Category: Commentary

I have been an over achiever for all of my life. I have a difficult time just sitting still. I grade my days according to how much I have managed to accomplish in each of them. I realized how attuned I am to constantly accomplishing goals when I recently had cataract surgery and my doctor insisted that all I should do for two weeks is read and watch television. In following her orders those fourteen days turned into hell for me. I literally felt like a slug of little worth until I finally kept to the routine by doubling the number of blogs that I wrote each day and reading every inch of print that I encountered. Nonetheless my efforts still felt insufficient as so many tasks were calling me and I could not do them. 

I actually envy those who are capable of total relaxation. They appear to be happy souls who are willing to let dust accumulate and dishes sit in the sink. Their lives are not ruled by tidiness like I must have to stay sane. They don’t grade their daily accomplishments and then feel sadness when they realize that they have missed the mark. I have tried to be like those who are able to relax all to no avail, even as I understand that as I get older I will have to release myself from many of the duties and routines that I now consider to be ironclad. 

One very positive thing happened during my two week sabbatical from the domination of a calendar filled with tasks to tick off from one moment to the next. The weeds in my flowerbeds went wild with all the rainy days that we had. Since my doctor specifically banned me from working in the dirt lest I get some in my eye I had to do something to keep from running outside with goggles to clean the areas that had become infested with weeds. I asked the man who mows my grass if he would take care of the problem if I paid him double for that day. He instantly agreed and I watched in total amazement as he freed my plants from the weeds that were trying to overtake them. I have since decided that I will get the yard guy to do this once a month from now on so that I may be freed from the tyranny of the weeds and he may get a bit more money on a regular basis. 

I suppose that I really am a bit too tightly wired to be a person whose body is making it more and more difficult to accomplish all of the tasks that I once did. I’ve never employed a maid even when I was working fifty to sixty hours a week. Somehow I always managed to keep up with all of the vacuuming and mopping and other tasks even if it meant doing those things late into the night. I have never needed much sleep so it did not bother me to keep moving even past midnight. Sadly that level of energy is slowly but surely evaporating from me. My body is telling me that I may one day have to surrender to the idea of getting help that I have never before needed. I waffle between admitting my limitations and insisting that I still have what it takes to nurture my type A personality. 

I have to admit to seeing the error of my arrogance. I had to battle with my mother when she became unable to drive and to care for herself independently. I am involved in the same war of wills with my father-in-law who seems to think that we should allow him to be totally independent when he can no longer do some of the most basic tasks that even a very young child is capable of accomplishing. Each time my husband and I lock horns with this man I tell myself that I will not be that way with my daughters when the day comes that I must be willing to curb my independence. So that’s why I am really trying hard to get over my own insistence on doing things that may no longer be appropriate, Mostly I know that I need to learn how to chill and like it. 

I have a cousin who is in her late eighties who is elegant in her approach to life. She hires out the cleaning, laundering and yard maintenance so that she has more time to enjoy whaterve time is left for her. She gave up driving once she turned eighty and is a regular customer of the Uber drivers in her area. She manages to play bridge and meet up with friends but she also has learned how to enjoy an afternoon of doing nothing. She is a wonderful role model for me even as I struggle with being like her. Perhaps if I throw myself into becoming a lovely older lady who makes life easier for the young folks I will still feel as though I am accomplishing something very important.

I have a friend who completes jigsaw puzzles by the dozens. Another reads a new book about every three days. Someone else I know does a great deal of cooking and preserving of fruits and vegetables. They have let go of the idea of always achieving the goals of daily rituals. They have mastered the art of relaxation and doing things that make them happy rather than fretting about tasks that can be left for tomorrow.They revel in watching the birds in their yards or just sitting around observing the world around them. They do not feel guilty when they are so relaxed and insist that neither must I. 

I am still a work in progress as I suppose everyone is. There is a season for everything and my time for being all things for all people is no longer necessary. I suppose that I will ease the anxieties of the young people in my life if I show them that I am willing to slow down and know my limitations. It’s time for me to enjoy the stillness and the mundane. It’s time to evolve.  

