My sister Abby was the center of the known universe for eight good years before I came along and ruined everything. She could not hide her black-hot hatred. My parents kept my crib in their bedroom for a year because they thought she might try to smother me in the night. Family lore has it that she broke my arm twice in failed attempts to do me in. As I grew older and harder to damage, she alternately ignored my existence and tormented me without mercy. Despite everything, I worshiped her like a god. She was the smartest person I knew. She painted her room orange and wore nothing but black for two years. She stood up to our father.
We shared what we considered an abusive childhood, although much later when I became a foster parent I realized it didn't come close. Our father was a tin-pot dictator; an angry, bitter man who was only happy when denigrating someone else. Our mother was a saint when she was sober. Abby and I wanted nothing more than to get out of the house, but she was older and had more means at her disposal. She tried to move in with friends, sleeping in bedroom closets so parents wouldn't know. She tried to run away, once making it all the way to New York City. When I was eight years old she figured it out. My 16 year-old sister, her 18-year-old husband and their infant son moved into a one-bedroom apartment of their own.
Overnight the sister who couldn't stand me became my protector and constant companion. She'd escaped from the house and was determined to spring me as well. She let me stay overnight whenever I was allowed to, first in that tiny apartment and and ultimately in a mortgaged split-level ranch in a spanking new 1960s subdivision. We called ourselves the BLEESTER SEESTERS and sang Wobbly anthems, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and Old Testament gospel at the top of our lungs. We memorized Woody Allen and Jonathan Winter comedy albums. We took car trips to parks and beaches with the baby in a laundry basket in the back of the Rambler station wagon. We were mesmerized by the Buckley-Gore debates and could recreate every one, each of us playing either part.
Having an older sibling was invaluable -- she introduced me to Bob Dylan and pop art, explained Civil Rights and Freedom Summer, shared her cigarettes and joints and horrible 16 mm pornography. When I went away to college, I did my best to return the favors. For the first time my world was larger than hers, and I tried hard to bring it all back home. I found anarchist professors, Marxist authors, student activists and libertarian economists and laid them on her doorstep like a cat leaving mouse parts on the pillow.
I never loved anyone as much or felt as special. We called ourselves a gestalt -- not sisters or best friends but different parts of a single being. But time moves on, decades pass, things change. In retrospect I can see we were once so close because we came from a small family in a tiny town and had a common enemy. In time we both escaped, divorcing the past, acquiring husbands and lovers and children and friends and interests and experiences we couldn't share. Over the next 40 years there were times when we felt as close as teenagers, times that were strained, and times when we were hardly in touch at all.
If Abby had found time to write her memoirs, I think they would have started after she moved to Gainesville and found her own real self. She discovered her own voice and her own passions. She raised five remarkable sons and daughters and married the love of her life. She did not just rage against injustice and inequality, she fought it tooth and nail. She lived more fully than anyone I've ever known, loved her family and friends as fiercely as anyone ever did, and never for a single moment looked back. I needed to take this moment to look back, and now I'll try to move on.
Abby Goldsmith, 7/21/1945 - 4/27/2015.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Friday, April 3, 2015
The Ides of March
Now that it's April, I can say it. I hate March. I hated this March and I hated last March and I've hated March for as long as I can remember. Twenty years ago my mother died in March. Every year bad things happen in March, to me and to people I love. I go into a blue funk and a brown study. T.S. Eliot had it wrong,
I began the month burying my sweet old horse and ended it with a speeding ticket. In between, my husband, son and daughter all suffered significant setbacks. Their stories aren't mine to tell, but in the way of families, their problems weigh heavier than my own. I hate March.
Which of course leads me to wonder about the Ides of March. Clearly not a great thing for Caesar, but what the heck are Ides anyway, and should I worry about them?
Turns out whoever invented the Roman calendar either had a sick sense of humor or was a very odd duck. Days of the months were not numbered one, two, three, four or first, second, third, fourth. Dates were counted back from three fixed points based on the lunar calendar: the Kalends at the start, named for the day that bills were due; the Nones, either the 5th or the 7th, depending on the month; and the Ides, the 13th or 15th. The Ides of March was the 15th.
The unnamed days of the month would count back from the named days, so March 4 would be "IV Nones", or four days before the 7th, and March 14 would be "I Ides", one day before the 15th. As odd as this seems, it's at least a little consistent with Roman numerals which can also count back from significant numbers -- e.g. IV for 4 and IX for 9. Kind of makes you wonder about the Romans.
We all know that Julius Caesar was warned to "beware the Ides of March" before his demise at the hands of 60 senators. Those actual words were a bit of poetic license by Shakespeare, but according to Barry Strauss in The Death of Caesar, the historical ruler did visit a haruspex named Spurinna on February 15, 44 BC, and sacrificed a bull so that the soothsayer could predict his future. Spurinna warned JC that his life would be in danger for the next 30 days, i.e. until March 15. On that date Caesar told Spurinna that the Ides had come and was answered, "Aye, they have come but not gone." That should have kept JC away from the senate, but the rest, as they say, is history.
Next question, what the heck is a haruspex? Haruspices were people trained to read omens from the entrails of sheep and poultry, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep. Haruspicy was a kind of specialty within the wider practice of divination from animal entrails, brought to Rome via the Etruscans, who were apparently quite good at it. Caesar's soothsayer was surely of Etruscan descent, as Spurinna was a common Etruscan name.
