A Bus With a View

I have been a public bus rider for most of my life. When my sister Judy and I were children, our single mother owned no car. Indeed she never even learned to drive a car. While Mother was working at her job as a waitress, Judy and I would hop on a bus and go wherever we wanted--mainly downtown though. I remember our several summers spent on the Mississippi Coast when we rented either a small apartment or a small Airstream trailer on Highway 90 across the street from the beach. Mother said, "Just go outside and wait at the bus stop; a bus will come by in about twenty minutes." We did that to go to town and to go to church on Sundays at the now blown-away First Baptist Church in Gulfport. As a child, one would think that she would be fascinated by the sights outside the bus window such as the white sand beaches, the stately older homes dating back to the nineteenth century, the many piers, and the restaurants along the way. Not me--I was fascinated instead by the view of the people on the bus.

Our book club finishes our discussion today of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. In her evaluation near the end of the non-fiction book, Barbara observes that the affluent simply don't ride public buses or subways. Instead they take a quick cab to whatever location they need or drive to it in their cars. I had reason in October to reflect upon the truth of Ehrenreich's statement.

My husband Garlan and I spent a month in Seattle back in the fall to see our daughter Kimberly and her family, both immediate and extended. We chose to ride the metro buses to go wherever we needed to go since our daughter was obviously quite busy with a full-time job at Microsoft as a product manager and an ever-growing and exploring toddler.

It took only a day or so of this routine before we made an observation about our view on the buses. The clientele could be categorized into three over-lapping categories: the elderly, the very poor, and the mentally and physically challenged. With their city-dispensed cards, they could ride the bus for a mere $.25 or $.50. Here's just a slight bit of what we observed in our month of riding public transportation:

A caregiver with her Ipod and her earphones in her ears to block out the repetitive sounds of her charge, a somewhat disheveled middle-aged woman who looked to be in her forties. Occasionally, the caregiver would shove her or speak cruel words of direction such as, "Quit that now; sit up and behave." We saw them on the same bus route several times, and the treatment was much the same.

A young man with dreadlocks and a cowboy hat who sat by me on one of the bus rides into downtown. During the fifteen minutes or so (he sat beside me), he told me he was bi-polar, had spent the night in a local shelter, but had to leave because he came close to "decking" one of the shelter's workers. Evidently, the young man had made a small joke about the worker's purple tie being like Barney's, and the joke almost led to a major altercation. He was on his way then to the waterfront piers.

While waiting at the bus stop on Third Street close to the Pacific Place mall and the West Lake Mall, we watched as a woman picked through the muddy soil where a city tree was planted in order to recover several cigarette butts to smoke.

The next day on KING 5 news we heard that in the exact location where we had been standing the day before a homeless man accosted another homeless man. The latter took out his gun and shot the man dead before an astonished crowd of onlookers. Evidently, The Seattle Post-Intelligencier reported the dead man had bi-polar also and was off his medication. The shooter had permission to carry a concealed weapon and was not charged in the incident.

Yes, I agree with the author of Nickel and Dimed. If the middle-class and above rode the public buses and subways more often, they would not talk about the "invisible poor" but be able to witness the plight of these folks more readily. Perhaps then, they could address the issue of poverty and the mentally and physically challenged more forcefully.

To Janis, George, and the Seekers

Several weeks back I watched a biography of Janis Joplin on the Biography Channel. Since my birth year approximates hers (she was born in 1943 and I in 1944), I began to realize that our lives were parallel to one another. The same is true of Beatle George Harrison, also born in 1943. As I have done some more reading on these two influential musicians, I have come to an awareness that both were seekers as well as non-conformists. I follow somewhat into that line of thinking also.

Janis was a native of Port Arthur, Texas, and grew up like several of us in the early 1960's with a realization that segregation was not necessarily the best choice for society. Her support of African American issues alienated her from her classmates. When she had achieved great prominence in the latter part of the decade, she returned home for a high school reunion. Evidently, her parents were appalled by her dress and behavior and kept a very low profile during the event, even leaving town to avoid the publicity that followed Janis everywhere she went. I believe she wanted acceptance from her high school peers, but she never received it. She lived her life as a non-conformist and seeker, hooked on alcohol and heroin until her early death at age 27.

George likewise was a non-conformist and a seeker. His biography indicates that his school did not appreciate his choice to wear jeans to school and to have long hair in the early 1960's. George also often found it difficult to adapt to what he considered the rules and regulations of Christianity. He, therefore, became a seeker of other religious philosophies. His settled upon Hinduism since he felt it was large enough to accommodate a variety of ideas and thoughts. Since the Mantras, or religious chants, are musical, he was pulled further into the faith and its emphasis upon meditation.

