As of today, Superhusband and I have been residents in
Alabama for four months. Sometimes it’s
hard to believe we’ve been here that long because everything seems so new, and
others it seems we’ve been working on this house and the car FOREVER. We
visited some great friends in Nashville last weekend, and I believe I took a
huge, audible intake of air as we crossed the city limits and were outside of
town—we were travelling again, and it was exhilarating.
But it takes routine to appreciate adventure. And the reverse is also true, that it takes
adventure to appreciate routine. There
are things I have been noticing lately that I haven’t had in so long that I’ve
forgotten I ever took them for granted.
One being tonight—we had my mother and grandmother over for dinner. I got to hear their voices familiarly talking
over one another (like you do when you’re family and not “company”) as I tended
to things simmering. And now I sit, over-full and content in our apartment as
Superhusband sorts through pictures and I am propped happily on the loveseat:
quiet, peaceful, non-tv-watching, non-planning.
(Fast forward to Sunday—this time I’ve had to write
piecemeal. I am, however, still over-full from a Fathers’ Day lunch. But back
to the story.) Other than just being over-fed lately, I have noticed some
wonderful, some not-so-wonderful things about being back in Alabama.
First, are the friends—in relatively similar time
zones. It is such a relief not to have
to do quantum math to figure out if someone I want to call is likely to be
awake. And not to mention actually getting to be in the presence of said
friends. A part of my soul returned when
I got to talk to one of my besties in Nashville about non-important things;
like hair, shoes, drink preference, traffic patterns, ad nauseum. If you only talk about important things, you’re
a therapist. If you talk about everything, you’re friends. It’s good to be back.
And then on Friday night Superhusband and I went to visit
some newer friends we’ve made since attending our home congregation here in
Florence. While there I had the ultimate
privilege of combining several southern delights; friends, chicken casserole
(the kind of casserole where the cook takes your compliment and then
immediately says “It’s SO easy, you just take a can of……”, which, in my
opinion, are the best ones.), porches and lightning bugs. You just can’t get
any better than girl-talkin’ on a front porch at dusk and watching lightning
bugs. Seeing the little flickers in the grass and rising to the trees makes it
easy to believe in fairy tales and wonder and mystery and beauty. I also get a
bit anxious that the species will somehow have remembered me for the way I used
to destroy myriad of their kind on a summer evening by squishing their butts
into my Granny’s front porch steps (partially to impress the boy cousins,
partially because I wanted to see if I could write my initials with their
glowing entrails before they stopped shining. It’s not the kind of thing you
want a lightning bug race to remember.) Insect brutality flashbacks aside, it
was a great evening.
And it followed on the heels of another couple of great
events—one spontaneous, one planned. Last Sunday I was privileged to attend the
memorial service of one of our church member’s brother. To my knowledge I had
never met the man. But our little
congregation was providing food for the family, so I got to go. Now we had just had a huge thunderstorm sweep
through the area, and after losing most of our power during the last ten
minutes of worship service that morning, had lost all remaining power just in
time for the memorial. But if southern
church of Christ women know how to do one thing, it’s to improvise. We took every tea light and taper out of the
cabinets, the ones reserved for special occasions, and festooned the buffet
line, the dessert table, and both the men’s and women’s restrooms. We paid special
attention to the placement in the women’s restroom stalls because we didn’t
want anyone’s dress catching on fire in such a delicate situation. And the men would not be outdone—there was a
video and music to be played, so there had to be power. One man brought his generator from home. Five
others courageously set it up outside (and almost out of earshot, to their
great compliment) and strung a straggly net of extension cords inside the
building and up to the projector and music equipment. It was brilliant.
And beyond the practical was the sentimental. Friends, neighbors, family all spoke of the
deceased with candor, humor, and tenderness.
Perhaps my favorite gleaning was from a rough-spoken man who quoted Dr.
Seuss: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” I was touched,
moved. And ultimately I was thrilled to be a native of a place which still
considers a life well-lived something to be celebrated.
But just as there is joy in planned things, there is joy in
surprises. After Wednesday night Bible class, a couple of us were still sitting
in the classroom talking. A man in the
congregation came in and joined our conversation, then out of nowhere the other
woman in the room suggested we sing a verse of a song. We belted out the first verse of “My Jesus, I
Love Thee.” After that, to quote the
great Dr. Shull, “We were like a hound dog with his first chicken; we could not
be stopped.” The requests came pouring
in and the verses came gushing out of us with eager abandon. It was refreshing, and sweet, and fun. It was
just another example of the home-grown entertainment and spur of the moment
praise that make me wistful about Florence, Alabama.
