Friday, February 18, 2011

One Day in the Deep South in 1966


The scene was a hotel lobby in the Deep South. The year was 1966. A white woman holding an infant entered the lobby with five other children trailing her. The oldest child kept busy keeping track of her siblings while the woman, still holding the infant, waited in line to get a room.

She noticed a black couple in line ahead of her trying to get a room.

"We're sorry, we don't have any rooms," the black couple was told.
"But we have reservations. We made our reservations over the phone last week," the black man stated.
"We're sorry, we don't have any reservations with your name," the person behind the desk repeated. "We don't have any rooms."
The couple left the hotel lobby.
The woman with the infant moved to the lobby desk.
"Yes, ma'am, can we help you?"
She gave her name and received her room keys.
"I know what's going on here. You don't think I know what's going on here?"
A porter moved to help the family carry their bags. He was also black.
"It's not right. It's not right," the woman exclaimed to the person behind the desk.
"We can carry our own bags, thank you," she said to the porter.
The porter watched as the family collected their belongings. A nine-year old boy struggled to carry a suitcase bigger than he was. Somehow, the woman and her six children made it to their rooms. The woman gave the infant to the oldest daughter and sat on the bed and wept.
Eventually, the woman dried her tears and set about the business of getting her children washed and ready for dinner. They were to meet her husband in the hotel restaurant for dinner. He had spent the day in a job interview.
Their rooms were at end of the hall. It was a long way to the elevator. As the family made its way down the hall, the hotel maids, who were all black, came to every door, lining the hall way.
"Good evening, Mrs. Barker, have a nice evening," the maid said.
"Good evening, Mrs. Barker, lovely children," another maid said.
"Good evening, Mrs. Barker, have a nice stay," another said.
The family filled up the elevator and went downstairs to the restaurant. The restaurant staff, who were all black, helped the woman and her six children to their table. When her husband joined them, the chef, who was black, came out of the kitchen and took the family's order for dinner.
One day in the Deep South in 1966. A day in the life of a family. A day in the life of a country struggling to treat all people with dignity and respect. A couple denied a room. A porter. A maid. A chef. A nine-year old boy. A woman whose memory lives on in the hearts and minds of her husband and children.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

A Love Worth Waiting For ...


Besides being a heretic, a misanthrope, and a cynic I also admit to being a romantic. A hopelessly optimistic and delusional romantic. If that makes sense to you, it doesn't to me. I don't understand myself at all. This prevents me from thinking I understand other people.

I grew up reading the classics. 'Readers Digest Condensed Classics for Young People' to be precise. My parents had ordered the set and we would get a book every month or so. Each book had four or five abridged classics. I read them all.

Captain Horatio Hornblower, Great Expectations and Beau Geste were my favorites.They were stories about adventure, honor, and romance. I cried the first time I finished Great Expectations. I could relate to Pip's broken heart, his dashed expectations.

Reading these books as a youth I developed a code of ethics and honor that might seem archaic. I was definitely more influenced by these classics than I was by the culture I grew up in the 60s and 70s.

It should be no surprise, then, that I was totally unsuited and unprepared for modern warfare, excuse me, modern dating.

My views on romance were also informed by growing up with a strong-willed, highly intelligent mother and three strong-willed highly intelligent sisters. My brothers and I learned how to not argue at an early age.

I became convinced that a woman would not do anything she didn't want to do. I considered romantic novels and movies where men had the upper hand as utter nonsense and rubbish.

I also believed that if the intelligence that created the universe entrusted the females of our species with childbirth then that was telling. It established a spiritual/biological priority which I strongly felt had to be respected.

My approach, which failed utterly for decades, was to be friends with all the intelligent, strong women I met and someday one of them would find me worthy of their company. I strove to conduct myself in such a way that respect and admiration of the opposite sex were my default settings.

After decades of disappointments, heartaches and frustrations, I was starting to think I might have been mistaken. When I went to seminary in New Jersey my plan was to be an ordained minister, get a small rural charge in western Virginia and bounce around the hills in my pickup truck with my two dogs.

I was not prepared for what actually happened.

I met a child of immigrants. Her father was half Sri-Lankan and half British. Her mother was German. Her parents met in London in a class where they were learning to speak English. She was born in England but moved to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, when she was four.

