Category Archives: A Woman’s Project

Fanfare for a Most UNcommon Woman

The world has lost a source of light this week. My friend Eleanor Sweeney has left the planet, and with her goes the last non-family link to my mother, a link that gave me permission to see my other as the whole woman she was.

Eleanor and my mother Charlotte became friends the year my baby brother John began Kindergarten, the end of 1966.  In those days, it was a rare Kindergartner’s mother who was nearing 50, which my mother was, and she felt out of place. 

“I feel like I did when I was working as an RA at UVM,” she told me that October.  “I’m the experienced older woman, and they all look to me for wisdom, and I can’t admit that  I’m still just flailing like everyone else.”

Eleanor made her feel normal. Their fourteen-year age difference was never uncomfortable for either of them.

They met through their sons. Within weeks of beginning school, John and Eleanor’s oldest boy were best friends, and they began visiting one another’s homes. Mom and Eleanor began to talk. It was easy to talk with Eleanor. She listened intently and answered astutely.  They began to share details of their lives as mothers of multiple, active children. Eleanor had three small boys; Mom had three girls and three boys, ranging in age from 6-14, still at home.  I had left for college in September.

Before Eleanor entered the picture, I remember mom going to College Club and PTA meetings, but she did not socialize with her cohorts or get close to anyone in particular.  With Eleanor, friendship quickly blossomed into a personal attachment. They talked on the phone, commiserated about kids and husbands, shared driving responsibilities, and nurtured a kind of surrogate sisterhood. 

Eleanor was the perfect confidante for my mom, whose European upbringing and old-world sensibilities were often misunderstood.  She had been an expert cellist and loved music, was a reader of all manner of literature, and grew up in a house where art was the center of everything.  Eleanor was a reader, loved books, music, and culture in general; moreover, Eleanor was an artist, a free-thinking photographer, with a keen eye for what made the natural world seem otherworldly.  They were both linguists who could converse about art or literature or current events in English or Russian; each was the center of life in her home and could equally prepare meals, do the laundry, analyze great ideas, and, when necessary, fix minor plumbing issues.  They were heroic women.

By the time I got to know Eleanor, I was the mother of grown children, and she was divorced and a grandmother.  My mother had told me I should get to know her friend, but I had had little opportunity. I liked her on the few occasions I met her, but we were not friends until the 1990s.  My mother died in 1999, and friendship with Eleanor became a kind of imperative for me, a force for which I shall be forever grateful.

Soon after mom’s death, another friend from our hometown sighed, “I wish your mother had been mine. She was perfect.”  I could not respond.  My mother was certainly anything but perfect for me, and it took time for me to learn how to love her appropriately.  Before I could articulate any of that, Eleanor spoke up.  “Charlotte made me appreciate my mother precisely because she showed me how to love an IMperfect mother.” 

What an epiphany, I thought. That is just what Eleanor is doing for me!

Over the next 25 years, we saw each other through a number of life changes. I divorced, her grandchildren grew up, and mine were born; she suffered great losses, and then so did I, though never quite as great.  We didn’t talk all the time, but when we did, we connected deeply and spiritually.

 Eleanor and my mother taught me what an extraordinary gift an intergenerational friendship can be, and I have learned to nurture the same with younger women as I age.  I cherish the time I got to spend with Eleanor. I will miss her, but her presence is unextinguishable in my sense of self, my appreciation for life.  Perhaps someday a younger friend of mine will feel the same about me.  

I doubt Eleanor knew what a giant print she left on my heart. She was far too humble to have sought it out.

Eleanor was one of the founders of the Adirondack Artists Guild; she is pictured here in the Guild’s Gallery in downtown Saranac Lake, NY. The Guild will host a celebration of Eleanor’s life and work in January

Fanfare for the Common Woman

Audio podcasts are a wonderful innovation, especially for those of us with insomnia.  Nothing is more soothing for me than a gentle voice talking about interesting worlds.  I especially love science, history, and theater talk, film history podcasts, or literary discussions, and David Remnick.  It is comforting to feel myself relaxed out of anxiety into someone else’s knowledge and then to drift off to sleep.

I confess that there are many podcasts that irritate me.  The ones that make me sit up, desiring to scream into my device– though that is certainly not an option for a considerate apartment dweller in the middle of the night – those that frustrate me with their pontification or false modesty,  political rants or misinformation. 

