We had a big weekend not long ago. My grandson took his first communion at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church. I understand that this is not something that may be interesting to everyone out in the blogosphere (I wondered how long it would take me to use that word). However, it’s not the event itself that makes it worth talking about. It is that there was an event in our lives that marked passage of time, passage of the torch, passage of generations, that makes it relatable.

I have no trouble remembering when my children, Justin and Emily, hit this milestone. It seems like a minute ago some days. Some days it feels like another lifetime. Suddenly, I was the grandmother sitting in the pew feeling all the feels that grandmas feel. He looked so grown up. My daughter looked so proud and relieved, somehow. My husband was bursting at the seams. It was Kevin, after all, who started all this. He is a faith-filled, thoughtful man who took me to church before our first date. He didn’t want to miss Mass, but knew he might not be up for it on Sunday morning. That spoke volumes to me. I wasn’t Catholic, but something woke up in me that evening, at that service. A spark was lit that grew into a desire to join the church and I think Kevin can take at least partial credit for it.

Anyway….nearly 46 years later, there we were. Peepaws and Meemaws, sitting in a pew in a church that had seen our daughter’s first communion and confirmation, our son’s funeral, our daughter’s wedding and the baptism of both our grandchildren. It was a wonderful, accomplished feeling to watch another generation in our family participate fully at the same kind of service that meant so much to me so long ago.

It is days like these that make folks stop and reflect on the life behind them and the life ahead. My role in life is evolving and changing in so many ways, just as everyone’s does. I realize how very lucky I am to have the family I do. I realize how lucky I am to have the right and freedom to sit in that church and not be afraid to worship. I am warm and fed and clothed and have a home to go to. I work, I visit with friends, I have a partner to be beside me. He takes care of me and I take care of him and neither of us fuss when it is our turn to do the caretaking. I won’t pretend that I don’t wish Justin could be here to go through these days with us. I would love to see him with his niece and nephew. I would love to see who he would have become. That is not our fate and so we just remember how lucky we were even to have him for 20 years. We realize how lucky we are to have Emily and her family with us, living close enough to us to be able to be part of their lives.

Naturally, we mark time with events like these. Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, goodbyes and new adventures have made me who I am. Sitting in church I found myself looking back with smiles and tears. Some of those memories make me blush, some of them make me very proud, some of them make me laugh or cry out loud and some of them make me want to strive to be a better person.

The times we are living in now are so very different than when I was a child. I welcome some of the changes and rue the loss of some of the attitudes and customs we took for granted. As I watched my grandson go through the ceremony that weekend, I couldn’t help but reflect on some of the things he and his sister may never know in their lives.

On summer days when I was really young, we hit the door after a quick bowl of cereal, sometimes topped with milk from our neighbor’s cow, sometimes from the milk that the dairy truck put into a galvanized box on our front step. Those days were spent riding a bike, exploring the nearby cemetery, wading in the creek (crick!) behind our property, tending a huge garden plot or designing a construction site under the lilac bush with my brother’s Tonka trucks and dirt hauled in from the garden. We used the railroad track rails as a balance beam, played baseball with 13 kids (or 5 kids) on each team or just sat in the grass and searched for four-leaf clovers while we talked about the important topics of the day for pre-teens. We stayed far away from the “log lot” where the sawmill stored logs before they were processed. It was very well known that you could be crushed to death in that lot and we gave it a wide berth. We weren’t allowed on the other side of the railroad tracks or in a “rough” part of town we called Bucktown. I don’t think it was really rough, but Mom didn’t want us that far away, so the railroad tracks made a good border and Bucktown sounded scary. We knew when to be home for lunch, and we knew the day ended when the “security lights” came on. We never, well, hardly ever, strayed very far and lots of moms kept their eyes on lots of kids. It was a bucolic and sweet way to spend a childhood. It will be an interesting series of stories for my grandchildren who will wonder how I ever survived without cable or streaming or internet or cell phones. Just for a little more emphasis, my grandparents had an outhouse and we had a telephone party line until I was a teen.

