Sometimes I Can See You...

By Polly Brewer

Sometimes I Can See You is a life affirming multi-generational tale. Some parts are made up while combining with a realistic memoir of a real person long involved in the art world.
far from being a family memoir, though it is that, these are luminous fragmentary tales of strong women and how they reacted to the men in their lives, sometimes disastrously but often strengthening. Plus a vivid journey back into 18th century colonial life in Virginia and a visit told with great immediacy to a small Ohio town in the 19th century which are intricately intertwined. The writing carries teh freshness of watercolor paintings with warm hearted view of life itself with all its fragility, losses, triumphs, and happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491800249

Polly Brewer

I'm late in returning to creative writing; maybe because of that, there is a lot of satisfaction and delight in doing it. Started off as a writer, coming from a writing family including Eudora Wellty, it seemed the thing to do. I hve been writing all my life, but took several detours, using PR writing for journalist articles and then when I ran my art gallery, Plums Contemporary Arts, press releases. Much of this was published in Washington, D.C., wrote a newsletter on social legislation and later at Stanford as assistant director of the Medical School News Bureau. More recently have taken several writing courses on from the Summer Arts Program at Fresno State, a jewel of an experience, requiring commitment and effort, but what rewards!

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© 2013, 2014 by Polly Brewer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/14/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0023-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0022-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0024-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913523

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART I

FROM PORTFOLIO I

POLLY WHO?

FLIGHT

GO DOWN DEATH

SIX MONTHS LATER

FROM PORTFOLIO II

PEACH PIT VIEW FOR SWC

AUGUST PICNIC

FOR RACHEL

RACHEL’S STORY

A CHESAPEAKE BRIDE

OFF AND RUNNING

DILEMMA OF NAKOMIS

VIRGINIA SKETCH BOOK

FRESHENING WINDS

AVE ATQUE VALE

PART II

FROM PORTFOLIO III

RIPE PLUMS SHOULD BE SWEET

FROM PORTFOLIO IV

THE COUSINS ARE COMING

SKETCH-SCENE I

STELLA’S STORY

A STRANGER TO ME

FLYING AWAY FULL OF

THOUGHTS AND NERVES

SHOWERED

GLIMPSES OF AN UNKNOWN LADY

THE PIE

WHAT WHITE SKIN HE’S GOT

LIKELY LETTERS FROM MARY LEE

CORN PUDDING AND PORCHULACA

JACK

JUMPING OVER THE CANDLESTICK TOGETHER

FROM PORTFOLIO V

OH MY DARLING DAUGHTER

BRINGING HOME THE BABY

MARGARET

SOMETIMES I CAN SEE YOU

PART III

FROM PORTFOLIO VI

WRAP ME IN WARM SILK

REVISIT TO TRAUMA

WORTH THE WAIT

MEMORY EDGES

ROYAL FLUSH

930 RALEIGH AVE.

FIRST TIME OF DYING

HOME BASE

FRIENDS

NOTHIN’ COULD BE FINER THAN SPRING IN CAROLINA

WASHINGTON D.C. NOTES

FROM PORTFOLIO VII

INTO THE COLOR SCHOOL

AFTERWARDS

ICE

FROM PORTFOLIO VIII

CRY CALIFORNIA

PART IV

OTHER STARTS

FROM PORTFOLIO IX

WINNING CHESS GAME

INTERLUDE

RHIZOMES

AUTUMN APPROACHES

ARE YOU REAL?

PETAL POWER

WALK UP THE BEACH WITH

BLUE STONES

REGROWTH

FROM PORTFOLIO X

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

For this memoir to start with Don is crucial as he was my anchor, friend, husband for many years. We had told ourselves that if we were twenty five years together it would be a gift and we had forty two years-a lifetime. He died November 2, 2011. There are four pieces which were written after his death. Most of the rest of the memoir takes place earlier.

And homage to daylilies, because with their unusual growth pattern they are symbolic to me of the fragments that follow. In its botanical Greek name, the daylily is called hemerocallis which means beauty for a day. The modern daylily, a marvel product of breeding, now comes in a wide range of rich colors but each lily still crumples and is finished during the night as it always has. Perhaps to make up for this rapid decline, it is instantly replaced by a similar bud, ready to open at first light of the next day. There are many flower buds on each daylily stalk and the older the plant, the more stalks it has. The daylily also comes in different heights and varying growth patterns—blooming early, midseason and late. Some now even bloom again after a brief rest. And after a long season, when all the buds are done, the strappy leaves remain, erect and sturdy, making their own mulch cover. Self sufficient, the rhizome system underneath serves as a storehouse for food produced by the leaves. Over the winter the rhizomes spread, ensuring a prolific next spring growth will happen so the past is ever making the new.

The daylilies pictured on the cover along with subtle images of the inherited past underline how much the present carries with it new life, also full of difficulties and challenges, but ultimately life affirming and beautiful.

PART I

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WATER PLACE

(Translation of American Indian name for Accomack, Virginia)

FROM PORTFOLIO I

I see the connection of my own fragmentary writing to visual work by artists that are important to me. There are often parallels. I have made use of these similarities so I write about their work as introductions to the various parts of this tale of my own family, both known and unknown as well as portions of my own story. I have called them From the Portfolio.

For most of my life, visual art has been intensely important. Different styles, subjects and mediums whether they are abstract or realistic are immensely pleasing, maybe because a painting, sculpture or fine craft is one into itself, but it is not. Everything is connected. A style emerges from each one. Also the old adage holds true. The more you look, the more you can see and the more you see, you are more able to look.

