 “Miss Kuhner,” she told me, “I don’t see that you have the makings of a teacher.” It was the fall of 1970 and I was devastated. From as far back as I could remember I knew that I wanted to teach. My future was never in question. My senior year student teaching supervisor and education professor, Dr. McHugh, was delighted to place me with a very experienced teacher, Mrs. C. who I would follow throughout the day for a while, and then slowly I would take over one class for several weeks.
I sat in the back of the room and took notes as she taught remedial 12th grade, advanced 10th grade, and intermediate 9th grade English. I watched as she exacted responses from the students and reminded them of the daily quizzes. There was no discussion about the material. In the 12th grade class I had little use initially for taking notes since the lessons were very rote and, frankly, boring. Instead, my papers were full of details about the kids in the class—all of whom were frozen in their seats. “Donna looks scared again today. She’s biting her nails a lot. I wonder if she’s having problems understanding.” And, “Jeff keeps hitting his leg like it’s falling asleep. I’ve noticed that he limps a lot. Maybe he needs some help.” And, “Marcie has been wearing the same clothes for three days now and she looks so tired.” About the second week I saw some of the 12th grade students at lunch time and I began to talk with them and offered to give them extra help if they wanted it. Several were grateful and took me up on my offer and I began to get to know them a little bit. Carol, it turned out, wrote amazing poetry so I taught her about the sonnet form to try. Jeremy, I discovered, had terrible eye-sight but no money for glasses. I talked to the school counselor who directed him to an organization that would help. And when shy Sara , who was born in Cuba, discovered that my first language was Spanish, she was elated. “This means I can be something too!” she gushed. A few days later Mrs. C. met with me after school. “You should not be helping those students,” she informed me. “They need to know that they are not really high school material. They should just drop out and go get jobs.” I was stunned. “I don’t understand,” I said, “Shouldn’t we be trying to give them the best we can so that they can be the best version of themselves?” Her sudden piercing laugh scared me. “Have you taken a good look at these children? They will never make anything of their lives. Now the ones in my Grade 10 class, they are worth helping.” I was shaken. This was not really teaching. It was something else, but it was not teaching. When it came time for me to lead a class, Mrs. C. assigned me the 12th graders. I tried several different methods to engage the students. I told stories; I asked questions; I pointed to passages in the texts that were interesting and showed details about characters and ideas. They were not all successful lessons. Some were total flops. But I went back day after day determined to help them discover ideas in literature and in themselves. And at the end of my 8-week student teaching stint, Mrs. C. sat with my professor and me and gave me her assessment. “You simply don’t have what it takes. You have to face it. Find something else to do.” She pounded the edges of the papers she was holding on the dark oak table between us and started to pull her chair back to stand. Dr. McHugh stopped her. “Mrs. C. can you please tell me why specifically you think this?” And she was more than happy to detail all of my “silly” attempts at engaging the students and all of my naive notions about learning abilities, and my useless waste of time trying to get “those ignorant children” to understand. Dr. McHugh then thanked her for her time and very courteously walked her to the door. They spoke in hushed tones for a minute before she left abruptly. His dark brown eyes were flashing with rage by the time he faced me across the table. I was limp—a diminished young girl whose dreams were crumbling. I felt my entire existence to be a sort of sham. If I couldn’t be the one thing I felt in the very marrow of my bones I was meant to be, then who was I? He looked me squarely in the eyes. “You, Sylvia Kuhner,” he said, “are a teacher. You always have been you always will be. It’s not what you do; it’s who you are. Trust yourself. Mrs. C. has a very narrow view of the world. We will not be using her as a model again.” Then his gaze went to the window for a moment and back to me. “Every single child has dignity and deserves a chance to succeed. Every single child should be honored and supported and celebrated. And I know, I know, you feel the same way.” I nodded in full agreement. For days I went over and over the events, unable to reconcile the pieces, but delighted at Dr. McHugh’s assessment of my teaching potential. About a week later I talked about this with my friend Clara, a cafeteria worker at the college and a local town resident. “So who was this teacher you were workin’ with?” she asked. When I told her she laughed. “Oh, Mrs.C. Why everybody knows about her. She only likes the rich kids—she doesn’t think the rest of the kids should even be bothering with school.” She yelled over to Johnny who was sweeping up, “Hey, Sylvia here was told by Mrs. C. over at the high school that she’s never gonna’ be a good teacher. What d’ya think about that?” Johnny chuckled, “Well, I think that makes Sylvia about the best teacher in the whole world.” All three of us burst out laughing. “You know,” Clara said, “you can learn a lot from people like Dr. McHugh about what you want to be like, but you can also learn who you don’t want to be—like from Mrs. C. . Everybody can show you something about life.” I agreed. The following September I began my first job as a teacher to my very own 7th grade class at Lower Regional School in Cape May NJ. On the first day of school as I looked out into the sea of anxious, eager faces I knew I was in love. There was nothing else in the world that I wanted to do—nothing else that felt so meaningful or was so much fun. As my work continued, I reveled in my students’ successes and really worked to help them learn about the material, about life, and about themselves. I helped and prodded and nudged and played every single day. I loved each and every one of them. When our class picture was taken in October there was much giggling and twisting about as the photographer and I tried to produce an orderly portrait. Finally, to create a more somber tone I said to the class: “Imagine looking at this picture way in the future—maybe