “Oh boy,” she said.

“No problem,” I said, and I meant it. I’m a safe, confident driver. That’s why I’m the family’s designated driver. I could handle it.

A blinding flash of lightening and accompanying thunderclap was enough to rouse my 9-year-old daughter, Nina, from the thrall of Mary Poppins. “Wow. Mom, has there been a lot of lightening?”

“A fair amount.”

She nudged her six-year-old brother and pointed outside. Torin looked unimpressed. Apparently lightening could not compete with Dick Van Dyke as Burt the Cockney sidewalk chalk artist.

Looking ahead, I saw the wall of rain before we hit it. Already in the right hand lane, I dropped my speed even more, checked to make sure the headlights were on, and eased us into the tempest. We were engulfed in rain and hail. I clicked on the hazard lights. All around us, other cars did the same. A few pulled over. The rest of us cruised along at 15 mph.

The rain slackened to a drizzle as we came out from under the bank of dark clouds, and slowly traffic picked up again. I moved over to the left lane to better allow parked cars on the shoulder to reenter the highway.

“Well,” I said to my husband, “that wasn’t bad.”

Just then the Nissan Sentra in front of me lurched.  Up ahead, approximately  30 cars were suddenly squealing and sliding to a halt, their brake lights rushing toward me like a downwind brush fire. I slammed on the brakes, pumping them due to a habit I formed long before anti-lock brakes made that unnecessary. The world slowed while my brain slipped into overdrive. A wall of cars were in the lane to my right. The Sentra was going to come to a stop well before I could. A 4×4 pickup was in the interior median slightly ahead of the Sentra. That was my only hope.

Still braking hard I felt the left tires leave the highway. They were on wet grass now; the only thing keeping us pointing forward were the two tires still on the road.  The Sentra skidded slightly left, eating up some of the little blacktop I had left. I tightrope walked the tires on a small rim of pavement and they held. Our van came to a stop three inches from the bed of the pick up truck in the median.

But I wasn’t watching that.

My eyes were glued to the rear view mirror. Beyond my son’s shaggy blonde hair, beyond the frightened eyes of my beautiful daughter, a tractor trailer was baring down on us, brakes whaling, its left wheels in the median grass, right hugging the road.

In that moment, I understood we could all die. And I was powerless to stop it.

The Mack truck grill grew bigger and bigger, death on MiracleGrow, until it took up the entire back window—every inch of glass behind by babies.

Then it stopped.

“Jane? Michael?” called Mary Poppins.  “Hold my hands. Stay close now.”

I sat, my hands on the steering wheel. Cars were everywhere—both lanes of traffic, both medians. My husband turned around to check the kids and reared back at the sight of the truck grill inches from our back windshield.

“Just turn around,” I said quietly. He did, his eyes staring blankly ahead.

Finally my mom took a breath.  “You did well, honey.”

I couldn’t answer. Truth be told, it didn’t matter how well I did. If the driver behind us had been less skilled . . . if his load had been any heavier . . .

I don’t remember the rest of the ride home, other than a brief moment when traffic was moving smoothly again and the Mack truck pulled level with us. The driver and I looked at each other, his eyes darting toward my children in the far back seat. Thank you, I mouthed. He nodded, deathly pale. And he was gone.

* * *

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime memoir No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin Group, 2009). For more information see www.AngelaDove.com.

This Friday night, August 5, my mountain town of Waynesville, NC will see its second annual Main Street Mile, and I’m excited. Not because it pulls our community closer together. And not because all proceeds go to support Shriners Children’s Hospital of Greenville, which gives free medical care to seriously ill babies and kids.

Sure, those are important.

But frankly, I’m in it for the bright orange vest.

First, a bit of backstory: The Main Street Mile was the brain child of my friend and local physical therapist Eric Yarrington, whose daughter Sophie has been treated at Shriners for torticollis and slight scoliosis. “We were so moved by the tremendous, compassionate care we received that we decided to give back,” says Eric. Together with a few close friends, Eric decided to organize a fundraiser for the hospital—a series of mile-long races for adults, kids, and first responders. When he pitched the idea to the governing bodies of this tourist-friendly town, they were nothing but supportive. Further, local businesses have donated pizza, beer, sodas, kids’ games, and goodie bags for participants. A local band has volunteered to play at the block party afterwards.

