Category Archives: Friends

Drive, Hives & Still Alive: Everyday Magic, Day 689

Posted on March 26, 2013 | Comments Off
Snow drifts on the drive were twice this high

Snow drifts on the drive were twice this high

That was yesterday, which included getting the van stuck in dog-high snow drifts, a doctor’s visit for stress-related hives, and narrowly escaping a speeding bullet of a car. It was also the Passover Express, the day to get everything set up for the big night of liberation at our annual no-holds-barred sedar.

In the beginning, there was snow. Despite only about 5-6 inches of the stuff in town, just five miles south, where we live, there was a foot, some of which melted and re-froze. Because I needed a big vehicle to pick up rental tables and chairs for Passover, which had been wisely (thanks to Ken telling me, “No, no, no, no, no!” about having people attempt to make it up our long and twisting snow-packed drive), I got in the van. Going forward and uphill didn’t work out so well, and going backwards led to inertia too. I pulled the snow shovel out of the van and went to work, freeing myself enough to go further down the drive, only to have it do it again. Within 40 minutes, I was exhausted and stuck in snow drifts. Rocking the car back and forth might work, but I was also on the edge of drifting off the driveway and down the hill. So I got out and walked to my mother-in-law’s home and borrowed the farm pick-up truck.

Rental place dog rug

Rental place dog rug

The snow sensation made me late for the doctor, and lateness translated into a very long wait. After round three of hives, I sensed it was time to go beyond deep breathing, antihestamine, and watching comedies about asteroids destroying the earth. It was time for steroids, which I now have and which make me feel capable of cleaning every closet in the house. I’m easily resisting though.

After the doctor, the rental place, where I once again climbed over the massive rug of sleeping dogs, rented my usual amount of tables and chairs for Passover, and then headed toward Rick and Amy’s to turn their living room-dining room into sedar central. Telling myself to relax — I was on Prednisone, Ken would DSCN1055come home early to dislodge the van from the snow, all would be right in the world — while crossing 6th street, a speeding white car soared toward me. Thanks to quicker reflexes than usual (thanks, steroids), I slammed the brakes and avoided that car impacting the driver’s side of the truck. The driver, a woman maybe a decade or two older, froze in the middle of the intersection when she realized she had run a red light.

“You’re still alive!” Rick told me as we unloaded the chairs. Still alive, a little itchy and sore, but I was also very awake. Which may relate in some way to the theme of Passover, or not.

Aafter Ken saved the van and bladed the drive so that now it’s just a big mush of mud and snow, we had a wonderful sedar. We sang loudly, banged the table with panache, marveled over the matzo balls and the very intense flourless chocolate cake, and laughed so hard it hurt. Everything shone in the light of the candles, many glasses of so-bad-it’s-good wine, our new and old friends, and the gleam of the mashed potatoes topping the shepherd’s pie. I felt gratitude and even some liberation, the daily kind all too evident yesterday.

I hope today isn’t nearly so exciting.

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Posted in Friends, Health, Home Making, Weather

A New Place, An Old City & Some Sweet Rewards in Tennessee: Everyday Magic, Day 683

Posted on March 15, 2013 | Comments Off

This evening, we wandered downtown Knoxville, home to our son Daniel, but a brand new city to me. I was instantly enamored with the old buildings packing surprising archways and hand-carved doors, and bDSCN0945etween them, slim alleyways where coal used to be stored for warming homes long morphed into warehouses, office space and swanky loft apartments. Although I was running on the fumes of only five hours’ sleep (nothing like pre-trip excitement to catalyst insomnia) and too much coffee, the cure was within reach: each step landing in this new place, cold air on my face, the approaching corner where I would turn toward a view I’ve never seen before.

There’s a lot about Knoxville that sings out to me in the familiar tune of east coast city: the age of the buildings; the spidery ways streets are laid out, some wide boulevards and others intersecting at close quarters; the sense of time aged and changed as this city reinvented itself again and again. Living near Kansas City, which to me always signifies the beginning of the west (and

DSCN0947

Erica and me below a sign that says “Chocolate Gelato.”

western cities), and coming from a very old eastern city, I feel a kinship to places where the buildings speak the language of my origins.