fifty years from now. You’re going to be so amazed at who you were in 1971. You’re getting this picture taken for the you of 2021.” This worked. Later, as we were adjusting ourselves into our normal classroom configuration, I asked them to think about their future selves and what they would be proud for having accomplished. There were all manner of responses. One girl wanted to cure cancer so no one else had to lose their mom to it like she did. One boy wanted to go into the Coast Guard like his dad and protect our coastlines. Another boy wanted to drive a giant truck all over the country. A girl wanted to be a hairstylist and have her own salon. And then Billy asked me, “So what do you want to be proud of in 2021, Miss Kuhner?” My answer was immediate, “Having been caring and helpful and inspiring to years and years and years of students.” And although the formats have changed in unimaginable ways, and my age-range shifted a long time ago from 7th grade to college, this September 2021, I am humbled and proud and delighted to say, I will start my 50th year as a teacher. I was 12 years old when at lunch time I just raced out of the school building (PS 63 in New York City), ran across a highway, over a busy avenue, rounded the corner, and breathlessly entered the lobby of my apartment building. I knew it was foolish at the time, but my overwhelming fear and anxiety just took over. It was mid-October, 1962 and our country was engulfed in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our teachers had been drilling us for days on various survival techniques, mainly “duck and cover” and “hide under the desks”, because it was widely assumed that nuclear bombs were aimed at New York City as the first line of attack. We all felt powerless. To add to the sadness, my father recently had serious surgery and was home languishing in pain, and my mother spent her days fretting over his slow recovery and also the panic of what most believed would be imminent bombings. On that particular day we had a drill in the hallway of our school where over a loud speaker the principal urged us to keep our backs to the wall as we all sat cross-legged on the cold, tile floor. Probably seeing the terror on our faces, our teacher, Mrs. Rothman, spoke to us in a quiet, but firm voice: “Shortly after we were married, my husband fought in World War II. After it was over and he came home he didn’t talk about it much, but I knew it had been horrible for him and others. He still had some shrapnel in his chest from a particularly dangerous mission which I knew caused him a great deal of pain. But still, I would see him really enjoying a simple slice of pie or a brightly colored bird on our window sill in ways I didn’t see before. Every day when he left for his job as a bus driver he would hug me and say what a beautiful day it was—even if it was raining. One day I asked him why he was so…well, so appreciative of everything. So many others were angry or distressed. And he told me: ‘After I was shot I figured out that things like this—like this terrible, terrible war—either make you better or worse when you come out of it. I set myself on trying to come out of this a better person. I decided that I was going to really enjoy life because this experience would teach me a valuable lesson. So I was going to be better for it.’ “ As we sat there scared and shivering I hung on her every word looking for some balm to fill my fearful heart. She finished, “So, when this ordeal is done and we all go back to our regular lives, think about whether this will make you a better person or a worse one. Decide that now inside of yourself because it will matter for your whole life.” And as she finished, the bell rang for lunch. Kids scampered to the cafeteria, but I bolted out the door and home to my parents. I found my mother crying in the kitchen and my father on the couch listless and very pale. “This will make us stronger,” I vowed out loud. “We will get through this—all of it—and it will teach us how much we love each other and how strong we can really be.” Of course they were shocked by this, but I had a very firm resolve. Even though I loved being at school, I stayed home to help and to be with the two people I so dearly loved. Several days later the missile crisis was over, my father’s health began to improve, and my mother’s panic began to abate. And, indeed, we really were never again the same as before the crisis. We were better.   “Mom, I’m going downstairs to tell them about the dance practice.” It was 1962, and I was 12 years old and living in an apartment building in New York City. My friends were coming over tomorrow after school to practice some new dances we’d seen on American Bandstand—especially “The Mashed Potatoes”. We were a noisy bunch and generally gathered at Ruthie’s house. But tomorrow was my turn. I thought the polite thing to do was to let Mrs. Green, who lived directly below us in 5L, know ahead of time. I didn’t know her or her husband very well, but I had met them in the elevator a few times. Mrs. Green with her thick German accent, curly gray hair, and bright blue eyes, looked and sounded a lot like my grandmother Annette who I had left behind in Uruguay when my family moved to The United States 4 years ago. She died two years later, and truth was, I still missed her. And my grandfather, Max. When Mrs. Green opened her door, she looked scared and shaky. “Come in dear,” she began, “I’m just waiting for an important phone call.” I walked with her to the big yellowish armchair with doilies barely covering its worn arms and back. I sat on the floor next to her. “What happened? Are you OK?” I asked wondering if I should call someone for help. “No, I’ll be fine. I just need to get my mind off of it until the call comes. Tell me something about yourself. Tell me a story,” she pleaded with her voice and her eyes, and continued, “Did you ever have to wait for news?” I hung my head down and began, “I can tell you about last week.” And so I explained how by accident I learned that my beloved grandfather had died a whole year ago and no one ever told me. How I searched the mail for weeks for a letter from him and none came. And finally, my parents gave me the letter from our relative in Montevideo explaining it all. “I was so angry,” I said looking up at Mrs. Green’s eyes, “because he died, because I didn’t know, because they kept such a big secret from me.” She looked down at me and said, “Ay, schatzi,” she began with a sigh, “sometimes things are kept from us because others think it will be too much for