Raven Ever After

People make fools of themselves around people who are in mourning.  They just do.  Some of the gaffes are honest mistakes.  You don’t know what to say so you start spouting platitudes.  Anyone who has suffered, really suffered, finds the one about God not giving us more than we can bear to be, well, unbearable.  That quote isn’t even in the Bible, is it?  I just looked it up.  It is a spin off a verse in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that says you won’t be TEMPTED more than you can bear.  That’s another thing altogether than getting smashed with horrible experiences.  I am sorely TEMPTED to smack some people in the nose for spouting platitudes, but I can handle it, I can control myself.  The temptation does not exceed my capacity to bear it.  But the grief, I don’t see how my family can bear the grief of losing Raven.  They are strong, they will bear up the for the sake of each other, but they are broken and no platitude will fix that.

Then there are the people who want to set a timer on grief. Last night I came on to Facebook to find requests from Raven’s mother and grandmother to flood Facebook with remembrances of Raven because some dimwit said that they shouldn’t keep posting Raven pictures since we lost Raven at the beginning of August and it is now October.  Time to move on, the dimwit reportedly said.

Hello?

Let me tell you something.

When I die, somebody sure had better mourn me loud and clear for longer than that.  Okay, I’m not as sociable as Raven was, so I don’t expect wide spread sorrow for me.  I’ll be happy if five people show up at my funeral, sincerely missing me, provided I even have a funeral, which I’m not really thinking I will.  I figure to just sort of fade into the mist as though I was never here, leaving only a few wonderful books behind and several awful oil paintings -- whereas Raven’s funeral was like a funeral for a princess.  Even Lilly Pulitzer sent a representative.  Yes, the Lilly Pulitzer clothing company, who did a special design for Raven because so many people wrote to them telling how much she had loved their colorful fashion line. So I don’t expect to have as big a chorus mourning me. 

But the thing is, when a person bothers to get born and become a person and live a life, it is the least a person can ask is that someone remembers them, sings them, dances them, speaks their name, posts their photographs and memories for a whole lot longer than two months after they die.  Raven lived sixteen years, and by all accounts and according to the pictures, every one of those years was a joy and delight to those close to her.  So I would say that she has at least sixteen more years where it is appropriate for the family to flood Facebook with Raven memories.

