Kids, One By One

Every day in the newspaper we read about another kid or two or three who has been lost to society. Sometimes the stories are horrific. The children were smothered by a parent who grew tired of the crying that interrupted video games, or just threw the baby out of the car, or starved and hurt their child. Or other things too sad to think about. These are the worst cases.

I wonder if the hospitals where kids are born could make a quick assessment of the families where kids go home to. Doesn't seem difficult to see some red flags, and make follow up on these. It would take a bunch of social workers, maybe expanded with volunteer home visit people. The home visitors could offer help, make some suggestions about child care, and if they saw dire difficulties, get immediate help. Yes, there is always the mind set of "we can't do this because.." But the lives of kids are at stake.

As a society, the politicians are always looking to the next election. Seems that in Florida we care very little about kids. The legislature makes sure that kids' welfare is always at the bottom of the list - they don't vote. It is a political must that politicians here vote to protect the fetus. But beyond that, they see no need to protect the kids that are already here and needing so much. Don't expand Medicare etc.

What I see in my volunteer work in an impoverished elementary school is a kind of subtle neglect a lot of parents have for their kids. I know these parents work hard and long hours to keep food on the table (or for fast food). I know these parents have few resources of energy or aspirations. And I know these parents love their kids.

But it makes me crazy that a parent cannot do the minimum to help their kid go to a free week of a wonderful camp next summer. We want that gifted and interested child to go to camp that she desperately wants to attend, but, so far, no one in her family will help on this. Hard to know what to do?

I will go to my grave knowing that I could have done better if I knew what to do. Perhaps I should be content that I have done my best child by child.

Telling People What you Really Think

You cannot do this! Certainly, you cannot do this on line.

I am known for being really blunt at times. My kids call me on this, and in a few instances I have been pilloried for what I have written in this blog. And, of course, I am deservedly contrite because I never want to knowingly wound even one person. The closest thing to a religious creed for me is the framed stitch work on the bathroom wall: "I want to live by the side of the road and be a friend to man"

Can anyone ever be totally honest? I don't think so. We are always adjusting and rearranging our thoughts so that we can be understood and paid attention to and not tearing it with the folks we love.

Right now, we are having some hard thoughts about our upcoming move from our apartment in St. Pete. My husband and I sometimes vent to each other about the difficulties of doing this. I thought it would be easy.  After all, I am always happy to be living here in this paradise north of Dade City.  But I always wanted that place in St. Pete - even if we were hardly ever there!

Suddenly, we'll have no place there where we can light if we want to. And there are all the issues about getting rid of a whole house full of furniture and memories.

Being honest, sort of, I know that we'll make a plan and do the horsing around of furniture no one wants, get movers, and move on, figure out where we can be in St. Pete.

I do not think that even the most loving families can sit down together and really talk about what bothers them, what feelings have been hurt, what delights them, and what needs to be done.

In my privileged life, my family and friends are not very dysfunctional, and piece by piece, we can talk in honest bits. It is worth trying.

Bottom line is that you actually cannot tell people what you really think. It is a process, takes time and attention and listening and mindfulness. And maybe you'll learn something too.

The Terrible Thing I Did that Still Haunts Me

As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I think that all of us need to think about our past- how we have changed our thinking and behavior or maybe even how we have become aware when before we were so oblivious. This "we" is not just the "we" of the privileged white people.  Now this "we" is all of us.

In 1961 I was a full scholarship student at an Ivy League university. I scrabbled for everything- grades, money for living.

 I remember the day very well. It is seared on my memory fifty years later. An African American friend and I were walking towards my off campus apartment for lunch. We were in the same class and at that time there were not many black students in this university. We had been together in a political science class and we were talking a mile a minute about the ideas. There was that left over snow on the ground that in New England takes a long time to melt.

She said, "I think that..." and I said, "But Americans think that.."  At that moment I realized that I was not thinking that this person, my friend, was really an American! Oh, how I wanted to just dive under one of those left over snowdrifts! I will never forget the shame of it.

She did not miss a beat, maybe it was just life as was usual. I have so regretted this obliviousness of mine. It seemed terrible to have to confront the reality of two races intersecting with ideas, friendship, and old baggage. We never mentioned it again.

Fifty years later, I can say I have struggled with these issues. We celebrate our family that is now colorful and multi-ethnic. As a school director I worked hard to have a diverse student body. As a community volunteer I am only thinking about what people can do and what their back stories are.

But fifty years into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we must still be vigilant with ourselves. We have come a long way since then. Multiracial is pretty much the norm, but there is still noise out there, discomfort maybe, that our President is a black man.

Hoping that in the next fifty years we'll all be brown and peaceful!

Life on the Ranch, Still Amazing

The monarch butterflies are tending to business and the passion flowers are in bud as I see them on my way in the mornings through the swamp to pick up the newspaper.

Late spring here in Central Florida, most of the trees except for the hickories are in leaf, and the woods are now a delicate and delicious light and lacy green. The big cypress trees are in leaf and I can even forgive the oak trees for spitting out so much pollen.  With all the unexpected rain for this time of year, and with no freezes during the winter, nature is in full blast.

With every year I live here, I notice hundreds more wildflowers and, on my morning inspection I see the tracks and scat of the animals who share this place with us.

I am beginning to be able to name so many of these creatures and plants whose ecosystem I share. I never want to see another zoo. Far better to get sightings of a bobcat, a fox, a fox squirrel, two snakes, too many deer to count, the alligator in the pond, the cranes and their two chicks, so many birds! All this in one day.

Sleeping with the windows and door open, I often hear the barred owls chuckling and hooting(now in mating season), and I hope to hear the whippoorwills that I used to hear a few years back. After the last cold snap we cleaned out the fireplace and closed the damper because it's time for the chimney swifts to return. They have always come just a month later than the hummingbirds, and now it's time.

I notice some subtle changes, even in the seven years we have lived here full time. Not so many birds in the night jar family, no wood storks for several years,  fewer ducks on the pond, not so many goldfinches, more hummingbirds who demand service. Fill those feeders, now!

It used to be that the only sounds of modern life we heard here were the train horns and some airplanes. Now, more often, we hear helicopters, and from the next door ranch, the noise of sports events. Google Earth has its eye on us. More of our neighbors seem to be shooting guns, and we hear that. The sky is increasingly more polluted with lights from distant football games, encroaching development, and neighbors' giant security lights.

Wrens have nested in the barn and in the glove box of the golf cart and in the tractor, and who knows where else? They are constant.

 But still, I can go outside right this minute and see clouds racing across a half moon and Orion trying to be seen in the wake of a weather front, and fireflies low in the palmettos. In the words of Walt Whitman, these things adorn the parlor of heaven.