I Danced With Cinderella

I have successfully managed to rewrite the opening to this post about four times. Each time I would get about two paragraphs in, I would look at it and say "No, that doesn't sound right." and I delete it and start over. How do you begin the story of a relationship that transcends anything the heart can explain? You really can't, you just open the book and start writing. It may not be fancy, but it's real.

Kinda like peanut butter. Not fancy, but just as vital to life as water and breath.

Eight years ago, my wife and I joined the church we now call our home. I had gone from a life of "church hopping" to deciding that unless we planted our feet somewhere, we would never grow. Many things about our church made me love it, almost from the beginning. Most of all, for me, it was the children. There were a lot of individual kids that captured my heart, and I could write a story about all of them, but for this blog entry, I want to talk about a very special one.

Her name is Tiffany. <3

Now, this photo is an earlier one. I didn't take it myself, because when we first began settling into our church, I didn't want to poke my camera in everyone's faces. This is the way I remember meeting her, though. She came up to me after Awana, no more than 4 years old at the time, and put her arms around my leg. She looked up at me with those eyes, and I looked back down at her and said "If you don't let go of my leg, you just might take a part of my heart with you." She grinned, and held on even tighter. This was the first of many times she would say (in her own little way) "Challenge accepted."

Tiffany grew, and I learned more about her from not only her talking to me, but from her grandmother. I won't go too deeply into her life, but for the purpose of this post, we will sum it up to say her mother and father are not in the picture. The reasons why don't matter to me, because she will be the first to shake off ANY signs of pity, and let you know with the joy in her eyes that God has given her all she needs in life in the arms of her grandma, and the people in church who love her too.

 Again, none of these photos so far are mine. I had not taken any of her yet. I was being careful, you see. By this point, Tiffany had managed a solid grip on me. I would see her in church, and she would run over to me, pigtails bouncing, and say "Mister Daniel! Mister Daniel! Mister Daniel!!" before jumping up into my arms. I was always very quick to put her back down (after a quick hug) because I never, ever wanted to present myself as any sort of replacement or father figure for her that she had never asked for in the first place, much less her grandma. Still, she was managing to weave her way into my heart in a way that could not be unwound, and I think she knew it.

I don't remember exactly when it happened, but at one point, her grandma came over to me and told me how much she appreciated me being a father figure to TIffany. Tiff was standing right behind her, and giving me that little smile that always seems to grab me away from whatever "duty" seemed important.

It was as if I had been given permission by God and by "mom" to be that person to Tiffany, and from that moment on, I made it my mission to let her know how special she was to me. How proud I was of her. How amazing her life was for God, and how deeply she had impacted ME as well. I talked to her like an adult would talk to a friend, instead of a grown-up talking to a kid. She would listen, and would share parts of her heart with me in return that she had not shared with anyone else.

A precious, brilliant, beautiful little girl began to unfold in front of me, because instead of a sideways hug from an adult, that ends in a pat on the back and "off you go", I would get down on one knee and look eye-to-eye with her. This was my way of saying "I want to be in YOUR world right now." I think this was right around the time she first whispered to me that she loved me. I had no idea how I had been granted the worth of those words, but when she said them the first time, I remember not being able to breathe under the weight of their meaning.

I also began taking more pictures of her. Almost as many as I took of my own children.

And the more I watched her, and the more I talked with her mom, the more I wanted to be a greater influence on her life.

