I just finished watching the well-written and well-acted HBO mini-series “True Detective.” Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson were the stars and executive producers, and the story slowly unfolded, surprising viewers each and every episode.

By the end, we were rooting for these two flawed detectives and, at the same time, left with images that the back roads and towns of Louisiana were filled smoke-spewing oil refineries and ignorant, evil people.

Not true.

It’s easy to think Louisiana is nothing more than a concrete highway dotted with Popeye’s Fried Chicken franchises. Beyond the interstates and main highways, though, lies a beautiful state with a generous people.

On recent trips to Baton Rouge, we’ve taken detours up highways west of the capitol city to avoid the traffic backups over the Mississippi River. The diversions are a satisfying choice as the landscape is a welcome relief from rushing casino-bound traffic.

On quiet roads, we’ve traveled past densely-packed sugar cane fields as far as the eye could see. Majestic oak trees, their Spanish moss swaying in the branches like a woman’s silk scarf, line up like sentries through these small towns.

Houses are located away from the highway, and most feature an inviting wrap-around Acadian-style front porch. That style of architecture dates back dozens of years to early settlers who spent evenings gathered on the porches to enjoy the breezes, courtesy of the state’s many rivers and bayous.

We’ve stopped at small antique shops, and the shopkeepers couldn’t have been nicer. People milled through the stores, and their Cajun-accented conversations were delightful to the ear. The air was filled with laughter and exchanges with us and other people in the store. 

A trip over Spring Break took me past parks and baseball diamonds filled with youngsters ready for spring ball. No voodoo or backwoods people here – the parking lots were filled with Suburbans and mini-vans, just as they are in every other state. 

The state’s tried to make a name for herself with shows like “Swamp People” that draws thousands of visitors, but they leave people with the impression all Louisianans walk around muttering “choot-em.”

While the former governor, Edwin Edwards, humiliated himself with a show about him and his young wife, most people cringed knowing this charlatan was once again milking somebody for money at the expense of his own dignity and, ultimately, that of a state that put her trust in him and had it betrayed time and time again by those who sacrificed a good people for a quick buck. 

While I applaud the producers of “True Detective” for bringing their money to the state, I’m saddened thinking those not familiar with the South would believe those dark, dingy bars, crooks and backwoods people are all that make up the Bayou State.

It’s the same with those who think Texas is nothing more than braggarts and women with big hair who spend every other day in the nail salon or that people from New York are rude or people from Wisconsin walk around with a fake block of cheese on their head.

We need to stop judging states by what’s on the surface and take a look at the lifeblood of each and every state – the people and families quietly going about their business.

The next time you head east through Louisiana, take a side trip off the concrete chute and leisurely tour the back roads. Take time to savor a cup of café-au-lait and beignets and visit with the owners. Find the beauty that’s shyly hiding in a state that’s often painted with a narrow brush.

You won’t be disappointed, cher.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I’m tired of cold weather.

I’m tired of icy roads.

I’m tired of wearing a jacket.

I want Southern weather to return.

My family grew up in the North, about 60 miles southeast of Buffalo,  N.Y. I’ll sound like some old goat rocking on the front porch when I say I remember walking to school in the snow.

Uphill.

Both ways.

We lived in an older house, common in Olean, N.Y., and we used to get dressed standing over the floor heater. My mom would lay our scarves, mittens, snow boots, hats and jackets over the heavy metal grate. Our clothes would be warm when we put them on, and that was a treat because that old house was drafty and cold.

Once outside, what I remember most is walking down the street through a tunnel carved out of snow.

There was an eerie hush walking in that snow tunnel, and I thought the world had turned silent except for the crunching of my boots on the fresh snow.

I remember watching my dad shovel a path from the back door to the driveway, the puffs of white smoke coming out of his mouth reminding me of a locomotive.

There were afternoons making snow angels and snowmen and chasing each other with snowballs.

