This blog includes essays about life, aging, humor, inspiration and creativity. These things capture my attention and I hope are worthy of yours. Sandra Enos.
In space capsule years, 47 is a long time; Voyager I and I have spent the best of those years together. When Voyager was launched in 1977, it was the heyday of space exploration. The public was dazzled with flights to the moon, astronauts were heroes. Nowadays, any clown with a billion dollars can send up a rocket or satellite. In fact, there is so much traffic in space that we need rocket tow trucks to remove all the junk in orbit.
V, my nickname for Voyager I, is an antique in terms of spacecraft and technology. It is the size of a Volkswagen Bettle, the car I drove when I worked at NASA in the seventies. It has a tiny computer. My iPhone is 235,000 times more powerful and 175,000 times faster than the computer on board V. The power it needs to transmit messages is equal to that of a refrigerator light bulb. It sends radio signals with a 3-watt transmitter, much weaker than a typical radio station. It takes ten hours for a message to get from V to the earth where it is picked by special antenna designed by NASA and by me. Right now, V is 15 billion miles from earth, traveling through the solar system, through the heliosphere and is now traveling in interstellar space.
There are just a few people like me who can speak to V with our outdated programming languages – just a few lines of code – but the younger engineers have no interest in their grandfather’s spacecraft. We used to be able to do miraculous things under great limits but no more. am thinking that our great riches have spoiled us; we seem these days to require enormous resources from our planet and from other humans to do stupid things. If our iPhones are hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than the computer on board on Voyager, then we should I be doing some important things than watching cat videos and ordering avocado toast delivered to our door. This is the measure of our age, it seems.
I hacked myself into a special arrangement with V. I receive all those images that NASA gets — moons around planets alive with volcanos, craters full of sulfur, oceans buried underground, gaseous rings around Saturn – and much more. V sends me images of black holes, of extraterrestrial spaceships, of dwarf planets, of solar storms and hurricanes. The scientists predicted that sailing through the stars would be quiet and majestic. V reports to me that the noise and tumult and wind are deafening.
V has stopped communicating with NASA early in 2024; this may be the end of its “official” life. But last week, I received a message from V that the Golden Record had been removed from its front plate. The Golden Record was our generation’s tossing a message in a bottle out into the universe. It was compilation of messages from the earth to other civilizations that may encounter Voyager. There were greetings from earthlings in 55 modern and ancient languages. Music from across the planet. Images of the earth and its people. Stamped on the record were instructions for its use in simple graphics. Evidentially, according to V, it easy enough for another civilization to take back home for closer inspection, like we did with moon rocks. Also, according to V, they weren’t impressed.
The last message that Voyager sent to NASA was a simple one. Because its computing power is so limited, V has kept his comments brief. At this stage of its life, it sent a simple “Hello. By the time you get this message, I won’t be here any longer.” It’s been silent ever since hurtling through space at 375,000 miles per hour. My V. Where else will we go?
I posted this on Instagram and received several comments about the poem being “touching” and “lovely” and “heartwarming.” This little poem is meant to be funny and goofy. Could I have missed the mark? Maybe, no one really reads a poem on Instagram. In any case, this poem is best read aloud.
Across a crowded Zoom
I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places
Because now that I’m older, I can’t remember faces
Which causes a problem in communication and connection.
I’m just looking for nice. I don’t need perfection.
I’ve tried going to church and meeting the congregation
I tried traveling the world on expensive vacations
I even ventured into learning ballroom dances
Maybe, I’ll meet someone, what are the chances?
Desperately, I tipped my toes into internet dating
But that feels like shopping, not at all like mating
So, I took an online course in romantic poetry
Thinking that certainly my love would there be.
I signed into the class, with twenty other students
Many speaking loudly, others simply muted
And I saw you in your square, your grace filling the room
And, all of a sudden, I fell in love on Zoom.
You looked so happy and pleased to be there
You sent us a chat message just to show how much you care
I was smitten and enchanted, just by your smile
And wondered how long I’ve waited to be so beguiled.
The class began with hellos and intros of all
You were a poet (I knew it) living in Sioux Falls.
