Rainy Afternoon in A Small Town

I walk into the corner drug store to pick up my prescription.  Well, first I try to pull a door that's clearly marked "Push" because the doors are hung backwards and they always mess with my brain, despite that I've been to this store a million times.  Behind the back counter, which is ten steps from the door, Brenda smiles at me.  We exchange pleasantries. She invites me to the next Lion's Club event and reminds me, “We always need good new members!”  Unlike Walgreen's, when I go to the Corner Drug I never have to give my name and address or tell the cashier whether I'm picking up or dropping off.  Brenda already knows

Standing by the register, Frank Crowe leans on the counter looking at me sideways and nods a hello without speaking.  I give him my tight lipped smile--the one where I don't show my teeth, then stick my debit card into the machine which takes an incredibly long time to complete my transaction.  I stand impatiently, tapping my foot as I wait for the beep that tells me I can retrieve my card.

Behind me, I hear the door squeak open again, Betty Looper.  I swear she's always in the Corner Drug.  Always picking up some prescription or another. She’s old.  No one knows really how old, but no one remembers a time when she wasn’t around either.  She’s like a permanent fixture here, just like that statue that stands crumbling and decaying in front of the court house of some old Civil War hero on his horse.  Nobody knows when it was erected and nobody knows when it will finally finish falling apart, but we all can see that its inevitable demise is nigh. 

 How many medications can one person even tolerate, anyway, before medicine is no longer a good thing?

Finally, Brenda hands me the little white paper bag, stapled at the top, with my bottle of pills inside.  With it in my hand, I turn and head out the door.  The pills rattle as I shift the bag to my left hand and start digging for my keys in my purse. I can feel old Frank's stare at my back.  Betty, ignoring me, presses onward, Brenda now turning her focus to her. 

“Now Bettty, you ain’t give us ten minutes to get that medicine ready before you come runnin’ over here.” She says to Ms. Looper, trying to sound like she’s teasing, but I can tell she’s more than a little put out.

Standing by the door, thumbing through some dusty old greeting cards, Estelle Cantrell looks up as I pass.  Her gaze is quick, but measuring.  She looks me up and down, making her judgment fast and sharp.  I don’t know what she thinks of my outfit or my hairstyle today and that’s probably a good thing.  I wonder what she’ll tell people about me?  I can just hear her now.  “She was in that store and out of it like she was on her way to a fire or something.  Ain’t no sense in anybody being in that big of a hurry.  If she put near as much time into ironing her clothes and fixing her hair she might not still be single.”

Honestly, I feel violated, like the simple act of refilling my blood pressure medication should come with some degree of anonymity or at least without judgment. But then in a small town, you tend to get the illusion that everyone knows too much about you.

You come to accept it, expect it after a time.  At first I found some comfort in being recognized, and in knowinmost every face I see.  It was almost like the feeling of home--like walking in every door to find family and a big casserole dish full of mac and cheese that everyone intends to share. Fresh gossip, thinly veiled as concern would fill the air with a familiar chatter that almost made you feel like you’d gone home for Sunday dinner.  I felt I sat among my own, adopted into this motley crowd of small town folks--hometown folks, only it's not my hometown.

They all seem to eye me in a sidelong way, even the ones who've adopted me.  They seem to accept me, even care about me, but then I remember the thin veil that covers most everything here. I’m recognized but not truly known and that confuses me more than the backward-hung doors at the Corner Drug.  

If I speak up too often or too loudly, I feel their eyes narrow and their lips purse with disapproval. 

"You're not from here." They're thinking.  

They say to each other, "She's not from here. She has no clue what she's talking about."

As if one small town in the South is so different from any other. 

 There's a kind of Southern pride, a false sense of originality that every little tucked down here below the Mason-Dixon wants to claim as theirs.  Like the way we all drink sweet tea, or the way most of us think grits are breakfast food only. 

"If you ain't from 'round here, you caint understand our way o’ life." They all say.  "We don't need no outsiders a comin' in, tellin' us how to do things."

Sometimes I think if it were up to Southerners we’d all still be using privies and drawing our water from backyard wells.  We’d be sending our womenfolk down to the river to wash clothes and making them cook on one of those old wood cook stoves.  To the chagrin of many, the Yankees somehow succeeded in modernizing the good ole South—even the small towns out in the middle of nowhere, like this one.

Progress is still a dirty word in the South and in small-town Southern America in particular.  If you speak the language of change, you are marked.  In the old days, you'd have been run out of town on a rail. Nowadays, you just get gnawed to pieces by gossip.

Along with the overblown sense of pride and originality you'll find in every tiny town, you'll find at least a fair amount of poverty.  On hillsides and hidden behind thick stands of pines, trailer parks stand like ancient ruins, their roofs tarred over, the windows held together by duct tape and a Sunday morning prayer.  They, and the people who occupy them are the landmarks of true Southern living.  Dirt driveways with deep ruts dug out by rain.  Clunker cars that just barely get folks to their jobs and back every day and  kids that spend too much time home alone...this is the reality of life in the Ruins.  

It wasn't always so.  Many years past, there was commerce here.  Factory jobs, hardware stores and green grocers, a post office and a cafe.  Now, shuttered and crumbling store-fronts sit empty, save for the ghosts of the past that dart with quick shadows across the sidewalks, specters of a place that used to exist.

