by Lynne Hinton
Charlotte had sat in the room with Margaret as all the reports were read. She reached for and held Margaret’s hand at one point. But she felt incomplete, fragmented; and she had told Margaret so. “The others should have been with us,” she had said to Margaret, who had nodded in agreement. And they both decided at that point that, for the rest of the way, Margaret would let the other women be a part of the process.
Jessie sat back at first and then dropped to her knees in front of Margaret. Then Charlotte watched as Jessie pulled Margaret out of her own chair and into herself, and they stayed like that for a very long time.
The young woman folded her arms around the steering wheel. She wept while she watched two women, two friends, fall into each other and into the sadness and into the fear and the sorrow. She saw them rock and sit and wipe the tears and hold each other some more.
It was powerful, she thought, what women bring to each other in calamity. It may not be forceful or disciplined or organized. It may not solve anything or provide a linear direction for others to follow. It may not have the intensity or action that men’s responses often have. On the surface it might even appear sparse or meager, insignificant, small. Many will pass right over it, never even recognizing its strength. But Charlotte knew it to be what it was. It was the place from which everything else grew. It was rich and fertile, the foundation of life. It was the bedrock of faith, but one she knew she did not have when she had sat in the hospital room with Nadine. And she wished she could have offered what these women seemed to possess.
Having witnessed enough, the young pastor started the car and pulled out into the night.
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4
Hope Springs Community Garden Club Newsletter
BEA’S BOTANICAL BITS
Let There Be Light
God said it; so it must be so! Give your plants the sun. Still, a gardener must use some discretion. After all, sunshine is like wine. Some folks can take only a little.
You can tell if a plant needs more light because it will be dwarfed and put out only a few leaves. Also, sun-starved plants will lean in the direction of the light and have long shoots. On the other hand, if there’s too much sunshine, the leaves will turn brown and appear burned.
Learn about the light needs of your plants before you put them in your garden. But remember, plants are like children: every day they need quality time in the sun.
4
Charlotte drove up the street slowly. Marion Gordon’s office in downtown Greensboro was on a shaded street where homes had been turned into workplaces for psychologists, nonprofit agencies, even a few lawyers. Close to the hospital, adjacent to a city park, the tree-lined street was traveled by pedestrians, cyclists, and automobiles, all hurrying along to someplace else.
The office was on the corner, flanked by large oaks and rows of bushes that grew bulky and green. The house number was printed on a sign that hung beneath the mailbox at the curb and was also painted in black just above the front door, which faced the main thoroughfare.
Charlotte pulled into the driveway slowly and parked behind the house where Marion Gordon and the other therapists had their sign. The small gravel lot was discreet, noticeable only if you were watching for it, and it appeared to be shared by the therapists and the women’s center housed in the building next door.
Gordon was a social worker associated with a group whose services included individual, marriage, and family therapy, with an emphasis on childhood trauma and abuse. Charlotte found this out by looking them up on the Internet, where their web page was filled with pictures of happy children playing together and phone numbers flashing at the bottom of the page for domestic violence hot lines. After reading it, she considered telling her insurance company that she had changed her mind and would rather go ahead and see one of their men. She was not, after all, interested in returning to her childhood, wading through all the memories, all the forgotten disappointments. And even though she did not try to fool herself into thinking she had lived a perfect childhood, she had not ever considered herself abused.
The property was fenced on three sides with tangles of soft-stemmed clematis and climbing rose twining in and out of the thick wooden rails that separated lawn from lawn. There were evergreen trees planted in the corners, one cedar, the other a fir, and large rocks placed at the base of their trunks.
Charlotte shut off the engine and waited. She thought about going back home. She considered that she did not have to go through with this and maybe all that she really needed was a good, long nap. She thought about her parishioners and considered how they would react if they knew she was seeing a therapist. She thought about her mother, Joyce, how many times she had gone to see counselors, AA sponsors, rehab specialists, and remembered how much of that work had been useless.
After Serena died, Joyce had tried numerous times to get her daughter to go with her to see a counselor. But the older woman was still drinking at the time and Charlotte had refused. Years later, when Joyce had been sober for a few years, she had suggested therapy again. But as before, Charlotte hadn’t been interested.
Even now, having decided on her own, Charlotte was unsure about coming. She wondered what good it could do, how much it would really help, if there was really any way to discover the source of her discontent. And yet, she felt that it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t as if she saw herself as being at her wit’s end or clutching her final straw. She simply realized that the time felt right and that if she was going to be able to be of much help to anyone else, she had to start understanding the condition of her own heart and figuring out how she might help herself.
Reluctantly, Charlotte got out of her car and walked toward the building. Off to the right, facing the side street, ivy draped the top of an arbor marking the entrance to a small garden, which was hemmed in by thick shrubs and tall clumps of grass. The garden had a bench, a few cement sculptures, and thin clusters of late summer flowers and more large rocks. It was a vista of steadiness, clarity, completely, Charlotte noted, unlike the landscape of her mind.
