Maps for my memories
Maps can be wayfinders, propaganda, legal evidence, and stories of days long past.
Anatevka, Anatevka
Underfed, overworked Anatevka
Where else could Sabbath be so sweet?
Anatevka, Anatevka
Intimate, obstinate Anatevka
Where I know everyone I meet
Soon I'll be a stranger in a strange new place
Searching for an old familiar face
From Anatevka
I belong in Anatevka
Tumble-down, work-a-day Anatevka
Dear little village, little town of mine
Fiddler on the Roof, “Anatevka”
In Fiddler on the Roof, the characters dryly remark: “People who pass through Anatevka don’t even know they’ve been here,” and my hometown often felt like a similar place. Underserved and impoverished, St. Lawrence County is exactly the sort of place where vulnerable people can be abused without anyone noticing. The county has the fourth-lowest per capita income, and at nearly 15%, it has the fifth-highest poverty rate among rural counties and the ninth-highest poverty rate overall.
I spent most of my first 18 years in the small village of Potsdam, established in 1806. According to early settler colonial accounts, the native Mohawk people called it Tsi tewate'nehtararénie's, meaning "the place where the gravel settles under the feet in dragging the canoe." Both of my parents claim Native ancestry, but I have no proof that their tales are true or not.
I found this 1801 map of Upstate New York in the American Geographical Society Library; if one shares a library building with the second-largest map collection in the nation, one should use it. 15 of my first 18 years were spent inside the geography delineated by Presbyterian minister and newspaper reporter Arthur J. Stansbury. My world was bounded by three bodies of water—Lake Ontario to the west, the St. Lawrence River to the north, and on the eastern edge, Lake Champlain.
Maps can be wayfinders, propaganda, stories, legal evidence, and more. Maps show who lays claim to what land. I come from a long line of farmers on my mother’s side, and land is their inheritance. I don’t have that same connection to the land, but I want to understand that sense of rootedness. Perhaps it is an unconscious rootedness for me. I feel it in my body when I return to my hometown; my seasonal allergies disappear as my body recognizes the pollen of my youth.
For the first seven years of my life, we lived in a white house on my grandparents’ farm, which had been converted from a milk house into a residence. The living room carpet was a dusty rose floral pattern left over from a Victoria’s Secret store my contractor grandfather had constructed in the late 1980s, and our living room seating was scratchy, slippery horse-hair furniture handed down from my great-grandmother. Because it was originally built as a glorified farm shed, squirrels and mice sometimes got in through the attic, and we’d find the soap in the bathroom closet nibbled into dust.
Despite my body’s affinity for the flora of the St. Lawrence River Valley, I spent a fair amount of time moving in and out of the valley. When I was 7, my parents uprooted us and moved to Massachusetts. After being rejected by every music PhD program he applied to, my father decided that God was calling him to seminary.
For my parents, the land of my distant ancestors meant prestige, education, and the opportunity to rub shoulders with the wealthy. My experience of those three years, however, was marked by crippling depression and anxiety. I remember standing in deep shame at food pantries on Boston’s wealthy North Shore, torn between wanting a change from canned peas and wanting to run away so people wouldn’t see me. I remember picking blue mold off bread before we ate it and covering mushy canned peas in yellow mustard to mask the horrific flavor.
Although we lived in Massachusetts for three years, I never formed any friendships. I occasionally wrote letters to friends at home, but mostly I buried myself in books to escape the loneliness. I learned to read at an early age, and soon I was consuming up to 80 books in a fortnight—the upper limit for a two-week check-out period. I would clear out one local library and move to the next. I lived in a world of books because when I came up for air, I was plotting how I would run away and never return.
I read many books, but Tolkien’s works—along with his detailed maps—became my constant companions. I picked up The Hobbit as a seven-year-old and was swiftly drawn into Tolkien’s legendarium. I read my father’s paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings to pieces (surely the least of the sins I've committed) and moved on to devour The Silmarillion. I loved the high adventure in The Lord of the Rings, but it was the tragedy of The Silmarillion that felt like home to the sad and angry child.
There are few happy endings in The Silmarillion. The elves are bound by an oath to fight a losing battle, and their mortal allies are too often collateral damage. It’s dark. There’s torture, betrayal, and amnesia-fueled incest. And yet there are these shining moments when characters defy despair and proclaim hope, even if they know they will not see that hope come to fruition.
“After his lord and companions had fallen, Húrin remained fighting, killing with his axe any Orc that approached him. With every strike he cried: "Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!". He cried it seventy times before Orcs captured him alive, as Morgoth had ordered.”
The sun did rise again, but Hurin didn’t live to see it. When he refused to reveal information under torture, Morgoth cursed Hurin’s family and made him watch as his wife and children met tragic ends (this is where the amnesia and incest come in).
Tolkien’s portrayal of the Long Defeat is lightened by his concept of eucatastrophe—the sudden beam of light when all seems lost. Eucatastrophe is what gave me hope on days when I could not see beyond the fog of childhood depression. Eucatastrophe is what allows me to believe that good will still prevail, even when the world seems like it’s on fire.
Tolkien’s Catholic perspective on the eucatastrophic Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection provided something solid for me to lean on at a church focused on God’s glory and little else. I’m not Catholic, but I’m grateful for Tolkien’s theological imagination—he provided a map to a different life.
Strange though it may sound, I owe my career to J.R.R. Tolkien. Although my family’s poverty guaranteed me generous financial aid, I needed a job to cover the remainder of my tuition. And I knew exactly where I wanted to work: the Marion E Wade Center. The Wade Center is an internationally respected special collection dedicated to seven British authors, and Tolkien is one of those authors.
I spent four years as a work-study student at the Wade Center and gained an archival mentor in the process. I transcribed selections from C. S. Lewis’ letters and oral histories on Dorothy Sayers. I learned how to describe archival collections as I updated the Wade Center history records and practiced answering reference questions for researchers from around the world.
I was drawn to the Wade Center because of Tolkien, but my attention was captured by how the staff offered their resources to the world. Too often, archives are thought to have Smaug-like archivists jealously guarding dusty collection hoards. I found that the staff were not at all dragon-like; they approached their work with the cheerful goodwill of hobbits.
In many countries, only serious researchers are allowed to use archives, and often they are required to present a letter of introduction from an academic sponsor. Because of its C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien collections, the Wade Center drew a wide variety of people: young and old, casual fans and dedicated scholars. The people who walked through the door might be tweens who wanted to see the wardrobe or researchers exploring Owen Barfield’s anthroposophy.
That first archives job taught me an important lesson: archives are for everyone. Especially the maps.
As someone who has used the Wade Center archives, yes, the staff do have "the cheerful goodwill of hobbits!" Loved hearing how this was a launching pad for your career.