Fire has fascinated and terrified me.

As a kid, I remember toasting marshmallows on an open fire, learning to put the marshmallow next to some glowing embers and slowly letting it turn a caramel brown with warm insides instead of sticking the mallow into the flames and burning it to a crisp while the middle stayed hard.

I loved the sound of the log’s crackle and pop, watching in a hypnotic trance as they transformed from muddy brown to scarlet orange.

The smoke smell gets into your hair but you don’t mind because the feeling of comfort overwhelms you as the stars twinkle overhead.

Then there’s the terror of a house fire. I was visiting my grandparents many years ago, and my grandfather was sitting in his usual place near a big picture window that overlooked the street.

Across the street, a house was on fire.

“That thing’s really going up,” I said to him.

“Yes it sure is,” he calmly said, sitting there watching the flames against the dark sky.

A few minutes later, my aunt came rushing into the room.

“Dad, your house is on fire!” she yelled.

He shook his head in agreement and continued to watch the flames get higher and higher.

“You own that house?” I asked him.

He shook his head yes as my aunt continued to pace the room and curse the fire department.

“Why aren’t you more upset?” I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

“What’re you going to do,” he said, resignation and acceptance in his voice.

Years later, after my grandparents had both passed away, their grand house at the top of the hill burned beyond rescue, the result of some druggies illegally in the house.

But small campfires are cozy and comforting on a cold night. It had been years since I’d sat around a campfire, so I was thrilled when my husband suggested building a small campfire pit in our back yard.

He’d been on a Scout campout and the outing reminded him how much fun youngsters can have around a campfire. He brought home some stones, a few logs and built a small fire ring in our back yard.

The grandchildren were visiting that weekend, and they were thrilled when he said we’d have a campfire and marshmallow roast. The boys from across the street came over, and we pulled some lawn chairs up around the fire.

As the flames danced, one of the boys decided to tell a scary story.

No campfire ghost story is complete without a flashlight held underneath a boy’s chin to illuminate the mental images he’s describing, and this night was no different. Except the “monster” in the story was a giant chicken nugget.

We all had a good laugh about the monster nugget, and then Luke passed the flashlight around the circle until each child had a turn at embellishing the story. While they waited their turn, the kids roasted marshmallows, each finding their favorite sweet spot in the flames.

Sitting outside with loved ones with no electronics, no television and no music reminded me that simple pleasures are always the best.

Movies can be great time distractions, rock music can get your blood flowing and television offers a few laughs.

But we made memories around that campfire, serenaded only by the crackling of the fire and the laughter of children as they used their imaginations to tell tall tales and look for fireflies.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

“Abby, stop running around.”

“Abby, stop fidgeting and come get in this picture.”

“Abby, Abby, Abby!”

We were visiting Goose Island State Park just north of Rockport. There were four young girls with their grandparents in the park, and one of the girls seemed to be in constant motion.

She had to be Abby.

“Abby, come over here and sit still.”

These orders were coming from her grandmother who was yelling loud enough for me to hear her even though I was standing on the other side of the Big Tree, the park’s’ main attraction.

A girl with a blonde ponytail and purple sneakers came racing past us with an iPad in hand, stopping to take pictures of the flowers, the leaves and the sky.

This was definitely Abby because her grandmother was yelling at her to stop running around the tree.

Her grandmother was also trying to get the younger girls to sit on a low-hanging branch so she could take a picture with her phone.

Luck wasn’t on her side.

Neither was Abby.

The three younger girls were bouncing up and down on the branch, and the grandmother was getting more irritated every minute.

“Girls, stop rocking that branch,” their grandmother whined. “I’m trying to take a picture and I want you all to smile so I can get a good picture.”

Whenever the girls managed to sit still long enough for her to take a picture, she wasn’t satisfied.

“That didn’t turn out because you were squirming around,” she told her granddaughters. “Now sit still so I can take another one.”

In the meantime, Abby had climbed up a tree and was swinging on a branch.

“Abby, come here,” the grandmother yelled, and there was an edge in her voice. I think Abby knew that Grandma meant business this time.

Abby climbed down and skipped over to where her sisters were posed. Orders were barked at Abby the whole time her grandmother was trying to arrange the girls for a pleasing shot.

“Stop moving. Stop bouncing that limb. Smile. Not that smile, your real smile.”

Under my breath, I mumbled some choice orders for the grandmother:  “let those kids be kids” and “an impromptu smile is 100 percent better than a forced one.”

After a few minutes, grandmother must’ve been pleased with the images because she told the girls to go play.

Not surprisingly, Abby came racing around us again, a huge smile on her face. On her second lap, she stopped, looked at one of old oak trees and began to climb up on one of the low-hanging branches.

