Category: Commentary

He introduced me to the wider world, taught me how to write and gave me a lifetime of joy with the skills that he developed in me. He was my high school English teacher for all four years, a man of culture who also happened to be a priest. His name as I knew him was Father Shane and he so inspired me that my life totally changed under his guidance. Without him I might have been trapped in an unchanging parochial loop of sameness and unwillingness to embrace change. In the four years that I sat in his classroom I thoroughly accepted his message that we explore ideas and make learning a lifetime proposition. 

I had began this journey with my father but when he died there was a void. His collection of books was a start but in never grew and he was not there to discuss the meanings and insights that he had drawn from them. His music told a story but it too remained forever abridged. It would be Father Shane who would complete the arc of exploration into the great ideas and accomplishments of humankind upon the foundation that my father had laid. 

Father Shane’s first commandment was to read, read, read. He required us to complete one book a week and then write a review of the text. He demanded that we encounter the full spectrum of genres, titles that included the great works as well as more modern texts. He did not want us to write a summary of the book but rather discuss the thematic importance of its words, structures, ideas. Completing such a task on a weekly basis was grueling at first but then it became a delightful habit that led me down avenues that I did not know even existed.

Father Shane also introduced us to newspapers, journals, periodicals that enhanced our understanding of the wider world beyond our little neighborhoods. He read to us from the New York Times and The New Yorker magazine. He took us to see plays at the Alley Theater and to listen to symphony concerts. He even filled the classroom with artwork and encouraged us to visit visual art museums.

Father Shane was a stickler for grammar and usage. Every week of instruction included forays into the structure of our language. Through practice, diagramming and instruction I became a kind of linguistic expert. When I later took a notoriously difficult grammar class in college I stunned the professor with my knowledge so greatly that she wanted to know where I had learned so much. I was proud to provide her with Father Shane’s name. 

Every Monday for four years Father Shane wrote a single word or phrase on the blackboard that became the prompt for the two hundred word theme that we had to write. I stewed over that assignment many a time, often scribbling a last ditch effort to complete the task in the late hours of the of the evening before it was due. The exercise taught me how to dig deeply into my experiences and creativity to find my voice. It made me capable of extemporaneously responding with a degree of coherency and depth. It eventually became a joy rather than an onerous job and it served me well in college when professors buried my in seemingly undoable writing assignments that I always managed to complete on time.

Perhaps the best lesson that Father Shane taught me came from the total disaster of my senior research paper. By then he had made me aware that I was one of his top students. I wanted to please him even more with a paper that would stun him with its depth of information. I chose George Bernard Shaw as my topic, just the man and his entire life. If I had been writing a book I might have impressed my teacher but instead I attempted to squeeze so much into the paper that it had no theme, no main idea. 

I literally read everything that Shaw ever wrote and then attempted to discuss his works in two or three sentence reviews. I devoured multiple biographies and retold the story of his life. My paper ended up being like a Reader’s Digest or Wikipedia review with little or no analysis. It took me over a week just to type it and properly cite all of my sources. I thought it was a masterpiece but in truth it was dry and lifeless, the kind of thing that begins to bore after a couple of pages and I had at least thirty of them. I had made the mistake of attempting to accomplish too much. If I had linked his politics to his writing or discussed his views on women as shown in his female characters I might have had something great. Unfortunately there was nothing tying all of the many parts together.

I was about to graduate and major in English literature in college. I wanted to be a writer, a journalist. I wanted to be just like my favorite teacher, Father Shane. He had never given me a grade lower than an A on any assignment I had completed. He had asked me to help grade the weekly themes of the freshmen that he taught. I thought I was his superstar and then he returned my research paper with a big red C scrawled across the cover sheet and a scathing review written on the back page. 

I was in tears and hardly able to look at the teacher who had seemingly betrayed me. I thought that I should have at least received some credit for doing so much work. Some of my peers who had hardly given thought to the project fared much better than I did. I was crushed and angry at the same time, unable to even confront Father Shane to argue my case. I put the paper away in a drawer in my bedroom and forgot about it as I engaged in the end of high school ceremonies. 

It was not until the summer that I found the courage to read Father Shane’s critique of my master work with calm and an intent to learn from it. I realized that his remarks were an effort to help me, not tear me down. He was a great teacher to the very end. If not for his honesty I might never have understood how to improve my craft. The dozens and dozens of papers that I had to write in college may have been just as lacking as my senior thesis. Instead he outlined every single misstep I had taken and told me how to correct those errors in the future. He cared enough to get my attention and then to rationally guide me in a better direction. 

