Cuppa Joe

From www.seattle.gov

I hadn’t been to Seattle since the late 70s and I was looking forward to seeing it again.  Despite the almost ever-present rain, there were snow-capped mountains, water, or trees every which way you looked.  A city where you could be in an asphalt parking lot and yet there was a spectacular view in any direction.  Hilly and beautiful even in the rain.

That first morning Linda told me we were headed out on errands, "but first we'll stop and get coffee.”  As she drove around, it surprised me to see coffee places on three out of every four corners. Every block! [This was before the advent of Starbucks in every city and state.]  Starbuck’s was certainly a presence, but another brand I hadn’t heard of, Tully’s, was also prominent, along with lots of other little nondescript coffee places, street after street.  [From Wikipedia: “There's a running joke in Seattle that the easiest way to find a Tully's is to stand in front of a Starbucks and turn around.” See what I mean?]

After a bit, Lin pulled the car over and we got out in front of what could best be called a storefront shack.  Sandwiched between two buildings this place had been built astride the alley between.  With two people furiously working the "counter," there were about nine or ten people ahead of us on line.  Most were dressed in business suits and had briefcases (this was before laptop cases were de rigueur), in their morning hustle, singing out their orders:
    "Tall caramel macchiato with a double"
    "Venti Americanos with half caf and whole"   
    "Short mocha latte stirred"


I was trying to think what language were they talking in. I never drank much coffee and usually filled half the mug with milk. 

“You should get a latte,” Lin said, and then placed her order, “Grande skim latte, please” and turned to me.

“I’ll have a latte, but could you make it half what you usually do?” I asked.

“What do you mean half?” the guy queried. His partner stopped to stare.

“Well. I don’t like strong coffee and I add a lot of milk so maybe you should just give me half the amount of coffee you give everyone else and then the rest milk,” I answered meekly.

“Oh. You don’t like coffee,” he said knowingly, “Well, I’ll give you a latte and you taste it 

and let me know how to adjust.”

“Please don’t do that,“ I protested.

“Why not?” he asked with a puzzled look on his face.

“I don’t want you to waste it and besides, there’re all these people waiting.” I was embarrassed.

“Well,” he said to me in an slightly exasperated voice, “we HAVE to get a baseline!”  

Coffee was everywhere.  In drugstores, in take-out windows cut out of the side of supermarket buildings, and in cozy, comfortable shops with back rooms set up like living rooms — complete with oversized club chairs and blazing fireplaces.  We entered one of these another afternoon — a dark wood paneled place with dark wood floors and black wrought iron details and a beautiful nickel countertop with lovely pastries and cookies and assorted mugs for sale.  It was a Tully’s and it was quiet and inviting.

“Shannon’s got soccer today,” she told me, “so after we have a cup, we’ll need to pick her up from school and drive her to practice.”

“But it’s raining Lin, won’t they cancel?”

“Are you kidding?” she laughed, “If they called things here because of rain, these kids would never play a single game!”  Lin went to put her things down on a coffee table while I ordered.

“I’ll have a light latte please.” I told the smiling young girl at the counter.

She looked uncomfortable with the request.  “A light latte?” she asked in a questioning voice with a bit of a furrow crinkling her brow.

“I just want a lot of room for milk, so just make it light,” I explained, trying not to sound like an alien in this world of coffee aficionados.

“Heather,” she called toward the back of the shop, avoiding eye contact with me, “Can you come out here?”

“Listen,” I said, trying to put her at ease, “it’s OK — you can just make it any way you usually do and that’s okay. Honest.  I can always pour out some of the coffee to add more milk,” I pleaded.

Ignoring me she turned to her manager and said in a blank way, “She wants a light latte.”

Heather turned to me, “What’s the matter?  You don’t like coffee?”

“Well, not very much,”  I said sheepishly, “and — ” I added trying to make my case,  "I have an ulcer, so I really need to watch the coffee.”  I wanted her to know that I wasn't a complete oddball, that I had a good excuse.

“You want a ristretto.” she said confidently and barked to her assistant, “Make her a ristretto.”

This cup is from Crate & Barrel

“A ris-STREH-toe?” I echoed, “What is that?”

“It’s a restrained latte.  Less espresso.” she deadpanned. “Sorry, she’s new.”

Now, years later when gourmet beans, blends, brews, and fair trade coffee permeate every facet of our lives, I wondered back to what made Seattle a place where coffee first reigned supreme in the United States.  


In a region where the weather is described by newscasters as “light gray” or “...medium gray out there today!”  maybe these folks need a continuous jolt of caffeine to propel them through their gray rainy days.

