After a trip to the beach, I attempt to give him a quick bath to rinse away residual sand or germy fish water. Once in the tub however, it’s difficult to get him out. “You’re turning prune-ish,” I insist, “just look at your wrinkled fingertips.” Unconcerned, he gives a cursory glance at his fingers and continues playing with his bath toys.
I open the drain, turn to retrieve a towel and he has closed the drain. We go on like this until the tub is empty. I reach for him and he goes limp, like a wet, spineless jellyfish.
Oh, he’s a handful, this one! But, I am bigger and somewhat stronger. Finally, I drape a towel over him and extract him from the waterless tub, as he exclaims defiantly, “No, never, never ever, not, nothing, (* slight pause as his brain searches *) none!”
He has just put together every negative word his barely two-year-old vocabulary could muster. I know I shouldn’t encourage his contrariness by laughing, but gosh darn it, the kid is clever. And so what if my amusement at his recalcitrance makes his parents' job all the tougher. He and I laugh together. It’s a grandparent/grandchild privilege.
I try to find humor in difficult situations. It helps me cope with that which I cannot control, like someone else’s behavior. I can’t make a two-year-old agree with me every time. Nor, should I necessarily do so. It is a two-year-old’s prerogative to defy adults as he/she begins to mature into a independent-thinking human being. They are wired to emerge from an angelic lovingly-reliant-on-you-stage and into the frustratingly diametric territory of the “terrible twos.” My own dear, departed mother used to laugh as she handed down the parental curse, “I hope you someday have a child as defiant as you are.”
***
A presidential election year is never something to which I look forward, what with all the negative bantering, but this year it’s “off the charts."
Back in grammar school Sister Beata taught us about the political process of an election in a democracy by having us elect a class president. A boy named Andrew won. (He went on to become involved in the perimeter of Chicago politics and recently retired his latest position as commissioner of the Dept. of Planning and Development under Mayor Emmanuel). As I recall, Andrew ran a “clean” campaign. He was honest and fair and stuck to the substantive issues, like staggered recess periods (allowing more room for physical activity on the playground), and limited “pop” quizzes. He did not engage in negative or defamatory attacks upon his opponent’s character. And he stuck to this even when his opponent made posters calling him, “Randy Andy,” (until the nuns confiscated and destroyed the signs, threatening to punish anyone caught even using the phrase.)
***
I cannot believe that just a few months ago I looked forward to reading of Mr. Trump’s inane antics; that I actually found some perverse amusement in him, as if to say “Let’s see what kind of craziness he’s up to now?”
How wrong was I?! It is clearly not a laughing matter.
We have a dangerous person running for the important office of President of the United States of America. He purposely inflicts harm by encouraging people to be as uninhibited in their morally bereft vacuity as he is.
Trump strikes a chord with people who somehow feel insecure, or as Olive Oyl called it in the Popeye cartoon, “un-secure,” as they seemingly lack confidence, or, at the very least, they fail to recognize their own strengths. These malcontents want to point the finger of blame at the government, at immigrants, at political correctness, at anyone or anything except themselves for what they consider their "poor lot in life."
I’m not going to list Trump’s reckless and egomaniacal assaults. Everyone has heard them. And they are coming so rapid-fire that it’s hard to keep up. Besides, I couldn’t respond nearly as eloquently as Mr. and Mrs. Kahn already have, nor passionately as Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald Reagan, who posted:
“Your glib and horrifying comment about ‘Second Amendment people’ was heard around the world… It was heard by the person sitting alone in a room, locked in his own dark fantasies, who sees unbridled violence as a way to make his mark in the world, and is just looking for ideas. Yes, Mr. Trump, words matter. But, then you know that, which makes this all even more horrifying."
New York Times’ Frank Bruni wrote:
Being angry at Donald Trump for comments like this increasingly makes little sense - it's like being mad at a 2 year old for throwing a tantrum.
Mr. Bruni, it’s an insult to every two-year-old to have their normal childhood development compared with Mr. Trump’s behavior.
Trump’s behavior and comments are not “childish,” they are calculated and cruel.
***
I was at book club, shortly after I became a full-time resident here in the rural heartland of America. We’d read a book that led to a discussion on racial intolerance. I confessed to the group my naivety that upon moving to a mostly all-caucasian community, and after working for 20 years at a forward-thinking, urban Catholic university, to find that such intolerance still existed. “I was quite dismayed,” I explained to the group. I questioned our choice of a home in this new locale, saying to Practical Husband, “What have we gotten ourselves into?!”
When I left book club that evening a co-member pulled me aside, and attempted to reassure me with a whispered, “We are not all like that out here, you know."
To the world, I say:
There are tens of millions of wonderful, welcoming, open-minded, compassionate and loving people who reside here in the U.S.A. Hopefully, we will not whisper, but collectively stand up and speak loud and clear in November to Mr. Trump, “No, never, never ever, not, nothing, none!”
***
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.” -Robert Kennedy
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| Let us set a good example for our young ones, and for, oh, I don't know... like maybe 7 generations coming? |
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