Grandma Geneva, God's Grace and Crack Cocaine - Part 2

...continued from Part 1.

The porch of a stranger is not a place of ambivalence. It is a place filled with the intrigue of the unknown. But a porch is an especially enchanting place if the stranger is your grandmother. The stranger's porch I was standing on belonged to my grandmother Geneva and the enchantment I felt was crawling up my spine, standing up every hair on its way.

I glanced over toward my wife, and then down to my eleven-year old son, Isaac. I knew their anticipation was only a fraction of mine. How could they possibly feel what I felt? The harvest of my long-cultivated dreams lay bundled in the person behind the door. We stood there in collective silence, waiting for the door to open. For some reason, that's what you do when you're standing on a porch waiting for the door to open.

The house attached to the porch stood exhausted from years of semi-neglect. It still wore the same dingy grey suit with the burgundy trim it'd been painted with in the 80's. The sidewalk leading up from 10th avenue to the west was a cracked mess and the hedge  obscuring our view to Ainsworth street to the south looked a little grouchy and unkempt. But none of that mattered as my vision blurred into a vacant straight ahead stare. I was only there to see one thing, Grandma Geneva.

I've experienced my share of life-changing moments; some pleasant, some painful. I've already told you about a couple of them. But as I stood there on Grandma Geneva's porch, about to walk into her life again, I  knew for sure I was about to experience another.

The first life-changing moment I can remember was in 1973. I was a round-bellied five-year old with brown eyes, a full-lipped smile and enough hair on the top of my head to weave a small Afghan sweater. Alongside my six-year old sister, I stood in the office of a family court judge, watching him sign a piece of paper that said I had a new mom and dad. That paper gave me a brand, new life. We all went to Ferrell's afterward and gobbled down a bucket full of ice cream to celebrate (The famous Pig's Trough for the locals).

In my old life, my mother slammed heroin and nodded on the couch while we played by her feet with our toys. In my new life, my mother made us chunky peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tucked us in at night with a bedtime story. In my old life, my father was mostly gone; a shadowy figure who gave us only a sporadic and neglectful love. In my new life, my dad told us he loved us every day by going to work and, to my daily wonder, always coming home.

That judge had rescued me. But as he was rescuing me, he was also robbing me. It wasn't his intent, mind you. You’d have done the same thing too, if you'd seen the first chapter of my life. But, like it or not, adoptions are a lot like surgery. At the beginning, there's a lot of cutting and pain; horrible pain. All that cutting makes you hurt and bleed for awhile. But after the pain subsides, slowly you get stronger and heal. And most kids even thrive. I did.

But just like surgery, adoption makes you lose parts of yourself forever. You lose your people, your history. Standing on the porch, I was filled with a great awareness of that loss. I've always been much more thankful for the gain than sorrowful for the loss. But, as with radical surgeries, sometimes the doctor cuts so deep, he removes the good parts along with the bad. Grandma Geneva was the good part.

As I stood on the porch of Grandma's Geneva's house thirty-seven years later, I wondered how our lives would change once I crossed the threshold. It felt like a part of me that’d been missing a long time was about to be grafted back in. Like a greater Doctor was about to give me back a long lost piece of my heart.

I knocked again.

A short, stout, bleary-eyed man in a stained wife beater and soiled blue jeans swung the door open. His Jack Daniel's breath burned its way through the screen mesh on its way to our nostrils, as he barked out a disinterested, "Yeah?”.

"My name is Timothy," I said in the well-heeled diction with which I'd been raised. "I'm Geneva's grandson.”

He looked at me quizzically and then, as if finally recalling the answer to a test question, bellowed over his shoulder, "Geneva! It's your grandson, Timothy!"

[Author's note: Although my grandma's character and honesty are unimpeachable, some of the following events are subject to the memory and interpretation of a 90-year old mind. However, after speaking with DJ himself, I feel confident enough to share this account. I have changed his name to protect his identity.]

DJ was a crackhead. I don't know, maybe he still is. But we don't see him any longer. The family put him out last year after finding out what I'm about to tell you. You see, a few years back, Grandma and DJ's life mysteriously and shockingly collided when he brazenly sneaked into Grandma's house one night with all the gall of a peacock in a 3-piece suit.

