All It Takes Is A Little Love

A year of limping around because of my arthritic knees has left me feeling chunky and not as fit as I want to be. Since at least one of my knees is working beautifully now I am back to serious walking and exercise. The fact that I get tired after a mile is evidence that I have a long way to go to get back into the shape that I once took for granted. I know that I can do it if I put my mind to it. I mostly want to regain my energy and I am encouraged by how quickly I have recovered since my total knee replacement. While the numbers on my scale are absurd and my clothes are dangerously close to not fitting anymore I am once again able to do the work that I need to do. 

I love walking around the neighborhood. I come back home all hot and sweaty but that is to be expected at this time of year. I will no doubt either walk early each morning or late in the evening once the temperatures begin to really rise. I like seeing how people have landscaped their yards and nodding as I pass other folks who are also out for a stroll. I’d join my neighbors across the street if I were fast enough to keep up with them but for now my pace is sure and slow. 

I do lots of stretching and strengthening exercises that I learned in physical therapy. I know that they are really helpful so I don’t want to start slacking with them. I’m not nearly as dedicated to being fit as once was and still should be. I admire my grandchildren for making exercise and physical activities part of their daily routines. I’m ready to return to the days when I was like they are.

For most of my life I have been thin and energetic. My mother used to wonder why I never sat still. I was not even able to study without moving around. When I was on the stationary phones I required an extra long cord so that I was able to pace back and forth as I chatted with friends. I was one of those kids who got into trouble for tapping my feet and moving my legs around under my desk. It was an automatic habit that I was never able to quell. I suppose that was the secret to my ability to keep my weight in tow. Eventually a bout with back spasms and two arthritic knees changed me into a sedentary chunk. I watched the numbers climbed whenever I weighed myself and kept making excuses for my increasing girth. It wasn’t because I was eating too much. It was because I was just sitting around in pain. 

Now I have no excuses. I have all the tools that I need to get a move on and I have to admit to being excited over the prospect of regaining the boundless energy that once came so naturally to me that my mother suspect that I had some kind of hyperactive disorder. Like the Energizer bunny, on any given day I kept going and going and going. 

It pained me that I had to stop so much to rest when we visited London last fall so I knew that the time had come to submit to the knee surgery. Now I wish I had done it sooner. I literally waited until both of my knees were rubbing bone on bone because I feared the process of getting a new joint made out of nickel. Now I know that the first weeks are not so fun but the progress becomes more and more exponential as the weeks go by. The best part is that one of my legs is now so straight that I no longer look bow-legged, a by product of my aching knees that was so embarrassing to me. With another surgery I will be standing straight once again and with the disappearance of pain I can exercise myself into the kind of person I used to be. 

I marvel at the things that doctors are capable of doing. In just the last few years I have watched my husband’s heart be cleared of all the blockages that once threatened his life. I have witnessed his cancer going away with forty treatments that were not exactly comfortable but definitely good for him. My back no longer spasms like it once did and now one of my knees is just like new. I have to admit that such things were not even possible in times of old. No wonder older people were often portrayed hunched over and limping. 

I know people who struggled for decades with weight gains that seemed to come even when they starved themselves. Now with either operations on injections and sometimes a pill they are transformed. They get full faster and as the pounds melt away their energy returns. It is yet another medical miracle that reduces heart disease and even seems to reduce addictions. 

I often wonder where medicine will go next. I hope to see a day when scientists and doctors understand the brain so well that they are able to eradicate mental illnesses and cure people with neurological disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS. I suspect that humans are closer to unlocking so many medical mysteries than we may think. Our funding for such research should be given gladly and the treatments should made  available to anyone who needs them. 

I once thought I wanted to be a doctor or nurse. I decided that I wasn’t really destined for such a vocation but I greatly admire those who dedicate their lives to helping others overcome illnesses and injuries. We should never allow our government to neglect the studies and research that is needed to advance our medical knowledge and we should all hold our medical community in the high esteem that they deserve. Every single day someone is getting a new knee, or a better functioning heart, or a treatment to eradicate a disease. I know that I cannot even measure the benefits of good medicine that have made my life so much better. It still seems miraculous to me. 

