All It Takes Is A Little Love

I’ve always been drawn to stories about heroes. When I was very young I read every book about saints in the library. Some of them impressed me with their willingness to stand up for what is right and just. Profiles In Courage remains one of my favorite books for outlining situations in which individuals went against the tide of opinion in order to follow their consciences. More recently I have been impressed with folks both young and old who passionately fight for causes in which they believe. I’ve even known heroes in my own life that nobody else will ever recognize, but whom I recall and admire because of moments when they rose to defend ideas that did not conform with popular thinking. 

It is incredibly difficult to buck the system in pursuit of integrity. I will always remember one of my students who stood up to her entire class, urging them to be honest about a situation involving cheating. She was a small girl who was normally quiet, but on that day she stunned everyone with her fearlessness. So too did another student who returned stolen items that his brother had taken from other students. He was initially shunned even by his own family, but over time his teachers and peers realized how dependable and morally upright he was. They ultimately chose him to represent the school at a summer leadership camp where he soared. 

I have admittedly been turned off of late by people and politicians who run with the pack, refusing to admit when wrongs have taken place. I may not agree with many of her political stances but I will always tip my hat in approval of Liz Cheney’s defense of our American democracy. She proved her mettle in defending our Constitution and the peaceful transfer of presidential power even as her political party mostly turned on her. So too was Adam Kinzinger a man of honor in the same regard. 

Sadly in today’s highly charged environment being a hero often means receiving death threats and being stalked. How the bravest among us are able to endure such things and stand firm in their beliefs leaves me in awe. I like to believe that I will always do the right thing, but I’m not so sure I would be able to do so publicly. I know I cringe and hide a bit when someone gets angry over the topics in my blogs. Nobody has ever threatened me with harm for having contrary ideas but I’ve been called a few names that were uncomfortable to hear. 

David Hogg was a student at Parkland High School when a mass shooter killed many of his fellow students. From that time he has been an ardent supporter of gun control and continues speaking out and organizing. He has been the victim of harassment and hatefulness even from public officials but he does not bend. He gives me hope for the future of the world. We need young people like him.

John McCain was one of the bravest men to ever serve our country both in war and in the Senate. He was a man of honor who loved the United States, not with a crazy fanaticism but with the highest respect for the laws and the American people. I remember the time that he insisted that Barack Obama, his opponent in a presidential race, was a good man. He refused to go along with lies and propaganda. He also voted with his conscience on many occasions. His time as a prisoner of war is legendary. He refused to take advantage of an opportunity to be freed earlier than other men simply because his father was a high ranking officer in the military. No amount of torture swayed him to relent. He had an iron will and he loved our country more than most of today’s politicians put together. 

Barbara Jordan was another of my heroes. I loved that she was born, raised and educated in my hometown of Houston, Texas. She was a brilliant woman and a voice for justice in a time when it took great fortitude for a Black woman to speak her mind. She ranks right up there with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in my estimation and I always wished that her health would have allowed her to run for President of the United States. I think she would have done that job remarkably well. 

I have been fortunate to know real life heroes again and again. They are people without an ounce of hypocrisy in their daily dealings with the world. They are what they seem to be, rising above the ordinary with their determination to work for just causes. Sometimes they are heroes like my dear departed friend, Sharon Saunders, who quietly counseled young men and women who were suffering. She listened with razor sharp attention and provided them with comfort and wisdom and most of all love. 

Sometimes it feels as though everyone is just a mindless follower these days and then out of nowhere there comes a hero. Watch for them. They are all around us. You may find them in the most unexpected places but you will always know them when they demonstrate their honor. 

We recently finished watching Bodies on Netflix and it’s premises have continued to creep into my mind when I least expect that to happen. The story is a mashup of detective genre , mystery and science fiction that posits several theories about the nature of being human. The main question lies in two arguments. One is that our history is a repetitive loop in which we are only players with predetermined roles. The other is that we have the free will to determine and change our destinies. We are not just puppets doomed to mistakes not of our own making. 

