Friday, April 29, 2016

Silent Witness

Silent Witness
My grandmother used to say if I sat on the concrete front step I would get a “cold in my kidneys.”  And that was when it was 80 degrees out.  Frankly, I don’t know if that is true.  At this point in life it kind of doesn’t matter for me because I don’t tend to sit on concrete steps.  I’m not afraid of getting the proverbial “cold in my kidneys,” I’m just afraid of not being able to stand up from getting down that low.

This morning it was 49 degrees (Farenheit).  In order to relieve you from a mathematical brain teaser, that is about 17 degrees away from snowing.  Or if you are optimistically going in the other direction, it is 17 degrees away from a perfect spring morning. 

So you can imagine my surprise when driving on a busy main route on my way to work I saw a man sitting on the concrete on the side of the road.  I did not immediately think to warn him of getting a cold in his kidneys.  He was an anglo-American with a royal purple tee shirt and a black cloak wrapped around him.  He was bald and sitting lotus-style against a light post.  The funny thing is, as out of place as he was in that location, he was in the perfect place to send a message.  Almost unseen by most passers-by, his presence was a silent witness to our frenetic scurrying.  It said:  “Peace.”

He had no sign; he himself was the sign.  He did not need to protest something; he was endorsing something more powerful.  He did not need to draw attention to himself; he was being attentive.  He did not need to shout or berate; his silence itself was the loudest thing on the street this morning.

Whoever you are Sir, if your disenchantment with the noisy secular society has caused you to remind us to look in the mirror and repent, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  If you are a young man who was raised in a Christian denomination that disappointed you with its own type of noise:  programs, requirements, and lack of focus on our necessary One Goal – your protest is a powerful reminder.  You won’t be misunderstood like the leaders of our day who attempt to bring us back on the rails of good order because you use no words that can be twisted and mangled by the media.  With your very body, you are a witness.  While my religion asks me to do this in its own way, I find even most faithful people will only go so far before they draw a line.

I have done silent prayer vigils.  I have marched on sidewalks with a rosary in my hand and prayed for people who are making harmful choices.  I know what it takes to do what you are doing.  People will hate you for taking a stand that is unpopular.  You may get something thrown at you.  Passers-by may call you horrible names, fly a negative hand gesture, or try to incite you to violent response.  And then there are the people who will bless you for your courage.  They will thank you for doing what they in their heart want to do, need to do. 

May you be wrapped in peace.  Shalom, my friend.

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Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Sewing and Me: a potential fiasco



Sewing and Me: a potential fiasco

I have a favorite pair of pajama pants.  I paid more for them than anyone should pay for pajama bottoms.  But in my endless litany of justifications for impulse purchases, these stand out singularly for their long-term impact.  They have been an inspiration to me, a frustration to others; they have brought both hostilities of unkind words and ensured the warmth of friendship.  Yet before you go drawing conclusions as if this was a tale of seedy character, I will explain.

I am basically a cheapskate.  That is how I get away with owning so much “stuff.”  I barter.  I search for deals.  I trade.  I replace.  I DIY.  But there are certain areas where one cannot afford to cheap-out.  I put my loungewear into that category.  So when I was at a local outdoor and country outfitter store and saw a soft brushed cotton pair of PJ bottoms with my favorite inspirational slogan about Life…. normally attributed to a person with a happy dog, I thought:  those babies are mine!  I broke down and paid for a brand name product. 

And I wore those pajama bottoms until they were thread bare.  Well, until nearly I was bare!  And then a brilliant idea dawned on me.  Why can’t I just buy a few yards of soft brushed cotton and use the original pair for a pattern and sew my own pj’s?  Why?  I will tell you why:  because sewing doesn’t work that way. 

I have gotten away with making curtains for some of the rooms in my house.  I like them.  But they aren’t going to win any prizes from real seamstresses.  And sure as heck, no one would ever dream of asking me to sew their wedding dress.  Or their sundress.  Or their anything, for that matter.  There are imperfections that came about during the “manufacturing process” at my kitchen table that I am willing to live with… but someone else might not be.  And thus the pajama “problem” began.

