Category: Personal philosophy

A Tale of Two Funerals

Recently, a good friend made the wise decision to not attend the funeral of a distant family member, recognizing that self-care was more important than her presence at the affair. Discussing her decision, we both recalled this old post from 2018 and decided a rerun was definitely in order!

Like so many people, I often bemoan the lack of courtesy and etiquette in modern society, but never so much as during the past year, when I attended two funerals, months apart, and encountered vastly different experiences.

On the first occasion, I did not even know the woman who had passed when I attended her funeral calling. I was making the nod to kindness, in that she was the daughter of a distant acquaintance, and that she had died unexpectedly and far too young. I had already sent a sympathy card, but I felt it would be appropriate to offer my condolences in person, sign the guestbook, make the requisite kind but banal remarks, and take my leave.

It didn’t turn out precisely as I’d planned.

I arrived at the calling, and, not seeing my acquaintance, signed the guestbook and walked up to the coffin to murmur a prayer for those left behind, grieving. An inherently shy person, I am never at ease in a roomful of strangers, so I looked about, hoping to spot someone else whom I knew even slightly. Having failed at that, I seated myself. A few people in the room glanced at me, but no one spoke. After a quarter-hour or so, I thought I might check the refreshment room and the chapel; perhaps my acquaintance was taking a break from the stress of the calling. Still failing to locate her, though, I returned to the calling room; again, a few of the family members and friends present glanced at me, but no one spoke or even smiled. I had just nerved myself to ask one of these aloof strangers if my acquaintance was present when she finally arrived. I waited patiently to one side while she talked with family members, and then, when she finally acknowledged me, I spoke to her briefly, offering her my hand and extending my sympathy. Although she thanked me for my condolences, she didn’t introduce me to any of the family members standing with her. I found that odd, but attributed it to her stress and grief. Having nothing more to offer, I left, feeling as though the whole thing had been hardly worth my effort.

The second funeral I attended was so different that I felt I’d stepped off the Transporter. Again, this was the funeral of someone I barely knew—the mother of one of my daughter’s oldest friends. I’d met this lady a few times, years earlier, when the girls were teenagers; her passing, too, was unexpected and devastatingly sudden.

I was not looking forward to a repeat performance of the first funeral, but consoled myself with the thought that my daughter would be present at this calling, so I wouldn’t be quite alone. This time, though, arriving at the funeral calling in the same manner, a stranger to almost everyone present, I was greeted. A young woman, a friend of the family, stepped forward to acknowledge me, thanked me for coming, shook my hand, and asked me how I knew the deceased. When I explained my tenuous relationship, she assured me that, although the deceased’s daughter had not yet arrived, she would be so glad that I had come to pay my respects to her mother and offer her my condolences. I was directed to the guestbook and to the photo gallery for the deceased, shown where I might get a cup of coffee; in short, I was given every courtesy, set at my ease in a roomful of strangers, and assured that my effort to be present at this sad affair was appreciated.

People sometimes bemoan the lack of decorum at modern funerals – the casual clothing, the inattention as individuals focus on their phones. And while those are very valid criticisms, they are but a few facets in the overall loss of courtesy, charm and kindness that seems to infest all society, but is never more noticeable than when people are cloaked in anguish and grief.

Charm, I once read, true charm, is the ability to set someone at ease by assuring them that they are wanted, and liked. Courtesy to a stranger is much the same thing: it is to demonstrate to that person that they are welcomed; that their presence is appreciated.

We should always extend courtesy to the stranger in our midst, for we never know when an angel might be walking among us. I hardly count myself an angel, but the young woman, unknown to me, but who made every effort to set me at my ease in a stressful situation, was most certainly one.

As always, feel free to republish quotes from, or even this entire essay, as long as with author attribution.

If you found something to like in this essay, you might also appreciate “Another Talking Stick Ceremony”. You can locate it in the Archives by scrolling below. It was originally published on December 10, 2017.

Women Exist

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

While the whole concept of “generations” is basically flawed, one of the few factors that actually point to generational divides is the group experience of those born into a certain era. As an example, I recall a casual conversation with a clerk at a shoe store in the late 1990s; a young man who was probably no older than 19 or 20. For some reason we were discussing the longevity of marriage. (I think the subject had arisen because my companion was buying shoes to wear to an anniversary party.) The clerk mentioned he’d just realized that many people who married in the 1950s and 60s were still together; were celebrating 30- and 40-year wedding anniversaries. People of those eras must have had a better understanding of what they were getting into when they married, he said. They must have made more realistic decisions about life partners.

My friend and I, both of us having been children in those decades, glanced knowingly at each other and then gently explained to the young man that, no, adults from that era were no better at choosing partners than anyone today. They simply didn’t have the option of divorce. “No Fault” divorce didn’t exist at that time, we told him; one had to prove a serious reason, usually adultery, to obtain a divorce. A spouse could actually contest a divorce, which was sometimes then not granted. Domestic violence was not even recognized as a problem, we continued, far less a reason for granting a divorce; a partner’s alcoholism or drug use, ditto. Female divorcees were ostracized, even when it was their partners who were at fault; divorced individuals were spoken of in gossiping whispers.

