Month: July 2023

Once I began working as a teacher my life thankfully settled into a tightly followed routine. Since none of us were morning people we’d scurry around at the beginning of the day getting everyone off to work and school. Luckily our girls only had to walk to the corner to catch a bus and Mike and I each had a car. I often left home before anyone else because I needed to be on campus early enough to look after the students as they arrived. 

After a wonderful first year of teaching at St. Christopher’s School I landed a job in the Pasadena Independent School District where I was in for culture shock beyond anything I had imagined. I had learned how to design lessons at St. Christophers and it was now time for me to learn how to manage the behavior of students. Luckily I had an extraordinary principal who coached me with wisdom and great kindness. I often think that I became a real educator under her tutelage. 

Many of my students were generally from low income families who often moved from one apartment complex to another just before being evicted for failure to pay rent. My grade book attested to the comings and goings of my changing roster of youngsters. While troubled children were not the norm, there was a more than a usual share of kids from difficult backgrounds. As I became familiar with my group of young people I would learn their individual stories and sometimes have to fight back tears. 

There was a young man whose mother had attempted to set him on fire when he was three years old. He was still dealing with the trauma of that incident and often dissolved into depression or rose up in anger. I had a child whose face had been disfigured by a fire, and a boy whose mother was a drug addict who often left him alone to watch his little sister when she went out at night in search of payment for sex. Twin brothers were like Cain and Abel with one of the pair abusing his quieter sibling. There was an unending drama of the like I had never before witnessed unfolding in front of me on an almost daily basis. 

Somehow I eventually learned how to keep my pupils focused and learning while balancing my own emotions to keep from carrying the heavy weight of their lives into my own. I did not want to bring that toxicity home to my family. I had to learn how to have a healthy balance between work and my life as a wife, mom and daughter. To say it kept me busy would be an understatement which I suppose is true of any working woman who has to run her schedule like a train yard. Every minute of the day was filled until I fell into bed exhausted but often unable to sleep as my mind filled with thoughts of what I needed to do for “my people.”

By this time my childhood neighborhood had changed. Most of the neighbors who had helped our family had moved. My mother found herself living among strangers whom she never really had time to meet because she was working and so were they. When her home was burglarized multiple times she quite rightly grew fearful of living there. My sweet brother, Pat, got a real estate license to help her sell her home and find a new place to live. Soon she was moving a bit closer to where I was living. Her house was lovely and her neighbors were sweet and welcoming. They would become advocates and guardians for her over time. 

So life rocked along and we began to take summertime vacations with our girls. We purchased a tent from Sears that was made of canvas and sported tan and green stripes. We bought sleeping bags and lanterns and a propane stove. We learned how to trek around the country with our gear, enjoying glorious adventures in the most beautiful places. We were a happy crew whether it was sunny or rainy, hot or cold. We adapted to the great outdoors and poured our hearts and souls into having fun. 

Mama became ill now and again and I would have to get her to her doctor and make certain she was taking her meds. Her neighbors and I formed an alliance that kept me informed if she was descending into a state of depression or mania. It was a quiet secret that we never shared with her. My brothers also began to shoulder some to responsibility of keeping her as healthy as possible. We were the three Littles giving back the love that our mother had always heaped on us. Everyone was willing to do whatever it took to make her life as smooth as possible and so we shared many happy gatherings together with our growing families and successes in the world. We met at every birthday and sometimes continued the old family tradition of meeting for a day at the beach or a park.  

Both Michael and Pat were rising through the ranks of their respective professions. I often thought of how proud my father would have been of them. We all knew that we were as healthy and happy as we were because of the Herculean efforts of our mother. Somehow as we muddled through our own adult lives as spouses and partners we admired her more and more. It was sometimes difficult to imagine how she had done so much all alone. 

As Einstein told the world time is relative and soon it was racing past us faster than the speed of light. We were on an exhilarating roller coaster ride that was going to take us places we had never imagined. 

