Maybe this is what a bear feels like when waking up from the long winter nap. Outside my kitchen window, the trees are in flower and birds hop gleefully from feeder to feeder. Sure enough, the robins are nesting in the bathroom vent again. And Carolina Blue is not just about basketball.
I've been in never-land for awhile, and still pass back and forth every day. But the renewal of life draws me out. I blink and look around, smell the earth and the icky scent of a subdivision full of Bradford Pears. They look so good, but EEE-EWWW. It's disorienting to find that life continues, with or without Mama, or me, or anybody else. Comforting, too.
I got a button on a Christmas present that says EAT SLEEP READ. I must have thought it was an instruction manual, because that's pretty much what I've done for the past three months. Oh, there are plenty of tasks --- more than I want ---- but I find myself taking cover in the self-soothing method I developed as a child.
My mother told me that I taught myself to read before I went to school. Ever the overachiever, I thought. But actually it was probably a ready defense. By the time I was five, I had three younger siblings. We were read to, but I don't imagine it was as much as I wanted. Anyway, when I was able to read on my own, I could get away from the chaos for a bit. I remember, as a kindergartener, curling up in a little window on the landing of the stairs to read by myself.
It was through books that I formed my dreams of who I could become, where I could live, what I could do. I was gifted with the ability to be transported into the story and share the adventures and perils and happy endings of the characters. I wrote, too, though precious few of those early pages still exist.
Part of the mourning process for my mother is going through the things she left behind. She had downsized considerably, giving away or selling a lifetime's worth of clothing, furniture, dishes and collectibles from all the places they had lived. Jill and I have many pieces in our house and they are part of our daily lives.
Recently, I've taken up the more intimate task of sorting through her papers. The grinding paper shredder confounds the dogs and cats, who regard it as yet another intruder in their domain. Much of it is routine and uninteresting, but there are also the letters, professional papers, fifty years of travel orders and her medical records from military hospitals. No earthly use to anyone, but I can't seem to throw them away. So back in the box they go, after a good look-see and floods of memories. There are Christmas Letters going back decades, documenting the highlights of our family's growth and change. Perhaps the strangest thing she kept was the folder of Christmas Wish Lists from all the family members for the last 20 years, along with hand-drawn spreadsheets documenting what gifts she had given everyone every year.
Then there are the notebooks, her journals or diaries or whatever you would call them. Now understand, I'm a compulsive journaler, too. I have a collection of notebooks going back fifty+ years that are filled to overflowing with astute observations about the nature of life, and plenty of whining. Nancy's? Not so much, at least not so far. She, like her father before her, jotted down events, weather, prices, destinations and who she saw during the day. She was not given to reflection about her own or other people's feelings, did not process her place in the world, neither opined nor suggested solutions to the problems of public life.
Still, there are several spiral notebooks and as I read them, I'm reminded of so many ordinary days that have slipped from memory. I'm grateful for her note-taking on the days of her life. She only started writing after retirement; the really juicy stuff came before and went discreetly unrecorded. But these pages are what matter to me now, the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday life.
Well. Now I've gone and done it. I wrote a blog for the first time in a couple of months. I've written nothing but an obituary for quite awhile, and wondered if my writing days were over.
Spring has sprung. Warmth returns. I'm shaking off the darkness of winter's night and coming back to life as well.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Color me Quiet
In another incarnation, I performed history programs for a living. I called it Travels through Time. Sometimes I enticed my daughter, Ashley, to accompany me. One of our joint ventures had me in mourning, entreating listeners to foreswear the demon rum, and Sign the Pledge. Her part was singing an old song, "My Father was a Drunkard" --- a plaintive little piece to drum up sympathy and temperance sentiment.
It has been one month ago today since my mother died, and I've been thinking about mourning. During my living history days, I developed a program to take into schools that taught kids about death and mourning in the Victorian period. It was always of great interest, and I have to admit I liked doing the research for it.
