by sheila morris
The temperature in the waiting room was cool as I signed the doctor’s daily appointment register at the front desk. I was number eight on the afternoon’s sign-in sheet. I looked at the line across from my name, and the moment I had dreaded for months was upon me. I had played and replayed the question in my mind.
Any changes to insurance since last visit? Yes / No
I circled “Yes” and spoke to the young, attractive receptionist, who was intently focused on her computer screen and hadn’t appeared to notice me. Her expression was harried, as if she was so far behind in her duties she would never catch up.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I circled ‘Yes’ today for change of insurance because I no longer have insurance.” I looked apologetically at her and spoke in my best “inside” voice. I didn’t want the other people in the room to hear me confess my failure to produce the key to the kingdom of good health care. Her fingers froze on the computer keyboard. Her reaction confirmed my biggest fears. She sighed heavily and began to disassociate herself from her mental and physical connection to the World of Important Matters. Without glancing at me, she began to rummage through manila file folders in a drawer beneath her workstation. At last, she pulled a single form from a folder, wrote something on it, attached it to a clipboard, and pointed to a round glass holder containing four ballpoint pens. “Fill this out and bring it back to me when you’re finished,” she said flatly. “Bring an ID with you, too.” She still hadn’t looked at me, and as I picked up the clipboard, I had a sinking feeling that I was wearing Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak.
I selected a pen and sat down to complete the form. It took me longer to pull my driver’s license out of the stubborn leather slot in my billfold than it did to finish the paperwork. Name, address, telephone number, date of birth, emergency contact, social security number. The remainder of the lengthy document required detailed insurance information, but that had been marked through with a large “X” by the receptionist when she handed me the form. She had written SELF PAY above the “X.” In red ink. I felt a sense of impending doom.
I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have health insurance, and I had recently celebrated my sixty-fourth birthday. Eighteen months ago, my employment was terminated due to a medical disability from ophthalmic herpes zoster, or shingles, in my right eye and other places in my head and on my face. I participated in my employer-sponsored COBRA plan during those eighteen months for ongoing coverage, but on day one of the month nineteen—BAM! No more insurance. I had explored alternatives for personal insurance policies, but costs were prohibitive. Medicare, the government-sponsored program for senior citizens, wasn’t available until my next birthday. Alas, I was like a tightrope walker on a rope suspended high above a river rising as quickly as the price of my medications. I was alarmed. No, beyond alarmed. I was afraid of a future with no insurance safety net.
I took the clipboard and ID to the front and laid it down on the receptionist’s desk. She was again immersed in her computer screen and clearly involved in the World of Important Matters. Then, without looking up, she said, “Thanks. Have a seat, and I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” My Invisibility Cloak worked well, I thought.
I returned to the chair I had claimed and sat down. I looked around the large waiting area and saw five other people waiting to see Dr. Thong—one of a group of four dermatologists who shared the practice. Their business had clearly expanded in the ten years I had been an “established” patient. The building was the same as when I first started coming to see them, but now the group occupied the entire space. The entrance was moved, and the lobby area was much more elaborate. A new, large, trendy flat-screen television hung from the wall to allow good visibility from any vantage point. One of the major cable news networks showed financial data from Wall Street at the moment, but the sound level was appropriately low and inoffensive. The brown faux leather chairs were definitely an upgrade from the uncomfortable ones in the previous lobby, too. The quiet room shouted first-class.
Two hands on a large clock on the wall near the front door marked our waiting time. I was at twenty minutes when I heard the receptionist call my name.
“Miss Morris,” she said.
I rose and walked to her desk. For the first time, she looked at me. Not smiling or friendly, but she did look.
” Here’s your ID. Someone will call you in a few minutes.” She had placed my ID on the counter. Was it possible my I nvisibility Cloak had been stolen while I listened to the financial news?
I picked up my driver’s license and sat down again. I busied myself for several minutes with re-arranging the items in my billfold so that my ID was easier to reach. That done, I daydreamed about the old days when I had good health and little interest in doctors or insurance. Occasionally, the door to the examination rooms opened, and a nurse called someone’s name. At thirty-three minutes and counting, I noticed that only two of us were left in the waiting area. Time must truly be money for Dr. Thong, I thought.
“Miss Morris,” I heard. I was startled from my musings about the lobby, doctors, medicine, and insurance.
