Journal Entry - Guitar

Here's another journal entry:

In 2006, my maternal grandmother Dee Curry told me that “she always wanted to play the piano but never was able to. She said that when she lived with her cousin, her family had a player piano. Her cousin would play that, but never knew how to play [piano] either.

“The most striking part of this, however, is that she did learn how to play the guitar, as an adult. ‘Either Bill or Phil [her sons] bought me a guitar. Your mom has it,’ Grandma told me. ‘It has a hole in it. I still have the books around here.’

“I was astounded. I don’t think I ever knew that, but I love the notion of my grandmother playing the guitar and I love that she can still surprise me with more depths of character and information about herself.

And following is how I considered using this bit of real-life information in the story of my great-grandmother Leta Eckman’s life:

“Going through her stuff, after her death, characters find some music books—maybe guitar books. Did she play the guitar? No one knows. No one at all. It’s not in her diaries or in anyone’s memory. There’s no guitar. She used to like to sing along with the radio, but everyone does that, right?

“Someone remembers her singing him/her to sleep. ‘Or maybe I remember her telling me that.’

“’She sang in the church choir,” someone else says, “but that didn’t last long. She started carrying on with the choir director.’

“’Is that the fellow she was trying to help figure out if he was gay or not?

“’Could be.’

“’But did she play the guitar?’

“’Well, look at these marks in the books. They look like her handwriting.’

“’And is George her teacher?’

“’Is there some man involved? Then maybe she only pretended to be interested in music to connect with him.’

“Maybe, but here’s what I like to believe.

“Since no one knows for sure, I can just put it together based entirely and completely on circumstantial evidence. Or even, as my skeptical sister would say, the evidence I chose to give credence to. Anyway, she liked to sing, and she sang pretty well, but she never had the opportunity to pursue music—and she transferred, at least mostly, her music dreams into her sex-life. She definitely was creative there.

“Then she had an opportunity to try later in life, but she was insecure and shy about it. Secretly, she bought a guitar and hired a guitar teacher. Maybe she even went to a music store for lessons. She did this on her own—alone, so no one would know. Maybe she was planning on surprising everyone some Christmas or at a family dinner. But something happened, and she never was able to play. And she put the books away, for the most part. Maybe she hoped some day to play again. But she got rid of the guitar.

“And that was that.”

My nineteenth birthday, part two

During my winter break, freshman year of college, I visited Grandma Eckman in the senior home twice, once before Christmas and then on my birthday a few days after the holiday. It was a cold, snowy day, and I found her wrapped up in bed. But she roused herself, and we were headed into a nice visit, or so I thought.

She didn’t have her false teeth in her mouth, which made her voice seem a little slurred and kind of freaked me out a little. I could see they were in a glass on the nightstand.

I was feeling warm in my winter coat, and her room was about eighty degrees. Actually, having been there for about ten minutes already, I was starting to perspire. I unzipped it and then laid it on the chair.

In those few moments, she had somehow put her glasses on and teeth in. I don’t think I let on, but I was relieved.

“Now, turn around, turn around,” she instructed, her hands lightly fluttering in the air. “I want to get a good look at you.

I started to comply, but she interrupted me.

“All the way around,” she coaxed, raising her hand and circling with her index finger.

I confess that I felt both foolish and a bit proud. How many 19-year-olds get “sized-up” on a regular basis by an inquisitive great-grandmother.

“You gained some weight, I see,” she noted.

“They call it the ‘freshman ten’,” I explained. “The all-you-can-eat cafeteria. The food isn’t always great, but—“

“Don’t interrupt,” she snapped.

She was staring hard at me, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

“Walk to the door and back.”

“What?”

“Don’t argue with me. Just do it.”

“But I—“

“Just do it.”

So I obeyed, feeling more self-conscious than I felt in the gym shower.

“I thought so,” she mumbled, “just like Dale.”

