Russia was a land of mystery, intrigue and fear when I was growing up in the 1970’s. As a child we were supposed to be afraid of the Red menace that was the USSR. On maps in school the Soviet Union was always red and I remember being fascinated with how large it was. It was like a nation reclining over a vast part of the world. Its head resting on the edge of Europe, stretching out like a giant cat across the continent up into Siberia with the tip of its claw reaching out towards Alaska. Maps were easier to learn then. There was no Czech Republic, or Macedonia, or Croatia, just Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. There was no Ukraine, Belarus or Uzbekistan. We had to memorize the countries of Europe in eighth grade. I remember feeling there was a certainly in maps. I had no concept about them changing. I had no concept about how moving a line and renaming the area in that line can affect one’s life. We had to make a map of one country using salt clay and paint to show the political as well as geographical features. I choose Germany. I had to show how it was cut in half, and how Berlin was cut off from the rest of the world. To us it seemed like the USSR was a dark place of snow and ice. This was a place where no one smiled, where tanks and missile launchers rolled down the street behind precise Soviet soldiers. Where everything was covered in razor wire and no one was free. It was also a place that would not hesitate to kill us given the chance, or worse an excuse.
And it bears mentioning that I grew up in North Central Connecticut home of the post-communist Polish Diaspora. I was surrounded by classmates with the suffix “-ski” on the end of their names. This loyalty to Poland ran deep in my hometown. If you were Catholic chances are you were also Polish or you wanted to be. I never saw an Irish Catholic until I moved to Boston. One of my friends had the last name of Brennan. I never made the connection that her name was Irish until I moved into the land of Kennedy. I dated a Polish boy when I was in high school. His father had left Poland and opened his own machine shop. That shop supplied parts to companies like Pratt and Whitney aircraft, which in turn built planes for the US military. So there was Mr. K, so many miles from his beloved Poland doing his small part to fight the nation that had turned his homeland into a communist nightmare. Everyone rejoiced at the election of Karol Wotila to Pope and during the crackdown against the Solidarity Union and curfews in Poland every family, Polish and not, had candles in their windows keeping vigil. I still remember making Christmas cookies with my family while listening to the news on NPR every night new arrests new curfews. That was the narrative of my childhood.
My father also for all his progressive liberalism hated communism. Which is not all that surprising, and yet there we were watching and loving one of the greatest pro Stalin propaganda films ever made. Only later would I learn of how important this film was in recruiting young men to fight and defend Russia. Only later would I learn about the sacrifice made by the Soviet Union to save us all from the Nazi terror. At the time all I knew was there was “us” who wore the white hats and “them” who had evil soul crushing communist “red” hats. At the time I loved this film, the battle on the ice being such an important moment not only in the film but for the history of film.
So a love/hate relationship was what I learned. I was supposed to love the beautiful things about people and countries but be wary about nations and their intentions. While other girls had posters pulled from the center of Tiger Beat Magazine on their walls, I had maps, Canada, Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa. I was the geeky kid who through Junior high school had maps on my wall pulled from National Geographic. I loved National Geographic. I once used an article on China to try to write my own language. I actually tried to teach it to my friends. So we could have a code. They humored me for a bit then moved on. Was it any wonder I always worried what my friends thought about my interests? I was kind of a spaz. Interested in things no one else was. Maybe myself a little like Lermontov’s Pechorin just not as cruel.
One would think this inspired deep creativity and risk taking. I just learned to move more into myself and push those interests away. So was it any wonder that by the time I got to college I chose history to please my dad. I loved history in my own right. I studied what I wanted to study but it never felt like I owned it for myself. So here is what I should have done with my life. I should have transferred to UCONN when I had the chance after freshman year. I should have gotten a degree in English and become some kind of writer. But I suppose if I had done that I would have no material now. What could be better for a writer than a wayward life of misdirection?