us. Sometimes they think the truth is so big that it might swallow us up.” I nodded in agreement and I continued, “my mom told me that after my grandmother died I was so upset that she couldn’t stand to tell me about my grandfather.” Mrs. Green sighed and swept her hand about the room, “Look around here.” I suddenly noticed the faces and hands and landscape paintings jamming the expansive whiteness of the walls. She continued, “I painted all of these from my memory. It’s all I have—my memory—of my homeland and my family.” She told me the story of how in Germany as a young woman she saw children and families herded into trucks and trains. She asked her parents what was happening, and they did not tell her. She saw her father taking down all symbols of their Jewish religion—the mezuzah by the door, the menorah on the mantle—but they did not explain. When the banging on the door came and she, her baby brother, and her parents were shipped to Dachau and separated, no one said what would happen. Now she looked up at her paintings, “They divided us up—sent me away again. They found I could paint and draw, so I worked in a big room making Nazi posters. Nazi posters. My art talent saved my life but look what I had to do with it to survive.” Now she was in tears, but she continued, “When the tanks rolled in and I saw that American flag I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. People had come to save us. To save us. That’s when I met Jimmy.” “Oh,” I interjected, “Mr. Green!” She smiled. “Yes. It was the worst time of my life and then it became the best. We fell in love. He brought me here.” “What happened to your family?” I asked, hopefully. “They were all killed right away. No one was left but me. And so I started painting my memories as soon as I could. It was all I had, but it was a lot. The more I painted the more I could bring them all back to me.” I looked around. Even my own 12-year-old eyes could see the vividness of the colors, the clarity and precision on the hands, the hair, the eyes of the people on her walls. “Ay, Liebchen,” she said, “art saved my life many times. It saves me now.” The sudden ringing of the black phone by her chair started us both. She picked up the heavy receiver and nodded as she listened. I stood up and walked around the room looking at the memories and remembering my own grandparents. When she hung up the phone, I went back to her. “Is it OK?” I asked. “No,” she stated frankly. It is not. “The results of the tests are not good. My health is not good.” Right then Mr. Green came through the front door jauntily and stopped suddenly when he saw his wife’s face. “Gertie?” he asked—he pleaded. I knew I was invading a private moment and quickly left. Ruthie agreed to have the dance event at her house the next day. I stopped in frequently to see Mrs. Green over the next few weeks. By the end, she could not leave her bed. A month after her death Mr. Green began moving out of apartment 5L. “I will go to Michigan to live with my sister and her family,” he told me when I saw him in the elevator. “I’m packing all of those paintings so carefully. I want my nieces to know these memories—these stories. Did I ever tell you how I met my Gertie?” We were now on the 5th floor and both got out and walked to the apartment where movers were wrapping and storing things. He began, “she was Dachau concentration camp. When our Army Division arrived to liberate them, the people there looked like ghosts. They were so thin and weak and afraid. Many threw themselves on the ground and wept. We gave them food and they took it and hid it in their shirts or pants—afraid it would disappear. But not Gertie. I saw her, a woman who could barely walk and was carrying paint brushes in her hands, take the bread, smile, thank us and break it in two pieces, giving half to some small child who was holding her leg and crying. I had never seen such kindness in my life.” Now Mr. Green was crumpled in a lone chair by the door. He continued, “She never spoke ill of anyone. But she wanted to keep the story of her family alive, and she wanted to remember beauty, and kindness, and humanity, and love. So she painted. What art do you have in your heart, Sylvia?” he asked. No one had ever asked me that before. “I can’t paint, I can’t sing, I can barely dance. I don’t think I have any.” I answered sadly. And then I brightened, “I love words. I can paint with them and tell stories!” He smiled. “If you give life to people you love, people you meet, people who you care about, the stories will give you life. Art keeps the world alive.” He was right. “It’s time,” he said. “I’ve had it long enough.” My father motioned to his trumpet case sitting in the middle of our living room floor. “I turned 50 this week, and I haven’t played in years.” He was right. In truth, I only had very vague memories from when I was a young kid of him raising the trumpet up to his lips and holding it skyward as his fingers pressed keys and loud jazz music came tumbling out. The sounds seemed to enclose me and at the same moment make me feel giddily free. In high school and college he had played in bands, mainly dance bands, and then for a few years was the leader of two of them. He played off and on since then, but by 1977 it had been many years. “It needs to be heard,” he said to me, and then continued, “The instrument isn’t meant to sit in a closet idle—it needs to be shined up and be taken care of and make sounds. It was created to make music, not live in darkness.” Later, after a local man stopped by in the evening and, frayed hat in his shaking hands and a bit of cracking in his voice, thanked my father for this gift, and left, I became sentimental. “Daddy, how can you just do that? How can you gladly give up something that valuable to you?” “Well,” he began, “I guess it depends on what you call ‘valuable’. See, I love music. Love it with all my heart, but that trumpet sitting in a case isn’t music. It needs to do what it was meant to do—make music. That’s when it becomes gold.” More than twenty years later, I fully understood. I learned that the man who had come to the house had a teen-age son who loved playing but the family could not afford a trumpet so he borrowed one whenever he could. My dad heard about him from a friend. Once the boy had my dad’s trumpet in his hands, and realized it was fully his own, he hardly let it go—took it with him everywhere. It helped him get a scholarship to college which gave him openings into a career he dearly loved. I learned this after my father died when I got a long condolence letter with an enclosed photo from the boy—now man—my dad had given the trumpet to. He wrote of how that simple gesture taught him a lot about life and people and the meaning of generosity. “It really comes down to being willing to give parts of yourself to others—Your dad gave me the gift of his music and the gift of learning I could make my own. And, see, my son Jason is next.” The photo: A young boy—maybe 9 or 10— holding a gleaming, giant-seeming golden trumpet in his small hands, grinning widely, with my dad’s beaten-up instrument case proudly set up right beside him.   “Sylvia you are an absolute mess. You’re dripping water all over the floor.” My mother was not happy. It was July 1966, I was sixteen years old, and we were at our beach house in Cape May, NJ. “I know, mom, but I just had to get back home. I don’t know what happened.” Now she harrumphed at me, narrowing her eyes as she looked askance at my sea-weed-like hair plastered across my forehead and down my back. In contrast she stood before me perfectly coiffed, make-up expertly applied, jewelry carefully chosen, and a soft-blue caftan drifting feather-light over her slight frame. These ramblings of mine around our small town mystified her. Life in The United States was still quite new to her and to make matters worse, she had only lived in cities her entire life. The world of a beach community was foreign territory and she did not yet have the language for it. She had never ridden a bike and when my father, Fred, taught me how when I was 6, she was terrified. “Fred, she’s going to hurt herself,” and “Fred why are you not holding onto the seat she could fall? She’ll get a concussion.” When I inevitably did fall, there were great recriminations. Even hopscotch was problematic for her, and jump-rope was not to be done when she was around. Skinned knees were the stuff of great drama and try as I might to hide them from her, she would see. So, now, at 16 every time I left the house on my bike to go to the beach or to visit my friends, she would warn me of imminent disasters. “Watch out for cars! Children play in the street—don’t run into them. Keep your balance.” But on this day in July, as I stood before her disdainful eyes, something was different. I was not dismissive or teasing with her. I was confused. She noticed. “What were you doing today? You were going to Bobbie’s house, right?” Bobbie was my friend who lived on the harbor. Her house had a long pier off the front where her brother and cousins (who were our ages) would dock their boats. She and I would watch the boys dive into the water or push each other off the dock in raucous horse-play. Sometimes they’d take us out on boat rides where one or the other would water ski. I sighed as I began to explain things to my mother. “Today I asked to try water skiing,” I began. She gasped and sat down. I continued, “It looked like so much fun, and the idea of gliding on the water seemed wonderful.” Her face looked horrified, but I continued, “One of the guys said that girls were never good at this, but Bobbie’s cousin Scott told him to be quiet and that he was sure I could do it. He explained things carefully to me: ‘adjust your life jacket like this; hold the rope with both hands on top; get in the water and have just the tips of the skis jutting out; and when we start to speed up, bring your body up to the surface. And then just glide along.’ He also told me that most times people don’t get up the first time. It’s really hard.” I put some towels down on a chair, collapsed into it, and continued: “So I did it. Jeff laughed and reminded me that girls were terrible at this as I lowered myself into the cold water. But I followed directions carefully. And the boat started to speed up.” Now my mother reached for a glass of water and gulped some aspirins as I continued. “It was amazing. I got up on the very first try! I thought about everything I was doing and my strong legs and arms worked to hold me up. It was glorious. I could feel the water sliding under me and the wind blowing my hair back and I thought that this is what birds must feel like when they take flight.” Now I hung my head. “What happened next?” my mother asked. I continued, “I don’t really understand it. I was holding onto the rope and I looked at the kids on the boat in front of me cheering me on and I looked down, and suddenly I just let go. I just let the rope go and I slowly drifted into the water. As soon as I got back on the boat and then back on land, I jumped on my bike and came home.” I continued, “I kept thinking that it was just luck. I saw Jeff on the boat and thought that maybe he was right. Maybe girls can’t do that. It all seemed improbable to me suddenly. And really, almost no one gets it the first time. I was just lucky. So I just let go.” My mother stared at me a minute, told me to go change into a clean bathing suit, and shooed me into my room. This made no sense. Half an hour later, my mother, who was afraid of all sports, who was against my participation in anything vaguely adventurous, had me in a car on the way to the harbor. There she had arranged for Gus and Kathy at the small local yacht club to fit me for skis and to take me out on their boat. “Mom, I don’t understand. You hate this stuff. You don’t want me to do this. Why are you having me go out there?” She looked at me defiantly, “I never want you to believe that your hard work and your effort and your ability are all just luck. Yes, you are lucky in many ways, but when you try hard, you need to know it was you who did it. Never let anyone—not even your own self—disminuirte (diminish you). Now go back out there.” And so it was that my perfectly manicured mother in her floral sheath dress and white heels, who disapproved of all my shenanigans, watched me soar and skim across the bright blue water, whooping and hollering as I jumped some small waves. Once or twice I looked over at her standing on the shore and I could see her clapping. She never fully understood my quirkiness—we were always differently wired, but she clapped for me. Years later, when I graduated from college and earned one master’s degree, then another, then my PhD, my mother clapped. My mother, who had dropped out of medical school because she thought she wasn’t smart enough—who had given up and gotten married young because the world around her told her that she needed a man to support her—who had to find her way after her first husband tried to kill their baby (me) and then disappeared—my mother put her white-gloved hands together and clapped for me over and over and over.   