You have to understand. By this time, Grandma lived alone, and although growing feeble, she stubbornly held on to her independence. Some years before, the white clouds of blindness had stolen her eyesight and it was becoming harder and harder to get around. Although family members did their best to watch over her safe keeping and care for her, she was easy pickin's for a crackhead with a little imagination and a light step.

Grandma recounted the tale later in one of our many conversations. For some time, she'd heard the noises; floors creaking and things going bump in the night.

"Weren't you scared, Grandma?", I asked her at the time she shared the story.

"Timoth-eh," Grandma croaked in her Tex Arkansas cadence that always makes me smile, "I KNEW somebody was there, cuz I heard the flo' creekin'. I could FEEL it."

"But you were scared, right?"

"Well, yes. But, the Lawd always been good to me. He kept me safe." her voice trailed.

DJ crept in and out of Grandma's house on his intoxicated tip toes for two weeks. He'd creep out to buy smack and creep back in to smoke it; slip out for a 5th of gin and back in to gulp it down. Mercifully, after Grandma's repeated demands to know, "Who's there? Who's in my house?!", he replied matter-o-factly, "DJ."

Beyond imagination, Grandma invited DJ to stay. She struck a deal with him, of sorts. She'd let him stay if he'd help her around the house, cook and clean up a bit, and "NEVER bring drugs into my house!".

DJ kept two out of the three terms in the deal, but Grandma kept all of hers and then some. Even with all of his blatant buffoonery, Grandma gave DJ what he didn't deserve. She gave him the roof over her head, the food off her table, and a chance to straighten out his life.

Grandma is a living "What Would Jesus Do" bracelet. To be sure, she was frail and reached out to him partly out of the necessity she felt. But that's not the strongest thread in the story. Grandma let DJ stay in her home because she is kind. You and I see crackheads like DJ and we cross the street to the other side. We avoid the DJs. But, a crackhead sneaks into my Grandma's house and she gives him the spare bedroom. The world lacks kindness. Kindness is mocked as weakness or naivete. But would there be so many DJs in it if there weren't so few Grandma Genevas?

I learned from Grandma Geneva that you don't have to be a ninety-year old blind, black woman to be a Grandma Geneva. Just keep a your ear to the floor boards of your life and listen for the DJs. You may not open the spare room, but you can open your heart.

DJ bellowed to Grandma again in his smoky voice, "Your grandson, Timothy is here!". He pushed the screen door open wide and motioned us in.

Grandma's house was an odd collision between her past and present realities. Old pictures of family hung on the walls and sat on the mantle above the fireplace in her living room; each displaying the faces of loved ones. I instantly longed to know their stories. I wondered where my picture would have hung, had life been different. These were my people and yet, I felt like a stranger among them as their smiling gazes silently followed me as we walked across the creaky hardwood floor. I tried to read the story of Grandma's life in the walls and curtains, in the smell of the air, in the feel of it all.

In my mind, the beautiful chapters were scenes of happy family gatherings. Of parents holding Easter plates piled high with chicken and home-cooked greens, while children darted in and around their legs in a wild-eyed game of tag. I could hear laughter bounce off the ceiling as aunties and uncles regaled nieces and nephews with childhood tales. I imagined baritone and tenor voices blending with alto, as well known hymns lifted the ceiling to new heights after church on Sunday afternoons.

Over and through it all, I could sense the matriarchal majesty with which Grandma watched over her brood. I could hear her voice, feel her power; a power that had once held a family together. A presence that made everyone know things were going to be okay. But, that voice had long since yielded to the slow and natural demands of age.

There she was, sitting alone in the corner of a cluttered dining room near a small end table piled high with odds and ends. Over her grandma clothes, an old apron hung from her shoulders and wrapped around her waist. A bonnet covered most of her natural, silver hair and her body was settled in her chair in a elderly slump. She was vulnerable, yet queenly to me. A venerable woman, subdued and resigned to the years God had apportioned her.

