Well, given the fact that I’ve been removed from Kentucky for two months now, and in response to several fielded requests for a final post, I reckon it’s about time I tie up the loose ends of this blog for those of you who have been kind enough to follow along for the past year.
The last couple of months of my term of service with CAP went by impossibly quickly. I knew that they would, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel dizzy and out-of-breath on my last night at the Jackson House. I also knew that it would take a long time for the overall experience of the year to sink in and make sense. It still hasn’t completely come into focus for me just yet, so bear with me if this last commentary seems fragmented and confused. That’s pretty much how I’m feeling right now.
I’m working a real grown-up job now. Yep. I’m the west coast sales administrator for Regent Sports; Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 5:00. It’s my first paid job with a lunch break and health benefits. Given this economy, I know I’m extremely lucky. All the same, though, my plain beige cubicle and corporate attire is a far cry from rollicking around Owsley County in a muddy minivan and flip flops.
I was sitting at my desk today, staring at the computer screen and trying to make sense of its flashing numbers, when I heard music from the other side of the room. The local default office station was playing on my co-worker’s radio, and the song was Train’s “Hey Soul Sister.” Now, I know this song was played ad nauseum for the entire spring and summer of last year, but hear me out. I checked to see that the coast was clear, then closed my eyes and allowed myself to float away for just a minute.
I’m driving in my CAP car and the Kentucky hills are decked out in their full-blown springtime regalia. My friend, Jordan, has the new Train album, and we listen to that song over and over again with the windows rolled down and our hands making waves out of the wind. The gentle curves of the hollows are fresh and green, and the bright fuchsia blossoms of the redbuds seem to shout out at us from their high perches on the mountains. I can’t breathe in enough of the sweet air and I can’t even begin to believe that I get to live here for the next year.
I’ve got a van full of wide-eyed students who have come down with boundless enthusiasm to spend time with my participants; we’re on our way back from a field trip to Flat Lick Falls, and they’re alive with the feeling of water rushing over their feet and the constant sound of it cascading off the ledge and into the pool below. I see in their smiles and hear in their laughter the same unbridled joy that’s filled my soul since I first crossed from West Virginia into Kentucky. My co-pilot leans over and turns up Little Big Town’s “Boondocks” as loudly as it’ll go, and we all sing ourselves hoarse.
I’m sitting in the back of a dimly lit chapel, waiting for the funeral service of a participant to begin. The room is filled with people who recognize and acknowledge me, though I can’t say that I know all of them. Mary looks peaceful at the front of the room; she’s wearing a beautiful blue dress, which her daughter painstakingly picked out of her limited collection. Her great-granddaughter sits next to me, swinging her chubby little legs off the edge of the chair. The pastor talks about the ninety-five years Mary spent on this earth, while the grey heads around me nod and grunt in agreement. Suddenly, a woman with a wild mane of silver hair steps from behind a wall. She’s dressed in a startlingly bright turquoise dress and a guitar hangs in front of her. Her face is a mixture of pride and sadness as she strums the opening chords of “Amazing Grace.” Her voice tears itself from her throat, as raw as the hollow in which she was raised. I feel goosebumps raise up on my arms and I swear that, wherever she is, Mary’s got to be hearing every note.
I’m sitting on our porch with Ben in mid-September. I’ve lost count of how many cups of coffee I’ve had, but it’s a nowhere-to-go-and-all-day-to-get-there kind of morning, and I want nothing more than to listen to music I’ve never heard before and watch the light filter through the leaves around our tree house. He plays “Murdered in the City” by the Avett Brothers and I think of Brian, Casey, and Patrick and, before I know it, tears are in my eyes. I laugh at myself as I brush them off my cheeks and wish, as I do all the time here, that I could be sharing this part of my life with them.
I’m behind the steering wheel, in the passenger seat, or hunkered down in the back for one of many road trips with friends who have become family. I’m cruising through Tennessee on my way to meet an old friend on Beale Street, where we’ll croon “Walking in Memphis” to anyone who will listen. I’m en route to South Bend, Indiana, where the Avett Brothers will appear on stage and Annie and I will turn to each other with expressions of absolute ecstasy as we hear “January Wedding” start up. I’m being escorted through southern Indiana on the way back from Bange’s birthday party in St. Louis by Men At Work, who save a bunch of us from lurking troopers and an ungodly smell that seems to pervade that entire part of the state. And, despite stiff legs and completely abusing my poor Cobalt, I find myself craving the road more every day.
I’m dancing in the McCreary House to Walk the Moon’s “Anna Sun.” Since Kristen first shared it with me, I make everybody who comes into the house listen to it. The number of people in the trailer makes for a cramped dance floor, but we move close to one another and shout, “We got no money, but we got heart.” It encapsulates so much of what being a CAP volunteer is, and for the time being and for a long time after I want nothing but that.
I’m washing dishes after dinner and singing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” even though it’s way too early to even start thinking about Christmas music. Nevertheless, and much to my housemates’ chagrin, I can’t help but hum the song as soon as frost starts appearing on our windshields in the morning. Christmastime means Braveheart pictures and tree-decorating and song-singing and movie-watching and tradition-sharing and Bug Childers-sled-riding. It also means the painful realization that, for me, this will soon be over.
I’m sitting in a near-empty bar with some of my dearest friends and very few others. Mitch Barrett and Owen Reynolds are playing a private concert for us; we’ve made our way from the back of the room to the front of the makeshift stage in the corner of the venue. I’m three days away from heading back to New York for good, and my greatest wish is that this night will never end. Empty beer bottles cover the table in front of us as we laugh and talk with the singers, and every song they play is better than the last. The boys close with “Drop in the Bucket,” and I promise myself that I won’t forget this feeling as my friends and I sing along.
“Wagon Wheel” is playing. I’m the rookie of the group, and we’re on our way to my very first contra dance in Berea. I’m nervous and out of my element and I’m told that everybody knows this song so I’d better like it. And I do. So they play it again for me. We sing it around bonfires where the heat feels like heaven on my bare legs as the ring of light cast by the flames keeps us safe from the big night; we walk away into the darkness smelling like smoke and starlight, and my room still smells that way in the morning. We make a habit of playing it at the end of every long journey. Rattling down Sand Lick in the dark, our driveway just coming into view, we sing it softly and somberly and almost reverently, and it feels like coming home every time.
“Yo, Bridget, where are you right now?” My head snapped forward and I whipped around to face Jose from the warehouse, who was laughing at me. “You’re a million miles away, baby.” I blushed as the other girls in the office chuckled and tried to refocus my attention on inventory and orders to be placed and salesmen to be dealt with.
My eyes drifted once more, though, to the Jackson House Christmas card I have pinned to my cubicle wall. I smiled back at the twelve other grinning faces that I know and love and miss to death. A gift from Kerri – a friend and housemate – sits next to my computer. It’s a framed copy of my favorite quote from one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs: “Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”
I think a lot of folks embark on a “term of service” under the impression that it’ll be just that: a span of time with a beginning and an end that will expand their minds and be a wonderful experience to talk about for years to come. One makes the decision to leave the familiar for a little while; she takes a leap of faith and immerses herself in a different world and a different life. And before she knows it, she’s found herself deeply in love with this strange place. The dark and dusty corners that are seldom revealed and rarely explored illuminate her soul with their own quirky light, and she is never the same. She has discovered too much about herself and about the way things are and they way that they could be to ever be satisfied with “the same.”
Thank you so much for spending this time with me, reader. Whether I know you personally or not, the opportunity to share the most incredible year of my young life with you has been a true honor. I promise I won’t keep you waiting long for the next adventure.
Until then, keep giving the strangest places a second look.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Slacker
Boy. Time sure does fly.
I’ve been slacking on the writing thing, dear reader, and for that I apologize.
We have a running debate here at the Jackson House (and, I suppose, in every CAP community) regarding whether or not our existence here constitutes “real life.” Undoubtedly, the work we’re doing and the people with whom we’re working are as real as it gets. Status-related, materialistic things like the size of one’s house, the make of one’s car, and the brand of one’s clothing are entirely inconsequential; basic survival is key, especially in the winter. I have to smile (albeit a little sardonically) this time of year as all of us are bombarded with countless advertisements for “the perfect gift.” Even my beloved J. Crew is promoting a cashmere/jewel/shoe of the month club for that special lady in your life. Know what my most-requested gift was this year from my elderly folks? Socks.
At the same time, though, this stripped-down version of the day-to-day is punctuated by instances of surrealism that do cause one to take a step back, shake her head, and ponder whether or not she’s just dreamt it all. It’s easy to get swept up, wrapped up, and caught up in the now-presumed miracle that begins each day with my eyes opening in dusky gray light that whispers “good morning” to our hollow before the sun does and ends when I slip into blissful unconsciousness before my head even hits my pillow at night. And that’s a good thing, really. I love being in love with my life here – with my participants, my community, and my surroundings – however real or unreal it is. The trouble is that it occasionally causes me to neglect the owners of the precious eyes that read these words now. And that’s no good.
At any rate, here we are in December. My one year anniversary is fast-approaching, and it blows my mind. I feel like if I were to come face-to-face with the girl who moved here at the end of last January, I’d cock my head to the side, a half-smile on my face, and try to place where, exactly, I knew her from. I remember driving slowly down Sandlick Road after spending a couple of days in Rockcastle on account of the snow and ice encapsulating my new home, my heart beating fast and my knuckles white on the steering wheel. I had only an idea then of how much my life would change, of the joy and pain my heart would experience, of the people I would meet and the situations I would encounter that would completely and utterly alter the rest of my time on this earth. I think I still only have an idea; there’s never all that much time to stop and think about it too much.
I wonder what she’d say to me. I look the same as she does – a little thinner, perhaps, and with a lot less hair. Knowing her, she’d shake my hand, trying to project a little more confidence than she was feeling, smile real big, and ask me to tell her a story. I know what I’d tell her.
Spend as much time as you can outside in the spring, and pick armfuls and armfuls of wild daffodils. The rock you hike to during WorkFest and YouthFest? That’ll be your retreat; go there more often than you feel like you need to. Speaking of retreats, soak up every second you can out on the porch before it gets too cold. Somehow the day just feels better when you’ve greeted the sun as it comes up over that hill. Keep your laptop away from liquids: you’ll miss your music a lot when it’s gone.
You’re going to have countless incredibly wonderful days, but you’re definitely going to be blind-sided by some rough ones, too. Just remember to keep your heart as light as a feather. Head up; chin up. Nothing is permanent: you are a temp. Beware of windshield time: I know you’ve never really had the chance to over-think before, but you will this year, and you won’t like it. Don’t ask too much of people. Actually, don’t ask for or expect anything of them.
Spend more time at that participant’s house, and when this one’s leg starts hurting, tell him to go to the hospital right away. This lady’s heart is broken; let her talk. And that one is terribly lonely; talk to her. On a lot of days, you’re going to be tired. Push yourself to get one more visit in before you go home. It means so much, and it’s why you’re here.
Don’t let Julia go off that rope swing. Watch out for that dumpster when you’re backing up the fifteen-passenger van. Spend more time in conversation with Steve. Bend those banjo strings, girl. Invest time and energy in your participants and in your community, but remember to save some of yourself for God. I know, I know. You find Him in those other things, too. That’s good. But give God His time. You’ll need it. When the light hits the frost in the morning when you go down that stretch off of 421 on your way to Booneville, go ahead and pull over. Take that minute. Same goes for that place up on Marcum Ridge. And when the spring rolls around and your senses are overwhelmed by the smell of a hundred different wildflowers as you start your walk down the driveway, let your heart do a somersault. Those are the moments that will get you through the not-so-stellar days. And love, love, love. It may surprise you, you naïve little thing, but it’s not always going to be a walk in the park. No matter how tough it gets, do it anyway. It’s the best kind of prayer.
There’s an underlying tone of departure in this post, I realize. I still have time left here in Kentucky, but it feels like my heart is already on the leaving side of “goodbye.”
Time sure does fly.
I’ve been slacking on the writing thing, dear reader, and for that I apologize.
We have a running debate here at the Jackson House (and, I suppose, in every CAP community) regarding whether or not our existence here constitutes “real life.” Undoubtedly, the work we’re doing and the people with whom we’re working are as real as it gets. Status-related, materialistic things like the size of one’s house, the make of one’s car, and the brand of one’s clothing are entirely inconsequential; basic survival is key, especially in the winter. I have to smile (albeit a little sardonically) this time of year as all of us are bombarded with countless advertisements for “the perfect gift.” Even my beloved J. Crew is promoting a cashmere/jewel/shoe of the month club for that special lady in your life. Know what my most-requested gift was this year from my elderly folks? Socks.
At the same time, though, this stripped-down version of the day-to-day is punctuated by instances of surrealism that do cause one to take a step back, shake her head, and ponder whether or not she’s just dreamt it all. It’s easy to get swept up, wrapped up, and caught up in the now-presumed miracle that begins each day with my eyes opening in dusky gray light that whispers “good morning” to our hollow before the sun does and ends when I slip into blissful unconsciousness before my head even hits my pillow at night. And that’s a good thing, really. I love being in love with my life here – with my participants, my community, and my surroundings – however real or unreal it is. The trouble is that it occasionally causes me to neglect the owners of the precious eyes that read these words now. And that’s no good.
At any rate, here we are in December. My one year anniversary is fast-approaching, and it blows my mind. I feel like if I were to come face-to-face with the girl who moved here at the end of last January, I’d cock my head to the side, a half-smile on my face, and try to place where, exactly, I knew her from. I remember driving slowly down Sandlick Road after spending a couple of days in Rockcastle on account of the snow and ice encapsulating my new home, my heart beating fast and my knuckles white on the steering wheel. I had only an idea then of how much my life would change, of the joy and pain my heart would experience, of the people I would meet and the situations I would encounter that would completely and utterly alter the rest of my time on this earth. I think I still only have an idea; there’s never all that much time to stop and think about it too much.
I wonder what she’d say to me. I look the same as she does – a little thinner, perhaps, and with a lot less hair. Knowing her, she’d shake my hand, trying to project a little more confidence than she was feeling, smile real big, and ask me to tell her a story. I know what I’d tell her.
Spend as much time as you can outside in the spring, and pick armfuls and armfuls of wild daffodils. The rock you hike to during WorkFest and YouthFest? That’ll be your retreat; go there more often than you feel like you need to. Speaking of retreats, soak up every second you can out on the porch before it gets too cold. Somehow the day just feels better when you’ve greeted the sun as it comes up over that hill. Keep your laptop away from liquids: you’ll miss your music a lot when it’s gone.
You’re going to have countless incredibly wonderful days, but you’re definitely going to be blind-sided by some rough ones, too. Just remember to keep your heart as light as a feather. Head up; chin up. Nothing is permanent: you are a temp. Beware of windshield time: I know you’ve never really had the chance to over-think before, but you will this year, and you won’t like it. Don’t ask too much of people. Actually, don’t ask for or expect anything of them.
Spend more time at that participant’s house, and when this one’s leg starts hurting, tell him to go to the hospital right away. This lady’s heart is broken; let her talk. And that one is terribly lonely; talk to her. On a lot of days, you’re going to be tired. Push yourself to get one more visit in before you go home. It means so much, and it’s why you’re here.
