Susan Olmstead Wang

No, I’m not being mean or unfriending people.

It’s just that I have moved three times since building an impressive Roll-O-Dex (young folks, that’s an old brand name) from the paper-based world in which I was a paperwork queen. Somewhere in the early 2000s, I had hand copied my literal card file of names and entered each into my smart phone. I had names of plumbers, repair guys, remodelers, babysitters, gutter cleaners, and, once our kids went away to college, lawn mowers.

As I went through the list, I found that each name called up a memory. Not always good. For example, I don’t know why I still had the name of a landscaper who took payment and did not come back, even after I called and cajoled. I finally wrote him a snail mail letter begging him to do the right thing and earn the money he had accepted. He came by, said, “Whew! I thought that letter was going to be a lawsuit!” and . . . never came back to finish! Can you believe it?! I dropped the issue – there were a few times when I had a “good” lawsuit case BUT, I never wanted to be in court on either side of a fight. Thought I had let it go. But, as I swiped to delete the contact, I noticed I was “cussing”! I had kept some shadow of resentment in my heart with regard to the person; I had indulged the shadow. I had NOT let it go.

I decided to send the contact off into cyber space with a little blessing instead of a “cuss”– I thought about how we all live with challenges and how we carry burdens that others cannot guess. Don’t know what was going on for him at that time. Don’t want the shadow anymore. No doubt, I had also offended someone by not doing what they wanted, how they wanted it, when they wanted it.

I swiped away insurance agents from 20 years ago, car repair people from 3 vehicles ago, and the roofers who had replaced the very fashionable green shingles on the roof of my 1961 house in Decatur, Alabama. Bye bye.

I got to the names of my obstetricians – three of them, three cities in two different states, from 40+ years ago. Ahh, thank you — my babies and I all survived. Thank God, thank you, thank you for helping God. Very easy to send those good people off with my blessings.

Over the years and closer to my heart, I added email addresses to the names and phone numbers of my “bouquet of women friends.” Women with whom I carpooled our kids ALL over, women who were likely to help with a church project, women with whom I worked at the university, women who liked to read, write, and dance, and Louise, who could whip a water ski boat up to the dock in one swoosh! No culling, no cussing here!

Huh . . I got to Cynthia’s name. I had lost track of her when I moved away to teach in DC, and she had moved “home” to Tyler, Texas to teach. But, our mutual friend and hairstylist reported that Cynthia had died the YEAR before!

We were friends. We opened a small business together and wrote a grant application to bring money for professional development in our small city. We taught together at the university. When I was 49 years old and “standing on chicken ridge” (a skiers’ term for hesitating to push off the rim of the drop and ski down), she said, “Here, give me that personal statement, I’ll have a look at it.” She nudged me to go ahead and submit my completed application for my doctorate. Four years later, I nudged her to submit hers. She came to my office and said, “I’m scared to press ‘send’.” “Let’s go,” I said. We walked all the way back down the long hallway to her office. We stood at her computer. “You can press ‘send’,” I said. She did. We both finished doctorates as non-traditional age candidates – with 5 kids between us, teaching jobs, and our conservative Christian friends around us a little doubtful about if God would actually call us to that. Yes, God would and did. Our husbands were supportive, we four were all friends. We were from different regions of the US – she was from the Republic of Texas, I was from New York (yes, upstate and the city). She had lived in Virginia briefly for her husband’s work and she despised the cornbread as “Yankee.” I laughed and said Virginia is not often considered “Yankee” territory, except perhaps after the defeat of the “Rebels” in that horrible war of Americans against Americans. She meant that she wanted cornbread made in an iron skillet with bacon grease. Me, too.

Well, I remembered her maiden name and that helped me distinguish her from others with her fairly common name. I went online and found a beautifully written obituary – with Christ at its center as Christ was of her life, with humor and humility, with due respect for what she had accomplished and for those she had served: her family, her church, her students. I remembered her kids’ names but the son’s name was common and I could not identify him. By following the daughter’s name and going to Facebook, I was able to check — yes, she had grown up but that was her sweet face smiling out of cyber space at me. I sent her a message of condolence, belatedly, but from my heart.

I am not deleting Cynthia’s contact page for a while . . . until my heart thinks about all of this a little longer. Then, the contact page will go out into cyberspace with a blessing and in peace.