Marcia's Musings: The Curious Case of Mrs. DeBoer
/ Rebecca AirmetBy Marcia Appel — Last Updated: September 16, 2024
Two farms away from mine when I was a small girl lived an old couple, John and Anna DeBoer. Like my Dutch-speaking four grandparents, they had crossed the sea from the Netherlands to become farmers in my northwest corner of Iowa. Farming gave the easiest access to work there, and some people knew their language. I loved Anna -always called Mrs. DeBoer by us kids - with all my heart. She taught me amazing things, and when she died, she left me her cherished cuckoo clock.
On summer days I would peddle to the picturesque DeBoer farm; my mother would arrive later by car for tea and lemonade on the porch. Sometimes we gazed at the white shirts and sheets lying on the thick lawn, brightening in the strong sun on windless days. Anna explained that the combination of sun and the chlorophyll of the grass ensured that white fabrics would stay blindingly so.
Towels drying on the grass
John and Anna raised three independent children – Joe, Harm, and Fenna – who in one way or another experienced many parts of the world, either through military careers or international teaching posts. When they visited, their parents would spend days cleaning the center aisle of the granary and set up a big screen with rows and rows of chairs. Neighbors flocked to these evening events to watch slide-show presentations about faraway countries and societies, expanding our horizons in the presence of friends. I remember them still and know deep in my heart that they broadened my worldview, as they did those of many others. I also became aware of whispers from some townspeople about the oddities – the “strangeness” – of the DeBoers. Were they only whispers?
I now witness with horror the vile rumors and theories disparaging Haitian immigrants in Ohio, causing little children to be unsafe in their schools and their parents to be sick with fear even though city officials vehemently defend them. Now I wonder if Anna DeBoer would have been vilified for some of her ways, or my grandparents for that matter. I flinch at the unkindness and scapegoating and barely recognize the culture in which I live.
The seething resentment against immigrants – even as they perform jobs no others wish to do – rolls and roils across our country, separating us and turning us against each other. The true teachings of yoga, the Buddha, and Jesus fly out the window and with them go reason, compassion, kindness, and love.
“Fueled by fear, mired in misunderstanding, and hardened by goading from manipulative leaders who know (or should know) better, the concept of ‘the other’ spreads its shadow.”
The fact that bias and prejudice and their cousins – scapegoating and name-calling – reach back through the sands of time is not a defense. We know better now. Ancient texts and philosophies from the Bhagavad Gita to the Buddhist Sutas to the yoga Sutras to the Bible warn of the dangers of seeing separation where there is none. For a moment, though, forget those texts and just feel.
What would we feel like if we were accused of stealing pets and eating them? Of stealing work that others reject? If our children were threatened with school bombs simply for being who they are? Recently, a close family member – a mother of two – asked me this: What is it going to take for our children, all our children, to be safe and to be loved? I know she’s correct: What is it going to take?
When we start to see “the other”, sit in fear, hide in darkness, and forget that we all bleed red, we all lose.
Anna DeBoer dried her white sheets on the lawn; she and her husband, John, hosted travelogues in their granary, yes. My Grandmother Zoet planted certain garden seeds in moonlight, and my Grandmother Appel urged all women to make sure they had their own money at a time when that just wasn’t said. Were they “the others”, too?
I wonder.
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We hold so tightly to the word “resolute” and its direct descendant, “resolution”. We took this lovely word with its Latin footprints, held it hostage, and morphed it into something that tends toward a kind of rigidity and judgment that often results in disappointment and feelings of failure.
When times become troubled, when loneliness descends, when weariness seeps into the bones, when the load feels too heavy, even when we wish to have fun and adventure, the comfort and joy of community beckons…
I sat in my car on the side of the road. Cars, vans, motorcycles, and trucks whizzed past me as I sat stuck in place. In my fog, I finally picked up my cell phone and called the friend who knows me best. “I’m sitting on the side of the Crosstown unable to move,” I managed to say through choked tears. “I’ll be right there,” she said.
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I loved Anna DeBoer with all my heart. She taught me amazing things, and when she died, she left me her cherished cuckoo clock. Now I wonder if Anna DeBoer would have been vilified for some of her ways. When we start to see “the other”, sit in fear, hide in darkness, and forget that we all bleed red, we all lose.
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The minute I walked through the glass double doors, I felt a current of connection flow through my body.
What happens if the ones you love don’t connect with self and with another as deeply as you do or as you hoped they would? How do you love the one(s) you’re with then?
I carefully peeled the orange, and as I placed the segments on a plate, a revelation hit me: “Ahh, this is how my life is - a whole lived in segments…”
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Hey, God, are you there? It’s me, Marcia. Usually, as I sit on my cushion, I listen for and to you. As you know, sometimes, I call you God, other times Universe. Other times, Goddess. In a long life with you, I learned you hear and answer to many names. I know you’re there.
At this time of the year, we often feel tender: tender toward other people, tender toward the natural world and all its creatures, tender toward life itself, tender perhaps even toward ourselves. Images both sweet, like a dog and cat sleeping together, and horrifying, like the pain and suffering borne by innocent civilians on both sides of a war, elicit tender thoughts.
The headline for this soul-baring sounds faintly geopolitical and sinister. It’s as though Hercule Poirot stands on deck to solve a great mystery. This situation requires no famous investigator, however. What is unfolding is the normal flow of the sweet river of life and a happy, joyous bend in it. I can’t wait to tell you this long-held secret.
This thought plagues me in a time of impersonality. We sit in offices in our private homes, alone or on endless Zoom meetings that I overhear from my home’s lower level when my children or friends stay over. Oh, yes, they see faces. The sharing, though, is all business…
With Barbie, there emerged a more complicated relationship. She didn’t look like anything I witnessed in the strong flesh-and-blood women around me, and it’s only by some miracle that I didn’t start to body-shame myself. I know many others did in the years before we talked about concepts like the male gaze and how it distorts the way women view themselves. This sets impossible standards that maim and warp and cause real illnesses in both men and women and their relationships, however they come together. Especially in the first decade of Barbie’s existence, her white, white world left out everyone else, which matched reality, until the great movements of the late ‘60s and ‘70s caused Mattel, Barbie’s corporate owner, to succumb to the pressure to “show dolls more like me and my daughter”. I’ll get back to that in a minute.