I stood and walked toward the smiling lovely young nurse who held the door to the examination rooms for me. She was dressed in a loosely fitting blue uniform that looked like the ones worn by actors in the medical dramas on television nowadays. Not the super-starched white uniforms of the medical series of the 1970s like Marcus Welby, M. D., but she looked good in blue. She was pretty in that wholesome all-American look and seemed very efficient as she carried what I presumed was my chart. Her smile belied her no-nonsense demeanor.
“And how are we doing today?” She motioned me to follow her past the maze of tiny rooms with the doors shut.
“Well, it’s not my best day, but I’ve had worse.” I walked as fast as I could to keep pace with her.
She smiled on, indicating a room with an open door, and I went in first. I sat down on the large, gray, leather exam chair with a thin layer of white paper pulled over it to prevent my germs from being spread to the next person. The agreeable young nurse continued smiling as she sat on a stool across from me. She studied my chart thoughtfully.
“Are we having any new problems today?” she asked.
“Actually, I am,” I replied. “I have a new trouble spot on my face that’s been there for two months. It’s probably like the other ones Dr. Thong biopsied last year, but he always wants to know about the ones that don’t go away.” I had a history of malignancies from skin cancers on my face, and any lesions from the herpes virus that refused to disappear in a reasonable time were suspicious, according to Dr. Thong. He was scrupulous about early detection of any potential problems. I had always admired that quality in him. An ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. Wasn’t that what my daddy had always told me?
I saw the nurse was taking notes, and I added, “Oh, and I got a tick bite about six weeks ago when I was in Texas. It still hurts and itches, and I wondered if it’s okay. It’s in an awkward spot at the top of my right hip, and I can’t see it.”
“Tick bite,” she said, and wrote more. Her good humor seemed to be fading for some reason, though. The perky smile was gone, and that made me uneasy. “I see you’re due for your annual full-body check today. I also see you have no insurance. Do you still want to do the exam?”
I was taken aback by the question. Was it possible to not have an annual check-up? The thought had never occurred to me. I had been having annual checkups, well, annually, for my entire life. My mother took me every year when I was a child, and I continued each year of my adult life. So, at sixty-four years of age, I’d had my share of regular doctor visits. Of course, I reasoned quickly, maybe that just applied to my primary care physician. The dermatologist might be different. But, then, they had never given me a choice before. What was going on here? My anxiety level leaped ahead several notches.
“Well, yes,” I said. “I’ll go ahead with the full-body exam.”
“Okay.” Closing my chart, she stood up and went to a cabinet in the little room. She retrieved a large neatly folded piece of white paper and handed it to me. “Here’s a sheet for you. Get undressed, and Dr. Thong will be with you in a few minutes.”
I took off my clothes and unfolded the white paper sheet. It was enormous and unwieldy, but I managed to cover my naked body in what I imagined was an absurd look. I now sat on paper and was covered with paper. When I moved, the paper made an annoying crackling sound. I was very uncomfortable and quite cold. My mental state matched my physical discomfiture. Would that man never get here? I looked at my watch, and my 2:00 p.m. appointment had lasted forty-five minutes so far.
Shortly thereafter, I heard whispered conversation outside my door followed by a quick knock and the appearance of Dr. Thong with yet another nurse. They were both dressed in the same spiffy, blue, multi-purpose unisex uniforms.
Dr. Thong looked remarkably the same every time I saw him. He is a small Asian man in his late forties with flawless skin and an inscrutable expression. His eyes betray nothing, but they are not unkind. When I worked as a stockbroker before my retirement, he indulged in small talk and liked to give me his favorite stock tips. He amused himself that way, and I was happy to have something to distract myself while he inspected my complexion. Post-retirement chitchat was limited, however.
“So, let’s have a look at you,” he said with no preliminaries. He began with my hands and arms and made his way to my back. “And, where is this tick bite that everyone is so concerned about? Oh, I see it now.” He muttered something to the nurse who wrote feverishly on my chart.
“Okay, nothing to worry about there. It’ll get better on its own.” With that dismissal, he moved around to the front and concentrated on my face. “Now, let’s see this other problem a little closer.” He hummed to himself thoughtfully. “How long has it been there?”
“A couple of months,” I said. “It just doesn’t want to go away.”
“Well, let’s see if we can make it go away faster.” He motioned to the nurse, who handed him a contraption that looked like a bug spray can. He gave three quick squeezes that made loud puffs of very cold air that hit the offensive red spot on my face. Then, I felt an unpleasant burning sensation. He took another look, appeared satisfied, and returned the can to the nurse, who struggled to write notes and handle the can simultaneously.
“That should do the trick. Very good luck,” he said. “No problems.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He turned to leave and had his hand on the door. “Anything else this time?”
“No,” I replied.
“Goodbye, then.” He was gone. No biopsies, no be sure to make an appointment for six months, no admonitions to wear sunscreen, nothing. Just three puffs, and he was up, up, and away. I sat transfixed and horrified by the visit. I felt a “disconnect” between this doctor and my well-being. I had a vision of being dismissed as an old woman whose health no longer required attention in a world of cheerful young medical professionals who moved briskly from one tiny sterile room to the next without making eye contact with the patients in those rooms. It was a scary feeling.
“You can get dressed now,” the nurse said. “Just carry your chart to the checkout desk. Follow the arrows.” With that, she was gone, too.
I glanced at my watch. It was now 2:50. My annual body check, complete with tick bite and face freezing, lasted approximately five minutes. It took me longer to retrieve my driver’s license from my billfold for the receptionist.
I got dressed and followed the signs to the checkout desk. A middle-aged woman wearing tiny reading glasses looked away from her computer screen to take my chart that now read SELF PAY. I saw her comparing numbers in columns highlighted with different colors on a laminated sheet of paper. Evidently, charges were relative, and she wanted to verify the amount for each procedure.
“The total for today is $128,” she said sweetly. “Will that be cash, check, debit or credit card?” She paused, and then added, “I see no follow-up appointment is scheduled. Do you think you’ll want to come back next year?” Her tone was hopeful, and I saw she must be an asset to the practice by facilitating a warmer atmosphere during the payment process.
“Debit card,” I said and handed my plastic card to her. “I’m not sure about coming back, but thanks for asking. I’ll call if I have a problem.”
She quickly handled my payment and gave me my receipt. I thanked her again and exited through the lobby area. The hands on the clock on the wall showed 3:10 p.m.
I officially joined the ranks of millions of Americans who are uninsured with little fanfare. I now totally understood the magic of the phrase, “Your co-pay today is $35, and I’ll be happy to file your insurance claim for you. May we schedule your next appointment?” I complained each year that my co-pay increased. I complained loudly that Dr. Thong was an “out-of-network provider,” which made my annual deductible higher for him. And, of course, I complained regularly about the exorbitant cost of insurance. Who didn’t? It was acceptable cocktail-hour conversation.
Now, we see through a glass darkly, I thought.
In the spirit of fair play, I located my statement from my appointment with Dr. Thong the prior year. I had two biopsies and an annual exam that day. The office visit was $90, and the biopsies with laboratory analysis totaled $574. I paid the $35 co-pay on the day of service, and my insurance carrier negotiated a reduction of $388 for reasonable and customary charges against the bill. The insurance company eventually paid $45 to Dr. Thong, and I owed the balance of $196 to apply toward my annual deductible. On the surface, my “self-pay” visit this year saved me $103. Not to mention the fact that I no longer pay those outrageous insurance premiums. Why don’t I feel better?
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The debate on healthcare reform and public policy in the United States follows the political fortunes of the fortunate. In a country that prides itself on offering hope and freedom for all, we often reserve quality health care for the few who are wealthy enough to afford it. The issues are complicated, and the systems and their operatives are deeply entrenched by decades of corruption and abuse that will make positive change a battleground for many years. To sum up succinctly, it’s a mess.
As my daddy used to say, “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember your initial objective was to drain the swamp.”
On March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act became law in this country. It’s an attempt to wrestle some of the alligators that love to snap at the reasonable objective of quality health care for every citizen. This particular swamp won’t be drained quickly or completely, as an assault on the law continues by its opponents through the judicial system in 2011. For me personally, Self Pay is over since I turned 65 in April of 2011 and am now covered by Medicare, but that’s another story with a different swamp of alligators.
A PRIZE FIGHTER NAMED PAIN
Let me introduce you to my new friend Pain…well, not really new…and not actually a friend.
I’m learning to live with him, but he’s a stubborn, persistent adversary. I must have known him intermittently through my more than six decades of life, although the encounters were brief and unremarkable. Painful episodes are the children of Pain.
I met Pain himself three and a half years ago. The mature, grown-up Pain. He came to my body through the hardest part of me—my head. He moved into the right side of my scalp and down my forehead to encircle my right eye and cheek. He followed the nerves that travel through my face. He had a cute little name that rhymes with Tingles. Shingles. Such a harmless name for the devil who rules my life. He moved into his new home with the excitement of a pioneer staking a claim for a homestead in the Wild West during the glory days when every vista was unexplored territory.
