Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Becoming Me — Breaking the rules, yet again


Whose dogs are these anyway?
Achieve. What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.


One of my favorite movies in the last few years is Becoming Jane. It is of course about Jane Austen, the world that made her into the sister, the daughter, the writer she would become. I always cry at the end in part because of the love story, how she let go of the love of her life — sometimes you just have to let go, to become — and how years later he comes back to hear her read and brings his daughter (spoiler alert!!!) whom he has named for his own lost love. But I also cry for the writer. About how it takes that letting go of the very things she loves the most, to become who she is meant to be.


To say that I identify with this story on many levels is too obvious. Though a big difference is that though I did leave one love in my life a very long time ago, I found another, and he's going to gripe about taking the Christmas tree down in a couple of days, but he is walking one granddog right now who became ours a couple of years ago, and another who will be going back to NYC on Friday — and I didn't have to ask him to. This from a man who didn't really like dogs when we first met, but gave me one anyway, just because I did.


And that old love? He loved dogs, so much so that he took back a dog I gave him once because he was not in a position to take care of it. He had sons, though I doubt seriously whether he would ever have named one of his children after me if he had had a daughter. And he has never once shown up at one of my author events, though his wife did buy a book from me for a Christmas present the year my first book came out.


James McElvoy in Becoming Jane


But back to Becoming Jane. Standing there with his curly locks looking a little bit like that boy I knew in the 70s, James McElvoy just pulls all the tears I have inside me right on out.


That boy from my high school and college days became himself once we broke up, not somebody I tried to make him to be. Come to think of it, he actually always was himself, never pretending, like I often was (am).  


And me: I sort of became myself. 


But here's the thing: I think there is more to me than I realize, and some of it isn't as good as I would like. So that's what I want to achieve in 2011. To become me, finally, at 53. (Ok, so I will be 54 in 2011, but not until WAY into the year.) And I have a feeling if I do that, finally become me, it might affect more people than just me. (Not that I have that much influence or anything, but still.)


* I want to become, the me who: 
creates more honestly; who gives love without worrying about the crusty patches on my skin or the fact that my eyes don't look so good through my glasses; who drops everything for a friend, even when I don't feel like it or have something else to do; who picks up after myself (I mean really, how many receipts do I need to save? And when am I finally going to put my shoes away?). The me who arrives early and prepared so she will never have that dream again about showing up in class without her homework. The me who forgives, especially when I REALLY don't feel like it, the me who finally forgives myself. The me who picks up where she left off on so many, many things. Who finishes, finally, what she has started. Who calls her sister. And her brother. and her sisters-in-law, more often. Who stands in her own skin and does not say "I wish I were", or  'I ate too many Cloo's French Fries so that's why I have this muffin top.' The girl who starts to get rid of that muffin top, no excuses.

To become that girl, that woman. And then move along.


So that's it. Become. Just a word, but one with so much possibility. 


Put it out there: I want to become... it can mean anything in the world, anything at all.


How will that make me feel? Who knows. Try it with me. Just try.  Become...  you'll see. And maybe I will too.


* It sounds a little bit the Sammy Davis Jr version of "I Gotta Be Me", which apparently you can get on a ring tone on your cell. 




Monday, December 27, 2010

this one's for the birds

Ordinary joy. Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?

Every morning as I make my coffee I look out at the birds. My mother taught me years ago how to know a common house wren from one called Carolina, a thrush from robin, catbird from mockingbird, junco from chickadee. I watch the towhee scratch for food on the ground, the nuthatch descending the tree head-down, and I thank my mother for one of the many simple joys of daily life she shares with me.

Bigdaddy & great-grandson, John, ca:1988
For bluebirds, I thank my grandfather. He used to raise them, if you can do such a thing, fashioning nesting boxes out of old pine, hanging them on the north side of the house, one in the small pine grove he planted when I was a child, just steps away from his front porch. On summer afternoons as we sat on the porch, splashes of blue flittered around the yard, father birds in and out of the boxes, feeding nesting mothers and later, growing broods.

When my husband and I bought a house in Atlanta, Bigdaddy brought me a handmade box, and we hung it on a tree in the back yard and waited. No bluebirds. We moved, taking the box along with us, rehung it, but nary a bluebird did we see. In 1989 we moved again, and once again I hung the box. No bird darkened the door for a year. One day before we had lived in the house for a year, Bigdaddy died. And on that morning as I was looking out my kitchen window, a flash of brilliant blue flittered through the yard. And landed on the door to the house. (I am NOT lying here.)