The young clerk was stunned. While he understood that divorce had been forbidden until modern times, he’d grown up in a world in which it was as common as crabgrass. He could barely grasp the reality of a world where one could be trapped for a lifetime in a loveless or abusive marriage, with no option to leave; in which the stigma of divorce destroyed lives. The reality absolutely flabbergasted him. I’m not certain he really believed us.

I often recall that conversation when I consider how minimal an understanding young women today have of the battles their female forebears have fought to achieve even the lopsided equality they currently enjoy. As much as the youngest generations appreciate the desperate struggles they still have on hand—the right to control their own bodies; the struggle for pay equity—they, like that young clerk, cannot even begin to comprehend the world that we older women grew up in: a world where most of our peers had no goal except to be “married young and then retire”; where the only office jobs available to women were secretary, receptionist, or bookkeeper; where a woman might become an elementary school teacher, but never a principal; where it was assumed she was working or attending college only until she could “find a man and get her M.R.S.”

Never was this better demonstrated for me than when, pondering all this, I was suddenly plunged into the memory of an old advice column, probably Dear Abby or Ann Landers, from my youth. I read those columnists religiously from the time I was 10 or 11 years old until I was a young adult, and sometimes—often–learned more from them than I did from school about life and love and human psychology, as well as courtesy, manners and etiquette.

This particular column contained a letter sent by a woman objecting to the way in which married women signed their names, protesting that they violated propriety by signing letters or cards as “Mrs. Jane Smith”. Mrs. Jane Smith did not exist, the complainant stated. There was no such person. The signatory was either just plain Jane Smith, or Mrs. John Smith.

Although I no longer recall the columnist’s response, I do well remember my acute dismay as I read that letter. All these decades later, that remembered dismay has multiplied a thousand times as I realize that many women of that era—my adolescence!–were cooperating in their own erasure. They collaborated in their own eradication.

And, terrifyingly, this still happens, I realize, looking about at a world where women must still go cloaked in burkas or endure plural marriage or genital mutilation; where they march with signs denying others of their gender the right to control their own bodies. Fifty years or more since that Dear Abby letter, and still there are women unable to oppose or actively cooperating in their own obliteration.

But then I look about at the strong, vital young women also marching, voting, struggling for their bodily autonomy and pay equality; unafraidedly naming their abusers, and calling out even an ex-President for the gross shame of his behavior, and I am encouraged and given new heart.

Mrs., Miss or Ms.: women exist. And they will never again be obliterated, from history or from life.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like the essay, “Yes, Ma’am! Yes, Sir!” You can find it in the Archives, below; it was published March 8, 2023.

And Miss Sands Did

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

I grew up reading a lot of science fiction: magazines such as Analog and Weird Tales; even the lesser known (but far more interesting) books, John Carter of Mars and Pellucidar, by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Friday evenings in my hometown of Indianapolis always meant gathering in front of the TV late at night to watch local celebrity Sammy Terry present some weird or scary B-movie, many of which seemed to involve horrifyingly evil queens or Amazon women battling each other to the death.

Decades later, I’m still debating as to whether any of this was a good thing.

You see, the sci fi shows, stories and novels of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I began ingesting their messages, were, to put it baldly, ripe with misogyny. From cover art that usually featured half-naked, nubile females, right down to the chauvinistic tales within, most denigrated women. Even the original Star Trek, as advanced as it was for the distant era in which it was shown, endlessly repeated sad old tropes about women’s roles in society.

Meanwhile, I, imbibing all this, was an adolescent growing up in a landscape of blatant sexism. I lived in a world in which women were dismissed and demeaned in ways no Gen Y or Z woman could even begin to imagine. Employment advertisements were habitually separated into jobs for Men and Women (no, there were no other genders, or even the suggestion of such; homosexuality was still illegal in most states, and there was but one known transgender person, Christine Jorgensen. So let’s not traipse off into that interesting little detour!) No matter what job a woman applied for, she was administered a typing test. A married woman could not open a bank account or obtain a credit card in her own name without her husband’s signature; some banks even denied accounts to single women, as I learned to my dismay when trying to open a checking account at the age of 20, using the same bank where I’d held a savings account since early childhood. At 20, employed full-time and living on my own, my paycheck stub and savings account were not proof enough of my ability manage money; I had to present a letter from my employer.

Meanwhile, domestic abuse, no matter how brutal, was shrugged off as a personal problem between two spouses. The police would not intervene, except to possibly arrest the abuser for homicide when the problems escalated.

It was a harsh and pitiless environment through which we young women scuttled.

