Thanks, Lord Clark

At my high school graduation ceremony, many students received well-deserved awards in math and science and the humanities. Some of these awards came to me. Somewhere I still have the certificates and the plaques. The watch I received has long since bitten the dust. The award I have most cherished all those intervening years was the book derived from the television series "Civilisation", written and narrated by Sir Kenneth Clark. That book still resides on my bookshelf and has followed me everywhere since that June day. I could have jumped for joy when I realized it was a prize for me.

My son gave me the remastered DVDs of the "Civilisation" series for Christmas this year. At the moment, I am working my way through the 13 programs in the series. These programs transport me through time and space as wonderfully now as they did then. Let me tell you why.

Thanks to Lord Clark, I discovered the cultural heritage of Europe. He began with the struggle of European civilization to rise from the Dark Ages, and he led his viewers through century after century of art and literature and invention and music and architecture up until the 20th century. Although I was generally pretty competent in history, my knowledge lacked the depth as well as the breadth of Clark's presentations. He showed me the rich heritage available to study and to visit and to appreciate. He tantalized me with glimpses of the European cultural patrimony I have inherited. He instilled in me the longing and the dream someday to see these paintings and walk in these places and touch these buildings. I knew of some of these things, but now I saw them on the television screen and that opened a whole world to me.

When I spent my junior year at the University of St. Andrews, I travelled for three weeks on the Continent with two friends. I didn't actually have Clark's book with me, but his voice and his examples were always near. I stood amazed in front of Notre Dame du Paris, and in the Louvre, and in Saint Chapelle. When we got to Rome, I tried to see as many things as I could remember. When we walked round Florence, I felt as if I were in the programs, and when I saw Michelangelo's "Slaves", I had no words. (Never mind my first sight of the Capella Sistina...) It was an utterly overwhelming trip. I also filled that year with several trips to London and its treasures, and I spun round Scotland, England, and Wales as well.

The first course I enrolled in for my senior year when I got back to William and Mary was the intro art history course. I needed to delve deeper into what I had seen. I also needed to make my list of what I would see and do if ever I had a chance to return to Europe. The doors had been opened and have not closed yet. Many of you know I have a limitless appetite for art museums, architectural treasures, historical sites, and cathedrals. I'm always adding to my list, too.

I tried to incorporate these treasures into my teaching. I hope that sneaking art and architecture and literature into my classes grabbed a few students' interest and led them to look and hear and read more widely as a result. I doubt I'll ever know, but I  tried to pass on to them what Lord Clark did for me.

Lord Clark showed me what to look for and I am chipping away at that list. (I still hope to get to Aachen and see the head reliquary of Charlemagne,)  Clark died in 1983. I wish I had written him a fan letter to tell how much that BBC series has meant to me. Now back to the DVD...

Why Did We Want To Go To Australia?

After my friend's recent death, I took a long trip down memory lane and spent some time looking through my high school yearbooks. Oh my. Not only did I smile and reminisce, but I frequently scratched my head when reading what my classmates and friends had written. You will probably understand my dilemmas when I read things that began with "Don't ever forget..." or "I'll always remember when..." or "Can you believe we...". Honestly, I just don't remember most of these at all. At all. Amnesia doesn't blanket my entire high school career, and I can remember plenty of events and people. Yet all those little shared moments which seemed absolutely deathless then have vanished completely into the decades which intervene.

Several of my friends referred to Australia when they inscribed their yearbook signatures. Apparently a group of us had talked, over the span of several years, of travelling to Australia sometime after graduation. We were serious. I think the plan was to get there and live there in preference to the U.S. We weren't all going to fly out together or buy a boat and sail there (although that would certainly have been an adventure!), but the general consensus seems to have been that, weary of life in the U.S. and hankering for adventure, we would make our collective way to the Land Down Under and start anew.

Why did we want to go to Australia? Why not California?

Certainly at this time in our lives, California held out all sorts of alluring possibilities. We were children of the Sixties, embroiled in the Vietnam era, ready to chuck our familiar surroundings and our families and get out there. California offered an easy and logical destination. California didn't seduce us, however. I should point out that we weren't interested in drugs of any sort, so perhaps the California magnet found nothing in us to pull toward it. We were a pretty straight bunch.

