Love Our Country And Make it Better

Trump just said that the congresswomen that he had earlier made racist tweets about hate our country. He said that they always complain about our country. First, it is our first amendment right to complain about whatever we want to. Second, these women were elected as representatives of the United States of America and are doing their duty to be a voice for their constituents. Third, I have only heard them complain about policy, process, and the actions of Trumps administration, not the country. Donald Trump, is NOT the country. The people are the country and the people are the government. Fourth, Trump complains more about our country than anyone I have ever heard before. I think he is the one who must hate our country. He hates the rule of law. He hates the balance of power. He has disdain for the constitution and the Judicial branch of the government. He is "in love" with ruthless dictators and monarchies. 

47% of you approve of Trump's performance. That means every other person I meet supports this xenophobic, transgender hating, sexual predatory, misogynistic, bigoted racist. Wake up people! This man is taking us to a dark place in America's past. He is leading us away from our ideals and toward fascism. He is plundering and pillaging our land for his personal gain. 

I beg you please to let go of your fears and embrace the founding ideals of this country that we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That all are equal under the law. That we reject fascism, corruption, and dictatorship. In America we should not tell our brothers and sisters to leave if they don't like how things are. We ask them to speak up and take bold action to make things better. We ask what we can do for our country, not how can we profit from its most vulnerable people. 

I will not ask Donald Trump that he leave our country because he complains so much about it. But I will ask him to resign from the office that he so disrespects. I will speak out against every lie he utters. I will demand that our congress hold him accountable for abuse of power. I will call his supporters out for putting their selfish economic interests above everything, including our Democracy. 

I beg you all not to put me on snooze or hide my comments because it makes you uncomfortable. We should all be uncomfortable with the path this President is leading us down.

 May God please bless this country's people with the ability to truly see the hatred in our hearts, the ability to hear the cries of families ripped apart by Trumps cruel policies, the ability to smell the stench of greed and corruption, the ability to feel empathy for the poor and hungry refugee, and to taste the possibility of what could be if we truly aspire to live up to the ideals of our founding documents.

The Special Name I Called My Father

Mom told me the story so often that I am not sure what is actual memory versus images etched into my mind by her vivid description of the events. I struggled, just now, whether to use the word event, because there is nothing extraordinary about the scene that I am about to describe. I’m sure that this is a scene that plays out regularly in households with young children. Except, there is one oddity to my story that I still don’t know how to explain.

When I was a toddler, my father worked second shift as a photojournalist for one of the two regional newspapers. Like most homes with kids, ours was a busy place each morning. I was the youngest, so my siblings would get themselves ready for school. Mom would be busy packing lunches, preparing and serving breakfast, and generally making sure that everyone got off to a good start for the day. I guess that Dad was sleeping as this all took place. He worked until midnight and then would watch the rest of Johnny Carson before turning in.

Once my two brothers and my sister were off to school, it was just Mom and me. We would spend our morning running errands. The A & P at Cotswold shopping center was a regular stop. Cotswold was partly an indoor mall at that time. The A & P anchored the “East Mall” and the Harris Teeter was at the far end of the “West Mall” After grocery shopping at the A & P, we would walk through the West Mall  past Ernie’s Record Store, jewelry stores, the dry cleaners, and the beauty shop, all the while enjoying the cold AC and the clean smell of the indoor fountains.

The West mall was connected to the East mall by a store called Roses. Roses was sort of a mini-department store. We would usually linger here while Mom looked at clothes and I was allowed to roam the toy aisle. From there we would ramble through the East Mall and straight into the Harris Teeter grocery store. We did not shop at Harris Teeter. We walked straight through the only automatic doors I knew of at the time, into Harris Drug Store. Mom would pick up Dad’s blood pressure medicine from the friendly druggist, Dan Lemelin.

Then we would head home for lunch with Dad. Only I did not call him Dad. My siblings called him Dad. My mother called him Tom or Tommy. I had my own name for him and that is the oddity of my story.

