SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

Like many of you, I read The Catcher in The Rye in High School.  I think I liked it.  I don't really remember. 

As my recollection is hazy, I will share this description I found on the internet: 

  

Holden [the teenage protagonist] explains to [his sister] Phoebe that all he wants to be is the catcher in the rye. He pictures himself wearing a giant mitt, ready to catch kids as they fall off a cliff while playing in the rye. The kids represent childhood. The field represents innocence. The fall from the cliff represents the fall from innocence. 

 

I expect we talked about this theme of lost innocence in my English class, but I, at 15 or 16, was barely out of childhood myself. How could I have known what Holden was getting at? Fast forward twenty years to when I had children of my own, and I would have gladly accepted the assistance of Holden’s mitt.

 

I remember looking at my daughters when they were very young and wishing I could protect them from whatever heartaches lay ahead.**  And now, with the world feeling ever more perilous, I wonder what challenges - personal or societal – my grandchildren will face. 

 

Lately, though, my desire to protect others from harm extends beyond children. I don’t just want to preserve the innocence of the young; I want to keep children and adults alike safe from harms and heartbreak of all sorts.  Every day, I encounter or hear about people who are hurting. Today, a friend let me know that the husband of a dear friend of hers had died.  My heart ached for my friend’s friend, although I had never met her.

 

Every day, I read news about people who are living in war zones, hungry and afraid.  I hate my helplessness in the face of this anguish. When I learn of people who have lost their jobs, who are homeless, who are lonely, I want to protect them. I want Holden’s giant mitt to hold back the bombs, to carry food and blankets.

 

Of course, I can barely save myself, let alone anyone else. None of us has much control over very much, really.  At least that’s what we discover when life pulls the rug out from under us. That's what I discovered when my husband was diagnosed with cancer.

 

So, here's what I am (perhaps naively) asking myself today. Isn’t it enough that nature throws illness, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes etc. our way?  Why must we manufacture more destruction?  Why do we rain bombs on civilians? Why do we allow children to go hungry?  Why do we look away from anguish?  Why don't we pool and direct our talents and resources toward helping one another?  We know how to do this. When a natural disaster occurs, people show up to rescue and comfort each other.  When my husband fell sick, then died, friends and family showed up to help us, then me. Why can’t we approach one another with kindness all the time?  Why must humans be so infernally, so maddeningly cruel and self-destructive?

I know what you’re thinking.  It’s human nature to make war. To hoard wealth.  To look the other way.  

 

Maybe.

 

But, "human nature" notwithstanding, I think it's worth it to open our hearts, put on our mitts, and see what can be done.

And as I don't know where to begin, let's start with kindness and generosity close to home.  Perhaps the next step will then become clear.  

May it be so.  

    

                                                                  marek-studzinski-eaHMb9UJT0I-unsplash.jpg

** I wrote about this desire to keep my daughters safe here: https://woacanotes.blogspot.com/2015/03/luck-be-lady_21.html

TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS

Yesterday, while reading a novel set in the early 1970s, I was arrested by a passage about a man driving his car with his child in the front passenger seat. The father was described as bringing the car to a sudden stop and putting out his right arm to hold his child in place.  I, at once, had a vision of my father (in the days before seatbelts) throwing his arm across my body to hold me back each time he came to a stop sign or red light.* Would his arm have done any good in a crash?  Of course, not. This was an automatic gesture of concern; it was him trying to keep me safe.  

 

My father wasn't someone you would have called tender, but I choose to remember this as a gesture of tenderness.  Look, my father wasn’t warm and fuzzy; in fact, he was angry much of the time.  Yet, I remember that he was the one who would sit up with me at night when I had a stomach bug, bringing me warm water to sip and waiting for the nausea to pass.  And, now, almost three decades after his death, now that my memories of his harshness are fading, it is these memories of his concern, of his tenderness that shine most brightly.

 

In the song from which I took the title of this post, Otis Redding is admonishing a man to “try a little tenderness” when his female partner is weary. But, really, tenderness is not reserved for romantic relationships. 

 

Looking around, I find it everywhere.  

 

I saw it when one of my twin toddler granddaughters ran into another room to fetch a stuffed animal for her crying sister. “Here you go, Charlie,” she said, placing the animal tenderly in her sister’s arms.

 

Or when Charlie asked her twin, with great solicitude, “How are you feeling now, Frankie?,” when Frankie was recovering from a meltdown.  

