Category: Aging

Being Leonard

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

10246301_10205604543090004_3263112611847433681_nIt’s graduation time, and when it rolls around each year I can’t help thinking of my own commencements from junior high, high school and college. So much hard work, angst and happy memories lay behind those glorious moments, and so much hard work, angst and happy memories lay ahead. Graduation day itself was somewhat like a wedding, a blur of people and speeches and congratulations that went by so fast. It somehow didn’t seem right for the culmination of so much effort to come and go so quickly, but that’s the way good times always seem to be. What strikes me most as I think back to those glorious moments of achievement is that each time I was surrounded by a core of my friends and family who took the time out of their busy lives to celebrate with me. While so many variables have challenged me in my life, such people have been a constant source of stability and love.

Graduations always make me think of my cousin Leonard. He’s the elder statesmen of our raucous bunch of cousins who is almost as close in age to our parents as he is to those of us who played Hide and Find each Friday night at our grandmother’s house. He was married and raising children while I was still happily engaged in the loveliness that was my childhood. When we saw him, he was far more interested in conversing with my mother and father than getting on the floor to entertain me. I always looked up to him not just because he was the first of our long line of cousins, but because he always appeared to be so happy and wise and confident.

Anyway, Leonard became known as the one person who never missed a single graduation. No matter what the timing was, or how bad the weather had become, Leonard would represent the whole family with his presence at one commencement after another. It almost became a game for us to scan the crowd at such events to find our own “Waldo” in the crowd. We always knew that we could count on seeing him just so long as we had sent him an invitation. While we joked about his perennial presence, I suppose that we never really took the time to think of how remarkable his devotion to family actually has been over the years. Little wonder that his own brood that has grown to gargantuan proportions is such a loving and tight knit group. With a kind of superhuman energy Leonard has managed to quietly take the helm and demonstrate to us the importance of finding time to honor members of the family as they pass through the milestones of life.

We Americans are a chronically busy and productive bunch. It doesn’t seem to be in our DNA to slow down even after we retire. There is nothing quite as shocking to us as someone who chooses to chill for a bit too long. We join organizations and volunteer and fill the nooks and crannies of our calendars so tightly that when we receive heartfelt invitations we quite often have to beg off, send our regrets. We’d love to be with family, but there is just so much to do that forces us to decline. Such has never been so with Leonard, a man who worked hard at his career, raised four delightful children, helped at his church and within his community, and still found ways to pause just enough to demonstrate his love for his us time and again. He has been as dependable as they come.

I suppose that if I were to give one single bit of advice to graduates it would be to follow Leonard’s example. As I look back on my life a sea of faces and experiences fill my head. Jobs and honors have come and gone. People entered my life and exited never to be heard from again. Many of the things that I labored to purchase have broken or gone out of style. The one aspect of my life that has continued to sustain and support me has been family and a circle of special friends who have stayed by my side. I have learned that when someone is as continually faithful as Leonard has been, it is due to great sacrifice and genuine concern. It is not easy to be as responsible and dependable as he is, but somehow he has made it his mission to be so. He is a rare gift in a day and age when behavior such as his is becoming less and less common. He has not allowed the rat race to become the focus of his pursuits. He has found balance and purpose in a life well lived.

There are so many stories of people on their deathbeds voicing regrets, being alone, realizing that they in their quests for riches, power, glory they forgot to remember the people who might have loved and remembered them most. When we hear such tales we marvel that someone who seemed to have it all actually had so little, and yet we also have tendencies to expend all of our energies chasing people and things that may ultimately leave us lonely and forgotten. Leonard on the other hand is a man who is beloved because little that he does is only about himself.

I attempt to emulate Leonard. He has demonstrated to me the importance of showing up again and again. He may not be able stay long but he always manages to demonstrate that he cares enough to be part of our most important milestones. That is all that we need to see. He has been our immutable constant in a world that seems ever less dependable, but he is growing older and time is taking its toll on his health. He won’t be able to carry the family banner forever, so its up to the younger generation to accept and honor his lead. He has shown us how its done. It would be a terrible shame to forget the importance of his efforts. It’s time for all of us to be more like Leonard.

