This season, I'd like to share with my website readers two articles I have recently written that are not obviously "religious." They are both about an earlier time in my life, and I have enjoyed re-living those years as I've written them. I have learned that reflection on life's journey can include events in which, in retrospect, I can discern God's creative and loving presence in myself and in others around me, and for this I am very grateful. I suggest that others might also discover much about God's presence in their lives through journal-writing, if they sometimes reflect not only on the present day's events, but on events of the past, as well.
"My Brush with Fame"
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace --
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
Says Alice.
A.A.Milne, "Buckingham Palace," from When We Were Very Young
The recent movie "The King's Speech," one of my favorite films of all time, brought back a flood of memories of my first "brush with fame." I was a very little girl when King George VI and his wife -- later affectionately known as the "Queen Mum" -- came to visit New York in 1939. My father, who worked at Columbia University, had bought tickets for himself, my mother, and me, so that we could join with the guests who came to Columbia's campus to welcome the visiting royalty to the school originally founded by the Crown and named "King's College." I proudly wore a little tag saying I was to be admitted to the occasion; my mother later made sure it received a place of honor in my first scrapbook. That is how, one spring day, I was standing with my parents in front of Low Memorial Library, an imposing colonnaded building in front of which a large statue of "Alma Mater" presided over the flight of stone steps, waiting for the royal guests to arrive.
I was, most likely, the youngest person in the crowd, so naturally, like any good parents, mine made sure that I would be right at the front so that I could see. I remember the occasion in part because I heard the story so many times, but I also can picture for myself what happened next. And it is not surprising to me that a very small girl in a pretty dress, with a big bow in her curly blond hair, standing in the very front of a crowd of grown-ups, caught the eye of the Queen, and that she looked directly at me, smiled, and waved.
This became a favorite family tale, my own personal version of "Cinderella," told time and time again as I was growing up. Knowing that "The Queen waved at me" sowed important seeds of self-esteem that came in handy as I was growing up. After watching "The King's Speech," I like to think that the tall and handsome king beside her caught a glimpse of a small girl, and smiled and waved, too.
Nancy Roth (Article for the Spring 2011 issue of Le Chat, the newsletter of Kendal-at-Home.)
The Lenox Place News
(Essay, with Lenox Place News excerpts, written for the Autumn 2011 issue of Communities Magazine. Editor: Christopher Roth.)
When I was a toddler, my family moved from their apartment into a white clapboard house with blue shutters in Scarsdale, a New York suburb north of Manhattan. Our street, Lenox Place, was a dead end shaped like the letter “L” with a small grassy circle at one end, enabling cars to turn around. It was a close-knit neighborhood, in part because of the many children who played together not only in our leafy yards but, since there was little traffic, in the street, playing jump-rope or hopscotch, or riding our bikes around and around what we called The Circle. On July 4th, the children would have a parade up and down the street, marching to the rhythm of my brother’s drum. I have to confess that, since I was the organizer of the event, photos from that period reveal, to my embarrassment, that I usually claimed the role of drum majorette, so that I could lead the parade.
As I made my way through elementary school, I discovered that of the three “R’s” the one I loved most was the second. I wrote my first poem, a celebration of my favorite tree in our back yard, when I was in third grade. My proud father, who worked at Columbia University, took it into his office, where his secretary graciously went through the laborious process of mimeographing several copies. But it was not long before he would give her a lengthier task on my account.
My parents always looked forward to the daily newspaper, tossed on our driveway each morning by a high school lad who made his rounds on his bicycle, except on rainy days, when his mother would chauffeur him so that he stay dry as he pitched the papers out the car window. I was in fifth grade when I had an idea one afternoon, as I cycled around The Circle, and thought about all my friends who lived in thee trim clapboard houses with colored shutters that lined our street: we too could have a newspaper. It was not until I was in bed with a case of the mumps a week or so later that I actually had time to do something about it, and at the same time garner some sympathy about my plight. A featured item on the front page of Vol.1, No.1, of “the Lenox Place News” was entitled Health Report: “Nancy Moore has the MUMPS, and is she puffed up!”
The premier issue was published in October of that year, and six more were to follow it, until apparently I ran out of steam the following April. It was not due to the economy or lack of customers: our paper was only 2 cents a copy. And it was certainly not due to lack of news, which was readily available when I went from house to house to interview each family . I hired my little brother, who had just learned to write, as a second reporter. He was listed as such in each issue, except during the times he was in my bad graces, when I demoted him to “distributor” and made him deliver the paper to all the neighbors. The paper was a major extracurricular project that year. It actually may have been even more important than what I learned in school, for it provided me with the satisfaction of strengthening the Lenox Place community and also gave me practice in one of the skills – writing – that was eventually to become part of my livelihood. Reading it now, I notice how tidbits of news that neighbors might have thought too trivial to share with a professional reporter were readily shared with a youngster: an incident on the commuter bus, a visiting relative, a child’s musical endeavors, a childhood illness. I also smile at the preachiness of the editor (yours truly – later to become a bona fide preacher) who campaigned on behalf of sharing Hallowe’en candy with the children at the county home who had none, and laid down a list of rules for safety during snowball fights. It’s also quite apparent from my editorializing that these were the years of scarcity just following the end of World War II.
My mother took me along to a local nursery during a shopping trip for bird seed, and must have told the proprieters about the newspaper, for they asked that an advertisement for their store be placed in the forthcoming issues, and paid for it with a set of Christmas candles in the shape of carolers, which have graced our Christmas table for at least six decades now (I could never bring myself to light them.) The entrepreneurial spirit was contagious; now that Billy Smeltzer, who lived a few houses away from us, had a way to advertise it, he created a neighborhood library, with its own set of rules.
The enterprise taught me the power of the written word, which can bring people closer together and also empower those who do so, even though they may be “only children.” And the satisfaction it gave me as a writer has stayed with me all my life. My former playmates still talk fondly about our childhood on Lenox Place, and one day, we hope to have a reunion. For that reunion, we’ll need a reporter, for sure, and perhaps, another issue of the Lenox Place News, since there’s been lots of news since the last issue!
– Nancy Moore Roth
