Passion

When I was a young girl living in a small town during the 1960s, it seemed important to be passionate.

The people in the movies I saw were passionate. They slammed doors, threw things, made grand gestures for love and retribution. Then they lived happily ever after.

My mother was a fiery redhead who reacted almost without thinking, breaking chairs, throwing glasses, backhanding me when I least expected it -- and yet it was obvious my father adored her.

The big Italian family who ran our local grocery store sang opera and Italian love songs as they stocked shelves and cut meat. It there was any disagreement it, too, was loud and passionate (and in Italian.)

Of course the sixties were also the time of protesting and meditating and drugs, which kind of clashed with everything else in my life and itself too.

We had Pooh and Peanuts and wanted to celebrate the world as simpler, kinder people.

Except we didn't.

We became the forerunners of this awfulness our country is going through. Liars, cheats, child molesters, racists, people with no real conscience and a love of money that is idolatry. People who glom onto one idea and pervert it into a lifestyle that serves nobody.

Winnie the Pooh cannot erase the corruption, or hold the suffering children, but he can open a window to a bit of light that might see a few souls through in especially trying times.

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.  Winnie the Pooh