Christmas 2016: Toddler Coat Politics

In the days approaching Christmas, life is sporadically peaceful.

While kitchen multi-tasking, I set a sheet of parchment paper on fire. No cookies were lost. Our dog Maria recently took a fall and couldn't walk, landing her at the vet's with us carrying her in by towel sling. Two weeks ago I undertook a harrowing drive through an arctic snow blast to Cincinnati so I could help my friend Laurel. Her inner-city church sponsors an annual family gift distribution and depends on volunteers. I'll be processing this experience for the rest of my life.

This spring Cliff had two ER runs because of soaring blood pressure. After hospitalization and countless tests, he's back on his feet and better than ever. Because no one loves a road map more than he does, he's traveled to North Carolina's Merlefest and visited Nova Scotia with his friend Allen. Although they covered miles of gorgeous scenery, I suspect they appreciated the pubs and Irish music best of all.

In the fall, we toured Williamsburg and Monticello for the gazillionth time. Cliff loves history; I love beautiful buildings. Because he's teased me forever about my bouts of fiery rhetoric, he scheduled a trip to Patrick Henry's farm in Scotchtown so I could stand where he wrote his "Give Me Liberty" speech. There's something reassuring in knowing I share the genetics of another writer who was not always well received but was right, nonetheless, I choose to believe. 

Maggie is considering a major in sociology or psychology. This summer she worked as a guide at the Thomas Edison Birthplace up the street and volunteered at the library's cooking class for children, meaning she can speak at length about light bulb filaments and aversions to lettuce. If there's a career in there, she'll figure it out, coupled with her devotion to campus dogs. As president of their Planned Parenthood chapter, she's attending the Million Women March in January. With Cliff's protest of Spiro Agnew's visit to Oklahoma and my being at Ohio University during the Kent State Massacre, she continues the family forays into political hot zones.

Of all the places we've lived, oddly enough we've had more company in Milan than anywhere else. We're happy but puzzled at the same time. Quiet and historic, little happens here. Nevertheless, plenty of guests have been mesmerized by our butterfly bush covered with a flurry of winged creatures two-stepping from leaf to leaf. Who could have guessed one plant could accomplish so much good? In a world where bees and butterflies are dangerously challenged, they flourish around our porch. Amazingly, one monarch actually sat for twenty minutes on my arm.

If you read my August post Crazy Corn, you know about my alarming moment with a local farmer's political views. There's plenty of crazy on both sides these days. Last weekend at that Cincinnati church, I worked alongside a volunteer whose national opinion was vastly different from mine. Rather than needlessly arguing, I searched for our common connection. Turned out, we were just two people who'd grown up in Ohio's Rust Belt and knew about lean times.

After winning his confidence, he told me he'd explained the need in this church to his affluent co-workers. One colleague responded by saying, "If you keep giving free things to those people, they'll never get jobs." He asked the man how many three-year-olds he'd ever seen buying their own coats. "I'm looking out for the innocent children who can't help their circumstances," he said to me. Who'd disagree with that point of view?

So that's my advice. Find the commonality.

Patrick Henry said: "We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means...placed in our power." Few of us can accomplish revolutionary change, but we can influence our corner of the world.

We can do something.

March. Plant a butterfly bush. Donate a toddler coat.

Do good wherever you are.

You always have that power. Always.

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Guest Blogger: Kelley Burst Singer

{From 1976-1983, I taught English and directed plays at Holland Hall Upper School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was twenty-four and had negligible experience. I didn't know up from down about teaching, but during those years, a handful of students changed me irrevocably. Over three decades, one way or the other, they've found me. I recently invited them to become guest bloggers, reflecting on something about their high school selves. 

