A short story in
memory of singer, actress, and activist,
Helen Reddy
1941-2020
From Linda Lee
Greene, Author/Artist
It was the last day of September,
2020. My cellphone rang at 6:00 AM on the dot. It was my Aunt Carol, my
mother’s youngest sibling, and my only remaining relative of my parent’s
generation. No one but Aunt Carol would call me at such an hour. We were both
early risers, a family trait that harkened back to our farming ancestors. I
thanked my lucky stars my coffee pot was already chugging. Her pot would be brewing,
too. Aunt Carol had fallen and broken her hip in early March of 2020. Following
surgery, she was placed in a rehab facility. The plan was that once she was well
enough, she would stay with me for a while before taking up normal life again
in her condo in the northern outskirts of Columbus. But then Covid-19 hit and
changed everything for everyone. The only choice left to her was to take up
residence in an assisted-living facility, and there she has remained. Carol is
not her real name. If I divulged her actual, full name, which, to protect her
privacy I would never do, you would recognize her. She is a well-known author,
active in her work to this day.
Aunt Carol has
been my best friend, mentor and trusted ally since the day of my birth. At 77
years old, she is proof that there is no expiration date on cool. Normally, not
a week goes by that we don’t see each other, preferably on Sundays. Covid-19
put a stop to that, too. I haven’t laid eyes on my aunt since the day in March of
last year that we went into lockdown.
“Good morning,
Aunt Carol,” I said into my phone. She didn’t say a word for a few seconds. I
did hear sniffles. She was crying. My heart jumped to my throat. ‘Oh
God, please no! She’s got the virus!’ my mind screamed in my head. We
lived in desperate fear of it every single moment of every single day as her
friends at the facility dropped like flies from the illness almost daily.
“Helen
Reddy died sometime yesterday,” Aunt Carol managed to say through her tears,
finally. “I heard it on the news just a few minutes ago.”
I drew in a deep
breath of relief and then ran the name through the catalog in my mind, a
vaguely familiar name, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Helen Reddy?”
“You know…the
singer…the “‘I am Woman, Hear me Roar!’ singer.”
“Oh! Yeah! God,
I love that song. Was it Covid?”
“They didn’t
say. I guess she had Addisons for a long time, and dementia.”
“She was
Australian, wasn’t she?”
“Australian-American.
She had dual citizenship. I think they said she died at her home in L.A., but
I’m not sure. She was only two years older than me. Helen Reddy meant a lot to
me, you know…an awful lot.”
I knew from her
unique storyteller tone of voice that Aunt Carol had a Helen Reddy story she
was chomping at the bit to tell me. I love Aunt Carol’s stories, even at the
crack of dawn. My cellphone at my ear and a steaming cup of coffee on the table
next to my lounge chair, I tucked myself in and listened:
“Helen Reddy and
her ‘I am Woman, Hear me Roar’ was instrumental in my discovery of my special
someone,” Aunt Carol began.
“If memory
serves, Aunt Carol, you’ve had more than one special someone.”
“I suppose it
depends on the definition.” She took a quick sip of her coffee, a
characteristically delicate sound in my ear. I pictured her all elegant and
pulled together in her chair, all set to charm the attendant who would deliver
her breakfast on a tray. No longer were visitors and communal dining permitted.
Covid was really cramping the style of my highly social aunt. She took up her
story again:
“I was a young
wife and mother in 1972 when the song went ‘viral,’ as they say now. I was also
one of the millions of women across much of the world who sang those words at
the top of our voices as we cooked and cleaned and changed diapers—and washed
them. Pampers didn’t existent back then. Because of that song about the
empowerment of women, our spirits swelled up and pushed out and cracked the
mold of our traditionally narrow and unequal roles, both in and out of
marriage. And then we set out to throw off those walls and forge new versions of
ourselves we never before thought possible.”
Her reference to
diapers set my mind to thinking about her children, Steve and Marci. They were
my favorite cousins. I hadn’t seen them since lockdown, either. Aunt Carol’s
voice broke in on my musings about my cousins when she said, “I remember like
it was yesterday how that song made me feel. It was as if I had undergone a
weird kind of surgery on my eyes that gave me new visual powers, like
Superman’s. I saw novel dimensions in myself of bravery and optimism, and even of
possibilities. I remember an expansive feeling in my chest. I drew in deeper
and fresher breaths that cleared my head like happens at the seashore.”
“That must have
had an impact on your marriage.”
