Friday Writings for Randos - The Hard Way

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:

The Hard Way

by Jane Flanders

"All right, do it the hard way." My mother's voice - the tone implies mulishness, snubbed advice, and an easy way, of course, if only I'd listen. " . . .

I myself have lived more than half a century the hard way, and yes, I've learned a thing or two.

The hard way to make fudge is to leave the room while it's boiling. The hard way to stay on a bike is to keep your eyes on the speedometer seeing how fast you can go. The hard way to have children is two at a time. The hard way to cut down a tree is to let your husband do it. There are lots of hard ways to have sex. The hard way to play a musical instrument is to practice. . .

The hard way to find God is to seek him among the dead or the living. The hard way to get children to do something is to tell them to do it.  Another hard way is to ask them. Drinking martinis is the hard way to stay sober. Nothing but hard ways to write poems.

I've watched the baby next door trying to throw the big blue ball. She raises it over her head and heaves but it always goes backwards. She never believes it. Last year her sister was learning to read as if in great pain. The hard way to read is to stop at every letter. Now she has finished Black Beauty, a wrenching tale, and will soon move on to Gone with the Wind. Scarlett will tell her about the hard way. . .

If you ask the baby to say "hard way," she'll try it, looking you straight in the eye. The hard way to talk is to start talking. Falling again and again she learned to walk.
Mother, honestly. When you let them open your rib cage and take out your heart and fix it and put it back, that was the hard way, wasn't it? What else is there?