Author: Sharron Burnett

I miss the days when I was young and thought nothing of climbing a tall tree and reclining in the fork of two branches. I remember one tree that was strong and sturdy enough to hold me while I read a book. The sensation of happiness and oneness with nature was so exhilarating that I can literally feel the rustling of the leaves and the smoothness of the branches. All I have to do is close my eyes and that glorious memory comes flooding back into my mind with a clarity that makes me feel nine or ten years old once again. 

I recall scurrying up the trunk of a tree and finding a low hanging branch that I might reach. Then I would pull my body up into the shade and work my way as high as I was able to get. I had so much strength then and absolutely no fear fo falling. I never thought that one day I would have bones that break easily or that I would need a ladder to get into a tree, if I even dared to risk such a challenge. Back then climbing a tree was as natural as running or jumping rope. 

I always thought that it would be wonderful to have a real tree house. Of course none of the trees that I found were large enough to hold a structure like that much less the people inside. Nonetheless, I suppose I was fascinated with the idea of having a clubhouse of my own that gave me a bird’s eye view of the world. Forget dollhouses. I wanted a house in the sky like the ones in books and movies. 

The closest I ever came to fulfilling my dream was when someone built a rope swing platform in a big tree that grew along the bayou. There was a ladder made from boards nailed to the trunk because the tree was so massive that nobody would have otherwise been able to scale it. There was a big board attached to a confluence of huge limbs. It was so high up that a fall would have been lethal, but it never occurred to me back then that I might be harmed as I moved up the trunk holding on to the swing. Once I got to the top I positioned myself on the board fastened to a long rope that comprised the swing. Then I pushed off and sailed back and forth over the bayou. It was heavenly!

Unlike Peter Pan I grew up and over time got older and so much more cautious. My doctors tell me not to ski or skate or ride a bicycle lest I break a bone. I worry just climbing on a stool inside my home. I can’t imagine being daring enough to conquer a tree anymore, and even if I had the nerve I no longer have the strength. My arms and legs and knees would fail me. 

Sometimes I dream of being able to do such things again. The joy and contentment that I felt every single time I climbed a tree was just so remarkable. I suppose that much of that was mostly about feeling so free. I was at the top of my world and somehow life was so joyful. The innocence of childhood can be that way as long as nobody is being abusive or hateful. In that regard I know just how fortunate I was. 

I knew tragedy of course. My father had died and I often felt the sting of sorrow and loss, but otherwise I had the comfort of loving people around me. When I was in one of those trees I also felt confident and accomplished and worry free. It was just me in those branches viewing the blue sky above and feeling the wind caressing my face. I thought of myself as an adventurer and imagined that one day i would do great things, which I suppose that I did, at least by my estimation.

I’m not even sure that I am able to run anymore. My knees are so in need of partial replacement that I don’t dare even try to move too quickly. I sometimes imagine myself as a kid running like a gazelle and climbing into wonderful trees but those days are now behind me. What nobody can take away are my memories and those are so delicious. For now I’ll stick to walking under the canopy of trees in a forest and maybe build a dollhouse instead of a tree house. Sometimes keeping my feet firmly planted on the ground is not a bad idea at all. There is a wisdom to it that feels just right.

Like many I’ve been eagerly following Julian Fellow’s newest offering, The Guilded Age. I am fascinated by the values, manners, costumes and customs of the times. In some ways the era was somewhat like our own present times in that there was great industrialization and innovation that created unbelievable wealth that fueled conspicuous consumption among the lucky few. It is a fascinating moment in our history that coincides with the youth of my grandfather, William Mack Little. 

While Astors and Vanderbilts were enjoying the luxuries of their wealth most Americans were still living simply and sometimes even struggling to survive. My grandfather famously told of stories of his childhood and the times when he ventured out on his own to tackle the world. He remembered Coxey”s Army traveling through his town on its way to Washington D.C. to protest the poverty that haunted the lives of so many citizens. He recited stories of people he knew whose families were starving from lack of work. He described the almost primitive lifestyles that were still very much a way of life for most Americans. He spoke of living in a house with no glass windows and preserving food by smoking meats and canning vegetables. At the same time Grandpa was fascinated by the many innovations that came to fruition during that same Guilded Age.