At least.

~~~~~~~~~~~ 

In memory of Raven Alexandrea White, great grandaughter of “Garnet” in PRECIOUS JEWELS, A SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST FAMILY SAGA.  Raven died while boating at Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina.

INSIGHT MAGAZINE AND THE “NOW” GENERATION

Groovy and cool were the words of the day, and Do Your Own Thing was the mantra of the “Now” Generation, that is my generation of cool, groovy long-haired cats and chicks.  Guitars were always around, whether one played them or not, blue jeans were a sign of rebellion and not to be worn on religious campuses.  It was in this era, circa 1970, that the Seventh-Day Adventist church realized that it had to get hip if it was going to appeal to the youth culture. 

What did the Adventists have to appeal to flower children living in the moment, counting the petals on daisies, tripping out on cloud formations?  THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR, the only Adventist magazine for teens at the time, had been started by none other than James White, husband of Ellen G. White of prophetic fame, before the Civil War.  1852, to be exact, not even ten years after The Great Disappointment when the Millerites had scheduled the Second Coming of Christ and been stood up, not once, but twice as William Miller recalculated all the signs and numbers. 

I remember THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR.  In my time, they didn’t hand it out in Sabbath School because, perhaps, they knew it was boring to teens.  I remember my grandparents subscribing to it.  Mrs. White was still alive when they were children, so they were in tune with THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR.   By 1970,  other Christian ministries were targeting my generation with psychedelic posters of a smiling Jesus in love beads.  The One Way arrow figured prominently (One Way To Christ).  Books such as JESUS THE REVOLUTIONARY were being published to show how hip Jesus was.  It was time for a cool,  groovy replacement of THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR before our entire generation lost interest and split the scene, man.

            And so INSIGHT MAGAZINE was born, its covers featuring guitars and warped fonts in hallucinogenic colors.  This magazine was proudly handed out in Sabbath School, and I would surreptitiously read it from cover to cover during the church service that followed.  My ambition was to be a published writer, but I had no idea how to make that happen beyond writing stories, which I did with pen and paper, later on a Smith-Corona manual typewriter that was older than I was.  If I wanted a second copy of anything I wrote, I had to use smeary carbon paper and hope I didn’t make too many typos on the original.  Some writers claim they prefer a manual typewriter to computers.  In my opinion, that is seriously deranged.

            I was seventeen years old in 1973, one of an elite handful of students who had been chosen by Southern Missionary College to enroll in its Honors Composition Class.  I forget how they discovered me.  I was extremely withdrawn, traumatized by years of bullying and other personality-shriveling experiences.  I had never been on the Honor Roll in academy, and certainly didn’t graduate with honors, having focused instead on my notebooks filled with my handwritten fiction.  Apparently, rays of brilliance leaked out somewhere, somehow, in a detectable form, because I ended up in the honors class which was taught by the rather exotically-named Dr. Minon Hamm.   

            I still have the papers I wrote for that class.  Among them was “The Chase,” an action-adventure car chase story in which my father’s road rage ended up in a terrifying encounter with another driver who also had road rage.  In the story, I never identify my driver as my parent, and Dr. Hamm wrote a note on the margin that she found it intriguing that I never say who the driver is in relation to me.  Another story was “The Hearing,” in which a white child yearning for affection accuses a black teacher she admires of having slapped her.

            Dr. Hamm said that all of us could “write circles around her.”  She was a warm, enthusiastic teacher who loved mentoring us.  The most exciting feature of the class was that before we finished, we were required to submit one of our stories to INSIGHT MAGAZINE’s national writing contest.  If I’m not mistaken, it was their first writing contest ever.  If not the first, it was the second, for sure and certain.  At any rate, it was a new feature, this contest, and I was wildly excited (in my subdued, withdrawn way).  Dr. Hamm was submitting a story, also.    

            I submitted “The Shell.”  The story had happened the summer before, and I was, even then, struggling with the conflicts that would end with my leaving the church and rejecting all organized religion.  I wanted to believe, so I was in a wistful state of mind, when I wrote the story about an incident on the seashore involving the faith of my eight-year-old cousin.  She had found a shell, fallen in love with it, only for it to slip between her fingers.  The sun was setting, the wind was wild, and she was praying to Jesus to help her find the shell.  I didn’t think she would ever find that shell, and I was saddened that she might lose her faith at such an early age because I knew what a painful process that is.  The story was very short, only a few paragraphs long, describing the search on the beach, my inner conflict, and my shock when the little girl screamed with joy that she had found the lost shell.

            Now, the desired ending would be a reaffirmation of my own faith, but real life is more complex, or it has been for me.  Instead, I ended the story on a more haunting note: Then I hear another cry. It chills through my wet clothes to my heart. I hear the bleat of a lamb. Spinning around to face the roaring sea, I see the gull. It opens its beak and utters the bleat again, gliding and dipping to touch the water.

            The reader is left to draw an independent conclusion, one that I do not spell out except in my subtle reference to the bleating of lambs and the crying of gulls.     

