When we planted the hedges, there were no barriers or lines between our back yard and the neighbors. Later, when we added a dog to the family, we put up a chain anchor fence. As styles changed, we put up a tall wooden fence. All went well. We kept the hedges neatly cut. But in later years, we couldn't seem to keep the fence clear of hedges from the other side -- the neighbor's hedges. We cut the leaves and the branches, we cut back on our hedges, but those pesky ones from the other side kept right on crawling all over the fence.
Once in a while, we would go around the corner and go to the neighbor's back yard. (Now you know no one was there and besides it is a rental duplex. Strangely enough, only one side was ever rented.) We would cut the hedges back and down some.
This year, I decided to cut our hedges down shorter. As I did, I noticed these round, now hardened branches leading to the fence and through the fence. Following them, I discovered that those pesky hedges on the other side that kept coming through the fence actually belonged to us.
The source of the problem was ROOTS. Roots that sent its stems, branches, limbs out in different directions and broke forth in other areas. We had been working all those years on the outgrowths, the fruit, the product and not the source.
Isn't that like life today? We work on the fruit, the outgrowth, be it good or bad, but we neglect the root.
Problems at schools lately, I'll not go into where, it could be anywhere, discipline, learning problems, personalities, class management, attentiveness, name them. Follow the trails, the evidence, like a detective to the source, the root.
When you have a medical problem, you give the physician, the symptoms, headaches, blurry vision, dizziness, and all kinds of ailments. He doesn't give medicine for the headache or drops for the eyes, he follow the nerves or whatever else to the root. It could be a bone in the neck. Okay, so I'm not a doctor but you get the idea.
Educators, in working with children, know that the child cannot solve the math problems. He works and works. As long as the teacher is talking to the child, the child works all of them correctly but left to his own devices, he gets everything wrong. Through the teacher's efforts in following the trail, she comes to the root. The child cannot read well enough to understand what to do.
Problems of all kinds -- family, societal, physical, mental, political -- all track back to a source -- the ROOT.
Before I become too sermonic -- and heaven knows I'm not a preacher -- look at the other side.
Families are getting ready for reunions. From one side of the nation to the other - north, south, east, and west. They come. As in "The Party," a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, "They come thick as children following a fife and drum." They come to follow the lines, the branches and go back to their source. Their roots. Each year the gathering gets larger and larger as more and more families rejoin. Each year something new is added as something old is discovered.
ROOTS.
High schools and colleges have their reunions now. Darden High School, no longer in physical existence but always in mental and pictorial memory had its last graduating class in 1970, thirty-eight years ago, but still they come to the reunion. Other schools in the county -- Frederick Douglas, Springfield, Speight, Black Creek, Rock Ridge, Lucama, Stantonsburg, Saratoga (if I left your school out forgive me) -- and in other places have reunions. The fun and enriching part about tracing these roots is that something else comes from them.
Churches have long found that by following the membership lines and tracking down families, they have unlimited resources in their own offspring. Reunions, homecomings and Family Days bring back these and others to their church ROOTS.
Look at the fruit, the leaves, the limbs, the branches. Look at the positive works being done in the schools, in the community, in the homes, the churches by those who have come from these ROOTS.
ROOTS - a many dimensional word and figure. Whatever we do tracks back to some source, If the source is malignant, remove it; if the source is rotten, cut out the rotten core; if the source is treacherous, cut out the treachery. Whatever is wrong at the source either destroy it or treat it.
However, if the source is helping others, give it more help; if the source needs money to continue its good work, give it money; if the source needs more room to expand, give it more room; if the source needs more light on its mission, give it more light. As a good friend of mine would say, "You get my drift."
Now, back to what started all of this -- those hedges. We had been treating it like the Hydra in mythology. Each time one of the Hydra's ugly heads was cut off another one grew back. Each time we cut the leaves on the fence, they continued to grow back. By following the leaves and branches we found their roots. They were in our yard. We cut the branches off at the root. Problem solved.
We know that all problems (like pesky growths) can not be solved so easily. But we do know that with time, effort and honest detective work, they can be dealt with. Give the pesky ones the cutting blow and give the good, the positive growths, more room and support. They will develop. We know-we know.
Catherine Taylor is a retired educator and former member of the Wilson County Board of Education.