Finding Toni

She didn't want to live up to her distinguished family, her father president of an African-American scholarship organization, other relatives doctors and lawyers, one cousin a concert pianist. She would lie on her bed in our dorm room listening to Johnny Mathis and telling me how much she missed her boyfriend Rem back in North Carolina. She had pictures of babies on her wall, and was a dreamy soft kind of girl.

I was not much of a companion. I was so terrified of failure that I was in the Conservatory practicing by 7:30 or 8:00 A.M., in class or studying and back at the Con until 10:00 almost every day. When she asked if I wanted to go to the Student Union, I couldn't upset my rigid schedule, and when I got back to the room she was often asleep.

I would have denied that I was in any way racially prejudiced. When the college asked if I would be comfortable with an African American roommate, I wrote back that of course I would. But I felt kind of proud of myself. My hometown was almost entirely white. It was 1965 in Michigan and segregation and racial violence was for the South and we deplored it. Still, the one black girl in our high school honors classes was mostly alone socially. When a college girl from our town married a black man, the comment was that it wasn't fair to the children. My rebellious middle sister befriended a biracial girl and a little friend told her "We can't associate with you any more."

My roommate covered for me that spring when I began sneaking out at night to see my boyfriend. I spun a romantic story of needing to help him in an emotional crisis, when actually I was losing my virginity. I don't know if she guessed the truth. She may have been too innocent.

After I ran off and married the boyfriend after freshman year, she and I corresponded sporadically. I was so caught up in actual emotional crises that I was very slow to reply to her letters. She dropped out of college for a year and discovered Black History, travelled to Hawaii and had another boyfriend for a while and then returned to school ready to enjoy the experience. My life was so complicated that we finally lost touch.

For a long time she was my touchstone for integration. I did nothing concrete in the turbulent years, never marched or protested, but at least I had had a black roommate for one year. The years went by and when I moved to New York in the 80's, I got an alumni directory and found Toni's name. She had married her "Rem", and he was a lawyer and they lived on Park Avenue. I began to fantasize about getting back in touch but felt embarrassed. I felt guilty about the whole relationship and worried that she would remember me unhappily. Also, she probably was now in a much higher social circle than mine. Finally, in the 90's I saw her father's obituary in the NY Times. It mentioned her, now living in Stamford, Connecticut. I tracked down the address and wrote her a letter of condolence, then continued to say that, now that my daughters were in college, I had been thinking about her and our time together. I suggested that if she wanted to get back in touch, here was my information. I never heard from her.

A few years later I found some of her letters to me. They were full of news and chastising me for not writing back. One hinted at an incident that I can barely remember, but filled me with shame as some of the details came back. She had been taking a course in D.C. and apparently made a plan to come over and visit me at my husband's parents' house. Meanwhile, he and I had gone off to a music festival and I had forgotten she might come. I think she showed up at the door and my father-in-law was mystified and maybe not very welcoming. I cringed reading her saying,"Why do you always leave D.C. when I come down?!" I wished deeply that I could apologize and that I had done so in my condolence letter.

Now she was a symbol to me of my own uneasy race relations, the bump of difficulty still to be overcome in my generation. My daughters are, I think. really color blind, but we older ones are still haunted . When Obama was nominated I could feel a shift in the communal guilt and defensiveness, but the damage goes deep. Once in a while at an opera performance I would see a handsome cafe-au-lait woman who could be Toni, and I imagined her at the pit rail saying, "Mahtha, is that you?" in her soft Carolina accent.

Recently I was temporarily able to navigate Facebook and I happened upon an alumni list for our college. I typed in a search for Toni and three entries came up: first as a writer of children's books on African American themes, next as having headed an organization to promote literature for African American children. Then was her obituary. She had died at 58 of a brain tumor, survived by her husband, who was an appellate court judge, her three daughters and her mother. Sometimes a door closes.

Followup on Jack and Helen

I called Mother on October 26th to chat, and later in the conversation I asked if she knew whether jack and Helen had been married yet. I wasn't sure she'd know but to my surprise she exclaimed, "Oh yes, it was Saturday night and it was a big event. The whole community was there, crowded into the dining room." She told me about the ceremony out in the Grand Court area, with an arch all decorated with flowers where they said their vows, lots of people, lots of food and cake and ice cream.

I was so glad to hear about it, and doubly glad to hear about it from her. Recent events have often eluded her memory. Sometimes with prompting it will come back that Nate and Kathy have taken her to dinner or Sarah paid a visit, but often it all disappears once the day is over. I've wondered sometimes if she is dealing with the losses of old age by living moment by moment and letting days fade into each other. She has said as much in reference to her hospitalizations and illnesses in recent years:" I think I just blank that memory out." In this same conversation I was asking her for more stories of her childhood and her siblings, as my Woodward cousins were curious about their father. "Since you are the last of your generation, " I explained. Not for the first time she asked if her sister Janet was gone, and I had to tell her again.

I know some of the memory problems are from ministroke activity and the like. But I suspect some things are too unhappy to keep thinking about. Mother has always been very good at enjoying her life, finding something to be happy about. She couldn't understand Dad's worrying- she said if something bad was going to happen, why ruin the present as well by anticipating trouble. When I was a turbulent adolescent I thought that meant she lacked intellectual depth. Now I appreciate the deep wisdom of that attitude.

So she remembered Jack and Helen's happy night. Perhaps the newlyweds have brought some excitement to the dinner table, infected those around them with their hope and their faith.

October Musing

Why do I love autumn most of all the seasons? When days come that are cooler, when the light is more golden and the evenings shorter, when the fields smell spicy with ripe grasses and dried leaves, I feel a return to my truest self. I seek solitude then, I revel in it, striding out across some open place, wind blowing around me like freedom. My soul is more naked, my body strengthening to meet winter, the air clean and energizing.

Some people dread fall as the precurser of winter. Instead, I experience a coming together, a going back to the shelter of home, warmth inside contrasting with cold and dark outside, the light in the window pulling me in from the elements to have soup and cornbread and talk around the table.

I love all the seasons. I do love the lazy warmth of deep summer, the erotic perfume of a warm night when all the smells of leaf and flower are released. But it has always seemed that real life begins again in September. I remember my first romantic breakup in high school, when my boyfriend of a year and a half or so wrote me the final letter. It was fall and I felt strangely liberated. If he had jilted me in spring, I might have been bereft, but in autumn it suited my mood of delicious melancholy.

In autumn everything is distilled. The fruits are ripe to perfect sweetness, grains and herbs dry to essence. Each year we can see the cycle of our lives and come to accept the rhythm. There is a last burst of color and the leaves blow away.

Taking a Chance on Love

Each time I go to Michigan to visit Mother at Grand Court,I find myself thinking about mortality,naturally enough. I become more aware of my own physical deterioration and reflect upon whether I've made much of my life so far. This time the weather was so perfect, the days so crisply beautiful that I had the strange thought: What if these are my last days, a gift from God before some unknown end? As I took walks around my brother's well groomed small town neighborhood, the sense was intensified by the unnatural perfection of the lawns and gardens. Of course, it is a truism that I am in my last days, however many they may be.

When I arrived at Grand Court on a Friday night, I was told to sit anywhere at Mother's accustomed table because "Jack is away visiting his son." At this table are usually Mary Belle, my mother's old concert companion in previous years, Norma, a spicy 94 year old, who said of my brother, "If I was younger.....!", Helen, a small bright woman with a curly gray wig and a turned up nose, and Jack, a widower who had moved in this May. I remembered meeting him in June, hearing his stories of WWII days in China as a cryptographer. Any single man gets plenty of attention among all the widows, and Jack is an outgoing person, commanding attention because his deafness discourages two way conversation and because he's a big guy with a dimply smile. As he said at one point, "I always keep the ladies in stitches."

At Saturday's noon meal he wasn't expected until late afternoon, but he appeared and Helen was like a young girl in her delight.

"Why look who's here!" she cried out, laughing and making room for him. She fussed over him, saying,"I'm so glad to see you! I'm so glad you're back."

I wasn't sure at first that they were actually a couple, but it became clear as she touched his arm and helped him with his portable oxygen and leaned in to tell him what someone had said. At supper his son came with some meds he had left behind and Helen went out after dinner to visit with him while Jack finished eating.

Only Mother and I remained at the table and Jack explained that Helen was a special lady to him.
"She's my love life," he boomed. "No sex or nothin'! Just doing things together."

By Monday, Helen wrote me a note on a scrap of placemat:"I have a secret. Jack and I are to be wed in October." When I exclaimed, she told me it was still a secret. Most of the people around the table are so deaf that a secret can be told with no one else any wiser. Also, as short term memory fades and thought processes slow down, not everyone is paying attention to conversation not directed at themselves.

After that, I became a confidant, as Helen was seated to my right. She told me that her nephew in the Army in the Middle East could not get leave to come home for the wedding. I was startled to find that she was planning such a big event. They had each been married for a considerable time, Jack for fifty six years, having lost his wife only a couple of years before. They are at least in their mid eightys if not older, with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Their secret wasn't very secret . They behaved like any new loves. Jack liked to tease her, pretending to drop things into her soup or coffee. She'd giggle like a schoolgirl. After meals, they'd sit on a couch together or go to each other's apartments and do a crossword or watch a golf game.

