Could it be that forty six years has passed since the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy? Could it also be that so many do not remember that fateful day, or is it that so many more terrible things have happened since then, that the significance pales in comparison?

Often, I hear people ask, "What were you doing"? on some monumental or historical day. I was newly sixteen. In fact, I was sixteen years and nearly one month old. I was in love with a boy that I later married, but right then I was just a face in the crowd at Richard T Crane high school. I had transferred there from Farragut High after some personal trouble and my days and nights were filled with what I assumed to be "grown up" chatter and endless laughter. My crowd spent a lot of time looking down our noses at Freshmen and dreamily watching the Seniors who seemed "all the way" grown up and on their way to a bright life.

Motown songs were beginning to flood the radio. The Beatles were still in high gear, Elvis was very much alive and my favorite class was biology with Mr David Layman. Viet Nam was a place far away where a lot of our boys were being drafted to go and John, Jackie, Caroline and John-John made up the most beautiful family we had ever seen in the white house. At least that we knew of.

We were in P.E. and I was refusing to climb that rope or pole in the middle of the gym. Our teacher, Miss Pearson was giving me a lecture on something and then we hit the showers. I had once again gotten out of doing that rope thing, and the girls all thought of me as quite a character. I never told that I was simply afraid and my bravado was based on fear of that thing flying out from under me. What I did say, with much flippancy was that I thought high school was preparation for the future, and since my future included getting married, I highly doubted that my husband would be requesting that I climb a rope in the center of our living room.  "That mouth will get you a failing grade for the day, Missy" Miss Pearson said. "Do what you need to do" was always my answer.

When we left the gym, chattering and giggling, we were immediately taken into a strange atmosphere. The hallways that were usually teeming with kids and teachers and locker doors slamming, was practically silent. Some kids were standing in little groups. Girls were crying and I knew something had gone terribly wrong when I saw my homeroom teacher, Mrs Rasmussen, weeping in the arms of a male teacher.  In whispered tones, you could hear, "The president"......and when we found out that he had been shot, many people began weeping as well. I decided not to cry.

This was President John F Kennedy and Kennedys just do not die.

I mean, not the ones who could help it. I knew vaguely of a brother who was in the service and on a plane that crashed.....but current Kennedys remained alive, if for no other reason than not to upset Miss Rose, and besides...what would Jackie do without her husband? Had they not suffered enough by losing their baby right in front of the public eye? 

When I picked up my younger brother from the sitter I could see that she looked stricken but shooed us home, as if something terrible might happen to us in a block and a half. Once inside our apartment, I flipped on the television and there was the image that would remain in my mind for life.

I didnt for some reason, turn up the sound. I could see the parade -like atmosphere, and since we had a black and white television, I had no idea that Jackie's suit was pink, or that they were nearing the place that would remain infamous forever. I turned up the sound, to hear the news announcer giving that blow-by-blow descriptive and then I saw our president slump. I watched in horror as our pristine first lady climbed up on the back of the car, shouting something, but the "something" was already done.  The announcer did his job and told us that "The president is dead".

My mother called from work and asked if we were alright. My brother, six years my junior, played obliviously with his little army men, whiie something deep and awful stuck in my throat and refused to be swallowed. I have not forgotten the feeling, but it has been replaced many times over as life threw me curve balls at rapid speed. Some of those balls were thrown at everyone in the world, some were my own personal gut wrenchings, but they contained the same bile-producing thing that comes from somewhere, rests in your throat and stays awhile.

Since then, Kennedys have appeared in the news in various conditions. Some held places of honor, while others brought societal shame. Some died on their own, while others were carried from the ocean or lay on a platform, bereft of life with their causes soon forgotten.

Today, I prefer to remember and to honor that memory of a fallen president who helped to change the history of the United States, just as Lincoln did. Just as many others have and just as our current leaders will.

Miss Jackie in her digified dark glasses and veil, little lady Caroline and the poignant and haunting salute of little John-John are the stuff that keeps some of us going. I hope that someone, besides a few...will remember without prejudice and smile a little smile, remembering where you were on the Day of JFK.

In August of 2005, Lester Artis Silas took his final bow.

He was born on May 5 1945 and I did not meet him until I was fifteen going on sixteen. He was the brother of an older boy that I had a crush on and while I was away at Summer camp in Michigan ( we lived in Chicago) my mother wrote me that the one I had such a mad crush upon, had a younger brother. "More your age" she added and I felt as if something slightly sneaky and conspiratorial had happened while I was away, but I did not think much of it.

When I returned home, fresh from a month of archery and swimming and numerous games of capture the flag, I was almost two months away from my sixteenth birthday and alas! had no steady boyfriend. Now that was, at my age, a shame and a tragedy. I had sort of had a boyfriend at age fourteen, but my mother had put the kibash on that one, when armed with about twenty dollars, the police hauled us home, after we ran away in an attempt to be married! 

