Gratitude

I remember Anna from college. Her and Emilio and Nelson and I don't remember who else would have me over for dinner in their big shambling house. Lauren was there usually and Julia and Hannah. Great tasting food was served in heaping portions, and I would drink wine until I was happily drunk. The thing I loved most was that everyone who came had some particular brand of eccentricity or quark, some creative dis-ease, and were equally embraced as part of this wonderful extended family. It was a safe place, where I remember breathing easier, outside all the self-judgement of that time in my life. I always thought that Anna set the tone. She was like a mother, even then, regal in her idiosyncrasy and understanding. She was solid, playful, wise, generous, and passionate. She embodied the values I've always cherished, and brought them into those settings in a palpable, nonjudging way: integrity, generosity, community, hope. She did it with so much love, was instrumental in creating and holding this space. I loved her for that, and for the closeness she made possible. I always felt some recognition of the type that goes unexplained in this little life, one of those big essential feelings that seems too obvious and deep and healing and real for words. The word that says it best is gratitude.

--From Frank M., a friend from Reed, who sent this memory to Nina last fall

Anna's Heart

I thought this story was from our Bank Street days, but I see the film wasn't made until 1984 so I guess Anna and I were in high school. (We managed to stay in close touch throughout high school, even though I went to Trinity and Anna headed to the East side!)...

We went to Loews to see the Mel Gibson film, "The River," about a family battling to hold on to their farm in the face of economic hardship. Not surprisingly, as the story developed, the family had to pack up their belongings and livestock, and cross a river in driving rain. Unfortunately their cow didn't make it across.

About 45 minutes after the river-crossing scene, the plot and landscape had changed considerably, and things were looking up for the family, I looked over at Anna and her face was completely wet.

"Why are you crying?" I whispered.

"Because the cow died," Anna whispered back.

That was Anna's heart.



(Post written by Paulette, who doesn't yet understand how to post herself)

Some photos...

...because right now, I have no words.

The Mommy Flower

Damp and overcast day. Too warm and the air too thick to be November. Hair curls. Kids run. They leave their coats and hats in our waiting arms. Let's play chase. The Rose Garden at the Cathedral of St.John the Divine is leafless, seemingly barren. The play area clearly marked by spongy AstroTurf. We say, "Do not run past the red!". Each child in his or her own way finds a means of extending the boundaries of the turf. Will and Lara find an interesting pile of mud, stuck with leaves yellow and gold. Kai finds a green bench and loses his too big red rain boots. Ava chases her shadow in circles. Dario spins and dances turning purposefully towards the off limits rose garden.
'Dario come back! Remember to stay in the red!' I say.
'But I need to get that flower for mommy!'
What flower? The garden appears bare of roses.

Dario rejoins his peers and finds a special stick. He sings and dances the stick into a a large bush as another child takes off running for the rose garden. "Stop!" is not heard but felt when I have caught him myself in the middle of the rose garden. I see to my surprise, the flower for mommy. Pale pink spray rose still blooming small and steady on a very pale vine. Without hesitation I pick the flower and gingerly carry it and the child back to Dario.

'Look Dario, I found your mommy flower!'
'Oh! My mommy flower!'
Dario smiles and takes it quickly into his hands and begins to sniff the sweetness of this autumn rose.
'Look! Look! Do you want to see the flower for my mommy?' He excitedly asks his friends as he passes the small stem around to his eager peers. The stem begins to break. I carry it carefully back to school.

We water the rose in a clear plastic dixie cup. 'The water is for your mommy flower to drink when it gets thirsty'.

The Mommy flower sits by Dario at lunch and snack each day for the next week. He asks to see it frequently and carefully holds the cup in two hands as he sticks his nose in the petals. He continues to share this gift. ' Do you want to see my special Mommy flower?'

It's a rose. And yes, yes we all want to see the flower you picked for your mommy.
The rose drinks the water , it's petals soften and begin to brown. Do not despair there are more roses in the cathedral garden. And flowers are a good way for you to think about your mommy and remember her.
'Yeah! We can go back to the garden and pick mommy more flowers'.

