GOD IS LOVE

Driving for hours, he starts to wonder if the road stretching ahead is endless. His anxiety building—like when he first tried to grasp the idea of “forever,” or envision the universe expanding outward—into what, into where? Colors and shapes blur together and fade: tree branches into sky; gravel edging the road into fields of dried cornstalks. Wispy clouds line the glowing horizon at sunset as he travels west. This is how he remembers it in the cold season.

He is going back after so many years. He doesn’t know what he will see, or what he will say, but he needs to close the circle of his life, “whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”

By early morning, he sees the farmhouse rising darkly against a brightening sky. His eyes fix it as he turns on to the long, narrow earthen drive. The fence on the perimeter is broken in some places, missing in others; some of the once-sheltering oaks are gone. They have been living only in his memory, but the old poplars still stand on either side of the front porch, with its wooden steps sagging into the damp earth. Twisting bramble and weeds crowd the flower gardens that once grew in sunny spots.

Ahead, loom rusted parts of yellow and green farm equipment, abandoned near the barn with part of the roof down on one side. He sees the fading painted image covering the top half of the barn facing the house, the first thing he saw each morning from his bedroom window: a red cross against shafts of light, over which the words are printed: GOD IS LOVE.

He remains in the car, his eyes closed, until he shivers from the cold. Emerging, he walks toward the house, observing broken windows, warped siding, and fallen shingles on the path to the back door. Entering the low doorway, he bends in a gesture of forced humility.

There is the wide stone hearth, charred ends of logs still across a blackened grate. Here is where the oak table stood, he and his sister set for Sunday dinners. He stops, moves his hand over the place where it had been. Entering  the front room, he scans the whole of it camera-wise. Tall windows line the west wall where, on summer afternoons, he would read stretched out on the window seat below, imagining he was drifting to a sun-soaked Greek isle.

The windows, coated with a fine yellow film,  diffuse the light through the vacant room. He sees, not the empty space, but everything as it had been on the day he left—with no warning, no word. A rocking chair next to the fireplace; an old-style standing radio the family would gather round to listening to hymns on Sunday evenings; a sofa opposite the fireplace; his father’s straight-backed chair with its black, crackled leather seat; a marble-topped table with frosted globe lamp painted with peonies, matching the ones on the wall paper—now worn in places down to the plaster. How elated and proud his mother had been when she papered the walls herself, saying, “There, now we have a proper sitting room.”

All the while, his memory projects a tableau of intimate vignettes and voices from the past into the room that smells of earth and cold, and feels like pain. He has arrived—returned from another world to speak to his God-fearing family, who had raised him to work on the land, making sure he was educated enough to run the farm. All gone now, they had waited years for his return. He has to believe they will gather here again, in spirit to listen to what he has come to say.

Outside, the wind kicks up, whining through the house, rattling the remaining shutters. His fingers, though gloved, are numb. He heads outside to gather kindling. Tiny vortices of golden dust rise up here and there as he picks up broken branches and twigs to build a fire to warm the frigid room. When the fire blazes, in the glowing warmth of its flames, he conjures his imaginary family, summoning them to hear the truth of his life. 

He wonders, Is reconciliation more possible with spirits than with living beings?

There is his mother, seated at the front windows, gazing out; his father stands at her side. His sister, Anna curls on the rocker next to the fire. His abandoned lover on the threshold, her back to the room. He can’t recall her face—only her despair.

He wants to say, “Call me Ishmael, Gilgamesh, Oedipus. I have seen the white whale, entered the cedar forest, solved the famous riddle.” But, those are his inspirations; they never would understand. He will speak in plain language, though those epic figures and their stories still live within him, the foundation for his thinking about  the world, life, and himself.

To the conjured visions now assembled for his homecoming, he states his case:

“When I was a boy, I read about heroes’ journeys, and I knew I had to set out on my own. I don’t think of myself as a hero, but I do think that simply living life is heroic, contending with all the forces coming against it. Here I am…battle-weary from forging my own path. I have survived, as I must believe you also have. There is no end to our journeys, here or beyond. There is always still a far way to go.”

He had set out long ago, leaving everything behind, toward what he had hoped would foster consciousness and conscience. He freed himself to leave the known for what was out there yet to be discovered, and to acquire an understanding of what it is to be human, which his youthful readings and musings had begun to suggest.

“I strove toward a vision, but…I am flawed, still so flawed.” His tale unravels, partly in sorrow without remorse, partly in victory without joy. “Maybe it is I who need to hear my own story to grasp it, but I put it before you,” he, hoping in whatever feeble way, he might atone for the pain he had caused.

“I wasn’t ungrateful or, at least, I never connected what I did or didn’t do with ingratitude.” Early on, he knew he would not replay the worn record of his father’s life and his father’s before him.

He intends to acknowledge to his sister the he abandoned her, after the confidences they had shared. He wants to kneel before his mother to ask forgiveness for his “mysterious disappearance,” for her never to have looked upon his face again, for his not having fulfilled her reasonable expectation that her family remain near, and that life go on in the same way ever after.

He thought to apologize to his young lover, whose beauty and innocence must have long ago faded. Her words, screamed to him still resounding, "If you leave me, I’ll hang myself from the barn rafters.”

“No, no you won’t! Don’t say that,”he had shouted back, feeling held hostage to others’ expectations and needs, but also bound to them by love.“I can’t stay to save everyone else and lose my self.” The next day, with guilt and grief, but with the vision of the life before him, he did the thing he had to do.

“I veered off the trajectory created for me…set sail on my own voyage, uncharted and blown off course many times,” as he remembered his wish to see wide rivers, not content with irrigation ditches and small streams trickling through the countryside: “I wanted to see the Nile, the Amazon, cities rising against the sky: Athens, Paris. I wanted to meet people who didn’t live as we did in what I had come to think of as this God-forsaken place.”

His mother had said it was not God-forsaken, ”God is everywhere the eye can see and the heart can feel—horizon to horizon.” If that is so, he tried to reason with her, couldn’t He then be found in other lands and landscapes—ones that would better serve to shape and grow something still small inside himself? He wanted to see the open ocean, stand before and climb mountains, meet and get to know people not like him, people who might be God and angels in disguise—strangers who would become his guests.

“When I finally settled after years of wandering, it was on that island on the wide Hudson. I felt I had found my place…my home.” There he saw those driven in black limos stopping at hotels, theaters and restaurants. “I made my way among them, but mingled with those who had lost their way, but not their souls.” To those he had dedicated himself—those who carried the sum of their lives in carts or plastic bags, maybe disguising sainthood beneath blank and somber eyes.

“How can I tell you what it would have meant for me to have stayed here? What it has meant for me to have done what I did, see what I have seen? I did what I had to do…trade the predictable for… for the possible. Here, yes, I was secure and comfortable, but… I didn't want that. I…I didn’t know what I would wanted, or what I would find, only that I needed the unpredictable…and some sense of fulfillment.”

He turns toward the windows, “Mother, you said I was a dreamer, a doubter, selfish. Father, you said I was lazy, a sinner, a bad influence on Anna with my wild talk of journeys and trials…that I was wasting my time reading what you called ‘those foolish books.’”

Then to Anna, “I have prayed you found your way and lived a life you chose,” as they had often encouraged each other to do, but wondering through the years if she had instead submitted to the life laid out before them. Had she been left utterly alone?

He glanced at the figure in the shadowy doorway, but could say nothing, the snare of her last words to him having left a crusted over wound on his heart.

He paused until he could recall the urgency that had propelled him beyond all considerations to leave, and how the ideas in those books became ideals to be acted upon—light-filled thoughts that opened up all the color of dreams, inspiring  his plan to free himself, body, and soul.

“When I was a boy, I loved this house…the picnics, the Sunday prayers, the hymns, and I always loved you…all. I knew what you wanted for me, and…I wanted to be good, to be grateful.” How he had struggled to be obedient, to honor father and mother—the commandment they repeated almost daily, noting the fires of hell awaited those who transgressed it, or any of the other nine “shall” and “shall nots,” until he could obey only one commandment: to experience life by following the fire within him.

“Please, Mother, I know you thought I should be content to be here, where I was born, but I…I had to walk into the world…on the narrow path of my own making…my own…limitations. I guess I…I had to learn things the hard way, and not just believe or follow all the things you tried to teach me. I couldn’t live up to what everyone else expected. I had my own expectations, and have come to believe as certainly as you had in your beliefs.” 

He speaks what he could not articulate before he had lived it. “We have not come to earth to blindly fulfill the dictates of God or man, ignoring our own experience, avoiding our own thoughts and questions, denying our doubts. Wouldn’t an omniscient God have foreseen, even intended rebellion? The disobedience of Adam and Eve was not sin, but a picture of destiny, human destiny—to be cast out of a perfect garden, to lose our innocence and to learn through suffering. To be fully human is to…to choose the good—in freedom, not out of command or fear. 

    If I hadn’t left, how else would I have come to know that evil is a mystery woven into the very fabric of the universe? Evil is not so much to be resisted but endured. Good and evil are all mixed up, one can be mistaken for the other, and what we think is good may turn to bad, while our good intentions can affect others in ways we couldn’t have imagined, no matter what we intended.”

He knows his own rebellion, by default or design, has moved toward his becoming “one with the Father” and was meant to achieve that fulfillment alone.

“I wanted to find my own fulfillment. And I did once…for a while. At least the kind I had imagined could be mine, with a red-haired woman I loved too much. She painted my portrait in blue with a gold halo. That was before our son was born with his spine outside of his body,” he swallowed hard. “On the first anniversary of his death, I came home to find…she was gone.” For the first time, the realization comes to him with excruciating clarity that she had vanished, just as he had from the sad farmhouse in which he now stands. He had never spoken the words out loud before—until now.

“I burned the portrait, along with the letters I had written each day for a year, with nowhere to send them. What would I do with all the love remaining?

“I had wanted to find life—as if it were something to find rather than to live…too proud in my belief…or my illusion that I was destined somehow to find fulfillment. Instead I lived alone with yet another mystery, until I took in a young man in rags with violet eyes who danced in night in St. Mark’s Place—asking nothing in return for his performances of grace and beauty—but a witness.”

He had meant to speak many more things into the quiet room to those he imagines are listening now. He is spent, empty to speak of the years roaming the city streets, to which he will return after this pilgrimage to the past—maybe stronger, maybe more broken.

All at once his life appears before him—as a sacrifice, forfeiting simplicity for the sublime, facts for hard-won knowledge. With the vision, comes a warmth, a calm, the frosted breath of his words visible, his voice hollow and weak.

“I am sorry for the pain I caused and…wish only…that peace be with you—now and forever.” And he feels it is so.

The wind has died down, the fire gone to embers. Across the fields, the sun is low in the late afternoon sky.  The circle is closed, he on the outside, the imaginary figures fading into the darkening room.

*“whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere” paraphrased from “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere” attributed to multiple sources, including Dante and St. Augustine, with the earliest being Empedocles (490 - 430 BC).

TRUE MINDS

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.

He presses his forehead against the cold window pane until it fogs over. The front and back doors are locked, and his keys do not open them. At the side of the cottage, he separates the thick growth of vines and peers into the bedroom window. Nothing remains of what had been in place when he left that morning.

He feels himself telescoping to a distance above, looking down on the scene, watching himself wander back to the front yard. Next to the bare willow tree he sees the sign: FOR SALE.

He heads for the pub in town.

Inside, the warmth and dim lights are a familiar welcome. It’s a busy Friday night, with only a few seats left at the bar. The sounds of end-of-week chatter fill the space. He sits furthest from the door, the wind rushing in, with wet snowflakes and the last of the autumn leaves. Avoiding the mirror behind the bar, he fixes his eyes on the array of bottles in various shapes and colors below it. He tries not to, but can’t help thinking about those early years when they came here together every Friday night, taking one of those cozy side tables, where other young couples are seated now, clinking glasses, smiling, their lives ahead of them.

He is remembering how they each would order a different cocktail of creamy pink, frothy green, sweet and fruity or the “grown up” ones—clear, amber-colored and bitter. It was all amusement, sipping from the other’s glass. He does not care to recall how many years it has been since he began coming here alone—first at lunchtime, then most nights.

He tries to lose himself in the music, the noise, the  vodka, forget for now that she is gone, and all that is lost to him. After a second double vodka, his mind and memory cloud over, and his heart is a cold stone.

He drinks until the bartender leans into him, “Better get going.” This time, he gets up without protest, and sets his course for the few blocks back to the vacant building he used to call home. Home, home, home swirls in his mind like the frozen flakes sweeping around him.

He has already decided, he will stay the night in the empty house. When he arrives, he stares at the little cottage, trying to bring it into focus, remembering the sounds and warmth of it when he arrived, unsuspecting, the night before. Unsteady, he manages to make his way to his car to get the blanket—the one that’s been in the back seat since the children were small. He crunches over the frozen walkway to the back door, covers his fist with the blanket and shatters the window. He pulls out a few shards of glass, and edges his hand in to unlock the door. He turns up the heat to warm the icy cold, and stumbles into the bedroom they once had called “the marriage suite.” He wraps himself in the meager blanket printed with elephants and balloons, and falls to the floor.

