Strokes and Second Educators

Strokes and Second Educators

By John Taylor; 2006 May 05

 

Our third and newest local paper in Dunnville, The Sachem and Gazette, has a senior's column by one Joan Miller. In its 10 February edition she gives some interesting advice about strokes. It seems that the effects of an apoplexy can be reversed if the victim gets to the proper facilities within three hours. To do that the attack has to be correctly diagnosed by those in contact with the victim, who are not going to be qualified doctors in most cases. The authorities are therefore offering the following quick and simple three point test.

 

1. Ask the individual to smile.

2. Ask him or her to raise both arms.

3. Ask the person to speak a simple sentence coherently.

 

This is very useful, especially to those who are members of the one in four families prone to migraine, since these attacks mimic stroke symptoms closely. I like this test because even in a severe attack I would certainly pass these questions three. Just the same, migraine is a precondition for stroke, so it would be advisable for those around me to give me the test during an attack, just in case. Both my father and his sister, my Aunt Marguerite, made it into old age without realizing their periodic bouts of moody misery are "headache-less migraines." I learned to recognize a migraine long ago, but over the last few years (since Aunt Marguerite had her stroke) my father has periodically dragged me to the emergency room convinced that he is having a stroke. No, just migraine the doctor always says. If I had had that test I would have saved myself time waiting in hospitals, and steered my father from a great deal of anxiety.

 

Father as Second Educator

 

We are all familiar with this quote about the importance of mothers in education:

"For mothers are the first educators, the first mentors; and truly it is the mothers who determine the happiness, the future greatness, the courteous ways and learning and judgement, the understanding and the faith of their little ones." (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, p. 126)

Conversely, the ignorance of mothers has a corruptive influence whose effects are usually overlooked. Many researchers interview serial killers to find out what led them astray, but the really interesting angle would be in-depth interviews with their mothers. Not that maternal influence on our present social plight is completely unrecognized. Observers like psychiatrist Theodore Dalyrmple remark that in the supermarket the typical way mothers handle the nagging of their children is to unleash a torrent of profane abuse, and when that has no effect (and it never does), to shut them up with chocolate. This attack followed by bribe method teaches a lesson about the effectiveness of violence that is searing and scarring the political landscape.

I am fortunate to have had an extraordinary mother, humble, grade three educated, unbelievably kind to children, totally dedicated to family. As we got older she held down three or four jobs and worked from early morning to late at night. She paid with her miserable wages my trips to England and Alaska, and similar indulgences for my siblings. If suffering were a credential she would have been in the first rank, and people felt it. I knew that she did not neglect her other friendships, especially with Aunt Amy, her sister. I thought she was a great mother as most sons do, but I had no idea of her effect on other people's lives until the day of her funeral.

They had the memorial service in a huge room and it was packed, standing room only. You had to fight to get into the room. She was a Baha'i for the last four or five years of her life and the service by the Hamilton LSA's Chairperson turned out to be a major proclamation. Close family members had to work our way into the room and up to the front row. Really, this was the first time in my life that I felt what it must be like to be a rock star, or at least a close relation to one. "Yes, Myrtle Taylor was my mother." "She was your mother?" they would say, with awe in their voices. "She was a wonderful soul." "Yeah, I thought I knew her but I was only her son." I could not believe that a non-celeb, an ordinary mother and housewife, or so I thought, could attract so many people to her funeral. Even today I remember that event, and I wonder at her invisible power and influence.

Anyway, just before the above quote from the Master comes something relevant to fathers of young children like myself, as well as mothers.

 

"...following the precepts of God and the holy Law, suckle your children from their infancy with the milk of a universal education, and rear them so that from their earliest days, within their inmost heart, their very nature, a way of life will be firmly established that will conform to the divine Teachings in all things."

 

Two things I notice, a "universal education" and a "way of life." In my recent experience the way of life part has come from me, and it has not been entirely successful. My perfunctory attempts at forcing prayer and reading from the Writings into the children's routine, usually at the last minute, meant that the forced devotions did little of their intended good. Only last night and this morning (having run into the above and following quotes yesterday) have I had some success making it a more pleasant and relaxing experience, rather than a duty done without feeling.

What helped most of all was adding a story about the Master at the end that tweaked the interest of six-year-old Tomaso. The stories are about Master at their age when He visited Baha'u'llah in the Siyyih Chal and was chased through the streets by street urchins. You remember how He ended it, when He turned around and chased them and they, thinking He had gone mad, turned and ran away. Tomaso was intrigued by that. Silvie then told a similar anecdote that her teacher had told her grade six class of how when he was camping a bear stole their food, so they hit pots and pans and chased it for a while. Then the bear turned on them. Here is how she tells the story. A few years ago she hardly spoke English, preferring Esperanto and Czech, now she speaks in unaccented teeny talk:

 

"And they were like Waaaa! And then the bear was like, Waaaa! And they they were like Waaaa! again, and then the bear was like Waaa..."

 

And so forth. Hearing it third hand like that one wonders how many times the bears and the campers turned the tables on one another. Perhaps she was mixing in something she saw in a cartoon. At any rate, I hope we can find more "boy-friendly" stories like this to keep Tomaso from his annoying resistance to the basic obligation of faith -- he says his prayers, usually, with anger and reluctance soaking his voice like syrup into pancakes. The second quote that impressed me yesterday was this:

 

"It is the bounden duty of parents to rear their children to be staunch in faith ... For every praiseworthy deed is born out of the light of religion, and lacking this supreme bestowal the child will not turn away from any evil, nor will he draw nigh unto any good." (Baha'u'llah, in Baha'i Education Compilation, 6)

 

What a revolutionary ethical statement! Frightening too. In a society so full of fear and fear mongering, this is the cure. If you look at the real dangers that are statistically most likely to bring us down, most are caused by immoral choices, and religion is the greatest protector against these, as the Master says. I am sure that ethicists would make themselves more effectual if they would look at moral choices in this way, as one's motive to turn away from bad and the desire to turn towards good. They should look at it statistically, what sort of education and background gives more resistive force against temptation and what encourages attraction to moral acts? I am going to have to put a great deal of thought into this.