Thanksgiving, Perspective and Abundance

"Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean."                                                                                                

                                                               ~ William Bradford

I think we're all pretty much aware that the image of  happy Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrating the first Thanksgiving is at best bogus if not an outright fabrication. It's simply a case of the victor writing history to suit his purpose. I was raised on a sanitized tale of Pilgrims sailing nobly to America and making friends with the Indians, bolstered by cute cut out cardboard decorations from the greeting card store. For many years that's how it was for all of us until around 1970, when someone burst our collective bubble and the realization that this wasn't just another potluck social starring our ancestors. The reality of the Pilgrims landing in the new world was gritty and grim. It seems the story was destined to be romanticized from the beginning if you consider the opening quote by William Bradford, so we can't blame it all on the greeting card companies.

Before it carried the Pilgrims to the New World, the Mayflower (as part of the British merchant marine fleet) carried wine from Bordeaux, France to Devon, England for at least a decade. Delivery of the Pilgrims to the mouth of the Hudson River was just another business assignment. The term Pilgrim-more descriptive of their mission than their group- wasn't actually used  to describe the First Comers to this part of the New World until the 1800's: before that they were refereed to as Separatists. The Separatists were a group of religious dissidents who believed it was necessary to leave the Church of England due to persecution by King James. One of the hallmarks of the Separatists were their use of the Geneva Bible, a translation of the Scriptures disapproved of by the Church of England. The group moved to a more religiously tolerant Holland for a few years, but returned to England when they were contracted by a London merchant in 1620 to establish a warehouse venture for the storage of timber, furs and whatever they could find of value in America.

The voyage last for nine weeks of mishap and stormy seas. Originally the Mayflower had been accompanied by a smaller ship, the Speedwell, which leaked so badly both ships had turn back to England. When ready to set sail again, the Mayflower, loaded with 102 passengers and crew, sailed alone.

At this point the history becomes muddled: the original landing site was somewhere near the mouth of the Hudson River, but records show that the group had permission to settle in Virginia. Instead, they landed near Cape Cod, Massachusetts...quite a bit of a mistake in navigation, if you ask me. They spent a month anchored just off the rocky shore while a group of passengers, including William Bradford, went ashore to explore the area. According to Travels of the Rock by John McPhee (Princeton University Press http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s5_7108.html), Bradford was in the woods on day when he was accidentally caught in a trap cleverly designed  by one of the  native inhabitants. Once freed, Bradford and the exploration party proceeded to search the area and found a storage of  corn in buried baskets, which they acquired for their own use. Coming across the grave of a child, they pillaged what they considered the best of the belongings buried with the body. Little wonder they had arrows fired at them from unseen attackers in the nearby woods numerous time before the sun set that day. (I guess grave robbing was permissible by their religious standards and personal ethics because they considered the native people of the area a lesser form of humanity.)

When the scouting party of First Comers returned after some time to the Mayflower, they discovered that Dorothy Bradford had committed suicide by "going over the side of the vessel" and drowning. Months passed before the group dared to  finally walked through sub-freezing water and ice over the rocky shore to land. Most of the passengers on the ship had been ill with pneumonia and scurvy, and less than half of them survived to make settlement.

The Native Peoples of the region were familiar with the Europeans who had been exploring the region since the late 16th century. In southeastern New England, the Wampanoag and Narragansett people have been following an agrarian cycle of farming and fishing for thousands of years and ultimately taught their new neighbors those skills. In return the Europeans brought infectious diseases with them for which the Natives had no natural immunity.  Many villages were totally wiped out by measles and small pox.

The Pilgrims and Natives kept their distance until nearly a year and a half later, when they had contact with Samoset, a Native elder, who greeted them in broken English he'd learned from some other Europeans who'd come to fish in the area. It was he who introduced Squanto to the residents of Plymouth Colony. Squanto had been kidnapped by a sea captain in 1614, but returned to his people five years later. He remained a part of the colony as an ambassador until his death many years later.

There are only 2 reliable historical accounts (http://www.pilgrimhall.org/1stthnks.htm) of the "First Thanksgiving", which was actually a Harvest Festival the Pilgrims celebrated every year at home in England. To them, a day of thanksgiving was designated each week on the Sabbath, so there was no need for an additional day to give thanks.( There is a record of a special feast happening about three years after the establishment of the colony, to give thanks for the intervention of Providence after an extraordinarily long period of drought being ended by a rain storm.)

