Category: Commentary

Red is a daring color. It reminds me of royalty, roses, Christmas, valentines, cardinals that come to play in my yard, happy faces after a walk along the beach in summer or a hike through the mountains in winter. It is one of my favorite colors to wear because it enhances my lips, my fingers, my toes and the sallow tones of my pale skin. Red is one of nature’s most wonderful hues that brightens even the dreariest of days. It is striking and cheerful and bold, but should never be overdone. All it takes is a hint of red here and there to catch the eye and stand out in the midst of the more commonplace neutral shades. When used properly it is magnificent. When overdone or in the wrong shade it can ruin an otherwise perfect canvas.

I remember being invited to a going away party for a friend who was sadly moving away from our group. The host of the gathering had just remodeled an older home with stunning success. All of the walls in every room were gray with white trim. They served as a canvas for his furnishings and artwork. There was a coherent theme of using a sparse but stunning shock of red throughout the house. In one room there might be bright red pillows along with a huge modern painting with a slash of the same hue. In another room the red might show up in dinnerware or a rug. There was just enough and not too much to be incredibly cohesive and striking. He had used red the way it should always be presented. 

A woman can be stunning in a red dress, but the effect fades if she also paints her nails and her lips a bright red then adds red shoes and a scarlet purse. On the other hand if she does a mani/pedi in red then that should blend with her clothing rather than match it exactly. Too much red looks cheap, but red used in just the right way is breathtaking. 

I am a lover of all of the old Alfred Hitchcock movies. In fact, I own a collection of CDs that I often take in our trailer when we go on trips in the winter when the evenings become too cold to stay outside. While I love them all, I have always been fascinated with Vertigo, a classic thriller in which the lead character attempts to transform a woman from ordinary to elegant. The first thing he does is soften the color of her hair and remove the excess of red from her wardrobe and makeup. The result is miraculous and even as a girl I marveled at how red can be either beautiful or ugly depending on how it is used.

Red also comes in many different hues. There are some that seem to have hints of yellow and others with a dash of blue. My own skin will die if there is even a smidgen of yellow but shine beautifully with the bluish reds. We older women have to be very careful with colors because our skin is not as vibrant as it was in our youth. Choosing what goes best with our skin tones is more important than picking something that delights us. 

Long ago my mother advised me to choose classic fashions rather than trendy pieces. She insisted that it was best to choose items that compliment the hair, skin and body type of the wearer rather than attempting to fit in with the most current ways of doing things. For me that means wearing neutral tones accented with what I call the jewel tones of red, royal blue, deep turquoise and burgundy. I adore a lovely green but it is very difficult to find a shade that does not make me appear to be ill. The right red, on the other hand, is easy to obtain and it does wonders for the way I look as well as my disposition. 

I often wonder what it is about us humans that we quite naturally have tendencies to decorate ourselves and the world around us. We might just as well have kept everything in our lives utilitarian but even in ancient civilizations humans attempted to go beyond the basic need for clothing and shelter with colors and creations of the imagination. It is as though it is instinctive to want to express ourselves and our surroundings with more than just the neutral shades of nature. We look at the birds and the butterflies and transform ourselves with the colors of their feathers and wings. 

There is a red cardinal figurine in my sitting room that once belonged to my husband’s Aunt Elsie, a most delightful woman who took me under her wing when I was still a very young bride almost overcome by all of my new relatives. She knew to invite me to work with her in her kitchen where we were able to talk without all of the noise of the twittering crowd waiting in the living room for one of her feasts. She welcomed me by confiding that she was so very happy that her nephew had found someone like me with whom to spend his life. I loved her deeply from that moment and the bright red of that bird that once sat in her living room catches my eye every single day and reminds me of my good fortune in spending time with her. 

Red is the color of our life blood. It is one of our most treasured hues. I for one love it and plan to display it in my home and on myself, but I’ve decided never to get a red car no matter how cute one is. Studies show that people in red cars get stopped for speeding more often than any other color. I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but with my sometimes heavy foot I won’t take any chances on standing out. I’ll just admire those zippy red sports cars from afar and get my fix of red in small of brilliant doses.

Chewing gum has caused a lot of trouble in my lifetime. It has encased my shoe like a spiderweb, almost always when the footwear was fairly new. I’ve had to remove a knot of gum from my little girl’s long curly hair. I’ve found so much of gum under the desks in my classrooms that I have often wondered how many years it has been hanging there turning into stony fossils each with a story of its own. I’ve unwittingly sat on a stray piece of gum and ruined a perfectly good pair of slacks. I’ve probably spent as much time instructing students to spit gum into the trashcan as I have teaching the quadratic formula. I’ve gone bonkers listening to someone smack and pop their gum and I’ve been guilty of putting a my own well chewed hunk of gum on the bedpost overnight. What I’ve always tried to figure out is who invented this gooey stuff and why did they do it?

