All It Takes Is A Little Love

A while back I spoke of taking a rather frightening fall in my bathroom and hitting my head so hard on the bathtub that it sounded like the crack of a baseball hat sending a ball into the air. I went to bed that night but checked with my doctor the following morning because my head hurt and I had a number of unusual aches in multiple areas of my body. He advised me to visit the Methodist Hospital Emergency Center near where I live so I followed his advice and headed that way. 

The parking lot was already filled with cars so that did not bode well in terms of wait time, but I had my phone to keep me entertained for however long I would be there. There were a couple of people ahead of me waiting to check in, including a young man who had brought his mother whose blood pressure was quite high. He was quite concerned that she was having trouble breathing. I

t took quite a bit of time for him to provide proof that he would be able to pay for the visit so I sat patiently waiting for my turn to get on the list of anxious souls waiting to be seen. All the while I found myself observing the people who were in the big room with me. I knew from my daughter who once worked as a nurse in a downtown Chicago hospital  and from watching “The Pitt” that people are given access to care not in the order in which they arrive, but in the seriousness of their condition. 

It did not surprise me that they took the lady who was struggling to breathe before any of the people who had already been there. What did make me wonder was how quick my registration process was compared to the poor soul who had been just in front of me. I did not have to do much of anything to get my name placed in line. 

I went back to the chair where I had been waiting and only a few minutes passed before I was ushered into the inner sanctum of the place. All of the beds were filled but I was able to walk on my own and showing no signs of inability to navigate so I ended up in a hallway also filled with people. We at least had a modicum of privacy with screens blocking our view of each other. When medical people came to talk to us they spoke in soft voices so that nobody would hear our personal information. It was a nice quiet place to be so I settled into the long wait that would consume most of my day by playing my word games and scrolling through Substack and Facebook to find out what was happening in the outside world. 

The care and attention that I received was outstanding. The staff was apologetic for the long wait but I could see with my own eyes how many people they were attempting to serve. In between this experience and the multiple times of late that I have been in emergency rooms with my father-in-law I understand the volume of cases that medical staffs must deal with from one hour to the next on any given day. How they maintain their calm and composure is beyond me. Theirs is a world of suffering and sometimes even angry souls hoping to find the solace that they need in moments that can be frightening. 

The hours ticked by before I finally had CT scans of most the bony areas on the right side of my body that had felt the hard blows of the tile floor and bathtub. The tech who took the pictures was so sweet and pleasant even as she explained that it might take a few hours or for the images to be read and interpreted. So back I went to my chair where a nurse periodically took my vitals and offered me pain medication for my headache. All the while I listened to the sounds of humanity that echoed through the building. 

I heard the young pregnant girl in the nook that was next to me speaking with concern about how her baby was doing. I caught the coughs and wheezes of an asthmatic child whose lungs needed to be cleared. I watched the quick reaction of the staff to a man whose heart was acting in an erratic manner. I listened to the moans of people in pain. Somehow I was in a kind of microcosm of the world with people of different races and cultures and economic status all waiting like me to hear the truth about what if anything was wrong with them. Keeping us all feeling important were nurses and doctors and technicians and even people cleaning the area who behaved with a calm confidence even as they must have been feeling exhausted from the volume of folks seeking care.

I ended up being mostly okay. There were no fractures on any of my bones or in my skull. There were no signs of blood clots that might break loose and head for my brain or heart. I only had the usual curvature of my spine, the arthritis of my hip and a small bulge in my back, all of which I was already treating with exercise and a pending knee replacement. They also found that I had a urinary tract infection. I left with a prescription for the infection and for some extra strength Tylenol for my soreness. When I checked to see what I owed I was waved through and told that everything was fine. 

I thought about the younger people who had been there. I worried about the woman having trouble breathing who was sent away rather quickly. I wondered what would happen with the pregnant woman and if she and her baby would be okay. I thought of the worried looks of those whose insurance was obviously not as good as mine who handed over credit cards before being cleared to leave. I realized how dedicated our healthcare professionals are but how broken the system that they must work in actually is. I saw that my good fortune is not universal and somehow that felt very unfair. 

