Giving Thanks in the Face of Hoplessness

Thanksgiving will never be the same again. My mother was always at her happiest when family gathered together to share food and laughter. This year we will all miss the enthusiasm that my mother displayed for all things holiday related. I knew this was coming. I knew that it would be a difficult day. But until November 12, I had no idea how hopeless I would feel this Thanksgiving.

The election results kicked me in the gut and left me with a sick feeling. It feels like the time I wiped out on my bike and the handlebar made a direct hit to my spleen. I was bleeding internally. It’s a uniquely sick type of feeling. I was sweating, but cold to the touch. I felt completely wiped out. I could not catch my breath at first, and then felt an overwhelming desire to just let go and fall asleep. My parents arrived home just as the neighbor called to check on me. The neighbor had helped me get home after the wipeout, but assumed my parents were home because both cars were there. But my parents had gone for a boat ride on the lake we lived on.

It was not that unusual when I was a teenager to find me taking a snooze in the middle of the day. But after the phone call, my mother came to check on me. My mother was a certified medical assistant and had worked in the medical field for several years at the time of my accident. She gently woke me up. She had that motherly look of concern on her face. She asked me details about the accident. She asked what happened when I got home. When I reported that I had vomited, I saw the worry grow on her face. She felt my head. I might have said something like, “Don’t worry. I’m fine.” I was accident prone, but I had never felt sick in this way before as a result of any previous falls or crashes. Mom said that we needed to see a doctor.

Dad drove us to the hospital in the city which was about a 30-minute drive. I believe we made it much quicker than that. Hospital regulations required that I sit in a wheelchair. As we waited to see the Doctor, I began to start feeling like myself again. My parents were beginning to doubt the rush to the hospital as I started racing around and popping wheelies in the wheelchair. We might have left except that the doctor arrived at just the right time. If we had left, I would not be typing this sentence right now. I would have been the first in my immediate family to leave this realm. By earthly measure, it would have been a long wait for my mother to join me. In cosmic time, it probably would have felt instantaneous.

The Doc took me to an examination room. He said that he was going to poke around my abdomen and I should let him know if I felt pain anywhere at all. He poked me under the left ribcage. I felt an immediate searing pain in my right shoulder. I remember telling him that it might seem strange but that his prodding in my gut had made my shoulder hurt. He stood up and said,” Yep. That’s your spleen.” They brought my parents in and explained that I had most likely ruptured my spleen. They would need to inject a dye into my blood and look at my spleen on an x-ray to see if it was bleeding. He explained that spleens were unnecessary organs and that if it was bleeding that they would need to do emergency surgery to remove it.

I’m much like my mother. Inside I am a ball of nerves, but I can display calm when crisis hits. So my mother and I both displayed calmness while our insides churned. This was major surgery. I watched on a screen the short x-ray video of blood leaking out of what they said was my spleen. I had never heard of a spleen before, but they made it sound no more important than tonsils or an appendix. Dying during surgery never occurred to me. But as a parent of teenagers now, I realize that must have been a real fear for my mom and dad at that moment.

My parents had to wait in the hall while the nurses prepped me for surgery. They had to shave the peach fuzz off of my belly where the incision would be made. They let my parents back in to see me off to surgery. They were all smiles and full of reassurances. I was in good hands. The doctor would take good care of me. As the nurse showed up to wheel the gurney to the O.R. my mother and father told me they loved me. My mother stroked my hair with one hand and held my hand with her other for as long as she could until the nurse said to them, “This is where we have to leave you. He will be fine.” I looked back at my parents and saw the color draining from their faces.

Then it was through the doors to the operating room and suddenly there was a rush of activity around me. A man dressed in scrubs and wearing a mask came to my side and talked to me. He said that he would be monitoring me during the surgery. He would make sure that I was OK. He also said that he was going to inject something into the I.V. that would put me to sleep and that when I woke up I would be in recovery. Then came instant darkness and all awareness was gone. It seemed only a moment passed and I was awake in a different part of the hospital. It took a minute to remember why I was there.

A friendly nurse greeted me with, “Good morning! Glad you decided to wake up!
There are people waiting outside who are eager to see you." 

My mother was first through the door. She had that look you get when you are bracing yourself for a potentially shocking sight. Would I look gaunt? Would I have tubes running everywhere?  Her face was prepared for these possibilities and more, but only for an instant. Her expression immediately changed to one of pure joy. Her son was fine. Dad was immediately behind her and was already smiling and saying, “How ya doin’, buddy?” Mom told me how happy she was that I was alright and how worried she had been. My parents loved me in that deep way that you don’t even know exists until you become a parent yourself. 

