On Letting Be

Link here to YouTube video of The Beatles, "Let It Be"

Thanks to the Internet, I have some experiences that knock me down from time to time, things that used to drift slowly through postal mail, using headlines or obituaries clipped from papers in towns where significant people live. Sometimes, a person could never know something important about someone who might have been a relative, or a close friend, because the ties would break down and the news would never travel to that corner.

I used to receive letters and clippings from my mother. She would let me know of the death of a classmate or friend, or a teacher, or the engagement of a relative, then we would talk on the phone, and see each other because of the funeral, or the wedding.

My first bereavement experience online was of the man I thought I would marry once upon a time when I was very young. He was the sweetest boy, yet tortured and inwardly bent and broken so that he could only commune in nature, near-silence, walking the hills of his woods. He was an artist, and a musician, and at heart, a hermit. I became infatuated with him when we were in college and he was breaking up with a long-time girlfriend. We passed each other on the sidewalk, noticed each other, and began to ask others who we were.

I pursued him, and he allowed himself to be caught. Yet, when I began to make little departures for adventures (Bolivia, India, seminary, Mississippi ...), he was hurt and afraid. I wanted him to pursue me, but I had to go. I began to learn, I had to let him be.

He became to me like a bird, flightly and beautiful, always there in his Lookout Mountain woods, could be heard but not seen, somehow staying on the other side of the tree as I looked for him. Over time, I left him to his woods and songs; I let him be, and, as I let him be, I let him go and let my own life be. He would call from time to time, not without its exquisite pain in those moments.

I found my true love one day, or she found me; and one day became years and years, through changes and growing, and making a life together. She died in a freakish storm of devastation and crashing world. Brain death. Discontinued life support. Ashes. Shattered, I picked up pieces and kept on going, moving, becoming.

One day, in the midst of fresh grief, I thought I heard the call of that bird of my youth, when I entered a new wood in a new city. I saw a flicker of a feather escaping behind a tree on my new campus. My heart, at the time grieving the loss of my true love, skipped a little. I reached out over the net, to see if he could be found in his familiar wood. What I found silenced his call forever, scattered his feathers on the ground. I found his obituary.

The symmetry is cruel. This elusive bird of the deep woods died the same death as did my own true love. A missed diagnosis. A chest procedure. A botched bleed. An embolus to the brain. Brain death. Discontinued life support. A funeral. Ashes.

Later, in a confrontation of anger and shame, being cast out by my father, I explained, "You see, Dad? Either way, I am a widow. You will know how this feels one day. I hope then you will think of me, and understand."

Within two years, I lost my own true love and the elusive bird of my youth. I am now much older. This horrid symmetry still grips me in my depths, wracks me with tears, and will not let me be.

Over time, to function and to keep going, I have taken anti-depressants. As a result, I do not cry. I also lack high spirits. I stay quite level, but tend toward depression. I take adversity stoically. I have anger, I feel the blues, I feel happy, I have fun. I find deep inward joy in music and art, and working with my hands. I know, in my pathological intellectualizing (according to some) there is a grasping and holding on, a way of living in the past, letting this pain live on -- actually, it evolves, changes, becomes something else as I evolve, change, become someone else all the time, at least that is what I tell myself, and hope is true.

People tell me I have a disconnect between feeling and affective presentation when I tell my stories in settings ritualized and formalized for that purpose, telling and feeling, emoting, affect-ing. They say this as if I have a pathology that could be overcome. I must wonder: If I can I let this be, what do I care if others cannot?

This is my task: let it be.

To Taos -- Maybe

I've been scheduled to go to Taos, NM, since March. As a challenge to my "J" or J-ness (for those who don't know what I'm talking about: The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Inventory), my friends who invited me have been on a blissed-out wedding adventure. Blessed with a dominant P (perceiving), and living, as it were, in Wonderland, anything is always possible -- so delightful!

Meanwhile, as Burns would have it, in his conversation with a field mouse, I have laid my best plans, but they predictably gang aft agley. A touch of anxiety stirs around the solar plexus, and I speak to it as if it were a person: "Calm down, it's all relative, and tomorrow will still be here one way or another."

Most recently, the new hubbie injured his hand, requiring therapy of some sort, so they could not haul out to Italy as originally planned. And, the hands are the living and the life of this happy couple. Injury would be disaster. So, travel to Taos was cancelled.

I began to make other plans, like going camping with the fam next week, writing in the mornings; working in the garden; replacing skins on the Airstream. Amazing how one's mind can transport through time, opening up possibilities, moving present to a future that does not exist.

Then, a few days ago, we're back on: the hand is not as bad as it seemed, and a honeymoon may still be do-able. The ticket still stands, so yes, I say, I can still go out to Taos!

The ticket is the only concrete future. Tomorrow is race day at the Indy 500. Traffic will be wild, and my flight is scheduled for 10:30 am, which means going to the track by maybe 8 am, or earlier, so R can get to the church on time. If she had a church in Speedway, she would not have church tomorrow :-) The plane will depart with me or without me. My mind sees both at the same time with equal valence.

Today is the day of decision, or is it?

Yes, my J-ness is challenged by their P-ness, and I wait ...

... and I wait ...

Genealogy Research and Accidents of Fate

Genealogy Research and Accidents of Fate

Anne G. McWilliams

May 5, 2010

Genealogy is something I thought I might get into when I retired, like most of the people I know who have kept the records in my family. It seemed to me that genealogy research required long hours in libraries searching microfiches of poorly scanned images of newspapers, government records, and ephemera donated from private libraries. One of my mother's cousins and I used to talk about driving to North Carolina to find the record of our Scottish ancestor's arrival in America. Such research must require time and boredom to become an obsession. Or does it?

I was dragged into genealogy recently, out of curiosity about my father’s family. The vacuum created by the void of stories became stronger in the past year in credit to forces beyond my control. I say “beyond my control” with a sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude, referring to my decision to overcome travel exhaustion and get myself up and out to church on an early Sunday morning, something later I would be tempted to call “a God thing”.

At church that morning, I met a Muslim Imam, our guest preacher, Mikal Saahir. It turns out he is a descendant of a person who was enslaved by my ancestor. I have written a good bit about that meeting. I’ll distill to this one droplet: Mikal and I met because of one simple reason – my church encourages members to wear name tags. This social-club practice is more or less common, gaining in popularity with churches seeking to attract and keep new members.

