All It Takes Is A Little Love

I was once a tall girl, five feet six and one half inches. As I have grown older I have lost much of that height and now stand at five feet four inches. The funny thing is that my feet are still the large size that meshes with my taller physique but my hands have also been rather tiny and out of proportion with my long arms and legs. 

Not only were my hands small but they seemed to always appear to be older than the rest of my body. Only now has the rest of me caught up to the wrinkles and worn look of my hands so admittedly I was somewhat embarrassed by my stubby fingers for much of my life. It was not until someone grabbed them one day and proclaimed that she loved how my hands spoke of someone who had truly experienced life. 

Of course I was stunned by her pronouncement and wondered what she meant by her praise. She explained that my hands appeared to be accustomed to doing hard work, caring for the world around me. She saw them as emblematic of determination and a willingness to engage in laborious tasks that needed to be done. 

I was flabbergasted by her words but left with a feeling of accomplishment that made me smile. The truth is that my hands have often taken part in hard labors that left dirt under my broken nails and scratches on my palms. My hands have been up to my wrists in mud and dirt. They have turned red from scrubbing a dirty surface. I have used them to apply pressure on a wound so that someone would not bleed out. They have been spotted with paint and stained with the ink that I used to write papers and answer questions on exams. In fact my hands have only rarely been pampered because I constantly use them to get things done but also to hold or hug someone who is grieving or hurting. My hands have endured as much living as my eyes and they are reminders of the hard work that I have asked them to do. So I truly appreciated that comment from the observant person who provided me with a much better way of assessing the appearance of my hands. 

I say this because we live in a world that can be rather superficial when it comes to judging people. We glance at someone and almost instantly decide if we think he or she is beautiful based solely on values the we have created in our minds for deciding the person’s relative worth. We do this even as we know that it is an incomplete method. As the people of the world pass us we take note of them in quick succession often missing the most beautiful among them. 

I was at a party sitting across from a woman that I barely knew. Her appearance did not instantly stand out to me. She wore no makeup and lines and wrinkles and dark areas under her eyes were quite visible but the more she told me about herself the more I understood how incredible she was. As her story continued to unfold her appearance changed in my eyes. I saw a beauty in her countenance that had not been so apparent at first. I could see that her entire focus was outside of herself. She was genuine and honest and no amount of makeup or fakery would have made her more beautiful than she already was. I realized why she had so many friends at the party and why their faces lit up just talking with her. I saw her smile and instantly change the composition of her face and so I blurted out that I thought she was beautiful. 

She stuttered in embarrassment for a moment and even laughed at the very idea but then her husband who had been silently listening to her just as I had been spoke up and thanked me for seeing in her what he had seen for all of their married life. Then she humbly smiled and showed her gratitude to both of us. 

I still think of that moment because it was a watershed for me. I realized that true beauty lies in a person’s heart and when it is there it transforms the individual’s appearance in our eyes. We no longer see the superficial aspects of beauty but only the ones that matter. So too might we learn the reverse when someone with lovely physical aspects spews hatefulness the countenance takes on a foul and foreboding appearance. We see only their ugliness and feel repelled. 

There are truly good people all around us who have hearts of gold. All too often we gush over those with glamorous physical features but never take the time to mention the immeasurable beauty of an unvarnished and humble soul. Think of how much better and more meaningful our society would be if we began to celebrate goodness over superficialities. Not all beauties are without gentle hearts. Some are lovely inside and out but far too many receive kudos simply for have slim figures, great hair and perfect facial features. Then we learn that they are also empty inside. 

It is said that beauty is as beauty does and it certainly seems so to me. Even the fairytales warn us to look inside hearts and souls to find the truth of a person. When we take time to look deeper we see the true loveliness of a person and we envision them that way forevermore. Beautiful souls need to hear how lovely they are in our eyes.

The long days of the Covid 19 pandemic still linger in my memory. I had read about the nineteen eighteen world wide pandemic in great detail. One book that impressed me read like a detective story with dedicated scientists determined to understand the cause of that horrific illness that killed millions across the globe. It was not until years later that they developed a better understanding of what happened then and were able to develop medications that would save the world from ever again enduring that strain of illness. I was so fascinated with what had  happened then that I followed the daily news about the Covid 19 virus with a sense of awe when that illness was overtaking the world.

