Author: Sharron Burnett

I am trying to compose myself after viewing photos and videos from mass shootings that were released last week by the Washington Post. I am a visual person who has to see things with my own eyes to fully understand their impact. It was brutally difficult to keep my eyes on the actual horror of what happened to innocents in massacres inside classrooms, synagogues, movie theaters, and outdoor concerts. We can read the words that describe such horrors and never fully feel the impact of terror reeked upon those present in such terrible moments. It’s too easy to quickly move on and pretend that there is nothing we can do to stop the senseless murder that plagues our nation like no other place on earth. It is important that we get a visceral sense of what really happens when a shooter armed with a high powered weapon takes out his anger on people that he does not even know. If such an incident is only a concept rather than a reality it is easier to be content with doing nothing of significance to stop it from happening again. When we actually witness the horror with our own eyes our perspectives are nevermore the same.

I am a gentle soul. I try not to hurt anyone even with my words. Most of us are like that. We cannot fully imagine horrific scenes because it never occurs to us to be intent on reeking violence on anyone. Those of us who think of the injured and their families after a mass shooting sincerely grieve for a time and we even pray for peace and comfort. Nonetheless we are not insistent enough to bring about meaningful legislation and enforcement that will finally bring the changes that we so obviously need. We only feel more and more helpless as we watch the processes of violence and condolence being repeated again and again. Nothing ever changes. 

We will be gathering with friends and family this week to give thanks for our good fortune. The launch of another holiday season will begin. We won’t want to tarnish our happiness with negative thoughts, so little will be mentioned about the problem with gun violence that is all too prevalent in our nation. Few of us feel totally safe anymore and that is not because of any one person who is supposed to be in charge. It is because of our own reluctance to do the kinds of things that we know we must do. It is long past time to control the types of guns that are produced and sold in our country. Arguing that we somehow have a right to weapons that were never intended to be used by private citizens is a specious claim. Allowing them to stay in circulation because there are already too many of them in homes across America is not a good reason to continue to do nothing. We as a nation have to decide whether or not we want to continue living with the continued threat of mass shootings. 

It is time for a national therapy session in which we honestly consider what our obsession with guns has done. Most of us have been touched by mass shootings that were close to home. I live only miles away from a high school where a student took out his warped feelings on classmates and teachers. A former student of mine was forever changed when she attended a concert in Las Vegas where a shooter killed fifty eight people and wounded even more. She still has flashbacks of lying on the ground in a pool of blood while hearing the rat a tat tat tat of bullets. An horrific massacre took place in an elementary school in Uvalde, a place through which we have pulled our trailer on our way to a state park. Most recently my granddaughter was in lockdown for days after a gunman killed sixteen people in a bowling alley only nineteen miles from her college. It feels as though the inevitability of being a victim or knowing a victim is moving closer and closer while we keep turning our backs on the problem after a brief interlude of concern. 

I do not believe that the second amendment was meant to spawn arsenals in the homes of citizens. I cannot imagine that the men who wrote and ratified that addition to our Constitution ever imagined the kind of weapons and bullets that are so easy to purchase in today’s America. I suspect that they would be as horrified as I am that their words have been so distorted that even children are posed with weapons in their hands by parents who seem to think it is cute and patriotic to assert the right to arms with armed family photos. 

I find it vile and alarming to fetishize guns and conflate them with freedom. The message we are sending our children borders on abuse. They are crouching inside schools to practice for potential danger. They are talking with their teachers about what to do if a mass shooter comes to their school. We are spending valuable time and resources installing doors and gates and alarms because we don’t have the courage to actually stop the madness of flooding our homes and our streets with more and more guns. 

The greatest gift we might give ourselves and our children this holiday season is the acknowledgement that it is past time to come together to pass control measures that will work. Other countries have mentally ill people like we do, but they have also legislated mandatory buybacks of the most egregious guns. They stopped the madness while we kept turning our backs on what we know we must do. If we don’t speak out and push for change it will happen again and again. Our thoughts and prayers will sound hollow. Our silence will be lethal. If we love our children we will begin the process of change. 

I try to stay relevant even as I grow older. This month I celebrated my seventy-fifth birthday. Seventy five is one of those numbers that rattles me. It sounds ancient and yet that is not the way I feel. I don’t need diamonds to commemorate my age. I need to know that somehow my contributions to this world are still meaningful. I fight against becoming little more than a silly lady in a red hat who life is mostly a round of entertainment. As long as my body transports me and my mind continues to work I still crave being essential to the daily buzz of life. I am reluctant to let go of my grasp on a purpose driven life. 

