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Be
sure to visit the
Letter from Joyce Archives
Losses
-- large and small, and (who would have
guessed you'd find this here) a Nasty Funky video.
March
13, 2009
Dear Friends,
Those of you who have known
me for a while through my stories about my life will know this already,
but for the rest (those of you who weren't reading my old newspaper column
back in the days when I tore our whole house apart looking for a lost
Barbie shoe, and the time I substituted a whole new zippered money
pouch full of loose change for the one my son Charlie had lost, at age
six) here is one of the (many) big issues I've struggled with over my
thirty one years as a parent:
I'd
rather endure almost any form of pain or loss myself than see my children
going through those things. And so, too much at times, I have tried to
protect them. Guess how successful I've been at that.
I told no shortage of stories, back when my three children were growing
up, of times I went overboard in this department. The time I drove a couple
of hundred miles to locate for my youngest son a vintage ventriloquist's
dummy for Christmas. Or a memorable day in a London subway station, on
a family trip, when one of the fancy leather juggling balls I'd just purchased
for my other son had dropped into the pit where the trains came in. My
children stood in horror as I climbed in to retrieve the ball, climbing
back up to safety just before the train came racing in.
I should add that I was never one of those mothers who were excessively
invested in worry over physical dangers to my kids. All three of them
are fearless snowboarders, adventuresome travelers, and all-around sturdy
types where athletic endeavor's concerned. More than that, they are --
all three -- very strong, independent and self sufficient people. It says
more about me, than about them, that I have suffered their pain so much
over the years.
One of the things you discover, once your children are grown and leave
home as mine have now done (they're 25, 26 and 31 years old) is that the
older they get, the more impossible it becomes to shield them. And the
kinds of losses they encounter are so much more substantial. This is called
growing up, of course -- adult life, something we all deal with, and my
sons and daughter are all doing a pretty good job at it. But standing
on the sidelines, watching -- with no capacity to affect the outcome any
more -- has been one of the larger challenges I've faced.
Last December, I told you the story,
here, about the death of my son Charlie's best friend from his junior
high school days, Adam, who was killed in a car accident following a terrible
New Hampshire ice storm. In the nearly three months since then, I know
not a day has gone by we haven't thought about him.
Last week came a call from Charlie. He started out with words I know well
"I'm ok physically, Mom. I don't want you to worry. I have my health."
Then he told me the rest of the story.
Charlie's
a musician and a DJ in New York. By day, he works with at-risk children
in a program in Brooklyn, helping them write and perform and then record
hip-hop songs about their lives. At night, he performs with his band,
The Beatards, and spins music he creates at clubs.
Last Thursday night (early Friday morning, actually) Charlie experienced
a hard, hard loss. The car service that brought him home from his gig
drove off with all his equipment -- many thousands of dollars' worth.
Including, most painfully, his laptop computer with all the music he'd
composed on it. Most of it not backed up. Three years of work, more or
less, gone.
After he told me
this, I felt nauseous. I imagined how it would be if I lost the entire
manuscript of a novel, or a memoir. All my photographs. Letters from friends.
Then, for the next three days, I went a little crazy, trying to think
up ways my son might get his equipment and his music back. I wrote to
everyone I knew in Brooklyn. I called him, hourly, with new ideas and
questions: Had he posted a plea on Craigslist? (He had, of course.) Had
he offered a reward? When he put up flyers, had he written the information
in Spanish as well as English? Perhaps we should consult a psychic.
Charlie was working hard, meanwhile, doing everything he could to put
out the word -- calling every car service in the borough of Brooklyn,
talking with fellow DJ's, circulating his flyers. He was devastated, naturally,
but he is also, fundamentally, an upbeat sort of person, so even though
he no longer had a computer or turntables of his own to work on, he was
already back making new music, and going to his job with the children,
and making plans for the future.
Finally, on day four -- somewhere around call number twenty seven from
me (in which I offered a suggestion of a family friend who had good connections
with the police in Brooklyn) he told me, gently, it was time for me to
let this go, and allow him to take care of things his way. Not without
difficulty, I am doing that.
My old friend Becky, who heard this story -- and knew me back when my
children were very small -- reminded me of a night, long ago, when I circled
the highway for an hour with my brights on, in search of a Playmobil sword
Charlie had dropped out the window of our car. This morning, I looked
up that story myself -- noting that I had ended the tale with the brisk
conclusion that I had now officially changed my ways and given up the
practice of trying to protect my kids from losses.
Fat chance.
As Charlie himself pointed out, the big losses -- like his loss of his
friend, last December, like his parents' divorce from each other, twenty
years ago -- should remind us that material losses (even huge ones like
what just happened to him) are never the worst. It's the people in our
lives, and the relationships, that are irreplaceable.
When I was writing my newspaper column, back in the old days, I often
tied things up at the end with pronouncements about lessons learned, improvements
I'd made in my character and behavior. Twenty years later, I'm more humble.
I still recognize, in myself, the soul of that woman who ripped up her
house looking for a doll's plastic shoe, out of the foolish hope that
if I could just find it, everything would be OK. I still make the same
mistakes.
I didn't find that doll shoe by the way. Charlie didn't get his turntables
and laptop back. (We did locate the Playmobil sword, but lost it another
day). As for the ventriloquist's dummy: I brought it home and set it under
the Christmas tree, along with a photograph I'd taken at the home of the
distinctly odd man from whom I'd bought the dummy, who had one entire
room filled with ventriloquists' dummies. I had placed this photograph
in the box with the dummy for Willy. It was Willy who pointed out to me
what I had failed to notice: that at least a dozen of the roughly fifty
dummies in the photograph had their pants unzipped, with some form of
plastic penis sticking out. Leave it to good old mom and her cozy Christmas
surprise.
And we are alright anyway. Bruised, battered, a little confused at times,
sadder but wiser... maybe even stronger for our mistakes and losses. All
a person can hope for.
Meanwhile, I thought I'd share with you a couple of lost object stories.
One is my
story about the sword, first published in 1987. Another is a story
-- a joint effort by Charlie and me -- about
the events of last Thursday night, in Brooklyn.
And though it might be supposed that the readers of these letters are
not the traditional hip-hop/funk music crowd, I also wanted to share with
you two pieces of music. The first is a song written and sung by two seven
year old girls who participate in the program Charlie runs in Brooklyn.
The song is called "Sistah,"
and I love it.
The second is a link
to a piece of music (and a new video) just released by Charlie's band,
The Beatards. The song's called "Nasty
Funky." Charlie is one of the three performers on the video (he's
the one who's not Asian or Indian, and he is singing, on the video, about
how much he loves making music. The dancing seven year old in the video,
incidentally, is Taj -- his father's son, whom none of my children speak
of as anything other than "brother." I am happy this is so.
I do want to issue a warning here, for those of you who may click on the
link to "Nasty Funky." The lyrics contain some non-G-rated material.
If you might be sensitive about that, pass this one by. I will just add,
I am enormously proud of my son -- as I am of his brother and sister,
of course. My children have never censored me, so (as much as I may overdo
things, in other ways) when it comes to their creative lives, I believe
they should express themselves however they choose.
That's it for now.
Tonight I fly back to Guatemala, to lead my second Lake
Atitlan Writing Workshop of the season. It is a joy of my life, to
assist in the process of helping other people tell their stories, knowing
what a gift it has been for me, telling mine all these years. You'll hear
from me in a couple of weeks.
Nos vemos. Te cuidas.
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