Gardening Wisdom

Did you know that if you plant certain plants too close together, it will cause little or no fruit production? Did you know that if you plant certain plants next to each other, it is bad for the fruit yield? Did you know that sometimes, the biggest plant will yield the least amount of fruit? Hmm......let's think about these things for a minute....or a few days. Wonder if people are like plants?

Ponderings

Providence is like any other place in the world...except that it has the ghosts of my childhood there...and therefore, is the only place of it's kind. All places have trees...but only one place has a mimosa tree in which I had a club. (I sat on the upper limb, my cousin sat on the lower one. It was a two-member club.) Most places have a local store. But only one place had a store where Carlton Coke had a mechanic shop out back and where you could lay on a bed upstairs in the back and watch people through a peep hole. Some places boast of a fine school, where education is second only to the caring hearts of the teachers and staff. But only one place had a school where the lady who helped raise me made the vegetable beef soup and tuna fish sandwiches on Fridays. ( I see you wincing...you have no idea how delicious!) All  schools have classes with classmates who grow up together....but not like my class. Nope. "My Class" was different.

My first day in a public school classroom happened in August of 1969. That year held a few things that would make history: the last issue of The Saturday Evening Post hit the magazine stands; the Supreme Court ruled that The First Amendment applied to public schools; Elvis had a comeback and introduced us to "Suspicious Minds"and "In The Ghetto"; The Godfather was published; James Earl Ray plead guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; John Lennon and Yoko Ono were married; Looney Toons ended and The Brady Bunch began; The Vietnam War was ongoing and a man walked on the moon. Charles Manson, Sesame Street, Woodstock, and Led Zeppelin are all names that would all become part of our collective consciousness. I, however, was blissfully and wonderfully ignorant of all of those things. I would turn 6 years old about a month after my first classroom bell called me to order. The biggest thing that happened in my life that year was the 7 stitches I got in my chin after falling from the merry-go-round on the playground and my appearance on the Arkansas version of The Bozo Show. It was a time of innocence for me... in the midst of all the hatred, strife and political corruption that was happening all over the world. 

I was never aware that the day-to-day people, who were significant influences in my life, had lost many hours of sleep....and peace.... and had suffered many atrocious blows from being in wars, sending children to wars, and watching as the world around them changed forever...and wondering what would be in store for little ones....like me. I was much more in tune to the fact that I liked singing with Mrs. Miller, my first grade teacher. She taught me neat songs like "Mr. O'Leary's Cow" and "Down Through the Chimney With Good Saint Nick."  I liked how we copied sentences from a large piece of writing paper...and how, when I fell and cut my chin, (refer to the stitches in the previous paragraph), the sentence we copied was about the blue thread in my chin. :)  I loved how we got chocolate milk for an afternoon snack....and how we sometimes played "Duck, Duck, Goose" or "Button, Button, Who's Got the Button" when the days got long.  I loved how we all met each other and how we became "our class."  I don't remember learning to read. I don't remember learning to do division. I don't remember learning how to identify the nouns in a sentence....but I remember playing kick ball with those big, rubbery, red kick balls on the playground. I remember singing "Mr. Postman" with my friend, Mary...and I was so impressed when she told me that her sister wrote that song. (Her sister didn't, really, but I didn't know any better then....and she probably didn't either.) I remember playing jump rope and playing on the monkey bars on the south side of the building. I remember developing my first trust issues when the friend who I was see-sawing with decided to quit the game unannounced and let the see-saw fly down with me at the top! Sometimes, a group of us would take over the swings on the playground...and we would sing and sing while we swung high into the sky! While people were dying in Vietnam, I was napping with my head down on my desktop. That is a very poignant thought to me now.

"My Class", the kids who would graduate in 1981, had a reputation, I heard from one teacher. Apparently, we were rebels. I don't think I was a rebel...but now that I'm older, I realize that I didn't really know myself very well back then...so, maybe I was a rebel. (Nah.) There were, at one time, around 40 of us, give or take a few. I can almost list them by alphabetical name...but I won't try, because I'd surely leave someone out. Our graduating class had 22 students. Most of us had started in that 1969 classroom together. Like it or not, we were together for almost nine months out of each year, for twelve years. Even if you didn't "hang out" with one another, you had a connection. Even if you didn't really "like" each other, you tolerated each other. The older we got, the more united we seemed....at least it seemed that way to me. I felt like each person was a brother or sister...and I wanted each person to be in their place. I remember having sad feelings when someone in our class was sick or missed school for an extended time.....it was as if my world was unbalanced. Everyone in the class was a part of me....whether they or I liked it or not. We had to make the best of it...at least I thought we did....and really, I think we did. There were parties, projects,  fights, disagreements, jealousies, love affairs, heartbreaks, and friendships made and lost. But through it all, somehow, the germ of "friendship" was kept alive..if by no other means, by the history we shared and the space we made in each other's hearts and  minds. 

On Saturday, four of my former classmates, two accompanied by their spouses and the other two by themselves, spent the day with me in  Providence. The building in which we met was one mile from the school where we graduated 32 years earlier. There was no fighting. There was no jealousies. There was just friendship. We talked about our lives then and our lives now. We pondered what our 50 year old selves would say to our 18 year old selves. I left feeling as though I really understood some things about my former classmates that I did not before. My heart warmed when I realized that, to the ones that were there, at least, they love me as much as I love them...and that our love for each other is, in some ways, a timeless sort of love. That love could be described as, (and I'll borrow from my sister-in-law here), "comfortable." We didn't  have to explain much history...because we already knew a lot of each other's history. There was, however, the occasional revelation that got shared, and it changed my paradigm once again....and I had to re-visit my feelings about a thing or about a person...and I became a little more gracious and understanding at the end of that revelation than before I knew it.

 I enjoyed coming to understand these people in "My Class" on a deeper level at this reunion. We didn't all have the same interests, but it was fun to discover new things and new interests about these people who I thought I knew so well. I continue to appreciate different interests from me. Does that sound like something I should have learned in the first grade, back in that 1969 classroom? Well, sad as it may be, I'm only now learning how to navigate the waters of "different than me" with any proficiency. I'm only being honest. I sure wish I'd been this interested in them back in our school days. Perhaps it would have made me a more kind person. Perhaps it would have made me a more interesting person to have been more interested in others. But we go from here, don't we.

There was a time in my life when I wanted to leave, forever, who I was when I lived in Providence. I wanted to become completely different and leave all of that life behind me. Time, experience, and plain old "life" have brought me to a different conclusion though. I have come full circle...and I embrace and LOVE who I was and where I developed into who I am today. This circling back has it's painful spots....like realizing that perhaps I was responsible, or at least played a role in, someone's insecurities or someone's pain or loneliness back in our school days. I continue to learn more and more about how to love people, respect people, and honor them for themselves. I continue to learn to look at the bigger picture of things and how to have consideration for the circumstances that bring people to the places where they are right now. I realize, more and more, that every person is a unique, important, and valuable individual who has their own unique and individual sort of struggles...and that they do not see the world through my eyes. God, please help me to keep having revelations...and help me always be gracious and love. Thank you for placing me in Providence, God. Thank you for "My Class"...because we are still connected and we are still having an impact on each other.:)