A mystical fog is coming

Originally published May 23, 2017

I have felt the crushing weight of sorrow on my chest for the past couple of weeks here in Sewanee. It's something I have tried to ignore, which is why I haven't been writing. For me, writing brings sorrow to the surface, forces me to address it, and to feel it consciously. I have not wanted to before now. In mid-April we began the long goodbye to the senior class of seminarians. The class we have lived with for two years, many of whom I have come to know deeply, intimately this year. I have a different experience here in seminary than Michael does: he sees his classmates for many hours every day as they work through their theology and administrivia and paper writing with fear and trembling; I see companions (that's what those of us living with seminarians are called), and a small number of them at that, maybe once a week for a couple of hours. It's a little weird, developing an intimate relationship with someone you only see once a week for a couple hours. It's a relationship built on common ground, a ground that not many people stand on together, that makes it intimate. Not just the commonness of being married to a preacher, because a lot of people do that, relatively speaking. But being in Sewanee, on top of a mountain, a bastion of liberalism in a sea of conservatism, steeped deeply in theology and liturgy, surrounded by rocks and trails nowhere near regular big-city conveniences, with someone who is working, but not working (in the earning money sense of the word), which is changing the shape of your relationship forever. It reminds me of music camp. I went to music camp every summer from 1981-85. Three years at Furman University and two at Brevard Music Center. I loved camp. I loved everything we did at camp, and everyone I met at camp.

Left: Me in front of the dorms at Furman. Notice the add-a-bead necklace. Must be 1981. No bangs yet.

At Furman, we spent two weeks living on campus, playing in the orchestra, eating at the dining hall and hanging out like we were college students. A bunch of us from Spartanburg went; we took our own contingent of friends, not quite ready to go off alone in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. There was a dance on the middle Saturday, where they played "You dropped a bomb on me" and "Superfreak"; to this day, everytime I hear those songs I picture the McAlister Auditorium stage and us dancing like ridiculous seventh-graders would. I remember Elizabeth Green and I decorated our room with Absolut Vodka ads, which were really cool, but now that I think about it, slightly inappropriate and now seemingly fortuitous; my mom has since remarked that maybe she should have said something about that. I remember, too, the time were mean to our friend Amy Long, who was slightly taller than the rest of us, but a much better musician. I remember a delicate kiss on the cheek from Eric Poston, a 9th grader who played the trumpet; I couldn't eat for days afterward, making my friend Harrison Martin accompany me in my self-imposed dining hall exile because I was too nervous to see him again - we both lost 13 pounds that week, and stupefied our parents when they came to pick us up.

At right, my roommate Liz, who gave up the viola soon after. She now runs a successful paint company in Charlotte. I'm going to see her the summer.

When I graduated to Brevard - a camp you had to audition for to attend - Harrison came with me, but we left most of our Spartanburg compatriots behind as we ventured away for six weeks to the world-renowned music center in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Harrison and I love this forlorn picture of us, left, taken outside the auditorium at Brevard. Both of us are viola players, too. If you look closely, you can see the viola hickey on her neck. That was a sign that we practiced a lot.

There we lived in an unairconditioned cabin with 13 other 9th-grade girls who were struggling to keep up with the repertoire and practice schedule demanded there, as well as the social norms of teenagers that help us develop friends. And we did. We were bonded in our time there, playing major symphonies as well as new modern works that our conductor, David Becker - whom we'll never forget - introduced us to. We struggled through theory class on Tuesday mornings, and giggled at operas sang in English (really, we shouldn't do that). The next morning we sang our breakfast order to the dining room staff; they were not amused. We went to a concert in the open air Whittington Pfohl auditorium every night, as required, as sat in a row with our cabinmates, hitting the high note in the Star Spangled Banner, which opened every concert. We bonded with the equivalent boy cabin, snuggling on the lawn during the most popular concerts, where students were banished from our 6 back rows to accommodate paying guests. We developed deep friendships that existed in letters for years, and that Facebook has helped us reignite. Elizabeth, Daria, Rhea, Harrison, Matt, Miller, Burton, Ricky, Kelly, Andrea and of course, the Becker boys, whom we all loved, boys and girls alike. What was it about those Becker boys?

