Glassybaby

Lung cancer.  That will stop a conversation.  More than any of the frightening medical diagnoses, that one seems extra ominous.  Someone utters the words “lung cancer” and I think of devastating, almost insurmountable odds.

At the age of 32, that’s what Lee Rhodes was told when she learned that her worrisome symptoms were actually a rare form of lung cancer.  She was a young mother deep in the thick of raising three small children.  This was not supposed to happen, not how life spooled out. 

She went on to endure uncertainly, surgery and rounds of chemo, and there were clearly moments when she questioned whether or not she would live to watch her babies grow.  Stress and fear and sadness, those are all immeasurable barriers to the healing process and Lee Rhodes had many important reasons to live.

One day, searching for a simple way to still the “what ifs” that reverberated around her brain in a mental sound track, she spontaneously dropped a tea light in a glass cup that her husband had created in a glass blowing class.  Sometimes the birth of life’s great ideas begins as simply and as spontaneously as that.

 

 

That one isolated act was a fulcrum moment for Rhodes.  As she watched the color of the glass glow and reflect the warmth of the flame, she felt her world slow for a moment.  She was infused with a sudden sense of deep down calm.  The simple candle in the colored glass settled her soul in a way that none of the other centering therapies had been able to do up to that point in her journey.

“In my mind, that candle in the glass contributed to my healing.  It made me step back, relax and take a deep breath,” Rhodes remembers.

From that day forward, Lee Rhodes filled her home with a series of the colorful glass vessels and they continued to inspire her.  At first, Lee remembers that people lit them for her, as a way to instill hope.  In time, as she began to recover, she began to light them not just for herself, but also for others.

And when Rhodes went on not only to survive, but to kick cancer’s butt, the disease had given her a mission to try to help other people fighting in what she calls “the battlefields of chemotherapy rooms.”  Gradually, she began to share her talisman for calm, giving the colorful votive holders away to people who were suffering.  As she watched the popularity of the holders grow along with demand, she began selling them out of her garage.

 

In 2001 Rhodes started Glassybaby, with the goal of raising money to help cancer patients ease the journey of treatment by covering unreimbursed healthcare costs.  These unmet needs range from something as simple as transportation to chemo or babysitting money while a patient goes to the doctor, to the more weighty costs of medical treatment itself.

Today, Glassybaby produces beautiful, colorful hand blown glass vessels in more than 400 colors.  The craftsman are all located in the United States and part of the beauty of their creations is the subtle variation in shape, size and hue, a testament to the artisanal quality of the finished product.  Each vessel is comprised of three layers of glass and requires four glass blowers to produce, hence their ethereal glowing qualities.

Glassybabys come in names as varied as the products themselves like Wet Dog, Frog Hunting, Wingman and Crème Brule.  “They are,” says Rhodes, “individual pieces of art at each table.”

The business currently has stores in Seattle, her home base, and is opening in San Francisco and New York, with more cities to come.  Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was so enthralled with the Glassybaby product and mission that he persuaded Rhodes to sell him 20% of the company.

There are 70 plus glass blowers producing roughly 500 votives a day, which has translated into the company being able to donate more than $1.4 million to date to charities that help cancer patients with costs not covered by health insurance.   The company’s ultimate goal is to give away $1 million a year.

Like Rhodes, many of the people who work at Glassybaby have been touched by cancer in some way. And it’s that passion and commitment to the cause that remains one of the reasons the company has continued to grow at a steady rate.

“Everyone in a waiting room is fighting the same enemy.  But it’s very profound when you meet people who literally don’t have the money for the bus fare to get them to chemo,” she says.  And it’s that part of the journey she is determined to ease through the sale of her beautiful glass vessels.

I first learned about Glassybaby when a friend gave me a gorgeous purple candleholder as a gift.  For months it sat in my office, glowing.  And then another friend found a lump in her breast. 

In the spirit of Lee Rhodes, I brought my Glassybaby to her home one day and lit a votive.  Art is meant to be shared, not sequestered.  And my friend (who is thankfully now cancer free) told me that she would light it during low moments.  The glow reminded her that she was connected to a tribe of determined people who were fighters, each tending their own embers of hope.  And she was a fighter too.