Don’t let Julia go off that rope swing. Watch out for that dumpster when you’re backing up the fifteen-passenger van. Spend more time in conversation with Steve. Bend those banjo strings, girl. Invest time and energy in your participants and in your community, but remember to save some of yourself for God. I know, I know. You find Him in those other things, too. That’s good. But give God His time. You’ll need it. When the light hits the frost in the morning when you go down that stretch off of 421 on your way to Booneville, go ahead and pull over. Take that minute. Same goes for that place up on Marcum Ridge. And when the spring rolls around and your senses are overwhelmed by the smell of a hundred different wildflowers as you start your walk down the driveway, let your heart do a somersault. Those are the moments that will get you through the not-so-stellar days. And love, love, love. It may surprise you, you naïve little thing, but it’s not always going to be a walk in the park. No matter how tough it gets, do it anyway. It’s the best kind of prayer.
There’s an underlying tone of departure in this post, I realize. I still have time left here in Kentucky, but it feels like my heart is already on the leaving side of “goodbye.”
Time sure does fly.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Cricket
Ah, Friday. It was the end of a particularly rough week, and I’d made plans to venture outside of the OC for the day to have lunch with a couple of friends and help out in Family Advocacy. I was pretty excited to just step back and take it easy; I’d been feeling slightly burnt out as of late.
As much as I absolutely love my work and my life here, at nine months in I’d be lying if I said that all of it doesn’t catch up with me once in a while. Just the Tuesday before, I’d come home from an exceptionally tiring day and gone straight to bed at 7:30 without saying so much as a “hello” to any of my housemates. Needless to say, in a family of eleven, if one goes to bed before double-digits it really isn’t fair to ask for or to expect silence. Therefore, I stumbled out of my room with my comforter a half-hour later, snuck through a seldom-used back door while the rest of the crew was otherwise occupied in the kitchen, and crawled into my van to rack up some REM points. This started out as a pretty sweet idea until somebody discovered my absence a couple of hours later and the entire house organized itself into a frantic search party, thinking that I’d snapped and embarked on some manic tear through the Appalachian hills as a result of my less-than-stellar day. I awoke in the front seat of my Chevy Uplander to the sound of my name being bellowed by the Jackson House men and echoing all around our hollow. Bless their hearts, but I wound up not quite getting the night’s rest that I so desperately needed.
So, when a housemate held our phone out to me on Friday morning and said that it was Earl’s daughter calling, I couldn’t help cringing. She’d told me the day before that her dad had been flown to Lexington from Kentucky River Hospital, and I’d asked her to keep me posted. Wish granted.
I softened when I heard tears in her voice. “They’re doing surgery,” she said. “My whole family is there and they want me to come. Can you drive me?” I sighed internally as I glanced at the kitchen clock and let thoughts of my low-key Friday vanish. “Give me a couple of hours, okay?”
We drove the two hours from Vincent to Lexington in time to meet the rest of the family after Earl had come out of the operating room. We waited inside a small room for a report from the front lines. Sarah was there, as were another one of her daughters and Earl’s two brothers from Indiana. Earl and Sarah’s two sons and their wives were in town, also, but were out grabbing lunch. I tried to gauge from the mood of the present company how gingerly I should tread.
“So are you one of them liberals from New York?” the smaller brother asked me, his eyes small and hard.
“Actually, I’m part of the red minority in that state,” I answered slowly.
Well, from that point on, we were all the best of friends.
A nurse entered the room and gave us an update. It turns out that the burning Earl had been experiencing for the past few weeks was a two foot-long blood clot in his right leg. Had he not suggested that as a possibility to the doctor in Breathitt County, we’d have been gathered for a very different and much more upsetting circumstance.
I spent the entire day with the whole family waiting for Earl to be wheeled to his recovery room in the ICU. They’re a mixed bag, to be sure, and they certainly made their presence known in the sixth floor’s main waiting area. Earl’s two brothers are complete opposites: Andy is a slight fellow, with his hair neatly parted on the left and a bright green and purple polo shirt tucked into his blue jeans; Ricky’s gray hair was parted straight down the middle, and overalls covered his substantially larger gut. The two sons present were big, beefy men – one is a mechanic, while the other followed in his father’s footsteps to become a truck-driver. The women all remained quiet, dozing on and off throughout the afternoon. Not the men, however.
“Check out how her second toe is bigger’n all the rest of ‘em,” one son whispered theatrically to Andy.
“She’s like a monkey,” Andy concurred.
“Where’s she from again?” another brother asked Laura on the other side of the room.
“New York,” Ricky interrupted.
“Well, how in the hell did she wind up here?”
“Not enough Republicans up there for her.”
“Well, she’s no fool.”
“We should call her Cricket. Sorta sounds like Bridget. And she’s tiny. Like a cricket.”
“Way she snorts, though, makes her sound like a barnyard.”
“You know the way to tell a woman’s from ‘roud here? Barefoot and pregnant.”
“Well, she’s already practically barefoot.”
“Didn’t she date that Jimmy boy a while back?”
Here I interjected. “I did NOT date Jimmy. We got pizza once.”
“Well, we might have her pregnant by May, after all!”
After a while, the brothers took one of Earl’s sons and set out in search of food, weary from an afternoon of merciless teasing. The rest of us continued our vigil. Finally, at long last, a nurse came in to us and said that our guy was able to start receiving visitors two at a time. I smiled at his son and daughters, but Sarah took my hand. “Come on, baby,” she said, standing up stiffly. “Let’s go see Dad.” I hesitated and looked at their kids, but they nodded eagerly, so I walked arm-in-arm with Laura past the nurses’ station and into Earl’s room.
The chaos of the hospital bullpen dissolved in the peace of Earl’s dimly-lit room, and I felt the usual calm associated with this man fill me up. He looked exhausted but comfortable in the hospital bed’s clean sheets, his long white hair swept back across his pillow. His eyes met mine and his eyebrows shot up in pleasant surprise. I felt my eyes prickle with tears as I asked, “How're ya feelin’, Earl?” Flint struck steel somewhere deep in his eyes and that old wry grin flitted faintly across his lips. “Mostly with my fingers.”
As much as I absolutely love my work and my life here, at nine months in I’d be lying if I said that all of it doesn’t catch up with me once in a while. Just the Tuesday before, I’d come home from an exceptionally tiring day and gone straight to bed at 7:30 without saying so much as a “hello” to any of my housemates. Needless to say, in a family of eleven, if one goes to bed before double-digits it really isn’t fair to ask for or to expect silence. Therefore, I stumbled out of my room with my comforter a half-hour later, snuck through a seldom-used back door while the rest of the crew was otherwise occupied in the kitchen, and crawled into my van to rack up some REM points. This started out as a pretty sweet idea until somebody discovered my absence a couple of hours later and the entire house organized itself into a frantic search party, thinking that I’d snapped and embarked on some manic tear through the Appalachian hills as a result of my less-than-stellar day. I awoke in the front seat of my Chevy Uplander to the sound of my name being bellowed by the Jackson House men and echoing all around our hollow. Bless their hearts, but I wound up not quite getting the night’s rest that I so desperately needed.
So, when a housemate held our phone out to me on Friday morning and said that it was Earl’s daughter calling, I couldn’t help cringing. She’d told me the day before that her dad had been flown to Lexington from Kentucky River Hospital, and I’d asked her to keep me posted. Wish granted.
I softened when I heard tears in her voice. “They’re doing surgery,” she said. “My whole family is there and they want me to come. Can you drive me?” I sighed internally as I glanced at the kitchen clock and let thoughts of my low-key Friday vanish. “Give me a couple of hours, okay?”
We drove the two hours from Vincent to Lexington in time to meet the rest of the family after Earl had come out of the operating room. We waited inside a small room for a report from the front lines. Sarah was there, as were another one of her daughters and Earl’s two brothers from Indiana. Earl and Sarah’s two sons and their wives were in town, also, but were out grabbing lunch. I tried to gauge from the mood of the present company how gingerly I should tread.