In college I had to write and write and write. I often had professors ask me where I had learned how to so beautifully bring my voice to my work. I always had the same answer. It had been Father Shane who was the teacher who changed my perspectives, widened my horizons, and showed me how to use the power of words. Few people beyond my parents have ever had such an enormous impact on shaping the person I ultimately became. He was a master teacher who achieved his goal with me. He made me a citizen of the world.  

I come from adventurous stock. My maternal grandparents traveled across the ocean from Slovakia just before the outbreak of World War II. They came one by one with my grandfather being the first to land in Galveston, Texas as an immigrant with a plan for improving his lot and that of his future family. My paternal grandparents moved all over the United States wherever my grandfather found work as a finishing carpenter. My father grew to love the idea of traveling, not just on vacations but in life. Just before he died we had taken a journey to California in the area that eventually would become Silicon Valley in the hopes of living in what he considered to be one of the most beautiful parts of the United States. 

None of that was to be for me. The job that lured my father a thousand miles away from my birthplace of Houston, Texas was a bust. Before long he left it and took us all on an odyssey through Los Angeles and points along the way to Corpus Christi, Texas and finally back to Houston as he attempted to find new employment. It was obvious that he longed to be someplace other than Houston but he had no luck in any of the towns where we stopped just long enough for him to realize that there were no opportunities matching his skills. When the family savings ran out he grabbed an offer to work again in Houston and resignedly returned. The adventurous streak that had so defined my ancestors would come to an abrupt end. 

I was actually happy to be back with my extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and friends. I had even secretly prayed to God to return us to the simplicity and security of my birthplace. I had little idea that within weeks my father would be dead from a car accident and life for me and my brothers would take a far different turn than I had expected. My mother took us back to the neighborhood from which we had initially moved and there we settled into a simple life until each of us struck out on our own as adults. 

None of us ever moved too far away from the house where we grew up. We had walked to school and church and built a foundation for life in a place where our mother made us feel safe. Staying in one place became a symbol of security for me as I remembered the trauma of all of our moves that ended in such unexpected tragedy. My focus in life seemed to always be on sameness, routine. A routine way of living felt good and I had no desire to disrupt it. Thus I find myself at the age of seventy two in the same part of the world where I was born with no desire to move the way those who came before me did. From a psychological standpoint I think that leaving what I had known and loved only to return and see my father die scarred me and buried all of my risk taking inclinations. 

I am quite content with living a long life never too far from the hospital where I was born. Remarkably it’s still there but the house where my parents lived was razed many moons ago in true Houston fashion. Nothing seems to last for very long in this bustling city that probably should never even have existed in the first place. Houston is still all about real estate just as it was when the Allen brothers advertised in the late nineteenth century. It was a strange place to build a city with its ribbons of bayous and mosquito infested swampy areas. Neighboring Galveston located on a bay that feeds into the Gulf of Mexico was the economic dynamo of the eras but the citizens of Houston were dreamers with a plan that somehow did not seem so crazy when a massive hurricane virtually wiped out Galveston.

Houston pioneers dug a big channel that allowed huge ships to come from the Gulf to the shores of a landlocked city. Over time that port grew to be one of the busiest in the country in spite of the fact that it was not adjacent to a natural inlet. The city began to thrive as far sighted leaders brokered the convergence of railroad lines, built a world class university that would become known as the Harvard of the south, and planned for a medical center that would rival the best in the world. Texas oil and gas ended up in refineries near the ship channel and when World War II prompted the need for fuel the city began to grow by leaps and bounds. 

When I came along Houston did not yet have a million people but today the city and its surrounding suburbs is home to around four million souls of such diversity that there is no one dominant group in the area, at least when there is no gerrymandering to make it so for purposes of voting. It is a friendly place where everybody mostly gets along as we proved when hurricane Harvey flooded neighborhoods with equal opportunity. 

