Month: June 2024

I suppose that Americans have always had a number of different ideas about how things should run. In fact, I’m fairly sure that humans everywhere in the world have encountered contrasting points of view. People look at the world around them differently which can actually be a very good way of keeping a society vital and interesting. It would be a dull and dangerous development indeed if we all walked around like programmed robots. Our best moments as humans have always been those in which we actually encourage and cherish a multitude of differing voices. 

Even as people have sometimes disagreed with each other they have mostly managed to get along. Now and then the issues seem so incompatible that we descend into wars, but most of the time we manage to at least stay civil with one another when our disagreements loom large. People with extremely different political views have been known to be friends. It’s generally been considered the American way for friends and family to respect differences, but in the last few years voicing one’s beliefs has become a risky thing to do. People take politics so seriously in today’s polarized environment that there seems to be little room or acceptance for disagreement. There is a tribal feel to the politics of the moment.  

I vividly remember my father and grandfather discussing political issues with fiery arguments and then embracing each other and laughing about their differences. My brothers have launched into endless debates with one another that always ended with the certainty that they still loved and accepted each other. I grew up believing that deep discussions from differing points of view were the spice of life. I have always believed that expressing pros and cons and launching rebuttals was a worthy undertaking among friends, a kind of Socratic exercise that leads to clearer thoughts rather than bruised feelings. 

My husband and I used to sit around on Saturday nights with our friends Bill and Pat or Egon and Marita challenging one another. We would talk for hours and never end up angry. Instead we enjoyed hearing our differing insights of life. We learned from those gatherings and become closer, not estranged. I used to joke that if someone had filmed our discourse it would have made for quite entertaining and enlightening television programming.

Sadly the wonderful friends with whom we had such amazing conversations have all died and we honestly feel that there is a big hole in our lives that is impossible to repair. In an effort to find the kind of intellectual dialogue that we once enjoyed we have been taking continuing studies classes in which all of the participants freely express themselves without growing tense or worrying that whatever they say will be wrongly interpreted. We have good healthy interchanges with one another just as my father and grandfather once did, just as my brothers still do. True freedom is not so much about what we may or may not do as it is a guarantee that each person be entitled to personal beliefs without fear. A healthy democracy allows for discussions and compromises. It operates in an environment in which everyone feels safe to express themselves. 

I can’t put my finger on the exact moment when our political climate changed so dramatically but I know that it is one wrought with a very real fear that saying the wrong thing will result in damaging family relationships and friendships and reputations. Publicly asserting one’s opinions can often feel as dangerous as walking across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope. One misstep, one choice of the wrong words can be so misunderstood that it provides the impetus for the death of a friendship or family relationship. It did not used to be that way. 

I grew up in the Cold War days. We Boomers were the kids who heard about the Iron Curtain that was tightly drawn around Russia and much of Central and Eastern Europe. We learned about the oppression of thoughts in countries controlled by dictators. We tried to imagine what it would be like to be subjected to propaganda only to learn that efforts to influence people’s thinking have been a reality in virtually every society throughout history.

The difference in modern times has been the ability to instantly spread ideas through mass media using all of the tricks in the propaganda book. Because of this, we should all be alert and willing to actively discuss what we are seeing and hearing to determine the validity or dishonesty of appeals for our support. It is only when we take the time to differentiate between truth and lies that we can accurately assess any situation. That’s why good old fashioned friendly debates among friends are actually quite healthy and necessary as long as there is an understood agreement that the relationships will remain intact even as the people disagree. 

I actually believe that it is possible to think very differently about many things and still manage to get along. I have done so with a number of friends and family members. In the end I always circle back to the one truth that we are all attempting to navigate through the world in the ways that make the most sense to us. I love my country of the United States of America because it has allowed me to be me. I am as patriotic as the person who shows their colors everyday even though mine is a more circumspect and quiet way of honoring my nation. I do not feel a need to force others to think or be or act like me, but I ask that they at least allow me to make my own choices without insulting or restricting me. 