Seeing her sitting in that corner made me realize how much life had happened since I'd seen her in that hospital waiting room almost twenty years before. Then, she'd been vibrant and commanding, even though my only memory of was from a glance. Now, she was 90-years old and tired. Of the fourteen children she'd brought into the world between 1933 and 1952, four were left. She'd buried ten; mostly by violence or hardcore drugs.

DJ leaned over and yelled in Grandma’s ear, “It’s your grandson, Timothy!”

“Timoth-eh?”, a puzzled look stretched across her leathered face.

DJ leaned down with his moustached lips just inches from Grandma's bonnet covered ear and kindly raised his voice, “I said your grandson, Timothy is here!”.

“Timoth-eh? Timoth-eh? ... TIMOTH-EH!”

I'll never forget the look that formed on my beautiful Grandma's face as long as I live. It was as if different parts of her face burst into separate emotions independent of each other. Her cheeks raised with the unmistakable lift of joy, while her eyebrows knitted together with a familiar sorrow. All the while, her mouth gaped in disbelief as her hands stretched forward trying to find me.

"Oh, Lawd! Oh, Lawd! My grandson, Timoth-eh! I thought you'd forgotten me!"

Worn and weathered hands searched for my face, as tears began to fill her eyes and gently spill down her cheeks. I put my face in those hands. Hands that had once held me so long ago.

After a long embrace, Grandma hugged and held Trudi and Isaac, too; as if she'd known them for a lifetime. And then, she immediately demanded we take her over to the "red couch" so we could visit.

The moment we sank into that couch with Trudi and Isaac on one side and me snuggled close on the other, Grandma launched into the first of many stories.

I'll always remember her very first words, spoken in a voice strong, yet laden with sorrow.

"We walked up Denver Avenue, me and my children. Just after the Vanport flood. Oh Lawd! Everything was gone. We got to the school and the white lady, she took care of us. They fed us coffee and sandwiches. Oh, Lawd! All my life, the Lawd's been good to me."

My ears loved her voice. My hands loved her hands. History poured into my heart, filling it with joy one word at a time.

To be continued...

Grandma Geneva, God's Grace and Crack Cocaine - Part 1

I have one grandmother left. Her name is Geneva. But, I can't think of many parallels between Grandma Geneva and the capital of Switzerland. In fact, I can't think of one, besides spelling. Switzerland makes me think of yodeling, preteen maidens with flaxen braids and freckled faces skipping through an Alpine meadow on their way to milk the cows. Grandma doesn't skip. At least not anymore.

I don't know much about my grandma because I really only met her last year. Well, that's not exactly true. I saw her once before at Emmanuel hospital the day I said goodbye to my father in 1988. He was dying after years of hard living. It was a brain aneurysm or an embolism, I'm not sure which. At least that's what I remember them saying. But I knew he was really dying from drugs and alcohol. You could see it in his eyes and face. See it in his hands. An addict knows an addict.

Grandma was saying goodbye, too. She was saying goodbye to yet another one of her children that day. I'll tell you more about that later. But, she was sitting in the corner when I nervously pushed the door of the waiting room open to see a family of people that looked a whole lot like me. Most of them darker, most of them older, most of them somehow familiar. I didn't know any of them, but most of them knew me. I was Kintu, the baby boy that was adopted away to a white family back in 1972.

It was too much to take in, so in a robotic haze, I asked the nearest "unknown relative" if he knew where Khalid was. That was my father's name, Khalid. He'd changed it from Steve to Khalid when he became a Muslim in the late 60s. Grandma was a life-long, sturdy Pentecostal and had fiercely registered her complaint at the time. But my father had inherited more than a few things from his mother. Among them was a bullish will. So, it stayed Khalid.

My unknown relative whispered the room number where my father lay and motioned in the direction I should go. That was how I met my Grandma Geneva.

Since that day, twenty-one years passed by before I met her again. Standing on the porch of her broken down Northeast Portland home, I rapped my knuckles across her tattered screen door. A walnut-sized lump in my throat was threatening to grow to an apple. But, the eagerness in my belly to know this woman was even bigger. Waiting for that door to open, my mind went over the two decades that had flown by.

