The Circle Becomes Smaller

No Longer Part of the Earthly Circle: Buddy, My Mother Jan, and Bobbie Hamming It Up Circa 1980

“The circle becomes smaller,” said Esty, a French nonagenarian who lives in New York. She and I were on the phone discussing the death of our friend Bobbie Carlin last week.

Bobbie’s death has been a shock to most of us who knew her. At 81 she wasn’t young. Nevertheless, she had such a tenacious hold on life that it is hard to believe she is gone.

I knew Bobbie for much of my life. Her daughter Susan and I became friends as teenagers. Soon my parents teamed up with Bobbie and her funny, darling husband Buddy for escapades and anniversary parties.

In February I wrote about visiting Bobbie in New York City. She was like a second mother to me … in good ways and bad.

I’ll never forget my frustration one day about ten years ago when she and my mother were chatting in our living room in Massachusetts. I peeked in to say goodbye since I was leaving for a friend’s wedding.

They shot identical looks at my sundress and uttered in unison three words every daughter dreads: “You’re wearing THAT?”

It took me some time to convince them that since the wedding was an informal garden party my attire was entirely appropriate. (The fact that I was wearing a hat apparently helped.) I was almost late for the wedding and wondered as I sped along the road whether I really needed one mother, let alone two. I was, after all, an adult.

Today, of course, I’d be happy to have either of them around to criticize my wardrobe. I’d still stand up for my goddess-given right to dress as I see fit. But I’d try to be a little more patient with their perceived mandate to express their opinions.

In many ways my circle and my world will indeed be smaller and less rich without Bobbie. She was maddeningly opinionated, but she could laugh at just about anything. She was familiar with every inch of her beloved city. And she knew every Broadway song ever written.

She prided herself on being ageless. The only time she ever allowed a white hair on her head was when she and her hairdresser decided on a look they called “tortoiseshell,” a combination of red, black, and white tufts. It sounds weird, but it was hugely flattering—especially when the tortoise slipped on a pair of huge Audrey Hepburn sunglasses.

Bobbie knew how to dress better than anyone else I have ever known and was always perfectly turned out.

When I complained once at being caught by a camera in informal clothes and no makeup, she told me, “A person should never leave the house unless she is prepared to be network television.”

I laughed because I NEVER look prepared to be network television. She was deadly serious, however.

Bobbie pretended she wasn’t sentimental. When the smart, graceful, and remarkably un-neurotic Susan became pregnant for the first time, someone asked the grandmother-to-be what she wanted to be called by the newest generation. Grandma? Nana? Grand-mère?

“They may call me Mrs. Carlin,” she replied loftily.

In the end Ian, Gillian, and Danielle called her “Barbar,” a shortened version of her formal name, Barbara. And she loved them—as she loved New York, cheap theater tickets, stylish boots, her dancer daughter, Stephen Sondheim, and makeup samples from Saks Fifth Avenue—extravagantly.

When I think about it, the truth is not that my circle and the world are smaller because Bobbie died but that they are larger because she lived.

I will never be able to emulate her sartorial style, which relied in large part on very slender legs. I hope, however, that I can someday match her passion for life.

For now, I’ll settle for singing a few choruses of “My Funny Valentine” around the house in her honor. She loved that song. And she was indeed the funniest of valentines.

Bobbie in February

Return Trip

Courtesy of Franklin Medical Center

I didn’t expect my life after my mother’s death to be a straight path. I don’t specialize in straight paths.

I expected it to be bumpy—and it is. It’s also curvy.

Some of the curves have been a little scary. Every tenth day or so I turn around and don’t quite know who I am or what my future will be.

I try to see this uncertainty as a challenge. Mostly I succeed. But a girl can tire of challenges.

Some of the curves are oddly gentle.

Last Thursday night I took my 86-year-old neighbor Alice to the hospital, to the same emergency room that had been my destination with both of my parents.

Alice had fallen in the middle of the day. By evening her leg was so sore that she wasn’t sure she could get to bed. So she called me—and my friend Esther and I helped her into my car. We got to the ER around 9:30.

