Jul 16, 2021

Reflections Conveyed to My Son Ryan Davison-Reed on the Remarkable Life, Love, and Values of Betty Geer Davison, Upon the Occasion of Her 100th Birthday

Midweek Missive  #646 (XIV-45)  >>>>>  The Betty Geer Davison Centennial Edition      

 

July 16, 2021                                                                                             

 

                                          

My Beloved Ryan---

 

May this Betty Geer Davison Centennial Edition of the Midweek Missive find you in fine fetter as you conclude your week back in Tucson at Krikawa.

 

I hope that your trip back to NYC is smooth and that you land with anticipation of another interesting  phase as you further explore your Bedford Stuyvesant/Brooklyn environs.

 

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I have thought much about Na this week,  and have for quite a few moons pondered and celebrated the impact that she in particular but also others have had on my life.  While I have for many decades had an elevated awareness of the determinative role of experience, life circumstance, and the people that fill one’s life, at this juncture I find myself to have a certain mountaintop perspective that has enhanced my appreciation for the unique individuals who have graced my life:  Marvin Lockwood Davison, Etta Marguerite Mayhew Geer, Dennis Alan Weltman, Jerry McAfee, Barbara Edith Reed, Ryan Courtney Davison-Reed, Betty Geer Davison.

 

In the same way that some people are particularly blessed at birth and the formative years of life in terms of intellectual capacity, talents, skills, and economic wherewithal, so are some given the enormous advantage of having been enveloped by loving, supportive, wise, spirited, joyful people.

 

Mom bequeathed to me so many gifts  >>>>>

 

Mom told me that she loved me every day of my life. Expressing my love to others comes easily to me;  physical and verbal expressions of love come as naturally to me as eating or drinking.  I got this from Mom and Dad.

 

Mom laughed easily,  From  my earliest memories to my last physical interaction with Mom in August 2017, just before she died, humor was a defining element of our conversation, gesture, context for our daily activity.  When I told her once as we discussed ballroom dancing that she should do a little jig, a twinkle came to her eye and she raised her right foot as she moved forth on her walker.  She tapped into an energy that powered her own life, created by Great, Great’s friends Inez Strother Wilson and Verna Strother Akin, the singular Marvin Lockwood Davison.  As I reflect what seemed seamless in the way that Dennis Alan Weltman and I connected and the sense of humor that Barbara inherited from Frances Nabors Reed and Marie Nabors Alvey, this becomes for me quite an inheritance of wit and a sustaining jocularity about Life that helps maintain perspective and keeps spirits high even when so much across the globe seems silly, stupid, cruel, senseless.

 

Mom gave to me a sense of proper diet, respectful tasting of food, and a love for preparation of nutritious and aesthetically appealing food.  Such a foundational appreciation has allowed me to grow in my understanding of the importance of food in sustaining a healthy body.  As I move further along the continuum toward a vegetarian diet, I am so very grateful for having early understood the importance of fruits and vegetables, manifested in the serving of meals deemphasizing meat to one Ryan Davison-Reed.

 

Mom gave to me a compassion for my fellow human beings.  I remember vividly many episodes such as those such as her chasing down a Lighthouse for the Blind door-to-door salesperson after, not really needing any more brooms or brushes, originally declining to make a purchase.  Gestures such as these register with a child, who then may go forth to express such empathy in different and more universalistic ways.

 

Mom absolutely loved children, as did Dad.  Seeing them express that love, easily, reflexively, as a major part of who they were as human beings, I now realize is something that I internalized.  I treasure every moment that I am with students of all ages and get the biggest kick out being with and bringing smiles to the faces of very young children:  “Go-go-go, don’t be slow, that’ll make me crazy doncha know”;  “Don’t be lazy, it’ll make me crazy, then my brain’ll get all hazy”;  “Focus-focus’focus, and don’t say hocus pocus.”

 

Mom and Dad always particularized this love of children by conveying to Jan and me that nothing was more important in their lives than the two of us.  Nothing.  Nada.  Anything else would always be put aside if we needed love or help or attention.  This sort of attitude moves through the generations.  When at 37 years of age Barbara and I were graced with amazing you, we had already garnered enough blessed experiences to fill most lifetimes.  We had much that we still wanted to experience and to achieve professionally---  but nothing---  nothing--- was more important than you.

 

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Love, laughter, nutrition, compassion, love for children, particular love for one’s own children:  Amazingly, such values express just about all that is important in the world.  Betty Geer Davison enveloped me with such values so effortlessly that I inhaled these along with the oxygen I breathed.

 

I did nothing to create this remarkable environment of love and transcendent values.

 

They were gifts of Mom and the other amazing elders in my life.

 

And thus my responsibility in the world is of great magnitude.

 

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I‘ll be looking forward to our next conversation, whether tomorrow (Saturday, 17 July) or at some other juncture as you make the transition from Tucson back to New York City---

 

I love you so very much, My Dear Son---

 

Gary

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