“So are you one of them liberals from New York?” the smaller brother asked me, his eyes small and hard.
“Actually, I’m part of the red minority in that state,” I answered slowly.
Well, from that point on, we were all the best of friends.
A nurse entered the room and gave us an update. It turns out that the burning Earl had been experiencing for the past few weeks was a two foot-long blood clot in his right leg. Had he not suggested that as a possibility to the doctor in Breathitt County, we’d have been gathered for a very different and much more upsetting circumstance.
I spent the entire day with the whole family waiting for Earl to be wheeled to his recovery room in the ICU. They’re a mixed bag, to be sure, and they certainly made their presence known in the sixth floor’s main waiting area. Earl’s two brothers are complete opposites: Andy is a slight fellow, with his hair neatly parted on the left and a bright green and purple polo shirt tucked into his blue jeans; Ricky’s gray hair was parted straight down the middle, and overalls covered his substantially larger gut. The two sons present were big, beefy men – one is a mechanic, while the other followed in his father’s footsteps to become a truck-driver. The women all remained quiet, dozing on and off throughout the afternoon. Not the men, however.
“Check out how her second toe is bigger’n all the rest of ‘em,” one son whispered theatrically to Andy.
“She’s like a monkey,” Andy concurred.
“Where’s she from again?” another brother asked Laura on the other side of the room.
“New York,” Ricky interrupted.
“Well, how in the hell did she wind up here?”
“Not enough Republicans up there for her.”
“Well, she’s no fool.”
“We should call her Cricket. Sorta sounds like Bridget. And she’s tiny. Like a cricket.”
“Way she snorts, though, makes her sound like a barnyard.”
“You know the way to tell a woman’s from ‘roud here? Barefoot and pregnant.”
“Well, she’s already practically barefoot.”
“Didn’t she date that Jimmy boy a while back?”
Here I interjected. “I did NOT date Jimmy. We got pizza once.”
“Well, we might have her pregnant by May, after all!”
After a while, the brothers took one of Earl’s sons and set out in search of food, weary from an afternoon of merciless teasing. The rest of us continued our vigil. Finally, at long last, a nurse came in to us and said that our guy was able to start receiving visitors two at a time. I smiled at his son and daughters, but Sarah took my hand. “Come on, baby,” she said, standing up stiffly. “Let’s go see Dad.” I hesitated and looked at their kids, but they nodded eagerly, so I walked arm-in-arm with Laura past the nurses’ station and into Earl’s room.
The chaos of the hospital bullpen dissolved in the peace of Earl’s dimly-lit room, and I felt the usual calm associated with this man fill me up. He looked exhausted but comfortable in the hospital bed’s clean sheets, his long white hair swept back across his pillow. His eyes met mine and his eyebrows shot up in pleasant surprise. I felt my eyes prickle with tears as I asked, “How're ya feelin’, Earl?” Flint struck steel somewhere deep in his eyes and that old wry grin flitted faintly across his lips. “Mostly with my fingers.”
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Country Poet
“I’m not sure I’m the girl you’re looking for,” I said doubtfully.
Hannah shook her head. “He’s not trying to court you. He just needs a friend. He can’t talk to nobody in this town.”
I wasn’t convinced. It’s not that I didn’t trust Sam; I did. I just wasn’t confident that my involvement in this particular piece of family drama would yield positive results. He was having trouble with his woman – actually, with two of his women. His ex-wife was giving him grief over custody of their two kids, and his current long-term girlfriend had stolen from the family and used the money to buy drugs. And although Hannah was simply worried about her eldest son, I couldn’t help but feel like I would walk into my office on the morning after our conversation to a very angry dope head and a twelve-gauge.
“Just take down his number,” Hannah pleaded. “He saw you in town the other day and said to me, ‘Mama, I just feel like I can trust her.’”
Against my better judgment, I added Sam’s number to my contacts list. I kept it there for a week or so and contemplated what my best move would be.
As much as my common sense was telling me to lose the number and forget about it, I couldn’t. Sure, my job title is “Elderly Caseworker” and I have absolutely no professional or personal background to help a fellow through a situation like this one. But this was family. Just a few weeks ago I’d gone to their reunion and shared stories, laughs, and wonderful food with the whole lot of them. Heck, I’d even gotten up in front of a hundred strangers and belted out “Amazing Grace” with banjo and steel guitar accompaniment. In short, there was an established bond there, and it counted for way more than common sense. And so I decided to call Sam.
Truth be told, I was as curious as I was concerned. Sam is your quintessential stone-faced, strong and silent farmer. Tall and gaunt, his face is a constant ashen color, his cheeks and eyes sunken in and partially hidden under a baseball cap pulled down low. He seldom smiles and never laughs. And while he’s always regarded me with kindness, I’d never had a conversation with him that extended past “Hey, how are ya?” Frankly, I could count on two hands the number of words I’d actually heard out of his mouth. Needless to say, I was intrigued to find out what it was that he believed he could share with me.
I waited one night until the Jackson House had wrapped up dinner and walked outside onto our porch with my cell phone. I found his name and hit Send, a strange butterfly fluttering in my stomach. Sam’s voice ended the ringing on the line and I told him who was calling. “Hiya, Sam. It’s Bridget. Your mom gave me your number.”
He sounded a little awkward on the other end, though not at all surprised. We exchanged pleasantries for a few moments, but it quickly became apparent to the two of us that if we’d never spoken this way when spending hours in each other’s company, then we certainly weren’t going to start on the phone this night. So we jumped right into it.
Sam told me about the two women he’d loved – how he’d given everything he could to them and how he’d been taken advantage of when they both turned to drugs. He told how his first wife had tried to use his kids to hurt him, and how his current girlfriend had proven to be a pathological liar.
“Bridget, I know that I’m capable of loving so much,” he said, his voice rising with emotion. “I just want to find a woman who’s going to love me as much as I love her.”
I’m glad that we were having this conversation via phone because, for the half hour that Sam poured out his soul to me, my mouth hung open. I’d had no idea that underneath that gray, non-descript exterior beat a heart so full of warmth and passion. I remained silent for a long time and let Sam get everything off of his chest. He talked about being lonely, and how at thirty-nine he believed that it was too late to start over. He said that he felt trapped in this place due to the custody battle involving his kids, and knew that his options (so to speak) were limited here. He insisted that he really loved his current girlfriend despite – and really perhaps because of – all of her problems. He was eloquent in his sincerity, his speech almost lyrical in its beautiful honesty. Sam became a country poet to me that night, tragic and sad and much wiser than I.
Sam and his girlfriend are still together; he took her back, much to his family’s chagrin. He’s helping her to work through all of her issues with the patient stoicism and loyalty of a saint, and he continues to work constantly to support her and his children. Sam and I have since resumed our smile-and-nod friendship. There’s a certain understanding in our eye contact now, though. Our “Hey, how are ya?” is like a secret code for “Hang in there. Sometimes love is tough. But it’s always worth it.”
Hannah shook her head. “He’s not trying to court you. He just needs a friend. He can’t talk to nobody in this town.”
I wasn’t convinced. It’s not that I didn’t trust Sam; I did. I just wasn’t confident that my involvement in this particular piece of family drama would yield positive results. He was having trouble with his woman – actually, with two of his women. His ex-wife was giving him grief over custody of their two kids, and his current long-term girlfriend had stolen from the family and used the money to buy drugs. And although Hannah was simply worried about her eldest son, I couldn’t help but feel like I would walk into my office on the morning after our conversation to a very angry dope head and a twelve-gauge.
“Just take down his number,” Hannah pleaded. “He saw you in town the other day and said to me, ‘Mama, I just feel like I can trust her.’”
Against my better judgment, I added Sam’s number to my contacts list. I kept it there for a week or so and contemplated what my best move would be.
