Mall Rite of Passage

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I’m still attempting to recover from my day with the lovely Madelyn Simone, our precious four-year-old granddaughter, the light of my life. Our day started out in typical fashion, with cuddles, kisses and sugar donuts. Although our early months were marked by too many episodes of “Say Yes to the Dress,” I’m determined to refrain from television viewing while we’re together, so we sorted and counted the money in her piggy bank, read a book about Easter eggs, and played a few hands of “Go Fish.” I was beaten fair and square in the first four rounds of that card game. No way am I introducing her to Monopoly.

The freezing rain that had kept us indoors for the morning began to let up, and so we decided to go out for a few hours. She nixed a visit to Sam’s Club, which surprised me as we both enjoy scoping out the free samples. I said no to a trip to the fast food restaurant with an indoor playground, as we made that visit the last time I was in Canton.

“How about the mall?” I’m not sure which one of us made the suggestion, but it seemed like a reasonable choice on a chilly day, so off we went. Since we weren’t quite ready for lunch, our first stop was the family lounge just off the food court. With its comfy chairs for nursing mothers and a selection of free video activities for the little ones, it’s the perfect oasis when faced with retail overload. After checking out the family restroom with its matching adult and child toilets (automatic flush, not Madelyn’s preference), we went to explore the rest of the mall.

There is so much to see and do when you’re four years old. We looked at the Disney charms at the Pandora store, enjoyed a free sample from the pretzel stand, and nibbled on caramel corn from the popcorn shop. We wandered through the store where you can create your own teddy bear, managing to escape its enticing call with the reminder that we needed to save our money for vacation. We also had fun trying out the various testers at the store overflowing with lotion, soaps and hand sanitizers.

I was ready for lunch, but Madelyn spied a store that specialized in girl’s clothing. She’d been to one of them with Becky, Unkie Dan’s girlfriend, when we’d taken Becky home to Columbus, and she remembered it well (of course). And there, in front of my eyes, this sweet little child morphed into a girl who could have been on the cusp of adolescence. It was an absolutely frightening transformation. She had the full attention of one of the sales clerks, a very helpful and friendly young woman, and Madelyn took full advantage. She tried on a couple of sweaters, a skirt, and a fur vest from the clearance rack without any help from me, modeling them to the beat of the music pumping through the store.

After getting the requisite “you’re so cute” compliments, Madelyn proceeded to ask the clerk, “Do you have any dresses?” So there she was, strutting around the store with an adorable dress ($45), the white fur vest, and her pink glittery cowboy boots. If this is what the tween years are going to bring, we are in deep trouble.

I managed to escape the lure of that store with a $3 hat from the clearance rack (vacation is coming worked again!), but I was staggered by the rite of passage I’d just witnessed. Soon Madelyn will be five, and then seven, ten, fifteen. While I do agree with Doug Larson that few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own, I’m more than willing to wait for that pleasure. “Childhood is a short season,” Helen Hayes reminds us, but I don’t want to do anything to speed up the arrival of the next season. I guess I better take “going to the mall” off our list or we’ll end up in Victoria’s Secret – no way am I ready for that adventure.

Heroin

I finally got a chance to watch “Saving Mr. Banks,” the story of the creation of the Disney film “Mary Poppins.” I’ve dabbled in song-writing for many years, and so especially enjoyed the scenes that depicted the Sherman brothers as “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” came to life. But my favorite song scene was “Just a Spoonful of Sugar,” as they discover the trick of the note going up high on the word ‘down.’ Just when we expect the music to go down, it comes up.

We’re glad when what is expected to come down actually goes up, as in the stock market. But in recent months, I for one have found it quite a relief when prices that we’ve expected to go up (gasoline, for instance) have actually plummeted. I love being able to fill up my gas tank for under $25. Too bad I can’t stockpile gasoline like I do cereal.

A recent Times-Gazette report by Dan Kubacki described another price decrease, not good news for law enforcement. According to Ashland Police Department’s Detective Brian Evans, the price of heroin is dropping. What sold a year ago for up to $60 a half gram can now be obtained for as low as $35, especially if the buyer is buddy-buddy with the seller. That may be good news for those looking to purchase heroin, but not good news for families whose lives have been drastically damaged by the drug use of their kids or parents.  

I wasn’t able to attend the Heroin Summit that the Mental Health and Recovery Board sponsored in November, but I know that many community residents and service providers gathered at Ashland University to hear about the extent of the heroin and opiate problem. Representatives from healthcare, first responders, law enforcement, and prevention and treatment agencies helped to raise awareness of the extent of the problems facing our county – and beyond.

I thought I might write about the facts of heroin: the physiological injury to the body, the suppression of breathing that can result in hypoxia, the opioid receptors in the brain that convert heroin back into morphine, or the increasing tolerance that demands more and more of the drug to achieve the desired high. They’re disturbing consequences, but it’s the faces of heroin that continue to haunt me.

I’ve met some of them in my work in the Salvation Army shelter in Wooster as well as in Ashland. Some are just kids, like the young couple who became estranged from their parents, had their children taken away, and ended up in a homeless shelter. They had both been clean for about four weeks when we last talked, and their conversation was peppered with the phrases common to addictions treatment.   