I’ve been thinking about July 4, Independence Day, all month long now, just as I have been looking back on my life and what it has meant. I suppose that I see the Declaration of Independence as the same kind of ideal that by which I have always measured my own purpose in the world. I realize the countless mistakes that I have made, the time wasted when I might have been improving myself, I have also celebrated the glorious moments when I knew that I had succeeded in coming closer to being the person that I want to be. So it is with our nation, a country developed by imperfect humans who no doubt had different dreams and ideas as they signed that document so long ago.

Even a brief and narrow study of the history or the United States of America leads to so many contradictions. On the one hand it has been a place where freedom to express our views has been cherished, but not always given evenly to everyone. In the beginning it seems that the idea of equality was a gift enjoyed only by white men. Nevertheless, our freedoms grew in stages because there were indeed brave souls willing to point out the flaws with our government, just as the Founders had critiqued the authoritarianism of the King of England. There was a second Independence day for enslaved people almost one hundred years later when Abraham Lincoln declared that the barbaric practice of slavery could not longer be considered legal in a nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal. 

It took even more time to recognize the right of women to vote even though Abigail Adams had urged her husband John to “remember the ladies,” It was only incrementally that the United State of America grew in fairness and justice for all. At times it even regressed just as each of us has done at different times in our lives. The Jim Crow days of segregation and degradation was a horrific moment when our laws were twisted to excuse unfairly demeaning laws our Black citizens. 

The Civil Rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties seemed to finally create  a legal basis for striving toward equality for all. Sadly, we are still attempting to determine how to achieve a goal that is continually hampered by “isms” that rank people rather than accepting them as they are. We Americans know that we may be a nation of mostly good people, but there is still hate that we must root out and overcome. 

Yes, the United States of America is an imperfect union of many voices, many beliefs, many colors and cultures. It can be a glorious bastion of freedom or one that stubbornly judges certain of its citizens to be inferior. With over three hundred million people in our land it can be difficult to balance all of the conflicting ideas just as it must have been when there were far few men and women living in the original thirteen colonies. Nevertheless we have indeed mostly moved forward. We have been progressive in righting the wrongs of the past. We have welcomed people from all over the world longing to be free. Ours is a very human experience that is wrought with the kind of difficulties that we all experience in our own lives. 

I could dwell on my mistakes from the past and those that I am making in the present, but it is better to look at the bigger picture of my life. I know I have tried and sometimes failed to be the best version of myself So too it has been with the United States of America and it is okay to point that out. Being blind to our faults is not being patriotic. In fact, I believe that those who ask us to improve our nation demonstrate their love for the country and its citizens. Just like our parents corrected us when we behaved badly, so too do wise men and women point out the times when our country has been wrong. This is how humans and human institutions grow. 

My fourth of July was admittedly quite boring this year. Most of my friends and members of my family were out of town celebrating in grand places. I was home with my father-in-law who has lived here for one year now. I have not yet found a way to leave him long enough to take a trip. My husband spent the months of June and July with follow up doctors’ appointments after a near death experience with his heart. I’ve mostly been isolated and confined to my thoughts these days and it has not been a totally bad experience. Sometimes it’s actually quite good to take time to analyze one’s life and to honestly admit to the moments that might have been better if only we had been more courageous and honest with ourselves. To everything there is indeed a season and perhaps mine is supposed to focus on contemplation for now. Maybe all of us who are citizens of the United States would do well to spend some time thinking about our history and preparing for our future.

We will soon be celebrating another milestone. In 2026, the United States will be two hundred fifty years old, a feat that seemed impossible back in 1776. We have endured many challenges together and somehow managed to find ways to keep our system going. The USA may seem to be troubled right now and we may be feeling overwhelmed. Challenges are part of the human experience and we generally weather them best when we are willing to appreciate our differences rather that feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys. If our beloved country is to continue for another two hundred fifty years we will have to be willing to come together without rancor and work toward keeping a democracy that should continue to evolve with the times. I believe that we will do it. Somehow we always have. It is a worthy and very human project.   

