Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Kiley Reid's debut novel Such a Fun Age offers an original and unique perspective on race and class through a page-turning story that is deceptively entertaining.

The setting was familiar--Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square and Kensington. My husband once worked at the corner of Rittenhouse Square and we spent 1980 living in Kensington. The two neighborhoods could not have been more different. The historic Rittenhouse Square and the upscale shops around it, ethereal sounds of music wafting from the Curtis Institute of Music; and Kensington with its empty factories and yardless rowhouses built to house textile factory workers. Money and privilege and the working poor. After we left, Kensington declined even more.

Reid's character Emira has graduated from my Alma Mater, Temple University, with a B.A. in English--as I did. I often proudly said that I held a degree that prepared me to read intelligently while impoverished. Emira has other complications: she has no idea what she wants to do in life and she is African American.

My first job out of Temple was working Christmas Rush at Strawbridge & Clothier's downtown; my second job was customer service at a Bala Cynwyd insurance company. Emira is a part-time typist for the Green Party and takes a part-time job as a babysitter. She shares an apartment in Kensington and hangs with her friends, wishing she had more disposable money like they do. Emira will soon be 26 and the impending loss of her parent's health insurance looms over her head. She needs a 'real job'.

The woman who hires Emira to babysit is Alix Chamberlain who has built a career as an influencer, married an older, well-off television newsperson, and has two children. She carries the heartache of her first love with Kelly, who dumped her just before prom over a misunderstanding and her ill-formed decision that proved disastrous for Kelly's African American buddy.

Emira has great affection for Alix's child. And, she badly needs the babysitting money. So when she gets a call for an emergency late-night sitting job she leaves her friend's birthday party at a bar. Dressed inappropriately, with a few drinks under the belt, hanging with a white child, Emira strikes the security guard as suspicious and she is nearly arrested. A white man records the incident and encourages Emira to prosecute. She isn't interested. But when they met up again later, they become involved personally. That man is Kelley.

Meantime, the incident causes Alix to take a closer look at her babysitter. She becomes emotionally attached to Emira, losing the boundary between the professional and the personal. This escalates to the point that Alix interferes with Emira's personal life with disastrous results for everyone. Except for Emira; she comes out the better, finally finding herself.

The interactions between races depicted in the novel were startling to me, first because I had not encountered them before in fiction, and secondly because they felt very true.

Do we white people really understand the implications of our behavior when we try to help, endeavor to show we are not prejudiced, are color blind or woke? Do people with comfortable lives really know what those who are struggling want from us? I mean, Alix sends leftovers and wine home with Emira! Is that helpful when what she really needs is health insurance?

Such a Fun Age reads like popular women's fiction but hits on important and relevant issues. It would be a great book club read.

I won a free book on Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK PICK

Such a Fun Age
by Kiley Reid
G. P. Putnam & Sons
ISBN-10: 052554190X
ISBN-13: 978-0525541905

Wanamaker's Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store

We moved to Philadelphia from the Midwest. Exploring the city was exciting and most weekends found us walking and exploring the historical sites, museums, and department stores.

Entering John Wanamaker's atrium court stunned us. We were used to one or two story malls. Our families did not shop at Detroit's flagship Hudson's store. Entering Wanamaker's one looked up to floors of open side galleries to the massive organ, and looking about noted the marble floors and the bronze eagle that seemed to guard the space. We heard about the legendary Crystal Tea Room and lunched there.

We learned about 'meet me at the eagle' and the noontime organ concerts, the holiday displays, and that they had the best women's room in the city with couches and chairs in a lounge and some stalls that locked and had their own sink. I soon discovered where the sale racks were and frequented them for bargains.

Ad in Bicentennial Booklet; from my personal collection

During our years in Philly we watched Lit Brothers and Gimbel's close. I loved to shop at Strawbridge & Clothier and Wanamaker's and am glad they closed after we left to return to the Midwest. Shortly after our return, Detroit's iconic department store Hudson's closed and became Macy's.

I never forgot those downtown stores.

My husband had heard a little about John Wanamaker's involvement with the Sunday School movement. I knew the eagle statue and organ were from the 1904 Louisiana Purchase World's Fair. Otherwise, I knew little about the man behind the store.

Wanamaker's Temple by Nicole C. Kirk was a revelation. I was fascinated to learn how the store I loved came to be built. President Taft personally attended the grand opening. It was a mecca of art and music and culture. Maestro Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra and John Philip Sousa had performed in the Grand Court. Art installations appeared throughout the store.

The book is about far more than one man and a retail store. Wanamaker was a relentless force in a movement that drove American religious institutions and birthed numerous organizations.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, civic and faith leaders, primarily white Protestants, were concerned about the growing urban immigrant population, who often lived in poverty and in neighborhoods afflicted by gang violence. These men wanted to shape a moral Christian society. The movement grew and expanded from addressing educational concerns and temperance to creating the Salvation Army and YMCA. They believed that architecture and the arts were elevating civic forces and that good taste was a part of the Christian armor of God. They believed that by addressing the practical needs of the poor and the immigrant, along with their spiritual and civic growth, they could form better citizens. The movement was a blend, being both progressive and evangelical.

The amoral greed of business and the consumerism of ready-made goods at this time meant business and Christianity seemed to be at war with each other. I graduated from Temple University and knew it's founder Russell Conwell preached "Acres of Diamonds" but I did not understand his message connected Godliness with the pursuit and accumulation of wealth--The Prosperity Gospel is still around today. Wanamaker was pressed by the revivalist Dwight L.Moody to leave business to save his soul, but Wanamaker was determined he could blend his faith and his business.

John Wanamaker, born on the wrong side of the tracks and educated at a mission Sunday School, had worked his way from the bottom to become a successful Philadelphia clothier. While building his retail business, Wanamaker was also building a Sunday School in his hometown of Gray's Ferry, using advertising tactics learned in business. It expanded to over 6,000 students requiring him to build a huge Gothic church that accommodated 1500. He started a bank to encourage savings and life skills coaching to teach "middle-class values." He also was active in the establishment of the YMCA.

Wanamaker had a vision of a store that would inspire awe. He embraced his store 'family' and created educational and recreational programs, even summer camps along the Jersey Shore.

John Wanamaker Sr. was an abolitionist who employed freemen in his brickyard. His son employed African Americans in his store, but as elevator operators and other behind the scene jobs, never as sales clerks. He organized separate social groups, as well, and they were excluded from his summer camp at the Jersey shore and store 'family' publicity photographs.

Kirk kept my interest throughout the book, her multilayered approach bringing an understanding of one man and his philosophy in the context of his times. It knitted together many aspects of American culture and provided me with a better understanding of society 100 years ago.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wanamaker's Temple as biography and history.

Wanamaker's Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store
by Nicole C. Kirk
NYU Press
Pub Date 23 Oct 2018
Hardcover $35.00 (USD)
ISBN 9781479835935

****

In the 1960s textile designer Tammis Keefe created a series of souvenir handkerchiefs,. The Philadelphia themed handkerchief designs included Meet Me At The Eagle for John Wanamaker's department store. Here are some color versions from my personal collection.

Below is a nylon scarf with the same design.

Other designs in the series include the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Declaration of Independence, the Betsey Ross House, and Rittenhouse Square. I have all but the Ross house in my collection.

As Bright as Heaven: Surviving And Thriving

In 1918 the Bright family leaves a tobacco farm in Quakertown, PA to move to center city Philadelphia. The father is to work for his uncle's funeral parlor, which he would then inherit. They have suffered the devastating--but at that time all too common loss--of a baby. Their grief travels with them into their new life.

In the autumn of 1918 the Spanish Influenza hits Philadelphia, leaving over 12,000 dead in its wake. The mortuary fills and the uncle dies. When a daughter falls ill, the mother keeps her alive but, worn down, succumbs and dies of the disease. Friends die, and a beloved neighbor leaves for the trenches of France. Amidst all this loss, one of the daughters rescues an infant in distress in a house full of the dead, and the child becomes the family's heart and reason to go on.

The women, the mother and her four daughters, speak in alternating chapters, their unique personalities and perspectives revealed through their own words. Philadelphia has a distinct presence, although fictionalized and geographically ambiguous at times. (The cover photo shows Logan Circle with City Hall in the background.) The time period, between 1918 and 1926, covers the flu and the war but also prohibition and the rise of the speakeasy.

The story is about people who suffer great loss and live through horrible times, who carry their ghosts and demons with them, until they are able to see that life goes on and somehow the world can be bright again.

My Goodreads friends have rated this a four or five star book and found it very engaging. So I will safely say that readers of historical fiction and woman's fiction will enjoy Meissner's book.

SPOILER ALERTS

I had several issues with the writing.

