Category: Commentary

You’d think that retirement would lead to boundless lazy days. It’s certainly how I thought that my life would be once I hung up my teaching badge, but it hasn’t worked out like that at all. Other than getting to sleep in until six thirty or seven rather than being on the road heading to work, I’ve kept myself busy since the day I walked out of the school building where I once lived for twelve plus hours each day. Somehow my personality did not allow me to sleep until noon or watch movies in the middle of the day. My compulsiveness demanded that I plan each day as carefully as I had for decades. I measured the success or failure of each day by assessing my accomplishments and measuring my progress in meeting multiple goals. 

I found that simply sloughing off left me feeling less useful to the world and sometimes even a bit depressed. I signed up for continuing education classes which I still take each fall and spring semester. I found my way back into teaching math, albeit on a smaller scale than when I was still a full time employee. I write at least five days each week and even completed a book which I can’t seem to get properly published. I exercise regularly and maintain a routine to keep my home in order. I spend time cultivating my plants. I plan regular camping trips. I look after my father-in-law and mother-in-law. I make an effort to stay in touch with friends and family members. I read constantly, sew once in awhile and cook daily. In other words, I don’t seem to have a lazy bone in my body. 

Once in a blue moon I hit the wall. My energy level wanes and I don’t want to do anything productive. When such a mood arises I allow it to fully wash over me. I stay in my pajamas all day long and sometimes only get out of bed to prepare something to eat. I watch ridiculous programs on television and take little naps all throughout the day. I indulge in ice cream and cookies and don’t care of if close the rings on my Apple watch. I order pizza to be delivered to my front door. I play with word puzzles on my phone for hours. Nothing that I do has any purpose other than to entertain me and rest my weariness. 

I never remain in such a state for more than a day. I usually arise earlier than normal the following day ready to take on the world with a vengeance. I revert back to my type A way of living and dive right back into my more typical habits. I am refreshed and ready to go after a lazy day which I have tended to call my mental health days because they recharge my batteries so well. 

I’ve been told by family and friends that I should relax a bit more, let things go, skip routines, throw caution to the wind. At this stage in my life it’s a bit too late to change my old ways. I’ve been operating at warp speed since I was a young child. It is in my nature to plan ahead, set deadlines, break tasks down in doable chunks, stick with the plan. It’s not that I am unable to relax, because just chilling is actually part of every one of my days. I set aside a quiet time in the morning. I enjoy a tea time in the afternoon and I spend evenings enjoying the company of my husband. In between I am a whirlwind of activity even when nobody is looking. 

Back when my girls were still at home I created lazy days in the summer. We’d have a hours of watching all of their favorite movies in our pajamas while eating nothing but snacks. I would take them to the beach or Astroworld where we would forget for a time that anything bad was happening anywhere in the world. Sometimes we’d just sit under the trees in our yard with me visiting with my neighbors while the children ran and played. We’d build elaborate forts out of sheets and blankets and I’d make up stories to tell them as we laughed under the soft dome of our creations. Those were glorious days when somehow it did not matter if the laundry did not get done or if dust had collected on the furniture. 

I suspect that as I have grown older lazy days frighten me a bit unless I am sharing them with someone else. If my awake time becomes little more than efforts to fill the time with fun, I begin to feel as though I no longer have any real purpose in this world. As someone for whom having a meaningful life has always been my motivation, I have a need to feel that I am doing something important each day. I am not yet ready to surrender to a frivolous way of living. I have seen from my elders that eventually our bodies and minds lose their ability to remain active contributors to the world. Our days eventually all become lazy whether we wish them to be or not.

Right now my mother-in-law is suffering from a heart that no longer works the way it should. She is tethered to oxygen day and night. Simply walking from one room to another is exhausting. She is tired of watching television from her recliner. She has difficulty concentrating on her books. She wants more than anything to be able to cook and clean and work in her garden. Without a sense of purpose and the ability to actively pursue goals other than simply waking up each day the light has gone from her eyes. 