Before this childhood scene turns into something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, there’s another side to those delicate snowflakes and rooftops covered in a blanket of glistening white.

When the snow melts, backyards turn into a brown wasteland of muddy snow and ice patches surrounded by islands of dead grass.

Northern swing sets rust a lot earlier than their cousins in the South because they’re covered with snow nine months out of the year. Our swing sets fade, but our young-uns are on the teeter-totter in December.

And January.

And February.

In the cold, there’s no getting in the car, starting it right up and driving off. When there’s two feet of snow outside, chains have to go on the tires and then drivers scrape ice and snow off the windshields before they free all four tires from impacted snow.

Ear muffs provide little protection from Jack Frost, and all one can dream about on those days is laying in a hammock under the warm sun, a pitcher of lemonade close by.

For my father, who was born and reared in the hot humid swamps around Lake Charles, La., 10 years of scraping snow was enough. He moved all of us to Louisiana, and we came to look at winter in a totally different light.

Winters didn’t always involve sub-freezing temperatures and busted water pipes. Southern winters meant keeping shorts and sandals close by because it’s not unusual for 70-degree days to show up in February and March.

Southern winters meant there might be a few days with temperatures in the 20s, but those were few and far between.

 Because we’re not accustomed to driving on icy roads, we call school off when the roads are frozen and stay home and drink hot chocolate. In true Scarlett O’Hara tradition, we then tell ourselves we’ll think about making up those snow days tomorrow.

So when it gets here, I’m going to embrace the hot weather.

I’m going to take pleasure in driving on roads that shimmer in the summer heat.

I’m going to enjoy wearing shorts and sandals 10 months out of the year.

And when the bluebonnets bloom, I shall raise a glass of iced tea and a slice of pecan pie to the warm weather gods.

And thank the heavens I’m a Southern girl.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I was at a seminar with a co-worker and we decided to head to another part of the building. She put her hands in her pocket and I grabbed my bulging camera bag, stuffed tote bag and my 10-pound purse.

“Where’s your stuff?” I asked.

Smiling, she showed me a pouch the size of a business card. Inside was her driver’s license, a credit card and a few dollar bills. She said she’s a minimalist and only carries what she needs.

I visualized all the “stuff” in my purse, and I could make a case that I, too, was a minimalist. Like her, I was carrying only the things I needed.

Well, perhaps I’m taking liberties with the word “minimalism” when describing my purse. There’s about 25 Bics in my purse, but that overkill comes from a hard-learned lesson.

On one of my first interviews for the newspaper, my pen ran out of ink. When I had to ask the person I was interviewing for a pen, I felt like an idiot. I vowed to never be without a working ballpoint again. Hence the reason for two dozen Bics in my purse.  

Hey, a reporter can’t be too careful or ill-prepared.

There’s the travel size packets of Kleenex. With allergies that stick around most of the year, having tissues I can grab in a hurry is a necessity.

Plus I’m clumsy. My Kleenex buddies have helped me mop up spilled drinks, melting ice cream and squished ketchup packets more times than I care to count.

Then there’s the added weight of all the coins jingling around in my purse. I’ve never gotten into the habit of putting coins in my wallet. I simply toss them into my purse after a transaction so there’s always a river of coins in the bottom. In a pinch, I can always rustle up $1.06 in dimes, nickels and pennies for something off the dollar menu at the drive through.

Which brings me to the camera bag. Sure I could use my cell phone to take pictures, but I love old-fashioned photography so I seldom venture out without my trusty Canon.

And no photojournalist’s going out without a notebook to write down people’s names, extra memory cards and at least five pens because, well, you know.

The tote bag is when I’m on a field trip. Inside are blank permission forms, filled-out permission forms, paper, notebooks, a map of the building and, of course, pens, pencils, highlighters and Kleenex. I don’t think of myself as having too much stuff. Instead, I consider myself the Boy Scout in the group – always prepared.   