I still love Houston and while I have sometimes thought of living in a more beautiful place I always end up wanting to stay. Houston can be beautiful or ugly depending where you go. It is brutally hot and humid for most of the year. There really are no seasons here, no fall colors or snowy days, but spring and fall are spectacular in their own Houston ways. The threat of hurricanes and floods loom large and we tend to become anxious when it rains but we have some of the best food in all of the United States. Getting from one place to another can be trying and when we say that something is close by it may mean that we only have to drive for an hour. We have anything that a person might want except beautiful scenery but we can drive to Galveston for ocean views or to the hill country for rolling vistas. That medical center that enterprising civic leaders advocated long ago provides top notch healthcare and now there are multiple universities in the city educating students from all over the world. We are even the center of the human universe with NASA headquarters planning a stunning future in space.

Some might say that my brothers and I got stuck in Houston and surroundings but over time it became a wonderful choice. We’ve been able to travel the world for fun and then return to the easy going feel of a home town that has provided for all of our needs. Houston has its flaws like any other place. Nothing is ever really perfect. Overall though Houston is a great place to live with a kind of can do spirit even in the face of enormous challenges that keeps it moving forward in an adventurous kind of spirit. It’s my birthplace, my home and I love it. 

I attended a graduation at Texas A&M University recently. It was an abbreviated ceremony which actually worked out quite well, no long speeches from the Association of Former Students or politically leaning entities. The students were separated into groups of about 200 with eight guests each and the entire affair only lasted a tinge more than an hour. It was wonderful!

The interim president of the university was the main speaker and he walked a fine line down the middle road in his address. Of course he spoke of the bright future that each of the students will have in the world of computing but also alluded to the ethics needed for their work. Then he mentioned the divisiveness in our country today and expressed his hope that a unifying leader will one day emerge to bring us back together. He used the examples of John F, Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as models of the kind of electrifying individual who might unite us in the name of our country and one another. He hinted that such a person might even emerge from the ranks of the graduates. Sadly he remarked that our past year of unprecedented events should have been the catalyst for a national effort to work together and instead our differences seem to be more pronounced than ever. 

I found myself nodding away as he spoke and feeling the hint of sadness and disappointment in his words. He admitted to being seventy seven years old and hopeful that things will get better before he is no longer of this earth. He suggested that we start by setting aside our anger with members of our family with whom we differ and then reaching out to friends whose views deviate from our own. Perhaps if we can begin to have thoughtful conversations with one another a chain reaction cooperation will take hold even in Washington D.C.

I’d like to think that such a thing will eventually happen but I worry that it is still a long time coming. We seem unwilling to even listen to each other much less attempt to understand what those around us have to say. I suspect that only when “we the people” begin a process of legitimate healing, not by covering up problems but by admitting to their existence and working to solve them, will our nation be whole again. Our stubborn refusal to really hear the whys and wherefores of many views is a roadblock to progress forward. Continuing obstinance will only lead to more situations like people in Texas literally freezing in the dark and minorities feeling like outsiders in their own country. We have to be honest and know that it will not hurt us, but will make us stronger and more just. 

I sometimes think that right now one side is too generous with our taxes and the other is too cruelly stingy. We don’t want to disincentivize Americans from working but we also do not want to assume that those who need a helping hand are by nature lazy. The truth is that some people will unfairly take advantage of overly kind hearts while others are quietly suffering in a society that often looks away from problems rather than constructively addressing them. We have begun to debate too many issues with soundbites and platitudes rather than thinking outside of the box. We do not have to do things the way we always have. It is possible to make positive change without losing the essence of our democratic republic. 

Many thought that the introduction of Social Security was a first step toward communism. While the program is terribly imperfect, it along with Medicare have improved the lives of elderly in myriad ways. So too has the Affordable Care Act made it possible for more Americans to get the medical help that they and their families need. Both were positive steps to a more humane nation but perhaps with some tweaking here and there we can make the programs even more productive and worthy of our taxes. 

As the Texas A&M interim president suggested we can all do better and our efforts should begin with an unwillingness to spread false information. An educated electorate needs to check sources and seek truth no matter where it may lead. This is what we learn in our schooling and this is how we should be approaching the decision making that affects us all. If something sounds too much like a slogan then it would behoove us to do some honest research before we just fall in line with any group or individual. 

I like that our young people are being challenged to think critically and to seek truth. Too many today are behaving like lemmings rather than individuals. There is something wrong when entire swaths of a party sound exactly the same. We need to be able to discuss hypothetical ideas without getting personal or feeling angry or insulted. That is the way forward. We should all graduate to a higher level of thinking. 

