THE UNUSUAL

     Summer is always an unusual time of year at our house.  We live on a beautiful river.  There are usually a lot of fun things to do and a lot of kids around, the perfect scenario for unusual things to happen. 

     This year, though, nothing unusual happened by the time our youngest daughter, Sugar, went to visit her older sister, Sissy, in Miami for a month.  That left just Trixie and me. Trixie is not a fan of the unusual.  It was not looking good for unusual, which, at our house, is unusual.

     I had gotten up at the break of dawn, or as Trixie likes to call it, 9 am. I walked into the bathroom to get a cup of coffee.  There was no coffee in the bathroom so I checked the kitchen.  I poured a cup of coffee and started drinking it just like I usually do.  I burned my lip, just like every other morning.  Then I walked over to look at the river.  There was a great blue heron.  We see them all the time.  But this one was unusual.  This blue heron had an injured wing.  His left wing was just hanging.  If the bird were human, its wing would be hanging at the elbow.  He did not look like he was in any pain.  He just stood there, looking out at the river.  I turned to Trixie and said, “Guess what’s standing by the river?”

     “An injured blue heron,” she answered.  Trixie usually has an answer for everything.  As I opened the door, the heron started to walk away.  So I came back inside.  “Poor thing is going to die.”

     “We should do something,” Trixie said.  So I grabbed my phone and announced that I was calling The Department of Game and Fisheries.  “You are doing what I said you should do?  That is unusual,” Trixie replied.

     The phone rang three times and when someone answered, I explained to them about the blue heron.  They gave me the number for Animal Rescue.  Animal Rescue gave me the number for a Bird Rescue.  They told me to capture the bird, bring it to them, and that they would euthanize the bird.  I could euthanize the bird myself.  I wasn’t trying to kill the bird, I was trying to help it.  That was the last straw for me.  

     I hung up.  I grabbed a fishing rod and walked out the door.  I put a fat juicy worm on the hook and caught a perch on my first cast.  I took the perch off the hook at threw it at the heron.  He backed away at first.  The flopping fish put the heron’s fears to rest quickly enough, though, and he emerged to devour the perch.  Then I caught more.  He ate each one.  I went back into the house and got the camera.  I took a couple of pictures and sat down to eat a pizza and think.  I do my best thinking eating pizza and as a result I am brilliant.  You would think so, anyway.  

     I was on Facebook when a familiar name popped up on my timeline, someone I knew from high school.  She was working at an animal preserve, not very far away.  So I sent her a note and the pictures asking for help.  She replied that if I could catch the bird, she would look it over to see if it could be saved.  I asked if she had any idea how to catch the bird.  She told me that a great blue heron is one of the most difficult birds to catch.  She went on to say that if I could even get close, the bird would try to poke my eyes out with its beak and that their legs are very fragile and break easily, so tackling the bird was out of the question.  She wished me luck.  I am pretty sure she knew I would never be able to catch that bird.  

     Trixie started shaking her head.  She asked me what my plan was.  I told her I was going to talk to the bird.  

     “Like Doctor Doolittle?” she asked.  

     “Exactly. Only I am not a doctor. I am a Mister.  Call me Mister Doolittle. Can you get me a box?  I will be right back,” I said as I walked out the door.

     So I went outside with an old white sheet, one worm, and one fishing rod.  I caught three perch and used them to try to draw the heron in close.  I figured I would use my cat-like reflexes to grab it by the beak as it was eating and then scoop it up, wrap it in a sheet and put it in a box and take it to my friend.  My plans seldom work.  The bird would not let me near it.  So I talked to the bird.  Just me and the bird.  Then it just plopped down on the ground.  And it looked right into my eyes. A look of defeat and desperation and complete surrender.  I knew that look.  I threw the sheet over him, grabbed his beak in one hand, gently scooped his legs up under him, walked back to the house, and went inside.  Just like I planned.

     “I need a box,” I said. 

     “A box?  For what?” Trixie answered.

     “The bird.”

     “What bird?”

     “This bird!” I said, as I showed her the bird wrapped in the sheet.  Trixie screamed like a wife whose husband just brought a three foot live bird into the living room.  

     “I cannot believe you brought a three foot live bird into the living room.  What are we going to do with it?” she asked.

     “We are going to put it in the box and take it to get fixed.  Just like we planned.  Where’s the box?”

     “I didn’t get the box!” she yelled.

     “Why not?”

     “Because there was no chance that you were going to catch that bird you idiot!”