The nurse had told me how strong I appeared to be. For most of my life that has been quiet true. It is the reason that my mother never had to take me to see a doctor. I grew up without annual checkups and received my vaccinations from a free clinic. My mother was a widow with little or no income and certainly no health insurance until much later in her life. Luckily me and my youngest brother rarely needed any kind of medical attention. The funds for such things were mostly reserved for my middle brother who suffered with asthma and often became as sick as the child that I heard in the emergency center. 

I suspect that even today there are many Americans who rarely partake of visits to doctors unless they become seriously ill. They cannot afford the cost of healthcare even when they carry insurance. The visits that only cost me twenty dollars will often amount to hundreds or even thousands of dollars for younger people who are already paying outlandish amounts for health insurance that they use only in serious emergency situations. I doubt that many of them would have the luxury of just checking to determine how dangerous a hard blow to the head would be. 

I don’t take my good fortune for granted nor do I believe that I should be in the only segment of our society that is able to keep up with the changing nature of my health. Good medical care should be a given in a nation as rich as ours. The fact that a significant percent of the population and lawmakers think that it does not matter if some people do not have the resources to get the care they need is a travesty. Too many of the folks in the same place that I was probably went into debt simply because they became sick. We need to fix this problem for good and for all!

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was so tiny that her mother had to make all of her clothes because there were no sizes that fit her thin body. When she got married she had few choices of a dress because most of them were too large. All the while she enjoyed being able to eat anything she wanted, cinnamon rolls, ice cream, pizza, Tex/Mex food. It seemed as though she would be forever thin. Even giving birth to two babies had almost no effect on her girth. She felt so lucky not to have to worry about adding extra pounds just by looking at food and so it went until she was a middle aged woman. 

Suddenly the pounds kept packing on to her midriff. She tried Weight Watchers and lots of exercise and eating small amounts while avoiding anything sweet or buttery. No matter what she did the number on her scale kept growing larger and she felt so discouraged. “How could this happen?” she wondered. 

She threw away all of the cookies in her home and started cooking fish and low carb low fat foods. She kept exercising and drinking glass after glass of water. She felt good. Her blood pressure was excellent and she even reached a plateau. She stopped gaining weight but losing even a pound eluded her. She thought of how the same thing had happened to he rmother as she aged and wondered if she had some gene designed to fatten her up to protect her bones or just to make her more humble about her appearance. 

Suddenly people who had once had problems with weight were getting surgeries to prevent them from eating too much. They injected themselves with medication that helped them to lose the constant urge to eat. They slimmed down and looked so lovely making her feel like a house. It just did not feel right and so she panicked and asked her doctor if something was wrong with her. 

He laughed and told her that she was just fine and need not obsess over something that often happens as we age. He insisted that it was good that she was exercising and watching what she ate but he told her not to worry or constantly count the numbers that show up on the scale.

Then someone she knew had a fall. He was already underweight and the crash onto a tile floor broke his hand, his nose and his ribs. His body threatened to shut down with one serious problem after another. There were times when he wondered if he was going to die. Happily he made it but he had become so frail that he could not walk nor was he able to feed himself to eat. He lost so much weight that he was skin and bones and he became very sick because he was starving even as he had not appetite. 

This made the girl realize that it was okay to have a full figure as long as everything else was functioning well in her body. Perhaps she was exactly where she was meant to be. Most people did not think of her as being chubby, just pleasingly padded in a fuller figure than she had ever known. She saw how silly she had been to worry and to compare herself to others who were finally enjoying the kind of figures that had been hers without effort. 

The girl kept to her healthy habits. When It was time for her to have some surgery the doctors and nurses boasted that she was a wonderful candidate because she was in such good shape. She could hardly believe her ears and so she found happiness in being herself and appreciating her good health.

There are so many among us like that girl who become dissatisfied with their body images. They dwell on all of the flaws that only they can see. They measure their worth by how low the numbers on their scales are. They take all the fun out of their lives by shaming themselves when they have nothing to shame. They have seen society remarking about famous women who have added a pound or two whispering that they are no longer beautiful. As a whole we put too much value on numbers and not so much in the total package of how people are. We make people so anxious that they become willing to waste away with eating disorders. We forget that beauty comes in many sizes and is mostly a product of the heart.

The girl is content now. She eats healthy food and even a bit of ice cream now and then. She devotes herself to exercise not to bring down the numbers but mostly to keep her body in good condition. A little bit of tummy does not bother her anymore. She’s okay just as she is. Life is good. 

