A Broader Interpretation of Relative

I grew up in a small town in southwest Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. An  agrarian, minimally industrial, coal mining, majority Protestant Christian town. Not the sort of place a lot of people hang around in once they grow up. We all had big dreams, high hopes, lofty ambitions. I myself excelled at not fulfilling potential, at least not in the manner that ensured a lucrative career and bragging rights at our Class of '77 reunions.

I was in high school with some pretty amazing people though. People who have over the past 30 +/- years traveled fascinating paths. They each have a very personal and unique story to their lives. Stories that are relative to my life because we each spent all or part of our formative years in the rich lands of the valley that the Clinch River flows through. The Mighty Clinch we used to call her, not understanding she was on her way to the Tennessee and then the Mississippi, pouring out in an offering of need and gratitude upon the Gulf of Mexico. A journey to her destiny as a part of the waters that nurture this earth, our mother.

We were too young for Vietnam, too young for Woodstock and Haight Ashbury. We were just old enough though, to know about these things. We were a generation that listened to Kiss and Judas Priest. We experimented with marijuana and drank jungle juice in the light of campfires on summer nights. We watched politicians fall from grace and men walk on the moon. We lived through floods and a gas shortage. Our experiences of these national and global milestones were filtered by being residents of Tazewell County. Our exposure to a rapidly changing world was tempered by the embrace of the mountains we roamed, looking for a way to be and do more than our parents had. 

So today when I read an article online written by a man I went to school and church with as a teenager a different understanding of relative was present. I knew about the article because Ron is on my Facebook friends list. I read the article because it is about someone we were both in school with in the '70s. I have an emotional response to the interview that would be foreign to the majority of the people who read the same words because the history and experience of both the journalist and musician are shared with me, and the other 1200 +/- young idealists who were students at RHS from 1972-1977.

I have a similar reaction each time I come across information that is connected to my roots, my past, my history. It is relative because it is in an odd way a part of me now. Relative to the person I was, am, and will be.

Is it all relative?

The reason most of my posts appear in the late afternoon? Roger spends most afternoons outside, and I have 'free' time. 

I love my husband, and I like him as well. He tends to be quiet, not to be taken as being uninformed or unintelligent. He will talk in 'spits and spurts' though, here around the house. Often about something that he has been mulling over for some time. Earlier today, seemingly out of nowhere, he began to share an incident from his past, and suggested I blog about 'dark years' and how people can get through them by doing the right thing.

A dark year for him was 1982. He suffered a series of setbacks, details not important. He worked through things, and the experience left a deep impression on him.

He had a friend when he was young who committed suicide, and at the funeral the minister said something to the effect that no matter how bad you think things are right now, odds are in a year it will have evened out in the overall scheme of your life. Roger paid heed to this, and operates in the larger picture of life mindset. He will say, "What was so bad a year ago today that it is burned indelibly in your memory?" I get what he is saying.

Perspective is always better when there is something to measure against. We all have dark times. They may be hours, days, weeks long. The really dark times can last months. Roger had a year of darkness. 1982.

His take away? Pushing things off to the side does not make them go away, they still have to be addressed and resolved. No matter how bad it looks now, in the end life has a way of achieving balance.

You know what? That husband of mine is pretty darn wise.

It is all relative.

As far back as my teenage years I bemoaned the advent of February. To me it was like the sludge field of the year. Grey. Dank. Dead. Depressing. Drizzly foggy days followed by long chilly nights. Naked trees, mud puddles, dead grass. I left my beloved mountains to live in sunny Florida after a particularly difficult winter, and an abysmal February. My daughter was born in February of 1985, and I would not see her again for 25 years. There were years that I would lie in bed, weep in despair, waiting for the agony that was ironically the shortest calendar month to end.

I gave up, ceded to the despair and depression for years.

I started to heal slowly, spent my last bad February in 2001 starring at Lake Ontario and finding me again. In April I came home to southwest Virginia and my beloved Appalachian Mountains. 

I see the sense in and truth behind what Roger says because I lived in a cycle of despair that I had to work through. And life does balance out. 

A year ago my mother had a fall in her home, and for a time we thought the worst. Time and grace healed and imbued perspective. She is much more limited now, and my sister bears the weight of most of her care. Life has gone on. 

It is all relative. And how life is faced, and lived, is inextricably tied to our relatives. This can be bad, more often it can be good. 

When you have that day or week or month or year of darkness, and look back upon it, the light that brought the balance? That is the blood and chosen relatives you have surrounded yourself with. 

It is all relative.

Practical Application of Relative

Oh my, it is late tonight. If I do not think and type fast, I may not even make it by midnight! Busy, busy day for this old girl.

So.

I had such a satisfying afternoon and evening, sitting and eating and talking. I met with two "girlfriends" at a local Mediterranean restaurant today. Actually, this brings up a subject I wanted to cover this month anyway, my sisters-of-the-heart.

A sister-of -of-the heart is a female friend, age unimportant, with whom you have a bond beyond friendship. A girl or woman with whom you 'click'. They are vital to our sanity, girls, make no mistake about it. They may be local, or across the country, or in another country. They are not determined by age, race, or DNA. Education? Not a determining factor either. I have been gifted throughout my life with these women. Sometimes they are in our lives for only a season, to help us in ways we never knew we needed help. Sometimes they are in our lives because we have a skill or experience they have need of and do not yet know.

Leesa I have known since first grade, Sandi I met in the seventh grade. Leigh is my first cousin. Diane is ten years older than I, Andrea ten years younger. Dove, Rae, Mandi and Deb I met at work. I met Shari through a flyer posted in a coffee shop about ghost-hunting, Debbie I met because we both follow a Tarot blog "Beth Owl's Daughter". Pilarr I met through Shari. Shaunna and Sussannah I met through Rae.

There is a beauty and synchronicity to life, a serendipity, the lagniappe that is always just around the corner. Sisters-of-the-heart are like that.

My life is enriched beyond measure by their presence and would be drab and monotonous without them.

I hope each of you has sisters (or brothers!) of the heart.

We are many, we are one.

We are each at the center of our own world, whether we admit it or not.

We are the nucleus, the sun. We are the heart, the soul.

We are not the sole composition, just the center. It truly can be no other way. What makes our lives work is the things that surround the center, the people in our lives. Our parents, children, spouses, friends. Our aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, in-laws, neighbors. Our co-workers. Our employers, employees, service providers. 

The relatives, the friends, the enemies.

I am Ellen. The person who shares most of my world is my husband, Roger. We met through Yahoo personals in the late Spring of 2001. He asked me to marry him in October of the same year.We dated for over a year before we were married. I would have lived with him, truth be told. I had been married from October of 1986 until September of 2001, 15 years. That was all I wanted of marriage.

Roger insisted we marry, because he did not want "people talking about me". How could I refuse in the face of such chivalry and honor? July 25 will be our tenth anniversary.

I see the people in my life as petals on a flower, like a lotus blossom. Some are closer, some further removed. Some have drifted off from a lack of care, some have left this corporeal plane. Some were never really connected, just gave the appearance of being that way.

I would not be who and what I am today without every single solitary one of them.

The contributions and impacts we have on each other are so minute and monumental, a contradiction of life that I find fascinating.

Relative. Relatives. Relation. Relations. Relationships.

The impact our presence has on the lives of one another, like the silk of a spider, almost invisible but of amazing strength. Terrifying influence.

My words, actions, ideas matter because of each of you, and your words, actions, ideas have immeasurable impact in my life.

We are many, we are one.

Beginnings-Looking Back

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Today is the last day of my grand experiment of participating in NaBloPoMo. The theme for January was Beginnings.

I had vague ideas when the month began of what I wanted to accomplish, writing the blog on a more consistent basis, sharing it more with the world. I did not anticipate what it has become in such a short period of time. 

I have connected on a new level with people because of this, been able to explore a bit deeper some relationships, and solidified in my own mind my viewpoints and positions. 

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday. I made the statement that my goal was to assist others through being a positive element in their lives. Helping others be optimistic, facing their inner lives with honesty, being able to encourage, educate, inspire, edify. These things are very important to me.

I believe that being victorious at life entails a level of awareness of self that is a very painful process to undertake. There are elements to being self aware that are very much private and those elements that are societal. The societal elements necessitate the involvement of others in the process. Now, these others may or may not be cognizant of their role, and we may not be aware of the similar role we are playing in another persons similar process. Sounds complicated? That is because it is.

We are complicated creatures, us humans. We are the yin and yang, the light and dark, the good and evil, the sweet and sour, the agony and ecstasy of the universe. We are capable of divine love and debilitating hate. We crave solitude yet all the while we are seeking out the companionship of others.

The advent of blogs has created a forum that melds together people in a unique and terrifying way. We can now explore our own psyche, and those of others, in a isolated/public manner that poses ecstatic possibilities.

The theme for next month is Relatives. I am going to post more about my biological family, and introduce you to some of my chosen family. You will hear about my sisters-of-the-heart, and learn how they came to be. On the 21st, there will be the most personal and private post I could possibly write. I may at times need to omit actual names, because I do want to honor the privacy of people. I ask respectfully, if you are reading this and do not want your name in any of the upcoming posts that may potentially include you, please let me know. I have the comments section set to send all comments to me for moderation ahead of publication and I may contacted in that manner.

Nemaste'

My Pawpaw Slade

Relatives is the NaBloPoMo theme for next month, but in light of the passing of my Uncle Jack, I thought I would start a little early.

My Pawpaw was James Roy Slade, and he was a farmer. That really says much less about him than was admirable. He could build a gate so sturdy that the fence would be gone and the gate still swing plumb. He was a deliberate man, as I knew him. I would guesstimate he was well into his forties at the time of my first memories of him. 

