All It Takes Is A Little Love

My grandfather was a finishing carpenter and lather. Much of the work he did still stands as a testimony to his skill and that of the men who worked with him. I have always been fascinated by the craftsmen who built the wonders of the world. I can only imagine the Egyptian engineers designing and carrying out the construction of the pyramids. Walking through ancient Native American sites I am in awe of what they accomplished without modern day tools. The medieval cathedrals of Europe are stunning. I marvel that humans have been so brilliant throughout history. 

I witnessed my grandfather’s skill in homes that he renovated. Every line was straight, corners fit smoothly together. His work was so perfect that it became a work of art. Little wonder that his son, my father, would later become a mechanical engineer and now one of my grandsons is following in his footsteps. There seems to be something in our familial genes.

I remember visiting my Uncle Harold who had built his home with his own hands. It was a small but sturdy place with arched doorways and built in cabinetry that fit perfectly along walls and in corners. Outside he built a workshop for his tools that was fascinating. My brothers and I became giddy whenever who took us out there to see how orderly he stored his many tools. Even better was when he showed us how to use them to create something wonderful. 

Much like my grandfather, Uncle Harold had the hands of an artisan. His fingers seemed to be perfectly shaped for the beautiful work that he did. They also showed the marks of the constant use that he had made of them in decades of building things at work and at home. 

Right now as I write there is a man redoing the wooden floor in my great room. After over twenty years there were unsightly scratches and gashes and much of the protective coating was beginning to peel away. For some time I considered pulling all of it out and installing a new product instead. A friend told me about her godson who repaired such things and so I decided to give the floor new life with his help. 

He has spent most of the day carefully sanding the boards. He has a masterful touch. Nothing is gashed. The wood is as smooth as it once was. He has created a stain that we like better than the one we had before. He has filled in the flaws that were always there. I see that he is a perfectionist like my grandfather and Uncle Harold so I am very excited about how lovely my floor will be once he is finished. 

He is taking his time not to cut corners. He is definitely someone who takes pride in his work. The job may be small but he is taking it very seriously. I marvel at the intensity of his efforts and understand why his godmother boasted that he creates beautiful floors. I think my grandfather would approve and Uncle Harold would smile because he too one day laid down a whole house of beautiful flooring. 

I greatly admire the craftsmen who take the time to do things right. They show pride in the work and never attempt to just throw things together. They admit when something is beyond their skills and often suggest someone else who is better. Not everyone is so honest these days. They take the job and the money and run. 

I remember a time when a neighbor asked me to come to her home to give my honest opinion of some tile repairs that a contractor had done in her bathroom. I was so shocked by the shoddy work that I had few words to express my dismay. I simply said that the whole thing needed to be redone. I hated giving her that news but she had spent a great deal of time and money planning the renovation and the work was as horrific as anything I have ever seen. She was actually relieved when I gave her my blunt opinion because the man who had done the work accused her of being picky. Ultimately she fired him and had someone come to start over again. It was a massive loss of time and fortune that nobody ever wants to experience but in the end she found a tile artisan who somehow performed a miracle and made her bathroom gleam.

We should celebrate the people who are exceptional builders as much as we laud other geniuses. These craftsmen and women have skills that go beyond just getting things done. When their work is completed it almost becomes a work of art like a painting or sculpture or a story well told. The human intellect shows its glory in so many forms. We must always celebrate them as the wondrous people that they are.

September is a big birthday month in our family rapidly followed by October when another round of birthdays commence. I’m the November gal and then there are two more in December. The result is lots of fun for three months when we go into celebration mode. Sadly two more follow in January so soon after Christmas that we have to pinch ourselves to remember to acknowledge them. 

One year my daughter who was born on December 20 decided that she wanted a birthday at a normal time of year, not in the middle of the Christmas rush. We let her choose the date when we would have a party and she leaned toward the summer, mostly because she wanted a day that would not include going to school. She ended up choosing a date that sounded good and we went along with her wishes. As you’ve probably guessed it totally bombed out. Somehow it never seems quite right to attempt to change the birthday date lottery to one that is seemingly better. It was too early in the year and when her actual birth date arrived she felt funny pretending that she had already enjoyed her special day months earlier. We never again tried to fabricate her special celebration.

