If I had to think of a time in my life when I felt very comfortable it would have to be the nineteen nineties. By then my children had both graduated from college, married and were doing well. I had many incredible friendships with individuals and couples who enriched my life with their very presence. I had earned a Master’s degree by then and was very comfortable in my career. I liked the movies and the music and the wonderful vacations that we took. My mother was retired and enjoying life and doing better with her mental illness than ever before. It felt as though all of the hard work that my husband and I had done had fallen into place. We totally lived with the mantra that life is good. 

I went into the new century filled with so many hopes and dreams little knowing the toll that ensuing events would take on our family. I suppose we all have the bad habit of thinking that our lives will continue to rock along without any difficulties when times are good. I had lived through so many chaotic moments and I somehow felt entitled to a quiet time when roses seemed to be blooming all around me. Then came 9/11 and its horror. I can still call up the intense emotions and fear that I felt on that day. I worried that life as I presently knew it was going to drastically change, but somehow as Americans we found the fortitude to work together in honor of those who had lost their lives. Our democracy held and it felt as though we had defeated a grave danger. 

I worried about the wars that came from that moment in Afghanistan and Iraq. I felt uncertain about how all of that would eventually play out. A kind of national anxiety that I had not felt since the nineteen sixties began to create worries for me as well. Nonetheless, I had a strong family and so many wonderful friends with whom to walk through those difficult times and so life went on without world events affecting me too much.

About the time of the fall of Iraq the world began to shift under my feet. My mother-in-law had a stroke and died after days in a coma. My father-in-law became tied up in knots and was soon in the hospital having emergency surgery from which it seemed that he would be unable to survive. Somehow he made it, but my mother began to have some of the worst symptoms of her bipolar disorder that she had ever experienced. I was back in the saddle of caring for people in crisis once again but still enjoying that births of my grandchildren. They became my saviors with their innocence and joy. Being with them kept me from becoming too wrapped up in my troubles. 

It seemed as though one horrific event after another came to rock the world. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans and my school took in more students from there than any other in the United States. Our classrooms were crowded and not all of the parents liked that we had taken in the suffering students. For me it was a sign that prejudices were growing again in my country. I had already seen much of that for Muslims, but now it was people from a neighboring state who were viewed with fear.

At the same time my dear friend, Pat, was diagnosed with cancer and would spend the better part of a year being treated at M.D. Anderson Hospital. My center was holding even as things began to fall apart. I was and still am a control freak and I was unable to repair all of the damage that I witnessed around me. 

Pat recovered and my mother found a wonderful doctor who seemed to help her in miraculous ways, but my friends Egon and Marita were not doing well. If it was not one thing it was another. Nothing seemed certain and there was a kind of chill in America that I had only seen during the Vietnam War. 

Life swirled around me. Egon died and his wife ended up in the hospital with her destiny uncertain. My grandchildren were still at the center of my world and my happiness as I embarked on a new job at KIPP Houston High School. There I would encounter “my people” in both my fellow employees and my students. I had never before felt so strongly that I was in the right place at the right time. It was good that work had become an anchor because my friend, Pat, would die and I would never quite get over losing her.

Work and my grandchildren became the steadying forces in my life. I enjoyed the years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Somehow I began to feel that everything was going to turn out all right even as I had to become accustomed to losing more and more important people who had kept me steady. First came Marita, then our friend Bill and, tragically, my mother. Then I retired and felt ready for a quiet life that seemed rather certain, Sometimes though the world has a strange sense of humor and the craziness only got worse. 

Our nation has endured so many tests and somehow we have always emerged from them but the present time seems more dire than ever. We managed to come out of the worldwide pandemic mostly intact but too many had died and our confidence was in tatters. Somehow we had become a divided nation. Our national tone has become uglier than anything I have ever seen in all of my almost seventy seven years on this planet. I don’t think I have ever worried this much about my beautiful United States of America. I can’t even seem to explain to those who think differently from me how horrific our current situation is. I long for the people that I have lost. I want allies who will talk to me and reassure me. I know that they are around but we have grown so wary of each other that many of them are afraid to express how they feel. Even families are being torn apart. 

My children and grandchildren remain at the center of my tiny universe along with God. I hope that we will be able to endure the current crisis and come out better than before. I still have great faith in my nation but I worry that I won’t see its reconstruction before my time to leave has come. I want the best of what we have the potential to be for every person who lives in America. I wants us to understand that together we truly become the shining city on the hill. Apart we will gain less than half of the glory that we might find together. I am keeping the faith that the goodness in us will triumph before it becomes too late. I’ll be at the No Kings protest tomorrow in the hopes that my feeble efforts to save my beloved United States of America will be echoed a million times over across the globe. I see that this is no time to hide away and rest. I will limp on my gimpy knees to demonstrate my love for country and for all people for however long it takes to set things right once again.