Saying Goodbye to My Friend Howard Zinn

We have lost a gift, which having received it, all of us might become.
AW
Photo: @1991 by Jean Weisinger
©2010 by Alice Walker

On hearing the news of his death.

Me: Howie, Where did you go?

Howie: What do you mean, Where did I go? As soon as I died, I went back to Boston.

I met Howard Zinn in 1961 my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over. My African roommate and I got a good look at him everyday when he came for his mail in the post-office just beneath our dormitory window. He was always in motion, but would stop frequently to talk to the many students and administrators and total strangers that seemed attracted to his energy of non-hesitation to engage. We met formally when some members of my class were being honored and I was among them. I don’t remember what we were being honored for, but Howard and I ended up sitting next to each other. He remembered this later; I did not. He was the first white person I’d sat next to; we talked. He claimed I was “ironic.” I was surprised he did not feel white.

I knew nothing of immigrants (which his parents were) or of Jews. Nothing of his father’s and his own working class background. Nothing of his awareness of poverty and slums. Nothing of why a white person could exist in America and not feel white: i.e. heavy, oppressive, threatening and almost inevitably insensitive to the feelings of a person of color. The whole of Georgia was segregated at that time; and in coming to Spelman I had had a run-in with the Greyhound bus driver (white as described above) who had forced me to sit in the back of the bus. This moment had changed my life, though how that would play out was of course uncertain to a seventeen year old.

One way it did play out was that the very next summer I was on my way to the Soviet Union to see how white those folks were and to tell as many of them as I could, even if they were white, that I did not agree to my country’s notions of bombing them. I didn’t see a lot of generals, but children and women and men and old people of both sexes were everywhere. They were usually smiling and offering flowers or vodka. There was no “iron curtain” between us, as I’d been told to expect by Georgia media. I love to tell the story of how I was so ignorant at the time I didn’t have a clue who folks were queuing up to see in Lenin’s tomb; nor did I even know what “The Kremlin” was. I also didn’t speak a word of Russian.

Coming back to Spelman, I discovered Howard Zinn was teaching a course on Russian History and Literature and a little of the language. I signed up for it, though I was only a sophomore and the course was for juniors (as I recall). I had loved Russian Literature since I discovered Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky back in the school library in Putnam County, Georgia. As for the Russian Language, as with any language, I most wanted to learn to say: hello, goodbye, please and thank you.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it also. We did. My mother, who earned seventeen dollars a week working twelve-hour days as a maid, had somehow managed to buy a typewriter for me and I had learned typing in school. I said hardly a word in class (as Howie would later recall), but inspired by his warm and brilliant ability to communicate ideas and conundrums and passions of the characters and complexities of Russian life in the 19th century, I flew back to my room after class and wrote my response to what I was learning about these writers and their stories that I adored. He was proud of my paper, and, in his enthusiastic fashion, waved it about. I learned later there were those among other professors at the school who thought that I could not possibly have written it. His rejoinder: “Why, there’s nobody else in Atlanta who could have written it!”

It would be hard not to love anyone who stood in one’s corner like this.

Under the direction of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) many students at Spelman joined the effort to desegregate Atlanta. Naturally, I joined this movement. Howie, taller than most of us, was constantly in our midst, and usually somewhere in front. Because I was at Spelman on scholarship, a scholarship that would be revoked if I were jailed, my participation caused me a good bit of anxiety. Still, knowing Howard and others of our professors, the amazingly courageous and generous Staughton Lynd, for instance, my other history teacher, supported the students in our struggle, made it possible to carry on. But then, while he and his family were away from campus for the summer, Howard Zinn was fired. He was fired for “insubordination.”

Yes, he would later say, with a classic Howie shrug, I was guilty.

For me, and for many poorer students in my position, students on scholarship who also worked in the Movement to free us of centuries of white supremacy and second-class citizenship, it was a disaster. I wrote a letter to the administration that was published in the school paper pointing out the error of their decision. I wrote it through tears of anger and frustration. It was these tears, which appeared unannounced whenever I thought of this injustice to Howard and his family – who I had met and also loved – that were observed by Staughton Lynd, who realized instantly that a. there was every chance I was headed toward a break-down; and b. the administration would quickly find a reason to expel me from school. Added to the stress, which nobody knew about, was the fact that I was working for a well-respected older man who, knowing I had to work in order to pay for everything I needed as a young woman in school, was regularly molesting me. Lucky for me he was very old, and his imagination was stronger than his grasp. As a farm girl and no stranger to manual labor, I could type his papers with one hand while holding him off with the other. What rankled so much, then as now, is how much others respected, even venerated him.
Perhaps this was one of many births of my feminism. A feminism/womanism that never seemed odd to Howard Zinn, who encouraged his Spelman students, all of them women, to name and challenge oppression of any sort. This encouragement would come in handy, when, years later, writing my second novel, Meridian, I could explore the misuse of gender- based power from the perspective of having experienced it.