I’ve selected certain artists, mostly from Fresno whose work especially resonates with me and I know all of them well. Hard choices to make as I really do admire and relate to so many others. I also took pleasure in selling their work as I featured them in my gallery.

Yet because of her layering technique with its rich complexity, my first choice is June Schwarcz because of her use of light and shade through layers of color. She is not so well known, but in her quiet way, so very distinguished. Regarded by many as the nation’s leading enamellist, she has been honored with over twenty five solo exhibitions and over fifty group shows. She has also been the recipient of many important awards. If she was Japanese, she would have been designated a National Treasure for her immense contribution and creativity to raising the bar of the art of enameling.

Though we don’t often meet, I’ve had the privilege of June’s friendship for nearly forty years and for Don, it’s been even longer. He first met her when he was a young curator at the La Jolla Museum of Art and she was just getting into her highly specialized field of enameling. Some years later, she and her family moved to Sausalito.

Soon after Don and I were becoming a couple, we attended a gathering where we knew she had been invited; I could tell it was important to him that June and I should meet, like each other. That we did, and as I’d hoped, June and I have long been friends on our own. For sure, she’s been a role model and an inspiring delight to visit. She and I can rattle away on the phone, talking of grandchildren, new work, recent events, whatever. Don looks on, shaking his head, wondering what on earth we can say, it is taking so long.

I carried some of her small pieces when my gallery was open, but it wasn’t the right milieu for them. Her work was too specialized, expensive and unconventional for Fresno buyers. However, there was a splendid bowl with an inside of velvety sky blue, shot through with gold and violet and a dark, iridescent, textured outer surface. It went to a friend of mine who knew what a treasure she was buying. But it seemed, by and large, I didn’t have the kind of gallery where her work could be properly appreciated.

But since then, the city has grown up a bit. Several years earlier, Don had given June’s 80th anniversary catalogue of her exhibition held at the San Francisco Craft Museum to Jacquelin Pilar, good friend and former curator at our own Fresno Art Museum, with the hint that the Museum should show June’s work. In 2008, the Museum gave her a large retrospective exhibition with its Distinguished Woman Award. Pilar compiled a beautiful catalogue, calling the exhibition, The Resonant Form—what lovely, apt, words!

She wrote about how the original form of thin copper changes shape in the heating or firing process becoming increasingly more luminous. "By etching engraving and hammering, June created a dimensional texture on the surface of the copper and then used the transparency of enamels to create a sense of depth as in an alchemist’s lab she uses her own base metal to create ingenious objects and become sculptural presences that command one’s attention. These pieces stand or sit, bending light through the structural arrangement, texture, density and color created by her process. Organic in nature, they remind me of the hidden treasures that one finds when strolling through a field or wood, coming upon the flotsam and jetsam of life in all its myriad forms."

June herself commented in the catalogue, "I do not know how you draw the line between fine art and craft or between the utilitarian and the non utilitarian. I want to be an artist. I intend to walk where I choose and not care which country I ’m in." This from a tiny, fragile lady now in her nineties!

The work assembled for the exhibition contained a range of growing, evolving styles, most of it from the collection of one person who has long held great passion for her work. He attended the exhibition and, as with all of us, was astounded by seeing the collection as a whole so beautifully presented with proper museum lighting and display cases, set at just the right eye level for observing both the shape and the interior and exterior of the pieces, all of them becoming increasingly complex. Intricate shapes, glowing depths of color—you could lose yourself in each piece’s shimmering depths. If June was not such a good friend and lovely person, I would be reluctant to compare my writing with her work, but her process of building and changing resonates strongly with me.

POLLY WHO?

It is like taking a late afternoon walk with no shadows ahead but quite long ones stretching behind. I remember a quote from a wonderful book that had a comment that really resonates with me. It is: Stories have to be told or they will die and when they die, we can’t remember who or why we are here. For some time, my mind has been full of family tales that are so intertwined with memories of myself growing up, hell bent to leave Norfolk. A plunge into relationships with artists, some of which were disastrous and others quite splendid soon followed.

Just out of college and thirsty for big city challenge, it was clear to me that I must leave Norfolk to get into and on with my own life. And so I did, even to being called Polly instead of my given name, Mary. I can never remember liking the name Mary, especially since it was pronounced in our Southern household as MayREEE, except by my father who always said something like Mahrry. I dreamed of being an April or Emily, but I was delighted to learn somewhere in my teens that Polly was a nickname for Mary. There is no connection, even in sound, but that disconnect pleased me, and still does. There is something freeing in having a new name.

I still feel strongly about my middle name that has long since dropped off the legal IDs. The fact remains, too, that my father’s name of Elliott never meant much to me growing up. I shed it as fast as I had done with the name Mary. It wasn’t until years later that I really thought about that dismissal, since it is a rich name, spelt with double L’s and T’s. The El is soft and quiet, the next LIO is stronger and more lilting then, TT decisive and unhesitant. In fact, it sounds very like my father. It is of Scotch origin. Its clan still exists in Scotland with a fine blue tartan.

But certainly my old daddy was not from these blue tartan Scots. He was descended from Scotch-Irish people, some of whom immigrated to Ohio.

In addition to my immediate family there are two other women that I especially want to seek out. Rachel Upshur many times great grandmother and Martha Oliver Elliott, my father’s mother who has left only the barest trace of herself. My father was no saver of writing or records nor was he talker of his youth. So few wisps remained. In finally finding Martha’s and husband Sam’s grave, there was a sense of enormous accomplishment that they really existed and that dates were almost exactly with what I had guessed.

