It was ten minutes to seven. I left the room with my little binder and notes in hand, to do a final bit of preparation in my little office-away-from-home: the local ladies' room. The local National Organization for Women (NOW) chapter, co-sponsoring our evening in Fredericksburg, VA, had laid out a fine spread: strawberries and fruit, crackers, cheese and several bottles of wine. A few friendly young women worked with older ones setting things up. Jean and I, along with Maria Papacostaki (who drove in that morning from Philadelphia), and Sarah Knorr from Richmond, were the evening’s special attraction–“Oh, it’s the authors!”–and it was sweet to enter a new circle, to share another world of the sisters.
The evening had been put together by one quite amazing woman: Alicia Knight. Alicia, writer and Sisters Singing contributor, political activist and child-care advocate, is also my sister-in-law. It was Alicia who had brought in the NOW connection, and no wonder–I learned that night that among many political roles she recently became President of the Local NOW chapter.
Alicia and I had looked at each other earlier that day, saying, really who could predict who would come? Several of her friends, and also friends and family of Sarah Knorr’s would be there… but beyond that, who knew? Since most of us reading that night were unknown, and did not live in the local Virginia area, I was quite prepared for this to be a sparse gathering. And that would be no problem-who could be greedy with so much abundance during our tour? A sweet, small group of 20 or so would be fine. We’d finish our tour in a communal way, with plenty of extra wine and cheese waiting at the end.
Getting ready in those last moments, I touched up lipstick, then found a quiet place to sit and think. We had the rhythm of it now. We were in a lovely meeting room at the Central Rappahonick Library that we’d earlier transformed into a Sisters Singing space with cloth and artwork, the grandmother drum and the altar. I looked over my notes. Then rose and dusted myself off for another dance with the Sisters.
And in those few moments, some alchemy occurred. It was as if some great push of breath washed into town. Suddenly 40 or 50 women and men were standing around chatting, sipping wine, catching up, finding each other. More people made their way in every minute, so that by the time we tore people from their refreshments and began the reading we’d added ten more chairs to the group of fifty, and some people still standing in the back.
Good old Fredericksburg. You had to bow your head and say thanks. That old sweet colonial town where you can visit George Washington’s mother’s Mary Washington’s house, and drive right by James Monroe’s law library. Cobblestone streets and an old apothecary with the original sign out front and a little museum of the jars and herbs and old bones stored in the shelves along the back. A quaint little town with a vibrant arts community and weekend drum circles that keep the town flowing and shaking. I’ve loved Fredericksburg since Alicia started bringing me here years ago.
Gazing about me, I found myself floating over to Sarah Knorr. As it turned out Sarah was standing with two of her biological sisters, beautiful women who glowed in the same quiet way as Sarah. How lovely it was to touch their hands and say Welcome. With Sarah were other friends, who were also "sisters," as she put it, and her wonderful husband Ken, who we’d met at dinner. He had volunteered to take photographs and had his camera out. People poured wine and found their seats.
What an amazing final night it was. People wept in the audience, everyone entirely present with every word. As soon as I stood and began speaking, thanking NOW and then specifically naming Alicia, the audience spontaneously applauded. What can there be said of this sister? That she is the beloved wife of my much-loved, deceased brother Dan is enough to make me love and cherish her. She is the mother of two young men who I consider my own, my nephews Roger and Lee. She has an uncanny place in this world: a fearless way of saying what is true, but not only talking. She brings her sons to volunteer at voter precincts on election days, attends Democratic conventions, volunteers to help returning soldiers and the military families in her area, though she worked hard against the war. Her father was a Vietnam veteran; and she understands the world is complex and full of contradictions.
Alicia. She’d promised small for that night, and said she’d do her best to get people to come, but as we got started a realized that Alicia and her friends don’t do small. So there was wine and drink and food and also the son of a local NOW member who is running for Virginia Lieutenant Governor who stopped in to introduce himself to the crowd. A lovely, tall, electable-looking person who spoke of social justice and raised our hopes for a future with good-hearted people acting for the collective and the circle. Later I saw him, square-jawed and handsome, walking out with our book in hand.
