Monday morning I drove a four-hour dash out to Carson City, NV to check on my 93-year-old friend, Kate. She seems to be O.K. now, but when I called her on Sunday I could only understand about half of what she was saying; her speech was incomprehensible, and her voice sounded as though she was possessed.
Kate and I have been friends for about 35 years. Although she’s 43 years my senior, I’ve never thought of her as a grandmother type. Our match-up is odd, and that’s why it’s especially precious to me. When I was in high school, Kate was a friend of the parents of two sisters that I was friends with. Kate is one of those rare individuals who truly loves and admires young people. She has always been very forward thinking, always interested in new ideas and new attitudes. She’s always been so alive and engaging; we hit it off right away.
When I bought my first car, I brazenly phoned Kate and asked if I could come visit her at Donner Lake, about a three hours drive from El Cerrito where I lived. She was delighted by my call and thrilled to have me. From then on, we’ve been friends independent of my high school girlfriends and their parents. Until she moved away from Donner, Kate would swim across the lake every day, all year around. For those of you who don’t know that lake, it’s in the Sierras and freezes in parts during the winter months, but she loved it.
Donner Lake
Kate is German and emigrated to the U.S. in the 1960’s. She was a young woman while Hitler and the Nazis were in power. She doesn’t talk about it much and quickly changes the subject when my probing questions awaken nerves she prefers to deaden, but she has made me aware of how Germans suffered horribly under that regime. Before meeting her, I had assumed that if you were fortunate enough to be among the “master race,” then you were immune. Not so. Ravaged by hunger during the war years, Kate lost all of her teeth due to starvation. The German army commandeered her family home and its contents, rendering she and her husband and their baby daughter homeless. Known to be anti-Hitler, her husband was conscripted into some of the worst military duty that included sweeping bombsites for dead bodies and body parts. His only pay was bottles of Vodka. Carrying jugs of freshly milled acorn oil, the only source of fat available, Kate was molested and robbed by German soldiers. About that incident, she was relived that she hadn’t been raped, but she feared what her fellow villagers would do to her when she returned home empty handed, everybody had gathered acorns for that oil. Being ostracized was almost worse than the attack.
She can’t talk about the years that followed WWII. I know she had her second child, a son, and I know that her husband had an affair. About all she says is that it was bad. Whenever we get near those subjects, it’s as if she is pulled into another universe. She wrenches herself away from the memories, struggling to pull her gaze off of those devastating recollections, and before she can look at me again, she repeats several times, “It was bad. It was bad, bad.”
The precise details that led up to Kate leaving her husband and daughter and coming to the U.S. with her son are not clear. But what is clear is that she seized her new life like one drowning seizes a lifeboat, with desperate and exuberant gratitude. She loved America and Americans. Not only learning but also mastering English, she found work, then worked her way up to owning her own interior design business, she raised her son, and she even tried a second marriage to a man 16 years younger than she was. The marriage didn’t last a single minute after he confessed to an infidelity.
I’ve always known Kate to be feisty, resilient, practicing the power of positive thinking as if it were her religion, and smart. She’s nobodies fool, for sure. We share a love for the outdoors. There was one eventful hike we took to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, dismissing most of the “Carry Plenty of Water” warnings and assuming a 14-mile round trip could be easily managed within a few hours. She’s always been a people magnet, and wherever she goes she makes new friends. So when she sprained her ankle two-thirds of the way down, we became guests of the Grand Canyon National Parks Service. We were provided gear and a camping spot alongside the Colorado River for our overnight stay, until a mule could be delivered to carry her out. I saved myself the mule-ride fee and hiked out.
I could continue on down memory lane, but the whole point of this essay is to tell you about what happened once I arrived in Carson City on Monday. She was in her polar fleece bathrobe, mobile but shaky, drowsy but far more lucid than she had been on the phone the night before, and she was over the moon that I had arrived. God it feels good to be loved. It appears as though she had a major foul-up with her medications (another long story,) but everything is back in order, and she was recovering rapidly. We talked for hours and caught up on everything I could think of. I showed her pictures from my laptop. A few of them were of me presenting Pearls My Mother Wore at various bookstores. I told her that I wasn’t trying to be vain or show-offy by showing pictures of myself, and she laughed and assured me she had no such thoughts. She said she loved me and she was proud of me. I told her I loved her and was proud of her. I told her that I knew I was flattering myself, but I thought we were kindred spirits. “Yes we are, Terry. It’s true,” she said.
As is always the case, our conversation meandered onto current affairs and politics. She’s disgusted and dismayed by much of what she sees in today’s culture, just as I am. Politicians, war, mass media and marketing, health care, global warming, crime, corruption, greed, homophobia, racism, bank fraud, mortgage crisis and foreclosures, national obesity, falling education standards, child abuse, etc., there are dozens of places to look where things seem to be getting worse, not better. For the first time, I heard her say it was a mistake for her to move to this country, to become a citizen, and to vow allegiance. “This country is losing its middle class, and when you lose your middle class, it’s all over,” she said. Coming from her, that statement gave me chills. Loss of a middle class was part of what ushered in the Third Reich. She’s not just some old lady spouting off about something she doesn’t understand. She sees trouble, and she’s not optimistic about it turning around.
I am. My argument to her was that yes, we are at a crossroads, but that before things can get better, they are getting worse. They are getting worse because we are, for the first time in history, being honest about what’s wrong. Yes, there was a time when “Made in America” really stood for something, but even in those glory days of the 1950’s there were millions around the globe who paid for our happiness with their own suffering. Until there is equality for all people, until every person is fed and able to pursue a life of comfort and joy, then we continue on this torturous path of haves and have-nots, criminals and victims. Before we can change course and create equality for all, we must acknowledge inequality, and that’s the painful and ugly stage we are currently in.
I don’t think the nonsense that drives me up the wall will last. I do believe that people, especially Americans, can say enough when enough is enough. We may not be there just yet, but that’s where I think we’re headed. Time will tell of course, but until then, I’m optimistic that the vast global majority of us will become less divided and more united. We will have a global middle class; at least that is my hope and prayer. Kate listened to what I was saying and seemed calmed by my optimism. I think she was calmed and not just stupefied by my foolishness.
You’d think we wouldn’t have had an appetite after such a heavy discussion, but we did. Kate’s a sensational cook. Kate tottered over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of left over ham, potatoes, and green beans. She opened the oven door and pulled out one of her skillets. Several were stacked in descending order on the two racks; one was a crust coated heavy iron classic. Although her kitchen is plenty big enough to store all of her skillets, pots, and pans in the cabinets, she uses the oven. Kate heated our dinner on the stove top. I watched every feeble move she made, weak but competent. She amazes me.
I don’t use the oven to store my frying pans, but my mother did. Storing skillets in the oven strikes me as extremely middle class; what a beautiful thing.
Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday. Feel free to add a comment or two by using the blue “Comment” link.
P.S. I haven’t heard back from Scribd.com yet, but I have learned that my Kindle version of Pearls My Mother Wore can be read on all e-readers.
Do you have any friends who are decades older or younger than yourself? Tell me about them.