Much more is known about Rachel. I believe that, however hazily, these women are part of the strong threads of the many complicated, resourceful people who have been in my life. Rachel’s ancient trace of DNA is part of me that I have passed on to my own daughter and grand daughter. Cousin Petie and I gave our girls as middle names her family name of Revell as a way of honoring her. Somehow, up until now neither Rachel nor Revell have ever been passed on like so many of the Upshur names. It is a funny omission from our prideful family, since as the third Mrs. Upshur, she bore three sons who founded branches, so she was crucial in insuring that a strong Upshur heritage would be passed along.

What was it like when all these people were younger? Since they are all gone, many of the stories will be invented though I will try to represent them as they might have been, based on what I know and what few facts are available. Some actual journals, notes and even two books on the Upshurs exist, far more than is found in most families.

It is the not so apparent life behind these records that fascinates me. All the hidden things, how they reacted to joyous and tragic events, make me very curious. All the intertwining, connections, or their lack. All of these people are living in my DNA but who were they, really?

Except for my cousins, Bo and Petie, my immediate family is mostly gone. There is really almost no others of our generation except we three though we all have grown children and grandchildren. Far from being untidy and disparate, the memories now seem more like samples that I had seen on display at the fine craft shows I had attended, chosen carefully to fit into my small budget, so I generally knew what to expect when the actual objects arrived. When they came, I dived into the bubble wrap to find buried there those beautiful things looking so pristine and perfect, I couldn’t wait to put them on display. They had all been made for Plums. It is the same now, thinking of all these things and persons.

My own memories are kaleidoscopic enough. Grounding them a bit in the past appeals to me. My life is not so much in pieces like a patchwork quilt, but separated into widely different sections. Yet here I am, not feeling in the least like battered tumbleweeds. Just the opposite. I have been an active, and for the most part willing participant in all of these divisions.

To probe what I don’t know or remember and to verify or reject what I think I have come to know should be exciting, not daunting.

There was Ladymum, grandmother, matriarch, would be ruler of us all, and the others—mother, aunts, and the relationships to the men in their lives. For us all there were mutual losses and loves, pleasures, adversities, the ability or inability to listen to ourselves, to change, lose, rebound, obtain some state of grace, to be free.

The stories as well as my own are certainly full of changes, losses and achievements. There is a long string of sad, funny, hopeful, beautiful, difficult complicated events trailing behind, all part of me, living so strongly in my shared genes and memories. Now, all mine to write about.

1.AnArbitraryOrder.jpg

An ARBITRARY ORDER,

drawing by Suzanne Sloan Lewis

2.OldRaymondQuarry.jpg

Old Raymond Quarry, photography by Donald Brewer

FLIGHT

Looking back, which now is a very long way, Don’s and my first meeting seems like one of those convergences that either was pure chance or a highly likely event because we, in our own ways, were so ready, like footsteps walking along, following the other logically in a pattern that led us to interest in the other.

In The Art Lover a poetic, wonderful book by Carole Maso, a writer I have recently met and admire tremendously, there is a passage that has already said what I am after here, better than I can. The quote is: wanted so badly to get her right. To get at the truth of her, where likeness turns into recognition.

Before I first met Don, nothing in my earlier life had warned or prepared me for the quagmire I found myself in relationship with Tom Downing, that left me with a terrible sense of bewilderment and loss, as I did not know what I could or should do about anything. And there were always Robert and Lelia as priority considerations. What to do about them? But far from being a burden, they were my lodestars.

Then there was Don, so full of emptiness. His reserved nature wasn’t helping his deep sense of everything being awry, as he had no one whom he felt he could confide in. He never did talk much about that time, except to say wryly that he saw a psych who left him feeling more closed than ever. Maybe he was trying to pull stuff out of me, and I didn’t like that so I suppose I did clam up he once said, but the fellow was a total jerk.

Don said to me in planning for his celebration of life that we both knew would be soon,

No one will mention my dark side, so you should do it. I hated being so obsessed, addicted to alcohol and smoking.

I could only answer but that wasn’t a dark side, rather illness that you triumphed over and gave them both up, alcohol so many, many years ago, and even smoking cessation was long past. He looked at me sadly and said,

Not soon enough on the smoking, that I had to live with the regret that my lungs had been so compromised. And you should say that. So I will, but not at the celebration.

He always gave a lot of support and keen editorial assistance to my writing, but he did not want to read the parts about himself.

Don’t want to get in the way of your scenario and hate thinking about that time makes my skin itch.

Likely I became to him a sort of solace, a protection of sorts against his reserved nature, as I could always easily penetrate his barriers yet my outgoing nature never seemed to clash with his quiet manner.

He had a lovely wry sense of humor that he showed often to me and which was always endearing, as was his steadiness, gentle nature and wonderful art eye.

To go to a museum with him was like having a genial informed personal guide who could open my eyes to details or richness of a depth that I have never seen before.

Before his and my many friends, I wanted Don to shine, be himself, the one behind his mask.

GO DOWN DEATH

I did well enough this past summer though it consisted of a massive plague of ants and the knowledge that it was surely Don’s last months. The hospice nurses who attended him often told me I was doing everything so well, but I wondered if they were guessing that needing reassurance was a priority, since I was consumed with anxiety and an unnerving sense of not being myself. In truth, selfishness and exhaustion were my constant companions though I was given a lot of welcome help and encouragement from the nurses, family and friends. But Don was in the last summer of his life. It left me short tempered, fearful of so much and angry at myself for many short comings in the face of it all. This was likely my period of grief because both Don and I knew that his time of fairly comfortable years of long invalidism was over as irreversibly as a tide flowing out.

