Category: Commentary

I was about six years old when I traveled to Arkansas with my family to see my father’s parents. During that visit my grandmother took us on daily visits to meet all of her favorite neighbors and then one day announced that we were going to take a little day trip to see her sister Kate. While my mother’s family was filled with aunts and uncles and cousins I had not met many people from my father’s relations so it was exciting to learn that he had an aunt of whom he was apparently quite fond. I would eventually discover that my father’s extended family was large and complex and filled with wonderful stories and histories. On that day it was just exciting to know that there was more to his background than only his parents and two sisters. 

Aunt Katie was a beautiful lady whose hair had turned a lovely snowy white. She had a sweet and sincere smile and her hugs were warm and snuggly. She and my grandmother and mother and father talked with great joy as though they had a great deal of catching up to do. I was amazed that they all seemed to know each other so well since I had never before even heard of this sweet great aunt of mine. I sat in awe of their conversation and realized there was more to who I was than I really knew. 

As the day grew shorter my grandfather announced that we needed to end our revelry if we were to get back to his house before sundown. We hurriedly took pictures of our gathering, shared more hugs and kisses and made promises to return sooner rather than later. At that moment Aunt Katie took my face in her hands and announced with a kind of pride that I definitely looked just like my grandmother when she was just a girl. My mother bristled a bit protesting that everyone agreed that I looked most like her family. Aunt Katie and my grandmother laughed without disrespect and insisted that I was definitely my father’s child. “I’ve seen those features before,” Aunt Katie declared. 

I remember feeling confused because I was a child and in my mind I only looked like myself, not some adult, especially one who was my grandmother. She was in her late seventies and bore a face filled with wrinkles. How could I possibly look like her? My father was a man with a hairline that had already begun to recede even though he was barely in his thirties. As for my mother, she had jet black hair and was incredibly beautiful in an exotic kind of way. I was just a child who did not seem like anyone but myself. At least that is how I saw it.

The feud regarding which parent I was most like continues to this day. While I am indeed unique I see more snatches of my grandmother and my father in my countenance than my mother. One of my brothers is the very image of my dad and over the years complete strangers have noticed how much the two of us resemble one another. His son and my eldest grandson could be brothers. There is more than a passing similarity between us that we share with our father which makes me think that Aunt Katie may have seen something in me that was quite real.

As I grow older I see flashes of my grandmother when I gaze into the mirror. My eyes are like hers and so are the contours of my face. My grandfather often remarked that I reminded him of his beloved wife. I sometimes think that our similarities go even deeper than the physical. I have always felt a spiritual kinship with my grandmother. I seem to remember so many lessons that I learned from her. I feel her presence deep down in my soul. 

My mother’s family still sees much of her in me and I suppose that I picked up mannerisms and expressions from her over time but she was very different. While I am generally quiet and plain she was the kind of woman who lit up a room whenever she entered. She had a charisma that made her unforgettable. Her smile bedazzled and her eyes twinkled. She was daring where I was reticent. My brown hair was mousy next to her shiny black locks. My features were less striking. I adored her and her beauty and knew that mine was different in spite of her protests that I looked more like her family than my father’s kin. In photographs of her clan at reunions I appear out of place next to my dozens of cousins. It is as though I was the adopted child from another genetic line entirely.

I am indeed my father’s child. I sport his seriousness on my face and in my demeanor. I prefer sitting at the edges of a crowd. I enjoy just being a spectator. I like the anonymity of my features and my personality. I am pretty in an unassuming way. I’m not the woman who would be chosen out of a crowd like my mother might have been but that is actually a benefit to me. I have never liked having a spotlight shone on me. I’m most comfortable when I am able to fade into the scene. 