I was watching one of the episodes of the television program when they featured a lighting ceremony by Thomas Edison. The magical feel of the moment almost brought me to tears as I recalled my grandfather describing his own first experience with seeing electric lights along a street. To him it was akin to traveling in space. It was almost magical and something over which he would continue to marvel for all of his life. When he spoke of it his face lit up with both joy and admiration. He knew from the first time that he saw the wonder of electric street lamps that the world around him was changing in ways that would ultimately benefit us all.

My grandfather was a great optimist. He saw the transition to the modern era as something to be celebrated. He was not envious of those who became wealthy from their ingenuity, but instead marveled at their contributions that changed the world of his childhood so dramatically. He was almost giddy as he ticked off the wonders of the inventions that had come to be during his lifetime. His favorite saying was that “these are the good old days.” He had no desire to backslide to an earlier time. She saw progress and change as something both inevitable and necessary. He embraced innovation with enthusiasm. 

Grandpa realistically understood that even with all of the great changes that had come to pass we were still far from being a perfect society, but he was a living testament to the incremental improvement of the world that he had experienced in his one hundred eight years on this earth. While he saw things that would have been unbelievable when he was a boy he did not live long enough to enjoy the explosion of technology that has continued the upward trend of innovation in the last many years. 

I feel certain that he would have delighted in having a computer on his lap that would allow him to draw on all of the knowledge included on the Internet. He would have been excited to have a phone that allowed him to contact people wherever he happened to be and do many other things as well. I smile at the thought of discussing the benefits and new jobs created by the creative minds of people around the world. I expect that all of it would have made him giddy. 

My grandfather never made a great deal of money. He spent his lifetime moving constantly to find construction work. Only twice did he settle down enough to purchase a home. My grandmother’s death from cancer before the advent of Medicare literally depleted all of his saving at a time when he was in his eighties. For the next thirty years he would live in a rented room with an income that took him from one monthly check to the next. 

One might suspect that he would be a bit bitter or envious of people who created vast pools of wealth, but the exact opposite was true. He instead counted his good fortune of living in a sturdy house with heat in the winter and cool air in the summer. He enjoyed driving his car instead of a horse and buggy. He appreciated his refrigerator more than anyone I have ever known. He never lost his joy of having a television or hearing broadcasts on the radio. He looked into the sky when a plane flew over with a sense of awe. He took nothing for granted because he had witnessed the before times. He would have laughed at a slogan wanting the Make America Great Again because he believed that the right pathway was always to look forward, not backward. 

During these difficult times I find comfort remembering my grandfather. He taught me to look for the good around us, because he believed that it was always there. He saw the future as a wonderful place to be because in the grand scheme of things we humans always find ways to make things better. He was the consummate optimist who had once lived in darkness illuminated only by the flickering flame of a candle. He had seen the light that first time he walked down a street lit by Thomas Edison and knew at that moment that we humans do more good things than bad. For him life was a wonder as it now is for me. What a great gift he gave me!

One of the duties of middle and high school teachers is to serve as chaperones at dances. It can be a somewhat onerous job because it involves a great deal of policing. It begins at the door when eagle eyed adults scan the kids for improper clothing or other infractions of the stated rules for attendance. It continues for those unlucky enough to be assigned to walk through the hallways of the school and the outside grounds for the duration of the dance. The purpose of this duty is to find stray students attempting to make out, smoke, or even ingest drugs or alcohol. While it is actually rare to find anyone daring enough to try such things on a school campus, when it does happen a delicate and time consuming investigation ensues. Finally, there is the job of walking around the dance floor to be certain that no inappropriate groping, or gyrating takes place. 

