Gum and Other Pleasures

I stole gum. Tons of it, over the course of years. If you weighed the total amount, it could drown you, as you slowly walked into the ocean. 

But that was nothing.

Before that, it was an Indian beaded necklace from the gift shop at Death Valley. I was twelve years old, staying in a housekeeping cabin with my family. My mother found it.

“What’s this?” my mother asked, pulling out the necklace from my bag, her voice rising.

I pleaded with her not to tell Daddy, but she did.

She knew I had no money of my own. My parents never gave my brother or me any allowance because, they reasoned, they would get us what we needed. The word “needed” meant they both had jobs, but it was a modest income. I could have asked them to buy the necklace for me, but I didn’t.

I was a good child, left with little choice in the face of my brother’s hyperactivity, tantrums, and the way he threw our parents into yelling matches.

My father sat me down in the cabin. His mouth always looked the same—square.

“You have to return the necklace,” he said.

I knew he would not hit me, but was afraid just the same, because of the way he yelled at my brother, had kicked his door in and broken his records.

Together we went to the gift shop and I handed the necklace back and apologize to the manager, who stood across the glass counter.

Later, there were clothes. My friend Liz and I challenged each other, venturing from our respective homes to meet in downtown San Francisco at our favorite department store. Liz’ dark brown hair always lay neatly down her shoulders, and she kept it parted in the middle of her pale scalp. Her large brown eyes sat symmetrically against her delicate skin. In contrast, my skin erupted in acne and greasy dryness, and my long blonde hair lay in thin strands.

We had met at S.F. State in the dorms, and partied there together. I witnessed the incident when she left her contact lenses in overnight because she passed out drunk. Early in the morning, our friend Teri drove us to UCSF emergency as I held Liz’ hand in the back seat. After a while, Liz emerged with white eye patches and the nurse instructed us to make sure she lay down for a day with them on.

Liz was there when I met Jennie’s brother at the toga party, across the room raising her right eyebrow. He and I stayed up all night talking, the first time I watched the sun come up. I had to convince most people all we did was talk, but Liz knew, in my shyness and reticence, that it was true.

Liz and I took mushrooms together with Teri, Sally, and JoAnn one afternoon in my dorm room. One girl who visited for a few minutes caught her hair on fire by a candle. That was the least of our excitement, as we giggled our way through hours of distorted shapes of my bedding, curtains, and my own artwork, as the colors astounded us.

I spent time with Liz and her boyfriend Jim, a diabetic, both when they first met, and later at her apartment, after the dorm days. Jim was an artist, drawing darkly-colored comics on a lightboard, smoking cigarettes, and staying in Liz’ room sometimes, while I slept on the living room couch. Liz’ younger brother John, who also hung around, adored me—it was written into his wide-set eyes, moisture compacting at the corners, his tall thin stature contrasting with his ample lips. Liz warned me not to lead him on, protecting him.

This was the “preppy” era, so the clothes we took from the department store were crisp cotton button down shirts with small plastic buttons, khaki pants with cuffs, and jeans with pleats. It never occurred to us that we could get caught, that the store employed people specifically to nab shoplifters and that there were security cameras. At least, we never discussed our fears. Before entering, we were calm. Afterward, we exploded with laughter, our non-purchases hidden in our bags. We had an unspoken bond in our thievery. We were outlaws. My favorite shirt, soft white brushed cotton with thin, pale pink stripes, I kept for years, even after I stopped wearing it. It was a trophy.

We would take the elevator up to the Juniors or Misses section. I hugged my canvas bag close—the same bag which the Moonies canvassing near the Powell Street Bart station would zero in on, the pattern of large geese beckoning to them. Liz’ bag was a designer model of dark blue synthetic material. We entered the dressing room without anyone noticing, and under its guise the items in question easily floated off the hangers. It was too easy.

Liz’ father was a judge who had relocated his family to San Francisco from Indiana.  Besides the one brother, Liz had one biological sister and two adopted sisters, both African American. Probably, I thought, a reason they moved to the multi-cultural Bay Area. The family, as I knew it from a few visits, seemed an unusual mix of independent thinking, idealism, and strictness, demonstrated by the warmth of Liz’ voice as she spoke to her adoptive sisters, but also by the strict tone of her mother towards Liz.

She, like me, had probably done this on her own before our joint escapades, though I never asked her. Since my theft of the necklace at Death Valley, I allowed myself to take gum whenever the mood struck. My friends, who thought of me as straight-laced, were surprised when they witnessed it, though they got used to it and even mused on it. With Liz, every time we got together, I thought we should stop, but I never said anything. Eventually, we stopped seeing each other, as friends sometimes fall away, but it was never with any definition or reason.

Still later, on my own in another department store closer to home, I found myself tempted. Liz and I hadn’t seen each other in a while. I hadn’t met my first boyfriend yet, I did clerical work I hated, and had moved back home with my parents because of an emotional collapse after living on my own. Desperate and empty, wanting something I could not afford to buy, I couldn’t resist.

I was out the door of the department store when I felt an arm on my shoulder.

“Excuse me.” The deep voice rumbled through me.

I turned around. The man wore a dark blue suit, his expression business like. No frills. We walked back through the store. My legs were numb, heavy yet weightless.