He hadn’t been the fellow I knew and loved for a long time, but we jogged along with his declining energy well enough. A sense of limbo, but not yet loss. Now it was a summer of the ever going air providing concentrator thump, to which I listened each morning, checking to see if it was still going before I went into the living room sofa where he was most comfortable. The thump of the concentrator told me he was breathing in air from the bulky machine that pumped air into his system as it worked in place of the normal bellows-like function of the lungs. The long pauses and then only faint thumps of the machine meant how shallowly he was getting any air, so a steady thump was the most noisy but reassuring even as the level of oxygen needed had been moved to higher and higher levels.

Often when I reached him, he was still asleep, but woke up promptly when I spoke to him. The sofa was familiar to him as he had long taken naps on it and he was insistent that he use it for evening bed, being familiar and comfortable. The practical hospital bed was uncomfortable he said, but his firmness in avoiding it said more. I felt some relief at his alert waking response, but was glad this was the morning one of the hospice nurses was coming, anxious when it was not.

I did not want to be alone with Don as I feared to face his death by myself. I had never been around a person dying and the knowledge frightened me as it was Don who was doing this, Don who had always recovered with hospital stays that pulled him around. For the nurses and personal attendant, he seemed to brighten up at their ministrations and they always assured me that his pulse was strong, blood pressure low, his grip remained unexpectedly vigorous. I would tell them of the faintness and length of time between thumps and the calls in the night for me to help him to the nearby potty chair that he had at last consented to use, admitting finally that having the chair near him was a good thing. And yes, I always told the nurses that to me, he was despondent and did not seem to want anything I did for him. They always nodded but said his friendly smile, interest in what they were doing and general responses told them he was doing quite well.

Daughter Lelia, far away in Alabama came when she could and she of course saw the decline as clearly as myself. She always had to return, so her stays, while frequent, were brief. She did her best about my anxiety of being alone with him and tried to get stepson John, who lives in Fresno, to be around in the evenings or early mornings, but he was not able to do that. Enough that I knew in a real emergency he would be here quickly, action person and doer that he is. The promise of the morning nurse visit or the attendant to help bathe Don became my mainstays.

It was me who had not had a snuggle for a long time and I told Don how much I missed it. He only replied with a distant look that told me how far away that seemed to him and was barely in his consciousness, much less missing, longing for it. In my duties for him, I rather liked washing his face and helping him rinse hands as it seemed our only intimacy left that was pleasant. There was always the strangest feeling that body contact was not needed or wanted except for the basics. Just the effort needed to breathe, making the concentrator thump, thump, the frequent nebulizer treatments of medicine and morphine of which he was plentifully supplied and which he gave to himself with care consumed, exhausted him.

It was all a living hell. If I could describe grief in a few words, it would be that. And to know that outside of my morning and evening washing administrations, and fixing meals that he ate so little of, my main purpose seemed to be to turn the TV on (so old it had to be done manually), fetch, feed. Prisoner, I felt which I also think is a huge component of grieving. Yet, his frequent toneless thank you irritated me. I asked him once not to thank me so often, I was doing so little. But he said he couldn’t do that, he had to say something. I ventured, then try saying that feels nice, which he said would not be true.

On the other side of it all, I was the one to deal with the proliferation, the energy, ingenuity and vigor of the endless ant invasion into everything—cat food, cereal, bread, toothpaste, drawers, sink, tightly closed containers everywhere I looked there were ants. Kill them, I did with pet safe orange spray, with my hands, with water drownings, paper towel massacres. Still new armies came and came again, just as vigorous, clever in seeking out everything. Their vitality totally vanquished me along with the endless TV watching by Don. He had always watched baseball and football events, but now the sports channel ran hourly. Young athletes, sweat pouring off their bodies, strong arms and muscular legs pumping, pounding as they ran to win, chests upright but heaving. As background, I hear the concentrator thump.

Then there were the progression of rowing competitions, the oaring, many arms rippling with muscle. The sculls moved effortlessly even while one edged ahead. To me, the worst were the cooking programs with multi-tasking chefs making their dishes look so tempting and easy and they certainly did that, while I knew even if I found the time or energy to attempt any of them and offered it for lunch or dinner, Don would only eat a mouthful or two. But he told me all these sports and cooking exploits distracted him and he enjoyed watching. But I was ever feeling churlish for being so careful to avoid seeing any more of them.

In effect, with the TV and the ants, life and energy was all around me only I was the exhausted one. The need for sleep consumed me. I did keep the garden going and watered and I thanked myself for doing that; I snatched at the opportunity to take brief walks, to go out to a lunch with an old friend, do grocery shopping, but it was always difficult in spite of hospice volunteer help or John. Precious, snatched times that were jewel—like to me. Towards the end of summer and early fall, Don couldn’t be left alone because of danger of falling which he had done enough times for all of us to know not even for a few minutes should he be alone. More and more anxious, I felt even more imprisoned.

Lelia had been with us in the middle of October and relief started with her prompt action about the ants. Her shocked brisk voice rang out,

Mom, we must be doing something immediately about them. Call your friend Vanessa right away. She’ll know a good exterminator who will use safe stuff. You can’t live with this like you are doing. It is an impossible invasion that has worsened even since I was here.

The next day, with professional help, the ants were gone. I still don’t know why this solution had not occurred to me, except I had thought it would be very costly. As it turned out, was far less expensive than I had thought. Probably any direct action was somehow beyond me, stuck as I was in a morass of anxiety and exhaustion. Lelia’s ant eviction determination is one of the best gifts I have ever received.

