Jesus, etc.

I’m a Christian. I grew up in a rather large Southern Baptist church and, from my childhood even through my college days, I was there when the doors were open.  My church was a second home for me, and I considered the congregants my second family.  Many friends there stepped up and helped in the absence of my mother; many of my teachers there loved me when I was a very unlovable toot with a snarky attitude and a chip on my shoulder.  I was extremely involved to the extent that, as a freshman in college, I served as one of seven on the selection committee for our new pastor. 

I credit my faith in God with my survival these 41-years. My faith that God loves me and that Jesus died for me has never wavered.  It never will.

It’s the fine print that I’ve been struggling with for about the past decade.

I’ve always been stunned by the Old Testament and the severity of God’s justice and wrath therein.  I’m confused by the choices of scripture the church (perhaps, more specifically, my church) chooses to hang on to, and those it chooses to ignore.  The Old Testament is ripe with some pretty heinous stuff (you know, stoning adulteresses, concubines and bunches of wives running around, marriages voided if the woman’s not a virgin, the list goes on and on…and this is just the tip of the iceberg.)

I’m most troubled by the trouble many churches/conservative Christians have with love and acceptance.  It’s a fine line between acknowledging and rejecting a sin and loving and embracing a sinner.  The struggle continues when one sin seems to be elevated above another in the eyes of some.

What was it Gandhi said?  "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  Hmmmm.

I am not a poster child for solid Christian behavior, don't get me wrong. I'm flawed so deeply and my lexicon so littered with expletives that I revel in using that I hope I can squeak in up top when the time comes.  The thing is, though, I will own up to my misbehavior and glaring shortcomings in a heartbeat.  I'm the first to admit I can be a hot mess. However...

There is one person in my life in particular who absolutely believes himself just a cut above and just a little bit closer to the throne than the rest of us.  He can be generous and kind in one moment and intolerant and hateful the next.  I think the biggest hitch in my get-along where he is concerned is that he fancies himself a flawless and faithful servant and yet can treat others with such disdain.  This little bit of hypocrisy has lit up recently and, well, it makes me want to scream.  If you know me well (especially if you were ever one of my students), you know that the day will come when I WILL scream.  There is a formidable rage brewing within me, and I'm just tough enough these days to unleash the beast.  As I've described my kind, giving, temperate Nyds, "once she has a mouthful, she'll say 'SHIT!'" It's coming 'round the bend...or out of my pie hole.

If I am really to follow scripture and hop up to Jesus's standards, I will stop griping about this fella and forgive him all the pain he scatters hither and yon.  That is my challenge.  I will forgive, but I do love to gripe...I'll see what I can do.

I have a host of friends who are Christians, and a great many who are not.  Some on both sides of the spiritual debate read the words I post here.  One pal of mine told me that if all Christians were like me, he'd be in the pew every Sunday.  It was high praise, but I know that what he likes about my brand of Christianity is that my fundamental belief in Jesus never wavers but I'm not too holy for any earthly good.  The key, I think, is not to let people like my anonymous ne'er-do-well or squabbles over this scripture or that ruin the great gift of faith.  As I was told once, comparing ourselves to others is as useful as tuning one piano to another.  It is the purity of the tuning fork that refines the piano's sound.  It is the love of Christ that wraps us up and carries us through the ridiculously difficult and confusing life we live here.

For the tuning fork I strain to hear every day.  That's the best I can do.  Can I get an amen? ;)

Supper Club 7.30.15

T

The most recent meeting of the Supper Club. I do love these people...soooooooo much.

And a more recent pic of sweet Doug and me :)

Timehop Nugget 7.30.15

The Trench

July 29, 2015

We've been having some gutter problems here at Wedgeworth manor, so Darin started digging a trench around the part of the house with the trouble to lay a big tube to carry the water away.  He got about 12 feet carved out on Saturday. I took it from there in the intervening days and dug out the remaining 10 feet or so. Today I had to fill in said channel with rocks that I schlepped to my local home improvement warehouse to procure and mounds and mounds of dirt. 

There are a lot of things that run through my head when I am laboring. During this shoveling extravaganza, mostly a string of expletives dashed across my consciousness in a steady stream. I need to give a shout out to people who do this kind of work all the time. I've always prided myself on my physical toughness and work ethic, but this put Nance to the test. It's about a thousand degrees out with bright blue skies, though, which is my kind of weather. I may love it, but it isn't especially conducive to hard labor for hours and hours.