So I retreated, escaping to imagined futures, where a woman of any race could board an interstellar ship with at least the rank of lieutenant…while the male captain womanized his way throughout the galaxy. 2001: A Space Odyssey, taught me that I could aspire to being a stewardess on a starliner, waiting on male scientists. Reading Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, I was assured that I might someday travel from Mars to Earth, and even save the planet Venus from terrorists…but my real job was to work in the on-board nursery of the starship. Women have more important things to do, I was instructed at the end of that novel, than building bridges or piloting a starship. A sci-fi magazine story told me of a future Earth in chaos, ruled by warring groups of women who spent their days battling over men. Reading a later Heinlein book, Time Enough for Love, I was reassured that it was all right for me, as a mere woman, to be a brilliant scientist, as long as I was pregnant with the child of the ultimate alpha male. And, horrifyingly, while paging through When Worlds Collide, I would discover that I could “earn” the right to sit on the all-male governing body of a new world, as long as I had slyly seduced and then committed the bloody murder of an enemy in order to get there.

Looking back now, I understand that my constant bewilderment about my role as a woman was promoted by the literature I read and the movies and shows I watched. Meanwhile, the novels I borrowed from my mother concerning the great queens of antiquity only underscored my sense of learned helplessness. Women could, it seemed, only be in charge if that right was gained by marriage to a powerful man. Reams of historical fiction was written about the famous Queen Nefertiti, whose sole importance to history was a bust of her beautiful face, but Hatshepsut, the powerful woman who ruled Egypt in peace and prosperity in her own right as Pharaoh for 15 years, received no such plaudits in literature.

Like the fictional Nell, I have lived a small life, and perhaps it was made smaller, more constricted and confined, by the books I read and the movies I watched in my youth, all of which, purporting to modern ideals, still defined women into roles that now seem shockingly archaic.

“And Miss Sands did!” one delightful time travel story ended, as the heroine, a genius without whom time travel would not have been possible, threw herself into her lover’s arms. But I now read that ending with a different take. While only a child, Miss Sands and her brother worked together to save themselves from interplanatery kidnappers; she became the primary scientist devising the time machine that would hurtle her lover back to prehistoric times to meet her in her childhood. She journeyed to Earth’s future to meet her beloved again as an adult. She was brilliant, accomplished, and a survivor.

Miss Sands did, indeed.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you appreciated this post, you might also like the essay “The Crap They Made Me Read!”, which you can locate by scrolling below, to the Archives. It was published on March 1, 2023.

NOT an Insurrection?!

In response to the Supreme Court’s shameful, reprehensible decision that Insurrectionist Trump may remain on the ballot, in violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, I publish this essay.

A family member whose political views I most decidedly do not share insists that January 6, 2021, was “not a real insurrection”. No, he tells me (by e-mail, which is probably safer, for that way my explosive reply is merely verbal, not physical); no, if you want to know what a real insurrection was, read up on the history of The Weather Underground.

The first time he made this claim, I was flabbergasted. Absolutely, totally, completely stunned. Stupefied. Bowled over. Blown away. Use-your-own-hand-to-shut-your-jaw dumbfounded.

Actually, I’m not sure why I was so shocked; I know his political views range far north of what I consider the ragged edge of reality.

Perhaps my dismay was related to the fact that, despite our shared DNA, his thinking could be so diametrically opposed to mine.

“For the love of God!” I wrote back, pounding the keys like they were enemies. “Are you out of your everlovin’ mind?! There was a NOOSE on the grounds of the Capitol! A noose! For the Vice President! People died that day. Some suicided afterward because of what they’d endured. The rioters violated one of the most sacred hallmarks of the US political system: the peaceful transference of power. Did you even watch what happened? I did! I sat here gasping at the screen, clutching my little grandchild as tightly as I could in my arms, alternately too shocked to speak or crying and cursing because of what I was witnessing. Not an insurrection? Are you crazy?”

Apparently so. Apparently, both he and many others share this specific form of madness.

He also seemed forgetful in that I am a few years older than he is, and have no trouble at all recalling the actions of the group he referenced. Before “The Weather Underground” was a cleverly-named weather forecasting website, it was a domestic terrorist group. They were active from the time I was 15, through approximately the next decade, protesting the Vietnam War, racism, and the United States government. I didn’t need to read up on their activities, because I remembered them. They began with a penchant for blowing up statues in Chicago. (And here let me just say that I was pleased as punch that every time the WU blew up the statue commemorating the Haymarket Riot, the city of Chicago erected a new statue for the same purpose. I hadn’t the slightest idea what the Haymarket Riot had been or why there was a statue to the memory of those who died, but causing terrible damage to the surrounding area each time they blew the memorial to smithereens was simply loathsome.)

The subsequent riots, firebombings, and attacks on individuals by The Weather Underground sadly killed a number of police. Like so many anarchists, idiots, and morons, though, the Weather Underground members seemed best at blowing themselves up.

They also staged protests that just didn’t quite pan out; instead of the thousands expected for their “Days of Rage” protest, only a few hundred actually showed up. (Apparently, one has to be a rapist tax cheat to command those sorts of crowds.)

But the chaos The Weather Underground created over the space of years, while very real and intimidating, in no way equaled the perfect storm of bedlam of January 6.

Very much unlike the tempest that occurred on the grounds of the nation’s Capitol that day, the Weather Underground members at least attempted not to injure or kill people: they issued warnings in advance to see that their targets were evacuated.