I laid my old pajamas inside out on top of the new fabric and just mentally added an inch everywhere.   Well, I added the inch everywhere except the place where I needed to add more than an inch.  Like, ahem, the backside…. And the front side.  So when I finished sewing them together with lightning speed – beautiful straight lines up the inseams – and attempted to put them on I realized one of two things needed to happen:  either I needed to get shorter (yeah, like I want that to happen) or the top of the fabric had to grow up and out somehow.  So I added a band piece. 

Do not ask me to explain technically what happened next, because I don’t think I can even reproduce it if I tried.  But the pajamas ended up with extra material.  So I just folded it so it would have a “fly” in the front and in the back and sewed it closed…. Because girls don’t need flies.  And that is all I can say about that.
I tried them on again and there was some sort of a problem.  I brought them to the attention of one of my friends who is an expert seamstress and she spent over an hour – but she claims it was considerably  more than that – at my kitchen table making the necessary adjustments.  Finally we had a nice looking product … which still didn’t fit me. So, not unlike a movie about traveling pants, I put them in a box and shipped them home to my family.  My family can always be counted on to give brutal honesty… even when you ask them to hold their peace.  So the pj’s came back with me.

They really did look great when they were done, by the way.  They were kind of a tie dye blue pattern and would be very comfortable.  I didn’t want them to go to just anyone so I wrapped them up and brought them to my birthday party where we did the Yankee Gift Exchange game.  The friend that sewed them was at the party also.  When her turn came, I said, “don’t take that package over there; just trust me on this.”  Our other friend opened them.  And she said, “these are GREAT!” and ran straightaway to the lav to put them on.  She came out and modeled the perfect pair of PJ’s.  She still loves them.  And I love the fact that my imperfect efforts became a cooperative work that someone I care about gets to enjoy.

But I will say this.  Any time I want to get my seamstress friend cranked out of shape I just say, “It’s kind of a nice day to work on a project.  I think I’ll sew some pajamas.”  She lets out a sound of exasperation and replies:  “Yeah, right.  With two flies?”
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Thursday, April 21, 2016

"What if God was one of us?" Indeed.

“What if God was one of us?”

The words to the song by Joan Osborne always put me off, “What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make His way home?”  It irritated my sense of the “dignity of the human person” to call us “slobs.”  And, at least from a Christian perspective, we do in fact believe that God became “one of us,” so by way of respect I wouldn’t want to use the descriptor “slob” in the same sentence of theological pondering about the nature of God.  It just doesn’t sit right with me.  But in view of some recent experiences I am starting to wonder about how God walks among us in some ways that are less than majestic and yet very obviously, um, godly encounters.

My friend Sandy used to pester me to watch the show “Joan of Arcadia.”  As I admitted previously, I don’t have television service.  Well, I might get a couple of channels if I bothered to hook up the antenna, but that is another issue also.  File it under the category of “Avoidable Nuisances.”  A few seasons of “Joan of Arcadia” came and went and I never saw them.  Then recently I figured out how to watch the re-runs on You Tube and I feel like I am getting a mini tutorial on those godly encounters I referenced above.  In fact, for just this one instance, television is actually supporting or clarifying some of my personal experiences.  I will tell you how and give you an example.

In every episode of “Joan of Arcadia,” they start the show off with that annoying song I reference above:  “What if God was one of us?”  And then in each episode Joan encounters a human person who speaks to her as if he/she is God.  Joan always knows who it is that is really giving the message when the person uses her name, “Joan.”  And then follows a commission.  It’s like, “Joan.  You really should join chess club.”  And then Joan protests about how she is busy, or how it will make her a social outcast to follow the directive, and finally gives in and does what “God” asked her to do.  And always Joan learns something from it. 

