I’ve been watching The Oscars ever since I was a little girl. My mom would narrate the awards, and I’d gobble up every morsel.

We’d ooh and aah over the dresses, the jewelry, the make-up – everything about this night was magical to us as we were sitting in our pajamas on our old plaid couch.

That was then.

This year, the Academy Awards were awful.

Like millions, I tuned in but then switched channels halfway through.

Even though I’m just a speck on the movie screen, I’ve got some suggestions for the producers for next year’s show.

Pomp and circumstance. Magazines and websites are filled with daily stories about the English royals.

They don’t really do anything for the country except give British subjects someone to put up on a pedestal, whether or not those princes and princesses deserve it.

Movie stars are America’s royalty. We know them by their first names – Meryl and Lupita – and we keep up with their lives, loves, hopes and dreams.

The Oscars are when our Hollywood royalty really shines, especially when it comes to their clothes.

I’m a red carpet fangirl. I love seeing what the stars are wearing to The Oscars.

I can picture that horrible swan outfit Bjork wore one year and the gorgeous gowns Grace Kelly wore back in the day.

I love the pre-Oscars show where we get to see the flowing dresses up close and find out the designer’s name.

Give us back our Harry Winston jewels.

Showcase those Armani and Chanel tuxedos and chiffon gowns.

Let us choose our new hairstyle based on what Sandra Bullock or Viola Davis wore to the ceremony.

While we’re talking glam, who chose the building this year? This year’s ceremony looked like it was held in a high school gymnasium where the prom committee put up plastic curtains and crepe paper to make things look festive.

I want the ritzy auditoriums, the luxurious red drapes, the thousands of twinkling lights on the stage and television screens the size of a Winnebago so I can see clips from the nominated movies.

As so many of them were on streaming services, few of us knew anything about the movies.

Give us the clips so we can see what we’ve missed and, if we were lucky enough to see one of the nominated movies, a chance to revisit an intriguing story.

A host. When the producers asked the popular Kevin Hart to host last year and then pulled the offer back after he was involved in a scandal, the academy thought they could go on without a host.

Big mistake.

Hosts are vital to the awards ceremony. Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies 19 times, and viewers loved his ability to crack jokes throughout the whole show.

He was also a beloved figure in America, having entertained the troops for over 50 years from World War II through the Persian Gulf War.

His jokes were often corny, but the troops loved that he gave of his time to bring home to them and we loved a familiar face in our living rooms.

Other favorites are Billy Crystal who hosted nine times, Johnny Carson, Whoopi Goldberg and Chris Rock. These were popular comedians in our culture, and they brought a bit of political bite and humor to big business in Hollywood.

Not having a host is a big mistake.

In a year where we lost so much due to Covid and social distancing, we could’ve used some old-fashioned charm and style from Hollywood.

We could’ve used the glitz, the glamor and the American royalty that movie stars give us.

So next year, let’s go back to the elegant Shrine Auditorium and see if the Avengers would host The Oscars.

Three hours of Iron Man and Thor?

Count me in.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Hospitals are scary places.

People go there to get better, but the process can be terrifying.

Our family spent a few days in at Lane Regional Memorial Center in Zachary, La. when our mother underwent procedures to have stents inserted into blocked arteries.

Physicians thread a long, thin tube into a blood vessel through the wrist and place the stents. Patients usually go home that day, and the relief is almost instantaneous.

Because Mom’s a tiny person, the team had to insert the tube through the groin, a bit more involved.

Mom’s a trooper and accepted the tougher procedure. The first time was exploratory to see where the stents needed to go, but her second procedure wasn’t as smooth.

A swelling about the size of a softball developed at the insertion site. My sister and I went to the cafeteria for a quick lunch, and we came back to find two nurses working on Mom.

One was using a sonogram to find where the bleeding was coming from and one was applying direct pressure to the area.

For over 30 minutes, these two kept searching for answers and solutions, all the while talking to Mom and us to keep us calm.

We were fortunate in that both had prior experience in a cardiovascular center and knew what to do.

Mom pulled through in fine fashion, and we were relieved and grateful these conscientious health-care professionals caught the issue before Mom was in serious trouble.

After that scary experience, she wasn’t keen on returning, but she was still short of breath and wanted to feel better.

So back to the hospital we went.

The doctor performed four stents on her – a lot, by the way – and she came out of the procedure groggy but cracking jokes.

She seemed to be stable, so my brother and I decided to grab a quick lunch.

Not more than a minute after we sat down at the restaurant, his cell phone rang. It was the nurse and the message was quick – come back to the hospital right now.

Mom was experiencing a “vasovagal syncope,” a fainting spell, but the episode was more complicated. Her blood pressure dropped to the double digits and she was as white as the sheet.

We stood in the doorway as five nurses and doctors surrounded her bed.

Laura, the head nurse in the cardio wing, was calm as she monitored her team and the machines.