The ones that most irritate me are the podcasts that pretend to offer hope and life modeling to women over 50. On podcasts such as unPaused, with Marie Claire Haver, or Wiser than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  These offer advice from the megastars like Isabella Rosselini, Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Steinham, Michele Obama, Jane Fonda, et high-falutin al.

Inevitably, these admittedly wonderful, rightfully revered role models are women who have achieved great fame and fortune. They are most certainly noteworthy, and I deeply admire them and their accomplishments.  But they are women who have been receiving attention for a long time already and are rarely in positions to which any of us groundlings can reasonably aspire. 

All the while, everyday women who achieve less than phenomenal but still noteworthy successes are overlooked. Despite the fact that we, too, are pundits. We, too, offer stories that could be truly inspirational.

I have many friends who have lived lives worth sharing.  Women – mothers and wives — who have written books that may not have been bestsellers but still had audiences and made a difference for their readers.  For example, my dear friend, who nursed her husband through harrowing bouts of PTSD, raised her family, took care of her brothers, ran a lovely small business, and managed to paint some lovely watercolors?  She knows about survival and rising above adversity and setting goals, and attaining happiness. Another brave woman I know writes songs that aim to forge peace and understanding while curating a huge cache of legacy art, and another creates phonics videos to promote literacy among disadvantaged children. They love their work, and they are proud of what they do, as many everyday women do. Some nurture student artists — those who may not be the Oscar or book award winners spewing gratitude for their mentors — and help them to nurture dreams that lead to meaningful careers that improve the world in multiple ways, Even while schlepping personal children from pillar to post, attending extracurricular activities, keeping husband’s clothes cleaned and pressed, etc., myriad ordinary heroines persevere.  Women who work as nurses, physicians’ assistants. dental hygienists, bus drivers, etc., while providing care for elderly parents.  Those who act in plays on, off, and way off Broadway,  direct educational and community theaters, sing in and direct choirs, play music, and lead small-town orchestras.

You can see my point, I am sure.  The accomplishments of women are incalculable. 

Surely the multitude of women who have built modest successes are no less interesting than those who have made millions?  Is it not exemplary that real people keep plugging away, writing, painting, acting, teaching, serving the sick, and providing goods and services?  Aren’t the common variety supermoms/daughters/aunts/sisters/grands apt role models for younger generations?

Come on, social influencers, podcasters, you who want to inspire women, find those of us who fuel the world with its real power. Look for our books, our drawings, our songs, our stories. Ask us what we know. Let us show you how fascinating we can be.

Book Review: The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish

Despite the dark suggestion of her title, Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink (Mariner Books, 2017) is pure illumination. 

I turned to Kadish’s book as I began cobbling the details and backdrops for a fiction I am working on about members of a 17th C New Netherlands Jewish community, refugees from the Portuguese Inquisition. Since Kadish’s book, set in the same time period, concerns the life of Portuguese Jewish refugees who have found their way to London by way of Amsterdam,  I was drawn in by a hope that her descriptions and depictions would give me a more vibrant, sensory experience of the world I hoped to create.  It did not take more than a few pages to know that I had made a wise choice, that I would find what I was looking for. And much more.

The life of Kadish’s characters, defined as much by ink as by history, is a seemly model for the ones I hope to bring to life. Mine too, will be defined by their stories, stories that bear the pressure of ink, which in the case of Kadish’s characters, is considerable . . . both physically and literally. 

Kadish’s book presents two heroines, each of whose existence attests to the ink’s sway.  One is a Ester Valasquez, a Jewish intellectual born into the wrong century, and the other is Helen Watts, a 21st C baby boomer academic intent on breathing warm life into the legacy of the woman whose work she has discovered in the carapace alcove of a house built in the aftermath of England’s Civil War.

Watts, a sexagenarian historian at a contemporary London university, finds herself wrestling with self-doubt and recrimination after she realizes that documents given to her by a former student are authentically written by a woman in the 1600s. Watts has never hoped for such a find, one that seemed unfathomable. That a female in that time period could have asserted herself strongly enough to have accomplished the work Helen has found seems incredibly miraculous.

The ancient writer Ester Valasquez is a true anomaly:  a brilliant Portuguese Jewess, trapped in but not stifled by the male-ordered strictures of 17th C society, both secular and religious. Ester, who speaks and writes fluently in Portuguese, Hebrew, Dutch, and English, is an orphan in the protection of the prestigious Sephardic Rabbi Ha-Mendes. Brutally blinded and disfigured by the Inquisition, Rabbi Mendes has made it his self-appointed mission to bring Judaism to the Jews of London, who have only recently been readmitted to Britain by Oliver Cromwell.  It is a community that lacks an educational center, and Rabbi Mendes engages Ester’s brother Isaac to be his scribe, to set his sermons and essays to paper.  Isaac dies, however, and Ester eagerly takes over as the rabbi’s scribe. Over time, as the rabbi ages, he writes less and less, leaving Ester to write letters in his name and others’, letters that are both heretical and dangerous.  That she gets away with her subterfuge has everything to do with the upheavals of the great Plague and then the Fire of London.  

The ink Ester uses is a heavy amalgam of iron salts thickened by tannin harvested from gallnuts, a bluish-black ink that mercilessly stains her fingers. Though the paper Ester uses is undoubtedly made of strong linen, the ink seeps through and leaves holes among her sentences.  By the time Helen Watts and her assistant Aaron Levy receive the documents, the ink has turned sepia-brown, and the weighted pages are difficult to read.

The words Ester writes are themselves more leaden than the ink itself.  Her letters, signed in names of men she deemed incapable of writing, are sent to the men with the best minds in Europe of her time, but the letters she writes to Baruch Spinoza, excommunicated apostate denounced by Jews and Christians alike, are the most dangerous. 

When Watts find proof that Spinoza actually responded to Ester’s letters, Watts realizes that the ink was even more ponderous for Ester and is a discovery she finds nearly intolerably heavy.

Ester has undertaken her intellectual pursuits with a full understanding of the consequences she will face.  She refuses the protection of marriage, the comfort of children, real love.  She has made a choice, and she is faithful to that choice throughout her life, though she finds an acceptable compromise that ensures she never has to worry about money, and her words will never betray her. Watts faces her discovery of the letters 400 years later with a similar conviction.  She, too, has made her work her life. She, too, has prized intellectual pursuit over the pursuit of conventional happiness.

Rachel Kadish has accomplished a miracle. She has given provocative life to a concept that few would deem important.  It may seem that the age has passed when a woman was not officially allowed to read and write, no longer are women prohibited from becoming actors, cannot wear men’s apparel. Women, some would argue, are no longer at the mercy of husbands and fathers for support, prohibited from inheriting the wealth of either.  In the absence of all such repression, Ester’s life might seem arcane. But the seemingly stark contrast of Helen Watts’ contemporary life points to a truth of most women’s reality, a truth that prevails today. 

Like Ester, Watts made her choices. She had all the academic and intellectual freedom she could ask for, but she, too, had to forego the pleasure of deep, committed love.  Even in her youth, when she was tempted by a handsome, commanding Israeli man, she could not commit her whole self to him.  Like Ester, she understood that belonging to a man, even to a man who offers deep, protective love, meant being swallowed by his life, his pursuits, his dreams.  Four hundred years later, Watts came to the same conclusion. Too easily women compromise themselves and disappear into their men. 

The Weight of ink is a deep dive into the minds and lives of two women widely separated by time and culture.  Both reside in a life colored by equal parts joy, satisfaction, and regret. Both are warrior women.

Hometown Revelation

Photo by Richard Amell, SLHS Class of '65

Sixty Years On. . .

Returning to Saranac Lake, the town where I spent my latter childhood years, used to be all about my mother and my brother David. Both were much loved for good reasons; each had a particularly large presence among the locals and made a difference to many.  In the old days, I felt suffocated and extincted by the size of the welcome I always got for them.  Mom’s friends and David’s admirers were legion, and I could not walk down the street without being greeted with, “Hey, I knew your brother,” or “Carla, you’re Charlotte’s daughter.  She was an amazing woman.”

Heck, I didn’t even have to be in our hometown.  Once, my then 20-something-year-old son and I drove through a blinding blizzard to spend a weekend in Lake Placid, the tourist mecca nine miles and a huge cultural ethos away from Saranac Lake.  We checked into the Hilton Hotel and went to the bar to unwind before sleeping.  Within minutes of being seated, three people at the bar realized I was a Swett and sat themselves next to me to  regale me with stories of David when he was the bouncer at a bar over on the lake.  Soon, another three people came over to tell me what a great teacher mom was the year she taught bio at LPHS.

