Month: September 2023

I can’t really point to a time that my life has been restful, at least not since I was seven years old and I spent my third grade year in six different schools that stretched from Houston Texas to California and back again. I seriously believe that the tumultuous journey coupled with my father’s untimely death at the end of the school year destroyed my adventurous nature. Instead I have tended to proceed from day to day with caution and a sense that all of my best laid plans may never come to fruition. I work hard to be prepared for the worst possible scenario which has kept me able to react quickly to the many challenges that have seemingly blocked my path. I tend to expect the unexpected which adds a bit of anxiety to my daily life but also insures that I am ready for the craziest events that may come my way. 

I sometimes laugh at myself because I am so obsessive about keeping my life on an even keel so that it will not fall apart in the event of an emergency. My life story has taught me that the best laid plans do go awry and more often than we might wish. I’ve learned how to be nimble in my reactions to death, illnesses, and changes that upend my dreams. In some years of my life I have had to fall back on plans from B to Z. So I have learned that the entire trajectory of my life can make a one hundred eighty degree turn in a millisecond, forcing me to use my wits to find my way back on a different route than the one housed in my dreams. 

So far my grit has kept me moving forward even as I have had to circle back from a different perspective. I suppose that my story is far from unique and definitely not as difficult as vast numbers of people who have endured suffering. For the most part there have always been helpers who saw my dilemmas and volunteered to help me recalibrate my compass. 

I have not always been as ready to reciprocate the support for others struggling with their own difficulties. I am one of those clueless souls who has had to actually experience a specific hardship to understand the anxieties involved with it. As I have walked through my life I have had to actually touch and feel the impact of death, family illnesses, mental illness and most recently the challenges of caring for an elder parent. I’m a quick learner but until I have actually experienced a difficulty on my own I do not always understand the depth of determination required to handle it. 

What I do now know is that none of us are immune from life’s tragedies and some seem to experience more than their fair share. Those folks need to have someone let them know that they are not alone. Most of us can weather even the most terrible storms if we see that we have beautiful souls rooting for us and carrying some of the load for us. It is only when it seems that nobody cares that we lose our focus and determination. 

The world is quite busy and its easy to feel lost in it. Fortunately we all know those remarkable souls who show up on our doorsteps like guardian angels just when we need them. Each hurricane season I think of a storm called Harvey that reeked havoc in my city as more than fifty inches of rain fell nonstop over a period of four days. I was terrified in that time because my husband Mike had just had a stroke and the doctors told us that there was a chance that he might have a second one in the weeks afterward. As the rain filled the streets and many of the homes I realized that if he were to have an emergency we might be left to our own resources. That’s when an angel appeared from nowhere.

One of my former students who lives nearby came to our house to check on us. He brought us a pair of rabbit ears so that we might still use our television if the cable went out. He made sure that we had all of his contact information and assured us that he and his brother-in-law would be able to get Mike to the nearest hospital using a big family truck. He had even attempted the journey to be certain that he would be able to navigate the waters. He then continually checked on us via text for the next many days. I was overwhelmed with thankfulness for his loving concern. Then I watched as friends and strangers alike came to the rescue for those desperately attempting to survive the floods all over the city. 

There were no artificial divisions based on politics, income, education, race or sexual preferences during hurricane Harvey. We were all united in a common cause and it was a beautiful thing to see. Sadly we don’t always turn such emergencies into shining moments. Instead we go inward, not making the effort to even notice that someone is suffering and in need of our help.

I am admittedly not the best at setting aside my own anxieties and carving out time to be a beacon of hope, but I have known some of the very best souls who seemed to be attuned to the needs of others and then act on their concerns. I try my best to remember how relieved I was when my Uncle Jack helped so much after my father died. I have never forgotten how Mrs. Barry came to my rescue when I was a young inexperienced woman trying to get help for my mother’s mental illness. I think of the dozens and dozens of times that my dear friend, Linda, has made great efforts to help me when I was adrift with life’s troubles wearing me down. Often my saviors have been people that I hardly knew or someone quite unexpected. Some individuals are so attuned to others that they just naturally show up whenever there is an emergency. They are our angels on this earth. 

I have traversed many tragedies but I am not as brave and wise as it may sometimes seem. I would have drowned in self pity were it not for the good Samaritans who had the compassion to minister to me in my darkest times. They were teaching me how to be a better person and they did so without fanfare. The angels are all around us and hopefully when the need arises we can be angels as well. 

I’ve grown up with kindness, a gift for which I an eternally grateful. It is difficult for me to understand brutal abuse because I have never experienced it, but I have witnessed children who were victims of it. Each time I encountered such a child I became emotionally distraught while having to present a professional calmness to the world. I had to learn to control my feelings as a teacher, especially when I learned of horrific situations affecting my students. Like a doctor or nurse I would have been of little use to them if I had descended into a blob of tears and hysteria. 

I suppose that because I had been treated with such love by the adults in my life and later by my husband I understood that it was entirely possible for humans to be good. Seeing the flip side of our human natures was stunning and I encountered it more often than I might have wished. The duality of our humanity is stunning but it still confounds me even as I see it in action and read about it in history. I often wonder what creates the monsters who would harm innocents. I suspect that violence begets more violence, but there are also those who seem to have some deviant narcissism and lack of feeling through no fault of those who raised them. 

I am a very spiritual person as were my parents who openly discussed their feelings and urged me and my brothers to be upstanding empathetic humans. I was taught to consider the source of bad behavior before judging or punishing. When I myself fell from grace I was most likely to receive a lesson in how to conduct myself rather than corporal punishment. In fact, hitting and demeaning was rarely accepted in my home. On a few occasions after my father died my mother weakly attempted to use a belt or switch on my brothers but her efforts were so half hearted that they usually ended with laughter and hugs. She hung up the belt and never used it again.

We were mostly taught how to behave by the examples of my parents and relatives. We were sometimes reminded of what goodness is by watching the adults in our lives spread kindness and positivity to everyone that they encountered. My mother in particular viewed all religions as being beautiful and thought of God as a benign being. She poo pooed the idea of vengeance and punishment and often commented that every person was a child of the divine Creator, even those who had committed dastardly acts. She reminded us that it was up to God to decide their fate after death, but she also agreed that sometimes a person is such mad dog that they must be imprisoned to protect society. Never did she think that they should be harmed.

When I encounter people whose thinking and philosophies are only skin deep I admit to having a difficult time understanding them, but I follow my mother’s example and love them anyway. Nonetheless I wonder if being the way they are is some kind of defense mechanism that protects them from actually considering the plights of other humans. I wonder how they can be self involved without noting the struggles of so many souls and then wondering what to do to help them. 

I remember a student once telling me that I was a very nice and fair mean school administrator. What he meant by that was that I enforced rules justly and was inclined to punish the action, not the person. My conduct rules were all about being a good person and much like my parents infractions were more likely to be met with mutual discussions of how to improve matters. I had great faith that most of my students would respond to encouragement and the vast majority of them did. 

I was recently speaking about someone that I know who is going through a rough patch in his life but is relying on memories of his deceased father’s expectations for him to heal and redeem himself with those that he has hurt. I was stunned when the person with whom I was speaking asked how someone who is dead could possibly influence someone who is living. I had always thought that everyone drew inspiration from good people they had known who are no longer with us. In my own case my mother, father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who literally molded my outlook on life with their compassion continue affect how I interact with the world long after they have died. I was literally confused to learn that not everyone feels that kind of spiritual connection with the great people who inspired them. It explained to me the man’s beliefs that only tough and physical punishments work. 

I know for a fact that I was often viewed as being too soft on my daughters and my students but I always believed that how I behaved toward people was more likely to impress them than making them afraid of me. I tend to think that I was mostly successful with my approach. In the few times that I failed to touch a heart, the child was so broken that only therapeutic interventions with professionals made a difference. Nonetheless, as a society we have a tendency to lean more toward punishment than active efforts to heal tortured minds and this actually confounds me.

I think that my brothers, husband, daughters and grandchildren are prime examples of the power of love. Humans are sometimes commit bad deeds and those things must never be ignored, but I have learned that discipline laced with kindness has longer lasting results than physical or mental lashings. Children understand and respond when we have done our best to be the type of people we want them to be. When we turn on them with anger and hurt or if we withhold our love, we begin the creation of a adult who may learn how to abuse others. Lessons in kindness delivered without lectures work so much better. 

In many winters I have feverishly covered the more fragile plants in my garden hoping that I might save them from the damage wrought by frost. Among those that concerned me was a lovely hibiscus bush that had graced our patio all summer long with lovely salmon colored blooms. The plant had spoken to me as we walked along the rows of a nursery and I knew that it had to join the roses and azaleas in my garden. I planted it in a sheltered place that got just the right amount of sun and water. Soon it had doubled then tripled is size and when July came it burst forth in glory catching my eye with its thick double ruffled flowers. It was one of the loveliest things I had ever seen.

After a couple of years a harsher than usual winter came along. That’s when I feverishly worked alongside my husband preparing my beautiful hibiscus for the worst. We wrapped it in a specially designed blanked created just for plants. It was made to keep the plant warm but still allow it to breathe. We felt confident that our efforts would work because they had sheltered our other prized varieties time and again. Besides the freezing temperature only lasted for a single night. 

When we unwrapped the plants most of them appeared to be as hardy as ever with the exception of the hibiscus which looked bruised and battered. We were not too worried because even the potted hibiscus that we stored in the garage each fall looked the worse for wear but we knew they would bloom again in the spring. There were no more freezes that year so we patiently waited for March to arrive with its magical healing powers for nature in our yard. 

Every plant we owned began to show new growth. Our amaryllis bulbs sprouted buds, then blooms. The roses leafed out and soon were boasting so many flowers that they appeared to be wedding bouquets. The azaleas were more prolific than ever and the grass grew enough to need a trim. There were little green shoots on all of our hibiscus plants, but not the one that I had so prized. I did not want to admit it, but I feared that it was dead.

April came and then May and while our yard was a riot of color and beauty the hibiscus remained bare, its branches looking as barren as a tree in the dead of winter. The plant looked so out of place next to the growth all around it and my husband soon convinced me to replace it with a hardier specimen. He dug it up and tossed it onto the grass but somehow I was unable to bring myself to throw it in the trash. Instead I filled a large pot with rich black rose soil and replanted the hibiscus hoping that it might still have a tiny hope of life. I moved the pot to the side of the house where it might rest out of sight but not out of mind. I kept it watered and checked on it regularly. By fall it appeared to maybe have a single bit of green sprouting from the its trunk. It was difficult to discern if the growth was part of the plant or just a stray weed taking hold. 

When October came and with it time to store the potted plants in the garage there were two tiny leaves on the hibiscus. I lovingly carted the pot to its wintertime home with the others and mostly forgot to think about it with the exception of the times when I gave each of the specimens a drink of water. 

In March I placed the hibiscus on the side of the house once again. By the end of the summer it was a fairly good sized little plant that had stayed green with no blooms. So it was for three years but I refused to give up hope. Somehow I knew that the beauty of the plant was still there even though it had been so disappointing for years. This July the hibiscus that I had always loved finally returned in all its splendor filling its branches with luscious salmon colored flowers. It was so glorious that I felt like the parent of the Prodigal Son welcoming my loved one to my home again. 

We all too often give up on people much as I was tempted to do with my hibiscus plant. I might have saved myself the grief and effort of nursing the bush back to life, but in my heart I believed that the beauty was still there even when the little shrub was its ugliest. I kept hold of hope that my wonderful hibiscus would one day return. It took much patience for me to keep believing that there was a chance for recovery because the signs of rebirth were barely there. So it often is with people who disappoint us or fall from grace. It’s sometimes easier to just turn our backs on them and move on, especially when they do not seem to be trying hard enough to redeem themselves. 

All too often I witness individuals working to overcome addictions or attempting to change habits that have been hurtful. Often their progress is brutally slow and filled with hopelessness and relapses into bad habits that seem intent on killing who they once were. It’s difficult not to just turn away from them, lock them out of our lives and fail to remember that they once meant something to us. It is quite normal to grow weary of their profligate ways and to wish them out of our lives. Sometimes that is even the wisest thing to do, but not we have done our best to give them a chance to redeem themselves. We forget that sometimes our prodigal sons and daughters do finally return. Redemption is one of the most glorious triumphs of the human spirit and most of the time it is accomplished when the wounded and battered find someone willing to believe in the them and help them to do the work to heal and grow and bloom again. 

I won’t leave my hibiscus to its own resources anymore. I understand its weaknesses and will do my best to nurture it to keep it being a beautiful source of light and joy. So it is with anyone we know who has faltered and disappointed us. We should not give up on them easily. It may take time and they may even fail to to come back to life. The point is that if we have patience and if all goes well one day we may once again see the person that we once knew, healed and thriving. Surely its worth a try to have someone we love be born again.

What a summer this has been! Europe was swarming with tourists. Airports were filled with travelers. We witnessed longer stretches of unusually high temperatures than many of us remember ever experiencing in our lives. We have been centered on attempts to return to a sense of normal after the privations and losses of the pandemic years, mostly looking away from all things unpleasant whenever possible. Certainly we deserve some respite from the distressing situations, but as we know the world is filled with tragedies with or without a worldwide pandemic. It can be a daunting task to pull us out of our doldrums and an even more gigantic task to discern what is the right way to approach the problems that continue to stalk the world’s people. 

Sometimes I wonder what I, as one person, can do to help those living in dire circumstances. It can be overwhelming to consider all of the problems in our own backyards and in far away places that are alien to us. Are there even enough resources on this earth to bring solace to every life, or should I simply shrug that things have always been this way and there is nothing that I can do? These kind of thoughts have confounded me for most of my life. I often think that my altruistic nature was born on the day that my father died. I vividly remember the people who went out of their way to help my family, those who went an extra mile to make sure that we were safe and secure. I become quite emotional thinking of how much their kindness meant to me and my mother and brothers. I have never ever forgotten a single one of them, Aunt Valeria, Uncle Jack, Uncle Willie, Mrs. Barry, Father Fiorenza, my grandparents, Aunt Opal, our neighbors on Belmark Street, the good people of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.

Back then I made a promise to be observant and to notice those who are suffering in this world. My resolve was heightened by my sainted mother who showed me and my brothers how to be empathetic and generous. There were times when she literally cried for the poor in spirit, but then she always followed her tears with actions that hundreds of people remembered after she had died. She showed me that one person constantly doing small things is indeed able to change the direction of people’s lives. 

There was nothing showy about my mother’s efforts. In fact, she was quite humble about doing good. It was not something to brag about. She commanded no awards or rewards. She was kind because she believed it was the way we all should be. The people to whom she ministered were often forgotten or misunderstood by others. She did not judge them. She simply loved them and often told me and my brothers how she herself had been shunned when she was a child simply because she was the child of immigrants. Nonetheless, her father taught her to hold her head high and be grateful and proud that she was a citizen of the United States. He urged her to use her good fortune to help those who were not as lucky, and so she did.

We often wonder what our tiny efforts will accomplish, but we forget the power of the exponent. One caring act raised to the power of millions grows with a steep curve. When we unite together to do positive things rather than to gripe and complain about the state of the world we overwhelm the evil forces that destroy innocence. If we see problems it is up to each of us to act if only in a small way. 

We all know people who make great sacrifices to be the helpers in the world. Sometimes their impact isn’t as apparent as it should be. Like my mother they are quietly working on causes that have inspired them. Some do such things in their choices of work like firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists, engineers, or even the people who clean up our messes. Each is bringing order and hope for the future to our lives and we often don’t even notice them. Some use their free time or their generous donations to improve the way we all live. Some create films or write essays to bring horrors to our attention or to remind us that we humans have a duality of characteristics that can be heavenly or hellish. It is up to us to choose which we want to foster and be.

It is not enough to simply sit around complaining about the problems of drugs, homelessness, wars, or refugees. There are not walls high enough nor concertina wire strong enough to protect ourselves from misfortune or to allow us to ignore the tired and suffering. We certainly don’t have to drive ourselves into states of despair over the issues of the world, but we can choose to do something positive about a situation that concerns us. Spreading kindness is a reward in itself, bringing us far more joy than time spent accruing things and status. 

I’m certainly not a cockeyed optimist. My life’s story has taught me that we sometimes face overwhelming challenges and that we don’t always get what we want in spite of our best efforts. Still, my mother’s life showed me that we don’t have to perform miracles or do the seemingly impossible to make a difference. All it takes is for each of us to consciously spend time doing something brave and wonderful wherever we think that it may help. Somebody has to do it. Why not be the one!

Wow! My father would have been one hundred years old last Saturday if he had lived instead of dying at the age of thirty three. Of course there is no reason to believe that he would have made it this far since he had a tendency to be a bit too daring and had more than one scrape with broken bones. Nonetheless his father lived to the ripe old age of one hundred eight and there was quite a streak of longevity among his ancestors. He just might have managed to witness some of the inventiveness of humankind that he had predicted would happen. I suspect that he would have enjoyed that, but a the same time I’ve never been one for “what ifs.” Things happen and we have to adjust to our realities in spite of how difficult that sometimes is. Still, I would have liked for my husband and my daughters and maybe even my grandchildren to have talked with him if only for an hour or so. 

We are all formed by people that we have never met. Their DNA resides within us. Their intellect and philosophies get passed down to us in small but meaningful ways. We all belong to a long and complicated strand of the past that shapes so much more than just the color of our eyes or the texture of our hair. We are the culmination of centuries and the purveyors of future generations. I like to think that some of my past features are already percolating in my grandchildren and will one day be evident in some person whom I will never meet.

Have you ever seen those striking photos of a young adult next to a photo or painting of a relative from many generations past? The nuances of similarity are strikingly uncanny. It is as though the individual from long ago has come alive in the modern world. We have such a family portrait in our home that features my husband Mike’s great great grandfather, great grandfather and a gathering of children one of whom bears an uncanny resemblance to my grandson, Ian. It appears to have been taken in Newcastle, Great Britain in the first decade of the twentieth century. If not for their dated clothing I would have actually believed that Ian was in the picture.

Everyone agrees that my brother, Pat, his son, Shawn, and my grandson, Andrew, look very much like my father. Since Shawn’s son, Lex, looks almost identical to his grandfather, Pat, at the same young age, it is a fair bet to assume that we have an idea of how my dad looked as a little boy even though we have no photos of him until he was in junior high. Some even say that I look more like my father than my mother, but it depends on which side of the family is studying my profile. If our physical characteristics can so clearly link us to our ancestors, just imagine how many unseen traits we carry. It is absolutely mind boggling. 

We already know that we may now connect ourselves to people we have never met simply by comparing our DNA to theirs. Often when we do, we find that the “perfect strangers” like the same kinds of things that we enjoy. They may even have identical idiosyncrasies. I marvel at the science that has demonstrated our interrelatedness, but even more at the phenomenon of similarities that have traveled down through the years. I like to think that even though my father has been gone for sixty seven of his “would have been” birthdays he is still alive and having an impact on the world through those of us who came after him and carry his traits. 

I know that Jack Little has been one of the strongest driving forces in my life, but I also marvel at how much my grandson, Andrew, is like him not just in appearance but temperament. The mix of other influences makes Andrew a bit different from my father, but there are times when I am talking with him that I catch glimpses of the same kind of intensity that Daddy felt for the people that he loved. 

I do not believe that our destinies are predetermined. Nor do I adhere to the philosophy that things happen for a reason. It would be difficult to accept that a divine being would be so cruel as to teach us lessons with the deaths of loved ones, serious illnesses, or wars. I think that we simply encounter random situations and it is in how we respond to them that the nature of our inheritances become surprisingly clear. All of the wisdom and DNA passed down through the ages influences our thinking and our beliefs. I already catch glimpses of long gone loved ones in the actions of the youngest members of our extended family. 

When answering the question of whom, living or dead, I would like to invite to dinner I never fail to include my father in the grouping. In fact I would prefer to just be alone with him on a bench overlooking the ocean. I’d like to share with him how much I have always loved him and how he guided the trajectory of my life even after he was gone. Then I would give him time to share his reactions to all that has happened since he left this earth. I suppose that everyone has a person or two that they would very much like to see just one more time. Instead I’ll just say Happy One Hundredth Birthday to my Daddy in heaven and tell him how much his influence lives on. Who could ask for any more wonderful gift than to know that we matter and always will!