Category: nostalgia

reflecting, remembering, Uncategorized

First memory

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I like to ask people what their first memory in life is. I was touched by the first memory of Georgia O’Keeffe as she sat on a blanket on the grass in her childhood place, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin – the vividness of her sight, the colors, the shapes, the sky, the grass. Her first memory shaped – or was shaped by the artist she was/would become. I imagine it is so for each of us.

Mom was not with me. That would have made an impression on me. Instead, I was talking to Mom on the telephone, under the watchful presence of Agnes Hundreiser, my mother’s friend who had come to take care of me during the day when Ron was in school and Dad left for work at the steel mill. Mom told me I had a baby sister. And then she asked me: “what should we name her?” I answered “Ann,” giving the name of my mother’s own sister, my Auntie Anne. That must have been the name of a sister, in my mind. And my own mother’s name was Mary, so my thinking followed!

“How about Susan?” Mom asked. And so it was: I had a baby sister named Susan.

I expect siblings shape our lives in so many ways, conscious and unconscious ways. Was I jealous? I expect I was, my role as the “littlest one” suddenly changed to Big Sister. And I suppose that jealousy has played out in conscious and unconscious ways in my life. I was often protective of Suzie, a role given to me by my place in the family and a role taken up by me by temperament.

The trajectory of Suzie’s life has been much different than mine. We have so little in common. Still, when something goes wrong in our lives, sister is the first to know, after partner, of course. When Suzie was diagnosed with colon cancer at 65 – the same age our father had been diagnosed with colon cancer – I was the first person she called. And when I could not be with her at the doctor’s appointment, she taped the meeting so that I would know, and understand what she was facing.

I sat for a bit: should I name this post, “Little Sister,” or should I name this post, “First Memory.” For some reason – I don’t know the reason – “First Memory” won out. It’s hard to separate ourselves from the influence and the power of a sibling, that I know.

Little sister, big sister: Susan Lynne and Mary Elyn, photo, circa 1956, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

remembering, Uncategorized

The Center Street Library

Mary Elyn Bahlert

The Center Street Library was close to the flat my family rented on Medford Avenue. To get there meant crossing two very busy streets: 27th Street, that cut from North to South, one of the busiest streets on the North Side of Milwaukee before the freeways went in, and Fond du Lac Avenue, which angled to the Northwest, like Medford Avenue, one street to the West. As a girl, my little sister and I walked to the Center Street Library with Mom once a week, in the late spring, summer, and fall, before the snow and freezing temperatures came.

Like so many things Mom did for us, the walk to the library with Mom was one of those things she had not experienced as a child herself. She wanted things for us she had not had. Both of her parents were illiterate – the ancestors of freed serfs from Ukraine – and she had taught her own father to read English when she was in grade school in Milwaukee, in neighborhoods to the south and east of where I grew up. Poor people, they lived among poor people, and the flat she grew up in served as a boarding house for other men who came from Ukraine, hoping for work and a better life. My grandfather had returned to his own country to bring back his wife, Feodosia (Frances), and their eldest son, Ivan (John). By my measure, the better life they dreamed of did not manifest in the new land.

So Mom made sure we knew the inside of the library, and with her as an example we had library cards and, during the summer, we were members of the Billy the Bookworm Reading Club. To make progress in the club, I had to answer a series of questions to show I’d read the required books. One day, as I stood at the librarian’s desk, my cousin Mark whispered the answers to her questions in my ear. I’m not sure if I heard him right, and I’m not sure if the answers I gave were right, but she gave me the sticker to the next level.

I discovered my first crush at the Center Street Library. I stood in the aisles with Larry Bartis. He and I walked along, looking up – to the highest shelf! – where we read the titles of books out loud to one another! Oh – how we laughed! Once – only once – I glanced over at him, and to my surprise, I realized as I watched him throw back his head and laugh: “I like him! A boy!” I kept it to myself (years later, after we connected on Facebook, Larry confessed he’d had a big crush on me). But I had noticed, noted my first crush.

