April 1, 1995

I awake in excited anticipation. Today is the day when I am to meet

her …..  NINA MICHELLE …. the daughter of my close friends. When dawn’s light has not yet circled to Los Angeles, Daniel and Sasha and I are bumping into each other with half opened eyes and toothbrushes sticking out of our respective mouths.

Up the California coast, into daylight, into green-hued mountains majesty, closer and closer to the City By The Bay.

I had seen two video tapes of Nina Michelle while I was staying with Daniel and Sasha.

One was a silly and playful video that Nina created for her parents. That video alerted me to the person: ….. to the comic, to the heart, to the unaffected poise, to the generosity, to the bubbly girlishness ….. and caused me to fall fatally in love with her.

She reminds me of her mother and she reminds me of some of the women I have loved most in all my life. Women who for reasons neither logical nor sound, are completely unaware of the breadth of their talents, gifts, beauty and the impact they have on the lives of those they touch.

The second video was Nina’s ice-skating performance in Boston with the blood-red scarf that introduced me to Nina’s lyric beauty and the gift from GOD that she has honed over her young life.  I am enthralled by skating, and so to see her perform this piece of emotional intensity, drew me with magnetic force to the consummate artist in her.

So, when we arrive in San Francisco and ascend the stairs to the place where she lives with her husband, Jon, I am nervous. Just like a star-struck groupie, just like some goofy school girl .… I keep hoping that she’ll like me. Sasha is so excited to introduce me to her daughter that I’m actually honored with the first hug and kiss.

Everything in Nina and Jon’s love-nest is as I had remembered it from the video. Einstein, the monster-sized cat is here. And the hand-made duvet cover. The glass shelving Jon has crafted. The poster art creatively placed on walls adjacent to the peaks and arches of an attic apartment. I feel as though I could be visiting my own daughter’s apartment, if I had a daughter. It is so like the me of my youth.

A surprise element catches my eager eye. On a scrolled iron table in their bedroom stands a glass container filled with my beloved irises. She couldn’t possibly have known their significance to me. But there they are …. those deep and majestic purple blooms accented with sun-yellow markings. Days later, as we are leaving, after our bond is firm, I mention how struck I am that in her home, near her bed, are the flowers that represent my life and work. (Irises are the flowers that represent THE MENTAL HEALTH NATIONAL ORGANIZATION.)

In less than a red-hot-New-York-minute, she is pulling out two blooms for me. I carry them like sacred gold from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and though they are wilting, dry and drooping, I put them in water and savor the gift she was happier than happy to share with me.

                                                                        * * * * *

Ah, but I digress. Jump back to first hugs on Sasha’s wooden deck.

Barely an hour has passed when we are off to a meeting at KAIROS, an organization housed in the home of Father John, a Catholic priest, who eight years ago, formed this organization to help the caretakers and those who are HIV positive or AIDS patients.

                                    Nina Michelle is HIV positive.

                                    And she is to be the featured speaker this night.

Ascending the stairs to Father John’s home, I know that I am about to enter a magical space because of the chipped orange paint on the ancient stairs that reveals a layer of violet. Art, aesthetics and loveliness are about to greet my hungry heart …. and I sense it.

Perhaps there is nothing so gracious as a renovated Frisco home overlooking the Pacific.

Inside: A bassoon player from the San Francisco Orchestra is accompanied by a pianist in one of the high-aesthetic rooms. I have never ever heard that instrument so soulfully carry a melody. Steve gives the deep, resonant-pitched woodwind a lofty life and allows my spirit to soar up and out of illness, loss and grief into the stratosphere of beauty, love and creation.

For truly, that is what KAIROS is about. Death and loss, certainly. But as imposingly and inspiringly, KAIROS is about life and pleasure in the moment given. It is about friendship, dependence and independence, sharing, caring and living life with new-found appreciation and deeper courage than one could imagine possible.

KAIROS is about reaching up and reaching out. It is about support given in an atmosphere that soothes all senses into serenity. Thank GOD for Father John and for all the Father John’s globally who eloquently deal with this Earth malady with both reverence and humility. I feel privileged to be a part of this cross-section of humanity who cares about the people and the people who love the people who are HIV positive or AIDS patients.

Nina is introduced and takes the microphone.

I stand in a position so that I can watch the faces of those watching the four minute video performance that Nina has brought. It is she, this silken skater, who tells her story through movement on ice with an eight-foot-long red silk scarf that represents her tainted blood. She glides to a section of the score from SCHINDLER’S LIST and silently speaks of what it is like to contract and live with the virus that leads to AIDS.

