All It Takes Is A Little Love

Some days doing the best we can will still fall short of what we would like to do but life isn’t perfect on any front and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves…Fred Rogers

We live in a fast paced world. From the time that we are born we begin a process of becoming that often involves expectations of the kind of persons we might ultimately become. Our parents guide us through milestones, teach us many of the fundamentals of living and hopefully love us so deeply that we are inoculated with confidence and determination. 

We go through phases of feeling both confident and awkward. We ask questions about the world around us and have the urge to explore under the watchful eyes of the adults tasked with encouraging us to be our best. Expectations both guide and bolster us as well as frighten us. Growing up is serious work and there are often times when we worry that we may not measure up to the dreams that begin to form in our minds. 

I remember having so many questions when I was a teenager. I was unsure of myself and how I wanted to live my life. I had a bad habit of comparing myself to others and being left feeling as though I was somehow less that I ought to be. It would be many years before I finally realized that everyone endures a bit of self consciousness in those growing up years. Luckily I mostly encountered happiness and lots of support during that time to keep me from over thinking about my seemingly obvious flaws. 

There comes a time when we are suddenly deemed to be adults who should be capable of caring for ourselves. Never mind that deep down inside we are so uncertain that we are ready to become the adults in the room. We have triumphs and times when we make so many mistakes that we worry that we will never make it through a lifetime of trying to balance work and family and life in general. We all too often become our own worst critics, noting every flaw in our personalities, our appearance and our attempts at being wise. Little do we realize until later in life that both our successes and our failures contribute to making us better versions of ourselves as long as we are willing to honestly assess who we are. 

Time seems to be so slow when we are twenty. There are never enough hours in the day to do all that we dream of doing. We balance so many duties trying to fulfill our own expectations as well as those of the people that we love. Before we can even catch a breath we find ourselves in the middle of our lives in our forties when we still feel so young but are seen by the world as older people. It is in those times that we have usually begun to understand who we are and what we truly want to accomplish before the clock runs out. With luck we may already be there but even then we will push ourselves to keep up the pace. 

The greatest gift we can ever give ourselves is the willingness to pause and celebrate now and again without a sense of guilt that we are not accomplishing something. We simply exist for a moment and do things that make us happy. For some it will mean camping in the midst of nature. For others it will be a frivolous time just partying and celebrating life. Whatever we choose is right if it makes us feel good about ourselves. 

The days of being old come so much more quickly than we ever dreamed. Hopefully we are able to examine our lives and be proud of doing things our own way. It is in these times when we can honestly assess how we have done but we should do so by understanding that just doing what we were able to do is often enough. It should be a time to celebrate all of the days and nights of our lives knowing that we stayed in the race even when we realized that we were not going to win a prize. Just making it to within reach of the finish line is a major accomplishment if we have been good and honest and loving. 

I am a pensive individual by nature. Even as a child I sometimes over thought about things that I had done or said and wondered if I should have taken a different approach. Introspection has played a big part in who I am. Luckily I reached a moment when I truly liked the person that I had become. I was capable of forgiving myself when I fell short. 

Life has happened around me at a speed so fast that I often wonder how the anxious and self conscious version of me made it this far. I realize that the culmination of every single day, every single encounter, every single decision whether right or wrong has made me the person that I am. I wonder where the time went and worry that I won’t be able to communicate to the people who mean the most to me just how much their presence in my life has given me.

I am content but determined to fix the imperfections of my life that may have hurt someone. I am at a point in my evolution when I tend to focus less on what I need and more on what others may require to feel safe and loved. As long as I breathe I want to make a tiny difference one person at a time. If I can do that I will have accomplished the best aspect of my dreams. I will do what I can and no longer worry if it is enough. It’s all that any of us can expect.

We drove past the former home of my paternal grandparents last week. We found the place on Arlington Street in the Houston Heights neighborhood even though I was no longer able recall what their address had once been. The place has held up well given that it is well over eighty years old. My grandfather built it with his own hands and it stands out as being very different from the other houses nearby. My grandfather was a lather by profession so of course he built his home with a stucco facade. 

