The Second and Only Part

The state of Bahia is bigger than Texas. The cobbled streets near our house were steep. There was an elevator, Lacerda, built from the cidade alta to the cidade baixa (upper and lower city). It was like a construction project in progress jutting boldly--streamlined, modern, a rival to Rio's more famous protective Cristo with outstretched arms. I doubt that I rode the elevator or sailed on the bay. I was content to nest and sing in our beautiful house. I was given the name Christine by my father who had seen Greta Garbo in a talkie playing Queen Christina of Sweden. My godmother didn't like it. She had a silver baby cup inscribed for me, "Irene" and wouldn't change it. How did I get a godmother when my parents were agnostics? Leo Wrench, married to Big Bob Wrench, was a friend and influential. Leo didn't like the name Della (my mother's name) so Della was changed arbitrarily to Judy, which stuck for forty years. My parents were also good friends with the British consul, a Catholic. Within a month of my birth, I was christened Christine. The certificate is elaborately embellished. The christening dress could fit a small animal. It's curious that the agnostics branded me with a destiny--follower of Christ. The Hindus say the awaiting soul chooses its parents. I can see it. I can see me also choosing that house in that place. The house was stone and, strangely for a South American house, had a large fireplace. It was a lesson in contrasts. There is a picture of me in front of the wintery fireplace dressed in summery batiste with my favorite object, a flyswatter. No blanket or doll for me. Judy said the bathrooms were like Grand Central station. I laid claim to the garden and my mosquito netted nook where I could hear the birds. I was carried about by the cook and her assistants, Alma and Zsa Zsa. My world consisted of music, rice, my necklace, and my flyswatter. My brother's existence was opposite to mine as he was going to a German school where he tackled his work dervishly and was first in his class by the end of the year.He spoke German and English. I spoke Portuguese in a waterfall sort of way. He was busy and accomplished. Our encounters were friendly but we were already on differing paths. I preferred to sing all day and sew. Except for the times I almost died (of a fishbone stuck in my throat, a tropical fever going too high) my days were pleasant. My observational skills were honed by visiting dignitaries. My mother thought it significant that Walt Disney was one of them. The Magic Kingdom coming to me.  .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Writing about the past I find brings too many chapters to mind. I like, instead, the daily outing adventures accounts. For instance, here is a message from 2007 in San Francisco:

As I was coming down the stairs, I heard a powerful voice singing, "Bringing in the Sheaves." A huge black man was singing and I was awestruck by the beauty. The noon crowd of San Franciscans and tourists was rushing by, hardly noticing. On a whim, I asked him if he knew, "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." He was startled by this person barely reaching his elbow in height but said, "Sure!" I said I wanted to sing along. The acoustics were phenomenal and our voices were perfectly matched. Next we sang, "Blessed Assurance," "I Love to Tell the Story," and "Showers of Blessings." At that point, however, he stopped to offer a prayer. He was all teary-eyed thanking Jesus for the "little lady helping me out today." Well, that made my knees wobble so I told him I could only sing one more song. "We finished with "Beulah Land." I don't think I have ever sung so well. No one gave us change; on the other hand, no one pointed out the political incorrectness. I was grateful for free speech and assembly! When I walked on to put my Fast Pass in the machine a few feet further, the regular ticket taker stared at me as though I were the 10th wonder of the world. For those of you of different faiths or no faith at all, read this as an account of a moment (for me, unforgettable) of community & happiness in "The City by the Bay." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So. You have a little flavor here of what my life has been. The rest can be gleaned by piecing together the messages and quotes. Thus has begun and ended the memoir of long ago days and foreign fields. 

The Makings of a Memoir

People have often told me I should write a book about my life. Here, in two installments, is as far as I have gone. Perhaps, it's far enough.

DEDICATION 

to the Keeper of the Universe,

who like a gentle breeze sets the

merry-go-round in motion.

