All It Takes Is A Little Love

Most tragedies that happen in life are not so easy to untangle as we look for answers that will explain behaviors that confound us. The truth usually lies somewhere in a complex gordian knot that makes it almost impossible for us to ever fully understand how things went so wrong. 

As a teacher I often encountered students with severe behavioral problems. Sometimes they were violent and frightening. It was easiest just to write them off as thugs, bad individuals in need of punishments for their harmful actions. Whenever I took the time to learn more about them I almost always saw that they were not born that way nor did they suddenly choose to be that way. Their journey to ugliness resulted from a complex series of issues that ultimately led to their angry bravado. 

The first time I encountered such an individual I was teaching fourth grade in a low income neighborhood. Some of my students were homeless, living in family cars or bunking down in a relative’s garage. The young man who caught my attention decided to threaten his fellow students with a pair of scissors in the bathroom. A frightened boy begged me to intercede and so I raced to the area to find the boy with the scissors sitting alone near the urinals with the point of the implement pointed to his jugular vein. He threatened to jam the blade into his throat if I came near him. Instead I sat down on the nasty floor and spoke softly to him, attempting to calm his fear and anger. I slowly inched closer and closer to him until our shoulders touched each other. When I asked for permission to hug him, he began to cry and lowered his weapon. That’s when I grabbed him in a bear hug sobbing along with him. He dropped the scissors to the ground and I retrieved them. 

I later learned that the boy had been set on fire by his mother when he was only three years old. The trauma of that event had left him scarred both physically and emotionally. From time to time something would trigger him and he would become violent in a kind of response to the fear that still lived inside his mind. He was hospitalized after the episode in the bathroom but would never come back to our school. I have always worried and about him and wondered how he is doing. Part of me feared that he was never able to control the demons that I saw in his actions that day. Another part of me hopes that he got the help he needed and continued on with a fulfilling life.

I could recount story after story of broken souls who experienced horrors in their childhood that not even healthy adults would be able to overcome without longterm therapy. There was the young man who witnessed his father killing his mother. There was a boy whose mom worked as a prostitute at night leaving him to watch his little sister. When his sibling was raped by a neighbor the mother blamed the twelve year old boy for what had happened. All of the lost souls that I witnessed had horrific stories that would never be easy to unravel and turn into the kind of normal outcomes that most of us experience in healthy and loving homes. Without extended and compassionate care most of them seemed to be doomed to difficult and often violent lives.

We would do well to invest far more time and money into helping such youngsters while they are still young and a bit more malleable rather than waiting until they are overtly committing crimes and mayhem as teenagers or adults. The longer we take to address the issues, the more damage is done done making it quite difficult to bring about the changes needed for them to live normal lives in our society. They grow into mass shooters, thieves, murders, angry and dangerous souls. 

I do not believe in overlooking the crimes of such people. They definitely must be addressed and just punishments must be administered, but my idea is to catch them earlier in the developmental process. We should be able to provide them with the counseling and emotional support that they need to reverse the negative trajectory of their lives. This is especially true for noticing those who are bullied and finding out who is bullying them. The child constantly sitting alone should never just be ignored. The individual hiding behind dark clothing may be visually expressing pain. The girl who wears long sleeved sweaters in the heat of summer might be hiding the scars that she has inflicted on herself from constant cutting. 

It is often easiest to look the other way when it is apparent that a young person is suffering. We don’t have to be invasive but we need to be observant enough to notice changes in the ways they act, suddenly lower grades, avoidance of other people. We should never just assume that it’s just the way that person is. There are almost always very clear signs that someone is in a state of distress if only we take the time to watch for such things. 

Not all of the souls for whom I interceded over the years have turned out well, but a great number of them have and they still communicate to me how important my care and concern was in helping them to feel confident and healthy. The young are a treasure, a valuable resource for the future of society. It is up to all of us to really see them and hear them and care about them before they become tragic statistics. Nothing feels worse than remembering the signs of distress that we did nothing about. We can make a difference and we should always be willing to try.

