The Transmigration of Stephanie Sinclaire Lightsmith

© Mandi Lynn

On April 14, 2021, my friend Stephanie died unexpectedly at Seatoun Beach. She was 67.

If I could begin to be

Half of what you think of me

I could do about anything

I could even learn how to love

When I see the way you act

Wondering when I’m coming back

I could do about anything

I could even learn how to love like you

Love like you

Love me like you

—From “Love Like You,” Steven Universe

I remember exactly where I was when I met Stephanie. One of the holistic health practitioners at our yoga studio had invited us to a party. You may not know this about me, but I am not the biggest party person. In this case, however, I was willing to hold my introversion/ neurodivergence/misanthropy somewhat more lightly for one February evening in Seatoun. This coastal Wellington neighborhood had held a special allure ever since we first rode down Marine Parade in a van named Gollum on a Lord of the Rings tour of the city and its environs.

The occasion was the arrival of Katey’s mother. She was in from London, where for years she had been part of the film and theater scene, running the iconic Kings Head pub theater. We found each other immediately, retired to a sofa, and shared our journeys as immigrants, entrepreneurs, artists. We talked for hours, about everything, stopping only to watch the orca in the harbor. It was an auspicious beginning.

Four months later, as the Fates and real estate situation of Wellington would have it, we ended up moving into the cottage next door to Katey and her family. In the meantime, Stephanie had returned to London to tie up some loose ends so she could return for the birth of her granddaughter later that year. It’s when she got back that we started an intermittent series of what we called “artist’s dates,” after Julia Cameron’s concept for sparking creativity. Our version was simple, a conversation, really, that ran for 10 years.

Some sessions we planned, but more often than not we met by chance. They were regular but never routine. More than anyone else I’ve ever known, Stephanie had a penchant for popping up at the most opportune moments. Her sense of timing, in that sense, was perfect. She and I would find each other at countless industry events, workshops, trainings, conferences, parties. We ran in the same overlapping circles. She made everything better; if she was there, you felt as if you were on the right track.

With Stephanie and playwright Phillip Tyler Wilson, Creative Leadership NZ 2017.

In LA, every coffee shop is filled with aspirants writing screenplays. In Seatoun, it was just Stephanie and me. We were respectful of each other’s writing time, because we knew how hard it could be to come by.

During our joint sessions, we would check in with each other, pitch our projects and share our processes, commiserate on our challenges and disappointments. Most of all we would encourage each other. We never collaborated directly on a project, but we were nonetheless collaborators. Stephanie wasn’t a mentor, at least not in the traditional, hands-on sense. I think she knew that the best way to provide guidance, at least in my case, was by example. As much as Stephanie had already accomplished, she’d had her share of obstacles and hardships, as any creative does. She was not without self-doubt. But she also had a titanic courage, a deep well of experience to draw upon, that saw her always pushing forward.

We shared a kinship but our temperaments were quite different.

Stephanie was always onto something new, a splendid hummingbird, and catholic in her sympathies and allegiances. For someone who excelled at beginnings, she got a lot done. She was a creative with a capital “C,” someone who understood the importance of generating and then shipping the work. For someone more deliberate but equally ambitious, it was always a healthy reminder.

Stephanie was vain but not despairing of growing old. Glamorous but not false. She was well on her way to cronehood.

She was the only person who called me “Darling,” which she spoke in her enchanting Mid-Atlantic accent.

Stephanie took Hawk seriously, always, most recently hearing his pitch for a trilogy of YA zombie-apocalypse novels he had dreamed up. She brought Hawk into our tradition, the ways of our little club, for why would you not honor the natural creativity into which we are born?

Stephanie sampled widely the menu of life, an epicure of the noblest intent who never failed to make you feel welcome, the center of the universe in that moment. She gave you her full attention. Jenifer put it this way: “When you were with her, she always held you as if you were already whole.” She spoke as if everything were possible, with a gentle but unassailable conviction that what we most longed for was eminently possible. I will continue to trust in her wisdom here.

When, in late 2013, a change in immigration policy meant we had to leave New Zealand, she was one of the first we told—in a chance encounter outside St. Peter’s Anglican Church. She was also the last person we saw before heading to the airport. She saw us off, radiant in her white ceremonial garb, from her Sea Star Studio. We were so rushed, so pressed for time, she finished cleaning out our apartment, selling off or rehoming the housewares, books, and sundries we were unable to manage in what we thought were our final days in New Zealand. We were very pleased when, shortly thereafter, she moved into our cottage.