CHAPTER ONE
 

Hoisted onto the Horse with the Tossing Head
 

Scheherazade was some storyteller. She went on for 1,001 nights of exciting episodes falling all over each other, none of them to my knowledge being about her. As I recall, those tall tales were chock full of magic fish, one-eyed men, vipers as big as palm trees, and a stone-blind giant. A+ for Imagination! Not me. No. I am going to spin out my life before your very eyes at a leisurely pace and without modern day counterparts such as UFO abductions, bogdwelling monsters, presidential conspiracies, or celebrity spottings. Take a deep breath, though, because, of course, I am going to have to bring in...the U., the ever present U. which leads me here and there and causes me suddenly to say, "We have to do this NOW! Up on the ridge this minute!" The right place. The right time. But I guess you can handle it or you wouldn't have chosen this book by its cover. Sigh. I suppose you are going to quit reading at this juncture. You think I am going to preach. Keep your shirt on. I'm not the only one in this book.

It (meaning my life) started in Brazil. Well, I know. I don't sound Brazil but we're not talking ancient history here. People got around in 1938 and my folks happened to get around to Brazil. It was pretty nice for me. First of all, I wasn't the firstborn so I didn't have to deal with being smart. There was no way I could catch up to my brother, Bobby, six years ahead of me and first in his class at the German school. Secondly, I was a girl in a country where girls put ornaments in their hair as I am wont to do; and thirdly, I had good-looking pets. There were three sloths, five monkeys, six rabbits, a crowd of parrots, and two dogs. I tried to teach one of the parrots to sing Cara Nome but she was tunefully challenged. The army ant parades over the stone wall were worth pulling up a chair to, and rounding up the scorpions beat Concentration any night, especially when we had to have blackouts. Fortunately, I was born in the late evening on the eve of the summer solstice, south of the Equator (12 degrees, 58 minutes) where summer is winter during the time of the Festa da Sao Jao, a harvest festival. Throughout June, there are fireworks. I arrived to the sound of forro bands (accordians, hand-drums, triangle) and starbursts in the city by the Bay of All Saints of the Savior. In short form Portuguese, we called it Bahia. .


Change of tone. It's my book. I can do it.


The faded photo shows a family, "Before." Mother is dressed in soft cotton, with sprigs of mignonette entertwined in the dainty pleats. Father has a white, long-sleeved shirt which will never be crisp. The older brother peeks over the head of the baby. He looks to be part of the group, although in later years he will seldom be seen by them. The girl, since it is a summer scene, is possibly six months old. She is held by her mother. Her brother's skinny right hand holds her right arm gently. Father is standing, proudly gazing at the little child. Mother is seated in a rattan chair. Brother crouches. Behind them are fat columns on which bougainvilla vines lean heavily. There is a wrought iron fence connecting the columns.  Checkerboard tiles complete the decor of a terrace. This is the girl's first house. It is provided by the government of the United States of America. Foreigners and Americans of all sorts come to this house continually. The smile on the face of the nearly bald baby is worthy of a painting by Botticelli. It is angelic, infectious, hopeful. Born on a stormy night, surrounded by the hymn singing of a Methodist missionary and the agonizing cries of her mother, this child will carry with her a mix of faith, resiliency, and danger and will think of these people as her Helpers. "Who will come and go with me? I am bound for the Promised Land." Her first baby gift is a necklace, an ebony fist, a powerful symbol of a voodoo religion which she will add to her Christian beliefs. She will never be too far from darkness. 

