Back in 1934, Thomas Wolfe wrote a book, You Can’t Go Home Again. It is a book that has haunted me in some ways for many years wondering if, as its title suggests, it could possibly be true. Is it really true that you cannot go back home and find life much as you knew it or remembered it?
I never knew the answer until one day I realized that you could never really go back, because of death. Death ultimately, permanently changed the landscape of what I had once known and cherished, however much I did not appreciate that at the time.
Death has once again changed my landscape. It has made it even more impossible to go back home, because one of the giants of my life is now gone. My 5th grade teacher, my most favorite teacher. A teacher that nourished me, and fed me, and praised me, and encouraged me. A teacher who never had a discouraging word, but who rather would stand on the sidelines and cheer me on to enter into a journey of my own self-discovery—education in the very truest sense—leading out that which is within.
Mrs. Yates is gone.
Oh, she is not really gone. Her physical body has died. But she is still very much alive. And not in some hallucinatory way through some group memory recall. I will one day meet up with her again. Of that I am positive. But man, what an impact she had on my life in this physical sphere.
* * *
I remember early on she wanted us to write a paper about some experience we had had on vacation or one we had had the summer previous to entering the 5th grade. I wrote about being on the farm of my 5th cousins—Monty & Karen Diew—up in Nauvoo, Illinois. I remember writing about how Monty and I got on the roof of a little chicken coop early in the morning and with a BB gun started shooting at the tin water pail from which the chickens were drinking and how they would run and flap from being scared and how much Monty and I laughed at that. I also remember writing how their water was so mineral laden that it tasted like poison to me, and I really emphasized that terrible stench of a taste. She just loved my budding writing talents and gave me an A.
* * *
I remember Jon Seaux. I had always interpreted him as a quasi miscreant from the other side of the tracks who knew how to draw bawdy pictures that with a few lines could be turned into something innocuous on Miss Rogers’s black board at James Bowie Junior High School when she was out of the room. Jon Seaux had a wicked smile, an impish grin. Who knew how to just barely stay on the right side of respectability, but whom you never wanted to cross. And that is the way he was etched into my mind, until one day, many years later, I was talking to Mrs. Yates.
As she and I began to sift through halcyon memories of old, she asked me if I remembered him.
Well, of course I did, but I was shocked he would even stand out to her.
She reminded me of a time when one of my classmates, and thankfully the mists of time through these 50 years has blotted out his identity, had had an accident in class with respect to bladder control. Of course that misfortune was the object of snickers and eye-rolling. But what was Jon’s response? Without being prompted, Jon went to the janitor’s closet, and got a bucket and a mop and proceeded to clean up the accident in silence as we all watched in wonder. He moved some desks to do a better job, and when he had finished, he looked us all in the eye and said, "This could have happened to any of us sitting here. I don’t ever want you to remind him of what happened, nor should you ever speak of it again." And with that, Jon left the room to return the janitor’s tools to their closet.
Mrs. Yates said, "I was so proud of Jon that day. He was years ahead of his time in maturity."
I had never stopped to contemplate what that action meant—the compassion, the initiative, the sensitivity of Jon Seaux until Mrs. Yates interpreted it for me.
Way before his time, before he ever graduated from high school, Jon died of a brain tumor.
* * *
And then there was her beloved husband, Reed. Oh how she loved to talk of his mischief, and how different they were from each other, and yet how so very much she loved him and his ways.
* * *
It had been rumored that when she was a girl, Mrs. Yates had read every book in the Tyrrell Public Library on the second floor. She was a voracious reader. She would read to us from time to time. She knew how to interpret and inflect and put in pregnant pauses.
I remember one book she read, whose name I have forgotten about a man who supposedly hated the United States back in the early 19th century. His punishment was to be put on a ship where he would never again be allowed back into the country.
But it was only in the later years of his sentence that he began to understand how wonderful of a country the United States of America was, and that he was so hungry for any scraps of information as to what was happening to our great land. Finally someone drew a map for him of how the country had expanded to the west, and his eyes were wide with surprise and shock and he cried for having missed out on some of the greatest adventures and dream making ever given to any country in the world.
* * *
Mrs. Yates could fire your imagination with a very ignited illustration that would burn in your mind. One day she said to us kids, "And what would you do if a madman with a machine gun came in at our door and started firing?" I never forgot that image, for it frightened me. It scared me. I did not know what I would do. I did not want to think about death.
* * *
From time to time she would pass out supplemental hardback readers for us to read from. In the front of the book, there was the template like there were on those of the standard issue books in which you were to sign your name to the textbook you were to study from all year. Except in these temporary texts, books of years gone by, I started to sign in ink mind you, every time one was given to me, even though I knew that within an hour we would be handing them all back in.
