"Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes." ~Gloria Naylor

Part I of a tribute to my dad who continues to sacrifice for his children....
This is my dad. I know. He is larger than life, not just in physical presence, but in personality as well as spiritual presence. We have had our ups-and-downs over the years, my dad and I. I am sure if you were to ask him what life with me at about 16 was like he would say: I wasn't sure she was going to make it to 17. I had some doubts myself. Growing up, I was keenly aware of the imperfections of my father; all the ways he managed to fall short of what I felt I deserved , all the ways he managed to embarrass me. When you are young and certain that you know everything about how life should be you see life and relationships rather myopically. Fortunately, youthful self-centeredness is tempered and eventually replaced by experience and perspectives shaped by maturity. It has taken a clearer view of the world and a deeper understanding of my dad not as my father, but as a person with his own failed expectations, sacrifices, and struggles to overcome.

I have been reflecting recently on all the ways in which my rough-around-the-edges and sarcastic father taught my brother, sisters and me what life is really about. He is not one for disingenuousness. If anyone does something he finds hypocritical or small minded he never has any bones about kicking up dust to make a point. Over the years, I have been able to figure out who the people are that have been the focus of his honesty when they find out that Monk Bailey is my dad. But the thing is, my dad would give you the shirt of his back if you needed it. Sundays in my house were filled with new faces and good food. I can recall sitting at the kitchen table for hours after eating a meal and discussing faith and life and millions of other things with people my dad has just met for the first time that day. Then there were the nights our couches , or extra bedroom, had guests that my father knew had no other place to stay.

My father taught me, by the way he opened himself and his home to the stranger and to the downtrodden, that the true mark of a love of God is evidenced in how we treat his children in need. How do we treat those who are just a little bit different or those who are new faces in a new place or those who have been weighed down by the hardships of life? In revisiting all of these memories from childhood and adolescence I can't imagine having a better example of what kind of person I want to be.

I need Thee every hour....

I am many things. I am a student. I am an Aunt. I am a lover of the arts. I am a sister, a friend, a woman. I am a New Yorker. I am an avid reader. I am a curious observer of human nature and beliefs. But of all the many things that I am, of all the millions of relationships, interests, and quirky personality traits that make me, well, Jenielle, what I have come to treasure beyond earthly value is who I am and who I can become because of my relationship with my divine Father and His son, Jesus Christ.

This is usully the point where many people may click the button, or roll the eyes, and say: not ANOTHER one of those crazy fanatics out to save my soul. I know that the "saving" of souls is far beyond my "pay-grade", but I also know that how I feel about my faith, my spirituality, my Savior, and my Church are a major part of who I am, even in all my many imperfections. And despite the common disdain for organized religion and religion in general , I feel profoundly the blessing of knowing I have a Savior who loves and understands not just me, but all who ever have been or ever will be born on this earth.

That is not to say that my life is sunshine and lollipops (especially when the snow never seems to stop :p). My life has certainly not gone in any direction I planned on it going for myself and there have been many moments throughout my life where my willingness or interest in having a close relationship with anyone or anything that didn't supply me with immediate gratification was nonexistant. But even in these moments I look back and see clearly how I was never truly on my own. And that is what keeps me going to church every week and having my regular conversations with God, because I have found life becomes much more manageable when one doesn't leave Him outside knocking, but opens the door and lets him in.

"Who, being loved, is poor?" ~Oscar Wilde

Today, a good friend of mine sent me a tongue-in-cheek message asking how I was feeling on Valentine's Day. The corners of my mouth curved up at this question. I am a 35 year old single woman surrounded by friends and family getting married and having babies. The world thinks today, this day set apart for the celebration of romance and passion, that I should look around me with a sense of being incomplete and left behind, that as a woman limited by biological time constraints I should feel like an anomally of nature, especially since I have such strong beliefs about intimacy. My response to my friend was a sincere one: I feel great.

Today I had a little old lady, ravaged by time and confined to a wheelchair, tell me I didn't look a day over 25 and that I was beautiful. In fact every time I see this woman who suffers from dementia she shouts from across the senior center,"Hey, Pretty." A kind moment offered to me by this woman I barely know.

But in thinking about my day of singleness, or loser's day as my sister Danielle (who is now married) and I used to jokingly call it, I am actually quite grateful to have an opportunity to reflect and fully understand how I see love and why, to me, Valentine's Day, holds neither pleasure nor pain. When it comes to the celebration of love and affection I see Valentine's Day very much as a lazy person's holiday manipulated by retailers to turn either guilt or perhaps even real loving care into dollars. When I look at certain couples I have been fortunate enough to know, like my friends Brooke and Frankie, I see February 14th as one of 365 Valentine's Days. To see a man and a woman devoted to each other, who laugh and cry together, who support and forgive one another, who write each other notes and poems of affection for no particular reason, is to see that celebrating love is actually best done in the actual loving itself.

This can be said of all the many forms of love that exist out there. As my friend Jane Austen wrote: There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time. And I feel truly blessed in my life to have been the giver as well as recipient of many of these forms: parent-child, sister-brother, sister-sister, Aunt-niece, Aunt-nephiew, friend to friend, divine Father-imperfect child. There is no reason I can fathom for me to be mournful about the one form of love I am currently lacking, because looking at the loves I have and the beauty of the pure loves I have seen through the years, I am quite happy to wait until I can have exactly what I deserve.

"...Love moderately.Long love doth so.Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."

At the age of 14 I was little more than a giant mess of hormones, insecurity, and an active imagination. I had literally just managed to surmount the horrors of my 8th grade year and careened into high school like a moth after one wing has been ripped off. That summer I had decided to try Shakespeare for the first time and discovered my drug of choice when I read Julius Caesar. My love for the Bard was immediate and intense. That is until I came into contact with the teenage passion and incredulous plot of Romeo and Juliet. My thoughts about this play for many years have been along these lines: How could a genius like Shakespeare tell a story with such beautiful language about such annoyingly foolish people? What a ridiculously overdramatic ending...when does that happen in real life? While reading the tragedy of these two star-crossed lovers I observed my peers and often thought very much the same things about the melodrama of teen social circles. The inflated passions of the characters Romeo and Juliet were not at all antonymic to what I witnessed in my own culture, but the lengths they went to to be together and the manner in which their tale ended seemed utterly unbelievable and pointless.



Fortunately, the teen tragedy did not quench my love for the writings of Shakespeare and I have continued to feed upon the fruits of his imagination for more than 20 years now. Ironically, it is this lifelong appreciation that has brought me full circle: studying Romeo and Juliet in a classroom setting, this time by elective choice. Another irony, I will have finished reading through the tragic love story on the cusp of the most commercialized of holidays: Valentine's Day. While I now have a richer understanding as well as appreciation for what William Shakespeare was really creating in his telling of this tale of ill-fated love I am reminded, especially at this "romantic" time of year, of what has provoked my dislike. The notion of love and romance as a spontaneous and predetermined master of the human race seems like a limited and disingenous reflection of the deeper nature and meaning of what it is to love. Just as a box of chocolates, overpriced flowers, teddy bears hugging balloons, or even diamonds and pearls gifted on one established day a year can't approach the value of a deep loyal and fervent passion, neither can the poetic dramatics of two 14 year old children genuinely express the meaningfulness of love based on understanding, self-sacrifice, and true vulnerability. It is a heady, impatient passion that drives these two lovers to their tombs....one wonders what would have been the long term nature of their relationship if patience and thoughtfulness had tempered youthful desire.