It is a burdensome kind of love. 

A love intertwined with hopes and fears.

It’s that love for my children that weighs so heavily upon me this Thanksgiving. I am afraid for them as I witness the emboldening of white nationalists. I watched in disgust as grown white people made Nazi salutes to our President-elect. I am discouraged by his weak response to the clear rise in hate crimes stirred up by his divisive rhetoric. I fear that my children have a long battle ahead. I worry that they will face bigotry because they are not Christian or white.  I struggle to put on the “everything is going to be OK” face that my mother was so good at.      

          Today we give thanks.

  And I understand that my privileged status gives me much to be thankful for, but with an awareness that finding comfort in that privilege is shameful. I am thankful that I am alive. I am thankful that my mother recognized an emergency when she saw one. I am thankful for the love that my parents gave me. I am thankful for the memories of my mother overseeing the family gatherings that made her so happy. I am thankful that I will create new memories with my wife and children.

And I am thankful for the burdensome love of being a father. Only this love can defeat hopelessness.

Veterans Day on a Creative Morning

Just when the last spark of hope seems to be surrendering to lack of oxygen, a few words can gently blow in through the ethernet, scrawled in shaky ink and offer a breathe that whispers the gray from it's surface and the heat glows visible for a moment. 

When I began writing blog posts I had no plan. I was just putting my thoughts on glass and sending them to the vague world of the internet. More people have read what I have written than I ever imagined. My post about my experience as a student in a class about the Vietnam War was published in a magazine called The Veteran. And just when I needed it most, the editor of that magazine sent me this note from a reader:

And on Veteran's Day, I attended a breakfast talk delivered by a co-worker at an event called Creative Mornings. She gave a powerful multimedia performance of imagery, acting, and speaking that moved a crowd of a few hundred. There is power in creating something. So the fact that I created something that meant enough to this man, who has lived such a long life, to take the time to write this note buoyed my spirit. Maybe I am creative in a way that can make a difference. 

Below, I have pasted some quotes from the posts that I have written so far. If they pique your interest, please click on them to see the context. Thank you to everyone who has supported me during this process of learning to blog, to write, and to share.

If I was born a blank slate, it did not take long for the world to write the word WAR uponme. 

This has been true since the beginning of time. We can be as one. It’s madness that only the prophets, the artists, and the poets seem to be able to see this.
  

Whenever one of the disciples would ask Jesus a very direct question about the nature of G-d or heaven, he would typically answer with a parable. Often the followers seemed frustrated by this. But Jesus understood that he could never explain the true nature of these concepts without the use of imagery. 

Still looking directly into my eyes, Dad firmly said,” You have to assert yourself.” He continued on with some tough love advice. “Have some self-confidence. They got your order wrong. Make them fix it.  You are going to have to standup for yourself for the rest of your life. You can start now.”

Then we saw the sign. “Public Welcome, Sunset Worship Service.” Then I noticed the 8’ tall wooden cross that had been planted like a beach umbrella in the sand.

The universe itself was about to pay tribute to our divine creator, so what did we need loud musicand amplifiers for?

I was still a lump of clay plopped on a scooter.  I could still become anything. The only thing is, I cannot think of a photo that captures that transformational moment for me. Maybe that moment hasn’t happened yet.  Maybe I’m just finding myself right now. 

Bigotry has a universal lexicon.

We have not been back to China. It’s been Ten years. We traveled there to bring home our beautiful, spirited daughter. I walked to a fruit stand to get some bananas and got more than I bargained for. A lesson and a gift. I got a lesson in generosity and honesty from a stranger. The gift came from the man who clutched at my shorts and begged for help. The gift came in the form of his unforgiving wails as I left him tumbling down steps and his tin cup that clang-clanged out with each bounce downward. Those sounds have haunted me. And I hope they always will. They are the sounds of humanity.

Under no circumstance within my near infinite imagination can I arrive at a scenario in which the officers ignore my wife and I end up dead. This, my friends, is white privilege. And it stinks.

It was unconventional. And if I am ever in a job interview and they ask me about a moment that I am proud of from my work experience, I will tell the story of Thomas. I’m proud that I was open-minded, that I recognized the strengths of everyone involved, and facilitated the series of decisions that allowed Thomas to keep knocking us out with his smile for a few more years.

