All It Takes Is A Little Love

I find myself harking back to lessons that I learned from my grandfather long ago. I suppose it might be said that he was first of all a stoic who found ways to accept whatever fate might send his way and then make the best of it. Surely his life was difficult but he seemed to approach it with a dogged determination and a never ending sense of humor.

His was an interesting life that is filled with mystery to this very day. In many ways he had to write his own biography because the adults who should have been helping him shape it were never really there save for a woman that he called his grandmother, a lady named Sarah Reynolds. Born in the nineteenth century, he lost his mother, Marion, at birth. She was a woman whose name he seemed to know who has never turned up on any historical documents. His father, James, immediately panicked upon the death of his young wife and handed my grandfather over to Sarah who does not appear to have any familial links to either James or Marion. 

It is difficult to believe that my grandfather’s existence in the United States does not show up until he married my grandmother in the early nineteen twenties even though he claims eighteen seventy nine as his date of birth. For over thirty years records show nothing about him, not even after his who grandmother died when he was only thirteen or the fact that he had to go before a judge to determine who would be his guardian. 

As it turns out he chose a man named John Little who had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point to guide him into adulthood. My grandfather called this man his uncle but I have never been able to trace his ancestry to that branch of the family. Sadly John Little died rather young while serving in Puerto Rico after a devastating hurricane in 1900. I have reached out to his descendants but none of them seem to recall that he was a guardian for anyone, including my grandfather. 

It saddens me to think of how alone my grandfather must surely must have felt at times and yet he never expressed such feelings. He spoke fondly of living with his grandmother and I suppose that she gave him the kind of love that every child needs to feel strong. He had little to say about his father who seemed to be only peripherally in and out of his life. He expressed great pride in the accomplished uncle that he chose as his guardian. Somehow Grandpa learned to read and write and take care of himself and he often spoke of how he quietly moved from job to job in one state after another. It was not until he met my grandmother in his forties that he found a long lasting relationship that seemed to finally provide him with an anchor.

Still, he and his family struggled greatly during the Great Depression when work was difficult to find. Just as he had always done from the time he was born he found ways to weather the storm and come out whole. There did not seem to be any kind of tragedy that kept him down, not even the death of his only son who was only thirty three at the time. His stoic nature and perennial sense of humor kept him going year after year. Somehow he understood that life can be brutal at times and he weathered great storms without complaint. Only the death of my grandmother seemed to set him way off balance for a time but eventually he found his way again. 

Grandpa spent his last twenty years in a rented room in a house with a widowed woman whom he would eventually call his “daughter.” The two of them created a kind of family life that allowed them to survive the blows of the world. Even together their income was minimal but they did not seem to require as much as people do in these times. They were content to have a roof over their heads and food to keep them alive from day to day. Grandpa thrived in that environment and grew older and well past one hundred years while the woman completed her career and retired to spend her days with the man who had become a father to her. 

Grandpa was a storyteller with a sharp whit and the mind of an historian. He had lived through the Gilded Age, the so called Cleveland Panic, the march of Coxey’s Army and multiple wars. He was living and working in Oklahoma when oil was found on the Osage reservation. He recalled seeing the first city lit by electric lights and celebrating the first flight of an airplane. His sense of what is important in life was tempered by one hundred eight years of living almost anonymously through great upheavals and change. Somehow in spite of the many losses and needs in his life he retained an upbeat philosophy about the world.

I am now slowly but surely moving in the direction of the last chapters of my life. Like my grandfather I enjoy telling my story which has been so much easier than his. At times I have to remind myself not to fall into a trap of despair when the world seems to be so awry. I turn to the wisdom of my grandfather that taught me that nothing in life is static. Good times always come back around. Good people inevitably win the day. Patience and determination keeps us moving forward. Survival can be difficult but humor and optimism will keep us motivated. 

I feel blessed to have listened to my grandfather and his philosophies on life. A man who might have been bitter instead learned how to find the best in the world around him. He believed in the honor of humanity even in the toughest of times. He always insisted that the present is where we find the good old days if only we are willing to look beyond the ugliness to see the brilliant lights of humanity. He lived history and his personal story was a treasure that he gave to me.

