There are things in life too important for words and too fleeting for a pictures; they come and go, leaving us a little changed as they pass. It is for such things we have memories. They are like bright fragments of stained glass indexed by sight, smell, touch and - sometimes - an emotion. A memory may spring to life after years of quiet rest in some forgotten corner and pull a person into a spinning dance of happenings that are no longer a part of now after having been revived by the scent of lilac on the wind or the sound of rain tapping a lullaby on the roof.
I remembered something today from my sixteenth summer. That was a summer made of moments, and some of them remain very vivid. I think that summer, more than most others, changed my life by bending and stretching my perception to include things I had not yet had to think of.
Bert and his wife were an elderly couple that belonged to my family's small church and who were two very important menders, makers and benders of my growing years. Jane was born and raised in the South, as it once was, and truly made every decision based on an unwritten code of Southern nicety. She encouraged me to read poetry and to enjoy culture by bringing me books. I learned to sit with Jane by the hour and hear anecdotes about the folks who once sat around her daddy's well-appointed table chatting of this and that.
Bert was from the North, and a hardened Yankee if ever there was one. He was very tall and looked rather like a retired statesman with massive white eyebrows. Bert often brought my brothers and I old games and stories of ghost ships and mysteries at sea that were written in the day when politics were actually what one believed and a writer could say what he needed to say without fear of someone getting rankled and hauling him onto a nationally syndicated talk-show for a raking down. Bert could understand these writers, being absolutely free with his own opinions to anyone who stood still long enough to be victimized by them.
Bert had had a collapse the previous year that ended in a hospital with the diagnosis of a cancer too strong to struggle against. Bert was to be sent home on Hospice to die, and I, because I was almost family and free of any commitments, was to stay with them and see to things until the new arrangement became a little less strange.
I was to cook his meals the way he had eaten them for three-quarters of a century. I was to keep a log of his symptoms and deal with all of the eccentricities brought out by an aspect of his personality that would have been medicated, were he not already drugged. I was to change his outsized diapers when he had an accident caused by the progress of his cancer. I was to inform him when he pulled out needles and tubes for the fifth time in two days that I was running out nice places to put them, but that I had no objection to his being a stubborn mule if he had no objection to my getting creative with the needles. I was to take all sorts of guff from him when he got frustrated, and I was to put up with every prank he decided to pull. (With his experience that was one hell of a lot.) Here's a healthy "for instance:"
Bert, his wife and I went to the grocery store in that first week and took him in his wheel chair. I had no idea that this was such a hefty task for a green teenager and a sheltered old lady to cope with. Naturally, we didn’t, and he got away from us while we looked through coupons.
When I found him he had some poor, polyester-clad girl cornered in dairy goods, and, rolling his eyes, lolling his head, drooling and slurring loudly, was asking her in vaguely threatening tones if she was quite sure that the eggs were fresh. Having skipped a number of classes in school, the girl didn't have the vocabulary to deal with this kind of situation, so she stood there, back to the corner, eyes wide, shaking and producing small noises that only cats and dogs could hear.
As soon as Bert turned to see who was coming toward them, the girl shied and bolted as fast as her cork platforms could take her. I would guess that she trotted straight out of the building and home to lock her door and cower in a dark corner until pigs flutter over a peaceful Middle Eastern countryside. Bert wiped his chin, tucked his shirt in, and gleefully exclaimed, “Pretty good, huh?!” I wanted to haul off and smack the chump. Would have, too, if I hadn't been so totally disturbed.
This man had every reason to be cold, bitter and belligerent, but he wasn't. He must have been in a great deal of pain most of the time, but we rarely heard about it, somehow. He had a zest for life and a sense of humor that could turn any event into a stage for some raffish prank, and I was to realize he seldom missed an opportunity.
I was also to learn that summer that the effect of so many of life's circumstances depended upon the window a person happened to be peering through at a given moment. I realized my window was dull and very tiny, and that there was an enormous world full of fascinating details that I would never see if I was not willing to step outside and let them surround me. Living with that strange man who was so wonderfully alive and dying of cancer at the same time made me wonder if, after all, it wasn't that one person had a hard life and the next did not, but, perhaps, that the same life affected individuals differently because of what they brought to it. So I stood in the grocery store and laughed with that old man until tears came and everyone who passed put us down as a little less than sane.
That same night, after Jane had gone to bed, and as Bert and I were settling into the long wait for morning, he began to feel uncomfortable and decided he wanted to get up. Bert could not sit up in the hospital bed without a good bit of assistance, so I passed one arm behind his back and reached over to take his left hand in my right.
