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Sylvie and small town manners

Mayberry (as defined by Wikipedia, the closest thing we have to an official “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”: a fictional community in North Carolina that was the setting for two American television sitcoms, The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D. It is also a song by American country music band Rascal Flatts. The thing is, if you live anywhere close to where I do, you know that Mayberry is a real town; it just isn’t called Mayberry. Look it up; you’ll figure it out. Hubby and I spent a few hours in Mayberry today. It was bittersweet.

Sylvie was my mom’s first cousin. I have no idea what that means in terms of her relationship to me, but it doesn’t really matter. She was nine years older than me, and in the summer of 1968 she was my almost-nanny. She moved from Mayberry to our house next to the airport in the Star City and lived with us for two months. I don’t remember much about that summer: she shared my bedroom, and her bed had a blue blanket on it…one that I still have. She could drive. We went swimming at a local swim club that didn’t have a pool, only a spring-fed pond that was COLD, and had a playground-type sliding board in it. That’s about it. After that summer she moved back to Mayberry. She went to college for a while. She got married, and divorced. And sometime in her early 20′s she was diagnosed with a very debilitating mental disorder. Her life from that point on was, well, difficult. She tried the standard medications, the ones that left her functional but with no personality at all. She spent time in mental hospitals and group homes. I lived with her mother and her for about 3 weeks when I took my first job in NC in late 1986. We, the family, would see her occasionally, at family reunions (when we used to have them every June,) or more recently, at a funeral. Before last September, I hadn’t seen her for about six years. We had a family reunion in September and she was there with her mother, my grandfather’s sister. She seemed happy to see all of us, but she was very quiet and withdrawn. A side-effect of the medication, perhaps.

Sylvie had three brothers and three sisters. Her oldest brother died in 1983. Her mother, my great aunt, has outlived her husband, her parents, and now, two of her children. It seems that life in Mayberry isn’t quite what we’ve been led to believe. Life, just plain old run-of-the-mill life, doesn’t always play out the way it’s portrayed on the tee-vee. It’s not all sunlight and roses. Shortly after our reunion in September, Sylvie got sick. She was in the hospital in Mayberry, and when they couldn’t help her she came here to the big city, only they couldn’t help her either. Hubby and I went to visit her while she was in the hospital here. She said she was fine, she didn’t need anything, that she appreciated our taking time to drop by and see her. She was released, only to be readmitted. The doctors said “cancer” but they weren’t sure how far it had spread. In the wee hours of December 30, she died.

So today we made the trip up the mountain to Mayberry to say goodbye. In some ways, seeing Sylvie today was much less painful than seeing her in the hospital. Her sixty years had been so hard, and the struggle is finally over. Her casket was covered with pink roses, but there were no other flowers, because the family requested that donations be made in Sylvie’s honor to the local hospice, or any charity of choice. I like that. Don’t send me flowers when I’m gone.

There is peace on the other side. We will all miss Sylvie. But the restlessness that was her life is calm now.

About those small town manners: the drive from the funeral home to the cemetery was, in some unspoken way, a much more appropriate tribute to her life than any words any of us could have spoken would have been. There was a police escort. Drivers pulled over, out of respect for the passing of a funeral procession, even on the highway. I was moved by the fact that, even though these people didn’t know Sylvie, they took a moment out of their day to pay respect to a neighbor, a fellow human being who was taking that final journey that we all will take. Hubby and I were chatting about something or other as we prepared to make the final turn into the cemetery. The police escort had pulled his car to the roadside and was standing beside his car.  As we passed by, we could not help but notice him, standing by his cruiser, head bowed, right hand placed over his heart. Whatever words we were sharing stuck in our throats.

Sylvie, her father and her brother are all dancing today. And the gift of the pink roses: perfect happiness, peace, and joy.

Update: the day after the funeral my husband sent an email to the Chief of Police in Mayberry, thanking him for the respect shown by the people who pulled aside as we passed by. The chief answered: “First, let me extend my sympathy on the loss of your wife’s loved on. Secondly, thank you for your kind words regarding the procession. Our department takes a great deal of pride in the way we handle funeral processions. I will pass this information along to the officer who conducted the escort. Thank you.”

Kind words, given and received, by perfect strangers. Try it.

on the passage of time

2011: the year that was, and wasn’t

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January: A wicked snowstorm at Valle Crucis and the profound beauty of all things made new; the mad dash to Santo Domingo, spending the week with the women of Cielo, the residents of the leprosorium, and my fellow travelers.

February: A birthday party for my step-father and a good time with the new sibs.

March: The month trust was broken.

