Monthly Archives: February 2020

Passing

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My next-door neighbor died a couple of weeks ago. She was a good and thoughtful neighbor, an attorney in her mid-40s, and, as far as I know, her death was totally unexpected. The first two people who informed me said she “passed” and, frankly, as a teacher, that word sounds too much like a grading assessment. Jennifer did “pass,” I guess; unfortunately, she also died.

Jennifer knew my interest in Mobile, New Orleans, and Mardi Gras. In fact, I created a travel guide for her very first trip to New Orleans and loaned her some books about the city to get her prepared and in the mood. New Orleans was a perfect match for her; she loved things bright and cheerful and frou frou and her cozy back yard had decorations and light displays for every season.

I used to throw a Joe Cain Day party on the Sunday before Fat Tuesday. The Joe Cain Day parade is a uniquely Mobile celebration open to all participants – the “people’s parade.” A few years ago, a few days before Joe Cain Day, I drove in from work to find a big fluffy festive Mardi Gras wreath hanging on my back gate. I knew immediately where it came from.

I moved the wreath to the front door, where it remained until midnight on Fat Tuesday.

The next year, a couple of weeks before Fat Tuesday, I hung the wreath back on the door. The next day it was gone. Left in its place was a note from Jennifer letting me know that she had some ideas for improvement and was taking the wreath for an update. It was back on the door a couple of days later – replete with even more beads and embedded masks.

This year, I hung the wreath on a Tuesday night two weeks before Mardi Gras. Jennifer died the next day. The wreath will now have a deeper meaning when I hang it in years to come.

I gauge impending spring by the trees that bloom in the front yards of the row of prim townhouses where I live. A decade ago, I planted ninety crocus bulbs in my front yard with the plan that they would be the first blossoms to herald the spring season. Next would be Jennifer’s front-yard crabapple tree, followed by the huge spreading white cherry blossoms in her back yard, that hang gracefully over my back fence. Finally, my pink cherry blossoms would burst forth in my front yard. By that time, the dogwoods and redbuds and glories of spring would be ready to go.

The crocuses scattered in my front yard seem to have petered out over the past couple of years so the big harbinger of spring in front of the house has been Jennifer’s crabapple tree. It’s a tall, gangly thing. Several people who have worked on my yard have offered to chop it down for free. Indeed, it had a lot of dead branches on it but Jennifer wouldn’t hear of losing it. One Saturday several years ago, her dad and I managed to trim a lot of the dead off and the tree has shaped up fairly nicely since.

It’s still not a beauty, except for those couple of weeks in the late winter when its deep purplish blossoms burst forth.

Last year, Jennifer, who did most of her coming and going through the back of her house, commented to me that she had completely missed the crabapple blooming because she had been so tied up with business, personal, and other things and had not even looked in the front yard.

I assured her that the show of blooms had been particularly beautiful and promised to alert her when the tree started to bloom this year.

Jennifer’s funeral last week took place on a dreary rainy Tuesday. The next day, as I opened my bedroom curtains just after sunrise, was bright and sunny. I glanced over at Jennifer’s crabapple and saw the first blossoms high in the top of the sun-dappled tree.

Winter will pass. Happy Mardi Gras.

Triggers

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In the early ‘80s, I regularly took the Southern Crescent from Tuscaloosa down to New Orleans for a weekend or a few days. The price was reasonable, the ride was scenic, and I had places to stay. I was usually on my own on those trips, and it was then that I learned my way around what is still one of my favorite places to be.

Early one summer morning, I hopped on the streetcar at Napoleon heading to the CBD. When the streetcar stopped at Foucher, a poised and well-appointed young woman boarded. She wore a stylish belted summer dress and had a tote slung over one shoulder. She took a seat a couple of rows in front of me. She mostly looked straight ahead, but occasionally she looked out the window at the passing street scene as the breeze gently blew her chestnut hair. I was entranced by her calm and effortless grace and frequently glanced in her direction.

We both got off the streetcar at Canal Street and walked our separate ways. And that was that.

The next day, I was cooling off in the late lamented Maison Blanche flagship store on Canal Street. As I passed the fragrance counter, I spotted my streetcar crush, tester aloft, sampling fragrances with a customer. She had the same relaxed and focused grace as on the previous day. I watched for a moment and considered possible conversation starters.

Then I moved on and the young woman became a memory.

That memory has been nurtured for forty years now. Back then, I used it as the start of a short story that never found its end; it might be stored away in some box in a closet somewhere. I’ll never know how accurate the memory is to the actual event.

But I have been thinking about memory lately and a lot.

I finally saw Pedro Almodovar’s latest film, Pain and Glory, a couple of days ago. I always enjoy that audacious Spanish director’s work and was anxious to see this frankly autobiographical film from a master who is entering his 70s.

Almodovar is the force who launched the careers of the young Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, among others. Both Banderas and Cruz have rejoined their mentor and play pivotal roles in this latest film. Banderas is the main character, Salvador, and Cruz is his mother, Jacinta. Cruz is radiant, but it is the aging Banderas who mesmerizes with his stooped gait and desperate gaze.

In an early scene of memory, the village women of Salvador’s childhood wash the laundry in a creek bed. As they finish the wash, they break into jubilant song as they drape the laundry over the bushes to dry. The film shifts from such beautiful memory to scenes of the aging Salvador in a heroin stupor, trying to find relief from his pain, … trying to find release.

Almodovar explores the challenges of an artist who might have passed his peak and celebrates the memories that nurture him in his emotional ebb and flow. These memories inspire the artist and, in a quietly triumphant finale, bring his artistic energy back to life.

In a recent interview, author Haruki Murakami speaks of memory.

When I was in high school, I passed a girl in the hallway, a girl whose name I didn’t know, who was clutching a copy of “With the Beatles” to her as if it were something precious. That scene was etched in my mind and became a symbol, for me, of adolescence. Sometimes scraps of memory like that can be the trigger that brings a story into being.

“Symbols,” Murakami says, “don’t age, aren’t full of contradictions, and probably don’t disappoint anyone.”

At the 2020 Academy Awards, when Bong Joon Ho received the Best Director award for Parasite, he quoted Martin Scorsese: “The most personal is the most creative.”

It is such personal memory that provides sustenance in the bleak periods of the soul. It is memory that makes this life bearable when the inevitable setbacks occur. The young woman on the streetcar is probably about the same age as me now. I wonder what became of her. Where is she now? I hope she has had a good life to this point.

And I wonder what memories inspire her.