I see in this cross-section of countenances the whole history of a disease. I see grief, amazement, joy, respect, compassion, loss, understanding and pathos, pathos, pathos.

It is as though this striking young woman, in four brief minutes, has captured all they have ever heard or felt about AIDS. She is their spokesperson, their wordless poem, their lament and sorrow, their ultimate acceptance.

Because I have always poured my pain onto paper, I feel grateful that Nina is able to pour hers onto frozen water and touch lives, bend hearts, change perspectives, give insight, hope, and ultimately, inevitably  ….  give love.

Seldom have so few minutes communicated so much. I believe that as poignantly as anything that has ever been communicated about this disease, Nina has skated its total truth with such universality and artistry that the performance will likely take its deserved place in history as a testament to a late 20^th Century plague.

                          After the video performance, Nina speaks.

Her words are direct, honest, and fresh. Nothing mannered. Nothing forced. She is so naturally adorable that even when speaking about AIDS her humorous clarity comes dancing through. She speaks of hating the disease, of dreading that it will likely rob her of her ability to do what she loves most. But she also says that “unexpectedly good things have evolved from having to face and live with being HIV positive.”

Wisdom sifting through her youth  …. because always does our LORD provide a counterpoint for tragedy.

Sasha and Daniel and Jon  ….  mother, father, husband  ….  are throughout, studies in composure and grace-under-fire. Their faces struggle with emotion, but their dignity and love for her overcome what might be maudlin display. I am so proud of them: my “family,” my friends, my surrogate children  ….  the people who have unwittingly stolen my heart.

At night’s end, as we are leaving, I mention …. hoping not to appear greedy …. that I would love a copy of the performance video. Without pause, Nina hands me her copy.

                                                    I thought I’d faint.

 I felt like an Elvis fan

who had just nabbed a rhinestone stud from

    one of his gaudy jackets.

    I was wowed.

    I remain wowed.

    I adore her.

                                                           * * * * *

                                           August 20, 2024

It was while perusing things I’ve written over the past sixty-four years

that I came upon this piece about Nina Michelle. I’m tossing it on my website in the hope that some of you might read it.

I want to add a few words about Nina Michelle, now that thirty some years have flown into space.

For years there was no delusionary hopefulness in her. There was hope. But there were no promises. She learned to live with the vast open-ended-questions-without-answers that marked her future. She was a study in truth and hard-edged reality. The marvel was that it did not create a morose or dank presence in her. Instead, she was luminous and shined the way all truth without deception or pretense shines. She was a devoted child of the King of Kings …. and it showed.

The skater: I was a dancer for years and so gorgeous movement, be it a skater or ballerina, a man sliding into home plate, a jockey on a speeding horse, the glide of a runway model, the walk of a decked-out dude ….  moves me. Makes my insides smile. Creates a lingering photo in my mind’s eye. Sometimes brings tears.

Nina always brought me to deep emotion. She moves like a make-believe vision of perfected grace. Those arms. Those hands. Those long and perfectly shaped legs that spin and jump and twirl and take her on backwards rides. And sometimes just one of those legs holds her entire body arched and angled while she glides the glide of a living angel.

She just has it …. that Peggy Flemming style and fluid, liquid grace that speak ballerina more than athlete. Of course, her body houses an athlete, it must. But as an extra present for viewers, an elegant swan resides in her.    

And now, she is well. She lives a productive and creative life. She teaches advanced skating to skaters who are future Olympians. She has children.

The reason I was in California for six weeks in 1995 was for a book tour for my first book, AWAKENINGS, A Jewish Woman’s Search For Truth.  Sasha, Daniel, Nina and Jon were an additional treat that frosted the arduous but fulfilling work of touring. It was a monumental series of

Days ….

              Emotions  ….

                                       Encounters  ….

                                                                                    Experiences.

I was saturated and never really the same.

I’m glad I was never really the same.

AMEN.

Believe me, I realize how sort of sad and absurd it is to call a cat your best friend. I wish I were kidding.

Lots of things happen to a life when the person wearing that life geographically moves time and time again …. when moving is almost as easy as deciding to wear blue sneakers that day.

My life has often been overflowing like a cornucopia with friends and acquaintances and travel buddies and prayer partners and the surprise people who show up and stick like velcro for life.

So to find myself at this stage of life with only the teeniest amount of people surrounding me, comes as an unfamiliar state of being. But I’m strong and independent, mentally sound and resourceful, so the days turn into decades and life is what I make of it.