Like Janis and George, in our parallel worlds, I have never accepted easily the tenets of my culture and faith without many questions. When I was 15, I was astonished to read the court trial papers of the murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till in the county in Mississippi in which I lived. I, like the rest of the country, realized these two defendants were guilty, yet like OJ Simpson, they were acquitted of a brutal crime. My subsequent brief conversation with one of the defendants' lawyers convinced me that I needed to seek a different journey, which would take me away from the prevalent voices of my state.

My journey away from my original church denomination of childhood has been longer, fully fought, and arduous. The first glimmer of it began, as a child of divorced parents in the early 1950's, as I watched my mother struggle, like George, with the rules and regulations of the faith. It began in the 1960's when my husband and I were college students. It has continued to the present. Could we ever find a faith that truly accepted with love and grace all races and all sinners? Could I, an avid seeker of truth, ever have a position of leadership in a church that told me every Sunday that I could not? Could our daughter be welcomed and accepted because she lived an openly gay life?

My struggle is especially problematic because all of the most wonderful times of my life were spent in that denomination. It was in that denomination that the church ministered to our family when we were in dire poverty during my parents' difficult marriage, it was the church in which I was baptized at the age of nine, it was there where I met my to be husband to be in 1962, it was there where I was the honoree of a traditional White Bible ceremony before my marriage, and it was there where my own children were baptized.

I still have no answers as I continue my search for truth, but unlike Janis and George, whose search led them to alcohol, drugs, or other religions, I stay within Christianity convinced that a benevolent God will show me the answer in His time.

City and Country Grandmothers

Our daughter-in-law, Carrie, had a birthday this week. A week before the event our eight year old granddaughter, Caitlyn, called me to tell me there was going to be a surprise party for her mother and that she would be planning all the details. She then listed off the items I was to bring: a snack, some nuts, a present, and a game like "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" to play. I did go ahead and bring everything she listed though I decided a thirty-eight year old might not enjoy the donkey game as much as an eight year old. I decided instead to bring a quotations game from Carrie's favorite movie Gone With the Wind. I even brought some lip gloss in four tiny containers that spelled LOVE as a prize for the winner, knowing Carrie would surely win it.
Checking signals with the other grandmother, Cappy, I discovered that Caitlyn had given her a different list of items to bring to the party: guacamole and chocolate chip cookies. On the afternoon of the party, Caitlyn told me by phone to come early so that I could help set the party up.

From someone who had just one birthday party in her life, my eleventh, because Mother had a new boyfriend who said he would pay to have a shared party with a friend who was born one day after me. It took place at the location that we used to call the Indian Mound. We had a picnic on a particular warm November day and then searched for arrowheads on the little hill that was somewhat of a small tourist attraction in Greenville, Mississippi, in the 1950's.

Carrie's birthday party was not the first time I have seen evidence in my granddaughter of many skills that I do not personally possess. In late summer, we had a family dinner with my sister Judy and her husband, Bobby, from Texas plus Caitlyn, her little brother Charlie, and her parents. When she arrived at the house, she immediately asked about the flower arrangement for the dining table. I told her I had none. She swiftly looked out the back door of the house, saw the still blooming rose bushes in the yard, asked for a vase, and soon put fresh flowers on the table. While she was in kindergarten, she won second prize in a regional art contest by painting a picture of a cow. Her other grandmother is an artist.

I have sometimes found myself wondering, with all of Caityn's talent for putting together a Martha Stewart party and house, how I can compete with the city grandmother's skills that Cailtyn has inherited. What will my legacy to Caitlyn be? After all, I am the country grandmother. Garlan and I have always had to watch our money very carefully. Our idea of a dream vacation in the 1970's was to put the children into our old car, attach our foldout camper, and go to Nashville for a week. We spent $140 for that trip. Through the years we have loved to participate in as many free activities as possible such as feeding the ducks on a lovely spring day at the park and checking out some books at the library, taking a short trip to see nineteenth century history in log cabins at the no-admission fee Harbor Village in Grove, Oklahoma, or hiking up the Yellow Rock trail in Devil's Den State Park and buying banana Popsicles when we returned.

The answer to my question is that Caityn will be a composite of both of us, Cappy and me. I can often see my own resemblance to the grandmother that raised me from age twelve through high school. We called her Mam. She never visited anyone without taking a gift from her kitchen; the most well-received was her famous Apricot Nectar Cake. She was faithful in visiting the shut-ins of the church and always took them a Home Life magazine to read for the month. I always accompanied her on these trips, and I hope I can continue the tradition with Caitlyn. The country grandmother gave her for Christmas a pink city apron from Williams Sonoma that has a crown on it and the word Princess. She will be a blend of both of us I am convinced and will always be our little shared princess.

Imagine

One of my favorite songs of all times is John Lennon's "Imagine." For me, I have always been a dreamer like John. It would certainly be great these days to "Imagine all the people / Living life in peace" with "No need for greed or hunger."

