History Lesson 101

The following tale took place in my classroom a couple of years ago and was recently published in the Winter 2012-2013  Journal of the Assembly for Explanded Perspectives in Learning (JAEPL). I haven't been able to get Joe out of my mind, so I thought I'd share him with you, too.

 

 I heard Joe before I ever saw him. Late on a Wednesday afternoon, I sat in my office, hunched over a pile of papers, becoming more agitated as the clock pushed toward five, rushing to finish a set of responses for my morning composition class. In the background, Joe’s high, reedy voice rose and fell in conversation with a professor from another department.

I refocused on the papers in front of me. Seconds later another conversation began…this time between Joe and one of my colleagues, just two doors away. A conversation with a visitor was not what I needed, and this fellow seemed to be working his way down the hallway. I remember thinking “if I pull the door closed right now, before he comes any closer, he won’t know the difference.” As I quietly moved the door into its frame, Joe’s words hung on the air.

The next morning, I rounded the bend from my office to my classroom, coming face to face with a short, trim man, his white hair cropped in military style. This had to be Joe. “Good morning!” I called out, anxious to make up for the click of my door against him the night before.

“Are you faculty here?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Are you teaching a class today?” Gesturing at the professional-looking camera hanging around his neck, Joe identified himself as a graduate of our university, on campus to attend his 50^th reunion. “I’m taking pictures for the Coast Guard auxiliary newsletter. Would I be able to visit your classroom?” Papers done, eager to be the ever-accommodating teacher, my conscience now slightly assuaged, I led Joe into room 321.

Joe told me a little about himself while we waited for students to settle in. After WWII, he’d come to our university via the G.I. Bill, and the changes on campus since then amazed him. “I didn’t recognize the place,” he said, as much to himself, as to me.

“It’s a coincidence that you’re here today,” I told Joe, just before he walked to a seat at the back of the classroom. “We’ve been reading and writing about WWII, the Holocaust really. They’ve just been to the Holocaust Museum on Monday.”

A few years back, a friend in the department and I developed a first-year shared-reading curriculum focusing on social justice issues. During their first semester, all of our students visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., as part of their Fiat Lux course (Latin: “let there be light”), and the idea for our project came from a student comment during a  classroom discussion of their trip.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 “I’m just so glad that the Holocaust is over,” a young woman said. “It’s such a relief that nothing will ever happen again.”

Images of Darfur and the Sudan crashed against her statement. I responded by listing genocides that have occurred since the Holocaust, but I knew a list of names was useless. Over lunch, I shared my experience, and from that unsuspecting student’s words, a curriculum was born. Broken into three parts--Gazing into the Abyss, the Burning of Human Beings, and Watching the World Burn--the middle section is rooted in writing about the Holocaust.

My class, on the day Joe visited, had just finished reading from that section: segments of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus and Marione Ingram’s essay “Operation Gomorrah.” As a class, we’d been concentrating on eliminating the general from our writing, and these richly textured pieces helped the students to see complexities they hadn’t considered before.

We began class by discussing their visit to the Holocaust Museum earlier that week. I asked the students which exhibit took the Holocaust from a historical notation to reality. They told each other about piles of old shoes, covered with a blue patina of mold; about the boxcar, some hesitating to enter, some offering a prayer as they walked through; about the pictures drawn by children, the recordings of survivors, the silence of visitors. All of them mentioned the Tower Room, a room stretching upward for three floors of the museum, four walls covered with photos of the 3,276 Jews of Monastir, Macedonia, none of whom survived their deportation to Treblinka. The photographs, while submitted to the local Nazi regime for tallying purposes, are poignant signs of ordinary life stopped short—graduation and wedding shots, families picnicking on summer lawns.

“It could have been me,” one of the students shared.

“It could have been any of us,” someone responded.

“What if my father had been a Nazi?” a blonde, blue-eyed boy asked. “Would I have been able to turn against my parents?”

