Month: May 2024

I enjoyed being a student and I loved being a teacher, but I have always looked forward to the summer break. I’ve used those months to relax and ready myself for the big push that starts again in early August. I spend my days reading and sometimes being lucky enough to travel. I take classes to hone my skills or simply to learn something that I never before knew. 

Some summers have been difficult like the one right after my father died which is still a blur in my mind. Then there was the summer of nineteen sixty eight when the United States seemed to be on fire with protests over the war in Vietnam and civil rights. A few years later my husband, Mike, spent the summer in the hospital receiving chemotherapy for blastomycosis, a strange fungal disease that he mysteriously picked up somewhere somehow. There was also the summer of gasoline shortages and long lines at service stations when we bravely took a trip to Colorado on a wing and a prayer, hoping that we would not be stranded without fuel. Most recently there was the summer of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd that ignited the indignation of Americans across the nation during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic. 

I suspect that we are headed into a long hot and possibly unstable summer again this year. A presidential election is on the horizon and tempers are seething over a variety of issues. I worry that those same feelings will boil over as the long days inch toward the party conventions. I have witnessed the turmoil in the past and I hope against hope that we will not endure such difficulties again, but the signs are pointing to trouble. 

The divisions among us seem to grow ever wider. In fact I sense that there are purposeful efforts to drive us apart by politicians hungering for power. Much like the people in Russia, China, Israel,  and Palestine, we are presently pawns in a high stakes game of political intrigue that is less about our individual welfare and more about determining who will seize power. There will be brave souls who attempt to exercise their freedom of speech in the United States, but ultimately it will be our individual votes here in America that determine what the direction of our nation will be in the next four years and for many years to follow. 

The effect of the lawmakers we choose will be present long after they leave office. The tone of the country is much like the growth of a child. It takes place over time, not in a single moment. What we are witnessing today came to be from the influence of change over decades. It would be wise for us to consider how we want our country to be in the future because the laws of the moment will affect our children and grandchildren for years to come. 

Each of us has every right to voice our opinions, at least for now. We must nevertheless always be vigilant in protecting those rights lest any person or group attempts to use force or punishment to keep alternate ideas silenced. Fascism takes hold quietly and slowly in the beginning and then grows exponentially until people find themselves locked into a prison of silence and fear. We must eschew anyone who tells us of plans to squelch those with whom they do not agree. Promises to get even or force feed one point of view should be viewed as a grave danger to all of us. 

I love the United States of America warts and all, but this does not mean that I am afraid or unwilling to speak of the things that are wrong, shortsighted, or unjust. Ours has been an incremental progression to a fairer way of living, but at times we revert to old habits which may seem to protect us but actually hurt innocents. Progress in our way of governing should not be viewed as being synonymous with surrendering our rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When we widen of the scope of who gets those things we strengthen, not weaken, the dream of our founding fathers.

 Innovation and enlightenment has been at the heart of the United States at the same time that we built on the backs of slaves and the disenfranchisement of women. It took us awhile to rectify the flaws in our democratic republic and we shed blood in the process. Surely we have advanced far enough to be wary of those who would set our country back to a time when minorities were ruled by a small group of powerful men. Our nation is at its best when we welcome and provide opportunities for everyone. It is strongest when we listen to the many voices and many ideas that flourish in a free society. 

I hope that we use this long hot summer to demonstrate the incredible openness and attentiveness of this nation. It should be a time to value our freedoms and to embrace leaders of integrity and unity in moving our great political experiment forward. I will be watching and hoping that we somehow manage to find what is best about us for surely we are on the brink of disaster if we cannot find a way to heal our wounds and move forward together and without rancor. I fear an unsettling time. I hope that I am wrong. 

I have to admit to enjoying the luxury of being thin for most of my life without any effort on my part. When I was a teen I was actually what most people would have called “skinny.” I hated wearing shorts and bathing suits because I was so lanky and devoid of even a scintilla of cellulite. I ate like everyone else but extra weight never came. I was able to binge on milkshakes and fried chicken and still maintain my Twiggy-like appearance. Clothes hung on me like I was a coat hanger in spite of no effort on my part to maintain my lightweight figure. 

