“AH, THE NEED TO BE SAFE”
It is true that on our recent journey to Washington State our rolling profile resembled something out of The Grapes of Wrath.Our aging BMW was so loaded down that the trunk refused to latch till David removed two clothes hangers. Atop the car a ski rack was filled-to-the-sky-high with household goods held by blue (ugly) plastic tarps then drawn taut by crisscrossing ropes protecting all from wind, rain and, we hoped, collapse. The picture is not yet complete. Attached behind the beige car and loaded to the limits of the law a wooden utility trailer rolled jauntily on wheels so ancient and massive it required a county search to find balloon tires that fit them. I suspect FDR and the CCC constructed that old trailer. Oh yes, color it sugar-mint green.
As if this whizzing distraction needed intensifying (as if all this could whiz), we carried along two large dogs. Born who-knows-where and each rescued as pups from animal shelters, our somewhat-golden retriever and our dubiously-black lab rested, atop more packed goods, tail tips brushing the rear window, noses to our shoulders. Those who understand current Northwestern prejudices can appreciate that to some we not only looked evil, we surely were, for we were tacked together, front and back, by California license plates. Only a flyer announcing a Communist cell meeting and nailed to a telephone pole on the Baptist church grounds in the 1950s could have earned more contempt. Mercifully, that truth had not yet dawned on us. We felt good about this leaving, we were “sure of” this move until we reached Portland, Oregon.
There, David recalled a remarkable site, a beautiful hotel lobby. He was not sure where it was but thought he could find it and wanted me to see it. He finds things well—not in the house or in his pockets—only in distant cities or from the sky—But not this time. We drove to the city center, searched, failed, and aimed again for the freeway. This leaving required a few busy intersections, and one particular red light. At it we stopped, dutifully. As it turned green and we turned left, the driver behind us honked. David and exchanged glances. Were our lights on? No. Had something fallen from the car? Apparently not. Had we lingered too long at the light? Not at all. The street we entered allowed the honking car to move up beside us. In a matter of seconds my concern for emotional safety emerged full-grown.
The confronting car (Oregon-licensed-vehicle-of-war) held two women—one rather grandmotherly, in the old fashioned sense, and a middle-aged driver I supposed was her daughter. Whoever, they jockeyed to a position paralleling us where the gray-haired passenger proceeded to make exaggerated faces at us. This is true. Hilarious in retrospect, but shocking at the time. Youpicture it.
A smile takes about sixteen muscles, a frown forty-three; the human body has only 656 muscles all told. But this woman, I swear to you, worked at least a thousand muscles against us that day. She used then all in a time’s flash and with a most practiced manner to convey anger, hatred, disdain, intolerance, and childishness. I was dumbstruck. A city block and an eternity rolled past. Both cars were forced to slow down for another red light. David smiled. I saw it coming. I begged him, “Please, do notget involved in this. David, plee-zee.”So much for my influence.
Energetically David signaled the woman, “Lower your window.”
“NO!” She shook her head wildly.
But perplexity slipped obviously onto her agile face. Somehow her missile of intimidation failed to destroy, even injure, the enemy. While she grappled for new strategy, David fired a huge smile her way. Bull’s eye! In spite of herself, she wascurious. What isthis strange Californian going to do next? He was meant to cringe (like his wife); he was to wither when hit. Rather, he invited exchange. She fell for it. She rolled down the passenger window while an exaggerated planting of her shoulders and head inferred grave resistance.
“Notice, you prune-pickers,” she conveyed, “nary an inch of give.” Both cars stopped completely. I prayed for a miracle, “Change light, now!” So much for my influence. We waited.
“You’ll be happy to know we’re moving here!” hollered David, across the line of fire.
“You know you are NOT WELCOME!” she countered, bullying, but unable to completely mask the shock delivered by this man’s unpredictable nerve.
“I know,” he responded, joyfully. “But, we’re moving here,and we’re bringing all our friends and family from California with us!”
Oh, how he laughed. The light changed on schedule. The “ladies” left. The dogs stood and wagged tails, sensing something wonderful in the air. How that man I married did enjoy that moment of . . . of what? I cannot call it noble character. I will not call it commitment to excellence. But, I suppose, I must call it a moment of being real. So authentic was he. And I? Oh, my response was sterling. Eyes downcast, I continued knitting. That is, I entrapped and paralyzed my fingers in an increasingly harsh tangle of yarn.
“Get me out of this city,” I begged. “Please leave.” I am not much fun when I am not safe. I cried some.