After a sound sleep, he opens his eyes to morning light, feeling wide awake, despite a headache. The memories and self-reproach he warded off the night before flood in with a brilliance, like the sun shafts on the bare wall in front of him. He pads to the bathroom to splash his face. He notices pieces of the white shaving mug with blue sailboats—shattered on the floor—in nowise reparable.

He wants to make himself presentable, make a plan, make some calls, get everything straightened out once and for all. Instead, he returns to the bleak room, eases himself down to the floor and stares at the ceiling, where memories begin to appear as visions before him, some bitter and dark, some too sweet and too light to bear.


The Meeting

She was lovely, vibrant, open and gentle—and as lonely as he, both of them ambitious with the necessary, youthful illusions about life, love and themselves. They grew up in the small, seacoast town in New England, but hadn’t traveled in the same social circles. She went to private high school off the island; he had thought her snobby. He was a star soccer player at the public high school; she thought him arrogant. They had mutual friends, but not until they were home on spring break in their last year of college did they really “see” each other.

That summer arrived with promise in the air and wonder in each other, in the place they had lived all their lives, discovering it together as a new world The woods they had walked in as children were now, Arden forest itself,” she had said. They whiled away the days on warm beaches, chatted on sunny cafe decks, shared oysters and champagne at intimate tables overlooking the bay, and hiked on rocky paths high above the ocean.

In the evening lying together, ocean air wafting in and the light and color of sunset filling her small room, she read sonnets to him and said, “I feel I am in a Matisse painting.” He could not stop wondering if her interest in him would fade in the fall. Their first Christmas together, she gave him a self portrait she had attempted, reminiscent of Matisse. He copied lines from a sonnet she had once read to him.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

He rolled the parchment into a scroll, placed it in a tiny bottle and tucked it into a small boat he had carved out of driftwood.

He adored her for challenging him to think beyond their place and time; she loved that he urged her to be in the here and now, the simplicity of which she respected and felt was true. In short, each had sensibilities and qualities the other lacked; they felt a void being filled, a missing piece fitting into place to make a whole of their life puzzles.

One day they sat resting along Old Garden Path, he looking out across the rocky cliffs that drop off from a height to small slivers of seaweed-strewn strands. She was reading Albert Camus and often felt anxiety setting in at what she found in his existentialist musings, but also  understood much of it as plain common sense.

“Listen to this. Camus says a person should know about himself,” she read, ‘like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects…know how far he can go, foretell his failures…and, above all, accept these things.’”

He remained gazing out to sea until she asked, “Well, what do you think?”

”What’s the point? I think it’s impossible,” putting his arm around her, “but I guess we still have a few years to figure it out—if that's the goal, but I don’t want to try to foretell my failures, whatever that means. I’d rather move toward my successes, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, sure, but if we don’t get some perspective now, I mean…”

“Oh, look, something out there just beyond the waves,” spotting a form bobbing and turning above the surface. They began running, keeping their eyes on the figure appearing and disappearing again into the blue-green waves. Further out, white sails drifted all in a row.

“A whale?”

“A seal?”

Then they lost sight of the shiny sleek form in the sun reflecting off the water. Overheated and exhausted, they dropped to the ground, laughing and holding each other.

He hears it now—her summer laugh, long since silenced. By the new year, they had planned on marrying one day and settling near that path with a view of sea meeting sky. But not until establishing careers in Boston—law for him, journalism for her. Many plans came into focus, but they married earlier than they had planned—with a child on the way. Then those plans were stretched out over many years until they vanished into a distant horizon.

He turns his eyes away from the ceiling, closes them for a moment and sits up. The sun has moved across the room. He wants to get up, but, he lies down again to see what else will be revealed to him, as if he has no control over the apparitions.


The Marriage

There she is—so young, fresh, beautiful. He can smell her scent; feel her softness, hear her voice, see her gestures—light and fine. It is pain to recall his urgent desire, fierce and fiery and later, his resentment that she had neither his intense, frequent appetite, nor his need for intimacy.

Then come images of the cottage passed on to her from an aunt who had stipulated that it be in her niece’s name only, warning that, “Mr Right was all wrong.” His senses fill with sights and sounds of how it once had been: manicured lawn, hydrangeas and lilacs; children playing under the willow tree, white sheets billowing out from the clothesline like sails in the wind. He thinks of the salty scent of them tucked into the bed. They had brought their babies home and lay with them there, she nursing and singing them to sleep, he yet unaware of life changing—slowly, but already shifting.

With free-lance writing and waitressing at the pub, she supported him through law school. He didn’t find a “suitable” Boston law firm, insisting on a practice in town, “safer and close to home.”

“The worst decision of your life and a curse ever after on you, our family and the town,” she later railed. For her, securing work, care of the children, private school tuitions, domestic chores, all came before him, he knew. Years expanded into decades, her intended brilliant career seemingly impossible, or so she thought, with children and responsibilities, and his practice languishing in lethargy amid town talk of questionable dealing and compromises.

As the past spreads out before him, even now, he feels the old desire—despite the years of refusals and excuses, she merely tolerating his lips, his hands, his weight, with the knowledge that she knew that he knew.

The vivid colors of their dreams faded; neither having measured up to the expectations of the other, or of  themselves.

A Shattered Vessel

It all came with a searing clarity one night, on a business trip in San Francisco where he visited an old friend, recently remarried. The couple couldn’t wait to show him the courtyard they had designed and created together. It was edged with lush ferns in front of fragrant, night-blooming jasmine, its white blossoms wavering like sparks in the moonlight. He noted how kindly they spoke to each other, how he deferred to her, how she looked at him, how they finished each other’s thoughts, and held hands after dinner.

On the way to his room that evening, he caught sight of them through their half-opened door. In gentle embrace, they leaned into each other, gestures full of promise. He closed the door behind him and stood by the window, unable to move, a warm breeze drifting in off the bay. The light and weight of the evening was a revelation to him, but also an irrevocable blow.

That night he dreamed his wife came to him in the dark. When she drew near, in a white flowing robe, he saw it was all jasmine flowers. He inhaled the fragrance of their perfume. When he reached for her, she vanished, and he awakened. He intended to stay awake, review his life, put it into perspective, but he fell back to sleep. 

When he arrived home the next day, he seemed to notice for the first time that the cottage was in sore need: rotting cedar shakes, cracked chimney, leaning picket fence, crumbing stone wall and unweeded gardens. Likewise, his office now seemed dark, damp and cluttered. He allowed himself to recall the old rumors about his practice and his marriage. He sensed how things were and were not, but didn't know what to do. He came to believe there was nothing to be done. He did nothing.

Again, he rolls over, props himself up, wanting to leave that house, but once more he gives over to the last scenes playing out in between futile questions: 

What if I had? Why didn’t I? If only I could have.