Sisters singing. All around us all evening there were Sisters: that great gathering of community which seems to spontaneously form around our book. Women and men, young and old, people holding Sisters Singing, thrilled to be sitting down to listen to poetry.
In addition to the amazing Alicia herself–who read her beautiful poem from the book, as well as a terrific piece about the election of Barack Obama–there are two things about that last evening which still thunder in my heart. One is Sarah Knorr. Lovely Sarah, who had been a sweet note of fresh Virginia air during the entire process of working on Sisters Singing-always signing her emails wishing us spring blossoms like dogwoods blooming in her neighborhood, or thanking us for all our hard work. Lovely Sarah, who’d written a beautiful, soulful piece about loving her mother through her illness with cancer. And also a poem about the sacred present in the simple act of making soup. She was as lovely as her emails and her poetry, as lyrical in person as one might imagine.
This, I think, is why I came to be with the Sisters. The little meal beforehand at the diner, hearing about grown children and life’s work, about writing and poetry and what is calling the soul. It is a great and luscious thing to put a face with a Sisters Singing writer or artist, to meet their beloved family and circles of love. It fills me with some great happiness, as if these wonderful names I have been tending for so long can live even more deeply in my bones. Sarah read her work with great beauty; we all sat entranced by a glow that seemed to come around her as she read of her mother, of love, of illness, of an exuberant alliance with life and memory that can never be extinguished, not by illness, pain or death.
Yes. As Sarah taught us, so may we live. And following her courage, I did what I had imagined I would do that evening. In the town near where my brother Dan lived, in the presence of his wife and two sons and many who had known him, I read the piece “Requiem” I’d written in his name. I’d spoken with Alicia, Roger and Lee in advance and they’d all said they were looking forward to hearing me read it.
But then there is nothing like actually doing it. As the evening opened, I had dedicated the entire reading to him, my voice breaking, and I wondered if it would be possible for me to do this. The piece was written four years ago, and has been carefully edited to be published in Sisters Singing. But still now, whenever I re-read it, I weep. I saw Roger next to his mother, and Lee off to the side. When I thought of them, when I thought of our great loss, my voice broke. Breathe, dear one. Breathe. And then that great breath that filled the room earlier came and filled me. I stood tall, and carefully, feeling each word, read of my brother Dan teaching me as an ancestor, in the world beyond this world, telling us all to go on loving.
And I walked then into the forest and to the great stream, and vowed to love, only to love. These lines end the piece, and as I came to them it all flowed into me, and I could hardly croak out those last words. But I did, and around me the room shone like brightness everlasting. Roger held Alicia, and I looked up, a bit stunned, full of tears, saying, “I’m so glad I got through it!” From the first row, where Jean sat, I heard her calm voice say, “Yes you did.”
Yes, I did. I heard the call and made the journey and sang out the words. It was impossible to do, it was impossible to re-visit that great heartache, and yet the teaching that Dan holds for us is so important, and so grand. He was there with us, an elder now, impossibly tall, holding us all. I could only look up, raise my hand to the heavens, and say Thanks, brother. Thanks.
So much changed after my brother Dan died. Still his life echoes like a great flowing chamber of prayer and love. I feel him with me, inside my skin and in my bones, and I am stronger for it. He lives for me every day in his sons, in Alicia, in all of us his family, every morning when I pray. Oh Dan.
I’m sitting now cross-legged in bed, tapping away at my sister Pauline's house. It's Monday, three days later. I’ve attended a wonderful family wedding–Jean and I, along with my sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends dancing our hearts out. I’ve danced with Roger and kidded with Lee in his dark blue wedding suit. Along with my wonderful sister Pauline, we have visited my nephew Paul and his wife Shosh and their two kids in Columbia, Maryland, playing basketball and soccer with four year old Nick and two year old Becka. Dan would have loved all of this. And, I believe, somewhere, he still does.