I tire more easily than I once did. There was a time when I was able to work twelve hours in my garden without experiencing pains in my body or the urge to take a rest. Now I have had to learn to pace myself in whatever I do. I’m still teaching students very difficult mathematics, but I am only able to stay sharply on task for about four or five hours before feeling compelled to stop. When I work in my house I pause about every thirty minutes to recharge my batteries like my iRobot does when vacuuming my floor. If I thoroughly clean my entire home in a single day I end up with pains in my knees and my back. The signs of slowing down are apparent in my body, but I have a tendency to ignore them and soldier on with the projects that I insist on completing. 

Mostly I am intent on pushing myself to continue learning. I find the act of increasing my store of knowledge to be more exciting than any other task that I do. Thus I registered for a class at the Glasscock School of Continuing Education at Rice University this fall. I tend to prefer topics focusing on the social sciences or current events, so for this term I chose The Philosophy of Ethics. The professor will provide a brief overview of the thinking of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Nietzsche. Since I have never taken a formal course in philosophy before it will be quite interesting to learn about these pioneers in thinking who span the human experience from the ancient Greeks to the more modern era. I have little doubt that this course will also lead me to further reading that will keep my mind active for some time to come. 

I must admit that as I approached the seventy fifth milestone of my life I was missing incredible people who were influential in changing the direction of my thinking and ways of approaching the world. I am eternally grateful for the inspiration that I garnered from my father and grandfather. While my dad left this earth all too soon he impressed me with his books and his intellectual curiosity. He is mostly responsible for my love of reading, a personal joy that has provided me with safe harbor even in times of dire distress. My grandfather showed me that we don’t have to become old in spirit simply because we reach a certain age. He continued to thrive and be mentally and physically active until he was one hundred eight years old. 

Then there have been my teachers. Sister Camilla helped me to overcome my tendencies to reverse letters and numbers. In many ways she taught me how to learn. Father Shane is the giant in my erudition who introduced me to the magnificence of the written word in poetry, literature and communication. Father Bernard taught me to look beyond the confines of earth and to gaze into the heavens and the future. Dr. Jones showed me the ways to convey the knowledge that I possess to others. Dr. Durand helped me to become more analytical in my assessments of the practicalities of society. Dr. Boyd demonstrated the threads that stitch our histories together. I have been able to apply their lessons to virtually every aspect of my life in the past and in the present. 

There have been friends who widened my horizon as well. Evenings with Egon and Marita or Pat and Bill were akin to participating in the intellectual soirees of Paris when great minds gathered to discuss art, literature, politics, philosophy. I soaked in all that I heard from them and began to view my life from a wider perspective. They taught me about places and ideas and people that I had never before known. They challenged me to think beyond the narrow confines of the place where I lived. They encouraged me to ask question, to search for facts, to be unafraid to refute or speak my mind. It was safe to reveal my deepest feelings and beliefs when I was with them. It was glorious to feel so free.

Now I find myself finding joy in offering my own knowledge and thoughts to my grandchildren who seem willing to listen to me and fire back their own objections to what I have to say. I have become my grandfather and I genuinely hope that I will be as inspirational to them as he was to me. I get great joy in teaching mathematics as well. When I see a smile on the face of a youngster who suddenly understands how a concept works it is as pleasing and valuable to me as a bag of diamonds would be. 

So here’s to my next phase of life. I do not know where it will lead or who will exit or enter, but surely it will be as wonderful as the previous seventy five have been. My only hope is that it will allow me to continue learning and evolving the way my incredible mentors have helped me to be.  

I remember celebrating my sixteenth birthday and thinking that it was a watershed moment. Somehow the fact that I might legally drive felt like a turning point into the adult world even though I would not actually get a driver’s license until I was in my twenties. My widowed mother was not able to afford car insurance for me and I was not willing to work to fund driving, so I did not rush out to take a driving test like many of my peers. Nonetheless, sixteen simply felt different to me and that thought was reinforce when my mother gave me my first tube of lipstick along with a pencil skirt and a clingy sweater as a gift. Somehow it was her signal to me that I was no longer a little girl. 

Twenty one was another milestone that impacted me mostly because I was finally of legal age to vote. Back in the day we had to wait until we were of twenty one to legally drink and cast our votes. It would not be until nineteen seventy one that eighteen year olds were given the greatest privilege of being a citizen of the United State. The first time I went to the poll it felt like I had arrived as an adult even though long before then I had already become the unofficial caretaker for my mother. 

