Month: September 2022

It would usually be a Saturday morning, a day when we slept a bit longer after a week of work and school. We would hear someone honking insistently in our driveway. I would throw on a semblance of clothing and go outside to investigate. Just as I suspected it was always my mother, up early and ready to go have a good time. She’d be sitting behind the wheel of her car with a big grin and as soon as I appeared she would gleefully hold up a bag of groceries that she had purchased for our family while doing her own shopping. 

As soon as she saw me, she would kill the engine and emerge from the car, still smiling and carrying bags of goodies that she had brought to us. I would rush over to help her, feeling a mixture of delight and annoyance at her unexpected visit that had interrupted my sleep. Mostly I was laughing and smiling inside because I knew how much love came with her arrival and filled those paper bags that she so proudly carried. 

My mother was a true child of the Great Depression. She understood clearly what it was like to struggle to put a meal on the table. Food was like gold to her, so when she brought gifts of bread and canned vegetables it was a sign of great generosity and concern for our welfare. It was also her way of telling us how much she loved us. She was a true believer that one should never visit another without bearing some small gift for the person who was going to open their home to her. She was always the Mama looking after her children, no matter how old and successful we had become.

There were indeed times when her early morning visits rankled me. Usually that happened after a very busy and tiring week at work when I cherished the time to myself on a Saturday morning. Those were also the moments when I had not yet considered what life would be like when she was no more. It did not yet occur to me that I would one day be longing for the sound of her horn awakening me from my slumbers. I had not yet imagined that one day her beautiful smile would only be a memory. I suppose that I took her generosity and undying love for granted back then, because it was always such an ever present aspect of my life. 

Recently my daughters and I were reminiscing about Mama’s Saturday morning visits. We thought of how lovely and simple our lives had been back then and how totally filled with unconditional love they were. Our worries were few and our needs were so simple. In so many ways my mother was symbolic of all things good, even as she juggled a million little hindrances to her well being. She was a Phoenix burned again and again, but always rising from the ashes with a kind of innocence and a smile. 

Sometimes Mama came to my driveway with a plan. Getting into our house with her paper bag of groceries was a subterfuge for other ideas that she had concocted. She might urge us to comb our hair and put on our shoes because she want to take us to the beach or on a day of window shopping at the mall. She might suggest that we accompany her to visit one of her siblings across town or that we pack some things for a random picnic. With her, things happened out of the blue, as though she had awakened thinking that it was a good day for some fun. 

If nothing else was pressing we would reluctantly go along with her joyful thinking, sometimes with a bit of hesitation. Experience had taught us that we would always end up having fun, but our practical natures reminded us of things that we felt we urgently needed to do.   With a wee bit of annoyance we would go along with her whimsy without ever thinking that one day we would really miss those random excursions with her. Somehow she made even a simple drive feel like an exciting adventure, ignoring our dieting with offers of ice cream and donuts. 

I’m a steady soul, a reliably regimented person who follows a calendar, a weekly routine, a daily repetition of structure. I fall victim to my own organization without the influence of an impish sprite like my mother or my departed friend, Pat, who also pushed me into adventures with her. I need people in my life who will take me away from the mundane and show me how to have fun even when I think I don’t have time. 

Sometimes I hear a car approaching and I find myself hoping that it is my mother once again filling my driveway with so much enjoyment. Then I remember that those days are long gone, but the memories linger to make me smile. People like my Mama are a gift that we cherish even long after they are gone. Perhaps I need to put on my shoes, forget about my plans, and do something out of the ordinary today. I think she would like to see me do that.

I have to admit that I am not really a fan of those work meetings that begin with a silly game like “Two truths and a lie.” That’s the one where everybody reveals something unexpectedly audacious about themselves that is hidden with a fib. For one thing, such an activity is supposed to be fun and interesting, but usually takes way more time than employees have to spare, especially teachers. While listening to all of the silly answers most of us are thinking about all of the work we might be completing instead of engaging in such foolishness. After all, it’s not as though we never talk with our coworkers and learn things about them. It’s also a fact that such games contribute little or nothing to helping us perform our jobs more successfully. 

