This wonderful drawing by Tim O’Brien on the cover of the winter, 2021-2022 magazine, Columbia momentarily brought me home to my self, my soul, and divine omnipresence.
I was newly married to Bill Brakeman in 1961 after a trip to Spain and a year of teaching Spanish to Smith students. We spent our first year in a small, one-room apartment on Claremont Avenue, on N.Y.’s upper west side. After eating dinner, prepared by this new “bride” who had ordered groceries delivered from a small local store and cooked one of five basic options, (chicken in some form, smothered in some soup, ham steak, pork chops, hamburger patties or meatloaf, minute steaks). Then we went to bed, such as it was. We rolled into one another on a small pullout sofa bed and parted early each morning with a hug and a kiss. Bill would commute out to Connecticut to his engineering job, while I studied myself into oblivion, then walked over to campus for evening classes. I mean, after all, they awarded me a Danforth grant to get this degree, so I could teach Spanish. I’d better perform.
We newlyweds must have had some conversations, but most of what I remember is exhaustion from studying, fretting over my distinctly inadequate culinary skills, and wondering if I was doing the right thing. I mean shouldn’t I be married AND pregnant by now, like it’s supposed to happen? Be a mother? A proper wife? Also can one get pregnant without orgasms?
Even now as I remember, I close my eyes tight and imagine myself into this wintry scene, transporting myself backwards into total student mood, a favorite fallback over the years. I wanted children, and what if my uterus suddenly aged too fast? Worrying was another fallback mood, as you can tell. Essentially, I felt pretty small and lonely and scared, like the bird—a Cardinal no less—on this cover art for the issue devoted to climate change. My imagination flew me into the wintry scene where I met my own Cardinal.
Well, hello big guy. Watcha doing?
Silence
Oh, your reading your texts or something, right? I wish I had a phone like yours. Hey, I’m talking to you.
Hmph
Thinking up a storm, I see.
Little bird, little bird, do shut up. You’re casting a shadow on my phone.
It’s snowing you see, and I just need a perch. Also, I’m lonely and bored out here.
Why won’t you talk to me? I’m pretty much of a standout feature in my flashy red suit. Like it?
I’m thinking.
About?
Are you a Cardinal?
Yup, none other, or so they say. What other guy do you know who has such a handsome coxcomb? Hey, smile why don’t you, Mr. serious guy. What could be more fun than a conversation with another proud male in the snow on a moonlit evening in the midst of academia’s crowning jewel itself? Hey, are you grinning?
Little Bird, little Bird where were you when I took myself so seriously, almost lost my way, or drowned in my own mind?
I was here, you just couldn’t see me. I am your imagination. I open you to create wonder and spy on God, to whom I introduced you to when you were a small child. Remember? You thought I was prodigal. But I was never wanton or wallowing in extravagance. I, like you, was just explorative—searching out, crying out, longing, reaching—and sinning along the way.
Cheerleading life itself, eh? Well, thanks for the company out here in the snowy cold.
Sure thing. I travel well. In Christian lore, I’m a symbol of vitality, sometimes a messenger. Church Cardinals dress all in red, strut their stuff, get stuffy. I do that too. So do you. Now cheer up. You can do this, even though you’re just pregnant.
What?
Oh, you didn’t know? Hit those books. Keep on going and next winter you’ll be trudging to the big city to take your comprehensive examinations here—great with child. I’ll be with you.
So that was how I got through, got pregnant, received a Masters degree, and relied on my comprehensive imagination in its latest incarnation—a red male prodigal bird-angel—to remind me, once again, even now, to trust this Omnipresent One.
