Author: Sharron Burnett

I have been lucky to have incredible neighbors wherever I have lived for all of my life. My childhood was tinged by the tragedy of my father’s death but the wonderful people among whom I grew into an adult were always ready to help me and my family. I felt safe and loved  and part of something bigger than just me, my two brothers and my mother. Save for the trauma of losing my father I enjoyed what some might describe as an idyllic childhood on Belmark Street in southeast Houston. 

Eventually I would leave home and begin a new life with my husband, Mike. We started our decades long journey in a couple of apartments where I once again encountered people who walked along with me as I grew into and more independent adult. They were my peers but also my teachers who were filled with practical skills that they shared with me for surviving in the world. 

When our children were still so young that they had not yet started school we moved to our first home near Hobby Airport. There we were the youngsters on the block, surrounded by men and women who might have been our wise older brothers and sisters. I knew that they were watching over us, making sure that we would be okay in our new role as home owners. They were wonderful people whose doors were always open to us whenever we needed advice or just a place to stop for a time and chat. 

We grew into middle age there as our neighbors began to show the wrinkles and greying hair of of time catching up with them. I sensed and feared that we would be left behind to take on the role of the elders while they moved on to homes with smaller yards and fewer responsibilities. I knew it was time to make a move of our own. Thus we relocated to our present house on a lovely cul-de-sac in Pearland. Oddly enough we found ourselves being the older people among young folk just starting families and growing their careers. 

We had lived in our former home for over thirty years surrounded by the same people, but the people near our new home seemed to come and go with regularity. In particular the house next door seemed to have a revolving door with different families coming and going. Then one day a lovely woman named Melissa came to stay there for a time with her husband and little girl. She was a friendly soul who first saw me outside with my granddaughter and immediately invited the two of us to a birthday party for her child. 

We felt like part of her family from the get go. From that moment forward she showered us with friendliness and generosity. She was young enough to be my daughter but we had a connection that surpassed age. I was enthralled with the loveliness of her personality and hoped that she would tarry for a longer time than others had spent in the house that seemed destined to be a way station rather than a settled home. 

Sadly Melissa too moved away far more quickly than I had hoped but she made sure that our friendship would survive by keeping our connection alive through social media and her thoughtfulness in difficult times. She delivered flowers and goodies and fine conversation after a surgery that I had. She kept me apprised of her busy life and the new joys of having a second daughter. I saw that she was loved and admired by everyone who met her and that she was energetic beyond what seemed to be humanly possible. 

Melissa was always doing something wonderful for anyone having a difficult time. Many months ago she built a “blessing box” near her home that she filled with staples of food that is always there for anyone who needs it. She keeps an eye on the contents making sure it is never empty. She encourages those who are able to do so to help with her project by bringing their own offerings. She asks nothing of the people who come to her little food pantry and cheerfully makes known that anyone is welcome to partake of its contents. 

After the hurricane that hit our area of the country there were people in dire need. Without power for days they lost the food that they had purchased for their families. Because many businesses were closed some were unable to work and earn the funds they needed to purchase replacements for the items that had gone bad. Melissa reminded everyone that her blessing box was open and people came to accept her largesse. One such person left a lovely note for her explaining the depth of her despair in being unable to feed her hungry children. Then she remembered reading about the blessing box and found her way to where it stood filled with just what she needed to stave off hunger. Then she blessed Melissa with her gratitude. 

I have learned over time of the goodness of people. I have been the recipient of their loving concern again and again. From the neighbors on Belmark Street to my present day home I have been surrounded by individuals like Melissa who go out of their way to be good neighbors. It is from this continuing experience that I draw optimism even in the most difficult times. 