That meant she had a Canadian, not a Monty Python accent. Although she was one quarter Indian, she passed for white. She had two highly intelligent and wonderful children. She was going through a divorce.

She belonged to a heretical Christan denomination. She worked as an intern at a drug rehabilitation residential facility in Newark, New Jersey.

She had a radical, egalitarian approach to social justice. All of that was stunning. But the most incredible thing was she found me good company.

We never really dated, which was a good thing because I was terrible at dating (see above). We just kept on enjoying each other's company. We took walks. We ate at diners (New Jersey has awesome diners). We talked.

In December 2002 we got married. We didn't have a wedding. We did that justice of peace thing. Afterwards, we ate at a diner and went to a bookstore.

Every day with her has been Valentine's Day. I don't think about the past much anymore, but when I do I realize that for me, it was worth the wait. We have romance, adventure, mutual admiration and mutual respect. Maybe I was right about some things, after all.

"Come with me, go places, once more for the ages."

Monday, February 14, 2011

But It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Cryin'

My mother died in 1998. She was only 67. I say 'only,' because I'm 53 now and 67 doesn't seem old.

In 1998, I was unemployed and suffering from something a doctor called 'chronic fatigue. I called it depression.

In my spare time, which I had a lot of, I was volunteering at the Blacksburg United Methodist church my mom went to and my dad goes to to this day. I had become friends with the senior minister, Rev. Herb Hobbs, who was also the the chaplain for the Virginia Tech football team. He recommended I pursue a career in ministry.
A good friend at church, Dick Arnold, had lived in New Jersey and recommended the seminary at Drew University in Madison.

New Jersey? The armpit of the nation. A place where being a jerk is a point of pride. But Dick Arnold was persistent. I needed to visit Drew University, he kept saying.

So my Dad and I drove up to New Jersey and visited the campus. The campus was set in several acres of forest. It was peaceful and serene. The administration building is so magnificent it has been in several movies. Many people get married on the beautiful lawn behind it.

Still grieving, but needing to get on with a career, I thought three years in this bucolic, spiritual setting could heal as well as prepare for a career in ministry.

What happened in the next three years changed me in ways I didn't think possible. I lived in off campus housing, sharing an old home with four other graduate and seminary students. My bedroom was a converted closet. Please don't ask if the closet had a closet.

But I was single and didn't care. I pared all my belongings down to a couple of suitcases and moved in. My roommates and I got along great. It all started out well. Too well, the cynic in me warned.

It was. After several months, I began to suspect that gregarious Keith was a pedophile. What transpired with Keith deserves its own pages and will be discussed at another time. Socially, I was my usual awkward self and botched a couple of stabs at relationships. Academically, I almost flunked an oral exam and had a professor refuse to grade a final paper for reasons only academics care about.

I was in turmoil by the end of the academic year. I was lonely and confused.

Back home in Blacksburg for the summer, I was too depressed to explain to family and friends the changes I was going through. One day I went to my mother's grave. She is buried in the town cemetery in the middle of town. There is a big, beautiful tree that gives her head stone shade during the hottest part of the day.

I sat there, under the tree, in the shade, crying, wondering. I was at a loss for what to do next. On the walk home from the cemetery I thought of writing someone I had met in one of my classes. At the end of the year, we exchanged addresses. I went home and wrote her a letter.

Even though I was submerged in my own grief, I remembered she seemed sad last time we talked. It's helpful to remind oneself that other people have struggles and tragedies, too. She had talked about how one of her good friends had lost her young daughter after a long illness. I sensed her sadness had other levels, but chose not to pry.

So I wrote her a letter asking how her summer was going. Two days later I got a letter from her. I was shocked. I looked at the postmark. She had mailed it the same day I did!

It was the same kind of letter I wrote,with the "hi, how are you stuff." But at the end of the letter she said her marriage was ending. That explained some of the deeper sadness.

We exchanged letters all summer, getting to know each other better. We explained our theological philosophies and shared family details. Then it was fall and time to go back to school.

I was worried, concerned and excited about what would happen next. I enjoy the company of intelligent, strong women. Most of my female friends were married or lesbians. I have always been comfortable with that, it kept me from falling in love and ruining a good friendship. My track record in love had been one disaster after another. I didn't want to add one more failure to the list.

Tomorrow: Meeting face-to-face.