I have recounted my personal struggles in the essays that I have written about my life. I suppose that if my father had not died in a car accident at the age of thirty three my story might have been very different from the one I have described. Daddy was an engineer who garnered a good salary that allowed my family to enjoy advantages that even my other cousins did not experience. When he was alive we always had a home in a nicer area of town that was filled with books and music and the kinds of accoutrements that well educated middle class families often take for granted. We rode around in a car that was a bit more luxurious than the norm. 

My father was the only person in the extended family who had earned a college degree save for my Uncle Bob who was his best friend. Even as a small child I sensed that I had advantages that provided me with a head start in life. I saw the disparities between myself and some of my relatives. I witnessed the segregation of Blacks and whites. I understood that even my mother had experienced cruel taunts because she was a poor child of immigrant parents. I was acutely aware that while our nation was founded on a claim that all people are created equal, the realities of life made it much more difficult for some in our society to fully enjoy the American dream. 

My own world was transformed on a dark road in the early morning hours of Memorial Day 1957. When my father’s heart stopped beating as his car slammed into an unmarked ditch at the end of a road, everything that I had known until then abruptly changed. There would be no more fancy houses or cars or vacations for me and my family. I would have to learn how to sacrifice and work a bit harder than I had been accustomed to doing. A glorious middle class ride was no longer available to me in pursuit of the so called American Dream. I would have to use the genetic tools with which I had been blessed to keep pace with the demands of living. Luckily my mother and father had already given me the combined nature of their intellect when i was born. It would be my mother who would provide the nurturing environment in which I would learn how to fully use my gifts to become an educated and competent woman. 

When it came time to apply to colleges I had no idea how to proceed. I had no knowledge of the vast network of higher education that was available nor did my mother. When universities like Notre Dame and Georgetown attempted to recruit me I did not understand that degrees from such places were more highly valued than others. All that I really knew was that traveling out of town was out of the question. I barely had the wherewithal to get to the University of Houston which was not that far from my home. I might have aimed higher, but I was ignorant of the head start that prestigious universities may have given me. 

I mention these things not to bemoan my own reality. I am in fact quite proud of my degree from the University of Houston which was a great school. I do not regret passing on the opportunities to attend big name colleges. What I have learned from my experience as a student and as a teacher is that while we boast of being equal humans in our country, the reality is not quite so simple. If I missed that equality from being poor, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my Black peers of the time to be poor and from a race that was not even allowed to mingle with the rest of us. The fact that we had to create laws to tear down the prejudices that had hobbled their freedoms was a sure sign that we might have talked about the ideal of equality but it was surely not a fact for the descendants of slaves even a hundred years after they had been freed. 

As President Lyndon Johnson said in a 1965 commencement speech at Howard University, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” If I was having difficulties keeping pace with a forward march of progress, I could only imagine how much more difficult it had been even for people who had been unfairly reviled and segregated. It not only seemed logical but incredibly fair to to provide young Blacks with opportunities to prove their mettle at universities that might otherwise have been closed to them. Affirmative Action was a necessity to level the playing field. 

As with most good intentions, Affirmative Action programs did not always work as well as they might have been expected to do. There is very little in this life that is perfect, so there were problems here and there. For the most part, however, the program provided bright hard working people of color with opportunities to receive highly regarded college degrees and then enter the workplace with the same kind of connections that wealthy legacy students have known for years. It was a boost up that helped them to be noticed, not just because they were minorities, but because they were as brilliant as their peers. They were recognized as being worthy of a chance to prove themselves and so many of them did just that. 