The magnetism came entirely from Australia. Was it because of the distance from southeastern Virginia? Australia sits pretty nearly at the opposite side of the world, that's true. Was it because Australia, though exotic, uses English as its official language? (Most of us had studied either German or French, but Europe didn't make the cut.) Had some of us recently read On the Beach and thus harbored apocalyptic visions? (I know some of us had, but our Australian vision predated my own reading of the book.) I don't recall anyone lusting after the variety of animal and plant species that are unique to Australia. None of us planned to examine the Great Barrier Reef or work with the Aborigines or surf or work on sheep stations. I really can't say what on earth we imagined we could possibly do once we were there. Yet Australia lured us with a persistent attraction.

Who knows why? After more than 40 years, to the best of my knowledge, none of us has ever been to Australia. I still hope to get there, especially now that my son's a commercial pilot and I can jet around anywhere. Interestingly enough, both my daughter and my pilot son have already been to Australia. My daughter has snorkled above the Great Barrier Reef and mingled with kangaroos. My son has roamed Sydney and its environs. Visiting Australia seems quite possible now. If I fulfill that wish, I will think of my friends. I'll probably feel like I should plant some sort of flag in our honor (perhaps take a selfie??), and treat myself to a nostalgic moment.

But I don't think I'll ever truly know why we wanted to go to Australia all those long years ago.

Lenny's Witness

Very early Monday morning, my school friend Lenny died in his sleep. He had battled Parkinson's and another, very rare and debilitating, disease, for several years. He had, nevertheless, kept living with enthusiasm and as much activity as he could manage. I last saw him in October, when our high school graduating class had a mini-reunion. It is saddening and unsettling to realize that he has taken that final journey so soon.

Lenny and I became good buddies in our junior year of high school, when we took our first journalism class and worked on our school newspaper. We were just grunts that year, learning the ropes and honing our reportorial and lay-out skills. (I can never use rubber cement without being transported back in time to those page layouts.) Mr. William Holbrook was our teacher and advisor, continuing his instruction after we had both been his students in sophomore English class. Both Lenny and I relished that class, and signed up for the next level in our senior year.

Lenny and I were co-editors of Trucker Topics as seniors. That meant much more work but also a chance to 'break in' new staffers and try out some of our own ideas each issue. Mr. Holbrook kept us focused and on an even keel, but supported us with understanding and wisdom. On slow days, Lenny and I would take a hall pass (in those days made out of a chunky wood block) and roam at will through the halls of the school. We were ostensibly either on our way to or on our way from the journalism room on some fictitious errand or other. Oh, we were such big dogs, and could go anywhere! We would just walk and talk, and we certainly could talk. Those days remain some of the nicest memories from high school.

Lenny took me to my first rock concert in the spring of our senior year. We went to see the Guess Who at Hampton Coliseum. Wow! I had a great time. Another nice memory from that year that involves Lenny.

After graduation, as everyone's does, our class exploded out into the world. Many of us haven't really been back in our hometown very much since then. Lenny and I lost touch during college, and I didn't see him to speak to him for decades. At a couple of the 'significant' reunions (30th, maybe, or 35th, or 40th) I was able to talk very briefly with Lenny and his wife, Carol (who was another high school buddy), but those conversations were pretty superficial and definitely short, typical of any reunion. At our last reunion in October, I was able to talk much longer with Lenny, and had a later, even longer conversation with Carol. I am so thankful I had this chance.

Now I have been reading Lenny's obituary (what a hard thing to do) and the multitude of comments posted on the funeral home's guest book site. All of this has filled in the intervening 40-plus years since Lenny and I were buddies. And these narratives and comments make me so proud to have known him, because Lenny shone like a wonderful star as he lived his oh too short life. He taught English at our neighboring, rival high school, and then became an administrator. Judging from the comments in the guest book, Lenny's students and fellow faculty members value him as one of the best teachers and colleagues anyone could have wished for. I have read comment after comment relating Lenny's high standards, creative teaching, caring advice, wicked sense of humor, unfailing support, and personal integrity. Think of how many lives he touched in those decades in the classroom! His friends remember his enjoyment of life, his wit, the hospitality of  his home, and the love he lavished on his wife and children. Lenny seems to have blessed so many during his life. That doesn't surprise me. It confirms that the qualities which made Lenny a good friend at age 18 continued to define him.

What a witness he has been to the power of virtue and wisdom and kindness and humor and love. I am so happy that he was my friend. I am even happier that he flourished into such an exemplary man. God bless you, Lenny. I will see you again.

A Memorable New Year's Celebration

My family didn't celebrate New Year's Eve with much enthusiasm or flash. No parties or dances or hoopla. We watched the Orange Bowl Parade on television, and if we were motivated, we stayed up until midnight. Usually we didn't make it that far!

When I spent my junior year of college at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, I discovered how amazing New Year's Eve could be.

I didn't have money to fly home for the Christmas vacation, so I stayed in the UK and my parents sent my sister across to spend Christmas with me (as her high school graduation present). She returned to the US before New Year's, and then I went to stay with a good friend in Bridge of Weir, near Glasgow. Two other friends joined me there, and another friend from St. Andrews lived in the same town, so we had a nice group to celebrate with.

The evening began with a lovely meal at my friend's house. After that, we walked over to her schoolmate's house to spend the hours remaining until midnight. We received a warm welcome there, and the family treated us to a little concert of chamber music which they performed for us! Yes, there I sat, entranced to be included in such a wonderful musical moment. One of the boys had arranged the music for his family, and each person played a different string instrument, and I thought that this was a brilliant way to celebrate the new year. (I also promised myself that if I ever had children, they would learn how to play musical instruments and then we could have musical evenings like that!)

As it turned out, the evening was only getting started. We adjourned into the front hall of the house (which was a good-sized house and had an ample entryway) and commenced Scottish country dancing. I was delighted. By this time in my stay at St. Andrews, I had developed a great interest in and fondness for Scottish country dancing, and took every opportunity to attend ceilidhs (social evenings featuring the dancing). To be dancing in a friend's front hall at midnight on New Year's Eve seemed an unimaginable present.

Then the doorbell rang.

Some of you may have heard of the Scottish tradition of first-footing at the new year. Scots believe that the first person to cross your threshold after midnight influences your fortune in the coming year. If this person is a woman, or a redhead of either sex, your new year isn't going to be very lucky. If, however, your first footer is a tall, dark man, things could go very well for you in the months ahead. My friend's father opened the door and in stepped a fine, tall, dark-haired young man, so the new year was secure. We resumed dancing.

At this point, I thought a Scottish new year's celebration was pretty darn good. It even had a name, Hogmanay.  My friends and I were having a grand time, and it was already nearly 1 AM. This was heady stuff for me.

Suddenly, the dancing ended and we bundled ourselves up in our coats and headed out the door. Once we walked out to the street, I could hear bagpipes playing nearby. Sure enough, up the street came a piper, followed by a small crowd of people. Oh, goody, a parade, thought I. We fell in behind the piper and walked along the street. Soon we stopped at a house, and the piper led us inside. Clearly there was a party here, too. I remember meeting quite a few of my friend's neighbors and quaffing some nice whisky (Scotch) and nibbling some tasty tidbits. After a short while, the piper gathered us up and led us out to the street again.

To the best of my recollection (which is dimmed by the number of years that have passed and not the amount of Scotch consumed that night), we stopped at three other homes during the course of our 'first-footing parade'. We never stayed too long at any one house, and we had lovely breaks of fresh air between visits as we marched along. We might have even been singing some traditional Scottish songs at various points as well.

It was all quite magical and full of fun and good spirits. No fireworks that I recall. No incapacitating or obnoxious drunkenness. No huge masses of people making streets impassable. Just a small town's first-footing parties, with a piper to lead the way. Who wouldn't be charmed by such an evening?

The Worst Week of the Year

We came to Chicago after my husband graduated from architecture school so that he could begin his career. We had spent three years in Virginia, enjoying Charlottesville and the opportunity to live near my family when our daughter was small. Chicago represented a complete change of environment and plenty of challenges, but we started settling in.