I lacked emotional connection to the characters. It could be the multitude of voices, but I think it was because the story is too much told and not enough shown. For instance, one daughter develops a crush on an older man who goes to war. He is gone for the bulk of the novel, and returns at age thirty-eight and the girl is still "in love." There is not enough interaction between them to make me believe she is "in love" with him for life. It seems contrived.

I found the book preachy and full of clichéd lessons. The ex-soldier, once returned home, consoles his now grown-up lover that the war was horrible and he had to heal. All this healing happened off camera and lacks emotional impact; he is just telling her a lesson he learned. Make peace with the past, he advises. Later, the foundling brother's family is discovered to be alive. The father forgives the Brights, saying that he was angry for a long time by his losses and is finally seeing there is good in life, ending with the old chestnut of 'we are all doing the best we can with what we have'. Nothing new here, kids.

And the story wrapped up with far too many predictable and implausible outcomes. I won't even go into them. There is talk of fate and destiny and finding patterns.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Consequently, although I had looked forward to reading As Bright As Heaven, especially for its setting and the time period, I found the book an average read. For those who are not familiar with the Spanish Influenza, who like feel-good endings, and who want the horror of history softened by wish fulfillment romantic endings, this is the book for you. It was not my cup of tea.

As Bright as Heaven
by Susan Meissner
Berkley Publishing Group
Pub Date 06 Feb 2018
Hardcover $26.00
ISBN: 9780399585968

Interlude: Saying Goodbye to Philadelphia

The view from the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps
down the Ben Franklin Parkway towards Center City

A week before we moved from Philadelphia I spent a day alone at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was where I had fallen in love with the city back when we first came to Philly for Gary to interview with the Eastern PA Conference.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art
with the Schuylkill River and Water Works
Bicentennial era pamphlet

I stood on the steps of the art museum, looking past the Washington Monument fountain down the Ben Franklin Parkway to the Second Empire City Hall. Behind me in the art museum was "Sandy" Calder's mobile Ghost, at the far end of the parkway was Alexander Stirling Calder's Swann Memorial Fountain, and atop City Hall was Alexander Milne Calder's William Penn: three generations.

detail from a lithograph of Philadelphia

Philadelphia as we knew it when we moved

I recalled my first views of the city, coming in on the expressway along the Schuylkill. Across the ravine was the strange sight of Laurel Hill Cemetery, the white monuments gleaming.

Then came the view of the art museum and the water works in front of it. Going down the Ben Franklin Parkway, bedecked with flags, past fountain circles, and ending with the imposing City Hall. I knew my ancestors had come into this port, and that in some way I was coming home.

Rodin's The Thinker at the Rodin Museum on the Ben Franklin Parkway

Our first anniversary after moving to Philly we went to Old Original Bookbinders for our first lobster dinner. They put a plastic bib on our necks. The lobster was amazing, dipped in butter, and so rich.

Ads including Old Original bookbinders
Saladalley was one of my clients when I was in sales

One birthday I ordered poached salmon with dill sauce at The Fish Market

The Fish Market 

We shopped at the Reading Terminal Market where we bought fresh vegetables and whole fish, boned leg of lamb to grill, and home made cottage cheese.

Reading Terminal. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske

We had our first Tabouli at a lunch stand in the Reading Terminal Market. I felt vindicated for always eating the spring of parsley from my parent's plate at restaurants. Here was a whole salad of parsley! We now grow our own parsley to make this salad.

Ad for the Reading Terminal Market
Bicentennial pamphlet

Reading Terminal. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske

We went to the Old City festival and bought exotic foods from the Middle East restaurant and Indian food from Siva, some of our favorite cuisines to this day. We loved to eat in Chinatown, where we had Peking Duck. We enjoyed chicken mole' and authentic dishes at a Mexican restaurant that opened near the Academy of Music.

restaurant ads in Bicentennial pamphlet

We had dined at Dicken's Inn, run by Charles Dicken's grandson, and took my brother for Cajun food at an expensive restaurant on South Street. I accidentally ordered raw oysters while dining on the Moshulu, and Gary and I each tried one.

It was during the Avenue of the Arts on Broad street that I heard an orchestra play Vivaldi's The Four Seasons for the first time. Under a huge tent along the Delaware River at Penn's Landing at a free concert, we sang along with Pete Seeger, "Bit by bit, row by row, gonna make my garden grow."

