Something there is that doesn’t love a wall… One on a side. It comes to little more: There, where it is, we do not need the wall I tell him… He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors?…
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down. …and I’d rather He saw it for himself…”
Excerpts from Robert Frost’s Mending Fence
In America right now, we have labored on our own invisible, impenetrable metaphorical wall. Berlin-like it separates us, right from left, liberal from conservative, Democrat from Republican, urban from rural, coast from heartland, rich from poor, ordinary from elite. Yet, unlike the Germans when divided by concrete, many of us express little desire to surmount it or bring it down, justifying our own side of the divide.
Embracing the concept like Frost’s neighbor, we seek to wall out our fears by building ever higher fences between “us” and “them” and when the barrier shows signs of erosion, we build it back again in the minds of our families and friends.
When others attempt to tear down walls between religions and races, between cultures and communities, between political parties and ideologies, this is portrayed as creating danger to the “American way of life” or as political correctness run amok.
But the way of life many seek to protect exists only in the idealized past, the booming era when hard labor could lead to home-ownership, and work in mines, in auto plants, in steel mills, in factories brought middle-class entrance and abundance.
It was an age of dignity for every “average Joe and Jane’ that’s largely gone today. Displaced, many on the right have come to believe it is the stranger, the “illegal,” or immigrant here, or those in countries overseas that are shoving them aside, taking their place…or that the “educated left elite” in America, missing the contributions they made, who have declared them unnecessary or unemployable.
Sadly, just as evolution didn’t stop with the dinosaurs, technology did not stop with the assembly line. It is relentless. STEM advances will make ever more jobs obsolete. To survive, we will all have to keep step with that evolution.
And the jobs that are going unfilled in America today, that would bring a good income, often cannot be filled by either the high school grad, or the debt-burdened Baccalaurean with a liberal arts degree. 
Rather workers with advanced training in technologies or Associate Degrees from Technical or Community Colleges are being sought. Both sides must face this future.
On the left side of the wall, fences are often favored as well.
Concern for not excluding others evolves into a litmus test of the uniqueness of the pain. Political correctness can even exclude Jewish lesbians from a gay pride march because Israel walls out Palestinians. 
Fences built on that side limit the “freedom” of free speech barring thoughts by conservatives as contrary to liberal beliefs, yet insist on their right to fully express their view. We all lose when this happens.
Still, neither side wants to come together to find answers. Stones keep being thrown: slurs, epithets, stigmatizing labels. Can we not disagree about a policy or a position, an idea or an ideology, without debasing the person expressing it? Not everyone is a terrorist, a liberal elite, or a neanderthal conservative.
Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you has become: Do to others what you think they did or what they might do…get even, hit back. Or worse: Knock others down (with anger and words), launch pre-emptive strikes before they can…because of course, we know who THEY are, we know what THEY think, what THEY will say, what THEY will do.
But I keep hearing Frost…”something there is that does not love a wall.” Will that axiom hold true?
This week brought a few calls for bipartisanship in our Congress. Can our leaders re-assert the idea that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts…that our Founders got it right in believing there is strength in accepting the contributions of every viewpoint, that compromise is more lasting than confrontation and division, that what made America great was standing united and finding common ground to meet upon.
It is time to make a commitment to that goal before more harm is done to our world. This post is my endorsement and my first step in that direction. Will you help me build bridges instead of fences? Together we can bring down the walls between us.
“The greatest predictor of future violence is a past history of violence. The roots of violence lie in unremitting anger and an inability to cope with it.”
Until the shooting of Representative Scalise and others at the GOP baseball practice, I was working on a different article, though related, one on civility and the inflammatory turn in our public dialogue. I still hope to get there, and I am cheered by those in Congress who are trying to reset their responses to each other because of this horrifying event.
Every shooter is unique, but I learned a lot from victims and perpetrators of violence, and focused my Master Degree studies on the roots of violence. In my experience, abusive people have often been exposed to violence or experienced abuse or neglect.
We all begin life programmed with a survival instinct expressed as fight, flight, or freeze. As infants and children, when we feel frightened, or threatened, or needy, anger erupts. If an adult responds and helps in positive ways, we begin to learn how to gain safety and control anger. If the adults in our lives are erratic, fail to protect us, or respond in angry ways, if they abuse us or ignore us, we can fail to learn these lessons.
Like mice in an experiment who are unrelentingly shocked, children with these backgrounds experience life as beyond their control. Some learn to fade into the woodwork, to run, to freeze. Those who go on to become abusers are mired in an anger that solidifies into rage at an unresponsive world. As adults they can go on to try to control this by controlling those around them to create a (false) sense of safety. When their relationship crumbles as a result, rage builds.
Now, add in poverty, a poor education or learning disability, a neighborhood where crime is common, performance anxiety or threat to a job or job failures or loss, simmering resentment at your lot in life, or some other perceived threat including divorce or romantic breakup, life stressors or loss. Clearly, poor coping skills, mental fragility, or mental health issues (depression or addiction) can be a dynamic as well. Altogether, these can be a potentially dangerous combination.
I don’t know if (James) Tom Hodgkinson’s background fits all of the above, or the warning signs at the bottom of this post. I do know he had many run-ins with law enforcement, that in 1996 a 17-year-old foster daughter committed suicide by dousing herself with gasoline, killing herself in his car, that a 2006 arrest was for forcing his way into a neighbor’s house and breaking down a door and punching a grand-niece in the face there. Later, Hodgkinson threatened a friend of hers with a shotgun in his face before hitting him with the butt of the gun. Recently, he had gotten really involved in the toxicity of the last election and let his home inspection license lapse. And it is also reported he was an alcoholic whose wife was talking about waning a divorce. Mainly, a fit. (See NY Times)
So, what do you do if you know someone like this? How do you help? Listen….but not until you are drowning. Suggest help. If there are insurance problems, try free hotline and crisis response numbers including NAMI, and though not every clergyman is as well-trained as my husband, often a minister or priest can be a resource. Check your local area for non-profits and charities who may be able to provide support. If you fear a situation call the non-crisis police line, or if violence is about to erupt, call 911, and get yourself and others to safety.
Tired? Yes, I am. I thought I’d found a home
You see they showed pictures. Face after face, photograph after photograph, teens, mothers, adults and kids….Saffie Rose, age eight. My heart stopped upon seeing her, captured by the picture of this raven-haired, brown-eyed, red-lipped innocent.
“Home is where the heart is.” Pliny the Elder Roman scholar, naturalist, and historian.
As a child, my husband spent his summers at a cottage on Chautauqua Lake in New York state’s Southern Tier and we had our honeymoon there. But in 1976, my husband’s parents bought a house near Sesuit Harbor on Cape Cod Bay. For twenty years we crossed the Bourne Bridge to spend vacations with our children at Harbor Beach, playing in the waves and watching the sunset. In Mom’s kitchen there, a plaque read, “Does the sound of the sea end at the shore or in the heart of those who love her.” If I listened with my heart, I could always hear ocean waves no matter how far away I traveled and picture myself walking on the sand.
Edenton speaks to me that same way. It has since the first day I visited, not knowing then which of the 19 counties of my territory would become our home. I drove in from Winton from my office and crossed the river looking at the light sparkle on the water with a growing excitement and a sense of deja vu.
Three months after that first visit, the crape myrtles lining West Queen Street welcomed us to our new home which I would come to think of as “The Shore.” As we walked to town, down to the harbor, and home again we saw porches and gardens, large and small, filled with lovely flowers unknown to me.
Slowly, I learned about plants I had heard of, but never seen in the north, like jessamine and honeysuckle. Part of our welcome to Edenton came in gifts of plants shared as touches of grace. Hostas, caladiums, crocosmia, hydrangeas, coneflower, bee balm, canna, iris, curly willow trees, and tulip poplar were graciously given and gladly received. Across our fence, Esther, an elderly Moseley neighbor, shared gardening insights and bulbs. Southern hospitality bloomed everywhere.