 
Kelley Burst Singer, Class of ’82, flipped me upside down. Her penetrating questions about the status quo allowed me to understand the frustrations of a smart girl who thought beyond customary boundaries. In fact, she and two brave friends started a woodswomen group, inducting me during morning announcements with feathers and ashes. Whenever I looked at Kelley, mature and capable, I saw how ridiculous the girls’ uniform, pleated plaid skirt and middy blouse, truly was: a costume that made them look like indistinguishable dolls instead of vibrant leaders. For two years, I helped students crusade to change the dress code. They won. Finally.} 

                                                                              *****

So how did I land at Holland Hall Upper School as a sophomore?  It starts with my public school junior high years.

A rush of horrible film clips surfaces when I shine the memory light in that direction. I could start with the creepy art teacher who gave the state art contest award to my pretty friend with big boobs, even though we worked on the poster together.   

Or the creepier gym teacher who often asked the cheerleaders to sit on his lap.  

Then there was the time I encouraged my best friend since kindergarten to join our Red Cross club, and she decided to run for president--against me--and won. 

Through my tears of humiliated defeat, I gave up my interest in first aid and enrolled in industrial arts because I wanted to learn woodworking and car mechanics. I was the lone girl and only lasted three weeks because the teacher was deliberately mean to me every day in the traditionally male class.   

Probably the most soul-depleting experience was science class taught by my typing teacher. She had high expectations in typing, where I suffered my only B in junior high despite considerable frustration and effort. But in science, where I was eager and desperate to learn, she wasn’t at all enthusiastic.

I stared with wonder at the microscope on the counter two rows away. 

All year.  

I asked her every few class periods when we would use the amazing instrument. Finally she snapped at me so harshly that I stopped asking.

I cried to my mother that I was not happy there. I wanted something more. There had to be more. Because she had been a teacher in her pre-marriage life, she understood the system was failing me. She was a fighter for more and better for her five children, and although it made no mathematical sense to our family budget, she agreed to let me apply to Holland Hall, a private high school.
 

I was on fire from the moment I took the placement test.

I couldn’t believe my luck at this opportunity. After what I'd been through, it felt strange that I fit in so well. I connected with the teachers and wanted to learn. And although I made an F on my first essay and was the oldest student in French I, I loved it. It was like landing on a different planet.  

In science, not only did we get to use the microscopes, but my patient and kind biology teacher guided me after school in extra projects that probably led to my becoming a physician. Yet in that era, I had never met a woman physician. I was not even sure one existed. I would never have said aloud back then that my dream was to study science and become a doctor.

But with each semester at Holland Hall, my confidence grew through experiences woven by teachers who guided me. They were powerfully transforming times for this Oklahoma girl. 

Those teachers had strong expectations of me to succeed as an intelligent, caring, and creative human.  John Bird, Craig Benton, Karen Henry Clark, Edgar Benarrous, Doug Bromley, Ted Sloan, Didier Poulet, Carlos Tuttle, Ed Hooker, Alice Price, Gene Aker, Coach Stanley, and Coach Hawkins. Thank you for not blinking when I tested out behavior on you.  Thank you especially, Ms. Clark, for enthusiastically agreeing to be the faculty sponsor of the newly formed Wild Wilderness Woman Club. 

The lasting effect of those years was the peeling away of beliefs about my appropriate role in life.  Slowly this group of teachers challenged those illusory limitations and cajoled me to break free. I will always be grateful to my parents and my teachers for this foundational pivot in my life.

                                                                              *****

Kelley Burst Singer, MD FACP, is a practicing internist and medical director of physician quality for Park Ridge Health in Hendersonville, North Carolina. A favorite part of her job is creating a clinic experience in which a patient feels cared about. Just like the teachers in her high school did for her as a student.

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Guest Blogger: Ken Levit

[From 1976-1983, I taught English and directed plays at Holland Hall Upper School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was twenty-four and had negligible experience. I didn't know up from down about teaching, but during those years, a handful of students changed me irrevocably. Over three decades, one way or the other, they've found me. I recently invited them to become guest bloggers, reflecting on something about their high school selves.