In strolled the sympathetic red-haired doctor who had charmed my mother on her last visit. Unlike me, my mother was not a woman to use the word “cute” lightly. Nevertheless, I believe it passed through her lips that night last August as she grasped his hand.

The whole experience could have been a bad curve for me—not to mention poor Alice, who was definitely in a great deal of pain.

It could have made the grief turn around and around and around in me as I remembered being there with my mother and facing her death for the first time, not as something bound to happen at some point in the distant future but as something almost sure to happen very soon.

Somehow instead of a scary spiral this ER visit turned into a calm unraveling, a path toward healing.

It made me smile to see the staff continue to do for Alice and others what they did for my mother on a very difficult night. Acting kind and concerned and competent. Going on.

And of course it was wonderful to be able to bring Alice home that night. We eventually found out that she has a hairline fracture of her hip, which will heal with a lot of rest (NOT something my dynamo neighbor is good at, but we all need our challenges) and lots of cosseting from children and friends.

She was sore, but she wasn’t dying. Not soon, anyway.

The night wasn’t a do-over. I love Alice, but she’s not my mother.

It WAS a comfort, however.

I Must Be in the Right Business

On Friday I delivered a lunch lecture to students at Greenfield (Massachusetts) High School.

The lunch lecture program is a sort of continuing-education feature for the students, although continuing education is clearly the wrong term since these kids haven’t concluded their original educations!

Basically, its aim is to expose them to different fields of study, different people, and different careers as an adjunct to their regular curriculum.

I was asked to talk about my work as a food journalist and blogger, to analyze why I love to write about food.

As you can imagine, this was pretty easy. I explained that I got into food writing the way I get into pretty much everything … by accident.

I went on to tell the students about the ways in which food writing makes my life more integrated, connects me to other people, and enables me to write about any topic I choose since just about everything can be related to food one way or another.

I provided a few examples of this wide-ranging focus, explaining that in the past I had linked recipes to such topics as vintage television programs, women’s history, literature, baseball, and astronomy.

I emphasized the ways in which my writing uses just about every subject I have ever studied. I knew this emphasis would go over well. I remember wondering when I was in school whether anything I was learning would ever prove useful in that far-away land called real life.

(Actually, I haven’t ever found much use for biology in my writing, but I don’t rule out being able to work it into an article or blog post one of these days!)

After this brief survey of my work, I asked the students to identify their favorite dishes for me … and to tell me if they could who had first made the dishes and why these particular foods were meaningful to them.

After the first couple of hands went up and were answered, the room exploded with young people eager to share their love of food and family. Among other dishes we discussed Pork-Fried Rice, Dad’s Enchiladas, Teriyaki Pork Chops, Ice Cream with Lavender Sauce, and several different versions of Macaroni and Cheese.

One student who had studied culinary science (I wish they had had that at MY high school) told me about his own creation for a final exam. He had prepared a breakfast pizza with eggs, cheese, sausage, and a multitude of additional ingredients. I’m sure he got an “A.”

We ended our session with enthusiasm—and hunger. The students themselves illustrated my point that food and cooking are meaningful both as pillars of everyday living and as keys to relationships and memory.

So I’m clearly in the right field. Now all I have to do is make A LOT more money cultivating that field…….

Speaking of school-age children, I’ll close here with an essay I wrote in my writing group last week that touches on my much younger self. We were asked to write briefly about a tree. This is what I came up with.

The Apple Tree

I’m not very old—probably about five, old enough to go to school each day but not old enough to have much homework.

Afternoons after school stretch their arms out to me, full of promise.

My first choice in the afternoon would almost always be to go inside and watch an old movie on TV, preferably one in which Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy harmonize as they sing of their love for one another:

“When I’m calling you oo-oo-oo oo-oo-oo………”

Most days, however, indoor, sedentary pleasures are forbidden by my mother. She wants an active, social child as well as a chanteuse.

Today her prohibition of indoor pastimes is fine with me. I have an outdoor mission.

My slightly older neighbor, Jamie Patrick Scios, has broken his leg climbing on the family television set—how and why no one knows. I am enamored of his crutches.

