A memory of Dad, at just the right time

I just want to read the news in the morning again without feeling like my entire psychological constitution is at risk. My dad, who wondered how Trump could stand himself, would have responded to that observation with a slow, sad shake of his head. 

I’ll come back to my dad in a minute.

                                                    

First of all, this won’t be a full-on Trump post, because discussions about Trump are no longer interesting. My appalled reactions to his speech, behaviors and attitudes are like everyone else’s. We’ve all seen how Trump leverages and gives voice to the darkest human feelings people can possess. He’s been lampooned, mocked, called out, and decent people now know the worst they once only feared.

And yes, it’s possible we’ll have him for four more years which is like being in an abusive relationship and being told “I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to live with it for four or five more years and then you’ll be free.”  

There is Just. So. Much. Hate. 

People will say that the hate was here before Trump came and that’s true. We’ve always had hate, like we’ve always had dogs who need to be kept fenced because if they’re loose, they will damage someone badly whom they perceive as a threat.

Self-control and perspective and general evolution and progressive societal leanings and new generational influences have helped us keep hate in check, or learn from it, or at least know we should try for the greater good.

But a while back, Trump opened the gate to let those dangerous dogs run and now, if we try to put them back in the pen, Trump will just come back and remove the gate altogether. 

Watching, or even reading about people who hate is like living in a climate you don’t like but must find a way to deal with every day. It’s like Florida in August. You have to be near the air conditioning if you’re going to remain civil.

So, what happens I wonder, to people when they are allowed, permitted, or even encouraged to hate for so long? What happens to a person who is exposed to hate for that long? What are we going to do with all this leftover hate in four or five more years?

I’ve been lulled into seeing the sides of humanity that I don’t like, and I fear I’ll become the frog in the water who doesn’t realize it’s dying from exposure to the slowly rising temperature.

It’s during times like these that I feel my dad’s absence most acutely. For years, we traded observations over lunch of the general human condition, the comedy and drama of it. Always, there was a spin, a take, a view that would lead to one of the many laughs we shared.

And so this morning, I talked to my father as I often do when I miss him. I told him that I had been feeling a little aimless on the writing side because my spirit has been suffering from all that climate hate. I said I wasn’t really sure where I belonged on the page but that I was feeling more drawn to the negative than the positive and didn’t like the things I was believing about complete strangers.

And Dad said:

If a course of action makes you feel like a person you don't like as much, change it. It's the wrong one.  

This, of course, is also known as listening to the gut, something my dad did reflexively, and encouraged me to do from the beginning as well.  

Starting today, I’m going to make an active effort to find examples of anti-hate, or even better, love and kindness. It’s what makes me the person I like most to write the stories of everyones and their everydays.

Next week: the man in the truck with the Trump sticker, and me, at the light.

I might not be able to leave my abuser for four or five more years, but somewhere in this heat, there is air-conditioning and that’s where I will be while it’s August in Florida.

A little story about Jenny Ball

There is a story in the Post today about a town in London where some of the park benches have been designated as “chat benches,” meaning that if you sit, you may be approached by a stranger in want of a “chat.”

I loved reading this. Everyone gets lonely, and I believe the elderly may suffer most and are least likely to do something about it.

In the comments that followed the article was one response that struck me, and it was from a woman who suggested we consider that predators may now lay in wait for targets exactly like the ones being “lured” to the benches.  

Okay.

I understand. There is danger around every corner. You never know who’s on the phone. Telemarketers, as mentioned in the Post story, prey on the elderly, and con persons in general will go to great lengths for that money under the mattress. Look at the phony grandsons calling to ask unsuspecting grandparents for money and getting it? And how are we supposed to square this facilitating of stranger liasons with what we tell our children about stranger danger?

Don’t forget, people. Kids watch our every move.

Quick story.

When I was very small, maybe six, I used to come home from school, say hello to my mother and leave to roam our quiet, end-of-town neighborhood looking for whoever was around, maybe playing with Barbies or building a fort in their living room.

But I had another friend in the neighborhood. Her name was Jenny Ball and she lived in a tiny house below the railroad tracks surrounded by waist-high weeds. In my memory, she was about ninety, and “no bigger than a minute,” as my mother would say, probably not over 5’2”. 

Jenny grew rhubarb, kept pigeons and was a hoarder. While my mother took care of my infant brother and probably believed I was across the street in Janey Woodman’s pink flowered bedroom putting tiny rollers in a Barbie’s hair, I was sitting at Jenny Ball’s kitchen table, peering at her between stacks of magazines while she told stories of all the husbands and dogs she’d had who had died, and were buried, “right out there,” she’d say, pointing.

“Right out there” was a patch of earth near the front door surrounded by a tiny picket fence and dotted with little crosses. Her son, Junior, had made them for her. Shortly after, he went to prison or died or both, I can’t remember, and maybe Jenny made it all up and buried her own dogs, I don’t know.

I was riveted by her stories.

The pigeons, who lived in a closet off the kitchen, cooed the entire time that she talked to me at her table. I got a few things in about school, and my brothers and my cat but it was Jenny’s show. She had a lot to say, and I was her very young, slack-jawed-with-fascination fan.