Feelings seem to be more immediate and inhibitions drop as people age. Telling me about the music he loves, the old standards of jazz and swing, Jack said, "Some of those chords, they just get me here," pounding at his chest and tearing up. I wonder if, like Dad, his emotions were always right below the surface or if after all the years of "being a man" he has just let go.

All of them are in a life boat together. Maybe even it's a kind of end of life vacation cruise. This couple is daring to have a romance, but, even more, to promise to take care of each other when things get bad. And they will be difficult; Jack has obsructive pulmonary disease from years of smoking, Helen has diabetes, both have some memory troubles. But they are grabbing a chance to feel excited and happy for as long as they can.

Back in her room, Mother commented that some people just have to have a partner. She herself hasn't felt that way. She said she couldn't imagine caring for anyone but Dad. I believe her, the more I hear about how they felt up to the end of his life, how he kept marvelling at his luck finding someone so beautiful and so right for him, how, even in his worst days, they kissed. It is strange and ironic that I have lived through such a big revolution in attitudes toward marriage and find myself envying the certainty and passion of those virgins. I think too much choice may have left me needy and obsessed with the idea of a perfect relationship.

After the last meal of my visit, there were hugs all around, a big strong one from Jack. I wished Helen all the best, and prayed the best I knew how that they would get a good period of time to enjoy their happiness. I hope to see them when I come again.

Blakelock Moon

This is a poem I wrote at Camp one night when I went down to the Pavalon alone to see the moon. During the week we wrote haikus in a class and I extrapolated some of the material.


Blakelock Moon

Blakelock moon
peers through black
cut paper leaves on flat trees,
crazed like a canvas.

The moon's strong gaze
in the soft bowled sky
spreads white light
where I walk
pulled upward,
unable to look away.

Haikus

The moon behind leaves
Flat trees like cut black paper
I am pulled upward.

White hole in dark sky,
Strong white eye in my window,
Moon pulls me upward.


Sun stripes down through trees.
The knowledge of perfection
Carries with it loss.

Monica and Mandy

When I wrote about the grandchildren at the reunion, I didn't mention Monica and Mandy by name, and I think I put them in a little different category- the ones who have had children. While we played around at the lake house, they chased their little children, kept them entertained and fed and changed and prevented them from drowning and plunging down the steps of the deck. Their Grandma Laura also took heavy responsibility for this as well. I felt guilty about not doing more, I enjoyed seeing the little ones, as we all did, but in the end, we light heartedly did as we pleased while the young mothers could only have stolen moments of freedom.
I remember it well, that constant presence of responsibility. Our children are a welcome gift: I used to go in their room and look at them as if it was Christmas morning. Their existence completes me in a soul deep and physical way even now, but we also never quite stop worrying. Our life is bumped up into a different level, and there is no looking back.
As to how they reflect our Dad: nothing was more dear to Dad's heart than children. Monica was the first and he had the joy of her first year of life. That picture of her standing with him with the lunch box down by the road is stamped on our minds. She always had a special relationship with her Boppy. When Mandy came along, there were my girls and then Brian, her special pal. We all loved watching Mandy and Brian at the farm, walking hand and hand , carrying Cabbage Patch kids, if I remember correctly.
The times when these poised and smart young women could join their cousins in the fun were especially precious: the hilarious telephone pictionary game, the night of crazy dancing, the photo album fest, and the late night talks.I think these relationships will last a lifetime, in spite of the geographic distance, as we all build memories together.

Reunion

Written in my journal June 21st

It is Father's day today, always near my birthday. We had our gathering at the lake house in Michigan without Dad, but he was there in so many traits in the grandchildren. I know we sibs also have them , of course: I'm supposed to be like him in appearance and in the urge to write and to hike, the stomach aches and the tendency to worry. We all have the love of nature-have to get outside. Lissa is the teacher and nutrition expert, Laura has Dad's honesty and bucking of authority, Nate the energy and love of home and sense of family responsibility, Sarah the deep understanding of the farm and the garden and shares his reserved temperament.

But the fun for us is seeing Dad in the next generation. When we had dance night in the living room, Brian's fancy footwork, a kind of Irish/ jazz shuffle original was eerily like Dad's honky-tonk and boogie-woogie dancing. Brian's cartooning is like Dad's doodles in the margins of books. With Jason's funny faces and goofy improvs, we looked at each other and said, "Dad." His lean athleticism is also like Dad's as a young man, vaulting over the fence to fetch a stray ball. Killian has the reserve and active mind and the urge to explore the wilderness, taking off in a kayak looking like a Thoreau. Kieran has the taut muscled body of the sprinter Dad was, as a wrestler and soccer player. Megan, too, has the sprinter's body. My own daughters have the restless creative spirit and physicality. All are smart and strong minded. The tiny people, the great grandkids, are only beginning to show their heritage, but Jack and Grace danced hard with everyone and are full of energy and invention and personality. Little Charlie watched it all with benevolence, waiting to join the circus next time.