 

Or a few weeks ago when I got up on our couch to hang a Christmas garland above a window, where our cats would (I hoped) be unable to reach it, and my other toddler granddaughter, Daisy, watching me, said, “Don’t worry, Mimi, I will keep an eye on you.”

 

Be still, my heart.

 

What is tenderness?  Let’s call it kindness, concern, or thoughtfulness.  

 

Here are some examples:

 

A friend buying me a book about trees, not for an occasion, but just because she thought I would like it.  

 

The same friend helping her adult children to clean out her ex-husband’s house and take care of paperwork after his death.  This wasn’t done so much for the ex-husband’s sake, as for the sake of her children.  It was the work of a loving heart.  

 

Two other friends who have stepped up to care for extended family members when no one else came forward. 

 

A friend, digging a trench along a path next to a drop-off outside our house, and lining it with cinder blocks to create a level walking space.  We could have hired someone, but she volunteered, because, you know, we’re friends, and she had the strength and know-how to do the job.

 

The friends who offered to, and did, take care of our dog while my husband was in the hospital two years ago.  

 

A friend, not a close one – someone I had only spent time with at gatherings but never one-on-one, who left an orchid on my front doorstep after my mother died.

 

I am moved by each of these actions and gestures. 

 

Still, there are those who find it difficult to accept kindness or offers of help.  A friend told me recently that her husband was made uncomfortable by a neighbor bringing him a meal after he had injured himself.  I know that this man would step forward to help a friend or neighbor. Can we be both generous and vulnerable? 

 

We are living in an unsettled and unsettling time.  We’re not going to navigate this time alone.  So, let’s be there for one another on both the giving and receiving ends. 

 

After all, as Ram Dass famously said, "We are all just walking each other home."

 

 

 

photo by Getty images for Unsplash

* Note to any younger folks reading this -- seatbelts weren't required to be standard in cars until 1968.  

WHEN DID IT ALL GO WRONG? (and how shall we meet the moment?)

Here I am living my life in a western nation, a supposedly "civilized" nation, a nation of plenty.  So, why did I lie awake last night wondering if I am living in hell?

Well, there was the debate -- a string of lies from the Republican candidate and confusion from our current president.  Although, to be fair, the liar himself frequently spews whole nonsensical paragraphs at his rallies.  Let's face it - they are both too old.  

And yet, this is our choice.

Then there was the attempted assassination of the Republican candidate. Look, if you have been reading my blog for a while or if you know me personally, you know it would be an understatement to say I do not wish to see him in the White House again.  That does not mean, however, that I want someone to shoot him.  I have lived through three assassinations.  These shootings tear at the  fabric of our democracy, along with the bodies at which they are aimed.  

Here's another reason why I couldn't sleep last night.  I made the mistake of looking at the news before going to bed.  I am usually wise enough not to do this.  I guess I had a lapse in judgment.  I watched a video of three different young white men angrily threatening violence in response to the attempted assassination.  

How is anyone sleeping these days?

I haven't even mentioned climate change or the recent Supreme Court decision, granting monarch-like powers to the President, or attempts to drag women back to the 1950s, not to mention the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and Somalia.  I just can't go there today.  

When did the pile-up begin? Was it 9/11?  Was it Sandy Hook?  Was it Parkland?  (Too many mass shootings to list here.) Was it January 6?  Was it the pandemic?  

Is it just that I have lived long enough to be feeling the pile-up?  I did, after all, grow up during the Cold War, which brought with it the Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of nuclear annihilation.  There were also the aforementioned assassinations--two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr, the Vietnam War, and more.  

Of course, things were pretty bad before my time.  My father lived through two world wars, my mother through one.  They endured the bombing of their city during the Second World War.  

Really -- Was there ever a time when things were ok?  I have a friend whose father once asked her when in the past she might like to have lived.   She had to tell him that, as a woman, she could think of no time in the past when she would have wanted to live.   

Sorry to dump all of this on you.  Maybe I'm feeling overwhelmed because of my lack of sleep last night.  Tonight, I will not read the news before bed, and tomorrow I will be able to heed these words from the late historian Howard Zinn, posted by a friend on FB this morning:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.  It is based on the fact that human history is a history, not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.  If we only see the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.  If we remember those times and places--and there are many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we won't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

So, friends, let us take heart.  Let's live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us.

Let us be radically kind. 

 

In the words of Mr. Rogers, let us look for the helpers.  

 

Let us be the helpers.

                                              Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

A PRAYER FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

When the world feels almost too broken to bear, I struggle to find hope, to not give in to inertia born of despair.  In times such as these, I find prayer and meditation to be a means of centering, a balm, a quieting that creates space for a rebirth of hope and courage. In this space, there is the possibility that an idea will arise, an idea of what I might do, in my small way, to foster peace, to bring comfort to those who need comforting.  

In this spirit, I offer a prayer, a meditation for challenging times.  

 

 

I pray for the body of the world.

I pray for the ten thousand things.

 

I pray for the brokenness of the world.

I pray for the eternal Tao.

 

I pray for those I love and those I cannot love.

I pray for those who have passed and those who are yet to come.

 

I pray for those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit.

I pray that they be healed, comforted, granted peace.   

 

I pray for the creatures who crawl, run, fly, climb, or swim.

I pray for the non-sentient, for they are energy after all.

 

I pray for plants and trees and all rooted things.

I pray for oceans, lakes, and rivers.

 

I pray for peace.

I pray for kindness.

I pray that justice might prevail. 

 

I pray

I pray

I pray.

 

 

                                                Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

KINDNESS REMEMBERED

         In the summer of 1967, when I was 17 and newly graduated from high school, I had a job in the technical library of the Newark, NJ conglomerate where my father worked as an engineer.  (Nepotism at its finest.)  I remember very little about the job, other than the fact that I did clerical work that was both tedious and exacting

         What I do remember is an important friendship that blossomed during -- and lasted only the length of -- that summer.  I don’t remember my friend’s name, what he did for the company, or how it was that I began to have conversations with him.  More than likely, he came into the library one day, and that was the start of our friendship.  In any event, how we met is not important.  What is important is what he did for me.

         The man was African American, and, my guess across the mists of time is that he was in his mid-to-late twenties.  The fact of his heritage is important because, having grown up in a white suburb in northern New Jersey, I had only ever spoken with one person of color before meeting this man, who, for purposes of this post, I will call “David.”

         Our friendship was chaste, and he was kind.  Of course, I do not remember our conversations in any kind of detail, but I know that we did not engage in small talk.  I know that we talked about civil rights and the war in Vietnam.  This was the ‘60s, after all.  I would have told him that I was going to start secretarial school in September (there’s a detour for another post) and he would have told me about his education and his work.  

        Yesterday, I came across this quote from Maya Angelou:   “People will forget what you said.  People will forget what you did.  But people will never forget how you made them feel.”  That is what I remember about David– how he made me feel.

         He made me feel intelligent and as if I were worth talking to.  He was patient and listened to this young girl as she tried to work her way through her confusion and sorrow over the state of the world. I had watched the Civil Rights Movement unfold on television.  I had been horrified by the police dogs and the fire hoses.  But I had been a teenager, a not very mature teenager, sitting in my white suburb with my white family and my white friends, and had been at a loss as to what I could do about any of this.  David took my concerns seriously.  As I said, he was kind. 

         At end of the summer, David gave me a wooden carving.  I felt touched and honored by the gift.  I still have it.  

        

         

        I have carried it with me through all of my moves for over 50 years.

        I had only one more contact with David after that summer, a contact that I had forgotten until yesterday, the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

         David must have given me his address on the last day of my employment at the conglomerate.  How else could I have written to him on that awful day seven months later when MLK was killed?  I don’t remember what I said in my letter.  I expect that I once again saddled him with my grief and fear and confusion. 

         I do remember that he wrote back.  I long ago lost the letter, but I still remember how it made me feel -- comforted and heard.  What a gift to a very young woman who was always being told that she was too intense, too sensitive, too much. What a gift from a young African American man who must have had much more on his mind than the feelings of a young white woman.

         So, David, I may not remember your actual name, but I do remember how you made me feel. 

        

          I hope that your life has been as kind to you as you were to me.  And I hope that I have in ways, however small, occasionally paid your kindness forward. 

          And may all who read this have a David or two to see you through.

THE TOP TEN THINGS I LEARNED AT THE ASSISTED-LIVING FACILITY

My mother spent the last 12 years of her life in an assisted-living center not far from my house.  During this time, I spent many, many hours in this building.  Here are the top ten things that I learned from observing, and interacting with, my mom and other residents.    

10.      Everybody has a story. 

            Even those, or especially those, whose lives look diminished and sad have stories to tell.   Ask for these stories.  You will learn that the storyteller’s life was not always so small and that she likely lived a very full and interesting life.  My mom’s assisted-living facility published a weekly flyer that frequently included the biography of a resident.  It was humbling to be reminded that these people had lived long and fulfilling lives before their need for care.        

9.        If you want to know how to approach an elderly person, watch how kids and pets do it.   

            If you want to give an elderly person a treat, bring a dog or a kid to visit him.  Then watch what happens.   A dog will not feel awkward around an elderly person’s disabilities, and generally speaking, neither will a small child.  My mom spent the last 10 days of her life in an adult foster home because she was too ill to stay in assisted living.  It was wonderful to see the delight on her face when the owner’s children would prance into the room and dance for her. 

8.        Start getting rid of your stuff.   

            If you are over, say, 55 or 60, start looking at your possessions with a cold eye.  If you live to be very old, the time will come when you can no longer take care of or use all of that stuff.  And, if you have had to go through a parent’s stuff after they pass, you will know what a burden you are creating for those you will leave behind.  As Roz Chast says in Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, her wonderful memoir of her parents’ last years, once you have gone through and sorted your parents’ stuff, you start to look at your stuff “a little more postmortemistically.”  So, organize your photos.  Take on a room every year and get rid of what you no longer use or enjoy.  And then start over again.  Not only will you be doing your kids, or whoever is left to pick up the pieces, a favor, but not having to take care of so much stuff will free you up to do what you really want to do with the years left to you.  (Unless, of course, taking care of your stuff is how you want to spend the years left to you.)

7.        Keep moving. 

            No, not your residence, your body.  Here is the bottom line, people.  If we don’t keep moving as we get older, we will stop being able to move.  And then everything will go downhill really fast.  So walk.  Or swim.  Take a yoga class.  Stay limber. Get out of your chairs.  Move your body.  Every day.      

6.        Keep your balance.

            Of course we want to be balanced in mind and spirit, but I am speaking here of physical balance.  Old people fall.  A lot.  So, don’t wait until you are really old to work on your balance.  Stand on one foot at a time for a while every day.  If you want a little more challenge, do the yoga tree pose every day.  Take a tai chi or qi gong class.  Of course, if we live to be very old, we will probably fall, but I like to think that working on our balance before then will forestall that day. 

5.        Make younger friends.

            By the last few years of her life, all of my mother’s friends had pre-deceased her.  This is a very lonely business.  So, don’t put all of your relationship eggs in one generational basket.  Cultivate younger friends.  If you are lucky, maybe they will visit you in your dotage. 

4.        Learn to enjoy your own company. 

            Here is the sad truth.  Most of the people who lived at my mother’s assisted living center rarely had visitors.  Even if you have family nearby and even if they visit you when they can, if you live to be very old and your friends pre-decease you, you will probably end up spending a lot of time alone.   So, if you don’t enjoy your own company, make it a priority to cultivate alone time, and figure out what to do with it.

3.        If you are an unhappy, self-absorbed adult, you will be an             unhappy, self-absorbed elderly person. 

            Any one who has cared for an elderly or very sick relative knows that we continue to be ourselves, only more so, as we grow older or sicker.  So, if you have unattractive qualities, you might want to work on those now.   In this way, you might be more likely to keep those family members and friends coming around.      

2.        Show up.

            If you have a friend or family member who is ill or frail, show up for them.  Be generous with your time to the extent that you have any to give.  Your loved one likely can’t remember what it felt like to have a job and a family and multiple calls on her time.  She just knows that she feels very alone.  Although we can’t picture it now, the time is likely to come when we are the ones who long for a visitor.     

1.               Practice kindness and patience and the gentle art of listening.

            These are the most important gifts that we can give to someone whose health is failing.  (OK, they are the most important gifts that we can give to anyone.)  And they are sometimes not easy gifts to give when our loved one is moving and talking slowly or repeating the same stories over and over again.   I wish I could say that I was always patient with my mother.  I was not.  Here are two things that I did find to be helpful:  (1)  Ask about something that you are interested in, (see lesson No. 1 above), then be silent and listen.  I would sometimes ask my mother to tell me about her girlhood or her experiences during WWII.  Not only did this cut off her oft-repeated stories about old TV shows, but now that she is gone, I am so glad that I asked these questions.   In fact, I wish that I had asked more; (2)  When you run out of patience and the ability to be kind, take a few days off to look away and do whatever you need to do to restore your ability to be present with patience and kindness.  This may help you to ward off burn-out and keep you from becoming one of those persons who never shows up.      

Of course, all of these lessons are aspirational.   May we all do our best to take them to heart. 

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash