Young At Heart

This morning I read a heartwarming story about childhood friends who were reunited after 82 years, having been separated at the outset of World War II because they had to flee Nazi Germany. The two women, now in their 90s, had fled literally to opposite ends of the globe, but with the help of the Shoah Foundation and the miracle of modern technology, they were able to find each other and reconnect. (Washington Post, Nov. 24, 2021)

One of the things I love about this story is that when Betty and Ana finally met up with each other on Zoom and later in person, it was as if they had never been apart. They resumed their friendship with all the steadfastness of nine-year-old girls. Despite their ages and life experiences, both women felt the same way they had when they were young.

Recently I was talking to a family member about my decision to let my hair go gray. On the one hand, at age 63, I figured, who was I kidding trying to retain vestiges of my youth? And yet, as I explained to my sister-in-law, I still feel like a 21-year-old. If pressed, I can even recall so many of the feelings, ideals, insecurities and fears I had when I was a little girl. I’m still essentially me.

Growing older has many benefits. We gain wisdom, independence, and some measure of self-confidence as we learn how to take care of ourselves and our families. Many of the fears I had when I was young have disappeared, such as my terror of getting shots at the doctor’s office. Many skills that I found daunting, such as learning to drive, are now second nature. And I sometimes find the exuberance of youth a little exhausting to contemplate. Being out on the town until four in the morning? No thanks.

But in many ways, I am still a young girl in search of belonging and acceptance just as I was 50 years ago. I still worry about being rejected. I am still shy in many situations. And I still love silliness and a good laugh.

Watching my adult children interact this past holiday week, I was filled with love and pride. They truly enjoy being together and have much to share with each other, whether it be career advice, Netflix recommendations or good-natured teasing. I hope they always feel as young at heart as I do in their presence.

Persistence

In Julie Ryan McGue’s wonderful memoir Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging, she describes the arduous process to find her birth parents, a process that took many years, substantial financial investment, and most importantly, courage. Stymied by the laws surrounding closed adoptions, McGue and her twin sister grow up with the unknowns that all adopted people face. So many doors are shut in Julie’s face as she seeks answers to her background. A lesser mortal might have given up.

But Julie persists. At one point in her memoir she says, “Never give up trying to find the right key to a locked door.” That sentence stuck with me long after I finished the emotional and satisfying conclusion of Julie McGue’s adoption saga.

Persistence is a quality that comes naturally to babies and young children. Everything is a learning experience for them, and they develop their skills with dogged determination. Picture a baby on its tummy rocking and pushing and trying with all its might to roll over. Or a child taking those first tentative steps and falling right on its diapered bottom. But somewhere along the way, we lose that tenacity. We are too busy, or it takes too much mental, physical, or emotional energy. That same tot who spent hours figuring out how to fit the blocks into the shape sorter now melts in a puddle of tears when trying to complete the assigned math homework.

Obstacles are opportunities to grow. No one develops muscle strength without encountering resistance, after all. So too with the roadblocks in our lives. My husband is constantly exhorting our kids to look at rejection and resistance as gifts. In his own career, he took impediments as challenges to overcome. When others doubted him in his work life, he would take an “I’ll show them” kind of attitude. He didn’t coin the expression “Success is the best revenge,” but he lived by it.

In Julie McGue’s case, her need for medical information to help herself and her children propelled her to find answers no matter how hard it was. She kept pursuing different avenues – agencies, DNA tests, even the advice of a private detective – all in her quest to find her birth family. There were so many disappointments, and they played havoc with Julie’s natural optimism and happy nature. Yet in her quest, Julie also found people to help and guide her along the way. Her story is as much about love and compassion as it is about rejection and heartache.

Julie’s persistence paid off. She was able to find her biological parents and siblings and to discover so much about the origins of her identity. And she enriched the life of her own family in the process. If you need a spellbinding story of determination and the ties that bind, I cannot recommend Twice a Daughter highly enough.

Playing Posse

Hey, kids! You too can have your very own AR-15 and use it to play “cops and rioters” – if you’re white, of course. Don’t let a pesky detail like being underage stop you from finding a way to secure an assault rifle and brandish your weapon in an unfamiliar and dangerous situation in the dead of night.

This is the message embedded in the latest demoralizing aspect of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Among many rulings favoring the defense, the judge in the case of the 18-year-old who killed two men and wounded a third dismissed the weapons charge against Rittenhouse on the basis that the rifle was not short-barreled. Oh, well, when you put it that way.

We have become a nation where it is okay for not only adults, but children, to carry lethal weapons around in public. As far back as 1999, when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris gunned down 13 people at Columbine High School, underage children have been able to procure weapons illegally through straw purchasers and lax gun laws. The mayhem this has caused cannot be overstated. This latest ruling by Judge Bruce Schroeder is guaranteed to produce more havoc and heartbreak.

The reality is this: Kyle Rittenhouse had no business being at a demonstration with a deadly weapon. For that matter, neither did any of his compatriots who considered it their duty to play law enforcement and protect other people’s property. We train and pay our police and, in dire cases, armed forces, to handle such situations. When even highly trained officers can make deadly mistakes, we should be loath to allow ordinary citizens to go around playing vigilante.