I held my head down, afraid to see anyone I knew. After all, I had grown up coming to this store.

We reached a double door. He pushed it open and we strolled into a large cold space with a cement floor, which could not be considered a room, as it had various open doors and passages coming off it. At a desk sat the manager, a man wearing slacks and a short sleeved shirt.

He asked me short-fired questions about who I was and what happened. These should have been easy to answer, but with each, there was a delay, my throat closing up and my voice nowhere to be found. When it did come, it sounded low and gravely. My name. My address. I don't remember the rest. Not close to tears, but nearer to dread, I stood there. I gave up the shirt from the goose bag. Multi-color stripes on white, short-sleeved cotton, button down. Cheerful, full-priced.

What seemed like hours later, a policeman appeared, his voice a blur. He put handcuffs on me, walked me out a corridor I didn’t know existed, there all the time in the bowels of the store.

The sun blazed outside. My eyes tried to adjust as the officer held open the back door of his squad car and motioned for me to get in. I slid onto the smooth upholstery, hands growing numb from the tight metal. I finally felt the tears at bay as he got into the driver seat and took off, this whole escapade rising to a new level of seriousness, but I would not give him the satisfaction. This felt like a mirror for my whole life, the complete disaster filling up my insides, but I didn’t want anyone to know. My eyes would have been puffy from the tears.

Then the police station desk. Cuffs removed. Signing paperwork. A court appointment the following week and community service assigned to me there. I would have to tell my mother. But she would tell my father.

I would spend a few hours each week at the Cancer Society, filing paper and learning the statistics of the disease. Lung cancer was the most prevalent. We were all volunteers except for the woman who ran the office, so I didn’t feel shamed or out of place—just doing my bit.

After a few weeks, I threw away the old trophy shirt in the garbage. I should have burned it in a fire that would encompass something deeper. At the time, I could not see what called me to steal. It wasn’t the lure of excitement, not the idea that you could get anything you wanted for free without asking, or even that you could have an elicit secret and enjoy that power. No, it was having to be “good” which propelled me into crime. Eventually, this acting out would transform into gaining agency and allow me to be the person I needed to be rather than passive, rather than the idea of good. I would no longer take such risks as with the shirt, nor entertain myself with such pleasures as stealing gum.

Gifted

My lack of motivation was born in 5^th grade at El Monte Elementary School. Mrs. Werner would announce after lunch, “Time for the achievers to leave.” They stood up and filed out the door.

The “Gifted Program” * left me ashamed. I had to stay in the classroom with the rest, studying with the new-fangled learning tools. The underlying suggestion was that the rest of us needed extra help. Tall cardboard towers stood near the front of the room. We would get up from our seats, choose which subject to work on from the many-colored options—geography, math, English, etc.—and return to our seats and work quietly by ourselves with the cards.

What happened in that room down the hall? What did they discuss? Why did they need a special teacher, all eight of them? They all lived up on the hill near the school, while I lived in the flatlands, bussed up with the kids in my neighborhood, all African Americans. Not one of them belonged to the special program either. And, coincidentally, everyone in the program were high-achievers. I didn’t know boundaries then. Did not have questions about I.Q., race, or psychological damage. I was just a child.

Until then I perceived myself as normal. My teachers were mother figures and learning was game-like, even with the atmosphere of natural competition. But school had been more than learning. The relationship I had with my teachers was central to how I received the subjects they taught. Mrs. Brown, my First grade teacher at my old Elementary school, Stege, back down in the flatlands, was the most motherliest of them all. Warmth radiated from her lovely brown skin and softly curled hair, and her thick-framed glasses spoke of intelligence. She did not hesitate to envelope a child in her skirts, nor did she have a problem with telling someone who was misbehaving to sit at the back. My parents had me bussed up to El Monte in Third grade because they were not happy about the quality of education at Stege, or perhaps because of the roughness children displayed on the schoolyard. Mrs. Emerick, at my new school, had reddish-blonde hair, also treated us warmly, and wore glasses. At the new school, I saw less African American children than at Stege, but there were now some Asian faces, among a predominance of White ones. El Monte benefitted from bussing, but diversity or special programs escaped my young eyes and ears, how adults were manipulating us into our present and future lives.

The relationships I formed with my teachers was of equally importance to those friendships I formed with my classmates. The ranking among peers took place in the classroom, where it was whether we raised our hand or knew the answer that identified us as being higher or lower in some way. We formed our own cliques at recess, away from the teachers’ eyes, each of us finding a place in the society of children which would mark us forever, as a leader or a follower, a joiner or a dissenter, as loud or quiet, pretty or plain, tough or wimpy.

If not Mrs. Werner, it would have been some other teacher who said those words heralding the secret group to go down the hall to another room, to separate, like cream from the top of the milk, the best part. I didn’t feel any different than those other kids until that moment. I played with a couple of them during recess, off in the corner of the field near the fence, right up against the school wall of the last classroom. There, we could see the steep streets the bus had driven up on, and below us, the flatlands spread out like an apron. Petite with a sweet, gentle smile, Jill had pale skin with freckles and wavy dark hair framing her face. Wendy’s frame towered over us slower developers. She would bring her Steiff animals to school, larger ones like the brontosaurus with orange, green, and purple colors. As equals, we played quietly and happily together. I did not feel different than Jill and Wendy, the gifted program sliding under my consciousness while at recess. They did not choose to enter the program, and they, along with other friends, cannot be accused of separating themselves from the rest of us let alone participating in it. Yet it changed us all. For some who were chosen, it meant getting more attention, which in turn may have helped them become clearer about their interests or learning styles.