This month, I choose Lee Rhodes as my person of inspiration.  She took her own experience and her story and created something that could light the way for others yet to come.  So it seems especially relevant, during breast cancer awareness month, to shine a light back on Lee and her beautiful, multi-colored mini beacons of hope.

You can learn more or purchase your own Glassybaby creation at  www.glassybaby.com.

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Summer Bribes

When I joined my DNA with my husband's, there were many unanswered questions. Would my recessive blonde genes triumph over his green eyes and dark hair?  Would our kids inherit his more mathematical and logical mind?  Would his laid back attitude trump my more tightly wired list-making one?  No matter. Those were all things we had little or no control over.

But I did feel certain of one thing:  our kids would be avid readers.

When I think back to my childhood, and the one my husband describes, we both loved to disappear into a world of books.  Reading took us to new places, requiring only imagination to color in the lines or draw the landscape.  

I fell just a little bit more in love with Bob when he first described his boyhood self to me as a kid “buried in a book.”  That’s when I knew, among other things, that he was the man for me.  Naturally, we would create a little cache of eager beaver readers.  Forget nature—that part was all about nurture, right?

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Oh, hang on a tick, no one in my household is illiterate, no one is using rope for a belt or wears cardboard shoes.  All four of my kids have a decent grasp on current events.  But much to my great sorrow, they don’t read for pleasure.  So if you are one of the lucky people whose progeny devour books like Halloween fun-size candy bars, you can stop reading now.   We need not feel the sting of your smugness.

I got through July and I put my foot down. Summer was half over! The tide had to turn.  I announced to my 13 year olds that they would read or lose their allowance.  Read beyond their summer reading assignments and, well, there would be a new article of clothing in it for them.

Admitting this two-pronged “punitive plus bribery” approach to making my kids read, feels a little like standing up in an AA meeting and announcing that I’m an alcoholic.

But I figure, if I out myself, maybe some of the rest of you won’t be so hard on yourselves.  You’ll abandon the unproductive search for where you failed, after years of modeling solid recreational reading habits, countless bedtime stories and dedicated visits to your public library. It’s a jungle out there in the world of modern childhood— the concept of reading for fun today feels more like being the Victorian bathing costume in the Miss America Bikini Contest--- its just not as sexy as its technologically entertaining competitors.

Bribing kids to read?  Horrors, say the ghosts of child librarians past.  I wasn’t beneath using Skittles as a reward for potty training.  Is this really any different?  Isn’t regular reading as essential as proper pooping if you’re going to thrive in this world? 

As an author I have the pleasure of knowing and working with some wonderful people in the book business. So I canvassed a few industry folks and came up with a stack of current YA books.  I’m no dummy.  I’m not going to try to force-feed Jane Austen right now.  I chose the Harry Potter-style lane. Every crack addict knows you need to begin with a gateway drug.

“All Our Pretty Songs” by Sarah McCarry was first up, a new YA summer entry that got great reviews.  My girls looked over the cover, their summer freckles furrowing as they read the flap; Cool Hand Lukes, those two, careful not to display too much overt enthusiasm.  An eyebrow raised in interest.  The lure and hook snagged in the fish’s mouth.  Success, I thought to myself, displaying my poker face.

I gathered titles like “Social Code,” “Fan Girl” and “Prep School Confidential.”  These books also had wonderful cover art to sweeten the offering, a short skirt here, a mysterious kissy face there.  Hah! Take that you addictive TV series, you seductively shot  “Gossip Girl” and fake blood strewn “Vampire Diaries” episodes! Yes, yes, shame on me.  I do permit them to watch these shows, but I’m what you call an “almost-everything-in-moderation” kind of mother.  Current pop culture has its own important place in adolescence. 

 

The books arrived.  And so they read.

Here we are now, in the early days of August.  Just before lights out, the three of us tuck in, we open our books, stretch out our legs on the bed, the moths beat against the screens in the hushed dark outside. There’s a bullfrog or two, singing baritone with all this recent rain.  OK, OK, so I over-dramatized the scene a little, it does feel sorta triumphant.  And it’s blissfully quiet inside, no vampire victims are screaming on TV, no Park Avenue prepsters are tossing their highlighted manes and huffing away on their Tory Burches.

There is only the flickering of the theater of our minds.  Only the sound of we three drawing breath.  We are reading.  Pure happiness.

