convergence . . .

When I was five, the French had won the French and Indian War. They didn’t lose until I was seven . . .
 

A jpeg of a detail of Fort Pitt,

Pennsylvania, taken from Plate IV

of "History of Allegheny Co.,

Pennsylvania : with illustrations

descriptive of its scenery, palatial

residences, public buildings, fine

blocks, and important manufactories",

 by Samuel W. Durant, L. H. Everts, 1876



  

A large jpeg of a street map of

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1795,

which includes Fort Pitt, detail

from Plate IV, Samuel W. Durant's

"History of Allegheny Co.,

Pennsylvania : with illustrations

descriptive of its scenery,

palatial residences, public buildings,

 fine blocks, and important

manufactories," Philadelphia, L. H. Everts, 1876. 



I remember raging home from school that afternoon in tears, a righteous kind of angry, the absurdity of what Sister told the class written all over my I’minthe3rdgrade! self. “Mommy, Sister lied to us. She said you lost the French and Indian War! You gotta tell her she’s WRONG!”

Somewhere in the personal archives I still have my third grade report card. I don’t remember which Sister we had that year, which means she probably wasn’t one of my memorable, either way, teachers. Bet my lowest grade was in conduct, in close competition with handwriting. If there had been a grade for recess, there would have been a three-way tie for last place! Head games have always been my strong suit and my head was in active volcano mode that long ago afternoon—even more so after Mommy said Sister was right.

Coming to the defense of all things French was already second nature. I don’t know what I knew at seven. Certainly not that my father’s family opposed my parents’ marriage (don’t send Jimmy’s birth certificate to him), that being a Catholic in the South wasn’t cool (my Catholic home, Catholic school, Catholic church was my universe). But I did know that my mother didn’t talk like my classmates’ mothers, that I’d had to learn, in school, that bushes weren’t buhshes and that vegetables weren’t veh-JET-ables, that a classmate told me that her mother said that my mother should go back to where she came from. I did believe that all things French were worth fighting for. I think I may have even believed that the French, like Mommy, embodied supreme authority, the last word, the final say-so. Apparently not so, at least not at Fort Pitt.

The convergence of those three rivers—the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio—and my life had already begun. Father Sullivan, who heard my first and subsequent confessions and otherwise controlled my wayward spirit, was second only to God himself, in my mind. He—and the nuns who staffed our school, were from Pennsylvania. Yes, Yankees! Ulysses S. Grant glowered down at us from his gilt frame in the school lobby as we struggled to master “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In the South. In rural North Carolina. Before Vatican II. (I only saw Father Sullivan’s broad back at Mass). Latin became my second language. (My mother thought it wisest that I forget the French I’d learned during our visit to France when I was two.)

I was pretty good at memorizing my catechism (head games, remember?). One year I was given a book of Christmas stories, Catholic ones, that I still treasure—even down to the crayon scribbles added by my “baby” brother. Another year I was sent to the only week of camp I ever attended—a Catholic camp, of course. But there I learned to make a bed and to swim. I rode a horse—sitting behind another camper and holding my breath every second of the excruciating experience—for the first and only time in my life. I was nine. And, in eighth grade, I was awardedthe ultimate, and most coveted, recognition—Queen of the May! I was so sure my new high (bet they weren’t much over an inch) heels would catch in the grate in the church floor! I was such a Klutz. But they didn’t.

The Pennsylvania crew had decided I was a “keeper.” They convinced my parents that, because our local public high school was a veritable “den of sin,” I should attend instead their convent boarding school in Pennsylvania. I did—one year—long enough to study Pennsylvania history with—of course—the details of how and why the French had lost the French and Indian War. I also saw my first—at least the first I remembered seeing—dead person (a nun) and conducted Buddha worship rituals with classmates in my third floor room late at night, when we weren’t out haunting the nuns’ cemetery with its caved-in graves. Classmates from places like Altoona, McKeesport, Johnstown, Allentown, Pittsburgh . . . One was from Aruba. One was from my hometown. African American. We were products of segregated Catholic schools. Our parents allowed us to visit each other’s homes that Christmas, at night, under the anonymous cloak of darkness . . .

My parents soon decided that exposing me to occasions of sin was preferable to losing me to the nunnery. Those next three years are another story for another time . . .

When Father Sullivan eloped with our music minister (Catholic priests take a vow of celibacy), I had to do some serious revising of my image of God. Obviously He wasn’t from Pennsylvania . . . He didn’t walk his matched guard dogs down school hallways. He wasn’t about instilling fear, about rewarding compliance. In the process, and it’s been a lifetime of process, I cast off the walking catechism mentality and forged a comfortable relationship with my God.



Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania skyline, taken from Mount Washington. At the "tip” is Point State Park, the bridges include Fort Duquesne Bridge on the left of Point State Park and the Fort Pitt Bridge on the right with the Three Sisters are on the left in the distance. The iconic castle-like, PPG Place skycraper is notable at the right. Photo taken by Bobak Ha'Eri. August 29, 2004.
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But I didn’t cast off the convergence of those three rivers and my life.

I married a man whose father grew up in Pittsburgh. Not that anyone from Pittsburgh actually lives, or lived, in Pittsburgh. My father-in-law’s family was from Coalport. He was Catholic. I could negotiate the Pittsburgh dialect, even the food and the history, thanks to my ninth grade experiences. That was all that would ever connect us—but I guess it was enough so that he didn’t withhold his son’s birth certificate when the time came for us to be married . . .

I don’t know who first suggested Carnegie-Mellon. It may have been my daughter’s flute teacher. Like my mother before me, I shipped my firstborn to Pennsylvania but, this time, to the very heart of Pittsburgh. Unlike her mother before her, she did not come home . . . She married a man who grew up in Pittsburgh—well, in Monroeville, actually. A man whose German mother, like my French mother, suffered the terrors and hardships of life under Nazi rule all those long, long years ago.

When I was five, the French and Americans had won World War II. The Germans had lost. Today, Gisèle and Mildred are the best of friends . . .

I fly to Pittsburgh once or twice each year, always with a window seat, always with a smile of warm recognition, almost a sense of homecoming, when the convergence of three rivers comes into view below me. Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio.

What if the French had won the French and Indian War?


NOTE: Summer 2007 or 2008?  for SCRI summer study . . .