     “Well, the idiot caught the bird and now the idiot needs a box.”

Trixie stood there for a second and glared at me.  It had no effect.  When you get glared at as often as I get glared at, you become immune to glaring.  She said, “Ok, I’ll get a box. Don’t let that thing loose in here.”

     “Grab your car keys too.” I said.

     “For what?”

     “Because we need to take your car to take the bird to get fixed.”

     “My car?  Why my car?” she said as she was looking all over the house for a three foot tall box.

     “In case the bird gets loose,” I said as she returned with a box.

     “That bird won’t get loose in my car because we are not putting the bird in my car.  We are taking your truck.  Where are your keys?

     “Sugar has them.”

     “Why does she have them?”

     “I don’t know.  We could ask her though I suppose.”

     “We can’t ask Sugar, you idiot, she is at school.”

      “Exactly why we have to take your car.”

Checkmate.  We put the bird in the box and she grabbed her keys.

     During the drive, that bird did not make a sound or move a muscle.  We were worried that it may have died.  I called my friend to let her know that we were on our way.  We were greeted at the front gate and then rushed to the bird hospital.  

     “How did you catch the bird?” they asked.  Trixie answered for me, “He talked to it.”

     “You talk to animals?” the doctor asked. 

     “They are usually the only ones that will listen to me,” I answered.  

     “You live in a house full of women don’t you?” asked the doctor. 

     “Yep,” I said.  

     He turned around, took off the rubber glove on his right hand, and shook my hand. 

“Me too,” he said.

     They examined the bird and said it was in very bad shape.  Its wing had been broken for a long time.  It was dehydrated and very thin.  I knew what they were saying.  Birds in this shape usually die.  Well, we did the best we could, I thought.  And then it happened, the most unusual thing in a most unusual day.  My friend said the curator for a marsh exhibit may be interested in the injured heron and gave him a call.  The curator said if the bird could be saved, he would put it in the exhibit.  So, the bird docs set about saving the bird. The bird will never fly again, and while it is unusual for a bird that cannot fly to survive, in this case it was the unusual events that gave it life.

     The most valuable things in life are the most unusual.  Diamonds.  Gold.  True Love. The most valuable actions in life are the most unusual too.  It is unusual to do all you should.  It is unusual to do all you could.  But usually, if you just do the right thing, you will be right.  The bird is doing well.  It seems that I can talk to animals.  My own kids?  Not so much.

 That is all.

GERONIMO!

I was in my truck, driving home from work last week.  This drive was normally a drive that was fraught with frustration.  In order to overcome that, I had a rule that I would use every day.  When I passed Sinclair Lane I would stop thinking about work.  That was the point where I would have to force myself, usually, to abandon thinking about my job until the next morning; or until someone called me from work. 

That day though, I noticed that Sinclair Lane was still a few miles away and my mind was completely free of frustration.  In fact, my mind was completely free from anything but one thought.  How was I going to tell Trixie that I had just been laid off?  She would ask why.  That would be her first question. Should I tell her that it was, in part, my suggestion to the owner of the company?  That was probably not a good idea.  The real reasoning behind the move was that in this economy, business has just dropped off to the point that they could not afford me any longer.  That was the truth.  The truth usually works for me these days.  When I don’t tell the truth I usually end up in trouble. I would tell Trixie the truth.

The truth hurts sometimes.  That is when people like me have a hard time telling the truth.  It is hard to tell the truth when you know it might hurt someone you care about. Trixie’s next question would be, “What are we going to do now?”  I already knew the answer to that question.  I was sure it would be hard to sell to Trixie though.  She is a realist.  I am an idealist.  Opposites attract I am told.  We are very attracted to each other, Trixie and I. So, as I was driving home, to tell Trixie the truth, my mind played out the whole conversation in my head. 

“What are we going to do now?” Trixie would say to me.

“I have a plan.” I would reply.

“You have a plan?”

“Yep.”

“Tell me about your plan to pay the mortgage, both car payments, Sugar’s tuition which is due next week by the way, gas and electric, the credit card bills, and feed everyone.  Tell me about this plan.”

“That is all.”

“What?” Trixie asked looking at me as if I was completely insane.

“That is all.  That is the plan.  That is all.” I said.

“That is all. is a blog Tony.  That is all. is a page on Facebook.  That is all. is not a plan.  That is all!”

