Month: August 2023

There was a time when summer vacation for students was actually a full three months long. In July kids were still flocking to the city park swimming pools on hot afternoons and reading whatever books suited their interests under the shade of trees of backyards. It would not be until mid-August that they might begin to consider doing some preparations for the impending school year. Mothers or fathers would take them to purchase new shoes, clothes or school uniforms. It would not be until after Labor Day that school bells would ring once again, but that was so long ago that few even remember such a time. 

I was a great student and I loved seeing friends that I had missed during our three month hiatus, but I always felt a bit sad to say goodbye to the lazy days of summer. I preferred sleeping late, playing games with my neighborhood buddies, existing without responsibilities and deadlines. I enjoyed the purposeless adventures of those long hot months when I was free and unrestrained. I often believed that I learned just as much from my own curriculum of exploration as within the confines of a particular scope and sequence of instruction. 

It usually only took a few days for me to become school ready again. I would adjust to the rigidity of the schedule and soon be back in top studying form. Little did I know back when I was a student that most of my adult life would be about conforming to the school calendar as well. In becoming a teacher I set the routines of my education bound journey in stone. To this very day I react to the changing seasons in concert with whatever the school calendar tells me to do.

Somewhere along the way to the present time summer vacation for students and teachers became shorter. The idea of being free for three whole months has been contracted with a creep toward starting earlier and earlier in August. I used to use my brother Pat’s birthday on August 17, as a gauge to remind me that it would soon be time to return to the classroom. This year the doors opened even before that date which meant that teachers had no doubt begun the planning and inservice time as soon as August rolled into view. 

There are myths about the life of teachers that still prevail. Aside from believing that only people who can’t do anything else decide to teach, there is the idea that teachers get paid for three months of vacation and that they work fewer hours than most. I have often been stunned when someone asks me what it was like to be home by three in the afternoon, something that never happened in all of my years of teaching. 

What I do know for certain is that teachers must fulfill a certain number of inservice hours to keep their certifications. Almost every teacher spends a week or two in June taking classes to keep up to speed with new theories and trends in pedagogy. If an individual wants to work with advanced placement programs the amount of required yearly education may extend into most of June. All of which means that teachers often have little more than a month of free time before they quietly report back to their schools in early August. 

As far as daily schedules go once school has resumed I can only speak to my own experiences, but on most days save for Fridays I was on campus no later than seven thirty in the morning and I rarely left before four thirty or five in the afternoon. In other words my work days were usually ten hours long, but that was only the amount of time that I was working at the school. There was never a day when I did not bring additional work home. Counting the hours that I spent grading papers and planning lessons I added another four hours to my daily routine. Sometimes I even took conference calls from parents on my home phone. In all honesty it was not unusual at all for me to devote seventy to eighty hours a week to the demands of being an educator. 

The truth is that I was not exceptional in my devotion to my job. In fact, I often felt that I might have done more, but I needed to devote time to my family as well. I drew the line when it came to encroachment on my personal life. I learned how to survive on very little sleep so that I might do most of my school work at our kitchen table while my daughters were doing their assignments. Then I would finish whatever I needed to do after they had gone to bed. The routine of the school months became so embedded in my psyche that I have found it difficult to totally relax when August rolls around. I feel the need to begin my marathon of educating young people again and again.

Now I have confined myself to homeschooling nine students in mathematics and tutoring others who need a little extra push in order to understand the concepts that they have learned at their schools. I begin organizing myself in mid-July on a smaller scale than before, but the planning takes the same time whether I am doing it for one student or one hundred.

I hear stories about the state of schools now that concern me. I read about the unhappiness of teachers who are all too often being misrepresented by political forces that actually know very little about the enormous efforts that educators make to help prepare our young to be the workers and leaders of tomorrow. You can believe me when I tell you that they do far more on a daily basis than can be measured by the first and last bells that ring on campus each day. In truth only those who can do the complex job are willing to return year after year. Neither the pay nor the respect they receive are the impetus that brings them back. Believe it or not, they do it for love.

For many this has been a summer of European vacations and blockbuster movies. It almost feels like old times have returned and yet nothing is really the same as it was back in the days of my youth or young adulthood. They are not the same as when my father-in-law was still a teenager on the day that I was born. Just as my grandfather always opined, life moves forward and changes just as it should. Still I have spent much of this summer looking back at my own story, remembering the people and events that most impacted me, reading books that track our shared world history. 

My tiny world is a microcosm of the global world , the story of humanity. Taken together our human journeys have all been leading to this moment in time. Our stories have been told in small gatherings with friends and family. They are the oral histories that reveal our innermost feelings. We hear the story of humanity in poetry that sometimes combines words and thoughts in the most succinctly profound ways. A musician picks up a guitar and begins to hum a melody and that coexists with words about who we humans are and how we think that are powerfully moving. A novelist, historian or biographer delves into the deepest human thoughts and actions that tilt the planet in conflicting directions. So it is with storytellers, those who feel a cosmic force pushing them to tell stories that explain who we are, why we are, who we hope to become. Words, music and artistry are the real ways that we are different from all the other creatures with whom we inhabit this earth. 

Writing about the first half of my life has been therapy for me. It has been a way of taking the disparate pieces of my history and putting them together in a kind of coherence that did not seem to exist when they were actually happening. Back then I only reacted. Today I am able to analyze the meaning and progression of my personal journey. I can see how the hardships and mistakes were as important in making me who I am today as the fun times and successes were. I can see that in the long stretch of history I am but a single link in my ancestry, but a necessary one as all of us of us are. There is an importance attached to every life, a purpose for our being. 

When things happen to us we are forced to react. How we choose to do so is often determined by our circumstances, our support systems or lack of them. None of us live in a vacuum. Each of us is influenced from birth by where we happen to live, how our parents have treated us, how safe or dangerous our environment is. Through nothing other than good fortune I realize that I have always been surrounded by wonderful people whose guidance and love helped me to seem strong and wonderful. 

Each of us is who we are because of millions of interactions with our environment. We never know who will impact us, who will change us for better or worse. We wake up each morning hoping that our day will be easy and pleasant, but deep inside we are on alert, knowing that the reality of life is often uncertain. The only thing we can control is how we will react, and sometimes our challenges and tragedies are so enormous that we cannot stay in command. We lose our composure and our ability to be rational, a perfectly normal thing to do. 

As I have looked at my story I have also spent much of the summer analyzing the world. It is an enormous task for sure because the truth is that there is no one best way of doing things. To believe that we should force our ideals and philosophies on others is absurd and the foundation of much of the rancor in history. It is instead through example that we are most likely to influence. People the world over respond to kindness and concern. Most individuals just want someone to take the time to hear and understand them rather than judging or condemning them. Evil is created. We are not born with it. Those of us who are lucky encounter little of it and so we learn to be good. 

I have been influenced by the generosity that has been extended to me over and over again. I have also learned how not to be by encounters with broken souls. In their own ways they demonstrated how evil is formed in our midst. I learned to avoid the traits that I witnessed in them just as truly as I was inspired by the good people who came my way. By the time I was entering my forties I had developed a sense of who I was and how I wanted my life to unfold even as I had come to realize that we can’t always get what we want. I knew that uncertainty lay ahead but I had faith in my ability to face coming challenges head on. I could not know what those would be but I knew that somehow I had already overcome many hard times. I have the skills to survive the storms.

The days from the late nineteen eighties to the present seemed to flash by far more quickly than the earlier part of my life. My whole family was busy with the work of family, friendships and jobs. We hardly had time to breathe in between our obligations but there would be the kind of interruptions that would force us to take stock of our lives once again, to change course to meet the new realities. I suppose that makes me about average in the grand scheme of things, more fortunate in where I had been born, who my parents had been, the catalog of extended family members and friends, and within my own small circle of husband and daughters. I know that I was simply lucky and for that I am thankful, but never boastful. But for circumstance my story may have been so different.

Life is all about people entering and exiting our lives. Our personal stories are filled with the influences of individuals who impacted us for either good or bad. Things tend to only have meaning by association with events or people who impacted us. Pets, on the other hand, are as integral to our histories as our relationships with humans. So it is that certain dogs have brought profound comfort to me in the toughest of times.

There was the stray dog that we called Whitey who showed up on our front porch shortly after my father had died. We were a devastated group filled with fears that we had never before experienced. Somehow without Daddy we felt anxious and unmoored. Whitey was like a guardian angel sent from heaven itself. We saw him as a protector who would lie at our front door during the dark of night as though understanding that we needed his vigilance to feel safe again. We searched for his owners to no avail and began to believe that he was our dog, sent from heaven maybe even by our Daddy. 

We transitioned Whitey to the backyard behind a fence and played with him during the day. He no longer roamed the neighborhood as he had once done. He became part of our family rather quickly distracting us from the sorrow that blanketed us. We got better under his watchful care. He was a kind of panacea for our woes. Then one day he was gone as quickly as he had come to us. Our mother opined that he must have found someone who needed him more than we did. We would never forget him. 

Once we were settled in the home where each of us would grow up surrounded by wonderful neighbors we once again longed for a pet, another dog. We went to a rescue shelter with our mother and fell in love with a collie named Buddy. He was already well trained and ready to be our new best friend. He was gentle with us and with all of our friends. He instantly became a neighborhood favorite. 

There was something wild about Buddy that explained how he may have ended up in a shelter. He liked to climb the chain link fence and stroll around the neighborhood. He’d visit with the people and the dogs and then return when he was tired or hungry. We never worried when he was gone because we knew that he was just exploring. 

As we grew older so did Buddy. One day he was gray and no longer able to take his strolls up and down the street. We found him lying under the shade of a fig tree barely able to lift his head. I was dating my future husband, Mike, by then and the two of us carried Buddy to the car and drove to see his vet. There was nothing the good doctor could do, so I reluctantly agreed to putting the faithful pup to sleep.

After Mike and I married and settled into a house with a big backyard we decided to get a dog for our two little girls. We visited the local SPCA and found a golden retriever named Red. She was beautiful and as sweet as any golden ever was. She had a sixth sense about loving and protecting us just as that variety of dogs was bred to be by Sir Dudley Marjoribanks of Scotland in 1868. 

Red met every criteria of a wonderful golden. She was calm and patient with all of the children and she loved to fetch things. She was protective as well. The only time I ever saw her become aggressive was when I was working in my backyard garden and a group of men arrived claiming to need access. They asked me to unlock the gate so that they might enter but Red would have nothing to do with them. Each time I attempted to approach to gate, Red forcefully pushed me back. When the men tried the latch she lunged at them with her teeth bared and a threatening growl. Somehow she sensed that they were up to no good and sent them away.  

Red lived to a very ripe old age in dog years. Her golden coat turned gray then white. She moved slowly like an old lady. One day much like Buddy she simply gave up and lay in a heap unable and unwilling to move. 

We would miss Red so terribly that our daughters became convinced that the only way to comfort us was by finding a new golden retriever. They found an advertisement for puppies in the want ads of the Houston Chronicle. We drove to a home in Katy, Texas to select a pup from a very large brood. One of the little dogs clamored over the others as though to let us know that she was anxious to be part of our family. We took to her immediately and knew that she had to come home with us. 

We named her Scarlet and often joked that she had a personality like Scarlet O’Hara. She was strong willed and beautiful, sometimes determined to do things her way. Nonetheless she possessed the best characteristics of her breed. She seemed to read our minds, knowing when we needed a snuggle or a kiss with her warm muzzle. On one occasion she served as a sentinel when I contracted the bird flu and had fevers raging as high as one hundred three degrees. I was sleeping most of the day and whenever I awoke Scarlet would be patiently lying next to the bed. 

Just as with Buddy and Red, Scarlet lived a long and wonderful life. She developed cancer which we treated for quite some time but eventually she grew weaker and the vet told us that she had given us all that she had left. We reluctantly let her cross the rainbow bridge to meet with all the angel dogs who had ever brought so much joy to their keepers. 

I have mostly been a dog sitter for my granddogs these days. I’ve enjoyed time with Maggie, Shane, Lucy, Cooper, Stella, Luna, Hermione, and Mercury. I have spoiled them like a grandmother is apt to do. Mostly I have enjoyed how bright and loving they have been. Dogs are good friends, loving children who never ask much of us but always give to us so unconditionally. I can’t imagine what we would do without them. 

My father was a thinker, a mechanical engineer who was also a poet and lover of music. Daddy possessed an everyman renaissance mentality. He saw the present and the future all at once. The energy of his mind made him incredibly interesting, but also uncomfortable. Even at the age of thirty three he was still attempting to find his place in the world, particularly with his work. He was searching for something meaningful, but never quite found the fit that would use his many talents and quench his thirst for knowledge. 

Daddy dreamed of a future that would one day come, but not in time for him to witness it. He had books that described traveling to the moon in a time when such things seemed to be only science fiction. He spoke of the worldwide need for sources of clean potable water and methods of harvesting and desalinating the oceans. Like his mother, he felt a kinship with nature and was never happier than when he was enjoying the flora and fauna around him. I suppose that our journey with him in the year before his death represented his quest to find work that might somehow bring more than monetary profits to humankind. I suspect that his quest had not yet been successful, but in retrospect I can see that if he had lived just a bit longer he might have actually begun to see the fruition of many of his ideas. 

My brother Micheal would fulfill Daddy’s legacy in the exploration of space. The little boy who cradled our father’s books and gazed at the illustrations even as a toddler would eventually develop navigation software for journeying to the International Space Station. Daddy’s descendants would share his curiosity and his passion for improving and protecting our planet. It is as though he showed us how to live in the brief time that he had. His influence continues to loom large in each of us who are linked to him on the family tree. 

Our beautiful blue planet is in trouble and far too many of us are ignoring the signs. We seem to think that the problems facing the people of the earth are simply par for the course, a cyclical pattern that will soon enough right itself. We point to droughts of the past to explain receding rivers and lakes. We plug our ears when someone sounds an alarm, telling us that our central problems have nothing to do with culture wars, and everything to do with our mistreatment of the natural resources that we too often take for granted. If the problems are not our own, we too often tend to shrug away our personal responsibilities to help. We forge ahead without making the sacrifices that we must begin to make if everyone is to survive. 

I think of my grandmother, a tiny illiterate woman who had more sensibility in guarding the earth than any person I have ever known. Her lack of schooling was a source of sorrow and even shame for her, and yet she had developed more common sense than most people possess. She had an understanding of how to use every resource in a way that enriched the environment. She did not waste or destroy. Her relationship with the natural world was not as a dominant human, but as a caretaker and sharer of the gifts that we have all too often taken for granted and destroyed.  

My father was not a religious man but he was a philosopher who believed in something bigger than ourselves. He often posited questions about why we are here on this earth and what our roles should be. He loved to explore through travel and books and deep conversations. He saw the possibilities of the future where others were mired in the present. He deeply believed that progress was not about things or bigger houses or an accumulation of wealth, but rather forging new frontiers that would help us all to live comfortably in concert with all of the creatures and wonders of the earth. 

Daddy often stressed our responsibilities to use the knowledge, skills and gifts that we had to advance learning and understanding everywhere. His library of books included the ideas of the great thinkers of history. He believed that we each have a purpose that we are bound to fulfill, not for selfish reasons, but for the good of all mankind. I heard him speak of such things over dinner, while we viewed the wonders of our country, on days when he read to us from the newspaper or one of his many volumes. Shortly before he died he chastised me for only coasting through life. He urged me to fully develop myself and my gifts. He advised me to find my passion and share it with my fellow humans. Most of all, he told me of my duty to protect the earth. 

I often sat next to my father while he was fishing. Those were the moments when he became the most philosophical about life. He would quietly point to the water, the birds, the sky and revel in their beauty. As he pulled a fish out of the water he would remind me of our stewardship. He warned that we have the power to both destroy and cultivate the planet. He asked that I do my best to take care of what we have. 

In this summer of heat, dry rivers, fires and extremes of weather I am reminded of my father’s words. I think of his books and those of the maternal grandfather whom I never met. They were men who understood our profound influence on the land and on each other. While we quibble over things that should not matter, we are slowly and surely destroying what is most important for our survival. We have important work to do if we are to save our planet. Each and every one of us matters. We can no longer deny what is happening nor can we shirk our duties to repair the damage we have already done. This I know because my father told me it would be so. It is his message from the beyond. I will do my best to do my part and encourage others to do theirs.

I suppose that it was inevitable they my Grandpa Little would one day die, but he had survived for so long that I began to think that he was immortal. When he celebrated his one hundred eighth birthday in November of 1996, he was as clear headed and bright as ever even though he had experienced some physical health issues during the summer. My brother Michael gave him a biography of Thomas Jefferson as a gift which he read immediately and spoke about at length when we visited him at Christmas time. 

Sadly, Grandpa took a turn for the worse after the arrival of the new year. He became wheelchair bound and confused making it necessary to send him to a nursing home where professionals might care for him. When we visited he made clear that he was unhappy there but none of us were in a position to provide him with the twenty four hour attention that he needed. On one occasion he actually disappeared from the place where he had been staying and a search party had to comb to area to find him. He was eventually spotted wheeling himself down the road determined to go back home. 

Our visits with him became more and more painful. He knew who we were but his mind was muddled. Sometimes he was not quite sure where he was. Other times he spoke of seeing relatives who were long dead. He was still cagey enough to stealthily beg my daughters to help him escape. We knew that his best days were gone but were still unwilling to consider that he might actually die. 

One night I was awakened from a deep sleep, or at least it felt that way. I looked up to see my Grandma Minnie Bell sitting on the side of my bed. She smile beatifically at me and whispered that it was time for Grandpa to join her in heaven. She went on to explain that he was very tired. She knew how important he was to me and my brothers, but she insisted that he had done all that he could to guide us. Now it was his time to rest. 

My dream state lulled me back to sleep immediately but in the morning I remembered my grandmother’s visit as vividly as if she had actually been there. Of course I understood that it was only a dream but when I got a call that afternoon to inform me that Grandpa had died I honestly felt that somehow my grandmother had actually communicated with me. Her spirit lived so close to my heart that I felt that she had wanted to comfort me. She knew how important Grandpa had been to our family. 

We soon learned that the funeral home was not willing to bury our grandfather until someone paid the bills associated with a traditional lay to rest. Grandpa had no savings or insurance policy or assets that we might have used. Because there were dozens of cousins who were all doing fairly well I began to call them one by one to see what they would be willing to contribute to the cause. Sadly everyone except my brothers turned down my pleas for help in giving our grandfather a proper burial. 

Since Grandpa had already bought a burial plot when Grandma died we only had to pay for the casket and the actual internment. The director of the place agreed to only needing a downpayment if someone was willing to sign a promissory note for the remainder of the cost. My brothers and i put our funds together and one cousin finally announced that she would sign the promissory note and get her sibling to help with what we still owed. After days of haggling, the funeral date was set. 

There was a large crowd mostly of grandchildren and great grandchildren. By then all of Grandpa’s children had already died. One of my cousins played his guitar and another requested that we play Grandpa by the Judds. I totally lost it when I heard that melody and the words, “Grandpa, tell me bout the good old days…” I had spent my entire life listening to the tales from my grandfather’s memory. He was an extraordinary storyteller who had made our history come alive with humor and compassion. Knowing that I would never again see him settling back in his recliner and puffing on his pipe in preparation of regaling us with descriptions of events from his life was almost too much to bear. 

Grandpa had indeed been our father figure after our Daddy died. He was a good man, well read and wise. He had known tragedy and hardship in his lifetime, but somehow he remained optimistic and grateful for the progress that humans had made. He believed in the goodness and ingenuity of people to carry us into the future. He understood the power of love and he cherished family above all else. 

Grandpa often spoke of missing his “buddy,” our grandmother. She was the love of his life, the one with whom he had enjoyed so much fun. I imagined her welcoming him to heaven along with my father and my aunts. I even wondered if he might finally meet his mother who had died giving birth to him so long before. Somehow I understood that while I was grieving my loss, Grandpa was celebrating. He had given me and my brothers the gift of his love and wisdom. Now it was his time to be with the folks from the good old days. I knew that one day I would see him again.