A few weeks ago my husband Mike and I were watching our daughter’s two collie dogs while she accompanied her youngest son to the University of Notre Dame. She lives in one of the most scenic places in the state of Texas, the Hill Country just outside of San Antonio. Visiting there is always magnificent with vistas that seem to define the real Texas, not the one in movies or as portrayed by politicians. It is as fine a place that I have ever seen and I have been to some exceptionally beautiful locales. Maybe I am a bit biased because I was born and raised in Texas or as Willie Nelson likes to boast, I was made in Texas. 

We take advantage of being at my daughter’s home because she is close to so many of Texas’ best spots. We never miss driving on a route that takes us through a cute little town nestled along the Blanco River which sometime is as lazy as can be but others rages over its banks. It boasts a couple of nice restaurants and several little shops and antique stores. It’s a fun place to spend a few leisurely hours, but on the most recent day we went through town and kept heading down the road toward Johnson City, the birthplace of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson. 

Johnson City has preserved Lyndon Johnson’s childhood home and a tour of the place is quite interesting. It’s hard to imagine the long ago when a little boy’s grandmother predicted the rise to power that Lyndon eventually achieved. It’s a small house in a place where there was little to suggest the future of its favorite son. The town itself is still somewhat sleepy much as it has always been. The road leads to what would become known as the “Texas Whitehouse” were Johnson’s family had a ranch and Lyndon first went to school. Nestled along the Pedernales River are structures where Lyndon once lived and a family cemetery where he now lies. 

There was a time when Johnson flew in on a private air strip and drove around in a Lincoln Continental showing off his pride in the Texas landscape to kings and potentates. Now it is a peaceful reminder of a time when the local boy had been the most powerful man in the nation. It was the place that Johnson loved best and when I go there I understand why. It always reminds me of the essence of Texas with its wildness, but also a kind of serenity that is all too often difficult to find anywhere else.

On our latest trip to the area we continued on to Fredericksburg, a town settled by German farmers that has become a tourist mecca with its many shops and wineries. It’s also home to the National Museum of the Pacific War because Admiral Nimitz was from that little hamlet. With the good food and many attractions Fredericksburg is a must see that we never fail to visit whenever we are in the area. I like to stop for wursts and red cabbage and German potato salad and a glass of wine at one of the many wineries. I’m drawn to the quilt shop and more often than not visit to a store that sells locally made jellies and jams. 

This time around we enjoyed some wine at Becker’s Vineyard even though the temperature was topping out at one hundred three degrees. We found shade and a nice breeze under a big fan and relaxed in the quiet near the lavender fields. I would not have minded lingering longer but we were on a mission to purchase some bluebonnet seeds to plant in our backyard in September. Come springtime they will burst into the lovely blue blooms that remind my whe they are the Texas state flower. 

We took a route along backroads on our return to our daughter’s home. As the highway twisted and turned we listened to music from Willie Nelson, the quintessential Texan who seems to understand the heart of Texas and it’s people better than anyone. I have to admit that I got a bit emotional with the beauty of the moment as we passed by farmhouses and fields and a meandering river. Willie serenaded us reminding us of how much we too love Texas. Somehow being in the beating heart of the state not far from Austin made us feel like the luckiest people on the planet. 

I know that Texas is not perfect. I disagree politically with our governor and many of our representatives but I look beyond that craziness. Most of the people here are rather wonderful even though some of them hold ideas of how things should be run that are very different than my own. That’s just the way it is in Texas. We mostly mind our own business and take care of each other no matter which side of the fence we stand on. We’ve got just about anything here that anyone might want. We have beaches and mountains and great cities. We take pride in our universities and our centers of medicine. We have forests and deserts, NASA and cypress swamps. 

Ours is a great state as long as the powers that be don’t get too carried away with telling all of us how we should be. Texans have not traditionally done very well with bossy individuals who get into our business but of late we’ve had some close calls with leaders who seem to think they will improve things by legistating how we should live. I’m hoping that this trend does not last because the best thing about Texas has always been letting us all live however we choose. I even have a pillow that we once purchased at the Johnson Ranch that has a perfect quote from President Lyndon Johnson, “This is my ranch and do as I damn please!” For me that sums up how Texas is supposed to be. Maybe soon we can get back to being that way again. For this gal being made in Texas has been wonderful and I’d like to keep it that way. 

