Broken Legs and Watermelon

On July 2 my only granddaughter broke her leg. No one had been around to see it happen, but when Phil, fiddling with the water sprinklers on the other side of the house, heard her crying. He found her on her hands and knees under the jungle gym.

She's a tough cookie, though. Knows no fear. After being cheered up and set on her feet and then treated to corn dogs and ketchup for supper, all seemed to be well. Except that afterward she refused to get off the bench. Seeing that this normally tough child refused to put weight on her leg, Phil and Katie decided to take her to the doctor. How does a two-and-a-half-year-old break a leg?

She will be casted on Monday after the swelling goes down. For now she's wearing a splint. When she arrived at my house yesterday, the 3rd, her father's 31st birthday, asleep in her car seat and curls spilling down over her face, I got teary. Life is so fragile and we break so easily.

When it was decided we'd all go down to the C Shop for Phil's free jelly beans (the shop gives out free beans in the amount of your years), Evelyn, now awake, said, "Granny Bee, will you carry me to the buggy?"

The candy shop was crowded, the day warm, the holiday weekend already begun. We left Evelyn Rose outside with her mum, and I bought her a Daisy Mint. She was pleased.

They're gone now, off to celebrate the weekend with other family. And I'm left alone thinking about my only granddaughter's broken bone. And how she's such a trooper. I wonder how much pain she, like the rest of us, will suffer in the school of hard knocks. Will she be able to land on her feet and sally forth every time? I suspect so. I'd like to be like her.

She loves watermelon. She is sighing over just how much she loves it. In this small way, we are like each other. 

Yeah.

Guideposts Daily Devotional--June 26, 2009

You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.
—Ephesians 2:19–20 (RSV)

Bankhead is a ghost town north of Banff, Alberta—once a thriving coal-mining town housing immigrants from all over Europe. Built by the Canadian Pacific Railway at the turn of the last century, it was Canada’s first planned community, with running water and electricity, sports arenas and schools, and Holy Trinity Church. Built atop a knoll between Upper Bankhead (where the miners and their families lived) and Lower Bankhead (where the mining operations were located), the church was visible from home or work, the center of the religious and social life of this peaceful Rocky Mountain town.

Though it was Catholic, the church allowed Protestants worship time whenever they could find a minister. On Saturday nights the various nationalities took turns sponsoring ethnic dances in its basement. Funerals for the miners killed below were held here; weddings too. What’s left for us is its foundation, and each time I wend my way to this place I have to search harder to find it, for the forest has slowly crept up the knoll, hiding it from view.

But here it is, its massive foundation rising out of the ground, framing the basement and topping out some ten feet high. Here the wide cement stairs climb to long-ago doors that once opened beneath a simple steeple and summoning bell. No walls now, no ceiling, no steeple or bell; just the foundation and stairs that meet the sky and heaven beyond.


Last summer I climbed the stairs, and sat, feet dangling into the basement. Slowly I began to sing a hymn: “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. . . .” Just me and the trees, the chipmunks, the grazing elk, the breeze, and the presence of God Who lingers here still.

Dear Lord, You are my one foundation, yesterday, today and forever.

“The brighter the persona, the darker the shadow.” --Carl Jung

Last month an amazing thing happened.

Forty years ago I lived in Orange City, Iowa, a small Dutch town of solid Christian and American Reformed, my family moving in when I was a sophomore in high school. It was not a pleasant experience. In 1967, this town of 3,000 knew more about our family than we did and I suffered a lot of social humiliation at the hands of the bleached blond girls. The social fabric of high school, experts tell us, is vital for healthy psychological and social development, and I did not escape those two years without damage to psyche and soul. And so forty years later I can’t think too deeply of Orange City without risking a sensation of mortification and emotional fear. Of pain just beneath my sternum, shortening my breath. In college I came across Carl Jung's “The brighter the persona, the darker the shadow.” Orange City, for all its Christian motif, was a dark place for me at the time; and if I think of Orange City at all it is Judy’s face I see. Rightly or wrongly, she came to symbolize that town. Then last month the most amazing thing happened; she e-mailed me.

Ironically, I'd only recently applied for a one-year teaching position at the university there, where my father served as academic dean all those years ago. I swore I’d never return. The last few years, though, I’ve been in this mode of revisiting my past—scattered as it is all over the U.S. and Canada—to see if I can’t find understanding in my patchwork upbringing. I currently need a teaching position and Northwestern needs an instructor. And so I applied—though I secretly wondered if I could walk into the metaphorical lions' den without getting myself mauled. Ironically Judy e-mailed.

It was not in my consciousness that anyone from Orange City would be writing, though. I kept trying to place Judy in Tempe, Arizona, where I’d moved my senior year. Nothing fit. Suddenly Judy’s maiden name popped into focus. Did I remember her? she wondered. “I was part of a place that caused you much harm,” she wrote.

I must have sat absolutely quiet for several minutes. She’d read something of mine, she said, in Guideposts Daily Devotionals, and wondered if it was me, from high school. So she looked up my blog and website, where I make mention of Orange City and its darkness, the girls, the prevalent self-absorption. She'd named herself as part of that harmful place. Something turned in my mind. Old feelings of humiliation and fear dissipated. Vanished. I discovered I could think of Orange City without turmoil. I could actually go back to teach and not be bait for the lions of my past. What kind of miracle was this?

I took a couple of days before responding. I wanted her to know what a gift her e-mail was—yet I didn’t want to brush the past too quickly under the rug. It stood between us and it was precisely because of my memory of her unkindness that her extension of friendship meant so much. “Yes, I do remember you,” I finally wrote, explaining that in my mind she was the worst of the lot. It felt cruel to write such words. But it was Judy and the others, after all, who’d brought on my knee jerk reaction years later when my son told me his junior year of high school that he’d gotten the phone number of a cheerleader. “A cheerleader!” I yelped, physically wounded. The bigger truth, though, was that I deeply appreciated Judy’s acknowledgment. She'd taken a risk. I wanted her to know how much this meant to me, an unexpected gift. In first one e-mail and then a second I struggled to name that gift, to describe the emotional freedom I now felt. She was gracious and wrote back, catching me up on her life. But she had no recall, she wrote, of deliberate unkindness, only that as an adult she can see how the town would have made me feel rejected. She was willing, she wrote, to be a face to that rejection, but as to targeted unkindness? Could you, she asked, give me a specific that might help me remember?

Our remarkably different memories astounded me. How could this be? How could she not remember what I remembered in such painful detail? More astonishing, though, was her graciousness and willingness to continue our dialog. A lesser person would not have bothered—annoyed that a simple gesture of friendship had resulted in an assault on personal character.

Our conversation was initially painful, I think, for both of us. But very quickly it became apparent that while my memory had become the reality out of which I functioned it was nonetheless unreliable. There is value in learning this—for grace can then trump. Judy was not without her own struggles back then, and I was able to view my experience through new perspective and gain a friend where once I did not have one. How does one explain this kind of miracle?

My mother says the emotional freedom from those dark years happened because I finally forgave the town for what happened there. Forgiveness implies I brought this about; yet I had nothing to do with it. It was Judy and her willingness to be a face to the darkness I felt, and to spawn a mystery I now seek to explain.

The mystery may have something to do with Jung’s “The brighter the persona, the darker the shadow.” Judy named the persona for what it was. A place that caused me much harm, yes—but harm not always intended. Named, the shadows disappeared. My son, who married his cheerleader, would tell me it’s simple physics.

Judy visits Orange City once a month, where her mother still lives. Perhaps the university will consider me; I’d like to experience Orange City with a friend. She tells me there’s Chinese takeout now. When the tulips bloom in spring, we could grab some sweet-and-sour pork, maybe lemon-glazed chicken, and head for the park where I used to go alone. Today we’d go as friends, creating new history from our past.

What Is It About Turning Seven?

When my youngest was about to turn seven I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed to get any older. Turning seven just wasn’t allowed. He was, of course, terribly disobedient and went ahead and turned seven anyway--whether I liked it or not. Every birthday thereafter it inevitably came up that he was continuing his willful course of disobedience. Once, when he was in college, I needed help in paying a bill. “You’re sure you can afford it?” I asked, needing the money but thinking he probably did too.

“Hey, I’m good. Remember, I’m not six anymore.”

Well, it’s seems perfectly unbelievable that I now have a grandson who is following in his Uncle Blake’s footsteps. Rome was over at my place for a sleepover not long after Thanksgiving and was all excited about his upcoming birthday on January 10. I told him that he was, in no uncertain terms, to turn seven. He laughed and rocked back on his heels and shook his head at me, like he couldn’t quite believe how naïve I am about these sorts of things.

“I’m serious,” I told him. “You can’t get seven. I don’t like it. I want you to stay six or I’m going to pout. See? I’m pouting?”

“Grandma Bee, I can’t help it! And I don’t want to stay six! Who wants to stay little all the time? I want to grow up and do things!”

“I can see you’re going to be obstinate about this, like Uncle Blake. How old is he now anyway? Twenty-eight? You tell me how many years he’s been disobedient. How long has he just gone ahead and gotten bigger anyway?”

Rome did the math. “Twenty-two!”

“Yes, and an old woman like me can only take so much grief in her life. You really need to stay six. Do this for me.”

Yeah, well, he told me there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it and, basically, that I had better like it or lump it. And he asked for some post-it notes so he could get started on making invitations for his party.

In the excitement of his mother's arrival in the morning he left his many post-it notes on the dining room table. Heather, when I called her, said she’d get him real invitations; I could keep his rough drafts. Which I promptly posted all over the house: my computer, my bathroom mirror, the frig, the front door…

January 10th arrived. I took over his birthday present. His last friend was just leaving an obviously successful party. Rome politely took his gift and began opening it.

“I don’t know if I want to give you a present, though,” I told him, “since you’ve decided to go ahead and turn seven.”

I love his laugh. His falling into himself, his sparkly brown eyes that his father says comes from some Native American great-great-grandmother. That I am perfectly silly was clear to him as well as little brother, Kodi, who tried to explain more clearly to me how these things work.

I left feeling sort of sad. I truly hadn’t want Blake to turn seven. And I really really didn’t want Rome to turn seven.

There is small comfort. Someday, if I’m lucky, Rome will have a six-year-old that will want to turn seven, too. There is that to look forward to.



_____________
PS If you want to follow my blog, click on "Followers"--which is up near where Rome's birthday invitation is. There's still only Tinsy Winsy and he's lonely. If you're like my friend, Pat, and fear having to give out all kinds personal information, this just isn't true.
PS/PS For my Republican friends, a little sick of my enthusiasm over Obama's presidency, I'm hoping a few of you will weigh in. KD just had eye surgery; she says she's waiting to see and will then make comment; and Jerry, well, I'm asking. We've been quarreling over this, I think, since Blake was the size he was in his grown-up palm in the image above. You know I'm always eager to hear what's in your head.

Martin Luther King’s Dream and Obama

Today while Martin Luther King Jr’s dream came true;

a day when men were judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin;

a day when freedom rang from every hill and molehill and every mountainside, every hamlet, every state, every city—indeed all over the world;

a day when we sang for the first time “My country tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty…” in truth;

today, while a dream came true, I was—I am sorry to report—going about more ordinary things. I updated my blog.

A new feature is a “follower” section—which you can see I’ve installed in the right hand column. I have but one follower so far—Tinsy Winsy, my childhood red sock monkey. I wish to invite you—on this greatest of days in the history of the United States, our founding fathers' promissory note now paid in full—to join Tinsy Winsy as one of my blogging pals. Say yes, and click on “Follow This Blog” button. On your mark, get set... It's somewhere close to my picture of Dr. King further down. ..go! And thanks.

Hey, but even if you don't want to join Tinsy Winsy? I still hope that everyone I know and everyone I don’t, can appreciate on some level the momentous paradigm shift in our country. My Canadian friends tell me the prayers of the world are with us. In this alone there is great reason to rejoice.

I find it all the more special to have happened just five days beyond what would have been Dr. King's 80th birthday. He could have lived to see this day. I'm sorry he did not. But that has been the price for today. Thank you, Dr. King, Happy Birthday. It's in the light of your life and shadow of your death that we stand in humble appreciation and deep gratitude.

On this day of dream come true, I simply end with the words of a friend who e-mailed today: “Peace on this great day.”

And for those of you who haven’t, for some time, read Dr.King’s “I Have A Dream,” here it is:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering his 'I Have a Dream' speech from the steps of Lincoln Memorial.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.