And, yes, the WU detonated bombs on the US Capitol and Pentagon grounds. Yes, those and their other bombings, riots, and violence against the United States were acts of insurrection. And despite the fact that they claimed that “terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate”, their “education” killed police, damaged property, threatened lawmakers, and created irremediable psychological harm in those they confronted. The Weather Underground was, undeniably, a domestic terrorist organization.

But the evil of their actions in no way compares with what occurred in our nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021. The mob at the Capitol that dreadful day was every bit as determined, and felt far less compunction, than those card-carrying members of the Weather Underground.

The January 6 insurrectionists issued no advance warnings; they cared nothing about the physical and psychological damage to those they confronted. They attacked; they destroyed property; they smashed people into doorways. They attempted to hunt down and kill our duly-elected lawmakers.

They were, are, traitors.

For a long while after receiving my relative’s “not an insurrection” missive, I simply deleted without reading anything he e-mailed or texted. I had, have, no wish to further explore his mindset.

Every morning, I discover abundant shock and revulsion just by opening the news sites that I prefer to read. As much as I believe in trying to meet others’ thinking halfway, I can’t intentionally invite distress merely due to a tenuous DNA connection.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you appreciated this essay, you may also enjoy “29 Things”, published November 6, 2019. You can locate it by scrolling below, to the Archives.

To Blog or Not to Blog

I was astounded to discover that I had never stopped writing.

Most of my family members, especially those closest to me, rarely read this blog. Only a few, the most dedicated among them, read it regularly. Ditto my friends: a very small group of friends faithfully read these posts. Most people of my acquaintance, though, simply aren’t interested.

Despite their disinterest, all of them have heard at some point that this blog, finally begun in my retirement, has been the fulfillment of a lifelong dream; that writing has always been my life’s passion, denied me for many years through various circumstances. (Life, as I have pointed out before, simply gets in the way of living).

Sometimes my inability to interest others in my writing makes me a tiny bit sad, but usually I acknowledge that it’s all right. Life is too short to pretend an interest in something that holds no personal significance. Many people, especially those of the youngest generations, prefer podcasts or videos. They simply don’t enjoy reading; if they do, they enjoy the pastime only in a limited scope or on specific subject matter. This latter consideration, I definitely understand! If I were forced, for instance, to read an article about something I find supremely uninteresting, such as auto racing, I’d certainly be bored beyond tears (or even homicidally irritated).

But occasionally, when feeling most saddened over my loved ones’ lack of interest in my writing, I can’t help but recall that, as an adolescent, I was certain that writing would be my career. Absolutely certain. Thankfully, I didn’t then know–and wouldn’t have believed, anyway–that the daily grind of life would toss my ambition onto a shelf that always floated somewhere just outside my reach, in a misty “someday, when I have time…”

And yet…

The other day, while performing a comprehensive purge of personal papers, I came across a small collection of fairy tales written when I was a very young woman. Intrigued, I read through them, realizing with some surprise that the stories weren’t half-bad; definitely needing work, yes, but not too bad. Digging further into the file cabinet, I encountered two large ring binders of poetry—several hundred poems, typed decades ago (on an electric typewriter, no less) and bound into thick denim folders. That discovery sent me to my computer, where I unearthed another file: the very best of those poems, 98 of them, arranged into a volume titled The Shuttle in My Hands. I was stunned, realizing how few people can, over a lifetime, claim to have written 98 poems as just part of their total portfolio. But there it was: 98 not-half-bad/maybe-even-good poems, tracing my spiritual journey from a wounded soul in a slough of depression to revelation and elation.

Now, intrigued, I was on a mission. I began to sort through every file. I found a printed copy, bound in red, called A Diary of My Divorce–a journal faithfully kept during the final year of my marriage, transcribed into a book-length document. Behind it in the file cabinet lay another bound copy, this time in yellow pressboard: A Memory of Madness. Forty pages of what author John Bradshaw once called “debriefing papers”, describing in meticulous detail my troubled childhood. Another bound copy, this one in blue, was titled My Book of Joys and Sorrows, and was a detailed memoir of the most important events of my lifetime, culled from my earliest memories or drawn from my yearly journals.

I returned to my computer to open A Book of Moons, 102 pages detailing my spiritual beliefs and practices. I paged through two indexed recipe books complete with photographs and stories; my own and my Grandmother’s, transcribed during long, long sessions of typing throughout one hot summer a decade ago.

I found numerous short stories, some finished and edited, others mere drafts or even outlines, both paper and electronic versions. I discovered three poems printed decades ago in magazines, and a hardback compendium, Truth the Poet Sings, in which one poem had been reprinted. I stumbled upon high school booklets of student essays and poems in which my contributions appeared. And, most precious of all, I discovered Melon Patch Letters—reminiscences of my daughter’s early childhood, vividly portrayed in letters that I had written to her during her first year of life.

Finally, shocked at the revelation, I realized that, life and its demands notwithstanding, and despite that publication had mostly eluded me, even long before I’d penned my first post for this blog, I had written–had written constantly; had never stopped writing.

Now, considering realistically the cost of maintaining my website versus my lack of readership, I wonder if, after all, on this day before my 70th birthday, it’s time to pen my last entry for this blog; to acknowledge, heart heavy as it might be, that there is little interest in these essays.

