Category: Emotions

Ask Alice

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Alice-Looking-Down-the-Rabbit-Hole-in-Alice-in-Wonderland

I suppose it was inevitable that we would all go a bit stir crazy after being shut in for so long. Sadly my own time in lockdown continues as I allow the more anxious folks to test the waters of returning to a more routine way of life. As my hermit existence is extended I have moments when it feels as though I’ve been pulled down a deep and winding rabbit hole that is filled with a level of crazy that makes me want to batten the hatches and hunker down for an interminable time.

Each new day brings almost unbelievable news of folks not handling the pressure of all this too well, but I should not be that surprised because of my decades of working in churches and schools. As the first lay director of the religious education program at my church I was accused of being an agent of the devil simply for having the audacity to take on the task of working with the children of the parish without being a nun. As a teacher and school administrator I’ve been threatened more times than I am able to count and that is just taking the bad behavior of the parents into account. I have learned that while the vast majority of people are level headed and polite there are always outliers who grab the attention with their noise. Most of the time I able to simply ignore their shenanigans but for the moment my patience is wearing thin.

I suppose that I am a cautious individual by nature and I generally admire anyone who is willing to take a few risks but there are indeed moments when discretion is the better part of valor. I can’t think of a more appropriate time in history to demonstrate a bit of sacrifice for the greater good than now. For the most part people are being quite generous in that regard but my patience has worn thin with those who seem to want to make a stink just for the sake of garnering attention. Those people who crowd into the streets refusing to distance themselves or wear masks or follow safety guidelines are exhibiting highly selfish behaviors. I understand their anxieties regarding their need to get back to work, but what difference could it possibly make to wear a mask and stay six feet apart while doing so? They remind me of adolescent students who refuse to follow a school dress code.

I used to tell my pupils that most rules and their punishments are created when people take advantage and push the envelope to the limits. When the behavior gets too bizarre someone invariably stops it with a mandate that includes consequences strong enough to prevent the unwanted action. If people simply thought of why certain dictums come about they might be less inclined to go ballistic over them.

Those of us who are older or have health problems are essentially being urged to stay at home while the rest of the world goes back to work. I don’t mind doing that at all even for an extended period of time if it helps to safely get our economy back on track. On the other hand when I do have to go out and about I want to feel secure and for now that means keeping a distance and wearing masks. I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would have a problem with that. If I am willing to do my part by secluding myself to get things running, then why can’t those who are out on the town demonstrate a bit of understanding of those of us in the more vulnerable groups? Just put on the masks and be done with it!

I also prefer honesty even if it hurts. My Uncle Bob is still one of my all time favorite people because when I saw him attaching his prosthesis to his amputated leg when I was quite young he told me exactly why his leg was gone and what his prognosis was. When he died when I was only six I understood what had happened and I loved him for telling me the truth rather than attempting to sugar coat the situation. He treated me with respect even though I was a child and to this day I prefer such honesty rather than attempts to make me feel better. Thus I am quite disturbed by those who try to downplay the pandemic and its future when nobody knows for sure what will happen. I would prefer hearing all of the possibilities so that I will be prepared for any eventuality. It’s a dangerous thing to give people false hope just to spare their feelings.

When the President of the United States floats promises of rainbow days and unicorns coming soon I am wary. He may be privy to more information that I am but I doubt that the long term outlook is as rosy as he sometimes paints it to be. He needs to encourage the nation to stay the course, make the sacrifices and work together. We’ve done this sort of thing before during the Great Depression and two world wars. He should be encouraging us to have the will to do whatever is needed in the moment, not to wear red caps and create difficulties for governors and mayors who are attempting to protect us. He needs to be honest and humble about how long this might take. We will be far more likely to survive with courage and determination if he models a leadership style that offers hope without unrealistic timelines and guarantees.

We are a nation of good and creative people. We do not need to boast or be selfish. This is a worldwide problem and it will be in working with all nations that the world finds its way back from the edge. It’s time we crawl out of the rabbit hole and back into the light of day, just ask Alice.   