Watching me shift the bags around on my shoulders, my friend said her desk was also spotless – not a paper or folder on the desktop at the end of the day. I didn’t say anything because my desk looks like a tornado touched down at the top, waltzed across the center and then did a swan dive off the “in” box.

There’s the stack of address labels and stamps because I lose them if they’re not sitting right in front of my face, extra memory cards, a box of Kleenex, two back scratchers, two address books and a typing stand with really important stuff.

All of which is required. None of which could be thrown away. So technically, I meet the standards of simple living.

Minimalism has its fine points but there’s one thing I’ll have that my travel-light friend will always have to borrow from me – a working Bic pen.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

It’s one of those nights. You’re feeling a little blue because you spilled soy sauce on your new shirt, you didn’t get a joke one of the young people in the office was laughing about or you find gray hair in your eyebrows.

Those are the times I’m grateful for comfort foods. Although your hips remember long after your lips have forgotten, if you don’t over-indulge, a little munchable comfort goes a long way. 

First on the list, peanut butter. Yes it’s fattening and high in calories, but peanut butter on a spoon sticks to the roof of my mouth and takes me back to my childhood days when a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich was the perfect companion when hunkering down on a nasty, wet day.

Next on the list is chocolate. Not any chocolate, mind you, but delicious yet affordable chocolate – Hershey’s Kisses. While feeling a little blue, unwrapping those kisses and letting them melt on my tongue is almost like getting a real kiss on my chubby cheek from my mom while she tells me everything will be okay.

Right up there with chocolate is almost anything crunchy.  I’m not talking about healthy crunchy foods like celery and carrots. I’m talking about Doritos, Cheetohs and Cheez Balls. Of those three, the Doritos are the top dog because you can take three bites out of each Dorito versus two bites out of a puffy Cheetoh.

And then there’s ice cream. For the usual quick pick-me-up, any cheap brand will do. But for those nights when the world’s crashing, only Blue Bell vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup, whipped cream and peanuts on top is a bona-fide mood elevator.

I’m almost convincing myself that comfort foods have a scientific basis.

In these days of healthy eating, I have to find a way to rationalize choosing peanut butter over tofu.  So to justify that bowl of Blue Bell, I have the comfort foods categorized.

At DEFCON 4, there’s the soft comfort foods – Twinkies and Little Debbie Cakes. Because these two snacks are gone in a couple of bites, I only use those when I’m a little down. They’re light-weights in the “feelin’ the blues” mood.

For times when I can see a blue horizon for the evening, DEFCON 3, I have to pull in a little heavier artillery – namely, Oreos and milk. Each dunk of the Oreo cookie in the ice-cold milk is dunking away a little bit more of the problem.

When we’re up to DEFCON 2 — flashing red lights signaling the blues are hanging around until the sun comes up again — I roll out the big dogs – pancakes. First, beating up the batter gets out a little bit of frustration. Then pouring those perfect circles on a hot grill makes me feel somehow in control of life.

When I’ve got a stack of light brown cakes ready, I smother them with slabs of butter accompanied by real maple syrup. Every bite takes me back to the days of making pancakes on leisurely Saturday mornings for my boys and laughing around the breakfast table.  

Life seemed easier back then, and if I survived stomach viruses that hit all three boys at the same time, back-to-back outbreaks of chicken pox and watching each one of my boys drive away from home to start their own lives, then I can survive whatever minor problem is coming my way.

And if the blues start washing over me, if I listen hard enough, I’ll hear the Blue Bell carton calling out salvation.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Over a lifetime of church services, I’ve noticed people seem to sit in the same place week after week. But there’s drawbacks.

The front row seldom sees what happens in the back and the people in the vestibule seldom see what happens in the front. I’ve sat in both places and neither one fits me.

Growing up, we were always late for Sunday Mass. My family of nine would squeeze into the last two rows where my dad usually nodded off and my mom spent her time breaking up elbow arguments.

Until my father found religion. Then we had to sit on the front row every single Sunday.

