Lyn Hacker: A real thanksgiving message, about the small acts of love and kindness that define us

I read one post from a woman on Facebook this morning, that said, “I’m tired of all this awful stuff! I want to read posts about pets and babies.” I had to smile, just at her sheer honesty. I wondered to myself, when, if ever, will we simply be able to read about pets and babies again? It feels to me like we’ve slipped over an edge.

I grew up in a suburb in South Lexington, and, along with all the other accouterments of such a life, such as softball, kickball, movie night at the park, etc., I remember distinctly one year watching a neighbor family build a bomb shelter under their house – it made a huge impression on me. We moved there when I was three, and I know I was no older than six, perhaps five. Of course in those days, we ran around like little packs of wild wolf cubs, ranging from one yard to another, investigating every little thing that caught our eyes. The whole neighborhood was our playground, including the creek in the park, which we waded in, fished for crawdads in, or simply sat down in and looked under rocks, returning home with wet bottoms. We did all of this largely unsupervised.

The construction of this particular retro-fitted bomb shelter was constant entertainment that summer. We’d park ourselves in our sun suits and overalls on the dirt piles over looking the giant hole the workmen were digging out from underneath the house. I can still smell the wet concrete cooking in the hot, blazing summer sun, the screech of the heavy equipment and finally being allowed to go inside it and look around after it was done. It was the coldest, darkest place I had ever been. They had already filled it with cots, linens, shelves with foodstuffs and other things. It was already stocked, even before the construction guys pushed the dirt back around the house.

Even so, I don’t recall ever feeling particularly threatened. That’s a gift of the young, this perceived immunity to danger. I knew, even at that young age, there was a real threat in the world – “the bomb.” I had been told that, by my parents. I didn’t quite realize what a bomb was, but I understood, and all the kids did, that it was a bad thing and that if we ever heard sirens we should run home and find a safe place to hide. I asked my mother what the sirens would sound like, and she said, somewhat wryly, “like the end of the world.”

Never heard sirens growing up

I never heard the sirens growing up. I ran into all sorts of the usual problems growing up, i.e., studying (a little ADHD), boyfriends, being “chubby,” but I never heard the sirens. I think I might have even kept a bit of an ear out for them.

Not having grown up in a terroristic landscape, I’ve listened to people demand safety and would remember what my father would tell me, that you were never really safe, so you had to know things and be smart. And then he would show me something interesting, like where to look for fishing worms, or how to find wild blackberries and pick them without getting stuck. He was always teaching me. I helped him pull the bad plugs out of our first TV and replace them with new ones. I helped him take the spark plugs out of his old Chevy Apache10. He taught me to plant beans, sow lettuce, shuck corn, how to live – all to stave off hunger, the real terror he and Mom had grown up with. My mother, now a teacher, taught me how to write and to read, and where to look for answers. Between the two, I can’t say I’ve always felt safe, but it was rare I felt in danger, and I almost always could figure out how to get out of trouble.

I heard the sirens on September 11th. I heard them over a car radio broadcast, standing at our family’s honey stand, at a farmer’s market, in a corner parking lot, under an impossibly blue sky, surrounded by happy people mulling around gaily decorated produce stands. As the activity slowed with the news and we all came to a stop and stood silently, I realized my mother was right, the sirens sounded like the end of the world.

We had been there, doing well all that morning, until all of a sudden the word went out and we were all suddenly, as one, quiet, listening to the live coverage on the car radio. Sales activity stopped abruptly and everyone moved out from their “stores” to talk and listen.

Mom was so visibly shaken, saying only, “I’m glad your father isn’t alive to see this.” She looked her age and more that day, aging ten years in 5 minutes, and I certainly felt mine. I was furious at these horrible people. Who were they to come over here and kill our people? I cried for our people, and everybody else that was in danger, and all of the first responders who now had to go put their lives in danger, and for all of the animals that helped those first responders whose lives were now in danger.

Being a respiratory therapist, I knew what was in store for everybody who breathed that destruction and survived. I hated those terrorists then, hated that they made my mother look so old so quickly, hated the draining color in her face. I prayed for the injured and I prayed because I was having such awful thoughts because I hate hate.

