Monthly Archives: December 2008

Nancy

Death, People, ,

We received word, last night, that Dean’s cousin, Nancy, died on Sunday night. We didn’t know she was ill, so it was a shock to us.

We’d not seen her in many years — perhaps as many as 16 — possibly more. The first time I met Nancy was during my first visit to San Francisco. We met her and some of her friends for sushi (I think I avoided sushi at that time) at a restaurant in Oakland. I don’t remember much except that Dean needed to eat a hamburger after the sushi dinner. That and we had a really good time. It seemed so different from the good times we had in Pittsburgh. More grown-up perhaps? More cosmopolitan?

We spent our last night in Northern California that trip at Nancy’s Oakland home before we went to the airport.I vaguely recall that the house wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, but don’t remember being worried.

In 1993 we visited San Fransisco again, this time with children and my mom. Nancy was celebrating her birthday (maybe her 50th?) at a Middle Eastern restaurant complete with a bellydancer (who chose me to “dance” along with him).We sat at low tables, on cushions on the floor. It was an interesting evening — but our times with Nancy always were interesting — and much different from what we normally experienced.

Nancy belonged to the same spiritual group as the folks who wrote Laurel’s Kitchen, which was also the spiritual group that my teenage friend Cynthia belonged to. (And Nancy’s sister, Joanne, helped edit the cookbook).

What I remember mostly about Nancy was her smile. She always seemed to be smiling — and not just her mouth, but her whole face. And she was the first person I knew who wore lip liner — I think of her every time I apply it.

Winter & Birds

Birds, , , ,

I actually started this post last December but was so astonished and disappointed in my memory I didn’t finish it.

I wrote it after hearing birds sing one December morning last year and remembering the poem, below, that I used to recite aloud in our empty two-car garage.

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

‘We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,’
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.

– Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing

I thought the poem was from the “Song of Solomon” and may have actually told people it was. When I looked the poem up on the World Wide Web I discovered that it was not part of the Song of Solomon after all, but by someone named Oliver Herford.

I realize, now, why I made the mistake. The book of poetry that contained I Heard a Bird Sing also held this part of the Song of Solomon:

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

Now I don’t feel so bad — they are both about winter and birds and in the same book.

Photo by James Jordan