I have what they call “a bad memory”. I forget things. What times were my kids born? What did I confess to at my first penance? What was my favorite teacher’s name? Who taught me to ride a bike? I cried at my first penance, I remember that, because I was scared to death of the priest. I shouted out my sins for the whole church to hear only to find out it was not my turn, the priest was at the opposite window and I had to repeat it all again while my teacher forced her way around the curtain to tell me to lower my voice. I was shouting because I couldn’t hear the priest and therefore, I thought, he couldn’t hear me…I didn’t realize he wasn’t even present during all this humiliation. I remember that! I was in first grade, about 7 years old. I think. I really don’t remember.

I do remember loving Religion class and Social Studies and English (the part where we read and talked about books) and the wind in my face and how exciting it was as I rode my bike through the traffic of the city all the way uptown to East River Drive. I remember how bad I wanted to learn how to drive. I’d day dream of the freedom I’d have, the places I’d go, the independence I’d feel. I remember how I felt but not the details of names and dates and times. I am someone who lives for details but cannot force a care about certain pieces of nonsense. I’ll never forget holding my babies, nursing them and tickling them. If you ask me now I may not automatically recall the years of their births…

I remember saying my name over and over with RN next to it. I remember calling myself Mrs. Louis….. way before I was a Mrs. I remember my daydreams and my days in the soft grass and sun, the cold winters with snow so high we were “stuck” unable to move and the way the piles of snow actually made us warmer, and cozier, the walks with snow gear on. Those things I remember…

I know I feel happy and sad in the same minute. I feel angry and proud and beautiful and unattractive all in the same day. I’m allowed to. I’m allowed to tell you all about it too.

How did I come to feel these things and why? Where did the feelings come from, how did I develop the opinions and point of view I’ve come to defend and shout about. Of course all of it is a compilation of experience.

I distinctly remember arguing with my father over Frank Rizzo. I remember feeling upset that the police seemed to be unfair in their treatment of certain criminals. I remember feeling like Frank was a phony. I remember saying how the poor need help, and the needy need help and I hated to hear any kind of racial slur or derogatory name. I hated that the people I knew loved Rizzo because he was Italian. I hated that. But THAT was all at my start, I was a very young 14 at the time of those discussions. I was not mature enough to understand the convoluted ways of government and police work and the way people lived and this was the foundation of me wanting to know more, wanting to know everything about how different people ticked, and how different their ticking, how they made decisions, how they treated each other, how they motivated themselves and how they got into trouble or how they elevated themselves from their own beginnings. I remember feeling like joining the peace corps or at a younger age becoming a nun and working with the poor and indigent people. Funny how I feel like I sometimes do that now and I hate it and then again sometimes I love it. I remember feeling upset that my family would not consider me marrying or even dating someone outside my own faith or culture. They were so narrow-minded! Oh…it drove me nuts. Now, years and years later, my poor aunt, who married a really nice Irish guy…we still remember my grandmother calling him “the Irish”. What is wrong with us? The man has a name!

Time goes by, experience and life, and my world and opinions got smaller. I don’t mean I am prejudice…I am just much more selective. I’ve come to understand this as not something I reject but something I take pride in, something I want to preserve. I’d love my kids to marry nice Italian girls just like myself! I’ll probably cry many times over their choices. Of course, I want them to be happy. Above all else? When will they learn? But I want them to be proud and indigenous. I want them to feel the importance of something that maybe doesn’t seem exactly right but really isn’t in any way wrong.

If it happens that their soul will only be filled with a certain amount of difference then we’ll have to deal with it at that time. Can I be supportive? Have I turned into my father? My mother? My husband? Where is SP?

I searched and researched and stared and intruded. I remember being shocked and dismayed at my findings. Of course, it started with my own family, then neighbors, then friends, then co- workers, then other students, then patients, and then strangers. I still search and reach to help myself understand how we are all so very much alike and then, beyond that hair of a line, we completely differ.

In my own religion and culture I find freaks. I tell you, Freaks!

As I matured and studied and processed information and experiences, I realize all things happen for a reason. I realize all the advertising as well as the politicians reach for our sameness and grab it and manipulate it. WE cheer when we hear something we’re familiar with, something that makes us feel comfortable. Sometimes what makes us feel comfortable is a lie, or just something we are used to but it isn’t the very thing we should be made to cheer about, it isn’t the truth, it isn’t anything but a detail we are being programmed to remember, a piece of nonsense, something that is made to sound right but really isn’t very right at all. I kind of oscillate between wanting to control my world and feeling too controlled by the world around me. I really want to be able to think my thoughts clearly and with intelligence. And I want the advertisers to leave me alone, stop trying to pull those memories out of me just so I’ll buy that sweater (of course I do and then I feel nuts), I want the politician to stop saying stupid things that tug at hearts, hearts too shallow to feel the coldness of the tug. I want the religious and the leaders to help us all help ourselves. I’d rather do it myself, rely on myself, feel proud of myself and then in return feel proud of my mentors, teachers, leaders..those people who sometimes seem so off, but are wise and experienced beyond my years. I’d love it if more people felt their own specialness; pride in themselves, pride in the country we collectively live in and complain about and freely talk and complain about..and that is all O.K.

I remember the first thing we did in grade school, in the morning. We stood. We stood and prayed; we folded our hands in traditional prayer style. The standing and the folding of our hands, so straight, so exact, took effort. We were tired. It was 8:00 in the morning. I remember standing, the sun shining through those cold aluminum windows, shades half pulled. I remember wanting to put my knee on the seat of my desk to rest a bit but wouldn’t dare. The nuns used to walk around with the pointer in their hands then. After the prayer, we stood and shifted to the right of the room, the corner where the American flag stood on a pole. My hand found my school emblem over my heart. I felt it’s beat and I recited The Pledge of Allegiance. I remember feeling proud of myself at enunciating indivisible. Surely, I felt pride. “With liberty and justice for all”, I stirred. I was so young, yet remember wondering, and feeling sure.

