I was helping a family to list their home today. A family that has lived in Douglasville for decades, but is now uprooting to go back to the home of their childhood to help with aging parents. They are retiring and just plain tired, hoping to turn a new leaf and start a different life.
How many times do we do this in our lives?
I remember being a young child and having to climb the steep stairs to the giant schoolbus that lumbered to our door. I was excited to ride it, though quickly learned how tedious and scary it could be, particularly when a giant fifth grade girl ruled from the front row. She was terrifying. Italian, beautiful, and ruthless. Even the bus driver obeyed her. In one day, my secure little life changed drastically. Aside from the giant, however, I loved school and my first grade teacher. She was strict with her lessons but hilariously fun during breaks. I remember us wearing boots and dancing on top of her desk. I am not kidding. Then when it was time for class to start, we were expected to be studious and serious in our seats. Elementary school was a delight and childhood was grand.
Then came middle school. There was no going back. We were on campus with the high schoolers at McEachern back then. There was a pecking order and we were at the bottom. We learned our place and that was generally to stay out of their way. But in our classes, my old friends from elementary school suddenly became sophisticated. Smoking. Kissing boys. Nights at the roller rink. Mama wouldn't let us hang out there, so my sister and I watched The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family on Friday evenings, dreaming about Donnie Osmond, Bobbie Sherman and David Cassidy. We imagined what it must be like to grow up, have a boyfriend, live exciting lives. High school rushed in like a tsunami, with lots of activity, excitement, trials. It seemed like it was never going to end, but then was over in a flash. Our childhoods take only a few years, but those years hang in our minds like a frame on a wall. What we do with it, what we populate our frames with, is up to us. We're not constrained by our frames, but we often believe it and can't seem to move past it. It's where we start, but not how we have to end up. The night I graduated, I looked all around me at the places at that school that I had loved: the musty, old gymnasium where I had sweated so many hours...the steps going up to the building where I loved to hang out every morning...the broad lawn where we threw softballs and frisbees...the band room where I found the bliss of playing with a group of people. All these precious places, now my past. I couldn't stay. I had to turn the leaf over again.
I clearly recall the day that my parents dropped me off at college. It was exhilarating, this new chapter. We arranged my dorm room, signed the proper documents, ate lunch. Then they pulled away from the curb. As I looked around, for the first time I realized that I didn't know a soul. For the first time in my life, there was no comfortable friend or ally to walk to class with...nobody to cry or laugh with, no routines or familiar roads to traverse. It was all novel to me. I felt alone in the universe. It was a new leaf. Somehow, I muddled through the first few days, meeting myriads of people. One epic day, I was in my room when a beautiful, 6-foot tall German-looking girl with deep-set eyes lit with intelligence walked right in without knocking. She was only wearing underwear and seemed perfectly at ease. That was Grace -- quirky, brilliant, funny, dry, shocking. She was instantly my friend. Grace introduced me to Red Zinger tea and Handel's Water Music. She had no problem speaking exactly what was in her brain. I began to understand more of where she came from... She had a hateful, legalistic father who beat her over the head with his demands and spiritual pride, then virtually beat her and her mother with his demon-filled fists. Coming from a home where my father exuded kindness, all connected to the spirit of God, I was confused about this kind of hypocrisy. How could she not explode with rebellion and all manner of debauchery in the face of such duplicity? But she didn't. She internalized it and by the grace of God worked her way through the hell that had been put upon her. My last week of college, where I was going through a personal firestorm, I hurt her deeply with a cruel and cavalier joke. I walked away, my final day, without making it right. Pride, shame and angst mixed up my heart until a few weeks later when God pricked me and caused me to make many things right, not just with her. Sometimes it takes an earthquake to shake a stubborn heart and I had almost wrecked every relationship I had. Perhaps there was something about the dreadful unknown that was staring back at me as I knew my leaf was about to have to turn over again. Despite my lapse, Grace and I have remained very close friends all these years, sharing mileposts, tears and joys along the way, even though we are a thousand miles apart.
There have been many more "new leaf" seasons in my life -- marriage, babies, moving, changing jobs, changing churches, losing family and friends...and then finding the next paths as I rounded the corner. God never does anything the way I think that He is supposed to do it. I love that saying, "If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans." The wild backside of this tapestry is a mystery, but it makes perfect sense to Him.
Rosemarie Norton is an artist and Realtor who lives on Magnolia Street in Villa Rica. Catch u
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