I look at the world and I see two very different versions of life in 2026. The news is filled with chilling stories that point to our inability to agree on how things should be done let alone just get along. There is a great division of beliefs regarding what our democratic republic should be. At the same time when I sit quietly with a single individual I find that we have more in common than the nightly news would let us believe. In truth most of us just want to live and let live but that is not a story that is exciting enough for those intent on changing the world to fit their dreams of power.

From the beginning of time there have been people who wanted to foist their views about life on everyone else. Great evils have been done in the name of progress and glory. There always seems to be someone or some group that manages to cover their bad intentions with promises of better lives for everyone else. We see that in today’s world more clearly than ever and yet most of us have little idea what we should do to curb the injustices that seem to grow ever more rampant. In fact, we can’t seem to agree on who or what is unjust, so we spend a great deal of time quibbling with each other rather than truly solving our real problems. 

Most of us spend our days surviving from one moment to the next. We work when we are young and hopefully set aside enough of a nest egg to live out our senior years with quiet dignity. We celebrate our families and our circle of friends that grows smaller and smaller as we age and watch people leave this earth. We try to prioritize our thoughts and actions to make our lives as uncomplicated and comfortable as possible. That takes time and effort that we don’t really want to spend on analyzing the political landscape. Instead of doing the research ourselves we turn to sources that we trust to provide us with truth and rarely question even the most ridiculous accounts of what is reality. 

I admit to once tuning in regularly to Fox News. It seemed to have a presence everywhere and for a time I naively believed that it simply offered me a slightly different point of view than ABC, CBS, NBC or PBS. My time as a debater taught me to consider different points of view but it also taught me to verify information. It does not take long to do so and the truth is often counter to the ways in which information is presented. Any of us can become victims of propaganda when we only listen to the one source that feels comfortable and aligned with our ways of thinking. We don’t have time to gather truth by doing our own investigations or questioning the validity of information, so we just go along with other people’s points of view. 

We humans are very complex. Our worldviews are shaped by every experience we have ever had. Our values come from our experiences and our needs. As we live through years and then decades we meet new people and either enjoy or endure new adventures. All of these things mold us and create a foundation for our beliefs and how we see others. We often cling so tightly to a certain mindset that we are unwilling to accept that there may be more than one way of living that we may not understand but should certainly allow. 

We all have dreams and fears and questions about our individual places and values in the universe. We often ask “what’s it all about?” For some structure and strict rules are comforting. For others the freedom to be different, to test the waters, to question the mundane is the only way to live. It can be frightening for some among us to hear someone describing the kind of life in which everyone has equal value and has the freedom to be themselves.

It is difficult for humans to balance their dreams with their fears. We are all too aware that not everyone is open, truthful, kind and  giving. We have been burned by bullies, liars and thieves. It is easy to be so wary of getting hurt that we begin to see danger where there is none. We are kind souls who keep loaded guns just in case we may need them to defend ourselves. We are deeply spiritual and religious but we vote for individuals who seem to not fully care for all of the people, especially those not like them. We walk around with our prejudices without even knowing that we have them. 

I have learned to be wary of power seekers who seem more inclined to line their pockets than to truly give of themselves to all of society. I cringe at anyone who bullies to get things done. I question the validity of people who constantly boast about themselves while belittling others. I find that the most impressive people are quiet rather than loud. Nonetheless, I understand that others would disagree with me and insist that we need strongmen to guide us not those who appear to be naive and unaware of how to lead. Still I simply cannot condone the actions of anyone who continually hurts others.

I do understand how different each of us is. I have mentored teachers who took off from ground zero and never needed any assistance to be successful and others who required much time and patience to learn how to do their jobs well. There were those who were able to walk cold into a classroom and dazzle the students with incredible lessons and those who needed step by step instructions and scripts. I have sat in meetings where half of the people wanted to throw the book at a recalcitrant student and the other half insisted that there were better ways of  altering bad behaviors. 

There is much talk about sitting down with one another to find common ground. I think the one on one among friends has much possibility but I do not believe the many of our world leaders would be willing to change. In particular our current president in the United States never responds to criticism nor does he ever admit that he might have been wrong. He seems to be incapable of working for all of the people, especially those whose viewpoints are so different from his own. It is therein that we have a problem as a nation. We no longer have three independent branches of government but most decisions are being made by one authoritarian who threatens anyone who dares to challenge him. 