What the program meant for me in the long term was that I would consider myself a less-than smart student for the rest of grade school, and through junior high and high school, and even into college. I dropped out of college, another indicator of lack of self-worth, in addition to lack of direction. When I returned to complete my college education twenty years later, it was with a consciousness about what I was worth. Because I had not withdrawn from a number of those initial college classes and those grades had turned into Fs, I had to petition to have those grades stricken from my record in order to restore an acceptable grade point average, in order to be accepted back into college.

That school happened to be San Francisco State. Proof of my self-worth, I did the considerable paperwork, meeting with a counselor there and then going to each department asking for signatures. At each juncture, I teetered on the bridge of humiliation and pride, not knowing which I felt at any given time or how some of these new department chairs perceived me. The music chair gave her entire support, as I wanted to apply to Mills College for the following fall, her alma mater. She said that she did not want to get in the way of my completing my degree and moving forward in life. I never even met the English chair, as the secretary disappeared into his office and then magically returned with the desired signature. The Sociology department similarly presented an enter-and-exit proposition. The P.E. teacher rejected my petition outright. Unfortunately, the same teacher still worked there, so the petition could not just go above him to the chair level. But I was shocked. P.E.? The other teacher who still remained was my Philosophy professor, with whom I took four classes, all in existentialism. She stared at me with her huge blue eyes.

“Sartre would not approve,” she said, her full lips with light pink lipstick clamped together, her short blonde hair see-through with the sun in back of her. She still wore the same pink shirt and dark knit skirt. “You know what he said about denial.”

It had taken years of working at a bookstore job where I was valued and where I benefitted from challenges to give me self worth. I grew personally and professionally. When I returned to school, it was this experience and knowledge that raised me up and gave me a voice. I could speak instead of cowering quietly as I had my whole youth. I had talent and ideas. I had traveled, read, and written. Returning to school, I became the star of all my endeavors.

The gifted program has changed, and now, in the 21^st century, at the grade school level it embraces both high-achieving and under-achieving students, with the idea that economically disadvantaged and varying cultural backgrounds are represented. Sometimes change happens too slowly. Did evolution of the program had to happen, perhaps, for this new incarnation of it to happen? Or could we just have jumped into representing more styles of learning? I still don’t understand how I.Q. is a valid assessment tool, in determining who is gifted. And then, what does gifted mean?

I now teach English at a community college, so have yet another perspective on students and their abilities. I find it clearly evident that all students have a gift of some kind or are talented in some way, whether they have advantages or are disadvantaged, whether they are “traditional” students entering from families who have already gone the college route, or from families who had been disenfranchised by higher education. How well a student does on a test or how well he or she writes does not yield any information about what could be teased out from within.

* The gifted program was authorized by an Education code in California, and therefore institutionalized. In the 1960s and 70s, when I attended grade school, the program was based on I.Q. 

John’s Garden: Losing John Tinker to Cancer, November 2010

Late August, when I saw John Tinker at the cancer support group meeting, I told him, “It has been a privilege knowing you.”

He sat there, looking his usual slim self, with his rosy-cheeked face.  His hair was greying at the temples. His eyes were alert. 

This was what he looked like ever since Dan and I had been attending these meetings at UCSF in spring 2009, soon after John and his partner Adrian started coming. John just kept showing up, after every creeping back of the cancer into his body. His appearances meant a new day, a new chance at life. Even through pain he was a fixture, one of the main members of this collection of people in various stages of colorectal cancer.

He wore his thick hair a bit longer in the front and short around his neck and ears, reminiscent of the F. Scott Fitzgerald era. The contemporary part of him wore jeans and a button down shirt, and glasses. He and Adrian both seemed like they were from another time. Adrian, skilled in the decorative arts, painted intricate designs on harpsichords, furniture, and walls. He was soft-spoken, humble, with a little pointed beard and twinkling eyes.

They finished each other’s sentences, and when their words would collide, they would ask each other, “Do you want to say it, or should I?”

This was the last meeting I could attend before my semester started, since I was assigned a Thursday night class. We all sat in a circle. The one couch often held either Marsha and RaeAnn or John and Adrian or Dan and myself, couples. Vittorio, the leader, sat in the same chair he always did, but the rest of us alternated. The room was vacated of the usual traffic by our 6pm start time. All the desks were empty, as were the other rooms with tables and chairs. On a shelf to one side were photos of a couple of women who had died of breast cancer, their names inscribed on the frames. On top of another shelf hats were piled up for women who had lost their hair due to chemo. On top of and in cupboards were balls of yarn and knitting needles and crochet hooks for people to make the hats.

John had expressed many times that he was dying, yet this time seemed different. His pain was worse, but too, the cancer was invading further. All of us did our best to respond in some way, and it turned into praising him and showing him gratitude.

