Epiphany Bumps Us Up

Growing up, I was one of those types that for the first month - January - I was taking tablets and paper writing my romantic or mental feelings about life, love, and needs as the year bursts through, whether the streets were wet, frozen, or warm with the problems of winter. I wasn’t popular in Miss Hutchison’s School for Girls. Dad’s secretary drove me miles and miles to school - well, it seemed like it in those days. Old Thomas picked me up and with much plea, I’d convince him to let me sneak a Snickers Bar at Harper’s General Store right down from the entrance to our farm. Today it’s almost a spit and a jump to get any private school, so no treats. But I was unpopular in those early years. Being unpopular, my hobby was writing for autographed photos of famous movie stars. That was a hobby. Who knows who signed the darn things. I still have a few somewhere in something plastic in a closet.

But more important, my first daughter, was conceived in a coffee plantation in Arusha, Tanzania. She was birthed on Epiphany and is now on the road to become a priest. Ironically, decades later I married Roberto on 5th of January, a day short of Epiphany. Of course, also in this month is when we give respectful glory to the great pastor and leader, Martin Luther King. It’s a precious time to be welcomed in this hard, messy, but hopeful world.

Back in the day of my youth (birthed 1939), I started every year off with keeping notes in a notebook that really said nothing, but I was good at twisting and pouring out the routine for each day, which was boring as it could be. However, my parents made life a bit special by getting my brother and me out of school for the month of February so we could go enjoy the winter delights of Palm Beach, Florida, where my grandmother Edwina lived. My dad was vigilant about keeping my brother and me up with our classes at school. In fact, we were always way ahead when we returned from the Florida excursion. I wasn’t the world’s greatest student at any point of the twelve years as my mind grew and was tied up in the string of study and essays and math and even gym, which I was poor at. 

Over my early years, like from age 6 through teens I have dozens of notebooks which days would start with “today I did this or that, “at least for the first 30 days and a few entries in February but they wain and ween as time passed on by and finally, I just stopped. I have no idea what happened for the 10 months afterwards.

The earliest scribbled thoughts were really boring like, “Today I went to school. Someone doesn’t like me but I have her likes and dislike in my new diary. Today after school I can ride Alex the old farm horse!!” When I was young, I could not say anything nice about my brother, who happened to be, in the long run, an amazing, generous, and brilliant man, although we both fought a bunch growing into a moment when we could respect each other. Annually, he ran the New York marathon, played violent polo most of his life when he was invited for a challenge, discovered wrangling horses out West. When he went off to Choate in the 9th grade, I was at St. Catherine’s and was the only one willing to meet my brother in New York or some city with his buddies and make sure they were behaving, for instance, on Thanksgiving Day. But, in general, in those days, brothers were just bothersome. He was two and a half years younger, so I thought my skill had to be to dominate. He called me fat slob and threatened to sit on my chubby self at any moment and beat me up. That was the early war we tossed up and down and then, only under the roof of our house. We first lived in my grandfather’s mansion at 2021 South Parkway East till he died. Dad sold it all to somehow who tore everything down, barn included. I’ve never been near Castela. Then we moved to the farm managers house on the huge farm, while mom and dad’s mansion was built in 1950.

I was not a safe sister. When my brother was born, I whopped him on the head in the bassinet with, I think, a toy. He got all the attention.  Blonde and blue eyed. I had black hair and green eyes. To get me out of the way, I was sent to Sunday School with my godmother, Maureen. But my brother and I, though we fought a lot in the early days, he could not say enough about how fat I was, and this pull, and shove and I hate you and you are a fat slob kind of things until, it seemed, like with a snap. We both went off to boarding school - me to St. Catherine’s in Virginia, Choate in Connecticut. Then we liked and worried about each other. And when I was at Bennett Jr College in upstate New York, I became more useful as a chaperone now and then when he and his buddies wanted someone to take them out for a day or two from boarding school. Sadly, but beneficially, the amazing southern mansion my father had designed and built was taken off the map. It was a good thing. The memories went with it in so many ways. Life is no longer that kind of style. I learned so much as a journalist from 1960 into the early 1980s. But thanks to my brother’s wonderful widow, after much hard work, has been able to donate the farm to University of Tennessee at Martin for research related to horses and crops. 

Somehow, I’m still alive, thinking about Epiphany now days rather than writing diaries. There is so much need, so many people in pain and fear, so many in Juvenile Court and 201 Poplar that need just some sort of chance to try to be better. I’ve devoted my life to those things as well as the prison system in Uruguay for so many years. That’s where I learned God’s lead and Epiphany was always a fresh start, it seemed.

There is so much memory. My two girls and one amazing son still thrive and have blessed me with, total, seven grandchildren. The last one shines at MUS (which my father was one of the founders), and my brilliant daughter Caroline who is at William & Mary’s University bringing her laughter and joy to everyone. And the beat goes on as the world turns and God leads us down more extravagant and beautiful experiences of this confused and sometimes dangerous earth. He made it for us. We must grasp it and see what God wants us to do to make it better, not worse. There is no room in heaven for racism and hatred and evil. So might as well put that in the garbage can and give a better life a tough try as the year rolls out before us. 

~ Rev

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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com