I have one ambition right now: to climb an apple tree in the backyard, hurl myself out of it, break my leg, and obtain my own set of crutches.

I put my Keds-clad feet in successive elbows of the gnarly old tree until I feel very high indeed—maybe as high as eight feet (which is a big deal for little me). I spread my arms apart like wings, launch my body into the air, and head for the ground.

But … I am small and limber, so after a lovely little whirl I arrive intact on the soft grass.

I try again to no avail. Grr.

I have a feeling my mother must have told the tree to take care of me.

Several weeks later Jamie lends me his crutches. They are a lot more work than I expected.

Thank you, Apple Tree, for not taking me too seriously.

Not the Original Apple Tree

Mother’s Day

My mother loved celebrations.

Mother’s Day is perfectly gorgeous here in western Massachusetts: perfect May weather. Our early lilacs are brightening up the landscape, and a few apple blossoms and daffodils remain.

In church this morning our minister, Cara, suggested everyone quietly name a mother who deserved remembering on this special day. I mentioned my mother, Jan (a.k.a. Taffy) and then heard my neighbor Alice softly say the name of her own mother.

Alice’s mother Mary Parker (whom we all called Gam) was a grandmother figure to all of us children in the neighborhood, one of the strong inspiring women of my youth. She was admirable, funny, and fierce.

Hearing that name made me think of so many other mother figures I celebrate today, including Gam.

I recalled my own grandmothers, Clara and Sarah, as well as my beloved aunts, Lura, Selma, and Connie.

I recalled my godmothers, Kay (who was named poet laureate of the state of Delaware) and Dody (who SHOULD have been named poet laureate of French film and key-lime pie). Both went to college with my mother.

I recalled my mother’s other close college chums—smart, fun women who taught me a lot about female friendship: Sylvia, Riley, Giff, and Bobby.

I recalled my mother’s other smart close friends: her partner in business, Claire; her partner in singing, Bobbie; and her partners in bridge and neighborhood gossip, Randy and Annie.

I also recalled some of the female teachers who have made a difference to me: Helen, who taught Sunday school and encouraged my personality (not that it needed a huge amount of encouragement); Bebe and Ma’am, my second- and fourth-grade teachers in two very different corners of the world; Penny, who taught me to play chords on the piano and to love music always; and Desley, Shelley, and Janet, who helped me survive graduate school.

It made me sad to realize that of all of these women only a few survive. Most of the teachers are still around, and my Aunt Lura is still with us. My mother, our other relatives, and most of my mother’s friends (except for the redoubtable Claire and Bobbie) are gone.

Nevertheless, my overall feeling was and is one of celebration that I am lucky enough to have been cradled by so many remarkable women over the course of my life.

I hope to continue to find mother figures as I age. (Someday I will have to turn 40.) And I hope to serve as a surrogate mother to others in their life journeys.

I realize that most of my readers are busy celebrating Mother’s Day today—but if you’re reading this at any time please take a moment to leave a comment below naming a mother figure who has helped shape you.

Writing her name and recalling her influence on you will make you feel mothered all over again. I promise!

Happy Mother’s Day … today and every day.

Esther, our church choir director, send these lovely roses home with me today in memory of my mother.

A Workshop

Grimod de La Reynière (I’ll get to him!)

Last week I attended a writing workshop for the first time.

The workshop is sponsored by the hospice program that helped my mother (and me!) when she was dying. Its basic purpose is to help people deal with bereavement through the writing process.

I already write about my bereavement (and just about everything else in my life) pretty regularly. Nevertheless, when the hospice people called and asked whether I’d like to attend I said yes. I had never participated in a writing workshop before, and I can always use a little feedback!

The workshop wasn’t quite what I expected since we don’t bring samples of writing from home to read. We just write in place, prompted by various cues from our group leader. We then read our writings aloud. If we don’t feel like reading, we don’t have to. So far everyone has felt like reading.

I wish I could tell you about the leader—and about my fellow workshop participants! Unfortunately, the whole thing is confidential. I can share some general impressions—and I’m sure as time goes by I’ll be sharing more of the essays I write.

