9/11... again and again
my good friend Melanie posted a picture of the twin towers on her Facebook page today with these words:
The world feels more filled with hate, people fleeing for their lives like so many from these building 14 years ago. May we focus today on Lady Liberty who welcomed so many who came knowing a better life exists with freedom.
yes, the world does feel more filled with hate, and though we pray for peace, much of the world is just not seeing it.
i wish i knew the answer. i do know that many people much smarter than i am are working on that answer, and across the world there are people opening their arms to the children of Syria, giving them water, food, a safe place, far away from violence.
on this 9/11, i always go back to the Sunday of the 10th anniversary, as i sat with my friends on a pew far away from home, listening to a sermon about forgiveness. i'm sharing it again, because i, for one, need to be reminded. i think of the first responders, who turned now away from what faced them, but toward it.
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we sat in upholstered chairs this morning in
in mid-coast Maine. no kneelers, just clear glass windows looking out over scrubby pines dotting the landscape. save for one small stained glass window above the altar depicting Jesus calming an angry sea, and these words: Fear not.
we shared our chair pew with four friends we have met in the past eight years. the six of us are in Boothbay
Harbor taking in the crisp air and celebrating 80 years of marriage between us. at supper last night, we shared memories of our earliest years as married couples, laughed at our naiveté and marveled at our sticktuativeness
if there is such a word. the oldest among us married at 22 and 23, will celebrate 40 years together on Sunday. the newlyweds have been married just 10, tying their knot tightly around each other and changing their world as a couple, just 10 days before our whole worlds changed — 10 years ago today.
the readings for today were about forgiveness, how when Peter asked Jesus how many times he was supposed to forgive someone who had wronged him, Jesus launched into hyperbole, saying seventy-seven (or seven times seven, depending on your translation.) and then He talked about the master whose slave owed him the equivalent of around a billion dollars in today's world. a price he could never pay back.
'we owe God everything,' the priest said. 'just because we opened our eyes this morning, we owe more than we can ever repay.'
i listened, waiting for the lesson about 9/11, and it was there, in the middle of all that need to forgive. how personal forgiveness, which is often the hardest, is based on the illusion that we might have had a better life if the person who had wronged us had not done so. and how as Americans living in a post-9/11 world, forgiveness is not so simple anymore. it was no accident, he said, that our lessons for today — of all days — were about this subject. chosen years in advance, this is just how God works.
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in the past week, my husband and i watched several specials about that Tuesday 10 years ago none of us will ever forget. it was harrowing to watch once again, as planes that seemed to come out of nowhere hit the Twin Towers and forever changed our lives as Americans. as i watched and listened to survivors and our nation's leaders tell their stories, i said a silent prayer that nothing like this would happen again.ever.
our daughter lives in NYC, and last week, she and her husband moved into a new apartment. her Upper West Side home is far away from Ground Zero, but as the anniversary of that day approached, i knew it is much on her mind. when i talked with her yesterday, they were staying home. traffic had been horrible since Friday, when the only news, it seemed was about a new, credible threat.
she was a senior in high school the morning of 9/11, and i was set to teach writing to members of her class later that morning. at home, preparing for the day, i saw the second plane hit in real time. then the Pentagon plane. it was almost impossible to pull myself from watching to get to my work. a little more than an hour later, after both towers had fallen, and as i walked up the steps to the high school, i listened to a silence so absolute I could not remember a time when my world had ever been so quiet. a man i didn't know came out of the building and we stared into each other's eyes for more than the split second strangers allow.
six months later my daughter and i visited Ground Zero ourselves with my best friend and her daughter. we stopped in at the office of one of my husband's colleagues, an Indian woman who told us the story of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge toward home and how it took hours to get to her little boy. 'the smell is gone,' she said as we stared into the canyon that still seemed to smolder. it was not gone. she was only used to it.
we were deeply moved awhile later by the thousands of fliers and bouquets of flowers posted on the fence that surrounded
the nation's oldest public building in continual use — which stands across the street from where the towers once stood. the minutia of the grieving, put there by families searching for loved ones missing when the towers fell.
from September 2001 to May 2002, St. Paul’s opened its doors to firefighters, construction workers, police officers and others for meals, beds, counseling and prayer.