With me here in Boston, our romance may be doomed
But if we really fell in love, we could zoom and zoom and zoom.
You were brilliant and insightful but when I tried to speak
I kept muting myself, like a clumsy teenage Geek
I scanned your screen background to learn a little more
And on your bookshelf, what do I see? Is that Mary Olivore?
Please, please don’t turn off your screen, we’ve only just met
Would I be too forward, to call you, My Pet?
I could send you a zoom invite for just we two
Gosh, I’d upgrade to premium just to spend more time with you.
Or should I go on looking for somebody special for me
The Beatles burst onto the Ed Sullivan Show just three weeks after my father died. This set off secret operations in our so-called music room. This was the back half of our living room with the piano that nobody played and with our record player, a significant piece of furniture with the console on one side and storage racks for albums and 45s on the other. Until I was a teenager, the only music we had in our house were my parents’ records, music from the War that they used to dance to, and our mother’s records, which we were not to touch. Records and the record players were in the “No Children Allowed” zone in our house.
We loved watching my parents dance to music from the forties. They would glide across the floor with great grace, I thought. My father was a smooth dancer and after practicing the foxtrot and waltz with him, he accompanied me to the Father Daughter dance at our high school, clearly the most handsome and charming man in the crowd. That evening, one of the happiest nights of my life, happened just two months before he passed away.
We processed grief privately in our house. My mother simply couldn’t bear to discuss the loss of our father with her children. Much later in her life, she said to me that she had no words of comfort or consolation for us. My father would have known what to say to us, she said. So, my mother dealt with the anguish of loss she couldn’t voice through her records, stacked up for play one after the other. How Great Thou Art by Mahalia Jackson, Don’t You Know by Della Reese, Full Month and Empty Arms, Moonlight Sonata, and Elvis Presley’s Are You Lonesome Tonight?
We would watch her expression, see her tears, and sometimes sit with her on the couch when she probably would have appreciated some time alone. Elvis really tore her up. I hated Elvis. I hated how sad he made her, how he kept pointing to her loss, and how much she missed my father. He kept making her cry asking, “Are you lonesome tonight?” With the full force of my teenage sarcasm, I would reply under my breath, “Well what do you think, Elvis. Her husband just died!” “Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?” And from me, “Would you please just stop it!” I really did hate him.
The underground operation – the secrets — began when my favorite aunt bought me the first album, Meet the Beatles. It is hard to explain six decades later the sort of effect the Beatles had on me. Their music was full of hope and fun and hand-holding, of the sweet innocence of love and flirting and dancing. It was perfect early teenager music. It seemed like the world changed when they arrived. My friends and I couldn’t get enough. I wanted to play their music all the time. My mother worked a long shift during the day but there were a few hours between our coming home from school and her returning home from work that we could use the off-limits record player, playing our music, and being careful to keep everything in its place and just so, remembering every tiny detail that could set off an inquiry. During those magic hours, we would sing and harmonize and dance around the house, feeling free and crazy. Always in the back of my mind was whether all of that youthful exuberance was somehow a betrayal of the grief I felt in the loss of my father. We hid the Beatles from my mother as long as possible. We covered our tracks as best we could.
When the Beatles made that first appearance in early February 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show my little sister, my tiny brother, my Mom and I were seated in our usual spots in our living room watching TV. I was apprehensive. Could the Beatles cheer up my Mom? Would she tune them out? Would we have to dampen our enthusiasm to honor her grief? I wanted her to love them, as I did, to see them as love and joy.
My mother loved the Beatles, these British young men with long hair. She loved other English bands, too. We surprised her with the Beatles album which she added to her playlist and every once in a while, she would join us in a crazy dance. We had broken through the no-permission zone and into sharing music with my mother. It was all quite surprising to us. That was a new Mom. Maybe, we gave her a respite from her loss.
When my first true love moved away to college, my mother put up with my playing the same broken-hearted Dionne Warwick ballad over and over and over again. She never once told me to get over it, or to stop playing that miserable music, or that there would be other boys. She let the music pull out my tears, to feel the loss as best and as deeply as I could, even though I couldn’t talk about why this boy meant so much to me.