Max and I feel like siblings; our personalities have meshed. He is quiet and soulful. He likes to stare out windows and circle into a fetus shape while he naps. He loves everyone who walks in the door and assumes everyone loves him. He has a regal bearing. (I do not have a regal bearing.) Eating is his favorite activity, mine too. (That’s a hard one to admit.) He follows me everywhere I go. He is conspicuously sad when I leave. He is attentive when I return.

He likes Motown and if he is resting when the music comes on, he will get up and move around in his unique rendition of dancing. He prefers my iced tea to his water. If possible, he will place himself near my tea and stick his paw in the tea, retract it, and lick the tea off. He would do this all day if I allowed it. I find this so utterly adorable that I do watch him for a while before reclaiming the tea. Being the inbred gentleman that he is, he never sulks when I take “our” drink from him.

He adores catnip, obviously. He adores tuna and salmon. And chicken and turkey and soup. When he is hungry because I have missed his feeding by 15 minutes, he will just stand like a military statue at my feet until I get up. No hysterical behavior, no begging, no scratching, His patience and lack of nagging touch me to my core. He COULD be a brat, he just isn’t.

Max is stoic. He is gentle and meek. He truly cares if I’m crying; he acts as though he is almost panicky. So I stop crying at the earliest possible second that I can. Once he presented himself to a friend of mine who was on a different floor of my house and nudged and whimpered until she followed him upstairs.

He thought I was in medical trouble. I was napping. I’ve owned other cats; none has ever cared THAT much. He breaks my heart with his love.

Gorgeous doesn’t begin to capture his beauty. I am captivated and spend long periods in thought as I stare at him. His staggering looks kiss my eyes. If he were a real dude, I would propose. He’s everything I long for in a man.

Psychiatric and psychological therapy have been in my life, on and off, since I was 15 years old. In that adolescent year, the heft of the world fell on my head and I couldn’t find Toni Brown anywhere. She went MIA. She left. She became invisible and non-existent. This is called mental illness in the form of severe neuro-chemical depression.

This pain-saturated condition appears, stays for a pretty long time (six months to a year and a half) and then re-appears in about eighteen to twenty four months. (At least, that was my pattern.) During depression’s appearance, the person with this disorder usually sees a psychiatrist who prescribes psychotropic drugs. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. It’s pretty much a crap shoot and one tries lots and lots of drugs until the right combination shows up: waning depression descends and there is less of a desire to just run away to another galaxy. 

I can’t possibly remember how many drugs I tried until the right one worked. It took many years and more patience than imaginable. Many times I had to stay with my parents as a woman in her thirties because I wouldn’t eat or dress or water the plants or take care of myself. I didn’t have the physical strength or the slightest interest. They were deeply involved for the whole two and a half decades. It’s a BIG STORY and it’s in the book GABRIEL AND ESTHER.

Usually, the person with this disorder also sees a psych therapist or a professional with Masters in Social Work, because these people too are trained therapists. Therapy is an invaluable tool. It is why I am so introspective and thoughtful about my behavior. It has taught me to think with a depth of perception that I never would have reached without it. It’s about as hard to find the right therapist as it is to find the right drugs. There are a gazillion therapists

practicing their profession and so, it too, is a bit of a crap shoot. I pray to be led to the just-right therapist and often I am. Sometimes I have to have a few sessions with more than one therapist. I have lived in MANY places and that is why I have had to search for the just-right therapist. But it is oh so worth the search. It has saved my life as easily as any drug. I still see a therapist, although I have not been clinically depressed since the late 1980’s. Sometimes I need a tune up.

The terrible, awful and completely unnecessary human behavior that still, at this point in the twenty first century, lingers to haunt and stunt is the prejudice about mental illness. This disease might as well be heart disease or diabetes. It’s simply another human disease in the pantheon of diseases. So many lives could be saved or at  minimum, not have to stand the ridicule of people who are ignorant about mental illness. When I was very ill, I know my parents were quiet about what I and they were going through. It just wasn’t talked about much at all in the 60’s and 70’s. I personally didn’t care about the damaging gossip; I was too sick to care. My daily job was to not kill myself.

In order for this to be an “acceptable” disease, the chatter has to change to “WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP? GIVE ME SOME GUIDANCE. A PAMPHLET. A SUMMARY. SOMETHING!  And know this for certain: IT IS NOT THE PERSON’S FAULT. And know this too: Depression is just one diagnosis. There are many: Bipolar. Schizophrenia. Borderline Personality Disorder. Panic Disorder. Agoraphobia. And the beat goes on.

Please let’s get this straight. The disease itself is enough to deal with. Mocking, bullying, imitating, looking at people as though what they have is contagious ….. helps no one. Please be kind. We need it so badly.