Rachel's Eulogy

Rachel's Eulogy (May 2021)

In 1952, my father took his well-honed mind, quiet good cheer, and the curiosity and self-discipline to work hard for a good reason, and left South Africa. He moved both to further his education and to live away from the apartheid regime consolidated by the 1948 election.

In 1969, when students at Washington University staged demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, he walked around the campus as a calming presence. He agreed that the war was misguided but disagreed when students burned down the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) building. One of the non-arsonist students, Charlie Stolar, who told me this story two days ago, lived across the street from our family and is with us today.

I already heard the end of the story from my dad. At a reunion held years later with some of the same student leaders, these men now well into middle age said quietly, “You were right. We were wrong.” Padre told me this story with neither bitterness nor pride.

Beyond science and current events my dad was a loving, supportive family man. I was a child who loved to draw from the time I could hold a drawing tool. My folks acquired a large roll of butcher paper and my dad rigged it up to hang from the basement ceiling. The supply outlasted our childhood. My dad also rebuilt the plywood from a discarded speaker cabinet into a garage (with a cardboard angled roof and hinged doors with working latches) for my brother’s metal trucks, and a flat cityscape with wooden light posts and small bulbs lit by a large attached battery. We called this the “town board” but it could also function as a one-story dollhouse with working lights.

Approximately two years ago I found in our parents’ basement a doll-sized clothing rack and three small hangers holding doll clothes. Rack and hanger were made from repurposed metal hangers, used with pleasure, and then stored and forgotten. Finding them, I was very moved think of this eminent physicist bending wire with plyers into toys for his small daughter.

One day my dad drove me to college. (I lived at home and commuted the one mile, so this was just some ordinary “going to school and work” occasion.) The university’s main entrance at that time had a large, impressive, curved driveway bisected by flights of stairs. Instead of dropping me off at the bottom staircase, my dad turned into the driveway to get me halfway up the hill. “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can take the stairs.” He replied, “Sweetie, if I could drive you up the stairs I would do that.”

I want to read two poems, both written by family.

My dad had twin cousins Cyril and Sidney Clouts. Although the twins were born about two years earlier, the three boys grew up together in Cape Town. Sidney became an eminent South African poet who lived and worked in London. Sidney is no longer here but we have his widow Marge, his son Philip and other Friedlander cousins watching the live stream from around the South African diaspora. Here is “Earth, Sky” by Sydney Clouts. [1] [2] [3]

Earth, Sky by Sydney Clouts

I walked with a flower
stuck red in my coat,
it flamed for an hour
and then it went out.
The hilltop above me
shimmered like stars,
the houses passed me
they were white upon white.
Then the dark came around.
I thought of my child,
his body a flower,
his heart like a star.
And the dark came around.

I put down the flower
and I walked on my way –
it is surely there still
but not as a flower.
And I thought of my child
who has come from the dark:
from night of the sky
from deep of the ground;
and I thought of my child
till the sun came around,
till the sun came around.

Here is a poem I wrote in 2013 for Padre’s 85th birthday party.

Poem for My Father at 85

The loom of life throws back and forth
its shuttle, slings through warp the weft,
binds thread to thread, builds textile heft,
folds, wraps, unfurls biography.
How else explain the woven path
the private carpet tapis map
that drew you north for cosmic rays
then pulled you west to work and love?
Character and circumstance twine
fibers sure as weaver’s hands craft
strands: investigation, careful
notes on atmospheres and neighbors;
frailties sketched with kindness, public
foolery tartly observed.

On this birthday I salute you
marvel how the boy within you
looked through the telescope
set loose the gyroscope tried to see
beyond beyond; planned, packed,
launched yourself by boat and airplane;
spread out far your fabric’s breadth,
narrative blanket, tactile tale
wide as the universe, lit by stars.

Written November 17, 2013 for the 85th Birthday celebration of Michael Friedlander
Revised and completed (as much as any poet can be trusted to be completed) May 20, 2020
Acknowledgement to Dictionary Online and (unidentified web site discussing weaving)