The People You Meet Along the Way
I’m pretty sure that most, if not all of the people we meet along the way have come in to our lives for a reason. I first wondered about my parents, grandparents, sibling, aunts, uncles and cousins. Wow! In my case, that was a lot of people, six aunts and uncles, 21 cousins and one sister. And I must have learned something from all of them. I was born in Alabama. Yes, you guessed it, I was born into the land of hatred for minorities and ignorance of equality. I have to wonder why. What lesson did I need to learn from that? Some of these people are truly narrow minded, hypocritical, bigoted and self righteous beings, but not all.
My mother was from a family of Primitive Baptists. Every Mother’s Day, our entire family on my mother’s side went ‘down to the country’ for a type of family reunion. There was an old white church with a cemetery in back and picnic tables in front. My memories were ones of both being astonished, and humored. When we arrived, we would go out to the cemetery to put flowers on our dead ancestors tombstones. OK, that was cool. I didn’t know them, but my mom was happy to be paying respects and I kinda got it that I had a grandfather once. My cousin Nancy and I would run around the cemetery and read the names and laugh and then look at each other scared we were laughing at the dead. So much fun! The adults would go in the church and sing notes. Yes, notes. Fa-So-La-Te-Do-Re-Me. I couldn’t believe it. It was the funniest thing and the most astonishing thing I heard in my life. Maybe there was some hidden esoteric meaning to singing notes that even the members of the church were not aware of. I mean, Re or Ra being the sun, etc. Nancy and I would go outside of the church and play while we laughed at the adults. One Sunday I remembered someone spitting out the window and it landing on Nancy. Whatever she spat was brown. Ugh! We were all dressed up in new frilly dresses our mothers made for us and we were horrified by the uncouth behavior of these adults. Evidently the old women and men liked something called ‘snuff’ and they spit out this stinky, yellowish-brown juice that came from the snuff they snorted, a type of cocaine, I guessed! Tobacco based. Nancy figured out it was an old woman dressed in black sitting by the window who spat on her. A black widow! And to this day, my dear cousin still recalls the black widow and laughs till she cries.
After their service was over, everyone went to their respective cars and brought out table cloths and tons of food, fried chicken, ham, deviled eggs, potato salad, baked beans and lots of other picnic food, plus pies and cakes to drown all your sorrows like coconut flake cake, southern pecan pie, lemon icebox pie, chocolate cake and on and on and on. Everyone was in bliss with all that luscious food and sugar, awaiting only on a prayer before they dug in. And the prayer came next. An old minister asked for the blessing of God and the blessings of all our dead relatives or ancestors and all the community and God bless the children, the sick and invalid and the soldiers and maybe that was about it. Then we ‘dug in‘ as they said in the South. Afterwards, the adults talked while the children played and we took the long ride home when the sun was going down, falling asleep in daddy’s 1952 blue Ford.
On my mother’s side of the family there were four sisters with their four husbands and fourteen cousins, my sister and myself being included in that figure of 14. My grandmother lived until the age of ninety-nine, so she was with us for many years. We spent Christmas at aunt Georgia’s home, Easter at aunt Aucie’s, Thanksgiving at aunt Joyce’s and grandma’s birthday at my mom’s (aunt Lauretta). Ages of cousins varied by probably as many as 10 to 15 years, Eddie being the oldest at around 20 and Kay being the youngest at around four.
Did I learn anything from my aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and grandparents? Of course.
From Nancy I learned how to laugh. And how to be mischievous. From my aunt Aucie, I learned not to smoke! I mean, what is up with chain smoking? Didn’t she want to breathe clean air for five minutes? Guess not, cause she lit one after another and died very young of lung cancer. My cousins were so unique, the football star, the shut in, the adopted kids of a guy in prison.
On my father’s side of the family was my grandmother and his three sisters and their husbands. I had seven cousins on his side of the family who all lived in the country and were pretty wild! One cousin was into explosives and blew himself up along with a few others. One female cousin stole her mother’s credit cards and bought everything she needed for a lifetime and nothing was ever done about it.
Another young cousin, Michael, was slaughtered at ‘Hamburger Hill’ in Viet Nam and I went to his funeral where the casket was never opened. It was a military funeral with a twenty-one gun salute. What a sad day!
His mother, Betty Jo, whom I used to call from time to time and was the sister of my father. Her husband was an herbal doctor who followed in the footsteps of his father who owned a hospital in Mineral Springs, Alabama on, you guessed it, a mineral springs lake. His father was somewhat famous at the time and saw patients from all over the United States. He was killed in some kind of police chase where I believe he was trying to kill someone else who was sleeping with his wife, or maybe it was the other way around. His name was Andrew Melvin Price who was famous for his medical practice at the time.