With Staughton Lynd’s help, and after he had consulted with Howie (I did not know this), I was accepted to finish my college education at Sarah Lawrence College, a place of which I had never heard. I went off in the middle of winter, without a warm coat or shoes and ice and snow greeted me. But also Staughton’s mother, Helen Lynd, who immediately provided money for the coat and shoes I needed, as well as a blanket that had been her son’s. In my solitary room, and knowing no one on campus, I hunkered down to write. Letters to the Zinns, first of all. To inform them I had been liberated from Spelman, as they had been, and had landed.

I was Howard’s student for only a semester, but in fact, I have learned from him all my life. His way with resistance: steady, persistent, impersonal, often with humor, is a teaching I cherish. Whenever I’ve been arrested, I’ve thought of him. I see policemen as victims of the very system they’re hired to defend, as I know he did. I see soldiers in the same way. In some ways, Howie was an extension of my father, whom he never met. My father was also an activist as a young man and was one of the first black men unconnected to white ancestry or power to vote in our backwoods county; he had to pass by three white men holding shotguns in order to do this. By the time I went off to college, the last of eight children, he was exhausted and broken. But these men were connected in ways clearer to me now as I’ve become older than my father was when he died. They each saw injustice as something to be acknowledged, confronted, and changed if at all possible. And they looked for signs of humanity in their opponents and spoke to that. They both possessed a sense of humor and love of a good story that made them charismatic teachers. I recently discovered, and it amuses me, that their birth dates are remarkably close, though my father was thirteen years older.

Howie and I planned to rendezvous in Berkeley in March, when he came out to spend a few weeks with his grandchildren. In April we planned to be on a panel with Gloria Steinem and Bernice Reagon at an event in New Orleans for Amnesty International. I had decided not to go, but Howie said if I didn’t come he would “sorely miss” me. I wrote back that in that case I would certainly be there as “soreness of any sort” was not to be tolerated.

Over the years I’ve been in the habit of sending freshly written poems to Roz and Howie. After her death, I continued to send the occasional poem to Howie. Last week, after the Supreme Court’s decision to let corporations offer unlimited funding to political candidates, I wrote a poem about what I would do if I were president, called: “If I Was President: ‘Were’ For Those Who Prefer It.’” My first act as president, given that corporations may well buy all elections in America from now on, would be to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, both men accused of murders I’ve felt they did not commit; both men in prison for sadistically long periods of time.

Howie’s response, and the last word he communicated to me, was “Wonderful.” I imagined him hurriedly typing it, then flying, even at eighty-seven, out the door.

The question remains: Where do our friends and loved ones go when they die?

They can’t all go back to Boston, or wherever they’ve lived their most intense life.

I fell asleep, after leaking tears for Howie most of the day: my sweetheart’s shirt was luckily absorbent and available to me, and after tossing and turning almost all night, I had the following dream: We (Someone and I) were looking for the place we go to when we die. After quite a long walk, we encountered it. What we saw was this astonishingly gigantic collection of people and creatures: birds and foxes, butterflies and dogs, cats and beings I’ve never seen awake, and they were moving toward us in total joy at our coming. We were happy too. But there was nothing to support any of us: no land, no water, nothing. We ourselves were all of it: our own earth. And I woke up knowing that this is where we go when we die. We go back to where we came from: inside all of us.

Goodbye, Howie. Beloved. Hello.

This piece ran Sunday, January 31st in the Boston Globe.

A few days after I wrote this remembrance a friend sent me a video about an orangutan and a hound dog. They had discovered each other and formed a bond. I realized the Orangutan, whom (I prefer whom to that) I had never seen animated with joy, as shown in the video, was the principal being coming to welcome us in the dream. I was struck especially by the comment of the orangutan's human care-givers that sharing to the orangutan comes naturally: that if given anything he or she breaks it in half immediately and offers the other half back to the giver. This ancestral behavior is wonderful to know.

To the Wife and Children

©2010 by Alice Walker

Dear Ones,

I realize you and your mother have been hurt and embarrassed by the infidelities and bizarre behaviors of your father. This is a common problem for many. Because your father is famous, you may feel exceptionally exposed, but be assured there are millions of wives and children feeling as sad, confused, angry and distraught as you do. I know you are lonely for your father, and that you love him too. Loving our parents is natural, and I would advise, whatever else you do, that you not fight this natural tendency to care about one of the persons responsible for delivering you to this world.

Where were you before? And what were you doing? You may wonder.

I tacked on these questions to remind us how huge the mystery of all behavior really is.


Once, I was so angry with my own father, and embarrassed by him too – he dared discuss my dating life with my mother in front of me, when I was a teenager, as if I were not there; plus he had personal habits that filled me with distress – that I didn’t speak to him for a year. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and at the end of the year I felt as though I had seriously damaged my heart. Which might be true. Only later I realized, whatever his faults, this was someone who loved me, and in our culture it is still difficult, fathers and mothers alike, to know what to do when a young girl sprouts breasts or a boy grows a beard and starts talking all the time about “going out.” My father, by then exhausted as the parent of eight children, had insulted my integrity, I felt, by distrusting my ability to take care of myself. But from his point of view, as a man, he was probably doing the best he knew. My inability to understand this, and far more, when I was younger led to a great deal of regret and a couple of bouts of literal wailing as the years rolled on.

I happen to like your father’s name. I wish more of us, not just indigenous people, would name ourselves after animals and plants. Even so, you might wish to consider the option of non-attachment to this parent by removing his name, if the stress of attachment is too great. One way of doing this, later on when you are older, and for your mother, when she is not upset, is to change your name. You could easily change your name to that of a tree or trees, for instance. Then you would be known as Ms. Or Mr. Pines or Oak, but would not be named for the entire forest. There is power in names, and it would not be favorable, as the I Ching would put it, to labor a lifetime under a name that stresses you. Besides, if you chose a tree (which is a kind of earth parent: it helps us breathe) you would remain connected to the forest in a simple and elegant but entirely impersonal way.

You may wish to read this paragraph once more. Wishing a measure of privacy for you, I am writing in a kind of code.

Sometimes people think that demanding and receiving an unnecessarily large sum of money from someone who has harmed us will help us feel better. I don’t see how this could be true, though I have never been in the position to have this experience. It is right to require a parent, if he or she can afford it, to offer all that you need for healthy growth – love and affection, food and shelter, education and travel; even a down payment on your first house – and in your case this could be substantial. Your mother should be well compensated also. Giving birth is not easy, and raising even one child, in our consumerist, violent, gadget-addicted society, takes more than many women are able to offer. Proper child rearing is heroic, largely unappreciated work, and this is a global situation; though you, as wife and mother, may be feeling alone, presently, with this awareness.

Personally I have felt happiest living on money I earned myself, though when I was married and my husband made more money than I did, it felt wonderful to pool our unequal financial contributions as we went about spending money on such things as a car for me (in which I drove to work in a poorly paid appointment at a local college) health insurance, and excellent professional attention to my poverty stricken teeth. I was raised by my parents to understand that work mattered, and that learning to save what I earned mattered also. I think there is a danger, in accepting quite a lot of money from anyone, of becoming disconnected from the masses of people who work for a living, and they/we happen to be most of the folks living on the earth. It is often our work that keeps us juicy and capable of having opinions about some of what goes on for the majority of our sisters and brothers, ourselves; confident in the ability to freely express what we observe.

None of this may apply to you. It isn’t as though I’m following your journey through this passage in your life. And it is only a passage. I’ve seen a clip of a few seconds of your faces on a television that was on in an airport. (I don’t understand why they torture us with TV in airports). I wrote an open letter to your father/husband some weeks ago and a friend, concerned for you, as we all should be (and for all parents in your situation) said: What would you say to his wife and children? At first I thought I was not called to say anything to you. Presumably you, the wife, are from a different land, and have a family, a country, and a culture, which will support and cushion you and your children. For people of obvious mixed culture and race in America it is harder, sometimes, to find the inner compass we all must steer by, because the outer compass, our very Being in a divided society, is so confusing. That was part of my thought in writing to your husband/father, whom I also do not know. And, I must admit, I was thinking of Michael Jackson. It has seemed to me billions of people the world over, and over decades, clapped and sang and danced along with him as he hovered on the edge, obviously lacking counsel from elders that might have prevented him from going over the cliff.

In some ways, the counsel to you is the same as for the Formerly Cherished: there is healing in Nature, turn to it. Let your heart remain open, even if having it break is the only way to do this. Time passes, and pain does too. Meditation helps. This is a birth experience while it is also a death. You will all be reborn as other than you were; there is every possibility of great excitement, amazement and joy, in this. Who knows, you may find it is your habits with each other that will change, and not, ultimately, the configuration of your family; errant spouse included. This may seem unlikely, but where there is love anything can happen, and usually does.

Ok, this was my “Dear Abbey” paragraph.

In my experience the only thing that prevents joyful rebirth, with or without original participants, is inability to forgive. There are practices that help with this. One I can wholeheartedly recommend for opening the heart is tonglen, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation that works I would think even with children, if they are old enough to enjoy sucking in their breath and imagining that by doing so they’re clearing all the smoke out of a room! If they can also grasp the concept of inhaling their own hurt feelings fearlessly, and exhaling what they’d prefer everyone on earth to have instead: joy, happiness, a new pony! (For me it is always a peaceful walk on the beach). There is a CD set from Sounds True on which to find instruction: Awakening Compassion, by Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. The teaching is droll and thorough, fun to hear, even if the practice doesn’t stick.

For stranded moms, dads, kids and anyone going through a tough time, I would also recommend living with a dog and cat. One of the greatest teachings from animals that seem quite different from each other is how readily and easily they can learn, most times, to get along. And especially with dogs, how quickly they forgive. I find myself sometimes thinking of my friends and myself as dogs, when we are sharing a difficult period with each other. Dogs tend not to outlive us; my own dog Marley Mu, recently died at the age of thirteen. She seemed always to grasp, by steadfastly loving, licking and sniffing, me, something that appears hard for humans to comprehend: we’re all headed in the same direction; toward the non-existence of the bodies and personalities we presently claim. There is not a moment to waste! How long would dogs carry on this nonsense? I ask myself, realizing I do still care for my friends with whom I’m feeling at odds. Maybe five seconds, I answer, learning to breathe and to let nonessentials fade.

Dogs have an undeserved reputation for being faithless because they’re curious, loving, eager to please and non-discriminating. They will stick their noses anywhere. Men who do this are sometimes called dogs, some women too. Where does nature, human and non-human come in? This aspect of infidelity is worth considering, too.

It probably goes without saying, but especially during times of great emotional challenge find company with those who embody the equanimity and growth that you seek; and who understand that a focus on revenge by it’s nature distorts one’s view of life.

All Directions Home,

AW

A book that might be useful in exploring the backdrop to mixed race and culture in America is The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed. This book is so well done that one says, reading it in wonder: This could not have been done better. It is like something that grew (an old cactus, maybe, with one bloom every hundred years) rather than something that was painstakingly researched, written and pieced together. Or maybe reading it is like peering through a microscope at the bark of a very old tree. If there was ever an American ancestral founding family that deserves our compassion, the Hemingses/Jeffersons are that family. I would also recommend my favorite CD by Nina Simone, Baltimore, which, in a way, is a compilation of songs about family, and one song in particular expresses a double belief: “Looks like only God can save the family,” the chorus, and, in Nina’s voice “Looks like even God can’t save the family.” However, if God is love, as many believe, what’s left is our own hard work.

If I Was President ("Were" May Be Substituted by Those who Prefer It)

© 2010 by Alice Walker

If I was President
The first thing I would do
is call Mumia Abu-Jamal.
No,
if I was president
the first thing I would do
is call Leonard Peltier.
No,
if I was president
the first person I would call
is that rascal
John Trudell.
No,
the first person I’d call
is that other rascal
Dennis Banks.

I would also call
Alice Walker.

I would make a conference call.

And I would say this:

Yo, you troublemakers,
it is time to let all of us
out of prison.
Pack up your things.

