Category: Commentary

I have a granddaughter who enrolled for a class that focused on the Cold War with a particular emphasis on the nineteen sixties and seventies. I have been fascinated to hear her views on that era because that was a time when, like her, I was coming of age. Perhaps the most defining moment in those years came on November 22, 1963, when I had only days before celebrated by fifteenth birthday with gifts from my mother that assured me that she finally believed that I was no longer a little girl. I was a sophomore in high school studying subjects like Biology and Geometry, teasing my hair and wearing pink lipstick. Life was feeling upbeat and exciting as I held a seat on the Student Council and joined the Medical Careers Club while writing for the school newspaper. Best of all I still had my all time favorite teacher, Father Shane, for English where I was thriving. 

On the day before November 22, Father Shane had arranged for our class to attend a symphony concert in downtown Houston. Classmates and I rode to the event in the car of one of our friends who had already turned sixteen and thereby had secured her driver’s license. As we were riding down Interstate 45 from the Hobby Airport area we were passed by an entourage of vehicles accompanying President John F. Kennedy who had come to Houston to raise campaign funds and meet with political supporters. It was an exciting moment for all of us who generally were huge fans of the president even though none of us were yet eligible to vote. Somehow seeing him whiz by us made the day even more exciting than it might otherwise have been. I told my friends about the time I had seen him ride in a open car no more than a few feet away from me as I stood with my mother and brothers under the freeway near Hobby Airport. He had looked over at us and waved with a big smile on his face. It was a golden moment for everyone.

I don’t recall much about the concert that we attended other than the fact that Father Shane had taught us how to watch the conductor as a cue for when to remain silent and when to applaud. We had felt quite sophisticated with our learned manners. We would also buzz about our brief encounter with President Kennedy even though we had only seen his car rushing past. The following day, on November 22, we suspected that Father Shane would briefly discuss the nuances of the music that we had heard before transitioning into a lesson. 

The class had barely begun when one of the nuns who worked at the school rushed through the door declaring that the president had been shot in Dallas. My first instinct was to laugh at her comment because she often popped in to tease us with silly jokes. Somehow, though, this bit of dark humor did not feel right so I held back my laughter following the cues from Father Shane and my fellow classmates. It took a few seconds before I read the expression on her face and realized that she was not attempting to be funny, I suppose I went into a state of shock at that point. I only recall sitting among my friends feeling all alone. It was almost an out of body experience much like I had endured when my father died. We simply sat at our desks without making a sound, without daring to even move. 

There was a later announcement that the President had died. In that moment I heard a few sobs and saw that some of my friends had put their heads down on their desks. I simply sat frozen and feeling as though somehow the world had ended once again. My emotions were rioting in my head as disbelief, sorrow, and even fear overtook my thoughts. Somehow time both stopped and rush forward at the same moment. Before long I was walking home to the comfort of my mother and my brothers. 

The next days were cold and dreary as though the weather itself changed to reflect the mood of the nation. For the first time in my memory my mother kept the television tuned to the hour by hour reports that seemed to only become more and more disturbing. I watched in horror as Jack Ruby shot and killed the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. It was the first time I had witnessed a murder in real time. 

We mostly stayed home but on the day of John Kennedy’s funeral Mama decided that she wanted to be with her mother. We sat in Grandma Ulrich’s tiny living room warmed by a gas stove that glowed in the darkened room. I remember little John John Kennedy, Jr. saluting his father and Jackie Kennedy wearing a long black widow’s veil as she walked behind the horse drawn caisson carrying her husband. The sound of the drumbeat became permanently embossed in my memory. I only need to hear a few seconds of it and I am once again sobbing for our wounded president. 

Somehow our nation’s reaction to the death of a president, a war in Vietnam that seemed endless and a struggle for civil rights for all of our citizens would dominate the rest of the nineteen sixties and much of the first half of the nineteen seventies. I began to fully understand that I would be stepping into a world far more chaotic than the safe little hideaway of my home. Unimaginable changes lay ahead that would push me into adulthood far sooner than I had ever anticipated. My family and my school would prepare me well for what was to come.  

I sometimes think that I was born wanting to be in high school. It was not until I entered Mt. Carmel High School in nineteen sixty two, that the world around me began to make sense. While I had many good friends and managed to have fun during my time there, it was in the academic arena that I found the joy that had seemed to be eluding me. My English teacher was particularly a catalyst for lifting the veil that had been distorting my view of the world. 