Sadly, he didn't stay, but I was hopeful. When the homemade box — not one of the fancy new ones — rotted, I reluctantly replaced it with a new one, moved the box a little more to the north side of our yard. Birds flittered through but never stayed. I put out meal worms, just like Bigdaddy did, and when a clutch took up in the plastic decorative box in my neighbor's back yard, they came to my house to feed. To bathe in the birdbath. Sort of like college students... it would be only a matter of time before they came home to stay. At least I hoped.

Eastern Bluebird, female —rountreemediaphotography
One morning earlier this year I scuffed into the kitchen, filled the coffee pot and looked outside. Blue, dancing through the yard caught my eye. A daddy bluebird was on the box. I watched, as he stood first at the door, then hopped in, his beak peeking out, then quickly, flew to stand on the box's top. I grabbed my binoculars, searched a nearby tree for Mama Blue, whom I knew was close at hand. And there she was, first on the top, then slipping so quickly inside I almost missed her. Back on the top, and the two danced a little jig, then flew away. Every morning after I kept watch, hating to leave for work for fear I would miss them if they returned. And then one day, in a flurry of wings and straw, they built a nest.

Years ago I bought a book on bluebirds, since my grandfather could no longer tell me how to raise them up. I knew now to knock before I opened the front door, but that it was ok to visit, to count. Each day I knocked, and each day I opened the door, first to find it empty. And then, joy! Two sky blue eggs. Then three. Then four. But Mama won't nowhere to be found.

Joy came again when I saw her on the top of the box. She flew inside. And stayed. Daddy flew in and out, keeping her sated. I brought more worms, and in the mornings, I knocked first, then sprinkled them on the top. Mama usually flew in from high up in the trees, out for her morning swirl, and watched. And before I was even steps away, she and Daddy stood there on the top, feeding.

Joy, again, when one day as I approached the box with my worms, I heard the tiniest chirps. Babies! I counted the days on my calendar, estimating when they might fledge, (16-21 days) worried I would miss it while I was at work.

But Mama bluebird was good to me. She waited to push those babies out of the nest on a day I was home and could watch. She sat in the dogwood, coaxing in a gentle voice, until one by one, they each took that first baby flight toward her, their soft freckled down fluttering. It seemed to take hours. And then suddenly, they were gone.

I kept feeding the worms. And my bluebird parents came back each morning for the feast.  At least for awhile. By midsummer, there was no sign of them, until one day, my father was visiting, and we noticed twigs coming out of the sides of the box. We opened the box to find not pine needles and straw but the makings of a nuthatch nest, which he advised me to remove, as there were no eggs inside. Within the week, my bluebird couple was back, and four more eggs took up residence. And I bought more worms.

This time I wasn't home when the babies fledged, but some weeks later when I looked out in the yard, four fat brown speckled birds, their feathers tinged with blue, slurped at the bird bath. 

And what do you know? Just now as I let the dogs outside, I see Mama Bluebird again, her head peering quickly into the box.


Joy abounds. Yes I can do just such a thing.


Sunday, December 26, 2010

I ought to be in pictures: Ok, so I cheated just a bit

Photo - a present to yourself. Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

Amateur photog that I am, I have taking well over a thousand photos this year, 999+ of them of other people. And of the two or three of me taken, they all seem to say: tired, old, fat, and tired again. Now, if this was last year, it would be easy. Despite 9 months of lost sleep and fretting, I looked pretty damn good on my daughter's wedding day, if I say so myself. What a happy day that was, for all of us. (Thanks, Joey/Jessica, and Linda, and Eric.)


But in 2010? Not so much.


Oct. 10, 1982
My husband and I have a tradition, though. Since Oct. 10, 1982, we have kept a photo record of our anniversaries. The idea came from the wedding gift of a dime store photo album from one of my mother's cousins, who gave us instructions to fill the album of photos taken on our wedding anniversaries, and looking back, we would be surprised at the stories the photos tell. That first picture was captured on a humid Georgia Sunday, and we dressed up in our rehearsal dinner clothes. I have written before that it looks to me like we are a couple a little unsure of the road we are traveling together. He holds me as if he will never let me go. I look like I could use a few pounds. What the picture doesn't show is the gnats flying around our faces, and the sadness we both felt, because my husband's father had had surgery to remove a necrotic brain tumor the day before.


