The photo messaged to me answered more than one worrisome question.   Two men in wheelchairs sat in sunshine on a deck, one listening to the other.  The one I was interested in was my oldest brother, Gary, a handsome man with gray hair and a neat beard.  His face, intent on the man talking with him, held a familiar intensity from a rehearsed life of listening from a psychologist’s chair.

What exactly Gary gleaned from the conversation with his companion isn’t known.  You see, Gary, who has Multiple Sclerosis, suffered a series of strokes before Christmas.  He has slowly been working his way back from a fog of scrambled language and cognition.  To see him trying to understand his companion told me he was still with us and not giving into whatever he thinks has happened to him, “This disease of mine takes away my body, in pieces.”

Still with us.  

His formerly exquisite mind tries to recall details about relatives.  He wants to hear about them.  The curiosity is there, the memory not.  He wants things, but can’t remember how many times he’s asked for them.  He is grateful for his caretakers and cooperative with customary good manners, but resistant to intrusive management.  

Still with us.

Gary has always set the stage for us.  The oldest of us, he was, by virtue of birth order, the first to read, the first to go careening on his bike down neighborhood streets, the first to climb trees, the first to win an art award in school, the first to have permission to use Dad’s tools.  The rest of us followed his example even to the point of overstepping ourselves by falling out of trees and scraping our knees in bike accidents.  Gary was the first to marry, the first to have a child, the first to obtain a college degree, the first to have a profession.

And he was the first to be diagnosed with a chronic disorder: multiple sclerosis, an unforgiving immune disorder, usually progressive, that causes paralysis and fatigue.  He fought the disease tooth and nail for years, stumbling but upright with a staff to steady himself, finding employment that didn’t require standing, using his keen analytical mind to continue in his profession within his physical limitations.  

Even as a youth, Gary didn’t easily cave in.  Our dad and he would go head to head, both determined to win — excellent training for a psychologist manipulating recalcitrant clients and for a semi-paralyzed man determined to support himself, drive a car, bathe himself, cook his own meals, and wash his own clothes.

And now this: strokes, hospitalization, and residential care.  Although he has trouble sitting upright and mixes up words, he works to improve.  “Don’t go, let’s talk more,” he says when I call.  Each time he repeats himself he edits himself, in a loop of repetition, caught at “I want a phone, I want a phone” until distracted toward memories of yesteryear and his family.

Still with us.  Here in the photo is our Gary, dressed in navy slacks and a long sleeved polo shirt, his inert legs stretched out, numb feet in shoes that never get scuffed from walking, arms resting in his lap, his kind face clearly engaged with his companion’s story.

Still here leading the way, as determined as ever.

The back door to the church fellowship hall swung open.  In walked two thin men with backpacks slung over their shoulders.  Both men had unshaven faces and deep set eyes under black eyebrows.  “Merry Christmas!” said the taller of the two.  They moved confidently across the room to cots set up behind a line of tables.

The door swung open again. A ragged line of people entered. An older couple, husband and wife, holding hands; a tall, thin, handsome man with a copper beard and a worn, gentle appearance; a thin blonde man with deep set eyes; a sturdy, young, cocoa-skinned man named Lawson; young James B and his girlfriend Kara with her dark, nervous eyes; thin Veronica; stocky Elvis — their names taking shape on name tags, their cot ownerships lining up, the men behind the line of tables, the women behind screens.  The husband wheeled in his wife’s oxygen tank and placed it beside her cot. Twelve guests this night, on Christmas Eve.

From the kitchen hints of turkey and gravy drifted into the hall where guests poured coffee and sifted through toiletries and books.  Tables were set for dinner, poinsettias in the center, fruit salad at each place setting.  A buffet line formed.  “Let’s eat while the food is hot.  Lawson, will you please say the blessing.”

From upstairs a brass quintet’s harmonies floated down, waves of crescendoing sound with each opening of sanctuary doors. Church members dressed in suits and dresses drifted in and out.  The setting could have been any church meal with the familiar pulse of conversation and forks clicking on plates, but not quite, because the guests at the tables were strangers to one another, thrown together because they were homeless.  

