Sharon Olds and family

I guess for anyone even somewhat familiar with Olds' work, she had a very difficult childhood, which she mined over and over, particularly in her first several collections.  In many ways, given that she does go over the same ground so often, her earlier collections are the freshest.  My personal faves are The Dead and the Living (1983) and The Gold Cell (1987).  I really devoured these when I came across them, almost certainly in my junior/senior year in college (around 1990).  I have to admit, I have not followed her career much past the mid 1990s, but I will try to correct this one of these days. 

The Father is a sustained meditation on the man who sort of dominated & ruined her childhood, but whom she loves in her own way, despite everything.  I have been reading and rereading "The Race" (from The Father) and hope to include it in an anthology of poems about transportation.  While it is somewhat embarrassing to admit, every time I read the poem, I get teary-eyed.  Certainly I think the poem is a strong one (and I love the metaphor of slipping through a closing airplane door like threading the eye of a needle), but there must be more to it than that.  Unquestionably, it must be related to my racing to Detroit when my mother was dying, and some of that unfinished business from roughly 15 years ago. 

As I thought more about it (today in fact) I think what I am actually reacting the most is the somewhat unexpected kindness shown to her by the airline employees when she simply threw herself onto their mercy:

I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I who always go to the end of the line, I said
Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
run.

I've generally had pretty good luck with airline employees getting me home even with major weather delays (sometimes going beyond the call of duty), though, as with so many things, things are not as good as they once were. I only just recalled that I couldn't get a reasonable flight from Chicago to Detroit.  I can't even recall if it was just the price, even with a (pre-)bereavement discount, or if I just couldn't make it in time (since they don't bother to schedule red-eyes from Chicago to Detroit).  In the end, Rachel, a co-worker at my summer job at the university, simply loaned me her car and let me drive it across three states.  I'm sure I tried to make it up to her later, but the depth of her kindness in my time of need was really extraordinary.  I've tried to do nice things to people from time to time, but can't think of doing anything quite as extraordinary as that.

After the funeral, when time wasn't of the essence and I had to help clean out her house and deal with the estate (splitting the tasks with my brother), I spent many weekends on the train, shuttling back and forth.  What to this day leaves me a bit chagrined is that I was able to keep up my coursework and doing my TA grading on the train -- and yet I was always too busy to visit while she was still alive.  I shouldn't be too maudlin.  We talked by phone once and sometimes twice a week and had a good relationship, but it just seemed out of the question to drop everything and take the train, when in fact it wouldn't have been much trouble at all.

I'm going to go ahead and include the entire poem at the end of the post.  I think the only discordant note is the 7 minutes she had to catch a shuttle bus, as well as an elevator and an escalator and then still run down a corridor to the gate.  Even in the days prior to 9/11 security, I don't see how this could possibly have taken less than 15 minutes minimum.  It's a tiny quibble, but pedantic quibbles are the lifeblood of the internet after all.  Without further ado:

The Race

Sharon Olds

When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk,
bought a ticket, ten minutes later
they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors
had said my father would not live through the night
and the flight was cancelled. A young man
with a dark brown moustache told me
another airline had a nonstop
leaving in seven minutes. See that
elevator over there, well go
down to the first floor, make a right, you'll
see a yellow bus, get off at the
second Pan Am terminal, I
ran, I who have no sense of direction
raced exactly where he'd told me, a fish
slipping upstream deftly against
the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those
bags I had thrown everything into
in five minutes, and ran, the bags
wagged me from side to side as if
to prove I was under the claims of the material,
I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I who always go to the end of the line, I said
Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
run. I lumbered up the moving stairs,
at the top I saw the corridor,
and then I took a deep breath, I said
goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort,
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the
bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed
in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of
women running, their belongings tied
in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my
long legs he gave me, my strong
heart I abandoned to its own purpose,
I ran to Gate 17 and they were
just lifting the thick white
lozenge of the door to fit it into
the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not
too rich, I turned sideways and
slipped through the needle's eye, and then
I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet
was full, and people's hair was shining, they were
smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a
mist of gold endorphin light,
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief. We lifted up
gently from one tip of the continent
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the
other edge, I walked into his room
and watched his chest rise slowly
and sink again, all night
I watched him breathe.

from The Father (Knopf, 1992)