Perhaps we will work our way to iconic titles like “The Wind in the Willows,” (although that window has probably passed) “Little Women,”  “The Hobbit” or any of the endless classics that could enrich their sponge-like minds.  Or not.  Is it important that my girls have read Thackeray or can recite sonnets of William Wordsworth or stanzas from William Shakespeare?  Or do we march on now, in the full glare of the information age, with a morphing view of what it means to be well read and well educated?  Quotes and poems and answers lie but a keystroke or two away now on Google.  Do studying Latin and Greek make one especially erudite?  Or obsolete?  What is the future of the “great books” and how will that definition change through the generations?  Who is writing the great books of our time?

Sigh.  All these questions!  I just don’t know.  What I do know is that my girls are reading.  They are marinating in the pure pleasure of delving into a real, live, paper paged book.  And yes, they will redeem their promised reward.  Fair is fair.  A deal is a deal.  They’ll pick a cute top or a skirt at Target as we head out of the mountains after Labor Day and begin to brace for the return of school, chauffeuring and schedules.

 

But here is the thing that gives me hope.  It’s the reminder that all of that foundation laying, all of that work we did as parents in the reading department, lurks somewhere inside like the herpes virus, just waiting to flare up.

 

My 19 year old asked me for book recommendations this summer—she actually asked ME!  And please do NOT tell her I’m writing this.  Aware that I could scare her off by lending her my more literary faves, I quickly pulled down choices like Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” and “Gone Girl.”  I slipped in “The Light Between Oceans,” and that clever Sloan Crosleys “I Was Told There’d Be Cake.”  Finally, I thought I’d dazzle her with Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” just to prove my cool factor is intact.  I must have smiled all the way to bed that night.

 

So take hope ye mother’s of children connected to their cell phones and computers.  Don’t despair you parents of instagrammers and Facebook friends.  I share this as a tale of courage that somewhere, around the bend, you might just witness the payback, all those years after the initial investment.

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Knocked Out: But A Christmas Baby Keeps on Singing

by Guest-Nancy McLoughlin

My son Collin McLoughlin was born on Christmas Day, which was not at all my plan.  There is nothing like that holiday birthday to ensure that your child doesn’t become a diva. But as the very first grandchild in our family, there was much fanfare leading up to the event. The Christmas holiday that year dovetailed with the arrival of my two sisters, who did a lot of “what does it feel like?” during the labor.

Although I failed, I spent life determined to spare any offspring the doom of a December birthday. My own is December22nd. I know what it means. All my own childhood parties were combined and shared with sister’s Lee and Megan in their birth month of May. When the grass is green, no one is as exhausted, strapped for cash or busy. It was like being a birthday foster child. No one really took it seriously and sometimes people forgot to bring the third gift, because honestly, why bother?

But having a December birthday builds character. I see that now. It breeds fighters and lowers expectations about what the world owes. It is one more secret weapon for life’s journey. And so when our Christmas baby Collin landed a slot on the current Season 3 of “The Voice,” NBC’s #1 rated show, it was cause for celebration among us.  The challenge brought the old feeling a child has when Santa Claus just might be coming.

Collin, Lee & Nan

After 100,000 singers tried out, Collin made it through two NY City auditions and then on to a pre-audition in California before an invitation to the blind auditions in L.A. There were lots of hurdles to jump through. Ultimately he made it on, and selected Adam Levine as his coach. Later he was stolen by Blake Sheldon before exiting the show.

The program format includes a taped series of episodes, (two thirds of the season) followed by the live portion which will end sometime right before Christmas. In other words, it is a LONG time. For months during the tapings I waved away discussion about “what’s to come” for my son Collin.

Fort Knox I am not known to be and it was challenging to keep the secret, for the better part of a year. My two sisters, proved a trusting place to park such valuable information. They were my vault and by confiding in them, I could still adhere to the “only family can know” interpretation of the rulebook.

During the tapings in L.A., we understood that we might be monitored, even taped at all times. With no way to confirm when and even if big brother was listening, my sisters and I developed a simple sister code phrase that only we could break. We were gone for nail biting weeks at a time, and the sisters were eager for updates on Collins progress after each challenge. We settled on our own phrase, equivalent to a “thumbs up, he made it to another round.” It hails from a time in our history, an era of elephant bell bottoms and Bonnie Bell lip smackers.