At this, our first parting, her gift to me was The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. She couldn’t have known that the afterword and part of the annotations were written by my favorite graduate school professor. Or maybe she did, via her cosmic intelligence network, or a little bird.

The week after Stephanie’s death, I was telling my friends at work, “my Millennials,” all about her. What she meant to the arts community here, to our neighborhood, to our family. To me. “She was one of my favorite people,” I told them, my voice breaking. And so she was. I may not have known that until just then.

I went for a walk on the City to Sea Bridge overlooking the harbor. Once upon a time I had run into Stephanie there, with Katey, shortly after my return to New Zealand. As I was reflecting, I noticed a duck swimming below me, right to left. An adult duck, male, and clearly competent in the ways of duckness, of duck-being, and moving with clear-eyed intent. Once, I thought, he had been a duckling and not yet versed in the ways that would be required of him. He paddled past me, and then I noticed another duck, swimming at a right angle to the first duck, along the y-axis to his x-axis. They came together and met in the corner of their mutual graph, their 0,0, and passed from view. Who is to say what transpired after this meeting? What might these two share from this center of all centers, this core of cores? In this life, we meet one another, and our connection and shared path may be invisible to others. Sometimes even to ourselves.

The way I want to remember Stephanie is how I once observed her: walking along Ferry Street, too far away to call after her. I knew exactly where she was going and why, to the cafe to write. I envied her the journey, but it was hers to make, and I had elsewhere to be. On she went to inhabit whatever faraway world she had called into being. On she went.

Godspeed, Darling.

Hillary, Hermione, and Us

When I was in fourth grade, I loved playing Around the World. This was the game we played, usually on Fridays, in which one student stood behind another's desk, the two students shouted out the answer to a math problem--delivered by the terrific Mrs. Groff--and the victor moved to the next student's desk, trying to make it all the way around the room's large rectangle of desks--"around the world." I was very good at this game, and often enjoyed the spoils of victory, which I'm pretty sure were Gummi Bears. But there was another student, an African-American girl named Michelle, who was even better. She was blazingly fast and, as much as I liked winning, I loved watching her play. She inspired us.

In sixth grade, I tied for second place in the 50-yard dash. My equal was my friend Sajy, and the boy who came in first was a year older than us. The true champ, however, revealed on Field Day, was a long-legged girl named Robin--and she smoked all of us. Watching her run, we were astounded: Who could do a 6.7? She could!

I went to a public school, and as often as not the best and brightest were girls. As I grew older and moved through school, however, I began noticing that some of the girls in my cohort began to disappear. No longer were they in the "gifted and talented" group, the "top section," the Advanced Placement classes. It wasn't until years later that I would learn of research showing how girls are at great risk of "dumbing down," starting somewhere in the fifth grade--about the time kids start showing an interest in fledgling romances and "boy-girl" parties.

These memories come back to me now because one of our best and brightest has lost the US Presidential election. Hillary Clinton has come up short, and I grieve.

I grieve for the country, I grieve for Hillary, and I grieve for my wife. I grieve for the little girl she was, once upon a time.

My wife, Jenifer, recently shared her experience in a Facebook post. She was responding to the sentiment, now widely expressed, that grieving is "soft," and that we are called upon to "get to work," or, by some, to get over it. Jenifer writes:

"You know the character Hermione Granger? You know, she's the smartest and most talented witch. She's always the most prepared. She's really passionate about learning. And she's really, for the most part, passed over. I grew up a Hermione Granger. Often, even when I was objectively or subjectively the best possible person for an award, a job, a promotion--I was looked over, passed over, or often even told to do the work of the other person. I have, throughout my life, been seen and treated as a half-person based on my sex (cisgender female). . . .

"For me, at a deep, largely unconscious and emotional level, Clinton became the avatar and champion of me. She is a living embodiment of every time I've been overlooked, every time I've been pushed down or pushed aside or treated poorly. Because like me, she just gets back up and gets to work. . . .

"And yes, I'm grieving. Not because Clinton lost an election. But because her losing the election was related to every time I have lost, and in particular, lost to someone who was truly *unworthy* of winning."

When I met Jenifer, it didn't take me to long to figure out that she was a Hermione Granger (even if I wouldn't discover that character for a few years). She was my equal. And yet, unlike me, she had experienced a school system, a community, a society that again and again denied her the recognition, status, achievement that were her due--because she was female.

Grieving is a natural, healthy response to profound loss. And Jenifer, and I, and all of us, have a experienced a profound loss.

To be clear, we are not grieving a political event. We are grieving the loss of what this election signifies, something far more significant: the loss of an idea about ourselves, our nation, that we are decent, moral people. The fact that people we love and respect have chosen complicity with hate speech and the language of fascism.