Granted, this may have been the most difficult class of the semester, as students confronted the reality of human betrayal. Our journey through the semester would eventually take us to a brighter place, in our research of people and organizations that worked against oppression.

But, on this day, we still had to view a film clip from Sophie’s Choice. (If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, William Styron’s beautiful mix of American naivete and the residual effects of the Holocaust, put it on your list). The clip shows Sophie’s arrival at Auschwitz with her two young children. In a desperate plea, Sophie tells an SS officer that she’s a Polish Christian. He responds by offering her a choice of which child will be allowed to live. The clip ends with Sophie’s little girl screaming for her mother as the officer carries her away under his arm.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Pushing the button to start the clip, I remembered Joe. I’d looked back at him several times during class. He’d stopped taking pictures a while back, and he sat upright, with a deep look of concentration on his face.

The room was silent after the clip. I turned on the lights and honored the silence for a bit. “Well?” I asked. “Let’s put this all together. Reactions?”

Our recent class discussions examined the impossible choices represented in our sample of writing about the Holocaust. The students picked up that theme again, centering on the tragic resonance of Sophie’s choice and the implications for survivors, on the legacy of grief. Though the film clip is hard to watch, I’ve shown it so many times, led the ensuing discussion so many times, that I could predict the outcome.

Or, so I thought.

“May I say something?” Joe asked from the back of the room. The students seemed to have forgotten him there. One or two turned toward him.

“I was eighteen years old,” Joe began. “I was there.” The change in the classroom was physical. Every student—the majority of them just eighteen—moved, as if part of a rippling wave building momentum, adjusting their seats to look directly at Joe.

“My unit went to Auschwitz. We were one of the first at the camp.” Joe said. “It was…it was…,” Joe continued with a sob, raising his hands to cover his face, and the rest of his story became wet words wept into his hands. In that moment, history came alive in my classroom. Movie images faded away, and, for us, it was Joe standing at the gates of Auschwitz.

“Joe,” I began. My knowledge level plummeted, and I failed to find words significant enough. “Thank you for being there. Thank you for sharing with us.” The students nodded, almost in unison. One or two stopped to speak to Joe, and he was gone.

His presence was still in our classroom on Monday when we met again.  The students wrote about him, and many stopped by my office to discuss his visit. I told his story over and over again, knocking on colleague’s doors, ironically modeling Joe’s behavior on that previous Wednesday afternoon.

I could sense their withdrawal when I began my story. “Oh, that guy. I heard him in the hall, too,” was the universal reply. Some told me they also closed their doors, anxious not to be disturbed. But when I told them about Joe’s role in the liberation of Auschwitz, their faces changed, softening, welcoming the idea of my unannounced visitor.

As for me, I will always be rushing to finish a stack of papers, but Joe’s visit will stay with me for a long time. What did I learn from him? Lessons are everywhere, my friends. Sometimes history breathes. Don’t close the door. You might just miss it.

Reprinted with permission from JAEPL's wonderful editor, Dr. Joonna Trapp, Chair of Communications at King College.

Sunday, Jill Moyer. "History Lesson 101." JAEPL Vol.18 (Winter 2012-2013): 133-134. Print.

 

Mother Love

Yesterday I ran into an old friend in the copy room. We'd known each other long before we started teaching at the same university, chatting with each other at open houses and baseball games. I put my arm around his shoulder, feeling his age through the crisply-pressed blue dress shirt. He kissed my cheek, leaving a soft, dry impression against my skin.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered into his ear. "How are you doing?"

"Not so good. It got worse once I started home." His eyes never left the copier key pad.

"It's hard to lose a parent," I offered. "Mothers are the hardest. No matter how old we are, losing a mother untethers us."

Looking up then, his eyes glossy, he crumpled his mouth into a sort of smile. I could see he knew what I meant. He had been set adrift, too.

I've been lost since my mother died, her passing sending chaos into the order I thought I'd imposed on my life. Such a smarty pants, I'd been. This was my new truth: my roots had been yanked. The ink on the map disappeared. I'd lost the paddle, and my boat had sprung a pretty big leak.

