October 3, 2008--The Ladies of Forest Trace: The Glass of Water

“You know how it is when you get to be 100.” It was my mother calling from Florida.

“Not yet. But I am beginning to get a glimpse of how that might feel.”

“I mean how you tend to remember things from the past while not remembering what you had for dinner?”

“That’s beginning to happen to me too.”

“Come to think of it, what did I have tonight? I think it was the chicken.” I wasn’t sure if she was joking. She has been showing some signs of a failing short-term memory,

So to change the subject and perhaps make her feel a little better about growing old I said, “To tell you the truth I can’t remember either. In fact, I was so nervous about the first presidential debate tonight that I couldn’t eat a thing.” I wasn’t quite sure how that was relevant--I too clearly was showing signs of discombobulation, “Though I did take a piece of klonopin to calm me down.”

“That’s very strong medicine. But if you did I hope you won’t make a habit of it.”

It was late for her, and in truth for me as well, almost 11:30, and we had both been watching the post-debate discussion on CNN. “So what did you think?” I asked.

“That’s why I called. To tell you what it made me think about. It took me all the way back to when I was much younger.” I thought she was again going to tell me about her sisters who were suffragettes and union organizers and who weren’t allowed to vote until they were in their thirties. But, she said, “I could see him as president.”

I wasn’t following her and asked, “Him? Who? See him as president?”

“I mean Obama. Barack Obama. Until tonight, though I’ve been supporting him for more than a year, to tell you the truth I couldn’t picture him in the White House. I wanted him to win, but I couldn’t visualize that. I don’t know exactly why but it was hard for me to imagine him there. In the Oval Office I mean. In the Cabinet Room. Making speeches in the Rose Garden. I don’t think it was prejudice. Though if I’m honest it could have been some of that. Remember how old I am. Things have changed since I was young, and I’m happy about that, but still I grew up a long time ago and it’s hard, no matter how you try, to overcome prejudice.”

“I do understand that, mom. What you’re talking about is something that’s very difficult to deal with. For me too. Though I have always been a liberal and was involved in the Civil Rights movement.”

“Maybe it’s because he looks so young.” I could hear her struggling with this. “Don’t misunderstand me because I know how this may sound—because until tonight he seemed to me more like a boy than a man.”

“He does look younger than his years. Though I think I saw some gray hair tonight. Which is good, or maybe it’s because we
have a new TV that’s high definition.”

“But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about—about just being able to imagine him as president. It’s why tonight for the first
time I was able to do that.”

This interested me because for some weeks now I’ve been checking in with my mother to see how she and especially her retired friends who live together in Forest Trace are viewing the election. How they are leaning since many, after Hillary Clinton lost the nomination, considered voting for John McCain. Some even more so after he named Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The women of Forest Trace for me have become my private focus group in this very swing state.

“It was because of the way, at the end when I was about to fall asleep, that he talked about his family. From what he said I realized that he had lived the same kind of life as I had. As poor Jews struggling to survive on the Lower Eastside, we, like him, experienced discrimination and poverty. We had to find ways to pull ourselves up. Like his father and his mother had to do. We needed to work very hard against all odds to make a living and to do well in school. And like them we not only survived but we, especially our children did well. America offered us that opportunity. Just as it did for him.”

“I know, mom, I too am the beneficiary of those opportunities. How you and dad both had jobs and saved so I could go to a good college.”

“And make something of yourself. Just like he did. So since I lived a version of the same life as his parents; and you, who went to the same college as he did, became successful, how we all overcame obstacles, I feel that I understand him better and appreciate what he has achieved.

“But,” she quickly added, “that’s not the entire story. Many struggled and did well. Others were less fortunate. But very few of those who did do well are ready to be president. That is a very different thing. Tonight, in the debate, he showed me that he is ready for that. To be president. Maybe he will even turn out to be a great president. Time will tell that of course; if, God willing, it happens. It will still be very difficult because of what he has still to overcome. To be elected I mean. None of that, the difficulty, is his fault.”

I didn’t need to say anything. What continued to concern her, and me, was obvious. “But this is not why I called. It’s something that I remembered from more than 50 years ago. When we went to Florida for the first time. Do you remember that?”

“It was to visit your sister Aunt Fannie and Uncle Harry who had moved there from New York. It was the first time I hade been south of New Jersey. The first time I had ever been in an airplane. I do remember that. Very well.”

“Well, do you remember what surprised us the most?”

“How green and lush everything was even though it was December?” I was struggling to resurrect my first impressions.

“That too. But that was not the most important thing.” She paused to give me a moment to connect to the stream of her memory. “It’s something I’m ashamed to admit. But what do I have to hide now. I’m such an old lady.”

“That’s true but only in years.”

“Stop saying those kinds of things to me. When you do that, I know to make me feel better, it only makes me feel worse—how you talk to me as if I am an old lady.”

“But ma . . .”

“I’m trying to tell you something important so please just listen to me. I don’t have much time left.” As if she felt my heart stop beating she added with a laugh, “I mean before I take my Milk of Magnesia.” She had had me worried so I tried to laugh along with her.

“You remember how the day after we arrived Fannie drove you and me from her house in Coral Gables to Miami Beach?” I indeed did. It was a glorious day and we drove there across the MacArthur Causeway with the glistening water of Biscayne Bay on both sides of the road and drawbridges. I realized like Dorothy, who no longer was in Kansas, that I was far, far from
Coney Island.

