main street, nickerson, kansas
My cousin Susie and I were born three months apart. Our families both lived in Indianapolis as our fathers worked together, co-managers of the family hotel. When I look back at photos from my earliest days, Susie and her older sister are ever present. They are my friends of longest duration.
But there were years when we drifted apart. Susie’s family moved away just as we started high school. We took very different paths. When Susie married and started having children I was living in California. She has brought up more than once how she regrets not being more aware of the loss I went through when my first child was stillborn. I have not held this against her at all. But it got me thinking about where she was during our childbearing years, the challenges she might have been facing.
In 1985 her husband Tom had just gotten his certification to teach K-8th grade, but teaching jobs were hard to come by. In the 1980s there were too many teachers… can you imagine? He finally found a job in Nickerson, Kansas; and in August, right before school was ready to start, he and Susie and their small daughter Meghan moved from Michigan to a minute town on the Kansas prairie. They were only there a year.
This fall I planned our route home to go through Nickerson, just to see what it was like. That stop brought up so many questions. I was having such difficulty imagining Susie’s life there, in a town with two paved streets, very few trees, miles and miles of flat farmland all around. What did it feel like to drive out to such unfamiliar terrain? How did they find a place to rent in days before computers? And what was the deal with the herd of camels that we saw as we entered the tiny town?
I phoned her and pumped her for her observations. She answered many of my questions, although she didn’t really have much to report about camels. It made me realize that she had gone through a tough year there, feeling very alone on so many levels.
We all have traumas in our lives. While she was feeling guilty about not being more caring during my time of loss, I realized that I had been equally disinterested in what she was going through. I love Susie deeply. Why had I never asked before what that time was like?
In actuality, we all live like we are at the center of the universe. What we are going through is so much more important, more traumatic than most of the other people we know, even the people we love. Seeing the main street of Nickerson, made me realize once again that we’re all going through something, a burden that is meant to be shared. The world doesn’t serve us, but it would be helpful if we would serve one another, especially those of us who are image bearers of the Christ. Who is more offensive to God, the unbeliever who thinks she is the center of the universe, or the believer who does?
Susie is having shoulder surgery on Friday to repair some torn tendons and ligaments. Her total recovery will take six to twelve months. Another hard year, full of immobility, physical therapy and some amount of isolation. Fortunately, now we are more emotionally connected. We make an effort to spend time together at least three or four times a year. But would you join me in praying for Susie’s surgery and her full recovery?
Love, Liz
“There exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us…the farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list… We are each other’s destiny.” Mary Oliver