Another Victim

Published on by Sharron Burnett1 Comment

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Aside from my father’s death I have to admit that my childhood was idyllic. I lived in a neighborhood that was like a small town. For many of us who resided there it centered on Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church which also offered a first through eighth grade education to those willing to pay the relatively small tuition. The area and the church were shiny and new back then and booming with the children of World War II veterans. Much like any suburban subdivision the homes ran the gamut from custom built brick to wooden ,models. The people who lived there were mostly middle class with those on the higher economic end having college degrees and professional titles.

My family lived at the outer edge of what was known as Overbrook. Our home was quite basic with three bedrooms and one bathroom. It was quite different from the one that we had when my father was alive with it’s extra bathrooms, built in bookcases, wood paneling and formal dining area. Nonetheless it was a great place to be as a child and I will be forever grateful to my mother for providing me and my brothers with the security of living in such a safe and child centered place.

My mother was an old school religious woman who believed that it was imperative to send her children to Catholic school and so she enrolled me and my brothers in Our Lady of Mt. Carmel as soon as it was time to begin our educations. The experience was nothing short of delightful.

The school was bursting at the seams back then. There were at least four sections of every single grade with twenty five to thirty children in each classroom. Every grade level was anchored by a School Sister of Notre Dame and the other teaching spots were filled with lay people. My mother managed to give us the private school education by working as a teacher there. We were allowed to attend at no cost and she received a small salary that helped us make ends meet at home. It could not have been a more perfect situation for any of us.

We had no air conditioning in the classrooms in those days which meant that for many months of the school year it was rather hot. Somehow we never seemed to mind the stifling air but it was admittedly nice to have a seat next to one of the big fans that whirred constantly as we learned, and learn we did in those halcyon days.

Our teachers were tough, but kind, (with the exception of one.) Our school was known throughout the city for being one of the best. We were well schooled in grammar, usage, literature, writing, mathematics, history, science and of course religion. I literally grew up with the same group of friends year after year as I advanced through the grades. Many of my pals’ mothers taught alongside my mother and from them I accumulated so much knowledge that I was still explaining to professors in college where I had become so well educated.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel School had sports teams of every variety and a drill team that became one of my favorite groups. By the time I was in the eighth grade I was the captain of the twirlers and enjoying the kinship of young ladies that I know to this very day. The school and its people were well known for excellence and so I was rather proud to be part of it all.

I eventually moved on to Mt. Carmel High School, then college and finally to my adult life. Just as I had changed so too did my old neighborhood and with it, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic School. Many of the old families had moved away and the new occupants of the homes more often than not did not have either the inclination nor the income to send their children to a private school. My old alma mater struggled to stay afloat as even the School Sisters of Notre Dame moved away and the salaries for lay teachers became a burden on the budget.

With each passing year it became more and more difficult to keep the school going. The buildings were no longer shiny and new. In fact, they began to have a careworn appearance that spoke of the problems getting students and teachers to keep things going. The academic excellence that my friends and I had experienced was slowly eroding until the Diocese of Galveston Houston decided to rescue the school from total bankruptcy. It seemed important to be able to provide the new residents of the area with an opportunity to give their children a Catholic school education but the reality is that the school was only a shell of what it had once been in spite of herculean efforts from dedicated individuals intent on keeping the fine tradition of the school alive.

There have been countless victims of the current pandemic. The world mourns the people who have lost their lives to this virus. We also hear of businesses that have closed and will never again open. Both our personal and economic health is reeling. Among the casualties is my old school, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. In late April the diocese announced that it, along with some other struggling schools,\\\\ would be permanently closed siting a lack of funding to keep things going any longer.

I suppose that the death of Our Lady of Mount Carmel had been in the cards for many years. I had witnessed its demise when I traveled to the old neighborhood to tutor students at Cristo Rey College Preparatory which is situated next door. I saw the peeling paint, patched roof and pothole rutted parking lot instead of the building that had been so modern and glorious when I was a student there. I spoke with people who taught there and realized how desperate their situation had become. While they worked to save the school that they loved they understood that it was getting more and more difficult to find students to fill the seats. The people living nearby often struggle just to get by. It is doubtful that many of them had the income necessary to pay tuition. Now with churches lagging behind in their contributions each Sunday because they have been closed I am sure that the diocese realized that the luxury of keeping schools such as Mt. Carmel afloat was no longer an option.