Not all the Oct. 10ths between then and now have been quite so awful for our family, though one or two have been marked by loss. We've celebrated pregnancies, moves, new houses, even something as seemingly inconsequential as yet another year together, just muddling through. I often give photo albums as wedding gifts, being careful to choose ones that have at least 50 pages. A few years ago, I had to buy a new album, because our old one was filling up.


Oct. 10, 2010
On Oct. 10, 2010, a Sunday, we got up early and took our dog to church. Now smart as he is, Reagan is not quite up to all the bowing and posturing and kneeling we Episcopalians are known for, and as far as I know he couldn't tell a credence table from a lavabo bowl. But the date of our 29th wedding anniversary happened to be on the Feast of St. Frances, when everybody brings an animal to church for a blessing.


The photo is taken by our friend Claire, just a quick snap so we could have it for the album. When I look at it now, I search for traces of the skinny girl in the Princess-Di-style dress who wasn't so sure about marriage at the end of that first year. Now, this woman seems to understand much more (though there are still some things she has yet to learn), and her groom has loosened his grip a bit, sure now, that she is not going anywhere. She's put on a few more pounds than she needed back in 1982, but she's added some laugh lines, too, and I'd like to think those lines show that today she can giggle a little more freely than she did that first year.


The picture may not be worth a thousand words, but it is worth more than the 10,585 days together that it represents. We have grown up and older, loosened our grip of each other enough to grow into ourselves. And I hope that keeps on happening, as we move toward 7,665 more October 10ths, to 50 years, and beyond. 


And what I said before about another year together seeming inconsequential, that is not true, not true at all. Even though on some of those days we have lost time arguing at stoplights, have forgotten to give each other a kiss goodbye, just have nothing new to give each other at the end of the day except a burden, on other days we have watched our children tickle toes with the ocean, take hold of a new family, find their gifts. We have watched each other grow businesses, write books, fail, then try again. 


Though on some days we have buried our parents and dogs, on others we get to take our dog to church, or like today, watch him playing with our granddog in a new snow fall. And though we may end this day, both of us snoring side-by-side (as the dog snores on the floor next to us), every single one of our days is a prize. 






Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas, All Y'all. Searching for Santa, redux



This story was published in 1994 in the N and O. Merry Christmas to all!
Searching for Santa
© Susan Byrum Rountree

