Remembering Rochelle

The Colemans, about 1975

My mother-in-law, Rochelle Helen Coleman, died on October 13, 2020, age 81, at her home in Stanmore, England, during the covid pandemic. Her death was both expected and shocking. Parkinson's Disease had been diminishing her for years and by the end her life was not her life anymore but existence circumscribed by pain and immobility. We learned over the summer that she had only weeks or months left. So we knew, and yet not. Not the finality of it. 

Distance and virus compounded sadness. We live in Toronto; Simon's sister in Olympia, Washington. They both knew they had to get to London, and they did. They had to quarantine, and they did. They wanted desperately to see their mother one last time, to say goodbye--and they did. She, it seemed, wanted to see them, too, before letting go, and she did. Rochelle died less than twenty-four hours after Simon reached her. 

The rest of us, the in-laws, the grandchildren, the further scattered family, mourned with her husband and children via screens and devices. We never imagined it would be like this, an enforced far-apart sharing of grief. One of the advantages of Toronto when we decided to move here from Brighton was, for me, its near-equidistance from California and England. Five or six (okay, sometimes seven) easy hours on a plane and voilà--home. Now the 'voilà' has vanished. 

I remember meeting my future mother-in-law for the first time, almost a quarter of a century ago, when Simon and I drove to London from Durham, where we both lived, for a research  project. I felt awkward and uneasy in his parents' house. Loitering in a corner, I witnessed a sweet moment of warmth and tenderness between mother and son: they stood side by side, he looking down at her and holding her hand, she stroking his long slender wrist. I fell even more in love with my future husband. 

By the magic of remote communications technology I was able to share that memory with the mourners gathered at Rochelle's funeral. The rules in the UK allowed only ten people to attend in person, so the rest of us, whether in England or abroad, participated by Zoom. We were grateful for it. Even mediated by a screen the occasion was moving and meaningful and brought us together. It was still not the same as being there, though. I could not stand beside my husband holding his hand while he said a last farewell to his mother.

Eli created a website for his grandmother: 

Rochelle Helen Coleman

Expecting: US election 2020

November 3, 2020. Election Night.

I loved being pregnant, especially the second trimester. Pregnant enough to feel confident, not so pregnant as to be uncomfortable. During my third pregnancy I joked that the ideal family size was 2.5 children. I reveled in the anticipation of the new child without having to endure the grind of sleepless nights and soggy nappies. "Expecting" is not at all a euphemism for pregnant, in my book. It's the essence.

I have had that same feeling during this election season. The campaign's the thing. A sense of anticipation and possibility leavening the deadweight of the current presidency. I am avoiding close scrutiny of results-in-progress, but the information seeping in via messages from friends and family suggests it's a gong show. No surprise. We've been to 2004 (do I mean 2000?) and 2016. 

I've done a lot of grassroots campaigning in various US elections, as a teenager, as a student, as an expatriate, and more recently in Toronto for local elections.  Two years ago for the US midterm election in 2018 a few of us from Toronto went door to door, getting out the vote in Oswego County, New York, helping eke a narrow victory for our Democratic candidate Anthony Brindisi. Mainly, though, I've "phone-banked" from the comfort of home, calling voters in targeted states and using a prepared script to Get Out The Vote. "Hi," I said, dialing Pennsylvanians from my house in Hove in 2008, "I'm with Barack Obama's Campaign for Change." 

This year things got digitally enhanced. No phones required, just computers. I called voters in Iowa and Florida; I texted voters in Florida, Michigan, and Arizona. I learned that to encourage individuals to vote, my key script messages included "identity labelling" (Being A Voter), "social pressure" (FOMO); and "make a plan" (When, Where, How and With Whom?). All of that sounds great as long as you can get a) the voter to answer their phone and b) the voter to listen beyond, "Hi, I'm Leslie, a volunteer with the Florida Democrats..."

Nonetheless, in spite of the vocal blank walls I kept encountering, the experience was fulfilling. The phone and text banking sessions happened en masse on Zoom; cleverly chosen hosts kept us all entertained and on task. A team of volunteers trained us and one even sang to us: before the Florida phone session this evening, a lovely older gentleman sang "God Bless America" -- in Yiddish (Gott Bensch America). "I have chills!" typed people in the chat bar.

The two text-banking sessions at the end of October with Jason Berlin's Field Team 6 were wildly enjoyable. Way more fun than I could have imagined or deserved. At the first one, while text-banking Florida, the Zoom hosts comprised "literary luminaries," including authors Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henriette Lacks) and Ayelet Waldman and R.O.Kwon and others. They introduced themselves and answered some questions and carried on chatting, often profanely and hilariously, amongst themselves as we texted. Click, click, click, guffaw. 