My reward at the completion of trenchapalooza is to strip down to as little as possible without offending the neighbors and dip in to my own little white trash pool on the zeeb (the old gazebo we emasculated by cutting the "ga" off and just leaving a deck with sides). I like to keep it classy.

A sane person might ask why my happy ass isn't in the air conditioning. It's called addiction, folks. Heat and sun call my name. It would be rude not to answer the call...

WT pool.

Thank God it's over...

Run, Forrest, Run!

The 
July 25, 2015


I don't call myself a runner, but I run.

I don't read articles about running or get my feet analyzed for the perfect shoe. I don't load up on carbs before a race or own a watch that times me to the nearest fraction of a second. I don't run with other people, typically, and when I do it feels weird. Sometimes my legs feel like lead and my lungs feel quite pop-able. But sometimes, just sometimes, I feel like I'm part deer: my legs are an engine almost disconnected from the rest of my body, and it's effortless. In those rare moments, I feel free.

Such was my jaunt this morning. 

Let me go back:  when I was a child, I would only run if chased. I tried to play basketball and I was awful. No sport came easily or even with a vast amount of effort. So, aside from manual labor, physical exertion wasn't on Nance's menu. My physique certainly reflected my standard choice of sit versus move. 

When I got married, Darin and I got each other bikes. I don't remember what precipitated this sudden leap toward fitness, but it was a good purchase. A year in, we rode the MS 150, a 2-day, 150 mile bike tour.  The first day was a delight, with warmth and sun. Day two was rainy and cold and I cut a hole in a trash sack because genius here didn't pack rain gear. "150" is a lie I tell you! A lie! At mile 150 my ass and I were both ready to pitch my bike off a cliff...but alas, there were 17 miles left to pedal. I finished that sucker, and I found myself altered forever (my ass recovered and so did I, not to worry).

For the first time in my life, I was in shape. I didn't want to lose the momentum I had gained during all that training and riding, so I started to run. Nothing big, 2-3 miles at a time. Enough to keep from returning to my childhood Pillsbury Doughboy status. I ran up to the month prior to having Grace and Drew each. I was even one of those annoying moms with the jogging stroller. Drew would listen to tunes and sing the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song at the top of his voice as I trolled around. I'm afraid the neighborhood thought he was special for the first two years of his life.

It wasn't until I randomly entered a race that some of my pals were in that I realized a) passing people was super fun and b) I didn't suck. It was the first physical activity I had ever done with any success, it kept my head clear and my backside less droopy than it otherwise might be. Win win win.

All this not to portray myself as some sort of fitness machine, for that is far from the case. But the run is a significant part of my life. I'm grateful for finding it.

This morning I woke before the sun after a fitful sleep. I was bothered, my body was telling me, but my mind couldn't sort it out. That happens.

After ambling around the house, I knew what I had to do.

As I started to run down the hill from home, something felt different. I felt like I was going slower but lighter. It's interesting to me how often my run improves when my mind is clouded or I'm angry or sad. It's as if a switch is flipped and the body says "screw you, head or heart! All systems are go here." I can't count the times I have run with tears streaming, my legs pumping away in spite of whatever heartbreak or frustration has seized upon me. And yes, people look at me like I've escaped from the mental ward. I don't care.

I felt slower, but my handy dandy phone tracker reported a faster pace than usual. And it continued to quicken. It just felt so damned good.

I walked for a bit as I neared home, but decided to sprint on straightaways. I was flying in spurts. And I laughed out loud. I felt like hammered poo an hour prior, but I ran it off. Sometimes, just sometimes, that happens.

I don't call myself a runner, but I run. And I'm grateful.

Biking today at sunset. Same bike that wore me out for 167 miles 17 years ago. Quite the pair.

I Know Why...

July 25, 2015

Caged Bird

By Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps 

on the back of the wind   

and floats downstream   

till the current ends 

and dips his wing 

in the orange sun rays 

and dares to claim the sky. 

But a bird that stalks 

down his narrow cage 

can seldom see through 

his bars of rage 

his wings are clipped and   

his feet are tied 

so he opens his throat to sing. 

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom. 

The free bird thinks of another breeze 

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees 

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn 

and he names the sky his own 

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   

so he opens his throat to sing. 