After lunch, my father would get showered, dressed, and ready for work just like any other dad. He would kiss my mother good-bye and that was my cue that he was about to leave. I would not see him again until lunch the next day. I wonder if at that young age I thought that he might not return at all. At least, that is how I acted.  What followed became a daily occurrence. I was determined that he was not going to walk out the door. I’m sure that this happens all the time. Toddlers do anything they can to stop their parents from leaving for work.

First, I would scream his name, but not Tom, Tommy, or Dad. Not Daddy or Da-da. Not Pop or Poppy. I would scream out the only name I had called him since uttering my first words, “Ahh-beee!” I would begin to cry loudly and shout “Ah-be, Ah-be” over and over. I would wrap myself around his legs to try and prevent him from reaching our front door. He would attempt to shuffle, and I would slide down his legs and seat myself on his shoes. I would keep clinging and yelling “Ah-be” as I cried and fussed using every ounce of strength I could muster. I had to prevent him from walking out the door. Ah-be would speak in a calm voice. He would tell me that he would love to spend the day with me if he could. He had to go to work.  He had to go take pictures. The newspaper would not like it if he did not show up. I can picture my mother standing back, allowing this to go on just long enough for my father to see how much I loved him. She would have a content smile on her face as she carefully unwrapped me from Ah-be’s legs. He would tell me he loved me and that he would see me soon. He said I’ll bring a present home for you. And he would. Along with cameras, lenses, and film in the trunk of his VW Bug, he also kept a steady supply of small toys, gifts, and Chet Snow Realty lollipops. Every day I would get something from this stash.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped calling him Ah-be. He became Dad, just as he was to my siblings. My mother loved telling me about my special name for my father. She’d say, “We have no idea where you came up with that.” All I know, is that is who he was to me. He was Dad to my brothers and my sister, but he was Ah-be to me only. When Mom would re-tell this story, I could see how happy it made Dad to picture it all unfolding in his head and to be reminded of how I loved him in a special way that required that I call him by an entirely unique name.

From my adult perspective, Ah-be meant something more than father. It was a kind of sacred term of endearment. A type of endearment that means you never want to let go of this person. Ah-be is a loved one that you long for his company so deeply that you will do anything to stop him from walking out the door.

One year ago, my father walked out the ultimate door. He will not walk back through it with a gift in his hand for me.

I was on the phone with him just moments before he pushed the emergency button at Plantation Estates. By joking about not knowing how much longer he would be on this earth, he had gently prepared me for the shocking news that would follow. Dad was gone.

 Ah-be had gone to be with Mom. He missed her so much. As much as I would have wanted to throw my arms around his legs and plead with him not to leave, I would not have. He was ready to move on, hold my mother, and wait for us to join him.

It’s like we are on the A & P end of Cotswold Mall. Mom and Dad are on the Harris Drug side of Roses. My friend, Dan Lemelin, the friendly druggist, is with them.

 I wrote before about how Dad left us a note saying that he had no regrets, only happy moments. It has become a mantra that my siblings and I try to live by.  However, I wish that before I hung up the phone with him on April 21 last year, that I had called him Ah-be one more time.

I have faith that he knows that. I love you Ah-be. I will see you one day and this time I will bring a gift to you. Maybe a Chet Snow Realty lollipop. Those were pretty special.

Unwritten Verses

I once knew the world in which I lived. I also tried not to allow myself to be complacent. But I must have fallen asleep. Complacency is like a sneaky narcotic. You can’t even remember when you first tasted it even after you are deeply addicted to it.

Complacency and conformity enjoy the company of one another. The numbing effect of complacency allows your soul to tolerate conformity. And conformity is like a whirlpool trying to suck us downward. When things get busy and tough, it is near impossible to not just give up. It begins to feel that the easiest thing to do is the best thing to do. Conformity disguises itself as safety. But it will eventually reveal its true nature and leave you shaken to your core that you allowed it to happen.

The universe will always sound out a giant wake up call that either destroys you or shakes you and wakes you into action. For too long, I have been stuck between the temptation to just fall back into complacency or finding the will rip down all of its illusions of safety.

Then, every day brings news that reminds me that I need to just break free and live life to its fullest for myself and my family. Nothing is more important than that.