 "Freedom from Want" by Norman Rockwell

Some of my friends don't celebrate Thanksgiving, citing the bad treatment of the Native Americans by the Pilgrims. I agree they were indeed treated abominably and I understand. I can appreciate their wish to stand in solidarity with those they feel were wronged. On the other hand I would also like to frame the situation in a realistic light. The Europeans of that era believed their colonizing effort was just because they were 'improving' the area in the manner commonly in use in Europe at that time, which included permanent settlements and their own methods of farming. They introduced the Christian religion because they believed they were chosen to do so by a Higher Authority. While none of these actions are excusable in any manner, I'd like to point out that we are also judging people from hundreds of years ago by the current standards of our society. That is incorrect, also. While hardly justifiable in what they wrought upon the land and its inhabitants, we cannot frame these events by our own morals and ethics of the present day. We must allow for  a genuine understanding of the mindset of the day, which was very different from our own. Stripped of it's emotion, the situation is less volatile: the natives fought to retain their right to land they had lived on and worked on seasonally for centuries while the Pilgrims were fulfilling an agreement for which they were contracted. The bottom line for them was that it was a business deal, and they'd given their word to hold up their end. Like it or not, that's what it comes down to- it was all " just business" as the popular phrase goes these days.

My take on this is that I reject the negativity created by the story of the First Thanksgiving. That does not mean that I have forgotten who wronged whom, and I believe that the single most important lesson that has come from all of this is that we as a people should never allow this type of thing to happen in our lifetime. We cannot change the past or continue to hold a grudge against people who were long dead before our own great grandparents were even born. Remembering and agreeing are two completely different things, therefore a remembrance to honor the beginning of our country's history is not out of line. It has never been a perfect history and many objectionable events have taken place in it's forging- but it is there, none the less and continuing to carry on the anger and pick at the wounds every year when we should be celebrating being thankful in the spirit of gratitude is a greater wrong. The phrase, " Would you rather be right or rather be happy?" comes to mind. What do we gain by continuing to beat our breasts and crying over what we personally had no involvement in? Accept the lesson, and move on.

I'd prefer to think of Thanksgiving as simply that: thanks-giving. The day is about being thankful for what is manifest abundance. Individually,we have a lot to be thankful for no matter who we are and how much we struggle. Every one's  life could stand some improvement in some form, but we've all been blessed, we've all received something unexpected, something we have not earned and do not deserve. Every one of us. Be thankful for those things. Stop to acknowledge that which has come into your life unearned or uninvited, even the things that seem go wrong or be wrong. You will be surprised by the gift of resiliency you find and the personal tools you develop to survive. Isn't that something to be thankful for?

Thanks-giving is about what is plentiful in our lives, not about Pilgrims and turkeys.

 

And a Partridge (sort of) in a Christmas Tree...

This is a true story- I swear it. You can't make stuff up like this....It seems this afternoon, after  my house mate decided to open the door to let in a bit of air, a tiny bird found it's way in, also. I was typing away at the previous blog when I heard a commotion behind me in the plants...on the floor between the flower pots was a little brown bird, wide-eyed and panting, scared half to death. It was a Carolina wren, which looks a bit like a common sparrow. The wren was frantic and trying to escape- it had found it's way in through the open door, but  was confused by the floor to ceiling glass windows and kept flying into them. The door to my make-shift bedroom opens into the same mud room, and the door was open....you guessed it. The wren made a bee-line into my room before I could gently direct it out the door.

The Aggressor

 It flew around the room, landed on a book self, then, as if suddenly finding a recognizable perch with some safety...it flew straight into my Christmas tree!

The tree is only four feet tall, not much of a safe place for a frantic little bird, and I began looking through the branches for the poor little critter, intending on grabbing it and putting it out the door. The wren, it seems, had other ideas. It had made friends with a small, brown artificial partridge, the last survivor of a box purchased at a floral supply house at the end of the 1980's.It was sitting very still-trying to hide- next to it's new friend. Truth be known, the artificial avids never actually looked much like partridges...and now that I think about it, peering in to the branches of the tree, it does look a lot like a Carolina wren.

The Victim

The Carolina wren must have though so, too because he deftly stepped up on the artificial bird's back with both feet. Obviously he's not a Rick Springfield fan and has never heard the song, Don't Talk To Strangers. He was friendly...and amorous. 