As much as my common sense was telling me to lose the number and forget about it, I couldn’t. Sure, my job title is “Elderly Caseworker” and I have absolutely no professional or personal background to help a fellow through a situation like this one. But this was family. Just a few weeks ago I’d gone to their reunion and shared stories, laughs, and wonderful food with the whole lot of them. Heck, I’d even gotten up in front of a hundred strangers and belted out “Amazing Grace” with banjo and steel guitar accompaniment. In short, there was an established bond there, and it counted for way more than common sense. And so I decided to call Sam.
Truth be told, I was as curious as I was concerned. Sam is your quintessential stone-faced, strong and silent farmer. Tall and gaunt, his face is a constant ashen color, his cheeks and eyes sunken in and partially hidden under a baseball cap pulled down low. He seldom smiles and never laughs. And while he’s always regarded me with kindness, I’d never had a conversation with him that extended past “Hey, how are ya?” Frankly, I could count on two hands the number of words I’d actually heard out of his mouth. Needless to say, I was intrigued to find out what it was that he believed he could share with me.
I waited one night until the Jackson House had wrapped up dinner and walked outside onto our porch with my cell phone. I found his name and hit Send, a strange butterfly fluttering in my stomach. Sam’s voice ended the ringing on the line and I told him who was calling. “Hiya, Sam. It’s Bridget. Your mom gave me your number.”
He sounded a little awkward on the other end, though not at all surprised. We exchanged pleasantries for a few moments, but it quickly became apparent to the two of us that if we’d never spoken this way when spending hours in each other’s company, then we certainly weren’t going to start on the phone this night. So we jumped right into it.
Sam told me about the two women he’d loved – how he’d given everything he could to them and how he’d been taken advantage of when they both turned to drugs. He told how his first wife had tried to use his kids to hurt him, and how his current girlfriend had proven to be a pathological liar.
“Bridget, I know that I’m capable of loving so much,” he said, his voice rising with emotion. “I just want to find a woman who’s going to love me as much as I love her.”
I’m glad that we were having this conversation via phone because, for the half hour that Sam poured out his soul to me, my mouth hung open. I’d had no idea that underneath that gray, non-descript exterior beat a heart so full of warmth and passion. I remained silent for a long time and let Sam get everything off of his chest. He talked about being lonely, and how at thirty-nine he believed that it was too late to start over. He said that he felt trapped in this place due to the custody battle involving his kids, and knew that his options (so to speak) were limited here. He insisted that he really loved his current girlfriend despite – and really perhaps because of – all of her problems. He was eloquent in his sincerity, his speech almost lyrical in its beautiful honesty. Sam became a country poet to me that night, tragic and sad and much wiser than I.
Sam and his girlfriend are still together; he took her back, much to his family’s chagrin. He’s helping her to work through all of her issues with the patient stoicism and loyalty of a saint, and he continues to work constantly to support her and his children. Sam and I have since resumed our smile-and-nod friendship. There’s a certain understanding in our eye contact now, though. Our “Hey, how are ya?” is like a secret code for “Hang in there. Sometimes love is tough. But it’s always worth it.”
Friday, September 24, 2010
The King
Autumn is an exciting time here in Kentucky. As nature ages gracefully, the leaves change and set the hills on fire in a blaze of scarlet, amber, and gold. Mornings wake up the day with a decidedly crisp chill in the air, and the fog is taking longer and longer to burn off in the valley of Booneville. Front yards are slowly filling up with pumpkins, bales of hay, and scarecrows. The old folks are taking turns making predictions about the coming winter, each more ominous than the last and quickly followed up by war stories of Januarys survived.
Perhaps, though, the most exhilarating Fall activities are the slew of county fairs that are threatening to occupy our every weekend. These festivals are no frivolous New York affair featuring beer tents and wire leashes for invisible dogs. Oh, no. County fairs around here are serious business. Young and old battle it out in 4-H contests for canning, quilting, painting, and vegetable-growing, and local musicians show their stuff at down-home talent competitions that win the victors a Walmart gift card and a year’s worth of bragging rights. There are banjos, mandolins, guitars, and more Appalachian clogging than you can shake a stick at. And as far as sustenance goes: well, if you can fry it and run a stick through it, you can most certainly ingest it (before jumping on the giant pirate ship ride and sorely regretting it).
During the past few weeks, my Kentucky family and I have immersed ourselves in the local flavor of our current surroundings. We kicked things off at the Jackson County Fair in our CAP hometown of McKee, which I followed with the Booneville Fair in the OC. A few of the J-House ladies checked out the Richmond Pottery Festival, while the ever-wise McCreary gals opted for the Bourbon Festival last weekend. This past Sunday, a few of my friends and I attended the Berea Spoonbread Festival.
Spoonbread is a type of cornbread that’s pudding-like in consistency, not like the dense, crumbly cousin that we live on down here. Seeing as how there’s a whole festival named after it, five of us splurged on a single three-dollar helping and eagerly gathered around the bowl with our spoons to try it. We all took our bites at the same time and chewed them slowly before looking up into the faces around the circle and seeing our own confusion reflected in each of them. Okay, so spoonbread isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m quickly learning, though, that a small town doesn’t need a real reason to celebrate community.
We wandered about the grounds, looking at the different stands and sampling the various fares offered from brightly colored booths smelling strongly of oil and clogged arteries. Eventually, we found ourselves sitting in a pavilion next to the music tent, eating snow cones and impatiently awaiting the arrival of the final act of the festival and the one for which we’d really come in the first place.
Will “Teen King” Reynolds is a sixteen year-old reed of a boy who – you guessed it – impersonates Elvis Presley. Do yourself a favor and Youtube him. All it took was for us to see his name and promotional photo in the festival program, and we knew there was no question that we’d have to be present for his show. He’s been doing this routine for years. When discussing the show later on in the McKee Rite Aid, the cashier knew exactly who we were talking about; she’d seen him at an Independence Day celebration in Richmond a few years back. What I’m trying to say, kids, is that this fellow if kind of a big deal.
Tamara and I were sitting at our picnic table surrounded by other cheery festival-goers while Christel and Ben went off to make phone calls before the music started up. While we girls were chatting, we heard a blood-curdling scream; we, along with the other thirty people in the pavilion, whipped our heads around to see who’d caught on fire. Alas, Ben came running over to us, eyes like saucers and the Superman symbol he’d had the kids’ face painter draw on his chest just peeking out over the top button of his flannel shirt.
“YOU GUYS. HE’S HERE.”
It took us a minute to realize that he was, in fact, talking about the Teen King. With those around us now looking at all three of us with some alarm and much interest, Tamara and I sprung from our bench and fled the scene, making a bee-line for the parking lot where the King himself was exiting his Oldsmobile with his grandparents and girlfriend in tow.
And what a King he was. He was dressed in a pale blue jump suit, his large white belt and many rhinestones catching the September sunlight and making him sparkle. His perfectly coifed black wig had not a hair out of place, and I can only assume that blue contact lenses allowed him to hold us in so piercing and icy a gaze. He was putting on a white scarf when we approached him, positively star-struck.
He graciously agreed to take a picture with Ben and me. Upon later review, I’m not entirely sure whether or not the curled lip was evidence of Mr. Reynolds staying in character or a sign of impatience for those of us who are so very far below his particular brand of royalty.
The show was just as spectacular as we’d hoped it would be. Afterwards, Ben and Trevor, who himself was sporting Batman’s emblem on his t-shirt, were banned from the Fun Slide for flying down headfirst, Ben bellowing the Superman theme song on the way down. And so we headed out.
But Lee County’s Woolly Worm Festival is right around the corner; its main draw is a massive caterpillar race. “Excited” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Perhaps, though, the most exhilarating Fall activities are the slew of county fairs that are threatening to occupy our every weekend. These festivals are no frivolous New York affair featuring beer tents and wire leashes for invisible dogs. Oh, no. County fairs around here are serious business. Young and old battle it out in 4-H contests for canning, quilting, painting, and vegetable-growing, and local musicians show their stuff at down-home talent competitions that win the victors a Walmart gift card and a year’s worth of bragging rights. There are banjos, mandolins, guitars, and more Appalachian clogging than you can shake a stick at. And as far as sustenance goes: well, if you can fry it and run a stick through it, you can most certainly ingest it (before jumping on the giant pirate ship ride and sorely regretting it).
During the past few weeks, my Kentucky family and I have immersed ourselves in the local flavor of our current surroundings. We kicked things off at the Jackson County Fair in our CAP hometown of McKee, which I followed with the Booneville Fair in the OC. A few of the J-House ladies checked out the Richmond Pottery Festival, while the ever-wise McCreary gals opted for the Bourbon Festival last weekend. This past Sunday, a few of my friends and I attended the Berea Spoonbread Festival.
Spoonbread is a type of cornbread that’s pudding-like in consistency, not like the dense, crumbly cousin that we live on down here. Seeing as how there’s a whole festival named after it, five of us splurged on a single three-dollar helping and eagerly gathered around the bowl with our spoons to try it. We all took our bites at the same time and chewed them slowly before looking up into the faces around the circle and seeing our own confusion reflected in each of them. Okay, so spoonbread isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m quickly learning, though, that a small town doesn’t need a real reason to celebrate community.
We wandered about the grounds, looking at the different stands and sampling the various fares offered from brightly colored booths smelling strongly of oil and clogged arteries. Eventually, we found ourselves sitting in a pavilion next to the music tent, eating snow cones and impatiently awaiting the arrival of the final act of the festival and the one for which we’d really come in the first place.
Will “Teen King” Reynolds is a sixteen year-old reed of a boy who – you guessed it – impersonates Elvis Presley. Do yourself a favor and Youtube him. All it took was for us to see his name and promotional photo in the festival program, and we knew there was no question that we’d have to be present for his show. He’s been doing this routine for years. When discussing the show later on in the McKee Rite Aid, the cashier knew exactly who we were talking about; she’d seen him at an Independence Day celebration in Richmond a few years back. What I’m trying to say, kids, is that this fellow if kind of a big deal.
Tamara and I were sitting at our picnic table surrounded by other cheery festival-goers while Christel and Ben went off to make phone calls before the music started up. While we girls were chatting, we heard a blood-curdling scream; we, along with the other thirty people in the pavilion, whipped our heads around to see who’d caught on fire. Alas, Ben came running over to us, eyes like saucers and the Superman symbol he’d had the kids’ face painter draw on his chest just peeking out over the top button of his flannel shirt.
“YOU GUYS. HE’S HERE.”
It took us a minute to realize that he was, in fact, talking about the Teen King. With those around us now looking at all three of us with some alarm and much interest, Tamara and I sprung from our bench and fled the scene, making a bee-line for the parking lot where the King himself was exiting his Oldsmobile with his grandparents and girlfriend in tow.
And what a King he was. He was dressed in a pale blue jump suit, his large white belt and many rhinestones catching the September sunlight and making him sparkle. His perfectly coifed black wig had not a hair out of place, and I can only assume that blue contact lenses allowed him to hold us in so piercing and icy a gaze. He was putting on a white scarf when we approached him, positively star-struck.
He graciously agreed to take a picture with Ben and me. Upon later review, I’m not entirely sure whether or not the curled lip was evidence of Mr. Reynolds staying in character or a sign of impatience for those of us who are so very far below his particular brand of royalty.
The show was just as spectacular as we’d hoped it would be. Afterwards, Ben and Trevor, who himself was sporting Batman’s emblem on his t-shirt, were banned from the Fun Slide for flying down headfirst, Ben bellowing the Superman theme song on the way down. And so we headed out.
But Lee County’s Woolly Worm Festival is right around the corner; its main draw is a massive caterpillar race. “Excited” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Bless Its Heart
It’d been a particularly rough day. I dragged myself up the steps of the front porch rather melodramatically and pouted as I headed straight for Annie’s outstretched arms, while Ginny cooed, “Bless its heart.”
Annie’s a tiny woman, part Cherokee with a full head of red hair that she usually wears in a plait that reaches the small of her back. She lives in a beautiful old white house sitting on top of a hill in Vincent; it’s one of my favorite spots in Kentucky. The walls are layered with cream planks that are turning yellow with age, and the dark wooden doors are covered with intricately hand-carved molding. After my visits with her in the spring, one of my favorite things to do was to run across her back property with her dog Ginger on my heels. I’d reach its highest point and throw myself down in the tall, sweet-smelling grass, sending up a plume of jewel-colored butterflies against an achingly blue sky. A big wrap-around porch conducts the most beautiful breeze on balmy summer evenings when we sit with her family on the swing and wave at the passing cars. Annie considers me to be a daughter to her now, and I see her children and granddaughter as my own relatives. There are few things to which I look forward more at the end of a long day than unwinding with the whole lot of them in a cloud of cigarette smoke at their kitchen table.
Annie’s granddaughter Kelly is eight years old and cute as a button. So, when she asked me to buy something for her school’s fundraiser to assist her in her generation’s relentless pursuit of Silly Bandz, I had no choice but to succumb to the requests of the freckle-faced little sprite. I signed up for twenty issues of Time magazine (I know it goes against all of my “El Rushbo” upbringing, McCormacks, but I’d already bought a subscription to Southern Living from another kid, and People en Español just wasn’t that enticing). As I didn’t have the cash on me that afternoon, I arranged with Kelly and her mother Ginny to meet me at the elementary school at 7:30 the next day.
Ginny greeted me with a warm smile in the chilly gray morning light as I waited for them outside the cafeteria. At thirty-seven years old, her face is beginning to show the effects of years of sun and smoking, but her brown eyes lend a pretty softness to her expression. Kelly sleepily took the ten bucks I handed to her and let the corners of her mouth curl up ever-so-slightly in thanks.
I hugged Ginny and said, “See you at your mom’s house later?”
“Of course,” she chuckled. “We always wind up there one way or another.”
I drove up Annie’s hill at about 4:30, looking forward to listening to their family banter for an hour before returning to my own Kentucky family. I walked in to a very different scene, however. Annie, her son, and her daughter-in-law sat silently around their table, chain-smoking their cigarettes and silently staring straight ahead. Annie looked up at me, her deeply wrinkled face creased even further with worry. “Ginny and Kelly were in an accident over in McKee. Kelly was taken to Berea, but they flew Ginny to UK.”
I looked at them, startled, and sat down in the vacant chair at the end of the table. “How are they now?”
“No one’s telling us anything when we call,” Annie said helplessly. She pushed the phone into my hands. “You try.”
I got through to the emergency room and discovered that Ginny was responsive, but in bad shape. I asked if it would be helpful to have a family member there, to which the nurse replied, “Uh, yeah.”
The obvious dawned on me then: neither Annie nor her son have a car and therefore had no way of getting to UK. I asked Annie if it would be alright for me to represent her family at the hospital, and she eagerly agreed. Bringing her daughter-in-law with me, I jumped into my minivan and sped off for Lexington.
After spending a fair amount of time in the waiting room, we were allowed to make our way through the maze of gurneys and plastic curtains back to Ginny’s bed in the ER. Her tiny 108-pound frame lay twisted up in the sheets, her left foot visibly swollen and her face contorted in pain. I rushed to the side of the bed and began to sweep her dark brown hair away from her face. She tried to open up her swollen eyes to look at me without much success. “It’s Bridget, Ginny. I’m here. I’m here.” She tried to repeat my name, but the left side of her mouth remained stubbornly limp, and she looked alarmed at the realization that she was unable to speak normally.
