On Boundaries

When the painters painted the walls of my daughter’s room, they made a choice to paint the part of the wall that intersects the ceiling and the wall at the end of a gable the same color as the ceiling. I found this odd, because in my mind, it seemed as if it ought to be a part of the wall instead.

That got me to thinking about the nature of boundaries. As humans much of what we do is mediated by the boundaries to which we subscribe or to the boundaries that are forced upon us by some external power. In fact, I challenge you to purposefully think about boundaries every morning and to not, by the end of the day experience, see, notice, or even be a part of one such instance by the end of the day.

Here are some that have been apparent to me in the last few weeks:

My wife works at a clinic that is on the rear boundary of a hospital campus. Recently, the whole hospital campus has become non-smoking and although patients and their families may be allowed some leeway, staff is strictly forbidden to smoke on the premises. There is a spot very near to the parking lot of my wife’s office where the public street joins the parking lot. It is not a pretty spot. It is not auspicious. There are no benches or even a good curb to sit on. It is simply the place where the road from the outside meets the hospital campus. I drive through this juncture of asphalt any time I come to see my wife, and without fail there is at least one person, if not two or three, standing just barely beyond the boundary, usually in hospital scrubs, smoking a cigarette.

Another example. In our small community there is a pretty distinctive social grouping phenomenon. There are those who are from “around here,” and there are those who have moved in. There are subcategories of each type, too. In the “from here” group there are, of course, those who, like my wife’s aunt, grew up here and have never moved anywhere else. There are folks like me who married into the community, or who moved here to be near to other kinfolk. There are folks like my wife who moved away for school and for part of her life but then came back. And there are those who moved away but who return occasionally. In the interloper category there are folks like me who have moved in but have some prior connection to the community. There are folks who have moved here for retirement and have settled. There are folks who aren’t from around here but who provide some needed service (doctors, lawyers, etc.) and are somewhat welcome. There are folks who have a second (or third, or fourth) house here who are seen as rich outsiders whose money is welcome but whose presence (and the resulting strain on the infrastructure) is not. In our county especially, there are also university folks who come and settle for a long time, who are active in the community, and who often try to fit in with and understand the local culture, but who will forever be seen as overpaid outsiders. The newest kind of outsider is the migrant worker and the other latino laborers who are often viewed with hostility but who provide services and who fill labor niches that would otherwise be left unfilled. The boundaries between these communities of identity are sometimes very evident and sometimes very nuanced. I’ve been particularly struck by the strangeness of my and my children’s situation here. In my case I am an outsider, but in almost every case I can say, “My wife went to school with you.” Or, “Are you kin to… fill in the family member? S/he is my wife’s first cousin/aunt/grandmother’s brother’s daughter’s step-son, etc.” I’ve been adopted into the history and, to a degree, accepted into the fold. My children will have an even more interesting challenge. They will be university brats with hyper-educated parents who push them to go to college and beyond, who attempt to help them have every opportunity to achieve and who have a standard of living that, while not extremely set apart from all local people, is still on the high end of local standards. But they are also children of this land. My daughter was born here. They attend the decorations for my wife’s family cemetery. They have ancestors here that go back to the revolutionary war. They have a sense of belonging that I didn’t really have as a nomadic child. Who knows what they will make of it?

I see great hope in the fact that my children seem to be taking to the land and the people in a way that transcends the boundaries. Anne Elizabeth has friends whose parents are university folks, transplanted Floridians, and locals. Nathan gets along with everyone but he told me today that some of his best friends at school are two Latino boys Jesus and Angel. Jesus doesn’t speak very much English, but he can say Nathan’s name, and, for Nathan, that is enough.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter where the wall ends and the ceiling begins. Perhaps the boundaries aren’t obstacles but simply multiple avenues to understanding the others. Perhaps, sometimes we paint within the lines, and sometimes we’re called to find the beauty in the freedom of stepping beyond the boundary and breathing in the fresh air of difference mixed with the slight tinge of another’s exhalation (smoky or not), and in that moment to delight in the wonder of being inside this delightful mess called life with all of these crazy wonderful others.