I had a fleeting, OMG moment when I realized what was about to happen. Mr.Wren thought he had a girl friend. The origin of the word 'bird brain' crossed my mind just as the wren, now frustrated that the object of his affections was not only a tease, she was the bird equivalent of a blow-up doll. His reaction was to begin pecking at the artificial bird until he had pulled all the feathers off it's head and back-"Take that, you phony!" The tree was shaking violently and dried feathers were flying everywhere. There was a lot of flapping and ripping noises.

While he was busy denuding my partridge, I reached in and grabbed him. He let out a surprised little squeak.

He didn't make a sound as I lobbed him out the door. ( I was tempted to hum the Air Force Anthem, Off We Go Into The Wild, Blue Yonder. There were no appropriate Rick Springfield songs for this moment, except maybe, Love Somebody. Well, to be honest, he did try... the feathered little freak.)

I now have a twenty plus year old sad-looking, bald, yellow plastic partridge and a small pile of loose feathers. I'm sure a little Tacky Glue will take care of the problem, but neither the lovely little partridge or I will be the same. Neither will that Carolina wren, I'll bet.

Merry Christmases Long Ago

This afternoon I bought an artificial Christmas tree at Family Dollar. It was on sale because the box was torn but all the parts were in it, so for $3, it went home. I was already resigned to the pot of bare branches like I had last year, which-if the truth be known- wasn't so bad looking after I they were trimmed with all the garland, tinsel and ornaments. In fact, you could hardly see any of the bare branches, and where they peeked through, it gave the whole thing character in a Charlie-Brown-Xmas-Tree kinda way...right up until the branches dried out and began to break off bit by bit and the oasis they were shoved into split in two and half the 'tree' fell on the floor before New Year's Eve.

There won't be that problem this year, because I have a 4 ft. genuine Noble Fir artificial tree, which the instructions packed with it assured me was made of real PVC ( Oh, goody!) The Noble Fir-named no doubt for it's fine heroic bearing and NOT because it is representative of any strain of fir tree named after anyone with the moniker Noble- is presently sitting on a card table wedged in the corner of my make-shift bedroom while it awaits trimming. I hastily cut a tree skirt from a yard of Xmas fabric covered in toy soldiers and holly on a cream-colored background and tucked it around the foot of Noble Fir to cover up its scrawny green  PVC legs, then got the stationary paper box full of Christmas ornaments off the top shelf of the closet where  they've rested since this time last year.


The box of ornaments is a wondrous assortment of things I've acquired from friends and my own habit of collecting through the years. Most of us have at least a few fragile ornaments from our childhood- mine are a couple of pine cone clowns made in China in the 1950's, two hard white plastic reindeer that I inherited after Aunt Laura Pote died in 1985, and a handful of peeling glass gee-gaws from my grandparents. The reindeer are always placed first on any tree of mine since I rescued them from the garbage when Aunt Laura's son was cleaning out the house after she died-she always placed them first on her own tree, and this sacred act was obviously lost on her only child who had tossed them into the trash can around the back of the house. They aren't particularly pretty, but they hold a lot of good memories for me of the next-door neighbor who was my adopted 'aunt' for 18 years.

Then there are the things I have made over the years from various phases of crafts- painted ceramics, counted cross-stitch,plastic canvas, bead kits, pain-by-number wood, assorted glued glitter items. They are joined by various Muppets, the Peanuts Gang, a 4 inch fully dressed Beefeater doll from England, cats, mice, cotton and feather birds and an assortment of stuff from friends-Jeff's grandmother's blue and white beaded Star of David and  bell; Gretchen and Mark's clothes pin bird's nests, Kay's hand-crocheted Xmas stockings and the Kermit the Frog in a Santa Hat JD stowed out of sight in his luggage and brought back from London for me when he filmed John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together. My step-sister Elizabeth found a porcelain and cloth Scrooge doll in the Christmas Room at Ronnie's Garden World in Smyrna, DE ( Which I miss, by the way, because they had the best selection of  decorations anywhere.) There are a dozen or so formerly white plastic glitter- dipped snowflakes that just make the tree, in my opinion, even though they have now aged to a yellow patina.