I am blessed with an age-diverse group of people in my life. Some of them are right now smiling a smile of remembrance, some are teary thinking about times past, some are wrinkling their forehead or raising an eyebrow wondering exactly how old I am. I have been alive in 8 different decades. I just barely made it into the 50s. The 60s and 70s were when I formed all those sweet memories and more. In the 80s I was a newlywed and a new mom. The 90s were a blur of kids’ sports activities all year long. The 2000s were graduations and proms and college and grief and reinvention. The 2010s made me a mother-in-law and a grandmother. The 2020s are going to challenge me with some real changes, but I am looking forward to all of them. I love my life. I love what it was, what it is, and what it will be. I have a some regrets, big and little, but I know reflecting on those gets me right back to where I am and who I am today. Time moves on and I am happy to keep moving with it. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Are you “woke” and and “politically correct” or are you inferior or uneducated or racist or xenophobic or misogynistic or stupid? Write a social media post about protests or riots or Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head and you will be told all the rotten things you are. For example, after 61 years, it has come to light that I am racist, homophobic and, oddly, misogynistic. I am also fat, stupid and a boomer. These descriptors have all come in response to social media posts over the last year. By the way, have you noticed you can’t deny being racist? You also can’t deny being homophobic. Denying it evidently just proves the point. One of these days I will write a blog on what that means. For now, the racist, homophobic, fat, stupid boomer wants to let off a little steam.

Those of us born in the 1950s or 1960s or even the 1970s know there are phrases and words we grew up with that should never be uttered again. Some were not used with malice or a demeaning connotation at the time. “Retarded” was a proper medical term, if you can fathom that. Some were very demeaning and hostile and I won’t recount any of those here. Sadly, some were just part of the vernacular and no thought was even given to where they originated. I agree that can no longer be an excuse for those of us of a certain age. However, I am frequently shocked at what is today considered as racist or xenophobic or misogynistic.

Most recently, I was accused of being racist for the use of the word “thug”. I will push back on this one with some fervor (and probably some sarcasm). I’ll resort to an old tactic and give you the internet’s most quoted version of the meaning of “thug”.

• Thug is a term for a violent, lawless person, especially a man. … The adjective form of thug is thuggish. In this sense, thug often refers to someone who acts as a bully or is a professional and violent criminal, as in The mafia sent hired thugs to intimidate store owners.

Bingo. Exactly what I mean when I use the word. Somehow, now I am supposed to know that a thug refers to an adult, black male in a derogatory way. Maybe it does for you. So who is it that appropriated the word “thug” and turned it into a cultural reference that subsequently turned us boomers into racists? I do not subscribe to the notion that because you hear with racist overtones, I have become a racist. For me, “thug” doesn’t have a race connotation. Ever watch “The Godfather”? Talk about thugs……and not one of them was an adult, black male.

Pop quiz: If a group of adult, white males is looting a liquor store to protest police brutality, are they thugs? If a group of black and white adult males is looting a liquor store to protest police brutality, are they thugs? If a group of adult, black males is looting a liquor store to protest police brutality, are they thugs?

The answer is, what does looting a liquor store have to do with a protest against police brutality? They are all thugs, and thieves and criminals if they are looting a liquor store. It’s looting, not protesting.

Moving on….

“Wokeness” and “political correctness” are just other words for being a thoughtful, kind and aware human being. What we are witnessing now, however, has taken those terms to a degree that some have come to use as weaponry. “Cancel culture” is now more like a sport…a sport with equipment that cuts and shames and demeans with a passion that renders common sense null and void. Most of us roll our eyes and laugh out loud at the references being made today. Dr. Seuss? Mr. Potato Head? You have to be kidding, right? Nope, not kidding. And we have to stop thinking it’s loony and really push back before the pendulum swings so far we can’t get it back to the middle.

I find it interesting that, in defending a lot of positions, the favorite tool is “If you don’t want/like X, don’t get/use X”. I agree, in most cases. So if you don’t like/want a Mr. Potato Head, please don’t buy one. Buy Lego blocks instead. They come in all shapes and sizes and colors and connect with each other in every way and don’t convey gender or sex. I used them with a Girl Scout troop to teach a lesson on diversity and inclusion and the value of every human being. They are a great tool for that. (Caution: don’t buy the ones in the pink box to avoid being called sexist.)

