Waiting for the Urchins

It's Halloween once again. The sun sinks behind gathering clouds and darkness is descending. It won't be long before the ghosties and goblins and Disney princesses and pirates arrive, hoping for candy and a little bit afraid. 

Remember going trick or treating? There's nothing new about Disney costuming. In 1958 I wore a Cinderella mask that kept going crooked so I had to look out of one eye hole. By the end of the night the dyes were running and I looked more like a horror victim than a princess. But I had a bag full of candy.

I have very mixed feelings about Halloween. As a kid, it was one of the most exciting days of the year. Costumes, shivery scary stuff, parades (yes, in school), and candy, of course. Lots of candy. Back in those days there were home made goodies as well ---- candy apples, popcorn balls, brownies and cookies. That all came to a screeching halt in the 70s, I guess.

Now, it's been a number of years since we went to a costume party. This year, we're not even dressing up to greet the kids. Our dogs hate it when strangers come to the door, so they have to put away for the evening. Somehow it's lost a lot of its charm.

But in a few minutes the first little butterfly or skeleton will come up onto the porch and offer up a bucket of some ghastly color and lisp out "Trick or Treat" while mom and dad stand back and grin. And for a few minutes, Halloween will be magical again. And I know it'll warm my heart.

Pushme-Pullyou

                                                          Dr. Dolittle and friends

Remember the Pushme-Pullyou from the Dr. Dolittle movie or books? Aside from being the perfect image for today's congress, it has a different, but related, political meaning for me.

First of all, I loved the Dr. Dolittle books when I was a kid. I checked them all out of the base library, along with the Mary Poppins books, when I was in sixth grade. They were counterpoint to my effort to read every biography in our school library. Typical for me.

So I've carried the Pushme-Pullyou image with me for decades and come back to it often. This morning, I was thinking about the current political situation, a month before the mid-term elections, and in the middle of death-defying efforts to legalize marriage for gay people in North Carolina. It's easy to get wound up, especially when I feel like I have a personal stake in the outcomes. Which I do. But it's equally easy to lose perspective.

When I was 18, I was enrolled in a tiny, American, liberal arts college in Germany ----- Schiller College. It was a unique experience that I didn't have enough appreciation for at the time. I ran away (literally) after one semester. But I arrived at school in the fall of 1968, freshly graduated from David Glasgow Farragut HS (Go Admirals!) on the navy base in Rota, Spain. I had lived in Germany for five years prior to moving to Spain, and my German language skills were far superior to what I had picked up of Spanish in the last two years. I felt like I was going home.

I was also in the company of my best male friend and co-conspirator for all things radical, John. We traveled to Germany by Eurail for three weeks before school started, and got into lots of tangles and interesting situations before finally landing at our castle campus in Bonnigheim. (I don't have a clue how to put an umlaut over that o.) I was feeling adventurous from the moment our train pulled out of Jerez in southern Spain, and being at school didn't dampen that one bit.

So politics. On our tiny campus we had 69 students, all freshmen, all American. Some came from the States and many came from state department or military families overseas. The faculty ---- I don't know how they got there, but they were certainly representative of the times. We smoked weed with the English professor while discussing literature, and we drank beer and danced with others in the on-campus "Milchbar". And one memorable night, we formed an SDS chapter.

We met at a gasthaus in town for a regular political workshop. Everybody drank wine or beer and got really argumentative. It was 1968. The world was coming to an end. Important political figures were being butchered in the streets. Entire neighborhoods in cities were in flames. The war was devouring a generation of young men. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We met with our political science prof ---- a wise and experienced man of thirty ---- who told us about this subversive, underground, radical group that was opposed to all the things that were wrong with our home country. Some of us had not lived there since we were children. "Breaking news" often broke a week or more after it happened ---- it was hard to keep up with what was happening back home. But the Students for a Democratic Society was in the vanguard, he assured us, and even though we were too young to vote (the voting age was still 21) we were old enough to fight the system.

I don't remember what exactly joining the SDS involved. I don't remember there being any secret handshakes, though there might have been some sort of membership card. I do remember that our meetings involved a great deal of wine and shouting. I'm surprised we didn't get thrown out of the bar.