I am deeply religious, but do not proselytize or think that my faith is necessarily better than that of others. I like the idea of keeping my church away from state issues. How I view God is very private and important for me but I am perfectly willing to learn about other people’s spirituality. It does not damage my faith when I hear from them. In fact, it may even enhance my relationship with my God. 

I suspect that we have all grown weary of the rifts that grow wider each day. I love the die hard classmate from my youth in spite of his ideas that confound me. I would like to think that my affection for him will be reciprocated without efforts to change me. I fear that if we keep removing ourselves from people with ideas that we do not share our circle of friends and family will become an echo chamber that leaves us ignorant and boring. I don’t want to be a member of a cult. I like feeling safe to ask, “Why?”  I am longing for honest discourse among friends.  

I think of the courageous women that I have known over and over again. I think of a neighbor who bravely rescued children from their father who had just murdered their mother. That same woman raised her family alone after her husband died unexpectedly. She talked her way out of a carjacking incident that left her with a broken arm but still alive. She was and always will be a hero to me. I loved her courage to say and be whatever she thought was right. 

I do my best to honor the women who have been steadfast in standing up for themselves and others. I think of a former student who confronted her peers when they were hiding the misdeeds of a student who had stolen a test and distributed it thinking that he would be protected by a wall of silence. The brave young woman who begged her classmates to be honest was diminutive, quiet and usually shy, but on one glorious day she proved to be stronger than anyone in her class. 

I remember a brash woman from upstate New York who had startled me with her colorful language and her bravado. When the need arouse she was the one who rescued little ones from a father who was mercilessly beating his wife. I witnessed her charging up the stairs to their apartment like a woman possessed. She was a Joan of Arc in her ferociousness and lack of concern for her own safety. 

I think of an older woman who defied the silliness of a boss consumed with himself. She calmly did so in front of the entire organization, voicing opinions and complaints that we all had been stealthily whispering while on breaks. With truth on her side she was unafraid to tell him how we were all feeling and her confidence won the day. 

Women have come a very long way from the times when my grandmother was pulled out of school before she even learned how to read and write so that she might help her mother care for her younger siblings. Back then women had few ways of controlling the number of pregnancies they might have and so my great grandmother had a very large family that she could not handle alone. So it was that my grandmother fulfilled one of the most common roles of women in that time, helping to keep the household running smoothly rather than learning in school. 

In spite of her illiteracy my grandmother developed a folksy knowledge of animals and agriculture that was quite amazing. She kept her family afloat during the hardest of times with her willingness to cook and sew and cultivate crops to keep food on the table and generate extra funds for my father’s education. She was yet another hero of mine.

I think of a young woman who has traveled to an island in Alaska, into a kind of wild place in order to provide better medical care to those living in a medical desert. She is a trailblazer who does what she tells others they should think of doing. I admire her with every fiber of my being and follow her new adventure with great interest. 

I could go on and on and on about remarkable women who overcame the limitations that were placed upon them by a society that seemed to think that they knew what women really need. I was thrilled when the subjugation of women began to change dramatically. I was the recipient of a world in which I got to decide how to live my life. I was able to choose how many children to have. I earned two college degrees. I worked at a job that I loved. It was glorious to be able to be free to be me and I did my best to help my own daughters to understand that they need not be inhibited in following whatever dreams they desired for themselves. 

Now I have a granddaughter who seems to be a culmination of all of the courage of so many women before her. She is brave and strong and willing to assert herself to build a better future for others. She is unafraid to talk with strangers and move across the country to learn about other places and opportunities. She knows what she wants and what she believes and is willing to try to understand and steadfastly fight for those who have few allies. 

There are at this moment attempts to co opt the freedoms that woman have received over time. No longer does a woman have to wish that she could earn a college degree without making her spouse feel badly for not having one. We are past the days when women cried because they were exhausted and ill from having children year after year. Our world has seen the magnificent contributions that women bring to the table. Like me, we have all seen the courage of women fighting for a person or a cause. We can’t go back! 