It’s a thrilling and thought provoking series that suggests the kind of search for answers that have fascinated humans for thousands of years. Only recently a Stanford professor claims to have proven that free will is a myth. His hubris fascinates me only to the extent that thinkers have tinkered with such ideas for a very long time and yet the discussion of what drives us seems to continue. 

I for one vote with team “free will” not just because of my religious upbringing, but because it makes sense to me that the very essence of the difference between humans and animals is that we have the ability to think about our thinking. If we were only bit players in an historical play in which our parts were carefully scripted it would not account for heroes who courageously opt to toss the playbook aside in a quest for justice. We humans actively seek to be virtuous even as we often fail in our efforts. I do not believe that these failures result from some vast eternal plan over which we have no control. Instead I am certain that every single day in every way we have opportunities to decide our own fates.

While our situations and our opportunities may vastly differ, we always have moments in which we choose how we will think and act regardless of how difficult doing so becomes. I understand that enslaved people had little recourse but to follow the commands of their masters, but inside their hearts and souls the same dreams and desires that anyone has were very much alive. If our destinies were indeed pre-programed we would be dullards without thought. Since I have never met anyone who did not consciously think about things, I tend to believe that our skill in that regard is the driver of our free will. We may not make the best choices and we may even be limited in those choices by cruel circumstances, but we have a higher calling than being simple minded and obedient. 

The question then becomes why and how some people use their free will to be virtuous and some choose evil. Those are conundrums that I don’t think we yet fully understand even as we study such things in attempts to unlock the keys to human behavior. We are certainly influenced by the sum total of our experiences and the people we encounter, but we all know of those who react differently to the same situation. John McCain might have used the influence of his father to be freed from captivity faster than those who shared his fate. Instead he chose to wait his turn even though he was being tortured. Not everyone would have done so. In fact we see people all the time taking advantage of others because of their wealth, status or power. 

Why do some of us become profiles in courage while others bow to temptations? These are questions that we humans often contemplate. I suppose that everyone wants to be good but our human frailties often get in our way. Sometimes we even have difficulty deciding what is actually good and what is evil. The complexities of life are daunting and they create doubts that sometimes freeze us into a state of inaction. 

Even with the gift of retrospect we realize that it is not always clear what might have changed the course of history for the better. Would things have turned out peacefully if the German citizens had never voted for Hitler and his henchmen or were the nation’s problems so deep that another bad actor would have evolved anyway? We can never really know how one change will affect the whole. The “what ifs?” of life do not always lead to better outcomes. 

I often wish that my father had not chosen to go driving down an unfinished highway in the middle of the night. The fact is that my thoughts are moot because it is exactly what he did. I might have been a very different person had he decided to stay home. My own way of interacting with the world would have changed. The people that I encountered would have been different. All of the influences that molded me would no longer have been there. It is fruitless to even attempt to contemplate a different theme to my story. 

As I have recounted I nonetheless find thinking about our thinking to be an exciting endeavor. I doubt that anyone will ever find a universally accepted way of explaining why and how we humans operate in the moral sphere. Still I hold fast to the theory that each of us has the free will to decide how we wish to behave. Therein lies both the glory and the shame of humankind. 

I am writing from my bed today as I keep my left ankle elevated and iced after enduring an accident yesterday. I have not allowed my advancing age to slow me down one iota until this moment. I have spent the last week decking the halls of my home and my yard with holiday cheer. I have climbed up and down the ladder to my attic to retrieve lights and ornaments and other decorations that I use to celebrate the Christmas season. I’ve been engaged a a flurry of activity, ignoring the pains in my knees, hips and back. I’ve learned that a dose of Advil keeps me going like the Ever Ready Bunny. I have ignored warnings from my daughters that is time for me to slow down just a bit, but my vanity would not allow me to do such a thing. 