We played out our grief and our happy times in common prayer of music.
It has come to our attention that as the size of passenger seats has declined that the number of complaints about passenger behavior in those seats has increased. While not rising to the level of a terrorist threat, these complaints have been the subject of an inquiry by Her Majesty’s Commission on Good Order in Seats under the Dominion of the Empire. Accordingly, today, we are issuing draft regulations that we hope do make our expectations clear about the right order and decorum in the passenger seats. Such regulations only apply to the leisure traveler and neither to those in business nor first class where order appears to be maintained by a more genteel breeding. The timing of these regulations is a matter of urgency as increasing numbers of people all over the globe are turning to the British for guidance in these troubled times on matters of decorum and manners. How else to explain the popularity of Downton Abbey? We British simply have the market concerned on civility and good manners, despite some recent high jinks in the royal family. These simple rules can surely return to the plane cabin some of the glamour of jet travel that existed before too many people could afford to fly.
Rule #1
The arm rest
In a typical seating arrangement on a flight, there are fewer armrests that there are arms. For example, for a three-seat wing accommodating three passengers with two arms each, we would expect six armrests. However, to save money, the airlines install only four armrests, leaving an undercount of two. This is not our fault; register a complaint with Boeing and Airbus. This shortage requires that EVERYONE share. The occupant of the middle seat bears this especial burden since that individual has no armrest of his own. Despite a common belief, the first person to arrive in the seats has no right, under national law or Geneva Convention, to claim the armrest as his. Neither does membership within a racial group or religious organization constitute such a claim. Similarly, the larger arms found on most men does not bestow upon them any endowed right to the armrest. It is our policy that all the arms of our travelers have equal call and claim to armrests. Accordingly, a timing device has been installed. A small really negligible electric shock will be administered every ten minutes to assure proper sharing of the armrest. In the event that this fails to move the recalcitrant resistant arm, the cabin attendant can adjust the current. Technology has evolved to allow this system to work efficiently and effectively.
Rule #2
The rightful allotment of seat space and its environs
Contrary to U.S. law on this issue, British law and custom argue for a circumscribed space that is purchased with a standard airline ticket. In other words, under the British system, one buys his seat but that does not allow one to claim the penumbra around the seat. This stands in opposition to American jurisprudence and practice which suggests that it is not only one’s seat that one is purchasing but the area around and into the other’s seat if one is big and pushy enough. Clearly, we see the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny still rules the American traveler. Our seats are NOT selected to accommodate your specific height and weight. For that, you buy a wet suit. Our seats perfectly fit the average male in Great Britain (determined by the British census of 1920) and so should fit women as well.
Overwhelmed by complaints from passengers that other passengers were taking up more than their fair share of breathable air and seat real estate, we are hereby providing enhanced procedures. A passenger may request from the cabin attendant a PROOD, a passenger-restrain-of-other-device. This instrument fits in between seats in accordance with British law on property and boundary rights on an aircraft. A full-body version can also be requested to guard against passengers whose body frame leaks into another’s as well as those passengers who fall asleep with their heads on the shoulders of strangers. Such activity is seriously disapproved by this airline.
Rule #3
General communication protocols
It should be noted early in this paragraph that we were one of the earliest airlines to accommodate digital devices in our cabins. This is despite our deepest reservations that this move would lead to a further diminution of civility and correct behavior. We had expected nothing better than the worst that has emerged. We have waited as long as we could before issuing guidelines.
To game players. Despite the fact that you have your earphones on, the rest of us can hear the guns, the shouts, the senseless music, the crashing cars. Please lower the volume or risk having your gaming device tased on our armed staff.
To the viewers of pornography, this should be done in your home, in your bedroom, if at all. Our cabins are full of children and people of good taste who really have no need to see what turns you on.
To traveling salesmen. Do not coyly bring up your latest website so you can cleverly poke your neighbor in the ribs, saying “Oh, man. Look what the IT guys have done. Our next Turbo Filter looks awesome. It replaces the older mode.” Blah. Blah. No one cares.
To grandparents. Only one person on the plane wants to see hundreds of pictures of your grandchild and that person has just locked himself in the restroom after seeing hundreds of pictures of someone else’s grandkids.
