It All Starts With Believing

As often happens, I awoke this morning with my mind whirling. Today, I awoke thinking of Shakespeare's Henry V's "St. Crispin's Day" speech, William Wallace's "Just One Chance" speech, and George Patton's speech to the 3rd Army. Each of these speeches, yes, even Patton's, moves me, a pacifist, to want to join my "band of brothers" (and sisters), weapon in hand, and leap into the fray. Why? The words are so compelling that something awakens in my being. I'm not sure what it is, something primordial perhaps, but whatever it is, it is powerful, and it is passionate, and it turns me into a we, by connecting me to my fellow human beings in a momentarily purposeful, noble action.

On the other hand, when we go to peace marches or rallies, we hold hands, and we sing, and we give one another flowers, or we hold candles--all symbols of peace, all lovely, individuals joined together, but not quite the same way because nothing in our peace activities  lights the fire in the belly quite like the St. Crispin's Day speech. Think of peace songs. Many of the songs about peace are hesitant and tentative: "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "One Day," Waiting on the World to Change," "Give Peace a Chance," and "Blowin' in the Wind," to name a few.

Perhaps everything gets muddled because when we think we are thinking of peace, we are actually thinking anti-war, which is a very different thing. It is a negative, rather than a positive. I've marched in a few anti-war marches carrying signs (two memorable times with all three of my sons), and I've sung anti-war songs since I was a child. I long for no more war, and I long for peace, but in hindsight, it seems like my activism has all been against war. I want to change that and be active for peace. But how? 

First, we need to define peace. When I define it, I mean flourishing as well as no more war. Flourishing is something we can all get behind, right? It's something positive, and we can be passionate about it, can't we? Or can we?

Why, I wonder, aren't there speeches about peace that rouse the listener to action like the St. Crispin's Day speech does for battle? I took this question to my students today because we are discussing peace and war, but we could not come up with an adequate answer. So I am bringing it to you, my thoughtful blog readers. What can we say, what can we do to rouse those who long for peace to passionate action? I'm eager to hear your ideas, and I'm eager for someone, one of you perhaps, to write the St. Crispin's Day speech for Peace. We need the words first to rouse us, to rally us, and to unite us together in a noble purpose much larger than our individual selves. We need a muscular, dynamic, robust, vigorous, vibrant peace if we are going to truly make the world ready for amity. And we cannot lose heart. It's so easy to say that peace won't work, that we humans prefer division to unity, certainly history attests to that. But we cannot give in to our doubts; we must believe that peace is possible. It all starts with believing. Then, we must talk about how and what and why until peace is no longer just an abstraction but becomes a  reality.

Take care,

Kate

St. Crispin's Day speech by Kenneth Branagh in the film Henry V: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAvmLDkAgAM

William Wallace's "Just One Chance" speech by Mel Gibson in Braveheart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjX9kg4uB3M

Patton's Speech by George C. Scott in the movie Patton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlzIPoRbF_A

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My Two Grandpas

My two grandpas were fascinating individuals and were very different from one another. Although one died when I was only eight years old, and the other died two months shy of my fiftieth birthday, both had a huge impact on my life.

My maternal grandpa, Ted, was Welsh and was a hard-working man, a quiet man, a gentle man, the very definition of a good man. He was a Bekins mover, and when he got home from a hard day's work, he loved to have Velveeta cheese and a beer, both with salt--I kid you not. Or maybe he just did that once to make me cry out, "Ugh, grandpa, salt on cheese and in beer--that's yucky!" Whereupon, he laughed. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is a very clear memory for me.

My grandpa Ted was my hero. When I was four or five, the whole extended family went to Knott's Berry Farm. We were in a store, and I was looking at something. When I looked up, no one was around. I went outside the store's door and looked around, but could see no member of my family in any direction. I went back into the store and waited. I was too scared to talk to the store clerk. I waited and waited, and finally I saw my grandpa come in the store and start looking up and down the aisles. I cried out, "Grandpa!" and ran to him. He got down on his knees and hugged me tightly, and he kept saying soothing words to me. Then, he took me outside to find the family, who had separated to look for me. This memory is very precious to me because I do not recall my grandpa Ted being very demonstrative, but that day I knew as clear as could be that my grandpa loved me.

