Category: Commentary

My Grandpa Little was my hero, and yet as I think back on this, I realize that even when I held him in high esteem I somewhat underestimated what a great man he was. He was only minimally educated much as people of his era were. Nonetheless he was able to read and write. He devoured books, newspapers and magazines and then dotted his conversations with information that he had learned. He was a builder who was able to repair almost anything in a house. He had a folksy wisdom and more than anything he was a remarkable storyteller. In another time he might have been an historian or a journalist or even a writer of books. He was also a survivor who adapted to whatever challenges came his way. He always did so with grace. 

When my grandfather was about 90 years old he was still incredibly healthy and his mind was brilliant. He owned a car and drove himself around his neighborhood, but not much farther. On one occasion he was leaving a grocery store when he accidentally backed into a cart that someone had left in the middle of the parking lot. It bothered him so much that he had not noticed the cart that he decided that it was time to quit driving. He believed that his mistake meant that he no longer belonged behind the wheel of a car. 

Grandpa drove carefully home and called one of his granddaughters. He told her that he wanted to give her his car with the proviso that she would be willing to drive him around whenever he needed to run errands or go see his doctor. She was thrilled to accept the deal and he boasted that a “menace” had been taken off the road. 

I marveled that he understood the nature of his aging process and was more concerned about the safety of others than his own pride. With his own doing he also rented a room from a young widow whose only hope of keeping her home was to lease space to a roommate. He would stay with her for eighteen years and they would become like father and daughter to one another. Because he was incredibly healthy and very much in control of his mind until he turned one hundred eight, he helped her with repairs on her home and nursed her when she was sick. Eventually they pooled their resources to pay for food and utilities. It was a lovely arrangement that seemed to work well for both of them as well as a third person who eventually came to live in the house with them. It was like Golden Girls meets Three’s Company.

My son-in-law’s grandfather was very much like mine. He reached a point after the death of his wife when he decided without any prodding to surrender his car and sign up for a suite in an independent senior living home. For him it was a logical move that allowed him to continue to live a full life while also being part of a community that watched over him. His family not only visited often but they also picked him up for family parties and celebrations and sometimes just for watching ballgames together. He kept his sense of humor and enjoyed great times until he was one hundred years old. As his health grew a bit worse he shifted to assisted living without a complaint. 

We each enjoy our homes, our privacy and our independence, but as the years go by our physical and mental health often begins to decline. Unless we live in a family community much like the Amish do, we may reach a point of being unable to care for ourselves as well as we should. The greatest gift that we can give our children is the willingness to adjust to the aging process without battling to hold on to the way we have always done things. Readily accepting the realities of our situations lessens the anxieties that our offspring may have regarding our safety. How that happens may look different in each case, but when we begin to defer to the care of others we are demonstrating great wisdom, not weakness. To everything there really is a season.

I’m still quite healthy and capable, but at my age things can change in a heartbeat. I have already instructed my daughters not to listen to me if I become foolish or incapable of making good decisions. I love my home and my routines, but I don’t wish to become a burden on my daughters by fighting their attempts to keep me safe. I keep thinking that I want to create a kind of living will for them in which I state my intention to trust them with their decision in the future. I would like to do this while I still have total control over my mind. Perhaps if I put my thoughts in writing, my children will be able to show me those documents if I balk later. It will be like a kind of insurance policy for their well-being and mine. They won’t have to second guess their decisions because I will have made it clear that I trust them to know when I need to give up my car, my home and my independence. 

I hope that I will actually be much like my grandfather. My health is exceptional right now and I still write daily, read constantly and teach mathematics to a number of students. I don’t want to take my present status for granted because I have seen so many situations where everything changed rapidly. I want my daughters to be certain that in my right mind I realize that a time may come when they must take control of my future. It will lift the burden of uncertainty and even guilt that often comes with eldercare. I want to be like my Grandpa and my son-in-law’s granddaddy as well. They were incredibly wise men who gave their families the gift of peace of mind without any strings attached. I can’t think of anything better. 

I joined Twitter a while back but I originally had no idea how to navigate it. I mostly used it to lead people to my blog website just as I did on Facebook. I am not sure if I ever got any takers from Twitter, but I kept my link there in a fantastical hope that one day a publisher, director, or bookseller might view my writing and then reach out to me to talk about getting my work to a larger audience. I can dream like anyone else.

My blog has never really caught on beyond few loyal readers who appear to like most of what I write.. I know that I have lost some of my most ardent followers because I chose to write political tracts that offended them in some way. I won’t apologize for my views because at least for now I remain in a country where i have the freedom the express myself. 

I still have my infamously unpublished book which I believe to be of merit for a wide audience. It’s not that I don’t want the public to see it, but true to the form of my life, something dramatic always seems to happen just when I have the time and the funds to get my work ready for a launch. This time it involves my sweet father-in-law who is newly widowed and recently undone by emergency bowel surgery and a life threatening case of Covid-19. Needless to say I have put the book on the back burner for the time being, but I am more and more often feeling guilty for making so many excuses for not presenting it to the public because it is a story that becomes more and more important over time.

Lots of people are talking about mental illness these days. What they don’t often discuss is how difficult it is to get help for family members who need it. The first step is finding someone willing to take a new patient. There are so many blockades to that process that it is almost impossible to describe. Insurance defines who gets which doctor. Of late many of the most prestigious psychiatrists only take cash. Some practices are full. Getting an appointment is frustrating and then comes the battle with the person who is sick. Not all mentally ill persons go gently into the good night of therapy. 

When my mom was her sickest I cried, pleaded, screamed, and one time even slapped her in the face to persuade her to accept help. I am not an abusive person. I abhor physical violence, but I could not watch her deteriorating for another moment. When she balked and refused to keep an appointment with her doctor I lost it and found my hand on her cheek as she snarled the poisonous and psychotic mania of her bipolar disorder. It was a low point in my life, but it worked. I got her to the help that she needed and for a time saw my sweet mother once again. 

I feel for families dealing with a mentally ill relative. It becomes an unwanted and exhausting task to keep a noncompliant person as healthy as possible. Over and over again the same battles arise and there is always a temptation to simply walk away from all responsibility. Only love is a powerful enough motivator to fight the system and the person who is sick. There is always the hope that one day the illness will somehow magically disappear, but that so rarely happens. 

I am proud of how things worked out with my mother. I think that in the end she understood that my intentions were always good in caring for her. I have found notations in notebooks indicating that she really did know that something was very wrong with her that she was unable to control. It was a sad way for her to have to live her life because by nature she was a delightful sprite whose heart was open, caring and lovely. We always knew she was getting sick when she sat in the dark brooding over manufactured beliefs that someone wanted to pin a crime on her. The person who emerged during those times was the antithesis of my mom. 

Mental illness is a scary thing and it is behind the rest of medicine by decades, maybe even centuries. There are still people who are spooked by it or think that it can be cured with a good attitude or lots of prayer. There have been few people on this earth as devoted to God as my mother was. She read her Bible daily and prayed earnestly. She was always kind and willing to give her last dime to someone that she thought might need it more than she did. Prayers were not enough to cure her, but they did give me and my brothers the patience and comfort that we needed to push her to accept medical help. 

Life was mostly good with my mother but the specter of mental illness always loomed large. Her bipolar disorder was chronic. The chemistry in her brain went awry in a cyclical fashion that marked the seasons of our lives for over forty years. It was a painful disease for my mom and one that affected my brothers and me as well. It distressed us to see her suffering over and over again, but I would tell anyone who is dealing with such misery that keeping our mother as well as possible was one of the most rewarding things we ever did. My book documents our journey. Watch for A Little Bit of Living in the near future. I just have to get a few things in order from my father-in-law and I’ll get serious about presenting a book that I really believe will bring hope to many folks. My failure to launch must surely end soon.

I believe that angels walk among us. Sometimes we don’t know who they are, and other times it becomes apparent to us that a certain person is far more special than the rest of us mere mortals. Sharon Saunders was one of the angels, a gentle loving and compassionate soul whose smile lit up rooms and warmed hearts. I am one of the lucky ones who got to meet her and call her my friend. 

