Yet Still We Rise

There may not have been a shred of compassion, empathy, or kindness at the Republican National Convention, but the green shoots of each reach up through the darkness--one tender stalk here, another there, all across America.

Consider: 

Sara is putting her house on the market after tending it lovingly for 18 years. At the same time, her job of many years is coming to an end. As you might imagine, that makes for more work than one person can do.

 

A small thing, but a symbolic one. Her mailbox is showing a lifetime of wear.

 

Replacing it is one more chore to add to the "get the house ready" list. That list is already endless, undoable. How do you pack up a lifetime in two short weeks?

 

Because it's on her mind, the mailbox makes a cameo appearance in a chance conversation about curb appeal. As it happens, said conversation was with a retired neighbor who has both time and paint to spare. Not long after, an unexpected text, accompanied by a picture, arrives. "I painted your mailbox." 

 

The world is suddenly a brighter, warmer, more livable place.

 

Question:

 

Might the kindness we are still able to show one another at moments like these let us rebuild a United States worthy of the name?

 

Rumination:

 

Zoroastrianism was a dualistic religion of light and dark, one whose followers believed people freely chose sides. Once their choice was made, there was no turning back. 

 

The faithful were assured that evil would be vanquished and good would prevail--ultimately. But they were also given a stark warning.The struggle would be fierce and the timeline would be measured not in years or centuries, but in eons.

 

Do you see the parallel to Doctor King's famous pronouncement, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice?” Lovely symmetry between the poetry of the 6th century BCE and the 20th century Ad Dominum, isn't it?

 

Conclusion: 

 

I wish I had the certainty of either Zoroaster or King. I don't. Like all disillusioned romantics, I have only cynical forebodings.

 

Yet, faithless as I am, when I look at Sara's mailbox, I find myself lifted on the fragile wings of hope.

 

__________________
 

Photo:R.Vazquez/MediaNews

Our friend who lost his house, Paul, has not left the fire zone. 

 

He and a group of neighbors have been cutting trees and clearing brush to build a fire break around the few houses in their area that survived. Because he has experience in that kind of work, Paul is committed to being there and doing what he can.

 

People can be so amazing in the face of tragedy and disaster. There they are working flat out in heavy smoke, short on supplies, a bit anxious about the fact that there was at least one shooting somewhere in the general vicinity. They could leave, but if they do, they won't be able to get back.

 

They've made a choice that some would call foolhardy. For them, it's not. They're focused on saving what they can so that there is something to come back to, a base from which to begin again.

 

What makes some people willing to be that selfless, that brave - even after losing everything? 

 

I am reminded of my brother calling me late one night, long ago. He'd just been to the place he'd be going the next morning. Part of his paramedic test was rappelling down something--a cliff, a bridge? I don't remember. Something tall.

 

Kevin doesn't love heights, but he really wanted to pass, so he'd gone out to sit with his unease so that he'd be ready in the morning. 

 

What drives a person surpass themselves like that?

Pay It Forward - Name A Charity As One of Your IRA or 401(k) Beneficiaries

My mother was a frugal woman. That’s not surprising. She was born in the depths of the Great Depression, to first generation Americans, people whose lives were governed by a fierce yearning for security. Mom dropped out of high school, but she inherited her parents’ talent for making a penny do the work of a dime. When she died last March, she left a small estate, a portion of which was held in a well-diversified IRA.

Because of the rules that govern inherited IRAs, we kids had the choice of paying taxes on all the money at once or paying taxes on small annual distributions spread out over our lifetimes. For me, the choice was simple—leave the nest egg to grow and pay a small amount of tax each year.

What was also simple was choosing a beneficiary for the account. 

Mom struggled to make ends meet. When she was laid up after knee surgery, we survived on disability insurance, the school hot lunch program, and help from relatives. When she couldn’t afford a car, we walked. When out-sized bills came due, Mom made draperies. Her second shift happened in the dining room, at night and on weekends, on the portable sewing machine she’d given me for Christmas.  

Who helps people like Mom? Who connects people to basic services like food pantries and infant health care? Who saves struggling families hundreds or thousands of dollars through the Earned Income Tax Credit? Who provides supportive, one-stop centers where people get credit counseling, improve job skills, and build assets?  United Way Bay Area. 

Mom sent a son and two daughters to college, bought a house in late middle age, and avoided being a financial drain on her children in retirement. That last thing was important to her—in fact, it was far more important to her than it was to us. Naming United Way Bay Area as the beneficiary of the inherited IRA is how I help my mother give back--tax free! Now that she’s finished worrying about the catastrophes that tomorrow might bring, I think she’d be pleased to invest in other families living on the edge. I know I am. 

Whether you are making estate plans for the first time or re-evaluating, I hope you’ll join me, Kenneth Edlin, Peter Noon, Barbara Joan Deepe, and many others. Together, we guarantee that United Way Bay Area will always be here to help. For more information on making UWBA a part of your life’s legacy, please contact Neil Muller (nmuller@uwba.org). He’s looking forward to hearing from you, as am I.  From simple bequests to sophisticated charitable annuities, we have lots to offer.

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For details on leaving retirement assets to charity see: https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/philanthropy/donating-retirement-assets-to-charity.shtml

Eulogy for Joan Hayes Conklin 1934 - 2018

My mother, Joan, was born at midsummer in 1934, the only child of two first generation Irish-Americans, Catherine Murray and John Hayes. She lived through turbulent, troubled, and halcyon times--and she was a true daughter of those times.