An infamous foe of the Texas revolution, Santa Anna, is often credited with being the first to bring gum to the United States. In fact, after his fall at the Battle of San Jacinto followed by other failures he was exiled from Mexico and ended up in New York City where he often chewed a gooey substance called chicle that came from a native tree in Mexico. His secretary, Thomas Adams, was fascinated by his boss’s habit and came up with the idea of mixing licorice with the rubbery substance to create Black Jack gum which became a sensation at the end of the nineteenth century. Oddly enough Adams first tried to make rubber out of chicle but when that failed he thought of Santa Anna’s habit of chomping continually on the naturally rubbery substance and realized that there might be money to be made mass producing a product that eventually came to be known as gum. 

I remember having a teacher who chided students who tried to sneak their gum chewing into the classroom by insisting that it was well past time for them to be over the kind of oral fixation that babies and toddlers often have. I always thought that his comments were a bit hypocritical given that he smoked while teaching back in the days when such things were still acceptable. I suspect that we humans indeed have a kind of primitive instinct to chew or gnaw or suck on things.

I thought one of my daughters would never give up sucking her thumb. I worried that she would be bullied in school if she did not find a way to quit her habit. The clock was ticking and I was using all kinds of alternatives and psychology to keep her from continuing the habit that I feared would make her the brunt of insults and bullying. Miraculously she simply quit one day just before she was scheduled to begin kindergarten. She never even looked back nor did she have an unusual attachment to putting things in her mouth. She just went cold turkey and that was the end of that. 

I’ve seen people chew on their fingers or suck on their hair. I was one of those kids who put teeth marks in my pencils. Whenever I felt anxious about my schoolwork I found myself unconsciously putting the end of my writing instrument inside my mouth while I contemplated strategies for solving the problems. I suppose that there is something instinctual about using our mouths as a kind of anxiety blocker, so gum was no doubt a more preferable way of satisfying that inclination than chewing on a stick or biting lips or smoking a cigarette or a pipe. Santa Anna and Thomas Adams somehow tapped into our need to soothe ourselves, but I can’t imagine why licorice was his flavor of choice. 

Of course now every grocery store check out lane is filled with a huge variety of gum of every conceivable flavor and type. Those products have unwittingly destroyed property and items of clothing in businesses, schools and homes across the land. Who has not experience the joy of becoming encased in a weblike goo simply by walking on the pavement on a hot summer day?Virtually every mom keeps peanut butter on hand not just for the favorite sandwiches of kids, but to use as a remediation when a chunk of gum ends up wrapped around every strand of long hair. We could probably glue together a stone wall with all of the chewed up gum that has been tossed without thought of the damage it might do. Never mind the general irritation that it sometimes creates.

Have you ever been in the presence of someone furiously chewing and snapping gum? The cringe worthiness of such an encounter can be as horrible as the sound of fingernails scratching across a blackboard. For those of you too young to know what that is, I can assure you that it causes an uncomfortable sensation that wracks the nerves. In such instances I have to look away or leave because otherwise I might suddenly switch to teacher mode and order the individual to spit out the gum or face the consequences.

I admit that gum has its soothing features and I enjoy a smack or two now and again. I’m not totally against its use but I sure wish that someone had thought about rules for disposing of it that everyone would agree to follow. We don’t spit food on the ground or attempt to hide bits of it on furniture, so how to did we come to think it was a good idea to dispose of gum by tossing it wherever we happen to be? Enjoy that chiclet wherever you are, just stop the damage to our world that gum has caused for over a hundred years. Remember there is some poor soul working with a putty knife and a garbage can every moment of every day attempting to clean up the mess. Have a heart. Think before you roll that gum into a little ball and toss it thoughtlessly where it will wait to attack someone’s shoe or clothing or hair. Think of it as being as dangerous as a match and walk it over to a proper container where it will do no harm. It’s the right thing to do.

I was a ridiculously young and naive bride. I had barely ventured beyond the borders of my neighborhood when I decided to marry my husband, Mike. My life had been quite narrowly defined and the role models that I had were limited mostly to members of my family, teachers, and the ladies who lived on the street where I lived. When I was introduced to Mike’s female relatives I felt mostly overwhelmed because they appeared to me to be almost uniformly sophisticated, beautiful, and worldly in a way with which I was unfamiliar. They even wore stylish hats to Christmas dinner! 

