So many of the stories from my grade school years seem to include Nancy, who grew up in the same neighborhood as I did in Milwaukee. Nancy and I are still connected, all these years later. And I always remember that Nancy and her sister, Diane, did not have parents, but that they lived with their Grandma and Grandpa in a lovely house on Medford Avenue, two blocks from our rented flat.
One day, as Nancy and I hung out together, we sat in the kitchen of that house with her Grandma. And although I don’t remember Grandma at all – was she talkative? Was she friendly to me, a friend of Nancy’s? Was she busy, always busy, or did she take time to sit down? That day, she told us about how she met her husband, Nancy’s Grandpa, who sat in the front room of the house. She had walked with a girlfriend to go roller skating, and there she met him, tall and handsome. Oh! he was so funny! Grandma recalled.
I looked toward the room where the old man sat. Handsome? Funny? How could that be? I tried to imagine him that way, but I couldn’t. And Grandma – how could I imagine her as a young woman, out with friends, having fun?
I guess all this means is that it’s a good time for me to be humble. Surely the young people who pass on the street next to our house here in Oakland must look at Jeff, look at me, and have a hard time thinking that we were young, once, too. One day, Jeff was walking to the house from his studio behind the garage, and he heard the young woman who lives next door to us describing her neighbors to a friend: “and there’s a nice retired couple next door.” We’re like Grandma, now, old and remembering when we were young. And grateful, grateful to be here, to “have our health,” as the old-timers used to say. Indeed, we do have our health and I suppose we’re old, now, too.
A nice old couple in Istanbul with a friend, May, 2023
Several years ago, Jeff and I initiated scholarships in our names at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where we both received our BA’s in the 1970’s. Later, each of us would make our way to seminary, Jeff to Garrett Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and me, to Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. How our journeys connected to form the journey of our bonding is another story, for another time.
I graduated from UW-M in the winter of 1973 and was hired almost immediately to train as a Claims Representative for the Social Security Administration. In a way, that’s when my life as an adult began, when my world began to open, to grow, and finally, to flourish. I left government service to enter seminary at the end of 1981, which marked my move from the Midwest to California. Sometimes even now, I have to stop to remind myself that I am in another place, that most of my life has been lived at a distance from my personal roots. And in my case, that is fitting.
As Jeff and I look to our past and our future, we both have held the value to serve – and to give back. I listen when I hear someone else use that expression: “I want to give back to the community where I came from…” And so, after I retired, I endowed a scholarship in my name, to be given annually to a student who is the first generation of their family – a student of color – to go to university.
The Office of Planned Giving at UW-M connects with the two of us at least once every year. Through our connections, we think of the University representative as our friends. Often, when we return to Wisconsin to visit family or to return to the places we still hold in our hearts, we have a visit. In the course of COVID-times, of course, we’ve had to meet online, to continue the connection.
This spring, Jeff and I met the new woman who is assigned to the Office of Planned Giving. Over the internet, we introduced ourselves. When it came time for me to talk about my scholarship, to explain what it meant to me, I had a surprise: tears. (Maybe the tears surprised her, also)!
I’m not a crier. I don’t think of myself that way, although I have, over the course of a lifetime, cried many tears. And I suppose there is something deeper that is touched in me, that I have this privilege, that I’m able to give back, that I want to give back, that I want to offer to open the door for another young person, whose times and life will be very different from mine, to be able to walk through that door.
As always, as I am often am these days, I am grateful.
Like my life, our spring garden has flourished! photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 6/2023
During Junior High, besides my studies in school, I attended weekly, Saturday morning classes at an Evangelical Lutheran Church. For two years, the teacher of our Confirmation Class was a Deaconess, probably the highest position a woman could serve in that particular denomination. In the third year, our teacher was the Pastor of the congregation, Reverend Hoffman. Because I went to a public Junior High, I was expected to study for three years in preparation for Confirmation as an adult member of the congregation. My good friend Nancy, who lived with her grandparents in the neighborhood near my house and the church, also attended the classes.
One year, we studied the travels of St. Paul, whose work figured highly in the denomination. We looked at large maps that hung from the wall of the classroom, and the Deaconess used a pointer to chart out the travels of Paul as missionary to those faraway lands, in what we now call the Middle East. And, over the course of the three years of weekly classes, we memorized Luther’s Small Catechism. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth…” and: “What does this mean?”