They farmed on the side of the mountain just outside of Bluefield, VA. The community was known as Bluestone, and not a few of the people were related to his family. His father, Grat, whom my nephew Grat is named after, was a blacksmith, sawyer and farmer. There were [I think-] four boys {Lewis, Dan, Roy and Henry} and three girls {Mildred, Nancy and Francis} in the family. At least those are the ones I can remember. Pawpaw worked as a driver for Bluefield Produce circa 1935, though I am unsure when he left that job. In later years, he worked as a custodian at Graham High School and as a school bus driver.

He was a devoted family man, as well as a dedicated member of the Ebenezer United Methodist Church, the Masonic Lodge, and the Eastern Star. He worked hard, selling eggs, milk and butter to a sizable customer base in Bluefield as late as the 60s. 

In addition to the dairy cows and white leghorn chickens, he raised hogs and sheep. He owned mules, which were the muscle in front of the hay-rake, the mower and the plow. There was an apple orchard on the farm, as well as a grape arbor, berry thickets and at least one plum tree. He grew wheat and oats and field corn. There were hay fields. At various times there were ducks and rabbits as well. The vegetable garden was overflowing with tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, onions, cucumbers, green bell peppers, lettuce, cabbage, green beans, English peas, salad peas, beets, October beans, lima beans, and I am sure I am forgetting something.

He arose early in the morning, built up the fire in the cast-iron cook stove, and headed to the barn to milk. He milked by hand, assisted by his sons in the early years, and two of my half-brothers in the latter years. He came in from milking and feeding the stock for breakfast, then headed back out to do farm work the rest of the day, somehow managing to fit in work at a public job as well. 

I can remember well him smoking a pipe, or hand-rolled cigarettes when I was young, later switching to Viceroy cigarettes then chewing tobacco in his later years. He loved coffee, and would drink cold black coffee straight from the coffee pot in the afternoon. 

Winter evenings would often be occupied with secretive meetings between him and other men who came to learn the secret works of the Masons from him. 

He always had to have a sweet with buttered biscuits or cornbread with his evening meal. The sweet may be molasses (he made his own), honey (he harvested his own) or Mawmaw's ground cherry preserves. The butter was butter Mawmaw made by hand, from their own dairy cows. 

I have been told that in his younger days he would drink a bit of moonshine now and then, and that he was known to join in informal bluegrass performances. He wore false teeth, and would entertain us by taking them out from time to time. 

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My grandmother was the love of his life, he always called her Darlin'. He passed away very soon after her in the winter of 1986. I think he just withered without her, they married when he was about 17 and he was past 70 when he died.

I Am So Blessed To Be Me

I was blessed from a young age with a large, loving, boisterous family. 

My mother may have only had two brothers who had lived to be adults, but both of her parents came from large families and people gathered at their farmhouse as a matter of course on Sundays and during summer months. Cousins, aunts, uncles abounded. We lived about 30 miles from them, and were not able to be there all the time, but we visited often. My mother would take us when we were small to stay for a few days when it was time to can vegetables from the garden. She helped Mawmaw, and we ran wild. 

My first memories of drinking coffee are from there - I would sneak around the dining table after the adults had wandered off and drink the cold coffee left in the cups. I still like coffee that is at room temperature, and have learned as an adult to drink iced coffee as well.

Pawpaw saucered his coffee. I always wanted to do that, but never quite mastered the technique. {saucering coffee is when you pour the steaming hot coffee from your cup into a deep saucer then drink from the saucer, though slurping is a more descriptive word for the process} I think, though I am not sure, this was done because the coffee would literally be boiling hot and pouring a portion into the shallow saucer enabled one to drink without blistering your mouth and tongue because the saucered coffee cooled faster than that in the thick earthenware cups.

Both of my uncles lived out of state and the times they visited were very special. I have always felt such a deep love for my family, never questioning the veracity of my feelings. As a child, I felt surrounded by these loving adults who really cared about my welfare.

As I have aged, one by one the elders in my family have passed away. Like petals from a flower, they have fallen away through the years. 

1986 was a difficult year - we lost both of my grandparents as well as my father in a very short period of time, less than three months.

As I write this Mom's younger brother, Elmer Jackson Slade, lies in his final hours at a hospital in Georgia. He called me during the Christmas season, and we talked a bit about this and that. He was concerned about Mom, and I tried my best to reassure him about her health. My amazing cousin Leigh has been as good and loving daughter to him as any woman could be, and I admire her strength and courage.

I like to think of Mawmaw, waiting for her baby to come home. She will have biscuits and sausage gravy ready for him. She will pour percolated coffee from the pot on the back of the wood-burning cookstove and listen as he and Pawpaw talk about the vegetable garden. He will be laughing and cracking jokes, keeping a smile on everyone's face. It is early in the day, because life and death are about beginnings and changes, not endings.

That is something I have learned from being a part of my large, loving, boisterous family.

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I am so blessed to be me.