Another proud memory of grandpa Ted is his "color" blindness. In the 1950's, the world was very color conscious in that the races did not mix a lot. My grandpa and grandma, however, stayed living in their Los Angeles home as their neighbors changed from white to black. My grandpa and grandma were friends with everyone, and everyone was friends with them. My grandparents showed me from the start of my life that there is no difference between the races except for skin color. I played with the neighbor kids from the time I could go outside. I was in and out of their homes, and they were in and out of my grandparent's home. Grandpa would sometimes take me to the corner store where he would get a beer and a cigar, and the nice black store owner would give me a popsicle or ice cream bar, while he would chat about this and that with my grandpa. I was so young that I did not realize what a special experience I was enjoying. 

However, this lovely experience with my grandparents and their neighbors showed me for the first time that my dad was a bad man. One day when I was five, he came to pick me up early from my grandparent's home and saw me playing with one of the neighbor girls. He ordered me into the house and said terrible things about my friend. He was mean to my grandma and said if she let us play with "niggers" again, he would not allow them (my mom's parents) to watch us anymore. On the drive home, I tried to figure out why my dad was so angry, but he just told me that I was a dumb kid who didn't understand how the world worked. Only I did understand. 

Kids can tell the difference between good and bad, and that day I realized that my grandpa and grandma were good, and my dad was bad. From that day on, I kept playing with the neighbor kids, but I kept a close eye out for my dad's car, which fortunately never showed up early again.

On Christmas Eve 1959, we got a phone call while it was still dark. My parents woke us kids up and hurried us into the car. My mom was weeping uncontrollably. My grandpa had died at only sixty-four years old and just a week after he had passed a physical, which he needed yearly for his job. 

My mom never recovered. She had been a daddy's girl, and when her dad died, she became lost. Perhaps it was because she was married to a brute of a man, who was as unlike her dad as a man could be. I remember on Christmas Eve one year later--my mom had just turned thirty--seeing my mom looking out the kitchen window with tears running down her cheeks. I tried to cheer her up by reminding her it was Christmas Eve, but she started weeping and sobbing. She told me, with heart-wrenching pain oozing from each word, that my grandpa, her dad, was the only man who had ever loved her, and now he was gone, she didn't know what to do anymore.

I've always thought, rightly or wrongly, that my aunt handled her dad's death better than my mom because she had married a prince of a man. My uncle Chuck is as kind a man as has ever been, and he comforted my aunt when she was sad. My uncle is such a lovely human being that I longed to be his daughter when I was young. My cousins are blessed.

One more thing I must share about my grandpa Ted. My grandma told me that she had a rule when she was dating that she would not kiss a gentleman until the third date (remember, this was the 1920's). However, grandma said when she went on her first date with my grandpa that she just knew he would not go out with her a second time if she didn't let him kiss her, so she broke her rule, and she never regretted it. In fact, until the day she died she always told me not to be too rigid because bending your rules sometimes resulted in the nicest surprises.

My paternal grandpa, Bill, was very different from my maternal grandpa. My paternal grandpa was Austrian and stowed away on a ship to get to America when he was in his twenties. He was a gregarious, passionate, demonstrative man, who pretty much wore his heart on his sleeve. He could be a snob, be judgmental, be unyielding and be sexist. He was funny and was one of the most curious, intelligent individuals I've ever known. We loved each other deeply, and when I was grown up and lived four hundred miles apart, we talked to each other every week and sometimes more. We talked about the books we read and politics and whatever was current in the news.

