Are You Hungry?

Today on page 5A of our Charleston Post and Courier newspaper reads a headline, “1 billion suffering from hunger”. It lies next to a ¾ color advertisement from one of the 2 most expensive furniture stores in the region announcing “Casual Lifetime Furniture” and a picture of a dining room set selling for $2999. I read this while I sat in my modest but comfortable home in a safe neighborhood enjoying my central air conditioning as I ate my breakfast of cornflakes, juice and cold milk.

I wondered then if I was the only person struck by the irony of the placement of these two items.

Yesterday I talked with Dr. Charlene Pope at the Medical University of SC’s College of Nursing about what direction I should take as I think about trying to enter the PhD program at that school. My interest has evolved into healthcare institution communication among caregivers and I don’t want to focus on America but on a more global scale. Perhaps that’s why my attention went to the headline and I stayed on to read the article.

Are we so calloused to headlines that we don’t take time to read the content? Does anyone give any pause when they are exposed to situations very foreign to our existence? And if we do take a minute, does anyone do something more than ‘cluck’ their tongue and move on? What if we sent one penny to an agency to buy food and distribute it. What if everyone in the world with any disposable income donated one penny to an agency we trusted to feed children and women and men who were dying, DYING, because they couldn’t have a breakfast. Couldn’t have a meal for days and weeks and then…

Would it feed our souls if we fed someone else?

Are you hungry today?

Just a look

This past week I drove through the ghetto on the way to my daughter's house. Her new digs are on the other side of a rough section of town. It's not unusual to see homeless people hanging outside one of the Mom and Pop grocery stores that line this section of her street. Not unusual to see women walking the sidewalks in very high heels and very short skirts... even during the middle of the day.

It had been raining. Alot. In our town if it rains for 30 minutes and it's high tide, lots of streets flood. And so my daughter's street, with several low spots anyway, was flooded. Up to the door handles of my car.

I took several side streets and came back to the main street where I knew the ground was higher and I found myself at a corner at a stop light. Then I saw her. And she saw me.

There have been only a few occasions in my life when I've met someone and had an instant connection. In the nursery of the hospital where I work I held a baby who's mother had given him up for adoption. He lifted his head and stared right inside of me and I called my husband to tell him I was bringing this child home. (I didn't..couldn't... but if I were single......) I met my best friend when she was lost and knocked on the door of my husband's business. We were fast friends immediately. And my friend Hendrien from Holland- that's how we all know her- and I sat next to each other one day at the beach while we watched the Space Shuttle take off 45 miles away and have remained great friends for 27 years.

But I was stunned this week when I turned my head and saw a woman, very unlike myself, that I felt I already knew. She wore a short red dress and stiletto heels not meant for walking. She was standing in front of a lake of water.

She stared back. I don't know what she saw when she looked at me. An older, overweight white lady, probably lost in a part of town that white, middle class women don't visit? Someone driving when she had to walk? A lady who could afford nice clothes and a nice house to drive home to? I briefly thought, "I live a life she couldn't imagine living."

And what did I see? A girl trying to make a living. A woman trying to cross a lake of water. A prostitute who might be on drugs. But the look in her eyes, the soul I thought I saw, will haunt me.

I should have stopped my car and offered this woman a ride. If she needed help to get out of the life I thought she was in, I should have offered it to her. Based on nothing more than a poignant glance, I was ready to change my life and maybe hers. In a blink of an eye I thought I might be able to help.

I knew this person. She could be me.

Then the light changed and I drove through the intersection slowly. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw my missed friend get into a man's car. And drive away.

The Yacht Club

Last night my husband and I went to a party on the river. We were celebrating a friend's completion of his medical residency and the party was held at a small
yacht club on our island. In fact, the only yacht club on our island.

Not a fancy place. Almost anyone can rent the club for events. My first husband belonged to this place we kiddingly called, the Redneck Boat Club. To join you have to have a white penis. That's right. No women are allowed to join. And no one of color belongs to this club.

My first husband loved going here, even though he would not think of himself as racist or sexist. The club is simple- a bar and a small event room and a sun porch. The grounds are large and you can store your boat there. But it's the fabulous access to Charleston's harbor that probably drew him and kept him there.

Easy access to the water. Sailing lessons for members' kids. Playgrounds and boats everywhere and kayaks and a small sandy beach. A long dock to fish and crab from. Bicycling distance from the house. My children spent many hours at this place.

And I never once felt I belonged. And of course, I didn't.

Every Friday night for years, my husband and I went to this club for a cocktail hour and raffle for which you had to be present to win. I silently fought myself every Friday night about going to the club. I disliked the politics and the beliefs of almost everyone at that club. But my husband wanted me to go with him and the children- who got to play with their friends at night at the river- on these Friday nights. And being a wife who was still trying to make that marriage work, I went along.

And I actually talked myself into it for a while. Smiling at the ladies there with their husbands. Compromising my ideas about equality and fairness. About what kind of wife and mother and woman I wanted to be. Trying to belong when very clearly I didn't. Until I just gave it all up.