Dad would have been fierce in the volleyball game. gone boating all over the lake, explored the marshes and found good places to walk,played joyfully with the babies, had a good read in the lounge chairs, a good beer with supper, and looked out over all of us with pride and satisfaction, as I somehow hope he was able to do .

War Wounds

When I was ten, my friend and I pricked our fingers and became "blood sisters." The paths in the park were " Indian trails", the scrapes and cuts from tree climbing and falling from bikes were "war wounds." We had learned that Indian braves were proud of the scars of battle.

Maybe I can feel the same way about the lines in my face, the pains in my neck where I hold the violin, the sagging place where my womb used to be.

I went to Riverside Church on Easter and the minister gave a sermon about scars, about Jesus wanting the disciples to see the wounds from the nails in His hands, the great cut in His side. The preacher said that when he visits patients post surgery, they always want to show him the scar of their incision. He said that he realized that this was not morbid but their way of saying, "Look what I've been through and survived. Look how I am alive." That is a message of the Resurrection, he said, that we can have new life when we think we have nearly died, and our scars are there to remind us.

My body is a map of my struggles and excesses, my strengths and my weaknesses, where I have put my love and energy and what I have neglected because I thought I could go on forever by sheer will. In the great cathedral of Riverside Church I could feel the hopes of this vast congregation of black, white and Asian, prosperous and poor looking for new beginnings and healing of the dark regrets of winter.

Visiting Mother

It must take great strength to grow old. I'm not sure I'll have it. Certainly my generation will not face infirmity and death with the same stoicism and grace as my mother and her generation.

I've just spent the last week in Michigan with her, visiting the retirement home. It is at mealtimes that the community gathers and I can gradually get to know some people. This time one of the liveliest ladies was facing a move to Georgia to be with her daughter, and she and her friends were mourning. When you are 88 years old, you are saying goodbye forever when you move that far away. Several long time residents have made such moves this year, maybe because of increasing frailty, or maybe because money is running out and living with a son or daughter is the only option. One lady I've sat with over these three years was not there this time. She was always sharp, with a wry wit. When I dared to ask about her I found out she had a stroke, couldn't talk, and was down in the nursing wing. People get worse, people die. It could be a morbid place ( once in a while people do make remarks like, "If I'm still here"), but most live graciously (and maybe gratefully) day to day and enjoy small pleasures, and at least keep up a front of equanimity.

It's considered bad manners to discuss your ills too much at the table- also somewhat a point of pride not to admit your weaknesses, if possible. The worst disability actually is deafness, in my opinion. It cuts people off from each other and makes many conversations monologues and non-comprehending nods. When Mother couldn't get her hearing aid adjusted right she said, "I guess I'll just go and eat and not be sociable." Mother who used to love to talk and discuss all kinds of subjects is often silent in a group around the table.

Is she depressed and hiding it? Stoical or in a passive state because of her memory problems-just waiting to be told what's going on? I had an urge to say, "What are you really feeling? Is it awful to be alone so much, to have trouble walking because of arthritis, to be half deaf, to have untrustworthy bladder and bowels, to feel confused, to lose so many abilities, to lose your husband and so many friends? Don't you want to scream sometimes?"

But she is tranquil, watches the birds at the feeders and comments about them, plays her piano . When I took her on some outing, she kept asking where we were headed, but she keeps track of the routine back at her home. She did say one day, "Somehow I still don't feel as if I live here." It must seem unreal when you've run your own house for so long. Once she made the decision to move there, she accepted the situation- either gave up or entered a state of serenity, depending on your point of view. Certainly her deep religious faith has carried her through many difficulties. On the rare occasions when she has complained, she quickly tempers it with a statement of gratitude for not having to cook any more, for the kindnesses of the nurses and aides. She does not want to be trouble to anyone.

It may be a Midwestern thing or a generational thing, but I didn't really hear anyone complaining. In public, at least, emotions are on an even keel. Most of the people there look back on lives well lived. Many have lived in the area all their lives, except for overseas service in WW II, some on farms, some at the same job (Ford or GM) for years. They have children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, had stable marriages, are firm in their religious faith. The ones I know from my growing up years there, gave service to their communities and were models to me of what life should be. I have not followed that pattern, however, and many of my contemporaries have found that our world has changed.

When we are old will we "rage,rage"? Will we be able to retire at all or to afford an independent end of life? Will we have the spiritual strength to accept the losses and pain? We will probably be more open about our psychological states, maybe be less lonely as we talk to each other about what we are facing. But in the end it is our own journey and journey's end .