I’m filled with great sadness at this news. I worry that there will be so many more losses of once fine institutions before all is said and done. I grieve for those students who will no longer have this school as an option. Maybe it is indeed for the best, but I profoundly sad that my old school is no more. I will have to be content with my memories which include the magnificent education that I found there and the forever friends who shared those glorious times with me. 

Living From Day to Day

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

beautiful-sunset-sky-with-birds-royalty-free-image-865856136-1547059564Regardless of what may be happening with respect to the rest of the population I won’t be leaving my home to resume my normal activities anytime soon. My cautionary tendencies are screaming at me to take a wait and see approach to attempts to restart my routines once again. In spite of my own feeling that I am not one of the vulnerable ones despite my age, I happen to live with someone who has heart disease and I love him enough to make a few sacrifices to keep him safe. Besides, I have no assurances that my body would respond well to an infection of Covid-19. I may be kidding myself in thinking that I am made of steel.

Years ago my husband, my mother-in-law, and I came down with hepatitis A. They sailed through a relatively mild two week case while I spent three months sapped by the illness with my doctors wondering if I would ever become well again. I did finally overcome the infection but I spent over twelve weeks in quarantine, only leaving my home to visit my doctors. It took me many more weeks to regain my energy.

I suppose that my point is that I am not ready to take any unnecessary risks so I will continue staying home until it is very clear that the danger has passed. In the meantime I know how to keep myself busy but I will surely miss my encounters with people. I know that my writing has become a bit boring. I tend to find my inspiration by being part of the world at large. For now I am limited to watching my neighbors from my front room window and checking the pulse of humanity from posts on Facebook and news stories from journalists who don’t necessarily share my views. My borders have become smaller and smaller but I feel guilty to complain because my “prison” is filled with luxury.

Last year around this time I was in London. Perhaps the most fascinating place that I visited was the London Tower, home of Willam the Conqueror and countless monarchs which eventually became better known as a place of imprisonment and execution. I walked through cold stoney rooms where people had spent years languishing in isolation as criminals. They left intricately carved graffiti on the walls that speak of their frustration even centuries later. My temporary time of being shut off from society does not hold a candle to what they must have endured so I know that one way or another I will manage to get through this.

My head is filled with so many questions and concerns that it’s sometimes difficult for me to string words together in a coherent sentence. I am a thinker by nature but I have to be careful not to let my thoughts take me too far down a rabbit hole. I’d be much better off doing something constructive like Sir Isaac Newton who invented Calculus after he was sent home from Cambridge during a plague. I doubt that I will ever be quite that brilliant but it inspires me to use my time constructively rather than dwelling on possibilities that may or may not unfold. Perhaps I may use this time to relearn Calculus since I haven’t done anything in that realm since I was eighteen years old. I might even end up with a healthier mind.

It’s not as though I am incommunicado. I still speak with family and friends. Zoom, FaceTime, and Skype have been godsends in keeping me linked with people. I send texts and voice my feelings on Facebook. I read voraciously. The world is literally at my fingertips in one form or another. My worst days stuck inside are indeed mostly pleasant.

I found a list of books about plagues on the BBC website. I bookmarked the article that outlined the various volumes. It might be fun to take a look at some of them. I read The Plague by Albert Camus when I was in high school and recall being fascinated by it. Maybe it’s time to read it from the perspective of someone who is older, wiser, and has seen the actual ravages that a plague can inflict on the world. Maybe I can even set my mind to writing my own historical fiction book or story about Covid-19.