I suppose that everyone has ideas about how to make work more fun, but, wasting people’s precious time is not a particularly good way to go about it. I tend to believe that meetings should have a definite purpose and be as short as possible. Never should there be a session just for the sake of fulfilling some obligation to have X number of get togethers. Anything covered in a meeting that might simply be sent in a text or email should be eliminated. 

I remember a time in my career when each department was supposed to meet to determine how we were going to prepare for an upcoming event. I was the Mathematics Department head and the other math teachers and I got together and developed a workable plan in about forty five minutes. We went right to the point, developed strategies and assigned specific tasks to each person. We agreed to stay updated via email. Our system worked magnificently and everyone was super happy. In fact, we kept on track and turned in our contribution several days early. The principal was quite happy with us and little did he know that our face to face encounters only took forty five minutes.

I later learned that other departments had stayed for three to four hours that same afternoon and then met regularly for several weeks to determine how everyone was progressing. When the other teachers learned about our streamlined method, they were stunned, and yet we accomplished as much and maybe even more than they did. I later found out that the other groups had to attempted make the sessions more palatable with food and little games. I guess those of us with mathematical minds were simply not imaginative enough to want such things. Ours was a bare bones venture with just enough time spent online each week to accomplish our goals without more work than necessary. 

Sadly, I eventually became the person who had to plan most of the faculty meetings and inservices. It was a task that I did not enjoy because all of the sessions had to be generic in nature when I knew that what the teachers really wanted was training targeted to their specific needs. Even more enticing would have been time to work in their classrooms developing lessons or grading papers. I fell into the trap of trying to make the sessions fun with silly games that mostly filled the time and probably weren’t really that fun for the teachers. 

I think that most bosses, principals, leaders would do well to carefully delineate training from team building, information from work. There is nothing wrong with employees having a bit of fun, but attempting to tie it to learning sessions is usually just annoying to most people. Time is precious on any job and it does no good to use people’s time on meaningless activities even if they are meant to help them relax. More than anything people want to know how to improve their job performance. Sometimes the best way to do that is in small chunks. Targeted learning thirty minutes here and thirty minutes there will make more of a lasting impression that holding people hostage for an entire day. 

As for informing employees of important information, there are a number of ways to do so without a formal meeting. A weekly email or text works nicely for such things. If there needs to be a way of assuring that everyone has actually read the message, there can be a way of responding back that tracks participation in the process. In truth, nobody likes to waste time. Even a ten minute Zoom session does the trick better than gathering everyone together and using up precious moments that might better be used doing other things. 

I do know that we all have different personalities and perceptions of how to work well together. I suppose that many people like all the frivolity of meetings interspersed with games. I even understand that some folks prefer and even enjoy diligently detailed sessions with other employees. They want step by step by step instructions. I guess my mindset is just not there. 

In the spirit of such things I will go ahead and play that silly game that so often shows up when workers get together for a training session or just an informational meeting. My version is that each person tells two truths about themselves and one lie. Then the group guesses which are the truths and which is a lie. So here goes mine…1. I once interviewed a television personality for a newspaper article.  2. I once got lost on a trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. 3. I am descended from Vikings.    

I am a very quiet person, hardly noticeable as I move through life. My voice is so soft that I have to exert myself to be heard at times. I tend to prefer being anonymous, not making waves. In many situations I would rather give in to another person’s demands, or perhaps compromise to keep the peace. I’m fairly easy going most of the time, but when I sense that a person or a group is being unfairly treated I rise up like a roaring lion to protest. I become a person who even surprises myself by my willingness to go to battle for what I see as a just cause. I suppose that I am an enigma in those moments because up until then nobody even notices that I am in the room.

As a child I mostly blended into the woodwork. I obediently did whatever my elders asked me to do, and luckily all but one of my teachers was kind and gentle. That one teacher lost my respect because of the way she treated her students. I was not vocal about her, but I took notes and made promises in my heart that I would never behave like her. She was the first person who taught me how to be a better teacher simply by swearing never to do some the the horrendous things she did to her students. 

In high school I had little need to move beyond my naturally easy going way of facing the world, but outside events were pushing me to a passion for standing up for those who are abused. I remember confronting a group of raucous boys who got carried away with taunting a female classmate and terrifying her in the process. I think that because I had always appeared to be a little mouse they were astonished when I raised my voice and stood up to them. They immediately stopped their abusive behavior without pushing back. Even I was stunned that I had so quickly and seemingly easily derailed their obnoxious game of inflicting insults on a sweet girl who did not deserve their terrible treatment. I felt proud that I had been unafraid to speak out, even though inside my heart was pounding and I worried that I might be their next victim out of revenge. 