When I met Grandma Geneva in 1988, I was a brash twenty-one year old young man who'd somehow remarkably survived life thus far...unscathed. I was brimming with huge helpings of talent, potential and polish; seasoned with a generous amount of bravado. It's the same mixture that makes a lot of twenty-somethings wonderful, yet slightly dangerous. By then, I'd already survived a pretty savage skirmish with drugs. The sheer indomitable force of my youthful will had staved off those demons and the future looked fluorescent, it was so bright. At least that's what I thought at the time.

But since then, another twenty-one years had passed and a lot had changed.

I'd gotten married to a beautiful girl who'd given me three amazing sons. Five years into family life, I'd cheated on that beautiful girl and almost lost them all. But, for some reason, God didn't spank me too hard and with remarkable grace, she took me back. And, although sufficiently chastised, I was largely unchanged. But, I put away the most taboo sins and settled into the more acceptable kind that most of you are used to.

Over the years, I'd sung in almost every major church or venue in Portland. Eventually, my profile raised in local church ministry. Under the leadership of my good friend, we planted a church. And, faster than a reality TV star goes to rehab, I became lead pastor of one of the youngest, hippest, most dynamic churches in Portland. Not equipped to handle the pressure, the old demon from my youth (and my family lineage, it turns out) made a grand reappearance.

One day (after a polite round of golf no less), I dove headlong into the deep end of the sin pool again. After a two-day binge of non-stop crack smoking at the Stateside Motel on 82nd, I somehow made my way back home to my wife and church to face the music. A few days later, I stood before my congregation at the Old Laurelhurst church, told them everything I'd done (against the advice of my eldership) and resigned.

This time I'd lost everything but my family and Jesus. God got out his belt.

Now I could tell you a thousand lessons I've learned from that episode in my life. But today, I'm thinking about Grandma Geneva. I was just sitting here, making a connection between that terrible time in my life and the gift I have of knowing her today.

If you survive the kind of splendid fall from public acclaim and accomplishment that I did, or if you survive any self-inflicted crisis that threatens to eat you alive, you change. Some people change and become better and some change and become bitter.

I decided bitter suited me better. I blamed everyone I could think of. I think my dog was even pretty high up on the list at one point. "If only you'd loved me more, Louie, I wouldn't have smoked crack!". I blamed God. "What did You expect, asking me to lead a church? It was Your flippin' idea in the first place and You're the omniscient One! You should have seen this coming!".

But bitterness sucks. It really does. It's just so heavy and exhausting.

In subtle waves of grace, a new reality began to wash over me. God began to reveal to me that He'd meant for everything in the last twenty-one years to happen. Now, I don't mean that He literally HANDED me a crack pipe and said, "My child, take a hit on this. In the end, you'll find Me, so go ahead and hit it.".

No, what I mean is, God meant it in the same way that the fish was meant for Jonah or Bathsheba was meant for David. God is a genius and has this crazy way of turning our folly into glory for Himself and grace for us. God doesn't author our sin, but He is a Wiz at using it to spank us into becoming better people. So, Jonah got a whale and I got a crack pipe. You tell me who got the better end of the deal?

Slowly, I became better. No gold dust fell from the sky. No angelic choir sang a Yolanda Adams song. It happened more organically than that. It happened in the daily grind of life. Sometimes, while I was watching a movie, other times while I was reading in Proverbs. Sometimes, when I pumped my fist at the skies and other times when I worshiped the God who painted them.

I began to think differently about life and value different things. Higher things, things closer to His heart. I began to see that my whole life is about loving God and loving people. That's a whole story in itself, but right now, I'm thinking about Grandma Geneva. I suddenly had a desire to know her. Love her. It was like after all this crap, God knew we were ready to be introduced.

If not for God, she probably would have had to say goodbye at that same hospital to her crackhead grandson. I don't know. Only God knows.

But now, in a strange, unspoken way, I knew she needed me and I was ready to be needed by her. And, as I finally stood on her porch last year, two decades gone by, my eyes filled with tears.

I rapped my knuckles across her screen door again and waited.

Hello again...

