Winter Yoga

Posted on 01/27/2013 by paulefallon

awkward_pose_3-001On clear, cold winter mornings the pre-dawn air is thin, the paving salts have turned the blacktop silver grey.  I pedal deliberately, the only bicycle amid few automobiles.  I coast over every bridge and through every turn, dangling my right leg just over the surface, on vigilant watch for demon black ice.  I see no one.  The beacon light of the Bikram Studio glows along JFK Street.  As I mount the stairs I wonder if perhaps I might be the only yogi alert on this frigid January morning.  Of course I am wrong.  There a dozen, no twenty, no more than twenty disciples arrayed along the black lines of the studio, soaking in the heat.

I savor these ‘one hundred degree difference’ days when the thermometer registers single digits out of doors and triple digits within.  This is class 884 – my yoga diary has disintegrated into a simple calendar chit that registers attendance.  Heather is our teacher, she has taught Wednesday mornings in Harvard Square forever; bone thin with huge red hair, a recent husband, and a pair of dogs.  She is a terrific teacher with the right mix of purpose and humor, heat and humidity.  I take my favorite spot, just to her right under the center fan.  Heather corrects me often, but I never mind her improvements.  I have a bit of a crush on her, which is ridiculous given my usual lack of interest in skinny people or redheads or, girls. My crush is just another element of silliness in a world that is torpid inside and freezing without, where I flex with sweaty abandon while the rest of the world creaks to rise.

You might think that after so many classes one more hardly matters; that I am as flexible as I am going to get; that another half-moon plus or minus isn’t going to make a morsel of difference.  I should feel good about being able to rest my head on the floor in fixed firm but should accept that my forehead will never touch the carpet in standing hand to feet.  But that way of thinking would be wrong, because even after 883 classes, change occurs within me every class, every day. Most changes are tiny; my eagle pose keeps getting lower and lower, though I would need a caliper to measure it.  Some changes are ephemeral; one morning four months ago I actually touched my head to my standing knee but have not been able to replicate that feat again.  Occasionally wholesale change sweeps over my practice and I establish a new normal.

This winter my yoga flowed to a new plateau. Somewhere around class 846 my lower back opened up and it has stayed loose for weeks.  As a result a whole group of poses became deeper and stronger.  My knees finally locked into standing head to feet, my torso held firm in triangle, I gained height in cobra, and my elbows hit the floor beside my knees in the final floor stretch.  One day my fingers struggled to clench my toes in a sit-up, the next day my palms flew beyond, cupped my digits and I grabbed my instep.  It was bizarre and sudden but appears to be lasting.

Daylight arrives about the time I leave the studio; crisp and bright though still bitter cold.  I pedal quickly along Brattle Street.  Traffic is heavy, women with impeccable makeup and patrician men grip their coffee mugs while navigating their Lexus’ and Mercedes’ and Lincoln’s out of Cambridge’s privileged driveways.  I nod to them; partly because a savvy cyclist wants to ensure that bleary-eyed people motoring tons of steel notice him, but also because I am in such a cheerful disposition, and they’ve got some bending and stretching to do before they can catch up with me.

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Adopted by an Orphan

Posted on 01/22/2013 by paulefallon

haiti-001This is another essay published in conjunction with the third anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. This appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine on January 20, 2013 under the title ‘The Boy Who Adopted Me’.

 

I reach down; a small black hand places a pair of nails in mine.  We are building temporary houses after the Haiti earthquake, wooden frames covered with plastic, held taut by flat-head nails with concave washers.  Our crew, American volunteers and local Haitians, erects a tin-roofed house in two hours. The boy under my shadow proves useful and reliable; whenever I drop my hand another nail appears.

We hike to the next site; my helper clutches the nail bucket.  “Dieunison” he responds when I ask his name. “Over there” he answers when I inquire where he lives.  Gestures and smiles communicate better than my Creole or his English.

