Rainbows and Dust

Arthur Rothstein, Texas, 1936

Tonight I decided I didn't need to finish yet another so-so book. What sealed the decision was, of all things, a TV show—a rebroadcast of part 1 of Ken Burns's magisterial documentary The Dust Bowl, of which I'd previously seen most of part 2 when it aired in January. Riveted by the unstoppable tragedy, the dignity of its aged witnesses, the clear-eyed storytelling, with its sense of historical sweep and human consequence, I realized I was no longer interested in the rather inconsequential, padded, and self-involved contemporary memoir I was reading by Frank Bruni, a writer I otherwise admire. 

I expected Bruni to be a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize earlier this month, if not a winner (he was neither . . . this year) for his great New York Times columns in which, among other things, he determinedly hammers away on same-sex marriage and other gay issues. I loved his essay about his father's evolving acceptance of having a gay son:

"In the years before Mom died, I had my first long-term relationship, and I could tell that seeing me coupled, just like my brothers and my sister were, gave [my father] a new, less abstract way to understand me. I just wanted what they wanted. Someone special. 

"He welcomed the man I was with effusively. Took the two of us out to eat.

"Then Mom was gone, and all the parenting fell to Dad. He tapped reserves I’d never imagined in him. When I broke up with the man he’d been so effusive toward, he must have told me six times how sorry he was about that. It was a message—that he was rooting for my happiness, no matter how that happiness came to me."

But Bruni's memoir, Born Round, about his lifelong battles with weight and eating, doesn't have the feel of consequence that that single column has. So, thanks to The Dust Bowl, I'm not going to finish it.

Even the last book I read—courtesy of my old pal the Total Femme—felt more substantial than Bruni's: The Other Side of the Rainbow: With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol, an out-of-print sleeper by the surprisingly not bad writer Mel Tormé. The book—about the making, and unmaking, of Judy Garland's one-season-long TV show, which Tormé worked on—illustrates the frustratingly sad fate of an out-of-control addict with mammoth gifts who has not a single person in her life really looking out for her (including Mr. Mel Tormé).

I've been on a bit of a Judy Garland kick of late (which perhaps the Total Femme intuited), having seen the fabulous Broadway show End of the Rainbow last year as well as, more recently, Garland's underrated final film, I Could Go on Singing, in which she plays, wittingly or not, a spot-on version of herself in the last, frayed years of her downward spiral.

What all of this rambling adds up to is this: We all deserve to have someone looking out for us, whether a loving parent, the government, a colleague, or a perceptive friend.

Alma Mater

The weekend before last, I met a former teaching colleague of my mother's for coffee. But the story isn't as straightforward as that.

In 1968, when I was in second grade, my mother went back to teaching Latin part-time at a girls' school. She loved teaching, especially girls. (She had taught at two other girls' schools before she was married.) She worked at this school well into the 1970s, continuing even as she pursued a master's in medieval Latin, which she completed while I was in high school. I remember doing my own Latin and algebra and English homework at the same dining-room table where she'd be typing her thesis—a translation of a manuscript about gardening (another passion of hers)—on a turquoise manual Olivetti. Both of my parents loved language. Words were the stuff of dinner conversations—not just the means of talking but so often the subject itself.

The school where Mom worked eventually stopped requiring Latin, and she left for a time, returned briefly, then for a number of years tutored students from there and other schools. Her last students were in the mid-to-late '90s, just as signs of as her dementia started setting in. I seem to remember a rather abrupt end to her final tutoring job, instigated by the boy's mother for unclear reasons. I think Mom was beginning to get confused about appointments and the like, and who knows how much repetition or forgetfulness might have been going on during the sessions themselves?

A year and a half ago, I published an essay about my siblings' and my experience selling our parents' house—the home we had grown up in, where Mom and Dad had lived for 50 years before moving into assisted living (by this time, in Mom's case, "memory care"). In the essay, I mentioned the school where my mother had taught. After the article appeared, I received an e-mail:

Dear Billy:

I was reading your piece when suddenly I made a connection. On reaching the paragraph where you mentioned where your mom had taught, I glanced up to check your name to see if I recognized it. Of course—Florence!

I taught French in the Upper School from 1971 until 2003 and remember when your mother joined the foreign-language department. More coincidentally, however, I saw your mom at  S______ [her assisted-living facility] earlier this year. I had gone there with a friend and former math teacher, Susan, to visit yet another longtime former colleague and English teacher, Miriam. Miriam no longer speaks and probably does not recognize us, but Susan and I visit her and make conversation about the school and the past. 