Especially at Christmas, as we walked past the Christmas wreaths on the vintage lampposts on our way to dinner in town, I felt a sense of peace and of place. It was a wonderful life and Edenton was home. My home.
Spring always finds a way to steal its way into my heart. I await it like a lover pacing the floor before their beloved arrives.
In the unusually warm beginning to February, the abundant weeds in our 1/2 acre, but neglected, back yard began to spout. I said prayers for it to stay warm enough to weed, and managed to clear the sunniest of the back “beds” around some of the bushes…and spring began its siren song.
A visit to Home Depot took me past pots of pansies and boxes of bulbs…and peonies, one of my mother’s favorite flowers. I tried to resist…but surely pansies were ok… they are tough. I know they are supposed to be planted before December, but just a few good roots and they grow and spread, even blooming through the winter…and it was almost March….
Oh, if only I were as strong as my pansies, but those bags of peony roots kept calling me…and I went back to Home Depot and the next love affair began….they had sprouting emerald emerging daffodils shouting spring at me, and unfolding grape hyacinth and the bluest of anemones singing of summer. Ah…the song of the siren.
Finally, lastly, when I went to get birdseed, some herbs seduced me. I knew it was crazy, even in NC there is no planting herbs in winter! But the groundhog certainly could be wrong, couldn’t he? My peonies thought so and began to sprout! I kept the herbs in their pots though my mental impatience progressed to fast paced tap dancing!
Making things worse, the last week of February I went to Edenton for a concert. It was a dose of spring to see the Japanese magnolia I had planted in our backyard fully in bloom, graceful limbs with delicately spaced blooms of waxy pink tinged cream peaking from the center of magenta outer petals like a promise against a Carolina sky. My daffodils and forsythia enticed me further in cheerful yellow from the landscape that took me nine years to create, the swords of iris Kelly green, pointing to the blooms to come. They have been my harbingers of spring for years.
So………at least Oregano and Basil (oh, fresh Basil) had to be planted. But exercising restraint, I put them in a large moveable planter.
So, of course, the urge to dance into spring was irresistible, but if I just had stuck with my pansies….ahh…this maligned but study flower: Despite the false use of their name employed by my childhood friends in taunting the weak or wimpy, they are Don Quixote, the knights-errant of the winter, stronger than they appear.
Loved this word but urgent warnings on my weather app of snow, sent me scurrying. Tray of herbs and planter moved inside, I warmed towels in my dryer to cover the peonies’ sprouts and the daffodils’ fragile blooms. I didn’t cover my hardy, brave pansies….that would have taken all the towels I had! Then, we had to wait to see how cruel an Inquisitor Stella would be to my fledgling flowers…and my pansy knights.
We made it through the snow, which is insulating – but then fiercely dropping temperature hit. This morning it was only 27 when I got up and still below freezing until almost 11 o’clock. Looking out my window at 7 am, I could see my pansies yellow and orange bright as the sun which had not yet warmed them, boldly purple in the morning light and pure white as the snow they had survived.
“When you are more fortunate than others, it is better to build a longer table than a taller fence.” Author unknown
Many in my family worked more than one low-paying job in order to secure a better life for their children. My father’s father helped build the railroad in the late 1800s.
They shake their fists, lean over the “treasure,” daring those who arrived late to the game to even think they should have a seat at the table let alone capture a spoon. “Mine, Mine, Mine, Get Away,” they seem to say.
“Someone” took away some or all of their spoons. Robotics and other technologies, outsourcing and corporate closures of plants, downsizing, lay-offs, lost or reduced pensions, and fear for themselves, their children, their future, and for their country. It was a disappearing way of life, a vanishing culture.
So let me share again a favorite cartoon, this time with a slight twist. It is a two cell cartoon. The first square shows a room labeled Hell, angry people around a huge table stretching elongated spoons to reach a bubbling stewpot in the middle. The spoons reach it, but, only able to hold them by the end, the people cannot bring the food to their mouths and fights erupt.
On November 13th, we had a celebration for my husband’s retirement after 45 years in the ministry.
