“On Getting the Butt off the Balcony…”

Family vacation 2013 is now history, documented in dozens of photos filed away electronically where generations hence will discover them and wonder,  “who are these ugly people and where are they and why didn’t  Great Granddad  label all these?”  They will not understand that I am from the post card generation where we sent and received beach photos and marveled, in our mostly black and white world,  at the natural looking colors of those doctored photos of girls in their one piece swimsuits  under palmetto trees.

They will wonder also why most of my 2013 photos show folks sitting on the balcony of the beach house rather than frolicking in the surf and sand.  I’ve noticed that as we get older, we tend to take more pictures sitting in the porch swing, or rocking in those big white rocking chairs. Our sags and bulges are less obvious with  balcony clothes rather than beach clothing, or lack thereof.

So it is that I did most of my vacation, and photos, on the beach house balcony.  It was there that I thought, ever so briefly, of those years where I could hardly rest on vacation knowing  I needed to deliver a sermon on the next Sunday.  I thought of all those commitments I used to have waiting for me upon my return:   counseling; weddings; funerals; administrative meetings; hospital visits.  And then those crucial issues like where to place the  water cooler; the color of the new carpet; and the potential church split predicated on whether to charge fifty cents extra for those wanting dessert at Wednesday night Church meals.  I breathed a sigh of relief at not having to care so much for anyone but myself.  I was feeling absolutely selfish, and was loving every moment of it.

Then I saw Dot, the neighbor across the way. We had gotten to know  Dot over the years of  using my sister and brother-in-law’s beach house.   Dot’s husband had died a few months ago.  I had yet to see her to acknowledge the loss.   I knew it would be a conversation of listening to her grief and struggles of saying goodbye to her husband of sixty-seven years.  “I could rush inside and be out of sight,” I thought.  “After all, I am a retired minister.  Retired ministers, especially those on vacation,  should not be expected to get involved in someone’s grief.”   I yielded to another voice which said something like, “Get your butt off the balcony, Son, and get down there where your years of listening skills might do someone some good, you lazy ….”   Well, you get the idea!  That voice inside me can be pretty rough sometimes.  Guess that’s part of being raised a Baptist in the South.  Sometimes I wish I had been raised a Unitarian in New Hampshire, but perhaps they, too, have that same voice,  only I can imagine it with a friendlier tone than the Baptist one!

I went down from my balcony refuge, greeted Dot, and  listened to her grief .  It was a familiar sound, but fresh with hurt and pain which I felt as she narrated the story of Ed’s last days.  We conversed long enough that my back began to ache and I began to perspire from the relentless sun.  My momentary discomfort was nothing in comparison to the immensity of Dot’s grief. 

When someone asks me what I did on my summer vacation, I will probably answer “ not much.”  I just sat on the balcony of the beach house looking over life and wondering about the past and the future.   On yes, and I heard a voice.  The urgency of the present broke in and I realized that there are no vacations from caring, or being a good neighbor, or offering a simple listening ear to someone who needs it.