By Letty Bassart

Ghosts, by Alexander Calder

I recently learned the tale of the Sankofa Bird.  The Sankofa is a mythic West African bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg in its mouth.

This complicated metaphor is quite different from my grandmother’s “para atras ni para coger impulso” or “Backwards not even to get an impulse.”   In recent years, she has started repeating it more frequently.  I giggle, as there are few women more loyal to the past than she.  My grandmother, a brave and stubborn adventurer, who wanted to be a schoolteacher but became a nurse, may sorely miss the earth when she arrives at the gates of heaven.

Of course, in dialogs of past versus present, past in present and present in future, the threaded hyphens always offer opportunities for edification.

Standing before Alexander Calder’s Ghost, deliberately installed in line with his father’s and grandfather’s sculptures, I recognize that this relationship is a tender one.  Standing inside the controversial Freedom Tower, I admit it is also powerful and intuitive.

The instants when something changes inside of us are definite, elusive, and often against our will.  This is as true of vocations, occupations, art making and rants as it is of relationships.

In third grade, I wanted nothing more than to play Betsy Ross in the school play.  I loved that Betsy was an expert seamstress.  To me, she was my grandmother.