We humans like to have fun and relax and throw all duties to the wind, but when push comes to shove each of us wants to feel as though there is meaning and accomplishment in our daily activities. Lazy days are like vacations and, just so, they were never meant to last forever. 

I seem to be much more involved with cooking these days than I have ever been in the past. If truth be told I don’t really care that much about food in spite of evidence to the contrary as demonstrated in my girth. If left alone I doubt that food would be much of an issue for me at all. I would purchase one of those huge Costco roasted chickens and be content for a week. Instead I am a social person and cooking for others motivates my interest in the culinary arts. 

A challenging twist to creating delicious meals is that many of the people who eat my food have to go easy on salt. I’ve had to learn how to use herbs and spices to enliven the taste of dishes that might otherwise be bland. I’ve become a huge fan of Penzey’s a little store in the Houston Heights that sells a remarkable variety of products to enhance virtually any kind of cooking. Best of all they have an entire section of the store devoted to mixtures that are salt free, but add so much delightful flavor to my cooking. I find myself using these concoctions on meat, eggs, sauces and even my famous beans. 

My favorite spices have become pepper, garlic, turmeric, parsley, basal, bay leaves, sage, and a Penzey’s creation called Mural of Flavor. It is a perfectly balanced salt free combination of herbs and spices that seem to work well with almost anything that I cook. I keep a large jar of it handy in a cabinet next to my stove. A sprinkle of it here and there seems to bring natural flavors alive.

I’ve also learned the loveliness of olive oil and vinegars. Last summer I visited an olive oil store in Old Albuquerque that features wonderful combinations like Persian infused olive oil and raspberry balsamic vinegar. Such products have become standards in my kitchen and I use them for both cooking and salads without having to include lots of fats, sugars and salt. Sometimes I can’t believe how flavorful the food becomes. 

My foray into a healthier way of cooking has been gradual so I don’t miss fats and salt anymore. In fact, when I dine away from home I am sometimes repelled by the saltiness of the dishes. My body reacts by swelling and sometimes my digestive system becomes angry. On the other hand people who come to my house to eat often request the salt shaker because their taste buds are missing the zing of salt. 

I often think of the many places around the world where my herbs and spices were grown. I hark back to history of stories of trading along the silk road. I imagine exotic spices making their way to the Europe of my early ancestors and I envision adventurous chefs finding new ways of using them. There is something quite precious about the spices and herbs that bring our foods alive. 

My husband watches cooking videos and has become my partner in the kitchen. He’s far more inclined that I am to try new ways of creating the food we eat. He found a lovely recipe for butternut squash that has become a staple in our menu planning. Ironically the crowning glory of the dish uses fresh sage leaves that are gently cooked alongside the squash and then used as a garnish. That lovely herb transforms the squash from ordinary to luxurious. 

I often wonder how humans thought to create edible foods. Who would have looked at stalks of wheat and decided to create flour and then combine it in such a way that it became bread? What instinct drove people to roast meat, and for that matter why would anyone even consider killing a beast and eating its flesh? I imagine myself sustaining life with berries and fruits hanging from trees. The idea of building a fire and cooking would have never occurred to me. I marvel at the creativity and ingenuity of the human race.

We have to eat or we die. Somehow over time there have always been people among us who pushed the envelope to make our process of staying alive more pleasurable. We have geniuses who create culinary delights with the same basic ingredients that we all have. They are food scientists who experiment with ingredients, herbs and spices until the taste is just right. They are artists of the culinary palette. I am in awe of them.

As I try a pinch of this and a dash of that I do my best to make my food enjoyable. I have victories and I have failures. Over time I eventually get it right. My herbs and spices and oils and vinegar are the key. They are the riches of my kitchen and I am ever thankful to the adventurers of yesteryear who first learned of their value and to those who spread the word of their value. Spices are the food of life. 