“It emboldened
me to lobby for some changes that I felt sure would benefit both your Uncle Ted
and myself, and by extension, our marriage. Do you remember your Uncle Ted?”
“Only a little
bit. I was still a snot-nosed kid when you guys divorced.”
“While I had
lived all my life in Ohio and he in New York, at the perfect time, life had placed
us on the same road as fellow travelers and best partners on the journey ahead,
both as a couple and as individuals. We were very young. As my grandfather used
to say, ‘We were still wet behind our ears.’ Ted and I grew up together. We found
our footing together. Helen Reddy’s song showed up just in time to arm me
against dark forces that lurked in the background of the marriage. They were
signals that the road had run out for Ted and me as a couple.”
“That’s a polite
way of describing what he did to you.”
“Oh well, it
doesn’t hurt to be kind. I don’t want to prejudice the kids against him.
Besides, nothing good comes from holding on to resentment. I forgave Ted a long
time ago—as I hope I am forgiven by people whom I’ve wronged.”
“You are too
good for your own good, Aunt Carol. But that’s one of the things I love and
admire about you.”
“Well, thanks. I
love you right back, honey.”
“But do you
admire me?”
“Well, of course
I admire you. What makes you think otherwise? Do you have something to tell me,
Darlin’?”
“No! Nothing! It
was a silly, reflexive remark.”
“Are you sure? I
don’t need to remind you that you can tell me anything, do I?”
“No, Aunt Carol.
I’m good.”
“Don’t you ever
forget that I’m here for you. Do you want to hear the rest of my Helen Reddy
story?”
“When have you
known me to ever resist one of your stories? I’m all ears.”
“All right then.
As I was saying, the marriage was the critical, opening lap of my voyage. It was
my first grand exploration of new and exciting landscapes and people. It gave
me my children. And right or wrong, it was the standard against which I gauged my
feelings for subsequent significant others. But absent Helen Reddy’s formidable
help, I surely would not have discovered the separate me that lived within that
marriage, the one I needed to nurture in order to survive after Ted and I broke
up.”
“I know, Aunt
Carol. I’ve been along on all of it with you.”
“Yes! But, I’ve
been pretty close-mouthed about the difficulties I encountered in the years
after Ted. I wasn’t always proud of my responses, and I hid from you and your
mother. I look back on it now, though, and understand that all of it was
necessary to get to my true life. And thank goodness my Muse was at work
beneath all of it, even during long stretches of time I couldn’t or refused to
hear her. An example is what occurred during my relationship with that high-powered
attorney. He plopped me down in the middle of a bunch of brainy people whose
greatest pleasure in life was a kind of verbal volleyball in which they whacked
an intellectual ball back and forth to one another across an invisible net,
nonstop. I was the sacrificial lamb who got thrown to those lions, time and
time again. Chewed-up, but smartened-up as to the sickening extent of my
ignorance, I got my butt off to evening- and weekend-college. In no time at
all, though, I found out that I liked college a whole lot better than Mr.
High-Powered Attorney. My Muse giveth and she taketh away, and away she sent me
on a different fork in my road.”
“The experience
got you into college. That’s a good thing.”
“Yes. It also
gave me greater insight into the possibilities available to women. Some of
those lions I encountered with the attorney were women a generation or two younger
than me. All of them had gone off to college after high school rather than to
marriage. They were attorneys, accountants, and other types of professionals. Traditional
marriage remains a good and right option for some women, but not all of them. Helen
Reddy and her feminist sisters deserve much of the credit for that progress.”
“It never
occurred to me that I wouldn’t go to college after high school. It was the
natural transition.”
“The transition
never felt natural to me. I found it a constant struggle. A quick scan of my sorry
resumé read at that time: ‘lonely, divorced mother of grown children out on
their own; lonely, office worker; lonely, adult college student; lonely, social
dropout.’ And the emphasis was on ‘lonely’. It’s always such a vulnerable place
to be. I was still that little lamb and by then lost in the towering weeds thick
in the fringes of my highway. An eagle-eyed, business-guy on the hunt for just
someone like me, and at the wheel of his Mercedes Benz, spotted me, scooped me
up, and carted me off in his luxury ride to a fancy restaurant. Soon I was the eye-candy
on his arm in pricey nightclubs in shining cities populated by glamorous people
who indulged in some edgy behaviors, my guy included.”
“You’ve always
been a real beauty, Aunt Carol.”
“You too! It’s a
lucky attribute of our family. Beauty is one thing and eye-candy another.
Eye-candy doesn’t have any substance—it’s intellectually unchallenging. It’s
demeaning to someone with a brain.”