Over the next week we build dozens of houses.  Dieunison finds me every morning; I never have to bend over for a nail.  I give him water and snack bars, fair wages for an eight year old Haitian.  We hug before I fly home.

The first January after the quake I return to stake an orphanage I designed, five months later to lay out a school.  Each time Jenison stands along the highway as if he hasn’t moved since I left.  He wraps his skinny legs around my waist.  I am his blan, he is my Haitian.

The second January after the quake I scratch a mid-life itch, quit my job and volunteer to supervise construction in Haiti two weeks every month.  On my first trip back Dieunison’s eyes tear as he tells me his mother died, then he throws back his head yowling like a goat; I can’t decide if he’s joking or masking grief.  Every month his life twists.  He lives with his aunt Michelle in a compound of lean-tos and simmering stew.  She ships him to Port-au-Prince when she can no longer feed him. I search for him frantically until one afternoon his thin figure appears outside our shanty.  I shower him with food and questions; Dieunison’s eyes dazzle at the chicken leg on top of his rice.  We find him a place to live, clothes, a bed, but once I return to the States, he flees.  We forced too much too fast on a boy used to being on his own.  Dieunison becomes a phantom, sightings are reported but he never shows his face to me.  Locals say, “Forget him, he is a street kid”, but Dieunison chose me; I cannot give up on him.

“Are you the man who loves Dieunison?”  A boy I have never seen approaches me. Dieurie is Dieunison’s half-brother; they live with a new assortment of relations. Dieurie is more mature, he cajoles Dieunison to reappear.  The boys frequent the construction site, enjoy hot lunches, and agree to attend school.  My next trip brings cash for tuition, uniforms, books, meals and ‘consideration’ for teachers willing to accept eleven-year-old’s in second grade.  The boys go AWOL at our first school meeting. “Nothing is free”, I lecture when they show up later, guilty and sheepish, “you want meals and clothes; you must attend school.” I banish them from two days’ lunch.

The third January post-quake arrives with the orphanage complete; my regular visits to Haiti are finished.  Dieunison and Dieurie have been in school three months.  They are filling out, sometimes they cannot finish the food on their plates.  They contemplate the leftovers with dismay; getting what you wish for can be disturbing.  When I explain that my next visit is far off Dieunison pleads to stow in my suitcase.  But they are Haitian, they belong here.  I want to give them opportunities, not steal them away.

Construction is an intense activity that ends abruptly.  But Dieunison has tethered me to Haiti for the long haul.  It will take years for these boys to graduate, but if they do their part, I will do mine.  Time does not factor when a boy hands you a nail and stakes a claim on your heart.

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Sweeping Dirt

Posted on 01/20/2013 by paulefallon

haiti-001A Haitian broom is a charming piece of folk craft; a sturdy branch about four feet long and an inch in diameter tied off at one end with hundreds of narrow leaves that bunch out unruly as a cheerleader’s pom.  Over time, sandpaper coarse palms rub the stick to a warm luster; fingers massage the soft wood into a comfortable grip, the leaves splay horizontal, lose their tension and fan out like a chimney sweep’s bristles.  It is a lovely, curious object, if not entirely effective for its purpose.

Every morning when in Haiti, I drive from my guest house in Grand Goave to our construction sites; we are building a school and orphanage.  Dawn is emerging; though the roosters are long past awake.  Dogs and pigs meander along the road.  The few men with jobs are up and gone; folks with no agenda are just beginning to stir.  Shadows pass in and out of shacks; dressing, splashing their faces with whatever water is left in last night’s basin.

The women’s first chore is to sweep the front yard, the hard packed earth that spans from private shelter to the public way.  Some houses have only a narrow path defined by small trees; others claim a broad plane that provides the inhabitants a full view of the passing world.  This is where families dwell until nightfall; interior space is used only to escape storms and catch sleep.

