A Treasured Friend

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to breakdown and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away; a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. Ecclesiastes

Steve Wickert was a gentle, broad-minded, hard-working, multi-talented, disciplined, intellectually curious, cheerful, thoughtful, charming, and utterly unselfish man, beloved by all whose lives he touched. I know he inspired and touched my life in a profound way. He was my friend.

I first met Steve in 1991 when I was asked to join a weekly chamber music group. We played quartets and quintets every week until I moved away in 2003. There is something about the intimacy of playing chamber music that creates an unusual bond that goes beyond normal friendship. It is a bond that, with the ethereal quality of the music, moves the soul and could be characterized as a spiritual experience. Because of that, my moving away and Steve’s death have not carried with it the usual pain of distance or loss. We are bonded in spirit.

Early on, there were times when we played music that I found Steve frustrating. He would always pass out the music and I was always given either the 2nd violin or 2nd viola part. I realized all the voices were equally important in such a small group, but I missed playing the beautiful solos of the 1st parts. As time went on I began to be given the 1st parts occasionally. I guess I had proven myself and he was more willing to share.

In later years Steve’s hearing began to go. We still continued to play, even though at times we all joined in Steve’s version of the music so that we could all play together. It didn’t matter though, because each member of the group understood the importance of playing with elder members in hopes that someday younger people would be willing to continue to let us play and express our passion for music, even with limitations.

The last time I saw Steve was in February last year on a visit. I had arranged with the other musicians to surprise him at their musical get together at his home. When he saw me his face lit up into a beautiful smile and I went over to him and gave him an enormous hug. Our cellist, another dear friend, told me after he died that she had never seen him give or receive any physical expressions of affection in all her years of knowing him. I am glad that my spontaneity and feelings allowed me to hug him and that he so opening and gracefully received it.

I am looking at Steve’s obituary notice, which has given me more insight into his long life. Steve was born in Germany and was the sixth of fourteen children. His father was an organist and parish hall director. His parents had plans for him to become a priest, but when he showed early promise as an artist, they allowed him to study art and art education. He used these skills both in Germany and later in the United States and was well known for his amusing posters that he continued to draw his entire life. All through his life, he exhibited as a painter, sculptor, illustrator and caricaturist.

Over the years, he also issued a series of over a dozen self-published books as gifts to family and friends, anthologizing more than a thousand German and other European folk songs in his own piano arrangements, with his own English verse translations, and accompanied by his own illustrations. At his death he was at work on a new volume, consisting of American folk songs. I treasure the volumes I received that are now in my library.

Toward the end of World War II, he was drafted and served as forward observer for the German artillery in Italy. His unit, however, retreated soon after his arrival and surrendered to the American forces upon re-crossing the Alps. After his release from an American POW camp, he rejoined his family, who had been relocated following a bombing raid. In 1952, he came to the USA with his family and became a naturalized citizen in 1957.

In addition to his professional talents as an artist, Steve was a passionate lover of music throughout his life. He played piano, violin, viola and cello with local orchestras in Rochester, New York and regularly met with friends to play chamber music. He was scheduled to perform a two piano concert two days after his death.

In 2006 I received a letter from him that touched me deeply. I am going to share it with you because I think it will help you understand what a wonderful man and friend Steve was.