Pain is a hard worker. He never sleeps. He is relentless in his pursuit of control and domination. Medicines amuse him with their efforts to ease his grip. He is like a prize fighter whose gloves are cinched for eighteen rounds. Medication sends him to the corner to be renewed, but he’s up and ready when the bell sounds. He is a bold opponent who stoops to cheap shots during the fray.
When the sun goes down and the day ends, Pain only works harder. Sleep and Rest flee from him. He is their biggest fear and worst enemy. He loves the darkness of the night because it reminds him of his own nature.
Pain pummels me with a ferocious pounding unmatched by mortal foes. I understand him better now, and I know his tactics. I know that he leaves after a long fight to make me think that I’ve won. I step into the center of the ring with my hands held high in a victory salute. It’s clear—Pain is the loser.
But, then, he comes back. Sometimes to the head that now bears the scars of our warfare. Sometimes with a fatigue that makes movement impossible because I have hit a wall that may as well be made of concrete. Always to my eyes, which blur and burn and water incessantly as they produce protein deposits that splatter the annoying eyeglasses that now must replace other forms of vision correction. As I grow older and my immune system weakens, Pain appears stronger and more powerful.
I have a rendezvous with Pain, as the poet once said of Death. I meet him when and where he chooses, and we engage in our struggle in quiet isolation. The stakes are high in this duel with no seconds available to offer assistance and no valiant rescue on the horizon.
It is just Pain and me.
PRIESTHOOD OF THE BELIEVER
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
—Hebrews, Chapter XI, Verse 1
Whenever I speak on social justice issues, or, more likely now, do readings from my books, someone invariably asks me about my religious beliefs. Some people opt for a subtle approach and others want to make sure I clearly understand their perspective. Last year I participated in a panel discussion on memoir at a book festival in South Carolina, and the moderator called attention to the three authors’ different backgrounds that influenced their work, including a remark about my life as a lesbian activist. Following our discussion, the audience was invited to ask questions.
We took turns responding to typical inquiries regarding memoir as a genre, difficulties in the publishing world these days, and whether our books provided cathartic experiences for unresolved issues in our lives. It was a lively interchange, and I enjoyed the questions and listening to the answers of the other panelists while I added my own opinions. As time for our session was about to run out, the moderator asked for one final question for any author. I saw a hand raised in the back of the auditorium, and a microphone was passed to a man who stood up and reached for it.
I sensed this was my question before he said anything. He was a tall man with vanishing silver hair and nicely dressed in dark pants, white shirt and a tie that was an indistinguishable color to me from my seat onstage. He did, indeed, direct his remarks to me.
“Miss Morris, I was wondering how you reconcile your life with what the Bible says about homosexuality. I know that God loves you, but He hates what you do. Why don’t you change?”
I was prepared for the question since it was a familiar one to me, but I paused to assess the restlessness of the audience before I spoke. Yep, everyone was ready to move on.
“The few Bible passages that refer to homosexuality are typically taken out of context and require deeper discussions than we have time for here,” I said. “Change is a word that implies choosing. My life has involved many choices, but my being a lesbian is not one of them. I’m not sure that anyone really knows how God feels about my life—including me.”
You get the picture. For those of you who ask these questions, and I think you know who you are, I want you to know that I appreciate your concerns. I usually answer with as much candor and humor as time allows and direct the conversations to other topics.
In real life, when time is not an excuse and levity and brevity beg the deeper questions, my journey of faith has no glib explanations. I am surrounded by the ghosts of generations of family members who relied on their convictions about God during the difficulties they faced throughout their lives. One of my eighty-three-year-old mother’s favorite sayings to this day is, “God is on His throne. No matter what comes, we know that God is on His throne.” This phrase comforts her in the confines of the Memory Care Unit where she lives and assures her that everyday problems are temporary and serve some greater purpose. It also relieves her of any personal responsibility for outcomes that aren’t suitable. It’s an expression she’s used frequently in her life when someone contradicts her opinions and she wants to end discussion. After all, what else is there to say when she declares that an omnipresent and omnipotent Deity reigns over us? In some deep inner place, my mother’s faith sustains her.