The first day in his class was challenging and a bit frightening as he outlined the goals that he expected us to meet. One of them was to read a book and report on it each week of the school year. He explained that we would have to choose a variety of genres from a multipage list of titles that were housed in our school library. He noted that he wanted us to read fiction and non-fiction, poetry, classics and modern topics. The task seemed daunting, but since my father had modeled his love of books and reading to me, I knew that it would also no doubt be delightful. 

Our teacher, a Carmelite priest named Father Shane introduced us to book reviews in The New York Times as guides to creating a good report. He did not want a rehash of the story, but rather an insightful critique and analysis of the writing. We would have to learn a new way of discussing a book that would require us to think about the impact of what we had read. 

The reading assignment might have been enough to keep us very busy, but our teacher gave us an additional weekly task. We were to write a theme of around two hundred words based on a prompt that he provided on Mondays. Beyond using that guide for our writing we were free to take any direction of our choosing in creating an interesting essay. I would quickly learn how to write under the pressure of a deadline.

In the beginning I struggled to meet these basic demands along with the requirements other classes. I had to learn how to divide my attention and grappled with time management lest I sink under all the work that I had to do. I often put off writing my weekly theme until Sunday evening when I would grasp almost hopelessly for any idea to jumpstart my writing. The same was true for reading and reporting on a book each week. I had to teach myself how to speed read and  become familiar with short books like Animal Farm to fill the gaps when I felt overwhelmed. Along the way I became better and better at such things just as an athlete becomes stronger over time.

In spite of my apprehensions and often waning energy I eventually learned how to juggle many tasks at one time. I created workable routines for getting things accomplished. I learned how to write about almost anything with ease. I read with eyes more attuned to themes, metaphors, the use of words than simply reiterating stories and facts in my mind. I began to see learning as both a challenge and a fantastically life changing experience. I was in my element. 

Other teachers spoke to my heart as well. I was taking Latin and as I learned the vocabulary the rules of grammar and the declensions I saw the influence of Latin in most of the words I encountered. My teacher, Sister Wanda, put relationships of language together for me, making sense of the very ways in which we speak. She also helped us to laugh about our struggles and how to view learning new things as fun.

I had never been particularly excited about science other than my experience with Mrs. Colby in junior high, but my physical science teacher, Father Bernard, used tactile demonstrations to help me actually understand how and why things work. When he set up a telescope on the football field one evening and showed us the moon and the planets. I was sold. The sheer poetry of witnessing the craters in the moon and the rings of Saturn helped me to realize the poetry of the universe. I finally and truly understood why reading and learning had been so exciting for my father. 

My best teachers were the ones who opened new horizons for me, even if the subject matter was sometimes difficult and controversial to understand. My English teacher, a Carmelite priest named Father Shane, was the best at that. He wanted us to move from the comfort of our isolated little neighborhood into the expanse of the world. He read to us from The New Yorker magazine and took us on field trips to see plays at the Alley Theater and to hear concerts from the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He and other teachers treated us as young adults rather than children. They challenged our thinking and helped us to hone our abilities in language, history, mathematics, science and even religious ethics. To me it felt like the great awakening that I had been seeking and I poured my heart into soaking up as much of the knowledge as my brain would hold.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October of my freshman year. I’ve since heard that some people left Houston for safer places in the event of a nuclear attack. My family simply carried on as usual. We somehow had faith, that may have displaced, that all would turn out well. Our mother had students to teach and my brothers and I had school to attend. We were all on the brink of an era that would bounce us around like a roller coaster. Somehow with my mother’s calm and the honest knowledge that I was gaining from my teachers I felt safer than ever. I had learned that beauty is truth and truth is beauty. I was no longer afraid. 

When I was still in my vibrant forties I remember a friend worrying about his mother who lived alone in Detroit. He had years before made his way to Houston and amazing work at NASA. He found love, married and settled down to work and have a family. He was an only child who visited his mother often. As she grew older and less and less able to care for herself he noticed how the once indomitable woman had become continually anxious. His conversations with her more often than not revolved around the many fears that consumed her. He learned that most of her information came from watching television news programs almost all day long. He wondered if she would be as convinced that the world was falling apart if she were simply to limit her viewing time or even give it up entirely. He believed that much of her angst had been created by the continual drone of reporters hawking their sensational stories. 