            We in the composition class critiqued each other’s stories.  I think Dr. Hamm thought “The Shell” would win the contest.  Maybe she gave all the students the impression that she thought their story would win, and that was the mark of a true mentor.

            I don’t remember the other students’ stories, but I remember Dr. Hamm’s.  It was titled “Uccello.”  In the story, a group of students are spending a summer studying in Italy.  When they arrive, they find that they are staying two to a room and must choose roomates.  The narrator ends up rooming with an unpleasant girl named Robin. The story was beautifully written with bird motifs throughout, the birds on the rooftops of Italy, the tortured, birdlike soul of Robin, the Italian word for bird, uccello.  In the course of the summer the narrator and Robin build a rapport and as a result, Robin begins to open her heart to Jesus.

              I remember “Uccello” because it was well crafted, but I also remember it because Dr. Hamm was put in an uncomfortable position when she had to inform the class that “Uccello” had won the writing contest.  She apologized profusely.  I don’t think any of us held it against her because we knew that she had competed with us because she considered us worthy competitors.  Besides, it was clear to me why INSIGHT chose her story over mine.  Mine had a cool, hip teenage protagonist, but Dr. Hamm’s story had an exotic location and a tidy, religious conclusion.

            Several years later, I found my writing groove.  It was a new age, the hippies were a vanishing breed, quickly replaced by yuppies and the word groove was going the way of the vinyl record album.  I came back to the INSIGHT contest and won it several times.  There was a new editor at INSIGHT, so eventually I dug out “The Shell,” and what do you know?  They published it for the kids of the nineties. To use 1990s speak, Sweeeeet!

Maggie Boo

One night I found myself flying across the Green Swamp on one of those sage grass brooms that I remembered from my childhood at the old Malpass place.  My great-grandmother, Miss Ellen, and great-aunt Esther would use these brooms that were made of the tall yellow grass that grew wild outdoors, tied with a string.  I don’t recall their brooms having a handle, just bundled grass, and since the grass was tall, so was the broom, taller than me, standing up in the corner of the shadowy hallway of the old Malpass place.

I used to try to make my own grass brooms but there was more to it than I understood, so mine were never any good, making a floor more messy than when I started sweeping.

That night, I was flying on one of those brooms over the land of my childhood, over tall yellow grass and marshland, with a dark river winding under me, edged with trees that grew in the water.  It was a glorious night. 

I wasn’t exactly me, but that wasn’t strange because I often dream through the perspective of other people.  I’ve dreamed myself into different time periods and different parts of the world.  I’ve dreamed myself as men and women, old and young, different races.  Some of the dreams are so vivid that I cannot forget them, such as the dream where I was a brown man in a desert landscape, riding a large shaggy animal which I have tentatively identified as a wooly mammoth.  I remember the animal’s hair was ropey, somewhat dreadlocked, and that I was as dirty as the animal I rode, kneeling on a dirty rug across its broad back. Memories like that stick with you, even if they are only dream memories.

Sometimes I recognize where I am, but at other times I seem to be in civilizations that have been lost to time, such as the wooly mammoth rider’s time.  The dream of flying over the Green Swamp was that sort of dream, one I would not forget, although this time I recognized the time and place.

My destination was one of those weathered old houses they used to have in the Green Swamp, the kind that sit on stumps and never see a paintbrush.  It was about the size of the Malpass house but the roof was different and it had an attic room with a window.  A little blonde girl was waiting for me at the window, and I felt a deep love for her and a knowledge that this feeling was returned.  I knew that she was the only person in the household who was expecting me, and I wondered why. 

Other things were afoot in the dream.  There was about to be a wedding.  There was a threat to happiness.  The little girl was worried, and I had come to save the day.   The dream slipped forward as dreams do, and I saw myself lifting up from the front porch and flying over a wedding party arranged in the yard for an outside wedding.  Whatever was happening was about to happen now and it had to do with the bride and the groom.  But something happened and instead of saving the day I veered off course and crashed into a weeping willow tree.

I woke up with all this clear in my mind, but with so much missing information.  Whose wedding was it?  What was the threat to happiness?  What had I tried to prevent from happening and why?  Why did no one seem to welcome me except the little girl?

And just as important…

What happened next?

How could I find out?

There was only one way.

Write the story.

So I began at the beginning, well, no, I began before the beginning, at the point where the little girl defies her elders and invites me to the wedding.  Of course they didn’t want me there.  I was an embarrassment to the family, flying around on a broom and causing attention to myself. 

And who was I?

I was…

Maggie Boo.

And who was the little girl?

Annie Doodle, Maggie Boo's niece.

Who was getting married?  The little girl’s older sister, Minnie Carol.

And what was the problem?

No clue.

So I kept writing.  Maggie Boo arrives, flying over the Green Swamp, and suddenly other characters started showing up the narrative.  Granny June with her red beaded purse, and Crazy Jim with his tarantula that he wore on his head.  And then another character entered.  And she was trouble.

If you want to find out what happened on Minnie Carol’s wedding day, you’ll have an easier time finding out than I did.  I had to dream it and then write it.  All you have to do is click on a LINK and order a copy!