Those we meet along the way
Lessons on seeing and being seen
I swore I wasn’t ever going to write about this in this newsletter…
…but here we are.1 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about that expression “it takes a village.” If anyone has had to learn to live into that saying, it’s me. I have been a solo parent for more than a decade (longer if you consider how things were going before my divorce), but by no stretch of the imagination can I say I did it all on my own.
I tried, mind you. Lord, how hard I tried. One of my children received a difficult diagnosis while still in kindergarten and I lost most of the community I thought I’d built, especially here in my small town. Some disappeared through attrition — I had nothing left to give and was so drained most of the time that I became a terrible friend. Those, I understood and continue to understand. The others, however, not so much. To this day I cannot comprehend people who exhibit a complete lack of empathy or worse, use self-righteousness and good intentions to cloak cruel acts and words.
Put simply, I lost faith in most everyone and everything and so tried to be everything my kids could ever need.
This, my friends, was the textbook definition of an epic fail.
Thankfully, one person saw through my fakery and pain. At first, she helped our family as a therapist — she was the one to refer us to the psychiatrist who would confirm my child’s diagnosis and help form a treatment plan. I remember answering her questions during intake and feeling for the first time that possibly, just possibly, I might not be wholly incompetent or delusional, as more than one person had alleged. I just happened to be in way over my head.
After a time, she changed jobs and ceased working with us in any kind of therapeutic capacity. More time passed and she became a trusted friend, the kind who knows you, who sees you, who can talk you off the ledge.
Full disclosure here — I have come to question many of the diagnoses we assign to children. Given the extraordinary suffering some children experience, why would they act like those born into safer circumstances? Why do we refer to a child as “atypical” and try to change them rather than focusing our efforts on changing a world that gives children unequal chances from the very first? Besides, whose norms define “neurotypical” anyway?
I digress.
None of those questions change the fact that without this person, I honestly do not know what would have happened to our family.
What’s more, thanks to this one person, over time something else happened — I slowly relearned to trust and over time, built a more stable, reliable community. When you know who your people really are, you can begin to trust that they get you and that they’ll show up whenever you manage to swallow your foolish pride and ask.
There is a lot to be said for knowing how to see, not least of which it’s a heck of a useful skill for a writer. My Grandma Ruth had that capacity, which probably explains her love of writing feature stories whether for the local papers or for larger publications such as the regional Country Folks. Today, I thought I’d share a column from the summer of 1993 in which she put those skills to work in describing three “people along the way.” Faced with a world that scorns those it deems ordinary or unimportant, Ruth restores a piece of their humanity and with it, our own.
People I meet along my way
There are certain people who leave a memory that lasts longer than the more casual encounter. I call these “my people I meet along my way.”
This summer during a week vacation in Kenmore with my brother and his family, I added three such persons to my collection of “people along the way.” Each is very different, and yet underneath they all have the same love and caring for others. They show and share this in different ways.
. Her name is Melba. She is the pianist/organist at the nursing home where my mother is a resident. She is the one who got Edith singing again, once she learned that one of Edith’s favorite songs was “The Whiffenproof Song” from her childhood days near the Yale campus in New Haven. Now mother sings along with the others as Melba leads them into the old favorites about “Susie,” “Sal” and “Rosie.”
I got to know Melba better at the picnic she hosted for the volunteers who help with church services at the home. She shared her music, her love of people, and her love of her home with us, and we delighted in the event.
I learned from conversation with her that life had not always been so kind and that she had overcome some major setbacks. “When my husband died I told myself I would continue living and it would be the best I could” she told me. Her enthusiasm for living is contagious. Her name is Melba.
. Her name is Irene. She is across the hall from my mother and I usually exchange a few words with her. This summer I got to know her just a little bit better.
She left the Sunday picnic just a few minute before the others, and as she did there was a spontaneous serenade of “Good Night Irene, Good Night.” She smiled and waved as she was wheeled back inside the home.
I stopped in her room a day or so later, and found her lying in bed deep in a Danielle Steele romance. We exchanged a few comments about the author and about my mother and then Irene said, “Wasn’t that some picnic Sunday? But I have been wondering, why did they sing to me? It was nice, but why did they do it? I squeezed her hand and gave her the only answer there was: “Because they care about you.”
By any standards Irene could well be termed “a loser.” Her husband died, and then her son at an early age. When her daughter-in-law remarried, Irene’s contacts with her grandsons diminished.
First Irene lost one leg and then the second to the ravages of disease, but she never lost her caring. She still participates as much as possible in the busy schedule at the home. She welcomes all visitors with a smile and a handclasp, even when the pain is very bad. She gives so much of herself just by being there. Her name is Irene.
. He calls himself “Ramblin Lou,” and with his family is a frequent country music entertainer in Western New York. This summer he entertained at the Allegany County Fair.
Within his musical group he has many names: husband, father, father-in-law, band leader, boss, et al. His music is traditional country and his band is indeed a family unit. His wife plays a mean guitar and also sings. One daughter is lead vocalist, another plays the keyboard and sings, and the third plays fiddle and clog dances. A son is at the drums and a son-in-law at the sound system board. The only “outsider” is the accordionist. However, the evening banter makes it plain that he is almost “one of the family.”
“Ramblin Lou” also has his own country music station and the family is involved as accountant, engineer, announcer, sales representative and entertainers. He is faced with a much more competitive market today than 27 years ago, when his was the only country music station in the area. Lou remains undaunted.
His audience of three generations at the town band concert I attended was there to hear his kind of country music and to visit with his kind of people. Every member of the group was walking and talking during the intermission and after the show. It was more than entertainment; it was a sharing. His name is “Rambling Lou.”
These, then, are three whom I have met along my way in this summer of 1993.
Ruth Dennis of Jasper is a columnist for The Spectator.
Closing with a bit of song
Nothing helps you get to know a person, ancestors included, like listening to the music they love, so I thought I’d share a couple tunes I discovered whilst working on this post.
There are about a million versions of “The Whiffenproof Song” available on YouTube, but I wanted one I could imagine my grandparents and great-grandparents listening to. The song begins at 2:12.
Similarly, it turns out there are a LOT of clips I could have chosen to share from Ramblin’ Lou, who passed away relatively recently, in 2016.2 I picked this tribute video because the images are just too good to miss.
It’s not that I avoid writing about these things—I wrote about them for years, actually, primarily in my role managing The Attachment & Trauma Network Blog. That and a huge amount of family healing got it out of my system…mostly. Also, it’s not impossible that I would not (yet) have become a writer had all that not happened.
Did you know Buffalo had a “pioneer of country music?” I sure didn’t, although I almost certainly heard Ramblin’ Lou’s music as a child without knowing what I was listening to. To learn more about the man, his radio station, and his band, check out Steve Cichon’s article “Ramblin’ Lou and the Family Band.”