These Darn Writing Shoes

Learnings in Winter - Reflections from the Alois

2012-01-12T12:29:00.000-08:00

Today. Winter, as a theme, or memory. Not a reality, not yet, not until later tonight, when the meteorologists are predicting accumulation. But here, at the Alois, memories and learnings amass not just for the residents of the Alois Alzheimer Center, but for those facilitators who occasionally walk the path with these kind-hearted souls.

When we first began offering this class, one student, now quite the stinker, refused to read her words. Following the first class, which involved the prompt, “I am From”, based on the poem by George Ella Lyon, F. took it upon herself to toss out her words. She remained leery for weeks, “What are you going to do with that?” she would point to the paper where she had hardly scribbled a word. Her distrust was alarming, but also understanding.

Someone had betrayed her words, her voice, many years ago. We had no knowledge of who, or when, but we hadn’t named the program, Found Voices, for nothing. Our work and F.’s continued presence would prove out, and over time, we would watch her laugh, joke, and even flirt with the farmer-resident.

In looking back, our first mistake had been to call this a "class." For the generation of 80-somethings, the word "class" brings back horrid memories. Teachers rapping rulers on knuckles, or the pressure of a deadline, or test, for material one didn’t know. Certainly, each in this circle has a slight grasp on their condition, so the prospect of reciting poetry or recalling the dates of the Civil War was terrifying. And too, the proverbial red pen had once made its way to each of their papers.

Some of our participants, experiencing significant memory loss, often don’t comprehend they are in a “writing class”. They come for camaraderie, to hear a reading of Robert Frost, to share a memory or eat a donut. They might saunter in, without a care in the world. It is a benefit of their disease.

When my own mother was progressing into a new phase of dementia, she passed through anger and frustration, and into more light. Worries had been wiped off her face, a face which in the past had sported pursed lips and creased brows. Of course, she still worries about who is coming down the hall, and “where is your father,” but her general trust in people around her is evident.

This condition, while beneficial, and a relief oftentimes for loved ones, is also cause for regret. For often, the person with memory loss cannot connect to other emotional aspects of their life, this including worries. And while all their thoughts, or their daily take on life, are upbeat, there is sometimes a hollowness, as if they are trying to fill a cup that keeps leaking, and they can’t quite tap into how to plug the leak.

On the rare occasion, the hole gets plugged, their cup will fill up, and they will tap into their reserves, and produce something akin to a fine wine.

Today, we readied the community room for the group. Our regular assistant was absent, so we waited on the staff to bring the residents to us. When they did, we ushered one group of residents that enter through the side door of the room. This I take it be the non-wanderers, or those that have been around longer, and therefore have stayed in the older wing. I don’t ask many details about the residents’ lives, preferring to let them surprise me, let them show me their story, instead of someone else telling it for them. First rule of writing. Show, don’t tell.

As this group of regulars, our long-time participants, were filing in, holding the hand of the person in front of them, one was missing. The assistant mentioned N. would be right back. She was using the restroom. We situated each as they entered the room, securing name tags, moving chairs, relocating walkers.

When I finally got around to saying Hello to N., she had removed her hearing aids, which drove me crazy. We would have to speak louder or move closer to her, but it was her prerogative. She wanted to tell me something else though.

N. began, in her halting voice, “I didn’t bring a pen.” To which I replied, “That’s OK. N. We have plenty.” Then, she mentioned, “I didn’t know where I was going today. I was worried this would be a class like school.”

She went on, “but then I learned I don’t have to worry.”

I don’t have to worry. What beautiful lines, what a mantra to speak over and again, as the flipping of the calendar sets fire to a hurried pace. Here, in our circle, N. does not have to worry.

When N. began coming to class, some of the prompts at that time dealt with love and family. N. had been adopted, her memories on those themes were painful. Now, she shares writing that is honest, hopeful, devout. After her last reading, I felt as I had been absolved of my sins for the week.

Her writings now are more light-hearted, more faith-filled. This could be due to her slipping into the next phase of her dementia, or a change in medication, or working with prompts that don’t touch on touchy subjects.

Or quite possibly, due to the safety N. feels in our circle, and that Winter cannot impact her inside, she no longer worries.

