Uncategorized

what comes to mind

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I walked under the railroad tracks at Fond du Lac Avenue and Burleigh Street on the North Side of Milwaukee from those neighborhoods of frame flats, home to two families, up and down, and into another world. I didn’t know it then, but the world I was walking in to when I came out from under the viaduct at 35th Street – across from Master Lock Company – would become my world. My world is different from the world I left in those rented houses. My world is different in so many ways.

I was introduced to other students, students who actually lived on the other side of the tracks, when I walked under those tracks. I was a student at Peckham Junior High School, and so were they, those other students. Many of them would become my friends. At least one teacher made the mistake of thinking I was one of those students, but I was always painfully aware that I was from the other side of the tracks. I never forgot that. I noticed the clothes my classmates wore. I knew that many of them came from families where at least Dad – and sometimes Mom, too – were educated beyond high school. Some of my classmates were the children of professional people. Maybe I felt shame among those students; I saw the differences between them and me, with raw clarity.

Something else happened when I walked under the railroad tracks. I was tracked into the college bound students, the smart kids, based on the IQ tests all students had dutifully taken during grade school. And that changed my life.

Some people along the way would become important to me, to my life. I would never forget their names, how they looked, things they said. For three years I sat behind Larry Atlas, who made me laugh, in English classes taught by Miss Ross. How old was she? As a student of middle school age, she certainly looked very old to me. She always wore black old-lady shoes, and she always wore a navy polka-dotted dress that hung long, between her knees and ankles. I’m pretty sure she went to the hairdresser once a week to get her hair done, cut and permed. I knew this: she was not cut from the same mold as the women I’d known up to then.

I’m grateful to have been educated by the teachers I was privileged to have in the Milwaukee Public Schools in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Not one of them knew it, but they changed my life, changed the trajectory of my life.

In Miss Ross’s class, we studied the American poets. Every week, we learned about a poet, read their poems, memorized a poem, and put our learning into a book of our own, poems carefully rendered in my own hand. I filled a pocket folder with sheets of paper that included carefully printed poems and pictures I’d cut from the magazines my mother received in the mail. Sometimes, I was called upon to stand in front of the class on Friday and recite the poem we’d been assigned to memorize that week. My own love of poetry was fertilized and grew in Junior High English Class taught by Miss Ross. I can still recite most of the poems I learned over those three years. I love to recite the poems I had memorized, so many years – so many decades – ago.

I learned to love poems then. I began to write my own poems then, too. Sometimes I still find a poem in my childlike handwriting, a few words of my own fashioned into my own poem. And sometimes – often – the words of a poem I memorized under the strong and wonderful guidance of Miss Ross comes to mind.

Reciting a poem from memory is a great joy – to me. Later, after Junior High, after High School, somewhere along the way of my now long life, I memorized “Twas’ the Night Before Christmas.” Every year, I make sure to break into a recital of the entire text for someone else’s enjoyment – and for my own enjoyment.

*

Jeff was the one who encouraged me, this past year, to have a collection of my own poems published. Without his kind encouragement, I expect I’d never have sent my poems out to be published. It’s an accomplishment of my life. Its genesis, I think, began on that walk under the viaduct at Fond du Lac Avenue and Burleigh Street, on the North Side of Milwaukee.

***

Moments, Mary Elyn Bahlert, Balboa Press, 2026. Available on Amazon.

img_3934
memories, remembering, Uncategorized

“That’s the fun of it!”

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Mom liked to have fun. So did Daddy. In my Middle School years and beyond, while I was still at home, Mom would quickly clean the kitchen table after supper – we always had supper, except on holidays, when supper became dinner – and they’d get out the cards to play canasta all evening long, loudly calling to one another over the table.

And it wasn’t until many years later that I learned the other things that Mom thought were fun. Volunteering at the hospital, where she made good friends among the other volunteers. Spending a whole day with me whenever I returned from moving West to Northern California. We’d spend the day driving around Milwaukee, looking again at the old neighborhoods on the North Side where we’d both grown up. Then we’d end up at the Milwaukee Art Museum, where Mom stood silently in front of her favorite painting -“Le Pere Jacques (the Wood Gatherer)”, looking closely, as if she was seeing it for the first time. We always had at least one meal out at a restaurant of our choosing. We had our favorites.

And Mom especially liked to bake. Every winter, in Christmas season, she’d bake the cookies we liked best – meringue dots filled with chocolate, Kris Kringles, sugar cookies in all shapes, carefully decorated and sprinkled with chocolate chips or plain cookies sprinkled generously with nonpareils. She loved to try new cookie recipes, too. She had her assortment of recipes – a collection of cookbooks across many years, holiday gifts from the Gas Company and Electric Company – and marked, with comments – i.e. “a favorite, try this one!” The comments were meant for me, for the time I’d be baking my own cookies at Christmas. An event that has never happened: ask my husband.

