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:
