Author: susan

I am sitting in the front seat of a car with Dad.  Perhaps I am four years old.  We are parked on a street near the garden apartment in Bayside where we lived before we moved to Connecticut.  The car is not moving; we are just sitting there talking.  We must have just come from somewhere, because Dad is in the driver’s seat and I am next to him.  But at such a young age, wouldn’t I have been in the back seat?  This was long before the era of seat belts or car seats.

I am stroking my fingers back and forth across what I later learn is called the dashboard, which is made of a material that I think is leather.  The dashboard, tan in color, is ridged vertically and prominently stitched with what looks like upholstery seams.  This design feature fascinates me, as do the push-buttons that Dad uses to make the car start up or drive or back up.  When our next car had a lever to do those things, I thought it very strange.  This car is a Ford Mercury, marketed for its “space age” looks.  The push-button automatic transmission appeared in the 1957 model year and was withdrawn in the 1958 model year.  Not sure about the “leather”.  

Sitting next to Dad, I ask, “But what if God makes another flood?”

“He will not,” Dad answers.  “He promised.”

“But what if God does decide to make another flood?” I persist.

“He will not,” Dad answers.  “He promised.”

I have a feeling this dialogue goes on for a little while.  It is the first lesson in faith that I remember. 

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My second lesson also took place in Bayside, around that same time, inside the apartment.  Dark, but not night, very early morning.  I was sleepily aware of Dad sitting on the edge of my bed, in his overcoat.  So it must have been winter, probably Advent, though maybe Lent.  He smoothed the covers and tucked them up around my chin.  I do not recall any words between us, but I knew that he was up very early to go to Mass, before going to work.  I just knew this.  This knowledge made me feel secure, and I disappeared back into sleep. 

The childhood faith lessons continued, with the scene shifting to Connecticut, where the family moved when I was six.  I was in school by then, of course — Catholic school, of course — but the lessons that I remember best did not take place in a classroom.  These were lessons in faith, not religion, a distinction I am finally appreciating.

Except on Saturdays and Sundays, Dad’s alarm clock would go off very early in the morning.  The alarm would often wake me up, too, and often I would get up to go to the bathroom and, on the way, peek into my parents’ bedroom.  No closed bedroom doors in our household!  In darkness, Dad would be sitting on the edge of the bed.  His feet flat on the floor, the palms of his hands resting on the mattress, his slightly bent arms supporting him, his chin tucked in a bit.  He would sit slouched like that for quite some time.  Then he would stand up.  At that point, I would melt away back to my bedroom, because we all knew that Dad had a get-ready-for-work choreography that no one disturbed.

The lesson?  That Dad was praying.  Which didn’t dawn on me until many years later, when I began to understand Matthew 6:6.  But I always knew I was witnessing something very personal.

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My apprehension of another faith lesson was immediate.  It has shaped how I use language to this day.

I attended a local kids’ art-and-crafts camp for a couple of weeks the summer I was eight or nine.  On the last day of camp, there was a little show of our work.  As Dad and I strolled through the simple display, he was silent, as he often was.  Trying to fill the silence, I was chattering, as I often was.  “Isn’t that adorable?” I asked about something or another.

Dad stopped stock-still.  He looked deep into my eyes.  My chatter died away.  Then he spoke. “Nothing is adorable except God.  Only God is to be adored.”  

After all these many years, I can still feel my face burning with shame.  This was no patient lesson about Noah and the flood.  Nor was it a gentle lesson about worship or a secret lesson that he didn’t even know he was giving about how to pray.  This was serious as could be.  This was a flat-out correction of something very wrong.  I only had to be told once.

In fact, except in prayer, I have never since uttered the word “adorable” or any of its variations.  I cringe when I hear them used casually in conversation, when “cute” or “pretty” or “special” are what’s needed.  I have never even written them until now.  

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, visiting his home state of Michigan for the first time in a long time, said how glad he was to be back “where the trees are the right height”.  

Hilarity ensued, in the media, the punditry and most everywhere else.  How can trees have a right or wrong height?  Such a ridiculous notion from, by extension, a ridiculous candidate.  Let’s see what else is ridiculous about him!  The reaction pretended to be insightful analysis of a potential national leader.  (Though neither the comment nor the “analysis” did not prevent Romney from gaining the Republican nomination.) 