Based on last week’s initial offering, I can say that I’m a bit different from the other participants—and not just because I’m a professional writer. The other group members expressed their grief in a manner that contrasted with my mode of writing.

Like me, most of them are dealing with the loss of parents. A couple have lost siblings, and one has lost a close friend. In general, their writings relayed their feelings in a way that made their sorrow sound more overt, more raw, than mine.

As we read our essays I felt a little phony somehow, a little less than authentic in my grief. I knew this was silly. I certainly miss my mother and mourn her death. And grieving isn’t a competition. I felt that way nevertheless.

Instead of dealing straightforwardly with death and loss as the other essays did, my writings skirted around those topics. They wove in a little philosophy, a few anecdotes, some threads of conversation, and even a joke or two.

I was reassured over the weekend as I dipped into a book called The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food. Author Adam Gopnik included the following sentences in an essay about two turn-of-the-century (the 19th century, that is!) French food writers.

“We have often heard these days about the difference between sincerity (saying what you truly think) and authenticity (being who you really are). There is as big a difference, though, between being sincere and being in earnest.”

His point was that the people of whom he wrote were absolutely sincere, and really quite authentic, in their writing about food. They were seldom in earnest, however.

They toyed with their words and their concepts. They laughed at their subject matter even as they expressed passion for it. They were simultaneously serious and playful.

Gopnik believes that all food writing stems from these two writers, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière.

Perhaps I’ve been writing about food for too long. Perhaps I’m really French. All I can say is that I identified with the spirit Gopnik described in Brillat-Savarin and Grimod de La Reynière.

In writing about anything—including and perhaps especially bereavement—I almost always combine the playful and the serious, the sincere and the humorous.

I do occasionally feel a little out of place, and I’ll probably continue to do so all my life. Nevertheless, after some reflection I realize that I am ultimately comfortable with my writerly voice. It suits my personality. And it suits my view of life. I see our earthly existence as theater, rich in emotion but also rich in spectacle and humor.

The bereavement group wrote three separate essays last week, one that took about ten minutes, another that took 20, and a third that took less than five. Here is my third, very short essay.

A Place on a Map (an assigned topic)

My grandmother’s infinitely stretchable Victorian house in Rutland, Vermont, still exists on Route 7 and could probably be viewed on Google Maps … if I knew how to use Google Maps and if I had truly high-speed internet service.

I don’t need to see it as it is now. I can close my eyes and remember what it was like for me as a child, smelling beguilingly of stewed rhubarb and decaying books.

And can I recall my mother’s vivid memories of it in HER childhood—her Eden; her Disneyland; her evergreen, always safe home.

My grandmother’s house in February 1937.

Meeting the Candidates

Tedd White (left) and Lark Thwing at the Candidates' Forum

Monday evening as I sat at a forum for candidates running for selectman in my hometown of Hawley, Massachusetts, I wondered what it would be like if we knew all of our candidates personally—particularly those in the upcoming presidential race.

My guess is that if I’d known Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for years, I’d be less inclined to listen to their positions and policies and more inclined to draw on my experience with them to judge their fitness for office. I’d know whether Mitt really cares about those he works with, whether Barack can really use his giant brain for practical purposes.

On the other hand, as the forum showed me, I’d probably have a much harder time making up my mind between the two.

I’ve known one of the candidates, Tedd White, since we were teenagers if not longer. His father and grandfather were farmers before him down the road, fixtures in the town and in my youth. I watched his sons grow up.

I’ve known the other candidate, Lark Thwing, for at least 20 years. His late parents were dear friends to me and to just about everybody else in town. And Lark and his wife Beth have become friends as well since they retired to live in the town. (Like me, Lark spent every childhood summer in Hawley.)

Also present at the candidates forum: a stuffed cow. (I have no idea why.)

We don’t usually have multiple candidates for positions in Hawley. In fact, we frequently have no candidates at all. Hawley is generally a sleepy little town. That sleepy little town is at a crossroad just now, however, so everything to do with its government is a little abnormal.

The problems all started with Hurricane Irene. Last summer shortly after the hurricane I wrote an essay about the many ways in which Irene seemed to have brought our town together. I was optimistic about the future.