“What?” I asked. No one had ever compared me to my great uncle-her son.

She looked hard at me.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“No, not really,” I answered.

“You will.”

And that was the end of that. She never brought up what she meant again, and mostly I forgot. We had other things to talk about that day. I wanted to share with her about my new life in college—living in the dorm, making friends, classes, changing my major from business to theater, having a role designed for and by me in a mainstage play and all the other excitements attached to my new college-student life.

She listened, or at least seemed to, for about 30 minutes. Then I saw she was getting tired and excused myself.

As I was putting on my coat, she asked me one last question. “When am I going to see you again?”

“Well, Grandma,” I answered in the vaguely hopeful, overly explanatory way that I would develop into an artform, “I don’t know if I will be here at Easter, since it doesn’t coincide with my spring break. And I’ll be looking for a summer job somewhere, too. I need to earn some money to pay for all this fancy education.”

I immediately felt guilty, but at the same time I didn’t want to make a promise that circumstance wouldn’t let me keep. While I intended to see her at the next available opportunity, I didn’t know when that was, and I feared putting any specific idea or time into her head.

“Okay,” she said.

She was used to disappointment, but she didn’t want to pressure me.

“I’ll keep writing to you, though,” I said.

“Good. Love your cards and letters,” she agreed.

She was already falling asleep, so I quietly finished, whispered a quick “I love you,” and was out the door.

It wasn’t until I was in the car, my well-worn orange Chevrolet Nova, that I realized I never told her about so much of how my life was changing, nor about how confused I was about my own evolving feelings. And what did she know about me that she wasn’t telling? What did she mean about Uncle Dale?

And then I began to think about my economics professor. While I was frequently confused about his convoluted presentation of macro-economics, GNP, supply and demand and so on, I truly thought that the man had the most kissable lips I had ever seen. And then there was Curt, a fellow student and actor whose body aroma always made me swoon a little. Unbeknownst to them, these two men lingered in my mind, and their presence stretched into all of my organs, sometimes so much that I felt like someone else was inhabiting my body.

Then my stomach growled, and I realized that I was hungry, and once I returned to my parents’ house, there would be lasagna and chocolate cake and brothers and sisters and fun. My focus immediately changed, and I stepped on the gas.

My nineteenth birthday, part one

My great-grandmother knew me. I don’t know any better way to put it than that. On my nineteenth birthday, I stopped by for a visit. I was on break during my freshman year in college. Having been born during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I was always on break for my birthday.

She was in her late 80s and doing poorly at the time, and I am not sure whether or not this was because of the holiday season or whether she was just getting tired of living. I found her in bed. This always signaled a short visit, but I didn’t mind. As she noted when I visited before Christmas, I already had one foot out of town, and she was correct.

This would be my last extended stay in my hometown for many years. I had already started to pack up my bedroom, so my mother could turn it into a sewing room—really, a sewing room. Yet this wasn’t an obligatory visit either. I wanted to see her, if only for  a few minutes, partly out of filial duty, but partly because I enjoyed talking with her.

When I first walked in, I couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep. She was still and it was quiet. She never liked the television. She rarely watched, and when she did, she had no problem turning it off or leaving the lounge to visit with company instead. So the television was off, and the room had a quiet that tapped me gently on the shoulder to warn me to be gentle.

“Grandma?” I said softly. I waited a moment, but when she didn’t stir, I called her again, this time a little louder. While she moved a bit, she still didn’t respond or turn toward me. I called again, actually at the same level.

Sometimes I envied the nurses in the care center. When they entered a resident’s room, everyone in it and in anywhere nearby knew it. They strode in like a gust of wind, their voices and gestures filled with confidence and energy. Where I—and many others—seemed to merge with the atmosphere—the nurses brought their own with them. Sometimes I wondered if we were simply being gentle or timid.

I walked around the bed. Grandma Eckman was lying on her side, facing the opposite wall. If she was asleep, I would leave. I couldn’t see disturbing her.

