All It Takes Is A Little Love

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is nothing like a walk in a cool quiet interesting place. For me that would be somewhere that is not warm but not too cold either. The sky may be cloudy or sunny as long as rain is not imminent. I like being somewhat alone on a trail that leads nowhere and to everything that I love to see. If I have a companion I want it to be a person who knows when to saunter beside me in silence and when to quietly speak about important matters or make appreciative comments about what we have seen or consider talking of differing  philosophies about life. 

I don’t want to worry about time or how I look or what I will do next on the perfect walk. There will be no particular goal pushing me to increase my stamina. It will be leisurely enough to allow time to sit on an old tree stump to gaze at the sky or to watch the antics of a squirrel. It will provide opportunities for finding treasures like colorful leaves or interesting rocks to stow away in my pockets. 

On the perfect walk I will learn something that I did not know before embarking on my adventure. Perhaps it will be an interesting thing that I see or a comment from my companion. Maybe it will simply be a new kind of pleasure from being so close to nature or a feeling of peace from perfect silence. Those are the kind of moments when I feel so comfortable with myself and with the world. For a time I have no worries or appointments or thoughts of things I must do. 

I have had some glorious walks along rugged trails in the Rocky Mountains with my husband and my two daughters. I have seen a rainbow stretching across the horizon and encountered a moose grazing just ahead of my approach. I have walked in warm sand along the ocean with a grandson and spoken of spiritual things with a granddaughter under the canopy of some of the largest trees in the world. 

Sometimes I walk alone around my neighborhood listening to my favorite music or tuning in to podcasts. I go into myself and walk mostly for exercise but at times I see something that makes me smile. I enjoy seeing my neighbors working in their yards or children laughing while chasing each other. I like being alone and thinking about how nice life can be without a great deal of fuss. I work out ideas that have been swimming in my head and feel a sense of gratitude for the place where I live and the people who are my neighbors. 

I once walked for miles with my mother and brother after our car broke down. We were in the middle of nowhere in a time before cell phones. Our only hope for rescue was to find a public place that was open and had a phone. Our path lay on a little traveled highway so we had no clues as to how long it might be before we reached civilization. Somehow with her usual optimism my mother made our unexpected journey fun. We were downright proud of ourselves when we finally reached a service station and hitched a ride with a mechanic who worked there. Of course this all happened in the days when every gas station had a mechanics’ bay and someone was on duty to pump gas, check the oil and clean the windshield. 

When we got back to our car we learned that the battery was dead but the kind man who had rescued us charged it up and sent us on our way without asking for a dime. I have always remembered his kindness and how my mother insisting on giving him a tip. That unplanned walk taught me about how we should all behave when someone is in trouble. That man will forever be a hero to me. 

I hope I never reach a point of being unable to walk. I totally agree with Mr. Emerson’s ideas of how it should be done. I look forward to those special times in the coming year and hope to share such moments with people that I love.  

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting us. —-E M Forster

Who among us has not dreamed of a particular life that never happened the way that we thought it would? Disappointments are part of everyone’s life. We think we have everything figured out and something comes along that dashes all of our efforts into the dust. We find ourselves unmoored, wondering how to salvage the bits and pieces of the life that is no more to create something new. It is always a challenge.

Some things that happen to us are traumatic and just wishing away our sadness is not the answer. Nor is trying to cheer ourselves with platitudes about how the setbacks will only make us stronger. We know instinctively that such ideas are rarely true. Perhaps we can’t even understand how things went terribly wrong. We feel a deep hurt and maybe even anger. Those feelings are very real and ignoring them only drives them deeper into our souls. 

If we are lucky we have understanding friends or a partner who does not attempt to hurry us through our grieving for the life we have lost. Maybe this person just sits with us and allows us to vent, to cry, to feel a bit sorry for ourselves. This is not a time for advice, only support and compassion. It will take time to adjust to the new reality. We have to realize the closure of a chapter of life that once had so much promise and is now gone. Moving forward will come later but not in the heat of the moment. 

I suspect that each of us has a story of loss to tell. Maybe someone for whom we cared deeply died too soon. Perhaps we failed at a job that we thought we would be able to do. We might have thought that we had a person’s love for a lifetime only to find that it was fleeting. We have to set aside all the hopes that went along with the life that we thought we had. It is so disorienting that we almost feel as though we are no longer of this world. Our interactions with people feel strange. We have to put one foot in front of the other in a kind of pretense that we actually know what we are doing and where we are going

We often talk of “wallowing in self-pity” as if it is a terrible way to be. The truth is that sometimes we have to allow ourselves to wallow a bit before we have the strength to chart another course. As long as we don’t get mired in the muck we are just experiencing the natural emotions that follow tragedies and grave disappointments. As onlookers we should remember to be compassionate, not judgmental. Never never should we suggest that somehow the person reeling from a horrible situation should just get over it or, even worse, count it as a blessing.

