I Am a Part of All That I Have Met

It was in a high school typing class where I first experienced Tennyson’s wise words: “I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world.... “

As a 15-year old, with a stern typing teacher hovering over us, I pecked out the letters from the typing book, transfixed by their mysterious poetic meaning. Years later as a teacher, I met the words again in a literature book and realized that Tennyson had put them in the mouth of Ulysses, an old king returning home from years of adventure.

This Christmas season the words became reality to me at an unlikely time. I was taking a walk through our neighborhood, dodging patches of ice from our recent snow. Suddenly my foot slipped! I felt fearful and unsteady—I must not fall at this age! On the heels of that fearful thought, I felt an arm behind me and heard my big brother Malcolm’s voice, “I’ve got you…” His presence was so real that it somehow steadied me and I took the next step in confidence. It was a fleeting moment. Malcolm was “gone.” I found myself smiling and missing my brother terribly as I headed home. But my experience was profound. Malcolm’s love in my formative years is part of who I am.

Where had the memory come from? I knew at once! Many Christmas seasons, Malcolm and I would walk to the Belleville Square to do our Christmas shopping together. Usually he would be helping me to get a gift for a school friend or family member. And always his strong arm was behind me on the icy winter streets. We didn’t have much money to spend. But there was a deep companionship between us. I was cared for and loved. I had Christmas in my heart!

Other memories flooded into my heart. One Christmas in sixth grade when I wasn’t quite ready to let go of the game of Santa Claus, I was embarrassed to let the family know that I wanted to go to the school Santa party that night. It didn’t matter that Malcolm was a high schooler. He was the one who offered to walk me over to school to have Santa give me a bag of Christmas candy. When I was 12 years old and a kitty was the greatest desire of my heart, it was Malcolm who hunted around the community and found someone giving kitties away. It was also Malcolm who steadied me as we watched our dog who had been run over by a car suffer and die.

Summer days in Smithton playing around the Creek when I was in 5th grade, I would attempt things I never could on my own because Malcolm was there: walking across the creek on a broken fence swinging out over the water or holding tree toads and letting them go. The memories go back …back… to 2nd and 3rd grade when Malcolm would fly his kite high in the sky and then let me hold it so I could pretend that it was my accomplishment. Dark days in Arkansas when I was in 4th grade and had not made the adjustment well, I experienced a sadness I did not understand. It frightened me. I missed my Michigan trees and friends and life. I was lonely at school as I stood alone by a tree at recess, watching classmates laughing and playing together but not wanting to include me in their circle of fun. I was the “girl from the north.” Miserable, I longed for the relief of the bell that called us back to class. But Malcolm walked with me to and from school every day and played with me after school. He was always ready to step down to my world to meet me. It didn’t matter what we did—making mud cakes and drying them in the sun, walking through fields of weeds higher than our heads. I knew Malcolm was in my world and everything was all right.

It was during this flight of memory this Christmas season, that Tennyson’s words floated into my mind, “I am a part of all that I have met.” Finally I understood! My heart turned to thankfulness: for a loving caring brother with whom I could share my heart—sometimes with words; sometimes not. It didn’t matter. He understood and loved me unconditionally. I didn’t have to do anything to earn his love. It was simply always there. And then my thankfulness spread to all the good in my years. This good is a part of me. Somehow that good dwarfs the heartbreak and brokenness in my life.

So that is what Ulysses meant! That was Tennyson’s heart. After all, he experienced tragedy in his early life, faced squarely the problem of pain and grief, experienced years of doubt and even anger toward his God because of the untimely death of his friend. He came through this nightmare of doubt and fear to a firmer faith in God. It was three years before his death at the age of 83 that he could write “I hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crossed the bar.” He wrote about this poem that Christ had been “on board all the time, but he hadn’t realized it.”

What a mystery! That God has designed us thus. We are a part of all that we have met. And for me, there is overwhelming evidence of God’s care for me through others. . . even to allowing me at another Christmas season to become the wife of my forever sweetheart and being given three children to love and give back to God.