I often think about those conversations with my friend as I too enter the later years of my life and hear a constant drone of bad news from the media. Unlike my friend’s mother I rarely watch the news programs. Instead I get my information from news websites on my computer each morning and then I spend the rest of my day in activities that keep my mind free from a day long cycle of worry. Still, I have experienced many nights of insomnia in which I have a tendency to blow up the darkness of news reports more than I should. It is then that I wonder if all of us are suffering from a hyperbolic news overload. 

I like to be informed, but there is a tendency in the press to grab onto one topic and repeat stories about it so much that it begins to feel more like a commercial than an opinion free recitation of facts…who, what, when, where, how. Political bents seem to slip into even the very best reporting and often those without a discernible motive are unable to command the attention of the public. In a sense we are the customers of the news who are not just allowing, but actually encouraging commentaries rather than reporting. By our preferences we have unwittingly turned the news into entertainment that thrives on keeping us afraid. 

It has been duly noted that our young are presently enduring an epidemic of depression. Little wonder they feel that way when they see the adults continually carping with one another unable to solve problems with a willingness to compromise for the sake of everyone concerned. Battles are big news. They sell papers and provide higher ratings on television. They bring attention to individuals whose thoughts my otherwise be ignored. We have become a world of audacious people vying with one another for the stage and a voice. 

There was a time when real problem solving took place in society. Bullies and liars were given little or no berth. Honorable men and women tackled real problems rather than engaging in culture wars. They considered differing solutions and worked for a common good, not a particular base of voters. The news desks were manned by people like Walter Cronkite who only occasionally voiced his personal beliefs, once when he cried when announcing that President Kennedy had died and another time when he expressed his frustration with the ongoing war in Vietnam. 

Before my mother-in-law died last year she watched the news most of the day. When we visited her she would talk of nothing else but the fears that the reporting had created in her. She kept her home dark and locked up tight as though it was a castle under siege. My father-in-law too seemed unable to trust anyone because of what he saw and read about the state of the world. It reminded me of my friend’s mother who had become a prisoner in her home because of her worries. 

There are so many people suffering from the toxic influence of news services pretending to be factual when they are actually pits of propaganda. They drone on incessantly infecting the minds of good folks who believe that we are on a precipice of destruction. They push us into conflicting tribes and encourage us to be wary of one another. The results of such propagandizing are frightening.

We hear stories of a young man who accidentally knocks on the door of the wrong house being shot in the head. We learn that two women using a driveway to turn around are attacked. A child whose ball rolls onto the wrong lawn becomes a target of fear. People are inside their homes loaded with arms, listening to dire stories of marauders and then we are shocked with they take aim at innocents because they fear that they are under attack. 

I recently contacted the county health department because the swimming pool next door has become a toxic danger to the neighborhood. I had spoken with the owners multiple times before making that call and they just smiled and said that they would do something to fix the problems. After a time as the pool sat in a deplorable condition they no longer answered the door. When I came by to ask them if there had been any progress in eliminating the brackish water that had become home to bullfrogs and who knows what else I was greeted by silence from inside the home. When nothing was done after five months I call the county health department that assured me that they would take care of the problem. 

Recently I received a message from someone at the health department. She had come by to check on the pool but nobody answered the door at the home. She explained that she does not have the authority to even walk to the backyard of the home to take photos, so she wanted to come to my yard and attempt to learn what was happening next door by peering through the cracks of my wooden fence. In essence she admitted that she was afraid of wandering around my neighbors’ property. Since nobody can’t really see anything from my yard without climbing a ladder it seems that the health department will be unable to issue any citations or orders for cleaning the scum and mosquito filled pool. In other words, this is where we are today. Everyone is afraid, even the authorities.

I would hope that like other issues that our world has faced this era of fear mongering will only be a phase. I like to think that we will tire of the constant bickering fear-filled reports. Somehow we will find our way again to a reasonable way of living together with each other. When we do it will represent a good step toward helping our young to believe once again that we are leaving them a compassionate world of opportunities rather than a cesspool of problems. Perhaps the sooner we do this, the better everyone will be. 

Each one of us is unique. We may share DNA with people whose branches on our family trees are far away from us, and even more with our siblings, but in the final analysis our differences are clear. Every person is a beautiful individual whose appearance and ways of thinking have been affected by both nature and nurture. 

