Anna Coleman Ladd in her studio, Studio for Portrait Masks

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
― Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask”

Masks hide, masks deceive, masks beguile, masks suppress. We’ve all heard the well-meaning advice before: Take off your mask! Reveal your real self to the world! And, at times and in many cases, this is sage, compassionate advice given by those who genuinely want to see, know, and love people as they are.

But for soldiers who suffered severe facial wounds during WWI, this advice may be little more than a cruel platitude. These were men whose deformities were so profound that even their loved ones turned away unable to look such reality in the face.

Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France, said that trench warfare proved diabolically conducive to facial injuries. He lamented the fact that many soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun. In Sidcup, England, there were actually park benches that had been painted blue as a special way of alerting townspeople that the deformities of those sitting there would cause distress.

Enter Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor, with a radical remedy: copper masks designed to restore a man’s dignity and appearance. She used galvanized copper that was 1/30 of an inch thick, so that depending on how much of the face the mask covered, it weighed between 4 and 9 ounces. Masks were generally held on by eye glasses and painted to match the individual’s own skin coloring. Mask-making was a painstaking process that began with acquiring a photograph of the soldier before his injury. Then Ladd and her assistants made a plaster cast of the wounded man’s face from which they made clay or plasticine copies, or squeezes. These provided the foundation for Ladd’s portrait recreation work. Eyebrows, eyelashes, and mustaches were fashioned from real hair and added later.

Ladd corresponded with Francis Derwent Wood, the founder of the Tin Noses Shop in London, who was doing similar work in England. At a time when plastic surgery had just entered the medical scene (and surgeries were limited to correcting small facial deformities), Ladd and Wood provided a non-surgical remedy. Ladd operated her French studio for a year and, with the help of four assistants, made 185 masks. Though the masks were fragile and became worn and battered with time and use, they provided hope to those like the soldier who said: “Thanks to you, I will have a home…The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do.”

Oscar Wilde wrote that a mask tells us more than a face. When I think of the unspeakable horror of trench warfare and the unspeakable price that soldiers with facial wounds had to pay, I agree with Wilde’s assessment that there are masks that may tell us more than a face. Ladd’s masks offered these men a means of showing the world the physical faces of their pre-war selves. They gave them opportunities to interact with others instead of hiding in shame. These masks told more about who these men had been and wanted to be.

At times, masks can be sanctuaries through which some can project the faces they want to meet the world. Although these masks may conceal what lies behind them, this concealing is not always bad. We’ve all worn these types of masks at times when we desperately wanted to be happier, surer, and more eager to live among others. We put our best face forward. We soldier on. We fake it until we make it. And this can be, at least temporarily, life-saving.

I have watched my grandson put on his mask of resolve. His nostrils flare, his eyes flash as he mounts the steps to the slide. His fear is palpable. But his mask gives him a braver part to play, and he plays it as well as a five-year old can play.

I have watched those in grief put on masks that put well-wishers at remarkable ease. These masks say You can approach me. I won’t break. I won’t fall apart. And for a few blessed moments, the grieved find themselves participants in the ordinary conversation and communion of a life before loss. Clearly, there is time and need for those who will suffer with them in more intimate ways. But there is much to be said for moments that offer something less intimate but valuable. Masks that offer respite from the alienating force of grief may be saving graces, indeed.

I, too, have worn masks that allowed me to enter classrooms on days during which I felt anything but paralyzing self-doubt. A student once asked me if I ever had bad days because, as he continued, I always seemed so happy. There was a trembling mess-of-a person behind my mask, but at this moment, I was truly grateful for the positive person my student saw. Thankfully, I have always had family and friends who allowed me to air my doubts, who sat with me and simply listened to my fears, and who helped me find my purpose and worth again. But I am just as thankful for the masks that allowed me to push forward rather than to retreat.

And then there are parenting masks. Those smiling-eyed masks that assure children that they are loved and all is right with the world. I don’t know a parent who doesn’t have one. When in sickness, worry, or sadness, they wake to find their bed-headed children’s faces inches from their own–faces that are uncannily cheerful and insistent at the crack of dawn–they don their parent-masks as quickly and naturally as their robes and slippers. And sometimes, miraculously, in the middle of Cheerios and cinnamon toast, they find joy that outshines their happy mask. For their masks are means to more genuine ends.

Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar writes passionately of the masks that blacks were (and often are) forced to wear in the company of whites. Masks like these are no sanctuaries. There are masks that conceal colossal and seemingly endless pain. Unquestionably, this pain must be unmasked in the name of love and human dignity.

Still, to write off masks as wholly negative things is short-sighted. Anna Coleman Ladd’s work is evidence that, at times and under certain circumstances, masks help us move beyond our pain to join the human race.

