Sunshine, Crocuses and Haiti

It's been an unusually rough winter in the central plains...only eight or nine days without snow on the ground since the official start of the season. But today is the kind of day to make me forget most of that. The sun is here with seeming vengeance to drive away the snow, and species crocuses are blooming, flashes of purple and yellow against the brown landscape.

Last fall, I planted three colors of crocuses on my father's grave in Hutchinson, KS., and a sister bunch beneath a redbud tree in Kansas City. I've been watching those under the redbud in particular this year, knowing that when the crocuses here are nearly ready those in Hutch will be in full bloom. It's a way to think of my father, who died 14 months ago, with less grief and more joy.

Even without flowering crocus, I've been thinking a lot about Ted (as I not-so-respectfully liked to call my dad) the last month or so. It is, strangely enough, the earthquake in Haiti that brings him to mind.

Ted was a conservative -- as is my mom -- which often surprises acquaintances who know that I am a liberal moderate (or moderate liberal...is there really a difference?) Through the years, friends who listened to the somewhat-good-natured political banter at our dinner table would ask how I grew up to be liberal in that house of conservatives. I always answered that question with some version of this story:

When I was 11, not much older than my son is now, my parents took my sisters, my grandmother and me on a Caribbean cruise. Several things about that trip stick with me -- the rock parapets of San Juan, the astoundingly azure waters around Curacao, the packed streets of Caracas. But it's the images of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that remain the most vivid.

Ted, whose outlook was shaped by growing up on a small depression-era farm, worked extremely hard to build a successful business as a young man. One of his few indulgences was traveling, and he refused to let any of us take the privilege for granted. To see a new city, country or continent wasn't about relaxation or status for Ted, it was about learning and trying to understand people whose world view differed from your own. He encouraged us to learn about the places we visited through any number of methods.

At some point on the cruise, Ted pointed me toward an onboard discussion of what to expect when we arrived in Port-au-Prince, (though he somehow failed to attend himself). The speaker talked briefly about Haitian poverty. He told us to look at the hills above the port at night to see the blazing cookfires of those "squatters" who lived on the hillsides in shelters made of cardboard, salvaged sheet metal and any other material they could find. I'd never heard the word squatter; it meant nothing to me. But I remembered it.

The day included a harried taxi ride through the streets of Port-au-Prince (in which our taxi ran into another), as well as a visit to a street market (where I bought a traditional madras hat, confusingly lined with newspaper). At dusk, my grandmother, Ted and I stood by the deck rail overlooking the city while the ship pulled away from port. Ted, who was like Monet when it came to the art of conversation, was too busy talking at first to notice that the hills framing the city were glowing red and orange.

"Those are the cooking fires of the squatters in the hills," I said, happy to show that I had learned something. I didn't expect the passionate lecture that followed.

"That's a horrible thing to say!" he told me. "Never assume because someone is poor that they're a squatter," he said, the harshness of the word clear in his tone. He continued for some time, admonishing me for looking down (he assumed) on those who didn't have the things I was fortunate to have. When he stopped and I could explain that the word came from the ship's cultural guide, not me, he calmed down.

It wasn't the last time I'd hear Ted lecture on the subject, but it was the only time the lecture was aimed specifically at me. I took his words to heart that night and it helped mold my global view. Ted would be amused, I'm sure, that I think of that instant as the jumping-off point for my liberal political philosophies.

That also wasn't the only time I'd hear Ted speak with such conviction about right and wrong or watch him talk emphatically about fairness and ethics and treating people with respect. He had no use for those who acted without a sense of responsibility to the world around them. He had particular disdain for those who were unethical in their professional dealings.

As I write this it dawns on me that I should thank Ted for giving me conviction to fight for change in the way our health care system treats families during pregnancy and birth. If more obstetricians shared Ted's sense of ethics, parents might not have to fight so hard for the right to make decisions on behalf of themselves and their babies...

Because they were planted just last fall, Ted's crocuses are just starting to grow while the others are blooming. Like great ideas that start small and grow in waves, the crocuses will spread with time, eventually filling the area under the redbud tree with purple and yellow blooms each year. They'll always remind me of my father, and now they'll also remind me of the importance of doing the right thing.

Bloom on, little crocus.