Beginning the Path That Had No Name

Looking back, it is clear to me that my spiritual journey began when I was twelve or thirteen years old, though I would not have called it that at the time. I definitely had not even heard of such journeys. It was a Hollywood movie that started it all.

Sometime in 1944 or 1945, I saw The Song of Bernadette, starring Jennifer Jones, at a small movie theater in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. New movies from Hollywood came first to theaters in Manhattan, like Radio City Music Hall, accompanied by stage shows that included the amazing precision dancing of the Rockettes — their long graceful legs seeming to move as one. Then there was the New York Paramount, which offered the latest movies as well as top bands and singers of the day, like Frank Sinatra. The films then made their way to downtown Brooklyn and similar areas in the other boroughs of the city; then to theaters like the RKO Kenmore and the Loews Kings in shopping areas like Flatbush Avenue about two miles from where I lived; and finally to theaters in outlying areas of the city, like my neighborhood in East Flatbush.

It was always a treat to see a movie in "New York," but that was expensive and may have happened only once a year at Christmastime. On those occasions, my friends and I would wait in frigid weather in long snaking lines on the sidewalks that wrapped around skyscrapers in order to see a movie and the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. I remember one year being there as a teen with some friends and taking turns running into a Woolworth's Five and Ten Cents Store for hot chocolate in order to defrost ourselves.

Mainly, though, we had to wait until a movie came closer to where we lived, and thus was much cheaper. The Song of Bernadette finally meandered its way to a small theater called the Rugby in East Flatbush, within easy walking distance of my home. For twelve cents (ten cents plus two cents city tax), I saw that movie, plus another full-length film, a newsreel, and cartons. Not a bad deal.

The Rugby Theater was wedged into a line of small shops on Utica Avenue. The only store I distinctly recall now from that row of retails was a Woolworth's Five and Ten Cents Store. The counters with their wares stretched from front to back, stacked with everything from penny candy and hair bows to kitchenware and underwear. It was always a treat to go there when I had a dime or a quarter to spend, which wasn't very often.

The theater had a small balcony for the smokers, so my friends and I would have found seats on the main floor; maybe we were even shown to our places by an usher in a gray uniform, with the beam of his flashlight leading the way. However, I think the ushers were mostly there to keep the noise level down on Saturdays and feet off the backs of the seats.

Honestly, I do not recall whether I knew anything about the movie before I saw it, or if I just went because it was something to do on a Saturday afternoon with friends. From where I am now, reviewing the many roads I have taken on my life's path, it is absolutely clear to me that seeing that film launched me onto a spiritual journey-one I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. Of course, I had no way of knowing that at the time.

The film was based on the true story of a teenage girl named Bernadette Soubirous who had eighteen visions of a woman in white in a grotto or cave near where she lived in Lourdes, France, in the mid-1800s. No one else could see "the lady," who eventually identified herself as the Virgin Mary. This luminous figure in white looked down from a raised area at the opening of a grotto and spoke to Bernadette — advising her, among other things, to begin to dig in the ground nearby. When Bernadette got down on her hands and knees and did this, water began to flow. After a while, this water seemed to have healing properties for some people. Church and some town officials questioned the veracity of Bernadette's story. Because her sightings were of Mary, Queen of Heaven, she was made to join a religious order.

At thirteen, I found it startling that this or any teenage girl, probably about my age, had encounters with a spiritual being. In the small Rugby Congregational Church that I attended with my mother, father, and older brother, the only time Mary was mentioned was at Christmas when the story was told of Jesus's birth. She was not given much press in Protestantism.

All I knew after viewing the film was that I wanted to have a profound experience too. I never could have imagined where that desire would lead me. At that time, I thought, How can I have an experience like that? After all, I am not Catholic, and becoming one is not my aim.

In those earlier years of my life, I had two Catholic girlfriends, and I had been with them a few times when they went to confession at their church. Also, one of our occasional special activities on Sunday afternoons was to visit the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, which was around the corner from where we lived — not every teenager's idea of Sunday entertainment.

There was a high black iron fence that surrounded this resting place for Catholics. I believe the gate was locked most days of the week, except when there was a funeral, but on Sundays it was open to the public. My friends and I would enter through the gate on Schenectady Avenue and then slowly wind our way along the curving paved roads that led past hundreds of gray marble gravestones to the far side of the cemetery where there was a small stone chapel. Once there, my friends would say the Stations of the Cross that lined the walls of the chapel while I sat on a wooden pew to wait.

There seemed to be something different about my friends' church and practices. Perhaps there was more of a sense of mystery, with priests whispering words in Latin and incense wafting in the air. My church, on the corner of Snyder Avenue and East 49 Street, was a relatively small stone building with slate steps that led up to the level where the sanctuary was. This sacred space offered the traditional rows of dark brown wooden pews. On the back of each pew was a wooden rack for hymnals and small round holes to hold Communion glasses.

On the altar, a sturdy wood table held a brass cross between two tall candleholders. Behind the table, a blue velvet cloth graced the half wall serving as a backdrop for Jesus, who looked out at us from a painting hanging above the cross. His eyes looked straight ahead at those of us seated in the pews.

It was in this sanctuary that I sat in one of the front pews each Sunday beginning at the age of nine, when I joined the Junior Choir. I loved to sing. Here, at an early age, I sang a duet, "Fairest Lord Jesus," with a boy named Kenny. That duet took place seventy years ago or more. Isn't it strange the things we remember?

What I tend to recall from the church services, besides singing in the choir, were the long sermons — like forty-five minutes long. I recall the length because I often timed them as I got older. It seemed like forever to a ten-year-old or even a twenty-year-old. The white-haired minister, a man of moderate height, stood in his appointed place at the pulpit garbed in the traditional three-quarter-length black robe. He peered through gold-rimmed glasses as he read words from page after page, and nothing remains with me about those sermons except their length.

Well, I take that back. One thing I just recalled is that most of his sermons seemed to include one story about someone he had met the previous week on the Utica Avenue trolley car. This tale amazingly always seemed to connect perfectly with the point he was trying to make in his sermon.

But that movie, The Song of Bernadette — that was different. It opened something hidden deep inside me: a stark naked desire to have an unmistakable spiritual experience, though I would not have used those words at that time. In fact, I never spoke to anyone about this, not even my girlfriends. I was probably afraid of what they would think of me. It was a secret safely stored in my heart.

One Sunday, after I had seen the movie, my two friends and I visited Holy Cross Cemetery. We walked for a while on the edge of the paved road. Somehow, I managed to separate from them briefly. Perhaps they had stopped to kneel and pray at one of the life-sized figures of Jesus hanging on a cross with a miniscule shed for protection. Walking quickly past various gray granite grave markers with names and dates chiseled precisely on the shiny surfaces, I was careful not to step on the grass that grew right in front of them. To do so, I believed, would be inappropriate, disrespectful, or perhaps even sacrilegious.

Knowing I only had a few minutes, I quickly found a quiet place away from the road near some kind of small white one- story building, perhaps a place for storage. There were two medium-height evergreen shrubs growing close to one side of the structure, with a fairly wide open space between them. It wasn't a grotto or cave, but it would do.

Standing silently, eyes closed, I held my breath and hoped with all my heart that a vision would appear. I waited, my breath held captive in my chest. Finally, I slowly opened my eyes, and my breath escaped in a sudden rush. All I saw was the white wall of the building and the two green shrubs. Crestfallen, I turned and walked slowly to meet up with my friends. I don't believe I said a word about this to them, perhaps because they might have thought me foolish. It would be many years before I would have experiences of the sacred, and it would be in ways that I never could have imagined. These would not be associated with any particular religion or spiritual path.

Around this time, I became a member of the confirmation class at my church. I earnestly did my best to commit selections from a catechism to memory, holding the little white booklet in my hand and reading page after page of small printed words over and over. To my knowledge, catechisms were not used in Congregational churches; however, the minister of the church at that time, who wore a turned-back collar (also not part of the tradition), had come out of a different denomination, so perhaps this was his influence.

Apparently, I was successful enough in my memorizing, for when Easter came, I was allowed to don a special blue robe and appear before the congregation in the sanctuary to repeat words, and then to hear some in return from those gathered — words that accepted me into church membership, words I have long since forgotten.

The desire for a profound spiritual experience never completely went away. Rather, I think, it faded into the background of my life as I entered high school, joined the Pilgrim Fellowship for teenagers at church, and developed a crush on a boy in my circle of friends. I remained faithful to my church and its teachings, even becoming a Sunday School teacher beginning in my late teens after attending a training class. As I moved into my early twenties, I served as one of the assistant church school superintendents — planning and conducting worship services for the upper level Sunday School — and eventually became a deaconess, all at a relatively early age.

I did wonder sometimes why a friend and I were chosen for these roles. Perhaps it was difficult to find older adults to serve, or maybe it was an attempt to keep the younger people in the fold. Let me be clear here, though: I was dedicated to my church.

"But Can She Type?"

As my high school days were coming to a close, I began to think about life after high school and my desire to attend college and ultimately become a writer — a desire I kept safely hidden away until my senior year. I don't recall ever having shared this hope with my parents, though I could have. Somehow, however, I found the courage to have the word "Writer" listed underneath my picture in the 1950 yearbook for Tilden High School. The picture shows me with puffed-up hair and a Peter Pan collar decorated with tiny fake pearls at the neck of my pure white blouse.

I had discovered the joy of writing when I was in elementary school at P.S. 208. Every six months, the school published an issue of its magazine, TheLanthorn. Each class had a page. One year, a little essay I wrote was printed on my class's page. What a thrill! Then, when I was about eleven years old, I decided to write a mystery novel, not at all daunted by such an undertaking. All I needed was a notebook of some kind, which I probably got on a trip to Woolworth's, perhaps using my allowance for this purpose.

There is one memory that has remained with me all these years. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed facing the two windows, with the dark green shades pulled halfway up. The windows offer a view of a miniscule backyard (partially covered with cement) and a garage. My grandparents, great-grandmother, and an aunt lived downstairs, and to one side of the yard was my grandfather's tiny magical garden-lilacs, hollyhocks, iris, and tiger lilies. I am sitting on the bed because there isn't anything else in that room on which to sit. The room always seems dark in this memory. I open to the first blank lined page and write, in my neatest manuscript handwriting, the name of my book on the top line: The Mystery at Cherry Hill.

Over the course of a few days, I filled several pages, introducing characters and setting the scene, which included a mysterious mansion. Then I stopped, and I never wrote another word. I have no clue why. Perhaps it was an eleven-year-old's experience of writer's block.

As I moved through high school, my interest in writing continued. In addition to some honors English classes, where I had numerous opportunities to do what I loved, I took a semester in journalism. Two things remain etched in my memory from that class. The first is Mr. Benov's method for keeping students awake and attuned to the lesson. He would keep one of his desk drawers partially open and then suddenly slam it closed, but with a smile on his face. He didn't have to work to get my attention, though.

The second thing I'll never forget is an assignment to cover a real news event. Mine was to write about a parade at Coney Island. I traveled by trolley to the BMT station, where I got on the above-ground train to Coney, my trusty notebook and pencil in my hand to record what I witnessed. The scenes of that parade marching down the center of the street are in a permanent hiding place in my brain.

As I write this, all of a sudden I sense the smell of the bay water just beyond the boardwalk that ran from Brighton Beach to Coney Island, if memory serves me. The boardwalk contained all kinds of cheap thrills: games of chance, "hit the stack of wooden milk bottles and win a stuffed animal" booths, puffy gobs of colorful cotton candy, and most especially, the machine that offered the shape and form of a gypsy encased in glass who fed fortunes on small white cards from a tiny opening if you offered her ten cents ... or was it twenty-five?

Oh, and the bay water — I spent many sunny Saturday afternoons splashing around as a younger teen with my friends, and then we burned to a crisp lying on a sandy blanket, knowing that cocoa butter awaited us at home to ease the discomfort. Only years later did those experiences come home to haunt me, as I've had numerous precancerous growths removed from my face.

But back to the journalism class. As I moved through that year, I began to have dreams of being a reporter for one of the many morning and afternoon newspapers — the New York Times, Herald Tribune, Journal American, Daily News and Mirror, New York Post, and in my borough, the Brooklyn Eagle. What I probably did not realize at the time was that these newspapers most likely did not hire women as reporters, except for the society page. What I did know was that I needed and wanted to attend college if I was going to have that dream or any dream.

No one in my immediate or distant family had attended college; in fact, I am not aware of any who even completed high school, except for my brother, who was three years older. I would be the first. In my senior year, I applied to and was accepted at Brooklyn College.

Looking back sixty-seven years, I cannot claim exact recall. However, I am certain that the discussion with my parents about college took place in the small dining area next to the tiny kitchen on the second floor of our two-family house. My father — a man of medium height, slightly rounded in the belly, with dark thinning hair — sat at one end of the grayish Formica-topped table, his sleeves rolled up just below his elbows, tie discarded after work, and suspenders still doing their job. He loved to tell jokes and make people laugh, and he would sometimes entertain us at meals. Often he would have an index card in his shirt pocket that held the punch lines of his latest jokes. If he forgot one, he would just pull out the card and glance at it. The rest of us at the table were, of course, always the audience. How lucky I was to have a comedian for a father.