Once I had my first child I actually went slightly over one hundred pounds and looked better than ever, but I changed nothing to get that way. My body just seemed to be attuned to being slim. It was a state of being that I totally enjoyed as I ate whatever I wanted whenever I desired it. I was able to binge on Tex-Mex meals and pizza whenever I wished and keep my tiny figure. It was simply who I was and how I was born, not something that I worked to maintain. 

Daughter number two added a few more pounds to my overall weight but I was still wearing small sized clothing and with my long waist and height of five six and a half I felt confident in my appearance. I enjoyed my seemingly weightless lifestyle until my fortieth birthday when consuming a bit too much birthday cake and ice cream pushed up the numbers on my bathroom scale and made my clothes feel a bit too tight. After awhile I even had to go up a size in my clothing, but I was still in the low numbers deemed to by society to be attractive. 

As I grew older I literally began to shrink due to my osteoporosis and I remember crying my doctor showed me that I was only five foot four. As my height decreased my girth grew larger. I went up another size and actually began to panic and feel shame. It was then that I began to understand the pressures that our society place on people to maintain the body of a young athlete. I was only able to keep from growing ever wider by religiously counting my calories and keeping track of how much exercise I do each day. It was a brutal process that took so much so joy and freedom out of my life. It was also a time when I grew more and more understanding of those who had never been blessed with the kind of runaway metabolism that I had enjoyed for most of my life. I began to understand that weight or lack of it often has very little to do with a person’s lifestyle and everything to do with how well their body is working for them. 

Our society does a great deal of body shaming. Those who sport a slim physique are often thought to be not just more attractive but more intelligent and reliable than their heavier peers. Some people have to work hard to maintain a healthy weight but many, like I once was, do little or nothing to look like the world thinks we should all be. I learned that my brothers were not so fortunate. They related to me how they were hungry twenty four seven and never were able to satiate that feeling. One of my daughters would later describe the same kind of struggle to get the satisfactory relationship with food that just happened naturally for me. 

I saw my own mother go from a small size to the pluses when she began taking medication for her bipolar disorder. I often suspected that her tendency to stop taking the pills was directly related to her desire to be thin again. In her and my brothers and my daughter I saw people who were not gluttons, but rather those whose bodies were reacting to the normal act of eating in disturbing ways. I knew that they were trying every single day to rectify the tendencies of their systems to pack on pounds that they strove to remove. 

On the other hand I watched my father-in-law keeping pace with the biggest eaters in town and never adding a single pound. He eats more calories at breakfast than most of us consume all day long. Between meals he drinks protein supplements and ends his days with wine, cheese, crackers, a large dinner and dessert. He exercise but no more than most people do just taking care of daily chores. He remains as lightweight as he was when he was twenty five years old. He likes to think that it is because of his lifestyle but I have observed that it is mostly because his body is attuned to properly using the fuel he provides it without leaving fat behind. 

The fact is that we humans glorify images of what we decide is beautiful. For some achieving that state takes little more than being born. For others it is a lifelong battle that is painful and mysteriously difficult. I have witnessed that phenomenon both as a thin woman and one who has to be a bit more careful. In my own life I have realized that we are not all alike in how our brains tell us whether or not we need to eat. 

Doctors now know that there are hormones emanating from the brain that send messages telling us that our bodies are full and we can stop fueling them with food. Such systems operate on a continuum from sending that message too soon, resulting in an unhealthy thinness, or hardly ever sending the good news that the body has sufficient food. Those who are hungry all the time feel the pangs and often end up becoming obese. The proof of such body chemistry has come in the form of injectable drugs that make them feel satisfied when they have eaten enough to keep their bodies functioning. Then they lose weight and feel more comfortable like the rest of us. 