While I was certain that Mike was my one true love I felt awkward and quite different from the rest of his family. I suppose that I was all too much like Tom Branson, the Irish chauffeur who married into the wealth and prestige of the Grantham family in Downton Abbey. Mike’s kin were very kind to me, but I was self-conscious and sensed that I didn’t quite fit in. It would be years before I matured enough to build up my confidence and feel quite equal even to those who appeared to be my betters. Along the way I found the one person who would inspire me and demonstrate to me exactly how to be a woman of distinction and great strength. Her name was Rosemary and she was married to Mike’s father’s first cousin. We called her Aunt Rosemary.

Rosemary stood out even among the lovely ladies who populated Mike’s family. Her Irish features pegged her as a descendant of the Emerald Isle even before I knew her story. She had grown up in Chicago, the daughter of a plumber as she often liked to note. She possessed a strong Catholic faith and the firm resolve to help the underdogs of this world when she set out from home to work as a nurse. Along the way she met a very handsome Puerto Rican doctor and the two of them fell in love and began a partnership that would define both romance and enduring commitment. They settled in Houston where he became a noted cardiologist and she devoted her time and talents to supporting his career and raising five lovely daughters. From the time that I first met Rosemary she instantly impressed me as one of the most genuinely loving people that I had ever known. In spite of the awe that I felt for her, she made me feel comfortable and safe. I would silently observe her over the years and vow to pattern myself after her as best I might.

It’s difficult to explain the essence of Rosemary. She was down to earth and refined at one and the same time. She never forgot her own humble beginnings but she was also able to entertain kings and potentates with ease. Perhaps it was because, even with the trappings of success, she never attempted to be anything more than herself, an incredibly giving and sympathetic individual. Rosemary was the kind of person who lived completely outside of herself. She was as kind to the downtrodden as to an influential kingmaker. She read and contemplated the gospels and then lived them as fully as anyone that I have ever known. She was the consummate mother, a devoted wife, an ever faithful friend, and a lifelong learner. She read with a voracious appetite and enjoyed contemplating and discussing new ideas. She was a natural beauty whose inner goodness radiated from her angelic face. She loved and is still loved by all who have had the good fortune to know her. 

Rosemary was my mother-in-law Mary’s best friend. The two of them seemed destined to be together. They shared the same birthday, February 4. They married cousins who are more like brothers. They were highly intelligent women in their own right who were capable of holding their own in even the most esoteric discussions. They both understood how to love deeply and unconditionally and their bond with one another was strong. When my mother-in-law died it was a great loss to everyone. Undoubtedly it was devastating to Rosemary who no longer had her beloved confidante. In characteristic fashion Rosemary quietly assumed the role of guardian over her friend’s family. She watched over my mother just as Mary had. She helped my father-in-law to deal with his grief and celebrated his joy when he found a new bride. She kept in contact with Mike so that he would be certain of her love. She was the guardian angel that I had always known her to be.

Rosemary had a more difficult time spreading her joy in her final days on earth. She had an accident that left her with broken bones and limited mobility. Her healing process was long and tedious due to her age but she was determined to continue to lead her life with as much gusto as she was able to muster. Eventually her health deteriorated even more and she spent her final years bedridden and under the care of nurses.

Rosemary faced down challenges and tragedies for most of her lifetime and she did so done so with wisdom and grace. She was continually surrounded by many people who loved and respected her. In many ways she epitomized the well lived life and was the ultimate feminist. She followed her heart and chose the path that best suited her. Hers was a lifetime of service, a lofty goal which she achieved with humility and little fanfare. She raised five warm hearted and accomplished daughters who like their mother have been a gift to all who know them. Even after all of these years I can’t think of anyone that I would rather emulate than Rosemary. 

As a young girl I used to read stories of saints and biographies of women as I searched for a life that I felt I might attempt to follow. Most of the saints appeared to be too perfect to me except perhaps St. Theresa. Few of the famous women about whom I read captured my fancy other than Eleanor Roosevelt. There was no way that I might have known that I would one day meet the woman who most closely resembled the kind of person that I wanted to be. I knew that Rosemary was my icon almost from the first time that I saw her tending her brood of excited little girls. Nothing about her ever disappointed me. She had the imperfections and fears that are normal for all humans, but she transcended them with her unselfish and giving heart. She taught me that the key to a good life lies in the simple everyday things that we do for those who need our love. 