I suppose that if truth were to be told each of us is unique but still bearing a host of genetic factors that color our eyes and determine the nuances of our appearance and even our health. I am indeed an amalgam of both my mother and father but somehow his DNA seems to be the more dominant of the two. As for who I am as a person I give full credit to my mother who raised me after my father died so early in my life. She allowed and encouraged me to follow my own star and that is who I really am. She gave me the wonderful gift of liking myself just as I am and now again I see her in every inch of me, winking and smiling like the delightful sprite that she was. 

I have dreamed a great deal in the past year. My mind has somehow recorded my 2020 concerns in short confusing vignettes which leave me wondering about the meanings of all that has befallen humankind. My mother and my mother-in-law are frequent visitors to my nocturnal travels. I suppose that they represent my longing for the wisdom and comfort that they always brought to me when they were still alive. I tend toward impatience and overanxious determination to take charge of uncomfortable situations and they always understood how to calm me and show me how and when it was best to simply wait. 

I’ve been frantically searching for a place where my husband Mike and I might get the vaccination for Covid-19. I have grown weary of my isolation from the rest of the world and long to feel freer to congregate with my fellow humans. I suppose that is why my mind takes me to see the two women who so often guided me in days past. My dreams of them are cautioning me to stay the course just a bit longer. 

I keep dreaming of a house that my mother-in-law never had but it feels like a warm memory of a real time. It is a lovely place reminiscent of an old English manor home with a curved driveway that takes us directly to the front door where she is waiting for us with a big smile. If is a far bigger and more ornate place than she ever actually owned. A glass wall at the back of the house reveals a sweeping meticulously landscaped lawn with lovely trees and a riot of colorful flowers. In my dream I sit at a table with my sweet mother-in-law sipping on tea and enjoying the view while she soothes the worries of my heart. 

I hear laughter upstairs and find my two daughters as they were when they were still children. They are with my dear friends Egon and Marita telling stories and jokes. The group smiles when they see me and I feel so warm and welcomed. Somehow though even in my sleep I feel as though something is wrong with this lovely picture because I know that my daughters are grown women with lives and children of their own. Egon and Marita have been dead for many years. Am I just longing for a time that I never imagined would end or is the suffering created by the pandemic simply reminding me to never forget that people are always and forever the most important parts of our lives? 

I am very much my grandmother’s border collie, Lady, in personality. She seemed to be always alert and concerned about the people that she loved. She stuck like glue to Grandma’s side and when we were present she watched over us as though we were part of her flock. She even corralled the chickens and kept danger away from the cow. Once she even jumped in from of my grandmother to save her from the bite of a poisonous. She almost died in the line of duty. Sometimes like her I take on the worries of the world.

I suppose that most of my anxieties center on other people. I am sometimes beyond empathetic to an extreme. I notice the slightest nuances in voices or countenances that indicate a problem. I fret over anyone that I suspect to be in trouble. That’s when the dreams come and the two women who most influenced me arrive to help me regain my balance. 

There is so much unknown to each of us and to all of humankind but slowly we are learning more and more. A hundred years ago doctors and scientists did not even know about viruses or how to treat them. In under a century they had broken the code to understanding and begun to develop viable treatments for them. Today we continue to be challenged by microbes that are not even visible to the eye but our ability to understand them progresses ever more rapidly. I like to think that we making similar strides with the human mind. 

I have dreams while I am wide awake as well. I think of finding ways to overcome learning difficulties and unlocking the mysteries of mental illnesses. I long for a time when ridding the world of bipolar disorder will be only a matter of a medical procedure. I smile at the idea of treating depression as easily as mending a heart. I truly believe that one day we will achieve marvels that will change the lives of those who suffer from addictions and behavioral difficulties. 

Dreams are keys to our deepest thoughts. If we pay attention to them we may discover important information about ourselves or even realize that someone that we love is in need of our help. Our dreams should not frighten us even when they reveal truths that we have been attempting to avoid. 

I like remembering my mother and my mother-in-law. In my dreams they become so real again. I feel as though they are still present in my life. I suppose that in some ways they are. Their influence on me is so strong that they have never really been gone. They live on in my heart and visit me when I sleep. I hope that never ends. 

