funny, isn't it?
by jeanne charters

As you read this, you are probably anticipating holiday celebrations with those who make up your very own beloved community. As I write it, it’s not quite Halloween. Deadlines, you know.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how so much of our lives are centered around holidays? It occurs to me that holidays give us times to look forward to, times to remember and, sometimes, times to dread. We seem to live from Christmas to New Year’s to Valentine’s Day to Easter to Memorial Day to Halloween to Thanksgiving and then the cycle begins all over again. This time passage is what centers the calendars of our lives. It is also what makes time fly faster than we think possible. I’ll bet you’re thinking, “I can’t believe it’s nearly Christmas again already.”

Were you born into a “beloved community” or have you shaped your own out of necessity? I was an only child in a two-parent family…the kind that looked like “Leave it to Beaver” to the outside world but kept its secrets hidden behind lace curtains and tight smiles. My childhood community consisted of a few aunts and cousins and neighbor kids.

Ruth Anne was my best friend growing up. She lived across Catherine Street in yet another two-parent home with a brother and a sister. She was 2 years older than I, and I worshipped her beyond reason. Her mother was Alma, and her dad was Barney. Barney was a cop in my town. There were secrets in Ruth Anne’s house, too, mostly surrounding Barney’s occasional tumbles off the wagon of sobriety. When that happened, all the neighbors spoke in whispers about poor Alma and what a saint she was to put up with his shenanigans.

People born in Springfield, Ohio rarely moved away. Their community remained the one they were born to, with additions made only as needed and pre-approved by the community members. Girls like me were expected to marry Irish Catholic boys and to start producing babies about 9.5 months after the wedding day. My first baby was born after exactly 9 months. Believe me, I was sweating that one.

But things in Springfield were changing. The factories and stores which had supported families for generations were closing. The boys couldn’t find work when they returned from Korea or Viet Nam, so, through rivers of tears, the young people packed up their vans and moved away for jobs. I’ll never forget my first move…to Chicago. Everyone told me it was a city of gangsters and that my babies and I would never be safe there.

My first year in Chicago was awful! We moved into a second floor walk-up in a Polish section of town. I thought the Irish were clannish until I encountered the American Poles. In most of the apartments, grandma lived in the basement, momma on the first floor and the married kids on the second floor. Lucky me…I was on the second floor of an all-Polish building, and they were not amused to have me there. It’s hard to imagine that this kind of prejudice existed back in the 60s; but, believe me, it did.

After a time, we were able to buy a small house in a Chicago suburb and then life changed. I entered a community of young wives and children who followed husbands from their hometowns in order to find work in the big city. We became each other’s brothers, sisters and understanding aunties, and bonded in a survival circle of split-level, aluminum-sided homes. Each of us had an entry foyer. Each foyer had walls covered with flocked velvet. Mine was green. We all had steps up from the foyer to the bedrooms (3 of them) and steps down to the “family room”, a half bath and utility room. The couple across the street were older, had a larger home and a swimming pool. Their house became the center of social activities in the summer. Everyone would pack up the kids, their chairs, a covered dish and a bottle of something and head to Ray and Jean’s every weekend afternoon.

It was a great way to live. We were all rearing children, and we really did have a “village” to help out. The moms got together for coffee nearly every day because nobody had jobs then. One winter, there was an ice storm in Chicago that crippled the entire city and knocked power out of the neighborhood. That’s when those of us living without heat moved in on our neighbors with fireplaces and had our own camping parties for the duration of the power outage.

When I left Chicago for New Jersey, I cried harder than I’ve ever cried in my life. I was leaving the best community I’d ever known and friends I vowed I’d love forever.
I wonder where they all are now.

In New Jersey, we moved into a slightly larger split level house with a walk-up living room, a walk-down dining room, and a big family kitchen. Tres chic! The town was called Florham Park, and it was just one hour by train from Manhattan. Again, a mixed-bag community of young marrieds who centered their lives around their kids, the community swimming pool and a local theater group. The men built sets in my garage while I learned all the songs at my neighbor’s piano.

When the other women and I got parts as chorus girls, we formed an exercise class in my kitchen to get in shape for the short skirts and opera hose. We partied hearty every weekend, and there were rumors of affairs. The times, they were a-changing, for sure.

When my then husband was transferred from New York City to Albany, NY, again the community grieved our leaving, gave us a farewell party and swore that we would all remain best friends forever.

Don’t know what happened to any of them either. Does this make me shallow or just a survivor?

In Albany, I went to work. The girls were now in junior high and I could see the writing on the wall that my husband would not remain employed much longer because he seemed more committed to vodka than to catalog merchandising. My community became one of working women. Most of them were great women. Some were clawing their way up so viciously that they became paranoid and would not support their sisters in any way. This was called “becoming liberated”.

My daughters graduated from high school in Albany and all graduated from college. I met and married again, became a business success story and we decided to leave for the balmy climate and freedom of North Carolina. This time, I really have stayed in touch with my friends up North. I think it’s because there were not so many of them and also that our friendships were based on more than geography and common problems of child rearing.

So here I am in Asheville, starting to build yet another beloved community. I hope this one will last me for the rest of my life. I’m taking it slow this time. Don’t feel desperate to have a “best friend” within one week. I’m older now and wiser, and I know these things take time and effort.

I’ve also learned a great truth…that the most beloved community is a community of one. The community of your own soul. Before you can be a friend, a lover or a mother, you must make peace with that little demon inside your head that tells you that you’re not good enough, or pretty enough or talented enough to be a success or a best friend to anyone.

So, as we all approach 2004, I wish you peace in your own heart, your own mind and your own spirit. If you can do that, you will always live within a nurturing and beloved community of your own making.

Jeanne Charters lives in Fairview with her husband, Matt Restivo. A former V.P. of Marketing for Viacom Television, she started her own award-winning broadcast Advertising agency in 1990.
[ charmkt@juno.com; 828-628-0023 ]