I’ve often spoken about invisible people and urged everyone to notice them. There are so many among us who work very hard each day for salaries so menial that they barely make ends meet. I often envision the mother of one of my students who worked two jobs for minimum age. She was an older woman who should have been able to retire and yet doing so would have meant having to sacrifice her home or perhaps the food she provided for her son. 

The young man often grieved for his mother. He spoke of how exhausted she was at the end of the work day. She would arrive home in the dark of night so tired that sometime she simply slumped over in the front seat of her car to sleep a few hours before it was time to leave for the first of her two jobs. When she did come inside her son would be waiting for her. He would notice how swollen her feet and ankles were and how she limped in pain. She would mostly collapse on the living room sofa and he would cover her with a blanket. It tore out his heart to see her that way.

He noted that his home was located near a city park that should have been a refuge for him and his mom, but instead it had become a hangout for drunks and drug dealers. He described how his mother had warned him to never go outside in his bare feet because needles littered the ground and she feared that he might come down with a dreaded disease if he stepped on one of them and punctured his skin. He and his mother had often reported what was going on but nobody ever came to chase away the rowdy residents of the park and no efforts were ever made to clean it and make it a safe place to be. 

The young man worked hard to graduate from high school so that he might enroll in a class to become certified to drive a forklift. He explained that with a job like that he might make enough to offset the low amount that his mother brought home in spite of working from six in the morning to eleven at night. His plan was to attend community college after work each day to learn how to maintain and repair airplane engines. 

The last that I heard he had achieved his goals but I still find myself wondering how his mom is doing these days. I knew that she was considerably older than I was when I taught this young man and must be well into her eighties now if she is still with us on this earth. She was a lovely woman whose job was to clean buildings, an oft overlooked but incredibly important task. I think of her whenever I see someone pushing a cart filled with cleaning supplies and I always make it a point to thank them for keeping things orderly and healthy. 

If I had my way such people would earn at least twenty or twenty five dollars an hour. Even with a forty hour week they would only make eight hundred dollars but that might actually be closer to being livable than the current minimum wage. Three thousand plus dollars a month is much closer to meeting the reality of existence than the $1200 a month that so many workers still make. Few of us would be able to maintain the rent on a house and purchase food with such a lowly amount of money. I should know because at the end of her life my mother was attempting to live on a bit less than a thousand dollars a month and it was so hard that she was often quite anxious. If not for her creativity and assistance from me and my brothers I don’t think she would have made it. 

We all too often act as though anyone doing jobs like cleaning are somehow inferior. Instead we should be incredibly thankful for their efforts. Those shining floors, clean toilets and dust free buildings are pleasurable just as places that are not up to par are disgusting. The person with the mop bucket who insures that a hospital room is free of germs is important in our recovery and yet he or she is often invisible and working for next to nothing.

I want to think that my former student has been able to enhance the life of his mother. She certainly worked hard to make his future more secure. He understood all too well the disparities of our economic system. There should be nothing wrong with creating and keeping programs that insure a modest level of existence for everyone. People should receive adequate wages for their efforts. Nobody should have to work seventeen hours a day seven days a week because the hourly pay is ridiculously low. It’s well past time to set the minimum wage at a more realistic amount given that inflation that continues to rise. Either that, or providing supplements without acting as though anyone receiving them must be lazy, would be helpful. 

I’d like to think that with the wealth of this nation those of us in the mid ranges of economic distribution would be willing to give a little more to insure that an older woman does not have to work herself to death. Even better would be to also require the wealthiest among us to pay their fair share. They don’t need fifty million dollar weddings but there are surely struggling people who really do require some help. When will we become generous enough to provide them with gratitude for what they do?

We’ve heard the phrase and seen the hats and other gear since 2016. So what is it that people want to “make America great again?” When was the ultimate era when they believe that America was truly great? Surely it could not be the Gilded Age at the end of the nineteenth century. While that was a a time of invention, innovation and great change most ordinary citizens struggled while the barons of the time became wealthy beyond dreams. 