He was sixteen and I was a piano playing church girl, upset with my parents who had not taken into consideration that I might not want them to divorce, so I set out to teach them a thing or two. Anyway, meeting Lester, and only being allowed to "house date" which meant he could come by, bring records to put on my little record player, and have cookies, cake and lemonade or soda and we could dance in the living room and he could go home. My mother was not taking any chances on my falling in love again and running off into the sunset.

Little by little Mother began to trust Lester and allowed him to take me out of the house on real dates. We spent a lot of time at the movies, taking in all of the scariest pictures in the world. We loved walking and talking. Often we would buy milk shakes at a place on the Westside of Chicago called Hollands' Hamburgers.

I was too shy to eat in front of boys because I was not one of those ( so I call them) petite eaters. I was clean as a whistle. Wore the little Jackie Kennedy hat and gloves and Laura Petrie chemise dresses. Flats and stockings, bought with my own after-school job money, but I was not a neat eater. I imagined that a blob of mustard or a great gob of ketchup would find it's way onto my clothing or wrap itself around my mouth, and I would simply die of embarresment.

Remember that? Thinking you would DIE of embarresment, or (gasp!) if a boy did not call you. Unlike the young women of today, we girls would allow cobwebs to grow on a telephone before we dared be the first to call a boy. It was considered pushy and un-ladylike.

Anyway, Lester and I began to date in earnest, and pretty soon, he began issuing the ultimate proposition. As for me, I wanted things to go along the way they were. Hand holding and a little kiss at the door was enough for me. I was nowhere prepared for heavier responsibilities, but Mr Silas assured me that he was about to "die" from need. I caved in and was immediately pregnant.

My mother wanted to murder the entire Silas clan, but I miscarried, and life went on. Being a sneaky girl, and forbidden to see the new love of my life, ever again, I became pregnant yet again. My studies suffered and my mother hauled us off to Meridian Mississippi, so that her relatives could keep an eye on me.

The year was 1964. I got straight A's in high school. The first all-black school I had ever attended. The teens in Mississippi were far more advanced and had serious stuff like integration on their minds. I felt silly and spoiled but I took my lessons right back to Chicago with me when Mr Silas appeared the week after he graduated from high school to claim his bride. We had corresponded at first in secret and then openly, with the intention of getting married.

Mother folded and signed for me to get married. Lester and I lived for a while with his alcoholic father, while he worked odd jobs. We lived in his childhood bedroom, with it's pendants and sports awards. His mother had been long dead and I felt so special to be married at the age of seventeen.  It was not long after that I became pregnant, and we got our own place. Steven Lester Silas was born on June 26, 1966.

Our joy increased when we added a little brother for Steven, the very next year, but our apartment was crowded and we began snipping at each other. When we got a larger place, with better furniture and he got a better job, we had more money, but we were coming undone in some way. More children followed and with it, Lester began cheating. Along with his cheating came a new attitude. He began to tire of me. I was this little homebody with the squeaky voice and a life that was uninteresting to him. I still wrote poems, did my art work, and tried to seem interesting. Still, Lester took care of us financially but his heart was all over the place.

Lester began hitting me, then hitting became kicking and slamming against walls. I know there are lots of opinions about battered women, but things were different in those days. No shelters and condescending law enforcement.  It was in 1969 that I met someone who showed me the first love I had felt in a long time. In 1970 I gave birth to the child of this man. Lester begged to come home and take us away to another state so we could begin again. I almost went, but the father of the new baby asked if I was out of my mind. So, I stayed in Chicago. Lester was enraged and began barging in to my apartment at odd times, trying to "Catch" the culprit. He never did, and it was not until the child of that love affair died in 1972 at the age of two, that I told Lester who the father of the child was. By that time, he was with the woman he later married.

Over the years, we tried to remain friends, but we had much more turmoil and lefover love and betrayals and anger between us than I can share in this journal entry. Lester would come to visit the children and we would end up dancing in the living room, much to the delight of the children. He was the only man that I could dance with. The children would clap their hands and urge us to "do more" and we would put on our old records and for a small space of time, we were the young couple who had fallen in love so many years ago. Our middle son, Michael would spy on us as Lester left on those magical evenings, and say, "I saw that kiss at the door Mom, what was that about"?

Honestly, I didnt know what it was about. It was about a love that was buried beneath the desires of two people too young to be responsible. Too young to take the time to make a decent life with the other one. He would hold me close and tell me that he would always love me. I knew it and I knew that he knew I loved him as well, but we could not live together.

Over the years we had occasion to run across each other. Sometimes, we would sneak out and have a date. Just as friends.

In 2004, i called Lester to let him know that our Michael had contracted AIDS and I had no idea how long he would live. Lester, who never left Illinois except to come to Mississippi to get me for our wedding, made his way to Minnesota. When I saw the taxi pull up to my apartment building, my heart did a crazy flip flop like when I first saw him at the age of fifteen. The dark and beautiful skin, his signature gob hat, his beard now filled with gray and his slanted eyes, squinted against the sun. I  had cooked everything under the sun. All of his favorites. When he came in , it was clear that he had been drinking and some of the things that he said were slightly off color. Still, he was there for our son.

Sadly, an argument ensued and he and my son had to leave. I never saw him alive again. His new wife, Gloria called in '05 to tell me that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. Neither of our sons went to their dad's bedside.

When he died, on August 6 2005, I was on my sofa and I dreamed about him, but it was not like a dream. It was as if he was in the room and smiling at me. Right after the dream, I kid you not, I got the call that he had passed on. Every day after that, for about two months, his widow called me. Yep, she called me for comfort and though I gave it, I was feeling cheated. I complained to my friends that I was not a "real" widow. We had been divorced for a long time, so there would be no patting me on the back and wondering why I was dissolving into tears for no reason.

Just as abruptly as she began calling me, Gloria just up and stopped calling me one day. She changed her phone number and I lost touch. In 2007, when the second son of Lester and myself passed away, I felt alone, even in a room filled with people and the arms that stretched out to comfort me, could not fill the void I was feeling. I had lost a school friend of fifty years in August of 2007 and my only brother in 2004. I was tired of death and feeling more alone than ever.

The early part of this year, I got the news that I was entitled to a widow;s benefit. I had no idea that I was entitled to anything, but apparantly I am. I had been struggling without health insurance and dealing with a debilitating health issue. I now have health insurance, the widow's benefit and published my first book this past July. I took my first plane ride in June and my health has improved greatly. I am sitting near the 8x10 photo of Lester, myself and our first two sons. Just this evening, I was looking at this photo. The two who began so beautifully and ended so bitterly. Still, I wept. I wept for our wasted youth and silly expectations. Still, I believe that wherever he is, he is still trying to take care of me. I married once again, but that did not last. I suppose I was not marriage material and may never be again. Who knows?

Once, Lester asked me to forgive him for the things he did to me physically. I assured him that it was all in the past, and I was healed. I even facilitated a women's journal group and went back to school, so that I could be an advocate for battered women and children. The experience was not wasted.

My Lester. My husband. The lover of my youth, you can rest. I am going to be alright! 

Ms Zenobia Louise Silas-Carson

The Widow

Zenobia L Silas-Carson

I can remember when sixty two was OLD.  I mean, in our fourteen and fifteen year old minds, it was. Sometimes at church, we would have an older sister or brother stand up and testify and maybe once in a while, they would add the years they had been "running for the Lord".

Well, in your young mind, you can see someone doing something like a marathon race for the Lord. We didnt know where or why, but if they were over the age of thirty...they were OLD. Like our thirty or forty year old parents. Just OLD.

We often talked about how they smelled..these old folks. Like medicine and long johns..even in the Summer. If we went to visit someone in what was termed, "the old folks home" which to us meant a safe place to put your doddering old and smelly people...we would hold our breath and make faces behind the backs of the people who took us there.

Now, I didnt have any relatives in the old folks home. All of our old folks still lived in their own homes. Like my Great Grandmother Ada Mae and her daughter...my mother's mother..Miss Willie Mae Thomas..or as she was affectionately known, Grandma Willie.

Great Grandfather died when he was 112, Great Grandmother Ada Mae passed when she was 83 and our Grandma Willie Mae, just died at the age of 103, three years ago.  We never thought of THEM as old, because they were so vibrant and strong willed..right up to the end.

So, here I am. Mother of six ( two of my children are deceased) grandmother of thirteen and I am going on sixty two. October 26th will herald the fact that I have seen sixty two summers. Wow! 

Funny thing is, I do not think I smell bad. I exercise often, walk a lot, work part time and write stories and poetry. I love online games and chatter away ten to the dozen to my friends. My world is bigger than the world of my ancestors. Bigger, brighter, faster and of course, I am of the wonderful generation that was and remains curious about everything!  The survivor in us keeps us going and going, like that pink rabbit.

Working in a number of nursing homes forever erased the queasiness that I used to experience when I visited them as a child. I met people one to one and loved on and appreciated them, even when I was in my thirties and forties. Working among these wonderful people gives one a glimpse into the future of sorts. I have laughed at their jokes, held their hands, and grieved profusely at their passing.

When one truly grows up....beyond the calendar years, we begin to see things in a different light. In the light of inevitability. In the light of the "circle of life".

I am happy to where I am. There is a whole new world to explore at this Autumn part of life. Discoveries and adventures, and boy! am I ready!