Tag: acceptance

I Had A Dream

I had a dream that I awoke to a world of rationality, patriotism, non-partisan peace among men and charity to those who mean no harm. Love, hope for the future and for those willing to roll up their sleeves and work hard the opportunities were there.  The churches and synagogues were an integral part of  jointly helping their rebounding communities ….and I felt safe. Malice, greed and hatred were words unfamiliar to us.  The year was 1947 and I was 8 years old.  

This morning I opened my eyes and the forward flight of  seventy years brought me back to reality that has no dream attached to it, but all the realities of our 2017 collective nightmares.  How did this happen?

I have lived through 14 presidential elections, my family’s preferred candidate not always getting elected, but my parents were patriots who lived through the depression and respected our Constitution and the democratic process.  With hate and malice toward none, they placed patriotism and love of country before politics. I am grateful for their strength that has allowed me to move forward in my life, sharing their same values.

My father always cautioned me that if I couldn’t say something nice, keep it to myself.   “There are other ways to give positive reenfircement than hurting someone with negative speech or actions,” he would say.  “Think before you speak. Always give someone the benefit of doubt and a chance,” he advised. “Do as your faith guides you, not as ‘they’ do.”

Well, it is evident everywhere I turn, all of this sage elder advice from my father years ago has evaporated in today’s divided political and hateful rethoric. 

 With  fake news running rampant on the internet and passed around greedily like Krispy Kremes, everyone salivating to get  their ‘two cents’ in to see who can be the most hatefully  divisive, politicians holding up the democratic process because they angrily feel like it, Facebook ‘likes’ attached to vile negative posts, it seems we are doomed to perpetual division. 

Where oh where has my country gone? Is everyone drinking denial Kool Aid? Hey folks, if you know civics, we have a new democratically elected president.  The electoral college has spoken. I understand, reality bites for some, but acceptance and support of our Constitution is part of the privilege of living in this great country.

 

I am off Facebook and only sharing my blogs. I have turned off the television and instead I am reading more and working at my own craft and thank God everyday for the beautiful  adoptive children in my extended family life who wouldn’t be here today if their birth mothers had had an abortion. 

 I am boycotting my once respected union peers out in Hollywood. I want to see them ply their craft and I care not a twit their stance on politics. Whether folks agree or not with you, fellow actors,  award events are not the platforms to share your political rage. Just because you can, doesn’t make it right, or even interesting.  

So, I don’t know how long my withdrawal from the political insanity will be, but  with malice toward none I am giving the new president a chance to keep us safe, improve the economy, and move us forward. If he doesn’t, then, lucky me, democracy will allow a change. 


In the meantime, for someone,  do or say something kind today, will you? One small step for mankind may collectively save all of us in the end.

Artwork by Norman Rockwell

Copyright©Sandra Hart 2017.      All  Rights Reserved

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If I Am Important, You Are Important

If I Am Important Then You Are Important
“I just don’t know …… my grandkids get me, but I can’t understand my son.  He just doesn’t get it.”
And so went the conversation I had about a year ago with a good friend of mine who is about my age and is also a grandmother. She only has one child, a grown man now, a doctor, and somehow he still wants her to be the mother and grandmother of his imagination, even though his mother-in-law, the other grandma, is young enough to to be her daughter. He just can’t accept her flamboyant bangles and bright red lipstick and allow her to be the human being with a kind and giving heart she has always been throughout his life; he evidently never really saw, appreciated, nor thought about his mother as a person until he became successful in his head and had children of his own. 
She told me she feels he sometimes shuts the good things in his life from her, the grandma with the panache and red lipstick his children love. The woman who constantly gave to him, asking little if anything in return now has her nose pressed against the window of his life from the outside while others are welcome to enjoy the good life my friend helped him achieve as a young man.
My final thought to her was that maybe that’s the problem. Maybe  she should have asked for more from her son along the way instead of just always giving.  Perhaps she has perpetuated a relationship of one-sided giving that will be hard to change. I certainly hope not. 
As usual in most of my blogs this conversation has stayed with me and recently started my brain thinking in-depth more about being a mother and grandmother, whether it is a different relationship with daughters than it is with sons, what it means today and what it means to me. Mother’s Day has just passed and it kind of fits in right now. 
I am fortunate to have two daughters and a son, so I have experiences with mother/daughter and with the mother/son relationships.  I can’t speak for other parent/ child relationships, I only know mine.  In my experience each has been different and evolved into opposites in adulthood. 
I’m trying to think that when I was raising my children if I actually demanded as much from my son as I did my daughters. I know they all had to do chores on Saturday. The girls would vacuum, clean their rooms and help with the house chores, but honestly, I don’t ever remember asking my son to do anything around the house. except try to pick up his clothes up off the floor.  (As a matter-of-fact I was reminded recently by one of my daughters about the picture we took of my son sitting on top of a pile of clothes – a mountain – in his room.) 
 So in my friend’s case, I am finally realizing, I, too, am guilty of treating my son differently. Boys go off and leave their mothers, girls stay.
An old proverb states, “A son is a son until he takes a wife. A daughter is a daughter for all of her life.” Knowing this, is that why we sometimes don’t demand for fear of breaking that bond too soon? 
 I always made my daughters accountable and never minced words with advice when I thought necessary. I never questioned it would weaken our bond or make them love me less. But for some reason I never did the same with my son. Is that normal? 
Our best mother’s dream for our sons is to be able to have him find his soulmate that will love him and share his life’s ups and downs long after we are gone, so why did I tiptoe so much until that moment? 
“Mothers who are ‘important’ convey two main messages to their sons: If I am important then you are important; and I am important so I am worthy of your kindness, which I will affirm,” she said.

“This second message, which is often dramatically overlooked in the child development literature, is perhaps the most important ingredient to helping children develop into wonderful adults,” said Dr. Stone Fish.

Mothers can serve as good models of how to treat a woman with respect, according to Dr. Coleman, a psychologist in private practice in San Francisco specializing in family and parenting issues.

“However, mothers who can comfortably learn to set limits with their sons and act in a healthy self-interested way produce sons who are better friends and partners to women,” explained Dr. Coleman, who is also on the training faculty of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group and has served on the clinical faculties of The University of California at San Francisco/Mt. Zion Crisis Clinic and The Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology.  

I have often said to my children that being a mother is the best job I have ever had in my life and if I had a ‘do over’ In hindsight I could have done better.  I know without a doubt am so privileged that ‘part of the way, you were to walk with me.’**

**To My Children – Sandra Hart

©Sandra Hart 2015. all Rights Reserved