Certainly this core belief system came partially from her mother, who lived a life of constant struggle as a single mother in the Great Depression. Left with four children when her husband died unexpectedly, my grandmother waged wars against poverty and, ultimately, herself when she fought the more difficult battles of loneliness and depression. A letter to her sister in 1954 following the death of their father illustrates her convictions that surely passed to my mother: “I know Papa has gone to heaven, and that is where I want to meet him. The Old Devil gets a hold of me sometime. I slap him off—and pray harder for the Lord to help me be a better Christian. I realize more that I need the Lord every day, and I want to love the Lord more and try to serve Him better. He alone can take away these heartaches of mine. I want to have more faith in Him. I have been so burdened, and I want to be happy. Serving God and living for Him is the only plan.”
My grandmother’s belief that faith was the only solution to the multitude of problems she faced and that there were higher levels of faith beyond her grasp was reinforced by the teachings of the little Southern Baptist church she attended every Sunday. The sweat and, often, tears of pleading preachers for more trust and more commitment stirred their listeners’ emotions and created an environment of permanent unworthiness, or as Paul writes in the New Testament, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans, Chapter III, Verse 23). My grandmother’s efforts to “have more faith” included a daily ritual of reading Bible passages using the rudimentary skills she acquired during a schooling that was limited to a third-grade-level education. I can still see the outline of her sagging body framed in light through the thin partition separating the kitchen from the enclosed porch that served as our bedroom while she sat at a small table and I lay in the darkness wishing she wouldn’t get up so early. But, there she would be, struggling to read godly guidance in the ungodly hours before dawn so she could be dressed and ready to walk to work by 7:30 a.m. six days a week.
Shockingly, my grandmother on my daddy’s side glossed over the deeper issues of faith in favor of a focus on hope. You may remember the famous quote from the Bible in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians: “In a word, there are three things that last forever, faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them is love.” For this paternal grandmother, the greatest “thing” that lasted forever was hope. She wasn’t concerned with the intricacies of faith nor did she exhibit excessive “love” toward others outside of her immediate family, but she attended the same Southern Baptist church faithfully every Sunday. Her hope was for humor, however. Her belief was that in every Sunday church service she could find something or someone—or, preferably, both—that she could use to entertain her family at the dinner table later.
The preacher was irreverently skewered on a regular basis. “Brother Latham is such a handsome man, but his sermons bore me to tears. Same old talk about sin every Sunday. Everybody knows he’s against it by now. He needs to come up with a new position or a new topic. And, did you see those poor little children of his? They look just like their mother, bless their hearts. God didn’t answer any prayers there, if you ask me.” The pious friends who seemed to take church so seriously were open season for my grandmother as well. “Did you see old lady Shead? Her face was twisted in such a tight knot it looked just like all that hair she has wadded up on her head. She must have fifty hairpins holding it together. She looked like God gave her some secret bad news this week, or maybe He put a burr up her butt.” And she was off and running as my grandfather and I laughed hysterically at her assessment of our churchgoing experience. No one, and nothing, was sacred at that table. She was a woman in charge of her home and family and most of the conversations that took place within both. I worshipped her.
And so, this was the faith of my mothers. The church was the teacher, the Bible the textbook, and the interpretations ranged from the holy to the inadvertently profane. I listened and watched these women for as long as they lived and, throughout my childhood, absorbed their diverse values that blended with the Sunday School teachings and preaching of the Southern Baptist churches my family attended. I learned to sift the messages and keep the ones that appeared to lessen my likelihood of going to hell when I died.
Since I knew from the age of five or six that I had what the Bible lovingly called “unnatural affections,” I also understood the threat of eternal damnation that could be my fate, unless God wrought a miracle and transformed me from my evil thoughts and desires. During my teen years I felt particularly wicked as I lusted after the girls in church and my favorite female high school teachers. In 1963, when I was seventeen and felt the flames of hell licking around me, I read a small pamphlet called a Statement of the Baptist Faith and Message. I thought I had discovered my saving grace, a distinctive Baptist teaching called “the priesthood of the believer.” While this doctrine produced volumes of theological intrigue, my simplistic interpretation at that point in my life was that no one stood between God and me. What a relief. No need for confessions to a priest or, necessarily, to trust the ravings of Baptist preachers. I was redeemed. It was a doctrine that kept me tied to the church and allowed me to censor its bad tidings for more than forty years.
It carried me to a Southern Baptist Seminary where I, rather ironically, had my first lesbian relationship when I was twenty-three years old, a seven-year relationship mired in our guilt and my infidelity. It carried me to a small Southern Baptist church where I had a lesbian affair with a married woman who was the Youth Director and another one with the preacher’s wife. God and I didn’t consider this to be adultery.
To say that my faith odyssey took a zigzag somewhere during the past fifty years is an understatement. With a genealogy of six generations of Southern Baptists and a family tree that includes a great-great-great-grandfather who was a minister during the Civil War in a rural North Carolina Baptist church, it’s no surprise that I surrendered wholeheartedly to the faith of my forefathers. I served as a minister of music and youth for five years in two Southern Baptist churches in South Carolina in the 1970s. Even after leaving the ministry, I continued my membership in the church and its music programs for more than twenty years. As the Southern Baptist denomination abandoned the doctrine that supported direct communication between the believer and Creator in favor of a collective acquiescence to a pervasive ultra-conservative leadership that led to the restructuring of its institutions of higher learning in the 1970s and ’80s, I stayed. When the boundaries between church and state blurred and the denomination tookright-wing political bent, I stayed. When the sermons of the ministers in the churches became a royal proclamation of morality as they and their leaders deemed it in the 1980s and ’90s, I knew my favorite doctrine was in trouble, but I stayed. Yet, eventually, that faith turned to heretical unorthodoxy—a seismic shift in my core belief system. Why?
My work as a paid staff person exposed me to the inner power struggles of church leaders and the budget requirements of doing “something great for God,” as one minister explained to me in the midst of a burgeoning capital campaign. I overlooked the hypocrisy of rancorous Wednesday night business meetings with the harmonious Sunday worship services. After all, the music was what God and I had in common. I didn’t forgive the preachers for their tirades against homosexuals, but I ignored them because God and I knew better. The “priesthood of the believer” was such a comfort—until it wasn’t. I was forever changed by a personnel matter, a blip on the radar screen of Important Events. When the church pianist, a close personal friend, was fired for being gay, I ran out of excuses for God and me. If God didn’t want my friend, I was sure He didn’t want me, and the feeling was mutual. I was done.
Charting that journey on a blackboard entails an array of colored chalk that begins with white for the innocence of childish trust to green for the color of money in the church to red for the anger of betrayal by believers to gray for the edges of doubt and disbelief in the Deity of my mother. “God” and “throne” are words that summon visions of clouds and enormous golden chairs from a Cleopatra movie in the ’60s—not a bad image, but not a convincing one, either. My maternal grandmother’s duel with the Devil also evokes strong feelings for me, but they are feelings of sadness for her inability to achieve that higher level of trust she desperately wanted. She never could be quite good enough, and I can’t believe in a Deity that inspires fear and irrational guilt. As for my dad’s mother, her irreverence was an early confirmation for me of my introduction to the doctrine of “the priesthood of the believer” and gave me permission to begin to overcome feelings of shame when I faced the puzzles of sexual identity that were my life. My grandmother definitely had a unique relationship with her God. Her words and sense of humor helped free me from the somber sermons of damnation in my youth and encouraged me to think for myself. I wonder if she knew.
All paths lead somewhere, and mine returns to where the journey began. My faith is in the rising and setting of the sun each day—with hope that I’ll live to see them, and with love for the laughter that makes each day worth living.
CANTERBURY ROAD
My first impression of the house at 2501 Canterbury Road was of a Tara set from the movie Gone With the Wind. The four very tall, thin, and grayish-white wooden columns on the front of the two-story brick façade reached from the bottom of the narrow front porch to the equally dingy triangular portico beneath the roof. Dark green English ivy crept across the brick in irregular patterns that almost covered the front, but not quite. Lighter strands of the plant made their way to the columns and clung to them for dear life. The house sat back from the street, and several ancient oak and pine trees vied for my attention in the front yard, but I confess I barely noticed them. All I saw were those columns. I halfway expected to see Scarlett O’Hara swoop down the steps, grab the black wrought iron railing with one hand and, placing the other hand across her forehead, proclaim that the South would rise again.
Dear God, I thought, may I please not ever have to live in this house.
God must, indeed, have a wonderful sense of divine comedy because my partner Teresa and I moved into the house on Canterbury Road one year after she bought it as an investment property. She’s a residential real estate agent and thought it had potential. I was sixty-three years old and cranky about change. Circumstances, situations, timing—the vicissitudes of life, as my Daddy used to say—conspired against me and aligned the planets of my universe in a perfect storm that compelled me to Canterbury. The move went as well as moves can go, and I attributed this to our successful downsizing a mere eight months earlier when we relocated to a little house on Woodrow Street in downtown Columbia from a larger home in suburban Spring Valley. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss the privacy of our large lot in suburbia, but I’d gradually come to accept the proximity of the neighbors on Woodrow Street. Our four dogs weren’t so flexible, however, and made life miserable for the unsuspecting neighbors who dared to venture into their own back yards. Thank goodness we hadn’t bothered to unpack all of those boxes. Procrastination has its own rewards.