Most of students at such functions are wonderful and with a bit of luck the evening can be quite fun. Even when the dancing becomes a bit inappropriate a gentle reminder or a stink-eyed look from one of the teachers usually calms down those teen-age hormones. Once in a great while there is a bit of sassiness which I always combated by reminding the offenders that a good metric for knowing how to behave is to consider whether or not they would do the offensive behavior in front of their grandmothers. That mostly elicited good laughs and willingness to comply with the rules for the event. 

I often had great fun at those occasions. I liked joining in with the line dances that were usually led by one of the students. Once in a great while one of the boys would ask me to take a spin around the floor with him and even though I felt a bit uncomfortable it was always in good fun. Mostly I enjoyed seeing the students all dressed up in their finery and being so much more relaxed than they ever were in class. They were generally joyful occasions, but once in awhile they descended into emotion ridden disasters. 

I vividly recall a lovely young student arriving in the early moments of one of those dances. She looked absolutely beautiful. It was apparent that she had made a great deal of effort to look her very best. I knew that she was nervously waiting for a particular young man to arrive. They had been a bit of a pair around campus for several weeks and all of us who taught them thought they were precious together. Both of them were very bright, well behaved and sweet. I knew that the young man for whom the girl was waiting would be delighted when he saw how lovely she looked on that night. 

Not long afterward the boy did arrive shocking us all. He had brought a date, a student from another school who seemed somewhat incongruous with him. She appeared to be older and more worldly than he was. She had an unpolished toughness about the way she was dressed and the tone of her voice. He appeared totally smitten with her and did not even acknowledge the young lady who had been so excited about meeting up with him at the dance. As he walked right past her as though she was invisible, she almost collapsed into a convulsion of tears. Several teachers and her many friends surrounded her with comforting hugs and comments, but she was beside herself. Meanwhile the young man and his date became the focus of everyone’s interest.

I felt so incredibly sad about the situation, but I knew that such things were simply part of the angst of the teen years. I wanted to do something or say something, but I knew that I needed to leave it alone. My heart broke for the girl who had been so humiliated. She was and always would be so sweet and kind. Her situation felt so brutally wrong. Meanwhile the boy seemed to be a hit with his peers as his date performed her dance moves that had to be corrected by the chaperones more than once. It felt as though he was being purposely cruel which stunned me because he had seemed as naive and innocent as the girl he had stood up. 

Things eventually worked out for everyone. The girl got over her sadness and the boy reverted back to the gentlemanly and compassionate behavior that had once been his trademark. They both moved on, went to college and created lovely lives for themselves. I suppose that the ugly event may have affected me more than it did either of them. I’d like to think that it was all just the result of immaturity and inexperience. I suppose we all had moments in our past that were as painful as pulling a scab from a wound. I doubt that many of us would ever want to go back to the awkward time of our adolescent and teen years when we made horrendous blunders in the way we treated others, especially those of the opposite sex. 

Chaperoning those dances and watching the young people so awkwardly attempting to slide into adult roles gave me a whole new perspective about growing up. I saw that even the very best and seemingly most mature of those kids created horrible debacles in their relationships. As I witnessed those things I found myself silently forgiving myself and anyone else who had really mucked things up when we were young. I understood how difficult the transition into becoming an adult really is for each of us.

Hopefully we learn from all of those horrible lessons that make us cry or appear to be heartless fools. We gain perspective about ourselves and those around us. We find the true meaning of love and respect. Too bad that wisdom often only comes after we have been hurt. Even worse is when we just keep repeating the same mistakes. I’m glad my two students found their way to making wise choices. It’s good to know that they got past the hard knocks and are now okay.

In most circumstances I am a planner. I have rarely completed tasks at the last minute. For all of my life I have carefully crafted schedules and calendars designed to ensure that all of my duties and assignments are completed with great order and design. I do so because life has taught me to prepare for the unexpected, to be ready for roadblocks and interruptions that blowup my best intentions. If I am ahead of the game, such incidents do not deter me from meeting my obligations on time. I am always ready with plans A, B and C. 

