Family Portrait

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Family Portrait

I thought it turned out well
I was told, we were told, to put our arms around
her
our great grandmother

I am dark with emerald eyes
my younger blue-eyed sister
blond, her hair enchanting strands of honey and gold
she giggled, snaggle toothed
she had bangs
I had waves

Granny was iconic
ancient
sat on the front porch of the old, old house
her porch another room
three of its walls the centrifugal view of her garden
farm
mountains
sloping roof helped protect homemade popsickle stick frames
of children’s, grand children’s, great grand children’s drawings

two parakeets, now one.  Green and yellow headed Polly.
I loved the soft soft soft green grasses in the front yard to the stone wall
smelled so sweet, soft on feet, warmed by a sun
that only came into the yard a few hours each day

heavy red water pump on one side under the enormous homestead oak
follow around the house down its hill to the back cellar
bunny rabbits lived there once
another family photo with Dad and me and the rabbit on his knee

the cellar of canned food—magical and mesmerizing
Dad would tell stories of his Grandfather’s store
at the end of the lane to the road
how he’d be closed on Sunday but
if a neighbor needed medicine
he would give it to him—no charge

follow on around the house and laundry hung lines that
paralleled the vines
of mountain grapes
Uncle Lawrence’s goat would escape
his pen and come
eat laundry and nibble at the vines

I was tasked to drag it back (I was 6 and 7 and 8...)
Across the yard
over a little creek (run-off ditch)
down the path between two fields of crops
over another run-off creek
through the yard
knock on the door and tell Uncle Lawrence
the size of Paul Bunyan
Granny had it with his goat

but by the time I found my way back to the house
more often than not
the goat had somehow gotten there first
again

on around the house back to the porch
there we were some spring morning
probably Easter
the mountains springy in their bright green hues
homestead oak so huge and gnarly
dark and strong trunk and branches
gently steadfast as fragile tender bright green leaves unrolled
slight chill wafting on the morning breeze

I did what I was told with great joy to have the chance
to stretch my arms around my great grandmother
head upon her shoulder
my sister leaned in from the other side
happy happy girl smiling and laughing
her arm folded up along Granny's arm,
her hand timid on the nearest shoulder

a favorite photo
rich memories flow through that image
and I can almost be there again

the words said stinging
ringing in my head
came much later
when I was told
it looks like you are claiming her all to yourself
pulling her away from your sister
poor thing can’t even put her arms around her
yours are in the way

silent
for a long time
even as the words ring now
I gazed and gaze at that photo
I did what I was told
put your arms around your Granny
and I did
I loved her
but hugging or touching was so rare
I embraced her with all the years before
and after
I take responsibility for all of that
my sister did what she was told
in her way, more reserved
she could have reached across as I did
Granny had room to spare from my
skinny little arms
she could have reached across and over my arm
reaching toward me
as I had reached toward her

framing Light

sharp, bright, fierce moon
glorious replacement for the sun
i prefer your hopeful, quiet, tranquil light
playful clouds in your glow tease by

stay

or better...return

remind us all
there is life and balance
Easter comes rising from the hope of reflected light
Be Light
I will wait for you
like the evening star, the morning star, a planet...
darkness is but a frame for the Light

Suddenly Sunday

5:00 a.m.!!???  Sh*t! That is NOT enough time before going to school.  Hate when I oversleep like that. Quick to the bathroom. Quick to the kitchen–gotta take that allegra-D an hour before eating breakfast and this is cutting it close but...d*mn.  Chased the magic pill with a full big glass of water.  Filled the kettle.  Gotta get Bubbi up and out so he’ll eat.  Unbelievable.  5:10 already.  I just hate it, this is going to be a beast of a week as it is!...haven’t overslept like this in MONTHS!  Even fell asleep on the sofa, what, 7:30 last night?  Don’t even remember transitioning from sofa to bed.

Hold up.

As the kettle started to exhale more and more loudly, a nagging thought wailed more and more loudly until I plucked it ripe and juicy into coherent translation: it’s * only * Sunday.

Yeah baby.  Sometimes it’s soooo good to be wrong.  Just because it isn’t a surprise doesn’t mean it isn’t a surprise.

