Ruth Eng: Finding Wonder in the Ordinary
by Dorothy Dow Crane

At 90, Ruth Eng is probably the oldest resident on North Road. She hasn't written any books or been in the movies, but almost everyone who knows Ruth Eng is fierce about how exceptional she is. They use phrases that range from "she's so full of life, she's so much fun," to those applied to spiritual leaders—"She takes each day as a gift. She can teach you how to live."

And so here I sit with Ruth on her off-white sofa, attempting to grasp this quiet force in the Tivoli community. She wears white cropped pants, sandals, and a brilliant turquoise cotton shirt that sets off her white hair. In a disarming southern accent untainted by her years above the Mason Dixon line, she immediately turns to me and says, "How simply thrilling, darlin'—how marvelous you have a grown daughter who answers the phone when you're not home!" And she goes on to ask about my son and my husband.

After a few minutes I catch myself and good-naturedly stop her, warning her that if I don't, we'll end up talking about me, not her. I hear a barely audible sigh of dismay, but she graciously refocuses, gazes out onto the fields beyond the small brick patio, and begins to tell me about her life. I suspect that Ruth is actually more interested in hearing about me than talking about herself. She's insatiably curious, receiving each ordinary detail as a great wonder.

Ruth tells me about growing up in world of strong tradition and deep family ties. She was one of six children in a huge, extended, devoutly Catholic family in New Madrid, Missouri, a family that today, she proudly tells me, counts over 100 members in the same area. She was the fifth generation in her family to attend a Catholic preparatory school for girls in St. Louis ("the nuns knew my mother, my grandmother and my older sisters"), and then went on to study music at a small Catholic college in Indiana.

But Ruth was also a free spirit. She convinced her father to let her study voice for a summer at the Juilliard Institute in New York. She showed promise, and the summer expanded into years as she prepared for and was accepted into the Juilliard School of Music. She moved into the International House, a residence for students from all over the world established by the Rockefeller family, where she met Fred Eng, a young artist with an infectious smile who had also made big moves in his life. Fred had arrived on the West Coast from China when he was just three years old. He had now come to New York to seek his fortune. When she brought him home to Missouri, he was the first Asian her family and most of the town of New Madrid had ever seen.

The young couple must have been quite a pair: a handsome, engaging Chinese man and a vivacious southern belle who called everyone darlin', her dark brown ringlets falling down her shoulders. He was crazy for tennis. She loved to sing and dance. Then the war pressed in on their lives. Fred joined the armed services and was sent to Morocco for two years. While he was away she sang in the Broadway musical Sing Out Sweet Land, with a cast that included Burl Ives.

After the war and the birth of their first child, Fred and Ruth moved to the home on North Road in Tivoi. Ruth describes it as "a tiny, tiny house, darlin', with no amenities. There was a pump for the water on the second floor!" The years passed and the house was fixed up and expanded to accommodate the joys of six children and the soul wrenching grief of burying three of them, one as an infant, two as adults. Her husband Fred died in 1995, just after their 50th wedding anniversary.

When I ask Ruth about the important details of her life, I discover that it's not about noteworthy achievements as much as small everyday tasks. She talks about the joys and work of raising five children, about teaching elementary school first in Hyde Park, then in Germantown, later at Dalton, the private school in New York, and finally working in a Head Start program in Harlem. Through this are woven walks with friends, yoga classes, notes and telephone calls—all simple acts that transmit an energy people feel but are often at a loss to describe.

Ruth can't really describe it either. When I tell her that people find her exceptional, that they are drawn to her, and I ask her why this might be, she looks puzzled and begins to talk about her faith. "God has been good to me. I take no credit. You just don't do it without God's help." She turns and looks right at me, her brows furrowed above her flashing brown eyes as if to signal me that what's coming next is very important, "You have to be aware and take time for an inner spiritual life." Unwilling to be categorized religiously, she reluctantly confides that she thinks of herself as "mostly a Sufi." The Gospel of Thomas lies on top of the stack of books on her coffee table. Beside it is a small statue of Buddha. She laughs as she remembers that her mother used to declare that "Ruth read herself right out of the Catholic church." She has a daily practice of prayer, reflection, and reading.

Perhaps it has to do with growing up in New Madrid, a Mississippi River town in the Missouri boot heel that sits right on top of a major earthquake fault. The Mississippi ran backwards after the New Madrid earthquake of 1812. Ruth laughs as she remembers how in her youth New Madrid was known for two things—"floods and bank failures, and we overcame both." When she was seven, the river breached the levee and flooded the whole town. Tremors were always a part of everyday life. "It was nothing to hear things rattle in the cupboard." Perhaps when you grow up in a place where the ground shakes under your feet and the river has been known to flow upstream and wipe out everything for miles around, you learn how to keep your balance.

When I ask her about how Tivoli has changed over the years, she replies that it's a miracle that Tivoli has remained a small village packed with so much. She buys the Financial Times ("the one printed on the pink paper") at the Country Grocer because, she tells me, it offers a broader scope and often anticipates the New York Times coverage. She remembers when the Santa Fe used to be a small restaurant, she loves what she calls "the resurrection of the Madalin," she enjoys the vegetarian food at Luna 61, declares Mike's croissants at the Tivoli Bakery to be better than any she's had in France, and confesses that she "just lives at the post office" where she just might meet someone and have a conversation that changes her day.

Ruth has been taking classes for years, both at nearby Omega and more recently at her winter home in Tucson, usually in subjects she knows nothing about, simply because she wants to learn more. She doesn't always agree with her teachers and is not afraid to tell them so: she tells me about encountering prominent scientist and author Ray Kurzweil, who believes that after losing a loved one, the neurons that connect you to that person also die. "That's just wrong," Ruth declares. "I haven't lost any of my neurons. In fact, they may be stronger."

Ruth simply loves people. "People turn me on," she says, "it's just as simple as that. My husband always said that if they took the phone away from me, I'd die. People feed my soul. Everyone has to figure life out for themselves. It would be very dull if we all did it the same way. Everyone has a different journey." Ruth is curious about that journey. I catch myself and notice that she has now turned the conversation back to me.

Perhaps her niece Harriet put it best: "I think Ruth sees the god, and only the god, in other people. That's what she teaches people, that it's not about the outside trappings."