Have no lips trembled in the wilderness?
No eyes sought seaward from the rock’s
sharp edge for men returning home? Has no
pulse beat more hot with love or hate upon
the river’s edge?….No love?

—Thomas Wolfe
____________________

He walked in that Saturday morning at the office. And I looked at him as he approached to where I was standing behind the counter. An old man, with a lean hard face. Kind of shabbily dressed, like old people are sometimes, and they don’t realize it. He had seen better days. He looks a little hungry, I thought to myself. And he had a grumpy air about him, as if he knew this day would be like all the rest have been, lately. It would not bring him many good things. Tired, is how he looked. Tired and old and grumpy. Still. He was a customer, or at least he might be one. And I smiled and greeted him, just like I try to smile and greet anyone who walks through that front door on a Saturday morning, or any other morning. Can I help you? I asked.

He nodded. I could, yes. And he told me. He had this little bitty storage shed back home, down south over the Maryland line a ways. It needed a new roof. He had a lot of questions. And he took his time, asking. And I took my time, answering. There wasn’t much else going on at the office right then, anyway. Might as well pay some attention to the old man. Don’t matter, how small his project is. Just take care of him, like you would if he was asking about a big building he needed. That’s what I thought to myself. And me and the old man just talked along. My first impression was right. He was in a grumpy mood. He kind of snapped out his questions. Maybe he’s just tired, from all he’s seen, I thought. Maybe it’s just not a good day for him. And we kept talking.

The phone rang, then, and I glanced back at my desk. Just let it go to voicemail. I’m busy here. But the old man wouldn’t have that. “Answer the phone,” he told me. “I’m in no hurry. I’ll wait. I just have a few more questions.” So I answered and chatted with a builder for a few minutes. Sorry, I said as I hung up. We only got one person in the office, on a Saturday. And today, that’s me. The old man waved it off. “Don’t think a thing of it,” he said. And he went right back to asking questions about metal for his little roof. I showed him color samples of what we have. Metal. Trim. Screws. He absorbed it all. He’d have to go back home and get some measurements. And then he’d get back to me. We were winding down. He took my card. And I thanked him for stopping by. We’ll have your stuff, when you’re ready for it, I told him. Call me, and we’ll have it ready for you when you get back.

And he turned away to walk back out. And just that close, he did. But just as he was turning, his eye caught the little poster taped to the back of my computer screen, facing him. My book. He stopped, and looked at the poster closely. Then he looked at me. Then back to the poster again. And he got all curious. His whole face changed. And he asked me. “Did you write that book? Were you born Amish?” Yes, I said. I did and I was.

And he looked at me. “Were you ever shunned?” he asked. Yes, I said. I was. For years and years. But as Dad got along in years, he let it go, dropped the shunning. I am very thankful that I get to sit at the table with him now. He’s old, in his nineties. But better late than never. Way better. Let me tell you that.

And the old man leaned in toward the counter, totally focused on what he had to say. It was like a light went on inside him. “I know all about what it is, to be shunned,” he said. The grumpiness was gone, replaced by a quiet, well, I don’t know what. A quiet knowledge, I guess. He went on. “I was a Jehovah’s Witness, years ago. I left them, back in the eighties. And they’re a lot like the Amish are, if you leave them. They’ll shun you. Oh, yes, they will. They still won’t have anything to do with me, the ones I knew back then. Still not today.”

The light died in him, then. And it drained out of him, his eagerness to tell me what he knew and thought. He was just a tired old man again. He settled in, settled back, seemed to shrink into himself. “It sure is a strange thing,” he muttered. “It sure is strange, how they treat you. And all because they claim to love you.”

Yeah, it sure is strange, indeed, I said. And I know how it affects you, to be rejected like that. I know all about how that is. I’ve been there. And we stood there and talked about what it was to be shunned. How you deal with it. How you adapt, in your head and in your heart. He had definitely seen some hard places. I could tell. He had been down some hard tough roads.

“I could still go back,” he said, suddenly. I was startled. No one had mentioned anything about going back. But he wanted to. “I mean, if I wanted to, I could,” he said. “Not that I do. But they would take me back. If I went, I would have to get to the service on a Sunday after it starts. I’d have to sit by myself all the way in the back, and then I’d have to get up and leave just before it ended. Eventually they would take me back, as a member, then.”

