This Time Love Wins
photo: M F Valentine
While sleuthing around a sparely-furnished guest room the night before my 2008 talk, I make friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. She’d overnighted right here on her visits to Yale University—surely, she’s left secrets. Closing my eyes, I picture her. Waking up, I’ll grasp her worldview. Looking out the window, I’ll see through her eyes.
Best friends Eleanor and I dress the next day for a 4pm Master’s Tea, a get-together with students and townspeople to chat about sharing philosophy with children. My host, Master of Calhoun College, serves as Professor of History and African American Studies. Incoming undergraduates anticipate their assignment to a residential college which will be home base from the start, housing if they choose, and their gathering place for reunions. Our teapartying group made the most of a good time together—four generations of Hollins women, my alma mater… out-of-towners with friends on their first Yale visit… New Haven locals with their neighbors… Yale students.
Despite delicious refreshments and pleasant weather, however, for me the room’s dark-paneled heaviness held. A silent overseer looked down on us from the wall, a portrait of the namesake of this residential College. Yale graduate and Vice-President from 1825 to 1832, slaveowning white supremacist John Calhoun—a vocal defender of slavery who deemed it “a positive good.”
Calhoun’s likeness hung over me on the train trip home. Nine years later, this residential college was renamed for Yale master’s (1930) and doctoral (1934) graduate Grace Hopper. Naval officer, mathematician, and pioneering computer scientist, she deserves any tribute.
Founded in 1701, esteemed Yale University’s slow trek forward. Today’s Congressional goons’ frothy-mouthed race backward. Thinking….
Now, we’re stepping away. Moving up. Breathing outdoors. Feeling nature’s subtle twisting, sweet edging past midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox. Sunsetting later—sunrising earlier. Tendrils pushing through dirt—cardinals poking into dirt.
Progress never stops. Love always wins. Poets heat February. Musicians rock love.
Lusting for French fries dashed with vinegar, Margaret Atwood spends winter’s “pewter mornings” homebound with her “black fur sausage” cat. “February” excels, every year, at one thing. Hello, shortest month, bringing yet besting despair, inching us forward, birthing optimism. “Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.”
Stores close and sidewalks fill. Despite a woman’s crooked heels, she and her companion clip along briskly on a frosty “February Evening in New York.” Denise Levertov overhears a seductive confession: “You know, I’m telling you, what I love best / in life. I love life!” Well, then, February. “More life tonight!”
“Hey, my little evening star / How bright you are.” Allison Russell’s refrain travels from her banjo strings into our hearts: “You’re Not Alone.” Baring her scars, lending her voice to all facing bigotry and abuse, Russell reminds us that “we have love.” Overcoming hardship upon hardship throughout her still-young lifetime, she works to get out the vote in November, 2022. “And, baby, you could never look me in the eye.” Maybe, but, oh baby, this duo holds that eye contact: Hozier, pledging allegiance, joins Russell for a re-dazzling “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”
“Well, this time love wins.” Who better than LGBTQ+ advocate Cyndi Lauper to perform at the White House on December 14, 2022, her mountain dulcimer tenderizing President Biden’s signing of the “Respect for Marriage Act.” For decades her song an LGBTQ+ anthem, Lauper plucks a tuneful rainbow: “I see your True Colors / And that’s why I love you.”
Especially in mid-February, from morning light to the middle of the night, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Boys “just wanna,” too. Ranging four octaves, Lauper hikes up a piano and duets with a trumpeter. “I wanna be the one to walk in the sun.” Yes, I wanna, and gonna, stay in that sun. Sun. “The powAH!”
Sun—hold that note—sun…. …. ….
…. ….
….
Told with McCarty’s characteristic wisdom, marvel, exuberance, and good will, Leaving 1203 is about navigating that way through. The author draws on all available resources—friends and strangers, food and laughter, life lessons learned in the very house she now empties, and, not least, her newly-inherited West Highland terrier, Billy. McCarty simultaneously learns and deftly teaches the fine arts of remembering, letting go, and holding on to what matters most. She not only finds the way through, she shows the way.
the greatest gift an author could give a reader… lessons of a universally philosophical and existential kind… a touching journey… a welcome, upbeat ride
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