Jenifer’s Shelter Island Journal: Grace

Noun: unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration …

I first met Grace in the early 90’s — beautifully dressed, expertly coiffed, she and her slim, dark-haired husband, Gary, looked like a kind of power couple. 

They had just moved to the Island full time from Rockville Centre.  I would come to learn that, according to Grace, on the celestial elevator of the universe, Rockville Centre was on the floor just below heaven — or was it the other way around?

In any event, throughout the first half of the decade Grace and I very slowly became, if not friends, very friendly acquaintances. It took so long, I think, because, with her high-end wardrobe and perfect haircuts, I thought she was something of a social snob.

She, on the other hand, saw me, with my delicatessen word salad, as an intellectual one.  It was only years later that we would share those specious opinions with one another and have the very best kind of laugh.

In spite of those tacitly-held opinions, as the 90’s came to a close, we found that we actually had much in common — kids we adored who were dealing with the challenges of young adulthood, both of us dealing with the exigencies of either entering or exiting significant relationships — we realized that were becoming real friends. 

I was teaching at the time, while Grace was giving 100 percent of herself as a realtor, 100 percent as owner of a house-cleaning service and the other 101 percent to her family.  She was a giver — of her time, her talents, her heart — and if you were her friend, you knew it.

In 1999, after 20 years of being single, I was saying a tentative hello to loving again and was on the cusp of marrying the love of my life, while Grace was in the process of saying a painful goodbye to hers.  In spite of the grief and turmoil she was facing, no one was a more robust cheerleader for my romance than Grace. 

She proved a tireless listener to all my doubts and fears.  Of course, I listened to hers, as well, but her generous heart was big enough for both my happiness and her pain.  A true friend.

In the meantime, whether single or married, we both were, and always would be, mothers. Grace was a fierce one — a mother bear — but I recall when one of my 20-somethings was having a rough time, making questionable choices, and I was at a frantic loss what to do, Grace shared a memory with me.

When her kids were small, they often played in the backyard with friends.  Grace could see them through the kitchen window as she stood there washing dishes.  Many more times than once, a sudden name-calling, pushing-shoving melee would erupt, and her instinct was to rush outside and break it up, but — unless there was blood — she’d stand there instead, clutching the side of her kitchen sink, and let them work it out for themselves.

And then, 9/11 happened. It’s nearly a quarter of a century later — yet we all are still far from healing.  For Grace, however, there was an added poignancy — her dad had been very involved in the construction of those towers.  I think that indelible trauma of that day cracked some of us open like eggs, while others were shut up like clenched fists. 

I think Grace and I were among the ‘eggs.’

Eight months later — May of 2002 — I experienced my own personal 9/11.  That “love of my life,” suddenly, inexplicably left me, and I was cracked open all over again.  My family and dear friends tried, but “all the king’s horses…”

Then Grace called.  She told me to make a loaf from flour, water, and cornstarch, I think — write on it all my fears and pain, let it dry overnight, take it to the beach at dawn and crumble it into the water.  She gave me something to do when there was nothing to be done, and so I was introduced to what I came to call my “spiritual boot camp,” with Grace as my funny, loving, jet-fueled sergeant.

I’d known that Grace was a spiritual seeker — she’d been raised Catholic, but her restless mind and heart lead her to explore all manner of spiritual territory — not in a dogmatic, chapter-and-verse sort of way but with an infectious exuberance and curiosity that made her, like the Pied Piper, impossible not to follow. 

From meditation to creative visualization to Reiki to sage-ing to dancing and drumming, etc., she opened to me the infinite variety of spiritual opportunities all around us, and the deep, abiding truth of the now somewhat cliché, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Where you off to now, Gracie?