In college I continued the process of becoming the real me. I used the anonymity of a group to march for the civil rights of my fellow black students. I wrote papers outlining my concern with the way the war in Vietnam was being mishandled. I found avenues for expressing my views in an effort to foment change. I chose t0 practice my writing skills and enhance them for greater impact. I decided to become a teacher because I believe that it is a profession upon which our entire civilization is built. 

When my mother became very ill with the symptoms of her bipolar disorder, keeping her well became another of my goals. For many years I silently sought help for her and devoted time away from my family and my work in search of treatments and therapies that might beat back the horrific side effects of her mental illness. At the same time I was afraid to admit to others that she was so sick. It was only when I had fully embraced the reality that her illness was no more shocking than heart disease or diabetes that I finally went public with the truth. Informing others about mental illness became yet another passion that has guided my life’s story.

Family and people are all important to me. Status, titles, wealth would be nice to have but those things have never been a driving force. My concern is always with the well-being of each human. It’s a demanding task that sometimes discourages me when I see entire groups of people behaving like those teenage boys from my youth who were bullying that girl. Somehow humans often so get carried away with their prejudices and faulty beliefs that they do ugly things. Often they simply join a crowd hoping to be part of a group without really thinking about what they are doing or how they are behaving. Theirs is a kind of ignorance that I have spent my life attempting to undo. My holy grail has been to show people how to suspend their judgements and critically assess situations on their own. 

It is not always easy to move against the flow of a crowd. Sometimes when I do so I find myself wondering if I am the one who is wrong. Just as I ask others to do, I regularly question myself and analyze my reasoning to be sure that I am not just parroting ideas that sound warm and fuzzy, but maybe are not the right way to do things. I attempt to be flexible, understanding, willing to really listen to differing points of view. Mostly I try not to judge, because I have found that most people really do want what’s best for others, but they just have different opinions about how to accomplish that. I know that I need to hear what they have to say just as they should consider what my beliefs as well. 

I often think of the founding of our country and how those men who came together to declare independence and create a new nation were often at odds with each other. Melding together all of their differing ideas was torturous and yet they somehow found ways to compromise even as they worried that those adjustments would ultimately be the downfall of the government that they created. The one thing that they seemed to share was a passion for freedom even as they did not extend those rights to all segments of the population. 

I suppose that I share their passion and do not take lightly the fact that I was born in a time when women and minorities began to finally see those freedoms extended to them. I fight to protect those rights for everyone in a fair and just manner. I teach to provide everyone with the opportunity to learn and grow and represent themselves. I point out the flaws in our system, not because I am unpatriotic, but because I believe that our democracy dies in darkness. When those in power are bullying any group I find my voice once again and I roar.  

There is a great deal of ranting and raving about student loan forgiveness. There is also a great deal of misunderstanding about the cost of a college education and how disproportionate it is to the salaries that students receive after graduation. Most people who are complaining point to the fact they they either decided not to pursue a degree or they paid for theirs with summer jobs and part time work. They find it unfair to suddenly decide to give the current crop of debt holders a break. While I can understand their concerns, I’d like to point to the realities of today’s college experience to demonstrate the unusual difficulties that so many of our college graduates are enduring. 

Let’s begin with the post World War II experience. Young men were returning from the war to a booming economy in the United States. Not even the lack of a high school diploma barred individuals from getting good jobs with benefits that were often free along with a promised pension. Veterans were able to earn college degrees at the government’s expense, sometimes in courses taken at night while still working all day. Actually having a degree or needing one for employment was more of a luxury than a requirement.

By the late sixties when I was a student the cost of a year of college at a state university without room and board added was around a thousand dollars. My first year was free because I had a scholarship, but I was a rookie and did not realize that I had to fill out paperwork to renew it even though I had a 4.0 GPA. I lost my free ride, but I had worked during the summer for around $200 a month and I was able to cover all of the first semester and I supplemented my funds with a four hour a week teachers’ aide job. All in all I doubt I paid more than about five thousand dollars for my education. Paying as I went was not all that difficult back then. 

