BRATTLEBORO — All my life there has been someone older to show me the way.
When I was a child, it was grandparents.
Since they had all emigrated to America, I grew up with a vision of America as the land of opportunity. If you worked hard, stayed in school, you might not get rich, but you would always eat. There was no question that I, the oldest grandchild, would be the first to graduate from high school and, a wonder in itself, go to college.
As a teenager, my mentor was a man I remember only as Casey.
I was a counselor at a camp for the blind in New Jersey; he was the director. The 17-year-old me listened and learned from the campers what it was like to struggle in a sighted world that mostly didn't know you existed.
But it was Casey who lifted a young woman who had hardly been out of her neighborhood into a world of diversity and choice. He called me the quiet rebel. He taught me I had a mind and I could use it to help myself and others.
As a young mother, I met Rachel Landon. I was at the time writing poetry early in the morning and late at night. I met Rachel at a book group meeting at the Weston Playhouse. I don't remember the book we were discussing, but there was this older woman in the back row saying, “Well, by the next time we meet, we will have forgotten both the name and the author of this book.”
She and her husband, Ed Landon, an artist, took me in and encouraged my writing when I was struggling to believe in it myself. I never knew until much later that Ed was a famous artist. He was even in Who's Who. They both listened with concentration to each of my offerings, and then would gently give me the gift of right-on criticism.
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When I was 50 years old, I moved to Brattleboro. And I began to attend the Putney Quaker Meeting, where someone connected me to Alice Holway.
Alice was fairly housebound at that time. She invited me to come to her house and read some poems. As I finished each poem, there would be a silence and then Alice would take the poem and walk it all over the Earth, connecting it to places she had been, people she had met, lessons she had learned.
She took my poem by the hand and expanded it to encompass the world.
Hattie Reeves-Forsythe, on the other hand, took my hand and led me inward to the soul. She was to me a Quaker. She also liked to hear poems. She would connect them to community, silence, inspiration, the poem's connection to the spirit, and, overall, how to be a more loving person in this world.
* * *
Pam Mayer shared her deep connection with the Earth by inviting me to Manitou. I would, in turn, invite some of the people I was working with at the AIDS Project to walk the labyrinth with me.
We all would emerge calmer than when we entered, fed by the myth and the reality. I can never look at the special light that illuminates an old maple deep in the woods without seeing Pam standing entranced by my side.
I will never forget Myrtle McDermott, either. I met Myrtle at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. We were both walking on a treadmill: me for my heart, she for her lungs.
We became friends as so often happens in support groups. I would visit her often. In the summer, I would bring fresh vegetables, and we would sit and admire the colors and varieties. We would talk for hours. Always we would end up laughing, the best gift any friend can give.
* * *
None of these people walk this earth any longer. All of them live forever within me.
I am grateful to them all.
And I would not be who I am had I not known each of them. I can never thank them enough.