Arise, Call To Action!

 

If events are not meticulously documented

did they really happen? And if proof of their 

occurrence has been preserved and assembled 

for public view how can society be assured that 

such documentation is truly reliable, much less 

the ethical spur of those who proffer them as 

proof positive? Commemorative statuary in the 

'free world' along with naming of institutions in 

recognition of past influences on the trajectory of 

history are now in poor repute through charges 

of historical injustice, white supremacy and the 

arrogance of colonialists consigning the world's 

aboriginals, 'racialized' communities to dreary 

lives of slavery, penury, disease. In this nothing 

to be proud of in further interests of conscience-

grieving guilt prepared to thrust their breasts on the 

swords of anguished apology. So haul down those 

statues, rename academia's halls of intellectual 

achievement, gut and renovate national museums

re-writing history as nations shrink in shame of 

once-proud history now joining the reprehensible

annals of invisible infamy, vile imperialists!

 

 

It Was a Very ? Year

 

The year I was born my parents greeted

their first-born child, with three more

to follow at substantial intervals, all

to an immigrant family living in pride and

poverty, escapees from racial bigotry

social and institutional violence seeing

no possible future for themselves where

they were born. It was, coincidentally the

year that Nazi Germany denied the

League of Nation having any business

interfering in the way it treated Jews. In

that year of 1936 Britain's King George

died, making way for the ascension of

Edward VIII; Hitler opened the 4th

Winter Olympics; 4 million French workers

went on strike; racists almost beat Leon Blum

to death; the Hindenburg had its first test

flight; Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles.

Jews were warned of arrest should they

attempt to vote; Italy, Austria and Hungary

signed the pact of Rome; Britain, the U.S.

and France signed a naval accord; Italy

firebombed Harar, Ethiopia; Arab

highwaymen near Nablus killed three Jews;

Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa;

General Francisco Franco began the

Spanish civil war; The "Nazi Games" of

the 11th Olympic games opened in Berlin;

Benito Mussolini celebrated his "axis"

with Nazi Germany; A British Royal 

Commission investigated the underlying

cause of anti-Jewish riots which the Arab 

Higher Committee boycotted; Japan and

Nazi Germany signed the Anti-Komintern

pact; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia

Kazakhstan and Kirghistan joined the USSR;

Edward VIII abdicated for Wallis Warfield 

Simpson; and humble me was born.

 

 

  

 

These are your neighbours, now

grandparents to children as young

as their own were when you first

knew them. Some have become

firm friends, others have 

disqualified themselves from

that inner circle to remain firmly

acquaintances, but all are like

close-bound residents of a

small village whose moments in

life become public knowledge

by consent of the inevitable

or by design. Now the common

interest is the afflictions of

implacable aging as all are

bemused by the little-noticed

alterations in appearance, where

grey is the mutually shared common

denominator. That, and the growing

litany of hip-and-knee replacements

heart surgeries, catastrophic fall

recoveries and post-surgical

treatments for an encyclopedia

of diseases. There, on the street

where neighbour meets neighbour

each sighs to the universal refrain

of time and tide's impatience.

 

 

Birthdays and Memories

We're talking about Mum, a recurring topic

in most of our infrequent conversations. I fiddle 

with the receiver to position it so her voice 

delivers a clearer message as she struggles with 

that message, short of breath. We've long since 

exhausted our takes on our mother's suitability 

as a parental role model and through our emotion

starved childhood knew we'd raise our own with 

empathy, open emotion and loving guidance.

Did it help? Do our own children now that we're

so old think more kindly of us than we do of our 

mother? Questions we bat back and forth. Now when 

we speak of our mother it's to recall little events --

things we remember about her. She is the younger 

daughter, the one who changed our mother's soiled 

diapers in her dementia. I'm the older one who rarely visited.   

Each of us us thought the other had it easier from our  

constantly haranguing mother until one day we finally  

opened it all up and spoke for hours. She can't do that anymore. 

Talking exhausts her. Walking exhausts her. She is 

approaching her 81st year. Our mother died at 84 of

frontal-lobe dementia. I feel badly for my little sister 

who sent her older sister a birthday card for her 85th 

birthday, arriving just around the corner of time before

she too, four years later is in the final throes of dementia.

 

 

Destined

 

 

Perhaps it was that his subconscious

led him to create that geographic distance

to break the spell of the emotional closeness

that stifled his independent future where

his experiences would be his alone, this

the youngest of our children, the very one

with whom his parents found bonds of

attachment in a shared love of all that

seemed of vital importance in the quality

of their lives, separately and together. When

his father many decades earlier painted a

picture of this son that hangs on our bedroom

wall perhaps subconsciously he faces away

eyes on some distant landscape as he stands

poised on a promontory, fields and forests

stretched out before and below his beloved

figure. We see this distant son every day on

awakening and on preparing for slumber, eyes

fixed on a distant horizon, back to us, and no

bereavement on our part can convince him to

turn his head, look at us, for his future called.

 

 

Boxing Day Gift

Her photo is on the back page of the local

paper. She is a young, attractive woman

a mother of four, the caption adds. Beside her 

another woman, her best friend. On the front page 

a headline: Killing domestic in nature: Police. 

And the quote that it is only a "homicide incident 

domestic in nature". Nothing to see here, a life 

snuffed out. But the public need not be overly 

concerned is the message; no general threat looms. 

No word of the arrested, the live-in boyfriend 

who might or might not have fathered any of those 

children. Testimonial from tearful friend how 

cheerful and good-natured, a perfect mother she 

was. A crowd-funding campaign will go forward.

Nothing to see here, a life snuffed out. An event

so common anywhere in the world, the reader

sighs, turns the page, pours another cup of coffee.

 

Sisters

 

 

Life began for them as sisters growing up

in the Pale of Settlement where Jews were 

sent to live lest they contaminate other 

Russians with their direct presence.

Sisters but unalike in every conceivable way. 

One married a Ukrainian peasant the other 

married my father. They were together as 

man and wife for over thirty years raising

four children together. Cancer took him at age 53. 

It wasn't cancer that took my mother though 

she had entertained colon cancer twice. 

Eventually thirty years past my father's death 

my mother was placed in a communal setting 

for elderly patients with dementia. My aunt

an inmate, greeted her sister on arrival but my 

mother failed to recognize her. She did though

mention the long-dead man she always referred 

to by his family name planned to drop by

sometime later that evening, and smiled.