Now. If I can just get the streaks in my hair like that. Watch out 21st century world!
Here is another good article on Susan Sontag.
Yes, yes, she was nothing like the Dali Lama... or maybe she was. Deeply passionate, thoughtful and yet detached. She intellectually, he spiritually. Both caring to the depths of their core for their causes and yet able to move through life making small connections to their "public" and making waves (cringe - sorry, the Tsunami occupies my subconscious too I suppose.)
I like to imagine strong personal ties to their friends and families, and am uplifted by their willingness to go against the flow, and to flow with it at the same time.
Ah yes, it's their paradoxical natures I love. Strength in gentleness. Peaceful passion.
Happy New Year.
v
p.s. Here is a wonderful speech by Sontag. Thoughtful, provoking. I love what she says about literature and writers.
Many years ago (many many years
Grandma was a bag of contradictions. Regal, devoted, warm and loving sometimes, cold and calculating others. She had a steely side that was born of a sharp mind and a life of tragedies - lost two children when they were young, one by a lightning strike. Her father died when she was young, and she grew up in boarding schools.
I judged her more harshly when I was young, as she could be Queen of Manipulation. Age has given me a bit of perspective on her life of struggle. She also battled depression and addictions. In the end she may have starved herself to death, ready to end it all. Beyond the sadness of losing her life, I regret not having more years to spend with her, to mend some broken fences.
But her hands crafted beautiful things - and she raised two wonderful men, one of them my Dad.
This year, as my small obsession gains momentum, I'm knitting hats for all the kids and their first cousins. Something I've meant to do for years, but never quite accomplished. No guarantees I will this year either, to be truthful. It means more than one wee hat each week, maybe 1.3, to make the deadline. (oh so fix-ed!). Ever the eternal optimist, I knit and purl away ... between work and children and shopping for Channuaka.
For Thanksgiving this year we traveled to Atlanta, paying respects to my Dad, (who now sports a titanium pacemaker), visiting Mom and sisters, a great investment in our family ties. Then I drove the kids down to Peachtree City, where they got to meet Uncle Owen and Aunt Kitty. This has been a goal of mine for years! Alas and no pictures! (Where was my brain??) I can't believe it has been about 14 years since I'd seen them.
Uncle Owen is another colorful figure in our family. He was a pilot in WWII and Korea, became an Ace in the latter. He traveled all over the world with his family of girls; three, then later four. We didn't have time to hear the stories, but will try to get back to gather this gold.
His mother was our famous Madeleine, the largest adventurer of the clan. She is rumoured to have been a ghost writer for Jack London, and a war correspondent in the Phillipines. She, like Grandma Berry, was born to wealth and privilege. Her father a prominent doctor, she broke away from the family early in life and was eventually disowned. My favorite stories are about how she defended blacks in Tampa against racism, even going to jail once for causing a scene on a bus!!
We also got to see LeeAnne, my Mom's youngest cousin, who is my age, and her kids. Then we stopped to see Steven in Tennessee on the way home, my first cousin that I haven't seen in over twenty years! He bought me a Coke at McDonalds and we began the catching up that warms and renews old ties.
So as I strive to bring families together - my children and their cousins, me and my cousins - I wonder at the pace of a life that doesn't allow much time for knitting, for visiting, for connecting with our past and ensuring our kids have each other in the future.
If we don't build memories for them now, of long lazy summers at the beach and holiday dinners around huge tables in packed houses of joy, what will they do when they're grown? Will they take the time to reach out to each other, and make sure their kids have cousins to play with? Will this generation make the effort to reach across miles to connect and remember?
Maybe the knitting is just yarn and needles. Or maybe it can identify us in our quirky hats, just as the genealogy, our history, and our future bring us together.
How nice to be firmly connected for all the years of our lives, no matter how scattered our geography or lifestyles, no matter how much time has passed. Not too tightly knit, not too loose. Lots of colors and strands and textures. All of us working on the piece, never finished. Making up a beautiful whole.
Thank you Grandma, of blessed memory.
v