Repeat: Grace Paley
I am not writing my blog right now because I realized mid-August that it felt like a burden instead of a release. I am too sad, navigating the twins leaving for college. I scheduled these posts that day so the blog wouldn’t be empty, but I could pull back and use the time left with the twins. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.
Grace Paley died today. Josh called me from work to tell me the news and his voice was cracking as he said it. It was like a favourite great aunt who had always been at Thanksgiving dinner was suddenly gone.
I met her once when we were trying to conceive. I went to a reading where she read the essay “Traveling”. It begins with her mother and sister taking a bus from New York to Virginia in 1927. When the bus got to D.C., every African-American got up and moved to the back of the bus. Paley’s mother and sister were sitting in the back and when the driver asked them to move to the front of the bus, her mother refused. She refused three times and remained in the back of the bus until they got to Richmond.
The story switches to Paley’s ride from New York to Miami Beach in 1943. Paley is sitting in the last seat in the white section. An African-American woman gets on the bus, holding a sleeping child. All of the white men in the white section let this woman and child stand. Paley offers the woman her seat but the woman demurs. Finally, Paley tells her that she’ll hold the baby. And the woman, from sheer exhaustion, gives Paley her child and continues to stand next to her.