We now have a better idea of how our bodies work than at any other time in history, but we are only slowly learning about the effects that our brains have on who we are, who we eventually become. As a teacher I knew that each of my students learned in different ways. In fact, I understood this from my own experiences as a student. I had to have both visual and kinesthetic activities for concepts to make sense to me. I had exhibited a bit of dyslexia in the first grade and my brilliant teacher taught me techniques for overcoming my inability to differentiate between certain letters, numbers and patterns. I also developed a unique way of studying over time in which I would pace back and forth in my bedroom talking out loud as though I was teaching someone whatever I was trying to learn. 

We know full well that most of us are born with both imperfections and unique talents. In addition to my learning differences I have fine thin hair and an almost nonexistent chin. I had to learn to deal with each of these things because they made me a bit different from what we call the norm. My physical and mental challenges were mostly benign compared to some that other humans must endure, but they reminded me to always be accepting and loving toward all people, not just those who look and think like I do. I may not fully understand the ways of some of my fellow humans but until I have lived in their shoes it would be truly arrogant of me to question the ways that they have chosen to adapt to life and find happiness. 

I once attended a weekend retreat for women that was sponsored by my church. I am admittedly not well suited for sitting and listening for long periods of time, nor do I do well when I have to sit quietly meditating. I wanted to go to the event nonetheless because I felt that it was time for me to adjust my thinking just a bit so that I might better understand others. It turned out to be one of those times when I was challenged to look at the world from a different perspective. I am all the better for my willingness to do so.

One of the speakers in particular fascinated me because he chose to address the issue of sexuality. At first he made me a bit uncomfortable in his openness about the topic, but he was calm and obviously not of a mind to shock us. He simply pointed out that our sexuality was meant to be a natural and beautiful thing, but also an individual thing just as with other aspects of our humanity. He challenged us to open our Bibles and find each of the times that Jesus spoke about sexuality in his sermons or conversations. He wanted to know how often Jesus described the only forms of sexuality that we should exhibit.

We were hard pressed to find much of anything that seemed related to sexuality in the words of Jesus. In fact, we saw through this man’s guidance that Jesus was mostly about love and accepting people as they were. It gave me a whole new perspective on issues of sexuality. I saw that as long as love and respect is present in any relationships they are good, not ugly. 

Those who study our brains and our anatomy are confirming that there are real differences between how we think and how our bodies work. There is a kind of normal curve that denotes whether any aspect of our physiology or psychology is average or different. We have no problem understanding that when it comes to intelligence there are people who have exceptionally high or low intelligence quotients, while most of us fall within an average continuum. Some of us are exceptionally healthy or beautiful while others struggle with health problems and societal judgements of our physical appearance. We tend to easily rank and accept such differences from the so called norm with every aspect of our humanity with the exception of sexuality. In fact, there are those who seem to believe that there are only two sexes, male or female, only one way of loving, heterosexual. Anything else in their way of thinking is deviant, a blasphemy. When I hear them I wonder how it would even be possible to have such vast difference between every other aspect of our humanness but not in our sexuality. Even without evidence from science and medicine it should be clear that it is unlikely that we will all be the same in our sexual relationships and thinking. 

I don’t have to live another person’s reality to know that it would be foolish to assume that each of us is merely a rubber stamp of all others. We can easily see our different shades of skin and hair and eyes. We hear the unique sounds of our voices and languages. We watch some among us rise to the level of titans in athletics or music or mathematics. We accept that we are of course very different in every possible aspect but then question those who insist on a different kind of sexuality.

Nobody forces a klutz like me to endure athletic challenges that are discomforting. Nobody questions the fact that some people despise having to write essays or complete complex mathematical calculations. We all know that our comfort levels with any aspect of life tend to depend heavily on our natural abilities and our thinking. Why should we force our own limited understandings on others even when it comes to sexuality? Why can’t we simply live and let live? Why can’t we just love like Jesus so beautifully urged us to do? Why don’t we believe his simple examples of how to treat our fellow humans?

We can’t legislate sexuality any more than we can legislate that only those with blond hair and blues eyes should be our models for beauty. If we take the time to form relationships with those who differ greatly from ourselves we usually learn that good people come in every conceivable form. We begin to accept our human differences as being normal and natural and we ultimately learn to love ourselves and others who are not like us. Instead of turning away from those courageous enough to honestly tell us how they feel, we would do far better to get to know and understand them than to fear and humiliate them. We might find that we are more alike than we might have thought. We will begin to love our differences.