I sat with one woman who had been using for some time, and I thought the intake worker had made a mistake on her paperwork. Surely the woman in front of me couldn’t be under forty – she looked at least as old as I am, only a few days short of sixty. But no, she was thirty-six. The heroin had robbed her of her youth.

But it’s the collateral damage that truly breaks my heart. The babies who face the symptoms of withdrawal in their first hours of life. The kids who’ve been tossed aside as their mothers chase after their next fix. The parents who’ve mortgaged their retirement to pay for one more treatment program

It’s tempting to think that all heroin addicts are like the derelict living under the bridge or the high school classmate who you could just tell was headed for a life of addiction and decline. But, as NBC’s “Hooked: An American Heroin Epidemic” discovered, heroin doesn’t discriminate. “In recent years, heroin has wound its way into American communities and touched people who wouldn’t have considered using it just a decade ago.” Ashland may be someplace special, but we need to understand that we’re not exempt from the challenges of heroin use. The NBC report was clear: “These days, no place is safe from heroin, not the suburbs, not the country, not the most affluent of neighborhoods.” Not even Ashland.

What My Calendar Says About Me

Toward the end of 2014, I bought myself a new calendar at my favorite bargain store to serve as a placeholder until I could find one I really liked. So far, that hasn’t happened, and the calendar’s big, blank pages glare at me with the question of what 2015 will bring.

Like many of my peers who grew up in B.C. (before computers), I struggle with having one foot on the solid dock of paper and the other foot in the boat of cyberspace and technology. While I love being able to whip out my cell phone to take a picture of the lovely Madelyn Simone or to check out a fact on the internet, I’m not ready to trust my weekly schedule to the wiles of modern technology. After all, what if I lost my phone (been there, done that) or phone service goes down? No, I’m sticking with a calendar I can write on with a pen.

So when I was in a meeting last week at the Massillon Museum, I opened my big, nondescript calendar to select a date for a future meeting. The museum’s director glanced over at my calendar and said, “Wow! Look at all that blank space!”

Did I detect a hint of judgment in her tone, or was it envy, as her calendar overflows with the day-to-day responsibility of running a cultural institution, participating in the life of the Massillon community, and preparing for impending motherhood? I, on the other hand, felt my own twinge of envy as I looked at her full plate, remembering the sense of accomplishment I felt when I, too, had a similar responsibility at the Ashland Kroc Center. While I love the rhythm of my life in these days of semi-retirement, I do miss having one main focus that helped to mold my days.

Since I’ve worn the self-selected cape of superwoman for so long, I also felt a bit of shame at the vacant spaces on my calendar. When I got home, I was tempted to pencil in words like “T-G column due,” “educational enhancement with MSS” (my Nana days with the lovely Madelyn Simone), or “preparation for staff training on self-care and time management,” one of this week’s tasks that didn’t make it to the embarrassingly empty pages of my calendar. 

The truth is that I do have a lot on my to-do list, and I don’t sit around eating bon-bons or watching Say Yes to the Dress, although I did succumb once to that temptation between Christmas and New Year’s, substituting pecan turtles for the bon-bons. I worked until midnight twice this week on a funding proposal, and I’m finishing this column with about an hour to spare before deadline, so yes, I’m busy – or at least undisciplined. But my calendar, that all-inclusive document that kept me somewhat organized for so many years, doesn’t show it. And, at least at first, I felt guilty.

With a milestone birthday nipping at my heels, I am reflecting on this season of life and how to reframe my definitions of success, accomplishment and even value. Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister reminds me that “Life is a growing thing going from seed to sapling, from pillar to post, hither and yon, forwards and backwards but always, always toward its purpose, the shaping of the self into a person of quality, compassion and joy.” Who has lived well? Chittister answers her own question: “Those who have sucked the juice of life from every period of its growing,” finding themselves to be “more human, more wise, more kindly, more just, more flexible, more integrated.”

I’m recognizing that this period of growing is shifting my guiding images from superwoman to midwife, from warrior to wise woman. I’m becoming content to lead the way less and come alongside more. To soothe my ego, I am going to buy a new calendar with smaller pages so I don’t look quite so derelict. Yet as I “suck the juice” from these days, it is with a deep appreciation for my present season of life, the unforced rhythms of grace (Matthew 10:28-30, The Message), and plenty of sticky granddaughter kisses. 

Two Valiant Women

Two valiant women, heroes to me at critical times in my life, were claimed by death within the past two weeks. I sorrow over the news of their passing, knowing the love they held for their families and the footprints they’ve left upon my life and the lives of so many others.

One of those women is Margaret, a Salvation Army colleague. We never served in the same area, nor had we spent much time together. Our acquaintance had been a casual one over the years, except for one long, deep conversation in a coffee shop in North Canton many years ago. Writing in The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis explains it to me. “Friendship is born at that moment when one man [woman] says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . . ‘” Margaret later gave me Lynne Hybel’s book, Nice Girls Don’t Change the World, that helped me understand our commonality. “The opposite of a nice girl is not just a good woman, but a downright dangerous woman. A woman who shows up with everything she is and joins the battle against whatever opposes the redeeming work of God in our lives and in our world.” That was Margaret.