We had gone to the Mummer's Parade on New Years Day, crushed in a crowd of thousands on South Broad Street. We heard the Beach Boys in a free concert on the steps of the art museum on a muggy July 4th.

I had stood in light-filled Christ Church where our patriot forefathers worshipped and supped by candlelight in the City Tavern where they broke bread.

Bicentennial Ads

We had seen the St. Lucia festival at Gloria Dei, the earliest church in Philadelphia when it was first settled by Swedes. I had worshipped at Arch Street Meeting House and in African American churches.

We had seen plays--from Athol Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is Dead to Dracula: A Pain in the Neck; George Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare; Jean Marsh in Too Good to Be True and Leonard Nimoy in a one man play about Vincent Van Gogh. We had seen Cats on Broadway and Candide at the New York City Opera.

And the concerts at the Academy of Music! The Christmas ballets of The Nutcracker and Coppelia. The outdoor concerts at the Robin Hood Dell and Mann Music Center. I remembered the cooling dusk, sitting on a blanket on the grass, transported by Scheherazade, white dining on brie and fruit and wine.

Riccardo Muti

We saw repertoire movies including the first time I saw Limelight and City Lights by Charles Chaplin, and Casablanca, and The Marx Brothers. We went to the Ritz and saw foreign movies with subtitles, and to the large downtown theaters for the re-release of Lawrence of Arabia and the premieres of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future.

The Liberty Bell in it Bicentennial location

I recalled the Bicentennial, history come alive for a whole year, the museums and free plays, the excitement and uplifting belief in America.

Scenes from around Philadelphia in a Bicentennial pamphlet

Goodbye to the many public statues: Emmanuel Frémiet's gilded Joan of Arc, Robert Indiana's LOVE statue and Claus Oldenburg's giant 'clothespin statue' that looked like lovers kissing, and the Lipchitz statue Government of the People which some thought looked like a pile of shit, and Henry Moore's Three-Way Piece. and the Pilgrim and Playing Angels and even the giant frog. Goodbye to one of only two statues ever made of Charles Dickens.

Dickens and Little Nell by Francis Edwin Elwell. Clark Park, Philadelphia
Photo by Gary L. Bekofske

Goodbye, walks along the Schuylkill where Thomas Eakins painted the scullers. Goodbye, Independence Hall and Carpenters Hall, to the second bank of the United States modeled on the Parthenon, to the Bourse and the Merchant's Exchange. Goodbye to Latrobe's Water Works and to Boathouse Row.

Goodbye to being surrounded by history, to walking past where Phillips Brooks wrote 'O, Little Town of Bethlehem,' the Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman Houses, Ben Franklin's grave and the first library which he founded. Goodbye to the 18th c houses and Elfreth Alley and New Market.

Goodbye to the 30th Street Train Station, place of the opening scene of Witness, and to John Wanamaker where a car drove into the display window in the movie Mannequin. I only have to watch Blow Out or Trading Places to revisit the city we knew.

Bicentennial ad for Wanamaker

And the shopping! The department stores, now gone: John Wanamaker, Strawbridge & Clothier, Gimbels, and Lit Brothers. The new Gallery and Gallery II. And Encore Books where I bought so many books for so few dollars.

The Gallery and John Wanamaker

We had gone to the amazing Philadelphia Flower Show and to Longwood Gardens.

At Longwood Gardens

And to the Tyler Arboretum and the Ambler Arboretum. And to the Tinicum Nature Preserve to see the migrating birds, where once we saw thousands of white egrets in the trees.

Tinicum Nature Preserve

Specters

A cluster of trees

            jade green fans brush-stroked against

            blue skies dappled with pearly gray clouds

stood lit by a noon-high sun.

Vivid and verdant, richness of growth,

nature's masterwork swathed in movement:

White flight checkering green 

like phantoms

or gathered angels.

Souls in gala celebration

saluting the season.

Egrets, white flames 

Leaping from cool still green,

darting from depths of green

into shadows of green.

Hovering, alighting.

Eternity's crown,

nimbus of elms.

The miracle of flight

visiting the permanence of roots.

It was where I finished my education. I remembered Professor Olshin who taught the Jane Austen seminar and how we were on campus and ran into her and within a year she had died of the cancer she had been battling.

photo by Gary L. Bekofske of Kensington. 

How many hours had I spent on mass transit? The subway and the El? Going to school, work, to shop, and for days spent walking around the city?

the new subway station

I said goodbye to the city that formed my twenties and was the background of my adulthood.