The rewards were more than sweet. Besides the glimpses of this place — a tiny cabin on top of a tall building, the shadow where a torch used to hang although the carved candle still hangs -I got to see more of my son’s life, hang out with his delightful new friend, and eat outrageously good food. Fried green tomatoes? Yes, and truth to be told, a few of these delicacies of the great beyond both at lunch and dinner. Freshly-madeDSCN0939 biscuit? Oh. My. God. With homemade blueberry jam. Pickled okra. Some kind of fried, sauced, smothered and amazingly still light chicken too. Sometimes there are amazing awards for waking up too early and getting flung through space at 30,000 feet until you can land in a brand new place.

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Missing Hadassah: Everyday Magic, Day 681

Posted on February 28, 2013 | 2 Comments

Two weeks ago, I got the call from Hadassah’s son: she only had a few hours left, and since she gave me her funeral wishes, could I send those now? I was in Vermont, in the middle of a residency, right between the opening reception in a warmly-lit cottage of a room and a film I was about to see. I forgot about the film and ran to my computer to send the information they needed, crying a little, stunned a lot.

Hadassah has been my friend for 30 years, both of us arriving in Lawrence around the same time, she for graduate school and me for love. We met at International Folkdancing, and although she was from Leeds, England, by way of many years living in Israel, and I was from New Jersey and Brooklyn, we spoke the same language: no holds barred, fast and direct. We understood each other instantly, and joined together in slow, mournful Israeli dances such as “Mana Vu” or fast, twirling ones, such as “Haroa Haktana.”

Years ran or moseyed by. We talked quick and happy whenever we saw each other, but it wasn’t very often. Hadassah was wild-busy in her passionate work as a speech pathologist, who did particularly powerful work with children. She could lure an autistic kid into words and help his/her parents keep the language flowing. I was busy with popping out babies, going graduate school work, doing dishes badly, writing and working. I saw her occasionally at folkdancing, the Jewish center for holidays or when she read the names of the dead with Ron each Yom Kippur. We always hugged, said it had been too long, and we should see each other more.

Seeing each other more came to pass when she was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer this summer. Because Ken is an occupational therapist who runs a wheelchair clinic, and is able to build a wheelchair on a dime (literally) and position people for comfort and mobility, we were called in early to help. Hadassah’s daughter Merav and brand new granddaughter also were welcoming, and we spent time with them in early autumn, me holding the baby while Ken adjusted the wheelchair he had built for her. There was an excited run to the hospital one night, me hauling our big labaraner and the wheelchair in my van along with the baby and Merav to get the wheelchair to Hadassah in the hospital. Merav and I joked about what order was best for unloading things without letting the dog out, and that evening, I walked in the pale dusk of the parking lot, rocking the baby, singing to her and telling her about her grandmother while everyone else was with Hadassah.

Hadassah got better, a long (but not long enough) reprieve, and we lost contact for a while, mostly because of my travel, and run of sinus infections I didn’t want to share with the family. When she started to struggle again, we were there. “We’re the opposite of fair-weather friends,” I told her. She said she didn’t care, and she herself was a foul-weather friend and appreciated others who were. Besides needing Ken to occasionally help her with positioning, she was interested in having me type up some of her life story, which was one of the most fascinating ones I began to hear.

The last time I saw her, she decided her life wasn’t a narrative but a collection of songs, each other unfolding a moment of vitality and adventure. She also went over with me again the plans for her funeral I was to co-lead her with our friend Jack. Yet she also thought she might have a year or more left and had already worked out, in detail, arrangements. I felt a gut punch that it wouldn’t be that long as I hugged and kissed her goodbye, told her again that I loved her. “I love you too” were the last words she said to me.

Four days later, she had a stroke, and Hadassah, who never did anything half-way, didn’t linger. She stayed alive until all three of her beloved children were around her, and for some hours, Ken also, who went over there to adjust her positioning so as to lessen the pain. I heard in his voice, as he stepped away from her bed to call me back late that night, the sorrow that she was dying. Early Friday morning, she stopped breathing. The funeral, held a few days later, was beautiful, according to Ken and others who told me about it. I sent a poem, which Ken read at the service and wished like crazy I could be there.