On our last visit, Susan's attention kept being drawn to a woman nearby, and she finally asked me if I recognized her, someone who perhaps had been at the school at some point. She looked familiar, but I really couldn't place her. An attendant told us her last name, and then I knew immediately. It's Florence!

I went over to talk to her, as she seemed likely to be able to visit a little, and I told her who I was, what the connection was. Her eyes lit up and we spoke for several minutes. Of course, her speech is garbled and difficult to follow and I imagine that she didn't know who I was, but she did know we were talking about her teaching Latin there, and I believe she mentioned A.D., who had been headmistress. I remembered that she had several children and I asked her about that, and she talked at some length about you all, but again it was garbled. We pointed out Miriam to her and told her that they had been at the Upper School at the same time, but that did not register. 

It was a bittersweet discovery for Susan and me, both retirees, to find her there, and we were so glad that we had been able to recognize her. It has become more and more sad for us to visit Miriam, who has been in a steady decline after a diagnosis an early-onset dementia about ten years ago. There is a group of former teachers who visit Miriam, although much less frequently now that she is unable to know what is going on. Susan and I will go this September and we will be sure to look up your mom. 

Your mother is still a lovely person, gracious and kindly. I remember her despairing at times over some of the more difficult students, but she was a smart lady and persevered. Anyone willing to teach Latin to adolescent young women has got to have some steeliness as well. 

Thank you for reading this and I send you my best,
Tessa G.

I was deeply touched by this surprise e-mail and replied immediately. I remembered my mother talking about Tessa often; she was definitely fond of her, even though they fell out of touch when Mom stopped her classroom teaching.

Since that e-mail, Tessa has continued to visit the assisted-living facility every couple of months and to send me reports. ("I saw your mom this morning. She was napping in her chair, but she woke up and I chatted with her. At one point she asked me very clearly what my name was, but I am not sure if my response meant anything to her. She looked well dressed, and I told her that she looked ready to teach.")

Tessa's friend Miriam died just two months ago, and she has since been back just to visit Mom—someone she knew half a lifetime ago, far less well than her now-deceased friend. Yet she continues to go.

Other than Tessa, my mother doesn't see anyone outside of immediate family, caregivers, and medical staff. Tessa, her long-ago colleague, knew her as a working, intellectually engaged, professional woman, and she now graciously honors that person my mother was by listening to her  mostly incomprehensible words, touching her hand, speaking to her of memories and people they knew.

After wanting to thank Tessa in person for more than a year—and simply wanting to meet her—I finally arranged for us to get together for coffee. One of my sisters joined us, as did Tessa's husband.

The occasion uplifted me in a way that I'm having trouble finding words for. Both she and her husband are warm and funny. They were easy to talk to, even interested in the rest of my family. We talked about the house in France they own, their own kids and grandkids. A bit about the school where she'd taught with Mom, but the conversation didn't linger long in that area. Maybe next time.

I hope there will be another time. But I don't know. I don't even know for sure if she'll continue to visit Mom as often as she saw her friend Miriam. She may, probably will—but then again, the visits may also taper off. And I couldn't blame her if they did. She's given a lot of herself already.

I've been thinking I wanted to find out more about those years when Mom was teaching, what my mother was like, from someone who saw her in an environment I didn't. Then I realized: As much as I'd like to hear these stories, I'm the one who knew Mom better. There's probably not much Tessa could tell me that I don't know.

My father died last summer. Mom greets visitors with a smile and a tender touch and an almost unceasing commentary of words that curl and wisp into a kind of music, yet are as hard to grasp as candle smoke. Yes, there's a "steeliness" within her—not the first word I'd think of to describe a person who has always been characterized more, in my experience, by sensitivity and emotion. But someone who knew her a very long ago reminded me that it's an essential part of her. My mother endures.

Colors of the Day

Friday evening, I completed a two-month refinancing process, something I'd been dragging my feet on, simply because of the pain-in-the-neck of it, but D. helped me get on it through his gentle prodding. I'll save a lot of money and now have only one monthly payment instead of two.

It's just a few days past six years since I moved into my condo—the time has gone fast. I still can scarcely believe I own my own home. 

Truthfully, it's not only mine but also a living gift from my father in his final, fading years, guided to write a check by my sister, who with her husband made two contributions as well, unbidden. And D.—whom I didn't know when I bought the place but met within months—has also has helped me make it what it is, generously facilitating a kitchen renovation two years ago and celebrating with me every day the things of beauty or usefulness—new, from my family, antiques from strangers' pasts—that have come to fill its spaces.

There's so much I have yet to live into here. I can't make time slow down, but on a quiet Sunday like this, I can look around and appreciate what I have.

We have seen a million stones lying by the water,
You have climbed the hills with me
To the mountain shelter.
Taken off the days, one by one, 
Setting them to breathe in the sun.

—Judy Collins, "Since You've Asked"  

— 

(Wow, my walls are really not yellow like that!)

That Sort of Thing

After reading a novel that was very well crafted and ultimately satisfying but not quite as page-turning as I'd hoped, I picked up one by another admired author, Life Class by Pat Barker. 

Having liked Barker's spare but powerful and beautifully rendered Regeneration trilogy, about World War I soldiers and survivors, I was shocked at how pedestrian, clichéd, and almost completely lacking in verisimilitude her more recent Life Class—also a WWI story—was. Honestly, the self-absorbed-artists-in-love first half could be a Lifetime movie set in the mid-1990s with very few alterations. 

                    "For what it's worth, I think he's still very much in love with you."

                        "Then he's got a bloody funny way of showing it."

That sort of thing.

I tried to stick with it once the plot moved to the war front, where the book admittedly improved in just about every way, but the first part had wasted so much of my time—which could have been used making me care about the characters—that I just couldn't muster the interest. Anyway, the Regeneration books covered the exact same territory so much better. Why bother?

What a delicious, chocolaty pleasure to now to turn to an Alan Hollinghurst novel. I've been reading him out of order, most recently his first, The Swimming-Pool Library (which I never blogged about; let's say for the time being that it was clearly the first novel of a great author who hadn't yet come into his own, which isn't to say I didn't like it). I've just started his third, The Spell, which is my fifth and last Hollinghurst until his next one comes out.

Here one of the characters, Alex, visits an ex, who is lying out in the sun wearing a thong:

Alex loitered beside him for a minute, unable not to look, hot-faced and haggard above the sprawl of what he had lost. . . . His eyes took in the blond down on the calves darkened with sun-oil, and the slumbrous weight of the buttocks with the tongue of lycra buried between them, and the arms pointing backwards like flippers . . . . 

Then there's the "hurrying greeny-black surface of the stream." Later, Alex "felt needlessly shy, as if warned at the beginning of a party of some worrying game to be played after tea."

That sort of thing. Each word a joy.

----------

D. and I have simultaneously started watching the BBC adaptation of Holinghurst's The Line of Beauty, starring none other than Dan Stevens, who plays Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey. What's left of an Alan Hollinghurst novel without Hollinghurst's incredible language and observation? A story, some characters, relationships. Perhaps more—we've only watched the first of the three episodes. Kudos to the BBC for tackling such forthrightly gay material, even if Stevens's smiley take on what in the book is a seriously horny sex-in-the-park scene is a little too "jolly good."

"I'd Love To!"

I liked this post from the Kitchn (sibling of the equally fun and inspirational Apartment Therapy), "Go With the Flow: Simple Ways to Relax and Enjoy Hosting." (The comments are good, too.) This sentence alone is a worthwhile reminder: "Your friends aren't judging you for perfection; they already enjoy you for who and how you are, and they're just interested in hanging out."

For every reason I can think of to have guests over, I can usually think of five not to. 

1. My place is so small. In Manhattan it would be considered enviable in both size and amenities, but in Washington it's just . . . small. Nevertheless I love it and find it utterly charming and cozy, and most everyone who sees it says the same thing. So where's the problem?

2. I'm vegan. Even though becoming vegan three years ago was one of the best—and most fun—things I've ever done for myself, I imagine that people I invite wouldn't be satisfied with what I serve or would consider it weird, no matter how delicious it is to me or how good a cook I am (which is pretty good).

3. I have a dog (half of the time). If it's one of my alternate weeks with her (or if I'm not planning to have her but a change in the custody schedule means that I do), what if a guest doesn't like dogs or is allergic, or what if she's underfoot the whole time? That hasn't happened yet.

4. I can't decide who to invite or how many or whether to mix friends. Some of the best, most relaxed times I've had as a host have been when I've had just one person over. So maybe that's my sweet spot and I should stick with it. Why the self-imposed pressure that I should be having larger groups over?

5. It takes so much time to plan and prepare. Yes. And meanwhile the calendar pages continue to turn. Isn't that time, too?

All in the Eyes

D. gave me the book The World of Downton Abbey for my birthday in September—which might be funny (see how the literarily mighty have fallen!) if it weren't for the fact that I've never been anywhere near as "literary" as people seem to think I am. (Example: At lunch the other day, a former colleague was telling me about her book group and how much she loved Democracy, the 1880 Washington novel by Henry Adams. "Have you read it?" No. "Oh, I really think you'd love it." Hmm, maybe. But what evidence have I given you that makes you think so? I'm not really drawn to Washington or political fiction, and I read mostly contemporary literature, albeit sometimes set in the past. By the way, did I like the much-lauded movie Lincoln? No, I thought it an endless, wonkish bore, as did D. Perhaps the subject of the future, contrarian post.)

Back to The World of Downton Abbey. The fact that I've read it might also be funny if it weren't such an interesting, gorgeously designed, and skillfully researched and written book (by Jessica Fellowes, niece of the show's creator, Julian Fellowes), about the history and sociology of the era and class divisions as much as about the show itself. Oh, and a book that happens to be about a TV series I'm so addicted to that I've seen most episodes at least three times.

For Christmas I received the book's sequel, The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, which is mostly tied into the third season (the first book covered the first two). It looks equally yummy, but I haven't explored much beyond the photos yet because I'm nervous that it might give too much away. (I already inadvertently heard two spoilers when I was in London in November, where the season had finished its run.)

One of the first book's insights pertains to one of my favorite characters, O'Brien—the lady's maid who is as loathsome as a badly overripe and discolored cheese, yet (in the third season) an increasingly, and strangely, sympathetic character, even as she plots revenge against her former ally, the footman-turned-valet Thomas. We're seeing more of her fear now as well as her sadness. She's becoming, for the first time within her downstairs world, a victim.

Siobhan Finneran and Rob James-Collier ( Carnival Film & Television Limited 2011 for Masterpiece)

"O'Brien moves almost seamlessly between floors; she is very good at her job, proud to be so, and her ease amongst both servants and family is a measure of this. Of all the servants, O'Brien is probably the best actor, showing only the face she wants her colleagues or her employer to see. Lady Grantham, after all, believes they are friends."

As for the actress who plays O'Brien, Siobhan Finneran, I agree with a comment in the same book by Rob James-Collier, who plays Thomas: "Siobhan is a fantastic actress to work with—you really learn from her. She's very measured and it's all in the eyes. In rehearsal you think there's nothing going on and then you see it on screen and you think 'wow—everything's happening.' "

A similar thing occurs when you watch an episode for the first time . . . and then for the third.

Laughter and Silence

Judy Dench as Ophelia, 1957 (Jimmy Sime/Getty Images)

If there's one path not taken that I'd choose if I had the chance, it would be to be involved in theater. I participated in a small way when I was a kid (and very briefly in college), and these days I've been lucky to see a few notable plays a year, but I think I would have enjoyed a career working in theater in some capacity. It seems to have a real sense of community that I sometimes find myself envious of.

This feeling arose again as I read Judi Dench's And Furthermore, which I finished tonight. It's not an autobiography (a point she underscores herself), more a collection of reminiscences and anecdote from her life as an actress. In fact, I read in the New York Times that it was assembled from transcripts of conversations with a friend and biographer, and that's exactly what it seems like: Judi Dench chatting, just talking. If you've heard her interviewed, she sounds exactly, but exactly, that way in this book. It's not great "writing," but it's worth the price just to have the amazing Judi Dench's voice residing in your head for however many days or weeks it takes you to read it.

If you lived in Britain from 1957 to more or less the present day, you could see Judi Dench onstage at least once or twice a year—that's how busy an actress she has been. It's of course partly a function of the difference between English and American theater, but I can't think of a single living American actor you could say that about.

As for the book, here's one passage I liked:

"On a film you have to sit and answer questions about what you think of the part, why you wanted to play the part, and I think that's none of the public's business. Why should you know the ins and outs of everything? You don't say to a dress designer like Betty Jackson, 'Why have you made a dress like that? Why did you cut the dress like that?' Why should the public know everything? The joy of the theatre is not really going and knowing that somebody had terrible difficulty playing this part, or why they did it; it is to go and be told a story, the author's story, through the best means possible. In any case, I never know why I've done something, it's for lots of reasons. I want to keep a quiet portion inside that is my own business and not anybody else's."

And these, the final words, at the end of the last chapter, "What Every Young Actor Needs to Know: Answers to Questions I've Been Asked Over the Years." For some reason, despite their simplicity and directness, they haunt me a little:

"What is the greatest reward of being an actor?

"Laughter if it's a comedy, silence if it's a tragedy."