Elizabeth Nell Dubus

PORCH TALK #4

One of my favorite fairy tales is BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, because, it seems to me, it shows us how difficult it is to grasp the simple gifts life offers us. In case you’ve forgotten the story—or perhaps haven’t read it—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is about a widower with three daughters. And as in so many fairy tales, two of the daughters are greedy and egotistical, while the youngest is open-hearted and good.
The tale begins with the father preparing to go on a journey. He asks his daughters to name the gifts they would like him to bring them. The two eldest want jewels, furs, and other expensive luxury items. The youngest asks for a white rose.
Easy enough for a wealthy man to purchase gifts for the two eldest. But finding a white rose proves more difficult. Finally, he sees the perfect white rose growing in a garden. He picks it—and at that moment, a huge beast appears, ready to devour him. The father pleads for his life, and is granted it on one condition: that the youngest daughter marry him.
Which Beauty does, though, as we can imagine, with great fear and loathing. And then, wonder of wonders, the Beast turns into a handsome Prince, who tells Beauty that the spell that changed him into a beast could be broken only by someone who loved others more than she loved herself.
The two eldest daughters are left gnashing their teeth—until Beauty, always gentle and kind, invites them to live at the palace, where her father is already established.
Life is full of white roses, if we could but see them. My mother used to tell me that there is joy and beauty in every day, and that if I didn’t find them, it was because I didn’t look. “Now there are days when you have to shovel a lot of manure,” she said.
We all have those days. I remember a time during the divorce that ended my first marriage when my lawyer called as many as five times a day with more bad news. I lived in what the girls and I still call “the rotten apartment”, held down two jobs as well as doing as much free-lance writing as I could sell—and when it all seemed too much to bear, I would unplug the phone, brew tea, put a favorite piece of music in my tape player, and listen while I drank the tea from one of the beautiful cups that belonged to my mother.
For those fifteen minutes, I had joy and beauty, and I am convinced that they saved me.
BUT to have them I had to put aside everything else: worry about the girls, worry about how I would pay the rent, worry about getting more work—all the worries that beset us when our world has collapsed and it seems that there is no way to rise out of the rubble.
Fortunately, I had grown up with a mother who believed in joy and beauty. She loved to walk, and when I accompanied her, I found myself on an adventure of the spirit, where every flower, every colorful leaf, became a source of happiness. Butterflies, rainbows, small children playing in the park—each and every one became part of the wonder ball life hands us every day.
(Wonder balls are an old Christmas tradition in Germany and probably elsewhere—as the child unwinds the ribbon that forms them, tiny treasures are revealed.)
Life’s treasures are tiny, too. If we blind ourselves with ambition for money, fame and power, or with envy of those who have more of these treacherous desires than we, we will stumble through life like the people in Plato’s cave, who lived in darkness because they refused to emerge into the light.
I say treacherous desires because they are insidious—at the same time we seem to be acquiring them, they are digging a bigger pit of desire, so that, like a puppy chasing its tail, we are on a circular path that literally leads nowhere.
This is not to say that ambition is in itself a bad thing. Like everything else, ambition moderated by the knowledge that ultimately, how we live up to the responsibilities our relations with other people present is the measure of a life well-lived, is fine. But when it’s the be all and end all of our existence, it becomes a weapon of massive destruction, killing our souls.
In our society, children can hardly help but become aware of adult ambitions at very young ages, and it is no surprise that they soon mimic these ambitions in their own lives. Which, I believe, sets them on the path to unhappy, unfulfilled adult lives, where comparison with what others have rarely has positive results.
I remember coming home from fifth grade to tell my father that something very disturbing was going on at my school. We lived in Baton Rouge at the time, and I attended a neighborhood public school, that was, of course, co-ed. “There are girls who are trying to have the most boys like them, or to have the prettiest dresses, or a ring made of real gold--.” My father could tell how unhappy this made me, and with the wisdom I came to rely on, he put my fears to rest.
“Sweetheart, there will always be girls richer than you, prettier than you, smarter than you, and with more talent. And there will always be girls poorer than you, not as pretty, not as smart, and with less talent. Now do we ever have to have this conversation again?”