She peeked through the foliage where butterflies floated above and noticed inside a green stone angel, her face dropped down, her wings draped about her. Three mosaic steps, topped with brightly colored pieces of cut glass, led to the bench. Since the young woman was a bit early for her appointment, she stepped inside and sat down. She listened to the hum of bees, the muffled sounds of traffic nearby, the silence in between all the natural and unnatural noises, and thought about an angel who had dropped her face from the light.
She bent to see the angel’s eyes, to understand whether this had been a posture of prayer or a gesture of resignation; but she was unable to see the angel’s face clearly. Charlotte realized that to see the angel completely she would have to get down on the ground on her knees. And since she decided that she wasn’t curious enough to risk getting dirty, she sat back on the bench and glanced up. The wind danced through the branches of an old flowering ash that had been planted in the yard next door but was draping and leaning across the garden and even out into the parking lot. The sun appeared and disappeared through the limbs, and Charlotte took in a deep breath.
She closed her eyes and let herself relax. She felt hidden and secure within the green walls and the tall twisting ceiling. It was a peaceful place, this little garden planted behind a therapist’s office, and she liked the way it was shaded and light, both at the same time. She sat, remembering the places she played when she was a child, the tall trees that she climbed and stayed in for hours, swinging between the branches, pretending she was flying above the earth. She recalled the empty creek bed where she kept a blanket and smooth river stones, the place she thought of as her sacred space, though at that time she would never have had those words to describe it.
Charlotte sat in this small, leafy room and was driven to the times and places when she was a little girl and had found solace along the trunks of great trees, a time when she had run to the forest in anger or fear and emerged from
the woods stronger, more confident.
It had been the strength of the tall Virginia pines and the grace of mountain laurel and sweeping sugar maples, the stirring of breezes and the cacophony of animal sounds, the cool mossy ground and the lacy webs of spiders that calmed her and quieted her and put her heart back in place.
She sat there, restful and remembering, drawn into neatly carved hours of her girlhood when she had found and claimed all the help she needed. Here in those memories of clean and untroubled moments, here in the chambers of wood and vine, leaf and flower, she remembered feeling alive and lively. Here, Charlotte thought, here surrounded by nature is the best place I have ever been.
The young pastor feasted in her memories until she was pulled back hard into the present. Someone drove right up to the arbor, skidded to a stop on the gravel, got out, and slammed the car door shut. Charlotte, jolted, jumped up and looked at her watch. It was time for her appointment.
She followed the woman who had just arrived from the parking lot to the office. The woman was bottom-heavy and broad and walked with a certain amount of difficulty. She moved slowly, blowing puffs of air with every few steps. She had a few folders and papers under her arm, a black purse swinging from her elbow, and she was balanced only by the way she dropped her weight from side to side.
Charlotte stayed a ways behind so as not to startle her but was still able to overhear the woman as she mumbled under her breath something about “egomaniacs” and “self-absorbed losers.” Charlotte assumed that she was a client for one of the other counselors in the house. The woman, stomping and puffing, moved in through a side door and pulled it shut behind her. Charlotte walked around to the front.
It was an old house, recently refurbished with a new coat of stark white paint and orange-red shutters and window boxes filled with fat marigolds and thick purple and yellow pansies. The front porch was surrounded with hanging baskets of ferns, and large green rocking chairs stood side by side, five or six in a row. It was homey and welcoming, like a bed-and-breakfast or a grandmother’s house, Charlotte thought as she went in through the front door. The first room was wide and cool; and since the air conditioning was on and working, the windows were closed and bolted. And as soon as Charlotte closed the door behind her, everything was quiet.
The room was decorated in bold solid colors, with light billowing fabric thrown across curtain rods on the top of each window. It was lively and sunny in the room, cheerful. Charlotte thought it was possible that a psychological assessment had been done for each aspect of the decorating of the therapy house. She wondered if all the counselors met to discuss which colors were therapeutic, which ones created more of a healing space, or if they just told a decorator to make it as happy as possible.
There was one woman sitting in a chair on the right side. She was facing an empty desk just at the hall entrance. The woman didn’t glance up from her magazine, and Charlotte sat down on the opposite side of the room, on a large brown sofa, waiting for someone to arrive at the desk and tell her what to do.
In a few minutes a middle-aged man, tall with thinning hair, came into the room from the back and motioned for the woman sitting and reading the magazine to follow him. He did not speak or even appear to notice Charlotte. The two of them chatted down the hall about the weather, and the woman seemed comfortable with him as they went around a corner and disappeared. Charlotte looked at her watch. It was five minutes past her scheduled appointment. She considered wandering around and trying to find somebody, just to make sure that she was in the right place. But then she decided that she should probably just stay out in the waiting area for a little while longer.
