By LYNN HANRAHAN 
Los Alamos

“If you want to come to the Regatta you gotta learn how to speak basic English.”

I really want to be rude and say “Who do you think pays for your regattas you little brat?” Or maybe “I was there in the eighties when it mattered marching to save lives!” But we only had a few days with all the kids home at once sitting under the big Ponderosa across from the Unitarian Church eating Chile Works.

I love that tree. We probably spent years sitting under it waiting for each other to finish piano lessons. We were discussing the flags on the Church — more specifically the flag which is more inclusive than the standard rainbow flag. I didn’t know its name and my daughter was horrified. She thought I was really dumb.

I used to think of my mother the same way. She was a politician in a mid-size Midwestern town. She did the nitty gritty work which kept the Democratic political machine running alongside Sadie and Norma. My mother was Sadie’s “white friend, Martha.” Sadie was my mother’s “black friend, Sadie.” Norma was both of theirs “Republican friend, Norma.”  

They spoke if each other in these terms from the sixties until the nineties. They canvassed relentlessly each election, typed, stuck stickers, and did all those lowly tasks so essential in the pre-computer political world. They had their differences — election night 1980 was horrible, but they never disrespected each other. They were classy, civil, and gracious.

It’s so easy to say well those were different times, the good old days, or some other nonsense but even thinking those things reminds me of my professor’s face in grad school turning red. To say times are different now is lame. It is a bad excuse for bad behavior.

On a summer Friday at some point in the early or mid- nineties I remember coming home from somewhere to find my mother pale and shaking in the backyard. She kept muttering Newscenter Seven.  What happened was that a news team from a neighboring town had stormed Democratic Headquarters with cameras and attempted to question her about some alleged impropriety.  

She was well over seventy by then, alone, mostly deaf, and beginning to experience cognitive decline. It didn’t help that she and Sadie had been violently mugged at the Headquarters not long before. She was terrified.

We all grow old if we’re lucky. We don’t always know the “woke” word for this or that. This hardly makes it appropriate to attack someone. They’re probably just doing their best.