Being Claire

Claire Cecilia Neff was our sister, our mother, our wife, and our friend.  Claire was a confidante who could not keep a secret. . . but to whom we trusted our deepest secrets regardless of her lack of discretion.  She was our muse, our activist, our spokesperson.  As she regarded the world from her porch, and later her bedroom, she was a friend to all who came by.

She was champion for the doomed.  She spent a lifetime caring for those whose own mothers had abandoned them.  A listener who did most of the talking.  A singer who demanded we listen to artists of other times, music of other cultures . . . sounds that she appreciated first, until we, through her ears heard what the commotion was all about.  Through Claire I learned about Hendrix and Zappa, Coltrane and Charlie Parker, Mel Torme and Chaka Khan, Hank Williams, and Smokey Robinson.  Someone once asked what my musical tastes were, and I said my tastes were eclectic. The truth was that Claire’s taste in music was broad, informed, and impeccable, and I knew music through her and because of her.

Claire was also a lover of stories – stories that revealed our flaws, or our special talents, bizarre coincidences, episodes of dumb luck or just of our being perfectly stupid.  She experienced plenty of her own adventures but loved the adventures of each of us just as if she was there with us.  Asking us to repeat our stories until she remembered each detail – until they were her own. A simple event at the office, the drive-thru restaurant, a first date – anything where there was an interaction that resulted in a departure from the boring. These events became cause for her sincere amusement and laughter – Claire would pull these old chestnuts out and make you tell her for the hundredth time about something truly stupid said at work.  There was also the telling and retelling of the freak occurrence.  Indelicate episodes became delicacies – dumb ideas and ineptitude an appetizer. The crappy things we did to those who slighted us became tangy slices of cold pettiness. Furtive and failed sexual episodes became fondues ready to be reheated. . . our dumbest mistakes became small plates of stupidity – to be repeatedly prepared and re-used as a recipe for conversation. Over and over and over again. For decades.

Claire was at once self-righteous yet not self-involved.  She appreciated each of us deeply, often deeper than we did ourselves. One of Claire’s distinguishing contributions to this world was her work as a Psychiatric Technician.  A career that she built for herself immediately after earning her cosmetology license. It seemed to me that the month after completing the cosmetology course of study she went back immediately to pursue her credentials to work with the severely developmentally handicapped and soon as a Psych Tech.  I did a little search of the type of personality it takes to be a Psych Tech – it could not fit Claire any better:

1. Empathic

2. Caring and Compassionate

3. Cool-Headed

4. Good-Listener

5. Hard-Working

6. Versatile

7. Resilient

8. Open-Minded

Claire touched many lives, but with her patients she profoundly changed the lives of humans beyond hope. How we treat the least among us defines us. We all have limits. When it came to Claire those limits were beyond what most of us can imagine.  She fought for those whose lives were so broken and painful that their reality gave her nightmares.  She didn’t just work with these souls, she loved them. She worked with the children who nearly drowned, or almost crushed to death.  She cared for scores of hydrocephalic infants, schizophrenics and the criminally insane.  She saved lives through her touch, her voice, and her love.  Early on, prior to becoming a psych tech, as a food service worker she told me of the pride she took in scrubbing every surface of every piece of furniture and equipment. I visited her at work on a few occasions – Her unit was immaculate.  She was peerless at her job.  And ultimately this became an issue for some who she worked with who were not healers. Those who were decidedly not empathic.  She was resented by those who chose to apply physical or pharmaceutical restraints rather than nursing care.  Claire was hope, and humor and light and love for the hopeless, and forgotten.  She found humor in it.  She found her purpose in it.

Claire was nothing short of heroic for so many things she did, so many things she said and for just being.  For Claire did not have the life I had.  She did not get the benefit of the doubt, or the second chances that I did.

I often think how I would have done in life if I were the only child who could not pass for white in a family of people passing for white in 1960’s America?  How she made each of us face our heritage when she was really nothing more than a child – this is the profoundest gift she gave to me.  Each of us has suffered, but Claire’s path over challenges was different than anyone I have ever met or heard of.  She figured it out – how to succeed despite her lot in life, not because of it.  She was resilient.  I owe her so much for fighting a struggle that I did not have to and was not equipped to and am mostly blind to.  Yes, black is truly beautiful in any amount.

In addition to those 8 qualities, I mentioned before – I will add several more:

Claire was generous – a patron of the arts, and an artist who gave her work away.

Claire was funny, fun, and beautiful.

Claire was musically gifted.

Claire was loyal.

Claire was unique and singular.

She was a great mom who raised an amazing daughter that she loved more than anything and a wonderful wife.

She was the best sister.

I first came to know Claire – in the Big House, No Friends. It was a special time because of the isolation, and the expanse of the house itself.  We lived in a big farmhouse without any visible neighboring houses and there was a long, long driveway to get to the house. There was a large, sunny room and a console record player.  My sisters were dancing and playing albums over and over.  Donovan, Sly and the Family Stone, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel.  It was just us. Later, we moved to a more modern but smaller house the second year we were there.  I remember Dad almost burning the smaller house down with a ridiculously big fire in the fireplace.  The events become jumbled – almost 60 years have gone by.

Then one day it ended.  I was the letter “H” in my first-grade play.  I have no idea what letter H was about, but I do remember that I was excited to be there.  I remember not being able to see any family in the audience.  Then I heard Claire call my name.  I remember seeing Claire, Mom, Val, and Leah. They were waving at me to come over and mouthing the words “Let’s Go!”.  The next thing I knew we were in the station wagon driving through the gates of the facility and there were black and brown fists, rakes, and shovels in the air.

It was January 24^th, 1967, and we were run out of town because our dad had caused a race riot at the Job Corps camp in Hayward California.  I know the date because I looked it up.  It made the front page of the Oakland Tribune.  It was a terrible day.  Somehow, we recovered, Dad found work and we moved on.  But out of that chaos came confidence – like a foundation built on the stability of being able to recover from anything, no matter the setback.  I think that chaos bound us all together and gave us confidence that we were going to be OK.  It gave Claire and all of us a story that never got old. 

I think Claire is here with us. Just like I believe Myrtle and Ed, Charmaine and Michael and Cynthia are.  Leah told me a story that Claire gave her some advice on how to start a new career as a respiratory therapist and Leah followed it to the letter, and everything worked out just the way Claire told her it would.  Leah recalled that Claire said later that she gave people advice all the time, but no one ever listened to her – but that Leah did.  I think we listened to Claire more than she realized – or perhaps more than we gave her credit for.

We are listening still.