The Lessons of Summer

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
kid s plating water on grass field during daytime
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

It’s been a tough school year for both students and teachers around here. There was a great deal of trauma to overcome in my neck of the woods. The fall semester began with hurricane Harvey and the spring neared a close with a shooting at Santa Fe High School. I suspect that everyone associated with education in these parts is more than ready to say hello to summer and engage in a bit of unwinding and relaxation. The trouble is that these days there is not always a great deal of rest for the weary.

After a very brief break summer school will begin and many teachers supplement their incomes with that extra bit of cash that working an extra month allows. Sadly some of the students who struggled during the year will have to make up for their lack of attention and effort. Then there are all of those required training classes that educators must take to keep their various certifications up to speed. I’ve also seen signs advertising all kinds of activities for kids that range from football, basketball, baseball and cheerleading camps to art and theater lessons. It seems as though few individuals enjoy summer the way I did back in days that were much slower paced.

Summer was a time for staying up well past bedtime and sleeping in each morning. Shoes stood unused in the closet, collecting dust with the exception of Sundays when they were donned for church. Every day brought new adventures, all unplanned and easy. There were three months of doing whatever sounded good at any given moment, and boredom was an unknown in our world.

My summer uniform was a pair of pull on shorts with a crop top that allowed the circulation of the warm air to keep me as comfortable as is possible in the humid Houston heat. My mother usually cut my hair short for the occasion and my brothers sported almost shaved heads. Our looks were all about simplicity and comfort. There was no need to worry about appearance because we were on vacation from routine.

We always managed to find something wonderful to do, and none of it involved watching television. Of course video games were in a future far far away. Instead we mostly played outside with the hordes of neighbor children who lived up and down our street. We invented all sorts of competitive games and used the middle of the street or someone’s big front yard as our playground. We were continually running and laughing and tumbling so that our knees and elbows were skinned more often than not. When the sun hit its zenith we often retired to someone’s home to play car and board games while our moms quenched our thirst with ice cold water or lemonade. If we were especially lucky our midday snack might include a cookie or some homemade peach ice cream.

Sometimes it was so hot that our moms would send us to our beds to rest a bit after lunch. I enjoyed lying in front of the open windows feeling the breeze that was produced by the big attic fan that worked day and night all summer long. Sometimes the heat would lull me to sleep, but mostly I used that time to read. I kept a collection of books from the library and went through them with such speed that I had to make many trips to the bookmobile in Garden Villas Park.

Of course there was always swimming and it never took much to convince our mother to drive us to the city pool where we had exactly one hour to luxuriate in the cool water playing Marco Polo and seeing who could stand on their hands the longest. If it wasn’t an especially crowded day, which was almost never, the lifeguards would ignore the clock and let us stay longer than expected. We so enjoyed those times, especially when we were joined by one or more of our cousins.

Sometimes I delighted in a world of make believe with my girl friends as we built houses for our dolls and pretended that they were stewardesses or glamorous actresses. I had created all sorts of furniture for my dream home out of milk cartons, tin cans, and cigar boxes. I knew enough about sewing to make pillows, bedspreads and tablecloths. I kept all of my gear in a cardboard box that once held green beans at the grocery store. My friends and I would spend hours with our little rooms spread out on the drive way and our imaginations taking flight.

Like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in film we often decided to produce a neighborhood talent show. Everyone had to audition of course but our standards were fairly accessible. It was rare for an act to be turned away. We’d dance and sing and tell jokes and perform magic tricks all for the entertainment of our moms. Admission was a quarter, a rather exorbitant amount for the times, but we were saving to earn enough money to build a fort. Somehow we never quite earned enough to actually erect the structure that we had envisioned but we did have some rather nice make shift efforts, especially the ones made out of sheets and quilts that we designed on the clotheslines.

