April 1, 1995
I awake in excited anticipation. Today is the day when I am to meet
her ….. NINA MICHELLE …. the daughter of my close friends. When dawn’s light has not yet circled to Los Angeles, Daniel and Sasha and I are bumping into each other with half opened eyes and toothbrushes sticking out of our respective mouths.
Up the California coast, into daylight, into green-hued mountains majesty, closer and closer to the City By The Bay.
I had seen two video tapes of Nina Michelle while I was staying with Daniel and Sasha.
One was a silly and playful video that Nina created for her parents. That video alerted me to the person: ….. to the comic, to the heart, to the unaffected poise, to the generosity, to the bubbly girlishness ….. and caused me to fall fatally in love with her.
She reminds me of her mother and she reminds me of some of the women I have loved most in all my life. Women who for reasons neither logical nor sound, are completely unaware of the breadth of their talents, gifts, beauty and the impact they have on the lives of those they touch.
The second video was Nina’s ice-skating performance in Boston with the blood-red scarf that introduced me to Nina’s lyric beauty and the gift from GOD that she has honed over her young life. I am enthralled by skating, and so to see her perform this piece of emotional intensity, drew me with magnetic force to the consummate artist in her.
So, when we arrive in San Francisco and ascend the stairs to the place where she lives with her husband, Jon, I am nervous. Just like a star-struck groupie, just like some goofy school girl .… I keep hoping that she’ll like me. Sasha is so excited to introduce me to her daughter that I’m actually honored with the first hug and kiss.
Everything in Nina and Jon’s love-nest is as I had remembered it from the video. Einstein, the monster-sized cat is here. And the hand-made duvet cover. The glass shelving Jon has crafted. The poster art creatively placed on walls adjacent to the peaks and arches of an attic apartment. I feel as though I could be visiting my own daughter’s apartment, if I had a daughter. It is so like the me of my youth.
A surprise element catches my eager eye. On a scrolled iron table in their bedroom stands a glass container filled with my beloved irises. She couldn’t possibly have known their significance to me. But there they are …. those deep and majestic purple blooms accented with sun-yellow markings. Days later, as we are leaving, after our bond is firm, I mention how struck I am that in her home, near her bed, are the flowers that represent my life and work. (Irises are the flowers that represent THE MENTAL HEALTH NATIONAL ORGANIZATION.)
In less than a red-hot-New-York-minute, she is pulling out two blooms for me. I carry them like sacred gold from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and though they are wilting, dry and drooping, I put them in water and savor the gift she was happier than happy to share with me.
* * * * *
Ah, but I digress. Jump back to first hugs on Sasha’s wooden deck.
Barely an hour has passed when we are off to a meeting at KAIROS, an organization housed in the home of Father John, a Catholic priest, who eight years ago, formed this organization to help the caretakers and those who are HIV positive or AIDS patients.
Nina Michelle is HIV positive.
And she is to be the featured speaker this night.
Ascending the stairs to Father John’s home, I know that I am about to enter a magical space because of the chipped orange paint on the ancient stairs that reveals a layer of violet. Art, aesthetics and loveliness are about to greet my hungry heart …. and I sense it.
Perhaps there is nothing so gracious as a renovated Frisco home overlooking the Pacific.
Inside: A bassoon player from the San Francisco Orchestra is accompanied by a pianist in one of the high-aesthetic rooms. I have never ever heard that instrument so soulfully carry a melody. Steve gives the deep, resonant-pitched woodwind a lofty life and allows my spirit to soar up and out of illness, loss and grief into the stratosphere of beauty, love and creation.
For truly, that is what KAIROS is about. Death and loss, certainly. But as imposingly and inspiringly, KAIROS is about life and pleasure in the moment given. It is about friendship, dependence and independence, sharing, caring and living life with new-found appreciation and deeper courage than one could imagine possible.
KAIROS is about reaching up and reaching out. It is about support given in an atmosphere that soothes all senses into serenity. Thank GOD for Father John and for all the Father John’s globally who eloquently deal with this Earth malady with both reverence and humility. I feel privileged to be a part of this cross-section of humanity who cares about the people and the people who love the people who are HIV positive or AIDS patients.