One day Mrs. Yates opened her text and saw my name, written in ink much to her surprise, and then she asked the class to all turn to the very front of their texts. She then asked "How many of you have Allison Cambre’s name in your book?" Probably ¾ of the class raised their hands. I was shocked and embarrassed. "Allison Cambre why have you done this?"
I had no answer.
She said, "You have got to get some ink eradicator and remove your name from these books."
I broke out in a cold sweat. I had no idea what that word meant, nor did I want to tell my parents the trouble I was in. So out in the garage that night I had my name written several times on a piece of paper and tried all sorts of solvents and chemicals to see if any of them might magically remove the ink. Much to my astonishment, I discovered that bleach would do the trick. And so the next day I brought a vial of bleach to school to undo the damage I had done.
* * *
I remember the time of her telling back in the late 40's or early 50's that she had broken her leg. She started crying not because of the pain, but rather because she had ruined some expensive silk stocking hose that she was wearing. None of us boys could possibly understand that.
* * *
Mrs. Yates said she used to smoke. And as a kid I had a hard time believing that! I mean she was like a high, benevolent priestess to me. And priestesses don’t smoke!
* * *
I remember the day I inadvertently saw Mrs. Yates’s letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal. She was hanging up her hat from teaching. She, many years later, had left the 5th grade environs of Eugene Field Elementary School, to go across the street to French High School to teach English. How I wish I could have had her for that course! But what disgusted her was the ignorance of some of the faculty with whom she taught referring to the Civil War as the Silver War, etc. She had had enough.
* * *
Imagine to my surprise that one day, I discovered that her own brother, Jeff, like me, was a clergyman. I just could not believe it. I got to meet him one time before he died. I went to a gathering knowing that he was in this room with over 100 people, and I began to look around for someone who looked like Mrs. Yates in the face. I found that someone, and I approached him by asking, "Did you ever live in Beaumont, Texas?"
* * *
Well . . . maybe you get the picture. Many of these memories are 50 years old, but they shine as bright for me as the very day I experienced them the first time.
Mildred Campbell Yates. Her passing means that Beaumont is forever, inextricably changed. I thank God that our paths crossed, and I thank God for the beneficent impact she had on me. There will never again be anyone like her in my life.
When I was little, I can remember on more than one occasion saying to my mother, "When you get old, I’ll take care of you."
She said, "Oh, I would love it if you did."
* * *
Sometimes it is not easy to willingly go gentle into that good night. Your physical apparatus begins to fail you not by changes in kind, but by changes in degree. A degree here, a couple of degrees there, and before long, you find yourself confused and wandering in a fog surrounded by familiar objects, but lacking a sure way of contextualizing all of them to make sense like they used to make sense.
She still has her ready laugh. She is sharp on the uptake. But there is a wobble in the short term memory. Asking things she had just asked about perhaps 10 minutes ago. Allowing others to do her thinking for her, instead of straining and working the old noodle to figure it out for herself.
"Well, maybe I’ll be where June is before too long."
"Why do you say that?"
"Well, what use am I? I can’t do what I used to do. I can’t move around like I used to to make cookies. I’m just not much help in the kitchen." And this is from a woman whose identity was bound up in doing and baking and cooking for others.
And I don’t have a comeback.
I’m not going to give false reassurance, and I listen and sift, and think "Why does she think that?" But then I further think, "If I were in her shoes . . . would I be thinking much differently?" I mean I could come in as the cheerleader and verbigerate at trying to restore one’s confidence, but would I want that done to me?
It’s got to be exasperating. She had so much life and vigor at one point. A workhorse who had unlimited energy, seemingly. Ready to get up and go.
I remember one time my mother-in-law commenting that she did not have half the energy that my mother did. She sat in awe of it.
Mom kept talking about if she only had access to a stove and pots and pans, but then they can’t allow that. Why, what if one of the residents were to leave a burner on. It is too dangerous.
Safety decisions are a killer. How can you take the right pills, if you don’t know what day it is? She can look back and recognize that she is in somewhat of a fog, and it perplexes her. How did it get to be this way?
So she sat a lot and watched and interacted where she could, but the hearing is not all what it used to be either.
We had her for six days, and I was glad to have her here, even though I still work a more than full-time job. I can remember that at my age my dad was retired, even my cousin was retired, but it will not be that way for me. I still have a few years to go before I can consider that option.
She and I think a lot on the same wavelength. Same sense of humor in so many ways. We can get so tickled with each other. I love pulling her leg. She always bites. That’s a lot of the fun, and I always play dumb.