Doug Remer, a former associate rector at my church and a family friend of my friend Anne Boone, was a relief worker at the chapel and invited us in. we knelt in pews where George Washington worshiped. we read some of the hundreds of letters lining every pew and wall, written by children from all over the world and sent to relief workers, thanking them for their service. this is not something you ever forget.
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the priest today said people have approached him in the years since 9/11 saying: where was God in this? why did God cause this to happen? "i don't know what kind of God you believe in,' he said, 'if you think God caused it to happened." he did not believe in that kind of God. nor do i. i can tell you where God was. in every single fire fighter and police officer who entered that building. in the couple, as the priest reminded us, who jumped out of the burning buildings, holding hands, knowing this was something that could not be done alone. there, in the community of strangers who huddled together for comfort, in elevators, in stair wells, on the top floors unable to get out, in those airplanes as their fuselages broke the windows of the towers, my God was there.
i found myself weeping — i can't remember a sermon in a long time that has made me weep — for the 3,000 souls gone, for the children of 9/11, for my daughter living in a city targeted yet again by terror. and closer to home, for the man sitting next to me, whom i have failed to forgive too many times, but who never fails to forgive me.
10 years ago, i had not yet met the friends that occupied my pew today. we were all in different places in our lives — Tim & Linda living in Birmingham, Lee and David living on base at Fort Bragg, NC. Lee had not even unpacked her belongings when David — who was supposed to be on vacation — came home to tell her he would be needed at work. (last week, as we recalled our 9/11 memories, several of us spoke of the quiet. Lee could not help thinking of how at Fort Bragg, there was no silence at all. just mayhem.
within five years of 9/11, the six of us would be brought together by church, and as Tim said over dinner last night, our connection to each other has changed us all.
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after church we took a car ride to a beautiful little island and found a tiny church built in i think 1918, nestled in the pines and rocks, right by the sea. inside, i knelt, finally, and said my prayers, once again, for having safely arrived at this spot, on this day, with these people. for my children, husband, parents and siblings. for the world, and peace.
this afternoon, we sailed in 12-knot winds aboard a three-masted 60-foot schooner. i braced my feet against the side as we heeled, her rails almost into the chop, tried to take a few pictures. and i thought about how to connect all the moments of this day: the church, the priest's message, the friends, my marriage and this sail.
i thought about the small stained glass window of St. Columba's, depicting to me, Jesus calming the waters during the storm. "fear not' read the words in one corner of the small window.
i didn't know until just now this about the window: "
the theme 'fear not'
was adopted (by the church) soon after... 9/11.
It also takes into account that we are a seafaring town. the touches of green signify the headlands of a safe harbor as the angel speaks peace from a bruised and stormy sky."
well. after 9/11, we are all bruised. though it's a gift to be married so many years, sometimes it bruises us, too. as the priest said: God is in the midst of them. and us.
fear not. angels speak peace from a bruised and stormy sky.
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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.
Like kudzu, come to think of it
sometimes the words i throw out into the world scatter and create new stories, all by themselves. sort of like children, i suspect. you raise a story up from that first uncertain word until it blooms into 700 or even thousands of words and then you nudge it out, into its own journey.
such is a story i published two weeks ago now
, about the farm i share with my siblings — though none of us could wield a plow if we had to. shortly after the story ran, the emails began, mostly from people who hail from Sunbury, the little village near where the farm sits. a cousin i had never met contacted me, as did strangers with my own last name, sharing their own memories of the place i had written about. as my quiet little story picked up steam, i lured in a couple of new blog followers, and six on twitter. #wow!
still more strangers shared it on Facebook, on their own pages and even on a page dedicated to memories of Gates County. as the days passed, i responded to the emails, marveling at how connected people felt because of my few words about, well, connecting.
of course the email chain faded, as happens, and i set my sights on work and other things, wondering what in the world i'd write next.
a couple of days ago, a new email landed in my inbox, a delightful tome from a woman on the west coast whose Tar Heel sister had sent her my column. her own grandparents lived near our family farm, and she recalled her father's home:
"...a real crossroads with their house, an uncle's and across the street the country store and owner's house where my warts were wished off one Sunday afternoon."