Our bicycles were our ticket to exotic places like the bayou or the woods where we felt as adventurous as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. When I grew older I even learned a route to Gulfgate Mall that I followed on my bike with one of my friends. We’d window shop and get cool inside the stores and sometimes even have enough money to actually purchase an ice cream sandwich or a candy stick.

At night we’d lie on our backs in the grass gazing at the stars and telling scary stories. We could hear the whispers inside the households up and down the street because most people had their windows and doors wide open. By that time of day our necks would be ringed with little necklaces of dirt and sweat that we called Grandma’s beads. Our feet would be black from all of the running and playing we had enjoyed. Our contentment was sublime and we seemed not to have a care in the world.

We had little idea back then how much the world would change. It would become rarer and rarer to see children outside all summer long. The kind of unscheduled lifestyle that we so enjoyed would be replaced with carefully choreographed activities designed to keep kids busy and free from boredom. Everyone would be rushing around almost as much as they did during the school year. There would be required summer reading and math packets to complete. The freedoms that we so loved would be replaced with more purposeful pursuits or hours spent in front of a computer or video game.

The sounds of summer that were once so comforting to me are rarely audible these days. Neighbors move in and out. Children are either inside or off doing more structured things. Dream houses for dolls are manufactured out of plastic and little girls only play with them for a short time and then they become too mature to engage in such things even though their ages indicate that they are still children. It’s unsafe for little ones to be unsupervised for even a moment. The freedoms that I enjoyed are unthinkable today and that actually makes me sad. I wonder if the magic of summer vacation is somehow diminished by our efforts to orchestrate it so. Our children have lost a wonderful opportunity to learn how to find simple pleasures in very small things. Perhaps many of the problems we face today might be resolved if we were to once again allow them to get outside and explore the world on their own. The lessons of an unstructured summer may well be the most important of their lives.

The Visit

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

33100596_10215737497531538_2624822615310598144_n

We lived next door to Dave and Betty Turner for over thirty years. During that time we got to know their children, and then their grandchildren and even their great grandchildren. They were friendly and generous people whose door was always open, sometimes without even a need to knock. We loved knowing that they were so close at hand and that they would always treat us like family. When we decided to move it was difficult to leave them because they had always meant so much to us. Eventually Dave died and Betty moved to a town in east Texas called Pittsburg. She built a house right next door to her daughter Vickie and settled into a comfortable routine that has made her feel very safe and happy.

We missed Dave and Betty from the beginning of our life in our new neighborhood. We made friends here but they kept moving away and new folks would move in only to leave after a short time. We are now the senior residents on our street, having lived here longer than anyone else. We can’t quite become accustomed to the more vagabond ways of the modern world, and so we long for neighbors like the ones that we once so enjoyed. When a For Sale sign went up next door a few weeks ago we shook our heads in dismay and both felt an urge to go visit Betty. We made a reservation at a state park in her town and gleefully headed her way.

The journey took us through the heart of east Texas which is dotted with small towns built around various industries and shaded by huge trees. It’s a lovely drive through forests that surround beautiful lakes. Main streets feature quaint old buildings and antique stores where sweet people smile sincere greetings and welcome strangers. I’m reminded as we drive along of my father once insisting that east Texas was the prettiest part of our state. In many ways his observation is true.

Pittsburg, Texas is home to Pilgrim’s Pride Chicken. The Pilgrim family homestead sits on a hill behind a gate adorned with the pilgrim head that is so familiar on the packages of chicken. There is a big office complex and a factory of some sort along the railroad tracks, but the chickens are raised by local farmers. People in the area speak highly of Mr. Pilgrim who is now deceased. They tell stories of him walking the aisles of the local Walmart handing out little books in which he had placed cash, or presenting money to every single high school graduate. His imprint on the town is everywhere including in a little park with a bell tower that he presented to the citizens as a place where they might go for solace among gardens and a tiny chapel.

