It might be spring

It might be spring

by Laura Harrison McBride

We had no lilacs at our city house in France--so I painted some on the security gate on our front window.

A funny winter, this last. Hardly

any cold weather. What there

was seemed colder than usual.

Still, the camellias began to bloom

in January. The white one I see

driving home from Waitrose

flowered at the appointed time. But

the snowdrops were late. The

lipstick-coloured camellias—the

Kiss Me Corals and Strike Me Pinks--

have only been out a week or so. No

matter; they are dropping dead heads

as usual, littering the ground below

with mushy brown dying flowers. They're

a mess, camellias are, after they bloom.

I don't like them.

I like neater plants—for instance, lilacs,

whose blossoms just get dry if they are

left unpicked. Not in this house, of course.

I pick all the lilacs. I would pick every lilac

there was, if I could. I'd bury my nose

in an armful of lilacs, the old lavender

kind—no use for white or deep purple

or red-purple because they smell funny,

not like lilacs.

I live here for the lilacs. After a nomad's

life for sixty years, I've got three planted,

an old traditional, a miniature Syrian

(dark purple, sigh) and a topiary old purple

lilac in a tub on the deck. I wonder if any

will give me armloads of blooms before

I die. It takes a while for a bush to reach

armload status, and—after eight years

since the first was planted—we are not there yet.

They say people live until a special event

happens in their lives, one they've waited for.

A wedding, a birth, a commemoration.
Something. For me, it will be lilacs, tons

of lilacs on a bush as big and giving as the one

in my grandmother's backyard 70 years ago,

hard against the back fence, competing

for space with an old-fashioned climbing

rose bush, and farther off, a Rose of

Sharon. I hated the Rose of Sharon. It

drew bees, and did nothing at all

of any use. I liked the roses.

But the lilacs. Last year, when we were in

France in the spring and away from my lilacs,

I made Simon climb down into a gully off a road

we often traveled and pick me the last two

blossoms on an abandoned bush. He didn't

want to; he felt it was stealing. I argued, told

him if anyone cared for the bush gone rogue,

they'd have come to pick the blossoms before

they mainly died. In the end, I prevailed.

But it wasn't pretty.

That's how much I love lilacs.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

Suffer the children

 

Children survivors of Auschwitz

Suffer the children

I'm hearing the screaming this morning. The

screams of Jamal Kashoggi as he was

hacked apart for telling the truth, and

wanting to marry his beloved lady.

I'm hearing the silent screams of the children

in the “showers” of Auschwitz as the

Third Reich ended innocent lives of Jews,

gypsies, Catholics, the disabled.

I'm hearing the impassioned wails of mothers

separated from their children, sent back to

South America without the young they bore

and nurtured and tried to bring to a promised land....

The land has lost its promise.

It survived its massacre of the Algonquin,

the Sioux, and all the other unique people

and cultures of North America.

It survived its enslavement of bewildered

souls transported forcibly from Africa, where

they had ruled the hostile jungles, but could not

overcome the more hostile—and well-armed--

Confederate slavers.

It struggles, now, to survive a platoon of

cockamamie self-styled pastors whose

similarity to their own saviour is as close as

is mine and yours to a rabid dog.

It struggles to survive an educational system

rendered impotent so George Bush's wastrel

brother could sell computers and standardized

tests.

It struggles to survive a health-care system in which

only the wealthy survive, thus ensuring that the next

generation will be saddled with too many useless, lazy

supernumerary trust-fund people for even the brawniest

economy to support. Unless, of course, the brawny workers

die out, leaving the helpless wealthy to carry on, which

equals the end of America.

It struggles with memory loss. Some don't even know

what the Holocaust was. Some forget that Russia has never

been anyone's friend, never. Not in all of recorded history.

And not now.

The population struggles to remember that they, too, can die

hungry and alone, unwanted and terrified. Indeed,

they don't understand that that end is more likely than

dying a self-made millionaire, a celebrity, or even

a Kardashian. Which is their dream, supported by

a culture that knows it is not possible, not for 99.999999%

of them, but profits on promoting the falsehood.

They don't struggle with uncertainty. Having to weigh

the relative merits of various courses of action is beyond

their pay grade. They lack the education to do it. Their

spiritual leaders are the cockamamie clergy, insisting

that Jesus would consign black or brown or yellow

people to earthly perdition despite abundant evidence

to the contrary in their own holy books. They do not

struggle with uncertainty; they are sure that black is white

and good is bad and they will arm themselves to the

teeth to make the rest of us believe it. They bear the

mark of Satan, all right, but also the vacant face of

the stupid person.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me”

does not mean, as one of the hollow clergy said recently,

excusing the Border Patrol, to make children suffer.

