Do you want me to come help you pack?” Paige asked over the phone.
I looked out my car window and stared up at my house. I’d spent a long afternoon staring at a blank computer screen . Tomorrow, my friend and real-estate agent, Claire,would bring me keys for my new place . Yet the whole moment felt slightly overwhelming.“No, I think this is something I need to do myself.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Are we still moving you out tomorrow night, though?”
“Yeah,Thomas has agreed to help. Not much to move though.”
“We’ll have to move your whole bedroom suite.”
“Yeah, but that’s about it. I don’t have anything else. And with what I have to pay you back, I’ll be eating sitting on my bed for the next year.”
“You’ll be surprised how quickly things will change.”
Thinking back to all the happenings of this week, I knew things had already changed.“I’m already surprised.”
“Well, have fun. It’s a new day.”
“Yes, it’s a new day. I’ll call you later.”
“What are you going to do? Plop you a monument in your front yard?”The younger man asked the elderly gentleman as they walked past my house.
“If I need to, I will . Wouldn’t hurt you anyway, young man.”
“You are so totally out of touch with this generation, Grandpa.”
Their conversation rounded the corner as they did. But the pitch of the grandfather’s voice made it clear who was in touch with whom.
I stood at the bottom of the steps to my house for what seemed like forever. I looked around at the ivy. It was so perfect. It ran neatly up the brick wall that surrounded the Abercorn side of our house. Each shrub had been maintained by Jake and his good friend Wayne, who had helped him for years. Every detail was attended to. Everything had its order. Its place. Just like my father. A man of order and detail. He commanded the whole while paying attention to the one. Looking at his handiwork, I was confronted with how much I’d yet to learn about life, about love, about work, about this family. Lord have mercy—about pretty much everything. I couldn’t handle one thing, let alone one thousand things. My stars, I couldn’t handle myself half the time. I heard a hum.
“You going in, or just going to watch the ivy grow?”
Poor sister always gave herself away before she even said a word. “I’m going in eventually.”
“Things have changed, little one.” I could feel Joy staring at me.
“How can you tell?”
“See it in your face.”
“Look older, huh?”
“You’re an old soul, Savannah; a person can’t help that.”
“Could we talk about something else?”
“Want to talk about dinner?”
I turned and looked at her wide black eyes. Then I cracked up. I laughed until I was doubled over. I even had to hold on to Joy so I wouldn’t fall down on the pavement. People were watching, but I didn’t care. I deserved to laugh. Somebody needed to laugh . Things had gotten way too serious around here. Before I knew it, Joy was laughing too . We were both trying to hold each other up, but we couldn’t, so we finally surrendered and plopped ourselves down on the bottom step. And by the time we were through, neither of us could even remember what had been so funny.
I leaned back on the stoop.“Joy, ahh, you make me laugh . How do you do it?”
“Do what?” She used one of her plump arms to try to lower herself down onto the step beside me. I reached out and helped steady her down.
“Stay so happy. I mean, you’re always singing or smiling. Every now and then you get a faraway look, but you’re just full of . . .”
“Full of what, baby? Joy?”
I laughed.“Yeah, crazy, isn’t it? You are your name . You’re just a joy.”
She looked at me as if this was no revelation to her at all.
“Well, what else would I be, Savannah?”
“Well, I know, but what if your name was Suzy? You’d still be full of joy.”
“Ever the clever one, aren’t you? Destiny’s in a name, Savannah.”
Here we went again.“You think?”
“I know. Ever met a child whose parents called him stupid all of his life? Stupid is what he turns out to be. Ever met a kid whose parents told him he wouldn’t amount to anything? I bet if you looked him up now, you’ll find he hasn’t amounted to anything. But tell a child he can do anything, and he won’t know any better but to believe you. Call a child a champion, or a hero, or a young girl a lady, or a woman of grace, and see what she grows up to be.”
She turned and looked at me with that look. That Joy look. That “I’m about to say something you should write down” look.
“Or name a girl Savannah, and she will forever have a destiny for that city . You were meant to be here, baby . You were meant to affect this city. Just like your name says, that is what you were created to do.”
“You think?” I asked again, except this time with a totally different attitude.
“I know,” she answered, still as confident as she was the last time. “Just like Victoria is meant to bring people to victory . Your mother knew what she was doing when she named you, Miss Savannah from Savannah.”
I stared across the street into the window of Clary’s . To think my name had a purpose. To think what I called people had an effect on them . Well, that just created a whole other set of issues for me and my life.
“What about Jake?” I asked looking at her.
“Now, that’s a man’s kind of name.”
“That pretty much defines my father, a real man . What about the name Mr. Hicks?”
She snickered. “I’ll have to look that one up, Savannah. But today, why don’t you just think about who you are. What you’re here for. And why you were given such a substantial name . Maybe because you have a substantial purpose.”
With that she got up and hummed her way down the street. I went inside to close a chapter of my life. And contemplate this new challenge.
As a writer, it is interesting to write the end of a chapter. You want things to be neat and tidy . You want dilemmas to be solved and your characters to be okay. You want your reader to end satisfied. As if the last drink offers the most satisfaction. But unfortunately, that kind of ending creates little anticipation. So you create drama, conflict, questions.
That was what this was for me. As much as I wanted to leave home, create my own life, have my own space, I was scared. I was torn. I was homesick. I was hungry. And I knew a few of those things would only get worse. But it was a necessary closing. It was a necessary journey. I couldn’t stay here forever . Victoria and Jake were where Savannah had come from. But it was time for Savannah to clearly define where she was going. I had to fly, grow, change, somehow. And this was the next step in all of those things.