See How They Grow

Everyone said NOT to do it.

    “It never works out when friends work together.”

    “It’ll be the end of the friendship…”

    “I wouldn’t risk it.”

    “Well, you can kiss that friendship goodbye!”  

were some of the things people said to me, trying to be helpful, but I couldn't imagine that Barbara and I couldn’t work together.  In many ways we were opposite in terms of skillset:

• She was detailed-oriented and while I certainly cared about the details, I wanted to worry about the big picture. 

• She was methodical, organized and extremely self-disciplined; I was scattered and would hopscotch my way through tasks. 

• She was level and controlled while I was an emotional roller coaster.

We seemed a perfect match.

I was tackling a huge project I’d never done before, creating a textbook from scratch and though the concept, editorial plan and table of contents were all created and approved by experts in the field, still it was going to be almost two years from plan to product.  I’d been bold in fighting to create and control this product; didn't want to be saddled with an outside company (again) that I couldn't control and would spend more time cleaning up after than I would developing. And my concept had been well-received  by the outside team of authorities they’d brought in to be questioned for two days by a market-research team the division had hired.  I’d only been in the company for 18 months and it was only the second textbook they were attempting.  So while I’d convinced the higher-ups, now that push was coming to shove, I was scared.  Barbara was a known quantity; she made me feel secure and most important, I couldn't imagine anyone I could trust more to follow-through and get the job done.  

I couldn't find a logo since
the company is now defunct

It was the first time anyone was attempting a managed textbook in the high school child development market. Normally textbooks were written by one author, someone who was a known expert in the field. But a managed text was one where you created the book through market research (What were the up and coming trends? New topics?) and a competitive analysis (How were the existing books weak?  What did the book have to have to beat the competition? ) and then you hired writers to write the copy. Not the “experts” because while they might be expert in the field, it didn't mean they were great writers, had the time to write an entire book, or had a sense of how to write a book with national appeal.  Our book was going to have consulting editors — known names in the field who would review the manuscript for accuracy — but they wouldn't write a word.  That was up to us.

We dove in full steam ahead.  Barbara made lists of everyone we’d need to hire freelance, wrote job descriptions, interviewed and reviewed writing samples of the writers.  We interviewed designer after designer until we found Leon, a guy older than we were who seemed like a good fit.  She plotted out timelines with delivery dates and deadlines from manuscript to galleys to proofs to finished product. Her meticulously hand-drawn color-coded charts on graph paper were taped around her office like an eye=level border of geometric wallpaper.  She drove me and the team of 21 by those charts.

There were glitches of course. One night we had to get hundreds of pages of manuscript out to readers and the copier wouldn't work; it was after 5 pm and no hope of getting it repaired until morning. I went riding the elevator until I found someone going up to their office and begged to use their copy machine — the guy laughed, let me in, and we met our deadline.  

A more serious glitch came earlier when we started getting copy from the team of writers and realized that the different chapters didn’t sound as if they were written by the same person — and of course they weren't! While we’d carefully chosen our team of writers based on the samples they’d submitted, we never thought to test them by asking them to rewrite their material to the style we'd finally settled on.  It was a mistake of huge proportions.  The entire timeline of the book was in jeopardy.  From every wall in Barbara’s office, those multicolored charts with their carefully drawn lines stared down at us disapprovingly.

We solved the terrible problem by hiring a master copyeditor, Kendra Crossen, who — in addition to copyediting (checking the grammar, spelling, consistency of formatting), had to rewrite the copy to make it flow as if from one voice. And she did.

During that year and a half, we did have one huge fight. I don’t remember what it was about but to Barbara’s credit, she insisted we face the conflict head on until it was resolved.  That was another great thing about her personal style and how she conducted herself in business — she never let anything fester.

When it came time to find a title we were up against a host of books that had been in the market for decades; in fact they were so popular that teachers referred to them not by the title, but by the author's name:  “I use the Hurlock.” or “We use Draper and Draper.”

But all the titles: Understanding Child Growth and Development, Caring for Children, Child Development, Understanding and Guiding Young Children —  sounded alike and boring.

It was Barbara who said, “What about See How They Grow?” and her words sailed into the room like a breath of fresh air.

The marketing and sales folks argued vociferously against it. The title didn't say what the book was about and it didn’t sound like anything else on the market — but that was precisely what made it perfect.  We weren't a text like any other at the time: our book went beyond the school-age child (8-12) to include adolescent development (the age of the audience who would be reading it); our book coupled the typical ages and stages of growth & development with caregiving — not just the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development of the child but what was it like to take care of a two-year old who was fighting, biting and saying “no.”  We had parenting pages which made the reader think about caring for, guiding, and disciplining a child — not an easy job as any parent knows.  We were going into a market where everybody already had the product and we didn't have "name" authors!  It would take a lot to get educators to buy this book. Standing out, sounding different was exactly what was needed.