Looking down at that withered, age-spotted hand made me see, suddenly, and very clearly, that one day it might be I sitting in his place. I looked at his face, at the expression in his eyes, and for the first time I could easily see him as the boy who blew raspberries at black-and-white movies stars, the young officer his wife had been so taken with, and the quirky father his children remembered so fondly. I was surprised by his humanity. For the first time I looked at Bert and saw - not an old man - but a person, and that person amazed me.
(Originally published in the Bay City Times, 2005, SPM)
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Things Passing, Buffalo, SD: Column for the Bay City Times
Uncle Sike and Aunt Lil had lived in Buffalo, South Dakota since the Great Depression, and have been, from my very first encounter with them, two of the most remarkably wonderful people I will ever know. They could talk for hours, tell the absolute truth and still never say a malicious word.
Going to Buffalo was rather magical as a kid. The trip took just short of forever, and there was nothing to be seen between the Black Hills and there except peacfully ripp'ling prairie. Suddenly over the top of the last hill, you saw a small patch-work of trees, (the only ones for miles), and knew you were there.
Thier house was something between a time-machine and a magic treasure chest: There were odd weapons and bits of tramp-art all over the walls and in odd nooks, strange pieces of old oak furniture from the early 1900's, fountain pens, and a juke box in the corner of the living room that lit up with bubbles running through its front.
The kitchen walls above the counters were covered with old cooking utensils that went out of vogue long ago, and the seat next to the counter was a stool made from the seat of Aunt Lil's daddy's tractor. Nothing in the house really matched, but there was a zany sort of unity in the sheer uniqueness of each item. And then there were the rocks.
The back yard had neat rows of wooden barrels and old zinc sinks full of rose quartz, Apache tears (obsidian), clear, sharp quartz crystals, agates, fossils, petrified tree stumps. In the basement there were rows of glass cases filled small, museum-quality specimens. Underneath were tidy little piles of fossilized dinosaur bones, agatized wood, and tins of delicate, pearly fossils and psudomorphs of corals and ferns. It was like a museum rummage-room. And we were alowed to rummage and take what we liked.
The very first time I was in that house was for a family. My mother and I were still very new to the family, then, and Uncle Sike and Aunt Lil knew it. They knew it, and somehow made me feel that I belonged as much as they did. (I later learned that they didn't belong that well themselves, and that they never really seemed to mind.) Uncle Sike gave me my first rock.
Sounds wierd outside of a tribal setting, but it meant a great deal to me and launched me upon one of my few childhood hobbies. That first rock was a slice of agate he had polished and cut himself. It was a thin slice of translucent, milky-hearted, amber-edged Montana agate with tree-like inclusions. To me, it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.
In later visits, I was to hear wonderful stories about the humdrum-to-them time gone by. I remember the first time I tasted Aunt Lil's home-made doughnuts; they were heavy, rich and warm. I tried making them myself from her mama's recipe, but, not having had her mama's teaching, they never turned out. Closest I ever came was to get the smell right.
We still went to visit after Uncle Sike passed on, and I remember sitting in the living room once after supper and Aunt Lil's getting up, crossing to the juke box , and making it play for the first time in one of our visits. She wanted me to dance with her, just once, and I felt too shy. She never did push it, and she never poked fun about it.
I've had cause to remember a lot about them, lately. He's gone, now, and she's missed him so much. They never had children - just each other and occasional visits from the outside - but they'd been enough, so long as they were together.
Aunt Lil is in a nursing home, now, and I heard that the house was emptied out and sold to strangers. I still have that first slice of agate that Uncle Sike gave me. I still make biscuits using Aunt Lils' mama's recipe ("cut 'em out with a greased bean can - nothin' else will do").
I never have gotten over regretting that one dance missed with Aunt Lil; it's not the sort of moment one can expect twice. I think that dance I missed is the reason I dance now, and I know Aunt Lil is proud of me for it as if I had been her own child. It is so easy to love someone like that, and so hard to let go when it is time.
(Originally published in the Bay City Times in 2005, SPM)
Going to Buffalo was rather magical as a kid. The trip took just short of forever, and there was nothing to be seen between the Black Hills and there except peacfully ripp'ling prairie. Suddenly over the top of the last hill, you saw a small patch-work of trees, (the only ones for miles), and knew you were there.
Thier house was something between a time-machine and a magic treasure chest: There were odd weapons and bits of tramp-art all over the walls and in odd nooks, strange pieces of old oak furniture from the early 1900's, fountain pens, and a juke box in the corner of the living room that lit up with bubbles running through its front.