Throughout the winter months, on every Thursday night, The Presbyterian Church of Bowling Green hosts a winter shelter program called Room in the Inn.  In the church fellowship hall volunteers set up cots with blankets, sheets, and pillows; cook dinner and breakfast; and serve twelve guests.  From 6pm to 6am, as many as fifteen volunteers alternate through five shifts; one of those shifts is the innkeeper shift when two church members sleep on cots over night.  It’s the least popular shift, beginning at 9pm and ending at 5am, “sleep” a convenient but  inaccurate description for the shift.

Because Christmas Eve fell on Thursday this year, while homeless guests settled in downstairs, Presbyterians upstairs carried on with the annual Christmas Eve schedule, two worship services, choir practice, children’s performances, traditional pageantry and music.

Upstairs was Allelujah, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem; Downstairs a hot meal, coffee, extra blankets, antacids, fitful rest.

I was there in both places, upstairs and downstairs.  I set up cots, served food, ate with the guests.  I listened to their stories.

We’ve been married 39 years. My wife has spells.  She needs her oxygen.  

We met at a laundromat. 

He was an Afghanistan. He enlisted after high school.  He had nowhere else to go. His mother abandoned him when he was thirteen.  

One day she didn’t pick me up from school.  

I kept driving without a license.  Finally, I was arrested and lost my license.  I’m trying to get back my license.

I’ve got some work tomorrow.

We lived behind a bush until Trevor found us.

I’ve got kids in Tennessee.

I’ve got this cough.  Acid reflux.

Upstairs I dressed in my choir robe, sang anthems, savored the music, absorbed the pastor’s message about the power of hope and love in a disturbing and swirling world of vicious rhetoric, murder, war, intolerance, and carelessness.  As the sanctuary darkened, we lit candles and sang Silent Night.  The lights came up.  We burst into Joy to the World. The brass quintet played Jingle Bells.  We embraced friends.  

Downstairs in the fellowship hall, when the lights dimmed, tired guests prepared for sleep.

At eleven o’clock I pulled on a sweatshirt, plumped up my pillows on a cot near the lobby exit and lay down to play online Scrabble on my iPad.  The other innkeeper, David, pulled off his shirt and shoes, placed a camp mattress on his cot just outside the hall near the lobby exit, and curled up in a red fleece blanket and drifted off to sleep, his breathing heavy and slow.

The primary lights in the hall and lobby were off, but not the emergency lights and not the Christmas tree lights.  The ice maker in the kitchen burbled.  One of the men sat on the edge of his cot and tried to squelch his fierce coughing, a garbage can beside him to catch his phlegm.  Although a doctor had visited with him the previous week, the man, resigned to his condition, had resisted treatment.  “Does he have lung cancer? TB?”  I worried.  The boyfriend and girlfriend whispered and paced restlessly, in and out from the hall to the lobby and back again, passing where David slept and then where I lay, until her need to sleep overcame his reluctance to leave her.  I checked the time. 1:30.  A man cried out in a dream.  A woman left to use the bathroom.  Snoring and labored breathing.  Hacking.  More outcries.  

My brain refused to relax. I covered my head with a shirt, hugged my extra pillow, the one from home, and practiced mindlessness. I added a coat to my blanket.  I shivered. At 3am thunder growled, lightening flashed, rain pelted the patio and street and spattered the windows.  At 4am I heard the rustling of coffee filters, the pouring of water into the coffee maker, the clink of cups, the rhythmic drip of coffee, a smoker’s morning cough. Two men stood quietly with cups in their hands and watched the coffee maker. 

Outside the rain continued, street lights shimmering on dark, wet streets.  

I rose and joined David and the early risers.  The coffee moistened my throat, its warmth spreading to my belly.  I held the warm cup against my cheek.

At 4:15 the breakfast shift volunteers, Cathey and Wes, arrived.  Slowly people awakened.  Rain flooded the streets.  Wes and I stirred scrambled eggs in iron skillets. Cathey flipped pancakes. We warmed the precooked bacon, poured orange juice, set out milk. 

“Do you have tongs for the bacon, Ma’am?” asked the young Army veteran.

“It’ll be a hard day with this rain.  The library will be closed, and the mall,” lamented one man.

“The buses won’t be running.”  