We added a subtitle: Concepts in Child Development and Parenting. When the book finally was published, two years after its start, seeing that book was exhilarating. Against all odds, with no actual experience in producing a book from concept to finish, together we’d done it. But management in the company had changed and I was on the way out, of the company and eventually educational publishing.

After moving south I returned to K-12 education and was in someone’s office at the state Department of Public Instruction when I saw our book on the shelf. With a big grin erupting on my face I reached for that smooth white volume, loving the feel of it in my hands. In the passing years, See How They Grow had been bought and sold from one now-defunct company to another. As I leafed through to the copyright page I saw that our names were gone.  Even though we’d given birth (to what always felt like my first child), we were no longer identified.

Never earning a penny in royalties, in some ways I felt rich. Thirty-one years after See How They Grow made its presence in the world, we not only had tangible evidence of what we'd created together, mother and midwife Barbara are still great and loving friends. [Happy Birthday Barbara!]

My Definitive Daughter

I wrote this many years ago but I reread it to remind me of how much we can learn from the mouths of babes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Many years ago, when my daughter was just in kindergarten, I asked a school counselor to assess how she was adjusting to life in a big school without the security of her twin brother in the same class. The only thing I really remember her saying in her thick Austrian accent is this: “CHEW-lee is a girl who likes to set her own agenda. As the parent, you will have to decide when to allow her to set the ahCHEN-da and when to draw the line.” At the time, the advice startled me. It seemed so amazing that my little girl was already showing such power and strength. From that point on, I saw her differently.

Long before her conception, somewhere in my personal dreamland, I envisioned any daughter of mine a little version of myself — dark and impish — but she (already defining herself as different) started life light and angelic.  Her coloring and build are very unlike mine, and for that I am both grateful and frustrated.  I continue to be surprised that she looks nothing like me. 

Also unlike me, she was not an adventurous child.  She stayed close to us, seemed a bit shy around strangers, and wasn’t exploratory about much, even food.  She ate it if and only if it was white: bread, rice, pasta, potatoes.  Unlike her brother — who would try every cuisine, condiment, and sauce — she was pleased with plain.

At the age of six she asked, “Mommy, why don’t you like my Barbies?”  I was taken aback because I hadn’t outright said anything about her dolls, but it was true; I didn’t like them.  I worried about the silent message they were sending and even at this young age, she already had acquired twelve.  “Well,” I answered carefully, “it’s not that I don’t like your Barbie dolls, it’s just that no one really looks like Barbie — in fact, no one can look like her because they’d have to have legs seven feet long.  I just worry that if you grow up thinking that that’s what ‘pretty’ looks like, then you’ll always be disappointed.” 

“I don’t think that,” she informed me. “You don’t look anything like my Barbies and I think you’re pretty.”  Aaahhhh, thank you honey.

Still, early in her life she began to draw these incredibly voluptuous girls, complete with clothing of her own design.  These figures always had an “I-Dream-of-Jeannie” look — bare midriff and ponytail on top of the head — and yet I don’t know that she ever saw the show!  Her preoccupation with these drawings of femme fatales and their clothes continued as she got older, though she had little regard for her own dress and appearance.  Day after day, I’d complain in frustration about her dirty jeans, stained top, and mismatched socks; she’d state in an equally exasperated way, “What’s the big deal, Mom?  No one looks at your feet!”

Lately, she’s been annoyed at her girlfriends and their newfound interest in boys.  She doesn’t think she’ll be interested in the opposite sex anytime soon. I pray that lasts, though the outside pressures are enormous on kids to act grown-up.  After a sleepover during elementary school, she asked, “Mom? What does ‘My boyfriend made me do it’ mean?”  She was only eight or nine! We’d worked hard to protect her from the sexually charged overtones in media everywhere, so where did this come from?  I hadn’t reckoned on the fact that some of her friends had teenage siblings. In their families, music, movies, and magazines were shared, regardless of the content.  Though ill-prepared at that moment to completely explain, whatever brief explanation I choked up seemed to satisfy her. 


“Well, that’s stupid,” she reasoned. “ I’m not going to let anyone force me to do anything I don’t want to.”  Good for her! I cheered.

