barb raze the obituary didn't say much. just that she taught at the same school for forty years and she "inspired her students". that's a kind thing to say about someone who isn't here anymore. and it's a lie. i shared my sharpest memory of her in "memorize". i made one desperate attempt to reach out, and she swatted it away. but maybe this does a better job of telling you what kind of teacher she was. there was a girl named crystal who went to my grade school. she was in the same grade as me. she danced with me once. she had long blonde hair. she smoked cigarettes. i'd never seen anyone my age smoke. some of the other kids made fun of her. they said she was trailer trash. i don't think she really lived in a trailer. i think her parents just didn't have a lot of money and her house was probably in a bad part of town. she was always nice to me. she never said a bad word about anyone. she made me feel like the most important person in the world for about half an hour the day she walked up to me with her best friend agnes during lunch recess. they smiled and linked arms with me, and the three of us walked around braided together like that. they didn't even know me. one day barb asked a question in class. crystal raised her hand. "put your hand down, crystal," barb said. "you don't know the answer." crystal did what she was told. she had that look you get when someone trips you just to watch you fall. i was talking about barb with pete once when we were in high_school. he said she was like one of the replicants in "blade runner", only they forgot to give her an emotion chip. i thought that kind of said it all. human, but not human enough. 211130 ... kerry "you need a jewish aunt," she said to me in a bakery in portland. we were having chocolate babka and coffee. she had brought me challah bread wrapped in thin plastic, with a ribbon. i hadn't seen her in decades, since ginnie died. ginnie was my de facto grandmother. i looked at barb, looked for ginnie's face, and couldn't find it. she is the eldest of ginnie's daughters. as a child i savored any attention from her. she was harder than ginnie, tougher. she squinted, examined. i loved ru, too, but she didn't come around as much. barb took us to portland's hollywood district to see her office. it was in an old craftsman-style house that she and her partner judy had bought. her office was full of art and objects from other continents, other hemispheres. it was dim, profound-feeling. the walls rippled with secrets, confessions, admissions, grief, epiphanies. she rested her hands on the back of an eames chair. "this is where i shrink you," she said. 211201 what's it to you? who go blather from