ACQUAINTANCES/FRIENDS/MOTHER REMEMBERED

Remembering my mother with much love and affection this Mothers Day!
Tributes to my mother have been written here previously that may be read in the archives.
Increasingly I experience a desire to share my thoughts with Mother the older I become.
She always listened when I wanted to talk.
If only Mother was alive today.

Mother, having become a single parent and the sole support of our family saw that there were funds available so I could have the requisite uniforms as a Brownie then, when I "flew up" those of a full-fledged Girl Scout.  Maybe this Scout song was added later as our troop never knew it.  After mother wed again, then later when my family moved to the country scouting was no longer an available activity for me. 

GIRL SCOUT SONG "MAKE NEW FRIENDS'

 

Thinking of the people at varying levels of acquaintanceship/friendship I've known during my lifetime they have likely affected my life.  I've previously written of some of them here.  A few others come to mind.

Early in my life, my fifth-grade teacher, Miss Barroway, who a week before had wrapped my knuckles hurtfully with a wooden ruler for exchanging written notes with my boyfriend is one such person.  This day I was staring at a pulsing throbbing on her neck as she sat behind her desk at the front of the room.  Staring intently back at me as our eyes locked, she suddenly called to me to come up front causing me to quickly gasp wondering what had I done now?

I was immediately relieved when she announced I would read the spelling words to the class as she arose and departed the room.  Later, our principal, Miss Broome, entered the room to tell us our teacher had a heart attack.  I must have seen the carotid artery on the left side of her neck pulsating.  

Then there was the Jr. High boy and girl enraptured with each other whose names I don't recall now who were the only classmates that befriended me, a new student at this third of new schools in different states I was in that year.  A fourth school soon followed with a much more friendly student body.

I remember my high school English teacher who introduced me to important mind-expanding literature including Shakespeare via Hamlet.  Nor can I forget she had us memorize the last stanza of 19th century poet William Cullen Bryant's poem, "Thanatopsis", that is encouraging and reveres life, but notes death is part of the life experience.   This poem assumed increasing meaning to me as I became older.

"Thanatopsis" 

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

People we've known and admired can disappoint us but we can still respect their more positive qualities I remind myself now when I think of her.

This disappointment with her for me is because during my high school years, a classmate, Jim, rejecting his father's unknown KKK racism to me then had written a final paper for our English class supporting school integration.  I never knew of his paper's subject matter which I didn't learn about until recent years.  That was in the early fifties of the 20th century.

The teacher had given Jim's written thoughts to school administration, who possibly ultimately referred them to the retro-thinking school board.  He was actually expelled from school though I hadn't known all that then.  

My classmate was ahead of his times.  A few years later integration did occur after I moved away from that southern state, though only after the federal government had to bring in troops for the integrating students' protection and to prevent violence.

Having previously been following in his father's footsteps, Jim had altered course.  He went on to a university, then studied to become a minister, was active in the 1960's integration movement, continued his dedication to include assisting those seeking citizenship and asylum in the US. as he presently does.  Now he's also active in the long term care facility where he and his wife reside in Illinois.

After my undergraduate college graduation, having returned to my northern home state I was distressed to discover racism was present there, too, but just less obvious.   Unexpectedly, a situation arose necessitating friends there and I take action to circumvent and bypass a racist exclusionary effort by an organization to which most of us belonged toward a new member of our group of friends.

Such protest and resistance is precisely what I believe each of us must do in everyday living if we're ever to truly integrate to fulfill America's and democracy's promise of equality for all.    This does not occur with that population minority striving toward converting our nation to an autocracy contrary to their occasional words.

Undergrad college in my early years brought lifelong friends as did the university in Southern California where I returned for post graduate study many decades later.  In between those years were relationships formed as a consequence of my various employment settings.  There were also neighbors who became friends wherever I lived around the country through the years.  Everyone impacted my life in one way or another contributing to the person I've become.

The harrowing circumstances in Ukraine, refugees fleeing to Poland, Russia's Nazi-like behavior in the war-like invasion of their neighboring country, threat to other nations, prompts me think of a Holocaust survivor, Isabelle Teresa Huber. 

I had the privilege of knowing her in recent years during the short time she was part of our writing group. She had been a professional classical music pianist among her talents.  When she joined our group she was in the process of writing her first book recounting her life experience as only one of three children to live and escape her Poland city during WWII at age three.  She and her mother were separated for a time but ultimately reunited, eventually coming to the United States.

Isabelle's mother came to live with her and son-in-law doctor husband.  He painstakingly regularly engaged her mother in periodic conversation about the early years his wife didn't fully recall.  He took notes of the unraveling of his wife's family's comfortable life then disintegration when the Nazis arrived, her father's departure, how she and her mother escaped, the countries where they lived, how they survived.   All this storytelling became part of her book a regular member of our writing group and longtime personal friend of Isabelle, Nan Miller, was facilitating and editing.

Her book, "Isabelle's Attic", was originally published in 2013 which I reviewed on Amazon.  I looked forward to her next book but her life and that of her friend, Nan, aiding her took quite a different turn.  Isabelle's highly respected orthopedic surgeon husband who had retired, sold his practice, later coped with Alzheimer's Disease, and had to be institutionalized, then died in July 2020.   Meanwhile, Isabelle developed a terminal illness and died in November 2020 -- click on her Claremont Courier obituary with her photograph.   Her second book never could be completed for Nan's editing. 

Meanwhile, Nan's husband and later she also coped with serious medical conditions that prevented their further writing and publishing plans following up on Nan's first published book in 2013, "Girl 44", about her early life as a foster child known by her number 44.

There have been so many more people at a different level of friendship whose names are prominent in my memory but I won't attempt to write about them now.

Each of you have interesting stories of those individuals entering your life and the varying levels of friendships you have formed, I'm sure.  Perhaps you are prompted to recall some of them to share?