Two months after we moved to Chicago, our second daughter was born. She lived only two days. Suddenly everything was different. I had no family here. My good friend Peg (from my St. Andrews days) was the only person I already knew in town, although we had discovered a lovely next door neighbor and were beginning to meet folks at church. My sister flew in right after our daughter's birth and was with me from then on, which meant that our older daughter had her 'second mother' to comfort her, but I had to stay in the hospital for a week before I could come home. My husband, daughter, and sister took our baby to downstate Illinois for her burial in the Bess family plot in Fairbury.

Some of you may have had a similar tragedy and will understand the dark, dark place that results. I won't dwell on those weeks and months after I came home from the hospital. All the bright hopes and promise of moving to a new city and starting an exciting new chapter in our lives dimmed and diminished. That winter seemed endless and sad.

Over thirty years have passed since her birth, short life, and death. Many blessings have come to me in that time, and much happiness. Yet, my daughter has never left me. I talk with her every now and then, in good times and bad, and I know she would love her niece and nephew. I taught girls her age when I was at Mother Guerin High in Chicago, and I have never been surprised that the class of 1999 is as dear to me as if they were my own daughters, because she would have been their age. Generally, I do okay.

The week of September 16th, however, is the worst week of the year for me. Regardless of where I am or what I am doing, the events of those three days are constantly playing in my heart and mind. I relive every moment. I welcome her and sit beside her in the NICU and hold her hand as I watch her die. This is just a very hard week for me. It's especially tough if I am at home by myself.

So this year, since my husband was out of town with his students, I decided to drive home to Virginia and spend these days with my sister and brother. As I walked into my sister's kitchen, I glanced at her calendar and saw that she already had written down my daughter's birthday. She never forgets, either.

I had a good visit, saw some dear friends, hung out with my sister and brother, and if I had sad moments, well, I was not alone.

Curry Powder

My mother cooked simple, straightforward, nourishing food. She didn't particularly like cooking, but she faithfully insured that we had meat/fish, veggies, and a starch at most evening meals. I believe that in the early days of her marriage, she studied her Good Housekeeping cookbook religiously. We certainly benefited from her care and her ability to provide variety in our food over the years. Thanks to her studies of that cookbook, we learned to love spare ribs, liver, and all kinds of seafood. Slices of her meatloaf appeared as a staple in my early school lunch sandwiches. I still hold her potato salad as the exemplar of all potato salads, and I despair of ever making gravy as expertly as she did. (How did she learn to make such a perfect roux so effortlessly?? And without knowing what in the world a roux was?) She and her oldest sister, Willie, seem to have intuited the same spaghetti sauce recipe, which I discovered decades after I had married, moved to the Midwest, and had dinner at my aunt's house in Michigan. Mother's vegetable soup will always remain in my family's 'food memory' as another delicious classic. She could also stir up a batch of biscuits in the blink of an eye and never needed to follow a recipe. (I asked her to make biscuits a couple of years before she died, just one more time, but she said she'd forgotten how. Alas.) For someone who regarded cooking as more chore than creative pleasure, Mother was a pretty good cook.

But she never cooked anything with curry powder.

I'm thinking of Mother's cooking today for two reasons. One because last night, while my husband (who doesn't like this meal) was in Chicago, I fixed a lovely batch of liver and onions just for myself. Total indulgence for less than $3.00. It reminded me of so many meals at home. The second reason is that today I am making a crockpot recipe for curried chicken, which has made my house smell mouth-wateringly scrumptious. These aromas never appeared in my mother's kitchen.

Nothing really spicy ever did appear in our kitchen. I remember introducing various seasonings after I had married and would visit my parents and cook for them, but I don't recall my mother ever following recipes that required more than salt, pepper, ham or bacon for greens, and mustard. (Now that I think of it, there must have been a little extra zip in the sauce for those spare ribs so long ago.)

My gastronomic experiences in college truly flung open the door to the delights of different foods, and, though you may not believe it, spending a year in Scotland broadened my food horizon even farther. I lived in a residence hall at the University of St. Andrews, and we all ate together in the dining room every day. I loved cauliflower and cheese. I had never eaten cauliflower at all, so this was a new veggie. I loved 'tatties and neaps', AKA potatoes and turnips. While I had eaten turnip greens quite often, I had never actually had turnips. I had never eaten lamb. My fellow residents, all from the UK, groaned at what they considered pedestrian fare, but I gobbled it up. Who knew that you could put cold peas in a green salad? I mean, really. At breakfast I could eat blood pudding and scrambled eggs and porridge. I even love haggis. (True.)

I first discovered curries in that dining hall. Not adventurous, super spicy, eye-wateringly hot curries, but curries nonetheless, matching up ingredients that I had never imagined. Wow. I looked forward to the meals that featured curry. So exotic to someone raised in southeastern Virginia and so very delicious. (I visited London on several occasions and we ate Indian food several times there, too.)

Of course, when I returned home, I wanted all my favorite homey foods and put curries out of my mind for awhile. I then spent a year working at Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions, and was delighted to meet several scholars and their families from India. They plied me with an even broader array of wonderful food. When we moved to Chicago, I lived near the area heavily populated by folks from South Asia. Curries again! And I began to use curry powder in my own cooking. My culminating experience occurred in the summer of 2001, when I actually spent six weeks in India, enjoying just about every new dish I ate.

I never tried to introduce either of my parents to curries. I never sneaked curry powder into any dish just to see 'how they liked it'. I'm not sure my mother had ever even heard of curry, as a matter of fact. But she is responsible for the breadth of my culinary tastes.

Mother's cooking demonstrated how delicious good, plain, wholesome food could be, and that formed the foundation of my own cooking skills. More importantly, Mother's determination not only to send me to college but also to send me off to Europe for a year, to open windows to a world that she knew would enrich me, provided me with experiences and adventures that shape who I am to this very day.

That means Mother introduced me to curry powder after all.

How Did Halloween Become So Popular?

Reading email today, I saw advertising from a children's clothing site touting Halloween costumes. The basic message told me that I needed these costumes so that my grandchildren would sport the most memorable and cutest costumes for Halloween. How did Halloween become such a major holiday that I am already supposed to be thinking about costumes for 2-year-olds who don't attend school?

I am not a Halloween Grinch by any means. (My high school's colors were orange and black, so I am predisposed to enjoy the color themes.) My sister and brother and I went trick-or-treating every year and always wore costumes. But we generally put our costumes together the day before, and certainly no earlier than the week before. We have been known to raid the linen closet for the oldest sheets in order to be ghosts (an always-reliable idea). In fact, I recall re-using one or two costumes for several successive years. And, of course, all that ended when we finished eighth grade.

With my own children, I kept things very low-key for Halloween. Before my oldest started kindergarten, I solved her need for costumes plus the need for very warm outer garments by cutting head and arm  holes in a black plastic garbage bag to wear over winter coats and putting a black witch's hat on her head. Nice enough. Generally, every other costume somehow fell together in the hours before we headed out for candy.

I do confess that I spent extra effort on two special costumes. Once, I sewed Star Trek officers' shirts, and once I fabricated an outstanding Tin Man costume for my youngest to wear to kindergarten. In fact, I think that was for the same Halloween, probably spurred on by my friend's (and landlord's) exquisitely-crafted furry bear costume for her son (my godson).

I don't, however, remember Halloween parties everywhere I looked, whether as a child or an adult, or seasonal stores dedicated solely to Halloween costumes and paraphernalia. Halloween was just a little blip on the radar between the beginning of school and Thanksgiving. Hardly a multi-million-dollar industry.

Isn't it just all about the candy, anyway?

That was our motive. We knew we had to wear some kind of costume or the homeowners wouldn't give us any candy. So we dressed up. And we carried brown paper bags to hold the candy. Nothing fancy or complicated that we would have to store somewhere until next year. Who stored decorations for Halloween? The pumpkin didn't last more than a week or two after carving.

During the last few years that my sons were eligible for trick-or-treating, we even ditched costumes and trick-or-treating altogether. Both of them, contemplating an especially cold, wet, and miserable Halloween evening, told me that if I would just go out and buy some bags of their favorite candy the next day, we could all stay inside and relax. That's what we did, and that's how Halloween finished up for us a couple of years later.

My sister has a dear friend whose favorite 'holiday' is Halloween. I think it's an endearing quirk, but I don't understand the appeal. There's not really anything substantial to Halloween. Really. Why has it become such a compelling celebration in the US? And, honestly, what are we celebrating?