Ode To a Joy

Some Zen for your Yen Again

Yesterday, Marlene Young-Humberd turned 72, which would surprise many who thought she was a decade younger. Marlene’s zest for life, her many travels to multiple continents, her enjoyment of all kinds of people, old and young, people of means, the working class and poor, any ethnicity, race, gender, sexual identity, faiths or seculars, she loves to meet them, listen to them and maintain active communications with them over many miles and years.

She is reflexively, intuitively and deliberately kind. Coming from working class roots, she never has felt herself above any of them and holds the capacity to forgive and move on, past any slight. Except mean people. Doesn’t matter what your political ideology is or what church you go to, Marlene is likely to befriend you, unless you’re a bully in word or deed.

With the size of her heart, that’s usually a very small shitlist. It should be automatic cause for self reflection and reconsideration of your life choices if you find yourself on it. Except you won’t.

As many readers know, Marlene passed away from an inexplicable infection in early December. I don’t want to dwell on or detail that any more because she is so much larger than life to ever be dead to me. She is certainly one of the smartest - if not THE smartest - human being I’ve ever known. At Clemson, where she majored in math, she met David Humberd who was two years ahead of her in school. When he moved on to law school at Vanderbilt, she transferred to complete her degree at nearby Tennessee State College. She and David married and spent, I think it was, another 45 years together.

David’s earliest law partner told me last December how in awe he was at her brilliance. To get a Bachelor’s degree in the 1960s one had to pass a Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Marlene is the only person he ever knew who passed two; one in psychology and one in German. Marlene didn’t come across nerdy nor would she flaunt any airs about her whipsmartness. Over time one could just sense how much her mind could encompass and absorb. She would teach you things without you ever realizing you were being taught.

First grade students poured out of lots of places on her passing to talk about how much they loved her for her kindness and humor. When she and David began parenting their newborn son, she took a leave of absence from teaching which eventually became permanent. They also were running cattle on their farm while David maintained his fulltime job as a property law specialist.

She then opened a gift shop and from there, co-founded a new craft industry, creating replicas of antique majolica pottery. Employing several women who created and painstakingly painted the art works for another decade, most of them becoming her lifelong friends like the teaching peers that came before.

We met online a couple of years after her lifelong love passed away. Over many months, comments ultimately turned to chats and eventually, to phone calls. She seemed like a nice and witty sort but I was at a point in life where I had no interest in romance and hadn’t dated in years. I was fine with doting on and annoying my adult daughters and grandkids, granddogs and grandkitties.

When Marlene told me she’d be visiting a friend she’d made in her pottery days, who lived about 2 hours away, I offered to meet her to do lunch, like I would for any friend. That first lunch really was quite pleasant.

Few could understand how quickly I was taken with her. Until they met her. Fewer could understand how she lived in Tennessee while my home remained about 2800 miles away, in Oregon. But the reality was we shared almost every day together from that first meeting.

We’d spend 3 to 5 weeks together 3 or 4 times a year. At my tiny abode or her farm or traveling together. We went to Seattle and Alaska together. Just before the pandemic curtailed travel, we cruised to multiple ports in the Caribbean. She loved to watch the hummingbirds, the dragonfly, the delicate or sturdily crafted creations of nature and people, the importance of every word chosen.

I came to view her as a consummate artist. Her home, which began as a log cabin when they first purchased the farm, had undergone several expansions and interior decorations. It was like living in an enchanted museum, full of welcoming signs and words and art creations she and David found or envisioned and created. I met friends of 50 and 60 years, people she or they employed briefly or for many years, each with their own array of skills and interests. She seemed to attract the creative and witty, mentoring and encouraging them to ever greater endeavors. I don’t think she consciously pushed any to work harder, but her friendship just made one want to be better at living and kinder. By all accounts, David had that same sense of good community building too.

She had some intermittent serious health issues but never once displayed any sense she was a victim or disabled in any way. With decades of issues with her legs, she typically moved well with a walker or cane. When we traveled, I sometimes pushed her in a wheelchair yet I never viewed her as disabled or alter-abled either. She was just too full of life and had an effusive zest for every quest, every visit with old friends and with the new ones she was always making. Can’t really recall many life affirming troubleshooting areas where I could outthink her. I enjoyed looking at the soybean crop with a small nearby mountain shining in the background like she did too.