When it came time for me to go home, she would say, “Now you wait here. I’m going to get my gun and watch you go up the hill, so hobos don’t get you.” I’d wave and walk, turning periodically to be sure she was still there, and of course she was, stooped with a bent arm over her head, waving while keeping the other hand around the barrel of her shotgun. I could see the row of horsey false teeth when she smiled, and the glint of her wire glasses. “Bye Byye!!!”

I remember going home and telling my mother about Jenny Ball’s gun, and I don’t remember her sitting me down, or the color draining from her face, but there was a last time I saw Jenny Ball alone and I think it was that day.

Years later, I asked my father if he remembered Jenny Ball and whether he did or not, I think for my benefit he said, “Oh sure, I do!” When I told him the whole story and came to the shotgun part, his  eyes widened.  

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “She could have shot you.”

To this day, I am grateful for those afternoons in Jenny Ball’s kitchen. It may have been where I laid roots in the concept of offering less that means more, or learned that lifelong connections can form around words. Or, perhaps, it existed to supply one of the earliest and most lasting examples of kindness that would serve me when my own father became first ill, and then, “no bigger than a minute,” and still needed a listener.

But  however it came about, or should or shouldn’t have, there we were, a very elderly lady and a very young child finding happiness in each other’s company, in a cool, not very well-lit kitchen, while the pigeons cooed, the stories flowed, and “right out there,” her little colony of dog-friends rested below their tiny crosses. 

Those "chat" benches?  I'm a fan.

Own your history- even if you get mad at it sometimes.

Recently, I connected with an old friend I haven’t seen since we were in our forties. We would have stayed in touch, been closer, but we had teenagers, and generational divides, and marriages and looks that were changing and relevance issues and we were just too busy salvaging our identities to deal with friendship maintenance.

Well, not salvaging – that’s very dramatic – let’s say, “managing.” We were managing our identities, which we agreed, had turned on us like mean girls.  

We had a great time owning up to stuff we thought only we were going through at the time, and sharing one truth that is only possible to admit after you’ve put your act together, which is:  how we projected ourselves back then only somewhat resembled how we really saw ourselves, because the way we saw ourselves was so packed with pass-fail messages from ourselves and others, it was a full-time job trying to figure out which inner voice was in charge.

Not everyone feels this way of course, and very likely at-home mothers feel it more intensely while they both create and react to the climate at home and identity begins to wrap around that climate  like parentheses. 

“Here’s the thing,” she said, recalling passages – a parent’s death, empty nest, and divorce. “Nothing that’s coming will be as hard as what I’ve been through. I can’t wait to see what happens now.”

I felt that, as the kids say.

Reader, if you’re in your late forties and any of this resonates, don’t lose track of people at this point. You will need them when you go through this “second adolescence” as my new-old friend called it, and you will definitely need them when you’re older to help you make fun of yourself and the drama you created when you were younger.

Like many people who have reached age not-forties, I have received the gift of clarity on a number of things. I know for instance, that there are few transitions and life stages I've gone through that almost everyone else doesn't go through which leaves me with a larger peer group than I thought I had. I know too, that we can control how easy or difficult our lives will be once we understand the far reach of our unique history, and its influence over:

How we choose to view everything.

How we choose to perceive and react.

How we choose not to react without thinking things through.

Choose.

Choose.

Try something when you're by yourself. Think of things that are wrong. People doing things that worry you. A thing someone said. A thing you did. A thing that’s happened.

Now, force yourself to think with the other hand. Using the words of an entirely different, positive perspective think about every item on your list differently, even if it bends your mind to do it. If you have an issue with someone, force yourself to look at it entirely from their point of view.

See that point of view. Keep thinking about it. 

Do this as often as you can, until it's a habit.

All of us, I am understanding, come into our stages and transitions dragging bags and bags of what our histories have taught us. They are filled with joyful discoveries, exhilarating triumphs, first loves, shocking revelations, memories of people who loved us and made us feel strong and safe, and memories of abusive or cruel people who screwed us out of better self-esteem.

It is often not the random events, or things people do or say, but rather the way history tells us how to interpret them that informs our every behavior, and in turn our every relationship.

That is good news, because the work of writing out your auto-responses will allow you to see through whose eyes exactly, you are viewing your life and it might not be your own. It might be someone who makes you aware of your shortcomings, or people who have messed up their own lives and would like you to feel as badly about yours. We internalize all kinds of people, the ones we love and the ones we've tried to love. 

The history that leads to the way you view and decide to tweak your life can be a hard thing to face, but here’s something else I learned after I was age not-forties anymore:

Time makes us stronger, but mostly time conditions us to face our histories. And if you don’t believe your history has helped or hurt you more than any other influence in life, think of the thing you would like most to hear about yourself.

Now ask, where, if, and from whom you’ve heard that thing before. If things are good, you heard it more than once from someone you love and who loves you, or will when you tell them you need those words in your heart.

Listen to me.

I didn’t go through my forties and fifties for nothing.