My life with my daughter is an ever-changing terrain. It took me years to figure out that while she wanted my opinion, it didn’t mean she was going to adopt it; and though she didn’t necessarily agree with what I thought, what I thought was important to her.  Try as I might, I no longer know what mood she’ll be in and can rarely predict her needs.  She can go from a sweet, smiling, loving child to a crying, screaming “I-hate-you!” horror — all within a moment.  I try to defuse my husband’s anger at such behavior.  “Honey, she’s just being emotional.  We should be glad that she has the strength of self to show her feelings — neither of us would have dared vent our anger at our parents.  It won’t last —  think of it as a sign that she’s healthy and strong and stands up for herself.”  At least that’s what I hope.

As the parent, I’d always imagined that I’d be the teacher and she’d be the student. But even that was never always the case.  I will never forget the night at the dinner table when I was yet again complaining about one thing or another being wrong with the meal I’d cooked. 

Apologies: my photos don't do her or her artwork, justice.

“Mommy?  Do you want my dinner?” she offered in her sweet seven-year-old voice. 

“Why would I want your dinner?”  I snapped, “I’m eating the same thing you are.” 

“Well, mine always comes out right and yours never does,” she said with a simple clarity that stopped my heart.

My child, my pre-adolescent daughter — with her well-defined agenda — will continue to educate me as I struggle with the ever-challenging role of being her mother.

 

Remembering Jess

I first met Ann in 1979 when she participated in a focus group in New York City sponsored by Butterick Publishing; she was one of a group assessing a proposal I developed for a new textbook.  After that session,  I liked her so much that when my next project involved her field of expertise, I promptly suggested to my boss that I spend a week with Ann in Oklahoma learning about childcare workers and daycare centers. Lucky for me, Ann said yes and we soon spent a week traveling the region, meeting her colleagues and friends, and, as a bonus, shopping the antique and thrift stores and eating, eating, eating (including the pickled okra). For those of you who know Ann, no surprise that this was high on her agenda (and mine, too) which is in some part one of the reasons I got along so well with her. That week-long visit was the beginning of a life-long friendship and when I first met her husband Jess.  When I was introduced to the handsome, fun-loving sweetheart of a guy (who all those years ago swept Ann off her feet and out of Brooklyn), I remember thinking — this must be some guy.  This guy got independent, strong-willed, family-oriented, Italian-to-her-bones Ann to move to the middle of the country where the only dark-complected folks like Ann were Native Americans. 

I liked Jess but in the beginning saw him more of an appendage of Ann’s; someone I had to “go through” to get to her whenever I called on the phone. But year after year, whenever I called, there was Jess.

“Well how-DEE!” he’d sing into the receiver, “How ARE you girl? And how’s that husband of yours and those twins?” and I’d be engaged in conversation reluctantly (at first), filling him in, before speaking to Ann. And as was Jesse’s way — he’d listen carefully, offer his down-home reassurances that whatever I was worried about would be fine, and then he’d start to tell me — you guessed it — a story. 

Jess was a storyteller at heart which probably made him so good at the insurance business. Fundamentally he just wanted to connect with his fellow human beings on this planet through stories. Stories were his way of reaching out to touch someone. And that was how we connected. He wanted to tell you his stories and he wanted you to tell him yours. Years went by in this way — cards, occasional visits, phone conversations and Ann would be at a meeting, or at the store, or shopping and Jess would carry on. But in 2008, when I decided I wanted to surprise Ann for her birthday in March, Jesse and I were bound in a conspiracy, and oh, what fun he had. 

For weeks we would have secret phone calls strategizing how to put one over on Ann. Jess would say, “Now why don’t we...” do this or that and I’d say, “No, that won’t work...what if she...?” and we’d plan to talk again and figure out more next time. All along Jesse kept saying, “Now if I don’t tell Ann SUM-ONE is coming, she’s going to KEEL-me.”

I tried to tell him that I didn’t want her to go on a cleaning frenzy; that I didn’t care about any mess; that I could just move whatever piles were on the guest room bed ---but he was adamant.

“She’s gonna KEEL-me if I don’t give her some notice.”

So, I became a decades-old friend they hadn’t seen in a lifetime, Barry Yellin who was coming to Oklahoma to visit his grandson and spend the night with his old buddy Jesse. (Just now I wanted to call Jess, to check with him about whether or not Barry was a friend from his back-East insurance days, but then I remembered I can’t call him; he’s gone.)

I swore Jess to secrecy, made him promise not to tell a soul because I was afraid he’d slip and over the course of the month of phone calls he was mixing up details and such. But when the time came., there he was to pick me up from the airport and to head on back to Chickasha and lo and behold, when he called out to Ann to “com’on out and say hell-lo to Barry!”