I enjoyed my eighth grade year save for my mathematics class which is somewhat ironic given that I would one day become a math teacher. I found myself totally lost but still making good grades in the class. Somehow I was able to fake it, but I really never had a genuine understanding of the concepts. I remember mostly being frightened of my math teacher who often sported aviator glasses and rarely seemed to smile. I’d come home and seek help from my mother who did her best to demystify the various processes. Eventually I would simply lock myself in my bedroom, pore over the examples in my textbook and teach myself the rubrics without ever really making the connections with what I was doing and the real world. I needed to understand the “why’s” and nobody was around to explain such things to me. That would happen later in my life.

The rest of my teachers were fabulous and I enjoyed their classes and their differing methods  of conveying information. Because I have always enjoyed writing I imagined myself as a journalist and dreamed of one day writing articles for newspapers and magazines. My teacher, Mrs. Getz, intrigued me because she often spoke of the challenges that dedicated writers must  consider. One of my favorite moments with her involved a lesson on proof reading papers before turning them in to her. She spoke of the incredible process that a group undertook in creating a new Bible. She said that literally dozens of dedicated souls had read and reread and corrected every possible flaw that might have crept into the sacred text. When the books were finally printed and ready for sale someone not even associated with the massive project picked up a copy, opened it and read, “I the beginning…” I never forgot that story and it makes me laugh to this very day.

Mrs. Colby was still teaching science and still as excited about the space program as ever. In February of my final year before high school she rolled a television standing on a tall cart into our classroom and let us watch John Glenn orbit the earth. We were all giddy over that accomplishment and somehow it made the future seem so exciting, especially since much of the pioneering work took place not far from where we sat in that classroom. In fact, we all knew people who were employed by NASA in those days. While I watched the work of brilliant engineers come to fruition, my brother Mike continued to dream of one day being part of the efforts to reach out into space. His mathematical abilities were already becoming apparent to his teachers and his inventiveness was stunning. I often imagined the kind of incredible conversations that he and our father might have had.

Pat continued to bring sheer delight to our family. He had Daddy’s love of humor and like our father, he collected friends easily. He was also a promising athlete, able to run like the wind, pitch like a big leaguer and adapt to virtually any sport quickly. He was quick witted, creative and a people magnet. In many ways he and Mike were becoming an amalgam of our father, each developing similar interests and talents that they shared with the father they would never really know. 

I enjoyed my stint as Captain of the Twirlers on the drill team and met lots of good friends along the way. My mother had always wanted to be a twirler herself but never had the opportunity to take the lessons and learn the skills. She drove me back and forth to lessons with Yvonne McCutchin at a Houston City Park while also teaching school, taking care of the house and family business, attending my brothers’ ball games, serving as the Historian of the church Women’s Club and enjoying fun evening for herself in a bowling league. While I took her efforts for granted at the time I now wonder where she got all of her energy.

The school year ended with the May tradition of honoring the Blessed Virgin. The annual event always involved the eighth grade class in a ceremony dedicated to the mother of Jesus. I was surprisingly chosen by my fellow students to be part of a special group that crowned Our Lady with flowers. Mama was so excited, but I was simply ready to move up to high school. It was the graduation ceremony that brought me the most joy, especially when they awarded me with a one year scholarship to Mt. Carmel High School which was located right next door. 

Grandpa and Grandma Little came to town to witness my transition from junior high school as did all of my aunts and uncles. After the ceremony we had a party at our house where Grandpa presented me with a book called Great Lives, Great Deeds. In the inscription that he wrote on the title page he challenged me to make my life one of integrity and good works. Somehow I felt that he was speaking to me as he knew my father might have done. I cherish that book to this very day and often joke that if my house were on fire it would be one of the first things I would grab on my way out the door. 

Lynda’s mother, Mrs. Barry, gave me the first perfume that I had ever possessed. It was Estee Lauder Youth Dew and it made me feel just a more mature than my image in the mirror had done. It would become one of my all time favorite scents and I continue to wear. it often. Aunt Polly and Uncle Jack gave me a 1962 Proof Set of coins and Mama presented me with a watch. To my delight I received lots of cash which I saved for my first year in high school. My graduation was the first really big celebration and gathering since Daddy had died. Somehow I felt that he was present and that he approved of how well all of us had done.