So I will tell you about one of my godly encounters.  But I must preface it by saying, “please don’t try this at home.”  You know how your parents taught you not to pick up hitchhikers?  Yeah.  I did.
This happened about 20+ years ago when I was “between jobs.”  I was struggling with not knowing how to get gainful employment in my field (Theology, English, or Ministry) and was hating the new city I had moved to because it seemed to be void of opportunity.  Generally speaking, I was in a miserable mood about where I was in life.  

I had moved back to the Northeast for a dream that blew up in my face before I even found an apartment to live in.  In fact, my dream imploded precisely within hours of moving to the city.  The reason I moved here – well at least my reason – no longer existed.  So, as the expression goes, I was making lemonade out of life handing me lemons.  I had left behind a beautiful southwestern state where people actually move to in order to flee the frozen tundra of the Northeast.  It was mid-winter and I was driving to my friends’ house for dinner.  The temperature was in the single digits but more accurately in the negative digits due to wind chill.  Snow was frozen all around us.  It felt like a ghastly, unromantic scene from Dr. Zhivago. I cringe just remembering that kind of cold.

I was driving my Chrysler down one of the main streets of the city when I saw a lone figure walking along the side of the road.  I could tell it was a skinny woman in a coat that was bulky and big for her.  Hood up, she was walking briskly along.  When I say that no one was out, I mean it.  NO ONE WAS OUT.  I was the only person on the road aside from the walking woman.  And then I knew.  I had to pick her up.  She was not even hitchhiking, really.  I pulled alongside her and rolled down the electric window with the touch of a button and asked, “Ma’am can I give you a ride somewhere?”

She leaned toward the car and said, “you’re not going the direction I’m going in.”  I said, “That’s okay.  Where I am going is not important.  I will take you where you need to go.  It’s not fit for man nor beast out here.”  She got in the car.  I looked at her tired, drawn face.  She looked older than what she probably was.  It appeared that smoking may have aged her face.  She at one point had a single drop of moisture on the end of her nose and I wondered if she knew it was there or had it frozen there.  Weird.  I asked her, “Where do you need to go?”  She replied, “Do you know where Wolf Street is?”  I turned the car and headed toward Wolf Street.  I began an attempt at small talk.

My question:  “Where on Wolf Street?”  led her to ask if I knew where a certain establishment was.  It was the name of a place where frustrated men go.  I replied, “Yes.  I know where that is.  Please don’t give me a heart attack and tell me that you are a dancer.”  She candidly said, “No.  I did that once but they threw a chair at me.”  (You are reading this and you are also getting an education, right?  The western movies never make it seem that the saloon girls are in danger, do they?)  She admitted she was unable to find a job because she only had a sixth grade education and no one would hire her.

I offered her some advice on how to get a job at a local garment factory.  I said to her, “Look, not everyone is entitled to hear your whole story.  But you can go to an interview and, so to speak, throw yourself on the manager’s mercy and say the truth:  you are trying to make a fresh start and need a chance.”  I myself was both wondering if and hoping that people still are receptive to honesty. 

As she got out of the car, she turned to me and said, “I guess I just have to trust, right?” 

It was then I realized that God had just tricked me.  He used HER to give me HIS message.  It was a quintessential one-liner urging me to trust.   Here I was being a baby about not having a job I felt suited my skill set; whereas, this woman had virtually NO skill set at all.  I was telling her to trust, in effect, when I myself who had all this talent and education going for me, wasn’t following my own logic.  I turned the vehicle toward my original destination and ran that encounter through my mind trying to absorb it all.  My friend who had dinner waiting kind of laughed at me when I told her the story.  That’s okay.  Laugh away, I just met God and He was pretty direct with me.  And He really didn’t look anything like I thought He would.  And I don’t find that funny at all.