My husband had already endured a stroke and a heart attack so the two of us decided to lay low until more information about Covid and how to treat it became available. We were both retired so we were able to stay in our home and watch the world around us struggling to operate. We ordered masks and had our groceries delivered to our door. We took many voluntary precautions because I sensed that doctors and scientists across the globe were using and sharing their knowledge even as evidence taught them to change directions as new information became available. 

I relied on advice from my primary care physician and a niece who is a doctor. I tuned in to the daily press conferences that featured Dr. Fauci and other medical experts. I knew that we would all have to adjust to whatever the best science was suggesting that we must do. At the same time I watched the amazing mathematical result of an exponential function raising the number of sick and dying to unbelievable highs. My instinct told me that we probably did not even have completely accurate accountings because many people quietly became sick and never informed a doctor. They suffered with the virus for a time and then got well. Some of those fortunate souls began to compare the virus to having a cold or the flu without acknowledging that for some people the same illness produced death. I chose caution over the hubris of believing that my husband and I would be okay even if we caught the virus. 

We made the best of the situation while still worrying about family members like my father-in-law and his wife who were approaching their nineties with several medical issues that made them quite vulnerable. We helped them survive during that time, showing them how to order groceries to be delivered to their home and visiting them masked up to be certain that they had whatever they needed. 

The times were lonely but we made the best of them. When we were finally vaccinated I cried tears of relief and from that moment forward I followed my doctor’s advice to get additional vaccinations every six months. Because of our caution neither of us came down with the virus and we were able to continue caring for members of the family who had to go into total isolation to be safe. 

All the while Dr. Fauci gave me a sense of hope. I admired his courage in shunning politics to deliver what he believed was the truth at each phase of that time. I knew that my own doctors were delivering the same information to me. They felt that caution was the best reaction until we fully understood the nature of the virus. We were all part of a worldwide event that demonstrated our sameness as humans. For a time we worked together for the good of all until our president, Donald Trump, began to politicize the catastrophic event. He started to deliver junk science to the population to make himself look better. He threw Dr. Fauci under the bus all for his own glory. Then he lost the presidential election and demonstrated his fury by inciting a riot on January 6, 2021. Since that time he has twisted truth to a breaking point and now we have had to watched Dr. Fauci being threatened and accused of being a vile criminal. It boggles my mind. 

At this moment in time the United States of America is troubled. Our president is on a vengeance tour that leads him to act like a spoiled child breaking everything he encounters. When he destroys one area he goes after another to divert attention to the mess that he is making of everything that he touches. His entire second term as president has been a total failure and so he covers his mistakes by accusing others of unreal crimes. 

We are now involved in a war that was unnecessary that nobody wanted with no way out. We have watched in horror as the smooth running of our federal government has been destroyed. We see our president raging out of control while nothing that he does brings back the kind of glory that he seeks. So he turns to the tried and true distractions that he hopes will fools us into believing that he is a victim of misunderstanding. Hopefully few of us will be fooled. 

I will stand by Dr. Fauci until the day I die. His public record of service to this nation speaks to his devotion to the health of all Americans. Like any good doctor he tells us the truth even when it is hard to hear. He did his best to lead us through the pandemic even as our president was working against him time and again. Somehow he kept his calm presence and refused to be bullied into doing and saying what was not good for the people. He is an American hero and it is a travesty that he is being drug through the mud. I feel ashamed that some in our nation are so ungrateful for his service. I hope he knows that most of us hold him in high esteem. We understand what is really happening and how he is being used as a pawn. Our hope is that one day the ignorance and vindictiveness will stop.

I often think about the people who paved the way in the past for my eventual introduction into this world. It is humbling to consider the thousands of years of history that took place in many different places before I uttered my first cries of life as a newborn. The ancestors that I have found are so much more than names on a register and yet I have so little information about how their lives unfolded. I have no photos or even paintings to visualize how they looked. They were simply members of a society of people who scratched out a living for a time on this earth and then became forgotten save for their names on registers that survived the centuries. 

