Saturday Haiku: Tadpoles

 tadpoles in a jar

whisper secrets to children
entranced in wonder

_______________________

Getty Images Photo

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Growing Up under Southern Apartheid (Part 3)

Photo by Jack Delano, 1940 (Getty Images)

A Matter of Complexion

During my preschool years in the small town of Wedowee, I had been observant enough, perhaps heard enough conversations to realize that there was a difference between Blacks and whites. My understanding of race, however, was still in flux, as evidenced by the memory I now recount.

My father always had a dark tanned complexion, while my mother was of fair complexion.  In the summer, my father spent a lot of time outdoors. He tended a vegetable garden and he did a lot of walking about town in his role as pastor of the First Baptist Church. It must have been in the summertime when I noticed that it seemed that my father’s complexion was getting darker.

Preschoolers are naturally fascinated by stories of metamorphosis – tadpoles turning to frogs, caterpillars turning to butterflies. Perhaps that is what put a certain question in my mind. If my father continued to get darker, is it possible that he would turn into a negro? One night at supper, after my older brother had finished eating and had left the table, I posed the question, directing my query to my mother but glancing over to my father. “I’ve been noticing how Dad seems to be getting darker and darker. I’m just wondering, could he be turning into a negro?”

Mom and Dad chuckled at the notion. They told me no, that would not happen. Maybe they talked to me about how we all continue to be the same as when we are born even as we grow and change. I don’t remember if they elaborated further, but there is the memory of being relieved that my world was secure.

After that table conversation, I went back to the bedroom that my brother and I shared. He was four years older and knew a lot more than I did. Maybe I was still not completely settled on my question, or maybe I picked up on some uneasiness from my parents, but I felt like I had to mention it to him.

“I said something as supper tonight,” I told my brother.

“Well, what did you say?”

I ran through the conversation with my parents about Dad’s skin tone and my question of whether he might become a negro.

“Awww!” my brother said as he jostled me about the shoulders. “You should not have said that!”

  

Then we both giggled and went about our business. It had been a day of learning. I learned that day that race is a settled thing, you cannot change from one to the other. And I learned that there are some things you should not say.

As a small child watching and observing, I was trying to figure out the differences in the people of our town. The lesson learned about race that day was that while it was definitely about skin color, it was more than a matter of complexion. 


< Part 2, What's in a Name?                                                     Part 4, White Christmas >

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Saturday Haiku: Fireflies

                                       
                                           lesser lights

    aloft in the night

    child’s delight

                     ~ CK

___________________

Photo: Firefly Long Exposure

Credit: Fonda Lashay

From Fonda Lashay // Design

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Where Do You Come From?

Going home 
by Tom Roberts

Last week I saw an interesting post by Chrystal at "Life After Church." She was taking part in a syncblog with She Loves Magazine in which participants followed a template to write out a poem about their personal heritage. I thought it looked like a good exercise in personal reflection. Looking closely at the site, it seemed to be a project for women so I did not try to link up with the project. I did decide to download the template, however, and by filling in the blanks (then adding a little bit) I came up with a snapshot of things I remember from a formative period in my childhood. I chose to look at a window of time when I was about six years old. If I had done this on another day, or picked a different time in my life,  it would have come out differently, but this was a helpful reminiscence.

I recommend the activity for anyone. Taking a look at where you came from and examining the influential forces in your life - good or bad - can be informative, liberating, and empowering. Besides all of that, it is always good for us to remember where we came from.  If any of you want to try this yourself, you can download the template here.

This Is Where I'm From

By Charles Kinnaird

I am from an old wrought iron floor lamp that I used to stand on

       and pretend I was a koala bear sitting in a eucalyptus tree;

From white bread and peanut butter.

I am from the little light green asbestos-siding house on top of the hill just up the road        

       from the fish pond where train comes through.

I am from the grassy field and woodland stream,

And the water oak whose long gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.

I’m from church every Sunday and hand cranked ice cream in the summer. 

From picking wild plums that grow along dirt roads

And harvesting vegetables from the family garden plot.

I’m from the small town Baptist preacher and the high school English teacher,

From Sunday afternoon naps and sitting around the kitchen table,

And from trips to the library.

I’m from “haste makes waste” and “keep your elbows off the table”

And “Climb, Climb up Sunshine Mountain” that we sang in Sunday school.

I’m from hanging stockings on Christmas Eve. 
I'm from birthday parties and Easter egg hunts.

I’m from the foothills of Alabama just below Appalachia

And Scots-Irish immigrants of years past whose descendants

       farmed

          preached
             midwifed

                taught school
                   canned tomatoes

                      did the early shift down at the saw mill

                         stocked shelves over at the general store

                            and worked for Western Union.

I’m from cotton mill country and field peas with corn bread.

I’m from seeing ducks on the pond

And sparrows in the garage.

From watching over the dog when he was sick,

And the cat when she got hurt.

From seeing pets die

No matter how hard we tried.
I'm from living with loss 
Then finding that space to love pets again.

From the Depression-era mechanic who answered a higher call

       and went off to college,

       not knowing if he would be able to afford the next year’s tuition

       – but by George, he did it!

From the elephant bell in the corner of the room that was a wedding gift

And the old wicker-backed wooden rocker where the grandma I never knew

Combed out her hair in the evening

So they say.

I am from a long line of folks who knew how to keep a good name.

Some were tough as nails

Some were quiet, some were ornery

Some a bit odd

But they were all good folks

So they say.

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Picture: Going Home oil on wood panel

             painting by Tom Roberts, 1889
             Public Domain
             Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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Wednesdays With Dorothy: Outings, Hysteria, and Prayer Meetings

                                            (This is part of a series. For Table of Contents go here)

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Dorothy Faye Burdette was born February 18, 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression. She tells a story of growing up in utter poverty. Her father was a mechanic who could not hold a job; her mother did odd jobs to bring in some money. By her own telling, Dorothy was a slow learner and was prone to behavioral outbursts that sounded like fits of fear and rage.

“My Daddy and Mother used to take me to the carnival on the fair grounds.  There was something about that carnival music that really scared me. I would try to get out of my daddy’s arms. I would get scared and nearly wring my daddy’s arm off.  If I got loose I’d break and run. My mother took me on the Ferris wheel. We would get way up to the top and I would rock that seat back and forth – my mother had to make me stop. I guess I was born with some kind of hysteria.”

“I was real hysterical back then. I would break and run and my mother couldn’t hardly catch me.  Sometimes I would look at the boards on the porch, with some of them bucking up – for some reason that would scare me. I would run up under the porch – that’s really how hysterical I was.  I remember I went running out onto the porch and I wasn’t paying no mind, I just ran off the end of the porch and knocked the breath out of myself.”

“Sometimes I would grab my mother by the legs and she couldn’t get me off of her, She would have to pry me off her legs and get me up to where the light was. I don’t know what it was, and I would get scared of the dark and everything, and I’d wake her up crying, 'Light the lamp! Light the lamp!’   And I’d try to climb the headboard of the bed – it was an old iron bed.”

Her behavior must have been a source of distress for her parents. There were few parenting resources available at that time in the rural South. Spanking and extended family were about the only resources, especially among the poor. Dorothy told me about a time when her parents appealed to a Higher Power in their desperation for help:

“There was a colored preacher and he told my mother – and I can just barely remember him tellin’ her – that he could pray for me and whatever that was would go off of me and it would never come back over me. Well, it did, but I was still pretty scared sometimes. Now that I’m older I’ve got where I’m not so seized or scared.”

Dorothy also shared some other experiences she had with religion when she was a child:

“Going to church, sometimes we went to them old tent meetings they used to have. One time we went to this church and they didn’t have no piano or nothin’ and they used to beat on buckets and sing. Then at our house there was a man and his wife – he worked in a shoe store in Sylacauga – and they were Holiness. They lived on one side of the duplex and we lived in the other.”

On future visits with Dorothy, she would tell me about her experiences in public school and the difficulties that arose both from her lack of ability to learn at the same pace as the others and from her difficulty fitting in socially. Living with developmental disabilities can present multi-layered difficulties. All too often those with the least coping skills are asked to navigate themselves through a complicated and often cruel world.

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A Boy and His Dog

“I love my dog. I love all my dogs. Every dog I ever had, I still love ‘em. And in my life, believe me, I have had me a bunch of damn dogs. Because you keep getting’ a new one, don’t ya? It’s true. As life goes on, you keep getting’ one new dog after another. That’s the whole secret of life. Life is a series of dogs.”

                                                                           ~ George Carlin


Maybe I should have titled this, "A Dog and Her Boy." For most of my life there has been a dog in my life. Right now there are four. There is Martha, my daughter’s dog whom we adopted from the pound when my daughter was six years old. Martha is a cute wire-hair terrier mix whom we soon discovered was hearing impaired. Daisy is a yellow lab mix who showed up at our doorstep 11 years ago. We could never find her owner, so she stayed. Then there is Mike, a cute little black and tan “Heinz 57” variety, whom my wife rescued about five years ago, and Felix, a little Chihuahua/rat terrier mix who was wandering the streets before hopping into my wife’s car one day. We could never find her owner either, so… we now have a pack.

A Litany of Dogs

Growing up, we always had a family dog. As a toddler, I pleaded with my parents to let me keep a little black and white hound puppy that had been dropped off at the city dump. Back in those days, everyone in our small town had to carry their own garbage to the dump. One Saturday, while accompanying my Dad on his weekly garbage run, we found the pup sitting quietly near a refuse heap. My Dad dubbed her, “Pooch.” My mother admitted that she was the cutest little pup she had ever seen. Then there was Brownie. After that was Smokey, a quiet noble shepherd mix who died too young of distemper. Later there was Trixie, an almost pure bred collie who was companion, playmate, and protector for me and my siblings for a good part of my childhood. She is the one you see pictured here with me as a lad. (More about Trixie in a moment) When I was in high school, there was Prince, son of Trixie. Then there was Chanet, part french bulldog, part boxer (she also died too young). Later came Missy, a collie mix rescued by my little brother. Missy went jogging with him every day until he joined the Marines then she welcomed him home on every furlough. There was even dog folklore in our house. My older brother and my parents told stories of Snooks, who was before my time but who accompanied my brother from infancy to school age.

When my wife and I met 27 years ago, Pete and Dolly were her canine companions. Pete was a shepherd mix who had been my wife's pet for many years, through thick and thin. She had to be put down the day before our daughter was born. Dolly was a chow/wolf mix who hated strangers, but was a jolly dancer at home with us. She reminded me of an Ewok from Star Wars.

Some Stand Out

All of our dogs have brought rich rewards into our lives, and some stand out more than others (you may have read my tribute to the remarkable Mr. Higgins, who departed this life about ten years ago). When I was a child, Trixie was the one who stood out above all the others. We lived out in the country at that time. Trixie had the run of the yard, the woods, and the neighbor’s pasture. She was very bright and she knew how to play and interact with us kids. She was as much a family member as a dog can get. We played in the yard and ran with her through the woods on many a futile rabbit or squirrel chase. That dog accompanied us on all of our usual haunts: hiking in the woods, walking down to the road to the fish pond near the old train depot, or going up the road to the country store. Once or twice, she followed us to school, which was against the rule, as the nursery rhyme says.

One summer morning, my younger brother and sister and I decided to go down through the woods to the creek bank to play, as we often did. Trixie trotted along with us as usual. She took the lead as we jaunted merrily along the path through the woods. Suddenly Trixie stopped right in the path. We couldn’t understand what had come over her, but we were anxious to get to the creek. When we tried to pass her, she turned sideways in the path and gave a low growl. She would not let us pass. This was bizarre behavior, we thought, until we looked ahead. Right there stretched along the path in the woods lay a huge snake - a water moccasin! YIKES! We all turned on our heels and fled back up the hill, out of the woods, and safely to our back door step. Of course there were rounds of cheers and hugs for Trixie, our faithful guardian. And of course, we had to go and tell our parents all about our harrowing adventure.