Suffer, there, means to allow. But...they are uneducated,

the clergy and their followers. And so, the words

of a man of peace are used as an excuse for acts so vile

that I cannot even list them without first taking strong drink.

I would scream. I do scream. My body, racked with pain

these two years since the UK referendum and Trump,

vibrates to the discordant notes—although discordant sounds

not strong enough—of the misery of two peoples, the British

and the American. There is no consensus on what is causing

my pain, but I know. It is the spectre of evil, settling on us

like a poison-laden mist. When it lifts, the physical pain will, too.

I wish I could pray.

Maybe they—we—deserve this misery, the misery that

has tripled homelessness, made prescriptions for anti-depressants

skyrocket. We spent out attention elsewhere

when the robbers were filling their satchels with our culture,

and enticing our politicians to join in the robbery. We spent our

attention elsewhere when the disaffected claimed all

politicians are the same, all clergy fools. There are some of

each, but we consigned all of them to the trash heap, bidden by

people too lazy to think, to discern, to decide, to act when

action was demanded.

It is our own fault, the vile situation in two nations. We

failed to notice the Russian runt as he weaved in and

out among honest, decent leaders. (Don't go there. Clinton

was a man, not a demon. Blair was a middle ground between

cockamamie socialism and the Tories, and not faultless.

In short, a man.) We must learn to accept partially flawed

leaders lest we get totally flawed ones, evil ones like Trump

and May.

Are you perfect? But are you good? Do you try? Are you kind?

There, then. How can we expect more in our leaders. Goodness,

energy, humanity. I'd settle for that.

I will settle for that and celebrate it if the US and the UK survive.

I give it no more than 50/50 odds. And I'm still hearing the screaming.

Stained glass: Alfred Handel, d. 1946[1], photo: Toby Hudson [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

 

 

C. 2018, Laura Harrison McBride

Maelstrom, a poem about NOW

Maelstrom


What in hell has crawled through

the strands of DNA to snarl through

the weeds of time? To steal the welfare

of people going about their business,

not expecting disaster to strike, at

least not from within their own houses

and their own nations. How have

ignorant buffoons managed to overcome

every attempt by educated, thoughtful

people to stymie efforts to wreck lawful

society, to wreck venerable institutions

that keep humans—those who would misbehave

at any rate—from killing off the rest of us?

Where will this end? Am I too old to live

through it? Do I want to? Do I want to live

if the last fifth of my life is no more than

a struggle to eat for another day, to have a

roof for another day, not to be invaded in my

own home by gilet jaunes, the crass army

of deluded, delusional and just plain dumb

ne'er-do-wells unleashed by the greedy upper

crust, by the arrogant Rees-Moggs, by the

simpering Goves, the jerks like Johnson

and the terminally bereft and vile, the morons

without portfolio like Theresa May?

What can I do that I have not done? I have protested

verbally and with money. I have written. I

have—of course—worried myself sick. For me, of

course. But for all those younger or sicker or

in any way less prepared to deal with the maelstrom

that's coming, less prepared than I, and I am

totally unprepared. How could I be? I grew up

in a post-War world where things, generally

speaking, got better and better, with only a few

small backsteps and missteps, easily rectified,

and off we went again. Forward in technology,

in medicine, in art, in international relations,

in democracy, in kindness.

And then, all of a sudden, there was Brexit.

All of a sudden, there was Trump.
Where did these despoilers of human life, of

human progress, of human kindness...

WHERE did these monsters—yes, monsters all--

Trump, May, Farage, and godknows Putin--

monsters with human skin, some with human hair

(not Trump; by his cranial rug shalt thou know him)

come from? What manner of DNA damage,

and where from,

produced this crop of beings set to ruin the world,

set to unleash the worst human tendencies, the

ones we have been trying to overcome for many

thousands of years? The Old Testament rule of vengeance,

suddenly front and center, and carried out by the

least possible humans to be found on this planet,

or any.

I despair. But yet, I awake another day. I cannot

let my beloved husband, my dear dog, face the descent into

hell alone. I'm not sure I'm any help to them, distraught

as I am. But at least they know I love them. For what

it's worth. Worth more would be this: If I were an assassin

and did not care for my own life. Then...then...then

I could do something positive for humanity. I'd just

have to choose the target wisely, for there would be

no second chance, no way to remove a second horrific

stain from the cloak of humanity.

