Moving Day

I am feeling, in no small way, like a bride packing up her childhood bedroom. Wondering what stays, what goes and what goes to good will. If I slide into unbridleld sentimentality, forgive me, but bear with me.

Grace Presbyterian Church has been the childhood home of my ministry. Of our ministry. It's the place I wrote all my songs, save one. It's the place I led worship in front of hundreds of people, none of whom knew me from Adam when we arrived in the summer of 2005. I remember being awed by the sanctuary. Walking in and being overwhelmed by the stained glass, the royal red carpet, the beautiful chancel, the communion table- whose message implored "Do this in rememberence of me."

I learned alot here. Like what "Call to Worship," and "Words of institution" means. How to plan a worship service. How to be a part of a team. How to be a mother. How to drive fearlessly on I10.

I learned to love the history and the liturgy of Grace. I remember thinking, "these people must be really holy" as I stood in the shadow of the giant cross, suspended as if in mid air above the platform. What I learned, and this is no small thing, is that all people- regardless of denomination, liturgy or history- are working out their salvation with fear and trembling. Liturgy does not holy make. But I dare to say, Love does. And they've got it in spades.

As I sit here surrounded by moving boxes, stacks of books, layers of effort, hope and intention, I am reaching for the meaning of it all. And what I'm finding is simply the last page of the first chapter. One I hope to revisit with fondness. But one that's finished none the less.

Thank you Grace. For trusting, loving and letting me go. You will be missed.

You cannot love both me and Ezra Pound

I knew it would never work. Deep down, I knew. Because of Pound. I made it my business to know who all the Anti-Semites were in art, music, literature and the like. I was like a one woman Red Scare, except I was hunting people who don't like Jews, not Communists. As a child I wanted to be Ann Frank. Or rather, I wanted to play Ann Frank, in an original production, written by me of course, that would include "Somewhere" from West Side Story. Yes, Ann Frank the musical. My fourth grade English teacher politely advised against it.

Walt Disney
Ezra Pound
Charles Lindbergh
Martin Luther
Henry Ford

The list goes on, at least according to google. But back then, there was no google, and this information was hard to come by. It was passed with the salt and gefilte fish. Dropped like alka seltzer into conversations of adults that I eavesdropped on. Pop, pop. Fizz, fizz.

So when a man I liked in college, (I was in college, he was in Baltimore) who was courting me through letters and poems, declared his love for Ezra Pound, I should have run in the other direction. He loved ampersands (and apparently still does),played in a well known rock band and was considerably older than me.

He was very concerned that he couldn't take me to his neighborhood bar. And being a "writer" who loved "Pound" his neighborhood bar was critical to the formation and maintenence of his delicate psyche. I was 20. "I have an id", I whispered over the phone as snow piled up outside my window. "Oh, God" he said dramatically,"a fake id?"

I went to Baltimore nonetheless. Against my better judgement (where was my mother?) I got on an Amtrak train over Christmas break, from New York City to D.C., to spend a few days with ampersand guy.

When we got to his house and I dropped my stuff on the futon in the loft outside his bedroom he raised an eyebrow. Then I raised an eyebrow. I expected him to offer to sleep on the futon. He was expecting some other arrangement.

What ensued was a quasi-comedic unraveling of this poetry based relationship, starting with Ethiopian food, ending with me hiding out at a girlfriends parents' house in suburban Maryland.

What could be less poetic than eating Ethiopian food on a first date. When you're 20. At thirty five I will happily eat Ethiopian food in front of anyone. I am married to a beautiful man whom I love and I am comfortable in my skin. Back then I wanted all boys to think I wore no makeup ("oh that? My lips are naturally berry-crush"), looked perfect first thing in the morning, and never went to the bathroom.


In this day and age you cannot escape anyone. If you have the slightest curiosity about a person who was a part of your life in some capacity you can find them on the internet. And their spouses. And children. Whether it's ampersand guy or your high school English teacher.

I feel as though this is both good and bad. Good in a way, for compulsive memoirists like myself. But also bad for us. There is less liberty we can take with these stories. Though I can't imagine the ampersand guy would particularly care if I re-wrote a few details of our short, strange story.

