Sep 23, 2011
Here are two poems and a mini-essay on the subject of getting older. I wrote the essay in July. It’s now sufficiently aged, like the finest wines, cheeses, meats and me.
Nursery Rhyme: Numbers
by Lola Haskins
Seven old ladies crochet for the boys,
Six old ladies hear thunder.
Five old ladies afraid of the noise,
Four old ladies go under.
One old lady to pick up the lace,
One old lady is crying.
How cruel to be born with only one face
And to see in the mirror its dying.
in Desire Lines, New and Selected Poems. copyright 2004 Lola Haskins. used by permission
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I’m turning 64 tomorrow and I’m depressed. Oh, not really depressed. Maybe it’s wrong to use the word for my condition, when people I know and love are stalked by clinical depression. But you know how certain birthdays just feel really old? For me it was 8 and 13, 43 and 51. The first two thrilled me. The second two not so much. This one doesn’t thrill me at all. I feel as though I’m running out of time. I feel as though there are a thousand things I once wanted to do, and now I don’t want to, or can’t.
My life is a boring succession of minor aches and pains – ankle, groin, foot, hand. This month my shoulder is unhappy about the way I was sitting at the computer. I’ve been using my husband’s laptop and the chair is too low. Now I’m in for six weeks or so of minor disability, ice, and possibly physical therapy. When did my body get so damn sensitive? It used to do whatever I want; now it complains when I ask it to get up in the morning and make me some coffee.
A friend sent an email of three photos, called Time Passes. Five little girls, six young women, five old women all lined up looking out at the ocean, all shot from behind. The little girls hold hands, wear baggy shorts to their knees, stand so sturdy in the sand. The young women lean over a boardwalk railing, frayed shorts above their buttocks, muscles smooth and luscious. The old women are in bathing suits, bending over, showing six variations of ancient thighs. I never see my legs from behind – it’s quite enough to see them from above, with the six inch scars where my wonderful knee replacements reside.
I’d like to give credit but I can’t find the source
I like the way I look, if I don’t look too close. I like having fluffy white hair. I like the way people in South Africa call me Mama and hurry to help me. At the Origins Museum in Johannesberg I told the young man behind the desk that I had no cell phone to call a taxi. He called his supervisor. After buttering her up with a discussion of some problem he had solved, he asked if she could help him. “I have an elderly lady here with no cell phone and she needs to call a taxi.”
Elderly – that was me. Why does it sound so much older than old? I see a little, trembling, bird-like woman, leaning on a cane. No one could mistake me for a bird, nor do I usually tremble, though I’ve certainly had months with a cane, which I came to love for the stability it gave me after knee surgery, and the candy cane stripes that made children smile.
I was lying in bed, sad and stewing, and finally got up to write this. Of course I felt better after I did. Now it’s morning. I suppose I’m 64 by now, though it’s six hours earlier in Florida, and I was born at 2PM in Argentina – I have no idea what time it is there. I believe in China I would be 65, because they count the time in the womb – or that’s what my father always told us. I will choose to believe it’s already happened, so I can stop dreading it and start getting over it. I’m 64, and Joe is taking me out for a fancy lunch. I can’t possibly count my blessings because I have too many, and I’d probably lose track. Anyway, there’s no time to waste.
I Ran Out Naked in the Sun
by Jane Hirshfield
I ran out naked
in the sun
and who could blame me
who could blame
the day was warm
I ran out naked
in the rain
and who could blame me
who could blame
the storm
I leaned toward sixty
that day almost done
it thundered
then
I wanted more I
shouted More
and who could blame me
who could blame
had been before
could blame me
that I wanted more
in Come,Thief copyright 2011 Jane Hirshfield. used by permission
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Sep 16, 2011
I hadn’t planned to see The Help. Another noble white savior of black victims? No thanks. I’d read two books on the subject of black maids in the South and thought I’d spent enough time on the subject. David Denby’s review in The New Yorker changed my mind. Apparently the film put the black maids front and center, and the acting was terrific.
