Tag: standing up

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Learning Normal

“Scott … he’s not letting Potatoes near the seeds again.”

I sighed. This had been a running theme of our first day or two in the Finch Family Revival. We’d finally managed to get a pair of birds, Potatoes and Molasses, named for a silly song on a favorite cartoon. On arrival, they were everything two finches should be: cute, energetic, curious.

But they were also not the matched pair we’d been seeking. Potatoes is a society finch. Molasses is a zebra finch. For those of you not steeped in the intricacies of Birdie Lore, that’s the Odd Couple: the quiet-living, polite individual suddenly asked to be roommates with Mr. Pushy.

Most of the time it didn’t seem to matter. They’d quarantined together for a week at the pet store and seemed appropriately friendly and affectionate when it came time to discover the strange new setting of Chez Rochat (or at least a comfy cage within it). But when Potatoes would land on the seed tray, Molasses would get uncomfortably close. “Ahem. Excuse me. You know that’s MY spot … right?”

And off Potatoes would go, putting off her meal until later that night.

We tried a separate dish. Results were … ambiguous at best. We weren’t taking them back – we’d never returned a pet in our marriage and we weren’t about to start now. Reluctantly, knowing how social finches were, we bought a second cage and began putting it together. And then we gave it one more day, partly from hope and partly from the knowledge that moving just ONE finch out of a cage is like trying to catch a single specific fly out of a swarm: a matter of grace, delicacy and no small amount of luck.

Something happened.

Potatoes grew a backbone.

Molasses hadn’t stopped coming over with his “Watcha doin’, why’re ya here, lemme see, lemme see.” But Potatoes stopped retreating. And faced with that, Molasses didn’t push it. Before long, the two were eating together at the seed tray like old buddies on lunch break.

They’d had to relearn what normal meant. And they pulled it off.

That gives me hope for the rest of us.

About 100 million of us are now at least partly vaccinated from COVID-19 (including the Rochat household). With that, the rules of “normal” are starting to get rewritten again: how to travel, who to visit, when the masks can come off and when they still need to stay on. We’re finding out once again how to live with each other, especially during this transition period when some are protected and some aren’t.

When the dust settles, it’s highly likely that some pieces of how we live and work won’t look anything like they did before. (And sadly, as we saw recently in Boulder, some pieces of it may be all too familiar.)  But one thing will be just as true as it was in 2019 – or, for that matter, as it was during that oh-so-chaotic 2020.

We still have to do this together.

That doesn’t mean rolling over for the demands of the callous and the cruel, any more than sharing a cage meant Potatoes had to starve herself. But it does mean remembering what we learned during the Great Pandemic, or should have: that we all depend on each other, that small acts of compassion can make big differences, that it’s worth giving a little to get a better world.

That when the world changes, we can change with it. And remain neighbors through it.

A finch can learn it. Maybe we can, too.

Meanwhile, anyone need an unused bird cage?  

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Standing Like a (Little) Rock

Ten years ago, I had the chance to hear Minnijean Brown Trickey encourage everyone to take the road less comfortable.

The name might not ring a bell. After all, it’s been 60 years since the Little Rock Nine made their way to high school accompanied by the 101st Airborne. Sixty years since a tooth-and-nail battle to bring black students to an all-white school, in the face of every obstacle that could be erected. It’s a faceoff that’s become iconic – an image, a newsreel, a chapter in a history book.

Suddenly, for one night, it became flesh-and-blood. And as Minnijean spoke of what she had seen and done, an entire audience asked itself “What would I have done then? Could I have been as strong?” No one doubted the right thing to do, or even that it still needed to be done – but that first step seemed so long, toward a world of uncertainty and danger and arrest.

Minnijean,  who once spilled chili “accidentally on purpose” on another student that harassed her, was gentle in response.

“Everyone is conflicted,” she said, in words that I took down at the time for The Emporia Gazette. “You might have to get kicked out of a few things. And you might find out how strong and courageous you are because you got kicked out of a few things. … It’s not about being arrested. It’s about being able to sleep at night.”

Self-respect. But not wholly self-reliance. Everyone is scared, she insisted. Everyone wants someone braver to help them be less scared.

Everyone needs everyone.

True then. True now.

***

When I first saw the news out of Charlottesville, I couldn’t find the words to meet it. It still seems unreal. Or maybe too real, the unwanted made undeniable. Torches and Nazi flags. Naked hate. Death, cold and real.

Some of us are lucky; we don’t have to think about this sort of hate on a daily basis. But like a mouse in the walls, not seeing it doesn’t mean it’s not there. And like those rodents, by the time you have to see it, the problem has grown.

It also becomes a wake-up call.

We’re a nation that argues. We always have been, even if the present time feels especially vicious. But if there’s anything I’ve seen mass agreement on from left, right, up, down, and all around, it’s that this evil has no place here. No, it’s not unanimous, sadly. But my goodness, there are a lot of us.

Enough to call evil by its name. Enough to stand.

This is the evil that friends and family fought as troops on the battlefield.

This is the evil that my English grandparents fought as workers in the factory.

This is the evil that has defined evil for four generations of authors, moviemakers, playwrights, and more.

This is the evil that sleeps beneath the human soul, waiting for an opportunity.

And it must be opposed.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m a First Amendment absolutist. Fred Phelps had the same right to speak as Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a country where one has wide latitude to speak evil and hate and horror if they will.

But the rest of us have the freedom not to listen.

The rest of us have the freedom to argue, and to oppose, and to ridicule. (Evil hates ridicule.)

The rest of us have the freedom to say not on my property. Not on my website. Not on my dime.

And when hateful speech becomes harmful action, an entire nation must be ready to show that actions have consequences.

This is not a comfortable duty we’re called to. Awareness never is. Confrontation never is. The first step toward better is as long as it was in 1957.

And as necessary.

Everyone wants someone braver to help them, Minnijean said. We can be each other’s someone.

And then, perhaps, we can all sleep a little better at night.