I was busy doing what I best like to do yesterday morning. I was teaching math to three delightful children who brought as much light into my life as the relentless August sun has done. It was our first time back to work since the summer break and they were in a joyous mood that kept a smile plastered on my face for hours. It was only when I returned home and opened my laptop that I learned that Dolly Parton had died and I felt a crushing blow in knowing that she had left us here on this earth. 

I did not personally know Dolly Parton but I felt as though I did. I was enchanted by her many talents, her beauty and that smile that came so naturally to her. Like everyone I knew her story of growing up poor but determined to fulfill the dreams that propelled her into becoming one of the beloved entertainers in the world. I enjoyed her presence on this planet because the light that she brought to us was brighter than the most luminous star. 

Some people preach to us but Dolly simply showed us how to live by example. She was a generous soul who embraced people exactly as there were. With Dolly there was no need to put on airs or pretend to be a caricature of some ideal kind of person. She loved people unconditionally. 

Dolly had grown up without much luxury so she understood what life was life for so many Americans who live on the edges of society. She was unimpressed by titles or wealth even though she herself had earned so many. She wanted to make a difference in the world beyond the trappings of success and so she shared the good fortune that she had built with her singing and writing and enormous talent and creativity. She understood how important reading is for the soul and so she launched a program that would put books into the hands of millions of children. 

Dolly Parton was the kind of person that we needed to bridge the gap in our differences and pull us together in a spirit of community. Her smile was genuine and her thoughts were comforting. She didn’t just light up a room, she lit up the entire world. We all saw that she was genuinely kind and understanding. The softness of her lovely southern drawl wrapped us into a warm blanket that felt so soft and so unlike much of the hate that is tossed around far too much in our daily lives. She was comforting and wise.

My Facebook feed filled up with tributes to Dolly Parton from people who knew her intimately to people like me who admired her from afar. She brought us together in a kind of harmony that has been missing of late. She reminded us of what is really important in our lives without scolding us. She was simply herself providing everyone with a beautiful example of how to live a wonderful life. 

I know that we will miss Dolly Parton. She is gone far too soon but I think that we will remember how she showed us the power of giving and loving and accepting without ever preaching. She simply was what she was, the epitome of grace and compassion, a guiding light in a time that too often feels so dark. 

There will be lowered flags and tributes from people in all walks of life. We all know how much we have lost with the death of this diminutive woman with a heart so big that it somehow reverberated to us all. Our sorrow will be on view but I would like to believe that it will prompt us to follow her lead and look outward to serve the needs of all of the people we encounter without judgement or demands. That would be the best way to honor this incredibly wonderful person who united us in a time when we have been encouraged to stay apart. 

Dolly Parton took life by the tail and managed to touch the hearts and souls of the world. May she rest in peace with the angels and saints where she will surely join a heavenly choir. She was one of the best among us and her life will continue to remind us that love is the answer to all of our problems. Like Dolly we can also be the change that we wish to see in the world but first we must give away our smiles.

After my husband and I retired from our longtime careers we began enrolling in classes at the Rice University Glasscock School of Continuing Education. Each of the offerings have all been superb and have lead us to reading more about certain topics and discussing the impact of the historical evolution of the world. 

One of the best series of classes came from a professor of history, Dr. Newell Boyd, who took us through the incredible age of classical Greece, the rise and fall of Russia, and later through the complex story of Great Britain. We were so enthralled by his lectures that we traveled to some of the places in London that are connected to the eventual revolution in the American colonies. 

Dr. Boyd knew how to make the past come alive in a manner that kept us wanting to learn more and more. He had a way of connecting the threads of history to the modern world and making sense of who we are as humans and how we got to this place. He also inserted the human aspect of the past in such a way that we felt a connection with our ancestors as we began to better understand what life must have been like for them. 

Initially the kings of England were totally in charge. Democracy for the common man was in the distant future. Kings decided when to go to war and how to spend the national treasure. They demanded total obedience from their carefully chosen assistants who generally came from a higher class of people than the peasants whose thoughts on how things should be were rarely considered. Those who refused to bow in allegiance were either tossed aside or condemned to death. We’ve all seen movies like Becket that tell the story of kingly friendships that ended with the death of a man willing to stand up for his beliefs that were counter to what the king desired. Dr. Boyd told us so many stories of souls whose final moments on this earth were decided by the king. 

