All It Takes Is A Little Love

I have a vivid childhood memory of visiting my grandparents on their farm in Arkansas. Their white house stood in the long shadow of a peach tree that was filled with sweet fruit ready to be picked and preserved in Ball jars lined up in the cool cellar below the rooms of the house. Across from the front porch was a tidy garden filled with row after row of corn, potatoes, okra, green beans, squash, peppers, cucumbers and peas. To the right lay the chicken coop filled with feathered hens constantly engaged in a cacophony of bird language kept under control only by the rooster who ruled the area. A little farther away was a cow that mostly sat lazily in the shade munching on hay. In back of the house my grandmother grew her flowers of every sort that gave color to the lovely rustic palate. Guarding all of it was Lady, a border collie, who commanded the attention of people and animals alike. 

It was an idyllic place where time stopped and everyday felt a bit like what living in heaven must be. My grandparents had created a little paradise in fulfilling their lifetime dreams. Best of all was how much fun they had keeping the farm running with precision. 

My grandparents arose from their slumbers long before the sun peeked over the horizon each day. There was always work to be done even when visitors from the city came to spend time with them. They checked on their crops, making sure that insects would not eat the precious bounty before it was time to start the picking. They managed the water and kept the weeds from going wild. Only after several hours of work did they return to the house where my grandmother cooked a full country breakfast of bacon, eggs, and homemade biscuits served with butter churned from the cow and jellies made from berries. She brewed coffee for my parents and made cocoa from scratch for me and my brothers. It was all so fresh and delicious. 

On most days my grandparents saved the chores of milking the cow and gathering the eggs for me and my brothers. I remember the first time I balked at putting my hand around the cow’s teat and squeezing to get the milk flowing. After a time I became an expert who could not wait for the ritual. With the beautiful white liquid in tin buckets we then got to watch Grandma pasteurizing it and separating the cream from the milk to make butter and whipped cream for her famous strawberry shortcake. 

Finding the eggs was better than an Easter hunt as we moved from one nesting place to another. The wary but good natured chickens only tried to poke us a couple of times with their beaks and then grew bored with our presence. The eggs came in many beautiful colors and when used fresh were more tasteful than anything I have ever enjoyed. 

I marveled at the skills that my grandparents seemed to have developed without any formal training. They loved explaining why they did certain things and how important it was to keep things clean and healthy. My grandmother in particular was masterful in the kitchen making her best dishes without the aid of a cookbook because she was illiterate. Everything was just there inside her head. 

One summer we came just in time to help pick the peaches from the big tree which was bursting with the luscious fruit. Grandma warned us to cover our arms and legs but we thought it was silly to wear long sleeves and long pants in the heat of summer. When our skin began to itch so badly that she had to hose us down we finally understood why covering our skin before embarking on the picking was so important. 

Grandma was like that. She tried her best to teach us things but if we were too hard headed to listen to her she relied on the consequences of our choices to demonstrate why certain cautions were needed. She never fussed at us or insisted that she had told us what would happen. She knew that we sometimes learned our lessons from the hard knocks of reality. 

I loved exploring the hills in the back acres of my grandparents property. There were cool trails sheltered by ancient trees and in some places sparkling rivulets of water flowed under our feet. Grandma never let us drink the water as is, warning us that we would get sick without first boiling the liquid to kill any bacteria that might be hiding in the cold clear patches. She told us that we never knew what might have polluted the source of water, so we had to be very careful. 

Grandma was able to name every bird we encountered and call to them with sounds that imitated the chirps of each of them. She showed us how to find wild berries safely by rustling the patches with a stick before placing our hands where a snake might be lurking. She found beautiful rocks that we saved a souvenirs from our hikes. She told us about a nearby place where people were known to find diamonds in the raw and even suggested that if we took enough time we might find some in the hills around her farm.

At night the air became cool and we sat on the screened in veranda that ran the length of the front of the house. We watched hundreds of fireflies lighting up the yard like little fairy lights. Grandma showed us how to catch fireflies in glass jars that then became lanterns in the dark of night. When the evening was done we always had to let the little creatures go again because it was not our right to keep them hostage for more than a little time. 

Those were some of the most wonderful and relaxing times of my life. I looked forward to visiting there every single year but soon the time came for my grandparents to sell the farm and move back to the city. The pains that Grandma had felt in her belly had grown worse and the nearby doctor had found that she had end stage cancer. She and Grandpa moved to Houston only minutes away from where we lived. 