Wow, I said. I could go back to the Amish, too, if I had a mind to. Which I don’t. I’m just saying. I could. They wouldn’t make me sit in the back, though. Actually, you’d sit pretty close to up front, where they can keep an eye on you. And they would make me walk a pretty strict line for about six months or so. But they would accept me, and genuinely so, during the process. I guess different groups do things different.

There was a silence, then. We just stood there, in the company of each other, the old man and me. It was soon time for him to go. But still he lingered, as if there was something more he wanted to say.

And I told him what I thought about the whole shunning business. My take on it. Yeah, I said. It hurts, to be shunned. And yeah, it’s no fun. But I have always stood for people to have the right to believe what they want. Don’t have to make sense to me. I’ll defend the Amish all day, and the JWs, too. They have the right to be who they are. They have the right to believe what they want.

The old man looked at me. I think it had been a few years since he’d thought much about the shunning. It had been a while since he’d talked to anyone about it. Especially someone who halfway understood where he had been and what he had seen. And he seemed to be considering his next words carefully.

“Yes,” he said. “We all have the right to be who we are, and to believe what we believe. That’s a given. But that don’t make it any easier to be shunned.”

It was time to go. He turned to the door. But then he turned back. He had one more thing to tell me. One more thing to say. He didn’t shake his finger at me, or anything. But what he said came from somewhere buried deep inside. There was nothing grumpy, nothing tired about the old man now. And then he spoke.

“They claim they’re doing it out of love, the people who shun you,” he said. “But it’s not love, to reject a person just because that person leaves your group. Maybe it’s hate. For sure, it’s rage. It’s not natural, for a parent to reject a child, to cut off all contact with a child. It’s not natural. It’s not Christian, either. You can claim it’s anything you want to. But it’s not love.”

No, it’s not love. I agreed. It’s not love, to shun someone. Real love is what those people need, the ones who shun. What they’re missing. And real love will never allow a parent to reject a child. Never. That don’t mean you have to approve of what the child is doing. But you won’t reject him. It’s impossible, with love the way Jesus taught and lived it.

“No, it’s not real love,” he answered. “And yes, real love is what those people need, what we all need.” Yes, I said. It sounds trite, but it really boils down to love. We all need love. Those who shun and those who are shunned. We need to love and be loved.

It was time, then, to leave. He offered me his hand, and I shook it. “I’ll give you a call when I got those measurements for my metal,” he said. “And thanks for your time.”

You do that, I told him as he turned and left. We’ll be here.
**********************************
Almost, this blog didn’t get written. And one might think. It’s March. The bad month for Ira. Last year, it got real dark, and he freaked out and never posted a word. It’s March. So of course that’s why he got stuck, writing.

But it’s not. It was way less complicated than that. I got March, this year. It will never freak me out again, not like it did. Not saying I’ll never skip a blog in March. But it won’t be because I’m freaked out. The thing is, I got a nice, new PC, a desktop computer. And a friend came over and set it up. The nice, new computer didn’t work. Kept freezing up on me, and losing the writing I had just labored on. There wasn’t a lot of peace of mind involved. I got a little fretful, I will concede. And for a while there, this week, it looked like this post wasn’t gonna get done.

My old computer was pretty ancient, in computer age. I bought it back on 2008 or 2009. Way back when I was blogging every week, and finding my writing voice. It’s an old-style desktop with an old-fashioned flat monitor. And it has more than served me well. I cranked out a lot of writing on that computer. I’ve worked my way through a few keyboards, and I’m on my second office chair. And the book. Every word was punched out, or at least edited, on that old computer.

And a few weeks ago, I got to thinking. I better get something new, before this old thing crashes and I lose all my stuff. So one day last week I emailed my ex-brother-in-law and good friend, Paul Yutzy. I’m thinking about picking up a new computer. Could you come over and set it up sometime, if I do? Paul is a computer geek, works in the field, and has always been my go-to guy. He answered right back. Sure. Get what you want. Brand doesn’t matter much these days. I can stop by one evening and set it up for you.