I would go on to explain to her the plans that I have for That is all.  To use the blog as a springboard to do a lot of things.  Things that will help people who are struggling right now.  So many people have lost their jobs in the economy.  So many people are struggling.  People need good news.  That is all would only convey good news.  And help businesses do the same thing.  And that in doing that, they could help their businesses grow.  Then I would see her eyes looking up at the ceiling and I would stop talking.  I would dust off and update my resume and apply for a job that I was capable of doing.  I would get the job and do an amazing job and I would be miserable.  I knew the drill.  I had done it many times.

I pulled into the driveway, grabbed my briefcase and walked to the mailbox.  A coupon for a pizza, the gas and electric bill, two credit card bills and the tuition bill.  And to add insult to injury a brochure for a college addressed to our daughter, Sugar. The freedom from frustration that I had felt just a few minutes earlier was fading fast. I had dealt with situations like this before.  Usually I dealt with them myself and I dealt with them badly.  I did something different this time though as I was trudging down the sidewalk to the front door.  I said a prayer.  It was a prayer of my own that day, but it was also the same prayer that has been said by millions of people for thousands of years. I said, “God, I need your help right about now.”

Trixie was already home from work and in the kitchen making spaghetti when I walked in the door.

“How was your day?” She asked me. 

“It was a good day right up until the point that I got laid off.” I answered.  She looked up at me and said,

“What are we going to do now?” 

Here we go, I thought.  When you have been married for as long as we have, you know each other so well sometimes you don’t have to use words to speak. This conversation was going to go exactly the way it did in my head on the way home.

“I have a plan.” I said.

“You have a plan?”

“Yep.” I said.

“Tell me about this plan.”  She said.  And then the most amazing thing happened. I told her about the plan and she listened.  She even started nodding her head a little.  She was listening so closely that she did not notice that the water for the pasta was boiling over. I finished telling her about the plan as she turned the burner on the stove down a bit.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

I knew what she was going to say, so I was stunned when she said, “Well, I don’t know if it will work or not, but I think we should give it a try for at least a month or so.  Let’s see if it seems to be working.  If it does we can stick with it, if it doesn’t we will have to do something else.”

“OK” I said.  That was all I could muster. I was speechless.  That seldom happens with me.

“Now, put the garlic bread in the oven would you please?” I put the garlic bread in the oven, and then walked into the living room to sit down.  I could not believe what just happened. 

“Thanks God.”  I said to myself. 

Trixie came in with a spoonful of marinara for me to test and said, “We will make it work.  We always do. In the past, in situations like this, whether it was our fault or your fault or nobody’s fault we have always chosen circumstance over opportunity.  Let’s give opportunity a shot for a change.  Now get your feet off the table.”

The next day we started our business.  It is called That is all.  By the end of the day we had three clients.  By the end of the week, we had seven new clients and the opportunity to be involved in a very large project.  They say if you love your job you will never work a day in your live.  I hope so, because I love this job. I love my wife too. That is all.

AFTERWORD

That is all. is a blog. That is all. now has a new dimension. 

That is all. Social Media Marketing and Development  has been created for any person or business that would like to increase their Social Media presence.  

That is all. uses a single or a multiple platformed strategic and customized approach that increases awareness and optimizes reach. More awareness and greater reach allows each client to maximize their marketing dollar.  

That is all. handles all off the subscriptions, design, and updates providing zero manpower impact to our clients.

If you need our help let us know at anthonyyoungjr@comcast.net  
If not, that is good too. We help people who help people to help people. That is all.

LET'S SAY GRACE

LET’S SAY GRACE

     Our Christmas dinner menu this year is like nothing we have ever had before.  It will feature giant lobster tails and filet mignon and cheesy potatoes and mushrooms and whatever else Trixie and Sugar can think of.  I am sure they will add macaroni and cheese and mozzarella sticks. If they don’t make something with bacon, I will. 

     Christmas dinners were not always this way.  For forty years of my life, they were celebrated with great tradition and fanfare.  My grandmother, Mema, would do the planning.  The men in the family had one responsibility, to stay the hell out of the way.  The men never let her down. The women handled everything else.  

     On Christmas Day, for over fifty years, each family would begin to arrive at Mema and Dada's around noon.  The men would head straight to the garage.  Uncle Tripp made sure that there was more than enough beer to keep them there.  The women would go into the house with whatever they were assigned to bring.  My mother, Peggy, was responsible for maintaining the eggnog and whipping up the drama when the drama started to wind down.  My aunt, The Nun, would be sitting at the kitchen table facing the door, doing her job of passing judgment on whoever might enter, and eating rum cake with her fingers.  Everyone who came in would place whatever they had brought on the big table in the kitchen and ask what they could do to help.  Mema would tell them that she had everything under control and that no one needed to do anything.  Peggy and The Nun would then assign each woman the last thing that Mema had asked them to do.  

     I brought Trixie to Christmas Dinner for the first time, six months after we had eloped.  I had warned her all about it.  I told her if it was too much for her to let me know and we would just leave.  I had hoped she would do just that.  I pre-apologized for all of the relatives that would offend her and I told her, in advance, of every grenade that would be tossed her way.  She walked through the door, as prepared as anyone could be.  She was a nervous wreck.  Two minutes in she whispered to me, “I have never seen anything like this in my life.  I thought this only happened in the movies.  I never knew real families did this.  I love this!”  

     I was shocked.  She must have seen something I couldn’t see at the time.  As it turns out, she did.

     In the dining room, the table was set, waiting, and ready for the food.  The table was huge and completely filled the room.  It was covered with a white table cloth.  A Christmas runner ran down the center of the table.  The seating was determined by Peggy.  She was a master of all things involving drama, and her seating arrangements always played a key role to insure that the drama was maximized.  Each place setting was set with three antique china plates, six pieces of silverware and three crystal glasses.  There were a dozen silver gravy boats, crystal salt shakers and candelabras spread out over the length of the table.  When the turkey came out of the oven, the side dishes would be placed on the table.  Dada, my grandfather, would start carving the turkey.  The first call would be placed to the garage for the men to come to dinner.  The men who were new to the family would finish their beer.  The men who had been around for while would open another beer.  When Dada was done carving the turkey, the second call would go out.  The men would come in and stand around the table.  Peggy would tell them where to sit and they would sit down.  The kids would come in to sit down next.  After that everyone else sat down.  Dada would sit at the head of the table and Mema would be seated next to him.  Uncle Tripp would be seated at the foot of the table. Without fail, every year, Peggy would jump up to tend to some last minute imaginary catastrophe in the kitchen.  When she returned and sat down, it would signal that Christmas dinner was officially to begin.

     “Let’s say grace,” is how it always started.  With those words, everyone who had already started eating would stop.  Everyone would look at each other.  Mema would always ask The Nun to say grace.  She was a nun after all.  She usually did a good job too, seldom invoking God to show his wrath upon us heathens.  She knew to keep it as short as possible.

     After grace, the passing of the ambrosia would begin.  Every family has its quirks as far as food goes.  Ours was ambrosia. Peggy was a master of placing the people that loved ambrosia as far away from the ambrosia as possible.  Sometimes it could take up to ten minutes for everything to make it all the way around the table.  You never passed things across the table.  Never.  The only conversation that ever took place up until this point, were things like, “Can you please pass the potatoes?”  “Can I get some more eggnog please?” and “Is there any bacon?”  The new family members always sat in silence, not wanting to offend anyone.  Trixie just watched it all.  She did not say a word.  And then, Uncle Tripp lobbed the first grenade of the Yuletide season.  He looked at Trixie and said, “Who are you?”

     “I am Trixie, Uncle Tripp,” she replied.

     “You are with Tony right?”

     “Yes.”

     “You are the prettiest of all of the girlfriends he has brought by yet.”

     “Uncle Tripp, I am Tony’s wife, not his girlfriend.”

     “Oh. Well I won’t tell his girlfriends that he is married then.”

     “That is ok, Uncle Tripp, I never tell my boyfriends that I am married either.  Can you please pass the string beans?” Trixie said.  

     Uncle Tripp raised a single eyebrow and passed her the string beans.  Trixie smiled and winked at him before he could wink at her.  She had passed his test and she knew it.  At the same time Uncle Tripp was losing his touch and he knew it.  Uncle Tripp didn’t say a word after that.  I think Trixie may have given him more than his ego could handle. Or it could have been the pint of whiskey that no one knew about that was stuffed in his boot.  It was probably a little of both.

     Trixie, a nurse, and my oldest sister, a nurse, started talking with Mema, a retired nurse, from the other end of the table about nursing.  Out of the blue Peggy chucked the second grenade, missing the mark by a mile.  She screamed at the top of her lungs, “I spilled some milk!  Someone get a towel! Someone help me!”

     “Just use your napkin Peggy,” I said.

     "I’ll just have to do it myself!” she screamed at me across the table and huffed into the kitchen.  

     Uncle Tripp pushed his chair back and stood up silently and limped away.  When Peggy returned she was crying and babbling about never being able to get the stain of the white milk out of the white table cloth.  

     “You realize, Peggy that you are crying over spilt milk don’t you?” I said.  Everyone laughed because the whole thing was so over the top.  Peggy became hysterical and retreated back into the kitchen.  Everyone stared at each other for less than a second, and then the nurses rejoined their conversation about nursing.  My cousin, a mechanic, and my youngest sister and her husband, both mechanics, started talking about cam shafts across the table. 

     The last grenade came from The Nun. The Nun interrupted Trixie who was in mid-sentence talking about some sort of medical procedure, and asked her from across the table, “Trixie. Are you Catholic?”

     “Yes, Sister, yes I am,” Trixie replied.

     “Were you and Tony married Catholic?”

     “No, Sister.”

     “Well, you have get married Catholic you know.”

     “We can’t do that Sister.”

     “Why not?”

     “The Church will not let us because we were both married before, Sister.”

     “You can get married in the Church, you have to get an annulment of your first marriages. Then you can get married Catholic.”

     “How do you get an annulment, Sister?”

     “You have fill out some paper work and pay the church.”

     “It is called a bribe,” I said.

     “It is not a bribe Tony,” The Nun said.

     “Well Sister, what do you call it then?” I said.

The Nun said nothing.  She stared at Trixie and me.  We stared back.  Everyone left at the table stared at us staring at each other. The Nun stood up and went into the kitchen with Peggy.  Everyone just stared at each other for less than a second, and then the nurses rejoined their conversation about nursing.  The mechanics continued talking about cam shafts across the table.  My brother and I started bragging to our other cousins on each side of us about our daughters.  Now that they were gone, we could do what families did.  That is the way it went almost every year.

     It was a scene of perfectly orchestrated chaos, born of tradition, and put together each year by at least four generations of women.  Time had changed the players, but the scene was always the same.  The script was usually the same too. The Christmas carols playing tried to drown out the gossip. The oven was baking and all of the burners on the gas stove were on high.  It was always hot there.  If you had been through this for years, the heat would add to the friction you would battle all day.  These dinners were to be endured. The grenades over the years will have worn you down. You focused on surviving until the end of the battle and nothing that happened until the last grenade was thrown.   You would not realize until it was too late that these dinners would end one day.  That was never even a thought.  

     If it was your first time there, you would feel completely overwhelmed and inadequate at first.  You would stand to the side and try to figure out exactly what was happening, who was who, and how to become a part of it.  The warmth that you would see after the grenades were thrown is what would draw you in.  The excitement of surviving the barrage would leave you wanting more.  If you were there, you were considered family, regardless of whom your parents may have been or where you came from.  Your past was of no concern to the hardcore family.  To the hardcore family, religion did not matter.  If you came from a fractured family, we had a place for you.  Every family there was fractured, in the process of fracturing, or fracturing one more time.  If you needed our family, we would take you.  We needed all of the help we could get.  Christmas was not a holiday in our family. Christmas was what held our family together.  If you were new to the family, you saw that, and it made Christmas amazing.  If you were not new to the family, you forgot that, and it made Christmas a memory.  

     Those Christmas dinners don’t exist any longer.  They were not ended by death or distance or discontent.  They were ended by egos.  Some thought themselves far more important than their family and put themselves in front of their family.  You can lead your family, but you can never put yourself in front of your family.  If you do that, you end up with yourself.  And if you are by yourself, you are alone.  And that is exactly what happed.  In our family, if you want to be alone, we will leave you alone.  Our hardcore family will not go away, though.  Our hardcore family will just go somewhere else.  That may seem sad on Christmas Day, but it is not.  Our family has endured generations of egos and change.  It will endure this change as well.  The gift of change, of ending what we know does not work and starting what we hope will work is a beautiful gift.  Now my brother and sisters and cousins are starting their own family traditions.  Everyone is welcome.  You are not judged there.  You come or go as you please.  The traditions that you will find there are based on one value that has been held dear for generations.  Family first.  This value is protected.  Each family is moving in a different direction now but each is headed to the same place.  Most carry on some of the traditions started fifty years ago, to pay homage to the Christmas dinners from the past. My family does not keep a single tradition.  Dinner is different every year.  Everything is different every year.  Every Christmas is a new one.  That is our tradition. 

     The one thing all of our families share, though, is something we learned from the failure of the generation before us.  If nothing changes, then nothing changes.  Families are made of each of us, not one of us.  

     That is all.