For Don, the end came almost as suddenly. Over a weekend at the last of October everything for him seemed to take a fast spin downward. With the hospice people, we made the decision that he needed more end of life care in the hospice itself. Lelia got here in time to be with him at the end. He died four hours after she had flown in and we think he somehow knew she was with me and that it was okay to let go.

My grief lifted, even in the immediate hours after he died, as I knew well, we were both unlocked from prison and he had fled. His spirit free, I was left to living, to make of it what I can. No ants, though I still sometimes wake at night from a dream in which I hear his voice calling me, as he so often did over those long months. It is with a drenching sense of relief that now I do not run down the hall to him, listening for the concentrator breath thump or its lack.

The good weather calls me to garden, to write, to enjoy lunch with an old friend lingering as long as we please, to take a nap whenever I want, read half the night. And there is still a lot more that I want to have and to do. And a younger, healthy Don would or maybe is giving me his familiar slight lopsided smile and saying approvingly,

Go right ahead. You sound just like yourself. And I am so glad.

SIX MONTHS LATER

Hi there. Don, I feel pretty sure you already know but I need to report that I did have such a grand weekend recently in the La Jolla area, hearing the panel about you and early days at the La Jolla Museum, seeing the ocean change from white cap froth to the gleaming deceptively smooth intense blue Pacific that has always struck me as against the often grayish Atlantic. As you might guess, shopping and eating well too, it seemed all the time. It was all lavish fun, but the major thing is that I found you there.

It seems no mistaking that it was more than memory or wishing you were there with us. It was so much more tangible than that, more like a vivid dream where everything is so real. Makes me wonder even more what is it that make dreams and memories so hyper? Yet this time, I was doing none of those things—just enjoying the ocean that backs up to the museum, appreciating the small breeze after the unexpected chilly weather of the day before, savoring the pleasure of being in La Jolla again, where you and I never lived but I have visited it often in years past with you and have always loved being there.

But just now, I don’t think I was so much into memory, only enjoying it all. I had left the museum to go out for another sight of the ocean. I was drinking in the view so thirstily when I felt something akin to a light, unexpected kiss or an affectionate arm thrown casually about my shoulder and there you were. No, not memory, not longing. Something else so unexpected, yet absolutely familiar. I knew at once it was you or some cosmic essence of yourself, hanging out there at the view you knew so better than I, maybe waiting since you knew I’d come to La Jolla sometime that weekend. It really was too precise to doubt, too full of affection and your own memories not to know that we were sharing our lives, present and past in a most intimate and intense way.

Of course, I had felt you the day before at the Oceanside Museum where your friends were, and their talks were so full of affection and good feelings for all that you had done for them. You, always reserved in showing your feelings, would be or maybe were so astonished and touched at how much and how warmly they remembered all the work you did with them and for them some fifty years ago, long before our marriage. But with Fred and Karen on the panel, how could I not feel delighted that I had come with my own friends who love trips.

Well sure, I did think your spirit had to be there too, but it wasn’t until the next day when we went to La Jolla Museum that I had this odd, private so welcome closeness.

Of course you know how much our back yard means to me. In recent years it seemed too static. The front path was the last project we were able to do together before your energy ran out. After that, there never seemed enough money or energy to tackle backyard changes by myself, and besides I wasn’t sure just what I wanted, though some repairs or changes were becoming necessary. In other words, the back was looking seedy, languishing in spite of the care I gave it. And well yes, it seemed that in those last few years you took no pleasure in it at all. I had the feeling you felt it was my baby, let her do with it as she pleases.

I knew I wanted something beyond more flowers and pots. And no more clunky old wooden furniture! But what else, I wasn’t sure. But now, all the shapes, structures, colors in the garden, like its well grown backbone seem alive again. Bright furniture, a new little patio of lovely pale brick, new grass beginning to sprout. There are places to sit, to eat, to contemplate, absorb, delight. It is altogether grand and has been accomplished with good help and the new money from painting sales. We had talked about selling some of our art but it seemed an impossible task that neither of us wanted to accomplish. And now it has happened with greater ease than I thought possible.

With the help of Steve and Vanessa, the sales went well and swiftly. In fact so easily I have wondered if your cosmic spirit hasn’t expedited it. What a kick you would have gotten out of my spending spree. I can hear you saying with amusement,

"You’ve earned it. Enjoy.’’

That’s when memory kicked in. In a delightful nursery we found, I had a sense of childish wonder that everything could be so fine and that you were delighting in my new found sense of excitement at spending money in such a place.

I do feel you’ve been gone a long time, though it is only several months. I have, of course, looked for you in places closer to home. Yet, somehow, we shared so little in those last months. We had both retreated at the coming loss, but we did not speak enough of our angst with each other, though you did say to me one day when I seemed especially exhausted and short tempered,

I know it is because you are grieving.

It seems now that I should have known I would find you down in bright La Jolla. In that afternoon, we were very much together. You have ever given me great gifts and they are continuing.

FROM PORTFOLIO II

Follows is a section of a piece that I had written for Don’s Celebration of Life service after his death. We did a mini exhibition of his work in a lecture hall at Fresno State where the event was held. It seemed the perfect spot with the casually displayed, but carefully chosen pieces on easels, because there was no usable wall space. It all seemed to fit perfectly, though very different from his immaculate hangings, both of exhibitions he had organized and from his own work in two different shows given at our local Art Museum.