My husband and I have been friends with Eric and his lovely wife Shannon for over a decade. (We met in childbirth class; once you’ve fake-labored together, you’re friends for life.) During the first Main Street Mile, my husband and daughter easy-jogged the course together while I volunteered. After helping walk-up participants register, the volunteer squadron leader handed me an orange vest and ten minutes later my trepidation and I were stationed at an intersection leading up to Main Street—a well-used cut through for local traffic. When the first car came toward me I stepped from the curb and raised my palm. The driver slowed, rolling down her window.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “This part of Main Street’s closed for the next hour.”

I cringed, waiting for her complaint. Instead, she took in my bright orange vest, nodded, and turned her car around.

No way.

But yes! It happened repeatedly! Some drivers didn’t even stop—they just saw the vest and turned aside. I smoothed my violent orange nylon lapels. Dang. I’ve got to get me one of these things. Would it work in other situations? The next time my kids were arguing, could I leap into the hallway, vest flowing around me, my arm raised, and bring about peace and even a few blessed moments of quiet?

My winning streak ended in the form of a two-tone Lincoln Towncar. The elderly gentleman driver made as if to steer around me when I stepped out in front of his vehicle. (I was, in retrospect, reckless with power.) He braked hard and growled, “I’ve already been waved on by your buddy down the street. What exactly is going on here?”

“It’s a charity run for Shriners Children’s Hospital, sir,” I said. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

He wagged his finger at me (2 parts finger : 1 part gold nugget ring). “Well I’ve got to get across the street.”

I tried for an engaging smile. “If you go about a quarter mile further, you should be able to cross without a problem.”

“It’s already a problem,” he hurrumphed. “I could sue you.”

“Oh, Howard,” the woman beside him said irritably, “It’s for a children’s hospital. Let’s just go a couple of blocks down and circle back. It’s not a big deal. ”

He furrowed his bushy eyebrows and drew an angry breath, but I touched my neon polyblend meaningfully. What? Did he think they gave these  out to just anybody??

“Fine!” he growled in an unfine way. I pitied him as he began his 3-point turn. He had tried, but what mere mortal can stand against the combined forces of good citizenry and orange nylon?

“The children thank you for your cooperation, Howard!” I was startled to hear myself call out. I looked down at the vest. “Stop that right now,” I admonished. “You’re hardly Kevlar.”

I haven’t thought about that night much during the past year, but when Eric sent me an email about this year’s Main Street Mile, I can’t deny my heart beat a little faster. The power of the vest is calling to me.

***Angela Dove is an award winning columnist and author of the true crime book, No Room for Doubt: A true story of the reverberations of murder (Penguin Group, 2009). For more information visit www.AngelaDove.com.

An unexpected delay in my schedule left me sitting outside my son’s piano lesson late one afternoon, instead of emailing my girlfriends a reminder about our dinner later in the week. So I thought I’d try one of those text messages the young folk are always mentioning.

(OK, I’ve sent texts before, but not many. And those few experiences made me feel like my natural habitat is sitting in a rocking chair watching Pat Sajak while numerous cats bat at the hem of my afghan shawl.)

I gingerly opened my flip phone and went to the menu. Hmmm. Nothing said “text.” How did I do this last time?

“Whacha doing, mom?” my daughter asked from the back seat.

I continued to scroll through menu options as I answered her. “Well, there’s this thing you can do with cell phones, like sending email—“

“You mean messaging?”

I glanced toward the techie in the back seat. “Yes. Maybe. If that’s the same thing as texting.”

One of the menu options was [MAILBOX]. I went to it and saw [CREATE MESSAGE]. Ah-hah!

After several minutes I figured out how to select recipients from my contact list. The phone only let me choose one recipient at a time, at which point I had to start over for the next. By the time added my 7th and final recipient, I was rethinking this idea.

[TYPE MESSAGE]

Finally! Let’s see. Today was Tuesday, so our Thursday’s dinner was in two days. Right. I looked down at my keypad and once again wished I had one of those phones with the full alphabetic keypad. As it is, my phone has the standard number keys that I have to press multiple times to scroll through letters available. Number 1 has assorted punctuation, 2 has A, B, and C, and so on. I sighed and started punching my way through my message. “Remember dinner on Tuesday. C U then.” The former English teacher in me felt awkward about the C U part, but it was so much faster!

[SENDING MESSAGE!]

“So that took a long time,” my daughter opined from the back seat. “What were you messaging about?”

“We have dinner on Thursday—Oh no! I just said Tuesday! That’s tonight!”

[YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE!]