Change came here, but it came like a thief in the night.  No one discussed or planned it.  It just came.  When the shoe store closed, everyone just drove on to the next town, to Wal-Mart or to Sears, where they could buy shoes and a dress in one place.  When the post office closed, a church moved in.  Slowly, change crept up each street, boarding up windows, every boutique, every beauty shop and every hardware store's sign permanently turned to read "Sorry, We're Closed."  That kind of change came easy.  It was gradual and since no one talked about it, no one had to actually see it happening.

Thing about change is, it's always happening.  

I drive across the street to pick up some Cokes and a frozen pizza for dinner from the local grocer.  The gals at the register say hello as I choose a buggy and go browsing through the aisles, picking up things I never intended to buy.  This store is old, too.  It's dingy and the floors have a peculiar hollow sound under the clomp of my heels.  The produce is limp, spotted bananas, potatoes growing eyes, mold on the blueberries, I decide I'll stop at the farm for fruit.  

I grab my milk and eggs and head to the register, where in line ahead of me a woman I recognize is already waiting.  I'm trying to remember her name when she speaks to me.

"Good to see you again.” She says kindly.  

"You too!" I say enthusiastically.  I'm probably smiling too big as I grapple for her name, or where I know her from.  

I'm relieved when she turns back to her groceries, laying them on the belt that doesn't work anymore.

I too, start to set my purchases on the belt, separating mine from my stranger-friend's with a yellow ruler someone left at the counter for that purpose.  When it's my turn, I use my arm to push everything closer to the cashier.  We make small talk as she rings up my milk and eggs, and I realize I forgot the Cokes.  Too lazy to bother with going back to get them, I tell myself I need to cut back anyway.

"Have a good weekend now!" The girl behind the register whose face but not name I know,  says.  

"You too!" I reply pleasantly.  I can't wait to get my things into the car and head home.  

As I make my way out the door, pushing the buggy with one hand, shoving my debit card back into my wallet with the other, it starts to rain.

Big, warm drops of water fall heavy on my back, soaking my silk blouse until it becomes my epidermis. It sticks tome, a purple skin, translucent enough so my bra shows through it, and every bump and curve of my upper body to boot.

I stand in the open, loading my food into the car, the deluge causing my hair to drip into my face. Now my skirt is soaked as well, the thin white linen like wet paper against my skin becoming cold and uncomfortably heavy. 

By the time I'm done I'm thoroughly wet and exposed. My light summer outfit gives me little in the way of modesty now that it's drenched.  I walk anyway to the buggy stall, with my head held high, dripping hair and running mascara notwithstanding.  Out the corner of my eye I see two men I recognize sitting in an old Buick, watching me.  When I look their way, they do not avert their gaze.  Behind the windshield they must feel like invisible voyeurs.

Sopping wet, I finally open the driver's side door of my car and try to quickly get in, my wet skirt restricting my movement. I immediately steam up the windows with my body heat and warm breath. 

I take a minute to shake out my hair, wipe the water and makeup off my face with a fast food napkin, take a deep breath.  I turn the key, flip on the defrost and the wipers, put the car in reverse.  As I start to back up, I look over my shoulder and see him there, just sitting in his truck, waiting, watching.

The thing about small towns is, you sometimes run into people you used to know.  You see them hiding behind end-caps at the gas station, and in their pickup trucks sometimes.  You should learn to be on the lookout for them, but sometimes you forget.  

I drive home, amused a little that those two guys in the Buick thought they were so hidden as they watched my practically nude body walk across the parking lot.  I feel that sick sensation, deep in my stomach, or in my uterus, or maybe my heart even, when I picture him waiting in his truck like a little kid thinking he’s hidden behind a sapling.

On my drive home I think over the past.  I recall times when I felt less of a stranger, but orbited a much bigger world.  I realize how, as I’ve shut myself off from people, my new world seems increasingly, painfully small.

Maybe I’m merely the shadow of something now. A dream that once was, or a place that used to be alive with movement and color.  Now I am that foreigner--not from 'round here.  Constantly seen, always recognized, but never, ever really known.

By the time I’m home the rain has stopped.  The sun threatens to pop back through the clouds as I unload the groceries and haul them inside.  I try to put them all away before I go change, but the air conditioning chills me to the bone as it permeates my wet clothes.  Home, no mac and cheese, no fresh gossip. No prying eyes or judgmental stares. Just me, in my wet clothes, a pile of groceries at my feet that I probably will never eat.    

Home Sweet Home...Or Not

My Boy. 

My challenge.  To lure him from the comfort of home takes a kind of skill at which I must constantly evolve as his parent.  In an announcement the night before, "We are spending the day out tomorrow."' I tell him so he won't get up and immediately engage in combat on Fortnite, then give me grief about leaving the house.  

Inevitably, while I shower, he connects with his friends and the match begins. 

"Fifteen minute warning," I tell him as I throw open the bathroom door, my hair still dripping.  I know I'll take longer than fifteen minutes to get ready, but still...

"Are you dressed?" I call to him as I load up the car.

"Yes mom!" He answers, the eye-rolling coming through in the tone of his voice.

"Shoes?" I ask. 

"Not yet." He sighs, realizing we really are about to leave home for the day.

In the car we make jokes and listen to history podcasts.  Once in a while he gets animated, telling me about something that happened at camp, or about some element of Fortnite that's similar to the podcast story.

We eat French fries, wiping salt on our pant-legs.  

He is fascinated by the long straight hills on highway 11, leading to the lakes.  When we finally get to the 

swimming hole, he's hesitant to get in.

"Let's just sit on the edge and put our toes in." I suggest. 