Pride goeth before the fall and I pushed myself a bit too far last night resulting in an ankle injury while hanging lights on a tabletop tree. My attempts to simply keep moving came to a halt when my ankle swelled to double its size and began to show bruising. Walking became almost impossible as a searing pain jolted me with each step. Fearing that I had perhaps broken a bone as I had when I was decades younger, I decided that I needed to have it checked with a doctor. With the help of my husband, Mike, I limped down the stairs and into the car for a visit to the Methodist Pearland Emergency Center. 

Luckily it was a slow night so the emergency crew saw me right away. Explaining how my klutzy tendencies had landed me there became more and more embarrassing as the doctor and nurses looked at me the same way my daughters might have. Somehow I understood that they were wondering why someone my age was standing on a chair to decorate a tree on top of a table in the second story of my home. As I told my tale over and over again I began to feel more and more stupid. In my head I was asking why I had not just settled down after dinner. I should have patted myself on the back for putting in a twelve hour day of creating Christmas cheer. The words “if only” danced through my head like visions of sugarplums.

While waiting for the X-rays to be developed Mike and I began joking about my situation. I suggested that I might tattoo the word “Klutz” across my forehead because I had injured the exact same ankle only a couple of weeks earlier after tripping over a rolled up rug in a friend’s home. I seem to have a knack for getting into wacky trouble as I rush through the world as though I am still sixteen years old, ignoring suggestions that maybe it’s time for me to surrender some of my compulsive behaviors just a bit. 

When my mother and mother-in-law were my age they had both simplified their lives greatly. They no longer hosted large holiday gatherings at their homes. That job fell to me. Their once extravagant decorations were permanently stored away. They might have one tiny tree to designate the season but nothing more. I understood their need to slow down because both of them had serious health issues that sapped their energy. My mother-in-law died at Christmastime when she was only seventy-six years old. My mother would last longer but her stamina became more and more stressed with each passing year. I, on the other hand, have always felt like my grandfather who lived the the ripe old age of one hundred eight. 

Somehow I have always felt invulnerable to the challenges often associated with aging. I bristle over questions about whether or not I have fallen or how many rugs I have in my home that may trip me. I refuse offers for a visiting nurse to come inspect my home because I am the one who is caring for my ninety five year old father-in-law. How dare anyone insinuated that I am no longer as capable as I once was!

The truth is that I have to keep myself busy with writing and reading and watching Christmas movies from my bed or I will surely be tempted to resume my decorating with abandon. After all I have a boot that keeps my ankle stationary and while I don’t maneuver as quickly as usual, I can still get around with minimal pain. I know I can gut it out, but perhaps nature is telling me to surrender just a wee bit. In refusing to acknowledge that I should begin to avoid climbing on tall ladders and crawling around in my attic or I will surely be as hard headed as my mother once was and my father-n-law now is. 

I have always promised myself to be logical about my capabilities like my grandfather was. I have hoped to be willing to hand over my car keys before my daughters have to wrench them from me in a big scene. I don’t want to be that old person who is driving the younger folk crazy with my demands to do things that I should be slowly phasing out of my life. The beauty of my grandfather was that he always knew when it was time to fold his hand without anyone having the plead with him to do so. He was a delightful elder who made it easy for his younger caretakers. 

I suspect that this is a wakeup call for me. I am going to have to learn to accept help and even to scale down my demands on myself. I can think of no greater gift to my children than to show some common sense beginning with taking the doctor’s advice and allowing my ankle to heal before I go traipsing about again. I’ve bruised a bone and created a contusion on my soft tissue just to prove that I can still be a person of boundless energy. I now see that as a somewhat selfish thing to do. 

So I resolve to find joy in doing nothing today other than allowing my ankle to heal. I accept that the world will still keep going even if I am stagnant in it for a day. I’ve got seven strong grandchildren who should be able to do the hunting in the attic and they will be all the happier in knowing that I am demonstrating my grandfather’s good sense. I suppose now is the time for me to learn how to let go gracefully.