We didn’t. One time was sufficient for me to understand that depending on whom we compare ourselves to, we either feel like the queen of the May or the ditch digger’s daughter. But in neither case have we changed one little bit.
I remember how free I felt that afternoon—free to be me, as the saying goes. Free to enjoy each and every tiny gift life surrounds us with, free to find joy and beauty—free to disengage from arenas where in an effort to best everyone around them, people destroy the best of themselves.
My mother’s favorite prayer was written by a Fra Giovanni in 1513: “There is nothing I can give you which you have not; but there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven. No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take Peace. The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet, within our reach, is joy. Take Joy. And so I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.”
I’ll end with a recipe given me by a dear friend. If there is anything that lifts gloom, even if for only a moment, it is the aroma of something chocolate baking—
Dewey’s Chocolate Brownies
2 eggs 1/3 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar ½ cup sifted flour
1 stick butter 1 cup nuts
1 tsp. vanilla
Beat eggs in bowl. Add sugar and mix well. Melt butter and chocolate (may use microwave but be sure you use a deep cup/bowl). Add to egg and sugar mix. Add vanilla, salt and flour, and mix well. Add nuts, mix. Put in greased, floured 8x8 inch pan. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until done.

PORCH TALK #3

Returning from visiting a sick friend reminded me of the many hours spent visiting fragile elderly ladies in New Iberia, Louisiana, where my mother grew up. We usually spent several weeks there in the summer, with intermittent visits during the school year. My grandparents, Walter Lee and Bertha Perry Burke, lived in a Tudor-style house on Main Street, set on property that stretched several blocks back to Bayou Teche.
They lived a formal life: while my grandfather went about his business as an attorney, my grandmother kept to a routine which included carrying on a voluminous correspondence with far-flung friends and relatives, giving commands to her household staff, and, in the afternoons, either receiving callers or making calls herself.
As soon as my sister and I could be depended upon to behave—and believe me, that came at a much earlier age than one might think—we accompanied our mother and grandmother on some of these calls—particularly those to ladies whose physical condition kept them, if not invalids, at least confined to their homes most of the time.
Our instructions were simple—after greeting our hostess, we were to sit with straight backs and closed mouths, speaking only when spoken to, and never omitting “please” and “thank you” when offered the usual fare for child guests, lemonade and vanilla wafers.
These old ladies’ homes all smelled of potpourri and strong coffee, and except for one pair, memory has blended them into a singe image. The two old ladies who stand out had a dog—one of the small, yippy ones, of course, some type of terrier—who, like all such dogs, seemed to me to be nothing more than a nuisance and not a proper dog at all. Proper dogs hunted, or patrolled the perimeters of property, or were large enough to tumble on the floor with us with no one in danger of getting hurt. So I never made an effort to pet this dog, though I watched it warily as it had a habit of nipping heels or ankles before darting under the nearest chair.
One day while visiting these ladies, I noticed something highly unusual: the dog wore what had to be a diaper. Intrigued, I couldn’t take my eyes off it, and though I managed to hold my tongue, the minute we stepped onto the porch, I asked my mother why.
I saw both her face and my grandmother’s change from serenity to consternation, and realized that I had once more stepped in the mine field that all children must learn to cross safely if they are not to set off explosions, minor or major, in the tranquility of family life. One of them answered, something so unsatisfactory I knew at once it wasn’t true. Years later I understood that the dog was in heat—the only question remaining was why these two spinsters had not had their dog spayed—unless, of course, their vet, like my mother or grandmother, had made up an explanation for this occasional phenomenon.
Visiting the sick went public when Sister Veronica, one of the Mt. Carmel nuns who taught at the convent in Lafayette I went to, decided that as seventh graders, we had attained an age when we needed to learn that not everyone had lives as comfortable as ours.
At that time, Lafayette had a branch of Charity Hospital in New Orleans—Big Charity—and Sister Veronica chose it as the perfect microcosm for the wider world. She began by having us make layettes for the babies of women who delivered at Charity. Since learning to do hand sewing which included French seams and embroidery was part of our sixth hour activities—this to make robes for the Infant Jesus of Prague, a statue of the Christ child who needed a wardrobe appropriate to the seasons of the Liturgical year—making layettes was easy. Sister Veronica insisted that we make these layettes as carefully and beautifully as though the Infant Jesus would wear them—as indeed He would, she told us.
While she would not allow us to bring these layettes to the maternity ward, she did take us to visit the geriatric and pediatric wards, and these visits I will never forget. The men and women in the geriatric ward came from the rural areas around Lafayette, and few, if any, spoke English. And so Sister Veronica instructed us to communicate with them in our school-girl French, which, spoken in execrable accents, made little sense but had one general effect—peals of laughter and bursts of chatter from bed to bed.
The first time this happened we left the ward with cheeks red with embarrassment, which Sister Veronica was quick to notice. “Now, girls,” she said. “When we visit the sick, we are not to think of ourselves, but only how to comfort and cheer them. And you did cheer those dear old people—why, I can hear them laughing still.” Small comfort to self-conscious seventh graders, but wise advice that has outlasted any chagrin I had at the time.
The pediatric ward sobered us immediately. Hot, crowded, with the inevitable smells accompanying illness and poverty, we entered carrying our bags of comic books and gum and candy and stood clustered by the door, ready to turn and run. Sister Veronica of course ordered us forward as any good general orders reluctant troops, and soon we found ourselves at bedsides, handing out our gifts, trying to talk to the young patients without bursting into tears.
My personal experience with illness was so different from that of these children I could hardly bear it. Trays set with linen and silver, light soups and crisp toast, and on one occasion, doves on toast when my mother’s favorite brother dropped by with a bag fresh from the marsh were standard sick fare. And unlike these beds made up with coarse cotton sheets, my bed linens were ironed and scented with veti vert, while on the table next to my bed stood a stack of favorite books, ready for my mother to read.
One more lesson in visiting the sick: a gracious lady, Mary Leonard, daughter of an Episcopalian minister who grew up in Virginia, taught the gentlest lesson of all: that beauty and elegance can lift the spirits of even the terminally ill. Thus she brought flowers from her garden and dainties from her kitchen, including a Sherry Gelatin which, she vowed, someone only hours from death’s door could swallow and keep down.
Mrs. Leonard’s face behind a huge bouquet of flowers was the first thing I saw when I awoke from a tonsillectomy, and one winter when my mother had pneumonia, her butler arrived daily carrying a silver tray with my mother’s lunch.
From all these examples I learned a, to me, valuable lesson, one which compels me to visit the sick and dying, the bereaved and grieving, even when I’d rather not. The lesson is this, and I can hear my mother’s voice as I write it: “You are not the one who is in pain, or is dying. You are not the one who has just lost a loved one. So the visit is not about you. You try to sense the person’s mood, and then you talk about what seems appropriate. If you can make the person smile, or even laugh, so much the better. But at all costs—they are to feel better when you leave than when you arrived.”
A classic and comic case of a patient feeling better after a visitor left is a story that makes me laugh every time I think of it. One of my friends’ grandmother was a grande dame par excellence, ruling her family and her social group with an iron fist barely concealed in a kid glove. One winter, Mrs. Voorhies succumbed to pneumonia, and became so ill she was hospitalized, put in an oxygen tent, and allowed no visitors except family. However, one of the ladies in her Rosary group sneaked past the nurses’ station and entered Mrs. Voorhies’ room. She crept to the bedside, peered through the oxygen tent, and said, “Mais, Voorhies, you look terrible, chere. What kind of flowers you want we should send to your funeral?” At which Mrs. Voorhies’ adrenalin started flowing, she sat up in bed, ringing madly for the nurse, and lived another several years.
I’m giving you the recipe for the Sherry Gelatin, because it really is a miracle dish. The sugar makes and lemon juice are nourishing, the sherry quiets nausea, and the pinch of cinnamon add flavor. It can also be served as a light dessert.
Mary Leonard’s Sherry Gelatin
3 cups sugar
1 pint sherry—not sweet
1 cup cold water
Juice and grated rind of two lemons
4 envelopes gelatin
1 pint boiling water
Pinch cinnamon
Bring one pint water to a boil, add sugar, sherry, lemon juice and rind and cinnamon, then lower heat, simmering mixture until sugar melts. Stir the gelatin into the cold water until it is melted and then add slowly to the sugar, sherry and lemon mixture. Pour into a square or rectangular two quart pyrex dish or into individual pyrex custard cups and cool before refrigerating until jelled.

