Missing an Old Friend

I have always admired intelligent women who speak their minds, who care less about the opinions of others than speaking the truth. We could use more of them today. Vera was one of those women. Her job title was school secretary, but she served more as an unpaid therapist as teachers, students, custodians, administrators, and visitors stopped by her office and stayed to chat, laugh, and hear her wisdom.

Vera was closer to my mother’s age than mine, but despite that, we became friends, and in 1978 she joined my friend Beverly and me on a Mediterranean cruise. Vera had turned 33 in 1945, the year Beverly and I were born. Certainly Beverly and I knew about the war, but for Vera it was something she had lived through and still felt strongly about. Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were more than names for her. They aroused painful memories.

But we weren’t thinking about the war when we arrived in Mallorca. We planned to enjoy the beaches, the art, the shopping, and the history—but through a lens of years.

Spain, as you may know, observes the custom of siesta—a two-hour break from business in the middle of the day. This was something we never seemed to figure out. We would arrive at the shops just as they were closing down, so we would find a sidewalk café, sip a few gin and tonics, and enjoy some gazpacho. 

One afternoon some American sailors stopped to chat and were immediately charmed by Vera. They too were impressed with her wit and her openness in expressing her opinions.

We had witnessed that earlier when we were on our tour bus waiting for the guide to get tickets. Some vendors came on the bus selling souvenir coins. All we could see from our seat was that they were about the size of a quarter and gold colored. By the time the men had walked down the aisle toward us, it became clear that the face on the coin was that of Mussolini.

At this point Vera rose from her seat and started yelling at the man, “How dare you bring those in here? You might as well sell coins of Hitler.” She raised such a fuss that they quickly fled back to the streets of Palma.

Our conversation with the sailors was not so heated. They told us about their ship and where they had been. Always a sucker for the poetic, I was moved by one young man’s talk of the sea as his mistress.

After we said goodbye to the sailors, we began walking through the alleys and streets of Palma back to our hotel, Vera soon decided she had to find a bathroom. (all those g&t’s, you know) We were not familiar with the city, didn’t see any public facilities, and, it was still siesta so no one was around, and the hotel was still a long way off.

Finally walking across a plaza, she said, “Here, I have to go here,” and she lifted up her skirt and watered the pavement profusely.

It was not until she finished that we saw the brass plaque in the pavement, now visible in the yellow puddle. It was a memorial to Franco.

“There,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to do that to you.”

Oh, Vera, if only you were here today!

Bird Amusements

The birds are my morning amusement, much more entertaining--and less stressful--than the newspaper. I usually fill up the bird feeders before I eat my breakfast. I go to the bin full of shelled sunflower seeds, fill up an old juice bottle, then grab the bag of peanuts, climb carefully down the steps (a stumble awhile back left me uninjured but embarrassed), and fill both the sunflower and the peanut feeders. But today I discerned there was enough left in the feeders so that I could wait until after my coffee.

The sunflower seed feeder is much larger and attracts a wide variety of birds--sparrows, finches, nuthatches, titmice, and the mourning doves who catch what's spilled on the ground. The peanut feeder has fewer but very particular fans--the woodpeckers, the wrens, and the starlings---LOTS of starlings. 

Starling

The starlings can clean out the whole feeder in a day, so I try to keep it full for the little guys, especially the wrens who are much better behaved. They are so cute with their upturned tails. They poke their beaks inside, take one peanut, and fly off, as opposed to the starlings who swarm in, knock each other out of the way, and grab as much as they can. 

Carolina Wren

This morning the remaining peanuts were stuck halfway between one hole and another. One Carolina wren arrived, tried one hole, then another, then another, all to no avail. Another arrived with a seed in his beak, fed it to the first wren, who then flew off. The second wren tried each hole, but after having no success, he stuck his head almost all the way in and retrieved a stuck peanut. You see what I mean, a kind and resourceful guy.

Hairy Woodpecker

House Sparrow

Soon after that, a hairy woodpecker arrived, saw that there were peanuts, tried a couple of holes, then began to peck at the container, thereby unsticking the peanuts, reached in and retrieved his breakfast.

Then a house sparrow arrived carrying a piece of grass in his beak, headed for nest-building, I assume, but when he reached in for the peanut, he dropped the grass. 

The next sparrow grabbed a peanut, but then dropped it. A cardinal sitting in the hydrangea immediately flew down and ate the dropped food.

American Robin

All while this was happening, a couple of robins were mining the yard for worms.

The Cavity

The Cavity

It was there at the base of my father’s right thumb. It seemed normal to me, as if this was how a father’s hand looked, a contrast to the mound on his left hand. I never questioned it. Why should I? His hands worked equally well at building a swing set for me or tapping his Chesterfield on the steering wheel while driving me to piano lessons or Sunday school.

I’m not sure when I learned that he had contracted polio as a young man. Maybe it was after we were asked to put our dimes into the tiny iron lung for the annual March of Dimes appeal. Maybe after hearing the stories of children who could breathe only when sealed into what looked a giant tin can I began to ask questions.

Whenever it was, I learned not only my father’s history, but how just the word “polio” produced fear and even panic. This was before Salk and Sabin and their miracle vaccines. The disease was something that could catch you if you were in the wrong place, like a swimming pool on a warm summer afternoon. It was something that could kill.

Yet, I knew my father had survived. The story of how he survived, with this cavity the only evidence, was one I would learn later from my mother. My father never talked about it.

An only child, he followed his cousin Harry’s path, attended the High School of Commerce, and went to work in the business world, eventually working for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. It occurs to me as I write this that I never asked exactly what he did there—just another one of those questions I wish I had asked, but now cannot.

At 25 he was tall, handsome, friendly, and hard working. He had a girlfriend whom everyone assumed he was going to marry. Life was good. Then came the weakness in his arm and stomach and the eventual diagnosis of polio.

His world began to change. He no longer drove his tiny Austin to work. After a few visits, his girlfriend stopped coming. His world became confined to the small house on Allen Street—the house and the yard. For it was in the “summer house”—an open wooden structure in the yard beyond the garden—that his father would take him every day and work his muscles hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

And on the day he was finally able to move his arm one inch away from the side of his body, they knew he could and would recover.

All this happened, of course, before I was born. Indeed, it was before my parents met. All this history was held in the cavity of his right hand.

March 14, 2017

Spring’s a week away

yet today--a blizzard

Schools are closed

Buses have stopped

Governors have issued warnings

Worriers have stocked up

on milk and bread

gasoline for the snow blower

deicer for the sidewalk.

Comfortable and warm

I watch clouds of flakes

swirl and pile up

on fence posts and

last year’s weeds.

All is still and quiet.

Then a flash of red—

a faithful cardinal

here to sing his matins.

Children Will Listen

“Careful the tale you tell

That is the spell

Children will listen”

     Stephen Sondheim 

1952 marked the beginning of my interest in presidential elections.  I was seven years old, and I was supporting the Republican candidate--General Dwight D. Eisenhower.  My support had nothing to do with his party. The only parties I understood then were the ones at which I served tea to my dolls in tiny willowware cups. VE Day had happened a month before I was born, so I did not understand his role as a victorious military leader. Certainly I was affected by the fact that my parents—both loyal Republicans—supported Ike. My mother even volunteered for him.

Eisenhower in Korea Two Weeks
Before His Inauguration

But in my young mind and growing consciousness I supported him for a very specific reason. I heard him say he would go to Korea to find an end to the conflict there, and that solidified my support.

Even at that young age I was very aware of war. At night John Cameron Swayze told me about the war in Korea on the Camel News Caravan. During the day at Frederick Harris School we practiced what to do when the Russian bombs came. When the big planes from Westover AFB flew over the house, I worried. I believed Ike would make peace.

I was not much older when I learned about immigration quotas, and I remember being puzzled and angry at a law that would judge persons by their race or country of origin. The fact that some people who wanted to move to my country could be stopped just because of where they came from seemed very wrong to me.

Of course, my sense of injustice only grew as I heard the news coming from the South about legal racial discrimination.I was ten the year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Emmett Till's murder, twelve when Little Rock Central High School was desegregated. Again there were those images on television every night. This time I watched as angry adults screamed menacingly at students just wanting to go to school. 

Elizabeth Eckford Arrives at Little Rock Central HS

Several years ago when I was in Little Rock for a conference, I stopped by the visitors’ center across from Central High School. Old news footage of that day in 1957 ran on old black and white televisions. I was brought back to the horror and fear I experienced as a child.

Sometimes I think we adults forget that children--even very young children--see and hear what is going on in the world, feel the injustice, and are frightened by the actions those in power make. It is not just we who can put together images of the devastation in Syria, families seeking refuge, and a president who would return them to that horror. 

In the past week I have talked to two different teachers who have told me about the debilitating terror some of their students have experienced since the election. They have listened and seen, and they are very afraid. 

Once

Swift River Dam-Enfield, Massachusetts

There was a river named Swift

powering mills and factories

producing wool and hats

boxes and buttons.

William Gilpin Home

There were four towns

with churches and inns

cemeteries and farms

orchards and fields.

Enfield, Massachusetts Railroad Station

There was a railroad

connecting Athol and Springfield

bringing in news and mail

visitors and family.

Mary Ann Bannister and William Gilpin
behind their home in Enfield, MA

There were school children and farmers

bankers, and preachers

loggers and artists

merchants and blacksmiths.

Enfield Congregational Church

There were Catholics and Protestants

Jews, and atheists

Democrats and Republicans

independents and non-voters.

Enfield, Massachusetts Baseball Team

Winsor Dam, Quabbin Reservoir

There were scholars and the unschooled

There were story tellers and pie makers

pipe smokers and knife sharpeners

baseball players and motorcyclists.

There was a thirsty city named Boston.

Then there was a dam.

Janus

As I step cautiously into 2017, this unknown landscape laid out before me, and I as I read the predictions of what many "in the know" see out there in the wilds of the next twelve months, I am of two minds. I could attribute that to my Gemini nature or that two-faced god for whom this month is named, but I suspect it has more to do with the basic fight or flight response.

When I think of our new president and those that support him coming into power, I am truly frightened for our country and its people, not to mention myself (someone insured by Medicare). Part of me wants to march, write a diatribe, or just scream. The other part wants to turn off the news, watch the birds, and open up a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

I am trying to find a balance between these conflicting parts of my brain. I have always been committed to securing basic human rights for everyone, but at times, like today, the challenges can seem so huge, I become immobilized. To maintain my sanity, I need to withdraw from the battle, if only for a time.

My mother modeled the latter approach. Optimism was her response to the many challenges she faced, starting with losing her mother at five years old, followed by her sister and she being moved from one relative's home to another, sometimes with their father, sometimes not, until she was married. As a young wife she carried a baby to term only to lose it upon delivery. In spite of it all, or maybe because of it, she faced most of life's situations with a positive (some might say naive) outlook. For her, it was a survival skill, and considering she lived to be 96, I would say it worked.

Not infrequently, I found her Pollyanna outlook exasperating. That is not to say she was not sympathetic when I was upset. It was just that she was much quicker to sweep all the negativity away. When I was depressed after the end of a long-term relationship, she listened and supported me. Then a week later she wanted to know if I was all better.

I can't sweep away my fears about the year ahead, but I can't linger on them either. This morning as I was writing this, I read Steve Garnaas-Holmes’ daily reflection "Unfolding Light," in which he talks about angels--the ones in the Christmas story, yes, but more importantly those that we can become by encouraging others, by shining a light on individuals making a difference. It seems a good response to all the negativity that surrounds us.

So as I take my next step into the unknown year before me, I will try to encourage what is good and not get too discouraged by the rest of it, all the while hoping I meet a few angels along the way.