When the smell of fresh baked
chocolate chip cookies wafts through the house for hours, my parents know I’m
home.
Thanksgiving morning was one of
those times. Every ten minutes I took a pan of six cookies out of the toaster
oven until they piled up to 49—maybe a few less because there were cookie
crumbs on the mouths of every person in the house.
My cookies: carefully packed for transport
I would never dare cook them in our
wood fire oven, because I want temperature control. When I tried to cook them
in a gas oven at a friend’s house, they came out mini scones. My toaster oven
at home is the only place I can properly bake my famous chocolate chip and
dried cranberry cookies so that they are perfectly thin and buttery.
My cookies were my contribution to
our Thanksgiving dinner. As I carefully handled each cookie dough scoop, I
infused it with love for my family because that’s what Thanksgiving is all
about to me. I was able to pour a little bit of my soul into the cookies aimed
at my family members’ stomachs because I was home.
When I left Nashville the previous Saturday
I couldn’t have been more excited to go home. I thought of family kayak trips
up the Millers River, hikes across the valley and dinners on the deck
overlooking my mother’s flourishing green garden.
Wait a second.
Wasn’t I going home to
Massachusetts in November? You’d think after living through 19 Novembers in
Massachusetts I would know to expect skeleton trees, grey skies and cold
breezes.
November in New England is
notoriously the most bleak and depressing time of year. There is no lush
greenery and warmth of the temperate summers, no colorful leaves of the iconic
New England autumn and no rolling hills of glittering snow yet. No, November is
all about the cold, grey-brown world pushing everyone inside to hibernate for
the winter.
Back in Nashville, fall was just
ending and the colors and warmth still lingered for a couple more days. This
was the first time I felt a true disconnect between seasons, thanks to my jump
home for Thanksgiving. Throughout my previous 19 years, I had been eased slowly
into November.
The wealth of food picked before Hurricane Irene in August 2011
The shock to my system lasted only
a day. After dinner on my first night home, my parents giddily pulled out our
Bananagrams set and began to set up a game for us. We were all quiet as we played, our
brows furrowed as we searched for words in the collection of tiles. However,
once the game was over we exclaimed with glee at the long, complicated words
the others found. We didn’t need to compile points; it was simply fun to have a
joint activity.
After Bananagrams we moved onto
Catch Phrase, which we play as a group trying to guess as many phrases as possible before
the timer runs out. We’re much noisier with this game as we shriek with
laughter when we have to use outrageous clues in order to get each other to
guess the phrases.
Across the table, Mom and I had a
connection to communicate phrases easily. Mom had only to say, “When you’re an
optimist you see…” for me to call out, “a glass half full.” We were on the same
wavelength.
That’s when it hit me. It was the camaraderie
of family that made my house home, not the picturesque mountainside
Massachusetts setting. November could never cast its dark shadow over the joyful
game time or caring conversations that makes my family my home.
Yes, living in the woods and
learning from an early age how to split wood safely and effectively has shaped who
I am and my understanding of home. I was able to remember that—I spent an hour
splitting pine chunks into little kindling pieces. But it was family that
provided the comforts of home.
Peeping Tom after a rain Summer 2012 --an ongoing family joke
By baking my favorite cookies for
my nuclear and extended family, I was able to give back a little of the comfort
and support they had used to build my home community. I molded every cookie
into its shape before it went into the oven, letting my hands transmit the
unspeakable love for my home and my family.
Sitting—in generational order—on
the steps of the Parthenon in Centennial Park, Grammy, Dad and I opened the
Great Debate. The generational debate that is.
“Pep’s generation is considered the
best generation,” Grammy asserted in a conversation about her father.
I responded, “I thought my
generation was the best, with all our technology.”
“I
think Pep’s generation was hailed as the best because of World War II,” said
Dad. “Everyone stepped up to the plate when the ‘free world’ needed them to
fight fascism.”
While
Pep didn’t fight in the war, he and everyone else left on the home front
contributed in every possible way —whether it was maintaining life in the United
States or building weaponry.
Families would huddle around their
radios to hear the latest news on the war, straining to hear the reports of
attacks and fatalities. Newscasters would get their information from press
announcements. Other reports would come with presidential speeches, military
commander’s reports or other governmentally controlled voices.
Today, we are presented with
television programs of varying degrees of bias, radio and print media. Citizen
journalists exploit the infinite space and audience of the internet. Governments,
organizations and individuals expound on their opinions and report events
themselves through the 140 characters of Twitter and the unlimited length of
blogs. On Facebook, others post and repost links to all of these sources of
discourse, generating an infinite stack of conversation about conversation.
Offline we text each other the latest news, be it worldly or personal.
Just today, Twitter exploded as the
Israeli Defense Forces and the Al Qassam Brigades faced off throughout the rocket
fire and bombings occurring on the ground. Both parties tweeted as the attacks
were happening. At first I was apprehensive about trusting the Twitter feeds, but because both
parties were tweeting, I was able to check the tweets against each other.
Generally, they agreed on the facts.
While the radio communication of
our great-grandparents’ era seems limited to my generation of instant and
constant contact, it was what made it possible for the Allies to unite and be
involved in such a global conflict for the time. The limited and controlled
flow of information kept that unified vision strong across the home front.
As the United States moved out of
World War II and began to face the perceived threat of communism, the media
again took a role of unifying the home front. This time, however, it was by
telling people how to live and how to organize their family life. In the face
of nuclear threats and the unknown world of communism, the United States
government created educational films about how to act as an American.
Some films detailed the appropriate
roles in the home, like one I watched in my U.S. History course last year, “A
Date with Your Family”: Mother cooks dinner while Daughter helps and Brother
helps Junior with his homework. When Father gets home from work dinner is ready
to be put on the table. The conversation over dinner is led by Father, but only
on pleasant subjects. “It’s not only good manners, but good sense,” the
narrator says of pleasant conversation, added that it’s good for digestion. The
video makes sure to touch on every possible moment where one of the family
members could say or do the “wrong” thing. Gender roles are explicitly stated,
as the women are to serve and please the men and the men are to graciously
accept the service.
If you’re interested in a similar video click this link.
Moving into the Vietnam War, the
government lost some control over the media and the images presented to the
American public. The atrocities committed in the name of democracy, under the
Stars and Stripes, shocked people. Journalists had found a way through the cracks
of the image the government desired, and showed images that compelled many to
action. Different historical accounts portray the ‘60s Vietnam protests in
various lights, but it is undeniable that these images were the power to move
the masses.
Much more recently, we faced the
downward spiral that was Judith Miller’s reports of Weapons of Mass Destruction
in Iraq before the United States invaded in 2003. As a Pulitzer Prize winning
journalist for the New York Times, Miller certainly had a trustworthy
reputation and had built up strong relationships with sources. But perhaps her
relationship with certain governmental figures (ahem... Scooter Libby) had
gotten too chummy. She leaned on and reported her sources’ incorrect
information that Weapons of Mass Destruction existed in Iraq, evoking the fear
that surrounded the nuclear threat of the Cold War era.
Furthermore, international
correspondents were often given protection abroad by the U.S. military. The
journalists took U.S. government tailored tours complete with interviews of
locals and military officials that would say what the government wanted the
media to report. Because of the safety these relationships provided, it was
difficult to get the real scoop on the drama in the Middle East.
With the advent of Twitter and the
explosion of the blogosphere, global information exchange has been
revolutionized. Nearly two years ago Egypt’s revolution was organized and
publicized online. The power of 140 characters overthrew an empire.
Today, the IDF and Hamas lob
explosives AND tweets at each other, a minor difference from the past 50+
years. However for the rest of the world, this paints a clearer picture of the
dominant parties and how they interact on a level where they cannot kill each
other.
Citizen and professional
journalists alike are now able to add their voices to the cacophony without the
external factors of a news media business. Online many people are determined to
correct each other—if something sounds a little fishy, citizen journalists will
not rest until it is sorted out. With the sheer volume of information, the
internet has the resources for self-correction.
Contrast this with the simple
presentation of information via radio broadcast characteristic of Pep’s
generation—the “best” generation. Pep could have sat down by the radio and been
told explicitly the news events. He did not have to go searching through files
of articles on the web. However, he always received the same perspective.
So which generation is the best? It
depends how you look at it. Grammy would celebrate the strength of her father’s
generation in the face of global danger, while I appreciate the luxuries of
today’s technology. To each her own.
Two of the Massachusetts ballot
questions invoked this topic, both from very different perspectives. Both the Death
with Dignity Act and legalization of medical marijuana were hotly debated.
Ultimately, legislation of medical
marijuana was passed in a landslide of 63% yes and 37% no, while the “right to
die”—assisted suicide—question has been conceded by the narrow margin of 51% no
and 49% yes.
With the issue of assisted suicide
for terminally ill patients, a debate was ignited to divide a relatively
unified, blue and liberal state as well as smaller communities within it.
In particular, my very liberal,
small, close-knit hometown began to show some tears.
The discussion seems to have begun
from a message sent to the town listserv regarding Question 2. Sharon linked
her message to a blog post she had written about why she was voting no.
As a disabled person, Sharon had encountered
many additional challenges in the medical world from doctors and nurses that
she felt did not truly want to help her. The most striking was when she tried
to ask for a form to update her emergency contact information before a surgery
and was instead brought a “do not resuscitate” form. She felt that her
humanity, her own desire for life, was undermined by the nurse’s assumption
that her quality of life was not worth fighting for.
Disabilities activists have been a
huge force opposing Question 2. They argued that in states that have adopted
similar laws, many abuses have emerged, either by doctors and the healthcare
system, or weary family members and caregivers.
This worry emerged through the
Wendell listserv discussion. If a suicide pill costs insurance $100, there is a
clear monetary advantage of that option over the thousands of dollars to help
ill or disabled people live out their lives in the most comfortable way.
Supporters of Question 2 asserted
that the proposal accounted for these potential abuses. Only patients with 6
months left to live (as diagnosed by a doctor) would be given this option. Patients
who are unable to make the decision in sound mind would not be eligible. Those
seeking this action must request it twice, orally, at least 15 days apart and
then submit a written request—signed by two witnesses—to be considered. Doctors
must offer alternatives to the patient, such as hospice, and give two days for
the patient to consider these choices. A second doctor must confirm the patient’s
eligibility and sound practice of the process.
In response to Sharon’s appeal
against assisted suicide, Wendellites expounded stories of family members who had
slowly disintegrated from a terminal illness and had been refused the quick
route out and increased pain medication as their discomfort increased. “If my
mother had been my dog, we could have ended her suffering legally. Instead she was a woman whose last wishes for
a dignified end were ignored,” one woman wrote in conclusion.
Nurses, therapists and other active
members of the medical field weighed in, commenting on how they would want the
option for themselves given the suffering they’ve seen.
The elementary school nurse,
however, commented that her mother had passed away from cancer and she had
enough morphine for pain in order to end her life early, had she wished it. The
nurse implied that she would vote no because the quality of day-to-day life was
not so dramatically desperate that her mother wanted out.
Ultimately, Wendell voted 80% to
20% for doctor-assisted suicide—one of the highest pro-votes in the state. The
internal strife clearly did not pull Wendell too far from its strong liberal
tendencies.
Although I voted for the “right to
die,” following this debate made me wonder if my reasons were sound. Is it
right to push legislation through that may include loopholes for abuse? What
about all the misdiagnoses?
My personal view of death was
forever changed when I first truly encountered it. I had been to funerals
before, but the person had already been long gone by the time I saw their body
from a distance. This time was different. I was presented with the stark
contrast of vivacious childhood and a man that was only a shell.
The father of a family friend had
fallen ill with cancer. It was a shock to everyone that knew the hearty,
healthy, athletic grandfather that he was. He underwent chemotherapy and other
treatments and generally held onto his lifestyle, despite being told he was
terminally ill. (UPDATE: correction: "Tim" chose not to receive treatment.)
Suddenly, his life-force began to
drain more quickly. He lost weight, struggled to move around his home, and
ultimately moved in with our family friends to be comforted through the rest of
his journey. There he further lost body functioning, had a very limited ability
to communicate, and lay waiting.
Soon after his hospital bed was
placed in the living room of their house, I went over to spend some time with the
family’s little girl—who was 3—to give her and her parents a break from the added
stress of Tim (name changed).
When I arrived, Sarah (name
changed) energetically hustled me up to her bedroom to play in her cozy space,
thrilled to have a buddy. As we passed through the living room, I caught a
glimpse of a ghost. What once was warm and vivacious Tim, was
instead just a shell of the person he had been before. A chill ran down my spine.
There seemed to be no justice for this to become of the man that had once
encouraged me with ease as I struggled to ski miles in Vermont.
After I left I called my mom and
began the conversation simply: “He’s going to die soon.” The next day we got
the call.
This experience gives me conflicting
information regarding the “right to die” question. He lived longer, and
healthier than doctors had predicted. Ultimately, however, he was reduced to a
shell of a human being until his body was ready to fully let go.
I believe people should not face
situations like Sharon’s where they are encouraged to leave their lives behind.
However, I also believe that should one so desire to hasten the already begun painful
process of death, they should be allowed that option. Hopefully more discussion
will emerge from this highly contested issue, and an appropriate compromise
will evolve.
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