her own family farm stands not far from ours but it is out of the family now. i wrote back, saying that we were practically neighbors, to which she responded: probably 14th cousins, several times removed.
this is such a part of what i love about writing: readers who take the time to tell you how much your little story means to them. these comments are no small thing to me.
we continued to email each other, unknowingly setting into motion a "whole 'nother story," as they say where i come from.
as i learned more about her, we discovered link upon link to each other: our grandfathers were contemporaries. she grew up on one end of Halifax County and i on the other. she gave her sister my book a few years ago. she loves Nags Head as much as i do, and the beach cottage her family rented when she was a child? owned by her "Cousin Joe Byrum," who was my grandfather's brother and married to her grandfather's first cousin. can you follow? i might need to diagram it.
(wouldn't that make her a cousin to me by marriage? maybe 14th, several times removed?)
no people. you can't make this stuff up.
photo copyright Watson Brown. Used with permission.
this morning, i found myself lured back to my Sunbury connections on Facebook, when i stumbled upon a photograph of our farm, taken last year by
, the exceptional photographer of weathered old buildings and the beautiful landscape of eastern North Carolina. Another accidental connection.
I don't know Watson personally, but we have many mutual friends, and i've followed his work for the past couple of years, drawn to his images of home. there is a great beauty in the art he finds among the ruins.
His calling is to document the fading history that connects all of us who call 'God's Country' home. he travels the back roads and dirt paths in search of life as it was once lived out.
browsing through his work, i image the voice of an aproned mother calling her kids across the field to home, the scrape of a father's boots on the back porch on his way in from a long day of fielding, the sounds and smells of something fried drifting out of the kitchen window toward the noses of those children, who turn and run, hurdling the rows of cotton, so as not miss a morsel of a summer supper.
my new friend on the West Coast and i hope to meet next time she comes this way. i have no doubt we'll find even more connections that link our families. in fact, i have a second cousin i'd like her to meet. his grandmother was her grandfather's cousin, Irma, so they are actually related. maybe we will share our family trees and see the many ways they do connect.
if i've learned one thing in all my years of writing, it's that a story can take root and grow right where you sow it, standing tall and strong against the sunlight like a weathered old oak. but sometimes a story lifts itself up and spreads like kudzu all over the landscape, one thread leading to another until it's hard to tell if there is any beginning or end.
this is a story like that, i think, and i hope it will keep on growing.
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.
summer sentence 2015
i sit, staring into the eyes of
my five-week-old great niece Lucy,
the two of us bound together
by blood
but not yet by story;
the only missive
we share is
our
week together
saying 'good morning'
and touching noses,
me bouncing her soft body
when she cries,
me trying to soothe,
her trying to discover
her new world;
and on this morning,
our last together,
she turns the corner
of her mouth, just so
into a soft,
baby smile
and i know
she is thinking
about the times
her mother fed her, or
my mother rocked her
or when her sister
(2, plus some)
held her and
kissed her face,
of the times her uncles
took her into their arms
and
showed her
their world
at that moment,
bound by
beach and sound and sky;
or of when her grandfather
danced with her
in afternoon
delight for both;
and as i look into her
family-blue eyes and
marvel at our same chins,
i wish she could remember
what i have seen of this week —
my sister holding and bouncing
her new granddaughter,
my brother walking into the
surf with his grandson,
now 8, who
asked my nephew
about girls and French kisses,
and
Monopolized our evenings;
our beach party dance-off
with no misunderstanding
from our
part-time partytime
brother-in-law;
how her mother ate fresh peaches
and slept when she could
(and cried a little),
not able to stick her toes
in the sand often enough
like her namesake,
my grandmother
always liked to do;
how we ate shrimp
and how we watched
the sun set
over the blue waters
of the inter-coastal
waterway,
my husband wishing
he was out there, skimming
the smooth surface,
under sail,
or my son
casting chicken necks
tied to string
in search of
crabs for his
Maryland love;
or how my daughter
lifting the paddleball
into the air
or tossing it
into the ocean
with her husband,
who sweated
into soccer heaven
with the 8-year-old,
all of them
no longer afraid
of the sharks
they had read about
in the news;
how i sat with my
nephews for the
first time in a year,
learning about jobs
and life
as they see it,
shared an early-morning coffee
with the newest girlfriend,
her eyes crisp as
the ocean water
we were about to leave;
and how after supper,
on our last night,
my mother sat
at the
kitchen table
with her grands,
holding stories
in her lap as
softly as she did her
great-grandbabies,
hoping to
pass
her own history on.
