If someone had told me I would climb the emotional and spiritual equivalent of Mount Everest to reach the place where I am today as a writer and a mother, I probably would have balked like a blind horse. Yet Tillie's writing was part of the rope that kept me tethered to sanity and strength. My copy of Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother is stained, drawn on by children, the edges brown and dogeared, the cover wrinkled and torn. It has, for many years, been a heart's guidebook; like a guidebook taken on a lifelong journey, it shows its age and use.
So this is a word of love and farewell to Tillie Olsen, a farewell full of gratitude for a life generously and abundantly lived. I'd like to finish by quoting the very last bit of a story she published in her daybook about the passing of her own mother, entitled Dream-Vision:
She who had no worldly goods to leave, yet left to me an inexhaustible legacy. Inherent in it, this heritage of summoning resources to make — out of song, food, warmth, expressions of human love — courage, hope, resistance, belief; this vision of universality, before the lessenings, harms, divisions of the world are visited upon it.
She sheltered and carried that belief, that wisdom — as she sheltered and carried us, and others — throughout a lifetime lived in a world whose season was, as still it is, a time of winter.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
... and a lovely tribute that I really enjoyed reading.
2 - Ms. Strega
Thank you so much, Natalie. I truly appreciate it.
3 - Bliffle
Excellent article!
4 - Lynn Rasmussen
I blogged about Tillie Olsen today and then discovered this lovely article. We are not alone. Thank you!