Presently, it's all laying in a jumble under the tree sitting on the table awaiting the big moment-as soon as I find the fluffy white and silver garland and a few strings of white lights I've shoved inadvertently in another box...meaning I will have to search through all of them tomorrow until I find said missing items. I will not be able to trim the tree without them, it's in violation of the 'The Rules'-I bet you know which ones, because you have them at your house, too. You know, the Rules that dictate what goes on the tree in which order to a specific Christmas CD, or which ornaments are traditionally placed on the tree by whom, or that the lights must be on while the garland and ornaments are being added. Things that we don't even think about but do out of habit because they are such ingrained traditions.( And isn't that yet another wonder of Christmas?)


Meanwhile, as I position each ornament in its proper place and adjust it to hang just so, all the Christmastimes I have ever lived through will come flooding back in my memory in the blink of an eye,and I will be living them again...as I happily sing along in each of the Muppet's voices that I learned while working on the above mentioned Christmas special...abet, slightly off key.

Take that, Charles Dickens...even YOU can't create Christmas Past like a tiny ball of spun cotton atop a pine cone from China with spindly pipe cleaner arms and legs can!

"Let's Be Careful Out There..."

 

Every episode of the 1980's police show Hill Street Blues would open with the morning assignments and dismiss with Sergeant Esterhaus' fatherly admonition, " Let's be careful out there." If you have never worked in Emergency Services as a police officer, firefighter or paramedic, you really can't appreciate the brevity of those words, which is private insider jargon among those who serve, protect and render aid. What it actually means is, " You are what stands between a world filled with all matter of danger and another human being who needs your help. Today you maybe be someone's salvation, but  you may have to sacrifice yourself doing that. Let's all come home alive." Dramatic sounding words which describe perfectly every single day in the field as a cop, firefighter or medic. I know, because I was a paramedic assigned to  the Tasker Housing Project of Philadelphia for nearly 20 years. The Tasker Project was little more than a war zone between African Americans and 2nd and 3rd generation Irish that lived in close quarters in an extremely poor part of the City of Brotherly Love near Gray's Ferry Crossing of the Schuylkill River and the old Arsenal. The battles were daily and the assaults often: all of the Housing Police, firefighters and medics knew each other on a first name basis...so did a lot of the residents. They saw us that often.

In 1983, I was one of the first women in EMS in Philadelphia- and the country. Female EMTs were a rare sight in those days. There were just as few women cops-and no females in the Philadelphia Fire Department who weren't dispatchers. Working in the projects, you piled your hair up under your helmet and hoped no one took notice that you were a woman.The uniform and turnout coat did nothing to emphasize femininity-everything was just a smaller version of what the men wore, and it was all ill-fitting and uncomfortable. I wore a medium blue shirt, navy twill pants and heavy steel-toes work boots, just like the men...and the same underwear, a dark blue tee shirt and boxer shorts. The only concession I was allowed was to sew the fly closed on my boxers; the tail of my man-sized shirt was long enough to meet at the crotch. I could have sewed a snap on them and made a body suit out of it, but then I would have been out of uniform during inspection...and the EMS officers came around often to check and make sure we were in Class A uniforms everyday and that the uniform was worn correctly so we'd look professional. We wore the same uniform day in and day out, 365 days a year. I will admit that I am rather envious of those in EMS I see today wearing polo shirts and shorts, or wool pants and sweaters because we never had them. Times have changed-for the better. The equipment is better and the uniforms come in all sizes-men's and women's. Sometimes I think that they've sacrificed professional appearance for comfort, but then again, half way through a 48-hour shift, no one really notices.

What has not changed is the job, which is thanklessly difficult for the most part. It's tough on your body, mind and spirit. Most of us that have spent a few years in the field have at least two or three major injuries that end up side-lining us to the point of disability. The turn over rate for EMS is higher than even the police department-or the military. Most only stay on the job 5 to 8 years unless you get promoted out of the field and into a better neighborhood, hospital duty, a desk job-or quit. I've done all three: I can proudly say that I was in the trenches a full ten years before I became a commander, and I lived to tell. The worst times during the job are when someone is killed in the line of duty. Some of the best are  working the holidays...Christmas in particular.