Unfortunately, the aftermath of the hurricane divided the town. The controversy revolved around river cleanup.

Most of our part of Hawley runs along the Chickley River. The river suffered hugely during the storm, destroying large chunks of the road and gushing onto people’s lawns and fields. We were lucky no one was hurt and not too much property was destroyed.

After the flood, the town, the state, and the National Guard set to work repairing the roads. Fixing the river was trickier. The selectmen wanted to clean up the river, which was filled with debris, and to re-route it in spots to help prevent future flooding.

One of the selectmen in particular had been longing to work on the river for years (he loves to go out and play with his machinery!) and saw the emergency as a chance to fulfill his dream.

The selectmen had trouble persuading federal and state officials to tell them how much aid (if any) the town might be able to obtain for river cleanup. Worried that snow would fall before they learned about funding, they decided to start the work as quickly as possible and trust to their political connections to secure reimbursement later.

The selectmen received a temporary emergency permit to work in the river. The work they spearheaded became controversial almost immediately, however, as it went beyond what many Hawleyites had envisioned.

Concerned citizens, the town conservation commission, the state department of environmental protection, and odds and ends of groups including a conservation organization called Trout Unlimited protested the scope and efficacy of the work. The state eventually issued a stop-work order.

Personalities flared, and two major factions developed in town. One viewed the selectmen as absolute heroes and berated those who had brought “outsiders” in to interfere with town business. The other maintained that the selectmen had vastly, even dangerously, exceeded their mandate. Each group argued that the other was involving the town in potential expense and litigation.

The worst part of it all, from my point of view, was that much of the time neither side could quite bring itself to believe that the other was acting in good faith.

The crisis was exacerbated by the fact that two of our three selectmen were gravely ill and therefore not working at their peak. One, our honored selectboard chair Darwin Clark, died in the middle of March.

Darwin had lived in Hawley all of his life. He attended one of the town’s last one-room schools in his youth and spoke with an accent that was specific to the town. A dairy farmer, he was what my father used to call a “country slicker”—a rural dweller who was razor sharp about local matters.

Unfortunately, Darwin’s illness over the last year meant that the town could not draw on his experience and wisdom very much during the river crisis. It is his seat on the board that Tedd and Lark aspire to fill.

I listened attentively to the candidates Monday night. Both spoke with civility and eloquence. They clearly have different visions of the town’s future.

Tedd talked about his training as a decision maker and pledged to work to lower taxes (an admirable hope but in my opinion a doomed one). He also reminded us of his family’s long-standing ties to Hawley, ties people in town value.

Lark spoke of building consensus, of improving communication among townspeople. He touched on his history of bringing people together at work and in volunteer organizations.

Both candidates come from families with a history of civic involvement. Both have supporters and signs all over our little hamlet.

Lark’s signs are colorful and straightforward. Tedd’s signs are plain but a little catchier in their wording, which mostly refers to his dairy farm. One promises that he will “work for the town until the cows come home.” Another says he “won’t milk the taxpayers dry.” My favorite appears at the bottom of this essay.

Both these men are neighbors so I know that they love Hawley and that they are generous and competent. I don’t agree with both of them all the time. I do think either of them would make a hardworking, likeable selectman. Would that our presidential choice were this difficult!

I plan to vote for Lark Thwing on Election Day next week. I think his flexibility, his desire to include more people in town affairs, and his cautious neutrality on the river issue will stand him (and the town) in good stead if he becomes our selectman.

Nevertheless, I wish I could vote for both candidates. And I hope with all my heart that whoever wins will help us find a way to heal the divisions in our town.

My favorite campaign sign of the season. Eat your hearts out, Barack and Mitt!

Coming Home

I am writing from Massachusetts! The dog, the cat, and I drove up from Virginia on Tuesday.

For the past couple of years I have missed spring in my hometown, mostly because of my mother’s health. Last year, for example, she was sick pretty much nonstop from March until late June. So we stayed in Virginia. We did see Virginia daffodils, but somehow the daffodils of home are always sweeter and yellower.