I’d add my own comments now: “I’m not a baker, but I’definitely try this if I was a baker!”

And Mom had her own way of talking about those days of playing Canasta, about the days of baking cookies to be enjoyed by the whole family: “That’s the fun of it.”

I’m a different temperament from my mother. Gratefully, my own path has taken me through University and Seminary, following the leading of my temperament. And so, my comment holds: “I’m not a baker.” Every year, though, I bake three kinds of pies – sour cherry, pumpkin, and apple – to contribute to the holiday feast at Norman Bahlert’s and Cheryl Rouse’s long table on Thanksgiving Day. Mom would be proud of me, I’m sure.

img_3909

My poor photo of a print of “Le Pere Jacques.” This print hung above the desk in my mother’s small room at Mathilda Brown Home in Oakland, 1998-2001.

Uncategorized

“Am I dying?!?”

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I didn’t mean to frighten the man sitting on the hospital bed in the hospital room, when I opened the door. I was just there to do a good deed. I intended to visit with him for a few minutes, maybe say a prayer – if that’s what he wanted, and then I intended to make a mark next to the room number on the census sheet in my hand, to return it to my volunteer supervisor, a kind man with a calm manner.

All I said as I opened the door, was: “I’m a chaplain…” The man who sat on the bed was dressed in street clothes, probably waiting to be discharged that day. His back was to me. As I opened the door, I didn’t know what to expect. Sometimes the patient was in bed, actually asleep with the hospital sounds ringing loudly down the halls and into the room. Sometimes, there were doctors present, circled around the bed, speaking softly to the patient. Sometimes, a family member sat at the bedside. I could see the sheets and pillow stacked in a corner on the window seat, and I knew they’d spent the night in the room with the patient. I approached each room tentatively; an introvert, greeting strangers was not easy for me, although I had had the volunteer gig for a few years. When I entered, I always asked if they would like a prayer. Some did; some did not. In the Bay Area, it was common to receive a “no” to my offer.

Before COVID hit us all with a slam and locked down hospitals and businesses all over the country, I’d volunteered for a few years. I liked the gig, then. I was able to walk from home to Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, a nice walk of about 5 long city blocks. And I’d met a good friend, Cherynne, who was also a volunteer chaplain, a Jewish woman who read to each patient she visited from the Psalms. She and I had lunch together a few times. After COVID shut us down, she and I had met in Alameda to walk along the shore of San Francisco Bay, a nice outing for us and for her dog. I would miss her soon, when she sold her house in Alameda and moved to Bellingham, Washington, during the pandemic.

I was shocked that day, when the patient with his back to the door answered my “I’m a volunteer chaplain” with his fear-filled question: “am I dying!?” I think I answered him, meekly, quietly explaining that I visited everyone on the floor. I think I did; I’m not sure. The patient was shocked. I was shocked. A few minutes later, when I made my way to the nurse’s station, his nurse told me that I shouldn’t walk into rooms with closed doors. That’s not what my training as a volunteer had taught me. And I made sure I asked about that when I told my volunteer supervisor about the event. He listened quietly and nodded. Then he told me that it was ok to go into rooms whose patient had asked that the door be closed. Oh well.

I liked the chaplain gig well enough. I did it for a few years before COVID hit us all and forbid many things, including hospital visits by folks who were not patients. Sometimes, I’d say a prayer. Sometimes, after I’d said a prayer, the patient would continue to offer prayer. Some folks knew how to pray much longer than I did. Sometimes, I’d chat for a few moments with a patient who was sitting up in bed, and leave the room without a prayer. Sometimes, I’d leave a small Bible or a pamphlet that I’d picked up in the volunteer room. I liked the racial and ethnic diversity I encountered at Kaiser; it helped me to stay connected to the community, the community I often related to when I’d been Pastor in downtown Oakland for many years.

I liked the chaplain gig well enough, but it didn’t come easily to me. I preferred the pastor role I’d left behind at retirement. I preferred that role because I had a relationship with the person I was visiting. As their pastor, I could sit and talk for a few minutes, say a prayer, bring greetings from the folks at church. As a volunteer chaplain, I was “cold calling,” a role that did not come easily to me, a role that I ended soon after my encounter with the man whose face I never saw, but who made a memory for me.

Quan Yin, quietly praying in my yard photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 9/2026

Uncategorized

Aretha, Diane, Dolly, Gloria

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I wasn’t on a first name basis with them, but each of these women – Aretha, Diane, Dolly, Gloria – were important to my life. Of course I knew their names. Even if they didn’t know mine.

My heart longs some times for those long, humid days of summer. I was in my college years, studying at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, on the East Side of Milwaukee. By some act of grace I had my parents’ car – a 1967 Chevy BelAir Coupe – for the day, as long as I showed up at the gate of A.O.Smith at 3:30 pm to pick up Dad from work. I had some money of my own – enough to pay tuition for each semester, enough to buy books, and my own room at home. Suzie had moved out early, getting married as soon as she graduated from high school. I had some money of my own, and time of my own, too.

Those were days of luxury, although I didn’t know it then. I was a few years off from graduating. I was free – in a way I would never be free again. After my summer class at the University, I’d take the long way home, driving south along the shore of Lake Michigan, WNOV playing “sweet soul music” on the radio, turned up, and me – singing along.

I loved that soul music. And I knew all the words. And a favorite of mine was Aretha Franklin. She’ll always be a favorite; sometimes when I’m working in the kitchen, I’ll prop my iPad up to the wall and play old albums. I listen to Aretha’s strong, soul-filled voice again. And I’ll sing along, just like I did on those languid summer days in Milwaukee. Aretha had been in my life forever – it seemed to me.

We were guests of my long time friend Joanne – I’d meet Joanne a few years later in the Social Security Office in Green Bay – when news came on tv that Aretha had died. “Oh…” I let out a small groan. I watched the news clips, Aretha’s familiar face and sweet soul music on the screen. Her death felt like a personal loss to me, a slice of my own story, my own journey, dying along with her. I had particular images of her in mind; I’d read that she arrived at each performance of her long career with her purse, which she placed on the top of the piano – to make sure she’d get paid.

I won’t forget you, Aretha.

*

And there was Diane. I’d admired Diane Keaton since her breakout role in “The Godfather.” In my college years, I’d made a spring break trip to New York City, and my friend Vicki and I had second row seats to see “Hair” on Broadway. As part of the cast who threw off their clothes in the final scene of the production, Diane Keaton had come into public view – completely.

I kept up with Diane’s career. The Internet made that possible. I read about her private life; after a long life with various partners, she’d adopted two children of her own and she’d apparently taken to buying up real estate. Like so many admirers, I knew about these things.

I won’t forget you, either, Diane.

*

Dolly. Dolly Parton was admired – not only for her music, but for her big heart. To me, Dolly had a real, true presence. She never forgot where she had come from, from a poor family in the South, and a life she’d left behind when fame caught up with her. From time to time, I’ll watch her sing “Islands in the Stream” on youtube. Her glowing presence shows up, even years after she recorded the song. Her glowing, kind, generous, loving presence. I loved to read about Dolly’s life, how she gave books to kids who wouldn’t have a book. I watched again an interview with Barbara Walters, the differences between the two women visceral on the screen.

Dolly, Dolly, we miss you so.

*

Gloria. Gloria Steinem. From the time I purchased my first copy of Ms. Magazine while living in Green Bay, I’d known about Gloria and the others – the women who spoke up, the women who wrote, the women who lived their feminism. I admired them. I wanted to be them. In my own small way, I tried to leave my own imprint at work, where I worked among men who had not had a woman share their position, their rank, at work. Gloria’s work spoke to me. Her path opened the way for me – and millions of other women – to “raise their consciousness” – to become aware of the second-rate citizenship the women of the world lived – still live.

I knew then that my name would not change – ever – if/when I married. The idea that I’d have to have a partner who accepted that without question did not rise in me, although that’s the way life worked itself out.
Gloria’s work and Gloria’s voice gave me courage to face my life alone, to begin to trust myself, to see myself and other women in a new way. What I learned from Gloria’s modeling has never left me. I expect that how I live out my life has been shaped by Gloria and the others who had the courage to see things the way they were and to say: NO!

My own feminism is gentler now. I don’t know if Gloria’s feminism came to have a gentler edge. I expect that life’s unfolding brought something to her own journey, as it has to mine.

Thank you, Gloria. Thank you.

***

As I write, faces and feelings come to my mind about all the years that have passed since these women came into my life. And just like that – it seems – they are gone.

***

Uncategorized

Moving – again

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I’ll always count the North Side of Milwaukee as my home. When folks ask where I’m from, I tell them: “Milwaukee.” And that was my home until I left Milwaukee to start my first job after college, when I trained in Minneapolis and was sent to Green Bay, Wisconsin as my first assignment in the Social Security Administration.