We've come to the end of our great journey. Tomorrow Jean and I will go to the Smithsonian, one of her favorite places on the planet. And on Wednesday we will make our way back home to California.
I take a deep breath, try to capture it all. A kaleidoscope of images and people file past when I close my eyes, like a moving merry-go-round with figures I myself chose, or that the grandmother spirits conjured for me. All of us involved are changed for this passage. Maria Papacostaki, who read her haunting, beautiful poetry at the readings in New York, Philadelphia and Fredericksburg, said to me at the end that she could do this for another year: travel town to town, carrying the Sisters. Reading the poetry itself is a by-product, she said. It’s being together, meeting everyone, sitting within the field that the Sisters create. It’s that irreplaceable thing, a circle of love and intimate connection, that everyone wishes to touch and doesn’t want to leave.
Go to the great River. Share the great Life. This is what my brother Dan taught me. When we love with a great heart, we love him-and we love all of those we have lost and all of those we have yet to meet. When we cherish each other, we cherish every ancestor, every star in the galaxy, every leaf in the bud ready to unfurl. We say it is possible. It is possible to be called and to spring forth, to hear a call for poetry and creativity and to answer it, to find community wherever you turn.
I did not know it, but as I think of it, perhaps I did. In creating Sisters Singing, we were at essence calling forth a circle. A place of connection that lives on. We have at our center not a book, but our hearts. We are ready to move into an unknown future. Together. If we are together, with each other, held by that great circle where the living and the dead and the spirits and the grandmothers all live, it will be alright, it will be shining–it will be a fresh day indeed.
The evening had been put together by one quite amazing woman: Alicia Knight. Alicia, writer and Sisters Singing contributor, political activist and child-care advocate, is also my sister-in-law. It was Alicia who had brought in the NOW connection, and no wonder–I learned that night that among many political roles she recently became President of the Local NOW chapter.
Alicia and I had looked at each other earlier that day, saying, really who could predict who would come? Several of her friends, and also friends and family of Sarah Knorr’s would be there… but beyond that, who knew? Since most of us reading that night were unknown, and did not live in the local Virginia area, I was quite prepared for this to be a sparse gathering. And that would be no problem-who could be greedy with so much abundance during our tour? A sweet, small group of 20 or so would be fine. We’d finish our tour in a communal way, with plenty of extra wine and cheese waiting at the end.
Getting ready in those last moments, I touched up lipstick, then found a quiet place to sit and think. We had the rhythm of it now. We were in a lovely meeting room at the Central Rappahonick Library that we’d earlier transformed into a Sisters Singing space with cloth and artwork, the grandmother drum and the altar. I looked over my notes. Then rose and dusted myself off for another dance with the Sisters.
And in those few moments, some alchemy occurred. It was as if some great push of breath washed into town. Suddenly 40 or 50 women and men were standing around chatting, sipping wine, catching up, finding each other. More people made their way in every minute, so that by the time we tore people from their refreshments and began the reading we’d added ten more chairs to the group of fifty, and some people still standing in the back.
Good old Fredericksburg. You had to bow your head and say thanks. That old sweet colonial town where you can visit George Washington’s mother’s Mary Washington’s house, and drive right by James Monroe’s law library. Cobblestone streets and an old apothecary with the original sign out front and a little museum of the jars and herbs and old bones stored in the shelves along the back. A quaint little town with a vibrant arts community and weekend drum circles that keep the town flowing and shaking. I’ve loved Fredericksburg since Alicia started bringing me here years ago.
Gazing about me, I found myself floating over to Sarah Knorr. As it turned out Sarah was standing with two of her biological sisters, beautiful women who glowed in the same quiet way as Sarah. How lovely it was to touch their hands and say Welcome. With Sarah were other friends, who were also "sisters," as she put it, and her wonderful husband Ken, who we’d met at dinner. He had volunteered to take photographs and had his camera out. People poured wine and found their seats.