Dennis and John,
collect Alice Walker
if you can find her:
in Mendocino, Molokai, Mexico or
Gaza,
& head out to the prisons
where Mumia and Leonard
are waiting for you.
They will be traveling
light.
Mumia used to own a lot
of papers
but they took most of those
away from him.
Leonard
will probably want to drag along
some of his
canvases.
Alice
who may well be
shopping
in New Delhi
will no doubt want to
dress up for the occasion
in a sparkly shalwar kemeez.

My next call is going to be
to the Cubans
all five of them;
so stop worrying.
For now, you’re my fish.

I just had this long letter
from Alice and she has begged me
to put an end
to her suffering.

What? she said.
You think these men are the only ones who suffer
when Old Style America locks them up
& throws away
the key?
I can’t tell you, she goes on,
the changes
this viciousness
has put me through,
and I have had a child to raise
& classes to teach
& food to buy
and just because
I’m a poet
it doesn’t mean
I don’t have to
pay the mortgage
or the rent.

Yet all these years,
nearly thirty or something
of them
I have been running around
the country
and the world
trying to arouse justice
for these men.
Tonsillitis
hasn’t stopped me.
Migraine
hasn’t stopped me.
Lyme disease
hasn’t stopped me.
And why?
Because
knowing the country
that I’m in,
as you are destined to learn
it too,
I know wrong
when I see it.
If that chair you’re sitting in
could speak
you would have it moved
to another room.
You would burn it.

So, amigos,
pack your things.
Alice and John and Dennis
are on their way.
They are bringing prayers from Nilak Butler and Bill Wahpepah;
they are bringing sweet grass and white sage
from Pine Ridge.

I am the president
at least until the Corporations
purchase the next election,
and this is what I choose
to do
on my first day.

***
Three deep bows to Noelle Hanrahan, Angela Davis and Gloria LaRiva. Champions of Liberty; Long distance, Unwavering.

For a fuller comprehension of this poem please view these videos: Incident at Oglala, In Prison My Whole Life, Trudell, and Why We Fight.

Edwidge Danticat, the Quiet Stream

©2010 by Alice Walker


All this time, silenced, speechless, grateful for my meditation cushion, I have been thinking about the writer, Edwidge Danticat, whose writing for me, so pure and grounded and wise, is the quiet stream flowing in the background of the present chaos and noise in Haiti. Danticat explores with acute attention and tenderness the complex reality of Haiti and its people, and like Arundhati Roy of India it is impossible to think of her native country without her.

I remember reading not so long ago the exquisite, word perfect memoir of Danticat’s childhood in Haiti, living in the home of her uncle, her father’s brother, before being sent eventually to America to live with her parents, who, desperate to find a better place and life for their children, had gone there years before. The love and respect between the brothers moved me profoundly; for such fidelity and trust as existed between them aroused my longing for a more prevalent example of honor in our day to day lives, an honor exemplified in the relationship, lasting decades, of these two men.*

A writer’s heart, a poet’s heart, an artist’s heart, a musician’s heart, is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world; more mysterious, beloved, insane and precious for the sparkling and jagged edges of the smaller enclosure we have escaped.

Edwidge, my younger sister, couraj, ma cherie.

There are millions of us thinking of you, with you, of Haiti. Learning what we must. Doing what we can. Understanding that someone labeled “criminal” for “looting” a box of candles may have a loved one crushed and bleeding to death in the dark. Who among us – so plump next to almost any Haitian – is put to this test?

Know the sturdy structure of words you have constructed about and for Haitians no earthquake can destroy. Your words will be part of the mortar that rejoins the soul and self-confidence of your people, so beloved by you: as they rise, once more; which being Haitian, they will.

Wherever you are.

Sharing strength,

Alice Walker

*Brother, I'm Dying.

“Re: Haiti: Passing on to you something that may help lift us from this sorrow.”

Sasha Kramer sent a message to the members of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL).

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Subject: Kouraj cherie: Update from Port au Prince


This afternoon, feeling helpless, we decided to take a van down to Champs Mars (the area around the palace) to look for people needing medical care to bring to Matthew 25, the guesthouse where we are staying which has been transformed into a field hospital. Since we arrived in Port au Prince everyone has told us that you cannot go into the area around the palace because of violence and insecurity. I was in awe as we walked into downtown, among the flattened buildings , in the shadow of the fallen palace, amongst the swarms of displaced people there was calm and solidarity. We wound our way through the camp asking for injured people who needed to get to the hospital. Despite everyone telling us that as soon as we did this we would be mobbed by people, I was amazed as we approached each tent people gently pointed us towards their neighbors, guiding us to those who were suffering the most. We picked up 5 badly injured people and drove towards an area where Ellie and Berto had passed a woman earlier. When they saw her she was lying on the side of the road with a broken leg screaming for help, as they were on foot they could not help her at the time so we went back to try to find her. Incredibly we found her relatively quickly at the top of a hill of shattered houses. The sun was setting and the community helped to carry her down the hill on a refrigerator door, tough looking guys smiled in our direction calling out “bonswa Cherie” and “kouraj”.