I'm a good shot with a basketball, even with a

Baretta. But not, unfortunately, with a rifle capable

of sending a bullet true for half a mile or more. No.

I haven't the nerve, even if I had the skill. So

I cannot do that. Nor can I spend all of every day

in prayer like so many Tibetan monks or Roman Catholic

cloistered nuns. A lot of good they've done, anyway.

I can close my mind to the horrors for a couple of hours a day,

finally. But not for all of it. Before the moon rises, I will

have suffered the tortures of the damned, in my heart and mind

at least. Sometimes, with the misery to come for all of us

preying on my soul, I suffer physically as my body reacts to yet

another needless shot of adrenalin, cortisol flooding my body,

releasing the fight or flight response, rushing through my veins

to damage what the coming starvation might miss.

I'm too old for this. We are all too old for this. The world is

too old for this. I wonder if its time has come.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

Horses as healers...for everyone

Today, I came across this video of a 94-year-old retired veterinarian riding a horse. She was incredibly happy...as I will be if I ever get to 94 and am able to get on a horse in any way. 

Seeing that lady and the gentle way she was treated by the people who helped her reminded me of the couple of years I spent as a non-therapeutic riding instructor at a therapeutic riding center in Maryland, Therapeutic Riding & Recreation Center (TRRC). I didn't take the job on because I was crazy about hippotherapy, although I had taken ONE course in it years earlier at Virginia Intermont College. I took it on because I needed the money; the book industry was going through a phase, and I couldn't get enough hours at the show barn-riding academy where I was teaching a couple of days a week. 

At the therapeutic riding center, I taught mainly the riders with no disabilities, but who were very intimidated by horses although they really, really loved them and wanted to learn to ride. I also had a class of severely disabled students whose benefit from riding was not in learning a skill to any degree, but having the exercise and emotional connection with horse. In that class, parents or other helpers ALWAYS sidewalked and led; my only job there was to devise very simple things they could do for coordination, generally involving dropping balls into buckets and suchlike.

At TRRC I also met Raymond, a Downs syndrome man who volunteered and tacked up many of the horses. He had had intestinal cancer but was over it when I first met him. 

Then the cancer came back, and he decided he had had enough treatment and would just live out the clock. 

He lived in a flat attached to his brother and sister-in-law's house, and they would bring him to visit as often as they could. One day, they arrived and said it was his final visit because his condition had become so bad. He was able to ride on his own indoors, normally, on a big draft horse he loved. I was the only teacher available at that moment, so I volunteered to help Raymond tack up as he was too weak by then to lift the Western saddle he rode in. 

I asked if he wanted to ride alone, or  preferred that I sidewalk. He asked me to sidewalk. It was an honor the likes of which I have seldom had. It was Raymond's last ride. His last ever ride. On the animal he loved above all others. Fortune smiled on me and I was allowed to share it. I still quiver at the majesty of what I was allowed when I think about it.

But then, when I think about it, I had lots of other celestial honors at that riding center. 

One of the students in my very disabled group said my name. Big deal? Yes, it was. Her parents told me she had NEVER said any instructor's name before. She looked about 16, but was actually 40, and so severely disabled in most ways that her parents sidewalked her--and they were both in their 60s--the entire hour. Another honor.

And there were the two physically disabled ladies who had an hour each Saturday morning being walked on horses either in the arena or out in the fields if the weather was fine. They were not my students, but one day, one of the ladies told me how they lived for that hour each week when the transport brought them to TRRC because they felt free and could see so much more. Another honor.

And there was the Japanese-American child, one of the cutest kids I have ever seen, whose father came every Saturday to sidewalk. I often wondered if he was anguished at having such a charming child who would BE a child for the rest of her life. I didn't ask, of course. I expect he just simply loved her; he was the most pleasant man, as lovely as his child.

All of this was rather strange to me, although obviously satisfying. In the show-oriented riding center down the road where I taught many more hours, parents would tell me that they were happy when I was demanding of their children, making sure they knew all they should at each level of their riding education. 

I was quite pleased to know that, of course. I believe in riding for so many reasons. Discipline, empathy, kindness, exercise, overcoming fear, bonding with a mammal of another color so to speak. All that and more. 

In retrospect, I think adding at least a little therapeutic riding to one's teaching experience can only do both riders and teachers good. The hunter-jumper show ring--my main milieu--is a somewhat rigid and highly stratified entity. I love it. But I think I was a better teacher for the dedicated, ribbon-hungry students seeking hunter-jumper fame and fortune at the show barn AFTER I had been teaching at TRRC for a while. I hope I was of some value to my students at TRRC--as they certainly were to me.

