Explaining

Early in the time my family converged at my niece's home to process the approaching death of my sister Martha, several people were around her in the curtained alcove her daughter Bonnie created for the hospice bed. She was still conversing with visitors at this stage, though she sometimes wandered. Bonnie and Kathryn (the sister I came with) was helping her with a garment, and I heard her say something that caused some mistaken assumptions about my sister complaining. It's not that she didn't complain, or have a lot to complain about, but they were mistaken and I had to correct them. A minute or two later, I called Kathryn and Bonnie over and explained.

The lady of the house comes home at midnight. She pulls the long cord, and a moment later, her butler appears. "Madame?"

She speaks in a low voice. "Charles. Please remove my wrap." "Yes, Madame."

"Charles, I'd like you to unzip my dress." "Yes, Madame."

Garment by garment, it continues. Then: "That will be all, Charles." "Very good, Madame."

"And, Charles?" "Yes, Madame?" 

"Don't ever let me catch you wearing my clothes again." 

 See, they thought she was complaining, but she was actually quoting the punch line of a story she'd told me when she was about ten, and it was important that they know what she was saying. Punch lines were our life. Also, it was a good story, so.

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Hospice Dad

 

Comforted by bed, blankets, and morphine,
He dreams of ninety-eight years.
From cabins to tents to farms to town,
Mastering piano as a performer,
Supporting a family on a musician's pocket
And an entitled sportsman's distractions.
When he wrote of his memories, some time back,
He didn't mention any of us. We were in his life
But we didn't do much to speak of.

In perpetual not-quite-retirement,
Building boats, he found his milieu.
He was popular, part of the conversation.
Then the strokes started subtracting him,
Shock by shock, never finishing the job.
He came back from it each time
Always diminished but still unreeling,
Still unwinding, years of string, floss, threads of past events,
Loosed and spun away from the shrinking core
Until his final bit flakes off on a breeze
And he goes from being more here than gone
To being more gone than here,
Remembered by the ones he forgot.
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Here Lies Somebody

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Not long after moving here, I was looking at a cemetery about a mile from our house, and found the grave of a likely relative. Likely, because (according to The Babbitt Family History), almost all Babbitts in the US were related, and traced back to Edward Bobet — with the exception of a few who had come into this country as immigrants with names the officials couldn't or wouldn't write, and who found themselves and their descendants dubbed with the surname.



It was possible to read the name on the stone: "Nathaniel Babbitt." The soft sandstone held other faint lines, but between their weak grip on the stone and the encroaching lichens, I couldn't make out any dates. I guessed that it was one of the oldest stones in the Pioneer Burying Ground, which began use just before 1800. I pored over a copy of the family history. Not the copy my grandmother had, but a scan of a library copy that I found online. Archive.org was probably the source of it. First, I tried to read the text conversion of the book, which as full of errors due to unchecked mechanical character recognition and problems with columns and footnotes. It turns out, though, that the scanned PDF version is fully searchable and looks great.

I soon found out that the family history is chock full of Nathaniels, and not knowing exactly when to look was also a handicap. I searched on Pittsford, and found references to other Babbitts, as well as to Pittsford, Vermont, which I've found is the town that the one here in New York was named after. Since this town was called Northfield at the time the cemetery was begun, I searched that as well. Guess which other state has a Northfield where Babbitts lived. Yes. Vermont. Curse you, Vermont!



By 2011, the growth across the face of the stone had expanded. I wondered if taking a brush to it would do more harm than good. I wondered if there were any descendants still in town — or in other nearby towns. The history mentioned Babbitts in other towns in the state, ranging from a few miles away on the shore of Lake Ontario to the other side of Syracuse. I tried calling a Babbitt in the phone book, leaving a voice message that hasn't been returned yet. I stopped by the Town Hall and learned that the town historian comes in for a few hours a week on Thursday afternoons, and took down her information. Months later, I remembered in time to give her a call.

She had some interesting information for me. Going to her records, she told me that the stone is not marking the resting place of Nathaniel Babbitt, but that of his wife, Anna, born 1782, died 1806 (June 1806, though the stone apparently once claimed 1804 in error). She was aware of the condition of the grave, and didn't think there was anything that could be done about it by this time.



Looking at my earliest photos, I could now trace some of the letter shapes in 'ANNA' in the gray-green overgrowth. I could even discern in the gentle curves beneath Nathaniel's name the likely location of "1782" and perhaps "June." She mentioned a Babbitt family that she used to know in town, on Clover Street. The father's name was Arlo or Arliss, the daughters were Donna and "Betty" (short for Elizabeth). Donna moved to Iowa, Betty passed on.

Time has been hard on the graves, particularly those carved in soft sandstone. The oldest is unreadable now, and is part of a row of undecipherable white slabs. I thanked her for the information, which was more than I expected, even though I had been fairly sure she'd have access to records. With or without records, she knew the graveyard, and its stones, very well. I felt like I'd been taking up a lot of her time, so I didn't ask about the small stones piled up at the back of the yard. They are probably footstones that became separated from their original graves.

I still don't know how I may be related to these people. Mom died in 2008, and wouldn't have been able to tell me anything anyway for at least a decade before then. Her last surviving sister, the oldest of her generation, died last year, and her widower wouldn't be much interested in that side of the family (he apparently has Grandma's copy of the family history, which may have notes written in it that I'd like to see). My sisters and I are interested in seeing what we can figure out, but it may be too late to do a lot of that by now. Too bad. The internet makes parts of it very easy to do.
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George Tooker (1920 – 2011)

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One of my favorite (if not my #1 favorite) American painters has left us. George Tooker, whose painstaking egg temperas showed us a sterile world of isolation and anxiety, lasted to the age of 90, somewhat secluded. A few years ago I knew he was still alive. For a while, I didn't know one way or the other: Schrödinger's Artist! He died today, March 29, 2011.



I first saw his painting, "The Subway" (top example) in the 70s and was fascinated by his creepy vision of a nightmare populated by strangers who didn't look happy about it either. On my first visit to New York City, I made a special trip to the Whitney to see it and was disappointed to learn that they didn't keep it on display most of the time. I bought a poster, though.



People in his paintings seem haunted. Like strangers on the street, they look at you (perhaps momentarily) with no joy or flicker of recognition. Each is isolated in his or her concerns. I wrote a paper on him for art history, almost thirty years ago, drawing on images from Raymond Chandler and dissecting "The Subway" on layers of clear plastic like animation cels.



He painted in the difficult medium of egg tempera, mixing his paints as he went along. He could make a mix last another day by putting it in the refrigerator. He was influenced by Reginald Marsh and Paul Cadmus. He and his lifetime partner, William Christopher, were active in the Civil Rights movement. I have a book about him, but I don't know an awful lot about him. Here is his self-portrait, from 1947:



More pictures can be found here..