I sometimes laugh when I see how complex birthday parties have become. Doors are adorned with balloons and often there is a huge sign in the yard announcing the joyful moment to everyone who passes by. Gifts are staged sky high and fancy food is either brought to the house or found at five star restaurants. Of course there are often formal photography sessions with special outfits purchased just for the occasion. My propensity for doing math begins to add up the cost of such mega celebrations and it boggles my old fashioned mind. 

I suppose that I was just an ordinary mother to my children. I usually had a homemade cake and a few gifts and called it a day. If I remembered to take out my camera to record the day with a few photos I was lucky. Mostly it was a low key affair  with perhaps a few close friends or family members joining us. I don’t know if I should feel guilty for hosting such plain celebrations or if I should congratulate myself for being frugal. I suppose that it’s all just a reflection of the changing times and perhaps if I were still a young mom I would be a bit more willing to demonstrate how much I loved the birthday boy or girl by planning an extravaganza.

My mother threw a few birthday parties for me when I was young. They usually involved having a few of the neighbor kids and my cousins over for some cake and ice cream. If she was really in party mode there might even be a game of hang the tail on the donkey with prizes for everyone. Oh how simple times were back then!

I admit to causing my eldest daughter a bit of grief when she was a child. We decided to celebrate her July birthday by filling a blow up swimming pool with water and telling the kids she invited to wear their bathing suits. Our plan was to let them go wild with the hose in the backyard and then have some cake and ice cream. A few of those that she invited assumed that we had built a pool in our backyard and they were stunned to see that the tiny rubber pond and hose would be their entertainment. It took a long time for my daughter to live down the insults that followed. Not even my urging that she overlook their rudeness seemed to salve the emotional wounds that she incurred. 

Now that I am an older woman I am even more low key when my own birthday comes around. I haven’t had to work on that day in quite some time and I often do something by myself that makes me happy. I don’t seem to need the attention that I so enjoyed as a child. My birthday reminds me that the happiest time of year is on its way with Thanksgiving and all the frivolities of Christmas. During those weeks I get to see people that I had not encountered all year long and I find that just being with them is the only gift that I desire. 

This year my husband and eldest grandson will launch the three months of celebration with a party together. It seems that three of my all time favorite men were all born in September My dad is on the second, my husband on the twentieth and my grandson on the twenty sixth. We’’ll have a small quiet gathering of family with some fajitas from our favorite Tex/Mex restaurant and a small cake. Nobody eats sweets in quantities like they once did. We are all watching our waistlines and thinking about eating clean and healthy food. Birthdays are an exception to our new routines. 

I think it’s rather amazing that we humans decided to celebrate our circuits around the sun. I wonder who first had the idea to do so. Who thought of bringing gifts? How did it all evolve? That’s something I need to research. I’ll get back to you when I find the answers. Until then let the celebrations begin! 

We tend to recall traumatic moments in our lives. For me there are three that stand out and replay in my head each time we reach the anniversary date on which they happened. On those days I feel the anxiety and sorrow anew, as though the tragedy happened only moments before. 

The first trauma for me was the sudden death of my father in a car accident. It happened on May 31, 1957 when I was only eight years old. To this very day I vividly recall every single minute of the horrific time with a clarity that runs in my mind like a video. I replay that moment as though it will somehow change. I imagine waking up on that day to find my parents getting ready for the Memorial Day celebration that they had planned. Of course, it did not happen that way and I find myself wondering what it might have been like to have my father around for a longer time. I even have horrible thoughts that it is unfair that my father-in-law is still here at the age of ninety seven while my father left this earth at the age of thirty three. That’s when I know how impactful my childhood loss had been.