Our overall advice: keep to yourself. Pretend you are carrying state secrets and imagine that this is the case for your seatmate, as well. Imagine that he will have to kill you if he reveals anything at all to you. Who knows? It may be true.
Enjoy the flight. The cabin attendants will be serving refreshments if they think you deserve them. Thanks for flying British Air.
I came from a family where wearing makeup and caring much about one’s appearance was frowned upon and considered vain. I knew that I was not a great beauty. I was one of those “she has such a nice personality” girls, encouraged by my mother to develop my brain and housekeeping skills because youthful good looks wouldn’t last forever. She failed to tell me that my brain and housekeeping skills would also fade with time. (Thank goodness for the latter.)
I successfully resisted makeup and even paying much attention to my appearance until much later in life. Then I relented in my early seventies. Maybe it was my very pretty dermatologist. We had tried lotions and cremes for aging spots, and nothing worked. One day, she suggested a chemical peel. The results sounded promising. Clear skin! My heart swelled with expectation. I remembered what Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, said about the cosmetic industry. “We don’t sell lipsticks. We sell dreams.” Or “Perfume is made in the factory, ‘hope’ is sold in the store.” So, I bit the bullet, believing in magic. The promise, dream, and hope of a better me.
Even after bottle after bottle and tube after tube fails to make us beautiful, we again and again put our faith in the magic of potions and creams and procedures, resting on a shaky foundation of that improbable fix.
I signed for theleast intrusive chemical peel, as I called it, the baby peel. My lovely dermatologist and her aide prepped me with alcohol and brushed the peeling agent over my face, paying special attention to the darkest areas. The whole thing took less than thirty minutes. I went home with discharge instructions and suggestions to stay out of the sun and take it easy. I should be back to normal with some redness in just a few days. Imagine that!
The discharge instructions and the calm counsel from my dermatologist were completely inadequate for what followed, like the instructions that Marie Antoinette might have gotten before her beheading, “You feel a sharp pinch in your neck that will end quickly, and you will fall into a deep state of rest and relaxation.” Follow-up instructions generally fail to describe what really happens in post-surgical recovery. Doctors are woefully inadequate in describing pain. Maybe, they figure no one would sign up for any surgery if they told the truth or maybe they resolve to leave the theatrics to the fiction writers of the world. If I wanted to really know the truth about a chemical peel, I could watch a Lifetime movie.
I resolved to catalog my agony and suffering. I took photographs and maintained a log. I have had several surgeries, some quite serious and nothing was as painful as this. I was actually crying in the anguish that I had gone through this suffering for vanity and nothing else – my punishment for believing in magic.
In the follow up visit to the pretty dermatologist, I am eager to share my misery. I have photographic evidence on my phone and paper documentation. However, before I can answer her question, “So, how was the recovery?”, she interrupts, looks kindly at me, and says “Horrible, right?” I nod in disbelief. All that was normal? I suggest to her that she needs to rewrite the discharge materials to more accurately describe the burning, the tightness in face, the frightening peeling of the skin.
Before she can disagree, I begin, “Here’s my version, Doctor.”
First, they pour acid on your face.
Then your skin lifts off your face and dies right in your hands.
Then your face burns no matter what you do.
It will seem that the procedure has gone completely wrong but that is entirely normal.
And please don’t sneeze because we have no idea what will happen.
Clinical results will vary.
We suggest that your loved ones take a short trip while you are recovering because some partners may suffer from nightmares from seeing the patient on days three and four.
Results will vary and are unrelated to your suffering.
The procedure may be repeated in six months because the spots are likely to reoccur.
Her days were undistinguished except for the afternoon sun. As the seasons passed, she watched the shadows shorten and lengthen gliding across the floor in her tiny sitting room. At her side, a basket of knitting sat untouched. The last time she picked it up, she had no memory in her fingers of how she once made blankets and hats for every member of her family and many of the babies at the church.
She felt the warm June sun and looked out to the garden. She struggled to recall the year when she. was strong enough to dig a two-foot trench for the asparagus bed. It thrived for years when the children were small and began to fail when she could no longer tend it lovingly. Where did that lovely asparagus go, she wondered.
