Blog

Saturday night we cruised north on I-75. The highway was a sea of red, and rain streaked the brake lights across the bus’s massive windshield in arcs and splashes. But the traffic charged forward, sweeping us along with it.

In the distance, the lights of Atlanta’s skyscrapers rose above the trees like the center of a newly formed galaxy.

The kids played in the back of the bus, long past their normal bed time. Maile sat beside me at the front of the bus, her feet up on the dash. We talked about how years change people. How life has made us a little more tired, a little more mature, a touch more cynical, a little less selfish.

Then we entered the city, the lights rising around us. It’s a fascinating feeling, driving through such tall buildings late on a rainy, Saturday night. The lights reflected off the wet highway, battered the windshield. Passing cars glared into my side view mirrors, then flashed past, making disgruntled sounds in the rain. When I opened the small sliding window beside the driver’s seat, the smell of wet, hot macadam rushed in to where we sat, filling the bus with summer.

Lightning flashed. Or was that a streetlight blinking out?

Then a quiet rustling through the curtain beside me. In the far reaches of my peripheral vision, out at the edge of a different galaxy, 2-year-old Sam had quietly walked to the front, pushed through the curtain that separates us from the back, and sat on the step beside my seat. He looked up through those huge pieces of glass, up through the rain, up at the forty-story office buildings with lights just blinking out.

Like a cricket in the forest looking up at the moon. Was there anything smaller than him in that entire city, looking up at its expanse? For a moment, he seemed like the center of it all.

Then, in a whisper, he said one word:

“Uh-mazing.”

A few of you were wondering what happened to the race organizer in the suit trying to chase down Kathrine Switzer at the Boston Marathon and rip off her race numbers because she was a woman and he didn’t want any women running in his race. Turns out, a huge dude body checked him. As an abbreviated Saturday post, (and since you all are such blood-thirsty, violent types) I thought I’d post the pics here for everyone to see.

Then there’s this shot:

I think these photos have a few lessons to offer us:

– Check out Kathrine Switzer’s determination. Ladies, she wasn’t giving up, and she wasn’t handing over her numbers. Keep that in mind, and keep running your own race, whatever it might be.

– Check out the small mob of supporters around her. These men were determined to help her finish her race. No matter how strong and determined an individual might be, everyone needs the support of other people from time to time. Are you willing to body check a race organizer for someone?

– Someone took these photos. I wish I could give a credit, but I just couldn’t figure out who took them. But the point is this: every story needs someone to chronicle it, or it will be forgotten. And when a story is forgotten, it might as well never have happened. If you’re a writer, or a photographer, or an artist, or a musician, or a teacher, or a human being: preserve the stories. Pass them on. Stories are one of the few weapons of power given to the weak and downtrodden, and storytellers can give gifts of significance to those viewed as lowly or insignificant by giving voice to their stories.

Stories can turn the world on its head.

Keep telling them.

* * * * *

For part one of “When a Woman Isn’t Allowed to Run the Race,” click HERE.

The small boy (me) stretches out on a worn sofa next to the man (my dad). He is watching television. The man wraps his arm around the skinny boy, protecting him from the world. In response, the boy asks the man a lot of questions, drowning out the evening news, but the man never shushes him like I (so often) shush my son when his life intersects with my own adult busy-ness.

Just a second, buddy.

Hold on a minute.

Let me just finish this up.

The little boy on the sofa asks the man (his father) the umpteenth question: “When you were a little kid like me, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

The man pauses, then speaks barely above a whisper.

“When I was a little boy, all I wanted to do was play baseball. That’s it.”

The man squeezes the boy a little closer, and the boy’s insides are crushed, not by the weight of the embrace, but by the realization that the man (his dad) had a dream that didn’t happen. Suddenly his house feels small and inconsequential, an indefensible structure in the face of a dream-squelching world.

But his father keeps hugging him, and eventually the small boy drifts off to sleep, and the weight of his dad’s arm is enough.

* * * * *

The small boy (my son) perches in Willie’s passenger seat during a five-hour trek into southern Georgia. He asks the driver (me) a million questions, and for the first time in too long the driver listens, and he answers every one.

“Did they have TVs when you were my age?” the small boy asks skeptically.

“Yes!” the driver protests, laughing. “I’m not that old!”

The small boy laughs mischievously.

“What was your favorite food when you were my age?” and “What were your four favorite sports, in order from one to four?” and “What did you like to do when you were a kid?”

Later the young boy would tell his mother, “I love sitting with Daddy at the front of the bus when he tells me about when he was a little boy.”

