Tuesday, December 30, 2014

it's all about the Pea

at twilight, on the last friday in december 1983, my husband and i got the first good look at our new baby girl. we had waited for what felt like a month of fridays... after her delivery, they'd whisked her off for prodding and poking, putting me in a semi-private room with a woman who reportedly (her words) had her womb tied up. where we waited, wondering if something was wrong.

at last the wheeled our tiny new person into the room with us in her bassinet, circling us with a curtain, while the womb lady on the other side dialed the number over and over of some invisible man who would never materialize.

in those first moments, we cried, touching her fingers, running our hands on her legs and arms and head, taking a good look at this baby of ours. a baby! all toes and fingers and perfect eyes, a baby who searched our own eyes for what her future might mean.

who knew, because we could hardly see beyond that moment. 

i'm not sure what we knew in that twilight time except we were glad to be through the worst part. or what we thought was the worst part and the best part— her coming into the world. 

i remember the short days in the hospital as a bit of a Camelot. i can still feel the warmth of the water on my body after my first shower, as i pulled on the flannel gown i'd worn on my honeymoon two years before (and before you say flannel?! it was October in the mountains, and satin on the outside.)

i still can feel that first tug as i tried to feed her. can remember just looking at my husband and exploding with love for what we had done together.

i felt beautiful, for the first time probably ever in my life, as i, with God's help (and a bit from my husband) had created this great beauty of a child. how could that be?

on a crisp, deep winter day, we took her home, the dog kissing her on the face upon greeting. and with a lot of help from our mothers, we set about parenting. in the coming weeks, we would diaper her and argue over her, sleep (or try to) with her on our chests, try to keep her from crying during supper, move with her to a new city where she finally stopped.

uptown girl was a favorite on the radio in those years, and it would prove to be a theme song for this little girl of ours. when she was tiny, i'd dress her up in her best and head into downtown Atlanta to visit her dad for lunch, and her eyes caught the skyscrapers, and i wondered what she was thinking. (now that she has ended up UPTOWN i know.)

i've spent most of the years since trying to grow into being her mother, and while i have not been terribly bad at it, there are times i wish i could forget. 

times when i screamed at her at things there were clearly my fault, times i cried privately (and sometimes not so privately) over her own heartbreak — friends who left her out of things, when she didn't make the grade, a boyfriend or two who weren't worthy of her attentions. times when i felt she failed me, but were really failures of my own in parenting.

tonight she wanders around her chosen city, getting a massage — as her husband lays sick with a virus they both contracted over Christmas — not to be stopped from her small celebration. 

and i long to be with her. her birthday was a game-changer for me — one of those days in life when the earth shakes on its axis and you're never the same, the day i stopped being (totally) selfish because someone needed me for the first time in my life. and i will continually mark it. 

we FaceTimed from the office, with surprise visits from her father and my friends, all of us wishing her a happy day as she sets out for ginger ale and crackers... ordinary pursuits on a day that will never be ordinary for me.

happy birthday Pea. 



writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

let your heart be light

our young associate rector at my church is a born teacher. since he joined our staff last year, he's developed creative programs that challenge the mind and expand your faith. and for the second year in a row, on the last Sunday before Christmas, he goes "behind the music," giving the back story for some of our most favorite Christmas carols and songs. 

dressed up in a clownish Santa outfit, with a fire roaring behind him on a flat-screen television, Christopher shared with us the story of how Jingle Bells was written by the son of a Unitarian minister, gifted in music whose father asked him to write a Thanksgiving hymn for his church. as he sat in the living room of his father's house, trying to think of something, he heard sleigh bells in the distance and headed outside to see what was happening. he found sleighs racing through the night, and felt so joyful that he went inside and wrote the song that was all about about racing through the snow. later he had the song published, and before long it became an iconic Christmas song, though it doesn't mention anything about Christmas. (Racing and betting and going on dates with Miss Fanny Brice were more important apparently.)

we learned that O Little Town of Bethlehem was written by an Episcopal priest who visited Bethlehem in 1865. Inspired, three years later he wrote a poem and his organist back in Philadelphia added the music. he had been searching for a way to lift people out from under the Civil War.

when Christopher pulled up a picture of Judy Garland from the movie "Meet Me in St. Louis,"  he talked about how the lyricists for the movie wrote a dismal song that Judy refused to sing, for a pivotal, sad scene in the movie. it was the middle of World War II, and Judy had toured for soldiers over seas and knew they needed to hear something hopeful. so they re-wrote the song, which would be played for troops right before the Battle of the Bulge. though she battled many demons in the years after she sang that song, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas was more important to her, Christopher said, than Somewhere Over the Rainbow. 

as the congregation there gathered — children and parents and grandparents and teens — began to sing  the song together, i looked around the room, seeing co-workers and friends and people i didn't know, and all captured by the beauty of this little song. i recalled hearing that after 9/11, James Taylor recorded the song just in time for Christmas, in an attempt to give listeners a bit of hope during such a sad time for our country.

every voice lifted, and together, we created a joyful noise that brought tears to the eyes of some. 

