Room in the Inn, Upstairs, Downstairs

The back door to the church fellowship hall swung open.  In walked two thin men with backpacks slung over their shoulders.  Both men had unshaven faces and deep set eyes under black eyebrows.  "Merry Christmas!" said the taller of the two.  They moved confidently across the room to cots set up behind a line of tables.

The door swung open again. A ragged line of people entered. An older couple, husband and wife, holding hands; a tall, thin, handsome man with a copper beard and a worn, gentle appearance; a thin blonde man with deep set eyes; a sturdy, young, cocoa-skinned man named Lawson; young James B and his girlfriend Kara with her dark, nervous eyes; thin Veronica; stocky Elvis -- their names taking shape on name tags, their cot ownerships lining up, the men behind the line of tables, the women behind screens.  The husband wheeled in his wife's oxygen tank and placed it beside her cot. Twelve guests this night, on Christmas Eve.

From the kitchen hints of turkey and gravy drifted into the hall where guests poured coffee and sifted through toiletries and books.  Tables were set for dinner, poinsettias in the center, fruit salad at each place setting.  A buffet line formed.  "Let's eat while the food is hot.  Lawson, will you please say the blessing."

From upstairs a brass quintet's harmonies floated down, waves of crescendoing sound with each opening of sanctuary doors. Church members dressed in suits and dresses drifted in and out.  The setting could have been any church meal with the familiar pulse of conversation and forks clicking on plates, but not quite, because the guests at the tables were strangers to one another, thrown together because they were homeless.  

Throughout the winter months, on every Thursday night, The Presbyterian Church of Bowling Green hosts a winter shelter program called Room in the Inn.  In the church fellowship hall volunteers set up cots with blankets, sheets, and pillows; cook dinner and breakfast; and serve twelve guests.  From 6pm to 6am, as many as fifteen volunteers alternate through five shifts; one of those shifts is the innkeeper shift when two church members sleep on cots over night.  It's the least popular shift, beginning at 9pm and ending at 5am, "sleep" a convenient but  inaccurate description for the shift.

Because Christmas Eve fell on Thursday this year, while homeless guests settled in downstairs, Presbyterians upstairs carried on with the annual Christmas Eve schedule, two worship services, choir practice, children's performances, traditional pageantry and music.

Upstairs was Allelujah, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem; Downstairs a hot meal, coffee, extra blankets, antacids, fitful rest.

I was there in both places, upstairs and downstairs.  I set up cots, served food, ate with the guests.  I listened to their stories.

We've been married 39 years. My wife has spells.  She needs her oxygen.  

We met at a laundromat. 

He was an Afghanistan. He enlisted after high school.  He had nowhere else to go. His mother abandoned him when he was thirteen.  

One day she didn't pick me up from school.  

I kept driving without a license.  Finally, I was arrested and lost my license.  I'm trying to get back my license.

I've got some work tomorrow.

We lived behind a bush until Trevor found us.

I've got kids in Tennessee.

I've got this cough.  Acid reflux.

Upstairs I dressed in my choir robe, sang anthems, savored the music, absorbed the pastor's message about the power of hope and love in a disturbing and swirling world of vicious rhetoric, murder, war, intolerance, and carelessness.  As the sanctuary darkened, we lit candles and sang Silent Night.  The lights came up.  We burst into Joy to the World. The brass quintet played Jingle Bells.  We embraced friends.  

Downstairs in the fellowship hall, when the lights dimmed, tired guests prepared for sleep.

At eleven o'clock I pulled on a sweatshirt, plumped up my pillows on a cot near the lobby exit and lay down to play online Scrabble on my iPad.  The other innkeeper, David, pulled off his shirt and shoes, placed a camp mattress on his cot just outside the hall near the lobby exit, and curled up in a red fleece blanket and drifted off to sleep, his breathing heavy and slow.

The primary lights in the hall and lobby were off, but not the emergency lights and not the Christmas tree lights.  The ice maker in the kitchen burbled.  One of the men sat on the edge of his cot and tried to squelch his fierce coughing, a garbage can beside him to catch his phlegm.  Although a doctor had visited with him the previous week, the man, resigned to his condition, had resisted treatment.  "Does he have lung cancer? TB?"  I worried.  The boyfriend and girlfriend whispered and paced restlessly, in and out from the hall to the lobby and back again, passing where David slept and then where I lay, until her need to sleep overcame his reluctance to leave her.  I checked the time. 1:30.  A man cried out in a dream.  A woman left to use the bathroom.  Snoring and labored breathing.  Hacking.  More outcries.  