My grandpa Bill was a maitre d' at three of the nicest restaurants in Los Angeles, retiring from Chasen's when he was seventy years old. When I spent a week with my grandparents in the summer, some of my fondest memories are eating at 1:00 A.M. whatever treat grandpa brought home from the restaurant. My favorite was sharing half a roast duck. Afterwards, we would sit in the living room, and my grandparent's parakeet would fly about the room, landing on our shoulders to give us kisses, and grandpa would regale us with his stories, often of the rich and famous, who frequently behaved less than stellarly.

My grandpa could be very wise, but his blind spot was his only child, my dad. He knew that my dad did not treat my mom nor me well, but he did nothing to try to change his son's behavior. When I was a child, a part of me was disappointed in my grandpa because I desperately wanted a white knight to ride in and save my mom and me from my dad, but another part of me had an inkling of understanding. The last time I saw my grandpa in person, we talked about this. He told me that he was ashamed of his son's behavior, but he also loved him. He said, "Katinka, he's my only son. What could I have done? I couldn't risk losing him. I love him. What he did to you and your mom was wrong. I wanted to talk to him, but I just couldn't. Can you understand?" And because I had four children whom I loved more than life itself, I finally did understand.

My grandpa loved food, and he passed that love onto me. We would eat anything and everything. He was a gourmet cook, and I was not, but we both were gourmet eaters. When he came to visit us in 1996, my four children were ages six to thirteen years old. My husband and I decided to take grandpa along with our children to one of our favorite French restaurants. Seeing grandpa's pride in all of us as he watched his great-grandchildren behave beautifully for two hours, eating escargot and pate and everything else we ordered, while chatting quietly together and with the adults, made my heart sing. The "icing on the cake" was when the maitre d'/owner came to compliment us on our children, saying he had never before seen children so young behave so well. My grandpa beamed with joy, and he proudly told the man that the children were his great-grandchildren.

During this same ten day visit, something happened that made me very proud of my grandpa. He played chess with the boys everyday. Grant was six and Hugh was eight, and both played well, but grandpa would beat them, which they expected. Gavin was eleven, and he beat my grandpa as often as grandpa beat him because Gavin played daringly. The day before my grandpa was to return home, Amy told me that her feelings were hurt because grandpa never asked her to play chess with him. I had been so busy trying to make my grandpa's visit fun that I hadn't noticed. Immediately, I went to ask grandpa about why he hadn't played with Amy. He said that girls don't play chess (remember I said he could be sexist). I laughed so hard and flopped on the bed. Grandpa looked puzzled. I asked him whom he thought had taught the children to play chess, and he replied, "Gordon, of course." By then, I was laughing so hard I was almost choking. I said, "No, grandpa, I taught them. I always played chess, but you would never play with me because I was a girl, remember?"

My ninety-one year old grandpa looked so startled and a bit ashamed. In that moment, he saw something he didn't like in himself, and saw how much he had missed in his life by his assumptions. He went to Amy and apologized, and then he offered to play chess with her. She didn't beat him, but she got close, and he told her how impressed he was with her abilities. He even managed not to add "for a girl." I loved my grandpa so much in that moment because it takes a real man to admit he was wrong, and especially to admit that to a child. At ninety-one years old, my grandpa was a real man.

He lived five more years, and when his second wife died, he was planning to come live with us because he wanted to spend as much time with his great-grandchildren as he could, but sadly he caught pneumonia and died before we could make that happen. When he died in 2001, I wept. I still miss him dearly.

One last note about my paternal grandpa, Bill. When grandpa first visited us in 1989, Gordon said to my grandpa that he had met the rest of my family and could not fathom how I turned out the way I did. He said that he had thought I had spontaneously generated because I was so different, so unlike anyone else in my family. And then he said, "But, now I know you, Bill, I can see that Katinka got a lot of who she is from you." Gordon could not have given my grandpa a better compliment. For the rest of his days, grandpa loved to remind me of that.

My two grandpas, deeply loved, so different from one another, helped make me the person I am today. I give thanks for them always.