Christmas is a hard time for many, surely. those who are lonely, scared, ill, grieving, heartsick. but how magical that, no matter what our circumstance, we can all come together in song, forgetting our troubles as we sing along with others.

have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. and this year, carry a tune along with your troubles, and may those troubles slip out of sight for a moment or two.


writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

it's a wrap

the lady walked up to the giftwrap station at Pittman's, the small department store where i was spending the better part of Christmas vacation wrapping presents, and handed me her bag. i peeked inside, finding a dozen or so pairs of tighty-whities and another dozen pairs of white athletic socks.(the trims were different colors as i recall.)

i know i blushed. was she the mother of a boy from my class? lord i hoped not. underwear was not a discussable item in my house in the 1970s — well not now either, come to think of it. (politics, yes, as long as you voted for Nixon), but not underwear, and certainly not tight-whities!

in my family, underwear was a utility item, bought on a summer saturday when the last pair had holes in it. Christmas was for surprises and wants, not for needs.

but back to the job at hand.

as the lady stood by me, i pulled out a two large boxes from the pile and some tissue, planning to place the whities in one and the socks in another. i probably huffed a few times, too, though i don't recall that. i mean, couldn't she have bought them cargo pants or a jean jacket, or brogans, something cool? (all of these things were available at Pittman's.)

wrap 'em separately,  she said. 

really? all of them? i glanced at my watch, calculating the time it would take me to wrap two dozen small boxes before closing, which in my memory was only minutes away. my church youth group was putting on "The Homecoming" that night, and i'd have to head home, grab a bite and dress for my role (my stage debut!) as Mary Ellen Walton. there was not time in my life for 24 boxes of briefs and socks, wrapped and bowed. 

but.

i had a job to do, and Edna Earle, (yes, really, that was her name) — Pittman's ever-present clerk, hovered to make sure i was efficient.

once i got over my embarrassment, i set to work, trying not to imagine who'd be opening these particular packages on Christmas morning.

+++

it was a rite of passage for the girls in my town to pay their dues behind the wrapping station at Pittman's. my sister, Pamula, had loved the work, and even now when she gives me a package i can see the results of her hours logged there as a teen. sides tight, ends as perfect as my mother's hospital corners. bow pert and beautiful.

not so much me. that exercise in learning how to estimate how much paper i needed (no wasting, please), or how to rip it away from the giant roll leaving a perfect edge, to fold the corners exact and flat and keep the tape straight, well, this was lost on me.

thank goodness i found another career.
+++


in a week, it will all be over, but there is wrapping yet to do. these days i don't have anyplace else to go except to sleep once the wrapping is done, yet i avoid it. 

though i try to fold exact corners and tie a fancy ribbon, my packages look like they were wrapped by that anxious teenager, weary of the job of wrapping dozens of tighty-whities for some unknown stranger. (thank heavens for small favors.)

but with the FAM coming in on Sunday, i could avoid no more, so i set up my wrapping station on the kitchen island, turned the bose to my Pandora Christmas and set to work. 

though at first the memory of Pittman's and all those socks yet to wrap hovered for a little bit, something else came through my thoughts that i hadn't expected. our first Christmas in our small house in Atlanta, and my husband had found a jazz station on the radio, playing Christmas music like i'd never heard before. (we weren't all about that jazz where i came from. mitch miller, sure, or even perry como, but this? lyrical, but without the lyrics. it was fine.)

soon i was lost in the memory ofpre-Christmas 1984, seeing my (much, much thinner) self wrapping the set of blocks my daughter would get for her first Christmas, tying a bow at the neck of the wooden rocking horse (SO impractical for a baby of one, but what the who?) and wrapping the few but carefully chosen gifts for my family, all in plain brown paper and plaid ribbon. (you can take the girl out of the country, and all that, but...)

i remember that night feeling so full of love for my small family, excited to celebrate the best gift we'd received already that year — the baby who slept just down the hall.

