Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of her.  All my experiences with adults up until that point led me to believe that being an adult was serious business.  “Act your age” had been one of many directives that followed me around, so naturally I assumed that the older you got, the more serious you were destined to become.

Before her, becoming older seemed a little like being doomed.  I thought maybe we were all allotted a certain number of hearty laughs at birth and that most people used theirs up somewhere before their eleventh birthday.  In school I had learned that your bones stopped growing once you became an adult and I imagined that once you stopped getting taller, an invisible lid clamped shut on the part of you that allowed for wild abandon, loud, shrieking laughter, and silly craziness.  Maybe “act your age” was the adult way of preparing us kids for that. It scared me. I was ten and I liked my silly craziness.  I didn’t want to be doomed to feeling lukewarm, smiling politely through life.

But then there was that moment in the car with Mrs. Kornbluth that gave me hope.  Mrs. Kornbluth wasn’t like the rest of the mothers in the neighborhood—adults who stifled their laughs by covering their mouths with the tips of their fingers to prevent anything more than a demure sound from escaping their lips. Mrs. Kornbluth was different. She was the kind of adult who threw her head back and laughed with her whole body.  I was fascinated by her.

It was a warm day in the beginning of the summer. I don’t know where the four of us girls were going, but Mrs. Kornbluth was our ride.  We talked silly talk amongst ourselves in the back seat and she joined in, as if she were one of us.

Then she did the “wild thing.”  She depressed the gas pedal all the way down to the floor then let it up just as suddenly—not once, but several times.  She looked into the rear view mirror and laughed at the sight of us lurching back, then forward.  From the outside, the car must have looked like a mechanical monster with a mind all its own, heaving in spasms down our quiet neighborhood street.  To the giggly girls inside, it was like being on our own personal fun-house ride on wheels.

It’s probably important to mention that we were not in any danger. Our neighborhood street was deserted, and the experience lasted less than a minute.  It seemed so harmless and so much fun to me that I had to share it.

“Mom, Mom!” I shouted through the back screen door.  “Guess what!”  As the words tumbled out, I knew immediately that sharing this with my mother was a big mistake.  All I had to do was look at her face.  Her lips did not smile and worry lines creased her forehead.  I could accept that—my mom was always worried about our safety–but there was something more: a dark cloud of disapproval settled on her face, a look that told me I would never be allowed to ride in Mrs. Kornbluth’s car again.

The unabashed delight on Mrs. Kornbluth’s face as she watched us four girls lurching and giggling in the backseat of her car has stayed with me for more than fifty years.  It was a defining moment—a catalyst for questioning myself about the kind of adult I wanted to become. Certainly there are times that call for being serious and occasions that call for the decorum of a lady-like laugh.  But there are also those times when I get silly and throw my head back laughing with my whole being, letting loose a raucous, open-mouthed, wild-abandon laugh.

At those times, I secretly thank Mrs. Kornbluth.

Togetherness.

When I think of the word togetherness, one image jumps to mind: the image of a man and woman in their fifties who lived around the corner from my house when I was growing up.  I don’t remember much about the man, but his wife intrigued me. She always wore her dark hair in braids which she pinned around her head like an Alpine maiden.  She dressed simply and never adorned herself with make-up or jewelry.

The old neighborhood couple mostly kept to themselves and didn’t seem to have any family or friends, but I never saw them alone. Wherever I saw one of them, the other was always close by.  When their car passed us on the street, we could see the woman sitting right next to her husband in the middle of the front seat as if there were an imaginary third passenger sitting next to the door.  (Fifty years ago cars had bench seats in the front and back. It was common to see teenaged girls sitting in the middle of the front seat when riding with their steady boyfriends, but older women always sat by the door.)  At first, it seemed sweet and kind of romantic that she chose to sit right next to her husband as they drove, but after a while, something about it seemed off-kilter–it began to look clingy and desperate.  I wondered if she felt stifled or if he felt trapped.

Togetherness.  What is it anyway?  Can too much of it become a problem in a relationship? To begin I needed a definition, so the first place I looked was in my treasured two-volume Webster’s Universal Unabridged Dictionary, copyright 1937. I found the word together easily enough, but togetherness wasn’t even listed as an entry word!  Togetherness, it seems, had not even been invented yet!

On-line dictionaries gave neutral definitions such as “affectionate closeness,” and “warm fellowship” and mentioned “a feeling of being intimate and belonging together.”  Within that context, it hardly seemed like a potentially divisive issue. I continued to search for essays and articles mentioning togetherness.

I found something interesting by Rainer Maria Rilke, one of my favorite writers.  I feel a kinship with Rilke because, like my grandparents, he is of Bohemian-Austrian descent and was born about the same time as they were. His writings are tender and wise and painfully lovely.  In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke defined togetherness as “a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement, which robs either one part or both of his fullest freedom and development.” When I read that quote, it hit me right between the eyes.  I wondered what he meant by “reciprocal agreement.”  There was no reciprocal agreement in my own young marriage.

My husband and I began our lives together flying blind.  The issue of togetherness never came about through an agreement; it had never been discussed or agreed upon.  It simply emerged and solidified on its own because of our unspoken, unacknowledged neediness.   It took us many years of trial and error to examine our relationship and learn to balance togetherness and individuality.  By breaking free of our old, constricting habits of relating to one another, we finally gained an understanding of one another’s needs and weaknesses.  It was only then that we were able to forge a truly loving relationship.

Getting there was gut-wrenching and grueling.   We were only twenty-one years old when we got married.  We were scarcely twenty-two when we became parents.  My husband needed someone who he could count on to be faithful and never leave.  I needed someone who would shelter me from the outside world.  We tried to squeeze ourselves into the traditional marital arrangement of our parents–breadwinner-caregiver.  It was all we knew.  The result was that each of us became broken approximations of our true selves.  He felt duty-bound to be a good provider, but was daunted by the immensity of the task. Financial struggles meant personal failure to him. He worked two jobs and had no time for himself. He became resentful.

I hid from the world by throwing myself into the role of homemaker and selfless wife and mother.  I was puzzled by the anger that simmered deep down inside me, and then I felt guilty for feeling angry.  Wasn’t this what I wanted?  What was wrong with me?  Why did I feel like I was shrinking with each passing day?  I felt like I was in danger of disappearing altogether.  Depression and joylessness set in.  I needed help. We needed help.

There were times when our relationship felt hopeless, but neither one of us was willing to quit.  We were both stubborn and proud and loved one another with startling ferocity. That alone made it impossible for either of us to walk away from the other.  Counseling helped.  So did self-reflection and growing up.  We had struggled mightily and finally got it right.

I understand the old neighborhood couple now, especially in the context of Rilke’s quote, read in its entirety:

“Togetherness between two people is an impossibility and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement, which robs either one part or both of his fullest freedom and development.  Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them, which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky.” (Letters to A Young Poet)

Like the old neighborhood couple, my husband and I had finally achieved our own “wonderful living side by side.”  And I think maybe it’s possible that in those last years if we had owned a car with a bench seat up front, I, too, would have slid over to the middle and sat right next to him wherever we went.

Sometimes I write poetry.  Things just come to me at the oddest moments and I need to drop everything and write them down.  This poem is short and it’s tight.  One might think it took a short time to compose. It took many hours.

This poem was prompted by a student’s question about a word he found in the table of contents of a book he had taken out of the school library– A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  Instead of using the word “chapters,” they used the word “staves.”  He asked me what “staves” meant and we looked it up together.  After that, the word grabbed ahold of me and wouldn’t let go until I wrote this.

Life’s Blows

Life’s blows cruelly stave a heart,

and bring it, pleading, to its knees.

A heart once shattered,

opens slowly,

letting love leak in.

Loving truly saves the heart,

and lifts it gently with great ease

toward what mattered

all along.

Love’s where you must begin.

This single poem uses very few words to describe what it’s like to grow older.

“Yes”

We are oxymorons, we…

Young minds encased in ancient housing,

full of expectant possibility.

We argue with our groaning bodies,

who tell us “No,” when really,

all we want to do is

live the “Yes.”

Be Loved and  Beloved—I play with words sometimes.  This is a celebration of second chances.

“Be Loved”

Gentle balm

enough to calm

a man of worldly cares–

To my beloved,

I once was thus.

And now,

I am again.

Aren’t we all a contradiction in terms?  Our feet walk in two worlds while our hearts know that our truest selves belong to only one of them.

“Hanes, Her Way”

A “Hanes Her Way” gal stuck inside

“Victoria’s secret” world,

I fail to see that she can know

what I have come to learn:

That love begins inside your head,

and oozes through your hands,

and spreads upon the one you love,

while clear-eyed hearts approve.

My story really isn’t that much different from the stories of other women my age. Born into a Catholic family in 1950, I was raised to be polite, obedient, and self-effacing. Somewhere along the way I got the message that it was better to blend into the background, not make a spectacle of myself, and put everyone else’s needs before my own. None of these things came easily to me at first.
As a young child, I was loud, demanding, bold, and headstrong. When I played, I played hard, got dirty, and came home with bruises and skinned knees. I was often told that I “didn’t know my own strength.” I grew up in a time when you could be strong or you could be a girl, but you couldn’t be both. My stride was too long, I walked too fast, and I talked too loudly. I was not graceful, or petite, or ladylike. I was bossy, argumentative, and a show-off. To top it off, I had big feet, toes that resembled talons, and a pair of hands you’d be more likely to find on a boy. I was a mess.
As a young child I remember my mother calling me “a mental case.” I wondered what that meant. I thought she was saying “metal case.” I’m still not sure what I did to prompt that reaction from my mother. Two things were very clear to me though–that I was a disappointment to her and that she loved me anyway. In desperation she often warned, “You are a reflection of this family.” Clearly she feared I would tarnish our family’s reputation by my actions, a heavy burden for anyone to bear. It took me a long time to realize what a tortured soul she was. The unrelenting expectations of my grandmother breathed down her neck day after day. Familial history was repeating itself.
I remember being with my mother in the grocery store when I was about seventeen years old. The young woman just ahead of us on the check-out line was trying to cope with her little daughter who was clearly in the midst of a very loud and squirmy temper tantrum. My mother touched the young woman’s arm and in her most knowing voice said, “It does get better, really it does. My daughter was the same way and now she is a sweet young lady.” It occurred to me that I had finally become the person my mother wanted me to be. I remember feeling proud and happy. The feeling was a fleeting one.
Considering the question “Who am I?” dredges up all the memories of being an unacceptable little girl, a conflicted adolescent, a misunderstood wife, a guilt-ridden mother, and a woman who, ultimately, threw herself into her life’s work to prove to herself that she really was a good person. Those stages of life are behind me now. I am older now. I am a widow. I am retired. My children have children of their own.
Writing memoir is an act of reconciliation between my heart and the sharp edges of my personal history. It demands a kinder and gentler perspective. It reveals and begs for understanding. Because I write, I understand my story more fully. Once blame and shame are allowed to fall away, the love that was hiding behind it all along feels safe enough to peek out from its hiding place. Examining one’s life is difficult work, but necessary. The question “Who am I?” is a question for an old soul. I am ready.

Who wouldn’t love being pen pals with a young child?  I thought I had hit upon a great way of passing along some anecdotal family history, sprinkled with homemade wisdom here and there.  How hard could it be?

 

Her message on the note card was short and to the point.

Dear Gram,

What would be the best present in the world?

From,

A Secret Friend

Juliet

 

Thinking better of it, she had erased A secret friend and signed her name below the still-visible erasure.  I chuckled to think that she regarded herself as my secret friend. She is my granddaughter and she is seven years old.

In the past her note cards have asked simple questions like “How was your Christmas?” and “What is your favorite color?”  Those questions were easy to answer and I had a lot to say.  As the words tumbled themselves effortlessly onto the page,  I remember thinking how simple this was going to be, being pen pals with a seven-year old.  Until now.

As I read over her latest question, it was clear that I was stuck on the word best.  If only she had asked me what would make a good gift, I could rattle off some practical things like a new hand trowel for digging in the vegetable garden, a new set of measuring cups for the times we bake bread together, or a new pair of binoculars for watching hummingbirds in the backyard. But she didn’t say good, she said best. And she added the words in the world.

The best present in the world.

There was really only one answer but I couldn’t give it.  Impossible images, like dodgeball projectiles, hit me squarely in the heart, filled up my eyes, and settled in my throat. I wondered if ever there was a time when Sorrow would pack its bags and move on, leaving my heart alone.  When would it stop ambushing me when I least expected it?

I pictured myself on one knee in front of her, my hands on her shoulders, my eyes holding her gaze as I worked at hiding any telltale traces of anguish. I heard myself say in a soft voice, free of hitches:

“Juliet, the best gift in the world would be to spend one more day with your Grandpa again.”

I am annoyed at myself that I cannot think of a more suitable answer to give her.  Surely if I shared this with her, she would be disappointed by its very impossibility. I know this from experience.

I remember asking my mom what she wanted for Christmas a very long time ago and she answered with two words: Good children.  I really wanted her to say that she wanted a new scarf, a magazine subscription to “Better Homes and Gardens” or a bottle of Chanel #5.  The possibility of staying well-behaved for any period of time was so remote that I knew she would be disappointed.  She was asking for a gift I could not give her.

Juliet is a sensitive and thoughtful child.  My answer would burden her with emotions she could not possibly understand.  I do not want her to be burdened or disappointed. Her question requires a concrete, achievable answer—a thing within her grasp–not a desperate, impossible wish.

If she asks me this question again when she is sixteen, we will talk about the miraculous nature of love and how it remains in your heart long after death claims the one you love. I will tell her about the crazy way your heart still misses that person after many years, even after another person’s love has filled you up with happiness.

But she’s not sixteen; she is seven. She requires an answer that can be unwrapped, and admired—something I can make a big fuss over while she smiles with pride.

Something concrete. Something like new measuring cups.

 

 

(Juliet wrote the notecard in March.  I still haven’t answered her.)

“How did this happen?” I ask myself.

It’s not like I didn’t see this coming.  Like everyone else from the beginning of Time, I have been getting imperceptibly older with each new day.  So why is it that “being older” feels new, like it’s just happened?

I was born in 1950.  The math is easy to do and depending on your own place on life’s timeline, you might think, “Wow, she’s old.”  I might be tempted to agree with you except that as long as I am not near a mirror, my numerical age actually feels like a lie.  That’s because I have always felt young.  I don’t mean feeling physically youthful; I mean feeling young and vibrant and optimistic within my own mind. The physical plant staring back at me in the mirror is graying and wrinkling.  She stoops and sags while the person within soars.

Age is just one piece of data and only a small part of who we are and what we are capable of becoming. No matter what the numbers show, we all have the capability to learn, to change, to gather wisdom.  We all have something valuable to contribute.

This is for my children. This is for my grandchildren. This is for all the people who have encouraged me to share my writing with a wider audience.

This blog is for you.