Supposedly stucco does not hold up well in the Houston heat with the ever moving foundations that cause crumbling and cracks but somehow that place looks as sturdy as it did on the day I was born in 1948. Back then the stucco was painted white and the most outstanding feature of the house was the screened in front porch that ran all the way across the front. My grandmother created an enchanted exterior with her green thumb and the seasonal flowers that kept a riot of color blooming almost all year long. 

My mother had a photo of me in front of that house on the occasion of my first communion. As luck would have it white Easter lilies stretched from one side of the garden to the other. It was such a lovely sight that passers by often slowed their paces just to admire the glory of what Grandma had created. My mother rightfully saw that it made a lovely backdrop for me in my white communion dress complete with a little veil. I solemnly hold a prayer book in my folded hands and I look as though I truly understood the solemnity of the occasion. 

Now the house is painted a dark grey which is actually quite attractive and makes the house look as though it might have been built by a talented and artistic architect. The flowers are gone but it is apparent that the house is loved as much as my grandparents cared for it back in the day. 

I really enjoyed visiting my grandparents there especially in the fall when leaves were falling in the ditches in front of the homes. The neighbors spent Sundays burning them to keep their lawns tidy. I can still imagine the perfume of those burning leaves on a chilly afternoon when we went to visit. The neighbors would wave and smile and because nobody had air conditioning back then I was able to hear the people living life inside their homes. There was a lovely cadence that enlivened the area and made me feel rather comfortable just listening to the sounds of everyday life. The people created a kind of symphony that was lovely and relaxing.

My grandmother always prepared one of her famous dinners for us when we visited and the aroma of her fried chicken, gravy, biscuits and homegrown vegetables wafted into the air joining the other pleasant smells that seemed to warm the whole area. Her food created a symphony of the senses that sometime drew neighbors to show up right around the time that her food was ready to eat. She almost always invited them to stay and few ever turned down her offer.

While Grandma cooked I had the privilege of setting the table, a formal event in which I learned how to properly position the china plates and the silverware on the starched and pressed linen tablecloth. It was a ritual that made me feel as though I was grown rather than a six year old little girl. I would open the wooden box that was lined with felt and carefully remove the forks and knives and spoons. I can still see the room and feel the flush of pride as I partook in the ritual of creating an inviting presentation. 

While the women were preparing the meal my father and grandfather sat on the screened porch and spoke of what sounded like important matters. Of course Grandpa puffed on one of his pipes filling the air with the sweet smell of tobacco. I saw that he was a handsome man even as a young girl. His long tapered fingers were those of a craftsman who took his work building things very seriously. Unlike my grandmother he was able to read and write and almost always had much to share about the latest book that he was devouring. 

I suppose that in my mind my father’s parents were the quintessential grandparents. They could have stepped right out of central casting in a Hollywood movie. While my grandfather seemed bigger than life, my grandmother was so easy to be around. She was a tiny woman not more than about four foot nine. I doubt she ever weighed a hundred pounds. She was thin but hearty with more energy than I have ever witnessed in a woman in her eighties. I learned one day when I was snooping in her bathroom that she dyed her hair and I saw bobby-pins and curlers that she used to create her short bob. She wore plain cotton dresses with few adornments but always seemed to have clip on earrings hanging from her lobes. She smelled of clean and simple soap and her hands were wrinkled and crooked from the arthritis that she insisted on calling “rheumatis” She predicted what would lead to her own demise when she advised me that everyone in her family died from “gut trouble.” Sure enough she ended her life with colon cancer and I have taken medication daily for years for my GERD. 

Grandpa was so strong and had such a commanding presence that I simply felt in awe of him. He seemed to be formally dressed even when he was doing heavy labor inside or outside his house. He kept his shirt neatly tucked into his pressed pants which were always secured by a belt. He wore dress boots that tied like the old fashioned shoes of another era. Those boots gleamed with the polish that he meticulously used. He had only a tiny ring of hair on his bald head so he rarely left the house without donning a hat, straw in the summer and fedora the rest of the year. He spoke with an authority on so many subjects and I never grew tired of hearing the stories of his childhood and his travels across the United States. 

It made me feel wonderful to see my grandparents house looking as though the present owners truly care for it. I thought back to the glorious times I spent there and found myself imagining how lovely it would be to have the opportunity of telling them the story of the original owners. I have a feeling that they would like knowing how much love grew inside the walls of the place where they now live.

I suppose that I lived in a bubble of delight before my father died so suddenly. As one would expect his death cast a shadow on my life from the time that I woke up at the age of eight to find out that he was gone forever. From that point forward I have responded to the world in a pattern that repeats itself over and over again.

I am mostly a strong survivor but from time to time my facade of strength begins to crumble a bit. For many reasons I have never been able to simply fall apart so I devised a method for getting through difficult situations. I tend to muscle through but often feel weakness creeping into my soul that I know I must nurture a bit before I am able to move on. It is in those times that I withdraw from the world for a bit, sitting at home in my pajamas and talking long naps and sleeps. Somehow the respite brings my energy and optimism back to life and I am able to soldier on just as I have so many times. 

The death of my father is truly the worst of my troubles but the mental illness of my mother is a very close second. It felt as though insult was added to injury when she became ill around twelve years after my father died. I had never before encountered anyone with severe depression, mania and paranoia. I had no idea how to react other than to be incredibly frightened by her behavior. Little did I know that I would spend the next forty odd years coping with her illness and attempting to find her the care that she needed. Each time that her illness returned I somehow found the fortitude and energy to help her become well again. Each time she was better I had to sit in my home vegetating for a few days to refuel my determination to carry on. 

And so it has been year after year with other incidents and tragedies that entered my life. In my late twenties I found myself going back and forth to the hospital where my husband was being treated for a rare disease that required months of chemotherapy with no assurance that he would ultimately be well again. All the while I had to remain strong for my two little girls who were already sensing that something was amiss. My need to comfort them kept me going for a very long time before I finally had one of my lockdowns while they were at school.

A three month bout of hepatitis brought the fear that my condition was chronic but ironically the imposed resting helped me to feel invincible once again. For the most part I encountered a long stretch of time in which things were going so well that I rarely felt the need to take a mental health day at home. I rocked along enjoying the fact that most of my irritations were minor and feeling thankful that the big challenges were few and far between. 

Eventually my mother grew older and less able to care for herself. She came to live with me and I found that having her in close proximity seemed to help both of us. Her last years on this earth were mostly pleasant because me and my brothers had learned how to navigate her mental illness with relative ease. What was shocking was to learn that she had advanced lung cancer and might have a limited time to live. 

After my mother’s death I retired from my work as a full time educator. Life became rather fun for me and my husband and I seemed to no longer have a need to take a break from reality. And so it was until my husband had a mini stroke followed by five days of relentless rain created by hurricane Harvey. I hardly slept during that frightening time as I watched one friend or relative after another having to escape flood waters entering their homes. I relocated to the upstairs and brought my most precious books and belongings to the safety of greater heights. Fortunately we were spared the horror of a flooded home and for a time life rocked along once again. 

Just as I was feeling quite sturdy and unburdened by worries the Covid pandemic happened and I silently wondered if my elderly father-in-law and his wife would lose their lives to the virus. While also shielding my husband from the illness I figured out ways to get my in-laws the food and other items that they needed so that they would not have to leave their home. The two years that I spent navigating past the potential of coming down with the virus worked out well but by then my mother-in-law was very ill with congestive heart failure. Sadly my father-in-law was in the hospital having emergency surgery on the same night that she died. My world turned upside down once again. 

After many weeks with ups and downs and time spent in rehab we brought my father-in-law home to our house where he lived for the next four years. Over time it became apparent that my husband and I were also growing older and becoming less capable of being responsible for an elderly man. When Mike was diagnosed with cancer and I was told that I would need two total knee replacements we understood that we were living in a precarious situation and so my father-in-law decided to move to an apartment in a senior living community where he would be enjoying life independently. 

Somehow things began to fall apart once again when he fell in the middle of the night and his health waned rather quickly from that time forward. While I was scheduled for surgery he was enduring one emergency hospital visit after another. There was a time when Mike was spreading himself thin caring for me and his father at the same time. 

Now I am walking better, sleeping better and feeling better but my father-in-law who is now ninety seven years old is under hospice care. His days and nights are spent on an oxygen machine while he lies in bed unable to eat more than broth and Boost. Just at the time when I should have been celebrating my recovery from the knee surgery I found myself falling apart much as I had done many times in the past when the pressure had become overbearing. 

I saw my optimism dwindling even as it was taxed by a president who seems to be insanely driving us to unnecessary wars. The fact that there were still people defending his craziness sent me into a spiral of sadness that I had to nurse once again. Because I understood how to heal myself I simply stayed at home doing little or nothing including spending time playing word games, watching television and sleeping much of the time. 

My self care has worked once again. My energy is stabilized and I know that I am going to be fine until the next terrible challenge comes my way. I learned long ago that it is not just okay to take a break when I need one but that it is absolutely necessary.

We always have to recognize when life is too much with us. It is always okay to take a break from life and even to tell people how we are doing. I suppose that I am lucky in knowing what to do but I suspect that some people like my mother all too often pretend that nothing is wrong when their worlds are falling apart. I would urge everyone to stop the world and get off on a regular basis. It is the least we can do for ourselves.

We once had a European friend who opened our eyes to the possibilities of different ways of living. Egon Osterloh was the child of a German father and a Norwegian mother. He grew up in Bremen, Germany in a time just after World War II. 

Egon often recounted how his parents purchased a small apartment in the town where they lived after the horrific world war that changed the face of Germany. The went to work for the local telephone company and would spend their work lives there until they finally retired. Each day they used public transportation to get to and from their jobs. In the meantime Egon entered school and was placed in advanced classes learning English along with reading and writing in German. By the time he was ready for college he was fluent in German, English, Norwegian, French, Spanish and Italian. His schooling provided him with two years of college credit at the University of Houston where we met him in the nineteen sixties. 

Egon’s uncle was a professor of Sociology at the university and he introduced my husband Mike to his nephew. The friendship between the two students flourished immediately and Egon became the brother that Mike had always dreamed of having. Our lives would become permanently intertwined even after Egon married a beautiful woman from Chicago named Marita.  Egon was our source of a worldwide view of life. From him we learned about people and places that would otherwise have been foreign to us. He also opened our minds to possibilities other than those we had learned as American citizens. 

Egon spoke of playing in the bombed out ruins of Bremen in his early childhood. Times were tough right after the war and he developed scurvy from a lack of needed vitamins. Nonetheless he experienced a good life with his parents and enjoyed travels to Norway and across Europe with them. With his facility with languages he felt comfortable wherever he traveled and he learned to value every person and place that he encountered. He brought his optimism and insights to the United States and adapted quickly to our ways of living. 

There came a time when my mother had grown older and was struggling with a low income and an aging body. One evening Egon contrasted the life of his mother with mine. He noted that his mother had no need of a car because public transportation took her wherever she needed to be while my mother often worried about the expense of having a car to take her on her errands. Much of the anxiety that my mother experienced involved keeping her car in running condition without busting her meager budget while Egon’s mother never had to think of such things. 

Egon noted that his mother went regularly to her dentist and doctors without paying a dime while my mother fretted over her copays even when she finally had Medicare. My mother lost a tooth or two because she could not afford the cost of saving them with dental work. Egon’s mother took it for granted that she would always get whatever kind of care she needed. 

My mother had to drive a rather long distances from her home to procure the groceries that she needed while Egon’s mother walked a few blocks from her home to shop for food. Somehow her life seemed to be much easier than my mother’s world of constant worry. It made me wonder why our nation which is so rich is reluctant to improve life for all of its citizens. 

Many of the arguments about universal healthcare revolve around long waits in countries where everyone visits doctors for free or very low prices. The truth is that those long waits exist here but we have to pay so much for them that citizens of other nations do not incur. The price of health insurance keeps rising along with the costs of medical care that often price many Americans out of the system. It may cost me twenty dollars since I have Medicare and a supplemental insurance but the same procedure might run hundreds or even thousands of dollars for younger folks. Additionally waits for specialists are now running six to nine months which is hardly different from socialized medicine.

Egon never became a citizen of the United States because his mother worried that she would never seen him again if he did so. Each year he returned to Germany to visit with his parents and to get the dental work that he needed. He would joke that the savings in dental procedures more than paid for the trip. He was never able to understand why Americans are willing to pay so much for medical care that was free or low cost in his place of birth. 

I suppose that we Americans have been lulled into believing that things like universal healthcare for all is the first step toward becoming a communist nation. Of course such hyperbole is false but as long as people believe such ideas we will continue to pay the horrific price of our stubborn insistence on keeping medicine out of reach for most citizens. We will cling to gasoline and new roads rather than creating system of mass transportation. We will make life difficult for anyone whose financial condition is weak and we will do so to enrich people who are already wealthy simply because they want to horde most of their money rather than sharing it to make lives better. 

Egon’s way of seeing things would have provided my mother with a much more worry free life. His was a tale of two cities. In one life was difficult and harsh, in the other essentials were there for the asking. Perhaps one day we will have the good sense to make changes that benefit us all but for now people like my mother will have to fret and worry about getting from one day to the next in a country where wealth seems more important than caring for each other.

Before this war, I thought I was a quiet person.

Ukraine taught me that’s not true

I just hadn’t found anything loud enough to fight for.

Now I can’t shut up.     Viktor Kravchuk

I came across this post on Substack and it spoke to me as clearly as if Viktor was in the same room with me. I too am a quiet person. I have always preferred to stay at the back of a crowd. I enjoy being anonymous when I go out and about from my home. I work best in small groups where I feel comfortable and unlikely to be challenged for my ideas. I suppose that in my essence I am shy and a follower of rules and yet I have found myself again and again in the uncomfortable situation of speaking up for people whose voices were not being heard. 

I think that the first time that I broke out of my protective shell was when a group of boys were taunting one of my dear friends and threatening to throw her into the deep end of a swimming pool in spite of the fact that she was screaming for help and declaring that she did not know how to swim. Before I even thought about what I was doing I found myself standing in front of them and demanding that they put her down immediately. I suppose that because they knew me to be a little mouse they were stunned by my furor and handed her over to me without another word. I was still shaking and wondering in my mind where I had found the courage that I needed in that moment but I never let them know how frightened I actually was. 

The next time I had to assert myself was when I was twenty years old and my mother was showing horrific signs of her mental illness. I turned to every adult that I knew and none of them seemed to know what to do. They essentially stepped back and told me that I would have to figure it out on my own. I found a psychiatrist through a family doctor but was still so unsure of how to proceed. Ultimately I found the courage to become her voice for over forty years. Again I was in wonder of how my aggressive tactics had developed because I still believed that I was essentially unsuited for the many fights that I had to endure in the name of saving her. 

I had always believed that I was a person of quiet resignation who simply accepted the realities of life but over and over again I found a voice inside of me that surprised me as much as it did the people around me. I became an advocate for my students and for the teachers with whom I worked. I saw injustice and was unable to simply back into the warmth and familiarity of simply being quiet. I realized that there were some issues so important that they required me to fight with a determination that was unstoppable until the people about whom I cared were safe. 

Now I find myself embattled in a cause that is bigger than anything that I have ever before attempted to set right. I feel as though I am watching the slow but deliberate destruction of the delicate democracy of the United States of America. I marvel at the coincidence of the two hundred fiftieth celebration of our nation and the deliberate ignoring of so many of the tenets of our Constitution. I don’t want to keep writing or protesting but now like Victor I can’t shut up.

Victor is from Ukraine. He has watched his country being invaded by Russia and little by little being torn apart. He has seen whole villages pillaged and watched the young men of his nation dying as they fight the invader. He knows that he can no longer be quiet. This is not the time. This is a moment when everyone must find a voice and those voices need to come from all over the world. 

We should all be enraged by the horrors happening here in the United States and across the globe. We should be standing in unison with Pope Leo who has understood that he too cannot be quiet about the death and destruction being wrought on innocents in so many places. I too feel the need to condemn the bloodshed and the destruction. Have we not learned anything from history? 

I want to return to writing happy blogs about vacations and childhood stories. I long to feel secure in the belief that the people of the world are doing fine. I like being quiet, sitting in the corner just observing life. Still, in this moment I must fight.