Grace with her Laurinburg High School Advanced English students
After Grace and Jim separated and I left for college, she continued to teach her Advanced English classes at the local high school and to work on her masters during the summer. But new paths were opening quickly. In the next few years, Grace would change jobs, buy a house and avidly pursue her interest in Black literature. If this new life had its challenges, it was filled with the personal satisfactions she had hoped for.
In December 1966 Grace writes of a visit to her mother in Dallas and then attendance at a convention of the National Council of Teachers of English in Houston. The Astrodome wowed her: “There never was such a place! It looks like the world would look if you could see it all at once.” In a February 1967 letter to a friend she says that she hopes to get a fellowship to complete her masters the next summer. In closing, she dwells on her delight in being a grandmother: “Isn’t it fun to have a grandson? Stephan is a doll. Wish you could see how long and how bright he is!”
In May, Graces writes of a professional conundrum. She has told her principal that she can’t live on her current salary but found the response less than encouraging. Meanwhile, a new community college is being established in Wilkesboro and they have interviewed her for a position there “in the area of humanities, which I want to move into, providing it is literature-based.” The salary is nearly twice what she is making. While she is considering this, St. Andrews, the local college where Jim had taught, offers her “a dual position, assistant dean of student life, and a chance to help plan and teach in a new humanities course.” Then, at last, the high school principal weighs in with a raise.
“Now — what do I do? I have tried to just live each day and yet all of these things have suddenly come my way. I am still strongly Presbyterian-oriented enough to ask: Why, and what does this mean in my life?”
Grace took the St. Andrews job. She hated to leave the classroom teaching she’d so loved, but the salary remained inadequate. To mark her departure, Grace’s students pooled their resources and bought her a Steuben Glass whale. Her junior class had chosen to read the unabridged version of Moby Dick. Some were waylaid by Melville at first, “but soon everyone was as excited about the book as I am. And now I have a beautiful, perfect crystal whale to remind me of our exhilarating learning experience and of my generous, affectionate 78 Special English students.”
In September 1967, she writes that “the new work is so different that I am not able to tell you whether I like or am just doing it. Perhaps the best sign will come tomorrow when I get my first salary check and see that I am finally making enough to live on.” She is spending the great bulk of her time not on teaching but on “deaning,” which she enjoys far less. On the other hand, she has gotten to see her grandson twice in two months. “He is strong and active and altogether delightful to be around. I can feel him and want to hug him right now.”
Grace with her grandson
In the fall of 1967, she buys a house. She writes a friend: “At first I was horrified at the prospect, but finally after talking with two wise and able business men and friends, I realized that buying a certain type of house was an investment as well as actually cheaper than paying the exorbitant rent I was paying.’ (Jim and Grace, having spent most of their married lives in church-provided homes, had never owned a house.)
She has a rich and compelling network of friends and colleagues in Chapel Hill — including Reynolds Price and longtime journalism professor Walter Spearman — and she writes to a friend that she has been invited to “two cocktail parties with the journalism, radio, theater, motion-picture, television crowd.” In August of 1968, Grace is awarded her master of arts in teaching degree from the University of North Carolina. She feels proud of her very high grades, and welcomes my calling her, in a letter from my summer job at Glacier National Park, “my scholar-mother.”
Over the next several years, the letters grow sparse. Surely she is talking with all of us by phone more now than before. Also, she is devotedly pursuing her longtime interest in African-American studies. She creates and teaches a new course at St. Andrews: English 203, Black American Literature. The 25-item booklist is a treasure, and I have folders full of her lecture notes on Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones, James Baldwin, Jean Toomer, Alex Haley, Eldridge Cleaver, W.E.B. DuBois, June Jordan, Ralph Ellison and more. But it was the work of Richard Wright that particularly compelled her. It was a thrilling moment when Grace was invited to a University of Iowa Afro-American Institute summer seminar in July 1971: “Richard Wright: His work, his world and his influence.” Ralph Ellison gave the introductory lecture.
Earlier in 1971, while I was in graduate school at Northwestern, Grace had come up to research Wright’s years in Chicago. Subsequently, she went with my sister-in-law to gather information on the years Wright spent in Memphis. This research culminated in a journal article that is cited online as still “the best piece of first-hand research” on Wright’s years in Memphis. “Richard Wright’s Memphis” was published in the 1972 Wright issue of “New Letters.”