Years ago, if you'd have told me that I defined myself through my mother, I'd have laughed, telling you high tales of my independence, offering storied examples of how different my life had become, how separate from hers, how my road was less traveled. Yet, here I am, my outline muddled, the sharpness of my features smudged, lost in the woods. With my mother's tired body went part of my history, an awareness of me before I was.

The night of my mother's funeral, I drank too much while I sat on my sister's porch. We told tales late into the night, cold glasses in our hands, a small candle burning on the table. My husband and sons brought me home gently, strong arms supporting me. Home again, I went straight to bed, taking the stairs slowly, grief and gin seeping through me. My daughters sat on the couch, having long since shed their funeral clothes, leaning against each other for comfort.

"How could you?" one asked me the next day, misunderstanding the past night's events.

Indeed, my dear child. Indeed.

Going Home

Yesterday, on our way to a picnic across the city, my husband took a turn that paralleled the street where I grew up. "Don't drive by the house," I said. The last time we'd been on the street, I'd cried for the losses the house and I had suffered.

Seconds later, I'd changed my mind.

Gary turned right onto Stratmore, and I called out the names of now long-lapsed businesses to our sons in the back seat. Another right, and we drove up the narrow lane left between the parked cars on both sides of the street. He slowed the car, stopping midway.

"This isn't it," I said, looking over Gary's head through the window.

"I think it is," he replied.

"What address is it guys? Can you read it?"

"1256."

I climbed out of the car to get a better look, gaping open-mouthed at the yellow brick house. Everything was different. A large unpainted redwood porch jutted out from the brick, replacing the grey wooden porch and the curlicue lattice work that had fanned out from the steps. The green and white aluminum awning was also gone, a heavy peaked roof awkward in its place. My mother would have cried to see the state of the front bank, once covered in ivy and dotted with delicate clumps of phlox--swells of pink, purple, blue, and white. The hedges that stood at the top of the bank had been glossy green and evenly trimmed. All that remains are straggly sticks, green leaves sprouting randomly across the front. The bank itself seems to have crumbled, turning in upon itself. Now dissected with broken railroad ties, dirt patches show between straggling ivy. Nothing blooms.

I recognize only four things about the house. The yellow brick, of course, is the same. There remains an odd aluminum railing along the steps from the street. The connectors at the railing's top and bottom always reminded me of the goose-necked curve of a kitchen sink faucet. My bedroom window continues to look out onto the porch, and I can glimpse a bit of stained glass on the side, if I stand on my tiptoes and strain my eyes to the left.

I wonder what the house remembers of me, of us. Does it feel me in the front street, my heart yearning toward it? Does it still wait for Jay's long steps up the street, bounding around the side of the house after a long absence? Does a shadow of my father sit waiting in the kitchen chair near the door? If I peer into the window on the porch, will I be sitting on my pale chenille bedspread, dropping the phone, wailing in grief for my lost brother?

Do our rumblings disturb the sleep of those who live there now? Do they come upon us as we sit around the table, all of us still together in this mirage? Do they hear us in the creaks of the house, wondering if the plumbing is going or if the stairs could use an extra nail or two?

If I had enough courage, I'd climb up those steps I haven't climbed for 35 years, running my hand along the familiar rail. I'd walk around the bend of the house, checking for wild violets and buttercups in the grass, touching the roses that used to border the walkway. I might sit on the wall a while before I knock on the door, asking for entrance. I don't have enough courage to go back, though.

My sister says the house doesn't look as bad from the alley. She drove up the narrow gravel road to look down at the yard we once had. Perhaps the tiger lilies have taken over, blanketing the grass in striped orange petals. Maybe the forsythia have grown together, building a dense canopy of tiny yellow stars, protecting us all.

Cutting Lilacs

Today I cut the first lilacs from bushes I've grown. They fluttered in the crook of my elbow, a haphazard lavendar bouquet, their movement matching my steps as I pocketed the pruning shears and walked back from the side yard.

