Peanutbutter & Grace

Today, I have a piece over at a new site, Peanutbutter & Grace.

The family that runs this publishing company have been internet friends for years and they have great stuff if you have a first communion or baptism or godchild to shop for, and want something that allows not just the kid, but the family to deepen their faith.  Check out the rosary devotions with liturgical art, browse, leave a comment.  Thank them for growing a Catholic family ministry to support their own Catholic family and others.   

Girls, Friendships and the Art of Growing Carrots.

A Giant of a Man

A good man died. I know it happens every day, but I knew this one. I knew his wife. I fell in love with her. Back in college, I thought I knew everything, because what Junior in college doesn't? Taking a 200 level English course would be a walk in the park, in fact I planned to phone it in, this was my easy A. She'd be lucky if I showed up.

In walked this five foot nothing snow haired coke bottle glasses woman with the warmest smile and she introduced herself. She started as an associate professor, teaching French and Social Justice, and now 19th Century Short Fiction. I'm still not listening. I'm daydreaming about the date planned for that evening. Tuesday nights we went for pizza and to watch tv in the student lounge. Most people wanted Moonlighting, we liked Remington Steele. She mentioned her husband taught law at Notre Dame. I registered this fact, maybe he taught my Dad. She said she'd lived in France. They'd raised seven children.

I sat up. Seven? Who has seven children? This tiny woman. She saw she had my attention. She winked. I don't know why, maybe she already knew she'd caught me. She went on to talk about how we'd be reading Emma and Madame Bovary and Wuthering Heights, and discussing rationalism, romanticism, and reality in the context of all three. I took notes. She wanted an essay comparing the three women's concept of love by the end of the month, five pages. I'd give her ten.

We became friends beyond the class, phoning and talking for hours, girlfriends across the decades. I'd meet her for lunch whenever I made it to the campus. She'd laugh when I had another kid, and delighted when I lapped her, finishing at ten. She'd tell me stories about trying to manage four while her husband Bob was teaching at the campus or in Italy. She recalled the parade of the children into the ancient homes of the church, their patent leather shoes clacking on the elegant tile floors, and the time when one daughter fought with her brother in front of the priest. (We were trading war stories about going to mass with a large young crew). We'd hit all the important topics, food, Catholicism, poetry and our families. Every conversation ended with wanting to make sure we did this again soon, though soon came less and less when health compromised her memory.

We'd still talk over the phone, but I knew he was managing her, protecting her, not telling me, but knowing I knew, not everything was alright. When we dined together last, he sat next to her and though we talked for three hours, the malady never came up. He kept steering her when she'd get lost, and I knew, this was his opening of the door, courting his Emma by walking her in the garden, letting her not be the victim of her maladies. He finished the stories she couldn't. He told her jokes to keep her from dwelling too long on the knowledge she didn't know something she knew she used to know. While sharing dessert, I felt struck by the reality, this was a courtly love, and his eyes still delighted on his beloved even as she ate or spoke or sat silent.

Last January, he had a fall and couldn't care for her anymore and I lost contact with my funny snowhaired coke-bottle glasses poet friend. She'd been put in a home to get around the clock care, and not being a family member, I didn't know how to find her. Today, one of their sons contacted me through Facebook. A giant of kindness and chivalry no longer walks the earth, and I'm very sad I can't be there to hug my friend through the fog where she walks, hoping again to meet her knight that always walked with her up to now.

Prayers for all of their family, and for the repose of Bob Rodes' soul. I hope he and my dad are having a great conversation with C.S. Lewis.

Wear Your Diamond Dearings Every day

Why? Because the worst thing that could happen is not that you lose them. The worst thing that could happen is you save them for a special occasion and then lose them.  Or that you don't wear them for fear they'll be lost and they grow dusty.  You lost out on all the days before they were lost when you could be wearing them and drawing pleasure from beauty.  You put the light under a bushel basket to protect it, and wind up living as if you did not have own those diamonds at all. 

Last night I learned how poorly I take a compliment. My daughter caught me doing what I almost always do when given praise.  I criticize it by pushing up against it my own less complimentary opinion of myself or my work, or I counter it by offering a return compliment to put whoever gave the kind words on a higher plane than me. Mock humility in practice to the point of becoming reflexive.

Shocked to have this moment of clarity illuminated by my 17 year old, I asked her, "How would you suggest I respond?"  She then role played to explain I should simply say "Thank you." and all that inner critic that I wanted to just let out in the moment, should be sent packing.  To not simply take the praise was to insult the giver, to refuse the gift, was to be rude.  She went on to explain that to deny what someone else said as being true for the sake of oddly enough, not allowing myself to think I looked bad, made the other person feel bad for trying to praise me. 

I looked in the mirror this morning and realized, this was all true. It wasn't all the truth of me, but there was a nut of it, stemming from never quite believing I was worthy of compliments let alone friends.  It also explained my near compulsive desire to launch into what my children refer to as my stand up routine whenever brought into contact with strangers. 

Suffice it to say, I got skewered.  New People! Time to make them laugh, appear confident, smile, laugh too loudly, it's show time folks! Impress. Dazzle.  Leave feeling high from the interaction, certain I've made a friend for life even if I never see them again.  Wonder why no one calls or emails five minutes later. They've seen this enough times to know it is not intimate, it is a mock sharing. It is shared, but it is rather like a blog, for public consumption.  

Then I sat there mad...like do we ever get over our own hang ups...does it really take to the age of 46 to even recognize a hang up?  and then...why now?  Friends are like diamond earrings and compliments.  They should be given/enjoyed daily or they will grow dusty and be lost when it comes time for a special occasion, diamond dearings to be shown and known and enjoyed.

So when  a friend called to talk about the reunion, she didn't realize she'd touched on a newly exposed vulnerability.  We both felt like the coming event seemed a little flat. That I had only a few friends coming to the college for this 25th year anniversary was the fruit of not having spent time with them since, not being present then or now, save when it fit my schedule.

Being present always means the same thing, being there for the other, and I'd spent much of college not being present at my own school. To those to whom I was close, they remain, but two are deceased.  Since then, while I form friends quickly --like creating lots of shallow roots, many of those friendships were built on shallow soil.  Others have died from a lack of tending.  Still others are there still hoping to be breathed on at some point, and then I asked. 

You'd think by now, I'd know to ask and ask often and shoot, spend the whole day asking because God never tires.  Friends. Despite ten children and a wonderful husband, great parents and in-laws, sister and brothers, sister and brother in laws, despite everything and everyone I knew, I felt lonely.  Friends God. I want friends.

My heart asked before my head understood what I was asking but I did ask. 

And God always answers.  He knows how I work too, which is good, because He can pour through that junk that I use to keep things shallow or at least, incidental. He also knows I have little patience so the phone rang almost immediately.

I wanted desperately to be the one to be there for the other for everyone else...yes that sounds very selfish and yes...it is.  Yes it was.   One of the ones I had been there for, even when it was hard, even though it might have been born of my own selfishness, was the first to call in response to my prayer.   And she set me straight.   Getting off the phone with her, I felt both exhausted and exhilarated.  


Then I called three women I like, who I would like to have as closer friends.  I have to start being the friend to the people I hope to name as such and that means, time. I sat afterwards marveling at how stupid it is that I spend so much time not recognizing the gifts put in front of me, pushing them aside like compliments.  Refusing to fully take on the gifts and the givers.  Keeping the earrings in a box.  And I'm carrying around a gong in my head, so that when the stand up lady shows up, I can bang her off the stage.  The one not putting on the show is much more interesting and it's time she stopped pretending, she didn't want to be seen. 

Oh.  And I put on my diamond earrings.