This year I was determined to take in some of the spring sights and smells in New England. I knew I couldn’t travel north until after last Saturday since I had committed myself to singing in a fundraiser in Virginia.

This is SUPPOSED to be a glamorous photo of me singing. My brother had technical difficulties, however. Next time, we'll pack a better camera--and I'll try to put on more makeup and stand still occasionally while performing.

I hoped that at least some of the Massachusetts daffodils would wait for me. They did!

As I drove through New York into Massachusetts spring greeted me. Leaves were just unfurling onto trees. Forsythia popped out in yards. Daffodils gently nodded in the breeze. To cap it all, the sky was cloudy so the light was almost always filtered, making the colors on the ground appear miraculous.

When I got home I even found violets underfoot.

To tell you the truth, I have mixed feelings about all this spring beauty. Part of me is sad that my mother can’t enjoy it this year. Like me, she cherished the promise of spring’s light green leaves and lawns.

On the other hand, I am HUGELY enjoying my little cat’s reactions to the spring air, the car ride, and her home in Massachusetts.

The start of our journey wasn’t entirely promising. Miss Rhubarb had never been in the car for very long, and she got bored after about an hour and a half. She was also miffed that I was unwilling to let her climb on the dashboard. After lunch, she blessedly decided to lie down next to her dog and nap, which she did for most of the rest of the trip.

When she arrived in Hawley late Tuesday afternoon, she was mesmerized. She had never seen grass up close and immediately decided that it is one of her favorite things. As for the house … after life in an apartment it seems to hold unlimited promise. So many rooms to explore, so many windows to gaze out of, so many piles of things to knock over!

She spent all of Tuesday night and most of yesterday exploring. She would return to me from time to time for food or a session of purring; then she would resume her walkabout.

Last evening she finally found an afghan in which to curl up and rest. She finally slept … and stayed asleep until morning.

Today she is wide awake again, nibbling on the pot of rosemary in the living room and taking in the sunshine through the windows. She makes me smile pretty much nonstop—and I know she would make my mother smile.

Perching in between them mentally, I feel ready to celebrate the season. And I’m even more determined than ever to get lots of work done so that I can afford to keep my lovely home in the country!

Getting ready to sleep at last......

A Letter from My Father

I couldn't find any photographs of my father in 1941, but the ones in this post come pretty close: my mother took them in 1942, when the two were first dating.

Some days I just love the internet. Thanks to that magical web—and to the research and kindness of a woman named Joan Weissman—I recently caught a glimpse of my father in his youth.

Joan is a textile artist who lives in New Mexico. Last week she emailed me out of the blue to ask whether my father had lived on West 108th Street in New York in the early 1940s. She had discovered a letter from an Abe Weisblat living there addressed to her mother and had found my contact information on the internet.

My brother did a little quick research and established that the Abe Weisblat in question was indeed our father. Joan supplied more information.

Her mother, Mata Rubin, was born in Poland but lived in Romania until she was 16. At that point Mata and her family moved to various locations before settling in New York, where she went to high school in the early 1940s.

Joanie (you can tell we’re already friends since I’m calling her Joanie!) told us that her mother hadn’t talked much about her past and had died of cancer in 1970, when her children were teenagers. Their father had kept souvenirs of Mata’s past in a box but had found looking at it painful. Now, after his death, Joan and her two siblings are going through the box and digging up details of their mother’s youth.

“Obviously, there was a lot of trauma,” Joanie wrote, “but from the letters I’m now discovering, she also had wonderful friends during the war years, and many meaningful relationships we knew nothing about.”

Apparently, my father was one of those friends. The letter from Abe to Mata was postmarked in 1941, when Mata was just 18 and Abe was 21. Joan mailed us a copy.

I had a feeling the letter was going to be pretty special when I read Joanie’s original note about it. She wrote that “the most surprising thing [was] that his heartfelt letter from 1941 seems to predict exactly the kind of person he would become, and the work he did. So, when I read his bio, I was sure it was the same Abe Weisblat.”

Here is a segment of the letter. In it my father is describing a trip he has taken to the Mid-Atlantic and New England states (with a brief stopover in Canada). I have corrected Abe’s spelling and punctuation just a little, something he frequently asked my mother or me to do. (He was a wonderful talker but not a polished writer.)

