Lynn and Jack. I still can’t separate that in my mind (it would be literally etymologically incorrect). Lynn and Jack had a profound impact on my life. They changed my perceptions, my ambition, my very philosophy.
I don’t come from a close family. My mother used to brag that we were so independent from each other. She told me once how proud she was that we were all just four people who happened to share a roof. I wouldn’t know a cousin if I passed them on the street. I haven’t spoken to an aunt or uncle in 20 years. I once went 12 years without my father calling me. I love my brother, but I'm not sure I'd characterize us as friends. I have no nieces or nephews.
That’s where I came from.
When I met the Kearneys in my late 20s it absolutely turned my world view upside down, because the Kearneys, anchored by that etymological entity “LynnAndJack,” are a close family. This became my inspiration, and my model as I created a family from scratch. My children Nora and Julian may or may not be aware how much I used the example of the Kearneys to make us more than just four people under the same roof. I look at my kids’ closeness now with wonder and gratitude.
Lynn and Jack are why the Nelson Chins are all artists today. My own parents were artists who could not see how to be artists in this world, and turned their backs on it, to their unhappiness. So, like the idea of the close-knit family, I had no model for that until I met Lynn and Jack. When Wei and I would think, this is too hard, I would say, Lynn and Jack did it.
But the most amazing thing about this amazing family, is their confidence in each other, in those internal bonds, and how it gives them incredible emotional generosity, a generosity so encompassing that it spills over the edges, dripping onto people like me. Never, in almost 40 years, did I ever feel that one scintilla of the love that Lynn and Jack felt for me was ever anything but shared and amplified by Jill & Dan, and then by their own children. That there is no limit to the embrace, no boundary on love because of that generosity.
I am so honored that Lynn and Jack brought me into that magic circle. It made me a better person. I will miss them more than words can say, and I will carry their love with me forever.
Monday, September 2, 2019
Monday, August 19, 2019
Losing Lynn
I worked for Jack and Lynn at the Workshop from 1982 to 1986, when my son was born. I would have come back, but Lynn told me to stay home and take care of my son. Plus, she couldn’t exactly fire the person who’d taken my place, I guess.
The thing about the Workshop, is that no one ever really leaves, although I think I was probably a little stickier than most, and stuck little pieces of me to the rest of the Kearneys, and a few McDonnells, as well.
Lynn and Jack created a magical family. I don’t know if they realize how magical, because all families have strife, and tragedy, and squabbles small or large and you can’t always see the magic from inside. But those of us outside it, even just outside it, wonder at it. From inside that magical circle, Jill tells me that she would worry that her mother worried about everything so much. And I saw a little bit of this, too, because Lynn was constantly worrying at me, but mostly, from outside the magic circle, Lynn’s worrying looked like righteous caretaking, and unshakeable loyalty and an almost pathological optimism. She enfolded me when my husband left, and again when my father died, and I know would have continued to do so no matter what.
After I stopped working for Lynn and Jack I like to say that I refused to let them go, but I think it was more the other way around: they folded me in to that magic circle and told the resident elves, fairies, gnomes, and other fey creatures, that this was a person who mattered, frankly in a way that my own birth family never did.
Every now and then I’d show up at Lynn’s behest at some family event, and there would be a cousin or a granddaughter or a spouse, or another like me, invited in, and you could see the thought: who in the world is this random person at our Thanksgiving. And by the end of the meal, the relentlessness of Lynn’s love would have brought them along:
Oh, I know who this is. This is family.
The thing about the Workshop, is that no one ever really leaves, although I think I was probably a little stickier than most, and stuck little pieces of me to the rest of the Kearneys, and a few McDonnells, as well.
Lynn and Jack created a magical family. I don’t know if they realize how magical, because all families have strife, and tragedy, and squabbles small or large and you can’t always see the magic from inside. But those of us outside it, even just outside it, wonder at it. From inside that magical circle, Jill tells me that she would worry that her mother worried about everything so much. And I saw a little bit of this, too, because Lynn was constantly worrying at me, but mostly, from outside the magic circle, Lynn’s worrying looked like righteous caretaking, and unshakeable loyalty and an almost pathological optimism. She enfolded me when my husband left, and again when my father died, and I know would have continued to do so no matter what.
After I stopped working for Lynn and Jack I like to say that I refused to let them go, but I think it was more the other way around: they folded me in to that magic circle and told the resident elves, fairies, gnomes, and other fey creatures, that this was a person who mattered, frankly in a way that my own birth family never did.
Every now and then I’d show up at Lynn’s behest at some family event, and there would be a cousin or a granddaughter or a spouse, or another like me, invited in, and you could see the thought: who in the world is this random person at our Thanksgiving. And by the end of the meal, the relentlessness of Lynn’s love would have brought them along:
Oh, I know who this is. This is family.
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