OK, I admit it: I am 37 years old and I still believe in Santa Claus. That fact is an embarrassment to my husband and even my children, who are borderline themselves this year, but who will pretend to believe, just to please me.
I keep a picture of the Real Santa on my desk all year long. Next to the Christmas Story in the Bible, The Polar Express is my favorite holiday book. And on Christmas morning, though I have recently conceded that the kids can go downstairs first, I always wake up wondering if this will be the year he’ll visit me again.
I don’t really know what happened, way back when I was 11 and one of my friends told me her version of The Truth. With three older brothers, she knew all the truths of life and was quick to squelch my naiveté, with stories about the tooth fairy who lived in a little tooth hut in the woods between our houses, or the giant who had once stepped in her front yard and then across the street at the cemetery, and left two giant-sized footsteps that later turned into ponds.
Let’s just say when she told me that Santa was nothing more than a myth, I wasn’t buying so quickly.
My mother was ironing when I came home that fateful day that could have changed my life. I will never forget the warmth of her kitchen, how she pressed the wrinkles out of one of my father’s shirts, and how I knew she would press out this particular truth for me. “Santa Claus is who you want him to be,” my mother said, neither validating my friend’s confession, nor my insistence of his reality. “You know in your heart what you believe.” It was the perfect dodge, one I would learn to appreciate more when my own children came along, but words that confirmed for me that though the magic stops for some people, it didn’t have to stop for me.
Truth is, my mother probably still believed then, just a little bit, herself.
Why else would she have driven us almost three hours to Richmond, Virginia, once even dodging a James River flood, to see the old elf? There were dozens of Santas along the way, any one of whom would have been glad to hear our wishes. But somehow, none was like the Real Santa.
The Real Santa
When you mention The Real Santa to any kid from six to 56 who grew up in Eastern North Carolina, they know all about him. True, he lives at the North Pole most of the year, but come November, he moves south to Richmond. Sequestered on the top floor of the old downtown Thalheimers department store in Richmond, he sits for hours from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, just like all the other mall Santas, taking requests, chuckling, talking about Rudolf and the gang, even going up to the roof byway of the chimney.
But ask those same kids why the Real Santa was different, why today they join some 45,000 others who drag their own kids extreme distances and withstand hours of waiting in line, just to sit on his lap, and they’ll be quick to respond. The real Santa is different, because he knows your name.
I should know; it happened to me every time I visited him. Just before it was my turn, the Snow Queen, a beautiful fairy-like girl in a long flowing gown, greeted me. Then, in a moment of absolute magic, Santa turned to me and said, “Why it’s Susan, all the way from Scotland Neck. It’s good to see you again. It’s been a long time.”
No mall Santa has that power, and believe me, I’ve searched. They may look the part, but it’s always hello little fella, or why you’re a pretty little gal. And it’s always tell me where you’re from. The Real Santa knew your name and your hometown as well as he knew your wishes, some before you knew yourself.
How does he do it? No True Believer will ever divulge the secret, except to say that he is The Real Santa, and he is magic. 
I’ve thought of Santa many times in the years since my friend stopped believing. Throughout my childhood, he granted most of my wishes; the ballerina bride doll, was the first one I remember. And forgetting to tell him about that blue plastic tea set didn’t mean he didn’t bring all 50 pieces anyway. He gave me my first typewriter, proof to me that someone somewhere believed in my 10-year-old dream of being a writer. (If you’ve seen the movie The Santa Clause, this won’t seem original, but the only thing I ever wanted that Santa didn’t bring me, really, was a Mystery Date Game. And I would have been willing to go out with Poindexter.)
A few years ago, my friend Grace asked my kids and me to tag along with her family on their annual trip to Richmond. She grew up on his lap, too, and I suspect for her, the magic hadn’t ended either, simply with growing up.
I hadn’t seen The Real Santa in almost 30 years, and while I was excited, I was reluctant to return to the scene of my childhood fantasy. Would he be the same? Would he remember me? Would my belief in him be shattered for good?
But there we were, huddled among the mass of people waiting in line for as turn in his gold and velvet chair. With the first glimpse of his balding pink head, it was like seeing a cherished friend after a lifetime of being apart.  I could see that, though he’d gotten older, he hadn’t really changed.
As my children approached the Snow Queen, my heart began to pound until those 30 years had slipped away and I was five again, waiting for my own visit on Santa’s lap. He turned his rosy cheeks toward my daughter and son, who looked a tiny bit frightened at first, until he spoke. “Why, it’s Meredith and Graham. How are things in Raleigh?” he said, and the bond was made, their belief — and mine — in someone they can’t always see, firmly intact.  Even my husband, the family cynic, was scratching his head in wonder.
This year, my sister is coming home for Christmas, all the way from Iowa. She hasn’t seen Santa since she was a child, so guess where we’ll be on Friday? But my sister and I won’t be the only ones making the trip to Richmond this year. We’re bringing children and husbands, my brother’s family, my parents, even a mother-in-law. Never mind that there are more adults than kids. Or that my son’s the only one of the kids who truly still believes anymore.
I’m not worried. The Real Santa is magic. And after a visit with him, we’ll just see who’s first one up to find what’s under the Christmas tree.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Giving Sooze a piece of my mind

Future self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?)


My rolls are in the oven, the dogs have settled, and for a short while, the house has quieted of the pre-Christmas rush. James Galway's soft flute and the voices of the Chapel Choir of King's School Canterbury drift over the aroma of yeast as it fills the kitchen.
SCRATZZZZH!!


That was somebody else's life I was describing, because though Galways' flute does dance across the air of my kitchen, now the dogs' shrill barks wake me from my holiday stupor. Their nails click across the floor as they pace, back and forth from window to door, jarred, it seems, by the simple rustling of the leaves outside, the washing machine humming, the oven timer going off.


Despite their ruckus, I do have 10 minutes between as each batch cooks, to think about yesterday's prompt, which I had meant to get to, but well, did the folks at reverb realize that Christmas is TWO DAYS away? Something tells me no, that when they were thinking up this wonderful project it was July, and the sidewalks were sizzling and there was absolutely no thought given to the holiday rush because Christmas was five months away. A lifetime. Five years.