Still don’t like to oversleep—in some ways more so on the weekends...but...hey, the whole day suddenly unrolled before me like red carpet to royalty I’m in heaven and there’s no more rush hallelujah it’s Sunday come!

not all corn fields are alike...not all houses are home

the image (why has this popped up into my head? I have no idea) is of me as a young teenager—was I 13? Standing in a second story bedroom looking out the window across a lonely country road at miles and miles ... or should I say acres and acres of very flat treeless fields of ripe corn.  Standing and staring at it like that was so different from driving past it.  It was so different from walking the wavy golden path at my Aunt Jean’s house alongside the wavy fields of waving corn or whatever crop they were growing at the time.  How I loved the two giant trees (oak?) on either side of that path—such delicious cool shade and the rattling of leaves in a near constant lilting breeze--- just before the path turned to see the house shaded at one end by trees and flanked at the corner with an enchanting azalea and dogwood garden.  Loved it there so much.  Loved that you couldn’t see the house from the road and how the world changed from the drive out of town into a whole other world when you turned on the path (before the gate was put up) and then it changed again over the crest under the trees and the house was on that slope down to the lake with all the cypress.  The most enchanting lake ever.  So when I stood in that bedroom in house with a small yard and no trees and looked out over the hot, parched, flat corn field it wasn’t right, it wasn’t alluring, it wasn’t home.  But the realtor and mom and dad all misunderstood my gazing silence.  I vaguely remember mom or dad mentioning what a beautiful view and how much I would love that and the realtor, bless him, said he had to be honest.  That land over there would very likely be bought soon by developers and in a short time the view would be the construction of houses like these.  Dad said well that will definitely not work.  She has always wept over the cutting down of trees and the loss of landscapes like this.  I still said nothing because it was true and even though I didn’t particularly like that view, I also didn’t particularly like that house, and I didn’t particularly like that sometimes it seemed somehow some things were either up to me or blamed on me and neither was particularly fair.  I was glad not to move there, though.  Funny how that’s the only house ever that I remember touring...and we moved every two or three years all my life (until this last decade) and I’ve been in hundreds and hundreds of prospective houses.  But that is the only one I remember.

Morning thoughts

Golden morning sunlight paints
tummies of tiny oak leaves from under
its canopy

new day rises still
early
every green holds its breath
still in deep sleeping blanketed humidity

silent flash of summer lightning in the west
carries off the rest
of night

Tribute to Aunt Dot (Crisp) Ballard July 21, 1931 - August 6, 2015

I was privileged to give the scripture reading for my Aunt Dot's memorial service in Columbia, SC, August 9, 2015, in Boyce Chapel at the First Baptist Church of Columbia.  The theme that ran through the Rev. Humphries' introduction, comments made by Dot's grandchild Angela Ballard Adams, by me and by friends Diana and Jon Dando had such a fabulous singular core: Dot had a way of making you feel like you were her favorite and most prized person in her life. 

The comments I made in the service were far more brief in tapping on the three reasons for choosing the passage, but in writing, i wanted to develop it a little more....

Scripture Reading Mark 5:21-43

The scripture reading today is from Mark 5:21 and following.  I have chosen this passage for two reasons.  Aunt Dot and Jesus are so much alike.  As everyone has said in the service and anyone you talk to, Dot Ballard had a special gift for connecting with you in a way that convinced you—not just that she loved you and cared for you, which was definitely and sincerely true—but that you were her favorite.  Favorite child, favorite grandchild, favorite niece, favorite four-year-old, favorite friend, favorite person in the world.  Even if it was in the space of a five minute encounter in the line at the post office and you never learned her name, you became central to her attention and her love and her force of deep acceptance with that easy, infectious chuckle.  Just being in the room with her was uplifting, and dare I say “healing.”  There were always people gathered in her home on Sundays and holidays and birthdays and whatever day something might be celebrated with feast and family. She was always feeding people.  Jesus seemed to do a lot of that, too.  Notice the company he kept, his reference to “these are my brothers and mother” which were the crowds that gathered around him. 

You will hear people joke about how one might know or be related to Dot—and everyone wanted to be related.  Everyone is related.  But each of us knows secretly, deep down, I was her favorite.  People followed and gathered around Jesus and even without clamoring for his attention (wasn't necessary) you were caught up in that infectious love and force of belonging.  Jesus made it his business to connect, to heal, to engage, to embrace, to love.  Dot had that gift because she had Jesus.

