loving what you've got

The culminating event of last month's travels -- and the reason we planned a Mississippi trip in the first place -- was a family gathering to mark the occasion of my cousin Carol's retirement from teaching. 

Carol taught second grade for 29 years, and then became a librarian for another dozen. Any way you slice it, that's a lot of years in the classroom, and a lot of lives touched by an extraordinary teacher. I made the cake.

Everyone pitched in to make a marvelous meal, kinfolks arrived, and, once again, generations came together, the way we do.

Pass the babies, exclaim over the children, enthuse about the meal, praise the cooks, recall family history, get a staircase photo with the lingerers, take a picture of the three Jims together, play a little jazz for the youngest aficionado, catch up and lift up: we choose one another, even in all our quirks and differences. We appreciate one another. It makes the loving world go 'round.

And that's a good thing. It's what I write about as well: Families that see beyond a lifetime's disappointments and shortcomings and expectations and pain, people who, in the end, swallow their pride and see themselves -- and others -- for what they are... beautiful, fallible human beings... and embrace what's joyful, what's funny, what's delightful, what's lovable -- because there is so, so much that is lovable.

It's a right-of-passage to come to this place in life. It's the jackpot, if you're lucky. It teaches you to love yourself.

This particular right-of-passage is a theme of all my fiction. The story may wrap around 1964 Mississippi, but at its heart, book two is a story of loving what you've got. Who you've got. And seeing that it is good.