Perhaps I have simply been lucky wherever I have lived, but I think that the truth is that people want to be kind and loving and helpful. There is a goodness in each of us that finds its way into the hearts of those who live around us. Some folks are more outgoing and inclined to be quintessential neighbors like Melissa but when there is a need mostly everyone rises to the occasion. I remind myself of that everyday, especially when we are led to believe that we are living through times of doom. I suspect that when everyone looks around they find the kind of blessings that Melissa so beautifully offers multiplied millions of times over. It’s nice to remember the blessings around us even when the skies are gray and the times are challenging.  

I keep hearing the question, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” When I think about what was happening four years ago I can’t help feeling as though this is an unnecessary query. Of course I am better today because four years ago we were in a state of uncertainty as we watched people that we knew and loved dying from a strange virus called COVID 19. 

I will always vividly remember those first months of 2020 when all the world seemed so normal until suddenly everything changed. I had gone to the Houston Rodeo Cook Off and mingled with large crowds innocently unaware that in only a few weeks the annual Livestock Show and Rodeo would be shut down as a precaution against the virus that seemed to be growing exponentially. I would first hear whispers about it from my sister-in-law who knew people who had returned from travels with a strange sickness. The first public reports of their illness were low key. After all there were only six or seven of them. Then the damn burst.

My husband had been scheduled that to have a heart procedure to unblock two of his arteries. I understood the seriousness of what was happening in the hospital as we were screened for fevers and provided with masks as we entered the building. Once we reached the floor where the treatment would take place I was told that I had to stay there or I would not be allowed to return. 

Normally my husband would have spent the night after his arteries had been repaired but on that day he would only stay until he was stabilized and then be sent home. I sat in the waiting room for over twelve hours before a nurse came to escort me out of the building so that I might retrieve my car. It took us more than thirty minutes to find an exit that was not locked up tightly. When I finally picked up my husband in front of the hospital that same nurse earnestly wished us well and urged us to be safe from the virus. The look on her face was serious and frightened.

My husband and I lived in total isolation after that. I ordered groceries from Instacart and other necessaries from Amazon. We had food delivered to our home for special occasions. The schools mostly closed down and then President Trump issued a stay at home order for two weeks to attempt to stem the spread of the virus. Many people began working remotely and I taught my homeschoolers with Zoom. In the midst of all of it there was a political campaign for the presidency that felt so strange. 

We celebrated birthdays with Face Time and sent monetary gifts with Venmo. When our anniversary came we ordered food from Brennan’s, dressed up, picked it up and ate on china in our dining room. We braved Thanksgiving outside in our backyard with two grandsons whose parents and brother were at home sick with the virus. We visited our daughter in San Antonio at Christmas time on her driveway in chairs set six feet apart. Christmas came to us by way of the mail and other delivery systems. We got together with the family with Zoom. 

It was all so strange and frightening because people were dying and I knew many of them. I kept thinking about the terrified look on the face of that nurse as she bid us goodbye. The doctors in my family were urging us to be very careful so we invested in masks and prayed for the time when we might be vaccinated. We learned how to cope but I worried about the youngsters whose important developmental years were being distorted in ways that I knew would affect them for the rest of their lives. 

I was not wrong in that regard. loneliness and despair became as contagious as the virus itself. A very nice man that I knew killed himself. I keep wondering if he would have done so had the world not been so upside down four years ago. The times were so uncertain and somehow we did not work together as a nation. Instead we argued over how to treat the presence of the virus. Our then President Trump fomented divisions among us that led to rifts in friendships and family relationships that should have instead been a time of national unity. 

The world is imperfect four years later but most of the worst scenarios are the creations of authoritarians and terrorists who have used this moment to create wars. For people in those situations the suffering continues and entire generations will never be the same as they might have been. Here in the United States we have made it through the worst times. While our economy is still stressful it is actually the best in the world. We will have to have some patience as the needed adjustments continue. Our democracy made it past the attempted overthrow of the election of 2020 by Donald Trump who became the first ever President of the United States to not accept the outcome. We were fortunate to have incredible doctors, dedicated teachers, laborers who worked even as we hid in our homes. We have made a comeback under the patient and steady hand of President Joe Biden. We still have work to do but all in all we are much better off than we were four years ago and none of us should want to go back to those times. 