I told my husband I was ready to go, and made my way to the exit past the tree where this rambunctious girl was perched on a limb, looking out over the world.

“Are you Abby,” I asked her.

She smiled and said she was.

“You keep being Abby,” I told her, softly enough so grandmother wouldn’t hear. “Don’t let anybody try to keep you from being you, okay?”

She smiled and said she wouldn’t.

We need to let young girls and boys be kids.

We need to let them run, skip, climb trees, be silly and not make them pose for a pre-conceived notion we have of what makes a good photograph.

Take photos of them hanging upside from a tree limb or lying on the grass looking up at the sky while they find animal shapes in the clouds.

Take pictures of them laughing, with chocolate ice cream on their faces and dirt on their noses as they enjoy those carefree and fleeting moments of being a kid.

And Abby?

You go, girl. Don’t let anybody or anything stop you.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Today, my youngest sister is celebrating a birthday milestone. Within the next month, three more of my siblings will blow out the candles on their cake.

We Heberts have always celebrated birthdays in a big way, mostly because there were seven children, and a birthday was the one day we could claim for ourselves.

Holidays, like Halloween and Easter, were shared, and we all got the same amount of loot.

But birthdays – those were special.

I still picture us as energetic kids, plastic streamers flying from our bicycle handlebars as we raced to the neighborhood swim spot.

The Baker Estates pool was our favorite summer hang out. All of us were expert swimmers, and my brothers could do back flips, half gainers and jack knives all day long off the diving board.

We moved through the different cycles of life together – graduations, dating, marriage, families.  Our children were born months apart so there was always a cousin to play with.

As our children grew up, we passed our childhood traditions onto them. There were Easter egg hunts, barbecues and crawfish boils and the never-ending basketball game in our parents’ driveway.

Then there came a time when the nephews started beating their uncles, and the driveway became center court for both nieces and nephews with the aunts and uncles on the patio, yelling plays and encouragement from the sidelines.

We celebrated high school graduations, then college graduations, engagement parties and weddings.

Nieces and nephews added children to the mix, and jobs, moves and time with our grandchildren and sons- and daughters-in-law pulled the seven in different directions.

Phone calls, text messaging and the internet helped us stay connected over the years but what hasn’t changed is celebrating our birthdays.

Our birthday traditions, friendly jabs and teasing has sustained the seven Hebert siblings for over six decades. I don’t know what I’d do without my siblings, and today, on my sister Donna’s birthday, is a good time to let them know how special they are.

Brother Jimmy is the most genuinely nice person I know, a master dentist and a sounding board without ever judging. He laughs at himself and makes us all comfortable when we make a mistake.

Brother Johnny’s unshakable faith inspires others on his radio broadcast, and his true voice accompanied by his playing the guitar to songs he’s written is always achingly beautiful.

Sister Diane is confident, extremely smart, beautiful and most outspoken and honest woman I know. I wish every day I could be as dynamic, energetic and selfless as she is.

She’s always the first to call on our actual birthday, and it’s always a joke when our brother Jimmy calls the day before. Her reply:  “Doesn’t count. You have to call on the actual day.”

Brother Joey is calmly patient with a dry and quick wit balanced by wood-working expertise and a selfless giving nature. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him angry or heard him say an unkind word about anyone, not even ex-LSU football coach Nick Saban.

Sister Donna is not only beautiful but she’s smart, sassy and not afraid of challenges. She can still turn heads and she’s artistic in everything she does. Whenever I need to vent, she listens without judging.

Our baby brother, Jeff, is a brilliantly gifted artist whose work deserves to be on display. His introspective and wise side balances out one of the wittiest and funniest people I’ve ever met. Plus he’s a fabulous dancer.

Their spouses are equally wonderful, and there’s no line between in-laws and siblings.

Life’s full of sadness and unexpected calamities. Never miss an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary people in your life, especially on their birthday.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.                 

We’re a country of complainers.

Case in point – the Super Bowl half-time show with Shakira and Jennifer Lopez.

Critics say the dances were lewd, and women were exploited by the props and revealing outfits.

Those who liked the performance cited a lack of cultural understanding. The dances used are part of the Latin and Lebanese cultures, they said, and people should stop complaining and be happy those cultures were featured.

There’s complaints about the Super Bowl ad featuring Cpl. Kyle Carpenter and Johnny Cash’s song about the rugged flag.

Critics said the song was a slap in the face to Colin Kaepernick, the ex-NFL football player who took a knee during the “Star Spangled Banner.”

Others said the video was honoring a young man who served bravely in the military when asked to do so by his country.

Nobody wins this argument except the complainers.

If you’re on social media, more than half of the postings are complaining about something or someone. Whole neighborhoods complain about people who drive too fast or too slow in their neighborhoods or who – gasp – park on the street.