But none of this was for me. Husbands and kids take up a ridiculous amount of energy, time and scheduling. After we moved and were properly settled in Chelmsford I began to search for something I could call my own. I thought being an at home mom would be mine. It was my decision so that must make it mine. But there is nothing about motherhood that involves any part of me independent of the child or children. So then I thought it would be my job. Again, in many ways like mothering, just a lot more people that I didn’t care about as much as my own children. And being a “religion” teacher has become a sure road to emptiness and spiritual poverty. So I started yoga. Which would have worked if I really actually had a practice that wasn’t total garbage.
So I began to think about languages again. I needed something like that. It was some way to get some prospective on the world. Maybe if I can learn a language I can see the world from another vantage point. In reality I just wanted to learn something only now do I see that learning a language especially a language like Russian becomes a consuming process. I think I knew that going in. So I close my eyes and commit myself to learning something hard, something difficult.I take a deep breath, I inhale I exahle. It will be difficult, but it is so beautiful the way the vowels and consonants curl around the mouth. They way the sounds melt like ice cream and are as study as meat. Not just a language- a feast.
Grace and talk later in the year after she is settled in and I am working my first year of my part time gig. How are things? Ok, students are great, kids are great, life is busy oh and hey the answer to that question, the one you asked in the car when we were sweating our butts off as wafts of road kill and hot asphalt drifted in through the open windows. The answer to that question was Russian. I am studying Russian. I am leaning to speak Russian. The answer to every question is Russian.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Origins of Obsession and Perhaps Madness:
My father loved history. He always had a pile of popular history books next to the side of his bed. He read every day. I was more interested in literature but was smart enough to realize that good stories come from someplace like a troubled history personal or political. He also liked movies especially the classics. Our local public television station used to broadcast old films every Saturday afternoon. This was real treat in the days before HBO, cable or even the VCR because the films would be run without commercials. I spent my afternoons with James Cagney, Catherine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Bogart and Bacall and one afternoon Elvis. I usually watched these films by myself with family only occasionally wandering in. One Saturday my dad had checked the listings and told me that one of the most amazing films was on and suggested we watch it together. The film was Alexandar Nevsky. This film became somewhat of a joke to my mother and brother because they for the life of them could not understand what we saw in that film. When my parents bought their first VCR unit my dad came home with Alexander Nevsky on video. They groaned, but I was elated. After that my dad was banned from going to the video store lest he brought back that film or God forbid, Ivan the Terrible, Battleship Potempkin or October.
I loved these films and began to expand my love of these films into other foreign films and especially the European films made outside or before the Hollywood studio system. To this day I would gladly pass up Lon Chaney’s werewolf for Max Schreck’s Count Orlok any day of the week. Any opportunity to see Little Flowers, Metropolis, Intolerance, or my beloved Russian films I saw them, rented them, loved them. Then I went to college and like the other artifacts of my childhood; forgot about them completely.
I got distracted. I never really thought that was a real career. Plus there were all the other college distractions and young adult confusion. I settled into a history degree program I became interested in other things. I waited, wanting to take the only course in Russian history offered by the school. Then it was cancelled for lack of enrollment. Then my advisor told me I was lucky it was cancelled she hated teaching that course. I rolled over and gave up. I read Marx on my own time. I became a closet Socialist knowing that communism was an inherently flawed ideology in practice but fascinating in theory I would go onto later to study Liberation Theology which seemed to me like a more compassionate application of Marx through the lens of the Gospel. I threw myself into my literature courses I sprinted through college and missed the whole point.
I don’t recall what I was really interested in with the exception of Chris, the guy from home I dated and later married and now share three kids, a dog, a lizard, two hectic jobs and a mortgage with. I was into being a resident assistant, I was “into being into” music, I was “into being into” films, and I was “into being into” anyone but me. And I graduated and then I went to graduate school because at the time I was really “into being into” a minister.