Mourning is no longer in style. While the formalized rituals from 150 years ago wouldn't work well today, I do wonder if we're not missing something. Death, in that era, was not hidden away in hospitals and nursing homes. It was acknowledged as a matter of course, an all too common occurrence in homes and workplaces.
I have spent the last month being rather quiet and slow. It is an intentional withdrawl from society. Victorian widows withdrew completely for a year after their husbands died. That was deep mourning. The entire mourning period for widowed women was four years, with variation in dress and activities to mark a gradual emergence back into society. For other relationships, the formalized mourning practices were less stringent, but no less ritualistic. (For more information about mourning dress check here.)
Obviously, not everyone followed those dictates. Not everyone was able to, or could afford to. But the underlying expectation was that a period of mourning was valued and respected. It was not expected that life would proceed immediately as though the deceased was simply erased without a trace, within a week's time. It sometimes feels that way now.
I decided to follow my own path, let the process unfold as it will without either pushing or prolonging. I wanted to see what it feels like. Almost unconsciously, I mark the days --- Mondays have crept up on me each week without my knowing it until I realize that another week has gone by. Each Monday brings its own thoughts and emotional pitfalls.
I knew from prior experience that the first couple of weeks were likely to be marked by difficulty with concentration, periods of inattention, lapses into sadness or memories. It was only after 2 weeks went by and I was still sometimes wandering around the house not sure what to do next, that I knew I must set expectation aside. No time limit, I was told. I shouldn't impose one on myself.
So today is one month by the calendar. I have to attend to some business. I must get organized, so I made a folder and a log. I've looked online and talked to people for guidance. I've made some necessary calls, as the executor of her will. Each day, more of the outside world intrudes on my reverie and beckons me back into "real life" ----- a life that still feels prickly and otherworldly without my mother.
I don't want to be some sort of neo-Victorian tragic figure. That's not my intention at all. What I continue to do is wend my way through the netherworld of life and death, the mystery of the smallest details of life and the enormity of loss. And all the while, I do my best to stay conscious.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Birth and Rebirth
I'm not a big fan of the birthday, at least not mine. Not because I fear getting older ----- I actually kind of like that. I'm far more comfortable inside my skin now than I ever was back when it fit better.
No, first of all, birthdays kind of annoy me because they don't really mark what we think they do. I was born on August 24, 1950. (By the way, as birthdays go, that's a good one, especially the 1950 part. Makes it so easy to figure out all other dates.) But that was just the day I was born, not the day I started.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some google-eyed anti-abortion terrorist determined that life begins sometime before conception. But when you get launched into the world and you're a full-fledged, breathing person, it'd be nice to get some credit for surviving all that cell division, and growing of fingers and toes, that went on in the womb. That's not nothing. So we already start out 9 months behind, give or take. Then we've got to put in a whole 'nother 365 before we even get to the big ONE. Somehow, that just seems wrong.
What all this amounts to for me is that in 2015 I'll turn 65 (see how easy that math is? I love 1950!) and that's supposed to be meaningful in much the same way that turning 21 is ---- it marks an artificial milestone that translates into describable, sometimes legal, changes. Everybody knows that when you turn 21 you can drink (wink wink) and you're considered an adult. Similarly, when you turn 65 you can go on Medicare. You also get all kinds of discounts, like with airlines and gym memberships, and people automatically put you in the category of OLD ----- or elderly or senior citizen or, my personal favorite, a golden-ager. You know who really thinks you're old, besides grandchildren? Car rental companies. Some don't even want to rent cars to people over 65. Huh! Why Sonny, I've been driving since stick shifts were everywhere and seat belts didn't exist!
Since Mom died, I've been in touch with a lot of people from my previous lives. It's an interesting process. First of all, I don't think I'm that much different, so why do all these people have gray hair (or bald heads!) and grandkids and social security? I still think that me being able to collect SS is some sort of scam I'm pulling --- surely I'm not old enough for retirement, right? All of my notions about time and life-span are up for grabs right now. I suppose it's a perfectly predictable life passage that happens just about now, but it's MY life passage and it's a novelty to me. How can life go by so quickly? How can I feel so new when, chronologically speaking, I'm sliding down the far end of the bell curve?