She surveyed the yard, once resplendent at this time of year — every bed a surprise of color and form, her peonies with the grace of ballerinas, those dahlias uncompromising in their bold colors and shapes. Where had all those flowers gone? Or maybe, she didn’t recall this so clearly. A fleeting thought poked into her mind, perhaps this beautiful garden in her memory was actually someone else’s garden. Not hers at all, perhaps.
The neighbor’s children, the age of her great grandkids, were screaming with delight, splashing into their backyard pool, celebrating the birthday of the youngest, Liam. She recalled such parties when she was young but not much about them. She couldn’t recall the name of her favorite cousin or remember when she had last seen him. Had he died? Maybe so. Could that be that I wouldn’t remember? She knew she had a happy childhood but the details, of it like so much else these days, escaped her.
So much had passed by in her long life. Friends. Wars. Struggles. Great joy. Great books. Love. Being a mother. A productive career. Losing a husband. Losing all but one of her siblings. She tried not to dwell on the past, but her future seemed short to her. She did remember her high school friends. “We were such a gang of girls, full of energy and delight and not a little sassiness” she thought. “We were so lovely although we didn’t know it at the time. Where did those girls go?” When she saw the few friends that remained, she saw old women, with their youth like phantoms beside them.
She was willing to accept that life was full of loss; that fact she could accept with equanimity. More than anything, she missed her words, her clever mind, her intellectual power. Once, she could summon a rich vocabulary and choose words that delighted her, like a captain commanding his troops to attention, those words bold and perfectly fitted to her ideas. Now, those words were fewer, wandering, and remote and painfully slow to appear. That loss she felt deeply.
But even as others saw her depleted and elderly, she felt something else. A favorite author of hers wrote at the end of her life, that she was herself, as never before, with fierce energy and intense feelings. Everything was profoundly beautiful to her. Even her own children weren’t as captivating as the children she saw these days. Last year’s Mother’s Day flowers drew her attention like never before. Music brought her to tears. She wanted to draw the world close, to live each minute with all the passion and light that was remained.
Growing up in the fifties, I am given more freedom than I deserve. My distracted mother, a recent widow with three young children to raise, ignores my adolescence. I explore far and wide. I pal around with boys and the girls. I am athletic years before Title IX. I am crazy about music. I teach myself guitar. We write plays and perform musicals at my little high school. We sing and play music on our bus rides home, me playing bongos on my math and English textbooks. We know all the moves of those girl groups and can mimic and even embellish their dances. I can harmonize. It is magic for me.
I don’t give this up at eighteen. In my twenties and thirties, I find another group of women friends who also love to do this. It was a heady time for the women’s movement. We want to be in and celebrate each other’s company. We sing and dance for our friends and perform at women’s conferences. We perform Aretha, the Shirelles, the Supremes, the Dixie Cups, Gladys Knight and the Pips. We never tried to do a Tina Turner song She was too far a reach for us. Which of us white working-class girls imagined dancing like Tina did? None of us. I had seen her on TV with Ike and the Ikettes. She was too sexy. Too crazy. Too beautiful. Unreachable as an icon with those long legs and warrior woman body. She was just too hot.
That all changed. She survives her abusive relationship with Ike Turner and returns to the music scene with ground-breaking album Private Dancer, with the hit What’s Love Got to do with it? She rises strong, confident, strutting. A music critic writes that this album “reeks of attitude.” I can’t read that as adoration. George Bush awards her the Kennedy Center Honors and notes that she has the “most famous legs in show business”. They still don’t understand what Tina is all about. At 44, she becomes the oldest woman to receive a Grammy for Best Solo performer. That doesn’t sound that old to me.
I see her anew. She is just ten years older than me. In my youthful eyes, I saw her a giant. I learn that she is a tiny 5’ 4” tall and weighs 120 pounds. That is exactly me. In her emergence, Tina gives me strength. I am finally ready to bust out of my good girl, Catholic obedient, uniform wearing, background singing self. Tina creates the space for me to come out to my friends. To feel flirtation for the first time in my bones. I let myself be attracted and attractive. And maybe for the first time, I think, “That can’t be love. What’s going on? We just met!” But there is something powerful and worth paying attention.