But for my own sake, and with absolute faith to myself and those adolescent ambitions, I can finally acknowledge that, although I may not continue as an essayist, writing for a barely visible and mostly disinterested public, I will never stop writing. I never did, and I never shall.

If you found this essay intriguing, you might also enjoy “The Savage Reviewer, Part 2”. You can locate it in the archives by scrolling below. It was published on October 7, 2020.

Finding the Word of Your Year

Every few years, I republish this blog post…. May you choose a Word for 2024 that will enhance your life in unexpected and wonderful ways!

I could still forego a resolution, yet choose something—some character-building, life changing something, to focus on during the coming year.

I stopped making New Year’s resolutions well over two decades ago. I saw no point in setting myself up for certain failure; it was simply depressing, and merely reinforced my bad opinion of myself. (I feel the same way about goals. Goals are something I set just to prove to myself that I am a failure. I don’t set goals anymore, either.)

For a long time prior to that decision, I’d followed Robert Fulghum’s sound advice: On New Year’s Day, I sat down and wrote a list of every good thing I’d done in the previous year, backdated it, and called it my resolutions. This was eminently satisfying for a number of years, even though I knew I was sort of missing the whole point.

So, casting about for some way to set myself some type of goal-yet-not-a-goal, I was struck by an idea: I could still forego a resolution, yet choose something—some character-building, life changing something, to focus on during the coming year. Not a goal, I decided; a focus. With that in mind, what if I chose just one word, one meaningful word, and attempted to concentrate on it throughout the coming year? Not to accomplish it—simply keep it at the forefront of my mind, and make it active in my life. One word was so little. Surely I could do that much.

I liked the concept. One word, one focus, seemed like a challenge I could meet. The trick, I realized, would be finding a way to make myself remember to focus on that word— to keep adding it to my life. (Well, that, and picking my word in the first place.)

Amazingly, having come up with the concept, I found that my answers came easily. I’d recently discovered that a lack of assertiveness had caused me a number of problems; assertiveness, then, seemed like a very good first focus word. But how to keep it at the forefront of my mind? How not to forget, not just the word itself, but the need to concentrate upon my focus word? That was going to be the real challenge of my not-resolution.

During that first year, I found that tricking myself into remembering my focus word was the best way to go. I took post-its and scraps of note paper and proceeded to hide them throughout my home in places where I knew I would not find them to easily, yet was sure to look. Since I wasn’t about to turn the heavy mattress on the bed more than once a year, one of the notes emblazoned with “My Focus This Year Is Assertiveness” was pushed into the thin hollow between the mattress and box springs. Another went under the couch cushions—I had been known, from time to time, to actually lift them up and vacuum beneath them (or at least search for loose change). And, yes, one note, slipped into a plastic bag, went into the bottom of the vegetable bin in the frig!

And, amazingly, it worked. I came across those notes again and again throughout that first year and was forced to keep my attention focused on becoming more assertive. And while I cannot now say that it changed my life, I can say with certainty that being reminded to focus on assertiveness did make a difference. By the end of the year, I knew that I still had a very long way to go on learning to be assertive, but I was no longer quite the wimp I’d been twelve months earlier, either.

I’ve used many Focus Words in the intervening years, and I’ve learned to choose them very, very carefully. The Universe, I’ve discovered, will cooperate with me—oh, yes, will it ever! Choose Peace as a focus word, and every possible non-peaceful situation imaginable will be tossed at my head like errant baseballs. And, for the love of heaven, never, ever, choose Patience !

But, defiant in the face of overreaching myself, the focus word I chose for 2017 was Magnificent.

And it was.
Afterword: In 2018, the Word I chose was “Kindness”. I learned, quite amazingly, that kindness is not just something we extend to others, but also that we must, humbly and with gratitude, receive. It is also something we must extend to ourselves. I learned, too, that though I may behave in a kindly manner to another, requiring of myself that I treat them with courtesy and consideration, I’m often shamed to admit that true kindness from within my heart is absent. I will carry this knowledge with me into another year, and hope to create and extend more true loving kindness to all. Foolishly brave, in 2019 I selected the Word “Restful”. Oh, dear! I did learn a much-needed lesson: that we choose our response to events. In 2020, I chose the word “Recognition”. I am still discovering all the unexpected ways in which that word has come to play in my existence. For 2021, I chose the word “Succored”…and I was. 2022 brought me to the word “Real”, which was actually an acronym for several words when I could not make up my mind about which one to select. That little experiment did not play out at all the way in which I expected. I think it finally boiled down to a year of “Discombobulated”. Another lesson learned; never gonna try that again! And, finally, in 2023, I selected the word “Empowered”…and found myself growing in many startling ways.

Grief and Prejudice

This essay originally posted on January 15, 2018. I reprint it today in memory of my Dad, Charles E. Gregory, Jr., who passed two years ago yesterday, on December 12, 2021. I am shaking my head ruefully as I do so, for my Dad was always a closet racist, who was, when he got the results of his DNA test, dismayed to discover an Ashkenazi Jewish ancestor.

