MLK Day 2008

Listening to the “I Have a Dream” speech, my gut churns; I am shocked with chills. I wish I could attribute the spine-tingling sensation exclusively to the moving rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s monumental speech, but to do so would be misreading the symptoms. What I’m really experiencing is fear and anxiety. Reading and listening to Dr. King’s 1963 speech, I am momentarily transported in time, swept up in his vision of a new America, and inspired by his foretelling of a brighter future for black Americans, for all Americans. With him, and with the thousands in his audience, I see before me a future of progress, of racial parity, of brotherhood, of a South where freedom rings. Stretching before us like the glassy water on the National Mall, I envision a pool of potential.

And then as suddenly as I step in, I am snapped back to the real world, shivering with fright.

As I hear Dr. King speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I think, what would Lincoln say of this scene? Nearly 100 years after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and the African-American is still not free? I recall the essays of W.E.B. DuBois, who, at the turn of the century, set three, primary goals for the African-American people: freedom, political power, and education. DuBois had met the “sobering realization of the meaning of progress,” yet he still held hope that these goals were obtainable. His philosophies where shaped by the aftermath of the Civil War, and the tides of Reconstruction, and yet his tone was one of determined hope, hope for a day of deliverance from the oppression of slavery, hope for an end to racism, hope for uplift from economic disadvantage, and political disenfranchisement. If, in 1900, the intellectual leaders of black America knew what opposition was mounted against them but had such confidence that it could be overcome, then why, why was Martin Luther King even making his speech in 1963? Why was Martin Luther King, the intellectual, and moral leader of black America in 1963 demanding the same basic, fundamental, civil freedoms that DuBois had asked for in 1903? And how did King do it with such conviction? How, when he knew the history of the African-American struggle, when he knew the universal history of oppressed peoples’ struggle, did he not surrender to despair? I sit here, 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial, steeping in it. Anyone with an ounce of concern for humanity and with any hope for its future, must ask why? And How? How, in 2008, are black Americans still overwhelmingly poor, disenfranchised, and failing in school? How, by whose hands, have the dreams of three great men, Lincoln, DuBois, and King, been enslaved to the realm of fantasy? I am overwhelmed with a sense of failure, acutely aware, on this Martin Luther King Day 2008, that America has not been the land of promise that it could have been for the African-American people. I am sorely perplexed that America, the great “social experiment” has failed so horribly at solving the “problem of the color-line.” And I wonder if DuBois’s “Veil” has been lifted far enough off the shoulders of black America to see underneath it America the beautiful, to hear from within it, freedom’s ring. I am sick with chills, and anxious with dread that it has not.

the china cabinet

Flo tottered to the stairs and leaned backwards, at their angle, bracing herself between the rounded banister heads, “Henrí! It is almost time to eat!” With surprising strength, she righted herself, once again perpendicular to the floor, and tottered back toward the kitchen, stopping to straighten a picture that sat on the mantle. Chewing on the inside of her cheeks, she tried to recall what it was her great niece, the blond one, had said earlier that afternoon.

“He looks so young!”
Maybe that was what she said?
Or was it,
“Which one’s Pop?”

It was hard to remember. Flo squinted at the dusty frame that contained Henrí and his brother Marcel. “You know, Henrí? Your brother was always right, you may have been a looker, but he got all the looks!” She ribbed her husband loudly, yelling in the direction of the stairwell. Like creaking wood, Flo heard the oven make that noise that told her it was plenty hot. Listen to you! she thought. Talking to that man all day while your roast burns to a crisp. Flo made a mental note to turn up Henrí’s hearing aid at supper.

She rounded the corner. In eyesight from the doorway was a crowded counter of pots and pans, accented by the beautiful vase of powder white lilies her sister-in-law and nieces had left that afternoon. Such a pity those girls live so far away, they’ll not see Henrí’s garden in the spring. Holding the flowers in one hand, and reaching toward the oven with the other, Flo created a balancing act like the pink tutued Mademoiselle Danielle used to do at the circus, one hand full of flowers, the other full of flames. She coughed at the smoke escaping from the oven and grimaced slightly at its familiar heat. Why he likes his pot roast blackened is beyond me, Flo thought in exasperation. Henrí always has had the most peculiar tastes. He was unlike his twin brother in that way, pickier, more exacting. But Henrí gave his preferences such elaborate defense, it was no wonder he was always getting his way. His sister, Marie, warned me of that, Flo thought. She told me before we got married that he was, “lisse.”

“Slick, like a varnish. A smooth finish on stubborn wood,” she had said.

Sixty-three years later and nothing changes.

Her eyes followed the roast as she set it gingerly on top of the oven. But her mind traveled, from that conversation with Marie, to Henrí and Marcel’s graduation, to the evening he proposed, to the flower garden on summer mornings, flickering through decades and stopping, uncertainly, at this afternoon’s comment from the other niece, the one with heavy brown hair. This one laughed loudly like a man. She had said, in a quiet voice that Flo imagined took incredible restraint,

“Aunt Flo, what was Henrí like?”

Flo had leaned backward in her chair, fluttering her hands about wildly. What was Henrí like when? Yesterday what was Henrí like? Forty years ago what was Henrí like? As a child what was Henrí like?

“That’s not really a question one can ask about Henrí,” she had told the girl.

She murmured this again into her smoky kitchen. “Not a question one can ask about Henrí at all.” But a question one could ask, a question Flo did ask was, “Henrí, are you deaf? It is time for your dinner!” Before the r closed at the roof of her mouth, the house shuddered, as if it were a ship lolling with cargo, and released an aching sigh. Flo rolled her eyes. “You are a bull, Henrí! And I am a china cabinet!” That was one of the English expressions Henrí’s mother never delivered correctly. Her attempts left the children choking with laughter. Now it was one of their favorite inside jokes. Flo thought that the girls from the afternoon, the brown and the yellow nieces, knew a lot of inside jokes. They giggled whenever their watchful grandmother turned away. Which was whenever Flo spoke. If only Henrí hadn’t been so long at the store, he would have been here to help her entertain. He was such a good host. Lisse, Marie would say. Smooth-talker. Ow! She brushed her hand against the metal roasting pan. “Hen-rí! Dinner!” her voice released more heat than she’d expected. “Henrí! Do! You! Hear! Me!?!” Stumbling back and than forth, like Mademoiselle Danielle did to please the crowd, Flo performed an embellished balancing act by fluttering the sore hand in front of her face. “Henrí!” she shouted, “it is getting cold!” even though it wasn’t. With flourish, her scalded palm crashed down on top of the white lily vase, sending loose petals and the small note card flying.

“We’re so sorry, Aunt Flo.” Was it the brown or the yellow one who had said this, and kissed her lightly on the cheek? The one who laughed like a man?

She had been relieved to see them go.

What were they sorry for? Had she invited them to dinner? Henrí wouldn’t have liked guests, unexpectedly. Her hand burned. She bit her cheeks. “S'il te plaît! Henrí!” Were they sorry for not staying longer? “Henríííí!” she wailed. Flo bit her cheek harder and leaned back against the counter. Her hand was starting to blister. “Je me suis fait mal! Henrí!” Her elbow swung. The vase toppled. Water and stems and slender white petals stampeded the air. Her tears broke in shards with the glass. Flo landed softly among the pieces, like china, on the floor. “Henríííí, nous sommes cassés Henrí!!”

questions of why and how

“I think I am starting to understand her grief a little more now.” I thought this to myself after I finished reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. The book clutched me and wouldn’t let go; I could sense how much Didion needed to write it, and even though I am fortunate not to completely understand her thoughts about death, I understood why I needed to read it just the same. One reviewer said “..I can’t imagine dying without this book.” I wish I had been living the past two years with this book. He is, I believe, expressing his gratitude (and mine) for Didion’s words, gratitude that she is speaking to us from within that seemingly impenetrable fog which hangs onto death, she is communicating the affects of loss, sharing how it dismantles and disorients and dements her. Her story sounded so familiar to me. And that is what I mean by “understanding her grief a little more now.” I can begin to illuminate, with her words, the little corners of the past two years, where death has been living near me, where the leftover parts of a person who had to met death, reside. I am not in an aftermath, but I live near one. And I’ve watched the way this changes a person, I’ve seen her go from an open canvas, to a stored painting, to close herself up. And I’ve seen how some days the mundane and simple actions of life are just left out, like an unfinished project. Keys are forgotten, cell phones are left behind, exact recipes cannot be followed, as if the brain is operating in another plane, above all the rhythms that keep this one intact. That’s exactly it. It’s as if she has gone to another place, like Didion talks about, a place where the rational and normal cannot exist. They cannot exist in the place she is, because if they did, then the death of her husband, and the death of Catherine’s 27-year-old brother would never have occurred. Not in a normal world. Not in a rational system. Not in a world of logical explanations and the best medical professionals, or the strongest treatments, or the most blessings and luck and good fortune. They wouldn’t have died in such a world as that. As humans we think this to be true; that death won’t, that death can’t come to the people we love. Especially when they are young, and healthy, and strong. As Didion writes, “I realize how open we are to the persistent message that we can avert death.” (pg 206) Well of course, when we are young, and if we grow up in health, and wealth, and comfort, we take this message seriously. As we age, and become more familiar with death, we become more attuned to this message and take more seriously those tips for beating the odds. But in terms of probability, we know the death of an older adult is more likely, and we can understand, in terms of health and aging and disease, how death happens to older people. We might even be able to understand the why: “Well, he lived a long and prosperous life.” “She was survived by 4 children and 19 grandchildren.” “Their time has come.” But how do we understand the loss of a child? Of a 27 year old triathlete?

The how or the why? How can this death be understood, in our rational minds?

It cannot. And that is what I have witnessed in the past two years, is watching someone rise to the insurmountable task of understanding death. Of trying to live both in this rational world that failed her, and in that world where she has been thrust, where magical thinking, and dream visits, and memories and odd occurrences make up the disjointed rhythm of life. I am starting to understand now that this way of living is called grief. That grief is actually a way of living. It is another plane. And I am able to see now, that this place of grief, to those neighboring it, is like a fog; it doesn’t stop her from waking up, or going to work but it makes her path blurry and her step cautious, it won’t last all day, but will suddenly and ominously descend from above like a wet and heavy cloak over her shoulders. I see her when she’s in that dense cloud, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to reach her, because I don’t even know where that world exists for me. But I know that others do, and that someday, despite the messages, and the medicine, and all the luck and good fortune, I too will know the feeling of that fog, and I will reread Didion’s book for comfort, and will probably not understand even a fraction more of the how and why of death but maybe of the magical thinking in it’s wake.