In reality life is not so kind as to defer to my intentions. My best laid plans have often gone awry. The unexpected throws a bomb into my best efforts to be reliable. Someone gets sick. Someone dies. The weather grows angry and dangerous. My car won’t start. A hot water heater floods my home. A pandemic changes everything. The blues settle over me like an unremitting dark cloud. Any number of things change me from a long term planner to a minute by minute reactor who walks through the muck of living minute to minute, day to day. 

Each of us has experienced life changing events that give us pause, upend all of our careful plans. In those moments it’s difficult to decide what to do in the next hour much less days and weeks ahead. If we are honest we want little more than to curl up into a fetal position and just shut out the world and all responsibilities for a time. Keeping ourselves moving forward becomes a step by step process, a minute by minute exercise in distracting our minds from the sorrows of traumas that inevitably enter every human’s life. 

I’ve blessedly never been so overwhelmed by sorrow that it totally immobilized me, but there have indeed been times when thoughts of stopping the world so that I might get off were certainly appealing. I’ve spent a day locked away from all of my responsibilities contemplating my sorrows. I’ve thought of chucking it all, running away. Somehow I always regain my momentum and soldier on as my mother often said we must do. I find a tiny reserve of motivation and energy and push myself inch by inch past whatever grief has come my way. I have learned that sometimes it is actually a good thing to take one day at a time until the fog of tragedy lifts and allows me to be my forward looking self. 

We humans dislike the mix of feelings that come from any kind of loss. We have a tendency to most admire those who seem able to carry on with great courage never seeming to miss a beat. In truth it is really okay to give ourselves time to adapt to life changing events that take us by surprise. The feelings that overwhelm us are quite natural and simply ignoring them is hazardous to our health and well-being. The sapping of our energy and lack of focus is a physical reminder that sometimes we cannot, and probably should not, push ourselves to dismiss the panoply of emotions that we are experiencing. At the same time we have certain responsibilities to ourselves and perhaps others that cannot be abandoned. Learning how to find a balance while we are healing often becomes a day to day challenge that is more than enough to do. 

Ours is a very competitive society that begins even when we are very young. We leave the safety of childhood to attend school where we become one of many. We have to keep up with a sequence of learning and assignments in spite of any traumas that may be taking place in our lives. There is often little patience for anyone who can’t keep pace with the scope of one size fits all planning. We learn as little ones how to simply march along day by day even when things are amiss in our private worlds. If we are lucky we encounter insightful and compassionate adults who give us room to deviate from the pressures of learning on a preconceived schedule. 

Eventually we become adults and the expectations imposed on us become even greater. We juggle multiple responsibilities that require careful planning, attention to long range goals. One monkey wrench suddenly upending our schedules can cause incredible damage to our futures if we totally shut down. People give us a brief respite to recover and then expect us to return to our normal routines as quickly as possible even though we know that we are no longer the same as we once were. The world moves forward with or without us, so we have to find ways to cope. That often means putting one foot in front of the other over and over again until we have made it through one more day. 

It’s up to each of us to be aware of those impacted by trauma and to understand compassionately how difficult it may be for them to perform the most mundane tasks until their minds have had enough time to begin to heal. We can help them by being present for them, lightening their loads, suspending judgements of their reactions., allowing them time to grieve. 

When my mother lost her husband and subsequently became afflicted with mental illness there were angels in her midst who did everything possible to help her through the toughest of times. Her neighbors lovingly sat with her listening to her sadness and even her paranoia. They alerted me and my brothers when she was slipping again. Her boss and coworkers allowed her to take time off from work as long as she needed so that she might recover from her cycles of depression or mania. Her sisters lovingly called her each day and encouraged her to slowly get back into her normal routines. They were all loving souls who did not abandon her like so many others had. They stood with her from one day to the next, never forgetting how wonderful she was. We would all do well to be like them for surely there are suffering souls among us who need our patience and our love as they slowly recover one day at a time.