“I know you try
to avoid speaking his name out loud for fear of summoning his negative energy,
but I remember him really well.”
“Making an impression
was very important to him, thus his penchant toward eye-candy. And he was the
most hyper person I’ve ever known. He turned out to be the crazy-maker who kept
me so busy and frazzled that I never read a book or wrote a word during my time
with him.”
“Do you remember
the time you guys took me to Vegas?”
“It was one of
those weekend gambling junkets at Caesars Palace he dragged me to so often.”
“And when I was
there with you, he spent the whole time playing poker and you and I eating our
way through the place. Do you remember that big, buffet-style restaurant? I
thought I had died and gone to food heaven.”
“Take it from
me, it was the only heaven I ever experienced with him. I had turned into a
person whom the, ‘I am Woman, Hear me Roar,’ version of me no longer recognized.
I was buried beneath a heap of faux-glitter in an earthbound hell, and one
morning I woke up, packed up, and ran for my life. I drifted for another little
while, but then I saw that never was a moment of my time with the business-guy wasted,
because the unrelenting noise and chaos of him squared me emphatically toward
my north star.
“Several years
later of hard work and lots of self-refection, my old friend Jay turned me on
to technology. That was a real liberation. It was no coincidence that soon the
words of my first book blared in my mind’s ear like a voice in a bullhorn. So I
followed that voice—I knew I had to follow it, and I sat down and pecked out
the manuscript on my shiny, new computer, lickity-split.
“I had arrived
at the destination my Muse had set for me from the very beginning. She had conjured
my experiences, steered me through them, and all the while, made a writer out
of me. But I was no spring chicken anymore. I felt pressed for time. I had learned
very well that any outside obligation or interruption would break my stride. The
struggle for empowerment of women has been an up and down fight, and my
personal battle mirrors the collective one. You know as well as anyone that the
barriers are massive and stubborn. But if I’m honest about it, I can’t blame
those outside forces entirely for my twist and turn ride to owning my personal
journey. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve forgotten or dismissed Helen Reddy’s
mandate: ‘I am Woman, Hear me Roar,’ and have shriveled up and shut up whenever
it was expedient or safer to do so. But I can’t be in that race any longer. I’ve
had to slow my pace and work my own agenda. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I read
something like what I think you are saying in May Sarton’s ‘Journal of
Solitude.’ She wrote, ‘People want to become you and when they find they
cannot, they want to kill you.’”
“I would add
that the trick is to refrain from killing ourselves when we find we cannot be
all we set out to be, or when we haven’t found it in another person. Life has
made it crystal clear to me that I am my own right and enduring special someone.
I find tangible contentment in my life. And now comes the most astounding part:
When I go to sleep at night, I’m carried back in lifelike dreams to a romantic meet-up
with an intoxicating man! Apparently the two sectors of my brain have forged a
pact in which one of them comes out to play at night and the other goes to work
by day. And so, night and day, I have the best of both worlds. What more could
an old broad like me ask for? It’s a gift from the gods, and in no way am I
complaining about it.”
“You’ve earned it, Aunt Carol. You
deserve any happiness you can get. I want you to know that I hear you. You’re
turning it over to me—to us younguns!”
Aunt Carol proclaims this to be a Helen
Reddy story, but it’s so much more. In her typical fashion, my wise and caring aunt
put to use Helen Reddy and herself to tell me some things I needed to hear about
the direction I’m traveling on my own road to self-discovery.
Now…six months later, the sun still comes
and goes. Tender spring flowers peek through the ground. Worldwide, multiple-millions
of people are vaccinated every day. Both Aunt Carol and I have had our two
Pfizer shots. Come tomorrow, Daylight Saving Time returns, and I’ll be at Aunt
Carol’s door bright and early to bring her home with me, finally. I have a
bottle of champagne chilling and clocks we’ll turn forward.©
Image: Helen Reddy at the microphone
The
above is a work of fiction based on true events.
***
Multi-award-winning
author, Linda Lee Greene’s CRADLE OF THE SERPENT, a finalist in the cross-genre
category of the 2018 American Fiction Awards, is an in-depth account of the
marriage of archaeologists Lily and Jacob Light. One reviewer states: “5
Stars…Gritty, deep, emotionally packed relationship story to sink your teeth
into. No fluffy boy meets girl tale, but so much more. Thrilling setting and
backstory; suspense galore!”
Purchase Link to CRADLE OF THE SERPENT: goo.gl/i3UkAV
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