Beech Tree News Network

My sister called on Wednesday.  She thinks Donald Trump is the antichrist.  “He WILL push the button,” she said, “And I don’t want to be here after he does!”  She has also decided to stop using adverbs.  It’s her stand against the multitude of qualifiers that stream from President-Elect Trump’s mouth on a near-hourly basis.  She’s a retired English teacher.  She can pull this off.
    In October, at my stepmom’s birthday party, my sister from Indiana said, “Donald Trump and Fox News are the only people telling the truth.”  She and her husband were looking forward to a Pence vice-presidency.  It would be good for Indiana, they said.
    The members of my family have always been like that—passionate and sure in their beliefs—albeit on different sides of the spectrum.  I attribute the trait to my dad.  He was very vocal in his opinions.  If you didn’t agree with him, you were an idiot.  He would tell you as much.  For a long time, I was very much like my siblings, although I did stop short at telling people they were idiots. 
I’m not sure when I began the shift that made room for beliefs and attitudes that were at odds with my own.  I think back to a talk in an auditorium by a man telling about the ministry of Mother Teresa.  In the fundamentalist church where I grew up, I was taught that the Catholics had it all wrong and they would not enter the kingdom of heaven like we Protestants would.  At that talk in that auditorium, I listened to this man tell about Mother Teresa and her order of nuns going out into the streets of Calcutta, India, in order to rescue those who had been left in the streets to die, some with rats already gnawing on their flesh.  They brought these dying individuals back to make-shift shelters where they washed and clothed them, so they would have a chance to die with dignity.  After hearing that man’s talk, I understood it was my church and I who had it all wrong. 
For the past few weeks, I have been transferring some video tapes of Jacques Cousteau onto DVD.  They belong to my daughter, Nikki.  Garey and I started ordering them for her after she told us she was going to be a Marine Biologist.  She was ten years old.  We received one per month, and I can still remember her excitement when they came in the mail.  I don’t know how many times she watched those tapes, but it’s a wonder they still play at all.
I used to be in awe at Nikki’s acceptance of the opinions and beliefs of others.  I often wondered how such a young child could be that open.  As I wondered in and out of the room where I was transferring the tapes, I would hear the gentle voice of Jacques Cousteau explaining the importance of a certain sea creature and its importance to our ecosystem or talking about the culture of the people whose lands bordered the seas he explored.  It was then I understood it was the influence of this man that had helped shape my daughter’s attitude of acceptance.
As a parent, I often worried about my young children falling in with the wrong crowd.  I needn’t have worried about Nikki.  She was onboard the Calypso with Cousteau and his crew. 
“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself,” Cousteau said. 
I’m very grateful he didn’t.