“We wouldn’t have met, even though we we’re both English teachers,” I said.

We went in different circles, even though we both helped students with their writing and were both writers. He worked for Stanford and I for Laney. He directed the writing center there, taught literature. When I had looked him up on the internet, I found that he had written papers on a writer I never heard of. The cancer transformed not only his life, but his writing. In between various surgeries, emergency room visits, chemotherapy, and other treatments, he worked on a book written from the perspective of a cancer patient.

It’s not often that one gets the chance to thank someone to their face, to say things that you would otherwise end up saying after their death. But this was a facet of the group, where we practiced the extraordinary.

Three years ago, in fall 2007, John fell down in a grocery store, writhing in pain. He went to his doctor, who did tests and told him he had colon cancer and would need surgery immediately. John balked in disbelief. Cancer? Out of nowhere. He was in perfect health—exercised, ate right, was of sound mind and body, lived daily as a vital person. After the denial wore off the next week he went in for the surgery.

We joined this group as we were doing research around Dan’s own cancer. Dan had been diagnosed with rectal cancer that spring and we had gotten two recommendations for radical surgery from inside Kaiser and one outside, at UCSF, from the new head of colorectal cancer there. The group helped us navigate the terrain. We found people with experience and a leader who moderated the conversation well and with humor. Everyone was frank, which made sense, as we ourselves had already entered into the realm of “too much information” being de rigeur, where bodily descriptions were not tasteless, but necessary.

At first, while waiting for the meeting to start, John and I would talk about our teaching programs. As he vanished from that world, he would ask about my work, and I gladly shared, knowing he understood and appreciated the details of my composition classes, which always benefited from an airing out.

Another connection I had with John was writing. Dan and I were waiting for a surgery date in June 2009 and I could not write. In between semesters, I was drowning in the limbo of not knowing and not having any control. I was anxious that Dan’s surgery would be in the midst of my summer teaching schedule, which was much more rigorous and condensed than a regular semester. We bandied back and forth with Dan’s surgeon about the date to no end, because he would forget what we requested and scheduled a date that had to be pushed back.

It was John who prodded me. He said I must write. John inspired me because of his own writing—not only little essays he was working on in spite of his physical condition, but the book about patients’ attitude and experiences with the health system. He wanted to affect change with this collection. His own positive attitude was the catalyst. The book would be available as hard copy, but also free, online, his gift to everyone and anyone. Thanks to John I put pen to paper, and that grew into writing over 100 pages about the steps and stages from Dan’s diagnosis to his surgery, the hospital stay, recovery period, and beyond, diagramming in words a partner’s experience with the medical system, an arc of a relationship.

John had gone on a leave of medical absence from his teaching position before we met in the group. By the time he had retired for good, a few months into our association, he declared that he did not miss work and did not understand how he could have spent that much time doing it. He was once passionate about teaching, but now a nice day consisted of waking up to Adrian’s touch and a little gardening. His priorities had changed. He and Adrian would have a nice dinner after hearing a new, even more devastating diagnosis, or brunch at the Cliff House.

“What else can we do?” they said to us all, with smiles on their faces.

We were all impressed with John’s attitude from the start—how he had been dealt this hand, yet he was approaching it positively, frankly, step by step. He was not “battling” cancer, as the medical profession wanted him to do; rather, he treated it as much as he could, and then accepted it. This does not mean he was passive. He had undergone surgery and rounds of chemo. When the cancer spread to his sacrum at the base of his spine, John had the new-fangled “cyber knife” treatment, lasers attacking the very spot where the cancer was hitting the nerve. In fall of 2009, he said he didn’t think he would live to the following summer. He took valium to mediate the pain, as the cancer was touching the nerve. Then he tried morphine, but it left him too out of it to pursue his creative outlets, like writing. Then methadone.

He and Adrian were unable to control the actual disease, but they controlled how they experienced the disease. The “we” here is significant, because it means that he and Adrian were dealing with this together. I understood the “we,” having gone through Dan’s cancer, where sometimes the line between patient and partner blurred in the work and emotional investment I put in which involved in attaining the right answers, treatment, and care for Dan.

More than working together to attain an end, because of the recurrences and complications, these two were living more fully than anyone I’d ever known, in spite of setbacks which left John taking the various pain killers, and making an emergency visit to the hospital because of a blockage in the colon. He led a life of laxatatives to avoid further blockage, before he ended up having a colostomy, which deprived him of wearing his nicely-fitted blue jeans, similar to Dan. John’s experience kept turning corners, and we would hear tales of something new all the time.

At the garden party they hosted in September, it was clear that this was a farewell party for John, despite the delectable sheet cake someone brought for his birthday. Adrian explained, as he welcomed us through the house and down the backstairs towards the garden, that John might have to lay down at some point, because he tired easily. Fall was approaching and he only had at most a few months to live since the cancer was uncontrollable and all they were doing at this point was trying to mitigate the pain.

Baroque music from a string trio flowed through the air from under the canvas cover at the corner of the garden, the hire of the musicians a gift from one of John’s friends for the event. A bowl of lemonade stood in another corner, next to the house, along with some chips and guacamole. We were introduced to some of John’s Stanford colleagues, as well as some friends from the Quaker church Adrian was a member of and which they both frequented.