It’s time that we quit poking our fingers and our jokes at those who struggle with their weight. It’s time we understand that some of us are simply fortunate not to experience the always hungry feelings that so often plague the heaviest souls among us. Their bodies simply work differently from ours. They are not somehow inferior. it’s time to quit shaming or preaching the gospel of thinness to them. They are beautiful and there are ways to help them without making them feel ugly and deficient. We can do better. 

It was a beautiful Sunday. The sky was blue. The temperature was in the seventies. All of the trees had budded and the grass was growing again. The landscape was a panorama of color with roses blooming in colors of red, orange, purple and pink. My amaryllis plants were coyly showing long stalks about to burst open with their magnificent flowers that only come twice a year. The azaleas had already been the show ponies of the garden but still held a few blossoms that heralded an early spring. The sight was as lovely as it has ever been and for me it was a kind of spiritual experience to use my bare hands to reach into the fertile soil to pull weeds away from the plants that made the space of my backyard resemble a fine garden. 

Once my trimming and weeding was done I sat at the wrought iron table on the patio that was decked with ferns and potted hibiscus promising to flower any day. I felt a kind of cosmic connection to the nature around me as I watched a flock of birds fly overhead squawking all the way. A bee buzzed onto one of the roses reminding me that it was time to fill my hummingbird feeders to provide nutrition for the tiniest of creatures. I felt relaxed and happy and very close to  the earth in my tiny corner of the world. 

It will soon be unbearably hot where I live. If last year was any indication there will be many days languishing in the high nineties with the sun bearing down so hard that I will only be able to care from my garden for a short time before bowing to the heat. March and April are the best times for being outdoors after the dreariness and bareness of winter. May heralds the summer more quickly here than in other places. For sun seekers it is quite nice, but for me it means that my time outside will be more limited. I no longer feel like enduring the searing temperatures that put brown spots on my skin and sap my energy. 

I’ve learned to do my summer time gardening early in the morning or close to sunset in the evening when the temperatures fall. Even my lovely plants protect themselves, carefully conserving their own energy by sprouting fewer blooms and curling up their leaves to protect the surface from the the rays of the sun. Only the weeds seem happy when it is so hot, proliferating faster and faster, seeming to know that I will be less and less likely to tackle them with as much gusto as I did when it was cooler. 

I try to recall the times when I was young and unfazed by the soaring heat of summer. I’d spend entire days playing outside with my friends never seeming to notice how my skin was morphing into a dark tan while my face glowed with a sheen of perspiration and sheer joy. My youthful energy never waned even on the days when the mercury rose to temperatures beyond one hundred degrees. My friends and I simply kept ourselves hydrated from the water hose and sometimes soaked each other with showers of warm water just for the fun of it. 

If I were not as delicate as I have seemingly become I would spend most of my days outside. It is when I am intimately connected with nature that I feel the most calm and optimistic but being an acute observer has caused me a bit of anxiety. We have more and more very hot days each year and fewer and fewer cold or cool ones.

I barely wore a coat this past winter. My outwear mostly languished in the closet. There was a time when I was walking to school that winter was brutal for weeks even here in the southern climes. By November our heaters would be working away and it would be mid March before the slow transition to spring would arrive. Summer was real for three or four months but September always brought cooler days and a season of fall that was as enjoyable as the spring. 

These days summer like weather dominates the calendar. April feels like May once did and May feels more like June. The high temperatures of August bleed right into September and the warm days of October all too often keep the air conditioners working throughout the month. I worry that the natural order of things may change so drastically that I will hardly feel inclined to be outside as much as I once did. These days I am no longer acclimated to extreme heat making me worry that I will become merely an observer of the world through the lens of my glass windows. I want to feel the breezes and sit quietly as nature celebrates all around me. I want to work the soil with my hands, feel the earth in all its glory. Will such occasions slowly go away?

I hear a bird singing with such great joy as I type the words of this blog. It is a glorious symphony that I must enjoy before even the animals who live around me seek refuge from the heat, resting their voices in the shadows. Like me, they have to find respite from the searing sun. They and I will spend our mornings and our evenings before dusk living together on this beautiful land but in mid day we will both be hiding from the heat.

I know that I must do all that I can to honor and treasure the beautiful gifts of joy that nature provides me. I must care for all creatures great and small on this earth with reverence and gratitude. The wind tells me that we humans have a duty to protect and save our beautiful planet and all living things. The ever expanding heat is an alarm that warns me that our time for taking all of the loveliness of the great outdoors for granted has gone. We all have a responsibility to do whatever we can to save the beautiful days when the sky is blue, the wind is pleasant and nature is glorious.

My husband and I continue to stick with our plan to have a weekly date night, a recent routine that I instituted as a way to get us out of the house so that we might share time alone. Since my father-in-law came to live with us we often find ourselves spending much more of our time at home tending to his needs. Lately we have even had more than our usual share of doctor’s appointments for ourselves as well. It just feels good to set our concerns aside and spend time together if only for a few hours. 

On a recent evening we chose to visit the Menil Collection of art and artifacts. It is a lovely venue in Houston, Texas that is open from Wednesday through Sunday each week until seven in the evening. Amazingly the admission is absolutely free. We walked through the rooms gazing at paintings from Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso as well as ancient treasures dating from before the common era. It was a delightful experience in a beautiful setting nestled in the Montrose area near the University of St. Thomas.

It had rained all day on the afternoon that we visited. The storms had only stopped at around four in the afternoon. The sky was still overcast and a blustery wind shook the leaves in the ancient oak trees surrounding the buildings. Everything was damp and quite green as spring was showing off its awakening in colorful displays. Somehow the gray skies and chilly winds seemed comforting rather than dreary. 

A short walk from the Menil Collection the Rothko Chapel stands waiting for those who want a spiritual uplifting. The stark edifice conceived by Marc Rothko is like a beckoning lighthouse in the middle of the fourth largest city in the United States. It is a sacred place of contrasting dark and light where people silently come to meditate. It was so calming that I felt every breath that I took and my heart seemed to beat more slowly. It was filled with people quietly and reverentially relaxing, praying or thinking. 

After our wonderful visit to the place that Dominique de Menil had so generously created for the people of Houston we drove a short distance to Niko Niko’s, a popular Greek restaurant in the area. There we sampled stuffed cabbage, shrimp and fish while enjoying the people watching and talking about this and that with each other. I felt a kind of lightness in the evening and a bit of wonder at how incredibly diverse my city of origin has become. I see the variety as a glorious thing, not something to concern me. The many faces of the people we encountered were as beautiful as the works of art that we had just seen. 

We decided just to drive around for a time after dining. We saw the delightful quirkiness of Houston and the different lifestyles that had cropped up over the years since I was born. Along the way we drove past the spot where my parents had lived on the day that my mother felt the pangs of my impending birth. The garage apartment where my mother and father resided is no longer there, but my mother had pointed out that location time and time again with a big smile demonstrating the joy that she had felt there. I’ve found myself being drawn to that place again and again as I contemplate my life and the good fortune that I have experienced from the moment that my mother and father became my parents. 

While my husband and I rode home from our date night I pondered the incredible luck that had brought me to the present time. Everything about my circumstances has been filled with so much love that I was surely bound to achieve the good life that has been mine. I wondered out loud why I had been so fortunate when so many in the world have experienced deprivation and abuse. I understood the gifts that the people I have known have given me, most especially my brilliant father and my incredible mother who eventually shouldered my upbringing alone. I thanked my husband for never once demeaning me or holding me back in achieving my dreams. I know that sometimes I babble on and on about the world around me and he always so patiently listens and supports me. 

As we neared our home I felt a rush of emotion as I remembered students whom I had taught whose lives had been betrayed by the adults who should have loved and cared for them. I hoped that I somehow helped them to know how wonderful and beautiful they were even in their very broken states of mind. I felt such honor for being able to show them that they were loved. 

Somehow this one date night rose above the ordinary. I don’t know if it was the weather, the majesty of nature, the timelessness of the art, the sanctuary of the chapel, the joyfulness of the restaurant or the return to my beginning, but something triggered a torrent of emotions that made my heart sing. I think I’ll keep up the tradition of a date night alone with my husband, a new routine that my dearest friend, Pat, once urged me to try. Somehow I felt her presence with me as well. She was smiling and and winking and declaring that it was indeed a “rainbow day!”  

I love the settled nature of my neighborhood and the routines that repeat themselves day after day, season after season, and year after year. The familiar is a soothing contrast to the uncertainties of the world, but I have learned that constancy is rarely life long. Instead changes are constantly occurring all around us. Some are life changing and others simply push us forward on the pathway of progress. Often the variances in our lives are difficult, especially when they come in the form of loss. We are constantly challenged to adapt to the realities of the personal and more universal events that make it almost impossible to simply carry on the way we always have. 

Some among us actually thrive on the adventure of change. Others constantly look back over their shoulders hoping to retrieve the lives that they once had. Fortunately most of the revisions in our lives happen so slowly that we barely notice the evolution of our ways of living. The cycle of life is often both linear and circular, inching forward and repeating history as we all simply do our best to tackle whatever life throws at us. How we will respond to tragedies or just the everyday matters of surviving one more day is often determined by the models that we have used to structure our lives. 

I spent the first eight years of my life moving from place to place. My father had grown up being a rolling stone as his own father took the family from town to town while he worked on constructing buildings. For my daddy, moving was an exciting adventure that allowed him to see the country and its people. For me it was an uprooting from family and friends. I never really adapted to the cultural differences that I encountered as we lived like vagabonds who got infected with wanderlust almost as soon as we had established ourselves in a new place. I found it taxing to reintroduce myself again and again and longed for the comfort of staying put. 

Sadly I got my wish when my father died and my mother moved us back to one of the neighborhoods where we had once lived. We quickly rebuilt our relationships with friends there and with our extended family. While it felt more comforting to me than constantly moving I missed my father and often imagined that I would have a much better attitude about moving around with him if only I might get him back. The important lesson that I learned with his death is how fragile our lives and our customs actually are. Life can be turned upside down in an instant and most of us will experience such daunting events all too often in a lifetime. 

The proper response to the vagaries of living seems to be to find joy in each moment while understanding that the very people that we cherish and ways of doing things may change. The only real constant in the equations of life all lie inside of ourselves. We all experience loss and tragedy and feelings of being unmoored. Sometimes such times are so distressing that we seem to lose our way and with a world of media all around us it can feel as though everyone else is having a good time while we suffer.  

The truth is that we can’t always get exactly what we want, but we can adjust to celebrating what we have and then regroup to create a new path for our dreams. In the process we will no doubt find ourselves in new situations with new people, and if we are patient enough, we may no learn to embrace and enjoy them as much as we did the old. The happiest people are not free from times of sorrow, but they learn how to grieve for a time and then get back into the world as it is even when they are frightened to do so. Along the way they may find new allies, new and unexpected joys, adventures that they may have never before dared to discover. 

The complexity of life is with us all and always has been in the history of humankind. No matter whether we are kings or part of the faceless crowd each of us experiences victories and disappointments. Nobody gets through this world without change. Each new day holds both wonderful possibilities and potential dangers. We would do well to seize the moments of joy with gratitude and remembrance. They will be of great comfort when difficulties come our way. 

When I look back on my childhood I remember my father dreaming big. He loved moving about, going where the work was interesting and the world was progressing. He was not ready to put down roots when there was still so much more to experience. Even though his life was cut short he had crammed so much into it that he could not be said to have wasted even a single minute. Somehow I now realize how wonderful it was to accompany him on his journey and to learn how to find the beauty in every place and person that we encounter. I chide myself for not realizing this simple idea until I looked back and saw what a wonderful adventure he planned for our family. 

Embrace each day. Use the past only for inspiration and understanding, not in longing. May the memories of your life be a blessing and may the remainder of your life be open to the newness that will surely come. Change is sometimes exciting and sometimes scary. Know that you have come this far and will know doubt have what it takes to complete the journey. If you look around you will find people just waiting to walk with you for part of the way or to the very end.