No More Kicking Cans

to kick the can down the road:

put off confronting a difficult issue or making an important decision, typically on a continuing basis

Recently, but prior to George Floyd’s death, these two sentences came to mind.

No more kicking cans down the road. There is no more road left.

With those words came an image. An accumulation of cans piled up against a barrier. Each can had a word on it that identified one of those difficult issues and important decisions that have persistently been put off. Cans that we have continued to kick down the road. I could see the cans. It took longer for the barrier that stopped them to come into view. Was it a brick wall? One of those concrete barriers you see on the New Jersey turnpike? Or maybe, the gates around the White House?

Squinting my inner eyes, I finally saw it. The barrier was the Earth herself, drops of sweat on her weary brow from the effects of climate change, wearing a mask like the ones we wear to protect one another from spreading COVID-19. The global pandemic has exposed this pile of cans for what it is. The accumulation of years of unwillingness to do the right thing, take the long view, and reckon with our own tendencies to look out for me and mine, while looking away from them and theirs.

Then George Floyd was murdered.

He pleaded with the man with the knee on his neck, telling him repeatedly, that he couldn’t breathe. He pleaded until he ran out of air. And then he was dead.

The Earth, against which all of those cans have been kicked, is telling us that she can’t breathe.

Words alone wouldn’t communicate what I was thinking and feeling, and while I might have a bit of a way with words, not so much with colored pens and pencils. That’s when I called my friend Willa. A sophomore in high school with a heart that is deep and wide, Willa has a keen intellect, and a grasp of the world far beyond her years. I want to be like Willa when I grow up.

I asked if she would consider drawing something to capture what I had seen in my mind’s eye.

She would.

And she did.

Except not exactly.

She took what I said, filtered it through her own lens, and came up with something so much better. Something more powerful, and disturbingly accurate—the Earth in full protest. Willa saw what I couldn’t. The cans are not heaped in a pile waiting to be picked up. It’s too late for that. They’ve all ruptured. Their contents have spilled out all over everything, and we have to deal with the mess we have made of the world. Starting with the racism that has been laid bare. In my mind, racism has been its own separate issue. That’s because I am white. To anyone who is not white, the impacts of racism are felt within the context of every other issue filling the skies above the protesting Earth. Yes, white people are impacted by these issues too. But not simply because they are white.

No more kicking cans down the road. There is no more road left.

Earth is calling us to action. To not only take to the streets in protest against what is wrong, but to lace up our shoes and get to work for what is right.

Look at her.

Feet firmly planted, her fists raised in defiance, she is simply not going to take it any more.

We can’t either.

With gratitude to Willa McLaughlin

Family Reunion

Today, Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle had a brief reunion with her dad Gryffindor, and her sister Piper. The last time these three family members were together was on December 1st, and I will never forget Gracie’s first night at home. That’s because I was awake all night, as she howled and cried in her crate next to our bed until it was time to get up.

It was her first night away from the only family she had ever known, and her loneliness and pain were heard in every high pitched cry. I can’t even imagine how scary and confusing that must have been for her. The next night, Tom suggested that we move her crate into the mudroom, and that one of us sleep on the floor next to her for a few nights, as she began to adjust to her new pack,. Tom took the first night, I took the next one, and by the third night, she was ready to sleep on her own.

She was home, and we were family.

Watching her reconnect with her first family today, it was easy to see that they recognized one another immediately, as they sniffed and wagged, sniffed and wagged, and of course, sniffed some more. Looking at Gracie and Piper, I could see the similarities - the shape of their faces and their body size - and the differences - their color and the texture of their coats. Like all of us, their shared genetics and early experiences have shaped the pups that they are today, and will continue to influence who they become as they mature.

As I watched this family reunion in progress, I was reminded that there’s no getting around it, family is family. And whether we stick together like glue, or hope we never see one another again, our family is always a part of who we are. There are no perfect families, and most of ours are a mixture of the good, the bad, and the seriously ugly, and we get to choose what to do with the family we’ve got. When it comes to family, it seems that the very best we can do is to celebrate every single shred of goodness, learn and grow from the bad, and heal from and leave behind the ugly so as not to pass it on to the next generation.

Driving away from that sweet reunion, I was grateful once again for yet another lesson from our Gracie-Girl, and for the fact that we two legged types don’t have to sniff and wag in order to recognize family.

The Arcs of Our Histories

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.” 

Theodore Parker                                                                                                                                       (Unitarian Minister and abolitionist. This quote is an excerpt from a sermon he delivered in 1853.)

My husband Tom and I arrived last night at the home of our dear friend, Birthe, in Lindum, a village in Denmark that dates back 2500 years. The family home, which was built in the 1800s, sits across the street from the village blacksmith shop, and in the shadow of the village church that was constructed in 12th century.

Next to the house, and behind the church, is the village cemetery.

From her kitchen window, our friend is able to see the stone, found in her garden, that marks the grave of her husband, Niels, also Tom’s host brother when he was here in 1965 as a high school foreign exchange student. 

We slept upstairs in one of the many bedrooms in this house that has been home to the same family for five generations. 

Before a new day dawned, the small house next door burned down. 

As we sit over coffee this morning, smoke still hanging in the air from the fire, and the church bells ringing in a new day, as they have every morning for generations, I can’t help but be struck by both the shortness of a life span, and the long arc of the history of this place. 

The tension between the two is worthy of our consideration.

Towards what do the long arcs of our own short histories bend?

Written with gratitude to Birthe, and in memory of Niels.