The Pinches and the Priest

This story is from Linda Benoit, a friend of mine and of many others in my local church. (That's BEN-wah for any of you non-Louisianians out there. *grin*) A woman in her mid-60's, Linda is married to a really friendly, down-to-earth man named Larry who can play a mean lick on a guitar.

Larry and Linda are very involved in our church, helping in numerous behind-the-scenes functions. Together, they have previously received the church's annual Discipleship Award. Both have always had a smile and a kind word to offer to anyone I've seen them interact with. I caught up with Linda after service last Sunday and got a quick story from her while she ate a doughnut in the church kitchen.

"Okay. I grew up Catholic. And so, my mother always said that we had to go to church no matter what. Only way you could not go to church is, you had to be really sick or dying."

I did not learn specifically where Linda grew up but I do know that, down here in south Louisiana, many families are Catholic. Many are seemingly more Catholic as a part of Louisiana culture than in strict practice of the religion, but many are SERIOUS about getting to Mass every Sunday.

Linda continued, "So, one Sunday we went – we were little – and my mother always sat on the right side, and that’s where the priest would come, give his morning message. And my brother was misbehaving, and she kept pinching him! And he said, 'You’re hurting me!'”

"Finally," Linda told me, "after 3 or 4 times, the priest said, 'The lady in the front row who’s pinching her little boy, please stop.'”

I cracked up laughing. "What did your mom do?" I asked.

"Well she didn’t like us anymore after that. Well not really, but we calmed down. And she fussed at my brother and he said, 'But you were hurting me!' And… but we didn’t do it anymore. But she still sat in the front row. I don’t know why…"

"Was she embarrassed?" I probed.

"Oh! She was very embarrassed! She was like… and you have to know my mom… she’s been dead 4 years. She’s ALL-ways right."

Seemingly in effort to salvage my opinion of her mother, Linda went on to say, "And she was one Go… she was one of God’s busiest people. She always flew… we were the first ones there and the last ones to leave. So, I grew up with, um, church."

Childhood memories that shape our perception of our present daily everyday lives. I have my own set of them, and I'm sure you do as well. I believe things like that shape who we are and how we behave when we grow up. And thankfully, despite some of our parents' fears and regrets, most of us turn out okay.

I appreciated this little glimpse into Linda's world!

The Mind of Scott

“I saw a lady give birth. Okay. I walked in there after the birth. Okay. What I saw… no man should have to see ever happen.”

Talking to Scott is like talking to one of my younger brothers. My brothers are different in many ways, but they both love to talk about topics that interest them. And they both seem to enjoy equally enthusiastic conversationalists with whom to have these verbal expeditions.

Most of the time when I talk to Scott, these crazy random topics come up and we discuss and dissect them until we get bored and move to some other train of thought. Scott is a friend of mine. We have some truly interesting chats, so I asked him if he would tell me a true tale for my blog. I got several, and have had to pare the conversation down to blog-sized. But they're all really intriguing tales. And now, back to our story.

“It’s the magic of the human body. I guess. But… I stood there for a couple seconds; it got weird in the room. Cause it freaked me out! I wasn’t expecting that when I came in; the doctors over here, standing side by side, and they just had… presentin’! For whoever walks in the room!”

Scott, an insightful African-American young man in his early 20’s, went on to describe this life-altering experience he’d had.

“And it… it freaked the (expletive) outta me! I still… it was AWKWARD! Then, I went over to the side to see the little baby, he was all ashy lookin’… I would think they would give him lotion or something, you know, they just came outta someplace moist; I’m surprised it was that… ashy. That was weird. It was really weird to me.”

I interjected, “I can only imagine. I saw a video of that happening when I was in college but…”

“Well, it’s even nastier when you see it come out with the sac,” Scott added.

“Ohhh…”

“Yeah,” he said. “The little… it looks even nastier, cause it looks like a bunch of iodine… just popped out.”

“Okay!” I didn’t know what else to say, ha!

“I… I’m serious. And it’s… and it’s very disgusting. Giving birth is one of the horriblest things you can ever see in your life.