Things long considered immutable and unchanging: Marriage until death do you part, a woman's place is in the home and only in the home, an expectation that you will live the life your parents lived--all those assumptions fell apart during my mother's lifetime. Each of those revolutions was reflected in her life.

A teenage bride, she brought three children into the world, saw her first marriage end, and entered the work world before she turned twenty-five. Much as she loved us, her desire to live, to experience, to love and to be
loved kept her searching for more.

Balancing was among her greatest skills. Balancing the family books, balancing the needs of her children with her own, balancing her conviction that life was to be lived against her deep desire to be a dutiful daughter living within the narrow confines of her parents' world--she was always balancing.

The needs of her children made her brave beyond her own imagining. So many times, I heard her say, "I don't know where I got the courage to do that." She took us through hard times, armed with nothing more than a joke. She had a novel way of dressing up a story. With it, she kept us from dwelling on hardships.

No car? Not a problem. She'd say, "We'll all walk to the grocery store together and buy just enough to fill four bags. That way, each of us can carry one.

As we walked down the short cut path between the houses, we'd string out behind her, each moving at our own pace. To cover the need to slow down a bit so Maureen, the littlest, could catch up, she once put her bag down, turned around, and watched us coming after her. "Don't we look like a mother duck and her ducklings on their way to the pond! Shall we turn left on Woodland and go for a swim?" Of course, we didn't; but she lightened the mood and gave everyone a chance to catch their breath.

A talented seamstress, she made both of  my prom dresses. The were one-of-a-kind creations that we never could have afforded on her secretary's salary. What I didn't know--what she kept to herself as she sewed on the dining room table late into the night--was that we couldn't afford to buy an off-the-rack dress. I felt like Cinderella...and I felt sorry for the poor girls whose mothers didn't sew.

Mom was her own woman, one created in the crucible of the war, its aftermath, and the social upheaval of the sixties and seventies. Yet, she never stopped being the child of her very traditional parents. It pained her deeply that following her own path created was what sometimes a bitter division between them. I think that is a large part of the reason she loved the painting called The Madonna of the Streets and identified with Mary Magdalene. Like the Madonna, she sheltered her children from the storm. Like Mary Magdalene, she poured out what she held dear at the feet of her beloved.

The kind of storybook romance she longed for eluded her for most of her life--but she never gave up hope and she never stopped trying. Finally, in 1978, she met Don Conklin. In him she found her prince--and, I like to think, in her he found his princess.

Their marriage wasn't perfect. But their thirty years together were among the  happiest in her life--and, I would like to think, in his. They loved each other for what they were, they accepted each other's imperfections, and they stretched to be there for one another when the chips were down.

As I wrote to my brother, Kevin, on Monday, "I imagine Don with his hand outstretched, waiting to welcome her to the after-life." Although it will be very sad to lay her in the ground in a little while, I will be comforted that she is lying next to Don. She has been lonely for him these last ten years. I like to think of her smiling up at him now, as she takes his hand.

She Works Hard For A Living

It's  not easy to come down from a sixty hour work week. The deadline is past--things went either well or poorly. Most likely, they fell somewhere in between. The work piled up for next week isn't at such a boil--yet--that you can't have a little bit of a weekend. For the moment, life should be good.

But there you are, vibrating like a plucked harp string, your mind whirring, your inner eye ceaselessly scanning, trying to locate the thing you forgot, replaying the trajectory of the just-finished project, following an endless loop of couldda/wouldda/shouldda. The maze of next steps fans out in all directions. Metaphorically, you've run as far and as fast as you are able, but--damn--that horizon isn't even close.

"Relax," everyone says. "Enjoy the weather, take time to stop and smell the roses." You would if you could. But just like in the aftermath of those ancient acid trips, you're not quite returned to what we are pleased to call reality. You can't quite focus, but you're not quite unfocused either.

It's not an entirely terrible situation. There is a slightly bizarre sense of pride--in your stamina, your ability to deliver, maybe even in the results themselves. "I've still got it," you think, even as you lie awake staring at the ceiling, too tired, too revved up to sleep.

Others may or may not appreciate what you just pulled off. Really, it makes only a passing difference whether they do or not, because you do. Making a way out of no way--that's what you'd put on your coat of arms, if you had one. I think of this phase of decompression as the adrenaline after-glow.

What makes this particular ending different from the many that have gone before? Two things, really.

The first is that my organization has a pretty good and pretty well-deserved reputation for honoring work/life balance. We work hard and there's always way, way too much to do. But we also acknowledge that our staff have lives outside of the office. Even though I've got two other projects ready to pop and a mountain of day-to-day work screaming for attention, I can count on getting the response I got when I declined a meeting set for late next week. "Of course you should take time off!"

The second is more subtle, more personal. It's where I am in my career curve.

I've been in this fugue state before, but when I was marooned here in the past, I always knew the road ahead was endless. This just completed project would be followed by another and another and another. Rinse and repeat...for decades. There were undertones of Sartre's No Exit to the space between.

That's not the case any more. There are still years stretching out before me, yes, but no longer decades. Retirement--the thing older workers are never supposed to admit they think about for fear of being labelled tired and spent--is out there. Being able to see it is adding a kind of exhilaration to moving from the altered reality of the deadline to the more rational reality of the interlude between this one and the next.

There's nothing golden about retirement, not in twenty-first century America. But the fact of it, it's new reality, it's unexpected tangibility--I find those things change the horizon in surprising ways.

Instead of feeling myself to be on a forced march from one mountain top to the next, I'm beginning to be able to imagine there is a wide, broad valley beyond these jagged peaks. I'm beginning to be able to imagine rolling hills. What will that be like, I wonder.