That's one side of the story, darkness. It's what happens late at night when the merry-go-round is stilled and the music stopped but in Bahia, darkness is disguised by dazzle. Salvador overlooks a bay. There are 38 islands in that bay. I probably never went to one but the view shaped my outlook. I am an islander at heart--enriched by an enclosed environment requiring a different kind of transportation so visitors would have to intentionally want to go there. It's not a loner existence; it is a special, set apart one. 

~~~to be continued...~~~

FAMOUS ROANOKERS

 The way ideas work with me is that they come in a rush from an unknown, but kindly, source. Usually, it's batches: two or three in a delightful collision with a title following soon. The Famous Roanokers started on June 17th, a lucky day, of I can't recall which year, when Rudi on Roanoke's City Market made a cane with the date of the peace vigil I had just attended. This was a silent standing vigil for one hour during which time I would look up at the Mill Mountain star and reflect on the past events of my life that were so important to only moi. When Susan asked me to make some tags for her store, the idea came to me of quoting people I knew at the City Market as to what they thought Love was. I labelled the tags with the brand, "Famous Roanokers" because to me they were stars. What they said was as important as any great writer or celebrity philosopher I had encountered. Then along came the idea of making a little book on the order of  a children's book with some simple drawings and those quotes. Like many of my book ideas (remember Hi Ann about a woman's letters to Ann Landers--that one still makes me laugh! and the one about the friendship between a racehorse and a chicken or the tender story of the walrus who loved yoga?) these projects always stayed in the Draft stage. Famous Roanokers never found its way to print. However, in subsequent years, my e-mail friends would find anecdotes about one of the FR's in the Inbox. I have a great nostalgia for these luminaries on my journey. They light up the night sky in constellation patterns I wish you could see. There's Gypsy Woman! Look, the Mermaid! the Cane Maker's Wife! the Wool Spinner! the Ladybug Sports a Goddess Necklace! the Dog with Coconut Breath! My wish for you, Gentle Readers, is that you always have such Famous Ones on your journeys, too!

Inheritance 1962

Inheritance

The inheritance of forest sounds
discovered by a thirsty child
is mine and from my throat
the years of vigil songs
rush in notes unreigned.
That I sing, therefore,
I cannot help;
only choice of length have I.
Oh, to sing unendingly.

In Loving Memory

IN LOVING MEMORY

October 1990

ACROSS THE MILES

Five years and how many stars away,

what have you seen by now?

Have you watched the binding of the Pleiades

or the loosening of the bands of Orion?

Have you counted the water jars tipped

into our mountain sky; followed

the guiding of Arcturus at his

appointed time;

surveyed the storehouses of snow?

If there is no weeping there, have you

attended the charting of peace

and hummed to the melodic

lights of healing?

Here, on this stilly autumn night

we recall the examples of prudence and

humanity, generosity and humor

you set for us

and think or you, Adventurer.

Christine Janz Taylor

Published in The Blowing Rocket October 1990

1973

A MEDICINE FOR GROWING PAINS

   It never used to bother me. Lately, though, it had become like a recurring dream that was clearly clairvoyant but without recognizable significance. I couldn't quite manage the feeling--vague, fleeting but often containing a sudden sharpness to it that seemed to be a warning signal.
   Three times a week, I go to the laundromat. I set my book on top of my laundry cart and walk four blocks to Sepulveda where there is a corner shopping area. The people at the laundromat are not a regular crowd or of any distinctive group, probably because it is not right at the beach. I like to watch the sorting of laundry at the tables and speculate on life-styles. Sometimes I have struck up remarkable conversations. Often, I have sat reading my book.
   On Valentine's morning, I was feeling sad.
   My small son Erik yells goodbye all the way down the street as he starts off to school; I answer until I can't hear him. On Valentine's morning, he had a bag of Valentines that he had spent a week addressing. He had not wanted to simply print the names; he had insisted on making great swirling letters with the first blocked off in the manner of Benedictine manuscripts.
   I hoped he'd have a good day. I kept thinking about the pencil-box episode in How Green was my Valley. Valentine's Day was going to be no easy task for me.
   As I left for the laundromat, I considered not taking my book but at the last second I shoved into the cart with a mad thrust as if to say, "You're the cause of it all."
   It was a windy morning. I walked over quickly.
   As I loaded my set of washing machines, I noticed a man at the table near me. I was riveted for a full moment to his small stack of laundry.
   In the time I've been going to the laundromat, I have come to the conclusion that sheets are an interesting indicator of lifestyle. There has been such a variety that I have been amazed. In all the time I've been going, nobody has had the same sheets as I, which puzzled me.