The SDS in the United States probably did have some impact. For me, it was an introduction to activism, no matter how small and ineffectual. When I left school and married my sailor boyfriend and returned to the States the next year, this early foundation segued into active participation in anti-war demonstrations and street-level protest in the women's movement.

My parents were apolitical. I don't believe they ever voted until they retired and moved back to the US. I cast my first vote for Shirley Chisolm in the 1972 primary. I've missed very few opportunities to vote since then. In fact, I like voting so much I always want to go back to the end of the line and do it again. You know the old saying ---- vote early and often!

I hear a lot about voter apathy now, attributed to various causes, and I wonder if some of it is just plain lack of education. We're swimming in information overload, but still too many people don't know how government is designed to work in this country. The loud doomsday voices on both sides of the political spectrum tend to drown out the plodding local-issue necessities of day to day government. Too many people feel like they don't matter, that they can't make a difference.

My one vote out of millions may not matter if I'm focused on that one tiny action. But if everyone stayed home and didn't vote, because it just doesn't matter, then who would seize the power? Somebody will, and it's not likely to be someone with my best interests at heart.

I feel vaguely guilty because I haven't been out canvassing or phone banking. Over the past 45 years I've done all of that, multiple times. I even managed a local campaign office one year for a governor's race. I've worked the polls. I've gone to Washington to lobby for causes. Now I'm ready to turn that part of it over, not because I'm apathetic, but because I'm tired. And it hurts my heart.

I'll vote. I'll always vote. I'll talk and blog and make phone calls to elected officials and sign petitions. But the pushme-pullyou of politics has taken its toll on me. I can't jump in with both feet anymore without hurting myself. And these days, for me, every single day counts.

Go on, all you youngsters ----- and the oldsters who still have the passion and the energy for it. Save the country. Let your voice be heard.

EVERYBODY VOTE!

On the Brink

It happens every fall. It took a long time to connect the dots because I actually LOVE fall. I'm not a big fan of being out in the sun and heat of summer, hate to feel sweaty and prickly, rarely visit the beach before October. Give me sunny, blue, autumn days with a bit of chill in the air and leaves that show some color, and I'm a happy camper.

So I've always ignored the dark side of autumn. And it's gotten me in trouble.

Retirement changes things, as I innocently said here when I first left my teaching job three years ago. I came to recognize, gradually, that I had experienced a moderately deep bout with depression. I started calling it my "good, old-fashioned, 1950s-style nervous breakdown" --- a fairly accurate description. 

Considering that I had finally succumbed to what I regarded as the Big Pharma takeover of mental health, and started taking medication a few years earlier, I thought I pretty much had everything under control. HA!

There's a reason that November is the month for Depression Awareness efforts. I always thought that depression had to involve being snake-pit comatose in order to count as the real thing. If I could still walk and talk, that wasn't depression. It was malingering. It was laziness. It was being a weenie.

Of the many things I've been learning during my three years of retirement, this is some of the most important. I still resist it. I still want to believe that it's a character flaw, not an illness, and that all I need is a good ass-kicking to get myself back in gear. But that's not true for me, and it's not true for other people either.

The systemic dismissal of everything short of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, is a huge failure in our society. We lose people every day, every hour. We wring our hands about gun violence and racism and sexism and all the myriad ways that people are bludgeoned with oppression, depression, suppression --- yet we still spank and holler at our tender little people instead of treating them like precious human beings. Where do you think it all begins?

I've had it pointed out to me, over and over, that I treat myself much worse than I would ever think of treating another person. Even the grocery store clerk. Especially the grocery store clerk. I would never in a million years yell at the barista who made me the wrong coffee or the student who didn't understand multiplication. But I sure will berate myself for sleeping 12 hours or not dusting up the dog hair.

It's a long, slow process, recovery. Just like sobriety, it takes constant vigilance ---- without judgment and shame. I have a posse to help me, everyone from a loving wife to healthcare providers to deep soul family and friends. But I know that the best thing I can do to stay ahead of it is to recognize it, talk about it, share with courage. That's a tall order.

Carolina blue skies. Brilliant sunshine across my desk. A calendar dotted with things I want to do and don't want to do. Dogs right behind me. All I have to do is be here now and breathe.