It's been awhile and I haven't an excuse for the year-long absence, except to say that I have 3 kids + 1 wife, which, for those that know marital math ='s a full life. I also read too much to write. I guess I’ve been too fascinated with the thoughts of others to concern myself with publishing my own. All of the above excuses amount to no excuse at all.

Plus, I think I've been too chicken to write. Especially about what I think. I say to myself, "If I write this down, then people will know my opinion. And then they'll have an opinion about my opinion. And then I might kill them." Something like that. On top of that, I think pen should hit paper (or fingers strike keys) only when the world can be enriched by the outcome.

If I'm to surrender to honesty right from the start, I do want readership. Who doesn't? That is why we update our Facebook statuses every time we have a bowel movement and tweet about the odd thing we just found in our toothbrush. We feel compelled to speak. To be heard. To be known.

But for now, I won't beg or presume an audience. There are already enough thumb-sucking ether-authors to outnumber even Lady Gaga fans, so why add another? For me, I'm hoping this adventure will produce a better harvest than simply sharing my inner life with the outer world. I'd really like to provoke thought and passion in the hearts and minds of people, and in the process, gain a few things that have been missing in my own life; some for awhile and some forever.

The first of thing I’d like is a more disciplined thought life. I find that writing consistently and continually creates a conduit through which I can both organize and express my thoughts.

Actually, if you really want to know the truth, writing helps me KNOW my thoughts. Ever feel like you don't even KNOW what you think until someone asks you and you're forced to stammer out an answer? Well this is where I'd like to stammer. About silly stuff like, "Should Lebron have gone to Miami?", or "Should someone finally criminalize coleslaw?". But even more, I'd like to stammer about weighty stuff that occupies our greatest hopes and deepest fears.

Anyway, my mind is ever churning, but seldom cogent, usually pondering, but seldom productive. I'd like to change that. And I think simply writing things down can help cultivate my mind from less of a weed patch to more of a garden (dangerous metaphor, considering vegetables grow in gardens).

The other thing is, I know that I am made to write. Don't ask me how I know this. I just do. I know it in the same way that I know I’m supposed to breathe every couple of seconds. Except, I've been breathing for a long time and gotten really, really good at it. Writing, on the other hand, is a flabby involuntary muscle that I think I’m supposed to be exercising regularly.

For now, I have no grand goal in mind. I'm not gearing up to give Don Miller a run, or trying to attract a gaggle of blog groupies. I just want to write. And I think I'll try writing about anything and everything. Until, over time, I find what makes my heart thump hardest and fingers fly fastest. And, if readers like what they read, then maybe they'll hang around and we'll have interesting conversation.

So reader, read. Then comment with thoughts of your own. I can't promise literary wit or genius, but I can promise authenticity. And maybe, like blue cheese or a Will Smith flick, you'll acquire a taste over time.

Perfectly You

By Kintu

(For Trudi on Mother's Day - we love you perfectly!)

Perfectly you.
You perfectly
make me,
gave me
three sons
perfectly.
Each one so
perfectly you.

Perfectly you.
You love
so lovingly.
Each boy
knows constantly
your touch so
perfectly you.

If goodness is a petal, you're the flower
If patience is a flower, you're the field
If virtue is a minute, you're an hour
The secret gift of motherhood revealed

Perfectly you.
These years
flew fleetingly
We lived
them happily.
Each one so
perfectly you.

I Want Not More

By Kintu

(For the inestimable Trudi)

Tear the sky
to pieces
rip the
east from west
and south from north

Pound the ground
beneath us
til the
mountains meet
the valley floor

Slam the moon
to Pluto
smash the sun
a trillion
stars off course

And still my love for you remains relentlessly unmoved

Rake the trees
and scorch them
slash the fields
and flowers
from every dale

Bleed the Nile
and dam
the Thames
drain every sea
the sailor's sail

Thaw gone
the glaciers
dry Niagara
til her fount
begins to fail

And still the world has lost no beauty, long as I have yours

Count twice the
world's eight wonders
take the
sum and add
one forty four

But there's
no wonder
why your wonders
make me wonder
even more

So hide
the sky blot
out the sun
eclipse Orion's
celestial door

I have your love and beauty rare -- in all the world I want not more