* * * * *

My dad sent me an email shortly after we left on our trip. In it he told me how he followed our big blue bus much further than I had realized, and how when he finally stopped he parked his car and watched us vanish into the traffic and over a hill and then we were gone. The things he said in the note made me feel like that boy again, lying beside his father on the sofa on a hot summer night, falling asleep as Dan Rather relayed events going on around the world. Events that were powerless in the face of his father’s love.

It’s a good feeling, when your father pays attention to you. I need to do that more, for all of my kids. Just stop and listen. And keep the world at bay for them.

Today’s guest post (minus the lengthy intro) comes to you from the always transparent Tamara Out Loud. Maile and I had the privilege of meeting her and her family a few weeks ago while traveling through Gainesville, Florida, and she’s just as kind and fun in person as she is in her writing. If you’ve never been over to her blog, you’re missing out – follow the link at the end. She’s an exquisite story-teller and her writing explores the crucial topics we often try to gloss over or avoid.

I’m honored to post this piece by her today because it’s the first time she’s ever shared in writing her story of being a foster mom. It’s also the first time I’ve ever cried in a McDonald’s while reviewing a guest post for my blog.

When she sent it to me, she wrote “This guest post for you made me grieve hard. I’ve never written anything that made me cry like I have tonight…Yet, writing it for you because we once talked about the fact that I’d done fostering and it meant something to your family gave me a push I never would have forced on myself for my own blog. And I think I needed it. So all this to say: thanks, even if you didn’t realize it, for the catharsis of retelling this story in the way I know best.”

And that’s one of the things I love about story-telling: the healing it can bring. So without further delay, Tamara’s story:

* * * * *

The social worker had a thin frame and kind eyes. He hefted the bloated baby as gently as he could through my front door and set him on the family room floor. He gave me the blue folder, thick with legal jargon and cobbled details of a life not yet a year long but already so laden. The sweet boy, immobilized by his own weight, looked up at me with such innocence to his whole situation, eyes like dark chocolate under curled lashes, and all his weight immobilized me too.

I could hardly hold him, and I could hardly not. I sweet-talked him with my mama voice and he felt no need to cry.

We began right away to try to undo the damage of eleven months of neglect. But a boy who’s lived his whole life in a high chair, given food instead of care, isn’t one much for veggies; he certainly can’t crawl. So we were patient and persistent, and after one month in our home, the only junk he had had was his first-birthday cupcake. As he mashed cake and tasted frosted fingers, I’m not sure who delighted more– the darling birthday boy, or the family to whom he already belonged.

And the family who fed him with health and with love was more than my husband, our three kids, and me– it was also the ones whence we came. He’s been gone from our home for four years now, but my grandmother still asks about him and it kills me not to have answers, and my mom still cracks up at memories of him and sniffles back tears at his pictures.

We always knew he wasn’t ours to keep, but that’s true of any child; it doesn’t stop the heart from hoping. And when the placing agent asks if you’d be open to adoption, your brain can get tripped up too. But what can you do, and you just love them, and you pray for their best, never mind yourself, but somehow your self sneaks in.

So I picked him up from daycare each afternoon, and by then he could mightily toddle, and with arms outstretched to the one he knew best, he beamed, “Mama!” and I loved him.

But the call came too soon, and the voice was too harsh. She was his caseworker and I was only his foster mother– a place holder for a real parent, a temporary fix in a state-wide shortage, a volunteer with no rights whatsoever. Not even to advocate for the little one in my care. He’d be picked up the next day and transferred to a foster home closer to the area his transient mother hung near. It would be easier for the agency to coordinate transportation if ever she decided she’d like to see her son.

I grasped madly at wits amid hot tears and laid out in a voice with as little tremor as I could manage his sure benefits in staying. He was thriving; I would drive him to see his mother; we’d make room in our small house for his sister. I don’t know how much was articulated logic and how much, desperate pleas. But it didn’t matter what I said, and she gave herself away in the end: I didn’t know how to raise him anyway– I was white and he was black.

The words slapped my heartbreak into fury, and I spat my demand to speak to her superior. The kinder woman calmed me with embarrassed apology, but sadness, only ebbed, came back and washed me over. And I told her there was just no way I could have him ready the next morning– I needed the weekend to clean all his clothes. But you really can’t prepare a baby to leave what he knows of home, and all the clean clothes a duffel bag can hold buy a mama only so much time.