“Why are you out driving in the snow?” she said with a raspy voice.

“Oh good,” I said with relief in my voice, “you are awake. For a minute there, I wasn’t sure if you were.”

“Oh, I’m awake,” she said. “I hardly sleep at all any more.”

I wasn’t sure if she was going to turn to face me or not. I could not tell the difference between her deciding to stay put or just gather enough energy to turn over. After all, she was nearly 90 years old.

“Are you uncomfortable?” I inquired.

“Honey, I’m always uncomfortable,” she answered and moved just a little bit.

I was relieved. I really wanted to speak with her and not a bundle on a bed facing away from me.

“It’s snowing,” she said again to remind me that she had previously asked why I was driving in it. Her mind sometimes was sharper than I expected.

“It always snows on my birthday, it seems,” I answered. “I like it. Last year, we had a big snowstorm, but this year not so much. Besides, I really wanted to see you. I have to go back to college in a couple of days.”

By this time she had moved enough to look at me.

Even though she was in bed and had been there for a few days, she looked exhausted. Having heard her speak several times over the past ten years about how close she was to “meeting her maker,” as she put it, I rarely thought about any of her illnesses or relapses as the final one. Of course, she always thought this was the end. Then again, most really sick people do, whether they have the flu or something like cancer.

“It looks like you’re having a rough day,” I said.

“A couple-few rough days,” she replied.

A little of the fire was back.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she nearly snapped. “I’m old.”

“Old?” I scoffed playfully. “You’re not even ninety.”

She rolled her eyes at me, and I laughed.

“I saw that.”

She strained a bit to roll fully onto her back and then she raised her bed to sit up some more. I gestured toward her.

“No, don’t,” she ordered. “I don’t need any help.”

I obeyed.

Once she raised herself, she began to appraise.

“Take that awful coat off,” she ordered, as if she was asking a child if he washed his hands before eating. “You look like an eskimo!”

To be continued.

Journal Entry - Who's at the Door?

LIke many writers, I begin writing projects by scribbling notes, memories, ideas and experiences into my journal. (I’ve been keeping one since I was a senior in high school.) Some would call them my writer’s notebooks. Once I think, after several notes, that I am in the midst of a potential project, I begin to title my notes, so that when and if I return to my journals after the project has launched, I can find them. As Grandma Eckman was a living part of my life for twenty years, I have made many journal entries. Here’s one:

“Yesterday’s Bible lesson theme was about calling – what does God call us to do or be. In the gospel lesson from John (1:43-51), Jesus calls Philip, who brings along Nathanael. And the Old Testament lesson was 1 Samuel 3:1-20. This is when as a youth the prophet Samuel is called by God. However, he is young, inexperienced and at first doesn’t know that God is calling him.

“In fact, at first, he thinks he is being called by his master Eli, the high priest. Even Eli doesn’t understand initially, because both are asleep when Samuel receives the call.

“So—what struck me in this yesterday was something that’s been happening to my grandmother (not Grandma Eckman but Dee Curry, my mother’s mother). She’s 92. She doesn’t always sleep well. She spends a lot of her sleep time, more worn out (“I’m just worn out,” she said to me yesterday) than awake or asleep.

“However, at her age, I wonder if much of Grandma’s sleep is more like how I was in the hospital after my jaw surgery. Still under the effects of anesthesia, I could hear nearly everything. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I wanted to sleep it off. I would close my eyes, feel like I fell into a deep sleep and wake up. The clock was right in front of me. Only ten minutes had passed.

“But I wonder if this is how Grandma sleeps. She hears things and gets confused by them. There is a train of thought she has created to having a neighbor—a man—calling or knocking on her door or window. When she answers the phone, he sometimes talks to her (she says) or not. There’s no one at the window. And no one at the door when she opens it.

“Maybe she opens the door, maybe not.