Be a voice not an echo. — Unknown Author

I have a friend who moved from the big city to the country in anticipation of her retirement. She loves the scenic beauty and the quiet but this election year has been a bit difficult for her as she learned that most of her neighbors are ardent Trump supporters. In fact she reports that huge Trump banners stretch across lawns and Trump flags fly in almost every yard. She is a person who appreciates the freedom of belief that we are supposed to have in our nation so she mostly did her best to just ignore the fact that she is surrounded by people who will no doubt be voting differently than she will. 

Since there was so much election enthusiasm around her she decided that it would not be tasteless or threatening to put up a small sign of her own. She procured a Harris/Walz sign and placed it in front of the fence that encircles her backyard. It is many feet from the street and rather unobtrusive compared to the massive displays of her neighbors. It felt good to live in a country where she was able to quietly demonstrate that she will be voting differently than the crowd. Sadly her sign only lasted a matter of hours. When she went outside for an afternoon stroll she noticed that it was gone. 

She was only mildly annoyed, but determined to make her voice heard. She procured a new sign which was also small and proudly placed it far back from the street so as not to be too conspicuous. The next morning when she went outside to drink her morning coffee she noticed that not only was the sign no longer standing where she had placed it, but it had been torn into pieces. and thrown down on the ground. 

At this point she was beside herself and wondered how anyone could be so petty as to send the message that her choices did not matter when she had so courteously driven past the gaudy Trump displays without judgement. She wondered what has happened to our political environment to prompt such ridiculous behavior. She was also curious about who might be so immature to do such a thing so she and her husband installed a couple of game cameras that they own and pointed them toward the third sign that she placed in front of her fence. Surely she would learn that is was just some pranksters looking for a good laugh. 

What the camera revealed was shocking. A woman driving a mini van had the audacity to drive up to the fence and take the sign. Inside her vehicle was a young child in a car seat. As the woman pulled away the camera caught sight of her rear window which sported a decal that was religious in nature. Somehow The incongruence of it all baffled my friend. For those of us hearing about her saga there was a sense of sorrow and perhaps a bit of anger that we have come to such a stage in our political discourse. 

I too have a Harris/Walz sign but it is tucked safely in my backyard where only I can see it from my kitchen window. I fear that if I place it in my front yard someone will drive by and decide to deface my father-in-law’s car that stays parked on the driveway. Maybe they would think to spray paint my house. Taking the sign would be the least horrific thing that they might do, so I avoid trouble by keeping my political allegiance hidden even though I am certain that most of my neighbors agree with me. They won’t be the ones aiming their ire at me. It will be strangers whose anger is so out of line that they would deny me the right to voice of my free speech. 

Four years ago I endeavored to hear the different ideas of friends and family. I asked questions and admittedly attempted to tell them about the research on the issues that I had done. I lost friends and was often insulted. I was determined not to turn on anyone simply because they disagreed with me but I was not always given the same respect. I truly wondered how people who had known me for a lifetime were so quick to turn their backs on me in favor of a man who I am certain does not even know or care that they exist. 

I have a healthier relationship with others who are much more mature. We laugh and joke with each other knowing that our judgements of the issues will never converge. We don’t really understand each other but we continue to love each other even as we each hope that our candidate will win. 

My mother taught me to live and let live. She was a very Catholic woman who nonetheless respected the differing religious beliefs of others. She defended people’s right to their own opinions. While she never once cursed she would have laughed at Tim Walz’ urging that everyone “mind their own damn business.” 