So we took our small gift of three days, and when the transporters came to take the little boy, they had to stuff goodbye-balloons from enamored daycare teachers beside him in the backseat. And as he looked at me with those beautiful baby eyes, he didn’t know that it was the last time he’d see this mama’s face. But he was fed full of her love.

* * * * *

Tamara Lunardo works out her thoughts on life and faith at Tamara Out Loud, occasionally with adult language, frequently with attempted humor, and hopefully with God’s blessing. She is the editor of What a Woman is Worth, due out this summer through Civitas Press. You can connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

My friend (and blog designer extraordinaire) Jason McCarty posted this picture on his Facebook page a few days ago, and something about it caught my attention. What’s up with the dude in the suit accosting that innocent woman trying to run a race? I had to read the caption.

It turns out Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston marathon in 1967. But it wasn’t until the race had already begun that race organizer Jock Semple realized a woman was running. (That’s him in the suit trying to rip her numbers off.) Reportedly, he chased her down, shouting:

“Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.”

However, Switzer’s boyfriend and other male runners provided a protective shield during the entire marathon.

* * * * *

Things like this snag my attention now that I have two daughters. One of them is in her bunk reading. The other is trying to sneak toys in under her covers. But some day they will make the connection between who they are and what they want to do, and when that day comes I will do everything in my power to help them be whatever it is.

Race a car.

Be a mom.

Run a company.

Lead a church. (Ouch, a lot of you were with me until that last one, eh?)

Whatever.

* * * * *

I wonder if their race will be hindered by men trying to tear off their numbers in one form or another.

I hope my girls will have the perseverance to keep going.

And, should it prove necessary, I hope that other men and women will form a protective circle around my two little girls and help them run the race they set out to run.

* * * * *

There are some great discussions going on in the interwebs about this topic. For starters, check out Ed Cyzewski’s series, “Women in Ministry” or Pam Hogeweide’s book, Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church.

Upcoming projects include Tamara Lunardo’s What a Woman is Worth and Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood.

The blue bus relaxes in the shade of tall trees on a small back street in a quiet suburb. A thick electrical cord winds its way to a 30-amp socket, meaning the generator (aka the old man under the bus) can take a rest. A wide tube exits from the innards of the bus and trails into a septic tank, meaning the waste can be emptied at any time. This little spot under the trees is a comfortable place.

At night we turn on three small fans. One pulls cool air in through the only window that opens. The second one, situated in the hall, pushes the cool air up to Cade’s bunk. Lucy hoards the third fan in the top bunk, where the air is warmest. When the lights blink off, the sound of the three fans creates a trio of white noise, lullabies of refreshing air that sing us all to sleep. We wake up in the morning cold, wrapped in blankets we didn’t think we’d ever need again.

This is the most comfortable spot we’ve been in during our entire trip. No need to drive anywhere. No diesel required. Palm trees on the other side of the street wave their fronds up and down, up and down, moving in a rhythm not unlike the sweeping movement of a hypnotist’s locket and chain. The leaning trees whisper to us:

“You are feeling very sleepy. You’re eyelids are growing heavy. Now count slowly backwards from ten to one. Repeat after me: this is a comfortable place. This is a comfortable place. I do not want to leave this place.”

Palm trees can be very convincing.

* * * * *

Comfort is a funny thing. We aim for it. We strive for it. We work hard to attain it. So much of what we do in life is centered around becoming comfortable. I eat because I don’t like the discomfort of feeling hungry. I sleep to ward off weariness. I work to make money so that I can have nice things that make my life easier or more fun.

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

But comfort brings new problems. Comfort attained often inhibits growth. It distracts us from setting or reaching new goals. Having grown comfortable, we stop learning about ourselves. In the end, comfort makes us rigid and inflexible in our thinking.

* * * * *

Here we are. We have become very comfortable in Pinecraft, Florida, with our bus hooked up to electric and a septic tank, no need for diesel, and a place to do laundry. These small comforts make it difficult to think about leaving. But today we leave. We head north. We begin the second quarter of our journey. 8500 miles to go.

The refusal to relinquish existing comforts derails dreams and places us on paths with other unsavory travelers: Boredom and Ineffective Living.

It would be silly to live the rest of our lives on a bus parked on a small street in Pinecraft just because we don’t want to give up these comforts. Think of all the sights we’d miss out on! Think of all the people we’d never meet! Think of all the annoying adventures we wouldn’t have!

Don’t let comfort keep you from living. Don’t let the fear of discomfort keep you camped on a back street of life. Don’t be scared to disconnect, batten down the hatches, and hit the road, if that’s where your journey leads you.