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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday March 12, 2001 Volume III Number 11 |
FOCUS - Athenian Treasure Hunt
How many ways can one say, “I love you?” Let me count the ways.
I remember our first bedroom set. We found it at a warehouse furniture outlet; some cold and stark barn out where the real estate is dirt-cheap and the tilt up walls are as bare as the concrete floors. The industrial strength structure provides protection from the elements and that’s about it. BedRoomSets-R-Us. E-Z Financing. Lots of inventory. The pieces looked pleasant enough. There was a dark wood grain. Plenty of drawers. A matching armoire. A couple of nightstands and a headboard. A mirror on the dresser.
We took a set home that day.
But truth be told, the wood grain was a high tech printed veneer - a facsimile of the real thing. The sides and tabletops and frame were flaky particleboard. Particleboard was some inventor’s way to recycle discarded sawdust. Add a little glue, throw it into a mold and presto - boards and siding. Then lay down a plastic veneer of look-a-like wood grain and what d’ya have? A bedroom set. An affordable bedroom set.
Then I also remember the day, years later, when we dropped it off at the thrift store. By this time, there were worn corners and cracks and stains and dents in the soft wood. The drawer sliders would catch and hang, and hinges were loose. We wondered where it might go to serve another family… and wondered how much longer it would hold together. Or maybe just become firewood.
Then this week, I inspected the handiwork of Ben the craftsman. What a contrast to that first bedroom set of ours.
It is his first effort. Hand crafted. The finest solid hardwood. A tall chest of drawers. It’s destined to be an heirloom.
He started with fine cherry wood, clear and straight. The base is beveled. Every drawer solid cherry – the facing, the sides, the bottom. A router smoothed out the edges, and cut tasteful decorative grooves in just the right places.
He made butterfly tongue and groove edges for a perfect fit at each corner. It’s solid and straight and the grain rich and deep. It must weigh in at a couple hundred pounds.
Ben is our son-in-law. And every time think about that chest of drawers, and consider the loving care and craftsmanship, and contemplate the home he and Kristyn are creating (some call it “nesting”) together, I realize how very much that young man loves our daughter.
* * * * *
Deborah is forty-seven. Married to Lorn.
Their only son is a baritone soloist… and already something of a sensation. To their surprise and amazement, he is winning high praise for his performances on stage.
Until this year, Deb only knew a few things about her own past. Her origins.
She had loving, adoptive parents. As an infant, just a few weeks old, she was told that she had been left on a church doorstep in New York City in a basket and blanket with a note (“I am so terribly sorry. But I can not take care of this baby. Please find her a home.”). An agency of the church arranged for her adoption with a fine family. In the process, a birth certificate surfaced. The document contained the name of an unknown mother, a birth date, and an unspecified father. In 1954 hospitals still had a space on the form do indicate “nationality” – two spaces, actually - which specified the ancestry of father and mother. “English” and “Polish” the certificate read. The mother’s name, “Lorraine Mae Drerrarodorch” haunted Deb for most of her forty-seven years.
She wondered – do I have brothers and sisters? Who is my father? Why did my birth mother give me away? Do I have grandparents? Are they still alive?
Just this last year, Deb listened to a co-worker, Barbara, tell about her exploits as an amateur genealogist. She builds family trees. The computerized tools and access to monstrous Internet databases at her disposal enable her to assemble family histories and uncover fascinating backgrounds and networks of interconnectedness. “It’s almost an obsession,” she confessed one day over a Styrofoam coffee cup.
And that’s when Deb shared her story. Barbara jumped all over it.
She placed a steaming cup of coffee on the desk, positioned herself at the keyboard and monitor and got to work.
The name “Drerrarodorch” made this one easy. She found a match in upstate New York. It was a Maiden Name for Linda Farrington in Pottersville, New York who is married for the third time, and prior to her current marriage re-employed her maiden name for several years in the interim. As far as Barbara could see, there were no other Derrarodorches anywhere else in the US of A.
“Good thing your name wasn’t Peterson or Smith,” Barbara told Deb. “We’d never find ‘em.”
So one Saturday morning when the boss was nowhere to be found and the two were working overtime, Barbara pointed to the phone, and with the telephone number of Linda (Drerrarodorch) Farrington on a slip of scratch paper, she asked, “You wanna call her?”
“Yes…” Deb’s face was flushed, and tense, and the picture of indecision and high anxiety. “But I can’t. You do it.”
“No problem,” said Barbara. And she removed the handset from the cradle and punched up the number on the telephone’s keypad.
A young woman answered. “Hello?”
“Hello, my name is Barbara. I’m looking for Linda Farrington. Is she at home?”
“No, I’m sorry, she’s not here. May I ask what it’s regarding?”
“Certainly.” And Barbara told the young lady what little she new about Deborah and Lorraine Mae Drerrarodorch.
“Wow.” The girl in New York sounded skeptical, but interested. Then she admitted, “I don’t know you… but I must say, this is very interesting.”
“Would you like to say hello to Deborah?” Barbara asked.
“Sure.”
Deb reached for the phone. On the other end was a young woman she never met, but Deb had this funny feeling that she was about to speak to her niece. This was Linda Farrington’s daughter on the other end of the line. Deb knew; it was more than just another over-time Saturday at the office. This was a rendezvous with destiny.
“Hello?” Deb’s voice was tentative.
“Hi.”
Barbara smiled and put her open palm into the air… Deb and Barb high fived.
And Deb could not stop smiling.
* * * * * * *
After three weeks of classes, Kevin’s college took a weeklong break. His campus is located in a small Swiss village along the Rhine River just north of Zurich. Büsingen. He and three of his pals decided to utilize their Eurail passes during this little interlude from the rigors of academia, swing down through Milan to Rome to pick up another student from their Stateside college (where they all attend when not “studying abroad”) – Sonya – and then head across to Bari, Italy, a seacoast village on the Mediterranean to catch an overnight ferry for Patrai, Greece.