Unfortunately, the house was not as prepared to receive our family as we were to move in. Teresa’s twenty-four-year-old son and an assortment of his friends had lived in it for the past year, and, while the columns on the front porch still stood, they did seem to breathe a sigh of relief when the boys left. Or maybe that was us. Regardless, we began an interior renovation to restore and renew our new home. In addition to the steady stream of workers on a daily basis, specialty deliveries required schedules and arrangements (i.e., making sure our four dogs didn’t escape or imperil anyone’s safety). Several security lapses occurred during the process, and Red, our Welsh terrier-turned-Houdini, managed to break free twice. Both times he was apprehended and returned unharmed. On one of his adventures, he was spotted riding by our house in a flashy convertible with the top down. He apparently considered it an upwardly mobile moment because he pretended not to recognize us and our frantic gestures to flag down the driver, who appeared relieved to find Red’s owners.
The one room in the house that was completely finished was my office, thanks to an understanding spouse who knew my need for peace, space, and family pictures. I found comfort in the pictures of my mother and father when they were young and innocent in a time before I was born. And the picture of me as a child standing behind my mother’s grandparents, with my mother and her mother beside me, reminded me of our connection from generation to generation. The eyes of my great-grandparents asked me to honor their strength and respect their vulnerability. My grandmother’s smile in that picture evoked memories of her as the center of warmth for me in my childhood home. My mother was a mystery to me in the picture, as she has been in life. I recently heard a character in the movie Up in the Air say, “Pictures are for people who have no memory.” That startled me, waking me from my usual movie-watching trance. For me, pictures preserve people and places and points in time, and I want them in my line of sight for as long as I have the vision to see them. Maybe the movie character just needed better memories.
So, in the midst of screaming saws, pounding hammers, new paint smells, barking dogs, people coming and going—I settled into my oasis on the second floor. In my opinion, it’s the best room in the house on Canterbury Road, and it is both teacher and muse for me. The crisp white trim stands out from the cool gray walls, and the colors soothe and calm me when I hear the turbulence beyond my sanctuary. The size is perfect for my desk and all-important computer work area. But, it is the windows that give the room life and character. From my desk I have two large windows on my right and another one of equal size behind me and to my left. I don’t have Edith Wharton’s view of her lovely gardens at The Mount or Herman Melville’s vision of the humpbacked Berkshires, which he eyed from his tiny writing desk while he penned Moby Dick, but what I see from my windows is remarkable.
I moved to Columbia, South Carolina, in the early 1970s. Columbia is the state capital, and with a population of more than 125,000, it is the largest city in a Carolina state that no one remembers unless it achieves notoriety through an embarrassing public scandal. When that happens, as it frequently does, the rest of the world miraculously makes the distinction between North and South Carolina. Otherwise, the only Carolina that has any memorable features is our sister to the north. Now, after considering the “lesser” Carolina my permanent residence for more than thirty-five years, I’ve simply learned to smile and nod or shake my head and shrug when someone in my travels asks me questions like, “Where is it that you live? Some place in North Carolina?” or, more recently, “Don’t you live in a town in South Carolina? Isn’t your governor the one that ran off to Argentina and said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail? And, then, didn’t he come home to his wife and announce on national television that his one true love was the woman in Argentina? Isn’t that where you’re from?”
The heritage of this city is, well, complicated. Formed in the late eighteenth century as a substantial settlement in colonial America, Columbia is a city that survived the devastation of the Civil War to become number twenty-two on CNNMoney.com’s top twenty-five places to retire in the United States in 2009. I have friends who are historians, and I trust them to weave the threads of the past into a tapestry that differentiates truth from fiction far better than I can. My history lessons come from the windows of the house on Canterbury Road and are vignettes that raise troubling issues for me.
Actually, our house sits on a corner lot, which means we live on two streets. We face Canterbury, and when I look out the windows to my right, I see similar two-story, older brick homes built on lots like ours, replete with immaculate grassy lawns, beautiful oak trees, driveways for parking newer models of European or Japanese sports utility vehicles, and labrador retrievers who are never pleased to see anyone on our narrow street. We are one of the houses that form the boundary for our neighborhood association, Forest Hills, which was created in 1925 and named by its developer for a New York City suburb. We have our own motto prominently displayed on a plaque in a yard near ours: Forest Hills – Historic Homes – Treasured Trees. Our association is active, and committees represent almost three hundred homes to coordinate Christmas outdoor decorations, community picnics, and historical preservation.