I continued to learn how to be an amazing woman from Rosemary. Of late I have marveled at her courage and her ability to set her own pain aside. I still hope that I might slowly but surely become more and more like her. It is a lofty goal, but one that has been my holy grail for decades. Rosemary was a true warrior among women and I am most grateful that I have been a recipient of her love. 

Rosemary K. Garcia died on Easter Sunday, a fitting day for someone like her. I have no doubt that she went immediately to heaven. I still thank her for being the woman who inspired me most. She was a living Irish blessing among us and now she is a saint. “May the roads rise to meet you, may the winds be always at your back, may the sunshine warm your face, the rains fall soft on your fields, and until we meet again may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.” I love you, Rosemary!

All cultures and religions seem to have some form of coming of age ceremonies. The timing of these rituals varies but usually occurs somewhere in the mid-teenage years. Many of my Hispanic female students celebrated the transition into a new stage of life with elaborate Quinciniera ceremonies at the age of fifteen. In the Jewish faith there are Bar Mitzvahs and in the Catholic Church there is the sacrament of Confirmation. Sometimes turning sixteen means being eligible to apply for a driver’s license or having permission from parents to go out on dates. I’ve even known of young people who get their first cars at sixteen to begin driving themselves to school and helping with family errands.

I remember my sixteenth birthday, but, as was more the norm back in the sixties, there was not a great deal of fanfare attached to that day. My mother would not have been able to afford the extra cost of purchasing more insurance so that I might drive, so my days behind the wheel of a car were delayed until I was working and able to pay the associated bills on my own. What I did receive were very symbolic gifts from my mom. 

She had purchased a beautiful royal blue wool pencil skirt for me that made me feel more womanly and mature than the gathered and pleated skirts that I usually wore. She included a pale blue sweater with a V neck that plunged just enough to make me look grown up, but not enough to expose much of my anatomy. The outfit complimented my thin body so well that I felt like a princess when I gazed in the mirror at how lovely it made me look and feel. 

An additional present from Mama was my very first tube of lipstick. It was the palest of pinks which gave a bit of color to my face without appearing to be ridiculous. I was over the moon with happiness that my mother had so symbolically informed me that she thought I was mature enough to take a step forward into becoming an adult. That moment might have brought me perfect bliss but for the silly antics of my younger brothers who behaved like silly kids upon seeing me so transformed. Their childish reaction was to snatch the tube of lipstick from my fingers and begin a game of catch that annoyed me to the point of screaming at them. Their laughter and silliness drove me to anger, but there was no retrieving my precious cosmetic. Suddenly one of them made a wrong move and my happiness dissolved into tears as I witnessed my lipstick tube hurling to the ground, coming open, and smashing into a pool of pink goo. Somehow in that moment I felt as though I had taken two steps backward into childishness. It was my mother who calmed the situation by chiding my brothers and assuring me that she would replace the ruined lipstick.

I usually had to wear a uniform to school but to my great pleasure my sixteenth birthday coincided with a free dress day on campus. It was a cold November day just as it had always been before the earth began to warm, so I bundled off to school with a coat hiding my brand new clothes. I’ll never forget standing at my locker, slipping out of my outerwear and hearing one of the guys in my class exclaim that I looked fabulous. Nothing like that had ever before happened and I really did feel like the most beautiful girl in the school. It was as though that skirt and sweater had transformed me into a confident person instead of the scared little mouse that I had been only the day before. 

Perhaps there is something quite wonderful about the symbolism of rites of passage. The formal acknowledgement of milestones, no matter how simple or inferred somehow transform us into more confident and independent versions of ourselves. It is the destiny of each of us to shed the skin of our childhoods and venture forth into the world as contributing members of the world. While we often long for that moment when we are in the process of growth, it is also somewhat frightening. When our elders let us know that they believe we are ready, it is a signal that we are on our way to becoming adult members of society. It may be a baby step, but it is forward progress one way or another. 

Memories of my sixteenth birthday are firmly planted in my brain. From that day forward my mother no longer called me her “little doll.” I loved that she stopped using that juvenile description of me. Somehow she knew that it was time for me to complete the process of growing up without reminders that might make me feel that I was not quite ready. 

The next few years would set me on a path of becoming. I would hold down very responsible jobs and positions of leadership both at home and at school. My mother wisely gave me my first taste of wine in our dining room. I quickly got tipsy and realized that I did not like the taste. i would not touch another drop of alcohol until I was twenty one. She also allowed me to puff on a cigarette that I found disgusting after a couple of draws. I never again had the desire to smoke. Her gentle way of introducing me to things that I might encounter out in the world made me realize that I had no need of sneaking around to see what such prohibited moments were like. I discovered in the safety of my home that I had no desire for such behaviors. 