I ventured to ask him, “Do you want kids?”

“Kids?” Scott thought for a second. “You know what, I’m not opposed to it but I’m also not jumping towards it or looking for it really cause… if it happens, it happens.”

Pushing the envelope slightly, I continued. “If you had a kid, would you want to see it being born?”

“I would be in there… but I would be cussin’ myself in the head the whole time,” Scott declared. He went on, “Cause she be cussin' me out, I be cussin' myself out cause “you know you don’t wanna be here right now for this” …cause you know what’s bout to happen. You SEEN it; it’s horrible.”

Scott went on to describe the variety of fluids and… other matter… that escapes a woman’s body during labor and delivery. I’ll spare you his descriptions. *grin*

It can't be THAT bad... can it? I mean, if nothing else, the end result has to be worth all the work, sweat, tears, cursing and... fluids...

“You can’t ev… you can’t lie and say when you were in high school and they showed you the health video and they… did they show everything?” Scott asked.

In MY high school? I never even heard of such a video being offered. Could have been due to the conservative climate of the area I lived and went to school in... who knows. I told Scott, “No, I didn’t see that in high school.”

Scott, however, was more than happy to elaborate. “They didn’t sh… okay, they showed us. They showed us the egg, and how hard one sperm has to fight to get to that egg. It’s a battle to the death! It is. You should watch the video. And you will realize that you were the toughest outta all those (sperm). You made it; they didn’t. They lost; you won.”

Yes indeed.

Scott concluded with the postulation, “To the victor goes the spoils of life.”

Amen, and amen.

Change of topics. We went on to discuss the trials and tribulations of getting your initial driver’s license, the evolving processes of getting your license renewed, explored several other topics, finally reaching the point at which we discussed job interviews.

Scott led in. “It makes no sense. It’s just like a job interview. Do you get sick of them asking you the same damn question 5 times in 10 different ways? You’re like… LOOK. I SAID I WORK OKAY WITH PEOPLE. Stop askin' me if I like people or not!”

I have taken issue with these interview methods before. “You know what gets me is those… those, uh… those questionnaires they make you take to see if you’re telling the truth and they ask you the same thing over and over in a different way?”

Scott knew what I was talking about. “Oh, the one that takes 10 hours to fill out?”

My rant continued, “Have you ever stolen a pen from work? Have you ever stolen office supplies? EVERYBODY’S taken office supplies!” I wondered aloud if the interviewee is expected to admit to past grievances or tell the truth and, thereby, paint him or herself as a Sticky-Note Crook. This is one of the multiple life-quandaries I have yet to figure out.

Scott contributed, “I’m not gonna lie, the first time I started doin’ em, I said no. Now I say yeah, you know what, I’ve taken a pen from a job; I’ve taken a stapler from a job!”

“Yeah.” I understood perfectly.

Feeling maybe just a little vindicated, Scott tossed out a “Thank you!”

I added, laughing, “Well I’ve done it both ways and I’ve never gotten the job either way. You know? Neither way worked for me.”

At this point, Scott grew ambitious in the face of ambiguity. “You know what, I’ma work for myself. I’m… I’ma work for myself. I don’t know what I’m gonna DO…” he thought aloud.

Scott is so smart and great with computers and electronics. In fact, at his home, he built his own tailor-made computer! I stated what, to me, was an obvious opportunity for him: “You’ll have a computer business!”

Scott agreed that was a possibility. “Either that or… draw. I don’t know.”

I love these little tidbits I learn about people I know when we get into these conversations. A fellow artist!

More pondering aloud… “Probably not for money but I would just like to draw, free time. I would like to, you know, make commission off of it but, you know, it wouldn’t be a source of income… that way it’d just be something I’d… but what I would do for…“

Scott stopped. A thought had hit him, and he had discovered the answer to his own life dilemma.

“You know what? I’ma win the lottery.”

He wasn’t going to hear any criticism. Solemnly, I agreed: “That is my goal.”

“It’s gonna happen,” he declared.