I still do. With all my heart, I still do.

~~~~~~~~

About three weeks ago, I got a text from her grandma. I still have this text in my phone. I practically have it memorized. I must have reread it a dozen times.

"Tiffany and I were wondering if you would give her the honor of taking her to the Daddy/Daughter dance at her school."

I'm not going to lie to you. When I read that text, I had to stop for a moment and recompose myself. Tears were shed, and quite a few at that. After checking with my Bethany to see if it would be okay, I accepted...with my heart still in my throat.

A few days later, I came over to her house to see the dress she would be wearing. It was a beautiful little robin-egg blue and teal dress with sequins around the waist. I just stared at this little girl that had garbbed my heart so many years ago, and thanked God for giving me the gift of her love.

The night of the dance finally came, and I took my tuxedo out of the closet. (Nothing but the best for this night!) I had picked up the first corsage I'd ordered since I went to my high school prom, and it was so tiny, that it was barely bigger than a tennis ball. <3

I got to her house, and after her hair was fixed, I stood back and saw this perfect little princess standing in front of me...a slight look of modest beauty on her face, and magic in her eyes.

What does a grown man do when a beautiful princess walks in the room?

He kneels at her feet. <3

Oh, my heart...

At the dance, we had marshmallows and pretzels and strawberries and punch, like you would expect at any elementary school dance. I tried to show off my dance skills, and she told me to sit down and watch her plate while she ran giggling with her friends. She came back and sat with me after a few minutes, and we took turns nibbling on pineapple chunks and grapes.

Then a slow song came on, and I stood and offered her my hand.

"May I have this dance?" I asked.

She stood,  and followed me onto the floor. We danced slowly, swaying back and forth to the music, laughing about silly nothing-things, and she even let me twirl her a few times.

Then another song started...another slow song...and I knew it immediately.

Not gonna mix words here. The minute the first chorus began, I was a basketcase.

"I will dance with Cinderella, while she is here in my arms..."

I leaned close to Tiffany, and laid my head on hers. To keep from losing it completely, I sang to her, and she held me closer than before, swaying to the music. Time truly stood still for a few minutes. Finally, she looked up at me, and I smiled at her once more as the song faded away. I don't think she understood the meaning of the words in the song, but they hit me like a velvet hammer.

God has blessed me with her for a short, amazing, beautiful time. And I am not going to waste one minute He has given.

After all, not every man gets a chance to dance with Cinderella...

Lessons In Stupidity, Part I

FIRE ANTS

When I was four years old, my mother and father had gone to my grandfather's house to pick corn. My grandpa had planted a good 3 acres of sweet white corn, and had told them they were welcome to as much as they could carry. They took me along, and told me that I could pick some if I wanted to, but otherwise just to stay within the rows and near enough that I could be seen.

When we got there, grandpa gave each of us a 5-gallon bucket. Mom and Dad walked into the cornfield and got to work. I followed close behind, but after picking a few ears, I got bored with this sort of drudgery. I put the few ears I had picked in the wheelbarrow Dad had brought to haul our final harvest, and wandered off to find something to do with my empty bucket in hand.

As I rounded a corner of tall cornstalks, I saw it. It was tremendous. It was amazing. It was unbelievably enormous. It was...*insert dramatic chord played in minor key here*

A HUGE FIRE ANT MOUND!

Of course, my little baseball-sized brain only had one idea...STOMP ON IT! But wait, I can't just stomp on it, they'll get all over my legs! I have to come up with...a...plan...*think, think*

AHA! I knew what I was going to do! I walked over to the mound, placed my bucket (bottom side down) on top of the ant mound, and climbed into the bucket. The mound was flattened under my weight, and I laughed as the ants scurried around, looking hopelessly for the culprit. Ha-ha-ha-ha-HA! I have outwitted you ants!

But wait, what's this? Hmm. They seem to be crawling up the SIDE of the bucket I am standing in! I watch this phenomenon, and see that they are now moving faster, and purposefully upward, over the top, and now down the inside of the bucket! My little baseball sized brain now sees that this was not such a good idea after all.

Of course, you can see there is a relatively easy solution to this problem. I may sustain a few bites, but a way out is clear. Simply hop out of the bucket, run like a few dozen feet away, and knock the ants off my feet and ankles. A few bites, yes, but a way out of this situation.

Is that what I did?

Nope.

Next simple solution, which would be the more likely of the two you would imagine a sane four year old would reach for. Call for help. "HEY! DAD! MOM! I'M IN FIRE ANTS!" Of course, they'd come running, and whisk me away...safe as could be.

Is that what I did?

Nope.

Final solution. Not simple, but a quick thinking kid could have thought of this. Strip off my shirt, throw it down outside the bucket, hop out, use the shirt as a landing pad, and run away. Thereby keeping ants off my foot as I escaped.

Is that what I did?

Not a chance.

What did this "Boy Genius" do to get out of this situation?

