The Delicate Center of Life

In the spirit of stating the obvious, life is hard. All around are examples of Broken Things. Broken dreams. Broken families. Broken minds and spirits. Broken promises. Broken hearts.
I struggle with a broken heart. There was a time when I gave my heart to someone who seemed to ask for it; seemed to want it. I gave him my heart freely and discovered my mistake too late. He has moved on, easily it seems to me, and now shares a roof with another woman. It costs me to admit this, because it is not easy for a strong, proud person to admit when they falter, but I have had a much harder time moving on myself, realizing that I was a disposable part of his life.
I share that place with you because I often write about the silver linings in hidden places. Truthfully though, sometimes you face something so completely out of your control that you break inside. You have to seal that break to keep going, but you always know it's there. It aches in bad weather. It makes you turn stations when certain songs play on the radio.
I am not sure how I would move past the Broken Things in my life without being able to focus on something higher than myself. Some call this God. For those who don't, there is a higher Common Good out there. There is humanity. There is "doing the right thing."
This evening, I indulged a yearly tradition at Emory University's Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It takes place each year in the university's chapel - a commemoration not only of creation, or of the creator, but an acknowledgement that we strive for that common good. The pastor phrased it beautifully - The delicate center of life. We believe that place exists. We pray for it. We sing of it. We share a vision of it with each other in the hopes that it will uplift those who most need it. People who, long ago or recently, sealed off a broken place in their heart to control the damage it did. Everyone who has lived a life has a few tombs hidden in the delicate center of their lives.
Every year, in that gathering space for both the finest of Atlanta's elite and the most ordinary of Atlanta's suburbanites, a safe haven is created. The room is dimmed. Candles are lit. Voices are raised. It is quietly powerful and wonderfully made. I hope the beauty of the evening seeped past all the hard, toughened places in people's hearts and reached the delicate center of their lives. I hope it reached into mine as well, and strengthened some of my own broken places.
My wish for all of you during this holiday season is that you encounter at least a moment that touches the delicate center in your life, and gives you peace, healing and rest.
-Laura

I Believe in Community

I got a great email from my dad's cousin yesterday. She said she was going through boxes, and had found lots of Burke papers - birth and marriage certificates, First Communion documents, stuff like that. She wanted to know if I'd like to have it.

Of course I did.

I returned her email with a chatty one of my own, and among other bits of news, I shared some of my latest goals with her. I find that expressing my goals has become easier these days. When my priest asked what had been going on for me lately, I told him as well. There's a calculated reason for this. I believe in community.

When I was younger, I used to have a negative opinion of community. I viewed them as oppressive and restrictive, viewed the people as nosy and judgmental. Certainly, some communities can be. But there's a subtle line there, and it's worth noting. When you let a community tell you who you are, they will control your life. But when you tell a community who you are, they will support you instead. And in fact, if you share with a community not only who you are, but who you want to be, whenever possible they will help you get there.

When you're a kid, that means the adults in the neighborhood will buy the worst tasting beverage imaginable from your lemonade stand and declare that it's fabulous. When you're an adult, that means they encourage you, tease you, quiz you, and hold your feet to the fire while you develop your plans. Their persistence can sometimes even substitute for your own, reminding you that your goals aren't all in your head.

In fact, just the other day when I confessed to a friend that my goals were big and scary, she did just what a community member does. She gently encouraged me to get over it, with these words: Dreams are no more scary than real life. If your dreams were unrealistic, you'd know it. But you know they aren't.

This may not seem connected to the memorabilia I mentioned earlier. I was reminded however of a piece of family history I already have. In these obituaries, you see people, recently deceased, being described by the loved ones they left behind. You can't help but wonder how you'd be described if someone were writing yours.

These family members had a loving community to miss them when they were gone, a community that knew who they were. So at my age, as I am reconnecting with who I am and who I always wanted to be, I acknowledge not only that I have dreams, but that I can nurture them into reality. I find that I want my community to know that the dreams are as much a part of me as the real bits they already know about. I'm not afraid of telling them in case I were to fail and embarrass myself. In fact, I'm not even afraid of falling or failing anymore, I'm just afraid of not trying. And I need them, along with my family, to remind and encourage me to keep trying.

That's how hard things get done. With help. And when you know that getting help will definitely make hard things easier, don't you want everyone to know?

--Laura

The (S)Low Country

Savannah is known as "The Coastal Empire." Just across the river, coastal Carolina is known as the "Low Country." Its nickname: The Slow Country.

When the marketing folks were picking out labels, you just have to wonder, "Did they mean to?"

My mother's family is gathering this week in south Georgia for a reunion, my grandfather's family name is Rollins. That side of the family is more shadowy to me than my grandmother's side of the family, dominated by close knit sisters. Two of those sisters married three of the Rollins brothers; my grandmother married one (Ralph) and my great-aunt Helen married two. Bennie died before his first son was born, and his younger brother Walter felt it was his duty to provide for the widow of his brother. This is a picture of their family in 1963.

So in a true southern cliche, our family contains double first cousins, or "kissing cousins" as some call it.

So this weekend I will drive mom down to see everyone. I will try to take lots of pictures, I will help my mom get the fruit tray which will be her contribution to the reunion potluck, and people familiar and unfamiliar will sit around a table at some random gathering hall to share stories I've heard in one form or another most of my life. They'll talk about Minnie Jean. They'll talk about Freddie. They'll talk about Harold, Walter, Austin and Ralph.

I've been to Savannah several times since I left home in 1988. This weekend it will be a distinctly different perspective, punctuated with family stories and connections. We will all pause from our usual weekend activities for a day to recall where we came from.

It will give Slow Country a whole new meaning.

--Laura

Help yourself. You're family.

There’s a stage to every friendship, where a person stops being a guest in your house. If they ask for a glass of water, you reply, “Help yourself. You’re family.”

Some people reach this more quickly than others, and while it sounds like a title you bestow on a person when you’re too lazy to get up and get them a glass of water, it’s really a much more delicate arrangement than you might realize. Without being aware of what has happened, an agreement has been established between the giver and the recipient of the “you’re just family” title.

First, the giver is comfortable enough with the recipient of the title that they don’t rush to the kitchen to make sure the glass is actually clean before filling it. This is either because they know they washed the dishes last time instead of their children or significant other, or they realize that if the recipient of the glass doesn’t think it’s clean enough, they’ll wash the glass themselves without giving the dirty glass a second thought. And that thought doesn’t give you the shivers the way it might with random folks, because family won’t tell your business out in the neighborhood.

Second, the recipient actually does know where the glasses are kept, because they’ve been in the kitchen plenty of times and over the years they’ve washed the glasses a few times to boot. They may have even washed a few forks. And they know where the ice is, and they know that there’s a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge for after one of “those days” at work, because that’s the way it always is.

It’s always a bit of a balancing act in relationships: when does someone hear “you’re just family” for the first time? Don’t be too stingy with the title this year, okay? Connections these days are tough. People are so busy keeping families healthy, companies satisfied and their summer lawns mowed that it’s harder than ever to reach out, connect and form friendships. And friendships, once established, are difficult to maintain under those daily pressures.

This weekend my parents updated me on a couple they know. When my mother was in the hospital undergoing heart surgery, one of them stayed with my father and me in the waiting room the entire day. He just took off work, so that dad would have a masculine voice in his ear keeping him distracted the way I did not have the strength to do. Now, he and his wife are so busy that my parents rarely see them, and they are struggling to maintain connections.

The same evening my friend Stacy told me about a neighbor having marital problems because she’s on call so much with her government job that her husband only sees her when she’s rolling into bed.

Another friend of ours lives with her boyfriend, yet sees him less than three times a week because he is caring for his ailing father.

Many people I hold dear are so busy that I’m lucky to see them at all, or only in passing. And these are just my friends, so you can imagine that they hold the same complaints against those they share beds, vows or genetic material with. It’s just hard to stay intact when so many responsibilities pull you in so many directions. No one has an ideal situation. You rarely know when you sign up for a relationship just what kind of challenges it will face. In fact, I think if you know them upfront, you might just be one of the lucky ones. You might just need to feel grateful that you had some advanced warning, because plenty of other people get caught up in the first blush of romance, and the challenges just sneak right up on them.

So this summer, when anyone bothers to check in on you and there’s even a little hint that they might want to see you face to face, worry a little less about the state of your house. Toss everything embarrassing in the spare bedroom and tell them to come right on over. You never know; you may need them as much as they need you. This summer might just be the start of a beautiful friendship. Don’t miss that opportunity to tell a previously casual friend, “Help yourself. You’re family.”

--Laura

Baby Powder and Vaseline

This is a picture of me standing near a tree in the front of our house. At the time, we lived in a little town called LaMonte, Missouri. My dad was stationed at Whiteman AFB.

The expression on my face stems from the fact that I was unaccustomed to 1. that much clothing, and 2. shoes. My parents took all these photos of me because it was such an event getting me properly outfitted for the weather. They usually got me this wrapped up and then I'd tell them I needed to go the bathroom and they'd have to start all over again. Lamonte was the house we moved to after Guam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam where if people told you that an event was formal, it meant you wore shoes. I hate shoes to this day.

Later, in the summer of that year, I would have a gleeful day of destruction with my best friend, Brenda. She lived across the street. We decided to pull pranks all day.

First we tampered with my dad's slop jug. This was a cold glass bottle he kept filled with water in the door of the fridge. While he was working outside, he'd come in the house and tilt back the slop jug for a drink. That day, we the jug, coated the bottom of it with vaseline, and refilled it.

Missing a sense of immediate prank gratification, we decided to play. So we poured a full container of baby powder out on the hardwood floors in my bedroom to make a skating rink. With bare feet, it was possible to skate if we kept "re-icing" the floor. After we'd had fun with this, we were covered in powder, so we went to the bathroom to wash off. Somehow we ended up taking off all our clothes while in the bathroom. Quickly we arrived at our next idea. We thought it would be fun to race outside and flash the neighbors. Naked, we ran outside, but quickly lost our nerve as cars began to ride by, so we hid behind this tree for what seemed like an eternity, until we could get back inside without being seen.

I think that was the same day we played gas station with my dad's car and filled his tank with the garden hose, but I can't remember. It seems like a lot of trouble for one day, but we might have done it all at once.

The gas station day, whether that day or another, did not end well for any of the children suspected of participating. But no adult knows for sure who actually pulled the prank. And I still won't name names.