12/13/06
Dear Paula,
Was it a bolt of lightning or was it the soft wing of an angel that touched me, when I read your account of your travel through the year.
It’s the least I can say: I was touched. To be included, an old man that I am, into what you accept and tolerate in the sheer battle of yourself, it felt like an honor.
Of course, I am still here, or am I? It’s the quaint but articulated indifference to what real age makes of a man. Plainly: Nobody knows except the old one himself. He doesn’t know, he just is condemned to live it. He is the “Unicum”, the oddity, the lover, the inaccessible one except for the vain scrutiny of trying to make him “act like all the others”.
Oh yea, I still stick out my antennas, actions that come with learning to walk and to eat, and even stroking a bow over a fiddle. That’s my conversation with the world I grew up with, though that has dramatically changed. I know it’s there, I can’t deny it, but I don’t have to agree with it. I don’t care whether anybody likes me. Most of them just take a step backwards in front of a confession like that.
Do I feel rightly seeing you sitting there calmly while I am blabbering away? You’d justly remind me of how much help I am enjoying with my children. And you are so right there. But even that is like rightness limited when one of my 4 favorite girls is befallen from a sneaky “Poliomyelitis” and will have to relearn moving like a baby, probably over the next 6+ months. She is God’s reminder for me that physical short comings are not reserved for old age.
Should I take hope from a turn like this? You bet I do. When you see your life elixir, your children, strangled in their youthful normality, then my age doesn’t matter a bit. There will be no miracle, but suddenly: oddity is normality.
Will we see each other at all, before it is too late? Christmas is such a wonderful God-given chance to join hands and cry out while you still can.
I know your courage has grown to face the oncoming year. I return your love in full measure.
Stephan Wickert

In Jeff Michaels’s article entitled “Endings and Beginnings” in the January issue of Sedona Magazine he expresses some of my beliefs and feelings about my relationship with Steve. Excerpted from this article:
“The ending of life is called “death,” and for many, death is a finality; death is an ending, a stopping, a ceasing—no more. There are faiths that describe death as the end and then they tell you what will happen afterward. They make something up: “You will go to heaven or you will go to hell. You will cross a river.” These are observation; these are glimpses, and they are all attempts to describe what you know is true. Death is not a stopping. Birth is not a beginning. Your energy does not cease.”

I will treasure the wonderfully fulfilling memories of many hours playing music and knowing Steve as a person in my heart forever. I also know, deep in my being, his spirit is soaring free and will be with me whenever I play music now or whenever I think of him. He continues to be a deeply loved and dear friend.

My Favorite Place To Be

My Aunt Leonie loved me. She was actually my Great Aunt, my grandmother’s oldest sister, and she was GREAT! It may not seem extraordinary to be loved by an aunt, but when I was growing up, she was the only person in my world whose relationship with me was based simply on love.

Relationships with everyone else were bound tightly with ideas of who I was and was not supposed to be, how I was to act, expectations, rules and unspoken conditions. Like other children who grew up in complicated environments, I thought my family was just the same as everyone’s. I developed ways to cope with my situation without realizing the challenges I was unknowingly enduring.

When I was with my Aunt Leonie, however, I could abandon my defenses and relax into who I truly was. I felt safe, nurtured, inspired, excited, and happy. Confusion about myself disappeared. No matter how many other children were around, there was no jealousy or competition. Aunt Leonie was an infinite abundance of purity and kindness and enveloped each of us with bountiful warmth and caring.

From my earliest memories she seemed very old. Her eyes were sapphire blue and sparkled like stars. When she smiled her entire face lit up. She had a large lump from a hernia on her side and she covered it with a flowered dress and sometimes an apron. She had white hair which she wore pinned up on her head. Sometimes when I was at her house she would let it down to wash it. It hung way below her waist and she would lean over the kitchen sink and pour a mysterious blue liquid over it. She would let me watch the entire process without explaining anything. I never felt the need to ask about it.

To this day I don’t exactly understand why my Aunt Leonie was excluded from large family gatherings. I knew intuitively that it was not a subject that should be brought up with anyone. The subject hovered in the family like a stampeding elephant. Once I overheard someone say that my grandmother was angry with her sister because, as children, Leonie was older but smaller and frail and my grandmother had to wear Leonie’s hand-me-down shoes. That explanation did not help my child-sadness or dismay at having my favorite person home alone right across the street as if she didn’t exist.

One noticeable contrast between my house and hers was how people talked with each other. At Aunt Leonie’s house it was like the volume had been turned down low on the radio. Voices were never raised. There didn’t seem to be a need for that. The words that were spoken were always kind, supportive and encouraging. We laughed a lot at her house and talked about our feelings.

