Comfort

I was just on the phone with Emily and Wilder.  We were skyping.  Emily said that Wi had been asking for me and as I talked to him and watched him on the phone, I realized he just was not feeling good.  He has a little cold.

I wanted to take him and hold him close and rub his little back.  I wanted to comfort him.

The world needs comfort now.  All of us, everyone.  Some may say—“Oh, you’re too awful to need comfort.  You don’t deserve comfort.  You deserve punishment.”

I’m not thinking of who does and who doesn’t deserve comfort.  I’m thinking the whole world hurts.  The earth itself hurts.

I’d like to put the earth on my knee and rub it’s little back.  You know that comforting someone or something else also gives you comfort.  It’s not a completely selfless act.  Endorphins flow, good feelings flow and everyone can calm down, settle down and breathe.

 

Mea culpa

I just heard a story that I want to share. No names, no places, just the meat of the story. A couple I know, late middle age, have a favorite restaurant they go to in the small town in which they live.

They go there for coffee and pastry in the morning and for dinner and drinks. They pretty much know everyone there except for the folks at the counter who often change.

One day, the husband came into the restaurant and noting that the young woman at the counter looked tired, said “You look awfully tired.” This was meant compassionately. When she agreed with his observation, he, because he considers himself a bit of a raconteur, added, jokingly, “Do you want me to slap you around a little bit?” This was a line from one of his favorite film comedies.

The girl broke into tears, went into the back and the manager came out and told him to leave the restaurant and never come back. The man apologized to the girl, the manager, and the owner. To no avail. Banned. He is banned. His wife, in solidarity, will no longer go to this restaurant. In a later appeal to the owner, who knows the couple well, they were told that they couldn’t come back to the restaurant.

It turns out that there were subtexts operating at the time. Both women had been victims of domestic violence.

Interactions between people are complex; one can easily walk into a shit storm. Wounds, especially raw wounds like this young woman and her manager obviously have, set them up for a black and white response. I understand that. But, if we are not given the grace of a redo, a redemptive moment, we will never learn.

How great it would be if an incident like this could be used as a “teaching moment.” Instead of slamming doors in people’s faces (however, un-PC they are), how about opening doors in dialogue? Talk about it. Explain to this old white man what he was missing in his unthinking response.

I understand the anger of the women, but this is a scorched earth approach. I understand that they say “No more”. I get it. What I can’t get, and this is for me too, is our inability to handle situations like this without offering the opportunity for change and healing.

How great it will be when we can respond to a unthinking and unaware older man with the words: “You can’t say those words to me. I am a victim of domestic abuse.”

If he can’t respond to those words with compassion, then cut him loose and cut him down. But please, allow for growth, otherwise we’re doomed to simply radicalize each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uncle Dint-It’s a soul thing

We lost Uncle Dint.  I don’t know why I say lost.  We didn’t lose him.  He lives here, right behind my breastbone, right next to my heart.  Right next to my Mom.

I remember Dint from so far back.  I remember when I was a child listening to the adult Granges laugh and tell stories and create a warm buzzy atmosphere like a beehive in our kitchen.  Those memories mean family to so many of us.  It is the warm fire we can go back to when we’re knocked off our feet and need some mending.  Dint was medicinal.

Uncle Dint and my mother had such similar energy.  Both of them had a passion for people, a passion for connection that could seem kind of frightening to a child.  When Dint saw you, you felt seen.  He’d proclaim “KITTY”.  No one, and I mean no one, enveloped you like Dint.

He’d kind of laugh and kind of chortle/giggle as he hugged you as if you were the biggest surprise he’d encountered in a long time;  a welcome surprise.   He was passionately curious about what I was up to, what I was thinking and why I was thinking what I was thinking.  I’m not sure I ever satisfied him on that, because I was never real sure I could voice what I was thinking just like that.  He called you to account.

