The Fire & the Flood: On Letting Go

Monday, 01 December 2008

LIME CITY — A Perrysburg Township home was destroyed by fire late Sunday, and investigators are trying to determine what caused the blaze.       This photograph and the accompanying article were part of a link sent to me by my friend Sharon, whose childhood home is pictured here.  This is what remains of a place where she spent her early formative years, and a place that I first came to know in the late 1980’s when I began to pay visits to my college friend and her family.  I have more than a few fond memories of parties, beautiful sunsets by the pond out back, and a growing bond of friendship; Sharon’s recollections seemingly outnumber the stars. Her parents moved on from this place a few years ago, just as mine did from the home that we knew for more than thirty years.  Our former home has been forever altered as well, water damaged by careless new owners.   Two homes once meticulously maintained are now a shadow of what we knew. All of this brings so much to mind.  First, that Sharon and I were both blessed in a way that is beyond what many people in this world ever know- we had lovely and solid places to go home to for so many years…addresses and phone numbers indelibly etched in our minds.  That was a fortune right there.  Eventually the lesson was learned that this wasn’t to be forever and I, for one, have yet to fully memorize my parent’s new address.  Something of a protest, perhaps. But the second thing is this, and that is a lesson in learning to let go.  Because it is one thing to see the people move on from the place, and it is another to see the place forever changed, and to wonder what that means for your life history.  It ceased to be your home when the sold sign went up and the moving trucks came, but still it was this place you could drive by and point to and say, “That’s where I grew up- that’s where this, and this, and this happened.”  It is something of sacred ground of your past. What now?  A lesson learned, a grasp loosened, memories cherished but reality made more manifest through destruction of the tangible.  A reminder that things fade, even die, but that there is still something in that air when the debris is hauled away- the love we share with one another in these places that remains with us always.

The limits of possibility have been widened considerably

Dunand/Getty

Two hundred twenty-one years ago, the Founding Fathers wrote into the U.S. Constitution that slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a human being in the representative democracy that was being born.

Last night, I wept openly as I watched a photograph of Barack Obama posted alongside these words:  The 44th President of the United States of American.  I knew something would get me going, and that was it…but then so much else kept it flowing.

150,000 in Grant Park, Chicago…how I longed to be there with them!

Barack, Michelle, Sasha, & Malia Obama walking on to the stage- our new First Family.

Jesse Jackson with tears streaming down his face.

People of every background crowded together in Times Square, not only celebrating a new year, but a new era.

The crowds to the north, in Harlem- fathers with sons, mothers with daughters, explaining the history of such a moment.

Even John McCain, eloquently and graciously conceding.

And I thought to myself, “What isn’t possible, if you continue to work hard, pursue new avenues, maintain the flame of hope…what isn’t possible?”

This man, Barack Obama, inspires me, and I am proud to call him my President, and I am proud to call this my country.

An Unexpected Messenger: Antoine, Part I

He came hurtling across the parking lot at me, calling out as he did, “Don’t put any money in the meter- you don’t have to pay on Sunday!”

Wake up, Maggie…

A new life has arrived in our family, and this photo with her daddy says it all regarding our feelings about her- congratulations, Bobby, Dena, & Max. 

Watching Max grow

My great-nephew, Max, is a working his way toward his second birthday this summer.  For twenty years there have been no babies in our immediate family, so we are fascinated by him as if we are creatures from another planet who have never seen a toddler before.  He charms us effortlessly and we are delighted by the smallest gesture of affection that we receive from him.  In about one month, he will be joined by a sibling, a sister already named Maggie.  But until she arrives and I am doubly under the spell of these tiny ones, I’ll be chasing around the little guy who wears these black Chuck’s…

Thinking…

At times, life feels something like this photo of an oft-used telephone pole…depending where we are in our journey, we post a bill telling the world that something or someone is important to us, but then later it gets removed, or maybe stapled over in favor of a new thing.  All those lonely staples, they represent whatever mattered enough at the moment, right?  This sounds harsh, perhaps, but I don’t mean it that way.  There is a sadness to it, I suppose.  But it seems to be the way of life, always searching for what is worthy of putting on marquee for all of the world to see. 