…here’s the thing about life. There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days, you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand. That’s how it has to be. That’s what we do for one another. — President Joseph R. Biden, January 20, 2021

No truer words were ever spoken and President Biden ought to know. Just when he thought his world was a beautiful dream it turned into a nightmare when his wife and a daughter were killed in a car wreck on a trip to purchase a Christmas tree. If ever there is someone who can identify with what happened to him it would be me. I understand why he has never really gotten over that tragedy because even sixty four years later I still have vivid memories of the Memorial Day morning when I awoke to find that my father had died in a car accident the night before. 

These kind of horrors plague us all and when they happen we really do depend on the kindness of others to see us through. In my own case there was a community of relatives and friends and neighbors and a young Catholic priest who came to the rescue of me and my family. I don’t see how we would have made it without them and it is the reason why such relationships have always been of utmost importance to me. 

My Aunt Valeria was there from the first moment that my mother called her hysterically in the middle of the night. My Uncle William demonstrated a simple kindness that I have attempted to emulate for all of my life. My Uncle Jack helped us to find a home and a car to provide us with the security that we feared we would never again feel. That young priest comforted my mother over when her mental state was crashing. People brought us food and walked with us until we once more found our footing.  

Later I would observe my mother sitting with a neighbor whose life was falling apart. I saw her reaching out to the sick, taking food to those in need. She was one of those people who understood the need to reciprocate for all of the goodness that had been bestowed upon her. Her generosity was legendary and when she died my brothers and I learned that she was even more giving than we had realized. 

We are at a crossroads in our country. We will either defeat the pandemic together or suffer the consequences of refusing to sacrifice for the common good. Unless we are willing to give a little of our freedom by wearing masks, social distancing and getting vaccinated there is no telling how long we will suffer from this virus that has no respect for us. It’s well past time for each of us the play a part, to lend a hand in the battle to control this illness. 

We want to be viewed as the greatest country on earth and we have a good argument for earning that title but we also must be willing to admit that being the best does not mean that we are perfect. There is definitely much work to be done. We might begin by having a willingness to learn about those who are different from ourselves. Listening is a wonderful way of beginning a process of repairing the difficulties that we have historically ignored. We need to really hear the voices of those who still face inequities that we have never endured. 

There are ways that each and every one of us can make a difference with our environment. We have so many wasteful activities. If we simply thought about our actions with a mind toward eliminating or even just reducing the damage that we do to our earth I suspect that we would soon notice the kind of healing that we need. I know that in my neck of the woods hurricanes are a constant threat. When one hits our area the damage is epic. We not only need but greatly appreciate the help that we receive but we rarely change our ways once we have returned to normal. We build more neighborhoods on land that flooded even when it was originally an open field that help water that might have gone inside someone’s home. We eschew attempts to create mass transit systems to get all of the cars off of our roads. When we should reciprocate with better behavior we just carry on as usual disregarding our own parts in the dangers of future weather events.

We often want help from our country but then do not want to assist in the efforts to keep our nation safe and equitable. We want to get but not to give. It’s time we accepted the one truth of living and that is that fate will deal us some horrific surprises and when it does we all hope that someone will give us the helping hand we need. When times are good we should all be looking for the places where others need our hands to survive. It’s how community is supposed to work and that is a challenge that we would do well to accept. 

I’ve been working from the time I turned thirteen years old. At first I mostly did babysitting for people in the neighborhood. I kept busy from Friday night to Sunday evening during the school year watching children from infants to one who was my age whose parents did not trust her to be alone. When I turned fifteen I worked at a medical clinic as a summer replacement for the front office personnel. I must have stunned people because I still looked like I was about ten years old but I earned the respect of my bosses because I did the job well. I worked from nine to five for eighty eight dollars a month. It wasn’t much, especially after deducting Social Security payments,  but who else was going to hire someone so young?

