Hannah's Flowers

Hannah's Flowers. Looked for this, didn't know I'd find an image, other than in my imagination. Or memory, perhaps... The photo is a frame from a video--made on one of the nights of the Songs & Places class in Fall 2011. A crucial time (they all are, but that semester particularly so) because it began just when my dear Betsy was at the most difficult stage in her illness. They'd urged me, in her room at Alta Bates, "Go on up to school. Don't worry, we'll take good care of her." Such close and valiant people, those nurses and MA's. It was late August, right at the beginning of the semester--the first night of class. I had a song list in my pocket, written out on the back of one of the hospital orders. Not much more. It's the list I've gone back to ever since--when I feel I need to start with the essential.

Walking into 170 that evening. New faces gathered around the table, expectant. I remember saying to them, at the very outset, "This class will be a lifeline--for me and for you both. In ways we don't even know..."

Then there were our songs. Down in the Valley, Rock Island Line, Mary Don't You Weep, Goodnight Irene. Our bedrock--a foothold and a ledge. We moved from one to the next, through those first weeks. The end came a month later, in Week 4: Oh Mary Don't You Weep. The Spirituals. It seemed so fitting. I went away, to New York, for the service--then returned (Anthony had covered for me with the class.) And that night, as I walked in, there on the table under the hooded lamp, a branch with flowers. Different each week, from that time on. Hannah would bring them, gathered on her way in to school. Unannounced, she never said a word--the flowered branch--there in the lamplight. A gift.

It's a sunflower here--so appropriate. And someone's hands--in a gesture of opening. Also appropriate. And the song, right at the end of the evening--Goodnight, Irene...

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Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dw4c2-NLF0 

Written and posted on My 17, 2019, Betsy's birthday.    Thank you, Hannah, and thank you Anthony! And of course thanks to Max Chanowitz on the accordion...
 

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