As I think about the hunger element of our world today, I often feel guilty about the massive amounts of food we Americans consume, and even throw away each day. The Today show has recently featured a series on the idea that 60 is the new 40. My, I wish it were true. Both my husband and I weighed far less in our 40's than we do today. Experts tell us that, if we eat just 50 calories more each day, we'll gain 5 extra pounds a year. Garlan and I have averaged l 1/2 or 2 1/2 pounds of weight gain per year since we married in 1965. Today, with all the emphasis on obesity in our society, we try hard to eat lots of salads, fruit, and soups. We also exercise from 3-5 times a week. I walk 2 to 2 1/2 miles five days a week, and he goes to physical therapy for his back and hip problem to ride a stationary bicycle and do other upper and lower body exercises. Yet, in spite of our efforts, the metabolism of the new 40 has still not set in for us.

I was reading a few weeks back in Joanna Seibert's book Healing Presence when I noticed one of the lines from a prayer in The Book of Common Prayer under "The Blessing of the Marriage": " . . . bring them to that table where your saints feast for ever in your heavenly home." I love to imagine the idea presented there, which is actually very similar to the image in Psalm 23 where God prepares a table for us and anoints our heads with oil. The idea is similar also to the one in Albert Brooks' comedy Defending Your Life in which Meryl Streep plays the character of Julia who can eat forever after death anything she wants and never gain weight. Both of the images are quite appealing to me.

The Great Divide

Our book study this week is discussing Barbara Ehrenreich's experience of working for Wal Mart in her non-fiction expose of the working poor. I have thought for several hours about what I wanted to share in the group in that our discussion first is to elicit each person's personal response to the literary selection of the week. My experience has been enriched somewhat because I have been exposed to both sides of the great divide in America; I am a representative of both the privileged and the poor.

As a faculty member for twenty-two years at John Brown University, I have been privileged to attend women's leadership conferences at Greystone Estates in Rogers, Arkansas--just a few miles from the Wal Mart company headquarters. The house is currently owned by the Don Soderquist family. Don was chairman of the Board of Trustees at John Brown for many years and retired several years ago as CEO of the company. The sumptuous house and executive conference center sits on Beaver Lake surrounded by many tree-covered acres. Inside, one finds a number of bedrooms accompanied by luxurious bathrooms. The meeting area often occurs in a gigantic cathedral ceiling living room with a stone fireplace and a view of the swimming pool. The house, built in the 70's, even boasts a bomb shelter with an escape route in a national or personal emergency of some type. I have eaten several catered gourmet meals there and even (here I show my lower class background) slipped into my purse upon departure a single bar of the unopened goat milk spa soap from the bathroom.

My other experience with the company, other than as a rare consumer of its products, comes from our daughter's two temporary jobs there. It was 1992 when Garlan and I drove out to Los Angeles to move our daughter home to Arkansas. She had been a graduate student at the University of Southern California majoring in film and literature. She was simply burned out after reaching the "all but dissertation" stage of her Ph.D. She wanted time to evaluate her life and her direction. When she arrived home, she interviewed for several jobs only to be told she was way over-qualified for the positions and likely would not stay long if hired. As a result of being unable to find professional work, she turned to a temporary job agency. One of her first jobs was to work at the Wal Mart headquarters retrieving computer disks for those who needed them at any given time. Since the area she worked in was like a warehouse, the workers were provided skates to increase their productivity as they dashed madly around to locate the desired disks. Her second job was with Sam's Club where she spent hours doing telemarketing for the auto club part of the company. I don't remember her salary since the job agency received the largest majority of it, but I am sure she made the required minimum wage.

Having lived in Northwest Arkansas for the past thirty-four years, I believe most people there have a love-hate relationship with the company. On the one hand, we feel tremendous pride that one of our own in one of the poorest states in the union, Sam Walton, was able to "make it big" as we say in the South. On the other hand, practically everyone has his or her own personal story to share about relatives or others being on welfare because of the thirty hour workweek (just below the legal requirement to provide company benefits like health coverage, 401 K's, and so on). We also worry about the mom and pop stores in the almost empty small downtowns because of their inability to compete with price and product.

What is the answer to the great economic divide in our country, not just Wal Mart employees, of course, but countless others throughout our country? Will we continue, as the privileged middle class, to enjoy the fruit of our labor for just ourselves and our families while we continue to ignore the inability of the working poor to provide for their families?

Useful Lives

Our satellite system recently dropped Court TV in favor of the Biography Channel. In spite of many ads urging outraged viewers to call or write in to complain, the system has kept the Biography Channel. I have always been interested in this form of reality. Even as a child of nine, my favorite genre when Judy and I went to the library in Greenville, Mississippi, was biography or autobiography. Now we speak more of memoir, indicating in the new term perhaps a realization that all might not exactly be reality but heavily dependent upon the author's memory of the happenings. In any event, I paused last week to see the last twenty minutes or so of Vivian Leigh's life on the Biography Channel. I was especially interested in one of her last roles before her early death at age fifty-three of tuberculosis.

The role I am writing about is in the movie Ship of Fools in which she plays a disillusioned middle-aged woman. She speaks with her fellow character on the ship's deck and basically says words like these: "I wanted to live a useful life, and I wanted to be loved." I've been thinking about those lines since then. The writers of the film seem to have gotten down a couple of the basic life events that make us happy as we reflect upon our legacies in the twilight years.

The answer to the second question is perhaps the easier of the two for me to answer. I met my husband Garlan when I was a mere seventeen year old just out of high school. He had me, not exactly at hello, but when he asked me for two dates--one for Friday and then one for Saturday as well--the first time we met. I quickly discovered him to be quite generous, spending a lot of his extra money on flowers, gifts, movies, and restaurants for me. I also realized he was a rock of a man, which I greatly needed in my life after being deserted by my father at age four or so. He was also older and wiser it seemed to me, being all of five years older than I. After three years of dating, we married almost forty-two years ago. While life has had many surprises for us through the years, I can honestly say that he has loved me.

The answer to the second question is a little dicier for me. When Garlan and I went to the University of Mississippi as young married students in the late 1960's, we both chose a career path that would limit our future earning potential greatly. He chose city management as a major, and I chose English Education. He served twenty-six years in middle management at a non-profit hospital, and I have taught over thirty-five years in non-profit schools and colleges. We both had some other odd jobs in the private sector during our college years. I would say that in our combined sixty or so work years in the non-profit sector we have not been wildly successful in terms of salary. Compared to the rest of the world, however, we were able to live middle-class lives.

Have our lives been useful again is the question? I have to believe that they have. We through the years have devoted ourselves to various volunteer activities that have given us some feeling of usefulness. These include Sunday School teaching, ushering in church, hosting backyard Bible clubs, working for the AIDS victims in the area as well as the homeless and those in poverty, working for the hospital auxiliary, and serving on various community boards such as the Area Heath Education Center.

As Christians we also think frequently of Jesus' commands: to love God and to love others. These four criteria, including being loved and being useful, do seem to represent a way to happiness, not necessarily to worldly success.

The Search for Quanyae

I called my granddaughter Caitlyn a few weeks before Christmas to ask if she would like to go shopping for a one year old whose name was Quanyae. I had recently been to the mall and impulsively picked up an cardboard angel from the Salvation Army display. On the card were sizes of clothes and shoes as well as toys his family thought he might like. Our daughter Kimberly has done this type of shopping in the past and has recommended it for me as well. I left the display with instructions on how to return the purchased items and by what date.

Caitlyn's first response to my question was, "He doesn't sound American to me," to which I countered, "Well, he probably is an American. He could be that he is African-American or perhaps Asian-American." "O.K., I'll do it," she replied.

When I arrived to pick her up that Saturday morning, both she and her three year old brother were dressed for the shopping event. Caitlyn put her arms around her brother's shoulders, looked intently into his face, and said, "Charlie, we are going shopping for a less fortunate little boy."

"Why we want to do that?" was his only response, but he looked forward anyway to going to Target and getting a Coke and some popcorn. As I pushed Charlie around in the store, he insisted on holding the Angel card while Caitlyn carefully looked for the most she could get for our budgeted money. Like most children would want, the first stop was in the toy department where both Caitlyn and Charlie quickly agreed upon a Red Rider tricycle for Quanyae. Next was the clothes department where we chose a sweater, shirt, and vest combination plus an outdoor jacket. The final stop was back to the toy section to round out our purchase with a couple of small cuddly toys. "He can sleep with this one," Caitlyn said as she held up a small stuffed animal that sang some bedtime lullabies.

After the prerequisite purchases at the snack counter, the grandchildren were too full to go out to eat the promised lunch. I suppose it's too early to know whether this experience, or the one recently at St. Francis house, will have the desired effect on them. I just know that a similar experience was important for me as a child.

One Christmas when I was eight or nine, Mother announced we were not going to have our usual small Christmas (we got just socks and underwear usually anyway and perhaps a $1 box of chocoate-covered cherries, so I cannot say I sacrificed much to forgo it). Instead we would take her tips from the tithe jar, and we would buy Christmas for a needy family. I am sure she was also thinking about the Christmas when Second Baptist Church members brought by groceries and a few toys for Judy and me. I do remember my excitement at the doll house they brought me. I also remember the excitement of the several stair-step, tow-headed children in the little house as their mother opened the door to us on a cool Mississippi delta night.