"Okay." He reluctantly agrees.  But before I know it, he's climbing on the rocks, out to his waist in his regular shorts after refusing to change into his swimming trunks. 

Whatever makes him happy.

I'm happy.  The cool water on my feet convinces me to change into my new red swimsuit and jump in.  

The rocks challenge me, but once I make it past them I'm swimming in water far deeper than I even want to know.  I remember this, or rather, my body remembers.  It remembers how to tread water,how the lake doesn't burn your eyes like a swimming pool.  My feet remember how to reach themselves toward the deep water beneath me, to find the coolness in its depths   My arms remember to stretch out like wings as I lie back and let the lake  catch me, and I float like a forgotten piece of driftwood for a while.  

My boy.  I have to encourage him to come to me in the deeper water.  On our blowup float we kick around the edge of the shoreline, his confidence growing with every minute we spend in the blue-green waters.  

When we start to pack up to leave he wants to know when we can come back again.  

"Soon," I said.  "Maybe even Tuesday."

"Ugh!" He eye rolls at me. "I really wanted to stay home on Tuesday!"

Where Should I Go But To The Lord?

Today I asked where the Lord was and a preacher came running.

Short of breath, with a damp, sweaty shirt pulled over his body, he said he was there to answer my question.

But he never did say where the Lord was.

He only asked, "What can I do?"

So I one-arm hugged him, despite his sweaty shirt, and said , "You're kind for coming, but there's nothing you can do."

"I'm here to help," he insisted, staring at me through his rectangular new glasses.

"Really," Said I.  "I'm fine."

But in my mind I wondered, was he telling me he's as close to the Lord as I'm ever going to get?

Because I remember long afternoons, much like this one, filled with hard work and music and Nature, that seemed to draw the very breath of God across my own damp skin.  

The Lord seems closer to me in the chirp of crickets and the croaks of tree frogs than in the hot wind of a preacher, hurrying to let me know where the Lord is.

There's a sunset to this day.  Blessed day!  It has an ending abundantly more beautiful than its beginning.  And isn't that the way of life, after all? 

I sit here on my front porch, listening to the night chorus tune up for its performance, to begin in earnest once the sun goes behind that hill over there.  

God's breath is cool, a comfort at the end of a hard journey, even one that only lasts from daylight to twilight. 

The reflection of all things holy, shines back at me from every window.  For it's in the growing, the tending, the dying and the rising up again that the Divine makes itself seen and known.

If one only cares to truly find it, or know it, or take it in.

The Lord abides in the grace it took for me to live this, this minute by minute bit of survival.  In the work of my hands that ache and beg me to quit.  In the fruit of my labors, that bid me keep going.  In the mercy of a sun going down, the heat of a July day finally relenting.

The Lord was in the sweat I washed down the drain as I stood naked before God in my shower, singing to keep from weeping.

The Preacher, well he left as quick as he came, no doubt running off intending with all good will, to carry the Lord with him, on his back or in his sweat or in his gaze. 

But the Lord didn't leave with him, anymore than the Lord hitch-hiked in on his shoulders.  

Bless his heart.  He doesn't know.

The Lord is found, for all of us, wherever we last left her.

Abberation

The driveway seems ordinary at first.  A mailbox sits to the left of it, with a newspaper slot underneath, which usually is empty.  No one really takes the paper anymore, not even country folk.  They've never felt too keen on keeping up with politics or local crime statistics.  Heck, they don't even consider that crime even happens in their neck of the woods.  And when I say woods, I mean woods.  You find yourself put at ease by the smoothly paved drive for about the first quarter of a mile as you wind your way past horses waving their long tails in the sunlight, baby goats butting one another, a few chickens, literally crossing the road in front of you.  Then, and gradually, the pavement turns to just tar and gravel, bumpy, unkempt and crumbling in places so badly that you find yourself dodging potholes.

After you pass the fork where one part of the drive way hangs far to the left and a tree sits right in the middle of your way (I always imagine it's like the Scarecrow) the pavement ends altogether and you're driving on a dirt pathway, marked by ruts made by other vehicles.  The rains of spring-time do a fairly good job of eroding the roadway, leaving gullies and ruts that you must navigate--some of them you must drive straight through, hoping the bottom of your car doesn't drag the ground or that you don't get stuck.

"Whose idea was this anyway?"  He asked.

"Um, I think it was yours." She answered with a smirk.

"Oh yeah."  His boss told him about this place, a smart little cabin by a lake, deep in the woods away from civilization.  He offered the weekend to them, saying they'd come home feeling recharged--that nature would do them good. 

But her husband wasn't a nature freak like the beaus of her past.  He was a city boy, more comfortable on a subway train than in a tent.  Since they met, he took up hiking with her, bought camping equipment, a jeep.  In it, they kept a supply of last minute outdoor gear.  A small tent, a flashlight, a sleeping bag for two, matches.  As they set out for the weekend adventure the small cache of equipment behind the back seat, smashed beneath their luggage seemed inconsequential.  Thanks to the cabin, they wouldn't need it.

No one gave them a clue as to how long the drive up to the cabin might be.  They made that first turn onto the smooth pavement of 132 Pine Knoll Drive at sunset.  As they drove through along the roughly largely unkempt pathway deeper into the canopy of the forest, night time seemed to descend upon them almost  preternaturally.

"I think we need the headlights." She urged.

"I can see just fine and I'm the driver," he quipped.