But I knew just what he was talking about.  This narrow affinity with Romney didn’t mean I wanted to vote for him.  But I appreciated his nuanced view.  Living in San Francisco at that time but keenly missing my own home state of Connecticut, I knew the difference between the trees in those two places and about so much else that mattered to me about where I lived. 

For now, I’ll stick to the trees.

In Connecticut, which is a small but “heavily forested state” (that’s what the internet says!), the trees are not very tall. Certainly, they are no match for the eucalyptus and the redwoods and the sequoias of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area.  Yet they are the “right height” for a state where there are no mountains, only hills and higher hills.  

Connecticut’s trees blanket its gentle contours, making for a cozy environment.  When I would travel back to Connecticut during the years I lived in San Francisco, I would feel coddled and safe.  Can’t say that for being under the eucalyptus in Golden Gate Park or the redwoods in Muir Woods.  Those trees seemed to thrust themselves away from the ground, far up into the sky.  I experienced emotion from them, sure, but it was different.  Aggression, maybe?

Now that I live in Oregon, I can appreciate that the Pacific Northwest (also “heavily forested”) offers a new metric for proper tree height.  Doug firs and the other mighty evergreens will do that!  At the same time, there are plenty of maples, oaks, birches and other tree species that offer me the same kind of cozy comfort that I felt in Connecticut — including the two dogwoods in my front yard.  Amazingly enough, these are Eastern dogwoods, the kind I grew up with, rather than their cousins the Western dogwoods.  Here, I am rooted.  That gives me the freedom to reach up and out.  And leads me to wonder if, maybe, feeling safe in Connecticut also meant that I was muffled and constrained, held down by an arboreal force.

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This next observation has nothing to do with the height of trees in Connecticut or anywhere else.  But it does say something about how I experience “place” and geography. 

Take as a given that my physical orientation works like the needle of a compass: it always points towards the North.  That means that my head faces N, my right arm reaches to the E and my left arm to the W.  My rear end, I guess, points S.  Well, on the East Coast, the big body of water — the Atlantic Ocean — was always off to my right.  Very reassuring.  When I got to San Francisco, I had to re-orient myself to the fact that the nearest relevant big body of water — the Pacific Ocean — was off to the left.  How disconcerting this was for me!  It threw off my whole sense of cardinal directions.  Do you know how long it took me to adjust?  How many times I drove off in the wrong direction?  

In Oregon, I had to adjust again.  We live about 90 miles from the coast, nestled into a huge valley between two mountain ranges (yes, mountains, not tall hills).  There is no big body of water nearby, to my right nor my left.  But there are a lot of rivers …

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My observations may seem light-hearted.  But they are designed to disguise the fact that “place” is a delicate concept for me.  Yes, I have successfully made my home in three very different places.  But I consume myself with questions whose answers change every time I ask.  

Where, in fact, are my roots if I am estranged from what remains of my family of origin back East?  What does it say that I chose to live for so many years, constantly on edge, in a deceptively beautiful city that, at any moment, might crack apart in an earthquake?  And now, am I hiding in the woods of the PNW, seeking safety and covering up deep sadness? Or is that what thriving looks like?

Maybe the answer is just this simple: I can bloom where I’m planted.

Writing class assignment for the prompt “$100”.

Some years ago, standing in the checkout lane at the supermarket, I glanced down on the floor and caught sight of the tell-tale green of … a bill … a folded-up piece of paper money.  There is no mistaking that color.

Aha!  I thought.  Lucky me!  I’ve found a dollar!   Good for me!   

As I bent to pick it up, intending to slip it into my pocket — finders keepers, right? — I saw that there was another number next to the “1”.  A zero.  Oh my, I thought.  It’s a $10 dollar bill.  My excitement ebbed.  Keeping a random  $1 bill is one thing, but $10 …?  How could I rationalize keeping the money?  My conscience began to prick at me, and I tried to ignore it.

And then when I actually picked up the money, guess what it was — a $100 bill.  

I’m happy to report that my conscience didn’t need to prick at me.  The message was loud and clear; I knew what to do.  I gave the $100 bill to the clerk, who summoned the manager, who said, “Someone will be back looking for this!” and took it safely away to the office.