I Have the Write

MY FAVORITE BURDEN

     I’ve borne a great many burdens in this life.  I’m not lamenting that; I’m just stating a fact.  My maker has had a clear design for me from the first, and though I will never understand the purpose of that design, I do my best to carry what has been laid upon me with some attempt at dignity.  Because I am human, I resent a great many of the burdens that irrevocably changed the course of my being.  In the midst of it all, I do have to admit to having a favorite burden…the burden of kindness.

     Like most of my burdens, this is one I’ve felt since I was a kid.  Riding home on the bus in high school, I had to stop downtown to transfer to the Laketown bus.  Nearly every day, I’d get on the second bus and people, grown up people black and white, young and old, would just start talking to me.  They saw it.  They knew it.  They could talk to me.  I was an ancient soul cleverly disguised as a 15-year-old girl sitting on the city bus in a navy blue Sacred Heart uniform.

     They’d sit down and straight away begin telling me about their sons who were in jail, or their spousal problems, or their crappy jobs.  I’d smile at them sympathetically and say what I hoped were the right words.  Most of the time, however, the words didn’t matter.  They wanted only to be heard. 

     It’s continued this way for all my life.  I don’t want to be kind some of the time.  Sometimes, the first thing I think is the worst thing I think.  So often, that bitter hardness is the first part of me that yearns to bubble up when I deal with this life.  When some poor sap wishes me “a blessed day,” there are times I want nothing more than to turn on them and say with all the sarcasm I own, “You can save the blessing of your god for someone else, because he and I aren’t tight.” 

     Others see only the light and wisdom of years when they look at me, but they do not know for every yin there is a yang.  What they fancy as a brilliant light has a black-as-pitch mirror image.  My greatest battle, the one I wage every day of my life, is between that yin and yang.  In the end, the disgrace it would bring my mother if I were to indulge my bitter inclinations stops me cold.  I feel a great need to carry on her legacy.  The only way I know to do that is to accept the burden of carrying forth what she gave me, who she was, what she gave so freely and simply and easily to every person she met. 

     All the while, I am but a poor substitute, fumbling through this life, reminding myself that my mother’s gift to me cannot be squandered or forgotten.  Yet this burden of carrying her light and making you know a bit of her through me is my favorite burden, because it keeps my own soul alive as well as hers.  I’d like to think that would make her happy.