All It Takes Is A Little Love

My wish for you is that you continue to be who you are and how you are to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.   Maya Angelou

Each human life is special and sacred. If we truly believe that it is more likely that we will not insist on imprinting our own beliefs and dreams on any person. Instead we will learn to honor our differences and strive to insure that every person who walks on this earth has the opportunity to be whomever he/she seeks to be. 

Sadly we humans have a tendency to judge people by our own personal beliefs rather than attempting to understand theirs. I suppose that I am more open to the multiplicity of human thought because of the influence of my mother. She was a devout Catholic who read her Bible every single day. She died holding a statue of the Virgin Mary, in whom she had placed great trust during her lifetime. That being said, she was incredibly open to the idea that religious beliefs are very individual. She did not think it was important to force her thoughts with regard to God on others. In fact, she encouraged me and my brothers to decide for ourselves how we thought of a divine spirit. She believed that the variety of religions in the world corresponded to our cultural differences and that God was God in many different forms. She was even open to a continuum of religious belief that ran from atheism to agnosticism and the many religious sects that humans accept. In the end, she made her choice to remain faithful to the Catholicism of her youth but she did not believe that it was her task to force others to agree with her. 

My mother taught me the importance of seeing that it is kindness that is a true indicator of a person’s character. She saw that many highly religious people were ugly when it came to their treatment of other people while those with no beliefs at all were often intensely loving souls. She encouraged me and my brothers to follow our hearts as long as we treasured each person as an important figure in this world. 

People like Mother Teresa and Gandhi were Mama’s icons even as each of them represented different faiths. What made them great in her mind was their love of fellow humans regardless of status or religious and political beliefs. She was never impressed with titles or wealth or power. She wanted us to be helpers in the world who were blind to differences that she believed did not matter. 

There is little wonder that my brothers and I are quite individual. We grew up knowing that we were free to follow our own instincts about how to live. I have continued with my Catholic faith just as my mother did. One of my brothers joined a Protestant church and is a faithful parishioner. The other brother believes in God but not in organized religious groups. He worships in his own way as an agnostic.

The same is true of the roles that we chose to follow. I became a teacher and eventually a school administrator in spite of efforts from outside forces urging me to consider medicine or law. One brother became an electrical engineer and spent his entire career working as a NASA contractor. The youngest brother earned a degree in marketing and then proceeded to the Houston Fire Department Academy where he had a long and fulfilling career as a firefighter and eventually a District Chief. Our mother was over the moon with pride for each of us and happy that we had found the niche by which we were able to bring our talents and our kindness to others. 

I suppose that my mother taught me to never be a busybody spouting indignation over people who chose to be very different from the cultural norms. She always insisted that our true goal in life was to find the goodness in everyone. Of course she understood that we might also encounter evil but she reminded us to be careful about judging too harshly or too quickly. She did not want us to live by prejudices that precluded the possibility that even personal choices that we do not understand more often that not are simply the result of our human variety. The yardstick that she gave us for interacting with our fellow humans was to look for each person’s willingness to love and embrace others. 

My mother was a first generation citizen of the United States. She suffered the slings and arrows of prejudice against herself and her family. They were judged simply because they appeared to be different. Her answer to the taunts was to ignore them and to prove her own worth with a giving heart. She did that for all of her life and so that is how I try to be even when meanness seems to be on the rise. I do my best to follow her example and love people for who and how they are. If more of us followed that ideal the world would be a most remarkable place. 

I’ve always enjoyed St. Patrick’s Day. I felt drawn to Ireland even though I never knew why until I learned that my great grandmother Marion O’Rourke was probably from Ireland or descended from Irish parents or grandparents. There is little or no information about Marion who died three days after my grandfather was born. Even though Grandpa never met her when he became a father to a girl he wanted to name her after the mother he had never known. 