"Well, maybe you can put them on for me then," She teased,"because I want to see where you're going."  She didn't want to admit it, but she felt nervous.  Her hands were folded tightly on her lap, as though she were trying to keep warm.  Really though, she needed them there so she could feel a sense of control over them.  The last few months their marriage seemed adrift, or more like they were adrift from one another.  Their jobs, the kids, the way life never really turns out the way you plan it took its toll on them day after day. Deep down, she had such high hopes for this time together that she felt anxious about saying or doing something to mess it up.  So she kept her nervous hands in her lap and plastered a smile on her face, hoping that somehow she could infuse the air between them with hopefulness, even romance.

Just as he flipped the headlights on, three deer appeared in the middle of the drive. He slammed on the brakes, the jeep sliding a little sideways across the dirt and gravel roadway.  The deer stood for a moment, frozen, like they say, in the bright lights of the jeep.  He honked the horn at them, waved his arms almost like he was trying to make them laugh, then yelled at them, "Shoo, shoo!  Go away!"
 After the deer sized up their jeep, they went on their way, across the driveway and through the thick woods, their white tails disappearing into a ravine.

"Ah nature!" He said with a big smile. "I'm feeling high already, just from the fresh air." He joked with her.  She knew he'd rather be pacing a city street filled with smog any day than to find himself surrounded by thick forest and the company of wild animals.

"Well I think they are majestic and beautiful."

"They are, They are." He agreed enthusiastically before shoving the jeep back into gear and continuing ahead, hoping that soon they'd reach the cabin--a sign of civilization, or at least some semblance of it, with indoor plumbing and a stove on which to cook dinner.

"I can already tell we are in for a great weekend." She chattered excitedly.  "Breakfast in bed, horseback riding, night swimming, it's going to be amazing."

"Breakfast in bed, huh?" He asked, amused.  "Who's going to get breakfast in bed?"

"Well," She answered sheepishly, "I was hoping maybe..."

"Breakfast in bed it is, my dear. If we ever get there..."  She could sense the irritation in his voice.  The driveway was beginning to seem impossibly long and more difficult to traverse the farther they went.

"Yeah, if we ever get there." she agreed.  "This is a really long driveway."  Her hands, still in her lap, she began to pick her cuticles nervously.  She knew her thinking tended to delve into the irrational at times.  Of course the driveway has an end, she thought to herself it can't just go on like this forever.

On and on they drove as night fell in earnest. Tree frogs and crickets began to serenade them from the darkness as a dampness seemed to soak into their clothes.  Not even  the moon helped to light their way.  The stars were extra bright, with no city lights around to lessen the view of their glow.  She leaned her head against the window of the jeep, looking straight up at the stars, trying to find the big and little dippers.  She remembered doing the same thing as a child, on the rides home at night with her dad.

They rode in complete silence, a tenseness in the air between them, not with one another, but about the situation they were in.   They hung so many hopes on this reunion with nature, with one another.  To fail at it--to end up lost,in it would ruin their entire plan.  She could already imagine the argument, them blaming one another for the wrong turn, the address written down incorrectly, the big joke his boss played on them.

She remained hopeful though, as they rounded one curve after another with no cabin in sight.  He began to wonder if their directions had been wrong.

"We've been driving for about seventeen miles already--slow driving too because this driveway is horrible."  How long had it been since his boss came out here, he wondered to himself.  "We have to be there soon.  Do you think we took the wrong turn?" He asked.
.
"I don't think so.  The directions said, 'turn left at the mailbox marked 132 Pine Knoll' and that's what we did.  Maybe we should have taken the right fork back there at that tree?  Should we turn around?"

"Turn around?" He asked sounding incredulous. "After we've driven all this way? No way, we are committed now.  We either find the cabin tonight or we find a place to set up camp."

"I'll see if my phone has a signal out here." She dug in her purse and found her phone, the phone she promised not to bring.  He didn't even feel annoyed at her for breaking her promise.  He was just hopeful that she could find a signal and perhaps access her GPS so they could see how close they were getting.

"Well?" He asked, stopping the jeep.

"Nothing." She looked worried and disappointed.

"Hey, don't worry," He told her.  "We have this under control. I brought plenty of supplies and if we have to, we can find a place out here in the woods and camp out for the night, find the cabin in the  morning."

"Yeah?" She asked, hopeful.  "We could have a romantic camp out?"

"Absolutely!" He grinned.  "I even brought those candles that keep mosquitoes away.  We can eat dinner by candlelight."

"What dinner?"

"Oh...um, well, I got your favorite chocolate, some graham crackers and, lets see, a can of sausages" His lip curled in a cute sort of way when he said "can of sausages."

They both laughed.

"Okay then." She smiled, "Let's do it.  Let's have a camp out right here in these woods!"

He drove a little further on until he came to a flat piece of road with a small clearing to the right.  "There's enough room for the tent over there," he pointed, "And look at all that fallen brush, perfect for our campfire."

Before long their tent was erected, their campfire glowing in the black of night--the New Moon graciously lending an air of romance to their adventure.They had one flashlight with batteries and the headlamps of the jeep to help them navigate their way around putting up the tent and gathering their firewood. 

Together they ate the bar of dark chocolate, washed it down with lukewarm champagne straight from the bottle.  Cuddled up under a blanket by the fire they talked about nothing and everything.  They ignored the sounds of coyotes in the distance, the crackle of deer feet along the fallen branches in the deep woods around them.  They didn't hear when the mama bear wandered across the drive behind their jeep, stopping to sniff for food before she passed it up, taking her cubs with her into the other side of the forest.