Our Canterbury neighbors could not be nicer to Teresa and me. The couple across the street are my age and have an empty nest except for two handsome golden retrievers that behave as well as they look. The young couple next door has an adorable baby girl who is learning to talk and calls all four of our dogs Daisy—the name of her sweet golden retriever. If any of them are disappointed in having a lesbian couple move into the house that resembles Tara, they hide it well. Regardless, during our first Christmas season, we participated in the association’s annual Lights of Christmas, and our outdoor spruce tree with white lights looked just like everyone else’s.
When I peer through the window to my left, the contrast is a tale not only of two cities but of two worlds. The intersecting street is Manning Avenue, which is the dividing line for the Lyon Street Community, an area of slightly more than a quarter mile and a population of 1,654 people, according to data published in 2008 by Columbia City-data.com. But what I see from this window are two small, white, wooden houses with aging roofs and tiny, neat front yards. Cars parked in these driveways are American sedans—older models soon to be considered “vintage.” Both houses have front porches, and in the summer, I often see people gathered on those porches to visit.
Occasionally, I talk with Dorothy, the ninety-something-year-old African American woman who lives in the first house on the left. Dorothy’s age and failing senses have no impact on her warm-hearted spirit and concern for the neighborhood. Whenever we talk, she never fails to greet me with a hug and tell me how happy she is to see me. She confides her worries about the people who live behind her and their lack of interest in taking care of their home. She doesn’t understand people who have no pride in what they own, she says. Dorothy walks with difficulty, but feels with ease.
Less frequently I chat with Mr. Scott, an older African American man who lives in the house next door to Dorothy’s. Mr. Scott is a very handsome tall man who lost patience with us when we moved in because we didn’t remove our construction trash in a timely manner. We admitted our guilt, apologized profusely, and he kindly forgave us. He has an adult son who lives with him. They are less likely to begin a conversation with either Teresa or me, but they are equally friendly when we see them. They even brought us a lovely poinsettia for Christmas.
It’s our first winter in the house, and I can’t remember a colder time in Columbia than the last couple of months. So much for the warm and sunny South. The scene from my second floor office has changed with the weather. Workers came and taped large sheets of plastic across every window in Dorothy’s house several weeks ago. At first, I wondered what happened. Then, it dawned on me that she must be too cold in her home. When I connected the dots, I walked over to see her. She wasn’t there, and her car was gone, too. One light inside the little house stayed on day and night, keeping a vigil of hope for her return. Teresa and I waited for her, too, and were happy to see her come back recently. She had, indeed, stayed with family who had a warmer house.
The median household income for the Lyon Street Community in 2008 according to Columbia City-data.com was $9,542, which means that 41.6% of my neighbors live below the national poverty line. The crime index is nearly twice the national average. When my insomnia isn’t deterred by prescription medications, I hear gunshots from time to time behind our house. Police sirens and blue lights at odd times during the day and night heighten my awareness of trouble in the lives of people in my community. Education levels, unemployment, households with single parents—by almost any measurement, the world of the Lyon Street Community is vastly different from Forest Hills. They are as different as black and white.
However, to make sure the uninitiated driver on Manning Avenue understands that difference, the City of Columbia placed a sign on our street corner that prohibits a left turn from Manning to Canterbury. No left turn. It’s the law. Brick walls further separate Forest Hills and the Lyon Street Community. The walls are seven feet tall, and the color of the brick used in the walls matches each Forest Hills house along Manning Avenue perfectly. Our wall color is the same red brick as our house. It is conceivable that we would never see the daily lives of our Manning neighbors, except for my office window.
I remember the words of a hymn from my childhood’s faith: Open my eyes that I may see—glimpses of truth Thou hast for me… That’s what I see from these windows every day—glimpses of truth. I understand it isn’t the whole truth, but it is my history lesson from a house I now call home. Scarlett O’Hara doesn’t live here, and our home isn’t Tara, but it is a teacher whose lessons define the American people, and I am a student who struggles to make sense of the complexities. Manning Avenue. Canterbury Road. It’s the same location and the same house. It faces different directions on a complicated compass.
I'll Call It Like I See It 