And that would be my philosophical musing for today.

Heritage

 

I spent a couple of days last week in Pittsburgh, PA.  My family is from this area, possibly on both sides (history is murkier than the Monongahela for some of the genealogy).  One side is clear, and you can’t go too far in western PA without seeing the surname “McKee” (McKees Rocks, McKeesport, McKee Place) or Rutan (the little town of Rutan, which I have yet to visit).  I know that the Rutans, in particular, have been in this area since the 1700’s, (a grandfather from generations back, Samuel, is buried in the Upper Ten Mile Presbyterian Church Cemetary in Prosperity- he was a Revolutionary War veteran).

More recently, my own father was born in PA, in the 1920’s.  He has many memories of Pittsburgh, and had stayed at the same hotel I was in this week, the elegant William Penn.  Built in 1919, it has likely seen other relatives over the years…like my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Rutan, when she would take the train north for shopping excursions at the old Kauffmann’s (now Macy’s, right up the street), or grandfather Harmon Samuel McKee, working one of his first jobs for the Heinz Company.

It’s good to be in a place sometimes where you can see your history all around you- it seems to me to more fully fill out a sense of identity.  Thanks, Pittsburgh.

7 miles

       

Those are the miles that separate us (Duke) from them (UNC), and tomorrow is the big game.  I’ll watch, but I won’t be thinking about it in the same way that I usually do.

Rest in peace, Eve Carson, Student Government President of the University of North Carolina.  May justice come for your death, and may all of us remember tomorrow that these two great schools are about fine people like you.

The city

I was reading an article about the development of a little known street in New York City- Centre Market Place.  It is wedged down in the southeast corner of the island, very close to lots of places like Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side (it gets classified in some neighborhood, but I didn’t bother to see which one).  Cartophile that I am, I had to look it up right away, and a memory came flooding back to me as I saw the location, just five blocks to the west of Sara Roosevelt Park.

I know this park well; far better, in fact, than I wish I did.  I know it because I was feeling hopelessly lost in that vicinity on my second trip to NYC.  A friend who lives in Philadelphia had directed me on how to get back to Philly on my own after we parted ways the day before- we had come over together on the always-an-adventure “Chinatown Bus”.  It seemed simple enough- all I had to do was find this little stretch of street in Chinatown by 8 p.m., the time that the bus was set to depart.  I had a card with the address and a small map printed on it, and I was confindent in my ability to get there.

What I hadn’t bargained for was the city at night.  How disorienting darkness can be, even when we are somewhat familiar with the area- I should have remembered well a similar experience in London when I was a college student but, you know, things fade.  And so that night, as I circled the same block more than once, signs for Sara Roosevelt Park kept coming into view, as did the concrete rectangular space itself.  The lighting was dim, the looming Manhattan Bridge to the immediate southeast was imposing, and the thought of my spending another night in the city took on an air of inevitability.

However, I do like a challenge, so I made one last desperate attempt at escape.  I found a nearby busy street (Houston?  Delancy?) and tried to hail a cab.  This being rush hour for New Yorkers, I was competing with lots of others for those yellow prizes, but I was fueled by my desire to not spend another $200 to sleep in this town.  I practically threw myself into the path of a Honda Odyssey Yellow Cab, but he stopped.  Child of the world that I believe myself to be, I appreciate, but cannot understand, all languages- my cabbie and I had this in common, for he spoke an African language and I spoke English.  I showed him my map/Chinatown Bus business card, and he called a dispatcher (perhaps he could read better than he could speak…or else he just didn’t want to talk to me).  I sat back, anxious but hopeful, as we sped by neon signs and paper lanterns.  To my great relief, we suddenly came upon that familiar corner near the dim sum place where I’d had lunch with my friend the day before…and that lovely hulking tour bus was right where it was supposed to be, as was the diminutive lady shouting, “Philadelphia!”  We made it, with minutes to spare.

My first, but not last, New York adventure- just one morereason why I love that place

Go, Ohio, Go

 

Here’s my bias, obvious by now…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghSJsEVf0pU