Toward the end of my career as a teacher I took a leap of faith and accepted a job as a high school Algebra I and Algebra II teacher at the first KIPP Charter high school in Houston. I had heard about the different ways that the KIPP schools operated on one of Oprah’s programs and I was fascinated by their unique approach for educating students that included, small classes and deep involvement of a trifecta of parents, teachers and students. Their educational philosophy was built around an idea that required teams of teachers, social workers and counselors who would get to know each student and his or her family personally. 

Sharon Saunders was a gifted social worker with a degree from Columbia University that she earned while living in New York City.. She was the person who would help guide our students through their socio-emotional needs and she was exceptionally well suited for the task. Sharon genuinely cared about the well-being of every person who walked into her office. She greeted students, parents and teachers with her ever present warm and welcoming smile. Everyone had a sense that when they spoke to Sharon she would listen with laser sharp focus and then solve whatever problems had occurred with an uncanny wisdom.

Students sought Sharon’s counsel because they all knew that she was honestly concerned about each and every one of them. She took time to get to know them no matter how long it took to confide their fears, abuses, longings and dreams. She knew when they were troubled and what they needed to be their best selves. I always believed that Sharon was the heart and soul of our high school because she saved so many students, parents and even teachers from their anxieties and demons. Talking with her was a spiritual experience in the feeling that she somehow always managed to find and love the essence of every person who came to her. Her office was a home away from home, calm in a storm.

At the end of my first year at Kipp Houston High School those of us on the team assigned to the Class of 2010 embarked on a trip known as the Civil Rights tour. We loaded onto charter buses with the freshman class and the team that had worked with them all year long to help them become rising sophomores. Sharon and I were assigned the task of making sandwiches for the crew at our various stops each day. Over rows of bread that we filled with luncheon meat and cheese, the two of us got to know each other intimately and locked in our friendship from that moment forward. 

The following school year I was named the Dean of Faculty and Sharon became the Director of the Social Work Department. Once each week before the sun had even arisen all of the school administrators would meet to plan, address issues and keep track of the needs of our students and teachers. Sharon always seemed to be the voice of reason that we needed as we guided our many souls. She would listen intently to everything that was being said, only speaking once she had critically heard and thought about all of the viewpoints being voiced. Then in a quiet, measured and soothing tone she always seemed able to get the to very heart of the matter and suggest a solution that worked for everyone concerned. She was brilliant!

I retired five years after I had met Sharon. I worried that I would lose the beautiful connection that I had with her. I need not have had such a thought. She would be by my side without fail. Even upon the death of my mother only days after my final work day at the school, Sharon comforted me in her magically soothing way just as she had done for hundreds of students who sought her almost magical intuitions that calmed and guided them. 

A small group who had worked together formed a kind of social club called the Rainbow Connection. Sharon was a charter member of the diverse collection of talented women who met regularly to laugh and feel safe to be themselves. Happily they asked me to join them. Over the years we enjoyed the kind of camaraderie and friendship that lasted even as each of us took different roads in our lives. We laughed and cried and shared sometimes heartbreaking stories. Our meetings at restaurants often lasted until every other customer had left and the manager had to politely ask us to leave. Our guru and voice of reason at those get togethers was always Sharon whose smile reminded us that we were going to be okay.

We saw less of Sharon during the Covid pandemic and the times of isolation that hit us all. Her health began to fail, but she still called to see how we were doing or to let us know about a former student who was hurting that she thought we might want to contact. She tended to downplay her own troubles. She was able to sense when we were feeling discouraged or having difficulties of our own. She selflessly guided every conversation to our needs rather than her own. She was the eternal optimist and woman of intense faith even as her body began to fail her. 

I loved Sharon Saunders deeply as did virtually everyone whose path had crossed hers. The students who once sat in her office seeking guidance and love are now adults with college degrees, businesses of their own, families that they adore. All of them speak of Sharon with a kind of reverence. She was the best of the school, the inspiration of their lives, a woman of integrity and devotion to the betterment of every person that she ever met. As the students always said, she was the real deal, someone without a phony bone in her body. She was an angel.