I sometimes wonder when I will feel safe enough to reintegrate with the life outside my home. The doctors in my family urge me not to be in a hurry to demonstrate my courage. They speak of their own worries for themselves and their children. They seem to believe that our dangers are far from being over. They are unwilling to suggest a time when it might be totally safe for me to emerge from my cocoon so I will just take things one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time without trying to gaze too far into the future and hopefully without letting my very vivid imagination get away from me.

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was horrific. Writer Katherine Porter lived through that terrifying experience and later wrote a semi-autobiographical piece about a young woman who survived the epidemic. During an interview not long before Ms. Porter died she revealed that of all the tragic events of the twentieth century it was the 1918 influenza outbreak that most affected her. In fact she spoke of never having been able to totally get over the horror of what she saw during that time.

We are living history even from inside our homes. The children of the future will want to know what we did and what we saw. There is something both exciting and terrifying at one and the same time. My only hope is that however each of us chooses to react to the situation we will do so with the intention of making it a bit easier for everyone else. For me that means staying put for a bit more time. 

Believe

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Man jumping over impossible or possible over cliff on sunset bac

We may be getting bored or even letting our imaginations get the best of us with worries about how this pandemic will ultimately affect our families, our friends, our state, our country, the world. It’s a pretty sure bet that we are in for some hard times but we are hard-wired to survive and many among us are already demonstrating the most honorable traits of our human personalities. All over the world people are pitching in to fight the battle against this virus with whatever talents and tools they have. It’s almost impossible to list all of the contributions to the cause that I have witnessed and I’m certain there are many more of which I am unaware. Whether it be laughter or medical expertise, optimism or leadership, knowledge or brute force we the people of this planet are working together just as we always do.

Of course there will always be naysayers and instances of selfish acts or even ugliness and evil that stain the good intentions of the majority but we’ll just have to ignore and work around such things for now. We don’t have the time or the energy to spare dwelling on the negative when there are so many positive things to be done. Our competitive natures should feed on the glory of teamwork and the kind of good sportsmanship that understands that the real winners are always those who adhere to a code of honor.

Each of us has a role to play, even the very young and the very old. All we have to do is consider our individual talents and then use them for the cause. The young woman who delivers groceries to someone’s doorstep is as vital in the battle against this disease as the doctor who toils tirelessly in the trenches of a hospital. We need our generals but their plans can only be carried out with enough foot soldiers to storm the enemy which in this case is the dreaded Coved-19.

We are long past the time for divisions and recriminations. It is a waste of our energy to dwell on mistakes or to indulge in fruitless critiques. We must rise to the occasion of this moment if we are to surge forward into a bright future. As a human race we must focus on our common needs rather than our political or spiritual or geographic differences. When all is said and done our only enemy is the virus and that should be our focus.

I’ve always been inclined toward a willingness to compromise. I’ve found few situations in which I have won all of my arguments regardless of how good and true I believed them to be. If I get even a bit of what I want I see it as progress and so I think we need to be as we work our way forward from the brink of this disaster. Each little win is a treasure. We can work out the smaller issues once the people of our world are healthy again. Hopefully we will share the common goal of rebuilding with a worldview rather than a tendency to horde our good fortune in isolation.

Sometimes it takes a tragedy for the scales to fall from our eyes and allow us to see clearly. My fervent prayer is that we will emerge stronger and better and more understanding than we have ever been. I suspect that the road will be long and hard but we’ve been rather lucky in the past so perhaps it’s now our time to shoulder a few more challenges than we are accustomed to balancing.

I have found myself marveling at the courage and kindness of my friends, a motley crew of people from all races and generations and professions who nonetheless share a determination to soldier through the fears and hardships of this pandemic. When my own anxieties begin to overtake me I invariably witness something wonderful from them that provides me with the motivation to take a deep breath and another step forward. We have become lifelines for one another and a source of hope in a situation that might otherwise become too dark to bear. Our humanity is shining through as magnificently as I have always thought that it would if ever it was being tested.

I am a religious person and my faith admittedly helps me. When I am most fearful I find myself silently singing, “Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come follow me, and I will give you rest.” These words from a song by John Michael Talbot seem to whisper in my mind, reassuring me that we have ultimately got this. While I know that not everyone shares my beliefs I know that I will be more ready to help my fellow human being because of the love that is the center of my religious convictions. For now I simply pray that each of the souls across the globe will somehow find a source of comfort to sustain them as we work our way back to a more normal future.

My gentle advice for everyone is to find something that you do well and give to others. Maybe it’s cooking a nice meal or calling to check on a friend. Each positive offering is important to someone and just may be the very thing that saves someone’s life. Keep doing what you do best and then just believe.

Live Laugh Love

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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For well over five weeks now I have gone nowhere other than Methodist Hospital on the day of my husband’s surgery and Paragon Infusion Center for my injection of Prolia. My days are contained inside the rooms of my home and in the glory of my backyard. I watch the people in my neighborhood from my windows and smile when I hear their laughter. I teach lessons to eight young people from an upstairs bedroom with my computer and my phone depending on what resources they have for distance learning. I try to keep in touch with family and friends and news of the world. It might actually be a rather pleasant time for me were it not for the images of human suffering that I see from all over the world. I am seemingly untouched by Covid-19 in terms of my own physical well being but my heart is heavy with thoughts of those less fortunate.

I am comforted by the overwhelming kindness that I both observe and experience. For the most part the pandemic has brought out the best in people. The good is doing its best to overwhelm the bad. Sure we have incidents of hoarding, price gouging, selfishness but those are the outliers. The more usual response of people all over the world has been to help even when it endangers their own lives. Amazingly there are courageous individuals running into the maelstrom rather than away from it because they want to assist in saving lives. The heroes outnumber the villains exponentially with each person doing whatever he or she can to get us through this nightmare.

In many ways we have been stripped down to the essentials of living. Sure we are watching our televisions and ordering grocery deliveries to our front door, but there is an uncharacteristic quietness and slower pace all around us that allows us to discover more clearly what is most important about our lives. We see that everything that we need is found in our relationships with one another, not in our possessions.

I have become more acutely aware of my own good fortune. The environment in which I await the end of this trial is safe and inviting. If I had to stay here for an indeterminate time I could be quite content. Still, I note that for some the forced isolation is far from pleasant. I am certain that there souls struggling in environments that are unsafe, abusive, lacking in the basic necessities. I pray that the people in such situations will make through this ordeal as unscathed as possible. I pray that someone is looking out for their welfare just as my husband and I check on my aging father-in-law or communicate with our children and grandchildren. I’d like to think that everyone has someone on whom to lean, perhaps a caring teacher or a friend. 

I have not been particularly kind in my assessment of the political leaders of my country and my state during this outbreak. My criticisms have been sometimes brutal but of late I have come to the conclusion that engaging in commentaries about their failures is of no use in the present moment. This is not the time to be concerned with such things because what’s done is done. We have to deal with the situation as it is in the moment, not as we would have liked it to be. There will be plenty of time to analyze the mistakes and determine better plans for the future after the battle over the virus has been won. For now I choose to pray that everyone in charge will be guided by wisdom. I pray that the leaders of the world will understand the need to work together. We have to keep our eyes trained on the real enemy which is Covid-19.

This pandemic is the great equalizer. It knows no geographical boundaries or political philosophies. It does not differentiate between one race or another, religious believers or non-believers. It sees only our humanity stripped down to its most basic form. All of our titles and accomplishments and riches mean nothing to it. We are simply humans whose bodies are places for the virus to find a home. If only we might remember that when the danger finally passes. If only we will celebrate our common bonds that supersede the trivialities of difference that seem to create our problems. Life is what we must cherish and elevate because now we should see that when our backs are against the wall it is all that really matters.

We humans are a resilient lot. we have a way of overcoming challenges again and again. It is a time of uncertainty but the one thing of which we might all be sure is that in the end our ingenuity and common decency will prevail. It has before and it will in this instance. That is the thought that should be sustaining us until we are once again able to throw open our doors and invite the people we love back inside our homes. In the meantime live, laugh and love. It has always been what we were meant to do best.