We were always late, and it was embarrassing to walk to the front row. I vowed to never make my children sit in the front, and we never did.

When they were young, we sat in the cry room. It’s loud in there and one always leaves thinking “At least my kid’s not as bad as that other one.”

Or maybe the other moms thought that about my sons.

But then my boys grew up and we settled into sitting in the middle of the church – not too close to the front and not too close to the back.

After the boys went off to college, I continued to sit in the same middle pew. But over the past three years, I’ve struggled with organized religion, not my faith, after being bitterly disappointed by the petty lay people who were supposed to be leading by example.

I left the church for a while, but I’ve been trying to return lately. At the small parish closest to our new house, I approached a woman who was in charge of the religious education department and said I’d taught teen classes at my former parish for over 25 years. She smiled weakly, said that was nice, and walked away.

Despite the slap in the face, I still go to Sunday services but I stay in the back, feeling like I don’t belong. But a few events have me wondering if the Lord needs people in the back.

One week, a mom was struggling with her older boy. It was obvious he had emotional problems, and she was trying to juggle an infant, two young children and control him.

I impulsively asked if I could hold the baby while she worked with her son, and she gratefully handed the little angel to me. She decided to leave, and I told her I’d carry the baby to the car. As we walked, she thanked me, but I told her thanks were not needed.

From what I remembered from all those sermons sitting in the middle of the church, I thought that was what people are supposed to do, not ignore those in need.

Another week, a  young dad walked in the door with his three children, his 4-year-old sobbing on his shoulder. He abruptly left, two other children in tow, and I figured it wasn’t going to be pretty out there.

I impulsively followed them and asked if I could help. Exasperated, he explained that his daughter said her pants were too hard and she didn’t want to wear them.

My granddaughter feels the same way about some of her pants, I told the little girl. In fact, I told her, I felt the same way about my hard pants. She smiled, her siblings smiled and then Dad smiled.

I’m no saint. Far from it. But I’m thinking my place isn’t on the front row, in a classroom or in the middle of the church. Perhaps my place is in the back with the crying babies, frustrated parents and those, like me, praying we’ll find a home.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

The Internet is a wonderful invention. Information that once required a visit to the library is now available in seconds. Although I’ve retrieved useful information from the Internet on everything from the weather to how to remove wallpaper, I also enjoy wasting time online, particularly on Facebook.

I can rationalize my decision. First, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with family. I check Facebook on my lunch break to see if there’s any new pictures or videos of my grandchildren and I’ll check in at night to see if anyone in my family’s posted pictures. We live far from each other, and Facebook keeps me up to date on what’s happening in my siblings’ families.

Just like when the old codgers sat on the front porch and talked about the weather, Facebookers do the same, except in cyberspace. come up with all kinds of weird names for freezing weather – Icepocalypse and Snowmageddon are my favorites.

On Facebook, you can learn about the 50 foods you must never eat after a certain age and get warnings to not undergo Botox treatments or you’ll end up looking like an Egyptian mummy.

There are also miracle foods and secrets to keep us looking young that, up until Facebook miraculously came along, have strangely never been revealed.

Speaking of foods, Facebook is full of recipes from how to stuff artichokes to how to grill zucchini. Over 48,000 people like the healthy recipe page while over 202,000 people like the chocolate recipes. That many people can’t be wrong.

Then there’s the practical side of Facebook. Every insurance company in America has a Facebook page. Better yet, Facebook can save me to 70 percent on furniture and hook me up with major discounts on clothes that look like they fit a Barbie doll.

Think the end of the world’s coming? Facebook has you covered. You can discover how to grow 100 pounds of potatoes in a four-foot garden and join the other crazies because on Facebook, conspiracy theories spread like butter on a hot bun.

Luckily, there’s always a rational Facebooker who posts a link to Snopes.com and straightens out all who believe roach eggs are mixed in with glue on the backs of envelopes.