   The man had my sheets only his were blue.
   Mine are yellow but I'd like blue better. I wished I could trade. It made me laugh to think what he'd say if I asked him. I found it hard to concentrate on what I was doing. The little bunches of blue flower clusters on the sheets reminded me of the pattern on the coat my mother made for me when I was eight years old, the coat I had snuggled in under on the night train to Paris. Everyone then had gone to sleep a few minutes after we left Geneva. Except for me. Snow had begun to fall. I had never seen snow fall in the night outside train windows. The snowflakes were soundless and gentle; and I was warm under my home-made coat. I wanted to wake someone but I was afraid. So I lay awake all night crying quietly because I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful.
   I noticed briefly that the man had reddish hair and then I sat down to read.
   I needed my book. I have become, in the last year, very defensive about my book. I've wanted to put a brown wrapper on it, curl in the corner by the #9 dryer and close out the world.
   I set the book on my lap so no one could see what I was reading and bent over it. I became completely engrossed and was soon far away and long ago in France.
   I heard a voice say to me, "My God, you're reading Proust."
   I had the urge to growl, "You want to make something of it?" but I glanced up because I couldn't figure out how anybody could tell I was reading Proust unless he had himself read Proust. It was the man with the reddish hair and the blue sheets trimmed with eyelet.
   "Yes," I said and then timidly, as if I really weren't up to knowing, I asked, "Have you read him?"
   "I read the whole thing. Took me four years."
   I braced myself, "How was it?"
   "Unforgettable."
   He began to talk. He talked about Proust's village of Combray, about the wonderful characters and how he had read Proust in Kansas City.
   And I began to talk. I told him that I had always been very much nested in my house, coming out and into society like a groundhog to volunteer piano playing for seasonal musical events. I had been content. But when I started my writing class, I had a strange thing happen to me. I was confronted for the first time in a long time with my taste. Unknowingly, a new feeling had taken hold. I was meeting with a group I liked, intelligent, witty, and I had been overwhelmed by a longing. A longing for affiliation. I kept wanting these people to be "my people." I had begun to question my judgment because so much of what was important to me turned out to be important only to me. I had been shaken by this.
   He asked me why I didn't pick out a particular group to belong to that liked the same things I did. Was I aware that there is a Proust society? No, I hadn't known but I would hesitate to do that. I wouldn't know why they were there. Was it for the writing or the strange, gripping transactions? Besides, what if not one Proustian also liked Chandler? Would I want to be narrowed down to only Proust?
   He stopped in what I felt was the middle of the conversation and we went along about the business of laundry.
   I felt immensely better. I wished I could say, "Thank you for the chat; it will probably change the direction of my life. A sentence here and there can do that, you know." I thought I should at least say goodbye. I didn't say anything. I thought he had left so I sat down again as my clothes were drying.
   "Listen," I heard him say, "here is my card. If you ever feel like talking Proust, come on in."
   I looked at the card. It was engraved with the name of an antique shop, south, on the hill. The Graffiti Gallery.
   "I've been by your shop a million times! It's on the way to McDonald's. I can't believe it."
   "I know. You looked so different without your hat and your children but when you were talking about your class, I knew it was you. Every time you stopped at the window and pointed out that clock to your children, you had that same look. You don't know how many times I've thought of running out and giving you that clock! My assistant knows of you. She said if I so much as came to the door, you'd run off and find a new route to McDonald's."
   "It's true," I laughed. I told him I was glad for the card and the chat. I told him that I would never go, couldn't go in his shop but I  promised I would wave as I went by.
   Erik came home elated. He had gotten 32 valentines.
   It had been a good day. I was relieved.
   It was as if I found out twenty-eight years later that I was not the only one watching the snow fall on the night train to Paris. There had been no need for crying.

Somehow

SOMEHOW, IN A TIME OF TROUBLE

   A heavy snow had fallen for that early in the year. The milk had frozen and cracked the bottles on the back stoop. Soot had already settled on the sills when we got up. The snowflakes that I had seen drifting like lullabies during the night seemed by eight o'clock, when my brother and I set out for school, to have caught the news of wartime. They had piled up grey and lumpy, great newspaper wads thrown across each lawn.