+++

music, of course, is the bridge to memory. 

as Christmases passed, i bought cassette tapes, then CDs of many of my jazz flavor favorites, practically wearing them out from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve in the car and at home. among the melodies is a string version of "Of the Father's Love Begotten," that brings me to tears every time i hear it.

tonight i think about all that's wrapped up in this particular Christmas memory, grateful for my not so young family, for gifted musicians, and for those years long ago when i worked at a job that taught me about serving others even when i didn't feel like it — and wasn't particularly good at it.

and, by the way, though my mother is probably cringing as she reads this, we are boxer people. 

no tighty-whities here, though i do wrap them separately from the socks.



writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Monday, December 15, 2014

shopping for mama

i called my sister on my way home from work, checking in to see when the family would gather for their first Iowa Christmas in many years. For the past few years, she has shipped her Christmas to North Carolina, spending it with my parents or her in-laws, but always making time to see my brother and me. 

this year, her children will be home for the first year in many, with a toddler granddaughter to entertain them every single minute she's awake. and Pamula can't wait.

so i want to know the details. what she's cooking, what she's giving. if it will snow. when everybody's coming. 

i call, too, to make sure we have my mother covered. 

my father loved to find just the right gift for Mama, and when we were young, he included us in on the hunt. whether he'd already chosen what he planned to give her (or she had told him what to buy),we never knew. my sister and i felt like a team, helping to choose, too.

one year, he bought her an evening gown of black lace and gold lamé. i remember my sister trying it on in the small shop, Daddy saying that it would fit my mother perfectly (which it did.) remember watching the clerk wrapped it in a large, beautiful box — i had never seen anything so glamorous. we couldn't wait for her to open her beautiful gift. she wore it for years.

shopping trips with Daddy were filled with fun and love as i remember. no struggling with exactly what to get her, no arguing or whining about how we didn't get our way. we didn't get to spend a lot of time with our father as a rule, but shopping for Christmas for Mama took precedence over patients, if only once a year.

the Christmas after i graduated from college, my sister was living in Texas so I shopped with Daddy alone. he picked me up after work one December afternoon, and in the process of shopping for Mama, i told him i had not yet gotten a Christmas tree. (i could not afford one.)  so he drove me to the garden shop where my parents had bought their tree for years. i found a small live tree, bound in its root ball, and insisted i have it. (we could plant it in the yard at home!) so he bought it for me and brought it to my second floor apartment — he even bought me ornaments! and there, it promptly died.

(in later years, Daddy and i shopped and bought my family's tree, which he put in the stand and in the house before my husband could complain about having to! i can still picture him lying on my driveway, screwing the bolts in the tree to keep it straight.)

as he grew older, Daddy asked my sister and me to take turns with him to shop.when it was my turn, he'd drive to Raleigh and we'd take on the mall and the jewelry store together, searching for that perfect thing.

i remember well the year Daddy and i strolled through the old mall familiar since my childhood. i don't remember what we bought, but at lunch time, we sat in the food court, eating hot dogs and sharing fries from a place that no longer exists.

a few days later, a letter arrived in the mail, Daddy thanking me for helping him shop. i have searched my house in the past year or so for that letter and can't find it, though i remember his words: how he cherished spending time with me, even if it was as 'simple as sharing a hot dog in the middle of a crowded mall'... i will never forget those lines, or the image they still provoke. 

Christmas always brings such anxiety about the gift giving, but i never felt that with my father. to him, giving was never a chore, but was as much about the time spent shopping with his daughters as it was the gifts we bought. 

my sister has finished her shopping, though i have not. do we have perfume? will what we bought her fit? i ask her these things, thinking of how Daddy loved giving to Mama — to all of us — wishing again that he were here to help is find that perfect thing.


writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

from the forest to the trees

i've written and rewritten these first lines tonight a dozen times, and nothing seems to stick. 

what i want to tell you about is how my sister has given me Christmas trees for years, trees made from candy canes and wood and garland and wire and some laden with snowflakes that in years of wear have lost some of their shimmer. there is a quirky tree that looks as if it belongs in Whoville, (one of the oldest and my favorite) and another with a heart for its star. i want to say how now i have a virtual forest of glittery trees and how each year i walk around the house and try to figure out the perfect place to put them. should i scatter them around or place them together? 


just about now in the Christmas mayhem comes the panic: what have i missed? presents not yet bought, things left undone that may never get done, and i forget that it is like this every single year. every. single. year. 

yesterday i unpacked my trees, placing them on the mantel — a new spot for them. and today, as i bought and wrapped and decorated my mailbox, i realized that i can't make the perfect Christmas for everybody like i tried to do for so many years. and actually, that is not my job anymore. my job is to create the space for family, and to make sure there is good food on the table.

it is probably not related, but this year i put a forest on my mantel, and somehow i seems as if i am finally seeing the trees.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

homemade heaven

Evelyn, who works in the room next to me on Mondays, is a baker. i watch her Facebook posts (well, i DID before their new algorithm took over my news feed) enjoying pictures of her creations. last week her posts about making baklava for the first time with her Lebanese mother fascinated me.

i've never worked with phyllo dough, but i know from watching others that it can be maddening. paper-thin sheets of dough kept damp, as you layer and layer and layer. making yeast rolls seems like making instant pudding by comparison.

