the first snow
The first snow of the long winter fell this week. We knew it was early because the blanket of snow was liberally sprinkled with autumn leaves, and we had to scramble with the new snowplow. Thanks to Kyle and Kim, the boys were outfitted with boots and mittens, but my mind wasn't there. I found myself drifting to the California shore of last month, with its cypress trees and the surfers looping themselves down the rocky cliff, one hand on the guide rope, the other arm clutching a surfboard. As some of you know, when I get blue, my tendency is to go inward, and I'm not sure that's all wrong. I am building days with writing and yoga and children and bundled up walks with the dog. It pains me that suddenly the bog is buried under snow--I'm hoping the temperature will linger in the forties long enough to melt the path through to clear, so we can trudge through a bit longer.
I went to visit a friend who is patiently suffering through a long stint in rehab after a long summer of hospitals and surgery. She was calm and lovely, and she had artwork and a photo of her beloved and signs with uplifting slogans on the wall. She had that easy way with the staff of someone who has been there long enough to feel at home. But of course, her entire being is pitched towards getting home, her real home, where she will be in the company of loved ones, not familiar strangers, where she will be able to move her body with strength and purpose because of this time in rehab. I might have overstayed how long a regular person would have visited, but she didn't seem to mind, and her equanimity comforted me.
One of the participants at the cancer retreat is planning a living memorial. You remember Tom Sawyer--he and Huck Finn ran away from home to an island in the Mississippi River until they realized that the town was sounding the river for their bodies. Tom Sawyer is taken with the idea of appearing at his own funeral and he and Huck and their friend Joe Harper cause a stir by dramatically appearing at the joint funeral service. The living memorial is a variation on the theme. Everyone gets together, including the near dying person, and celebrates life, specifically the life of the person dying.
I can't imagine such an event for myself, but I do know that I want to take certain steps to make sure that the immediate aftermath of my demise is less complicated for the people I love. I was always really moved by the pathos and irony of Sylvia Plath worrying about the fate of her young children on the day she committed suicide. That's the problem with the dying--we can't easily shuffle off these moral coils, and we worry, even in death, about that day, and the next. It's the weeks after, the months, the years, that are out of reach for us. But the immediate hours still feel our responsibility.
Did you know that Assia Wevill also killed herself? Wevill was the woman who had an affair with Ted Hughes while he was married to Sylvia Plath. Like Plath, Wevill killed herself and their four-year-old daughter, Shura, using a gas oven. I knew of the fury that Ted Hughes evokes amongst some Plath followers, but until I was thinking of Plath, what with the recent release of more of her letters, and did a little reading, I somehow did not realize that the fate of these two women was so intertwined.
Assia was born Assia Gutmann, and she was the daughter of a Jewish father and a Lutheran mother. She grew up in Tel Aviv, and was described as "free-spirited," which could mean many things but seems to have at least meant she loved to dance. She married two men in fairly short order, and then had an affair with a young poet, David Wevill, who she then married. I suppose you can assume a certain restlessness, but I wonder about the choices women felt they were able to make, and the strength it takes to remake oneself over and over again. She was a poet and a translator and had a successful career in advertising. Assia and David Wevill then rented a flat from Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. By the time of Plath's suicide. Assia was pregnant with Huge's's child; she then had an abortion, a decision which hurts my heart to contemplate. After Plath died, Hughes and Assia lived together--Assia helped care for Plath's two children, Frieda and Nicholas (who also went on to commit suicide). At the age of 37, she gave birth to Shura.
Assia was ostracized by Hughes' friends and family, and by the legions of Plath followers. Hughes continued to have affairs. She was reportedly distraught by his reluctance to marry her, and felt that he treated her as a housekeeper. I have never read her poetry and never read a biography of this particular woman. I do know that she and Shura were found by the family's au-pair.
Kind readers, this is where I left this posting when Thanksgiving occurred, as it just did, with the bustle of children from near and far, young and old, pies almost too numerous to count (Sara, my cousin and fellow baker, and I discovered a new way to make meringue that was delightfully delicious and seemingly foolproof)--the usual apple and pumpkin and pecan, but also sweet potato and cranberry and an apple butter pie made with raspberries and blackberries, and a football game that left one young Michigan fan in tears, and then, as the long weekend came to a close, news came from across the country of my own aunt's death, also at her own hand.