View of the Ben Franklin Parkway from the top
of City Hall

My footsteps echoed as I walked up the stairs under Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Diana with her bow and arrow to visit my favorite art: Fish Magic by Paul Klee. Carnival Evening by Rousseau. John Singer Sargent's Luxembourg Gardens. Van Gogh's Sunflowers.

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/44513.html?mulR=1263678720|8

I remembered when we brought Chris to the museum and how he was so interested in Salvador Dali's Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) and having to explain it to an eighteen-month-old.

I returned home to Gary and Chris, excited for the next big adventure waiting for us, but knowing that Philadelphia had left its mark on me.

Views of the City

I saw your familiar yet unnamed face
flicker across the movie screen’s blank stare
and every image burned with recollected stain
the wall-writings, the liter,
the detached reflected city streets
in the towered window’s glare.

Remembered
diesel perfume and urine-soaked stair,
the rapid rush of walkers
going somewhere, anywhere,
with intense vengeance.
The panhandler’s challenge, the derelict’s sleep
on steamy subway grate, the wind
whipping down manufactured canyons
with a whirlwind of refuse.

And yet among all this came creeping
the quiet vacuum
where small things took root:
the flower of a fountain,
the square of sycamore where a child played,
the balanced architecture of a hopeful past,
violin strings slicing air,
you were also this, and more----

A dreamed, racial memory,
the place where my ancestors first came ashore,
when baffled, tongueless, full of faith
they sought new life in a foreign place.

Recalled, my first view of you,
driving down the river’s gorge,
your ancient dead saluting on the far hill,
gleaming white in spring’s green leaves;
passing Eakin’s famous bridge,
turning our eyes to the temple
rising over falling water
where I would learn to worship
the craft of  human hands
and mortal imagination.

Distancing the parkway,
flag-full and fountain-embraced,
until reaching  your heartbeat,
the clash of ages
where generations of Calders and Rouse meet.
In that disconsonance, I knew
I’d returned to the home
I’d always dreamt I’d find.

I gave you my best years.
And you, you stamped your imprint
on my most tender and childish being.
Here I viewed the extremes humanity can achieve:
where the lame led the blind,
and the powerful bomb the children of the disinherited,
and subway tunnels echo with solemn saxophone  songs,
and shop windows beckon entrance
into organ-filled halls.
I memorized your every aspect and view,
walked you from South Street’s decay
to Kensington’s skeleton-lined avenues,
I knew your markets and your alleys.
The light-filled rationality of Christ Church
to the Occidental streets behind the Chinese gate.

I have been damaged
as by sunlight too bright,
too well observed,
and no one understands here
in this peninsular Midwest,
what I have seen
and what it meant
or why I dream of you yet.

Nancy Writes Junk Mail for Ministers

One of the artists I worked with, Vic, made this impression of me for my birthday.
I am wearing a Brooks Brothers dress I had bought when I was in sales.

In seminary, I knew the address 2900 Queen Lane as the home of Fortress Press. Now I had a job working there, working for the Board of Publication (BOP) as a copywriter/copyeditor.

The interview was quite strange. The head of Promotion looked over my resume and noted I had worked for the Lutheran pastor who once was an editor at Fortress. She decided I had to be OK because my old boss had high standards. And that pretty much ended the interview.

I discovered that my coworker was another United Methodist pastor's wife, a younger woman whose husband was serving at the Providence/Mt. Pisgah charge! I discovered we were very different, and also that I was totally unprepared for my job.

My coworker was an English major who had interned at the American Poetry Review, to which I had subscribed to since it began. I had a sales background and had loved advertising since a teenager. If the arts--literature, music, and painting--influenced people's thinking and feeling, I saw advertising as another form of influence. The power of the word, whether in fiction or a print ad, fascinated me.

At my desk I had my Stunk & White and a good grammar book. And learned on the job how to write, edit, and prepare manuscripts. 

Everything was old-school, pre-computers. We used an IBM Selectric typewriter and cut and pasted changes with scissors and mucilage glue. 

A brochure and a print ad I wrote

We wrote ad copy for display ads in Lutheran publications, flyers and brochures, catalog copy, and letters for mass mailings. The in-house graphic artists did the layout and art. I took several evening classes on graphic design at the Abington Art Center, reimbursed by the BOP.

Book promotion copy ad I wrote

I had to learn about the new software that was being developed to write a display ad and an article that appeared in the Lutheran paper.