I heard a professor from the Association of Black Women Historians on NPR, who said that the maids need to tell their own story, and people should read the historical and fictional accounts of domestic workers by black authors. And then a black caller said that she loved the movie This caller said that as they exited the theater, the white audience was crying and the black audience was smiling.
I didn’t grow up in the south, nor with black servants. But I have my own story, about life with our Argentine cook, Elisa. Memory is fiction; fiction can be truth. Much of my memory comes from my parents’ conversations about Elisa, conversations infused with affection and condescension.
My sister Luli and I were born in Argentina, where my father was lawyer for an American communications company whose tentacles reached around the world, fomenting or preventing revolution as its bottom line required. My brothers spent their childhoods in Buenos Aires, but we returned home when I was a baby and Luli a toddler. And my parents, who had not lived in the States for many years, brought with them not one, not two, but THREE servants: Jackie, to nurse my brother who had polio, Theresa the maid, and Elisa the cook.
CHRISTMAS IN LONG ISLAND, 1948. ELISA (THE TALL ONE) AND THERESA, IDENTIFIED ONLY AS “SPANISH MAIDS”
Life in Long Island was dramatically different from life in Argentina. No more hobnobbing with diplomats and government officials in Belgrano, parties at the polo club, weekends in the country. Many of the neighbors had a weekly maid, but no one had live-in servants. Jackie went home to Argentina. After a couple of years Theresa moved to Queens and joined the other South American women who worked as housemaids. But Elisa stayed.
She stayed for 18 years. I grew up in Long Island, Cambridge, and Ann Arbor with my sister, my mother, and Elisa. My father traveled a lot. When he was there he seemed distant and imposing. He looked like Eisenhower, and until I was five I thought he was The President.
I adored my mother, and trailed around after her like a puppy. But Elisa was a close second in my affection. She cuddled and fed me, welcomed me in the kitchen, let me visit in her room in the afternoon, took me with her to Catholic church. My mother was small and thin; my father said with pride, “I always told Marcy I would divorce her if she became fat.” Elisa was tall, stout and solid, with big strong arms.
When I was little I called her Lili, but graduated to Elisa. My parents called her Elisa, and she called them Senora and Senor. She refused to learn English, though I’m certain that she understood every word of it. She was proud, and I think she didn’t want to feel stupid, the way you do when you are learning a language. My parents offered her classes, but she considered herself, as an Argentinian, superior to the other new immigrants.
She was an exceptional cook. I remember her chicken fricasee, her deep dish apple pie. I watched her roll out the ravioli dough and put down spoonfuls of filling made with beef and pork, cover it with a second sheet and press it into squares with a rolling wheel. She stuffed the homemade canneloni with calves brains, prosciutto, and spinach. When I had my first apartment, I asked her how to make meat loaf, and she gave me a stalk of celery, an onion, a green pepper and a few pinches of sage.
My sister and mother were often at odds, and Luli spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Elisa. She herself became a professional cook, but even Luli can’t duplicate the rich, sweet crust on the deep dish apple pie, or the fricasee gravy.
Elisa cooked delicious meals, served them to us at the table, and ate alone in the kitchen. But when my parents went out, we’d have a special treat: frozen pot pies or TV dinners with Elisa. For dessert, we made banana splits.
ELISA JOINED US AT THE TABLE FOR LULI’S WEDDING CAKE.
When I was eighteen, Elisa went back to Argentina. I remember her in a grey suit, with a purple orchid on the lapel, when we took her to the airport to fly to Buenos Aires. She was eligible for Social Security, but there was some rule against non-citizens collecting if they lived abroad. I don’t know how he did it, but Dad spent years in bureaucratic wrangling to get it paid to her. The income made her relatively rich, and she lived comfortably with her niece’s family.
ELISA GOES HOME
When I was twenty, my mother’s breast cancer spread to her bones. Elisa agreed to come back to help. They were living in a three-bedroom apartment in Silver Springs, Maryland. I visited them there, and found a very unhappy trio.