When we got back to Matthew 25 it was dark and we carried the patients back into the soccer field/tent village/hospital where the team of doctors had been working tirelessly all day. Although they had officially closed down for the evening, they agreed to see the patients we had brought. Once our patients were settled in we came back into the house to find the doctors amputating a foot on the dining room table. The patient lay calmly, awake but far away under the fog of ketamine. Half way through the surgery we heard a clamor outside and ran out to see what it was. A large yellow truck was parked in front of the gate and rapidly unloading hundreds of bags of food over our fence, the hungry crowd had already begun to gather and in the dark it was hard to decide how to best distribute the food. Knowing that we could not sleep in the house with all of this food and so many starving people in the neighborhood, our friend Amber (who is experienced in food distribution) snapped into action and began to get everyone in the crowd into a line that stretched down the road. We braced ourselves for the fighting that we had heard would come but in a miraculous display of restraint and compassion people lined up to get the food and one by one the bags were handed out without a single serious incident.

During the food distribution the doctors called to see if anyone could help to bury the amputated leg in the backyard. As I have no experience with food distribution I offered to help with the leg. I went into the back with Ellie and Berto and we dug a hole and placed the leg in it, covering it with soil and cement rubble. By the time we got back into the house the food had all been distributed and the patient Anderson was waking up. The doctors asked for a translator so I went and sat by his stretcher explaining to him that the surgery had gone well and he was going to live. His family had gone home so he was alone so Ellie and I took turns sitting with him as he came out from under the drugs. I sat and talked to Anderson for hours as he drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point one of the Haitian men working at the hospital came in and leaned over Anderson and said to him in kreyol “listen man even if your family could not be here tonight we want you to know that everyone here loves you, we are all your brothers and sisters”. Cat and I have barely shed a tear through all of this, the sky could fall and we would not bat an eye, but when I told her this story this morning the tears just began rolling down her face, as they are mine as I am writing this. Sometimes it is the kindness and not the horror that can break the numbness that we are all lost in right now.

So, don’t believe Anderson Cooper when he says that Haiti is a hotbed for violence and riots, it is just not the case. In the darkest of times, Haiti has proven to be a country of brave, resilient and kind people and it is that behavior that is far more prevalent than the isolated incidents of violence. Please pass this on to as many people as you can so that they can see the light of Haiti, cutting through the darkness, the light that will heal this nation.

We are safe. We love you all and I will write again when I can. Thank you for your generosity and compassion.

With love from Port au Prince,
Sasha
--------------------

The Old Fox

The Chicken Chronicles
Chapter Fifteen
©2009 by Alice Walker

One of the books I would like to read to you next summer, assuming most of us survive that long, is The I Ching. Mommy loves it for its profound observation of non- human animals. It does a marvelous job of understanding humans, too, of course, but it is remarkable in its grasp of how much we learn from our cousins who study and comprehend us, but cannot, in human language, speak. For instance, there is the story of the old fox crossing an ice-covered pond on tiptoe, because she knows the ice may break. She/he is fine until he almost reaches the other side. Then the ice breaks! She almost falls in (which would mean drowning) but instead, because she has been careful, she only gets her tail wet! This is to say that Mommy, having traveled from the most southern part of India, Kerala (very hot) to the most Northern part, the foothills of the Himalayas (very cold) had avoided getting sick until the very last day of her visit.

And, My Children, air pollution, a major health hazard in the urban world of humans (the atmosphere to my lungs in New Delhi, and later, Cairo, looked like a thick dust made from your chicken mash) was a big factor, also.

But really, what is not amusing in this world, or at least thought provoking, once we stop coughing?