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This column came from my heart...and TRRC did not know I was going to write it. However, if supporting therapeutic riding appeals to you, I can at least vouch for TRRC as a very worthy program to support. Should you be inclined, here's their donation page.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

 

Medieval times? Men STILL rut in the spring

If you've never heard of the Society for Creative Anachronism, the only thing you need to know is that it is a sort of full-time Renaissance Fair for ordinary folks. A club with a difference, really. Everyone chooses a persona from a bygone time, preferably before the 17th century, and develops a character who could have lived then and a wardrobe in which to portray that person at Society events.

About 25 years ago, when one might possibly still be dating after a failed first marriage (I refer to myself and the friend involved here), Barbara invited me to go with her and her boyfriend, a Society man-about-town, to a summertime camping event in rural Tennessee. He was staying overnight in a tent; she intended to go home after dinner as she liked camping, even in modern clothing and with access to toilets (not allowed; they didn't exist as we know them in 1500) about as much as I do. Hint:
I refer to four-star hotels ad camping, so you can see how I might feel about the real thing.

Anyway, I agreed to go with her. Of course, being womenfolk, we were expected to bring food. Problem: We couldn't use plastic bowls or plastic wrap. So we found enough wooden bowls, wrapped everything up in towels, threw some apples and grapes into a cloth sack, and wondered how we would get the modern stoppers out of the wine without a corkscrew.

"Not my problem," Barbara told me. "Kenny can do that."

We also had to come up with costumes. Since I had no intention of a second coming, I wasn't about to spend any money on one. I had an old long skirt and a new blouse with a plunging ruffled neckline. I decided that, and a pair of leather Jesus sandals, would have to do. The neckline was so low, I stuffed a silk rose down it to cover the "jewels."

And off we went.

The conversation, for the almost two hours it took to get there on the hottest day of the year, revolved around men. She was having issues with Kenny; I was so immersed in my work as a journalist and hobby riding hunter-jumpers that I had no need of nor interest in a man.  Despite the fact that she hadn't found dating to be any easier than it had been in her teens, Barbara still thought it weird that I had crossed "get a boyfriend" permanently off my to-do list. To be fair, I did have plans, but not until I was 55; then, I decided, I'd have sown enough of my own oats to bother threshing someone else's. (As it happened, I met the man at age 58)

At length, the conversation turn to how truly easy men were to entice if you wanted to. Any appeal to their manhood--ANY appeal--I told her would have them eating of one's hand. She didn't believe it. She told me to prove it. I agreed.

We got to the venue and found Kenny, tricked out in his kilt and sporran, watching the battle on the field, He waved a few times to one combatants he apparently knew. Barbara and I sat down, and I spoke to Kenny. "Gosh," I said. "I don't think I've ever seen such cute little animals as the ones between your legs," referencing the sporran's two tiny animal (rat?) heads. For the uninitiated, a sporran is the leather or fur pouch a man wearing a kilt hangs from his belt to hold his worldly goods. Ahem.

Kenny ate it up, actually.

Mink Sporran: Kenny's little heads were NOT mink

Then the friend came off the field all sweaty from wielding the wooden sword. "Boy, I sure wish we could use the swimming pool," he said, wiping his brow. Of course, they weren't invented in 1570 or whenever, so they were out of bounds.

I saw my chance.

"Well, if you like, I could throw my rose into the pool and you could jump in and save it," I said, batting my eyelids and leaning forward to the jewels would show beside the rose.

He was speechless. Barbara rolled her eyes. Kenny was beginning--but only very dimly-to catch on.

It was, however, time for lunch. So Barbara, Kenny and I went toward the area of the long picnic tables Kenny had staked out for us, spread out our tablecloth and began to arrange the food. We ate in relative comfort in the shade. When lunch was about over, the combatant came over and sat beside me. Obviously he wanted to get to know me better. "Shall I peel you a grape?" I asked him.

It was all over. From that moment on, the poor schnook was hooked and Barbara lost the bet. The man--I almost feel sorry for him now--badgered me to stay for the evening entertainment, which Barbara and I had not planned to do. And didn't.

The next Monday, when Kenny was back home, he phoned Barbara and said that the combatant had begged Kenny for my phone number, but he didn't want to give it out without asking.

Good job. It meant Kenny got to live until at least the next Society of Creative Anachronism event.

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Copyright 2019 Laura Harrison McBride