Plant Defiant

“I see you’ve got a cabbage plant that’s still hanging in there,” my son, Dave noticed.

That was during Christmas break. How that plant had managed to make it through most of December, I don’t know.

Then it was late January, and there it was, still alive. It seemed impossible.

“Did you know there’s one green plant left in your garden?” Lori was looking through her binoculars, watching the snow falling when she eyed the lone survivor in my very dormant vegetable garden.

“It’s a cabbage plant,” I informed her. “I don’t know why it hasn’t shriveled up and died.”

Although we’d had a relatively mild winter up until the big snow of late January, we had had several hard freezes with cold enough temperatures to turn all the other plants to a dead, dull brown.

But there was that cabbage plant, decked out in its spring green, standing out like the guy who shows up for a party in the dead of winter, decked out in a derby hat and yellow sports shirt when everyone else has donned thick sweaters and wool mittens.

As Lori continued to peer through her binoculars, I named my plant.

“I’m calling it, Plant Defiant,” I told Lori.

Were I a horticulturist, I might be able to give you the scientific reasons why my cabbage plant had defied the winter elements.

I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation.

But, I chose to give that cabbage the benefit of my lack of knowledge and attribute its survival tactics on a defiant attitude.

“I think of defiance as a having a negative connotation,” Lori objected, after I told her my plant’s name. “You know, like a child with a defiant attitude,” she explained.

My wife has been a school teacher for 36 years, and I could see in her eyes the images of at least a dozen children with defiant attitudes towards the good intentions of teachers.

But defiance can have a positive aspect.

It can push us to stand up for the right thing, for something we believe in, when everyone else tells us to be quiet and sit down.

The negative voices whisper in your ear, “Conform to the way things are. Don’t venture out. Blend into the wintry bleakness. You can’t make a difference.”

Author Irving Stone spent much of his life writing about successful people---particularly artists, thinkers, politicians.

Someone once asked him if there was a commonality among these outstanding people. Was there one thing all those people---ranging from Jack London, to Michelangelo, to Van Gough--- had or did that could have attributed to their achievements?

Stone’s observation was that sometime in their life they had “…a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished...and they go to work…They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified and for years they get nowhere. But every time they're knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they've accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do."

You don’t have to be a famous artist, politician, or intellectual to make your mark. You only have to be the unique you that you were called to be, persevering in the thing you are called to do.

For some it may be a homemaker. For another, it might be a teacher, or a lawyer, or firefighter.

It’s not so much what you do but that you do what you meant to do, and because you know you are meant to do that thing, you do it well. You defiantly refuse to be and do something that’s not you and not what you are called to do.

And in defiantly saying “no” to the ordinary, you are saying “yes,” to the extraordinary.

The snow slowly blankets my garden, like a mother gently pulling the covers over a child she puts to bed.

Somewhere beneath all that snow, entombed in white, is a cabbage plant that kept on keeping on, and if it accomplished nothing else, it inspired a tired man on a cold winter’s day to say “no” to the voices of derision---the ones that say the effort is not worth it, that it doesn’t make a difference anyway---and instead of giving in, to respond with another “yes” to the call, even though no one else hears the “yes,” or applauds the call, for in that “yes,” is the defiance, the power to stay with it and not give up.

Red and yellow, black and white

My tutor looked away from the math problem to the sidewalk outside.

I squinted, watching boys and girls walking hand in hand.

White children were walking next to black children.

The tutor made it clear that she did not approve of whites and blacks walking together.

Mom had arranged for her, a retired school teacher, whom I will call Mrs. “B,” to help with my math studies, for that was a subject my six-week report card indicated needed some attention.

That’s when Mom contacted Mrs. B. She was probably in her mid 60s, but she seemed older than the ancient of days to my third grade mind. Mrs. B. was kind enough, at least she didn’t rap my knuckles when I made a mistake, and that was a good thing, for my missteps in math were many. Sadly, though rumors of miracles with her other students abounded, Mrs. B’s efforts to improve my math skills were largely wasted.

But I learned something from Mrs. B that would stay with me forever, even if it was one of those life lessons that come to us in a back-handed, negative way.

The lesson had to do with those kids we saw walking down the sidewalk in front of her house that day.

“It’s wrong,” she said firmly and forcefully, pointing to the presence of black children with white children, “and God doesn’t approve,” she said.

Right and wrong was as clear to Mr. B as the correct summation of addition or multiplication, subtraction or division. It was right there, like the checks for a correct answer or a red “x,” for an incorrect one.

But looking at the smiling faces on those kids, I couldn’t help but think Mrs. B’s estimate of the facts didn’t quite add up, at least not in my mind.

It certainly didn’t correlate with what we sang only a few blocks down the road from her house on Sunday morning at the First Baptist Church where I had learned to sing, “Red and yellow, Black and white/They’re all precious in his sight/Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

Did he love all the children the same or were some children favored because of their skin color? Did he love them as long as they stayed grouped together, color by color, with some colors innately more privileged than others?

But what puzzled me the most was an even deeper issue, at least to me: What was it that caused an intelligent person to think God frowned on black and white children walking together?

I pondered.

Many years later some of those questions would lead me to write a doctoral dissertation that at least in part addressed the issues that Mrs. B and other well-meaning people had raised in my mind.