2012-01-11T17:04:00.000-08:00

Jesus and Mary Go to Tampa

After the cattle completed their lowing,
and the three Wise Men returned to Afar,
after the Star in the East ran out of hydrogen
and began to grow dim,
Jesus and Mary went to Tampa.

They stopped at Hamburger Mary’s,
a burger joint known for its inclusiveness.
There on County Road 574, they stumbled upon
Drag Bingo, and a show called Daphne’s Doll House.
Having tired of challah and soup,
Mary ordered the Hot Legs tossed in special sauce,
and, as a side, the Hail Caesar Salad.
while Jesus ordered off the menu for Little Lambs.

Upon hearing her name called out by the wait staff,
Mary stepped up to the mic for Mary-Oke.
As Mary crooned to Madonna’s Like a Virgin,
Jesus left room for dessert of fried bananas foster,
trying to erase the taste of hay from his mouth.

After that, the manager got an inkling
these two were on their way to stardom.
As Mary and Jesus prepared to leave,
she asked Mary to stand against
the blank wall nearest the kitchen
and drew a feint chalk outline around her.

She let them exit through the back door,
en route to San Marco, Texas for the outlet malls.
Meanwhile, the rest of Tampa flocked
to Hamburger Mary’s, lining the county road
to see the miracle they had just missed.

AJW
1/11/12
In reference to a news item about Mary’s image showing up in a Tampa Bay restaurant.

http://www.andrewzmorningshow.com/2012/01/11/the-virgin-mary-has-turned-up-at-a-restaurant-called-hamburger-marys/

Self Space

2012-01-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

Self Space

Clean out the closet of your “self.”

Toss out right or wrong.

Some days, you will feel right.

Rememberthose days.

Do not expect perfection but be open

tohumility.

Gather friends, hold them near.

Keepwriting more so.

Let go of the warm bed in

winter’smornings.

Do not write willy nilly, but

withintention.

Proclaim that you are the goddess

you have been looking for.

Capture while you can the poignancy

of the transient moment.

You will never be done, you have

barely begun.

1/1/2012

AJW

Christmas Solstice

2011-12-30T10:20:00.000-08:00

(Solstice from the Latin word sistere - to stand still)

Quiet house, full house.
Sun greets Morning,
asking Night to extend a hand.

Lights flicker at the neighbor’s,
Santa having already arrived.
He won’t show
–across the street –
for hours or more.
He will have time to stop
scratch his belly, and the dog’s.
He won’t need Rudolph
when he sets down his sleigh
nor candles in the window.

The dog paces
waiting, wondering.
The coffee has grown tepid,
the children have grown up.
But in their waking sleep
they generate energy enough
to stumble from bed and upon belief -
the magic emerges with the sun.

12/25/2011
AJW

My Mother's Christmas Gift

2011-12-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

Two months ago, my parents moved to an independent living care community nearby. They live independently only because my father’s mind is intact, if not his ability to sign Christmas cards. A caregiver attends to Mom’s needs once a week to give Dad respite, and encourage Mom to participate in activities around the community.

The monthly calendars published by the Lodge Community boasts all sorts of field trips – Cracker Barrel and Movie, the Mighty Wurlitzer at Music Hall, Sharon Woods in Lights. Many of these my father takes advantage of. Mom’s outings are limited in scope because of her attention span, and her “sundowning”. At dusk, she becomes anxious and wants to return home.

Within the community, there are activities for Arts and Crafts, Let’s Have Fun, Chair Volleyball, and Communion and Rosary. But there is also the Choraliers. A musically-inclined piano player, Alice, comes to the Lodge, and directs residents who choose to participate in choral practice once a week. Then, the group performs for various audiences in-house, families, and last week, traveled to another senior center.

At my urging, Mom “decided” to join the choir. The caregiver, Elizabeth, accompanied Mom to the first practice. No one had any idea how long Mom might sit. But Elizabeth was getting paid by the hour, so it was no matter to her.

For a few weeks, Mom attended practice with Elizabeth. Even Dad took Mom one week, and was forced to sing along.

The week before the Choralier’s performance in front of their peers, Mom was visiting at my house, rolling meatballs at my side. “What are these for,” she kept asking. “Wedding soup.” I replied, assuming she recognized the season of Christmas was always accompanied by Italian Wedding Soup. “Yeah, but whose wedding?” she pestered. “No one.” “Then why are we making these?” “Mom, it’s Christmas.”

Though Mom had just been singing carols, the concept of “the most wonderful time of year” was lost. We switched the music over to Frank Sinatra, and she whiled away the rest of the rolling with Frank’s music on her lips. When she walked away to look out the front door, a common chore of hers, Mom stopped mid-step and said, “You know, I always loved to sing. Ever since I was little.”

I agreed heartily with her, recalling her days dragging us to Midnight Mass so she could sing in the church choir, and too, she was part of the Resurrection Choir, which sang at all the funeral masses. Her voice, though not booming, was always perfect pitch, and devout.

“I wish I would have learned how to sing when I was little,” Mom reiterated.

I looked up puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I wanted to know how to sing.”

“Oh, like taking lessons?”

“Well, yes, something like that.” She beamed knowing I understood.

Mom moseyed off into the family room, to perform her other task at my home, closing the plantation shutters.

Monday of Mom’s performance arrived. I met up with Mom and Elizabeth, strolling through the lobby on their way to be seated for the show. Mom kept motioning for me to sit by her, in the choir’s chairs. I repeatedly signaled that I would sit in the audience. I took a seat near the front, but didn’t want to be distracting.

Like a young girl who spots her parents while singing in her first concert, Mom frequently waved to me from the back row. I would give a wave, we would lock eyes, and then sing in unison, “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.”

On occasion, I had to look away from Mom, because I was in tears, reflecting on the years of Christmas past, her beautifully-decorated home, her perfectly round meatballs, and crisply pressed pizzelles. But Mom didn’t miss a note, singing happily - no, joyfully.

When I was five, my mother had bought me a Mrs. Beasley doll for Christmas. In high school, Mom gave me purple corduroy jeans as a Christmas gift. Over the years, her selections were conscious choices gleaned from scribbled lists, dog-eared pages of the Sears catalog, or a whisper from a sister.

Mom could not have known, that at age 84, the best gift she could have presented to me was her voice.

12/19/2011

Goodbyes Part I & II

2011-12-16T10:48:00.000-08:00

I am miles from home driving past whirligigs for sale

and berries baked in pies sold off Amish buggies.

A hundred trips have led me past signs

offering farm raised perch and kittens raised by hand.

In a few weeks or maybe months,

Mom and Dad will sell the thirty-year-old home.

I am afraid that no family home means no family.

Memories of our youth will no longer rock

our own children to sleep, the ghosts of our teens

will not keep them awake.

The pool table will have been sold despite parties it once held.

Wide mouthed canning jars will no longer

capture the juiciness of the summer.

And zucchini, fixed 1001 ways, will become a relic of the past.

A picture of Mom and Dad, squinting into the Sunday sun

as they stand on the cracked drive of 724 Lincoln Street,

will be all that is preserved.

Dad’s too wide blue tie stands out against his

white shirt with short sleeves - the style he wore

every day to the shoe store.

Mom still sports white pants - always black or white –

only now a few sizes less.

This day, my baby sister and oldest sister with her baby

march out from the garage to join and wave

as I reverse my course.

It is still tradition

that whoever is home leaves the Sunday paper,

the Saturday cartoons, the Monday morning wash,

to take up their role outside the garage

and stand side by side as the committee of goodbyes.

AJW 7/9/2007

II.

Today, as I bathe Mom, she is open to my bossiness,

only if Frank Sinatra flies with us, or Crosby croons

a white Christmas into existence in her very bathroom.

She even declares her legs need more lotion.

Dad tells me they did not attend Mass

for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception,

He also confesses to not taking Mom to choir practice.

After lunch in a noisy café, we hang

stockings embroidered with letters on the rocking chair.

Mom repeats names, “E for Ettore, J for Jean.”

Alright, I say, gathering my keys. You take care of each other.

Mom takes Dad in her arms, hugs him too tight.

“Oh we will. We take care of each other.”

Alright, I mutter again, trying to leave.

Mom cuts ahead, opens the door,

a chore she daily performs, expecting a guest who never comes.

She keeps it ajar while I walk out.

When I turn, Mom is standing in the hallway.

Dad is leaning through the open space.

The scene is reminiscent of goodbyes once hailed

from the garage of their family home.

Only now, they are piercing the blandness of a fourth floor hall,

waving wildly, wishing me buon viaggio

in my travels outside of their world.

12/8/11

AJW

Never Give Up - In Memory of D.

2011-11-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

Reflections from the Alois –

Thanksgiving, we told the circle, was just a week away. Without any concept of time, each one shook their head in acknowledgement, but was unable to connect blue skies and sunshine with the typical rainy Ohio Thanksgiving in their

past.

We laughed about how many turkeys Americans might consume on this day, could it really be close to 250 million? And oh, the pounds of cranberries, and not just the kind that come in the can.

F. marched in with a new autumn orange sweater on, to match that of Leigh’s. I too had dressed up, and felt the occasion was a worthy one.

Per our usual routine, R., the assistant at the Alois, rounded up the residents who would be participating in the sharing circle. Looking back on notes from our first class, only ML. and W. and F. had been in continuous attendance. And too, B., whose had fallen off. She wore a trench coat inside now, where there was no threat of rain.

And J. ,when asked about, I was told, “She is too confused anymore to sit through a class.” J. who first wrote, “I am fun. I love to make silly jokes.” In recent times, she had simply sat to listen to our voices, and give hugs when requested. She would no longer be in attendance though she would always be part of any circle that we remembered. Our favorite remembrance of J. would be, as we discussed food, and she motioned, “those little crunchy things you pour milk over.” "Cereal," we shouted in unison. Her description is still a catchphrase for us, when we are at a loss for words.

As R. made her rounds, I asked about another one of our originals, as we like to call them. “Where is D.?” She hadn’t been in attendance all Fall. Rinda replied, “D. passed away last week.” This I was told before beginning our circle, and thus, my interaction with each resident took on new meaning, for I didn’t know when it might be the last.

I locked eyes longer, made more jokes at my own expense, and really listened, sometimes prodding them for more information than they might have first offered, producing a treasure chest full of sentiments.

After class, M., the activities director extraordinaire, spoke again about D., “We held the memorial service here, and her family then took her to be buried in Pittsburgh.” He explained how crowded the service had been, and that he was sorry he didn’t think to invite us.

I shook that off, as we acknowledged how residents come to feel like family here. “The staff really took an interest in D. She was a mess when she came, but everybody worked with her, to get her in the right meds, get her walking. They never gave up.”

They never gave up.

These words echoed in my head throughout the day, as I reflected on Mom's condition. Lately, I have been hit with an onslaught of peers moving their parent to a secure facility. I tell them nothing compares to the Alois, the staff, the treatment of the residents, how they support outside activities, how they push each resident.

When one enters the Alois, it is not with the intention that this is the end. It is with the goal of starting over, correcting mistakes by other medical or non-medical staff not as educated in the field of dementia, helping the resident re-establish a healthy routine which they might have fallen out due to lack of oversight, as is the case with my mother and when she finally stopped cooking or bathing.

I push my mom. It drives her crazy. Sometimes, she will throw an air punch at me and say, “Why don’t you just leave me alone?” I have answers for her, a play on my own fears, but even deeper, a resolve to never give up on Mom.

I see much of her in the women at the Alois- the reflection is in their eyes, their laugh, their singing. But mostly, I see Mom in their sheer effort to be awake in the moment, despite their physical and mental challenges – encroaching blindness, crippling hands, weakening minds.

Today, the circle, average age 80-something, gave thanks for their “good health”, having eyes and ears to still see and hear, for God and “Gospel friends”, family and “being included.” Today, I give thanks for D. and the rest of the circle, for Mom, for never giving up.

Observing Freedom at the Alois

2011-11-11T05:14:00.000-08:00

Last week, we had the honor of facilitating our sharing circle at the Alois, with the focus on America and freedom. What began as a concept to ask the participants to write it means when they see the American flag went deeper than imagined.

We began with Emma Lazarus, her beautiful sonnet "The New Colossus" engraved on the Statue of Liberty. I had visited the Statue of Liberty a few summers ago, but somehow the meaning had more impact as I read her words. “Imprisoned lightening”, “Mother of exiles”, “sea-washed sunset gates”, all these phrases and concepts are missing from our everyday jargon that reference the Statue of Liberty. These stronger images are the ones that touched me most deeply.

As participants were asked, what the pictures in front of them meant, each was able to articulate a time when the war took life away from them.