We are grieving the loss of identity.

Women are hardly the only ones hurt. The patriarchy--which sounds so old-fashioned now--also wounds men, gravely. The old mode forbids them from grieving. From expressing vulnerability. So many men today don't know how. As the poet Robert Bly puts it, they don't know how to shudder. We have a nation of strong women. We need men who can shudder.

There's a lot of talk these days about how the "angry white men" of America haven't been acknowledged by Washington. And it's true. These angry white men haven't been seen. But the crime is not solely the politicians'. These are men who haven't undergone the ritual of initiation. They have never, as youths, been seen by elder men, never been blessed for the golden promise of their power, and so do not understand vulnerability or the subtle demands of intimacy.

A man unseen walks in shadow and sees all others in shadow, and seeks to bring them into the orbit of his darkness.

When I see my son, Hawk, age 8, I marvel as his self-possession, confidence, emotional intelligence. They inspire awe in me. He knows who he is and understands that he is allowed, simply, to be there. He knows that his peers--from New Zealand, Fiji, Greece, Georgia, the UK--deserve the same. And he is beginning to discover his privilege.

Whatever gifts my son has received from me, whatever are of his own makeup and destiny, I know that many come from Jenifer, who feels similarly "entitled". Entitled to be there, to occupy physical space, to participate in equal footing in public discourse, to belong--in short, to matter.

I have friends who are not so lucky. Friends, who, because of the color of their skin, are more likely to be "extrajudicially executed" by public servants. Friends who, because of their gender or sexuality, are more likely to take their own lives, because they are not permitted to be there.

I grieve for them, too.

The day after the election, I stole away from the office for a moment. There was no place to go that was private, it was pouring outside, so I went up a back stairwell, between office floors, until I could go no further. Beyond the locked door was the roof of the building. I went as far as I could go, and I wept.

Whatever Hillary's shortcomings (that is say, her humanity), she has had to walk the impossible path expected of women, which is to be immaculate. But we have no need of perfect women. We need women who hold themselves, and are held by others, to be whole people. Women of ambition, intelligence, and doggedness honored for what they contribute to the world. Is it too much to hope that, adult by adult, teacher by teacher, mentor by mentor, friend by friend, we can nurture these gifts in our youth, girls and boys alike? That we ourselves might be the avatars and champions of those who need us most?

Remembering Matt

Over the past year, on only a couple of occasions, I heard from my friend and former co-worker Matt White. They were our first communications since I left our shared employer and moved to New Zealand. He was checking in on my doings in the new world, providing intel on the old--the kind of pleasant surprise you get every now and again when you move far away from everyone you know.

It was good to hear from him. Like a number of my erstwhile colleagues, however, he'd been laid off. (In any number of ways, I got out just in the nick of time.) That wasn't exactly fun stuff, but he had plans to return to school, and that was encouraging. Shortly before my departure he suffered a stroke and was in hospital, and so we didn't have a proper farewell; and to be honest I didn't know how he had fared afterwards. To hear him tell it, though, over two years down the track, things seemed to be looking up.

Yesterday I heard from a mutual friend that Matt was murdered in his sleep by his wife. Horrible, shocking, senseless. The details at this early date are few but unhappy.

I can't claim to have known Matt well. At 6'11" he was the tallest person I knew. He loved sailing. He'd gone to Penn, led its basketball team to the Final Four in 1979, and after being drafted by the Portland Trailblazers played professional basketball in Europe for a number of years.

I worked closely with Matt. He was a member of the software documentation team whose work I edited. He was a very good technical writer, smart, frightfully thorough, and an expert in e-learning. I remember interviewing Matt for the position and reviewing his respectable work history (including upper management), education (Wharton MBA), the seemingly idyllic life he left behind in Spain, and--let's be honest--the romance of his former career and wondering why this fellow wanted to take what must have been a hefty pay cut to write instruction manuals for credit union software. (To be fair, this is exactly what I was wondering of myself.)

He was a good hire. He picked up the software quickly. He did his work well and he did it fast. He kept his head down. When we talked, it was of Europe and his days abroad and my several trips there. It was exciting, this glimmer of another life, of travel. It wasn't rooted in the distant past, or nostalgia, or even of hope tied to a distant star. It was something he had done, something real that could be done. I can't say he influenced me directly in my decision to live abroad, but he more than most knew the appeal of other places and how they can take us out of ourselves in the most wondrous ways.

He also drank more coffee than any person I've ever met, with the possible exception of my dad's friend Larry Ironsides.