It was something of a relief to be anonymous, to duck into their legacy.  I was content to linger in the long shadows Mom and David had cast years before. 

Over the years, I remained in touch with only one person, the grown-up boy I counted as my best friend from 6th grade on, the boy with whom few in our class knew I had a relationship.  He had gone to college, been engaged, been sent to Viet Nam, and moved down south, but we stayed connected though I had not seen him since he visited me in New York on his way to Viet Nam in 1969.  I would have seen him if he had been in town when I was there, but he was not. 

 I loved taking my family to visit Saranac Lake, and we went as often as we could.  We camped at White Pine Camp before it was renovated.  We hiked up to Copperas Pond.  We canoed or boated out onto the lakes. But since my one true pal was not there, I felt no compulsion to call anyone else.  I didn’t expect that anyone would remember or care.  David and Mom were the ones that counted.  I did not.

Everything changed for me when  the 35th Reunion of the Class of 1965 rolled around.

In 2000, on the verge of leaving my husband and having buried my mother just a few months before, I got the notice that a reunion was in the works.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about facing my classmates, but I was sure I needed to find a way to feel grounded.  I had just begun to flex my creativity and was experimenting with a new career; the idea of being among the people who knew me before I left my chrysalis was comfortingly attractive.

The opening event was a meet-‘n’-greet at the Belvedere Restaurant, a hometown tavern, where many of my classmates had learned to drink as teenagers but to which I had never been.  I parked my car outside the restaurant, and before I got halfway out of my car, a familiar form appeared at the top of the stairs.

“SWETT!!!” He exclaimed, addressing me, as people had when we were young, by my embarrassing last name.  “You’re here!!!”

The surprise greeter was John, the boy who sat behind me in 5th grade. The one who dunked my braids in an inkwell then cut off the ends, who was grateful I didn’t complain to the teacher but simply laughed.  He was the boy who told me to shut up when I argued with a teacher about the legitimacy of a request we were expected to honor. He was never someone I thought of as having any real interest in me, but he had always been there.  And now there he was smothering me in hugs.  He led me in. 

Inside, I was greeted by people, many of whose faces I barely recognized. My oldest, best friend was there, and I buried myself in his affection but felt no reason to hide for long.  There were so many cherished memories assembled.  Gail, who lived down the hill from me when we first arrived in town that winter of 1957.  Her dog Mike nearly scared me to death. Later, when we both moved across town, Gail was once again down the hill from me, always my neighbor and a kindred spirit. Marsha, whose 4th grade birthday party invitation eased my transition from Massachusetts outsider to Saranac Lake resident.  Nancy, my high school bestie, and Maryanne, with who made me laugh as we walked together down the hill from school in the springtime. I rediscovered Karen, whose baby brother was born within weeks of mine. And shy Art, who had seemed so disinterested in anything academic but had evolved into a High School History teacher.  Then there was Penny, whose friendship was a constant aspiration though she seemed to disdain me, enveloping me in a hug. 

Within minutes of arriving, my classmates reminded me that though high school was not my finest hour, it was a time that deserved to be remembered.  The campaign for senior council president, the regional chorus festivals, jazz band, speech contest, the town centennial pageant. . . . 

People still effused about David or Mom. But I realized I, too,  belonged.  My fellow townspeople were, along with David and Mom and all the Swetts, the main characters in the play that was my life in this town.  I felt embraced and accepted, and I understood for the first time that the play wasn’t over yet!

I struck up correspondences, albeit spare, and looked forward with great anticipation to whatever came next.

At the fiftieth reunion, naturally, some of the best people were not there.  Old age, illness, family events, death.  Nancy was no longer with us, and John was clearly ill.  But we had a blast.  Gail and I hosted the culminating ceremony together, and we formalized our belief that we were sisters of the most bonded sort, members of a family of disparate siblings, who’d grown up in a community founded on the idea that a town exists to care for one another. 