The freeway restored a modicum of security, or at least a measure of anonymity. As my shock and tears diminished I said something like, “Are we not citizens of the United States? Is this city not a city within the United States? Did we dosomething to deserve that treatment?” We chewed hard on a discussion of being objects of discrimination. Not who we were personally but that we were where they did not want us determined the reaction to us of perfect strangers. Well, not “perfect” strangers. Perhaps those Portland women are decent, but I will not call them perfect, in any respect. But who they are is not the point. Leaving is. Leaving can feel unsafe, it can be unsafe, even when we tend it well.
We let go of California, hung for a split second in Portland, and quickly attached to Washington. Day one: purchase local license plates and cut down chances of harassment. Then, because we fully intended to stay, we built the gods fence, ordered the newspaper, and arranged for local banking. We signed on the dotted lines for savings, checking, and Visa accounts here, at a small branch of a proud state bank. You know the sort, where local business people walk in to make deposits at the end of the day, where neighbors wave and chat as they stand in line to make a transaction, where people know one another’s names, where tellers smile and good things happen. As they did for us, in our small California town, in our local bank there, even though we did not say that here, where talk of California is slow to grow warm.
Ah, yes. The noble Northwest. Where good people live well. Where even before the ink dried on the new checks from our new bank, some new, perfect stranger “borrowed” our account number and successfully forged their way to several hundred of our dollars. Of course the bank made good our loss. It also decided to close the transgressed account and open us a newone. That decision was executed, post-haste. But, in the split seconds between leaving and attaching, between accounts old and new, unexpected things can happen. And do. Did. The bank unintentionally botched an arrangement for paying the checks still circulating from the oldnew account. Consequently, before too many days passed it appeared that the Pines were bouncing checks from one end of the country to the other. Ah, but our bank bounced back. They wrote letters of explanation and apology; they assumed the cost of their errors. They apologized; they solved problems, all but one. A local one. Rising in a bakery.
The check I wrote, paying for several loaves of tasty bread made in a small bakery in this fine harbor community, came from the now defunct first account. It bounced and was returned by the bank to the bakery stamped, “SUSPECTED FORGERY.” Great. Naturally, it carried my name, my local phone number, and the bold numbers of my California driver’s license. Mr. Local Baker was not happy. He called me. He set his tone as the woman in Portland set her shoulders. As he made his point I very much regretted leaving our home in California where the sun and the people are warm.
“I don’t know what kind of community youcome from,” he said, instructing me, “but these sorts of things do not happen here.”
I know that in a commitment to being real, people workto relate well to others but do not always succeed. That day, I venture, I did not. I tightened my own tone and coolly informed him that, in fact, we came from a community quite similar in size to this one, had lived there for twenty-five years, and could assure him this “sort of thing” never happened to us there.I encouraged him to call his fine bank—here—where these sorts of things never happen, but did.
As I write, I truly wish The Baker knew the rest of our story. Not only did someone use our checking account illegally, but our new local bank-issued credit card number got used by someone we do not know, to purchase expensive concert seats. Probably the tickets were used. The Visa card no longer could be. That account, like the checking account, was closed and reopened under a newnew number.
Shortly thereafter, on the way home from church, we stopped at a Seattle bakery where even betterbread is baked, and while we selected como and sourdough rye, some industrious citizen ripped off emblems, front and back from our BMW. Not in eight years of driving that car in California did anyone do so vile a thing. Ah, these wonderful Puget Sounders, just people, like those we left behind. The point, of course, is not that northwesterners suffer unfairly the invasion of outsiders or that we outsiders discover a particularly nasty streak in northwesterners. The point here is that leavings carry the forfeiture of guaranteed emotional safely. To leave, we must let go. We say “no” to something in order to say “yes” to something else. We release one thing in order to grasp another. That release may prove wonderful, or it may not. It reminds me of a fortune cookie fortune I have pasted in my journal. Surely it is the best ever: “The near future may bring everything you have always wanted. Then again, it may not.”
True. There simply are no guarantees of safety when leavings are elected. Many are the numbers of those who remain in dull, stifling, or even hurtful situations, who close ears and eyes to opportunities, who stymie noble character and reject growth rather than risk a terrifying moment that precedes attachment and follows letting go.
With some structural liberty, I quote Jesus who once said to a questioning young man, “I’ll tell you what I want. You let go of your wealth and your reputation and follow me. Just let go.”
“Ah,” said the financially and morally successful young man, “not even for eternal life can I do that.” He was sure and he was safe. He wascurious. But, he was not willing to leave the familiar.
He was not alone in that human response. “I don’t want change.” “I need to be sure.” “I want to feel safe.” “I am powerfully reluctant to be sad and leaving too often produces that opportunity.”
I recognize those concerns. Perhaps you do. I experience them. Some of them sometimes rule my days.
COMING UP: LEAVING IS RESISTED BY “A RELUCTANCE TO BE SAD”