We are only weeks away from another election. We should ask ourselves if cheap gas is more important to us that protecting our democracy from a man who so cravenly abandoned us in one of our darkest hours and then incited a coup when he did not win again. Why would we worry more about inflation than our democracy? If we truly love this country we have to remember what it was really like four years ago. We can’t repeat the nightmare. 

I’ve been actively working as an educator for well over fifty years. I’ve done everything from working with four year olds to teaching College Algebra. I’ve held positions in private schools with middle and upper middle class students and in public schools where some of my pupils were homeless. The vast majority of of the young men and women that I taught were first or second generation immigrants, some legally here and others only protected by DACA. 

I’ve seen the world from their eyes. I have shared their dreams. I have watched their progress in a society that that all too often spurns them. I have been challenged by angry immigrants who thought that I was just a wealthy white woman who had no idea how difficult their lives were. I have even been called a racist by a frustrated Hispanic student who saw my attempts to teach him as a sign that I thought him to be ignorant. 

I once defended myself from the doubts of some of my students pointing out my background which includes having an Hispanic father-in-law and a Chinese sister-in-law. I told them stories of my Slovakian grandparents facing the same kind of prejudices they endured when they came to America. I spoke of my mother being called a “dirty Pollack” by her best friend’s mother. I spoke of my family’s poverty after my father’s death and how my brothers and I used education as a pathway into the middle class. I wanted them to know that it had not been easy for my family to melt into American society but did agree that being white had no doubt helped. I wanted them to realize that I wanted to assist them in navigating a world that would sometimes be unkind to them. I tried to give them hope. 

I allowed my students to really know me because I saw that they were all too often being misjudged simply because of their appearance or their speech or even the places where they lived. They often had to work harder than most to be respected and accepted. This was particularly true when their parents still struggled with speaking English. Sometimes, but thankfully not too often, other teachers considered them to be inferior. I witnessed their struggles in real time and admired them all the more for pushing forward, ignoring the naysayers and creating incredible lives for themselves much as my mother and her siblings had done. 

I have to admit to being appalled by the theme of mass deportation that seemed to enliven the attendees at the Republican National Convention this summer. The specter of ten million people being deported was a kind of lightning rod for the crowd but it was an absurdity and travesty for me. To lump together millions of people without knowing them individually is to deny their very humanity. It amounts to judging them without evidence other than their race or language or religion or culture. It is akin to throwing rocks at innocents or hating them because they have somehow been deemed “dirty.”

I know accomplished young people who are among the so called illegal. Through no fault of their own they were brought here as babies, toddlers, young children. They know no other place than the United States. They have grown up with a command of the language and customs of our country. They have degrees and certifications. They work at difficult jobs and yet according to the promises made that the GOP convention they are in danger of being sent away to places that they do not know. 

There are also many classified as illegal who are the backbone of the farming industry. Without their labor there would be nobody to do all of the handwork required to plant, cultivate and pick the crops. Food would become less plentiful and far more costly without them. There would be untold shortages. They are not taking other people’s jobs, they are doing jobs that other people do not want to do. The same can be said of so much labor intensive work. Construction crews would be decimated. 

Most people do not realize how much illegals contribute to hotels and restaurants either. It is estimated that without them the entire industry would devolve into a state of disarray. When those who have worked their way up to professional jobs are put into the mix it should be apparent that these are not people who are ransacking our country with violence and crime but instead they are working souls simply wanting better lives for themselves and their families just as immigrants have always been. Statistics show clearly that there is a lower crime rate among immigrants in general and illegal ones in particular than the rest of the population and yet they are being presented as a clear and peril danger to us all. 