Perhaps America was truly great during the nineteen forties and fifties. We won a war over fascism and when our young men came home there were tremendous opportunities for them to begin their lives in earnest. Still, what was it really like during those times? What was good and what was bad?

America’s “Greatest Generation” grew up during the Great Depression. It was a tough time to keep a roof overhead and food on the table. The era was so devastating that some people gave up and killed themselves. Others moved in search of work and a promised land. Many who remembered that part of their histories spoke with reverence of Franklin Roosevelt who seemed to be a savior for them. Still others worried that Roosevelt made too many changes too quickly. The quiet divisions tended to be forgotten over time but they were there. 

When Europe went to war most Americans wanted to stay neutral. The politics did not seem to involve them and they were still tired from the depression years. There was an America First movement that locked Roosevelt into inaction even as he seemed to realize the dangers of leaving Great Britain to fight alone. Horrifically there were even citizens who supported the fascist ideals of Adolf Hitler. An infamous rally was held in the Radio City Music Hall in New York City that included Nazi rhetoric and flags. The idea of going to war was far from being the universal gesture that it would ultimately appear to become. 

It took the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese to enrage Americans enough to support the idea of getting involved in the conflict. When Hitler also declared war on the Untied States the die was cast and the citizens of the United States threw themselves into the war effort. Young men dropped our of high school to enlist. Hollywood began instantly making films to keep the enthusiasm high. Women went to work in factories to produce the tools of war. It was a time of mostly national unity inspired by the idea of fighting an evil that had descended on the earth. 

After the war ended the United States itself was untouched by the destruction that had damaged most of Europe and much of Asia and Africa. Our nation was ready to help our allies rebuild. The economy was booming here and along with it the birth rate that brought babies like me into the mix. There were opportunities everywhere and many of them did not even require a high school diploma or a college degree. Homes were plentiful and made easier to purchase with the G.I. Bill that also paid for education. Life seemed perfect as we look back on those years but the Black citizens who were still struggling for equality would no doubt have a different point of view. Women who were still viewed as second class citizens might also agree. 

The perfection of those years was also marred by the fears that grew from the invention of the atomic bomb and the potential for worldwide destruction that changed our sense of security. The country began to worry about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We became involved in a war in North Korea. Fears of communism gave rise to the infamous McCarthy investigations in which people were blackballed and ruined by little more than innuendo that they were communists. There was an undercurrent even in the days when life appeared to be idyllic. 

In other words that has been no perfect imaginary time in our nation that we should aspire to embrace. Instead we should be looking to see what has been exceptionally good about our country and attempt to emulate those things. At the same time we must be careful to recall what was bad and why we attempted to change for the better. I suspect if we are honest and careful we will realize that we haven’t actually been so far off the mark. There is no reason that we must now destroy the work of decades in a misguided attempt to resurrect a moment in time that really never existed. 

It takes careful consideration to determine what we need to do to provide freedoms and opportunities for everyone, not just certain groups. First and foremost we must preserve the rights that have not always been available to all. We need to restore the strict division of our three branches of government with the understanding of how the Constitution describes their specific duties. We need to find the balance between those branches once again so that they might become independent entities working as our founders intended. All three should also remember that they are beholden to all Americans, not just those who voted in a particular way. Our government is broken and it is only when our elected officials and our judges leave their personal feelings at home and work for the good of the nation that we have been at our best. It’s time for the moneyed and powerful to have less impact on how the government works than the millions of individuals who represent a diversity of ideas. 

There was no perfect time to which we should all aspire but there have been perfect moments that we would do well to remember. It took time but we ultimately gave women the rights that they had deserved all along. It took even more time but we pushed hard to give the descendants of slaves the place in our society that always should have been theirs. It took time but we adjusted to the immigrants from around the world just as we should be doing with those currently coming to our nation. It took time but we eventually built an educational system that provided knowledge to more than just the wealthiest in our midst. It took time but we used our inventiveness to build rockets that went to moon. We created a system of research and cooperation to defeat diseases and keep our population well. We even managed to send our largess to places struggling to fight hunger and disease. These are the things good about us that are great. This is the kind of thing we must continue to do. 