Reading the article’s ending, it is easy to see why Grace felt so drawn to Wright: “However limiting and hostile {his roots in Delta soil} had been, because he felt deeply enough and was conscious of his own possibilities, he was ‘full of a hazy notion that life could be lived with dignity, that the personalities of others could not be violated, that men should be able to confront other men without fear or shame, and that if men were lucky in their living on earth they might win some redeeming meaning for their having struggled and suffered here beneath the stars.’”
First day outside for a month. Needed to mail birthday cards. I felt I was hurtling downward in the elevator. Such a sensation of speed! Briefly thought they’d sped up the elevator, (BQE traffic average gone up from something like 11 mph to something like 50 – why not ;-). But then I realized, no, my life had slowed down, is what happened. I’m so unaccustomed to movement.
Jose was there, no mask, seemed a bit portlier (could I be transferring my many lost pounds onto him?). Keith there, too, wearing a mask. Both seemed as ever. Out the door — felt like walking out when you’re traveling: a new city to see. Strange, exciting.
More vehicle traffic than I’d expected from looking out the window. But it was 6:30 am, probably a kind of rush hour. And more than I’d expected meant a cluster of three or four taxis, vans, trucks; long space, then another cluster.
The butcher still has a sign instructing peeps to line up down Amsterdam, not 87th, only two people allowed inside at a time, must be wearing face coverings. And there were packages of toilet paper in the window. At the butcher!
Kirsh bakery all shut up. Sad sign saying they’d closed due to the virus, protecting everyone’s health, a GoFundMe available for us to help support the staff, they are HOPING to reopen when the crisis passes. Good luck. Though I will do a contribution.
Picked up our mail and Diane’s — and came shooting up the elevator shaft and back home.
Who knows when I’ll go out again? No more family birthdays til June ;-)
April 25, 2020
Email to Sharon:
Dear one,
We three O sibs are all writing — a gushing stream of family recollections, and then responding to one another. Quite something. It’s been fun, engaging, sometimes unsettling. I do feel like I’m lagging. Re the virus, I’m completely out of the woods, of course, but at first I did a bit too much – 3-and-a-half hour board meeting, plus lots of grandkid time, trying to help out our completely overworked and stressed-out kiddos. Anyway, I’ve sort of zigged and zagged in recovery but am definitely gaining strength. Cough sticking around annoyingly, though.
So many things are going to pass out of our lives. It’s mind-boggling. One small thing (not small to me, but small in The Nature of Things): I think you know we all had our tix to go Maine in July – all except Paul, that is. I guess I knew it was already pretty clear we weren’t going to get to go. But none of us had stated it. Then Nannerl said yesterday that Islesford demands that anyone coming onto the island stay quarantined at home for 14 days. That is, we’d all have to remain there, in the house, on the island, for two weeks, and meanwhile couldn’t go hiking or biking or climbing in Acadia. Not gonna happen. When we told Laura yesterday while FaceTiming with Petra, Laura’s face absolutely fell. It seemed she was so counting on it — as a kind of North Star, a break from this impossible two-working-parents-at-home-with-two-little-kids gig. Which is so hard too on Nell and family. Aaargh. My heart aches for them all. Every now and then one or another is clearly on the verge of tears or other emotional overload.
Still, everyone is healthy, and they all love one another. It will work out. But it does all look so endless, doesn’t it? And so ill-defined as to what happens AFTER…whatever after might mean.
We think we will finally venture out next Tuesday (gorgeous today, but the park would be too crowded). Lord knows we need to.
David has painted our bedroom, and it looks lovely. I’ve gotten out lots of memorabilia boxes and am aiming to make further contributions to the O sibs gush (and I hope simultaneously, or occasionally, also attending to whatever writing it is that I most want to do, but don’t know the identity of!).
I’m grateful that you’re keeping your spirits generally up (or making it look like it?;-), keeping something of a schedule, keeping in touch with J and me and I’m sure others. It does seem everyone is reaching out more than usual, sequestered as we all are.
Further cases in Ingleside, I wonder?
Let me know how you are.
Love you,
GO
April 28, 2020
First day walking in the park since March 22. First day out, period, really. Luminously beautiful day, blossoms , blooms and spring-green buds abounding. Yet it was a constant challenge – if not downright unpleasant. Too many people. I was constantly plotting a way to avoid them. Unnerving.
As David said, we’re so used to being safe inside. That’s part of it. But there really were way too many people.
Next time we’ll pick an ugly day or a very early hour – or dinnertime? Or try Riverside again.
