People and Places: The Influence They Have On Us

00:00 Okay.

00:02 Okay. So we just started recording. My name is Amira Elmansoury I'm here with Janet Nelson and she will be sharing her story first.

00:11 Amira Elmansoury how much of an introduction do you want me to give about me? Just my name.

00:18 You can do, like, a little bit. Name interests, how we met, what this whole project is, whatever you want.

00:26 I think I'm going to leave that part up to you.

00:29 Okay. Okay.

00:30 The project part up to you. Okay. So, I'm Janet Nelson Nelson. I live in Northampton, mass. I'm a retired child psychologist, and I met Amira Elmansoury through her wonderful program at UMass Amherst, and she's going to tell us more, share more about that with you.

00:52 So. Oh, I thought you wanted me to share it now. No, continue.

00:57 So we talked about sharing a story about someone who was very important and influenced us in our lives. And I wrote a story about my brother, and I'm going to read the story now. I was born in 1943. Yes, I'm going to be 80 years old, a middle child in a working class, post world war two family near Flushing, New York. My older brother, named after my father, excuse me. William Henry Ruloff Nelson junior, was a quiet, deeply sensitive, and highly intelligent boy. During those years, the 1940s and the 1950s, baseball and moms at home waiting to put supper on the table for their working husbands was part of the american dream. And I lived in a little area in Queens where people, families, were very, very much devoted to fulfilling that post World War two american dream. My brother Jay, as we called him, did not fit in. He wrote poetry, read deeply, and spent a great deal of time alone. Even as a very young girl, I knew that Jay, four years older, was different. As he and I grew to adolescence, he began to be teased by the other boys on the block. As we played baseball, Jay kind of withdrew into his room quietly. My friends whisper, excuse me. My friends whispered about him. In his early teens, I knew there was trouble, my parents talking behind closed doors. Those were years when words like homosexuality were never spoken out loud. Amira Elmansoury can you stop it for 1 minute? I'm going to repeat that last sentence. Those were years when words like homosexuality were never spoken out loud. It was illegal and immoral. With all that he was struggling with as an adolescent, Jay had time and made time to always be my big brother. In a family overwhelmed by illness, financial issues, and emotional stress, he introduced me to poetry and to literature. As he grew his friendships of bright, enthusiastic gay boys, I became a focus of their energy. Surrounded by them, I went to my first opera. When my brother moved out when I was 16, his apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan became my second home, a respite from my own. His life was not easy. Despite his high intelligence and a full scholarship to Princeton University, he dropped out of college, unable to reconcile the emotional stress that marked those years. My course was different at each juncture of my growing professional life. It was my brother who championed my success and kept me motivated when I questioned my own abilities. My doctoral dissertation was dedicated to him in 1982. Jay showed the early signs of AIdS. The years ahead were marked with anxiety and fear. We talked honestly, and after four years, we knew he was dying. I saw him last 36 hours before he died at the age of 46. I read a favorite poem of his by Edna St. Vincent Millay at my younger son's wedding. Like my brother, it's a poem about the freedom and the trappings of love. My son's daughter's middle name is Jaydeh, named after him. Over these past decades, I've watched with amazement and joy at the changes in our culture. I often find myself smiling as I think about how Jay's life would have been, that he had such freedom and affirmation.

05:43 Wow, that was such an amazing story.

05:48 Yeah. Thank you.

05:50 Thank you for sharing that.

05:52 Obviously. Obviously. Even after all these years, he died. Oh, my God. 56, 66, 76. He died way over 30 years ago. It's still emotional for me.

06:08 Of course. That's your problem. Yeah.

06:10 Always. It will always be.

06:12 Yeah. I love the, like, full circle moment that you talked about with reading the poem at your son's wedding.

06:19 Yeah.

06:20 I think that was very sweet.

06:23 You know, there's a. My brother, the poem from Millay, a piece of it is love in the open hand. Nothing but that. Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt. Wow. Yeah.

06:41 I need you to give me some poetry and literature recommendations because I've been meaning to get into it, and I have no idea where to start.

06:48 Oh, I'm not an expert, Amira Elmansoury I'm not an expert.

06:51 I feel like compared to who?

06:53 You can talk about that.

06:57 Yeah. That was amazing. Thank you for sharing.

07:01 Listening.

07:02 I think I'll stop the recording here.