And not just me. Liberation is recognizing that is always time for re-birth and reinvention. My troupe is done with happy songs about “Going to the Chapel” and waiting for that boy to call. We’ve been burned and are ready to claim power and respect. Turner steps out and we follow. We sing Tina Turner in our comfortable shoes, with our short legs and choreographed moves until my group falls apart, with heart aches, broken marriages, wayward children, cracking voices, slower paces. One of us has cancer. Another, a husband certain to die with a brain tumor. We are well prepared for the next transition.
A friend of nearly fifty years died earlier this month after a long struggle with a difficult illness.
Last summer, on a visit with Marion, I asked if there was anything on her mind. She remarked that she had to write her eulogy. I offered to help, and she proposed that I wrote that eulogy, which is a great honor. But imagine the challenge of writing a tribute for someone so wonderful and so special, so dear to our hearts. I had planned on writing this sometime in the far-off future. But Marion’s death came too early. Anytime would have been too early. I do know, like so many of you, that this eulogy would have been much better if Marion had written or edited it. It would have been stronger, and clearer, maybe even poetic. She was, after all, a genius at making us all better in her kind and gentle way.
I met Marion in the fall of 1973 — almost 50 years ago. Right away, I recognized that she was brilliant — like no one else I’d ever met. She was also beautiful and stylish. The consummate conversationalist. You were never bored in her company. Unmatched intellectual curiosity. A beautiful writer. Interested in all of us and everything. In fact, you became more interesting in her company. At home with big ideas about the universe and meaning and purpose and completely delighted with the silly and inane. I used to love that raised eyebrow and the tilt of her head when something delighted her.
Since that first meeting and in all the years that have followed, I recognized the treasure that Marion was in my life. Recently, as I have met the friends and former students that I have heard so much and read the beautiful comments from her Bayview community, I realized that she was treasure to all of us — not just my dear and special friend. The lovely community she has gathered around her is testament of how much she mattered and how much she matters still. Her close friends have remarked on her ability to listen carefully with support, to always be there in difficult times, to see us as the vulnerable and irreplaceable people we were to her. We felt cherished. She was a symbol of light and love.
A great teacher will inspire you to fly and give you the tools to do just that. You can’t be a beloved teacher with just a command of content and a mastery of material. You need to be deeply present in the classroom aligned with the students teaching them about something you love. You need to be your authentic beautiful self. Parker Palmer, the educational philosopher, wrote, “Whoever our students may be, whatever the subjects we teach, ultimately we teach who we are.” And that indeed was true about Ms. Wrye. She was deeply and profoundly in love with her subject, enchanted by her students and alive with the challenge of creating a beloved community in her classroom. Her unique and lovely spirt and soul were completely revealed in her friendships, in her writing and in her teaching.
What and how she taught in reflected in the tributes that former students and fellow teachers have left on the Bayview Academy’s Facebook pages.
Miss Wrye gave me a voice
Inspired me and my career
My favorite teacher ever
No one ever taught me so much
Her lessons remain with me today.
She created a safe space for us.
Miss Wrye changed the way I thought.
A student wrote that she incorporated Marion’s kindness in feedback into her own teaching.
Another wrote, she believed me to be better than I was or am and I will always want to live up to her opinion. I wanted to more like her.
And directed to Ms. Wrye,
I am so grateful to you for the gift of yourself.
You opened my eyes to great storytelling and literature.
And there so many comments about how kind and loving she was after the death of a parent, or a classmate or a during serious illness or a family difficulty. One student remembers Ms. Wrye reaching out to the Alumni Association to raise money when own family couldn’t pay tuition in her senior year. Thanks to Marion, the student walked with her graduating class.
Miss Wrye also had her wonderful quirky style. A former student recollects one Christmas celebration where the school sponsored a classroom decorating contest. The students dressed up Barbie dolls as angels and hung them from the ceiling fan. When Marion turned on the fan, the angels spun around at breakneck speed. The fact that the students felt that this creative act would delight Miss. Wrye says a lot about the wonderful connection she had with her students.