I took her to Austin last Monday to meet my brother who carried her on out to San Angelo. We ate at Zoot there in Austin and had a pretty decent meal.
After lunch she climbed into his mini-van and sat while my brother and I transferred the luggage to the van. I went to the front seat and opened the door to kiss her good bye. And she gave me a look. A look that said, "I’m sorry I’m not what I used to be. I’m sorry I’m not as much help. I can never repay the time and the money and the kindness you have given me. I love you. You are my first born. I treasure you in ways you will never fully understand."
It is only now that I am unpacking what that look said. It is sad. It’s not what I want. It is not what she wants. But it is what it is.
Maybe I was one of the fortunate ones. My childhood to me seemed very idyllic.
Very early on, I loved to go on vacation. Going on vacation to me meant that we would get to see my grandparents—Grandma & Grandpa Cambre, and Grandma Anderson. They lived in the same little town of 5,000 in SW Iowa. It really is not until this moment that I am grasping how fortunate I was for that happenstance. For so many families, the members are flung far and wide. But the core of my family lay in SW Iowa. And when you push on that core, all four of my grandparents came from Illinois. How amazing is that? I knew relatives there as well. My Grandpa Cambre’s brother lived out his life in Illinois. My Grandma Cambre was an only child. My Grandfather Anderson’s siblings remained in Illinois, and my Grandmother Anderson’s two brothers remained in Illinois, while her sister eventually moved with her own family to Denver.
But when we went to SW Iowa, we stayed with the Cambre’s. I loved my Grandfather Cambre. He was a mysterious man to me, a witty man, a man with a smile.
I can remember my sister and I touching his bald head and asking him if that hurt.
Well, no, it did not. He said it was like touching the skin of our own arm. We could not understand that.
In a vague way, I knew that my Grandfather was my Dad’s father, but I had a hard time putting that together.
Grandpa died when I was 10 years old. We were actually at his house when he died in the hospital, but no one told me. I knew that when I came down the stairs for breakfast, everyone seemed a little sullen at the table, but it wasn’t until I went to Grandma Anderson’s house later on that morning that I discovered why. My sister and I got into some kind of a verbal fight, and my grandmother said we shouldn’t fight on such a day like this.
I asked, "What do you mean? What is so different about today?"
She said, "This is the day that your Grandfather has died."
I said, "WHAT? Grandpa is DEAD? Why didn’t anyone tell me?" I was shocked, stunned, blown away. I could not believe it. I did not know he was that ill.
47 years later my Dad died. And now I am Grandpa Cambre.
It is hard for me to grasp this. I am to my grandsons what Grandpa was to me.
But wait . . . Grandpa was old. And he walked with a cane. He had had infantile poliomyelitis. But now I am to the family what he was 50 years ago.
I grew up in a world that seemed impervious to change. What an illusion. I now grasp that in so many ways, change is the name of the game.
This is from Khachaturian's Gayne Ballet Suite. It is some good stuff if you feel blue or depressed and just want to have some music to parallel what you feel.
In the Bible study I have been teaching on Wednesday mornings at the village church, we recently were looking at chapter 6 of the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. That led to a discussion about the 9 ranks of angels with the seraphim being next to God himself, and the cherubim just below them.
I had remembered that P. I. Tschaikovsky, one of my absolute favorite composers, had composed some piece of work about that rank of angels, and here it is.
I remember how it blew me away the first time I heard it by chance at night on my car radio years ago. I was alone. I tell you, the composer was a genius . . . or very, very sensitive . . . like Mozart. As I listen, I shake my head in amazement and wonder.
If you want to get blown away, turn up the sound and listen to it at night with the lights off, or with just a few candles lit. You will be within aural proximity to the antechamber of paradise.
In the last three Protestant Episcopal Church services that I have attended (two of them being amongst the largest in the country) neither one of them used the Psalter during the eucharistic services. That did not dawn on me until I had finished going to the third church.
It's hard for me to go and worship and just be a participant. I keep looking at my watch trying to sense the pacing. Are they going to have enough time to get all of the liturgy in without feeling rushed? And shockingly, with more liturgy and more people than I have got, they get it all in, with the eucharist every Sunday.
The tradition that I come from uses far more of a call-response type of rhythm than what they use, though clearly that is there in their services. My tradition virtually begs for an altar call each service, and that is foreign to theirs, so some time is used up there.
Yet interestingly, the very service where I have received the most people into membership, I never do an altar call in it. And the service where I rarely receive members, I virtually always do an altar call there. Go figure. I know I still am.