April: Quiet before the storm.

May: A whirlwind, unplanned mini-vacation in the Cardiac ICU. Note to self: do NOT pass out during pre-op.

June: The trip to the DR that wasn’t, and the surgery that wasn’t.

July: The surgery that was, and the trip to Washington DC during the heat wave that was….ridiculous.

August: My girls at the beach;  gaining a new “daughter.”

September: Reconnecting with mom’s family.

October: When my daughter began to accept her beauty.

November: Thanksgiving with the step-family; the realization that I really do have a new family; our other “daughter” leaves, breaking our hearts in the process.

December: Quiet Christmas, the beginning of rebuilding trust; the loss of a cousin who was also a childhood friend to me; and finally, starting the journey back to my true self.

To my family and friends, old and new: let time go lightly.

things I’ve learned from the lepers

(All indented quotes are from the writings of Mother Teresa.)

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

See that beautiful woman up there? Her name is Mimi, and she has leprosy. I’m the one in the purple t-shirt, and I’ve suffered from my own form of leprosy as well. I’ll explain in a minute.

Leprosy: as defined by the National Institutes of Health, also known as Hansen’s Disease.

Even those who never read the Bible know that it’s full of people with leprosy. The unclean, the untouchable, society’s outcasts, forgotten, ignored, or viciously and deliberately scorned, the “least of these.” There are all sorts of theories about what the word “leprosy” really means, as used in the Bible. Everything from mentally insane, emotionally disturbed, or merely unpopular to people forced to sit at the roadside and scream “Unclean!” to passers-by, people who were considered to be highly contagious, even before we as humankind knew what “contagious” really meant, or how pathogens and bacteria are transported from person to person. People described as being “covered in sores”.

For anyone who isn’t aware of it, leprosy still exists today. Statistics abound as to the number of new cases diagnosed every year. Look them up if you’re interested. Off the top of my head, I know that the number of diagnosed cases is rising in India every year. Ninety-five percent of the world’s population is immune; of the remaining population, those who contract the disease can be treated with antibiotics and are considered to be non-contagious after as little as two weeks of treatment.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a pill that will cure the perception that people with leprosy are “unclean”, and the practice of confining people with leprosy to controlled facilities to “protect the surrounding populations and communities from contagion” still occurs.

I have been blessed to have been allowed to visit a leprosorium on numerous occasions since my first visit to the Dominican Republic in 2000.

Yep, you read that right. BLESSED. Here are a few things I’ve learned from the residents of the Sisters of Mercy (Mother Teresa’s organization) leprosorium:

You’re never too old for a teddy bear. (Notice the beautiful hands holding the teddy bear.) Same is true about candy; go have that Snickers bar, or a Jolly Rancher.

Blindness doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t see, nor does deafness prohibit you from hearing.

If you can’t sing well, you can still sing loud.

If you can’t dance, it doesn’t matter. Dance anyway.

When someone loves you enough to throw a party in your honor, make every effort to attend. But if you can’t make it, and they really love you, they will bring the party to you.

Never, ever, underestimate the value of a simple touch.

Language barriers don’t always prohibit honest communication. Sometimes those barriers enhance honest communication.

There are people who still keep their word, no matter what. A Wake Forest student visited the leprosorium during spring break a few years back, and she made friends with one of the gentlemen residents. Although he was blind, he insisted on having a polaroid picture taken of himself, with his new friend. The picture was taken and placed in his hands. He then asked the student to place his fingers over her face, so he would know exactly where her face was in the picture, and he told her, “I will pray for you.” The following spring the student returned, and when he heard her voice he called out to her, saying “I prayed for you!” and showed her the picture. Her face was no longer visible, having been worn away by his touch as he held the photo as he prayed.

The beauty of a home is as much or more about the people who live there as it is about the materials by which it was constructed, or by the luxury of the furnishings within. Stuff is…..just stuff.

This is the doctor who takes care of the patients at the leprosorium. He’s worked there for 35 years, give or take. He knows a great deal about the symptoms, treatment, and care of patients with Hansen’s disease.  The thing about leprosy is that it damages peripheral nerves, effectively removing the patient’s ability to feel pain. A person with leprosy can get a speck of dust in his eye, and because he feels no pain, he does nothing to remove the irritation, thus damaging the cornea and potentially causing blindness. A person with leprosy can get a burn or a scrape on a hand or foot, and because she feels no pain, the smallest of injuries can become so infected and inflamed that permanent damage occurs. Sometimes the patient loses fingers or toes, or hands or feet…all because there is no pain to warn him of a problem. In other words, pain can be a blessing, an indication of something that needs attention, NOW!