I opened it. “I thought our dinner was Thursday. I’ll be late tonight.” I chose [REPLY] at the bottom of the message. Huh. Would that send it to everybody? Probably not. Well, I’d answer this one right quick and then deal with the others. I started typing: “Sorry. It’s not 2nite. I meant Th—“

[YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE!]

“Angela, I thought dinner was on Thurs?”

Wait! What just happened to the message I was typing? Where did that go? OK, don’t panic. Just do it again.

[REPLY] “Sorry. Yes, dinner is on Th—“

[YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE!]

“Oops. I had the wrong date. I’ll get there as soon as I can!”

There was a timid tap on my shoulder. “Mom? You’re sort of muttering to yourself.”

“Yes, honey, I know. I just sent the wrong message to everyone and they won’t stop texting me long enough for me to correct it! Stop laughing! Don’t you have homework to do?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I used my menu button to get to my OUTBOX. Yes, there at the top was my original message to the group. I opened it to see if there was a way to reply to everybody at once instead of having to scroll through my address book again for all seven recipients. Hmmm. What did this button do?

[RESENDING MESSAGE!]

“Why are you shouting, Mom?”

“Do your homework!!”

[CREATE MESSAGE] [CHOOSE RECIPIENT] [CONTACT LIST] A . . . B . . .

By the time I crafted my reply and was able to send it, I was sure a quarter of my life had slipped away. But hey—at least this happened with people I know and love. They already know I’m flaky. And every one of them was kind enough not to comment on the colorful language in my final message.

###

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime memoir, No Room for Doubt (Penguin Group, 2009). For more information about author events visit www.AngelaDove.com

I glanced at my daughter in the rear view mirror and stifled a sigh. Fourth grade—the year of cliques and flirtations, of defining and defining against. This year my daughter and I have had all kinds of interesting conversations, not just about what she sees in her class but about how these issues will be a part of the rest of her life. I had expected some of these issues; I had hoped others would wait a few years.

Ready or not, here I come.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I asked. “Maybe I can help you understand.”

There in the car, on the way to her golf lesson, Nina related her story. A photographer had come to her elementary school that day to take  a picture of each teacher with his or her students. There had been some technical difficulty with the equipment, during which Nina’s classmates began to harangue the photographer—but quietly, amongst themselves. Nina, however, overheard what one group of boys was saying and it upset her. “So I don’t understand what they meant when they said gay, but it wasn’t how we use that word.”

That gave me pause. “How do we use that word?”

Nina looked at me like I’d just asked her where she lived. “You know! Don we now our gay apparel . . .”

My laugh interrupted her fa-la-la-ing.

“What?” Nina asked, seriously perplexed. “You said it meant happy and full of joy.”

“It does,” I said. “But here’s the tricky thing: words change. A word might start out meaning one thing and then, years or decades or centuries later, it can mean something else.” My daughter’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Think about the word awesome,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“Really good. Like, if you like something.”

“Uh-huh. But originally, it was a much more powerful word. It meant something that filled a person with awe. The experience or event was so completely overwhelming that it would leave the person speechless, just stuck in that  moment of wonder.”

Now my daughter was laughing—hard. “So the next time we make chocolate chip cookies, instead of saying it’s awesome, I’m just going to freeze at that table and hang my mouth open.” She demonstrated, eyes wide, drool gathering. It was . . . awesome.

She stopped laughing. “So what does gay mean now?”

I waited for a red light to change and considered how best to answer. “Well, when people grow up and they start feeling like they love somebody—love them in a way where they want to be together forever and be a family—well, at that point, most boys feel that way about a girl, and most girls feel that way about a boy. But some people feel that way about someone the same gender as themselves. A boy might fall in love with a boy, and a girl might fall in love with a girl. And today we use the word gay to describe that.”

I felt pretty pleased with myself, but Nina continued to look troubled. “Yeah,” she said, “I still don’t get it. Why is that bad?”

“It’s not,” I said. “Your dad and I believe that some people are just made that way. Maybe someone is born with blue eyes, brown hair, and is gay. Not a big deal. But to some people, it is a very big deal. For them, it is too different. Some people even think it is wrong. And you know what happens then?”

Nina answered quickly, now on the solid ground of previous conversations. “Some people are afraid of different. They decide different is dangerous. That feeling can even turn into hate.”

“That’s right.”

I pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine, finally able to turn to my daughter face-to-face.  And Nina’s face told me she was working through something in her mind.

“So is that why some boys in my class used the word gay to mean stupid? Because some people want to make that word mean something bad? Because they think someone being gay is bad?”