“Do you remember—look how it’s as fresh in my memory as this morning’s breakfast—that we had to stop for gas?” This I could not recall. “And you were thirsty.” It was remarkable that she would remember such things. “How you went to the water fountain next to the garage?” It was coming back to me. “And when you got back to the car remember how you asked Fannie why there were two water fountains—one that said ‘Colored,’ and if that meant that soda came out of it since Coca Cola was brown? I thought you were being so cute.”

That in fact remains vivid to me. Seared in my consciousness. “That I do remember. When I learned what it really meant it made me very sad that human beings could be treated that way.”

“But what I remember most is how embarrassed I was that I also didn’t know what it meant.” I heard her take a deep breath.

“The only way I can justify my not knowing was that it was well before the Civil Rights movement and since at that time we didn’t have a TV I had never seen pictures or films of things like that. Of course I knew about prejudice. Up North we had that too. It was awful and ugly but not like that. Not so blatant.”

In a rush that day back in the 1950s was coming back to me. “And then I remember Fannie telling us that there were beaches where colored people were not allowed to go. As if their black bodies would pollute the water if whites swam there.”

“This is my point exactly. But also how we, I mean I, did not act much better. We had a ‘cleaning girl,’ remember Bessie? We called her that—‘Bessie,’ even you did who were only eight years old at the time and she a grown woman. And she called me

‘Miss Zwerlst’ and you ‘Master Steven.’ Remember that?” Of course I did.

“And how did everyone in the family and in the neighborhood refer to their cleaning women?” I knew that too. “That’s right,” as if she had read my thoughts, “Shvartzers. And some of the girls here still refer to their aides the same way.”

She paused to gather herself. “I hate that and myself for that. That I sit there and listen to that and don’t say anything. What do I have to lose? I’m 100 and shouldn’t care any more what they might think of me. But still I just sit there and smile back at them as if to acknowledge that it’s all right to talk this way.”

To absorb the full measure of this, neither one of us said anything for a few moments. Only the static on the line between New York and Florida crackled.

I didn’t know how to respond and could only stammer, “Mom . . . you’re being too hard, I mean . . . on yourself.”

“No I’m not,” she shot back. “I’m not being hard enough on myself or I wouldn’t just sit there.” To that I couldn’t think of anything to say to make her feel better. She was right.

And I knew on too many occasions I didn’t behave any better. I recalled a time, and told her about it, when I was trying to raise money for a worthy project—one ironically to help minority children prepare for college—and I had a meeting with a very wealthy Jewish investment banker and philanthropist, someone who eventually made a significant grant, during which he incredibly referred to the students who would benefit in the same way—as shvartzers—and like my mother had just confessed I didn’t move to correct much less confront him. I wanted his money. So I just sat there being polite and acting obsequiously.

“Which brings me back to my point,” my mother interrupted my train of thought. “About what I saw and learned on that trip to Florida and Barack Obama. Not just about the drinking fountains and the segregated beaches about which I could justify to myself that I had no personal responsibility, but more important I caught myself acting in a version of the same way the following day back at Fannie’s house.

“You remember it, a small cottage in a yard surrounded by grass and palm trees?” It was indeed lovely, an image in Kodachrome color especially to a young boy who back in his native Brooklyn knew only front yards made of bare earth and packed clay. “Fannie had a gardener who acme once a week to cut the grass and prune the bushes and trees.” Of this I had no immediate recollection. “He was an old black man. Or at least he looked ancient.

“Fannie was out shopping and you and I were alone in the house when he came. And even though it was December, down there in the sun it was very hot. Through the window I watched him struggle to push that heavy lawnmower. He was soaking wet with perspiration and so I went out into the garden to ask if he would like to come in, get out of the sun for a while, and have a cold drink.

“I’ll never forget this. He took off his hat and stood there dripping, with his head bowed, not looking up at me, and said, ‘No, ma’me, I’m doing just fine. Though you’re very kind.’ With that he turned away and returned to his work.”

This was coming back to me as if through a thick and forgetful haze. My mother pressed on. “Well, it was very hot out and so I put a glass of ice water out on the back step and watched through the window curtains. He saw the glass; and after looking around to see if anyone was nearby came over to it, again took off his hat, and with the kerchief he had around his neck, which he removed, he with great care used it to lift the glass in a way so that his hand did not touch it. And rather than put his lips against the glass, he tipped his head back and let the water drip into his open mouth.”

This indeed I remembered vividly. I had been standing right there by the window with my mother. She had had her trembling arm around my shoulders.

There was silence again on the other end of the line. But I could hear my mother softly sobbing. “Mom, mom, it’s OK. That was so many years ago. That was a good thing that you did. And you’re a different person now. You’ve done so many wonderful things. Think about your students. So many of them black children who largely because of you became good students and went on to college. How you still hear from some of them; how . . .”

“But I should have tried to say something to him,” she said either not having heard me or choosing to ignore me, “I should have found a way to acknowledge what we all had done to him. Even if not directly, me included.” I could hear her sigh.

Again I didn’t know what to say; but just as I was about to try, she pulled herself back from her painful memories and, her old self again, buoyantly said, “But think, just think what happened tonight. How I now know what is going to happen. As I told you, I can now see that. Not because we owe it to him or to make up for the past. Not that at all. Because he is so exceptional and has earned it.”

“There are still five weeks to go,” I said, always the worrier. “and you never know what . . .”

“Believe me, darling, I know what even a day can bring. You can’t not know that when you live in a place like this with ambulances here every day schlepping people to the hospital or funeral parlor.” Once again she chuckled as if she were offering a cosmic joke—which I suppose she was.

“After all these years, you know me. That I’m a witch and I can see the future.”

And with that she hung up before I could tell her that I loved her.