Home Again, Home Again

Up at 7am, load the last bag and my pillow and blanket into the car, print out driving directions (I will not take any wrong turns today), quick stop at Panera's for a "headlight" and iced tea, a prayer for traveling mercy, then hit the road. Traffic is not heavy, I am not slowed to a crawling pace for construction too often.



The sky is gloriously blue, the day pleasantly stretches before me. I determine to let it unfold as it will, not rushing to get home, stopping when I decide to, unmindful of the ticking clock. I put CDs in the slot and sing my way home. My favorite song this week? Calvin College Women's Chorale, directed by Pearl Shangkun, sings Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down by Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory. What a tremendous message. I'm sorry I can't find a clip online for you to hear.



But I definitely want this one sung at my funeral, whenever that might be. Its dancing music. A celebration of what comes next. And I sang it l-o-u-d and happy - several times - before moving on to other stuff. I waited until I cleared Chicago before indulging in the headlight. What, you may ask, is a headlight? A pastry with light colored fruit filling (lemon usually) as opposed to a tail light (a pastry with red filling in it, usually cherry or raspberry). How did we come to start calling these fruit strudels such odd names?



I first remember the adults who had volunteered to be counselors at our youth group's summer camp sitting around the picnic table in the early morning after someone had made a bakery run. The colored jelly reminded them of car lights, and they laughed and joked about it as they prepared for the onslaught of day from the flaps of their tents.



That was the summer my best friend decided I was getting way too much attention that I didn't deserve (I was a tyrant in those days, a dictator par excellence) and she challenged me every way she could. When she made no progress in getting people to convert to her leadership, she bushwhacked me on the path to the bathhouse and slapped the bajeebies off my face, full hand print deeply embedded in my cheek.



I didn't get it then. I was just miserably hurt. Wounded that my best friend had turned traitor and now hated me for no reason I could understand. I slunk back to my tent and hid, licking my wound, fearful my Mom or Dad would see the red welts and question me. Kind of hard to say you fell off a horse with a clear handprint on your face.



I avoided my friend for the rest of the week. Kept to myself as much as I could. Did the opposite activity she picked. For a few short days, the bewildered rest of the crew wandered about in a daze, unsure of what was going on, not certain what they should do. At first, my friend had the gleam of victory in her eyes, crowing about how she had shown me the error of my ways. I let it alone, still trying to figure out what was bugging her.



I finally could stand it no longer. I waited until she was alone, and asked for an audience. The why question was laid on the table and she looked at me as if I were stupid. The litany began of all my sins and crimes. Things she had held in for years. How my actions made her feel inferior, how I was fickle, hanging around with a group of kids who didn't accept her, how I never let her have her say or her way. I was, to be succinct, quite cruel and thoughtless. And rendered speechless.



I munched my headlight, remembering with vivid reality the sting of her slap and her accusations. We made up, as best friends do, but it was never the same after that. Much of what she said was revelatory for me. It changed the way I saw things, affected my leadership style (if indeed I truly had one), profoundly touched my heart.



I didn't hate her. Not at all. What I realized was that I traveled in quite a different world than she did. She was not my only friend, but I was hers. And I had behaved badly towards her. In the years that followed that traumatic summer, we grew farther and farther apart, not by choice, but by choices. I was regents pre-college track. She was home-ec no college in sight. I was music, she was sports. I was a bookworm, she was boycrazy.



I never forgot the lesson she taught me. And I remember when I eat a fruit filled pastry, that I am not all I am cracked up to be, and that I ought to take an inventory to see who I have been persecuting lately in order to make amends.