Oblivious to the sound of an owl swooping down to catch a mouse just outside the zipped up haven of their tent, they made love without restraint, the creatures around them, ignoring the noises they made.  Nature accepts nature as it is, the sounds and sights, nothing warranting judgment or diversion.

Aberrations, though, hide among us as much in the perfunctory and expeditious tasks of suburbia as on the wayward path of a driveway that leads to nowhere and an aberration moved among them in the deep forest that night.  Not quite human, not quite beast, it stood at a distance, leaning against a sycamore, waiting for the sounds from the tent to fade, waiting for the lumbering sounds of sleep to take them over as their campfire began to fade under the star-dotted sky. 

News reports all say that the tent was found with all their things inside--a double sleeping bag, a purse with a dead cell phone, a box of unopened graham crackers, some canned sausages and two sets of clothes.  An empty champagne bottle lay on the ground by the smoldering fire, as though it were abandoned in the middle of a game of "spin the bottle."

Their jeep had four flat tires.  The keys for it were never found and there were no footprints on the driveway going in or out.  They had seemingly disappeared into the forest, no sign of either of them anywhere.

Just around the curve from where they stopped to set up camp, the porch light of the cabin still glowed, awaiting their arrival.  Inside the door, a vase of  fresh white lilies sat on the kitchen counter. Beside them, a card in a yellow envelope with her name scrawled on the front, was never opened, never read. Along the edge of the lake, a tall figure walked in a long stride, its footsteps leaving no trace in the mud around the shoreline.  Fog hung heavy over the waters, and the coos of mourning doves began to fill the early summer morning air. 

Sweet Grief

This afternoon I came home hot, tired, and feeling weak.  We had a busy day driving here and there gathering what we needed for Arthur's first birthday party tomorrow.  The stores were extra crowded, it being July 3rd.  The babies dealt with the heat better than us grown folks, and Charlie, the champ that he is, maintained order in the backseat for us as we dragged the children from one place to the other.  We ended up staying out far longer than we anticipated.  Both Sylia and I found ourselves completely drained from the heat, the walking, and the wrestling with two toddlers all day.  By the time I dropped her off, we were both ready to crash; then I remembered a dinner date.  Michele's birthday dinner at Kanpai was at 7:00 and it was already 6:00 when I dropped Sylia off.  I quickly traded shoes with her, put on some fresh makeup and headed out the door.  By the time we reached the end of the driveway I got a text that Michele wasn't able to get to dinner, so I decided I would not go either--I couldn't have made it on time anyway, and without the birthday girl, what's the point?  So we grabbed some drive-thru grub and came home.

As Charlie and I unloaded the car, I noticed my neighbor, Nell, on her golf cart up by her garden.  (She's also the landlord, although our relationship is much more friendly than business.)  I came inside and gave Charlie an envelope filled with the rent money and asked him to run it up to her while I finished putting things away.  In a few minutes he came back, short of breath from running and said, "Nell wants to talk to you."

"About what?" I asked.

"I don't know." He said, "I think she wants to know if Senior Action is closed tomorrow."

"Okay," I siad. "I'll run up and talk to her."

As I approached I took in the sight of her, in her mid-80's, she looked, at a distance, strong and able bodied as she hoed away at the weeds growing up around her tomato plants.  My mind flashed back for a second, to my daddy having us kids hold back the plants while he used the tiller to destroy the weeds growing up around his squash, cucumbers and melons.

"Who put you to work?" I asked, teasing her as I approached. She didn't hear me.

When I finally reached the edge of the garden after tromping through high grass in the back yard, she stopped her working to ask me the schedule for this week.  I told her we'd be open again on Thursday as usual.  I always know, deep down, that when Nell calls for me to come, I am going as a vessel.  I can try to give her friendship, comfort, even rent money, but on days like today all she really needed were some ears, willing to listen, and a heart that could sit with her and hold her grief for just a little while.

People need to tell their stories.  They need a safe person in their lives to tell those stories to-someone who won't brush them off or change the subject or start talking about when their great uncle's wife died in some freak accident.  Nell often needs to walk through her yard and remember her husband. She needs to keep him close somehow and her story--her grief story is one way she's able to do that.

I never knew Bud.  He and Nell were the best of friends from what I hear.  Their children all grown and moved away, Bud died on the afternoon of his brother's funeral.  Nell had only turned her back for a second. When she turned around he was lying on the ground where she last saw him standing. She believes he was headed for the porch swing, but never made it. She turned him over, and seeing his face, knew right away he was gone.  That image of his face remains etched in her memory, a stark reminder of how instantaneous loss can be.Traumatized by that image, her dreams prevented her from his visage for months afterwards. She dreamed of him often, and longed to see him as he was in life, but her mind only let her see him from the neck down.

She turned and sat down on the seat of her golf cart as I leaned against the front of it.  I listened as she spoke from her heart, while I brushed fire ants from my feet, trying to look unfazed by the stinging bites.

"I am half alive." She said to me.  "What I really want to do is go curl up in a corner and cover myself up and just be alone.  But I know I can't do that.  I push myself to get out and do things because I know that's what he would expect me to do."

She told me about a conversation Bud had with their daughter a few days before his death.  "If something ever happened to me, I know your mama would be alright." He told Sharon.  "She would go on and she would take care of you kids and make a good life for herself despite me being gone. But if something happened to your mama, I wouldn't make it."

"I can't quit on life because I know what he expected of me." She said, a far off look in her eyes as she gazed across the vast field--land she owns, among so many other worldly possessions.  I think she would give it all just to have him back again.