How do I speak about him when he has left such a record of his work? Look around at this small but diverse exhibition and at the portrait of him as a young man. It is an early work by John Altoon that Don wanted shown at this gathering. In college years they shared a studio together and were classmates in Santa Barbara. They remained close friends until Altoon’s death in 1969, though Altoon had notoriously stormy relations with many others in the art community. Don told me that one afternoon they were just lounging around, not really working in their studio when John said, I want to paint you as you are, no posing, sit there as you are doing. The oil painting was briskly done, with few finishing changes and here it is, all these years later fresh as ever of a young man doing what? Idly looking at his good hands.

I always liked looking at Don’s hands. They were capable, strong, sensitive and finely made, hands that could fix or make so much. In fact they were one of the first things I noticed about him, as he had bought flowers for me, even before we met. When introduced, he thrust into my arms a beautiful bouquet of daffodils and iris. Spring flowers, a perfect gift for a bone-chilling damp early winter evening in Washington, D. C. His gesture was half shy and half triumphant as he said, They are for you. I felt like I was meeting not someone from the far away West Coast but known to me even then. Now nearly fifty years later and so familiar to me, those hands shortly before he died were still supple and strong.

Let’s look at this small section of his work and the first thing we see is how varied it is. And that was certainly Don. Complex, curious about a lot of things, willing always to listen, learn, experiment. Did you also know that he was a great lover of well written British mysteries? We often talked about the characters in the mystery stories as if they were close friends to us both. And how he disliked scented, flavored coffee and the work and hype of Thomas Kinkade!

Back to the exhibition, where he would want us to be. Note especially, the large pastels, as this was a direction that he intended to pursue, but his illness prevented. To me, they are more personal, freer and full of feeling A collector friend admired them and bought one on the spot. He remarked how different and more personal the pastels seemed from the earlier work.

He said Will the real Don Brewer please stand up? I laughed, Don only looked puzzled but remarked, to us both,

You are silly if you really think that since I have always been myself in my work. It is all of a piece. Of course everything I do is personal.

Though he always was very quiet and unassuming, Don’s character ran deep. Friends caught that aspect of him in their recent notes. Like from Armen, His gentle spirit, his kind manner and worldly intelligence made him such a wonderful human being; from Ellie, who also used the words kind and gentle but reminded me that I had had the good fortune of having shared a life, friendship, love and good adventures with such a fellow. From Nori, an out of town artist, who wrote me, "Don had a kind of grace about him; I often wished I could learn to be someone like him.’’ Then, Ebe’s expressive DARN at his passing. Yes, how I appreciate, understand and share these sentiments. And I would add, he had an ironic wit that often popped out and so much insight into so many things. He was a peach of a person, a true partner and soul mate, most of the time.

He retired from the museum world as the board and he had divergent views of its future, much like the times in La Jolla but he did not wish to fight again what he felt was a losing battle. Being no longer part of that world in which he had so long played a distinguished part gave him the opportunity to return to his own art and I was glad for him. He went like a homing pigeon first to photography, a medium in which he had long been interested. The first photos he made using an old fashioned view camera were outstanding. There is one here of a British monastery that is a favorite of mine. However, he soon left straight photography as the then new computer usage possibilities fascinated him. He turned eagerly to both drawing digitally and working with photography as he excerpted images from digitally scanned prints and moving them around to make what became elegant abstract drawings, though he called the series Mamas and Sibs. Yet all his work showed sensitivity to line, shape, and form and yes, sometimes his dry wit emerged that always lay very close beneath his quiet manner.

I want us here to feel celebratory about this special man and artist who is still very much with us through his work and spirit. He is in our hearts as part of all of us.

PEACH PIT VIEW FOR SWC

When you look at a peach pit, you see a wrinkled surface with deep ridges that could appear, if you squint, like ancient carvings. I once heard that miniscule images have actually been carved onto the pits. I can believe that, because I do have a tea set of Imari ware in the Thousand Faces pattern. At first, the faces are not there, just a pleasing abstract swirl of cinnamon red, light green and gold. You have to look very closely to find the faces but they are there, very tiny, but yes, they do eventually appear out of the pattern. I also have a small ‘worry box’ given to me by a friend who once lived in Guatemala. It is bright and cheerful, said to be quite big enough to place all worries. And of course there are the unbelievably minute Indian carvings on ivory, a marvel to behold. So I can see how a peach pit could hold real carvings by some finely coordinated eye and hand using a tiny tool to shape the grooves.

What though, if one could translate the whorls and ridges into tangible scenes without doing any carving at all. Suppose, then, you just look at the peach pit to see the memories, scents, events all there, jumping out of the grooves? Easy, it is, at least, to remember the fresh scent of the ripe peach it once was, juicy and golden, streaked with rose near the seed, or in these days, the white fleshed peach, unbelievably creamy looking and tasting so sweet.

From there, I can make a leap to the late winter rains that nourished the peach trees to make blossoms that turned to buds. Then their growth into fat, fuzzy fragrant smelling fruit. Suddenly I feel a longing for rain on the dry land that is the norm for Fresno August, a wanting to smell the rain that all the hose water never duplicates. I really do not like that parched look that my garden, even the zinnias get, in spite of all my watering. In humid Washington, D.C, where I lived for some years, there would be sooner rather than later a thunderstorm to clear the air for a bit. And that unique smell of those first drops on to the hot pavement, dusty, dry mingling quickly with the fresh and wet of the big raindrops. I want a lot not to be in Fresno in August.

Yes indeed, the peach pit can send me spinning along now. To catch a hint of the smells, the colors, is not hard once you get the knack of it. Much more challenging to see into the peach pit ridges the movements, the breath that give all the memories life. Can I translate what I see in the peach whorls? In my writing, can I get my voice beyond just a collection of character sketches and tales?