I called to my mom in a calm, clear voice...

"Momma, can you come here to me?"

My mother of course, busy with her work said "What is it Daniel?"

I thought quickly, then said "Um, I want you to see this, please?"

My mother said "I will soon. We are busy right now, okay sweetheart?"

DRAT! FAIL! MUST TRY A DIFFERENT TACTIC!

"Daddy, I need you." I said calmly, but with the slightest hitch in my voice."

My father was occupied as well, but said "What do you need, Daniel?"

"U--u-mm..." I stammered. "I really need you, please...?"

My father said "Why do you need us to come over there?"

The first ants began to crawl onto my feet and ankles, and the first of many white-hot bites began to assault my bare legs.

"Daddy, please...please! Come here, please? I need you!"

My father was curious now, and said "What's wrong?"

"I...I...I...I....I'm LONELY!" I said with a pitiful whine.

My father and mother both said "Well why don't you come back over here? You won't be lonely anymore."

The ants were swarming now. Dozens of bites were zapping my bare legs and knees, and I said with a pleading wail "Please?! I'm really, really LONELY!"

I started crying.

My father heard my tears and walked over to me. When he saw the situation I was in, he snatched me up out of the bucket, stripped my clothes completely off, and frantically swept away the ants that had now made their way into parts unmentionable.

I remember him flapping my clothes in the air, shaking off any ants that had made their way onto my pant legs and underwear.

I stood there, stark naked, pinpricks of fire all over my legs, and trembled with shock as my mother ran to scoop me up and carry me to the car.

To this day, I have no earthly idea why I lied and said I was lonely. Any myriad of answers would have brought them running, and yet I chose a lie so witless that I might as well have said "Umm...I'm going through a paradigm shift."

Is there a moral to this story? Probably somewhere. Instead of a cutesy ending to this story or a pithy foundational truth though, I will instead share this song. It was playing on the portable radio my father had brought along, lying by the wheelbarrow as the fire ants took their revenge on a stupid boy with nothing better to do than torment them. To this day, when I hear this song, my legs begin to itch.

Chalk and Charcoal

I began this blog not as a photography blog, per-se, but as a place to share memories of my life that I wouldn't want erased forever if something were to happen to me. My best friend at my church was killed in a tragic accident two years ago. I never got to say goodbye, and I still had things I wanted to tell him. He probably didn't even know that he was my best friend, but I still have the last text he sent me in my phone, and I can still hear the last words he ever said to me. He had stories too, and maybe he has them written down somewhere.

I miss you Ronney. <><

My wife has told me that I have the strangest set of file cabinets in my mind, and she never knows when a random drawer will open and a weird file pop out. It usually occurs when I have had too much coffee, or at rare times, a glass of wine. The other day, one of those very stories popped out, and it wasn't wine or coffee that brought it to the surface. It was because a new friend of ours had visited, and it reminded me of something that happened a long time ago.

Before I get into that though, I want to show you this photo. A Facebook friend posted it today, and it gave me such pause.

I've seen this picture before, of course. I took Sociology in high school and our teacher talked with us about Ruby Bridges, and we hashed that hot button out for the class' hour. What it made me think about though, was how different it was back then.

Of course, my high school years were nothing like what it was like when schools were first racially integrated. I'm glad I didn't live in the times where not only the OPINIONS of many reeked of racial bigotry, but the very freedoms we hold dear in the USA were compromised by division of color lines that went from public restrooms to seats on the bus.

I'm not going to lie to you. I grew up in a part of town where the lines were clearly drawn. I don't mean to say that we didn't coexist, I mean simply that white was white and black was black. I remember a little old man that lived up the road from us (he must have been 80 years old, at least) who ACTUALLY believed that black people were cursed by God.

My mother and father didn't believe any of that garbage, of course, but in our house it was clear that black was black and white was white.

My high school days brought even more of this to forefront. I won't go so far as to say that we were drawing a line right down the middle of the school, but in many many ways, that line existed. If any of my classmates read this, they will know what I mean by "The Invisible Line". It was there, and only the brave dared to TRULY cross it.

Here's how it worked...at least from my perspective:

If you were a white guy, you could hang out with the black crowd if you were a jock, or if you were raised in a black neighborhood so that you were "accepted" from the beginning.

If you were a white girl, you could hang out with the black crowd if you were a white girl who preferred black guys.

If you were a black guy, you could hang out with the white crowd if you were a jock, or if you were a total geek. (Think Steve Urkel)

If you were a black girl, you could hang out with the white crowd as long as you were comfortable in your skin.

