MayBelle Gets More than She Ordered

May 3, 2021 ~ Amy Lyles Wilson ~ 4 Comments

It doesn’t take much for MayBelle to stop and think of her precious parents. The backdoor neighbor’s cigar smoke makes her hope, just for the tiniest moment, that her father has come for one of their long, rambling conversations that serpentined among politics, religion, books, and culture. He’s been gone for twenty years, and still she gleans from those chats. She enjoyed talking with him over anyone else in the world.

Taking some items to a local nonprofit last week channeled her mother, who seemed always to sense someone in need. Whatever you do, don’t ask MayBelle about the time she want looking for her favorite pair of jeans, the ones with the apple appliqués, only to be told they had been donated. Same goes for her middle sister, whose dolls were given away to some Methodist missionaries’ children without her permission.

“You have plenty,” their mother would say. And they did.

Just yesterday, this:

MayBelle was leaving one of her favorite Nashville lunch spots, The Picnic*, when she stopped for a car to pull into a spot. It was shiny, four-door Mercedes. Gleaming white. An older gentleman parked the car, got out, and walked around to the passenger side. He was smartly dressed, handsome. She’d swear she spotted a pocket square. He helped an older woman out of the car. Probably his wife? Also well dressed, everything matching. Sensible shoes. He placed his left hand on the small of her back and guided her toward the door. They were both elegant, slow movers. And then: A teenage boy opened the door to the restaurant and waited for them to make their way inside. Patient. Kind. In such a world as today’s where rudeness seems to prevail and manners seem almost obsolete, these tender gestures about broke MayBelle. (MayBelle apologizes if she seems a bit jaded today. A weekend trip to a crowded mall has her evaluating all of civilization.)

These two intimate interactions made MayBelle think of all the ways her parents cared for one another, with such concern and respect. And it made her think of how hard her oldest sister and brother-in-law have worked to raise their three lovely children to be thoughtful and courteous. And it especially made her want to find this picture, in which one of MayBelle’s nephews helped her mother to the car after a family lunch. MayBelle’s father was gone by this time, so a new escort was needed.

MayBelle stood for a minute or two after the couple and the boy were no longer in view, mesmerized. She’s not sure what rooted her to that spot, but what she had witnessed felt holy to her. Most days she tries to pay attention, MayBelle does, just in case a routine chicken salad run might turn into an extraordinary encounter with the Divine. In that one instance, MayBelle felt connected to her ancestors, experienced compassion for her elders, and was inspired by the next generation. Not bad for an ordinary afternoon in May.

*Best fruit tea in town.

My Husband Has Cancer: Does It Matter What Kind?

March 28, 2019March 28, 2019 ~ Amy Lyles Wilson ~ 6 Comments

eVjzCWJzSK2j+luVvRuORg — In the waiting room.

When I tell people my husband has been receiving treatment for cancer, many ask—almost reflexively—“What kind?”

After thoughtful consideration, much of it conducted in waiting rooms, doctors’ offices, and pharmacy lines, I’ve decided this is not the most appropriate, or helpful, response.

At fifty-seven, I am sometimes fixated on causes of death for folks my age and younger. Hoping, I guess, that I might avoid their fates if I just have the facts. Take a different route, get a second opinion, stop the unhealthy habit.

So I get it, the curiosity. I just don’t like it.

If the answer to the question “What kind of cancer?” turns out to be one of the more aggressive types, will you label my husband a goner? If it’s categorized as “lifestyle related,” will you condemn him?

Each time I’m asked this question, I’m taken back to occasions when I’ve inquired, or wondered, upon hearing such announcements from others. All the times I made assumptions. I hope I never do that again.

From where I sit now, in a chair beside my husband as he receives chemotherapy infusions or next to him on the couch as he rests after radiation, the only real question is, “What can I do?”

Hiking Toward Home: In Which a Middle-Aged Woman Forges Her Trail

November 26, 2018 ~ Amy Lyles Wilson ~ 3 Comments

I have hiked five miles of the Appalachian Trail. It’s true, but I usually announce this with my eyes cast downward. Not because I think five miles is paltry; for me, it’s an accomplishment. My reticence is due to the circumstances of my achievement.

So, yes, I did cover a handful of miles of the North Carolina portion of the AT. But I did it with guides, people who walked before me as an example of where to put my feet; how to navigate a root-heavy curve; when to steady my pace. Those same people also toted my luggage from inn to inn as we spent our nights in soft beds after eating delicious meals prepared by hands other than ours. We awoke to smiling hosts and hot coffee before setting out for the day. (Over the course of the trip we logged more than five miles, only part of which was on the AT.)

Does it matter that I’ve never “roughed it” a day in my life? What if I mentioned the ice storm that cut off our power for four days, causing my parents and me to huddle in blankets around the fireplace, or reminisced about rolling out my sleeping bag onto the hard ground outside Mentone, Alabama, while at Camp DeSoto, or noted the semester I spent in Indiana living in a cold, sparsely furnished rooming house while teaching? Without wireless or cable? Without my husband?

If I were to talk about any of those experiences as real challenges, you would not reward me with your awe.

There are other things I might impress you with, like not marrying until I was forty-one and being okay with having lived alone so long. Trusting that my life has purpose, even though I never had biological children. Spending three days in the hospital with an undiagnosed infection that threatened to wipe out my white blood cells.

Still, I have not “roughed it” a day in my life. When I was single, I had good friends and encouraging role models who crafted fine lives for themselves without romantic partners. When I was diagnosed with endometriosis and told that any fleeting chance I might have had for bearing a child had passed, I did not think that meant my life had no meaning. I had not dreamed of having children, even though almost everyone around me assumed I longed for offspring. And with the hospitalization two years ago, I was lucky to have access to good healthcare, and to be blessed by a peace that passes all understanding.

In my younger days, I needed your approval. Never one to take a chance and then beg forgiveness, I sought permission even when none was required. Back then, I hungered for your acknowledgment. If you praised me, all the better.

My younger days are gone. It’s one of the joys of aging, this trusting of Self. At long last I no longer crave the noticing of the world. My own awareness is enough.

In the writing workshops I facilitate, we write in response too prompts. I wrote this after reading “The Hike,” by Genie Zeiger, as printed in The Sun Magazine. I encourage the folks gathered around my table to go where the writing takes them, without worrying if it relates directly to the prompt. So I took my own advice, and this is what I came up with on a Saturday morning in Nashville. What does the poem bring up in you? Write for twenty minutes. I’ll set the timer. Go!

https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/395/the-hike

Go Collect Yourself

February 21, 2018 ~ Amy Lyles Wilson ~ 3 Comments

The dream came over the weekend, the one with her dead mother in it. MayBelle hasn’t dreamed about her mother regularly in the two years since her death, although MayBelle often senses her mother’s spirit with her. And certainly she feels her mother’s influence, even lives it out. On separate occasions just last week, MayBelle quoted her mother to a friend, heeded a piece of advice delivered decades ago, and missed her with such fierceness that she had to step outside a restaurant to collect herself.

Maybe MayBelle will make that her Lenten practice, “collecting herself.” She will gather up the pieces she’s lost hold of, the ones she either thought didn’t matter or was told didn’t count. She’ll root around for her childhood dreams and begin to honor those goals she let fall by the wayside. She’ll walk as far as she has to, searching for the just-right shards and fragments. Hers.

Along the way, MayBelle will have to put down some things, she realizes, for one middle-aged goober can’t carry it all. She’ll start with that pesky self-doubt and the tendency to see herself through a distorted lens. Then she’ll move on to a constant need for approval and an everlasting refrain of: “You are not doing enough.” She’ll get rid of clothes that don’t suit and accessories she doesn’t need. (Why in the world did MayBelle buy that mustard-colored sackcloth tunic?) Out with the affectations that never did the trick anyway, and say goodbye to being unduly influenced by every piece of advice—sought or otherwise—that comes her way.

As she hunts and gathers and sets aside, MayBelle will focus on collecting what counts and what connects. All she cares about and all she can offer. Those dreams, people, and activities she can tend and nurture well. She hopes she will need a big basket to hold it all. For now, MayBelle will start with this basket, one her mother used for taking food to potluck suppers at Briarwood United Methodist Church. MayBelle knew she kept the basket for a reason.

In the dream, MayBelle’s mother is happy. She is not worried or anxious. She is not scared of the dementia that garbles her memories, or the death that looms. Instead, she is laughing merrily with one of her precious great-grandchildren, a young girl with a big bow in her hair who pushes MayBelle’s mother in a wheelchair. They are both smiling, big toothy grins, as they loop round and round. They exhibit such joy that MayBelle chooses to believe it is more than a dream. It is the stuff of life.

Dear 2018: Whatever Happens This Year, Please Don’t Demand That MayBelle Be a “Change Agent,” “Goddess,” or “Warrior”

January 5, 2018 ~ Amy Lyles Wilson ~ 3 Comments

Or worse, a “badass.” MayBelle doesn’t want to be any of those things. She just wants to be herself. Maybe, in this new year, a more refined MayBelle, or even the most MayBelle-iest MayBelle she can be. But she refuses to be overwhelmed/intimidated/shamed by messages implying that she needs to be different—that she has to re-create who she is—in order to live a full life or make a mark. Her middle-aged MayBelle-ness—overweight and prone to worry, proud of her accomplishments while embarrassed by missteps, aware of time passing but still hopeful—simply has to be enough.

So in the coming days, 2018, MayBelle plans to “center down” as Howard Thurman says in Meditations of the Heart. She will rise to her strengths as often as she can. She hopes to help those in need when she’s able, tend her loved ones with care and compassion, take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, push herself to be healthier, follow her heart, improve her skills, and in all things give thanks. But please don’t tell MayBelle every day has to be awesome, New Year, because some days aren’t. Some days are just plan ol’ days, full of mundane events and interactions. And while MayBelle believes there is usually something extraordinary in the ordinary, other days are so challenging they can only be endured. It’s life. And life requires more than positive thinking and exhortations to be a “badass” or claim one’s inner warrior. MayBelle actually hopes she doesn’t read the word “badass” again in all of 2018, and she’s glad her precious mother is not here to see how commonplace such words have become. (Pardon her prudishness, but MayBelle, for one, does not need the f-word on a coffee mug.)

Surely MayBelle doesn’t have to be a change agent or a goddess to live fully, serve others, pursue her dreams. She just has to be herself. So, 2018, you will not find MayBelle berating herself if every day isn’t off the charts fantastic. You won’t catch her strategizing for world–or even neighborhood–domination.

Instead, MayBelle will be over here doing the best she can. Paying attention to the world around her, writing her heart out, and helping others do the same. Making adjustments as needed, relying on grace, and counting her blessings. If she loses a few pounds or gets a book deal in the process, great. If not, she’ll still be pretty bada**.

Love,

Real Life