80 IF

George Harrison, an Italian interview, and a nightmare

George Harrison would have turned 80 years old as of February 25th (though sometimes he said it was the 24th, in his teasing way, telling people they’d missed it). The same age as my characters Agnes and Polly in Fellowship Point. I have had a lot of contact with eighty-year olds this year who have found those old women a place of pride in their age and vitality. I didn’t expect that response. They were characters as far as I was concerned, with as many mathematical properties as human ones. Yet what I wanted for them and loved about them, their not going gentle, their belief in the phrase that Agnes ironically repeats it ain’t over til it’s over, their being in the thick of life, was received as an infrequent validation by many. This week I did a Zoom interview with NNEditorre, my Italian publisher, in conversation with Donatello Di Pertrantonio. Her novels are rigorous and gritty, yet she asked me how I had the bravery to write about old women as protagonists. I have been asked that before, and the answer is that I love old women, I didn’t think about the fact that they aren’t generally seen as exciting protagonists until I was too deep in the book to turn back, and that Agnes and Polly came to me and asked to be written about.

What would George be like as an 80 year old? I could imagine it by writing a fan fic about him. I said a couple of letters ago that when I was a tween I wrote fan fics about being George’s sister. It began as solace for me, but turned out to be a big job. In my writing, George felt under the thumb of Paul McCartney and needed a lot of bucking up and ego boosting. This was a role I knew well, having had a complicated father and a grandfather that I ministered to as best as I could. But George, though very busy, still cared about me! One fall I found a book in the local library listing all the boarding schools in the country and I wrote away to them for applications. I spent many afternoons on my top bunk bed carefully filling them out as if George was applying for me. He had to write descriptions of what I was like. He was fair, and described my flaws with hope for improvement. He thought about me and wanted the best for me. My imaginary friend.

I never screamed or wept over the Beatles. I considered those behaviors unserious, and I was serious. I think the kind of heartstruck fandom I felt was something the obverse of a phobia, but developed in the same way. There are moments when incursions are possible. When we have lost contact with our mothers. Not our real mothers. The mothers who formed and grew us in a watery, dark place. Phobias and manias find a way in when we have no sense of being cared for, when we feel bereft and helpless. We may feel that so powerfully and painfully that we aren’t even aware of it until the distraction takes hold. Then we have a phobia or a Beatle to think about instead of the abyss. Or that’s how I think it happens. I came to that conclusion during COVID, when I was determined to get rid of a phobia that has severely interfered with my choices all my life.

I did pretty well with it and have found much relief. But I had a nightmare the other night, the first one after a long series of very happy dreams where friends came back, relationships were flourishing, the days were warm. It was the scariest dream I ever had and I could hear myself screaming but couldn’t wake up until Mr. Dark helped me come out of it. The dream was easy to interpret in the light of day, but has been difficult to shake. I had entered into the deepest chamber of horror and desolation. It was the place I would have done anything to avoid. Past tense. That was the upshot. I can look straight at it now. I might scream but I’m not going to seek a distraction. Bring on the abyss! Bring on existential lonesomeness of the first degree! I see you and I raise you another day of life.

I’m not going to write a fan fiction about George at 80. I have no idea what he’d be like. I never knew him beyond the boundaries of how I could think and feel growing up. Yet I daresay the thought of him was a scaffold where I built my own sense of being likable, with room for improvement. I’m still a work in progress and hope at eighty I am as vibrant as Agnes and Polly. The fan in me wishes George were, too. But I am consoled now by his words—all things must pass. That’s the truth.