There’s more than a few miles between Elvis Presley’s Graceland and Gracesland, a caddywampus plot of farmland in upstate New York.
Turns out, “Gracesland” was a misspelling…
or maybe not. In the rancher’s absence, wayfarers get to choose which side of the entrance sign they like best–and the narratives to match it.
The choice seems obvious. I mean, who doesn’t want (and need) additional helpings of grace?
To the vast blue ocean, I offered a single rose,
and whispered a simple prayer about gratitude and grace.
It was ushered into deeper waters by the outgoing tides.
The ocean swaddled it in velvet,
And sang to it sweet lullabies and old, familiar hymns.
Time passed. The tides rolled in and receded.
I waded in the shallows, watched the rosebud sink and rise again.
A deep peace washed over me, and when the tidewaters dipped to their lowest ebb, I discovered these treasures from the sea.
Is it any wonder that Freckles likes to lounge here, in Treasure Island Cove?
I did something yesterday that was so completely out of character that it left me shaking–and smiling, just a little.
It all started when I emerged from a framing store, rummaging through my purse for my errant keys as I headed for my car. A woman glanced out her driver’s side window, staring straight past me as she put her poshly appointed, yacht-sized pickup into reverse.
CRUNCH. She ran smack-dab into the family van that was parked behind her. An older model, with oxidized paint and a couple of missing rims. Someone’s trusty mode of transportation, marred further now by a shattered tail light and back-end damage.
She wheeled around to see if anyone had noticed. When I caught her eye, she lifted her hands in a shrug, as if to say, These spots are so darned small. What are you gonna do?
Suspecting her intent, I made the motion of someone writing their insurance information onto a piece of paper.
She lifted her middle fingers, tires squealing as she returned to her emptied parking stall.
I waited patiently by the driver’s side door, listened quietly when she positioned herself as the hero in a made-up story about a little girl running loose in the parking lot, venturing dangerously close to her oversized tires. “Thank God I hit the van instead of her,” she said.
“Maybe you could explain that to the owners,” I said. “But you should definitely leave them a note.”
In a flash, her demeanor went from faux-concern to fierce anger. “Who do you think you are? God’s policeman?”
I met her eyes with a leveling gaze. “You hit their car,” I said in a calm, quiet voice that camouflaged my growing unease.
“I’m a Christian,” she screamed, about two inches from my face.
Confused eye blinks. “That’s irrelevant,” I said.
“You think I don’t know right from wrong?” she asked. “F*** you.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about you. I’m just a witness to an accident. Please…leave them a note, so we can both get out of here.”
She flipped her hair over her shoulder, came at me with flailing arms. “Go f*** yourself,” she said.
A woman wheeled her shopping cart past us, made a U-turn, and situated her purchases in the small space between me and the truck driver. “Are you okay?” she asked me.
I nodded, just slightly, without dropping the truck driver’s gaze. “I’m okay,” I said, with an appreciative smile. “We’re just talking about hit-and-run accidents, that’s all.”
At this point, the truck driver decided it might be a good idea to inspect the damage she’d caused.
“Look at this van,” she said derisively. “They must be very poor.”
Where was she headed with that comment? No telling, but I didn’t want to go there.
“You hit their car,” I repeated. “Just leave them a note.”
I think she finally realized that I wasn’t going anywhere until she did just that.
She hoisted herself into the jacked-up truck, retrieved an envelope from her designer handbag, and scribbled something onto the flap. It wasn’t with a cheerful heart, I can tell you that. She was dropping verbal carpet bombs all the while, and wiping spittle from her mouth.
She then waved the scrap of paper under my nose, flounced over to the van and jammed it under the windshield wiper.
“Thanks,” I said sincerely. “You did the right thing.”
She answered me with screeching tires; left long, dark skid marks at the stop sign.
As I watched her tail lights flash red, I melted into a puddle of relief. My good intentions could’ve gone terribly wrong. But in hindsight, I doubt I would’ve have done it any other way.
In retrospect, I’m just now realizing why I did something so totally out of character, so completely out of my comfort zone. It came of feeling helpless to affect any positive change, especially after the House voted to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act last Thursday. Despite the effort I’d put into convincing our legislators to do the right thing, they chose otherwise– stripping good-hearted people of their right to quality health care, and separating ordinary citizens like me from their hard-earned dollars. If this triumph of meanness isn’t stopped in the Senate, millions of Americans will suffer very real, extremely dire consequences. The “least of them” especially, while the wealthy stuff yet another tax break into their Louis Vuitton handbags.
So if I were to guess my deep-seated motives, I’d describe this situation as a one-off opportunity to set things right again. For one family, at the very least.
Make no mistake: I don’t feel one bit heroic about any of this. But as a spiritually minded optimist, I see this as an affirmation of what I’ve always believed to be true: Speaking up for the causes we believe in, and standing our ground in grace–that’s how we turn bad choices toward the good.
To all those who’ve
nurtured,
protected,
inspired,
laughed and cried,
commiserated and conspired with us,
revealed to us their vulnerabilities,
believed in the shimmery magic of starlight, fireflies, and rainbows,
showered us with grace,
and loved us into the light…
Happy Mother’s Day.
So this happened…!
Breaking news, just then shared via Twitter
While the event itself was deeply unsettling, I am grateful for the opportunity to give voice to my experiences, and to widen the conversation.
Excerpt: The best way to confront a hate group that has increasingly made its presence known in Anaheim is difficult to determine. Some people prefer not to give the KKK the satisfaction of receiving any attention at all. I understand that, but my bigger fear is that if we ignore the KKK, we allow racism the opportunity to fester in the dark.
Image via LA Times’ Twitter feed
I first wrote about the experience here (KKK Rally in Anaheim: Where were the helpers?) and then posted a follow-up blog (What Was I Thinking?). But this LA Times editorial is edgier. It also goes deeper.
Wondering: What would you have done, in similar circumstances? After you’ve read the complete editorial, I invite you to respond via Twitter or Facebook, or drop a comment on this blog.
In the gauzy hour before sunrise, our shuttle pulls into the circular driveway of Ronald Reagan Medical Center. Streetlamps twinkle on shiny poles, and polished travertine gleams in our headlights. My husband collects his pre-op instructions; I give his hand a gentle squeeze. Sirens wail. Paramedics lower a gurney from an ambulance, and the hospital doors whoosh open, bathing everyone in light.
Hollywood-style glitz, more often associated with its namesake than your typical hospital
Here, staff members treat surgical patients with the same accord as trauma patients, who get the same level of care as celebrities who roll up to the entrance in chauffer-driven Bentleys. Stretched by limited space and overwhelming demand, staff members nevertheless find a way to share a deep appreciation for the human beings that occupy their beds. “What’s your story?” finds its harmony in the oft-repeated, “How can I help you?”
Several hours later, I find myself pacing the length of the recovery unit. A grizzled man clings to an IV pole, winces as he shuffles past me, pivots, and matches his steps to mine. “Way to go,” I say, and he gives me a wan smile.
“I was born in the original UCLA hospital,” I say.
“Don’t date yourself,” he warns.
We walk together in silence, but before long, he’s describing for me a harrowing tour of duty in Vietnam. He’d signed up for the military after high school—same as his daddy, and his granddaddy before him. But while he didn’t expect a hero’s welcome when he returned home as a decorated paratrooper, neither did he expect to be pelted with glass bottles, verbal expletives, and spit. He shrugs, scratches the tattoos that span the length of his arms, says his heart transplant was probably caused by stress. But he is quick to reassure me that the protesters hadn’t broken his spirit. He is proud of his children, and several grandchildren look up to him, now.
We linger in my husband’s doorway, talking softly while he emerges from his anesthesia haze. A nurse swoops in, repositions the cotton gown around his shoulders, offers him water, and fluffs his pillows. Eric opens his eyes, gives me a weak smile that says, roughly translated: “I love you. We made it.”
They are worlds apart, my husband and this wounded veteran. Their paths converged in this hospital because of health concerns, nothing more. Their prognoses are good. They have everything in the world to live for, and they know it.
Believe it or not, the same can be said for the people who huddle inside these temporary quarters, parallel-parked on a road less travelled.
You’ve perhaps seen this kind of encampment on your way to work: a derelict dwelling that afflicts the comfortable. Most people avert their eyes as they hurry past…but I don’t.
What I’m about to tell you might come as a surprise to some, given that I most often blog about hummingbirds and butterflies, wonders of nature and writerly stuff.
As the daughter of an itinerant preacher, I’m intimately familiar with the musky odors of makeshift quarters like these. I’ve experienced poverty so severe that it creeps into your psyche, have endured hunger pangs so severe that they feel like a shank to the belly. I spent a good portion of my childhood in the margins, wholly dependent on the kindnesses of strangers. Despite–or maybe because of all this–I cling to the comforting words of my Nana: “In the darkest nights of winter, watch the skies and listen for the robins.”
Nana taught me to lean in the direction of things that are “lovely, honest, and true,” to believe, without wavering, that “joy cometh in the morning.” She never stood in the pulpit, but by her example, I learned the simple elegance of the Golden Rule. It’s the gold standard, when it comes to taking the measure of your life.
