Reverb 10 for December 29 – DEFINING MOMENT

December 29 – Defining moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

Those who have lost loved ones are probably familiar with the point in the grieving process where you realize that the person is never coming back. Obviously, you’ve known all along that death is pretty permanent, but it still takes quite some time before the less rational parts of your being accept the fact as well.

When my father’s portrait was placed in the lobby at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, I realized that there was the end, right there, on the wall. The portrait “unveiling” was like a period at the end of a sentence of the last paragraph on the last page of a book. Full stop. “Well, that’s that”, I thought. It’s amazing how we are born, we live and carve a path on this planet, we die, and all that is physically left is a painting on a wall in a lobby of a busy urban hospital. Dare I say millions of people will come to pass that portrait? They will read the accompanying plaque and wonder about the man behind the spectacles. There is no more knowing him. I have avoided stopping and staring at the painting when I am in the hospital for fear that someone with “catch” me and wonder what the heck I’m doing with my nose practically pressed up to the thing. I think about my dad, bodiless, floating around somewhere, watching me watch him. I get an odd feeling in my gut – the same feeling I get when I misplace something. I know that I KNOW where the darn thing is, I just can’t find it, can’t grasp it. It drives me nuts. Just where could he be? Where on earth could I have put him? I usually have to open up the box I keep in my closet of “mom and dad” to find him. I guess in a way, he does come back. Just not in the way I would like.

The portrait is so life-like, so warm and golden in its tones, that you almost expect him to wink as you pass by. But Hogwarts, HUP is not and I don’t expect to see my father’s visage floating in and out of the frame any time soon. My auntie Jackie, who lives in Richmond, on the same street that she once padded down barefoot as a child when it was a dirt road, told me of how she regularly talks to her deceased husband. Sometimes, when she visits him at the cemetery, she even yells at him. “I just go and cuss him out when I’m mad at him for leaving. Nothing wrong with doing that once in a while.” And I think that’s ok. It’s ok to be angry with people about being left behind and all the things they didn’t say and the questions they didn’t answer.

The aunties, or Daisies as the elder matriarchs in our family have come to be known, remind me that my grandma ‘Ree – whom I seem to greatly take after at times – did things a whole lot crazier than talking to dead relatives, so there should be no shame in it. I’m guessing there may be some days when I take a chair in the lobby and look across the corridor and have a word or two with my father; maybe even yell a little bit.

Reverb 10 for December 23 – NEW NAME

December 23 -  New name. Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?

Eulalia Howlett

My first choice would be Eulalia. However, the name of my great aunt usually causes people to wrinkle their noses and ask “Eu-what?” And forget asking other people to spell it! I love the name, though. It has always had a particular musical quality that I love. I have been forbidden by my mother to name any children after her lest they be tormented throughout their grade school years. Aunt Eulalia was my father’s favorite aunt because, being a teacher, she was always a big supporter of his education. He used to recall her helping him with long division and the encouragement she gave him to pursue his aspiration of becoming a physician. She was also a very beautiful woman whose body language and elegant stature commanded respect. Sometimes, I imagine having a little shop that sells homemade jams and breads and even yarn and I would call it “Sweet Eulalia’s” after her.

Marie Frances Johnson (nee Howlett) 1943

My second choice would be Marie. Marie is my middle name. I am named after both of my grandmothers. My maternal grandmother was also Susanne Marie and my paternal grandmother was Marie Frances. My father had a habit of calling me “Marie” when I was in a bossy mood and reminded him of his mother. According to family lore, Marie was one helluva lady and even kind of crazy in her later years. Just this weekend, an auntie of mine told us of how, when she went to the cemetery to visit family, she would look and the ground and mutter “You SOB’s! All you left for me was arthritis!”. She was quite overprotective of my father and tried her darndest to keep him out of harm’s way, not allowing him to go ice skating or swimming or walk on the same side of the street as a funeral parlor or cemetery. She had all sorts of quirky beliefs, one of the most notable being that soaking in the same tub of water you used to cook corn would make your skin soft and silky. She was fond of scrubbing my father raw in an old washtub full of corn water with a generous bar of Octagon soap. She was an intelligent woman who had aspired to be a seamstress and attend the Pratt Institute, but segregation kept her from realizing that dream. I like to think that my acerbic wit probably comes from her as she was pretty much known for speaking her mind quite plainly. Family members describe her as a pistol and she was most certainly a woman before her time. I probably get a good deal of my “domestic” interests like sewing, knitting, baking, canning, and cooking from my maternal grandmother who raised 5 kids in Chicago and surrounding suburbs in the 50′s. She made most if not all of my mother’s clothes, though my mother drew the line at a homemade bathing suit one year. She also produced fantastic meals on a shoestring budget and kept the family entertained with her piano-playing.