My brain refused to relax. I covered my head with a shirt, hugged my extra pillow, the one from home, and practiced mindlessness. I added a coat to my blanket.  I shivered. At 3am thunder growled, lightening flashed, rain pelted the patio and street and spattered the windows.  At 4am I heard the rustling of coffee filters, the pouring of water into the coffee maker, the clink of cups, the rhythmic drip of coffee, a smoker's morning cough. Two men stood quietly with cups in their hands and watched the coffee maker. 

Outside the rain continued, street lights shimmering on dark, wet streets.  

I rose and joined David and the early risers.  The coffee moistened my throat, its warmth spreading to my belly.  I held the warm cup against my cheek.

At 4:15 the breakfast shift volunteers, Cathey and Wes, arrived.  Slowly people awakened.  Rain flooded the streets.  Wes and I stirred scrambled eggs in iron skillets. Cathey flipped pancakes. We warmed the precooked bacon, poured orange juice, set out milk. 

"Do you have tongs for the bacon, Ma'am?" asked the young Army veteran.

"It'll be a hard day with this rain.  The library will be closed, and the mall," lamented one man.

"The buses won't be running."  

"I've been wet before."

At 6am the guests would be escorted to a morning shelter nearby.

My husband arrived to help clean up.  I drove home, took a hot shower, and fell into our bed, with its Sterns and Foster mattress, down comforter and 600 count percale sheets.  I slept until noon. When I woke up and looked out our den's French doors, it was still raining.

It was Christmas Day.

If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy

Let's play "What if?"

What if the ATMs stopped working?  What if the NSA was interested in my phone calls to the church?  What if ISIS terrorists succeeded in cutting off traffic between Chicago and Atlanta?  What if the sweet muslim lady who works out with me at the gym suddenly blew us all up?  

What if you were pulling weeds at dusk and a helicopter whumped-whumped just overhead and you found yourself bathed in a searchlight?

I try to remain calm, to keep things in perspective,

ATMs regularly run out of money over the weekend.  I remember when ATMs didn't exist.  It's not a big deal.  I don't believe the NSA will ever be interested in any of my phone calls or emails unless an NSA employee wishes to volunteer to serve a night at a winter shelter or wants to write a boring novel about my family or friends.  As to cutting off traffic on I-65, the Kentucky and Tennessee Transportation Authorities have succeeded in truncating travel with legitimate construction delays and highway closures, without any help from ISIS.  I wouldn't mess with the sweet lady at the gym -- no way!  She's as sharp as a tack, wise and wily about people, listens to all manner of nonsense flying off the tongues of gals as they perspire through their routines, then sweetly says the equivalent of "Every day is a blessing. We are so fortunate to be here working out, to have each other."  

As to the helicopter and why it would spotlight a woman pulling weeds at dusk, you might theorize about the possibility of a nearby helicopter training school.  That sounds reasonable.  You'd be wrong, but you'd be trying to keep things in perspective.

.....

My daughter Jenny lives in Franklin, Tennessee, home to ordinary people like themselves and also some music celebrities who live nearby.  The eight lanes of I-65 run north and south just fifteen minutes from Jenny's quiet cul-de-sac.  The surrounding streets carry only light local traffic.  It's safe to jog, walk dogs, and ride bikes.

I was visiting Jenny's family on a Thursday. In her yard and the fields beyond, trees were just turning yellow and orange.  Autumn's chill had inspired us to light gas logs.  After visiting around the fire and enjoying the waning light glowing through the living room windows, we decided to go out for sushi.  

Jenny, her son, and her daughter waited for me in the car, while I put on my shoes.  As I closed the back door, I locked it, out of habit, a habit necessary at my house -- not at hers. I didn't realize I'd locked it until I walked through the garage to the car.  Did I just lock that door?

"Jenny, do you have a key to the house?"

"No.  We use the garage door opener."  She raised her eyes in alarm.  "Mom! You didn't lock the door, did you?"