I enjoyed working the holidays, despite the ice and snow and no heat in the cab of the ambulance(you wanted heat in the back for the patient, so you turned it off in the cab-you couldn't have both.The first type 2 and 3 box units were temperamental beasts!)Oh, and no gloves-you can't grip a stretcher with gloves on and risk it slipping out of your hands.... There was a more relaxed flow between emergencies on the holidays- except those times when families gathered around the table to celebrate the season, had a few drinks...then remembered why they only did this once a year. It usually ended in blood shed; someone whopping someone else up the side of the head with a beer bottle, or whipping out a carving knife...the better prepared used small caliber firearms. In the projects they used some variation of a MAC-10, which is basically a small, quieter version of a machine gun that was chambered for both .45 caliber and 9mm ammunition. You never knew what sort of GSW you would encounter when a MAC-10 or one of it's distant cousins had been used, but the injuries were always catastrophic and usually fatal.Drug dealers loved them because they were cheap and easy to conceal, and you could be a lousy shot and still hit something or someone. Speaking of drug dealers, you could always tell where to go to get a good meal on Christmas Day when all the usual places were closed  just by observing the neighborhood junkies. Because they always have the munchies, always junkies know where the food is and where there is a McDonald's or a bodega open for a bite. 

In 20 years, my partner and I never went hungry thanks to the local junkies.

The most poignant part of  any Christmas emergency call usually involved a child-children who has been beaten by a parent for some small infraction, or burned by a candle or handling a string of C9 bulbs, or bitten by the neighbors' pit bull...occasionally we'd be called to attend a child who was 'just sick', and almost without fail the Mom involved was illiterate and  couldn't understand the doctor's instructions (provided one had been consulted) or didn't speak English and was at a loss of what else to do other than to call 911.They were always relieved to see us and didn't swear at us or otherwise try to kill us. We were always delighted and slightly relieved when it was something like a case of Chicken Pox and didn't involve any bleeding. It wasn't a true emergency, but we got to do a little education and community PR...which always made the job easier down the road. In the Projects, you always took off your instrument holster and badge and holding them aloft yelled, " I'm a MEDIC- NOT A COP...!" before you entered the building. Usually this worked and you didn't get shot at...usually, but not always. I got very good at diving for cover when I worked in the Projects, and I have the osteoarthritis from hitting the floor so often to prove it.

Keith, my first partner, was a kind, compassionate soul. He was an Eagle Scout and fit the mold-he was a good man. He used to buy a bag of groceries before every shift and give a few cans of food to whomever we came upon who needed them, and the bag was always empty at the end of the day. We brought along bags of hard candy on every shift for the hundreds of kids we saw on the street and handed out all of it to the little grubby hands thrust through the windows of the ambulance. We burned out the siren on our rig playing Jingle Bells on the hi-lo unit for a bunch of little kids huddled on a street corner one  snowy Christmas Eve, then went to a 7 Eleven and bought buns, mustard and hot dogs to roast over the open flames of a burning barrel they were using to keep warm. I've never tasted a hot dog that good since; I suspect it was the company....

I live far way from inner-city Philadelphia now, In the suburbs west of Raleigh, North Carolina. There is a city of  Raleigh Fire Station two blocks away, and the rumble of the rigs and the sound of the sirens stop whatever it is that I'm doing at that moment...I listen, counting out the units...and I can tell by the pitch of the siren and the vibration which type of unit is rolling out onto the cement apron in front of the station sight unseen l.

On Thanksgiving I baked a cake, carefully pinned my (now vintage) insignia on my coat collar and hiked up to the fire station. It was a little before 6 p.m., and the firefighters I could see sitting around the table through the window of the break room were sipping coffee and finishing their dinner. There was a TV mounted on the wall playing a football game, and a couple of the guys were snoring in chairs and the sofa in front of it. The floor was littered with empty soda cans and a pizza box, take out containers from McDonald's, and someone's turn-out pants draped over the end table. It looked just like I imagine every other fire house in America looks like on Thanksgiving day...it looked just like the one I used to command in South Philly, and it felt a little cozy ....like home.

I banged on the window with my fist and smiled at the momentarily startled crew. A young EMT answered the door warily, " Yes, ma'am...What can I do for you ?" His eyes swept over the insignia on my collar: the gold eagle of the Tactical Commander and the blue and white Star of Life of EMS, and he stood up a little taller and snapped out smartly, " Yes, ma'am!" 

I pushed the cake into his hands, " Happy Holidays." I said, " Thanks for being here... Be careful out there."