Everything's Gonna Be All Right

Rise up this mornin',


Smiled with the risin' sun,


Three little birds


Pitch by my doorstep


Singin' sweet songs


Of melodies pure and true,

Sayin', ("This is my message to you-ou-ou:")



Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,


'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.


Singin': "Don't worry (don't worry) 'bout a thing,


'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

~ Bob Marley

I had planned to write about a different topic, but life has a way of directing one’s thoughts and that is what happened to me this week. Everyone in my circle is experiencing stressful times, and as a fixer and a pleaser, their stress has affected me.

No matter how co-dependent I am and how much I want to take the reins and steer the horse back on course, I’ve learned that is not my most useful role.  So I’ve had to learn how to assist people in other ways.

The thing about life is that things happen and even the best prepared of us can be knocked down on occasion.

Sometimes I think how rote our lives are. Up at a certain time every morning, same morning routine just about every day, off to work or something else, bills to pay, laundry to wash and fold, groceries to buy, lawns to mow, bathrooms to clean, this TV show on this night, another one the next night, books to read and new ones added to the list, exercise, nutritional meal, splurge meal, a movie, or a concert or a road trip on the weekend. Then something happens that snaps us upright and out of the mundane. No one said life was going to be easy, and sometimes it’s downright boring and that’s not easy either. One isn’t better than the other, it seems.

Right now I know people who are out of work (some for a few years), who struggle to pay bills, who lost a loved one, who have an illness, who are making a life transition, and others who just feel overwhelmed. I feel for each of them, wish I could help them better, and wonder when it will be my turn.

A couple of weeks ago, Ronald and I went out for dinner. That’s something that has become rather common for us as empty nesters in a new location (I hate to keep calling it new when we’ve been here five years) where we can’t seem to find friends. As we approached the restaurant, there was a man sitting on the bench. I noticed he watched us as we got closer and closer.

“Hey, you look like a nice couple,” he said. “I don’t want no money, but I sure could use a ride.”

My shyness made me retreat a step. Ronald glanced at me then spoke.

“Where do you need to go?” he asked.

The man identified an intersection a few miles away.

“Why don’t you go in, and I’ll give this man a ride,” Ronald said. He opened the door for me and, as it closed behind me, I heard him introduce himself to the man.

I sat in a booth, ordered a soda, and told the waitress I was waiting for my husband because he offered a ride to someone that needed one.  “That’s so nice of him,” she said.

I had my cell phone out on the table, watching the digital numbers change as time passed, and figuring out at what precise time panic would set in if Ronald hadn’t returned.

Finally I decided I would give him three more minutes, and then figure out whether I would call his cell phone or 911. Just at that moment, he slid into the booth.

“I had my cell phone ready in case you didn’t get back,” I said, laughing, relieved.

“He had to go a little farther than he initially said,” he replied. “He never would have gotten there walking.”

Last week he shared a similar story. He had gone out to shoot pool on a weeknight. He played quite a few games with a guy he had never seen before, sat and talked afterwards over a soda, and it was late by the time he finished. I had long ago gone to bed so I could get up for work in the morning.  A teenage girl flagged him down as he drove home. He stopped and she asked if he could give her a ride.

“My God,” I said, “you could have been a serial killer.”

“I dropped her off at the corner of her street,” he said.

“She was lucky.”

“I see a lot of girls out late around here,” he said. “I don’t know why they are out at that time of night.”

“I taught Cara and Mackenzie to not get into situations like that if they could help it,” I said. In theory I hope for equality among the sexes, but in real life, brawn wins out in certain situations.

“She acted like I was going to ask her for something,” he said.

“She was expecting it,” I said. I told him about a reality show I had watched where a teenage girl was getting into strangers cars and offering sex in exchange for rides. Her father had died and her mother had been in a car accident that had left her paralyzed. This girl was angry at life and out of control.

“Yup, but she got me instead,” he said. I felt relief. I could have been reading about her in the paper but instead she got home safely that night.

A year ago he came home asking if we had any wire hangers.

“This guy is locked out of his truck downtown, and he doesn’t have any money to call for a tow truck or help,” he said. “I stopped at the dry cleaner, but they wouldn’t give me one. Probably thought I was going to do something illegal.”

I handed him a hanger, knowing that as a retired firefighter, he knew how to open a car door. He turned and headed back out, and I knew I’d hear a good story that night at dinner.

