So much of life is centered around food, to the extent that all things—from holidays to simple breakfasts to gathering to discuss and celebrate the lives of those lost to us—revolve around a table. It is not just the sharing of a meal, but offering of ourselves.
This past Friday, D. and I were invited to a dinner party in memorial of an individual dead 10 years, yet still alive in myth and truth in the heart of our friend Ross, a person of many names, but who for simplicity’s sake we shall call Babette.
Attended by friends of Babette, who Ross lived with for a time upon moving to Portland, friends of Ross’s who knew Babette, and people like myself who never met the woman but have read and encouraged Ross in his endeavors to write about her and his life as her tenant and eventual caregiver, the party was both formal and informal. We ate on fine china and drank from crystal goblets, surrounded by the artifacts of her life that decorate Ross’s house. We asked questions about her, bothered Ross to write more and share it, and later viewed slides of the woman, once a man, as a child in France, a young man in Oregon, and in drag in various locations from cheap motels to Cannon Beach. Jokes were made and observations given. The plastic urn that once contained half of her ashes served as a vase and centerpiece.
A commercial fisherman in the summer, Ross served Alaskan salmon and rockfish, with sides of peeled roast potatoes, salad, and fruit. Another friend brought rice dishes.
The fish, while excellent, could not compete with the conversation. From reading Ross’s writing, I am not certain I regret missing the life of Babette. A friend of Ross’s from high school called her ‘awful.’ Another woman who knew her as a professor and met Ross through circumstance long after her death, deemed her ‘fantastic.’ Everyone who knew Ross when he was living with Babette remarked that she hated all of his female friends. Ross himself confirms this.
The friend who called her ‘awful’ also said she influenced Ross, changed him and convinced him to grow in ways he may not have otherwise. This got me thinking—Ross and I met as adults, our friendship beginning professionally through American Gun Culture Report, an independent magazine which he published and I wrote for and eventually co-edited. Meeting someone as an adult changes the playing field, so to speak. Life goes on, and we age with it, and are only who and what we are presented as at any given moment.
Ross met Babette when she was a senior citizen, and after the sex change which turned her from male to female. Thus, his perception of her was different than her children’s, her former lovers’, or the woman who was her adopted mother. His friend, who knew Babette and observed her influence on Ross’s human trajectory, most likely sees inner parts of his self now invisible to others. I, who never met Babette, must have a completely separate image of her in my mind, as who she is to me is only what I know of other people’s observations, and a friend’s memoirs.
I met my husband when we were both in high school, and although it took several years for us to even like each other, we see one another through a longer lens.
What parts of ourselves are buried as days and hours pass? How do we affect our own change? Sometimes I am grateful to meet people without the burden of past judgements, and other times I wish I could resurface some of my younger attributes. If I had met Ross as a teenager with dyed purple hair and taped breasts, would we be the friends we are today? If I had met my husband when we started dating, at ages 23 and 25, would we have been attracted to each other with as much intensity?
In the end, none of it matters. Reality reigns. Viewing slides of a fascinating person I will never meet, who walked the streets dressed as a woman long before opting for permanent surgery, it is impossible not to wonder how it must of felt to be seen as that which she presented, but perhaps not who she truly was, and it is equally impossible not to conclude that ultimately all perception is superficial and eventually inconsequential. Inside all of us there are mirrors of our former selves swimming beneath the surface, and when we are gone those images will only be further refracted as we become merely memories of who we were to the living.
To learn more about Babette, see more photos of last week’s dinner party in her honor, and read the eulogy written and orated by Ross before our meal, check out his blog: Babette—The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth at http://rosseliot.wordpress.com/.