And then, in the midst of this psychic struggle, a middle Eastern woman, I have no idea from what country, with her scarf and robe, tried, at this particular time, to engage my mother in some price haggling over a jar of honey. We are all of us, all the vendors, standing there under this impossibly blue sky, in shock, tears running down our faces, looking to each other for verification, for solace, car radio blasting out news, at this farmer’s market and this woman wants to haggle with my mother over the price of our honey. I instinctively, went into protection mode, but my mother, a tiny woman, squared off and looked this woman in the eye and said, “You go to Hell.” The woman started to make a deal of it and I told her, “the best thing you can do is to turn around and walk away.” Looking like she had been slapped in the face, she did.

Being thankful

Was my mother wrong? It’s up to therapists, or the political pundits, or I guess who ever else wants to judge us for that day. I won’t judge her. God will certainly judge me, I have no doubt. Might not have been my best moment. I have many friends who will judge me, not because they are not my friends, but because they are staunch idealists and that’s the way they are, and I love them for it. They can be who they are, and have that permission from me, should they need it. I pretty much extend that right to everybody, as long as they’re not trying to clip my wings. Or kill me. I draw the line at murder.

I heard this, watching Downton Abbey (Season 5) the other night, said by the taciturn Carson to the intrepid Mrs. Hughes, “I feel a shaking of the ground I stand on – that everything I believe in will be tested and held up for ridicule over the next few years.” I felt the ground shake when they hit France the other night.

So now another Thanksgiving will come and go, post-bloodshed. One of our wonderful traditions in this country, celebrated regardless of whether its origin was as true as it’s been made out to be. Still, a lovely thought, and so why not sit down with friends and family, share a meal, and vocalize what we’re thankful for? I am thankful for everything that I am, all of the lessons I’ve learned, all those living in my life, and all who have walked on. I love this season, and then the build up to Christmas, which amazes me. Although it’s not the big celebration it used to be for me, I’m in awe someone would give their life for me. I will certainly celebrate His birthday, regardless of the day He was actually born on. I’m in awe also of our first responders, and our soldiers, and also thankful for them.

I have some education, and I read a lot. I watch a lot of news from many different sources, primarily with a liberal bent because I only have digital TV and as such am relegated to the networks. But as much as I read, watch and listen, often up until the wee hours of the morning, I find I am empty when it comes to advice on how to live in this world where some parents dress their children as bombs and send them in to crowds.

I don’t know how to think. I can’t tell anybody what to do. I have no answers. I have no suggestions. I know I can only do what I have always done, which is to try to live my life truly, to be as honest (as I can stand it), to myself and to others, and to treat people the way I want to be treated – by the “Golden Rule.”

No such thing as safety

I believe, as my father taught me, there is no such thing as safety. There are degrees of safety, i.e., if one wears a helmet on a motorcycle, they will be a little safer than if they don’t. But overall, daily life safety, there really is none, so I cannot understand why people willingly put themselves in harm’s way by sticking earplugs in their ears and living with their eyes glued to a telephone screen. Not that not doing that would make any difference if a bomb-dressed child should wander into your presence, but… A lot of it is our own responsibility.

I know this. I will not live my life in fear of the end. I will not walk in front of a car to please someone else’s ideology. I will not put myself in danger and deaden my perception of my surroundings with the latest bikini clad songstress dancing on my iPad. I will not make myself a victim.

I will not hold it against one person, the faults of some of their people. As I walk in the woods and am aware of the dangers that live there – the spiders, the copperheads, rattlesnakes, coyotes – I will walk in this forest and keep my senses tuned, appreciating, as well as the potential danger, the smell of the dried, crumpled, baked leaves of autumn stirred up by my feet and the heat of the October sun on my face, thinking my free thoughts in freedom. What would Jesus have done? We know the answer. He would have given that woman the jar of honey. I guess I am a sinner, then, a Christian, a defective human being who often makes the wrong decision, but tries real hard nonetheless.

Tolkien wrote, via Gandalf, the White, “Some believe it is only a great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love” – a great literal work by an elderly man written for his children, an allegory for his time. And so, as a Thanksgiving promise, I refuse to stop doing that which makes me sane, which gives my life meaning and purpose. I refuse to stop helping others, if I possibly can, and I will do what I can do, in my own little corner of this world, to change things for the better. If I can help, I will. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Lyn Hacker is a Lexington native raised by Appalachian parents to be not only educated but proficient in the living arts – working very hard, playing music, growing gardens, hog farming, orchard management and beekeeping. The UK graduate has been a newspaper staff writer and production manager, a photography lab manager, a Thoroughbred statistics manager, a Bluegrass singer and songwriter, a registered respiratory therapist, a farmer, a Standardbred horsewoman, a Red Barn Radio promoter and a beekeeper. She lives on a farm in Sadieville.