"I'm afraid I did."

Lauren and Sam popped out of the car.  "Daddy may have put a key in the garage, Mom."  They have the optimism of teenagers.  In the meantime, Jenny called her husband, who was driving somewhere between Iowa and Oklahoma on business.  "Jim, do we have a hideout key?"

Her face clouded.  No hideout key.  The kids returned empty handed.  They next looked for an open window.  Jenny followed, iPhone to her ear, giving a running account to Jim, the only family member with a key.  

When Sam discovered an unlocked kitchen window, I bent over to pull some tiny weeds in a path.  I needed to be useful and silent, nearby but out of the way during the window prying operation.

Whump, whump, Whump!   

A helicopter suddenly hovered above me. Its spotlight slithered along the path toward me, scanned the shrubbery, and stopped on Lauren, her body halfway through the kitchen window.  The helicopter angled up and away, its thumping motor fading, circling, then nearing, its searchlight bounding over treetops.  And then It was immediately above me.  I found myself in a circle of blinding light.  Lauren had disappeared into the house, unlocked the door, and emerged from the garage.  

Under helicopter surveillance, we jumped into the car and took off, our imaginations running wild.  

"They were narcs!"  

"Traffic helicopter from I-65."

"Police surveillance."

"Body snatchers!'

"Silver Alert!"

"The Neighborhood Watch!"

"Voyeur!"

"FBI!"

"NSA!"

'Immigration!"

"Donald Trump!

"Ted Cruz!"

"Sam, don't text!  We're under suspicion!"

"Mom, slow down.  You'll attract attention!"

And so it went.  

That evening during the Chicken Red Curry and the Dragon Rolls--"Check for listening devices hidden in the food."  The next morning over coffee--"Check the Kuerig for NSA's fingerprints!"  At dinner parties--"The weirdest thing happened..."

Until one day Jenny was telling a neighbor, "You wouldn't believe...the other night."

"Oh, that was Aldridge.  He does that.  He has a helicopter. He lives two doors down from you."

Neighborhood Watch?  No, just out for a spin on a Thursday night.

If he had known us, we could have laughed it off.  "He's just messing with us."  But we didn't know him and he didn't know us, which complicates the scenario.  

Voyeuristic prank?  Honest surveillance?  Comic relief?  Determined vigilante?  Neighborly hello?

We would like to keep events in perspective.  Lauren succeeded in unlocking the door.  We made a clean getaway.  Indeed, that hovering helicopter shifted the focus away from my locking the door.  Still, we can't quite let go of wondering "What if..?"

It's the not knowing that keeps the story alive, not quite at the Twitter level, but almost.

"Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid.” 

― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast.

.....

"If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy."  from the title of a feature article by Walter Kim from The Atlantic, November 2015.  

 

Aunt Meryl

Aunt Meryl was not my favorite aunt.  Sometimes she was my least favorite aunt. However, Meryl Richardson has silently been with me all of my life in my neurons and my facial structure.

"Ha!" Exclaimed my older brother once.  "You look just like Aunt Meryl."  And yes, he's correct.  No matter how much I wish I looked more like my mother or her sisters, my father's oldest sister Meryl is definitely implanted in my genes.  

If she had been college educated, Meryl might have been an English teacher, or maybe a professor of  art or music.   As it was, she became a pianist in a band, a writer, and a well known landscape artist from Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco.

Childless, Meryl doted on my cousin Linda, who was admittedly adorable and sweeter than I ever wished to be.  I was the niece who wore my brother's jeans and climbed trees and didn't like my hair combed.  But I was also the niece who spent winter weekends and summer weeks with my aunt when my mother was ill, which was often the situation until I was ten.

I remember these visits with my aunt like vinegar and sugar.  Diane, brush your hair. Delicious apricot pies. Why don't you wear a dress?  Lavender scented bubbles in the bath tub.  Sit up straight.  Scrabble games. Don't be rude.  Art lessons.  Where have you been!?  Music jam sessions. Hush!  Camping trips in Yosemite. 

Memories of the annoying nighttime rhythmic tick rock of the mantle clock and my uncle's snoring mingle with the daytime delight of painting beside my aunt on her tiny back porch.  My Uncle Wayne and Aunt Meryl took weekend excursions to places where she would paint plein aire in watercolor. Later when she would render her watercolor sketches in oils, I watched --fascinated.  I imagine these were some times when she said, Hush!  But more often than not, she would set up an area for me with a large sketch pad and some paint.

"Draw with a paint brush," she'd say.  "Paint whatever you like."  She never criticized my immature paintings.  Instead, she taught me how colors mix, about perspective and composition -- patiently, kindly.

She was always her best self when painting or playing the piano.  Her nervousness, her obsessive worries about propriety,  her perfectionism, these issues simply disappeared when she was occupied with her talents.  

She lived a long life, outliving two husbands. In her later years I  admired her zest for living.  I think she had a good time in her later years:  traveling, playing the piano for a swing band, playing bridge, and painting small scenes and flowers.  When I last visited her in her senior care home, she determined that we were served lunch in a grand manner with warm hospitality.  Her hand painted notecards were on display in the lobby, purchasable for a nominal price.  I'm told that when she became bedridden, she practiced her music on the bed sheet, her fingers moving through trills and chords.

You never really know someone, but when you can feel someone's presence in your own nuerons, you have to be grateful. Or else, what would you be saying about yourself?!

Picking Up the Pieces

This post is a parable.

Last month while Herb was constructing a gravel pathway he dumped some of the gravel in the grass.  Grass will grow in gravel, here and there where seeds find a grip between pieces of gravel, but such a result doesn't match our standards for a lawn. After all, we contract with Trugreen to achieve a green, virtually weed-less expanse of fescue.  Gravel is for paths, not for lawns.

I felt a stab of frustration.  I wanted to say, "Why didn't you lay down a tarp?", or worse....   Somebody was going to have to pick up that gravel.   Herb saw I was looking at the spread of gravel under the truck's tailgate.  "I'll take care of it," he said. And then he walked to the house to clean up.

 He had been working for hours in the heat.  And the path looked great.  The sun was dropping beyond the tree tops.  It was time to make supper.  Droplets of perspiration dampened my t-shirt.

But again, somebody was going to have to pick out the gravel.

I sat down in the grass and began scratching out each nugget of gravel.  At first it wasn't easy.  I was resentful.  How could he have been so careless?  And then piece by piece my unaffectionate, accusing attitude lifted, until I began to feel pride in what we could accomplish together.  I was the clean up crew.  My fingers aren't arthritic; I'm limber enough to crawl on the ground; a scrub brush would clear the dirt from under my nails.   It took an hour.  I filled a large bucket and then dumped the gravel onto the path. In the end my spirit was light.

This is what healing is like, my friends.  It doesn't attack, or blame, or gossip.  It isn't resentful. And it isn't accomplished with systems of governance.  It is accomplished one by one, individually,  by taking responsibility for our own emotions and thoughts and by serving one another, with our fingers, piece by piece, if it must be.

 Philippians 2:3 ESV
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

2 Corinthians 13:11 ESV
Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

Here Come the Weeds!

Our yard is a green canvas, thoughtfully planted in every shade of green imaginable, with flowering shrubs, graceful trees, and flowerbeds.  From the deck visitors see an orderly sprawl of long lawn carefully lined with flower beds.

"This must take a lot of time," said a guest recently.  Another said, "When do you sleep?" I'm always astonished at such questions because a labor of love isn't remarkable.  

Our pie shaped one-point-six acres began as a subdivided plot in the early 1940's, purchased by an engaged couple before he left to serve in WWII.  The plot would be the couple's site of their dream home; only he never came home and she, devastated by his death, never married.  When she was seventy, she decided to sell the lot.  

I think of her often, how she had wanted a family to fill their home with laughter and life, for its vibrancy to spill out into the yard, for children to chase each other and take turns at the tree swing.  How she could have grown tomatoes and picked beans or filled vases with roses and peonies in May.

Instead for thirty years she had a vacant lot bush-hogged while she held onto a vision that never materialized -- at least not for her.  I was the one who sculpted the vision, crafted the design, photographed the playful children, laid the paths, hung the tree swing, picked the vegetables, and filled the flower vases.

Many players have had a hand in the results seen from our deck.  I alone cannot claim the labor involved.  My first husband played an important part with his enthusiasm for the property. We built the house.  He mowed, he tilled, he dropped trees.  A friend's daughter helped me plant our first landscape.  A neighbor taught me how to use a chain saw.  My son cleared the last half acre of wild shrubs and trees.  Cambodian refugees cleared a fence line.  

And then Herb.  It was a second marriage for both of us.  I said I'd like a berm in which to plant perennials.  All he asked was where did I want the berm? I came home to a huge pile of dirt beyond the walnut tree.  "This ought to test us," he said, as we began shoveling for days and days until indeed we had a berm.  That same berm is now bordered by a flagstone path and filled with oriental lilies and peonies.  

I'd like a bigger deck, I said one day.  A son-in-law and Herb built a huge deck.  I wished aloud for a waterfall and two miniature ponds, a greenhouse, a holly garden, a cut flower garden -- these wishes slowly took shape year after year.

I wondered if we could clear the privet shrubs encroaching on our lot.  I wondered if we could take out more than twenty trees one summer.  "Mark and I can help," said a daughter.  

This year, we removed a gravel path we no longer needed.  The grandchildren have outgrown imaginary games along garden paths.  They will play frisbee on the lawn and still swing in the tree swing, as do I, but evil witches and space invaders no longer dwell behind the hydrangeas or beneath the cedars.  

May has arrived, and with it, weeds.  Seeds from redbuds, hackberries, and maples have bombarded the ground and taken root. Wild grapevines are shooting upward into the cedars. Bindweed clings to the hydrangea stems and dances above the false indigo.  

Rain has loosened the soil.  The weeds are having a party in the yard.  I pull on my heavy jeans and loose t-shirt, slip into my garden shoes, and collect my garden gloves and a weeder.  I will be crawling along the ground for a couple of hours while the birds entertain me and my dog follows.

I really don't mind at all.  

  

The Puzzle in Easter

At 5:30 on Easter morning, my cell phone's alarm stirred me from a dream.  I was not going to miss this year's sunrise service, where I was to be one of the women at the tomb, in this case, a real tomb in a historic cemetery.  

I have always puzzled at the oddity of Easter with its declaration of resurrection, its mix of bunnies and eggs, its costumes and customs.  To admit this is not to reveal a lack of faith but to admit the certainty of contradictions.  People I love dearly may not grasp why I might consent to re-enacting the scene at the tomb of Jesus.  For them "He is risen" is explained away as sheer chicanery, a public relations scam, hallucinations, death denial.  Dead is dead.  

Would I rise for a sunrise service, just because I was asked to play a part?  I might.  I don't voluntarily walk about to see the sun replace the moon.

I parked in the Napa Auto Parts parking lot, crossed the street, and took a service bulletin from my friend Tom.  Walking along the winding path through the cemetery, I noted how grave sites dipped and grandfather trees gripped the earth.  Water and age had erased names and dates from limestone markers.  My companions and I wondered which tomb to approach; there were so many that matched the description, "It's the one toward the fence on the right."

I was thinking, It's odd to be walking among worn grave markers looking for some sign of what is called Lapsley's tomb, where it is said, the first Presbyterian church was established in my city.  I wasn't attending to where my feet might stray when suddenly my right foot slipped off the sidewalk's high edge, and I went plowing forward into the muddy grass.  Covered by a long black raincoat, my Easter outfit was spared.  I looked around to see who had witnessed my indignant fall. Using the service bulletin, I wiped away the mud on my hands.  I wasn't hurt.  I had fallen in a graveyard, in a garden of stones beneath oak and maple trees--me, the one who avoids cemeteries in general, the one who relishes a lazy two cups of morning coffee, the one who eschews attention.

During some wait time when I could have been praying or remembering hymns,  I intentionally tried to escape from a mental collage of contrary images.  On one hand, a celebratory pageant unfolded before me, and on the other, flashes of odd Easter memories competed with the given moment.