There’s Throwback Thursdays, a place for you to post every embarrassing picture of yourself from the 1970s wearing tube socks and short shorts with white piping around the edges.

Some of my Facebook favorites are the selfies. There are very few people on Facebook who haven’t held their phones up over their head, smiled and snapped a selfie and then posted it to Facebook. When your mother posts a selfie, you know it’s time to find something else to do with your phone.

And then there’s the complainers. They post about everything rotten in life, but I wonder if they realize they’re part of the problem by consistently griping about every single thing that happens.

I decided not to add to the wasteland. I don’t post what I had for dinner, send out chain emails or send you a link to watch my Facebook movie.

I don’t play Candy Crush, I could care less about the secret Ellen’s been hiding and I’m not interested in taking a Carnival Cruise. I just want to see pictures of my grandchildren and drool over the chocolate pie recipes.

And if there is a magic pill that will make the pounds drop off and the wrinkles go away, there’s only one possible place to find it – Facebook land.  

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I don’t consider myself a prude, but lately I’ve been clucking my tongue over the antics of female performers who are selling their souls for a bit of notoriety.

The Grammy Awards were the latest debacle in a long line of young women who think taking off their clothes and performing lewd acts is the only way to establish themselves as a “serious artist.”

Case in point, Katy Perry. She became well known and admired for her beautiful renditions of Christian music. One of her biggest hits, “Firework,” called for people to believe there was a spark inside themselves.

Now she’s pole dancing with demons on national television.

We’ve long watched young girls come bare it all for fame:  Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan and Miley Cyrus come to mind. They went from pre-teen idols to 20-something sleaze bags, all for fame and fortune.

No denying they’re the talk of the town, from bloggers slamming them to their sexy videos attracting viewers by the thousands. Perhaps it’s brilliant marketing on their part because they’re financially successful and popular, but that’s a twisted path to success for women in our country.

These performers are a small slice of Americana. I firmly believe parents are the true voice of reason when it comes to teaching youngsters about the true meaning of success. The Dove Corporation is one of the few industries doing something positive for young girls.

 

The Evolution of Beauty

A few years ago, Dove created a video “The Evolution of Beauty.” A female kindergarten teacher underwent an all-day make-over session. Stylists curled her hair and professional cosmetologists  caked on the make-up. Then the Photoshop magicians made her neck longer, reshaped her face and plumped up her hair.

The meaning was how can we define beauty when reality is so far removed from what’s on the pages of fashion magazines and on billboards.

They followed up that campaign with “Real Beauty Sketches” where women were asked to describe themselves and a police forensics artist drew what they described.

Afterwards, the women were asked to find someone in the waiting room to visit with. Later, the forensics artist asked them to describe the person they’d talked with. The results were striking.

The women were harsh and judgmental about their looks yet the people who talked with them described their new friend in gentler terms and much more accurately. The women were quiet and circumspect, wondering why they’d been so hard on themselves.

Dove’s latest project is entitled “Selfies.” A professional photographer talked with pre-teens and their mothers about their looks. All were critical of how they looked and found fault with their facial features.

The photographer then asked the girls and their mothers to take self portraits, or “selfies” with their cell phones. The moms self-consciously posed with their daughters and then they began to have fun with the photos.

Dove enlarged the selfies and posted the portraits in a large gallery. They gave guests Post-It notes and asked them to comment on the pictures. All the comments were positive – what a beautiful smile, love your eyes and confident smile.  

The girls and their moms were reminded that true beauty comes from being strong and brave and being happy with yourself.

Not from acting like trash.

These self-proclaimed successful artists could learn a thing or two from young girls who came to understand the real meaning of class and beauty these Hollywood flashes in the pan have forgotten – ignite the spark in yourself and remember real beauty comes from within.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Photographs capture special moments in our lives, so it was with disappointment I realized I missed the opportunities I had over the holidays to take a picture with my eldest son.

