Category: Commentary

During my long career as a teacher I mostly worked in areas of town where life was difficult for those who lived there. They were places where gangs and violence were far more commonplace than in the suburbs. I saw the underbelly of poverty and neglect and its impact on good people who were doing the best they could to care for their families and provide opportunities for their children. By far the vast majority of my students in such places were hard working, law abiding individuals who were simply caught in the uncaring cycle of economic want. They were generally determined to better themselves and most of them eventually did. Sadly a few bad eggs sometimes spoiled the whole lot giving the impression that life in such places was by definition violent and dangerous. I learned instead that such communities were filled with vibrancy and hope and that misbehaving adolescents usually grew into fine adults. 

Nonetheless all too often certain students achieved reputations as troublemakers when in fact they were actually quite sweet. Whenever things went missing they rose to the top of the suspect list and so became victim to a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. One of them was a very bright young man with whom I formed a relationship of mutual respect. I saw that behind his tough veneer was a bright and eager student who struggled to be seen as a good person. His quick temper had often landed him in hot water either from talking back to his teachers or refusing to be pushed around by his peers. He and one our counselors were working on anger management but his fame as a firebrand often preceded him. When I overlooked his antics and focused instead on his intellectual abilities he calmed down into a model student whenever he was in my class. 

I was in charge of a fundraising program from St. Jude’s Hospital that involved recruiting students to get sponsors who would pay them for working a series of mathematics problems. Those funds along with the completed workbooks would then be returned to St. Jude’s. I was such an enthusiastic supporter of the annual event that I volunteered to do all of the work involved in checking the student work and compiling the money into one check for the organization. It took extra time from the students but they took pride in being able to do something for others. They were as enthusiastic about the mathathon as I was, so the donations came pouring in from the community. 

On one afternoon I was busily counting the money at my desk when there was a disturbing commotion in the classroom next door. Without thinking about securing the funds I rushed over the see if I might assist the teacher there. It ended up that she had fallen and so I helped her get to her feet and waited to see if she was going to be okay. I then called the school nurse to come to do a brief inspection. All the while the stacks of money sat unguarded on my desk. 

When I finally returned the notorious young man who was often regarded as a delinquent by my peers was sitting casually behind my desk. He immediately chastised me for being foolish enough to leave so much cash unattended but assured me that he had watched over it in my absence. He cautioned me to be more careful in the future. 

I was probably more lax than I should have been when it came to protecting valuables. Not long after that someone stole my wallet which just happened to be filled with money that I had withdrawn from the bank for a trip to a conference that many of us were planning to attend. I only realized the theft when I decided to purchase some snacks for the road trip and found that my wallet was missing. Several people immediately suggested that they had seen the same young man who had guarded the St. Jude’s donations lingering near my classroom. They were as certain that he was my thief as I was that he was innocent. I was so sure that he was innocent that I didn’t even want him to be interrogated. 

Many years passed when I received a call from the neighborhood police department. A city worker had found my wallet while cleaning out the sewer system. It was intact with all of my bank and credit cards neatly placed in the leather slots of the wallet. Only the money was missing. 

I was overjoyed to get the wallet because it was the final proof that my student had not been involved in the theft. He did not live in the neighborhood where is was found and there was no way that he would have been there. Each afternoon he boarded a bus that took him in the opposite direction to an apartment complex that was far away from the place where my wallet was found. He had always been vindicated in my mind but now I absolutely knew that he was not involved. 

I will never know who stole my wallet but I am glad that I was unwilling to jump to conclusions based on innuendo. I have always believed in the saying that a person should be considered innocent until proven guilty. We often jump to erroneous conclusions about people that have nothing to do with the truth. Justice demands that we do not equate the circumstances or appearance of someone with reality. Past mistakes do not make someone a criminal. In fact I have found that given a chance most people want to do the right thing. We all need someone to believe in us but sadly some among us are too often denied that basic equality that most of us enjoy. Reputation does not equal guilt.

Neither my parents nor grandparents ever traveled on a plane nor did they ever express a desire to visit any place beyond the United States. My father had wanderlust like a fever so I suspect that had he lived beyond his thirty three years he would have eventually become a world traveler. He had already made his way to most of the states and planning vacations was one of his most avid hobbies. At the time of his death flying was still a kind of luxury that he could ill afford but I have little doubt that he would have eventually found his way onto a jet to cross the globe. 

After Daddy was gone vacationing usually meant visiting his parents in Arkansas or spending a few days in San Antonio or Austin. Most of the time it just meant not having to go to school rather than actually packing up and driving to some far away destination. I did not miss exploring other places because I had burned out on long hauls after our whirlwind year of driving to California and back to Texas again just before my father’s demise. Somehow I associated long trips with the end of his life and so I had little desire to be anywhere but home. 