I’m not afraid to venture into neighborhoods best known for crumbling sidewalks, ghost signs and hazard cones, and curbs so steeped in garbage that you turn your ankle when you step into the street against the light. Call me reckless if you will, but I’m not afraid to venture into darkness to serve “the least of these.” I love the whirr of iridescent wings, but this is the pulse of my life.
Rarely has any of this made its way into my blog–not explicitly, anyway–for reasons I’d rather not go into right now. Mary Oliver once said: “Write for whatever holy things you believe in.” I’ve always done that, sometimes in broader strokes than others. But the events of this past weekend have inspired me to put a finer point on things this morning.
All that to say: when I sprinkle candies over a swirl of frozen yogurt (to celebrate my husband’s homecoming), I also toss a large wedge of gourmet Swiss cheese into the grocery cart. An impulse buy, for total strangers.
I keep a respectful distance, smiled as I peer into the shadows. “Hi, my name is Melodye,” I say, “Do either of you like cheese?”
Four hands, light and dark, stretch beyond the portal of the tent. A wordless answer, easily translated.
We exchange names, share a few pleasantries, and then I retreat to the warmth of my car. New friendships need oxygen, and grace.
In Inky and Starr’s mirrored sunglasses, I see reflections of our shared humanity.
Storm clouds cover the sun with a wooly-gray blanket. Heavy winds lift the edges of the tarp. My husband’s discharge process takes longer than expected, and as I tap-tap-tap my fingers on the steering wheel, my heart tugs me in the direction of their curbside home. Again. I cut the engine, shove my keys into my purse, grab my camera, and cross the street.
“May I sit with you for a while?” I ask. The answer is yes!
We warm ourselves around a makeshift grill, spin yarns about our childhoods, and muse about the events that brought us all together. They’d met two years ago, Starr tells me, at a bus stop in Hollywood. Inky gives her shoulders an affectionate squeeze, “I’ve been looking for her for all my life,” he says, “and we’ll be together for always.”
“Would you mind if I take your picture?” I ask. “And maybe take a short video, so I can share your story with my friends?”
Inky flings his arms open, fingers splayed, and flashes an open-mouthed grin. “Sure,” he says. Starr nods, with no hesitation whatsoever. So I switch my camera to video mode, and press the shutter button. The result is this unedited clip–not inclusive of everything we covered in our earlier conversation, but enough for you to get better acquainted. Roll straight through to the end, and you might learn something new about me, too. I’ve never fielded this question publicly, but his curiosity was genuine, and disarming…
Call them serendipitous, call them happenstance or good luck. But the truth is, these seemingly random encounters occur more often than anyone (aside from my closest friends and family members) might guess. My husband calls them “a Melodye thing.” I call them shivery magic–miracles that come of flinging your heart’s door wide open, and basking in the light.
We stood at the railing together in reverent silence, watched the sun hover above the chapparel-covered hills before sinking into the ocean. A shoulder’s distance away, a stooped old man was mumbling to himself. He wore a plaid shirt and tan slacks, hitched at the waist with a belt several sizes too large, and his gnarled fingers were folded into a knot of resignation. Or prayer, maybe. It was impossible to read his face because his rheumy eyes were fixed on the horizon, somewhere far beyond the pewter clouds and the sun’s fading brilliance.
In the slope of the old man’s shoulders, I sensed a heavy presence. It hung in the air between us: an unspeakable grief.
I wanted to lift his spirits somehow, wanted to ask, maybe, if he knew the name of the sweet little bird who sang from the brush as the shadows grew long and the gentle breeze turned chilly. I wanted to bridge the silence, searched without success for the just-right words to cheer him.
The streetlights flickered on, offering light but no insights. Tears welled up in my eyes when we left. In the quiet car ride home, above the sounds of the motor and whirring tires, I grew increasingly uneasy. I placed my hand on my husband’s arm, said “Turn around,” and he responded instantly. In the shared silence, we’d heard (and answered together) the call for grace.
We found it in the twilight, but not in the form that we’d imagined. A smallish dog was bounding between a pair of gawkish boys and the lonely old man–a furry bundle of unbridled joy, with flappy ears and a trailing leash. Grace, in the shape of an ungainly mutt, who erased all traces of misery with his swishing tail and exuberant barks.
Grace. It’s the unseen hand that stitches several characters together into a greater story and reminds us of the ties that bind. It’s expressed differently for everyone, perhaps, but it’s very essence of Thanksgiving…a shared table around which we pass generous portions of love and laughter, cherished memories and favorite foods.