A neighborhood baseball game went sour when the batter drove a hit right down the line and it slammed into my younger sister Meg’s forehead. The term traumatic brain injury hadn’t yet been invented and neither had the MRI. But the word concussion had.

The pediatrician instructed my parents to wake Meg up at intervals during the night and ask a pre-arranged question to which she was to deliver the correct pre-arranged answer. If she seemed confused and did not recall the phrase, then the family Buick Skylark was going in gear to the hospital for observation.

For our secret sister Voice updates, we used the same phrase from Meg’s concussion night. My nerves were fraying from several nine hour audition marathons and a west coast time difference, but I dialed the phone and uttered the code into the voice mailboxes of the sisters. After that it was their problem to keep the secret as they went about life in a small summer town where everybody knows everything.

Sister Lee and Collin forged a bond very early in his life because he belonged to all of us in the way that very first children do.  I am glad we named him Collin, avoiding the advice of some who thought Christmas Day was a great naming opportunity for “Nicholas,” or “Jesus” or “Noel.”  Collin was a chip off the old aunt block and had terrible colic, (like Lee did). It was so intense, Lee was the only one we could trust to babysit without beating him, or overdosing him with cold medicine as one baby nurse did.

Blood curdling screams and infant barf were her reward for harrowing hours that felt like a gift for us to safely run away from. Surely it curtailed Lee’s initial desire to rush in and start a family of her own, especially since our mother always lamented how horribly colicky she was as well. Thanks to Bob’s gene pool, none of her kids suffered with it. Just mine.

At Lee and Bobs wedding Collin wore his very first suit, making a celebrity appearance as only the first grand-baby can. It was a large scale social event at which Collin showed early promise as a performer. We had to leave early, rushing off before the bouquet was thrown, exhausted and disheartened after Collin refused to quiet down. At the time we could have cared less if his commotion would someday morph into a healthy set of vocal pipes. We were barely getting through.

Collin, Nan & Lee

The day after Hurricane Sandy hit our home, we huddled in darkness hoping only for a glimpse of that evening’s “Voice episode. The town was without power or cable TV but the universe eased up enough to comply with a mother’s desire to witness a son (for the last time) on his network T.V. journey.

Trapped by fallen trees we snuggled under blankets. With an hour to spare, my husband drained the last of our gasoline into the portable generator and discovered a way to rig our ancient satellite box to receive just one TV channel, (and in some quirk of electronics, it would have to be the last one viewed before the power was lost)!

NBC was what we wanted and that was what we had. After a full day of jaw dropping storm coverage, Brian Williams took a break from his extended news report and turned the airwaves over to the singers. Despite rain and wind and the stuff that makes disaster on TV hard to turn away from, NBC made a local programming decision to suspend the sadness for a showing of that evening’s episode of The Voice. We all knew what was going to happen for Collin but there is a huge difference between “knowing” and “seeing.”

Collin watched his Knock out round live (no one has a preview of how things are edited) and made a graceful exit from the competition after Michaela Paige a feisty high school rocker with a pink rooster comb was designated the winner of their elimination round. Their battle was like pitting Kermit the frog against a popular and trendy Pokeman character. They are both so different.

Despite the sputtering generator and spotty service, Collin fought to send the obligatory “thank you” twitter to his fans, timed appropriately and coordinated by the show along with his exit. ”Darn, it isn’t going through,” he said concerned it might appear that silence indicated a case of poor sportsmanship rather than storm constraints.

Collin Mcloughlin at The Voice

The Voice is not over for our family. Sequestered, gagged, and gossip-neutralized for months after the taped shows, we can now sing to the rooftops because anything can happen in the live shows and we have no more secrets to share.

What a wonderful experience it has been, a fantastic way to tap into America’s continued fascination with its newest top sport. The McLoughlin family has by no means lost its Voice. We have lots of new friends left to root for in the competition. I can still join in on the e-mails of other cluck clucking moms on the show, some of who have singers that are finished and others who still have some distance left to run, and Collin is headed back to L.A. to spend some time rooting for his friend at the end of the Voice from backstage.

On behalf of every mother that sat through years of school shows or singing pageants that made their ears bleed, I say “thank you” to shows like the Voice who give the aspiring musician a way to be heard. It does take a village. And “thank you” to a home town, and to an extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and sisters who embraced an opportunity to cheer from the sidelines, making every play feel like a wonderful holiday celebration.

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