A while ago I sat with an acquaintance, a devout Christian, discussing a mutual friend who was grieving the loss of a loved one. Our conversation centered on whether or not the individual’s grief had exceeded the bounds of normal mourning and become debilitating.

I’d held this same discussion only a few days earlier with another acquaintance, one who is Jewish. During that conversation, my Jewish friend had described to me her faith’s designated period of mourning, which, as she explained it, was far longer and more ceremonial than what most Western or Christian society considers usual. As I listened to her explanation, I realized that the Jewish customs of mourning genuinely ministered to the emotional needs of survivors.

I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes. How wise to accept mourning, even deep and long-lived grieving, as necessary and healthful, and to provide traditions and time for its passage! Why had I never encountered this civilized concept before? My friend’s explanation of Jewish mourning customs forced me to acknowledge that we as a society were perhaps not doing our loved ones any favor by allowing them only a brief interval of grieving before insisting that they now “get over it”… “get back to normal”… ”try an antidepressant med”… “stay busy; that will take your mind off it”.

During the second conversation about grief, this time with my Christian acquaintance, I mentioned this (to me) enlightened view of the grieving process. Nodding in response to a comment made by my acquaintance, I explained, “Well, a Jewish friend told me that in her faith…” And although I know that I continued my explanation intelligently and comprehensively, I cannot now recall anything of what I said from that point forward in the conversation, because I found myself focused on only one thing: the expression of utter distaste that flitted across my Christian friend’s face the moment I said the word “Jewish”. It was there and gone in an instant, but it was unmistakably there: the grimace of aversion the moment I said the word, “Jewish”.

I’m sure my own eyes must have widened in shock at response to what my brain had so clearly registered. Sitting before me was a sophisticated, intelligent, 21st century individual, one whom I was sure that, if charged with prejudice against Jews, would have vehemently denied it. And yet a single expression unmistakably crossing a face had just clearly said otherwise.

Prejudice knows no sanity. The spiritual leader to whom my Christian acquaintance declares allegiance was born, raised, and lived a Jew. His name was not actually Jesus Christ; Jesus is a Greek rendering of his name, combined with a Greek title. His Aramaic Jewish name was probably Yeshua Ben Yosef –Jesus, Son of Joseph. And he, Yeshua, is the spiritual ancestor from whom all Christian denominations claim descent. Yet more than 80 years–nearly a century!–after the horror of the Nazi death camps, I witnessed a Christian’s face betray utter revulsion at the thought of a modern Jew.

As I think of it now, remembering, I am no longer shocked, although perhaps even more dismayed. Does prejudice never die? Do the old hatreds never end?

I began the conversation with my Christian acquaintance discussing the topic of grief. And I ended it grieving — grieving the unbounded, undying continuation of hate and ignorance and prejudice.

If you appreciated this essay, you might also enjoy, “A Tale of Two Funerals”. You can locate it by scrolling to the Archives, below. It was originally published on March 5, 2018.

Families, Holidays, and Chaos!

This essay was originally published December 7, 2017. But with the holiday season bearing down upon us like a derecho, I thought it might be a good time to re-run it.

A few years ago I stumbled across Dar William’s humorous and touching holiday song, “The Christians and the Pagans”.

It was a good-natured glimpse into the utter chaos experienced by a family of very dissimilar individuals, all trying to navigate their way through the minefield of a Christmas dinner without triggering nuclear meltdown.

I found it so delightful and thought-provoking that I forwarded the YouTube video link to most of my contacts. A few of them had encountered the song previously, but were glad to enjoy it again. To others, as it had been to me, it was a revelation: a couple of laugh-out-loud verses woven into an authentic description of the bedlam relatives endure as they try to practice tolerance and caring for the sake of family at the holidays.

But, to my dismay, a couple of my contacts found the song very offensive. To say that I was bewildered at their reaction is an understatement. This was a song about tolerance—about the triumph of love over personal differences—about the curiosity of children, as well as their inability to lie for the sake of tact (“The Emperor has no clothes!”)—about, as the verses straightforwardly state, finding common ground in the midst of seeming contradictions.

Eventually it became clear to me that, for those who found the song distasteful, their rejection of it lay in the very fact that the song was, indeed, about tolerance: about a Christian family struggling to accept and love their non-Christian and unconventional relatives (it is implied, though never outright stated in the lyrics, that the young niece is in a lesbian partnership) at Christmastime. To some of my very-Christian acquaintances, this concept—that Christians would willingly welcome the company of their non-Christian relatives at Christmas—was anathema.

It is a mindset that I cannot even begin to comprehend. I glory in the traditions of other cultures, so many of which celebrate a religious or secular holiday near the winter solstice. Soyaluna, Diwali, Christmas, Hanukkah, Old Yule, Festivus, Solstice, The Return of the Wandering Goddess…to me, they are all beautiful traditions, evocative of the universality of the human spirit reaching out to the Divine. To reject loved ones because they have chosen a different faith (or even no faith at all) is, to my way of thinking, so far from the genuine practice of spirituality, as I understand it, that it boggles the mind.