“That’s my goal,” I firmly repeated.

Scott continued, “Lottery? It’s happenin. 20… something. Lottery.”

Wishing big… one of my favorite things to do. It’s kind of a game I play in my head, not ever really taking it seriously… but oh, if I ever did win the lottery… man oh man oh man. I would be one grateful girl, let me tell you that.

“A nice little ca… you know what, it don’t even have to be a million dollars!” Scott mused. “50 grand. To where they don’t have the… or I have to get a lawyer so they don’t say my name, cause I don’t feel like moving.”

With no hesitation, I stated, “Oh, I’m moving! I get the money, I’m GONE.”

Scott agreed. “I… I understand. I would probably move somewhere else better.”

The conversation turned to the topic of Lena’s and my plans to move as soon as we get the money… we’re thinking Albuquerque… somewhere drier and cooler and… WAY out of the reach of hurricanes. (If you live in south Louisiana like I have most of my life, or anywhere along the Gulf Coast, you know exactly what I mean.)

“I can’t wait,” I said wistfully. “We’re work, I mean, we’re working on it.”

Hopes, dreams and everyday life. Those are part of the reason I have these conversations with people. I get to hear their hopes and dreams, learn some of their life stories and, hopefully, we both come out of the conversation having learned a little about each other and about life in general.

That is my hope, also, for the readers of this blog. Have a great week!

Coal Miner's Daughter

“I was born in southwest Virginia. My dad was a coal miner.”

Picture it: 1940's, rural area in the Appalachian mountains of southwest Virginia. This is where my friend Julia Young spent her childhood. She was the youngest of five children, and her father worked in the coal mines to support their family. Her story gives credence to the truth that having a lot of money is not a requirement for enjoying life.

When I think of Julia, I see a great big smile! Julia has lots of smiles to share and lots of hugs to give. Now in her early 70's, she is a working woman pulling 40-hour weeks and going home every evening to her life partner Kathy and their "son" Beau, a cute and energetic little Westie puppydog. I met Julia at the church we both attend, and ours is one of my most valued friendships.

A "game night" at church... Julia on the far left, Kathy on the far right.

Julia began telling me about her growing-up years. She told me her family didn’t live in a town but in a “place” where 25 other families lived. Blackwood is an unincorporated area in Wise County, VA. Blackwood was a coal town near the farthest southwest corner of the state of Virginia.

"There was a store, and a post office, together."

"And that was it?" I asked.

"That was it. But yeah, that’s where I grew up and it just really cool. And… we moved there when I was… almost 5. We moved there in the summer that I was 4, and that’s where I remember most of my CHILD-hood childhood.

Julia told me about being the little sister to four older siblings: "My oldest brother joined the Navy when he was 17 and I was 4. And he used to come home and ride me around on his 'soldiers' - pick me up on his shoulders," she smiled.

"My other brother Ron is seven years older than I am. I was in the 6th grade when he graduated High School. He was like, back a year or something. I was telling Kathy last night, I don’t even know wh… oh, we were watching a football game! And I said, 'I wore his football suit!' And she goes, 'Football suit?' How ‘bout uniform?' And I went, 'Oh, yeah, that!'"

Julia and Beau

Julia continued, "But he, that brother, was closest to me, the one that’s… I only have one sister and one brother living. I have one sister and one brother who died."

Her living brother, she told me, is in North Carolina. Her sister lives in Jacksonville, FL.

Julia resumed telling me about her years growing up in Virginia. "You know. Christmas was because of United Mine Workers, which was a union that the coal miners belonged to. And they would give a bag of candy and fruit and nuts, about this big, for each dependent that my dad had. And my brother was 'too old.' You know. 'Can’t have that. You girls have that. I’m too old; I’m a teenager,'" Julia laughed. "But, yeah. We had a lot of fun, though."

"We, um, everything that we played we just about made, you know? I remember playing baseball. I was the only girl on the team, and we, our bat was a piece of wood that my dad had whittled a handle on."