There they would board yet another train and meet up with a young Professor (a “Yalie” – i.e. a doctoral candidate from Yale) and his wife for a five day tour of Athens, Olympia and Corinth.
In the old city, they climbed the hill and
walked through the ancient Parthenon
which dates back six centuries BC and the temple dedicated to Athena, the
goddess of wisdom and knowledge. The
great stones were hewn by artisans who shaped and erected mighty columns and
triangular façades forming those familiar classic clean roof-lines from
antiquity that Thomas Jefferson loved – and imported to Montecello and then
Washington DC.
Arriving just at the beginning of Lent, weekend Carnivali celebrations brought out all the bright culture and dancing music and costuming of ancient Greece. Kevin and his traveling companions entered in, and marveled at a world so far from home –so alive and rich. From the Aeropagus, where the Apostle Paul preached from a rock to the Athenians from the heights and a wide view of the city and the waterfront, they wondered out loud what it must have been like to hear the booming voice of the converted Rabbi attempting to convince these “Gentiles” to believe the Gospel.
They wondered about the technology required to move the rocks. And the gods who inspired such ambitious, backbreaking work. And the artists carving their impressions in stone – images still vibrant, three thousand years later.
They wandered across the land bridge to Corinth and listened to the strains of Carnivali music in the streets, and over to Delphi and then Olympia – home of the first Olympic Games. They pondered – why was he Alexander the GREAT? And why did the Delphinians believe that their city was the very center of the world – home of Apollos? And what about the military exploits of Sparta? And the philosophers of Athens? And Zeus? Plato and Socrates?
And in the distance, the mountain peaks were snow capped as they have been for thousands of winters through time, and as they dined on authentic Greek fare, they agreed – “we’ve studied all this stuff since we were elementary school kids… and now, we are here.”
As if they hadn’t seen enough, back in Rome they wandered around St. Peter’s Basilica and checked out the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and imagined Michelangelo on the scaffold painting the Last Judgment nearly five hundred years ago and wondered about the meaning at the center where the hand of God reaches down from Heaven and touches the hand of a man.
And if you will indulge me for a moment… here’s a quote from Kevin’s e-mail…written from his dorm room in Büsingen back on his campus on the Rhine in Switzerland -
God has been so amazing... He provides, He cares, and He loves. I am so thankful for these opportunities He has given me and for the place He has put me in. Continue to pray for my guidance here... my deeper learning of Him and His plan for my life.
* * * * * * *
When Deb came home that Saturday afternoon, Lorn noticed right away. She was dazed. “You’re not going to believe this,” she told her husband.
She told him about the Internet connection and Barbara’s insistence on following the trail and locating a young woman in Upstate New York who “I do believe is my NIECE!”
“Easy now, easy Deb,” Lorn held her by the shoulders. “Take a deep breath. Go ahead, tell me the rest.”
From there, Deb arranged a conversation with Linda Farrington – one on one. And as they spoke, and shared bits of information, Deb’s hopes were confirmed.
At age forty-seven, Deborah found a fifty-two year old sister. The conversation went on for two hours. Coast to coast. New York to California. Lorn didn’t even bring up the cost.
Within weeks, Deb and Lorn made arrangements to fly from Southern California to Albany New York. Lorn arrived a few hours before Deb – he connected from a business trip in another city. All the way, Deb looked out the window from thirty five thousand feet and stared… wondering. What does she LOOK like? Will she ACCEPT me? Will she be my friend?
Linda remembered from her childhood that her mother Lorraine disappeared periodically. Once for nearly a year. She heard somewhere that her mother Lorraine delivered a baby in New York City during that year. But Lorraine, who died tragically in the mid-sixties, never spoke of the child.
As Deb deplaned, Lorn stood with Linda and her husband and her daughter at the gate in Albany. Deb’s heart raced. Lorn said later that Linda, who bears a striking resemblance to his wife, was just as anxious and apprehensive as Deb.
When their eyes met, two complete strangers, there was instantaneous recognition… squeals of delight and a warm embrace.
The two daughters of a long lost and confused woman just extended their families.
The two husbands shook hands warmly. “Are we supposed to hug, too?” Lorn asked Linda’s husband.
“Ah… why not?” he said.
Not many of the other passengers or onlookers or airport personnel understood the deep meaning of the teary group hug and the laughter at the terminal gate in Albany New York that day.
But now Deborah has a sister. And a new best friend.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning again. And you are a leader.
You’ve spent a good part of your life hunting treasure. It’s taken time, energy and money. And you’ve found some of that treasure. But the hunt goes on.
There are all kinds of treasures. More than the big contract. Or the elephant sized commission. Or the bonus. There are treasures that transcend the monetary kind.
Treasures like cherry wood dressers. And ancient ruins on a far-away hilltop. And a long gone sister who reappears and dispels the loneliness and emptiness with the power of a smile and a tear. She brings healing in her hug.
Ben isn’t just building a chest of drawers. He’s building a life. Kevin isn’t just sightseeing. He’s broadening his world, and gaining an understanding of his place in it. Deb isn’t just satisfying an idle curiosity. She’s filling up an aching void.
That particleboard bedroom set with the loose hinges and broken drawer slides? It’s a treasure, too. It witnessed the creation of three beautiful children, thank you.
Some are telling you that this quest you are on is a monumental waste of useful energy.
I’m here to tell you this: don’t turn back.
The treasure is real.
Seek, and you will find.
Knock, and the door will be opened.
Ask, and it shall be given.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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