But not all has been rosy.
Nope. Other things that happen
here have begun to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I now subtly sneer at all the
teens working in restaurants who hug all their friends who come to eat there—I just
think it’s smarmy and unsanitary. I have mourned the fact that big hair will
never go out of style here. Ever. And
even today I have been ashamed of my constituents ahead of me in line at the
Dollar General who made me ten minutes later in making my Mexican cornbread
because the two homosexual women and their indigent man-friend had to call
someone to bring them money because their food stamps wouldn’t pay for their
energy drink. (No lie—but I have a
love/hate relationship with that incident because it so nicely encapsulates our
quirky yet pathetic low-class culture. Bless their hearts.) I’ve still had time
in my head to do a lot of pouting, whining, griping, fighting…and various and
sundry other disgruntled noise-making activities. And that’s just at home!
And all of that noise has led me to a conclusion about
marriage. We all know that passage where
we are told that “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and
cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” (Mark 10:7-8) Okay, I get that. But what that verse doesn’t say is that the one flesh that’s created is NOT a full
grown adult one. Not even an average of
the ages and/or maturity levels of the participants. Oh, no.
It’s a figurative baby relationship. And it will act accordingly.
We plan for weddings like we plan for babies. We kind of know what they’re going to look
like, we get presents for them, we prepare special food for them. When they
arrive it’s a glorious celebration which is at once wonderful and terrifying.
Then, after all the parties are over, those two people take
that one baby marriage home, and muddle through with it. At first, with both babies and marriages,
there is a lot of cooing, a lot of unintelligible speech, copious amounts of
saliva, and let’s face it, if things are normal, a lot of sleepless nights. We
expect most of that, on both counts. But
what we don’t expect is this relationship to develop its own personality so
quickly. Because two people are
involved, you can’t just eat what you used
to eat for dinner (for me, a bowl of Lucky Charms, a Slim Jim and bunch of
cheese and crackers might suffice); now the relationship tells you what to eat.
For ease and entertainment, from now on in this post I’m going to call mine and
Superhusband’s marriage Marty. Marty
then decides what we watch on TV. Marty decides what makes us happy, sad, angry—we
are often tired because of Marty, but we can’t give him back. We made him. ALL attention, work, scheduling,
anxiety and joy is directly tied to our baby marriage. We are the parents of
this writhing, screaming, socially awkward, often poopy little baby marriage,
and it is our responsibility to raise him. Don’t get me started on the teething
process.
As the marriage baby grows, it gets to do some fun things
too, which impress his parents and other interested by-standers. Our Marty has
already begun picking out his new clothes, which sometimes match with fashion
and sometimes don’t. But Marty’s big
enough to handle that now. Marty has
been working on numbers, saying “please” and “thank you,” and sharing. He even has learned who “Mommy” and “Daddy”
are, and identified traits of each—these are the parent marriages that made
ours. And whether we like it or not,
Marty looks a lot like his parent marriages (those of my parents’ and
Superhusband’s), and sometimes the similarity is so ingrained that each blames
the other, but we’re not really sure who initiated the trait.
Superhusband and I have been married for just over 18
months. That means that our Marty is in
his terrible two’s. The parallel is so
clear! We often find ourselves worried about the kinds of things a two year old
is consumed with: “What is “mine?” Are we there yet? Did you get more than me? But I wanted to go
first! No!” It’s really exhausting. But just as we are about to throw in the
towel, little Marty snuggles up and says “Don’t cry. I love you.” and we
melt. And while Marty doesn’t know it,
the two people who made him know that this is just a phase. Not that the decisions made during this time
aren’t relevant, because they are, but Marty’s reactions, confidences, misgivings
and fears will change. He will mature as
we do. We must nurture, but never assume that our mistakes (if they are honest
ones) will totally screw the kid up.
So, on we trudge. Through
growth spurts, fevers, hand-eye-coordination victories, through temper tantrums
and fits of giggles. And I am blessed beyond belief to be sharing it all in my
little Southern hometown, with the lightning bugs as time-honored witnesses.