Grandpa never spoke about Marion until I finally asked about her. I suspect the he did not know much about who she was. None of my efforts to find her in records have been fruitful. While I don’t know for certain it seems as though she gave birth to her baby boy without any kind of medical assistance. The event was no doubt difficult for her and resulted in her death that does not even seem to be duly noted anywhere. 

I had some problems with the births of my daughters. The first time I was in labor for over eighteen hours and the baby kept turning to come out breach because of an extra bone that I have. The doctor thankfully knew how to turn her around and all went well until the day after she was born when I began bleeding profusely. It ended up that I had not eliminated the placenta so the doctor had to give me a medication that started the labor pains once again until the placenta was out of my system. A similar situation occurred with my second daughter but because the doctor had seen what happened the first time around he carefully planned to make sure that my labor was faster, that the baby would not come out breach and that the placenta would successfully be eliminated. 

When I first heard about my great grandmother dying so soon after having her first baby I began to wonder if she may have had the same problems that I had. It was sad to think that there was not a medical doctor available to help her like my doctor did with me. I have always wondered how different my grandfather’s life would have been if his mother had lived to raise him into a man. 

As it happened Grandpa’s grandmother took care of him until he was about thirteen. Then she too died and he was an orphan in need of a guardian. Suddenly his father arrived ready to finally take on the responsibility of his care. Grandpa was suspicious of his father’s motives in finally stepping forward when he had been gone for thirteen years. Grandpa had a small inheritance from his grandmother and he wondered if his father was more interested in getting his hands on the money than on taking care of his son. 

Grandpa ultimately chose an uncle as his guardian, a man who was a graduate of the Military Academy at West Point. He boasted that his uncle was a fine and honest man who guided him to a time when he was able to go off on his own to see the world as an adult. Once again sadness entered Grandpa’s life as his uncle died from typhus that he contracted after a hurricane in Puerto Rico in 1900. Death and abandonment seemed to be two features of Grandpa’s life and yet he found the gumption to carry on all alone. 

My grandfather was born near the end of the nineteenth century. He had already witnessed a great deal of history when he set out on his own. When World War I arrived he was already too old to be drafted. Instead he traveled around the United States finding work as a lather. Along the way he visited many states and built edifices that still stand including the San Jacinto Monument and the State Capitol building of Arkansas. 

He was an adventurous but lonely soul who does not show up in census records until after he married my grandmother. By then he was already in his forties. a seemingly seasoned bachelor who fell for my grandmother the first time he ate her cooking in a boarding house in Oklahoma. She was a widow with a grown daughter from her first marriage. Somehow the two souls fell for each other and tied the knot. Eventually they had two children in their middle ages, Marion and my father, Jack. 

I always thought of my grandparents as being old people because they were already in their seventies when I was born. They were a happy couple who seemed to be on a perennial honeymoon. Grandpa’s eye would twinkle at the mere sight of his wife and even after her death he would speak of her with reverence, as though she had somehow perfected his world. 

My grandmother was eighty eight years old when she died but Grandpa would always lament that she had “died young.” He would live eighteen more years after her death but never failed to bring up her name and call her his buddy until the day he died at the age of one hundred eight. 

Just before Grandpa died I visited him in a nursing home. He had begun to suffer from dementia for the first time in his life. He told me that I had just missed seeing my grandmother. Rather than arguing with him I said that I was sorry that I did not get to see her. 

A few nights later I was awakened from a deep sleep and to my amazement I felt the presence of my grandmother. She sweetly explained that Grandpa was tired and that God was ready to take him home and give him some rest. It was a dream that felt so real, especially when Grandpa died the very next day. 

Grandpa had lived a long and lovely life. By the time he died he had lost his son along with his wife and most of his friends. He had even watched some of his grandchildren leave this earth. Through it all he remained steadfastly dedicated to his family and he kept a positive outlook on life in spite of all of the misfortunes he had known. He was my hero and always will be. He showed me how to survive even the toughest experiences with courage and  dignity. I think of him often. 