Elisa cooked in the little kitchen, and tended my mother in the bedroom. My father told me with amusement that she strenuously objected to wearing her old uniforms but, “Of course I insisted.” Elisa had left her life in Argentina, where she was an honored matriarch, to help my parents, who had always claimed she was part of our family. She returned as a friend, and they insisted she was a servant. She left after a few months.
I was furious. A child accepts whatever she sees; a teenager sees no one but herself. Now I was old enough to begin trying to imagine Elisa’s life.
She was in her early forties when she came to the States in 1948. In 1957 she went back to Argentina for a year while our family lived in Bolivia. Except for that year, she had no contact with her family except letters.
She had a day off every week, but only occasionally took the train to Queens to visit with friends. Her friends never came to the house. I think she had no lovers. Sometimes she went to church.
In every house we lived in, she had her bedroom, and sometimes a bathroom of her own. She spent her days in the kitchen, and afternoons in her bedroom, listening to the Spanish-language radio and reading “La Prensa.” She watched television with us in the living room; Perry Como was her favorite. My parents bought her a television so she could watch in her room, but she never used it. Occasionally she went to the movies with Luli and me.
She opened presents under the tree with us on Christmas mornings in her maid’s uniform, then made Christmas dinner for a big group of friends and family. After my father carved the turkey, she fixed herself a plate, and ate dinner in the kitchen. She attended family weddings in her Sunday best.
Elisa’s story echoes that of southern black maids in so many ways. She was a wonderful cook and caregiver. She was called one of the family, and reminded of her second-class role at every turn. She demonstrated exceptional loyalty. She knew every family secret, and we never knew hers.
I failed when I was twenty, and I fail now, to understand what it was like for her. I could create a fictional character out of these sparse facts, but I have no confidence it would contain Elisa. My character would enjoy her work and be proud of her skill, but she would be lonely, angry, resentful. If that was Elisa, she hid it remarkably well for the eighteen years I knew her.
LIZ, ELISA, LULI
My stepdaughter, majoring in African American studies at Oberlin, denied that Elisa could have loved me. But Elisa was cut off from her family, had no children of her own, never married. She was not like the black maids who “lived out.” She had no children whom she must neglect to take care of us, no home other than the one we shared. Not just because she was so important in my life, but for her sake, I hope she did love me and my sister.
My mother died when I was 24; Elisa died two years later. She would have been in her 70’s. After long neglect, I was just getting ready to send her a picture of me and my son. Her death left me with grief and guilt.
So what did I think of the movie? The two black maids, Minnie and Abilene, were full, breathing women, with a chorus behind them of sympathetic victims. Their white employers, Hilly and Celia, were respectively bully and bullied, with a chorus behind them of paper doll Barbies. Abilene’s crude revenge was perilous and implausible, and diminished her. The movie was like a full painting and a pencil sketch glued together. If you’re looking for insight as well as entertainment, I’d recommend the books listed by the African American history professors, or one of those below.
New Yorker review
ABWH Open Statement
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (book)
Telling Memories Among Southern Women (book)
Sep 9, 2011
I’ve found another hero – Richard Simmons. Because of him, I have exercise in my life again, and I love it.
I used to walk several miles every day, swim a few times a week. I liked to dance and hike. I even backpacked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back. For several years, before and after my knee replacements, I worked out on machines at the gym.
When Amanda came to live with us, it all fell apart for a while. She was everywhere and all the time. Once she settled in, though, I was ready to exercise again. After our morning bike ride to school, I would write and then go to the gym. But everything interfered or tempted me – a novel to read, errands to run, a nap, a lunch date.
I needed exercise I could do at home. At the library the only exercise video I could find was for pregnant women. At 63 and out of shape, I figured it would be about my speed. It was OK, though the music was faint in the background, the instructor was bland and pious, and her constant admonitions – breathe for your precious baby, this is the most wonderful time of your life – were irrelevant and faintly irritating.