So distractions: school, marriage children, alleged calls from God, conversion and baptism, holiness, revival, Hebrew, intellect, preaching, Liberation Theology, Greek for two weeks, clinical pastoral education, church administration, breaking up into small groups, more preaching, field education, church committees, ordination committees, Annual conferences, more district committees meeting until I just decide to chuck it all and become a Roman Catholic. No ordination, no problem. So I land myself in a Catholic high school, teaching social justice of all things. And then Grace comes into my life and calls me on the distraction, calls me to account for the distraction and inaction in the words. “What- do- you- want -to -do –with- your- life?” Later while not behind the wheel of Satan’s minivan I close my eyes and I dream of what my life could have been, the chances I should have taken. And I sob at the thought of my life wasted, my passion not pursued and then I realize I don’t even really know what that passion is. I know what it used to be. I used to walk around holier than everyone proclaiming that I was doing ministry I work for God, He is my co pilot and employer. What could be more glorious and worthy than that? I stop and think realizing that practically everything is better than that. Because here I was less than 10 years into my vocation, my ministry and I was spent and dried up. If I had a mustard seed I wouldn’t even have the energy to plant it.
So what gives a life meaning, what makes it worthwhile and beautiful? I think of my children, my gift to creation, maybe they will do something great. I think again, wow I have really rolled over into the grave if that is the case. Barely forty and already my greatest gift are my children. What about what I have to give? Then I close my eyes and think again “screw that, what do I want to do…I struggle for the preposition with, in. to? Which one do I want? I try them all but “in” makes the deepest impression. Up to this point it has been all about what I can do for others and with three children and the husband I am married to the giving part is not going to end anytime soon. So what do I want for me? What do I want to know? What do I want to learn? What will I do with what I learn?
When my father was in the hospital after his heart attack and again at our last Christmas together we had this conversation. The exact words have faded but the sense of the conversation was that I was not inherently unhappy with my challenging job as a teacher because I was actually pretty good at it. And the subject matter I was trying to make not just understandable but interesting and accessible. Isn’t Raising Arizona the best way to teach about the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill? The problem was that I needed something that fed me and helped me feel like I was still growing. My disappointment was that I thought my “teaching ministry” was supposed to do that. My dad told me after all the years of ministry he had served it gave a lot but sometimes took more. So I needed something for me. I told him I was thinking of studying another language. He asked me if I was going to finally study Russian.
I was not thinking of another degree program or a change in career. No, whatever I decided had to be done where I was. I could not leave my job. I needed my job. I could not leave my family I needed them to and of course they needed me. Plus the bottom line was working in a Catholic environment the family and job are linked. No matter how bad my marriage was ever going to get if I wanted to continue to teach in a Catholic school I was stuck where I was. So whatever I decided I had to be able to do it where I was. It was not about changing my life but changing the furniture. I needed new intellectual furniture.
I played around with the idea of learning another language for some time. When I had babies and a double stroller I thought I would learn Italian. I tried to rekindle my old Spanish and French from time to time but quickly lost interest. One lunch period with Grace we talked about learning languages, she took Greek in New Haven and I spent two years of hard labor in Hebrew. “I kind of was thinking of German?” I said. “German! No, no you don’t want to learn German. Such a hard, cold language it is not a very beautiful language” A little surprised by this response but she has a point. Ok no German. This later confirmed by a friend in Moscow who thought German sounded “bossy”.
I close my eyes and dig deep and far back to what I loved. I find buried there boxes of films books, and stories. I remember watching Alexander Nevsky why did I love that film so much? I remember the many times I have seen Dr. Zhivago. For my birthday that summer I purchased The Brothers Karamazov,it was the first book in years that had passages that brought me to tears. I see myself at age 14 under the big tree across the street from my home. There I am reading Chekov and letting him paint images in my imagination. I remember the years of ballet lessons, not French school training but Russian, in the lineage of Vagonova. I think of my first celebrity crush. The real one after Shaun Cassidy faded; I fell madly in love with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Maybe the ballet had something to do with that also. And my favorite Star Trek character was always, Mr. Chekov. And then there was the summer I invented a game called “Communism”. Which was really Risk or Monopoly but the USSR got to win. Ironically I invented this game on the Fourth of July and invited our State Representative (who was a close family friend and at our house for our cook out that year) to play it with me. I still cannot believe she indulged me in this subversive activity. These of course were pedestrian reasons to commit a sizable chunk of time and energy and really were no more than silly girlhood trivialities. But the universe, karma and destiny was about to give me an answer or a push. Among other factors, the universe was cultivating my Russian variant on the other side of the world.
