I wrote the book and have wrapped it all up on this blog, but the story hasn’t ended. We have now been in the big city for two and a half months. The roots are in the ground. I have met every neighbor within a block; the teens across the street, the stern grandpa next door, the darling retired couple with the barky dog, the couple with the chickens, the artist who lost her husband two years ago. There was a mystery episode of a huge nasty lizard in my backyard (escaped from the newlyweds’ doggy door). We picked and canned the peaches from our elderly neighbors’ tree. We have shared birthday parties, pies,beans and cornbread, bar-b-que.
Just today we entered new territory when our kitty climbed a tree in the backyard. We were away from the house at the time and when we returned home, a full-on watch party was happening in the backyard. People were genuinely concerned about the safety of our cat, an animal that the good Lord has graced with supernatural reflexes. They were taking videos and sipping drinks and pondering solutions. This is worlds away from the universe I grew up in.
When we moved, we landed scared, intimidated, and slightly prejudiced. This is the honest truth. We didn’t remember homeless or prostitutes on the corners. We’d forgotten how many denominations and opinions and languages there were. We’d been cornered away from most color and class for nearly a decade. As we had risen the ranks from poor, starving college students to debt-free, middle to upperclass parents, we carried our privilege with us. It didn’t feel heavy, as we had acquired it quite naturally and mostly everyone else around us had the same swanky luggage.
If I were to glance over my shoulder, I could see the path that brought me here. And if I peer way back in the distance I can see the first house I grew up in with plywood, rebar, and gravel floors. My dad filling the bathtub with warm water by the five gallon bucketful. The ladder that leaned up against the landing to the second floor. The walls with the horse hair plaster that crumbled off in chunks. There were years complicated by living with a very sick dad. The shame of wearing my brothers’ hand-me-downs and pretending I didn’t care.
I don’t like looking back. I prefer a steaming hot shower and shiny wood floors. I like early morning runs in the mountains and not laying in the buggy heat of an unairconditioned house, willing myself to fall asleep. I like RX bars and toilets that flush.
As a grownup there was no one in my circle telling me this kind of life wasn’t a God given right.
But it was time to peek back and remember that character wasn’t built in a spotless speck house situated in paradise. And we were fooling ourselves if that little seed of struggle early on in our life wouldn’t grow into a tree that bore fruit. It necessitated a move from comfort to dependence, or else we would become the world who demands social justice but offers nothing of ourselves.
We wanted to integrate. To de-class, desegregate. We were concerned for our kids. It was too easy to picture them growing up in a nice house with this fundamental view of privilege.
This took guts and a lot of uncertainty. Because no matter how poor I grew up, I am still white. I can only backtrack so far before it looks like I’m trying too hard.
It wasn’t comfortable to enroll my kids in the neighborhood school when just last year I walked around quite believably as a confident I-can-manage-life-without-any-help homeschooler. (Have you read the book? The joke is on me!) I was preaching to the choir when I should have been sitting in the service.
The big moment of truth came when we walked into Meet the Teacher night and we were in the minority. We were the ones being eyeballed. We were the ones speaking English as our home language. What was this new life going to be like? Would we find something in common with our neighbors?
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland the Queen quips, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”
Of course she is speaking of the intangible, the dreamlike, the preposterous. She is fiction, after all. But I’ve asked myself for a long time now if I’m brave enough to actually do the six impossible things, whatever they are, and beginning with small impossibles.
Meeting the neighbors.
Looking someone with an addiction in the eye.
Listening to a stranger’s story and crying with them. Or crying in the presence of a stranger as they listen to your story.
Maybe it is putting supper on someone’s front porch. Or hiring a babysitter to watch kids at naptime so you can volunteer at your kids’ school. Maybe it is answering the phone every time it rings instead of checking caller ID first.
Being brave isn’t limited to what one can do on one’s own strength. It is just what happens when I loosen my grip on what I can control to catch hold of God’s greater beauty.
It is a fantastic thing to aspire to when you think about it. It isn’t flashy, but it is thrilling. Six impossible things…and then six more. Repeat.
We have now been in school for one month.
We no longer feel quite the amount of tension as when we moved here. It has taken some confessing on our part to weed out our misjudgment and seek a better understanding of the cultures around us. It demands quiet introspection and tuning out what the world is screaming is important. I walk kids to and from school each day, my eyes open for the people in our path. Twice a week I go into classrooms to assist with reading groups and other tasks. I am falling in love with kids and teachers I would have never known.
It seems holy even if we’re taking teensy little steps. They are steps nonetheless.
