How Sweet the World - A Tribute to My Late Great Uncle Bob

Robert Hawley, my Uncle Bob, was more a force of nature than a mere person.  They really don't make them like him anymore.
Even for being part of the Greatest Generation, Uncle Bob was something of a standout.

If I had to choose one adjective, I'd pick impish.  Relatively small in stature, as I recall, but he crackled with energy and humor.  But also a suave gentleman.  In my mind a charming blend of Maurice Chevalier and Jackie Gleason.

I'd heard the story of how he'd started out as a messenger boy at The Harris Trust Bank and retired a vice-president. (NOTE TO FAMILY: Apologies in advance for inaccuracies.  This is all to the best of my notoriously unreliable recollection.  Consider this more of an impressionistic portrait.)  He also served honorably in the U.S. Navy during World War Two.  Because of this he didn't meet his eldest son until he was at least a year old (see note above).  My brother also recently told me that Bob had been haunted by tinnitus since being made to stand on deck while the warship he was serving on fired its big guns.

Yet he played a beautiful trumpet, of the Great American Songbook style.

Visiting Aunt Kate and Uncle Bob was always an enjoyable window on a gracious lifestyle.  They were of the era of the cocktail hour before dinner.  An evening at their home might end with cousin Rick playing piano, Uncle Bob breaking out his trumpet, and perhaps a sing-along of Broadway musicals.

But this does not adequately convey his goofiness and joi de vivre.  Bob lived to entertain.  A sterling example of this was when my husband and I visited Kate and Bob in the beautiful home they retired to in Walnut Creek, California.  Tom and I had embarked on an epic driving journey across the American West to San Francisco, and had arranged to stay overnight with them on our way to San Jose and Yosemite.  They lovingly fed and housed us, Bob bemoaning the whole time the fact that we were only staying one night.  He was such a host that the next morning he actually got up and washed our windshield.

We spent our enjoyable evening together watching a movie.  I believe it was a circa 1960's era telling of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, complete with unspeakably cheesy special effects.  As the credits were rolling at the end of the movie, Bob turned to Kate and deadpanned (in that inimitable Bob Hawley way) "That was a real stinker, Kate."  A phrase that has lived on in Tom and my lexicon.

I do not ever remember him saying a truly unkind or, dare I say it, discouraged word.  I say truly unkind, because I do remember him asking my mother if the dip she'd prepared (it was either hummus or baba ganouj; the 70's, man!) was plaster of paris.  Kate and Bob retained their love and charm even after suffering the unimaginable pain of losing one of their beloved daughters.  He also accepted his widowed mother-in-law as a part of their household, though he did goose her once mistaking her for his wife while she was bending over the tub giving one of the children a bath.  An oft-repeated story.

Then there were his pet sayings.  Among my favorites: "I haven't had so much fun since the pig ate my kid brother!", or, its cousin, "I haven't had so much fun since I got my toe stuck in some barbed wire!"

I also clearly remember my sainted Aunt Kate's vaguely exasperated sigh, "Oh, Robert!"  This may appear when Bob was coming home from the store with an impossibly large watermelon to please his house guest, or trying to smuggle oranges through a roadblock during the Med Fly scare because house guests deserved home grown California fruit.

The best, though, was in a quiet moment, when family was gathered and all was well, Bob would look around and sigh "How sweet it is!"

How sweet the world.

Amazing Grace

Despite feeling like I was pretty much phoning it in this Lent, Holy Week was The Way of the Cross.

It started Wednesday.  We had a client at the shelter who reminded me what I love and hate about the job.  This was a woman with potential.  She was smart.  She was educated.  Her children were grown.  Her future was an open book.

But she had destroyed her last career with her drinking.  And she had come to us directly from a mental health agency.

But I liked this woman.  She was the first client who arrived during my shift and I was as nervous as a hostess.  I helped her get settled.  I happened to be working when her boyfriend was arrested.  It was intense.  She was one of those people who'd been abused her entire life and she'd never pressed charges before.  When I told her that her boyfriend had been picked-up, she grabbed hold of me and sobbed.  I sat with her, and between sobs she said how she didn't deserve it.  He had treated her worse than an animal and she didn't deserve it.  The empowerment was palpable.

I knew the cards were stacked against her.  No income, no resources.  But she tried.  She applied for housing, jobs, and any benefit she might possibly be eligible for.  When another woman, very pregnant with two small children, came to the shelter she took her under her wing.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  The Wednesday of Holy Week is Tenebrae, a service of darkness during which the candles in the church are ceremoniously extinguished.  I arrived at work to discover that the pregnant woman with the children had left because the other woman had stolen money from her.  What?  I had spent quality time with this woman and I didn't want to believe it was true.

The next day was Maunday Thursday.  The day of betrayal.  For me a spiritual day of grocery shopping and arranging to get the furnace fixed.

Good Friday.  The crucifixion.  Why do we call it good?  I started my workday by accidentally setting-off the security alarm at our agency's outreach building.  Then I slipped while trying to help someone move a heavy television and it dropped on my fingers.  On my bowling hand, natch.  Then I headed to the shelter. 

My fave client had stayed in her room all day.  That just wasn't like her.  She'd been very depressed since Wednesday which didn't bode well.  We had good rapport so I went in to talk to her.  I just had to know.

We talked.  And talked.  And she cried.  She talked about the pain of growing up bi-racial in the 60's.  The pain of being an adopted child who was abused by the mother who had chosen her.  The pain of being told by her husband (the abusive husband who had preceded the violent boyfriend) that anything she had ever accomplished in school and work was just because she was the token person of color.  She simply oozed pain and worthlessness.  But she knew she was smart.  She knew she had to show her children, even though they were grown, what a strong woman is and how she should be treated.

She admitted that she had been drinking the day before.  Denied stealing money or drinking that day.

Sitting with her had been a moving experience, but the warning bells were chiming in my head on my drive home.

The next day, Saturday, she had moved to the couch and was watching movies. She didn't feel well.  She had avoided contact with the night staff.  While she was watching movies I searched her room.  I found the empty bottle of vodka in her closet.

I calmly went downstairs and sat with her in the living room.  I pointed out that, yes, drinking an entire bottle of vodka would make one feel pretty sick.  She was going to have to leave.  She did not deny anything or argue.  She understood.  Since things were slow and she was being reasonable I said she could stay until morning when her son would be able to give her a ride.  I gave her a list of shelter numbers and suggested she look into a halfway house program.

I also told her I still thought she was one hell of a person with great potential.  And invited her to call me at work any time.

After I got home that night I threw myself into Easter preparations, not sure my heart was really in it.

Easter is such a magical time of joy and redemption, and it did not disappoint this year.  As I sat in church I felt peace.  I was sad about this woman, but not hurt.  I recognized that she hadn't betrayed me, she had betrayed herself.  And I had been able to respond with love and a measure of mercy.  I had always treated her as a human being worthy of respect and maybe, just maybe, she would look back and remember that and realize that she wasn't worthless.  I could look at her brokenness and failure and love her.

I sometimes wonder if God regrets that whole vow to never destroy the human race.  We can be pretty mean and stupid creatures.  But we are loved.

This is the gift I can bring.  I don't have the power to fix a broken life, but I can look for the person inside the problem.  And I can care.  I envision what I do as being like the parable of the sower: some seeds will fall on fallow ground, some among the rocks, but some will sprout and take root when we least expect it.  I may never see the result, but I will keep tossing out the seeds.

We can be God's grace in the world.  Amazing.