Black Like Her

 

I don't ever think about being white. Maybe that's the difference. I think about wrinkles or spots, about hair gone silver or lips gone thin and pinched, but never about being white. It's just not a thing. It doesn't affect what I do. Ever. It's just there. Nothing to be changed or even noted. A 70-year-old fact.

My husband said he had at least one black and several American Indian forebears somewhere in his genealogic tree a number of generations ago, but our son emerged blond and blue-eyed. No wide nostrils or high cheekbones. I never even thought of it, didn't consider for a second he could turn out otherwise.

But skin color, as it turns out, matters. Not because it changes a person's basic composition or worth, but maybe because it's so, well, so there.

I've thought a lot about how I look over the years. Green eyes, chestnut brown hair, smooth skin in fortunate times, bumps and blemishes in others. Long legs. Small breasts. Fingers that span eight piano keys and feet misshapen by bunions. But nothing so elemental as skin color. I didn't think of that. I don't think of wearing something that I can't change or hide, that covered me head to toe. Nothing that labeled or disgusted or frightened.

And here's the irony. As much as I tried to make myself beautiful from time to time, the most beautiful woman I ever saw had something I could never have. The most beautiful woman I ever saw was black. Not politely coffee or nut brown, but black. Senegal black. Slave black.

 I saw her only once, and stripped to the waist in a church bathroom in a homeless shelter on a morning when I'd been frying pounds of bacon in the kitchen, but paused to call everyone to breakfast.

I gasped to see her. She was astoundingly female. Round and generous everywhere that spoke of women--shoulder, hip, breast. Her skin gleamed, flawless and shining. She paused to look up, washcloth in mid-stroke over the back of her neck, but her head never turned. I saw her eyes in the mirror then, more slate than brown and just as flat and hard. She had no idea.

What I wouldn't have given for that beauty, that voluptuous depth. I would have traded my fashionable thinness, my obvious collarbone, my silly pink nipples for her charcoal and mahogany in a second. She looked like a woman. Next to her, I looked like a washed-out wannabe. I carried her image with me for awhile but later, shrugged off my envy and went back to my life, failing to notice again my white, almost completely ignorant of her black.

The closest I ever came to any kind of understanding was in Italy, where the locals knew me as Eastern European  by a look, where I was identified and catalogued by a glance. There, the way I looked determined how I would be treated--like a tourist--and how I was expected to act: to speak English, to ask simple, polite questions, to tip well. My foreigness was with me wherever I went. 

Maybe blackness is sort of like that kind of foreigness. Are we all basically the same? Sure we are. But for some, for those who can be categorized by a glance before anyone knows anything about their dreams or character, we automatically create distance. In that gap, wariness can become mistrust and mistrust breed marginalization. It changes the world. It changes us.

Even though I still don't think about being white, I do think about that beautiful black woman in the church bathroom. I still wish for her color and voluptuousness. I want to tell her how she looked to me, but can't think of how it could be done without sounding condescending. I don't like a world that won't let me do that.

 

Image: copyright Saatchi Art

The First Freedom

Freedom. This country has stood for freedom since it began. Even the Statue of Liberty declares it: Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free. 

Human beings, by their very nature, know they are destined to be free. It's the way we were made to function. But, today of all days, it's important to remember that we didn't invent freedom. Freedom isn't the property of the United States of America. We didn't wire people to need it, soldiers to fight for it, or provide anything new that hadn't existed before.

In fact, the first freedom had nothing to do with a country's rebellion against a king. Nor did it have to do with the abolition of slavery or with what we are allowed to talk publicly about, or with the ability to go to church anywhere we want. It had nothing to do with a constitution or a set of laws, ours or any other. 

Freedom is much older than that. The first freedom was bestowed by God.

The first freedom was free will. 

Yup. When God made men, He said, "Oh, by the way, I'm in charge of everything, and my plan will take place because I AM, but you get to decide what you're going to do regarding me. You get to listen to me or ignore me. You get to follow me or walk away. It's up to you. You're free."

And we know it. It's what we fight for. It's what some people have died for. 

We get confused about this sometimes and think the United States of America is special. One nation under God. But we forget that every nation is under God. And every nation that fights for the liberties bestowed on men by God is His. 

Were we one of those? Yes. Are we still? That might be up for debate, but the idea of freedom hasn't changed. A people who fights for personal freedoms does so because they were first given permission by God to have them. 

No, those freedoms are not absolute. They are not to be wanton. They are not to be random. We are meant to be governed by just laws made by honorable men, and that is worth remembering, too. But, as we celebrate the Fourth of July, let's remember that the United States of America is one nation among many acting out God-given freedom as best it can, that there is always more work to be done, and that there will always be a struggle somewhere.

America. One nation exercising God-given free will, joining all other nations doing the same. All the people of the world recognizing the good and noble in one another. Better together.

Sparrows and Lilies

 

Spring mornings at the farm were blue and white, colored by the sky, hard and square-edged. The memory of winter lingered long there. Birds hid in the woods. The sky commanded all. Horizon spread side to big side. Morning sun declared reign over bested hills. Red, pink, orange, yellow in response to cloud and temperature, but feeling more like a declaration from God that He’d done it again, kept the world rolling another day. Magnificent, out of any human control.

Even Florence’s stone streets were softer than the farm’s eventual demands. Its welcomes evaporated, its embrace withdrew. I am too big for you, it told me every day. I shrank from its stern declaration, tried unsuccessfully to soften its edges with dahlias, asparagus, and willows in flowerbeds appropriated from random underbrush, to temper its warnings with cats and grazing goats, to test its threats with housefuls of guests who could still see welcome where I no longer could.

The farm shut its doors to me, crowded me out with overgrown fields and a silting well, too much lawn, too much house, and echoes. Too many echoes.

The deed said the farm belonged to me, house and land, but the deed lied. It belonged to Dave still and dismissed my supposed authority with a perfunctory wave. No, it said. You hold no sway here. You can’t sign enough documents or plant enough flowers, or hire enough contractors to change that.

It was good practice, though, because this place is different. Green and willing, with rounded edges and birds that sing on garden chairs and front lawns, with neighbors that laugh and invite, with children and grandchildren within arm’s reach, lacking facile criticism and second guesses.

God reigns here, too, but He shares His sovereignty with me, gives me liberty to spread out and imagine. He commanded me here, mechanically propped up a failing body to possess it, said Go, and made me to live against my will. God is pulling out pieces of my past like Jenga blocks and I can’t help Him because He knows which ones will make the pile fall and I don’t. He’s driving and I’m along for the ride. I didn’t decide to live. I didn’t decide to move. I didn’t choose this place or these people. It’s not my life. It’s His.

Across the street, two squirrels chase each other around tree trunks. Not finding food, not building a nest, not caring for babies. Just running for the joy of it. God expects no more from them but to love their life. Like sparrows and lilies. Maybe even like me.

Unfolded

 A real estate agent will tell you that they can sell you a house, but it's not true. You don't choose a house. The house chooses you, being older and having had the persistence to stay put, whereas you found it necessary to abandon one place for another.

Then, once having chosen, the house reveals its secrets one by one, uncovering a stubborn drain here or a squeaky door there. In those first weeks, bricks, plumbing, concrete, and roof all announced their immediate need and I tried to prove my faithfulness in meeting them. 

A house saves its  best surprises, though, for its living parts. Within weeks of signing the papers, my house buried its life, shrinking beneath frost and snow, sleeping for five frigid months, taunting, hiding behind lowered lashes. Spring has come, though, and now that it has, the house yawns, stretches out its arms, and lets it fingers unfold in greeting, almost before I can see. 

 Crocuses first, purple and striped. Then the lush, but niggardly, green of a daffodil clump that saw fit to yield only one flower. The clematis sprouted only halfway up. The tree next to the arbor that won't tell yet whether leaf or flower will come first. Tulips, roses, raspberries, strawberries, all unwinding green from some inner storehouse of life, all according to their own predetermined recipe. 

This is the welcome that didn't come in the first week or month, that waited until I'd tested worthy. This is God's first breath saying, Yes. You are welcome here. Look what I've saved for you. This is only the beginning.

Hello, me. Nice to Meet You

 

Today is the last day of Indian Summer. Tomorrow, the cold will blow in and stay for four or five months. So I went for a walk. The sky is blue, the sun warm, and the colors of the autumn trees glowing. And I find myself in the most unexpected place: home. 

I shouldn't be surprised. During my entire 50-year adulthood, I have never chosen my own place to live. Not once. Until now. For a long time, I called no place home. There were places I lived happily, some very good places, and people I loved there, and things I learned. But here, this place, this house--it feels like a prolonged hug. Warm, familiar, like I'm tucking myself into the last void in the puzzle. A perfect fit. 

So I walked by the river today and along the way found a store. For the first time since I was  child, I find myself in a real neighborhood rather than a distant suburb or on a country lane framed by punishing hills. But there it was, a real store well within the reach of a comfortable stroll. So I tested it and bought an egg salad sandwich. That's always the test, after all. It passed. The bread was fresh and made with unbleached flour, mayo-ey eggs squeezed out the sides, and the lettuce still had a satisfying crunch at 2 in the afternoon. 

 I sat by the riverside to eat, then, on the way home, reveled in manageable, gravel-less sidewalks, and actual blocks with crosswalks and street signs that announce your arrival.

That's my car in the driveway. Yes, I have a driveway, too, and rather than a metal shed, an actual garage with an opener. I have garbage pickup and, finally, finally, a window on the second floor. I'm there now, looking out and watching a world that's at last the right size. The pine tree in the front yard is swaying in the wind and down below, right under where I'm sitting, October roses resolutely bloom.

It's said that living is like walking a road. If it is, then I've come full circle only to find myself at the end. Who would have imagined? Oh yes. Of course. Thank you, God.

My Elijah

 

 

I never thought of you as a priest before today. My priest. My Elijah.

There are others, of course, several of them. Two Davids and a Norwegian. But never you.

The living with you was clouded by passion, I think. Love and living every day hid that part of you just enough to recede into the background until you were gone. The man of high blood and towering mind was all I could see until, well, until it wasn’t and only the supernatural remained—that, and the sudden understanding today that the priest had been there all along.

Elijah made me see. The prophet, the leader, the seer, the sublimely wise beloved. And the parting.

Come with me here and there, he said. To Jericho, to Bethel, to the Jordan. I am leaving. What do you want of me?

A double portion of your spirit.

Elisha didn’t ask for Elijah’s body to remain, but his spirit, and twice what he once had, enough to last a long time, enough for the rest of his life.

This is what you’ve given me. You and the God who put it in you in the first place. By His grace and by your love, your spirit remains in me, and a double portion made available through freedom from life’s repetition, necessity, and error. Your going away made you more available, more wise, more kind.

So you stand by the Jordan, raise your arms, and the waters part. I watch you walk across and vanish from sight by flaming chariot. There is nothing else now to do but pick up the cloak that lies empty on the bank of the river.

Old Soul, Young Soul

It's said that some children have old souls. Quiet, understated, and probing, they ask unexpectedly deep questions and have a rare thousand-yard stare. They just don't quite fit in with their carefree peers. Like my granddaughter, Ella. She moves differently than her friends, talks differently, thinks that some of the things they do are silly when they are actually quite normal for ten-year-olds. She would rather go hiking in a park than to a carnival, cook rather than play a video game. She actually likes playing with her sister. Her mother says she has an old soul and I can see why. Some of the pictures taken of me as a child have that look.

But the thought made me wonder....do souls have an age?

Souls, after all, are a reflection of our prime of life--the best of us. They're what God made in Eden. They're us as if we were Adam and Eve--strong, capable, and agile. It's hard to spot the difference between body and soul in mid-life, because your body and soul are near the same age. Seriously. 

I always thought I was one thing. Yes, I knew that I was made of a natural and a supernatural part, a part that would die and one that would live forever. But it was hard to tell which was which. Everything worked pretty much in unison. Now I'm starting to understand more easily that, yes, body and soul really are two distinct parts of what makes us. The body is a big skin sack filled with blood and bone. The soul, well now, the soul is different.

And my soul is seventeen years old.

I've always know this. As I matured, it was like I was stuck there. Like part of me got that old and no older. As the years passed, the contrast between how I looked and how I thought I should look got wider. As did the difference between how I feel now and how I used to feel. I've never stopped being startled at my reflection in the mirror. Somewhere in there, my hair is still brown and my face unlined. Somewhere, I can still do an hour of aerobics and bench press 200 pounds. I know that because when the radio plays just the right song, I'm back there on a summer day, driving down Lakeshore Drive, wind in my hair, singing. Nothing's changed, really it hasn't. But actually, it has. That's obvious.

So, it's just memories, I thought for a long time. And then Dave died.

That's when I understood that there are times when we break, when parts of us are torn away. We can feel it, like when someone tugs at old fabric and it comes apart strand by strand. Afterward, we know we've lost something that was once part of us, part of flesh and blood, part of what made us.

Well, it's happening again, but this time I recognize the process.

There's the 69-year-old me, with heart issues, and weird blood pressure, and a neck that hurts every morning and muscles that need to be coaxed into cooperation, and yada, yada, yada. Then there's the 17 year old me who can do absolutely anything without effort or pain or looking over her shoulder. And that's how I finally spotted who she really was. The absence of regret.

It was easy to imagine my entire self transcendent when body and soul felt like one thing, when they both soared strong and together. But now that we don't anymore, I'm reaching out to her. She had to be 17, before betrayal, before defilement and brokenness, before disillusionment and settling, before desertion and ambition, before regret and grief.

I'm getting old, and my flesh ages just like everyone else's, but the space between body and soul is getting wide enough now to see the difference. I feel the separation and am far enough away that I can actually stand back and look at that 17-year-old soul and admire her. The tearing, the dividing of body and soul that ends in death, began long ago and I missed a lot of it, not knowing what to look for but now that it's getting closer to complete, well, it's a lot harder to miss. It's a good thing. It's a putting in order, a getting ready. After all, some day I'll have to leave the old body behind, but now I know that when that day comes, I can be 17 again. Not perfect, but prime. Young. Clean.

I like that girl, after all. We live companionably together these days, separate, but like friends who understand one another completely without explanation. I am content with her. It's OK that the body doesn't match. This is life and what the living of it inevitably takes, given enough years. I'm happy to be able to carry a young soul in me as I walk. She makes me smile.