Chicago is cold. Rip-roaring cold and it is very early in the season of frigid air, so this doesn’t bode well at all for January or February. Even Alabama and Florida, where I associate adjectives like mild and sultry to the temperature, is experiencing a strong northern draft. I find myself thinking of Erika’s aria, “Must the winter come so soon?” from the Barber-Menotti opera, “Vanessa.” I am just not ready for this cold, this early.
Driving down Lake Shore Drive into the city, I looked out onto Lake Michigan and there was a cold mist rising from the waters. I remembered this drive only days ago, it seems, when I was in shirt-sleeves and shorts headed down to the harbor to take the sailboat out for a day of warm, even hot, relaxation.
“Must the winter come so soon?”
Years ago, in the days before air-conditioned environments – commercial and residential – fans, both electrical and human-powered, were important fixtures everywhere in the hot summers of Alabama where I grew up. Funeral “homes” even capitalized on the heat by giving away cardboard squares with a wooden handle attached to provide some movement of air when sitting in the stuffy confines of the Baptist church in late July. Generally these “fans” had an image of “Christ knocking at the door” on one side and a description of the services offered by the local mortician on the other.
I don’t recall ceiling fans outside commercial situations. Now, of course, every room you enter in a residence has a “decorator” fan whirling away. Most seem to have been designed by Miss Ruby, the madam at a “Nevada Social Club.” (Yes, you should read between the lines since I am not going any further down that road.)
Before we had a fan that was permanently fixed in a window to pull the cooler summer evening air into our home along with the thickly sweet, wonderful smell of gardenias planted around the yard, we had a small, table-top, oscillating fan – maybe an Emerson if my memory serves me correctly.
At some point, the fan had been loaned to a neighbor who had an ill family member and thus needed the limited comfort of the Emerson while they convalesced. The individual survived their malady and soon appeared in public. They even turned up at the Ice Cream Social sponsored by the Missionary Women at the church.
But the fan did not reappear to stir the air at our home.
It was a particularly hot summer and my parents commented about this more than once – the errant Emerson as well as the incessant heat. The two subjects were bonded with perspiration.
One day, out of the blue, the fan was returned.
I was the one who answered the door and received the valued prize.
“My parents were wondering if you were ever going to bring this back.” Of course, I spoke the truth. They had said that many times during the lingering summer heat. The cat was out of the bag!
Being new to diplomacy – I was only seven – I didn’t know the difference between private and public information. It was probably around the same time when I answered the door by saying, “Mom said to tell you she wasn’t at home.”
I was forbidden to answer the door after that. They said something about safety and strangers, but I think that it was for a different reason.
Sixty years later, my purple-haired mother had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia administered for a knee replacement surgery and became very unwieldy during her hospitalization. Her “rantings” were totally candid and lacked any editorial consideration of the persons subjected to hearing them.
On one afternoon when she was particularly talkative, it happened that a relative was paying a visit to her bedside. My sister was there as well.
Much to my sister’s horror, mother launched into a long discussion about the visitor sitting opposite. For the entire visit, the relative was forced to listen to an ongoing account of why she was unappreciated, unwanted, and disliked by my mother. It was obvious that mom had no idea to whom she was speaking. It was if she had been injected with a truth serum. She was on a roll.
It is important that you know something about my mom. She was the sole of discretion.
Late one night, suffering from a bout with a serious chest cold, she phoned my daughter hundreds of miles away. "Honey, you must promise me something and you can never let anyone know this. If I die, you must promise me to get here as quickly as possible and remove the empty bottle of scotch in the bottom of my trash bin in the kitchen. I have been sipping liquor to help my cold and I don't want that to be discovered by anyone." A very private woman with a strict sense of what is proper. And a concern for image!
But back to the incident at the hospital.
I had visited mom a couple of weeks earlier and she spoke of me, thankfully in gracious terms, without ever being aware that she was speaking to me.
But now she was smoking with diatribes.
Fortunately, our relative had the good grace to take the medication into consideration. She could have been totally incensed, but she was forgiving. Mother’s tactless railings were never mentioned. Diplomacy reigned.
But diplomacy is a very difficult thing to manage. It must be carefully pursued. It is an art which requires delft strokes. Nuance!
Richard Holbrooke was a master. He traveled those avenues with ease.
He was also the epitome of one dedicated to a cause far beyond himself. He set a benchmark for public service. He died this week and we are worse for it.
I have not read all the accounts of the Wikileaks release of private correspondence of our State Department. I feel certain the some probably bore the thoughts of Holbrooke – especially his assessments of Hamid Karzai.
He might even have mused, as I have, about whether the sleeves of the coat that Karzai always drapes on his shoulder might be sewn closed. Did someone forget to snip the basting by the tailor? Such strange posturing by Hamid.
Curiously, it is reported that one of the most explosive encounters between the Holbrooke and Karzai occurred following the recent elections in Afghanistan.
It brought to mind another election in this country. Think Florida and hanging chads.
It was probably the Supreme Court that kept Holbrooke from the big desk in the corner office and the chosen seat in the Cabinet Room. For had the votes in Florida been recounted, President Gore would have most certainly named him as Secretary of State.
This, of course, was not to happen. Holbrooke has been gracious with his “under-Secretary” role and performed tirelessly up to the end. It is reported that his final words spoken to a physician of Pakistani decent had to do with ending the elusive situation in Afghanistan.
Recently, the Little People were with their mother on a shopping trip. The older of the two – my grandson – spied a man in the shop who wore an eye patch.
Failing in his understanding of private and public thoughts – of diplomacy, he shouted and pointed, “Look, there’s a pirate!”
I wonder if Holbrooke ever pointed and shouted that at Karzai.
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