Something I find disturbing in political discussions on the internet, TV, and in general, is the growing number of people who dislike (even hate) government per se.  This outlook isn’t limited to one or the other end of our political spectrum.  It’s a general attitude that has become an undercurrent in our present culture.

I have problems with this.  Not because I support the way our government functions, or even a ton of its policies.  But rather I believe government needs to be a pact among our citizens to provide as decent a life as possible for as many as possible.

Clearly this isn’t the present case; systemic reforms are desperately needed.  Just as clearly, the road to those reforms cannot be Hate Street.  The only way that we can reach the pact mentioned above is if people talk to each other with respect and try to understand the others’ needs.

I’ve been tough on progressives for their all too often dismissive attitudes toward people with whom they disagree.  But it’s not just them.  It takes two to talk.  And two to listen.  And two to try to understand.  And a whole lot more than two to change the way things are.

Unfortunately, media being what it is–the use of polarization as a ratings tool–as well as promoting party line bullshit, may very well make reasonable discourse impossible.  And that’s a highway “hardnosed” to hell.

More thoughts:  The economy and the incredible budget cuts in federal and municipal governments have had a terribly negative effect on women and people of color disproportionate to the rest of our population.

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp339-public-sector-jobs-crisis/

This reminds me of when Clinton “ended welfare as we knew it.”  Bang, a sudden huge spike in jailing women for non-violent crimes.  All the better to jumpstart ‘for profit’ prison systems.  Money for prison growth when sixteen million children go to sleep hungry every night in the United States.  Are these really our priorities?  I didn’t think so.

More thoughts:  I understand why people don’t like paying taxes and it’s clear the major bang for the buck are the wars our leaders place us in.  But does this tax hatred include a reluctance to pay for police and firefighters?  Trash collection?  It certainly includes a lack of desire to pay for first rate schools, teachers and other public sector employees.  Are we actually happy having a crumbling infrastructure?  Bridges we can’t cross, potholes that wreck our cars’ suspensions?  Blocked roads and highways?  To say nothing about our desperate need to update everything from education to transit systems to actually be a player in this century.  We know private industry won’t take us there unless it brings great profits, which, by their definition means cutting corners and leaving government to hold the bag. (See The Big Dig, Boston.)  Once again, this hurts the poor, working, and middle classes.  Not Bechtel Parsons.  Worse, the Supreme Court decided corporations were entitled to the same rights as humans.  Which, as the sign says, “I’ll believe that the minute they execute one in Texas.”

More thoughts:  Unions.  The Walker victory in Wisconsin (regardless of the money differential spent) says something about our culture’s perceptions and attitudes. I don’t know enough about seniority as an issue so won’t opine (surprise, surprise) but let’s have some perspective.  Seniority simply doesn’t stand alone.  Unions have also brought us Child Labor laws, forty-hour work week, benefits, the busting of sweatshops, the push for a minimum wage, and job protection.

Worse, our distaste toward unions is allowing basic rights like collective bargaining to be eliminated or neutered and pensions decimated.  Sure, unions have done stupid things and need some serious reform–but what institutions haven’t and don’t?  Hell, the financial sector came within an eyelash of completely destroying our economy, but the only people who curse them are the people who got fucked by ’em.  I never hear a general call for an election built around “bank busting,” a refrain often heard about unions.

More thoughts:  Of a much different nature.  Music.  Been listening to Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammon’s album We’ll Be Together Again.  One song in particular, My Foolish Heart, reflects how two different horn styles can come together and create beyond belief beauty.  Ammons’ soft, seductive minimalism partnered with Stitts’ hard attack and shower of notes merge with each other in an almost miraculous manner.  The entire album is extraordinary but that song is worth the price of admission.

Also been listening to a friend’s (Bruce Turkel)

http://turkeltalks.com/index.php/everyone-wants-to-be-a-rock-star/

new cd called The Southbound Suspects.  Really super for a first.

I can’t think of better piano playing than Thelonious Monk’s Solo Monk and Monk Alone: The Complete Solo Studio Recordings of Thelonious Monk.  If this is fodder for debate, please argue away.

More thoughts:  Watching the construction of my new website by people whose aesthetic taste and expert technological skills   (Paula & Tim John) has been an eye-opening wonder.  The world in which they work might be virtual, but there is nothing virtual about the skill it takes to create something that’s beautifully reflective of me and Matt Jacob.  I’ve been crazy privileged to know Michael Paul Smith who designed my book covers and Tim and Paula.  Sometimes I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So.