You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right!—-Rosa Parks

My granddaughter asked me and my husband what we did during the Civil Rights Movement of the nineteen sixties. I had to admit to mostly being involved from the sidelines. I was still in high school when most of the important protests and events took place. It was not until I was a student at the University of Houston that I participated in some rather small on campus marches. I knew with all of my heart and mind and soul that the quest for equality for all represented by that movement was right and just. It is not been quite as clear nor as easy to choose sides regarding other issues that have arisen during my lifetime.  

I spent a great deal of time protesting the war in Vietnam whose goal was not particularly clear to me. To this day I regret how the message that the anti-war movement delivered became so muddy and unclear. Along the way it divided a whole generation in our country in ways that have never been totally mended. I know that for myself it was not about making villains of the young men who fought in that conflict, but rather about how questionable our nation’s involvement was. To this very day there is a spectrum of thinking that often tends to place those present in the debate along a continuum of cowards to brave patriots depending on who is remembering what those disagreements were about. it was much harder to know that I chose the absolutely right side during the Vietnam War era, therefore I have always been a bit fearful that I may have been hindering more than helping the cause even as I believed that continuing that war and losing more young men was fruitless.

I console myself in knowing that my intentions were always on the side of peace and fairness but I see from the distance of aging that all of the situations and questions were far more nuanced than I had considered. Perhaps the same can be said of those who were gung-ho supporters of the war. Maybe they never really understood why people like me were working to end the violence and bring our soldiers back home. I suspect that they instead believed that most of the protestors despised them for bravely carrying out their duty to our nation and thus they may still harbor bad feelings for those of us who marched with signs condemning the whole thing. 

So many issues in life are like balls of thread that have become knotted and tangled. Undoing the mess is difficult and time consuming and in the end one wonders if it was even worth the effort. I accept that the vast majority of humans do indeed want to be on the right side of goodness and to do what is truly right. The fear that we have in doing such things comes when we worry that we may somehow be choosing wrong. 

Just as it was rather easy for me to know that supporting the Civil Rights movement was a moral imperative, so it was for those who fought in Europe and the Pacific during World War II. Things become messy, however when we consider the atom bombs dropped on civilian populations in Japan. Even Oppenheimer, one of the creators of that horrific weapon of mass destruction, came to worry that he had opened up an evil can of worms in building it. To this day there are convincing reasons for condemning that horrific bombing even as it is supported by assertions that many more may have died if we had not ended the fighting so dramatically. 

The war that is raging in the Middle East between Israel and Gaza is one of those situations that is so complex that it is quite difficult to determine how to react. On the one hand Israel was attacked by members of Hamas in October when citizens were killed and taken hostage. On the other hand, the devastation inflicted on the Palestinian citizens of Gaza since then has been ferocious and deadly in a way that seems to be a gross overreaction to the initial incident. Furthermore the fighting does not appear to be leading to the stated issue of freeing the hostages, while imposing many of the deadliest consequences on innocent Palestinians whose homes, schools and hospitals have been destroyed. A debate reminiscent of the one during the Vietnam War is raging across the world. 

I know young people who are earnestly questioning the decimation and death of Palestinians and wondering if the ultimate goal of Israel is no longer simply to keep them in line, but rather to rid them from the area forever. Skirmishes between Israel and Palestine have been common since land was first carved out in the for the Israelis in 1948 by Britain, France and the United States. A seeming act of kindness intended to give them a land of their own did not take into account how the people already living there might view about the situation. As Israel claimed more and more territory over the ensuing years the tension has built and built with Israel demonstrating its might in quelling any uprisings. This time things feel very different to all sides. It seems as though a true fair and equitable peace must be brokered with everyone’s needs in mind if life is ever again to be safe and secure for either group of people. This peace cannot come unless both sides enjoy freedom rather than dominance of one side over the other. 

It is difficult to choose when both groups of ordinary citizens are suffering and it feels as though the real disagreement is between politicians thinking they can simply wave magic wands to make things happen their way. The people become mere pawns in struggles for power. Nobody wins and so choosing one side over another becomes murky and difficult, especially for those of us who are not directly impacted by it all. We are judging from afar rather than living the nightmare. 