Now that I’m back in Kansas, taking in the vast white sky and snow-clung fields, it’s starting to land in me. Hadassah is gone. I looked through a bundle of photo albums for a photo of her, sure I had one somewhere of her at her wedding in 1985. She was wearing a brown corduroy blazer, a skirt, brown boots, and she was half-turned around, laughing. While I couldn’t find the photo, I find pictures of her in my mind, all of them so alive. I’m grateful to be part of the end of that life, but I also miss my old friend.

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Last Morning of the Year: Everyday Magic, Day 665

Posted on December 31, 2012 | 1 Comment

1231121026The snow falls steadily. The dog races out the backdoor, we realize a moment too late, to chase the coyote into the woods. The birds funnel out all directions from the feeder. The fire hums along in the pellet stove while Daniel sits at the counter, playing a computer game and his siblings sleep down the hall.

It’s the last morning of 2012, a year that doesn’t translate for me easily into a phrase or two. It was hotter than hell. The drought did and continues to do extensive damage. A dear friend, and subject of one of my books, died in January. The presidential race was a panoramic whirl of soundbites, attacks, humor, despair and many daily visits to fivethirtyeight. I traveled by foot, plane, cruise ship and car, sometimes on my own, sometimes with friends, and often with family to the northern shore of Minnesota to stare at Lake Superior, across the Gulf of Mexico to watch the ocean gleaming in late afternoon, through long trails in the fern-feathered woods of Vermont in between meeting students and faculty at Goddard College, and down roads revisited after 30 years to give readings. Books that came out this year reunited me with old friends, and brought me new ones — my youth group advisor I hadn’t seen since the late 70s, students past and present, the daughter of one of the people I wrote about, a spirited commander at Walter Reed, a friend from high school and college, an old roommate from my University of Missouri days, and a woman who mentored me in the early 80s in grassroots organizing. The road repeatedly led me home.

Our family and home got a little older, settling into what unfolded. Daniel moved to Knoxville for Americorps, Natalie crossed over into her senior year at McNally Smith where she studies singing while balancing many jobs and gigs with her band, and Forest and I began pumping iron at the local gym with our respective trainers while he settled into his final year of high school. Ken burned prairie, commuted another year to Topeka to work with people living with severe developmental disabilities, and wrote a lot of columns and updates about the seasons and cycles. A rambunctious and loving big brown dog came to our front door in February like he always lived here, and soon he did. The kitty slipped outside a few times only to roll around on the sidewalk until we gathered her back in. Our very old labmation persisted, and even yesterday, amazed us by 1231121027walking with Daniel and Shay all over the hill. We saw a lot of movies, ate the wonderful lentil soup at Aladdin’s often, and washed dishes, windows, laundry and floors, only to track in mud and heat up leftovers again. We filled the bird feeder in the morning only to find it empty by night fall. I painted the bathrooms and cleaned the basement. Our gardens withered.

Now one ending eases into another beginning. When I was younger, my wishlist was long and varied. Now it comes down to the simple wish for health and safety for all I know and love, all I don’t know and love also. Health and safety are really about life: being here, being able to take in the gifts given to our eyes at each moment, like right now as the snow clings, one flake to another, on the deck ledge up close and the cedars across the grass the dog passes on his way back to us.

Wishing everyone deepest blessings and brightest joys for 2013.

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Posted in change, Community, family, Friends, Health, Travel

The Morning After the Party: Everyday Magic, Day 664

Posted on December 30, 2012 | 1 Comment

1230121058Let’s just say the first party was a sparkling cider with a dash of white wine and a big paper plate full of latkes kind of affair. The second party was pomegranate vodka all the way. In either case, now is the morning after, and those of us who just indulged in the first party, which started about 5 p.m. and was over by 9 p.m., are wide-eyed and bushy-tailed (as my husband’s grandpa used to say). Those of us who indulged in both, e.g. my young adultish children, are fast asleep in their beds.

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Mariah, worn out by sleeping through the parties

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Shay, worn out by not sleeping through the parties

The morning after the party has always been a time of curious calm and delight for me in the quiet of who’s still sleeping. As a child, I loved rushing downstairs after my parents’ parties in our narrow Brooklyn triplex, aiming myself with great speed toward the silver bowl of leftover Wise potato chips and small dishes of M&M remnants. It was lovely to sit on the plastic-covered couch, eating the dregs, and imagining what the adults talked about, which I knew induced explosions of laughter, usually after my dad told a joke I was forbidden from hearing.