How do we encourage altruism in our grandchildren, especially if they are privileged? I do not have the answers, but I suppose it is true that it is usually passed down from one generation to the next. Caityn's other set of grandparents serve on a variety of community and college boards and help others in that very positive way. Caitlyn was anxious to talk to me on the phone last week when I called. She said, "Mom B, in my freewriting today at school, I wrote that I was going to have a New Year's resolution to think about myself less and others more." I hope she will, and I hope when Quanyae is an adult he will also be in a position to think of others.

Confirmation

I guess I come from a good heritage of spiritual searchers in my family. Most notably was my mother, Frances, who began to move from her traditional faith of being a Southern Baptist for years to another choice of denominations. I believe her search started, as it does for most of us, because of a church teaching that she could not resolve in her own life. Since divorce was uncommon in the early 1950's, I know she felt a stigma related to her status as a single mother. She was also troubled by the Scripture (Mark 10:ll) where Jesus Himself states, "And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." Mother in her younger years was a vibrant woman who loved dancing, horseback riding, movies, and even boxing matches. The thought of violating one of the ten commandments was troubling, yet she was lonely. I remember her taking us to other churches through the years we lived in Greenville, Mississippi. We visited the Community Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Catholic Church, and others. She read literature on Christian Science. After she remarried when I was seventeen, she settled in on a form of Quaker beliefs, the Plymouth Brethren Church. She literally transformed herself before my sister Judy's and my eyes. The woman who had been very strong and forceful as a single mother was now meek and mild and refused to pray aloud any longer.

My own search away from the Southern Baptist denomination began in 1991 when our daughter told us she was gay. It seems somewhat ironic that we can believe in and espouse the rules of the faith until they begin to conflict with our reason. We still do not have the answer from science as to what causes one to be gay rather than heterosexual, but I have come to believe that one does not choose it; it simply is not a lifestyle choice.

Last week The Arkansas Democrat Gazette ran an article about Bill Clinton's and Jimmy Carter's work within the more moderate American Baptist Association. At the end of the article, the three issues of the Southern Baptist denomination were reiterated: opposition to pro choice decisions, opposition to gays, and support of Israel. I do not have a problem with two of the issues, but I obviously do the third. Southern Baptists like to say continually that they love the sinner and hate the sin. Unless, however, those who are gay feel that love and welcome within the church, it is wasted.

My own struggle the past fifteen years has led me closer to the Episcopal Church because it has two theological items only that all must believe in: the Creation and the Incarnation. Beyond that there is a lot of diversity in what one believes. I recently wrote this poem as I have thought about where I am spiritually today. I still do not have all the answers (and I never will), but I long to read and study more in the Bible about God's mind.

Confirmation

I have sauntered painfully along these downward slopes

kicking against the goads (or, if truth be truth,

against the heart of God Himself).

Away from the church for four years,

I find myself still in limbo.

I pause among the lingering shadows of summertime

only to awaken to the reality that winter has arrived,

and I need to feel the penetrating sun rays instead.

I perform the one half way ritual at the

bottom of the path and check the time: twenty-three minutes.

As I start the somewhat steep ascent back home,

I reflect upon my path.

I walk north on Mondays, south on Tuesdays,

followed by an east-west hike on Wednesdays.

The cycle repeats itself for the next three days.

As I arrive home, I find the second half of my walk

has taken just twenty-one minutes.

Why is it that going downhill takes longer

than the walk upward and back to You?

Why do I keep tracing the sign of the cross repeatedly

as I search for answers?

I come to the door and knock.

You open the door and remarkably take me in

just as I am.

I celebrate her, not myself.

I am sure that I am not unique in being rather tired of all the celebrations to self lately on the Today show. When Katie left the program, it seemed we had weeks of celebration, showing numerous old cuts from the past years and noting all the change in hairstyles. When Meredith began work as Matt's co-host, we had a huge celebration of her in spite of the fact that she had accomplished nothing yet on the show. Just last week we were subjected to Matt's ten year anniversary celebration, and this week we must look endlessly at the clips from the past fifty years of the Today show. Today we saw Barbara Walters, looking like an Amish woman, and Hugh Downs some forty years ago at Munich.

Actually, I prefer to celebrate some of the lesser known people in my life, especially today. My sister Judy turns sixty-six. Since she is four years older than I, she has always been more like a mother than a sister. I say that because of our being thrust into young adult status when we were children. Our mother was away at her waitress job for much of the day and night, so we were forced to see to ourselves a lot of the time. She and I learned to cook rather early, at least some simple dishes like fudge or grits or oatmeal. We entertained ourselves at night since we had no television with listening to the old radio programs like "The Shadow" and "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon." Mother told us never to open the door of our apartment to anyone at night.

Judy did a great job of protecting me most of the time since I was (and still am) very headstrong. Once, though, when I was five she was playing with her friends on the front step of the apartment house. A garbage truck tried to back over my back since I had fallen off my tricycle in its path in the gravel driveway. Another time, when I was one, Mother told her to watch me and not let me fall off a high bed. I fell off anyway and wore a brace several weeks for a broken collarbone.