The Impediments

It had been a long decline: the practice, the cottage, the marriage, he begging her to love him, she begging him to save his reputation and their family. He feels the sting of  harsh, accusatory words exchanged one too many times and imprinted on the other’s soul. They seemed now to reverberate in the empty room.

They had once been pure vessels waiting to be filled to the brim with all that was lacking, wishing to be known by the other, to learn from the other what yet was unknown. What each needed was taken in at first, a thirst quenched, and savored. With time, the other’s deficits were exposed, and the draft grew bitter with resentment.

Don't see me as I am. Don't change me.

How many lovers discover that neither one receives what is longed for, what they think they want, need or deserve? To be free to develop separately, yet to live and grow together. How? Maybe that wisdom can be imparted in an instant, or take a lifetime, if ever. Lovers’ illusions and self-deceptions, unfounded rationales, too much pain and sore need, all intertwined.

Infinite are the ways of creating a glittering shell of appearance, while the core of suffering goes unseen, unnoticed, unacknowledged. What devices, defenses and denials mask the myriad roots reaching in every direction, compromising a once solid structure?
Quiet, quiet…hear the vines growing?

With daylight already fading, he lifts himself up. He runs his fingers through his hair and wraps the blanket around his shoulders. He goes to pick up the pieces of the shattered mug and puts them in his pocket. He wanders into each room, lingering a moment, then goes through to the kitchen. He covers the broken window with the blanket. Next to the magnet on the refrigerator: ”If you're going through hell, keep going,” he leaves a note:

I am a wandering bark.

Outside, the day’s sun has melted last night’s snow. Rivulets run through the cracks in the walkway. He pulls at a strand of ivy clinging to the cottage wall until it loosens and carries it with him to the pub.

 *Title: “True Minds” and sub-title, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments” from Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare.

 *“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks/But bears it out even to the edge of doom” from Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare.

*“like the palm of his hand…” attributed to Albert Camus.

*I am a wandering bark” from Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare (in reference to “love“ as “the star to every wandering bark”).

Graduation Address – Class of 2003

The Waldorf High School

Lexington, Massachusetts

June 8, 2003

Good afternoon everyone. I am so happy to be here today among my former colleagues, parents, families and friends of the Waldorf High School, and most especially you, my former students, to join you in celebrating the graduation of the class of 2003. Congratulations on your accomplishments.
    I also feel very privileged to have been here for each of the graduations since the inception of the H.S. I believe the world is and will be a better place for these and other Waldorf students going out into the wider world with this very special education—and of course, with the love and support of their families and friends, and their own inherent and unique gifts and potential.
    I want to thank all of the high school students past and present for teaching me so much, and giving me such hope and affirmation of my long held belief that ideas are real and beautiful and powerful to become ideals to bring to our world.
    When I was a young girl I spent a lot of time in the library. Back then I chose a book by its cover. One I remember had a fuchsia cover with black silhouetted figures carrying little umbrellas, and strangely shaped letters that read, Silk and Satan Lane. I felt it was a book about everything that was not me and my world. And, indeed, it was a book about a Chinese family living on Silk and Satan Lane. I remember another book too, with a picture of a young girl, not much older than I was at the time. Her eyes shone with a sadness and kindness and, though I didn’t realize it then—a wisdom way beyond her years. I took that book home, and that is how I learned about the Holocaust. It was The Diary of Anne Frank.
And while I learned about the worst that humanity could engender, at the same time, I also learned about the best: courage and hope. She wrote:
    It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality…I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder….It’s a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals; they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart…. I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them!
    This insight impressed itself upon me so strongly then and has been a touchstone ever since. There was such a certainty in her belief that an idea can become an ideal. She not only believed, but KNEW that realizing ideals is possible—even if she herself could not realize them in a certain place and time. That certainty is a power that moves and shapes lives, and has moved and shaped lives throughout the history of humanity.
    We could say that she was just a young, naive girl, just as we sometimes dismiss the thoughts and feelings of young people today. Most of us have heard that quip: “Hire teenagers while they still know everything,” which reflects the frustrations we may feel at times with their growing independence and wish to do things their own way. But there is a lot of truth in that little phrase: It isn’t so much that teenagers know everything, it’s just that we forgot how much we “knew,” or, at least, held as ideals when we were this age.
    Last year this class and I took up a question that became a theme for the year, in all of things we read and discussed. The theme was “What is Truth?” We approached that question through the essays, stories, books and poetry, bringing in historical, social, political and psychological perspectives. And I imagine that in every one of their courses, the high school faculty, in one way or another, also approached this question. We had a lot of fun, but also delved very deeply into how one knows, and, indeed, if one can know truth. They thought, felt, spoke and wrote most profoundly on this topic—truth being another way of looking at ideas that become ideals: "Ideals which expand souls and become the potentiality of deeds (Steiner).

    Did we answer the question? No, of course not. Truth cannot be defined, it can only be known by a very individual, self-reflective and world-interactive experience. Knowing what is false or untrue allows us also to grasp and embody truth. It’s been noted that:
The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth. Truth is. It can neither be lost, nor sought, nor found. It is there wherever you are, being with you. Yet it can be recognized or go unrecognized.
    I feel certain that Max, Soren, Katie, Dado, Daniel, Sara, Chloe, and Malcolm all have recognized truths about themselves and about the world and have begun to explore and make those truths their own. No one else can do it for us can they? It is a great responsibility and a lifetime’s work to do so. It begins with education—and education that has as its intention that human beings become free and moral, both according to a process of self and world knowledge.There is a story told that:

    God and Satan were walking down the road. God bent down to pick something up. He gazed at it glowing radiantly in his hand. Then Satan became very curious and asked,     “What’s that you have there?”
    “This,” God said, “is Truth.”
    “Satan said, “Here, let me have it; I’ll organize it for you.
If I have any words of wisdom—they would be: Don’t allow anyone to organize truth for you. That is too easy and too dangerous for your morality and for your freedom. That would mean that you abdicate responsibility for acting on those ideals. You can only act on ideals that are truly part of your being. Einstein said: 

     To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me authority myself.”
    Fate has made all of us authority for ourselves, whether we recognize, like it or not. We do not have to act out of instinct, genetics, desires or fears, or handed down traditions or perspectives. Rather, each one of us must reflect, see our relationship to the world, to each other to our true "selfs," and live out of that orientation. This is what we have discussed in our classes.
    Class, this is what you have been given in the great works of the philosophers and authors, but more significantly, through your own humanity--living and acting out of ideals that you have made your own, becoming your own moral guide and authority.
    Remember in your main lesson with Mrs. Wells, you read The Divine Comedy. After Dante comes through the inferno and purgatory, he stands at the top of the mountain, and his guide, Virgil, leaves him, but not before he gives Dante a crown and mitre—symbolizing that he is now the priest and king of his own life. He is now authority himself—not as a matter of course, but through seeing and understanding the consequences of abdicating that right and legacy which he was shown and learned through his journey.
    At every moment, here and now, you are the only who can recognize truth, take ideas, make them ideals and live them.  I would like to close with a poem as a gift to the class of 2003. Excuse me while I turn to the class.