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Don't Cut the Final Class - Part II

Don’t Cut the Final Class- Part II

Who is it that we allow to reach us, to teach us?  Recently, a woman posted photos of an elementary school class and their teacher online.  She asked, “Does anyone remember this teacher’s name?”  Facebook “friends” knew each other’s names and recognized their cute little faces, but I still haven’t seen someone identify the teacher yet.  And even at their age, she had laid down some really critical groundwork for their futures as lawyers, dental hygienists, landscapers, etc.  She was teaching basics at that level that would be used for years later in the grocery store, at the bank, at a desk in an office somewhere.  And they can’t remember her name.

When I was in high school I had a summer job where I actually worked at the high school organizing the books in the English Department’s stock room.  I created the system whereby teachers could request  books for their classroom, it got recorded on an index card with date and amount of books, and then the order was delivered to them in a timely fashion.  In the course of that summer when friends were at camp or doing nothing at all, I was gainfully employed.  I also became acquainted with the teacher who had hired me.  I had a respect for her as an adult and appreciated her kindness to me.  When I left to go out of state to college, she was diagnosed with cancer. 

Upon my return for school vacation, I asked for permission to go to her house to see her.  Cancer seemed “new” in those days because people in my world didn’t seem to get it as much as they do now.  I brought her a bible.  I recall one of my family members saying to me, “Don’t you think that’s kind of a personal thing to give someone?”  I agreed, but said that now was the time to get personal because she was about to see her Maker. 

She so graciously received it from me.  She said, “Oh, how nice.  I don’t have this translation.  My father was a minister you know.”  I did not know that.  Interesting.  I just knew that she seemed like she needed something encouraging and that was my best gesture I could offer.  She had her head in a turban from lost hair and her little white dog Becky was allowed to actually walk on the kitchen table to be able to give her kisses.  Our conversation was brief.  As a young inexperienced person, I did not know what to say in the face of her sickness; actually, in the face of her death.  But she had a certain tired cheerfulness about her that I still can feel.  I believe that was the final lesson she gave me:  it’s okay to be tired.  And it’s okay to be cheerful even when people are painfully aware of your impending exit.  I don’t think she was even in her 40’s.  Processing this seemed impossible to my mind.

I remember one of my favorite college professors telling us in our Pastoral Guidance class:  “I hope each of you will have the honor of being present at the moment of someone’s death.”  He was a parish priest prior to teaching college, so I imagine he had attended more of his share of those end-moments. 

A few years ago, I sat in a small office of the hospital where I work.  It was off the beaten-path where people who were actually looking for me would have a hard time finding me, so I have no good explanation for what happened that day.  I was feeling sorry for myself that I was doing “office work” and not in full time ministry somewhere.  Or was I?  That night, I was there for some reason after 5pm and this dear woman appeared at my door asking if it was the chaplain’s office.  (The chaplain’s office was closed for the day.)  The lady at my office doorway had a relative who was dying in the Intensive care Unit and wished for some final prayers.  I called the priest on call, but also went in to be with the family before he came.  I led them in a short decade of the Divine Mercy novena prayers.  Just as I finished, the priest came in and cheerfully did his piece of prayers and comfort for the family.  It was a gift to be part of the flow of the grace of God to them.  

The patient, who was dying, unknown to me, gave me a lesson and a gift:  God uses whoever is open at the moment.  If we want to be an instrument of peace, we need just ask.  I do not know if she was a teacher or something else in her younger years, but in her dying moment, she taught me to know that God’s arena is bigger than our official classifications. 
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Don't Cut the Final Class - Part I

Don’t “cut” the final class
I have a confession to make:  I never cut a class before.  I would like to tell you that it is because ever since my youth I had a passionate connection with the importance of education but I’m thinking that might not be 100% on target.  I think it had to do more with my fear of death.  Particularly my own, because I knew my father would “kill” me if I skipped a class.  I am able to joke about it now that I am a safer distance away from those years.  I also know that I can out-run my father if I need to do so.