The second day that stands out to me every single year is November 22, 1963, when President John Kennedy was killed. I had turned fifteen years old only four days before this happened. On November 21, he had arrived in Houston, Texas by why of Hobby Airport which was only a few miles from my home. We had learned that he would travel from there to the Rice Hotel in downtown Houston. The route would take him down Broadway Street to Interstate 45 and my mother realized that his limousine would travel under the freeway to make the turn to head to the hotel so we sat on the curb waiting for his entourage to arrive. 

When the police escort neared the area we stood so close to the street that we could have touched the vehicles passing by. Suddenly there was the president in a open car waving at us with a big smile. I still feel breathless when I think of how clearly we saw him so when I learned that he had died the next day I fell into the same kind of grief that I had felt at the moment of my own father’s death. I remember exactly which classroom I was in when the announcement was made. I know who was sitting near me and I recall the sorrow that filled the area as we sat in stunned silence sometimes putting our heads down to sob.

The other moment which was both traumatic and almost unbelievable is the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. I was the Magnet Coordinator of a school in Houston ISD and a meeting was planned at the administration building. On such days I went straight from home rather than driving to the school where I worked and then backtracking an hour or so later. Thus I was dallying a bit longer at home and watching the morning news as I readied myself for the day which happened to be gloriously beautiful. 

As I was finishing my preparations I saw the first plane fly into one of the towers. I remember feeling quite confused and wondered how such a thing could have happened. Only minutes before everything was so calm and mundane. Suddenly I witnessed something happening that made no sense but I had to leave lest I be late for my meeting. 

As I drove along in Houston’s early morning traffic I turned to an all news radio station to learn what became of that plane that had hit the tower. As I listened the announcer literally freaked out as he almost screamed that another plane had arrived and had hit the second tower. At that point I understood that this was not a random accident. I realized that we were under attack and I had to calm myself to be able to drive safely to my destination.

Upon arriving at the meeting place I found myself in a solemn situation. My fellow colleagues were silently watching a television that had been hurriedly brought into the room. The usual camaraderie and chit chat of such meetings was missing so I simply took the first available seat that I saw and sat as stunned as the rest of the people in the room. Not long after that most of the coordinators had arrived and together we watched the towers collapse. 

Some people screamed while others cried. I sat quietly feeling as though I might faint as my chest became heavy with anxiety. I literally was unable to comprehend what I had just seen so when the director of the magnet program nervously began the meeting as though nothing strange had just happened I almost felt an out of body experience that made the whole moment feel absurd. 

The poor woman trying to keep our attention babbled for a time and then stopped in the middle of a sentence, scanned the room and then declared, “What am I doing? All of you need to very carefully drive back to your schools and provide comfort to your coworkers and students.”

We filed out of the room like zombies who had been sent on a mission and somehow found our way back to each campus. In truth I don’t know how I got there because there is a gap of blankness between the time I entered my car until the moment when I arrived at the school. There I found a state of utter chaos as frightened parents came to take their children home. 

My principal asked me to sit with one of our teachers who was a Texas transplant from New York City. He was in a terrible state of mind because his parent both worked in one of the World Trade Center buildings. He had been desperately attempting to reach them by phone with no luck and so he sat somberly in the school conference room staring into space. 

I moved a chair near to him, hugged him and sat next to him without uttering a work. Somehow I knew that he needed to just remain silent so that is what we did for hours only breaking the quiet when he made new attempts to reach his parents. Finally late in the afternoon his call was successful. He did not give away what he was hearing. He simply listened, nodded his head and remained stoically blank. Then he quietly said good by, set down the phone and collapsed onto the floor sobbing so hard that I feared that he had learned that both of his parents were missing in the rubble of those buildings. 

I knelt down on the floor next to him and attempted to comfort him simply by touching his back now and then. After what seemed a lifetime he recovered, sat down oi his chair once again and apologized for his emotional outbreak. Then he told me that his parents were safe, In fact for the first time in their lives they had both decided to call in sick and take a mental day day just to go to a park and enjoy the beautiful weather. 

I was so relieved that I let my own emotions rise to the surface and cried for the first time that day while he and I held hands in a kind of understanding of the enormity of what had just happened. I later drove home still feeling a great weight as I began to understand how horrific this terrorist attack had been and how many precious lives had been lost.