I was horrified. “How could it just…vanish? That’s not possible.” It was 1959, I was almost 9 years old, and four weeks earlier we had moved to San Paulo, Brazil—the fourth country I had lived in. My father, just 31years-old at the time, was starting a new enterprise: a textile factory. I had gone with him during the machinery installation and loved sitting on a high perch watching it all come together and listening to the language I was just beginning to learn—Portuguese. The men had books with instructions and suggestions for how to make it happen and slowly the design took shape. But today when I came home from school, I found my parents talking animatedly about what happened that day. My mother was waving her arms about in a state of near panic, and my father was trying to console her. “Sara,” he began, “these things happen. It’s not too bad. We’ll fix it soon and we can get back on schedule.” There had been a small fire in the back warehouse of the factory and while some inventory had burned, the machinery was fine, he explained to me. I nodded in understanding, and remembering the large concrete partition between the front and the back, I explained to my mother that it would be just fine. “It’s not like the library of Alexandria disaster,” he said off-handedly. Confused I asked him what that was. “It was a very ancient library that held much of the knowledge of the world. Great writers and philosophers and thinkers wrote on papyrus scrolls—what they used before our modern paper—and stacked them in this huge and beautiful library. Being a librarian there was a very prestigious position which came with a great deal of power and honor. And then almost two thousand years ago the entire library was destroyed by a giant fire. And by neglect. The whole thing was gone.” “None of it was left?” I asked in horror. “No. Nothing. Imagine all of that information and knowledge of the world and of people gone,” he explained. I grabbed my light jacket, told my parents where I was going, and ran down the block to our local library. No matter where my parents moved us to, I always found the closest library and made it a kind of home. I loved sitting on the chairs or comfy couches, surrounded by hundreds of books, and leafing quietly through one or two or three. Sometimes I would walk around the stacks and just run my hands along the book-spines and then let my fingers feel the embossed titles on the sides or the fronts of the covers. My problem came with the language. I had learned my first language, Spanish, in Uruguay, and then learned my next language, English, when I was seven and we moved to my father’s home country, The United States. But now Portuguese was a new challenge. The library clerks were at first surprised to see an eight-year-old who couldn’t speak their language showing up several afternoons a week. They would smile at me welcomingly as I bounced recklessly up and down the aisles. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not yet read any of the books. “No English?” I would ask. “No…” they would respond sadly. But I was not deterred. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would still show up. We started learning each other’s language. “Book” I would say pointing. “Livro” they would respond smiling. “Pencil” I would say; “lapis” they would answer. And so it went for several weeks. They would sometimes have picture books or art books for me to peruse when I came in. But just walking around in the midst of all of those words between covers waiting for me to discover their secrets was enough of a joy for me. On this day, though, I needed to share this horrific new knowledge about the burnt library. I burst into the San Paulo library and kept repeating that the Alexandria library burned. “Tragedy—tragedia—Alexandria biblioteca,” I blurted breathlessly as I ran into the marble building with socks slithering down my skinny legs, jacket half off my arms, hair tumbling out of my normally tight braids. They looked confused and dismayed. The head librarian came out from the back room and I repeated the words to her. “Ah, si,” she said, shaking her head and sighing the expiration I myself could feel. “Tragedia. Grande tragedia.” And then in Portuguese I could see and hear her explaining to the women about the ancient library and its demise. I didn’t understand most of the words, but I could read the women’s faces clearly. “Tudo?” (everything) one of them uttered in disbelief. “Tudo,” explained the head librarian. And they looked at me, an eight year old disheveled girl whose place of happiness and comfort was where they worked day in and day out; a little girl who could not yet read the words in this world of theirs but somehow understood their power; a little girl standing before them feeling her first encounter with the immensity of loss—and they all reached down to hug me. One by one, with tears in their eyes, they hugged me. And for that moment, on a Wednesday afternoon, in San Paulo Brazil, no words were necessary. Within a month the textile factory was running smoothly. I would visit with my dad and see the weaving of the lined-up threads somehow magically finding their ways through metal to come out changed into cloth. One time I took samples of the various woven fabrics, and over the weekend made bookmarks for my librarian friends which I stored carefully in my pockets. But when I walked into the library that Monday afternoon, they were lined up waiting for me and giggling with anticipation. I was confused. Then three of them pulled out books they were hiding behind their backs. One excitedly said, “We buy books for biblioteca—library.” And they handed me three books in English. The books were about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. I jumped up and down. “I can read these. I can read these,” I chanted with glee. “Thank you!” And immediately I plunked myself down on the nearest couch and read. When I looked up I could see them beaming. Before I left I remembered to give them the bookmarks I had made which they delightedly accepted commenting admiringly about the different patterns and colors. Every time I went to the library for the rest of the year they ceremoniously and with great joy brought me those three books. And even if I didn’t re-read them each time, I carried them about proudly as I wandered—and sometimes skipped—down the aisles. When I was almost 10 we moved away from Brazil and back to The United States. The day before we left I said good-bye to my librarian friends. “Nos sentiremos sua falta,” they said in unison. I smiled, “I will miss you too,” I answered hugging each of them. One of women solemly continued: “Alexadria not gone,” she said, “it here always,” and she pointed to her heart and her head, and then to my heart and my head. And as I walked out through the large wooden door, they waved good-bye using the multi-colored woven bookmarks I had given them like signal flags on passing ships. Many years later I learned that the government in Brazil during that time had no money for library books in foreign languages. And that these women who had to commute several hours a day to their jobs for very low pay, lived in small homes in the back-country with little running water and electricity. And I learned that for months they had saved small amounts every week so that they themselves could buy those books so that I could read in their library.  The baby blue jay had fallen to the ground and my father ran out to the side yard of our borrowed house in Larchmont, New York to rescue it. It was 1957, I was seven and he was (can it be?) thirty, and although this was the country he was born and raised in, this was the second continent and fifth house I had lived in. “It’s only temporary. Bill lent it to us while he’s in Europe.” Yes, it felt temporary. I still hadn’t gotten used to the new world I was in, and the strange new English language around me. “Abuelo,” I said to my grandfather in Spanish four months ago, before leaving Uruguay, “when will I see you again?” “I will always be in your heart, see?” he said as he showed me the latest drawing he’d made for me of a large heart surrounded by lilies of the valley, my grandmother’s favorite flower. But I knew, even then, even at seven, that only the red heart on the paper would stay together. Mine was going to break. “Papa, Father, Father, it’s there by the rosas.” From inside the dining room window I pointed at the exact spot on the window where I could see the crumpled mass of gray. How strange it was to say “father.” I liked the Spanish sound of “papa,” rounded and formed from closed lips and then a burst of energy and an outward puff of air, and then again, “pa” “pa”. But in English a forcing of air through teeth trapped on the bottom lip, the mouth hinged open and then the tongue thrust out along the teeth and a growl deep in the mouth, “fa th er.” But this was his language and his country and here we were going to live a fine life and be happy. He said so. And I wanted us to be happy. I knew things in Uruguay were bad, and there was never any money or hope. “Plata, “ there. A word meaning “silver,” something shiny and real. “Money,” here. A word that didn’t have a picture and I kept confusing with the first day of the school week. The baby bird wasn’t moving much as my father scooped it up in his gloved hands and to reassure me that it was still alive showed it to me through the window before turning to the tree, turning toward the nest. Perhaps (quizas) had we not been looking at each other through the glass and then at the almost lifeless mass in his outstretched hands, he would have seen the mother blue jay. Her attack came from some high place and was a direct and fierce stabbing of my father’s head. He yelled in pain as she pierced him once, twice, three times. Blood trickled over his ears, down his face onto his shoulders. I saw him look at me through the glass as I stood frozen with my mouth open wanting to call for some help and not finding the words or the breath. The baby in his left hand, waving off the wild mother with his right, he climbed the ladder he had leaned against the tree, and deposited his charge into the nest. When at last he came inside, before my mother saw him and fainted, before we went to the hospital, he said to me, “Sylvia, you see, this is what matters . You must always help others. It might hurt sometimes but you must help the world however you can. Remember this your whole life.”  “No. Marta Sanchez isn’t coming. She wasn’t invited.” It was May of 1958, I was 8 years-old, and at Susie’s house, three doors down from mine in Passaic, NJ. We were talking about an end of the school year party at her house this coming Saturday. Susie’s house was the biggest and most perfect one in town with a pool in the backyard (with a slide!), a treehouse for her brothers that was off-limits to girls, and a permanently set up croquet course where we were right now. “But she has to come. I thought everyone from our class was coming,” I blurted out while banging my mallet against the wooden ball sending it precisely through the hoop. I continued, “Her mom even made us matching dresses.” Marta’s mom was known to be an excellent seamstress. Her work on wedding gowns was in constant demand. She would sometimes show me how to stich around a button, or under a complicated pleat, or behind an intricate embroidered area and tell me, “it has to look like it’s floating. It has to look like angels made it with magic.” Then she’d smile, look through her thick-lensed glasses, and get back to work. “My mom says that she’s Puerto Rican and they don’t belong at our parties,” Susie continued as she took her turn, hit the ball, and missed the hoop. Suddenly Mrs. Tannor appeared holding a tray of lemonade and cookies, her heavy, gold charm bracelet clanging as she walked. “Are you girls having fun?” She set things down on a nearby table, smiled and was beginning to walk away when I stopped her. “Susie says that Marta Sanchez can’t come to our party next week because she’s Puerto Rican. I don’t understand. She’s really nice. Everyone likes her. She says she’s going to be a doctor one day.” Mrs. Tannor sat down on a nearby chaise lounge, her soft yellow dress rustling around her, and motioned me to stand before her. With great solemnity she took my hands and looked me in the eyes. “Sylvia, dear, there are things in this world you just don’t understand yet. There are people we simply can’t be seen with. There is such a thing as a reputation and if you are with the wrong people…well, it’s shattered. You have to be very careful in this world. And she will not be a doctor. She’s a girl and look where she comes from.” I stood frozen with my wooden mallet in my hand as she stood up quickly, patted me on my head, told us we only had a few more minutes to play, and went back to the house. “Come on, Sylvia, we’ve got to finish. You’re beating me. You always beat me,” Susie giggled. The situation troubled me, and I thought it over and over in my mind as I trudged solemnly home. The next day at lunch I talked to Marta about this. She didn’t seem surprised. “My mom