My fortieth birthday was supposed to be a big deal but it was almost a nonevent for me. Somehow nothing about that age felt any different than being twenty five. I was vibrant and healthy and still looked younger than I actually was, a trait that had followed me from the time I was a little girl. I had a teenage daughter who kept me young with her dancing and music and a preteen who kept my home filled with laughter. I actually felt as though I was just getting started on being an adult. I had a career that I loved, incredible friends, and an extended family that was as close as they come. My life was busy and almost flawlessly happy, so being forty barely phased me. 

When I celebrated my fiftieth birthday I thought I might finally feel that I was turning a corner on my youthfulness. I had a mostly empty nest and grandchildren began arriving, but somehow I simply turned into an energetic Gammy and just kept going at full steam. I earned a master’s degree and qualified for the Master of Mathematics certification that eventually went bust after few were able to pass the test and school districts seemed unable to realize what the designation meant. I just kept breezing forward balancing multiple roles with seeming ease. 

Even at sixty five I still felt like an unstoppable human dynamo. I imagined that few people actually thought of me as a senior citizen. I laughed at my AARP membership card and just kept going even as my life began to change dramatically with hints that maybe I was indeed entering a different phase of my life. Members of my family and beloved friends began to die. I found myself attending more funerals each year than parties. I developed arthritis in both of my knees and sciatica in my left hip. I was no longer able to spend ten nonstop hours working in my garden without paying the price of feeling as though someone had battered my body. Slowly I began to feel my seemingly bottomless pool of energy waning just a bit more with each passing year. Worst of all even strangers seemed able to tell from my countenance that I was no longer a spring chicken. the lines on my face and the tiny gray hairs on my head seemed to give me away. 

Now I have reached my seventy fifth year and for the very first time I almost feel my age. I still measure my days with accomplishments and they are many. I am the mathematics teacher/tutor for ten students who keep my mind sharp and my laughter flowing. I read and write for hours every single day. I can clean my entire house from top to bottom in a single session but such excess invariably leads me to the bottle of Advil that I keep close by. I seem to lose loved ones at a more exponential pace and have grown to dread messages and phone calls announcing the illnesses or demise of those close to me in age. I now play the role of matriarch of my family and find that by definition I despise it because it means that I have lost the wisdom and guidance of the older women who were so important to me. I spend most of my days in a continual loop of routines that are not nearly as exciting as days of the past. 

Somehow I am still a caretaker. Perhaps I was destined to play that role even before I was born. I’m still able to cook and clean and accommodate the needs of my older father-in-law, but unlike in the past I seem unable to do more than one thing at a time. I can walk but don’t ask me to chew gum while doing so. I appear to be my old energetic self but I fall into bed exhausted most nights. Seventy five has finally forced me to consider that I may not totally be what I used to be. 

Just when I think it might be a good idea to allow myself to slow down a voice tells me to keep on trucking. I may be bent and creaky but my heart is strong and my brain is still working quite well. Like many of my peers I don’t yet feel ready to just throw in the towel and sit back to enjoy a view of the world. I know that I still have something to offer and I am determined to keep thinking younger than I am. I know that I can still make a difference. I won’t yield to the idea of feeling as though I have nothing more to offer. I continue to learn and evolve with the times.

I am my grandfather’s granddaughter. When he was my age he was still working. When he was eighty he purchased a farm and labored from dawn to dusk growing crops and tending livestock. At eighty eight he was installing light fixtures at NASA. When he turned ninety he purchased a new suit thinking that he might need to have one for his burial. When he finally died at the age of one hundred eight that suit was eighteen years old and quite worn. 

I suppose that Grandpa’s blood traces energetically through my veins. My mind hears the number of my years and wonders if I am nearing final act of my story but then I shake my head and know that I’m not even close to feeling done. So as I celebrate my diamond jubilee I plan to just ignore the number of my days. They have never meant anything to me before and should not make a difference now. Somehow it feels as though I have only just begun.

Summer was truly hellish this year for both humans and nature. June was much hotter than usual portending the weeks long temperatures in the hundreds throughout July and August in Texas. Adding insult to injury was the lack of rain that left lawns and plants struggling to stay green and healthy. Even my hardiest specimens lost their usual luster and some simply gave up and died. Only the weeds seemed to be as hardy as ever as they propagated faster than I had the energy to pluck them from the ground. They choked my roses and flowers much like the hot air choked me whenever I attempted to spend more than a few minutes working outside. 