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.
still the same, at heart
For the life of me, I can't recall what the story was about, but it involved Pinocchio, Geppeto, a mailman, a bunny, girls with hearts and Jiminy Cricket, and me — the girl on the second row, right end, scared to death of the cowboy next to me who claimed kin to Earl Scruggs. I remember I wore an itchy petticoat and white gloves (if you look closely, you can see them.) I am listed in the program only as 'girl'.
We were the Class of 1962 in Miss Lottie Welch's kindergarten — a tiny house in her back yard where she tried to teach our town's smallest to sit still, get along with others, sing songs and finish the puzzles we took off the shelf. We'd miss recess of we didn't, this I know because I'm guilty of it.
And this afternoon, a baker's dozen of these kids will gather for the first time in 20 years.
Some of those little ones moved away and we lost track of them. Two of the girls died of cancer a few years ago. In the last couple of years through Facebook, I found out that the cowboy really is a
distant kin to Earl Scruggs.
I look at these small faces and see each one as a gift. One of us is really good at poker. Another at growing tomatoes. The pretty girl on the back row holding the big heart is a fashion designer. The boy in the middle of the first row in the striped jacket is a history teacher who is trying to preserve our town's history on Facebook, though few of us live there anymore. Pinocchio is a musician and will bring his tunes to us tonight. Jiminy Cricket is a successful businessman. I'm not sure what the mailman grew up to be, but I can't wait to ask him. There is a coach in there, and a hospital administrator. And the girl on the back row sitting with a heart in her lap is an artist, and she created my daughter's bridal bouquet.
I have known this group since I was that chubby freckled girl, some of them since birth. Six weeks ago, 'the girl next door' and Jiminy Cricket and I chatted on a sunny Sunday morning and said, you know, it's our 40th year out of high school, so we ought to get something together. It is amazing to me in that short span of time we've pulled together a reunion of some of those pictured here, and some who joined our school from neighboring towns. There will be a few who didn't graduate with us and a surprise or two, and the chatter that this event has created over these past weeks has been heartening.
Our historian will remind us that our education began in some ways, when an Air Force jet flew over our playground that year so close to the ground we thought it would crash on us. (It did crash just north of town, killing the pilot.) Our years continued with the Kennedy assassination our first grade year, took us through the walk on the moon, the Vietnam War, race riots and marches in our streets and the end of segregated schools, our soundtrack the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Spinners and The Temptations. Some of us lost parents to tragedy, others to old age, and a few of the lucky still have them both.
Browsing through old scrapbooks and yearbooks in the past few days, I have been reminded of what a rare gift it is to travel from kindergarten through high school graduation with some of the same people. These folks knew me before I knew myself, and I, them, and sometimes, sometimes, you just need to go back to that place before the world happened to you, and see if they — and you — are still the same 5 year-olds who graced the stage that day, some of them holding hearts in their hands.
(look for me in the News & Observer on Sunday, June 20, as I begin and new stint as an Our Lives columnist)
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.
charmed, i'm sure
charmed, i'm sure
ever since my kindergarten teacher gave the storyteller's stool to me i have been reluctant to give it up. i thrive on the story, those others and of my own. i tell them over lunch, in the grocery line, at the supper table and in my own head in the middle of the night, but that's just a piece of who i am.
i can't remember if the charm bracelet was a gift from my children or to myself from me, but i've had it for years. once a few years ago when i misplaced it for a few weeks, i woke in the middle of the night in tears because it felt truthfully that i had lost a piece of myself. or lots of pieces.