Betty’s house is about eight minutes from the center of Pittsburg in an area of wide fields with horses and cows grazing under big oak trees. She has a magnificent view whether she’s sitting on her front porch or enjoying a cup of coffee on the back deck. It’s a nice place and it makes us smile to see her looking so happy there.

We spent an entire afternoon and much of the evening with Betty. Her daughter and son-in-law joined us to exchange stories and get us up to date on the happenings. Betty had major heart surgery about three years ago. A helicopter flew her to the hospital in Tyler where she was well cared for while her son-in-law was having his own medical emergency at the same time. Both of them are hale and hearty now, but Betty does not have as much energy as she once had. She owns a scooter that she uses to get around the neighborhood. There is a ramp on her deck that allows her to easily move from the house to the road. She loves the freedom and security that her new living arrangement allows. She and her daughter and son-in-law take care of one another and have a great deal of fun.

While we were visiting one of Betty’s granddaughters came by with her little girl. She was quite young when I saw her last so it was shocking to realize how much time had gone by from the time that we moved from our old house. We had fun playing with the child who was enchanted by Betty’s assortment of dogs and cats. We munched on homemade cookies that Betty’s daughter called “death” cookies because somebody that she knew always seemed to die shortly after she made them. We were relieved to learn that the consumers of the cookies always do just fine. We ate a few more than we should have because they were filled with chocolate chips and coconut that made them taste as though someone had melted a Mounds candy bar inside them.

Later we all gathered around Vickie’s table to indulge is a delicious roast beef dinner that she had prepared. Vickie is a great cook but I suspect that her hospitality is what made everything so special. She even whipped up a batch of homemade banana nut ice cream for the occasion. It was sinful and quite delightful, but not nearly as much as the wonderful people who were going out their way to entertain us. They even suggested that we bring our trailer to their land the next time that we come and we will have everything that we need for comfort.

The time passed so quickly that I was shocked to notice that we had been there for well over eight hours. It’s amazing how good friendships are so easy to rekindle. I suspect that we might have visited for eight hours more, but we needed to return to our campground before they locked the gates for the night. With full bellies and hugs and promises to return soon we reluctantly left our dear sweet Betty. I felt as revitalized as I always did when I would go next door for a quick hello. Betty has a way of looking at life realistically but with great optimism. She is a wonderfully uncomplicated soul who takes in strays and loves them back to life. I can’t wait to sit across from her sipping on some tea when next we return.                                                              

Glory

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

purple-grapes-vineyard-napa-valley-napa-vineyard-39351.jpeg

As I grow older I become more and more pensive. Perhaps it is because I am retired and have more time for thinking, or maybe it’s just a characteristic of my age. I watch the elders who served as my adult role models slowly die one by one, and I become more and more familiar with the inevitability of my own mortality. I no longer have the luxury of numbering my days in large denominations. I was reminded of this when I recently purchased carpet with a twenty year guarantee and realized that I’ll be ninety years old before I must replace it again. That of course is if I’m particularly careful and follow in the footsteps of many of my long living relatives. The reality is that while the carpet may have a guarantee, my own lifespan is less certain, as is everyone’s.

I have of late been thinking about the history of my seventy years here on this earth, and I keep returning to the struggle for civil rights that so dominated my very impressionable high school and college years. As a young child I had noticed the segregation that was still so common in my native south. Whenever I had questioned my parents about what I saw they would hesitate and appear to be uncharacteristically confused and even a bit frightened by my insistence that it seemed to be so wrong. I was an innocent child who was being taught by my religion to love all of mankind and by my country that we are all equal, and yet there were visible signs that this was not happening the way it should.

When I was in middle and high school the civil rights movement began to take hold in earnest. I recall hearing about the attempts at integrating schools when I visited my grandparents in Arkansas. I had much earlier traveled north to Chicago with my parents and witnessed blacks mingling without consequence with whites on the trains and in restaurants. It seemed to be the logical and just way of doing things, and so I began following the outcome of boycotts and marches and sit ins, gleefully celebrating each victory and dissolving into disappointment each time the warriors for justice were defeated. I knew in my heart that the slowly evolving changes that were taking place had been long overdue. In fact, I was never able to reconcile the idea that humans should ever be ranked in terms of value based on highly questionable characteristics like race, religion or place of origin, a tendency that has created great cruelty throughout mankind’s history. I was thrilled to believe that our society had become enlightened enough to disavow the ugliness and ignorance that was still so apparent in many corners of our country.

Sadly I was to learn that my optimism and naivety was a bit cockeyed and premature. It took a long while for real changes to happen and in the process many of my heroes were killed, leaving me more and more unsettled. Still I eagerly celebrated each small step on the road to progress as the decades rolled by. I knew that there was still an underbelly of prejudice that was alive and well, but in my circles people were loving and eager to set our history aright. I suppose that I was so insulated by the fast paced cadence of living that I failed to notice that the road to the Promised Land stretched farther ahead than I had imagined.

I have reluctantly removed my rose colored glasses long enough to discern that our problems with getting along with one another continue to abound. Particularly of late it feels as though the scabs that had so protectively covered wounds have been torn away revealing that there are many among us who still harbor bad feelings for anyone different from themselves. The sight of people marching through the streets of Virginia emulating Nazis was particularly stomach churning for me, but even worse was our president’s reluctance to condemn them without reservation. I became more observant at that point and began to contemplate things that I had seen that niggled at my conscience but didn’t really rise to the surface. That is when I understood that if we are very honest with ourselves we will admit that there is still work to do in the area of civil rights. In fact, today there are many different groups of people who are treated as though they are somehow subservient, and this trend is sadly occurring all over the world.

I don’t believe that overt prejudice is as prevalent as it was when I was a child, but the truth is that there should never be room for any of it. When we are silent when others are being abused, we become partners in the crime. There is a disconnect when we attend church and pronounce our love of God, but then voice ugly commentaries regarding His children or allow others to do so. We must all have the courage to do what is right, rather than drawing the curtains so that we don’t have to see what is before our very eyes. We may all be wary of conflict, but there are times when we must face it down with truth, and the truth is that there are still individuals being judged not so much by who they are, but by how they appear to be.

I once went on a journey to the heartland of the civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties. I was accompanied by students who had learned Algebra I from me. I saw the places that had been blurry black and white images on the tiny screen of my family’s television in a time when I was only fifteen or sixteen or seventeen years old. I found myself becoming emotional over and over again as I stood in the kitchen of Dr. Martin Luther King and touched the vey table where he often sat to pray. I shed tears in the basement of a church in Birmingham where four little girls had been killed by a bomb blast set off by a racist. I touched the prison bars that had caged Dr. KIng’s body, but not his spirit. I walked across the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma and nearly collapsed with emotion. I walked down the street with my students toward the state house in Montgomery and remembered that glorious moment when so many brave souls had finally joined together to demonstrate the need for true equality for every human.

I’ve been wanting to take that civil rights trip once again. I want to share those moments with my husband and at least one of my grandchildren. I think that we all need reminders of our past if we are to continue moving toward a better future. I don’t believe that it behooves us to ever become complacent because that is when we get fooled into thinking that everything is as good as it is ever going to get. Somehow our human nature tends to slide back into old habits unless we exercise care.

I watched the movie Selma on Mother’s Day. It was a magnificent production and a reminder to me that I never again want to allow overt racism to exist in a legal form in my country. Because I believe that there is a constant danger of this happening I am vigilant and vocal. All good people must be advocates for justice lest those who are filled with hate and spite lead us down a dark path of division. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord who showed us how to trample the grapes of wrath. I will follow Him. 