Now, when I return to Milwaukee for a visit to family or old friends, I skirt that part of the city, although I long to return again. I’d like drive down the streets I walked every morning on my way to school. But Milwaukee is a city that has suffered from its own racism, and after being deliberately bumped from behind in a rented car at a corner on the North Side, I don’t want to return again. I remember the days of Father Groppi marching from my neighborhood to the South Side of Milwaukee, across a viaduct, during civil rights days. Milwaukee was and is very racially segregated. The people have a right to be angry, but I no longer have a need to prove that I can do certain things.

Over the course of my childhood, my parents rented flats on the North Side. As an infant, I was taken home from Mercy Hospital to 9 and Juneau Avenue on the near north side, and over the years, we lived on many other streets – Ring Street, where I started school at La Follette Grade School, 2 short blocks away, 28 and Center, Medford Avenue at 26 street, which ran parallel to Fond du Lac Avenue, a major artery, and then a flat on 49 Street South of Burleigh, across the street from St. Joe’s Hospital School of Nursing. From there, I walked to Washington High School. And that’s where we lived when I graduated from High School and began university at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, on the East Side.

A city kid, I was familiar with buses and took them everywhere, until I got my driver’s license at 17. Then, I shared the Bel Air coupe with my parents – after Mom had driven Dad to work at A.O. Smith on Capital Drive – when I needed it to get to classes at UW-M.

When I was growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the streets were still lined with majestic maple and elm trees until Dutch Elm disease cleared out the elms. And except for the months of winter, the trees met magically overhead across streets. For all its simplicity and even modesty, the streets were beautiful then. In the winter time, children – myself included – walked all the way to school along the top of snowbanks formed when city trucks shoveled the snow onto the narrow strip of concrete that marked the edge of the sidewalk. We’d climb the snowbank at the end of a block and walk clear along the top to the other end, which marked an alley or street.

But we moved a lot. I think it’s tough on a kid to move to another home, another school. And I think it was especially tough because my mother, who shouldered most of the responsibility for finding a place and for setting the move into motion, was anxious, always, about our safety. We always moved to a beautiful upper flat in a building that we called a “flat.” Another family lived below us; below the first floor was a full basement and above the upper flat was a full attic. Our flat was always beautiful because Mom preferred that the wooden frames around windows and doors not be painted over. And those flats – built some time after 1900 – had small rooms with a tiny inner hall with cupboards and where the doors to two bedrooms and the bathroom gathered together. We’d move when Mom had some beef with the landlord, the landlord, the person Daddy called, “Boss,” with a smile.

I shared a room with my little sister, Suzie, and until my brother Ronnie moved away to be married, and we always had a place with three bedrooms. Those old flats had a pantry with a window, cupboards on two sides. At Medford Avenue, the place had a lovely butler pantry.

We’d move when Mom was angry at the landlord for some reason, or we’d move when Mom wanted us to study at a different public school. In memory, it is always Mom who made the decision. I expect that’s accurate. Dad was a hard working, strong, union man, but he left the decisions to my mother. And if anyone could carry out what was needed, it was Mom. When Suzie was still in the stroller, I have a memory of walking in the neighborhood when Mom spotted a “for rent” sign on a house, and when she left me at the curb with my baby sister in her stroller. Mom marched angrily down the steps after the woman who answered the door spotted us waiting on the sidewalk and told Mom they didn’t rent to families with children.

I expect I felt a kind of shame at the simplicity, the poverty of those places. Once, walking to school with my friend Nancy, who lived down the street from me with her grandparents, on Medford Avenue, asked me why my parents rented their house. She had a way of saying things that are better left unsaid, I think. I don’t remember my answer, but I remember how I felt. I didn’t know the answer to her question. Now, I think that my parents had both grown up poor, although both were hard workers, and Dad was grateful to have landed a union job in the steel mill after the War. It would have been too big a stretch for them to own their own place. That was that.

In the summers, my family sat together on the front porch of our upper flat – wherever it was – after supper. Sometimes, Daddy would make popcorn, and we’d pass around the big round dish, taking big handfuls of the treat. As the sky grew dark, fireflies would pop into the night, and once or twice, a bat flew from the eves of the windows over the attic, into the night, and back again.

*
Was it hard on me, to move again and again as a child? I have never considered that. It was hard on me, I think, to see – to feel – the anxiety that filled the air that I breathed as a child. Like most kids, I didn’t know what I lacked, although as a child, I noticed the differences in social class of my teachers and the other kids, once I got to Junior High.

My long life has passed since I lived in those humble, crowded flats. Jeff and I own a beautiful Craftsman House in Oakland, a house that is the same vintage as those flats.

That’s where I am from.

Sturgeon Moon over San Francisco,
August, 2026, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert