The Letter . November 2, 1946

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 The Letter…November 2, 1946 from my Dad to his his mother in Texas.

   This morning as usual I went out to get the paper..reluctant to read todays bad news about incendiary speech and devices…. I brought the paper back to read in bed and noticed a letter on the floor…dated 1946 it was a letter written by my father James White to his mother back in Waco,Texas…describing what he saw in Olympia, Washington as he was in military training…(later stationed in Japan)

“at sunset I was alone on top of their Capitol building and never saw a more beautiful outlay of forms in my life..Mt Rainier could be seen to the east just a pinnacle of sow and mist..the moon with its half orb of soft tints and glows to the South and the Sun settling down into its bed of rosy hues in the west..their legislative building was of streaked granite and white limestone-with a touch of white marble as cornices..Such beauty-by man and the Architect of the Universe is not understandable to me.It is an unfinished desire which seems to have no answer: a mere long for which I must ever conjure up faulty reasons as final answers”…..later on in the letter he speaks of trips planned to Seattle and Vancouver…”I get so saturated with the present that I forget too much of the past Good Life I shared with family, friends and those whose aspirations I shared. This world was not made just to to be probed into and ogled at: Friendship and Home Life are the true aim. I will not cheat myself by passing lightly over these things: they are everthing!”Love JC

Ps This leaf is an elm whose descendents George Washington stood under and took command of US Army July 3, 1775) (actual leaf long crumbled and gone now)

So thank you Dad for reaching out to me over 72 years. Once again I know where I got my search for beauty and connection to others…I got it from you. Thanks for  reminding me to always affirm beauty in this world and to build rich relationships with others. Thanks Dad

Once again...Memory

      That day 9/11 so long ago.... now 17 years ago.
I remember I was on my way to work and stopped at the Post Office to mail a birthday package to my brother. The postal clerk told me a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I felt slightly off balance hearing that news and had not heard about the first plane. Our electricity was off that morning as the huge tree (probably dating back to the mid 1800's) was being cut down that morning. It was all eerie and strange and upsetting.
    I made it to work at the Jewish school where I taught and wondered about our vulnerability. The day was thick with questions, fear and uncertainties.
    The day got worse and later I watched those people jumping from the buildings.
    Today as I write it is a brilliant sunny day. It was sunny back then too, but soon clouded by smoke and heartbreak. I came home that day to a wide open expanse of sky that was oddly eerie and symbolic of what had happened in NYC that day.

      Years pass. Memory remains. I recall how the NYT carefully and compassionately printed obituaries pairing maintenance people with high executives. Death had been a level ground after all. Grief saturated those months going into fall and winter. I lit candles on that tree stump for months even as the snow began to fall. Grief remained...

The Jewish Peddler and The Baptist Preacher

   

And so I row my leaky boat ...there on the vast and rocky seas of memory...I row and row...

hoping to set anchor

this densely packed holiday weekend began with opening a box of clay pieces made by me

and my students long ago at the Jewish Day School I worked at...

oh the labors....the sweat....the tears...

 the kiln opened when it was cool enough to reveal treasures that would

grace numerous Seder tables including my own

for decades....

the salt water dishes, the haroset dishes, the Seder plate, and Elijahs cup.

and always the Chaise Lounge Charoset Dish that occupies a place of honor.

I set out the dishes and the memories...

I carefully take the photo of my Jewish ancestors off the wall and prop it on boxes of matzah 

on a chair adjacent to the place setting for Elijahs Cup

for all these moments are mysteries.

years pass, but the ancestors remain..

I remember what I do not remember and know that my great great grandfather was

a seltzer water in nothern Romania.

I could not find a trace of him when I visited the graveyard in 1998

but allowed the mystical light flowing in the window in the middle of the night

to direct my gaze of wonder..

He appeared in dreams and in my imagination as I began the long road backwards and forwards

to this moment of holding a small Seder with friends..

******

when I take the train of memory back to Texas it is hot and almost summer.

I am arriving with my family after 3 days on the train. The salami sandwiches are now tasteless

and we are weary.

My grandfather C.H. White is there to pick us up and

we head to the small house in Waco where we will spend the week.

He was once a farmer who got the call to preach and so he rallied forth from his pulpit

and later circled round and round about Jacob.

On Easter Sunday we drive out to hear him preach with fury and brimstone in the 

small church 

so simple with just a wooden cross.

so simple it is hard to recall the Greek Orthodox majestry and mystery that  holds me 

up north.

where we are not Greek, but we fit in...almost

after church the family gathers

and I feel my sense of tribe

the South held and fascinated me...it was a part of me

just as part of me never gets used to these long northern winters

as I yearn for the sun and warmth

we had Fried chicken, beans, mashed potatoes and iced tea

if you look at the family picture of us all standing outside the old house

you'd see me in my homemade dress and specially curled hair.

*******

yesterday I went to Easter with my neighbors and remembered

my long ago Baptist past 

the service could not have been more different

but the ardent faith remained.

the fried chicken for lunch took me all the way back to Texas

*****

sometimes it is easy to dwell in the house of memory.

when I lived on that small island I wove belt for a living.

the warp and the weft holding each other 

to make a long weaving of color and strength

 the weft and warp of memory hold me now.

**

i row and row

finally landing on the small island of memory

there I weave in my old stone cottage

creating

my warp and weft of moments

from the past and future

of ancestors known and unknown 

on my simple square loom

remembered and mused upon

**

A Cake for What would have been my Mother's 97th Birthday

A Cake for my Mother

        Pity she didn't live longer. The opera "Rigoletta" was on last night and she would have been listening right along. Opening her thick Opera book and noting it again. Remembering when she had listened to it last in Vienna and the last time she had heard it on a Saturday day afternoon straight from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

         I can see her now laying on the couch on a Saturday afternoon. Stretched out somewhere between Minneapolis and Vienna, the cares of the week, the day and the moment vanished for a few short hours. My dad would be off to a movie or typing upstairs. She sighed thinking of the emotional terrain she navigated daily with this temperamental brilliant Texan who didn't like opera. Sighing she remembered her days at the Opera House in Vienna and how she went to Demel's afterwards for a Viennese pastry delight topped with whipped cream.  Sighing perhaps she sketched one of her enigmatic mystical faces in the back of her Opera book.

     Sighing I open the old Opera book. The cover is falling off, but the sentiments remain. If I open it at just the right spot the music swells out lapping out over the pages and those last desperate moments of La Boehme ring out as Rudolpho cries out "Mimi! Mimi!" over her dead body... or I turn the page and Tosca jumps over the parapet. Drama, turbulence, passion and drama. Nothing sedate or politely midwestern about this. And thus my parents dramas matched these operatic ones as well.

     What a couple. My mother Emily with her European manners, education and warm Viennese empathy. Her psychological insights remain and no matter what her own inner challenges were she always saw through to the core of a problem revealed in intimate conversation. Saying to me as we sat in the backyard on that hot August day precisely six months before she died. "Have the expectation of Goodness!" And there was my father from east Texas. The rambuctious intellectual who left the south, who loved Japan, who flourished in Kyoto, who read 1000's of books. Poetry bonded them, but it was a tempestuous union. They were so different. It took me years to realize that we were not midwestern. I popped my head up from within the family, looked around and realized we had no farm ties after all and not a bit of Scandinavian blood. We flourished none the less and my parents gift of entertaining kept their friendship circle warm and nourishing as dad tossed another log into the fireplace as he read another poem to a rapt audience gathered in the living room

          The opera remains. My dads books are piled up in the back room. I open at least one a week and share the poems he loved in my weekly poetry group. Their deaths have been just a blip after all as they float above me...somewhere in the ether...supporting me..nurturing me...commanding me to do this or that and most of all to remember them and hold on to their values.

                              In two days my mother would have been 97. I can see how she would have popped up after that long illness that almost took her out...and how we would  have celebrated despite her ensuing frailty with a cake, a handmade card and a small puppet show made at the last minute. Laughing she would have opened her presents and we would eat cake amid the bouquets she had been given..... but she's gone.

      Now I peruse the recipe for gugglehopf cake. It needs time. Yeast must be dissolved, almonds chopped, flour sifted and there are two risings. I anticipate making it just the right way and serving it with lots of whipped cream. Perhaps a side of jello would complete the honoring and the offering.

Happy birthday Emily. Your memory remains a blessing.