When I was a young child my parents purchased Christmas ornaments to fill out a fairly large sized tree. They were colorful and twinkly as they caught the rays of illumination from the strings of light. I thought they were beautiful and loved lying on the floor gazing up at the glorious sight that signified a wonderful time of the year. As far as I know my mother was still using those same decorations on the last trees of her life which had steadily become smaller and smaller as she grew older. I don’t think that she ever purchased another ornament to add to her collection. She simply used the ones that she and my father had purchased when they were in their twenties. 

When I first married Christmas came quickly, only two months after my wedding. My husband Mike and I scrambled to purchase a small tree and a couple of boxes of colorful glass ornaments to brighten the branches. They were rather nondescript decorations that filled the bill for celebrating the holiday on the very slim budget of our first year together. 

Unlike my mother, I slowly but surely began collecting Christmas ornaments over the years. Every one of the trinkets that decorate my many trees has a story of time and place and people that I have loved. There are the uniques items festooning my travel tree that remind me of places that Mike and I have visited. My mother collected salt and pepper shakers on her trips with my father. I collect Christmas ornaments. They span years of visiting different places and always remind me of the joy I felt on those trips.

At the turn of this century I spent New Year’s day in Austria where I learned of different symbols that supposedly represent good luck. On the eve of two thousand four just before midnight the owners of the restaurant where we were dining presented us with a box of confections portraying four leaf clovers, lady bugs and cute little pigs all of which represent lucky charms. Somehow I got it in my head to begin purchasing little pig ornaments in the years that followed. When I had a sizeable number of them I created a tree dedicated to the precious creatures that I collect whenever I see one that is unique. 

In my dining room I feature a tree filled with beautiful ornaments made from silver and porcelain and carved wood. Most of them were gifts from friends who knew that I enjoy adding to my Christmas ornaments. Many represent milestones in my life like the birth of a grandchild, the purchase of a new home or a wedding anniversary. I even began adding yearly adorable gingerbread men to mark the passage of time. In the middle of all the glory of the delicate creations hangs a plastic angel whose silver paint has faded over time. She may be incongruous to those who see her amongst the other artfully created trinkets but she means more to me than any of them. I managed to take her from a table of castaways after my Grandma Ulrich died. I had seen her on many a Christmas Eve as we celebrated with my aunts and uncles and cousins. She reminded me of those magical evenings with my grandmother padding among her guests in warm slippers offering her milky over sugared coffee with a big smile on her face. That angel is the star of my tree. 

The main tree that stands in my great room is filled with so many memories that it would take a year of blogs to recite all of the stories behind them. Some reminded me of things that I love like Harry Potter or Mickey Mouse. Many were gifts from friends, coworkers and the youngsters that I taught. There are homemade creations like the one that feature a dear friend’s children when they were toddlers. Now they are both in their forties and fifties. My daughter made another one with a photo of our golden retriever Red. There are ornaments from my mother who noticed that I liked to collect such things and gifts from my friend Marita who brought back cute decorations from her travels around the world. There is a handmade set of Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus ornaments that my friend Pat insisted on buying for me on one of our many Christmas adventures and others from my friend Cappy who loves Christmas as much as I do. There is the sweet gift from Jenny and Eric on the occasion of my fiftieth wedding anniversary as well. I get quite emotional setting up this tree because it reminds me of so many good times and good people. Nothing is there that does not evoke special feelings.

There is one more tree that I set up inside my home. I place it on top of a table so that the whole neighborhood sees it through a large window in the second story of my house. It is the tree that holds the ornaments that have become flawed over time. Some have lost their color. Others are missing parts. It is a tree that would make Charlie Brown smile with delight because while it starts out looking rather ordinary and bleak, somehow it is gorgeous when it is finally donned with items that most people might think to throw away. In many ways it is my favorite tree because it is so humble. The only pretense featured on that tree is the joy of knowing that even the least of my ornaments are beautiful to behold. 