Of course eventually the common citizens of the kingdom demanded more and more rights and the Parliament that was once little more than a group of confederates of the king gained enough power to begin critiquing the actions of a king. Bit by bit they moved toward a more inclusive and democratic form of governing until the present day when the king is a more symbolic than an actual ruler. 

I have been thinking of those lessons from Dr. Boyd a great deal lately and somehow I have come to feel that the United States of America which came from a revolution against the king of England is in a stunningly perverse way moving backwards. By that I mean that our president is grabbing so much power that he does not even defer to the duly elected Congress. He uses loopholes and stalling techniques to insinuate his power over issues that were never intended to be his domain. At the same time the Republicans in Congress bow to his every wish much like those wealthy Englishmen who pandered to kings of old. Even the Supreme Court mostly looks the other way when he ignores the Constitution by starting a war that has no end in sight. All the while his cabinet members fawn over him as though he is the greatest genius to ever sit in the Oval office. 

To me Donald Trump is the very essence of a long ago king. He burnishes the White House with gold adornments and seems to think that it is his right to redesign the place to meet his personal needs. He posts his name on everything and he tears apart agencies that do not go along with him. He seems to have a kingly complex which is more than ironic in this year of what should have been a celebration of our nation’s freedom from a king. 

In just a little over a year and a half he has destroyed so much of what has been good about our nation. Some people compare him to a fascist and there is certainly evidence that he models many of those characteristics but it seems to me that more than anything he wants to be a king. He wants us to bow down to him. He wants to imprison or put to death those who are not totally loyal to him. He is enriching himself and his family while impoverishing the most economically insecure citizens of the nation. He abhors the common folk but showers them with lies and propaganda designed to keep himself and his loyal followers in charge. Nothing that he does has anything to do with enriching our nation. Instead it is all about providing him with immense power, glory and wealth. It is as though he sees himself as a modern day King Henry VIII. 

I have visited the Tower of London. I have viewed the family jewels of King Charles. I have seen the rooms where the unfaithful citizens of old were imprisoned. I have stood on the site where many of them were hanged in front of crowds of common folk who understood the message being sent to them. I have seen the location where an earlier King Charles was hung as Parliament began to use its force in the name of the people. I see that nothing is really new again but rather is an echo from the past. 

I don’t want our current president to hang but I am in favor of limiting his powers the way they were intended to be by those who so earnestly crafted our Constitution. It is long past time for the people of the United States to insist that we return to three independent branches of government and that the tax money that we send to Washington DC be spent for us, not for the whimsy of one man. It is time to set things right and that will only happen if we join together to send people to Washington who will defy the president when he breaks the laws of our nation. If we don’t do that now I fear what our future will be. As it is there is so much that we must repair to make certain that this never happens again.

I am a lifetime supporter of women’s rights. I watched my mother take over the duties of a family during a time when women were struggling to have an even playing field with men. I sometimes wonder how she even managed to do all of the many jobs that were required of her as a single parent. Somehow she worked, ran our household, and earned a college degree all on her own. She kept our home tidy, our bellies filled and our determination to earn our own degrees rolling along while she did every single job related to parenting all by herself. 

I was fortunate to be part of a team when I launched my own career in education. My husband handled half of the tasks related to our home life and I completed the rest. My days were long and as I look back on them I am astonished that I was able to do as much as I did. I had to rise from my slumbers before the sun came over the horizon and make sure that everything my two daughters would need for the day was all set in place before even thinking of leaving home. I was usually at work by seven in the morning which sometimes required a drive of up to an hour just to get there. I was mostly on my feet for eight hours making sure that my students had learned the concepts that I was teaching them. On some days I had afternoon duties or meetings to attend that kept me at the school until five in the evening when I would repeat my one hour drive home. Once there I prepared dinner, helped my girls with their homework, and tidied up the house or did a load of laundry. 

I was fortunate to have a sweet mother-in-law who came to sit with my children until they were old enough to officially become latchkey kids. When they were sick my mother-in-law came to sit with them. I understood my good fortune in having her so that I did not have use my sick leave every time one of them had a fever or upset stomach. Once they were older and reliable enough to be alone I felt that I had won a valuable prize. 