I’m not the world’s best cook. In fact I don’t get a kick out of cooking like some people do. Maybe it’s because I generally don’t get excited about food. I just want enough to stay alive and I don’t really mind repeating the same menu over and over again for myself. I think of cooking more as a task than a hobby or something that makes me happy. Nonetheless I try to make my meals appealing for the members of my family and they generally like what I prepare from my limited repertoire. 

My mother started me on the road to cooking when I was rather young. She delighted in being a chef and wanted to pass down her skills to me. Her first steps were to have me watch her preparing different dishes and learn from what I observed. My Grandma Minnie tried the same method with me but sadly my attention span often drifted off into other interests so I really did not enhance my cooking skills by standing behind the two master chefs of my family. 

I tend to be a kinesthetic person who learns by doing, so eventually my mother shifted gears and challenged me to prepare a meal for the family. Since I was not yet in my teens my choice of entree and side dishes reflected the kind of things that I liked. I decided to fry up some meat patties and serve them with mashed potatoes and green beans. None of it seemed to be that difficult but no matter how hard I tried to make my potatoes smooth the lumps just kept showing up. I wondered if I was ever going to get my offering on the table before it was time to go to bed so I eventually just served everything as is. 

The meat was acceptable and there is not much that can go wrong with opening a can of green beans, heating them and then announcing that they are ready for consumption. The mashed potatoes looked good with their butter and cream but I suppose that I had not cooked them long enough because when my family tried them they crunched as they chewed. Of course brothers being brothers had to find me guilty of giving them the worst meal they had ever eaten. It was bound to happen given my mother’s culinary acumen. By comparison my efforts were a hack job that disgusted even me. 

I got better over time. Having recipes and following them helped. My first kudos came from the cookies that I baked. Eventually I became quite adept at making a pot of beans from dried legumes. Over time my family members honored me with the title of the Bean Queen. The step from beans to soup was not all that drastic. I began to develop an uncanny ability to know how to weave ingredients together in a tasty stew. To my great joy there were no complaints about my vegetable, chicken or potato soups. 

I have the most fun cooking when I am doing it with someone else. The solitude of cooking alone feels like an onerous task but putting together a feast with someone else is fun. I like to play music and banter with whomever my cooking partner happens to be. Making it a social thing eases the feeling that cooking is a drudge.

My husband and I make seafood gumbo every Christmas and I always look forward to the experience. My mother-in-law expanded my soup making abilities by showing me how to make yellow split pea soup for New Year’s Day. I haven’t missed a year of doing that ever since she turned the job over to me. 

I make a mean arroz con pollo and the ease of creating a pot roast is totally appealing to me. I know it may sound a bit too easy but my fried eggs are perfection. I make a tasty grilled cheese as well. In fact somehow cheesy things are my favorites. My macaroni and cheese is really good. I learned how to make that from my friend, Cappy. I never cooked salmon until my youngest daughter shared her recipe with me. Now I rotate salmon into my menu on a regular basis and I have many renditions all of which are quite delicious

I love one dish or one pan meals. Sometimes I think my real lack of enthusiasm for cooking has mostly to do with the number of bowls and utensils and pots that I have to clean after cooking. When I can create a feast on cookie pan covered in aluminum foil and cook all of the courses in the oven while I read or do the other things that I most enjoy I feel victorious. 

I’ve got  couple of slow cooker delights but I usually find that everything starts to taste the same if I use that mode of cooking too often. It mainly comes in handy when I have scheduled a very long day of appointments and tasks that leave me scrambling at the last minute to come up with something for dinner.

For a time I used a service that gave me the ingredients and instructions for many of my meals. Over time the entrees became more and more expensive and recipes were repeated again and again. I realized that I might duplicate the best menus without paying an arm and a leg for a single meal. 