We visited often and Grandma was a stoic who still continued to grow lovely flowers and vegetables in her yard but her eyesight and her body began to fail. Her cooking for which she was renown became subpar. Her energy waned. Soon she was bed bound and dying at home because there was no safety net for the elderly back then. Medicare was still a dream project that was yet to come. My grandfather became her nurse using up his savings for the meager medical care that he was able to afford for her. She died being as strong and uncomplaining as she had ever been. She was an angel who somehow has never left my side even sixty years down the rode from when she took her last breath. Her memory is more than a blessing. It is a call for goodness and bravery on my part that I try to follow all the days of my life. 

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

In one year so many important government programs have been gutted. Funding for NASA and scientific research has been drastically cut. Young people graduating from college this spring are anxiously attempting to find jobs in their fields of study and most of them learning that few opportunities are there. For the next six months Medicare and Medicaid will not cover walkers, prosthetics and all kinds of medical equipment for the elderly and the poor. Virtually every government agency aside from the military and ICE has experienced drastic funding cuts. Obamacare has been gutted. The reasoning given for such moves has been that we have to be more circumspect in spending if we are ever to balance the budget. 

In the meantime the richest Americans enjoy tax cuts that boggle the mind given that they have billion dollar net worths. The cost of ICE raids is outrageous. Now we have embarked on a war with Iran that was not even run past Congress and that will cost outrageous amounts. Former President Eisenhower was right on target when he noted that the cost of guns and war and bombs is taking away support for average and low income Americans. Inflation is on the rise. Farmers have had an horrific year. Our former allies are questioning whether or not we can be trusted in the future. Tariffs are on again off again and on again at least temporarily. 

It feels as though we have a king rather than a president, a man who believes that he can do anything that he wants with impunity. He lies and wreaks vengeance on blues states while it feels as though the ground under our feet is shaking. There is no certainty about anything at the moment and hunger is growing among those who are cold and unclothed.

I remember President Eisenhower with great respect and regard. My parents were grateful for his service during World War II. They often commented on what a good man he was. When he ran for president I was a seven year old in the second grade. I knew nothing about politics or even the man who was running against him. All I knew was that he was someone to admire and so my best friend, Lynda, and I rode around our neighborhood chanting “I like Ike!” We were two little girls who somehow understood that he had saved our nation and much of the world with his service as the commander of at the American forces in the war against Germany. 

When I came upon the quote from him I was somewhat stunned and yet I have learned that most men and women who have engaged in active duty during a war are quite likely to caution everyone about what we surrender whenever we focus on battles. I suppose that President Eisenhower knew better than most how much was lost when war defined the daily lives of people all over the world. I suspect that he wanted us to be cautious about jumping into an altercation with another nation. In pointing out what we lose when we focus on funding the tools of war he knew more than anyone that there is nothing glamorous about conflict. I suspect that he wanted us to think very carefully before investing in war. 

I find it confusing that we are backing away from supporting Ukraine and even absurdly insisting that the Ukrainians began the war with Russia when we all know full well who the aggressor was. We seem to have so many excuses for discontinuing our aid to Ukraine but think nothing of starting a war with Iran in the middle of the night without even consulting Congress. I wonder which Americans are going to lose government assistance from programs that won’t have the kind of funding that will be spent on this war that has dubious rationale for happening. 

I know people who are pacifists in every situation. I am not one of those persons. I do understand that there are times when we have to defend ourselves or help to defend nations that have been invaded. While I see war as a last resort I am not so naive as to think that every single war is bad. Nonetheless I want to be assured that every other possible avenue has been addressed before war is judged to be the only answer.

I am offended by the way in which our present attack on Iran came to be. We were in the middle of negotiations. We had only recently finally ended our presence in the Middle East. We are weary and most of the people who actually voted for Trump did so because he claimed that we were more likely to go to war if Kamala Harris became president. He ran on a promise of peace and yet he seems to be more than eager to escalate the tension in the Middle East and he did so without having any kind of plan other than hoping that the people there will now have the courage to rise up and create a government of freedom and democracy. 