You know, now that I think about it, it wasn’t just parents and educators that were on the same team.  It was more or less the proverbial “village” that helped to keep the kids in line.  My Uncle John told a story from his youthful days of a neighbor woman that came to his house and told his mother he did or said such-and-such.  Right there, my grandmother gave him a wallop, despite his protest.  When the neighbor woman left the doorway and walked to her home, he turned and earnestly said to my grandmother, “But, Ma, I didn’t do what she said I did.”  She said to him, “I know.  But it made me so mad that she even said it.”  I am not sure she won an award for parenting jurisprudence that day, but it did make the point that honor mattered to her. 

Honor matters to me.  I think that it always has.  I have made my mistakes and have had to re-adjust my sails a few times in adult life but I think the thought of being a decent human being has always lingered around me.  I mentioned cutting classes before.  I want to go back to that topic.  In high school we had a teacher who was really a militant personality.  She missed one day of school and we had a study hall instead of her class.  I remember reading a novel that was particularly interesting to me during that study hall.  Now, over 30 years later, I still remember what it was.  Unfortunately, I was not on top of the concept of “signing-in” to class.  A sign-in sheet circulated around the desks because the study hall monitor did not know us to be able to do attendance.  So I was there, I just didn’t sign in. 

The next day, my friend and I were accosted by the teacher in class and basically humiliated in front of our peers as she announced, “You cut the study hall yesterday and I intend to turn you in,” or words to that effect.  Frankly, I couldn’t remember where I was for a minute because I was so stunned.  I turned to my friend who shrugged her shoulders and said, “big deal.”  That was not my thought in any way.  I went to the Assistant Principal before the teacher did and told him the whole story.  He assured me he would speak to her.  We never heard another word about that from the teacher.  I even told my parents about it because I wanted to make sure that the thing was dead in the water.  I learned from that experience that sometimes it is the teachers who get taught by the students about more important lessons in life.  You don’t have to be a fool to give a kid the benefit of the doubt.  You just have to know how to recognize an honest soul.  That takes a little more work and study, though, doesn’t it?

Last year in the midst of teaching a class I let the cat out of the bag.  I told the kids, “You realize that the point of formal education is not to open the tops of your heads and pour facts down in there for no good reason, right?  The purpose of education is to teach you to love learning so that you will continue to seek it out and become an enriched, wise person.”  They looked kind of surprised at that.  I really do believe that.  It doesn’t matter if it is adult education in a church basement, or hung-over college students on a secular campus:   the educator holds a torch for both fire and light, warmth and guidance, musing and motivation.  

The educator says, “Here.  Turn your distracted thoughts to just one thing and learn how to think logically and rationally because the world is not always offering that to you.”  (I will at this point avoid any pontifications on the current Reality TV show called “Presidential Debates 2016,” even though it proves what an educational NEED we have in our country.)  From the point of learning how to follow one train of thought on one subject, you use the commutative property (learned in mathematics) and apply it to all kinds of ideas and topics that come down the pike.  This, I think, is the essence of learning how to think.
Of course we hold out the hope that learning how to think moves you to the vision of learning how to live.  You cannot contemplate the true, the beautiful, the good, the just, without asking yourself, “How does this apply to my life?  Or does it?  Should it?  Can it?  How, then, am I to live, now knowing what I know?” 

When was the last time you allowed yourself the privilege of being challenged by a thought or an idea?  Are you willing to go beyond your comfort zone of ideas and pre-conceived notions to learn something concrete that may really help you to become a better version of yourself?
Who teaches that class, anyways?  

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Tuesday, April 5, 2016

The 3-Letter "F" Word



ATFC.  It stands for “Ask the Fat Chic.”  That’s what I wanted to call an advice column I was thinking of writing.  It would have nothing to do with weight loss because that is not something I have any proficiency in at all.  It would just be about everything else.  I was throwing the title out there because sometimes we don’t take people of substantial girth seriously in other areas.   As a comedian once chided, “In Great Britain people are fat because they have character; in the States we are fat just to take up space.”  It’s funny.  But not really.  

