It is night. Chelsea and Sam have just left after dinner that I cooked. Country fried steak for Chelsea, a mountain of rice for Sam, green beans, and home made gravy that would have FFDA warning labels on it if the government knew that I’d made it at home. These days home made gravy is kind of like a meth lab in Effingham County or Ardsley Park.
One of my all time favorite stories is about a meth lab in Ardsley Park which is an old established and very prestigious Savannah neighborhood. At the time John Lutz was the Chief Operations Officer at Union Mission and we were gathering for a staff meeting. He was telling us of a neighbor’s garage that blew up for no apparent reason.
We all busted out laughing.
“What?” he asked looking like Opie from Mayberry. If John had red hair instead of black he would have been a ringer. Everything else about him reeked of a 35 year old Opie wearing a white shirt and a black tie.
“John do you know what a meth lab is,” Lavanda asked laughing.
A look of horror enveloped John’s face. “Not in Ardsley Park,” he exclaimed.
We all burst into louder laughter.
“It’s everywhere,” Aretha said shaking her head. “Why wouldn’t it be in white neighborhoods? It’s mostly in the white neighborhoods.”
“Yeah,” Lavanda continued. “I used to wonder why white people never lived in the slums. Then I realized that they have trailer parks.”
Joe Bridges sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve before saying, “Lookie here. Every neighborhood, white or black has their drugs. I should know. I’ve visited them all. Ardsley Park included.”
Everyone laughed except for John who laid his head on the conference table and groaned.
“It’s a white people’s drug,” someone said.
Joe shrugged his shoulders. “A drug is a drug,” he explained.
Joe is a former addict and at the time was in charge of maintenance of Union Mission. He oversaw the building of everything in the 1990s retiring after the J. C. Lewis Health Center was done. He and I wrote our names in the concrete of the foundation one sunny afternoon when the work had begun.
I called the meeting to order and we got down to business. When your life is working in the middle of human tragedy, you laugh at whatever you can find humor in; even when it isn’t funny to most people. It’s funny to you. And it sustains you for another day.
When Robin William’s movie “The Fisher King” came out I took the entire Union Mission staff. It is about a homeless man. We laughed when everyone else in the theater was tearing up and it was crazy rip roaring laughter. And we cried when everyone else laughed.
Doing the work of God is an upside down kind of existence. People grow to hate you for it.
These are funny thoughts on a Friday night.
Goddess and I are on the beloved back deck with a fire going. We listen to the waves crashing against the shore in the distance. I have on my holy jeans which will soon have too many holes to wear in public, a long sleeve tee shirt and no shoes. I keep putting my bare feet next to the fire.
Jackson Browne is telling me how tender the night is; the Benediction of the neon lights. I am over neon. I’ve had a lot in my life.
“Tender are the lovers undercover; the stranger and the secret lover.” I pause and consider these words while staring into the fire with the ocean tickling my ears behind the music.
My whole career has been this tender work…until it was no more. “In the hard light of an angry sun, no one remembers what was said or done. Tender are the words they choose.”
You win.
I win.
We lose.
The rain starts to fall and I sigh. Then Goddess and I leave a wonderful December night and close the sliding glass doors on the past.