I loved these films and began to expand my love of these films into other foreign films and especially the European films made outside or before the Hollywood studio system. To this day I would gladly pass up Lon Chaney’s werewolf for Max Schreck’s Count Orlok any day of the week. Any opportunity to see Little Flowers, Metropolis, Intolerance, or my beloved Russian films I saw them, rented them, loved them. Then I went to college and like the other artifacts of my childhood; forgot about them completely.
I got distracted. I never really thought that was a real career. Plus there were all the other college distractions and young adult confusion. I settled into a history degree program I became interested in other things. I waited, wanting to take the only course in Russian history offered by the school. Then it was cancelled for lack of enrollment. Then my advisor told me I was lucky it was cancelled she hated teaching that course. I rolled over and gave up. I read Marx on my own time. I became a closet Socialist knowing that communism was an inherently flawed ideology in practice but fascinating in theory I would go onto later to study Liberation Theology which seemed to me like a more compassionate application of Marx through the lens of the Gospel. I threw myself into my literature courses I sprinted through college and missed the whole point.
I don’t recall what I was really interested in with the exception of Chris, the guy from home I dated and later married and now share three kids, a dog, a lizard, two hectic jobs and a mortgage with. I was into being a resident assistant, I was “into being into” music, I was “into being into” films, and I was “into being into” anyone but me. And I graduated and then I went to graduate school because at the time I was really “into being into” a minister.
So distractions: school, marriage children, alleged calls from God, conversion and baptism, holiness, revival, Hebrew, intellect, preaching, Liberation Theology, Greek for two weeks, clinical pastoral education, church administration, breaking up into small groups, more preaching, field education, church committees, ordination committees, Annual conferences, more district committees meeting until I just decide to chuck it all and become a Roman Catholic. No ordination, no problem. So I land myself in a Catholic high school, teaching social justice of all things. And then Grace comes into my life and calls me on the distraction, calls me to account for the distraction and inaction in the words. “What- do- you- want -to -do –with- your- life?” Later while not behind the wheel of Satan’s minivan I close my eyes and I dream of what my life could have been, the chances I should have taken. And I sob at the thought of my life wasted, my passion not pursued and then I realize I don’t even really know what that passion is. I know what it used to be. I used to walk around holier than everyone proclaiming that I was doing ministry I work for God, He is my co pilot and employer. What could be more glorious and worthy than that? I stop and think realizing that practically everything is better than that. Because here I was less than 10 years into my vocation, my ministry and I was spent and dried up. If I had a mustard seed I wouldn’t even have the energy to plant it.
So what gives a life meaning, what makes it worthwhile and beautiful? I think of my children, my gift to creation, maybe they will do something great. I think again, wow I have really rolled over into the grave if that is the case. Barely forty and already my greatest gift are my children. What about what I have to give? Then I close my eyes and think again “screw that, what do I want to do…I struggle for the preposition with, in. to? Which one do I want? I try them all but “in” makes the deepest impression. Up to this point it has been all about what I can do for others and with three children and the husband I am married to the giving part is not going to end anytime soon. So what do I want for me? What do I want to know? What do I want to learn? What will I do with what I learn?
When my father was in the hospital after his heart attack and again at our last Christmas together we had this conversation. The exact words have faded but the sense of the conversation was that I was not inherently unhappy with my challenging job as a teacher because I was actually pretty good at it. And the subject matter I was trying to make not just understandable but interesting and accessible. Isn’t Raising Arizona the best way to teach about the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill? The problem was that I needed something that fed me and helped me feel like I was still growing. My disappointment was that I thought my “teaching ministry” was supposed to do that. My dad told me after all the years of ministry he had served it gave a lot but sometimes took more. So I needed something for me. I told him I was thinking of studying another language. He asked me if I was going to finally study Russian.