The kitchen walls above the counters were covered with old cooking utensils that went out of vogue long ago, and the seat next to the counter was a stool made from the seat of Aunt Lil's daddy's tractor. Nothing in the house really matched, but there was a zany sort of unity in the sheer uniqueness of each item. And then there were the rocks.
The back yard had neat rows of wooden barrels and old zinc sinks full of rose quartz, Apache tears (obsidian), clear, sharp quartz crystals, agates, fossils, petrified tree stumps. In the basement there were rows of glass cases filled small, museum-quality specimens. Underneath were tidy little piles of fossilized dinosaur bones, agatized wood, and tins of delicate, pearly fossils and psudomorphs of corals and ferns. It was like a museum rummage-room. And we were alowed to rummage and take what we liked.
The very first time I was in that house was for a family. My mother and I were still very new to the family, then, and Uncle Sike and Aunt Lil knew it. They knew it, and somehow made me feel that I belonged as much as they did. (I later learned that they didn't belong that well themselves, and that they never really seemed to mind.) Uncle Sike gave me my first rock.
Sounds wierd outside of a tribal setting, but it meant a great deal to me and launched me upon one of my few childhood hobbies. That first rock was a slice of agate he had polished and cut himself. It was a thin slice of translucent, milky-hearted, amber-edged Montana agate with tree-like inclusions. To me, it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.
In later visits, I was to hear wonderful stories about the humdrum-to-them time gone by. I remember the first time I tasted Aunt Lil's home-made doughnuts; they were heavy, rich and warm. I tried making them myself from her mama's recipe, but, not having had her mama's teaching, they never turned out. Closest I ever came was to get the smell right.
We still went to visit after Uncle Sike passed on, and I remember sitting in the living room once after supper and Aunt Lil's getting up, crossing to the juke box , and making it play for the first time in one of our visits. She wanted me to dance with her, just once, and I felt too shy. She never did push it, and she never poked fun about it.
I've had cause to remember a lot about them, lately. He's gone, now, and she's missed him so much. They never had children - just each other and occasional visits from the outside - but they'd been enough, so long as they were together.
Aunt Lil is in a nursing home, now, and I heard that the house was emptied out and sold to strangers. I still have that first slice of agate that Uncle Sike gave me. I still make biscuits using Aunt Lils' mama's recipe ("cut 'em out with a greased bean can - nothin' else will do").
I never have gotten over regretting that one dance missed with Aunt Lil; it's not the sort of moment one can expect twice. I think that dance I missed is the reason I dance now, and I know Aunt Lil is proud of me for it as if I had been her own child. It is so easy to love someone like that, and so hard to let go when it is time.
(Originally published in the Bay City Times in 2005, SPM)
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Mill and Brewhouse, Almont, Michigan
In the village of Almont, Michigan is a building set back from the road inviting a visit. It was built in t 1843 as a mill of some sort and the building is not possessed of a single solitary straight edge or even surface so, of course, it is easy to fall in love with it even if it were standing empty. Which it is not. The Mill & Brewhouse is a study in reclamation:
One walks into a room with a gas fire before a pair of small, paisley-clad benches that face what at first looks like a store front with glass windows above wooden wainscoting on the right and left with two pair of massive doors mostly covered in flaking ivory and gold paint; between the pairs of doors are another pair of windows side by side. On closer inspection one notices the doors are not matched and what looked like store windows are actually curved window sashes rescued from some building that no longer exists and suspended from the ceiling of exposed lumber is a long axel strung with wheels of the remaining mill workings.
Walking through this front one is greeted by long tables keeping company with rows of mismatched chairs, chests of drawers and trunks and boxes and bits of linen, lamps pictures, the pipes of an organ that has tired of tootling, rusted pieces of metal that have aged beyond their intended uses and into the vague-but-kinder world of sculpture. Every surface is laid out in careful vignettes of objects that are related but not crowded; the space is rather more like the home of an eccentric great-aunt expecting a lot of company rather than a typical antique store.
Grab a sturdy, hot Americano and begin your ramble; this is a place worth visiting and keeping in mind as a place in which to hold your special events should you find yourself in this part of the world. Keep an eye on www.circa1843.com for updates on the transition from antique shop to coffee bar and event space.
SPM
One walks into a room with a gas fire before a pair of small, paisley-clad benches that face what at first looks like a store front with glass windows above wooden wainscoting on the right and left with two pair of massive doors mostly covered in flaking ivory and gold paint; between the pairs of doors are another pair of windows side by side. On closer inspection one notices the doors are not matched and what looked like store windows are actually curved window sashes rescued from some building that no longer exists and suspended from the ceiling of exposed lumber is a long axel strung with wheels of the remaining mill workings.
Walking through this front one is greeted by long tables keeping company with rows of mismatched chairs, chests of drawers and trunks and boxes and bits of linen, lamps pictures, the pipes of an organ that has tired of tootling, rusted pieces of metal that have aged beyond their intended uses and into the vague-but-kinder world of sculpture. Every surface is laid out in careful vignettes of objects that are related but not crowded; the space is rather more like the home of an eccentric great-aunt expecting a lot of company rather than a typical antique store.
Grab a sturdy, hot Americano and begin your ramble; this is a place worth visiting and keeping in mind as a place in which to hold your special events should you find yourself in this part of the world. Keep an eye on www.circa1843.com for updates on the transition from antique shop to coffee bar and event space.
SPM
Almont Mill and Brewhouse
In the village of Almont, Michigan is a building set back from the road inviting a visit. It was built in t 1843 as a mill of some sort and the building is not possessed of a single solitary straight edge or even surface so, of course, it is easy to fall in love with it even if it were standing empty. Which it is not. The Mill & Brewhouse is a study in reclamation:
One walks into a room with a gas fire before a pair of small, paisley-clad benches that face what at first looks like a store front with glass windows above wooden wainscoting on the right and left with two pair of massive doors mostly covered in flaking ivory and gold paint; between the pairs of doors are another pair of windows side by side. On closer inspection one notices the doors are not matched and what looked like store windows are actually curved window sashes rescued from some building that no longer exists and suspended from the ceiling of exposed lumber is a long axel strung with wheels of the remaining mill workings.
Walking through this front one is greeted by long tables keeping company with rows of mismatched chairs, chests of drawers and trunks and boxes and bits of linen, lamps pictures, the pipes of an organ that has tired of tootling, rusted pieces of metal that have aged beyond their intended uses and into the vague-but-kinder world of sculpture. Every surface is laid out in careful vignettes of objects that are related but not crowded; the space is rather more like the home of an eccentric great-aunt expecting a lot of company rather than a typical antique store.
Grab a sturdy, hot Americano and begin your ramble; this is a place worth visiting and keeping in mind as a place in which to hold your special events should you find yourself in this part of the world. Keep an eye on www.circa1843.com for updates on the transition from antique shop to coffee bar and event space.
One walks into a room with a gas fire before a pair of small, paisley-clad benches that face what at first looks like a store front with glass windows above wooden wainscoting on the right and left with two pair of massive doors mostly covered in flaking ivory and gold paint; between the pairs of doors are another pair of windows side by side. On closer inspection one notices the doors are not matched and what looked like store windows are actually curved window sashes rescued from some building that no longer exists and suspended from the ceiling of exposed lumber is a long axel strung with wheels of the remaining mill workings.
Walking through this front one is greeted by long tables keeping company with rows of mismatched chairs, chests of drawers and trunks and boxes and bits of linen, lamps pictures, the pipes of an organ that has tired of tootling, rusted pieces of metal that have aged beyond their intended uses and into the vague-but-kinder world of sculpture. Every surface is laid out in careful vignettes of objects that are related but not crowded; the space is rather more like the home of an eccentric great-aunt expecting a lot of company rather than a typical antique store.
Grab a sturdy, hot Americano and begin your ramble; this is a place worth visiting and keeping in mind as a place in which to hold your special events should you find yourself in this part of the world. Keep an eye on www.circa1843.com for updates on the transition from antique shop to coffee bar and event space.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
When Everything Was Neighborhood
Muriel is a customer of mine at the Magic Bean Café who was 2 ½ when the family moved to 711 Cherry Street from 5th street. Muriel’s parents (Clotilda and James A. Ellis) and two siblings, both older, shared the house on Cherry Street. (“Used to be 111 when we moved there. Then they changed it. I remember it so well. Back about 1928, somewhere in there.”) I am lucky enough to chat with Muriel almost every morning and one morning I asked a few questions (in parentheses below) which were rewarded with a glimpse into the past of the neighborhood in which she grew up and where I now live.
“My folks lived there until 1970, I’d say. Then moved out to Carrollton. Four bedrooms and when we first moved there it had that humongous furnace. Coal. There was a coal bin they shoveled into. And when we first moved there, there was a cistern and dad took it out. I remember it scared me because I was small.
Dad had it all painted and remodeled. It had French doors between the living room and the dining room. The chandelier in the dining room was just gorgeous; it looked a lot like the one at the Temple Theater – all prisms – and I hated cleaning it. The living room went clear across the front of the house. With a fireplace, and there were two chandeliers in the living room, two of them, smaller than the dining room. Behind the dining room was a little breakfast nook. There was an open stairway. Both the living room and the dining room had framed in panels of rough plaster and both rooms had purple velvet drapes. I hated those things – they were hard to clean.
My dad had all this decorating done, and then the Crash came, so there was no decorating done for years and years. They ran out of money, I guess.”
(Did you have your own room?)
“When I was young it was in the back, later in the front. We had boarders, two men, who stayed the front bedroom. We took boarders in the hard times. The boys (siblings) had the other back room and my folks had the middle bedroom.
(What was it like living in the neighborhood at that time?)
“It was gorgeous. It was a prosperous neighborhood. It wasn’t like Washington Street, or anything, with all those big houses, but it was a nice, nice neighborhood. It was close to three schools; I think that was why my dad chose it. And it was close to a restaurant he had.
My dad’s restaurant was called Jim’s Lunch. It was on the corner of Federal and Weadock Streets.”
(What do you remember about it?)
“Well. I hated it. I had to work in it. They closed it in 1943, the year I graduated. But it had good food. We always had food. Just ordinary home-made food: roast chicken, roast pork, meatloaf, those kinds of things. A whole plate full of food for twenty-five cents – no tax – I remember taking the cash. My father was Greek (my mother was not Greek), so he was with all the Greek restaurant owners, they were buddies. We had a lot of Greek restaurants. I think almost all the restaurants downtown were Greek somehow at that time.
I remember when they were working on that Post Office (remodeled and rededicated in 1937), and when they were taking up the trolley tracks out of Genesee Street. We had all those workers in for lunch.”
(What was Christmas like?)
“Oh, the stores were all beautifully decorated and once a week the stores all changed their window displays. Once a week – the stores closed at 5 or 6 o’clock – my mother and I would walk and window shop. Morley Brothers had the most beautiful window displays. Saturdays everyone would go downtown to do their shopping. The busses would be running. We had a thriving community, such a beautiful downtown.”
(When did you leave the neighborhood?)
“In the ‘50’s, probably, when I got my own place.”
(What do you miss about that kind of neighborhood?)
“I miss the type of neighbors you had back then. They were all nice people. Baums were on the one side of us, I guess he was a mayor years and years ago. Perry’s Grocery store was right next to Baums’. It was a convenient area to live in because it was close to everything there was. We had everything close by: schools, libraries, drugstores, busses. Everything was “neighborhood” at that time. Neighborhood stores, neighborhood everything.”
It is sad to think that so much that was wonderful has vanished through short-sighted efforts to curb what is called urban blight, but it is a delight to report to Muriel and others like her that a strong sense of community and neighborhood still survive and that we who live near St. Mary’s Cathedral hope to keep this kind of neighborhood alive in the structures and streets and people that remain of the place they once called home. It is still the most wonderful place in which to live. I hope it always will be.
SPM
“My folks lived there until 1970, I’d say. Then moved out to Carrollton. Four bedrooms and when we first moved there it had that humongous furnace. Coal. There was a coal bin they shoveled into. And when we first moved there, there was a cistern and dad took it out. I remember it scared me because I was small.
Dad had it all painted and remodeled. It had French doors between the living room and the dining room. The chandelier in the dining room was just gorgeous; it looked a lot like the one at the Temple Theater – all prisms – and I hated cleaning it. The living room went clear across the front of the house. With a fireplace, and there were two chandeliers in the living room, two of them, smaller than the dining room. Behind the dining room was a little breakfast nook. There was an open stairway. Both the living room and the dining room had framed in panels of rough plaster and both rooms had purple velvet drapes. I hated those things – they were hard to clean.
My dad had all this decorating done, and then the Crash came, so there was no decorating done for years and years. They ran out of money, I guess.”
(Did you have your own room?)
“When I was young it was in the back, later in the front. We had boarders, two men, who stayed the front bedroom. We took boarders in the hard times. The boys (siblings) had the other back room and my folks had the middle bedroom.
(What was it like living in the neighborhood at that time?)
“It was gorgeous. It was a prosperous neighborhood. It wasn’t like Washington Street, or anything, with all those big houses, but it was a nice, nice neighborhood. It was close to three schools; I think that was why my dad chose it. And it was close to a restaurant he had.
My dad’s restaurant was called Jim’s Lunch. It was on the corner of Federal and Weadock Streets.”
(What do you remember about it?)
“Well. I hated it. I had to work in it. They closed it in 1943, the year I graduated. But it had good food. We always had food. Just ordinary home-made food: roast chicken, roast pork, meatloaf, those kinds of things. A whole plate full of food for twenty-five cents – no tax – I remember taking the cash. My father was Greek (my mother was not Greek), so he was with all the Greek restaurant owners, they were buddies. We had a lot of Greek restaurants. I think almost all the restaurants downtown were Greek somehow at that time.
I remember when they were working on that Post Office (remodeled and rededicated in 1937), and when they were taking up the trolley tracks out of Genesee Street. We had all those workers in for lunch.”
(What was Christmas like?)
“Oh, the stores were all beautifully decorated and once a week the stores all changed their window displays. Once a week – the stores closed at 5 or 6 o’clock – my mother and I would walk and window shop. Morley Brothers had the most beautiful window displays. Saturdays everyone would go downtown to do their shopping. The busses would be running. We had a thriving community, such a beautiful downtown.”
(When did you leave the neighborhood?)
“In the ‘50’s, probably, when I got my own place.”
(What do you miss about that kind of neighborhood?)
“I miss the type of neighbors you had back then. They were all nice people. Baums were on the one side of us, I guess he was a mayor years and years ago. Perry’s Grocery store was right next to Baums’. It was a convenient area to live in because it was close to everything there was. We had everything close by: schools, libraries, drugstores, busses. Everything was “neighborhood” at that time. Neighborhood stores, neighborhood everything.”
It is sad to think that so much that was wonderful has vanished through short-sighted efforts to curb what is called urban blight, but it is a delight to report to Muriel and others like her that a strong sense of community and neighborhood still survive and that we who live near St. Mary’s Cathedral hope to keep this kind of neighborhood alive in the structures and streets and people that remain of the place they once called home. It is still the most wonderful place in which to live. I hope it always will be.
SPM
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Streetlights: A column for the Bay City Times
It had been a long, hot day. The market had offered sounds and smells and tastes that were new to me, and I had paused more than once to take things in. The people I had met while bumming about with Julie had been friendly and tried to make me feel welcome with hand gestures and facial expressions since I couldn’t understand their other language.
Then we bumped home in a taxi. The driver had to take us nearly thirty miles before dropping us a couple of streets from the house. He charged us about nine pesos and shuddered off in a thick fog of exhaust thinking he’d ripped us off. Julie and I stood there a moment and shared a chuckle: Nine pesos for thirty miles. That’s, like, a dollar-ten.
The air was cool and heavy, and the streets were not very well lit. The streetlights were so far apart that the darkness settled thickly between them creating spot-lit vignettes of the city. We passed a group of musicians, (guitars and hand percussion) under one light getting warmed up for an all-night jam session. A young man and woman, oblivious of the other activities on the street but obviously not immune to the music, were enjoying each other under another light. The next several lights presented empty sets until we came near the streetlight nearest Julie’s parents’ house.
In that light stood a little girl about eight years old, tiny for her age. Her shoulders were shaking with sobs kept quiet by one delicate hand against her mouth. She was dressed in grubby shorts and a blue T-shirt, and her small-boned feet were bare on the pavement.
Julie crossed over to her and asked what was wrong in words that conveyed concern, but no meaning, to me. The girl told Julie that she had accidentally left the water running in the chicken house and she was waiting for her father to get home and beat her for it.
Julie tried to reassure her; she tried to make her believe everything would be fine. She bent down, and, not noticing the dirt, pulled the child to her and hugged her close as she patted the little back and smoothed the long, dark hair. Everyone concerned knew there was nothing any of us could do. The girl’s father would come home and beat her, (Didn’t he, always?), but at least – in that moment – a respite could be offered where a sanctuary could not.
……~.~.~.~o'O'o~.~.~.~……
So much has happened since that trip down into Vera Cruz; so many things have changed, but that little girl standing in her own pool of light still comes back – just as she was that night – to make me pause and think. I cannot forget the time I suddenly saw life through those eyes. A life not marked by happy birthdays and merry Christmases, but by tears and beatings in a long night shot with bright spots that show the best better and the worst just as it is. I remember. And I pause. For just a moment. Then I move on painfully grateful for each happy child-life I am so blessed to witness in my life.
Originally published in the Bay City Times in 2005, SPM
Then we bumped home in a taxi. The driver had to take us nearly thirty miles before dropping us a couple of streets from the house. He charged us about nine pesos and shuddered off in a thick fog of exhaust thinking he’d ripped us off. Julie and I stood there a moment and shared a chuckle: Nine pesos for thirty miles. That’s, like, a dollar-ten.
The air was cool and heavy, and the streets were not very well lit. The streetlights were so far apart that the darkness settled thickly between them creating spot-lit vignettes of the city. We passed a group of musicians, (guitars and hand percussion) under one light getting warmed up for an all-night jam session. A young man and woman, oblivious of the other activities on the street but obviously not immune to the music, were enjoying each other under another light. The next several lights presented empty sets until we came near the streetlight nearest Julie’s parents’ house.
In that light stood a little girl about eight years old, tiny for her age. Her shoulders were shaking with sobs kept quiet by one delicate hand against her mouth. She was dressed in grubby shorts and a blue T-shirt, and her small-boned feet were bare on the pavement.
Julie crossed over to her and asked what was wrong in words that conveyed concern, but no meaning, to me. The girl told Julie that she had accidentally left the water running in the chicken house and she was waiting for her father to get home and beat her for it.
Julie tried to reassure her; she tried to make her believe everything would be fine. She bent down, and, not noticing the dirt, pulled the child to her and hugged her close as she patted the little back and smoothed the long, dark hair. Everyone concerned knew there was nothing any of us could do. The girl’s father would come home and beat her, (Didn’t he, always?), but at least – in that moment – a respite could be offered where a sanctuary could not.
……~.~.~.~o'O'o~.~.~.~……
So much has happened since that trip down into Vera Cruz; so many things have changed, but that little girl standing in her own pool of light still comes back – just as she was that night – to make me pause and think. I cannot forget the time I suddenly saw life through those eyes. A life not marked by happy birthdays and merry Christmases, but by tears and beatings in a long night shot with bright spots that show the best better and the worst just as it is. I remember. And I pause. For just a moment. Then I move on painfully grateful for each happy child-life I am so blessed to witness in my life.
Originally published in the Bay City Times in 2005, SPM
Friday, December 30, 2011
After Katrina and Christmas: Column for the Bay City Times
(Note: This piece is very specific to an event that is very much out of our headlines currently, but I decided to drop it into this blog because I am reminded of late of other things that are slipping from our headlines: Hurricanes in subsequent years, the BP oilspill that has left parts of the Gulf of Mexico dead, the earthquake in Haiti that still is not recovered from. I am reminded that just because things are no longer considered "newsworthy" does not mean they chould be forgotten. Forgetting is just another way of wearing ourselves until one day a disaster that does not immediately impact us personally fails to awake in us any compassion for those who are impacted. So it is good to remember. SPM)
Holidays bring different sorts of memories and associations to each individual. The day after Christmas is for many a great anti-climax that is hard to recover from, while for others it is a relief to be able to look back on another holiday rather than forward to one; depending on the holiday, I can see both points of view.
This New Year, post-Katrina as well as post-Christmas, is one that holds a great many unknowns for all who have been fortunate to survive this past year to see the new one in.
Many have spent holidays in ways and places they had not expected and the New Year is not being brought in with the typical resolutions because this year is full of uncertainties beyond many of the years preceding it.
We in Michigan are not immediately, obviously impacted by Katrina, but for many in the South there are questions more pressing than any resolution: Where will we live if there is no home to return to? How will we live? Will my family always be separated? Will I ever feel safe or at home again?
There are certain places in this world that bring images and half-memories to even those who have never physically visited them: Paris with its art and romance and rain. Istanbul, Gate to the East. Jerusalem with the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall. New York City with its Stock Exchange, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. And, ever and always for some, New Orleans with its fourteen-foot ceilings, its Latin Quarter, its Mardi Gras and – oh, most of all – its music.
They are the places that we share with each other; places we all know a little about, places that are a subtle part of our human identity. They break the ice in public and inspire dreams in private, and the world is more wonderful because they simply exist.
I have to believe that New Orleans will recover because it is such a part of the whole that it will leave a great void if it does not. Never mind Mardi Gras; parties come and go. The music, the art, the architecture and the bizarre and delicate tolerance of the Crescent City are too valuable to let pass without the greatest struggle. There are far too many things that only survive in memory and photograph, too many ‘used-to-be’s, for this not to be so.
We need New Orleans just as we need every one-horse town and steamboat stop along the sultry Gulf Coast. Wherever we may be from in this country, whatever may come, they are a part of who we are, and we cannot forget them just because they are beginning to slip from the headlines.
A disaster of this magnitude is not over because we are tired of hearing of it. Rather, it will go on, impacting further daily, like a deep flesh wound that must heal from within before it can be made truly whole again.
This healing is going to take time and it is important that we continue as we have begun and exercise patience and generosity, not because we have to, but because we were spared and are able.
Even when – having grown up in the South I cannot bear to write the word ‘if’ – New Orleans is placed upon its feet again, there is a great deal of distance between a place that has never changed and a place that has been restored, no matter how loving the restoration. The loss of life and way of life as well as the loss of property and the displacement of commerce cannot be reversed, but they can be lessened.
Some hold that there is another life in which we settle our tab from this one, and others hold that the present life is the only one we can be quite sure of. Either way, it would seem wise to use this life very carefully.
Whether one is an optimist or a pessimist, whether the glass is half full or half empty, the contents are what we have; this New Year is the one we have to work with and, though eating less and spending more time reading are admirable resolutions, let me challenge you to another this year: Purpose to pause now and again and simply remember.
Remember the simple and often taken-for-granted boons of your small children about the house and your old people around the table; neither will be there always and it is impossible to tell what this year may bring.
As you are remembering and counting blessings, don’t forget those whose children were old enough to go to war and may not be coming back as well as those whose old people may not have been fast enough to escape Hurricane Katrina. Remember and do what you can; no one could ask more.
(Originally published in the Bay City Times, December, 2005, SPM)
Holidays bring different sorts of memories and associations to each individual. The day after Christmas is for many a great anti-climax that is hard to recover from, while for others it is a relief to be able to look back on another holiday rather than forward to one; depending on the holiday, I can see both points of view.
This New Year, post-Katrina as well as post-Christmas, is one that holds a great many unknowns for all who have been fortunate to survive this past year to see the new one in.
Many have spent holidays in ways and places they had not expected and the New Year is not being brought in with the typical resolutions because this year is full of uncertainties beyond many of the years preceding it.
We in Michigan are not immediately, obviously impacted by Katrina, but for many in the South there are questions more pressing than any resolution: Where will we live if there is no home to return to? How will we live? Will my family always be separated? Will I ever feel safe or at home again?
There are certain places in this world that bring images and half-memories to even those who have never physically visited them: Paris with its art and romance and rain. Istanbul, Gate to the East. Jerusalem with the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall. New York City with its Stock Exchange, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. And, ever and always for some, New Orleans with its fourteen-foot ceilings, its Latin Quarter, its Mardi Gras and – oh, most of all – its music.
They are the places that we share with each other; places we all know a little about, places that are a subtle part of our human identity. They break the ice in public and inspire dreams in private, and the world is more wonderful because they simply exist.
I have to believe that New Orleans will recover because it is such a part of the whole that it will leave a great void if it does not. Never mind Mardi Gras; parties come and go. The music, the art, the architecture and the bizarre and delicate tolerance of the Crescent City are too valuable to let pass without the greatest struggle. There are far too many things that only survive in memory and photograph, too many ‘used-to-be’s, for this not to be so.
We need New Orleans just as we need every one-horse town and steamboat stop along the sultry Gulf Coast. Wherever we may be from in this country, whatever may come, they are a part of who we are, and we cannot forget them just because they are beginning to slip from the headlines.
A disaster of this magnitude is not over because we are tired of hearing of it. Rather, it will go on, impacting further daily, like a deep flesh wound that must heal from within before it can be made truly whole again.
This healing is going to take time and it is important that we continue as we have begun and exercise patience and generosity, not because we have to, but because we were spared and are able.
Even when – having grown up in the South I cannot bear to write the word ‘if’ – New Orleans is placed upon its feet again, there is a great deal of distance between a place that has never changed and a place that has been restored, no matter how loving the restoration. The loss of life and way of life as well as the loss of property and the displacement of commerce cannot be reversed, but they can be lessened.
Some hold that there is another life in which we settle our tab from this one, and others hold that the present life is the only one we can be quite sure of. Either way, it would seem wise to use this life very carefully.
Whether one is an optimist or a pessimist, whether the glass is half full or half empty, the contents are what we have; this New Year is the one we have to work with and, though eating less and spending more time reading are admirable resolutions, let me challenge you to another this year: Purpose to pause now and again and simply remember.
Remember the simple and often taken-for-granted boons of your small children about the house and your old people around the table; neither will be there always and it is impossible to tell what this year may bring.
As you are remembering and counting blessings, don’t forget those whose children were old enough to go to war and may not be coming back as well as those whose old people may not have been fast enough to escape Hurricane Katrina. Remember and do what you can; no one could ask more.
(Originally published in the Bay City Times, December, 2005, SPM)
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