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GREENSBORO — At the end of what some call the Decade of Dread, I think often of Harriet Barrett.

She’ll be 86 next month. She’s frail, as slender as a stick. She can barely see out of her right eye. She’s recovering from a broken left hip, and she knows when it’ll storm because of the arthritic ache in her right leg.

She lives down Lawndale Drive at Loyalton, an assisted-living community where her hall neighbors struggle with dementia, depression and failing health.

So, she writes. She writes in the morning, in the afternoon, in longhand, on a legal pad. She strings together phrases and images that are beautiful.

I’ve written about Harriet before.

But this time, it’s different.

In the past 10 years, we’ve seen jobs evaporate, companies vanish, housing tank and controversies continue as terrorists turn airplanes into weapons of mass destruction.

It’s exhausting. That’s what makes me think of Harriet.

She’s not afraid.

She’s in the fourth quarter of her life. She could lose sight in both eyes because of a retinal artery blockage, and she needs a walker to get around.

Yet, ask her about that, and she has an answer.

“You know me, honey,’’ she says. “I never give up.’’

She eats blueberries to keep her eyes healthy, and she listens to Frank Sinatra and the soundtrack to “South Pacific’’ to keep herself, as she likes to say, “eternally young.’’

And she laughs. But it’s not just any laugh.

It’s this back-of-the-throat, yech-yech-yech guffaw that’ll remind you of Jerry Lewis or SpongeBob SquarePants.

And she laughs often, especially when she talks about Andy.

Or really Annie.

He was a she, and she sat at Harriet’s table for meals at Loyalton for five months before Harriet figured that out.

“You know that song, 'She walks like a dame’?’’ says Harriet, shimmying her shoulders. “I thought she was a man the whole time!’’

They call Harriet the “poet laureate of Loyalton.’’ That came from Margie Frazier, Loyalton’s community relations director.

A few months ago, Frazier visited Harriet in her room and read “Serenities,’’ one of Harriet’s poems. Frazier liked it so much she had it framed and hung in the main room under the big clock for everyone to read.

In the three frames on the wall, you see phrases like “young at heart,’’ “vibrant wonders’’ and “gallant chimes of faith and loyalties.’’

“It makes me feel darn good,” Harriet says. “That’s true, honey.”

After Tim Edwards read it, he had a request. He’s Loyalton’s maintenance director. He asked Harriet if she could write a poem for his two children, Brandon, 11, and Crystal, 14. She did, and she called it “Soliloquies For My Children.’’

On Christmas, Edwards gave it to his kids. They loved it.

Harriet began writing poetry and prose in 1967 after the death of her husband, Randy. Since then, she has self-published six books of poetry, won awards and had her work published in Slate and Style, a national magazine for the blind and visually impaired.

“When I have to write,’’ Harriet says, “I gotta write!’’

Then comes the laugh. And the story of her first great-grandchild, John Miller Mansfield, a 9-pound, 6-ounce boy born a few weeks before Christmas.

It’s what she’s been wanting for 20 years. To be a great-grandmother. She calls it the “greatest wish in my life.’’

Why? She has an answer for that, too.

“To carry on, my friend,’’ she says. “To carry on.’’
 

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com