Growing Up on Columbus Circle

I grew up in Newnan, Georgia, on Columbus Circle. While our home and family certainly weren’t perfect, my four siblings and I were blessed with parents who loved and cared for us and each other. We had a house that was warm and safe. The property surrounding our home was family property dotted with open fields and a forest ripe for adventures. We lived a life filled with love and tender nurturing, a blessing  I don’t take for granted.

Since my parent’s deaths, my siblings and I have slowly and meticulously gone through the possessions in our childhood home. We have been going through this process in preparation for an estate sale.

For several reasons, it has taken us quite a while to do this. First, we weren’t emotionally prepared to do it and needed time to grieve our parent’s deaths. Secondly, we wanted to savor the process – to hold each item and remember. We wanted to remember the people in each picture. We wanted to clean out Daddy’s pockets and find each mint he placed in them – one for him and one for Mama. We wanted to search the nooks and crannies for lost jewelry and hearing aids. We wanted to thumb through their Bibles and read the notes written between the margins. And we wanted to make careful decisions about how we would honor them through this process.

This house was the only home I lived in from my birth into adulthood. My parents built this house and remained there until their deaths. It was home. Even after I had my own home, I still called this house “home.”

Going through the items from my childhood brought on another kind of grief. Finding long-forgotten items brought back floods of memories. Deciding what to throw away, what to keep, and what to sell created a different kind of emotion that I hadn’t prepared for.

When we had completed our task and drove away from the house, the realization set in that this house would never be the same. The possessions within it would go into new homes. The walls would no longer hold our pictures but would echo with the memories we made in that place. It was, admittedly, a hard goodbye.

My siblings and I have beautiful homes and families of our own. We love them and cherish the richness of the blessings they bring to us, but still, goodbye to our childhood home was a tough farewell.

My prayer this day is that the love and joy that was experienced in our home will settle deeply into that space on this earth – that it will soak into the soil and birth something beautiful in its place – that the goodness we experienced there will arise into the heavens with a resounding prayer of thanksgiving to God for the blessings of growing up on Columbus Circle.

Home

An ode to my childhood home

by Ruth Sprayberry DuCharme

The road home winds through pastures and towns,

Where tall pines congregate along my journey.

Cows graze and crows swoop,

Each taking their food from the land.

Rivers and creeks cross the path,

Flowing along the road on their journey to the sea.

Schools and shops dot the way

And mark the journey’s miles.

The destination is a simple brick house – our home,

Built with love and full of memories.

The home where babies first lay their heads.

The home where toddlers took their first steps and played under the willow tree.

The home where children explored and created adventures.

The home where teenagers argued and first expressed their unique personalities.

The home where college students came and went – free to live into adulthood.

The home where we returned with our spouses and children so they could experience the blessing of this warm place.

The home where we gathered in times of joy and sorrow – to sit on the porch and soak in each other’s presence and strength.

The home where things turned around, as they often do, and the nurtured ones became the nurturers, tending to the needs of parents who had aged way too soon -

Walking them home and holding their hand all the way.

The house stands empty now.

All that remains are the echoes of its memories – a shell of what it used to be.

But shells are beautiful in their own way.

They hold the sound of the sea

And as long as I live,

I believe this home will hold the echoes of me.

Still

Non-Negotiables

Be kind.

Be safe.

Be respectful.

In my music classroom, these are my non-negotiables. Any space that is filled with children needs guidelines. Simplifying my classroom expectations has become a life lesson for me and my students.

Instead of a long list of dos and don’ts, we navigate our way together with the expectation that we are to aim for kindness, safety, and respect in everything we do.

The first step to implementing this set of guidelines was to help my students understand what “non-negotiable” meant. Trust me, these children know how to negotiate, but they weren’t clear on the meaning of a non-negotiable.

Negotiating goes on daily in my classroom. It usually goes like this, “if we finish our work, can we play Pass the Beat?” Or “If we promise not to talk, can we sit by our friends today?”  Or “If we win the game, can we have a Skittle?”

Teaching them that a non-negotiable is an absolute – a guideline with no exceptions was new for some of them. My goal was to help them understand that our behaviors can be filtered through the lens of kindness, safety, and respect.

Kindness. We defined kindness as uplifting words, treating each other with tenderness, accepting differences, and being gentle with mistakes.

Safety. For us, safety means keeping our physical bodies safe and providing a safe space for feelings, expressions, and thoughts.

Respect. There’s nothing a teacher appreciates more than respect for his or her role in the classroom. That means good manners and no eye-rolling. Our room is a place where every voice is heard, and every life is honored.

These are big expectations for such young lives, but I view this as foundation-building.

In the church setting my ministry was to help children build a faith foundation – to know the stories of God and God’s people, and to follow God’s way. My work in the classroom is also about building foundations for children.

Kindness, safety, and respect are used to measure everything we do. They are the building blocks for God’s command to love each other and love our neighbor as ourselves.

With my students, the question isn’t, “Why did you do that?” The question is, “Was that kind, safe, or respectful?” From that point, we build an understanding that the choices we make have consequences.

God laid some non-negotiables before us too. In Micah 6:8 we read, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” These are the measuring sticks for the children of God.

Things tend to fall apart when we lose sight of God’s non-negotiables. Our egos take over, and we lose connection with our true selves. It happens in the classroom, the workplace, the political arena, and yes, even in the church.

In the current climate in which we live, we are being called to examine our relationships with the world, with each other, and with ourselves. Instead of falling into the habit of dwelling in the shallow space, it is time to allow ourselves to be led to the deeper places – the place where only God’s spirit can lead us. It is time to seek to understand the depths of our fellow brothers and sisters and view them through the lens of God’s non-negotiables of justice, loving-kindness, and mercy.