Don't live down in a hole...
This was one of my mother’s mantras. I am not sure exactly why, but more than once she said to me, “Whatever you do, don’t live down in a hole.” She did not like houses that sat down in a hole, or as we might say here in the mountains, “in a holler.” She felt they were unsafe and unseemly and she would over and over repeat her advice, “Whatever you do, don’t live down in a hole.”
Even our youngest grandchildren have that mantra engraved on their little brains. I don’t think they really have a clue about the meaning, but they can say the mantra, especially if we pass a house that is built “down in a hole.”
I wish I had asked my mother more about this phrase and why she so firmly stood behind it. I have certainly taken it to heart and would never ever buy a house that was built “down in a hole.” I like a house on a hill; not necessarily on the top of a hill, but up aways. I didn’t even want to live on the bottom floor of our apartment building—too similar to living down in a hole. We happily live on the 4th floor.
Even though I am 99% certain that my mother was referring to houses and where one should live (or not live), I have heard that phrase differently in the past weeks as our country has debated and discussed a bill that has now sadly passed and is guaranteed to put part of our population living in a hole.
Yes, there are literally some places that are physical holes; places that look very similar to Nazi concentration camps. And yes, this is not the first time we have sentenced some of our citizens to living in holes—think of the Japanese internment camps during World War II. Or the living conditions of slaves.
But there are also holes that are not only physical, but also mental, emotional and spiritual, like the frightening holes of having no health care; or of having limited food resources as prices rise and free school lunches are eliminated; or of threatened educational opportunities; or the danger of being violently kidnapped off the street by men wearing masks to hide their faces. Imagine the horrifying hole you must walk around every day if your skin is brown and you risk being separated from your family and deported to a country you do not know and have never known. It is a dark and deep hole indeed where the lawful promise of due process as well as the entire Constitution have been shoved since this administration came to power.
It is hard to understand how our Congress—urged onward by a President who knows no boundaries to his cruelty—could act without any empathy or concern for those whom Jesus would call “the least of us.” They are not the least in God’s eyes, of course, but the least in the eyes of those who feel some need to have someone to look down upon, a scapegoat to falsely blame and persecute.
It is the hole that lacks empathy, a hole that is pure evil, a hole which once you push someone into, they have little hope of getting out. It is the hole in the hearts of those who care about no one except themselves.
Whatever you do, don’t live in a hole. Whatever you do, don’t push someone into a hole when you are very aware that they may never be able to escape, to climb out of that hole.
No one deserves to live in such a hole. Yet half of the members of our Congress voted to shove people into that hole and they danced and laughed and sang when they voted to make it happen. If you want to make yourself ill, you can watch it on YouTube. I could not bear to post that video here in my blog. Dancing and laughing and singing that they passed a bill that only about 6% of the American people wanted, a bill that will cause almost unimaginable pain.
My mother was right. Whatever you do, you don’t want to live down in a hole. You don’t want to live in the darkness of not caring about other people, of not being always grateful for all you have sitting at the top of the hill, of not caring enough to try to reach out to those who are living in a hole where they have been sentenced to a life of suffering and injustice.
Whatever you do, you don’t want to live in a hole. My mother was right. She was absolutely right.
Excellent imagery. And there’s Virginia Foxx of Watauga County always front and center in some of the vilest moments of our history.
A jumbled response but that’s my head lately. I live in a neighborhood called The Gulch. It’s a very nice neighborhood but nestled down a steep hill. I love my house but when I come back from the beach or the mountains, I feel very closed in. I never heard your mother’s saying, but it’s very true. And the disgusting photo: what a collection of vile, cruel people, so pleased to be destroying so many lives—the workers who are paid substandard wages to clean their houses, take care of their yards, build their offices, staff the restaurants they have $100 dinners in, babysit and educate their children, care for their elderly relatives. It makes me sick.