I eventually found work with Holiday Inn making reservations and renting cars. That was an interesting experience because I talked with people from all over the United States. Among my customers there were even a few well known people. On one occasion I got a call from Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock and roll singer and piano player. I knew who he was but I was supposed to be highly professional so I just stuck to the process of finding the hotel and room that he wanted. Ultimately he became aggravated because I had not swooned over the idea of talking with such a noted celebrity. He asked me if I even realized who he was. When I acknowledged that I indeed realized his identity he wondered if I was excited over being able to help him. I played along and Insisted that I was absolutely thrilled to be talking with him and that it had been the highlight of my day. 

I enjoyed that job. The pay was good and we got bonuses for renting cars and meeting certain goals. At the end of the summer my boss even encouraged me to consider making a career of working for Holiday Inn. I was pleased that she liked my work but determined to get a college education and a different kind of career.

Before I ultimately earned my degree and became a teacher I did a series of different jobs to earn some extra cash. One of them was an afternoon gig at an on site daycare center at the apartment where I lived. It seemed to be a rather easy work since I didn’t even have to drive there and the director promised to provide me with dinner each evening. I liked children so I jumped at the opportunity to work there. 

It was not long before I began to have second thoughts about the place. It was very unclean and the children were virtually neglected unless I was there. The director lived in an apartment attached to the center with her family. Her own children often joined whatever group I was watching and bullied the other little ones. When I corrected them my boss would chide me and tell me that it was not my responsibility to manage them. 

The meals that she served the children were filled with starches and sugars. There was rarely a vegetable or fruit to be found. Often the food was cold and on more than one occasion I found bugs crawling on the serving trays. Of course I quit eating there but I worried about the little ones who were supposed to be in my care who sat innocently consuming dinners that I found to be disgusting. When I mentioned my concerns the director insisted that she was following health department guidelines in meeting the children’s nutritional needs. 

The toys for the children were mostly broken remnants from her own children’s toy boxes. I never once saw them being cleaned nor did I have the materials for taking care of that myself. Eventually I purchased some soaps and disinfectants to use for that purpose but they quickly disappeared so I became more and more distraught over conditions. That’s when I was transferred to the baby room which reeked of urine. I found infants lying in sopping wet diapers on soiled sheets. I was disgusted by the slovenly conditions so sometimes I took items home at night and washed them myself just to make things more sanitary. I even sanitized baby bottles and nipples that often looked as though they had not been properly sterilized. 

I suppose that I finally hit the wall when one of the children stayed day and night in the nursery for over a week. When I enquired as to why the little girl’s mom had not come to pick her up I was commanded to mind my own business. The director told me that it was neither her responsibility nor mine to question why the mother was gone so long. Somehow even though I was a very young adult I knew that the situation was far from being appropriate. I began to worry and literally lose sleep over the horrific conditions and wonder if I was somehow complicit by my silence.

I had a yearly medical exam with my doctor about that time and I confided my concerns to him. He counseled me to quit lest something tragic happen while I was working there. Additionally he gave me a number to call to report everything that I had seen. It was with great relief that I turned in my resignation the following day but my heart was till broken when I thought of the children staying there. I called the health department and provided a vivid description of what I had seen. Even as I spoke I felt as though the person at the other end of the line was not taking me seriously and I was right. Things continued as usual at the center and nothing was ever done to improve conditions. I cried for those children but there was little more that I might do.

Every other job I had from that moment forward was wonderful but I still think of how strange that whole situation was. I hated that I had not been able to make meaningful change for those children. I still wonder if it would have been better for me to stay so that at least sometime someone actually cared about those little ones. I marveled at how cruel the world can sometimes be when people do not have the money for higher quality care. Psychologically it was a truly horrible job, the worst I would ever have. 

I suppose that the only positive that came from that work was that it taught me to really care about all of the children that I would later encounter. I realized that many of them were coming from backgrounds that made their lives difficult. I became a voice for them and I learned how to keep advocating until something was done. Never again would I take indifference for an answer. Out of the horror of that day care came my determination to advocate for those who have no voice.