What I noticed, though, was that all the while, she was stroking Mom’s hair. In a quiet voice, Laura was reassuring her patient she’d be okay and they wouldn’t leave her.

In what seemed like an eternity, Mom finally stabilized.

Most of the nurses left the room but not Laura. She moved to the side of Mom’s bed and held our mother’s hand for over 30 minutes as she monitored the machines and talked us through what had happened.

Professionally, the team was on point every step of the way.

Personally, they went above and beyond, and that care was evident in the small gestures.

Every nurse who came in Mom’s room, day and night, not only took her vital signs but didn’t leave without tucking in her sheet and blanket.

They checked her ankles for swelling and then gently rubbed the bottom of her leg as they asked how she was feeling.

They brought heated blankets without being asked.

They called Mom by name and thoroughly answered all our questions, even though they probably heard the same lines every single day.

The kindness the nurses, doctors and aides showed to our mother means more to us than we could ever express.

Thank you for remembering the scared person wearing a cotton hospital gown is first and foremost a human being.

Thank you for treating our mother with dignity, professionalism and compassion.

Thank you for saving her life.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.     

When I was a young teenager, my dad took my brother and me to New Orleans’ Ponchartrain Beach to revisit his childhood fun place.

He bought us tickets to ride The Zephyr, a huge roller coaster, because it was his favorite.

I’d never ridden a roller coaster but if Dad liked it, the ride must be okay.

At the end, my brother was laughing but I shook for over an hour.

That fear jumped up again on a trip down the Pacific Coast Highway a few years ago.

This road has a mountain on one side and a cliff, with no rail or shoulder, on the other.

After a couple of hairpin turns, I spent the rest of the ride on the back-seat floor board with my eyes shut.

Whenever we choose a vacation spot, making sure there aren’t any mountains is always in the back of my mind, hence the reason we go to the beach so often.

When my niece raved about a visit to Sedona, Ariz., I figured the desert is flat and warm, so this spot should be perfect for a spring vacation.

However, I didn’t realize Sedona was up in the mountains, and the only way to get there was over switch-back roads and hair-pin turns.

The road was terrifying.

At one point, I was looking over the edge and there was nothing between us and the rocky ground 4,000 feet down.

I closed my eyes and started praying.

As bad as the road was going up the mountain, it was worse coming down.

Seeing signs about runaway ramps for 18-wheelers, warnings about a 6-percent grade the next five miles – which I found out means the road drops so much truckers have to worry about their brakes catching on fire – did not make the trip any easier.

When we finally returned to the somewhat flatter grounds of Phoenix, I relaxed a bit. Until we decided to take in some of the trails.

I went up the first one and my knees and nerves cooperated. But when we started up a pretty steep trail, I stopped half way and told my husband he could go on and I’d wait for him there.

I relaxed on a rock and took in the view. After about 15 minutes, two mountain bikers stopped in front of me.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” one asked me. I assured him I was.

“Well the rangers are down there watching you, and they asked us to stop and check on you,” the second one said.

I was mortified. Sure enough, there were two white trucks in the parking lot and a man with binoculars was looking my way.

I waved and signaled a thumbs up.

Another man came after the bikers left and asked if I was okay. He said the rangers were getting ready to come up there and take me down the mountain as I could be in distress.

There was no way I was going to face the humiliation of having two park rangers with rescue gear come up there and get my scared self off that trail.

I had to get down to the parking lot and tell them I was okay. However, that meant I had to walk the trail by myself.

The longer I sat there, the greater the chance those rangers would come after me and cart me down there like a bag of potatoes, so I started down the slippery gravel trail.

Luckily there were kind people along the way who let me hold on to their backpacks on the steep sections and the narrow parts with a steep drop off.

Once down, I thanked the rangers for their concern and for not making me feel like a big crybaby.

They assured me people get in trouble because of dehydration or the altitude, and they’re always on the lookout for folks needing a helping hand.

Rationalizations are so comforting.

For our next vacation, the sea-level beaches of Texas and the flatlands of Florida are looking pretty good.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.         

Over 35 years ago, my husband explained the difference between a full-court press and a zone defense.

I’m still not sure what exactly they are, but I know what it means when he mutters “they need to stay out of the paint” during a basketball game.

I learned to appreciate basketball when I was in high school.

I was a member of the pep squad, and cheering in a warm gymnasium beat sitting in the football stadium in the freezing rain.

Few of us understood the basketball rules, but we could see the players’ faces and the gym always seemed to reverberate with feet stomping their encouragement on the wooden bleachers.

I grew to appreciate the athletes, both male and female, as their sweat and strained muscles reflected their love of the game.

That appreciation should’ve come earlier as the guys in my family are die-hard fans.

We grew up in Olean, N.Y., and my dad loved watching St. Bonaventure play basketball.