I'd been smelling the promise of these delicate starbursts since last evening. The night air carried the heaviness of sweet scent to me, a scent belying the prim line of pale blossoms on green-leafed stems. The smell of lilacs and honeysuckle bewitch me on languid summer evenings, allowing me to float in time. Late at night, honeysuckle invades my nostrils, pushing its dank sugar into my mind. I fear I could get lost in these scents.

We planted three lilac bushes a few years ago as part of the frenzied preparation for Laura's graduation party. Two of the plants sat in black plastic containers outside of the garage door for about five years before their planting. One bush came from my sister's yard, a puny offshoot jutting at a sharp angle from its pot. The second came from my friend Karen's yard; there she tends a heady swirl of growth--drooping wisteria, lush petals, riotous leaves. Both dug and potted a young plant for me after they'd heard me remember my mother's garden, their offering of scrawny-leaved sticks a gift of comfort between women.

We lived in a red brick duplex on a city street, my mother moving us as close to a suburb as she could while complying with rules that police officers live within Pittsburgh's boundaries. They bought the duplex, my father advising "As long as we have a tenant, we'll never have to worry about the mortgage," and so we grew up with the sound of other people's feet above our heads. Our house would have been huge, a rambling two-story with stained-glass windows on staircase landings and spacious bedrooms, but cut in half and left with one floor, our house shrunk, losing airiness and light. Sometimes, when the tenants weren't home, I'd creep up the wide steps past the beautiful windows and wander through their rooms, no sense of ownership in my trespassing. Once I took two potatoes from their refrigerator, using them to make homefries while my mother was at work.

Our yard, however, was all ours. The tenants had use of the wide front porch that my bedroom window opened onto, the window long and wide, running the length of my bed. A green and white aluminum awning offered cover, making for perfect porch sitting during summer storms. None of the tenants ever set up their lawn chairs there, but I still sleep easier when I hear rain spattering against our skylight, lulled to sleep by girlish dreams.

My mother didn't seem like the kind of woman who gardened. I can't picture her at work, on her knees, tending to the flowers. Does my memory fail me here? I wonder if the lush yard of my childhood was already planted when my parents bought the house. Surely she must have been responsible for some of what I carry with me. The garden was a compass to the seasons: furry gray pussy willows, wild yellow shoots of forsythia, heavy lilac bushes, tiny sprigged lily of the valley. In the Giant Eagle each spring, I stop to stroke the soft pads on bundles of pussy willow branches plunked in a white bucket of water. Take me back, my fingers say.

The backyard sloped gently uphill. On the right sat a swingset, but the left top held a massive rock garden, grey stones broken by bursts of tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils. Behind the rock garden, a tangled group of rose of sharon grew together forming a natural fence. We sometimes pulled the curled pink flowers from their stems, imagining them to be hot dogs that we served our dolls lined up in a row on the grass. Later hens and chicks lay close to the rocks, while brilliant tiger lilies swayed above them, a mass of orange and yellow. When my mother died, my sister and I chose pink stargazer lilies to blanket her casket. Would she remember, if she could?

At the bottom of the yard, bordering the sidewalk to our house, a series of roses bloomed. Most luscious were the deep red velvet, large buds opening to reveal the kind of flowers sold by florists. My mother's favorites were the yellow roses, "for remembrance," she said. Along the side of the house were the peonies. I was fascinated with the ants that worked to open the blossoms. No matter how hard I shook the deep pink cabbagey petals, an ant or two still remained, causing my mother to fret, returning the bouquet outdoors.

Bordering our neighbor's house on the left were the lilacs and the forsythia. My mother would cut armfuls of the lilacs, filling vases and jars in every room of our house. One vase, a blue piece of depression glass ringed by a thin scalloped collar, held them best. In the shade of the lilacs and forsythia grew a low forest of lilies of the valley, their bell-shaped blossoms rising from leafy pod-like curls. I'd lie on my stomach and pluck them, one by one, surprised at the strength of their resistance to my pulling, until I had enough to fill the tiniest of my mother's vases.