I have been rather complacent for most of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I was quite active in promoting and participating in the civil rights movement when I was in college. I spent over forty years advocating for my mentally ill mom. I fought for educational opportunities for every child. Beyond that though I’ve been rather chill through most of my life. My involvement in politics other than voting was practically nil. My life was good so I felt that I had little reason to be concerned about much beyond the confines of my home. 

I tend to be a person who spurns conflict. I’m diplomatic by nature and ever so polite. I prefer blending into the background to leading a movement. I prefer quiet to raucous events. Sometimes, however, duty calls and I feel compelled to speak out no matter what doing so may cost me. 

Many years ago I was working at one of my all time favorite schools. Every single day of teaching there was a joy and I sometimes imagined myself retiring from the place like a female version of Mr. Chips. Sadly, the environment quickly changed when a new principal arrived to manage all aspects of the school. At first she was nice enough, but she gradually demonstrated a number of disturbing ideas and habits. After a time she became downright authoritarian and even a bit disturbing. For example, the girls’ Physical Education Teacher installed curtains on the showers that she purchased with her own money to provide the young ladies with some privacy. When the principal saw them she unexpectedly became infuriated and stormed out of the gym. A few minutes later she returned bearing a large pair of scissor that she used to cut down the curtains in front of the stunned coach. 

It would take pages to recount the outrageous things the principal was doing but suffice it to say that morale among the teachers was incredibly low. Many members of the faculty were mumbling and grumbling and whispering about plans to leave the school as soon as they found teaching positions elsewhere. One of them was a dedicated educator who was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. She had managed to schedule all of her infusions after school hours so that over the many weeks she had never missed a single day of work. Instead of applauding her for her courage and sacrifice the principal had complained that the woman had lost her energy and enthusiasm, giving her a low mark on an evaluation. 

I suppose that I have always been a champion of the underdog, so I took it upon myself to make an appointment with the principal to outline some of the concerns that my colleagues and I had. I did it in the spirit of helping her to understand that morale was nil. I thought she would thank me for my honesty, but instead she interrogated me for eight hours as though I was a criminal. She wanted me to name the people who had complained about her which I refused to do. In the end I knew that I would have to leave the place that had once been so wonderful. After I left, the school board fired her. 

Sometimes being complacent is a cowardly thing. There really are moments when we need to assert ourselves, speak out. It’s been said that the only thing worse than a bad person abusing others is a good person who says nothing. Silence can be damning to those without the ability to defend themselves. Accepting the status quo just because it has always been there way can often be hurtful. We may want to look the other way, but we know in our hearts that doing so is wrong. 

Complacency is sometimes an indication of satisfaction and maybe even happiness. It’s uncomfortable to be in a position of needing to defend or assist or care for those who have no voice. Most people would rather walk away from a difficult situation than deal with it. I know that feeling as well as anyone because there were many instances when I wanted to wash my hands of dealing with my mother’s mental illness. I thought of how wonderful it would be to ignore it or run away from it. Instead I had to face it. 

Everyone has difficulties, some of which are very dark and which they never share with others. They paste on a happy face and greet the world as though all is well. Sadly they may be enduring unimaginable hurt and pain, accepting their situations, with a stiff upper lip. While I understand that there are people don’t wish to share their personal trials, I worry about those who ignore abuse and injustice whether it is happening to them, someone they know or a stranger. More often than we wish, we must step out of our comfort zones to face the problems of this world head on. 

I’ve noticed that the history of the world has a kind of recurring rhythm. Humans rage against problems for a time, foment changes, and then retreat back into a kind of quiet complacency. They become weary of the battles and need to recoup until the pressure from real troubles becomes too much to bear and then they rally again. 

I suspect that we are in one of those periods in which some situations can no longer be ignored. We have a worldwide health emergency. Russia is rattling sabers. The economy is bowing under the strain of two years of uncertainty. The world’s homeless population only continues to grow. Mental illnesses are raging. Crime is out of control with more guns on the streets than there are people. Climate change is destroying homes and lives. 