This country, especially in Vermont and New Hampshire, seems to be just as it might have been a hundred years ago. All you see for miles is mountains, green fields, more mountains, more green fields. Imagine going to a place where, when you want to wash in the morning, you have to go down to the lake with some soap—or in the better places, you have a bowl and a pitcher of cold water to wash yourself—a place where there are more cows than people (that’s true in the state of Vermont), where the kids go to the movies in their bare feet—and places where they don’t think at all about the war! They argue they have more important things to think of—their cows and their crops.

I could go on and on, but the point is that here are people that I have been looking for, people not interested in just going further economically, or becoming powerful. They’re poor, but they have enough to eat from their crops, and so they are satisfied with life. They don’t have to worry about hating people. Above all they are real people—people that could not be false. Maybe it’s because they live so near to the soil, and so haven’t been too much affected by our industrial life.

Ye Gads! I’d better stop this raving, before you think I have become completely mad. The point I wish to make is that in your letter you’re afraid that you won’t meet the real people, because they don’t exist. But believe me, Mata, they do. And when you meet them you will realize how wonderful they are, and how we who think we are the smart ones are but empty shells.

In some ways Mata’s letter was written by the man I knew in later years. It foreshadows my father’s career in agricultural economics, a field that wasn’t at all “natural” for a Jewish boy from New York City but that fascinated him all his life. It also demonstrates the enthusiasm and heart he always showed to his family, colleagues, and friends.

And yet … this document is also the letter of a stranger to me, an idealistic youth (with perhaps a slight bent toward socialism?) who displays a touching naivety.

The combination of old and Abe young Abe moved me. We seldom get to see the trajectory of our parents’ lives with clarity. I only knew Abe in his maturity; my parents waited a long time to have children!

It shocked me a little but pleased me greatly to get a glimpse of young Abe … looking out into the landscape of the country and his life with happy expectancy.

I am grateful to Mata for keeping the letter and to Joanie for getting in touch with me. Most of all, I’m grateful to my father for being such a rich role model. I plan to keep on cultivating the traits he exhibited in his letter to Mata—curiosity, optimism, warm heartedness, and enthusiasm.

My father certainly never smoked a pipe when I knew him--so either he smoked the things only briefly or this is a pose. (I lean toward the latter!)

Straightening Myself Out

Busy kittens can make their companions tired.

I don’t know how many of you out there cry on a regular basis. I’m not a frequent crier—and I think by and large I’m doing pretty well adjusting to being an orphan. Nevertheless, every once in a while I involuntarily turn on the waterworks. They came roaring out at about midnight a couple of nights ago.

A contributing cause for my tear fest was my adorable but sometimes maddening three-and-a-half-month-old kitten, Rhubarb. Like many babies of different species, she can’t manage to sleep through the night.

It doesn’t seem to matter what time we go to bed or how much I play with her in the evening before retiring. After three or four hours of shuteye (occasionally five if I’m really lucky!) she transforms herself from sleepy kitten to attack cat, pouncing on Truffle the Dog and me as we attempt to finish our night’s sleep.

If I lock her out of the room, wails of anguish fill the apartment. If I allow her to stay in the room, the mayhem continues until I’m ready to get up in the morning. At that point Ruby quietly curls up for a nap.

I know she will grow up soon. Meanwhile I’m perennially a bit groggy.

The other night I as was getting ready to go to bed I decide to search for the charger for one of my (too) many electronic devices. I ended up in the kitchen—not the neatest room in the house. As I lifted clean laundry to search underneath I managed to hit one of the wine glasses hanging on the rack above the kitchen counter. The small goblet fell to the ground and shattered into myriad pieces.

The broken glass wasn’t one of my late mother’s best—I’d guess that it dated from the 20th century, not the 19th—but it was graceful and attractive, with a curved cranberry cup and a clear stem. Its set was one of the few for which my mother owned twelve matching glasses. My brother and I now have eleven left.

The remaining glasses still hang in the kitchen. (They aren't this messy looking in real life; it's hard to take photos of glass!)