Last night I sat on the dock with a different husband. But not with a different me. Perhaps a truer me. Definitely a more contented me.

Compromises. Hopefully they don't damage you too badly while they're teaching you a lesson.

My safe word is "Purl"

I have a curiosity about lifestyles very different from mine. I love the idea of communal living. I am perversely intrigued by the concept of sister-wives found in polygamous marriages. And S&M holds me fascinated.

So I was at knitting tonight. My Odd Friday Night Unitarian Universalist Knitting Group. Six of us who get together for hours of hilarious and warm conversation. Somehow we started talking about yarn which felt like we were knitting with steel wool and how only masochists would like this yarn and if we knitted something WITH this yarn we'd have to include handcuffs and the knitter would have to have a "safe word." In S&M circles, a "safe word" is given when the sexual play becomes a little too rough or scary- a word which can't be misinterpreted to mean anything other than "STOP." "NOW!"

I've been thinking about friendships alot lately. About what makes friends and how friends are made.

I'm lucky to have this knitting group. They're my friends. Good friends. We may have started as a church connected group, but we have gone way past that. Initially our UU church-related commonalities gave us a jumping off point. Our conversations, however, have become threads which we gently unravel from each others' lives. We don't indulge in pseudo-psychoanalysis. And we don't bare our deepest, darkest souls to one another while we sip lattes at our coffee house meeting place. But we share concerns about our families, hopes for our careers, children problems and parent problems and travel plans and, yes, knitting patterns.


Thisis the group of people to whom I'd turn to at 3 am in an emergency- (the 3 am call is my bellwether for defining friendships). I'd call these friends if and when I need moral support. If my car broke down and I couldn't find a ride. If I needed an air mattress for an out-of-town guest. If I need a recipe for an appetizer.


We knit and we laugh and we drink tea about every other Friday night. These nights appear in my busy life as a respite. I can count on finding a haven from chaos at least every other week.
When the world is spinning almost out of control, I know I can count on these Fridays when I can be myself with liberal, like-minded folk who share a love of knitting and good conversation. In a sometimes scary and rough world, the Friday Night Knitters are my oacis.


My 'safe word' is "Purl".

Seven Year Itch

I just read today that most people turn over 50% of their friends every 7 years. That means that every 14 years we have a completely new circle of buddies.



I know that it must be. And the reason why I know this is because seven is a mystical number.



Seven is the smallest positive integer to be spoken with two syllables when pronounced in English. Seven is the largest number of digits which the typical American can remember without prompting (hence, 7 digit phone numbers). Seven stellar objects in the solar system are visible to the naked eye from Earth: the sun, the moon and the five classical naked eye plants: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. There are seven hills in classical Rome, seven Sages and seven wonders of the world. We have seven days of the week. Seven dwarfs and Snow White. And Marilyn Monroe's Seven Year Itch.



Of course we'll have new friends every 7 years. And how those friends do change.



When I was a little girl, my friends, for better or worse, were kids who lived near me. If we couldn't walk or bike to each other's houses, we couldn't be friends.



In high school, my friends were those socially inept people like myself. We stuck together because at our little North Carolina high school, it wasn't too cool to be brainy and brainy was what defined us. Thrown together by eccentricities.

College? More of the same... except some of us had cars.

After-college friends, though, are a different story. I made 3 close friends in nursing school. And thirty years after nursing school, I can't find any of them. Kids took up alot of my time in my 20's and 30's and my friends, or rather, my acquaintances, were parents of my friends' kids and a few who I went to church with. We'd try to get together but often ball games and after-school activities and homework and our own jobs interferred with creating a bond between us.


UNTIL.

A few years ago I realized that my kids would soon be gone. My husband and I would be in an empty house. And I was planning to retire in 7 years. All of my friends at the time were people I worked beside. Did I have friends? Or were they simply people I bumped into daily?

When you're 50 years old, how does one make friends? How does one find people to make friends with????


My good friend Lynette is the best friend-maker I've ever known. She knows how to cultivate friendships and most of what I've learned as an adult about friendships I've learned from her.

Let people know that you like them. Join groups of people who share your interests. Go to church. Volunteer. And when you find someone.... call them. Often. Go out to dinner or a movie or to the Farmer's Market, even if only for an hour. When it's a special occasion, mail them a card. Have a party and invite every friend you have. Or would want to have.

So now I go to church almost every Sunday. And after 20 years of going to the same church, I think I've finally connected. I'm a slow learner. I belong to a knitting group that meets every week. In my normal workaday world I would have never met the wonderful women I've met at this free knitting group. I belong to another group that knits blankets for chemotherapy patients. I've registered to become a Literacy association member. I've become active in my professional nursing association.


When I was in 1st grade, friendships weren't work. Now they are. My little friends are gone. I hope these are here to stay. Longer than 7 years. They'll be worth it. Thank you, Lynette.