Later in the day, we studied the world. I saw the pictures of the poor kids in Africa eating with their hands, the flies all around them. I remember feeling so safe, so cared for as that pointer went around the room and those eyes peered out from the tight habit watching and waiting for us to make a wrong move. We weren’t scared. We were proud of ourselves. We were proud to get through the day without being hit and when we got that gold sticky star on a test we felt true happiness. I wondered if the nuns had hair. Did they wear clothes under those blue uniform habits? Did that head garment hurt? No wonder they were grumpy. Until I met Sister Damian in high school, she wore regular clothes and was sooooo happy all the time and didn’t even own a pointer. I knew it! It is always all about the clothes.

Every time I was told a story about an American being “overseas” helping the poor or the sick or the needy or the tortured, I felt pride. I remember crying over the pictures of the soldiers. I remember praying for them. I remember my family whispering about a family member getting out of the war, dodging his turn. I thought I was supposed to think the same thing, and I do, I would not run my sons right over to the nearest sign up booth but then again I know the pride I feel when I see a soldier, brave and strong and so unselfish and I feel something stronger, something better. I feel safe again. I feel proud. I want to help too.

As I get older the moments of American pride stack along with the awe I feel towards my family and the memories I’ve made over the years. I remember my alma mater. I remember my neighborhood and high school friends. I don’t remember everyone’s name but I remember what I need to …those experiences that educated me to have the opinions and concerns I have today. None of which are for the sake of being liked, or elected or feeling beautiful. It’s all about doing what is necessary, what is right and what is good. What is good for the world or America isn’t necessarily anything to do with what is happening to me in my little world. It is a much bigger, deeper soul.

How can anyone be first proud of being American as an adult? And HOW is that very person in the position to maybe help lead that very NATION? It’s absurd.

There is nothing more beautiful than a dirty, hard fighting soldier holding an American flag, or communities coming together to help in a disaster. The freedom to feel what we do and say what we want almost in any situation is our right and liberty. I watch these ongoing elections and debates and I get knots in my stomach with the lines we are being fed like old grain being shoved down the throats of old, dumb cows. Shall we wag our tales just because we’re being fed something?

I am not that old, nor all that wise but the government cannot control anything in a well mannered and efficient way by giving little to those that have big needs or by making promises that only a young, naïve child would understand to be right or for the common good. They need to teach us how to cope, they need to guide us towards our own pride. They need to stir motivation…for us to make America even better. It shouldn’t be for them to convince us to elect them to take care of us. What good will that do any of us in the long run? We need to think about the long, big, wide picture.

I want to work hard and keep the money I make for my family. I want to have choices in the health care I decide to utilize and I want those health care providers to cater to me, to take care of my needs, not be beguiled by red tape and control. I want to be healthy enough not to need so many medications. I want to feel safe and proud. I want to choose the education I feel is the best for my children without having to pay astronomical prices for it. I want a President who felt his or her pride from childhood. I don’t want someone who is on the way up the learning curve. I want control and high ethics. I want leaders who will help us all raise our standards, our expectations of ourselves, and our intelligence and our morals. I don’t want extreme tolerance. I want safety, pride, allegiance and comradeship

That isn’t too much to ask of the greatest nation in the world!

Is it too much to ask of ourselves?

I don’t remember everything, for sure, but what I do remember are the things I’ll never
forget.

"Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace . . . Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" Patrick Henry

"[i]To sell oneself to the highest bidder is bad enough - but not to even meet ones own reserve!" Rosalia de Bringas, "La de Bringas" Benito Perez Galdos


Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
The writing of The Declaration of Independence…read it

Landing on the moon…remember the planting of The American Flag on the MOON!!!!!

From the movie Great Moments in America: (from a review of)

A New Beginning (1900-1929)" opens as the first human voices are transferred via radio waves, electricity lifts industrialists such as J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford to heights of immense power, the Wright brothers soar aloft, the Titanic capsizes, and World War I unfurls. "Part Two: The World at War (1930-1945)" commences with a sobering flashback to the Great Depression and crawls ahead into the second global conflict that brought the Allies and the Axis powers to each others' throats and ended in one of the planet's most devastating genocides. Opening at the end of World War II, "Part Three: The End of Innocence (1946-1963)" moves ahead in time to the dawn of the Cold War, the brink of the Cuban missile crisis, the rise of apartheid, the civil rights movement, and the Kennedy assassination that brought America to its knees and permanently robbed the country of innocence forever. In the second half of this documentary, "Part One: A New Voice (1964-1975)" runs the race to the moon, watches the development of transistor television, provides a sobering look at the R.F.K. and Dr. King assassinations, looks on with horror as Charles Manson and his cult bring the love era tumbling to the ground, and watches Richard Nixon step down in the face of Watergate. "Part Two: America, the Great (1976-1990) sees Jimmy Carter masterminding the Begin/Sadat peace agreements, terrorism first rearing its ugly head, Jim Jones leading a mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, and Reagan replacing Carter, launching star wars, and ushering in the Iran-Contra affair. As this episode closes, the Berlin Wall collapses. In "Part Three: The Global Revolution (1990-2000)" the Internet comes together, Clinton enters the White House, O.J. Simpson goes on trial, and Al-Qaida sets the stage for the most horrifying mass murder ever to hit American society. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide


We did all that…not perfectly, and we certainly aren’t perfect., but we learned and moved on and still are Strong and Proud and Free….as a matter of fact, the strongest, the proudest and the FREEIST!

Imagine that.

Remember that.