As I walked up each step leading to the front door I decided to make this moment different. I would memorize and remember. And that is what I did. I knew I would be alone to accomplish it. The rest of my family was having supper on a sidewalk. So I took my time. For an hour I did nothing but walk around my house and remember.
Our parlor (or living room, if you’re normal) beckoned me. In truth, the monstrosity of a picture over the fireplace—my mother in her tiara, draped in her Miss Georgia United States of America sash, and rather expansive hair—forces one to look. It caused me to smile. It used to cause me to pity her. But tonight was different. Tonight was not about just her. It was about us.
I remembered birthdays and arguments. I remembered sneaking out of windows with Paige and sneaking Grant in for midnight conversations. I remembered countless dinners around the table that had seen far less action than this week and remembered Jake and Victoria and Thomas and Duke and how life had been made better because they were in it. Not perfect. Nothing can reach such standards. But Savannah perfect. Perfectly fit for me. Perfectly created for me.
I walked to Dad’s study at the back of the house, across from the kitchen, tucked beside the powder room on the other side of the stairs. I sat down on his leather sofa and looked at the perfect door that only years before had to be entirely replaced. It was the day of Victoria’s garden tea . Who knows what for. And who knows who was there. But one person, or canine rather, had been banned and sequestered in Dad’s office . Vicky thought that would work. Mistaken child. Duke could see them from Dad’s window. First he barked at them . Vicky shut the blinds. Then he howled at them. Vicky turned on Harry Connick Jr . Then he flat decided to come through the door. She hadn’t prepared for that one.
And a grand entrance he made with half of Dad’s study door wrapped around his neck like a rather large flea collar. She tried to pull him inside. He pulled the other way. It was a tug-of-wills. Duke lost, but only after he had successfully knocked over two tables, feasted on overpriced caviar, and peed on an elderly lady’s leg that looked amazingly like a tree stump. I can’t help it; the woman had substantial calves . Then he was taken away by Thomas to Dad’s store, where he spent the next week in “time-out.”Truth be known, Duke probably didn’t lose after all.
I walked up the stairs and noticed the gash in step number six. That took place during a rather lively discussion I was having with Thomas that prompted the throwing of a stapler. It had been unsuccessfully patched. I had been successfully disciplined.
I climbed into the attic and retrieved the necessary boxes to pack up my room. Scanning my wall of bookshelves behind my bed, I took each book down carefully and laid it in a box, remembering something about each one. The sight that followed was really not surprising. Hillary Clinton’s book Living History lay hidden behind all of my other books. No need to ask who put it there. No need to ask why. Because standing upright next to it was Dick Morris’s book, Rewriting History.
“Sad lady. Sad lady.” I laughed.
My eyes were drawn to one of the eye-level shelves and the works of C. S. Lewis. Of all the authors I have read, few have captured the essence of the soul like Lewis. I looked at each of his books stacked neatly in a row in alphabetical order by title.
I picked up Mere Christianity and leafed through its pages, chuckling at the oxymoron of the title, pondering the thoughts of Lewis as he decided to place that label on the weight and depth of those pages, making it clear in such relevant terms that Christianity is anything but mere. I recalled his statement in The Weight of Glory, where he said,“If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead.”
I read over and over the underlined text and my own thoughts, written in the margins. Each of them trying to understand what I was reading, even while experiencing revelation. I thumbed through The Screwtape Letters, The Problem with Pain, and The Great Divorce. And by the time I was through, it was evident why my tilling time had been so nonproductive over the last week. Because tilling had been all about Savannah.
Not about a bigger plan, not about a greater purpose, not about a discovered destiny, but about me, my wants, whims, and selfishness. Joshua was right; that’s why he drove me mad. He saw through me. I knew it, and he surely knew it. And the whole thing drove me crazy.
I wasn’t an evening tiller. But tonight I didn’t have a choice. I had some core issues to settle. I had some demons of my own to purge. I had some monuments of my own that I needed to chain myself to for a while.
As I ran through Forsythe Park, the tears flowed freely. The comprehension of my own lies and idols and pride were almost more than I could handle. But I didn’t care. He who handles tilling time could handle this. And He did. He stopped the world for me. He spoke and I listened. He challenged, and I was willing. He rebuked, and I knew it was all true. He reminded me of my limits, and I agreed. He offered His strength, and I gladly accepted.
And then I noticed, for the first time since I had returned to Savannah almost three weeks ago, the most beautiful rose garden I had ever seen, right in the middle of the park I ran through every morning.
I approached the white-columned enclosure with reverence. The iron gate that surrounded it was willing to let me enter . The two iron benches that sat on either side of the garden were available. But the stone bench that sat in underneath the concrete arbor was inviting. Next to the bench was a small plaque declaring, “Everyone needs to stop and smell the roses.”
I remembered Joy’s words of wisdom. “You need to stop, smell a flower . . .” I hadn’t smelled a flower in years. I hadn’t stopped in years. I probably hadn’t listened much in years either.
I leaned over one of the most beautiful yellow roses I had ever seen, suddenly understanding why an entire song was written about them. It was stunning. Perfectly opened. Smelled like, well, like a rose, and before I knew it I was dancing around that garden like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. I smelled the white ones, the red ones, the pink ones, the pink with white ones. And then I sat down on the bench and just smelled them all. For the first time in years, Savannah smelled a rose. And for the first time in weeks, Savannah was listening. Really listening. And amazingly enough, when I fell quiet, a wealth of wisdom waited.