I was not thinking of another degree program or a change in career. No, whatever I decided had to be done where I was. I could not leave my job. I needed my job. I could not leave my family I needed them to and of course they needed me. Plus the bottom line was working in a Catholic environment the family and job are linked. No matter how bad my marriage was ever going to get if I wanted to continue to teach in a Catholic school I was stuck where I was. So whatever I decided I had to be able to do it where I was. It was not about changing my life but changing the furniture. I needed new intellectual furniture.
I played around with the idea of learning another language for some time. When I had babies and a double stroller I thought I would learn Italian. I tried to rekindle my old Spanish and French from time to time but quickly lost interest. One lunch period with Grace we talked about learning languages, she took Greek in New Haven and I spent two years of hard labor in Hebrew. “I kind of was thinking of German?” I said. “German! No, no you don’t want to learn German. Such a hard, cold language it is not a very beautiful language” A little surprised by this response but she has a point. Ok no German. This later confirmed by a friend in Moscow who thought German sounded “bossy”.
I close my eyes and dig deep and far back to what I loved. I find buried there boxes of films books, and stories. I remember watching Alexander Nevsky why did I love that film so much? I remember the many times I have seen Dr. Zhivago. For my birthday that summer I purchased The Brothers Karamazov,it was the first book in years that had passages that brought me to tears. I see myself at age 14 under the big tree across the street from my home. There I am reading Chekov and letting him paint images in my imagination. I remember the years of ballet lessons, not French school training but Russian, in the lineage of Vagonova. I think of my first celebrity crush. The real one after Shaun Cassidy faded; I fell madly in love with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Maybe the ballet had something to do with that also. And my favorite Star Trek character was always, Mr. Chekov. And then there was the summer I invented a game called “Communism”. Which was really Risk or Monopoly but the USSR got to win. Ironically I invented this game on the Fourth of July and invited our State Representative (who was a close family friend and at our house for our cook out that year) to play it with me. I still cannot believe she indulged me in this subversive activity. These of course were pedestrian reasons to commit a sizable chunk of time and energy and really were no more than silly girlhood trivialities. But the universe, karma and destiny was about to give me an answer or a push. Among other factors, the universe was cultivating my Russian variant on the other side of the world.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Why this is all Grace’s fault:
The summer I turned 38 I decided I would learn Russian and it is entirely my friend Grace’s fault. My conversation with her driving back from New Jersey in July 2006 precipitated both my current midlife crisis and my Russian language lessons. These days I blame pretty much everything on her that is very convenient for me as I live here in Massachusetts and she is in New Jersey. I am terrified she will move back.
Grace and I met and became friends and colleagues while teaching at the same Catholic high school in the same department. Grace is one of the brightest people I know. No scratch that, she is the smartest person I know. I generally do not run in the circles of the academia like some British costume drama but Grace could and I suspect has. Let me give you an idea of how bright she is. Her mind is like a giant safe; she collects information and stores it. She knows where everything is and how it all fits together. Take history for example. I may know for example that the council of Nicea was in 589. (Actually, I didn’t know that. I had to look it up.) But I can tell you that it was the council where Christian creed was agreed upon. This was where the Eastern Church spilt from the west. The controversy was over the origin of the Holy Spirit. This controversy which still divides the church called the filoque controversy said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the Father and God the Son while the east maintained that the Spirit proceeded from the son only. I can tell you all that. I can rattle all that off my head. Grace on the other hand can give the details on what was for dinner the first night of the Nicean conference she tell all kinds of stories about who attended, who was excommunicated, and what they wore. But this is not gratuitous or pointless information. Grace can weave this information into relevance about the current Middle East Crisis, Imperialism in Africa and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
It is all important and it is all relevant. And this is her most precious gift and what makes her such a good teacher, she makes you care about stuff that you did not even know you should care about. I love visiting Grace’s world. It is a place of endless story and connection. In her world everything is connected and holds within that invitation the possibility for illumination and enlightenment. She never uses this knowledge against others, well she did once I do not have the heart to recount it here but it ended badly. It is not in her nature to make others feel small. It is just not part of who she is.
We shared a somewhat similar pedigree in that we were both held divinity school degrees, mine from Andover Newton Theological school and hers from someplace in New Haven Ct. The name escapes me now. As women teaching theology in a Catholic school we faced some unique obstacles in our profession. We loved teaching, we loved our students, we loved Christ but the church was making us insane. To put this in some real perspective we were both working in a classroom during 9-11 and the priest sex abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese. I was still not coping well with my father’s death and the re adjustment of my relationship with my mother and brother. We had just begun to stop holding our breath after 9-11 and then the abuse scandal broke. Our classrooms became crucibles for all that was right with America and wrong with the church. Some days I would come in early and the two of us would sit in her room and just cry over the war or the latest news over the scandal or something other issue going in the life of the school or in our own lives.
I had a therapist who once told me that stubbing your toe is painful but stubbing your toe when the rest of you feels like crap just hurts like hell. In 2005 everything in my life hurt like hell. I felt like I was stubbing my toe everyday and feeling like everything was just wrong. The job I once loved I was ready to quit and threatened to do so. My home life was out of control with kids and husband. Grace told me she had a new job and was moving to New Jersey. Then like a fatal does of morphine the school year came to an end. I was offered to try working as a part time teacher, Grace asked me to help her move to New Jersey.
It has always been true since St. Anthony decided to move to the desert for some alone time with God and asked his friend to help him find the perfect cave. Or when those austere people with the buckle hats decided that Europe was getting a little to ostentatious and pinchy for their religious sensibilities there was some poor shulb with a truck to help them move. And you know it was the hottest damn day of the year. I think the government could commission a survey that Global warming is really caused by too many people asking their friends to help them move. That’s the way it is a friend asks you to help them move and the temperature shoots up 30 degrees.
We drive to New Jersey in separate cars. One Ford Focus and my Caravan with the seat removed both cars packed tight with all the flotsam and jetsam that Grace could not part with. Now, this is a person who is a devoted student of Tibetan Buddhism. Looking at her bring out “one more box” I stand convinced she slept though the session on detachment. If the Dalai Lama himself showed up right now watching us packs all this stuff in the car I think he would seriously reconsider his decision to bring his teachings to the west. If this is result what was the point!
Grace has a pleasant trip, her car had air conditioning mine was blown out weeks ago and is too expensive to fix. It’s ok I drove in non air-conditioned cars most of my life. I think the Honda Civic Chris and I bought before we got married was the first car in my life that even had air conditioning. So really how bad can it be? Pretty bad. It’s not just the heat it’s the noise. You have turn your radio up louder just to hear it. Then there is the noise from the road itself, which just drums in your ears. By the time I hit the Tappan Zee Bridge I have found a radio station that is playing 80’s songs. I am ok with the first few just enjoying the memories but when they play “You Spin me Round” by the band Dead or Alive I have become certifiably insane. I am singing at the top of my lungs and waving out the window like a lunatic.
And Grace being Grace has booked us in this really nice hotel. I have done this favor for one reason. She has promised me the first hot shower and an ice-cold Bombay Sapphire martini with extra olives. We walk into the hotel. Grace looks a little glowy from the ride I look like some poor refuge she picked up on the way down. The whole thing is getting surreal. And some extremely formal wedding is taking place. I have never felt more inappropriate in my life. I should feel embarrassed or ashamed that I may sweat all over the bride or flower girl but I am too tired.
We get into the elevator. It has a television flat screen that is playing and replaying Fred Astaire singing “Fly me to the moon”. I look at it, I look at Grace and we both burst into falling out laughter. Tears streaming down my face we head into the room and me into the shower. Hot shower clean clothes and a martini life will be perfect. How hot was my car? My bra strap melted to my skin. Glad I always over pack these items. I was in a small way glad that Grace would have to share my car on the return ride home, this I think should further cement in her mind the truly what a wonderful friend I am.