I watch the elaborate celebrations of sixteenth birthdays that occur these days and I sometimes wonder if they actually make the recipients as delightedly happy as I was with my mother’s simple but meaningful way of letting me know that I was well on my way to becoming a woman like her. It was as though she helped me break out of my cocoon and fly away with the wings of a butterfly. It was the most glorious of days and I will always be thankful for the wisdom and love that she showed me as she help to present me to the world.  

I’ll be the first to admit that I just don’t get the fascination with reality television. The forays into the lives of supposedly ordinary people are of little interest to me. First of all I suspect that the cameras are run for many hours more than the final product. What ends up on the screen is a highly edited version of what actually happened during the filming, which I suppose is necessary to create a good story. Nonetheless, I lose curiosity about the people within a few minutes. I find that I care very little about the superficiality of their lives. 

I am generally an observer of people. I have been constantly watching the passing parade of humanity for all of my life. My own mother often corrected me for staring as I intently watched the people that I encountered. I found the most ordinary incidents to be extraordinary, so one would think that I might be one of the biggest fans of reality programs. I suppose that the fact that they are so highly engineered to created particular stories makes them uninteresting to me. I much prefer to do my people watching in the raw when individuals are not really performing so much as just going about the process of living from day to day. I could sit on a bench watching the passing parade of humanity for hours, not the staged productions of television.

It might be argued as Shakespeare so wisely noted that all the world is a stage. Each of us is a player in our own starring role. There are moments when we allow ourselves to be totally natural unedited versions of ourselves and times when we assume a different persona to fit the circumstances. Even our speech changes based on the uniqueness of each situation that we encounter. We learn over the course of our interactions with the world when it is safe to be unscripted and when we must adopt a more formal mode of acting. In a sense each of us plays different characters depending on the conditions in which we find ourselves. 

As a teacher I had to adopt a high level of professionalism. It was important for me to watch the use of language and learn how to be warm and encouraging to my students without crossing a line of inappropriate familiarity with them. I knew that every word that I spoke mattered and that included carefully guarding my personal points of view. My job was to teach mathematics with respect and understanding, but not to push my personal beliefs or to let my ability to cuss like a sailor find its way into my classroom. Such highly personal moments were reserved for members of my family and friends so trusted and dear that they would forgive me for slips of the tongue or behavior. 

When I write I reveal some of my very private thoughts. Composing my blogs and stories provides me with an outlet for honesty that is not always allowed in the other corners of my life. Still, if I were to be entirely truthful, even my most confessional tracts are as edited as those reality programs. I want to convey a particular belief so I leave out the entire dialogue that runs through my mind and only select what I deem to be most important. Some things in my brain are so raw and painful that I can’t even bring myself to tap the keys on my laptop to describe them. Only the most trusted and forgiving of the people that I know ever hear of those things. 

Perhaps reality television is a way for people to live vicariously with individuals who have a lifestyle that is very like or unlike their own. The stories provide individuals with an outlet for their own feelings or perhaps a way of informing their own curiosity about the world. I suspect that those who watch such programs are as interesting in people as I am, but they are so busy that they rarely have time or the inclination to sit on the sidelines of life simply observing. These shows must provide them with a look into situations that they never imagined, a vicarious way of expanding their own world views. 

When I am conducting my own sleuthing into human nature I am enthralled and I rarely find myself judging the people that I see. For some reason the folks on those reality programs irritate me and sometimes even incense me. I find that I rarely like them or their lifestyles. I become police, judge and jury all in a single moment and quickly change the channel. I think it is because the shows are so highly manufactured that they do not allow me to get to know the people on my own terms without preconceived ideas of who they are. I’m forced into a point of view from the start, which simply does not work for me. 

When I watch a series or a movie I enjoy the creativity. I know that I am watching fiction and within the confines of the story there is room for me to form my own reactions to the characters. If the writing, directing and acting is particularly good I find nuances and humanity in the people that always seems to be missing on reality television. I like dimensional people, not flat cardboard versions of them. We humans are so much more complex than what is shown on reality television.

I always thought that reality programming was a passing phase but it actually seems to be more popular than ever. The characters on these shows become famous for doing nothing but mugging for the camera and adopting personas designed to steal the limelight. Because such shows and their participants somehow become part of the news, the characteristics that create standouts has found its way into our politics. Now all the world is a show, making us somehow believe that we too can become stars of the play. Hopefully we will come to understand that it is not real and return to a more serious and real manner of doing things. We have to relearn the difference between reality and entertainment if civilization is to survive.