Ronald is nonjudgmental about the circumstances when a person asks him for help. He’s not thinking, “this guy is homeless” or “he’s going to take my money and buy drugs” or “he’s going to do me harm.” He assesses the situation and determines if there is anything he can contribute.  He learned to do that on the job. It didn’t matter if it was a prostitute who had been beaten up by a john or the drug addict who suffered a bad trip or the wealthy guy who rammed his BMW into a guardrail. He was there to assist.

A lot of people wonder why Ronald hasn’t continued to work in firefighting in some way, but he is adamant that he wants nothing to do with it. Over twenty-five years he saw things he would not wish anyone else to witness, and they haunt him as many others who work in such fields will attest. He knows what death looks like, and catastrophic injury, and terror, and mass destruction. He knows those things are equalizers. He still has a strong need to serve, to protect, and to assist.

I know a few of my readers probably think I am crazy over Ronald. I am. I’m crazy in love and crazy full of respect for him and how his presence makes a mark in the world. It’s an honor to have someone like that in my life. In many ways, he saved my life, but he has told me I did the same for him.

It still frightens me, though. It’s not that I don’t want him to help, but that I don’t know how to read the situations like he does. Sometimes I worry about the danger he might encounter. But I know I have to trust him in those situations, just as I told him a long time ago when he was still on the job that he could rely on his intuition because it never failed him.

Another dinner out a few nights ago, and another situation arose. The guy who held open the door for us first asked us if he could cut ahead since he had been at the door first, and the line was fairly long. We both said yes. Then he started a conversation with us.

He said he was new in town, was in the military, and worked for the FAA. He said that since he had moved to the city, he hadn’t really been able to meet people, and he wanted to know what places might be good to do that. I chuckled because we hadn’t been very successful at meeting people. Ronald made a suggestion or two. We exchanged introductions, and, in the meantime, he had worked his way around to being behind us in the line. When we reached the hostess desk, Ronald waved him in front of us, but he begged off. The hostess asked, “Two for dinner?”

We looked at one another and silently assented, as people who have been together for almost forty years tend to do. Ronald said, “Maybe three. Would you like to join us?”

The man seemed surprised and said that he was actually waiting for a friend and that he would stop by our table to exchange phone numbers.

He never stopped by although I saw him several times on his cell phone racing to the restroom. It made me suspicious.

Later, on our way back to the car, Ronald said, “I don’t know about that guy. What was his name again?”

“Adam. He was strange,” I said.

“A lot of times, guys are trying to sell drugs or buy drugs, and they tend to look for a black guy. They make their assumptions,” he said.

“You know, I was thinking that,” I replied. “It’s like the guy that worked in the dining hall when we were in college. One day he asked me if I liked to party. I was confused and didn’t know how to respond, and he never asked me again. Now I know, just from this situation, that he was wondering if I did drugs.”

“It took you all these years to figure that out?” Ronald asked, laughing.

“Yup.”

I know Ronald relies on his intuition, and that’s true about my daughters, and even myself. My fear in certain situations is my intuition telling me, “you can’t handle this so don’t get involved.”  That’s why I didn’t answer the dining hall employee when he asked me his question. I didn’t know what he meant, but I knew it couldn’t be good.

I may not be in the position to help people the way Ronald does, but I’m the cheerleader who isn’t afraid to shed a tear and feel your pain alongside you while I listen to your story. That’s what I do best: letting people share their burdens or vent, helping them believe in themselves, to reach for something better, or to help pick up the pieces after life has been shattered by some event.

I can think of many times when I met a stranger – someone who walked into my office or that I met at a function or in a store or who rang my doorbell – and my intuition told me they needed to talk to someone. I’m that someone. I can listen and listen and listen, for hours if need be. I can sense if that person needs more than that and offer suggestions, a contact name or place to assist, or some lovely platitudes that lift the spirit.  Maybe I’ll never see that person again. That happens frequently. My hope is that I left a gift for that person, maybe recognition of one’s own strength. Each person leaves me a gift as well – the gift of connectedness.

Trusting your intuition is true for you, too. Listen to it. Withhold judgment. Hear what it really says, not what you think it should say or what you want it to say.

When those things in life occur that knock you down, trust in yourself. You’ll find your way. You’ll figure out the outcome, even if it isn’t the one you first wished for or imagined. In the end things have a way of working out just the way they are supposed to – everything’s gonna be all right.

