Friday morning

13 January 2017

— But who’s superstitious?

Good Morning All,

I went to a colleague and friend’s 75th birthday bash yesterday and had the usual feeling of: what’s a kid like me doing, hanging around with all these antiquated folk? Not that my friend looks anything like his age, other than lots of laugh lines. 

We taught together at the International School for 20+ years. There was then and is now absolutely nothing racist, sexist, or bigoted about him. He always went the extra mile with his students, and they loved him for it.

That said, he is the only actual person I know who voted for Donald Trump. Of course it boggled my mind how a person as kind and decent as he would vote for an egomaniacal racist misogynist, not to mention one who so disdains what America stands for.

But since a birthday party is a birthday party,  I reminded myself a few dozen times on the drive in, “Shut up, Bheka! No political discussions whatsoever, not today!”

When I got there, however, I realized I need not have lectured myself. He and I spoke of old times and new. I got to meet his sister who’d flown in from Texas for the occasion. The three of us chatted together and with the dozen others present. And I found to my great relief I liked him no less than before he so seemingly voted against his nature.

(That does not mean, by the way, that the topic won’t come up down the road!)

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bheka

P.S. A couple of days ago, while I was wondering if a poem about The Move might gather itself into words, one did.

 

Kitchen Table Exchange

Bheka Pierce

For the woman whose house I bought,

The year had been hard, her father lost

In the dead end of February, her husband

In the midst of April daffodils.

Their photos on the piano told me again

How the faces of the recently dead can

Make you want to say, Please don’t smile

Like that. Don’t you know what’s coming?

We were happy here, she said, my man and me,

Forty-two years, our lovely kids, boy and girl,

Some difficult times, but mostly warmth

And laughter and unrecognized good fortune.

I lost my wife fourteen years now, I told her.

We had thirty-three of those blindly lucky years,

Also a boy and a girl who would every day

Make their mother as proud as they do me.

She looked for a moment startled that someone

Else was in the room, then a smile shimmered

Through her grief. Thank you for that, she said,

It will make the letting go a little easier.