Take care,

Kate

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Celebrating Our Better Natures

For me, Christmas merriment begins the day after Thanksgiving. Our friends, the Gore family, come to visit that weekend, and their arrival ushers in the festivities. We cut down our Christmas tree; the Christmas lights go up; and Christmas music floats on the air for the next four weeks. Everyone you meet seems more patient, more understanding, and more caring. Peace on earth and goodwill toward one another shimmers all around the world. Briefly each year, we celebrate our better natures and glimpse what heaven might be like.

But one verbal mine is hidden below the surface, and it can explode all the goodwill with just two words: Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. Already the "war" has begun. On my Facebook page, I am greeted with "let's keep Christ in Christmas," and the gauntlet is thrown down for the unwary agnostic, atheist, Wiccan, Buddhist, Muslim, or whatever other believer in a non-Christian faith to pick up, and someone always picks it up, whereupon a heated exchange of words takes place. For the life of me, I do not understand why expressing goodwill towards one another, regardless of the phrasing, can instead bring about an absence of goodwill. It is counterintuitive.

While I do not wish to belittle anyone, at the risk of doing so, the whole phrasing thing is silly. If there is God and Jesus is our Savior, which I personally believe, I doubt either one gives a hoot about how we express goodwill to one another. God doesn't need anyone to keep Christ in Christmas. He doesn't need defending. Good heavens, he's God after all. When we get on our high horse about keeping "Christ in Christmas," we aren't defending Christ, we are being sanctimonious prigs, and we are creating distance, when God wants us to be close. God wants us to get along with one another anyway we can. So if we who believe in God have a hissy fit about someone saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," it is we who need an attitude change to become more gracious and tolerant because we are supposed to be reflecting a loving God.

Furthermore, you individuals who prefer to say "Happy Holidays" should not make it illegal to say "Merry Christmas." That is just as nutty and just as disparaging to Christians as Christians have been to you. It is not a legal battle we should be waging with one another; rather, we should be appreciating that both phrasings are ways of sharing with one another the spirit of love and joy that the season represents. We need to understand that we are saying essentially the same thing--peace on earth and goodwill to everyone. And we should smile in agreement, reach out a hand, hug, and cherish the brief time each year that we feel connected to one another, no matter how we express that connection.

So this year and every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I shall merrily go about my days saying "Merry Christmas" to you, and I look forward to hearing "Happy Holidays" along with various other greetings from my Wiccan, Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim friends because, bottom line, what we all want is to celebrate our better natures and bring Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all at Christmas time and all the year long.

Merry Christmas

Kate

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Making the World a Better Place One Bridge at a Time

I hate bridges! Imagine my delight when I discovered that there is a word for that fear--gephyrophobia--and that I am not alone with this fear, which cripples, debilitates, and makes one's world small.

One time in 1988, Gordon was driving us across the Columbia River, and I panicked. I huddled on the floor under the glove compartment, barely breathing. My young children were frightened for their mommy, but I could not be brave for them. I was terrified, pure and simple. An earlier time in 1982, I was driving from the East Bay to San Francisco, when I realized (it was my first time driving that direction) that I was on a bridge. I completely freaked out and stopped the car. Fortunately, it was during rush hour, so the traffic was quite slow. Gordon was taking a nap, woke up, and very kindly changed places with me, while I sat hyperventilating on the floor of the passenger side of the car.

After Gordon developed dementia, and I had to take over the driving, I realized that I had to conquer my terror at driving over bridges, or my world would physically be a very small place. My first bridge was the Golden Gate Bridge. It was January 2002, and I was taking the kids to Inverness. I played a Peter, Paul, and Mary CD very loudly in the car, and sang along to the songs the whole way across the bridge. I was so proud of myself, but the kids were just ho-hum. They did not realize what a HUGE thing I had just accomplished in my fifty-first year of life.

I still do not enjoy driving (or walking, for that matter) over bridges, but now I will cross them because I want to continue making my world larger.