As I think of her, I wonder what it might have been like if one of us had said, “let’s make time for each other.” If I had said, “I’m coming today.” We didn’t, I didn’t, and I am bereaved, deprived of what could have been but isn’t.

I’ve got a similar feeling about my friend Pat. She was the tenth grade geometry teacher who promised to take her students out to dinner at the Lakeview Smorgasbord if they received a perfect score on their New York State Regents Exam, an offer with very little probability that she would have to pay up. I was thrilled when the test results came back and four of her students had obliged her to follow through on her promise. That was one delicious dinner.

As teachers sometimes do, Pat took an extra interest in the young woman “whose eyes mirrored so much of her thoughts and feelings,” as she later described me in a letter. Her ever present desire and demand for excellence and her willingness to believe in me when I struggled to believe in myself are gifts that I’ve carried with me long past my high school years.

Life moved on, and I did as well. As I write these words on the morning of her funeral, I am grateful that for a few short weeks in 1997, we connected once again when I sent her a packet of some of my early writing. The signature handwriting that had first challenged me from the chalkboard at Tonawanda High School filled pages and pages of a legal pad back in ’97, and remains a precious gift to me on this morning in Ohio. We corresponded back and forth then, and talked a time or two, but I don’t think I ever answered her last letter.

I have a sense of regret at what could have been, but I’m wise enough to know that life gets in the way of all that could have been, and that’s how it is sometimes with friendship. Distance, time, work responsibilities, family obligations, and changing circumstances all make it challenging to form and sustain friendships of value. Facebook may help, but we kid ourselves when we think that our friendships will stay the same forever. So instead of focusing on regret, I’m choosing this morning to celebrate the sense of sisterhood I felt with both Margaret and Pat, honoring their lives as I hold a few pages torn from a legal pad and a small book.   

It was Washington Irving who wrote, “Sweet is the memory of distant friends. Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.” Even as the frigid air blows around us, the sun is shining, and there is comfort in the warmth of memory this morning. Flight of the angels, my friends. 

A Blessed Ache

In one of my favorite photos, my parents posed in front of their first Christmas tree in the home they built on Klinger Avenue in the 1950s. Less than two months later, they welcomed a squalling infant to that house, which was to be my residence for the next eighteen years. Upon leaving home for college, I had no idea that a life in Salvation Army ministry would make me a nomad of sorts, but as a result, I’m now living in my twelfth domicile since then (not counting assorted dorm rooms and seminary apartments).

I’m a homebody by nature, and twelve homes seem excessive to me. However, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the average American moves 11.7 times during his or her lifetime, so, barring a relocation to the nursing home in the near future, I’m right on target for mobility. However, I am glad that we’re settled in our own home in Ashland these days, and I have no plans to move ever again.

I was not a happy camper when my dear friend Morven Baker and her husband David announced they were planning to move to North Carolina. Surely now that I’ve found a permanent home in Ashland, the people who enrich my life here would not dare to move away, right? Wrong. The advent of on-line education at the seminary level opened the door for David to continue to teach at Ashland Theological Seminary from anywhere in the world with Internet connections. The call of the ocean, the promise of a warmer climate, and the proximity to three lovely granddaughters and a new baby on the way made the decision to relocate a great one for them – but it is a profound loss to the Ashland community.

While highly respected in their professional circles, Morven and David Baker are not headline people, and their departure from Ashland hasn’t made the front page of the Times-Gazette. For nearly thirty years, Dr. David Baker has been a professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at the seminary. He’s a deep thinker and communicator, and is recognized internationally as an Old Testament scholar and contributor to biblical commentaries. His writing and editing skills and his steady presence on campus have enriched the lives of countless seminarians here in Ashland and around the world.

His wife, Dr. Morven Baker, discovered her own calling as a counselor to women, particularly those with a history of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence. Hundreds of women throughout northeast Ohio owe their very lives to Morven Baker, whose tenacious spirit offered a faithful companionship on the treacherous path from abuse to wholeness. Morven was officially my advisor for my doctoral work at the seminary, but in reality she was a midwife, one “with woman,” bringing to life what was being birthed within me in those days.

I’m rejoicing with my friends in the opportunities awaiting them in the days ahead in North Carolina, especially as they embrace those beloved grandbabies on a regular basis. But I am also grieving the loss to our community here in Ohio as well as to my own heart. This farewell brings a blessed ache, but an ache nonetheless.

Cathy Loerzel wrote about the ache of her own move with these words: “I must welcome my sorrow and sit and stare at my empty walls with boxes stacked to the ceiling and smile with tears at the memories that are stirred.” As these words take shape on the computer screen in front of me, I am smiling with tears at the stirred Morven memories of back porch conversations, locked office doors, re-sale store visits, dissertation dissection, and caring companionship.

In 1900, Peter Christian Lutkin composed a melody for a benediction found in Numbers 6. His song forms the prayer on my heart and lips for my dear friends and for all of those whose lives are in transition in these first days of 2015: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. Amen.”