Where Yesterdays Began Poem by gershon hepner

Where yesterdays began
tomorrows will resume,
after the todays that ran
without much elbow room
for bygone times, the past
that all todays displace.
Yesterdays come last
in the headlong race
towards tomorrows, yet,
when rediscovered, they
establish pace that’s set
not for the mere today,
but for a future that
we’ve not yet realized
our yesterdays begat
to be romanticized.

Inspired by an article by William Yardley (“A Holdout Against Developers Leaves a Legacy, ” NYT, December 28,2008) about an old lady Edith Macefield, who lived in Seattle and refused developers’ offer of $1 million to sell her house, which was built in 1900:
Ms. Macefield was 86 when she died in June of pancreatic cancer. Six months later, her 108-year-old bungalow is cloaked by what will soon become an LA Fitness club and a Trader Joe’s, set to open next year. Inside, bed sheets are still on the living room sofa where Ms. Macefield slept when she could no longer climb the stairs. Ceramic cows ornament the top of every appliance. A few copies of “The Little House, ” the children’s tale by Virginia Lee Burton of a country cabin swallowed by sprawling development, are in one corner. People she did not know would dropp them off. In a bookcase in a dark hallway there is another book, not well known like the others. In fact, it is unclear whether anyone other than its author has ever read “Where Yesterday Began.” Ms. Macefield paid to have her novel published in 1994, under the pen name Domilini. It is set against the backdropp of post-World War I Europe. An introductory page begins, “This story is for all those who have ever loved — truly, deeply, irrevocably — and in the thrust of disaster. For some, love simply dies — and one moves on. But for a few, love is as lasting as the ages — despite the impossibilities, the separation, the insured loneliness.” The book is 1,138 pages long, not counting the musical references, from Scottish folk songs to a 1915 work by the English composer Albert W. Ketelbey, and a 16-page glossary of the French, German and Italian phrases sprinkled throughout. “I think it was kind of a love story, ” said Mr. Peck, the longtime friend. “I never did read it.” The book is dedicated to “B. Robert Aigner, M.D., ” with no explanation why. Reached by phone at his home in a Seattle suburb, Dr. Aigner,80, said he remembered Ms. Macefield was a patient, but nothing more. Dr. Aigner, a neurologist, was amazed and amused that Ms. Macefield would have dedicated her ambitious work to him. He had never heard of it. “I have no idea what I was treating her for, ” he said. She wrote other manuscripts and short stories, and, of course, there are the tales she told the few visitors she invited inside her house.


12/28/08