It was filled with lots of laughter (A This is Your Life, Doug Eddy! program scripted with a lot of humor – to the left Liz Woodbury as me [my wedding veil] and the doll for our son Chris!), as well as wonderful family and friends, great food, and a few tears…most of those falling when our daughter, who hates public speaking, offered a tribute.
The day after all our company left we began to seriously pack for our move, a sort of altered reality. Only now, as we finally are getting genuinely settled, is the reality of his retirement, our retirement, really reaching us and we can look back with a bit of perspective at our lives through the lens of that celebration.
“Thank you to the Edenton church for taking such good care of my parents…
“When my father first decided that he wanted to go into the ministry, his parents were not really in favor of it. They worried about the challenges and financial security and like all parents, they wanted that security for their son. But my parents’ calling was strong and they had a dream about what their life would look like and they decided to accept the challenges.
“We have talked about the hours it takes to be a minister. There were calls in the middle of the night and we didn’t know what was happening, but we knew that someone needed help. My father managed to do this while pursuing his doctorate. My mother worked full-time and went to school to get her MSW. There were times when my mom worked 3 jobs. We didn’t have the brand name clothes or the best cars, money was tight, but when I think about my childhood, that doesn’t even enter my mind.
“When we moved to Syracuse, every year I would ring bells for the Salvation Army with my mom at the giant kettle in our local mall. I believe we started when I was about 8 years old. After our shift, we would take a tag from the Tree of Lights and go shopping for someone who may not have a Christmas without that tag.
“I remember one Thanksgiving my mom got a call that a family was looking for a Thanksgiving basket that had long since been distributed. When she hung up the phone, she told my boyfriend (now husband) that we needed to go to the store and we shopped for everything you would need to make a Thanksgiving meal. When we were done, we went to the family’s home. My mom told the woman that we were able to find one more basket. As we brought in the bags, their children were peeking out at us from the stairs. This was one of the most meaningful Thanksgivings I have had.
“Often times, I would go to my parents with what they would call my wounded birds. I remember one Christmas, I was working at BJs with a single mom who worked 2 jobs. She told me that she wasn’t going to be able to buy her boys Christmas gifts that year because she was struggling to just keep up on her bills. So I did what I always did. I called my Dad. I told him the situation and asked him to help. Christmas was only a week away and my dad told me there was nothing left, but that he would see what he could do. I took a private collection at work and managed to gather a small amount, but before the end of the day, my dad showed up with a large donation. My friend, who worked so hard, was able to buy gifts for her children that year.
“I remember asking my father how he was able to find a donation so late. He told me that as he was leaving the church, a man showed up and said that God had been good to him that year and he wanted to make a donation. Did this man actually exist? I don’t know. What I do know is that my father is one of the most selfless people who I know and that never, not even one time, has he ever let me down.
“I hope that you enjoy taking life a little slower, although I have a feeling there will be some sort of community work before I know it. You have done what you committed to each other. You have touched countless lives and have made this world a better place.
Doug is enjoying not having to preach. He always described writing sermons as a bit like producing a term paper every week, not just a couple of times a semester, but week in and week out. The unrelentingness of the task is not all: it needs to meet the needs of every life in the congregation, no matter age, or situation, and speak to every hurting soul there present. And if that isn’t enough pressure, you are doing this for God, as well, so you are not allowed, or don’t allow yourself, a merely adequate sermon. To use a sport’s analogy, Doug loves those, you can’t even just bat over 300 like the great Babe Ruth, because that would mean (only) getting a hit one out of three times at bat. No, you need to hit a home run out of the park every time while doing all your other pastoral duties as well. So, after forty-five years, and batting close to 900, a little rest at this point seems fair.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Another of my favorites was a small framed picture another manager gave me of an eagle soaring with a Knute Rockne quote that read: “Leadership: Eagles do not flock, you find them one at a time.”
In downsizing to move to my new house, I have pared away many of these items. However, a stone with a motto on it that I chose for Doug now resides on my new desk in my new home. It reads, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
For a while yet, since we moved in December, it will be figuring out our house and where to fit things…and deciding some things no longer fit. As spring comes, our new yard, a pretty blank slate, will also await. So, I know there will be lots of digging in my future. And of course, there are still this blog and my book…I need to get back on track with my agent and publishing quest now that our move is almost behind us.
