The Kindness of Time

Sometimes the past jumps up and bites you – it’s surprising, painful and regrettable. But sometimes it washes over you with a kindness that comes with the passing of time. It covers your vision with a nostalgic patina viewed through experience and the hard-earned wisdom, finally, of what’s really important after all.

Anyone who has had a close family member or friend die will tell you that the first few weeks of grief are raw and invasive. You feel the need to remember as a measure of respect, but the memories are just too painful. As time grinds down the tender, hard edges, the softer memories come creeping in one-by-one. And after enough time, you are left with sweetness – those few select memories that you are willing to hold close and examine.

My young friends have for some time been urging me to open a Facebook account. I refused to give in for so long. But, to steal an appropriate line from my friend Donna, resistance is futile. Part of the reason I held off for so long is that I know my personality and I knew (and I was right) that it would become a major time sponge. But the flip side is that I can be online with my friends from Northern Virginia that I so miss and I can pretend that I will once again see them in church on Sunday morning. The other great pleasure has been in rediscovering friends from my past. I made just such a connection today and I am carrying that glow of nostalgia – my past looked at through eyes that know what’s really important.

Because in truth, we simply cannot deny the importance of the details of our growing up. They are in us, deep, and we can ignore them or pretend they never happened but they have helped to shape who we became.

Take hounds for instance. I was raised with beagles, lots of them. My daddy was a hunter and he kept a pack of beagles. I didn’t see much of them because they stayed in a pen down in the back, but I did have a beagle that was my pet in the house. When she died, I got a bassett hound. Hounds were always there for me to wrap my arms around and exult with or cry to.

My fondest memory of my daddy is of one Sunday morning when he got me out of Sunday School and we sneaked back home during church. Understand, we never missed church and this added to the spirit of adventure. One of the beagles had puppies and they were being weened. He needed to feed them and we gave them several saucers of milk. They knocked them over, lapped up the milk and began to lick the extra off each other’s faces. We laughed until we cried.

I grew up and moved on to cats and cocker spaniels. Over the last few years, though, I found myself yearning for a hound. When Chloe, my coonhound, came up on the rescue website, I was lost. I fell instantly in love with her because she so reconnected me with my past.

I guess the beauty of rediscovered past for me is that I see family and friends through different eyes. We’ve all grown older, some chubbier, some thinner, some balder; but I see them through gentler eyes. I see fewer defects, idiosyncrasies and flaws because I see the good things I remember and I know the other stuff just doesn’t matter. Time mellows.

Family Unplugged

I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately. Our son, Cory, and our grandkids, Jacob and Claire, just left after a brief stay – first time at our South Carolina home. Steve and I live in a golf community on the lake and it is essentially a retirement community. The nearest small town, Manning, is about 11 miles away. You will not find a Starbucks, a movie complex, Outback Steakhouse, Borders books or Target store. Best Buy does not occupy mall space nor does Laser Quest, Chuck E Cheese nor Red Robin.

How would our technology-craving, fast-moving, entertainment-centered kids (including our grown son) take to our new and very quiet life style? I will tell you that when they got into the car and drove away, I was as exhausted as I ever am after a stay. But what a sweet kind of fatigue this was!

The twilight of the night before had found us standing on our dock, tossing food to the turtles and fishing. We listened to Canadian geese passing overhead and watched heat lightning in the clouds on the horizon, “Southern lights”. I marveled at how very much it felt like my summer vacations of the 1950’s. No technology, just nature and family.

We played board games and sat on the back porch and rocked. My grandson and I shared stories and spent long companionable silences simply rocking and basking in our shared company. My granddaughter told me about her wishes and dreams and asked me about mine. We played bingo at the community center and set off fireworks.

Steve and I had been looking for a pontoon boat for some time and it just so happened that we found the one we felt we were supposed to buy only days before our family arrived. Steve and Jacob brought it home for the first time together. A milestone frozen in time that seemed monumental – that we will remember and we hope he does too.

Late at night, when the kids were in bed, the adults sat in the dark on the porch and listened to the crickets, cicadas and discussed the dearth of fireflies compared to my childhood. We too shared our dreams, disappointments, and hopes. We communicated. Without wires and without wireless. Just quiet voices wrapped in love.

Cookies for Me

School started this week here in South Carolina. The beginning of the routine, the mad dash for school supplies, the busses running again, it always makes me remember...

First day of kindergarten. In Hawaii. My son walked away from me and onto the bus and I stood there struggling with all the emotions I was hoping I’d escaped – the sense that he was on the path to adulthood, the quiet lonely kitchen I was returning to, middle school, high school graduation, college, marriage – it all came crashing into my tear-filled eyes.

I walked home with my baby girl in the stroller and took the first of countless glances I would take at the clock that day. I paced. I told myself that I needed the extra time to spend with only my daughter. Then the answer occurred to me! He loved chocolate chip cookies. I would pull a batch out of the oven just in time for his bus. We could come home and talk about his day over cookies and cold milk! And, true enough, our time together that day was sweet.

The next year as he was entering first grade, we were a world away from that beautiful place. Steve was in the Army and we found ourselves on the east coast in New Jersey. I felt a small twinge of worry as I dropped him off at school – new school, new state, new friends. How would he adjust? However, my mind quickly eased because I already had my bag of chocolate chips in the pantry.

As each school year approached, my emotions changed. I was again torn when my daughter started kindergarten. But as my kids got older, I didn’t mind those first days of school. Can we be honest here? I’ll confess I began to look forward to those days and the peace and quiet in my house before the after-school piano lessons started.

And there were always the cookies. Every year. My own gift to my kids. My way of welcoming them home from their first day of school.

As they began to get older, I noticed that sometimes they would grab a handful and head out the kitchen door. Gone were the days of family circles around the table with cookies and milk and talk about teachers and new friends. Soon they forgot to thank me for the cookies. Then one day, they were out with friends after that first day of school and the cookies sat untouched until after dinner.

Here’s the funny thing – this story is not nearly as depressing as it sounds. We still shared our lives but in different ways. I realized during those last few years that the cookies were for me – my way of marking time, of setting tradition, of providing a stabilizing influence. Who knew the tradition, the encouragement was for me?

How many times do we take issues, worries about someone to God? We try to “fix them”. We pray for them – surely if I pray enough, he’ll change, she’s got to know she’s wrong in this. And we go to God’s Word to prove our point, to be able to show that we are right. And the more we read, the more God says, “Are you listening? This is about you and I’ve been teaching you.”

So now my kids are grown and gone. But do you know what’s amazing? I never approach the Tuesday after Labor Day without a moment of wistful remembering. And I’ve been known to bake a cookie or two.