All It Takes Is A Little Love

I taught fourth grade students for a brief moment in time. I loved the principal of the school and she did many things to help me grow as an educator. I had friends at the school and I was lauded for doing a good job with the children but it was not a good fit for me in spite of all of the positives. The basic problems was that nine and ten year children tend to tattle and bicker with one another. Most of such behavior was benign and I was even quite good at tamping such situations down, but after a few years I grew weary of having to constantly put out petty fires. At one point I mentally considered making it a punishable offense to tattle which of course was only a pipe dream rather than a real possibility. Instead I moved on to work with older students who not only did not tend to tattle but worked actively not to let me or any other adults know about their private spats. 

It is a childish and immature behavior to constantly accuse others for our shortcomings or to bully other people into bowing to our needs. Sadly there are adults who never seem to outgrow the immature need to portray themselves as martyrs who are constantly harassed by terrible people rather than owning up to their own failures. The blame game in adults too often begets violent abuse that is both psychological and physical. Such people can attempt to lay so much guilt on someone that the accused actually begin to believe that they are the tormentors rather than innocents locked in a toxic relationship. 

I still saw a few instances of teenagers who had never matured enough to outgrow their childhood tendencies to blame everyone but themselves for their mistakes. All too often such individuals were violent with their words and ways that they treated the people around them. Sometimes they frightened their own parents or abused their fellow students. They were difficult, often arrogant and difficult to control. As a teacher I would hear about such bullies from frightened students or parents who outlined stories of the cruelty that they imposed on souls that they believed were weak. Most of the time it became obvious that their bravado was actually hiding their own low self esteem by masquerading as being strong and confident . Sadly their horrid behaviors did grave damage to their targets. 

Of course I mostly wanted to protect the innocents who were being frightened by a protagonist, but at the same time I understood that the seemingly evil students needed help as well. All too often their behavior was briefly punished and then mostly ignored when they obviously needed deep counseling. Without an intervention I knew that they would simply continue to wreak havoc on others and ultimately on themselves. 

I can’t say that I ever discovered how to successfully change a person who was so broken. Perhaps there is some truth to the idea of a bad seed, someone born so psychologically damaged that nothing will help them. Instead I think to this day that there has to be a way to positively change even the most egregious behavior if it is caught early enough to keep it from becoming a lifetime habit. 

When I was teaching in that fourth grade setting I had a set of identical twins in my classroom but they were anything but the same. They came the closest to being a real life Cain and Abel that I have ever witnessed. One was shy, hard working, polite and genuinely kind. The other seemed like a young sociopath. He beat up not just other students but his own brother. He stole, lied and was easily angered. His own mother was so afraid of him that she left home one night and never returned. She left a note begging her family not to try to find her because she could no longer take the pressure of dealing with her frightening son. 

I suppose that with such situations there has to be a dire collision of nature and nurture creating an individual whose behavior is vile. I don’t know what the father was like but the mother was frightened and weak. I have no idea about all that was actually happening in that family but I learned years later that the violent son eventually crossed a line with the law was doing time in prison. I was not surprised but it still bothered me that he was not given therapy while he was still young in an effort to change the trajectory of his life. 

We have so much to do when it comes to discovering how to fix a broken soul. If we never make an effort to help such souls to be better we will have to deal with the kind of bullies who grow up to be criminals or maybe even tyrants who manage to take control of nations. We see these difficult individuals when they are young and all too often look the other way or wash our hands in frustration allowing them to just move them along. Somehow I believe was can do better.  

He boasted that he is rich and then explained why he believes this is so. In fact, what he sees as his riches have nothing to do with money or possessions. I thought about his words for sometime and then delightfully realized that I too am rich. So here forth is an explanation of why that is so. 

I am rich. I have a working mind that has allowed me to read hundreds and perhaps even thousands of books and articles and written words that have inspired me and left me ever more edified in knowledge and enjoyment of the human capacity to analyze and learn. 