On the surface it seems as though terrible mistakes have been made for the last seventy years leading to fear and hatred between the two groups of people that will make it ever more difficult to solve the multiple issues. It will take decades to rebuild the infrastructure in Gaza and more time for any of the people to trust each other. A deadly Pandora’s box has been opened and somebody has to be willing to put the genie back in the bottle, but who will that be? 

I am fearful about the situation because I think that right now determining what is right is like untying a gordian knot. Nonetheless, both sides need to try and the rest of us must stop sending weapons that keep the fighting going for who knows how long. Then we must find a Solomon capable of repairing the damage of decades and finding ways to insure that both sides begin to live in a state of freedom, respect and peace as good neighbors rather than sworn enemies. That’s a tall order and in the meantime we all might want to consider making our discussions about the issues calm and focused on determining what might work rather than creating our own little battles of differing opinions. Emotions are not going to end this, nor will more fighting or name calling or destroying property or putting people in jail . This is going to take some very hard work. I want to believe that we humans are up to the task even as the evidence worries me.

What is patriotism? Is it flying the flag or singing the National Anthem? Is it serving in the military or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance? What a really constitutes a person who loves this country called the United States. What makes a truly great American?

I have never believed that outward appearances constitute love or devotion for a country. It’s easy to drape oneself in red, white and blue and spout phrases thought to be indicative of a grand fealty to our nation. What is often more difficult is loving this country so much that one has to be almost like a loving parent correcting troubling behaviors in a child. A truly good citizen of the United States is willing to point to its flaws and suggest ways of correcting them. A true patriot faces the struggles and mistakes of the nation’s history and makes changes designed to move the country into the future, not to repeat or honor the sins of the past. Patriotism is not showy but we know it when we see it. 

No worldly creation has ever been perfect and the United States of America certainly has not been so, but it has often found moments when it served as a beacon of hope in a tumultuous world. The ideals set forth by the Founding Fathers are noble but we all know how difficult they can sometimes be to foster. Even at the beginning our country lacked the courage to abolish the evils of slavery, instead using human’s as possessions and labor to generate economic success. It took a war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands to finally ring the death knell for the horrific practice. Today those who insist on reminding us of our original sin are right to never forget what we once did lest we lapse into forgetfulness and treat our fellow humans without regard. Patriots like Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and modern day heroes like Colin Kaepernick remind us that our ideals must extend to all Americans, not just those who conform to rituals. Those who help us to see our flaws more clearly are the true great Americans among us. 

Young Americans today have many ideas about how the United States should be. They are willing to make sacrifices for the well being of others. They want us to look at situations from the viewpoint of their impact on others, not just how things have always been. They look forward rather than looking back. They seek honest answers about how we treat one another and how we have failed in that regard in the past. They have real concerns about the ways that some things have always been and are filled with suggestions as to how to evolve together into the future. 

I don’t like using categorical terms to describe myself but in terms of age I am an older women, a person whose shelf life on this plant is becoming more and more limited with each passing year. Still I want to do my part to demonstrate my gratitude for living in this country for three score and fifteen years. I have seen the ugly side of our country and the glories of its goodness. I believe that if we indeed love this nation we should be determined to make any sacrifices needed to welcome and include all citizens into the absence of want and security. Everyone should have a place to call home, food to ease the pangs of hunger and medical care to fight the aches and pains that we all encounter. It is not up to us to create laws that punish those who are different or impede those who want to rise as I have done. 

Public education should be honest and focused on critical thinking, not religious beliefs. We must honor the rights of each person to believe in his or her own higher power, or even not to believe at all. It should not be up to us to decide how people should choose to think or live as long as they operate in compliance with just laws that do not fall more heavily on some groups. We should encourage many points of view, not discourage them and then be willing to work together for the benefit of all, not for a single party or person. 

When our young people use protest to point out what they see as our faults we should listen to them and applaud them for having the courage to bring our attention to areas where they believe we must improve. True patriots do difficult things for what they believe is the good of the country. Walking in step with how things have always been done is much easier than loving our land so much that one feels compelled to point out the changes that they believe must be made. 

Our political contests have grown out of hand. They are traveling circuses funded by wealthy groups hoping to get their share of the economic pie. They are sometimes raucous and filled with rhetoric and propaganda designed to make us fearful. Not all the red white and blue nor the number of flags are meaningful unless they are designed to lift all of us, not just those who walk in lockstep. The real patriots are quietly telling us the difficult things that we need to hear. They don’t need to raise their voices or play songs to demonstrate their earnest desire to honor our country by including everyone in the process of living together and sharing the opportunities of this land. 

Does birth order actually mold an individual’s personality or is all the hype simply a grand way of stereotyping? Does the sex of children have more to do with personality than where they are in the pecking order? What about only children? Is it nature or nurture or both that ultimately makes us who we are?

I was a first born child. My mother ecstatically and carefully recorded every milestone of my infancy in a baby book filled with photographs and intricate details of my life. She saved birthday cards from my first three years and made baby blankets by hand to swaddle me. She was quite obviously determined to be a fabulous mom and the evidence that she was totally enthralled with her role is found in that carefully crafted book and the detailed stories that she told over and over. 

When my brother was born three years later the focus of her attention widened. She did not neglect me but she had to set me on a more independent course because my brother was often quite sick, She spent hours nursing him back to health. She had far less time to dote on me even though she did her best to continue sending me signs that she loved me very much. I suppose that I actually enjoyed the freedom that came with having a new brother and even though no words were spoken I sensed that my parents expected me to be more responsible than I had previously been. 

When I was five years old my youngest brother was born. With that event my mother’s time and duties were stretched. She purchased a baby book for him but simply tossed photos the pages to be arranged and narrated at a later date that never seemed to come. She certainly loved each of us to the fullest, but I sensed that I had been the recipient of the most focused amount of her adoration simply by being born first. I suppose that experience left a mark on me of some kind but she ferociously doted on each of us in her own way.

I can’t say that I was a particularly sharing and caring sibling until after my father died. In fact I lived in a kind of bubble of egoism in which my brothers existed but received little of my notice. As the only girl I receive a different kind of attention from my parents that I greatly enjoyed. As fate would have it my father just happened to speak of my lackadaisical tendencies shortly before his death. He urged me to be better, so when he was gone I took it upon my self to be a kind of adjunct parent to my brothers and a helpmate to my mother. 

I don’t think that birth order had as much to do with my becoming hyper-dutiful as much as the new circumstances of my life. An inner voice seemed to command me to rise to the occasions when my mother and brothers needed my help. Somehow being responsible became second nature to me. My brothers eventually carried their fair share of keeping our family intact as they grew old enough to be of assistance. Nonetheless we each developed our own personalities that might be described as fitting the stereotypes of birth order theories.

I have been the serious and often anxious planner. My middle brother is easy going and adaptive. The youngest brother is gregarious, jovial and always ready to take risks. I see a bit of both my father and my mother in each of us. I suspect that nature has much to do with how we each became but nurture and our shared experiences no doubt mattered more. 

I never felt the resentment of the so called eldest daughter syndrome. I have often longed for a sister but my brothers are wonderful and loving even as their maleness sometimes does not truly understand my feelings. Mine are uniquely female experiences that only another woman truly comprehends. Nonetheless my brothers have partnered with me over the years in sharing all of the family joys and disappointments and tragedies. I would never have been able to care for our mother all alone during her bouts with mental illness. We were a team that worked as a unit and for that I will always be grateful. 

I would posit that my experience disproves the idea that birth order somehow defines us for life. Perhaps having a single parent eliminated all of the familial stereotypes or maybe both of my parents were ahead of the times in seeing me and my brothers as equals. Whatever shaped us turned out to be quite wonderful. 

I treasure my brothers and our partnership. I revel in our differences and the characteristics that we each bring to the table. There is joy in our solidarity and also in our perfect mix of personalities. We admire and love each other just as we are, birth order or not.