Looking for that ray of hope that always manages to survive
I was thinking seriously about taking my Christmas decorations down last week when word came that there had been a school shooting again — this time in Minnesota. It happened just seven blocks from my son’s home in a beautiful, friendly Twin Cities suburb.
Was his family OK? To get an answer, I didn’t call. I texted. They were all right, answered #4 Son (birth order, not quality of life).
“The swat team answering the call went to the wrong school,” he reported. “Not a confidence builder.”
Because I was working on this column, I added. “It’s going to be hard to be funny this time.”
“Maybe don’t be funny,” he answered immediately. “Sometimes, things aren’t funny.”
But there’s that feeling that we need to find something good. “Look for the silver lining” the old song went, and we all sang along in the post World War II days of the cold war when we expected to be attacked at any moment. In the old days of the Cold War, every newscast was filled with predictions of imminent destruction — and that was before television or the internet.
After Russia detonated a nuclear bomb in 1949, schools across the United States began having air raid drills, training students to take refuge under their desks. Duck and Cover was the name of the game. The idea was to make the experience appear like a delightful interlude, as atomic wars so often are, apparently.
The mascot was a little cartoon turtle named Bert. He hid in his shell while we were supposed to dive under our desks, covering our heads with our hands. How this might provide protection from a nuclear bomb was unclear. Also, since girls weren’t allowed to wear anything but dresses or skirts to school, our nether garments were uncovered for the duration of the Cold War, providing research material for a whole generation of future Victoria’s Secret customers.
The grownups pretended that this lighthearted approach would keep us safe and we pretended we believed them. Trouble was, unlike Bert, we had no shells.
We also believed we had no future. My goal in those days was to live to be 16. I figured after that I’d be too old to care, and it would all be downhill anyway.
I first wrote about the shock and trauma of a school shooting in 1998. It happened at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon (4 dead, 25 injured). My #2 Daughter walked over to the vigil service with classmates from the University of Oregon. She sent me a piece of the blue ribbon that the students had woven into the schoolyard fence in memory of those lost.
I wrote about that in this very column in this very paper. (Let’s hear it for the free press.) Readers were quick to respond, and one wrote to say, “I read your column every month because you are usually funny. Well, I read your column today and you weren’t funny.” The message was clear, and that’s how I learned it was my job to find and report on that little ray of hope that always manages somehow to survive.
In our religious ed classes years ago, we helped the children make vigil light holders glazed with ash from the Mount St. Helens eruption so that they would know that beauty can come from catastrophe. Canadian crafter Sandra Solon uses melted candles leftover from Christmas and her children’s original art to create valentine keepsakes. Beauty can come out of meltdowns.
First thing to do is turn off the radio and TV, and anything else that pretends to give you the news. Keep the newspaper though. Then, take a deep breath and look for something that will ignite a smile. Dr. Patt Schwab says that she tries to make five strangers smile every day. My favorite thing when standing in the grocery store is to try to get the whole line doing warm up Tai Chi exercises. Sometimes it works. Sometimes they throw produce at you.
While I was standing in line last week, the customer in front of me, a young mother, didn’t have enough money. She frantically searched through her purse to no avail. She only needed $6.
The clerk said to me, “Could you possibly help her?” He shouldn’t have had to ask. I remembered my days as a young Army wife with not an extra penny.
“I can’t let you,” she said. Crying now.
“You’d do it for me,” I said, and knew it was true.
We’re going to make it somehow. I was going to take my Christmas decorations down, but maybe I’ll leave them up awhile longer. We can use the light.
Where to find Dorothy in February
- 9 a.m. Feb 7 and 21: Zoom Coffee Chat and Change the World. For questions and registration link, email Dorothy@itsnevertoolate.com
- Swimming upstream radio show: February Celebrations of the Heart. Log on to https://pod.co/swimming-upstream-radio-show or anywhere you get podcasts.
Contact Dorothy Wilhelm at Dorothy@itsnevertoolate.com; www.itsnevertoolate.com; PO Box 881, DuPont, WA 98327; or 800-548-9264.