04 Apr 2026 Defining my best life

Posted at 7:17 PMh in Features by

By Vivian Lawson Hogue

As I approach a birthday, I am thinking of the blunders that endangered my “nine lives.” Before the age of 3, I fell into a fishpond in our yard. Fishponds were the trend in Old Conway at some earlier point. I think I just wanted to see some fish and leaned over too far. I don’t recall who pulled me out, but the event caused my mother to cover the pond with chicken wire.

Two years later, I found a bottle of aspirin and ate several. When mother discovered the bottle and me, she scrambled an egg and made me drink it. I would think drinking a raw egg would be more dangerous than eating an unknown number of aspirins. I was supposed to throw up and didn’t, but at least I had no headaches.

In the second grade, I was included in a “rhythm band” set to perform on the stage of the old “red building.” We wore homemade costumes of red, white and blue crepe paper. My teacher, Mrs. Clark, played piano for the group. As we prepared to practice one day, we all “fine-tuned” our “instruments,” of which mine were cymbals. I was directed to stand behind Mrs. Clark, and that was HER mistake. MY mistake, for a reason known only to a 7-year-old, was thinking it would be entertaining to clang those cymbals behind her head. After doing so, she justifiably gave me the public tongue-lashing of my life.

A few years later, I descended quickly and unexpectedly from a limb of a neighbor’s oak tree. It was probably about 8 feet to planet Earth, enough to knock the breath out of me. I was able to get up but couldn’t breathe well or speak as I ran across the street to our house. In that era, there was no traffic on College Avenue, so my least concern was looking for oncoming cars. I couldn’t get many words out to my mother, but she’d probably seen it before. As she continued canning tomatoes, she said to lie down and I’d be all right. And I was.

My latest bad move was nothing like these but was just as frustrating, embarrassing, etc., etc. It was caused by many distractions and hurried circumstances. It is nearly impossible to retract words, thoughts, images or errors once they are published. Yet here is my pitiful explanation for my blunderful February column. I will preface by saying that before teaching art, my earlier subjects taught were geography and American and world history. I DO KNOW George Washington lived at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson lived at Monticello, but in my haste, I typed the opposite. My son read that column and emailed to say, “I hate to be ‘that guy,’ but … ” and you know the rest. My apologies to George and Thomas.

But there are parts of my life that are not so “blunderous.”

My parents, although from different socioeconomic levels, made two good decisions: dad asked mother to marry him and she said yes. Because they were both teachers, they had our “raisin’” and education foremost in their minds. We five siblings had caring, attentive, nurturing parents. Mother continually worked for her family of seven. She cooked, sewed, washed clothes in a wringer-washer and lugged baskets of heavy, wet garments outside to dry. She did teach me valuable laundry lessons. When washing, add bluing to the white clothing. Also, if I knew what was good for me, I wouldn’t wash anything red with the five guys’ white underwear.

Mother read to me from the McGuffey readers until I eagerly read for myself. She made cloth dolls for me and kept a sharp eye out on her last child and hoped-for girl. That girl, however, climbed trees, had no interest in dolls, and did not inherit her mother’s fabric art talents. 

Mother made my school clothes as well as some Naugahyde seat covers for a brother’s car. She crafted my beautiful, peau de soie pageant dresses with rhinestone embellishments and handmade roses. When I began my teaching career, she created full-sized cloth flags of the major world powers, all of which we hung from the ceiling of my classroom.

My dad was not an affectionate man, but we knew he loved us and held dedication to our welfare and education. He taught me much of his botanical and insect knowledge. For example, I learned that if stick-tight seeds ever attach themselves to your socks, you may as well toss them.

I have, so far, lived what I consider the “best life,” which includes my husband and children, but I also have, so far, lived the life I was given. God knows everyone before they ever appear in their mothers’ wombs. He says He knows how many hairs are in my now-white tresses and surely knows there are fewer now. Bless His heart, I know he meant well, but He had His hands full with this one.

Vivian Lawson Hogue
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