Accidental activist

Human suffering when reduced to sound bites and headlines is easily dismissed.

Perhaps that is why a friend’s lunch guest could announce that the death of a young migrant boy from dehydration was “the mother’s fault” for taking him on the journey.

Perhaps that is why heavily armed vigilante citizens roam the back roads of known migrant routes to pour out the water left at critical drinking stations along the way.

And perhaps that is why institutions have systems that create simplistic “solutions” that ignore the cost to human dignity and safety and, all too often, to life itself.

No one I have met since moving to the borderlands of Southern Arizona moved here to become an activist.

I know I didn’t.

But then something small happened. And then another small thing. And bit by bit, those experiences piled on until it was impossible to NOT see the inhumanity and suffering in this beautiful but often inhospitable landscape.

For one, it was the knock on a back door in the heat of summer…a worn face…an unmistakable desire for a cup of water even in an unknown tongue…a thirst that, if not quenched, would lead to death.

For another, it was walking a desert trail in the neighborhood and finding a dusty, worn child’s backpack under an ocotillo, a well-loved stuffed animal hanging from the unzippered opening.

For another, it was driving home from a favorite canyon walk and noting a young man suffering by the side of the road and feeling compelled to bring him to a local Mexican restaurant where the staff could discover his story and help him recover from weeks of walking in the desert alone.

For yet another, it was the trusting hand of a small child in a shelter in Mexico asking without words to come sit under a mesquite in the desert sun and draw pictures together in a brand new coloring book, The Wall at the border visible in the distance.

For me, it was sitting in a federal court in Tucson with a woman confined to a wheelchair who came nearly every day to bear witness to the tragedy of our legal system as deportation hearings were held.

Young men, brought in chained together like common criminals, were now facing felony charges for what used to be a misdemeanor. None spoke much English. All had translators who valiantly tried to make sense out of complex legal options being presented to those who were so hungry for opportunity in America, they were willing to risk even this.

Experience, up close and personal, has changed all of us. We no longer see headlines without being able to put a human face or story behind each. We can no longer hear statements that dismiss the human suffering around us without sharing our own encounters in the desert. And we can no longer allow lies to be circulated freely without correction.

We all do what we can now.

Some hike into the desert carrying the burden of heavy water jugs to supply the thirsty. Some sit in wheelchairs in courtrooms and are simply present and praying over the lives consumed by the justice system. Some take the stand of truth in the face of rejection by their own families and in their own faith communities.

And me? I listen to stories and commit them to paper and to music and try to put human faces to the headlines. It feels inadequate in the face of so much suffering, but like the widow in the Biblical story,

it is the only coin I have left.

I will die if I don’t eat.

As a child, every morning upon rising, I recall my mother’s first words:

I will die if I don’t eat something when I wake up.

I think truisms from our youth get absorbed like sun rays on the skin, changing our color into a new shade of desperation. And so I too became convinced that imminent death awaited those who did not eat upon rising.

Perhaps this self induced anxiety contributed to food issues later in life.

For my own children, though, not wanting to become my mother, I moderated the declaration:

I cannot function if I don’t eat first thing in the morning.

Somehow that seemed closer to the truth for a gypsy mother raising children, which I considered a step up from the wolf mother who raised me. Lest you find that a harsh description, bear in mind this is the mother who declared her entire lifetime that she adhered to the parenting practice of benign neglect. Her pride in having mastered that technique was palpable. The fact that it horrified everyone who ever heard her declare it always escaped her attention.

For some reason, many of her truisms were sustenance related.

If you drink water, you will get worms.

Every child needs to eat a pound of dirt a year.

When you are young, these truisms get internalized, I think, often in ways too deep to be easily recognized by our daily, conscious, functioning self. But since I am no longer young, I have been experimenting these last few years testing the hypotheses that have ruled my existence for all of my life. And here is what I have discovered:

I do not die if I don’t eat when I get up.

Every sunrise finds me walking on a coffee fueled adventure, and my dead body has yet to be left on the trail. I have not had to drag my calorie deprived body down the trail nor boost it into my car. Some mornings, I manage to hike without even having coffee in my system.

The world is full of miracles.

In fact, I have found that I don’t die if my lunch happens at 3 pm instead of noon, or my dinner at 7 pm instead of 5 pm on the dot. So much anxiety in my youth was fueled by what would happen if meals did not occur on a regular, arbitrary schedule, regardless of connection to actual hunger.