there are two typewriters hanging from it. at least two dogs. a rocking chair and a rolling pin. a starfish, a guitar (well, that's not me but is my son), a camera and the state of north carolina. an eagle scout pin (another son one). birdhouse, sailboat, pineapple, pinecone.
a story in each.
i'm a writer who loves to tug the story out of myself and others. one of my working joys is to be able to string words together so they sound a bit like music, at least to me. i work in communications as a church lady who tries to tell the story of how God works in mysterious ways in the lives of the people around me. and in that job, i use every professional skill i've ever learned, including typing, which at 17 was convinced i would never need.
writer mender mind-bender bird watcher yeast roll baker wife listener questioner Christian daughter blogger picture taker sister crybaby friend
Has a nice ring to it
On a spring day in 1981, I sat at my future husband's family kitchen table wondering just when he would tell his parents that we were getting married. He had asked me in theory a few months before, and since we'd asked my parents for their permission a couple of weeks before, my mother's wedding machine was already in motion.
I think we even had a date.
We had been in Atlanta all weekend, sharing meals and conversation with his parents, and through each one I waited for him to share our news.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
Sunday came, and i sat the kitchen table, wondering if I would have to call my parents and tell them that the wedding was off. he was just not saying anything
We were minutes from leaving, when the man I had fallen in love with just five months before finally took a seat beside his mother and spoke.
'We've got some news,' he said. 'We're getting married.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' She countered and with those words, she took the diamond off her finger and handed it to me.
A few months before, understanding, surely, that I was the one, she had told me about the ring. It had belonged to my husband's grandmother and became hers when she and her handsome army pilot decided to marry. Family tradition required she hand it down to her son's choice. her only son. I hoped at the time she would be pleased for me to wear it.
I loved the ring, more for what it stood for than for its actual beauty. We reset the small diamond into a setting that suited me, married a few months later and set about making our life together, the heirloom reminder of the legacy of long marriage that came with it circling my hand.
Some years later, I lost the diamond (a whole 'nother story as they say). When I finally told my mother-in-law, she said only: it's a diamond, not your marriage.
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I will tell you that certain moments every mother cements to memory. That first giggle and step, the random day when your boy plays with his sister in the attic in the rain, or when he drives out of the dmv parking lot with you riding shotgun. that day when he says he wants to make his own decisions — which amounts to what time he wants to go to bed — when he leaves the house, heading to the first job that means something to him.
And there is that day when your son sits with you at the supper table where he asks to make those first decisions about his life and tells you he wants to continue the family tradition. with the ring.
The days following that day have filled my life with joy. Meeting him at the jewelry store to figure out just how we would keep it secret. The fact that my current ring is not the one that belonged to his grandmother and great-grandmother didn't matter. We were helping him create a new legacy out of an old one, and we were certain that legacy would matter to the young woman who will be his bride.
When I joined him the day he picked up the newly reset ring, he apologized for not bringing a handkerchief to wipe my tears. I cried anyway, knowing this particular day, like so many other in my memory, would not repeat.
A week ago tonight, we gathered with the people who will welcome my son into their family, and the four of us waited for our children to arrive. Two hours before, my son had taken his girlfriend on an ordinary walk with the dog to the park, and she had come back wearing the diamond that I had worn on my own hand for the last 12 years.
And then they joined us, mothers and daughter crying, fathers and son smiling, restaurant patrons offering to take pictures, stopping by the table with best wishes and congrats.
At our center we sparkled, this moment of clarity, cut to memory for us all.
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stay tuned. i begin a new journey writing once a month for the News and Observer on Father's Day 2015 as an Our Lives columnist. I did this 12 years ago, and they have asked me back.