Here and Now

Now when there is no truth

Here where everything and nothing is real

When and where all paths lead to everywhere

And nowhere

You have refused to stand at either pole

Or be forever lost in between

You know one thing is clear

You are the fixed star

You navigate with your soul consciousness

Whoever, wherever you are

Above, below, around—and into all things

All things exist in relation to you

Orbit in your sphere

Are held in balance by you

Live by your warmth and light

You have become the Sun

Here and now!

A POEM

Edging into mood, mind, my Self--unawares

creates color, chaos, confusion

indigo apprehension of a fall

split-screen identity

What do I desire, remember, know, believe--
through distractions

like a thousand tiny pearls
strung earth to sky?

THE HOLES THEY LEAVE

That night the stars kept me awake. I couldn’t sleep, so I went to the window overlooking the ocean. A green light flashed at the horizon beyond the cloaked meadow. Looking up, I saw more stars than I ever remember, brilliant and shimmering. Elated, I felt my whole being inhaling the ebony sky teeming with star life. I stood in awe for moments, minutes, or hours—how long, I can’t say.

    When I returned to my bed, I still couldn’t sleep—but not because of the mad convergence of memories, desires and fears that had been crowding in on me before. My mind was free and pure with the light of those gems in the dark velvet sky. I wasn’t drawn back to look again, however compelling; rather, I just let them live and expand in me—as they always were and always will be, as I lay in quiet wakefulness.

    But not long enough. As the first light dawned, edging in on me was an awareness of my own smallness against the expanse of the grandeur I had witnessed. I wished to remain in that blessed state, like one holding on to a fading dream, but those habitual, chaotic thoughts began pressing in once more: the absurdity of being human, the perpetual dirge sounding beneath the surface of mundane reality. I felt an impending void. I wanted to fill it with the beauty and mystery of the starry heavens. Out there, in here, “as above, so below,” these words were like pearls on the strand of my desire to remain as I had been, but it was not to be.

    That was the night the stars kept me awake.

    Since then, I haven’t been the same. Why? I don’t know, but I am determined to return to that state of grace. During the day, I go about my routine and practical matters, but with anticipation of the other half of my life—the night. It’s all obsession. I sleep for an hour or two then awaken and wander to the window to see if the stars are as they had been that night. They never are.

    I know it’s crazy, but there has to be a way back. I began trying anything that might diminish my agitated condition. I’ve attempted to clear my mind through meditation, but to no avail. I bought a bunch of self-help books, joined a Yoga class, devour natural remedies for sleeplessness, anxiety and depression. I also started seeing a therapist, which I had meant to do when I came back from my travels a couple of years ago.

    I am also reading poetry about the stars hoping to affirm my experience of that night. I’ve found many star-inspired expressions, but the lines in this poem come closest to my obsession to recreate it:

    And now, each night I count the stars,

    And each night I get the same number.

    And when they will not come to be counted,

    I count the holes they leave.

    Desperate to find peace, and as a last-ditch effort, I asked my therapist to prescribe something to help me sleep. About a week into taking the meds, this happened: While asleep, I got up, went outside, walked into my next door neighbor’s house, opened the refrigerator, took out a bowl of pasta and ate it. I also took her dog out for a walk, then wandered back to my place.

    My neighbor, Dana, witnessed the whole scene, and came over the next morning to tell me about my strange adventure. I didn’t believe her—that is not until she showed me the evidence. She started taking a video when she heard me come in, watched me in amazement and followed me around, ready to call 911 in case things got even crazier. I was embarrassed, and it was frightening to hear. I felt like an idiot. So much for sleeping pills!

    Dana and I went for a walk on the beach that afternoon. It was sunny and warm for late October, the sea all lapis lazuli and silver wrinkles under a clear sky. We talked as we walked into our elongated shadows. Until then, I hadn’t thought I knew her very well, but I realized then that I probably felt closer to her than to anyone. Even though, ashamed of the incident the night before, I felt safe with her, maybe because she had said more than once that I remind her of her daughter Linney, who had recently come home after years away.

   I told her about the night the stars kept me awake, and my unshakable obsession. I even told her about the poetry I’d found that could sometimes calm me. I started to feel like Dana could see through to the real me. (I am not sure there is a real me.) I didn’t resent it though; at least that would mean someone knew me. The thing is, I’d never confided in anyone before in that way (not even my therapist, not really). And Dana didn’t think I was insane.

    How can I say what it’s like—my quest? Waiting for the new moon and cloudless sky, going down to the ocean’s edge to stargaze in the “mystical moist night air” (another line from a poem). Even though the heavens are always majestic, there’s never anything to catch me off guard—like on that night.

    That’s it!

    Why am I always on guard? I ask myself. I have no answer. Poetry is the only thing that can catch me off guard—with ideas and feelings I’ve never had before, but I somehow recognize them as mine when I “hear” them—the beauty and truth of them. I find myself more at ease at those times, and a little less desperate.

    My therapist tells me I do have the answer, and she will help me find it. Part of me thinks it’s all bullshit: my quest, my question, her reassurance, my obsession, my strategies and remedies. What would it mean to come to terms with an answer (if there is one)? Still, I continue the therapy and all the rest of it (except the sleeping pills). Why? Because I want to get back to perfection—the ultimate distraction from myself—that feeling of the stars living in me.

    A couple of weeks after Dana and I walked together, she called to say we should meet for dinner. Her invitation made me feel good—comforting to think of being with her again. She said she had a gift for me, and I got the impression she also wanted to tell me something. I figure she has worried about me ever since the sleep-walking incident. I look forward to our meeting when I will confide in her even more—tell her things and ask her things.

    She’s a wise person, an “old soul,” as they say. I respect and trust her. I will even let my guard down, intentionally this time and really spill my guts (poor Dana). Maybe I will hear myself say something that will surprise me, like poetry can, something that comes from the part of me that isn’t on guard.

    Driving back from a therapy session I decide I should just quit going. The therapist is bringing up stuff I don’t want to think about, which I guess would be good, if I really want to get to the bottom of things? But it doesn’t feel good, and besides, I already am at the bottom of … something, but also feel at a threshold.

