Look Quickly!

I swear I just about missed it. Busy with work, booked on the weekends, tired in the evenings, I just about let fall go past without really seeing it at all.

Fortunately for me, this weekend afforded time for me to slow down just a bit. The weather turned near the end of the week, highs in the seventies giving way to the mid forties. The quick freeze brought out the colors of the trees, and I was able to find the time on Saturday to go for a walk in the golden light of late afternoon.

As I walked, my heart slowed, my shoulders dropped back down where they belong. The noise in my head subsided for just a bit; I was able to stop and breathe in a bit of the day's beauty. Summer's crowds are mostly gone, the park is quieter, getting ready for its winter break.

Maria's birthday was this past week. I didn't think it had affected me, but then, today, I found myself in tears - not so much because she is dead, but because of what could have, should have been, and now will never be.

When I packed up her things, I took a box of her nicer clothes home to clean and sort through; I figured I might like to wear something of hers sometime; we wore the same size. The box has been nagging at me from various corners since I brought it home, but somehow, I haven't been able to find the time to open one smallish box. I finally made myself open it today. The clothes inside smelled to high heaven of smoke and sickness. I almost just closed it up again to put it in the trash, but stopped myself.  Her youngest daughter is growing quickly to be about her mother's size. She might appreciate having a few things to remember her mother by.

So I plugged my nose and stoppered up my heart, and went through the dresses. This one, too old to be wearable, this one, yes, it should do just fine. I remembered seeing her in some of the clothes, from before she hit the bottom of her long slide; she wore them well.

The clothes are all cleaned now, ready to be pressed. If only it were so easy to wash the stains she left on my heart. She was toxic in her worst moments, and those are some of my last memories of her. But I know she still had, somewhere inside, the little girl who dreamed of having her own babies to dote upon. I know because I saw glimpses of her quirky smile even as the alcohol stole her away too soon.

These are the memories I will try to hold this week, as I stop to watch the leaves in their flamboyant farewell, I hope she had a Happy Birthday, where ever she has gone.

Wrong Words

I've finally found a measure of sympathy within myself for Donald Trump.

I am no fan of his, but the dust up this week around his call to Sgt. Johnson's widow brought out the teeniest feeling of sympathy. I know he said the wrong thing in the wrong way, and in typical Trump fashion tried to bluster and attack instead of apologize his way out, thus making the situation worse, but I cannot believe he would intentionally cause trouble during a condolence call.

How many times have I opened my mouth only to find, instead of the flow of words I wished, a stumbling mish-mash of little sense? I know the sentiment I want to express, but can tell by the look on the other's face that I chose the wrong words to express it - and my sentiment just got terminally lost.

I'm more attuned to this after my bout with cancer, and even more so, by Kate's. People meant well when they tried to sympathize with our trials, their words falling splat on the ground instead of conveying the good will their originators had intended. Most times, I was gracious enough to help them pick the words up, clean them off a bit and reshape them to match their intended meaning, but there were a few times I was tired enough, out of sorts enough, that I just let them lie in the dust where they fell.

When it's been my turn to watch my words fail, I am grateful there's not been someone there with a platform and a mic to broadcast my clumsiness to the nation, indeed, the world. It's bad enough to stand there and try to recover the dropped words; to explain what I really meant when it's just been me and one or two others. I can't imagine the embarrassment of having my red-faced stumblings shared gleefully across the airwaves

Just this once, I'm willing to cut the guy a little slack.

Tough on Crime

Bronia was a Holocaust survivor. A young teen when the war broke out, she was sent to Auschwitz for the first part of her imprisonment, then to Germany to work in the factories where she finished out the war.

Once the war ended, she came to Kansas City with her husband. (I asked her once, "why, of all the places in the world, Kansas City?" She replied, as if no further explanation was necessary, "that's where Truman was from!")

Bronia stood all of five feet tall, maybe, and in her younger days was a slim girl. (By the time I knew her, she was quite round - she told me once she didn't care how much she weighed, but after her experience in the camps, she was determined she would never be hungry again. And she wasn't.)

After they arrived in Missouri, she and her husband opened a bakery at 31st and Woodland. The neighborhood there wasn't a bad one back then, but there are always a few bad apples about.

One day, a normal business day, a man came in with a gun. He pointed it at Bronia, standing behind the register, and demanded she give him the money.

Rather than money, she gave him a piece of her mind. What did he think he was doing? Didn't he know how thin their margins were? She had no money to spare! This was America, and she hadn't come this far to get all she'd built since arriving here taken away!

He'd picked the wrong bakery to rob. Back in the day, she'd faced down Eichmann. Some punk with a gun wasn't going to worry her any.

As she berated him for his lack of good sense and manners, she was busy packing up a bag of doughnuts. She finished up her tirade with a bit of compassion - surely, he wouldn't be trying to rob Bronia's bakery if he wasn't hungry. She came around the counter, put the bag of goodies in his free hand, and pushed him out the door, telling him not to come back again until he'd learned some sense!

I can picture the man, standing on the sidewalk, looking at the gun in one hand and the bag of bakery goods in the other. A bit dazed, not sure what just happened, he goes on his way, still puzzled and definitely well-chastened - never to bother Bronia again.

If only all robberies could end the same way. A well measured dose of compassion dished out alongside an eye-opening moment where the would-be-criminal learns to see others as something other than marks to be taken.

We might need more bakeries then, but we'd definitely need fewer prisons.