I am rich. I have always known love from my family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and students. My store of good times and laughter is immeasurable. I am an oligarch of incredible relationships that have created the true wealth of my life. From the time I was born to the present day I have experienced the good fortune and extravagance of being with generous people who showed me that nothing in life is more valuable than the moments that I share with others. 

I am rich. I live in a cocoon in which I feel safe and secure. I have not had to endure war or want. I sleep each night in a state of comfort and rise to each new day with the assurance that I will have food to eat, clothes to keep me warm and the beauty of flowers and birds festooning the world around me. I am grateful that my life is not ravaged by want or need even as I see what I must to for those who do not share my good fortune. I understand that my richness requires me to be a generous steward working for the good of all people everywhere. I know I must share the wealth of my life. 

I am rich. I have enjoyed excellent health for most of my seventy seven years. I have mostly had boundless energy and only slowed down a bit as I aged. I have been the beneficiary of good doctors, good medicine and plentiful food. My life has been long and rather easy because of who my parents were and where I have lived. I did nothing to earn my good fortune. It has simply derived from lucky circumstances. 

Sometimes I wonder why I am so rich while others struggle. I suspect that I owe more to those in need because I have so much. It is only fair that I share my energy, my talents, my knowledge, my love. Hoarding the wealth of my life would surely be wrong and so I do my best to help others to learn, to feel safe, to experience the goodness that I have always known. I expect that I fall short of giving enough even as there are so many less fortunate souls crying for help all around the world. I can only do so much but is it ever enough? Surely I am meant to open my heart to the suffering without judgement for they did not have the advantages that have been mine from the time of my birth. 

I am not speaking of money or possessions when I make an accounting of my wealth. In that regard I am quite average but still rather wealthy when I read about a woman living under a tarp with her children not far from where I once lived. I have to wonder what happened to her and how she ended up in such dire straits. I know full well that my family and my friends would never have let such a thing happen to me. What was her story? Why was there nobody to help her? Why I am rich while she is poor?

I have friends and family who do wondrous things for others. They humble me with their generosity and show me that I must do more to spread my own gifts and talents while my mind and body are still working so well. 

Most of us are richer than we may think we are. The measure of our wealth is not focused on gold or possessions but on the relationships and joy that fills the coffers of our lives. Those of us who have much incur a duty to seek out those who have little. Instead of shunning immigrants in search of better lives for themselves and their children it is our duty to welcome them. Instead of insulting and taunting people who are different we should open our arms and accept them. There is much want in the world around us that can be repaired if we all simply learn to love and to choose leaders whose hearts are open as well. Hatefulness is the enemy of us all. It breeds the kind of greed and distrust that threatens to bankrupt us.. Our riches increase in value when we spread them far and wide. The poor in spirit are among us and in need of our generosity and protection. 

I am rich and I have known that every single day of my life. From the time I was born I enjoyed the silver spoon of love, acceptance, safety and freedom. Those who gave me such riches showed me how to share good fortune so that is what I will continue to do. 

Life was adventurous when I was a child. My neighborhood was filled with children on every street. At the end of the subdivision there was a bayou where childhood explorations felt just like living alongside Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. While I never actually went into the water, I many times swung over the snake filled Simms Bayou on a swing that someone had built high up in an ancient tree. It took daring just to climb to the platform from which we jumped but I was either exceedingly courageous or really dumb as to any dangers back then.

There were rumors that alligators sometimes sunned themselves on the lawns of those whose homes backed up to the bayou but I never actually saw one. I just made sure that I would never have a close encounter by staying away from the murky waterway that separated Overbrook where I lived from Garden Villas on the other bank. Those who shared homes with critters from the deep had to watch for snakes like water moccasins or they might get bitten. A lady from Czechoslovakia who was friends with my mother almost died from a bite by the viper so I made sure that I checked the area before moving around. My Grandma had shown me how to watch out for critters lurking in high grass and I always followed her advice. 

Who knew that squirrels were also troublesome? A girl who lived around the corner from me became very sick when a squirrel that she tried to pet turned on her and bit her hand. Unfortunately the cute little fellow had rabies and she spent many painful days in the hospital getting the treatment that would save her. I remember praying for her at my Catholic school and being delighted when she survived her ordeal. 

