She spent hours at the church. For years, her home was the sanctuary for ministers of Reeves Temple. They knew they could find quiet and a meal at Bec’s house. Thursdays at Grannie’s were such an experience in collaboration and learning to pull one’s weight. Among maternal extended family, we learned to set the table, and sit and eat with cousins, and how to clear a table, and how to restore a room to a previous order. One neat rite of passage was that when you began high school you could then sit at the “big table.” At the big table, you got to serve yourself, listen to grown folks conversation, and participate as well. I miss that Grannie. She died in her 97th year, having had Alzheimer’s for about ten years or so. The grace is that she lived long enough to see her grandchildren grown, and she shared lots of years with us, loving us, teaching us, and guiding us. She loved a lot of people and was held in high esteem by many. The beauty is that I see much of her personality in some of the grandchildren. Her legacy lives on. The legacies of all people live on, in certain traditions, when one calls out their name and remembers them. What a blessing to remember the good and beautiful amongst the pain. Sometimes we do well moving day to day; other times we are stymied and get bogged down in our realities and how we interact in the world.
One morning on the way to work I saw a deer; it had frozen in the middle of the street, and I waited patiently for it to pass. Getting anxious or blowing the horn would have only made the deer more nervous and it probably would not have moved as quickly. The sound of the horn may have traumatized the deer. Sometimes we are like deer. Sometimes we freeze when the bright lights of crisis, change, and difficulty pierce our reality. Sometimes, like deer, we eventually do move on; at other times, we get stuck in the quick sand of difficult challenges, and we remain there, especially if we do not have a community of accountability around us, to help us come back to a more balanced view of life.
During this period, I also wrote about my anger at society for viewing educational institutions, especially the soft sciences as peripheral. People entrusted with nursery schools, day care, kindergarten, and elementary schools have to purchase their own supplies and remain underpaid. There could be no successful careers and businesses without strong foundations, but those who help to provide those foundations are devalued and compensated poorly. I also realized my anger at folks who create programs but fail to work out a substantial funding apparatus across the years. The rule of thumb is that you need three to five years of capital when beginning any venture, because it will take that long before you can turn a profit. Unfortunately, many visionaries have poor business sense; consequently, many of those who work in the nonprofit sector work too hard and are often grossly underpaid. In faith communities and in higher education, there are so many incompetent people that have advanced amid the Peter Principle. They have been elevated to the height of their incompetence. Seems some of the hardest working, most talented people get the most hassles, and those that worm their way into positions ride on the coattails of those who really care and work really hard.
During that season, my daily prayer was to become aware of my emotional issues and to be able to continue to see where my anger exists. I began to reflect more on anger, research it, and took an anger management training course. One of my prayers was to be able to release more anger, and to be able to use my anger creatively. I had come to recognize that anger, like any other emotion, is not good or bad, it just is. I also recognized that sometimes when anger does exist, one may or may not be aware of it, for it may be buried underneath great hurt, grief, and loss. As I peeled back the onion of my life, I began to see that there was a place where anger and grief, betrayal and loss were intimately connected.
Who knows why there are certain issues in our lives that are hard to release? When we first got married, with school and familial financial obligations, it seemed the wrong time to think about children. Later, when we did try, our attempts seemed futile. I had lots of support dealing with our inability to conceive. Then we gave up; we realized that we would not have the blessings of giving birth to children. Then an astonishing thing happened: September, 1994, we were pregnant; unbelievable! As this was the time before everyone had home computers and internet access, we phoned and faxed everyone our great news. We were so thrilled, so delighted.
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