We were lucky to avoid fires like the horrific devastation in Maui. Most of us have air conditioning which kept up cool, but the threat of losing power was real as reminders to use as little as possible lest the grid collapse under the stress became a regular thing. There were few days when the children were outside playing as they had always done. I missed them but preferred that they not become overheated. It was mostly quiet as though our neighborhood had become a ghost town. The walkers were gone. The congregations of neighbors in their lawn chairs on the driveways did not appear. Everyone was hunkered down inside save for rare moments when the mercury dropped a tiny bit. 

On Labor Day there was great rejoicing when a short rain fell onto our lawns and streets. No big plans for barbecues and final summer flings had been interrupted by the precipitation. Nobody wanted to be outside anyway. Having wet grass on a day when we were prohibited from running our sprinklers was like seeing manna fall from heaven. 

I’ve been around for awhile and have never once seen a summer like the one just that just passed. It was debilitating and should have been a wake up call for all of us. Sadly I suspect that until it becomes the new normal far too many will scoff at the idea that we really do have to change our habits if we are to have a more positive relationship with the planet on which we live. We can ill afford to rely on a return to what we have known as normal. It would be a travesty to simply ignore what we witnessed this summer and pretend that we had nothing to do with why it was so. 

Ironically I began the summer reading about the Dust Bowl era in the southern plains of what had been the breadbasket of America. The farmers there had misused the land, plowing under most of the native grasses, ignoring the needs of the soil, creating a disaster just waiting for an extended drought, naively believing that the rains would come again to save them. 

It took great effort to reclaim the decimated land and some farmers actually learned their lessons, but many of the renewed farms came at the cost of using groundwater from an ancient aquifer that took thousands of years to create. Farmers no longer rely only on nature to irrigate their crops and since the end of World War II they have depleted over fifty percent of the water in the Oglallala Aquifer. Since there is not enough water to quickly regenerate itself there is grave concern that this groundwater source will ultimately be bone dry unless there are major efforts to conserve what remains. If the aquifer dries up there will be a huge swath of places in the center of our country without even a source of drinking water. 

Nature has been screaming at us for decades and we have seemed to ignore the signs. It is as though our hubris has overtaken our good sense. We don’t appear to be willing to sacrifice now for the greater good later. We tear down forests, clear land, disrupt habitats, build on every inch of ground we can find. Unlike our ancestors who stayed away from river bottoms and knew not to inhabit rice fields, we think we can tame nature to suit our whims. Like those poor souls who reaped the windy dust storms in places once known as “No Man’s Land” we scoff at suggestions that maybe there are places that we were not meant to be used. We even take a paradise like Maui and overbuild to the point of making a wildfire almost inevitable. 

I heard that people were able to swim in Lake Superior this summer without wet suits. That may not sound strange at all to anyone living along the Gulf Coast where summer time bathing in the sea is a tradition, but to those who have lived on the shores of that northern lake it is an eerie happening. Along with milder winters in the north, warmer lakes are seemingly an anomaly even as such things are happening more and more often. 

We have been warned again and again by scientists who study the earth. They are not mad or crazed people. They are simply reporting what they have seen. They track the trends in weather. They measure the rainfall and the temperatures. They record the declines of forests and creatures who once lived in them. They are simply observing the facts and determining that an unfortunate trend is occurring before our very eyes. We would do well to listen to what they have to say. If we don’t adopt new ways of interacting with nature, we may one day be forced to relinquish our stubbornness when the wonderful resources of our beautiful earth are depleted. 

We can no longer pretend that our individual actions do not matter. Each of us can do something every single day to change, to learn more about the ways that we can sacrifice now for a better future. The health of the Earth depends on us. An ounce of prevention now may forestall a dire event in the future. We have the power to do what we instinctively know we must do. The question is whether or not we have the will. 

I know that I sound like a nag when I keep bringing up this topic but it is important that we keep reminding ourselves of our duty to squarely face the challenges of climate change that are created by humans. Once every adult that I knew was a smoker. Within less than a decade most of them had heeded the constant warnings of the dangers of cigarettes. I know that with the right mindset we as people are capable of doing great things. Sadly we should not wait until we are forced to change when our neighborhoods burn to the ground or there is no water where we live. It would be wrong to think that we will die before the worst hard times come so that we have no reason to bother sacrificing for a future we will not see. We are at our best when we plan for the future rather than simply reacting to the present. It’s time that we all do some heavy lifting together with our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren in mind. It’s time we repair our mistakes out of love for one another and for our beautiful earth. 