says this happens to us sometimes. But she tells me not to worry because when someone doesn’t like you even before they know you it’s not you they don’t like. It’s something in themselves that they don’t like but they have to find an outside place to put it. How can anyone really not like you when they don’t know you? She says, ‘Don’t listen to hate when it talks, Marta, because it will stop you. You are made of star light, so just shine and the whole world will see you are magnificent.’” “Magnificent” became my favorite word for the whole day. That night at dinner I told my father about the problem. His face was red with anger, but his words were controlled and clear, “ Well, you know how your mother and I feel about justice. You know how we feel that all people deserve dignity and respect and equal chances. There is a great deal of unfairness in the world. But this is becoming your world now--how do you think you should solve this?” I was confused. The party would be so much fun, but how could I enjoy it without my friend Marta there? And the matching dresses were beautiful. I came up with a plan. I told Susie I was really sorry, but I wouldn’t be able to come to the party. I asked Marta to come to my house for an adventure on the party day and that we needed to wear our matching dresses. My mother called her mom to get her approval and when they arrived, as Marta and I twirled around in our fancy white dresses with pale blue lace trim, I saw the adults talking but couldn’t hear any of the words. And then all of us climbed into my parents’ big black Buick, drove over the George Washington Bridge into New York City, and on to The Plaza Hotel for afternoon tea. We ate cookies and scones and whipped cream (right off the spoon!) and cakes. Then Marta and I were allowed to wander through the lobby by ourselves. We hid behind the huge potted palms and scampered and slid on the shiny corridors. Someone stopped us and asked if we were twins and we looked at each other and burst out “YES!” at the same time. On the way home we sang songs in the car and the adults told stories about when they were kids. The sun was almost setting as we drove west over the bridge on the way back to New Jersey and when we said our goodbyes, we all declared it to be “The best day ever!” I yelled loudly as they drove away, “It was magnificent!” We moved away the following month and continued move after move for many years. As happens, I lost touch with many of my childhood friends. But by chance I ran into Susie at an event almost thirty years later. We didn’t recognize each other at first but small talk about backgrounds quickly sorted that out. I asked about her family. “Well, I married a lawyer—he specializes in civil rights lawsuits. He and my mother barely talk to each other. I love her, but I just can’t agree with her ideas. It took me too long,” she looked down with sadness and continued, “but I did finally realize that people need to be treated with dignity. I remember listening to Martin Luther King’s speech and his line about basing your opinions about folks not on the externals but on the content of the character of the individual.” She went on, “My father died a few years ago. Heart attack. And my mother…Oh my…” now she chuckled at some long-held internal joke, “she had breast cancer.” I looked confused, but she continued, “so her doctor sent her to the best specialist and meticulous surgeon in New York.” At this point she was laughing so hard that she wiped tears from her eyes. “I went with her for the examination and imagine both of our surprised faces when we were greeted by Marta Sanchez!” Oh my. Now I burst out laughing. “My Marta?” I sputtered, “Marta? So, what happened next?” “Well, she had the surgery and it was successful. Marta saved her life. And while my mom was in the recovery room and Marta came out to talk with me, I listened carefully to all instructions about after-care, thanked her, and then I asked her how she could put aside such anger and obstacles that she was faced with. And know what she told me?” Now I was listening very intently as she continued, “She said you just have to love the world. You have to make things better that you can make better. That you just have to harness your internal star-shine and glow brilliantly, and eventually everyone will see your magnificence—that her mom taught her that.”  In 1970, on a lovely early summer day—the kind where light scents of lilac and early roses fill the air—as my mother and I walked along a sidewalk near our home in Cape May, a confused driver crashed into us pinning our bodies against a brick wall. People rushed to help us, gently and speedily. Ambulances were called, the hospital was at the ready, and we were quickly in operating rooms. My mother was in critical condition and near death. The surgeon made the difficult decision that to spare her life he would have to amputate her left leg at the thigh. She was losing a great deal of blood and our small hospital’s supply of her fairly rare blood-type, A negative, had been depleted. A call went out to our town’s Coast Guard base for help. Immediately the few cadets and officers with her blood type came to her aid. She needed a lot, but these young men were at the ready. Thanks to the helpers and the health care professionals and the “Coasties”, eventually she began to recover. Our lives never were the same, of course, but a new normal began to set in, slowly—very slowly. She learned how to navigate with the drastic changes to her body and, of course, to her life. Many years later, by complete chance, I met an ex-Coast Guard at a wedding in Cape May. I told him the story of my mom, and with the intensity of emotion you don’t expect from a complete stranger he grabbed my hands. I could see he was ready to cry. He told me he was one of those men. As I looked at him in astonishment, he continued. “The day we got the call I was at the lowest point in my life. My father had committed suicide the year before and I had never dealt with that pain and what it did to my family. I was drinking too much and I’d started gambling. I didn’t know why I stayed in the Coast Guard but I didn’t know what else to do. At 21 I thought my life was over. Nothing mattered. But then when we rushed to the hospital and they started drawing blood out of me I got this feeling…I don’t know how to describe it. As they’re taking my blood I started feeling powerful. Yeah, powerful, for the first time in a long time. I was helping someone else live. I was part, really part, of something outside of me. And your mother needed me to live.” I was dumbfounded and just stared at him as he continued. “Afterwards we all waited for days to hear how she was and when we got word that she was recovering well, we cheered. I began to see that what I did had meaning to someone else—that I could help others live. And that helping others is what gave my life purpose.” When I was able to form words again I asked him what he was doing now. “I’m a paramedic in Detroit. Best job in the world. Every day.” I hugged him, this stranger who saved my mother, and I thanked him. He spoke, “I gave her blood and she gave me a future. This life we have,” he continued, “it’s no good unless we share it. We’re all in this world together, right? We are all here for each other. In giving life we get life.”   “Look, out there—over out that window—See ‘em?” A man with gray, thin hair, stooped shoulders, and a wan complexion—a stranger--motioned to me excitedly from just across the train aisle with the wild glee of someone whose joy needed to be shared. I had been sitting in the dining car after dinner with a cup of tea, looking down at my glossy magazine, lost in the swirling dresses of Vogue’s spring season couture features, dreamily accepting the clanging of the train’s wheels and the jostling of the items on the tables. We were on our way north from Fort Lauderdale to Philadelphia, a trip that typically takes 24 hours by train.
I looked up and followed his shaky pointing fingers just in time to see geese—flocks and flocks of them—flying in formation over the south Georgia savannah lands, their bodies making long shadows over the water. The sun was starting to set and a rosy golden glow settled over the marshes. He leaned his old, spindly body back in his seat. “I always say them birds is the prettiest thing I ever did see, excepting my Sally,” he said still looking out. He turned to look at me, “Sally was my wife. Died 4 years ago, Part of me died too that day.” He picked up a cup from the table. We looked out the window in silence for a few minutes, each of sipping from our vessels. Then I asked, and he told me stories. (“Oh, she was a terrible cook—poor dear tried so hard and served it up with so much love I never said anything but good.” And, “When our son was born and she was in so much pain she looked up at me and says to me that it was the best day of her life ‘cause there was a new human that combined the best of the two of us. And here I was all worried about the money and the work. But she cut right through to the important parts.”). “How far are you going?” I asked as we reached Jessup, Georgia. He answered, “I’m going all the way to Washington, DC. My son is meeting me there—going to go live with him and his family. Don’t know how that’s going to work. My daughter-in-law, she don’t like me much—always trying to tell me what to wear and how to talk. I expect she’s not too happy about this, but my son insisted. I gotta get some medical tests. Cancer spread. I told him I’d be better off just letting the Good Lord take me in my old green chair on my porch in Palatka, but he won’t hear of it. Truth is, I want to see my grandson. He’s almost 20. I want to tell him some stories—let him know the strong people he come from. We got to tell stories—It keeps people alive.” I smiled. The sun had gone down and the windows now showed only the reflection of the inside. “How far you going?” he asked of me. I answered “Philadelphia”. He continued, “That’s a long way. I take this train cause I like to see the real land—I flew a couple of times, but it don’t feel right. That’s a place for those birds—not for me. So why do you ride the rails?” he asked. I shook my head, “I have a problem with my ears. My balance system is thrown off if I fly—the pressure causes me to feel so dizzy that I fall down. Kind of like there are magnets in my head that pull me over. It lasts for 10 days once it sets in. So my husband and I figured out how to travel a lot by train. We really like it—get a little bedroom for sleeping, get our meals, and meet people.” I smiled at him and he grinned back. “You know, I hear-tell that geese navigate by magnets in their heads. Amazing aren’t they” he answered. Then went on, “when I was a kid my papa wanted me to go out hunting them birds with him. He showed me where to go and how to walk and sit real quiet, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I was born 9 months and a week after he come home from WW2 and he never once talked about it. Closest he come was when he’d just lower his head and say that no one should ever have to see what he saw. Then he’d just shut up. After he died, I learned he helped liberate a concentration camp in Germany somewhere. Found some medals he’d gotten too. But he never wanted to talk about it.” His gnarled hands were now clutching a spoon as he stirred the liquid in his cup. He continued, “When I couldn’t kill them birds I thought he was terribly disappointed and I ran up to my room and slammed the door shut, embarrassed. He came in after me and sat right there at the edge of my bed and said to me, ‘son, there ain’t no shame in not wanting to kill. You got to go with what your heart tells you is right and wrong. I seen too much killing and I think that it takes a big man to admit he don’t have the stomach for it.’ Then my daddy, he stood up, and get this, he salutes me. Salutes me, turns on his heels and leaves the room. Twenty years later when we buried him, I did the same for him.” His voice was quivering as we were coming into Charleston. “Is that one of the stories you’re going to tell your grandson?" I asked. He looked, up and I could see the tears on his deeply wrinkled face. “Sure is,” he said, “Sure is. Gotta keep people alive” It was late and we said our good-nights and headed down the narrow hallway in opposite directions. The next morning at sunrise I opened the curtains of my sleeping compartment just as we were heading into DC and was greeted with light dancing on the Potomac River. When we stopped at the station, I saw my companion from yesterday evening shuffle slowly on the platform, cane in hand. He glanced up and saw me. I waved and he smiled and tipped his brown hat. Suddenly there was a young man coming toward him—racing on the concrete, arms open wide to embrace him. Even through the train’s thick glass windows I could hear him yell out “Grandpa! I’m so happy you’re here,” as he grabbed his bag, held onto his arm, and both men walked, chattering gleefully, toward the exit. “Gotta keep people alive.” |
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