Fighting Fires

Where were you on 9/11/01? It is a day that many of us won’t soon forget.   I particularly remember the overwhelming fear, sadness, and dread I felt as I watched the firefighters. They were the people running into the World Trade Center buildings where death and mayhem reigned. Over three hundred of them would die that day, others in the years to come, and many others would suffer permanent physical, mental and emotional damage. I worried that Ronald, a Syracuse firefighter, would be called to go down to New York City for the search and recovery work. My selfishness was only exceeded by my fear.

I read an interesting article today on ABCNews.com (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/firefighter-ptsd-suicide/story?id=14466320) titled Firefighter PTSD, Depression and Suicide – Helping the Helpers. It talks about the high rates of PTSD, depression and suicide among firefighters, mostly not recognized or acknowledged before 9/11. I know about this intimately. Ronald, now a retired fire lieutenant, was exposed to constant death and danger on the job for twenty-five years, unimaginable for most of us. As one of the first black firefighters in Syracuse after a federal consent decree ordered the department to align hiring practices with city demographics, he was also exposed to the closed and racist culture of firefighting, where outsiders were not welcome.

I respect the work firefighters perform for us. It’s a call of duty and service for many, Ronald included. But I know this, firefighters are human and they suffer the attendant failings, fears and weaknesses of all of us. That they still put their lives in danger so that we may be safe is not only astounding, but we forever owe them our gratitude, respect and understanding.

What you read next may make you wonder how I can feel that way, but believe me when I tell you that we humans are a complicated, perplexing bunch, not easily described in black and white but in many shades.

(Excerpt from Chapter 7, The Ubiquitous They, Shades of Tolerance)

The Syracuse City Fire Department had a history of being staffed with white firefighters. Prior to 1981 blacks constituted less than one percent of the force. The department was mostly made up of Irish-American and Italian-American men whose fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins and grandfathers had been firefighters. The U.S. Justice Department and the city of Syracuse filed separate actions in 1978 for non-representation of the community demographics on its force. In 1980 a consent decree was issued to align hiring practices of blacks to reflect the community racial makeup. The department demographic was to consist of at least 10 percent ethnic minorities. By 2004, two years before Ronald’s retirement from the force, the percentage of black firefighters was at 16.5 percent while the community was 25 percent black.

 Two white men filed reverse racial discrimination claims in 2005 that stated the department hired from two lists, a white list and a black list. They purported the department had passed them over for recruits selected from the black list who had the same scores as the two white men. White firefighters posted the test scores of the new black recruits on the official fire department bulletin boards in every station. They supported the reverse discrimination suit. The court dismissed the claims in 2010.

The facts above are about faceless men and percentages, but Ronald would become one of the first black firefighters after the consent decree was issued.

He decided to take the firefighters civil service exam in 1980. He had talked about becoming a state trooper, and I told him I thought he might get killed in a job like that. Then he talked to a state trooper to find out when the exam was scheduled, and the trooper told him they did not want recruits like him. Ronald knew he meant blacks were not welcome on the force, so he signed up for the firefighters exam. The irony of his wanting to become a firefighter after I expressed my fear about the danger of being a state trooper was not to be lost on me, particularly after the fatal fire near the university just two years before.  His longing for this kind of dangerous job surprised me at first. I saw him as the artist and musician, not the alpha male type, but Ronald’s complex nature fascinated me.

Ronald scored well on the statewide exam and was selected for the July 1981 class of firefighter trainees. The class, the first selected after the consent decree, had thirty new firefighters: fifteen white men and fifteen black men.

During training one of the chiefs told Ronald that he believed Ronald might very well become the first black fire lieutenant in the history of the department. He told him he was impressed with his skills and how quickly he learned. Ronald was skeptical.

The chief was wrong. Ronald would become the third black lieutenant, resisting the pull to be first. I always told him it was because he knew, deep down in his gut, the other firefighters would have made it impossible for him to become the first.

What Ronald came to experience was that the chief’s enthusiasm for his future on the department would make the white firefighters, who had brothers or sons or nephews waiting to join, resent him.

He was assigned to one of the busiest stations in the city, Station 8 on the south side. The chief had indicated that the experience he would gain working at such a busy station was critical to reaching his potential as a future officer. Ronald stopped over a few days before his first shift, and the firefighters on duty were aloof. He quickly toured the station and left.

