"when I was fourteen..."

"Send me away 
with the words
of a love song..."

For the last year - or so, I have been hearing the first line of something -- but I haven't known what it was meant to become. A post, a poem, a conversation I needed to have with someone? Then today, I heard it in the context of the Hemingway quote that gave voice to the last, most recent post on this blog, "Write hard and clear about what hurts."

That was when I knew. That first sentence was a prompt, a reminder.  And it wasn't giving up.  It was saying, over-and-over again, "You need to write about this:

"when I was fourteen..." 

So today, I stopped and listened. And it was like a sucker punch to my heart.  I sighed deeply.  "Yes," I thought, "this is what once hurt, and needs to be written."

A few years back, there was a song, by The Band Perry, titled,"If I Die Young," It may sound self-indulgent, dramatic, and morbid, but whenever I heard it I wanted to weep for the girl I was at fourteen. Sometimes death comes to us in ways that aren't an escape - we just have to find a path through.

When I was fourteen, my life finally felt like it was becoming livable. The abuse I'd endured since the age of four had all but stopped -- when my family began to explore a deeper understanding of our individual and collective relationship with God.  We still moved houses regularly, but I had a real friend for the first time in my life. A friend that I wasn't related to.  A friend that didn't disappear when we changed neighborhoods and zip codes.

You see, even though we changed schools, we still lived in the same town and went to the same church. I was still able to participate in the same camp-based local activities. For the first time, there was continuity in my life - one that extended beyond my family.  And there was hope for a future that included my dream of having a life-long friend -- something I'd only read about in books.

I loved my new Sunday School friend.  We rode bikes, sat by the pool, went to movies, and talked about things that mattered.

And then one day, we had a family meeting. My parents told us that we were moving -- again. But this time it was going to be out-of-state and time zones away. Spontaneous phone calls, movies, sleepovers on weekends -- were over. Long-distance phone rates would make calling impossible.

Saying goodbye that last Sunday after church was one of the most painful moments of my childhood. As our parents waited, my friend and I said goodbye and promised to write letters -- every day. Later that week my family loaded up our station wagon and we were on the road to a new state, a new town, new schools, a new neighborhood, and a new church home. I saved my babysitting money, I bought pretty stationery and postage stamps. I wrote my friend almost every day. She never wrote back.

For a year I checked the mailbox daily - the minute I got home from school. If it was empty, the first question I would ask my mother as I flew through the kitchen door was, "Was there a letter today?' There never was.

You may be wondering why I feel the need to write about this tonight -- isn't it just water under the bridge? Well, besides the fact that I kept hearing that one line: "When I was fourteen..." it is because it was a great hurt that I can now write hard and clear about.  

And if I have learned anything after six decades of living in this world, it is that we are never alone in the pain we have experienced. To feel dismissible when you are doing everything to connect with another human being is heartbreaking. It can make you want to "die young" -- as it did me.  So, if there is someone out there feeling this kind of loneliness -- I need for them to know, you are not alone.

For many people, their lives are filled to the brim with continuity and connection. They grow up in loving homes, they have the same friends throughout childhood, they are embarrassed by indulgent parents, and overwhelmed by a hyper vigilant community that knows everything about them and the details of their lives. 

 If you are one of those people, I can't tell you how much I envied you -- most my life.

But for some of us, life was lonely. We dreamed of familiarity, connection, continuity of place and people. When we finally had a friend, we were willing to do anything to keep that thread intact. And sometimes we made grave mistakes. We over compensated, we gave gifts that seem too generous, we called, wrote, texted more than we should, we hesitated to say "the hard things" for fear of being rejected or dismissed, we are too easily crushed and too quickly hurt. We take things too personally. We are too grateful one minute and too needy the next.

If you have lived a life filled with family, friendship, connection, and community you are blessed. If you have a friend who has come into your life and seems too needy, or too willing, or too eager to write, call, text -- please be patient and kind. If your child has a friend who moves away and writes them a letter - please encourage them to reply. It may be the single most important thing they do for another human being. Rejection hurts.  Childhood rejection is devastating -- even when it is done without malice or rancor -- which I am absolutely certain was the case with my Sunday School friend.  She was just a girl herself.  She just had a full life.  I was simply that extra drop that flowed over the edge of the cup.

But, I still remember the name of my friend. I still think about her all the time - almost 50 years later. I wonder if she ever read my letters -- on pretty stationery spritzed with Love's Baby Soft perfume and filled with all the details of a 14 year old's life in a strange new place where she felt more alone than ever before. 

 Did she like the four-leaf clovers I found, pressed, and tucked in with the program from my new school's homecoming festivities. Did she ever even read the poem about friendship that I finally found the courage to send?  Did she ever wonder whether the boy I told her about was kind or funny?  

She was beautiful and popular.  She had many friends.  Her life didn't change when I left. I was just a small, shy girl who she meant the world to. A church friend. But to me, she was my first real friend. 

 Sometimes, I just think of what she may have missed -- a lifelong relationship with someone who thought she was very, very special. Someone for whom she was a refuge of friendship, in an unfriendly world. Someone who would have never let her down.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote in her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection:

"There is no greater miracle
known to earth, than perfection
and an unbroken friendship."

 
I pray she knows that I would have been in her corner forever. I would have done anything to be the friend she may have needed someday - and could always turn to.

Since then I have been blessed by some amazing friendships. But being a friend is not something I am always confident about. I am often awkward in groups, I shut down if I feel insecure, I don't always know what to say, I take things too personally, I need a "job" to be at ease in social settings.  Yet I am always trying to be the friend I never had as a child, or as a teenager.

I don't think I am the only one who has ever felt "friendless."  Friendship is hard.  It requires a level of vulnerability that leaves us feeling naked in a crowd. It also requires trust in a Love that overarches those moments when we do feel alone in a world obsessed with group selfies, and accumulating "likes," on social media.  A love that can't be measured, apportioned, given, taken back, extended, or unfriended.

Elsewhere in her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy offers this encouragement to anyone who has ever felt lonely and friendless:

"Would existence without personal friends
be to you a blank? Then the time will come
when you will be solitary, left without sympathy;
but this seeming vacuum is already filled
with divine Love."

 
This statement was a promise for me as a fourteen year old girl waiting for a letter in the mail.  And tonight, as I look back at that chapter in my life, I realize God was always there in my heart.  I was filled with love and hope.  I was the one who had the courage and strength to love someone, even when there was no response.

Tonight I am writing as hard and clear as I can, about something that once hurt, but is now a memory of the sweet, shy girl I was. The girl who never stopped hoping.  I write, in hopes that it will help someone else remember how rare and remarkable it is - in this world - to be loved and believed in by another person.   And maybe - just maybe - to hold hands across the miles with someone else who feels alone.  If you write, I promise -- I will always answer.

offered with Love,

Kate

"gentle on my mind..."

"It's knowing that your door
is always open, and your path
is free to walk..."

I love this version of John Hartford's "Gentle on My Mind" by The Band Perry. But it's Glen Campbell's 1967 recording that first caught my heart.

It was 1969 and everything felt at loose ends. Our family had pulled up stakes and moved over 2,000 miles across the country. We were living with relatives while our parents secured housing. I felt so untethered that summer. I was looking for anything I could latch on to, and call my own.

The teenage sons of long-time family friends were kind, respectful, and good. It didn't take long for me to develop a paralyzing crush on the oldest boy. Days were soon filled with tennis, swimming, berry-picking, and playing records in my cousins' basement where we'd talk, and dance, and play cards, while our parents visited upstairs.

I believe that in his eyes - I was a child. I certainly looked like one. Three years younger, and already very small for my age, I was more like someone he should babysit rather than date. But this didn't stop me from dreaming -- the way young girls do. He was kind, but certainly not interested in dating a little girl.

It must have been obvious to my parents, aunts, uncles, and his parents -- to say nothing of my cousins. If he was coming over I was animated and happy. If he wasn't, I sat by myself on the porch, reading novels, and sighed -- a lot.

One day, my very intuitive aunt joined me on the porch. In her hand was a copy of Mary Baker Eddy's small volume, Miscellaneous Writings, 1883 - 1896. At first she didn't even refer to the book she was holding. She simple asked me what was on my mind. And for some reason, I was honest with her. 

 I told her that I was thinking about him.  I admitted how impossible - I knew it was - for us to ever become a couple. Not only was he not interested in dating a little girl, but we were very different. He was an adventurer, a wanderer, someone who saw a horizon and simply had to find out what lay beyond. I, as I told my aunt, was a homebody, a bookworm, someone who sought out small spaces and quiet corners.

My aunt didn't remind me that I was barely old enough to be allowed to stay up late and watch Bonanza -- much less be thinking about my future with a boy who was already shaving and planning a solo road trip to Colorado after college. She spoke with me as if I were a young woman. She addressed -- not the difference in our ages -- but the differences in our dreams.

She reminded me that my dreams were filled with visions of ivy-covered halls at a prestigious university, while his were filled with mountains, rivers, vast open highways, and endless western skies. Without saying much more, she handed me her copy of Miscellaneous Writings, and walked back into the house. Holding it in my hand, I noticed that there was a long slip of soft blue grosgrain ribbon, pressed between two pages. After she left, I opened to where the ribbon had been placed, and found that she'd marked a passage for me to read. It was perfect:

"We should remember that the world is wide;
that there are a thousand million different human wills,
opinions, ambitions, tastes, and loves; that each person
has a different history, constitution, culture, character,
from all the rest; that human life is the work, the play,
the ceaseless action and reaction upon each other
of these different atoms.

Then, we should go forth into life with the
smallest expectations, but with the largest patience;
with a keen relish for and appreciation of everything
beautiful, great, and good, but with a temper so genial
that the friction of the world shall not wear upon
our sensibilities; with an equanimity so settled that
no passing breath nor accidental disturbance shall
agitate or ruffle it; with a charity broad enough
to cover the whole world’s evil, and sweet enough
to neutralize what is bitter in it, — determined
not to be offended when no wrong is meant, nor
even when it is, unless the offense be against God.

Nothing short of our own errors should offend us.
He who can wilfully attempt to injure another,
is an object of pity rather than of resentment;
while it is a question in my mind, whether there is
enough of a flatterer, a fool, or a liar,
to offend a whole-souled woman." 

The first thing I felt was "known." I can't tell you why, at 14-going-on-15, I was so moved by this passage, but it touched me deeply.  And, it was perfect. It was grown up and thoughtful. To think that this aunt --who I admired so much for her dignity, compassion, and grace -- would think of me as a "whole-souled woman," gave me something to hold on to. It was the very anchoring I had been seeking.

Almost 50 years later, this passage - in my own copy of Miscellaneous Writings - is always marked with a slip of grosgrain ribbon and marked with blue chalk. It has seen me through arguments with my sister, break-ups, not getting "the job" I'd thought was mine, political disappointments and dissent, as well as  countless opportunities for humility, meekness, and grace.

The boy -- he went on to become an extraordinary young man of substance and adventure. Me -- I still love books, quiet spaces, and the simple things of home, spiritual service, and family. That summer, my aunt helped me let go of the wrong anchor, to find my true grounding in what was enduring, changeless, and beautiful. I will always be grateful.  Each person that comes into our hearts, can forever remain gentle on our minds.

offered with Love,

Kate