Interestingly enough, I never knew any of these women as they died either before I was born or shortly thereafter. Their names are special to me, though, because they are names I hear frequently in family get-togethers where we hoot and holler over funny stories about Grandma ‘Ree and Auntie ‘Lalia. My father’s mother always wanted a baby girl in the worst way and I’ve grown up hearing how thrilled she would have been to see me come up in the world. I like to think there is a little bit of each of these women in me.

Reverb 10 for December 7 – COMMUNITY

December 7 – Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

To whom much is given, much is expected. I have discovered community in those nursing colleagues that share my desire to contribute to the field of nursing in a meaningful way by providing care to vulnerable populations – racial and ethnic minorities, women, the homeless, the addicted, the incarcerated – that face myriad health care disparities because of their liminal status in society. When record numbers of health care providers are jumping the primary care ship for high paying specialties, we are committed to providing comprehensive primary, preventative care in an effort to foster healthier individuals, families, and communities. I am lucky to have found such wonderful people who share my passion for nursing. I am continually inspired by the patients that I am privileged to care for and collaborate with.

I have also discovered community in my neighborhood. This is the 4th year that those who live on our block have met for our weekly Advent Soup dinners. As one of our neighbors likes to say, “we have created a sub-culture” in an era where few families and communities take time to share a meal, let alone take the time to do it 4 weeks in a row. What is truly remarkable about this neighborhood tradition is that only a handful of us are Catholic. These gatherings transcend religious and spiritual belief, though, and challenge us to slow down, to revel in the anticipation of the changes that are to come. We have used this season of Advent, known as a time of preparation in the Catholic faith, to gather and reflect upon the year we are about to leave behind and the year that is to commence. We discuss our hopes and disappointments, our fears and longings; we laugh a lot over bread and homemade soup. We reflect on how we have been able to create an oasis of peace, love, and friendship during a hectic season. I am infinitely grateful for the fact that I only have walk up and down my block to find, not only true friends, but family.

 

At the risk of seeming gluttonous, I don’t know if I could really ask for more in 2011, except that my relationships continue to grow and deepen and that life never fail to present me with the opportunity to come to know others who cross my path.

Reflection on Handwriting

If you want to have a really bad day, I recommend reading the sentiments written by others about your father shortly after he died. Because if there is anything worse than your own personal grief and pain, it’s reading about the pain of complete strangers almost two years after the fact.

When I was walking down the hallway and ran into the chaplain, I knew we were going to talk about my dad and I knew that she was finally going to give me that little book that had been displayed in the hospital chapel so that faculty, staff, coworkers, and colleagues could reflect upon what a {insert your preferred adjective here} guy my dad was. And, of course, it was fitting that she present me with this neat little package of highly charged emotions right before the highly charged, emotional event that has come to be known as “Dad’s Dedication”. Needless to say, the notebook sat in my backpack until I passed it off to my mother after the portrait had been unveiled and canapes had been consumed.

It didn’t occur to me until yesterday when I was thinking of every way possible to procrastinate, and further put off writing a rather tedious research paper, that I decided to rifle through my mother’s room to find the notebook. I clicked over to Hulu on my computer and put on “Parenthood” for background distraction and proceeded through the pages. It’s never good to attempt these things with complete silence. If reading the sadness in another person’s handwriting is much more difficult than thinking about your own sadness, then not being able to fully deduce what someone has written because their handwriting is illegible is infernally frustrating.

Wait, what did you say about the time when _____ happened? Is that a ‘k’ or an ‘r’? Reading someone’s thoughts about another person is like an archaeological dig where you discover things that you never ever knew. Things that suddenly put that life into context and unravel mysteries. Couldn’t you have thought to print neatly? When someone dies, you realize just how much you didn’t know about that person. Even when you shared the same living space with them for 24 years, you still weren’t privy to the day-to-day goings-on of another man’s life. And why would you be? We all lead separate lives to some extent. There is no possible way to completely know another human being. I find myself wishing for just another snippet or anecdote that will allow me to better hold on to those memories that are already seeming very distant and murky.

[This is for another entry, but if I could have a superpower, it would be that I could read minds.]

The best part about reading those two dozen or so entries was realizing how devastated other people felt. When someone dies, people offer their condolences because it’s considered polite human behavior. I am still shocked and awe struck by how sincere and genuine other people’s sentiments have been, how emotional they still become when I pass them on campus or in hallways. It’s almost too much to bear. And that’s the worst part. Because if there are other people feeling as ridiculously awful as I feel, then the whole terrible bad dream of prolonged illness and death must certainly be true.

If some people had better handwriting, though, I’d at least be able to thank them for taking the time to share their sadness.

Geneaology

Richmond is old. So old that it almost creaks under the weight of modernity as if catching up with the 21st century is just too much to bear after 400-some years.

The life blood of Virginia’s capitol city flowed steadily from the James River – English settlers, slaves, tobacco. The city and it’s inhabitants witnessed revolution, civil strife, deconstruction, and rebirth. Driving through Richmond provides a cheap tour of history in America – unwritten stories are featured in the massive statues of war heroes lining Monument Avenue, the nouveau-riche grandeur of Byrd Park and the West End, the remnants of Jim Crow segregation on the Southside, the long legacy of African American business and entrepreneurship in Jackson Ward, the recollection of bellowing steam engines and canal barges with their industrial cargo in Shockoe Bottom, and the possibility of new era that trails the students at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Richmond is easily one of those places where everyone knows everyone else and their business. Especially on the Southside. The Southside really started out as farmland in an area called Swansboro. My earliest ancestor, Rebecca Howlette, was a slave on the cusp of the Civil War. She was mother to 6 children and keeper of the “old place” for Mr. John Howlette – a wealthy landowner and father of Rebecca’s 6 mulatto children. We all trickled down out of her line like little tributaries from one, strong river – the Moons, the Martins, the Logans, the Howelettes, and so on.

According to Auntie Eva, Daddy came down to Decatur Street talking all proper after being born in New Jersey. They could practically smell the North on him. Auntarie – my grandmother Marie – ran a tight ship, though, and nothing pleased her more than knowing her home and her child were clean as a whistle. She had love enough for 4 or 5 children that she squeezed into her one and only. Grandma Marie stuffed him full of all the hopes and aspirations and dreams that she had had for herself but were dashed by racism and segregation. Her “angel baby” wouldn’t have everything snatched out from under him. She was a force to be reckoned with.

There used to be a grand house at 29th and Hull Steet where he lived with his parents and grandparents. It used to have a lovely porch. Grandma Marie surely thought that cleanliness was next to godliness as she mandated that daddy bathe in the deep metal tub on Saturday evenings. She used the left over water from boiling corn, strewn with husk silk and a large, scratchy bar of Octagon soap. When you were rubbed nice and raw, you were ready for starched Sunday clothes and the minister. Auntie Elaine says that Grandma Marie was a “fly chick” in her day with nary a heair out of place. She wore her thick, silky hair long, refusing anything resembling pickaninny braids. If you had any ounce of respect for yourself, you didn’t dare show your face to the public with a head full of curlers. She always longed for a daughter with whom she could share these lessons.

When Grandma Marie and I first had occasion to meet, I was a squirming infant and she, an old woman whose mind had been turned to swiss cheese by dementia. In pictures, she holds me stiffly, not seeming to understand what I am or from whence I came. Her greyed hair is cut short and leaves little trace of the glamourous woman she had always been. I arrived decades too late to be any sort of dream-come-true for her.

A squat carwash now occupies the lot where my daddy and his cousin used to mow the grass on Sundays for a quarter until they fought so much over splitting the money that Big Pa Howlette – my great grandfather – decided to give each boy 25 cents. The rest of the clan was spread out over 28th/29th Streets and Midlothian Pike – a veritable Howlette beehive. The clapboard shack on the corner of 28th Street and Midlothian Pike still stands with its lonely barber pole adorning one wall. So does one Howlette residence whose green awning bears a large, stenciled “H”.You could walk up any one of the major thoroughfares to the Five and Dime or Miller and Rhoads. On summer evenings, Big Pa would send daddy down to the corner store and pharmacy for nickel smokes.

Over in Newtown South, at Decatur and Pilkington, is the 2nd Baptist Church. Rebecca – being a fierce Christian and community advocate – pushed for the opening of a church that would be closer to her home. A stained glass window near the pulpit quietly honors her memory and contributions. Maybe if I stare through the fragile light filtering through the colored glass long enough, Rebecca just might appear, mother of our generations, like a vision of the Virgin Mary.

The memories, the stories – histories and herstories – triumphs, tragedies, and the germane goings-on of many a person are palapble here. Richmond is the wellspring from which many a black family poured out. Death seems to always be an event that leaves the living with more questions than answers. I’ve lost many years in learning these family intracacies, of knowing people who look like me, of being able to put an answer to the classic life questions: Where did I come from? Who am I?

Sometimes the answer is simple. It’s not wrapped up in all the superficial things we think distinguish us as individuals. You can’t really be defined without the “other”.  So you realize that there has been a place for you all along, among these others that exsited and continue to exist: I am a Howlette; daughter of Bernett Logan, born through a long lineage of capable women – Rebecca, Fannie, and Marie.