So I went on line and found Richard Simmon’s Sweating to the Oldies series, and bought all four. I had never seen him, except briefly in ads. He didn’t appeal to me: I thought he was just another sanctimonious self-help guru. I was wrong. He is a man full of laughter, happy to be totally ridiculous in the name of health.
The music is my age: Peggy Sue, Dancin’ in the Street, Twist Again. The routines are a great workout. They are low impact, and use a lot of arm action to keep the heart rate up. Each disc presents a different scene: a prom with a band, a party in a diner, an amusement park called ‘Sweatinland.’ Disc Four is a sock hop but for some reason begins with a black gospel choir in robes parading in and singing Shout.
His dancers are many races, young and middle-aged, most of them overweight. They dance and sweat behind him for 50 minutes, smiling, laughing, flirting, singing along. It really does feel like a party.
Some mornings I throw my whole self into it. Some mornings I move as if I were under water. Sometimes I dance six numbers and then skip to the cool down section, other times I do the whole tape. I usually dance in a tshirt and underpants and orthopedic shoes – no one sees me but my husband, and he deserves a laugh.
Richard Simmons is happy, kind, and encouraging. Every once in a while he slips in an earnest pep talk, and you can’t help but feel he cares about you. But best of all, he is thoroughly silly.
Instead of the standard drab warning that it is a federal offense to copy the discs, he and some hulking police officers raid a warehouse. They find about 75,000 pirated discs, and a surprising perpetrator. Richard camps it up, totally over the top, and I’m convinced it is his real mother in the co-star role.
When the band begins He’s A Rebel, a couple rides a huge motor cycle on to the set. The tarty blonde gets off, gives the man an extravagant smooch, and then lip synchs the song while Richard Simmons flirts outrageously with her, dancing all the while. It’s My Party is an energetic pantomime, complete with crying.
At the end of each disc, the dancers form two lines and applaud each other as they boogie one at a time down the middle. For some the screen shows how much weight they have lost; the numbers are impressive. They say Richard Simmons has helped millions of people to exercise and enjoy themselves. Now it’s millions plus one. Bless him.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
THE GOOD NEW DAYS
click
Sep 2, 2011
Imagine a child who is regularly beaten with a hose.
Imagine a child who is locked in an apartment alone all afternoon.
Imagine a child whose last meal was rice for supper, a child who has not seen her mother in a year, who never met his father, who saw her brother shot, who goes outside and fights all the other beaten children.
Imagine a boy or girl who is all these children.
Then imagine that you are a teacher, and three or four of your eighteen students are these children. They hide under tables, they knock over desks, they curl into sad balls in the corner. They scream and swear and cry, bite and punch and kick.
You handle their behavior and its effect on all the others, and you teach most of the children to behave themselves in the classroom, to read, write and do simple arithmetic. You spend hours of classroom time testing and testing and testing them. You adopt curriculum changes nobody consulted you about. On weekends you grade papers, fill out forms, write reports.
Your reward? You are blamed for all the problems in the schools. Your salary is tied to the academic success of all the children. You are told there is no money for glue, paper, and scissors, so you send home weekly newsletters that half the parents don’t read, and beg for donated supplies. When you don’t get them, you buy them yourself. Every year you are fired in April, and probably re-hired in July, depending on the budget. You hear people joke that those who can’t do, teach.
Imagine if it were otherwise. No merit pay based on week-long tests of little children. No special awards for Best Teacher, but good teachers rewarded for helping those who struggle, and irredeemably bad teachers dismissed. Teachers paid as well as the lawyers in the legislature who think they are experts in education, and come up with new policies, new curricula, new standards every few years.
I bought Amanda’s teacher a button that says “Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, make laws about teaching.” I guess that says it all.
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(Note: The children described above are not Amanda. I have volunteered at her school for three years, and I've seen and heard a lot.)
Aug 26, 2011
IRIS
School started Monday, and Iris came over last weekend to help Amanda organize her room. Iris is a champion organizer. She even has labels in the refrigerator.