What else awaits is…unknown! What a gift! A new lease on life to discover. New directions, maybe new work, volunteering – All kinds of possibilities to explore.
“The happiness your toys bring…is your gift.” S. Claus in The Meaning of Christmas
Over the next few years, he began to collect Star Wars figures, a Millennium Falcon, a light saber, and we saw the movie several times. He LOVED Star Wars. Finally, when Gretchen was six in 1980, it was re-released just before the Empire Strikes Back was due to come out, so she saw it as well.
As was true for a lot of our life, but especially before I went back to work, money was tight. I scrimped and saved all year for Christmas and planned it down to my last penny, like a general marshaling the last of his troops. But the universe, (God to me), had a different message to give that year. It happened this way:
By 1980, we had moved to Syracuse. Doug was a Pastor with three Christmas Services on the 24th. So that Christmas Eve, the children and I frosted the last of our cookies for Santa (The recipe is in my blog post Santa Cookies – Making Christmas Memories) and I started the Stollen dough that would be our Christmas morning’s breakfast bread. Then, Chris and Gretchen and I ran to the store for more sprinkles, whose purchase was going take my last $2.00.
Of course, front and center as we walked into the store, there it was on display: Christmas in the Stars: A Star Wars Christmas Album record. The kids were beside themselves with excitement. I don’t remember what it cost, but I didn’t have the money. So, I tried to talk them out of it – “why, we didn’t even know what it sounded like” – but to them it was Star Wars…so it had to be great. Of course, I was heartbroken as I told them I just didn’t have any more money. Gretchen still had confidence, “Don’t worry, Mommy, you have checks.” But that only works if there is money in the bank, and my Christmas money was spent. More explaining….Chris was crushed.
Christmas junkie that I am, I had always been determined that Christmas would be the one time of year my kids would not do without even if they were preacher’s kids. So, I was equally crushed. But not Gretchen, and I heard her confidently say the words every parent dreads: “It’s ok, Chris, we’ll just ask Santa for it. It’ll be ok, Mommy.” She believed in Santa and his ability to grant wishes with every fiber of her being, the trust shining in her eyes. Chris, who had decided immediately after Christmas the year before that Santa no longer existed, looked at me, and wisely said nothing. Yet, more explaining. “Santa’s sleigh is probably already packed, honey. He may not be able to get it into his bag on time to get it here this year.”
We finished our baking, ate what had to be a quick dinner with Doug, and went to the 7:30 Christmas service. Then, we raced home. Time to write our notes to Santa and put out the cookies. Gretchen confidently wrote in her note: “Santa, please bring the Star Wars album for my brother.”
Christmas morning, on the very top of the jumble of gifts under the tree, wrapped in Santa paper, there it was: Christmas in the Stars. Chris actually jumped for joy – perhaps even restoring his faith in Santa a little. Gretchen, just thrilled for him, said, “I told you Santa would bring it.” The ah ha moment came to me then: Santa had honored my daughter’s faith. It’s just that like God does, he works in mysterious ways.
The concept of the album was of a Santa’s Workshop where droids made toys and wondered about the boys and girls who received them.
When we say, I can love you, my gift to you, is that I do, will you all say with me to each other, I can love you, my gift to you, is that I do, I do.
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
The days are racing. Usually, this time of year it would be my count down to Christmas. It would be putting the candles in the windows, and putting up the tree, picking gifts, baking cookies, wrapping presents, placing Santas I’ve collected on the table, stockings on the mantle and a big Santa in front of the fireplace, a manger set, lights everywhere, while carols play on the stereo, I am a Christmas junkie! While I wrapped the presents I had carefully selected, I would watch A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
This year there are lots of boxes, but no ribbons. This year it is sorting and taking lots of things that used to be important to the Habitat for Humanity Restore…hoping they can be just the right thing for a different person, and packing the things we will keep to take to our new home.