I want people to be able to look into the face of their neighbor and appreciate that person for just who they are.  The person who is very stunning by Cosmo standards, but has so many insecurities… the person who has scars visible from some accident, but won’t attend parent-teacher night so their kid won’t be teased … the person who doesn’t fit television’s portrayal of what lawyers, secretaries, doctors, and mechanics should look like but keep eeking out a living serving others daily … the list is endless.  We are who we are – and in every person must hide a bit of the divine, a bit of the lovable, something to offer. 

I ran the idea by a few friends and was intrigued by the reactions to my using the “F” word in relation to my own self.  Now, I can do that, right?  Without violating the national taboo regarding politically correct terminology.  After all, it is MYSELF I’m talking about.  And I am pretty familiar with what the numbers say when I get on the scale.

I have been fascinated by how we deal with this – oh heaven help me for saying it – “white elephant” in the center of our cultural living room.  I had a friend who is a bit of a direct-hit sort of person.  Fifteen years ago she left a weight watchers grid on my desk.  She came in to use the scale in a neighboring office – and did I mention she is a very crafty senior citizen – I said, “I will walk over to the scale with you.”  I got on the scale and she said, “Now how does this thing work?”  (she KNEW) and she looked at the digital read out and let out a very elongated, “Wowwww.”  I responded, “You know if I had any feelings, they’d be hurt.”  She reiterated that I didn’t look like the number she was reading.  Now, fifteen years later, I probably do.  But then again, the number changed.

There are places we don’t deal with it, aren’t there?  The woman who refuses to get weighed at her annual doctor’s visit…. The shopper at the store who is throwing into the grocery cart a few giant size bags of chips and cookies…. The person who just HEARD me say “I’m starting Whale Watchers,” and puts an entire tray of Italian cookies in front of me, or gives me four scoops of ice cream when they take two.

Like the racial language issues, we just keep dancing around each other in crazy circles hoping we don’t accidentally bump into another person’s feelings.  We don’t want to say the wrong thing.  We don’t want to say the right thing, in case somebody changed the rules again and it’s a new wrong thing.  But mostly, we just don’t want to say ANYTHING.   

I love the film “Cyrano deBergerac” with Gerard Depardieux.  There’s this whole uncomfortable scene about how big his nose is and the dance-around that issue between him and another gentleman.  He takes everything offensively.  The great thing about that movie is that the actor came to his part without needing additional makeup construction for his nose.  He’s still GOT IT – that huge nose - in every other movie he is in…. and it never seems to get in the way of how fabulous he is as an actor. 

In the front page of my journal this year I have taped a little saying:  “If hunger isn’t the problem, then eating isn’t the solution.”  It makes you wonder what the problem really is, doesn’t it?  At 5 am the other day I got up to let the dogs out for the second or third time that night.  I let them out into the side yard fresh with new-fallen snow.  I came back into the house and stared at the clock, calculating how long I would have to sleep before the alarm went off once I got the dogs back inside and back to bed.  I opened the microwave.  It doubles as storage space for cereal, bread and contraband.  There was a package of iced molasses cookies there.  I just had one.  I had a cookie at 5 in the morning.  Not because I was hungry, but because I remembered at 5 in the morning, when I barely had a pulse, that YESTERDAY I had wanted a cookie and never got around to it.  I brought the dogs back in the house.  I went back to bed.  My chocolate colored spaniel Madeline inched up next to me, leaned over my body and whiffed my breath.  She looked directly into my eyes in a very accusatory fashion.  Yeah.  Molasses cookies do not in any way smell like minty-fresh toothpaste.  I got busted by the DOG.