Driving along the rutted road in the dim light, I watch women stand with their feet apart, sway their hips counter to the rhythm of their arms, and sweep away whatever the wind cast down overnight.  Back and forth they waver as if in a trance, shifting across their living rooms, half asleep, near zombies with two legs and a broom. Their sweeping was long ago chiseled into motor memory.

Every morning I am transfixed by their quiet, futile dance.  The women sweep dirt from dirt.  They raise dust, they push it away, and more dust rises in its place.  Are they fools, scratching at Haiti’s tenuous soil, or noble in their quest to create a place of hygiene and order in a land that defies either?  Are they trapped in a Sisyphus-like cycle of endless sweeping or might they someday achieve their desired objective of a clean world?

Contradictory human truths play out in these dawn movements.  We are creatures of habit, of pattern.  We do what we know, not always because it is best for us, but because it gives us comfort.  Sweeping dirt provides the illusion of making things neat.  If we sweep every day, long enough and hard enough, we can convince ourselves that sweeping makes a difference. These women never create a sanitary place for their family to live, yet their labor offers other benefits.  When they sweep their yard they claim it in a more tactile way than any deed can bestow, just as anyone who puts effort into a patch of land both owns it and is owned by it.  These mothers know their children need a clean and safe place to grow and thrive and they do all that they can to provide, despite the forces of poverty and disease that thwart their effort.

The futility of sweeping dirt might discourage me.  Instead, it motivates me to create enough hard surface here to ensure that people can eat and sleep and learn and play without mud packing their soles or spiders climbing up their legs.  We don’t need to replicate the blacktop parking lots that span America, but a little pavement has its benefits.

Haitian brooms have long handles; the woman stand upright.  Sweeping is a dignified act, an act of caring, an act that says ‘I matter and my family matters’.  But it is also an act of defiance against the trials of this land.  Sweeping dirt denies natural disaster and physical deprivation, it ignores political instability and economic futility, it mocks every calamity grinding down on them.  Sweeping dirt asserts that these women will do whatever they can, however little that may be, to create a sanctuary for their family on this earth.  For humans everywhere strive to improve our lot, no matter how meager.

_______________________

This article was published in the Cambridge Chronicle on January 12, 2013 under the name ‘We are Creatures of Habit”.  I prefer my original title.

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Buckeye Logic Comes to Magic Haiti

Posted on 01/14/2013 by paulefallon

haiti-001This is the second of four articles I had published in conjunction with the third anniversary of the Haiti earthquake.  This article was published in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer on January 11, 2013.

Since the 2010 Haiti earthquake I have made sixteen trips to design and supervise construction of an orphanage and school in Grand Goave.  Haiti is a poor, backward, corrupt place, but it is also magical.  Mysticism runs strong here where ancient voudou merges the physical and the spirit world.  This mysticism offers solace for people with so little control over their daily trials. Time and again, when my American expectations are upended I remind myself that like magic, Haiti is not rational.

No one would describe Ohio as magical.  It is sensible and grounded, rooted in fertile soil and industrious citizens.  It is the epicenter of the United States’ most enduring and traditional values, a practical place where logic and reason prevail.  Two summers ago I bicycled through Ohio, Cincinnati to Conneaut, passing through Xenia, Columbus, Mount Vernon, Akron, and Cleveland.  I developed a strong appreciation for Ohio’s generous people, hearty food, exuberant cycling community, and its citizen’s faith that the products of our hands and minds, infrastructure and technology, are the tools that build successful lives.

I was pleased when a group of 23 Buckeyes from Akron came to Haiti to construct the growing compound where aid workers stay. They painted banisters and walls, laid out foundations for guest cottages, and built a roof on the new kitchen.  After a frustrating day of demonstrating earthquake resistant construction techniques to Haitian crews predisposed to attribute the tremor to the revenge of angry gods, I appreciated the planning and handiwork required to build a roof of both logic and craft in three days.