If you are interested in reading more about Ladd and the masks of WWI, read:

“Faces of War” Caroline Alexander Smithsonian Magazine
February 2007 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/faces-of-war-145799854/#siHKd0GeVOSVjlPw.99

A frozen female cardinal lies in the snow on the deck outside our dining room windows, another casualty of collision. Sadly, we have had several hits per day. Some are simply stunned and spend a few groggy moments before they fly away; others lose their lives to concussive blows that rival those in the NFL.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that we’ve gone through a couple hundred pounds of black sunflower seeds. Our deck is bird central. Finches, nuthatches, cardinals, blue jays, tufted titmice (is this the plural of tufted titmouse?), juncos, sparrows, and woodpeckers buzz in and out from the surrounding trees. And most are successful in eating their fill and retreating to the woods behind our house. Except for the collision casualties, that is.

My daugther, Collyn, recently alerted me to the fact that Chicago has an organization created expressly for this problem. According to their website, Chicago Bird Collision Monitors is an all-volunteer conservation project dedicated to the protection of migratory birds through rescue, advocacy and outreach. Their members rise early and hit the streets of downtown Chicago, rescuing birds that have survived collision and documenting deaths of those that have not. They promote bird-safe glass and bird-friendly building design. And they have special vans with their CBCM logo on the side! And special CBCM equipment! This is a well-organized, well-funded effort, indeed.

Jokingly, my daughter suggested that I sign up for the bird collision monitoring training identified on their website. Seriously, though, I think the world might be a better place if there were more collision monitors. Not so much for birds, but for humans.

So many human victims of collision stagger about us, wounded, disoriented, and forlorn. These are individuals who believed they could move easily through encounters with co-workers, bosses, friends, family, or strangers. Only to be met with resistance–degradation, disapproval, alienation, or shame–that stops them in their tracks. And, like their feathered friends, some recover, and some do not.

To borrow the words of author Philip Yancey, perhaps the truest resistance is ungrace. Yancey writes:

Ungrace does its work quietly and lethally, like a poisonous, undetectable gas. A father dies unforgiven. A mother who once carried a child in her own body does not speak to that child for half its life. The toxin steals on, from generation to generation.

We all know individuals who have suffered from collisions with ungrace. In truth, most of us know this suffering personally, for we have cracked our souls on impenetrable words, acts, and attitudes. There is no disputing the fact that collisions like this occur every second of every day, perhaps even generation after generation. But where are the collision monitors?

American author Flannery O’Connor understands that what falls must be redeemed. In Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, she writes:

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration.

So I ask again: where are the collision monitors who redeem the fallen? Where are those who understand the price of restoration? Clearly, God’s eye–and that of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors–is on the sparrow. But what about us?

In Matthew 10:29-31, Jesus says:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

You are worth more than sparrows. We sing the hymn, we quote the verse, but where are the collision monitors, the grace-givers who act as God’s hands, recovering those who have collided with ungrace? I’m confident that they’re out there working just as diligently, just as compassionately as those who rise early to rescue wounded birds. They may not have fancy vans or agency t-shirts. But like the bird collision monitors, they do have amazing equipment. Armed with grace and the conviction of the Beatitudes, they are ever on the lookout for collision victims.

Don’t get me wrong. Bird collision monitors are obviously caring, committed people. What bothers me is the reality that we often go to incredible lengths to rescue creatures of the air, land, and sea (heck, even the air, land, and sea!), while ignoring the wounded humans around us. I know there are wonderful agencies and organizations filled with selfless people who focus their efforts on wounded people of all sorts. And I realize that there are good individuals who quietly do recovery work because it’s the right thing to do, because they are loving their neighbors as themselves. Perhaps because there are these agencies and individuals, we may take their efforts for granted, choosing instead to celebrate the work of bird collision monitors and the like.

In his book, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News? Yancey writes:

Herein lies the most solemn challenge facing Christians who want to communicate their faith: if we do not live in a way that draws others to the faith rather than repels them, none of our words will matter. 

It goes without saying that there is a whole lot of repelling around us. A window and a word of condemnation are both powerful repellents. And a collision with either leaves the wounded stunned, at best, or destroyed, at worst. Yancey encourages Christians to redeem rather than repel. This is the real work of human collision monitors.

I confess that I have a difficult time watching the news these days, for collision carnage is piling up. Hateful words, quick judgments, and searing sarcasm all prove to be as destructive as my dining room windows. I dream of tuning in one day to see a collision monitor rushing onto the scene to restore a wounded individual, a victim of those who oppose his or her convictions . Now that would be newsworthy, indeed.

Lali Eisenberg Sokolov and Gita Fuhrmannova Sokolov

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us, and those in the flower, chocolate, and greeting card businesses are licking their lips in anticipation.

But for those short on cash and long on genuine sentiment, the love letter is always a good choice. I’m not talking about a love text, heaven forbid! But an honest to goodness, pen-to-paper love letter. This is the kind of letter that remains in its original envelope safely nestled in a place among keepsakes, a letter that may physically yellow and fade over the years, but that never loses its impact on the heart. In this type of letter, writers bare their souls in unabashed prose or poetry intended for a precious audience of one.

A would-be love letter writer could take note from Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s words to his wife, Vera:

I need you, my fairy tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought–and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smile at me with all its seeds.

Or English poet John Keats to fiancee and muse, Fanny Brawne:

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days–three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

If you’re a man or woman of few words, you might look for mentors in New Zealand short story writer, Katherine Mansfield who wrote You might drop your heart into me and you’d never hear it touch bottom or Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote I don’t want to live–I want to love first, and live incidentally.

I grew up in a house of words. My father, a teacher and poet, genetically instilled in me a reverence for the spoken and written word. At the supper table, I listened as he spoke. As a child, I took in the rhythms and sounds of a language that seemed other-worldly and infinitely more beautiful than anything I’d ever heard. As a young woman, I became his student, eager to read the words he’d written on the essays I submitted for his classes. Later, as I began to teach and write, I read my father’s poetry–often attached to the bottom of a letter or email. I have known my father as a writer for most of my life.

But it wasn’t until recently, however, that I came to know my father as love letter-writer. I remember the day the manila envelope stuffed with a bundle of letters–rubber-banded and in their original envelopes–arrived at my home. My mother had sent them to me, graciously granting me a look at a father I had sensed but had never truly seen.

The sheer quantity of letters astounded me. Each was written in his distinctive hand, the signature loops and angles, the way one word leaned eagerly into the next. This was my father before he was my father. This was a man who loved a woman with every pen stroke, every word. The most expensive box of chocolates, bouquet of flowers, or greeting card are no match for a single line of a single letter written by my father to my mother.

As I read through my father’s love letters, I was also reading Heather Morris’s novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Although criticized by some for historical inaccuracies, the novel shines as a love story between Lali (Ludwig) Eisenberg and Gita (Gisela) Fuhrmann. Lali, the Tätovierer, first meets Gita when he tattoos her number. As he recounted his story to Morris, he said: As I tattooed her number on her left arm, she tattooed her number in my heart.

Budding love in one of the worst concentration camps the world has known may seem unlikely. But Lale’s and Gita’s love story began and continued through love letters delivered, astonishingly, through Lale’s SS guard. Lale’s desire to meet and know Gita was so strong that he dared to bargain with his SS guard to ensure that Gita received his letters. Initially, he simply wanted to know her name, for he didn’t want to know her as the four-digit number he tattooed on her arm. Their correspondence progressed from simple requests for information and plans for when and where to meet to declarations of love.

Lale and Gita survived unimaginable horror in the camp, only to be separated as the Russians approached, and the Nazis began their retreat. But the love that had sustained them in Auschwitz-Birkenau drove them both to wake each morning, in hopes that this day would be the day they would find each other. After weeks of searching passengers from every train that stopped in Bratislava, Lale was headed to the Red Cross when a woman literally stepped in front of his horse-drawn cart. This was Gita, the love of his life.

Lale and Gita were married and changed their names to Sokolov, a safer name in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. When life there became too dangerous, they escaped and moved to Melbourne, Australia where they lived out the rest of their lives. There, Gita gave birth to Gary, their only child. Gita died in 2003, and only after her death did Lale share their incredible story with author Heather Morris. Lale died in 2006.

Lale’s risk-taking not only included sending love letters to Gita; he also took tremendous risks to buy food from locals who worked inside the camps. The women who sorted clothing and personal items taken from incoming prisoners would smuggle money and jewels to him, so that he could buy food to distribute to those most in need. Lale even changed a prisoner’s tattoo so that he might escape the gas chambers and helped another prisoner escape. Although much of his life he feared he might be regarded as a Nazi collaborator because his role as tattooist had garnered him some special privileges, this same role afforded him opportunities to move about the camp more freely and to make connections with villagers who worked inside the camps. Certainly, the countless prisoners whom Lale helped would consider him a hero. Lale, himself, denied this label and told Morris that he just did the right thing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda:

I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside of me there will always be the person I am tonight.

This is the enduring essence of the greatest love letters. In them, we write words that capture the extraordinary love of single moments, single days and nights. Through them, we remember the people we were when we wrote and received them. And when we are separated from the one we love? We can read them. Again and again. We can live and love again through words that have only grown more lovely over the years.

There are 7 days before Valentine’s Day. This is more than enough time to pen a great love letter: one from your true heart, one that will remain its original envelope safely stowed with other treasures, one to be taken out and read. Again and again.

Read Lale’s and Gita’s love story:

Morris, Heather. The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Harper, 2018.