None of us have any doubt that Sharon Saunders is now in her heavenly home free of the physical pain that so often stalked her. The choir of angels have welcomed her as one of them while memories of her and her radiant smile will continue to bring light those of us who were fortunate enough to have known her. Sharon was the best of the rainbow that we forged. We will miss her deeply and always be thankful that we knew her. 

The heat has been relentless this summer. I find it more difficult to endure as I grow older. I can’t believe that I spent the first twenty years of my life in a home without air conditioning. Somehow the hot days of summer in Texas barely registered with me back then. Now I’ve become like a fragile southern belle who wilts upon emerging into the relentless sun. 

This year has been especially brutal with record setting temperatures in the high nineties before it was even July. Some parts of my state are experiencing highs of one hundred four and rain has been elusive. I’ve had to do my gardening in the early morning hours or just before sunset when a slight breeze finds its way into my yard. Even the neighborhood swimming pools are mostly empty during the hottest hours of the day. 

Where I live having constantly high temperatures is a reason for concern. It means that the ocean and gulf waters are becoming perfect breeding grounds for massive hurricanes. Around here we won’t breathe a sigh of relief until the end of October when the season has passed and we have once again been spared from nature’s fury. This year has a number of us very worried we seen this pattern before and it rarely turns out well.

I think the whole world is exhausted and even a bit crazy right now. We have witnessed a lifetime’s worth of tragedies in a very short span of time. Covid-19 is still claiming victims, thankfully at a much slower rater, but vulnerable people that I know continue to catch it and experience harsh symptoms and extended recovery time. I hate to think of what might have happened to them without their vaccines and boosters because they have been very sick. So it would be nice if Mother Nature gave us a bit of a reprieve this hurricane season. We are so weary and the thought of a furious storm is a bit more discomfiting than usual.

i watch the war in Ukraine from afar but my hearts is so heavy for the people there. It’s tempting to look away, but I know that doing so would be wrong. I want to support the efforts of the citizens there, but feel as though my offerings are so small. I worry about China hinting that they want to regain Taiwan and rumblings that China may assist Russia in taking Ukraine. I feel a bit overwhelmed by the fact that such things are happening at the very time when it would be nice for the whole world to take a bit of a breather from the tragedy of the pandemic. in a perfect universe we would all be getting along, but instead our human natures are trending toward hurting and taking advantage. A big hurricane during a time like this will just be a poison cherry on top of the insanity that is our reality. 

I have literally lost count of the mass shootings. I find myself being more vigilant than ever when I go out. I’m not avoiding interactions with my fellow humans but I’m being cautious like I was when I was growing up with a single mom. I had become much more relaxed and naive about what might happen as I went about my daily routines but recent events have reminded me to always be aware of my surroundings. I find myself searching the lay of the land and considering what I might do if disaster were to strike. It’s the kind of thing my mother taught me so that we would be able to live normal lives without a father. I’ve had to resurrect my skills. It saddens me that we can’t agree on how to change this trend, but that seems to be part of the problems we face as well. Sadly the heat that we are experiencing is yet one more problem that we have ignored for far too long.

We have so many difficulties that we must address but we keep getting distracted by our differences. We somehow can’t agree on solutions, so we tend to just keep quibbling rather than studying the issues and making progress toward finding solutions that actually work. In all honestly it both saddens and angers me. It worries me as well. There is great danger in always be at odds.

On a small level life is good. I enjoyed a fabulous Fourth of July celebration with my neighbors. We convened in the cooler hours of the evening and munched on barbecue, grilled vegetables and desserts. We danced on the driveway while children were frolicking in the grass. We enjoyed an amazing fireworks display on our very diverse cul-de-sac. Nobody worried about politics, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. We were just happy neighbors enjoying each other and our freedoms. If a hurricane comes we will surely band together once again to help each other during the storm and its aftermath. I just wish our little United Nation of people on our street might be an example for everyone in all corners of the globe. That would certainly make for a better more peaceful world and maybe we would finally get serious about dealing with the climate that worsens with each passing year.