I was a bit of a groupie I will admit. I loved that he was in a band. And even though this visit was going badly, not just awkwardly but badly, I stayed long enough to accompany him to a show at a DC club. We walked the ten or so blocks from the train in silence. When we got our names checked off the guest list he went straight for the 21 and over VIP section and began drinking scotch. I drank diet coke with a girlfriend and shot irritated glances at him as often as I could make eye contact.

By the time the show was over he was hammered. My girlfriend drove us back to his house in her VW Rabbit, and he spent the entire ride hitting on her. When we pulled up to his place, he climbed into the front seat and kissed her cheek, half falling onto the icy sidewalk.

I went home with my friend that night, wondering what could have gone so wrong. I was usually a pretty good judge of character. "Serves me right," I thought. "Pound." There are signs, there is writing on the wall.

Weeks later I called him, snowed in and bored. "What happened?" I asked, thinking of all the lyrical poems, letters and ampersands. "Truth be told, Cameron," he said, "I really don't give a damn." Maybe it was less Rhett Butler. I can't remember now. But what I do remember was the "truth be told." It was so colloquial. So average. So unlike the dramatic vocabulary of his written self. But really, what did I know? I was only 20 after all.

Jamaican Gold

When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with gold cross necklaces. I was about 8, and Jewish, so naturally this caused a bit of a stir in our house. We had a nanny who lived with us back then, she was from Jamaica and wore a light blue nurse's uniform. Her skin smelled like gardenias and cocoa butter and she did bible studies in her room at night, when I was supposed to be in bed. Sneaking glimpses of her bible and notebooks, I zeroed in on the crosses emblazoned on them. Bingo, I thought. This is my chance.

While Soul Train played on her small TV with the sound turned down, Mary would read bible stories to me, eventually giving me colorful, illustrated versions from her churches Sunday school archives.

If I'm honest, I will admit that my motivation for participating in these secretive studies was the glittery cross that teased me from the throat of my classmate, Allison Scully. Allison was also allowed to wear ripped jeans, had blonde hair and a tan-all-year-round complexion. She was not Jewish. And I wanted to be like her.

Our studies were secretive because Mary knew, much better than I did, that my Jewish father would likely object to his only daughter being evangelized under his roof. In retrospect, he might not have cared much. It was my lapsed Catholic mother that eventually put the kabosh on the late night Soul Train sessions.

Mary told me that she would get me a gold cross necklace if I finished all my lessons with her. She told me that the gold that came from her country is more beautiful than from anywhere else. She proudly showed me her own cross, tucked discreetly behind her powder blue collar. Good for her. She knew that visions of jewelry danced in my head and wanted to be sure I knew the meaning of that pendant I so desperately wanted.

When the day came that I'd correctly filled in all the blank, underlined spaces in my notebooks (and believe me, I labored over them) I casually approached my mother in the kitchen after she'd gotten home from work.

Poor Mom. Working her tail off. Sitting in traffic on the George Washington bridge. Likely worrying about my nutjob younger brother and how he was compulsively punching his Kindergarden classmates. The last thing she was expecting was a religious grenade, lobbed from her daughter's 4th grade hand.

Ironically, this is still how I approach my mother, 20, er, ahem, plus years later, with my biggest news. "Want something from Starbucks? By the way, I'm getting married and moving to Texas." That sort of thing.

Before the words had even fully left my mouth, she was hushing me and pulling me to the dark of the front stairwell. "Whatever you do," she said, "don't tell your father." That was it. End of story. The saga of the gold cross necklace had come to an end, at least temporarily.

Looking back, I am profoundly moved by this act of love from my mother toward my father. Maybe there was some genuine fear there, but my mother is not one to scare easily. Though my father has always, and still does at 82, cut an intimidating figure. Their marriage was a shell, propped up on holidays (Jewish ones) for us kids, and their friends. There was literally no love between them, though I didn't really know that yet. Though her own needs, and even dignity were often disregarded by my father, my mother took great care in protecting his Jewish-ness. Something that he himself cared little about.

Recently on the telephone he told me, "You know, when you were a kid, you begged me to send you to Hebrew school." I waited breathless for some additional revelation of my childhood self. "Why didn't you?" I asked. "I don't know" he said. Silence.

"Well," I retorted, tongue planted firmly in cheek, "blame yourself I'm not a Jew."

I kept prodding. "Well, your mother was not interested and..." "Dad," I said, "she was more interested in Judaism than you ever were."

A note of tenderness entered his gravelly voice, "I never knew that", he said " I never knew that."