Fifty-Nine Years of Updraft

McKinley School looked like a huge castle through my first-grader eyes, one with arched front doors studded with thick brass handles too large for the grasp of small child-hands. The brick structure seemed almost colossal with vast, awe-inspiring interior halls and high ceilings.  Enlargements of influential, sober-faced men hung on the walls, overseeing young elementary students like stalwart grandfathers. I started school there in 1955.

It was a simple, predictable time when mothers worked at home, sewing clothes and keeping house.  Fathers ventured into the mysterious work-world beyond the home, then returned in the evenings for tuna casserole, canned green beans, and muffins and apple crisp made from scratch.

This was the era when roller skates clamped onto our street shoes and tightened with a key worn on a lanyard around our necks, and no one worried about the potential for danger - for slipping a foot out of a loose skate, for banging our heads on the concrete sidewalk. These things were just part of life.

It was an innocent time. I didn’t know to fear strangers, and was eager to make friends. I met a girl nicknamed Senie at school that year who quickly became a best friend, one destined to walk beside me for a lifetime. Her mother, Gayle, would become a surrogate mother for me, my other mother, and I her other daughter.

In 1955 I was only six, and Gayle thirty-six.  I had no idea I would enjoy many magical hours in her warm kitchen brimming with snickerdoodle smells, or that she would someday host a luncheon to honor the women in my bridal party.  I couldn’t know she would permanently inspire and shape me.

* * *

A couple of days ago I visited Gayle.  I am now sixty-five.  She is a ninety-five-year-old matriarch, a supportive pillar of paternal love.  I’ve known her for fifty-nine years.

Congestive heart failure has been Gayle’s constant companion for a long time.  And yet as I entered her apartment, her smile and glittery eyes were as infective as ever.  We settled into easy conversation.  Her candid, humorous, animated stories - told with a soft-and-shaky voice - still held me captive. 

After we’d visited for about an hour, her breathing became more labored.  I knew it was time to wrap things up.  I cut to the chase. “Here’s a tough question for you, but I need to ask it.  What do you think explains your successful life?” 

She paused briefly, then spoke with conviction. “I’ve always loved life!  Always.  And I’ve always loved people.”  Her face glowed. How well I knew this!  She’d loved me consistently and well, almost as one of her own.  She truly had been my other mother.

Senie - her daughter who dubbed me her forever friend the year we both turned sixty - passed away in May of 2013. Gayle and I spoke of this again as I grabbed my coat and studied the family pictures covering her wall and library table one more time. Viewing pictures of Senie, I felt the sting of loss return in full force, and said so.  “Prayers help,” Gayle offered when I couldn’t find words to express my grief.  I instantly felt the usual updraft, the familiar accepting-and-expectant, hopeful current that had always defined her. 

Before leaving, I needed to know all was truly well with her soul. “How are you doing really, here in this little apartment by yourself?” I asked.  The white walls seemed confining, and the two tiny rooms empty and lonely. My eyes searched hers.  She knew I expected the truth. 

Despite ill health and the passing of her husband, daughter, and many friends, her response was profound.  “I have my knitting – see?  I’m working on this hat.”  She showed me a puffy white cylinder with blue trim, knitted with five needles in the round.  “And I have my pictures of family surrounding me.  I’m content.”

We hugged one last time, and I felt soulful strength flow through her frail arms.  “I love you, honey,” she said, her face nestled between my cheek and neck.  Then she pulled back until we were almost nose-to-nose.  “You’re not only my other daughter – you’re my only daughter, now.”  Our eyes locked.  “I’m content,” she said again, as if to reassure me.  

There it was again, the intimate updraft: satisfaction laced with hope. I felt it rising, lifting me, encouraging and supporting me to live a story written in her language, her vocabulary of love. I stepped through the door and looked back to see her smiling and waving, a heroine and mentor who invested her emerging legacy in my very early roots, and then committed to nurture me as long as she lived.