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.
car talk
for a girl whose grandfather was a Ford dealer for more than 50 years, i should think more about cars. but i don't. a car to me has always been transportation, surely, but a means to and end? a status symbol? a love? not so much. and i have not ever really thought much about the car in story — like some people might write about the trans am they saved up for and drove as a teenager or the '65 mustang they painstakingly restored.
a car gets me down the road and home again and i always feel pretty blessed about that. but i don't often think otherwise about the meaning of the box with pistons and throttle, brakes (unless they don't work) or gas (unless i am out of it), and though i should think of the people who created this great machine that changed the world as we know it, i don't.
or at least i didn't.
until i go a new(er) car. two weeks ago.
i have had my fair share of cars, though there is not one picture of any of them. the first, a pale blue maverick i shared with my sister. no ac, no power anything: brakes, steering or windows. a static-y AM radio. my grandfather didn't trust any newfangled gadgets like FM or AC, and though more than once my mother chose those options on family cars, her new drive often showed up in his shop without them.
the Maverick took me many places, but i remember most driving down the back roads, windows down, headed to the beach for the very first time by myself. i think i was 16.
then there was the mustang — a blue 1975 4-speed my father let me pick out, not at all the collector's item as the '65 — that car moved with me to Carolina, to my first job in journalism. when my landlord found out i had a cat in my apartment, i threw her into a suitcase and into the back seat of the mustang and drove her home to my mother.
together the mustang and I moved all the way down to Georgia and into the-rest-of-my-life. we traded it for a harsh two-toned brown escort with an orange stripe down its side, a little car more suitable to carry the baby home from the hospital than the 4-speed upstart. that brown car was the only car i ever really hated.
then came mom cars. the wagons — a burgundy dodge and a white chevrolet, the dodge van with the fake wood on the side. the expedition that made me nauseous when i drove it out of the dealer lot it cost so much. then the jeep that took my children to college, the one i drove all around eastern North Carolina schlepping my first book.
and then the last car — a used lexus suv. daddy thought we were living beyond our raising buying a luxury car — even though by the time it joined the family it was already four years old.
but it's this car that for some reason got me to thinking about the story of it. and the stories of all the other cars in my life.
people write whole
. (my friend Jane has written a slew of short stories and every one of them features a car.) one of the only twilight zones of my memory was about a car that talked back to its driver (imagine that!). what about 'my mother the car', apparently labeled the
second-worst sitcom of all time
and who can forget Car 54 Where Are You?
i don't write about cars or name them or think about them or tell stories about them, really. but then we found a new car, and before we were headed to the dealer to pick it up, i found myself thinking about all the places the old one had taken me.
100,000 miles. that's how many we trekked together. and as i thought about those miles i actually took a picture of the odometer, and thought, Lord, you are going crazier in tiny increments every day. a few minutes later, we ticked across the 114,000 mark, and it felt like a milestone.
when my husband said he had someone coming to look at the car, i went crazier still. found myself pulling out a note card and writing — as if i were the car itself — to the faceless new owners to tell them what the car had meant to me. seriously.
I may look a little worn around the edges, the car wrote. I am 11 after all, (is that 33 in car years?) but i have been good to my family...
the buyer didn't show, and i tucked the car's carefully scripted letter in a safe place to wait for one who did.
100,000 miles.
to the gazebo where the Pea got engaged and to her wedding, with her gown draped across our laps. to the vet with the dog, when we had to put her down, then home with her ashes. to my son's college graduation. to his first house, the back filled with new house things from Target. to my niece's house to meet her new baby.
to my father's hospital bed too many times, the car doors and windows framing winter as it changed to spring, the steering wheel absorbing my many tears along the way.
that car took me away from my childhood home for the last time and to my mother's new house. to our favorite beach and our friends' favorite mountain respite. to the airport with the dog and to church and to the grocery store and back again on hundreds of regular days. we didn't cover a lot of the map, my old car and me, but we traveled far.
when we sold her last week, (did i really call her HER?) i forgot to put the note in the glove compartment, which is probably a good thing. no reason for the new owners to worry that they bought crazy along with a pretty good old car.
now i'm finally back in blue again. though it's three years old, my new drive still smells like the back of my Bigdaddy's neck ('new car' was his cologne of choice), and has two — TWO — manuals, a 300-pager for the sound system alone.
and this: it doesn't even have a key! what in the world would my grandfather say to that?
and so we're back on the road. i can't say where my new blue car will take me, but i know somewhere along the way, that's where the story will be.