So there we were in a minivan with no air conditioning on the New Jersey turnpike in July and Grace asks me “Beth what do you really want to do with your life?” And I think to myself “Damn it, I am going to die someday and this is all I’ve got to show for it.” For a spilt second I feel so inconsequential I think of taking us both out and jumping lanes in front of a semi tractor-trailer. But I think better of it. I have three children I adore and a husband I love. Grace has her daughter Catherine who is her world. Besides she has already paid first and last months rent on her apartment. So I continue to responsibly drive the minivan back home. The elastic in my bra is melting and adhering to my skin but sure I will entertain that question. So I answer her. “I have no f-ing idea!”
She is laughing at me now or just delirious from the heat. When you drive with the widows’ open it is a whole new kind sensory experience. You are assaulted with things air conditioning protects you from like truck exhaust and road kill. But she presses on because we are only over the Tappan Zee Bridge and have at least another 3 hours of driving. I am trapped so I need to answer her. The only thing that comes to my head is “Russian historian, 1890- 1945 and my dissertation would have been on the films of Sergei Eisenstein.” Grace is speechless. I have tazered the conversation. She is immobile, paralyzed. “Where did that come from?” So now I have a story for her and one of the few ones she has not ever heard me tell.
It all has to do with my father:
Grace and I met and became friends and colleagues while teaching at the same Catholic high school in the same department. Grace is one of the brightest people I know. No scratch that, she is the smartest person I know. I generally do not run in the circles of the academia like some British costume drama but Grace could and I suspect has. Let me give you an idea of how bright she is. Her mind is like a giant safe; she collects information and stores it. She knows where everything is and how it all fits together. Take history for example. I may know for example that the council of Nicea was in 589. (Actually, I didn’t know that. I had to look it up.) But I can tell you that it was the council where Christian creed was agreed upon. This was where the Eastern Church spilt from the west. The controversy was over the origin of the Holy Spirit. This controversy which still divides the church called the filoque controversy said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the Father and God the Son while the east maintained that the Spirit proceeded from the son only. I can tell you all that. I can rattle all that off my head. Grace on the other hand can give the details on what was for dinner the first night of the Nicean conference she tell all kinds of stories about who attended, who was excommunicated, and what they wore. But this is not gratuitous or pointless information. Grace can weave this information into relevance about the current Middle East Crisis, Imperialism in Africa and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
It is all important and it is all relevant. And this is her most precious gift and what makes her such a good teacher, she makes you care about stuff that you did not even know you should care about. I love visiting Grace’s world. It is a place of endless story and connection. In her world everything is connected and holds within that invitation the possibility for illumination and enlightenment. She never uses this knowledge against others, well she did once I do not have the heart to recount it here but it ended badly. It is not in her nature to make others feel small. It is just not part of who she is.
We shared a somewhat similar pedigree in that we were both held divinity school degrees, mine from Andover Newton Theological school and hers from someplace in New Haven Ct. The name escapes me now. As women teaching theology in a Catholic school we faced some unique obstacles in our profession. We loved teaching, we loved our students, we loved Christ but the church was making us insane. To put this in some real perspective we were both working in a classroom during 9-11 and the priest sex abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese. I was still not coping well with my father’s death and the re adjustment of my relationship with my mother and brother. We had just begun to stop holding our breath after 9-11 and then the abuse scandal broke. Our classrooms became crucibles for all that was right with America and wrong with the church. Some days I would come in early and the two of us would sit in her room and just cry over the war or the latest news over the scandal or something other issue going in the life of the school or in our own lives.
I had a therapist who once told me that stubbing your toe is painful but stubbing your toe when the rest of you feels like crap just hurts like hell. In 2005 everything in my life hurt like hell. I felt like I was stubbing my toe everyday and feeling like everything was just wrong. The job I once loved I was ready to quit and threatened to do so. My home life was out of control with kids and husband. Grace told me she had a new job and was moving to New Jersey. Then like a fatal does of morphine the school year came to an end. I was offered to try working as a part time teacher, Grace asked me to help her move to New Jersey.