And bridges are what we need in this country after our contentious election. We need to build  bridges and walk across them to heal our country and to make it ideologically larger and more inclusive. Building bridges may be a perilous endeavor, but it is a necessary one, and we need to build them together and cross them together--Democrats and Republicans, gays and straights, all ethnicities, military men and women and Greenpeace activists, all religious people, agnostics, and atheists, men and women, the young and the elderly, and the rich, the poor, and everyone inbetween. Our country is fractured with huge chasms between the various factions, and these chasms can only be crossed by building bridges of understanding, tolerance, and acceptance. 

We can only build these bridges when we quit looking at each other as enemies, as right or wrong, and we see, instead, our similarities, the things we have in common, and embrace them. This world of newly built bridges will make all of our worlds larger, fuller, and more harmonious.

But how do we do this? First, we have to genuinely want to build bridges. We have to leave our preconceptions and assumptions behind. We have to seek truth. A good first step might be to get rid of Fox News and MSNBC and go back to straight news. Has there ever been a finer moment than when Edward R. Murrow exposed Joseph McCarthy? I think not!

We also have to quit casting blame. We will never agree on who is responsible for any particular problem. Instead, we need to acknowledge the problem and go forward from there. Simple when you are no longer looking for blame.

And gloating? Completely forbidden. Gloating is not gracious, and bridges can only be built in a state of grace.

Building bridges is not easy work, and traveling across them is sometimes almost impossible, as I can personally attest to, but building bridges and traveling across them is what we must do in order to make our country and our world a better place to live for everyone.

So, all you people who voted, go up to that family member, co-worker, or neighbor who voted differently from you, sit down over a cup of coffee, and commiserate with the Republican voters who feels angry, lost, and scared; congratulate Democratic voters who mostly feel an immense relief that their man won; and discuss third party viability with everyone. Then, start building bridges.

Take care,

Kate

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A Tale of Two Grandmas

When I was a little girl, I loved both of my grandmas, but I only liked one. I called them my nice grandma and my mean grandma, and I still refer to them that way today, though I now know it's not really that simple.

My grandmas got married about the time that the depression began. They had their babies, my parents, a month apart. Both families were poor, but that is where the similarities ended. My grandmas' reactions to raising children during the depression were vastly different. My nice grandma lived in the world with an open heart and an open hand. To her, the world was brimming with possibility as long as she was with the family she loved so much and could worship God whom she loved dearly. She went to church every Sunday. My mean grandma, on the other hand, closed her heart and her hand. Her world shrank to her husband, her son, and herself with only a smidgen of room for her mother, her sister, and her brother. If she had faith in God, it died or became irrelevant.

When I was a little girl, my nice grandma sewed us cute outfits, played with us, read to us, told us stories about her childhood, drank a glass of milk with us when Engineer Bill did his "red light, green light" milk drinking on his program, and hugged and kissed us hello, good-bye, and for no reason at all, just because she loved us. In contrast, my mean grandma gave my sister and me lots of lovely gifts. We had dolls and clothes from Saks Fifth Avenue. She would give us a dollar every time she visited. But we were sent to our room for the duration of the visit, except for dinner, and were never played with or talked to, and were told how good a grandma we had to give us so many nice things. We got a formal kiss good-bye.

As you might imagine, I did not like the clothes from Saks Fifth Avenue, but I wore the outfits my nice grandma made me until I outgrew them or they were rags.

When I was four years old, my parents went on a trip. They left my sister with my nice grandma, and me with my mean grandma. My grandma sat me alone in front of the black and white TV to watch Peter Pan with Mary Martin. She didn't watch it with me, nor did she want to hear what I thought about it when it was over.  Even as a young child, I was a sharer, like I am today, so it was agony to watch the show and not have anyone to talk about it with. She didn't read to me, and my only happy moments were when my grandpa was home. He was loving and fun. Faced with another night alone with grandma because my grandpa worked nights, I rebelled. With all my four year old might, I demanded to be taken to my nice grandma's house. After a lengthy phone call, they agreed. Of course, my nice grandma punished me for being a naughty girl, but punishment from my nice grandma was MUCH nicer than spending any more time with my mean grandma.