One night after a particularly rough day, she said she had a very realistic dream that she and Bud were getting the kids ready to take off on a long road trip somewhere."I remember in the dream, telling the kids to hurry up so we could get on the road early.  Then I went into my bedroom and I could hear Bud in the
 bathroom.  I opened the bathroom door and he was standing there, wiping his hands and face with a towel and I finally was able to see his face. I threw my arms around him. I laughed and cried and just hugged him so tight, and it seemed so real, like I could just feel him in my arms.  I asked him, 'Please tell me this is real, that it's not a dream. Please tell me you are really here with me.'"

"He didn't tell me it was real, but he looked me straight in the eyes and said, "I am always with you."

"Back then there was a towel bar in my bathroom, and I always kept a hand towel hanging there.  He would use it and he'd always leave it hanging there crooked.  I fussed about it all the time, and I'd go behind him and straighten it back up.  When I woke up that morning and went in my bathroom that hand towel was hanging there crooked, just like he'd been there."

Goosebumps popped up on my arms, and tears welled up in my eyes and hers. It seems God gives us sometimes, these little gifts of comfort in the most unexpected ways. I really believe it to be true.

I've listened to her tell his death story many a time, but every time there's something new she has to say.  We talked about how difficult her life became when she lost him, how even 23 years later, she has to push herself and will herself to live.

And I suppose that's what we all do to some degree.  We live with the pain of our losses, carrying them always close to our hearts, perpetually only half-alive without the presence of the ones we've loved. We always hear people talk of "moving on," but today I learned that most of us just carry on as best we can.

The truth is, out of all the emotional experiences life throws at us, grief is the one that sticks to your soul with all the strength of the love we held in our hearts for the ones we carry on without.

Best friends.  Partners for life.  That's what they were.  Through good times and bad, they were a team.  "When you've had the best in life, it's hard to live with something less." She said to me.

"You were very lucky to find a love like that." I said to her.  "Most of us spend a lifetime just dreaming about it."

"I know I was." She said.  "I was very lucky."

Grateful to be her confidant, I stood with her a little longer and listened.  She is teaching me, with every story, that some things in life transform us.  Grief is a pain that doesn't ever really expire, but even so,  it must not define us or prevent us from living.  We often treat it like a race to be run and finished, when it's really just a river that ebbs and flows through life.  We revel in the beauty of our memories, and ache at the pain of our losses, never really knowing or understanding why or when the waves of emotion will rise and fall.

What I've learned best, is that the stories of our losses make up the stories of our lives.  We memorize them, detail upon detail.  The memories keep us close to he ones we cherished, and the aches we feel at their absences become in some way, all we have left of them.

Love sometimes dies, joy often gives way to despair, happiness is always fleeting, but grief?  Grief is ever present.  It never, ever dies.  It just lies beneath the surface, tied to the best and the worst of our memories, memories that even death can never take away.

Surfing Through the Lies Landing in The Chaos of Truth

A while back I watched a documentary that focused on the amazing surfing ability of a teenage boy.  At the tender age of fourteen he took his surfboard out into the ocean and conquered waves that would swallow up a grown man.  Clearly, he possessed a gift, a skill bestowed upon few.  Still, his father who was a surfer as well, worried.  How could he not imagine losing him to the tremendous power of the sea? Yet he watched with pride,  his son taking on the ocean not to battle with it, but to assimilate himself into it, bend himself to its will, humbling both himself and the sea, leaving both the powers of the deep, conquered  surrendered.  The ocean bowing to his will, his spirit overcome with grateful respect for the power on which he glides. His father, though filled with anxiety and anticipation never hinted at discouraging his son from the danger that awaited him upon every tall wave.  His eyes bespoke a heart overflowing with pride  at the bravery of his child.   It does take brave kid to set out to conquer the ocean.  I think though, that his father's bravery may far outweigh the son's.   He wears it with humility, but with a fierceness of spirit rarely found the world over. He gives his son over to his dreams, releasing him to the deep, never knowing whether one day, the deep will claim him for good.

Experience is a fine teacher--a better one than any other I know.  And those of us who come at life without it often find ourselves facing walls of adversity that rival those 40 foot waves under that fourteen year old's surf board; only less equipped to ride out the wave until they reach the safety of the shallows, where their feet can finally touch the sandy ground.   I am often one of those people.  I often think I've weathered every kind of enormous wave that life could roll over me, but just like the endless undulation of the sea, life remains ever-changing, and I find myself sometimes under the swell.

A few days ago, I found life coming at me at speeds that rivaled the enormous Hawaiian wave you may recall from the memorable show of the 70's, "Hawaii 50."  I remember the intro music, the drums in the background, a quick clip of a hula skirted girl swinging her hips, and then, the Wave.  I only caught glimpses of it as  my mother hurried me off to bed as a child, but I recall that for some reason, it set a kind of terror in my mind that rolled through my dreams often.  I dreamed of being engulfed by it--lost inside a tunnel of water, unable to catch my breath or scream for help.  I suspect that my near drowning experience at Lake Murray when I was seven conjured up some of those ephemeral images.  I was probably 12 years old before I saw the ocean for myself, and never swam in it until I was 20.  I always imagined it as one roll after another of those big Hawaiian billows that haunted my childish dreams.