There have been unspoken and unofficial affirmative action programs in decades for all time. Wealthy white families have always had the ability to pay for the best colleges in the country. They send their children to high schools with connections to those universities as well. Their young are groomed to be stand outs when the time comes to apply for college. They know people who can help their children to score higher on tests, choose the right subjects to study, write essays that catch the attention of admission officers. They more often than not have attended the more prestigious universities themselves, creating legacies that make it easier for their youngsters to get a shot at being accepted. Rarely does anyone note their advantages or point out that they get to start many meters ahead of the less fortunate in the race. 

Anyone who thinks that racism is gone has been living in a bubble. Anyone who cannot see the advantage of identifying qualified young men and women of color and providing them with educational opportunities that might otherwise be closed to them does not understand how important such programs are for all of us. Making a concerted effort to find these students and boost their likelihood of being leaders in our society is one of the grandest ideas ever conceived. Affirmative Action is not watering down our colleges. It is actually making them more attuned to the idea of equality. Nobody gets into Harvard only because of the color of their skin. Those who do have already been identified as the brightest among their peers. Such students enrich campuses across the nation and often work harder than their fellow students to prove their mettle. 

Mine is only an opinion, but my own experiences as a fatherless child and later as a teacher of students of color has convinced me that the trope of insisting that we are all equal simply because the preamble of the Constitution says it is so is absurd. We should all be equal, but from the inception of our nation that is an ideal that we have yet to fully embrace. Racism continues to raise its heavy hand even as there is a current drive to turn away and pretend that racism is gone. Anyone who lives outside of a middle class white bubble knows that this is true. Pretending to make ourselves feel better will taint our society, not make it stronger and more fair. We have incredibly bright young people of all colors. Helping those who have no connections is a great idea, not a bad one. Making our universities more inclusive and representative of society is good for everyone. Sadly a conservative court has bowed to an unreasonable decision that implies that if we say everyone is equal, then they are. 

George Washington once said something to the effect that it’s our democracy if we can keep it. Even he seemed to realize the journey that still lay ahead for our country. It would be almost a hundred years before we did the right thing and freed the slaves. It would be another hundred years before we outlawed the segregation of the descendants of those former slaves. We still have work to do to make our democracy as equal for all as it always should have been. It is admittedly not an easy task because there will always be those who believe in the superiority of one race over another. We will have to do our best to move in the direction of equality by elevating those who are still far from the starting line and sending them on a pathway to leadership. It is the only way that the dream will finally come true.

I never had a conversation with my maternal grandmother, never knew what she was thinking, what her full life story had been. I took her inability to speak English for granted, never really wondering what thoughts and stories lay behind her sweet face. In my youth I was busy with learning about the world and myself. It was not until after she had died that I began to contemplate her existence. Too late I wanted to know more about her than the superficial portrait of a kind woman bearing cups of heavily sugared coffee. Sadly while she was alive I only truly knew that I felt quite comfortable and loved around her even though she and I never once had any kind of conversation. 

My mother adored her mother. She spoke of her in reverential terms as the ultimate purveyor of love and sacrifice. Mama told stories of her mother performing miracles in the kitchen to feed her eight children during the Great Depression, often saving the bones for herself when the fare was lean. Somehow it never occurred to me to ask for more details the mystery of Grandma until it was almost too late to piece together a more complete biography of her life.Perhaps all I really needed to know about my maternal grandmother was the sweetness that I felt in her presence, but I was determined to find out more. 

Long after my grandmother had died in the late nineteen seventies I realized the importance of her presence within the family. There was a kind of hole in the once dependable fabric of our family in her absence, a missing piece that seemed to be strange given that she had always been so quiet and unassuming. I began to ask questions and do research that helped me to develop a portrait of her that was more complex than I might have imagine. 

I had only known my grandmother as Mary Ulrich from Czechoslovakia. I found that her maiden name was Maria Bartakovic and that she was born in the Trencin area of Austria Hungary in 1890, the daughter of Andreas and Maria. She was baptized as a Catholic in that same year in Cachtice according to church records. After that her life is a cipher until she made a journey to Galveston, Texas in 1913 to meet her husband Pavel Uhrick who had preceded her the year before. 

My Aunt Valeria has told her daughter that Maria worked at a farm known as Magnolia Park alongside her husband when she first came to America. The place which was named for its native magnolia trees was located near what is now known as the Houston Ship Channel just east of downtown Houston. Within a year of arriving she gave birth to her first child, William, but continued working at various jobs that included cleaning office buildings at night and clerking at a bakery. From what my aunt recalls, her mother spoke English enough at the time to converse with others. When she lost that ability seems to have gone unnoticed by her children. 

My grandmother must have been an attractive woman with her black hair and blue eyes. My aunt revealed that while Grandma was working in the evenings her boss began to harass her. When she told my grandfather he insisted that she quit. Somehow I had never thought of the chubby woman who was my grandmother as being the object of a man’s unwanted attention, but given how attractive all of her children were, she most certainly must have been stunning herself.

Eventually my grandmother had a succession of births that gave her ten children. Sadly one of the babies died so quickly after birth that he remained unnamed. Another son, Stephen, lived for six months before succumbing to his inability to properly process food. Of the eight children who lived, four were boys and four were girls. My mother was the youngest of the brood. 

When my mother was still a toddler Grandma had a mental breakdown. Given that she had carried and birthed ten children from 1914 to 1926 with no medical care it is little wonder that she succumbed to the rollercoaster of hormonal changes that must have affected her. I can only imagine how tired and run down she must have been. I know that her absence had a profound impact on my mother. I was one of the few things that she ever revealed about her childhood.  

I suspect that my grandmother was also traumatized by her experienced in a hospital. From the time that she returned to her family in about 1931 until she died in 1977, she only left her home once when her appendix burst. She also never spoke English again. Her whole world would be encapsulated inside her house with her children and grandchildren buzzing around her.

The grandmother that I knew padded around her tiny home in her bare feet unless it was a particularly cold day when she grudgingly donned warm slippers. She quietly tended her garden and made her daily pot of coffee. She mopped her wooden floors each morning as if by habit and did little more. Much of her time was spent sitting in her preferred chair in the corner of her living room watching her children and grandchildren like a sphinx. What she was thinking was an enigma. The extent of her communication was to refer to anyone who entered her home as either “pretty boy” or “pretty girl.”

She was nonetheless the perfect hostess, almost instantly serving cups of weak coffee fortified with sugar and milk to anyone who entered her house, including small children. I loved that brew because it felt like sipping love to me. The smile on her face as she presented her offering told me all that I needed to know about how much she cared about all of us. 

Maria Bartacovic Uhrick must have been a beautiful young girl with her dark black hair arranged in a braid and pale blue eyes that were always so calm and comforting. She would grow into an old woman with a figure like an apple and streaks of gray in her hair. Her face was wrinkled and her hands were care worn from digging in her yard and performing countless chores. She had laid down on the floor of her home ten times and given birth more often than not without any help. She raised a motley crew in a tiny space and all of them would love her deeply and make her proud. 

I suppose that there was a time when I thought that Maria Uhrick was just a simple woman. I would have to encounter the trials of being a woman to fully appreciate how remarkable she actually was. I suppose that I know all that I really need to know about her now even as I thirst for just a tiny bit more information to fully uncover her mystery. Somehow I think that I should simply be content with now being able to infer the contents of her mind. She was brave and hardworking and content to play the most important role that anyone might tackle. She loved.

As a child I looked at my grandfather in awe. He was a giant of a man in my young eyes. He was always impeccably dressed even when he was performing hard labor on his farm. His trousers were always neatly creased, his shoes meticulously polished, his ironed shirt tucked neatly inside his pants, his suspenders perfectly placed on his chest. His hands were beautiful, strong. His face was handsome even in old age. He never ventured outside in the sun without his fedora. To me he was figure who was larger than life, a man educated through curiosity and experience.

As an adult I found wisdom and succor from him and it was my good fortune to be able to visit with him anytime I wished. I did not need to call for an appointment. His door was always open, his welcome always warm. Often when the anxieties of simply existing began to overwhelm me I would suggest to my husband, Mike, that we go visit Grandpa who was living in a rented room on the northside of Houston. 

Grandpa’s landlady was a widow who was young enough to be his daughter, and who in fact became much like a beloved family member to him. In the beginning he paid her rent for the room which helped her to meet her financial responsibilities. Over time they simply began to pool their resources to keep the place in good repair and to maintain a comfortable way of life. 

The house where he was staying was tiny, probably little more than a thousand square feet. It featured two bedrooms set between a small bathroom. Grandpa had his own space while the owner of the house shared her room with her sister. They were a congenial trio with each person pulling his or her weight with cooking and cleaning. In spite of the tight quarters they got along rather well. I suppose that none of them would have made it alone, but together they were safe and secure. 

Grandpa held court in a recliner in the corner of the living room that he had helped to panel so that there would be no further need to paint the walls. Due to his age he was only able to work on the bottom half under a ledge of trim. the upper section of the panelling was completed by the landlady’s son. I often noted that the bottom half was perfection while the top looked as though it had been installed by a child. it spoke of Grandpa’s craftsmanship that resulted from a lifetime of working on construction projects. 

Grandpa was proud of his contributions to some master works like the San Jacinto Monument in Texas and the capitol buildings of several states. He had built a home in the Houston Heights that still stands as evidence of his impeccable work. He had created special features in the kitchens where my grandmother created her mouthwatering recipes. I supposed that the mark of his craft was present in buildings all over the United States. 

Grandpa was always exited to see us. He’d settle into his recliner, prepare his pipe and then launch into tales of his life. He was a natural born storyteller who had lived through the modernization of the world. He had seen the birth of electricity, human flight into the air and then into space. He loved to speak of his childhood and then boast of the modern conveniences that made the later part of his life so much easier. He viewed innovation as proof of the genius of humans. He thought of himself as a lucky man for having witnessed the march of progress that only seemed to accelerate over time. He was an advocate of embracing change and looking forward rather than longing for the past. 

Some how his perspective always set me right. I was much like my grandmother, his beloved wife, who was a chronic worrier. Grandpa saw that in me and advised me to be less anxious and more focused on enjoying life no matter the challenges that it brought to me. He understood quite well the seasons through which we pass and he found beauty in each of them. For him the “good old days” were to be found in each present moment. He reveled in the wonders that made his life so much easier than those that his ancestors had endured.

From Grandpa I learned about preserving food in a time before refrigeration. I heard about the devastation of smallpox outbreaks and times when children only went to school for a few years to get the basics of reading and writing. He told me of his experiences in Oklahoma before that place was a state. He spoke of the mistreatment of the Osage Indian tribe by greedy white men who coveted the resources of their land. I learned about another depression that occurred during his boyhood and how Coxey’s Army came through his town. He was a folk history professor extraordinaire who enlightened me time and again. 

Grandpa was also a voracious reader who loved to talk about the latest book that he was reading. He tended to enjoy history more than other topics but he was open to new ideas from any topic. Best of all was his contentment and ability to make the best of whatever life threw his way. He never really stopped missing my grandmother but he had endured so much loss in his life that he had accepted its inevitability. That was apparent in the unfolding of his belief that there is indeed a time or a season for everything. 

Grandpa gave away his car when he turned ninety years old exclaiming that he was not as alert or able to react as well as he once was. He saw old people as hazards on the road. He did not want to take the risk of hurting someone simply because he was too proud to admit that his time had come to surrender to his age. He was wise beyond anyone else that I have ever known.

Those visits to see my grandfather were a lifeline for me. He represented a connection to my father and to my grandmother. He was my past, my present and my future all wrapped up in one person. He was my guru, my peacemaker, my guide. With his long life he was a force on whom I thought would always be able to depend. For the time being he would always be there for me.