My friend Barbara Hiken passed away a few months back, well into her 90s. I met her through her husband, Gerry Hiken, a great actor and dear comrade, and Barbara became a dear comrade as well. I knew them for forty years, and though I was unable to make her memorial in Palo Alto this last Saturday, I sent along a few words to Nina and Noah, their two children, who I have known just as long.
When I think of your mom, I just think of all that face. So much face. That incredible hunk of nose right in the middle and that smile. That divine, toothy, Jewish Kabuki smile, totally theatrical, yet completely real. But despite all that nose and mouth her eyes still stole the show, twinkling above it all. It was a soulful, aching twinkle and always with a little danger, like some wild force might take her over at any moment and all bets off. I loved to sit and talk with her and just listen to her voice, that gruff, leathery Jewish lilt, then she’d flash that smile at the end like punctuation. The way she put her eyes on me, holding my gaze like we were in on some big cosmic joke—I’m not sure it was the same joke, but we were in on it, nonetheless.
I can feel her, pacing the kitchen in Palo Alto, forty pounds of Belgian chocolate stashed somewhere nearby for baking projects to come. Me asking her to tell me the same Elvin Jones stories over and over, how they were engaged and how he only read comic books. The look in her eyes when she’d say “he was the most charming man I ever met,” and you knew she meant it. My favorite was when they were out in East Hampton (they had to stay where all the “help” stayed to keep out of trouble) and Elvin suddenly remembered he had a show in two hours in the city with his brother Hank, so Barbara rented a helicopter so he could make the gig on time. And of course, being called in the middle of the night to come do Billie Holiday’s make-up in the casket for the viewing-- She told all these tales like they were no big deal, but I know she appreciated my appreciation of her extraordinary life.
One story she always told with great affection was how she and Gerry met. It was at the old CBS in New York, she was the make-up girl and putting a fake mustache on him when he started kissing her fingers; an entire lifetime of repressed heterosexuality bursting forth in a gush! Neither of them said a word but later she found him. “Are you going to ask me out or are we going to ignore our fate?” And with that bold query began a sixty-year odyssey.
I come from pretty straight people, my folks radical in their politics but very by-the-book in their lifestyle, and so your parents living separate lives four hundred miles apart while maintaining their marital bonds (or their version of) opened my mind and let me see that there were other ways to do it. They made it up as they went along, but no matter how far-out, free-love, Northern California they had ventured, there was something surprisingly stable and almost middle class about them. And of course, they were both incredibly creative; highly cultured but with a funky arts and crafts sensibility. They cared as much about gardening or a collage they were making as they did about their so-called careers, their playful spark Hikenizing everything they touched. They were right sized, and there was a real humility to them, individually and as a couple— and not the selfless kind or the 12-step kind or the yogic kind, but real empirical hard-won, life lived shit. They were in the middle of it but had also dropped out of it. That’s a pretty hip magic trick if you can pull it off.
When I went into my twenty-year dope spiral and lost touch with them it was painful, but they accepted me back easily. Didn’t matter how long the breaks were, the second we laid eyes on each other it was back on. The connection went deep. A real love, and I felt it. I know Barbara had her own demons and struggled with depression, but the light in her was so strong that it never battered her into submission, and her longevity and booming laugh were the proof. In touch with the simple and essential forces that sustain a meaningful life she was a wabi-sabi master. The rehearsal was the performance and vice-versa. I can see her so vividly in my mind right now. That head of hers. That Jewish Buffalo head. What a fucking head!
I’m sitting here drinking coffee with my own homemade half and half (more cream than milk) and thinking about Nina telling me that Barbara made the same. Glad I’m in good company. My strongest memories will always be up there in the Palo Alto kitchen, the warmness of her welcome after however long. The immediate ease between us. That smile, those eyes, the glittering theater of her face. I never met anyone whose inner life was so completely captured in their features and expressions. She was a beauty: human, tender, and wildly open to possibility. She must have said the word “yes” fifty times for every time she said “no.”
Tommy, this is an incredible piece of writing. This is an incredible tribute to your friend, Barbara. Your whole heart and soul are in it, and so many of the things you say about her are so memorable on a level of life and language that I find myself wanting to hold on to them in perhaps the same way you want to hold on to your memories of her. I particularly like your description of her features: 'That smile, those eyes, the glittering theatre of her face.' I can see all of that so clearly! No doubt you brought a bit of theatre to her life, too. No doubt she appreciated your appreciation of her extraordinary life.
What a life. This is so beautifully written. I'm sure her family and friends will treasure it. Sorry for your loss.