The new kitchen is a structure with one right angle and three odd angles nestled into a corner of the compound.  In pre-earthquake Haiti this out of squareness would hardly be noticed; most buildings got flat concrete roofs with cowlicks of reinforcing popping out for an eventual second floor.  Since those roofs crushed many people, post-earthquake structures often have sloped wood joists with metal roofs.  A wood frame will not last as long as concrete in a country susceptible to decay, but it is too light to crush when it falls.

The Buckeye’s new roof is a beauty.  One of the guys explains its logic to me.  “The metal roof needed to be about 3 in 12 slope.  We set the ridge four feet above the dividing wall in the kitchen, so it could be sheathed in full pieces of plywood.  We had to sister the joists, which were only 16 feet long.  We set the longest rafter perpendicular to the ridge and the top of the wall.  Then we laid out the other rafters, some parallel, some not, to determine a consistent slope.  Finally, we built up the angled walls as much as needed to meet the rafters.”  The result is a simple yet consistent roof sitting atop a skewed box.

I asked him about hurricane clips to protect the roof from ripping off in a hurricane.  “We couldn’t find any anchors to drill in the concrete block walls, but we found a spool of metal tape and some through bolts. We set the bolts through the top course of the masonry, anchored the metal tape to one end, wrapped it over the rafters, and pulled it tight to the other side of the bolt.”

This story demonstrates fundamental differences between Haitian and American cultures.  Take a dozen guys from Ohio, throw them in Haiti, give them an assortment of tools and materials, a jumbled problem, and in three days they develop and build a rather elegant solution.  Our ability to problem solve is great, we relish the challenge.

On our construction site, where we are building a larger yet more regular building, every step is an arduous process that must be repeated and repeated.  The crew trowels grout into ten walls, but unless we tell them to grout the eleventh, they might not.

This lapse is not due to laziness; Haitians work very hard.  It is simply that their minds work differently than ours.  We look for pattern, for logic, we apply order wherever we can.  Haitians are less analytical, less inclined to assign effect to cause.  They are more comfortable with magic.

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Transformation in Haiti

Posted on 01/12/2013 by paulefallon

haiti-001In conjunction with the the third anniversary of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, several newspapers have published essays about my experiences in Haiti.  Over the next few weeks I will post them on my blog.  Here is the first one, which the Worcester Telegram and Gazette published on January 8, 2013.

I never met Britney Gengel, the Lynn Universty student from Rutland who died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake.  I never even heard of her until five months after she died, when serendipity led me to her parents.  As an architect who had worked in Haiti before the quake, I wanted to lend my hand in its recovery.  As grieving parents whose daughter’s final wish was to start an orphanage, the Gengel’s wanted to build one in her honor.   We collaborated on designing the BeLikeBrit orphanage.  We travelled to Haiti to select the site and plan the building.  Eventually, the project consumed me; I scratched a mid-life itch for change, left my job, and volunteered to supervise construction.  Hundreds of others, many from Central Massachusetts, contributed time and resources.  For many of them, like me, the spirit of this girl and her family’s determination to make her final wish come true transformed our lives.

Haiti is a land of endless contrasts.  It is dirty, backwards, corrupt, and intractably poor; yet it is also beautiful, tranquil; magical, and spiritually rich.   Conflicts between ancient traditions and modern opportunities are heightened by Haiti’s extreme poverty.  Most earthquake damage could have been prevented if construction had met standard codes, but since Haitians are equally inclined to attribute the earthquake to angry gods as shifting plates, construction crews were wary of the earthquake resistant features we incorporated in our building.  Families are tight knit, yet official marriage is considered optional and eighty percent of children in orphanages have living parents who placed them there for a better chance in life.  Haiti is a fiercely independent nation, but their turbulent history, insular culture and prohibitions against foreign investment crippled it; rendering Haiti utterly dependent on foreign aid.  Perhaps the biggest conflict of all is that this country, dysfunctional by any measure, is so vibrant and endearing; as if a predisposition for protest, a disdain for authority, and a stubborn streak were the ideal ingredients of charm.  Like many before me, I am aghast at Haiti’s poverty yet captivated by its people.