These events keep coming at me trying to shake me from my slumber. They are taunting me. They are screaming at me to get my shit together and make the most of this life. They shout at me to quit playing it safe. Take a chance, dance in the sunlight, sing as loud as you can, get bruised and banged up, but just make sure you are really alive!

I feel like I have been living in the first verse of “Sunday, Bloody, Sunday” by U2 for years.

“I can't believe the news today
 Oh, I can't close my eyes
 And make it go away
 How long?
 How long must we sing this song?”

But I know the news will just keep coming. It’s been sounding like an alarm in my ears for weeks now.

And this morning the phone rang earlier than usual. And the news came even harder and more disturbingly than ever before.

I can’t believe it.

I can’t make it go away.

But I refuse to keep singing the same song.

I’m not sure where that will lead me. I don’t know what words will be in the unwritten verses. From now on, I’m making up my own melody and lyrics.

And I will find the rhythm that works for me and the people I love.

Peace and Happiness in this Old World

This will be the most difficult Thanksgiving of all. This November 22^nd, 2018 will be the first celebrating without either of my parents. We lost Mom almost three years ago, and Dad left this earth seven months ago. We were fortunate to have both of our parents well into our own adulthoods. Even so, I must confess that I am struggling daily to fully immerse myself into my own life. I want to be as fully alive as both of my parents always seemed to be. But my struggle to reconnect to joy and enthusiasm in my daily life, let alone Holidays, is under assault. The country that I love seems to be collapsing into chaos and hell-bent on self-destruction. The torrent of bad news leaves me wondering just what should we be thankful for.

As fires rage across California and Hurricanes become more frequent and fierce every year, we close our eyes and ears and pretend that our own greed is not contributing to the global climate change that spurs these events.  Our children are massacred at music festivals, in dance clubs, and in their schools. Our neighbors are murdered in the streets or even in their place of worship. The death toll is rising and yet we cling to archaic beliefs about our sacred right to own weapons of mass destruction. We sacrifice the security of our children and our neighbors by failing over and over to put away our childish obsession with guns capable of killing dozens of human beings in a just a few minutes. We elected leaders who campaigned with a message of hate and fear-mongering. Yet, we act surprised when those leaders heartlessly rip children from their mothers’ arms and cruelly separate them from each other. In some ways, I am glad that my parents are not here to witness how harsh and cruel our own society has become.

Yet, I know in my heart, that Mom and Dad also lived through dark times. World War II raged throughout their formative years. They witnessed the bigotry and hatred that brutalized peaceful marchers for civil rights. They worried that their sons may have to someday go to Vietnam and never return as had happened to so many other peoples’ sons. They watched television news that broadcast the new normal of assassination as a way of defeating those who lead progressive movements. And they too lost their own parents along the way. Despite all the horror that went on in the world, they somehow managed to find joy in life every day. They were fully present in their own lives and always mindful of how blessed that they were to have each other, a family, and a roof over our heads.

The day after Dad died, I gathered with my three siblings at his apartment at Plantation Estates. My brother, Randy, opened Dad’s computer, as we looked for important documents. But as we all stood together, Randy found a gift left for us just a few months before. Dad had left a message for us in his Word documents. We were blown away. In just a few sentences, he told us exactly what we needed to hear. And as I head into this Thanksgiving, I am going to do my best to heed his words. I am going to do my best to be fully engaged in my life. I’m going to remember how blessed we are to have had the best parents, to have each other, to have my own wife and children, and a roof over our heads.

Here are the words that my father left for his children:

To my children – this is jan 11^th 2018. I am going through a lot of procedures  to see about putting a new aorta valve in my heart. I hope it will be successful – but if not and in case I dont make it – dont worry about  me. I think your Mother may be able to sneak me into heaven with  her and I will be happy. I have had wonderful life with your Mother and all of you children – and now all the grandkids and great grandkids.- I have no regrets but just happy moments. Proud of all of you and wish you much peace and happiness in this old world. Love you all - Dad  

May you all have no regrets, but only happy moments this Thanksgiving season. May you find peace and happiness in this old world.