Nancy must have had a hard time sitting through those three hours of study on Saturday mornings, in addition to a week of public school. She expressed her having a hard time by acting out in some way. One Saturday morning, the Deaconess had had enough of Nancy, and so she sent her home, early. Later, as I left the building to walk home the two blocks to Medford Avenue, I met Nancy, sitting on the front steps of the Church. She had no intention of going home early to her grandparents’ house!
***
My family were not church-going people, and so, I was not a church-going young person. I survived – easily – the grueling “examination” before the Congregation, led by Pastor Hoffman, the week before we were to be confirmed. It was a large class of Confirmands, and the Pastor would call out a name and ask a question about the studies we had completed. The following week, on Palm Sunday, we were confirmed as adult members of the church. We received our Certificates of Confirmation, and a little box of envelopes for our tithes.
My family were not church-going people, and I was not a church-going young person, and so I attended church one or two times on my own before I stopped going entirely. A year or two later, I received a visit from the Deaconess, who had the charge to learn why I had “fallen away.” I recall bits of our conversation, my explanation that it seemed to me that the Hippies, with their talk of “love,” were expressing something like the Church’s teachings. I recalled that at one time during Confirmation Class, the Deaconess had used me as an example to the class of someone who would never drift away from Church! Now, I’d apparently failed her. I never did receive the visit from the Pastor, the next in line to question my failing faith.
Several years later, while I was studying at University, a surprising idea came to mind: “why couldn’t I be a Pastor?” I tell people now who inquire about my journey that I had not seen or even heard of a woman pastor! It would be several years before I found my way to a United Methodist Church with a thriving young people’s ministry led by a charismatic, politically involved Young Adult Minister who gently “took me by the hand” and led me into the Church. The Reverend Harvey Stower, had invited me, by his gentle guidance, to have a relationship with Jesus, and to show my faith by my life and actions in the world. And on one occasion, he asked me a question – no one had asked before: “Do you ever think about seminary?” His question allowed my unspoken yearning to come to the surface. His example of ministry, his work for justice, always, his walk with Jesus, was far-removed from the memorization and testing I’d encountered in Confirmation Class.
Still, I’m always grateful for the sound sense of theology and Biblical understanding I’d received during those three years of classes in the Lutheran tradition. As I grow older, looking back, I see that my life has had a trajectory of its own. Often, I was too anxious to trust that trajectory. But here I am, a fulfilling life of service behind me, and a deepening spiritual journey, still. As I like to say, “I’ve taken a drink from many cups.” I’m grateful.
A respect for all faiths: The Blue Mosque, Istanbul, 5/2023, photo by meb
My mother loved books, and although she had not graduated from high school (she received her GED when I was enrolled in college), she made sure she passed on her love of books and learning to her children. So once every two weeks, she walked my sister and me to the Center Street library, where she checked out several books, and where Suzie and I also found books to take home and to read.
Somewhere over the course of my childhood, my mother received a set of bound, green covered books, fictional accounts of a family from Canada: The Whiteoaks of Jalna (written by Mazo de la Roche, Collier and Son, publishers). I still have the six volumes, a wonderful set of books I set out to display on beautiful fir shelves in our living room. When I was old enough to read these books, Mom and I read the books. And we talked about what we had read, those fictional people, whose lives were much more privileged than ours, that beautiful country land, such a stark contrast to the streets lined with narrow, rented flats in the city.
What I remember most about those books is how they awoke my mother’s fancy, as well as mine. We loved the characters. We talked about the happenings in the books, as if we had witnessed these happenings in our own lives. And we admired – maybe even had a crush – on the eldest son, Renny Whiteoak.
Renny was a red-headed, ruddy young man, strong, good looking. Over the course of the books, he grew from a young person into a young man. And both Mom and I fancied, from time to time, that we had seen Renny. Sometimes, as we rode in the car (Mom learned to drive and got her driver’s license when I was in Junior High), one of us would point out a young man on the street: “look, there’s Renny!” And we’d both agree that we’d seen him, again.
Mom sparked my imagination, and I expect she sparked mine because her own was lit. She would remind me – in later years, when I discovered my anger at what my folks had or had not been able to give me – that she had grown up in a different way than I had. And that included making space for books, for imagination, for a world that would grow to be larger than the world I was coming up in.
Now, I love seeing those green covered books on my shelf. They hold a lot of memories for me. Lately, I’ve been reading again – for the fourth time, I believe – Jane Eyre. As I remember the legacy my mother gifted to me, I expect I’ll be reading about Renny Whiteoak again, too. Maybe I’ll even see him on the street.
Here’s to Renny! – photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 6/2023