The next year, when I was five years old and halfway through kindergarten, I developed pneumonia and was sick for months. My mom had to work, so my nice grandma came to stay with me during the week. My maternal grandpa, also a true sweetheart of a human, dropped his wife off on Monday and picked her up on Friday. Grandma was so fun. She would get into my mist tent with me and read me stories, so I wouldn't be scared. She played stuffed animals with me. She watched TV with me. She made me laugh. She made me goodies to eat, and she hugged and kissed me. I felt very loved.

As time went by, and I grew older, I realized that while my nice grandma was, indeed, nice, my mean grandma wasn't really mean, she was just cold and distant. She didn't like my mom, hadn't wanted her son to marry my mom, and wasn't thrilled about us kids. She loved us in her way, but her way wasn't very child friendly. What I didn't realize yet was that she was harming herself with her coldness even more than she was harming her grandchildren.

In my mean grandma's desperate attempt to make her world safe and comfortable, a behavior that stemmed, I've come to believe, from her reaction to being poor for so many years in the depression, she kept her world immaculately clean, ordered, and small. Bars were on her heart. Self-protection was paramount. She kept her mom, my great-grandma Nani, in a tiny room an hour away. I was heartbroken when I saw my beloved Nani's room, which was only big enough for a bed and a dresser, because I knew my grandma had plenty of room for her mom to stay with her, but she only let her mom visit once a year. My Nani never complained, but I complained on her behalf, making my grandma frequently angry with me because I wouldn't mind my own business. No matter how often I asked, my grandma never let escape one hint or whisper as to why she was so mean and stingy to her mom.

My mean grandma also kept a ledger, which she showed to me one day in my early twenties. It was filled with what she gave people as gifts and what they gave her as gifts. She listed loans and when they were paid back. She put notes beside the names, and these were not flattering. My mean grandma had a balance sheet life, and she always felt she was on the wrong side of the balance.

My nice grandma, on the other hand, gave and gave and gave with never a thought about what she got back. I have truly never known a nicer human being. She had a joie de vivre that was inspirational. She would take the bus across the country to visit her sister in Florida and come home with a list of new friends. When I was getting married in 1975, she went with me to the bookstore, and when we couldn't find The Joy of Sex, she walked right up to the cashier and asked where it was, explaining that her granddaughter was getting married and was a virgin, so she needed the book. I almost died of humiliation, but I also loved her for it. Nothing daunted my nice grandma.

When it came time for my grandmas to die, they died as they lived. My mean grandma slipped into a coma, shut off from us who loved her, while my nice grandma beamed with joy when she learned that she would be seeing her beloved husband and her beloved Jesus soon.

However, before my mean grandma slipped into a coma, she did something that made me very proud of her, and gave me a glimpse into the woman she might have been if she had been willing to risk uncertainty. She was feeling poorly on Christmas. She had cancer and knew this was probably her last holiday with us. She was so weak that she could barely sit up, but she somehow got up, wrapped her dressing gown around herself, and made her way into the living room to spend the evening with us. It was the only unselfish, loving act I can remember her making, and in that moment, I saw what a strong woman she was, and I respected her and loved her very much.

Who knows why we respond to life the way we do? Do we have a choice about how we respond? I've always puzzled about why one grandma came out of the depression with an open heart and hand, and the other with a closed heart and hand. Perhaps that's how they were before the depression. I shall never know. What I find fascinating, though, is how children are so perceptive about the people around them. From my earliest memories, I knew who was the nice grandma and who wasn't, and the distinction became clearer and clearer as I grew up. The big difference from childhood to adulthood was that I developed sympathy for the one who wasn't because her life, while safe, was so very small.

And my nice grandma? Well, if she were alive, she would by 99 years old today. I wish she were still alive. I miss her everyday, and I honor her memory by trying to have an open heart and hand like she did, but she's an impossible act to follow.

Take care,

Kate

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