After my daughters left home to attend college I enrolled in an advanced degree program and took advantage of every workshop offered by whatever school district had hired me. The additional education allowed me to advance my career and become a school administrator. I was balancing so many balls in the air that I might have been a circus performer. I was tired all the time but pushed through the whole experience. I never regretted all of the hard work or the balancing act that became my daily routine for decades. 

I knew that I was not alone. There were men and women everywhere working together to raise families and still be successful in their jobs. I understood how difficult it was to be my best in the many roles that I had to perform and knew that others were living parallel lives to mine. The daily grind of most Americans is duplicated around the world but in some places the governments have created programs designed to help. In the United States working people are mostly on their own. The situation can be particularly brutal for single parents who must carry every single duty on their backs. 

We now live in a very lopsided society in which the wealthiest among us are able to hire a fleet of people do do the everyday work in their multiple homes while the lowest paid often work more than one job just to stay afloat. Many children become caretakers for their siblings while they are still quite young. Families often overlook the symptoms of illnesses because the cost of medical care even with insurance is beyond the parameters of their budgets. Sadly, those symptoms may accelerate until individuals are mortally ill. There are people all around us who are working harder than ever but barely hanging on.

I recently read a post from one of my students who created a floral business that was flourishing until the cost of flowers and gasoline increased to record levels. She frantically posted one day that she had to have a large vehicle to deliver her creations but she was burning gasoline at a rate that forced her to stop at a service station every other day. She needs her truck to keep her business thriving but has to increase the prices just to stay even. She is exhausted and frustrated just as many Americans who own small businesses are. 

While the vast majority of Americans are working unspeakable numbers of hours only to fall further into debt with the rising costs of everything our president and his family members are doubling and even tripling their wealth. We read about their energy and ingenuity while understanding that they have dozens of individuals who do the work that the rest of us must do after laboring at jobs all day. They are not affected at all by the higher cost of everything that they want. They fly around the world with billionaires wearing five thousand dollar outfits and then they wonder why so any Americans are angry every time they go to a grocery store or stay up until midnight paying bills and doing chores. 

Our present society is financially lopsided in many ways because the man in the White House has been spoiled by wealth his entire life. He does not know how to be an every day ordinary citizen nor do his children. He lives in a gilded palace ranting about his own importance, playing golf every weekend while the rest of us are wondering if we and our families will ultimately be alright. We watch our incomes being stretched with every single purchase. We make adjustment after adjustment to stay afloat as the prices of everything we use grow higher and higher. For the poor the sacrifices are even more drastic and yet our president only has sympathy for himself. He cannot even understand what it is like to be stranded on a ship that has been at sea for over two hundred days. He is unable to relate to anyone who is not wealthy.

Our economy is not on fire. It is teetering at the brink and our leader is incapable of understanding how so many Americans are suffering. I am lucky enough to be in the middle. I was able to purchase a hybrid car that allows me to drive around for only about twenty four dollars a month. I am covered for now by Medicare and I get a pension from my years of teaching. I am still healthy enough to do most of the work that needs to be done in my home. I know that I will survive just as I always have but I worry about the younger Americans who are struggling at every turn. I know that we all have to join together to send people to Washington DC and to our statehouses who will begin to concentrate on the people, not on enriching themselves. We all have to vote in numbers that send a clear message of our displeasure. If we simply rubber stamp the wishes of Trump and the Republicans who bow to his every whim our entire society will be in grave danger. Our president does not care about us and that is the brutal truth!

I have often found that the college classes that I thought would be a waste of time often became some of my favorite moments in education. One of those courses was all about team building and the rumors that I had heard about the professor and his syllabus worried me enough that I put off taking it until I had almost completed all of the requirements of my masters degree. 

The first day of class we watched clips of Dances With Wolves involving the customs of Native Americans as portrayed in the film. I had to admit that the presentation prompted me to immediately think differently about the movie itself and the idea that the nuances of teamwork are essential to the success of virtually every culture. I appreciated the way that the professor allured us into listening to his take on the value of knowing how to work with others and so I felt a bit more comfortable with the whole concept in spite of being a dedicated introvert who had mostly worked as a lone wolf throughout my career. 

