Hip, Hip Bourrage!

Not very often does one person earn an entire blog entry…but not everyone is like my friend Tracy. Today is Tracy’s birthday and it seemed fitting to muse about and celebrate this friend who has been a part of my world since I was but an 18 year old in Granville, Ohio!

Two years ago Tracy’s birthday fell during one of the celebrated Denison Singers’ reunions. At the stroke of midnight on September 19th we sang to her and at 11:59 at the end of the 19th of September, we sang to her one last time for that birthday. She thought it was her best birthday ever. The company was good!

Tracy was a senior when I was a freshman at Denison and ever since my induction in the Denison Singers I have loved knowing her. We enjoyed the legendary Europe trip that January singing in churches and cathedrals throughout Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland. It was an exhilarating year. Tracy teaches music to young children in an Ohio public school now, and while there was a stretch of maybe 12 years that we were out of touch, for the last decade her friendship and counsel have been among the loveliest I have known.

What is it about this friend? It is always an interesting challenge to decipher the magic of a relationship and point your finger at the source of the love and admiration. Other friends may have their own list of what they most treasure in Tracy, but for me, it is all about a French word, oooo lala—bourrage.

This summer I had a conversation with a friend of mine named Nancy who lives in New York. Nancy had just come back from one of the most unusual trips I have ever heard of—she and her 18 year old daughter went to the south of France to be part of a team to restore a medieval town wall. I had never heard of such a trip—such a quest, but as she explained the importance of the job of wall-building, the care and thoughtfulness in building a wall in the manner done a thousand years ago became fascinating to me. Nancy explained that it is not as simple as throwing big stones together in a big pile. Nancy, ever the interesting wordsmith, explained that the most care had to be done in the part of the wall called “bourrage” in French. The bourrage is the part of the wall that holds everything together, and if the wall does not have the proper or supportive bourrage, the wall collapses. The big, fancy rocks just don’t do the main job—it all depends on the bourrage.

So that idea of the bourrage is exactly what Tracy represents. She acts, nay, embodies, bourrage in every facet of her life. As I came to know her initially in the Denison Singers in the 1980s I quickly realized how important she was at being the bedrock of her senior class. I have long called her the “Earth Mother” of the Singers, the person who made my freshman class aware of the importance and seriousness of the Singers, but the word bourrage fits even more—the glue that cohered the group as I came to know this meaningful group.
As I have come to know Tracy as an adult, or a post-college adult, in the 21st century, I have come to see that she is the bourrage of her family, of her faculty—as far as I can tell, she embodies the significance and potential of what that term bourrage must do. Tracy holds people together, families together, groups together. She is not a showy “big rock”—that is not her style. But if anyone looks closely at a relationship, at a group, at an institution, she is the lynchpin, the cornerstone, the necessary bourrage that ensures that the structure exists neatly, formally, and with strength and dignity.

I would never have given a medieval wall much thought if Nancy had not exhorted to me how much she enjoyed her trip and her back-breaking work to recreate the work ethic and success of a medieval wall-maker. Nancy’s unusual trip inspired me to realize how much like the elegant, timeless, seemingly effortless medieval wall my friend Tracy is. People rely on her to define boundaries, set a tone, and symbolize strength like the medieval wall.

Many happy birthday greetings to Tracy, that beautiful bourrage!