    As I pass Dana’s house, I see a woman on the sidewalk with Dana's dog. It’s a damp, raw November evening. Something is wrong. She’s in a nightgown, pacing back and forth, looking like she’s in a daze. It’s got to be Dana’s daughter. I pull up next to her and roll down the window.

    "Are you okay? You're Dana's daughter, Linney, right?” She’s crying, so I can barely make out what she’s saying. She doesn’t answer my question.

    She just keeps repeating, "Mom, why? What am I gonna to do? Why, why did you do this to me?"

    She doesn’t even seem to notice me, so. I get out of the car and practically pick her up to get her into the back seat. The dog jumps in too. I tell her I’m her next door neighbor, and a friend of her mother’s, which makes her cry even more. I bring her back to my place, clear a spot on the sofa and pour us both a shot of whisky. Between her sobs, I hear what’s happened.

    “My mother’s dead,” her voiced strained.”I didn’t know …. She … she … ”

    “What? No …” I interrupt, “No, that can’t be true; we were supposed to … ”

    “Yes, yes it is true. She was sick, but she didn't even tell me. Do you believe that? I called to her last night, and when … when she didn’t answer, I went into her room. I kept shaking her, but she didn’t wake up. She looked funny, so I called an ambulance. I stayed with her until … until the end. It was horrible, and I … I … ”

    She begins crying again. I don’t want to pressure her, so I just let her go on and get everything out. When the sobs subside, she tells me that Dana regained consciousness for a bit at the hospital, but the doctors told Linney that her mother was in the end stage of Leukemia. She would not be coming home. There was just time enough to say goodbyes. That’s when Dana told Linney about the things she had left for her. You’d think it would’ve been something for Linney to hold on to. Maybe that's harder—holding on when she is never coming back.

    “I’m not gonna to do it. I don't wanna see anything—whatever she left. I … I can’t … I won’t. Anyway, she …she hated me and … ”

    I stop her right there, trying to set her straight, “Now, that is not true. Your mother did not hate you; she talked about you a lot. She wanted the best for you; she loved you.” I didn’t really know about their relationship, but I did know Dana worried about her.

    “No, no she didn’t,” Linney practically screams at me, with a blank look, then puts her hands over her face, her body shaking in silent gasps. While I wait for her to calm, I notice that she is not much younger than me, and is quite a beauty. So Dana’s saying I reminded her of Linney had nothing to do with our looking alike. She is a lot smaller and thinner than me (I try to ignore the sharp twinge of that fact). She has the kind of looks, no doubt, that turn a lot of heads, open a lot of doors, and maybe keep her from seeing herself as she really is.

    I remember Dana told me that when Linney once said, “I’m starving,” she knew it was literally true. So, she somehow persuaded her to go to lunch. Linney ordered crudités (which sounds much better than “raw vegetables”). Dana said they would have tasted better, too, with the crab and cheddar dip. Apparently, Linney was frantic to move the vegetables away from the dip, “as if they were going to jump into it by themselves. The dip should have come with a ten-foot pole,” was what Dana had said. She could be funny like that, but it was sad too, partly because I can relate to that fear big time.

    I knew Linney was like me, too, in that she had been away for a few years “traveling” (a kinder way of saying, “wandering”). She came home to stay, Dana said, “until she sorted things out and got her life back on track.” I’m also waiting for that to happen for me.

    After a few minutes of silence, I hear myself say, “You can stay here tonight, so you are not alone,” but hope she doesn’t take me up on it (until she doesn’t). That’s when I feel a dark and heavy weight looming, about to crash down. For some reason, she wants to sleep in her mother’s bed, so I walk back with her and get her settled in with the dog.

    The next morning I check in on her. She cries off and on, but doesn’t say anything else about Dana's sudden "disappearance," avoids eye-contact, and keeps repeating, "I don't want to live in this house. I've gotta get away from here. I can't stay. I’m not going through those things she left. I'm just not! I’ll go away. I don’t want to see anything or look at anything.”

    Okay, okay already, what a big baby, I am thinking. I only say, “Your mother must have had her reasons—leaving certain things for you, don’t you think? Aren’t you even curious? She seemed like a wise person,” I innocently offered, but Linney looked stunned.

    "My mother, wise? No, she was a crazy person. You didn't know her—not like I did. She did hurtful things, like not telling me she was dying.”

    "That's what I mean, she had her reasons,” trying in vain to convince her. “Yes, I guess I didn't know her…not the way you did, but it seemed like she looked out for you.” I was realizing Dana knew a lot more than she let on about a lot of things. Linney didn’t know Dana the way I did either, or that she had looked out for me too.

    I feel sad when I remember that we were supposed to meet in a couple of days. I had planned to learn more about her then, but was most looking forward to learning more about myself (everything really).

    “What are you talking about?” Linney whines. “She was not looking out for me. We never got along, and especially since I came back home!”

    “She never mentioned anything about that to me. I heard only good things, maybe a little concern, but …. ” No, I decide I am finished. I don’t want to hear it—Linney’s distorted take on things, or think any more about it. I’m not going to convince her. I resent her for being closed off, and for making me feel so protective of Dana and her memory.

    I’m blindsided when she begs me to go with her to make funeral arrangements. I want to say, “Oh, no, now you are the crazy one, not your mother. I couldn’t possibly.“ Instead I hear myself say, “Okay, if you want me to.” I mean, she has no one else.

    Somehow, Linney and I manage to get through the funeral arrangements. I am surprised by my own feelings of loss, a sense of the finality of death, and the certainty of my own demise one day, which is not something I had thought too much about before. By the time I get home, I’m exhausted and hungry. I can’t eat or sleep though, and stay up until midnight.

    I flop on the bed and try to relax, using my techniques: visualizations, exercises, and all the other things that never work. I end up staring at the ceiling until 3:00 am. Finally, I pick up one of the poetry books scattered at the bottom of my bed. When I feel myself begin to unwind a bit, I “hear” these lines from the last poem I read, like a mantra chanting itself in the dark:

    That’s how you came here, like a star

    without a name. Move across the night sky

    with those anonymous lights.

    I close my eyes, imagining I am one of those lights—a star moving through the heavens. Instead of the stars living in me, I will live in them. It’s the closest I’ve come to that feeling on the night the stars kept me awake— unguarded—outside the fortress walls.

    The memorial service and burial are held on the day Dana and I were supposed to meet, the day I was going to find out everything I always wanted to know, but was afraid to ask. The strange thing is, I slept that night for eight solid hours—the first time in months. I never believed in magic or miracles; now I’m not so sure. Maybe Dana is able to hear all that I was going to ask her, and all that I was going tell her. Maybe my desperation somehow can reach her (wherever she is), and she has pity on me—once again.