Amanda’s room was my despair, though she is a top-notch tidier, and if I don’t ask her she does it on her own every few days, quickly whisking everything to its place. But there were too many things, and not enough places. Broken toys, single earrings, dead balloons, pieces of plastic and cardboard with no known provenance, and everything she had brought home from kindergarten through second grade. All of it in higgledy piggledy piles: on the dresser, on the bookcase, in the corners. Piles on the desk so the flip top couldn’t be opened, piles on the night stand imperiling the nightly glass of water.
But even though I hate the mess, I am torn. When I was a child the rule was: no food in your room, and keep the door closed. So part of me says it’s Amanda’s room, not mine. Another part says it’s my job to teach her how to keep control over the mountains of things that invade our space. And a third part wants her to be what I am not. I am a lifelong slob with organizing tendencies. I live surrounded by clutter, but I love to spend a morning tidying, and I long for bare, beautiful rooms.
MY CLUTTER
My internal conflict about Amanda’s autonomy is part of the challenge of being her mother. Her favorite phrases are “I can do it,” “I don’t need help,” “Leave me alone.” I’m never sure whether I should guide, instruct, require, or leave it up to her. Lazy (let her do whatever and however she wants) is as bad as authoritarian (you’ll do it my way, right now). It’s finding the crooked path between that is hard for me.
I encourage independence as much as I can. When we do the laundry together I help her sort and put away, but she loads and runs the machines while I watch. She makes Sunday morning pancakes all by herself while I set the kitchen table and keep an eye out for danger. She climbs the ladder and cleans the muck from the gutters under Joe’s supervision. It’s a treat to see her gain competence and confidence.
At the same time, I often do know what’s best. She has plenty yet to learn, and sometimes she has to let me teach it. So I decided she would begin the school year with a desk she can work at, books and supplies she can find, and a closet where her clothes don’t disappear. But I knew we would tussle if I tried to help, and I proposed that we ask Iris.
Iris has known Amanda since before she was born – she was at the baby shower for Amanda’s mother, and gave a women's welcome party when Amanda first came to live with us. She was happy to help. Her own grown daughter, temporarily living with her, won’t let Iris touch her room.
Amanda would have resisted me at every turn, but she worked happily with Iris.
They spent four hours organizing – sorting, boxing, even discarding. Amanda scrubbed all the surfaces before they put everything away.
Like anyone cleaning out a room, Amanda lingered over things – old toys, old letters, old photos. I would have been in my juggernaut mode: don’t dawdle, we have a job to do. Iris let her talk about the memories that caught her. Amanda wouldn’t give away anything, but by the time they were through, the biggest bin was full of dolls, stuffed animals, and toddler toys.
I did a few little things as follow-up – moved winter clothes to a storage box on the top shelf of her closet, threw out the trash bag, moved the shoe rack into a corner. I’m going to buy one more big bookcase to take care of the tidy piles still left to put away, and a label-maker. Amanda resisted this until I told her it was Iris’ suggestion. Then she agreed I could buy them, but I wasn’t to touch her stuff. She and Iris would finish the job
Even with some work left to do, the room looks wonderful. I can breathe in it again. I am so grateful to Iris for doing this, and even more grateful for her role in Amanda’s life. I’ll always be Amanda’s grandma, but now I’m her mother too, dispenser of rules, routines and requirements. She needs women who can delight in her without trying to fix her. Iris is one of these women, and Amanda loves her.
Aug 19, 2011
My father once said he really liked being important and hanging out with important people. I replied, “I don’t. The only thing I hate worse than kissing ass is having my ass kissed.” (My father brought out the worst in me.)
Emily Dickinson said it much better:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!-
How public – like a Frog -
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog.
click
I can’t stand show offs. Raconteurs annoy me. Some men in my family indulge in monologues – I once clocked my father at 32 minutes without a break. In law and academia people tend to hold forth. When you combine these into a law professor, watch out! I worked 23 years at a law school; I was surrounded by bloviators.
