Previous Works
There is one thing I’ve learned in my 75 years on this planet- no matter how awful the event surrounding you, enveloping you and those around you, you must keep your eyes and heart wide open. If you look hard enough, you will find something positive – because every cloud can have a silver lining. This is true, at least, in my own life.
Unlike most of you, I got to choose my name, my religion, my citizenship, and my race category. Was that cool? Or was it a lifetime spent trying to find just who I was. Most of you born into a family, given your name, and raised in a religion knew who you were, where you belonged, and what was expected of you. What about me?
A few years ago, I remember hearing that in America, when people are asked to choose three adjectives that best describe themselves, minorities typically write their race as one of the three. Caucasians never do. In my informal survey of many friends, I have found this to be accurate. Why do those of us who are not white think of our race as an integral part of who we are? Is it because of how we are treated by the “in” group? I think so.
I was four when I first met my Chinese grandmother, my Nai Nai. At first, we couldn’t even talk to each other, because up until then, I only spoke Italian and French and she only spoke Chinese. I was born in Berlin, my German mom’s home, and within months of my birth, my Chinese father had been appointed acting ambassador to Rome, so we had been living in Rome for almost all of my life. What led to my meeting with my Chinese grandmother was a 1941 recall order from Chiang Kai Shek for my father to return to China, specifically to the war capital in Chongqing, to help out. Chiang Kai Shek was the leader of the Republic of China.
I was in my mid fifties when I first saw my parents’ wedding photo. My eighty- year -old mother unpacked a large cardboard box full of letters she kept and showed the old black and white photo to me, ashamed. In it her dress hangs awkwardly off her tall frame. The neckline is uneven and the fit is baggy. In spite of the badly designed dress, my mother is radiant standing in the center. Why had she never shown it to me?
At fifteen, I planned for my death. Born during World War II, I was a child of a German mother and a Chinese father, and I spent my early years escaping death by moving from Berlin to Rome to Chong-qing to Washington, D.C. These years shaped me into a meticulous planner. And so if I died, I wanted the perfect funeral.
When I try to think of where I have felt the happiest in my life, my mind glides over so many possible places.
Could it be the palace in Rome where I spent four of my earliest years? The marble winding stairway, the echoing hallways, the magnificent paintings on the ceilings, and statues decorating the entire palace?
“Please teach me to drive this summer, Carola!” I begged over the phone. Desperation had driven me to this point. Ray was being tested for a possible heart attack and I had to find rides to and from the hospital for visits. I was fifty years old and it was time to learn.
Waking up at dawn in a cage surrounded by 47 large black buzzing, trilling, flying insects may seem like a nightmare to you, but for me, it’s heaven. The cage is a mosquito net hung from the ceiling and envelops my entire bed.
I don’t like breaking the law; raising owls in a private residence without proper permits is against the law. Game wardens almost never catch an eagle poacher red-handed, but a biologist without a federal animal rehabilitation license is an easy target. When I am presented with an injured bird, I weigh the possibility of an arrest or fine or taking a chance to be kind. When two neighbor farmers, while haying, each ran over a short-ear owl’s nest and found these injured nestlings, I took a risk. I have loved raising all sorts of wildlife in my home from squirrels, snakes, spiders, silkworms, and cecropia moths to chipmunks, tropical fish, lizards, toads, rabbits, and mudpuppies. So the owlets found their home in our rented summer home in Solen.
I had never defied Ray before this. Not in the ten years we had been married. I rejected the other nine suitors because they were pushovers. I chose Ray because he was intense, strong-willed, and brilliant. At twenty years of age, his qualities intrigued me. I adored him and allowed him to mold me into an adult to his liking.
“Katherine,” said Ray, my husband, trying to keep a neutral tone, “ a lieutenant in the U. S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations from Minot just called to speak to you!”
I had longed to tan a hide ever since my fourth grade students at Key School in Annapolis read a children’s book together. The story centered on a Native American girl who used arrowheads to skin an elk and tan the hide.
So, one summer when my husband and I were in North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation offered a six-day course on how to tan a buffalo hide, and I signed up right away. My bird research group would have to work without me that week.
Why do I continue to long for the China of my youth, when I know it no longer exists? Why do I weep when reading stories of children who were forced to leave their countries due to civil strife?
Broken branches crashed against the windows as the wind howled. I lay under the blankets, covering my head under pillows trying to silence the fear. Wishing that Ray, who always held me tightly during storms, had not died the previous month.
I am haunted by voices of ghosts speaking to me whenever I am alone. There are two in particular who talk to me. Ray, my beloved husband of 54 years, who died seven years ago speaks most often.
“The speed limit is NOT a suggestion, Katherine, it’s the LAW!” he says when I’m barely driving five miles over the limit.
These last few years, I have attended many “celebrations of life” for family and friends. At each event, I am moved by the testimonies for the newly departed given by those in attendance. Without exception, I think how sad it is that the one who would benefit most from hearing the loving words is not there to hear them!
I’m 81 years old. Lord knows how much time I have left. I so admire those who are able to cull as they age, and who leave only a few personal possessions around them when they take leave of this beautiful earthly life.
I left my country and my father at the age of eleven. I longed for both most of my life. The memories of my father colored my being. I was three or four when my father sat me on his lap and held my hand as he tried to teach me to write guiding my fist. I fought him, going right when he wanted me go left. He wondered why I didn’t learn as quickly as my sister.
Garrett, a twenty-month-old angel, looks down from heaven and sees a large group, planting and weeding the garden built in his honor at Quiet Waters Park. He smiles as he sees his dad, Lee Feldmann, greeting the Midshipmen: “ It’s so great for all of you to come on this lovely Saturday morning to help us plant and weed! We are so
thankful!”
My desk has papers scattered across it as if a whirlwind passed over it. The dining room table is littered with half-completed projects. For a person who rarely leaves a task unfinished, I’ve turned into someone I don’t recognize.
I know my days are numbered. I always knew they were numbered. Looking at the obits daily, I notice that the ones listed are around my age, some older; some younger. Each day I wake up grateful that I am granted the gift of one more day on this planet. But death looms large around me. If I’m lucky I have fifteen more years. I think about my last fifteen years. I was sixty-four fifteen years ago. I sang the Beatles song happily. It seems like yesterday. How quickly those fifteen years flew by. How do I slow down the passage of time? How do I savor each moment more than I do already? What IS death like?