Portrait of an Activist

The old man is blessed with a number of fascinating relatives. One of them is a niece called Linda. In recent years I have dubbed her The Activist. She is a mid-generation Baby Boomer born about a quarter century after the old man.

Unfortunately Linda inherited a certain determined and very private individualism and a congenital heart condition from the old man’s family. Much more fortunately she got her talent, intellect and positive personality from her father!

Linda’s mother and the old man, who was the baby of his generation, had an always loving but often disapproving-of-each-other sibling relationship. Partly that was because of their age difference. In spite of that the old man eventually gained some maturity as did the relationship, which soon included Linda’s father, the old man’s wife and then Linda herself. Linda’s father brought a new, different and rather exciting dimension to the old man and his whole family.

That persisted for some four short years until the old man decided to leave the coastal environment to begin his own struggle for upward mobility. They lost touch except for occasional visits, even after the old man decided to return to the gentle valley of his childhood in the frustrating pursuit of impossible dreams beyond his capacity. He found his older sibling still beautiful but with only a shadow of her vibrancy. Linda suddenly lost her mother to heart disease when she was just eight.

While the old man became ever more absorbed in his personal, family, professional and community struggles, Linda grew up under her father’s guidance, developed many friendships and a new generational sophistication. We saw her periodically in family group settings and while visiting her father but learned little of her complexity and achievements until the old man’s later retirement. In the meantime she had taken voice training at the university, travelled Europe by car with a friend of many years, took teacher’s training and taught school for many years. Linda had a special bent for taking up causes, certain she would make a difference and make the world a better place. Somewhere along the line, though, she was diagnosed with the heart disease that seems to affect many of the females in the old man’s family. She suffered through a number of surgeries, developed a super-sensitivity to electro-magnetic radiation and after years of disability finally accepted early retirement from the teaching profession.

For a number of years now Linda has made the anti-wireless, anti-WiFi and more recently the anti-Smart Meter causes [Linda is the one with the glasses shown in the photo above] into completely absorbing, totally demanding causes while the old man cautioned her to take it easy in what seems a losing cause in our time. Ever ready to help others, including the old man with his aging problems, Linda has not slowed down.

In early February the old man, along with many others, got e-mail notice that Linda, who lives alone, had been roused by friends sufficiently to admit them and get her to hospital. Her childhood friend of so many years was kind enough to call the old man later the next day to provide a few details.

Since then the old man has heard that after a few days of observation, Linda has returned to her home under the care of her friends and according to visitors who saw Linda during her hospital stay, Linda is her bright and cheerful self.

Through all this trauma and clan gathering, the old man has been his usual contrarian self. He has made no effort to visit, sent no flowers or get-well cards, totally intent on giving her time to heal, stay as quiet as possible, and get a clean bill of health. Then, lo and behold, a mass mailing e-mail arrived from Linda in the old man’s Inbox this morning urging him to sign another community’s anti-Smart Meter petition on behalf of Citizens for Safe Technology. Linda seems to be back at work!

Though the old man and his spouse of nearly 63 years have not told her so privately, they wish to tell her in this sometimes public way that they both love her dearly and that she is proving once again that she truly is Linda the Activist with a capital “A”. No matter where they are positioned in her personal universe or whether they agree with her personal decisions or not, for them Linda will always be on the side of the angels!

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