As a result of meeting Mikal, I have found many facets of reflection upon the human drama of race, politics, religion, manners, morals, and memory. Two facets emerged and merged during the same day. For one, some time ago, I applied to work with the 2010 Census. I didn't get the job, but I did run into a friend at the screening exam. We met for lunch yesterday. And, yesterday, I went to vote in the Indiana primary election. The convergence of these federal functions is the basis for my story today.

Going to the polls is a chore. Rachel says I am irrationally upset by this: our neighbor is an official with the poll workers, yet insists upon campaigning for the Republican Party far inside the 50 foot limit, inside the polling place. It's hard to deal with this, because he is a beloved retired teacher. Alas, this is not a battle I want to choose at the moment. I recognize a familiar transference reaction to my own father’s entrenched conservatism. Therefore, I won’t say anything. Maybe this is fodder for another essay. Besides, my intransigent Republican neighbor very kindly asked about my adventure in genealogy of late. Voting and the Census -- I'll bring it all together, I promise.

I joined Ancestry.com one night around 10:00 p.m. I paid the trial fee and began my search. I could not believe my eyes. I typed in the outline of my family tree, beginning with my father, and adding the few names I knew of his ancestors. From time to time, I would return to the tree to find little green leaves on some of the names, especially the males of the spousal pairs (most every one of those pairs appeared to have been officially married).

Clicking on the green leaves, I would find hints that held the possibility of confirming the vital statistics of that person, spouse, children, and other members of the household. Other genealogists had made links to my ancestors, and thanks to them, I could link documents containing details I would otherwise never find on my own. I could not believe it, finding out so much so quickly about my family. One ancestor, for example, had a record of slave ownership recorded by the federal slave census in 1850. He had at least 17 slaves. I am vague about the number because my eyes were crossing with sleep deprivation.

[Recently, I became equally obsessed with a game on my iPhone: Tap Out. I worked the free version incessantly until I reached the end. I stopped talking to my family, except to draw them into the game to help me. Now, they are all working on Tap Out, but they won’t finish it as fast as I did because they have job and school schedules, and they go to bed religiously at 9:00 p.m. Losers. Slackers.]

Never mind. My family slept peacefully in their beds upstairs; the dogs were asleep in their crates in my study. I heard them whimpering their chasing dreams in little dog-lip muffled barks. Meanwhile I sat on my round blue exercise ball, squinting at the MacBook screen, tracking down census reports, Social Security Death records, marriage licenses, and other confirming documents, linking confirmations to the people in my growing family tree. I kept up this click-and-shock game until 4:30 a.m. Good thing I do not have a job working for someone else. This could become a habit affecting my performance.

The next day, or, rather, later the same day, I had lunch with my friend who is working for the 2010 US Census. On the way to meet him, my unconscious, hard at work with all the preconscious details of my search, dredged up and delivered to me a little gem of insight.

The census forms prior to the Civil War (1850, for example) were quite simple: names, ages, skin color, birthplace of father and mother, value of property. After the Civil War, Jim Crow showed up.

Limestone County, Alabama, and Giles County, Tennessee, were the main census forms I was finding, thanks to other, more serious genealogists who had followed their own links to my ancestors. The forms became quite complex after the Civil War. For example, forms after 1860 asked if inhabitants had attended school in the past year; could the inhabitants read and write; did the inhabitants rent or own property?

I recalled from my history lessons that persons with black skin color could not vote at the time. States and the federal government differed in policies. The “three-fifths human” policy in effect since the seventeenth century continued well into the 20^th century. In this policy, blacks were not considered to be fully human, and therefore lacked the full capacity to give consent to the government by voting. Women also shared this inability to give full consent for the same reason: they lacked the full powers of reason required to engage in the responsibility of electing those who would govern the state and the country.

Later, as full humanity became bestowed upon blacks (and women) in order to vote, blacks had to overcome an unofficial but life-threatening obstacle: to pass a reading test and a writing test. African Americans were lynched and shot for attempting to register to vote, even as in slavery they were murdered when discovered to be able to read and write. Fannie Lou Hamer, in the middle of the 20^th Century in Mississippi, was beaten almost to death, leaving her maimed for life with a limp, because of her effort to gain the franchise for black folks. The three Civil Rights workers murdered and buried in the earthen dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi, were, according to the local politicians, “Yankee agitators”, out to register black people to vote for the Democrats in the national elections.

Now, a zealous convert to my own personal genealogy, I am dying to get my hands on these actual documents. I need my own proof of these names, these records of census takers who visited my ancestors and interviewed them.

Those long-ago census workers walked across the creek, up the path, and across the plank porch of a cabin I now own on 80 acres in Limestone County, Alabama. Those census workers exchanged air in a room with my ancestors. Their oxygenated blood empowered muscles that moved an old-fashioned dip pen across the page of an official government document, recording names and vital statistics. (The writer, Shelby Foote, kept that close to the page, writing the first drafts of all of his manuscripts with dip pens, with Esterbrook Probate 313 nibs.) 

As my own fingers strike these keys on this peripheral keyboard, and the print-like image of letters appears across the page-like image on the screen, my fingers stop and flex and imagine the scritch across the dry leaf as the census enumerator recorded those names and details. They also demonstrated varying ways of spelling the names. And, in transcribing the names in the Ancestry.com database, some scribes made some curious errors. For example, my mother’s ancestors, Bowers, became Boviera in the electronic documentation that accompanies the facsimile of the form. Fortunately or unfortunately, paying members of Ancestry.com can correct these errors.

The census is important, we know, for calculating public service needs and taxation to support healthcare, safety, and education. However, it is easy to see how census taking might be viewed with suspicion and reluctance today. As the census worker recorded details of property, literacy, and relationship, they were also drawing back tightly upon a bow-string that would release its killing energy upon its target for another ten years ahead.

My new friend and possible relation, Mikal Saahir is descended from people who could not vote, whose lives depended upon their ongoing servitude to my white ancestors for decades after the Civil War. Their chattel status continued long after the law of the land affirmed their humanity, their capacity for reason, their right to vote and participate in their own governance.

In a census year, 2010, I am mindful of the ease with which I completed and mailed my household census form, even though my marriage status continues to be denied by the state and diminished by its record as “domestic partner”. Facebook, Twitter, Ancestry.com, are all new since the last census. The online facsimiles of the old records of past decades and centuries provide stunning reminders of the unknowing ways in which we accumulate a record of our humanity, our moral decisions, our exercise of justice.