In five years from now I will be 58. Fifty-EIGHT! The same age my husband is now, and he will be a little bit closer to retirement. I hope I'll have a couple of grandchildren, and instead of the dogs interrupting my nap with their barks, I'll snuggle down with little people who will call me Sooze, and we will warm our toes under the covers for an afternoon story. I'll pull out the soft ornaments I used to hang on the bottom of the tree, so they can feel free to touch. I'll save the roll scraps for them, and I'll show them how to carefully tie the dough into knots. And we will read the Christmas story from the Advent calendar of little books their mother used to read from — since my son doesn't even have a girlfriend at the moment I will assume he won't be a dad just yet — and we will read it straight, with none of the joking that came when my own children were teenagers, when Old King Herod  became Old King Harold, a favorite neighbor down the street.


If I could sit down with Sooze and give her a little piece of my mind that she could take with her as she navigates the years between this one and the one I imagine, I would say these things:
• Listen to your dreams
• Get some fresh air
• Stop what you're doing when a child is whispering
• Put your mind to it (see previous post on that one)
• Nap with the dogs
• You have already worried enough
• Meet your children half way
• Sing more often
• Plant more seeds
• Bring flowers into the house
• Hug your parents closer
• You will eventually figure it out
• Call your sister
• Use every color in the crayon box
• Remember what happened when you (insert mistake here). It's over. It's forgiven. Now go.
• Let your husband see into your soul
• Giggle at every opportunity
• Write every day
• Show God you are paying attention


sbr


(stay tuned, because I am thinking of that bonus letter.:)





Monday, December 20, 2010

Santa Baby... Hurry Down the Chimney

Beyond avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn't because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)

The other day, I was trying to redecorate the Christmas tree, which after I had put the lights on I had handed it over to the men in my house and of course I should have known better, but I wanted them to have a part in it. Or at least pretend. Anyway, as I was redecorating, I was looking through the top drawer in my living room chest, which I never look in except for at Christmas, for those ornament hooks that are all tangled up together so much so that it almost looks like they have been propagating like gerbils since last year. And then, as often happens with someone who has never been diagnosed with anything like ADD but who has an ADD brain sometimes, I started rifling through the stuff in the drawer. Christmas napkins (hey they were supposed to be in a different drawer). Old baby books, including my own. A neat pull-out Victorian Christmas card I got as a child that I loved, and then a bunch of papers my mother gave me a long time ago that I had forgotten about. Inside I found this:

(Facebook friends, please humor me).
How funny, I thought, that when I was 8, I wanted a typewriter. (Please, those of you who think I should have known that Santa didn't exist at 8 (ok, 9) don't tell me because he still does, at least in Scotland Neck, NC, so of course he did in 1966.) 
I had no idea how to type, wouldn't learn until I was a senior in high school, and even then I didn't think I needed to know how. That was not a skill I would ever use in my career. Typing was for secretaries and such. And the whole typo thing I am so good at? Apparent, even in my very best 8 (9)-year-old cursive.  Where was my proofreader, is what I want to know.


But reading this letter to Santa, I got to thinking. (Oh no, not that again) Though there are other things I have avoided this year (many) the BIG THING is owning the whole writer thing (again) and actually doing what I have been talking about doing for a long, long time. I have wanted to be a writer since I was six. I can't tell you exactly why or when, but I can say it might have been because of Hitty, that Newberry Award-winning story about a doll somebody gave me a long time ago. I could never quite get past the first few pages, thinking surely I could write better than this. There were no pictures! Though I hear it has been remastered, whatever that might mean.


And I am a writer. But I have lost that identity along the way of being one, of trying to pay a few bills. So, as I have written before (these questions are beginning to seem very repetitive) what I didn't do in 2010 is finish my funny novel, I think because it is so unlike anything I have ever written before that I am worried about what folks will think of me. (and not just my folks.) And I didn't even pull out the other one I have not finished, the one those "real writers"  I know said showed so much promise. 


IN 2010: Yes. Too scared too busy too worried too unsure, all of that. Aren't y'all tired of hearing that now? I am. And I'm sorry to repeat myself.


So here we go. The promise: I'll make Santa Claus glad he gave me that typewriter. Now... If I could only find it in all the clutter around here.