I’m not one for being in the picture. I’m usually behind the lens, so photos of me are few and far between. But I wanted a picture of my son with me, especially as Nick lives over 8,000 miles away and visits once a year.

I had only one chance:  when I’d drop him off at Hobby Airport for his flight back to Taiwan. We pulled up to the curb, and the walkways were packed with frazzled travelers. I grabbed my camera and a passerby agreed to snap the picture for me.

One click. One picture.

I checked the screen, saw the image was there, hugged my son tightly and told him to let me know when he got back to Taiwan.

As he rushed off into the crowd, I said a prayer, asking his guardian angel to keep watch over him on his travels. On the way home, I’d glance at the camera, knowing for the first time in 10 years, I’d have a visual keepsake of mom and son.

Life came bounding along and I put downloading the pictures on the back burner. One morning, I lent my camera to a group of students, and when they returned, they asked me to check their photos.

I started scrolling and realized there were only seven images in the camera.

I tried again.

Just seven photos. My heart started pounding when I realized I’d never downloaded that picture of Nick and me at the airport.

Pulling the card out of the camera, I inserted it into a card reader, downloaded the images and looked at the computer screen.

Just seven photos.

I was devastated and began to cry, beating myself up for not doing what I knew I should’ve done, knowing I wouldn’t have a chance to have that picture taken again for another year, if that.

At that moment, Jeff Peterson walked into my room.

Jeff is the new computer information technician for our school, and he just happened to stop by. Although we’d never met in person, he instantly knew something was wrong.

When I tearfully explained what happened, he said he might be able to get the pictures back. Unless, he cautioned, someone had reformatted the card. Then all the information would be lost forever.

I handed the card over, sniffling, asking him to please do what he could.

Ten minutes later, I heard a ping, notifying me I’d gotten a new email. It was from Jeff with a photo attachment – the picture of Nick and me at the airport.

Of course that started the tears all over again, but this time, they were tears of relief.

I’ll never put off downloading pictures again and I’ll never doubt my guardian angel is watching over me.

One evening, she was disguised as a man who stopped to tie my Christmas tree back to the roof of my van because I hadn’t tied it tight enough.

She was once a mechanic who replaced a thermometer in my overheated van and didn’t charge me, seeing I was stranded in Mobile with my young sons.

On a trip to Louisiana, she was riding with me through the driving wind and rain as I crossed the Atchafalaya Basin.

This time, she came into my life wearing loafers and a tie and gave me back one irreplaceable moment in time.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.  

A few years ago, a radio station was honoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by playing all of his recorded speeches.

Because I’d read excerpts from the “I Have a Dream” speech, I thought I knew the main facts about the late civil rights leader. But I discovered there was so much more to Dr. King than the “free at last” line.

His speech about talking to his young daughter about why she couldn’t go to the local amusement park “Fun Town” is heartbreaking. There was only one reason his 4-year-old daughter couldn’t go to the park – the color of her skin.

Most of us have visited Disneyworld, Fiesta Texas and other amusement parks and we know how much fun those places are.

But not Yolanda King.

She was told she couldn’t go to the most fun place in town because she wasn’t a white child. I cringe thinking about the many parents who’ve given the same humiliating talk to their children, that they aren’t the right color or the right sex or the right nationality to enter places.

Because these prejudices still exist, tolerance and acceptance are lessons we should be teaching our children, and MLK Day is a great place to start. But instead of concentrating on exactly what King stood for in his life, we’ve turned the January holiday into a clearance and mark-down sales event.

That we’ve done so is ironic, especially when studying King’s  1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech.

He said that when machines and computers, profits and property rights are more important than people, we’re in deep trouble. Almost 50 years later, I’d say he’s right.

Many people will text a friend instead of having a face-to-face conversation. We watch or listen to something on an electronic device while eating meals, getting dressed, driving to and from work and even when exercising.

In the evenings, we’re glued to our flat-screen TVs, iPads or laptops instead of thinking about what’s just or intolerant in life or engaging in meaningful dialogues with each other.

