basketry
by Susan Weber
In the midst of our communal scramble for solutions, I come upon a photograph that pulls me close. A lone man stands on a gray stone Naples street. His gloved hand sorts through a basket that’s been lowered from a balcony by rope. A handwritten sign reads, “If you can, put something in. If you can’t, take something out.” His stooped frame, dressed in brown plaid suit coat and tailored pants, seems both tentative and focused. The black bowler and his shined shoes lend a dignity to his stance. Muslin cloth around face and neck hugs his close-clipped hair. The improvised mask looks as oddly normal as the graffiti lining the well-groomed street.
I feel for this man as I once felt watching my grandfather look through a basket of gardening tools. In his yard in upstate New York, irises and gingkos thrived. I like to think the bulbs and ramrod gingko tree from my mother’s yard to mine are descendants of Grandpa Hewes’ garden. I hope it’s true, and wouldn’t care if fact suggested otherwise.
I started a letter to Italy today, thanking it for all the beauty and intensity come down to us through people and art. I suppose it was a letter of condolence, solace to the living, shared memories of life well lived. I found no words for the loss of the past few weeks, so I set my pen aside.
Long ago as a nursing student, I lived in a railroad flat on Murray Hill. My roommate, Graciella with her beautiful contralto, was studying opera at the institute. Our landlady Mrs. Robuano kept her fingers on the pulse of Little Italy. One day she asked me to help Mr. Fatica who needed a weekly vitamin shot. He was elderly and frail and spoke as little English as I spoke Italian. After each visit, we’d sit and smile our pleasantries as dust mites filtered the afternoon light. I took the wrinkled bills he handed me across the kitchen table. Baskets need to be respected.
I’d like to wrap a ribbon or a rope around all this grief. A silver thread from old Mr. Fatica to the gentleman of Naples in a photograph that drew me close. The pathos of the moment asks something of us, yes? Empathy in. Empathy out. It will haunt me in the interim.
Painting by Giovane Scugnizzo is in the Public Domain