"Please hold for the Statue of Liberty"

(To those who are reading Meatballs - I’m working on Chapter 6 and will post it as soon as it’s done.)

This week I emailed my reps, once again, telling them to use their effing positions of power to oppose this stupid war. You don’t need me to convince you of the disaster that this Epstein Administration is. I’m not a political writer though I am a citizen of the US, I’m paying attention, and I’m incredulous, angry, and scared.

I was looking at some of my old writing this  morning and this thirty-year-old newspaper column about making phone calls caught my attention. It’s incredibly outdated, yet the exasperation is still true. So is, I think, the weird and heartfelt hope that we can make a difference.

I’ll edit this a little, not much. 

…

March 1996 / Phone Calls

I know a lovely human being who’s been making too many phone calls lately. She says in that small moment between when she dials someone and when they answer she tends to forget who she’s calling and why.  

She also mentioned that not long ago she was on her cordless phone (remember when we called them this?) coordinating a meeting while she was making dinner -and the phone fell in the soup. She says she’s going on vacation just as soon as she can call for arrangements.

Last night I made fifteen organizational phone calls. There should be some kind of special term for these kinds of calls. They’re not job related, though making them is a job. We do them to get volunteers for PTA, coordinate a banquet, remind Scout parents of the next meeting, arrange a church project, plan someone’s retirement party. These calls come part and parcel with interesting lives. They are not fun, although they’re not awful, either. 

I think of them as lima bean phone calls. They won’t kill, but who in their right mind would seek them out?

When I was a teenager I read a weird short story about a grown woman. The plot seemed so curious and banal I never forgot it. Now that I’m an adult, I think it’s hilarious. 

The protagonist was a fine but rather introverted woman. A service club she belonged to was arranging a bake sale. She was given a list of forty people to call to ask for baked good contributions. 

The task loomed over her. She didn’t want to call people she didn’t know. She felt overwhelmed by shyness but she was also disgusted with herself for being such a wimp.

She procrastinated until it was almost too late, and then she discovered she’d lost the list. Panic grabbed her until the light went on in her head and she breathed a sigh of relief, smiled to herself, and sat down to make a careful grocery list. She proceeded to bake for two days and brought forty desserts to the sale by herself.

Quick. Which seems easier? One hour of lima bean phone calls or two solid days in the kitchen? 

I know plenty of people (me) who, given a choice will pick the kitchen, the work shop, the garden, or the home office every time. 

If de Tocqueville were writing his treatise on American democracy now he’d probably talk about the amazing amount of time we spend on the phone arranging the activities, events, and politics of our lives. It isn’t glamorous but it’s definitely the tool by which most of the good works we do get coordinated.   

Perhaps we should amend the Statue of Liberty. She’ll still hold high the Torch of Freedom  but we could tuck a phone under the other arm. (Or in a pocket. Does she have pockets?) The message should be clear. If one is going to contribute to the strength of this nation eventually one’s going to be on the phone. 

One of the first fine moments of my young adult life came to me because of my willingness to stick a phone to my ear. It was Thanksgiving of 1972 and I was a college kid home for the long weekend. I was quietly and politely eating turkey down at the cousins’ end of my aunt’s dinner table. People were talking about the recent election where Nixon had trounced George McGovern. Twenty-nine people were satisfied and grateful with the results of that election. “That simpering liberal McGovern” was not a big favorite in my family.

Right then my brother announced, “Of course, the fact that Nixon won was no thanks to Mary Beth, who volunteered for McGovern.”

Silence reigned. You could hear turkey chilling and cranberries jelling. An uncle at the grown-ups’ end cleared his throat. I saw his great head swivel. He leaned slightly forward in order to imprint a clearer image of me in his beady eagle eyes. 

 “I expected better of you, Mary Beth, than to fall prey to the blithering liberal blather that erodes our society.”

I flipped my long hair out of my eyes, re-adjusted my granny glasses, and straightened my bell bottoms. Then I grinned. It isn’t just every day that a nice girl with good grades and no boyfriend can startle and surprise twenty-nine people. Especially people who’ve known her since she born.       

They thought I was doing something powerful and dangerous. I knew all I’d done was call a hundred citizens of Illinois’ DuPage County and I didn’t bother telling my relatives what a pathetic experience it had been. DuPage (at least at that time) was the second most Republican county in the country. Out of all those phone calls, I got one person who didn’t mind talking about McGovern. He chuckled when he told me to keep up the good work. 

Maybe the people of the world who agree to make a few phone calls for this organization or that cause aren’t exactly power brokers and superheroes. But there is something to be said about the way we stitch together the pieces of our communities with these eternal, infernal, informative, low rent calls. I remember when President Kennedy told us the Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” 

Maybe it begins with a phone call.