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The Invisible and QuietHand We believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble. EMILY DICKINSON My sister and my brother inherited most ofthe spiritual genes in my family-I suppose by way of our maternal great-great-grandfather Abraham, a village mystic in Lithuania, a colored photograph of whom graces the wall ofmy office. According to legend, he lived to be II7 or lOs-accounts vary. My grandmother Ida told me that his secret was a cup of hot water with lemon every day, and that's the regimen she followed, religiously, but she only lived to be 90. Ida used to tell me that people would come from allover Lithuania for Abraham's advice; in the picture, he wears a yarmulke and has a full gray beard and mustache. My father comes from a family ofatheists, but he was always fascinated by philosophy and by Eastern religions, and he and Nola would have long conversations about Buddhism and Hinduism toward the end ofhis life. My mother and I are, I suppose, the agnostics ofthe family. For my mother, writing is her religion. Although her maiden name, Gottlieb, means "God love," I don't remember her ever saying a word to me on the subject-with one exception-when I was seven and announced to my mother that fairies were real but angels weren't-my sister's influence , no doubt. My mother thought this was a hilarious assumption, and made me repeat it to my father. But that's the only conversation on any religious subject that I can recall. I can't presume to think that my mother is without spiritual yearnings whatsoever-but we treat it the way other families might treat the subject ofmadness perhaps. In some ways, for me, it's closely allied to madness. A large percentage ofpeople classified as schizophrenics see visions and join cults. In my limited experience, that's true. Nola was 3 4 Nola always seeing visions, and while my mother has steadfastly claimed to be a skeptic, I always felt she wanted to believe. In the early 1970s, the Hemley household was Psychic Phenomenon Central. At eleven, I was doing automatic writing, a kind of spiritual advice column for my family and my mother's students, and I signed the columns "Shiva." My sister was communicating with her Guru Sri Ramanuja, whose Centre ofBeing was located in Queens, New York, sometimes by way of letter, sometimes by telepathy. I remember my mother hosting a seance in 1971. But now she dismisses all ofthat as a kind ofgame, or as her attempts to try to understand what was going on with her daughter. Still, someone accused my mother of being a witch-some disaffected student, she thinks, who received a low grade, and she wasn't reappointed. That's part ofthe reason, in any case. At the time that my mother was coming up for reappointment at Stephens College, Nola suddenly disappeared (one ofseveral times), drove with an acquaintance to New York to be closer to her Guru, and wound up in the psychiatric unit at Bellevue chained to a bed. For weeks, my mother had no idea where Nola was, and when it came time to give the tenure committee her teaching evaluations and other documents she just handed them a sheaf of papers and said, "Here. I can't do anymore. Nola has disappeared. I've got to go to New York." The committee made no excuses for her and she wasn't reappointed. Here. I can't do anymore. Nola has disappeared. These are words I'm tempted to repeat, to shove the couple hundred pages ofher journals in someone else's hands and say, "You make sense of them. I'm going to New York to look for her." Gone for almost twenty-five years, run away for good this time. I know that eventually I'll have to throw away the crutches ofother people's voices, their words, and even throw away Nola's own words. To rediscover her, I'll have to look into those wordless places I've turned my back on. Sept. I, I994 DearRobin, Here's Nola's 'Journal." Asyou will see, she wrote in an extremely exaggerated style. I tried to edit the manuscript-with her consent-but I gave up. It was too much, and she couldn'tdo itherself. She also distortedfacts. WHENSHE QUOTES THE little speech to God that she made as a child...

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