And she even rescued me once, from the pandemic, over the last ten months of the time we shared. I was deeply in love with her before that. I would have married her except for my own sense of propriety. She and David had worked to build a comfortable life together. I was a man of modest means and had grown used to living modestly, juggling to get by at times, in blue collar occupations. I didn’t want to encroach on her or depend on her except to enjoy the great times we shared together.

But I needed a roommate in February 2020 to get by. A Craigslist roommate had turned into a 60 day disaster. With the trip to the Caribbean imminent and a pandemic threat growing, I yielded to an agreement to accept her help. She’d cover part of my rent, the extra room would grant me working space to resume a long sidelined writing project and we’d have more privacy during her visits to my home. I also conditioned our agreement on her accepting repayment once I completed that project and that I’d get another roommate as soon as the pandemic threat ended.

We never got to that point. We remained physically separated from mid-March to mid-November while we sought balance in a pandemic-driven world. We’ve each had great friends afflicted with microbastard-19. Her eye and ear for things, her appreciation of people brought balance to mine in many the conversation.

Our daily online interactions continued and most days included a long nightly phone call with some days including more. I also knew she was thoroughly entranced by the charms of another young man in her life, her 2 year old grandson. I’d only met him during Christmas of 2019. I knew I could never win against that kind of competition and saw no reason to try. His parents were equally delightful. I was worried heading into that holiday, aware Marlene’s son had never seen his Mom with another guy besides his Dad. Turns out her son was equally bright, witty and kind. Go figure. His wife and her parents added more to that festive occasion taking turns amusing that kid and each other.

Marlene will now be 71, going on 60, forevermore. Last August, when a new issue in one leg started bothering her, it became evident in our nightly phone calls that she was concealing increasing pain. When it seemed like she was going to need a short stint of antibiotics in the hospital to get past it, I was ready to fly to Tennessee but she discouraged that. I was already busy running aid to wildfire refugees and consoling my landlord, who lost a house and a cabin for summer getaways in those fires. And Marlene’s sister-in-law was driving from two states away to tend to her immediate needs.

I’d get there two months later, ready to bring her back to her home after she ultimately chose a surgical procedure followed by a 10 day stint in physical therapy. I flew in during the height of Tennessee’s pandemic rise and thankfully was spared any infection from that.

I had two intentions at that point:

1) I’d help her through her period of recuperation, which I anticipated could take between 6 weeks and 3 months.

2) And I planned to propose to her. If not a legal marriage (since many seniors want to avoid financial complications in their well-earned retirement incomes), any celebratory arrangement so I could be there with her and for her, should she ever face another bout of anything impermissible in anyone I love.

This was the second time in 3 years that a simple scratch started a major infection. We had planned an August Amtrak trip from Minneapolis to Boston before the pandemic cancelled that. Had I been there, a little more attention and TLC might have spared her this bout of infection. Long-distance just wasn’t gonna work anymore.

I never succeeded at either. While she recuperated well for more than two weeks, back at home, playing with her kitty, Jelicat, in her usual good spirits and her energy increasing, suddenly the infection came back with a vengeance and she was gone on December 7th. Nothing in her prognosis prepared anyone for that. I wrestled and occasionally wrestle still with the sense that I failed to save her. What sign did I miss? Should I have been more of that obnoxious patient advocate in the ER while the staff was consumed with multiple covid patient needs?

But as I said, I can’t dwell there. Marlene would easily dismiss those concerns. Had things gone as we’d planned, she might have recovered nicely and told me the permanent presence part two of my plan was wholly unnecessary because we were already full partners in our hearts and our daily interactions.

She was wedded to her rural roots, her circles of loving family and friends that extended to England, the Czech Republic, India, Namibia and Australia along with dozens of US states. Her love for multiple arts and music genres was equally boundless. Most days, in our online interactions, we were private messaging each other with a news item or more likely, a photograph, a funny meme, or a video of some newfound musician or comedic routine. With random acts of flirting.

