Wednesday Walk: Dallas Sunset

Remembering history and reconnecting with family

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As is typical every Wednesday, I’m bring you a smattering of topics that I hope will make you a bit more curious about the world around you and give you something to think about later. I call these Wednesday Walks, as it’s the type of conversation we might have walking down a path in the woods. Shall we take a stroll?

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History Helps

As I wrote about on Sunday, these are hard times to witness. I think part of the reason I was so reluctant to fully engage in the news coverage of the murders happening in Israel, Palestine, and now the U.S. was because I knew that if I did start looking into it, it would be very hard to go back to living my normal life.

That has been true for me, as I find myself watching news reports and social media messages with regularity now and just feeling sick. It’s hard to engage in the menial problems of my daily life when I know that people in other parts of the world are suffering. The mainstream media seems to have a tendency to strip us of our empathy, but it’s important to remember our humanity.

That being said, I have been able to find solace in some strange places. I took my seven year old son to the local library a few days ago and he wanted to go down every aisle and look at practically every book. I happened to see one based on the American Girl doll Kit Kitteridge, which my daughter had found at a free yard sale a few years ago and then passed on to him.

I’ve written before about how much I appreciate American Girl, especially the older dolls and stories that leaned into telling the stories of girls in historical contexts. Kit was a child during the Great Depression, and the book that I happened to suggest to my son was called Welcome to Kit’s World, 1934: Growing Up During America’s Great Depression.

There are several books like this for the historical dolls, and they give a sense of what everyday life was like for children in a given era. They cover fashion, politics, world events, music, entertainment, food, and much more and give greater context to the fictional stories of the girls.

Our whole family sat down to read Kit’s history lesson together a few nights ago and it was remarkable to read stories of life 90 years ago. I of course knew the main points of the Great Depression from both the media and hearing first hand accounts from my grandparents of what life was like back then (although three of my four grandparents were only babies when the Depression happened).

My grandpa’s portrait in the mid-1930s

The book really paints a picture of just how bleak the Depression era was that doesn’t often come through in family stories. After the stock market crashed, millions of people were out of work. There are photos in the book of children without shoes holding all sorts of assorted containers as they wait in line for some milk, while men and women wait in line for soup kitchens run by Al Capone.

On top of the economic uncertainty of the era, the Dust Bowl happened at the same time, where a combination of soil depletion and drought led to a loss of arable farm land. There was even a plague of grasshoppers in 1931 that destroyed crops.

Reading that book reminded me that every era has its challenges. Some of them are within our human control and some are not. Our time will not only be measured by the problems that occurred, but more importantly, by how we decided to respond to them in the moment.

The situation in the Middle East is bleak at the moment, and I hope enough people will stand up and speak out against the atrocities happening there. We may not all have the solutions or be in a position of power to make a difference, but we can still speak up and join the human chorus together. History is being written right now and we get to decide what role we play in the historic record.

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Getting Grounded

This week marked my first time taking a plane for work since December, 2019. In my past life, I was in the air and on the road at least once a month (often much more frequently). Work travel used to mean extravagant dinners at nice restaurants; eating and drinking too much, barely sleeping, and then hustling through a shoot to get more good food.

I’ve spent the beginning of this week in Dallas for a video shoot and felt a different pull this time. Maybe it’s the lingering effects of COVID in the air that make me wary of going to a restaurant, maybe it’s the diet that my family has been following for the last two years that make stuffing my face seem less appealing, or maybe it’s just an overall grounding that happened to me during the pandemic.

At any rate, I decided that I would rather spend time with family while on a work trip and made the effort to seek that out.

My wife’s cousin relocated to Dallas for a job opportunity about a year ago, although his wife and young kids initially stayed home in Toronto. Just a few weeks ago, the entire family made the move and are now adopted Texans.

Even though I had a packed schedule for work and I didn’t know what was on their plate, I reached out to see if they wanted to get together on Monday evening, knowing how difficult meetings can be with little kids. They agreed that seeing family was important.

For those that don’t know, the Dallas metro is a massive sprawl, so just being “in Dallas” does not mean I was necessarily close by. When my work wrapped up on Monday, I got in the car and the GPS said the ride was more than an hour to his apartment.

I made the trek, and boy was I happy that I did. I have always been close with this side of my wife’s family, but I hadn’t spent much time with either of his kids (his oldest daughter was born during COVID and his youngest was born just four months ago).

I hadn’t even given much thought to it, but my wife’s cousin introduced me to the kids as “Uncle Heath” and I felt an instant bond. He had ordered some Texas BBQ takeout and we ate it in a nice common room on the top floor of their apartment building, overlooking the Dallas skyline at sunset.

Dallas at dusk (Heath Racela)

I danced and sang with his oldest daughter as she showed me her favorite toys, while his younger daughter smiled and giggled at me. At one point, their mom pointed out that I was the first family that had visited since they moved to Dallas a few weeks ago, so their daughter was especially excited to show off her house.

I traded a fancy dinner with my colleagues for some takeout and play time with little kids, and I frankly couldn’t have been happier. I left that visit missing my own children, but also feeling happy to have formed a new bond with my two nieces, one that I hope can grow stronger with time.

It reminded me of visiting my cousin and her son when he was just one or two years old in San Francisco many years ago. That son is now in college in New York and I’ll be meeting up with him and his mom in a few weeks to see a show in Manhattan.

I suppose that I am sharing all of this because I am feeling an increased importance for family right now, in part because of the place in life that I’m at and in part because of what’s happening in the world. My wife and I both come from large families, and sometimes that can be easy to take for granted. With so many aunts, uncles, and cousins on both of our sides, it can be easy to forget just how precious each member of our family is.

Being a part of a family takes effort on everybody’s part. It takes making the time to see each other, reaching out when we’re thinking of somebody, and sharing how we’re feeling. It may take some extra effort, but it’s nearly always worth it, as you remember where you belong and who really matters.

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Other Wednesday Walks

Guns and Ships

Re-Legoing

If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.

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