Trixie was not my dog, per se. She was the family dog, and she gave her attention to all of us. I was always proud of Trixie. I found joy and comfort by having her around whenever I went outside. What is remarkable to me, as I look back on these old photos, is that I have always been camera shy - I do not like having my picture taken. I well remember, however, the day these shots were taken. I had a box camera that my uncle had given me for Christmas one year. I remember asking my brother to take a picture of me with Trixie. Looking back, I find it amazing that I would have requested to have my own picture taken. It must say something about the importance I placed upon the remarkable dog who was part of my childhood. Here's to all the dogs who have enriched the lives of people everywhere! If you have a dog story, feel free to leave a comment.

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A Childhood Encounter

(Part 1 in the series, Experiences of Mystery and Wonder)

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It may not have been my first experience of mystery, but it makes for a good story. I was eight years old and it was a breezy summer evening. We lived in the country and our closest neighbor owned a horse pasture that lay between our house and his. On this particular evening, I happened to be out in the back yard as dusk was slowly moving to twilight. I looked down below our yard to where our neighbor's pasture ran adjacent to the woods. It was there that I saw the strangest sight. It resembled a white sheet floating in the air and dancing about in the lower corner of the pasture. I was astounded and perplexed. I had heard ghost stories and had seen them portrayed on TV, and I began to wonder if I might actually be seeing a ghost. The sight must have been two or three hundred feet away, so I slowly walked down toward the pasture fence to get a better view.

My heart was pounding, I was breathing deeply, my eyes were unblinking and fixed upon the mysterious object that floated, danced, and changed shape as it moved about in sometimes a circular motion, sometimes an erratic fashion. I felt both fear and fascination as I continued to creep in for a closer look. As I got closer, I heard snorting and footsteps – it was definitely alive. How much closer should I get? Should I bolt and run back to the house? At that critical moment my eyes detected what I had not been able to see further back in the dim twilight. I saw the shape of a brown Shetland pony who had white shoulders and a white back. Our neighbor was temporarily keeping a friend's pony in his pasture. There was a brief moment there when fear and laughter co-mingled. Suddenly the movement, the snorting and the hoof beats all made sense as I realized that from my initial distance I had only been able to see the white markings on the pony.

I ran back to the house in excitement. I had to tell someone what I had just experienced. The first person I saw was my older brother who was watching TV.

"Richard!" I said, "You gotta hear this – I thought I saw a ghost!" I then began recounting my twilight adventure. My brother, who was four years older than I (in fact, he is still four years older than I am) interrupted my story.

"Did you say you walked down to see it?" he asked.

"Yes!" I answered.

"You didn't think it was a ghost or you would have run away."

"But I did think so at first," I countered.

"No," he said, "you would have run."

Seventeen years later I was in seminary in California. In a Philosophy of Religion class I was reading Rudolf Otto's classic work, Das Heilige. Actually, I was reading the English translation, The Idea of the Holy. Rudolf Otto was writing about encountering mystery and wonder in the context of religious experience. He didn't like to use the word holy because of certain baggage that came along with the word. Instead, he coined the term, numinous to refer to the experience of mystery, and he used the term, mysterium tremendum to refer to the divine mystery itself. He wanted to get back to a more basic primal concept of religious encounter.

At one point Mr. Otto said that when one encounters the vast and indescribable mysterium trememdum one has the feeling of fear and the urge to run, but at the same time one is attracted to the mystery. When I read that, I wanted to go back to my brother and show him, "You see! Here's a German theologian who says you can experience fear and attraction simultaneously – that’s why I didn't run but went to get a closer look, even when I thought it might be a ghost." But I didn't tell him that because he's four years older than I am. Besides, I doubt if my brother even remembers the incident.

Looking back on that encounter long ago, I realize that all I need to know about experiencing mystery and wonder I had already learned by eight years of age:

1. I had other-worldly terminology to ascribe to the experience.
2. I knew the simultaneous feelings of fear and attraction.
3. I learned that it is difficult to convey to others the impact of a subjective experience.
4. There will be people who will discount one's experience of mystery.
5. I learned that truth does not diminish the impact of a subjective experience of mystery.



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The One and Only

She was the first woman I remember being truly crazy about. Janet White was the epitome of loveliness. Beautiful smile, shoulder length dark brown hair, clear radiant complexion, full of life. She lived up the road from our house, just past the fishpond and the old train depot. I was elated any time I got to see her. She must have been 16 or 18 years old at the time. I was six. I don’t know if I understood at the time that such relationships are destined to end, and are often short-lived.

Janet was our baby sitter for a time. She had two sisters who would also baby sit my brothers, my sister and me. On at least one occasion they all three baby sat us for an entire Saturday when our parents had to be out of town. I remember my father telling someone about Janet and what a wonderful baby sitter she was. “Yes," he said," the children are crazy about Janet.” I remember being taken aback by that word crazy as it was applied to me (and my siblings) but I knew he was right. I was crazy about her – there was no turning back. I would cherish each encounter, listening to stories, reading Golden Books, riding tricycles while she supervised our play.

Then it all came quickly and quietly to an end. My mother told us that Janet had moved away and gotten married. I felt some sadness that she would not be our baby sitter any more. I wasn’t really prepared, however, for that next (and last) encounter I had with her. Some time had passed – enough time for a six-year-old to move on to other things and gain some emotional distance from those halcyon days. Then one warm summer night she stepped into my life ever so briefly.

It was a Sunday night. We were all at Jackson’s Gap Baptist Church where my father was pastor. She must have been passing through town, or visiting relatives, but Janet came to church that night. I was not aware that she was there until after the service. I was standing on the front porch of the red brick country church. A single yellow light overhead illuminated the area where people talked and visited after church. Beyond the perimeter cast by that light lay the night filled with the sounds of crickets and frogs, and the warm still darkness of a time still haunted by Sabbath rest.

It was into that yellow light on the front porch of Jackson’s Gap Baptist Church that Janet stepped up to speak to me. She was beautiful and glowing as ever, and she held a baby in her arms that was just beginning to cry with restlessness. I was glad to see her, but did not know what to say. I probably gave her an awkward grin, shuffled my feet and clasped my hands behind my back. But what could I say? There she was, with a baby of her own. It drove home to me the fact that she would no longer be there for me when she had her own life and her own child to care for. She spoke a few words and then stepped back. Turning, she walked out of the yellow light that illuminated our gathering and disappeared into the summer night. That is when I truly knew that she was gone from my life.

It was the natural ending of a chapter in life. I had already made the transition from tricycles to bicycles. Life continued to be full of other things: new playmates at school, hikes in the woods, adventures along the creek bank, kite flying, catching tadpoles and crawfish, running through piles of oak leaves in the fall, and chasing after our collie when she spotted a chipmunk diving into an old tree stump. There would be challenges and changes along the way, but there would never be another one like Janet White.



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Memories of Springtime Past

Here is the telling of one of my early memories of a day when the secret of life opened up to a barely conscious lad.



An Early Time

It was early morning.
There was a mist in the air
And dew on the ground.
The clover aroma of spring
Mingled with the scent of moist earth.

It was early morning
As I stepped out the back door
With sleepy eyes.
I was three years old.

At the edge of the yard
I saw a grand white mule
Standing in the springtime mist –
The largest animal I had ever seen.
Beside the mule
Was a dark-skinned man in denim overalls.
My father stood there with them
His laughter rippled the morning air.

I went running across the yard,
Shoes collecting dew,
Lungs sampling the damp air.
I had to see the great white beast.
He stood tall
Shoulders brimming with power,
Head proudly facing the day,
Subdued grunts and clouds of breath
Spewing from his large nostrils.

It was early morning
As I hastily made my way ahead.
Before I could reach the mythic beast
I heard a shout from behind.
“Stop!” cried my mother.
“That mule might kick you.”

I stopped.
Then I slowly edged forward.
How close would they let me get?
If only I could touch
That white behemoth.

It was early morning
And the rhythmic chore began.
A cadence of sound emerged
From leather straps, metal rings,
Wooden handles, steel plow,
Heavy grunts, and slow steady hoof beats.
All moved together like a ship heading out of dock.
Cutting through the ground,
They left a red clay wake
As man and beast crossed the green clover field.

It was early morning
And an early time
When a three-year-old boy
Took more into his heart
Than he could realize.
He walked into a spring day
Humid with promise –
A powerful beast shrouded in mist,
The heavy earthy aromas,
A father laughing
And a mother warning of danger ahead.



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