So on the very next to the last day, feeling fine, but tip-toeing across thin ice, high in the foothills of the Himalayas, almost on a lark, I accepted an invitation to consult a doctor of Tibetan medicine about some old health challenges I thought I’d already overcome. Though I didn’t plan to say what they were: he or she’s the doctor, I thought, let him/her tell me. The doctor came in, golden skinned, black haired and radiating health, placed me in a chair close to his side, and proceeded to hold my wrists for about five minutes, pumping up and down on them with his fingers in time with my heartbeat. He looked into my eyes but unlike a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, did not ask to see my tongue. He then proceeded to tell me everything I had been told by my Iranian acupuncturist less than a month before!

You will be happy to know that Mommy is basically healthy. That is because of our garden, which, with your rich poop, we shall continue into infinity. He informed me that climbing hills is something I should avoid, even though I’ve done it for so many years. Walk, but walk flat, he said. I should also not eat late at night because at night is the only time the liver gets to rest. Who knew? The most interesting thing he said though was that I must overcome a tendency to impatience. It turns out impatience is the thief of serenity! The moment he said this, I knew it was true, even though I like to think I am the soul of patience: like most humans, I am most patient and serene when I’m alone. But guess what? Dharamsala (the locals say Dharamshala) is one big hill. By the time I’d climbed the hill to the clinic (even though, truthfully, we climbed it in a van) I’d already climbed hundreds of steps and stairs and wandered up a couple of trails. And the air, very thin, and with a needle like cold embedded in it even in the sun, had hardly seemed sufficient to get me from one level to another. However, Mommy, having walked up so many hills, has a strategy: which is to walk up hills that are steep, on a slant, and sideways. The Tibetans who dash up and down their hills with the grace of mountain goats may have been amused at my way with hills. But another time when I return to visit them and they’ve aged a bit, I’ll explain it to them. This way of climbing hills saves the knees.

I meditated on what the Tibetan doctor said about my impatience and realized something to ponder: I am most impatient with people who don’t think the way I do. This isn’t the same as feeling impatient with people who have different opinions; I like this, for the challenge of it. No, I become impatient with people whose minds seem beamed from a completely different universe. In the world of astrology, one might say: Oh, Cancers and Capricorns. Maybe Librans. But it isn’t as simple as that. My mind, I realize more calmly now as I enter late middle age, is the classic monkey mind; it is non-linear in the most profound way. In short, without training, it is capable of being all over the place. Like a real monkey it seems to jump from imaginary branch to imaginary branch and then, as if by magic, it lands where the nuts are. Or the fruit.

But this is why Life gives us teachers. And you, My Girls, have been very helpful to Mommy in this regard. Remember when, after Glorious was eaten up by the chicken hawk, and Mommy was withdrawing from you out of fear and sorrow, and we humans thought bringing in more chickens would help us all feel better? Remember that? E. and L. and G. and Mommy had a long (by chicken terms) collaboration: How to do this? Would the “old” chickens get along with the “new” ones? E. thought we should introduce one new chicken at a time. But I thought no. One new chicken probably wouldn’t last long, from what I’d been reading in my Chicken Manual. I thought we should bring in the whole gang of new chickens and, in their numbers, they could duke it out with the gang of chickens already established in the chicken house. Ultimately, this is what we did. We introduced six new chickens at once, the Red Gang of Six.

Oh, the way you treated them! I was heart-sickened. I was appalled. I had only known you as gentle and cuddly, blissed out on Chardonnay grapes and kale leaves. You were vicious to your new mates. You pecked and scratched them; you wouldn’t let them near the food and water. You didn’t want Mommy to be Mommy to anyone other than you. When I tried to share goodies with the Red Gang of Six you wouldn’t allow it, unless I forced you out of the way. I was so embarrassed for you. Were these the “children” I thought I was raising? But, guess what? From your point of view, as chickens, you were doing what comes naturally to chickens to do: you were creating the pecking order that chickens live by.

My impatience with your behavior led to a withdrawal from you. I felt disappointed and deeply saddened. This made me stay away for days (at least two). When I went back to visit, you were still at it. Mean as could be. Abusive and ugly. Yes, ugly. Mommy found this brutalizing behavior so hideous she could hardly look at you. And when you jumped into her lap, wanting a cuddle, sometimes she stood up. It was this event, when she felt she simply could not bear you in your meanness, that was probably the most serious threat to Mommy’s health and heart.

That moment of pushing you away - while you looked at Mommy as if she’d lost her mind -was the flowering of impatience.