Time For Another Dispatch

Dispatches from the Edge and Other Stories from the Margin:

Birthdays, Hard Days, and Other Ways We Stay Alive

Well, friends, it has been quite a week for the Kerr household. Nothing dramatic happened, nobody ran off to join a circus or burst through my door, guns blazing, demanding custody of the dining room furniture, but the days felt busier than usual, and the hours seemed to elbow each other for space. We celebrated another birthday, which, in this family at least, marks the tail end of the holiday season. Some families tie the end to Epiphany, when the Three Kings set off in search of the Christ child. We here wait for mid-January when the oldest boy blows out candles and tells us what he is planning for the year ahead. It might not be a holy day, but it is a happy one, and we need as many of those as we can muster in this world.

By the time we got to the weekend, everyone still liked each other, which is more than some families can claim after a hectic week. A person can forget how fortunate they are to have ordinary problems. It is a risky thing to grow complacent with one's blessings. The truth is that one person's busy week is another person's great mercy. Some folks are simply born a little closer to the shoreline, already near the harbor, while others are tossed unexpectantly into the open water with nothing but a dented bucket and a vague sense of direction.

I remember a fellow I met at work many years ago in a transitional housing building. He was one of the regulars in the residency, the kind of man whose name staff would learn simply by repetition. He introduced himself to me at the front desk one afternoon, slightly inebriated, which turned out to be his resting condition. He was crass, irritable, and carried the sort of humor that comes with a serrated edge. When he smiled, it was usually because someone else had slipped on life's banana peel.

After a year or so, I learned his rhythms from watching him on the monitors at the front desk, which showed every angle of each floor of the building. He would climb the stairwell every day with a brown paper bag and try to outrun whatever storm lived inside him. When he got drunk enough, he would wander the hallways wearing an oversized woman's dress. He never came down to the lobby with it on, never left the building, and never so much as acknowledged it during the week. But up on the fourth floor, his ghost would float past the elevator doors, lace hem brushing the linoleum floor.

One Saturday evening, I was forced to cover a third shift when my staff member called off. And in the hours between 2 and 4 a.m., when the world is quieter than it knows what to do with, old Theodore drifted down to the desk. He couldn't sleep. And for the first time, he talked to me not as a nuisance or a problem, but as a man speaks to another man who has witnessed a fair amount of trouble.

He told me he was from Las Vegas and that he and his wife once ran a restaurant together, quite happily. He said it slowly and with pride, and looked me in the eyes as he did. I remember his eyes misting over as he spoke, as he spoke of bygone love-filled days, another life entirely. Then came the sudden case of cancer and the short goodbye he had to make to his beloved, and whatever sturdy beams held Theodore upright snapped in the collapse. He tried moving in with his father, who lived here in town, but you can't force a man in grief to sober up by willpower and sermons alone. His father, a kind man but by no means a saint himself, could not carry the weight of him. So Theodore landed in transitional housing where the rules were looser, and no one asked him to figure out employment.

The dress, he said, was hers. On weekends, when the pain in his chest made it hard to breathe, he got especially drunk and put on, letting the memory of her wrap around him once again. I've seen worse ways a man can hold on to love than by borrowing her clothes and letting fabric carry what words no longer can.

All of which is to say that life is tricky. These rivers run deep, and the water can get pretty wild. So if your world is calm today, take a moment to look up and say thank you, because you are living in a good stretch of river right now. And if your world is raging and the rocks are sharp, know that there are unsung heroes and midnight angels out there who don't mind riding the river with you. They cannot change the current, but they can help steer you toward solid ground. And when people such as these surround you, the world can get better faster than you can imagine, and in ways the newspapers never bother to mention, and accreditation audits sometimes miss.

I wish I could tell you the story stopped right there. I wish old Theodore had let those quiet helpers ferry him the rest of the way. But grief is a stubborn current, and not everyone finds a safe shoreline in time. Not long after that long night at the desk, he drowned himself in drink. His liver gave out, his breathing followed, and the front desk logs grew still where his name once appeared.

So now, whenever my months get busy, and my own problems feel sharp, I remember Theodore and how grace can call out to a man and still not be taken. It keeps me from being complacent about my blessings.

And if the Good Book is true, and I have reasons to believe it is, then there are new mercies to be found at the dawn of each new day.

It's worth our while to look for them.

Well, that is today's dispatch. From the dusty corners and the quiet places, keep the faith, friends, and pass it on.