I was simply stunned to learn that some of my Christian acquaintances thought that their non-Christian counterparts would be encouraged to “find Jesus” if they were cast out and treated as lepers; that they believed children should be shielded from the spiritual differences of those they encounter, rather than receive a simple explanation as to why the family believes other faiths to be in error. I could not comprehend their feeling that families should not at least try to join together in love and caring at the holidays, no matter what their dissimilarities.

It’s always seemed to me that the surest way to assure others that one’s belief system is valid is to demonstrate, by the very life one lives–by ethics, morality, kindness and compassion–that it is a faith worth emulating. How, I was now forced to ask, could shunning loved ones, subjecting them to rejection and disgust and dislike—how could that in any way inspire their acceptance of the faith of those who cast them out? Wouldn’t such behavior just convince them that their own spiritual path was obviously the more noble choice?

In a question between my own belief system and that of others, I will always choose the path of learning; never relying on rumor or medieval bad press or intentional misinformation, but seeking to know the genuine principles surrounding a faith (or even a rejection of belief) to find the thread of commonality woven into all that is the human spirit.

But, no matter what they do or do not believe, all those who demonstrate love, acceptance, kindness, courtesy and tolerance will always be welcomed to a seat at my holiday table.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also appreciate the essay, “Toxic Recipients”, from January 9, 2019. You can find it by scrolling below, to the Archives.

Dreading Dreads

One does not have to appreciate every art form a culture produces; only courteously accept it.

I grew up in the era of Afros. I thought them wonderful; the bigger, the better. To see Black (of course, then it was merely black-small-b, or African American; times change, so does language, often in unfathomable ways…anyway…) To see Black people reclaiming their heritage and flaunting those beautiful, big Afros was marvelous. I thought, too, of how great a relief it must have been to so many young Black women to no longer stress over their hair, attempting to make it resemble those of their counterparts in other races.

Cornrows became popular, and I thought them elegant, admiring the effort that went into creating such a definitive look. Then came the era of the Jheri curl, which seemed to be a lot more work for the wearers, but was gorgeously glossy. One Black friend’s little daughter was so proud of her hairstyle that she even named her cat Jheri Curl. Multiple braids, often beaded and with hair extensions, burst upon the scene, too, gorgeously reminding one of the great Egyptian queens of antiquity, but again, a lot of work for the wearers.

Still, I rarely knew any woman of any race, myself included, at any point in history or the present, who didn’t seem to spend an inordinate amount of time, effort and money on her hair. Men (with the possible exception of Hugh Grant) could show up at a barber shop every couple of weeks and then wash, comb, and be done with it. Women, on the other hand, found it necessary to work on their hair like it was a separate being with a life of its own for whom they were responsible, providing endless caregiving.

One of the worst hairstyles ever, I thought, hit just slightly before the Jheri curl, when young White women everywhere began to sport what I will forever think of as “Did you put your finger in the light socket?!” hair—because that’s what those ridiculously overprocessed perms resembled. One male supervisor in the office where I worked proclaimed that a female coworker who’d gotten such a perm appeared “one hundred percent cuter”. I thought he’d lost his mind. Followed by the crimping iron, light-socket hair was one of the most ludicrous hairstyles ever perpetrated upon the female populace. It could only be explained by the fact that, in that era, most of the top hairdressers were male (which begs the question of exactly why that should be so, when it was women’s hair being arranged and women’s money being spent, but I suppose that’s a topic for another blog post). I suspect, though, that it was totally the aim of these hairdressers to make women look absurd. They succeeded.

But then, all of these styles, and my admiration for or disdain of them, come down to one thing: personal preference. As I’ve mentioned before in these essays, I personally don’t like square-cut fingernails, and dislike the “coffin shape” nail even more. I don’t care for claw-length nails, either. I prefer fingernails to be rounded and fairly short. I find both pearl white and dead black nail polish unattractive. These are merely my private penchants, though. I don’t say, would never even consider saying, a single word when in the company of anyone who sports such a manicure, just as I never so much as whispered the slightest negative to those of such questionable taste who happily displayed light-socket hair or crimped waves (or the young men who wore mullets—what in the world were they thinking?!)

Which brings me, finally, to the crux of this essay, because I was, some time back, accused of being micro-aggressive, at best, if not outright racist, for mentioning—while NOT in the company of an individual wearing the hairstyle!–that I don’t like dreads.

Well, I don’t. Just as I dislike light-socket curls and mullets, crimped hair and coffin nails and zombie black nail polish, I simply don’t like dreadlocks, be it that they are on the head of a Black person or a person of any other race. I don’t argue with anyone’s right to wear any of these things, because it all comes down, in the end, to personal preference. I like Afros and cornrows. I liked Jheri curls. I absolutely adore the look of box braids, those wonderful multiple braids with hair extensions. But I don’t like dreads. I think they look regrettably like a headful of ’70s shag carpet.

Why, then, does a personal preference make me either aggressive, or racist? I don’t ask anyone to like the polish that I select to adorn my nails or the way I style my hair; it’s my hair, my nails, and my choice. To anyone tactless enough to tell me that they don’t care for my Elsa-braid or glitter nail polish (and this has happened), my reaction is simply “Eh!”, or perhaps, “Good thing you don’t have to wear it, then, huh?”

