“Courage, Mademoiselle. There is always something to live for.” – Hercule Poirot ( Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House)
Poirot, in his marvelous Belgian accent, often counseled his clients to be courageous. And if there is any character who defined my children’s television childhoods it was Hercule Poirot. Maria and the girls must have watched every Poirot episode together when the girls were staying with her on the hill, and the library, in town, had them in their collection, as well.
While some of the comic moments in Poirot – think when Poirot rescues Chief Inspector Japp from his Christmas-carol-singing-in-laws in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas – are many, there is a serious side to Poirot, the one that survived Word War I, and is capable of extraordinary self-discipline, that reminds me of Maria. One of the stories Maria once told me in the dark, and terrifying days after 9/11, when I was feeling rather guilty about having brought children into the world, concerned her parents in the aftermath of World War II. When her mother complained about something that her father deemed utterly inconsequential, he would ask her, “Are you dead yet?” This was his way of asking her whether this, whatever this was, was worth complaining about. Basically, he was saying keep calm, carry on, and stop complaining. We survived the war and you have a home, clean water, and food on the table. Done.
While Maria did not ask me whether I was ‘dead yet?’, which probably would not have gone over very well, she did tell me that I have to face whatever scared me dead on, and that I had the courage to do so. I, of course, did not believe her for a minute. She also told me something I had never heard, which is that the things we fear are usually not the things that happen to us.
As the mysterious days after 9/11 turned into the agonizing months and years of U.S. entry into the Iraq War, Maria became more rooted in her principles. She railed against the political situation and reminded everyone who would listen that war was never the answer. Take it from her, she knew. And, one day, she said that she would die for these principles. In my lifetime, I had never met one person who had said this.
Now that takes courage.