No, I didn't know him well, you know. I can't speak to his domestic or his interior life. I didn't have his confidence. But I mourn his passing. And maybe that's just how it is with those who for a time play a significant part of our daily life. We don't know what angels and devils reside on their shoulders, nor the trajectory of their lives. We just hope for the best, don't we?

Thanks, Matt. Be at peace.

For Scott

At the Smithsonian, May 1983 (l-r): Ryan, Mike O'Hara, Scott Frailey.

On March 11, 2012, my friend Scott Frailey died after a four-year bout with melanoma. He had turned 40 last month.

I loved Scott Frailey. He understood the inherent supremacy of left-handers, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and milk.

This might yield some clues into his character. He was very particular. He had opinions. This was something of a surprise, a challenge, even, to the short, shy kid who was more often than not daydreaming in a galaxy far, far away.

Scott loved politics. From an early age, he was a card-carrying member of the Republican party, an ardent fan of Ronald Reagan's. I have no idea of his adult political views, but I love this. I was Republican by default, because I was a friend of Scott's. It just seemed like a reasonable idea. Scott was quiet but persuasive. Stealth. More on that later.

Scott and I often teamed up in school and extra-curricular courses. In seventh-grade life science, with Mr. Johnson, we shared a table. Scott immediately drew a line down its middle. You can imagine the border disputes that ensued. I think even then, at 12, Scott had a sense of the righteous, and of winning. And if winning meant bestowing on me a godawful nickname, something sublimely embarrassing, like - just for example - "Rupert Rasmussmelon," then, by golly, that's what he would do.

For a few years in junior high, we took Saturday-morning courses at Franklin & Marshall. Creative writing, mostly. And for a couple summers we went to smarty-pants camp at Millersville University - we studied the Revolutionary War, the Teutonic Knights, more creative writing, and biology, where one of us developed an irrational fear of contaminated stream water. We were also cited on at least a couple of occasions for being disruptive in class. This was mortifying to at least one of us - again, I really shouldn't  say whom - but now I'm thinking we should have gotten into more trouble. (I should like to point out, however, that Scott was appropriately taciturn in reporting our endeavors to his mother, when it was her turn to carpool. When she would ply me for intel, I always caved.)

Still, our time was not altogether unproductive. Together we created a vast story world, an epic war across the stars between the evil Sardinians (no relation to the fine people from the Italian island) and the noble Quatnerds. Ours was a narrative told almost exclusively in pencil drawings. We would often draw together on the same sheet of paper, each of us starting on our respective sides (again, with the fierce territoriality) and joining the massive subterranean chambers, their stalactites and stalagmites, in the middle of the page. In our world, the hammer-headed Sardinians gave no quarter to the triangular, rocket-footed people who mined for Quaternium-19. And, yes, in case you're wondering, that's exactly where your shampoo gets that indispensable ingredient. I can't be sure, but I imagine that was Scott's discovery. As you can tell, in this arena, we rocked.

With girls, we rocked to a lesser degree. Scott won't mind if we skip over that chapter.

We played a lot of football in those days. (Also, Dungeons & Dragons, but, again . . .) I played quarterback a fair bit - insisted on it, as young Napoleons do - and Scott probably picked off more of my passes than anyone else. And if you were playing receiver, woe betide you; for Scott had a knack - there is no way to say it but "uncanny" - for getting The Angle on you and getting that interception. He was the Ron Woodson of our Hamilton Park posse.

We'll Be Loyal.

Physically, he was unremarkable, you might even say gangly. But his speed was deceptive, his will of iron. He was one of the most competitive guys I've ever known. Of course, his mother - bless her soul - insisted on his wearing play clothes. And play clothes meant high waters and dark socks. None of us suspected then, but this may have been Scott's strategy to make us underestimate him on the field. Scott was stealth before there was stealth.

Several years after we graduated from university, Scott called me up, invited me over for lunch. He was newly married and he wanted to catch up. We did, and it was like no time had passed. The chicken chili was really good, too. When I had drifted away from our circle of friends, Scott remained my connection. I think in terms of temperament, of all my friends, his was most like mine.

He wasn't perfect. He didn't break out the Electronic Football every time I bugged him to. And if it were possible, his Star Wars figures were even more pristine and less played with than mine. No one had a See-Threepio with tighter shoulders.

What I'm getting to, what I know that all of you already know, is that Scott Frailey was a remarkable guy. Others will be able to tell the stories of his university days, of his professional life, of his time with his family. But I will always be grateful to have been there from the beginning, and I saw right from the start: he was really, really awesome.

And left-handed.

I loved Scott Frailey. He was my friend.