Once, I saw a young cat of mine, frail from feline leukemia, die within an instant. For the past days he had not been able to eat anything, but that morning, in response to my urging, he had managed to swallow a little. I praised him. He understood that, gave me a small cat smile. Then, in a tiny burst of energy, he indicated that he wanted to get into a nearby chair filled with cushions, rather than his towel lined box where he had lain sickly for days. He stretched his thin body against the chair legs, looked up at me, his eyes full of pleading. Of course, I picked him up, laid him gently on the cushions. One second his eyes were shining with pleasure, in the next, he gave a tiny sound, perhaps of surprise as all shine went out of his eyes. I knew that he had died even as I bent down to feel him. A whole range of emotions washed over me.

Guilt that probably the food I had encouraged him to eat had been too much for his system, relief that he had gone so peacefully, shock that it was all over so quickly. That evening I learned that Biggy, my beloved aunt had died almost at the same time a continent away. Had a wild thought that maybe her spirit had wanted to relieve the cat of the more prolonged death that she had suffered, wanted something of mine for company to take with her, knew I would readily give it.

And some years ago, Don and I were driving back from San Francisco. We were comfortable in the car, at ease with each other and full of thoughts about our trip. The radio was on. Suddenly an announcer broke in to say that two planes had just collided on a runway in the LAX airport causing many injuries and some deaths. All those people thinking they had just landed safely, some now a breath away from harm, while others had their life finished. Don and I safe and warm in our car, protected, miles and miles away, but it so easily could have been us on that returning plane.

Of course, no one will forget, because the images are now part of our national consciousness, the heretofore unimagined scene of people flying out of the falling Twin Towers like thrown rag dolls. Repeated replays on the TV over and over.

Now, too close, yet not my turn. My car crashed into a tree. I saw the glass shatter, heard a far off voice screaming, took me an instant to realize it was me.

We will do other tests, of course, but I am of the opinion that you are very lucky with a broken ankle, bruising and stiffening spine only from impact, said the gentle handed cardiologist, speaking in the lilting voice of most English speaking Indians in the Emergency Room at Community where the ambulance had rushed me.

And all the trips to see Robert, some to bring him home from the hospital. Once on a late Christmas morning we arrived to see the ambulance taking him off just as we arrived, but later, he was alert enough to eat some of the sugarless holiday muffins that I always made for him as holiday treats.

Didn’t think we could bring him around this time, the doctor said, and look at him, he said he was hungry. Yet the call came just a few weeks later that he was found, peaceful, but life gone, in his bed.

What a huge peach pit this. That is clear. The whorls are bottomless. These instances happened, they are gone, but still, they exist. How ephemeral such memories are, yet they have a life of their own, lasting far beyond the happening at the time.

Can anyone not see the rag doll figures or not smell the fragrance, taste the sweetness as the whorls on the pit reveal themselves, yourselves?

3.%20Woods.jpg

Woods, photograph by Irven Day Rule

AUGUST PICNIC

So this is a charmed circle, in its real life a clearing in the middle of nowhere, down a bumpy dirt road in our own southeastern Sierra foothills. Chaparral, manzanita, black oak, redbud and buckeye trees are everywhere. Our friend John painting out of sight, well back up the road in a spot that appealed to him. Don is prowling around with his new digital camera, looking for unusual natural objects. I can see him within a clump of trees, the dark branches contrasting with the bright light around them. Embracing the future, he has just said what fun it was not to have to worry about exposures, harmful darkroom chemicals and zone systems. He knows that so much can be corrected on the computer instead of the darkroom. It was an inspired birthday present to him from me as I kept its purchase a real secret which was hard to do. He who shows so little of himself really looked surprised!

John is over from the coast just to see this place. I am so glad, that as I had hoped, he is finding it exactly to his liking. He has set up his portable easel, already wet his watercolor paper to make his first vigorous strokes which run down in loose streaks. It’s so like him, these starts of free abandon; it’s later that the landscape he is seeing begins to emerge, only the brown summer dried grass will probably turn up orange! I know that several good pictures will emerge out of this excursion, he paints so rapidly. John, nationally known, was a star in my gallery. Now that it has closed, he will still be long time good friend.

A month before, I shut the doors on Plums Contemporary Arts after sixteen years, a long time for a gallery life in Fresno. I had hung on to it, good as any lover, but in the last few years, my feelings for it changed. Like the canary sent into the coal mines to test whether the atmosphere is poisonous, in Fresno the endless cool reception to art other than landscape and floral painting was hard to take indefinitely. And rising up so strongly was this urgent feeling of wanting to return to writing in a non-journalistic way. This want was among the primary reasons for closing. Still, I had loved doing the gallery. Don, with his experienced museum eye brought a special elegance to the hanging of the painting exhibitions; for me, it was great fun to find and arrange the fine crafts that Plums also carried as well as planning and working with the artists as to what work would be shown.

A wildly eclectic final exhibition was given of all the artists who had shown at Plums over the years, with a fitting name, The Last Picture Show. It was a brilliant success, lots of sales, big crowded final reception. The local art critic, a good friend over the years, said, Dammed if it didn’t seem more like an opening of a unique gallery, more than it’s closing.

Hating wakes, I saw to it that the party to close Plums was celebratory, refreshments lavish. No speeches, but many warm notes left in the open guest book. Then through a hot July, Don and I worked like dogs which is a silly statement, because no dog ever worked as hard as we did, as we packed up, returned art work, built storage space in our garage to stash what remained. It was a workout, but finally done, left us with a heady feeling. Our picnic with John on l80 acres of friends’ property in the Sierra foothills was our first outing of new found freedom. Retirement? Rather, set free! It came like a big embrace.