"And we played with that, and we had a softball, my softball, that was so cheap that if you, if you hit it with a bat - *WHAPO* - you’d get it out of shape!" Julia chuckled at that story, still vivid in her memory.

While Julia talked, I could imagine snapshots of the experiences she described. Five kids and maybe some of their friends, getting together and laughing as they ran, played and got sweaty while throwing, hitting and catching a lopsided softball. Those sound like good, fun memories to me!

"Um, we used to go up in the woods," she told me. "I loved that, used to go up in the woods and we’d pick flowers, wildflowers for our mom. There was a stream that ran from the reservoir and… violets, BEAUTIFUL violets and if you’d… um, my brother taught us, well, if you’d follow the stem of a flower as far as you can, then it would be long and then it would fit in the vase… not the vase; the… jelly jar," Julia laughed.

"...Fit in the jelly jar better; it would be a long stem. And he taught us… he taught us all kind of things, taught me a lot of things." Julia's love and admiration for her brother glowed in her smile and warmed her voice as she spoke.

"But yeah… and then, he and I used to go up in the woods in the summertime and look for trees that were already down – felled – for, that were still good that we could cut up for…"

"To dry out for winter?" I asked with a smile.

"To dry out for winter," Julia affirmed. "And then we would haul them down to the house. We didn’t have a saw or anything."

"Well what’d you do?" I asked.

"Axe," Julia answered matter-of-factly.

"Axe… oh!! That’s work!" I laughed, impressed.

"Then," Julia added, "we would get two tons of coal that cost twenty-six dollars. I remember that so well, my dad sayin that! 'I got… 2 ton of coal cost $26!'" In Julia's voice, I could hear the echo of her father's pride.

She went on, "And my brother built a basketball goal for us. We put it in the ground and had a basketball goal to play basketball. My sister played basketball; Peggy. She was taller than me and… all the time taller than me. And I’d jump and jump and jump and try to block her shots and she’d go step back one step and go, 'PLOOP!'" I gathered from that, despite all Julia's efforts, Peggy would usually make her shot.

I shared with Julia how the sight of Lena and me playing basketball is something akin to watching an episode of The Three Stooges. We laughed awhile and settled back down into our conversation.

When Julia was 13 years old, her family moved to Washington, D.C. "We moved to D.C. because the mines had shut down. There was no more operating. There’s coal there, but there was no more... I don’t know exactly for sure... I’m thinking there was no more operating money or something."

"The thing that I find fascinating about my life," Julia later added in an email to me, "is the integration of schools the year after we moved to Washington D C. It was scary and interesting at the same time. We went to junior high that year, thank God we were in the same school because we stuck together out of fear. There were white and black kids both inside and outside the school... screaming slurs to each other... threatening close to death if you go inside...". Julia went on, "Police men there controlling kids and finally getting everyone inside and it continues inside also. We were terrified!"

I can only imagine what it was like to be a kid in school when all that took place. As people, we all grow comfortable in our accepted social norms. When major changes take place, we are shaken. We are "put out." We are sometimes afraid. Two races, previously divided, encountering one another in a mixed setting for the first time... yeah, I bet that was hard for both sides to adjust to.

But both sides DID adjust. And, while things are still not and will never be perfect, integration has become our "normal." Interacting with people of different races every day is something we are used to; something we are comfortable with. Adapting to changes is something we have the ability to do. Still, it is our CHOICE. We can stay stuck in old, rigid mindsets, or we can grow and change with the world around us.

Julia told me that, even though she and her sister grew up in a the "racially-segregated south," she is proud of the interracial friendships she has formed and has come to greatly value.

So Julia from southwest Virginia, an Appalachian girl who grew up in the woods and around the coal mines, found herself up north in Washington, D.C., teased about her southern accent but learning and growing up. Since then, life has taken her many other places... but I'm glad she's here now, in Baton Rouge. I told her once she's the big sister I never had. She told me I am the little sister she never had.

And that is just fine with me. :)

Julia and Kathy with Cindy Williams from "Laverne and Shirley" at a theater in Florida