I was slow that first time, only managing to reach about 500 voters, in part because our messages did not target Democrats only but included voters of all stripes. A lot of the responses just said "Stop" and we had a canned reply:"Okay, taking you off our list immediately. Have a great day!" --which I amended to "good evening" because it was evening. Some of the replies were nasty and vitriolic, some indicated more politely their support for our opposition. To those recipients, our programmed response was along the lines of 'thank you for that information'. At the joking suggestion of one of the chatting literary luminaries, I began adding "Bless you." 

But sometimes there were actual conversations. Because our first--uneditable--message said, "Hi, NAME, I'm Leslie, a volunteer with Field Team 6. We are on a mission to end covid-19 with science by signing up Democrats to vote from home," which to be fair was rather inane, we got some crisp responses. "Don't politicize covid," said one. "Are you a scientist?" demanded another. But my favorite came from Darren, who replied, "That's cute, Leslie. 6 months of your mask enforcement hasn't ended anything." He went on to accuse Democrats of increasing division in America. "Of course that's the goal isn't it? A house divided cannot stand." His bitterness came through clearly. That's odd, I thought; sowing division and dissent is what we 'good guys' see those others, those 'bad guys'--those Republicans--as doing. Not us. I wrote back to Darren and told him that I too wanted to see an end to division in the USA. To my great surprise, Darren responded to my note with kindness, hoping that one day soon America's divisions would heal and we would come together. "Keep up your work!" he concluded.

"Thanks, Darren," I wrote in my turn. "And bless you."

Shondaland: Jeff Perry and Shonda Rhimes with Field Team 6

The second text-banking session with Field Team 6 was hosted by Shonda Rhimes, created and writer of such TV shows as Grey's Anatomy and How To Get Away With Murder. She is a favourite of my daughter. While we volunteers sent texts (that evening it was to voters in Michigan) using specialized campaign software, Rhimes and an actor from some of her shows, Jeff Perry, chatted about Rhimes'  life and career, about creativity, the storylines in her various shows, etc.. We texters could ask questions in the chat bar between our batches of messages. At the earlier behest of my sister-in-law, I asked Shonda Rhimes what she was currently reading; she said she doesn't read when she is writing, so, at the moment, nothing (disappointing). Then my daughter took a turn at the laptop while I had a break, and Jeff Perry, who my daughter had recognized from some favourite TV shows, spotted her young face and pointed her out. "Leslie Carlin!" he called to the remote crowd (we were logged in under my account). Perry focused on her and spoke of the hope we must give this generation and the hope we get from it, from people like her. "Are you, what, about 23?" he asked. She gestured downward  (we were all muted). She is 17. Perry continued to address her through his brief impassioned speech. Her eyes glowed as she said, "Mommy, he's speaking to *me*!" She looked at the screen and nodded and smiled and nodded some more. I think a political junkie may have just been born.  On top of it all, we sent GOTV messages to over 1000 voters. She's a fast clicker, my teen. She got pretty good at responding to the feedback. "Oh," she said, showing me one of the more profane ones, but she handled it.

Phoning Democrats in Iowa a few days later was much more grueling. I was shocked at the amount of information available to me: names, phone numbers, home addresses, locations of polling places, ages, genders. Of course a lot of the numbers were wrong, so the other information may not have been all that trustworthy. Still. I kept at it for 2.5 difficult hours before it closed down (the session, not Iowa). I called over a hundred numbers, did not get cussed at, and spoke to a few nice people. Another phone-banker couldn't hack it. "My stress levels are just too high," she wrote in the chat. "Sorry, I'm going to leave and go do some texting." My thinking is that it's like a dentist appointment. You don't enjoy it but you do it anyway. (Which reminds me...)

Today, election day, I texted 1100 Arizonans and then had to log off in order to join the phone bank to Florida, the one with the Yiddish serenade. The SwingLeft folks running this phone bank encouraged us-- about 200 souls, all told--to keep sharing our stories and successes in the chat. Some stories were good ones. 

For example, Sarah wrote: "OMG this guy answered with 'I’m taking a poop.' It was not a prank. He realized I wasn’t his girlfriend, cracked up, then hung up. I called him back, he apologized profusely, said 'I thought you were someone else,' then I gave him his polling place and told him he had an hour and a half. Best voter connection EVER."  We applauded her in the chat bar. Nick spoke to a woman who did not think she was registered, but he was able to inform her that she was. Off she went to the polls to vote. Rachel successfully organized a ride for one wannabe voter to her polling place. Her next voter asked Rachel whether she worked for the CIA. I too spoke to a few strange folks, a few nice folks, a lot of hang-ups, and one man who assured me he had voted for Biden first thing in the morning and since then had driven 12 people to their polling places (he was an Uber driver, but still). People are voting. The turn out is amazing. Victory for democracy, as people are saying. Democracy: the least worst system of government.

So, it's been a good campaign. Expectant, like the middle of a pregnancy. And now the painful birth of a new presidential term. I'm still avoiding the results. I'll wait for that plus-sized lady to sing, and hope it's a song about freedom, a song about justice, a song about the love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land. We may have a long wait.