And we’ve convinced ourselves that hash tags and smiley faces are a suitable replacement for a person-to-person smile or hug. We don’t need computer-generated road signs when we can look in a friend’s eyes and see despair, happiness or grief.

King believed that through meaningful dialogue with each other, face to face, we would see we are more alike than different. He believed deeply in God and that one day people of color would be free.

But he wasn’t a dreamer. He was a realist.  

King knew about the deplorable slums in Memphis and Atlanta. He knew people of color were lynched to the applause and cheers of white people. He knew he couldn’t sit in the front of the bus without being arrested and then beaten to a pulp.

He knew he had to demand change and he did so from the very beginning of his career in the 1950s.

King stood alongside the Freedom Riders in 1961 and 1962.  He was there in 1963 when the Civil Rights Bill was passed. And he was silenced in 1968 when an assassin’s bullet took his life much too soon.

On Monday, when the media is saturated with advertisements for blow-out sales and most of us are home relaxing on a paid holiday, remember the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

To paraphrase:  Some things have always been wrong and they will always be wrong. But some things are right and will always be right.

Justice and equality for all are ideals that are always right.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I’ve always been fascinated by cars and driving. Luckily I came of age when muscle cars ruled the roads. Back in the early 1970s, our school parking lot was filled with fabulous cars – powerful Ford Mustangs, fast Dodge Chargers and yacht-long Rivieras.

For me, the real thrill was sitting behind a skinny steering wheel, my hand on a rumbling floor stick shift and then gunning a powerful engine.

My dad taught me how to drive when I was 13 because I begged him constantly about wanting to learn how to drive. I remember bucking down the street in our old Ford, trying to ease the clutch while praying I wouldn’t hit any of the garbage cans on the side of the road.

When we’d take long road trips, I sat in the front seat where my dad dispensed driving tips about how to judge distances, how to keep a steady speed and how to safely pass another vehicle. 

On the day I turned 15, the legal age to drive back then in Louisiana, I was the first one in line at the driver’s license bureau and elated when I walked out with my license.

My parents let me have my dad’s beat-up Pontiac Executive, and I drove everywhere, including to school every day. The highlight of my early driving days was when I learned to master the big curve near the governor’s mansion on Interstate 110 without tapping my brakes.

Everything was going well until three friends and I were returning from a high school marching camp at LSU. A week in the Louisiana summer sun had practically melted us, but we’d survived and were glad to be off our feet, heading home in the Pontiac.

I still wasn’t good at reading freeway signs, and instead of taking the exit to north Baton Rouge, I accidentally took the exit for the old Mississippi River Bridge, the one obstacle I said I’d never tackle.

Built in the 1940s, the structure was steep with narrow lanes and no shoulder. For someone who’d never driven over a bridge, the prospect of driving over the overpass was terrifying.

My friends were screaming as we headed for the old bridge, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I gripped the steering wheel, my heart pounding, and we slowly ascended the monster.

I held my breath going up and exhaled at the top. But then I realized – not only did I have to go over the bridge, I had to come right back over it to get back on the right road.

Somehow we managed to do both safely, and I’ve avoided that bridge for years. I’d sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour on the new bridge just to avoid having to drive on those narrow lanes way above the Mississippi River.

Recently, I needed to drive over the old bridge to go to my sister’s house. Approaching the bridge, I tried to calm my beating heart by telling myself that terrifying trip was over 40 years ago, and I’ve driven over hundreds of bridges since that hot summer.

Approaching the giant orange monster, my stomach tightened up and I gripped the steering wheel.

Just like I did so many years ago, I held my breath on the way up and breathed a sigh of relief and triumph when I crossed over into West Baton Rouge Parish.

Conquering fears isn’t easy. Sometimes all it takes is holding our breath and taking a step. Or in my case, a trip over the river.

 This column originally appeared in The Fort Bend Herald.