The second reason for choosing this passage is harder to put into words—or maybe not, just that it’s painful.  It’s painful to suffer the loss of a loved one.  Especially such a one as Aunt Dot.  I can’t imagine life without her—and I hope to find that the magic and power of her love, just like Jesus’ love, remains in me, in each of us, giving and receiving, healing and holding, continuing to take care of each of us in the depths of our longing for her presence.  She did not fear death.  I kinda do.  Only because it is elusive and mysterious.  Only because my longing to be is so strong.  My longing to be conscious and aware and connected.  My longing to be reunited with family and friends—family I don’t even know because they left this earth before my time.  

This passage in Mark chapter 5 is among many of those that reassure me that death isn’t all that powerful or scary in the hands of Jesus.  I read these stories—in the Old and New Testaments—because they give me comfort and reassurance that death does not have the final word.  We are on this side of it so the stories address things on this side of death—people who are brought back to life are brought back on this side of it.  The metaphor they were just sleeping is proven by how they wake, are still here with us.  When Jesus died, he came back to us from the other side and so that was the only time we see that we will see.  We will recognize those we love by virtue of how we personally are connected to them, it seems to me.  This is ageless and timeless.  There will be the feel of her spirit, the appearance, if you will, of the one we saw.  To some at age 20, to others age 50 and so on.  But that’s beside the point, my point is that I read these stories for comfort, the reassurance of the hope that in Jesus’ hands, death is not the end, will not separate, is not so powerful.

I read these stories when I feel the pain of loss and fear I might not see my beloved Aunt Dot again and it gives me hope that I might not understand, but in Jesus’ hands, all things are possible. Not an easy choice to believe, but it is a choice.  I choose to believe it because Dot believed it.  First hand I was born and raised in her vicinity to watch the miracle of a life fully dedicated to embodying Christ.  If that is difficult to believe, that knowing Jesus makes a difference, then she is one of the rare ones to show how a life can be lived with faithful prayer and hope to be Jesus among all of us; her life shows this miracle is possible.  

The last letter I received from her was on July first of this year.  She was encouraging me and happened to mention her struggle sometimes with relationships and accepting people...  What?  Dot struggled to love and accept people?  Of course she did. She could be impatient. She could roll her eyes and say someone was driving her crazy. She was fully human. Yet her humility acknowledged the struggle.  In her letter she writes, “So much harder to live peacefully when working on relationships—I don’t always do well it seems.”  What? Even Dot!?!? ...But look at how we remember her!  Look at our favorite memories.  Our sincere gratitude for her is specifically rooted in this one characteristic that is spoken of by each person who knew her—she loved fiercely, personally, intimately, with great favor and great joy.  So in her struggle, she handed that over to Jesus as well in prayer that it would be healed, changed, reconciled.  We are the testament to her success in that prayer.  This gives me hope as well, that prayer can be and will be answered as we seek to embody Christ in namaste—honoring the holy, the “created in the image of God”ness in everyone we meet.  Everyone.  Even the one who is difficult for us personally to accept perhaps.  While on earth even Jesus himself struggled with relationships, and chose a few to do something specific here, sent others away who were disrupting the flow of life there, spoke to one person one way and to the other another way.  Always connecting, embracing, accepting where we are and loving us into the change we might need, no matter what other people might say or think about us...

Actually there’s a third bit to this passage that I find makes me chuckle—Jesus and Dot are so much alike—this last image has been mentioned time and time again as well.  The two of them are so much alike—related like brother and sister. I won’t give it away, but you can’t miss it. It comes in the last sentence.  

Mark 5:21-43 (NASB)

21 When Jesus had crossed over again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around Him; and so He [a]stayed by the seashore. 22 One of the synagogue [b]officials named Jairus *came up, and on seeing Him, *fell at His feet 23 and *implored Him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death; please come and lay Your hands on her, so that she will [c]get well and live.” 24 And He went off with him; and a large crowd was following Him and pressing in on Him.