The first time I rode on a plane was on my honeymoon. My husband and I flew to New Orleans, a quick jaunt from Houston by air. In those days we had to walk onto the tarmac and climb a flight of stairs to reach the cabin. Friends without tickets were allowed to follow us to take photos of the big event. There was a naïveté about the whole process that is now long gone. I was so excited about being married that I actually recall little about the flight other than the fact that a cabbie who drove us to the French Quarter from the New Orleans Airport took a circuitous route that cost us a fortune in fare. 

It would not be until twenty years later that I would fly again. Life took hold of me and the idea of jetting off somewhere seemed overly frivolous. Instead my little family and I travelled across America by car, camping in the outdoors and creating awesome memories. Then we suddenly received a free ticket to anywhere in the USA as a promotion from our bank. It was time for me to fly again. 

My dear friend Linda had recently moved to Los Angeles and I missed our fun times together so I decided that I would use that ticket to go see her. My daughter Maryellen wanted to visit the family as well so I purchased an additional fare for her and we were off to see the Schefflers in LaLa land. From that moment forward I was hooked. I found the take off and the landing to be exhilarating and I had no sooner returned home than I was mentally planning my next journey. A whole new world lay before me and I began to understand why travel had brought so much joy to my father. Going by air made even places across the ocean accessible.

I might have been in Scotland last May but for COVID 19. I gladly gave up that dream for the sake of precaution but I find myself more and more often longing to hear phrases like “Fasten your seatbelts” or “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are ready for takeoff.” I long to be able to explore the world once again, a treat that I suppose I had begun to take for granted before the virus made it impossible. 

I’m not sure when there will be freedom to travel anywhere I wish once more. I worry a bit that I it will take far longer than we once thought. I miss being able to so easily jump on planes to see the world like it was only a year or so ago. I am more than eager to plan a whirlwind tour across Europe and settle into a seat on a plane that will take me wherever I wish to go. 

In the meantime my husband and I are busy planning a camping trip for the summer. We know how to do that quite well and we are certain that such journeys are always fun. I have the patience to wait until it is deemed safe to fly somewhere without having to quarantine in a hotel for weeks. I’m optimistic that I will once again hear all of those familiar phrases that tell me that I am about to leave the ground and fly in the air to the places that fill my dreams. 

I’ve decided that I will never again take juch trips for granted nor will I be frugal and purchase economy seats. My last experience in the “cattle car” section of a plane was excruciating. I’d rather go less often in the comfort of business class than sit for hours with my knees in my chin and my arms cramping from having to hold them so close to my chest. My old bones really can’t take such cramped quarters for twelve hours anymore. My last trip in the back of a plane felt way too much like the long journey to and from California of my youth when I was stuffed in the backseat of the car with my two brothers for hours on end, sometimes sleeping on the floorboard while my siblings snoozed on the seat. I suppose today’s economy class for overseas flights give me flashbacks that I do not wish to recall.

I’m confident that the day is coming when I will be settled into my seat filled with anticipation as the wheels go up and the pilot announces that we are on our way. I am patient for now but in truth I can hardly wait to fasten my seatbelt.  

Long ago a priest told me that the story of Jesus’ final days on earth was an example of the ups and downs of human existence. He noted that Jesus entered Jerusalem as a hero with crowds cheering him and creating a carpet of palms for him to walk upon. By the end of the same week he had been betrayed by a friend, abandoned by his closest disciples and tried and convicted as a political criminal. As he was dying a brutal death on a cross the only people willing to be present for him were his mother, a cousin, a woman follower of sometimes questionable reputation and a complete stranger. Many who had only recently cheered him now taunted him and some who had been closest to him denied even knowing him. 

Such it often unfolds in our own lives. Over the entirety of our time on this earth acquaintances come and go, friendships sometimes disappoint, our popularity rises and falls until over time we think we have a good idea of who might be at our sides through the best and the worst of our days. More often than not family members are the core of those on whom we know that we may depend, especially our mothers and fathers who seem to love us no matter how imperfect we are. 

I saw the cycle of relationships unfold rather dramatically with my mother, an outgoing and generous woman who seemed to always be surrounded by people who loved her. She was the woman in the neighborhood and at church whom people trusted with their hidden feelings. Her door was always open and people flocked to her until the quirks of her mental illness made her more difficult to understand. One by one people became too uncomfortable with her depression or manic outbursts to keep visiting or even talking with her on the phone. They offered excuses for not accepting her party or dinner invitations. Her world shrank to a small group of ever faithful friends and family members who refused to abandon her even as her mind became more riddled and confused. Most of those who truly loved her were her brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and of course her children and grandchildren who stood by her no matter how dark her changing moods became.

