Margotlog: Phebe Hanson: a Minnesota Original
Maybe it's not surprising that as we watch friends diminish and lean toward death, their most prominent and loved characteristics stand out. I wouldn't have said this about Phebe even three months ago, which was when I probably last saw her. I wouldn't have thought of her essence like this, but since she died recently at 88, I find myself asking, What were the most formative experiences of her life? And without much hesitation, I find myself answering, having her mother die when she was still a child, and developing a rare disease called Wegener's Syndrome when she was edging toward old age.
Growing up in a small Minnesota town where her father was a Lutheran minister, Phebe developed what I think of as a "giving" personality. She must have been born a talker, but the circumstances that shaped this trait had to do, I think, with carrying around a halo, sometimes tarnished (and thus open to humor) which she wore jauntily to better spill its glow. When her mother died, that glow became even more necessary. The girl's humor drew the world close, not in a frantic way, but with a warm, spirited intensity that united us with her in what felt like a mother's energetic embrace. I've never known anyone else whose quirky, inclusive humor could so quickly make us feel like her pals for life, and darn happy to be laughing with her even as we bemoaned what the world was up to.
"Long Underwear," one of my favorite poems published in her first book, Sacred Hearts (Milkweed Editions, 1985), suggests two somewhat contrary but ultimately sympathetic traits. First there's the getting out of bed early in snow-filled dark, and before anything else, letting her "flannel nightgown/ fall to the floor" while she stands "in forbidden nakedness...over the rush of Satanic heat" from the furnace below and pulls on her long underwear, the underwear she "won't discard/
until spring melts the stubborn snow
of my father's caution,
and lets me wear my legs naked again.
I love that little jab at her father because it's so evident that he is the parent of her life, and she with her encompassing humor must foster within herself a motherliness, not only to warm her, but the rest of us, her delighted readers.
Phebe's much later millstone, the Wegener's Syndrome, caused her at various time great distress. Her vision became impaired, and sometimes her mobility. I wasn't privy to the many manifestations of this difficult disease, but I do know that the steriods used to treat it caused her great trouble from time to time. She had to retire from teaching, she a natural-born teacher of all ages from school children to college students to adults. Yet, it seems to me that the teaching never stopped. She herself became the lesson, a witty, often laughing, sometimes mordant mother to the parts of herself that wouldn't work. That instead of isolating her from friends, the disease somehow urged her to reach out with humor that enlivened us as well as herself.
I know there were bitter, bitter periods. But her struggles seemed to disappear when we stood at her door. We became the company she needed to delight and draw close. We were the necessary others to her wit and insight. It was a most satisfactory embrace. So much so that I almost can't believe she is dead. Yet, just as she herself needed to be reminded, we do too. At the end, the obituary in the Minneapolis StarTribune notes: "As a lifelong worrywart, Phebe often expressed anxiety that she would die, and for many years, family members assured her that she would." We love you, darling friend, We'll keep assuring ourselves that without the claw of death reaching toward us, there'd be little need to relish what we have among us.