I would go visit ground zero many times. I would pause on September 11 to remember that for day twenty five years. It became a kind of spiritual reckoning in which my bottled up grief would return. 

Today we remember once again and vow to never forget those who died and those who worked so hard to help others survive. Both the horror and the courage of that day are burned into my soul. I honor the entire city of New York for the courage and compassion that they brought together for their fellow citizens and I promise to keep the torch of kindness burning as long as I live. 

I suppose that it might be argued that as I age I become a bit grouchier than I once was. I have a number of pet peeves that I try to keep to myself but the one that bothers me the most is the staging of presidential speeches. Starting toward the end of the twentieth century someone who plans such things decided that the messages of presidents would carry more weight if there were ordinary American citizens standing behind them as evidence of support. Such events became as choreographed as a Broadway musical. The common folk were chosen to represent the face of the population and the ideals of the speaker. 

I don’t know about anyone else but I find such “shows” to be annoying. I much prefer the old ways of presidential announcements when whoever was in office simply stood at a podium stating the facts without all the fanfare. I really do not need to see the reactions of supporters in order to get the gist of presidential announcements. In fact, I find all of the staging to be a distraction designed to keep the American people entertained rather than informed. I don’t need music and flags and smoke and mirrors to appreciate the content of a president’s speech. I don’t want off topic jokes and slanders. As Sgt. Friday once said, “Just give me the facts!”

I realize that we live in a world filled with imagery that often tells us more about what is being said than the actual words. Nonetheless I find all of the add ons to presidential speeches to be distracting rather than useful. Maybe it’s my personal way of learning or part of my introverted personality but I just don’t like all the the distractions. 

I once took a graduate class in educational psychology. On one of the class days we gathered in the classroom and had to wait a bit longer than usual for the professor to arrive and begin his lecture. Prominently placed in the middle of the whiteboard at the front of the room was a single hot pink post-it note with no writing on it. I was unable to take my eyes off of it even when the professor finally began his lecture for the day. For some reason I began to imagine how that pink blob got there. My mind drifted away from what the professor was saying for a moment and I had to force my attention back on him lest I miss important information. 

After about fifteen minutes the professor suddenly stopped and turned to look at the pink paper as though he was just then discovering it. He seemed puzzled as he quietly stared at it and then he stood right next to it and asked if any of us had wondered why it was there. Almost everyone in the room acknowledged that they had been as mesmerized by the lone piece of paper as I had been. Then the teacher pulled it from the whiteboard and turned back around to address the issue. 

He asked how many of us had lots of decorations in our classrooms. He wanted us to describe how the environment was set up and why we chose certain things. Before long he had convinced us that more often than not too much on the walls and hanging from the ceiling might look appealing but it was also causing some of our students to lose focus and day dream while we were attempting to dispense knowledge. 

I totally understood what he was saying because I had been one of those students who was often lost in thought in classrooms that were too busy. I also thought of the many young people that I taught who were so easily taken off task by the environment. I recalled a time when I had posted a “Where’s Waldo” photo on one of my side bulletin boards. It had nothing to do with the mathematics that I was teaching but I thought it was fun and might delight my students. What did not occur to me was that it might become a massive distraction. Then one day during a test I noticed the student closest to that poster seemingly staring off into space. 

When I walked past his desk I saw that he had not completed a single problem on the test. I asked him if he was having difficulty with the work and he quite innocently announced that he wanted to find Waldo before beginning the quiz. I knew in that moment that Waldo was going to have to go lest other students become mesmerized like this one. Luckily this young man was quite adept in math and was able to complete the test as soon as I gave him some hints to instantly find Waldo.

I suppose that the whole presentation of presidential announcements has become a major production over time but I wonder how many others besides myself have grown weary of the silliness of always having a crew behind him to visually show us his support. Sometimes it might be best to stand alone and just get to the point in as few words as possible. We do not want or need to have an hours long production. I don’t require jokes or dancing to understand the gravity of a situation. I long for the days of simple announcements devoid of so much showmanship. If something is important enough to demand our attention it should not be hidden in distractors. 

I suppose that it is all a matter of taste. We all learn differently and react differently to the same situations but surely it is apparent that our leaders are constantly getting off task with all the extra frills. I don’t think we need to see the entire astronaut corp to know that the president is at NASA. We don’t need an entire backdrop of American flags to understand that the president is a patriot. The silly music adds nothing to the moment. The best addresses to the nation are delivered quietly and quickly without the extra scenery. I would so enjoy a return to that way of doing things. The silliness that we see so much today is irritating and insulting. My advice is to just keep it simple!  

Some might argue that I am not quite whole because I did not normally experience the Electra Complex that would have naturally lead me into adulthood. My father died while I still adored him the way a little girl of eight tends to do. He could do no wrong in my eyes and in many ways I still grieve the loss of him. That being said I managed to adjust to the reality that I would never see him again. I’ve done well and lived a good life but a little voice inside my heart always feels the hurt welled up inside me on the fatal day when I learned that he was no longer coming home. 

Still, because I was a bit older than my brothers I have vivid memories of our father. He was a very present dad who generally followed a routine much like other fathers that I knew. He left early each morning to go to work and returned in the evening when he would almost always shed his suits and settle down on the living room couch in comfy clothes while music played on his Victrola. This was the time when he read the newspaper or leafed through one of his books. 

If I came into the room he more often than not shared what he was reading with me, explaining how the adult world works Sometimes he read poetry or passages from books. He made reading seem like the most wondrous joy in the world and he whet my appetite for indulging in the art of reading. All the while the music played in the background and he would explain why he enjoyed certain symphonies or concertos. 

On weekends my father often took me to bookstores with him. He spoke of the great authors and most times allowed me to choose a book suited for my young age. I visited libraries with him and fell in love with the very sight of hundreds of books tempting me to open them to discover what was inside. 

My father’s influence has shaped me in almost spiritual ways but it never really occurred to me that my brothers were so young that they did not have a clear understanding of who he was or what kinds of things he liked. Now and again they ask me questions about him that bring tears to my eyes. I realize in those moments that our father is more of a concept to them rather than an actual person who once lived and breathed on this earth. 

A few weeks ago my brother who was five when our father died asked me if our daddy liked music. He spoke of how much our mother enjoyed listening to her many records which he assumed that she had purchased over the years. It shocked me to understand that he had no recollection of our father’s influence that brought all of that music into our home. My brother’s reaction when I told him about our weekend excursions to record stores and how our father listened to that music every single day was to smile in finally knowing that his dad liked the same kind of music that he does. 

Once my youngest brother stayed behind after I had hosted an Easter celebration. He sheepishly asked me to tell him what our father was like. I felt like Wendy caring for her brothers and all the lost boys in Peter Pan. I choked on my words as I explained that he only needed to look into a mirror to know how our father looked. I explained that he sounds like our dad as well. Then I spoke of our father’s sense of humor and how much he enjoyed fishing and grilling burgers and watching football games. All of these things are the same kind of interests that my brothers have. It is as though the spirit of our father lives inside of both of his sons. 

Our father would have been one hundred three this month if he had lived a long life like his father who made it to one hundred eight years. Instead we lost him when he was in his early thirties, a young man with a young family who thought he had decades of living ahead. His death impacted so many, not just me and my brothers and our mother. Over the years people spoke of him with a kind of reverence and each of them had wonderful stories of the deep relationships that they shared with him. All of those remembrances always reminded me that he was indeed quite special so I grieve for my brothers who cannot recall much about him at all. 

With the love and special care of our mother my brothers and I turned out to be rather happy and normal. Still I wish that there were some kind of time machine that would allow my siblings to know what I know. Theirs was a loss that nobody really imagined until their questions brought their feelings to light.

We would all do well to pay attention to the children. They are watching and learning and wondering and yearning. It’s good to help them know what is real even when the knowing might be sad.