So on Saturday after work, I headed on over to Best Buy to pick up a cheap PC. That right there was my first mistake. But I didn’t know. So I went in and lurked around the computer section. Surely someone would see I needed help, I figured. I mean, in a big box store like this, you always have to fend off the sales people. They won’t leave you alone.

And almost right away, here comes this beautiful girl, all smiling and friendly. She had a name tag, so I figured, here we go. Great service, this. She smiled very prettily and gushed at me. “Oh, I just LOVE your hat (I was wearing my Aussie.). You wear it SO well.” Why, thank you, I said, genuinely pleased. It’s real nice of you to notice. She smiled again, and then started asking questions for some survey she was doing. She didn’t even work at Best Buy. So that little compliment went out the window, whoosh, just like that. I felt deflated.

After shaking her off, I kept loafing around, looking at computers. No one came. It all figures, I grumbled to myself. When you’re looking to buy, no one pays any attention to you. When you’re just window shopping, you get assaulted by some pesky sales person every time you turn around. I finally approached the sales desk, where four guys were standing around, cracking jokes and laughing. I got some questions about a computer, I said, and one of them rushed to help me. He knew his stuff and I was on my way in twenty minutes with my new PC. A Lenovo, an all-in-one model, where everything is in the screen. Pretty wild stuff, those computers are. I unloaded at home, and set the big box in a corner.

The next afternoon, Sunday, Paul and his friend Malinda came over. I shuffled around, trying to stay out of the way, while Paul set up my new model and transferred the data from old to new. All my docs, and all my pics, and all my other stuff. By late afternoon, he was done, and we sat down to the fine meal Malinda had whipped up. And then they left. I felt good. A brand new computer. Latest model. I was all set, I figured.

Almost right away, things did not go well. I surfed around a bit on the internet, and then left the desk for a few minutes. When I sat back down and moved the mouse, nothing happened on the screen. The thing was frozen stiff. No movement, no nothing. I finagled around and hit various combo keys. Control, Alt, Delete. Restart. Nothing. Finally, I reached down and unplugged the computer. It went dark instantly. I fired it back up. Maybe that was a fluke, I thought.

It wasn’t. The computer froze up and locked up randomly, maddeningly, at the most inopportune times. I had an outline started for this blog, and pulled it up. I punched around, writing, for fifteen minutes. And then, boom, the screen froze up again. No. No. NO. I screamed inside. I can’t lose all that stuff I just wrote. And again, the only way to get rebooted was to unplug the computer and start over. I’ll never get a blog written this way, I thought. Oh, well. Just skip this week, I guess. But still, I wanted to. And I kept working away, off and on. And the computer kept freezing up, mostly when I was online, and mostly after I turned my back for a few moments. It was all real frustrating.

Came this Wednesday evening, early, then. I sat here, working on my blog. And I saved the words, now and again. And then there was a long stretch, probably half an hour. I should save, I should save, I thought. But I kept writing. And all of a sudden, the mouse wouldn’t move. Frozen again. No. No. NO. But it was. I yanked the plug-in from the wall, and then fired up again. Word would not, could not retrieve the words I had not saved. It was still early. I got pretty livid. I shut down my new computer unplugged everything, threw the keyboard and mouse into my messenger bag and loaded my truck. Back to Best Buy. That’s where this piece of junk was going.

I walked in and up to the Service counter. And our conversation remained polite throughout, I gotta say. But they were rigid, unhelpful, and totally lacking in service. They wanted to charge me $100 to move my data from the defective computer onto a new one, and it would take five days. Frustrated, I excused myself and stepped aside and called Paul. I told him what was going on, and he got all indignant. “It takes five minutes to transfer that data,” he told me. “Get your money back, go home and plug your old computer back in. I’ll find something that’ll work for you in a day or two.”

So that’s what I did. Asked for my money back. At least they didn’t make a fuss about the refund. As I was walking out, I almost bumped into the pretty young survey girl who had swooned about my Aussie hat last Saturday. Still out there, still as pretty as ever, still accosting people for her survey. She recognized me, her eyes widened, and I tipped my hat. Ma’am, I said. And then I got out of that place. I will not shop at Best Buy again.

And then I went back home and reconnected my trusty old computer. My old friend. I thought we had parted for good, but now we were together again. The computer fired right up, and everything worked, just like it always has. And that’s why this blog got posted this week.