So what is the problem?  I think we could have teams of psychologists and counselors and guru’s all taking a stab at it.  I don’t want to over simplify it.  But I think if you remember that final scene in “Moonstruck” when Johnnie Camerari comes home from Italy, Cher tells him she can’t marry him (because she is in love with his brother who looks, ironically, just like one of my ex-boyfriends), and Olympia Dukakis looks at her husband across the breakfast table, in front of the entire family, fully aware that he has gone out on a date with a younger chickadee, the quote of all quotes is delivered:  “Cosmo, you’re gonna die.”  She throws it right out there:  the only excuse for his juvenile, needy, thoughtless behavior is he fears death.  He needed to be able to do something that he thought he was missing out on and survive it.  And he looks at her, quite sheepishly, and responds, “Te amo.”  What a perfect response:  “I love you.”   No unpleasantries.  No yelling.  No hurting words.   Just, in a word, he was grateful she didn’t tell him what an ass he was.  He already knew.

So the next time I am in the dressing room and am wondering why in my midlife years the women’s clothing department switched to funhouse mirrors, I’m not going for ice cream afterwards.  I think I am going to take one step closer to that woman in the mirror and tell her:  “Te amo.”  I’m going to sort this out.  But even if I don’t it’s okay because “Cosmo, you’re gonna die.”  Eventually.  And maybe someday I can look at the scale and say “wowwww” for  a totally different reason.
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Saturday, April 2, 2016

I Fell in Love Tonight at W...




I fell in love tonight at W-mart.  It wasn’t like I thought it would be.  His eyes locked mine and our worlds collided.  He could barely avert his gaze from me.  I imagine it was because we are worlds apart.  It wasn’t the difference in our ages that drew us.  The woman he was with, like me, had on a black coat.  It was hand-made, stylish, particular.  My black coat was shorter, trendy, and the zipper down because:  a) it would be hot in the store with it up; and b) the zipper has stripped itself in the middle at least three times today and I have lost my patience with it.  My shirt, in honor of St. Patrick’s day is a mottled hunter green/white tie-dye Henley.  The woman with him, had a solid tasteful dress with a pretty white apron on front.

She had a cheerful face that I knew he must love passing those great brown eyes across – the same eyes that looked at me and wondered, “Where are you from?”  His cheeks had a ruddiness that comes from being out in the cold – and they added to the peaceful, settled look he had for the moment we shared the space in the fabric department.

I was buying a soft, swirly pattern of greens, blues, purples for the room that I keep my birds in.  That room has an ocean theme; mostly because, well, the room that had the bird theme was too big to just keep birds in it.  It seemed like a waste of space.  So I moved the birds.  And the room decorated with bird décor is now the guest room for the guests that never seem to come.  Nonetheless, I have one more room to myself in my house that I bet he does not have in his.  The woman he was with was buying solid colors:  white, brown, blue.  I venture to guess her skills as a seamstress leave me in the absolute dust.

How I wanted to talk to him!  I could not think of an opening line.  I also presume because clearly his ancestors are not the same ethnicity as mine, that we might not speak the same language.  But perhaps the language of love could transcend it?  As I wondered, another fellow came around the corner and grinned at me.  I wouldn’t get this kind of attention at a bar.  I just know it.  I looked down to him, and grinned back – thinking for a minute I could bend down and tie his shoes for him as a gesture of friendship.  But nowadays people don’t trust strangers’ innocent gestures.  And perhaps we shouldn’t because of the world in which we live.  A world, that is perhaps more mine than his – even though my religion tells me to be “in the world and not of it.”  His religion says the same exact thing; from the same exact book.  Except his family lives it more profoundly. 

They set themselves apart quite conspicuously.  While the other kinds of Christians try to be a leaven in the world – a source of raising up of ethics and morals and kindness.  I hope.  I get my two yards of fabric and push my cart away – when he returns to his home he won’t snap on a light switch and probably won’t flush an indoor toilet and certainly won’t use a phone. … even when he is old enough.  He will drive a buggy, court a girl his own age by the moonlight, raise crops, and live in peace.  If the people in my zone can figure out how to keep peace on the planet. 

