Mama was driving the Mule and Daddy was hanging off the edge of the passenger-side seat, a rather precarious way of riding necessitated by the fact that Lily and Tamar were in their usual places – Lily sprawled in the floorboard and Tamar sitting front and center beside Mama. They drove up into my yard and Mama asked, "You had supper? Your Daddy just caught a nice mess of fish. There’s enough for you, too."
Accepting the invitation, I set out for a long walk with the intention of ending up back at Mama and Daddy’s house just as the fish were coming out of the frying pan. As is usually the case, I got there a little early and, entranced with the book that I taken with me on my walk, I decided to sit out on the porch and try to finish a chapter rather than join Daddy in watching Fox News.
It was balmy and just a little overcast. It was that moment in the evening when the sun has gone down, but the bugs have not yet descended in vengeance upon every available inch of uncovered human flesh. The late afternoon traffic on what used to be practically our own private road had slowed to about one car or truck every twenty minutes or so. The dogs were dozing on the deck underneath the rustling limbs of the pecan tree.
My reading was suddenly disturbed by Tamar running across the yard to stand at attention in the middle of the road. I didn’t hear a vehicle of any kind approaching so I dropped my head back to my book. She was probably scoping out a squirrel.
Then I heard her growl. That defensive growl that starts in the back of her throat and expands slowly until it gets to her mouth and forces it open to show teeth. I closed my book to look. This time she was shivering, her golden fur shaking like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. What in the world had her so wound up?
I followed the turn of her nose and raised my head toward the sky and that’s when I saw them: a bundle of balloons – five or six of them, red and blue and yellow, tied together with string and floating down the road toward us.
When you live in the country you pay attention to the sky. You watch for sunrise and sunset. You keep an eye on what might be rain clouds. You notice a hawk dive-bombing what looks like an empty field only to see him swoop back up with an unlucky mouse in his talons. You know what belongs there – rainbows and turkey vultures and crop dusters, butterflies and dragonflies and diesel smoke.
So when something as out-of-place as a bunch of balloons unattached to a hand comes floating across the landscape, you – if you are a dog – growl, then bark loudly enough to make sure your dog friend comes running and the two of you go chasing the balloons as the wind bounces them down the road just high enough above your heads that there is no chance you’ll ever catch them.
If you are a person, especially if you are a person who reads a lot and sees everything in literary terms, you stop what you are doing and watch the parade of balloons and dogs make its way down the road. You wonder who set the balloons free and how they came to be at this exact spot at this exact moment and, most importantly, you wonder what it means. You glance down at the title of the book you are reading which just happens to be Where God Was Born.
The author, who knows quite a bit about such things, supports the almost-universally accepted idea that God or, more accurately, religion was born in that part of the world formerly known as Mesopotamia. He’s been there and he’s seen the ruins of Ur and Babylon and what’s left of Old Jerusalem. He’s hiked through the Negev and climbed the Mount of Olives, even visited the spot that tradition says was the location of the Garden of Eden. He has a lot of support for his idea.
And on any other day I would probably agree with him. But this day, this night I’m standing in the lavender light of a place where there is always more than enough fish for supper, where looking at the sky will teach you everything you need to know, where balloons appear out of nowhere, and for this moment, at least, I think God may very well have been born right here.
Copyright 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Hummingbirds
It is dry. Very dry. So dry that the new leaves on the holly trees at Sandhill have rolled into tight brown spirals that make them look like miniature cigars. They disintegrate into fine powder when pressed between my thumb and index finger.
I’m pretty sure that the dryness has something to do with the fact that I’ve not seen any hummingbirds this spring. Not one. And that disappoints me.
Mixing up the nectar that looks like cherry Kool-Aid, funneling it carefully into the feeders and then watching the aerial stunt shows of the bird kingdom’s imps has become one of the truest delights of springtime for me.
We started this cooperative effort, the hummingbirds and I, about four years ago. I’d never noticed any of them around Sandhill proper though there always seemed to be a few floating around Mama and Daddy’s house. One day a visitor noticed a single bird hovering outside the living room window - mesmerized, apparently, by his own reflection – and videotaped the performance to show me when I returned from work.
I was so infatuated that I insisted we drive back to town immediately to buy a feeder. I put it up outside the dining room window and within a couple of days I was being entertained by the hummingbird and his friends while I ate dinner.
Last summer, when I added the deck to Sandhill, I also added another feeder, hanging it on a shepherd’s crook at the corner of the deck. This year I got a third – a globe the size of a small canteloupe made of thick glass like a Coca-Cola bottle the color of the ocean at mid-morning – and hung it in the chinaberry tree in the back yard.
On the first warm Saturday I mixed up some nectar and filled all three, ready for the arrival of my hyperactive friends.
Funny thing: Here we are, the middle of May, and I’ve not see a single hummingbird.
I come, the feeders are empty. I fill them up. A few days later, they are empty again. I fill them again. And again. And still no hummingbirds. I can’t make them come. All I can do is hope.
Standing under the chinaberry tree the other evening, at just twilight, ocean blue orb balanced in the palm of one hand, ruby-colored liquid pouring out of a pitcher held in the other hand, I had an epiphany.
"Feeding invisible hummingbirds requires not hope, but faith," I heard my heart whisper.
I stopped to consider that. Hope is very still. Quietly it gazes with rapt attention at the future that is not yet, but might be. Faith, on the other hand, is anything but still. It taps its foot, strums its fingers. It remembers, no, not just remembers, but depends on the past.
Hope pulls. Faith pushes.
Hope desires, longs for, imagines hummingbirds. Faith fills the feeders.
It is hard sometimes to know which of the two virtues is needed. Hard to know whether to turn one’s back on what has been and put all one’s eggs in the basket of what might be or to leave one’s eggs in the nest, knowing that they, kept warm by the body of the mother hen, will hatch in their own time.
And, then, like most epiphanies, this one shifted a little. "Of course," my heart said, still whispering, but a little louder, "sometimes you need both. Sometimes," she said, "faith and hope work together. Sometimes you need to act on what the past taught you in order to imagine what the future might be."
I put the rubber plug back into the feeder, hung it back up on the tree and walked into the house, fairly certain that all that whispering had to do with something other than hummingbirds. And absolutely certain that one day, one day soon, I was going to see a hummingbird.
Copyright 2007
I’m pretty sure that the dryness has something to do with the fact that I’ve not seen any hummingbirds this spring. Not one. And that disappoints me.
Mixing up the nectar that looks like cherry Kool-Aid, funneling it carefully into the feeders and then watching the aerial stunt shows of the bird kingdom’s imps has become one of the truest delights of springtime for me.
We started this cooperative effort, the hummingbirds and I, about four years ago. I’d never noticed any of them around Sandhill proper though there always seemed to be a few floating around Mama and Daddy’s house. One day a visitor noticed a single bird hovering outside the living room window - mesmerized, apparently, by his own reflection – and videotaped the performance to show me when I returned from work.
I was so infatuated that I insisted we drive back to town immediately to buy a feeder. I put it up outside the dining room window and within a couple of days I was being entertained by the hummingbird and his friends while I ate dinner.
Last summer, when I added the deck to Sandhill, I also added another feeder, hanging it on a shepherd’s crook at the corner of the deck. This year I got a third – a globe the size of a small canteloupe made of thick glass like a Coca-Cola bottle the color of the ocean at mid-morning – and hung it in the chinaberry tree in the back yard.
On the first warm Saturday I mixed up some nectar and filled all three, ready for the arrival of my hyperactive friends.
Funny thing: Here we are, the middle of May, and I’ve not see a single hummingbird.
I come, the feeders are empty. I fill them up. A few days later, they are empty again. I fill them again. And again. And still no hummingbirds. I can’t make them come. All I can do is hope.
Standing under the chinaberry tree the other evening, at just twilight, ocean blue orb balanced in the palm of one hand, ruby-colored liquid pouring out of a pitcher held in the other hand, I had an epiphany.
"Feeding invisible hummingbirds requires not hope, but faith," I heard my heart whisper.
I stopped to consider that. Hope is very still. Quietly it gazes with rapt attention at the future that is not yet, but might be. Faith, on the other hand, is anything but still. It taps its foot, strums its fingers. It remembers, no, not just remembers, but depends on the past.
Hope pulls. Faith pushes.
Hope desires, longs for, imagines hummingbirds. Faith fills the feeders.
It is hard sometimes to know which of the two virtues is needed. Hard to know whether to turn one’s back on what has been and put all one’s eggs in the basket of what might be or to leave one’s eggs in the nest, knowing that they, kept warm by the body of the mother hen, will hatch in their own time.
And, then, like most epiphanies, this one shifted a little. "Of course," my heart said, still whispering, but a little louder, "sometimes you need both. Sometimes," she said, "faith and hope work together. Sometimes you need to act on what the past taught you in order to imagine what the future might be."
I put the rubber plug back into the feeder, hung it back up on the tree and walked into the house, fairly certain that all that whispering had to do with something other than hummingbirds. And absolutely certain that one day, one day soon, I was going to see a hummingbird.
Copyright 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Making Sense
The sky was a blue glass bottle pouring out the white light of the sun. It puddled in the grass of what was once the Wesleyan Botanical Garden and what has been for probably 75 years Washington Park. It was a perfect spring Saturday in Macon, like so many perfect spring Saturdays I’d spent there, anesthetized by youth and privilege and oblivious to the gifts of freedom and promise.
A group of about a dozen high school students had gathered for the taking of prom photos. The girls were dressed in bright orange and deep turquoise, jonquil yellow and cobalt blue, their skirts all full and showy like peonies, fluttering in the breeze around their ankles. Their arms and shoulders glowed with the faux bronze of tanning beds. Their hair, pulled up off their necks, couldn’t withstand the teasing breeze and came loose in soft tendrils around their carefully lined and shadowed and mascara’ed eyes.
The boys stood awkwardly, hands in the pockets of their rented tuxedos, saying little, following the instructions of the mothers dressed in blue jeans and loose cotton blouses and wondering how exactly they had ended up here, in front of God and everybody, wearing pastel cummerbunds and pin-tucked shirts.
I sat on the grass next to a narrow creek that flowed with just enough water to shimmer like a million tiny mirrors or – better simile – the sequins on the red dress of the tall girl with dark hair and I listened to the giggles, watched from a safe distance the eye rolling and head tossing. I couldn’t help being mesmerized by the drawing room drama played out as the group moved from the bridge to the stone steps to the iron benches, posing and preening, smiling and leaning into each other with the right combination of timidity and sophistication.
Then I looked at my cell phone to check the time and realized I’d missed a call. Probably not anything important. No one was expecting me anywhere. No one should be needing me for anything on my out-of-town Saturday.
I was wrong. The call was from law enforcement, my job, the work that I didn’t want to follow me to Macon, and I knew before I dialed the number that something horrible had happened.
My friend Tom, who was born to serve and protect, outlined the facts. One child was dead; another child was arrested. The former now a victim, the latter now what the law calls a juvenile offender. And because he was a juvenile, the people back home had questions for me because I am what the law calls a juvenile prosecutor.
I listened to the story, as much as anyone knew at that point, and felt the light dim, the warmth cool, the musical sound of laughing teenagers transformed into dissonant cackling.
I closed my eyes and accessed that part of my brain that speaks the vocabulary of criminal procedure. I answered questions, asked a few of my own. And then I hung up.
There are moments when one can’t help being aware of how big the world is and how isolated we all are from the rest of the people living in it. Most of the time that happens, for me at least, when I’m stuck in Atlanta traffic, experiencing sensory overload and absently wondering where all the people in the cars are going, where they live, how much trash they produce each day and where that goes.
And then there are moments when the world contracts into one small square of earth. Moments when the connectedness of every human being to every other human being is as palpable as spring sunshine on bare arms. Moments when every face is the face of someone you love, every hurt a bruise on your heart, every loss your own sacrifice.
Sitting on the grass in Washington Park last Saturday, it was that kind of moment.
There is no way to make sense of what happened. Here or at Virginia Tech or, eight years ago, at Columbine. But there has to be a way to redeem those moments. A way to translate the language of loss into something speakable.
There has to be.
There just has to be.
Copyright 2007
A group of about a dozen high school students had gathered for the taking of prom photos. The girls were dressed in bright orange and deep turquoise, jonquil yellow and cobalt blue, their skirts all full and showy like peonies, fluttering in the breeze around their ankles. Their arms and shoulders glowed with the faux bronze of tanning beds. Their hair, pulled up off their necks, couldn’t withstand the teasing breeze and came loose in soft tendrils around their carefully lined and shadowed and mascara’ed eyes.
The boys stood awkwardly, hands in the pockets of their rented tuxedos, saying little, following the instructions of the mothers dressed in blue jeans and loose cotton blouses and wondering how exactly they had ended up here, in front of God and everybody, wearing pastel cummerbunds and pin-tucked shirts.
I sat on the grass next to a narrow creek that flowed with just enough water to shimmer like a million tiny mirrors or – better simile – the sequins on the red dress of the tall girl with dark hair and I listened to the giggles, watched from a safe distance the eye rolling and head tossing. I couldn’t help being mesmerized by the drawing room drama played out as the group moved from the bridge to the stone steps to the iron benches, posing and preening, smiling and leaning into each other with the right combination of timidity and sophistication.
Then I looked at my cell phone to check the time and realized I’d missed a call. Probably not anything important. No one was expecting me anywhere. No one should be needing me for anything on my out-of-town Saturday.
I was wrong. The call was from law enforcement, my job, the work that I didn’t want to follow me to Macon, and I knew before I dialed the number that something horrible had happened.
My friend Tom, who was born to serve and protect, outlined the facts. One child was dead; another child was arrested. The former now a victim, the latter now what the law calls a juvenile offender. And because he was a juvenile, the people back home had questions for me because I am what the law calls a juvenile prosecutor.
I listened to the story, as much as anyone knew at that point, and felt the light dim, the warmth cool, the musical sound of laughing teenagers transformed into dissonant cackling.
I closed my eyes and accessed that part of my brain that speaks the vocabulary of criminal procedure. I answered questions, asked a few of my own. And then I hung up.
There are moments when one can’t help being aware of how big the world is and how isolated we all are from the rest of the people living in it. Most of the time that happens, for me at least, when I’m stuck in Atlanta traffic, experiencing sensory overload and absently wondering where all the people in the cars are going, where they live, how much trash they produce each day and where that goes.
And then there are moments when the world contracts into one small square of earth. Moments when the connectedness of every human being to every other human being is as palpable as spring sunshine on bare arms. Moments when every face is the face of someone you love, every hurt a bruise on your heart, every loss your own sacrifice.
Sitting on the grass in Washington Park last Saturday, it was that kind of moment.
There is no way to make sense of what happened. Here or at Virginia Tech or, eight years ago, at Columbine. But there has to be a way to redeem those moments. A way to translate the language of loss into something speakable.
There has to be.
There just has to be.
Copyright 2007
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Lost and Found
I had an opal necklace. It was a gift – a small stone set in gold on a narrow gold chain. I wore it every day. I would unconsciously finger it while I was on the phone or watching television. When I looked in the mirror it reminded me of lots of things, including the fact that opals are supposed to be good luck for those born in October, but bad luck for anyone else. I was, fortunately, born in October.
One morning I stopped for gas on the way to work and when I got to the office realized that my necklace was gone. I’d had it when I left home and it wasn’t in the car. It had to have fallen off at the gas station. I went back – anxious, almost panic-stricken – to scour the parking lot.
I found the chain, but the opal was gone.
Sadness wrapped itself around me like a blanket on a hot day. I wanted to push it away, kick it off. The necklace was, after all, only a thing. The opal was not expensive, what jewelers call a semi-precious stone. It could be replaced.
Except that it couldn’t. I wanted that opal, the one that came on the chain, the one that came in the green box that I had opened so excitedly. I wanted the opal that had absorbed my touch for years, that had moved up and down with my breath, that had vibrated with my laughter, rattled with my tears.
A friend at work had a metal detector and he volunteered to go to the gas station and run it over the parking lot, between the pumps, around the trash cans. He didn’t find my opal, but he came back with a theory: The clasp on the chain had loosened, the opal had slid off and, when the next car pulled up, had gotten stuck in the tire tread and rolled away.
As theories go, it wasn’t all that plausible, but it did give me a visual image to consider – my opal stuck in the tire of a shiny new mini-van taking a family to Disney World. Or maybe it had been picked up by a red convertible full of sorority girls on their way to the beach or a diesel-belching 4x4 pick-up truck hauling seed corn. Imagining my opal on various road trip adventures was helpful for, oh, about fifteen seconds. And then the sadness returned.
The realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do to effectuate the return of my opal was, while not intellectually challenging, emotionally impossible. Things shouldn’t get lost. I shouldn’t lose things. Things should know better.
It took a few weeks, but eventually the spot at the bottom of my throat where the opal used to nest began feeling less naked. I stopped reaching up to tug it across the chain like an acrobat on a zip-line. I didn’t startle myself anymore when I looked in the mirror and didn’t see it.
Then one day I didn’t think about it at all. And that day became a month and a year and several years. And the lesson is supposed to be that things are just things and a person can always get over losing a thing.
Except that that is not true. Because just this week, for some totally inexplicable reason, I thought about my opal necklace. And I remembered its milky whiteness and the threads of pale aqua that wound through it like a creek. I remembered the iridescence that made it, like a soap bubble, reflect pink, then gold depending on the angle with which the sunlight hit it. And I remembered how secure I’d felt every single time I reached up to touch it, how it symbolized for me something that had nothing to do with being lucky or nicely accessorized.
And I figured out that the lesson was really this: Things are never just things and a person never gets over losing something that was more than just a thing.
There’s a place at the bottom of my throat, that little v-shaped place where my collarbone dips down, and it is empty. Always will be. Because that which belongs there is lost.
Copyright 2007
One morning I stopped for gas on the way to work and when I got to the office realized that my necklace was gone. I’d had it when I left home and it wasn’t in the car. It had to have fallen off at the gas station. I went back – anxious, almost panic-stricken – to scour the parking lot.
I found the chain, but the opal was gone.
Sadness wrapped itself around me like a blanket on a hot day. I wanted to push it away, kick it off. The necklace was, after all, only a thing. The opal was not expensive, what jewelers call a semi-precious stone. It could be replaced.
Except that it couldn’t. I wanted that opal, the one that came on the chain, the one that came in the green box that I had opened so excitedly. I wanted the opal that had absorbed my touch for years, that had moved up and down with my breath, that had vibrated with my laughter, rattled with my tears.
A friend at work had a metal detector and he volunteered to go to the gas station and run it over the parking lot, between the pumps, around the trash cans. He didn’t find my opal, but he came back with a theory: The clasp on the chain had loosened, the opal had slid off and, when the next car pulled up, had gotten stuck in the tire tread and rolled away.
As theories go, it wasn’t all that plausible, but it did give me a visual image to consider – my opal stuck in the tire of a shiny new mini-van taking a family to Disney World. Or maybe it had been picked up by a red convertible full of sorority girls on their way to the beach or a diesel-belching 4x4 pick-up truck hauling seed corn. Imagining my opal on various road trip adventures was helpful for, oh, about fifteen seconds. And then the sadness returned.
The realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do to effectuate the return of my opal was, while not intellectually challenging, emotionally impossible. Things shouldn’t get lost. I shouldn’t lose things. Things should know better.
It took a few weeks, but eventually the spot at the bottom of my throat where the opal used to nest began feeling less naked. I stopped reaching up to tug it across the chain like an acrobat on a zip-line. I didn’t startle myself anymore when I looked in the mirror and didn’t see it.
Then one day I didn’t think about it at all. And that day became a month and a year and several years. And the lesson is supposed to be that things are just things and a person can always get over losing a thing.
Except that that is not true. Because just this week, for some totally inexplicable reason, I thought about my opal necklace. And I remembered its milky whiteness and the threads of pale aqua that wound through it like a creek. I remembered the iridescence that made it, like a soap bubble, reflect pink, then gold depending on the angle with which the sunlight hit it. And I remembered how secure I’d felt every single time I reached up to touch it, how it symbolized for me something that had nothing to do with being lucky or nicely accessorized.
And I figured out that the lesson was really this: Things are never just things and a person never gets over losing something that was more than just a thing.
There’s a place at the bottom of my throat, that little v-shaped place where my collarbone dips down, and it is empty. Always will be. Because that which belongs there is lost.
Copyright 2007
A Time To ...
My friend’s mother died. I drove south to sit on the back row of the chapel and listen to the minister read from Ecclesiastes. Later, my friend and I stood on a bluff overlooking the Crooked River and breathed in the smell of the marsh, a scent that, though sprouting from death and decay, awakens my senses.
We took deep breaths, listened to the water birds and squinted our eyes against the sun’s reflection on the water. A skinny snake paused on his dash from one bank of azalea bushes to another to make sure that we didn’t step on him. The breeze off the river caught in the ringlets of my hair and those of the Spanish moss dangling from the branches of the gnarled oak trees, tossing them both like confetti. And the unmistakable grief on my friend’s face was joined by an expression of contentment.
On my way home, because I feel something quite like a magnetic pull when I am that close, I stopped on St. Simons for a walk on the beach. Just above the horizon – the imaginary line that reminds me that the only thing that ends is my sight of the ocean, not the ocean itself – in a sky that was the palest shade of blue, the moon had risen, a white-washed half-disc. Behind me the sun was still up, egg-yolk yellow and warm.
Caught between the two, the fulcrum upon which the day was pivoting into night, I stood still and listened. The rush of the rising tide and the clanging of the masts of the boats in the boatyard and the cries of the children in the surf mingled to become the voice of the minister as he intoned the familiar words: "A time to give birth and a time to die. ... A time to weep and a time to laugh. ... A time to mourn and a time to dance. ... A time to search and a time to give up as lost."
For all the times I had heard the words read, read the words myself, quoted them from memory, I had never noticed the choice of conjunctions. The writer, who calls himself the Preacher, used the inclusive connector, not the limiting. And, not or. In a subtle choice of words, he reminds the reader that the time for being born is not separate and apart from the time for dying. The time for waging war and creating peace are one and the same. Laughing and crying are the same thing. They are joined, irrevocably linked. They happen not are different times, but simultaneously.
It doesn’t make sense, of course, to our linear-thinking minds. We move in increments, in steps, through stages. We compartmentalize everything, even the ephemeral. We decide how much we are willing to experience at any given moment and ignore anything not on the agenda. We split our lives into childhood and adulthood. We divide our days into work days, sick days, vacation days. And, most tellingly, we make strict distinctions between the sacred and profane.
What if, I wondered, I could believe that being silent is, in fact, speaking in the profoundest of voices? Or that in order to know deep love I must also experience intense hatred? Or that the truest way of holding something – or someone – close is by letting it go? Could I learn to live with the contradiction?
It is spring and, for Christians, it is also the season of Lent, forty days of contradiction: A king who refuses to reign, friends who betray and deny, death that results in life. Forty days of paradox. Forty days of pondering the Preacher’s sermon, recognizing it as prophecy and watching the prophecy be fulfilled. Of growing to hold in one embrace life and death. War and peace. Love and hate. Never either/or. Always and.
To every thing there is a season. And a time to every purpose under the heaven. With the season comes the purpose. And, if we are open, the grace to live it full.
Copyright 2007
We took deep breaths, listened to the water birds and squinted our eyes against the sun’s reflection on the water. A skinny snake paused on his dash from one bank of azalea bushes to another to make sure that we didn’t step on him. The breeze off the river caught in the ringlets of my hair and those of the Spanish moss dangling from the branches of the gnarled oak trees, tossing them both like confetti. And the unmistakable grief on my friend’s face was joined by an expression of contentment.
On my way home, because I feel something quite like a magnetic pull when I am that close, I stopped on St. Simons for a walk on the beach. Just above the horizon – the imaginary line that reminds me that the only thing that ends is my sight of the ocean, not the ocean itself – in a sky that was the palest shade of blue, the moon had risen, a white-washed half-disc. Behind me the sun was still up, egg-yolk yellow and warm.
Caught between the two, the fulcrum upon which the day was pivoting into night, I stood still and listened. The rush of the rising tide and the clanging of the masts of the boats in the boatyard and the cries of the children in the surf mingled to become the voice of the minister as he intoned the familiar words: "A time to give birth and a time to die. ... A time to weep and a time to laugh. ... A time to mourn and a time to dance. ... A time to search and a time to give up as lost."
For all the times I had heard the words read, read the words myself, quoted them from memory, I had never noticed the choice of conjunctions. The writer, who calls himself the Preacher, used the inclusive connector, not the limiting. And, not or. In a subtle choice of words, he reminds the reader that the time for being born is not separate and apart from the time for dying. The time for waging war and creating peace are one and the same. Laughing and crying are the same thing. They are joined, irrevocably linked. They happen not are different times, but simultaneously.
It doesn’t make sense, of course, to our linear-thinking minds. We move in increments, in steps, through stages. We compartmentalize everything, even the ephemeral. We decide how much we are willing to experience at any given moment and ignore anything not on the agenda. We split our lives into childhood and adulthood. We divide our days into work days, sick days, vacation days. And, most tellingly, we make strict distinctions between the sacred and profane.
What if, I wondered, I could believe that being silent is, in fact, speaking in the profoundest of voices? Or that in order to know deep love I must also experience intense hatred? Or that the truest way of holding something – or someone – close is by letting it go? Could I learn to live with the contradiction?
It is spring and, for Christians, it is also the season of Lent, forty days of contradiction: A king who refuses to reign, friends who betray and deny, death that results in life. Forty days of paradox. Forty days of pondering the Preacher’s sermon, recognizing it as prophecy and watching the prophecy be fulfilled. Of growing to hold in one embrace life and death. War and peace. Love and hate. Never either/or. Always and.
To every thing there is a season. And a time to every purpose under the heaven. With the season comes the purpose. And, if we are open, the grace to live it full.
Copyright 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
Heartwood
It was supposed to have been a very busy Sunday – to Savannah for my namesake’s confirmation, then to Macon for the funeral of one of my Wesleyan professors, then to Perry to celebrate Katherine’s birthday. It turned out not to be.
One of my five-year-old original equipment tires blew out in the left-hand lane of I-16 just outside Savannah and, after the fortuitous appearance of a very kind gentleman who was most adept at the use of a jack and crowbar, I limped back home, wise enough to know that I didn’t need to be driving a couple of hundred miles on a doughnut tire.
Gifted, then, with a gloriously sunny Sunday and no expectations, mine or anyone else’s, I herded up the dogs and set out on a purposeful amble.
It took a few minutes to slow my normal pace, to let my footsteps fall into a sauntering, unhurried tempo, but once I was there I found myself feeling suspiciously like a ten-year-old and it didn’t take long before I was seduced into climbing the grain bin for a quick aerial surveillance of my kingdom. Having determined that all was as it should be, I climbed down, much to the relief of Lily and Tamar who had been unsure as to exactly what was expected of them during my detour, and crossed the road into the woods.
As I walked deeper in, the woods grew quieter and the sunshine dappled. I followed the fire break for a while, down a slope, up a rise, stepping carefully into the soft patches of wiregrass, not unaware of why the Rattlesnake Roundup is held in March.
Turning and heading back to the road I came across a fallen pine tree. I stepped up on the log and began walking its length, arms out to keep my balance. The rotting wood gave slightly with each step; it felt a little like walking on a trampoline. Halfway down my impromptu balance beam the wood had disintegrated entirely and fallen in mounds of sawdust on either side of the trunk. What remained to connect the two ends was a thin shaft of heartwood, what we country folks call fat lighter.
Heartwood is the inner portion of a tree that, as the tree increases in age and diameter, ceases to function. In old growth pine trees, the heart becomes saturated with resin and, as a result, will not rot.
Botanists will tell you that heartwood gets its name simply by virtue of its position at the center of the tree, not because of any vital importance. They will also tell you that a tree can continue to live even if its heart is decayed.
Bent over, hands on my knees, staring at the tree’s deep yellow entrails glistening in the sun, I couldn’t help thinking about the human application – the fact that the hearts of some people are not of vital importance, the fact that they continue to live day after day long after their hearts have died, the fact that – like fat lighter – they are heavy and flammable.
I straightened my back, put my hands on my hips and stretched my neck up to look at the clear blue sky. Who am I fooling? I asked myself. I am one of those people. Not all the time, but sometimes. Not every day, but some days.
Some days I wake up encumbered by unfulfilled dreams and unrealistic expectations and I feel myself hardening, my chest soaking up the resin of resentment and bitterness, before I ever put my feet on the floor. By the time I’ve brushed my teeth I’ve become intensely flammable, tinder for whatever fire is set around me. And by the end of the day I’m nothing but ashes. Fat lighter won’t rot, but it will burn.
I looked around to find that the dogs had abandoned their efforts to find something to chase and made their way back through the brush to see what had fascinated me into stillness.
"See that right there, girls?" I wanted to say. "That is not the kind of heart I want. I want a heart that is alive. A heart that can be touched by what happens to it. A heart that is tender and light so that, when I give it to somebody else, it won’t be too heavy to carry. That’s what I want."
But I didn’t say it because something told me that they already knew.
Copyright 2007
One of my five-year-old original equipment tires blew out in the left-hand lane of I-16 just outside Savannah and, after the fortuitous appearance of a very kind gentleman who was most adept at the use of a jack and crowbar, I limped back home, wise enough to know that I didn’t need to be driving a couple of hundred miles on a doughnut tire.
Gifted, then, with a gloriously sunny Sunday and no expectations, mine or anyone else’s, I herded up the dogs and set out on a purposeful amble.
It took a few minutes to slow my normal pace, to let my footsteps fall into a sauntering, unhurried tempo, but once I was there I found myself feeling suspiciously like a ten-year-old and it didn’t take long before I was seduced into climbing the grain bin for a quick aerial surveillance of my kingdom. Having determined that all was as it should be, I climbed down, much to the relief of Lily and Tamar who had been unsure as to exactly what was expected of them during my detour, and crossed the road into the woods.
As I walked deeper in, the woods grew quieter and the sunshine dappled. I followed the fire break for a while, down a slope, up a rise, stepping carefully into the soft patches of wiregrass, not unaware of why the Rattlesnake Roundup is held in March.
Turning and heading back to the road I came across a fallen pine tree. I stepped up on the log and began walking its length, arms out to keep my balance. The rotting wood gave slightly with each step; it felt a little like walking on a trampoline. Halfway down my impromptu balance beam the wood had disintegrated entirely and fallen in mounds of sawdust on either side of the trunk. What remained to connect the two ends was a thin shaft of heartwood, what we country folks call fat lighter.
Heartwood is the inner portion of a tree that, as the tree increases in age and diameter, ceases to function. In old growth pine trees, the heart becomes saturated with resin and, as a result, will not rot.
Botanists will tell you that heartwood gets its name simply by virtue of its position at the center of the tree, not because of any vital importance. They will also tell you that a tree can continue to live even if its heart is decayed.
Bent over, hands on my knees, staring at the tree’s deep yellow entrails glistening in the sun, I couldn’t help thinking about the human application – the fact that the hearts of some people are not of vital importance, the fact that they continue to live day after day long after their hearts have died, the fact that – like fat lighter – they are heavy and flammable.
I straightened my back, put my hands on my hips and stretched my neck up to look at the clear blue sky. Who am I fooling? I asked myself. I am one of those people. Not all the time, but sometimes. Not every day, but some days.
Some days I wake up encumbered by unfulfilled dreams and unrealistic expectations and I feel myself hardening, my chest soaking up the resin of resentment and bitterness, before I ever put my feet on the floor. By the time I’ve brushed my teeth I’ve become intensely flammable, tinder for whatever fire is set around me. And by the end of the day I’m nothing but ashes. Fat lighter won’t rot, but it will burn.
I looked around to find that the dogs had abandoned their efforts to find something to chase and made their way back through the brush to see what had fascinated me into stillness.
"See that right there, girls?" I wanted to say. "That is not the kind of heart I want. I want a heart that is alive. A heart that can be touched by what happens to it. A heart that is tender and light so that, when I give it to somebody else, it won’t be too heavy to carry. That’s what I want."
But I didn’t say it because something told me that they already knew.
Copyright 2007
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Latitude and Longitude
Gray-brown like south Georgia dirt, the hickory nut rolls around in the palm of my hand. It is cracked, but still whole. The little point at the end, what the botanists call a stigma, is worn down to a smooth nub.
I picked it up eight or nine years ago one sunny fall afternoon from under a tall tree frosted with Spanish moss. The tree grew on the edge of a lake, on a lot my friends were considering buying. The three of us walked around, our feet shuffling through the leaves that had already begun to fall, and talked about where a house might sit, what the view would be, what good times could be had there.
The nut and a couple others like it ended up in a bowl in my living room along with a handful of acorns the size of quarters that I’d picked up along a hiking trail in North Carolina, some shells from the beach on Saint Simons, an abandoned wasp nest, some bird feathers and a pine cone the size of a dime. It has been there ever since.
My friends did buy the lot at the lake and they built a vacation house there. There were pansies in the window boxes and an aluminum windmill that spun like a top on windy days. From the rocking chairs on the screened porch you could hear the water lap against the sea wall, an echo of the wakes of the motor boats out in the channel. On clear nights the moon spread out over the water like a million mirrors.
Once, when I was lost and needed a place to try to figure out my coordinates, I went to the lake house to breathe. I had hoped to sit on the dock and watch the winter sun rise and set and find in that rhythm one of my own. Instead, I sat inside and watched it rain for three days, kept company by pencil, paper and homemade pimento cheese that my friend had laid in store for me.
The endless torrent of water was matched by the one that fell from my eyes. I huddled under the bed covers and asked myself how I would ever find my way. I read. I wrote. I prayed. I listened as the beat of the rain on the roof became the pulsing of my heart.
And somewhere in the coldness and darkness and wetness of the night I began to understand that I am lost only if I insist on knowing where I am going.
On my last morning there, as the sun began clawing its way through the clouds, I wrote in my journal a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor: "We [must] simply give up the illusion that we are in control of our lives and step out. Which is why, perhaps, it is called a leap of faith."
A couple of years ago, a spark ignited a flame which became a conflagration which ate up the lake house. It was too strong, too fast. By the time the fire truck arrived, it was out of control. In a few short hours, all that was left was the concrete piers, a post-modern Stonehenge. When I got the call I felt as though someone had desecrated my church.
My friends are resilient souls. They decided to rebuild and, this time, to make the lake house their year-round home. It would be bigger, big enough to accommodate lots of family at once. As a result, the hickory tree, already damaged from the intense heat of the fire, had to come down.
The construction is done now. Time to check the view from new windows. Time to move in and consecrate the new rooms with love and laughter. Time to put aside the old memories long enough to make new ones. Time for a housewarming present.
And I know just the thing.
The hickory nut rolls around in the palm of my hand. And today it is going home. A reminder of the connection between the past and the present, a link between what was and what is. And a gentle reminder that what will be is totally dependent on that leap.
Copyright 2007
I picked it up eight or nine years ago one sunny fall afternoon from under a tall tree frosted with Spanish moss. The tree grew on the edge of a lake, on a lot my friends were considering buying. The three of us walked around, our feet shuffling through the leaves that had already begun to fall, and talked about where a house might sit, what the view would be, what good times could be had there.
The nut and a couple others like it ended up in a bowl in my living room along with a handful of acorns the size of quarters that I’d picked up along a hiking trail in North Carolina, some shells from the beach on Saint Simons, an abandoned wasp nest, some bird feathers and a pine cone the size of a dime. It has been there ever since.
My friends did buy the lot at the lake and they built a vacation house there. There were pansies in the window boxes and an aluminum windmill that spun like a top on windy days. From the rocking chairs on the screened porch you could hear the water lap against the sea wall, an echo of the wakes of the motor boats out in the channel. On clear nights the moon spread out over the water like a million mirrors.
Once, when I was lost and needed a place to try to figure out my coordinates, I went to the lake house to breathe. I had hoped to sit on the dock and watch the winter sun rise and set and find in that rhythm one of my own. Instead, I sat inside and watched it rain for three days, kept company by pencil, paper and homemade pimento cheese that my friend had laid in store for me.
The endless torrent of water was matched by the one that fell from my eyes. I huddled under the bed covers and asked myself how I would ever find my way. I read. I wrote. I prayed. I listened as the beat of the rain on the roof became the pulsing of my heart.
And somewhere in the coldness and darkness and wetness of the night I began to understand that I am lost only if I insist on knowing where I am going.
On my last morning there, as the sun began clawing its way through the clouds, I wrote in my journal a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor: "We [must] simply give up the illusion that we are in control of our lives and step out. Which is why, perhaps, it is called a leap of faith."
A couple of years ago, a spark ignited a flame which became a conflagration which ate up the lake house. It was too strong, too fast. By the time the fire truck arrived, it was out of control. In a few short hours, all that was left was the concrete piers, a post-modern Stonehenge. When I got the call I felt as though someone had desecrated my church.
My friends are resilient souls. They decided to rebuild and, this time, to make the lake house their year-round home. It would be bigger, big enough to accommodate lots of family at once. As a result, the hickory tree, already damaged from the intense heat of the fire, had to come down.
The construction is done now. Time to check the view from new windows. Time to move in and consecrate the new rooms with love and laughter. Time to put aside the old memories long enough to make new ones. Time for a housewarming present.
And I know just the thing.
The hickory nut rolls around in the palm of my hand. And today it is going home. A reminder of the connection between the past and the present, a link between what was and what is. And a gentle reminder that what will be is totally dependent on that leap.
Copyright 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
To Tell The Truth
I read recently that golf balls originally had no dimples. They were perfect spheres, round and smooth. When a golfer made his swing, pulled the club back in an arc over his shoulder and brought it back down to hit the ball, the trajectory was more like a baseball line drive than a basketball floating jumper.
The story goes that only after a ball had been used for a while, whacked and beaten, scuffed and bruised, did it begin to take off, to lift into the air high above the heads of the golfers and caddies and spectators. It became obvious that the game was more interesting this way and in 1909 the Spalding Company began manufacturing balls with dimples, that is, imitation defects.
It is said that a dimpled golf ball will travel almost two and a half times farther than a smooth one.
Isn’t that a great story? A morality tale that reminds us that being used over and over isn’t always a negative thing. That paying attention to the way things work, rather than the way they are supposed to work, is the first step toward innovation. That it is sometimes the wounds we receive and the scars that remain that give us the loft to fly higher and farther.
I know some people who have been golf balls. People who rose to their greatest heights after having been beat up a few times. And people who started their lives’ journeys with all the right things – good family, intelligence, enough money – , but who didn’t accomplish much in the way of obtaining their hearts’ desires until they’d been through some days when it seemed as though all the blinds in the world had been drawn shut and it would never be light again. And people who remembered that it was a game and just stayed in it, confident that sooner or later the odds would fall in their favor.
Yeh, the golf ball story is a great one. Except it may not be factual. The Spalding Company website, which has an extensive section called Heritage, doesn’t mention 1909 at all. And it certainly seems that such an event, a modification that changed the whole game, would merit some mention if it actually happened.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that it isn’t true. There is a big difference between factual and true. Facts are verifiable. Scientifically provable. Authenticated, corroborated, substantiated by independent sources. Facts are universally recognized.
Truth, on the other hand, may not be provable. Truth is something that comes from the heart and no EKG in the world can produce a printout of love or loyalty or patriotism, all of which are very real. A particular truth may very well exist for only one person. And, interestingly enough, it is usually truth, not facts, upon which people are willing to risk their lives.
Just a few thoughts to say that I believe the golf ball story. Maybe it wasn’t Mr. Spalding who had the light bulb moment. Maybe it was a golfing physicist who stood at the tee one day, twirled the ball in his hand and thought, "This would probably go farther if it had a lot of little dents all over it." Maybe the guy who wrote the article I read made it up entirely. It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the story struck a familiar chord, gave me a visual image to consider the next time I’m feeling a little exploited or misused or the next time I need to encourage someone who is feeling that way himself. What matters is that, call it fact or call it truth, none of us gets through life without a knock or two and it helps to believe that we can be left with something more than just a bruise.
Copyright 2007
The story goes that only after a ball had been used for a while, whacked and beaten, scuffed and bruised, did it begin to take off, to lift into the air high above the heads of the golfers and caddies and spectators. It became obvious that the game was more interesting this way and in 1909 the Spalding Company began manufacturing balls with dimples, that is, imitation defects.
It is said that a dimpled golf ball will travel almost two and a half times farther than a smooth one.
Isn’t that a great story? A morality tale that reminds us that being used over and over isn’t always a negative thing. That paying attention to the way things work, rather than the way they are supposed to work, is the first step toward innovation. That it is sometimes the wounds we receive and the scars that remain that give us the loft to fly higher and farther.
I know some people who have been golf balls. People who rose to their greatest heights after having been beat up a few times. And people who started their lives’ journeys with all the right things – good family, intelligence, enough money – , but who didn’t accomplish much in the way of obtaining their hearts’ desires until they’d been through some days when it seemed as though all the blinds in the world had been drawn shut and it would never be light again. And people who remembered that it was a game and just stayed in it, confident that sooner or later the odds would fall in their favor.
Yeh, the golf ball story is a great one. Except it may not be factual. The Spalding Company website, which has an extensive section called Heritage, doesn’t mention 1909 at all. And it certainly seems that such an event, a modification that changed the whole game, would merit some mention if it actually happened.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that it isn’t true. There is a big difference between factual and true. Facts are verifiable. Scientifically provable. Authenticated, corroborated, substantiated by independent sources. Facts are universally recognized.
Truth, on the other hand, may not be provable. Truth is something that comes from the heart and no EKG in the world can produce a printout of love or loyalty or patriotism, all of which are very real. A particular truth may very well exist for only one person. And, interestingly enough, it is usually truth, not facts, upon which people are willing to risk their lives.
Just a few thoughts to say that I believe the golf ball story. Maybe it wasn’t Mr. Spalding who had the light bulb moment. Maybe it was a golfing physicist who stood at the tee one day, twirled the ball in his hand and thought, "This would probably go farther if it had a lot of little dents all over it." Maybe the guy who wrote the article I read made it up entirely. It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the story struck a familiar chord, gave me a visual image to consider the next time I’m feeling a little exploited or misused or the next time I need to encourage someone who is feeling that way himself. What matters is that, call it fact or call it truth, none of us gets through life without a knock or two and it helps to believe that we can be left with something more than just a bruise.
Copyright 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Things That Stay
"You need to come to Indianapolis," the voice on the other end of the telephone announced with such assurance that it didn't occur to me to question it. Barry is a salesman, a car salesman, born to the breed. He is a hard person to contradict.
"You need to have some fun and I can promise you that we'll give you some fun. So, when are you coming?"
I hesitated. Taken off guard, I mumbled a few words that neither of us understood.
"You can't tell me no. I am not a person that someone can say no to. You're going to come. You just tell me when."
"Let me check my calendar. I'll call you back."
Two weeks later Barry called me again. "You didn't call me back," he said matter-of-factly. "So when are you coming?"
As I said, Barry is tenacious. And he loves his wife. Though she is very happy in Indiana after living there for nearly 16 years, he recognizes that it can't hurt to continue to express his gratitude for the fact that she packed up and left Georgia, two toddlers in tow, to settle in a place where Easter outfits include overcoats.
Barry also loves surprises and he had decided that my visit would be a surprise. For three months we exchanged secret e-mail's and telephone calls and on the Thursday afternoon before Martin Luther King Day, I found myself on a plane to Indianapolis by way of Cincinnati (whose airport, incidentally, is not located in Ohio, but Kentucky).
My plane from Savannah to Cincinnati was delayed an hour. I called Barry. He was completely nonplused by the fact that his list of lies about why he would be getting home late would now need to grow by at least one. "I've got a plan," he told me and I laughed. It's hard not to laugh at Barry.
I finally got to Indianapolis at 10 o'clock. Barry and I hadn't seen each other in 15 years and I was wondering if we'd recognize each other. I rounded the corner and there he was. His hair was grayer, mine was longer. Otherwise we looked about the same. It probably helped that at that hour the airport was virtually empty and there weren't that many passengers/people waiting from which the two of us had to choose.
"This is the plan," he told me. "I got an empty pizza box last night. I'm going to call Sandra and tell her that I'm ordering pizza. When we get home, I'll go inside and then you can go to the front door with the pizza box and ring the doorbell."
It went off without a hitch. One of those I-wish-I'd-had-a-camera moments. And the look on Sandra's face was worth the delay, worth the earache I always get as the plane descends, worth all of Barry's lies, for which he was immediately forgiven.
And I did have fun.
It didn't surprise me really, but time and distance have a way of eroding things and anyone with any amount of living behind her knows that not everything lasts.
Sandra and I met when we were ten years old. We have never lived in the same town. We have never spent more than five consecutive days in the same town. Except for the fact that we both love to talk better than just about anything, our personalities are near-polar opposites. Sandra is spontaneous; I am deliberate. Sandra is self-effacing; I am self-critical. Sandra is blonde; I am not. And, yet, somehow over nearly 40 years we have remained friends. We have lasted.
What a comfort. What a joy. What a gift.
Copyright 2007
"You need to have some fun and I can promise you that we'll give you some fun. So, when are you coming?"
I hesitated. Taken off guard, I mumbled a few words that neither of us understood.
"You can't tell me no. I am not a person that someone can say no to. You're going to come. You just tell me when."
"Let me check my calendar. I'll call you back."
Two weeks later Barry called me again. "You didn't call me back," he said matter-of-factly. "So when are you coming?"
As I said, Barry is tenacious. And he loves his wife. Though she is very happy in Indiana after living there for nearly 16 years, he recognizes that it can't hurt to continue to express his gratitude for the fact that she packed up and left Georgia, two toddlers in tow, to settle in a place where Easter outfits include overcoats.
Barry also loves surprises and he had decided that my visit would be a surprise. For three months we exchanged secret e-mail's and telephone calls and on the Thursday afternoon before Martin Luther King Day, I found myself on a plane to Indianapolis by way of Cincinnati (whose airport, incidentally, is not located in Ohio, but Kentucky).
My plane from Savannah to Cincinnati was delayed an hour. I called Barry. He was completely nonplused by the fact that his list of lies about why he would be getting home late would now need to grow by at least one. "I've got a plan," he told me and I laughed. It's hard not to laugh at Barry.
I finally got to Indianapolis at 10 o'clock. Barry and I hadn't seen each other in 15 years and I was wondering if we'd recognize each other. I rounded the corner and there he was. His hair was grayer, mine was longer. Otherwise we looked about the same. It probably helped that at that hour the airport was virtually empty and there weren't that many passengers/people waiting from which the two of us had to choose.
"This is the plan," he told me. "I got an empty pizza box last night. I'm going to call Sandra and tell her that I'm ordering pizza. When we get home, I'll go inside and then you can go to the front door with the pizza box and ring the doorbell."
It went off without a hitch. One of those I-wish-I'd-had-a-camera moments. And the look on Sandra's face was worth the delay, worth the earache I always get as the plane descends, worth all of Barry's lies, for which he was immediately forgiven.
And I did have fun.
It didn't surprise me really, but time and distance have a way of eroding things and anyone with any amount of living behind her knows that not everything lasts.
Sandra and I met when we were ten years old. We have never lived in the same town. We have never spent more than five consecutive days in the same town. Except for the fact that we both love to talk better than just about anything, our personalities are near-polar opposites. Sandra is spontaneous; I am deliberate. Sandra is self-effacing; I am self-critical. Sandra is blonde; I am not. And, yet, somehow over nearly 40 years we have remained friends. We have lasted.
What a comfort. What a joy. What a gift.
Copyright 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Comfort Food
Momofuku Ando has died. He was 96. A Japanese entrepreneur, he was the founder of Nissin Food Products. He invented the instant noodle. What we call ramen noodles. What my college buddy Mona called, for no discernible reason, flexy noodles.
Ramen noodles were one of the staples of my law school diet, available at the Piggly Wiggly on Vineville Avenue for six packages for a dollar. I think I tried the shrimp flavor once, but most of the time I rotated among chicken, beef and pork.
I wasn’t much of a cook then, but standing over my tiny little apartment stove and watching the brittle square of noodles fall apart and soften in a pot of boiling water made me feel, somehow, a little more human. The steam would raise and swirl around my face and, after I opened the plastic-lined foil pouch and emptied the flavor packet into the pot, the scent of chicken soup would spread through my three tiny rooms like a cartoon genie freed from a magic lamp. It would creep into the curtains and the carpet and my winter coat draped over the back of one of the two chairs that bracketed my cinder-block-and-2x4 bookshelves. The next day when I came back from class and opened the door the lingering aroma made those three rooms a little less empty.
Katherine was in graduate school at the same time I was in law school and her go-to meal (to use one of perky Rachael Ray’s favorite phrases) was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, only most of the time it wasn’t Kraft but whatever generic brand the grocery store in Athens had on sale for three boxes for a dollar. She managed to get two meals out of a box so she and I were pretty much on the same food budget.
At the time, of course, the idea of eating ramen noodles (or macaroni with powdered "cheese") three or four times a week wasn’t as romantic as it appears in retrospect. More than once I had to remind myself that the economic deprivation of being a law student would not last forever, that one day I would be able to choose my meals based on something other than price. Over 25 years later, I can’t remember the last time I bought a pack of ramen noodles. I haven’t asked her, but I don’t think Katherine has bought macaroni with fake cheese since her children were small.
The last time she and I ate together it was for a Christmas party at Sandhill. There was real china and crystal and flatware that I keep in a big wooden box. There were linen napkins and candles. And we ate real food, cooked from scratch. It was a lot of fun.
But, now that I think about it, not any more fun than the ramen noodles and mac and cheese days, the tiny apartment days, the our-whole-lives-before-us days. Days when there was nothing better than the free entertainment of standing on the Indian Mounds and watching the whole city spread out before us. Nights when there was nothing better than cruising down Highway 41 with the Guess Who wailing out "These Eyes" through the speakers on the 8-track tape player. Days and nights when there was nothing better than being young and eager and hungry.
The newspaper article that informed me of Mr. Ando’s death said that the Chinese eat nearly 30 billion packs of ramen noodles each year and that 65.3 million packs were eaten worldwide in 2004. Mr. Ando died a very rich man. I hope he also died a happy man. I hope he knew that his noodles were more than just food for the body, that they were – in that odd backward glance kind of way – food for the soul.
Copyright 2007
Ramen noodles were one of the staples of my law school diet, available at the Piggly Wiggly on Vineville Avenue for six packages for a dollar. I think I tried the shrimp flavor once, but most of the time I rotated among chicken, beef and pork.
I wasn’t much of a cook then, but standing over my tiny little apartment stove and watching the brittle square of noodles fall apart and soften in a pot of boiling water made me feel, somehow, a little more human. The steam would raise and swirl around my face and, after I opened the plastic-lined foil pouch and emptied the flavor packet into the pot, the scent of chicken soup would spread through my three tiny rooms like a cartoon genie freed from a magic lamp. It would creep into the curtains and the carpet and my winter coat draped over the back of one of the two chairs that bracketed my cinder-block-and-2x4 bookshelves. The next day when I came back from class and opened the door the lingering aroma made those three rooms a little less empty.
Katherine was in graduate school at the same time I was in law school and her go-to meal (to use one of perky Rachael Ray’s favorite phrases) was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, only most of the time it wasn’t Kraft but whatever generic brand the grocery store in Athens had on sale for three boxes for a dollar. She managed to get two meals out of a box so she and I were pretty much on the same food budget.
At the time, of course, the idea of eating ramen noodles (or macaroni with powdered "cheese") three or four times a week wasn’t as romantic as it appears in retrospect. More than once I had to remind myself that the economic deprivation of being a law student would not last forever, that one day I would be able to choose my meals based on something other than price. Over 25 years later, I can’t remember the last time I bought a pack of ramen noodles. I haven’t asked her, but I don’t think Katherine has bought macaroni with fake cheese since her children were small.
The last time she and I ate together it was for a Christmas party at Sandhill. There was real china and crystal and flatware that I keep in a big wooden box. There were linen napkins and candles. And we ate real food, cooked from scratch. It was a lot of fun.
But, now that I think about it, not any more fun than the ramen noodles and mac and cheese days, the tiny apartment days, the our-whole-lives-before-us days. Days when there was nothing better than the free entertainment of standing on the Indian Mounds and watching the whole city spread out before us. Nights when there was nothing better than cruising down Highway 41 with the Guess Who wailing out "These Eyes" through the speakers on the 8-track tape player. Days and nights when there was nothing better than being young and eager and hungry.
The newspaper article that informed me of Mr. Ando’s death said that the Chinese eat nearly 30 billion packs of ramen noodles each year and that 65.3 million packs were eaten worldwide in 2004. Mr. Ando died a very rich man. I hope he also died a happy man. I hope he knew that his noodles were more than just food for the body, that they were – in that odd backward glance kind of way – food for the soul.
Copyright 2007
Monday, January 08, 2007
Jingle Bell Awe
The Saturday morning that I finally tackled the cleaning out of the attic, I found myself surrounded by a rug rolled into a long cigar, a doll cradle, Christmas tree stands of various sizes, a cooler and probably 25 cardboard boxes, something of them mislabeled. Wreaths hung from the rafters by ten-penny nails and insulation billowed up from the unfloored part of the attic like cotton candy.
I stood in the dim light of one naked overhead bulb and wondered how I would decide which of the thousands of pieces of my history would stay and which would go. I was torn between wanting to toss everything blindly and wanting to go through every box, every file to make sure I wasn’t getting rid of something important.
The boxes stacked on top of each other contained everything from old cancelled checks to a wall calendar from 1975. In one of them was my Girl Scout badge sash, in another old school notebooks. There were doll clothes and 8-track tapes and scrapbooks with pages nibbled along the edges by mice.
Two large trash bags and six or seven trips up and down the attic stairs later, I had reached a compromise with myself. There had been some tossing, some tears and a lot of restacking. The attic was, as a result, neater but not a lot emptier.
The sense of righteous cleanliness that I’d hoped to attain had eluded me. The higher consciousness of detachment from tangible objects would have to wait.
I thought about that the other day when Aden’s mom called to tell me about Christmas. At four, she shared, he finally "got it." And what she meant by that was that the excitement this year was his own, not just a reflection of his family’s. He spent all day Christmas Eve going back and forth to the computer with his dad charting Santa’s progress around the world. "He’s in Peru!" he cried out running through the living room and, then a hour later, "He’s in Mexico!"
On Christmas morning he went outside and found a single jingle bell in the yard. He picked it up, dark brown eyes shining, and said in near-disbelief, "It still smells like reindeer."
Ah. I couldn’t help smiling when she told me that. I could just see him holding the shiny jingle bell in his little boy hand and staring at it with that special brand of awe that exists exclusively in childhood and fades so slowly that one realizes it is gone only too late to halt the process.
"It still smells like reindeer." And I knew, then, why I’d never be able to throw away the key chain, the note scribbled on the paper plate, the nametag, the smooth gray stone, the newspaper clipping. Each one, held in my hand and up to the light, conjures up a moment, a feeling, a promise, a memory. Each one still smells like reindeer.
Jingle bell awe exists only in childhood, but there is another kind that is available to even the most grown-up of grown-ups. It is the astonishing realization that even as our vision narrows to focus on those things like meetings and mortgages, to concentrate more and more on that which we can manage, govern or manipulate, our other senses, like those of the blind, can become more sensitive. It is the amazing revelation that we can still hear jingle bells and smell reindeer as long as we remember. And we will remember as long as there are tokens and talismans, relics and artifacts. As long as our attics and desk drawers and hall closets hold the keepsakes of our hearts.
I suspect that the jingle bell will be around for a long time. Will probably make its way into a box, into an attic at some point. And then one day, when someone is seeking righteous cleanliness, it will reappear, dull and rusted, and, rolling it around in his hand, Aden will be reminded of the Christmas he was four years old, the Christmas he tracked Santa Claus all the way cross South America and learned what it meant to believe.
Copyright 2007
I stood in the dim light of one naked overhead bulb and wondered how I would decide which of the thousands of pieces of my history would stay and which would go. I was torn between wanting to toss everything blindly and wanting to go through every box, every file to make sure I wasn’t getting rid of something important.
The boxes stacked on top of each other contained everything from old cancelled checks to a wall calendar from 1975. In one of them was my Girl Scout badge sash, in another old school notebooks. There were doll clothes and 8-track tapes and scrapbooks with pages nibbled along the edges by mice.
Two large trash bags and six or seven trips up and down the attic stairs later, I had reached a compromise with myself. There had been some tossing, some tears and a lot of restacking. The attic was, as a result, neater but not a lot emptier.
The sense of righteous cleanliness that I’d hoped to attain had eluded me. The higher consciousness of detachment from tangible objects would have to wait.
I thought about that the other day when Aden’s mom called to tell me about Christmas. At four, she shared, he finally "got it." And what she meant by that was that the excitement this year was his own, not just a reflection of his family’s. He spent all day Christmas Eve going back and forth to the computer with his dad charting Santa’s progress around the world. "He’s in Peru!" he cried out running through the living room and, then a hour later, "He’s in Mexico!"
On Christmas morning he went outside and found a single jingle bell in the yard. He picked it up, dark brown eyes shining, and said in near-disbelief, "It still smells like reindeer."
Ah. I couldn’t help smiling when she told me that. I could just see him holding the shiny jingle bell in his little boy hand and staring at it with that special brand of awe that exists exclusively in childhood and fades so slowly that one realizes it is gone only too late to halt the process.
"It still smells like reindeer." And I knew, then, why I’d never be able to throw away the key chain, the note scribbled on the paper plate, the nametag, the smooth gray stone, the newspaper clipping. Each one, held in my hand and up to the light, conjures up a moment, a feeling, a promise, a memory. Each one still smells like reindeer.
Jingle bell awe exists only in childhood, but there is another kind that is available to even the most grown-up of grown-ups. It is the astonishing realization that even as our vision narrows to focus on those things like meetings and mortgages, to concentrate more and more on that which we can manage, govern or manipulate, our other senses, like those of the blind, can become more sensitive. It is the amazing revelation that we can still hear jingle bells and smell reindeer as long as we remember. And we will remember as long as there are tokens and talismans, relics and artifacts. As long as our attics and desk drawers and hall closets hold the keepsakes of our hearts.
I suspect that the jingle bell will be around for a long time. Will probably make its way into a box, into an attic at some point. And then one day, when someone is seeking righteous cleanliness, it will reappear, dull and rusted, and, rolling it around in his hand, Aden will be reminded of the Christmas he was four years old, the Christmas he tracked Santa Claus all the way cross South America and learned what it meant to believe.
Copyright 2007
Thursday, December 21, 2006
O, Christmas Tree
It is not a perfect Christmas tree. Several of its branches dangle in slings made of fishing line to minimize gaping holes in its architecture. The lights are not exactly even. Some of the ornaments are faded and bent into something other than their original shapes. But it is, like Charlie Brown’s tree, infused with a real-ness that arises from the something other than lights and ornaments.
Dangling near the window and sending erratic flashes of light around the room is a tiny brass ornament with my name engraved along the bottom. My friend Pam’s mother smoked Lord-knows-how-many-packs of Virginia Slims to redeem the personalized ornament offer for the six of us our freshman year at Wesleyan. On one of the lower sturdier limbs is a three-dimensional representation of a runner lighting the Olympic torch, Sandra’s acknowledgment in Christmas of 1996 of the great fun I had in being a part of the relay through Statesboro.
The mouse dressed as an angel was a gift from Jessica who sat at my conference room table one day and nearly lost her breath laughing at stories of my rodent phobia. The sea horse is made of Saint Simons sand. The ceramic Claddagh reminds me of Mandy and Celtic music and all kinds of secrets.
Scattered over the limbs are the snowflakes and balls that Mama crocheted and the tiny Chrismons I cross-stitched when I got my first place. There is a glazed dough pig and a little balsa wood birdcage, a china bell painted with a dogwood blossom and a silver one engraved with my initials, a baseball that opens on a hinge to reveal Santa Claus in red and white pinstripes. A tiny porcelain cross hangs from a green ribbon near the top.
At the top of the tree is a big Waterford crystal star, a gift from Lucy and her parents the year we all stood in front of the judge whose hurried and harried attitude could not dampen our awe and delight at the legal acknowledgment of what we’d all known for some time – that Lucy was home.
There must be over a hundred ornaments on the tree, each one placed there by my hand, the touch connecting me to people and places and times, some of them gone forever except in my memory. It is not a perfect Christmas tree, but like every tree in every home in every town it is a representation of the life that is sheltered and nurtured here. It is, like the Little Prince’s rose, unique in all the world.
Soon it will be taken apart, piece by piece, ornament by ornament and packed away in the attic until next year. But on this Christmas Eve, between heading off to church in early morning to light the fourth Advent candle and heading back in the early darkness for Communion, I will still my thoughts and my heart long enough to sit and stare. To remember Pam’s mother. To think about Sandra and Jessica and Mandy and Lucy. To say a prayer of gratitude for the hands that crocheted the snowflakes. To invite the spirits of all the people I love to join me under the tree in marveling at all we share.
Copyright 2006
Dangling near the window and sending erratic flashes of light around the room is a tiny brass ornament with my name engraved along the bottom. My friend Pam’s mother smoked Lord-knows-how-many-packs of Virginia Slims to redeem the personalized ornament offer for the six of us our freshman year at Wesleyan. On one of the lower sturdier limbs is a three-dimensional representation of a runner lighting the Olympic torch, Sandra’s acknowledgment in Christmas of 1996 of the great fun I had in being a part of the relay through Statesboro.
The mouse dressed as an angel was a gift from Jessica who sat at my conference room table one day and nearly lost her breath laughing at stories of my rodent phobia. The sea horse is made of Saint Simons sand. The ceramic Claddagh reminds me of Mandy and Celtic music and all kinds of secrets.
Scattered over the limbs are the snowflakes and balls that Mama crocheted and the tiny Chrismons I cross-stitched when I got my first place. There is a glazed dough pig and a little balsa wood birdcage, a china bell painted with a dogwood blossom and a silver one engraved with my initials, a baseball that opens on a hinge to reveal Santa Claus in red and white pinstripes. A tiny porcelain cross hangs from a green ribbon near the top.
At the top of the tree is a big Waterford crystal star, a gift from Lucy and her parents the year we all stood in front of the judge whose hurried and harried attitude could not dampen our awe and delight at the legal acknowledgment of what we’d all known for some time – that Lucy was home.
There must be over a hundred ornaments on the tree, each one placed there by my hand, the touch connecting me to people and places and times, some of them gone forever except in my memory. It is not a perfect Christmas tree, but like every tree in every home in every town it is a representation of the life that is sheltered and nurtured here. It is, like the Little Prince’s rose, unique in all the world.
Soon it will be taken apart, piece by piece, ornament by ornament and packed away in the attic until next year. But on this Christmas Eve, between heading off to church in early morning to light the fourth Advent candle and heading back in the early darkness for Communion, I will still my thoughts and my heart long enough to sit and stare. To remember Pam’s mother. To think about Sandra and Jessica and Mandy and Lucy. To say a prayer of gratitude for the hands that crocheted the snowflakes. To invite the spirits of all the people I love to join me under the tree in marveling at all we share.
Copyright 2006
Sunday, December 10, 2006
In Tandem
It bothers me sometimes when I go to church and the preacher raps me on the head.
Not all the time. Sometimes the rap is a "Hello? Anybody home?" and it just wakes me up to something I already know but just hadn’t considered in a while. And sometimes it’s a "Hey! Guess what!" that makes me sit up straight and open my eyes a little wider.
But sometimes, every so often, when I’m sitting there in a column of sunshine slanting through the stained glass window on my pew, the preacher takes out a mallet – no, make that a meat tenderizer with all those spikes on it – and whacks me with a blow so sharp that it’s hard not to yell, "Ouch!" right there in front of God and everybody.
So I’m walking around this week with a big purple bruise underneath all this hair and still wondering why that one remark, not even a major point in the sermon, is still pulsing so hard and so regularly through whatever artery it is that connects the brain to the heart.
This is what he said: "The fear itself is a sign that God will keep His promise."
Say what? Isn’t that a little, well, untheological? Isn’t the whole idea of believing in God and ultimate eventual good supposed to produce something like spiritual endorphins? Isn’t it supposed to leave us with, if only a platitude, at least a platitude when the Wicked Witch and all her flying monkeys surround us and our cowardly, ignorant and heartless companions?
And especially on the first Sunday in Advent when we’re supposed to be focusing on the promise of peace on earth and good will toward all of us and the angels are telling us to fear not, should those two things – promise and fear – really be riding on the same float in the Christmas parade?
Every year about this time I find myself pulling out my well-read copy of Barbara Brown Taylor’s book of sermons, Home By Another Way. In the one she titled "Singing Ahead of Time," she talks about Mary, the teenager who managed somehow in what had to be the most frightening moment she’d ever experienced (but which would pale in comparison to the one she’d face about 34 years later) to believe, to take as truth a promise as yet unfulfilled. Taylor reminds us that Mary has no ultrasound, no DNA test identifying God as the father of her baby. "All she has," Taylor writes, "is her unreasonable willingness to believe that the God who has chosen her will be a part of whatever happens next."
Promise and fear. Together.
Promise belongs to the future, that unseen and untested place to which we would be drawn by our hearts even if our minds hadn’t created it. And we are drawn to it even as we ask ourselves trembling, "What if it isn’t so?"
Joan of Arc. Christopher Columbus. Martin Luther King. Everyone who ever teetered on the edge of the high dive. Everyone who ever asked for a raise. Everyone who ever fell in love. Promise hand in hand with fear.
To be honest, I’m not sure that this particular stream of consciousness is what the preacher had in mind when he chose the lectionary reading from Luke as his text. Then again, it’s not about what he had in mind when he entered the pulpit and it’s certainly not about what I had in mind when I entered the pew.
It’s about Christmas and the miraculous conception of not just a baby whose individual life would change every thought and idea and action that came after, but the conception of every thought and idea and action that would come after and change every life.
It’s about, as Taylor put it, "singing ahead of time." Singing before there’s a reason to sing. Believing the promise while feeling the fear. Standing between the two, holding out our hands and becoming a bridge.
Copyright 2006
Not all the time. Sometimes the rap is a "Hello? Anybody home?" and it just wakes me up to something I already know but just hadn’t considered in a while. And sometimes it’s a "Hey! Guess what!" that makes me sit up straight and open my eyes a little wider.
But sometimes, every so often, when I’m sitting there in a column of sunshine slanting through the stained glass window on my pew, the preacher takes out a mallet – no, make that a meat tenderizer with all those spikes on it – and whacks me with a blow so sharp that it’s hard not to yell, "Ouch!" right there in front of God and everybody.
So I’m walking around this week with a big purple bruise underneath all this hair and still wondering why that one remark, not even a major point in the sermon, is still pulsing so hard and so regularly through whatever artery it is that connects the brain to the heart.
This is what he said: "The fear itself is a sign that God will keep His promise."
Say what? Isn’t that a little, well, untheological? Isn’t the whole idea of believing in God and ultimate eventual good supposed to produce something like spiritual endorphins? Isn’t it supposed to leave us with, if only a platitude, at least a platitude when the Wicked Witch and all her flying monkeys surround us and our cowardly, ignorant and heartless companions?
And especially on the first Sunday in Advent when we’re supposed to be focusing on the promise of peace on earth and good will toward all of us and the angels are telling us to fear not, should those two things – promise and fear – really be riding on the same float in the Christmas parade?
Every year about this time I find myself pulling out my well-read copy of Barbara Brown Taylor’s book of sermons, Home By Another Way. In the one she titled "Singing Ahead of Time," she talks about Mary, the teenager who managed somehow in what had to be the most frightening moment she’d ever experienced (but which would pale in comparison to the one she’d face about 34 years later) to believe, to take as truth a promise as yet unfulfilled. Taylor reminds us that Mary has no ultrasound, no DNA test identifying God as the father of her baby. "All she has," Taylor writes, "is her unreasonable willingness to believe that the God who has chosen her will be a part of whatever happens next."
Promise and fear. Together.
Promise belongs to the future, that unseen and untested place to which we would be drawn by our hearts even if our minds hadn’t created it. And we are drawn to it even as we ask ourselves trembling, "What if it isn’t so?"
Joan of Arc. Christopher Columbus. Martin Luther King. Everyone who ever teetered on the edge of the high dive. Everyone who ever asked for a raise. Everyone who ever fell in love. Promise hand in hand with fear.
To be honest, I’m not sure that this particular stream of consciousness is what the preacher had in mind when he chose the lectionary reading from Luke as his text. Then again, it’s not about what he had in mind when he entered the pulpit and it’s certainly not about what I had in mind when I entered the pew.
It’s about Christmas and the miraculous conception of not just a baby whose individual life would change every thought and idea and action that came after, but the conception of every thought and idea and action that would come after and change every life.
It’s about, as Taylor put it, "singing ahead of time." Singing before there’s a reason to sing. Believing the promise while feeling the fear. Standing between the two, holding out our hands and becoming a bridge.
Copyright 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Friendly Fire
A couple of months ago Lily and Tamar got into a terrible fight. It was Saturday night. We took them, in separate vehicles, to the animal emergency room, driving the 20 miles into town with all kinds of fear and trepidation that the vast amounts of blood spread all over Mama and Daddy’s deck and laundry room were an indication of horrible, horrible injuries.
As it turned out, though they both had to stay the night, the only serious wound was one on Lily’s left front leg that required stitches.
Once we got them home, we undertook a complex logistical effort to make sure that the two of them had no contact with each other. One got to play in the yard in the morning, the other in the afternoon. After years of sharing a bed, the two were banished to not just separate rooms, but separate houses. It was exhausting.
And emotionally draining. These two dogs have been bosom buddies for nearly six years. With the exception of four or five incidents involving bared teeth, otherworldly growling and bites that drew blood, they were completely simpatico. They cried for each other when they were separated. They chased deer and rabbits and squirrels in tandem. They began each morning licking each other’s faces as though to reassure themselves that all was right with the world.
When I took Lily back to Saint Buddy to get the stitches removed I asked him what we could do about the problem. He presented me with a copy of a scholarly article on "intraspecies female aggression" and warned me that what I was going to read would not make me happy.
He was right. The experts say that IFA, as I’ve come to call it, is not an unusual problem. There were explanations about canine society and the necessity of an alpha dog, warnings about trying to treat dogs equally as one would people and suggestions about behavior modification.
The experts’ conclusion was that IFA is not easily solvable. In fact, they wrote, it is unlikely, once IFA has been introduced into the relationship, that the two dogs can ever be trusted with each other again.
It made me sad.
And it made me even sadder to think of the human application. It didn’t take me long to thing of more than a handful of relationships, mine and other people’s (and not limited to females, thank you very much), that had gone from close and loving and attached-at-the-hip to distant and cruel and vicious. And, like the veterinary experts said, most of those relationships cannot be healed.
With dogs the aggression is instinctual and arises from fear. We humans, with our advanced brains and social connections, are supposed to live beyond the reach of instinct and, yet, it occurs to me that the source of all those broken relationships can, in one way or another, be traced back to fear. Fear of loss, fear of separation, fear of fear.
We’re working with Lily and Tamar, carefully reintroducing them to each other. When I take Lily up to Mama and Daddy’s each morning I hold her leash tightly and allow her and Tamar to touch noses through the wooden gate on the deck. We’ve even taken a couple of long walks, one on a leash, one loose, making sure that a safe distance between the two is maintained.
Neither one gets so much as a pat on the head until she responds to a command of, "Sit!"
Will it work? Will they somehow figure out the parameters of their relationship and learn the behavior that will allow them to once again run freely over hundreds of acres together? I don’t know.
What I do know is that every time I look at them, separated by barriers that they created themselves, I see not just their faces, but human faces. And it makes me want to cry.
Copyright 2006
As it turned out, though they both had to stay the night, the only serious wound was one on Lily’s left front leg that required stitches.
Once we got them home, we undertook a complex logistical effort to make sure that the two of them had no contact with each other. One got to play in the yard in the morning, the other in the afternoon. After years of sharing a bed, the two were banished to not just separate rooms, but separate houses. It was exhausting.
And emotionally draining. These two dogs have been bosom buddies for nearly six years. With the exception of four or five incidents involving bared teeth, otherworldly growling and bites that drew blood, they were completely simpatico. They cried for each other when they were separated. They chased deer and rabbits and squirrels in tandem. They began each morning licking each other’s faces as though to reassure themselves that all was right with the world.
When I took Lily back to Saint Buddy to get the stitches removed I asked him what we could do about the problem. He presented me with a copy of a scholarly article on "intraspecies female aggression" and warned me that what I was going to read would not make me happy.
He was right. The experts say that IFA, as I’ve come to call it, is not an unusual problem. There were explanations about canine society and the necessity of an alpha dog, warnings about trying to treat dogs equally as one would people and suggestions about behavior modification.
The experts’ conclusion was that IFA is not easily solvable. In fact, they wrote, it is unlikely, once IFA has been introduced into the relationship, that the two dogs can ever be trusted with each other again.
It made me sad.
And it made me even sadder to think of the human application. It didn’t take me long to thing of more than a handful of relationships, mine and other people’s (and not limited to females, thank you very much), that had gone from close and loving and attached-at-the-hip to distant and cruel and vicious. And, like the veterinary experts said, most of those relationships cannot be healed.
With dogs the aggression is instinctual and arises from fear. We humans, with our advanced brains and social connections, are supposed to live beyond the reach of instinct and, yet, it occurs to me that the source of all those broken relationships can, in one way or another, be traced back to fear. Fear of loss, fear of separation, fear of fear.
We’re working with Lily and Tamar, carefully reintroducing them to each other. When I take Lily up to Mama and Daddy’s each morning I hold her leash tightly and allow her and Tamar to touch noses through the wooden gate on the deck. We’ve even taken a couple of long walks, one on a leash, one loose, making sure that a safe distance between the two is maintained.
Neither one gets so much as a pat on the head until she responds to a command of, "Sit!"
Will it work? Will they somehow figure out the parameters of their relationship and learn the behavior that will allow them to once again run freely over hundreds of acres together? I don’t know.
What I do know is that every time I look at them, separated by barriers that they created themselves, I see not just their faces, but human faces. And it makes me want to cry.
Copyright 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
Deed of Gift
Just the other day I was headed cross country toward Valdosta – one of those places in our wide and wonderful state to which it is difficult to find a straight shot from here. Having gotten widely varying estimates of time and distance from three different internet mapping services, I decided to play rabbit and head out in what I knew was the general direction, the back roads known as the Woodpecker Trail. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a drive more.
It was early Saturday morning. There were few other cars on the road so I could watch the landscape skim by. The yellow autumn light came through the trees at such an angle that the changing leaves all looked as though they’d been plated with precious metals. Acres and acres of cotton spread out on either side of the road and were so thick with fat fluffy blossoms that I couldn’t help but hear the voices of my childhood preachers singing out from the pulpit about the fields being white with harvest.
Rounding a curve I saw a neatly-painted sign dangling from a limb on a tall oak tree: Fresh Eggs - 1 mile. I was half-tempted to take the detour down the narrow dirt road just to meet the kind of folks who still sold eggs from their back porch.
At a county road crossroads, three shiny new pick-up trucks, each one with a grill as big as a cattle gate, were parked on the gravel outside a cinder block store. Men dressed in various degrees of camouflage leaned against the fenders, hands in pockets or crossed over their chests, soaking up sunshine and swearing to the number of points on the buck that had been just out of range.
I passed a sign that told me I’d entered the Big Hammock Wildlife Management Area, 7000 acres of flood-plain habitat owned and managed by the state of Georgia. A few miles further down the road I drove into Appling County and the road widened, took me over a new concrete bridge. Underneath ran the Altamaha River. It is the largest river of the Georgia coast and the second largest river basin in the eastern United States. It flows for 140 miles through southeast Georgia toward the Atlantic Ocean.
On this day the water was low, barely moving, and the sand looked like cake icing, creamy white and spread in gentle waves along the edges of the water. All was silence and stillness and I was suddenly struck with an instinctual protectiveness toward the river and all it represents. It was as though by being there at that particular moment I’d been vested with an ownership interest in that particular piece of creation.
I’ve experienced it before – at the foot of a waterfall in North Carolina, on the banks of a creek that runs along one edge of our farm, under an oak tree too big to circle with my arms, on top of the Temple Mound in Macon – and each time I’ve found myself breathless.
What is it, I wonder, about untouched nature that speaks so deeply to our souls? Do we hear our own breath in the wind? Feel our own pulse in the current?
There’s been a lot of talk over the past 30 years or so about preserving our natural heritage and cleaning up the environment. We’ve spent a lot of money as a nation to do just that. And, yet, I’d bet that the majority of Americans don’t see themselves as the owners, much less the caretakers, of a single square foot of dirt on which they are not paying a mortgage.
We have become so distanced from that which we didn’t create that rain is just something that delays a baseball game and wind only something that interferes with the satellite signal. And 7000 acres of nothing but wetlands seems like a lot of wasted space.
Until you see it. Until you feel it. Until you own it for yourself.
Copyright 2006.
It was early Saturday morning. There were few other cars on the road so I could watch the landscape skim by. The yellow autumn light came through the trees at such an angle that the changing leaves all looked as though they’d been plated with precious metals. Acres and acres of cotton spread out on either side of the road and were so thick with fat fluffy blossoms that I couldn’t help but hear the voices of my childhood preachers singing out from the pulpit about the fields being white with harvest.
Rounding a curve I saw a neatly-painted sign dangling from a limb on a tall oak tree: Fresh Eggs - 1 mile. I was half-tempted to take the detour down the narrow dirt road just to meet the kind of folks who still sold eggs from their back porch.
At a county road crossroads, three shiny new pick-up trucks, each one with a grill as big as a cattle gate, were parked on the gravel outside a cinder block store. Men dressed in various degrees of camouflage leaned against the fenders, hands in pockets or crossed over their chests, soaking up sunshine and swearing to the number of points on the buck that had been just out of range.
I passed a sign that told me I’d entered the Big Hammock Wildlife Management Area, 7000 acres of flood-plain habitat owned and managed by the state of Georgia. A few miles further down the road I drove into Appling County and the road widened, took me over a new concrete bridge. Underneath ran the Altamaha River. It is the largest river of the Georgia coast and the second largest river basin in the eastern United States. It flows for 140 miles through southeast Georgia toward the Atlantic Ocean.
On this day the water was low, barely moving, and the sand looked like cake icing, creamy white and spread in gentle waves along the edges of the water. All was silence and stillness and I was suddenly struck with an instinctual protectiveness toward the river and all it represents. It was as though by being there at that particular moment I’d been vested with an ownership interest in that particular piece of creation.
I’ve experienced it before – at the foot of a waterfall in North Carolina, on the banks of a creek that runs along one edge of our farm, under an oak tree too big to circle with my arms, on top of the Temple Mound in Macon – and each time I’ve found myself breathless.
What is it, I wonder, about untouched nature that speaks so deeply to our souls? Do we hear our own breath in the wind? Feel our own pulse in the current?
There’s been a lot of talk over the past 30 years or so about preserving our natural heritage and cleaning up the environment. We’ve spent a lot of money as a nation to do just that. And, yet, I’d bet that the majority of Americans don’t see themselves as the owners, much less the caretakers, of a single square foot of dirt on which they are not paying a mortgage.
We have become so distanced from that which we didn’t create that rain is just something that delays a baseball game and wind only something that interferes with the satellite signal. And 7000 acres of nothing but wetlands seems like a lot of wasted space.
Until you see it. Until you feel it. Until you own it for yourself.
Copyright 2006.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Loose Change and Pieces of Moon
At low tide – not on my beach, but another beach, one where the sand is less like confectioner’s sugar and more like sandpaper – I went looking for, I thought, shells. But not exactly shells. Pieces of shells.
In our part of the world it is a rare occasion that presents a whole, unbroken, unblemished shell on the wet edge of the continent for someone to pick up and tote home, so I walked with my head bent, my eyes scanning the crunchy water line for interesting fragments.
Just a few strides from the boardwalk I found half a sand dollar. It looked very little like the whole ones you find at sea shell stores, the ones that are bleach-white and completely round, the ones whose five sets of pores on the top make a perfect Spirograph star. This fifty-cent piece of a sand dollar was exposing its inside, the cavity that in a living specimen is the water-vascular system that enables it to move, the cavity that – in death and dismemberment – was only an empty room.
I found more, smaller pieces as I walked. I picked them up, rattled them around in my palm. Pieces of a dollar. Quarters and dimes and nickels. Loose change. Not quite as easy to carry as a single bill, but still spendable.
Further down the beach something glinted in the sand. I reached down to pick up a piece of moon shell. Smooth as glass, curved like a scythe, it was about the size of my thumbnail. I couldn’t decide whether it was pink or brown or something in between. Either way, I thought and smiled at my vanity, it would make a pretty lipstick.
As I kept walking and scanning the water line, it appeared that, in an effort to get my attention, the tide had deposited an embarrassment of moon shell pieces. Slivers, slices, chunks. All different, but all recognizable and all evocative of a full moon shell.
Just the night before I had stood and looked out over the ocean at a full moon. Its reflection in the water pulsed with energy, scattered illumination in all directions, outlined the landscape in softness like a filter on a camera lens. I had watched it and remembered other full moons, other nights standing under a shower of pewter light. I had stared at the pumpkin-colored ball poised in the sky at the exact point where its surface could be fully illuminated by the sun and thought of the mystery and magic we attribute to something that occurs only once every 29½ days.
Why, I asked myself, holding the fragile pieces of moon shell in my hand, don’t we see mystery and magic in the other days? Why do we reserve the awe and wonder for one night a month? Why do we save things – good china, linen napkins, our deepest emotions – for what we call "special occasions"?
The tide had turned, the roar of the waves had softened and I could now hear in the rhythm of my footsteps the sound of thousands of shell fragments dissolving beneath my weight. Shells becoming sand.
Back over the dunes, through the sea oats, I carried my treasures, bits and pieces, parts and fragments, remnants and shards. I carried them with my palms turned up and open, the way I’d been told by a friend that one must carry anything of value.
It would be lovely some day to happen upon a sea shell, whole and unbroken and unblemished. A pink and white conch or a tiger-striped chambered nautilus or a tightly spiraled whelk. But it is better still, I’ve decided, to look for loveliness in the pieces and parts and fragments that get scattered like crumbs along the shore.
Few dawns are heralded by full moons. Few shells survive the wash of the tide unbroken and unblemished. It is the other moons, new and waxing and waning, that usher in most mornings. It is the pieces of shells, worn down by the wash of water and broken by the weight of travelers that form the beach. And it is the awe and wonder, the mystery and magic of the everyday that is the currency of our lives.
Copyright 2006.
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