It has always been true since St. Anthony decided to move to the desert for some alone time with God and asked his friend to help him find the perfect cave. Or when those austere people with the buckle hats decided that Europe was getting a little to ostentatious and pinchy for their religious sensibilities there was some poor shulb with a truck to help them move. And you know it was the hottest damn day of the year. I think the government could commission a survey that Global warming is really caused by too many people asking their friends to help them move. That’s the way it is a friend asks you to help them move and the temperature shoots up 30 degrees.
We drive to New Jersey in separate cars. One Ford Focus and my Caravan with the seat removed both cars packed tight with all the flotsam and jetsam that Grace could not part with. Now, this is a person who is a devoted student of Tibetan Buddhism. Looking at her bring out “one more box” I stand convinced she slept though the session on detachment. If the Dalai Lama himself showed up right now watching us packs all this stuff in the car I think he would seriously reconsider his decision to bring his teachings to the west. If this is result what was the point!
Grace has a pleasant trip, her car had air conditioning mine was blown out weeks ago and is too expensive to fix. It’s ok I drove in non air-conditioned cars most of my life. I think the Honda Civic Chris and I bought before we got married was the first car in my life that even had air conditioning. So really how bad can it be? Pretty bad. It’s not just the heat it’s the noise. You have turn your radio up louder just to hear it. Then there is the noise from the road itself, which just drums in your ears. By the time I hit the Tappan Zee Bridge I have found a radio station that is playing 80’s songs. I am ok with the first few just enjoying the memories but when they play “You Spin me Round” by the band Dead or Alive I have become certifiably insane. I am singing at the top of my lungs and waving out the window like a lunatic.
And Grace being Grace has booked us in this really nice hotel. I have done this favor for one reason. She has promised me the first hot shower and an ice-cold Bombay Sapphire martini with extra olives. We walk into the hotel. Grace looks a little glowy from the ride I look like some poor refuge she picked up on the way down. The whole thing is getting surreal. And some extremely formal wedding is taking place. I have never felt more inappropriate in my life. I should feel embarrassed or ashamed that I may sweat all over the bride or flower girl but I am too tired.
We get into the elevator. It has a television flat screen that is playing and replaying Fred Astaire singing “Fly me to the moon”. I look at it, I look at Grace and we both burst into falling out laughter. Tears streaming down my face we head into the room and me into the shower. Hot shower clean clothes and a martini life will be perfect. How hot was my car? My bra strap melted to my skin. Glad I always over pack these items. I was in a small way glad that Grace would have to share my car on the return ride home, this I think should further cement in her mind the truly what a wonderful friend I am.
So there we were in a minivan with no air conditioning on the New Jersey turnpike in July and Grace asks me “Beth what do you really want to do with your life?” And I think to myself “Damn it, I am going to die someday and this is all I’ve got to show for it.” For a spilt second I feel so inconsequential I think of taking us both out and jumping lanes in front of a semi tractor-trailer. But I think better of it. I have three children I adore and a husband I love. Grace has her daughter Catherine who is her world. Besides she has already paid first and last months rent on her apartment. So I continue to responsibly drive the minivan back home. The elastic in my bra is melting and adhering to my skin but sure I will entertain that question. So I answer her. “I have no f-ing idea!”
She is laughing at me now or just delirious from the heat. When you drive with the widows’ open it is a whole new kind sensory experience. You are assaulted with things air conditioning protects you from like truck exhaust and road kill. But she presses on because we are only over the Tappan Zee Bridge and have at least another 3 hours of driving. I am trapped so I need to answer her. The only thing that comes to my head is “Russian historian, 1890- 1945 and my dissertation would have been on the films of Sergei Eisenstein.” Grace is speechless. I have tazered the conversation. She is immobile, paralyzed. “Where did that come from?” So now I have a story for her and one of the few ones she has not ever heard me tell.
It all has to do with my father:
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