Home to September

              It is September: real life returns after the suspended time of summer. Summer no longer means freedom to me--freedom from what, when I am no longer working? Summers are too hot, I can't enjoy being outside; by August there is a heaviness, an inertia in the air. The first cool days and nights are such a relief.
     
             Even when autumn meant school and all its pressures, I welcomed the clearness of the days and the undercurrent of melancholy. I have always been a minor mode kind of person, feeling the contrasts, the way a warm, lit house welcomes me when the weather is cold. Life is precious when you know it will end; not in a morbid way, not as a depressed person, but as the poets have always known. Perhaps because I have been fortunate in my life, I seek the balance of a streak of sadness, the knowledge that I am alone, and all this beauty is a temporary gift.

January Walk

                       Today was bare and grey and foggy. I wandered across the long hills of the former Curtis estate, now all old trees, trees that rared up out of the mist like druids. One tree was twisted as if yearning to pull itself out of the ground and drag away into the fog.

                     I walked in my own pocket of silence, alone except for one or two distant dog walkers. Then suddenly, a team of Amazonian girl runners crested a hill and tore past, sleek in elegant tights, their long, black ponytails flying behind them. They ran up the longest hill with perfect form and speed, moving sculptures. I was nearly invisible as they passed, young deer goddesses, allowing me to see them for a moment in their human guise.

                     I was bundled up against the chill, puffing as I squished back up the soggy slope. I admired, even yearned a little for that youthful energy. But my freedom is being my imperfect self, and a January day that is a fresh beginning. The year begins again, the trees are black shapes waiting for far-off spring, the day is grey and white, waiting for color. I have time. No one is looking at me, I have nowhere to go, I can do anything or nothing at all.

Summer's End

Journal Entry August 28, 2018

    Coming to the rag end of summer, a heat wave on the cusp of autumn, the serious time of year.  I have been in a mode of waiting to heal, to fix my body, one part at a time. At some point life has to go on.

    I went to the Art Museum today to escape the heat and find inspiration. Yes, art does transcend, yet I see a painting by Edwin Dickinson from 1938, a dark impressionistic landscape that the signage says reflects the unease as war approaches. The artist is more timeless than the journalist or the politician, for sure, but they do feel the currents around them,and they often prophesy.
   I am most drawn to the lonely landscapes: Homer's "Winter Shore"--rough, bleak, threatening, sliding on snowy rocks to the sea below; Hopper's picture of blowing trees beside an empty road, only the invisible observer present; a strangely claustrophobic Andrew Wyeth: a foreshortened hallway to a room at the end with a few tools in it, all browns and greys, geometric.

  On the way home I heard Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" symphony, with Lukas Foss on the piano, Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Music cannot stand back like a painting can. It is the soundtrack of our lives. This work is raw emotion, finally; seems intellectual at first, with its long variations, almost Hindemith-like in construction and spareness. Then he breaks out with a scream of anguish. But it isn't the end--off he goes into a dance down Broadway, a fin-de-siecle night on the town, and the next morning a wary acceptance, a weary acceptance.

   So what is it for me? Sometimes--often--I think that I don't have that many years left, and I should do something important to help this damaged world. What have I ever given, really?
   And yet, how would I use my particular talents? This human mess will go on with or without me, and isn't going to be changed by me. I am bound to be more frustrated and miserable the more I think about all the horrors. I can vote, I can give some money here or there. People who thrive on anger, or energetic young people, or the truly strong and noble can try to change things.
 
it is ungrateful to not love the day, the nature around me, the murmuration of leaves on the trees outside my window, the moonlit clouds, and the sun still greeting the morning. I can't spend my last years poisoned by a bunch of horrible old men.