There was a large wooded area across from our church that was the domain of the neighborhood kids. I was a true free range child who delighted in the adventure of roaming through trees and weeds to explore and build forts that made us feel like pioneers of old. Most of us began our adventures around the age of seven and neither our parents nor ourselves seemed to worry that we might encounter danger. Nonetheless we created scary stories about what we had seen that we told at night whenever someone had a slumber party. Little of what we claimed had happened was real but our imaginations made us feel that such things probably might take place if we were not very careful. 

Our bicycles took us up and down the streets and sometimes even over the railroad tracks at the entrance to the neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody else and even though we thought we were free as birds adults were watching over us all of the time and keeping our parents advised of where we were and how we were doing. That’s just how life was back then.

Most of the time I didn’t get into any trouble but now and then my friends and I might come across some teenagers smoking or making out. They usually scared us into running away as fast as possible and never revealing what we had seen. I probably learned more about taking care of myself in those wonderful days than all the formal lessons might have taught me. 

My fun was not limited to the place where I lived because my cousins and I roamed my grandmother’s neighborhood in the east end of Houston whenever we got together. We climbed on mountains of rock and shale at a local business on Sundays by skittering under the fence. We pretended we were mountain climbers. Only later did we realize how dangerous it was to climb on those loose rocks. We most surely had guardian angels watching over us us or someone would have been hurt. As kids we had little regard for possible danger.

There was an abandoned two story house one street over from where my grandmother lived. We avoided that place out of fear of what kind of demons were haunting it but eventually our curiosity got the best of us. We made our way over to the place only to find that the front door was ajar. The downstairs was littered with leaves, cans and other refuse but was otherwise not particularly interesting. We took a vote and agreed that we needed to go up the stairs to see what was there.

The planks creaked as we made our way higher and higher. Finally we gazed from the stairway at a wide-open area that held a makeshift bed of blankets. Nearby a pile of clothes convinced us that someone was living in the dilapidated place. One of my cousins decided to bravely do a bit more investigation so he moved from the stairway into the room in spite of our worries that doing so was not a good idea. Suddenly the floor fell apart under his feet and he saved himself from falling down below by spreading his arms like an anchor, but his feet were dangling in mid air. The oldest and strongest of the boys gingerly made their way over to him and managed to pull him out of his precarious position. Then we all hightailed it down the stairs and out the front door as fast as our feet would take us. 

Just as we turned to head for Grandma’s house the person who lived in the “haunted” place came in to view yelling obscenities and warnings at us while we ran with as much speed as we could muster. Never looking back we hurled ourselves at the safety of our grandmother’s front porch and breathlessly vowed never to tell our parents what we had done and never to venture over there again. 

It’s been a long long time since those days of my youth. I would not consider doing those same kind of things today. I am older and wiser and my sense of adventure is muted. Still, the memories bring a smile to my face and a sense that those days were as good as it ever gets. I don’t even think of how lucky we were not to get hurt and true to our word we never told our moms what we had done. Sometimes I wonder if they somehow knew.

I am a history freak. My favorite books are historical. I get a kick out of learning about events and ways of life that were previously unknown to me. I suppose that my interest in history goes right along my search for my ancestry. I have had great luck in some branches of my family tree and not so much in others. I have been rather surprised by how much I was able to learn about my immigrant grandparents who came here from Czechoslovakia. Using ancestry sites, family stories, reading historical tracts and culling through dusty boxes of family documents have provided some interesting insights about my ancestral heritage. 

For years there was a family disagreement about where my grandparents were born. Everyone seemed to agree that my grandmother was born in Czechoslovakia but there were two different stories about my grandfather. While some agreed that he too was born in Czechoslovakia, others insisted that he was born in Cleveland, Ohio. For a very long time I had no proof either way until one of my cousins sent me a box of documents that had sat for years in a dusty garage. 