I might also point out that though I am a copious water drinker, I have yet to be diagnosed with worms. To be fair, my mom did grow up in a time when water purification was not a priority, so this may have been true for her. But we were raised in a time when a simple turning of a handle on a faucet brought unlimited, safe drinking water.

The world is full of miracles.

And as for the pound of dirt? Unless you count the dusty expectations that were never met, or the shifting sands of my own perceptions, I believe I am pretty dirt free.

Of all the truisms, though, that infiltrated my developing soul, the most damaging was this:

Mitchell women are different.

This was usually uttered when confronted with a woman who seemed put together and strong and confident. Mom would let me know in no uncertain terms that women like this were shallow and not worthy of imitation.

Since everything admirable in other women was met with derision, I stopped observing or emulating to protect myself from her disapproval and thus never learned the language and culture of women until I spent a week in the North Cascades wilderness on the first all women Outward Bound journey.

That is a story for another time, but I will tell you that the most valuable lesson from the journey was simply this:

Mitchell women are women,

part of a tribe characterized by courage, compassion, and grace, and linked forever together by our shared experience in a world that fails on far too many occasions to notice and acknowledge our strengths and our innate competence, individually and collectively.

We are the glue that holds the world together, whether we dress in designer clothes or tattered jeans. We are the heart and soul of humanity, whether we have monthly pedicures or leave traces of hand clipped toenails on the worn carpets that cover our floors. And we are the conscience of this human existence, whether we run board meetings or cry ourselves through another diaper change, exhausted and alone.

We are women, regardless of our last names or upbringing, and we are a better tribe when we celebrate each other and lift each other up, disdaining the eye of judgement and embracing the heart of acceptance for our unique abilities and passions.

So go forth, tribe members.

Eat breakfast whenever you want…or not. Drink lots of water without fear. And don’t worry about the dirt. Leave it where it is on the ground.

It was never meant for you anyway.

I need a leash

Six months ago we became “people who have a dog to walk every morning.” Nearly every dawn, from below freezing to over 80 degrees, we have walked at Canoa Historic Ranch because, we tell ourselves, “it’s Zuni’s favorite place to walk.”

For many months, we were content to let her walk beside us on a leash. But as her confidence grew, we wanted to train her to be off leash but still on the trail. It was an easy journey, as she is very content to be with her tribe.

A non-reactive dog, she has been surprised by deer crossing the trail, flocks of birds flying in front of her face…every manner of creature surprising her, and yet she cares not. She often stares with a bored indifference as she studies the activity like a person would a bug in a jar. She seems to be content of be “free” but still tethered in her spirit to the trail.

Not so for Ginger, a rescue we would regularly meet on the trail. We would often catch sight of her bounding through the desert territory with reckless abandon oblivious to the dangers, and her owner, herself accustomed to the wilds of Alaska, simply equipped her dog with a large bell in order to keep track of her.

I thought of Ginger this morning when Zuni and I walked the trail, sans The Boy. Taking our normal route, I noted her “alert” body stance and careful sniffing. We were nearing “Coyote corner,” an area that we walk through every morning. But never if The Boy is not with us.

Even off leash, she stopped, turned, and then sat down facing the opposite direction and assumed the “put on my leash” look. Complying, I then waited until she was ready to move. When she did, it was away from the dangers she could smell but I could not see.

Moving away from danger, she was confident and quick moving, leading the way as she would do when off leash, but feeling more secure connected by the leash. Her spirit knew that a better choice than moving unhindered towards the danger was moving away, tethered, to safe boundaries.

Oh, how I wish I had learned that lesson earlier in life. I spent most of my young life living like Ginger, craving absolute freedom, ignoring the real dangers around me, and thinking I could move through life “unleashed” without consequences.

But there are always consequences.

In these reflective years, it is impossible to look back and not see a swath of destruction left in the wake of my “absolute” freedom. And perhaps of all the ill effects, the most damaging were to my own soul.

Over the decades, I have come understand that true freedom comes from having boundaries, and that being “on leash” is necessary to protect me from my “Ginger” nature. Living life untethered left too much wreckage in the rear view mirror.

Yes, I still adventure and still lack discernment when it comes to being “off road”. Thinking through a spur of the moment thought is a skill still in infancy for me, especially when it comes to exploring new places and experiences.

But when it comes to matters of the human heart, being on leash is simply a kinder, gentler, safer way to interact with the world around me. It keeps me close to my tribe. It keeps me protected from real but unseen dangers.

And it leaves no trail of regrets.