I sometimes feel as though I was born with a desire to be around people with kind hearts and a sense of fairness. Perhaps I simply observed my mother and then believed that everyone should be like her. People often boast that children in my Baby Boomer era learned how to properly conduct themselves from strict rules that included paddling, but I don’t recall ever being spanked by my mom. She had a gentle way of modeling the behavior that she expected from me and my brothers. She set limits and sometimes even lectured us, but brute force was not one of her tools. Whenever we had disagreements during the day she made sure that we understood that all was forgiven before we fell asleep at night. She had high exceptions for all of us but her demands were gentle and always couched in unconditional love. 

When I ventured out from my home even as a very young child I set high standards for the people that I encountered. I suppose that I unconsciously compared them to my mother. If they were just and compassionate I liked and admired them. If they exhibited even a hint of cruelty I lost regard for them, although I did so in a respectful way because my mother had taught me to defer to my elders unless they were abusive or immoral. 

I watched my mother quietly nurturing the people in her world. She rarely brought attention to her charitable nature but I witnessed it often enough that I understood how wonderful she was. The only times I ever saw my mother being combative was whenever she felt that some person or some group was being bullied or hurt. Then she became ferocious in her defense of them. She was not one to simply sit back and look away from injustice. 

Mama had a disturbingly low income in the final years of her life and yet her generosity even for complete strangers never waned. After she died I found countless letters from charitable organizations thanking her for her donations to their causes. Given that she sometimes sat in the dark or without heat to save on her utility bills it amazed me that she had been so giving and yet it was all in line with her character. 

My mother truly loved people and she never understood why they would want to hurt one another. She cried at the thought of man’s inhumanity to man, a topic that she often discussed. She abhorred violence and even though she often boasted of her generation’s efforts in bringing down fascism in World War II she was opposed to the war in Vietnam because she did not feel that it was a worthy endeavor. She wrote papers defending her views and became more political during that time than I had ever known her to be. I have no idea how she voted or what her beliefs were other than loving her country to the point of becoming emotional. She kept such things to herself unless she saw a moment when someone or some cause needed her voice.

My mom took a fancy to Madeleine Albright because she was the first female Secretary of State who also happened to be from Czechoslovakian ancestry just as she was. Mama delighted in comparing Secretary Albright to her own mother and noting how proud she was that someone much like her had risen to such a noble and important role. She also found it fascinating that Ms. Albright collected pins to place on the lapels of her suits. Eventually Mama would begin giving me and my daughters delightful pins each Christmas, a tradition that we have continued over the years. I suspect that this was my mother’s quiet way of letting us know that she wanted us to be as dedicated to the protection of all people as Madeleine Albright was. 

My nature is to blend into the woodwork. I don’t like drawing attention to myself and I certainly don’t like controversy. I prefer to be a peacemaker, a diplomat. I like bringing people together with a common goal. Nonetheless my mother showed me that there are indeed times when I must find the courage to speak out. I’ve found myself in difficult situations time and again because I knew that being silent was being complicit in unacceptable behavior. I’ve gone on crusades for justice more than one time and while my mother cautioned me not to be too outrageous I suspect that she was proud of my willingness to take risks to improve the lives of others. 

I often tell my daughters that they come from a long line of very strong women with their Grammy, my mother, in the forefront. I have urged them to stand up for what they believe to be right just as she always did and I have also tried to do. I’m happy to say that while they would prefer to live quietly and without notice they are unafraid to speak out for what they believe to be true. 

My mother once told me that there was a time when women asked their husbands how to vote and sometimes even how to think. She was thrilled that I felt free to be myself and to have my own beliefs. She taught me how to be strong without being unkind. She showed me how to gently and respectfully create change. She was a woman of the highest character who had learned the importance of putting people first. I could not have had a better role model if I had chosen one myself. She was truly a woman of distinction and a gift to all who knew her.