For the majority of us family is the constant in a world of variables. By the time one reaches an age like mine the hangers on and flatterers have been culled and the people who really care are apparent. They are the ones who will sit with us in an ICU, comfort us when life feels cruel, check on us when we seem not to be ourselves, love us even when we have difficulty loving ourselves. At the center of our shrinking sphere of influence is family, people who know us better than anyone and still accept or at least overlook all of our many flaws. 

Family has provided me with rock solid support from the moment that my father died when I was a very young child. My mother was my number one fan, a woman who cheered me on when I was a winner and hugged me when I failed. Until the moment she died she was ever present with her unconditional love. I still miss her random unannounced visits when she would gleefully honk her horn in my driveway to announce that she had come bearing gifts of food or plants or ideas for how to spend a sunny day when I might otherwise have stayed home. I long for her birthday cakes and quirky gifts and the sound of her voice singing Happy Birthday with the memory of my coming into this world that only she would ever fully understand. 

My brothers have been fellow travelers with me through thick and thin. As we grew and went our independent ways the bond that we forged as children stayed as strong as ever. Now it is extended to my sisters-in-law and my nieces and nephews. We form an ever growing circle that feels unbreakable. It takes little more than a phone call or text to rally all of them to my side. I feel their genuine warmth and love and know that I am never really alone.

All but one of my aunts and uncles are now gone. It has fallen to my cousins to keep our once large and raucous extended family together. The clan has grown so large that some of us do not really know each other. Still there is a solid group of us who once laughed and played together at our grandmother’s house on Friday nights. Each of us has seen more of all sides of life than we might have wished. We may not get together as frequently as we once did and in fact often wish that we would not wait for weddings or retirement parties or funerals to take the time to visit once again. Still when we do rally the feelings that we have always had come back to the fore and our links are strong again.

Then of course there are those closest to me, my husband and my daughters and sons-in-law and grandchildren. They are my strength, my pride, my joy. We can be totally open and honest and still not break the ties that bind us together. We laugh and cry with the ups and downs of daily life. We create our family history together, a story that is still unfolding minute by minute. 

Family matters to each of us. We hold each member tightly in a special place of our hearts. We love them whether they are almost perfect or perfectly flawed. In a world that can sometimes feel cruel and without compassion if we are really lucky we will have a family that embraces us just as we are. 

She came to me with tears streaming down her face from behind her glasses with lenses as thick as the bottoms of bottles. She held up her braille copy of our mathematics text book so that I might see the hundreds of holes added maliciously to the raised marks on the paper. Someone had punched those holes uniformly with the point of a compass. She thought she knew who it was and as she made her accusation I watched him smirking and laughing as though he had done something wonderful. When I approached him he owned up to his antics with a kind of pride. He scanned the room with his sarcastic smile as if he knew that the other students would shower him with adulation. That’s when I lost my composure, all sense of decency, my usual instance on being kind to everyone. 

I tore into him with the advantage of being an adult, someone who knew how to use words as a weapon. My lips were dripping with sarcasm as I spoke of how small he had to be to hurt a blind girl just to get attention. I asked him what was wrong with him that he was only able to find friends by being ugly. I went on with my anger until he was sobbing like a small child and then I hurled my most lethal blow by shaking my head and saying, “That’s what I though. You are just a little worm with no courage, no character, no substance.” 

The students broke into a cheer. They smiled as though I had released them from an evil spell. There was a sense of relief as the poor soul continued to cry in shame with his head down on his desk. I should have felt victorious but instead I felt like scum on the bottom of a shoe. I had allowed myself to fall to a level of unkindness that I swore I would never use with another human. I had always believed that two wrongs do not make a right no matter the circumstances and yet here I was. 

I mostly try to be a kind person but sometimes my very human traits lead me down a rabbit hole of thought or words or actions that are as awful as the behaviors I most abhor. Of late I find myself all too often succumbing to the kind of nastiness that has seemingly become popular. Whenever I have had my fill of insulting language or actions I react but never as horribly as I did on the day I defended the little blind girl in my class. In retrospect I see that the boy who ruined her book was a damaged and disabled as anyone. His approach to life and people was toxic but I should have remembered that he had to have learned how to be that way due to some horrible circumstances. I did not need to accept his behavior, but I should have combated it in a more humane way. I should have been the example that he needed. Instead I became not just his worst nightmare but my own.

Of late I find myself muttering to no one that I am so tired. I still have more than a good share of physical energy but psychologically I am bushed. It is not so much that I am depressed because I am still able to take delight in the glory and wonder of the world and its people. I don’t mind the sacrifices I have made during the pandemic. It is my disappointment in people that is wearing me down. When I see someone note that a particular person or group is “human garbage” I shudder. When I witness abusive language or behavior being not only accepted but encouraged as some perverted form of bravery, I want to cry. I find myself wondering if the world has somehow gone crazy or if it is only I who have a problem. 