I really do wish that I had developed the joy of cooking like my mother and grandmother and daughter and so many of my friends managed to learn. I can’t exactly explain why food just does not matter that much to me. I cook for others and honestly sometimes the task just becomes tedious as I think about escaping the house for an adventurous walk or continuing to read the book that I don’t want to put down. I guess that I never got the gene for cooking that some people have. I’d be satisfied to eat the beans and weenies that were a staple for one of my aunts with whom I seem to be the most alike. I cook to survive but do my best to understand that the people at my table want a bit more, so I try a little of this and a little of that now and again and seem to please everyone’s taste buds most of the time. Speaking of that, I must now go to the kitchen and come up with some ideas for grub for tonight.

Einstein proclaimed that time is relative. It certainly has been that way for me since I had a total knee replacement. The day of the surgery flew by as though someone had stolen many of the hours that usually make up the passage from one date to the next. The first days following dragged along as though someone had forgotten to the wind clock and so I was stuck in a seemingly forever moment. What we don’t always talk about when discussing Einstein’s theory of relativity is that even emotions like joy and pain are also relative.

We’ve all had the experience of having such an enjoyable day that it felt as though time had speeded up just when we wished it would slow down. So too whenever we are feeling sorrowful or the pain of a bodily injury time seems to be infinitely sluggish. An hour seems like a day. A day seems like forever. 

When I first announced that I was going to have surgery for a total knee replacement I received a variety of comments. One woman was only five weeks from the same kind of procedure and her words were disturbing. She insisted that the days and weeks and hours after the surgery were riddled with almost unbearable pain. That is something that few doctors mention when providing information about what lies after the procedure is done. 

As it happens I tend to be a stoic capable of enduring great pain in a somewhat positive way. Nonetheless I understand that each of us has varying abilities to deal with aches that plague our bodies. I have a set of twin grandchildren who literally are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to pain. One seems like wonder woman when subjected to intense discomfort. Her twin, on the other hand, is so acutely aware of the body’s efforts to heal itself that he suffers mightily like the woman who attempted to prepare me for the unpleasantries that would lie ahead.

I have to admit that the whole aftermath has been far more uncomfortable than I ever imagined. Most of the time I managed to grit my teeth and work my way through the soreness but there were times when I winced and tears appeared in my eyes. It is a much more serious and difficult surgery than I had dared to believe. I think my friend was attempting to prepare me and she certainly did. 

It stands to reason that if something artificial is placed in your body there will be reactions. The body sees the foreign object as an invader and has to go into a mode designed to heal. That healing process requires lots of hard work to keep the knee from becoming stiff and immovable. For weeks the daily routine has to include physical therapy sessions and home exercises. Even just sitting for an hour without moving results in a stiffness that makes the knee feel as though it has been encased in concrete. It’s up to the person who has had the surgery to keep moving and sometimes that does not feel so good. 

I am nicely along at this point in time. I can bend my knee one hundred twenty degrees with effort. It is till not a pain free movement but it is one of which I am very proud because it took many hours to get that ability. I can also keep my leg so straight that it hits a flat surface at zero degrees. That too has required stretching and building back the muscles in my leg. Time for me has been built around icing the knee to reduce swelling, elevating the knee for the same reason and working out even when I wanted to do something else. I can totally understand the frustration of my friend for whom the pain was unremitting. I know the experience of being unable to sleep on some nights when nothing seemed to stop the constant throbbing. I had to concentrate on the fact that all of that activity at night was a sign that my body was attempting to be normal once again.

Time has been relative for me. I mostly stay at home to be certain that I don’t catch a virus or otherwise get sick and only add to the recovery time that continues. I feel a bit better with each passing week and I have resumed regular activities like teaching my homeschooled students and cooking and doing light cleaning. I’m banned from yard work. which is my form of relaxation, until I reach three months from the date of my surgery. I can’t go to the dentist until six months after the surgery. I obey the demands of my surgeon and his team because so far everything they have told me has been very true. 

My life is moving at a slow pace right now. Each day seems very long as I am anxious to wake up one morning and feel as though I am all healed. This moment in time has made me so much more aware of those who suffer for any reason. I find myself thinking of them and doing my best to help them to get from one day to the next. I know that wonderful people have done that for me. Everything about life is relative and so we would all do well to understand rather than to judge. Each of us have different levels of tolerance for the painful times that come our way. It’s up to us to help each other along.  

