Neville Frankel

Through The Looking Glass

I was all set to pack up my Saab and drive across country to the midwestern city where I was attending graduate school. But first, I had to furnish the bare kitchen in the little house I’d rented.

Standing at the Jordan Marsh checkout counter in Boston, I was a bearded graduate student, at once self-involved, unsure of myself, excited to be leaving, and apprehensive about being on my own. Before me was the set of inexpensive cutlery and glass plates, all wrapped and waiting to be paid for.

At my side stood a beautiful, elegant woman in her early forties, with coifed chestnut hair and delicate features. She wore a gentle smile, she had a lovely figure, and she appeared unaware that men looked at her wherever she went.

The cashier, a middle-aged woman with greying hair, looked at her, then turned to look at me. She rang up my purchases, which didn’t come to much. The cashier took the credit card proffered to her, ran it through the reader, placed the receipt in the bag and handed it to me. Then she beamed a dazzling smile at the two of us.

“I do love it,” she said, “when young couples come in together to furnish their first home. I do wish you all the best.”

The woman beside me blushed scarlet. I followed her outside, grinning. I could see the embarrassment she felt showing on the back of her neck.

“How much did it come to, Mom?” I asked.
She shook her head, not wanting to talk.

“Oh, come on, it was funny. Dad will get a kick out of hearing about it.”

Through the blush on her cheeks, I could see the pleasure she took in being mistaken for a woman young enough to be my bride.

The next day, as I kissed her goodbye before getting into my car for the cross-country drive, I thought how wonderful it was to have such a youthful mother. It crossed my mind that perhaps I shouldn’t be leaving. How long would she remain so youthful? Would she still be so when I returned a year later? Today, I wonder whether she was really that youthful, or whether it was my desire to appear older that skewed our realities in the eyes of a less than observant cashier.

*

Just before her funeral last month at the age of 98, my sister and I went to the funeral home to say a final farewell. As I looked at her, lying at rest, she wore that same gentle, unself-conscious expression on her face. She didn’t look 40 anymore. Neither did I. As I turned to leave, I remembered that morning at Jordan Marsh. Only yesterday I was starting out as an adult. Fifty years passed in a flash. Neither one of us could have had any appreciation of the fact that most of our lives still lay ahead of us.

I’ve mentioned before that The Moon Knows Their Names, my forthcoming novel in March, 2027, has been in the writing for more than 60 years. That’s a long time for a story to be percolating before it comes bubbling out stale—that it’s been so long in the preparation and planning that the topics and conflicts it addresses are irrelevant; that the tale emerges only to discover that its time has passed.

But that fear assumes the writer is fixed in time, which, of course, is not true. I was ten when I first began thinking about this story. Had I written it then, it would have been the tale of an African child dealing with the loss of his grandfather who was killed in tram accident.

Fast forward a few decades. If I’d written the story at age forty, it might have reflected my experience of being in college during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the civil rights struggle, and the growing opposition to the Vietnam War. It might also have included my experience as a father raising small children, which colored my life in every way possible. I’m not suggesting that these topics would have appeared in the story, but that my experience of civil disobedience, distrust of government, love and marriage, and fatherhood would have given shape and color to the story.

But it turns out that I wasn’t prepared to write the story until I reached my seventies. Not that I was waiting for the right time—it wasn’t even on my radar. And then something wonderous happened. Our grandchildren were born!

I don’t think, had I tried to write this story earlier, that it would have centered around four old men pooling their emotional resources to raise an orphaned boy. What made the story possible was my own growth. No matter how fertile my imagination, I couldn’t have written this book about these grandfathers in the way that I have until I had become a grandfather myself. And if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to bring to bear the detail and tenderness of the interaction of these four men with the boy I’ve named, Bahari.

But the book has become about much more than four old men raising a child. It’s about racism and the cruelties of empire; about faith and tradition and home; and about being lost and then found. It’s about deception and self-delusion, and what’s really important—community, friendship and love.

But, above all, it is my grandchildren’s responses to the world—original, spontaneous and innocent—and the joy they evoke in me, that made this story possible. I can honestly say that, perhaps more than any work I've written, this is the most important story in my lifetime.

TEARING THE FABRIC

My mother suggested that on this raw March day, I might be cold delivering her eulogy at the gravesite if all I wore was my dark blue suit and tie. Wouldn’t I be wiser to go back inside and get my coat and hat? I shrugged her suggestion off as I usually do, and backed the car out of the driveway. Instead of continuing straight to the cemetery, I turned right, intending to drive by my mother’s residence to pick her up for the funeral. Halfway there I remembered that the hearse was bringing her, and that she would already be at the cemetery, waiting for us.

Her decline in the weeks before she died was rapid. She didn’t speak much. As I sat by her bedside one day holding her unresponsive hand and watching her uneven breathing, I heard her voice in my head telling me to go ahead and write her eulogy in advance because if I didn’t, it was inevitable that I would omit important facts about her life that I would later regret.

She was right on all counts. The weather was raw, a cold wind was blowing, and standing at the podium as I delivered her eulogy, I was freezing. And her eulogy was incomplete—I neglected to mention her fascination with the British Royal Family, and how she watched both Queen Elizabeth’s funeral with tears in her eyes, and the coronation of King Charles. And I neglected to mention her lifelong love of chocolate. I don’t think she ever met any chocolate she didn’t adore. Cadbury fruit and nut milk chocolate bars especially.

No one would disagree that in order to reach maturity, children need to separate from their parents. In my family we have always referred to this process as the “tearing of the fabric.” It happens gradually, in pieces, as the child become more and more competent in the world. The parental bonds need to be torn in order for the child to become fully self-reliant.

What a surprise to discover that a similar process takes place at the end of life, too. If the loss is of a parent, it doesn’t matter how old the parents and children are. My siblings and I are in our seventies, and we are all surprised at the recognition that we are, in some form, continuing the tearing of the fabric that begins in childhood. This is not about denial, or acceptance, or even grief. It’s about becoming accustomed to living with a void that can’t be filled. About learning to accept the many ways in which a loss will continue to manifest itself until it becomes a part of the new fabric. Her apartment is no longer hers. She will not appear again around a corner. There will be no taking her out to medical appointments or to buy clothes or out to dinner. Presence has become absence.

One of her last comments was that she wasn’t sure she wanted another birthday. Knowing who she was and how strong her life-force was, it was probably as close as she could come to saying that she knew it was time. We are not heartbroken, and we will, as she predicted, become used to a new normal that doesn’t include her physical presence. In the meantime, there are multiple ways to fill the void. Love. Conversation. Memories. Reruns of movies and documentaries about the royals. Ginger cake. And always, there will be chocolate.