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.
what a flake
in one of my family's first home movies that exists with me in it, i'm looking out of the picture window at snow falling. lots of it. piling up in our front yard, my brother and sister out in it in their snow clothes. it's hard to imagine that we all actually had snow clothes back in the late 50s, but we did, and when the movie cuts to the next day, there i am out in the snow myself, my chubby self puffed out in a snow suit.
maybe it's because i was born in the heat of august that i have been enchanted by snow from my very smallest self. whenever i heard the song "Suzy Snowflake," i wanted to be her. who wouldn't want to be dressed in a snow white gown and tap on every window pane in town and invite all the boys and girls out to play,
knowing they would come?
now that would be something.
and have Rosemary Clooney sing about you? i mean, really? what could be more magical. Frosty the snowman melted, and Suzy Snowflake would only be around for a short time. like candy at Halloween.
she had power, that suzy, enchanting, turning bushes into popcorn balls, as the child's poem went, transforming herself like Cinderella, all glittery in the moonlight.
we used to cut out snowflake shapes in school. we folded and cut in complicated patterns.
snowflakes, it appeared to me, were part if a special design created by something or someone quite artistic, and i wanted to know more about how this could be.
i loved snow as a child, even though it didn't come very often.
i used to sit with the World Book and ponder the snowflake pictures,
their shapes so intricate that i knew instinctively that their creation was not possible by accident.
,and i wondered if they really looked like the designs we made. but it took only standing out in the snow for a little while, watching those flakes fall, to discover that yes, snowflakes, for real, can look
could something that created a beautiful Suzy Snowflake have created the same beauty in me? i wondered.
i believe this was my first understanding of God.
what i love about snowflakes: no two are alike. they are formed from water and temperature and altitude into something not short of a miracle. just like each one of us. (well, maybe not the altitude part, but you never know.)
yesterday, when the first flakes began to fall just at daybreak when we were out on our daily walk, i noticed something. as my sleeve caught the ice, those same shapes i had cut from paper as a child fell onto my sleeve — iced lace — and i imagined Suzy Snowflake tapping once again (though technically, she would be Suzy Sleet) at my window, begging me to join the party.
like the finest jewelry — faceted and etched and sculpted — beauties all, created not by human hand but by someone bigger than i could imagine.
i took a picture (that my weatherman friend wants to use in a case study for the national weather service.) dendrites he says they are, formed at special temperatures, and they are 'efficient accumulators.' later i ventured out to take a new picture, and the tiny shapes were gone, though snow still fell.
≠≠≠
i'd like to think of myself as an efficient accumulator, although that feels a little FAT.
but if you take the fat out of it, that accumulator could be of friends, of ideas, of hope, of creativity, of love, of family, of faith — the very things i need every single day, to complete the delicate facets that make me.
fat flakes fall at my house now, the third of three storms that have taken hold of us in the past 10 days. as i write, they have taken hold of the deck, the street. but come morning, they will cling together, making the world white again. look closely though. at what makes it glisten.
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.
Happy Birthday, Pamula!
Happy Birthday, Pamula (repost) #sheis60today!
note: in the years since i wrote this post, my sister has become a grandmother, and the hoy of watching her in this new role is unparalleled. her new baby girl Gracie carries the gene that reaches from my grandmother to my sister, on to her daughter and now grand. (we have seen pictures of our great-grandmother, and have mercy all five generations look just alike! Wishing her a happy 60th
birthday, which once again falls on The Gathering weekend. miss you Sis. and i feel so much closer to you on our journey in the past few years.
Pamela Jean Byrum was born on a February morning so foggy that my grandfather drove past the hospital entrance and had to turn around. My father was in the Navy, and my mother, great with child, was living with my grandparents in a tiny village in northeastern N.C. about 20 miles south of Suffolk, Va., when the big day came. Daddy came home shortly after, and from that day on, she stole his heart ... ( ok, so I was a twinkle in God's eye when she arrived and my brother already a reality, but I think all will agree that she is the fave. She dressed as my father for Halloween one year. I mean, who does that and does not win favor from somebody?)
While I was not there to witness her arrival, I imagine my sister made her entrance quietly, unlike my own, as a whirling dervish a little over two years later. And that pretty much sums us up as sisters. She is the quiet one, and I am the one who tries to get all the attention. Do I need to even say that she's not on FB?