Anyone who visits Haiti returns to the United States a different person; after seventeen trips I hardly recognize myself.  I am drawn to Haiti precisely because it defies comprehension. Haiti falls short of American life by any statistical standard, yet by less conventional, though equally valid measures, it actually surpasses us.  By and large people in Haiti are happy; they are hopeful; they are not defeated by hardship.  Community is strong in a country where life is too hard to even pretend a person can ‘make it’ on their own.  And Haitians are mythically in love with their country.  One evening I witnessed a skinny kid strolling the beach at sunset; he struck his arm to the sky and yelled ‘Ayiti!’ I marveled at his patriotic euphoria despite the devastation all around him, and wondered how many Americans would muster the same exuberance amidst our own bounty.

BeLikeBrit orphanage also defies comprehension.  It is a solid, beautiful building, the most substantial building in town; though it would be unnecessary if such good construction existed before the earthquake. It is a monument to a young woman whose life was dashed in the first bud of adulthood; she inspires us by her lost potential as much as by her actual feats.  It is a testament to humans coming together to serve a higher purpose; to share our capabilities and resources with those less fortunate in an attempt to transform our loss into something positive.

Every one of us involved in BeLikeBrit was fueled by motivations beyond standard measures of economic gain and loss; we gave of ourselves without expectation yet we each received more in return than we donated.  Our good effort will never compensate for Britney’s death, but we can all be proud of the building that her spirit inspired.

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Favorite Picture of 2012

Posted on 01/07/2013 by paulefallon

haiti-001I am on vacation this week, but want to share this wonderful picture of students on the stairs of the Mission of Hope school.  Happy New Year to all.

121212 MoHI with Students

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Happy New Year Invention

Posted on 01/01/2013 by paulefallon

vitruvian_man-001For those of us who need more disco balls in our life, which is pretty much all of us, here is a terrific and easy way to add sparkle to your everyday life.

 

For our New Year’s Eve party last night I bought a pair of small disco balls to hang from the accent lights over our dining room table.  We removed the table and raised the chandelier out of the way to create a dance floor.  We attached the mirror balls to a series of elastic bands looped through one another, suspended on an axle (a small Allen wrench) directly over the aperture of our accent lights.  The effect was dazzling.

DSCN1946

 

Happy New Year!

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Peter Ralph Lee – March 27, 1945 to December 25, 2012

Posted on 12/26/2012 by paulefallon

 Peter Lee TurtleneckPeter Ralph Lee died on Christmas morning, December 25, 2012 after suffering a heart attack and fall on December 14 that caused irreparable neurological damage.

The single word that describes Peter is community.  He lived in community, he made his livelihood creating community, he thrived among community, he enveloped everyone he touched in community, and he died among community. One of his ICU nurses at Brigham & Women’s Hospital proclaimed, “I want to be part of this village!” as she witnessed the flow of caring visitors who sought Peter’s binding presence until the end.

Peter was born on March 27, 1945 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and adopted as a baby by Howard and Valerie Lee.  He lived briefly in Midland, Michigan but spent most of his youth in Aiken South Carolina.  Peter graduated with a BA in Biology / Chemistry and a Master of Public Health from the University of South Carolina and began his career in public health working for the State of South Carolina.  Peter was founder and first director of the Healthy Communities Initiative at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) as well as the founding director of the Ecumenical AIDS Ministries of the South Carolina Christian Action Council, which formed AIDS Care Teams in almost 100 churches across the state. Peter received the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership award, in 1995 for this work.

In 1998 Peter moved to the Boston area where he became Program Development Specialist with the RWJ Community Health Leadership Program, Collaborative for Community Health.  He became Director of Healthy Communities Massachusetts and Director of the Massachusetts Partnership for Healthy Communities before his retirement earlier this year.

Peter’s many civic contributions included serving on the Governing Council and Editorial Board of the national Coalition for Healthier Cities and Communities.  Peter was co-guest editor (with Len Duhl, the “father” of the Healthy Cities movement) of a special supplement of the Public Health Reports on Healthy Communities in 2000. He served on the steering committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s long-range planning committee for Metro Boston, the steering committee for the Massachusetts Cardiovascular Health Plan, and the Boards of WalkBoston and Urban Edge. He was also active in his Roxbury neighborhood as co-chair of the Fort Hill Civic Association.

Peter was a lifelong activist, inspired by hearing Martin Luther King in a march on Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, as well as a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church.  He studied at the Order of the Holy Cross but his vocation for action drew him to the public arena.  He was an active member of Christ Church Cambridge throughout his years in Boston.

Peter had a lifelong interest in Cuba, where his parents met and lived before he was born.  Though he never lived there, he was able to visit.  He bore witness to the economic challenges facing that country but also to the beauty of its people, their culture and their tightly knit community.

Peter’s life cannot be measured by titles and achievements alone, for he touched as many through his generous spirit and equanimity as through his official actions. He coined the phrase, “A healthy community is a garden to grow people in” and he tended that garden with more vigor than anyone.

Peter understood that the strength of community lay not only in what we share in common, but also in capitalizing on the unique strengths of each individual.  As his neighbor Sachielle Samedi wrote, “When we first met I was black, you were white; I was Haitian, you were American; I was 34 years old, you were 62; I was straight, you were gay; I was blunt, you were subtle; I had a northerner’s brashness, you had a southerner’s sensibility; I had an eight pound Yorkie, you had a sixty pound Boxer. Yet, despite these superficial differences, we were the best of friends.”

In retirement, Peter remained involved in community.  This past fall Peter began a volunteer position as archivist in the archeology lab of the City of Boston.  The work energized him with the same sense of purpose he savored throughout his life.

Peter is survived by his gentle sister Pat, his beloved dog Dancer, and the thousands of souls he touched during his time on this earth.  Memorial service plans, coordinated through Lawler Funeral Home, are not finalized. We thank Peter for a life so well lived, and for embracing us as part of his community.

 

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The Hope of Christmas

Posted on 12/25/2012 by paulefallon

haiti-001The hope of Christmas lay in a tiny baby in a manger.

I am no fan of Christmas.  The myth I learned as a child seems naïve in adulthood.  I do not subscribe to the religious or commercial aspects of the season and the introvert in me balks at so much socializing.  But Len Gengal asked me write a Christmas piece for Be Like Brit and my ambivalence for the holiday evaporates in the face of my respect for Len.  He loved Christmas and the joy it brought his daughter until that joy got yanked away when the Hotel Montana collapsed.  So once again Len pushes me beyond my comfort zone.  I am thinking about Christmas and realizing a fresh perspective on the holiday gained through maturity and my experience in Haiti.

The hope of Christmas lay in a vulnerable baby in a manger.

Amidst the ‘stuff’ we brought to Haiti over the past two years; an orphanage and a school, a road and clean water; two significant changes happened to me.  First, I got older, noticeably older.  The travel, the sun, the rudimentary living took its toll. I have more age spots and wrinkles and my mental lapses are accelerating in number and severity.  Second, death became a more visceral presence in my life.  When my grandparents and parents died, the unfortunate events were tempered by their adherence to natural order.  But death in Haiti ignores such logic; peers died, children died, death is both arbitrary and frequent; we inured ourselves against grief to avoid being consumed by it.  This familiarity with death seems to have followed me back to the States.  In the past week we pulled the plug on my friend Peter Lee after a brain injury left him in a coma without any prospects of neurological function, and the beautiful scientist Tanya Williams died at a mere forty-two.  Death is no longer something I can observe at arm’s length; I am in the thick of it.

The hope of Christmas lay in an innocent baby in a manger.

