Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last night my daughter took us to see Michelle Obama speak at a nearby arena.  It was packed with women of color and maybe 10% men.  It was women hear us roar, all right.  She was down home and frank, as if she was in a living room with us.  She was inspiring, funny and honest.  We all admire her for her determination to keep her life as normal as possible and protect her daughters.  She didn't pull any punches.  She told us if we didn't like what our daughters and granddaughters were facing in this world, to step up to the plate and fight to make things better.  We can't just sit back and bemoan pay inequity, sexual harassment, few women in top positions in any profession or in Congress.  Because it takes all of us, and especially it takes women to care enough for young women to see that they don't face everything we put up with.  Don't leave it to the men.  They tend to be comfortable with the way things are and ignore the rest.  And if we don't care about our daughters and granddaughters then we are perpetuating the action of not caring enough about ourselves.  We are valuable and necessary in society.  Our perspectives are often different and fresh, and our social skills more fine tuned.  Are we going to sit back and wait to be rescued any longer?  I surely hope not.  We know how that goes. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

The weather has warmed up and we're all kind of bubbly about it.  My husband and I got too hot going around the reservoir yesterday, instead of rubbing our cheeks and hands to keep warm.  The pelicans on the water were happy as well, bobbing in the water and keeping an eye out for the fishermen. 
I had a fun time talking to a friend last night about Calico Critters.  We both have them for our grandchildren.  I began a collection for my foster granddaughter about ten years ago and then she and my granddaughter played with them whenever they were together at my house.  Finally, I bought a house and critters for my granddaughter to have at her house two states away.  Now my friend has introduced them to her two year old granddaughter and I'm about to show them to my two little grandsons.  My foster granddaughter preferred bunnies, so we have a lot of those, but then kitties were added and puppies for me.  I have a little house, a nursery, a bakery.  The silliness is part of the charm.  But we began doing cell phone videos with the kids speaking for the animals (sometimes I would pinch hit) and I treasure these sometimes revealing plots.  They got super creative and it's amazing how speaking for a tiny toy animal highlights the thinking of a child. 
Anyway, my friend and I get a kick out of the play and inventiveness of our grandkids, and such joy, well, it must be shared!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My dear friend who is recovering from knee surgery is two weeks out and feeling better and stronger and sleeping easier.  She's come out of the tunnel and basking in the lighter atmosphere.  She's had a hellish two weeks and I'm so very grateful she's turned the corner.  I felt like only time would really help and so it has turned out.  She's had the loving support of her friends and family, but still, this was going to be a swamp to wade through and she was alone doing it.  Her determination and strength saw her through, not any of us.
Another friend is at the bedside of her son, hoping and praying he makes it through his dire medical crisis and can resume his life.  She's a doctor, but she's helpless except in her steadfast love for him.  He's fighting, but the outcome is unknown and she is powerless to save him.  All of us are praying he recovers, but life is arbitrary and cruel sometimes, and we know that as well. 
One friend is sailing more smoothly and on less rough seas the other is in the eye of the tempest.  And I am powerless to rescue them from their pain.  It's hard to care so much but let go of the illusion of control.  But I'm learning.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Saturday I went with some friends to the March for Our Lives speeches and march.  It was thrilling to hear from kids instead of adults, and these kids are amazingly articulate.  The crowd was friendly and the signs, as always, spot on.  I came home with sore knees but pleased.  I wanted to listen, since so many of our government people are not.  The next day a friend and I went to hear three eighty something African American men talk about their lives.  Again, just listening.  They had been through so much in their lives:  poverty, racism, loss of a parent.  Two of them got PhDs, and ended up professors at U.C. Berkeley, and one became a lawyer and then a Superior Court Judge.  One was the grandson of Ida B. Wells.  Another worked with the Kennedys as a liason with Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers.  They'd all been athletes in college who couldn't find anyone around U.C.L.A who would rent to Blacks.  They persisted.  And how!  Their friendship has survived sixty plus years.  They are retired and each lives six blocks from the other two. 
So, this weekend,  I was inspired by the very young and the very old.  They have a lot to say, and we should all listen.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been busy the last two days babysitting our grandson.  He's good natured and amiable, and basically I follow him around and keep him from injuring himself, and feed him, and read and push trains and cars around with him.  We took him on a stroll today, and he was pointing out trucks and trees and all the ordinary/amazing things he saw.  His vocabulary is expanding rapidly, and we're very close to sentences, I believe.  Our two year old grandson is fluid in sentences, and knowing what's coming is exciting.  I think of these innocent beings, and then think of the Parkland students, and I can't stand the danger our stupid policies about guns have put our children and grandchildren in.  This is not acceptable.  I'll be marching tomorrow, because somehow we must make our representatives think of family values:  the right to live without fear of harm in our schools, where most children spend the majority of their lives until they are in their twenties.  Get down to basics.  Protect the vulnerable.  So that children have a future, and not a terrorized childhood.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

With all the news about Facebook's breaches, you'd think I'd feel vindicated, but no.  I'm very private, so I resisted the entreaties of friends and the fact that three of my four kids are on it.  But I listened to  my friends about how much it means to them to have this daily touch of friendliness, and they are intelligent beings who weighed the risks with the rewards and found the later overwhelming.  I doubt they are worried now.  We are older, and naturally don't put impulsive posts online.  They protected themselves.  But others may get hurt, and that is a pity.  However, I think there is nothing they could have really done anywhere to protect their privacy.  We are in a post privacy era.  We had our credit card number stolen the old fashioned way, years ago, via my stolen wallet, and once recently when we have no idea how the card number was obtained.  We changed the number.  What else can you do?  I know nothing is deleted, and luckily, a lot I've written is pre-computer, so shredding solves the problem.  Clearly my Dad did that before he died, and there is no trace of him online.  My brother lived his entire life without a computer, and was untraceable after his death, but he was also the loneliest person I know.  Private, but erased.  So we all make our choices, and if we do the "wait a day" rule before we post anything, a lot of regrettable writing doesn't happen.  That unscrupulous people take advantage of our desire for connection shouldn't be surprising, as we are in a culture of greed and selfishness, mostly unchecked.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I watched "Lady Bird" by myself last night and really loved it.  The film was funny, truthful, and tender.  Four times I struggled with my kids leaving home and going to college, and the year before they leave is so hard, on both sides.  This separation business is excruciating!  I recognized myself as the daughter and myself as the mother.  I put my parents through agony, then turned around and had to be the recipient four times over!  And the complexity entailed is right there on the screen, irreducable.  The acting was perfect, and I believed in these characters.  If I live long enough, I may see my kids go through this with their kids, but it's not likely.  But there is this movie out there in the world that tells it like it is, to give them comfort.  Wait a go, Greta!