Right now we are just tearing things down including our relationships with the rest of the world. This is not greatness. It is the worst of us. Somehow we must find our way back to the what we do best and no actions we adopt should involve bullying or persecution. There is goodness and even greatness in our history that has tried to help as many Americans as possible. Those are the ideas to which we should ascribe.

It has been a long journey since one of my husband Mike’s doctors  gave him the news that he had prostate cancer. After that diagnosis I learned a great deal about the PSA test that led to a whole series of MRIs, biopsies and PET scans. I found out what his Gleason score indicated and accompanied him to many different specialists until we ended sitting in front of a radiation oncologist who announced that Mike would need thirty nine radiation treatments stretched over eight weeks. First, there would be more tests, biopsies and PET scans followed by a surgery designed to create a barrier so that the radiation would only affect the cancerous area. 

It took many weeks from May to much of June before Mike was finally at the outpatient center where the radiation would take place. After mapping the affected area he was finally ready to begin a process that felt almost endless in the beginning. Luckily the side effects that Mike had were somewhat minimal and more irritating than painful. He would have to arrive each day with a full bladder and an empty bowl for the radiation to be effective. It took awhile but we soon learned how to stay on target with that demand. 

We found new friends in the waiting room that was filled with patients and family members. We watched as some of the folks completed the process and as others first began theirs. We came from far flung places and different backgrounds but we found common ground with the challenges that we all shared. It was almost inevitable that we would get to know and like different individuals with all types of cancer. 

There was the real estate mogul who had once lived in Shreveport, Louisiana who often spoke of his daughters who would come to visit him and to shop. There was the Jewish lawyer who always wore his yarmulka who hid the damage done to his nose from the cancer that seemed to have brutally attacked him. They were sweet people who were anxious to return to good health and the routine of their lives before cancer became their daily focus. Everyone was optimistic and worried at one and the same time.

We watched joyful celebrations as one by one the people in the room finished their regimen of radiation and rang the bell signifying the end. We all smiled and clapped with each person who made it to the finish line because we understood how they were feeling. Their joy was our hope. Our hope was their joy. 

The people who worked at the facility were extraordinary. There was the receptionist at the front desk who greeted everyone each morning with a dazzling smile and hearty hello that told us that he really cared about each person who came his way. We began to look forward to seeing him and exchanging him with a fist bump or a laugh.

The woman behind the desk in the waiting room was patient and always scurrying around to be certain that everyone had water, soft drinks, coffee and snacks to tide them over as they nervously waited for their appointments to begin. She was patient even with the crankiest souls always trying to send vibes of concern for each person. 

Mike had two technicians who worked with him. They made him feel safe with their smiles and conversations and jokes. They learned what music he like to hear when he was inside the machine that aimed the radiation on the cancer. They never seemed to get frustrated or even tired as they worked from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon with not much in the way of a break. 

Then there was the doctor who gave a weekly update and explained every step of the way with precision, detail and confidence. His expertise was the panacea that grew ever more within reach with each passing week. 

Mike finally came to the end of the journey. We entered the building with mixed feelings. We were thrilled that his ordeal was over but we knew that we would miss all of those wonderful people. We brought flowers for the technicians and Mike wrote a card for everyone who was part of the program. As Mike went to the back for his last treatment I felt a flood of emotion as I sat with my daughter and son-in-law who had come to celebrate the moment. 

Later when Mike triumphantly rang the bell the whole room was beaming, clapping and shouting congratulations. It was over at least for now. Mike will follow up in three months to make certain that the task of eradicating the cancer is done. For the moment the anxiety is gone and only gratitude remains as we contemplate the miracle of it all ad think of the many who were there with us and many more who are yet to come. As my Grandpa Little always said, “These are the good old days!” Mike had reached the finish line and it felt so fine.