***

I was eight years old in a yellow Easter dress and hat. After church, my family had arrived at my Aunt Meryl's place where my father's family planned an Easter picnic, the old fashioned kind in the yard, blankets on the lawn, a potluck of fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, cole slaw, pickles, and cherry pie.  The apricot trees were blooming and the blue wisteria hung over the pergola. My aunt hugged me while I secretly squirmed.  "How nice you look in your Easter outfit. You are so pretty when you wear a dress.  I don't think jeans are becoming on girls."  She lifted my hat.  "What a lovely hat."  She ran her fingers through my hair.  "I don't like your hair short like this.  You must ask your mother to allow it to grow longer."  

I was nine.  It was early.  I was waiting for breakfast and thinking about our planned Easter egg hunt.  I heard a strange scream, not quite human.  Our second story breakfast room had wrap around windows that overlooked a lawn that fell away to a terraced garden filled with spring flowers.  Looking through the windows, I searched through the apple tree's leaves for the cause of the eerie scream.  Our beloved dog, a spaniel mix, had in its mouth my pet rabbit Snowball and was shaking the life out of it.  Red splattered snowball's white fur.  "Mommeeeee!"   I cried.  

I was thirteen.  My mother had been dead six months.  For Easter my father had bought me a navy and pink cotton dress and my first heels.  We waited in the car for my brothers to reluctantly emerge from the house in sports coats and ties. They hated dressing up and church bored them.  Daddy was sad but determined.  This was the first Easter following our mother's death in an airline crash.  To feminize me and soften the day, Daddy had enlisted a motherly friend.  And mostly it worked though the lilies gave me a headache and I worried over resurrections and struggled with life after death fears and wishes.  My brothers looked miserable but behaved.  It was the best we could do.

My children were young, my son just a toddler, my daughters three and five.  My friend Mildred had made smocked Easter dresses for my girls.  The girls jockeyed for Easter eggs hidden in the grass and ate chocolate eggs for breakfast.  We laughed because our cocker spaniel had sat among the daffodils and sniffed them.  The Easter service resonated love and hope.  We held our own picnic in the sunshine of our backyard.  I felt lifted, surrounded by love and life.  That week I painted our cocker sniffing the daffodils.  The painting is still a family favorite.

Life played out. I divorced.  The girls went to universities.  My son was waiting for scholarship offers.  Herb Simmons and I were dating.  On Easter Herb and I went to an outdoor sunrise service, the day began brightly and grew warm.  I had learned to live as they say "in the moment."  I had no idea what lay ahead but had accepted God's constant presence.  "Do not be afraid. I will always be with you."  This is what I heard in my head as Herb and I walked hand in hand that morning.

***

And now, here I was standing before Lapsley's tomb while waiting on our pastor to arrive, and again I was aware --"Lo, I will be with you, always." -- even though my thoughts were split.

I suppressed an urge to laugh: our pastor in his flowing white robe had suddenly retreated to his car and driven away. He had forgotten the copies of songs for the service.  And now we waited, Lapsley's concrete vault before us, our cold hands in our pockets, our shoes wet with dew.

Later, over coffee at church a friend from my previous life introduced me to her husband as Diane Eison.  Standing with us was a mutual friend who at church has known me only as Diane Simmons.  "You're Diane Eison!?"  As in the Diane Eison.  Well, sometimes, it's best not to ask too many questions, so I did finally laugh at that truth and all the rest, the absurd contradictions and the absolute certainties.

 

Agendas

I have an agenda.  Everyday.  I go to bed with one and I wake up to it.  

This morning my agenda points me to this writing, a doctor's appointment, a visit with a friend, and a meeting.  

I have agendas within agendas.  Today's agenda is within a weekly agenda, within a monthly agenda, within a yearly agenda, within a life agenda.  Doesn't everybody?

Apparently not.  "We want people without agendas."  What does that mean?  Fence riders, indecisive types, unbiased leaders, followers, innovators, risk takers?  It could mean we want people whose agendas we haven't discovered yet.  Hmmm.  Would it be helpful not to know what people believe or desire if you wanted them to join a team for problem solving?

If the candidate supports universal health care, I want to hear about it. I don't want to discover later that he or she quietly wished to undermine the program.  So you see, not only do I make my views known but I wish others to speak up as well.  I don't want to be blind sided by, guess what, hidden agendas.

Tricky word, agendas.  

My husband makes a to do list and puts it out where I can see it.  I see he plans to start some caladiums in the greenhouse today.  I know not to interfere with his plans.  I also know he likes to be home at night, not go out too much or have people in.  So he has agendas around which I maneuver.  It's helpful to understand people for the sake of cooperation and respect.

People without known agendas are difficult to trust.  You wonder what they might do or how to work with them.

I once worked with a man whose agenda was driven by security.  Everything had to be tightened down under his control.  He feared circumstances might get away from him and he wouldn't be able to solve the problem.  I, on the other hand, wished to take risks, to learn how to do things I'd never before tried.  We had to find a way to work together or we weren't going to accomplish anything.  Over time we found avenues of trust.  Since our shared arena required access to technologies and passwords, I was careful not to make mistakes that would elevate his suspicious nature.  He learned he could use me to experiment with programs he didn't have time to explore.  He couldn't advertise for innovations, but I could.  It wasn't easy, but it was doable.  It had to be.

As a teacher, I learned that arranging people in groups to solve problems requires finesse.  A handsome, muscular blonde seventeen year old student experienced a change in attitude when I put him in a group with a feisty dark skinned girl with kinky hair, a girl he had openly disdained for her assertive and saucy stance.  The situation was electric with racial and gender bias.  Their task was to uncover evidence of bias in some documents we were studying.  Before long, he was speaking her language and joining her tune. She had discovered how easy it was to work with him.  And here's the point, they knew their task and they each understood each others' points of view.  Their arguments were lively and productive.

Give me people with agendas.  I want all the news out on the table.  I already know people don't  agree on everything. Isn't that a healthy thing?  Isn't that how change happens?

The Day the Sea Could Have Swallowed Me

Waves rolled over blackened rock ledges.  Seaweed, salty and bulbous, swayed in tide pools.  A strong breeze stirred my hair.  Sand squished under foot.  Gray clouds traded with sunshine.   My friends and I, warmed by summer and sand, faced the waves.

We waded in the tide pools and, like lizards, basked on the soft sand.  The scene offered enough entertainment without challenging any unseen forces, without risking our lives.  We were, by any reckoning, already winners.  After all, we had convinced our parents we were capable of managing a getaway to the beach, that we would be careful during the one hour drive to and from the coast.  Our parents, although probably wary, hated to discourage our independence and adventurous spirits.  Teenagers, yes , but also a stellar group of excellent students and responsible youth -- we could almost taste our freedom in the salt air.

Gritty sand mixed with our lotions and flew onto our blankets.  Our sand castles sprawled along the tide's edge.  Our footprints trailed toward sand dunes and cliff caves.   A rhythm of undertow and rolling surface, a swirl of reality and imagination stirred us.

Aware of the pull of parental caution -- sand gets in your sandwiches, sand fleas bite, sun burns skin, undertow kills -- youthful curiosity lured me to wonder if I could climb the cliffs or how it would feel to sleep all night on the sand.

My friends and I were challenging the surf, sometimes body surfing.  A confident swimmer, I began swimming out further and further, waves crashing over me, currents tugging at me.  This is all memory: dark water and foam, the receding shoreline, my suspension of fear when I should have been terrified.  With what fate was I toying?

And then, I decided to return.  Here was the struggle I had not imagined.  I could swim and float but not so easily determine my direction.  The currents delivered me toward shore and then drug me deeper into the sea.  Desperation's bile rose in my throat.  I swallowed sea water.  Fear chilled my limbs.  I rolled onto my back to rest.  A wave crashed over me, flipped me, and pulled me under.  I fought to the surface, coughing and spitting.

If I use the currents, I can make it, I thought.  I rolled onto my stomach and cut diagonally toward a point to the south.  My limbs ached; my lungs burned.  Finally, my toes touched a sand bar. My lungs sucked in the salty air.  I waded against the surf to a rocky shelf and lifted myself up to safety.

As I walked around the point, the waves hushed, the gulls floated overhead, and my heart beat steadied.   I could see my friends sorting shells and munching on potato chips.

"Hey!  I made it."

They looked up. "Hey.  Where ya been?"

"Swimming."

That was it.  I made it.

What was this about me, this odd suspension of self and circumstance, this challenge of dark and deep boundaries of fate?  It's a question for which I have no answer.  An indelible memory of verve, struggle, and escape -- the event could easily have taken me with it.


“for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters