I couldn’t have written that thirty years ago. That is one of the things I like about being older. It frees you in many ways. With time, I have come to understand why things happened the way they did, and that has allowed me to forgive myself.
But it is painful, because when you reach this point in life, you know the years left are numbered and there isn’t any going back. There is nothing I can do to change what’s already happened.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Omar Khayyam wrote that, and he was so right. That is what is difficult about getting old: that finger has already written; you are stuck with it. It doesn’t stop me from trying, however. One of the most unexpected things that is happening as I age is discovering that relationships with those I have loved and lost have changed. It is somewhat like rewriting a story.
The mother I feared has in memory become the exquisitely beautiful woman whom I longed to get attention from as a child. Today I am fulfilled as I pass by her portrait hanging in my living room; she is here now, though she wasn’t there then. That is good enough for me.
Dodo, whom I truly loved and who was always there for me, is now, alas, not. It ended tragically, and there remains a scream of silent pain, but she is here in photographs and letters written to me over the years. It must suffice.
And last but not least, Naney Napoléon, mastermind behind the scenes of the whole, terrible mess that affected the lives of those she truly did love. Her “rage to live” was a passion for money and society, not something I admire, but no matter. I love her as I did then, and always will. I say to her now, as she often would say back then, “You are my own flesh and blood.”
Six
Sometimes as a child I would see a shadow of sadness pass behind your eyes, and there are moments I see it still. After all we have talked about this year, I have a much better idea where that shadow comes from.
Did you know that after you speak, you often silently repeat the words you have just said out loud?
I used to wonder why you did this, but now I understand. You are reviewing what you have just said, replaying it in your mind. It is a sign of how lost in thought you often are, even in the midst of conversation with other people.
We are very similar in this way, but I am usually lost in thought thinking about the future, and you are reviewing moments from your past. I wish sometimes we could break out of ourselves and just be in the present, but it’s not easy for either of us.
Since we’ve started communicating like this, I hope we will be able to do that, but you are right, I tend to replay moments from my past, imagining how they might have been. Some experiences are more real for me when I play them over in my mind’s eye than when they first occurred. Of course, it would be better to be in the scene originally, to “be present,” as you say.
This replaying of scenes from my past is one of the side effects of aging. It occurs rarely in younger years when time is speeding by, something new happening every minute. Now when I remember a painful scene from the past, I reconstruct it from another point of view, to make it bearable. I re-edit it, changing the outcome so the story has a happy ending, but sometimes I become overwhelmed and just have to stop.
Do you do reconstruct scenes from your past?
I think about events that have happened—it’s impossible not to—but more often than not, I am imagining scenes from the future, unknowable as that future may be. I am always planning, preparing myself for what comes next, and what may come after that, and after that. I find looking backward too painful; there is no reinventing the past for me.
I have drawers full of photographs, snapshots from my childhood, and I keep telling myself that someday I will go through them, but I haven’t yet. It’s as if I’m compiling evidence, as a reporter gathers facts for a story, but for now I find it too difficult to open the drawers.
Well, I wish I’d had the foresight to consider the future as you do. The idea that I would ever be ninety-one never had any reality for me. It was inconceivable. If it had ever entered my mind, I naively wouldn’t have thought it would be all that different. Wow, what a surprise. It certainly is different. No more swinging on the trapeze, no more running up and down stairs, lots more contemplation.
Once upon a time, long ago, women made up charming fantasies about themselves and fibbed about their ages. Until the day she died, Naney skillfully sidestepped the reality that she was eighty-six years old. It was a harmless preoccupation to hold time at bay.
There is something touching about the idea, the trusting hope that it is indeed in our power to control what is happening to our faces, our bodies. Today we can delay the decline, but the inevitable lies ahead. Inside, however, in our core, past the aches, pains and creaking joints of age, youth still resides. Keep that in mind.
As I write this, I am stretched out on a sofa. Flakes of snow drift past the arched windows of my living room. As I look back at my life, I become once again an acrobat on a tightrope, poised, suspended. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. But as I breathe out, I am no longer an acrobat. My life no longer depends on balance. I am free. I am nearly ninety-two, but at this moment I feel ageless.
Do you think about death a lot? Over the years, you have talked to me about dying many times. Plenty of people say they don’t want to be a burden, or may discuss a living will or a “do not resuscitate” order with their children, but you have always been a bit more, shall we say, detailed?
You have talked about ending your life on your own terms—taking pills if you were no longer able to enjoy your days.
This used to make me nervous, but the more death I have seen over the years, the more I know that no one can predict how he or she will react as it approaches. In the abstract, people talk about how they want their lives to end, but as the time nears, and the reality becomes clearer, their perspective changes.
This morning I woke up thinking I could have died in my sleep. Instead, here I am ready to go, “Up and at ’em.” Over my first cup of coffee it came to me that life starts out as a straight line moving upward, but as we age, it starts curving down ever so slightly, then faster and faster as the years pass, merging into a full circle at death, completing the journey from where we began. No matter how we plan ahead, there is no certainty when the curve will complete itself. It can, might, will at any instant. (Yes, even before I finish my coffee or this next sentence I could die.) No matter what our age, death is not in the distant future. It is here in this present moment, right now, alive and waiting. Accepting this fact puts a different light on how I think about death, and I wish I had become aware of this sooner.
Despite Botox and so on, time is not reversible. It has been marching steadily on since the moment we are born. “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching!” No secret the destination.
Woody Allen wrote, “Rather than live on in the hearts and minds of my fellow man, I’d prefer to live on in my apartment.”
Well, here I am, living on in my apartment. I am not afraid, only apprehensive sometimes that death may happen sooner than I think. I’m not ready yet.
If not in my sleep, I am determined to go into death serenely, not kicking and screaming, but using whatever foolproof medication is available to get the job done. Will I have courage to do this? This is only a possible option in later years, if I’m seriously ill and ready to go.
There have been times when, filled with despair, I thought of taking my own life, but I never wanted to leave you and your brothers with the burden of wondering why.
These thoughts pass. New projects appear unexpectedly, new adventures pull me back into life. My imagination takes charge, giving me strength to edit and reconstruct whatever the current situation happens to be; or I turn a corner and see something beautiful or someone extraordinary running toward me, arms outstretched, ready to fold
me in an embrace.
I hope to be around for a while, but I do want to mention some thoughts regarding my funeral. I don’t want you scrounging around thinking, “What is she going to wear?” This way you don’t have to worry about anything; it’s all mapped out for you.
I want to be cremated, and I’d like you to place a handful of my ashes in your father’s grave. When I visited Ned Rorem in Nantucket, I noticed a glass jar with an adhesive label on his desk containing what appeared to be small white pebbles.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The ashes of my mother and father,” he responded. This was the first time this possibility occurred to me. I had always thought ashes would be dirty, black, like soot in a fireplace after the wood burns down. But it turns out ashes don’t have to look like that. I wish I’d known this before, so we could have done this with Carter and your father and have kept their ashes close by.
I told this to Nancy Biddle, and when her son died she kept some of his ashes and found comfort in doing so. If it interests you, please keep some of mine in a jar somewhere. If not, no problem. Just scatter what remains in the ocean on a sunny day.
I had thought not to have a religious service, but maybe something more is required? It’s up to you, and however it’s easiest. My wishes are whatever you decide.
If you do want to have a funeral in a church, St. James is probably appropriate, as that’s where Carter was confirmed and where his funeral took place. If there is an open casket at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral home, dress me in one of the Fortuny dresses (the yellow one perhaps), which are in a box in the cedar closet in my apartment. Please have Aki do my hair (“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity”). Also ask him to select someone to do my makeup—I do not want the funeral home’s cosmeticians to do it. If Aki and his makeup person are not available, please ask my dear friend Nydia Caro to supervise. She will know exactly what to do.
At the service, I would like to have a number of my friends speak, and please ask my friend Judy Collins to sing “Amazing Grace.”
Well, I think you will be around for a lot longer, but I will be sure to do just as you wish.
You’ve talked a little about forgiveness and failures. Do you have many regrets?
Ah yes, let us come to regrets and as we do let me sing to you, Anderson, a song I once heard Naney singing as I burst into the room without knocking. She stood as if in a trance, her back to me, looking out at the rain lashing against Auntie Ger’s guest bedroom window.
On the wedding finger of her left hand, a gift from her husband, three round diamonds representing her three daughters: Gloria, Thelma, and Consuelo. Her red mahogany nails tapped the windowsill in time as she sang.
Time is flying,
Love is dying,
Youth cannot be bought . . .
She pressed her cheek hard against the glass as if to break it so rain would splash on her face. Then she hummed another melody before once again singing,
Dream, Dream and forget,
Pain. Fear. Useless regret,
Fly, Fly, beautiful lady, on light bright wings.
It made me so sad I wanted to cry, but instead ran and put my arms around her. Where had my adored, and adoring, valiant Naney Napoléon gone?
“Come, little one,” she said, “There, there now, don’t let’s be gloomy. Everything is going to turn out all right!”
And I believed her.
I wish I could be like Edith Piaf, belting out that I have no regrets, but I’m convinced that even the Songbird of Paris had some; why else would she so insistently sing a song denying she had any? My greatest regret is not making more of an effort to be closer to Carter, not talking with him about feelings or experiences we may have shared. Perhaps it would have made a difference in what happened to him. I always imagined we would be closer as adults, once we had lives of our own. I thought there was plenty of time.
For me the list of regrets is so long I wouldn’t know where to begin or to end.
It is only today, with the passage of years, that I can look back on choices I made and see how many were mistakes. At the time they seemed like wise decisions, triumphs even.
But the heart of the matter, the nitty-gritty truth, is that I am grateful I was able to pass this way. I wouldn’t want to go through it all again, but I am thankful that I was bestowed at birth, by my Fairy Godmother, with the gift of being able not only to give love, but to receive it in return. For I have come to believe that love is all that matters, and I have had more than my share.
So thank you, God, Moosha Moo—remember, from William James’s “Anesthetic Revelation”?—or whoever or whatever you might be.
Coming right down to it, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a moment. Well, maybe one or two. And if you flirt with the idea of reincarnation, who knows, we may meet again. But this time, Andy, I promise I will get it right.
Earlier I sent you a letter I had written to my long-lost father. I thought I would write one to myself at seventeen, a letter I wish had arrived before I headed to Los Angeles for the “two-week” visit to my mother that changed my life forever.
Gloria,
For you, underneath happiness lies in wait a dragon. If it is mercifully asleep, you are unaware the dragon exists, but it is there, as it has been since those dark nights in Paris when you lay in bed straining to hear the whispers of Naney and Dodo filtering through the half-opened bathroom door.
But now?
I am happy to tell you, I have become captain of mind, spirit, and soul on a boat capable of slicing through seas, rough or calm. Still, the dragon is patient. Though out of sight, it glides along in the pitch-black depths, keeping track of my progress as I chart my course. When I started writing to Anderson, telling him the Tale about all that happened, I felt the dragon quicken its pace. You are unaware, but I now know that my life has been a long search to slay this beast.
But not to worry; let’s not be hard on ourselves. I’ve made the dragon a friend and so can you; the kind of friend who lives in a distant land you touch base with now and again, and only to remind yourself of how far you have come from where you began.
There are a few other things I’d like to get off my chest, as the saying goes, before I pop off elsewhere. Not that it will change anything, just perhaps it will make me feel better about—ah yes—those useless regrets Naney sang about.
So listen, Gloria, while I tell you what might have been had I read this letter before it was too late.
First, I urge you to find a mentor—ideally, a woman in whom you can confide—as soon as you can. You need someone with a lot of life experience, who is open and interested in listening to you, someone with whom you can talk about the tumults raging inside you. You have no one, and have acted impulsively too many times to count.
I remember, particularly in my younger years, there were many times I wished I had never been born. But soldier on, I promise those moments will pass.
Go to college, and afterward, study art in Paris. Don’t get married at seventeen; wait until you are older and ready to start a family. You’ll know who you are by then. Right now you haven’t a clue, though you think you do.
As for marriage, I should be an expert, but I certainly don’t feel like one. I suppose I do have a few words of advice.
Do not get married until you are absolutely crazy certain this is someone you can imagine being with for the long haul. Spend a lot of time with him. Travel with him. Traveling together is the best way to get to know a person.
Also, fall in love with someone your age or close to it, someone with the same values and with whom you can communicate on every level. Don’t edit your thoughts, feelings, and values to please someone else; express them as they truly are. This is really important and, alas, one of my great failings.
Great sex is, of course, a top priority. Over the long haul it comes and goes, goes and comes, but hang in there. Make every effort to remain faithful; it will make you happier than you already are.
Oh, a
nd marry someone who makes you laugh. This is perhaps most important of all.
As for other regrets? I regret the times I said no when the answer should have been yes, and vice versa.
I regret the years of separation between my mother and me, and that when we did reconcile, we never, ever discussed what had happened between us.
I now understand that I was far more related in spirit to Auntie Ger than to my mother, but Auntie Ger and I never became close enough to be aware of this. Another regret.
I regret the few times I hurt Sidney Lumet, though I am relieved he knew of the great love I had for him and still do. Most of all, I regret tearing up without reading the letter from Catholic Charities advising me that Dodo was on her deathbed, and that I was not by her side when she died.
Although I tend to be hard on myself and don’t often feel I am qualified to give advice, there is one thing I do believe in above all else: love.
Love Is All.
Despite all that has happened to me, or perhaps because of it, of this I am certain. Can one ever love too much? Trust too much? Not in my book. Love and trust are my truths. They rarely fail, except when I don’t listen to my instincts.
I believe even now that a great love, a true love, is seeking me out as I am seeking him. Until you find that person, you will rush down many paths leading nowhere. These are tests from which you can learn truths about yourself and discover who you really are. There will be many Prince Charmings who turn into toads before the one you seek appears.
The Rainbow Comes and Goes Page 16