This was all so unnecessary and it is as foolish as our invasion of Iraq that led to death and destruction that will haunts us for decades to come. I am weary of the recklessness of Trump who seems to be smashing things almost as if he wants to purposely destroy the United States. It feels as though a bunch of teenage gamers are running the show with their silly names for the war and their costuming to make themselves look big and important. I long for a time when someone calm and collected like Dwight Eisenhower is at the helm and the Congress is rationally determining whether or not it is time to be at war. Right now all I can say is “God help us all!”

War is a serious thing and all intentions to start a war should be very carefully considered. Once the first rallies occur it becomes exceedingly difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. History has shown us again and again that war is terrible for everyone even as there have been times when war was the only solution for stopping tyrants. 

In particular stopping the march of Adolf Hitler through Europe was only going to be accomplished by fighting after he had started the takeover of nations. It was ugly and the aftermath left much of Europe in ashes that took decades to overcome. War is never something to be taken lightly and must always be agreed upon by the representatives that the people have sent to Congress as voices for us. War should be carefully planned and thought out lest we open a Pandora’s Box the leads only to death and destruction rather than progress. 

My father-in-law fought in the Korean War with other soldiers from Puerto Rico. He was happy to give his service but he is always the first to proclaim that war should never be taken lightly. To this very day he is unable to speak of what he saw on the battlefield. It is not a source of boasting for him but rather a somber time to remember silently. Our efforts in Korea did little to stop the Communist regime in the north of that country. Perhaps its best outcome was at least giving the southern portion of the nation the freedoms that my father-in-law wanted them to have. 

We went to war in Vietnam once again hoping to stop the spread of communism. It seemed like a noble cause but all of the efforts to free the nation ended up being for naught as the democracy collapsed and the north Vietnamese ultimately won. So many young men on both sides of the fight ended their lives early for a cause that most probably was never going to turn out the way we had all hoped. 

And so it went in Afghanistan and Iraq. We think that if we just free the people from the tyrants that they will eagerly work to set up democratic systems that bring freedom and harmony. Sadly none of those things happened. Once again we found ourselves wondering why we had sent the treasure of our young men and women to die. 

It should be obvious that we cannot project our will on other cultures or other people who do not think the same way that we do. It is tempting to believe that we are the good guys only trying to help those suffering under the thumbs of dictators but the situations are far more complex than that. No plan so far has worked to rebuild a nation by eliminating the authoritarians who run them. Thinking that the oppressed will be able to rise up, pull themselves together and topple the oppressive government without a plan and leaders is naive at best. 

Our nation came about with a declaration of independence that outlined the beliefs of representatives from the colonies. Theirs was a plan even as it seemed absurd to challenge one of the strongest armies in the world. There was a determination that kept things going and all of it was homegrown, not the interference of a foreign government. The uprising has to come from the people, not from the outside with advice that may or may not ring true to those who live in horrific places. 

Iran like much of a Middle East has been a kind of powder keg for decades. For more than a century outside governments have tried their hands at influencing the governing bodies. Many nations have tried and failed to artificially create democracies in places with cultures and religions very different from their own. Often the rationale for such interference has had more to do with gaining access to oil and other treasures than from concern for the people of those nations. In fact, a good argument can be made that much of the chaos that we presently see in the Middle East has resulted from imperialist efforts to shape the world according to the needs of outside nations. 

Nobody asked the American people if we wanted to go to war with Iran. Nobody took the time to discuss the possibilities of war with the Congress. We only recently ended our years of battling in Afghanistan and Iraq and I suspect that most Americans are weary of the whole idea of stirring the pot in Iran. Besides there were ongoing talks that might have led to an agreement if given a bit more time. 

It is the right of Congress to declare war, not the president. That is written in the Constitution because the Founding Fathers were disturbed by the idea that a single person would have the authority to embark on war without discussion of the pros and cons. What Trump has done is wrong and at least for now seems without merit. 

We are cutting back on all kinds of programs for Americans presumably to balance the budget but now we miraculously have the funds to spend on a war with Iran that nobody voted on? Do we really want our taxes to be used for such a thing or does this seem to be only an effort by the president to take our attention away from inflation, the Epstein files and other real problems that we now face? Do we really want to send our young people to a faraway land that may actually resent our presence. Why would we want to make our nation less safe by provoking Iran? Does anyone actually believe that this move will lead to positive change with little or no effort?