She’d suffered a stroke while driving. Kelly later explained that her mother had been acting rather strangely upon leaving their appointment, and that she’d just “fallen asleep” on their drive back to Owsley. They’d careened into a ditch on a remote roadside (something that proves to be a constant threat around here). Once their vehicle had come to a stop, Kelly had crawled out of the car with a chipped collarbone, up the embankment, and to the first house she saw. When nobody answered her knock, she ran into the street and flagged down a coal truck, saving her mother’s life.
As doctors and medical students drifted in and out of the room, Ginny continued to writhe in pain; due to the fact that she hadn’t been given an MRI yet, she was unable to take any sort of pain-killers. When the doctors revealed that she’d not only broken her foot in three places, but had also crushed her pelvis, I really wasn’t sure how much longer Ginny could take it. It’d already been hours since the accident and, because of the lack of family presence and pertinent personal information, nothing had been done to her in that time except for the insertion of an IV of fluids.
The doctors saw the need to stabilize her heel before proceeding with an MRI. The fracture wasn’t compounded, but the nature of the break was such that every movement threatened to push the broken bone through the skin. Two medical students began to cast it, and Ginny cried for them to stop, trying to lift herself up. I gently held her shoulder down, stroking her hair and shushing her the way I imagined my mom would have if it were me laying on that bed.
“You’re doing a great job,” I whispered as she whimpered under my hand. “I’m so proud of you. And Kelly’s going to be so proud of her Mama.”
“For what?” she mumbled through her uncooperative lips as a tear slipped down her broken nose.
I smiled and loved her so much at that moment. “For being so brave.”
The plaster eventually hardened, and Ginny fell asleep out of pain and sheer exhaustion as I held her hand. It sounds ridiculous, but I felt a strong protective, maternal instinct as I hovered over her pain-stricken face and broken body. It felt like somebody else – someone much older and more confident – was answering the doctor’s questions, giving direction to Ginny’s sister-in-law on how to update the family, and filling in Ginny’s husband when he finally arrived at UK from Berea Hospital. I felt as if Ginny was my very own, and I wanted to stay by her side through everything the doctors did to her that night. This was impossible, I knew, but I was so grateful to have been able to be with her as she endured all of that suffering. There’s a certain intangible but extraordinarily resilient bond that forms between people where intense suffering is involved. It can’t be created amidst everyday circumstances, and it can’t really be explained. It’s a bond that transcends normal human contact because suffering, like true joy, taps into psychological and emotional wells that are only accessed rarely, when something so deeply affects an individual that the usual reactions just don’t suffice.
When the surgical team wheeled her away to put pins in her foot and to scan her brain, I kissed her forehead and told her I loved her. Her “I love you, too” was muffled, but it meant the world to me.
Annie’s a tiny woman, part Cherokee with a full head of red hair that she usually wears in a plait that reaches the small of her back. She lives in a beautiful old white house sitting on top of a hill in Vincent; it’s one of my favorite spots in Kentucky. The walls are layered with cream planks that are turning yellow with age, and the dark wooden doors are covered with intricately hand-carved molding. After my visits with her in the spring, one of my favorite things to do was to run across her back property with her dog Ginger on my heels. I’d reach its highest point and throw myself down in the tall, sweet-smelling grass, sending up a plume of jewel-colored butterflies against an achingly blue sky. A big wrap-around porch conducts the most beautiful breeze on balmy summer evenings when we sit with her family on the swing and wave at the passing cars. Annie considers me to be a daughter to her now, and I see her children and granddaughter as my own relatives. There are few things to which I look forward more at the end of a long day than unwinding with the whole lot of them in a cloud of cigarette smoke at their kitchen table.
Annie’s granddaughter Kelly is eight years old and cute as a button. So, when she asked me to buy something for her school’s fundraiser to assist her in her generation’s relentless pursuit of Silly Bandz, I had no choice but to succumb to the requests of the freckle-faced little sprite. I signed up for twenty issues of Time magazine (I know it goes against all of my “El Rushbo” upbringing, McCormacks, but I’d already bought a subscription to Southern Living from another kid, and People en Español just wasn’t that enticing). As I didn’t have the cash on me that afternoon, I arranged with Kelly and her mother Ginny to meet me at the elementary school at 7:30 the next day.
Ginny greeted me with a warm smile in the chilly gray morning light as I waited for them outside the cafeteria. At thirty-seven years old, her face is beginning to show the effects of years of sun and smoking, but her brown eyes lend a pretty softness to her expression. Kelly sleepily took the ten bucks I handed to her and let the corners of her mouth curl up ever-so-slightly in thanks.
I hugged Ginny and said, “See you at your mom’s house later?”
“Of course,” she chuckled. “We always wind up there one way or another.”
I drove up Annie’s hill at about 4:30, looking forward to listening to their family banter for an hour before returning to my own Kentucky family. I walked in to a very different scene, however. Annie, her son, and her daughter-in-law sat silently around their table, chain-smoking their cigarettes and silently staring straight ahead. Annie looked up at me, her deeply wrinkled face creased even further with worry. “Ginny and Kelly were in an accident over in McKee. Kelly was taken to Berea, but they flew Ginny to UK.”
I looked at them, startled, and sat down in the vacant chair at the end of the table. “How are they now?”
“No one’s telling us anything when we call,” Annie said helplessly. She pushed the phone into my hands. “You try.”
I got through to the emergency room and discovered that Ginny was responsive, but in bad shape. I asked if it would be helpful to have a family member there, to which the nurse replied, “Uh, yeah.”
The obvious dawned on me then: neither Annie nor her son have a car and therefore had no way of getting to UK. I asked Annie if it would be alright for me to represent her family at the hospital, and she eagerly agreed. Bringing her daughter-in-law with me, I jumped into my minivan and sped off for Lexington.
After spending a fair amount of time in the waiting room, we were allowed to make our way through the maze of gurneys and plastic curtains back to Ginny’s bed in the ER. Her tiny 108-pound frame lay twisted up in the sheets, her left foot visibly swollen and her face contorted in pain. I rushed to the side of the bed and began to sweep her dark brown hair away from her face. She tried to open up her swollen eyes to look at me without much success. “It’s Bridget, Ginny. I’m here. I’m here.” She tried to repeat my name, but the left side of her mouth remained stubbornly limp, and she looked alarmed at the realization that she was unable to speak normally.
She’d suffered a stroke while driving. Kelly later explained that her mother had been acting rather strangely upon leaving their appointment, and that she’d just “fallen asleep” on their drive back to Owsley. They’d careened into a ditch on a remote roadside (something that proves to be a constant threat around here). Once their vehicle had come to a stop, Kelly had crawled out of the car with a chipped collarbone, up the embankment, and to the first house she saw. When nobody answered her knock, she ran into the street and flagged down a coal truck, saving her mother’s life.
As doctors and medical students drifted in and out of the room, Ginny continued to writhe in pain; due to the fact that she hadn’t been given an MRI yet, she was unable to take any sort of pain-killers. When the doctors revealed that she’d not only broken her foot in three places, but had also crushed her pelvis, I really wasn’t sure how much longer Ginny could take it. It’d already been hours since the accident and, because of the lack of family presence and pertinent personal information, nothing had been done to her in that time except for the insertion of an IV of fluids.
The doctors saw the need to stabilize her heel before proceeding with an MRI. The fracture wasn’t compounded, but the nature of the break was such that every movement threatened to push the broken bone through the skin. Two medical students began to cast it, and Ginny cried for them to stop, trying to lift herself up. I gently held her shoulder down, stroking her hair and shushing her the way I imagined my mom would have if it were me laying on that bed.
“You’re doing a great job,” I whispered as she whimpered under my hand. “I’m so proud of you. And Kelly’s going to be so proud of her Mama.”
