Have I mentioned how much I really enjoy Marilyn Elliott? In the eras of the Victorians and the Romantics, it was not unusual to find love letters between mutual friends, students and teachers, and those who simply had mentors they admired. It was a very letter writing society. This had nothing to do with a romantic love as the limited view of love letters today would have it, but were words of appreciation and admiration in a time that was not so fearful to share them. And so, while I don’t know that I would call this a love letter, today I have decided to dedicate this post to Marilyn, Asbury’s rock of a chaplain, and my fantastically whimsical friend.
If I were to write this in letter form, I might start like this:
Dear Marilyn,
You are fabulously wonderful, even if you do drive me crazy!
If I could put the essence of my relationship with Marilyn into one precise sentence, that’s the closest I could come. The things I dislike about Marilyn are the things I absolutely love. I love how spontaneous she can be, how she keeps me on my toes. And I hate that she won’t nail down times with me. I love her honesty, her lack of desire to say anything but the truth. And I hate when she says things to me I don’t want to hear. I love that Marilyn doesn’t censor herself around me, that she laughs with me, that she plays with me and teases me.
Marilyn is not like any other woman I’ve met. She is never bothered by my intensity and does not try to entertain me when she is not in the mood or does not have the time. She does not fake how she feels, and I have learned that I never have to worry about what she may be thinking about me, because she’ll simply say it. I love that she doesn’t put up walls with me, and I love that I don’t have to second guess Marilyn and that I have her word on that.
With a twenty-six year age gap, our relationship is, to say the least, a unique one. It is so interesting to me, that sometimes I wish I could frame it and put it on my shelf, because it would add an interesting element to my collection of pictures and trinkets. Marilyn is largely uninterested in the age gap, but being less than two months older than her youngest child, my relationship with her sometimes looks more like an awkward parent-child partnership than a friend to friend kinship or even a pastor-student bond. The weirdest part is that sometimes it looks like all three at once.
Marilyn is one of the very, very few who understand me not just as someone of a postmodern point of view, but as a Portlander who has been uprooted and transplanted into a place entirely foreign to her culture. As a Canadian, especially one with the same bent toward postmodernism that I have, she seems to understand this with an empathy others can’t grasp. I love that I can vent about my thoughts on Southern culture, the Church, and Asbury and have no worries that she’ll be offended or even bothered, and to know that, in fact, I just might have an empathetic ear.
My first experience with Marilyn was not a personal one. Due to a minor back injury from my nasty car accident that officially welcomed me to Kentucky, I was in and out of New Student Orientation, unable to cope with both the discomfort of sitting for too long and the discomfort of being in a sea of people I’ve never met. But I did happen to be in NSO when Marilyn spoke. I don’t really remember what it was she talked about, but she caught my attention when she quoted Brandi Carlile’s song “The Story.” It is a certain type of person that has an interest in Brandi Carlile and acquaintances back home are a number of those. Brandi Carlile is a Seattle-based musician who has a bigger following on the West Coast than over here, so to hear her mentioned piqued my interest, and I seemed to stow away in the back of my mind that whether or not Marilyn was a person I should get to know, she was at least worth noting as relevant. She made me curious, but it was many weeks before we would officially connect.
Since then, it’s been a crazy ride, one that has consisted of office visits, random chats, witty bantering, lots of cupcakes, banana bread, church visits (including Easter), grocery shopping, lunch out, her front porch, one retreat, tears, laying in the grass, a trip to the public library, the asking of me (or any other female near enough to hear the question) to be the contributing factor in the giving of grandchildren from her last born and, as she so articulately noted, the only one left with the biological capability to do so, and the exchanging of books and movies.
I have known Marilyn for less than a year, and it’s been a year to remember, though one I sometimes think I’d rather forget. I don’t know if I could have survived Asbury without Marilyn. Like a little beacon of sanity, Marilyn was always there to remind me that there was a world outside Asbury and that the world outside Asbury would not see me the same way the world inside Asbury does.
I love that Marilyn will not give undue sympathy, even if I do want it, and won’t bullshit around. I love that with no warning, she’ll come out and whisk me away from my grueling work to take a quick trip to Goodwill or go sit in the sun for a few minutes or lay in the grass. I love that Marilyn does not want to be a mother to me and that I don’t want her to treat me as if she’s my mother, but that at times we default to that anyway and in the end I just go with the flow of whatever she wants, because it has everything to do with spending time with her and nothing to do with how that’s done.
These days, Marilyn and I are designing a garden (hence the public library trip)—a prayer garden outside one of Asbury’s many chapels. If there’s a timeline for this, Marilyn has not notified me of it, and I don’t find this to be a surprise. Whether or not it even gets finished by the end of the summer is up for grabs, I’m sure. But the finishing end is not much of a factor for my choice to be involved. I’m simply entertained with the opportunity this will bring for more amusing stories and fantastic interactions, and the opportunities that have already arisen.
Marilyn does not fit the Asbury mold. She doesn’t even fit the opposite of the Asbury mold. She is simply her own entity, and this is one of the reasons I so enjoy her. I could write a lot more about her. I could tell amusing stories and relay comical conversations. For now, though, I will end by saying I love that Marilyn has redefined relationships for me that is very different from the dysfunctional and painful ones in my past. I love that Marilyn doesn’t think my intensity is any stranger than that of her children or even her own and that she may not even see me as particularly intense at all. Asbury has been one of the hardest experiences of my life. It is not an easy place to be in and burnout tends to happen quickly but inefficiently. Almost a year later, it feels less like home to me than when I first arrived. But when I look closer, I remember there are a couple of people who have made it all worthwhile. What I have learned from my relationship with Marilyn is something I will always cherish. No matter where I go and where I end up, I know I will always have Marilyn to chat with, cry to, and to share fabulous poems and endless bounds of wit and humor with. Thanks, Marilyn, for an amazing time and one crazy ride!
Oh, and did I mention I love that Canadian accent? Sure is something, eh?
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