I suppose that I am my mother’s daughter and can’t imagine making rules or laws that invade the most personal aspects of people’s lives. I also will never ever understand how politics can lead to the kind of divisions that are so prevalent these days. I sure would like to feel free to be me and to put my Harris/Walz sign proudly in my front yard but since 2020 I have become quite wary. Nobody has to read my blog. It is tucked quietly on my website that I don’t force anyone to visit. My Facebook wall remains pristine with birthday greetings, happy thoughts and hopefully posts that won’t enrage anyone. I love my friends and family and even when I don’t understand them I refuse to ever turn on them, but I still think that my friend and I should be able to have one small sign without worrying that someone will destroy it or our property. Too bad that it has become a dangerous option to boast a Harris/Walz sign in some parts of a mostly red state. I long to be a voice, not an echo. Somehow I’ve had to learn how to whisper instead.

I was scrolling through Facebook on a leisurely Saturday morning when I came upon a post from my wise friend, Jenn, about motherhood. It was one of those insightful commentaries that literally nailed the silent anxieties of being a mother, a teacher, a caretaker for older parents. One line in particular spoke to the essence of my life, “It’s not the doing that’s exhausting, it’s the thinking for everyone.”

The fact is that the lives of women are so often quietly filled with tasks that might appear to be small or even menial. We are the ones who are constantly planning, preparing, adjusting, making sure that we are ready for any eventuality. We know when the birthdays are and purchase cards and gifts accordingly. We watch the dogs and feed the sick neighbors. We notice the worrisome changes in family members. We plan for Christmas two months ahead of schedule. We quietly fill the pantry with the foods that everyone needs. We lie awake at night when everyone is asleep thinking ahead, remembering the days gone by, wondering if everyone is okay. It is in our natures to be fearful that someone we love is not doing well or needs something that we don’t seem able to give. We may smile and joke even while our hearts are burdened heavily with a thousand tiny concerns. 

I always laugh during my annual check up when my doctor asks me if I have been feeling anxious. My inclination is to tell him that of course I am feeling anxious. I am a mom, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a woman. We always have worries brewing under the surface. We just don’t let them loose most of the time. We have learned how to control them so that we are still able to function as though everything is just fine. It is a learned behavior of mothers and women in general. 

Little girls are always looking around, noticing things. In study after study girls are more likely to notice the nuances of a situation. Boys are curious but focused on one thing at a time. Girls are keenly aware of even the smallest changes in the environment. Perhaps our brains are built to be that way. Maybe we are destined to be the ones who are thinking for everyone. Maybe we are trained to be that way from the time that we are born. Perhaps there is a bit of both nature and nurture in our development. Whatever it is makes life sometimes feel overwhelming in the quiet times when we struggle to slow down our brains and just let things go. 

I saw the difference in men and women in full view when the hostages from Russia returned to the United States. President Biden and Vice President Harris were on the tarmac ready to greet the freed men and women when the plane touched down. President Biden was gloriously happy to see the Americans back home. He eagerly shook hands with them and talked with them, but it was Kamala Harris who looked over and saw their relatives longing to finally hug the loved ones who had been imprisoned and away from them. She interceded and nudged the former prisoners toward their families, smiling and urging them to be reunited. Hers was a typical response, one that all women would recognize. We see not just the big picture, but all of the tiny details. 

I have grown unafraid to voice my worries publicly. I no longer pretend to be totally put together. I want others to know that we are all so much alike in the concerns that we carry beneath the surface of our stoicism and smiles. I now freely cry when the moment hits me. I have learned that my grumpiness in tense situations is normal and quite okay. I allow myself to be imperfect, to make mistakes and admit to them. I have not become wimpy. I have become honest, authentic, and in much better mental health than I once tried to be by stifling the feelings that seemed wrong. 

 I greatly admire heroes like Simone Biles and Michael Phelps who admit to experiencing depression or anxieties. The truth is that we all get discombobulated now and again. Stuffing our feelings inside only creates ulcers and panic attacks. We all get a case of the ‘twisties’ that frighten and disorient us. When we are willing to admit that things are not quite right and we reach out for help we demonstrate great courage. If we tell others about our trials and how we struggled to overcome them, we pave the way for more and more people to be sympathetic to each other and to themselves.