At the age of seventy seven I have little to lose so I am angry that old men are so blithely deciding to put our young people in harm’s way. How can we sit still when a draft dodging president says that some of our young people will die? Does he plan to send his son to the fight?

I do not like the Iranian government but I am a realist and the odds are slim to none that bombing them will bring about a glorious revolution. If we want to help someone we have a better chance of good results by sticking by Ukraine and our European allies. This move in Iran will not go well and it will be our young who will once again suffer the most. When will we learn that lesson? 

I was baptized in the Catholic Church when I was an infant so I don’t recall that day. All I have is a document naming the priest who performed the ceremony and the name of my godmother who was my Aunt Polly. As it turned out the same priest officiated at my wedding. His name was Father John Perusina and by the time I met him he was an older man with white hair but my mother remembered him as having reddish hair when he was younger. There was a kind of wonderful irony in the fact that I became close to him as an adult and his wisdom often guided me until the day of his death. 

My Aunt Polly was a wonderful godmother. She looked out for me and my mother for all of her life. She visited me on my first day of school as a first grader when I was terrified and my lunch was filled with ants. She was a woman of action and took charge by bringing me a new sandwich and making sure that my lunch would never again be invaded by insects. She was always a delightful presence in my life until her death at the age of ninety five where I learned what a faith-filled Catholic she had been. I still think of her with her larger than life personality and her love that never faltered. 

My mother faithfully sent me to Catholic school for my education. I skipped kindergarten and went straight into the first grade. I was too young to have my first communion with the other students so it was not until I was in the second grade that I celebrated that lovely moment. I remember being much more excited about the white dress and veil that I got to wear on that occasion than the actual sacrament. I loved my prayer book and rosary and still have those things tucked away in a special place.

I would spend all twelve years of my pre-college life in Catholic school where I got daily lesson is religion, a subject that is now often listed as theology. I took what I learned quite seriously and since we lived within a short walking distance from school I often began my mornings by attending mass. I appreciate the education that I received from the School Sister sof Notre Dame and Carmelite priests along with a few lay teachers here and there. They generally prepared me well for college and my future life. I thought that I had the religious aspects of my beliefs figured out until I began to enjoy Sunday tea time and conversation with my mother-in-law. As a convert to Catholicism she had read countless books by theologians so that she might more fully understand what faith is all about. From her I developed a more mature perspective about God and what it really means to be a Catholic. Mostly I realized that a relationship with God demands us to use our free will and intellect to make decisions that honor the value of our fellow humans. 

I have kept up with my faith but I have found myself picking and choosing which parish to attend. Through my mother-in-law I spent many moments with Father Perusina, the priest who had baptized me and he taught me so much about building an adult relationship with God. He made me more aware of my responsibilities to my fellow humans implied by the simple message from Jesus that our main task is in life is love one another. 

I worked for a time as a Director of Religious Education but I never felt completely relaxed in that position. I still struggle to know and understand my role as a Catholic and Christian. I felt out of place attempting to guide people like Father Perusina and my ever faithful and studious mother -in-law had done for me. I had more questions than answers which I suspect has more to do with my personality than my beliefs. Getting to know God is such a personal journey and somehow I believe that it necessarily varies from one person to another. I see God as a guide to goodness rather than a keeper of rules. My relationship with God is comforting and tinged with a feeling of friendship. Through God I can be myself and learn how I am supposed to be with others. Mine is a loving relationship with God and I believe that my duty is to be kind and understanding toward all people, not judgmental and didactic.

I know that God is often different for other people and I would be the last to deny them the right to their own beliefs. My mother always thought that God comes to people in different forms and versions depending on their cultures and what makes sense to them. She never had a problem with anyone choosing a different way of believing or even not believing. She used to laugh and say that God believes in and loves even those who do not think a God exists. 

None of us will ever know if we have found the right pathway to life but I do not believe that being self righteous and pushing my ideas on others is the right way to honor God. Far too many ideas about God simply came from the minds of humans so when they seem to be more hurtful than loving I find myself backing away from them. 

I have wondered a bit about my Catholic faith of late when I have heard of priests who took advantage of young men and women. It saddened me to know that they would hurt someone else while hiding behind a clerical collar. I suppose that in the long history of humans there have always been those who defiled the messages of God. Even today cultist ideas about godliness are rampant all over the world. So much anger and hurt in peddled in the name of God. 