What an amazing final night it was. People wept in the audience, everyone entirely present with every word. As soon as I stood and began speaking, thanking NOW and then specifically naming Alicia, the audience spontaneously applauded. What can there be said of this sister? That she is the beloved wife of my much-loved, deceased brother Dan is enough to make me love and cherish her. She is the mother of two young men who I consider my own, my nephews Roger and Lee. She has an uncanny place in this world: a fearless way of saying what is true, but not only talking. She brings her sons to volunteer at voter precincts on election days, attends Democratic conventions, volunteers to help returning soldiers and the military families in her area, though she worked hard against the war. Her father was a Vietnam veteran; and she understands the world is complex and full of contradictions.
Alicia. She’d promised small for that night, and said she’d do her best to get people to come, but as we got started a realized that Alicia and her friends don’t do small. So there was wine and drink and food and also the son of a local NOW member who is running for Virginia Lieutenant Governor who stopped in to introduce himself to the crowd. A lovely, tall, electable-looking person who spoke of social justice and raised our hopes for a future with good-hearted people acting for the collective and the circle. Later I saw him, square-jawed and handsome, walking out with our book in hand.
Sisters singing. All around us all evening there were Sisters: that great gathering of community which seems to spontaneously form around our book. Women and men, young and old, people holding Sisters Singing, thrilled to be sitting down to listen to poetry.
In addition to the amazing Alicia herself–who read her beautiful poem from the book, as well as a terrific piece about the election of Barack Obama–there are two things about that last evening which still thunder in my heart. One is Sarah Knorr. Lovely Sarah, who had been a sweet note of fresh Virginia air during the entire process of working on Sisters Singing-always signing her emails wishing us spring blossoms like dogwoods blooming in her neighborhood, or thanking us for all our hard work. Lovely Sarah, who’d written a beautiful, soulful piece about loving her mother through her illness with cancer. And also a poem about the sacred present in the simple act of making soup. She was as lovely as her emails and her poetry, as lyrical in person as one might imagine.
This, I think, is why I came to be with the Sisters. The little meal beforehand at the diner, hearing about grown children and life’s work, about writing and poetry and what is calling the soul. It is a great and luscious thing to put a face with a Sisters Singing writer or artist, to meet their beloved family and circles of love. It fills me with some great happiness, as if these wonderful names I have been tending for so long can live even more deeply in my bones. Sarah read her work with great beauty; we all sat entranced by a glow that seemed to come around her as she read of her mother, of love, of illness, of an exuberant alliance with life and memory that can never be extinguished, not by illness, pain or death.
Yes. As Sarah taught us, so may we live. And following her courage, I did what I had imagined I would do that evening. In the town near where my brother Dan lived, in the presence of his wife and two sons and many who had known him, I read the piece “Requiem” I’d written in his name. I’d spoken with Alicia, Roger and Lee in advance and they’d all said they were looking forward to hearing me read it.
But then there is nothing like actually doing it. As the evening opened, I had dedicated the entire reading to him, my voice breaking, and I wondered if it would be possible for me to do this. The piece was written four years ago, and has been carefully edited to be published in Sisters Singing. But still now, whenever I re-read it, I weep. I saw Roger next to his mother, and Lee off to the side. When I thought of them, when I thought of our great loss, my voice broke. Breathe, dear one. Breathe. And then that great breath that filled the room earlier came and filled me. I stood tall, and carefully, feeling each word, read of my brother Dan teaching me as an ancestor, in the world beyond this world, telling us all to go on loving.
And I walked then into the forest and to the great stream, and vowed to love, only to love. These lines end the piece, and as I came to them it all flowed into me, and I could hardly croak out those last words. But I did, and around me the room shone like brightness everlasting. Roger held Alicia, and I looked up, a bit stunned, full of tears, saying, “I’m so glad I got through it!” From the first row, where Jean sat, I heard her calm voice say, “Yes you did.”