For the three and a half years since our first face-to-face meeting, she made me a better, kinder person throughout. I mean, I’d always had some compassion in me. But cut off from my traditional charitable volunteerism by the pandemic, I continually found new ways to aid friends and acquaintances in their moments of crisis.

It may have come from my pocket or sweat but the example originated in her heart. It was evident in all the ways she reached out to people and cared for them.

She might have a strong opinion on a controversial subject like politics or religion but she rarely would bring it to her Facebook timeline. There, you’d find thoughtfulness, an appreciation of beauty, snippets of wisdom, her regular array of coffee loving posts, mentions of the baby she was GranMar to. Her timeline was like her home. A place to find peace and comfort, joy and kindness, a respite in the storm. Sometimes shielding a cuss word or strong opinions from online observers that might include a former pupil or longtime deeply spiritual friend.

Even with the artfully done peacock hair coloring she adopted in recent years, she was more about buoyance than flamboyance. Quick to laugh spontaneously and often; I doubt anyone who spent 5 minutes in her company went away unimpressed. And any moment of storm was quickly followed by a rainbow. I never felt any reason could exist to suppress her, contain her or ‘own’ her in any way. I wanted everyone I knew to meet her and enjoy her too. I mean, here I’d nearly perfected a reasonable degree of bachelor comfort with minimalistic needs and this force of nature blew in and mysteriously transported me back in time to where I felt like a clumsy high school kid trying to figure out suave and debonair stuff to impress her with.

That’s what my decision to start this newsletter’s about, to pay her back. And pay her forward. I’m supposed to resume my professional writing because she wanted that. Because she thinks I have important or occasionally insightful things to say. She could be wrong but I’m not gonna tell her that. I’ve yet to find a reason to question her judgment since she’s the greatest friend I’ve ever known.

I won’t say “bless her heart” as I’m familiar with all that can mean in the Southern dialect. But my heart and life experience has been heightened, enhanced and blessed by her presence in it. Her picture shines her countenance towards me daily from its perch just left of my desk and our daily conversations and giggles continue.

As a writer, at times it’s extremely difficult to edit or to avoid straying off point but in this first effort to fully explain Marlene I have to say there just aren’t enough words.

Wham isn’t intense enough. The sun isn’t bright enough.

But a couple of days ago, I found some musicians I really wanted to share with her. I kept hearing more and more stuff that was making me smile and laugh for well over two hours. I realized then that the lessening of politically violent rhetoric and the steady decline of covid cases had created a void. An inviting space that allowed me to learn to relax again, to reclaim optimism, to simply and fully enjoy the beautiful things in life again. I can mourn and miss and hear her in many moments still. My insomnia’s abating with the addition of more daylight. I want to hand her a few more smiles and I get to, based on the simple power of thought. I am sure I can gain from her advice still.

You go on ahead. We’ll catch up in a bit.

Marlene would want that for me and for everyone and that’s what she always was about and will always be about.

So the end of this long wordy missive is what I’d share with her, some things fun and delightful. And the next newsletter will be longer on the fun stuff and much shorter on words. Share them, discuss ‘em or just enjoy them. We can all begin to do that again and isn’t that what 2020 took from us?

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I didn’t get this published in a timely way as I made numerous phone calls to many of her friends and some of her family, checking in on them all day yesterday with much reminiscing. Though I never had the pleasure of meeting David, I believe today is his birthday. I like to think they’re busy laughing and dancing their way to another fresh adventure. Such lucky ducks!

With her birthday one day after International Womens Day, today’s newsletters are dedicated to her. I hope you find the same joy she and I found last weekend when we heard them.

And here, again, are The Rainbow Girls. You might need to raise the volume for this early version from back in 2013, a cover of a classic Bob Dylan tune. This was at the Ferrara Busking Festival, in Italy. They began as a quintet but by mid-decade, the tapdancing singer and the percussionist singing here had moved on.

The remaining trio began attracting a larger audience with a breakout album in 2017 with more original compositions. (you may need to raise the volume some for this.)

More to come. And a good morning to each of you. Time to put some coffee on. Hope you have something good to do today. In the not so distant future now, we can open our arms and find friends there. It’s your Constitutional Right in this new-fangled MamaLuminary Interestingly Arranged World Order.

Bon Appetit!