Bright brown eyes, a merry laugh. Even across the room at the party where I met Marian in 1981, I sensed a possible friend. When we began talking, we discovered many shared interests, and we kept joyously talking for the next 40 years. Sometimes we were nearby each other: two summer jobs near the Plaza in Santa Fe; two students of cultural anthropology at Stanford and at Berkeley; two short term stints on the east coat when Marian was doing an MBA at Yale and I was teaching in Vermont; a year in the 1990s when we were both back in Santa Fe. But even when we weren’t living close by, we visited each other, wrote cards, and talked on the phone. At least twice when I had to move across the country, Marian drove with me, turning each day on the highway into a gala extended conversation and high-spirited adventure.
When I think of Marian, I hear her voice: her laughter of cascading delight, her breathy “Ohh…” of wonder or of concern, and her wholehearted “Oh, YES!!” when taking up a suggestion to walk, to talk, to cook something delicious. I also hear her delicate respectfulness in granting advice. For though Marian was almost self-effacingly modest about her own accomplishments, she was hugely generous in nurturing others. Ever since 1981, for whatever I’m trying to write, I’ve depended on Marian’s ear for literary style, eye for cultural analysis, nose for insincere generalization. I’ve also felt that I could talk to her about any difficulty and dilemma, and her caring attention has always, every time, made things better.
Through the decades Marian often sent me quoted words written in her tiny rounded script on slips of paper the size of fortune cookie readings, or along the edges of cards bearing the New Mexico sky. These were often fragments of poetry and wise insight: reminders to stay tuned to small and big mysteries, to cultivate compassion, connection and gratitude. In recent years, during our Skype chats across continents, Marian would sometimes read aloud words that moved her. When she shared a short passage from Thomas Merton, I asked if she could email this too. Rereading Merton’s words, I hear Marian’s gentle voice:
“Our real journey in life is interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening, and an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.”
Attending to that creative action of love and of grace is to honor this dearest of friends.
Kirin Narayan