Tag: community

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A moment…

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Mom and I stood together in the checkout line of the local supermarket where she shopped in her neighborhood in Milwaukee. I was home on a visit from the Bay Area of California. We always loved those days together, two “Milwaukee girls” who explored the city, finding new and revisiting old sites.

She didn’t say it to me; she said it to herself. In the line ahead of us, an elderly Asian woman and a little boy, who appeared to be her grandson, stood in front of the checker. We heard the checker ask for some amount of change, and the elderly woman, her hand full of coins, turned to the little boy, extending her hand toward him. He peered into her the palm of her hand and chose a coin or two. She handed the coins to the checker.

“And now he feels ashamed,” I heard Mom say to herself. She had seen the moment, just as I had, and I knew then that it had brought forth a memory of some distant moment in her life. She would have been standing at the checkout with her mother, Feodosia, who had never learned to read, and she would have been the child she saw now, looking into her mother’s hand and choosing the right coin. And she had felt ashamed.

I understood then that my mother had a heart for those who are the “other” in our country. I had always known it, having grown up in a house where we did not speak slurs about those who were/are “other.” I grew up learning to respect those who had gone before and to respect those who were different than us, those whose lives had been difficult in ways I could not imagine, those who had left their land and their people so that I could be standing in that aisle that day, a witness.

And I loved her even more for that moment.

community, nostalgia, reflecting

Life in the West – a sense of place

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I hadn’t visualized living in the American West for most of my life, but here I am. I’ve lived in Oakland for over 25 years, after I completed my work as a Pastor in Oakland, and I expect I’ll be here for another while – God willing.

When I was young, I imagined that I would leave the Midwest, and I was certain I’d move to the East, to New York City, perhaps, or to Washington, D.C. My imaginings always took me to cities. To big cities. I love the diversity of cities, the abundance of neighborhoods, each one with its own personality, and I love the choices we take for granted in the cities. I love the bustle of things, and I love the way even cities become quiet on holidays, or on early Sunday mornings. I love the diversity of people – diversity of color, of background, of education, of family. I love it all.

And I’ve been privileged to have come West, where I arrived as a student in seminary in Berkeley in the 1980’s. I was fulfilling my dream to go to seminary, to become a pastor.

My husband Jeff is from the Milwaukee area, from Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee. Part of him yearns for the quiet country life he came to love and to respect when he spent time with his maternal grandparents on their farm, northwest of Milwaukee, where Jeff’s mother had grown up. His mother, though, waited for the day she graduated from high school to leave that place for another life. Sometimes Jeff reminds me that it’s his turn to choose a place, a country place… I expect he must be dreaming again of finding a place that gives him love and care and a respite from whatever might be bothering him at the moment.

But we are connected here more than by time and a place. We have strong community here; community is important to us as a value, and we know it would take a long time to build that again in a new place.

And – I remind myself – we are not 40 years old anymore!

And so, from year to year, our connection, our deep bond to this place deepens and deepens. And when we travel, living in the West makes it easy to tell people, when they ask where we are from: we’re from California. Everyone knows where California is!

Looking out to the West, over the Pacific, from home. Photo by meb, 3/2025

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The day they died

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Jeff and I were driving home from Sacramento on Saturday, March 21, 2009. I leaned over to turn on the radio in the car. There was a repeating news story from Oakland – where we were headed, and where I was pastor of a downtown church -being broadcast on the news, details changing and being added as more information came to the broadcasters. Four Oakland police officers had been shot by one young man that afternoon. Two were motorcycle police officers, two were members of the SWAT team that had gone to the home of the suspect and were murdered by the suspect as they climbed the stairs to the apartment he was holed up in. The attacker was shot dead by officers.

When we arrived home, I checked the messages on our answering machine and discovered several calls. John Hege, the son of a family I served in the church in Oakland, was one of the motorcycle officers who had been shot. John would not die for a day or two, after he had been declared brain dead.

Like so many others, I was in shock. I tried to call John’s parents, John and Tam, but they were not home. The police department had brought the affected families together and they were in the care of officers. I tried to get to John Hege, Jr., who lay brain dead at Highland Hospital, but I was not permitted access to the officer.

*

Friday, March 27. Like so many others, I watched the funeral of the four police officers who had lost their lives on television, broadcast from the Oracle Arena. As the service ended, I walked to Mountain View Cemetery from our house, and met the funeral director who was caring for John’s family. I sat in the hearse as we waited for the family to arrive. I looked back at the hearse, realized there was no casket – four caskets had been visible at the community service. In one of those simple moments at such a time, I asked the funeral director where he was. He nodded toward my arm, leaning on the urn that held John’s ashes. We almost laughed as we broke the silence of that moment.

I rode in the hearse to the Hege plot, high in the hills, and waited with the family at John’s graveside. Tam and John and their two daughters and their families stood silently with us. I said a few – unimportant, but necessary, I suppose – words in the presence of this sombre gathering, and the funeral director nodded at John, the officer’s father, giving him the urn with his son’s ashes.

I stood behind John as he kneeled over the grave and leaned over to place all that was left of his son into the grave. As he kneeled, he appeared to fall over, and I leaned over him, reaching for his shoulder, just as he set his son’s ashes in the grave.

Years later, telling the story to someone who has not heard it, I come to tears each time. In my role that day, I did not cry. I witnessed. I was a witness to the grief that hung over us all, to the grief that enveloped John’s family.