“I’ve been wet before.”

At 6am the guests would be escorted to a morning shelter nearby.

My husband arrived to help clean up.  I drove home, took a hot shower, and fell into our bed, with its Sterns and Foster mattress, down comforter and 600 count percale sheets.  I slept until noon. When I woke up and looked out our den’s French doors, it was still raining.

It was Christmas Day.

Let’s play “What if?”

What if the ATMs stopped working?  What if the NSA was interested in my phone calls to the church?  What if ISIS terrorists succeeded in cutting off traffic between Chicago and Atlanta?  What if the sweet muslim lady who works out with me at the gym suddenly blew us all up?  

What if you were pulling weeds at dusk and a helicopter whumped-whumped just overhead and you found yourself bathed in a searchlight?

I try to remain calm, to keep things in perspective,

ATMs regularly run out of money over the weekend.  I remember when ATMs didn’t exist.  It’s not a big deal.  I don’t believe the NSA will ever be interested in any of my phone calls or emails unless an NSA employee wishes to volunteer to serve a night at a winter shelter or wants to write a boring novel about my family or friends.  As to cutting off traffic on I-65, the Kentucky and Tennessee Transportation Authorities have succeeded in truncating travel with legitimate construction delays and highway closures, without any help from ISIS.  I wouldn’t mess with the sweet lady at the gym — no way!  She’s as sharp as a tack, wise and wily about people, listens to all manner of nonsense flying off the tongues of gals as they perspire through their routines, then sweetly says the equivalent of “Every day is a blessing. We are so fortunate to be here working out, to have each other.”  

As to the helicopter and why it would spotlight a woman pulling weeds at dusk, you might theorize about the possibility of a nearby helicopter training school.  That sounds reasonable.  You’d be wrong, but you’d be trying to keep things in perspective.

…..

My daughter Jenny lives in Franklin, Tennessee, home to ordinary people like themselves and also some music celebrities who live nearby.  The eight lanes of I-65 run north and south just fifteen minutes from Jenny’s quiet cul-de-sac.  The surrounding streets carry only light local traffic.  It’s safe to jog, walk dogs, and ride bikes.

I was visiting Jenny’s family on a Thursday. In her yard and the fields beyond, trees were just turning yellow and orange.  Autumn’s chill had inspired us to light gas logs.  After visiting around the fire and enjoying the waning light glowing through the living room windows, we decided to go out for sushi.  

Jenny, her son, and her daughter waited for me in the car, while I put on my shoes.  As I closed the back door, I locked it, out of habit, a habit necessary at my house — not at hers. I didn’t realize I’d locked it until I walked through the garage to the car.  Did I just lock that door?

“Jenny, do you have a key to the house?”

“No.  We use the garage door opener.”  She raised her eyes in alarm.  “Mom! You didn’t lock the door, did you?”

“I’m afraid I did.”

Lauren and Sam popped out of the car.  “Daddy may have put a key in the garage, Mom.”  They have the optimism of teenagers.  In the meantime, Jenny called her husband, who was driving somewhere between Iowa and Oklahoma on business.  “Jim, do we have a hideout key?”

Her face clouded.  No hideout key.  The kids returned empty handed.  They next looked for an open window.  Jenny followed, iPhone to her ear, giving a running account to Jim, the only family member with a key.  

When Sam discovered an unlocked kitchen window, I bent over to pull some tiny weeds in a path.  I needed to be useful and silent, nearby but out of the way during the window prying operation.

Whump, whump, Whump!   

A helicopter suddenly hovered above me. Its spotlight slithered along the path toward me, scanned the shrubbery, and stopped on Lauren, her body halfway through the kitchen window.  The helicopter angled up and away, its thumping motor fading, circling, then nearing, its searchlight bounding over treetops.  And then It was immediately above me.  I found myself in a circle of blinding light.  Lauren had disappeared into the house, unlocked the door, and emerged from the garage.  

Under helicopter surveillance, we jumped into the car and took off, our imaginations running wild.  

“They were narcs!”  

“Traffic helicopter from I-65.”

“Police surveillance.”

“Body snatchers!’

“Silver Alert!”

“The Neighborhood Watch!”

“Voyeur!”

“FBI!”

“NSA!”

‘Immigration!”

“Donald Trump!

“Ted Cruz!”

“Sam, don’t text!  We’re under suspicion!”

“Mom, slow down.  You’ll attract attention!”

And so it went.  

That evening during the Chicken Red Curry and the Dragon Rolls–“Check for listening devices hidden in the food.”  The next morning over coffee–“Check the Kuerig for NSA’s fingerprints!”  At dinner parties–“The weirdest thing happened…”

Until one day Jenny was telling a neighbor, “You wouldn’t believe…the other night.”

“Oh, that was Aldridge.  He does that.  He has a helicopter. He lives two doors down from you.”

Neighborhood Watch?  No, just out for a spin on a Thursday night.

If he had known us, we could have laughed it off.  “He’s just messing with us.”  But we didn’t know him and he didn’t know us, which complicates the scenario.  

Voyeuristic prank?  Honest surveillance?  Comic relief?  Determined vigilante?  Neighborly hello?

We would like to keep events in perspective.  Lauren succeeded in unlocking the door.  We made a clean getaway.  Indeed, that hovering helicopter shifted the focus away from my locking the door.  Still, we can’t quite let go of wondering “What if..?”

It’s the not knowing that keeps the story alive, not quite at the Twitter level, but almost.

“Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it’s true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I’m paranoid.” 

― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast.

…..

“If You’re Not Paranoid, You’re Crazy.”  from the title of a feature article by Walter Kim from The Atlantic, November 2015.  

 

Aunt Meryl was not my favorite aunt.  Sometimes she was my least favorite aunt. However, Meryl Richardson has silently been with me all of my life in my neurons and my facial structure.

“Ha!” Exclaimed my older brother once.  “You look just like Aunt Meryl.”  And yes, he’s correct.  No matter how much I wish I looked more like my mother or her sisters, my father’s oldest sister Meryl is definitely implanted in my genes.  

If she had been college educated, Meryl might have been an English teacher, or maybe a professor of  art or music.   As it was, she became a pianist in a band, a writer, and a well known landscape artist from Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco.

Childless, Meryl doted on my cousin Linda, who was admittedly adorable and sweeter than I ever wished to be.  I was the niece who wore my brother’s jeans and climbed trees and didn’t like my hair combed.  But I was also the niece who spent winter weekends and summer weeks with my aunt when my mother was ill, which was often the situation until I was ten.

I remember these visits with my aunt like vinegar and sugar.  Diane, brush your hair. Delicious apricot pies. Why don’t you wear a dress?  Lavender scented bubbles in the bath tub.  Sit up straight.  Scrabble games. Don’t be rude.  Art lessons.  Where have you been!?  Music jam sessions. Hush!  Camping trips in Yosemite. 

Memories of the annoying nighttime rhythmic tick rock of the mantle clock and my uncle’s snoring mingle with the daytime delight of painting beside my aunt on her tiny back porch.  My Uncle Wayne and Aunt Meryl took weekend excursions to places where she would paint plein aire in watercolor. Later when she would render her watercolor sketches in oils, I watched –fascinated.  I imagine these were some times when she said, Hush!  But more often than not, she would set up an area for me with a large sketch pad and some paint.

“Draw with a paint brush,” she’d say.  “Paint whatever you like.”  She never criticized my immature paintings.  Instead, she taught me how colors mix, about perspective and composition — patiently, kindly.

She was always her best self when painting or playing the piano.  Her nervousness, her obsessive worries about propriety,  her perfectionism, these issues simply disappeared when she was occupied with her talents.  

She lived a long life, outliving two husbands. In her later years I  admired her zest for living.  I think she had a good time in her later years:  traveling, playing the piano for a swing band, playing bridge, and painting small scenes and flowers.  When I last visited her in her senior care home, she determined that we were served lunch in a grand manner with warm hospitality.  Her hand painted notecards were on display in the lobby, purchasable for a nominal price.  I’m told that when she became bedridden, she practiced her music on the bed sheet, her fingers moving through trills and chords.

You never really know someone, but when you can feel someone’s presence in your own nuerons, you have to be grateful. Or else, what would you be saying about yourself?!