Thomas later passed away from complications of HIV. I will never forget him.  May he rest in peace.

I learned not to judge people too quickly, as I had done with her when she barked at the class and gave me an F. Ms. White taught me how to be a better writer. But she also showed me why it was important to give my best effort. Earning a top grade was hard work. But more importantly I discovered that working hard and asking for help made me happy with the finished product. 

Happiness 

with a big circle around it. 

I was tethered to a boat, but alone. Everything else seemed to fall away. All that existed in the moment was me and the water. The hum of the engine seemed like distant white noise. I would lose myself in the joy of skating over a lake at 30 miles per hour.It felt like 60 miles per hour. At this speed, the water was as solid as it appeared.  I could trust it to hold me up. And I could push myself and test the limits of the surface tension to hold me as I made deeper and deeper turns back toward the center of the wake.

It feels like the earth is wobbling on its axis. The stars don’t line up in the sky quite the way they used to. I need to get to the ocean so I can look at the horizon and make sure it’s still there. Is there still a sharp line that separates the ocean from the sky? Or has the sea begun to leak into the atmosphere blurring the delineation between heaven and earth? I need evidence that our world is not tumbling off course. I need assurance that the sun is still holding fast to us, not letting us slip from the safety of its gravitational embrace. 

Maybe tomorrow the earth will right itself. The stars will take their normal positions. Maybe the sun will shine a reminder my way telling me that it is holding fast to us, that we are safe, and that my mother is just a phone call away.

my date and I made a quick exit out the backdoor, practically falling on one another. 

Laughing out loud.

Emotional soot lingering

Beneath the visible structure

I’m sinking.  I’m sinking right through the floor of that bus. 

But she was a livewire!  She grabbed at things and put things in her mouth like she wanted to take it all in, hold on fast, and ingest the whole world! Ha!  Failing to thrive?

The world is not fair.

The puppet master has incredible leverage.

Snaps are meant to disappear.

I didn’t start out in Terry’s class a tabula rasa. I had words and phrases. I had images. I had music. But his class didn’t just add new information to my slate. He taught met hat I was an ever expanding canvas. New space was being created all the time. Clean, white space to paint colorful new ideas. Blank space not just to record music but to recognize its power. I learned that ideologies were not meant to be permanent tattoos. I learned to find confidence in my voice. And that I could use my voice to speak up in the hope that there will be a day when we come into this world and it etches only the word LOVE on our slate. That our world will not even have a need for the word PEACE because it has no opposite.   

I hope that you hear my mother’s voice. I hope she dials straight into your voting booth from her cell phone in heaven and reminds you to vote compassionately for social justice, for equality, for education, and religious freedom. She will remind you what a special person you are and how important your voice is. Let it be heard today.

My Mother and this Election

Hillary Clinton suffered a disadvantage over the last several months. It’s an advantage that Barack Obama enjoyed during both of his Presidential campaigns. My mother was here, on this earth, voicing her advocacy for her candidate. If you ever met my mother, you would know that having her in your corner was a competitive advantage that belied her petite stature. By this point my mother would have already voted. But had she been here among us who are still confined to this realm, she would have been spending the last several months reminding everyone how important it is to elect Hillary Clinton.

My mother was not a partisan loyalist. She always voted for the candidate that she felt was the nicest, had the best policies for families, and acted in a dignified manner.  And she was not always vocal about her choices. But as she grew older, and her family grew to include grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she began to speak out for the candidates she believed would help shape a better future and world for them. And she was determined that her will would be the voter’s will.

She did not shy from any topic. Although I am glad that she did not have to hear the so-called locker room banner spewed by a candidate that I cannot even bring myself to mention the name of in a sentence that also refers to my mother. But, she would have found a way to demonstrate her disgust regarding that as any self-respecting southern lady would.

My mother wielded her charm like a lasso, reeling you in, and not releasing you until you had heard every possible convincing argument she could make. You could not just walk away from her sweet and natural style. I am quite certain that there were people who had figuratively or actually been cornered by my mother and heard her out. And when they that cast their vote they heard her voice calmly, but firmly making a case for doing the right thing.

So if you are voting today, I hope that you hear my mother’s voice. I hope she dials straight into your voting booth from her cell phone in heaven and reminds you to vote compassionately for social justice, for equality, for education, and religious freedom. She will remind you what a special person you are and how important your voice is. Let it be heard today.