PORCH TALK—#2
I go to Alabama often to do some birding with a man I’ve known for almost eight years. We met when I had a beach house at Navarre, Florida—he lives in Elberta, Alabama, a small town on the highway that starts at Fairhope, Alabama and goes through Pensacola, Florida and beyond. I have always loved the outdoors—growing up in a small city in a time when no one locked their doors and children could be outside playing literally from dawn to dusk without their mothers once worrying that they had been kidnapped or worse, I had the freedom to walk and bike with friends, and I did.
But times change and caution is not only advisable but necessary, so my outdoor adventures became few and far between. What a delight it was, then, to make a friend who not only loves nature, but is also wise in her ways, and more than willing to teach me what he knows.
I soon gave myself the nickname ELEPHANT’S CHILD from the Kipling story about the little elephant whose curiosity almost got the better of him, because I bombarded my long-suffering friend with every question that came to mind.
When I think back to those early adventures, I marvel at his patience, not only with my ignorance, but with the clothes I wore. Unable to take the sun, I would swath myself in gauzy long-sleeved shirts, and on my head large hats more suited to an English garden tea out of an Angela Thirkell novel than bird-watching.
Gradually my knowledge grew, my wardrobe became more sensible, my shoes sturdier—and this new hobby became a dependable source of joy—there are few things I like better than to be walking through woods or on a beach or sod field waiting for a flicker of movement, a sudden chirping—and then the bird is spotted and the real fun begins.
I thought all birds always looked the same, except for the different coloration in the male and female of a species. Wrong! There are juveniles and first year adults, there is breeding plumage, there is the look of feathers during and after molting—my friend and I have had many pleasant discussions as to just what we’re looking at, but with the aid of memory, experience, and couple of trusted field guides, we usually arrive at a satisfactory answer.
So much a part of my life had these birding expeditions become that when I sold the beach house some years ago, I immediately began to try to find a way to replace the convenience of just getting in the car and heading east. Nothing I thought of worked, however, and I settled into staying at a vacation rental or bed and breakfast, all comfortable and near our birding sites, but all involving packing the kind of gear I take when I travel.
And then one day while I assembled the food staples I would need for a long weekend, I remembered my Aunt Roberta, one of the family grand dames, who married a true bon vivant when she married my Uncle Francis. They had met in kindergarten in New Iberia, and when they married, they bought the house on Main Street where the kindergarten had been, naming it Halcyon House, a harbinger of the happy lives they had.
Uncle Francis was, as I said, a true bon vivant. He was also a successful businessman and a founder of two of New Iberia’s banks. He and my aunt and my parents spent a great deal of time together, going out for dinner and dancing, and it was agreed that Uncle Francis had been a splendid addition to the family.
But—and there is always a but—he was also a spontaneous gentleman, given to calling my aunt in mid-morning to tell her he had just made reservations for them to fly out of New Orleans that afternoon to New York, or Miami, or any other place that struck his fancy.
These calls posed a dilemma for my aunt. Of course she was delighted that she and my uncle would spend time together in a place they both enjoyed. She was not so delighted at the prospect of having to find the necessary garments and accessories in such a short time. “And so,” she told me and some young cousins one afternoon, “I decided to have kits.” She led us to a closet in a guest bedroom and opened the door.
There lay several zippered cloth bags with labels on each. NEW YORK KIT. MIAMI KIT.
SAN FRANCISCO KIT. She unzipped them so we could see the contents. For New York, packs of stocking, several pairs of gloves, a suit, a tailored dress—much the same for San Francisco, with a smart raincoat added—and for Miami, bathing suits and cover-ups, beach shoes, suntan lotion, sunglasses, and large hats.
I still remember the awed admiration I felt when my aunt explained that if we were lucky enough to marry a spontaneous man, we must make sure we didn’t let our own desire for advance notice to spoil that lovely characteristic. “Remember, girls. A little organization ahead of time can prevent problems later.”
Now I have my birding kit ready to go. It has a pound of dark roast Community Coffee that I never travel without, sugar, salt and pepper and other condiments, paper towels and other household goods I need in a vacation rental—insect repellent and sun screen, one of those headbands you soak in water, wring out and then wear around your forehead to keep your blood cool—everything needed to meet any contingency.