Sunday, December 19, 2010

The Behinder I Get

Ok, so it's Sunday morning, and I have to get to church then come home and make three dishes for an open house I'm helping host for a young couple about to be married (and it turns out I should have made one of the dishes last night)... and so since I don't get the REVERB10 email this morning I go to the site to see what today's prompt is and I find out that I have missed not one but TWO prompts since Thursday (what happened to my Friday? And my Saturday? Oh, Christmas will be over in a week, so there's that.) And so now, if I am to get caught up, I have to learn something, decide to try something and heal something, all in the same day, all in about 10 minutes so I'll have time to at least brush my teeth before I head out to church.
December 19 – Healing What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? (Author: Leoni Allan)
December 18 – Try What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it? (Author: Kaileen Elise)
December 17 – Lesson Learned What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? (Author: Tara Weaver)
So I will take them in backwards order: What did I learn about myself? That when I put my mind to it, I can think about how to make people around me happy. I can surprise them. I can support them. I can help them remember. I can give them joy. So, it 2011, I will (try) to put my mind to it.
What do I want to try? To write every day. Like this. Better than this. To finish what I started, but I have said that here in the past 19 days a lot already. 2011 WILL be the year I finish that novel, find an agent, get going with it.
I also want to try to be more mindful of and responsive to the needs of others. To exercise every day. I have gotten WAY off track on that one this year, blaming it at first on a workout injury, then on the weather, the job, the time of day. If you think about it, this could apply to the whole healing thing. 
Not sure I was healed of anything this year, though my exercise injury is a lot better this morning, but next year? To be healed of what ages me, and that covers a lot of territory.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Hilda Kay

This whole reverb thing is proving harder to do every day. So forgive me for taking a full day to finish up yesterday's prompt:

Friendship: How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? Author: Martha Mihalick

I have never been good at long division. It just felt like to me an attempt to separate the big number from the small. Part of me liked the architecture of it, all those lines and angles, and how you could make everything work out to zero, but when I looked at the big number at the top and the zero together, it just felt like something was lost in all that dividing. And sometimes there was a remainder. What about that?
I grew up in a town divided. White/black, rich/poor, white poor/black poor. Those kin to everybody/those kin to none. Those born there/those who were not. Farmers/farm workers. Educated/not. The black/white part everybody understood. It was just that way.


The rich/poor or upper class/middle class thing was harder to determine. I didn't think of my family as rich, though because my father was a doctor, a lot of folks in town thought we were. But I never had fancy outfits — everything I owned had to go with something else. I didn't get my own car when I turned 16. We didn't take fancy family trips. I guess back then, I thought that most all the white families in my town were rich, and all the black ones poor, not understanding divisions by degrees.

My own world was pretty small. School, church, home, riding bikes, playing Clue in the summer, hanging out with friends who were pretty much like me.


Though I don't remember when I met her, I had a friend named Hilda Kay. In first grade we took tap dancing and ballet together, and when it came time for our recital in the spring, we had our picture taken for the town newspaper. I'm seated on the front row, with my friend Lydia, and Kay is in the back, her eyes wide and wondering, or at least that's what it looks like to me. We played the roles of maids to the lone boy in our group, who played Mr. Clean. (He had an earring way before it was fashionable, but for heaven's sakes. Maids?) Hilda Kay didn't live near me, but when you live in a town that is about 2 square miles, I guess that's relative. Her house was in the neighborhood where my family lived when I was born, down Church Street and across 12th, then straight on the dirt road by the Boy Scout Hut where my brother went once each week. 

When I was young, I remember Hilda Kay as a smiling girl who later wore glasses.  Once when I played with her after school, she showed me her bb gun. My father had a shotgun, but it was buried in the back of a closet, and I had never seen him take it out. That day was the first time I ever shot a gun of any kind. I can't tell you now what I shot at, but I thought I was going to get in trouble. I do recall that when Hilda Kay shot, her aim was true. 


Divisions within our class were fairly clear-cut as I recall: reading groups, smart vs. "socially promoted." Kids who sometimes didn't wear shoes because they couldn't afford them, who rarely bathed, or who didn't show up until after harvesting season ended because they worked on the farm. And the rest of us. Hilda Kay was one of us.

Though she was a bit scrappy, if she will forgive me that adjective. In 6th grade, Kay and another of my friends — who lived on my side of town — got into a fight after school on the playground. Girls in my group got into spats all the time, but this was an arm-slinging fist fight like the boys got into. I remember kids in a circle — boys and girls — egging the two of them on, and I like to think I was not one of them, but I likely was. I remember dust flying with the punches, and wondering how it must feel to be pulled to the ground with your underwear exposed for all to see. When I picture it in my mind, I am far away, but I was probably closer to it than I care to admit. The friend she fought was probably at the time supposed to be my better friend, but she was often not nice to me, or to others in our circle, so was I secretly pulling for Hilda Kay to win?