I'm reading about brain chemistry and neurology, creativity and consciousness. I'm also re-reading Agatha Christie to give those neurons a break from trying to find hooks on which to hang new learning. I get the butterflies in the tummy with excitement when I make new connections, understand something that had never been clear before. I clench my teeth and read some paragraphs over and over, almost feeling the reach of dendrites as I try to grasp something new. Wears me plum out!
When I was 30, I first noticed that the skin on my hand was loosening up. I was appalled. I kept poking at the back of my hand like it was a dead mouse, fascinated and horrified. Thirty-five years later, with far more loose skin, I assure you, I see my mother's hands, the hands of my grandmother ---- wrinkled, veiny, age-spotted ---- and I love them. They're not new, they've been used to work and play and dig in the dirt and hold babies and make love and open jars. They've been surgified several times, rehabilitated, puffed up and shrunk down.
At Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh (UUFR) my favorite part of the child dedication ceremony is the call to 'use these hands in the work of the world.' I have done that and, most recently, in the care of my mother in her last days. As we gathered around her bed, and the world fell away, it felt like a death and a birth, rolled into one.
That is new learning for me.
No, first of all, birthdays kind of annoy me because they don't really mark what we think they do. I was born on August 24, 1950. (By the way, as birthdays go, that's a good one, especially the 1950 part. Makes it so easy to figure out all other dates.) But that was just the day I was born, not the day I started.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some google-eyed anti-abortion terrorist determined that life begins sometime before conception. But when you get launched into the world and you're a full-fledged, breathing person, it'd be nice to get some credit for surviving all that cell division, and growing of fingers and toes, that went on in the womb. That's not nothing. So we already start out 9 months behind, give or take. Then we've got to put in a whole 'nother 365 before we even get to the big ONE. Somehow, that just seems wrong.
What all this amounts to for me is that in 2015 I'll turn 65 (see how easy that math is? I love 1950!) and that's supposed to be meaningful in much the same way that turning 21 is ---- it marks an artificial milestone that translates into describable, sometimes legal, changes. Everybody knows that when you turn 21 you can drink (wink wink) and you're considered an adult. Similarly, when you turn 65 you can go on Medicare. You also get all kinds of discounts, like with airlines and gym memberships, and people automatically put you in the category of OLD ----- or elderly or senior citizen or, my personal favorite, a golden-ager. You know who really thinks you're old, besides grandchildren? Car rental companies. Some don't even want to rent cars to people over 65. Huh! Why Sonny, I've been driving since stick shifts were everywhere and seat belts didn't exist!
Since Mom died, I've been in touch with a lot of people from my previous lives. It's an interesting process. First of all, I don't think I'm that much different, so why do all these people have gray hair (or bald heads!) and grandkids and social security? I still think that me being able to collect SS is some sort of scam I'm pulling --- surely I'm not old enough for retirement, right? All of my notions about time and life-span are up for grabs right now. I suppose it's a perfectly predictable life passage that happens just about now, but it's MY life passage and it's a novelty to me. How can life go by so quickly? How can I feel so new when, chronologically speaking, I'm sliding down the far end of the bell curve?
I'm reading about brain chemistry and neurology, creativity and consciousness. I'm also re-reading Agatha Christie to give those neurons a break from trying to find hooks on which to hang new learning. I get the butterflies in the tummy with excitement when I make new connections, understand something that had never been clear before. I clench my teeth and read some paragraphs over and over, almost feeling the reach of dendrites as I try to grasp something new. Wears me plum out!
When I was 30, I first noticed that the skin on my hand was loosening up. I was appalled. I kept poking at the back of my hand like it was a dead mouse, fascinated and horrified. Thirty-five years later, with far more loose skin, I assure you, I see my mother's hands, the hands of my grandmother ---- wrinkled, veiny, age-spotted ---- and I love them. They're not new, they've been used to work and play and dig in the dirt and hold babies and make love and open jars. They've been surgified several times, rehabilitated, puffed up and shrunk down.
At Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh (UUFR) my favorite part of the child dedication ceremony is the call to 'use these hands in the work of the world.' I have done that and, most recently, in the care of my mother in her last days. As we gathered around her bed, and the world fell away, it felt like a death and a birth, rolled into one.
That is new learning for me.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Meeting the Reaper Head-on
My mother died ten days before Christmas. That's so like her.
Nancy was a woman who was easy to love. She drew people like Monarchs to milkweed. They simply couldn't help themselves. Not only was she funny and pretty and kind, she had a way of listening that was attentive and made you feel like you were her sole concern at that moment. It was usually true ---- she loved being with people. It was also true that she was hard of hearing and had to lip read. That helped her cultivate the soft, sincere, focus that people felt in her presence.
She was genuinely happy to help people she knew and loved, and people she didn't as well. When I was a girl, she had a way of adopting people into the family. She cooked too much because there was no way to know how many would show up at dinner time. She listened to people's troubles, even though she rarely offered advice. Her attention and compassion were enough.
In her later years, as the kids grew up and moved away, she became increasingly independent. In her forties, she moved back to the US from England for two years, in order to complete her degree in teaching. She had taught for years without it, but wanted to achieve full career status with the Department of Defense Dependent Schools, and needed a diploma. A few years later the folks turned the tables and she held down the fort in the Azores while Dad pursued his ambition to be an itinerant, starving, actor in the US. In a marriage that surely had its ups and downs, they were both committed to helping each other fulfill their dreams.
After 31 years of living overseas, traveling widely, and teaching generations of kindergarteners and music students, they settled near grown kids in Louisburg, North Carolina. The final two decades distilled a lifetime of family ties, artistic pursuits, community living, travel, and caregiving. There were innumerable family get-togethers always accompanied by board games, singing at the piano bar, and laughter. When hurricane Fran blew through, it was at Mom and Dad's we all took refuge. Theirs was the only house in our family to sustain bad damage ---- wouldn't you know it? ---- but at least we were all together through that frightening night. Because that's exactly what we do.
Retirement for the folks brought the chance to do community theater, to attend grandchildren's plays and concerts, to go on their annual pilgrimmage to Disney World. Mom and I would talk on the phone almost daily, a delight after living on different continents for so many years. We discussed the birds in our yards, bragged on how many loads of laundry we had on the line or what we were cooking for supper. We swapped stories and gossip and shared resentments and troubles. An already close relationship blossomed under the ordinary of daily contact.
When Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 1998 it was not a surprise since he had been behaving strangely for some time, but it was a shock. Reality check. Life was changing completely and abruptly. She took care of him at home, taking on the brunt of the burden and shielding the three of us kids who live here, so we could carry on with our own lives and families. It was not until he became unmanageable and dangerously combative that we understood the true extent of his decline. She continued to visit him several times a week in the Memory Care unit, overseeing his treatment and condition, but relieved at last from feeling unsafe in her own home.
She was widowed after 53 years of marriage and several years of Lester's dementia. Now she was free from caregiving and could travel once more. She flitted about, knocking things off of her bucket list and visiting friends and her three older siblings. Good times, indeed . . . . until. Small things at first, lost objects, repeated questions or statements, getting lost in a town of 1,500. With utter despair we all came to realize that she was showing many of the early signs that Dad had shown, and the diagnosis was confirmed. Two years after Alzheimer's claimed Lester, it came gunnin' for Nancy.
Nancy Lou Ewers Bundy was a determined woman. She was eminently practical and, though blessed with the spirit of an artist, she did not shrink from the real world. Whatever her thoughts and fears after she started treatment, she rarely let on that she was anything but firmly grounded in living her life each day to the fullest. She took care of legalities. She divested herself of most of her belongings. She chose which independent living community she wanted to move to in Raleigh, close to the kids. She voluntarily gave up her car and couldn't say enough how glad she was that she didn't have to take care of that big house and yard, or cook or clean for herself anymore. She made friends and became a BINGO maven. We continued to talk on the phone and see each other as usual. She fell in love with an older man, Jack, and passionately threw herself into a relationship that sustained and uplifted both of them for five years.
There's no pretty way to live and die with Alzheimer's. There are ways to manage it, there can be joy and laughter ---- sometimes high hilarity ---- and there can be intense love and devotion. But no matter how you cut it, it ain't pretty. She lost memory. Her speech and coordination faded away. She was confused and frightened sometimes, often courageous, mostly resigned. Her body gave out as she lost half of her body weight and the ability to walk or feed herself. Her limbs contracted until finally, mute and vacant, she was curled into a grotesque fetal position, ready to launch into an unknown world and leave that tortured body behind. Which she did, nine and a half years post-diagnosis, at 9:28 PM on Monday, December 15, 2014.
Isn't that just like her? She didn't want to trouble anybody. Maybe she knew we were bringing her home on the 10th for however long her final weeks would be, and decided she would cut it short and bring us all together. With the help of Hospice, she was carefully installed in a hospital bed in the front room of our house. Within two days she started to fail. On her final day, the family gathered. Music played ---- Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Christmas carols. The lights on the Christmas tree drew her eyes when nothing else could. We whispered and talked to her, told her how much we loved her, thanked her for the light she had always been. We patted and soothed and kissed and held her and she slipped away, enveloped in love. That was her gift to us, a final light on the path she has always illuminated for her children, her family, and friends.
She was my mama.
Nancy was a woman who was easy to love. She drew people like Monarchs to milkweed. They simply couldn't help themselves. Not only was she funny and pretty and kind, she had a way of listening that was attentive and made you feel like you were her sole concern at that moment. It was usually true ---- she loved being with people. It was also true that she was hard of hearing and had to lip read. That helped her cultivate the soft, sincere, focus that people felt in her presence.
She was genuinely happy to help people she knew and loved, and people she didn't as well. When I was a girl, she had a way of adopting people into the family. She cooked too much because there was no way to know how many would show up at dinner time. She listened to people's troubles, even though she rarely offered advice. Her attention and compassion were enough.
In her later years, as the kids grew up and moved away, she became increasingly independent. In her forties, she moved back to the US from England for two years, in order to complete her degree in teaching. She had taught for years without it, but wanted to achieve full career status with the Department of Defense Dependent Schools, and needed a diploma. A few years later the folks turned the tables and she held down the fort in the Azores while Dad pursued his ambition to be an itinerant, starving, actor in the US. In a marriage that surely had its ups and downs, they were both committed to helping each other fulfill their dreams.
After 31 years of living overseas, traveling widely, and teaching generations of kindergarteners and music students, they settled near grown kids in Louisburg, North Carolina. The final two decades distilled a lifetime of family ties, artistic pursuits, community living, travel, and caregiving. There were innumerable family get-togethers always accompanied by board games, singing at the piano bar, and laughter. When hurricane Fran blew through, it was at Mom and Dad's we all took refuge. Theirs was the only house in our family to sustain bad damage ---- wouldn't you know it? ---- but at least we were all together through that frightening night. Because that's exactly what we do.
Retirement for the folks brought the chance to do community theater, to attend grandchildren's plays and concerts, to go on their annual pilgrimmage to Disney World. Mom and I would talk on the phone almost daily, a delight after living on different continents for so many years. We discussed the birds in our yards, bragged on how many loads of laundry we had on the line or what we were cooking for supper. We swapped stories and gossip and shared resentments and troubles. An already close relationship blossomed under the ordinary of daily contact.
When Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 1998 it was not a surprise since he had been behaving strangely for some time, but it was a shock. Reality check. Life was changing completely and abruptly. She took care of him at home, taking on the brunt of the burden and shielding the three of us kids who live here, so we could carry on with our own lives and families. It was not until he became unmanageable and dangerously combative that we understood the true extent of his decline. She continued to visit him several times a week in the Memory Care unit, overseeing his treatment and condition, but relieved at last from feeling unsafe in her own home.
She was widowed after 53 years of marriage and several years of Lester's dementia. Now she was free from caregiving and could travel once more. She flitted about, knocking things off of her bucket list and visiting friends and her three older siblings. Good times, indeed . . . . until. Small things at first, lost objects, repeated questions or statements, getting lost in a town of 1,500. With utter despair we all came to realize that she was showing many of the early signs that Dad had shown, and the diagnosis was confirmed. Two years after Alzheimer's claimed Lester, it came gunnin' for Nancy.
Nancy Lou Ewers Bundy was a determined woman. She was eminently practical and, though blessed with the spirit of an artist, she did not shrink from the real world. Whatever her thoughts and fears after she started treatment, she rarely let on that she was anything but firmly grounded in living her life each day to the fullest. She took care of legalities. She divested herself of most of her belongings. She chose which independent living community she wanted to move to in Raleigh, close to the kids. She voluntarily gave up her car and couldn't say enough how glad she was that she didn't have to take care of that big house and yard, or cook or clean for herself anymore. She made friends and became a BINGO maven. We continued to talk on the phone and see each other as usual. She fell in love with an older man, Jack, and passionately threw herself into a relationship that sustained and uplifted both of them for five years.
There's no pretty way to live and die with Alzheimer's. There are ways to manage it, there can be joy and laughter ---- sometimes high hilarity ---- and there can be intense love and devotion. But no matter how you cut it, it ain't pretty. She lost memory. Her speech and coordination faded away. She was confused and frightened sometimes, often courageous, mostly resigned. Her body gave out as she lost half of her body weight and the ability to walk or feed herself. Her limbs contracted until finally, mute and vacant, she was curled into a grotesque fetal position, ready to launch into an unknown world and leave that tortured body behind. Which she did, nine and a half years post-diagnosis, at 9:28 PM on Monday, December 15, 2014.
Isn't that just like her? She didn't want to trouble anybody. Maybe she knew we were bringing her home on the 10th for however long her final weeks would be, and decided she would cut it short and bring us all together. With the help of Hospice, she was carefully installed in a hospital bed in the front room of our house. Within two days she started to fail. On her final day, the family gathered. Music played ---- Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Christmas carols. The lights on the Christmas tree drew her eyes when nothing else could. We whispered and talked to her, told her how much we loved her, thanked her for the light she had always been. We patted and soothed and kissed and held her and she slipped away, enveloped in love. That was her gift to us, a final light on the path she has always illuminated for her children, her family, and friends.
She was my mama.
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Bridesmaid again
I woke up Wednesday morning, November 5, to sigh into my coffee and feel around for equilibrium. It's not an unusual feeling. Far more often than not, the day after an election is a letdown. Why do I keep backing the people who lose?
Maybe it was the coffee, particularly strong and fragrant that morning. Maybe after 40+ years of participating in the political process, I'm finally catching on. I've figured something out --- losing is a good thing. It means I'm still a progressive!
Think about it. By definition, progressives are the minority political group. However we align in terms of party or self-identity, to espouse progressive ideas about society is to buck the norm. We are, if you will, the tip of the arrow. And when the entire society lurches forward as it did in 2008, the pushback is going to be brutal.
It's a continuous process and, given the way humans seem to be constructed, will probably go on this way. Progressives forge ahead, push the boundaries, defy standards and taboos, invent, create, and often thumb their noses at the folks who aren't on board. Conservatives want to conserve ---- be comfortable, stay on the path, harken back to custom and tradition, hold on to the proven way of doing things. Change is difficult and threatening; most people don't like much change.
These two will always be at odds and never truly understand each other.
I won't assert any of my theories about what lures one person into the unknown while another longs for the comforts of home. Neither is essentially bad or wrong or right or good. In fact, while I count myself a lifelong progressive I also seek comfort in familiar people and surroundings.
It is that tension between surging ahead and holding on that is behind the colossal battle that plays out in politics, over the airwaves, and in families. And I imagine that the faster the pace of change, the more strident the conflict. Even for an old dog, future-gazer like me, it is hard to catch my breath. I'm always a few innovations behind.
Last weekend I had occasion to go to the big, new, whiz-bang library on the campus of North Carolina State University. This is a university that has a strong science, engineering and technology focus, and the library reflects that. As I sat writing (it's Nanowrimo.org month!) I saw and heard all around me the students of today ---- leaders of tomorrow ---- discussing, comparing, writing on whiteboards things I have no idea about. Those were some smart young people and they're learning about the world today and the world they're going to shape for tomorrow.
I came away from that experience energized and hopeful. Isn't that the way of things? My generation in the 60s and 70s was at the vanguard of social and technological revolution. Now we're regarded as wizened relics, obstacles to progress. Pat them on the head and wait for them to die.
I truly hope that the confirmed conservatives who want to take us back to a world that existed only in their imaginations do not succeed in scorching the earth too badly before the young'ins can take over.
Progressives are the minority. Fortunately, we can't stop progressing. It's in our DNA.
Maybe it was the coffee, particularly strong and fragrant that morning. Maybe after 40+ years of participating in the political process, I'm finally catching on. I've figured something out --- losing is a good thing. It means I'm still a progressive!
Think about it. By definition, progressives are the minority political group. However we align in terms of party or self-identity, to espouse progressive ideas about society is to buck the norm. We are, if you will, the tip of the arrow. And when the entire society lurches forward as it did in 2008, the pushback is going to be brutal.
It's a continuous process and, given the way humans seem to be constructed, will probably go on this way. Progressives forge ahead, push the boundaries, defy standards and taboos, invent, create, and often thumb their noses at the folks who aren't on board. Conservatives want to conserve ---- be comfortable, stay on the path, harken back to custom and tradition, hold on to the proven way of doing things. Change is difficult and threatening; most people don't like much change.
These two will always be at odds and never truly understand each other.
I won't assert any of my theories about what lures one person into the unknown while another longs for the comforts of home. Neither is essentially bad or wrong or right or good. In fact, while I count myself a lifelong progressive I also seek comfort in familiar people and surroundings.
It is that tension between surging ahead and holding on that is behind the colossal battle that plays out in politics, over the airwaves, and in families. And I imagine that the faster the pace of change, the more strident the conflict. Even for an old dog, future-gazer like me, it is hard to catch my breath. I'm always a few innovations behind.
Last weekend I had occasion to go to the big, new, whiz-bang library on the campus of North Carolina State University. This is a university that has a strong science, engineering and technology focus, and the library reflects that. As I sat writing (it's Nanowrimo.org month!) I saw and heard all around me the students of today ---- leaders of tomorrow ---- discussing, comparing, writing on whiteboards things I have no idea about. Those were some smart young people and they're learning about the world today and the world they're going to shape for tomorrow.
I came away from that experience energized and hopeful. Isn't that the way of things? My generation in the 60s and 70s was at the vanguard of social and technological revolution. Now we're regarded as wizened relics, obstacles to progress. Pat them on the head and wait for them to die.
I truly hope that the confirmed conservatives who want to take us back to a world that existed only in their imaginations do not succeed in scorching the earth too badly before the young'ins can take over.
Progressives are the minority. Fortunately, we can't stop progressing. It's in our DNA.
Friday, October 31, 2014
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.
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.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Pushme-Pullyou
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!
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