The front yard was a treacherous slope, that made weeding a difficult proposition. An angry teenager, I argued with my mother about that chore. "You want me to do what?" I'd chided, as if she were risking my life. The front garden was so large that I'd sit moodily in sections, pulling random leaves of grass and clover that managed to survive in spite of the dense leaves of ivy. Still, there, amidst the ivy and soft patches of creeping phlox, tender, frilly dianthus bloomed. Even our side yard bore flowers, buttercups and violets rising triumphantly from the green.

My own lilacs are on my kitchen table as I write, their fragrant presence changing my patterns of thought. One of my three bushes burst this year, but still I don't have enough blossoms to fill my house. I left enough there to scent my yard while I drink cups of coffee on the deck, while I sit collecting my thoughts in the dark. After I'd arranged my lilacs in a clear glass vase, I went back out to the shady section of my yard, where a small group of green leaves curved protectively around stems of bell-shaped flowers. I should have planted them when we first bought our house, but, even so, five lily of the valley shoots sit in a tiny vase on my kitchen sink helping me while I remember my mother.

Lemon Meringue Pie

My mother's lemon meringue pie should have been in the revolving glass case at Minnie's House of Pies, its sweetly-stacked white and yellow layers calling like sirens to unsuspecting diners. Patrons would have been hypnotized by the spinning lemony wheel, their plates soon licked clean, sunshiney smiles playing on their lips.

The pie was a beauty--unevenly peaked with wisps of pale meringue, golden tips whisked under the broiler, the topping hiding the translucent citron promise of a center. When my mother took the pie from the refrigerator, I'd gently pop the tiny pearls of moisture beading the surface with my little finger. The meringue stood stiffly on the wedge of cut pie, but the clear yellow filling shook a little, still feeling the movement of the knife. Each bite was a wafer-thin slice of meringue, quivering lemon, and crust, the sugary citrus creaminess coating my tongue.

I know my mother cooked dinner for us most nights, but I can only see my father stirring pots at the stove, suspenders crossing the back of his plaid shirts. Navy cook style, he served up plates of chicken and dumplings, stuffed peppers, and spaghetti. In my mind, though, I see my mother's finely-boned fingers coated with flour, the result of her mixing and rolling always delicate sweetness. An expert turn of the spritz cookie tube, plopped doughy shapes on the sheet underneath. Her cookies were finished with pale blue, pink, and yellow icings--dotted sometimes with little silver balls.

During Christmas, holiday tins were stacked in our fruit cellar, each one holding cookie layers separated by rounds of wax paper, carefully cut after tracing the lid for size. Long after my father died, we continued the tradition, even taking a cookie class together at the local high school where we learned how to roll ladylock dough around metal forms and crush almonds into batter that would be topped with raspberry jam and powdered sugar. In late November, my mother would arrive early one weekend morning, and we'd begin to mix dough, placing each plastic-wrapped log into the refrigerator to wait for its turn in the oven. My husband would watch our boys while my mother and I rolled, cut, and sugared. At the end, we'd divide our cookies into my mother's tins, sitting together for a cup of tea at the table finally wiped clean.

When I was around ten or so, my father took me along on a visit to his brother's home. I wanted my mother to come along, as I hated to think of spending a long day sitting quietly on my uncle's front porch. So many years later, it's easy to understand why she stayed at home. My uncle's remarriage to a straight-backed woman named Vera had changed the tone of our family visits. I remember Vera's face the most, colorless lips pulled naturally downward, hair pulled up into a relentless bun. On this visit, Aunt Vera seemed delighted to have me to herself, as she pulled me into the kitchen where she'd laid out the ingredients for a pie--a lemon meringue pie.

"Oh! Lemon meringue is my favorite," I told her. "My mother makes the best!"

"We'll see, won't we?"

Of course, she went around it all the wrong way. She planned on using lemon pudding for the filling, and a box mix for the crust sat on the counter. I knew that my mother's crust involved leveling cups of flour with a knife and her secret ingredient--a creamy oil called Whirl. The part of the pie I loved the most, though, was the filling. A milky pudding center just wouldn't do.