Chaos is anathema to me. I much prefer to have order in my life. I make my bed each morning because I don’t like the feel of going to sleep under tousled sheets and blankets. I have a touch of attention deficit disorder that often causes me to freak out if the things that I use daily are not in their usual places. I don’t like the sight of dishes piling up in my sink or countertops littered with the objects of daily living. For some reason my brain does not work properly in situations where there is nor order and design. All of which does not seem to fit with the joy that I feel in ignoring the clock in performing my daily rituals.

Some mornings I linger in my pajamas for hours even though I have arisen earlier than the sun. I may choose to read and write and sip on my tea well past noon without even realizing that it has become that late. I don’t like following a fixed schedule for eating. In fact there are times when I even forget to feed myself. I love the serendipity of aimlessly taking off on a day trip to the beach or on an unplanned journey. I am often able to do such things because I keep the chores of living in good working order. At any given moment my laundry is clean and folded away. My kitchen is ready for preparing the next meal if and when I decide to do so. My bed awaits my return with smoothed out sheets and blankets. The dust can wait, but the biggest tasks have already been done. 

Of late my life has not been nearly as adventurous as it once was. My father-in-law is a man of strict adherence to routines that never seem to vary. He awakens and immediately dresses for the day complete with tucking his shirt neatly inside his trousers and donning his shoes before walking through the house. He eats breakfast at much the same time each morning then retires to his room where he stretches and lifts weights. He spends several hours gathering the news and taking care of business before pausing for lunch. An hour or so after he has eaten he walks on the treadmill and then finds interesting videos on the Internet to entertain him until five in the afternoon. That is when he exists his room and sits at the kitchen table expecting a glass of wine and perhaps a bit of cheese and crackers. He wants us to sit and talk with him before enjoying dinner that he always follows with dessert and a session of television watching. At nine or nine thirty he goes to bed ready to rest before repeating the process the next day.

My father-in-law tells us that he has had mostly the same habits throughout his lifetime. When he was working he arose from his sleep a bit earlier, but other than that his schedule was as tightly regimented as it is today. His habits are healthy and predictable and no doubt have contributed to his longevity. I suppose that I should admire him and perhaps even emulate him, but I have an itch inside my DNA that compels me to wing it now and again. I spent so many years as a teacher being tied to the ticking of a clock that I long to be free from even noticing what hour it happens to be. I like the feel of adventure that comes with just going and doing without being tied down to sameness. 

I suppose that the time will come when I will leave the confines of my home less and less. I will no doubt revert to a stricter schedule as my body and mind grow older. Nonetheless, I think of my mother when I feel outright rebellion against tracking my activities under the watch of a clock. She rarely did the same thing two days in a row. She was always ready to go in an instant if an invitation to explore came along. I remember the times when she would show up unannounced at my home wanting to leave responsibility behind in search of adventure. The two of us would spend the day randomly going wherever our imaginations led us. It was always so much fun!

I learned from mother how to carefully and methodically take care of my business and responsibilities so that if a case of wanderlust hit me, I would be able to fly away like the wind. I   suppose that the balance of being steadfast and open to change at one and the same time has been a good way of living for me. I am both a reliable worker and a vagabond. A person who keeps my life running smoothly and someone who is ready to be daring on an ordinary day. I am both obsessive compulsive and messy. I suppose that my personality and quirks are in line with the tests that indicate that I use both my left and right brain with almost equal emphasis. I am both rational and emotional depending on the situation. 

I don’t know if my balance in life is a good thing or one that is bad. What I do know is that it works for me as effectively as my father-in-law’s strict adherence to an unchanging routine does for him. I suspect that neither of us would be comfortable in being forced to change our ways. Each of us approach life in ways that we have adapted to our personal needs. 

When I was teaching I learned all too well that everyone faces the world with different coping skills and foibles. Some approach challenges with deadly seriousness. Others need to laugh and poke fun when times get tough. There is no single right way of living and we would all do well to understand that before judging or misjudging the people around us. What works for me may not work at all for someone else. Thankfully most of us are free to make the choices that work best for our needs. I often think of how much harmony there would be if we just followed the dictum to live and let live. Instead of trying to force people to adopt our preferred ways of surviving maybe would should be more tolerant of our differences. The truth is that there are indeed different strokes for different folks.