We may want to pretend to be normal with our parties and concerts and movies, but inside we know that complacency has no place in our schedules right now. No one person or group is to blame for any of the challenges facing us. It will take all of us and much sacrifice to make genuine efforts to set things right. We can be complacent after we have done our best to work together to fix our broken parts. For now there is no rest for the weary. 

As children we are taught to be truthful. As we grow older we realize that some of our adult icons have lied to us. Our first realization of dishonesty is always difficult to accept, especially if we have really tried to be entirely open in our own lives. 

We’ve all heard the story of George Washington confessing to chopping down a cherry tree as a child. Whether or not that is little more than a myth is uncertain and we don’t really know that Washington was always truthful, but it does appear that people trusted him. That alone makes us think that he must have been mostly free of lies and deceit. So too did Abraham Lincoln somehow earn the moniker of “Honest Abe,” leading us to also believe that he was a man who had earned the confidence of the people who knew him. 

I’m not so sure that anyone has lived through decades without telling a fib here and there. As children we all have those moments of attempting to cover up our incidents of bad behavior with bold excuses that border on lies. Who hasn’t found themselves complimenting a cook over a dish that wasn’t actually tasty at all just to spare feelings? The little white lies creep into our habits because it sometimes seems better to spare someone’s feelings than to voice what we are really thinking. Those lies seem not to hurt anyone so we justify them with slight prevarications.

Of course there are truly hurtful lies that eat at the fabric of families and societies. The person who steals from a company multiplies the untruths over and over and over to keep from being caught. The adulterer breaks the sacred vows of marriage. Lies destroy trust and create cynicism and fear. 

I have been fortunate to be surrounded during my life by mostly honest people. There was, however, a priest at my high school who hid the fact that he was sexually abusing one of the girls, so it might be said that his whole life was a lie. Someone stole all of my valuable jewelry one time, my checking account got hacked, and a student took my wallet, but those are the most egregious things that have happened to me. As a young adult I watched President Nixon’s reputation unravel as evidence pointed to the coverup that he engineered after the break-in at the Watergate. 

Perhaps my parents kept worries from me, but that was simply an omission motivated by love. If either of them was hiding some egregious act I have never uncovered it. I believe that they were both well-intentioned people who did their best to be honest and forthright. They modeled the behavior that I would adopt as a child and carry into my adulthood. What you see with me is very much who I am. I am a person with nothing to hide. 

My mother and my teachers and my church impressed me with their lessons about honesty, so it’s difficult for me to understand someone who lies continually. I know such persons exist. I have met them among my students. I have wondered if they had not been taught to be truthful like I was or if they were simply imitating the conduct that they from the members of their family. Either way it made me sad to see that those so young were already on a dangerous road. 

Nowadays we are cautious about who we believe because there are so many lies circulating around us. We are realists, but we get caught again and again in shocking revelations about people we once admired. Oddly our cynicism about the shortage of truth in our society makes us more likely to believe that everything is fake. We become confused and manipulated. Lies gum up the works and turn us against each other just like my mom often warned. 

Truth, like love, always wins. Somehow the lies, exaggerations and stealthy behaviors are usually outed. It’s best to choose truth, even if it is painful. We may not want to know the imperfections of the people that we love or the ugly aspects of the history of our world, but we are better off getting such things into the light than hiding them in the shadows. Honesty is a first step to rebuilding trust and I can’t think of anything we need more right now. Sadly we live in an era filled with so many hoaxes that it is often difficult to know what is true and what is false. We should not have to be detectives and researchers to know the difference. If truthfulness became more of a norm we would have more confidence in what we hear.

Truth is beauty and beauty is truth. It begins or not, in the arms of parents. It continues with our teachers and our neighbors. If that trust is broken and then accepted as the way things are our society breaks down. It’s time we all worked hard to show our young ones the importance of being honest and the pitfalls of lying. Praise the truth tellers and reveal the liars for what they are. Most of all be the models of truth that our children need.  

A work colleague lost his son last summer. The young man with an inviting smile and twinkling eyes was murdered in a road rage incident after a family outing to a baseball game. The tragedy has profoundly affected the boy’s father who very openly admits to a level of grief that is beyond trite condolences and assurances that one day he may realize the purpose of such a thing happening. Many of his friends and acquaintances and even some strangers have read his posts and struggled to know what to say or how to feel in such a circumstance. The bereaved father is not looking for help. He has a professional therapist for that. Instead he is simply expressing the agony of a shattered life. 

Recently he admitted that he was not ready to forgive the man who shot his son. The murderer has yet to utter a word of remorse. Instead the bereaved father asked us to describe forgiveness. He wanted to know if any of us would be inclined to forgive someone who had committed such a heinous crime. 

I think that the concept of forgiveness is far too complex and personal to describe in a generalized way. As with much of our experience we tend to over simplify issues. We want quick answers. My friend has found that in reality such a quick fix is impossible to find. So too do I think that we literally have to be the person who has been hurt to fully understand the level of loss, betrayal, violence that often surrounds the question of forgiveness. There is also the issue of whether or not the perpetrators of such acts have a semblance of regret. 

I think that the most powerful moments in the life of Jesus of Nazareth came when he was betrayed by a friend, tried for a crime he did not commit, sentenced to die, and then nailed to a cross to die an agonizing death. There were two other men hanging on crosses of their own on either side of him. One of them admitted his sins and expressed his regret for having committed them. Jesus forgave him, but Jesus did not turn to the other fellow and offer the same absolution. What this teaches us is that pardon is earned by truthful sorrow and penance. I don’t think the message could be any clearer. 

There is also the issue of mental culpability. We know that some people act out of severe mental illness. In the same way humans sometimes do not act to protect or save someone out of ignorance or simply because they are not paying attention. On that same day that he was dying Jesus uttered a collective kind of mercy for his executioners saying, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” 

I Googled the word forgiveness and this is what I found, “Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment toward a person who has harmed you…Forgiveness doesn’t not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing offenses.”

For me forgiveness would depend on the degree of hurtfulness that someone inflicted on me. A hurtful comment would be easy to pardon. A lifetime of degradation from someone would not only be too vile to condone but would also demand a total break from the toxic relationship. I don’t think that anyone should be expected to forgive the malicious taking of a life, particularly if the perpetrator is unwilling to express sincere contrition. 

I do believe in the possibility of redemption but it is not always easy to know if the repentance is sincere or simply a ruse. Whatever the situation, I don’t think that it has to be up to the victim of extreme abuse or violence to make the first move and be the better person who offers an olive branch. I think it is really okay to hold contempt for the person who gassed hundreds of Jews, the man who hung an innocent man from a tree, the person who humiliated and beat his wife. If God gazes into an individual heart and finds enough remorse to forgive them, then so be it, but the victims of such heinous experiences should not be held accountable for forgiveness. It is only natural to feel no mercy for someone who has destroyed a life. 

My grandson was an actor when he was in high school. He once performed the role of Dennis Shepard, father of Matthew Shepard who was brutally murdered for being gay. At the sentencing of one of the killers Mr. Shepard asked the judge to spare the life of the convicted murderer in a stunning speech that sums up the agony of losing a child to violence. He did not however express a willingness to forgive.

“Every time that you wake up in that prison cell, remember that you had the opportunity and the ability to sort your actions that night. Every time that you see your cellmate, remember that you had a choice, and now you are living that choice. You robbed me of something very precious, and I will never forgive you for that, Mr. McKinney. I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.”

Somehow I think this says it all about forgiveness. This is what I would tell my friend.