My uncle, Bruce Price, saw patients on Sundays only and worked for Boeing making airplanes during the week. In my twenties, when I was searching and living in Krishna temples, I became very interested in herbal and natural medicine. Then one day I remembered my uncle was an herb doctor! So Larry and I and my daughter went to spend a few days with my aunt and uncle at the Springs. He showed me books, we talked about how to identify and gather the herbs in the area and he even diagnosed me as being deficient in vitamin B and iron. Unfortunately, he died too young with a heart attack.
For years after the Viet Nam conflict I would call my aunt Bet on Veterans Day. She was a great southern woman who made her own peach wine and Sarsaparilla tea.
My sister died at the age of 33. What did I learn from her? Her life was so sad. She was always overweight, from a toddler, so I knew it was genetic. But I have to say when she died, it nearly killed my mother. The greatest pain in this material world must be the pain of losing a child or having something horrible happen to them you can do nothing about. How does a mother cope with that pain? She never got over it. Never!
Anyway, my sister was very jealous of me. I was cute, popular and she was overweight and sick. Believe me, I think about life with her often. Those years formed who I was in many ways. I became ashamed and embarrassed to be pretty. I was embarrassed to be talented and athletic. Basically, I was holding back on who I could have been. I allowed myself to start gaining weight around the age of 12 when entering into puberty. I began to lose my self esteem. Food was what my family loved, and I began to love it too, but I could remember a time when I cared little about eating. My mother would constantly have to badger me about finishing my meal. But with my families love of food and my sister’s weight problem, I joined right in to the madness and before I knew it, I was damaged. I lost and gained weight the rest of my life.
Then I looked at my neighbors, school friends, teachers, social clubs and boy/girl relationships. We cross paths with so many people in a lifetime there is no wonder we can’t remember them all. But I do believe they all have something to teach us. Maybe we learn, maybe we don’t. Then marriages, new towns, jobs, trips, and camping trips, moves, all contribute to the whole of who we are.
So what is the purpose of it all when we just have to die in the end?
I learned from my mother not to be self-righteous and bigoted because she was. She was meticulous in cleaning and sewing and I learned that from her. My father was a god man, always going to church and taking care of others. He loved to fish, swim, play cards, golf, tell jokes and dance. He loved sports, played baseball as a youth and even as an adult. He loved it that I was athletic too. I definitely took after him in that respect. From him I learned many lessons of course, but one major one was not to procrastinate. It has served me well. My sister taught me compassion and empathy. I was always making an effort to protect her from cruel people who would criticize.
But here is the interesting thing. Most of the lessons learned, I learned in my old age as I looked back at my past. I’ve learned to pay attention from my mother. From my mother I also learned cliche’s like, ‘A stitch in times saves nine’ or ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.’ I learned not to criticize others from my father and my mother. I learned steadfastness from my father. I learned to give up my low self esteem from my sister. I learned not to feel guilty for being the cute one in my family, well, actually, maybe I didn’t learn that one at all.
The people you meet along the way are there for you and you for them, I was convinced. It only made sense. Sometimes we learned from embarrassing stuff we did. Sometimes we learned from things we did right. In high school I was elected Head Cheerleader. There was another girl who felt she was more qualified and made every effort to defame me, but it backfired against her. It turned out, I was happy and worked hard while she became known as someone whom others couldn’t quite trust. Of course I wanted the position of head cheerleader, and I was humbled to get it and yet I could see how her jealousy was eating her alive. Lesson - jealousy will destroy you!
In college I got mixed up with some girls who thought they were ‘cool’. Right. I went with them one day to a trendy dress shop where I was challenged to steal a swim suit. Everyone was doing it. I stole this really hot turquoise bikini with lemon yellow trim. Afterwards, I went swimming and hung the swimsuit on the clothesline outside. The next morning, the suit was gone. Someone had stolen it from me. Lesson; DON’T STEAL. Your actions come back to you. “Instant karma’s gonna get you!” (John Lennon) I was so embarrassed and ashamed. I already felt guilty but knew instantly how I was getting my due long before I ever heard of the word ‘karma’. And as I looked back, I wondered if the owner of the boutique hadn’t followed us home to take back her goods. Wow! That was humbling.