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

The Heart's Grasp

"I carry your heart (I carry you in my heart)." --e.e. cummings

When I left Parkview, one of my students created this painting and presented it to me on behalf of the whole squad. Several students would make this sign to me with their hands at various times, and I would either reciprocate, clutch my heart, hug them, pound their knuckles, tell them I loved them, or any combination thereof. So this painting was the perfect symbol of my feelings for them and for our team. I was touched to believe it was how they felt about me, especially when I was the most flawed of us all much of the time.

This painting hangs now in my favorite room in the house: it is a little room in the basement with my exercise stuff in it (my favorite being my sofa with wheels, the recumbent bike on which I sit and pedal and write--as I am now--while watching Bravo.) Outside the glass doors to this room is the vast basement where the kids come and go while I sweat and think with my thumbs. Surrounding the painting are pictures drawn by my own children. It is a solid retreat for me, with constant reminders that love is the thing...even when biking and watching pointless, trashy tv.

Tonight this heart painting is acutely in my focus, as my heart is beating for people I love who are in peril.  Unnecessary are the specifics of their fears or suffering. Suffice it to say, though, that as the poet best described, today it is my heart--not my hands--that holds theirs.

I am grateful that my heart is equipped to do some lifting now, when it matters most. There have been times, see, when they carried mine for me.

July 19 Nugget

Parenting 103

July 18, 2015

Parenting 103 (check Parenting 101 and 102 in the annals of the blog and you will see the trend here)

I’m not a fan of drama for the sake of the dramatic.  Trust me.  But a moment came today that jerked on the fabric of me just a little.  My seams are slightly askew as the sun sets on today. Here you go.

Drew was pitching in the last tournament of the year (thank you, sweet Jesus!) and a line drive hit him square in the side.  No buffer, no stop—straight from the bat to his belly.  I know he’s only ten, but these kids hit…and not like kids. He doubled over, holding his side, and something happened in me that is hard to describe.  Call it adrenaline, call it fear, call it motherhood.  I felt like I could have flown above the fence to him if I had to.  It was all I could do to stay put, watching the coaches rush to him as he hopped around through the pain.  I heard myself making sounds.  I wasn’t crying, but some sort of terrified groan was plowing through my voice and face and my heart. What if it had been his head?  It hit him so hard.  

They ushered him to the dugout and I could tell he was managing the pain. My noises ceased and my body slowly simmered down. 

 Next to me was Nyds, in a similar state, tears in her eyes.  I looked at her.  We looked at each other.  

“That’s the big fear,” I said slowly.  She nodded.

“That’s one of my prayers every game,” she managed.  

This has always been a fear in the back of my mind:  pitchers are in such close proximity to hit balls. 

Nyds gave me an ice pack for him (the woman comes prepared) and I went over to the dugout.  Moms are supposed to stay away—for the pride of their boys and for the whole team professionalism blah-de-blah—but I had to check on him.  I slid him the ice and looked at his sweet little red hot, sweat covered face. He gave me the “don’t make a big deal of it” look but also the “if I could, I would let you take care of me” nod.  I know my boy.

I went back to Nydia and we both sat a little stunned for a while.  He was fine.  But we had glimpsed into a potential we knew of but didn’t want to see. We couldn’t unsee it.

And then I remembered the only other time when I have had that moment of utter terror seize me for one of my children.  Believe me, I know how fortunate I am, by the way; and I plead with God that so it shall remain.  When Drew was about two, he and Grace and I had all been in and out of the house on a summer day.  Somehow, both Grace and I lost sight of him.  There were multiple ways in and out of the house, so at first I didn’t worry.  But we called to him and called to him and…nothing.  As true panic hit me, I yelled his name with a voice I didn’t know I had.  It was so strange and loud and twisted up with fear that it even scared my unflappable 6-year-old.  

He had wandered inside and we had just missed him somehow.  He finally heard me calling him.  Even Grace clung to her little brother that day.  I held on for dear life.

-----------

In brighter parenting news, my sweet girl returned home from New York today.  I can’t describe how much I missed her.  And the thing I love…especially in the midst of this miracle that is adolescence…is that she missed home.  She missed me.  She looked older and taller.  It’s only been a week.  She is just such a remarkable beauty—inside and out. And she is back.  I’m still holding on for dear life.