This is NOT to say that there weren't those who broke the dividing lines and made our school less black and white. There were. Plenty. But there was always that invisible line there. It was like a chess game. All the pieces move about the board, but the colors are clearly defined.

One line that was NEVER crossed was the romantic line. If you were a white girl who dated a black guy, you were never going to have a white boyfriend again. It was as if the very relationship you shared with this person of deeper color had tainted your own body...a drizzle of chocolate forever on your lips. And a black girl dating a white guy? Oh snap...your own race isn't good enough for you? Consider yourself "white-listed".

I knew where those lines were drawn too, and while I did have black friends, I knew that one wrong move could have me on a precarious perch if I was not careful and respected those unwritten guidelines.

So here I am in high school, and I have found my "clique" that I hang out with..."The Weird Folks". I was a headbanger kid, and had longer hair, ripped jeans, and a denim jacket with Ozzy Osbourne on the back. I was also a social outcast, because I wasn't "cool", good-looking, witty, popular, rich, sexy, or any number of things that are required to make it into one of the "in-crowds".

I was just me.

Now, if you were confident in being "just you", that made you awesome. If you had no idea who you were, and were screaming inside for validation, that made you a loser, no matter who was on the back of your denim jacket. In many ways, I suppose I envisioned myself like Ozzy himself appears in many of his performances: Dark. Troubled. Mysterious. Yearning. Maybe a lot like this:

Scary? Yep. A lot of my life was, and I just didn't tell anyone. You can read about that in a previous blog entry. You'll know the one.

So on one particular day at school, I was in one of the biggest "blue funks" I had ever been in. My girlfriend had just broken up with me. Of course, she already had another guy, and here I was an ENTIRE WEEK later, and still pining over her! I look back on that now and think "Dude, get over it! She wasn't who you needed anyway, and vice versa!" At the time though, my life was absolutely in the tank. I had my sketchbook in front of me, and I was drawing pictures of dark angels and black widow spiders.

As I sat there, all alone on the back steps of Longstreet Hall, a pair of white Keds sneakers appeared in my peripheral vision. I looked up, expecting to see one of my few little "outcast-ish" friends coming over to me, but I was taken aback by who it was instead.

Her name was Shanice (pronounced "Sha-neese") and she was a year behind me. She was one of those girls who was comfortable in her skin, and wasn't afraid to skirt the lines. She was also beautiful, and had a laugh and a smile that could win you over in two seconds. I don't have a photo of Shanice, but this girl reminds me a lot of her:

She squatted down in the dirt with me and said "Why are you sittin' out here with your head in the mud?" I told her about the breakup, and she listened to me whine about all my problems, bless her heart. That must have been like reading Kafka! After I was done with my rant, she said "Well, you need to get over that. Life's too short."

We talked for a little bit, and she finally decided to grab the bull by the horns. She leaned up on her elbow and said "So what will you miss the most about this girl?" I told her all the usual things a guy would miss. Her eyes. Her smile. Her laugh. I chuckled and said "Oh, and that girl could kiss!"

Shanice sat bold upright, and gave me a look like I had just told her that Whitney Houston was a man. "Honey..." she said "White girls can't kiss."

I laughed HARD and told her that I begged to differ on that point. She smiled and said "Well you know, being that you are a free agent and all, I'd prove that point to you right here and now, except for one problem."

I thought she was messing with me, but I said "Yeah well, we know how that goes, if anyone saw us..."

"Oh NO!" she exclaimed. There's nobody here. I ain't talking, You ain't talking. I'm just saying it'd be cruel. I'd ruin you for every white girl, ever."

She stood up, and reached down to offer me a hand. I stood, her hand in mine, and with a moment that could only be defined by a flash of understanding in our eyes, she laid one on me. BIG time. For the next thirty seconds or so, she took my breath and left me floating somewhere on cloud 13.

When my vision returned to normal, she straightened my jacket collar, and said with a grin "I'm sorry...really...I just hope that next girl on your list can follow that, right there."

~~~~~~~

In life, there are defining moments. Some of them define who you are, some define who you are going to be, and some define things you never knew existed.

What Shanice awakened in me that afternoon was not bawdy, adolescent, or romantic in any way. Yes, it was a great kiss, but it was something much more than that. It was a shift in the way that I saw the world. I was raised in a house that laid the dividing lines out quite clearly. There was white, and there was black.

Shanice, in one fluid movement, took that sketchbook out of my hand, and showed me the human equivalent of placing fingertips to charcoal. What was once a dark line was now a soft gradient of the one thing color can't touch...the soul. I'm thankful for that today. Who knows where I might be if I hadn't had that awakening?

Have things changed? I think to a point, yes. The lines are still there sadly, and they are more real than ever. It's up to us. We have to experience a change in our hearts. Only then can we can open our eyes and blend the colors into something beautiful.