When we moved to Louisiana, Dad was a frequent fan in the stands where he cheered for LSU hoopster Pete Maravich as “Pistol Pete” made his way into the history books.

That love was put into action as our brothers had a perpetual basketball game going in our parents’ driveway.

At family barbecues and holidays, the brothers and brothers-in-law would invariably lace up their sneakers and the game picked up right where it left off.

The games were friendly but competitive. I don’t remember if anybody every won or lost, but the score wasn’t the point.

Friendly competition, non-stop heckling and showing off were the primary goals.

Our nieces and nephews would play when their uncles and dads let them.

One afternoon, we girls decided to play. The game started off friendly, but our natural competitiveness kicked in and there was elbowing, shoving and pushing.

I think I might’ve hurt my sister.

With three sons who all liked sports, we had a basketball goal in our driveway. With almost-daily games, when our thoughtful neighbors, Dwight and Neta, put in a new fence, they put the handle on their gate on the outside so the boys could get their ball out of their back yard.

Recently, when my alma mater, the University of Houston, made it to the NCAA finals along with Baylor, another Texas school, we settled in to watch the game. Baylor took the lead and never looked back.

Since we were already settled in for the evening, we watched the Gonzaga and UCLA game even though we didn’t have a favorite.

Without a dog in the fight, I came to admire both teams, and it was obvious they were well matched and both wanted to win.

When Gonzaga’s Jalen Suggs threw the ball from half court with less than a second on the clock, sunk the basket and won the game, we both jumped off the couch yelling in amazement.

We were eager to see these two teams take each other on for the championship title.

A sluggish, disjointed Gonzaga team took the court, but the Baylor Bears came on the court strong, bold, united and ready to win.

They easily took the 2021 NCAA Champs title.

Sometimes games, like life, are decided in a split second.

Sometimes, the winning outcome is evident from the start.

Other times, the underdog will fight with everything they have and take the win.

What matters is getting out there, playing with skill and abandon and accepting defeat or victory with grace and a handshake.

Not bad rules for life either.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

 

April Fools’ Day has different origin stories – which fits this day perfectly – but most of us use April 1 as a time to pull pranks and jokes on each other.

Our family’s favorite April Fools’ Day joke was one my brother played on my then-2-year-old son.

Nick was sitting on my Mom’s kitchen counter and my brother noticed he was wearing tennis shoes with Velcro laces.

Knowing it was April Fools’ Day, Jeff looked down at Nick’s shoes and said “Your shoes are untied.”

Nick looked down and his uncle said “April Fools’!”

We all laughed so Jeff said it again. Nick looked down again. This back-and-forth went on for probably 10 minutes with Nick innocently looking down at his shoes every single time, and teenage Jeff and my youngest sister Donna wondering when the child would catch on.

Perhaps this was a foreshadowing of what was ahead as Nick did graduate from Texas A&M University.

The best April Fools’ Day pranks come from people who aren’t known for telling jokes or doing silly things.

Such is the case with our middle son.

Stephen has a good sense of humor but he’s our serious child. He’s never been a joke teller or one who participated in the silly games and pranks other kids did.

But he pulled off the perfect prank when he was in college.

Stephen had been offered a summer internship with a national accounting firm, but he wasn’t sure which location they’d send him to.

One afternoon, he called.

“Mom, the firm made me an offer. There’s a catch though,” he said and my heart stopped.

He explained that the firm was going to send him to a Third World country in the Middle East. They couldn’t guarantee his safety but they were going to give him extra money because of the risks he’d have to take.

I asked him a lot of questions about what kind of security measures they were promising, did he know which country and if he was sure he wanted to take a chance with his life for money.

“Yes, I’ve thought about all of that,” he said. “There’s only one thing that concerns me.”

I held my breath.

“That you actually fell for this. April Fools’,” he said with a laugh.

He had me hook, line and sinker.

I told him to call his dad and play the same prank on him.

“Oh he’s too smart to fall for this joke,” Stephen said.

Intelligence had nothing to do with whether or not his dad would fall for the joke, I told him, ignoring his implication that I was the dumb one.

Stephen took up the challenge and called his dad who fell for it just like I did.

That’s why April Fools’ jokes are best carried out by those who don’t normally joke unlike my dad who loved telling jokes and telling tall tales.

If he’d tried pulling an April Fools’ joke on us, we’d have instantly suspected he was pulling our leg.

When Dad passed away, my brother Jeff and I were alone in the emergency room. Jeff looked at the clock, and said quietly that Dad died on April Fools’ Day.

Neither one of us realized the date before that moment, but we both agreed it was fitting that our father, the one who loved jokes and told a joke better than anyone else, passed away on this day.

Remembering to laugh in the midst of sorrow was the last lesson my dad taught me. So Happy April Fools’ Day, Dad. Thanks for reminding me that life has its share of smiles as well as its share of tears.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.