Paths of Devotion

Don't hide your heart but reveal it,
So that mine might be revealed,
And I might accept what I am capable of.
— Rumi

Last week my friend Vitaly greeted me with a sudden handshake. He had returned from Russia for the funeral of his father, who had died on Christmas. I had given Vitaly a simple card on which I copied lines of Rumi's on grief.

It was clear that Vitaly was reeling from the experience. On the way to Moscow, he said, he had to be strong. Now, on the other side of the world and his father’s life, he was sick and physically exhausted, and only now was the enormity of his grief flooding in.

In my sterile cubicle, Vitaly shared that he had never lost someone so close. We didn’t say much, but I knew what he was feeling. We both had lost sick and elderly grandparents, aunts, uncles, but until recently neither of us had come so close to death.

Vitaly described how he spent New Year’s with his eighty-eight-year-old grandmother, drinking champagne and watching fireworks explode over Moscow. I wondered what rituals he may have participated in and what outlets might be available to him now that he was back. The geography of his experience, the sudden flight alone into the realm of his past, struck me as the story we all share in this time.

Modernity has buried the old ways of initiation and provides no sure path to mastery. Those who in previous ages would have become elders are now locked away in institutions full of close supervision and technical know-how. Our youth can work all sorts of entertaining technologies but take longer and longer to become true adults, if they do at all, with few qualified to guide them along the way. We’ve forgotten the natural world and its animals, who are in many respects our superiors. We are immigrants in a cold, unyielding land.

Last year was marked by further travels in the outer and inner worlds. Like Vitaly, I had flown to the other side of the earth, into another time and place. Last May, while Vitaly visited his father for what would be the last time, I walked leaf-strewn streets in New Zealand. I returned for our rabbit’s last summer; and for the last two weeks of his life, Jenifer and I watched over him day and night, gave him the medicine he hated taking, held him upright so he could eat, drink, and relieve himself. October J was both child and elder, both dependent and wise beyond measure. He showed us the truth of Amma’s words, that nothing is a burden when there is devotion.

Today, a little later than usual, I put on my coat and made for the corner door. Vitaly had his on, too. “You going for a smoke?” I smiled. “Yeah.”

We slipped out the door and into the first snowfall of the year. We crossed the parking lot, and I headed for the bordering trees. “Where are you taking me?” Vitaly asked. “To my secret place,” I joked. We went up a short embankment and under a canopy of pines to the Quaker meeting house just beyond.

I said that it was old and Vitaly said that nothing in America is old. He was right, of course, and as we took shelter on the front porch, my common retreat, he noted the meeting house’s year of establishment: 1871, one hundred years before his birth. Vitaly smoked and I looked across the street to the silent Quaker graveyard, to the snow-grey atmosphere haunting the surrounding woods. We said little, watched the falling snowflakes, and remembered sunnier days. It was a good start.

October J Decided

Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world. — J.R.R. Tolkien

October J Rabbit has passed. Yesterday, at five o'clock in the evening, he died in Jenifer's arms. He had waited for me to return from work. He waited for me, and when I joined him and Jenifer on the sofa, I knew that his time was drawing near.

Jenifer offered October some water, some honey, but he wanted neither. Then, with great force, he pushed down with his front legs, and Jenifer placed her hands beneath his paws to give him better leverage. All his long life he had rarely uttered more than contented murmurs and clucks, or the low grunts of sexual desire. Now, at the end, determined sounds of effort escaped as he pushed down and reared his head up, leaning into Jenifer's chest. He pushed and pushed again, rising skyward, until with his last breath his spirit escaped the body. His hind feet were pressed neatly together, his little hands folded as if in prayer, and his gentle face lifted to God. He died with honey in his mouth. It was a beautiful death. Perfect. A miracle.

We first found October, or he found us, in the pet store Jenifer was working in. The date was September 5, 1997. He gave us 10 beautiful years to the day. He was always fully present and effortlessly himself. Everyone who knew him saw his big personality, was forced to reconsider their notions of what a rabbit could be. He was naturally a prey animal, and yet he approached others and the world without fear. If a dog or cat was out of line, Mister J would not hesitate to thump and let them know who was boss. If he were a Gatorade flavor, he would be Fierce Melon. He was regal and imperious (he got that from his mom), curious and generous. He was our sweet, rabbit-shaped boy.

October J, we love you. We will be with you always, to the end of all days.

Each form you see has its unseen twin image.
If the form is transient, its essence is eternal.
If you have known beauty in a face
Or wisdom in a word,
Let this nourish your heart:
What passes is not real.
— Rumi