I’m telling you, this child rocks my world.

“Honey, I believe you have just expressed a very grown-up truth. But I want you to know those boys may not realize that truth. They’ve heard grown-ups use the word gay that way, and probably get big laughs from it, and so they are using it. But I hope you would never, ever use the word in that way, just like you would never say That’s so Asian  or That’s so retarded to mean something was bad or stupid.”

“I wouldn’t! Never!” She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the back door—my little girl going out into an adult world. Then she turned back to me. “But I might need to explain a few things about differences to those boys in my class.”

Rock on, darling.

***

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist and author of the true crime memoir, No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin Group 2009).

We did turn to a variety of medications, and while they alleviated some of her symptoms, they had their own side-effects. I remember watching Nina’s last season of soccer—she stood in the field looking slightly dazed while teammates barreled around her. I started asking my mom network for ideas of other methods of treatment and the same word kept cropping up: Acupuncture.

And my response was always the same: Yeah, right.

My daughter has always been terrified of needles. Her pediatrician’s office used to schedule us for the least populated time of the day in order to spare their other young patients the trauma of being in the waiting room, or even the building. One “shot day,” after trying to pry my girl’s knuckles from a doorframe on the way to the examination room, a nurse jokingly suggested we try a drive-through option. I handed the chunk of doorframe back to her and said to let us know when they had their drivers’ window in place.

(Not that I can give Nina a hard time. As a kid I was just as bad about pulling my loose teeth. But come on—that’s practically dismemberment!)

So in spite of the increasing number of success stories I was hearing about acupuncture, coupled with my discomfort of having to regularly dope my child with antihistamines, I waited. I waited until Nina outgrew her scream-inducing, architecture-reducing fear. Then I explained to her the premise of pressure points near the body’s surface that wind throughout the body to key organs and systems, and how needles in Eastern medicine do not penetrate deep under the skin. (I left out “usually.”) I taught her breathing techniques to reduce fear and pain. And, on my daughter’s nod, I set up the appointment.

It was one of my top 10 decisions of all time—nestled between “Only wear comfortable shoes” and “Maybe I’ll try one of these chocolate-covered strawberries.”

On the first appointment, Nina’s acupuncturist talked to her about diet.

“Where are the needles?” my daughter asked.

She talked to her about full body wellness.

“Where are the needles?” my daughter asked.

“So, I take it you’re a little nervous about the needles,” the woman answered.

She reached over to a table and pulled a small paper envelope from a canister. She peeled it open and lifted out . . . nothing. At least, it looked like nothing. I tilted my head and caught the faintest gleam of sunlight on a strip of metal that had the diameter of a single hair.

Nina squinted at it. “It’s so narrow,” she said. She eyed the woman suspiciously. “Will it hurt?”

“Well, let’s try it on your mom first.”

Whoa-whoa-whoa.

The practitioner reached for my hand. What was I supposed to do—refuse? Sighing, I, er,  handed over my hand. She traced a line between my pointer finger and thumb. “This is a good spot to increase energy and general wellness,” she said. Nina barely noticed. Instead, she was scrutinizing my reaction.

I drew in a deep breath and tried to conjure up an expression that said, Oh boy! I sure hope someone sticks a needle in my hand!

What I felt was akin to a fly landing on my skin. It didn’t hurt. Instead, there was just the slightest bit of pressure. I looked at my daughter and said, “Hey, that wasn’t bad at all.” Then I looked at my hand. Oh, that’s  kind of creepy. . . No-no-no. Think happy thoughts! Wow! I sure do love that my hand is a little bit punctured! That’s swell!

“So,” the woman asked Nina. “What do you think?”

“OK,” said Nina, “but only if I can tap them in.”

That’s my girl! And also, can I take this needle out of my hand?

Nina’s treatment went off without a hitch. There was no screaming or crying or destruction of property—not that day or any other during her 4 months of treatment. Since that time, Nina has learned how to calm her mind and prolong her concentration. She’s more attuned to her body and feelings. And she hasn’t had a single antihistamine.

The past two weekends she’s been outside much of time, helping me set up our garden. (It only took me a couple of seasons to learn the mountain folk are 100% accurate: Never to plant before Mother’s Day!) We’ve gone to outdoor festivals and had picnics on the porch. We’re living the “after” picture of that Allerest commercial, only without the intermediate trip to the drug store.

But the next time she needs a shot, I’m still gonna use that drive-through option.

Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist (click here for archives) and author of the true-crime memoir, No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin Group, 2009).