The people who fostered the growth of Saranac Lake in the late 19th C arrived there in order to give or find relief from TB; the tradition defined the town and trickled into everyone’s consciousness.  Saranac Lake became a refuge for veterans of WWII and Korea, boys who needed a quiet, caring place to raise their families and set the world aright.  Refugees from places like the Swiss Alps who needed to be in the familiar protection of the granite mountain walls that surrounded us.  We were raised by survivors who nurtured one another’s survival, and we members of the Class of ‘65 bonded to one another as our parents did to our town. 

Returning last month for our 60th Reunion, I had feared that David’s recent death would make it painful to hear his virtues extolled.  I was wrong. This great extended family we’d both been part of shared memories that made mine more vibrant.  I missed him more and at the same time a bit less because he was there with us in more hearts than just my own.

There were far fewer of us this year to revel in the joy of sharing one more party.   So we made a solemn promise to one another: we won’t let ten years pass before we do it again.  Ours is a special joy we must nurture fervently.

Saranac Lake, NY, began as an outpost for hunters but gained fame and population as a medical center for Tuberculosis sufferers.

In Memoriam: Marilyn Joan Alkus Bonomi (1943-2025)

Walking in the almost cool, late August air today, I felt a premonition of Fall. Crisp air,  cornflower sky.  Finally. . .  October’s on its way. 

October has always been a special month.  My birthday, my youngest child’s birthday, the year’s first cold snap, darkening afternoons.  This time, however, the October snippet hit me with an image of Marilyn Joan Alkus Bonomi.

Mari and I met on an October Saturday in 1987 at my youngest’s birthday party, a party I hoped would help us get acquainted with our new neighbors.  We had just moved from Arizona to Connecticut, and none of us had been prepared for the culture shock we would encounter.  Fitting in was challenging, and a party seemed like an opportunity to make some friends, to show our new cohorts that while we might not have mastered the eastern way of dressing and speaking, we were just plain folks like everyone else.  Personally, too, I hoped that an adult or two would come to the party and stay, be a welcoming presence . . . or at least a fellow parent with familiar sensibilities.

Mari was the one.  She swept in, deposited her daughter in the midst of the other children, then sat down next to me and opened a conversation that drew me in, made me feel instantly connected.  It was a stream of consciousness into which we were able to immerse ourselves every time we were together for the next nearly forty years of our enduring friendship.

We had lots in common.  Her daughter and my youngest were the same age and had already begun to bond,  which meant that Mari and I were destined to see one another often. We were both English teachers with a deep connection to the theater; she was well established in Connecticut, and I was looking for a job.  We shared a nearly obsessive love of rhetoric and a penchant for lost souls. Though humanist Jews, we had both chosen husbands who were Jesuit-trained Catholic schoolboys.

 Over the course of that first year, her daughter and mine became besties and formed a union that included my older daughter; Mari and I were fused.

Because of Mari, I quickly found a job.  At the birthday party, she had been delighted to learn that I planned to substitute teach while I sought permanent employment.   “That is wonderful news,” she said.  “I teach at Amity, in Woodbridge, one of the best schools in the country. Can you tell I’m proud? Anyway, we never have enough good subs.  I’ll put your name in.”  

She did.  I spent much of that year subbing at Amity and loving it. 

One day, when we were lucky enough to have lunch together, she pointed to a lanky man leaning in among a group of students, listening intently and chatting with them.  “See that guy?” She asked.  “That’s Stu Elliot.  He’s one of our Assistant Principals.  A good man.  A great administrator. See how he interacts with the kids?  He is special, which just means we won’t have him for long.  He’ll have his own school any day now. Which is why I want you to meet him.  He will want to hire teachers of his own choice, and you would be a perfect addition to any team he takes on.”

We spent ten minutes talking to Stu, and I agreed.  He was remarkable.  A year later, he became my principal at the high school next door to my house.  I could not have been more fortunate, and my gratitude to Mari never diminished.

Our friendship ran deep.  Her child was at my house almost as often as mine was at hers. We celebrated holidays together and commiserated when we were both unhappy.  Our contact lapsed a bit as each of us traversed the hard road of divorce and redefinition, but we found one another again in time to have a few great years as senior citizen sisters. Though never enough time to fully share our appreciation for years of a deeper-than-blood kinship.

Since 1987, my life has been fuller in dozens of ways because of Marilyn Joan Alkus Bonomi.  Though she will live on in her daughter’s eyes, in her grandson’s laugh, in my heart, in my soul, in my very vivid memory, I shall miss her voice, her presence, the soft touch of her abiding love.