Mommy Dearest
Posted on: March 1, 2010
I really need to stop spending time reading the news. It’s too depressing to have all my horrific visions of the past, the future, and most of all, the present proven true. My mother was right about so many things, and if anything, that’s even more terrifying than most everything else. Good thing that even when I hated listening to her, I did, and when I didn’t want to believe her, I didn’t just throw all she said into my personal \dev\null file.
Today a friend of mine of Facebook posted one of those links. You know the kind. Those links that make you sigh, think, ponder, nod your head, and want to throw up. For me, the effect of this post was doubly nauseating, since I have one of those “loves” for England and Classical music. I am not wholly blind to the horrible behavior of the British government (one cannot spend any amount of time studying world history and not know a bit about the sheer terrible-ness of England). Nor am I such a rabid Classical music fanatic that I cannot appreciate how some might dislike it so much that their dislike becomes a tool in the hands of another. After all, I remember my own father trying to “teach me” to like Classical, Talk Radio and what he called “Real Country“. Eventually, he did achieve his purpose. I cannot imagine limiting my musical tastes to just what was popular in my youth.
In any event, my real dismay wasn’t from the police state that England becoming. It was … well, as I was growing up my mother always used to warn me to be wary of times of peace and prosperity. Not because there must eventually be a fall; though I can only assume that she meant that as well.
Mom saw the use of people by governments and the abandonment of people by their own communities. She saw wars being driven by a need to (as she put it so very many times) “give the young men something to do besides hang out in the streets and get girls pregnant”. She saw the bread, the circuses, the ways Rome tried to hold on to its burgeoning empire, and she would warn me over and over that we were ripe for another war.
I remember talking with my mother-in-law about how there are no places for young people to gather anymore. To my embarrassment, I confess to being disturbed (momentarily, thankfully!) last week in Panera when a group of teens walked in during “School Hours”, simply because it wasn’t what I was used to.
But really, if kids or adults or elderly people or… can’t hang out and talk with each other over a drink, then what? Most, I would warrant, teens just want a place to spend some time, talk, have fun and simply “Be”. Yet, that insidious little voice that has seen bad behavior from one (it would behoove us to remember that history and the news reward the “bad guys” with attention, not the plenitude of “good guys” out there), and it says “Beware” without proof.
Quite the commentary on the human condition… I’m still puzzling out what it means, but I think I’d like a new commentator.
There was a lot more in my mother’s words of wisdom, stuff I’m still trying to gather up the self-comfort to admit I believe and consider on a daily basis. I do know that the world isn’t any less lovely for her reflections, but only because I can at times see a pretty sunset and remind myself that all is going to be what it will be, no matter what, so I might as well enjoy myself.
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And I do so wish my mind wouldn’t walk out the door whenever I start typing one of these pages…. *sighs*
A Garden of Delights 
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