I take my emotional journey down memory lane once each year. Dear people still bring new ornaments to me. I also find some that I know I must have. I may be nearing the need for one more tree that I might tuck away on a countertop or table as my collection continues to grow. I gaze at my twinkling trees just as I did with the one that my parent’s created when I was a child and I feel so much joy and peace. Those trees speak of a life well lived and the people I have known and loved. They are so beautiful to me.

Geography was a required class for those of us seeking a degree in education. I put off taking the course as long as possible. I had heard that the professor who taught the fundamentals of geography was a tyrant who never gave anyone an A. I finally registered with great dread and attended the first lecture with a negative attitude. Within five minutes I was mesmerized by the depth and breadth of knowledge that the woman had. Soon enough I was looking forward to the three hours each week when I would learn things about our earth and its people that I had never before known. She not only enlightened me but also demonstrated the interconnections of history, sociology, science and mathematics that affect our earth. Suddenly I understood the importance of focusing on our human dependence on this planet. 

Later I would learn how to teach geography if I were ever called upon to do so. The professor of that class would echo the methodologies of the geography teacher who had so enchanted me. He suggested that students needed to understand the human journey from place to place and the how’s and why’s that enticed them to settle in certain areas. He also stressed the importance of water throughout the history of humankind. Water, he said, was more valuable than any other resource on earth. Gold and oil are of little use if water is not available.

I was only tasked to teach geography a few times in my career. I tried to help my students make the connections that my professors had shown me. I wanted them to understand as I had that history has always been beholden to the resources of the earth and that water is the most important above all. I showed them how cities and towns across the globe began along the banks of rivers or next to oceans or lakes. When humans finally decided to settle down they needed water to grow their crops and quench their thirst. 

We have often been guilty of wasting or polluting our precious water sources. Even today the city of New Orleans is grappling with an invasion of sea water into the fresh water of the Mississippi River. Drought combined with over engineering of the great river has created the devastating situation. Pallets of water had to be brought into the city while efforts were made to halt the invasion of the sea. 

In some parts of the United States drought has caused wells to run dry, lakes to become holes in the ground. We have at times found lead in water sources as well as other cancerous materials. There are Native American reservations that still have no running water even in the modern era. 

We humans need water to stay alive. We must drink a certain amount each day to stay healthy. Our crops will not grow without water. We need water to keep our homes sanitary, to clean our clothes. This summer we have seen the need to conserve our most precious resource. Many of us are still subject to water restrictions and yet there are far too many among us who think of what is happening as mere irritations rather than signs from our earth that we need to become more aware of our individual impacts on the availability of water for everyone. 

We indeed must begin to view water as our most important resource. Just as we invest in stocks and bonds and precious metals, we should be investing time and money into saving water. We need to be as conscious of how we use this life giving resource as we are of saving income for the future. We can no longer afford to simply take water for granted. Already there are places in the world fighting over sources of water. Water has even been used as weapon of war. 

I spent much of the summer researching the history of the dust bowl in the southern great plains. It was human desecration of the native plants along with a years long dearth of rain that left people gasping for life. When dust storms raged, drifts of dirt blocked the doors of homes and seeped through the cracks in windows. The people suffered from dust pneumonia. The carcuses of their livestock were filled with soil that had blown off of the land. The people’s daily prayer was for rain that would fill their streams, ponds, lakes and wells that were as dry as bones. Many died and many had to leave in search of greener pastures kissed by showers from heaven. 

I now find myself taking great care with the water that comes into my home. I reuse dish water in my garden. I take tips from my daughter who catches water from her shower in containers whose precious content might then be used for other chores. My husband is studying how to harness water from our gutters when it rains. We can no longer afford to simply waste what we have. It would be to the benefit of everyone if we kept water restrictions in place to make certain that we do not wantonly throw away this precious resource. 

Conservation should become a habit, one that we do without complaint. It is an exercise for the future that will lead to better health for the planet. It’s well past time to protect our water. All of our money and possessions will be meaningless if there is no water. It’s up to us to keep it flowing and keep it clean.