I tried to help Aunt Vera by instructing her on my mother's recipe, including a vivid description of the tiny beads of moisture on the meringue. "It's just perfect," I summed up.

"Well, I'll tell you something that's not perfect about your mother," Vera responded. "She wears too much lipstick, and she's going to lose all the color in her lips because of it."

"I wear lipstick sometimes," I retorted, lying in solidarity with my mother.

"Only cheap women wear lipstick."

I had a vision of my mother's face, red hair bobbed to her shoulders, pink lipstick framing her lips. My face felt hot, and I moved to the doorway. "My mother isn't cheap," I told her, "and your lemon pie will never be as good as hers."

Finding my father on the porch, I sat next to him on the old green striped glider. I waited for Vera to come after me, but she didn't. My dad and I kept perfect rhythm, our heels pushing off in tandem. It never occurred to me that Vera might have been just as afraid as I to share our conversation with my father.

In the last years of her life, my mother didn't cook much of anything. While she was still able to get out on her own, she ate out for as many meals as she could, even when she had to eat alone.

"I stopped for a bite," she'd tell me when I asked what she'd had for dinner. She carried coupons in her purse just in case.

I'm not sure when things shifted, and my mother began spending most of her time in the blue corduroy chair in her den, seated next to the large humming oxygen concentrator. Going out meant hours of preparation: a bath the night before since the exertion was too much on the day of the outing, laying out an outfit on the wicker chair next to her bed--many trips in socked feet between the closet and the dresser drawers, getting up three hours before we'd leave so she could have a little orange juice with her pills and sit down between all the parts of getting dressed. Mostly, that last year, I'd take her to the Giant Eagle. If we had time, we'd stop for a late breakfast at Bob Evans, "where they knew how to cook eggs."

Going to the Giant Eagle wore me out, too. After I helped my mother down the four steps from her hallway and across the lobby, I'd dash across the parking lot to the car. I'd pull up in front of her building, jump out of the car, help her get settled, then slide back into my seat. I'd follow the same routine at the restaurant, and again at the Giant Eagle. After I loaded my trunk with her groceries, I'd retrieve her in front of the store and buckle her into the front seat. Back again in front of her apartment building, I'd unload her and the groceries. We'd struggle up the four steps with our respective baggage--her oxygen tank on her shoulder, my knuckles creased white from the handles of plastic bags. Opening the door with a shaky hand, she'd lurch into the blue velvet chair closest to the door. I'd lug the remaining bags up the steps, divide the groceries between the cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer, and sit for a few minutes chatting. Later, I'd complain about the drawn-out process to my sister, my husband, my children.

"Mom, why don't you let me run to the store for you?" I'd ask, promising how quickly I'd be there and back with all the items on her list.

"I'll think about it," she'd always say. "Next week, maybe."

The next week would find us back in the Giant Eagle, her knobbed fingers fumbling with her carefully clipped coupons. Most weeks, she needed something from every aisle. I ran interference for her, matching coupons with cans and boxes. Her cart was stocked with convenience foods.

Our last stop was always the frozen dessert cases. She'd pull six or seven coupons from her envelope for waffles, ice cream sandwiches, slices of pie. The last week we shopped together, just four days before she went to the hospital, just seven days before she died alone in a single room, she chose a pie-shaped box containing a single slice of frozen lemon meringue pie. When my sister and I cleaned out her refrigerator after the funeral, most of the groceries we'd purchased during that trip were uneaten. There was no pie-shaped box of lemon meringue pie in the freezer. I hope she enjoyed it; I hope it had a lovely clear lemon filling.

Recently I made a pie for a Sunday dinner with my son and his girlfriend. I layered apples and dried cranberries with sugar inside of a refrigerated pie crust. Andy said it was the best pie he's had in a while. My father-in-law says I make the best pumpkin pie he's ever tasted.

I've never made a lemon meringue pie.