My idle turning of the stories of the two historical women--poets each of them, one famous the other not, mothers, abandoned by the same philandering man, the black downward dance with mental illness, firmly in the closet and so many wonderful medicines yet to be invented--my casual inspection of their stories of private pain turned sharply against my own heart with this sudden, terrible news.
My father cared for his sister with a kind of formal intimacy, often talking to her every day, and certainly more than weekly, taking care of her affairs through a long life's journey in and out of darker chapters.
I don't know how to think about her death. I pray that God takes her into his embrace and allows her to feel loved and known in the ways which seem to have escaped her in this life on earth.
And today, for the last time, a card from Aunt Pat arrived in the mail. Like clockwork, Aunt Pat sent cards to some of us weekly--for every holiday, for the weeks in between, sometimes with an old joke in her perfect, careful penmanship, not often with a note, but always, love, Aunt Pat. My daughter showed me some of the messages she had received in recent months from her great-Aunt. One, written in response to a question, listed out the top ten things Aunt Pat turned to for support. Family was there, atop her list. Her card today is a Hanukkah card. She sent presents to the boys last week, which sit in unopened boxes, awaiting the festival of lights. Even in her sorrow, she meticulously penned those final cards for us, ordered those gifts, went about her business, until she didn't.
We are left alone in these short days and long, ever colder nights of this winter of 2018 without the familiar beacon of solid companionship we had with our aunt, our sister--she did not love passionately, not with us, but she loved consistently. The methodical perfect handwriting of the hundreds and hundreds of notes we all received from her over the years, the countless cards of our birthdays, our celebrations, our holidays.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live, says Joan Didion, but I can't think of the right words to piece together the me that was writing of Sylvia Plath and of Assia Wevill with the me who must write of Patricia Brown. I can't understand them, finally, not me with my almost desperate regard for life, my fervent hope that months can become years, my most vulnerable self that would give many things in order to live to 74, as my aunt did. But I respect them, because I know a little about pain and a little is more than enough to honor the country that must have sprung up, the many miles of lonesome fields and cold mountains, between those lost souls and the rest of us in order to summon the necessary energy to shepherd themselves out of this mourning world.
I went to visit a friend who is patiently suffering through a long stint in rehab after a long summer of hospitals and surgery. She was calm and lovely, and she had artwork and a photo of her beloved and signs with uplifting slogans on the wall. She had that easy way with the staff of someone who has been there long enough to feel at home. But of course, her entire being is pitched towards getting home, her real home, where she will be in the company of loved ones, not familiar strangers, where she will be able to move her body with strength and purpose because of this time in rehab. I might have overstayed how long a regular person would have visited, but she didn't seem to mind, and her equanimity comforted me.
One of the participants at the cancer retreat is planning a living memorial. You remember Tom Sawyer--he and Huck Finn ran away from home to an island in the Mississippi River until they realized that the town was sounding the river for their bodies. Tom Sawyer is taken with the idea of appearing at his own funeral and he and Huck and their friend Joe Harper cause a stir by dramatically appearing at the joint funeral service. The living memorial is a variation on the theme. Everyone gets together, including the near dying person, and celebrates life, specifically the life of the person dying.
I can't imagine such an event for myself, but I do know that I want to take certain steps to make sure that the immediate aftermath of my demise is less complicated for the people I love. I was always really moved by the pathos and irony of Sylvia Plath worrying about the fate of her young children on the day she committed suicide. That's the problem with the dying--we can't easily shuffle off these moral coils, and we worry, even in death, about that day, and the next. It's the weeks after, the months, the years, that are out of reach for us. But the immediate hours still feel our responsibility.
Did you know that Assia Wevill also killed herself? Wevill was the woman who had an affair with Ted Hughes while he was married to Sylvia Plath. Like Plath, Wevill killed herself and their four-year-old daughter, Shura, using a gas oven. I knew of the fury that Ted Hughes evokes amongst some Plath followers, but until I was thinking of Plath, what with the recent release of more of her letters, and did a little reading, I somehow did not realize that the fate of these two women was so intertwined.
Assia was born Assia Gutmann, and she was the daughter of a Jewish father and a Lutheran mother. She grew up in Tel Aviv, and was described as "free-spirited," which could mean many things but seems to have at least meant she loved to dance. She married two men in fairly short order, and then had an affair with a young poet, David Wevill, who she then married. I suppose you can assume a certain restlessness, but I wonder about the choices women felt they were able to make, and the strength it takes to remake oneself over and over again. She was a poet and a translator and had a successful career in advertising. Assia and David Wevill then rented a flat from Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. By the time of Plath's suicide. Assia was pregnant with Huge's's child; she then had an abortion, a decision which hurts my heart to contemplate. After Plath died, Hughes and Assia lived together--Assia helped care for Plath's two children, Frieda and Nicholas (who also went on to commit suicide). At the age of 37, she gave birth to Shura.
Assia was ostracized by Hughes' friends and family, and by the legions of Plath followers. Hughes continued to have affairs. She was reportedly distraught by his reluctance to marry her, and felt that he treated her as a housekeeper. I have never read her poetry and never read a biography of this particular woman. I do know that she and Shura were found by the family's au-pair.
Kind readers, this is where I left this posting when Thanksgiving occurred, as it just did, with the bustle of children from near and far, young and old, pies almost too numerous to count (Sara, my cousin and fellow baker, and I discovered a new way to make meringue that was delightfully delicious and seemingly foolproof)--the usual apple and pumpkin and pecan, but also sweet potato and cranberry and an apple butter pie made with raspberries and blackberries, and a football game that left one young Michigan fan in tears, and then, as the long weekend came to a close, news came from across the country of my own aunt's death, also at her own hand.
My idle turning of the stories of the two historical women--poets each of them, one famous the other not, mothers, abandoned by the same philandering man, the black downward dance with mental illness, firmly in the closet and so many wonderful medicines yet to be invented--my casual inspection of their stories of private pain turned sharply against my own heart with this sudden, terrible news.
My father cared for his sister with a kind of formal intimacy, often talking to her every day, and certainly more than weekly, taking care of her affairs through a long life's journey in and out of darker chapters.
I don't know how to think about her death. I pray that God takes her into his embrace and allows her to feel loved and known in the ways which seem to have escaped her in this life on earth.
And today, for the last time, a card from Aunt Pat arrived in the mail. Like clockwork, Aunt Pat sent cards to some of us weekly--for every holiday, for the weeks in between, sometimes with an old joke in her perfect, careful penmanship, not often with a note, but always, love, Aunt Pat. My daughter showed me some of the messages she had received in recent months from her great-Aunt. One, written in response to a question, listed out the top ten things Aunt Pat turned to for support. Family was there, atop her list. Her card today is a Hanukkah card. She sent presents to the boys last week, which sit in unopened boxes, awaiting the festival of lights. Even in her sorrow, she meticulously penned those final cards for us, ordered those gifts, went about her business, until she didn't.
We are left alone in these short days and long, ever colder nights of this winter of 2018 without the familiar beacon of solid companionship we had with our aunt, our sister--she did not love passionately, not with us, but she loved consistently. The methodical perfect handwriting of the hundreds and hundreds of notes we all received from her over the years, the countless cards of our birthdays, our celebrations, our holidays.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live, says Joan Didion, but I can't think of the right words to piece together the me that was writing of Sylvia Plath and of Assia Wevill with the me who must write of Patricia Brown. I can't understand them, finally, not me with my almost desperate regard for life, my fervent hope that months can become years, my most vulnerable self that would give many things in order to live to 74, as my aunt did. But I respect them, because I know a little about pain and a little is more than enough to honor the country that must have sprung up, the many miles of lonesome fields and cold mountains, between those lost souls and the rest of us in order to summon the necessary energy to shepherd themselves out of this mourning world.
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