It’s amazing to me how much time this kit has saved. And something else, something I wonder if Aunt Roberta thought the very same thing: the kit in my closet represents the possibility of other birding adventures, and its presence is the promise of joy.
What a very wise aunt to teach us that preparing for joy is one of the very best gifts we can give ourselves!

PORCH TALK—#1
I grew up in one of those Southern families who sit on porches and tell stories as evening slowly veils the landscape, darkening the houses across the street, blurring the line of sidewalk at the edge of the lawn, draining color from the flower beds, and finally closing the porch with its one yellow light into a space in which past and present and future merge, and the voices coming out of the darkness could belong to an ancestor long dead, or a child not yet born.
One of my earliest memories is of a screened front porch that separated the safe, familiar world of the house I lived in from a world of sidewalks that passed houses lived in by strangers, and from streets that led into whose knows what danger.
My first memory of leaving the safety of that porch was when a nurse, black, white uniformed, smelling of talcum powder, wheeled me in my wicker buggy while holding my older sister’s hand past the houses on either side of our house, and the houses on either side of theirs, around the corner, and down a street, and perhaps even a block or two more, and then we were in foreign territory, where only our nurse could vouch for us.
Here it didn’t matter who our father and mother were, how long and important their heritage: what mattered was whether the hands on my buggy’s handle belonged to a woman who was respected on that street, by the people who lived there. That introduction into this separate world at a time when I responded more to the warmth in these new voices than the color of their skin may well have been one of the most valuable lessons of my life, one that my father built on in the years to come.
Our porch, screened in summer with rosa Montana vines to keep out the west-setting sun, was not, in reality, large. But to a small child, this no man’s land that belonged to neither the interior of our home nor the exterior of the yard around it, became Peter Pan’s Neverland, Flash Gordon’s outer space, Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole.
For me, porches have that magic still. When I first saw the house in which I now live, a long porch stretching across it, I knew it was the home I’d been searching for. And when, once inside, I saw another porch across the house, any small doubt about the wisdom of making an instant decision vanished.
Now all the front porch is screened, furnished with wicker chairs and tables and lamps, with plants on tall stands and overflowing the seat of an old-fashioned child’s carriage. Half the back porch is screened—the other half forms a bridge between the house as it stood when I bought it and the addition of a library and new master suite.
I like to think of these porches as portals, not just to the house, but to memories of the past and fantasies of the future. When I take a cup of coffee to the back porch, and sip it while birds gather at the feeders and morning glories open on the fence, or sit on the front porch in late afternoon watching the sun change the open sky into a canvas on which each day another masterpiece appears, I am in a place where the mind and heart and spirit come together as the problems of the mind, the worries of the heart, the weakness of the spirit vanish as the light vanishes from the sky, leaving only this moment.
Which is, of course, the essence of a life. Moment after moment after moment—a beat of time, so small that it passes without notice as we look ahead to the dreaded meeting, the boring engagement, the trying friend. And in focusing on moments yet to come—we miss the present.
Often we miss it as a defense—who wants to hear someone else’s music, someone else’s conversation? Who wants to see sad looking or scary looking or weird looking strangers temporarily sharing a common space?
More often we miss it because we have put aside the wonder of the child, seeing the ordinary as miraculous—a bird flying—a flower where yesterday there was none—the taste of cinnamon and sugar on toast—all the myriad tastes and sights and smells and sounds and textures we have long taken for granted until we are shocked into observance by some powerful event—and then, when it’s over—we go back into a senseless world.
Which is where porch sitting comes in—or balcony sitting, or patio sitting—or park bench sitting—any place that doesn’t have the particular function of a bedroom, a kitchen, a den, any place we choose to be our own small refuge.
A friend of mine believes that every home, no matter how small, should have several places in which just “to be.” And I’ve noticed that many of the assisted living facilities and nursing homes now have such places, offering for their residents spots other than their small apartments or rooms in which to find a book to read, or a view to contemplate.
I hope this blog becomes a kind of porch for those who read it, an inner porch in which there is space to be—space to think and feel and discover that past and present and future are only words, that we do float between them, and that when we become conscious of that freedom, we will have found our own porch—our own place to be.