On Time… More

I just finished reading Elizabeth Alexander’s wonderful memoir The Light of the World. Most people know Alexander as the poet who wrote/read the poem “Praise Song for the Day” at President Obama’s 2009 inauguration. I met Elizabeth only briefly, through the poet Kevin Young, when she was living and teaching in Chicago.

The subject of her memoir is her marriage to Ficre Ghebreyesus, who died suddenly of a heart attack four days after his 50th birthday. It’s the story of a happy marriage, which makes the fact that it was cut short all the more sad.

What I take away from it is that in this marriage there was time. There was time for so much! Not just two sons, but time for art, for discussion, for sex, for sitting in the backyard, for drinking coffee, for making meals that take a long, long time to make, for a garden, for poetry, for smoking, for speaking Italian (and his other four languages), for deep friendships, for travel. How can that be?

Flowering Tree at St. Louis Arboretum, March 9

Elizabeth Alexander is an academic, and during their marriage taught at three different colleges/universities, but mostly at Yale. She was also, by the end of the ’90s, a very well-known poet with many invitations. She was busy with lots of work and even a fair amount of travel for that work.

And lest you think Ficre was a lay-about painter, he was not only prolific as a painter, he ran restaurants. Restaurants! A very demanding profession. He had business partners, but one of these restaurants was in New York City. There is no question his own life had external demands beyond the family.

Catherine in front of art on the High Line, NYC

And yet, he is waiting on the couch for her when she comes in after an event at Yale, so that they can sit and talk together. The sense I got on every page of the book was that Ficre had time, for everyone and everything, but especially for Elizabeth and their two sons and for beauty. And so, as the book expands out and envelops us as readers, we luxuriate in a life in which there was time. Whatever else there was, there was plenty of all that is good and true and deep in life on this earth.

water tower from the Whitney Museum roof terrace

Somehow I think this has to do with “shoulds.” It is a big problem I have, all these “shoulds” always hounding me. I try to limit them, to beat them down, to keep them at abeyance. “Shoulds” devour time, make it so much more of a drudgery. And also, I stack things up on a calendar. I know calendars are necessary, and also charting how much I work and various commitments. I missed two poetry events this week, which I would have enjoyed. That is not a problem so much as I did not spend that time instead with something more expansive, being more present, but by being upset with myself and fretting. I should have gone. I should have energy. It wasn’t a burdensome event. Why didn’t I go?

When I think about the life ahead, not knowing how long that will be, I realize it is not about what I want to “do” or even who I want to “be.” It is about how, and that how answers in large part (whether one’s life is long or short) the question of time.

photos from recent travels, which were full of beauty, friends, family, and “big” time…