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. For all of my life I have considered this place home. I married a man who was also born and raised in Houston. His ancestors came to Texas before it was a state. My grandmother was born in Texas at the end of the nineteenth century and took her last breath right here in Houston. 

I’ve travelled throughout the United States and to other countries and each time I have returned I have felt a sense of joy and security in being back home. I love my neighbors and most of the people I encounter in my city, but of late I find myself wondering if I want to be here anymore. I no longer have the feeling that I belong in this place since my votes are mostly overridden by voters who back individuals with whom my views are diametrically opposed. More and more often I wonder if it’s finally time to strike out for a new location where lawmakers seem to be kinder and more advanced in their thinking. I wonder if the Texas that I once felt so comfortable in will ever be the same. Somehow the laws being foisted on the citizenry fly in the face everything that I hold sacred. 

I finally got representation from a Congressperson who responds to my inquiries and votes for the issues in which I believe. Now even this is being threatened by a ridiculously outrageous decision by our governor to gerrymander the districts to insure that Republicans win five more Congressional seats in the midterm elections. I seriously can’t believe how the awful people running our state get reelected over and over again when they do nothing of merit for the people. 

They seem to think that it is a good idea to give thousands of dollars to families that want to send their children to private schools. They insist on banning books and putting the ten commandments on view in every classroom. They withhold funds for Houston seemingly out of vengeance for the many Democrats who are voted into our local offices. They took over our school district with a man of questionable credentials who has run off many of the finest teachers with his absurd ideas. I could go on and on but the point is that I feel as though I do not matter in my state anymore. I am invisible and made so purposely. 

I suppose that given my age it is most likely that I will endure my anonymity and use it to hide out until I draw my last breath. The idea of picking up stakes when I have so much invested in Texas is frightening. The places where I might like to live are so far away from the people that I love and so I suppose that my fate will be to simply endure the political environment that is so distasteful to me. My only hope is that eventually this too will pass. I want to believe that it will before I move on to my eternal reward. 

The majority of my grandchildren are looking for greener pastures and I can’t say that I blame them. Maybe I will be able to take turns visiting them in places where I feel more comfortable. I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself so that will mean only short moments of respite from the ugliness of Texas politics that makes me so incredibly sad. 

I used to boast about my home wherever I travelled. I spoke of the good people in my state and the landscape that represents so many different ecosystems. I felt that my voice was important to the state representatives and that my concerns were being addressed. I lulled myself into a kind of slumber during which I was not seeing how the changes were creating a Texas that is anathema to me. When I ultimately realized what had happened it was too late to stop the madness. Now so many of my fellow Texans just pull the R levers without really understanding what each of the individuals plan to do. 

I haven’t completely lost hope. I continue to have a bit of Pollyanna in me. Still, I find myself wondering what it would be like to live in Illinois or Colorado. I visit New York City and feel so at home. I imagine myself in Minnesota or even California, which is ironic given that I prayed to get back to Texas when I lived there as a child. If I really get carried away I think of how lovely it would be to live in Ireland or England or Canada. I always enjoy being in those places and feel the tug of my ancestors who came to America from there. Still, I know that being on a vacation is not the same as living somewhere for days and months and years. Reality always sets in when I concoct such dreams.

I am inching toward my eighties and at my age understand that there are no guarantees regarding how much longer I will be healthy or even alive. Considering a major move seems somehow silly and so I will have to find ways to deal with the sorrow that I feel in losing the Texas that I once knew. I felt so much better when I believed that I was living in a wonderful place with so many opportunities. Now I have seen the underbelly of my state and it is difficult to view. That gives me only the option of doing my best to rally around the good Texans attempting to bring our precious state back to a focus on all of its citizens. I suspect that there are more people like me than I can even imagine. it’s time to find them and rally with then until we fix the mess that has been made. We are Texans. Surely we can do this instead of just giving up and moving away. Time to quit crying and get to work. I don’t have a moment to lose.