Each year for sixty four years I have faced the anniversary of my father’s untimely death in 1957 that so drastically changed life for me and my mother and brothers. I remember that morning as vividly as my wedding day and the birth of my daughters. What should have been a sunny holiday spent at the beach with my cousins turned into a nightmare as soon as I arose from my sleep and heard my mom talking with someone on the phone using the past tense when she spoke of my father. I did not have to hear the horrible news from my aunt when I found her in our kitchen puttering away her nervousness. Even at the age of eight I had an intuitive nature and already understood that an earth shattering event had occurred. 

My mother had always been as steady as a rock and as delightfully happy as anyone I ever knew. On that day she was so bereft that she could hardly pull herself from her bed and she uncharacteristically left the care of me and my brothers to her siblings who quickly began to gather in our living room. As I quietly assessed the situation I somehow realized that I would have to rise to the occasion and muster a strength that I did not know I had to make sure that my mother and brothers would be okay. Psychologically I matured from eight to thirty in a single moment. I set aside the frivolities of childhood and adopted a seriousness that would mark the sense of responsibility that I was feeling. 

I suppose that my mother descended into a state of deep depression and perhaps even hopelessness that left her in a state of mind so unlike the person I had always known. It would be weeks before she would emerge from her tears and faraway looks. To say that it was frightening would be an understatement but somehow I understood how difficult the future looked to her and I felt confident that she would pull herself together, which she ultimately did. 

For the next ten years Mama returned to a revised version of her general optimism and courage. She kept us together and made a life without daddy feel safe and secure. She only had moments here and there when her emotions would spill over the top and feel out of control. Mostly she was our stalwart and source of unconditional love and wisdom. I was in awe of the woman she was and continued quietly being as trouble free for her as possible because I knew that she had more on her plate than most people would ever be able to handle. 

When I was in my first year of college my mother began to behave in ways so unlike herself. She experienced more and more periods of depression that would last for a couple of days and then seemingly go away. Her temper would sometimes flare up unexpectedly and in cruel ways that I had never before seen. She was a kind and loving person and her outbursts frightened me. She also developed irrational fears that I tried to laugh away but when I saw her clinging to them I worried that something was more amiss than just a roller coaster of emotions. 

Eventually Mama would have a complete mental breakdown. She closed the windows tightly, drew the blinds and drapes and locked herself into her darkened bedroom even as the temperature soared in the unairconditioned house. She cried constantly and with eyes darting like an animal running for its life from a predator she would speak of being watched by law enforcement for some unknown crime. She even believed that her sisters who came to help her were attempting to poison her. When she watched television she heard messages from the programs that were not part of the script. I was terrified. 

I learned that my mother had a mental illness that would stalk her for the next forty years. When she was sick, which was several times each year, our roles would reverse. I would be her caretaker and she would be like my confused child. It would take years before we had an accurate diagnosis of her condition which was bipolar disorder. 

With great regularity, usually in March, July and October my mother would travel through a cycle of emotions brought on by her illness. Almost always her symptoms began with sadness that prompted unending tears and isolation from the world. If I was able to convince her to see her doctor quickly enough the worst effects would never happen but when she was adamant that nothing was wrong and refused medical help she would descend into an emotional hell. the next phase was mania and that is when she became most unrecognizable. She talked constantly, often spewing vile anger and insults. She was unable to sleep and her the thoughts that raced through her head were filled with paranoid ideation. Eventually she would experience a psychotic break entirely. 

It was alway painful to see her that way. It felt so unfair that such a brilliant, wise, stalwart, and compassionate woman would be laid so low by some chemical flaw inside her brain. My brothers and I worried constantly that she would get herself into trouble but somehow she was blessed to have neighbors and coworkers who watched over her and alerted us whenever they saw signs of her mental illness rearing its ugly head. 

I always loved the interludes during which my mother was herself again. They were like a precious gift that I knew we had to enjoy with gusto because the never ending cycle of her bipolar disorder would inevitably return again and again to steal away her beautiful soul and replace it with a tortured turn of the mind. 

I still advocate for the mentally ill but realize that they are often relegated to neglect in favor of other more understandable problems in our world. There is still so much to be learned about how the brain works and why is sometimes goes awry. The suffering that good people endure along with their families leaves them misunderstood and sidelined from the roles that they might otherwise have enjoyed. We have such a long way to go in our knowledge and compassion and investment in time and money for mental illness. I truly believe that if we were to pour as much effort into understanding why a beautiful mind can become so infected we would actually solve many of the world’s problems. I suspect that much of the negative behavior that we witness is actually the result of a mental defect that might easily be repaired just as we do with hearts. Helping people who struggle with psychological issues will be my goal as long as I have breath to spread the word about their needs. A mind really is a terrible thing to waste and right now we condemn far too many to the dumpster. It’s long past time for finding real and lasting solutions for diseases of the brain.