I never saw Hilda Kay as being set apart in any way from the rest of us, except maybe she was smarter that most. I certainly never thought of her as poor. Her Daddy was a mailman, after all. She tells me now that she was a keen observer when she played with friends who had more than she did at home, trying to emulate the manners her mother didn't teach her but our mothers did. She never had napkins on the table, she says — I thought everybody did — and when she visited our homes, she would watch closely how we used ours, so she would know what to do. She described my childhood home as clean and quiet and safe, and my mother elegant. I know about the clean and quiet, but whose home would not be safe when you are 11?

In 1969, when integration loomed, a bunch of us moved to a private 'academy', a euphemism for a place where no blacks where allowed. (My town, 15 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, had not fully integrated, and the white power elite took what they perceived as their right not too follow the law all the way to the US Supreme Court. Not their finest day.)Before we left public school, we all loved our classmate Vironette, one of the blacks to integrate before 1969. She could hit a softball harder than any girl I had ever seen, and when we left for the academy, she wanted to go with us. Kay and I both have often wondered what happened to her. 


Kay stayed in the public school because her family could not afford otherwise. And she made friends with the black kids, played basketball with them, walked down Main Street with them, which was something none of the rest of us would do. I know these things, not because I knew them then, but because just a few weeks ago, Kay and I became friends again, on Facebook. 

In 10th grade, she joined us at the academy. And then, when she was about 16, she vanished from our sight. In the years since, I have heard here and there about her. I knew she was an attorney, but that was about all. 

When I found her on FB, I sent her a quick note, hoped she was well, wondered how she was doing, told her I was a writer. Soon, she wrote back, and in the weeks since we have learned a lot about each other we didn't know. And she has enlightened me about many things, about how much we are the same, and how divisions, real and unintended, shaped us both. We have discovered that we wondered about lots of the same things, but were too young to articulate what our thoughts were.

Growing up, I always thought I was a little divided from my group of friends. I thought too much, cried when somebody looked at me the wrong way, had long conversations with myself, some of them about the divisions I couldn't understand. Why was it was ok to have black servants prepare food for me when I spent the night with friends, but it was not ok to share a classroom with them, or to shake their hands in church? 

I have come to learn that Kay wondered about these things, too. In her emails, she has shared a lot about her life and how different it was from mine, though I never knew any of it. We have laughed over the schoolyard brawl, which she says now was because she was tired of our "friend" choosing who would be left out of our group each day. She recalls getting in a pretty good punch before the fight was broken up.

Kay moved out of her house as a teenager, dropped out of high school, and I knew nothing of this, just knew she was not in our class for graduation. She later became a nurse, then went to law school at George Washington. And she flies her own plane for heaven's sake. Doesn't sound like something a scrappy little girl — who might be most famous in childhood for fighting a battle few of us were willing to — could accomplish. But I said she was smart. 


Hilda Kay has done well for herself. She has her own private practice, is married to a doctor, and rescues precious puppies who need a loving lap to spend some time in. It seems now that she has finally made a safe home for herself. 

Our email conversations have been a gift, and all these words have been an attempt to articulate what all I have learned from her. Much, but maybe I can say it like this: Dare every now and then to cross that great divide, even if though the answer might be zero. Because sometimes, when the dust settles and the angry crowd withdraws, you might just find that what remains is worth keeping.


sbr





Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I have been waiting all year

creativeisaverb@pattidigh

Prompt: 5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.



cloos' club
lunches writing cloo's club the novel wicked full frame snow days with the dog  june in nyc (with the princess and her pea) graham's new job suppertime in winter will berry's almost snowed-out wedding writing in response to scripture sailing holy grounds easter vigil phone calls from my sister and barbara organizing the gathering finding patti digh arranging altar flowers friday walks with reagan bobby sherman meredith's visits home staff retreat conversations in the purple room friends of the friendless taking pictures any day playing memory with cole hearing angels singing at bess's wedding Sunday naps  anna's shower and wedding suppers with emily august in nyc wicked, again (with M) diana gabaldon finding sandra finding kay lunch with graham lunch with rick  sunsets at the sound staff lunches talking it out haircuts with eric writing retreat hearing the world richmond marathon my birthday glee! raising hope

One note: You can hear Patti Digh (twice) at The Gathering, a women's event, at St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Fri/Sat, Feb. 25 & 26. Find out more and register. Learn how to live your life as a poem.