Otherwise good people, motivated by fear, can seek to restrict other good people from enjoying the freedoms both have a right to claim.

Fear causes rational people, many whose ancestors immigrated to this great country, to deny all other immigrants the same opportunity to love and work in this country.

It causes one group of people to look down upon or away from another group of people, thereby permitting injustices to them simply because they are “different.”

This Sunday, I will join others---red and yellow black and white---in honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his now famous, “I have a Dream,” speech, Dr. King said something we all need to remember: We are on this journey together, and in light of the multifarious threats to our freedoms both within and outside our borders, it is imperative that we stay together.

Or all of us could lose the freedoms we hold so dear.

In reference to many of his “white brothers,” who were present the day King gave that speech, he said that they “have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

“We cannot walk alone,” King said near the end of his speech. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

It’s still true today.

So, thank you, Mrs. B.: I learned from you that even good, well-meaning teachers can have flaws and prejudices, and those very flaws and prejudices can teach us that when we are afraid, we can---just like those children you pointed to on the sidewalk were doing so long ago---lock arms and hands, sometimes even with those whom we fear the most, and walk the road together.

We cannot turn back.

Not now.

Not ever.

Very superstitious

I made sure I had on my special socks---white with red trim, and my OU sweatshirt, T-shirt, and ball cap.

Then, we raised our hands for the kick-off as we chanted “OOOO-U!”

My son, Dave, and I are apt to repeat “First-down, first-down, first down,” when OU is in a tight spot on offense, or “turn over, turn over, turn over,” when we’re backed up on defense.

And all our mojo seemed to be working at halftime. We were holding on to a one-point lead.

Then our team slipped into a football coma in the second half.

No amount of jinxing the opponent or nursing our own team back to contention with good luck mantras seemed to work.

Dave shook his head mid-way through the fourth quarter and resigned himself to defeat, “We’re done.”

All our effort, and our team still lost.

I thought of the hilarious 2012 Bud Light TV commercial featuring various superstitious behaviors of football fans: one guy is rubbing a rabbit’s foot, another arranges his beer cans in a specific pattern inside his refrigerator, someone else wears two different colored socks, and a couple holds their hands over their eyes just before a winning field goal. When they see that it’s good, the guy seems to be saying, “I did that.”

The commercial has Stevie Wonder’s 1972 smash hit, “Very Superstitious,” playing in the background and ends with the tag: “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”

The reason the commercial was successful was because “it’s tied to human truth,” according to Paul Chibe, then Anheuser-Busch’s VP for marketing.

"The human truth is that when you're an NFL or football fan, you have a superstition for what you do for a game,” Chibe told Business Insider. (His personal one is that if the team he is rooting for is losing, he switches channels. “If I turn it off they'll get back into winning mode.”)

Or so he hopes. 

We resort to such behaviors when we want to feel like we can have some control over how an event beyond our control we will turn out.

I know that repeating, “first down,” when my team has the ball will not increase their odds of actually getting a first down.

But I often do it anyway.

Maybe it relieves anxiety.

My sister-in-law, Lisa, is an intelligent woman, an accountant who is responsible for the pay-roll of a significant number of people. And earlier this year, she wouldn’t speak to my wife for an entire day because Lori jinxed our team by saying, “This will be an easy game.”

It wasn’t; and we lost.

Of course, Lori should have known better and “knocked on wood,” after her blithe prediction.

“I didn’t know I had that kind of power,” Lori chided.

But later that same day, Lori’s team was behind.

“Why aren’t you watching the game out here?” I asked, referring to the room with the best TV.

“Oh, they seem to do better when I’m not in there,” she said from the other room.

I asked one of the deacons in my church, a guy whom I know to be a huge University of Kentucky basketball fan, if he ever engaged in superstitious activities when UK played. “Oh no,” he said, almost scorning the premise in my question.

But then, he confessed, “Well, when UK had that winning streak last year, I did wear this special shirt…”

I smiled.

Only because I’d been there.

You might call me a “Recovering Superstitious Person.”

“Hi, my name is David, and I’m a superstitious person.”

“Hi, David,” I hear thousands respond.

The thing is, I know what I’m doing, and like Barney Fife, I’m not really superstitious, just cautious.

Earlier in the year, we were behind 17 points in the fourth quarter. I couldn’t take the pressure, so I went outside. “If we score the go-ahead touchdown, turn the porch lights on and off,” I requested of Lori.

“I’ve got to get away from this and pray,” I said as I walked out the door. And honestly, I did pray, and not like you might assume I prayed. I DIDN’T pray for my team to win. I prayed for the worship service the next day, my sermon, certain people, God’s Kingdom, the larger perspective that comes with the recognition of life’s more important things.

And then, I saw the light…

…the porch light, that is.

“We came back?” I asked as I stepped inside the house, out of breath from running down the street.

“YES!” Lori screamed.

I later wondered what someone might have thought had they watched me pacing up and down our street only to see me tear off toward my house when our porch lights flashed.

But at the time, it didn’t matter.

I high-fived Lori 7 times, because that would help insure a victory next week.

Which it did.

I’m sure.

Knock on wood.

After all, it’s only weird if it doesn’t work.