Saturday, March 7, was the anniversary of Bloody Sunday when protestors were met with extreme violence as they attempted to cross the William Petit Bridge in Selma Alabama in 1965. Their intent was to bring attention to the voting rights of Blacks that were being trampled in areas all over the United States. When the peaceful marchers came over the horizon of the bridge they were met with snarling dogs and angry white men ready to beat them over the heads with clubs. It was an horrific incident that burned into my sixteen year old brain and cemented my determination to spend my life providing opportunities for all people. 

Years later I was in the final days of my life as a mathematics teacher working at a school that sponsored a Civil Rights tour of the south for students who had just completed their freshman year. The high school was the first of its kind in the KIPP Charter School system and most of the students came from minority neighborhoods in Houston, Teas where life was often difficult. When I was asked to be one of the chaperones for the trip I looked forward to sharing the tour of historical places that I only knew from the news of my youth when I was not much older than the students with whom I would share the trip. 

I had told a group of the young people how devastated I was witnessing the events of Bloody Sunday on my family’s black and white television. I mentioned that I cried every time I saw old films of that horrific day and that I would probably be moved to tears once again when we visited the place in person.

We first stopped at Toogaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi where we heard from a minister who had accompanied students who took part in sit ins back in the sixties. From there we traveled to Memphis, Tennessee and went the the hotel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. My emotions were jumping all over the place and I felt as though I was experiencing a sacred pilgrimage with my Black students as we visited each site. Eventually we traveled to Selma, Alabama to walk across the bridge that was so burned into my memory. 

We left the buses in front of the church where the original march began. We walked slowly and solemnly down the street with cars from the local police following us. As we came upon the bridge the old images of the people who had been there on March 7, 1965 flooded my brain. Somehow it felt right that I was honoring them with my students who also seemed to understand the impact of that moment in history. 

When we had walked the length of the bridge and gathered in a nearby field one of my students came up to me where I was standing alone deep in my thoughts. He hugged me and asked, “Are you alright, Mama B?” That is when the dam holding back my tears broke. 

I retired a few years later and time passed. It was 2020, and Covid 19 had overtaken the world. On a day in May a man whom I might otherwise have never known died at the hands of a police officer after crying out that he could not breathe while entreating his mother to help him. Once again I was mesmerized by the film showing the cruelty of the police officer whose knee bored down on George Floyd’s throat without pity.

Soon afterwards I received a private message from the student who had comforted me on that journey over the William Pettit Bridge. He begged me to help his people as he believed I would. That is when I began writing about political issues and justice. I was on fire in my defense of the frustration and anger that our Black citizens were feeling so many decades after the Civil Rights efforts had seemed to bring prejudices to an end. I realized that we were still fighting the same kind of battles in our nation that were so violent back when I was a teen. It was as though I had circled back to a time that I had naively believed was long gone. 

My student awakened me in that moment. I realized that I had assumed that the fights for justice for all people in the United States were over. I had travelled in circles where I was sheltered from prejudices even though my students and many of my minority colleagues had insisted that the battles were not yet over. I wore rose colored glasses that fooled me into thinking that all of the civil rights issues were settled. In May of 2020, I finally faced the truth. 

It has been tough for the past six years because an underbelly of our nation has come roaring back with confidence that they can roll back many of the programs that insured that all people of all races and beliefs would be free to express themselves. I have watched with a certain level of guilt as many of the old prejudices have resurfaced often from the man who serves as our president. It has broken my heart but not my spirit to see such things. Now on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day after the funeral for freedom fighting Jesse Jackson, I see that our work is not done until all people whomever they may be are respected and given an equal chance just to be. Because I believe that human rights are not optional I will carry on as long as there is still work to be done. None of us can afford to look the other way as long as any of as are being treated unfairly.