I am not fool enough to think that the world can ever be filled with rainbows and unicorns. History is proof that we humans are capable of unthinkable horrors. Nonetheless I want to believe that most good people are offended by cruelty no matter the reasoning for it. My stomach turns when I hear cheers for remarks that should never have been uttered, including those like I made to that unfortunate boy. It says something terrible about our society when we are willing to follow and revere brutishness. It is as inhumane as kicking a wounded dog. 

If there is one thing that is holding me back from celebrating each day with pure joy it is the realization that so many have wittingly or unwittingly allied themselves with individuals and groups that are almost barbaric in their assessment of those with whom they disagree. It worries me that we have allowed this trend to go as far as it has without insisting that it stop. Somehow too many have conflated boorishness and vindictiveness with courage. 

I still believe that we humans are mostly good. We want to be better than our natures sometimes lead us to be. We are usually a forgiving lot and we even know how to get together when necessary to topple the tyrants among us. There are signs that we are no longer willing to simply accept the cruelty that is so fashionable but in our haste to rid ourselves of it we have to be careful that we do not become as bad as the brutes who dish it out. We should always remember that it may be okay to topple a few tables to get the attention that we need but hurting people should only be a last resort. I’m betting that kindness and love will eventually win but it is going to take some concentrated effort from most of us to make that happen. We can’t look the other way anymore, but we must be careful not to descend into the darkness when we make the efforts to rid ourselves of the cruelty that we so dislike. Surely we are better than that.

I have often admitted that learning and teaching gave me a way to temporarily turn off the challenges of living. Going to school comforted me after my father’s death and well into my teen years. I found it difficult to be too obsessed with my troubles while studying. As someone who is prone to chronic worrying learning provided me with a safe haven from which to escape from the concerns that seemed to follow me everywhere. Eventually my work as a teacher became my mechanism for feeling calm and safe. Keeping my mind active has always prevented me from becoming obsessed with my troubles. 

I often regret not continuing with my education. I have a graduate degree but I think I would have enjoyed enrolling in the Creative Writing program at the University of Houston that so many of my professors were encouraging me to do. If not that, I might have worked toward earning a PhD. in educational leadership or some such thing. 

I suppose that I might well have done either of these things but I always seemed to have more irons in the fire than I was able to handle at one time. I was a kind of perfectionist with my work as an educator but I also had a family waiting for me at home. I was already robbing them of so much of my time that I did indeed feel guilty about adding rigorous classwork to my already bursting schedule. Then there was also the care of my mother which always hovered in the background. At any given moment I often had to drop everything to get her the care and the safe environment that she needed. I never knew when her mental illness would rear its head, but I did know that it would always inevitably happen. 

Now that I am retired I might have enrolled at a university not so much for career advancement but just for the love of learning. Instead I found the Glasscock School of Continuing Education at Rice University where I have taken a course each fall and spring since 2011. There is nothing more wonderful than learning just for fun, no certifications, no tests, no grades. I take the classes only because they make me happy. 

I’ve become a kind of groupie for certain professors and mostly history but I’ve experienced other types of learning as well. I picked up some tips on writing and publishing that have helped me with my blog and allowed me to lose some of the fear that I once had of exposing myself and my points of view to the public. I’ve enjoyed several histories of the city of Houston that have brought back memories as well as shown me how and why Houston developed into one of the largest cities in the United States. I’ve learned about India, China, art history, current issues, and the backstory of Downton Abbey. 

It’s been fun gathering information from extraordinary lecturers and surrounding myself with interesting and brilliant people who share my interests. Before COVID 19 I used my afternoons or evenings at Rice as a day out by always including a special lunch or dinner in the festivities. I’d dress up a bit more than I do at home and make a day of doing something just for me. 

During the isolation of the pandemic I have turned to studying and teaching once again as a way of keeping my mind from wandering into dark places. Helping my students to learn mathematics has been a gift to me just as it has been for so many years. I’ve also read and watched tutorials on various subjects in addition to taking two history classes remotely. All of it has filled my hours and made the past year more than just bearable. I have mostly enjoyed the quiet of my solitude and the opportunity to do research and meditate. 

I’ve recently watched a PBS series on Ernest Hemingway that has prompted me to want to reread some of his works. I first studied them as a teen and young woman in my twenties. I suspect that my age and my experience might cause me to view them a bit differently than before. I often find that the same words seem to change when observed from different points in time. I am now that old man fishing in the sea rather than a young woman feeling pity for him as he battles with the marlin. I’ve already realized that books I read long ago feel different when I read them now. I used to despise Heart of Darkness but in a recent reading I found it to be a masterpiece. 

We can all do with a bit of continuing education. Learning should never end and need not have any purpose beyond simply enriching one’s life. For me studying and gaining new knowledge is better than hours with a therapist or swallowing an antidepressant. Keeping the mind active is as critical as exercising the body and eating a healthy diet. It’s the route to a good and happy life.