I had to use gloves to handle the yellowing and brittle papers and most of them gave me little new insights about my grandparents. It was a photo of a page in the family Bible that unlocked the mystery for me. It clearly listed both grandparents dates and locations of birth along with the names of their respective parents. Further verification came from yet another cousin who had enlisted the help of a professional from Slovakia who confirmed that the names, places and dates that I had found were indeed correct. Furthermore the new findings gave me the names of my great great grandparents as well. 

My grandfather was born Pavel Dusan Uhrik in Trencin in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I read about the era when he was growing up into an adult and learned that the Hungarians had created very strict laws for the nations under their thumb. In fact they had made it unlawful for anyone in their empire to speak native languages, instead insisting that all citizens had to speak Hungarian in schools, churches and other public places. The rules were incredibly restrictive and considered Slovaks like my grandparents to be of a lesser quality than Hungarians. The Slovakian people were treated as inferior and generally relegated to lives with less education and laboring jobs. 

I suppose that my grandfather was looking for a way out of the horrific treatment of his people and so when places like Houston, Texas sent advertisements to European countries enticing the people to come to America he saw a way out of the situation. In 1912, he booked a ride on a steamship from Bremen, Germany and found his way to Galveston, Texas which was one of the ports of entry at that time. I have seen his name on the register for the day that he arrived. 

Grandpa Uhrik found work at a farm near Houston and saved his money so that he might send for my grandmother the following year. She too arrived in Galveston and the two of them got busy planning for a future that would allow them the freedoms that were missing under Hungarian rule. Eventually Grandpa would Americanize his name to Paul D. Ulrich and he would also become a naturalized citizen of the United States.

. According to my mother and aunts and uncles my grandfather was quite proud to be and American and he cherished the freedoms that came with his move. He instructed his children to ignore the taunts that were hurled at them by people who were angered by their presence because they were immigrants. He urged them to hold their heads high and to appreciate the opportunities that were so numerous in the United States even as rocks were being hurled at them.

My mother often spoke of her father’s attention to the country from which he had come. He was quite happy after World War I when the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart. While he was not so sure about the Slovaks and the Czechs being joined as one country, he was at least happy that his nation finally had found a way to be free. When Hitler invaded he was gravely concerned that his people were once again subservient to a nation that only wanted them for their rich farmland and supply of labor. He carefully followed World War II and was especially proud that all four of his American sons served in the military and helped to free Czechoslovakia once again.

My grandfather had wisely used his talents, his curiosity and his investments to have a house that he owned and a job where he faithfully worked. He had even bigger plans for his retirement years so he had purchased land in Richmond, Texas where he hoped to one day have a farm. Unfortunately he had a cerebral hemorrhage and died after World War II around the time when Russia laid claim to Czechoslovakia and made it a member of the USSR.

My mother always wondered if her father’s stroke resulted from yet another disappointing enslavement of his homeland by an authoritarian government. She said that when the takeover was announced in the news her father cried, something that he had rarely done in all of his life. 

I have followed the fate of what is now Slovakia for most of my adult life. I was ecstatic when the USSR fell apart and Slovakia became a free nation in its own right. I have most recently been concerned by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his rarely spoken but very real desires to resurrect the former USSR. I worried about the authoritarian government in Hungary with its rules that sounded so much like the ones that convinced my grandfather to leave his homeland so many decades ago. I felt his smile in my heart when Orban was defeated in the recent election and I found myself hoping that there will be no more bitter disappointments that would have make him cry. 

I think I understand my grandfather even though I have never met him. He was an honorable man who endured humiliation from Hungary in his youth and had to ignore those who did not want him in the United States. His grandchildren like me and my brothers and cousins have truly enjoyed the best that the United States of America has had to offer. My hope is that we will preserve our freedoms which are now under stress. I think he would appreciate that so far we can still speak our minds and even protest the wrongs that we see. I imagine him feeling quite proud that he was able to give us such a gift. I know that I will always thank him for his foresight and will do my part to preserve the freedoms that mean so much to us all.

A year of limping around because of my arthritic knees has left me feeling chunky and not as fit as I want to be. Since at least one of my knees is working beautifully now I am back to serious walking and exercise. The fact that I get tired after a mile is evidence that I have a long way to go to get back into the shape that I once took for granted. I know that I can do it if I put my mind to it. I mostly want to regain my energy and I am encouraged by how quickly I have recovered since my total knee replacement. While the numbers on my scale are absurd and my clothes are dangerously close to not fitting anymore I am once again able to do the work that I need to do. 

I love walking around the neighborhood. I come back home all hot and sweaty but that is to be expected at this time of year. I will no doubt either walk early each morning or late in the evening once the temperatures begin to really rise. I like seeing how people have landscaped their yards and nodding as I pass other folks who are also out for a stroll. I’d join my neighbors across the street if I were fast enough to keep up with them but for now my pace is sure and slow. 

I do lots of stretching and strengthening exercises that I learned in physical therapy. I know that they are really helpful so I don’t want to start slacking with them. I’m not nearly as dedicated to being fit as once was and still should be. I admire my grandchildren for making exercise and physical activities part of their daily routines. I’m ready to return to the days when I was like they are.

For most of my life I have been thin and energetic. My mother used to wonder why I never sat still. I was not even able to study without moving around. When I was on the stationary phones I required an extra long cord so that I was able to pace back and forth as I chatted with friends. I was one of those kids who got into trouble for tapping my feet and moving my legs around under my desk. It was an automatic habit that I was never able to quell. I suppose that was the secret to my ability to keep my weight in tow. Eventually a bout with back spasms and two arthritic knees changed me into a sedentary chunk. I watched the numbers climbed whenever I weighed myself and kept making excuses for my increasing girth. It wasn’t because I was eating too much. It was because I was just sitting around in pain. 

Now I have no excuses. I have all the tools that I need to get a move on and I have to admit to being excited over the prospect of regaining the boundless energy that once came so naturally to me that my mother suspect that I had some kind of hyperactive disorder. Like the Energizer bunny, on any given day I kept going and going and going. 

It pained me that I had to stop so much to rest when we visited London last fall so I knew that the time had come to submit to the knee surgery. Now I wish I had done it sooner. I literally waited until both of my knees were rubbing bone on bone because I feared the process of getting a new joint made out of nickel. Now I know that the first weeks are not so fun but the progress becomes more and more exponential as the weeks go by. The best part is that one of my legs is now so straight that I no longer look bow-legged, a by product of my aching knees that was so embarrassing to me. With another surgery I will be standing straight once again and with the disappearance of pain I can exercise myself into the kind of person I used to be. 

I marvel at the things that doctors are capable of doing. In just the last few years I have watched my husband’s heart be cleared of all the blockages that once threatened his life. I have witnessed his cancer going away with forty treatments that were not exactly comfortable but definitely good for him. My back no longer spasms like it once did and now one of my knees is just like new. I have to admit that such things were not even possible in times of old. No wonder older people were often portrayed hunched over and limping. 

I know people who struggled for decades with weight gains that seemed to come even when they starved themselves. Now with either operations on injections and sometimes a pill they are transformed. They get full faster and as the pounds melt away their energy returns. It is yet another medical miracle that reduces heart disease and even seems to reduce addictions. 

I often wonder where medicine will go next. I hope to see a day when scientists and doctors understand the brain so well that they are able to eradicate mental illnesses and cure people with neurological disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS. I suspect that humans are closer to unlocking so many medical mysteries than we may think. Our funding for such research should be given gladly and the treatments should made  available to anyone who needs them. 

I once thought I wanted to be a doctor or nurse. I decided that I wasn’t really destined for such a vocation but I greatly admire those who dedicate their lives to helping others overcome illnesses and injuries. We should never allow our government to neglect the studies and research that is needed to advance our medical knowledge and we should all hold our medical community in the high esteem that they deserve. Every single day someone is getting a new knee, or a better functioning heart, or a treatment to eradicate a disease. I know that I cannot even measure the benefits of good medicine that have made my life so much better. It still seems miraculous to me.