For one semester--and for reasons I've long ago forgotten--I lived in college housing in a basement apartment beneath a brick apartment building, downtown Sioux Center, Iowa. First semester, junior year it was, I believe, right downtown, just an alley between us and the offices of the mayor of the village.
I don't know that I ever met him personally, although I'm quite sure had I run into him on the street, he would have smiled to acknowledge me. The town mayor lived an odd life for a resident of this cow town on the prairie. Most of his life--we were sure--was lived in his next-door office, not around a fireplace at his home. He was the mayor, very highly respected, acknowledged to be the major mover-and-shaker in his town. Most histories would agree that he hustled the town into becoming thriving little burg it has become.
His strange, off-hour comings-and-goings from that downtown office only increased our estimation of his character--and his mystery: that the man lived to lead Sioux Center seemed perfectly obvious. To the college guys who lived next door, downstairs in those basement rooms, the Mayor seemed town royalty.
But back then he wasn't the only potentate. There was another too, the man who had quite single-handedly chosen Sioux Center, Iowa, as the home of a new college to be created by people from the same tiny denomination, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) as he and his congregation. That college was and is Dordt College (now "university"). Together, the Pres and the Mayor were the town royalty--they shared the throne and, at least to our 20-year old perceptions, got along royally.
The Mayor's Office is now a laundromat, but the apartment building looks just about exactly as it looked fifty years ago. Sioux Center is probably twice as big as it was in the late Sixties, and the college the Pres carved into existence now enrolls twice as many students, a majority of whom are not members of the CRC. Things change.
Yesterday was the funeral of a daughter of the Pres, not the oldest child but the first of what was once the royal family to pass away. But today most people around town don't remember anything of her regal birth, or of the royal family from which she came. What ordinary folks know is that she was a long-time elementary school teacher, that her husband is a fine man, a good father. They may also know that the two of them had three children, each of whom is married, the oldest of which has reached "middle-age."
A small crowd will be gathering, I'm sure. Whatever royal status her father (and her mother) had achieved a half-century ago won't be visible at the ceremony. People are sad, friends and relatives are mourning, but the funeral itself will not be royal.
Cancer took her. Death, not a respecter of persons, came too early, as it often does.
It's an old, old story, retold in every town and village on Planet Earth, isn't it? Crowns tarnish, storied lives turn to dust--after all, life is fleeting, memory is all we have, all achievements are temporary. It's one of the oldest songs we sing.
Sometimes when I go past that brick apartment building, I wonder whether anyone still lives in that basement apartment. I wonder if I'd be really polite, I could bargain my way in sometime just to look around, just to remember.
It's a bargain with truth, isn't it?--because try as we might, we can't go home again. The only rest is eternity. "I am not my own," the creeds beg us to promise. Death is the final seal.
An old friend, daughter of a preacher, once told me her father used to say that when he did a funeral he learned to just get out of the way. "Just read a psalm," he used to remind himself, she said, "just Psalm 90, no more: "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom."
I don't know that I'd really like to see that basement apartment where, just about sixty years ago, we used to live. It can't possibly be the same. Nothing is.
Ubi sunt--one of the oldest themes in human literature, comes up effortlessly on days like today, one of mankind's oldest lamentations--"where have all the flowers gone?"
4 comments:
Maury and BJ were influential with the development of who you are, they created a job for you. The ground level floor above you was the medical clinic of Dr. Orhrich whose nurse Bertha Buyert, poked my shoulder with a three inch needle so I would not get polio..
Your blog, Jim, brought back some memories that have been buried for a long time.. The last time I walked through those basement apartments was around the year 1967 or 68 during the height of the Vietnam war. Today, I believe that that building houses a number of Hispanic families who live, play, work, and worship in a town that’s very different than 60 years ago. A few years ago, I walked around that building whose date is chiseled in stone at the very top of the building: 1950. Some years ago, I made my way partly into the building, but never dared come down to those basement apartments unannounced or uninvited. And so for now, they simply remain in my memory.
Many times I have gone back to the places of my youth only to feel discombobulated. Thomas Wolfe was right: you can’t go back home – not really, at least not the way we remember it. Truth is, we were made for seasons in life – seasons not designed to be repeated nor perpetuated. It goes against the grain of what a season is. Our calling is to live in the present and anticipate what comes in the future. So it was with father Abraham.
You are a writer with an acute sense of observation, and you are historian, with an acute sense of time’s passage. It’s natural at your age to reflect on the past and the many memories that go with that. But may it be as we grow older we nurture in ourselves the ability to focus on the present and with it what lies before us in the future. I find it’s the only thing that ultimately brings sustained shalom.
Thank you again for the gift of your blog.
Thanks for your blessed addition to the post!
Thank you for the gift of your comments. What both of us know is fatigue is not only ever present in these later days of ours, and, sadly, the burden it weighs on us is ever heavier. Comments like these, this morning, are a buoy for which I'm exceedingly grateful.
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