Historians and literary critics urge us to avoid the fallacy of anachronism. Pointing to the uses of census taking in the past must not be interpreted as a sign of future continued abuses, they say. Did a government of a state, say, Alabama, in a decade, say, 1880s, in an era, say, of Reconstruction misuse the cold facts of a census form as a weapon against darker-skinned human beings? If those dark-skinned ones were not fully human in 1880, should we fault the State for treating them like animals?

Other critics say we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the benighted white leaders of a benighted era made a categorical mistake that they could not help but make, should we discount also the good they tried to do? The cold light of observation cannot but filter through the accumulations of those people who actually were fully human all along, people living out actual realities across the generations, and accumulating a record of having been sinned against by those who made “a big mistake”. 

Not discounting my own personal and private pains and sufferings interspersed throughout a life of blessedness, I have known such small suffering, and immeasurable benefits from my own accidents of fate. I ended up on the winning side of history, thus far, because my ancestry treated fellow humans like animals. Somehow, “sorry” just doesn’t measure up.

All of this reflection came about during the lunch hour between lunch with the census enumerator and exercising my right at the voting booth, prompted by investigating my family of the past online. Maybe after dinner, I can work on world peace.

David and Goliath and Healthcare*

In my opinion, the vitriol of the healthcare debate is all ideology and political money all around. Republicans in the pockets of the healthcare industry which includes insurance companies and hospital corporations (Goliath); Democrats in the pockets of the poor and under-represented, the same people Republicans want to make the whipping boy of any progress in social justice (David). (Apologies for an expedient eisegesis.)

The abortion scare  is a perfect example. The abortion argument is, in disguise, a ploy based on elitism, spread abroad to repeat the fear-mongering of the Philistines, to bring the Israelites into submission, to enslave them and keep them poor.


The abortion scare is a language game, propaganda generated for the same reasons the Republicans always pile responsibility on the backs of the poor and persons of color who are marginalized by each and every Republican "cause" on the present platform. Ever since HIV appeared in the 1980s, a prime case study, Republicans have forced the health care system into its typical posture: suspicion of and scapegoating of the poor and persons of color. Poverty; public education; civic development -- the same coded language and inaction kill millions of faceless people.

The Tea Party members and even a (probably Republican) member of the house played their hand: race and phobia of the poor couched in the fear language designed to dupe well-meaning good people. I appeal to the example of Jesus: the poor were his #1 concern, not the political and fiscal hegemony "scare" of the Pharisees. The Republicans will have to figure out another strategy. Their "tell" in the past weekend has blown their cover. 

Meanwhile, David has emerged from the unwashed masses with his sling and five smooth stones. He managed to bring the monster down, maybe not with the first shot, but he's down -- down.

Democrats, my David trope, likewise, have another monster on the way: the challenge to lead toward the implementation of what could be the most monumental step of progress in this century (spoken by one who will most likely only see the first 1/3 or so of it, actuarially speaking). David -- keep your eye on the monster.

Nota bene: These arguments are so divisive because they are designed to hit us where we feel rather than where we think. The abortion argument is an argument of the amygdala, not the hippocampus. Or is it the other way around? The emotional hit in the gut by the abortion argument is meant to bypass the brain and go straight to the ballot box and the checkbook. Don't fall for it!




*I'm in a debate on Facebook with a man I first met when he was a seminarian. Now he's a minister, and I think he's a wonderful person.


Image is from http://www.biblepicturegallery.com/free/screen-sized%20pictures.htm

My Very Personal $.02 for Health Care Reform and Why I Wrote to my Congressman, André Carson

Dear Mr. Carson,

I am your constituent, I voted for you, and I am very proud of your representation of our district of Indiana.

I am also a friend of your home mosque, Nur Allah, in Indianapolis. Below, I will include a link to a wonderful story of discovery between Imam Mikal Saahir and me. We were on the cover of the Indianapolis Star on February 20, 2010. Our families share close ties, rooted in slavery, in Limestone County, AL, where Mikal’s parents and my parents and I were born.

As your constituent, I'm writing to tell you why I'm such a strong supporter of health reform. My story about health care is a desperate concern for my own family.

I am one of many women of an age, 50+ (I am 52), unemployed, searching for work, and unable to afford health insurance. When I moved to Indianapolis in 2007, to be with my new family, I knew I had a job here for one year at Christian Theological Seminary. During that one year, I had excellent health insurance, with generous benefits. Since July of 2008, I have had no insurance.

I have an academic background, but in a field that is very narrowly defined, Pastoral Care and Counseling. The impact of the economy upon institutions of higher learning have made it practically impossible to find work teaching in my field.

When I began the job search, in 2007, while I was on a limited one-year contract as Interim Associate Academic Dean at CTS, I was warned that a woman over the age of 50 could expect to be in the job search process for an average of 18 months. I passed that mark last December, and still, I have continued to search without success. And, I continue to be without health insurance. For a very brief time, I was employed at a very low wage, and had coverage, but when that position ended, I could not afford the cost of COBRA.

I have applied to Wishard Health Advantage and am waiting to hear from them about my eligibility. When I consider my career prior to moving to Indiana, the work and the benefits, I feel very awkward applying for insurance that covers the poor, even though I suppose I have to realize that I am now poor. I have a place to live with family who love me and care for me. In that I have a roof over my head, and food to eat, I am not poor; but, in terms of earning my living at a job that provides not just an income, but self-esteem, I am devastated. I have spent all of my savings.

I am capable of earning a lot of money, with companies or institutions that would offer excellent benefits. Meanwhile, I could be taking the place of someone who needs the coverage more than I do. Yet, this seems to be my only recourse during this period of unemployment (do you hear my expectation, that I will work again in my field?). This hope, for coverage by Wishard Health Advantage, is my beacon against drowning in debt if I should need it.

Fortunately, my health is very good. I have no major pre-existing conditions. As I continue to age without coverage, unable to afford the basics of preventive medicine, I am monitoring my diet and exercise, trying to avoid the need for medical care. I do worry, however, because I have not had the essentials of mammogram and annual physical exams and check-ups recommended for a woman my age.

For the minor conditions for which I do need medication, I have been blessed to receive free for a limited time, from a drug company, a medication that would otherwise cost over $150.00/month. That prescription will expire soon. I have another generic prescription that I am blessed to be able to purchase for $5.00/month at the Kroger pharmacy. If I do qualify for Wishard Health Advantage, both medications will cost the same, $5.00/month/prescription, from Wishard pharmacies.