   I walked with my older brother to school and I waited for him after school. I had to wait in the cold an hour and a half or walk home six blocks by myself. The choice was mine. I never gave it a second though. I waited. My brother was often taunted by a group of boys from his class that walked ahead of us. To have a tag-a-long little sister was considered unmanly. I could have spared him this abuse but when I mentioned that maybe he'd be better off without me, he said, "Aw, they're just jealous."
   We took our time on the way home, counting maples and looking for cardinals, but we didn't downright dawdle because we had to be back at 4:15 for Jack Armstrong. Also, my mother was alone and she was afraid of kidnappers. I figured when I saw the relief on her face that she was afraid someone would kidnap her. To be afraid for us was illogical as I was in the care of my brother, which was like saying I was in the care of my father. But since my father was away I didn't feel I really knew him; my brother's care seemed titanic in comparison to any father's.
   My brother was an unlikely looking hero but my hero, nevertheless. He was skeleton skinny, short, with dark brown hair that often looked more black than brown; it curled with Irish abandon and grew all over the place. His eyes were so dark I wasn't sure he had pupils as ordinary people should. He had too many teeth which, however, were evenly lined in a large mouth. During the winter, his skin was pale, never ruddy; he never blushed the way I did. Altogether, in winter, he had a ghostly appearance; he was a study in black and white like the woodcuts in our book of Pilgrim's Progress. His teachers remarked that he was meticulous, compulsive, industrious, delightfully well-mannered and a genius. I would have preferred to call him nice but genius was great, too.
   I liked having a genius around the house. It's handy not to have to know anything. Also, people outside the family assumed that because I was quiet and my brother's sister that I was a genius, too.
Being supposed a genius made up for too many teeth not evenly lined in a large mouth with straight-as-a-plank hair. I watched my reputation carefully by declining to speak and practising my handwriting. Kindergartners were supposed to only be able to print. I thought, though, if I could skip learning to print, I could save a lot of time. I was afraid if I went about printing at my customary pace that I would be so far behind by the second grade, I would have nothing but hours of homework. I would miss the Lone Ranger. I had extravagant long range plans which, among other things, definitely included the Lone Ranger.
   We rented part of Mrs. Elvira Hardy's house. The front porch had been boarded up to make a bedroom that led into the kitchen. Mrs. Hardy ate one meal a day at her Association Hall so she had no use for a kitchen but she needed the three bedrooms for her historical records. To use the bathroom we had to go out our back door, tear around to her front door and then upstairs. We had to be finished by the time she came home at 7:30. No getting up in the night. There was room on our porch-bedroom for a double bed and the radio. My mother was very cheerful about it saying that this was just all temporary. But actually, we liked it a lot. My mother had previously had servants when we lived in Brazil so it was quite a help to her that there was not too much to clean. She was able to bake biscuits, from an old family recipe, that were tasteless and hard. My mother had grown up on a farm in Indian Territory where the chores were suited to the child and she had never done anything but pick walnuts. My brother had learned to concoct spaghetti, though; we were well off. We ate early, not the usual nine o'clock we had been accustomed to, because of the possibility of Mrs. Hardy stopping in. Godliness was somehow related to leanness and starvation in her mind. Seeing us dipping biscuits into the sprawling spaghetti would have brought on a scathing sermon.
   We, also, after she came home, got under the covers to talk. We knew she'd eavesdrop and my brother was hopelessly subversive. Although he was a patriot and kept track of the campaigns on a huge map, he had outlandish notions of the future. He had discovered a book from out of the orient that extolled the virtues of pacifism. He said desperately that the war must be won but in our own private lives we were sworn to non-violence. When I say "we" I mean "me." My mother wouldn't hear of it. She thought we'd all go to jail. There was no way to contact my dad if we went to jail because he was at a top secret location in the Atlantic. One day, though, he sent us a clipping from Time magazine that told all about a top secret operation in the Atlantic, so he said we might as well write. My mother didn't care about writing but it made her a little more open minded about going to jail.
   My brother explained and explained at me how we were to resist should an incident come up. I didn't comment. As far as I was concerned it was a lot of malarkey. I was the smallest in my class. The teacher called me Concertina because, first of all, when the roll was called, I replied, "Present, Mrs. Lippincott," as though I were singing Mairzy Doats and Doesy Doats, and secondly because I was so tiny. I really wouldn't have had a moral choice in a confrontation but I was fascinated by his theories:
