BEEN THERE DONE THAT - YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!

"Been there, done that....!" We've heard it, even said it, many times. Especially the longer we live with all the many more events about which to say it.

But now here's the point. As with most off-hand comments, we can either shrug it off, or we can sink into it a little deeper. If the latter, we will be seduced into analyzing the words in one of two ways. They are either the weary wisdom from an exhausted traveler; or they are an invitation to share from an enlightened explorer.

Share what...? That's like a newlywed asking a mother of five what's it like giving birth? Clearly, there is something to be learned (or unlearned) from her predecessor. And so I was always the sort of kid who was utterly interested in what my aunts, uncles, and especially grandparents had to say. Or, for that matter, whatever they just had to remember. What better way for the child to get a peek into the play of life upon whose stage he was about to enter.

I can't recall everything they said and remembered, but two lessons stand out. Courage and Patience.

Grandpa Bart was an Italian immigrant who came to work the great Copper mines of Arizona at the turn of the 20th C. The local company-town (better known as Hell Town) was a little hillside community of saloons and 6-guns called Morenci. Whenever Gramps talked about it, he shared nothing more than lyrical tales of frontier life. Filling me with colorful images of the Old West. Until, at his wake, I heard the true tales of how hard and brutal his life had been as a migrant miner. In that split second next to his casket I felt his unspoken courage, for he had never wanted to discourage me by painting any of his pain.

Grandma Mary had been born in Illinois, but fell passionately in love with Bart. Then, following her heart, she traveled with him out into these unforgiving hills. What I most remember of her last years are the lazy afternoons holding the strands of yarn from which she would make the balls from which she would sew wondrous linen delights. Always with -- as I learned she did standing by her man -- with astounding patience, quietude, and gentle commitment to the task at hand.

"Been there, done that...?" Next time you hear that, it might best be heard not as a sigh, but as an opportunity. The opportunity for you to ask: So tell me, what was it like.