 I had challenges such as how to make a boring history of Christianity exciting....

 Vic did the art for this catalog I worked on.

After our boss red penned our manuscript, we would cut and paste, and then it went to the in-house artists for the graphic design aspect. I loved working with the artists. Vic was an older gentleman who had worked for Theodore Presser Music for years. Wendy had joined the army to get her art school education. They were later joined by a young Hispanic artist.

A drawing Vic presented to me.

Wendy's sketch in response to the Ethiopian famine.

It was the first full-time desk job I had ever had. After a few weeks, I started joining my coworkers at coffee breaks and lunch. I got to know people from other departments as we sat in large groups at long tables in the cafeteria. The job had its drawbacks; I gained twenty pounds the first year and another twenty pounds the second year. Regular lunches and sitting all day took its toll after years of skipping meals and being on the go. Plus, I drove to work as there was no direct mass transit route.

A woman we met through the Kensington Area Group Ministry worked there. Jane also was into clowning and Gary joined her, becoming a mime.

Gary in his mime costume

Jane had joined a new choir, The Choral Arts Society directed by Sean Diebler. Gary and I auditioned and were accepted. The choir had four performances a year.

Here I am at a Halloween party dressed as a witch
with Jane in her clown costume 

Sean was a demanding director, whipping us into a 200 voice choir that would sing with the Philadelphia Orchestra in several venues.

In 1984 we performed the magnificent A Sea Symphony by Vaughn Williams. That July we were at the Mann Music Center, an outdoor venue, for An Evening with Rogers and Hammerstein with Erich Kunzel directing The Philadelphia Orchestra. In November the choir participated in the second Concert for Humanity, with Ricardo Muti and Emmanuel Ax. And in December we sang the Messiah by Handel with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. In 1985 we performed the Neue Liebeslieder by Brahms, the Gloria by Vivaldi, Sea Drift by Delius, and other pieces.

Gary's work took him to San Francisco for two back to back conferences over two weeks. I saved up money and flew out to join him for the weekend between conferences. We ate in Chinatown, went to the Warf and walked around the city, drove across the San Francisco bridge to see the John Muir Redwoods National Monument and Napa Valley. We even had time to stop at some famous wineries.

I was enchanted. I knew the geological history of the area and had read about the Redwoods. The very flora and fauna were so different. I did fall in love with the city and area and would have moved there in a heartbeat had it been possible.

Company picnic

The BOP was a real community with were social events and trips. We went to the Baltimore Inner Harbor to see the opening of their new Aquarium. I wrote this poem.

Aquarium
Baltimore, 1986

Room walled round with water
--underseascape--
and fishes flashing, weaving
or slowly spiraling downwards
like drugged dancers
in weightless pirouette.
Some paired, some schooled, some
silver racers in revolution, some
enacting most ancient rituals.

Most primal and original of creatures!

And into these, with regal entrance
the stately ray wings effortlessly;
mottled brown back, wing tips
upturned, tail properly level.
Majestic, even to the cream underbelly
and smooth-lipped gills elegant rhythm,

proving humanity's simplicity
with a sting.

On Halloween, we wore costumes to work. I remade an old choir dress. wore a long blond wig, made a hat, and carried a real vintage ostrich feather fan, channeling Mae West. I am at the center arrow in the photo below.

Halloween at 2900 Queen Lane

My coworker left for another position in the building and a new woman was hired. We became friends and one weekend when Gary was away she invited me to her mother's cabin in the Poconos.

I enjoyed writing but my editing was not consistent. When the Lutheran pastor I had worked for offered to help me get a job at the Board of Pub I had declined. I knew my failings ever since my Kimball High writing class. My mechanics were not great, and I was not a perfectionist.

Right before my boss went on vacation she told me I was in charge of overseeing all the projects in process. She did not prepare me in any way. I neglected to notice my own copy was missing the all-important order form. I went on vacation and came back to learn that my coworker had been promoted instead of me.

My boss Mr. Lilyers

When Jane changed jobs I applied for her old job, working for Len Lilyers who managed the periodical and music departments. I did secretarial work and helped drum up advertising for a publication for organists. In my spare time, I helped at the in-house house retail shop, the St. Nicholas Shop, and the customer service gals with whom I shared office space.

 Another birthday came with another card from Vic.