Nina is introduced and takes the microphone.
I stand in a position so that I can watch the faces of those watching the four minute video performance that Nina has brought. It is she, this silken skater, who tells her story through movement on ice with an eight-foot-long red silk scarf that represents her tainted blood. She glides to a section of the score from SCHINDLER’S LIST and silently speaks of what it is like to contract and live with the virus that leads to AIDS.
I see in this cross-section of countenances the whole history of a disease. I see grief, amazement, joy, respect, compassion, loss, understanding and pathos, pathos, pathos.
It is as though this striking young woman, in four brief minutes, has captured all they have ever heard or felt about AIDS. She is their spokesperson, their wordless poem, their lament and sorrow, their ultimate acceptance.
Because I have always poured my pain onto paper, I feel grateful that Nina is able to pour hers onto frozen water and touch lives, bend hearts, change perspectives, give insight, hope, and ultimately, inevitably …. give love.
Seldom have so few minutes communicated so much. I believe that as poignantly as anything that has ever been communicated about this disease, Nina has skated its total truth with such universality and artistry that the performance will likely take its deserved place in history as a testament to a late 20th Century plague.
After the video performance, Nina speaks.
Her words are direct, honest, and fresh. Nothing mannered. Nothing forced. She is so naturally adorable that even when speaking about AIDS her humorous clarity comes dancing through. She speaks of hating the disease, of dreading that it will likely rob her of her ability to do what she loves most. But she also says that “unexpectedly good things have evolved from having to face and live with being HIV positive.”
Wisdom sifting through her youth …. because always does our LORD provide a counterpoint for tragedy.
Sasha and Daniel and Jon …. mother, father, husband …. are throughout, studies in composure and grace-under-fire. Their faces struggle with emotion, but their dignity and love for her overcome what might be maudlin display. I am so proud of them: my “family,” my friends, my surrogate children …. the people who have unwittingly stolen my heart.
At night’s end, as we are leaving, I mention …. hoping not to appear greedy …. that I would love a copy of the performance video. Without pause, Nina hands me her copy.
I thought I’d faint.
I felt like an Elvis fan
who had just nabbed a rhinestone stud from
one of his gaudy jackets.
I was wowed.
I remain wowed.
I adore her.
* * * * *
August 20, 2024
It was while perusing things I’ve written over the past sixty-four years
that I came upon this piece about Nina Michelle. I’m tossing it on my website in the hope that some of you might read it.
I want to add a few words about Nina Michelle, now that thirty some years have flown into space.
For years there was no delusionary hopefulness in her. There was hope. But there were no promises. She learned to live with the vast open-ended-questions-without-answers that marked her future. She was a study in truth and hard-edged reality. The marvel was that it did not create a morose or dank presence in her. Instead, she was luminous and shined the way all truth without deception or pretense shines. She was a devoted child of the King of Kings …. and it showed.
The skater: I was a dancer for years and so gorgeous movement, be it a skater or ballerina, a man sliding into home plate, a jockey on a speeding horse, the glide of a runway model, the walk of a decked-out dude …. moves me. Makes my insides smile. Creates a lingering photo in my mind’s eye. Sometimes brings tears.
Nina always brought me to deep emotion. She moves like a make-believe vision of perfected grace. Those arms. Those hands. Those long and perfectly shaped legs that spin and jump and twirl and take her on backwards rides. And sometimes just one of those legs holds her entire body arched and angled while she glides the glide of a living angel.
She just has it …. that Peggy Flemming style and fluid, liquid grace that speak ballerina more than athlete. Of course, her body houses an athlete, it must. But as an extra present for viewers, an elegant swan resides in her.
And now, she is well. She lives a productive and creative life. She teaches advanced skating to skaters who are future Olympians. She has children.
The reason I was in California for six weeks in 1995 was for a book tour for my first book, AWAKENINGS, A Jewish Woman’s Search For Truth. Sasha, Daniel, Nina and Jon were an additional treat that frosted the arduous but fulfilling work of touring. It was a monumental series of
Days ….
Emotions ….
Encounters ….
Experiences.
I was saturated and never really the same.
I’m glad I was never really the same.
AMEN.