“She danced every dance. She was not a spectator.”

I found a small box that had some letters and photographs that I had not seen in many years. They were from my college years and I had not read them in a long time. I think these “acts of love” speak to the values in life that are important and I hope to never forget them.

My beloved Shakespeare and Literature Professor and friend:

The first envelope contained a letter from my favorite College Professor and Chairman of the Literature Department. I received this upon graduation and part of it read: ” To have you as one of our majors is a special privilege, and we trust we have helped you to discriminate between the tawdry and the genuine, the false and the true, the excellent and the mediocre.” This past February I drove with a friend to Wheaton College to memorialize this larger than life teacher and mentor. She lived her 98 years just as she taught, discerning between the excellent and the mediocre and summoning all of us to live better lives. I will never forget her and I feel privileged to have had a long and memorable relationship with her. As Eliot said and she affirmed upon her retirement — ” in the end is my beginning.” (Four Quartets)

You visited me when I was old:

My Junior year I lived off campus and I used to visit an elderly woman who lived alone. I would bring her some groceries and sweets and we would talk. I would also say a prayer before I left. I did not realize what an impact this had on her life until I neared graduation. She wrote me a tender letter in her own hand writing thanking me and telling me how she would miss our times together. She also put a $2.00 bill in the envelope. We never know what our “small acts of kindness” are capable of meaning to others, but when I read her note I was tearfully transported back to that little house and that generous woman.

She danced every dance. She was not a spectator.

The third person I am remebering entered my life in the early 80’s when I worked at The Baltimore Museum of Art. She was the Accountant of the Museum. There in my box was a wonderful picture of her and me laughing and playing on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland. We worked very closely since I was Director of the Museum Store. She was smart, funny and we would often go out and enjoy Baltimore. Being a native, she introduced me to all the wonderful seafood I had missed growing up in Pittsburgh. Later when I moved from Baltimore to New York City I continued to see her when she visited New York. At some point she decided to stop visiting New York and our communication stopped. The last time I wrote her was 2010. This summer while visiting Baltimore, I looked on the internet to check her address and I found out that she had died unexpectedly in 2013. One part of her obituary read: “She liked all of Baltimore’s cultural attractions, the arts, the museums, the symphony and experimental theater. In life, Carole danced every dance. She was not a spectator.” I had enjoyed museums, meals and dancing with her, but it made me sad that I had missed her last dance.

I will always remember Carole. It was she who dragged me onto the dance floor and taught me to live life to its fullest. Quoting a piece from John Donne’s poem “No Man is an Island:” “No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” All three of these women were woven into my life and though I miss each one, buried in the box are the memories they left for me.

(Through the keyhole: an orange tree in Rome, both holy and ordinary)