I was given an extremely beautiful and talented roommate in college. She was a classical pianist (Sandy, mentioned in the story of Purple Haze) who went on to become somewhat famous in her symphony orchestra. She came from a middle class family while I came from a lower middle class one. Late in my life, I was understanding how it could be very dangerous having friends who may look down on you, if only in a small way. This woman both wanted me as a friend because I was popular and cute, but didn’t want me as a friend because my parents didn’t have enough money. Lesson; hang out with like-minded people who love you for who you are, not what you have.
I was popular in college, was elected ‘Freshman Favorite’ and won awards in high school, so looks were not a problem for me. But I honestly had no clue what my talent was. Was I just a cheerleader and nothing more? Shallow! I simply couldn’t imagine I would have to take care of myself, especially coming from the South. Everyone got married there and their husbands took care of them. So I wasted way too much time in school, looking for boyfriends. I spent all my years in college not knowing what to do. As a result, my low self esteem only seemed to double. I was good at sports, tennis, golf, water skiing, etc., but I thought I was not very intelligent. (I later found I was definitely wrong.) My grades were horrible and my teachers affirmed my stupidity. Realization came to me about my intellectual abilities much later in life as I easily passed my Real Estate Broker’s Exam and Insurance Broker’s Exam, when others continued to fail. I was not stupid at all. I simply did not apply myself when I was young. I was mostly bored. Why did I listen to others? I went into business for myself in Food Service and made a very good living for around 21 years as a somewhat accomplished entrepreneur and published a number of magazines. Yet damage was done to my self esteem very early on and that is a hard thing to repair. Lesson; Don’t make men the priority in you life, denying your own talents the chance to thrive and don’t ever let others tell you ‘you can’t,’ because ‘you can!’
In business I hurt feelings as I fired employees who couldn’t do the job properly or were too slow, unfocused and perpetually late. I was sometimes very impatient with incompetent or slow people. I did not know how to let people down gradually. I tried to be kind, but honestly, there is no easy way to tell a person how they are not helping you run your business the way you would like. And this is serious because you are dealing with other peoples lives and their livelihood. I fired one man who was slow and talked constantly instead of working. His wife was pregnant. I waited until after the baby was born and Christmas passed, but I had to let him go. Lesson; if you’re going to be in business, you will probably be SHREWD and others will get hurt as a result of you’re moving up in the business world.
This human life must be for the lessons you learn, from your cousins, your friends, your teachers, your parents, your children, your husband, your bosses, your employees, your acquaintances, the clerk at the store, the bartender, the mechanic and others you meet along the way. Otherwise, what is the point?
Who were the other people I met along the way? LOL. My husbands and boyfriends to start with, as I have already described. But here are the lessons learned. My first was a high school lover, turned Coast Guard Navigator, turned Krishna devotee. My second, although not actually married was the Viet Nam Vet. My third live-in boyfriend was the cinematographer, writer and artist. My fourth lover and second husband was an Architect. My fifth major relationship and husband was a Pharmacist. My sixth lover, not husband, was the jazz keyboardist and singer, and my seventh lover was the sociopath. Seven is an octave, right? Done! I hoped! Definitely learned lessons from each one of them.
With Number one, I learned to teach what I know, because he didn’t and he had so much to give. Number two, I learned you can’t cop out with suicide, war sucks and you really have to focus on a career because we have to make money in this life, like it or not. Number three, I learned to believe in myself and my god-given intelligence. Number four, I learned to think very hard before I commit to something and to not let someone’s obsession with me be the reason for my commitment. Number five, I learned to bake bread, cookies, cakes, puff pastry, Napoleons and Danish. I learned the secrets of different doughs and batters and temperatures to bake each item. I made pastry creams, cheese crackers, pies and ate them all! That didn’t help my self esteem. But I mostly learned from this man how criticism is extremely harmful! He nearly destroyed me at the time. But he became a good father, good provider and a good man, I think.
With Number six, I learned to use my talents for God. And I don’t mean singing in a choir. I mean, if God has given you something, double it! And with Number seven I learned that Demons are Real!
So from four husbands and three live-in boyfriends I learned to teach what I’ve learned, hold my life sacred, write, think first before making a decision, bake, don’t criticize others, to appreciate jazz, and to stay away from sociopaths. They are everywhere!
Orgasms I learned from the girl next door. From bosses I learned to be kind, give expert instructions, be patient, and be fair. From children, I learned everything!
With friends, I learned to sail, to play golf, to write, to clean, to get what you need and to tell stories. Instead of simply being quiet at happy hour, I told stories. One lady friend who is published told me, “Everyone likes to be entertained.” I wanted to be an entertainer, therapist, spiritualist, chef, sailor, and friend. I think I was.