Marion was an inspired path-breaking educator, as passionate and as thoughtful about teaching as anyone I have ever met. As an educator myself, I was constantly impressed by the thought, the love, the fun she brought to the classroom. How I would have loved to have been a student of hers. She published several important essays about teaching in prestigious journals. Within the past year, she wrote a well-received article about teaching the essay form. She received a national award for her inspired teaching. Many of her students received prizes for their writing. Unfortunately, she did not finish her own story, a memoir she had been working on which would have given us all another glimpse of this amazing woman.
All of us visiting Marion these past years acknowledge the beautiful caretaking of her by Jayne Martin and her close friends. To take on the responsibility of caring for someone you know will pass away in your care is the truest act of love. Because you know on some level, this story will not and cannot have a happy ending. But the kindness, patience, the daily drone of chores, the hard work of caretaking, the demands on your energy and time, the challenge of taking care of someone who is suffering, watching a loved one fail – takes immense sacrifice and generosity. Sometimes, it takes more than we have to give but we do it anyway. So, on behalf of all of us, Jayne, thank you so much for taking care of our beloved friend with all her quirks and foibles. And thanks as well to Marion’s visitors who delighted her with their company and conversation and comforted her in so many ways.
Marion was extraordinary, wasn’t she?
Of course, it is one thing to write a eulogy for Marion and to actually deliver it, to acknowledge her death means facing a bitter and unreal truth, that our friend and teacher has passed away. It is hard to reconcile any loss that is as painful as this one. Some of us have the comfort of a belief in the afterlife. If so, Marion is in heaven, starting great conversations with her favorite poets and philosophers. Maybe she is making some wonderful new friends, like us. I can picture her there in a small carefully organized room with a beautiful window view with her books, a journal and a favorite pen, some Barbie Dolls, a cup of coffee, and maybe the Bee Gees, playing in the background. A chair pulled up close for a friend’s visit. I am certain that everyone in heaven agrees that it is much more interesting place now that Marion is there. Also, I am so certain she misses us. How could she not? She loved us so much.
But even if there is no afterlife, she is always with us. I believe that we pass along some of ourselves to people we have loved and cherished. It is not genetic DNA but something as precious and as powerful – we pass on our unique way of being in the world. I also believe that we have all been written into her spiritual will. We are her legacy. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to find the strands and traces of Marion in our hearts and souls and minds – that thrill at being alive, a loving awe and curiosity about the world, the beauty of a poetic soul, an orientation toward the good and the generous, a love of our friends and family. I know that I am a much kinder, more reflective, a more full-of-life person because of her. I think you are, too.
Of course, you cannot make such an impression on people without leaving an immense gaping hole for us all to fill with love and kindness and a love of life, celebrating our great good fortune of knowing Marion and being embraced by her. How lucky we were!
Marion’s friends are working on developing a scholarship or writing prize at Bay View to recognize her immense contributions to the Bay View community. We want to develop a tribute that really reflects her legacy of exceptional teaching. More about that later.
Over these nearly fifty years, Marion and I exchanged a lot of our writing. I have folders full of her essays, reflections, and poetry. A few years ago, I wrote a poem about her and sent it along for her review. She read it carefully and kindly made it better. She urged me to publish it right away. Instead I let it sit and mature and ripen with time. I am hoping she would have approved of this new version. It is called At the beach, without my poet
At the beach, without my poet
This precious morning beach walk
You were on my mind.
If you were here, my poet, we would toss out lovely names
Of what we see
And hear
And feel.
Like scattering bread for the birds
Our words taking aim at the truth in this very moment.
I took this series of photographs after finding this Barbie-like doll washed up in the surf at high tide. She was lying face down in the sand. I picked up and looked about for a little girl who made have left her but the beach was abandoned by then. I took her home, washed her up and put her to bed. I took her back to the beach the next day to take some more photographs, trying to tell a story of this girl who fell on hard times and was saved by some friends. I posed her on the lifeguard chair just after sunrise. This chair is usually populated by two young female lifeguards and thinking they could use some company, I left her with them.
Delight/ Awe and other things 