Setting the Stage
My grandmother, Margot, is one of my grand muses. An opera singer in the 1950s and 60s, then an anthropologist, graduating from the first women’s class at Brown University in 1972, Margot was as glamorous and regal as she was intellectual and studious, a trailblazer in every sense of the word. She died last month at 92 — a beautiful and easeful death, surrounded by our family, music, stories, laughter, and tears. She was beloved and deeply respected for her contributions to anthropology, indigenous textiles, opera, music, the arts, her students, and her many communities. The quintessential social butterfly, she delighted in gathering with her brilliant, eccentric, and curious colleagues, friends, and vast family.
I was well prepared, thanks to our many direct conversations, and my work on aging, longevity, healthcare and medicine — especially the COVID-19 response work on end of life. As with so many of my interests, she was my motivation to dive in — to make her inevitable death and dying process the best I could for all of us. After she landed in the emergency room on Thanksgiving, she was chipper, inviting me in to take a seat, despite a stifling swarm of tubes and cables. As we watched old movies, I held her hand, and looked around the room, met by an array of products and tools I knew well. I had redesigned many of them — thanks to her. The IV bags, infusion pump, blood glucose meter, blood pressure monitor, X-rays and CT scans, the advance care directive… And soon to meet her in the operating room, the surgery instruments, hemostatic agents, and point-of-care diagnostics.
Over the next few days, we would learn that she had cancer. We often joked that, at 92, her health was nothing short of a miracle — save the many compounding falls that aging frailty portends. Her last scene was short: not years or months, but weeks; her departure in the count of days. Margot was a fiercely independent force of nature; being with her through surrender was an honor. Somehow, even more so in the hospital, with its ever-present reminders of the life-death-rebirth cycle: newborns and gurneys. One in, one out. It’s a uniquely paradoxical environment, where time means nothing and everything. Hours fly by in waiting, then seconds make all the difference. The forcing function of urgency creates a distinct synchrony, a distinct intimacy. Our family became a different kind of team, each contributing our strengths to move at a new tempo, in a new context, as a unit — a sprint of sorts.
Margot was precise and practical about her burial logistics, planning so far in advance that the phone number to the crematory service was long out of date when the time came to call. Any day now, I’ll receive some of her ashes, which I didn’t anticipate would feel important, but do — even though she is present in every room: in books, masks, artifacts, and photos; in the indigenous huipiles and jewelry of hers that I wear; in my commitment to the curiosities and dreams that keep me brimming with life. She is present in the many messages still pouring in from her friends, who have become my friends, too, through a confluence of craft.
Communicating with others about her conjures a greater sense of sadness than I feel in my own thoughts, but I hesitate to describe it as “loss.” I don’t resonate with the concept that we “have,” then “lose” people. I learned in the process of creating Famous Last Words that in Sioux culture, the dead don’t die, but rather “walk on.” To me, this more appropriately acknowledges the nature of the human experience. That we are each on our own journeys, moving to our distinct rhythms and timelines, with reservations to walk on that can only be made for a party of one.
More profoundly than sadness, my tears for her are made of gratitude — for her inestimable support, inspiration, and guidance as my greatest teacher. Our world was full of great curiosity about life and each other, travel, language, and, of course, craft. Margot was instrumental in teaching me my ways of being, learning, teaching, and creating, which I only understood in time to be the way of anthropology, and her refinement as an ethnographic instrument. She taught me the art of listening — to others, to myself, and to the details, which she never failed to notice. She modeled, and perhaps was, the epitome of marching to the beat of one’s own drum. Her nature was not evangelical or proselytizing; Margot did Margot, and everyone else was welcomed, and encouraged, to be exactly who they were.
Her friend, Victoria Rivers, wrote:
“From the very first [moment] when I had an idea to write a book, I ran the idea by her. She was nothing but supportive. So inclusive in her thinking. She never considered hierarchy, rank, boundaries. Encouraging. Open. The way we all ‘should’ be. I have such respect for her. She gently guided me and improved my phrasing, teaching me to write more concussively. And I so appreciated and loved her.”
Following her threads of curiosity led me to discover my own: a journey with no known endpoint to Guatemala, to learn what enraptured her about the Maya and the indigenous textile tradition wound up as a whole chapter of life in Central America, from Mexico to Nicaragua, as I worked on the first of many projects inspired by her. Along the way, I gathered mentors in her friends, like Frank Mays of Nim Pot, in Antigua. After fieldwork in Phoenix, I visited Victoria and John in Sedona; when in Rhode Island, I stopped by the Haffenreffer to meet Thierry. When I wanted to learn about bodywork, I called Carol; to level up my storytelling — Beth. When young me discovered I was dating someone with completely opposing political views, an emergency lunch with Margot and Peggy. When I needed a great editor who understood my penchant for subtle code in a noisy world, Charlotte was there. I always reached out, because I knew if they were her people, they would also be my people. We shared the same values, the same longings.
Musical performance, however, was not one of our shared longings. I have many memories of playing simple Dixieland with Margot on the piano, but that was it for me. Between her intimidating talent and a first exposure to violin lessons I can only describe as boot camp, I pressed the eject seat on music as a child. Margot breathed music — she sang since she was a child, in over 43 opera roles including South Pacific, Carmen, and Marriage of Figaro. She sang classical repertoire, modern and new music, and taught voice. In her Rhode Island life, she founded a music ensemble. I remember that Rhode Island house well, because an enormous painting of it is still in her dining room. Jim — Papa, to my generation — is in his office at his typewriter, Margot in another room singing next to the piano, their golden retriever, Emily Dickinson, on the porch, and the three fates in goddess form on the roof.
“Margot stole the show. She gave all it would take.”
- A review of her 1961 performance of Marthe
Eventually, music came for me, too. In 2016 or so, I saw a woman at a dinner party playing the harp. It was the first time I felt a pull toward an instrument. “Yes… But not now,” I responded to the feeling. Life was too full; I was flying often, multiple times a week. I knew I didn’t have space for more “new.” Fast forward to January of 2019, I decided it was time. I called the harpist from the dinner party, and so it began. At the end of each long day, the language of music felt the way I imagine brain surgery might. It brought so much insight, yet so much fatigue — no easy task, but I carried on with the lesson calendar I had set. In time, that eased a bit, and I studied with two music teachers. I started to understand what music did for Margot. This was how she clarified her instrument, clarified her thinking and writing.
I discovered two modes by following this thread: the kinesthetic understanding of what it took to recreate the music I loved (Philip Glass, Sylvan Esso, Bjork, Gone Gone Beyond, Daft Punk, Agua de Estrellas); the other was a practice in listening, in studying relationship, and developing one with the harp as we got acquainted. The relational dynamic was revelatory. Studying people and culture is a study in relationship—curating, collecting, textile design, performance, teaching, too. It was all woven together, quite exquisitely, each of her practices feeding the other. When I told Margot about the harp, she shared that she played it, too — Appalachian lap harp. Of course she did.
Margot kept a pulse on emerging artistic talent on all fronts — from the Merola Opera graduates to Lana del Rey, and the latest exhibits at BAMPFA. We often went to the Berkeley Repertory Theater, to the movies, all the museums, of course. She brought me to delightful, hidden places of hers, like the Piedmont Piano Company for intimate performances among the sculptural masterpieces, and the West Edge Opera. Margot tended to inspiration carefully; she recognized creative courage and supported it. She knew all the new restaurant openings, long before I did, and we went often, fortunately, because cooking was not her strong suit.
Margot and Papa lived a life of art, in a house that was, itself, a provocation of possibility, bursting with their creations and those of their friends that shared the same way of life: books, playbills, records, tapes, poetry, weavings, paintings, films, dioramas, and pottery. There was no visual field in that house without art — the blue painting of Papa by Diebenkorn, the dancers by Jacques Fabert, the beautiful illustrations and covers of Papa’s books by Bern Porter, the staircase lined on either side with masks from Palenque to Bali, the collection of off-white Heath dishes, the villages of kachina dolls and baskets. Every wall and surface cradled a story.
Margot was prolific, driven, and wholly encouraging of all creative expression; she fanned even a hint of a spark, confident in the currency of exploration. When it began to dawn that academia might not be for me, she encouraged me to carve my own path. She couldn’t guide me from direct experience, but she taught me to find my way. She demonstrated a beauty in discipline, the necessity of rest and meditation (although she never labeled it as such), evidenced the effect of commitment to one’s craft, and championed the pursuit of curiosities with persistence.
What Margot did not tell me, nor did anyone else, was that a tremendous surge of energy would descend upon me. It began months ago, picking up speed and intensity, and has only accelerated since her death. Perhaps it is legacy, announcing its timer, or perhaps it is grief, finding solace in the alchemy of the hands. Regardless, the product is the same.
It’s time to share, time to give, time to gather, time to pay it forward.
The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
-David Viscott
This is the best way I know how to honor her, and move through the walking on — share the gifts she gave to me, that have shaped my practice, and helped me navigate the new again and again. To not just tell her story or my story, but to set the stage for others to experience, learn, and find it for themselves.
A new chapter is in motion. You are welcome, and invited. The stage is now for you.