How I got a bridesmaid

So back in the fall of 1997 Josh and I decided to get married. I told my parents and maybe some co-workers, but I was utterly terrified to tell Anna. Like losing sleep scared, like maybe I'd rather call it off than tell her. I just thought I would be such a disappointment to her, such a sellout. Finally I worked up the courage to tell her, and she was a little grumpy, but mostly just said that she knew we'd get married, but she figured we'd wait until we had a kid first so that there'd be a reason to - so she was kind of letting me off the hook while saving face. As the wedding approached, which was going to be in NC at the beach, Anna started telling me about the dress she had gotten to wear to my wedding - pink chiffon, purchased at the FoWad on the UWS. Can someone else please describe FoWad, or is it one of those places you can only really know through experience? Anyway, pink chiffon from Fowad, but she didn't quite like certain aspects of the styling, so she altered it herself to suit her fancy. Then she told me about the matching shoes, etc. I didn't really know what she was up to, maybe just kind of being silly and making fun of the wedding thing, which was okay by me, as I just wanted her to have fun and express herself however she wanted, as long as it didn't totally freak my parents out, and they would never have thought that pink chiffon was any sort of joke. The wedding was not going to have any bridesmaids or that sort of thing, just a simple, fake Jewish ceremony performed by a friend in a beanie-whirligig hat under the chuppa on the beach. Of course, if I were going to have had a maid of honor, it would not have been anyone else but Anna. So, skip to the day before the wedding (perhaps someone else can tell the story of how they almost missed the plane to NC and how Anna was riding the taxi driver), and we had a meeting on the porch to go through the plans, like a rehearsal of sorts. Anna was there b/c I had asked her to hold a chuppa pole. So we were talking about what to do, etc., and she looked at me, dead-on, eye-to-eye, in her most serious intense face and said, "You do know I'm your bridesmaid, right?" And I said, "you are?" She said, "yes." This made me happy inside, I thought it was so sweet, it was like she knew she should be it, knew I wasn't going to go the wedding party route and would never have asked her to do such a thing, but like she thought she should be there with me, by my bridesmaid, even if we were butch old hippies trying to buck the system whilst participating in it. I like to think of it as reclaiming the bridesmaid. So, I asked her, well do you want flowers to carry, and she said, "of course!" So the next day we took some of the flowers out of my bouquet and made one for her. She helped me get in the wedding dress and managed my veil and all of those bridesmaidly tasks. And she walked next to me and stood next to me and she cheered and jumped up and down when it was all over and she looked so happy and that made me so happy and what a beautiful day, what a great wedding, and what a perfect best friend. Thank you, Anna, my best bridesmaid.

p.s. I will try to get some pictures of her in the dress scanned in at some point.

The Many Faces of Anna

This email is from one of Anna's teachers from Bank St.

Hi Nina Nina, David Wolkenberg here, Anna's teacher when she was in the 5-6's at Bank Street. I was at the memorial today. It was so interesting for me to hear what was said about her. Some of it corresponded to my memories of her, and some significant qualities did not. I found her to be very caring, very kind, very gentle, very supportive, very helpful, and sort of quiet, sort of in repose. Very beautiful eyes. When Anna looked at you, you had been looked into. I never saw the warrior, the overt intensity, the occasional ferocity.

At Bank Street, teachers had individual meetings with each child's parents. One in the fall, and one in the spring, toward the end of the school. Parent Conferences they were (are) called. I very distinctly remember one aspect of my meetings with Dora and Tony. When I described how she was in the classroom, her (your) parents were incredulous. "She never yells or screams," was their question. "She never shouts or gets furious?" "No, she is very even and steady." Dora and Tony described some of the goings on at home, and I observed that she was very different in school. She wasn't tense or inhibited or constrained. She was very relaxed and peaceful. We were very fond of each other.

So, I heard again today the Anna not in my classroom. I loved hearing it. I retired in June of 2001 after 30 years of teaching at Bank Street. Always the 5's-6's, always in the same classroom. I have maintained contact with the school. A couple of years ago someone told me that Anna LoBianco was working there. I was frequently on the verge of going to visit her, or at least emailing her, to make a connection with the adult Anna. I didn't. I'm very reluctant to come in on a person's life when I had a relationship her/him years ago. So, the possibility has irrevocably passed, and I am very sorry about that. I went rooting through my Bank Street photographs, thinking I had a class picture when I was Anna's teacher. I found it, scanned it, and here it is.

The attachment, the photo, is not very sharp because the original isn't. I played around with it a little in Adobe Photoshop but that didn't work out. A fuzzy photo cannot be made clearer, it just becomes worse. Having lived through various deaths I know that the excruciating pain takes a very long time to diminish, even just a little.

So my heart goes out to you. You are in for a rough time.
Best
David

(As if it wasn't perfectly obvious, Anna is center row, third from the right...And there's Paulette, bottom row, all the way to the right.)

Direct sunlight

Beams through the Window
Originally uploaded by I Am A Legionnaire.

Anna didn't believe in curtains or shades -- when I was trying to sleep until noon in my cave at the House of Rock in Portland, she wanted the sun to blast in as soon as it came up.

Hey! We should do a post of all the places Anna lived...