At the BOP I was surrounded by people gifted in music, art, and writing. In my department alone there was Larry, a church organist who brought me in as a 'ringer' when his choir had special performances; Kent who was a wonderful pianist who had built his own harpsichord; Jane who sang in the Choral Arts Society;and Andy, editor of a periodical and a church organist, and his wife Jane who sang and played recorder.

Jane, Kent, and Larry were dear friends at work

My sketch of Kent, Jane, and Larry

Mt. Zion in Darby celebrated an anniversary and all the previous pastors were invited back.

Gary and I at the Darby anniversary celebration

Gary's job at UMCOR meant he was away long hours and many weeks. He left the house by 5:00 am, taking the subway to the North Philadelphia station, riding the train to Pennsylvania Station in New York City, then catching a subway to Riverside Drive. Depending on transit delays he was home about 7:30 at night. He traveled across the country and out of the country, sometimes being away two weeks a month. So my friends at the BOP were a Godsend.

When Christmas came I still worked a second job. In 1985 I was a sales clerk at the Lord and Taylor store in Elkins Park. I worked in the sweater department, back in the ugly sweater era, and spent my free time refolding them. I found notes for a poem on the back of their mimeographed employee instructions

Lights Out at Lord & Taylor, Xmas 1985

Hating things, yet loving, caught in the world's trap
desiring this man's gifts but despising his scope,
at night when the lights are out and the empty sterile hall
sends back my solitary steps upon the linoleum floor
the stony models' cold gaze diminishes all to its material form
the essence of breath and spirit flushed out, purged;
no longer do the clocks carol around the upright
nor muzak's mild assault reverberate. All is silent night and dearly still.

Oh! But were it not for beauty that money can purchase!
Cold change and worn paper rule our senses.
The richness of fine things, well-wrought artifacts
which enchant us, entrap us. Where it not for beauty
how content I would be to remain poor.

Who has turned us around this way, senses tutored
to delight in the lovely, who cannot pay the admission fee.
I have come to disdain the wealthy who take their wealth
so carelessly, who cannot understand those who live
not by their desires but by necessity.

 At night the gold chains, leather purses, silk shirts
all turn drab, seen for what they are, apart
from the value we award them. Then our petty desires
shrink, flimsy and hollow.

In 1986 I worked at the holiday St. Nicholas shop in a mall. That was fun because everyone working there was from the BOP.

I had not been a television watcher since Ninth Grade when I decided to give it up. (Except for Star Trek!) We only had a 13" black and white portable television. But with Gary away so much I was watching more tv. In 1985 we bought a 20" color tv.

I would come home from work and walk P.J. Because of the mass transit hubs, there were a lot of outsiders in the area. People made wide arcs passing us and when someone asked, "Yo-is that a miniature Doberman?" I would reply "Yes." No one wanted to mess with a Doberman. When we got home I had to play fetch with P.J. for an hour, and then I made a light meal to watch in front of the tv. I also took up working on Gary's stamp albums.

I had to deal with house problems on my own, too. One morning when I turned on our vintage torchiere lamp I heard a mad squeaking. I found a bat nestled around the now hot

When the water heater died and leaked all over the floor I had to clean it up and have a new one installed. Another morning I discovered I had forgotten to close the front window behind the couch and found the screen halfway pulled out. I realized someone in the process of breaking in must have met P.J. face to face. Thankfully, our 'miniature Doberman' scared the intruder away. P.J. also twice alerted me when people tried to steal our new Toyota Corolla when it was parked in the driveway behind the house.

Remember those big glasses of the late 1980s? 

Gary helping out in the kitchen.

Since turning thirty I had been thinking about a child. I had never before considered having a child. But now I saw the child with us, and I was constantly thinking about our actions and how they would impact a child.

Maternal Instincts

I am the one who always
comes when called, closing
windows at the first sound of rain,
opening the door
for the dog at night.

I caress children, sympathetic
to their fragile questionings,
fond of their games.

And the small animals
of the suburban malls gather
a great indignation in my breast,
a longing to set all creatures free.

Suffering from the hollowness
of my womb, my Antarctic breasts,
I am the woman born for loving
who has not the luck to love.

Another birthday, another card from Vic!

I had no idea back then how a woman's fertility drops after age 30. Every month I would dream that I was not pregnant. But one day I just knew. Gary and I bought a test. It was positive! I made an appointment at the HMO and told the intern I was two weeks pregnant. I was 34 years old and the biggest adventure of our lives was just beginning.