There is a shift in perspective that comes as we move through the years. One day seems much like the last until you look back across the span and see how much has changed. This poem captures my perspective in this moment after so many decades on this earth.

My Mortality

I’m afraid of

          nothingness

Of not seeing my

          children and

          grandchildren and

          great-grandchildren

bloom, as they add

beauty to our lives.

New babies for the world.

In the background

          always there

My fears, my lack

          of courage.

Will I die?  When?

How?

I go on day after

          day

with my unfinished life.

          Seeing friends,

          reading books,

And trying not to be afraid.

How does one sum up an entire memoir? Is it possible to capture what you meant to say or is this final chapter just a follow-up? For me, the memoir was about more than recalling the past. It was about seeing the full picture. This is an excerpt from the last part of my book, The Myth of the Yellow Kitchen.

The gift of returning to the past led to greater understanding of the present, the one life I have, and my place in the larger scenario.

The book was written over a long period of time. For me, time was needed to face the issues and emotions of those early years with an honesty that only distance can bring. Through my writing I learned to rethink my views of gender, relationships and Identity.

Before the divorce, I tried so hard to be the ideal wife and mother — making drapes, taking cooking lessons, caring for my children, and fulfilling all the fantasies I had of the yellow kitchen. I never thought about what I needed to realize my own abilities.

“Give your husband your pay check,” friends advised me when I first started teaching. At that time, my husband, Charly, held a psychology internship in various New York State institutions and did not make much money. But did her really need my paycheck to safeguard his masculinity? And what about my feelings of confidence as a professional and decision-maker? In the fifties and sixties, I never disputed the idea of fixed gender roles.

The divorce, such a tragedy for me at that time, became the impetus for growth, independence and the development of my abilities. I did grow. I did change. I moved from the traditional view of a woman’s role in the forties and fifties to an independent, professional woman in the seventies, eighties, and nineties.

I have been fortunate to have had several long relationships wth men after the divorce. WIth each relationship, I was reminded how men were often socialized to a view of masculinity that was almost impossible to attain. The myths about male sexuality were particularly difficult for them. For me, on the other hand, the feminist movement portrayed models and images that helped me formulate new conceptions of both male and female roles.

This all became clearer to me as I began to write. I started writing more than thirty years ago when I sold my house and went from room to room remembering what happened there, who we were, and how developed. Still, it took years before I could embrace writing, years of working hard to keep it all afloat and taking care of the children. Then, there was little time and energy to write. Now, writing fuels my passion and creativity. Often, I am at the computer at five in the morning. The gift of returning to the past leads to a greater understanding of the present, the one life I have, and my place in the larger scenario.

As I look back over my life, even now many years later, I am reminded again and again of that night long ago when Beth was sick, really sick in the middle of the night and I had to rethink who I was and what I needed to do. Then I found my strength in helping Beth. From where does the strength come now to face the ambiguities ahead?

Sometimes the blessings can get lost in the murkiness of longevity, the shadows of unexpected ailments, the vagueness of where am I going, if anywhere. But each day, I try and reconnect with the strengths that emerged after the divorce the force to get a doctorate when I had no money and three young children, and the power to enjoy the magic and mystery of life.

Rhoada Wald, author of The House Loved Us, reflects on the sorrows and joys of life as her perspective changes. It’s a journey filled with unexpected twists and turns.

I just heard that Jane died.  We met long ago in a class at Columbia and have been friends for almost forty years.  She died of a heart attack and was found lying on the kitchen floor alone.  Her sister emailed me the news about her death, just the facts, nothing else.  Such is loss today.  It is lonely to know a person is gone, gone forever, and no one to talk to about Jane, about our strange and long friendship, about Jane’s life, her marriage, her divorce, her life in Israel, her conversion to strict orthodoxy, and much, much more.  But I am almost accustomed to new deaths.  They happen all the time now.  Jane lived on the fifth floor of a house in Berkeley with no elevator and I always wondered how she climbed the stairs with her fragile heart. 

She married an internationally known, brilliant mathematician who also became involved in Jewish religious orthodoxy in later life.  That’s how they met.  I was the woman who escorted Jane everywhere including the mikvah the day before their wedding..  I had never been in a mikvah before but understood the myth—wash away all sins.  They didn’t stay together for long, they divorced after five years in Israel where the internationally known mathematician was revered and honored.  I never liked him.

Jane’s doctorate was from Princeton and she researched and wrote her dissertation at Berkeley on culture.  She was forever putting her concept of culture into a book on California but it never came to pass, although she always said, “I am thinking about it.”

I have so many stories about Jane, but some stand out.  She began her adult life with the cult culture of California and slowly moved to Jewish orthodoxy.  She came to visit me once on a weekend.  When she opened the refrigerator that Saturday morning, the light was on.  She started screaming at me to have someone turn the light off.  I thought to myself, “She wants the refrigerator light turned off, well, that’s easy.“  She would not let me do it, I was Jewish.  Someone was in my house at that time, someone not Jewish and Jane was comfortable with Cecilia turning off the refrigerator light.  At the end of that scenario, I told her lovingly but with the determination that she could visit me anytime, but never again on a Jewish Sabbath or Jewish holiday.

The Stages of Mourning

At this stage of life, it is almost impossible not to think about the past.  Suddenly, I remember someone and think about that person for a very long time. 

Today I remember all those deaths, Jane, Gloria, Sylvia, Sidney, and Gene.  My life can be told through those deaths.  There are many more, my sister, Milly, my brother, Sam, my Aunt Dotty, my mother, and my father—one is enough to tell the story and is the metaphor for all.  I miss Milly, she was always there, to help, to smile, to make me laugh, to encourage me with my writing.  One night, when I was young, Aunt Dotty came to give me a kiss before I fell asleep.  “What are those tears on the pillow” she wanted to know?  And now twenty-five years later, I think of my mother all the time.  I want to pick up the phone and say hello like I used to.  I am the matriarch now, the oldest one in all the families and that is reassuring and unsettling. 

Motherhood goes on forever.  It never dies.  My son gets sick and I worry the way I always worried but now I keep the worry to myself.

This year, particularly last summer, I have learned to find some peace in solitude.  Like May Sarton, sometimes being alone feels replenishing.  I get up when I want, eat at unusual times, watch TV late in the night or never watch it.  I have only myself to please.  But sometimes I feel the pain of acute loneliness, solitude troubles the heart and the soul and I want to weep. 

I Am Lucky

Charly left when Beth was three, Stephen eight, and Marian nine.  He saw the children on a schedule after the divorce but was not really involved in their daily care.

In spite of everything, they have blossomed.  Not that there weren’t some issues and problems along the way.  There always are.  Marian and Beth both have masters in their fields and Stephen is an attorney. 

They have blossomed as parents, in marriage, and in each of their careers.  They have managed to deal with the problems, raise wonderful children who are now grown and involved in their own careers, find ways to take care of the issues of marriage when they arise and care for me when needed.  I am in their lives.  I am lucky to have my three children settled in one place.  We are a family here in Boston.