By the second class we were allowed to self select a group that would undergo the process of becoming a real team throughout the rest of the semester. I had been in classes with two women who had impressed me and I gravitated to them immediately. I was excited when the three of us forged a solid promise to work together by sharing the load of any assignments that we might have to complete. Another woman who had not yet found a group was soon a member of our happy and hopeful union and we had high hopes of succeeding.

It did not occur to us at the time that we were mostly of the same ilk, three middle aged women with type A personalities and work ethic. Our fourth member was young and seemingly naive so we silently felt that we would be mostly carrying her along. We were not concerned at all about the lack of diversity that defined our group but that aspect would soon be changed by the professor.

By the third class a new male student had arrived late from China. His English was all but nonexistent as he attempted to explain who he was and why he had come from so far away to earn an advanced degree. We held our breaths as the professor scanned different groups as though deciding which would be graced with the newcomer. When his eyes locked on our section of the classroom we understood that we would be the guinea pigs who would have to deal with an individual who seemed unable to offer anything of merit to our projects. Suddenly we had become an incredibly diverse group and we were silently unhappy about the prospect. 

We were required to meet regularly beyond the hours of the class. In those meetings we would have certain goals to reach and in the process we would learn about the different stages of team building. We had to provide the professor with a report of how we were progressing. While we initially believed that we would more than likely be in so much agreement with each other that we would be able to carry our young man from China along without any problems, we would soon learn that forming a cohesive partnership between five different people is never that easy.

We got through the norming phase but began to understand that we had three chiefs and two individuals who just sat looking as though they wished that the three of us vying to take over would get our acts together. Once we determined who was best at keeping the team on track we entered the storming phase which quickly boiled over into a series of grievances that included a full blown crying session from the youngest woman who felt that we older ladies were treating her as though she did not have a brain. Her accusations were shocking to hear but because our goal was to work through the stage of disagreement for the sake of the ultimate goal we set our defensive attitudes aside and soon realized that we had indeed been sidelining her without providing her with opportunities to express herself. 

Of course we were still not hearing from the man from China who seemed to just stare at us as though he was miserable. We had to find a way to give him a voice and that became our next challenge. Weeks passed and we heard little from him but along came an assignment from the professor that forced us to take a quiz together. Amazingly the man was able to write down his ideas coherently enough that we were able to see that he was in fact absorbing the gist of the materials that we used in the course. We were able to use his work in the tract that we gave to the professor and he noted how well we all seemed to be using the skills of each person in the group. When we saw our grade we literally felt like a team that had won a trophy and we bonded ever closer. 

Our final assignment was a long paper that would demonstrate how well we had understood the concepts of the class. We began meeting at the home of one of our members that looked out on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. By then we felt the comfort of friendships that allowed us to be honest with ourselves and each other. We used the movie Hoosiers as the exemplar of incredible team building. We sat together eating popcorn and taking notes about the moments when team building took place in each scene. 

Each and every person had so many wonderful ideas that we had to pick and choose what was most important but we made sure that every point of view was honored. Since I enjoy writing I was charged with putting all of the different entries together and since we had worked as a group our words seemed to fluidly join each other. The young woman that we had intitially misjudged came up with the most important and unique section of the paper. The man from China knew how to make our efforts look professionally polished. We turned in that paper assured that even if it did not impress the professor we would cherish what we had done together forever. 

We were over the moon when we received the only A plus that the professor claimed he had ever before given. He cited the area of the paper that had been conceived by the younger woman as the key to its perfection. He noted the incredibly professional look of the presentation and he understood that only a well defined team working together would have been able to create such a masterpiece. 

I still think of that class and how much it taught me. It was there that I learned the value of diverse voices and talents. I saw that being in an echo chamber produced mediocrity while genuinely tuning in to many different points of view was powerful. I took that lesson with me to the remainder of my career. I had learned the importance of building a diverse team with individuals bringing their best skills to the table. Diversity and real teamwork are the foundations of the kind of creative thinking that solves big problems. Real teams that respect each player’s value are incredibly powerful winners. Those run by a tyrant who only allows one voice destroy any chance of doing great things. We would all do well to accept this powerful truth.