Good news today though: Looks like our City MD can do antibody testing. I may try it someday next week.
April 30, 2020
Email to friends:
I am completely out of the woods, though still dogged by fatigue and a cough. Looks like I can get a test soon for antibodies. I’m eager to do that, despite the fact that nobody seems to know what exactly “immunity” might mean with this beast of a virus. Eager for David to have one, too. Surely he was exposed to it!
Paul is doing amazingly well — in a time when no restaurant jobs are available and no meetings permitted. Thank goodness Arizona has more services available than we’d ever have thought. Our other kids are worn-out, over-extended — and making it. I am so grateful that all four of them are such loving parents. We had a long FaceTime today with James and Nell, reading through a wonderful book about volcanoes and listening to James repeat: Stromboli! Vesuvius! Nyiragongo! Krakatoa! and point with his little cute finger at the map, locating these mysterious (raging and fiery and wonderfully scary volcanoes — “that one erupting!”). One page showed animals running from a violent eruption. Another showed dinosaurs standing by an ancient volcano. I asked James, do you suppose the dinosaurs ran from the volcanoes, too? He said: NO, GoMa, they died.
Working on this sibling memoir project today, I saw a letter from my mother’s cousin, written to me in Zaire, reporting that she had read to my grandmother my letter about climbing Kilimanjaro (speaking of volcanoes). My grandmother replied: I can’t understand why anyone would want to climb such a high mountain.
Yesterday I came across a letter from my Dad, in which he told me: Neve, if you climbed Kilimanjaro because it was there, you aren’t finished, because it’s still there.
Love to you wonderful women,
Geneva
May 4, 2020
Zoom board meeting with NU-Q. Funny to talk to all the Qataris, way over there on the other side of the world where I can no longer go. Felt jittery afterward – too much real world intruding on my seclusion. Suddenly decided I needed a walk. Tamped down all the anxiety I felt after our first excursion, last Tuesday. (Way too many people out, impossible to keep distance. I jumped into the bushes like a creature hunted.)
This time was lovely. Plenty of peeps, but not too many. Mostly either elderly or parents of young children. Nobody jumping in front of me, spitting in front of me, casting his droplets all over me ;-). Walked in my customary haunts. Beautiful tulips on the way over. Gorgeous redbuds strikingly abloom in the park. Walked by the now-removed swings in the pinetum. Tried to take the little wooded path just west of the Great Lawn, but a fellow photographing was standing in the middle of the narrow way.
Regular path over to the theater, then right where the waffle seller isn’t, thought I’d visit the turtles. Too many people on the viewing dock. So to walk around the Great Lawn. But then realized it was open, headed into the lush green expanse sparsely dotted with folks. Strode right out into the middle and flung myself upon the soft-firm ground. Cast off my mask. Took in the clean blue sky. Sang my song of grateful praise, for the beauty of the earth.
Walked back by our bench: “In love and gratitude.” On my way out of the park at 85th and CPW, heard a good snippet. Woman A with two dogs on the path spies woman B, calls out, “Well hi, Marilyn!” “Hey! How are you?” says Marilyn. “I’m fine. Well, you know…as fine as you can be, considering,” says Woman A., “how are you?” “I survived,” responds Marilyn. “You’re surviving?” says Woman A, not sure she heard. “I survived,” repeats Marilyn. “IT!”
Home safe, into the building, Perez complaining about how hard things are with his commute. I’ll bet all the doorman feel that way.
May 5, 2020
Hard evidence, at last:
May 15, 2020
Email to Sharon:
How are you? Can you go out walking now that this lovely weather is here? Even on that lovely short trail near you? Or is the footing bad. I forget. And maybe too many people too?
I’ve had a couple of minor setbacks of late. Some of it seems virus-related; others I know have gone through something like this. Recurring (though intermittent) fatigue and lingering cough. On top of that I got a dang bladder infection and was put on a very strong antibiotic that gave me headaches and constipation. Those are predicted side effects but doc said it was worth it unless things got worse. I seem to have adjusted, because I’m feeling better today.
Meanwhile I’ve just been plain old blue. Our sibling recollection thing has been surprisingly unsettling for me. Kicks up all the old ways that I have felt slighted – always the little sister. I realize this is unseemly and even ridiculous, but it turns out I’ve felt it sufficiently that it didn’t matter that I realized all that. Must be partly because of All That’s Going On — and the fact that nobody knows for how long it will. Not to mention of course the utter degradation of our democracy. And of our earth. In any case, I had to beg off sibs Zoom today.
All good here otherwise;-). I’m reading Savage Beauty, biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. David now painting hallways. Beautiful walk today in Riverside Park.
Please let me know how you are.
Love, GO
May 16, 2020
Need to sing more. Found suggestions good for harmonizing:
Anything by Simon & Garfunkel has fantastic, tight two-part harmonies. Recommended ones, however, would include:
The Sound Of Silence
El Condor Pasa
America
The Boxer
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Scarborough Fair / Canticle
Cecilia
Mrs. Robinson
Another band possessing fantastic two-part harmonies is The Beatles. Recommended tracks, in this case, would be:
Something – George Harrison (lead) and Paul McCartney (harmony)
I Saw Her Standing There – John Lennon (harmony) and Paul McCartney (lead)
Here Comes The Sun – George Harrison (lead) and Paul McCartney (harmony)
Come Together – John Lennon (lead) and Paul McCartney (harmony)
We Can Work It Out – John Lennon (harmony) and Paul McCartney (lead)
I Wanna Hold Your Hand – John Lennon (lead/harmony) and Paul McCartney (lead/harmony)
Beach Boys: I get around. Surfin USA. Good Vibrations
Crosby Stills & Nash, Simon & Garfunkel, some of The Decemberists (Down By the Water is a nice male/female harmony).
Mamas and the Papas. California Dreamin
Beatles. Michelle. Here, there and everywhere
Red Hot Chili Peppers. Californication. Otherside.
Yardbirds. For your love
The Eagles: Hotel California
Dylan. Knockin on Heaven’s Door
Ben Harper and Jack Johnson: High tide or low tide
Rockapella. Sweet Home Alabama, Basket Case, Stand By Me
Grateful Dead. Sugar Magnolia. Uncle John’s Band
Spirituals:
· Steal Away
· Give Me Jesus
· We Shall Overcome
· Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
· Every Time I Feel The Spirit
· Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho
· Lord, I Want To Be A Christian
· I Want Jesus to Walk with Me
· He Never Said A Mumbalin’ Word
· Deep River/Shall We Gather at the River
May 17, 2020
Email to Arthur:
Thanks for your good wishes. I felt sad about our not joining you all on Friday.
I’ve been feeling a little blue. (I know: Who isn’t?) There are so many reasons for that, of course, from the virus to climate change to the demolition of our democracy to just some plain old personal sadness. When Friday came around, I was a bit overwhelmed by all of this stuff piling up and didn’t feel strong enough to join in a vigorous sibling talk.
Since then, I’ve been getting better rest and going out on long walks, and generally feeling stronger. I’m grateful for your love and looking forward to talking to you and to Susan Friday. (Please let her know.)
Love,
Neve
May 19, 2020
Locusts, next?
This AM I took my final mean-antibiotic pill. No more bladder infection. Uveitis is dormant for the moment. Less fatigue lately and cough quieting a bit.
Feeling grateful.
Then I flossed my teeth — and a crown fell off🤪.
Dentist can’t see me for a week. I’m lucky he can see me at all, with so many offices closed.
May 24, 2020
Can’t let things pass without noting outrageous failures in U.S. dealings with coronavirus. Beginning with the idiocy of telling people not to wear masks, lack of available testing – and extending all the way to CDC smushing together testing figures – that is, those testing for the active virus and those testing for antibodies. And excusing that by saying states were confused. ACK!
June 5, 2020
Email to siblings:
Dear ones,
I hate this but I’ve got some kind of awful bug. Came on yesterday afternoon. Abdominal pain, low fever, nausea, that familiar slamming fatigue. I don’t know whether the dratted virus makes me more susceptible to all these things that keep popping up or not. But I’m gonna try to join in at the beginning of our call and see how long I can last. I fear not long.
Hardest decision is go to doc or trust my healing. Opting for latter right now.
Love to all, talk soon (briefly?)
go
Later on June 5
Email to fellow Wellesley alums re virtual 50th reunion celebration set for the following morning:
Fri, Jun 5, 2020, 7:26 PM
Dear colleagues,
I am in the ER at Mt Sinai with acute appendicitis. Surgery tonight. No way I can be there tomorrow for our panel. I am so so sorry. With Karen and Nancy, you’ve got journalism covered (hoping someone can relieve Nancy of chat moderation).