This is what we loved most about camp, though. Friends. This is the cabin of Lower Nancy. Harrison, laughing, the middle; Leah to her right, me in the dark glasses, Rhea the trumpet player in the red shirt down front, Andrea the pianist front center, and Mary Lynn, our counselor. I don't remember the girl behind her! This is at the ice cream stand just outside Brevard. What a treat.

When our basement flooded, it flooded the shoeboxes of letters I had saved over the years. Yes, I had saved every letter we exchanged for years after camp. I had forgotten there were so many. And they were so long. We wrote long letters to each other. About boys, moms, siblings, teachers and the ups and downs of the dramatic life of a teenager. I was able to save some of the letters, letting them dry page by page under a lamp. But most were lost. I was heartbroken. It's funny now, to see their faces on my Facebook feed. We eventually did lose touch, and haven't quite reconnected, but through the feed. Daria and Elizabeth are in New York, as we always knew they would be. Kelly and Miller teach, as expected. Ricky is still just as good looking. Andrea is still at the piano. One of the Becker boys, my dear Justin, recently died. His brother, the tall Jason, writes of him often. Harrison and I remain friends, as we were childhood friends who went to college for a year together, then she stood in my first wedding, and next week we will have dinner together. She's been a constant note in my life. I've been accused of being a romantic. But I swear, that time was real. Our last summer at Brevard the opera company staged Brigadoon, a musical about a Scottish village that appears one day every 100 years. I didn't actually remember that; I had to look it up on Wikipedia. What I remember was that at the end of a story about a mystical land, a fog appears and the utopia the two characters had experienced disappeared into the fog, just as our last summer at Brevard was about to do. The similarity was not lost on any of us. We knew that our time was about to end, and that we would likely never see one another again. There were many tears shed at the end of that summer. Brevard, you see, has the same mystical fog as Sewanee. I see a mystical fog coming here, even though fog season is long past. Michael and I are in charge of helping families move here. We thought it was just going to be move-ins next fall, which is a joyous and exciting and exhilarating time. We didn't expect to be moving people out. People I have come to know and to love and to support and to feed and to laugh and to cry with in this singular place in this particular time. I don't know them deeply, but I will always know them, and my heart will always pine for them. For Elizabeth's kinetic energy and incredible craft-making creativity; for Theresa's quiet kindness and limitless knowledge; for Michelle's strength and outrageous sensibility; for Anna's humorous honesty and perseverance; for Lauren's energy and dedication to her family; for Helene's librarian mothering; for Kristie's quiet but surprising voice; for Michael's constant and always-smiling presence; for Sharon's dependable participation; for Marina's beautiful smile; for Sara's never-ending cheers for Iowa; for Anne's soaring singing; for Paul's dependable DJ-ing; for Daniel's talented entertainment, and for all the others I haven't mentioned. We won't write letters, like I did in high school. We probably won't even send emails. What I will do is comment on Facebook posts, on how big the kids are getting, or how fun the vacation seems, or what a beautiful church they're serving in. I will continue to be a quiet presence in their lives, to let them know I haven't forgotten them, and what an impact they have made on my life.

2017 CiMs, or Companions in Ministry. We honor the seniors with a brunch at the Vice Chancellor's house. In the back, Amanda Sprott-Goldson '19, Funmi Odidi '18, Marina Mails '17, Jessica Caccese '18, Elizabeth Adamson '17, Kristie Ohlemeier '17, Paul Schutz '17, Laticia Harris '18, Anne Wilkerson '17, Helene Hannon '17, Crystal Jones '17, Precious Chanza '17, Laura Carlson '18, Ian Harden '19, Michael Hardin '17, me '18, Kelsey Leftwich-Yazell '19. Sitting: Lauren Osborne '17, Michelle Calhoun (with George) '17, Sharon Teets '17, Teresa Phares '17