And the truth is that, attempting (after years of, I admit, being less-than) to be both considerate and tactful, I would never be so insensitive or rude as to say to a dreadlocked individual, “I dislike dreads”. It’s their head, their hair, and their choice. When I read of the young Black baseball player in Valdosta refused the right by his racist coach to participate in a game due to his short dreads, I was incandescent with rage on his behalf.

Simply put, just because dreads are a traditionally Black hairstyle, and one occasionally co-opted by those of other races, does not require me to like the style, but only to courteously accept it. As with music, food, literature, clothing, and art, one does not have to appreciate everything each culture produces; to state my truth without carelessly hurting a specific individual’s feelings is neither aggressive nor racist. It’s simply a personal preference. And that is the end of the discussion.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in “Ophrah’s Brown Satin Gown”, which was published on July 22, 2020. You can locate it by scrolling to the Archives, below.

The Honesty of the Child

The Emperor has no clothes!

On my 69th birthday, my four-year-old granddaughter explored the mystery of my age. Lolling and rolling about in the perpetual motion of a toddler, she sat across the room from me on a hassock, regarding me seriously before saying, “Mimsey, you were brand-new. Then you got older, and now you’re just old.”

Happily, my sense of humor overcame my chagrin, and I burst out laughing as I wholeheartedly agreed with her. “Yep, that’s absolutely right!”

Later that same afternoon, my mail arrived. Oh, to be age four again: few things as exciting as accompanying Mimsey out to the mailbox to wade through yet another clutter of bills and charity pleas. I plucked a couple of actual keepers out from among the junk, including my AARP magazine. Little one glanced at the periodical, hoping for one of my nature magazines filled with cool photos of animals and flowers that we could page through together. Instead, seeing only a cover photo of the stars from a recent movie, she announced, with a shrug quite evident in her voice, “A bunch of old ladies.” I sighed and agreed.

Ah, the brutal honesty of children. Her words transported me back in time to the morning when a coworker, slightly older than myself, returned to work after having spent the weekend visiting her own small grandchild. Sputtering with laughter into her coffee, she told me, “That kid asked me how old I was, and I told her, ‘Oh, Mimi’s older than dirt’. So she made up a little song about that phrase and went around, singing it! ‘♫ Older than dirt, older than dirt, my Mimi’s older than dirt! ♪ ’ ”

All these memories of hilarity in response to the pitiless candor of small children, though, surfaced in my memory as I read a slightly ridiculous and definitely ageist article penned by a woman who, obviously no longer in the very first flush of youth, objected to being called “Ma’am” by a restaurant server. It made her feel old, she complained bitterly throughout every line of the article, while quite ignoring the simple fact that the title was a term of courtesy and respect, used by a stranger in a subordinate position.

Not being registered on the site, (Ah! I long for those days in the infancy of the internet when anyone could post a comment in reply to any article!), I couldn’t respond to the whining writer as I wished. “Well, honeybunch,” I desperately yearned to say, “as a 30-something woman to a barely-out-of-his-teens server, you are old. Or, at least, older. And as a customer, deserving of courtesy from someone in a subordinate position, you’re being addressed with respect. So deal with it!” Going a step further, I longed to tell the hapless columnist, “You have two choices: (A) grow older; or, (B) die.”

Of the two, I’ve generally found (A) preferable, even now, as I am rapidly sinking into verifiable old ladyhood.

Perhaps becoming Vintage looms less large for me because, throughout my youth, I was privileged to know three striking, vibrant women, my grandmothers and my mother-in-law, all of whom accepted their age with consummate grace, refusing to allow it to diminish them in any way. My maternal grandmother, Mayme Welch Snoddy, had lived what many might consider a tragic life, in poverty, with an alcoholic husband and an innumerable brood of children. Yet all I remember of her is her joyous, ringing laughter. My paternal grandmother, no-holds-barred Italian matriarch Marie Ruggiere Gregory, loudly and uninhibitedly proclaimed her hilarious take on every solemn societal ritual, again laughing her way through the myriad difficulties of life. And my lovely and gracious mother-in-law, Mary Smith Chifos, was, until the brutality of dementia robbed her of herself, a world-travelling, spirituality-seeking whirlwind, with a heart big enough to love unreservedly.

What terrors could old age hold for me, with three such sterling examples of genuinely graceful aging in the forefront of my life? World wars, smallpox, poverty and addiction, wartime deaths, spousal affairs and widowhood and divorce, all failed to diminish their zest for life in any way, or lessen their brave laughter in the face of it. What could wrinkles, softening muscles and whitening hair, mean in the face of such innate strength of character?

I wonder, sometimes, what example I am providing for my own granddaughter, even as she proclaims, in her innate, childish honesty, that the Emperor has no clothes. And I hope that she, too, will someday joyously recall the Vintage lady in her life, and have no fear of growing old.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy “Vintage Treasure”, last published June 8, 2022. You can locate it in the Archives.