They say that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Maybe that is true sometimes but we all experience difficulties that seem downright unfair. We feel weak and vulnerable and it’s not the time to hear people hinting that we are somehow been lucky. We might reach that conclusion on our own farther down the line, but it is something that we must discover on our own, Never should it come as a suggestion from a well meaning person who seems to be clueless or even uncaring about how devastated we are feeling. 

It’s difficult to be hurting when others seem to be moving right along. We see their happy photos and read about their magical lives and wonder why we got showered with manure. It’s also difficult to be around someone who is attempting to work through a moment of pain. We rarely feel comfortable when someone is falling apart. Our urge is to fix them immediately and that would be exactly wrong. We have to accept them as they are in the moment while assuring them that we are there for whatever they need. Sometimes what they require is silence and maybe a hug or someone who will cry with them. 

We humans do indeed scab over our hurts and even if they heal there always seems to be a scar. It is in our natures to get up and try again. If we are patient and have a bit of luck along with our own efforts we may find a new kind of unexpected happiness and reward. Sometimes we even get exactly what we needed all along. 

There is no looking back and dwelling on what ifs but they will surely come from time to time. It’s okay to mourn and to imagine how things might have been as long as we do it with a smile and then rejoin and celebrate our new lives. Each of us will find ourselves changing course many many times and learning more about ourselves than we could have possibly imagined. The lives we live will twist and turn and challenge us hurt us and even make us wiser but there will always be a new road to explore. Hopefully it will be kind.

I landed my first job in a public school when I was nineteen years old and a student at the University of Houston. I competed to earn a post as a teachers’ aide at Elliot Elementary School in the Denver Harbor neighborhood of Houston, Texas. Since I had attended private Catholic schools all the way through high school, I hoped to get a feel for life in a public school before I invested too much time and effort in pursuing a degree in education. 

This was back in 1968, when I was as green and naive as they come. I had hardly ventured out of my neighborhood for most of my life up until then. Aside from my third grade year when I attended five different schools and lost my father to a car accident, I was a sheltered as anyone might be. I had no idea what I might encounter in a public school located in the east end of Houston, Texas not far from the ship channel and the home where my mother had come of age. It was located in a neighborhood where the people and the cultures were different from my experiences. 

I took to the teachers and the students immediately. The school had a welcoming spirit and the outstanding educators whom I was hired to support were eager to use me for more duties than just watching children during lunchtime or running off worksheets and tests on the mimeograph machines. They urged me to interact with the students, to manage reading groups, tp tutor one on one or in small groups. I was busy all day long and I loved every minute of the adventure. I felt assured that I was indeed preparing for the right vocation. 

In spite of my enthusiasm there was one aspect of the school that made me feel uncomfortable. The students classified as having special learning needs due to both mental and physical disabilities were segregated from the rest of the school. Each morning small buses headed for a drab building in a far corner of the school property. There the special education students spent their days encased in a kind of mystery since I never really saw them or witnessed what was happening in their classrooms. They even ate lunch just before the other students arrived at the cafeteria. Somehow their plight seemed lonely and it almost felt as though they were being hidden away like some tragic mistake that nobody wanted to see or discuss. 

There came a time when an outbreak of flu left the faculty depleted to the point that I was moving from one classroom to another attempting to fill in for the absent teachers. Eventually there came a call from the special education building and I found myself walking across the lawn with my throat in my chest. I had know idea what I was going to find and how I would deal with it given my total lack of experience with such things. 

There were only a small number of students in the building and for the most part it felt as though they were mostly being watched over without a great deal of concern for making academic progress. Everything about the furniture and lack of color or a sense of creativity was depressing. Most of the students seemed almost unaware that I was even there. Now again a fight would break out or a child would begin screaming for no apprentice reason. I felt very uncomfortable in the situation and decided in that moment that I would definitely not consider specializing in teaching students with learning needs and physical disabilities. 

I eventually earned my degree after a few fits and starts. I began teaching four year olds in a private setting and while it was delightful I wanted more of a challenge. Before I had a chance to try out a public school the nuns at my church recruited me to run the religious education program. While I loved the idea of being the first ever lay person tasked to carry out that job in our parish, I eventually felt a call to finally work full time in a public school. As if someone was trying to send me a message public school positions were few and far between so I went back into the classroom via a private school where I literally taught all of the middle school mathematics. 

It was not until 1984, that I finally began working in a public school setting. By then Jimmy Carter had created the Department of Education whose main duties involved administering special programs, with a strong emphasis on strengthening the education of special needs students by creating training and guidelines to include them in regular classrooms whenever possible. Their isolation ended and even those with the most difficult problems learned in sunny rooms with dedicated specialists creating individual learning plans that allowed the children to expand their abilities and work toward being part of regular classroom interactions. 

It was glorious to see them smiling and confident and doing so well. The difference that the new guidelines and support systems made for them were breathtaking and I found myself feeling rather drawn to the joy of watching them succeed.

I will never forget an occasion when I had a room full of special needs students sprinkled in with a group of students who did not meet the specifics of a special education rubric but were nonetheless reluctant learners who needed extra time and differing styles of teaching to engage them. I was using mathematics to demonstrate critical thinking skills to them when a group of visitors from the administration building suddenly appeared to observe what was happening in my classroom. The kids rose to the occasion and showed off their knowledge and confidence in every way. Later I received a sweet note from one of the visitors commenting on how exciting it was to see the “advanced” students in action. Little did she realize that over one third of the students had been from our special education department. 

I think about this as there is a push to end the Department of Education at the federal level. I find myself feeling frustrated at the lack of understanding of what that wonderful agency actually does. I might first say what it is not. Not once did I receive orders to teach in a particular way or to use specific tools to teach a concept. What I did get from them is funding for special projects with students who need more time and variety to learn. I saw my mathematics department suddenly qualifying to receive manipulatives, calculators, and computers that enhanced my lessons. I saw with my own eyes how vibrant and excited my special needs students were. The Department of Education accomplished that and so much more. 

It saddens me that people who have never taught children a day in their lives seem to think that they know what children need better than the teachers. They see the Department of Education as a waste of taxpayer funds and somehow believe that the agency is peddling woke propaganda and deciding what and how teachers will teach. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I hope that life does not become more difficult for our students with dyslexia, autism, dysgraphia, brain injuries, learning disabilities, anxieties, blindness, deafness, emotional illnesses, Down’s syndrome and so many other difficulties. The Department of Education has made learning more and more possible and much happier for so many young people. I would hate to see all of the progress go away based on misconceptions of what the agency does. The segregated rooms in the back of the property are no more. Our most needy children are being loved and taught to be productive members of our society. What could possibly be a more worthwhile investment?  

Life is like an ice cream cone. You have to lick it one day at a time. —-Charlie Brown

I have had a sometimes difficult life, but not one that has been impossible to bear. The trauma of my young father’s death when I was eight still haunts me, but my memories of him are beautiful. They have served me well as a guide to being the best version of myself most of the time. 

After Daddy died my mother rose to the occasion of being a single parent in spite of having to surmount financial challenges that might have broken the spirit of most people. She pushed through every difficultly seemingly performing little miracles with a smile on her face. If she worried, she never showed it to me and my brothers. Instead she taught us how to be grateful for having a sturdy roof over our heads, and food on the table. Much like my father she urged us to take full advantage of education and served as a role model by going to college to earn a degree and serving as a teacher at our elementary school. 

I remember my mama burning the midnight oil studying, writing papers and poring over the bills that she always found the means to pay. I had little idea back then how stressful her life must have been and how it was slowly but surely chipping away at her mental health. I would soon learn the extent of her stress around the time that Americans first landed on the moon when she seemed uncharacteristically sad and afraid. As her symptoms became ever more frightening I had to find help for her and embark on a decades long role of giving care for her whenever her bipolar disorder returned. It was difficult and sometimes horrifying but it also forced me to dig deeply inside myself to find strength that I never believed that I had. 

I adjusted just as I had when my father died and just as my mother had done as well. I was happily enjoying purchasing a home with my husband Mike and raising my two little girls when fate stepped in once again to rattle my optimism. First I picked up a case of hepatitis that knocked me off of my feet for over three months. Then Mike somehow came down with blastomycosis, a deadly fungal disease that attacks organs. While he underwent months of chemotherapy in the hospital I envisioned life without him in case the treatment did not take. Luckily he went into remission and we picked up our lives with optimism and gusto. 

My own education had been delayed by the medical issues of my mother and husband but I was soon back at college enjoying my courses so much more with the maturity that had redefined me. I was certain that I wanted to be a teacher and I threw myself into learning the skills that I would need with a passion. Ironically at the very moment when I graduated there was a glut of teachers in the public schools so I had to change course, a talent that I had been developing from the time that I was eight. I spent my first year in a small private school with delightful students who allowed me to practice being an educator with them. It turned out to be a relationship made in heaven. It was a safe place to make mistakes and start over again and again day by day until I got it right. 

By the following year I was a veteran and ready to work with underserved students with difficulties that made anything that I had ever experienced seem like only a tiny bump in the road. I learned so much about the potential of every single person and how to draw out the talents of young people whose lives were sometimes turned upside down and inside out. I knew that I had been working my way toward this for a very long time. 

My mother’s mental health would keep me busy while I became more and more in love with my career as an educator. I went back to the university once again to earn an advanced degree. I accepted more and more responsibilities while sending my own daughters through college. I became a grandmother and witnessed my husband having a heart attack and then later a minor stroke. Fortunately he survived both and kept going with the help of talented doctors. Life went on one day at a time just as Charlie Brown predicted. 

Now I am officially retired but still teaching students who are home-schooled. My mother died about a decade ago in a beautifully peaceful manner. My father-in-law lives with us now and I share caregiving of him with my husband. My grandchildren are in their twenties. Some have already graduated from college and others are either well on their way to earning a degree or at the beginning of college life. I have an extended family of cousins, classmates, neighbors, coworkers, and former students. I have bad knees and bones but I’m still quite able. I know full well that life is very much like an ice cream cone and so far I have licked it one day at a time.  

Words fail me in this moment. In most cases they flow out of me like a waterfall. Right now I can’t even define my feelings which jump from disgust to anger to deep sadness to unremitting determination. I have witnessed a debasement of my nation by a vengeful bully who is using his office to be a spiteful agent of hate. Donald J. Trump is revealing in real time how petty, ignorant and childish he is. He is demonstrating his hatred for the United States of America and he is using the tactics of a childish tyrant to destroy decades of hard work that began with our Founding Fathers in 1776.

February 28, 2025, is a day that will live in infamy. It is the moment when Trump showed the entire world what a horrible human being he actually is. He let us all know that his approach to life is that of a mobster who is willing to lie and cheat to get what he wants. Trump lured the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to the Oval Office with the promise of a financial deal that was always in reality about staging a public ridicule at a press conference. Zelensky was ambushed by Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and the quietly complicit Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

In a tirade unworthy of the President of the United States, Trump and gang pounded on Zelensky with allusions to card games and with taunts and lies. It was perhaps the most disgraceful breach of diplomacy and honor that has ever occurred in our nation. It befouled the dignity of the Oval Office and in only a few minutes sent the message to the entire world that the United States of America is no longer to be trusted.

I need not go into the details of the encounter. We all saw it and heard the sordid comments of Trump, Vance and Hegseth. We listened to their insults as Zelensky held his ground. It was a tirade from the so called leaders of our nation akin to rants from Adolf Hitler that we have watched on the History Channel. It’s crudity and implications have sent me and people the world over into a sense of disbelief that our nation could become so foul. 

I found myself wondering if the United States of America would even exist today if during the American revolution George Washington had been berated like Zelensky. After all, things were not looking so good for the patriots who were fighting the advanced British army. They had less funding for their efforts than the king’s men. They had less training for their soldiers. It seemed unbelievable that they had even had the temerity to stand up to the king. Only about a third of the people in the colonies were strongly in favor of the war. Some literally left for safer places. Others tried to live their lives as though the battles were not even happening. Things did not bode well for Washington and his forces but the revolution was fueled by the Declaration of Independence and a belief that the people of the thirteen colonies deserved to live under their own democracy, not bound by the vagaries of the king whose only use for them was to fill his coffers. 

I thought of Abraham Lincoln and his unwillingness to allow the United States to fall even when the Confederate army was winning battle after battle. I thought of his resolve that “the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth.” He saved this nation from extinction even when his cause seemed hopeless.

I wondered how we Americans would have reacted if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had told Winston Churchill to face the facts that Great Britain was not going to win the war against Hitler. How much shame would we have felt if FDR had suggested that Churchill surrender?

I thought of all of the people who have lost their lives in pursuit of democracy in our own country and I felt horrified that Trump chose to humiliate the one man who is standing tall in the fight for his nation’s independence. In my mind I was screaming for members of the Republican party and those who voted for Trump to finally realize the terrible mistake that they have made. The sound of crickets nearly broke me but the courage of Zelensky reminded me that our freedom has never been free. Great men like him have had to fight to keep our own republic intact over and over again. I felt ashamed that somehow we Americans have allowed Trump to infect our country with his pettiness and ignorance. I wanted someone in that room to rise up in defence of what they surely know is the right and just thing to do.

I am still in a state of shock. I have cried. I have felt betrayed not just by Trump but frankly by those that he fooled into voting for him. I now know that we have difficult days ahead but I will speak truth and do whatever I am called to do to protect the people of our nation. I will live with the hope that this moment has galvanized the American people to demand that Trump be finally held accountable for the many treasonous things that he has done. There is no excuse for his traitorous behavior nor for his henchmen who sit looking at their hands while he tears down all that we hold sacred. I will not rest until the damage that Trump has inflicted on our nation and its reputation in the world is undone. I will also hold firmly to my support of President Zelensky and Ukraine. I know a great man when I see one.

I refuse to fold, to look away or run away. Our democracy is injured but it is not dead. Things have fallen apart but the center will hold. The resistance is growing and we are living history. We have a chance to make a difference and that is what I choose to do.