Columns

By Roger Barbee

        Seasons and Sadie

            Sometime last week I first noticed the seasonal changes on the mountain. Working in the raised flower garden, I went to the shop for some pruning shears and on the way back, I glanced to the saddle just south of Edinburg Gap. Yep, there was a light touch of yellow, gold, and specks of red. Since that day last week, the change has spread along the ridge, causing the mountain to take on an array of colors like those of an artist’s palette.

            However, before the cold and snow of another winter arrives,  we have weeks of sharp, vibrant colors to enjoy. Not only have leaves begun to turn on the ridge of the mountain, but I have seen some sugar maple leaves turning.  It is indeed a magical season that seems to have arrived unannounced, but I know that lack of awareness  is about me and not the seasonal cycle. Yet, we all are often taken aback by how quickly the change of seasons happens. On the last day of September, while working on a doll house in the shop, I opened the large doors that face the mountain so I could see the same saddle from last week.  I glanced up often to marvel at  how the colors had increased. Not only had the ridge taken on more color, but also the base shone with a dull orange tinge that announced the coming change. Sanding and painting the intricate parts of the doll house, I thought how as this seasonal change has come  many of us in the valley have continued on with our daily lives—the joys, the sorrows, the squabbles, and the mundane, without taking heed of the dramatic change happening on the mountain and around us. Then I thought of Sadie and her words to Mary Ann, my wife.

                        When Mary Ann and I first met, one of the first people in her life about whom she told me was her long-time friend, Sadie, who now lives in Gettysburg. Attending the same church, Sadie and Mary Ann had shared much in their lives until Sadie was called to counsel violent, male prisoners in the Pennsylvania state system. Over the years of her prison counseling, Sadie came to realize that, until she became an ordained minister, she would be limited by the restraints of the state prison system. So, this  spunky lady in her late fifties enrolled in the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg so that she could do more for “her” violent prisoners. After years of hearing about her and her work in the prisons with the men that she said had been forgotten, I was finally going to meet her.

                        Sadie and Mike, her husband, invited family and friends to her ordination. It was a lovely service in an old Lutheran Church near Gettysburg. However, what struck me was how much energy flowed from the small frame of Sadie. Like many celebrations, her ordination was over a weekend, but her glass-framed, smiling face seemed to be in all places with all her family and friends. With her ordination, her prison outreach expanded, and we began regular trips to Gettysburg to race the local marathon, see the historical sights, and share time with Sadie and Mike.

                        Sometimes we would share time with both, but on occasion  Mike would be out of town, so we had Sadie to ourselves. She showed us interesting, seemingly unknown parts of her hometown, she shared with us her work in the prison system, and her work as an assistant pastor. She told us how the men she ministered to had done horrible, unspeakable things, but also how they were human beings who had suffered abuse. She could sit over a meal and tell of these men without  judging; she acknowledged their horrific crimes and their humanity. And always, she was cheerful, bright, wise, and kind. Then  three years ago she shared, over a light salad, how she was having discomfort and could not eat much. That discomfort progressed into cancer.

                        Tears. Treatments. Pain. Fears. All of it and more, she and her family have gone through  much. Yet, like some people, Sadie has somehow continued to smile and radiate energy—until this week when she told Mary Ann, “I knew this would happen (her decline). Do what you have to do…it happens so fast.” The vibrant, loving lady who went to seminary late in life in order to serve humanity now has only about an hour of energy each day.

                        Change is happening on the mountain and in our lives. In the midst of all that change,  we are occupied with the ordinary concerns of life. But, are we living or just going through the motions? Perhaps we should heed Sadie’s words-”it happens so fast”-and do what really matters.

By Roger Barbee

                                                Pleasuring Herself

In his fine memoir, The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark recounts his grandfather’s explanation of aging: “ A man don’t start to learn until he’s about forty; and when he hits fifty, he’s learned all he’s going to learn. After that he can sort of lay back and enjoy what he’s learned, and maybe pass a little bit of it on. His appetites have thinned down, and he’s done most of his suffering, and yet he still got plenty of time to pleasure himself before he peters out entirely. That’s why I like November. November is a man past fifty who reckons he’ll live to be seventy or so, which is old enough for anybody….”       An admirer of Ruark and his two books about the older men in his life, I am reluctant to disagree with his grandfather, but I must because of Florence (not her real name).

The first time I met Florence was when my wife introduced us. She was a new member of a support group for widows in which my wife assisted. When we were introduced, Florence held her Bible close to her chest but could not hide the hollowness in her eyes. Her soft voice and softer demeanor caused me to think that she was having a most difficult time concerning her husband’s recent death. Her disheveled dress spoke of her emotional state. Over time, however, as Florence and I established our own friendship through church and our writing group, she shared much of her earlier life and of her marriage to her deceased husband, who was highly regarded in our small community.  She had lived in his shadow, known as “Lou’s wife.” (not his name) I watched as she struggled with the issues concerning a spouse’s death and admired her grit as she sold the house they had shared, donated his tools and clothes, and all the other things that must be done following a death. My wife and I were elated when she found an apartment in a modern complex of homes, restaurants, shops, and that was near her children and us. Florence settled into her life, but she did not stop growing. In fact, she bloomed.

According to the web site Grammarist, the phrase time heals all wounds may be first attributed to the Greek poet Menander, who lived around 300 B.C. and said, “Time is the healer of all necessary evils.” Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem, Troilus and Criseyde, written in the 1380s contains the phrase: “As tyme hem hurt, a tyme doth hem cure.” However, no matter how the sentiment is expressed, the pain of a deep wound never disappears, but time and life may lessen the sadness of past pain. And Florence, as she embraced her new surroundings to create a new, full life, contradicted  Ruark’s grandfather’s observation about being seventy.

Florence is no longer any man’s wife, pushed back into the shadows. She is known in her community through her part time work in a shop, for being encountered during her early morning walks around the complex, for her group that meets weekly to share conversation on a veranda, and her patronage to a cigar bar. Into her seventh decade, she is now herself. Yes, she is still a mother and grandmother, but she also has a life in her community that is hers, and not one that she shares with her family. Her family knows of that life’s existence, but Florence denies them entry because it is hers and not one to be shared with them.

Florence shares her new life with my wife and me, and we are happy for her. She told us not long ago how she was planning to smoke a cigar in the near future in the cigar bar and might even get a small tattoo. Not bad for a past seventy-year-old grandmother whose hands still bear the creases from work as a young girl on a North Carolina tobacco farm.

Florence, like all of us, carries certain sadness. But unlike so many folks, she took stock of where she found herself and decided for life. Much like the Phoenix, Florence rose from the ashes of her former life– to smoke a cigar, to get a tattoo, to build her own nest.