It was all about attitude.  It was all about chasing away the dark and getting ready to work and play and love. He got up and got on with it.  He pushed through pain, he pushed through loss, he pushed.  I’m not sure how comfortable that always was for his immediate family, but for me it was and is an inspiration.  I’m sure this had a lot to do with how he grew up but, really, it’s a soul thing.  He had that soul thing.

I’m think of Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high.”  As a moody and dark teenager, I would have found this quote annoying and naive. Now that I’m older, I find it is the only way to survive in an uncertain and sometimes cruel world.  Gather your loved ones and tell stories, and laugh, dance if you can, cry if you must and live with attitude.  Go high.

That’s what my Uncle Dint did.

All my love to all who knew and loved him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get real

Planning to go over to Emily’s soon and was chatting with her prior to getting dressed:

Me:  “So your Dad will be back in a half hour, I better get dressed.  I’m still in my pajamas.”

Em: “Don’t get dressed.  Come over in your jammies.”

Me:  “I can’t come over in my pajamas.  I have to be a good role model for my grandson.”

Em:  “Why?  He poops his pants.”

Good point.

Just because I love this picture:

 

 

 

Everybody hurts

So, I don’t know where to go with all the pain in our lives right now.  Starting out real locally—my husband’s neuropathy which causes him to cry out at night.  My brother John who reacted to Trump calling himself proudly a nationalist.  Ow and ow  again. John, like many of us, hurts and is angry and is frightened by the trajectory of our country.  Maybe the moral compass of the universe doesn’t bend toward good, maybe it just swings from good to bad and everything in between.

I read in the paper this morning about a man with five children who will lose his job if Halliburton can no longer do fracking in and around Denver.  Fracking is dangerous and unhealthy for those living around it but he needs a job to support his family.

How do we reconcile these disparate concerns?  We can’t reconcile. One person’s needs are another’s doom.  I need a job, you have gas coming out of your kitchen sink.  Until we evolve a better source of energy, the only solution is compromise, listening to each other.  This is not right against wrong, black and white.  It is to do what is mostly right for all concerned.  Nobody’s happy, most everyone accepts the resolution.  That is government.

They say all politics are local.  I’d say all politics are familial as well.  From the particular (healthcare), to the local (fracking, mining) to the global (climate change); government has to hold the net wide enough to encompass us all.

Which is to say that government by it’s nature is imperfect and meets most needs only partially.  It’s like feeding a large family who are finicky eaters.  No one will be completely satisfied but no one will leave the table hungry.

The bickering must stop.  No one is going to provide a perfect answer. We need wise people to calm us down, to show our better selves.

The net needs to be wide to encompass all of us or it will be so narrow, so constricting that it will destroy us all.

Everybody hurts.

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I worked with kids who really hurt and were hurt, emotionally and physically and their reaction to much of what came their way—frustration, hurt, disappointment, was to blow up.  Our job was to try to help them integrate their emotions (fear, anger) with their rational minds.  Many of them had never learned to use their rational minds.

Our country right now seems to be all emotion, fire and overreaction.  Time to do a little wise mind therapy.

Find your balance.

 

 

 

 

Rock On

I love rocks:  little rocks, big rocks, black, brown, green, grey, speckled, sparkling, striated, crumbly, misshapen, shaped like hands or feet or noses or heads, long and skinny, fat and lumpy, gnarled, burly, shaped by earth, by fire, by water, by friction.

I love rocks.  They are weighty but have nothing to say.  They are porous and can be pliable but they are only and ever what they are.  Their histories are sometimes very apparent and sometimes need chemical analysis.  They may morph from cliffs to sand but the smallest grain of sand is still a rock.

I can stand on them, by them and under them.  I can feel their coolness and their “I am not a sentient being” beingness.

Do you remember Sylvester and the Magic Pebble?  Now a magic pebble is a rock, a small rock no bigger than your thumb, but it packs a boulder sized wallop.

Sylvester unwittingly turned himself into a rock.  I love rocks but I don’t want to be one.  Oh, maybe for a day but not forever.

Anyway, be careful what you wish for while holding  a magic pebble.