I remember using Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head to teach my kids body parts. Where do the eyes go? Where does the hat go? Where do the shoes go? Silly me…I thought they were handy educational toys. 30 years later I find out all I was doing was ingraining sexist, genderist (a new word?) and misogynistic stereotypes on my poor unsuspecting children. Except…..my daughter is one of the most tolerant and loving souls you will meet in your lifetime. My son didn’t have a judgmental bone in his body, unless you butchered a Stevie Ray Vaughan song on the guitar. How can it be that their exposure to Mr. Potato Head didn’t set them up to be cruel, judgmental and intolerant? I even read them the Berenstain Bears’ “He Bear, She Bear”….they shouldn’t have had a chance in hell of being “woke”.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s because their parents and their grandparents and most of their teachers and most of their friends were examples that didn’t allow for any kind of hateful, intolerant behavior. I don’t pretend to believe that all the people in their lives held all the attitudes of the hyper-woke today. I will tell you that Mr. Potato Head didn’t override the lessons we taught them to be kind and to live their lives without telling others how to live theirs. When they did encounter some hateful rhetoric about women or race or sexual preferences, one or both of us jumped on the opportunity to teach them about tolerance and prejudice and their responsibilities to be kind to one another. We were not perfect parents, but when I take a good hard look at the end result, I know Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder had a lot more influence over my kids than Mr. and and Mrs. Potato Head.

I don’t imagine that this will be the last blog I will write that is born out of my disgust for this “woke” standard by which we are all being measured. The irony and hypocrisy of it all is just too rich a subject matter. Until then, my book suggestion for the week is “Go, Dog, Go!” by Dr. Seuss. “The Godfather II” is the best movie ever made and will teach you the true meaning of “thug”. ….and don’t forget to pack your “angry eyes”, just in case.

I have been thinking that I need a blog for a while. I have a lot of things to say that, at the time, seem very important. I realize that not everyone agrees with that sentiment, so I needed to find a place I could record them, revisit them, revise them or delete them. I spend a lot of time on social media typing things in capital letters with exclamation points and question marks and then deleting them for fear of offending someone. I needed a place where I don’t necessarily have to worry about being offensive (I truly try not to be) and that only the people who choose to will have to read what I say.

I suppose I should tell you a little about me, so you can make an informed decision about whether you are interested in what I have to say. I was told once I don’t have a problem talking about myself (not that I am bitter about that), but this feels a bit uncomfortable. Here goes…

I was raised in a very small town in Southeastern Indiana and have wondrous, happy, carefree memories of being a child. My father had a great work ethic and was in the business of automobiles; fixing them, selling them, gassing them up. Mom worked if she needed to, but was home most of the time. I have four brothers, two sisters and am very proud to claim all of them. My dad and one of my brothers have left this world and I do what I can to help people remember they were here. I am married, have worked pretty steady since I was 17, and have two children. One lives near me and one left this world 18 years ago.

In the vernacular of present day, I am white non-Hispanic, cis female, heterosexual, married, Catholic Christian, pro-life, conservative, non-college educated, (well, a little college educated), overweight and prefer the pronouns “she”, “her” and “hers”. In my preferred vernacular I am Cathy, Mrs. Schroeder, Mom (Mama works, too), Meemaws, Kevin’s wife and Bob and Rita Simmonds’ daughter.

I realize that all the labels are necessary to put me in the correct box when reading all these future important thoughts. I wish it wasn’t so. I wish the words were most important, but we all know that sentiment is a memory. Maybe we can bring it back to life. I am lots of other things; the product of my upbringing, my life experiences and my thoughts. I hope to share those things with you in future posts, or at least the part of them that applies to the subject at hand.

I promised I would explain “It’s Just Cathy”. In the sixth grade of my tiny public elementary school, the principal and sixth grade teacher was a wonderful, regal man by the name of John Thrine. He was as close to a public school headmaster as I can imagine. On the first day, as he was learning our names, I became a consternation to him. He asked my name. “Cathy”, I said. “No”, he said, “your proper name”. “It’s just Cathy”, I said. “No, you must be named Catherine or Cathleen. Cathy is a nickname”, he said. “It’s just Cathy”….. He decided he would call me Miss Simmonds because Cathy seemed too familiar. He moved on….to my good friend “Trudy”, or as she became to him a few minutes later, “Miss Maudlin”. He was a wonderful man.

Welcome to my blog. I hope you find it to be worth your time. I can’t guarantee that you will like or agree with everything that falls out of my brain, but I promise to be just Cathy and to try to write in a way that entertains, informs and inspires.