Over the years I have learned to admire and love the immigrants who have come to our country. They do not take our opportunities and largess for granted. They are the first ones to rise to the occasion hen we need to work our way out of natural disasters. They arrive willing to do the dirty work that we appall or cannot do. They love their children and want the same things for them that we want for ours. They are not a danger but a national treasure and we do them wrong and our country wrong when we insist that they go away. 

Of late my calendar looks like a mess. I plan things and then something unexpected happens that changes the flow of my appointments. This on again off again serendipity has been affected by everything from the weather to family emergencies. As someone who likes to accomplish things in a timely manner it’s been difficult to draw lines through unfulfilled goals, especially those that have involved meetings with friends. 

I’ve been attempting to get out a bit more for several weeks now but my best laid plans seem to quite frequently go awry. I can’t honestly predict what I am going to be doing from one day to another and that is becoming a bit annoying. I tend to think of myself as an introvert but that only means that I prefer to recharge my batteries alone, not with a crowd. In truth I really enjoy being around other people and that has not been happening much for quite some time now unless I really reach out and work hard to make things happen.

I was delighted recently with a visit from one of my former students who came with his family. We spent several delightful hours laughing and talking and catching up on what everyone has been doing. The idea for the visit began with my student’s offer to help with the clean up effort around our yard after the hurricane that blew through. Since we had already taken care of that job he asked if he might just come by to visit. To say that the afternoon was a highlight of my recent days would be an understatement. I felt revitalized with boundless energy after they left. 

We started this summer with a wonderful graduation party for my grandson and promises not to be such strangers with our family and friends in the future. Sadly everyone, including me, got really busy with lots of mundane obligations. Between me, my husband and the ninety five year old who now lives with us there has been a constant round of doctors’ appointments and even a brief hospital stay for the oldest of our new little family. Of course none of that is exactly fun. I began to feel as though the people who do the valet parking in the Medical Center had begun to feel a kinship with us after the twentieth time we showed up there. They represented the most human contact we have had for many weeks.

Facebook has rubbed my face in my current homebound status with photo memories of all of the trips I have taken in the past. June and July have always been filled with vacations to wonderful places, but not this year. The farthest we have been is the forty mile trek to Galveston for a glimpse of the Gulf of Mexico. That was nice but I have an itch to get away. I suppose that it comes from my father who seemed to be perennially planning the next journey to some new destination. 

There have been moments when I have imagined myself throwing a few items in a suitcase and then aimlessly driving away with no particular place in mind. I’d just head north or east or west and see what I find. There’s no telling where I might eventually end up as long as it was away from home for a time. Maybe I was born under a rambling star or something because for all of my life I have found myself suddenly and unexplainably having an uncontrollable itch to just forget my responsibilities and just run away. I hear the call of the mountains, and I must go. I dream of a big city like Chicago or Boston and aim myself in that direction. I think of the ocean and head for the shore. It seems not to really matter where I go. Only the pull of travel is what matters. 

I have had some wonderful times in the summer and should not be feeling sorry for myself for being uncharacteristically stuck at home. I should not be so spoiled that I can’t forego one year of staying in place, but if I’m honest I have to admit that for weeks now I have been gazing outside and dreaming of the places I might go. Perhaps if the weather and the everyday challenges were not dashing my plans to be with friends so much I might be a bit more content. Still, I feel guilty for not being content and understanding that this is just a temporary pause in the fun that I have always had in abundance. This too shall pass and I’ll be feeling hurried and harried in attempting to meet all of the possibilities for fun and engagement with the people that I so love. 

Perhaps I should have a reading marathon of the many books that I have not had time to even open. Maybe I can watch an entire series from start to finish while munching on junk food. I can surely create a vacation like atmosphere right in my own home and even find some other souls who might enjoy coming for dinner or meeting for a few hours at a restaurant. I must get off of my duff and create some magic instead of wasting away the hours wishing that I had the freedom to fly away like a bird. I’m usually good at adapting but I have been slacking off. I think I can turn this different kind of time into something much better than just feeling sorry for myself. I do love a challenge and this is a good one, so stay tuned. You may soon be hearing about how I retrieved excitement out of what at first seemed like a really dull time. I feel confident that I will succeed.

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. 

Do not become bitter or hostile. 

Be hopeful, be optimistic. 

Never, ever be afraid to make some noise 

and get in good trouble, 

necessary trouble. 

We will find a way to make a way out of no way.

          ~the ever beautiful, John Lewis 

I have often found that people who have suffered the most in this world are the most optimistic about how their trials will be resolved. We all know how a young John Lewis grew up in a segregated society in which some people deemed him to be inferior to people of the white race. In his role as a Freedom Rider he was spat upon and physically injured. A lesser man might have given up entirely but he steadfastly worked for equality and justice for all people, eventually becoming a beloved Congressman.

Sadly there are still people suffering both in the United States and all over the world. Sometimes it feels as though despair is the only emotion sufficient enough to handle the feelings of disappointment in the reality that we humans still don’t seem to understand the importance of valuing every person as someone deserving of the same freedoms and opportunities that so many of us enjoy. Reading the words of John Lewis is inspiring and a roadmap for the patience and determination that we must have as we work for a better and better world. 

Congressman Lewis cautioned us to eschew bitterness and hostility, a way of reacting to unfairness that is particularly tempting when the bullies who create the divisions and inequality are sometimes brutal in their beliefs that some people are innately inferior to the rest of us. They do not value the sameness that we all share in wanting to live in a way and a place where we can be ourselves and demonstrate our willingness to work hard to progress from the limitations of our lives. Anger at being misjudged and spurned is a logical defensive mechanism that surely comes to mind when actions and words are belittling of our intentions and abilities. 

Some humans have demonstrated prejudices again and again. They make assumptions about people based on superficial traits like the color of skin or places where people were born. It can be difficult to overcome hatred the way that John Lewis so remarkably did. He understood his own worth and that of the people for whom he spent his life representing. Sometimes his hopefulness led him to dangerous situations, the good and necessary trouble of which he often spoke. 

There have been other heroes in history who made good trouble for humankind. Ghandi comes to mind along with Nelson Mandela. Both men spent time in jail for their troubles. Ghandi was ultimately killed. We might make an endless list of such people if we carefully study history. In the Catholic Church such souls are often canonized as saints. We erect statues in their honor but sometimes, before their messages are fully appreciated by society they are unsung martyrs for causes much grander than most of us consider. 

I am particularly drawn to the optimism of John Lewis because in today’s world there is a kind of feeling that we are about to revert to darker times when entire groups of people were ostracized from societies or subjugated because of physical traits. John Lewis would urge us to find a way to change such attitudes when there seems to be no way to create a more loving world. 

Sadly religion itself is too often used as valid reason for denying the worth of others. There is much misjudging happening all around us. Perhaps when we see this we need to have the courage to engage in the kind of good trouble that is necessary to change such thinking. It can be frightening and daunting to consider defending those who are often unable to defend themselves. 

I think of Jesus and the incredible life that He led. If ever there was someone who got into good and necessary trouble it was He. His short life was dedicated to inclusionary lessons. He demonstrated with his actions that nobody should be spurned. He embraced lepers and befriended outcasts. Nothing in his parables and words was meant to divide us or rank us. In his eyes each person was a beautiful creation worthy of love. He was a revolutionary force Who was punished for his efforts . He engaged in necessary trouble hoping that we would learn from Him.

We might all do well to consider the plight of the most reviled among us and determine how we might help them to be accepted and appreciated. Surely we must see that demonizing any group without knowing them just because we do not understand them goes against the laws of goodness and kindness. Instead of telling people to go away we might begin to consider the idea of really seeing them, talking to them and learning what they need to feel as free and fortunate as we are. It’s time we swim out of the sea of despair and do what we know deep down in our hearts is right. A dose of good trouble would be great for all of us.