We wandered back upstairs, to the dining room table, where an assortment of French breads beckoned, handmade by another friend who was taking a baking class, along with a platter of Mediterranean finger foods and the brownies I had brought. Then back out to the garden, where at second glace we could take more in.

The variety of growth paled beside the height of some of the plants, such as a couple of olive trees, pink roses climbing a trellis, and the pink holyhocks, in full glory. These mixed with tropical plants and low-lying grasses and flowers in yellows and purples. It seemed like a mad disarray, but the closer you got, the planning became apparent, as you walked on one of the little paths, or sat on a stone wall to enjoy the music more closely, avoiding the prick of a cactus here and there.

Sitting on cast iron furniture under the mid-afternoon sun, Dan and I spoke to a friend of theirs who had a studio near Adrian’s, in the same area, Hunter’s Point. She explained how Adrian drove past the house to his studio and saw the “For Sale” sign. We told her how we knew the couple, and she listened intently as we spoke of the support group experience, of John’s health. Dan, who didn’t readily open up, spoke to her of his cancer. 

As this conversation waned, Marsha and RaeAnn from the group appeared. Like John and Adrian, they had lived most of the years of their relationship in separate dwellings and recently moved in together. Marsha said they had visited this house, and explained their joy at the new picket fence at the front which replaced the chain mail one.

He and Adrian had bought the house together a little before John was struck down by the disease. At that juncture, they had already lived together for 14 years, and had been together as a couple for three years before that. Theirs was one of the oldest houses in San Francisco, and a wreck, which they spent considerable time and effort renovating into the Victorian jewel it once was. Adrian used his skills as an accomplished decorative artist to restore the décor. They selected the right furniture to complement the era. They kept all the old pictures that were already in the house, of people they did not know, and propped them. They re-upholstered. John took on the backyard, finding old and new plants and flowers to make a lush, enveloping garden, a legacy for Adrian and John’s friends.

The other connection between John and Adrian and Dan and myself was what cancer gave our relationship. It was a gift. Dan and I realized how committed we were to each other in the midst of the cancer, over lunch down the block from the hospital, during a day of many doctor appointments. We married in April 2010. John and Adrian had their marriage ceremony near the time Dan had his surgery, summer 2009, in Mendocino. These relationships have been the richer for this disease entering our lives, like a secret garden that needs a key.

The meetings I could not attend in September and October, Dan informed me of. He said that John and Adrian were looking into hospice care and discussing the details of John’s death. Adrian so openly talked about John’s death right in front of John, it felt weird and unusual, but it was also mark of their frankness with each other and their openness with the group. Adrian wondered if he could accompany John’s body to the crematorium. John expressed how he had prided himself on his body, and how he had lost control over it.

Cancer has made us seen who are our friends and who are not. It has shed a light on priorities, values, and love, in the same way that death does. When my father died over a decade ago, his absence cast a shadow and made everything clear—my love for him, the balance of my parents’ relationship. Cancer, too, reveals all—what is important in life.

In the face of John’s death, questions come to the front. Why does one person die, while another’s life is spared? Just because Dan’s cancer was caught in an early stage? Why must Adrian deal with this loss? Longing comes up—how I wish I had known John more, better, for more years. Was it enough to see John in group? I picture John’s face and want to hug him as I did the many times after a group meeting.

Knowing someone through a support group is different than sharing their everyday life—it is no better or worse, just more concentrated. I didn’t think of myself as a close friend of John’s because I did not share this everyday life, and because outside of one event they invited us to, we only saw them in group, in a controlled setting with rules, with others around. What the group allows is divulgence of the deepest information—the physical breakdown of the body, cancer cells multiplying and destroying a life. The physical.

In John’s case, the cancer became something spiritual too. His beliefs had helped steer him to a positive outlook of acceptance. His spirituality was, as he told us, something that he went towards to nurture himself in these times. When, however, during one session, he broke down and told us his strength was nowhere to be found, that even his spiritual center couldn’t be found, what could we say? He couldn’t be cured. His optimism failed. He was going to die and was in constant pain. We were there as witnesses to his pain and his struggle to remain optimistic.

As with anyone I love, I found myself wanting to reach out and grasp the pain, removing it for good, along with every part of the cancer, but all I could do was remark on our meeting and knowing each other under these unique circumstances. It was particularly hard to watch someone like John go down because he kept returning to the group, because of the depth which he saw and understood his own predicament, because of his expression of that to us. He was an illusion even before his death.

John’s positive attitude, though it may have waned, was an inspiration, like the garden he left behind to be enjoyed, plants both old and new flowering in the sun and bending to the force of the wind. If there is a way of not “battling” life, but accepting it, recognizing what can be controlled and what cannot, John found it. The garden stands for the connection he felt to the living world, but also his connection to something beyond.

My Name

Inspired by Sandra Cisneros “My Name” 
from The House on Mango Street

Laurel wreath, sharp points, not serrated, not smooth, not round, but oval. Why did she name me after a leaf, a tree, that strong smelling, good for stew, good for sauce, hard to pronounce in some tongues, an “l” at each end, a name so un-Jewish, unlike my middle name, Sara, after her mother? Sara no one would mis-pronounce, Sara, no one would startle, then halt, before diving into a pool, the “el” just about to leave the tongue.

Fragrant laurel leaves making the winner’s wreath without thorns, clearly defined leaves with a point at each end. Nothing hurts. Then why is it so sad, so quiet, unlike my brother, who could be loud, with the “k” at the end of his name—Mark—the end defined with no chance of falling into the water.

I used to think about changing my name to Lauren, Laura, Laurie, making accommodations to the world to be accepted, to blend in, because I wanted to be out of the way in a ponytail, invisible unlike my brother who created a storm out of a room, our parents whirling around him trying to contain him, hiring other people to make sense of him, though our father was a social worker.


My name was too much for me. I wanted something quieter, to fit how quiet I had to be—there was only room for one of my brother. I was nice. I was sweet. I was Laurel wanting to be Lauren, Laura, Laurie, writing those names in cursive in elementary school, learning the order of the letters in case I could change my name. I loved my family, felt safe but hated the yellow, hated who I was, closing the door to my room and stuffing my ears. My mother’s diets gave me a vision of my own body. Not having a high IQ, while members of my 4^th grade class went down the hall to the “gifted” program, gave me what I was worth. Positive negatives.


Only after I could be bad, did Laurel make sense, disappearing during lunch from temp jobs, stealing from stores, hallucinating in my dorm room, colors exploding, drinking the hard stuff in a car bound for downtown, with my housemates screaming “Louise” each other. Even with all this, I remained innocent on sugar overloads during the walk from 29^th Avenue home towards the ocean and park.

I grew into my name, because regardless of child or adult, always the child. It’s not enough that others say it. I grew into the “els,” framing me like a gate.

Winds at My Back: My Mother, My Teacher

Everyone who has gone through the process of education can tell of someone or something that pushed him or her on, and the challenges. In Burro Genius, by Victor Villasenor, he talks about the idea of a weed, that it may not get water, or concrete is poured over it, but still it survives. He struggles with his Spanish in an English-speaking classroom. He is a weed, fueled, rather than drowned by poison and dryness; he goes on, survives, peeing in his pants in front of other kids, wetting his bed, and later, as an adult, endures the hundreds of rejections on his writing submissions.

My mother watered me, tended me as a flowering plant in a garden, but I also felt like a weed, not good enough, different, the one blonde child on a bus-full of black kids going up the hill, sitting stiff on the tall dark green seat with the straight back, my hair in two ponytails, one behind each ear. My transparent bag with a colorful flower pattern showed everything I had inside.

My mother taught me to read and write before I went to school. As a children's librarian, she was experienced at reading to a room full of children. She was my teacher, and I have followed her footsteps, not in becoming a children’s librarian like her, but first becoming a children’s bookseller, and then becoming a teacher at a junior college.  But going through higher education wasn’t a straight line. Partly, it was due to motivation. I was always a B student in high school, by my own choice. I would rather do homework in front of the TV, or sit in the blue chair in the living room with my feet up listening to Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto or Beethoven’s Pastorale symphony. Only later, when I went back to complete college after years in the working world, did I strive for As, putting my GPA on track. Only then could I see myself as worthwhile, a bright flower, talkative rather than silent. One doesn’t have to suffer language discrimination to internalize pain in the classroom. Home life shaped who I became in public. I was mostly invisible as a child. I had to be, because my brother was a hyperactive, demanding, yelling, hitting boy. So when I went to school I demonstrated the same behavior I adhered to at home. Be good, be nice.

My parents expected me to go to college. They were both the first in their New York Jewish families to attend. My mother wanted to be a doctor, but only one cousin in her large family was supported to do so, and he was male. So she studied biology before attending Columbia library school in a special summer program. My father went to college gratis of the service after WWII ended. I dropped out after a couple of years, directionless. Twenty years later, and after my father’s death, I returned.

I teach the power of language to my students in the writings of Frederick Douglass, Malcom X, Gloria Anzaldua, Jonathan Kozol, and Aleen Pace Nilsen, as well as Richard Rodriguez. We examine language and how it is used to exert power over people or or influence them, how it is gender-related, and how a person can change with mastery of language. But I know only one language—empowerment through knowledge, through knowing who you are, where you come from. 

The Letter: My Father & Education

After leaving my long-time bookselling job and traveling in Europe by myself for three months, I found a job in the city at a small bookstore. I wanted to reinvent myself, find a new career, but was unable to make the jump. I was still figuring it out, I told myself.

It was early November and already the leaves had started crumpling up on the sidewalks of 24^th Street, and riding home on Bart I could see the sun setting over Mt. Tam around 5 o’clock.

The newspaper clippings started funneling in from my father around then, and that’s when I decided I finally needed to stand up to him. The articles were about individuals finding a job with a good future and good benefits, but I didn’t need to hear it.

At my previous job, where had I worked for years at a large general bookstore in Berkeley, I considered it my career, but all he could do was suggest other occupations and careers; for instance, that I go to school to become a physical therapist.

One afternoon he and my mother met me at the store and we walked up the street to have lunch.

I saw the words in his brain form, saying “get a real job,” as the juices from my taco dripped onto the plate and sounds of children ricocheted off the walls.

I loved that job, meeting with children’s book publishers and ordering the books, having a constant dialogue with co-workers and customers about history, art, travel, the world past and present. But it wasn’t an honored profession with a future, according to my father.

He was a social worker. He spent his hours steering people in a direction. He knew how to counsel couples and families, and his clients were so devoted to him, he received gifts, such as a painting, a stained glass lamp, and free meals at one couple’s café where a sandwich was named after him, “The Benjamin.”

Calls came to our house asking for him, his patients asking for help, but he wasn’t there in the afternoon and evening, as he scheduled his appointments then. So I would write down the name and number. Once, as a teenager, I counseled a suicidal woman because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t hang up.

He grew up on the idea that you create your own foundation. He enlisted at the beginning of WWII so he could pick his position, to train as an aircraft engineer. Stationed in North Carolina, he also did coursework in Texas and other places. And later, when the war ended, he enrolled at Los Angeles City College on the G.I. bill, and continued to get his B.A. He drove a cab to support himself. His landlord wanted him to marry his daughter, but my father had other ideas.

He was inspired by the settlement houses he had seen in New York, in poor urban areas, where volunteer middle-class people would live and share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors. The idea of helping people rise out of their disadvantaged situations had burned into him.

So he moved back to Brooklyn to live with his father and stepmother in their third floor walkup apartment, pushcart hawkers yelling their wares below on the crowded streets. He drove upstate to attend classes at Adelphi University to get his MFCC when he wasn’t driving a cab on the New York streets.

My father was the only one of his siblings to attend college. His father, Ben Zion Benjamin, or “B.B.”, came from Russia. He was a paper hanger and his children went into trades, either following their father’s work, or selling cars, or doing clerical work. My father wanted something more. In turn, when he became a father, he wanted something more for my brother and me as well. It was impossible to get around it.

That’s why I dropped out of college—because it felt like a large empty structure that had no meaning, no point. I don’t know where I derived any motivation of my own, with his force always present.

When I succeeded in music, as a young oboist, I felt like it came in spite of my parents. I got no guidance, no encouragement, heard no applause from them. I got Bs in high school without trying. I studied with the T.V. on, listened to Mozart and Beethoven with books on my lap.

The letter I sent him was serious and long, like my ever-expanding narrative poems, like the essays forming in my brain, like my dreams, never-ending stories with light and shadow, symbols, a beginning, middle, and an end. I told him the truth—that I needed to find my way—that he should trust me.

My mother called immediately. “You really hurt him—he is only trying to help.”

I didn’t hear from my father. My parents went away for Thanksgiving, celebrating without me.

My brother had already written his letter to our father years before, and since then they enjoyed a successful interchange. My brother told me they would have a conversation, each taking something positive from it. The proof was the music played sometimes in the car, a tape my brother made for him, of Jeff Beck and other rock guitar players, which our father would never listen to on his own.

They were like a sailboat with both people steering. My father even attended an EST seminar while my brother was immersed in that group, which many called a cult, as it was accused of brainwashing its victims. My father would listen as my brother divulged the inner workings of the sessions, the deeper details which inspired him.

The objective, I realized, was to not lose my brother to this group’s hungry claws, so my father extended a hand rather than possibly seeing him drown.

For me, my father was trying to steer my small boat and not let me have a hand in it. When, over the years, I was cajoled into having breakfast out at Sambos or Carrows by him, I would sit and listen in my shorts and t-shirt, the orange upholstered booths sticky under my legs. I thought, why are you counseling your own daughter? Communicating with him had never been easy, and I had been eeking out the words for years, a couple here, a few there, but they had not been heard. I was the quiet child alongside my brother’s noisy hyperactive ways, and needed to speak.

The cheese I brought to my parents house to celebrate my father’s birthday December 15th was his favorite, its veins a messy bright blue against the smooth ivory wedge. Stilton. I had told them I would come by after my shift ended.

My father and I sat calmly reconciled, somehow, enjoying the cheese together around the coffee table while my mother finished preparing dinner. It felt easy rather than awkward. There was hope.

 

When I got the call five days later, I was sitting on the couch in my one bedroom apartment with the cat on my lap.

My brother’s voice wavered. I didn’t know why was calling from a hotel room in San Luis Obispo. My parents and brother had driven to LA for a family wedding.

He explained that at the wedding, everyone was worried about our father because he was usually so talkative, but instead, he just sat off to the side looking pale. Later that day, he said, they spent four hours at the hospital in LA, but the doctors found nothing, so they decided to come home, my brother driving. They just pulled into a gas station in San Luis when our father had seized up.

“How is he?” I asked.

There was a pause. 
"What's going on?" I said.
“He’s dead.”

I had to stand up, my footing uneven as I took the cat off my lap and rose from the couch. It didn’t make sense, didn’t seem real. His doctor said he was in perfect health. How could this be true?

He said, “Mom won’t talk to me. Can you come down. I can’t drive her back alone.”

I needed a ride, so called Michael, my ex-boyfriend, always ready to help. In the meantime, I called my friend Lisa to come and sit with me.

I poured myself a glass of scotch, because I thought, that’s what you do when someone dies. Instead of knocking me out, which it should have done, it only made me feel more normal.