    For a while I see Linney once or twice a week walking the dog. We wave to each other without a word, but I haven’t seen her for a month now. I’ve called her at least once a week, offering to help with anything she may need.

    "Thanks," she always says, "I'm fine. I don't need anything.”

    “Okay, then. Well, you let me know if you do?” but no word from her—until tonight.

    Out of the blue, she calls, as I came in the door. She sounds frantic. “You have to come over … right now!”

    “Okay, be right over,” and I break out into a cold sweat at the prospect of what I will find, what I will see or hear. The sun is going down. It’s dark and icy cold. The ocean is roaring, maybe churning up for a Nor’easter. I walk over to Dana’s house and go in through the kitchen door—the one I wandered into the night of the sleeping pill fiasco.

    Dana’s house always looked staged for a photo shoot. On her tables and shelves, here and there, she would place bluebells in the spring, seashells and feathers in the summer, autumn leaves in the fall, moss and crystals in winter. I liked the displays of seasonal warmth, light and color, but now it looks more like my place, not at all inviting—no frills, dark, and kind of messy. I notice flower arrangements left from the funeral on the countertop and kitchen table, wilted and dried.

    “In here,” Linney calls from the small office off of the kitchen, lamplight spilling over the doorway. The room is as if Dana has just walked out of it, and will be "back in a sec,” as she would say. It is now, I guess, the single welcoming, orderly, and bright spot in the house.

    Looking up, Linney says, “I made myself come in here early this morning." I assume she has been in here all day.

    “Oh, how? I mean … you said you never wanted to … ” She cuts me off, running her hand through her long hair in a nervous gesture. “I know … I know. I never wanted to come in here, but … I … had this dream last night. My mom was calling me, but I couldn’t find her. I wandered through the rooms, but it was kinda like I was outside too, trying to get in. You know how dreams are weird like that? The wind kept pushing me back. I could see inside the house. Waves were crashing against the windows from the inside, and I heard the wind howling … sounded like a train coming. It woke me up. It was still dark, but I could see the light coming from the lamp in the office. It hasn’t been on since my mom died, so I felt like she made it come on … like her way of calling me in here. I feel like I’m still in a dream now, or,” Linney hesitates, “or awake for the first time—not sure which.”

    Me too. I brace myself when she says that, but I can’t say a word. I notice she looks different tonight, still sad, but softer, more composed, and somehow, yes, more “awake." The glow in the room illuminates her long hair, and the gold trim at the collar and cuffs of her nightshirt. I keep my gaze on her and try to focus as she begins to show me some of the things Dana left for her. She opens a picture album.

    ”These are pictures of us, of me, when I was a little, when Dad was still alive." She points to a photo of her in a pine tree, taken from the ground up. The branches look like a feathery green staircase with Linney looking down, waving. There is another of Dana holding a little Linney up with one hand under a white beach umbrella dotted with blue fish.

    "I didn't know …. I didn't know so many things,” she whispers, as if I am not even here. She picks up a worn, white journal, and holds it close to her. “I didn’t know Mom wrote in this when I was growing up.”

    "Maybe you didn't need to know … until now.”

    Pictures and papers are strewn over the desk, and in its open drawers. She picks up a page, “I’ve been reading this letter over and over." She doesn’t read it out loud to me, but I sense it must have broken a silence, opened a door or shattered some walls. Maybe filled a void?

    Linney opens another small book with a black leather cover embossed with tiny white stars. She turns the pages, pausing to read some of Dana’s entries, her fingers tracing along the lines. On the first page is the date of Dana’s diagnosis, a description of her treatment plan, and her intention to keep her illness from Linney, apparently also her thoughts and feelings through it all. Linney reads lines from poems on virtues that meant something to Dana:

    On hope as, “a thing with feathers/that perches on the soul,” and on faith, like the moon, “faithful, even as it fades from fullness/slowly becoming that last curving and impossible/sliver of light before the final darkness.” There is mention of Dana’s “year of miracles,” of gratitude and joy through her last days spent with her daughter at home, but also of her companion, “constant sorrow.”

    I am feeling like Dana left these treasures for me too when Linney asks me to read the last entries. I am lightheaded and disoriented as I read what Dana wrote in her graceful handwriting, my voice barely audible, far away sounding, like it is not me speaking:

    Pain — has an Element of Blank—

    It cannot recollect

    When it begun—or if there were

    A time when it was not—

    

And

The Heart asks Pleasure–first–

And then–Excuse from Pain–

And then–those little Anodynes

That deaden suffering–

And then–to go to sleep–

And then–if it should be

The will of its Inquisitor

The liberty to die–

    I look up at Linney holding out to me a small package wrapped in dark blue tissue, bound with silver ribbon.

    "She left this for you. Open it, I want to see.”    

    “Really?” I take it into my trembling hands and unwrap it. It is a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson with a note:

    For Stella

    With Hope and Faith

    From Dana

    Outside the night is still and silent, no stars, and sea fog drifting in.

Acknowledgements

Title “The Holes They Leave” and “Each night I count the stars/…” from “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide” in S O S: POEMS 1961-2013, copyright ©2014 by The Estate of Amiri Baraka. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

“as above, so below” from the Hermetic texts of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus.

“mystical moist night air” from“When I Heard the Learned Astronomer” by Walt Whitman.

“That’s how you came here/like a star…” from “A Star Without a Name”by Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Mathnawi III, 1284-1288) Translation by Coleman Barks in Say I Am You, (copyright ©Maypop, 1994), printed with express permission of Coleman Barks.

“a thing with feathers…” from “Hope” by Emily Dickinson in Poems by Emily Dickinson, First & Second Series, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.

___“faithful, even as it fades from fullness/…” from “Faith” by David Whyte in River Flow: New & Selected Poems, printed with permission from Many Rivers Press www.davidwhyte.com, ©Many Rivers Press, Langley, WA 98260 60 USA.

___“constant sorrow” from“Man of “Constant Sorrow” by Dick Burnett (1913) originally published as “Farewell Song.”

___“Pain has an element of blank…” and “The heart asks pleasure first…” from “The Mystery of Pain”and “The heart asks pleasure first” by Emily Dickinson in Poems by Emily Dickinson, First & Second Series, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson

THE VEIL

Doris James Rotondo

I have a sense that images in memory, known and unknown live within us, and may arise spontaneously, welcomed or not. This phenomenon first reveal itself to me in literature and art, which can awaken associations through symbolism in words or images. Then, I became more aware through writing of my own "stored" images, some deep, some at the surface. Also, I began to "see" what others disclose when the soul speaks, either shared consciously, or, unbeknownst to them, seemingly in casual converstaion or an off hand remark.

    To an astute listener, observer and delver into such things, as I consider myself to be, these images or experiences, once spoken, seem to ray out like a holograph, fill the space in a room or in my mind. One such image appeared yesterday and here I will set down what I heard and saw.
    If one word only could have described my godmother Aunt Doris, it would be “eccentric.” Every time she saw me, she would say in her high, lilting voice, "Oh, there's my fairy goddaughter!" Funny, kind and open, she was a enigma to the rest of the family. For one thing, she always carried an enormous, usually rather gaudy bag, out of which she pulled various items and gadgets: a metal tea ball, a large thermos of tea (probably spiked), caramels and licorice for lovers of sweets, artificial sweeteners (before anyone heard of them), and other novelties deemed (by her) absolutely essential for all outings. These items, like her countless phobias and fears, seemed to be extensions of her self. No one in the family understood the need for the ever-present bag, much less the reason for her fears—the origins of which were unknown (maybe even to herself), although the nature of them were often displayed and shared off-handedly, as freely as were the contents of her satchel.
    I have a vivid memory of her wearing a beautiful blue coat with a wide "ermine" collar when she arrived for holiday and family gatherings at my grandmother's house. Her fragrance quickly wafted through the room on the coolness of a snowy evening. The cousins ran to greet her with hugs and kisses which left lipstick smeared on our cheeks. She was a sight to see: frizzled hair, thin painted-on eyebrows, shiny pancake makeup face and lips of ruby red. My sister and I could not wait to try on the coat left on the bed in the upstairs room. We asked for her make up bag, which she freely let us look through and experiement with. Then we painted and powered and looked in a mirror imagining we were our more grown-up selves. 

    She didn't mind, and we were in heaven.

    There was always laughter in her company, usually at the table after dinners where it seemed we sat for hours. Aunt Doris was often at the center of conversation and source of laughter. She was well aware of her aura, as we laughed about the bag, about the fears, about the idiosyncrasies and occurrences in her life. 

    She told us of once having excitedly run up on to a stage to receive a prize at an event after hearing the winning number called out which matched the ticket in her bag. Then in front of the hundreds of people was told by the MC that the ticket she was holding, though with the correct numbers was from another event entirely! Then there was story about an outdoor luncheon she and Uncle Frank attended. They had filled their plates with food, sat down at an empty picnic table—on the same side, whereupon it toppled over onto them, food and all, which evoked another hardy round of laughter. It was also well-known that she wherever she visited, she took a souvenir: a piece of silverware from a restaurant, a glass or towel from a hotel room.

    These, as well as many other stories told and retold at family gatherings, inspired such good humor and warmth. It was all part of the "Aunt Doris experience," and, in a way, a kind of odd family bonding, which no one more than Aunt Doris enjoyed and looked forward to.

    She was a mystery, not only related to the stories of odd occurences, and the huge bag with its jumble of curiosities within, but also for the even heavier burden of the fears she also carried with her wherever she went. Some of the fears I recall hearing about included elevators, tall buildings, crowds, and any mode of transportation. Uncle Frank had to hire a series of live-in lady companions to stay with Doris so she not be alone. Once, when a relative appeared as a guest on a local television program, she was afraid to watch--another mystery to us all. Despite her fears she had to sometimes muddle through, especially being in a car, as how else would she get to the family gatherings to reveal the medley of miscellany and tell her stories? Both of which were accompanyed glancing at each other, rolling of eyes and, of course, lots of laughter.  

    I suppose some of the adults may have known something more about her anxieties than we children did. We mostly felt only the lighter mood and the laughter surrounding the lovable oddity that was Aunt Doris, who, by the way, could play a mean honky tonk "Limelight Blues" on the piano.
    Yesterday, I saw Aunt Doris for the first time in many years. The family doesn't get together often anymore, as we did when we were young, lived in closer proximity to each other, and our grandparents were still alive. Now, some thirty years later, the cousins are all married with families of our own. But there she was Doris, a little older, a little heavier (so was I), still jovial and had the fabled "bag" with her. This one matched her pink sweatshirt decorated with lace and cowgirl fringes. We were all ready to be entertained, and she did not disappoint.
    Once again, she performed and we laughed together; only this time without Uncle Frank who had since passed away. I know everyone must have imagined that expression on his face, and his unique laughter when she began her act in that high pitched voice and tinkle of laughter. This time she pulled from her bag a battery-run ash tray designed to whisk away the smoke from her cigarettes. Out came an extra set of batteries (in case), the saccharin packets, a cigarette bag—containing several packs of off-brands and a fake plastic cigarette complete with lit ash on and a rising smoke feature meant to help her stop smoking. She had purchased it some years ago, never used it, but continued to carry it with her, as she still meant to write to the manufacturer regarding her dissatisfaction with the “contraption.” We all laughed heartily, just like old times.
    In the past, we had occasionally her her refer to her mother as "Mrs. James" in a sarcastic tone. This time, however, she looked a little different as she spoke, and my delver's sense became finely tuned, as an image she lived with all of her life became visible to me. And this I felt one as a source responsible for her eccentricities and anxieties. It was only a moment, a glimmer—created with a few words, and, even though we all laughed again later, in that moment I empathized deeply, with more of an understanding and compassion for her suffering.
    I knew her mother had left the family at some point, but Doris told us that Mrs. James would take her aside whenever she visited to speak smoldering, hateful words about the father, words which Doris said she did not understand. I rememberer her father, Mr. James who had a printing shop below the family apartment, as a kind and quiet man with whom Doris lived when she and Frank were first married. It was obvious that she adored her father. What stood behind the harsh words, and the look on her mother's face described when she uttered those harsh words to Doris about her father must have seared into her young girl’s soul and remained there as a tender wound that must have, in part, formed the fearful woman she became. And of course this was most likely only part of the story.
    As Doris conveyed this memory to us at that last family gathering, an image of the scene she described appeared to me, as Doris seemed for that moment transformed into her mother—taking on the same tone and contorted facial expression her mother must have used to denigrate and discredit the father. 
    I am certain Doris was compelled to occasionally conjure up that image and re-encact it so that she herself could view it, like some grotesque Veronica’s veil of the vulverable little girl who had borne her own cross, which she carried, not in her bag, but impressed upon her heart. This, however, was the first time I had seen it--explaining in part the mystery of Aunt Doris.

It was a revelation in the midst of frivolity, a gift of insight and understanding to me, and I honored the fleeting moment in my own way then, and share with you now, my own images and memory of my generous, funny, kind and wounded Aunt Doris--a recollection of the the joy she brought to the family along with the sorrow she endured.

January - 1990

Aunt Doris passed away in 1996, alone in her little cluttered house in Gloucester, New Jersey. Her only son, Frank, Jr. (Frankie), committed suicide a few years later.