Age Before Beauty, and Pearls Before Swine

I saw someone recently that, when last I saw him, was a boy. It surprised me a little to see the man he has become;  a little taller, a little leaner, the exuberance of youth replaced with the purpose of manhood.  We didn't speak, it wasn't the time for pleasantries, but I did watch him for a while, marveling at the grace that had replaced the boy's awkward movements, the confidence and competence he displayed as he moved about, the courtesy with which he greeted those near him as he went about his business on the altar.

I glanced down at my hands, clutched around a prayer book that I still needed to say a few words I had sworn repeatedly I would memorize, seeing a bent finger that came about from one of my many awkward moments, a scar from a childhood surgery,  a slight bump on my wrist from a middle-school attempt to be athletic, all those imperfections that bring about a sigh, a wince, or just a sad smile when I see them.   The changes he would notice in me were not to my advantage, I recall thinking.  I had never been graceful, my scars spoke to that.  I was never a raving beauty, my features adequate, but hardly those that called for a second glance.  My skills had not improved, if anything, I had allowed them to lapse a bit.  Time, I thought, as I watched him glide through the door into the sacristy, can be cruel.

I suppose we all feel like that from time to time.  Those moments when we realize our physical prime is behind us.  Often it feels wasted, or at least misdirected, and we are left wondering about the what-might-have-beens, occasionally wondering what is left?

I think such things hit us in our middle years because we see in our children the strengths and certainties  (only sometimes misplaced!) we once had, and we see in our parents the frailties we will become.  We vow to change, to lose weight, to finish our degree, to find some further meaning in our lives, to create some good that will live after us.

Yet, we forget how to simply be.  We want to do good, we want to create, to change.  We aren't content with our place for it's not where we imagined we would be.  I am reminded of a favorite quote, from a memoir entitled Red Hills and Cotton, which runs,  "How often do we picture the way ahead and dream of it and plan?  But the actual road is never the dreamed one, and the sights that we start out to see are not the scenes that we remember."

Yet, it's OUR road.  The things we've done have made us who we are, and the sights that impressed us will linger long after our initial frail ambitions have faded from memory.  My grandmother had a chestnut tree.  The priest who received me into the Church smiled at the sound of bells, the same ones that tolled for him at his requiem.  My husband loves the smell of old books.  My dear friend (you know who you are) loves the smell of horses.

We are the creation of a God with an eye for details.  It is in those small things, those fine nuances, that we find who we are.  Ambitions can be swept aside by a strong love, be it for a spouse or a child.  We will gladly digress from our path to help those who need us, and sometimes we never regain that original way, but it is not a failure to linger where we find joy, or where we find purpose, and if that purpose is not all we think it should be, it is no less important.   We may not dream of an ordinary life, but we are not always aware of just how extraordinary the simple can be.

I saw the extraordinary potential in a young boy.  I witnessed it in what the man he has become no doubt perceives as his ordinary duties in his daily life.  Someday, he too, may question what more he should have done.  I only hope I am there to tell him what an impact he has had on me.

In Memory of Granite Men

There are some places that feel like home even when one has never known them before. Sometimes we grow attached to a place that reminds us of another, occasionally it is the fact that it reminds us of nowhere else that we've ever been.  It might be the smell of balsam borne on a cool spring breeze, or the heaviness of the summer air, or simply the sound of droning bees over flowers that our mothers and grandmothers planted.   There are places we live and places we visit, places that draw out our strongest yearnings, and others that we are simply content to miss.  

New Hampshire is such a place for me.  I grew up in the Deep South, in woods thick with creeping vines and crawling creatures, humidity that prohibited sweat, and accents tinged with courtesy and condescension toward those not privileged enough to consider Dixie their land of birth.  Yet, I fell in love with New Hampshire before I saw her, through her lore of fishermen and lumberjacks, her history of rebellion and independence, that marvelous motto of "Live Free or Die", a sentiment very simpatico to a born Southerner who now resides in South Carolina.  

Then I met her, this land that held my husband's heart.  I saw her lakes and her share of that rocky coastline.  I visited the places that solicited the remark "yah can't get theyeh from heyeh", I recognized kindred spirits in those outside of the "checkmark",  towns that hold to ideals and values long abandoned by our progressive world.  I was thrilled when we moved to New Hampshire, and heartbroken when we left, saying my goodbyes to not just friends and family, but to the land itself, particularly to the mountains that saw us for so much of the summer and fall each year we were there. 

Those of you who are familiar with the White Mountains of New Hampshire may remember the Old Man in the Mountain, that craggy face that was carved of glaciers, and was very much a symbol of the state and its people.  Daniel Webster once said,  "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

I can attest to that.  It was New Hampshire that defined the men of my husband's family, giving them the same craggy features as that of the famous rock formation, the wind giving them a ruddy complexion, their eyes as deep and fathomless as the lakes they built their homes around.  They married women of similar nature, supportive and strong, defensive of their own to the point of cruelty, but just as selfless with their own energies and gifts.  These were not men  to be trifled with, nothing foolish here, nothing that would yield to less than the ideal.  

The world changed.  They chose not to.   They worked with their hands, their eyes and their hearts. They felled trees and planted them, farmed the land in small rocky fields, shaped metal, fought for their country and kept a clear conscience throughout.  They owed no man anything and sought only to leave a better world for their children and to serve a God that they knew well.  He was a kindred spirit to them, this Creator of men, forever unchanging, worshipped in a variety of ways by each of them, loved nonetheless by them all.   

The last of these men left us last week.  May he rest in peace with his brothers and his God.   May he be there to welcome us, with the strength we relied upon evident once more in the body that had finally failed him, his eyes clear and his nature gentle, making God's heaven infinitely better than it was before he arrived. 

The Old Man of the Mountain fell a few years ago...we grieved for that rock, too.   Perhaps it is a sign that God no longer makes such men, and the world is a lesser place for it, even in the places we love.