Today is her birthday, and since she won't speak for herself, let me say just a few things about PamUla. (she will not be happy with me, but I promise, it won't be the first time.)
One thing to get out of the way: On her wedding day, the priest mispronounced her name, calling her Pam-U-la, and the name has become our affectionate moniker for her ever since.
I don't have any first memory of my sister, just soft images of the first room we shared. I think there was a lamb on the wall, and a doll bed, but I am not sure. Pictures of us show that we wore matching nightgowns, and in our crinolines, she looks a bit thinner, which would hold true through the years. Old home movies reveal when we walked down the sidewalk, she tried to hold my hand.
Everybody called her the 'Pretty One' and me the Baby, and our identities have held true to that, too. She is the steadfast to my mercurial, telling me much too often than I would like to admit that I need to buck up and get going. She has lived in Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, Missouri and Iowa, has set her stakes down in every place, and quickly. The first move took her on her wedding day in our childhood hometown to the Texas Gulf Coast, a hurricane swirling close by within a few weeks of her settling. Back then, she called me every day (when Long Distance cost a LOT of money), telling me how she had to take up the carpet, get the wet vac, take care of business, and move on.
She is like our grandmother in favor and demeanor, so much in fact that a photograph of my grandmother when she was a teen looks exactly like my sister. I have always marveled that someone could be so much like another, but two generations apart.
My sister can fix a toilet, dance a mean shag, decorate a house, plan a beautiful party — be it wedding, 50th anniversary or birthday — raise remarkable kids, drive anywhere in inches of snow. This from a girl who once left her yellow Pinto on a hill on a major road in the middle of my current city because it was too snowy to climb. And she can do all this, with a certain fashion panache I have never been able to pull off.
And this: what is the source of legend — She loved camp; I screamed til my mother took me home. ( She can get her own blog if she wants to rehash why, because I won't.)
When she was in high school, Pamela (never PAM) took her first trip in an airplane to California to visit the older sister of a friend. I had my birthday when she was gone, and I woke up sad that she wasn't there, but found a banner she had hand-drawn draped across the floor in front of my bedroom door. My brother walked by, saying "Happy Birthday!" and I didn't even think he knew what day it was. He had put it there for her, in her absence. She is that kind of sister.
Since then, she has taught me how to be both birthday fairy and leprechaun to my children, how to tough it up (well, sometimes) when things are not going my way. And the few times through the years when we have fallen out about one thing or another, have left me with my heart frayed at the seams.
In recent weeks, PamULA has become a patron saint of sorts, for The Gathering, which I have helped plan at my church. (She will probably not speak to me for awhile after this.) When we were looking for old photographs that defined the word "story," I ran across many, but one of PamULA, in a dress my grandmother (not the one most like her but the one most like me) made for her. She is pretty in pink, her hair curled just right, but for a dance she didn't want to go to — my brother's senior prom. A sophomore, she had been asked, not to go with a date, but to serve punch in white gloves, on the sidelines. When I showed the photograph to my friend, Katherine, the Great Designer, she was drawn to it. What girl hasn't had to wear a dress she didn't want to, to an event she would rather die than be attending? (hey, I made the picture very small)
So there was PamULA, suddenly representing the marvelous, conflicted, complicated story that is in each of us. To me, she fits perfectly in that role.
My favorite picture of her I took myself, at my niece's wedding a few years ago. PamUla is funny, and she loves nothing better than a good laugh with friends she has known for a long time, and that is exactly what she is doing here. Beautiful in her laughter. That is my sister.
When I talked to her the other day, I told her how her mug was now a LOGO. She can take heart that when we start planning our next event, she will probably be yesterday's news. Maybe. She might just become an ICON, which is what she is for me.
I hope she can forgive me if that happens. Take a look at that first picture. She is still the Pretty One. And I am still the baby, trying my best to make a stink.
Happy Birthday Pam-ul-a, ... I love you so!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
susanbyrumrountree 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.
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.
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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.
the first gift.
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.
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.
Hooked, Day 5 (lots of mixed metaphors in this one!)
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.
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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.
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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.
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.