We survived these experiences, thankfully. Both of us married good men, have great adult children, and adorable grandchildren. Judy has always been a terrific role model. She loves God with her whole heart and her neighbors as herself. She is the epitomy of Jesus' teaching to do so. Today, big sister, I celebrate you.

Nickel and Dimed

I was awake last night until 2 a.m. I then slept restlessly and dreamed about my waking thoughts. I blame it all on Barbara Ehrenreich's book from several years back titled Nickel and Dimed. It is our assignment for my book club that meets every Wednesday at the Cathedral. I didn't think it would bother me even though I knew the premise: for a writing assignment the author would go undercover a month at a time and work for minimum wage jobs to see if she could survive as one of the "working poor." As I read about Ehrenreich's experiences working as a server in two restaurants in Key West, the memories of my childhood once again started crushing upon me.

When my mother and father divorced in 1950, she went to work to support my sister and me as a server as well. She chose to work a split shift so that she could make more money in tips. The pay at that time was $3 per day. She typically worked seven days a week from 11 to 2 for lunch and from around 4 to midnight. In my memento cabinet, I still have her rulebook for waitresses as well as a picture of her in her early 30's with her jet black hair, red lipstick, and crisp white uniform. Here are my most potent memories:

The placing of her own nickels and dimes in what she called the "tithe" jar in our kitchen cabinet. In the morning, while Judy and I were getting dressed for school, she carefully counted her tips, took out ten per cent, and placed the money in the jar to be placed in the offering plate on Sunday mornings.

The countless servings of stale, cold restaurant food she brought home for us to eat later in those little white bowls with a single ring about the outer portion as decoration. I especially remember the mashed potatoes.

The expert way she could carry a large tray to serve a table of eight without any accidents ever.
She was good at what she did, and she knew it.

The night she came home and told us she had received a $2 tip from a large party she had served that night. She was truly elated.

The summer when I was sixteen when she finally crashed from overwork and underpay. We had gone down to the Mississippi Coast to spend more time together. She had left her job at Azar's in Greenville. Both of us were soon working (and renting a small Airstream trailer) at the restaurant/drive in across the highway. She worked about a week and then quit for some still inexplicable reason. I continued on as a car hop outside and became the breadwinner. She "took to the bed" as we say in the South. I worked for the usual $3 a day from four to midnight and then swept up the parking lot before I could go home.

These remembered experiences of my past have again reminded me of the plight of the working poor. The Democrat Gazette has recently featured several letters to the editor about tipping the servers. Now they are paid at least $2.13 an hour. Many customers still consider it an option as to whether they leave a tip or not. I often wonder if they have any idea what they are doing to the families of those folks.

A Rose for Ms. Lewis

I have to admit that I was one of those people who longed for retirement quite a few years before I should have. I could picture myself on the front porch of my home in the deep South, sitting in a rocking chair with a glass of iced tea beside me. I would read books from sunup until sunset like Robert Morgan's heroine in his poem "White Autumn." One of the aspects I had forgotten, however, about the deep South is that the weather is hardly appropriate for sitting out all day. After a summer with several highs of 104 degrees in July, I spent much of it not on the front porch but inside in the deliciously cool air-conditioned retirement home that my husband and I purchased a year ago. My retirement fantasies also changed recently when I met Ms. Lewis.

Being new to the area of Little Rock, I have gotten involved in a new church, Trinity Cathedral. After becoming somewhat bored with the innumerable CSI and Law and Order episodes every night on TV, I decided it was time to throw the books down and become involved in "the work of the world." That work is to look outside myself and to look to the needs of others. Shortly before Christmas a call went out for help at St. Francis house, a facility that provides food for the hungry, commodities from the government, gifts for the poor at Christmas, and even a health clinic. When I called, someone informed me that Ms. Lewis was in charge of the gifts program and that, yes, she could use additional help in preparing for the food and gift giveaway on Dec. 22 and 23.

I tapped on the door lightly on the second floor of St. Francis house. Ms. Lewis opened the door, took me into the "wrapping room" loaded with numerous gifts, paper, tape, and scissors, and let me commence working. Ms. Lewis is 81 year old. She told me she had been a staff member there for years but had been retired for a number of years also. She now donates her time to the organization for the sake of others. She has been in charge of this event for thirty-eight, "going on thirty-nine" years she told me. Evidently her husband died when she was fairly young, leaving her with two seventeen-year-old teenagers still to raise. She shared with me her excitement about going to Chicago after Christmas to be with her daughter and to celebrate Kwanzaa.

The next week I went back, along with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Caitlyn, and her friend Corinne to assist in the gift giveaway. Ms. Lewis had everything organized to a "t" as we say. Weeks earlier people had signed up for the gifts and food and been given a number. On this day, they brought their number to a door to have their names checked off the list. They then brought their stamped number to us to receive the groceries and wrapped gifts. All went as planned until perhaps the gifts could not be located for a family. Caitlyn said this was the worst part. Ms. Lewis, however, promised the gifts later if the family would return the next day. She wrote the numbers down either to locate the gifts or to wrap new gifts.

I often think of Faulkner's famous story A Rose for Emily since I taught it to students in English II for years. Faulkner gave the lead character Emily a symbolic rose or tribute for killing a man she loved. A better tribute, in my opinion, would be one to Ms. Lewis, who tirelessly gives of herself year after year to bring life and joy to her little community in south Little Rock. Caitlyn said she would go back next year. She considered the best part to be handing out the gifts to the families and saying, "Merry Christmas."

Capitol Punishment?

I have been thinking a lot the past few days about both capital and capitol punishment, especially in light of the botched execution of Saddam Hussein and the elaborate state funeral of President Gerald R. Ford. Both were men of great power in their respective sovereign nations for a period of time. I have concluded from these meditations that I do not believe in capital punishment, but I do believe in capitol punishment.

I agree with Tom Friedman's column in today's Arkansas Democrat Gazette that justice, and possible healing, might have been better served to have put Hussein in a prison with tight security for the rest of his life. To all the people of Iraq, it might have been seen as a gesture of reconciliation between the two warring factions.

Since I come from a strong background that is Southern Baptist, this view might be considered strange by some of my best friends and family members. After all, the Bible's Old Testament seems to be in strong support of capital punishment. I have yet, however, to find a verse in the New Testament that does so. So, what factors could possibly have contributed to such a view so different from the rest of my denomination? Perhaps it stems from the murder of my own father in 1976. While sitting in a bar in the Mississippi Delta, my father was shot three times in the abdomen. He walked out to the highway and told the people in the bar he was going to see his daughters (my sister Judy and me). The next morning the highway patrol discovered his body beside the highway. As usual, he was attempting to hitchhike. I have asked myself many times, if the "perp" had been located, whether or not we would have, as victims, asked for the death penalty. Would it be possible to reconcile the biblical statement, "Vengeance is mine," with our own natural desire to seek revenge? It is a question that has been asked numerous times in the classics from The Odyssey to King Lear to To Kill a Mockingbird. I am still considering the question.

The question of capitol punishment, however, is more clearcut to me. I was a young married woman in the early 1970's when I heard President Gerald R. Ford give a complete pardon to disgraced former President, Richard Nixon. How could it be so easy to erase wrongdoing and violation of law? Yes, as we have heard commentators tell us for the past few days, the gesture was to heal a broken country. Some thirty years or so later I still disagree with the decision. It seems to me that the fundamental difference, of course, between capital and capitol punishment is that the state takes a life in the former and gives life to an anxious nation in the latter. What I mean by that statement is that capitol punishment allows us all to see that no person is above the law, no matter how powerful. If just and fair punishment, and many would argue that a life in prison without parole is worse than a quick death, would come to those who commit murder and who commit political crimes, perhaps, just perhaps, the crime rate in America would decrease.

. . . find Strength in what remains behind

One of my favorite poems of all is William Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality." I know he was an English Romantic writer who was privileged in every way. In this poem he reflects with nostalgia upon the loss of his childhood and youth, "Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind." I believe, however, that I am more like his contemporary William Blake. Born to the working class in London, he was able to witness the many injustices that children of his country had to endure in nineteeth century England. These astute observations led to the famous poems in his "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience." Who can ever forget the chimney sweeper who cries with his lisp, "''weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe?

While surfing the tv channels the other night, I paused momentarily on Joel Osteen's New Year's sermon at his mega church, Lakewood, in Houston. Basically, his message was that we need to move forward and not spend our time searching our pasts and meditating on all our mistakes, missed opportunities, wounds, and hurts from the past. One of my resolutions for 2007 is to take his words seriously and to live for today and the future. I have spent far too much time on the past.

My grandmother, whom we affectionally called Mam, through the years was one who lived for the moment. Her words always were that she had two loves in her life after the death of her second husband, food and tv. In spite of the fact that she had many losses in her life, she was always optimistic about the future. In 1918 she lost her two-year-old son and her first husband to the Spanish flu. She struggled to raise her baby daughter alone for a few years, but then she remarried. She wanted more children, especially a son, not really to replace the loss of James Robert but as a comfort and to give to her new husband who yearned for a son. Her dream was not to be realized, however, when she was rushed to the hospital for a hysterectomy shortly after the marriage.

My mother, on the other hand, worried endlessly about how her life had gone. She divorced my alcoholic father when my sister was nine, and I was five. Even as her life was nearly to a close in 1993, she often spent hours with my sister and me discussing all the alternatives she might have taken in her life.