Ken Levit, Class of 1983, excelled at heartfelt questioning, making him a treasure. He was terrific onstage, grappling with all kinds of issues about characters, staging, and plots. I once mentioned The Rolling Stones in English class. Amazed, he asked, “You mean your Rolling Stones were our Rolling Stones?” and pinpointed a teenager's time frame for me. During another class, his frustration rising, he asked, “Can’t we read anything happy?” The Classics made no allowances for joy. Realizing, then, why student writing was wooden, I made space for personal essays where their life experiences could shine in their writing. Ken, a magnificent influence, challenged me often and well. To his everlasting credit.]

***

I really didn’t want to do this. I’m kind of sick of the voices in my own head about Holland Hall and high school.

I’m not sure why.

Perhaps it’s a sense of guilt that I still don’t fully appreciate. How lucky I was to go there. How I never even thanked my parents for the chance.

HH was exactly what I wanted.

At Barnard Elementary, they said the kids at HH had REALLY long arms because they carried so many books. I thought that sounded perfect for me since I loved books. Years later, I am stunned by how narrow our world was there. How cruel it could be. Maybe that’s always the case for those tough years. A Separate Peace. That’s a question I have.

I’m doing this because of the person who asked me to do it. Ms. Clark. Wow. She might have been the best teacher I ever had.

But I really couldn’t tell you why. I don’t think she ever actually taught me anything specific. There was nothing I ever learned directly from her. And it wasn’t like she ever directly intervened in my life or helped me through a personal situation. Yet somehow, somewhat mysteriously, she looms in my head in a big way.

She once did something that blew me away.

We were in class. A typical English class for us. Were there even ten of us? But we—mainly the guys—started cracking jokes about gay people, reciting descriptive names we thought were funny. It built and built. And then Ms. Clark stepped quietly to the corner and put her head in it with her back to us. It was strange. It was certainly unnerving. I think we asked her why she had done this. She said, into the wall if I remember it correctly, "Because I have friends who are gay people."

Her pain radiated. I felt it. I was ashamed of myself.

It's truly incredible that we even had to be taught that, but it was practically a foreign concept for me in 1981. But it wasn’t totally foreign either. It felt wrong even then, but she called us on it in a deep way.

What’s a good teacher?

In my current job at a private foundation, that subject arises in a clinical way. All sorts of smart folks try to create the models and the assessments. But, when I think about my great teachers at Barnard or HH or even in university and law school, there is basically one unifying feature. They were honest with us, treated us with respect and built a relationship with us.

That’s a pretty basic thing: caring relationships built on honesty and mutual respect. If I learned that, it’s even better than the long arms.

***

Ken Levit is Executive Director of George Kaiser Family Foundation.

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For Want of a Nail: How Women Succeed

Cliff and I faced buying a new car recently. We drove several and talked with the salesman. When things started sounding serious, he called in the money person. She presented options. The conversation finally ended.

He handed us his business card.

She scribbled her phone number on a post-it note.

Over several days, Cliff called both of them with questions. They were equally friendly and knowledgeable. The paperwork began. When we returned to sign, we didn't see him at all. We sat in her office: Holly Brownell, Finance Manager.

I remained silent until the last T was crossed.

Then I leaned across her desk and said, "Holly, here's the most important thing to me. You need business cards, and you need them now."

She froze.

I explained that for someone with her title, a colored paper square did not inspire confidence and made her seem slipshod. An after thought. It was an unspoken indictment of professionalism.

I asked her to realize the message she was sending, not only to adults, but to children sitting in her office with their parents. It showed a boy that women did not qualify for the same status--especially in an environment where all the men had cards. It showed girls they had no right to expect the same privileges. They could aspire to the title but not the respect.

A business card, all 2 x 3.5 inches, confirms equal status.

It forces the point.

The dreams of children begin with something small, something tangible. Who can say what little girl will be inspired as a woman pulls that bright card from the drawer?

Holly understood and said she'd get right on it. "And I expect you to send me one," I said as I left her office. She did, too. She told me she was proud to have them and said, "It's because of you, Karen."