*

There are some moments in life that remain, some moments as a Pastor that I remember, vivid moments that come to mind as if I am living them again. That day on the hill, witnessing the grief and the resignation of John’s family, comes often to my mind. When I pass the sign on the freeway that names the four officers killed that day, I nod, as a witness, and to my memory.

Sometimes it seems strange that beauty remains after such a grave loss.

Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert

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Friends

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Some would call it a blessing. For others, it is something they are not able to attain. Many people need – and want – only one or two. Some think that everyone they meet is a friend.

I call mine a blessing.

This past week, I spent several days with Vicki, a friend I met in high school. I met her brother Bruce before I met Vicki, when I sat behind this tall, painfully shy boy in Art Appreciation Class, my first elective course as a senior at Washington High School in Milwaukee. During our college years, Vicki and I started to hang out together more often. The course of our lives has been very different, but our friendship remains. When we met in Denver – as close to halfway between New Berlin, WI and Oakland as we could figure – we spent the evenings together in our hotel room, talking and talking, until after we’d turned out the lights and lay in our beds.

I remember meeting Joanne for the first time, when she sat down at my desk in Green Bay, Wisconsin, smiled her bright smile, and said, “do you golf?” (My answer: I didn’t, but I could try. I never did). We took road trips together, and we flew together to Montreal and Quebec with another friend, Carla, who is still in Joanne’s life. Joanne commiserated with me as we mourned our lack of dates, until we finally met the men we would marry. Joanne stood up with me in my wedding. Because I was at school in Berkeley, I wrote a prayer for her wedding and posted it in the U.S. mail, instead.

The Bug was my best friend in high school, and we keep in touch via email now. Her sister Bonnie and I stood up in the Bug’s wedding. My heart hurts for the Bug now; her son died unexpectedly – at only 46 – in the past year.

I knew Pat’s family from the time I was little in Milwaukee. Her aunt was one of my mother’s good friends, a friend from her neighborhood in Milwaukee, too. Later, Pat and I, her brother Bobbie and the Bug, and several other teenagers from our neighborhood worked together at the Times Fine Arts Theater on Milwaukee’s North Side. Now, I talk to Pat very few months on the phone, and even now, we’ve got plenty to talk about. And to laugh about.

Later in my life, I’ve continued to make friends. I’m grateful. I met Alexis and Linda, both clergy, through meetings with other United Methodist clergy in Northern California. Staying in touch with them is important to me. A year ago, Judith rode home with me from a retreat where we’d both led small groups of clergy in reflection sessions, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Some of my friends, like Lana, live locally, so I get to have lunch with her, where we discuss books we are both reading, and with Jean, another Oakland person.

I hope their friendships keep me healthy, and I hope I have something to give them, as they do to me. Conversation with each one is different, full of history, often serious, and always interesting.

My life is richer for each one of my friendships. I am grateful.

Vicki and me, Botanical Gardens, Denver, 5/2025

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First job

Mary Elyn Bahlert

My first job was at the Times Fine Arts Theater on Vliet Street and Hawley Road in Milwaukee. Word must have passed from one young person to another, because most of the other young people who worked at the theater were friends of mine from high school, and even earlier in my life. There was Pat R., her younger brother, Bobbie, my best friend, The Bug (who had received her name from Bobbie at some point), my cousin Mark, and a couple of other kids from the neighborhood.

I could take the 23 bus right to the front door of the theater to start my shift. I was the vendette, my friends Pat and Bug – who worked at different times – were the ticket sellers. We worked for minimum wage – I started at $ .90 – yes, that’s right – 90 cents! – and stayed at that rate for the year I worked there. And I worked no more than 15 hours each week.

My shift started with my walking down the left aisle in the dark theater to a little room off the dark hall behind the stage. There, I reached into the dark room to flick on the light switch, and I reached for a big bag of popcorn that was stored in that room. The popcorn had been popped at a sister theater, larger, with its own popcorn popping machine. I carried the big bag of popcorn back to the narrow aisle in the lobby of the theater, where I dropped the popcorn under the lights to warm. I had picked up some real butter in the back room of the theater, too, and I put that in the dispenser to warm and to melt. Then I was ready for customers.

Times Fine Arts Theater was not well-attended. Its fare was mostly “adult pictures,” although not what we would call X-rated these days. And then, the Theater showed one feature – not several in different theaters, which is common today. From time to time, I’d catch a few minutes of the movie currently running. But mostly, I stayed behind the counter where I sold popcorn and candy from a selection that was locked behind the counter until I opened it for my shift.

During the movies, I could talk and have fun with my friends who worked along with me. The usher stood at the doorway to the outer hallway, which was cold in the winter. The ticket seller had an electric heater which she had plugged in as soon as she arrived for her shift. Sometimes, crushes developed there between various couples, mostly short-lived.

I credit that job as marking the beginning of my life-long addiction to popcorn. (During COVID, popcorn-making in a pot on the stove became part of a daily lunch ritual with Jeff). I kept a small portion of popcorn behind the butter machine, and I snatched another kernel of buttered corn – real butter – from time to time. During COVID, popcorn-making in a pot on the stove became part of a daily lunch ritual with Jeff.

At the end of our shifts, we carefully counted out what we had made that night, and inventory of the candy in the glass cabinet that I opened from the back was taken. Then, I locked it up again, stuffed the remaining popcorn into the large plastic bag I’d stashed under the counter, and walked it back to the room behind the big screen.

When the shift was over, my Dad’s dark blue Chevy Bel-Air coupe showed up in front of the doors, and I was on my way home. Later, the Bug had access to one of her parents’ cars, and she’d drive me home, the two of us talking and laughing all the way.