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. 

The doctor also knows about that ‘other’ form of leprosy. He calls it ‘leprosy of the heart’. When we lose our ability to feel empathy for others, to be willing to walk in their shoes, to seek first to understand rather than to be understood, we become hardened; we don’t see the needs of those who surround us every day. I confess to struggling with this form of the disease.

The first time I visited the leprosorium, one of the first residents I met was Enrique. He LOVES Senor Jack, the American director of Mission Emanuel. He always had a smile for everyone he met. His ‘uniform’ always included a hat, most recently a Panama hat, and sunglasses.

Enrique died this week. I will miss him terribly.

But, borrowing from that other great bastion of wisdom, the script of “Men in Black”…he isn’t dead, he just went home.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do. -Mother Teresa

This just in…

Update:

Wubby is still not in the house. Wubby’s stuff is.

Meanwhile, in other news….

Baby Girl had a group project to do in English. (Don’t get me started on group projects.) As part of the project, they had to create a Power Point slideshow, at school, on the school’s computers and saved to a folder on the school’s network. Notice that all of the technology is owned by the school. No home computers were harmed in this process.

They finished their work last week, saved their stuff, and waited for their turn to present. Monday was their turn, only there was a slight problem: the Power Point file would not open. No way, no how. The teacher could offer only the following: “You’ll need to figure out why your file won’t open.” Baby Girl came home Monday quite distraught.

“We don’t know what’s wrong. It opened last week, we worked on it, saved it where we were supposed to. We did everything right, but the file won’t open.”

I asked her a couple of questions, like “was it saved as a .ppt or a .pps?” and “Did you maybe save it in a previous Power Point format?” She had no idea.

So, Tuesday morning I sent an email to her English teacher:

Baby Girl has expressed a great deal of concern about her group’s PowerPoint slideshow for their project. According to BG, she and her group members worked on the file and finished it last week. She also says that it has been saved in the correct folder, but will not open now. If this is indeed the case, then one of the group members needs some technical assistance in order to ascertain the problem. If there is no one at NDHS with the expertise to help, then please allow her to call me. I have a technical computer background, and may be able to help her over the phone.

Thank you so much.

If you’re an aficionado of TNT’s series, “The Closer”, then you will understand exactly what “Thank you so much.” means. If not, refer to any previous discussion regarding the hidden meaning behind the Southern idiom “Bless your heart.”

I got a response from English teacher at the beginning of third period, Baby’s class:

I had one of the students from the group just stop by my room.  I tried to pull the power point up on my laptop, but it didn’t work.  I sent Allyson, another member of the group, to the library to see if it could be converted.  The librarian couldn’t get it to convert.  However, Allyson created another slideshow last night and has it pulled up on my laptop now.  They should be able to present today without any problems.

Hope this information is helpful.

Hmmm, she doesn’t have a clue about what is wrong. Converted? From what to what, exactly? But, her closing remark indicates that she also knows how to say “Bless your heart” without using those exact words. I don’t find this answer to be satisfactory:

That’s great! 

I do think the students should be able to find out what happened to the original file, just in case it was something they inadvertently caused. However, Baby Girl’s description of the problem sounded more like there was some kind of file corruption. I know she is going to be gun shy at working with PowerPoint at school. She takes everything VERY seriously, and was practically in tears yesterday afternoon over this.

Was there a particular error message displayed when you tried to open the file?

I waited. She replied, some time later:

The librarian told Allyson it had something to do with the antivirus software…maybe they downloaded a picture the software didn’t like.  They also did not save it in the correct folder.  It was supposed to be saved in my teacher folder labeled 3rd period, but I found it in the “general” teacher folder.  I don’t really think this was the problem, though.

This still doesn’t help anyone, and poor Allyson had to reproduce the group’s work, at home, so they could finish their project. I have a problem with that, too. Not able to leave well-enough alone:

Thanks for keeping me in the loop re: the folder issue. The problem does still seem to be a bit vague, with the potential of reoccurring without the students’ knowing about any problems until they tried to open the file for presentation. If the anti-virus software detected a problem, it would be logical for the software to issue an error when the file was saved, which could have happened and been missed by the students.

 I’ll work with Baby Girl on file location techniques in Windows programs.

 Thanks again.

We discussed all this when BG got home from school. Yes, they presented Allyson’s reproduced file. BG also told me exactly where they went to locate the misbehaving file, and her description matched where the teacher said the file should have been. BG could quote EXACTLY where they went to try and open their original file, and she’s not a computer geek like her mother.

The end result: no one knows what happened, and no one at school really cares enough to figure it out, which means that the students have gone through this annoying exercise without learning anything worthwhile about how to avoid this type of problem in the future.

So: my daughter, without really trying, has learned everything she needs to know about how to work as a help desk technician.

Every silver lining has its cloud, I suppose.

it isn’t supposed to be like this

As if no one knows, I am 50 years old. I’ve been doing this math problem in my head since January, and it’s easier to do with a number that ends in ’0′. Here’s the calculation: When my mom was x years old, I was y years old. Then this whole list of things starts popping into my head, things that were happening in my life when I was y and my mother was 50.

OK, that sounds really confusing. Here’s an example: when my mom was 50, I had a 2 year old son and was working full time (plus some) as a systems analyst. I was also singing the the church choir, finding out that I had fibromyalgia and wondering what life was going to look like on the other side of that realization. Stuff like that.

So now that I’m 50, I start thinking about where my kids could have been by now, if I’d had them at the same age mom was when she had me. I could be a grandmother. There’s a mind-blower. I could be experiencing the empty nest that everyone talks so glowingly about. We could be finished with (at least) one iteration of  one of the kids (who would be adults) having changed careers.

I have two cousins that are a bit younger than me. One has three children, a sophomore in high school, a senior in high school, and a 21-year-old who can’t figure out who she is or what she wants out of life. She tried college; she tried Parris Island (lasted about 4 weeks), and now she is back home, working and studying automobile maintenance at the local community college, only girl in the program. Sounds like fun.

The other cousin has three children too. One is 22, in Iraq.The second one is 20, in the Navy, stationed in Hawaii. The third just had a baby, so my cousin is a grandmother.

These are all concepts that are kinda hard for me to grasp my sad little brain around.

Here’s another one: one of my children has been booted from the family domicile. Never, ever thought I’d be here, at this time in my life, dealing with this kind of problem.

Surprise! Woody Allen said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” So true. Now there are all of these pieces of things that I thought would be one way, scattered around the edges of my life. And his life, too.

Tough love is hard, damned hard. We’ll get through this, and the result of the putting of pieces back together won’t look like it did before the glass was broken. I don’t like the not knowing part.

Too bad. It’s here and I have to deal with it.

But, as Scarlett O’Hara said: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

And cousin Melanie: “Whatever happens, I’ll love you just as I do now until I die.”

heaven’s just too far away

So, it’s time to plan for the week in Cielo (heaven) next January, and I’m agonizing over this decision, again. I was supposed to go last June, but my summer medical mystery tour kept me home. (Gee, I should write that blog post, seeing as the adventure is on-going.) The trip is relatively expensive, my Baby Girl just got her heart broken over a potential trip to the British Isles next summer, and I really want to take her somewhere for her 18th birthday. New York is high on the list, again.

Heaven always seems to be just out of reach, a little too far away.

———————————————————–

A couple of Saturdays ago we had a family reunion in the Gap. The descendents of David Ed and Lena Pearl gathered on the mountain to reconnect and reflect. Thanks to Alecto, Lena Pearl’s spirit was allowed to return from her walkabout in CT. (Alecto kidnapped Pearl last September when she took a nap in the Gap and stumbled upon Pearl in the parking lot of the motel. I think Grandma Pearl was concerned about Alecto’s traveling chicken.)

Anyway, this is Ed and Pearl:

This picture was taken around 1978. Ed passed away in 1979; I was a senior in high school. Pearl was about 75 in this picture; Ed about 80, I think.

This is their nuclear family:

From left to right, there’s the youngest son, HB; oldest daughter, OC, Pearl, Ed, and my grandfather, WC. We’ve lost them all except the oldest daughter, who is now 90 years old herself, and still driving.

Pearl lived to be 100 years old. We had a big party for her birthday, and one week later she passed away quietly, in her sleep, as she had wanted. She outlived her husband and three of her children (they had a stillborn son as well). She also outlived one of her grandchildren. I can’t begin to comprehend what life was like for her, how much the world changed in the hundred years she was here. She rarely ventured off the mountain, which makes her  impromptu escape to CT last year even more intriguing. She saw the ocean for the first time when she was 94, and she told me once that the only thing she regretted was that she never learned to drive.

This is my grandpa WC, my grandma, and my mom:

Betcha can’t guess when this was taken……NOT.

WWII: he wouldn’t talk about it to anyone. Except for my father-in-law, who also served during the war. The two of them met at a birthday party for hubby when he turned 30. They sat together under a tree in my parent’s back yard and chatted for hours, about the war. After they died we found letters they had written to their families back home.  For two men who didn’t talk much, they both sure had a lot to say when they put pen to paper.