That's the charge for all women. To rally, to advocate, to challenge, to cheer each other on. We have a collective mission. Not every success is played out in mile-high venues. But each inch forward expands the reward column. Nothing that supports women is insignificant.

The powerful proverb "For want of a nail" illustrates the value of small, necessary things.

Nails count.

So does every Holly.    

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Something's in the Details

If you look up the expression, it's either God or the Devil in those details.

It was God in my house. My mother always said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well." She ironed sheets and pillowcases, each bed made with six inches of top sheet folded neatly over the blanket. Her garden was an elaborate summer production of caged tomato plants clipped to topiary perfection.

You won't be surprised, then, to know I scrubbed and ironed Maggie's toddler shoelaces."Why, Mama?" she asked when I sent her off for the Tide-To-Go pen to erase grass stains.

Cliff used to question my decisions, too. In our first year of marriage, he decided it was the Devil smirking at him from my detail quest. No sofa was correctly placed until I insisted he relocate it again and again and again. Every time we moved to another city, the new yard needed one more shrub or cluster of something fluffy. Then another. Then something tall by the oak...

One night as we watched the evening weather report, I pointed to the map and said, "There. Right there. See how the yellow encircles the blue? That's the print I'm looking for in a shower curtain."

"Karen," he sighed. "There's medicine for this." 

True.

Details can be maddening. Except when they're not.

When we moved to Milan a year ago, many unopened boxes sat in a storage room jumble. So Halloween passed undecorated. No one said a word. It was clear I was inundated at that point. But I felt the emptiness of an unheralded holiday. I'm pretty sure they did, too.

Knowing Maggie would arrive Friday for her college fall break, I organized the decor. With her garden witch swinging in salute by the garage, I could see we needed more details beneath her, true to my mother's logic. We added chrysanthemums and pumpkins in several colors. "She's back! My witch!" Maggie said joyfully as she pulled in the driveway. 

Cliff smiled when his lighted spooky houses emerged from their cardboard shadows to reside on a burlap landscape. Every year we recount the tales behind each accessory. The three of us are a solitary unit, having lost familiar connections over the years of moving from one state to the next. Our details are our relatives, revisiting us like familiar cousins.

And the smiling pumpkin, purchased by my mother for Maggie's first Halloween, glows beside her bed through the night while she's home.

Cliff carried those boxes without being asked. He patiently dug holes to plant the flowers. He drove me through the countryside to find perfect pumpkins.

No eye rolling or sighing or questioning.

Some details are as precious as breath itself. In a life's landscape, they're the stepping stones whispering behind us, all the while assuring us we can step forward. Safely.

Nothing matters more.

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Cliff: The Pied Piper

In my years with Cliff, I've seen this happen numerous times in public places.

A tearful child will walk up to him and announce: "I can't find my mommy."

Cliff gets down on his knee and says, "We'll find her." Then he takes that small hand and looks for the information counter or customer service. Cliff stays right there, holding on until the mother arrives.

He never knows these children. He doesn't wear an official badge.

They see him and know he's the guy. It's some kind of attraction thing, a nameless but constant lifeline to seekers of all shapes and sizes.

Shortly after we moved here, he tackled the picket fence. I call it the infinity fence because he can never get to the end of it. There's always one more rotten rail or picket to replace. No matter how long he paints, there's a missed edge that requires attention.

One afternoon a local we didn't know stopped by with his grandson. "Need a hand?" he asked, as Cliff struggled with the new gate. Over two hours later, Darrell, Hayden, and Cliff were finished (and friends for life, by the sound of all the good-natured joking). Cliff asked, "What do I owe you?"

"Nothing," Darrell said. "Consider it your Welcome to Milan gift."

He's returned several times to help with difficulties that crop up in a 150-year-old house.

He was here once to relocate two doors, but it ended up involving mice.

I don't know how long they'd been around when I finally spotted their presence. Cliff was running errands, so I asked Darrell if I had guessed correctly. He agreed and looked in the basement for a nest, thinking they were climbing up the wall into the kitchen.

"Set some traps and get rid of them," he said casually and turned to leave.

