by Harvey Lillywhite
Yesterday morning I was in Atlanta to teach some people at the Department of Justice how to write better. I had to leave my own family for the day. And on the plane ride down, I was thinking about certain friends I’ve had since high school and how they have, in my mind, become part of my family, too, though I haven’t seen many of them for years and years. I was thinking about how these friends had remained so tied to my sense of who I am. And it occurred to me that, in every case, I had met the family of these friends, and there was something about having met the family of my friends that made the friendships somehow deeper, and, in fact, indelible, to use a sort of emotionless, almost clinical term. And further, I wondered that I had not met any of the family members of most of the friends I’ve made as an adult. Not that these adult friends are not important to me, but, not having met their family, they remain, perhaps, just a little more distant to me. Should I now, on the verge of being an old man, meet their families, their brothers and sisters and, if they were still alive, their moms and dads, I assume then that these friendships too might grow a little deeper into that circle of people with whom I feel a true sense of indelible family kinship. As ridiculous as this theory is, there is maybe something to it.
So family was on my mind, and I was aware of thoughts of closeness and separation popping up as I sat for a few moments at a Greek 24-hour diner on Forsythe Street in downtown Atlanta having coffee before heading into my day’s job. It had been foggy and drizzling slightly as I walked from the Glenn Hotel to the coffee shop. But as I sat there, the rain that drought-stricken Atlanta had needed all summer started to come, in bucketfuls. It was hot for the beginning of October, in the mid 90s, and so muggy. And from this the proper rain turned into a deluge. In just minutes the streets were gushing with water.
Thinking I had only to cross the street to get where I needed to be, and having a small portable umbrella, I remained calm and even enjoyed this dramatic washout as I finished my tea. In fact, it was raining so hard, I thought it would pass fairly quickly, though it ended up lasting for 20 or 30 minutes, truly flooding some surrounding areas—as in water up to the windows of stalled cars.
I paid my check, left a generous tip, and pushed out the door with my umbrella ahead of me and my backpack, full of the stuff I needed to teach, clutched to my chest. The umbrella was quickly collapsed under the weight of the heavy rain so that I had to hold it with one hand and hold it open with the other hand, my backpack dangling from my shoulder. Still I was staying fairly dry as I crossed the street trying to find how to get into the building I thought I needed to be in.
Actually, the umbrella reminded me of my family—how it protected me from the rain, but also how it collapsed around me in certain crises and needed my help to stay up. It said something, too, about sacrifice, though I wasn’t sure at that point whether the energy to keep the umbrella open was coming more from me or more from my loved ones. But I found my way into the building, which turned out to be The Court of Appeals Building—not where I needed to be.
As I entered through the huge, heavy door, cascading water into the foyer, a very old security guard who waited by the front desk let me know that I was in the wrong place. I was on Forsythe Street Northwest and needed to be on Forsythe Street Southwest. Normally a small detail, but in this rain, I had a good five blocks to go to get to the Sam Nunn Federal Building between Alabama and Martin Luther King Streets.
The security guard definitely reminded me of my family—how he felt some compassion for this lost, wet soul and how he was ready with directions that would get me where I needed to go.
I thought of hailing a cab, but this was Atlanta, not NYC—none to be seen. The traffic on the street not only passed me by but managed to splash great fanning waves of water at me from the street as I walked at the edge of the sidewalk rubbing against the buildings, trying to stay somewhat dry. And obviously the traffic reminded me of family—how it sometimes ignored me, left me to get to work on my own. As the I Ching says, “No blame.”
Crossing wide Marietta Street was like fording a river. I was up to water over my shoes and socks and halfway up my knees. As a kid, I’d been fly fishing with my Dad hundreds of times, up to my hips in freezing Rocky Mountain water, the felt soles of my baggy Remington-BarrierFlex-chest-waders-for-men slipping over the mossy rocks as I steadied myself against the huge current, trying to cast out my line. Now I managed to keep the umbrella up and kept my head dry. The river especially reminded me of my family. I thought of the rain cycle, how this water might be the same water that had fallen on General Sherman, a distant relative, when he was burning Atlanta. Or it might have fallen on some great cavepainters at La grotte Chauvet Pont d'Arc in France 30 thousand years ago or on the speleologists who’d recently discovered the paintings. It was water from the ocean, from the clouds, from rivers formed by the runoff of glaciers. It had washed already so much of the earth, percolating up and down for untold centuries. And I thought how I think of myself now more like a river than a rock, and how I was coming to appreciate the flow of others, who are not so “other” after all, how we all were caught in the rain sometime, how we drank it, swam in it, sailed over it. And of course the growing river of rain in the street was reminding me of my family in all those respects.
To keep a short story short, it’s true that I finally made it to the right building. The three guards there smoking under the awning felt pity for me, though they needn’t have. I was okay—just very wet. Actually, in my seeming helplessness, these guards who otherwise would have been distant and perhaps a little surly, felt true compassion for me—a stranger, not of their race, who, at the moment was pitiable enough to become part of their human family. I was, in fact, still excited to teach these people at the Department of Justice who’d been flown in from several states for this communications training. These guards were like my family as they made sure my soaked bag made it through the security x-ray machine and that I got it back, and that I signed the right book to get the right visitor’s badge, and made it to the right elevator.
So there I was in the classroom, even early by five minutes. We were all wet. I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my pantlegs so I could walk. They peeled off whatever they could and still remain decent. We were a little nearly naked family for the day, ready to talk about how even writing has to be a conversation—perhaps from one family member to another—a thought I harbored and actually expressed. We did talk about being aware of our readers, how we must treat them like family—or better—if we hoped to hold their interest.
At day’s end, I boarded the MARTA at 5 Points and rolled back to the airport. Of course the subway train was like family, carrying me along. And yes, the whole family of man seemed to be at the airport in front of me as we slugged our way along for half an hour in the security check line. And the Delta 747 that flew me home was late, like family. And the flight attendants catered to me better than my own Mom. And the seats were filled with many daughters from Mexico on their way to D.C. (I was headed back home to Baltimore). And, no kidding, as we flew away at twilight, we flew (do I even dare say it?) through a rainbow. The way it fractured the light into those huge bands of color was without debate like family.
The Lakota actually have a saying for this: Mitakuye Oyasin. I’m not looking it up. You look it up. (Just like family.)