Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
URBANNA — One day, a glorious spring day one Sunday, the sort of day Father would open the front door of our house in Ohio to greet the sun singing the cheerful refrain “nothing could be finer than to awake in Carolina in the morrrrrrning!” (I never fully understood this tradition because hadn’t we awakened in Ohio?) As I was walking with one of the “goldens,” Brandy, a woman thrust open her front door and shouted, “Why aren’t you in church?”
Startled, I stopped cold on the road and turned to look at the woman. She was angry and practically shaking her fist at me. “Madame,” I responded, “I am in church.” I continued on my way with my rich reveries.
Later I told my husband, Chip, about this odd exchange, wondering at the differences people have as to spiritual life. “You should have asked her why she wasn’t in church,” he said. We both laughed.
Still, I am grateful I spared the woman a recount of my religious feelings. I might have sat down on her front steps and explained why I felt I was in church that Sunday morning.
I might have told her that God was in each of us and all we needed to do to be in touch was to connect with our deeper sense. Meditation. Which means, one is “in church” every day if one turns inward and refrains from the meaningless and shallow entrapments of the world.
How fortunate she was to escape my lecture.
Like most newcomers to Middlesex, we commuted back and forth to the Peninsula social events for several years. It took years to build new friendships in our new home. Chip was busy with his law practice commuting back and forth to his office in Yorktown each day, but I had retired from my work by then and many times I felt lonely in spite of daily writing, reading, biking or walking through the town.
It was difficult for “come-heres” to meet and socialize with natives (which is the case in every community) and I thought that I should work to try to change that self-imposed social system of isolation between the two groups. Unless the county could come together and become one family we would be slow to develop — similar to Richmond in comparison to Charlotte, N.C. A city that has a social system that separates people for any reason will always lag behind those communities that move forward together.
My very first native friend was Catherine Murray. I often went over to Catherine’s house and enjoyed a cup of tea and conversation with her. She later moved to Richmond.
I started three lunch groups trying to mix and match ladies as much as possible — Baptist and Episcopalians, Deltaville and Urbanna, come-heres and natives, professional women and homemakers, Republicans and Democrats — ever hoping to break down some of the natural divisions.
Another native, Diana Pitts, and I decided to form a dinner group made up of 20 couples, half natives and half come-heres. We wondered if the two groups would “jell” into one group. In the beginning it was stiff, the natives and come-heres sitting by themselves and staring at each other and possibly thinking. What hath God wrought?
Three months later the ice broke. Native Jimmy Pitts dared me to take a motorcycle ride with him. I had never been on a motorcycle and was terrified, but before I knew it his wife, Judy, helped me into her leather jacket and helmet and sat me on the Harley behind Pitts.
We roared off on his Harley for a noisy zip around Urbanna with one of us white with terror.
But, of course, I had to hide my fear. The revelers were waiting for us when we returned and Charles Bristow christened our group the “Nightriders” to thunderous cheers.
Nightriders still enjoy monthly dinners all these years later, but — no more motorcycle rides.
I organized a discussion group for the University of Chicago’s Great Books Series which met and later the Middlesex Poetry Club both of which started at the Urbanna library but eventually changed to meeting in my husband’s office.
Great books met for over 10 years and we read the great thinkers starting with the Greek philosophers. Each year we also read the parts of a Greek and Shakespearean tragedy.
One day a member named Bob, who was living at the time at the old Gressitt House in Urbanna, invited us to bring our picnic lunch to his place but warning us he had to stay in bed because he just had surgery and could not laugh.
We were sure it would be OK because we were starting to read our parts to “Hamlet” that day and there was nothing funny in the tragedy.
How wrong I was. Elizabeth and Burton Leaf, Elizabeth Smith, Gari Sullivan, Peggy Dent, Jan Hollberg, Beverley Whitiker, Emily Pancake and I began reading our parts. Our Donnybrook was Jan, who was the ghost of Hamlet’s father. She spoke her part in a loud, spooky voice and we all burst out laughing and no matter how we tried, we could not stop laughing whenever she read her part.
Poor Bob was lying in his bed on the other side of the house and we heard him laughing and then groaning in pain. Finally, he came out to beg us to stop reading Hamlet.
Our Middlesex Poets group both read and wrote poetry. Urbanna Baptist Church hosted our poetry readings. We even published a slim volume of poetry under the title of “Middlesex Poets.” Sales did not set records.
By the late 90s we organized a dinner-dance club to help come-heres meet new friends. The group planned five events a year.
The first event was a black-tie dinner dance presented at the Piankatank Golf Club in 1999 with a huge turnout. Fat Albert and his band played 50s music to which we danced like teenagers with no regard to how we would feel the next morning.
It was open seating and when I walked through the club that evening I saw members seated at tables of eight by membership to church, where they lived, (Deltaville and Urbanna) or whether they were come-heres or natives.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
(To be continued.)
© 2024
