WordSisters

Category: vulnerability

  • Navigating Life’s Turbulence: Lessons from a Country Walk

    Candidate signs and Halloween decorations needed clearing November 7th along the country road where I walked. My feet moved slower than my thoughts of how to accept election results. 

    Five hundred feet ahead, at least a dozen large, wild, turkeys covered the road as well as both shoulders. They can be mean in a standoff. Future concerns fell to immediate safety. Should I turn around, my clap hands, swing a fallen branch to clear a path? Yelling and singing haven’t worked in the past. My walk was over.

    Two deer bounded out from woods on one side of the road, gracefully crossed the asphalt, and entered deeper tree growth in beautiful synchrony. The turkeys scurried behind the white tails. Here, then gone. The walk cleared.

     “Awesome” I said out loud at the display of natural beauty. Unattractive turkeys had been swept into a brief glimpse of something amazingly natural on another day of unpleasant election rhetoric and deep discord.

    Decades ago, St. Mary’s in Luxemburg, WI began my Christian orientation. Small towns, filled with relatives, made it easier to accept a set of beliefs and traditions. What I still carry is a careful relationship with God. Call it spirituality or faith, old-fashioned or unnecessary, I value the foundation. At the turkey and deer moment, I followed the spoken word with a silent “Thank you, God” for a reminder of good possibilities.

    In November, regardless of voting on the winning or losing side, many people remain thankful for family, friends, freedom to have a public opinion. I dread how politics and powerful men with money will affect the quality of life. 

    Fear feels like too powerful a word at a time when caution is critical. Fear was two years ago when I had major surgery to save my life. I knew what I feared that day. I could balance fear and hope. Today I can’t name what to fear beyond unpleasant changes. Fear and dread appear in definitions of each word, but fear has a more expansive description. 

    I’d love to be one of those deer easily running through the woods. I can accept moving closer to the speed of the wild turkeys shuffling through fallen leaves or awkwardly flying up to their nightly roost. During the day I will keep looking for ways to move the threatening turkeys out of the way of my walk and yours.

    Two years of thankfulness. More to come.

  • In Memory

    Door County, WI: Sunsets are earlier. Black-eyed Susan dominates gardens as hydrangea fade. Squirrels fearlessly dart across sidewalks, decks and paths to grab early acorns. Field mice and chipmunks are in the same race for food stores.

    Trees are beginning to change. Yellowing leaves increase in numbers each day. Kids still run on beaches and play wherever a swing set is not closed. Young people gather with cases of beer, many without masks. More cautious folks crowd outdoor dining places. Multi-generational families wander about as if it were August 1, not September 1. COVID has changed the normal rhythms of summer while Mother Nature delivers heat and humidity where houses didn’t need air conditioning ten years earlier. Lake Michigan pushes beyond its all-time high water mark, devouring docks and houses’ front yards.

    When it already feels as if the stars are out of synch, COVID has taken the fathers of three friends or relatives. Three members of the Greatest Generation, living in three different states, in congregate facilities for three very different reasons. Friends and family called them Jim, Dom, and Marlin. They had eleven adult children among them plus almost four dozen grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Two were veterans and one farmed his entire life. Family photos show them joking with great, tall grandsons, sitting with the newest grandbaby resting on an arm, in wheelchairs by Christmas trees. These were men who loved and were loved.

    Thanks to COVID, they died comforted by staff members as their families were mostly kept away. In the heat of August, sons and daughters mourned the once strong fathers who built businesses, walked fields, fixed tractors, painted houses, taught them to throw a ball, sang next to them in church, made the final journey of life without endangering family.

    The Greatest Generation is disappearing as COVID ignites within our communities. They fought for our country’s freedom, raised families, built the cars and houses and machines of the 20th century USA, fed the world. In turn COVID has left us unable to protect them, not even gather for proper farewells.

    As summer sneaks away, as our elderly pass in the settings meant to keep them safe, as our days of small social gatherings and playing games outdoors with our grandchildren are numbered, COVID is like the spreading black-eyed Susan which left unchecked threatens to obliterate the beauty of other blooms.

    In honor of James Armstrong, Dominic St. Peter, and Marlin Hunt. With sympathy to their families and to all who have lost loved ones to this pandemic. Friends, please help friends stay healthy and strong.

    Black-eyed Susan