This Little Light of Mine

As we drove I became increasingly concerned. At one point as we were going up the slippery incline, we came upon children playing on both sides of the road – excitedly waving to us because we were white people rarely seen in those parts. A fat nanny goat in full pregnancy darted out in front of us and the children scampered after her. Lyle trounced on the brakes and the car began to fish-tail wildly. Miraculously he got the car stopped just in the nick of time. My heart was pounding with fear. It was a near miss. We had almost ploughed into a group of children. The excited youngsters gathered around our car as we had become permanent fixtures solidly stuck in the mud. Our African passenger Mr. Ng’anga cleared the group of children out of the way. He stood with them and dared them to move. I, of course, tried to silently squelch the panic that had erupted like a volcano within me. What if we had injured those children? There was no emergency 911 call network. No ambulance. We were isolated in a remote rural area. What if we were stuck in the mud for hours with no one to assist us? No tow trucks, no way to get help. However, Lyle (how I admire that guy) calmly shifted gears, twisted and rocked the car back and forth until he was able to maneuver it out of the muck, while I stood by amazed at his driving skills. We drove away with the children cheering us on as the nanny goat, oblivious to the whole drama, contentedly scavenged for food. When we reached the high school I was secretly seething, trying to hide my fury, because we had not been told about the muddy road. But the father was not in my world. In the air turgid and warm, bathed in the tropical sun, his face was awash in dazzling light as his daughter Mary came running to greet him. When I watched Mr. Ng’anga hug his daughter, I couldn’t help but think of my own father. And my anger about the precarious road mellowed. I recalled those long ago hallowed days when I savored the pride my father had in his eyes when he looked at me. My dad Otis Dick was a coal miner in Appalachia. I remember the day he took me to visit Pikeville College near our home in Eastern Kentucky. I was seventeen. Excitement and dread was in the air. Dad asked to speak to the president of the college. He had come to see if he could work out a way for me to attend college. A weak light filtered through the crack in the door where we were invited into the office of the college president. My heart fluttered within me as I took my place like a silent sentinel watching over a very raw and painful scene. Facing a very dignified and well-dressed man, with a huge mahogany desk separating them, my father began to speak. Dad made clear that he would do everything he could to pay for my education. Could he work out a payment plan? My father was wearing navy blue flannel trousers and an open-collar white shirt, no tie. I knew he was anxious. With his right ankle resting on his left knee, I could see his foot twitch back and forth as he fidgeted with the hat in his hand. “The coal mines have fallen on hard times,” he said. “And they have reduced my work to only three days a week.” He explained that he had a wife, four children and a blind mother-in-law to support. He said he knew of a coal mine in Virginia about fifty miles away where he was hoping to get a better job. There men were working five days a week. The only problem was the seam of coal in that mine was only forty inches high. It meant shoveling coal on his knees, which he was willing to do if a way could be found for me to go to college. I felt a little embarrassed, humbled, indebted, grateful, deeply loved and guilty for the sacrifices my father was willing to make for me. My father was a mechanic in the coal mine. A foreman. His job was to lead a crew of men and travel miles under ground to fix disabled machinery. Sometimes he and his men had to walk miles deep inside the cavernous pit – bent over, of course. (It was rare to find a seam of coal where the men could walk upright.) But on other occasions they were able to ride motors way back into the face of the mine, pull the mining machinery out of the hole, and work on the equipment in the mechanical shop above ground. This other job of shoveling coal on his knees in a very low seam of coal was for unskilled workers - the worst job in the mine - and Dad was willing to do that for me. That memory is seared in my soul. My father’s love continues to nourish me. I never felt worthy of that love, but then his love was unconditional and I knew he wanted nothing in return. Being worthy was not an issue for him. Dad just loved me. When Lyle and I had our first and second baby, I held them in my arms and cried. I was overwhelmed with joy, tenderness and protectiveness. Music filled every fiber of my body. My heart composed a glorious symphony. I was inundated by that unconditional love a parent has for her child. I knew then that I too would crawl on my hands and knees and shovel coal for my children. How wonderful God has made us that we can receive and give such tenderness and such love. Maybe this is a glimpse of what it means to be made in the image of God. I believe we are encompassed and nourished by God’s love, much like the baby in the womb. God’s compassion is like the caring bond of a mother for a child. It is a love that will not let us go. When Dad and I returned home from Pikeville College I told my mother what had happened. I pleaded with her that I didn’t want to go to college. I said I could not bear to have my father work so hard in such a mine with the seam of coal so low. I also knew it would be dangerous, because that mine in particular had pockets of gas that could easily ignite and cause an explosion. With love and gravity in her face, and tears streaming down my mother’s cheeks, she told me I had to go to college. She said it would break my father’s heart if I did not go. I had to accept his sacrifice. And her sacrifice. There was no other alternative. It was the way it had to be. My mother’s tears were also tears of identification: of unfulfilled dreams. She, Pearl, was an avid reader who longed for wider vistas. Held back by missed opportunities and poverty, my Appalachian mother of four children suffered from dreams that withered on the vine. Despondency and dark bouts of depression and rage marked her days as she watched the world pass her by. She was truly a ‘pearl’ cultivated in the crucible of life-gone-sour – and she was determined that life would be better for me.