My life has been centered around written communication—poems, stories, and letters—the quiet, methodical structure of language. The spoken word comes less easily, but it comes, none-the-less, while teaching a class or talking with a friend. And, hopefully, it comes not too late.

Community Through Poetry in Albany

Tonight is the final Second Wednesday Poetry Drop-In Workshop with Alison Seevak at the Albany Public Library from 7-9 p.m. Alison has been leading this for ten years. It is free and open to all ages, and I have met people from ten to 85 years old, all with something to share of their lives, their perspective. Alison calls herself a “facilitator,” and that term more than anything else defines the session. The library website calls this a workshop, but technically it is not; rather, it is a place where people produce ideas and share them with a small and diverse community of writers.

She tells newcomers, “We’ll write and then share. Even if you think you don’t want to read, you might want to consider it.” She talks about the power of hearing oneself read aloud, that “you never know—it might be something someone else needs to hear.”

There is no feedback, which is a boon for those of us who just want to write and not be judged. What this does is create an open atmosphere. Alison’s matter-of-fact approach and her passion come through, as she is someone who is as comfortable with dealing in poetry as she is with breathing. After she has everyone say his or her name, she stands up with a stack of paper and then walks around the donut-shaped arrangement of desks where we sit facing each other, to distribute the prompt. The prompt changes—once it was a strawberry, once we chose from her selection of postcards, and sometimes she takes us through a scaffolding process of making a list before writing.

Tonight, the first prompt is a poem about what’s in a boy’s head. There are just under twenty of us, but the number has been larger or smaller, with a core group of regulars. One of the regulars, sitting next to me, Frances, who spins gossamer out of language, makes a sound of recognition at the author’s name, a Czech poet, who I’ve never heard of, and Alison makes a comment to Frances. Once everyone has the poem, she reads it aloud. Then we all write for 20 minutes, including Alison, because she always participates, always shares. This is the best model of teaching—facilitating and sharing. People learn best from each other with someone to guide them. And she is a professional teacher, to kids, and in her own life is a mother to a little girl.

We have already introduced ourselves, but when we read aloud, we mention our names again, upon the request of Tom, another regular. We all know he is going to ask. Elsie has not come with him this time—they are both older and I feel concern when she doesn’t appear, because she seems frail. Tom comes from the school of rhyme, and his poems are always tied together perfectly. He reads first, and we all laugh, because he builds humor in his poems.

Then we work around the circle. Someone new, Carmen, has focused deeply on dental floss and popcorn—her poem is like an onion—you keep peeling and it continues. It is the polar opposite of my style, I realize, which tends to go outwards. Her dark brown, almost black hair frames her face sharply, capping her head, with thick blunt cut bangs over her eyes. Everyone is rapt as she speaks, murmuring surprise and delight, but not saying anything, honoring her space. We continue around the circle, hearing the variety, what each person has gleaned from the prompt—to say what’s inside our head, or if we want, inside our heart, or our body, or whatever else. Most people have gone with the ‘head’ prompt, and all sorts of things pop out—stuffed animals, the natural world, literature, the minutae of daily life, childhood. There are laughs, there is silence, there are moist eyes and smiles, the range of human emotion.

After everyone reads, we take a ten minute break to enjoy the goodies some of us have brought. Usually Alison brings some cookies, but tonight we want to celebrate her. And tonight before we began, Ronnie Davis, the head librarian, came to thank Alison for her dedication with a bouquet of flowers.

One regular who used to come for years but hasn’t lately, Liz, asks me, as we much on cookies, “so is anyone else taking this over?” I say I don’t know. I only heard from another regular, Emmy, that this was the last session. “It’s about community,” says Liz. “Yes,” I say, realizing that for the first time that it is more than about writing, that this ties us together. Liz starts talking about the first Thursday open mic here at the Edith Stone room, for years, which is scheduled after a poetry reading. I go to the readings, but leave before the open mic, but that is Liz’ passion, reading aloud.


Poetry has figured prominently in Albany for a while. We have a poet Laureate, Christina Hutchins, who leads the open mic. She was selected for the position in summer of 2008 by the Albany Arts Committee.

As stated on the City of Albany web page:  “The year 2008 is Albany’s Centennial year and is thus a fitting time to begin a Poet Laureate program that will help us celebrate our shared history and community. The honorary position of Poet Laureate is given to a writer who uses poetry to express and celebrate a spirit of community throughout the year and to foster a love of poetry and literature among citizens young and old. “ 

Christina is another leader in the community, then. In a time where values seem to head more towards money-making than the arts, a time when the arts have little funding in the U.S., Albany has made a statement in supporting them, a model for other cities to reckon with. The fact that Albany has supported the writing group with Alison for ten years is considerable enough, let alone the fact that we have a poet to represent us to the world.


We do one more round, as Alison hands out another prompt and we write for twenty minutes, and share. Before we leave, I thank Alison for being a “facilitator,” praise her for being unique. Others join in. I ask her about her decision to leave. She explains that she is just taking a break, that the program is not ending, and that the library did not initiate this. They don’t necessarily want a substitute or replacement because they have built up a relationship of trust with Alison. She is unique, as the library of Albany is. As Ronnie Davis says, “we have always supported poetry in the community.” And in that, the library has brought the community together.