Author Archives: wendywelch

How to Be in a New Place

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As Jack and I cope with book launch day, Andrew-the-shopsitter guest blogs about living in new places and making new friends. Take it away, Andrew!

How do I write about Big Stone Gap? I think there’s a temptation to cram it into an existing small-town narrative. Something about nostalgia for times past and simple living:

The local diner feels like a time machine, a place where people still get together and talk over a cup of coffee…

I didn’t expect to find ___________ (iPads, greek yogurt, movie snobs, a good slice of pizza) once my Greyhound pulled away from the island of Manhattan.

Seeing photos of bluegrass and country stars stretching back 40 years on the wall of Maggard Sound is a reminder of the rich cultural traditions of the region…

Community still means something in Big Stone Gap…

None of these things is completely untrue. The Mutual Pharmacy and Diner actually is a great place where people know each other. And yes, my bloodstream has been enriched by their grits and two types of gravy (I know the brown is made on-site, but I still prefer the white). People have been friendly and welcoming, demonstrating the hospitality and the occasional Yank-ribbing I had expected.

But to take any of those stories and make it what Big Stone Gap is about, now that’s just unfair. But I think there is a real lesson to be taken from being dropped into a new place, whether Big Stone Gap or Atlanta. How we experience the identity of a place isn’t so much about a cliche you can drop on an entire populace, but about how we as individuals engage with those around us.

When I moved to Seattle after college I found myself learning the city: its streets, restaurants, bars, and parks. But there were some ways in which I would never know the city like my native roommates. They were of the place and had absorbed a culture that would never be totally mine. Still, there were times when I felt like I had the edge, whether knowing the restaurants in the International District, or the best bars downtown.

My point is not just that I’m a freakin’ genius who is better at living than others (maybe I’ll save that argument for a later post). My un-genius became clear to me when I went back to Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up and lived for 19 years. I’d borrow my Dad’s car and get lost for hours trying to find a sandwich shop I ate at every day in high school. Or I’d go to get Chinese food and realize that the place had closed and I didn’t know where else was good. Or friends who lived in Columbus would tell me to meet them in a certain district (I’m looking at you Victorian Village), and I had never even heard of it.

I never had to engage with Columbus. And while my heart knows it and is of it, I never gave the city the thought it probably deserved, because it was never forced on me. In Seattle (and later New York) every step down an unfamiliar street, every trip on the bus, was entirely new. My engagement with the city had to be a conscious one, or else I’d probably still be wandering around the Central District, lost and hungry.

When I’m walking around Big Stone Gap I am entirely out of my element. So I’m back to needing conscious, constant engagement. Every step, every opportunity to meet someone new or try something different deserves my full attention. Amazing people (Gappers? Stoners? Biggers? Gappees? Gappinites? Gapperois?) have been open to sharing a bit of themselves, but it’s ultimately on us as individuals to grab at any chance we’re given to learn more about our surroundings.

And I think that’s a point worth making. Perhaps with some effort we can even try and see our own communities in the same light. Look at it like an outsider and grab at those chance encounters and friendly offers that we so often pass up. Could I hang out in a diner in Brooklyn and jaw with regulars? Or catch a Celtic concert and swap stories with the musicians? Or drop by the work of someone I’ve only just met, just to see how cool their job is? Probably, yeah. But I wouldn’t. And I didn’t. But I have in Big Stone Gap.

Such a lovely, weird Wedding….

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The bookstore hosted its first wedding Sunday. The bride wore a black bustier; the groom wore a black vest. (Both wore blue jeans, in case you’re interested. And the bride had a nice white corsage pinned to one strap.)

 

The Society of Friends members and the friends of the marrying couple gathered in our bookstore a little before 1 pm, wearing Sunday dresses and panty hose and blue jeans and flannel and generally looking like themselves. (In case you’re interested, I wore my pink bunny house slippers. You know, an afternoon wedding is less formal.)

Jack, as a member of the Big Stone Gap Meeting, read the Clearness Ceremony findings for the couple, stating there were no impediments to their marriage. He then explained more informally how the thing would go down, to put the non-Quakers at ease.

And then the wedding started. Silence descended, lasting about five minutes before Rachael’s father spoke up to thank everyone for their embracing of Wes and Rachael’s lives, and expressing appreciation for the assembly of friends to witness their Commitment Ceremony. (Fathers don’t have to speak first; it just happens as it happens.) Another five minutes of silence. Rachael stood and told Wes she intended to help him become the person he wanted to be, and that the day she met him, “my whole future flashed before my eyes.” Wes promised to guard Rachael’s health and well being, to be her best friend, and to “always listen to what you have to say.”

Couples in the circle of chairs began to hold hands, and the sniffling started as Wes and Rachael embraced, then signed their marriage certificate. Jack and Sue-Ella, the meeting’s clerk (the closest thing Quakers have to pastors), also signed the certificate. They all sat down. Silence followed, broken by various participants speaking their thoughts at slight intervals. While a Gathered Silence for Worship usually lasts an hour, this one ended at 45 minutes, out of deference to those not quite at ease with such practices–or perhaps put off by bookshop cat Val-kyttie, a real curmudgeon who has a soft spot for Wes, deciding to bless the marriage certificate by lying down on it. Who can say?

Out came the food, glorious food–mostly vegetarian, since Quakers are generally considered liberal bleeding heart health-reform-lovin’ animal-rescuin’ treehuggers (although I happen to know that two people in our group vote staunch Republican). And the presents. A jar of honey from the homesteaders’ bees. A hand-stitched afghan. A homemade card of pressed flowers. A gift certificate to a chain restaurant. (Told you there were conservatives.)

The bridal couple took their wedding trip to the liquor store across the street (now open Sundays). While friends don’t normally go on honeymoons, four accompanied them. What can I say…..

It was a moving event. Wes and Rachael had just the day before expressed concerns: would the act of marrying change their commitment to each other, change the way people viewed who they should be? He the homekeeper, she the high powered executive, they’d spent a lifetime already defying the conventions of who should be doing what, and called what. “Husband and wife” were not in the plans; no rings were exchanged, white tulle and virginal lilies conspicuously absent.

But oh, there was love. And understanding. And honest commitment. It all got summed up when the Presbyterian minister, called in to make the wedding legal in the eyes of the Commonwealth of Virginia, stood to announce the newlyweds. I saw Rachael brace herself. As someone who had been introduced as “Mrs. Beck” five minutes after my own wedding, I felt her fear.

Tony put one hand on Wes’s shoulder, one on Rachael’s, smiled at them, then at the assembly and said, “I would like to introduce to you, for the first time ever, the loving and united-in-the-sight-of-God couple of Wesley Hearp and Rachael Miller.”

Yep.