My grandfather was a farmer, a furniture salesman, and a grocer like his father before him.  We always called Grandpa WC’s store the “fruit stand” because he would drive from his home in Virginia down to South Carolina every week to buy fresh fruit. There’s another store now where his store used to be, but there will never be another “fruit stand” there. He was also a butcher who had a reputation all around for the quality of his meat products. The first time I met Hubby’s oldest brother and his wife, we played the “six degrees of separation” thing (before it was called that) and I discovered that my future brother-in-law would drive 45 miles to buy steak from my grandfather. Small world and all that.

After the reunion we drove by the old place, where my great-grandpa Ed’s store was. It’s been torn down since I was in the Gap last. Seeing that empty place where his store used to be punched a great big empty hole in my gut. It’s still oozing.

This is Pearl’s house:

It’s still there, but it’s showing it’s age these days. The barn and outbuildings are gone now. There were two big rocks on either side of the front steps. When we were kids we used to jump off those rocks out into the yard. We were such daredevils. There’s a creek that runs behind the house where we used to play, trying to catch crawdads. And there was a milk can cooler in the front yard, fed from the creek I suppose. Grandpa Ed was forever warning us to stay away from it because we might fall in and get hurt.

See that side porch there? This is it:

Pearl had a way with plants, could grow anything. So did her son, my grandpa WC. That porch was our playground, our school-where we learned to shell peas and snap beans, to knit and crochet and mend, our courting place-sharing the swing with the cute cousins who came to visit. Hey, this is the South. Dating cousins is allowed, not that we ever did. We just shared the swing and wondered what it was like to be older than our 10 or 11 or 12 years, and to have a “real” boyfriend.

This is the five generations, 1962:

See that toddler there, the curly-haired, tow-headed blonde with the pigeon toes? That’s me.

And those are the people that made me.

• Farmers and farmers’ wives
• Business owners
• Part-time Independent Baptist preachers
• Quiltmakers, knitters, seamstresses
• Mill workers
• Butchers
• Secretaries
• Salesmen
• Systems analysts who never studied computer science in school, but excelled in the industry none the less

I am the sum total of these people, these lives. They have given me so much life experience that my own children may never know. There are things that I’ve tried to pass on, but at 21 and 17, my children aren’t that much more interested in their family history than I was at their ages.

Baby Girl and I were driving somewhere the other day. She has always loved country music. I was forced into it, by her, and wound up loving it as much as she does. Anyway, this song came on the radio. I was driving. When I heard the words “fruit stand”, the sobbing commenced. What are these tears? Sadness for the lives that are no more? The way of life that is becoming more and more rare, and more and more precious? The joy of knowing that kind of life, and that kind of love, or of knowing that, someday, Heaven won’t be that far away, and hopefully that back porch will be there for us to enjoy again?

I think it is all of those things, and more.

Answer

Got the exact answer I expected. Tomorrow I will have a plan to go with it.

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homework

Baby Girl had a homework assignment to complete on the first day of school this year.  She had to write a poem about herself, about “where she’s from.” She didn’t ask for help, and I didn’t offer any. I think she got it just right.

Where I’m From

I am from long afternoons at the barn. Pastures sprawled out in all directions and the whinnies of horses. The sweet smell of hay and the feel of rough mane through my fingers. The taste of dirt after falling off.

I am from the days of watching Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon. Dragon Tails, Arthur, and My Little Pony. Singing along with Barney & Friends and the Sesame Street show. Telling Dora where to go and what to do.

I am from Scottish ancestry. The land of haggis, kilts and the sound of bagpipes. A land that fought valiantly for its independence, but lost. The same land where Nessie resides, making lake Loch Ness her home.

I am from two brave soldiers, both of whom fought in World War II. Overseas in a land unfamiliar, fighting a powerful enemy. Bearing the weight of war on their shoulders. Writing letters to loved ones back home, thankful that they are safe.

I am from weeks at the lake. Jumping off the dock, going out for boat rides. Watching movies and playing games with cousins. Spending time with the two neighborhood dogs. Fishing and eating dinner on the deck. Watching storms pass by.

I am from the love of history. The times of kings and queens. Of Tsars and Tsarinas. Guards standing watch outside palaces and castles. Times where sickness and plague ran rampant. And war was at every corner.

I am from the best family anyone could ask for. A mother, father and brother. Loving, caring, always there when you need them. People that could never be replaced. People that will always be remembered, their faces and names forever in my heart and mind.

She says she isn’t a writer.