I am delighted by our new Pope and by the Cardinals in our nation who are speaking out for those among us who are being persecuted. When they remind us of the words of Jesus I feel a bit more comfortable that the message that I have taken away from my church is one of love. I can’t imagine building a lifetime of faithfulness on any belief that would purposely condone hurtfulness or shunning of any of my fellow humans. It feels good to know that the messages I am hearing align with my own beliefs. Somehow I have always believed that God is good. My spiritual journey has over and over again revealed only one focus and that is love. 

Every single Friday of my childhood save for the few months that we were living in California was spent at my Grandmother Ulrich’s home. It was a tiny place prompting me to sometimes wonder how it had been possible for ten people to live there. My mother made it sound like heaven so I pushed aside my thoughts that it may have been difficult. Later, when I was an adult I tried to imagine four girls sleeping in one double bed in a room so small that there was only a tiny pathway between the bed and the wall. Even more unbelievable to me was that my very tall and muscular uncles had also spent their nights together in a bed that is smaller than the one I share with my husband. 

The funny thing is that my mother and all of my aunts and uncles insist that the main thing for them was that they had a roof over their heads, food on the table and parents who loved them during the time of the Great Depression. Their enthusiasm for their good fortune helps me to better understand how difficult those times were for many Americans. There were literally folks living in their cars or finding shelter anywhere that there was an open door with people willing to help them in their time of need. 

Even as I had a picture of how terrible those days were it is still something that is unimaginable to me. So many Americans had no work, no savings, no way to enjoy even the most basic human needs. Little wonder that many of them headed as far west as they were able until the gasoline in their cars went dry or their autos simply broke down. 

My mother and my aunts and uncles often boasted that their father had paid cash for their home and the land that it stood on. He managed to hang on to a job that few would have wanted that kept his family fed with scraps of meat that he was able to buy at a reduced cost. He had turned the backyard into a farm that my grandmother cultivated and used to prepare simple meals that were so meager hat they left everyone in the family with a thinness that probably worked out well in those crowded beds. 

I suppose that I have never thought of my mother’s family as being poor because they had a spirit that kept them busy surviving in one place while so many others wondered where they would sleep at night. I have always felt that one’s wealth is more a point of view than a ledger. That Ulrich family was rich in spirit and drive. Everyone of them led honest and loving lives, ready to work hard and be nice to everyone they encountered. The legacy that has emerged from that tiny house in the shadow of downtown Houston is enormous. In only two generations from my grandparents everyone is a member of the middle class and a few have even become wealthy. As far as I know all but a couple of my grandparents’ great grandchildren have college degrees. Everyone enjoys a standard of living that Grandma and Grandpa would never have dreamed would happen to their descendants. 

I have more often than not seen the same kind of evolution in the economic and educational status of my immigrant students. It does not take long before they are enjoying the so called American dream. Sadly we are now in an era in which the economic opportunities have shrunk for everyone except for the richest people in our nation making it harder for young adults to make it like my grandparents did. While the so called Big Beautiful Bill gave the wealthiest among us one tax break after another, filling their coffers with more money that they will ever use, the average American is bearing the brunt of the ever increasing cost of living. 

The prices of land and homes has increased to a point that young people are more often than not in their mid thirties before they can afford to invest in property. It takes two incomes to achieve such a feat in most cases. The salaries of the working class have been eaten alive by inflation and at the same time those incomes have failed to increase at the same pace as the accumulation of wealth at the highest end of the spectrum.

All of this makes me wonder if we will actually see a stoppage in the kind of progress that made the descendants of my grandfather ever more successful. College even at the public level is brutally expensive. Salaries after graduation barely pay the price of the student loans used to earn the jobs. The twenty thousand dollar home of my twenties is now sitting at two hundred fifty thousand dollars in a state that is known for lower housing prices. Cars cost in the tens of thousands and a week of groceries might run two hundred dollars without frills. Now I wonder if there is a bubble that is about to burst and show us what life was life for my grandparents. 

I sincerely hope that our government leaders and businesses will come to their senses and understand the stresses that they are placing on those who are just staring out in life. They have been working hard just like my grandfather did but barely keeping apace with the rising costs. It’s up to us to find ways to remedy the economic uncertainties before they take us back to a time when so many suffered just to meet their basic human needs.