Death cemented my commitment to Haiti; 250,000 deaths in general and one in particular.  In life, Britney Gengel was a joy to her family and friends; in death she has rallied hundreds, thousands of people to step up for Haiti.  More specifically, to step up for children in Haiti, to provide sustenance and shelter, education and opportunity.  The story of Christ’s birth stopped being a quaint, primitive tale as I worked among children who lived in stys and slept on dirt; children who don’t even have the luxury of a manger.

The hope of Christmas lay in a pure baby in a manger.

Christmas is the ultimate celebration of hope over reason.  It acknowledges that we have created a tragic mess of the beautiful world we have been given, that we adults are so entwined in its machinations we can never salvage it, that only something tiny and vulnerable, innocent and pure can lead us on the path we are too narrow minded to find ourselves.  Be Like Brit is going to give six dozen children with manger-like backgrounds the chance to shine at their full potential.  Though I doubt any will be the Messiah, there is a good chance they will eventually teach or fish or build with wood or lead others.  Thanks to the Gengel’s tribute to Britney these children will all have the opportunity to transcend their origin.

The hope of Christmas lay in a perfect baby in a manger; a baby who saves us from our imperfect selves; a baby who transcends his surroundings to bring us the hope that one day all children will enter the world free from suffering.

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A Babe with a Brain

Posted on 12/23/2012 by paulefallon

vitruvian_man-001I was riding along the Charles in the early evening when my phone buzzed.  I saddled off my bike.  Brett’s voice, subdued and halting, conveyed the timbre of tragedy in his hollow hello.  Despite all the proliferating forms of communication, we still deliver bad news by telephone.

Tanya Williams died; 42 years old according to the calendar; forever 26 in my mind.  She was the friend of a friend, Brett’s housemate in graduate school before he came to live at my place, but that description implies a distance that did not exist.  If you met Tanya, if she engaged you and looked in your eyes, she was directly connected to you.

Tanya used to hang at our place with her boyfriend Dave and a lovable assortment of geeks.  Brett and I had the best digs and the coolest deck; on hot summer afternoons a posse of MIT doctoral candidates browned their bodies while discussing arcane science, ripping through NY Times Crossword puzzles, and drinking beer. Other women flowed through from time to time but Tanya was the only one with an unlimited deck pass.  A house of guys has to protect their reputation; only the most spectacular girls deserve unfettered access and nobody compared with Tanya.

Tanya was a babe with a brain, and her attributes aligned in that order.  Since she had a PhD from MIT, a post-doc from Berkeley and worked with Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn, her brain credentials are of the highest standard.  But as a babe, she was without peer.  Tanya was the Lauren Bacall of molecular biology, the Michelle Pfeiffer of DNA Transposition, her willowy body, her regal cheekbones, her easy smile and the toss of her auburn hair proclaimed her easy elegance. She moved like a cat.  She always threw me a little off my guard, yet I never doubted that she had me pegged.

Tanya married Dave, as perfect in his own right as she in hers. They moved to California, had a son, life was rich, and then cancer began to eat away at it until, after battling for over five years, the mutated cells bested the babe.

Brett moved away too.  We are still in touch from time to time as extended families are, our shared past is richer than what we hold in common at present.  He was thoughtful to call when Tanya died; he knew I would want to know.  I was not friends with Tanya well enough to book a flight and stand at her funeral; that’s not my style anyway.  But she meant enough to me that I walked my bike along the river awed by the recollection of her brilliant heart, mind and body.  After some time my eyes cleared, my breath drew regular again and I continued on my way, but my spirit was dampened.  Although Tanya’s light was extinguished three thousand miles away, her absence made the December night even darker than usual.

I think about Tanya a lot these days.  I could rail against the injustice of people dying before their time, of fate tripping up perfection, but I wasn’t there for the bad parts and they don’t cloud my memory.  For me, Tanya will always be a babe in a bikini on our deck with a terrific tan and a sharp word for any guy who misunderstands that brains can come in very alluring packages.  It is a testament to Tanya’s enduring presence that on a cold December night fifteen years later, even a guy like me can relish such a babe.

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