I suspect that most people feel a bit like me. It’s way too hot for comfort and the world itself is all too often on fire. We could surely use a respite, a bit of rain without flooding, an end to wars and shootings. We still need to heal and that will take some time. Maybe the first step lies in checking on our neighbors and really caring about them even when they are very different from ourselves. Even when it is hot we have the power to cool things down one person at a time. 

Someone was asking if I ever find beauty in chaos. I guess the answer to that is a full stop “No!” I’ve had enough chaotic moments to last a lifetime. I am one of those people who not only prefers order, I actually require it. Blame it on a bit of dyslexia or attention deficit disorder or obsessive compulsive tendencies or perhaps all three things. My brain literally stops working correctly when unpredictable disorder ensues.

As a teacher I planned every moment of every day down to the smallest detail. Because I understood that things rarely go exactly as hoped, I prepared lists of alternatives from A to Z in case something did not work or the unusual occurred. I walked up and down the aisles of my classroom considering how well students would be able to see and whether or not I would in turn be able to keep an eye on them. I attempted to predict all of the possible unintended consequences of having almost thirty souls confined to a small space and prepared accordingly. 

I stocked my classroom with extra paper, pencils, markers, pens, tissues, paper towels, paper clips, staples, bandaids, anything that someone might have occasion to need. My lesson plans included extra work in case my students wizzed through a lesson. I had alternative learning activities in the chance that my original instructions bombed. I kept books for students to read if they finished tests early, puzzles they might do for enrichment if they seemed bored. Mine was an orderly world on paper, but all too often everything changed in an instant.

I’ve experienced the gamut of unexpected occurrences. I’ve had a nine year old student bring powdered chlorine to school which he sold to other students as cocaine. I’ve seen the usual vomiting and unnerving epileptic seizure. I’ve had to leave my classroom in the care of another teacher while I coaxed one of my students from jamming a pair of scissors into his jugular. I’ve had to break up fights and pass out tissues to girls who had just lost their boyfriends. I’ve had projects that were fun but ended up making messes in the classroom that I had not anticipated. In spite of my best laid plans my students surprised me again and again. 

Life has a way of being chaotic at times no matter how much we try to keep things going smoothly. We don’t expect to have an accident or for someone to get sick enough to need hospitalization. We rock along and then someone dies without warning. If we are really unfortunate we find ourselves in some very dangerous situations. We can only be so safe, take so many precautions. It is impossible to isolate ourselves from chaos, even if we decide to become hermits. 

My maternal grandmother reached a point in life after which she never left her home. Two of her unmarried sons lived with her and cared for her. They paid the bills, purchased groceries, made repairs on the house. She happily tended her garden and cooked and cleaned. She seemed not to miss interacting with society at all. Her children and grandchildren visited regularly so she was never alone. She was content with the slow pace of of final years and the only time she left the comfort of her isolation was when she had medical emergencies. 

Most of us would not want such a lifestyle nor would we be able to have it. As we go about our business we never know what might happen to us. We accept that there will be times when we completely lose control of our situations for the joy of interacting with our fellow humans. Chaos in small doses once in awhile is not so bad. I can take being part of a massive crowd at a ball game or a concert because I know that it is only temporary. If I had to endure that kind of thing frequently I would become unbearably anxious.

I often think of people who live in war zones, the ultimate in chaos. i really don’t know how they keep their minds intact. For me that would be the worst case scenario which is why I never understand those who openly advocate for things like civil war. I suspect that such folks have not really thought through the horrors of such a situation, the deaths, the damaged buildings, the homelessness. War is one of the most unreasonable and unbearable sins against humanity. 

Even animals have an order and design to their existences. Bees have a chain of command and a hive that is as organized as it gets. Watching ants build a mound is fascinating. There are rules, instincts that only fall apart if other species arrive to throw the system into disarray. Chaos is unnatural. A virus follows natural rules even as humans reek chaos dealing with it. 

I am a planner, a quiet thinker. I’ll stick to as much routine as possible. Soon enough chaos will come my way. Hopefully I will ready to adjust to it, but I am rather certain that I may get overwhelmed by it and I won’t enjoy that feeling.