LIFE WITH A CAPITAL 'L' Chapter Three, section FOUR

“L” Listening, Chapter 3, section 4

Life Is Always a Lesson, Whether or Not We Learn It

 I can thank my eight-grade teacher for encouraging my love of the English language. Likely, Mrs. Bartles was responsible for place me in advanced English my freshman year of high school. As nearly as I remember, I was a flatly average student who happened to do well in English. Fun was the driving purpose of my sense of purpose.

My freshman English teacher was not like me. He was an avid little theater actor and a mighty presence. He loved words, their sound, and his own beautiful voice shaping them. He had us reading Othello.He had us discussing Shakespeare and writing papers. He had me much too busy, and I had to work very hard finding ways to circumvent this responsibility. Apparently my dedication and obvious determination to do just that paid off.

One day—fortunately I do not remember the exact circumstance or its outcome—one day, I do remember standing at the desk of my dramatic teacher and hearing him finish his (accurate) assessment of me with this phrase, “Miss Roberts, you are a dedicated gold-bricker.”

I did not receive this warmly—obviously I was not being complimented—but I did not blanch. I laughed a little because he did. Mostly, I stood wondering what he meant by gold-bricking. Its meaning completely escaped me. Only a couple of years ago did I look up the term.

During World War II, the period of my instructor’s young adulthood, a gold-bricker was someone idling, or shirking duty, someone skilled at letting another do all the work. My teacher was on target. I was not into school, generally speaking. But, why for so many years, did I even remember this undefined assessment? What did it strike in me to stay with me? It struck my curiosity. It did not, as perhaps he had hoped, strike my conscience or my sense of honor. It could not. I did not know what it meant. But it struck my curiosity and lay there for years—a phrase, an opinion, stored till curiosity wanted badly enough to stop wondering, and start knowing. Life is a lesson, whether or not we learn it.

My grandmother taught me one. Martha Elizabeth. She died last December, and it does not matter that she was ninety-three, that her heart was failing. I meant for Granny never to die. She is, was, an indispensable part of my life. She helped raise me, she certainly helped shape my personality and she gave me her love of observation, of language, and of art. She was a friend. 

I can hear her say, “Oh, Barbi,” like no one else said it. Not that others do not address me with affection or love, it is just that no one else is Granny.

One day, nearly twenty years ago, she and I were working together in my kitchen. She was visiting for a few weeks from Phoenix. It was a stressful time in my life. I was not very happy. If you had asked me then, I probably would have said that David was making me “not happy.” That is how it felt, that day in my warm summer kitchen, preparing dinner with Granny waiting for my husband to come home.

Granny was widowed, but I knew she had been unhappily married. Her husband was many years her senior, was never her partner, and was definitely her lord. Pop had hischair, hisradio, his schedule, hispreferences, his daily peeled apple, and his wife to make life comfortable—for him. In striking and terrible ways, through sixty-some years, he demonstrated a lack of loyalty, a absence of love. He, of course, had his story, which makes me want to better understand. But in my kitchen, realizing Granny’s tender personality and creative spirit, I wondered how she managed to survive. I wondered especially for myself. My husband was not by any stretch my grandfather but I was suffering a long spell of being “not happy.”

“Granny, didn’t you ever need to count?” I asked. “How did you survive all that time in your marriage?” My grandmother leaned against the cupboard, became wistful and vulnerable, and in her gentle and resigning way said, “Oh, Barbi. You know, you just learn to die a little bit at a time.”

Life is a lesson. Granny’s words shot through me like twelve years of schooling compacted in a phrase. “Learn this, Barbara,” the lesson said, “learn this. Do not live by dying a little bit at a time.” I made a decision that late afternoon as sunshine poured through my kitchen windows, as my grandmother lightened the subject with her wonderful humor. I finished wondering; I began to learn. My personality is so like hers. I tolerate, I abide, I rarely express anger, I rarely feel it. But I knew I was finished being “just like her.” I made a decision that nothing—not marriage, not future, not security, not peace—should require “dying a little at a time.”

Dave and I do not have the same relationship we shared prior to that Granny lesson. The poor man was nailed the moment he came home that day. I nailed myself. We discussed the needs of our marriage; we discussed mutual responsibilities. We discussed the survival of both of us in relationship. We got better. We were not through learning, but we would never again be where we were before life offered us a chance to learn.

Whether or not we pay attention to it, all of life is a lesson. Every moment allows an assessment of the world around us, and the one within us. Some lessons are momentous; others are minor. Some will hurt our feelings or our dignity; some will prove us right, delight our hearts. But nothing in life happens without eventually affecting everything else. Lessons of life are like the concentric circles left in a pond when a pebble is dropped or a leaf falls. They quietly continue whether anyone is watching or caring. Life teaches, whether or not we learn.

Conclusion

Maya Angelou, poet, educator, historian, best-selling author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer, and director, a great contemporary voice, and remarkable Renaissance woman, spoke in Tacoma, Washington. My daughter Kim and I heard her. Ms. Angelou, without a doubt, is pure talent, presence, and pleasure with a powerful punch.

She is also a woman who deserves to be angry, destroyed, defeated. In fact, for three of her childhood years she did not speak. She could not. She suffered the effects of a brutal rape. She knows “dysfunctional family” as if each letter of those two words were her breakfast, lunch, and dinner throughout childhood. They were. Ms. Angelou represents many people who have the right to be angry, to refuse to believe life has lessons worth learning, even in the midst of horror or hardship.

Rather, she is the model of a decision-maker. She decided to learn. She committed herself to survival and to a level of survival that loves, feels, risks, reaches out. 

Whatever is true . . . honorable . . . just . . .pure . . . pleasing, commendable, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned.

We learn what we can endure, what it means to know ourselves and our world, how we can fail, how to survive, how to survive well. Real people are committed to shedding ignorance, to learning in order to live authentically.