Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1950’s, in a middle-class, creative Jewish family, and with both parents working , I was mostly raised by Lily Pearl, a warm and nurturing black woman who I loved and trusted with all my little girl heart.
I hugged her so much, I still remember how she smelled! A magnolia-scented sort of sweat, the oil of fried chicken and the sweetness of Gold Medal flour, which seemed to be all over our kitchen all the time.
Lily could cook! Oh my yes.
When I was quite young, she’d bathe me.
She’d make our small family-of -four bathroom fragrant with whatever bubbles she chose for my tub, close the door so my bother Richard didn’t peek in and see his naked little sister, and Lily and I would share a wonderful ,caring time. So strange how that memory is so strong with me. I loved her so very much, and I knew she loved me too. Love simply poured out of that dear woman. I was thirsty for every drop.
Anyway, starting at the top of my head, she’d pour warm water over me and begin to soap me down, beginning with her usual chant: “I can wash down as far as possible (as she poured more water on me,)
And i can wash up as far as possible, (my feet would be baptized)
(I’d be giggling by this time)
But YOU gotta wash POSSIBLE! (referring to my hairless groin)
And we both would laugh and laugh, as she gently sent all my youthful Georgia soil down the drain.
I was never exactly told what POSSIBLE referred to, but somehow, with her kindly judicious finger pointing, I knew that that part of my body was for me and for me alone to deal with. That same chant every single bath. Now, seven decades later, I remember it still …with love. It’s one of my few vivid childhood memories….me and Lily Pearl….and my POSSIBLE!
There are many stories i could tell about me and Lily Pearly, some of which i have written down in my many journals, but this story of her judicious treatment of me as a young female creature? Well, let’s just say, I can never hear the word “possible” without thinking of Lily.
Our lives are built, moment by moment, on what is and could be possible.
Possibility therefore has infinite meaning, because each person is unique in that moment to moment way that lives are lived. POSSIBLE of course means sex and pleasure, children (which i’ve never had) and fun (which I’ve had probably too much of), as well as pain, power and illness…POSSIBLE…well, honestly, anything is POSSIBLE…POSSIBLE is anything.
It pleases me to think that the place where all humans come from is a place of absolute possibility, and that that place belongs to women….and young girls.
POSSIBLE for me is my dear Lily Pearl. Alive in my memory. Sweet and sweaty.
Long may she wash!