but Evelyn, who shares a connection to my home town that we didn't discover until about a year after she began working with us, does not take shortcuts. she documented her time, working with the phlyllo, measuring the squares of baklava with a yard stick so that each piece was a perfect parallelogram. assembling the baklava took two hours, she said, and her mother had already made the filling.

so when Evelyn presented me with my own piece of her handmade baklava, i felt honored. i treasured it, examining the layers and marveling at the masterpiece this small piece of dessert was. i'm not a dessert eater, so i tried to take a sliver, to save most of it for my husband, but my efforts destroyed her work, so i guiltily ate it all

later, Evelyn brought me half of a slice to share with my husband, and i wrapped it up in the Christmas napkins she provided, excited to share this Christmas surprise.

another gift of Christmas, and we have 14 days yet to go.





writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Rousing the Drowsy Self

Author's note: Tis the season when my writing class at my church ponders the readings of Advent. We spend most of the fall reading and studying the lectionary, asking ourselves where we fit in the narrative. Our parishioners are now reading "The Pondering Heart" collection as an Advent discipline, and since this project is what got me writing again, i thought i'd include a sample on the blog. The full book is available for download at holymichael.org.

My father knew the power of a daily nap. At times when he was the only doctor in my small home town, the needs of others drew him out of bed into the dark night. Off to work before 8 each morning, come noontime he was home for a bowl of soup, some saltines and a half-hour stretch on his bed. In seconds, his snores pounded the house.
Then he was off again and ready to heal, fueled by his nap.



I began naps in earnest when I was expecting my first child. The dog and I would climb on the bed with a book, and soon we’d drift into a pleasant daily dreamland, our short respite giving us the fuel we needed to prepare for what soon would be months of sleepy existence.
 

These days, my favorite part of a Sunday afternoon is my nap. I take the phone off the hook, stretching out on my grandmother’s sofa with yet another good book and soon I’m out, sometimes dreaming so deeply that I dream I wake up, but in fact, keep sleeping
Maybe I’m too comfortable, my legs tucked into the soft throw, my mind drifting from the pages of my Outlander novel and into slumber.


Now that I’m of the age when I’m no longer pulled out of bed in the night to soothe a fretful child, I don’t require the restorative rest my father did all those years ago.
My naps pull me away from chores I’d rather not do, from those midnight worries that too easily also dampen my daytime thoughts, from truths about myself I’d rather not face.
But what have I missed in my reclining hours? A chance to do all such good works as God has prepared for me? To spend an hour using my gifts for spiritual good rather than my own therapy?


Honestly, I don’t really want to see a time when the sun darkens, the moon won’t give light and the stars start falling from the sky. And if the Son of Man shows up at my house on a Sunday afternoon, I likely will miss the whole thing, because I am down for the count.


Keep awake, Jesus implores us during Advent. Beware, keep alert. Perhaps I should reconsider his advice.
 

May this Advent be a time for me to rouse my drowsy self, and get to work.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

those little treasures

my friends and i lament this time of year about dragging all the Christmas stuff out. we've been collecting little treasures for more than 30 years, and well, they tend to accumulate to the point that unpacking all those ornaments and broken lights, tiny Christmas trees and nativities proves a bit overwhelming. especially when you don't have a pile of small people to help you put it all together. 

when we first started out, i could get the tree up, the lights on, the Santas distributed in the time it took for my daughter to take her afternoon nap. she would wake, coming down the stairs to a fairyland of lights and glitter, which captivated her for a good while. by middle school, though, she used to move my Santa collection around the house because apparently the places i'd put them didn't suit. when she was in high school, i remember an outburst because she came home from school and i had not put the finishing touches on the banister garland. i had no idea how important it was for her to come home to this holiday fairyland, the house filled with mementos of her childhood and the treasured days we had created for her. to her, a house decorated must have meant a house happy, and that particular Christmas it was not.

she left for college, and somehow i recovered from whatever kept me from the spirit that year. and though i found the fairy dust again, i can tell it's slower each year in the sprinkling. (tinker bell is getting old.) as my children become adults, the presents become fewer and more intentional, and i leave whole boxes of decorations unwrapped, their purpose no longer as important to me as it once was.

as i write this, my mantle is bare and every single present (which are few) aren't wrapped, though today i received my first present in the mail. i have about a dozen boxes to unpack — the nativity, my collection of Christmas trees, the large Santas that sit table-top. the dining room table serves as my staging area, and so there is no place to entertain, should anyone decide to visit. plus, no Christmas food! 

everybody rushes me, but i keep reminding myself that it is ONLY DECEMBER 9th! my own parents never decorated a tree or filled the house with greenery until at least the 15th, back in the day. otherwise it would die, because it was fresh from the yard (and not from Wal-Mart.)

back in the day. my father took my sister and me to Rocky Mount, a full 30 miles away, to shop for my mother in a mall with a magic Christmas tree, its lights blinking to the sound of organ music. i am certain we never shopped in November for what could easily be bought in December, and AFTER the 10th, thank you very much. who needed to shop before then? these days if you want it you had better have thought about it in October, for it will be gone by early November. it seems as if Advent, that time of preparing and anticipating has been moved to just after Halloween.

but my anger about that is not the point of this story.

it's this: when you do unpack your Christmas, whether it's the day after Thanksgiving or the day before Christmas Eve, what i forget about the sometimes laborious process of pulling it all out, is that buried among the ornaments are hidden treasures, those trinkets that by tradition and story provide a surprise.


this morning before the rush to work, i finished the last of the tree, taking in the tiny ornaments my mother gave us the very first Christmas we were married. and then i took inventory, of all the ornaments hanging and where they had come from through the years.

Hawaiian ornaments from my sister who had visited there in her early marriage. an origami star given to me by a friend who died unexpectedly a couple of years ago, the year after she gave it to me. miss piggy (from my sister, too — do you think that was a not-so-subtle message?). the corn husk nativity and Moravian stars we found for our first and only Christmas in Winston-Salem.

among my favorites is a bird's nest given to me by my Peace College suite mate and daily walking friend, so long ago she likely doesn't remember it. a nest with a tiny egg, a small nuthatch hand painted on its shell. when she gave it to me, she said this was something her mother had always kept in her own tree. because legend held that choosing a Christmas tree where a bird had nested would bode well to the family for that year.

every year i tuck the nest carefully in the branches of the tree to be sure it won't fall. and i marvel at the unknown artist who could paint something so small — no larger than a penny — yet so detailed. 

+++

a few minutes ago, my niece called to FaceTime, her not-yet-two-year-old showing me her tree, her snow globes, how she sits in her favorite chair right in front of the tree and kicks it softly, to see the branches glisten with the twinkling lights. every morning when she wakes, her mother says, she marvels that the tree still stands there in her living room, filled with Santas she can touch. 

i turned the camera around so she could see my tree, showing her every Santa i could find. her eyes widened as she said: ho ho ho!, with each one. then i showed her my little bird's nest, and she said 'tweet.'

little treasures. 

and there are so many days yet to give.


 writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Monday, December 8, 2014

the first gift.

my friend George knows the storyteller's art. he pulls you in like fresh catch, asking you questions about yourself until he lures the conversation to the tale he longs to tell. i have always loved his stories, whether they be about his extended family or set in the high school locker room we girls could never enter, or at the 8th grade lunch table or about the quirky folks who made up our town when we were children. George seems to remember everybody he's ever talked to, the conversations he's had with them, moments in class from our junior year when a misstep by a classmate turned into the perfect comic moment. how his French teacher uncle always identified his students by name en francais. he is particular in his questions, mining for more stories as you talk.

i've probably known George my whole life — i don't remember meeting him at all. he was just always there, in kindergarten, in church, in the neighborhood. in his family he is the lone boy in a sea of older sisters. his father died tragically when we were in late high school. his father's twin sister lived next door to me. 

George's mother died this past week at 91, and though i couldn't make her service today, i sat down to write him a note. and then i thought better of it. and called.

when he picks up, his drawl of a voice stretches out for the length of the block where he grew up and where some of his family still lives. he is serious at first, though he assures me that all will be fine. his mother didn't suffer long. his father's aunt — also a member of our home parish — died at 100 only a few hours after his mother, so his extended family stands caught in their grief for both women, our tiny home church fielding two funerals in two days. we talk a bit about that, and then the stories begin, stories that follow a route through memory into laughter and back again.

i'm easily lured. as the last child of a family not kin to anyone in town, our family stories don't extend beyond a generation. But George is kin to practically everybody, by birth or by marriage. and he knows at least one story about almost every one of them. if i had a day or two to sit with him (and i wish i did) i know i would hear them all.

our phone call is cut short (at 45 minutes) because of a business call he has to take, but the time with him on the phone feels so much like the first gift of Christmas that i have given myself. i tend to forget, now that my mother is no longer living in the house where i grew up, how much that house and that place mean to me. 

yes, i could have written that note (i will Mama, not to worry), but now i will treasure the story that came because of the conversation. thank you, George, old friend. keep 'em coming.



writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

these people

until about 10 years ago, i never worked in an office. of course i began my career slugging it away in a newsroom, and i worked in two of them for a few years until i didn't anymore. then i worked from home, raising two wiggly children who until that point were my most colorful of coworkers.

as i raised them, i carved out a sort of work like for myself, staking claim to a small room at the top of the stairs that was supposed to be the 'nursery' in the house we bought 25 years ago. it soon grew into my office, with built-in book shelves and a Pottery Barn desk with room for all of my files, a small closet where i could store all the accouterments needed for the life of a writer at home.

i loved this life, getting out of the office long enough to meet with writing students or interview very cool folk, but knowing i could retreat to my space by the end of the school day and collect whatever jewels my children chose to share with me about their day.

and then, college happened.

just about that time, my church called a new priest, a young man whom i might have babysat if i'd lived in his neighborhood— he was that young. but in time, he began to build a team of people who would lead him through a period of tremendous growth for our church. some of these wonderful folks were already at work there. others joined their ranks a few years in, tapped by my priest because he found them to have a particular talent he felt we needed.

when he approached me about joining the staff for communications, i was reticent. i loved my freelance work, my free time, going to church but having little responsibility for it besides my monthly pledge. but then he took me to lunch and talked about that 'call' thing, and well, that got me, so i signed on.

i had not worked in an office with anyone since 1981, and in those first months, i found myself in a tiny corner spot filled with somebody else's filing cabinets. then he hired another, and the two of us picked out a soft purple color to paint the cinderblock walls of our new 'office.' he hired another and another, all i imagine taking them to that important lunch when he talked about 'call' and 'purpose' and leaving no room for 'no' in the conversation.


today we are a team, communicators and administrators and financial folks and children and youth ministry folk, priests and others, all of us forging deep friendships as we go about what i have truly grown to understand is a ministry.

i think too often when people here the word 'ministry', they think of hands folded, voices low, whispering in serious tones. grief.

and where i work, of course there is that, but.

we gather around the table at our weekly staff meetings, and we begin with prayer, surely. but as the meeting progresses, we might be asked who we are in the Star Wars trilogy, our favorite song from  the Sound of Music, or we might find ourselves breaking out in song to the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore. there is method to this madness (the MTM thing grew from a discussion about the preaching rotation (or ROTA), which morphed into 'Rhoda' and of course most of us are of the generation who would remember that Rhoda was MTM's best friend. that meeting ended when our newest priest took his collar and tossed it to the air. (no irreverence intended, to be sure)

who does this at work?

i hope everybody.

i love these people. and i hope everybody has staff meetings like ours, because it's therapeutic, particularly for those of us in ministry work. (and by that i don't mean ordained ministry, b/c 90 percent of our staff is not 'ordained'. but we have been called, to be sure.

and the joy of it is, we leave our staff meetings laughing, ready to take on the sadness many of our parishioners share with us daily, and maybe to offer them some hope. we are there to listen, to make copies for them, to share lunch and conversation, break bread in communion, to hear them out, even, when they think we are not doing our jobs.

tonight we gathered with the leadership of our parish to celebrate the end of what has been a challenging year — january brought a heart attack and open heart surgery for our priest. and each month that passed brought further challenges, either for our parish or for the Church at large. and because of the people i work with, we met the challenge.

tonight i want to thank these people (only a few of whom are pictured here) for welcoming me, for being my friend and for being a minister to me. blame the MTM song on the guy who photobombed the picture.

but be sure of this: love is all around, don't need to waste it, you can have the town why don't you take it? you're gonna make it after all.

try singing it. see what happens.

(tossing a priest's collar is optional of course.)


writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Hooked, Day 5 (lots of mixed metaphors in this one!)

imagine flying. 

bird-like, with a view of the ground from just above the treeline, then in a flash, soaring up toward the milky way and taking a right at that second star, then on til morning. flying.

the unencumbered and unchallenged kind of flying, the look-at-me-way-up-high, Peter-Pan kind of flying. FLYING!

ever since i was a girl and saw Mary Martin soar in her green felt suit across the television stage, singing that song, i have imagined flying like that, imagined flying free, like the boy Pan.

the idea of flying, only to be stilled long enough to never quite grow up beyond where you landed. now that would be something.

if i could choose a year i didn't want to grow beyond it would be fourth grade. at 9 you haven't really made any particular mistakes that you'll have to carry with you like you might, say, at 11. or 16. your parents still think you are pretty smart and cute, your friends love you completely, the acne hasn't yet landed on your face and though you may have a boyfriend, he never actually talks to you, so he doesn't matter all that much. gotta love 4th grade.

you still believe in Santa Claus (well, at least in 1965), still have not yet shaved your legs or started your period or felt the rising and falling of unexplained and unexpected feelings. you are flying. and high, hoping to land in that place 'where dreams are born and time is never planned.' and where nightmares can still be calmed with a lullaby.

at that age, i was not aware that i might one day make mistakes i'd carry on my back for years and could not flee, no matter how i might try to fly above them.

+++

i have always loved anything about Peter Pan, and years after the Mary Martin production, my son and i fell in love with Hook, the story of Peter as a middle-aged man who has forgotten what it's like to be a child. there are no special lyrics, no dance of Tiger Lily, but it's a wonderful examination of how quickly we leave childhood and move into the things that hardly matter. watching Robin Williams in the role of Peter, who eventually begins to understand the value of thinking and believing as a child, you imagine that this is a role he was born to play. i can't think of Peter Pan without thinking of this great actor.

+++

i thought about all this last night as i watched Peter Pan live. as soon as the stage opened to Wendy and her brothers, I felt much like a 9-year-old again, so absorbed in the story that by the time Tinkerbell needed me, I clapped hysterically to keep her alive just as i had when was was six.(my husband made fun of me on Facebook.) for a moment, even in fiction, i mattered, i was needed to bring about something important. 

there is something wonderfully freeing, flying-like, in abandoning all those burdens for a few hours, to remember what it feels like to be 6, or 9.

and to remember that years later for no explained reason, how you sang to your sleepy children words you had learned yourself as a child from Wendy, and Peter Pan.

how often, now ,does it feel like you matter. that someone's very existence depends upon  your clapping? 

and what do you think is around your bend, after you take that right at that second star? Morning, surely, but there has to be more.

sbr

Tender shepherd, tender shepherd, watches over all his sheep
one in the meadow, 2 in the garden, three in nursery, fast asleep.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

day 4 — turkey talk

years ago, when my husband and i were dating, both of us reporters for the daily newspaper in Augusta, Ga., we rarely ventured out for lunch alone. when i didn't bring my lunch (practically penniless, i was on a strict budget), a group of us reporters would find some dive place to grab a quick bite.

my then boyfriend wanted to keep our relationship a secret from the mob of news hounds in our presence, so we pretended to not really know each other all that well on these outings. then he would call me on the phone and talk to me, though our desks were barely 20 feet apart.

one favorite lunch place was a small sandwich shop tucked around the corner from the newsroom, and in my memory, we ate there fairly often, when i could afford a lunch out. my favorite thing on the menu was a turkey sandwich with cheese and a dollop of cranberry sauce (the canned, jelled kind my mother always served at Thanksgiving), with cheese and sprouts.

i'd never eaten such a sandwich. the turkey sandwich mama always made for us was but delectable: Wonder Bread, turkey slices, iceberg, sweet pickles (not bread and butter, but the homemade kind) and Duke's. simple. perfect. as i recall, on that reporter's first visit to meet my family, my mother made that sandwich for us to share on the ride back to Augusta from The Neck. (for the un-inititated, that's the nickname of my hometown.)

but i became a city girl, ready to take on new tastes, and this new way to create a turkey sandwich caught my attention. as had the rakish reporter who sometimes shared the table with me. and this sandwich would become a piece of our history as a couple... just like how i remember him giving me my engagement ring over a Wendy's single, no cheese. (and that is the truth.)

in the years since, i've made that turkey sandwich off and on, learning that my husband of 33 years really never liked the sprouts part but he ate it anyway. (he probably never knew that Wendys was not my fav of burgers, but i digress.

 i've been feeling a bit disconnected from that reporter of late, and i miss him. we come and go, sharing too often the spare conversational meal as we head out to work or wherever, our minds set on the next thing and the next, rather than on each other. it feels like after all this time, each other does not matter as much as it should, and this saddens me.

a young woman i work with who recently had her first baby is outright effusive about the love she has for her little nugget and the husband who helped make her. was i ever that effusive about that reporter i once knew? surely i must have felt that way, and  in recent days, i have been mining my memory to find that feeling again.

last night i made that old sandwich, lathering on the Dukes, changing out the spouts for shredded iceberg, piling on the turkey and the cranberry sauce, this time not the canned kind. just to see if he would remember.

i'm not sure he did, but he did say that this was always the best sandwich, which is a start.

what is it that reconnects a couple who have been have together so long that they've forgotten why they came together in the first place?  i have been thinking about this a lot.

i hope it can begin with a simple sandwich and go from there.




writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

whole food

i spent a long lunch hour today with friends i have known my whole life, celebrating a birthday... our shared history unspoken between us, but sound.

i have known one of them since kindergarten, the two of us sharing those first lessons in creating angular letters on the chalk board. Later, we three shared  reading groups, basketball and  cheerleading tryouts (one of us AlWAYS sat on the sidelines.) endured algebra class and diagramming sentences, weathered boyfriends (a few of whom we have in common), college angst, the uncertainty of new marriage (and the 30+year kind), parents who perplex, siblings who sometimes don't give us what we hope, or sharing the complexity of being an only child.

today we weather elderly parents, children launching themselves or who attempt, siblings who have never needed us before but now who suddenly do. all difficult things.

though i don't see them often enough, they make me whole, somehow, in a way only home can do. 

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

86

i've been carrying around some cargo in my car the past few days, waiting for today, when i could clear the clutter, if you can call it that, which i really can't. what some might consider clutter are remnants of my father — sports coats, dress shirts and pants —that used to hang in his closet.

we've been waiting for the time when my mother was ready to give them up. these were not his favorite things, but dress clothes he may have outgrown, both in fit and usefulness, that now hung in the guest room closet, dry cleaned and ready for something. perhaps some other body to inhabit them.

so that's what we decided, after we'd stuffed ourselves twice over the turkey and whatnot: to gather these few things up and pass them on.

i actually didn't mind my bodiless passengers. every time i opened the door to the back seat, i'd sniff them to see if they bore any traces of him, but they did not. i tried to remember when i'd last seen him wear that tweed blazer, the navy sports coat, the striped button down, the several pairs of khaki colored slacks, but i couldn't recall. it was right to give them away.

today is his birthday, 86 he would be. so it seemed the perfect day to donate these discarded pieces of his life to someone else to use. after lunch with my coworkers, i headed over to StepUp Ministry, which recently has created GG's closet, a place where men participating in their program, which is focused on financial literacy, can shop for interview and career clothes. (though women have similar clothing programs all over the country, men's programs are rare, it seems.)


(Daddy went on only one interview in his life that he talked about, and that was for the job he eventually held for more than 50 years — caretaker of the people of my home town. (when he applied for a loan to start his practice, the farmers who ran the bank asked for collateral, and he gave them his career, though they were used to dealing in land and tractors, neither of which he had.) 

he never wore a suit to work, saving them for church, funerals and weddings. he did wear a tie, but those were not part of my parcel.

i parked my car, gathering as many of his things as i could and headed to StepUp's front door, my heart pounding. i'd made arrangements to meet the volunteer director, and when i asked for her, handing over the first of Daddy's coats to someone at the front desk, i felt the tears coming. i'll go back and get more, i said, escaping. what was that about?

by the time i reached my car, the tears came on full force and i could not stop them, thinking only: i need to call my sister, she will understand this.

i gathered the last things and turned, finding the volunteer coordinator, a tall woman i had met briefly at my church, her arms open to me and to the burden i carried.

'i didn't think this would be so hard,' i said.

'i did,' she countered, 'which is why i want to give you a hug.'

we walked back with Daddy's clothes, and i found myself talking, probably too much.

'he was a physician,' i told her. 'many of his patients were poor.'

'what better place, then,' she said, 'than to share his clothes here.'

somebody soon will dress in my father's old navy blazer and his striped button down, his khaki slacks and head off into their own job interview. what they will have, if not land or tractor as collateral, is history —  one of helping and healing. 

such is what they need. 

i wish i had thought to put a small card in each pocket— 

'this blazer belonged to Graham Vance Byrum, Sr., raised in Sunbury, NC, father, grandfather, husband and physician. loved Wake Forest and circus peanuts. adored his wife. treasured his children & grandchildren. was tight with a penny and loved a pun. what you wear was donated on his 86th birthday. go for that job, and wear it well.'







writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Monday, December 1, 2014

my mother's house

author's note: it's likely that my reader has forgotten about me, it's been months since i've written anything. i've been blaming this on the fact i've had nothing important to say (as if i ever did in the first place.)

but as Advent begins, i've felt a little nudge again, a stretching that means the words are trying to get back to work. i hope you'll be willing to take a peek, at least for a short season, to see if there is still worth left in what you find here. my first effort is something like poetry. I am no poet. but i hope you will see the story in my words.
sbr


in my mother's house

sunlight pours 
through the open front door,
a puddle of warmth 
where the dog
sits, watching 
her world.
the living room rug
wearing the same colors as
my mother-made 
prom dress,
stretches out
in pinks, blues and aquas
of a spring bouquet,
a perfect fit.
the secretary where 
my father sat and
opened his letters, 
looms.
a memory 
of him holding his
letter opener,
the cat 
sprawled across
her mahogany throne,
waiting to hear his news.
now mama turns 
on the gas logs
with her 
new remote,
scans the paper
as her 
youngest grandson
gathers
his angular legs, 
so like my father's
and stretches
across the sofa
which i never saw him do.
i toss my suitcase 
on the bed that was
my brother's
in the old house,
finding 
my father's shoes
boxed
as if he had just
laid them there.
later
i climb between
whisper-soft sheets,
and weep
a bit,
knowing 
daddy
never once 
saw
the sun
spill through
my mother's 
new front door.



writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.