So this is the conundrum that I face. I can listen all day long to people who think that our president is a great man and I might even understand why they believe it is so, but they generally are unwilling to learn why I fear for my country when I see what he is doing. We can air our differences but never seem to find common ground. I leave such discussions filled with questions and frustrations. I find myself wondering why we are so terribly divided and wonder if there is ever a way to get beyond the impasse that is stifling our democracy. 

I believe there is a way to get along. There are things that we can do that provide freedom and opportunity to all. It begins without an insistence that all three hundred million of us have to be clones of one belief system. We must return to ways that honor all of the personal beliefs regarding religion, sexuality and other areas of life that are really none of our business. Instead we need to concentrate on providing for one another and making certain that everyone has a chance to get healthcare, have enough food to thrive, enjoy education and achieve personal dreams. We are a land of great wealth and industry. It’s time that we concentrate on using that for the good of all. We are a vast community of many cultures and our duty is to honor each other by insisting that those who lead us will never use their power to hurt any of us. 

I suppose that I have always wanted to be a writer. Even as a child I created little stories and then books and a neighborhood newspaper. All of it was recorded by hand with my own illustrations. None of it went beyond the boundaries of the street where I lived. Still, I fancied myself as an author who would one day be famous for her creativity and wit. 

Sadly none of that came to be, not even in high school when the teacher that I had for all four years challenged us to write a theme every single week. I would sweat bullets over the prompt until it was do or die on Sunday evenings. Try as I may I never once had the honor of my teacher reading my work to the rest of the class. As I listened to the offerings of my classmates I wondered where they got their incredible ideas and how I might one day create something worthy of praise. 

I wrote a great deal of prose in college and managed to earn high grades on my papers but I wanted to do more than write reviews or compile facts in a persuasive argument. It was not until I was in my senior year that my work began to receive some notice and I even received several invitations to continue my education in the art of writing through a program that was new to my university. Since I needed to get cracking with my career to earn some money I passed on that idea and settled into the life of a teacher. Ironically I spent all of my years teaching mathematics because the first principal who hired me did not need my English major but was taken by my minor in math. 

Since retiring I ply my mediocre talent with blogs that I compose five days a week. I seem to hit a bullseye of delight now and again but I have never been discovered as the next great journalist or story teller even as I dream of such a thing happening. I suppose that I get enough joy out of writing to offset the fact that I mostly seem to be doing it for myself. 

Just when I think that my skills are improving I read a daily blurb from someone like Anne Lamott and I suddenly realize that there is a vast difference between an amateur and someone who truly has a gift. Anne is one of those incredible authors who strings words together in such a way that they light up the page like a fireworks show. I am in awe each and every time that I enjoy the way that she is able to take an ordinary topic and make it feel like one of the most extraordinary things that I have ever read. 

Some writers like Stephen King have such a facility with words that even a short political dig comes across as memorable and brilliant. I suspect that there is not a class that can teach such skills. There has to be some kind of innate talent that begins on the day of birth when they begin observing the world around them. Their words are magical in their ability to bring ideas to life.

My parents created an almost spiritual reverence for genius in me that wraps me in a kind of elation when I encounter a wordsmith. My worship and envy of them almost always coincides with wonder of how they became as good at delivering ideas as they are. I suppose it’s the same kind of admiration that a wannabe athlete experiences watching Michael Jordan or Caitlyn Clark. 

I’ll keep reading the best of the best and pecking on the keys of my laptop in a quest to one day write something so wonderful that anyone who reads it will feel exactly the way I was hoping to coax them to be. I want to hit the kind of high note that nobody ever forgets. I know its in me somewhere if only for that one great moment. 

I laugh as I reveal my inner feelings because there was a day when one of my students just knew that he was destined to be the next basketball great. He was well under six feet tall and mostly sat on the bench during the games that his mediocre team played. I did not want to murder his dream because I truly understand how hurtful such truth can be. Instead I encouraged him to develop as many of his talents as possible so that if the career as a basketball star did not work out he would still have a backup plan like I did with my teaching. He tried several pathways but eventually found his own kind of joy in computer work. Now he simply enjoys a quick game of basketball with his buddies after work. I suppose this is what I did with my own career, so I wonder if he still dreams of dunking the winning ball in a major game as I do in wondering if my writing will ever be known beyond the limits of my tiny group of readers. I suppose that everyone sometimes imagines what it would be like to rise above the mundane. 

In the long ago before I had even started school at the age of five I had a friend named Merrily. She was a beautiful child who always wore her dark brown hair in braids that hung down over her shoulders. I so enjoyed playing with her, but she did not live full time on our street. Her parents were divorced so she only came now and again to visit with her father and his new wife. 

Merrily never spoke of the breakup of her parents and I was too young to ask about such things but it was indeed strange to me. I was never sure how to refer to her father’s wife because Merrily never referred called her “mother” or even her stepmother. Nonetheless Merrily was lots of fun and so I simply enjoyed her company whenever she was available. 

Both Merrily’s father and his wife worked at full time jobs so during the week Merrily was supervised by the family maid who would watch her and care for her needs. That meant that I had to play at her house rather than mine and it was quite different to be in a place that seemed to be picture perfect, quiet and always orderly. My own home was filled with the toddler babbling of my brother Michael and the laughter and songs of my mother who always seemed to be celebrating her delightful mood. 

Merrily’s home was always dark and cool and decorated with exquisite furnishings while mine was filled with sunshine and the usual collection of highchairs and playpens and little toys that belonged to me and my brother. I loved my family and everything about life in our house but sometimes it was fun to be in the elegance of Merrily’s domain.

I was usually a bit wary of dogs back then, especially large ones that seemed to tower over me. I had been introduced to the German Shepherd that belonged to the girlfriend of one of my uncles. All I had to do is walk to the back door and the snarling beast would slam his entire body against the only barrier between him and me. All the while he would growl and bare his teeth as though to warn me that he would devour me if only he had the opportunity. Thus I remember flinching a bit when Merrily first introduced me to her pet who was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Fortunately he was a very gentle and obedient dog who never made any kind of dangerous moves towards me. He only wagged his tail and waited for me to pet him which I truly enjoyed doing. 

My friendship with Merrily was sporadic given her comings and goings but after we had played together a number of times her parents invited me to dinner one evening. I can’t recall what the food was like with the exception of the dessert at the end of the meal. The lady of the house set a single scoop of vanilla ice cream in front of each of us and then performed what seemed to me like a feat of magic. She walked around the table spooning a liquid chocolate concoction onto the confection that turned to a hard surface upon connecting with the cold. It was like an Eskimo Pie in a bowl. Never before had I seen anything like it and to say was impressed would be an understatement.

Before long Merrily’s father and his wife had moved so I was once again trapped in a neighborhood filled with only boys and no girls. It seemed to be my fate everywhere I went. Even my cousins were all boys save for one girl. I somehow got along until we also moved into a neighborhood that was filled with girls my age whom I still know and celebrate to this day. With all my new friends I didn’t think much about Merrily anymore but in my heart I suppose that I would always remember her with her gentle dog, enchanting home, and strange situation with her parents. She would always be the first girl to whom I shared my secrets. 

Life is filled with surprises. After a difficult journey to California and back my parents rented a house in a neighborhood not far from where I had once enjoyed the company of Merrily on Kingsbury Street. They chose the place because it was within walking distance of my father’s best friend, Lloyd Krebs. One day when I accompanied my father on a jaunt to Mr. Kreb’s home we suddenly encountered Merrily and her father walking that sweet pup that I remembered for his well behaved manners. 

I was excited beyond belief and so was Merrily. Her father and mine talked for a bit while we hugged each other and promised to get back together whenever possible. Happily not long afterward I was in her now and again home with the same maid watching over her while keeping everything spotless. We had so much to talk about because we felt so much more grown up now that we were almost ready to complete Grade 3. We thought of ourselves as rather sophisticated young ladies and we planned playdates and sleepovers to last a lifetime. 

Fate intervened once again when my father died suddenly and my mother chose to purchase a house for us in a far away neighborhood. I would never see Merrily again. I realized that I did not even know her last name and I never thought to ask my mother to help me find her. Somehow my life moved along without her and yet even many decades later I think of her and the sweet name that she had that was so perfect for her gentle and happy personality. I find myself wondering what happened to her and hoping that her life has been good. I don’t know if she felt the same way about me but I loved her. She was my very first best friend.