         June 12, 2016--Journal Entry in the New House

             I love, almost more than anything, the wind in trees. This neighborhood has tall trees, oaks, maples, and in our yard there is a very tall locust, and so many other trees, that at this  time of year the back yard is all shady. I sat out there this late day on the light-dappled lawn under a tree with heart-shaped leaves (what is it?) and read.
            How often in Brooklyn I hungered, literally yearned in my mouth and throat and being, for the sound of wind in a tall tree, a pine maybe. I would escape to a park or all the way to Bear Mountain, but I couldn't hear the sound from my home. I couldn't hear it from Fishtown, either.
           Now I am here in paradise, in Elkins Park. It has been a perfect early summer, not yet hot, plenty of rain for the lawns and gardens. Peaceful people walk their dogs as I stroll around in the cooling evening air. Children's laughter comes from back yards, a boy runs by in stocking feet, holding his sandals. A family holding ice cream cones from Sprinkles around the corner gets ready to load into their car.
           It's hard to believe there was a horrible massacre in Orlando today, one man mowing down scores of people. It's impossible to picture the madness and rage in the Middle East and Africa, and in the violent, poverty-stricken areas of Philadelphia only a few miles from here. How did we get so lucky, and why are so many others not lucky at all?
            I feel guilty, but I also don't know how to equalize it or if I can. I'm not made of heroic material. I will be open to some possibility, but I also want to fully appreciate this gift, this "reward" after my own struggles. The struggles were nothing, comparatively, but it is also ungrateful to do less than seize the joy of wind in the trees and a catbird singing and mewing in the dogwood tree.

           I'm so glad for Dad that he had the farm for so long--so glad for all of us. He worked and fought for teachers' rights, taught those recalcitrant kids for  little money, worried about whether he could support us all, and then he really did. What sweet triumph for him to look over his acres, the vegetable garden, the family gathered on the screened porch, the sunset between the barns.

You Would Never Know It

                 

                      I am a wild  thing.
You would never know it to look at me, the most invisible:
        a plump, graying white woman in frumpy clothes.

                       Oh, I don't care!

That is the freedom, as free as
       a nose-picking, butt-scratching, tree-climbing six-year-old.

I grew out of dirt, I rolled in dirt and leaves,
I straddled the tree branch, I was the tree.
I flew in the wind,
I screamed.

They tried to keep me down,
      but I was molten at the core,
      my eyes blazed out,
      my power built and built,
      and one day I blew
      and flamed hot lava all over the world.

I was the most dangerous creature on earth:
     a sexual woman,
     the maw of my power engulfed all men.
     I drew them into me
     and fed my energies,
     or flung them off like chaff in the wind.

I was the creator of symphonies, of great tragedies.
I was Sarah Bernhardt, who fainted when she was bored.
I could have been Cleopatra.
I chose to live a simpler life,
     but I smiled secretly.

I birthed twins, since one was not enough.
     I might have been pregnant for years, I was so fertile.
     I would have a child of every race,
     people the earth with my lovely, lively, mocha, almond,
     boundless offspring.
                  I am always the mother
                  among all the mothers.

Now I am the goddess of no face,
     the wind, the full moon.
     I slip among you,
     watching,
     pitying your ambition,
     the weight of your work, your struggle for recognition.
                I know everything and nothing.
I fly over it all,
    look down on anthills, the log rolled over,
    see the ocean still relentless,
    the jet stream,
    solar storms.

              I close my eyes.

Going Home Again

                 Going Home Again

             A curtain of snow suddenly blew across the road in front of me, as if separating me from what had gone before and what was ahead. I was disoriented, crossing no-man's land, blind.

             I travel alone on my twice-yearly trips from Philadelphia to southeastern Michigan, where I grew up. I have not lived there for nearly fifty years, but some root stretched very thin still pulls me back. I don't think I could live there, but I need to visit that part of me, the part that is from there.

              I need to drive, not fly, take two days to get there in my nowhere bubble. It takes that long to make the transition from an active in-my-life person to the receptive visitor, and from urban life to the small Midwestern town. I slide along through the mountains, stop for the night in an anywhere motel, begin to feel rootless and timeless, learn about many things on NPR or live in the world of an audiobook as I drive again.

               The land flattens, and in eastern Ohio the winter lake-effect snow can suddenly squall. This time I saw it ahead, the black sky and a look of fog over the wide fields. Then I was in it, with nothing to do but slow down and hope.

               I was not as frightened as I would have been had I not entered a kind of dream state. My cell phone rang; when I finally got safely to a rest area on the turnpike, I saw that it was my sister, Laura, who often has a sixth sense about travel dangers. When I told her about the snow, she said, "I was afraid of that!" and looked up the weather radar on her computer. She said I appeared to be out of the snow except for one little flare near Findlay. Sure enough, that was true, and soon I was at my brother's and beginning the rituals of re-acquaintance with my family and my home place.

                It has been ever-more important to do this since my mother's death two years ago. My parents were always the focus of our reunions: in summer, all five of us siblings with our children gathered at their house in the country. Even when they moved to town because of my father's Parkinson's disease, we made the effort to come from other parts of the country. Dad died, Mother aged, we kept coming, supporting her and each other through her decline.

                 Now we have to face the changes. Weddings have brought us together in Vermont and Texas, but that is not home. And, really, home is not home. The overlay of memory is more real than the physical places.

                 I am trying to find my way in a kind of suspended state of almost-retirement. My two youngest siblings, who live in Michigan, are still working. My middle sister. in Alabama, has four grandchildren and a job. My sister in Texas is happily retired with an also-retired husband, and they travel all over in their camper. I play violin jobs once in a while now, but my husband is still a very busy musician. I imagine that my family is wondering what has happened to the accomplished oldest sister they have admired, how she can be so aimless.

                  One day during this visit, my sister-in-law and I explored the Lenawee County Historical Museum. It is housed in the ornate Carnegie library where I spent so much of my childhood. While I chatted with one young volunteer about my memories of the place, an older man with thick glasses came in. I was talking about my fifth grade teacher, a grand-niece of a famous local woman abolitionist, when, to my surprise, the old man turned out to have been a classmate of mine.

                   He was a deeply informed docent and walked all around with us, explaining the artifacts of the industrial heyday of the county and  the history of its part in the Underground Railroad on the route to Canada. He also knew about our former classmates: his buddy who was a go-between for me in third 

grade when I wanted to know if Gary Krouse liked me, and the class clown who was now a bitter Vietnam War vet who had lost a leg. And he also remembered that I wrote "wonderful stories" that our fifth-grade teacher had me read to the whole class.

                      I have only kept in touch with one old friend from those days, my best friend from second grade on, Mary. She has been the constant, along with my family, through all the crises and joys of our lives. We have an innate compatibility that goes beyond mere history. Over a cozy lunch at her house, we picked up our friendship easily. She has embraced her retirement and has a network of volunteering and social activities. It may come more naturally to her than it has for me because she has lived in the same community for most of her life.

                       In spite of the welcoming from my family and my friend, and all the warm gatherings in sub-zero weather, I was ready to head back home, to my real life, whatever that is. The return trip had no drama; there were no storms. Only my mind is snow blind, caught at the border between two parts of my life.

Our Mother's Voice- a Eulogy

Our mother's voice was the descant of our days. She rocked us to "Baby's Boat's a Silver Moon" and the Prayer from "Hansel and Gretel". We heard her before we were born and all the time after. She sang in the car, in the yard hanging sheets, in the kitchen, embarrassed us singing in the grocery store, projected her voice far across the back yards to call us in for supper. Once in a while she even had time to sit down at the piano and practice a piece of music. We sang with her as babies, learned rounds, nursery rhymes, folk songs and hymns. As we brought our families back later, we sang together around the piano.

There was always music on the radio or on records. We heard her teaching her voice students. It was assumed we would all play an instrument and sing in the choir, Nate being the only one who dared to pursue singing seriously. I had the privilege of accompanying her on the piano by the time I was ten. I think my career of playing violin for opera and chamber music was molded by her training me in phrasing, allowing for breathing and listening. The violin was the closest sound to her silvery voice that I could find.

We learned to speak clearly, hearing her enunciation in that resonant voice. We also heard what she said, the moral center of her life: kindness to others, respect for each person and trying to understand them, when we disagreed or even disliked them. She listened to our questions and troubles and helped us find our purpose in life.

When she went through the mourning of giving up singing publicly because of an essential tremor condition, her students carried with them some of that voice and, especially, the confidence and understanding she had given them. She expressed herself at the piano she had bought with her teaching money. The piano went with her to Grand Court and to Tecumseh Place where she entertained the other residents. She never lost her musical touch, and as she aged, began to sing along again.

It is the soul voice that we will always hear. She knew us, knew our real selves as no one else will. Even at the last, she said what we needed to hear. I think we will be trying to live up to her faith in us for the rest of our days.