Addressing the 1% - Mim memory

Giving thanks for my John & his patience as I try this approach, then that, to remarks I'm making at the gathering celebrating Mim.  
 
Am hoping Peter will be there & share some Mim memories, that Mike & Kerry watch via Skype & share some of their own fond moments.  But there's no getting away from not standing up with my own sense & recollection of Mim, without sugar coating or unnecessary embellishment. 

 

Spouting out around John has been a godsend.  What I'm considering at this point in time, three days before the party down at Shannon's, is addressing my comments to the 1% who were allowed a glimpse of the real Mim, or at least selected sides.  

In his tribute, Frank Rose mentions how invisible Mim was at perhaps the first Laurel Church Camp, which she attended in her mid-late thirties.  "If you walked into a room & no one was there, it was Mim," was how Frank put it. 

That's the Mim seen (or not) by most people.  Only the 1% experienced her invincible side.  The person who auditioned for & was accepted at theater programs at Manhattan's prestigious Circle in the Square Theater, at California's even more elite Pasadena Playhouse.  Attended Berry College, a mountain college in north western Georgia; the University of Houston; the University of Pennsylvania.  Received her bachelor's from New York University & her master's from Rutgers.  Honored with a formal proclamation by the New Jersey State Legislature for her volunteer work with autistic children.  And those are just the tip of her adventures & accomplishments.

Mim was a maker of magic - for her family (especially her younger brother & sister), for neighborhood kids, for youngsters in town who fell under her spell, for the countless families whose lives she touched over the years. She was the lynch pin in the Lockhart family, the one who virtually defined how "family" was translated & lived from one era to the next, the one who connected most profoundly with the various elements of the extended Reynolds' circle.  

When it suited her, Mim could be invisible, but - within the family & with many others - she was always a force to be reckoned with.  Just coming up with the funding for the amazing things she did must have taken awesome creativity & oomph!  No shrinking violet could have managed such major financials.

 

All who knew her seem to be in agreement that Mim was singularly intelligent, talented, gifted.  The one person who balked at that assessment was Mim.  

It took until my early twenties to start questioning Mim's inexplicable scarcity mentality.  Her explanation came in the way of a warning, "The more you have, the more others can take away."  

To this day, am clueless why Mim carefully set up brunch outings to places like the Du Pont Hotel, to The Plaza, to the Algonquin, only to turn to me as we sat surrounded by storied elegance & say, "We stick out like sore thumbs," or  "We look like a couple of hicks."  It took me until my late twenties to finally have the presence of mind to respond, "Speak for yourself."  

Couldn't figure it out then, still can't fathom Mim's entrenched sense of being less when she was so much more than most hope to be.

Many years back, I developed imagery that helped me cope with my adored older sister's self-denigrating ways ~ I'd picture the day, this day, at hand, with Mim truly connecting with The Creator.  

The Creator would look at her with a loving smile & say, "Mim, your sister says..."   

Mim would interrupt with an adamant, "My sister LIES!" (which was what she always said).  

The Creator would go on, the loving smile even more tender than before, and finish, "Mim, over all those years, your sister told the truth.  You ARE singularly intelligent, talented & gifted."  

Hearing it from The Creator, 
my bet is she finally 
has to believe it.