25 A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, 26 and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse— 27 after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His [d]cloak. 28 For she [e]thought, “If I just touch His garments, I will [f]get well.” 29 Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. 30 Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My garments?” 31 And His disciples said to Him, “You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” 32 And He looked around to see the woman who had done this. 33 But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. 34 And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has [g]made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.”

35 While He was still speaking, they *came from the house of the synagogue official, saying, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the Teacher anymore?” 36 But Jesus, overhearing what was being spoken, *said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid any longer, only [h]believe.” 37 And He allowed no one to accompany Him, except Peter and [i]James and John the brother of [j]James. 38 They *came to the house of the synagogue official; and He *saw a commotion, and people loudly weeping and wailing. 39 And entering in, He *said to them, “Why make a commotion and weep? The child has not died, but is asleep.” 40 They began laughing at Him. But putting them all out, He *took along the child’s father and mother and His own companions, and *entered the room where the child was. 41 Taking the child by the hand, He *said to her, “Talitha kum!” (which translated means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl got up and began to walk, for she was twelve years old. And immediately they were completely astounded. 43 And He gave them strict orders that no one should know about this, and He said that something should be given her to eat.

obituary The State newspaper Columbia SC

sign guest book Dunbar Funeral Home Dignity Memorial

unending tribute to Dad through cycles of grief, joy, gratitude...and hope

I remember the feel of the bark on the tree against my palms and against my cheek, the tricky slickness of the bottoms of my mary janes against the skirting of the trunk and roots.  I was five.  I could feel wisps of hair from the loose bun falling around my face and lilting across  my eyes as I blew kisses toward the camera at Dad’s beckoning. It was a pretty day and I felt pretty in my dress with the white top and dark blue skirt (were there polka dots?) And lacy socks and mary jane’s.  I felt pretty being photographed like a model and hanging out with my dad.  He was thin and his hair was still black, waved back with a beautiful hairline I see now when I look at photos.  He was cool.  He could sing beautifully.  He could take beautiful photographs.  He could tell wonderful stories.  He could write words to move you to tears or laughter.  He could take the big rabbit out of its cage behind Granny’s house and let me pet it.  He could drive fast through the mountains.  He could make up really good stories about people in restaurants eating at nearby tables. He could work all night. He could win writing, advertising and marketing awards. He could sell anything. He could only write when he had a deadline and a paycheck.  He could be gone for long stretches of time.  He could hurt my feelings faster than anyone.  He could make things that didn’t make sense make sense.  He could explain why people were the way they were.  He could pray with his eyes open. He could help millions of people get through national disasters or a political crisis.  He could negotiate the release of prisoners or a change in policy.  He could get splinters out of my finger.  He could pick out the best puppies.  He could bake a chicken that had cinnamon as a main seasoning ingredient.  He could order the best steaks.  He could help me map out a better plot sequence.  He could decorate a house—perfect compositions of wall hangings and furniture.  He could make things sound better.  Or worse.  He could move and uproot his family every two to three years.  He could make up the best words like disgustipating. He could make me feel like the most special and important person in the universe.  He could make me feel suffocated.  He could make me angry.  He could make me laugh.  He could make me cry.  He could NOT beat me at racquet ball once I turned 12.  Otherwise, he could do anything.  Except prevent vascular disease from taking over his life. He can still make me miss him and love him and forgive him for being human like the rest of us.  He can still be the best dad ever.  He can still speak to me.  He can still make me laugh and cry.  He can still make me feel special and loved.  He can still make me wish he were here to eat Calabash shrimp at the beach, or drink cherry ibc colas, or watch tennis.  He can still be here with me, for me, in my memory and in my ways.  I hope he can forgive me for not knowing a lot of things I wish I’d known...about how and how much he loved me...about misunderstandings that seem to linger...about how really really far death can separate you...about how impossible it is to know the story when it wasn’t told...  I put all of this into a pretty box of joy without sides, wrapped in paper of unlimited gratitude, and ribboned in swirls of grieving that will hopefully one day be untied...to find us all there—all the family for generations—together inside (and out) once again...

how weird was that? just streamed it all of a sudden...  and i might post it but I’d have to name it something like unending tribute to dad through cycles of grief and joy and gratitude...and hope...

i hope you have a great father's day and will celebrate your dad in a special way.  i'm grabbing moon pies and cherry ibc colas and going to the beach...