Our Foundation

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

pexels-photo-225744.jpeg

It’s the day after Mother’s Day and I find myself thinking about what it means to be a mom. I learned all that I needed to know from my mama who was exceptionally good at the task. I always marvel at the fact that she somehow managed to raise three children each of whom is totally different from the others. She allowed us to be ourselves and ultimately it made us into very happy adults. She loved and guided us, teaching us right from wrong, but then let us develop our own passions. She parented us all alone because our father had died when we were eight, five and three respectively.

A truly good mother like her is able to provide everything that children need, but it is a challenging  job that requires full time devotion, and my mom was always ready to give us her all. She admittedly spoiled us but only with love, not things. We appreciated her, but nonetheless I don’t think that we ever really knew how important she was to us until she had died Now we remember all of the little things that she did that once seemed so insignificant. In fact I find myself calling upon her wisdom and generous spirit more and more as time goes by.

My mother-in-law was another model of motherhood who was only able to bear a single child which was quite dangerous for her. She had a congenital heart defect that doctors felt would shorten her life, and so when she became pregnant they were certain that having a baby would kill her. Not to be bullied into terminating the pregnancy, she insisted on taking the risk. The delivery was complex but ultimately successful, and one of the proudest moments of her life. After my husband was born she the proceeded to love him so much that she turned him into one of the sweetest people to ever walk the earth. Her parenting style proved that some good things are never too much.

I was a young mother who still resembled a child when I first became a mom. I made the kind of mistakes that come from immaturity, but I know without reservation that my girls were the most wonderful gift that I had ever received. I literally thought about them almost every waking moment. More than anything I wanted them to grow to be great women like their grandmothers, and my dreams have very much come true. They are not just good moms. They are extraordinary.

Mothers are the foundation of society, the first teachers of the young. They quietly sacrifice for their children, rarely drawing attention to the many things that they do. They awake in the middle of the night to feed a hungry infant or to console a feverish body. They juggle routines and schedules to get their little ones to lessons and activities. They slowly help them to develop their talents and interests, sometimes adjusting their budgets to provide opportunities for their hard work to take hold. Their own responsibilities and worries grow, but they rarely share the concerns and stresses that rattle around in their heads. The children’s joys are their joys, just as the pain becomes theirs as well.

Sometimes we grow up and look back at photographs of our mothers and marvel at how lovely they were before we were born. We forget that they were once young themselves, dreaming of lives that may or may not have turned out the way they had imagined. We find ourselves one day looking at their graying hair and wrinkled skin and we remember when they ran and played with us. We think of those times when they tucked us into bed, or just smiled at us from across a room. They seemed to love us for no particular reason, but simply because we existed. We gained and lost friends, but our moms were ever faithful, ready to hug and comfort us even without being asked, even when we had ignored them or hurt their feelings.

Moms come in so many different versions. Like snowflakes no two are exactly the same and yet they are all similar. Some moms carry us in their wombs, and others choose us when we have no other place to go, loving us as much as they would have if we were their very own. Some moms dedicate themselves to the home and others balance their care of us with careers. All of them are beautiful.

This past weekend I attended a lovely graduation party for one of my former students. She spoke to us about the things that her mother had done to help her to earn her degree. There were nights when she was up in the middle of the night studying, nearly exhausted. Her mom would arise from her own sleep and bring coffee and encouragement. When she was frustrated her mother would cheer her onward. The young woman believes that her achievement is just as much her mother’s as her own. She understands that without the sacrifices that her mom made her great day might never have come. She rightly credited both of her parents for the wondrous things they had done from the time that she was born, and realizes that they will continue to walk beside her in her journey through life.

We sometimes forget how remarkable and demanding a job being a mom actually is. Sadly the day eventually comes when she is gone. Still her spirit somehow lives on inside our hearts. We see her in the things that we say and do. Her face in forever etched in our minds. We know that she is with us, guiding and consoling us through time and space.

God bless all of the mothers of the world and those who use their maternal instincts to help all children to grow in wisdom and grace.