I have always felt my opinion is not called for on every subject. Better to hold your tongue and be thought a fool than speak your mind and confirm it. If you use your ears more than your mouth, you learn a lot. My mother taught, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” But underneath this quiet, discreet exterior is the little girl saying, ‘Look at me, look at me.’ Deeper down is my yearning for everyone to like me, and my astonishment when someone doesn’t. And surrounding it all is a completely distorted self-image.
For instance, I consider myself tactful and well-behaved. My friends are astonished when I reveal that. Apparently what I am is extremely blunt. It’s true I sometimes say what no one else will, but I never get credit for all the times I hold my tongue.
When I worked at the law school, I often gave speeches at conferences or to community groups. I enjoyed giving the speeches, a nice mix of information and advocacy. I was usually preaching to the choir, and I liked the audiences’ responsiveness, the admiring cluster of people coming up afterwards to agree with me. After the talk, though, when I was alone, I quickly descended into self-loathing. What a know-it-all. Who gives a shit what I think.
When I discussed this with my sister Luli, she sent me a cartoon captioned, “Lizzy receives the Nobel Prize for peace, literature, and general wonderfulness.” It was a picture of me with a brown paper bag over my head, muttering, “Pond scum, I’m pond scum.” As you can see, she has a sharp wit, a skilled pencil, and an exaggerated view of the marvelousness of me.
click click
So why would I decide to write a blog, to throw my opinions out into the world for anyone to read? Clearly, Ms Lookatme is in charge. But more than that, with the complexities of raising Amanda, the writer I had struggled to create after retirement was expiring. She needed time and attention. Like Tinkerbell, she needed to hear me say, “I believe in you.”
It’s been well over a year since Amanda came to live with us, but I’m not yet ready to pick up my novel. This blog helps me keep the writing going as I adjust to motherhood. And I’m finding unexpected advantages in writing it.
Like many writers, I struggle for self-discipline. If you’re a teacher, you have to show up every day, ready or not. If you’re a baker, you have to provide the daily bread. A mother’s work stands in front of her, insistent, a dozen times a day. But the world is not waiting for my writing. No eager audience is clamoring to hear from me. I’m the only one who cares whether I do it or not.
When I was working on novels, I could always find an excuse not to write. A novel takes at least a year just for the first draft. What does it matter if I skip a few days? I can always justify it with the idea that the whole thing is simmering inside. But if I’m writing mini-essays, I can’t pretend I have weeks for them. They’re not worth weeks. And they’re a manageable size. I can dump all my thoughts on the page in a morning or two, and then tidy them up.
Habit is taking over; each day I write makes it easier the next. I remember reading an essay years ago in which a writer said that every day you don’t write, you’re not a writer. This strikes me as both neurotic and male. Every woman writer knows that family will interfere. So I’m pleased to be writing almost every day.
And of course there is the practice – whatever you write, you are practicing your skills – the right word, rhythm, fluency of thought, editing. The passive voice, present participles, cliches all raise red flags. Oops, there’s one now.
I didn’t anticipate how much I would learn about myself. In my diary, my counselor and comfort in the darkest times, I usually simply ramble until I understand what’s troubling me. In these mini-essays I choose a subject and find out what I think about it.
I’ve written and edited seven of these, and have a dozen topics waiting. I wanted to have a store of them, to avoid the paralysis that might come if I faced a deadline and an empty page. (I’ve never been a journalist.) I also wanted an assignment to keep me occupied during our extended stay in South Africa. Six weeks is too long to be a tourist, too short to make a life.
The private me is still uncomfortable with the whole idea. Silence creates a peculiar power, a promise of deep water beneath the surface. Maybe the voice of the duckweed is a shrill quack, and underneath is just muck. But even Emily Dickinson wrote her letter to the world. Do you suppose she would have pulled her poems out of the drawer and put them on the Internet?
Frog in duckweed. Copyright 2000 Narciso Jaramillo, used by permission. click