Their license plates are published and people are outraged at this despicable behavior. Seldom are the whistle blowers called out for being complainers.

Lines cause a great deal of whining.

People complain about waiting in line and lines that move too slowly. They complain if they happen to get in the wrong line at the grocery store, if there’s a line at the post office or if there’s a line at the DMV.

Many of us remember the days of standing next to the television set and rotating the rabbit-ear antennae until the signal came in clear enough for our parents to watch “Gunsmoke.”

We all muttered under our breath about our unfair parents and vowed we’d never make our children do that for us.

Yet we’re the generation that asks our kids to go find the TV remote control and bring it to us.

We complained when summer hit and the attic fan in the house couldn’t keep us cool. Then we got window air conditioners and complained the fans were too loud. We couldn’t hear Marshal Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty talking and the electric bill was too high.

So we got central air and heat and we still complained about the bill.

We complain about slow service in restaurants and baggers in the grocery store who put our produce in the same bag as frozen tater tots.

Restaurants are too cold, too hot, too slow or the food’s not up to our standards.

Maybe it’s time we stop complaining, swallow a dose of civility and have a reality check.

If you think the dancers at the Super Bowl half-time show were inappropriately dressed, you haven’t been to the mall lately to see what people wear out in public. It’s a lot less material than what I saw on television.

You might disagree with Colin Kaepernick, but we live in a country where we are free to disagree.

We can complain about the post office, but I can barely read my own handwriting – how they can read millions of personally addressed mail and still get those letters where they’re supposed to go astounds me.

The cable bill might be high, but no way I’m taking “Paw Patrol” away from the grandkids.

Road construction’s no fun, but it’s a short inconvenience for a much-better roadway.

Restaurant servers and baggers in the grocery store barely make minimum wage – let’s see how you’d handle rude customers when you’re not bringing home a decent paycheck.

It’s a lot harder to look past the inconvenience and understand why there’s a line, why people park in the street or why utilities cost so much.

Stop taking the easy way and, for heaven’s sake, stop complaining.

Instead, be grateful and use that waiting time to count your blessings.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

Photoshop is interesting software for enhancing photos. Changing color images to black and white is fairly simple and the removal of color changes the mood instantly.

Bare tree limbs against a blue sky looks quite menacing when the image’s in black and white, and I usually fall back on the color image to see the vividness in the photo.

When I ran across an article featuring colorized photos of Holocaust victims, I reluctantly clicked on the link.

When we look at photos from the concentration camps, they’re beyond horrific. Emaciated people lying side by side in wooden bunks with barely any room to breathe.

Their bodies reflect starvation and brutalization, and their faces are hopeless.

That’s the reaction seeing the photos in black and white. But a new effort has artists colorizing the black-and-white images.

The results demands that viewers see the photos in a new light – real people with freckles, dimples and deep brown eyes.

The website “Faces of Auschwitz” has a collection of the colorized photos, and they will make you cry in sorrow for the beautiful, innocent people who met such a horrific death.

The number of those killed in the Nazi death camps is staggering – approximately 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz and nearly 1.1 million were Jews. Of those 1.3 million, 1.1 million – 85 percent – were gassed, beaten to death or starved to death.

One fact will haunt you – 232,000 children were sent to Auschwitz, separated from their parents and either executed, made to work or used for experiments.

On a single day, Oct. 10, 1944, 800 children were gassed to death at Auschwitz.

How did the people who carried out these atrocities go home to their families at night?

How did they eat dinner with their children, play in the park with their sons and enjoy a warm bed, knowing that a few miles away, children were starving to death in the frigid cold.

This week was the observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day to remember these atrocities so they don’t happen again.

What’s sad is most young people lack basic knowledge about what the Holocaust was and how many Jews and “enemies” of the German state were tortured and killed.

There’s an old saying by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We think mass political killings could never happen in these days of 24-hour news and information on every subject under the sun at our fingertips, but atrocities happen every day, and we either don’t know or turn a blind eye.

When most people don’t have a clue about events like the Holocaust, we are in grave danger of repeating these same crimes against those whose religious or political beliefs are different from ours.

Many years ago, I arranged for a Holocaust survivor to speak at a church in Richmond. We opened the talk up to the community, and we all left in shock as we heard this gentle woman describe how she had to learn to lie to survive.

I think of her often, even more so as I looked at those colorized pictures of the Holocaust victims.

Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor said we see the world in color and the colorized photos bring these people and those events back to life for us. We must remember the evil people can commit if we want to stay off that path.

Ignorance and apathy are the first mile markers.

Hatred and envy ensure we stay on that road.

Learn your history.

Do not repeat the mistakes of the past.

And remember for those who are no longer here.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.