“Making predictions is a very hard thing to do, especially when it’s about the future.” ~ Yogi Berra

I want to thank Sherri Frank Mazzotta for pinch hitting this week.  I’ll be back doing my thing next Monday.  Enjoy her post!!!  Zach

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my mother in doctors’ offices and hospitals.  “You’re my only kid that doesn’t tell me anything,” she says, apropos of nothing, as we sit in the ophthalmologist’s waiting room.  “It makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong as a parent.”

For a moment, I feel guilty.   My sisters tell my mother everything.  I have friends who are close to their mothers.  But I’ve never volunteered much about my relationships, jobs, or health.  I’m not sure why.  Here, in the waiting room, all I can do is shrug.  “Guy doesn’t tell you anything either,” I remind her, referring to my brother.  She agrees, and thankfully, moves on to another subject.

There’s no sense in sharing my thoughts now, at 47.  Is there?

It means my mother doesn’t really know me.  And I suppose, I don’t really know her.  But how do you change patterns of communication that have lasted a lifetime?

To be honest, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it.  I’ve never been one of those women who needed to write about her angst-filled relationship with her mother.  It isn’t angst-filled.  We have a good relationship, meaning we spend holidays and birthdays together.  We talk on the phone.  But expressing emotions has never come easy to my family.

Maybe it’s due to age, but suddenly my mother is pondering such issues and asking me to ponder them with her.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I’m not prepared.

When she was having heart palpitations, she waited all night before calling.  “I didn’t want to bother you,” she says.

In the emergency room, I help her change into a johnney.  The nurse puts electrodes on her chest, and I watch the numbers on the EKG climb higher and higher.  Mom’s 73 and has mostly been in good health. But as I look at her thin arms and exposed back, I wonder if this is the beginning of tests and pills and appointments with specialists.

After the nurse leaves, my mother makes a face and whispers, “She touched my tits.”

“No she didn’t, she was just putting the disks on your chest.”

She shakes her head.  “She didn’t have to touch me there.”

This is the mother I’m used to.  The one who worries about people staring at her on the bus; people eavesdropping on her conversations; and whether the nurse is a lesbian.  Not the mother who’s worried about me keeping things from her.

After her heart rate comes down, they admit her to the hospital for more tests.  I’m afraid she’ll be nervous having a male nurse do the intake, but when he steps out for a minute, she says, “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”  I’m married, so it’s not me she wants to fix up.

The nurse has a long list of questions.  “Do you follow any special diet?”

“No,” she says, thinking hard.  “But I want to try Nutri-System.  I’ve heard it’s better than Weight Watchers.”

I laugh.  “Mom, that’s not what he’s asking.”  This is also the mother I know:  The one with a quirky sense of humor.

The nurse asks if she feels safe at home, and the question confuses her.  “Safe?  Yes, I live with my daughter.  I couldn’t have done that if my husband was still alive.  Not that I wanted him to die,” she says.  “That didn’t come out right.”

She lives with one of my sisters.  My father died nearly 20 years ago, and I’d always hoped she’d find male companionship again.  From her admiring comments about the nurse and other men over the years, I think she wanted that too.  Yet she never pursued it.

“He was my one and only,” she tells the nurse.

When I was growing up, I watched my mother apply lipstick each night before Dad came home from work.  “I still get excited when I hear his voice on the phone,” she’d say.  She got up early to make us breakfast.  Made sure we lived in a clean house and had clean clothes to wear.  Was waiting for us after school.  But I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be anything like her:  Tending to husband, house, and children.

That thought astounds me now.  Makes me ashamed because it overlooks the generosity, compassion, and selflessness that were imbued in everything she did for our family–qualities that I aspire to.

We spend two days together in the hospital.  During that time, we talk about my father, my husband, aunts, and cousins.  It’s mostly my mother talking and me listening.  Despite my silence, she says, “I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here, Sherri.”   I wish I could offer more in the way of comfort.  Wish I could share more of myself.  But instead, I focus on practicalities like helping her walk to the restroom.  Bringing food when she’s hungry.  Making sure she’s not alone when they wheel her downstairs for the echo test.

For now–because it’s always been this way–that’s all I can give.

Recently she said, “We never say ‘I love you’ in our family, but we know we love each other.  Right?”  Once again, I didn’t know how to respond.  This is a new way of talking.  A new kind of courage.  Maybe someday I’ll have that courage too.  But it won’t be like a Lifetime movie, where one traumatic event suddenly brings us closer together; makes us spill our emotions like a sticky syrup.  It will happen–if it happens at all–gradually.  Clumsily.  One moment at a time.

At the end of that first day in the hospital, after yet another nurse had examined her, my mother looked at me and said, “Everybody’s playing with my tits today, I don’t know what it is.”

“They must be a hell of a pair,” I said, and we both laughed.

It was one moment.  One brief moment out of thousands more to come.