She studied the room. There were overstuffed chairs with lots of pillows. Pots of flowers stood in every corner, and piles of magazines covered the coffee table and spilled onto the floor next to the seats. There was a wall with long narrow bookshelves behind her, but she didn’t turn around to see what books were there. The air conditioner blew back on and Charlotte looked at her watch again. A few more minutes had passed.
Finally, just as she was deciding to leave, Charlotte heard a door open down the hall and the sounds of someone coming toward the waiting room. She strained her neck to see who it might be; but as soon as she heard the puffs and the heavy steps, she knew it was the same woman she had followed in.
“You Charlotte Stewart?” She stared directly at Charlotte.
Charlotte nodded.
“Then, come on with me.” And the broad woman turned and walked back in the direction from which she had come.
Charlotte got up and hurried after her. The woman pushed opened a door into an office and stood behind it while Charlotte walked in. Then she shut it and locked it. She sat down in a chair by a desk and pulled out some forms and tried to find a pen. She gasped and sighed the entire time.
Charlotte stayed near the door, feeling a little unsure of what she should do.
“Can’t ever find something to write with.” The woman fumbled in her desk drawers and along the top under folders and papers.
Charlotte reached in her purse and handed a pen to the therapist. She smiled and took it and started to write something on one of the forms, then threw the pen and the papers down in front of her. “Well, why don’t we just talk first? Go on and have a seat.” And she motioned toward a sofa that was pushed up against a window.
She got up as Charlotte walked over and sat on the couch. Then the woman plopped down in a chair situated across from the minister.
“I’m Marion,” she said, finally introducing herself.
“I’m Charlotte,” was her response as she brushed down the front of her dress a bit nervously.
“Your insurance company called me last week. I never heard of them.” She pulled herself up a little higher in her chair.
“It’s a denominational company.” Charlotte paused, then decided to explain. “I’m a pastor and we have our own insurance company.”
The woman nodded as if she understood. “Oh, one of them,” she said. Charlotte wasn’t sure if she meant that being a pastor was one of them or the insurance company was one of them. She didn’t say anything else.
“So, Reverend Charlotte Stewart, tell me what brings you into the office of a therapist.”
Charlotte raised both eyebrows and gathered her hands in front of her. “Not sure exactly.”
She waited. She had not expected to have to jump right into things. She had hoped or at least expected that there would be a little small talk at first. The direct hit of the counselor caught her off guard.
Marion did not ask anything else.
Charlotte decided to continue. “I was just beginning to feel…” She hesitated again, “I don’t know.” Another pause.
Marion kept waiting. She was motionless in her seat.
“I was just feeling, how do I say it?” Charlotte took in a breath. “I’ve been feeling lost.” Then she sighed because she had said it.
“Lost.” The counselor repeated like she was taking notes.
Charlotte thought that maybe the counselor was going to say something prophetic so she waited. But there was nothing more. She just sat high and confident in her seat without saying anything else. So Charlotte simply looked around the room. Marion just waited, letting her get acclimated to the office.
Charlotte noticed the pale peach walls and the Christmas cactus on a stand in the corner. She saw the big rubber ball up against the wall and quickly turned away, worried that rolling on a ball might be part of the first session. She observed the books on Marion’s shelves, all about “living healed and healthy” and “a woman’s right to love,” and then she stopped at a picture that hung on the wall just behind the desk and chair. It was about two feet tall, an old brown frame with a stained and aging watercolor of a large black woman bending over a small plant.
“It’s from a church book actually,” Marion said when she noticed what Charlotte was studying. “It was in some section discussing the parable of Jesus about the seed planting
. You know it?”
Charlotte nodded without facing the counselor.
“It’s the one about the seed being sown in different places.” She answered herself while she peered at the young pastor.
Charlotte was familiar with the text.
“I wonder which seed that one was.” The therapist said this as she turned to study the picture.
Charlotte sat exploring the print, remembering the parable of Jesus.
“Well, I guess since it sprouted, it must have been the one that was planted in the good soil.” Charlotte considered that she was wasting her time and money talking to this strange woman about a picture on a wall and a parable from the New Testament.
“Or maybe it was one of the seeds that was thrown along the path or on the rocky ground or even among the thorns, but the farmer found it and saved it, nurtured it with great tenderness and care, and it sprouted and grew after all.” Marion said this and then focused on her client.
“It’s a nice picture,” Charlotte said with little thought as she continued to scan the room, impressed that the therapist knew the Bible story.
“Yep, my favorite,” Marion replied.
There was a long and uncomfortable pause for Charlotte as she stared out the window watching some birds at a feeder. Marion didn’t break the silence. She seemed perfectly at ease in the quiet. Finally Charlotte spoke again.
“I don’t really know why I’m here,” she confessed.
Marion did not respond.
“I just have been feeling,” she struggled to find the right words, “empty or something.” She leaned against the sofa. “I’m sort of isolated where I am and don’t really have anyone to talk to. I thought it might be helpful to have a place to come and talk.”