I wish to emphasize two factors. One, I am in many ways a person of privilege. I have an excellent education (Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University). I have known good success as an employee all my working life. I taught in my field for seven years in Ohio, prior to moving to Indianapolis.

Secondly, I am "a woman of a certain age" in which job opportunities are, obviously, very limited. When I went to orientation and training at the Work One center, an employment counselor advised me to do two things:

1) downplay my level of education

2) disguise my age

I learned to prepare a résumé that has no specific dates of employment and no reference to my academic career, so all an employer knows is that I do have a bachelor's degree. I do not provide the dates of my education completions so that my age could not be calculated. Both of these pieces of advice are uncomfortable because they do not reflect the full reality of my background.

I have been involved in a full-time job of seeking employment. Each week, I receive postings of openings, and I apply to the ones that seem to align with my talents and training. In the past three years, I have had one call from an agency that screens potential employees from corporations in Indianapolis.

I have sent my academic credentials to many colleges and universities in Central Indiana. To date, I have had no interviews. Thanks to my one year contract at CTS, I have been invited to teach on an adjunct basis. One course in the spring semester and one course in the fall semester are the extent of my employment as an adjunct. I am deeply grateful for this chance to use my skills and earn some money for my family ($6,200/year).

With this income I earn, I hope to qualify for Wishard Health Advantage. I will be deeply grateful if I qualify. If not, I do not know what will happen to me and my family if I experience sickness, injury, or any other kind of medical need.

I hope the health care bill will pass and change will begin for me and countless other women over 50 who are unable to do what we want to do: work with our skills, and manage medical care when we are unable to find a job. I hope that Wishard Health Advantage will extend to me while I am in this period of unemployment. If it does not, for whatever reason, I will be in deep despair and will live in fear of the welfare of my family.

I ask that you help me and others by supporting health care reform. I am hopeful that we will have a national plan that includes all citizens of Indianapolis, and that covers all persons in our country.

Please see my message to you, along with the stories and photos of other Americans from your district and across the nation, at http://my.barackobama.com/HereFor

Here is a link to the story of the first encounter between Mikal Saahir and me, one year ago this month.

http://indyanne.blogspot.com/2009/03/spiritual-dna-or-day-imam-met-southern.html

http://indyanne.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-in-star.html

Your constituent,

Anne G. McWilliams

The Story in the Star

I finally scanned the Indianapolis Star article with photos and graphics of the story of 2/20/2010. Thanks again to Bobby King.

I posted the articles on Dropbox in four pieces, the best I could do with my scanner size here at home. Thanks to those who asked to see the photos and graphics.

I've also started a blog of our research on the McWilliamses of Limestone County, AL, and I'll post that update soon.

Here are the links:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4819731/McWilliams-Saahir_Star_20_Feb_2010_1.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4819731/McWilliams-Saahir_Star_20_Feb_2010_2.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4819731/McWilliams-Saahir_Star_20_Feb_2010_3.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4819731/McWilliams-Saahir_Star_20_Feb_2010_4.pdf

... and what about the prom?

I sat down today and visually visited my high school Facebook friends. I’m thinking about the whole idea of "prom." Back then, there were comings-out of girls in the elite society of white girls. I guess I should go ahead and crack the old nut: I had my coming out much later, around the age of 27. 

At Athens High School, there was no prom. Along with desegregation, prom was discontinued. I think of that today with the news of the high school in Fulton, MS, that cancelled their prom because a lesbian couple planned to go together as a couple.

That the school would cancel its prom, placing the burden of a stupid adult decision on the backs of a couple of kids is so sad to me for the two girls and for all the kids who looked forward to their prom. But, you know what? I've been there, in a couple of ways. For one, I went to a school that did not have a prom for reasons adults thought made sense. Secondly, I've felt the social ostracism of being controversially different. With everything in me, I wanted so much to fit in and, especially, to not rock the boat. Of course, we had gay schoolmates back then -- we're everywhere, always. But, it was hard for those who could not pass. One person I know of committed suicide. I had no language for or consciousness of my own gayness back then, but I did feel the pain of difference. But, really, back then, we were frying other fish, so to speak. I can remember only that we were all twisted up about race.

So, why did my high school not have prom? Because: parents of white girls did not want the risk of their girls dancing with black boys. And, school officials did not want the set-up for inter-racial violence. That's it, in a nutshell.

Proms and coming out balls were (are?) for putting people of the same education and social class together to make couples, to make families, to make society. That's why schools once were in neighborhoods. Society girl rituals are about presenting young ladies to the world, to say, "I'm ready -- I will graduate, I'm fertile, come and court me." The more elite clubs are about social engineering sharpened to a point. And, as the Baptists said back then, everyone knows if you allow teenagers to have sex before marriage, it could lead to dancing. No one thinks overtly, out loud about the design of social rituals. It's all about birds of a feather. That's the thinking of the good ol' days -- the Old South.

Somewhere along the way, the elite sorority I mentioned earlier, the one that would finally move me out of strangeness into popularity, hosted a formal-dress dance for the white kids, by invitation only. The brief time I was a pledge, I wrote kids' names on bids and envelopes, decorated the ballroom, and ran the scut-work errands for the sorority. The bids were presented at the door of the Athens Country Club (need I say, whites only Country Club?), and one year, at the ballroom of the Jetport in Madison. 

Above, that's the photo from my senior year, dressed in the gown my mother made for me. In our alternative-prom formal, couples (boy-girl) promenaded across a stage in a ceremony called the "lead-out." The tuxed boy with the gowned girl on his arm walked with head-high dignity out into the spot-light and paused for the photograph. Where is that tuxed boy now? He was older than me by 3 years -- an older man.

This same sorority also held the Sadie Hawkins dance every year. Whites only, of course. For this dance, the girls asked the boys, turning the tables of chivalry. I think that dance was at the old Fairgrounds in a barn-like building. 

The idea of both dances is that they were off school property in private locations, hosted by a private group that was not officially affiliated with the school. Parents were chaperones. Teachers and school officials were invited, unofficially. I wonder if anyone back then questioned what we were doing? Well, why should anyone's conscience be any different from mine? There I was, a Christian, a caring person -- and a self-absorbed teenager trying to fit in. 

Why does my mind anachronistically wish to have been more enlightened back then? The lines were drawn for us, racially and sexually. We all knew our "place" in society. I suppose by now, I have moved through my life to such a place that I find it impossible to give in to nostalgia. Sure, it was a sweet time at times, but would I go back and live it again? Not just no, but, hell no.

School Days: Class of '75

In the spring of 1975, I graduated from Athens High School, Athens, AL. I think our class must be due for a reunion this year, a multiple of 5 -- or do they go to 10 year increments after thirty years? Anyway, wow, 35 years ago!

I have five or six classmates on Facebook, some of whom I knew since elementary school. The benefit/burden of living in a small town is that everyone knows everyone -- sort of.

It's not so small anymore, and, even back then, we always seemed to have newcomers.

Athens would not like to see itself as a bedroom community to any other city, but, in my memory, that was one of the interesting things about the town. The Huntsville industries brought a lot of "new kids" to town, children of people who worked in the science industries. In my mind, the most notable industry was the Space and Rocket industry, led by Werner von Braun, who led the development of the Saturn rocket, that made possible JFK's vision to land earthlings on the moon. Our 10-year-old is fixin' to go to Space Camp with her school this month, at the Space and Rocket Center.

Huntsville was the place to go as a teenager, if you wanted a nice date to a movie and a restaurant (The Fog Cutter, Red Lobster, -- you know, the fancy places). Athens had no movie theater at the time, at least not with new releases. I did work in the then-new Athens Cinema in my senior year, I opened the building, turned on the big projector, and started the popcorn machine -- all processes that took a long time.

I have been thinking about Athens High School lately because of the recent acquaintance with "the other McWilliamses" of Limestone County. How much I do not know of my own heritage ... Talking with Mikal Saahir and telling others about the story of our meeting (see earlier posts) have peeled back layers of memory and associations -- and the lack of them.

In 1975, our class graduated with a history of (not sure about this) five years of desegregation. I recall that we attended the old Athens High School when the Middle School was created around the same time, and I was in the 8th grade. Those who had attended 6th grade at Athens Elementary School spent 7th grade in another school for one year, while arrangements were made for the creation of the Middle School. [Memory is notoriously unreliable without documentation, so I'm not really sure about this chronology.]

By the time 8th grade opened up at the Middle School, desegregation had happened. I remember being led into the hallway on the first day of school, each class with its white students, lined up to greet our new black classmates. The air was charged with anxiety on both sides of the hall.

How did that desegregation work that year, from a system perspective? Only later in life did I begin to think about what my new classmates lost in desegregation. Trinity School was a beloved place for a lot of people, yet it was closed down and left to deteriorate. I recall driving through "the black section of town" and seeing the weeds and vines crawling up the walls and roof. Or do I? I think I remember that.

Instead of integrating both Trinity and Athens High, Trinity was closed, and, eventually, a new high school was built on the north side of town. This new school was located on Highway 31, not far south of the junction with I-65.

As I moved on through school, in those high school years, there were incidents of violence, especially at football games, it seems to me. I was in the band, and as far as I knew, or was concerned then, the band was a place of discipline and order. Mr. Bacon and Mr. Havely ran a tight ship, and music kept us all focused. Band was my joy in high school, along with my church youth group, the UMYF at the First United Methodist Church, and, of course, my horses.

For reasons I came to understand much later in my life, high school was not a happy time for me. I felt that I did not fit in. I was a tomboy; I was not particularly popular; I didn't date much, but had a series of boyfriends. When I was a senior, I was rushed into the sorority that I thought would make my social life complete. But, I quit because it interfered too much with my horse time. [Kids are so cruel to each other. Rumors and lies drifted back to me much later, but I was too far gone to care.] Life at home was fractious. Interracial dis-harmony, Vietnam, Watergate all created a -- here comes the cliché: turbulent time in which to be a teenager. I could hardly wait to get away and go to college.

When I did go away, I kept on going. Now, I'm here in Indianapolis, with my partner, a woman, her 10 year old daughter, our three dogs, and one cat, and surrounded by inlaws/outlaws I dearly love -- and, here, it's mutual and I feel so very normal. My family of origin, however, is painfully broken. My dear dad, full of bitterness and grief, still lives in Athens. My remaining brother is in Nashville, frequently homeless (see earlier poem). Robert's wife and kids live in Florida, and his teenage daughter is doing her best to find him in herself and her friends.

I had to move to Indianapolis to meet up with some wonderful people from Limestone County, with whom I share a history that is older than Athens High School. They mention names to me of their relatives, classmates and schoolmates with whom I shared nothing in common back then. I wish I could hear some stories of both the Trinity and Athens Middle and High kids who gained something and lost something back then.

Reflections at One Year

Take a look at this photo from my great-aunt's scrapbook. If you click on it, it will open larger in another window. The "Uncle George" of the caption is George McWilliams, freed from slavery at the age of 9, in 1863. Some members of his family are on the porch of the slave cabin where I suppose George lived most of his life. How often would this family have had such a portrait taken? Look closely. A young white male has one arm around a younger man, possibly George II, and with his other hand he has his fist full of George's coat. I suppose this little white boy, a rascal for sure, is my grandfather, Bob Lee (Robert Lee) McWilliams, who disappeared from my father's life -- and my life -- when my father was 8 years old. As we say Down South, Bob Lee 'turned up dead' in the late 1970s in Salt Lake City. Word was, he was an alcoholic, and an abusive husband, who brought a lot of pain and misery to a lot of people. The Hebrew Bible says that the sins of the ancestors are visited upon the descendants from generation to generation. I consider the stories, told and untold, in my family and I believe this is true. And, yet, the drunkard womanizer, King David is the ancestor of the Christian Messiah. Irony makes such good storytelling. This story is about so much more than race and slavery; it includes layers and nuances of human misery. At one year, I ask myself, "What's the point?"

Tonight, I had a conversation with reporter Brandon Perry of the Indianapolis Recorder, the weekly paper of the African American community of Indianapolis (and beyond). Mr. Perry's article will be the fourth publication*, within two months, of the story of the meeting between Imam Mikal Saahir and me, one year ago, March 8, 2009.

One year later, I still find myself shaking my head over the unlikelihood of that meeting a year ago. Mr. Perry asked me what I would like for people to take away from our story. After a lot of rambling on, with some of my academic thoughts and personal reflections, I settled on this thought:

So much has happened since 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in North Alabama and Southern Tennessee, when my great-great-grandfather, James LaFayette McWilliams freed from slavery the nine-year-old George McWilliams. Let me break that down, in case it isn't clear. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced for Jim Fate McWilliams and other slave owners in the Tennessee Valley region. I do not for one moment think George McWilliams would have been freed from slavery any other way. There was no magnanimity in the action of Jim Fate McWilliams.

Now, on the one year mark, I have a lot more questions than I did on that day Mikal and I met for the first time. Firstly, why or how did his family come to know and hold and cherish this story of emancipation? I had no idea of this story, and could have lived out my remaining days without knowing it, had events not conspired (a G-d thing?) to bring us together in Indianapolis, IN, far away from Elkmont and Athens, in Limestone County, Alabama.

Secondly, what happened to little 9-year-old George on that day in 1863? He had a brother, bought by the McWilliams family at the same time, some time in their young childhoods. A third brother was bought by the Yarbrough family. What happened to him? Where did little George and his brother live? Who took care of these children? Were there other slaves in the McWilliams estate at the time? I know, from the photos gathered by MIkal's family, that George McWilliams continued to live on the McWilliams property, living in the cabin that was the slave quarters, at least according to tradition. Were there others? Did any adults, taking the McWilliams name, leave the estate and venture away from the others?

Finally, for today, how did Jim Fate McWilliams take the news of the enforcement of the E. P. back in 1863? He would have been a man in his 30s. What changed in his household, if anything did, because of the legal end to slavery?

I have none of these stories. The cloudy past of my father's "people," including the black McWilliamses, will most likely obscure this story for me for a long time. Now I have some questions for me.

What will I do with this information?
Why was my initial reaction to Mikal's introduction into my past a response from a place of guilt and shame? What is in this story that affects my ego to such an extent? Sure, it's all in the past and I can't influence it in any way. Seana said, on our vacation with friends in México last week, that I could work out my reparations with her. That was funny, a little twist on the question about, when will we ever be finished paying for the sins of the past? When will the learning be complete? Dear g-ds: if racism is over, then what kind of misery are we, in the majority, willing to continue to support in our cities? If racism is over, I need someone to explain to me what to do about this stain upon my name? If racism is over, what happened to the revolution? I missed it entirely.

What is the point of this story?

I told Brandon Perry that this story brings my situation as a white Southerner -- who witnessed the dismantling of Jim Crow and the growth of Civil Rights and my experiences in consciousness-raising efforts -- out to a place of new scrutiny, to be sure. I have my response, and it is my response. I do not speak for anyone else as I live through this awakening.

One of the main points I take away from this encounter and its ongoing revelations is a repetition of something I learned from Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, and Henry Louis Gates. Human beings are 99.99% exactly the same on the chromosomal/genetic level. Without the statistically insignificant differences contained in the 1/100th of one percent amount of difference that might emerge as skin color, hair, eyes, etc., we are all the same. What violence and evil we have made of that 1/100th.

Another point is the closeness we share, unknowingly, with others around us. How amazing: Mikal Saahir and I, two McWilliamses with roots from the same county, met on a Sunday in Indianapolis, IN. Indianapolis: his home town for life, my new home since three years ago.

I gave up a while ago my firm grip on the personal G-d. Too much bad stuff happened all in a row, and my faith was not much help. Still, I am drawn to community, to people who gather in G-d's name. I am so glad that there was a place that Sunday morning, where people gathered to reflect upon the Spiritual DNA of the children of Sarah and Abraham.

What to make, then, of the meeting, that it happened at all? What's the point? Where will this journey take us from here? It is a small world -- we are all interconnected -- what happens to one affects all -- a rising tide lifts all boats -- I am sorry -- I forgive you -- these phrases are so common because theses kinds of little miracles happen so often.

What now? I am left with a feeling of Mystery, with a capital M, trembling before a grace that is beyond me, that blesses me in a particular way that feels very personal. Shall I take the Mystery personally?

*other publications:
Indianapolis Star
My corrections to the Star article are below on February 20, 2010
Focolare's Living City Magazine
Muslim Journal (article not posted online/essentially the same as Focolare's version)

IndyStar Article: Bound by the Past

Image from Indianapolis Star article, credit goes to Stephen Beard and Robert King of the Star.

Thank you, Bobby King! You did a great job with a story of very tangled-up details. The front page of the Star! You forgot to mention that when we talked on Thursday, you sneaky reporter.

Below, I have posted the article that appeared in today's Indianapolis Star. There are some errors that I want to correct, but I don't want to go anywhere near the comments section of the newspaper because -- despite some nice comments -- it is such a cesspool of human ignorance and hatred. So there.

In fact, when I scanned the comments, I saw that a reader recommended Edward Ball's book, Slaves in the Family. My friend Laurel sent the book to me immediately when I shared this story with her back in March of 2009. I read the book in one sitting. Then, I sent the book to Mikal Saahir.

Here are some corrections marked like thas this and with more info in brackets like [this].

I want to say much, much more about this story, more than already, in an earlier post. I will do that soon.

TTFN

BOUND BY THE PAST

By Robert King on February 20, 2010

Meeting reveals shared ties to the culture of slavery

When Michael Saahir and Anne McWilliams crossed paths over coffee between Sunday services at her Northside church, they easily could have passed from each other's lives without another thought.

But Saahir noticed her nametag and made a comment that there were McWilliamses in his family.

The overture could seem odd, given that Saahir is black and McWilliams is white. And even stranger, Saahir is Muslim -- a kufi-wearing imam, in fact -- and at the time, McWilliams, was an administrator at a Christian seminary an educator by training, was preparing for a five-week stay in Guatemala to attend intensive Spanish language school. [actually, I was at CTS in 2007-8; in March 2009, I had just finished a unit of CPE at Methodist Hospital; I have been an adjunct at CTS off and on since I was Interim Associate Academic Dean at CTS].

Yet McWilliams couldn't help but come back to Saahir, who was the guest speaker at her First Congregational [United] Church of Christ, and pick up the thread connecting them. It didn't take long for them to realize they were connected by more than a thread.

Both had family in Alabama. From rural Limestone County, a place so small it's almost hard not to be related somehow. McWilliams had grown up there, she said. Saahir spent summers as a kid there and still has family there.

Then Saahir said his ancestors had been slaves, some of whom were owned by a man named James Lafayette McWilliams. She recognized the name.

It was her great-grandfather great-great-grandfather.

"I was just stunned," she said.

Making the connection

The McWilliams family -- its white and black iterations, its parts rooted in slavery and slave ownership -- had completed a long journey that Sunday almost one year ago. It was a trip that covered nearly 150 years, four to five generations and almost 400 miles.

Saahir and McWilliams have come to see it as a divine appointment.

McWilliams had just joined the church a few months earlier the previous month. Back late from vacation the night before, she considered sleeping in but went anyway.

Saahir was a visiting guest speaker. He had come to address the theme of the day: the "Spiritual DNA of Abraham" -- to speak about the common history of Muslims and Christians.

But he and McWilliams also wound up giving a brief lesson on racial history -- how a black man and a white woman in Indianapolis can learn about their shared ties to the slave culture.

"It was rather extraordinary," said the Rev. Richard Clough, pastor at First Congregational, who invited Saahir to speak. "I witnessed their conversation as it unfolded. It was really just an astounding thing."

The conversation continued after church.

Saahir realized that a black and white photo in his family history collection showed his once-enslaved ancestor, George McWilliams, circa 1928, holding a little white boy in his lap. That child, it turns out, was one of McWilliams' great-uncles father's first cousins, Thomas Martin Gilbert.

Talking further, Saahir, 53, and McWilliams, 52, realized that as kids they had walked some of the same streets. Saahir grew up in Indianapolis but spent his summers with family in Athens, Ala., where McWilliams grew up. Both went to the movies in a self-segregated [Ritz] theater -- she downstairs, he in the balcony.

And then there was Mary McWilliams Gilbert, a lively little old lady who, even late in life, lived in the "big house" on the McWilliams family's farm in Elkmont. [She was the mother of the little boy, Thomas Martin Gilbert, in the photo with George McWilliams.]

She was one of Anne McWilliams' great-aunts great aunt. But they had met briefly only once, after a family funeral after McWilliams' estranged grandfather's death in 1978 or 1979.

Saahir, though, had had an extensive conversation with Gilbert in the 1980s while on a fact-finding mission.

Gilbert told him that she had given his mother her name -- Gloria. It shows, he said, how the residue of the slave culture still held sway well into the 20th century.

It was so extensive that the last slave in the family, George McWilliams, freed as a boy [age 9] by the Emancipation Proclamation, in the 1930s still lived in the cabin behind the "big house" he had occupied as a slave.

That influence carried on, in fact, to Saahir. Much like Malcolm X or Muhammad Ali, Saahir took a new name after his conversion to Islam in 1980, dropping his Anglicized name for a new one. It was both a statement of faith and a rejection of the names his ancestors inherited from white slave owners.

Even so, when Saahir went to visit Gilbert in 1985, his Alabama relatives told him not to knock on the front door because, as a black man, he wouldn't be allowed in. Instead, they said, he should go to the back entrance, where slaves had once entered and black servants still used.

Saahir was too interested in hearing about the history to risk upsetting protocol. So he took the advice. "I had waited so long to get the interview I was afraid of being turned back," he said. "It was just the way it was."

Accepting the past

McWilliams' family research was more limited. She had once plugged "McWilliams" into a genealogy Web site and made contact with a Florida doctor judge [Alan Todd] who gave her some printouts. Mostly, though, McWilliams saw them just as names on paper.

Never did she conceive that her family had owned slaves.

Her dad, Robert Lee McWilliams, [Jr.] never talked about his side of the family. Her mother's side had been simple farmers, and she just assumed the same was true on the other side.

"It hit me with shock," she said. "And I just have to be honest with you that it hit me with shame."

Shame because McWilliams had always thought of her family as enlightened. As a child, she remembers asking her parents about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and hearing them speak favorably of it as a means to make all people equal, regardless of color. She had been taught never to look down on others.

As an adult, McWilliams chose the church where she and Saahir met in part because it was the kind of place that would be involved in interfaith work and would turn over the pulpit on the first Sunday of Lent to a Muslim imam.

Learning of the lost history forced her to re-examine much about her family's past. The fact she grew up in a house with a black maid who did all the cooking and cleaning and dirty work seemed different now. More unseemly than it had as a child.

So did the memory of being told as a child that all the [other] McWilliamses in the Limestone County phonebook were black, and of no relation. She came to feel cheated out of an important part of her past.

"I've never had an encounter so clearly, face to face, with my history as a Southerner, a white Southerner," she said.

And McWilliams began to feel some guilt.

"There's an assumption in a lot of circles that if you are white in America that you are racist because of the way racism is so systematized in this country. I sort of believe that," she said. said, "I have to take the longest step forward to bridge that gap."

To that end, McWilliams has asked Saahir and his wife if she can accompany them to his family reunion in Alabama this summer. She wants to meet the ["other"] McWilliamses of Limestone County and learn from them.

For Saahir, the lessons of this new family connection aren't about inducing guilt. He's told McWilliams she bears no burden from the distant past. But he is hopeful that their story can help heal some of the racial problems in America by encouraging people to understand their history.

"There is a lot of untold stories that we are ashamed of," he said.

Like many Southerners, Saahir's family migrated north from Alabama looking for work and a better life. McWilliams bounced around the country in pursuit of her education, and for her work in academia.

Their own lives -- the segregated movie theaters as kids, the need as adults to still respect the code of the big house back entrance -- evidence vestiges of a past not so far behind us.

But both say their willingness to put themselves in an interracial setting where they could meet is a hopeful sign, a measure of progress.

Yet they won't chalk up their meeting to simple coincidence.

"It just seems like a conspiracy of factors, spiritual and cultural, that brought us together," McWilliams said. "I'm sure you can explain it away in many different ways, but it was so efficient, so instant."

"It is the plan of God," said Saahir, the imam. "And I don't fully understand it yet."

[Neither do I, Mikal, -- neither do I!]

Prose Poem: Unruly Tenants

   A group of unruly people followed me home from band rehearsal last night, and crawled into my dreams.

   These people rented spaces in a massive old house.

   The landlady was cranky. She called a meeting of all the tenants.

   Was I an observer or one of the tenants? The dream world is not always specific about this assignment.

   The landlady revealed the tennis scoreboard she had set up in the lobby. Each tenant's name appeared in the vertical column to the left, and out to the right of the names, horizontally, were the numbers of the rented spaces and the contracts they made to renovate the space. So far, nobody was winning.

   The landlady was furious with everyone. No one was keeping to the terms of the contracts.

   The renters were:

• a dancer
• a philosopher
• a chef
• a writer
• a healer
• a teacher

   Some had spouses; some had children; not all with spouses had children; not all with children had spouses.

   Each renter had excuses:

• too busy
• other priorities took over
• the work was too expensive
• or too hard
• or needed more skill

   The landlady was cracking down: Get it done or get out.