I still love libraries. In high school, I worked in the library at Washington High School in Milwaukee. In seminary, I worked in the Graduate Theological Union library in Berkeley. I love the smell of libraries. I love the little nooks with tables and chairs, places to relax into reading a good book, or places to write the first outline of an important essay for school. I love the tall stacks. I love to sit for hours, working on a paper, surrounded by the books that hold the answers to my questions. I love – loved – the card catalogs, that held directions to the answers to so many mysterious questions of interest. I love to take my questions to the Reference Librarian, who, I’m sure, loves to discover something new along with me, as he moves his mouse around the big screen on his desk that takes the place of the card catalogs. I love to sit in a corner with a magazine I’ve taken off the shelf to enjoy. I love libraries.

The building that was the Center Street Library in Milwaukee is now home to The Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum. The Museum “opened its door and its heart to the community, city, and state in 1987. Based on the premise that a people who know their history will grow to love and appreciate themselves more, the Society is striving to create a bright future out of a heart breaking past.”

Milwaukee Public Library opened the Center Street branch library in the former firehouse in 1927 (from “Urban Spelunking,” Bobby Tanzilo, December 12, 2017).

As I write today, I picture in my mind’s eye myself, my mother, and my little sister, Suzie, walking those streets again. What I picture is a scene from long, long ago. I’m grateful to my mother, who thought in a larger way for us than anyone had thought for her, as she introduced us to something greater than the life we knew, in that library. Maybe she knew it; maybe she didn’t. I’m grateful, anyway.

beauty, poetry, remembering

This morning, a walk up Mount Wanda

Mary Elyn Bahlert

This morning, a walk up Mount Wanda,

summer brown – early this year. 

Up the long path to the top –

A windmill, high and lonely,

Turns and listens

As the earth crunches beneath our feet,

and as we circle, again and again,

The azure sky draped overhead.

Here, tired from the climb, the trees our companions –

our lives have come to this! –

We stop! We breathe. —Mary Elyn Bahlert, 6/2021

On Mount Wanda, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 06/2021







		


			
		
	






	
	

		remembering, wisdom
???  Curiosity  ???
	


	

							

			 Mary Elyn Bahlert		
		
		

			

It was in the beginning of January, 2001.                                                                               My mother was in the last days of her life, and she lay on her bed, under hospice care, in the Mathilda Brown Home in Oakland, every day, all day.  I sat with her often – as often as possible –  and we chatted idly, our conversation about ordinary things.  From time to time, Mom would close her eyes as she lay on her back, and I sat in the silence – our last times together. 





At the time, I was the proud and enthusiastic owner of the Palm Pilot, powered by batteries, that held my calendar. 





One afternoon, I sat next to Mom’s bed as she rested, and because I had not brought a book or other work from my office, I turned on my little computer-calendar and started to play Solitaire- a bonus feature.  A few moments later, Mom sat up, and threw her legs over the side of the bed, as she looked at the object in my hands.  “What is that?” she asked.





                                                  ?????????????????                                                          





Over the years, I’ve come to value my own curiosity more and more.  Curiosity has been a great gift to me.  As I get older, I know that I prefer to spend my time with curious people – people whose sights are set on the abundance of wonder in the world.  Their curiosity may lead them to interests that aren’t mine, but it’s the quality they possess that makes them interesting – and, well, curious – to me. What they give me from what they’ve received from their own interests continually makes my life richer.





And their curiosity flows over – to people.  Curious people are interested in other people, about the world other people inherit, about how other people got to where they are going now, what decisions they made, who they’ve encountered in their lives. Over the years, my friends loved to visit with my parents.  In their small living room, my friends’ lives were of interest to Mom and Dad, whose lives were enriched by the young people in their lives.  Mom and Dad were interested in the lives of the young people who visited, and the young people knew that – and liked it.