“But when she first told me this, I encouraged her strongly to never answer the door in the middle of the night. Further, I told her she shouldn’t answer the phone. Only those who knew her would do either—and NEVER in the middle of the night. This disturbed me.

“Until yesterday when I began to consider that Grandma may be receiving messages from God—telephone calls, a visitor at the door. These could be—well—death. She doesn’t know. And she’s not ready yet—or maybe she is. She says she’s not.

“In Grandma Eckman’s case, she fought death, too. But she fought everyone. She was different. Her death—I think she may have been afraid of death. After all, she had kind of a wild life. Maybe she saw death as one of her husbands and felt it might be hell.

“Further, Grandma Eckman converted to Catholicism after she moved to what we called Little Sisters of the Poor. What if she started confession—talking to her priest? How would that have affected her? Guilt? Penance? Just wondering.”

Billy Graham, Part Two

Although not much of a television watcher, my great-grandmother watched The Billy Graham Crusades religiously, usually on a Saturday night. Even though she did not come from a conservative Christian background (first Reformed, then Lutheran and finally Roman Catholic), Graham’s charisma, his preaching and the music pleased her, so she watched.

Graham’s story is also intriguing, particularly his combination of fundamentalism and compassion. This drew audiences all around the world. Over a period of 50-plus years beginning in 1957 and via the growing medium of television, he drew millions of viewers and followers.

Rev. Billy Graham not only beamed into people’s homes, but would also broadcast his show live to packed auditoriums and stadiums, where audiences would behave as if he was right there in the room with them. Once satellite transmission became possible, he went international: 1) in 1989, he preached from London to more than 800,000 people gathered at 247 "live-link" centers throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, as well as 16,000 sites in 13 nations of Africa; 2) in 1990, from Hong Kong he preached to an estimated 100 million people at 70,000 locations in 26 Asian countries; and 3) in 1991, a Buenos Aires satellite mission reached 5 million people at 850 locations in 20 countries.

By the 1960s, Graham was a world-famous celebrity. He created his own pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and appeared as a guest on a 1969 Woody Allen television special. During the Cold War, he was the first evangelist of note to speak behind the Iron Curtain by addressing large crowds in countries throughout Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. An opponent of Apartheid, Graham refused to visit South Africa until its government allowed attending audiences to sit desegregated. Then when it agreed in 1973, he openly denounced the segregated political system.

A true evangelical, Graham was interested in fostering Christianity around the world. In 1983, 1986 and 2000 he sponsored, organized and paid for massive training conferences for Christian evangelists from everywhere, the largest representations of nations ever held until that time. In 2000, over 157 nations gathered in Amsterdam. At a revival in Seoul, South Korea, he preached to more than one million people at a single service. He appeared in China in 1988.

Still, Graham remained devoted to his followers and would-be followers in the United States. On September 22, 1991 Graham held the largest event he ever led in North America on the Great Lawn of New York’s Central Park. City officials estimated over 250,000 in attendance. In 1998, Graham connected with scientists and philosophers when he spoke at a TED conference.

He was a featured speaker at memorials and services after American catastrophes, such as the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, the September 14, 2011 prayer and remembrance service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and a special "Festival of Hope" in New Orleans with his son and successor Franklin, which was held on the weekend of March 11–12, 2006, after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

On June 24–26, 2005, Billy Graham began what he has said would be his last North American crusade, three days at Flushing Meadows in Queens, New York.

However, like a true celebrity, Graham has never really retired, merely cut back to making specific personal appearances, including meeting with President Obama in 2010.  President Obama was the tenth U.S. president to have conversed with Rev. Graham, dating back to Harry Truman.

One final note: As a guard against even the appearance of wrongdoing, Graham had a policy that he would never be alone with a woman other than his wife Ruth. This has come to be known as the Billy Graham Rule. “There’s a man dedicated to his wife,” Grandma Eckman used to say with a tinge of scorn in her voice.