The mark they left

I tried to get my Aunt Elsie on the phone yesterday, and the number had been disconnected. I don't know what this means, but I reckon it means in some form or another we're moving on in that relationship.

Everywhere I turn, we're moving on. Growing older, more tired. Passing on, and away, till time will have little meaning for us.

I'm reminded of relationships. From the seventh grade to my senior year in high school, Ricky Roberson came home with me on the first week of October. Right as rain, and just as trustworthy was our relationship. Ricky, the long-limbed, lanky pitcher on our baseball team, Billy the stubby catcher.

He came home with me with a bag and some homework that might or might not have been done, and we went on Thursday night to the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair at the Fairgrounds in Meridian, Ms., just across the state line from York, Ala.

The fair was about a big a happening as ever there was a happening in Meridian. Interestingly enough, back then I was able to venture onto all the rides with no fear at all. Upside down, round and about, ripping through still humid air like I couldn't be harmed in any way. I remember change pouring out of our pockets every year, though every year we made a solemn vow to protect it better. Ricky, the center on our football team, and Billy, the middle guard, were both unconquerable and apparently unhurtable but also unlearning.

He rode the bus home to spend the night with us, and all, absolutely all that could possibly be wrong with the world was corrected in one special night each year. We rode rides into that good night, were picked up at the late hour of 9:30 p.m. for the 20-minute ride to my house in Lizelia, then played football the next.

Friends for life, and beyond, we were. Those scars on legs and arms and fingers and even a toe or two were ours. The pain of loss, even a few out-and-out losses was ours. Our time, our coming in and going out, was ours, and nothing has ever taken it away. Nothing. .

Of course, I haven't seen him in decades, but that's another story for another time.

Friendships are like thick marbeled ribeye steaks in that they get better with each and every bite, and they never, never disappoint no matter how the question "How do you like your ...?" is answered. Rare friendships? Fine. Well-done? Absolutely. Medium-well? After all these years, of course?

 

New friendships, and those old, seasoned ones grow on us like the meaty grain-fed farm animals pour protein into our lives.

 

In one of my favorite stories in scripture, there was a famine in the land. A man from Bethlehem in Judah left home to live in the country of Moab; he and his wife Naomi and their sons Mahlon and Kilionm who married Moabite women (doesn't that always happen?).The name of the first was Orpah (the correct spelling of the queen of our television), the second Ruth. They lived there in Moab for the next ten years. But then the two brothers died. Naomi was left without her sons or her husband.  One day she and her two daughters-in-law decided to leave Moab and set out for Judah (home). And so she started out from the place she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law with her, on the road back to Judah.

 

After a short while on the road, Naomi told her two daughters-in-law, “Go back. Go home and live with your mothers. And may God treat you as graciously as you treated your deceased husbands and me. May God give each of you a new home and a new husband!” She kissed them and they cried openly. They said, “No, we’re going on with you to your people.” But Naomi was firm: “Go back, my dear daughters. Why would you come with me? Do you suppose I still have sons in my womb who can become your future husbands? Go back, dear daughters—on your way, please! I’m too old to get a husband. No, dear daughters; this is a bitter pill for me to swallow—more bitter for me than for you. God has dealt me a hard blow.”

Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye; but Ruth embraced her and held on. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law is going back home to live with her own people and gods; go with her.” But Ruth said, “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god; where you die, I’ll die, and that’s where I’ll be buried, so help me God—not even death itself is going to come between us!”

To me there is no greater sign of friendship or even something deeper than this notion that what we have between us will not change, no matter how our circumstances change. Nothing will take this from us. It's as certain as days must end in Y, and nights must offer stars for desert.

Christian Morgenstern once wrote, "Home is not where you live, but where they understand you." I guess that to be about right. That thought, for an itinerant preacher who serves at the discretion of the bishop of the conference, is special.

Fifty years have passed since Ricky and I grew into and out of the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair, since Kenny Joe and I became best buds, since Errol and I drove around in that radio-less car that forced us to sing at the tops of our lungs if we wanted any music in the pale yellow Mercury I named Mokey Bear, since Stanley and Randy and Sonny and the rest of us went unbeaten in summer baseball, since we beat Meridian in high school on a couple of home runs, a good pitching night and something called chemistry and the good times outweighed the bad by a ton or two. Since ... since we looked at ourselves and silently committed to go where each of us would go and live where each of us would live till we didn't. And when it did, and obviously that time came, it wasn't the end of those times but the beginning of those memories. They exist like the lake at the west end of Lizelia, like the bricks that went up on the walls of what would be Northeast Lauderdale elementary through high school in 1962 and never came down.

That white house of ours up on the hill off highway 39 still stands there in Lizelia, housing renters and my memories. Ricky had a bout with cancer a few years back, but I believe him to be okay now. He and his wife have three girls, and he coached them all. He's one of the top high school softball coaches in the state, with state championship belts on the wall, as they say, and all that baseball we learned together with coaches Pratt, Covington, and Moore was convertible to softball.

The Fair, as far as I know, still comes into town the first week of October, putting up tents and putting down stakes in that area that once housed The Royal Drive-Inn movie theater. TThe rides, I'm certain, have changed as much as my hairline and my waistline, but I'm willing to wager friendships made on that old asphalt and grime are still friendships of the highest order. Sure, time has worn on the area like friction on tired automobile brakes.

Me? I've seen kids come and grow, and I lose the scirmaches to age on the world's battle-field everyday, it seems.

Francois Mauriac once said, "No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."

I first met Ricky Roberson in the third grade. He, and all the others, went our separate ways to different schools for different reasons as freshmen in college, and we never really came back together. Wives and lives and jobs and all ganged up on us.

I have very little to give them now. I'm not absolutely certain I would know them, him, if they walked in to my church this Sunday. I don't know their phone numbers, or their addresses. But till the moment I breathe my last, their people are my people, their God is my god; where they die, I’ll die, and that’s where I’ll be buried, so help me God.

I can truly say that he, and all those guys I grew up with, left a mark.