“For what?” she mumbled through her uncooperative lips as a tear slipped down her broken nose.
I smiled and loved her so much at that moment. “For being so brave.”
The plaster eventually hardened, and Ginny fell asleep out of pain and sheer exhaustion as I held her hand. It sounds ridiculous, but I felt a strong protective, maternal instinct as I hovered over her pain-stricken face and broken body. It felt like somebody else – someone much older and more confident – was answering the doctor’s questions, giving direction to Ginny’s sister-in-law on how to update the family, and filling in Ginny’s husband when he finally arrived at UK from Berea Hospital. I felt as if Ginny was my very own, and I wanted to stay by her side through everything the doctors did to her that night. This was impossible, I knew, but I was so grateful to have been able to be with her as she endured all of that suffering. There’s a certain intangible but extraordinarily resilient bond that forms between people where intense suffering is involved. It can’t be created amidst everyday circumstances, and it can’t really be explained. It’s a bond that transcends normal human contact because suffering, like true joy, taps into psychological and emotional wells that are only accessed rarely, when something so deeply affects an individual that the usual reactions just don’t suffice.
When the surgical team wheeled her away to put pins in her foot and to scan her brain, I kissed her forehead and told her I loved her. Her “I love you, too” was muffled, but it meant the world to me.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Coming Home
Sunlight streams through the windows and shines off the whitewashed walls of the tiny church as blue-haired women in their Sunday best shuffle their way into pews reserved by tradition and habit. This weekend is Homecoming here at the Green Hollow Methodist Chapel, and one of my gals has invited me to be a part of her family today. I’ve taken my seat in the back, right behind Ella Mae and her son. Slowly, the rows in front of me fill up with generations of people who have come through this place at various points in their lives; hugs and excited greetings are exchanged as folks catch each other up on the past year.
As the conversation dies down, the pastor walks up to the front of the church and grins broadly at his congregation before inviting everyone to stand and sing. A hundred voices meld together and rise to an arched ceiling that embraces the joyful noise like an old friend. I mouth the words but don’t allow any sound to come out; aside from not being familiar with these old hymns, I feel like my voice would stick out amongst that gathering above us, a harsh New York accent trampling on beautifully soft Southern lilts. I’m content to listen, and my voice is content to rest (for once).
After a few verses, we sit and the pastor begins to take a role call. He announces the last name of each family in the parish, and all those present from that group stand. Some families have upwards of twenty members present, coming from as far away as California. Others – like Ella Mae’s – have two, but they represent their lineage and stand just as tall. The pastor introduces the oldest member of the congregation; at ninety-four, she stands proudly behind me as he calls out her name, beaming in a bright pink and purple floral print dress and surveying her church family, one which she has seen grow and change more than anybody else in this building has. Our attention is then directed to the youngest member who, at four months old, sleeps blissfully through the first of many homecomings, completely unaware that the eyes that smile on him now will watch him closely as he develops a little personality and contributes in his own way to Green Hollow's rich history.
After some preaching and more beautiful singing, we get up and file slowly through a door at the front of the church into a gathering area. Miles and miles of Southern cooking stretch out in front of me. In a traditional show of friendly competition, each lady has made her own specialty dish with the flair and panache of a five-star chef. Oh, sure, they’ll bat their eyes and dispense cordialities, but don’t be fooled: this is a blood sport (my compliments to whoever whipped up the potato salad, by the by). These people know how to cook. And they sure know how to eat.
We eventually roll away from the banquet tables and back into the church, where it’s open mic time. I’m blown away by the natural talent within this tiny community; each young singer that steps up to the front of the congregation is better than the last. While keeping an ear open, I make my way to the vestibule, where there are large scrapbooks set out featuring thousands of newspaper clippings from years past about the church’s members. I skim through the generations, watching one girl grow from a birth announcement to an engagement announcement to a wedding announcement. I look around and see her sitting close to her young husband, and I smile when I notice that she’s just starting to show. A pretty blonde woman comes and stands next to me, serving as a guide of sorts as I continue to explore this church through its periodical records. She tells me that she’s thirty-nine and a teacher at the county high school, but she has a youthful light and warmth about her that makes me feel like a peer. We fall into conversation easily, and I learn that the expectant mother inside is her younger sister. Hearing my accent – or lack thereof – she asks me where I’m from and which church I attend. I answer New York and give the name of my parish, and I notice the slightest trace of a raised eyebrow (Catholics aren’t traditionally all that popular in these parts). I quickly explain, “My horns and pitchfork are in the car.”
I’d had high hopes of being the recipient of a few smiles at this church, perhaps of being granted the chance to be graced by a conversation or two with its charming members. I’m happy to report to you that, due to that comment, I am known as the “Catholic New Yorker with Sass” to the Green Hollow Methodists, and have since received numerous dinner invitations. How’s that for ecumenism?
As the conversation dies down, the pastor walks up to the front of the church and grins broadly at his congregation before inviting everyone to stand and sing. A hundred voices meld together and rise to an arched ceiling that embraces the joyful noise like an old friend. I mouth the words but don’t allow any sound to come out; aside from not being familiar with these old hymns, I feel like my voice would stick out amongst that gathering above us, a harsh New York accent trampling on beautifully soft Southern lilts. I’m content to listen, and my voice is content to rest (for once).
After a few verses, we sit and the pastor begins to take a role call. He announces the last name of each family in the parish, and all those present from that group stand. Some families have upwards of twenty members present, coming from as far away as California. Others – like Ella Mae’s – have two, but they represent their lineage and stand just as tall. The pastor introduces the oldest member of the congregation; at ninety-four, she stands proudly behind me as he calls out her name, beaming in a bright pink and purple floral print dress and surveying her church family, one which she has seen grow and change more than anybody else in this building has. Our attention is then directed to the youngest member who, at four months old, sleeps blissfully through the first of many homecomings, completely unaware that the eyes that smile on him now will watch him closely as he develops a little personality and contributes in his own way to Green Hollow's rich history.
After some preaching and more beautiful singing, we get up and file slowly through a door at the front of the church into a gathering area. Miles and miles of Southern cooking stretch out in front of me. In a traditional show of friendly competition, each lady has made her own specialty dish with the flair and panache of a five-star chef. Oh, sure, they’ll bat their eyes and dispense cordialities, but don’t be fooled: this is a blood sport (my compliments to whoever whipped up the potato salad, by the by). These people know how to cook. And they sure know how to eat.
We eventually roll away from the banquet tables and back into the church, where it’s open mic time. I’m blown away by the natural talent within this tiny community; each young singer that steps up to the front of the congregation is better than the last. While keeping an ear open, I make my way to the vestibule, where there are large scrapbooks set out featuring thousands of newspaper clippings from years past about the church’s members. I skim through the generations, watching one girl grow from a birth announcement to an engagement announcement to a wedding announcement. I look around and see her sitting close to her young husband, and I smile when I notice that she’s just starting to show. A pretty blonde woman comes and stands next to me, serving as a guide of sorts as I continue to explore this church through its periodical records. She tells me that she’s thirty-nine and a teacher at the county high school, but she has a youthful light and warmth about her that makes me feel like a peer. We fall into conversation easily, and I learn that the expectant mother inside is her younger sister. Hearing my accent – or lack thereof – she asks me where I’m from and which church I attend. I answer New York and give the name of my parish, and I notice the slightest trace of a raised eyebrow (Catholics aren’t traditionally all that popular in these parts). I quickly explain, “My horns and pitchfork are in the car.”
I’d had high hopes of being the recipient of a few smiles at this church, perhaps of being granted the chance to be graced by a conversation or two with its charming members. I’m happy to report to you that, due to that comment, I am known as the “Catholic New Yorker with Sass” to the Green Hollow Methodists, and have since received numerous dinner invitations. How’s that for ecumenism?
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