Yes, I did. I heard the call and made the journey and sang out the words. It was impossible to do, it was impossible to re-visit that great heartache, and yet the teaching that Dan holds for us is so important, and so grand. He was there with us, an elder now, impossibly tall, holding us all. I could only look up, raise my hand to the heavens, and say Thanks, brother. Thanks.
So much changed after my brother Dan died. Still his life echoes like a great flowing chamber of prayer and love. I feel him with me, inside my skin and in my bones, and I am stronger for it. He lives for me every day in his sons, in Alicia, in all of us his family, every morning when I pray. Oh Dan.
I’m sitting now cross-legged in bed, tapping away at my sister Pauline's house. It's Monday, three days later. I’ve attended a wonderful family wedding–Jean and I, along with my sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends dancing our hearts out. I’ve danced with Roger and kidded with Lee in his dark blue wedding suit. Along with my wonderful sister Pauline, we have visited my nephew Paul and his wife Shosh and their two kids in Columbia, Maryland, playing basketball and soccer with four year old Nick and two year old Becka. Dan would have loved all of this. And, I believe, somewhere, he still does.
We've come to the end of our great journey. Tomorrow Jean and I will go to the Smithsonian, one of her favorite places on the planet. And on Wednesday we will make our way back home to California.
I take a deep breath, try to capture it all. A kaleidoscope of images and people file past when I close my eyes, like a moving merry-go-round with figures I myself chose, or that the grandmother spirits conjured for me. All of us involved are changed for this passage. Maria Papacostaki, who read her haunting, beautiful poetry at the readings in New York, Philadelphia and Fredericksburg, said to me at the end that she could do this for another year: travel town to town, carrying the Sisters. Reading the poetry itself is a by-product, she said. It’s being together, meeting everyone, sitting within the field that the Sisters create. It’s that irreplaceable thing, a circle of love and intimate connection, that everyone wishes to touch and doesn’t want to leave.
Go to the great River. Share the great Life. This is what my brother Dan taught me. When we love with a great heart, we love him-and we love all of those we have lost and all of those we have yet to meet. When we cherish each other, we cherish every ancestor, every star in the galaxy, every leaf in the bud ready to unfurl. We say it is possible. It is possible to be called and to spring forth, to hear a call for poetry and creativity and to answer it, to find community wherever you turn.
I did not know it, but as I think of it, perhaps I did. In creating Sisters Singing, we were at essence calling forth a circle. A place of connection that lives on. We have at our center not a book, but our hearts. We are ready to move into an unknown future. Together. If we are together, with each other, held by that great circle where the living and the dead and the spirits and the grandmothers all live, it will be alright, it will be shining–it will be a fresh day indeed.
"When I thought of them, when I thought of our great loss, my voice broke. Breathe, dear one. Breathe. And then that great breath that filled the room earlier came and filled me. I stood tall, and carefully, feeling each word, read of my brother Dan teaching me as an ancestor, in the world beyond this world, telling us all to go on loving."
ReplyDeleteI think Dad must have been standing behind you, lifting and holding you up as you were reading his passage. You know, an odd thing about this, is that I remember his passage in my mind's eye as if the lights dimmed whilst you were reading, and the only senses I really had were the feel of my Mom's hand in mine, and the sound of your voice. Then once finished the room brightened and there you were, looking up at the ceiling and thanking him for helping you through. And there was Mom with tears in her eyes and a tissue in hand. It was wonderful.
On a side note, I think I'll have to agree with Maria. Another tour would be fantastic. It brought so many people together that, to do it again would really be something.
~Roger
Working late, typing up the memories of one of the children I work with, a boy who lost both his parents, a homeland and family before he turned nine. Each time I come he knows I'm going to hand him the pad of paper, going to ask questions until the memories start having color and shape: his little sister's smile, his mom on the slide, the last thing she bought him. Then I look at him and he says, "Write about that. That's what you're going to say. Write about that." And I smile and he writes. He writes, My mom and daddy are right here next to me. Always.
ReplyDeleteThank you Carolyn and everyone, all the writers and listeners and readers and all the ones standing behind you
Vivian.
Viv