A curious stone building, once home… Saukville, WI, 5/2022       Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert





My brother Ronn was 9 years older than me; he married when I was 14.  In my eyes, he was all grown up, making his way in the adult world.  One day, after he’d been married a year or so, he said something to me that I’ve never forgotten: “Do you know that some people are not as interested in things as we are in our family?”  “No,” I answered Ronn, in response to his reflective question.  I’ve never forgotten his question, his observation, really, about the world as he saw it – his own world growing larger by his connection to another family.





Curiosity has led me to be curious about myself, to be curious about my inner life, about what has brought me here, about who and what I’ve encountered over the course of the years of my life.  My curiosity extends to other people:  what makes them tick? In my mind, curiosity is not dependent on finding answers; curiosity is interested in questions…





I’ve always loved libraries.  What better place than a building whose purpose is to hold books, computers, magazines – all filled with something to satisfy someone’s curiosity – or to leave someone’s curiosity unsatisfied, so that they have to go back for more?!?





I didn’t come from highly educated people, people with degrees and titles.  But I did come from a curious sort, people whose eyes lit up with the discovery of what was new, new in their lives.  I expect that the quality of being curious is not related to education.





And would the world be different, if human beings were less concerned with certainty than with curiosity?  

		


			
		
	






	
	

		remembering
Mrs. Hospel
	


	

							

			 Mary Elyn Bahlert		
		
		

			

My first grade school was Robert M. La Follette Elementary School in Milwaukee.  During the summer before I started fifth grade, my family moved a mile west where we rented another flat – we always lived in the second floor flat – where I walked to Clarke Street School on 28 and Clarke Streets.  I had to cross 27th Street, a busy thoroughfare on the North Side.





I made several good friends at Clarke Street School.  One of my best friends – Frances (Peltz) Assa – and I re-connected several years ago; we had lost touch after the 6th grade.   Through the years I had thought about Frances, and one of the joys made possible by the Internet has been our re-connection in our 60’s. 





Now, though, I remember a day that was an important day in my life, one I often remember.  In the summer after 6th grade, my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hospel, invited me to spend a day with her at her home.  I expect that only a few of us received that gift, although I don’t know for certain.  I took the bus from 26 and Medford – where we lived in the big upper flat in the house second from the corner of Medford Avenue and Tamarack Street – to the East Side of Milwaukee, east of Humboldt Boulevard. 





I now know that as a child, I identified with my teachers – unlike most children, who identify with their parents or those who’ve been their care-givers.  The trip to spend the day with Mrs. Hospel would have been significant for me.  I’m sure I was excited, although I don’t recall.  The bus trip alone – a young girl, arriving on a city bus – would have been cause for excitement.   





No one in my immediate family had been to college, and my childish ability to note these differences was important to me. 





In my mind, I see the wall in one room of Mrs. Hospel’s home.  Was it the living room?  The dining room?  I know we had lunch.  Sometimes, I think I can almost remember what she served for our lunch together, but I do not remember.  I see the wall, I see the framed pictures there.  And when I see them, I realize – again, as I did as a child – that this house, this way of living was different than the way we lived, the way my family lived. I knew this, with a child’s knowing, a knowing I have not lost through the years. 





At the end of our time together, Mrs. Hospel walked me to the corner of Humboldt Blvd. and Locust Streets, where we sat on a bench, waiting for the bus to take me home again.   Just a few years later, I would wait on that same corner for the bus to take me home from the University.  As we sat there, I remember talking to Mrs. Hospel, asking her questions about herself.  I seemed to call on a part of myself – a larger, more adult part of myself – to have this conversation.





A good friend of mine – a retired school teacher – tells me that some-times she sees in children a part of them that is mostly hidden, but that rises to the surface in certain moments; as a teacher, mother and grandmother, she loves these moments.  I think she was describing the Me I knew that day.  Maybe this part of me was my True Self, that larger, indescribable Self that we have always known, that has been with us, is in us, birthing us – forever.  





me, 1961





Sometimes, Facebook is a remarkable thing!  A few years ago, Mrs. Hospel and I became Facebook friends.  When she was my sixth-grade teacher, she was in her first year of teaching, and so, I expect, she is only 10 years older than I am.  We’re both still young – and in the Wisdom Years…