I was kind of a loner as a child, and not by choice. My intensity tended to drive off the other kids, and bursting into renditions of Barbra Streisand’s “People Who Need People” in the school yard didn’t exactly win me friends. So parties seemed especially magical to me, mystic explorations of joy on steroids in my book. I told myself as a kid sitting on that couch that one day I would become an adult and throw parties. I would be the one pouring potato chips into bowls and putting out bottles of seltzer and chocolate milkDSCN0256 so we could make our own egg creams.

It’s all come to pass, even the egg creams one year. Our annual Hanukkah, and on inauguration years for Obama, Obamakkah party, has overflowed my childhood cup of wishes decades ago. I’ve also learned, for the most part, not to let the party planning or prepping wear me out too much, a lesson tested yesterday when Ken and Daniel were out burning the prairie (for planting of prairie flowers into the tall grass) while Natalie, Forest and I were cleaDSCN0263ning the house. There were a few challenging moments — such as when Ken called us to say, “Get out here to help now. The fire is heading toward the house” and later, when I was scrubbing the bathroom floor only to have a neighbor call to say he had my puppy dog — but all in all, I felt happy, peaceful and grateful when our friends began arriving.DSCN0276
Now it’s the day past, the food processor (the new one) ready to go into hibernation for a while, and all is shining. I have muffins in the oven and coffee ready for those-who-must-not-be-disturbed (who surely will wake before mid-afternoon). The fire burns brightly in the pellet stove. The dogs snore lightly.

The party’s over, and all is well.

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In 20 Years, We’ll Remember This Dinner As So Wonderful & Other Truths: Everyday Magic, Day 652

Posted on November 24, 2012 | 2 Comments

It was the spur of the moment. It was bound to happen. It was unexpected too, involving the Bizarre Bazaar, a sudden cold front and a lot of cell phones. Mostly, it was spurred by the perfect storm of dinner time, proximity, the hunger for hummus and the love between various friends. But whatever made it happen, the result was 13 of us, most of who had known each other for 30 years or more (“before you were even born!” could be a common refrain) ending up at one table at Aladdin’s. We had run into each other at the Bizarre Bazaar, the annual art and gift show involving exactly what you might imagine.

After we got our annual divine oddity — an altar for life/death/rebirth that involved whirling dervishes and sun gods — we ran into batches of great friends. Things coalesced while marveling at beautiful pins of 1940′s bathing beauties or over sparkly things that could adorn tables or earlobes. By 7, we were all in the back of the restaurant, putting tables together and waiting for other diners to finish so we could fetch their chairs.

“In 20s years, we’ll remember this dinner as so wonderful,” I told my friends and kids as we talked about what else we’d remember: that however badly we thought we looked now, we would think we were damn good-looking at this from the vantage point of 2032. That we might not remember any of this at all. That we loved overhear the conversations of the kids (aka, the ones in their late teens and 20s), who grew up together, all ended up sharing falafel and fast-paced stories of working at google or kissing the wrong guys. That we could lightly reference stories from decades before about each other that sent us all into blasts of laughter. That we laughed hard also over who grew up tethered to a clothesline and who had to get married in jail. That we were too full for dessert and too happy to leave the table after the bills were paid.

In the end, we set out our different directions, this particular confluence about to fly apart toward New York City, Lecompton, South of the Wakarusa, Knoxville (as in Tennessee), St. Paul, and North Lawrence. A magical dinner lit into full warmth with just a spark, and even afterwards, its warmth traveling through miles and years with us.

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A Wedding Shower, a Funeral, a Newborn, a Dying Friend & a Little Cold: Everyday Magic, Day 628

Posted on September 25, 2012 | 1 Comment

The Days of Awe have been more than awe-inspiring this year, thanks to a confluence of life’s essence. In the last week, we’ve poured our attention into rites of passage and signs of life.

Several days, we’ve been with an old friend facing a sudden diagnosis of late stage cancer, her daughter, and her spanking new grand daughter, who I got to hold and rock while Ken transported our friend’s wheelchair to the hospital room. Pacing with the baby, just six or so weeks old, in the hospital waiting room and outside by the fountain, I found myself slipping seamlessly into sway-walking and singing, the only diversion up my sleeve to distract her from turning her head to nurse. She watched me with bright eyes, and a few times, smiled and squinted as if she were trying to laugh. I kept singing her name to her, remembering how much I love holding newborns.

Within a few days, I was wearing what I’ve come to know as a “fascinator,” an

The bride, Rachel, front row, wears a white fascinator beside her mother in a cream-colored one.

elegant hat, at a high tea wedding shower. Snacking on little sandwiches with the edges cut off, I visited with the bride-to-be and her mother, both friends, and shared praise with others there for how good we all looked in our fascinators. We gushes over the plushness of the towels someone gave as a gift, laughed during a memory game, and drank something called a “blushing bride.” Afterwards, I kept my fascinator on while picking up bananas at Target and then something at an auto parts store. I think I may have to don such hats regularly.

The next day, Ken and I went to the funeral of a dear man who is part of our Jewish community. The funeral was packed, the stories family and friends shared immensely beautiful, funny and tender. Off to Bani Israel, the Jewish cemetery (founded in the 1850s), we first wandered with others in the community to place small stones on the tombstones of old friends long gone, and then gathered for the short service and burial. As per our tradition, we all took a turn dropping a shovel-full of dirt onto the casket, the sound of which always breaks my heart open (others tell me it does the same for them). I was moved by the love of the family and the community, and by the time afterwards, sharing stories of friends buried there as well as the graves of children and adults from the 1800s.

Today, I sit in my chair and watch Cottonwood Mel move slightly in the breeze. Bees buzz around the hummingbird feeders hanging from the trees, and the animals sleep all around me while I entertain a cold. Yet given all the perspective the Days of Awe have shown me, what does it matter to be under the weather when the tender and curious weather of community fills my life?

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In Praise of Five Great Dads: Everyday Magic, Day 587

Posted on June 17, 2012 | 2 Comments

Each Father’s Day, I look at my friends’ pictures of their “best ever” dads on facebook and in blogs. While I love and miss my own father, who died in 2003, it would be so far beyond ludicrous to call him a good father that if I got anywhere near that territory, my siblings would respond, “WTF, Caryn?” (excuse the F-word — we grew up in New Jersey where there were stiff penalties for not using it regularly). Yet I have witnessed and continue to delight in best-ever dads all around me, so this post is for them:

  • My Step-Father Henry: Henry was a sterling example of letting love lead the way. A relatively quiet man who found himself in the middle of our opposite-of-quiet (and prone to bursting out into musical numbers) family, he brought all of us peace, love and understanding. Once, during a horrific fight with my sister, after which she ran to her room and I ran outside, Henry steadily aimed himself to support all sides, comforting her, and then finding me, sitting on a curb across the street. He made me feel welcome, reminded me this, too, would pass, and invited me back in the house. Years later at a Thanksgiving in Orlando at my other sister’s house, Henry gave our whole family a beautiful Thanksgiving card, thanking him for welcoming him with so much love into our family even though he brought a trunk-load of that love with him. He was a wonderful husband/companion to my mother for more than two decades, and we all miss him fiercely.
  • My Father-in-Law Gene: If it’s true that you can measure your luck in a husband by his father, I hit the jackpot. My father-in-law was simply one of the kindest people on the planet. Not only did he accept me as one of his own way back when, but he went out of his way to make my life (and the lives of everyone he knew as well as had barely met) better. He had a key to our house, so it became commonplace for me to come home, dragging toddlers and balancing shopping bags, to find a perfect vase of red roses on the kitchen table. “I knew my n0-good son wouldn’t get you roses, and they were on sale,” he joked with me later. He also got my mother-in-law red roses. He was our go-to source when our babies needed serious rocking and holding, and like all the Lassman men, he embraced all aspects of caring for kids, from birth on up (yes, he even changed diapers). He went out of his way to make the days of grocery store checkers, neighbors, and family better. We’ll miss him all our lives.
  • My Brother Barry: Some men are born to be dads, and that’s the calling of Barry. Father to two teens, he has been completely devoted to his kids for every breath they’ve taken. He encourages, supports, listens to, talks with, cheers on and stays completely present with his children. Lately, he’s been taking lots of photographs to document their soccer careers, but having seen him with his kids at many family gatherings, I know he’s equally there for them in all other aspects of their lives. Taking after my mother’s loving nature, Barry shows his son how to be a man of integrity, strength and love, and his daughter that she’s deeply loved by such a man and should never settle for less.
  • My Friend Lou: Several weeks ago at Lou’s memorial service, each of his sons and most of his grandchildren spoke of how family was at the center of his life. His best revenge against the Holocaust (that took all in his extended family except his brother) was to live a life of meaning, compassion, activism and love. During the years I interviewed him for the book I wrote about him and Jarek, he turned ecstatic whenever discussing anyone in his family. No surprise that everyone in his family, and just about everyone who met him, adored him.
  • My Husband Ken: Ken was also born to be a father, and from the day Daniel was born through the present, he’s completely present in the lives of our children. Natalie has wrapped herself against him all her life while watching movies, Forest runs up to Ken with sports scores to discuss nuances of teams far from here, and Daniel asks Ken for advice on challenging social situations. Ken can talk to our kids about just about anything, but he’s also phenomenal at just hanging out with them, making our home a refuge for each as they navigate the wilds of becoming adults. His fathering makes me a better mother, and I’m blessed to have done this crazy-baby-life-goes-to-hell thing with him, so Happy Fathers Day, Ken!

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads past, present and future out there.

Pictures (from top): Henry, Gene and a sleeping Daniel, Barry with Daniel, Lou and his grandchildren, Ken with Natalie and Daniel

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For the Love of Lou: Lou Frydman’s Memorial Service: Everyday Magic, Day 560

Posted on June 4, 2012 | Comments Off

Rick, Tess and Hannah singing “Sunrise, Sunset” to open the celebration

Today was the memorial service for Lou Frydman, my friend who I wrote about in a forthcoming book. The service was intensely moving with singing, poetry, stories and letters — even a remembrance with stage directions — shared from Lou’s children, grandchildren, brother-in-law, friends, students and fellow activists. Here is the talk and poem I shared.

Some years ago, Ken and I were having brunch — blintzes of course — with Lou, Jane, Jarek and Maura, and the thought I had been percolating for years — that someone should write a book of Lou’s story of the Holocaust, Jarek’s story of the Polish Underground, and their remarkable friendship — slipped out my lips. I asked them if I could write this story despite my repeated thoughts over the years that I shouldn’t offer such a thing because I was way too busy with work, writing and living in a household of teenagers. It was the best slip I ever made.

Although Lou and I disagreed about all things spiritual (or even the existence of spiritual), for me, receiving Lou’s story was one of the two greatest spiritual gifts of my life, the other being the wave of love and forgiveness I experienced at my father’s death. Lou’s story is obviously about survival, making a life in a new

John (Lou’s son) telling us that Lou was just like a father to him

world after the world he came from was destroyed and eliminated. Yet it’s also a story about how to live, particularly in light of the worst darkness humankind has experienced, that of the most systematic murder of millions.

In telling me his story, Lou didn’t just invite me in for the ride; he made sure my seat was well-padded with laughter to make the passing through all the places we would visit bearable for me. The worst the atrocity, the harder we laughed. One time I ran into Rick in the produce section of the Merc, and he told me, “My mom says you and Dad are laughing your asses off.” It was true, in some part because of the jokes Lou told me, like this one:

It turns out Hitler survived WWII and was in hiding in Argentina when some SS men find him and beg, “Please, Furor, can’t we just do it all again? Please?” Hitler thinks it over for a moment, sighs, and then says, “Well, alright, but this time, no more Mr. nice guy.”

Lou brought so much humor to his story that one of the many publishers that rejected the book — Needle in the Bone: How a Holocaust Survivor and Polish

Jarek, Lou and me in January

Resistance Fighter Beat the Odds and Found Each Other — said that Lou was too happy and obviously not coming to terms of what he had been through. This limited view of a Holocaust survivor is one of the many mythologies Lou sought to break through, and his story as well as his life is a testament to living outside narrow views, closed-mindedness and apathetic or frightened avoidance of what’s most wrong with the world.

But beyond the jokes, Lou constantly made me laugh, both of often laughing so much I would start to cry too. Lou had one of the greatest laughs of all time, and he also brought that laughter to his story not just to show how ludicrous the Nazis were (which, in addition to being evil to and beyond the bone, they were), but how life goes on despite and because of almost all his beloved — mother, father, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends — killed.

Lou’s story didn’t just teach me about survival and resiliency, but about what it means to live with our eyes and hearts wide open. His discernment of what he experienced was profound and precise, but he also saw what could be. The goodness he made out of his life was more expansive and higher than the depth and complexities of the evil he experienced.

Jane and Lou

When Lou’s cancer started metastasizing, and it seemed likely he didn’t have years left but only months, I decided to write him a poem. Having written a poem for Maura’s (may she rest in peace) memorial service, I knew I would want to read Lou a poem too, but why not write it while he was still here so he could have that too? Strangely enough, as some of you know, Lou died on the one year anniversary of Maura’s death. While I would much rather have had to dig this poem out years from now for Lou’s service, I’m sad to say now is the time, yet for me, Lou is still here — right in my heart.

For Lou, While He’s Still Here

“I won’t last long,” Lou says, his voice bright on the phone.

I pace the deck on a shining autumn morning, Lou stands

in his kitchen or walks to his couch, the books to re-read

marking his place. We talk of his health, his grandkids, my kids,

and of course, Nazis. “This one just cracks me up,” he says,

his voice rising to tell me what he found in the paper. Meanwhile,

more doctor’s appointments, his granddaughters’ college papers,

a magazine article in Polish, another book on what really happened.

Never paranoia in Lou’s case, but the simple clarity of facing

death too many times. He rifles through his memory, lands

on a story he wants to tell, and starts talking.

Almost 70 years ago, he fell asleep instantly each night in the camps,

his body trained on survival. He stood at attention when he had to,

shoveled or peeled or carried for hours, and walked until

he could no longer go on, ready to die. Having lived, he made a life

from tenderness and beyond the ruins of evil. Now he laughs about

how, after the darkest pain last night, he ended up, this morning,

drinking 7-up, amazed at how delicious it was. Meanwhile,

the cancer advances, the world continues to fall apart and

come together, brilliant photos of sea creatures come across

the internet, and his son shows up with home-made cookies.

If anyone can show us what it is to live, it’s Lou, who keeps close

the folders of news clippings, a photo of family at a costume party

before the war, receipts and visas, letters delivered years later.

The family long gone, and the family now here: all he lives for,

their entwined voices alive with laughter, urgency and calm,

stories and realizations, song and surprise because of him,

because of what he shows us about the love that endures.

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“You Are My People, and I Am Yours”: Everyday Magic, Day 550

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 2 Comments

I’ve been at Brave Voice, the retreat Kelley Hunt and I lead in the Flint Hills each spring, and wanted to share a poem I wrote for a close, old friend. In honor of all our close, old friends as well as our close, new friends too!

You Are My People, and I Am Yours

It started long ago. It started just now.

Subtract a week, a year, a decade, and it makes no difference.

When we swam in the reservoir late morning, mid summer,

the chill of the water tripping our young voices into song.

When I failed the big test, when you lost the job, when we drove

all over Laramie hunting for your next home, when I floated in

your Topeka bathtub for hours to make the contractions bearable,

when we cried on the phone after your miscarriage.

Through our dying and dead fathers, the loves gone bad,

or so good that our broken hearts shattered to reform themselves,

through roadtrips blasting Tracy Chapman, through the worst fight

during a graupel blizzard in the tiny tent on the Continental Divide

before descending for the ultimate burrito, we were still each other’s.

When we walked along the river trail in our 50s or across the prairie

in our 20s, when you showed me the sunburst faces of the Orthodox icons

and I told you the meaning of the word “mensch,” when we cried together,

you from a porch in New Mexico, me from a porch in Colorado

while your mother’s breathing slowed to nothing, when you gave up

and dissolved your deepest wishes into prayers, when I gave birth again

while you snapped the shutter of your camera, when we puzzled apart

every tangle with our families of origin, when we filled your rose-tellised

deck with family to celebrate my son’s college graduation, and all

the times we picked wild strawberries in the rain before singing

“Night Fall on the Prairie,” you are my people, and I am yours.

Now why wouldn’t you believe that you’ve always lived in the house of love?

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