Snide aside: How do people come up with this stuff? I mean, say I'm thinking about changing jobs or invading Persia and I want an idea of how it's likely to go. I might think to pull petals off a daisy: good luck, bad luck, good luck, oops. Or, if I need a bit more nuance, maybe I could try to interpret the clouds. Are they white, dark, puffy, flat, shaped like duckies or H-bombs? But no, of course I'll slaughter some farm animals and look at their livers. How stupid of me not to think of it sooner.
Back in the day, of course, it wasn't quite as bizarre as it appears to us now. It would be natural for priests performing ritual sacrifices to look at the carcass of a healthy sheep or calf and think the gods would be pleased, whereas if the organs were diseased, maybe not so much. Mesopotamians believed the liver to be the source of blood and hence of life, so paying particular attention to that organ would make sense. And the more obscure something is the more privileged the practitioner, so you end up with exquisitely complicated liver topography that only experienced haruspices could interpret.
Whatever. According to one story, Caesar's bull lacked a heart, always a bad sign. According to others, Spurinna was also an astrologer and his prediction was primarily based on the planets. In any case, Caesar took the prediction seriously but chose to go to the senate anyway. He must have really hated March.
March is actually lovely in North Central Florida. They days are warm and evenings cool. Redbuds and dogwoods line the county roads with pink and white. Deciduous trees begin to leaf out species by species, from sweetgums to cypress. Robins and cedar waxwings visit in great numbers on their way back north. Winter gardens are harvested, spring gardens are planted, and potato gardens grow bushy and tall.
Now the house is filled with mosquitoes. Tomato plants sag in the sun, Pollen wafts down from the sky. The humidity is creeping up, and highs in the 90s are predicted. Hello April, I love you.
I began the month burying my sweet old horse and ended it with a speeding ticket. In between, my husband, son and daughter all suffered significant setbacks. Their stories aren't mine to tell, but in the way of families, their problems weigh heavier than my own. I hate March.
Which of course leads me to wonder about the Ides of March. Clearly not a great thing for Caesar, but what the heck are Ides anyway, and should I worry about them?
Turns out whoever invented the Roman calendar either had a sick sense of humor or was a very odd duck. Days of the months were not numbered one, two, three, four or first, second, third, fourth. Dates were counted back from three fixed points based on the lunar calendar: the Kalends at the start, named for the day that bills were due; the Nones, either the 5th or the 7th, depending on the month; and the Ides, the 13th or 15th. The Ides of March was the 15th.
The unnamed days of the month would count back from the named days, so March 4 would be "IV Nones", or four days before the 7th, and March 14 would be "I Ides", one day before the 15th. As odd as this seems, it's at least a little consistent with Roman numerals which can also count back from significant numbers -- e.g. IV for 4 and IX for 9. Kind of makes you wonder about the Romans.
We all know that Julius Caesar was warned to "beware the Ides of March" before his demise at the hands of 60 senators. Those actual words were a bit of poetic license by Shakespeare, but according to Barry Strauss in The Death of Caesar, the historical ruler did visit a haruspex named Spurinna on February 15, 44 BC, and sacrificed a bull so that the soothsayer could predict his future. Spurinna warned JC that his life would be in danger for the next 30 days, i.e. until March 15. On that date Caesar told Spurinna that the Ides had come and was answered, "Aye, they have come but not gone." That should have kept JC away from the senate, but the rest, as they say, is history.
Next question, what the heck is a haruspex? Haruspices were people trained to read omens from the entrails of sheep and poultry, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep. Haruspicy was a kind of specialty within the wider practice of divination from animal entrails, brought to Rome via the Etruscans, who were apparently quite good at it. Caesar's soothsayer was surely of Etruscan descent, as Spurinna was a common Etruscan name.
Snide aside: How do people come up with this stuff? I mean, say I'm thinking about changing jobs or invading Persia and I want an idea of how it's likely to go. I might think to pull petals off a daisy: good luck, bad luck, good luck, oops. Or, if I need a bit more nuance, maybe I could try to interpret the clouds. Are they white, dark, puffy, flat, shaped like duckies or H-bombs? But no, of course I'll slaughter some farm animals and look at their livers. How stupid of me not to think of it sooner.
Back in the day, of course, it wasn't quite as bizarre as it appears to us now. It would be natural for priests performing ritual sacrifices to look at the carcass of a healthy sheep or calf and think the gods would be pleased, whereas if the organs were diseased, maybe not so much. Mesopotamians believed the liver to be the source of blood and hence of life, so paying particular attention to that organ would make sense. And the more obscure something is the more privileged the practitioner, so you end up with exquisitely complicated liver topography that only experienced haruspices could interpret.
Whatever. According to one story, Caesar's bull lacked a heart, always a bad sign. According to others, Spurinna was also an astrologer and his prediction was primarily based on the planets. In any case, Caesar took the prediction seriously but chose to go to the senate anyway. He must have really hated March.
March is actually lovely in North Central Florida. They days are warm and evenings cool. Redbuds and dogwoods line the county roads with pink and white. Deciduous trees begin to leaf out species by species, from sweetgums to cypress. Robins and cedar waxwings visit in great numbers on their way back north. Winter gardens are harvested, spring gardens are planted, and potato gardens grow bushy and tall.
Now the house is filled with mosquitoes. Tomato plants sag in the sun, Pollen wafts down from the sky. The humidity is creeping up, and highs in the 90s are predicted. Hello April, I love you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)