When I think about the vastness of the ocean, the ships that sit buried beneath its surface, the life that teems, deep below the tumult of those humongous waves, the lives it has devoured and the lives that through time and tribulation, were borne across it seeking safer shores, I am left in awe.  We live on a planet made of water, it swirls around us, affecting weather patterns and  fueling storms that devastate  the modest slips of land that we like to think we own and command.  But we really possess so little in the way of power; the reach of our control extending no further than the ends of our own noses, if we find the wisdom to ever acknowledge the truth.

All this talk about water.  Sometimes, I don't even know where I'm going when I start to speak of the things that tumble around in my brain.  But this time my life drew me to the water--or to the way it behaves and expects us to keep our footing as it continues to morph and move, forcing us to comply or suffer the consequences.

Over the lasts few weeks I feel like life threw me a surfboard and said,"hop on, we're going for a ride."  I had no choice, of course, but to oblige.  There were days when I knew my need to control came in second to other things.  Sickness, injury, end of school ceremonies and beginning of summer chaos took over my life there for a while, and I had no choice but to ride it all out.  In some ways I'm still riding--I might have never made it to my feet on that surfboard but I can belly surf with the best of them through the extraordinary struggles of life.

Then again, I find myself in a state of overwhelm often.  I find that social media's wealth of misinformation and the strong opinions of my acquaintances flood my mind and my emotions to the point that I want to shut myself down completely.  I am confused by much of what I see there--the blind followers of a party, a leader, or a belief system they've never taken one second to examine or test or dig deeper into--they fill me with a sense of familiar shame and dread.  I recall that I used to be one of them, someone who wanted to be told what to believe and who happily accepted what I was told as the truth.  Ignorance is bliss, they say, but when life comes at you with a reality as big as a 40 foot wave, ignorance makes a poor life preserver.

Once in a while I try to speak my own truth, but it falls on ears that are stuffed with bias and dogma and fear of finding they lived an entire lifetime believing a lie. Perhaps to them, the nightmare of allowing their beliefs to be challenged is akin to my dream of that enormous wave swallowing me up.  What are we without our beliefs, and who are we if our beliefs get challenged and then changed?

So because of our deeply held beliefs, we live in a world of fear..  We fear anything different from what our mama's and our preachers teach us.  We fear anything that comes from the mouths or the hearts of the "other" that does not abide with us in our bubble of belief and separation.  Religion and politics aside, there seems to be so little space on dry ground for equality and and respect between mankind.  Our human spaces are filled with limp justifications of the atrocities done to our fellow man.  The Christian masses somehow stand on the side of persecution and merciless accusation while those they vilify as evil and ungodly try to unite in love and in defense of those who are downtrodden and looked upon with disdain.  Those who merely want to follow The Commandment--that we love our neighbors as ourselves, seems to apply only to the neighbors who look and live the way we do.

Folks, I grew up sitting with my skinned up knees showing past the hem of my Sunday dresses, sitting at the feet of my Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Sarah Davis, who taught me more about the Jesus many say they serve, than most high-minded Baptist preachers can even hope to know before they stand behind the pulpit screaming and sweating  railing at their congregations about the travesty of their sins and about the God who eagerly awaits his chance to dole out punishments so severe you leave your church on Sunday never knowing that Jesus came to Love, not to condemn.  Sarah Davis taught me that Jesus sat down and ate with the undesirables.  He never sent the children away.  He spread grace and mercy everywhere he went--and example to us all, Christian or not, of how we should approach life, and how we should regard the welfare of our fellow man.

Never mind who Jesus was, or that we say we are his followers.  Our fear of being wrong outweighs our duty to Christ to be his hands and feet, to serve our fellow man as if we were taking care of Jesus himself.  We must find rationalizations for the evils we see perpetrated in the name of  the law.  Must we convince ourselves to believe the worst in others in order to feel better about the choices we've made?    How else could we sleep at night, knowing we have failed at the most basic and most important commandment Jesus gave.  We cannot love God with all our hearts and treat our fellow man with anything less than the love for our neighbors that he also commands.

I fear that instead of becoming experts at finding our own weaknesses and working hard to overcome them, the waves of truth are building momentum and as they gain speed, as they pick up momentum along the way, we will all find ourselves washed ashore beside our fellow human beings, moms and dads, lost children and the broken, life-worn elderly, the drug dealers and the addicts, each one as human as the next, each speaking their native tongues but hopefully, finally accepted, loved, understood.  For it is only in the darkest of times that human beings tend to come together to face whatever evil threatens to harm them all.  Right now we stand divided, but only now.

The tide is changing.  The waves grow stronger with every truth revealed.  We might all feel overwhelmed and heavy with the news of it all, but eventually, this turmoil will unite us.  It must, or we will find ourselves consumed by our prejudices, never to  embrace the entire human experience or richness with which it was intended from the beginning of time.

Escape

I do not know what it is like to live in constant fear of what my own country might do to me or my family.  I do not know how it feels to live in a country whose government turns its head, blind to murder.  Or I should say, murders, some of them orchestrated by people in the highest ranks of power.  I  never got in my car to drive to the store or to work, thinking I might not make it home because there's someone out there who is looking for a chance to kill me.  I've never lived without enough food, never lay in bed at night and listened to machine guns and bombs going off all around me. My privileges are many and my experiences in life threaten to leave me with the impression that the rest of the world lives as I do. 