   "What happened to Jesus after He was in the Temple" he asked me. I shrugged. "How come no Bar Mitzvah? How come if He was an apprentice to Joseph He never even showed off with one little boat? He had to borrow. Didn't He take any pride in the work He'd been at for 18 years?" There were endless questions along the same line. And finally he popped the answer. "I'll tell you what happened. Joseph couldn't go through with this crazy idea of Mary's and he had Jesus kidnapped by Mongols. Jesus spent 18 years in China, that's what He did. But He couldn't tell anybody about it or they wouldn't listen to what He had to say. He had to be 'just-plain-folks' from Nazareth. And what did He say?"
   Oh golly, I thought. Am I supposed to be able to answer that? I was not up on these things.
   "I'll tell you what he said," my brother interrupted. "It's all here in Chinese. Love. Charity. And no hitting."
   He talked on this way until it was time for Inner Sanctum during which I remained under the covers. Lights out would come swiftly with thoughts in my mind of where we would all end up. My mother, in her place in the middle of the bed would sing dully, "Does you want the stars to play with or the moon to run away with...in your mammy's arms a creepin' soon you will be sleepin'" and would be the first one asleep.
   The late November snow staged the scene for finding out what this no hitting entailed.
   When I go out of school the snow seemed camel high. I waited on the steps imagining a ride to Jack Frost's glass palace. My brother was among the last to come from class. The six boys were ahead, throwing snowballs. I am convinced that I was not intended as a target but it all happened so quickly that everyone assumed instantly that it was an intentional blow, a challenge. One of the snowballs hit me in the eye with full force. I did not cry out although the pain was fierce because I was so scared. I saw the look of rage on my brother's face. Fighting six heavy opponents was going to get us massacred. Resisting was going to accomplish the same thing. I saw the grisly end coming as the boys surged toward us like a glacier turned into a flash flood. They couldn't have been more than four feet away when suddenly my brother flung his arms, scattering his books across a snow bank. He began shouting in a torrent of passion, "Holy Mother! Queen of the Angels! Strike down with thy divine touch the souls of mine enemies! Michael, King of all Glory! Cut away the eyes of these abominations you see before you and roll them to the gates of everlasting Hell. Spit our their hearts from your mercy and twist their veins of ice into a crown..." Throughout, he was spinning, rolling, flailing about in an on the snowbank, the wildest creature I had ever imagined. He looked like a character in a sped-up silent movie making angels in the snow. I wanted to laugh at this black and white extravaganza but the accompanying sound was terrifying, unearthly and came out in such a rush that I was paralyzed with fear. The boys watched a full minute and then took off like the Devil was after them.
   My brother and I sat in the snow awhile not saying anything. What would we have done if his attack hadn't worked? I never after had to find out.
   However, the lesson came in handy on a more minor scale when my son Erik was about four. I was saddled with a new neighbor's boy. The boy was a brat, a whiner, a temper-tantrum prone, unimaginative poor excuse for a human being. I did what I could but was getting nowhere much and the influence on Erik was devastating. My joy of a boy, my wild-haired Irishman, famed for riddles and long distance rock climbing was turning into a brat, a whiner, a temper-tantrum prone, unimaginative excuse for a human being.
   One afternoon, I was sitting in the bedroom which functions much like the old porch-bedroom only it manages to contain a rocker, a TV and a table where we have our spaghetti, in the same amount of space. I had had enough of both the boys. I eyed the bed. It is not a regular bed with a headboard, springs, slats and such refinements; it is two double mattresses on top of each other, very fine for jumping on. Usually it has eight or so bed pillows in differing cases, unarranged, which are not for having fights because someone might break one of my long cherished souvenirs. The pillows are for getting comfied-in and for constructing secret caves. The bed is about four feet from the rocker and had at that time a white spread; it looked very like a snowbank.
   With a speed I've never been know to have, I leaped onto the bed. I set myself like Joan of Arc on bent knee and with my "sword" swiped at the pillows and shouted, "Queen of the Angels! Hear my supplication! Spill milk over the heads of mine enemies and fling their teddies to the far corners of the earth! Take away this burden and spread your smile of glory over all! And then I cracked up laughing looking at those two faces. It worked. I only did it once but it was as though I had the power of the evil eye. I never needed it again.

   My brother came recently to see me after a long absence. He didn't recall his theories, the confrontation, Jack Armstrong, or even being a genius. He remembered our Saturday rides on the elevated when we went to the city, walked from one end of Grand Central to the other and then got back on. I had forgotten.
   It seems we pluck from our memories the moments that we need. And at that critical hour, when Erik was about four, with all flanks moving in on me, I needed a snowbank and a peace plan.