When I was a child I felt loved and secure. I don’t remember ever worrying about anything until the third grade when my world was upended. It began with an unexpected move to California that rocked my quiet and content little world. I did not want to leave my friends or my extended family in search of adventure. I was quite unhappy with the prospect of going to an unknown place to start over again in building relationships. Sadly the next many months of my life would be filled with tumult and, ultimately, one of the greatest traumas of my life. 

In the third grade we moved four times and I attended five different schools. That alone had been enough to shatter my sense of complacency, but when my father died at the end of the rambling school year I was crushed in a way that I was never able to voice until long after I had become an adult. My mental well-being was rocked to its very core, but people did not think to provide therapy for children back then. I suppose they believed that kids were mostly ignorant of the pain of loss and that I was resilient enough to adapt quickly to my new circumstances. Instead I spent the next decade dealing with my grief and attempting to rebuild the confidence and sense of security that had been destroyed upon my father’s death. 

It might be said that I became tough, a stoic who simply accepted that life was difficult. I learned to submerge my emotions by mostly ignoring them. I found that I had power over dark feelings by throwing myself into work. It was a deceptive technique that kept me going even when my mother became severely mentally ill and the responsibility for her care fell to me when I was twenty years old. By that time I had accepted that mine would be an unusual life interrupted intermittently by tragedies that I did not want, but knew how to overcome. I was saved from total desolation by having the good fortune of being in a life long relationship with a very good man who has relentlessly stood by my side in the most difficult hours. 

My students taught me that I was not alone in my suffering and that there were many individuals who had to endure even worse challenges, often without the love that I always found even in my darkest hours. My heart grew from working with them. My compassion expanded and allowed me to once again accept my feelings, even those that hurt. In many ways working with my students became the best therapy for my own traumas that I might ever have found. I saw their problems and understood their sorrows in ways that ran deep into my heart. I became known as “Mama B’ to my kids, the person who would truly understand their trials and their sorrows. In turn, helping them led me to being honest with myself about my own emotions.

I speak openly of my journey these days, not for the sake of finding sympathy, but because I want to encourage others to speak of the demons that have haunted them. Talking about uncomfortable feelings and owning them is a first step to overcoming them. I suppose I understood this best from an incident that occurred during one of the multiple times that my mother was in the throes of her bipolar disorder. Her illness coincided with an annual wellness appointment that I had with my doctor. During the visit he remarked that I was so healthy that he had little to say to me, but suggested that I might want to discuss something that was bothering me. Uncharacteristically I told him every detail of my life and the pain that I was feeling. I cried as I unpacked decades of sorrow and he listened intently. 

At the end of my rant he spoke with total understanding about my situation. It was as though he had somehow found a window to my mind, my thinking. He even perfectly described what he thought my emotions might be. He congratulated me for my bravery and told me to never again bottle up my feelings the way I had been doing. It was as though he had lanced a poisonous sore on my heart. As the infection drained away, I felt as that a miracle had just occurred. 

I now know that tragedies come and go in our lives. Some are almost unbearable and others bring a short interlude of sadness. By being honest with myself and knowing whom I can trust with my thoughts I am now able to heal after each battle with the vagaries of life. I have many scars and some of them flare up from time to time. There are triggers that bring tears and even worry. Mostly though I have learned that the pain of loss, betrayal, illness eventually lessens even if it never goes completely away. I am still strong, and even stoic, but I no longer push my true feelings aside nor do I attempt to go it alone. 

We are in a time of protracted uncertainty and sorrow. Unlike my own forays with such moments, this one is affecting the entire world. As humans we are worried and exhausted. It should be okay to express our concerns without judgement. In turn we should be ready to listen with intent to really hear what the people around us are saying just like my doctor did for me. We all need understanding, and while a stiff upper lip can be admirable under certain circumstances, it can also be an iron mask trapping our pain in a toxic way. 

This is a moment of great importance when we must set our differences aside and minister to those who are in grave need of kindness and compassion. Our world is in turmoil not because of a single individual or one way of believing, but because we have forgotten how to truly care for one another, starting with healing ourselves.