Poosey Digest: All in this together

Greetings from Poosey.

Someone had shrunk the house. There was no other logical explanation. I’d spent hundreds of hours of my childhood exploring the nooks and crannies of Grandma’s house, jumping on each piece of her furniture, inspecting each precious knickknack, and generally terrorizing my poor grandparents who were more than indulgent when the grandkids would come to play. I can remember going at a dead run for what seemed like a half a mile from her kitchen table then doing a belly flop in Grandpa’s recliner, and then running marathons around the interior of her spacious, two-story frame farmhouse.

So what the heck had happened?

This summer I asked the house’s present residents if I could once again take a peek at this wonderland that had provided me with so many hours of childhood pleasure and they gladly agreed. I just don’t understand. The house looked the same from the outside but when I stepped inside the front door …well, everything had suddenly become a miniature of that big old house that was stuck so firmly in my recollection. Sure, the new residents had remodeled, but everything was so darned small in comparison to the playground of my memory.

The same thing had happened just weeks before when I tracked down the hill where I’d first learned to ride a bicycle. I can even remember the temperature on that long-ago afternoon when my dad knelt in the grass of our backyard and removed the training wheels from my bike. I had tried to convince him that I’d need those “cheaters” for at least 10 more years but he insisted that it was time I hopped aboard and learned to balance without the help of the two little rubber spheres that had been holding me upright. And I plainly recall that my first three attempts at balance were disasters, leaving me to dig the grass out of my nose and try again.

The truly scary part of this adventure was the steepness and length of the hill. I sat atop my black and orange Monarch bicycle and gazed down a slope that seemed to go on for miles with our house looming some two or three miles below me. So what had happened in the ensuing years? I stood at the ridge of that same hill last week and it wasn’t a hill at all. In fact, I could detect only the slightest slope between where I was standing and the brick wall some twenty feet away. Twenty feet? Whoever had snuck in and shrunk Grandma’s house had been at work leveling off and shortening the bike path of my maiden voyage down what was left of the hill.

Perception is a tricky thing, but when you combine it with a memory that tends to exaggerate the past at the expense of reality, you’re in for an awakening. The things we once knew look so very piddling when compared with today’s truth.

I’ve have friends who say that in the days since the election have been unable to sleep, fearful of what might be looming in our nation’s future. Otherwise stable individuals have found themselves staring off into the distance for long periods of time in a sort of politi-daze. One lady told me she hadn’t come out of the house since the election results were announced, but she hoped that by Christmas she again attend church. And, of course, there are an equal number of folks giddy with joy at the voting results. They believe that all our problems will be solved by the new White House, Dorothy will click her heals together three times and we’ll all be back in a long ago Kansas where Eisenhower played golf as Ozzie and Harriet chatted about their sons report cards over their morning Quaker Oats. Of course, both camps are wrong. But the emotion of the moment has made us unable to see the reality. As a nation we tend to be excitable.

I’m reminded of the words of Mr. Rogers of TV fame: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” And I can’t help but recall the sight of my Uncle Francis who surveyed the smoking ruins of his garage after a late night fire had destroyed the structure. He lit his pipe and said, “Well, the damned thing needed cleaning out anyway.”

So, let’s come out of our houses, let’s lick our wounds, let’s ease up on the bragging about our victories and realize that we’re all in this together. Some day we’ll look back and realize the hill wasn’t all that steep and that we’re better off without the training wheels.

You ever ’round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.