I have a wonderful memory from my childhood. It is the sound of one of our neighbors practicing on her clarinet. Back then few people had air conditioning so everyone kept their windows open allowing the noises of life in each household to reverberate through the neighborhood. The young lady was a several years older than I was and a member of her high school marching band at the local public school. She was rather good and I looked forward to hearing the melodious tones of her instrument each evening as she became more and more adept in her performances over time. I can almost still hear her even as more than sixty years have passed.

I went to wonderful parochial schools were I received a top notch education but music was sadly rather lacking. In junior high I was a member of a choir and we learned the rudiments of reading music, but mostly we just sang from a rote memorization of our parts. In high school I was placed on a track that precluded artistic electives. Instead my schedule was filled with extra languages, sciences, and mathematics. While I appreciate all of the knowledge that I gained in those years my one regret is that I did not have the opportunity to learn how to play an instrument. In fact the school did not have either a band or an orchestra. 

Creating bands and orchestras is an expensive venture even if the students rent their instruments. It involves a major investment in teachers, assistants, sound systems, music, acoustically designed rooms. My school had to choose between state of the art science rooms and what the powers that be saw as the frivolousness of music equipment. I suppose they wisely chose science but to this very day I wish that I had received an opportunity to learn how to play a clarinet or a piano or maybe a cello or violin. 

Some of my classmates took private music lessons but I was a “scholarship” student who earned my tuition by excelling in my classes. I was a kind of investment in the future for my school and music was not on the menu. Thus I only dreamed of having the skills to create lovely sounds like my neighbor did.

When I was studying to be a teacher I had to take a basic music class. We all had to purchase a recorder and learn how to play a few songs. I became quite adept at performing “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and other ditties but that did not satisfy my longing to be a real musician. In the same class we had to master “Three Blind Mice” on a keyboard but my short stubby fingers struggled to reach between the keys. I would later learn that a truly talented music teacher knows how to find just the right instrument for each person. 

My eldest daughter signed up for band classes in intermediate school. She wanted to play the flute but was never able to get a single sound from that instrument. Instead she had a knack with the oboe and worked to master that instrument for three years. Because I had such a longing to play I invested in private lessons for her and hundreds of dollars in replacing broken reeds. The oboe was a difficult instrument but she slowly progressed and then found that if she continued with it in high school she would have to play with the percussion students during marching seasons. Because she was a talented dancer she chose instead to join the dance team and left her music behind. 

I became obsessed with the fact that nobody in my direct family actually played an instrument. My husband did bit on the guitar and my mother-in-law was somewhat accomplished on the piano but nobody actually excelled like that neighbor of my long ago. I longed to hear real talent from one of my own. I had a paternal cousin who made the keys on a piano sing like angels so I felt certain that somewhere in the complexities of genetics there had to be some DNA that would lead to great musical talent in my offspring and their descendents. 

Soon I had grandchildren and one by one they all chose to join the band in middle school with varying interest in continuing through high school. From those seven four became somewhat accomplished. Grandson Jack played multiple instruments from his time in band including brass, piano and guitar but he, like his mother, chose to follow a different artistic route in high school. Benjamin became a tuba player and enjoyed it so much that he stayed for the full band experience in high school where he ultimately became the Drum Major. Ian chose the cello and with each passing year he became more and more adept. He has a passion for music that shows in his incredible performances. He plays like an archangel. William is a violinist but he does not share the enthusiasm of Jack, Ben and Ian. Nonetheless I am overjoyed that some of my fold have so beautifully mastered the art of music. Finally the kind of beautiful sounds of my youth are being reproduced by my grandsons. 

If I had the opportunity to learn one more thing it would be to master an instrument. It would not matter to me what that might be. It would simply be wonderful to be able to sing to the heavens with my skill. As an educator I believe in providing all students regardless of income with a chance to play an instrument. I don’t really believe that an education is complete without at least a rudimentary introduction to such a competency We should all experience moments of rising heavenward with our music like my neighbor did with her clarinet. It is perhaps the most gloriously creative act that humans may do. The sound of music raises us all from the commonplace into the domain of angels.