In the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties my daughters went to college at state public universities. I was shocked by the increase in the price tag because it was not proportionate to the gains my husband and I had made in our income. I was a teacher and he was a banker but we still had to take out loans to get both of them through their business and environmental science degrees. We watched the cost of the college climb exponentially in the eight years that our daughters were there. When they graduated with usually sought after degrees there was a downturn in the economy that left them scurrying to find employment of any kind at salaries that were not proportionate to the cost of their diplomas. It took about ten years to pay off the debt which essentially doubled over time because of interest rates.  

Fast forward to today and the picture for young people is even more gloomy. Few jobs are available for high school dropouts. Most entry level jobs require a four year degree and those do not come cheaply. In fact, just getting into a public university is incredibly difficult. Many like the University of Texas, where one of my daughters went, are essentially closed for anyone not in the top seven to ten percent of their high school class. Further culling is done for specific majors like engineering or business. The same is true for Texas A&M. Even the University of Houston which was once considered a fall back school is now out of reach for most students. Then comes the cost.

I was able to send my eldest daughter to the University of Texas with room and board for about seven thousand dollars in her freshman year. That represented a third of my teacher’s salary before taxes and deductions. By the time she graduated the price had increased to ten thousand dollars which came to about fifty percent of what I earned. We paid progressively more for the youngest daughter to attend Texas A&M University. We watched the exponential growth of tuition and fees in horror. Now those same schools can cost as much as forty thousand dollars a year with housing and food. Students without scholarships may leave with a huge debt to pay with a starting salary of fifty to seventy thousand dollars a year. Accounting for the cost of living and the deductions from their pay, they are living on the edge even after working hard to fulfill the American dream.

I have former students who competed for spots in some of the top business schools in America and were hardworking enough to earn those coveted places. Then they graduated only to realize that the promised rewards of high paying jobs for practical majors were not forthcoming. They found themselves paying a third of their salaries for housing, a tenth for medical benefits, and another tenth for their student loans. If they added deductions for social security, taxes and medicare they were barely making it from month to month, especially since the cost of food and gasoline had also risen. Some of them even got caught in the downturn caused by the pandemic or the oil bust, and graduated at a time when few jobs were available. I know of a student with a petroleum engineering degree whose graduation coincided with massive layoffs at oil companies. He went to work as a laborer on an oil rig hoping that he would land a job when things improved, but he missed his window of opportunity and now works at low level jobs well beneath his capabilities. He still has his student loans to pay and is drowning. 

We thought nothing of forgiving PPP loans for business people who more often than not did not pass on their good fortune either to their employees or their customers. Even our former president has escaped loans and forfeited payments with legal maneuverings and bankruptcy. We don’t seem to get nearly as angry about that kind of forgiveness as we do with our generation of college students who believed that they had to get degrees to be engineers, accountant, teachers, nurses in spite of the prohibitive costs. There was no way that they might have paid as they went because it would have required full time jobs to earn the kind of money that they needed. So the took out loans.

My granddaughter was accepted to Cornell this past spring. It had been her dream to go there since she was very young. The price tag for this Ivy League university was well beyond her means or those of her family. She kept the acceptance letter as a memento and chose a more reasonable alternative. She wrote over one hundred essays to various groups offering scholarships and won enough of them to shave the cost of her education in half for at least her freshman year. She worked all summer as a receptionist at a beauty salon and sometimes even washed hair. There is nothing lazy or spoiled about her but she will still have a very large debt to pay on the day that she graduates. As compassionate Americans we need to be willing to fix the glaring problems associated with earning a college without jealousy or contempt for the young people who only want to be prepared to take on the challenges of the future.. It is a worthy investment for us all to give them a fighting chance to begin families and purchase homes like we did. Our nation depends on them to take on the difficult jobs that require their knowledge and skills.

I still think of school starting after Labor Day, even though that has not been the case for decades now. When September rolls around I begin to imagine cold days ahead that will mitigate the heat of summer. I much prefer lower temperatures that seem to make everything cozier. While I love the ocean, I prefer walking along its shores in a sweater with an cool breeze nipping at my nose. Perhaps it is my birth month of November that makes me fond of the colder times of the year, or maybe it’s just a personal, quirk. It may even be that the mild winters where I live are more comforting to me than the harsh heat of summer. I am more than ready to see the mercury drop in my thermometer. 