   Caught in the landlady's headlights, each renter was wide-eyed with terror. There was no place else to go. There was nothing else to be done. Time's up -- get the work done, or you are out of here.

   Later, I went to a party at the dancer's house. He showed me how to get to the Caribbean ocean through a tube. We swam there, or the current took us there. We landed on a beach.

   An Afro-Caribbean man on the beach opened a large scallop shell and showed me how to feed abundantly on the fruits of the sea there on the beach. He also told me that if I came across a grouper as long as his arm, he would pay me $100 for it. {Yeah, I know -- sometimes seafood is just ... seafood.}

   According to the dancer, whenever the going got too stressful in the house, we were free to take the plunge and find the ocean and the beach. The tube is always open, and you can breathe underwater. Go there any time.

   I could tell: the landlady really wanted everyone to get the jobs done. She knew: if each tenant fulfilled her/his contract, the massive house would be fabulous. She wanted everyone to stay and to complete the work.

~~~***~~~

   Of course, this is all a metaphor of the Self, and each character, location, and talent is some aspect of mySelf.

The unconscious brings such gifts!

I have this Thirst for Poems

I have this thirst for poems. Mary Oliver. Robert Frost. Anyone, really, who has just the right blend of the concrete embodied reality of the little horse standing by the snowy wood, or the soft animal body of the goose flying overhead, and the mystical tending toward the universal desires.

Attending to this thirst, I remembered that a book by Donald Hall, Life Work, was on my shelf. And, seeking more about form, an unopened Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, on poetry's forms, a text for one who aspires to write poems -- like me. Earlier in the month, I read another wonderful text about writing, Reading like a Writer, by Francine Prose.

I watched a DVD movie, or should I say film, Local Color, a story of a young artist who wanted to learn from an old master. This film brought images and thirst together.

Rachel brought home a volume of poems assembled by Garrison Kiellor, Good Poems for Hard Times. In that volume, I found a form that I could imitate, to tell the story of getting fired. I still don’t know what I am going to do. But, I sat down and wrote the poem, because I knew that I would rather write than die. Getting fired made me feel a way of death, not of suicide, but some soul-killing thing that wanted to eat away at my heart. Writing the poem gave life to me and defended my soul from death.

Hall’s Life Work came into my hands as a bequest, a gift to my late partner, Nancy, in 1993, from our friend Jane, who loved books and poetry. Jane introduced us to Laurie R. King, still my idea of the best of the kind of fiction I want with me on a desert island.

Life Work I picked up some time after Nancy’s death, when I was wondering what would come next, as I wrote in a journal and talked into a micro-cassette recorder, talking to Nancy and missing her. I made some notes in the margins in that earlier reading. But I did not finish. I could tell that things were not going to go well for Donald, and I just could not deal with that at that time in my life.

As he recollected his grandfather's farming life, and his cancer appeared, I could not continue to travel with Donald. Nancy’s cancer was too close yet. So, I put the book on my shelf, with other poetry.

I read thirstily through the Keillor volume, but like a kingfisher watching for the shine of one fish at a time, finding the poets I knew well first. I put the volume down and picked Life Work up again.

I had to press through Life Work. It is a lovely little book, but it is not light reading. (My ordination mentor reminds me that I am very intense, so perhaps anything would be heavy reading for me.) I soldiered on to the end, as Donald began his chemotherapy, as he and Jane Kenyon held each other and wept in their anticipation of his dying.

When I finished Life Work, I picked up the Kiellor volume again and kingfished for Donald’s poems. I found Donald’s poem about Jane Kenyon’s death. What a sad irony and symmetry, that she died before he could die. She left him. His poems about her death, the theme of his book Without, express his “deep grief and fury” or so said one biographer.

I know that grief and that fury.

The partner of a colleague took her life last week. I wrote a poem to try to defend my senses against, again, death. How wonderful, how helpful to me, that I can turn to Donald Hall in his loss of Jane Kenyon, and to Mary Oliver in her loss of Molly Malone Cook (Thirst; Our World). Others have sought through poems to defend against death, to rage on Heaven and drag the clanging metal cups of their earth-prison cell against the bars and make themselves heard, to get. it. out. C. S. Lewis used his craft. Hemingway used his.

How many times in my own experience have I found myself overswept by a memory of a specific grief, and have been told to “let it go”? These phrases are so common because death is. Eventually, for some people, these phrases go on to become helpful; that’s why the very people who could not hear them when they were tossed out in the height of grief go on to say them to the other sufferers in the height of their grief. These phrases sell a lot of shiny and frilly commercial greeting cards. But, please, there must be a time for silence. Can a card contain silence in a kind of large blank space, with something at the very bottom, or centered in the middle, like "I am so sorry" or "I miss her, too." or "I do not want you to be alone. Come."

Who gets to decide when you let go? What is the deadline after which your grief becomes a pathology? I'll tell you one: some arrogant bastard in an office with framed diplomas on the wall. When you've exhausted your curses, against the insensitive types, and the Pollyannas and the Nietzsches (what does not kill you makes your stronger), then, I say, grab your own pen and paper and write it all down. Let it flow.

Where are the listeners to the stories of those who grieve? The listeners. Ones who listen. Listen. Here is a holy act, an act of the apostles of love, the ones who sit with and hear. That's how it is, reading Oliver's Thirst. Here are poems that give a glimpse of what it was like for her to lose her. And, maybe that helps, somehow, hearing how another tells it, this experience of losing and grieving.

As I read through the poem, Last Days, (Hall) I felt again that desolation of loss. And now, I await the sound of the garage door opening and the door swinging in, and the chatter of the new family, the one I love and her little shadow, the child, whom I also love, but so differently. I love this little one like a custodian of a work of fragile art, belonging not to me, but to others for whom she is a priceless treasure, moving through this world here on a very bumpy path. This woman I love and her child are out playing basketball, boisterous and oblivious to the passage of each present moment and their proximity to mortality. And that is just how it should be. We know better than to stare into the sun. Besides, who would want to? We prefer to stare at what the sun makes possible: life. Our life together, here.

What more universal theme than death could there possibly be for poetry? How does anyone survive without it? Prose is just too facile, too prone to preaching. (Like now.) A poem can contain it all, from sorrow to fury. Just writing about it now feels shallow, like trying to find the perfect prize for my beloved in WalMart. As if some plastic imitation will do.

This reflection ends in listening. And, maybe a small pretty glass of something amber-colored, a fine Central American rum.