I felt I belonged there. Aunt Leonie's house was at the end of a dead-end street one house away from mine. I was allowed to wander back and forth between our houses as early as I can remember. Her enormous yellow house became my refuge, although I didn’t recognize it as such at the time.

One of my earliest memories was running through the sprinkler in her freshly clipped lawn. I was wearing just my shorts, having spontaneously discarded my shirt for a more complete experience. The sun was shining brightly, and big puffy clouds were floating in the enormous blue sky. I was free. Suddenly, I was grabbed up by the back of my shorts and carried firmly under the strong arm of my father like a football all the way home. I was told in no uncertain terms I would never betray my womanhood by not wearing a shirt in public EVER AGAIN. I wanted to run away from home right then and live at Aunt Leonie’s. I thought it would probably be okay, as long as I packed plenty of shirts.

Aunt Leonie’s stepdaughter, Flossy, lived with her. They had a huge porch swing on the South side of their house that seemed to be the place to go for a gentle breeze. There were no railings behind the swing so it would fly out into space and take my breath away. Aunt Leonie, Flossy and I would swing for hours, me in the middle, singing songs that we all knew and even some that we made up.

Aunt Leonie loved to bake. She had a little stool for me to stand on which made me just the right height for helping. She would spread all the ingredients out before me. She taught me how to sift flour, skim off cream, measure lard, and form leftover pie dough into animal shapes that we would sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. I could hardly wait for them to come out of the oven so that we could eat them.

No matter what we were doing at Aunt Leonie’s house, when the cuckoo clock announced the hour, we would race into the sitting room and watch the little German man and woman and their duck come out to take turns ringing the bell. We would squeal with delight and laugh right out loud at the whimsical folly. Every hour we were taken by surprise and thrilled, as if each cuckoo was our first.

Aunt Leonie had an enormous antique oak oval table in her country kitchen. Kids would flock to her house in the cold times of the year to play solitaire. We would play for hours. Instead of playing against each other, we would play in such a way that in order to win, we each had to get rid of all our cards. It was an amazing experience of working together, finding peaceful and encouraging solutions, and having an important place in a group. We worked together and we all won. Putting puzzles together were also a favorite winter activity.

One of Aunt Leonie’s virtues was the ability to be in the moment. We spent many afternoons sitting on wooden crates in her driveway with a small pail of water right by our sides. We would carefully choose little rocks that seemed drab and uninteresting, plunk them into the bucket and gently begin to scrub. When we would pull them out and hold them up, the sparkles that had been hiding inside would burst out, glistening and dancing in the sun’s rays. I was convinced that we were working magic. Those moments were so full and perfect; there was no possibility of being anything but completely absorbed. I didn’t miss a thing.

One of our favorite things to do at Aunt Leonie’s happened every year in the fall. Lots of kids would flock there after school like geese knowing it was time to fly south. When we arrived, a bushel basket of Granny Smith apples sat in the middle of the oval table surrounded by pairing knives. Now, I am sure if our parents knew about this they would have been horrified. We would take an apple and start slowly and carefully peeling the skin into long snakelike ribbons. As we developed our skill, the spirals from one apple would continue on into the next. The challenge was to see how long you could make it before the spiral skin broke. To my knowledge, no one ever got cut.

I am certain I am the person I am today because of my Aunt Leonie. She initiated me into the world of spirit and soul, empowered me to discover myself, inspired my imagination, encouraged even my wildest dreams and allowed me to express my feelings. Aunt Leonie sowed the seeds of kindness, caring, trust, safety, living in a peaceful way, and being all I could be.

Aunt Leonie taught me, most importantly, about love and offered this comfort in so many ways. She showed me with her smile, the delightful sparkle in her eyes, how she put my ponytail in a rubber band, the way she talked with me, and how carefully she listened and listened and listened. She affectionately held me in her loving world, which gave me ground beneath my feet. My Aunt Leonie loved me and I loved my Aunt Leonie! She was my favorite place to be.