I used to hide most of the concerns that I carried in my heart. I was not willing to tell anyone how much my father’s death derailed me. I rarely mentioned my mother’s mental illness and how difficult it was to care for her. It took me years before I began to crack from the pressure of pretending to be perfect. I remember the day when I finally let go and confided to one of my coworkers who instantly understood how I was feeling and counseled with me on the spot. We became closer than ever because of our human connection and he urged me to be more open all of the time. 

I now know so well that each and every person is working out something in their minds. We women tend to dwell on a million things at a time and often feel reluctant to ask for help. Good health demands that we know our limits. We will be much stronger when we honestly admit our imperfections. We may know that we will never be able to turn off the thinking, but by boldly admitting to our frailties we can find the help that we need to carry on. 

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina George W Bush, Republican, and Bill Clinton, Democrat, joined together to raise funds to help New Orleans rebuild from the devastation of that storm. I was awed by their willingness to set aside political differences in a common cause for the good of people who had lost so much. It was the kind of effort that I believe demonstrates the compassion and greatness of our nation. 

I witnessed the same kind of cooperation during and after hurricane Harvey that flooded my city and suburban towns with over fifty inches of rain over the course of several days. Everyone living here knew numerous people whose homes filled with many feet of water. We all sat inside our houses watching the incessant rain that never stopped and hearing of friends and family members who had to abandon their neighborhoods and homes walking in waist high water to safety.

People came together both before and after the horror without regard for personal beliefs or preferences. We worked as one to make sure that everyone would be okay. Images of people of many races and religions doing everything possible to insure the safety of others are permanently etched in my mind. I was very proud of my city and the fact that nobody became mired in “them and us” kind of thinking. Republicans and Democrats alike worked for the common good, Religious folks and atheists were as one. No labels prevented the people of the city from working together. 

I also know that the recovery took time, many months in fact. For some it would be years before they once again felt normal. FEMA had offices for the duration, doing its best to help the people both short term and long term,. It was a glorious demonstration of what is the very best about the people of our city and the entire nation because help came from all parts of the United States. 

Today we see people suffering from the devastating effects of hurricane Helene while a new storm called Milton seems to be barreling toward an area in Florida that was already hit by Helene. Meanwhile there are people in Houston still waiting for companies to rebuild their fences and roofs that were damaged in early summer by hurricane Beryl. Climate change has made the exceptional the rule this hurricane season and it’s time that we remember how to work together rather than making a natural disaster a political football game. 

Here are some truths that must be addressed immediately…FEMA is responding as quickly as possible in every case, but is running out of funding due to the high volume of destruction this year. This is not because money was diverted from FEMA to housing for illegals, but only because there have been so many destructive storms this year. Added to that is the fact that almost thirty Republicans voted against a bill that would have provided additional funding to FEMA only days before Helene struck. Now the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, refuses to call a special session of Congress to address the monetary needs. Instead he insists that it would be wrong to call back the representatives this close to an election. 

I can’t imagine the kind of thinking it takes for people to create an environment of divisiveness in the midst of an emergency. I am up to my eyeballs in disdain for the partisan gaming that is dividing us into tribes, phony groups of “them and us.” What is the purpose of pulling us apart and making us believe that we can’t work together anymore? 

The trouble seemed to begin during the Covid pandemic when we had politicians making fun of those who wore masks and attempting to demonize the medical community. At a time when we should have been together the epidemic became political. From there it morphed into efforts to force us all to live alike. A kind of hatefulness has tainted our relationships with one another and our willingness to understand and treasure all people, not just those exactly like ourselves. We have a man running for President of the United States with a platform of rancor and outright lies. Now he is using the misfortune of those caught in storms to foment even more hate aimed at innocent groups of people who have done nothing to deserve the danger in which he has placed them. 

This is something that we have to stop. We should all be insisting that our lawmakers work together for the common good, not just to pander to one group or another. We are all people caught in a dangerous storm. It’s time for us to once again have each others’ backs. Mother Nature does not discriminate in its wrath. People are suffering and need us to stop the bickering and just get things done. It will take time so we must have patience as well. We can do this one step at a time with the resolve to help not hinder. Milton is on its way. We must insist that Congress comes together to be prepared for whatever may happen.