Each moment, each day as the mother of these two is another piece in the fabric of who I am.  The pattern is ever changing.  But it is lovely.

  

The Favorite

July 18, 2015

I saw “Trainwreck” last night.  It is hysterical, wonderful, vulgar.  My kind of flick.  I don’t think I will spoil the movie for you when I launch into this next part, but if you get all jacked up by knowing a plot twist and you plan to go see this f-word-laden film, it’s probably time to stop the read on this one.

In the movie, the father of our heroine, Amy, dies.  She delivers a eulogy in which she first acknowledges his flaws.  Topping the list are he was a drunk and he was an asshole, and it’s funny and heartbreaking as she makes the case for both. But she goes on to say with a grief that this kind of loss makes palpable (and I’m paraphrasing here), “He made me feel loved and important every day.  He was my favorite person.”

And it was then, after laughing enough to test my already limited bladder control, that I stifled a sizable sob so hearty that giant tears bubbled up and out, silently. That scene I couldn’t shake.  I would even say I was inexplicably melancholy last night after my solid almost-pee-my-pants movie event.  And I woke up this morning with my disposition unchanged.  

The thing is, Amy’s assessment of her father struck a larger chord with me. Feeling loved and important every day is it. Not BEING loved and BEING important (okay, okay...that does lay the groundwork...).  But you gotta FEEL it.  

I’m not splitting the atom here.  I know that.  We have basic human needs of belonging and love.  Got it.  I don’t have a PhD in psychology and I don’t claim to.

But there is nothing nothing nothing I need or want more than to feel loved and to feel important.  At the crux of all my difficulty is when I don’t.  At the crux of any pain I’ve caused others—from family to friends to students—is when I have failed to make them feel that way.  Conversely, at the core of every good relationship I’ve had—from family to friends to students—is when they feel loved and important because of me.  

And you can’t fake it in perpetuity.  I’ve been able to “fix” all kinds of messes here and there, doctor all kinds of wounds, by faking my way through:  yes, I really care about this/you; yes, I can pretend.  But only for so long. Eventually, the bough of feigned affection breaks. And so do you.

So it is with sincere gratitude that I survey the contents of my (slightly worn) heart and find its inventory in solid supply of love and importance from and for so many.  The ache comes, though, when the give outweighs the get here and there. 

Such is life.

It is my charge to do what I can do be the favorite person for those in my favor.  I try and I will and I do. 

We are all charged with that pledge, aren’t we?  Be someone’s favorite.  Try.  Do.

Kayakorama

Kayaking with my boy on Fellows Lake.

July 16 Timehop Nuggets

Death, A Misunderstanding, and Stirrups

July 16, 2015

This morning I met my best friend Sarah at a funeral visitation. Our dear pal Ellen lost her eldest brother suddenly and we went to hug her and give her the love you give your friends when awful happens. 

Ellen is absolutely gorgeous and her beauty is effortless. She is maybe ten years older than me and one of the happiest people I've ever met. But she isn't so happy you want to slap her. She is just genuinely at the happy helm of her life. 

Several nuggets of memories bubbled up in the midst of the morning. 

The first is that Ellen's brother was a doctor. A lady doctor. Long before I met Ellen, he gave me my first PAP Smear. 

It's a small world.

The second is my favorite Ellen story. Ellen's mom passed away several years ago. She was a classy lady named Shirley. Ellen was taking care of Shirley's house after her death. It had been weeks since her mother's passing when Ellen was headed inside the house.

Shirley's neighbor, for reasons that escape me, did not know that Shirley had died. Ellen wasn't aware of this necessarily, but did know that this neighbor, while truly kind, was also a big talker. As Ellen saw the neighbor on this fateful day, she said hello, but headed into the house as quickly as possible to avoid a lengthy neighborly chat. In true Seinfeldian fashion, the neighbor called to her as she opened the front door, "Tell Shirley hello for me!"

"Will do!" She replied as the screen door slammed behind her.

It wasn't until she was inside that she realized what she had done.

"It was a reflex!" she cried, telling us the story not long after. 

What in the hell was she to do now? she wondered. That's a tough conversation to have, we all agreed. "Hey, by the way, when you asked me to say hello to Mom the other day...well...that's a toughie..."

It was several weeks of strategic avoidance played out by my good friend before she finally had to come clean. In true Ellen fashion, she owned it. And I have loved her all the more ever since. Classic.

The third and final moment was that, as Sarah and I entered the chapel, the OB/GYN who delivered Grace was the first person I saw. She has no clue who I am (she wasn't my actual doc, but rather the one on call that day; and I'm sure it's hard to place faces after fourteen years and thousands of, well, stirrups and episiotomies and placentas, etc...) I thought to myself, though, how nice. Two important days in Nancy's gynecological life are coming together here at the funeral home. 

It is a small world indeed.

July 14 Nuggets

July 14, 2015

The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
--Bob Marley

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.
Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
--CS Lewis

I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.
--Jon Katz

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.
--Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense

The Walking Heartbeats

July 14, 2015


My Grace is in NYC with her cousins and grandparents. She took with her a big ol' chunk of this heart. It's just a week. In four years she is going to really leave. Ugh. Baby steps.

I suppose the pharmaceutical industry exists for attachment issues such as these ;).

The reality is that life in the house is just less beautiful without her. And less edgy. She has a wonderfully vicious sense of humor for which I proudly take credit. If I'm thinking it, there is a decent chance she is about to say it. 

But my boy is back from his World Series trip, and I am happy to report that he still leapt out of the car to me the minute he got home. Of course, I completely wore him out in the following moments, clinging to him like a kissy leech. 

I made it up to him yesterday by letting him whack the sh*t out of me with a pillow. That's what makes 10-year-old boys belly laugh, apparently: chasing and beating mom with a king-sized pillow.  Here I am, using my legs as armor. They were of limited use.

All it takes is his incessant "this is so fun!" to do me in. What's next, Drew, knife battles with me pinned to the wall? I'll think about it ;).

Sarah

July 8, 2015

10 days before man walked on the moon, my best pal, Sarah, arrived on this planet. Today is the birthday of my dearest friend. We are marching up the hill together, but she is a few years ahead of me (bless her). 

Our friendship made its official launch toward the end of my high school career. Sarah, interestingly enough, was out of college and substitute teaching in my school. That cracked me up, because we had known each other for the entirety of my life, but the age difference was dissipating as a factor and our soul-centered bond was strengthening with every day or new adventure. Let's face it, when she was in 8th grade and I was in 3rd, hanging out would have been more of a babysitter/babysat situation...or just weird.

As I headed to college and Sarah to grad school at SMS, our lives stayed closely intertwined. If something happened, it wasn't real until I told Sarah. And that way it has remained these last 20+ years.

Sarah is my family, and I hers. Even in the midst of marrying, birthing babies and raising them, rising up in our careers and juggling all of it, we may go for bits at a time without a word, but we worry not. It's a security of affection and trust that I thank God for every day. 

Just after Sarah's youngest was born around 8 years ago, Sarah got sick. It seemed like a flu that wouldn't end. She lost weight, she lost energy. She was crawling up stairs and unable to open doors. I watched this athletic, energetic woman deteriorate and I realized that I might lose her. That we all might lose her. I was terrified.

Thank God, Sarah was diagnosed with Ciliac disease and her life was saved. Since then she has managed this son-of-a-bitch-but-we-guess-it-could-be-worse disease with class. 

I will never forget looking into an abyss of life without her in it. My eyes stung and my heart roared. But hey, we have plans to share a room in the home a long way down the line. Sarah may be habitually late, but she doesn't break plans!

Happy Birthday to my Sarah. I love you to the moon and back. In honor of this special day, I've complied a few of our finer moments in pictures. Most of them are not embarrassing.  

In summer of 1999, Sarah lived in Boston. I came for a visit. Here we are in the bathroom of a cool place to eat and shop called Marche. Sarah had on white shorts and sat in birdshit. We are cleaning it up here and felt the need to immortalize it on film. Ironically, we were vacationing in Mexico and few years ago and her hubby, Al, and I were together by the pool when a bird rained down toilet time on the both of us. Bonds formed after shat happens are bonds indeed.

Oh good Lord. The things we do for Jesus. We are staking tomato plants in Centralhatchee, Georgia on a college mission trip with our good buddy Jen. The best part of that trip--aside from moments like these--was the mother of the missionary with whom we were staying. Miss Erma was about a hundred years old and she sat in a chair in the corner of the living room with a bottle of Aqua Net to the side, by her feet. At random, she would lift the can to the hair up front, just above her forehead, and spray. We loved it.

The hair!!! But our legs are legit.

In Napa for Jen's wedding in 2005. Poor Sarah was pregnant, so I drank her share of the wine. That's the kind of friend I am.

At the wedding of our bud Amy, with Ellen and Heather. The five of us descend on Heather's family lake house once a year. We became a group around 13 years ago, when we would invade Heather's house every Wednesday to eat and drink and watch "Sex and the City." Sarah was the nucleus of the group, bringing all of us together. That is one of her many gifts. She effortlessly connects people. 

Sarah and Al, 2004. They make each other very happy, which makes me very happy. 

There aren't enough words or pics to do justice to who she is and what she means to me. Love you, Sar!

PS--Grace with Sarah's girls, Sophia and Lauren, and Amy's son Carter, as we celebrated Sarah's big day :)

July 9

July 9, 2015

"I don't know what it is, but I'm always surprised when I can count on someone."

--Meryl Streep, in It's Complicated

Absence Makes the Heart...

July 8, 2015

Today I had to send my boy and his daddy off to the World Series in Oklahoma. Grace is leaving for New York on Sunday with her grandparents, so she and I stayed behind before she exits for a week.  Here I'm wrestling another kiss and hug out of him before we said goodbye.

I don't like to be away from my kids. The barometric pressure in my atmosphere changes when they aren't close. And I'm not an obsessive, helicopter mom. Honestly. I just really like them and I like them floating around in my orbit. 

The first time I had to leave Grace behind for an overnight debate trip, she was 3-months old.  Nyds drove us to drop me at the bus. I leaned in to kiss the cherub goodbye and I thought my heart would plop out in the seat next to her. I unsuccessfully fought back tears and Nyds joined me. It was the hardest climb up those damned bus steps to greet my squad that I have ever made.

But I survived. And so did Grace. And Nyds.

The day will come when they leave and I will have to figure out how to soldier on. And I will, with two pieces of my beating heart broken off and following them from place to place as they live their own lives. But for now, I like hearing "yeah?" when I holler one of their names in the house. I like schlepping Grace to and fro to keep her social calendar active. I like getting minute-by-minute baseball score updates from Drew.

On the other hand, I admit it is fun to have four+ bachelorette-ish days with just my girl and me. This is how she is beginning our little at-home vaca, complete with two coveted recent Bday gifts: a ukelele and a hammock. Not bad, sis. Not bad.

Beaches

July 7, 2015

I gave in to my adolescent cinema memories a few days ago and watched the movie Beaches. I'm a total sap anyway, so put me in front of a late 1980s film--complete with the cheesy music and dying best friend--and you will find me in a nostalgic puddle. Of course, I'm not nostalgic for death or the marginal tunes; it's remembering how much I loved that movie when I loved it. I've probably watched it 50 times; but until Saturday I hadn't watched it in ten years.

The attraction I've always had to this little gem is friendship. Bette Midler (CC) and Barbara Hershey (Hillary) play best friends from two different coasts and walks of life. They meet when they are eleven, but don't see each other again until they are grown. The friendship is spent apart more than together, but it is sustained by their correspondence. For years, letters between them travel cross country, and with them, their lives. They each become, truly, the most important person one for another. 

Of course, sh*t happens and things fall apart between them for a bit. When the big Hollywood confrontation plays out after a span of time when CC has continued to write and Hillary has continued to send the letters back, a hurt CC tells Hillary, "You and your lousy letters. Just to get one of them made me feel special even before I opened it."

Eventually the two mend what is broken and Hillary proceeds to have a daughter, get sick, and die. CC (Bette) sings "Wind Beneath My Wings" over the death montage and takes the daughter to raise. While all of this happens, I sob. It's great.

We live in a world full of communication that is not face-to-face. And the least of it is conducted with the help of the US Postal Service. But holding tightly to a precious relationship--whether by quill and scroll or thumbs and smartphone--is a worthy practice and one for which I am forever grateful. The ding of a text or the discovery of an image posted or an email sent can be a burst of oxygen. A lifeline.

For my fictitious friends CC and Hillary, letters are the artery of their friendship. I understand. I'm certain I'm not alone.

So thanks, Beaches, for the cry...and the reminder that connection is, indeed, very special.