As I swept up the shards—or most of them; I found another just this morning—I berated myself.

I was a terrible daughter, I thought. I couldn’t take care of my mother’s things. I couldn’t even manage to put away my clean laundry—something that would have appalled her. I started crying, and for a little while, despite the dog and cat’s best efforts, I was inconsolable.

I put on my nightgown and washed my face as I cried. As I dripped down onto the bed with the animals around me, I recalled my mother’s attitude toward tears.

An eminently practical woman, she had absolutely no use for weeping. I decided that if she were looking down at me from heaven, she would more upset by the tears than by the broken glass. I have broken things all my life, and thanks to that practical streak she was pretty much resigned to the breakage.

I looked at the walls around me and noted that the pictures were all crooked. Worse than tears in my mother’s opinion were crooked pictures. She spent a lot of time adjusting them on the walls.

I got up off the bed and gently straightened the paintings. The worst offender, a portrait of me when I was 13 by M.F. Husain, looked a lot better when it wasn’t crooked.

Somehow the act of putting it into alignment it made me feel a little straighter myself. The tears subsided, and I went to sleep … at least until Miss R. decided it was time to start playing.

Lessons learned:

1. Action is better than moping.

2. Be useful rather than tearful. (This is really the same as lesson one–blame my kitten-induced fatigue!–but it sounds more positive.)

3. Put away the laundry as soon as you fold it. (This one is taking me a while to learn. A new pile has formed in the kitchen.)

4. DO NOT start search for things when you are tired. (This one I have taken to heart.)

I look--and feel--better when I'm in alignment.

Time and Talent

Here I rehearse for my upcoming Virginia concert with pianist Patty Pulju.

As readers know, I’m spending this year evaluating my career prospects and figuring out how I can (whether I can?) make a happy and lucrative living in the years to come.

Part of this process involves figuring out what I do well. Being me and therefore a bit too introspective for my own good, I’m not just wondering what I do well. I’m also wondering what it means to do something well.

How much of what we are and do is nature? How much is nurture? How much is the perspiration so beloved of Thomas Alva Edison?

My two greatest strengths—the ones that have brought me the most satisfaction in the past—are my writing and my singing.

To an extent I was born with both of these—or at least trained to them. My mother was an excellent writer; my father, an excellent talker. They brought me up in a household that abounded with grammar, editing skills, and imagination (not to mention humor).

My family sang all the time—in the house, in the car, at bedtime. My grandmother considered becoming an opera singer. She serenaded us with a sweet, strong soprano voice she passed along to several of her children and grandchildren.

I recall family song nights around the piano in her house … and in the Play House at my summer home of Singing Brook Farm. There music flowed all around, like the brook that gave the farm its name or the rolling hills that sheltered us like a cradle.

Of course, I pride myself on working at both crafts. I’m a rapid and intuitive writer, but I do spend time planning what I write—and editing it into better form. Likewise, I work at my singing: I rehearse often, recording songs about which I am unsure so I can hear the points at which my voice flags or goes off key.

I also spend time researching the original context in which my songs were written and performed. I don’t want to imitate the original singers, but I do want to understand why they did what they did—and why the composers made the choices they did—as I work on my own interpretations.

Nevertheless, I know that I wouldn’t be doing this work, improving my prose and my voice, if I didn’t have a basic skill set to work with.

So … do I have any right to be proud of what I do? My talent is just … a talent, an innate ability that I may help along but can’t really take credit for. In a sense every day I just borrow my mother’s writing voice and my grandmother’s singing voice.

I find some solace in the OTHER definition of talent—not “natural ability” but (here I quote Merriam-Webster) “any of several ancient units of weight” or “a unit of value equal to the value of a talent of gold or silver.” In other words, talent is not just something we inherit. It’s something we spend.

It’s up to me to use my talent well, to spend my artistic resources wisely and productively. This is a true challenge for me. One of my other natural talents is for spining wheels. I’m apt to waste both money and time.

I hope at the end of this year I will be able to say that I am proud of the ways in which I used my talent.

Readers, what are you proud of? How do you feel about your own talents?