The last year and a half has been difficult here in the USA. We’ve been on a roller coaster ride that is sometimes terrifying mostly because most of us never consented to enduring the difficulties that we face. From day to day we can’t predict what new horror will be introduced by a president who seems to take delight in coming up with strange ideas in the middle of the night. For a supposed conservative it is amazing how much radical change he has introduced in a very short time. It feels as though a barbarian horde intent on trashing programs and changing the foundations of our nation has invaded Washington D.C. The whiplash from day to day is often violent, leaving many of us in a dreadful funk. It can be difficult to keep the faith that good will ultimately triumph over the madness. We all find ourselves in need of emotional support, evidence that there is still a vast store of hope that might keep us eying a better future. 

In the midst of the crises along comes a group of four astronauts who remind us of all that is good and wholesome in our country. The crew of Artemis II that flew around the moon are just the steadying force that we needed to drown our doubts about humanity. These four incredible people are the very picture of goodness and heroism even as they themselves admit to just being human rather than superheroes. 

Imagine being in a confined area for days with three other people. Even a loving family might snap from the constant pressure of having to get along and yet our four astronauts seemed to truly revel in each other’s company. Watching them meet challenges and interact with one another was inspiring. They seemed to be the best among us, the kind of people who respect others regardless of differences. They were diverse in backgrounds, gender, race and nationality and yet they used those differences as a positive aspect of their mission. Their mutual respect and dependence on one another was so wonderful to witness. They were just the group that we needed to see in a time of so much turmoil. 

These men and women are so accomplished, the best of who we are as humans and yet they all bear a sense of humility and even gratitude for the opportunity to be part of an historic moment. Just thinking of the remarkable feat that they demonstrated to the world was a kind of tonic for all of our souls. Realizing the level of cooperation and intelligence that that was required for their mission to be successful was an inspirational reminder of what we humans are capable of doing, not for power or riches, but for the betterment of all people. Their time in space was just the panacea that we needed. 

There have been other moments and people that have reminded us of the courage and goodness of people in the midst of ugly chaos. Pope Leo is a steadying force for the world, constantly reminding us of what the message of Jesus was. He challenges all people everywhere to remember the poor and sick and wanderers of the world. His is a message that we would all do well to consider. He too has become a source of emotional support. 

I have hardly been a fan of King Charles. I tended to write him off as someone of little merit but when he visited our nation he so quietly and deftly outlined the very foundations of our nation. He helped us remember why we exist as a free and independent country. He iterated the hopes and dreams of our Founding Fathers and challenged us to be the kind of people that they hoped we would be. He touched my heart and calmed my insecurities. As he spoke I realized that we the people of the United States will honor our ancestors by righting the wrongs that have dominated so much of the past year and a half. We will not let power hungry would be kings destroy the human progress that we have made as we strive for the ideals of our Constitution. 

I sometimes feel as though we the people have been thrust into an abusive relationship with our own government. We watch rules being twisted and flaunted while our taxes are being diverted from the good of humanity to treasure troves for war and construction of unnecessary ballrooms. Emotional supporters like Heather Cox Richardson remind us daily with her letters that we Americans have faltered before and always found our way back to the pathway of freedom. We wake up from our fears again and again and figure out how we need to be. 

It has been said that the United States of America operates on eighty year cycles during which we grow lazy and distracted from protecting our government. It has been eighty years since the end of World War II which was the culmination of horrors like World War I, a pandemic and the Great Depression. We lived a kind of golden age in the years since that time and our memories blurred as to the horrors that we should avoid. Now in our celebratory year of the founding of our nation we are being challenged once again to set things right. We would do well to look to the emotional support individuals who show us the proper way to be. They are the heroes of our era and their wisdom and example will show us what we must do to reignite the promise of our nation. 

I have encountered a number of nurses in the last few months. There were the wonderful men and women who prepped me for my total knee replacement surgery and those who worked with me once I returned home. They checked on my progress continually and responded to my questions so quickly that I never became anxious that they may not have received my messages. Their understanding of my concerns was unflagging and contributed greatly to my eventual recovery. 

My father-in-law has been in and out of hospitals, rehabilitation centers and a nursing home since the first week of December. During that time his nurses have worked diligently to keep him comfortable. Sometimes they have even sat with him through the nights when his anxieties have overtaken him. All the while they let him know how much they care about him even when he becomes grumpy in frustration at the downturn in his life. Florence Nightingale would have been proud of the professional and loving way that they have so patiently worked with him both day and night. 

My brother has been plagued with one heath problem after another since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He has always been an energetic man who loves to go on long hikes in rough terrain. He loves to travel and do wood working and all of the activities that he thought would be part of his retirement. Sadly he has mostly spent much of his time with illnesses and injuries related to Parkinson’s that have landed him in the hospital over and over again. Just as with my father-in-law nurses have watched over him and done their best to help him heal in as much comfort as possible. 

Nurses are truly angels among us and yet we do not always treat them with the kind of respect that they deserve. They are highly educated individuals who do not always receive salaries commiserate with how difficult their jobs actually are. Most work twelve hour shifts in hospitals where they are lucky to be able to stop long enough to have a break or to eat. They are on their feet rushing from one room to another and then keeping charts up to date with the distribution of medications and the symptoms of the patients. Theirs is an exhausting vocation and yet they remain calm and pleasant even when frustrated patients bark at them.

Nurses spend time with patients long after the doctors dash in and out. They are the lifeline for those who are suffering, usually having far more medical knowledge than we generally give them credit for having. Sometimes people even treat them as though they are servants rather than the professionals that they are. Most folks have little idea of how difficult the courses that they take to get a degree actually are. Nurses know and understand biology and chemistry and anatomy and can explain how medications work. They notice things that even the doctors may not see. They are the true backbone of our medical system. 

Nurses have been so important to my husband as well. When he was in his mid twenties he contracted a fungal disease that required weeks of chemotherapy. His veins began to break down but the doctor did not want him to have an implant in which to apply the medication. A wonderful pediatric nurse came to his rescue each time he needed an infusion. She took a tiny needle and created a perfect IV with an accuracy that was stunning. She remains one of his all time favorite people on this earth.

Later my husband had heart surgery and was recovering when it was a nurse who saw that his heart rate was unsteady. Even when the doctor said it was no big thing she continued to monitor my husband and pushed over and over again to note the fluttering of his heart. Eventually a cardiac specialist confirmed that her concerns had been real and my husband now wears a loop recorder to alert the doctor of any dangerous changes in the beating of his heart.

Much as with teachers we do not always give nurses the same level of respect that we would provide to a business person or an engineer. While nurses make a somewhat decent living they still fall below the salaries of those in other professions that may or may not require the higher level of knowledge that they must have to be effective in their work. 

In this month where teachers and nurses get lumped together for appreciation as though they were an afterthought we ply them with flowers or goodies but far too rarely take notice of how truly important they are. At the same time many of us never see give them the same level of regard as others with a college degree. Is it because most of them are women or is it because we do not clearly understand how much learning and training is required for a nurse to be ready to tackle daily challenges that consume every hour of their workdays?

There are those who seem to think that we might one day be able to use artificial intelligence to replace nurses, teachers, engineers and sometimes even doctors. Such thinking fails to see the importance of the human touch that nurses provide. No program or machine will ever be able to extend the gentleness and kindness that nurses bring to their patients. It is their warmth overlaid on their knowledge that makes them indispensable. 

I often hark back to a time after the birth of my youngest daughter when I was in the hospital recuperating. I was exhausted after a complication during my hours of labor. I was sleeping peacefully one night when a nurse quietly entered my room and checked my vitals as discreetly as possible. When she had finished she pulled the blanket over me and gently tucked me in like my mother might have done. She smiled down at me like an angel and whispered that I should rest. I will never forget how much her gesture meant to me in that moment. I can still see her face which calmed me and told me that I would be okay. 

I would like to believe that one day we will all elevate the status of nurses to the place of high regard that should be theirs. Until then find a nurse and tell her how thankful you are that he or she was there when you needed the most care. This is the very least you can do for them. 

“Life is about using the whole box of crayons” Author Unknown

I have a dim but pleasant memory of visiting a nice lady who lived next door to my family when I was about four or five years old. She was an artist and her home was filled with modern furniture unlike anything I had ever before seen. Some of her paintings festooned the walls and they were magnificent creations of color and strange forms. I would later think of her when I watched the movie Auntie Mame and saw the avant-garde furnishings and lifestyle of the main character. That is how I still think of the lady who lived next door, a free spirit with a creative mind who was kind to children.

I vaguely remember coloring with her and feeling so calm in her presence. My mother claimed that the lady was quite impressed with my shading and ability to control the crayon rather than just scribbling all over the page like most children my age. I have to take my mother’s word for truth because I don’t remember the details of my visits with the neighbor other than being in awe of how different her interior decorating was from the more traditional settings that I had always seen. 

I grew up with a fondness of art and one of my most audacious dreams as a child was to get one of those huge boxes of crayons that seemingly had every shade of tints that I had ever seen. The biggest box I ever owned was the one that was just a step above the smallest offering with two rows of crayons rather than only one row representing the colors of the rainbow. I took extra care of my crayons keeping them neatly aligned in the box so I was horrified when I one day took an art class and the instructor insisted that I tear off the paper around the waxy sticks and break them into smaller pieces that would allow me to better shade my compositions. I enjoyed having my crayons lined up in glorious rainbows without any flaws.

One of my brothers hated to color so his answer to a task that he found tedious was to just grab a brown crayon and scribble all over the paper. Since the teachers knew that our father had died they tied his habit to depression and called my mother in for a conference. They suggested that my brother might need some counseling and used his brown artwork as proof of his sadness. When my mother suggested that it might be a good idea to first find out from him why he always submitted brown scribbles, they immediately called him into the meeting. When asked why he always chose brown and then only scribbled with it he insisted that he hated coloring and just wanted to get the project over with as quickly as possible. His only sadness was in being required to perform a task that was odious to him. With a bit of pressure from the teacher and the counselor he finally agreed to choose more cheerful colors if that was what they wanted. 

I laugh about how different my brother and I have always been and I marvel at my mother’s patience in allowing us to follow our own dreams. I think she understood quite well that the two of us were destined for differing ways of engaging with life. His would be a world of numbers and analytical tasks and mine would revolve around doing my utmost to make learning feel magical. I used lots of colors in my words and in the environment that I created for my students. I understood that those young people who looked at me with anticipation represented all of the colors that the world has ever conceived. Not two were exactly alike. I had my giant box of colors in the many personalities, dreams, and abilities of the thousands of young people who came to my classroom. I suppose that I wanted them to remember my lessons the way I remember my neighbor’s colorful and exciting home where I was felt so comfortable and understood. 

We can complain about diversity as though it is something that diminishes us but that would be so wrong. The bigger the box of crayons, the more possibilities there are for creating a wondrous work of art. So it is with people. All of the many colors and shades of their personalities and cultures and ideas are beautiful just like a giant box of crayons. The artistry of the world is incredible with no one place or type of person being more pleasing than the others. We need everyone just as they are. Diversity moves our world forward and creates a collage that brightens the world rather than diminishing it. 

I think of how that giant box of crayons always made me dream of possibilities and now I see that all of those different shades represent the variety of the world. The lady next door introduced me to a way of living that I had never before seen and I still remember it because it was so beautiful. That is how I see the world today. The many shades of our world enliven our planet and make it a wonderful place to be. 

The world is filled with ironies, collisions of the past, present and future that sometimes happen in ways that seem to be almost spiritual. So it was with me last week. It all began when I read an article that featured the author’s choices of the most authentic historical films. I wrote down the titles on a small tablet where I keep notes of ideas that I want to pursue and one by one my husband and I began watching the movies each evening. 

We began with Cromwell and moved through old flicks like the nineteen fifties era rendition of Napoleon. We both agreed that the author of the article that I had read had made excellent choices in recommending movies that are incredibly representative of the times that they purport to examine. Each film was indeed exceptional so we stuck with our plan to view everything on the list one by one. Finally we reached the movie, Selma.

The very mention of Selma, Alabama conjures intense emotions in me. I was glued to the nightly news each evening during my high school years. I saw the efforts of the civil rights movement in the south where I lived. I cringed at the stories about Black citizens being denied entry into schools, restaurants, bathrooms and other public spaces. Even as a child of seven or eight years I had understood how wrong it was to make the Black people in my city sit at the back of the bus that my mother and I took on our ventures to downtown Houston. I questioned the signs on water fountains and bathrooms that segregated Blacks from the rest of us. It ruffled my sense of fairness and decency to see such things and as I grew older my resolve to help make things more just only became stronger. 

In nineteen sixty five I was a junior in high school and not yet seventeen years old but I followed the nightly news regarding the civil rights efforts with hopeful interest. Thus I saw with dismay what happened in Selma, Alabama on the William Pettit Bridge one Sunday when Black citizens attempted a peaceful protest march to shine a light on the flagrant attempts to keep them from being able to vote. I watched the brutality of the state troopers who attacked with snarling dogs, officers on horseback and batons that battered the heads of the people. I was in tears then and still become emotional when I think of that dreadful day. 

Of course Selma represented a turning point in the efforts to secure the right to vote for all people who are citizens of the United States. It forced President Lyndon B Johnson to respond to the issue with legislation that banned attempts to keep Black citizens off of the rolls. The old tropes of making Blacks answer ridiculous questions that insured that they would be turned down when the attempted to register were to be no more. 

Fast forward many years later to 2010 when I was a mathematics teacher in the middle age of my life teaching at a charter school where many young Black and Hispanic students worked hard to enrich themselves with an education that would lead to opportunities to attend college. At the end of each school year the freshman class embarked on a journey to some of the key Civil Rights sites including Selma, Alabama. I was eager to volunteer to be one of the chaperones because I wanted to see the places that had been so impactful in the story of our national tussle with justice for all. To me it was a pilgrimage. So I warned my students that I might become especially emotional in Selma and spoke of the feelings of my youth when I was only slightly older than they were.

The trip itself was like no other journey I have ever taken. Each place that we visited tugged at my memories but it was in Selma that I truly felt a sense of reliving history. We stopped first at the church where many of the plans for the march to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, had begun back in nineteen sixty-five. As we walked down the sidewalk heading for the bridge we were followed by law officers in cars. Many of the Black students huddled around me quietly wondering if the people in the town were concerned by our presence. We were indeed a rather large group and must have seemed a bit out of place. 

Soon the William Pettit Bridge loomed before us just as it was in nineteen sixty-five. We could not see the other side because the road was curved into a kind of hill. It was only when we reached the peak that we were able to see what lay ahead. In our downward descent my emotions overtook me. I felt my heart racing and breathing became more difficult. Tears of remembrance welled in my eyes but I made no sound. I kept my feelings in check much as I always tend to do when I am with my students. 

Once we reached an open field where we gathered to get on the bus that would take us to Montgomery one of the students approached me and asked, “Are you okay, Mama B?” My lips quivered as I shook my head up and down and then he gave me a big bear hug as though he understood what we both were feeling in that moment. 

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota. Suddenly I received a message from the young man who had understood me so well in Selma. His request for me was simple. He asked me to be a voice for him and for his people. He understood that the cause of justice for our Black citizens was still in jeopardy. That is when I began to change the tenor of many of my blogs. They were no longer just happy pieces that made people smile. I lost many readers because of my defense of George Floyd and those who protested his death. 

Now in 2026, we have a president and a Congress and a Supreme Court that seems intent on taking our nation back to a time that was not great at all. They allow gerrymandering to go wild, eliminating districts that gave Blacks an opportunity to have representation. Only last week the majority of the court voted to restrict one of the key premises of the Voting Rights Act by noting that it was unconstitutional to create districts that assured Black citizens with representation. It was in my mind the most egregious setback in justice in the last one hundred years. In the state of Louisiana where one third of the citizens are Black the court ruled that districts aimed at giving them representation are unConstitutional. 

So here I was watching Selma only days after the Supreme Court ruling and my emotions ran free. I was sobbing not just in remembering what happened sixty years ago but in knowing that the efforts of so many brave souls are being undone one by one. I cried not just about the past but about the future of our nation. I felt a deep sadness in realizing that the efforts of so many brave souls are slowly being undone as lawmakers draw ridiculous lines to create Congressional districts that water down or outright eliminate the voices of individuals and groups who still long to be heard. Why can’t we get it right?