For all the Rittenhouse defense’s protestations that the boy shot these three men in self-defense, it was Rittenhouse himself who drew first blood. Of course others would try to stop him or go after his weapon. I consider those people the brave ones. Unarmed, they tried to stop a kid with a deadly weapon.

But I see the handwriting on the wall in this trial. Rittenhouse will go free, and young white men across America will receive the message: Yes, you too can be a star in your own real life video game, Vigilante Justice.

Post-Truth America

It is disturbing, but perhaps unsurprising, that hundreds of QAnon followers recently camped out at the site of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination to await the appearance of the president’s son, JFK, Jr., himself deceased for 20 years. QAnon loyalists began posting a theory that Donald Trump was going to run for president in 2024 and name John John as his running mate. (“QAnon believers gather for John F. Kennedy Jr. to return in Dallas,” The Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2021) The ways in which this purported theory are bizarre boggle the mind. Apparently it was even too outlandish for “Q,” the supposed shadowy figure who prophesies on the internet. Yet hundreds of true believers showed up in downtown Dallas to wait for JFK, Jr. to show.

The assault on truth may not have begun with Trump’s candidacy for president, but he certainly allowed the era of “alternative facts” to take root and flower during his presidency. He was, after all, the promulgator of the infamous birther rumors about President Barack Obama’s citizenship. Any time unpleasant facts about him or his administration were reported, he decried them as “fake news” from the “lame stream media.” His own disgraced National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, is himself a QAnon conspiracy theorist who promoted the theory that a cabal of elite Democrats is running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor. Flynn also appears to have suggested Trump loyalists stage a coup after the election of Joe Biden as president. Recently he has been promoting disinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines, claiming the government may be putting it in our salad dressing. This is a man who was in the highest levels of our government.

Flynn is not alone in the Republican world of conspiracy theories. Many Republicans in Congress have spread unfounded accusations about voter fraud and demanded recounts in last year’s presidential election. They have minimized the dangerous actions of the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6. Some of them, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, subscribe to QAnon theories. These are our elected representatives. We should be very afraid.

Living in a post-truth America has become exhausting. Even our education system is under attack with extremists insisting teachers teach “both sides” of the Holocaust, for instance, or positing that creationism is as valid a scientific theory as evolution. But what has been most damaging about our inability to agree on basic facts has been the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The disinformation campaign waged by fringe groups and anti-vaxxers has been alarmingly effective with a large segment of our population. Consequently, we have been unable to get enough Americans vaccinated to gain control of a disease that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Politicians and salespeople (the same thing?) have always manipulated facts to suit their purposes. But at least the facts themselves were undisputed – until now. Now we live in a world where unhinged people can make any outlandish claim on the internet and be believed. And the cynical manipulators are there to seize the preposterous claims and use them to their own advantage, whether political, ideological, or financial.

I’m sad that QAnon enthusiasts are wrong about John F. Kennedy, Jr. I would love to believe he was still alive. And I think he’d either be horrified or laugh hysterically to think of himself being linked with the likes of Donald J. Trump. Maybe he’d feature the story in his “politics as pop culture” magazine George. Or perhaps he’d be as disturbed as many of us are by life in a post-truth America.

The Milk of Human Kindness

Did you know that the word vaccine is derived from the Latin word for cow, vacca? In the 18th century, Edward Jenner developed the field of immunology by infecting a patient with cowpox or vaccinia on the theory that it would protect the child from the deadly scourge of smallpox. Through Jenner’s experimentation, the disease of smallpox was almost completely wiped out, and the principles of vaccination were created.

Today we face a virus that may be far less deadly, yet it is still responsible for the loss of millions of lives around the globe. COVID-19 has wreaked havoc in our economic, social, political, and emotional lives over the past two years. But thanks to the efficacy of vaccination and the efforts of modern pharmaceutical companies, we have the tools to lessen the scourge of death and long-term disease for countless people.

There’s only one problem: getting more people to agree to be vaccinated. Despite the fact that vaccination has practically eliminated such diseases as measles, mumps, rubella, and polio, there have always been a small cohort of anti-vaxxers who fear the vaccine more than the disease. Through disinformation and discredited studies, these anti-vaxxers have made others hesitant to allow themselves or their children to receive what can be a life-saving inoculation. Even in the case of viruses such as influenza and coronavirus, which will never be completely eradicated, vaccines provide protection against the worst effects of these illnesses.

Our problem today is even greater. Politics has infected (pun intended) the mindset of too many people. They see vaccine mandates as an infringement on their freedoms, despite the fact that schools have had them for decades with little fanfare or animosity directed toward these reasonable requirements to assure the health and safety of others. And for me, that is what it comes down to. Not only do I protect myself by being vaccinated, but I protect others more vulnerable than myself, people who are too young or whose immune systems are too compromised to be able to receive the vaccine.

As the holidays approach, many people are feeling anxious about gathering with family, especially when some members refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19. If Christmas is all about gifts as it is to so many, then being vaccinated is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself and your loved ones. The internet is rife with stories of anti-vaxxers who later regretted their vaccine hesitancy after succumbing to COVID-19 and experiencing the life-threatening effects it can have even in healthy people.

Cows provide nourishing milk for millions of people. And cows also gave Edward Jenner the means to combat a deadly disease hundreds of years ago. We can provide the milk of human kindness by being vaccinated. Let’s overcome our fears and give it a shot.