"I don't want them to die," I replied, the tears starting.

He turned back and changed his tone. "Now, Karen, I know you write children's books and want to make friends with the mice, but that can't happen. You don't want them to settle in and have babies."

So I told Cliff, who headed for the hardware store. He did not return with mousetraps. He bought a contraption that lured them in and snapped its doors shut so he could release them unharmed.

Night after night, it worked like a charm.

When we reported our successes to Darrell, he slyly asked, "Are you marking them? It might be the same darned mouse over and over." 

When Cliff related all this to Maggie and how he took them to the creek at the bottom of the hill, she was amused and created a scenario about their encampment in the woods.

"Look! It's Aunt Louise come home to us!" they'd shout, leaping up from their tiny campfire.

"Who's that man?" they'd ask.

"I don't know, but he has Ritz crackers!" Aunt Louise would explain to a chorus of ooohs. "Under his sink is a cottage where you can get peanut butter. You reach for it, and the doors shut tight so you can eat in peace and get a good night's sleep."

They nod enviously.

"Then he wakes you up in the morning and carries you home!"

They ask how to find this storybook place.

"I'm not sure, but you have to climb a hill," she replies.

I don't know if mice distinguish north from south, but they could end up at Marcia's instead. She can get Ritz crackers and peanut butter.

But she won't have Cliff. To the everlasting regret of those dreamers at the encampment.

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Snapdragons

My mother-in-law Mary Jo and I had one common reference point: Cliff. Her son, my husband.

Even then, we would have disagreed across the board on his welfare. Pick a topic, any topic. We were decidedly different women.

However, I did learn something valuable from her.

She told me once about a lost opportunity with her oldest granddaughter. She'd always planned to take the little girl to a local restaurant known for its afternoon teas. All lace and frills and classical music, she thought it would be fun, a treasured memory.

But she never got around to it and didn't seem to know why. I urged her to follow through, even though the girl was in college at this point. "Take her by surprise," I suggested. "There's still time. She's not too old for your attention."

But she didn't. She chose to carry that regret.

In all fairness, I understand what she didn't say and probably couldn't have accepted anyway. My

mother-in-law lived a paralyzing life of restraint, suspicion, traversing a never-ending trail of domestic sharp edges marked by her husband's edicts and selected Old Testament scriptures for warning signs.

Cliff has always called the situation "walking on eggshells." He would know, having grown up in that house.

So I did my best to avoid taking moments for granted when we brought Maggie home from China. Give her life's lovely details, became my mantra.

One day my mother Betty was in our living room, watching as I sat on the staircase beside Maggie. At 18 months, she wanted to descend on her own. Terrified to hold the rail and walk down, she bravely scooted on her bottom, gripping my hand in hers. It took quite a while.

Carrying her down would have been so much quicker.

But we would have missed so much, too--her squealing giggles, her wiggling confidence when we reached the last step. My mother clapped for her.

"Honey," my mother said, "you're a much better mother than I ever was." I shook my head and reminded her of that beautiful, spotless house. "Dust covers everything in here," I admitted.

"Our house never had to be that clean," she said.

Again, regret. Watching us, step by step, had offered a silent space for perspective on years of lost experiences. But also, a surprising glimpse of me as a mother. I understood, then, she clapped for me as well.

So this summer, as I looked at the blank expanse of our garden, I thought about what to plant and remembered showing Maggie, when she was a toddler, how to make snapdragons "talk" by squeezing the petals at a garden store. She was as enchanted as I had been when my mother, who grew an annual bed of snaps, as she called them, showed me. Sweet alyssum always graced the edges.

Easy as it would have been, I never planted them for Maggie. I was focused on creating some other floral effect.

So this summer I planted snaps and alyssum for Maggie. They weren't as lusciously perfect as my mother's, but at least I didn't stop in my tracks because my collegiate daughter is long past yard playing.

They simply grow for her.

And for Mary Jo and Betty, their regrets buried beneath the summer blossoms.

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