I resolve this year to join in the work of the world, already in progress somehow without me. I want to " . . . find Strength in what remains behind," but I surely don't want to embrace it for years like my mother did. And, unfortunately, as I have done for too many years.

"I'll be homeless for Christmas"

Recently while listening to NPR, I heard that the song "I'll be Home for Christmas" was one of the most endearing of all songs to the American public--that and "White Christmas," of course. The idea was that, even if we cannot actually be home for the holiday, we will be there in our hearts. I have been thinking lately about these lyrics, especially after working Christmas Day in downtown Little Rock to help feed breakfast on the steps of City Hall to around thirty to fifty homeless people. Garlan, my husband, and I were asked by Robert, a new friend from Trinity Cathedral, to help. Robert's been doing this work every day for the past ten months after discovering one day that those in the soup kitchen at the Presbyterian Church downtown ate just once a day and had twenty-three hours to go before the next meal. Robert's interest in the cause relates to his own son's homelessness for a period of time.

On Christmas Day the weather was as bleak as possible for a Southern city in the wintertime. Clouds sprinkled a chilling, blowing mist of rain upon us on the porch of the facility. One of the women had brought chicken and dumplings in a crock pot, which she had hitherto promised to one of her own family for their Christmas dinner. She was from a neighboring church. Evidently, word of the need is spreading throughout the city. Old worn clothes hung on clothesracks on the most sheltered part of the overhang. My job was to pour steaming coffee refills to those gathered there that morning. One of the men was delighted to find among the clothes a worn pair of wool gloves with the fingers out so that he could get some measure of warmth for his cold hands and still eat his breakfast. I noticed another carrying two bags of apples away from the scene for some food either to share with others later or to eat alone. I met two folks, Nita and Kenny, whom my husband drove to south Little Rock to a woman's house they called "Grandma." You see they had hoped to get one of the free rooms to stay in Christmas Night that had been donated by a couple of local motels. By the time, however, they walked some twenty blocks or so to the location at City Hall, the rooms were all full, and the van had left.

We know this problem is not one unique to the city of Little Rock. I ask myself, "What does it mean to be homeless at Christmas?" "What does it mean to be homeless any night of the year?"
Nita had just come in by bus from Seattle, dozed off briefly in the bus station, and had her wallet with $200 stolen. She had somehow connected with Kenny for a bed at Grandma's for one night at least.

My husband and I cannot give money, but we can give of our time to help in the cause. My own interest in the problem stems from my short periods of homelessness and hunger as a child being raised by a single mother and being abandoned by an alcoholic father. Even today, like my sister Judy, I find myself cleaning my plate of food down to the last bite and often "stowing away" food in my purse for a later meal.

Nita was homeless Christmas Day in Little Rock thousands of miles away from her hometown of Seattle. She had hoped for a better and warmer life down South. I hope she can find it.

New Beginnings

On this first day of 2007 I am hopeful that the new year will be calmer than the past year. What began last New Year's Day was blissful optimism as I planned my retirement in May after thirty-five years of teaching and an additional six years as an insurance clerk. After the perfunctory round of retirement events, fondly labeled "lisapolooza" by one of my colleagues in the English department, I celebrated retirement. One of my first gifts was from my husband, Cindy Lauper's At Last cd, which I played relentlessly. A second very thoughtful gift was from my daughter Kimberly, a week's bed and breakfast stay in Hot Springs. The highlight of that week was getting to know our grandson Cole more since he was now officially a toddler.

The day after my husband's sixty-sixth birthday, however, we received a call notifying us that his sister Beverlea was in critical condition in Wichita with lung cancer. She lived just two days after we arrived at the hospital. We discovered in going through her papers that she had gotten a CAT Skan a year before but had failed to share with anyone in the family the seriousness of her condition, which evidently began as breast cancer. The summer was even more hectic as we buried Beverlea, cleaned out my father-in-law's house in preparation for an estate sale and real estate listing, and placed P-Pa, as the family calls him, into a nearby assisted-living facility.

Our family has repeatedly discussed the whys of the situation especially these: Why did Beverlea not confide in any of us as she confronted death alone? Why did she not seek medical treatment as most cancer patients do and get chemotherapy and radiation and surgery? My sister Judy tends to think she did not because she wanted "to go out her own way." I tend to think otherwise. You see Beverlea had only the smallest of AARP health care policies that would provide only a tiny payment each day for intensive care. She was sixty-four and not eligible for Medicare. She did not work at a full-time job any longer. In her mind probably she felt she was adequately covered until the CAT Skan was denied any payment by her insurance carrier. We live in America, and yet there seem to be few choices for those "caught in the gap" as we say. She lived with her aged parent, lived on her Social Security check, and had few expenses other than healthcare. My hope for this new year is for a new beginning--that Congress will truly work together to solve the health care crisis for those who must choose to die untreated.