Ann took a look at me and went totally blank. Jess and I couldn’t stop laughing at her startled face, “Ann, it’s me!” I said, afraid she hadn’t recognized me, but from that moment on, we were all smiles. We had a lovely weekend and true to his word, Jesse hadn’t told a soul. Everyone I met was floored and amazed that Jesse hadn’t spilled the beans to anyone.

After I left that weekend, pleased to have pulled off the surprise and had such a terrific time, from that moment on, whenever I called Jess would sing out, “Well, HELL-lo BEAR-REE!” into the phone; it was our special joke and he spent the next year re-telling the saga of how we fooled Ann and surprised her.

Jesse O’Bar Jr was a stubborn cuss and when his health issues with his shoulders began to seriously worry Ann, I did my best to argue, plead, coax, and cajole him into seeing the doctor, consider the surgery and more, but he wouldn’t budge. When I saw him I was shocked at how tilted his head was and how limited his use of his arms seemed to be, but he was cheerful as ever and adamant as ever. He worried that “letting those doctors mess-around” was going to make things worse. Just as he’d adjusted to his retirement; adjusted to giving up golf; he’d adjusted to these physical limitations.

Selfishly, I’m glad I wasn’t there to witness his passing. I’m happy to keep the memories of that last visit to Chickasha to celebrate Ann. 

I will miss Jess — the joy of his voice singing out “HEY GIRL!” whenever I called and I will miss his stories and I will miss the love that he spread to every living soul he encountered.

 

ep!phany

I love thrift stores — you never know what treasures lie in wait. While visiting New York I was with Susan and Mark in Housing Works down on Crosbie St in New York. It was the first time I was in that particular store and I wasn't finding much to catch my eye, but then I spotted a Magritte-like image on the cover of a small box that turned out to be a set of cards. Marked $2.00 (with a red 50%-off slash) — I didn't know what they were but I thought — for a dollar I couldn't go wrong.

When I got back to my hotel room I opened the box and read the first card: "How does ep!phany work?" The images on the cards (49 of them) were meant to be used individually or in a group,  "outloud or in silence," to unblock your creative juices.  There were suggested ways to “play” them — "hit the wall," "brainstorm," or "the lone ranger," but I chose "constellation." 


Select three cards, assign them each a meaning (Past, Present, and Future) and then flip them over to reveal the connection between the assigned meaning and the symbol on the card.    
Here is what I drew from the deck:

Past = Ascent

This made sense to me. I had long pictured myself trapped in the slippery white bathtub of our family life with me (tiny as a Borrower) trying to escape the fast-draining, swirling water, scared and frantically clawing at the walls of the tub, no traction possible, continually fighting not to be sucked down.  While “ascent” didn't picture my white tub-nightmare, all through my past, I was always seeking a way up and out.

Present = Envy

I’m ashamed to say that lately, I do have feelings of envy. I envy people who don’t have to work.  I envy people who have enough money to travel.  I envy people who can do what they want to do.  When you're middle-class in this country, it’s frustrating and hard to be more than halfway through your life and still watching every dollar.  I envy people who have their mother and sister.  I envy people who put themselves first! I know, I know.  I have so much more than so many people.  We have all our needs and so many of our wants.  We have our kids.  We have our house.  We have jobs.  We have our health.  [I don't want to sound selfishly ungrateful, but the card surfaced and I felt I needed to say what it said to me.]

                                         Future = Answer  

Well, this image really just up and smacked me in the face.  Right there staring at me was this KEY; an image of something that I could hold in my own hands.  All those years and years of waiting for some one or some thing to make my future great — but this card was telling me: I could take that key and open the door to everything. It would unlock EVERYTHING.  These cards were speaking to me. 
I had the answer to my future. 


It was an ep!phany.  

OR could anyone interpret those same three cards to fit their past, present, future? 

Escaping with the Pilgrims

In my family, we cooked with an abundance of what I thought of as “Armenian 

vegetables” — eggplant, squash, tomatoes, onions, green peppers. I didn't consider these vegetables American because they weren't on the dinner tables of my friends. For the most part I loved these vegetables, except when they included (to my disgust) fava beans and (even worse) okra. God, I hated okra! Okra was cooked with tomatoes and onions until it was slimy, slimy, slimy. Even the name of this particular dish was gruesome: “bah-MEE-yah.” It wasn't until my college days when friend Peggy Flaxman from Texas introduced me to fried okra.

In a small town grocery that also served hamburgers and fried okra in the back of the store, only Peggy’s winning grin and plea, “You HAVE TO try it — it’s Southern popcorn!” convinced me to give it a try. In this joint (like none other I had ever seen), the customers plunked down their paper plates on top of the chest-high store shelves (amid the napkin dispensers, the ketchup, mustard, onions, salt & pepper) and ate their batter-dipped, lightly fried and slightly salted okra while standing over the cereal, bottled goods, and everything canned. People gobbled their okra, swiped the grease from their mouths with flimsy paper napkins, and instinctively leaned left or right to shift their bodies out of the way of a shopper’s hand reaching for something on the shelves below. Despite the catch-as-catch can atmosphere: the burgers and okra were simply delicious.

A few years later, my friend and mentor, Ann O’Bar from Chickasha (that's CHICK-ka-shay, Oklahoma … not too far from Anadarko) placed in my hands a bottle of her homemade, home-jarred pickled okra and after the first bite of vinegary crunch, I was sold. In these two southern incarnations, okra took on a whole new life for me and I adored it. 

When it came to the American vegetables — peas, string beans, carrots, and broccoli — all came from the freezer case. My father was totally against canned vegetables…too much salt, not enough vitamins. The corn might come out of a can, and in those days, definitely the asparagus, but those were the exceptions. [It would be decades before I even knew what real asparagus tasted like.] Farm-grown peas, string beans, and cauliflower would not come into my consciousness until we moved south. Then a whole host of other vegetables joined the fray — pole beans, butter beans, parsnips, turnips, collards, mustard greens, and kale. These were the stock of southern kitchens. But in the kitchens of my northern childhood, frozen it was. 

Each night, getting ready for dinner signaled the time when my parents would come home from the drycleaners — exhausted and stressed. This was the time to become invisible. Outwardly I went through the steps of what was required of me while spinning a fantasy world of comfort deep in my imagination. From the time I was seven, frozen mixed vegetables transported me to the land of a collaborative and caring community.

Whenever I ripped off the paper-cover and opened the waxed-whiteboard box of mixed vegetables, I always spilled a few. These few became the kernels of sustenance for we Pilgrims…

We were weathering an awful winter: blustery cold, huddled together, we stoically faced the hardships that life doled out daily.  In the lean-to, around the rough wooden table and hard benches where we sat, we had our bonnets and our cloaks, but by now they were threadbare and poor protection against the blowing winds and the falling snow.  None of us had the comfort of the furs or pelts that draped the Indians and their smooth brown bodies.  I envied them their warmth, but was taught to fear them. 

The Indians were a mystery to me.  At the most unexpected times, they came and went.  Their presence was unsettling and yet, though I would never tell anyone, somewhat comforting.   Even though they were so unlike us, I sensed they were like us; banded together, traveling in a group, watching out for one another.  The elders cautioned us to be wary of the Indians always and to never let down our guard.  Still, to help weather the winter, whenever they silently appeared and then wordlessly disappeared, we welcomed the kernels of corn, peas, carrots, and lima beans the Indians shared.

Sparingly I put each small vegetable into my mouth—at first frozen-hard, but slowly each would warm on my tongue and depending on how hungry I was, I would either wait until it had thawed completely OR I would take a bite through the just-softening edge and my teeth would slice through the miniscule icy bit.  If it hadn’t been for those Indians, I don’t know how we would’ve survived.

Placing the ketchup, mustard, silverware and napkins on our table, I liked the corn best.  It seemed to hold a sweetness past its frozen starchiness.  The lima beans I liked least, followed by the peas, and then the carrots.  These three seemed to have little taste in their frozen state. Once stove-top cooked, buttered and salted, the Pilgrims faded into the background.  I quite liked the vegetables more, but the company at the table far less.

A Face of Race

It happened twice during a conference on "moral education in a diverse society" many years ago; it happens every time I wear that necklace.  It’s a necklace I love and have had for thirty-plus years. And yet each time I wear this necklace it brings me to the question of race.

Back in the 1970s, living in Manhattan, walking down Third Avenue as I’d done thousands of times, I saw a young man seated at a small table with about twenty pieces of silver jewelry.  Sidewalk vendors were an every weekend occurrence in Manhattan at least throughout the spring, summer, and fall.  It was the way-of-shopping life and how I bought most of what I owned.  I stopped and looked, as I’d done over and over again  every other Saturday in the city at the 26^th Street Flea Market, at the Lexington Avenue Fair, at Union Square.  A discriminating shopper (and not one to easily part with my money) one lovely piece caught my eye — a simple silver rectangular face; an inch wide, eighth-of-an inch longer. A kind of molded impression of a face — nose, mouth and concave depressions for the eyes — a truly simple, yet haunting piece I felt I had to have.

“This is beautiful,” I said to the twenty-something guy behind the table, looking carefully at the piece. “Did you make it?”

He replied yes and seemed glad I was interested.  “It’s silver,” he said trying to be helpful, “see, it’s marked on the back.”  I turned it over to see the 925 and two simple vertical loops on the other side.  “You can wear it as a pin or put it on a chain as a necklace,” he added hoping to cinch the sale.

“I’ll take it,” I said, as I dug around in my over-sized bag to find the cash to pay him.  I honestly don’t remember how much it cost; it’s been thirty years, but knowing me, I wouldn’t have paid more than eleven or fourteen dollars for it. 

“It’s not signed.” I said to him startled that I just realized it.  “You didn’t sign your name on the back.”

He looked at me uncomfortably.

“You know if you’re going to make things as beautiful as this, you really should sign them," I said a bit emphatically, "even if you put just your initials, you really need to, because this is a work of art,” I said hoping to impress upon him the importance of what I was saying.

As I prattled on, he seemed to grow more and more uncomfortable and I took the rectangle that he’d wrapped and taped in a tissue, and dropped it in my bag.  I said thanks and walked away, but I wanted to go back and ask him his name. Ask him so I’d remember years later (when he became famous) or if someone asked, I’d be able to say, “________ made it.”  But I didn’t. 

I didn’t because he was African-American and I sensed that asking him, he might think that I thought he wasn’t really the artist; that I was questioning if these pieces were really his.  He hadn’t offered his name.  I had asked many a struggling artist their name when buying an etching, watercolor, or handmade scarf on the street.  This time, because he was black, I didn’t.

My sister gave me a box-link silver chain that suited the face perfectly. I wore it constantly and every time I did, someone, and often more than one someone, complimented me on the necklace. 

Photo: Jack Edinger

“I love your necklace! Where did you get it?” and each time I would say, “I bought it on the street from this young African-American artist and I am so bummed I never asked his name.”  I said it for a reason.  I identified him as African-American because I was saying, “See?  You really admired this and it was made by someone you didn’t imagine would make this.”  I don’t know if it was racist or anti-racist, but my intention was to honor this young man even though I didn’t know his name.

However, whenever someone African-American would notice my necklace and tell me how much they liked it, then I had a problem.  I pretty much told them the story in the same way, of how I spotted it, purchased it and didn't know the artist’s name, but I didn’t mention that he was African-American.  I wanted to; I wanted to say, “See this thing of absolute beauty was made by a black artist…but I didn't, because I didn't know how it would be heard.  Would the person be offended?  Would they think, “God isn't she racist?  She wouldn't tell me if the artist was white.”  (And that was true.) Or would they be pleased that they might share a sense of identity with the individual who had created this lovely thing?  I didn't know.  But each time it happened it bothered me. 

     Bothered me all around. 

     Bothered me that my assumptions about his identity originally stopped me from asking his name. 

     Bothered me that my perceptions of how to bridge the racial divide “colored” my description of the maker. 

     Thoroughly bothered me that my insecurities about whether or not I would be thought of as racist caused me to react           differently depending on whether the admirer was a person of color or not.

Perhaps my discomfort was that I initially censored myself because of some assumption about racial identity and that left me feeling guilty.  Perhaps it was shame at not getting his name or of having bought his piece of art on the street, assuming it would help pay the rent. But the bottom line was that I didn’t know his name and I could never truly credit him the way I did with so many other pieces of my pottery, jewelry, and art collected over the years.  It was race and it was racist and yet what was the right thing to do?  Be color-blind about the maker?  Perhaps. 

The conference ended with the session, “What Difference Does Race Make?” and before I got to that session, twice my necklace had been admired, both times by men who were black.  I still didn’t know what I should have said. 

I wish I had asked.

1918

After my grandmother died, after the funeral and burial at the cemetery, as was the custom, people gathered at a restaurant to eat a meal and anyone was free to get up (often there was a mike) and tell their stories and share remembrances of my grandmother and what she meant to them.

During my wanderings one Saturday, while shopping the indoor “yard sale” at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home on Manhattan’s York Avenue in the high 80s, I came across a ring.  Mixed up in a shoe box of jewelry odds and ends — it was an Art Deco square-faced ring with a small diamond chip set-in a V-shape between the cut-out numerals “1933” on the face.  It fit and I bought it for a dollar.  Later when I had a jeweler look at it, it turned out to be platinum. From the day I first saw it, I always wondered whose ring it was, what had happened for her in that year, and where she was now.

Once I had this ring, I decided to collect “year” rings.   Certainly I didn’t see them often and they would be fun to hunt for.  I always had to have something to look for…first quilts, then posters, next pottery, and now, due to the jammed-packed studio apartment I lived in, I was steering away from the bigger items and looking to downsize my collections.  Reagan cards completely fit the bill.  Not much of an initial investment financially, I was confident that this compact political memorabilia was bound to be valuable one day. Slowly I was amassing quite a stack.  There were the predictable reissued postcards of his movie days, “Bedtime for Bonzo” and the like.  Then the official stuff: White House portraits of Ronald and the family, inaugural ball shots, and of course photo ops during the course of his presidency.  But it was the satirical cards that I liked best.  The comic ones of Nancy selling the White House china on the great lawn for $3 a plate; Ron hurling bombs at Brezhnev; or the not-so-presidential ones from Germany, England, or France — Ron naked in a cowboy hat riding Nancy;  Reagan (or was it his son?) half-naked in leather suspenders holding a can of Crisco...you get the picture.  After collecting close to 200 (not counting duplicates), year-rings seemed a welcome change.

[I would've liked to have shown you some of those Reagan cards but I seem to have misplaced the collection...for the moment.]

Gathered in New Jersey with the family at my Aunt Maddy’s house, my Gramma was admiring my 1933 ring. I explained to her that I was collecting rings like it. 

“I have a ring like that and next time you-come-my-house, honey, I’ll give you that ring.” she informed me.

“No Gramma, you don’t understand." I said to her,  "It has to be a ring with the year on it.  Just the year.”

“And I have a ring like that ho-kee-see (my soul), and I’m gonna give you that ring when you come my house,” she restated.

“Gramma,” I patiently repeated, “it’s gotta just have the year, nothing else.  No other name or school or anything.”

“Yes and I have that ring.” she persisted.  “My brother Hosroff gave it to me and I’m gonna give you that ring next time you come my house.”

I smiled dismissively because I was sure she just didn’t get it.

A few months later, we went down to the shore to see my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Helga and Gramma.  Gramma now lived in an apartment on Ocean Avenue, four blocks from her original house on Ninth Street.  Now Uncle Charlie and his family lived in the house of my Gramma so it was still like being at the Gramma’s I knew.

I walked down toward the beach and rang the bell of my Gramma’s apartment.

“I’m-a so happy to see you honey, I’m glad you come.  Come my bedroom.”  We went in to her small bedroom and she sat down on her bed.

“Go in my closet, hokesee, down in the bottom, you see a purple shoebox?  Bring me that shoebox.”

“You mean this one?” I asked as I dug out the box from the neat stacks on the floor of her closet.

“That’s the one,” she smiled. “You come here.”

As she opened the lid I saw that inside were small bundles of things, each wrapped in tissues and she took out a few and looked inside and replaced them until she found the one she was looking for — a metal ring with a scrolled filigree 1918 on its face.

“GRAMMA,” I exploded, “it’s a 1918 ring!  It’s exactly what I'm collecting!  I'm SO happy!”

“I told you I had that ring,” she said pointedly looking me in the eye.

“But I didn't think you’d knew what I meant!  I can’t believe you have this ring — it is SO perfect!  Where did you get this ring??”

“Well, when I’m gonna be eighteen, I’m gonna graduate school and then I’m gonna get married to Grampa, so my brother, Hosroff wanted me to have something. Something to make it special for me cause I’m the first in my family to graduate eighth grade.  But don’t tell anyone I gave you that ring, honey.”

She always said that whenever she gave you something. “Don’t tell the others. I don’t want them to know you’re my favorite.”

So, while I don’t remember all the wonderful things people said about Gramma after the funeral, I heard my sister tell the story of how she was Gramma’s favorite because when she and cousin Bobby came home summer nights past their curfew and the fathers were waiting to give them the devil, Gramma always positioned herself in-between to keep my Dad and Uncle John at bay. 

Then I listened to my cousin Linda who said that SHE was Gramma’s favorite because she was the one who lived with Gramma while she went to college and having spent all that time together knew Gramma’s loved her best.

And then, I got up and said, sorry, but I was Gramma’s favorite and I had the ring to prove it. 

Years later when our home was broken into and the 1927 ring with the initials B.A.D (Bucky Dean’s ring acquired from his estate sale in North Carolina) and the 1933 Art Deco  platinum ring with the diamond chip were taken, I thanked my stars I had the 1918 on my finger that day.

My Gramma made each and every one of us feel that we were her absolute and only favorite —  and that is what was so very special about her.