These Sierra foothills where I am today are not really in the middle of nowhere; its pristine location just makes it seem that way. Where we are is really very close to Kings Canyon National Park and about forty miles from Fresno. But even the journey is unexpected as one leaves the flat valley, to quickly climb and wind up a rocky, hilly road, rife with vegetation, and occasional breath—taking vistas. With the brisk change in height, as we go ordinary cares already are left behind. The fierce July heat had abated.

Here we are after many double ess turns, accompanied by a brisk little breeze and filtered bright sunlight. It is a luxury not having a single more pressing chore, and together with my two favorite fellas. Everyone is absorbed in what we are doing, so it’s silent except for the sound of a little creek or waterfall very near along with an occasional bird chirp.

Yet, I am still only thinking. The yellow legal size tablet is empty. I sigh in recognition. Sitting on a rough but stable wood seat that someone must have made years ago feels comfortable, as I lean up against the oak tree that serves as backrest. For some reason, all the ground has been cleared around it but the adjoining trees are in the form of a circle. Almost as quickly as a shadow vanishing in a sudden shaft of sun, something changes in me.

I am aware as never before, of the care which Don and John have taken in selecting their sites and how they have prepared. Don kept trying this place and that, by choosing, lining it up, then finally selecting one that he knew would work. John, maybe less choosy about the site, but faster, as he drenches his first approach to the paper which would allow the surface to be more receptive to the work that will come. He always starts with the general. Specifics come later. Both men will later continue carefully, John in his studio and Don now with the computer.

Well, in my own way, I can do that. Even have lots of practice as I have been using these very same procedures for years when a new exhibition or creating a new display is planned. The feel of pen in my hand putting words on yellow paper becomes pleasurable. Easy to disregard my original idea of making some sort of organizational chart. I know what I want to do and how to do it.

For a moment, it is like I can soon go into the warm waters of the Chesapeake Bay with my cousins, or later, a teenage me, lying on the white sands of Virginia Beach with my friends Kitty and Edith after a bracing swim in the Atlantic Ocean. Shutting my eyes, savoring these memories, it is only for the moment. I am happy to return to this sunlit day in the foothills and thoughts of reaching Brambleton. Beyond this day, I can easily go further back in time.

The charmed circle is letting me go back to Norfolk, Virginia where I grew up, but not on Lovett Avenue in the district called Brambleton, a riverside section of the city, where they lived long before my time. Never even been there as when I was growing up, it had fallen into decline and was known as a rough place to be avoided. It is very near the Elizabeth River, that I know, but can only guess at those young people. It is this magic place with John and Don working nearby with a sun comfortable as it wrapped around my shoulders, where I can see them clearly.

It’s odd now that I put my mind to it, how headstrong and unhappy Gladys was, the aunt who died years before I was born, how Biggy, so dear and close to me, must have gone through some kind of hell almost at the same time as myself, awash in frustration and unhappiness in Washington, D.C. And Uncle Jack, who early on found and kept his dearly cherished wife and the success he made out of several near misses, much like I have done.

I think, in a way, that my circle where I am sitting is letting me double back on myself. I marvel at how intricately everything seems to fit together, yet how separate all my family have been and deeply into themselves and their own agendas. There are intersections, contrasts, connections many of which I have been unaware of or uninterested in knowing more. There is approval and relief that the yellow paged tablet is filling up. I have long since ceased to stare at empty paper. My hand, my head are full of words. A sketch, Scene I comes to me clearly.

John, Don and myself take a break for the picnic lunch. I had chosen carefully. John doesn’t like anything fancy, Don wouldn’t like it if the food was too plain. He’d be disappointed if there weren’t a few treats. John, with his girth, stiff white hair, ruggedly handsome face could still pose as the Marlboro man or a hearty, handsome Roman as he is half lying on the ground propped up on his elbow. His bright blue eyes are taking in the whole setting with evident appreciation. Don is sitting up against a tree, slender, graceful in any movement he makes. His hair, once so dark, is grey now with some white, but still wavy and thick, thank goodness. Just some hairline receding that makes his broad forehead more prominent. I am in between him and John, dispensing goodies from a new gift of a picnic basket. Said Vanessa, who gave it, this is a promise I want you to make that with the closing of Plums, you and Don will finally make more time to enjoy trips and events for yourselves.

It is a super picnic. We’d never have been so fancy without her gift of such a fine basket. Another Fresno gift, it occurs to me, as starting as a business relationship over the years Vanessa and I have become family, like being aunt to niece, a familial relationship we didn’t have but coveted. In all my memories of family, we gladly made our own, out of choices. Delight, too, watching Don and John, so different, so intent on their own work. Don has seemed the most restless. John has already painted three pictures. He is far more into this day than Don. And I have made my yellow paged beginning. In our different ways, we have made something meaningful, or at least which pleases us. This creative, unhurried day is still so alive with the still bright sun, the breeze silky and caressing. Dare I say it’s been perfect?

Now, I watch Don carefully putting his camera away in its snug case. I wonder whether earlier hard decisions had given me this gift of intense sweet certainty of doing the right thing, putting me in this place. I wouldn’t even have access to this private wilderness without Plums, as the land is owned by close friends, now, but whom I got to know because they had sought out the gallery on their own, as it sounded like their kind of place, found their hunch was correct. In the process, we all became good friends. So now there are a lot of California friends, husband dear to me, acquired niece, a head full of memories and freedom to write what I please about those others that remain so much part of me.

It is a very bumpy ride uphill from