As I take my subtle leave from the love of my life – a four month old chubby Amish baby in a grocery cart -  I move to the other side of the store and remember by immediate experience what other cultures are among us.   A girl with purple hair passes by.  Chic.  But probably not going to get her to Wall Street any time soon.  An adult woman and her late 20’s daughter pushing a cart with a baby princess arrayed in pink sucking a pacifier.  The woman talks to no one in particular when she passes the freezer case.  I watch her young adult daughter walk away.  She is wearing mid-length athletic shorts even though it is 45 degrees outside.  She’s got a nasty bruise on the back of her calf, and below it, a tattoo.  They look like the rural poor trying to look like they are “making it work” in Central New York.  How many of us out there are faking it like this?  If her boyfriend works at Burger King and gets the much-contested minimum-wage bump it won’t encourage him to do any better for their little family.  It will just lock them into a trailer park for the rest of their life.

I pass a woman who has dread locks that were a foot long and very neatly coiffed.  And smart jeans.   And a nice shirt.  Good for her.  We are still shopping where we are shopping though.  Maybe she works for a sheriff’s office as the voice on the other end of the phone that says, “Yeah?  What thehelldo youwant?  I ain’t got all day here.”  Her face is neither friendly, nor inviting, nor tired.  I wonder if the Girl Scouts ask her to buy cookies when she walks by.  I don’t think my face is particularly friendly, and they hound me every single time they see me.  But maybe that has more to do with my physique which appears to have been familiar with cookies a time or two.

Then there is the couple in the cereal aisle.  He has a pierced thing on his face and a goatee.  His clothes again scream “rural poor.”  The girlfriend with him has taken no obvious pains to enhance her feminine side.  And she makes me think of my friend the tour guide in the Appalachians who declared to me once with mischievous zeal:  “I LIKE my women with some meat on their bones.”  I think to myself, meat, yes, but not a whole eight-course meal!  But I assess their state carefully for I am at least a two-course meal and people who eat in glass houses should not throw stones.  Or something like that.  You get my point.

And the middle aged couple in the freezer aisle.  I suspect they have the life I thought was going to be mine.  He wanders a bit and she playfully goes up to him and links her arm in his like she has secured a prize.  He seems to feel good about that maneuver and they chuckle and stroll along together as if they are on a date – not in a grocery aisle.  I wonder if my mood would be better if I thought of every moment of life as a “date” of some sort.  I bet they are Baptists.  I am not a Baptist, but I always picture Baptists as happy people.  Maybe he works an office job at the power company and she teaches kindergarten in a rural community.  Perhaps their kids are grown and gone and they are part of the lucky few that remember why they got married 25 years ago?  Does she bring him a beer at the midpoint of him cutting the grass on a hot summer’s day?  Does he massage her feet when they watch Jeopardy on tv together at night?  Will he take fiendish delight in not telling her what exactly it is the guys talk about at the Moose or the Elks at their monthly meeting?  Does he tease her about the 80 year old woman in their choir who can’t carry a tune in a bucket just so that his wife can whap him with the dish towel as she cleans up the kitchen after supper?  Americana Conjecture is a consoling thing sometimes.  I hope their life is as happy as it looks here in Upstate New York.

Then I round out to the checkout line.  I spy him again.  My brown-eyed little wondrous bundle of curiosity.  Sitting in the cart as his mama pushes him.  She is old enough to be a mother, probably just barely.  And she is young enough to be my own daughter, probably just barely as well.  Her husband – standard Amish straw hat in place, blue shirt sleeves, black everything else, manages the checkout and then they all stroll happily across the parking lot.  There is no buggy waiting.  There is a truck.  Because even in Amish country at this part of the USA you could freeze on a night like tonight.  Hey, they may be cutting a corner, but it is their corner to cut.  I just hope they take good care of little brown eyes.  He lives in a world where sometimes I wish I was.
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