I like starting a fire in my fireplace and wearing my favorite sweaters that never seem to wear out. Nothing soothes me more than reading while sipping on a warm mug of tea. I enjoy wrapping myself in a soft and cuddly blanket and wearing slipper socks on my feet. I prefer long walks that invigorate me without making me sweat and gasp for air like in the summer. 

I read that my part of the world will become hotter and hotter as we humans add to the changes of climate. I’ve already noticed that it takes longer and longer to reach the cold days that I so love. There have been times when shorts were more suitable for comfort on Christmas day than a crazy sweater. My boots seem to last forever because there are so few days when it is cool enough to wear them. There seem to be fewer and fewer wintry days with each passing year. 

Those of us who prefer cold winter days tend to be in the minority. Most people revel in the sunny summertime. They love the warmth on their arms and the freedom of wearing skimpy clothing and playing outdoors. Those are the months when I feel sweaty and miserable. I spend most of my time indoors because when I go outside the air feels oppressive. I long for the cold when brisk walks energize me. I seem to come alive in the late fall and winter.

I have a friend who craves chilly rainy days and I have to admit to feeling the same. People laugh at his obsession with weather that others consider to be dreary while I understand his joy in such moments. Perhaps both of us would change our minds if we had to endure a harsh winter in upstate New York or on the plains of North Dakota, but down here in the south of Texas we rarely feel a chill in the air. 

One year I traveled to Minnesota in November. It was already much colder than the worst of our winters along the Gulf Coast. I needed a warm coat to wear for an upcoming trip to an Austrian ski town. A friend suggested that I check out the stores where we were. We set off in search of a suitable jacket and soon found a display of sale items that suited my needs. I found a wonderful down coat with a fur-lined hood and immediately claimed it as my own. As I was paying the cashier she remarked that I was getting a great deal on the piece that I had chosen. She noted that the annual sale of spring outerwear was always a hit with the customers who put such finds away for when the winter became a bit more bearable. It amazed me that there was actually a place on earth where such a heavy garment might be donned in the month of April when those of us down south are already well into wearing our summer gear. It occurred to me that I may not enjoy winter nearly as much in a place where it seems to last as long as our warm months do down here.

I haven’t had many occasions to wear that big coat that I purchased in Minnesota, but it sure came in handy when we had the big Texas freeze a couple of winters ago. The so called rolling blackouts of the power companies stretched into days of frigid temperatures inside the house. I wore that down jacket all day long as I shivered in my rooms. I found myself thinking of that episode of Little House on the Prairie when Pa was away and Ma had to deal with a deadly blizzard. it wasn’t quite that bad, but most of us down in the south aren’t really accustomed to sustained days of freezing. Even our plants and pets suffered during that time.

Perhaps what I really like is weather that is not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Sadly these days everything seems to be extreme. We either endure weeks of temperatures in the high nineties with no sign of rain or our streets are inundated. As we crisscross the world there are fires and famine or floods and destruction. We can’t seem to return to the gentle rolling of the seasons that I remember so well from my childhood. 

I used to rearrange my closet each September. I would move my summer gear to the back and place my fall and winter garments near the front. Now I don’t even bother because I rarely need to use the winter items. I miss the crisp cool fronts that rolled in each October making our classrooms without air conditioning bearable. Now it’s a good bet that we’ll still be sweating on Halloween. 

I’ve had to learn to adjust to the fact that I won’t see much winter like in the days of my youth. I’ll take whatever cooler times I can get. I often think of walking to school with the cold nipping at my nose. I’d push against the wintry air feeling invigorated, but I was always more than willing to accept a ride with my friend Judy when she and her mother stopped to take me the rest of the way on such days. There was something more normal about those times than what we all seem to experience now. 

I don’t know what the future will bring. I worry that my flat city will one day find itself under water as the earth continues to heat up and the oceans rise. I wonder if my grandchildren and great grandchildren will have to relocate much like the migratory societies of old. Where will there be a good place to go?  Will my old coat from Minnesota suddenly become a great way to stay warm in the spring as they travel north? Who knows?  I keep wondering where the winters that I so love have gone.