Valetine's Day 1955

Around this time in 1955, I got the shingles. Yes, I was a little girl in elementary school with herpes zoster, a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash that trailed a blistered stripe up my right thigh, around my hip, and across my lower back.

You've seen ads on television with old men like Terry Bradshaw talk about the debilitating pain?  Even though this happened sixty years ago, I still remember the scorching, shooting pain.  It was worse at night. I'd wake up screaming and bucking in my bed from the agony. My mother would come in and rub lotion on the blisters and tell me how sorry she was that I was hurting, that she would take the pain from me and carry it herself if she could. Mothers are like that, you know.

Mother was among those women who, after World War II, continued working outside the home--from 8 - 5, Monday through Friday. Like many families in the South, we had a maid who came in during the week, who cleaned and cooked and made sure we weren't latch-key kids. But when I got sick, Mother stayed home with me. My brothers were at school, so it was as if I were an only child, and she showered me with her attention.

Valentine's Day occurred toward the end of my affliction and Mother went to Duke & Ayres, the local "five and dime" store, and brought home red construction paper, scissors, paste, lollipops, copper pennies, strings of brightly colored yarn, and other trinkets that have faded from memory. We sat at the dining room table where we cut out heart shapes and created our own valentines. On the ones decorated with the strings of yarn, we wrote "String long with me, Valentine." The ones with pennies were inscribed with "It makes cents for you to be my Valentine." And my favorite, "I'm a sucker for you, Valentine" was written across the hearts with the lollipops attached.

Having shingles at such a young age is something I would not wish on anyone. But having my mother all to myself as she created a love-filled memory that has lasted a lifetime is something every daughter should experience.

My mother is no longer of this earth, but her memory is alive in my heart, and today, the day after Valentine's Day 2015, she still comforts me.

Valentines

When I was moving this year, I found an old Valentine’s card from my ex-husband. The card had the inscription: The best is yet to be. We divorced two years later. He broke my heart, and I didn’t think life had much to offer… I was just marking time, wanting and waiting to die.

In the cycle of life, after all endings come new beginnings. Not immediately, however. There is a middle ground—I call it the wasteland, that desert where you wander in your howling grief, being stripped down to the bare bones of you, sustained only by daily manna from God.

Barbara, Jackie, Maya, Elda, Charlotte and Wynell were my manna. They were unrelenting in their care; they fed and comforted me when I could not.

I stayed in that wasteland until I could let go of my old way of being and walk out, a “new” person. I did not jump into a new relationship after my divorce (Thank you, God!). I don’t think it was because I had good sense; I believe it was because I trusted God to lead me rather than my pushing or rushing to a new beginning. It has been a long road, but as I always believed in my heart, when I got to the other side, I knew it would be worth the hard lessons and time alone to find out exactly who I am at my core.

There is a new man in my life. We met twenty years after my divorce, and we have been together for almost three years. For Valentine’s Day, I received such a surprise when I arrived home… the sweetest bouquet of pink tulips sat right inside the front door, a bouquet of long stemmed red roses greeted me in the kitchen—along with a box of chocolate truffles—and a bouquet of red roses awaited me in the bedroom. Ron did not do this because he felt he had to compete with a memory or impress me with grandeur. He did it because he knew I didn’t expect it, and he delights in surprising me.

On Valentine’s night we went out to a local restaurant to listen to a band we know. Misslette reminded the audience that God loved us first, so if anyone was alone, to remember that none of us is alone or unloved. Truer words have never been spoken.

The last song Misslette performed was Etta James’s “At Last,” and Ron danced with me. The next morning I thought about the line in Robert Browning’s poem. The entire first stanza of the poem—not just one line—describes my life today.

GROW old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in his hand

Who saith, ``A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

 

Where are you in the turning points of your life today—at an ending, beginning or betwixt (in the wasteland)?