For auld lang syne, my jo

For auld lang syne

We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet

For days of auld lang syne

I’ve just spent the past hour trying to find the same kind of coffee cup my Papa used, which I have now learned is a 70s Corelle Old Town Blue pattern with a D handle. I found a set of two and sent a screenshot of them to my Mama before I bought them. I told her I was pretty sure they were the same but something seemed different. I wanted to make sure I was getting the right kind, because I am convinced my coffee will taste better in them. Every morning will taste like a Saturday at Granny and Papa’s house when I am ten years old. She said they were the same—the only difference was that the ones from Ebay didn’t have coffee stains. I’ll take care of that.

Coffee is a near religious experience for me. I guess it’s not much different than the Navajo and their peyote. It awakens me for prayer and meditation. And as soon as I get my Corelle cups, in a way, it will connect me with my ancestors. For auld lang syne—for the sake of old times.

I wonder what my grandchildren and old students will associate with me. Books maybe? Tap shoes? This reading lamp? A song I choreographed to or something I said? I have two of my Papa’s hats. He was a hat wearing gentleman. I loved that about him. Those hats were a part of his character. He had one that he would wear outside in the garden, that had a solar operated fan built into it. He looked ridiculous with that contraption on his head, but I don’t guess he cared.

Papa grew up poor as dirt, one of nine children who had to pick up and move every so often when the money ran out. He enlisted in the Army and ended up serving as a mess sergeant during World War II. When he came home on leave one time, he wanted to go see his Daddy, and he ended up leading the authorities straight to their moonshine operation. He was arrested along with his Daddy and brother and ended up having to go on another tour with the Army as a part of his agreement with the law.

But my Papa was a gentleman. He held down a steady job, retiring from the Thiele Kaolin company in Sandersville, Georgia. Good credit was important to him too:  “No one can take your good credit from you,” he used to say. Holding down a steady job and having good credit doesn’t make someone a gentleman, but I’m not sure how to explain it to you aside from this. It was in the way he treated people.

I hope I’ve taken on some of these better traits. I like to think I treat people with kindness no matter their station in life. But I am not my Papa inasmuch as I am not all anyone else. I share traits and appreciations with other kin, but I am not them. I am me. Still, they are a part of me, just as I will be a part of my descendants.

There is a song by Nichole Nordeman that is seldom played on the radio anymore called Legacy—”I want to leave a legacy/how will they remember me/did I choose to love?/did I point to You enough?” A few years later, Casting Crowns released a song called Only Jesus that throws shade on Nordeman’s song, claiming “I don’t want to leave a legacy/I don’t care if they remember me/Only Jesus”. I cringe when I hear the latter song on the radio. I think they’re being incredibly rude in their rebuttal, and when you compare lyrics, the message is actually very similar. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to leave a legacy of kindness, compassion, and pointing to Jesus. So there. Put it on the record.

Drink from a warm cup of kindness and then share it with the world. May we bestow such a legacy on this cold and bitter earth.