On his first day, he pressed his uniform with its newly sewn on patches. He buffed his black steel-toed shoes and pinned on his badge. He was firefighter number 429 – it would take us twenty-six years to realize that Cara and Mackenzie were born on the same day, April 29^th, as his badge number. We noticed one day as we walked toward the car, two years after he retired, and saw the vanity plate with the Maltese Cross, the universal symbol of firefighters, and his badge number. He would think of the coincidence as simple serendipity.  I would believe it was a sign of predestination, even if we had taken so long to notice it.

When he arrived at the fire station, Ronald reported to his officer. Lieutenant Andy Schaffer was the kind of firefighter who figured if he did not have time to put his air mask on, so what? It was just smoke. He had a large horse-like face, cratered and pocked skin, and thick gray hair that raged all over his head. He was referred to as touched, but then again, a lot of the old “smoke eaters” were touched. Ronald had heard stories about them during training.

“You know you niggers can’t help how you are,” Lieutenant Schaffer said to Ronald at the breakfast table after the morning equipment check.

“Really?” Ronald asked.

One of the other firefighters put his beefy arms on the table, stared at Ronald, and tipped his crew cut toward him.

“We don’t want you niggers here,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure you don’t make it. I’m a union steward, but I won’t represent you ever.”

Ronald left his first day angry and discouraged, but he also knew he would not let anyone stop him. He bought firefighting manuals and studied them on his time off. He memorized the pocketbook of city street names and maps. At the station, though, he read Drum Magazine, a magazine dedicated to professional musicians. He did not want the other firefighters to know he was studying.

Within a month of Ronald being at Station 8, Lieutenant Schaffer started calling him his “little Brillo head.” He would pass behind Ronald, place his arm around his neck and rub his knuckles across the top of his head.

Firefighting is a fraternal brotherhood. Oftentimes when off duty, each station shift hung out together, playing sports, drinking, socializing. If a firefighter chose not to engage in activities outside of work, he was looked upon unfavorably, as if he might not rise to the occasion if one of his brothers was in imminent danger. But things got worse when Ronald joined the Fire Department Bowling League. I went with him one night to watch him play, the only woman at the alley.

As I sat at the table behind the lanes, I shifted under the stares, my cheeks feeling warm.

“I don’t think they like me,” I said to Ronald.

“It’s me they don’t like and us,” he said.

The atmosphere degraded as the evening progressed.  The firefighters became unruly, drinking one beer after another, leaning in to one another, making comments while staring back at me, then laughing. A heavy set middle-aged firefighter staggered up to the lane when it was his turn to bowl. He picked up his ball off the rack and swayed with the weight of it. He turned toward the pins, his elbows bent, the ball centered at his chest. He bent slightly and his pants fell to his ankles, boxers and all. The men all laughed and turned to see my reaction. I had turned away.

“They’re all pigs,” I said to Ronald.

(Excerpt from Chapter 8, Watch Our Show, Shades of Tolerance)

Ronald heard more insidious remarks about our daughters and me at the fire station: jokes about how I’d “figure it out one day,” and run off with a “suit,” one of the white male mangers they imagined I worked with; they joked we would never need a babysitter because all we would have to do is wet the girls’ lips and stick them to the wall; they called them zebras; and then there was the officer who told Ronald he should have stuck our two-year-olds in a cab and gotten his ass to work the day Ronald’s car broke down on the way to the babysitter and then the fire station; another white firefighter got angry that Ronald called him to let him know he would relieve him by official changeover at six p.m. but would not make the unofficial relief time of four p.m. because he was driving his daughters to a summer dance program in another city. “Tell your lazy kids to get up off their asses and stop inconveniencing me,” the firefighter had said.

“He might as well have said ‘black asses.’ I know exactly what he meant,” Ronald said in the car as we drove back to Syracuse. He arrived at the station well before six, pulled the firefighter aside, stuck his face close to his, put his finger on his chest, and said, “Don’t ever talk about my daughters like that again. You don’t know anything about them and you don’t have a right to an opinion.”

Sometimes he retaliated. “You better watch your daughter,” he told one white firefighter. “White girls love black guys, and she might come home with one.”

The seeds of Ronald’s depression were planted in childhood, and they would thrive at the fire department.  Facing a litany of jeers, racist remarks, disrespect and pranks meant to make him look bad, I wondered how he didn’t blow up at the lot of them. He did, about six years into the job, soon after he was transferred to Squad, an elite and coveted placement that served as a steppingstone to becoming an officer.

One of the officers there wore a swastika on his uniform collar; the other firefighters asked him daily if he was ready to put in his voluntary transfer papers since they did not want him there. One night Ronald lost his temper and picked up a firefighter by the throat, held him against the wall even though he was a head taller than Ronald, and warned him what would happen if they took it out to the parking lot.

“I might not beat you,” he said, “But you’re gonna feel me and regret it tomorrow.”

Ronald picked up a trashcan and heaved it at his lieutenant during another heated exchange. Many years later the lieutenant would be promoted to chief and he would lie about a fire scene as a way to stop Ronald from successfully completing probation as an officer. He told some of his cohorts that he would make sure Ronald didn’t pass probation. One of the other black firefighters overheard him and told Ronald to watch his back. The chief reported that Ronald had not handled the supervision of the fire scene properly. His deception was discovered, though, after a few other officers at the scene gave their assessment and rated Ronald as fully competent. The administration was forced to investigate. Soon after, Ronald’s probation supervisor told him the chief would no longer be a problem. Then the chief announced his retirement, and Ronald passed officer probation.

While he served on the Squad, Ronald and I decided that if he put in his transfer papers, he would never earn the respect due him, and that he would stick it out until the administration put him on the mandatory transfer list. I said, “We’ll stay together through this, no matter what happens. If you put in for a transfer, they win.”

The five years he remained at Squad would be some of the most difficult years of our marriage, both of us thinking that his time there would be the thing that finally drove us apart.  I remember telling myself that relationships moved along a continuum between love and hate, and it was okay if we were leaning toward hate, because we’d swing back the other way. It comforted me enough to get through the bad days, months and years.

I was traveling for my job as a manager on a special records project at Bird Library in 1988, a few years into Ronald’s tenure at Squad. Across the country in San Jose, I was out of touch for most of the day. On the nights Ronald worked while I was gone, Cara and Mackenzie stayed at their Nanny and Papa’s. On his second night in, Fire Control issued a code 99, working fire. Squad and Rescue went to every working fire, along with the station in the fire district, so they responded to the call. As the engine pulled up to the curb just minutes after the alarm, the night sky glowed deep orange. The fire was fully involved, meaning it was blowing out the windows and spreading very quickly. The firefighters watched as an elderly couple, trapped inside the house, framed by the picture window, perished before they could reach them. No one would ever know why the couple waited so long to call 911, but the delay killed them.

The officer in charge, devastated by the loss of lives, ordered the roof crew up the ladder, perhaps hoping the building could still be saved. Ronald was on the roof crew. They are the men who carry large chainsaws and axes up a ladder, hook themselves to the roof, and cut ventilation holes, the fire raging beneath them. Ronald ascended the ladder and assessed the roof visually and by touch. He climbed back down.

“Can’t do it. The roof is spongy. It’s about to go,” Ronald reported.

“That’s a direct order! Get the fuck up there,” the officer yelled.

“No,” Ronald said.

“I’m citing you for insubordination!” the officer said, but Ronald would not hear the words, only see his lips move, because the crash, as the roof crumbled and descended into the conflagration, drowned out all other sounds.

Ronald told me about the incident the next day on the phone as I sat in my room at the Ramada Inn. I could hear the hurt in his voice that the couple had not survived, but I also heard relief that he heeded his gut.

 “Look,” I said, trying to steady my voice, imagining a different kind of phone call, “it’s great you take care of me and the girls the way you do, but if you ever get into a situation again where you think following an order will kill you, walk off the job, right then, right there. Promise me. We’ll figure it out later. And, remember, your gut never fails you.”

 “Hey, does Dianne know you hate white people?” one of the white firefighters asked him at the breakfast table a few weeks later.  He smirked and looked for approval from the other firefighters. Ronald had heard the question hundreds of times over the years.

“You’re right,” Ronald said, staring back at the firefighter, his eyes narrowed and dark with disgust. “I don’t like white people, but Dianne isn’t white. She’s Dianne.”

I knew what Ronald meant when he said I was not white and that he didn’t like white people. I didn’t feel white, not in the sense they did, as if white was better, but the firefighters probably did not understand him. They thought he was a “crazy nigger.” Ronald was not black in my eyes either; he was Ronald. His skin color was there, but it was not all of him. When I focused on his skin color I only saw how it looked against mine, warm and complementary, the way an artist uses color for shading and contrast.

Soon after he hefted that trashcan at his officer, the administration transferred him to another station. One of the chiefs pulled him aside and said, “I have to transfer you. You got that, right? But just between you and me, sometimes you have to kick a little ass.”

Ronald knew how to kick ass.