Amy Hill Hearth

 

"It took me 100 years to figure out that I can't change the world. I can only change Bessie." – Bessie Delany at age 102

 

I think of this quote from Having Our Say every time I feel frustrated and helpless about our country and the world today.

 

Realistically, what can I do to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine or Israel or Sudan?

 

Here in the U.S., our divisions are unlike anything I've experienced in my lifetime. It seems impossible to persuade anyone to consider an alternative point of view. We've become a nation of shouters, not listeners.

 

So, as Bessie noted, the only control we have is over ourselves. I can improve myself as a human being – and even that's not easy to do.

 

Most of us are taught that we can make a difference in life, that even the smallest gestures can impact someone's future in a positive way, and surely that's true. I'm not saying we should abandon those efforts. In fact, we should double-down on them in these hard times.  

 

In the big picture, however, the deeper truth is that very few people (and I am not among them) have actual power in this world, and unfortunately, many of them wield that power in grotesque ways.

 

I can write letters. I can donate money. Probably the most important thing I can do is vote in November, and you can be sure that I will.

I want to share a story with college students struggling to answer the questions, What career should I choose? What do I want to do with my life?

 

I was one of those students who floundered. I changed my major from Psychology to Sociology, then History, and finally English Literature.

 

Although I had always loved to write, it didn't occur to me that I could be a professional writer. I didn't see the common thread until someone pointed it out to me. Perhaps this was because I didn't know anyone who made a living as a writer. My father had a degree in engineering and my mother, in math and physics.

 

And then one day during the worst of my confusion, my father asked me, sort of nonchalantly, "Have you ever noticed that the classes where you got an A – when you were happy – always included a writing project?"

 

Hmmm. Truer words were never spoken. The subject didn't matter at all. History, English literature, Sociology – Dad was right. If a course had been structured around a writing project, I was in Heaven, and I excelled.

 

"You love to write," Dad said simply.

 

And then I asked what now seems like the stupidest question ever: "Doesn't everyone?"

 

"Why, no," Dad replied. "In fact, most people don't like to write at all. See, writing comes so naturally to you that you assume everyone can do it well. Maybe you should be a writer."

 

The conversation with Dad was life changing. I had always expressed myself through writing. I kept diaries and wrote long letters starting in grade school. I wrote a draft of a novel during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. Why had I not seen this as a path for my future? Why did it take someone to point it out to me?

 

I have no idea. I was young and overwhelmed, I guess.

 

I knew in my heart that Dad was right. Immediately, I applied and then transferred to a smaller college with an intensive writing program. I took courses in magazine writing, creative writing, and screenwriting. I joined the college newspaper staff. I got an internship at a magazine in my senior year, then my first job at a daily newspaper, and on and on, leading me eventually to a reporting contract at The New York Times and then my first book contract.

 

After a single conversation with my dad, I was able to find my place in the world, and I've never looked back. Sometimes, what it takes is the right advice from the right person. 

 

 

They were smart. Wise. Intuitive. Their stories from long ago were riveting and historically significant.

  

But what seemed to draw readers to Sadie and Bessie Delany, the late centenarian pair of sisters of Having Our Say fame, was the fact that they were utterly charming and completely genuine. In a society in which people are accustomed to artifice and manipulation, the Delany Sisters were a shock. In telling their story, they had no agenda, and readers could sense it immediately.

 

The day I met them in 1991, they were 100 and 102 years old, and I was a 33-year-old newspaper reporter. Talking to them was like time-travel. They reached back into the past with ease, and took me with them.    

 

They blew me away.

 

I was captivated by the way they interacted with one another, sister to sister, after living together for a century. When I got home that evening, the first thing I did was call my own sister, who is a year and a half older. I couldn't wait to tell her about the pair of centenarian sisters I had met that day, and how they were still giggling and quarreling about things that had happened a century ago when they were little girls. 

 

This was, I told my own sister, the sweetest thing I've ever witnessed.

 

It is this sweetness, this unvarnished charm, that flows through the book. I made sure to include it all. I didn't want the book to come across as too reverent which to me meant stale. I wanted readers to know what it felt like to be in my shoes while I observed them puttering in the kitchen, or listening from "my" chair in the parlor or at the dining room table. Happily, the sisters liked my approach. When I suggested that the book be a work of oral history rather than a third-person biography, they agreed to that as well. To me, the words they chose to tell their stories were as important as the stories themselves.

 

And so, Having Our Say is peppered with endearing expressions and anecdotes. The sisters, for example, referred to themselves quaintly as "maiden ladies," a term I had heard perhaps one other time in my life. When I asked the name of their cat, they explained cheerfully, "We call him Mr. Delany since we don't have a man in the house." When asked why they thought they had lived so long, they replied: "It's because we never married. We never had husbands to worry us to death!" And then they shrieked with laughter at their own joke. 

 

I could go on....and on. But it's all in the book for you to read, anyway. You'll learn a great deal of American history from the book. You'll see flashes of anger and sorrow as they tell their stories. You'll be appalled at some of it. But most of all, when you reach the last page, you'll realize you've fallen in love with the Delany Sisters.  

 

My father was a very good amateur photographer. Then one day in middle age, he set down his camera forever.

 

He simply stopped taking pictures. He'd been his high school's yearbook photographer, documented his own experience in WW II with a camera, and took hundreds of photos of his wife and family in the 1950s, '60, and '70s.

 

I must have been in my late teens when we all noticed he no longer carried his camera bag with him. I asked him why, and he said he was tired of feeling as if he were documenting life rather than living it. "I want to be a participant, not an observer," he explained.

 

I've thought of his words often. I love photography and have sold some of my pictures over the years to newspapers and magazines. I've taken my own photographs for one of my nonfiction books. But I understand what Dad meant and I've heeded his warning. Photography is a passion that will swallow you whole if you're not careful. When I go out with friends, I don't want to be the person everyone counts on to get a photograph of us together. Ditto for every experience from travel to family holidays. I don't want to be worried about the lighting, or if someone blinked. I want to live the experience, not record it.

 

Now this situation is multiplied a thousand times with social media. Those of us who participate are performers, documentarians, reporters, witnesses, and judges. On social media, real life can take a backseat, and it's not always clear what is truly happening. Some people are perhaps too candid while others are cautious. Many people present a curated view of their lives. Some people post photos once a month and others, ten times per day.

 

As for me, I'm finding my own way. I love social media but I don't want it to own me. I love photography but I don't want it to take over.

 

Like Dad, I want to live fully in the moment.

The voicemail message box on my phone gets full very quickly these days. It's not that I've suddenly become more popular. It's that there's very little space left for new messages. I allowed a backlog of old messages from my mother pile up, and I don't want to erase them.

 

Mom died last March.

 

She still had all of her social graces and was the same wise, considerate person she'd always been. The messages reveal that. They also show that she still had the capacity to love life at 94 years of age.

 

The best messages were when she would call to say it was snowing. She loved snow and so do I. Once I was in the middle of a long day in Manhattan with my agent and my book editors, and I checked my messages. "Hi, it's Mom," she said. "It's snowing! It's really coming down! Talk to you later." 

 

She'd also call me about the latest visitors to her bird feeder. She knew them all and worried about specific individuals who hadn't been to the feeder in a while. "I saw the female cardinal, but not the male," she'd say. "I hope everything is all right."

 

Sometimes she'd leave what she called "FYI messages." This usually involved something I'd bought and had shipped to her and she just wanted me to know that it had arrived.

 

An FYI message went like this: "Hi, it's Mom. This is an FYI message. No need to call me back. Especially if you're writing."

 

She lived a hundred miles away. I visited frequently, but in between my trips we used email (yes, she had a laptop) and especially the telephone to stay in close contact.

 

Now she's gone and there's an enormous hole in my life. I have thousands of wonderful memories. I have some of her belongings, such as her wedding dress.

 

But I also have her phone messages.

 

Someday, when I have to upgrade to a new phone, I'll have to figure out a way to save her messages. But for now, I have no intention of doing anything except leaving them where they are. It's nice to know that anytime I want to, I can play her messages and hear her voice.