As Americans, we tend to think that working hard and being a Christian is all a person needs to possess abundance.  We have no reference point for real suffering or fear.  We cannot fathom the urgency to escape the lives we worked so hard to build, just to save our lives and those of our children.  Many of us possess no understanding of the world outside our own bubble of existence.  We paint the whole world with the brush of our own reality, never considering that the neighbor across the street struggles with depression or that people all around the world go to bed every night in fear of what might happen to them before dawn.  We see our privileges as "blessings," and our accomplishments as gifts from God.  Meanwhile, somewhere in the Philippines little children are digging through garbage to find their next meal.  Our obtuse view of the world hardens our hearts to the very real terror and suffering of other human beings, whether they live next door or in South America, Central America, or all the way across the world.

Information is at our fingertips, if we care to find it.  In China, Korea, Russia, people only know what their government wants them to know, and often the information they get is manufactured to look like the truth when in reality, it contains nothing but lies.  We have the freedom to Google anything we want, but how many people care to research why droves of people leave their lives behind them, their homelands, to seek asylum here. 

Imagine for a moment, that sometime during the night tonight, your home is attacked by strangers.  They burst in with guns and demand that you hand over all your money--everything in your bank accounts, your savings, whatever is in your kids' piggy banks, everything.  Imagine that these people take up residence in your life.  They move into your house and they tell you when you can come and go.  They ration the food our of your own refrigerator.  They constantly threaten your family.  You live your life in terror, knowing when you go to bed at night that there are men with machine guns in your house who might decide to start shooting at any moment.  Men have taken over your neighbor's houses too, so you can't just go there.  The police are in on the whole deal--they know that people are living this way, but they do nothing about it.  Imagine that one day you and your neighbors all get together secretly and decide to escape under the cover of night--you're going to the next state over where people live in houses where there are no machine gun wielding strangers guarding every door.  So you pack up what little belongings you can carry and make the journey, a dangerous one through forests with no well-trodden pathways, where men in uniforms with weapons lurk in the shadows.  You live in tents or sleep in the open for days because your journey is long and arduous, but you persevere because you just know that people who live in a state that values freedom and liberty will shelter you from the oppression of living in a house guarded by men who threaten your safety at every turn.  You travel, hungry, tired, dirty.  You lose a few neighbors along the way who were just not strong enough to weather the journey.  Perhaps an elderly neighbor suffered a fall and couldn't continue on, a child falls sick and the family gets separated because someone has to stay with the child.  Imagine the day you finally reach the Georgia state line!  What relief and hope fills your heart!  You are finally at the threshold of safety with the promise of a new life where fear and poverty do not define you. 

Then you find out, Georgia doesn't want you.  Georgia doesn't care that you are escaping a life of fear and oppression.  Georgia thinks you're there to overcrowd their state, to steal jobs from current residents, to bring down their property values, and mooch off their taxes.  Georgia can't be bothered with your sob stories, they are hard working Americans--Christians who go to church every Sunday.  You aren't just unwanted, you are vilified, treated with disdain.  You are corralled, separated from your children and told to wait.  Wait for what?  You don't know.  You don't know what will happen to you or when you'll see your children again.  You don't know who is caring for them or if they are upset or hungry or afraid.  Georgia thinks this is best for you.  Georgia doesn't care how you feel--this is not about feelings, it's about their tax dollars and your threat to their way of life. 

I know, my attempt to reach you is lame.  I realize I cannot create empathy in a person who lacks it merely by asking them to imagine something other than the sheltered lives they lead. 

You can dress a hypocrite up in nice clothes and call him a good man, but he'll still be a hypocrite.

I'm afraid that's where we now stand, as humans, as a country, and as the Christians many claim to be.  Perhaps compassion, empathy, kindness and love are the internal workings of the soul that cannot be taught.  I believe they must be cultivated slowly over time, starting before we even put our bare feet to the floor and take our first wobbly steps.  Is it ever too late to start  the process?  That's a question for which I have no answer.  I only know what I hear and see around me. 

You can call it politics, liberalism, bleeding heart Democrats, snowflakes whining about us not giving handouts to undeserving low-life trash; what it really is though, is sad.  I'm not talking about politics here.  I"m not talking about your religious beliefs or who you voted for in the last election.  I'm not asking  you to change your views on abortion or to make a comparison between abortion and separating families from their living, breathing children.  I'm not referring to your opinion that I, as a Democrat, would be okay with a woman murdering her baby but bothered by what's going on with these children today or how your attempt at justifying what is happening by making that assumption or comparison proves your lack of understanding or empathy for other human beings. 

I'm merely talking reality.  The reality is, what's happening to people at the hands of America is wrong.  It's wrong if you're a Democrat.  It's wrong if you're a Republican.  It's wrong if you're Baptist, or Catholic, or Agnostic or Atheist.  It's just wrong, and no amount of pointing fingers or making justifications for it will ever make it right.  So, if you're pro-life, shouldn't you care what is happening to these children?  Is it a stretch for us to ask you to care?  Should we stop caring about a child as soon as it's born? How is that Christian?  How can anyone with a soul not care?  I, as a human being care.  Can I ask you, as a fellow human being to put aside your biases and put aside your political grudges long enough to see this human suffering for what it really is? 

We are America.  We can do so much better than this.

Here, I am leaving a link for you.  It only vaguely describes what these people coming to America to escape from.  I hope you will take the time to read it, ponder what it would be like to live under the threat of gang violence, government corruption, extortion, and the threat of murder.  Imagine worrying whether your sons or daughters will be picked by some gang member to carry drugs for them, and given no choice in the matter.  Imagine worrying about whether your sons will live another day.  Imagine having a list of family members you've already lost to violence.  And while you're at it, open your heart to the possibility that these truly are human beings who need safety and need shelter from the constant threat of death.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/central-americas-violent-northern-triangle