My paternal great grandparents came along at the time before the Civil War. Photographs of common folk were popular by then and so I have a picture of my great grandmother. Unfortunately nobody seems to have a likeness of my great grandfather even though he was a man of many important duties. He served as a lieutenant in the Union army during the Civil War. Later he joined the fraternal organization of the Grand Army of the Republic. He even became the Justice of Peace in Scott County Arkansas but there is no photo of him to be found. Surely he posed in front of a camera at one time or another but along the way any photo of him became lost. 

My grandmother rescued the mustering papers that were his when he left the Union army. She urged me to care for them when I was still a child. My mother kept them safe until I was old enough to understand my responsibility to preserve them. I have since learned from a cousin that there is a big folder filled with information about my grandfather in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. I suppose that I need to plan a trip there perhaps with one of my daughters or a grandchild to see what we may find inside that paperwork that will surely unlock many of the mysteries of his life. 

I think about him often and realize that he never got to see my father, Jack, his grandson who most decidedly would have made him proud. Descendants of John WS Smith have done well at least in the branch from his daughter Minnie Bell. There are engineers, doctors, teachers, musicians, mathematicians, accountants, firefighters, nurses and some working to be lawyers. I think he might have enjoyed knowing that the future of his family would turn out to be so productive but at the same time he appeared to be a very private and humble man who was not inclined to bring attention to himself. 

I belong to a group of distant cousins and such who all descended from John WS Smith’s parents Austin Boley Smith and Biddy Anne Fitzsimmons. They had many children so there are an incredible number of people who share my DNA that I have never met. My father died young so I never got around to asking him or his mother about our extended family. I knew a few names like Aunt Katie and Aunt Clara. I even met some folks in California that were somehow related to my father. I was too young at the time to pay much attention to that sort of thing. The people are just fleeting memories of individuals who did not mean much to me at the time. I lost the link to them when my father died and his mother followed him only a few years later. 

I once spent a pleasant afternoon with one of my paternal cousins named Vickie who lives in New Mexico. She has spent a lifetime tracking down information on the extended family but until she met me her search more or less ended with the death of my father. She had as many questions for me and as I had for her. She gave me photos of my grandmother when she was young and one of my great grandmother. She told me where my great grandparents were buried and revealed their connections to Texas and Arkansas. 

The only family stories that my grandmother told me centered around health issues. She mentioned that members of her family often drank vinegar and pickle juice. She insisted that everyone in the family died from gut troubles. Given that she herself died from colon cancer I took her words to heart. When I made my first visit to a gastroenterologist I told him what she had said and he nodded with a smile. I eventually learned that a folk remedy for the heartburn that plagues me is vinegar or other acidic sources that somehow quell the GERD that plagues some folks like me.

I am the very image of my cousin from the Smith family and I see much of myself in my grandmother. As a matter of fact my mother often frowned at the idea that I more closely resembled Minnie Bell than her. I’ve learned that how I appear often depends on who is assessing me. I have a bit of both sides of the family but seem to lean a bit more toward those Smiths. 

My Smith ancestors were common people who came to America from England before our revolution. They settled in Virginia and when the fight for independence began they offered their services to the patriots. While my ancestors seemed to land on the right side of history I know little more about them. Nobody was wealthy enough to own slaves as far as I can tell. They were generally simple people just striving to make it from one day to the next. It was not until my father’s generation that they became more educated but somehow it seems that John WS Smith had leadership skills that vaulted him into roles that foretold the success of his present day descendants. 

My people came for opportunity and things certainly worked out well for my branch at least. I feel a sense of history and pride in my background that makes me understand my own responsibilities in keeping our nation moving forward and staying free. The Smiths were here 250 years ago and their legacy keeps those of us who are living in the present aware of our duty to assure that the United States continues to be a haven for those longing for the chance to create better lives. I honor the work of John WS Smith each time I speak for what I believe is right and just.    

I suppose that life has forced me to develop a tough skin or I would have fallen apart long ago. Nonetheless I am a very feeling kind of person. I literally have the ability to empathize with people so much that from time to time I hit an emotional wall. When that happens I have to step back from the world for a time to reenergize my determination. It is a tactic that I developed as a child and it still works for me as my clock ticks closer and closer to my eighties. 

I have a tendency to take on the worries of the people that I love and those of the world whom I have never met. Try as I may I can never turn my back and pretend that all is well when it is not. I have a caretaker personality that includes concern for the sick and hungry and abused people of the world. 

There are many negative descriptions of people like me. I’ve heard them all and rejected them because I truly believe that each of us is called upon to care for the needs of others. Simply going to church on Sundays and praying for God’s grace and help is not enough. I believe that every aspect of our lives should reflect the belief and expectation that we will genuinely strive to provide solace for all people well beyond the sphere of our families and friendships. 

When I witness the level of greed that is so often admired and simulated in our modern society I cringe. There is nothing wrong with wealth unless it becomes the be all and end all of a person’s motivation. When riches are hoarded while obvious suffering is all around us I grieve and wonder why we humans are so often oblivious to the hardships that many among us endure. 

I know that it is wise to give only what one is able to afford but in some cases I witness people building mansions of material acquisitions while complaining about people on welfare whom they depict as lazy. My experience as a teacher of economically disadvantaged children taught me that things are not always as they appear to be. I have encountered parents who worked two jobs during the week supplemented by more work on the weekends to barely scrape together enough to afford housing and food. Such individuals are caught is a vicious circle of exhaustion and poverty that few of us can even imagine. 

I have taught students who seemed to be very bright but made horrific grades because they neglected homework and studying. They fell asleep in class and seemed not to care that they were missing the opportunity to elevate themselves. Taking the time to talk with them about what was motivating their bad attitudes often revealed disturbing situations that kept them unbalanced and weary. 

There was the girl who went home from school to supervise her younger siblings while her mother worked a second job. She had to see to their lessons, prepare their dinner, bathe them and get them to bed before she was able to take care of her own studies. There was the young man who traveled forty miles from the school campus each afternoon to clean office buildings until after midnight. There was the student whose bed was the family couch where she dreamed of Santa Claus bringing her a bed for Christmas. I could fill books with tales of families working more hours each week than most of us would ever be able to endure while still barely keeping up with rising costs. 

As a society we have heard our so called leaders fuming about “shit hole countries” and “welfare mamas” without taking the time to determine what was really going on in such people’s lives. They cater to themselves and other wealthy souls complaining constantly that they are expected to help the poor and suffering. It is as though they see themselves as the victims as they proclaim their spirituality while condemning those who behave in ways that they do not approve. 

Either these kind of people are incredibly uninformed or clueless or stingy. Whatever the case, they don’t seem to realize how life’s events can often create situations so dire that people cannot raise themselves up no matter how hard they try. In such instances it is up to those of us who have to give proportionately. We are called upon to remember the sermon on the mount that admonishes us to be aware of those who are suffering and to care for them.

Our present society in the United States is awash with demonizing groups and countries with generalizations that do not take into account the worth of every human who walks on this earth. We are building a treasure for war by taking from the poorest and weariest among us and then going to church on Sundays and proclaiming our love for God. It boggles my mind even as I know that it is not up to me to judge. Nonetheless I can follow the example of Jesus and upend the tables of the money changers when I see adoration of wealth while ignoring the less fortunate and that is what I intend to do. 

The source of my most current frustration grows from my sorrow that we are hurting people more than we are helping. Thus I recently reached a point of deep sorrow that overtook me until I gave myself a brief moment to look away just long enough to toughen up again and reenter the fray. 

I don’t know how long we will be a nation that has lost its way but I do know that I will remain in the effort to confront the movement that is pushing us into wars and ugliness toward the most vulnerable among us. I can be as dedicated to a just cause as the pretenders who dehumanize others in selfish pursuits. Change will come. It always does. 

My mother had countless photos of me as a toddler visiting America’s national parks with her and my father. I can’t say for certain that those early intersections with the beauty of our nation influenced me to love the outdoors later in life. Still there is something mystical about the feelings of reverence that I have always felt whenever I revisited the majesty of places that my parents first showed me. In my mind the national parks and monuments of the United States are spiritual. I feel the hand of a force far greater than anything human when I am wandering along the roadways and trails of our national treasures.

I can’t even think about places like Rocky Mountain National Park, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, or Glacier National Park without becoming emotional. I have cried tears of joy in each of those places. I have been overcome by their beauty in the same way that I celebrate the glories of humanity. I feel my own presence and duty to preserve and honor the planet on which we live whenever I have the privilege of viewing the natural wonders of our nation. 

I married young and from the onset my little family was plagued with problems that demanded our attention and finances. Not even a year into my marriage I found myself caring for my mother who was sidelined by bipolar disorder. At the age of twenty five I watched my husband being treated for a fungal disease that was often fatal. Somehow he overcame his illness with many weeks of chemotherapy that reduced him to skin and bones. 

With two children and not a great deal of money my husband and I purchased a tent and some sleeping bags that allowed us to visit the most wonderful places in the United States on a strict budget. We became the camping family who sat under the stars at night cooking on a propane stove. We gazed at the stars and felt a connection with the beautiful environments that embraced us with a sense of awe. At the end of the day we crawled into our tent and slept on the floor feeling as though we were the luckiest and wealthiest people on the planet. 

We have awakened to the sound of a moose passing by our tent. We have stayed safe and dry during raging storms. We have watched the geysers in Yellowstone National Park venting their steam just the way they had done when Teddy Roosevelt was president. We found ourselves in canyons where it felt as though we were the only people on the earth. We became one with the spirits of the first people who walked on our continent and saw the ruins of their pueblos and works of art. We hiked to the top of mountains and told stories by campfires. The joy that we experienced was immeasurable. 

When our daughters were grown we took our grandchildren to the same places that we had shared with their mothers. We saw how much they loved the journeys just as we always had. The simplicity of those trips when we were pared down to simply surviving and appreciating the glories of nature were part of the spiritual inheritance that we passed down in our family. Somehow our grandchildren understood just as we had how important it is to protect our natural resources not as ways to make money but as the sources of connection to our oneness with the world. We understood in those places what a gift they were and how it was up to us and all Americans to protect them. 

We are older now. We cannot lie down on the floor of a tent without fear of never being able to get up again. We graduated to a trailer and then to staying in motels and cabins but our love for the natural wonders of the United States has never faded. We are the most at peace in such places and they continue to call us just to wonder at their beauty. Sadly our president does not appear to share our concern about preserving our parks and monuments for all Americans for all time. He is a business man who sees everything as an opportunity to garner wealth. He does not appear to understand that some places are far too sacred to mar with drilling or mining or cutting down. Perhaps his parents never showed him how to spend quiet moments revelling in the beauty of falling water or endless vistas at the top of a mountain. Maybe he never walked among the ruins of native Americans who lived in this land centuries before the first Europeans came. Maybe he never experienced the sheer joy of sitting under the stars with only the sound of the wind and the calls of the animals interrupting the silence. 

Since the last few decades of the nineteenth century our presidents and our Congress have mostly supported the idea of preserving much of the natural beauty and history of our vast continent. They have set aside places of incredible value for our very souls. These places tells us our story in ways that no words might ever do. They burrow into our hearts and help us to understand the enormity of our roles in caring for them so that future generations will experience what we have. Doing anything less than preserving them from the greed of those who only view them as sites of resources and income should be anathema to us all. 

We have seen the tacky destruction of our monuments in Washington D.C. that Donald Trump has defaced. His propensity for covering nature with concrete and faux gilt has destroyed much of the essence of our capital. Now he is quietly eroding the protections of our natural heritage in the parks and monuments that have heretofore been free from monetized industries. Bit by bit he is imposing his belief that there is a buck to be made in every corner of the earth. As a result he is taking land and allowing it to be used for profits rather than to provide us with a glimpse of the glories of the United States. 

Woody Guthrie said it well. “This land is your land. and this land is my land. From the California to the New York island. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me…”

Let our lawmakers know that we don’t want Trump to destroy our land. It belongs to all of the people, not to those who would gut it and leave it ruined.