N. mentioned herself, as a young wife, waiting for the return of her husband. She still waits today, though her husband has passed away.

R. mentioned, “I cant share.” I took this to mean she didn’t want to participate, but when gently nudged, I realized it was the pain she was bearing keeping her from sharing her words. “All those boys that died needlessly,” she finally uttered, with a sense of relief, but almost as if it were shameful to address death, or question our country’s motives for war.

R. was charged with ferrying the Japanese POWs to camps. We knew this about him, but he too was reluctant to share. Just opposite R. sat M., who bears scars of a bomb dropping in her hometown in Japan.

L. always with something upbeat to share, mentioned “I served in Korea from 52-54, but I didn’t do anything extraordinary. I don’t want to brag. I wasn’t special because I served. And those who did not serve should not be ashamed either.”

A different R, who, when presented with a picture of men in uniform across the war and ages, noted how many wars our country had fought. When prompted, the picture meant more than just men in uniform. “I was a young nurse. I was behind the lines, taking care of these men.”

And finally, F., always the quick-witted one. When shown pictures, she didn’t connect to any of them. But when asked to write, she shared, ”My brother went off to war. I remember my mother crying all the time.”

We closed our time that day with a rousing rendition of God Bless America. I was grateful for our work that day. I felt like the woman Emma described in her poem, “a mighty woman with a torch…from her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome.” For liberating the words of our participants from some depth inside them, that we only touch for seconds. And while the words only last on paper, and their minds often travel elsewhere, their sense of freedom has lasted a lifetime.

How to Save a Life

2011-10-26T05:47:00.000-07:00

They collected everything

church intercessions

for the poor and the homeless

memorial cards from funeral services

Vatican stamps and mint quarter

collections of all fifty states

a model train of the Thirteen Colonies

illegible notes from a trip to Italy

letters sent home from college

English translations

of notes written in Italian

silver tea spoons from the ’76 tour

their wedding cake topper

her garter belt

the original catering

and bar receipt for $42.oo

stoic Norman Rockwell plates

rosy-cheeked Hummel figurines

newspaper articles

about miracles and saints

but it was children

they collected with the most pride

always bringing them

from faraway places

back into the fold

to a table set for seven

10/15/2011

Quiet Ripening

2011-10-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

Here is the silence

grapes

in their fullness

before bursting off the vine

curdled milk of sheep

sometimes waiting ages

beneath old walnut leaves and ash

olives before October’s press

anticipating goodness

that will ooze

from their inner selves.

the crescent moon

tiptoeing up the craggy shadow

to surprise Mount Amiata

All around, silence

Even the wind

carries the quiet

and brings stillness

to its seat on the window sill.

Castiglioncello del Trinoro, Italy, October, 2011

In Memoriam: “Why Are Most Italian Men called Tony?”

2011-09-10T04:40:00.000-07:00

He was the uncle that never grew old. Uncle Tony, my mother’s younger brother, would walk into any room, hospital, funeral, living room, kitchen, and begin his jokes before saying, “Hello.”

In a voice made raspy by years of cigarette

smoking, he would say, “Hey, Net Marie…there was a Pollack, a priest and a Dago….” And the room would erupt with laughter before the punchline. Despite Tony’s pride in his Italian heritage, there was always a Dago in his jokes, reflecting his ability and that of his ancestors, to laugh at themselves.

Flashback to a picture of my first Christmas. Uncle Tony is shot using a Polaroid camera as he plays Santa Claus for my siblings and me. I find another picture of him from 17 years ago, from my first wedding, and this is the youthful image I have carried with me. Dark skinned, black-rimmed glasses, a permanent tan acquired from his father’s genes and work outdoors in the concrete business.

Along with his jokes came his steady stream of curse words whenever Art Modell was mentioned. Uncle Tony was an ardent Browns fan. Actually, I could never pinpont the precise adjective used to describe his relationship with the Cleveland Browns. He was a season ticket holder for what seems like all of my life. We absorbed our passion for the Browns from him. I recall sitting with my mother on Sundays watching the game, and I swear, if she weren’t a proper Catholic, she would be cussing alongside of him. She would chastised my father who was a turncoat by half-time, but the rest of us muddled through the lean years, the Brian Sipe era, the Bill Bellichick times, and the present day, which would simply be called miserable.

Soon after college, my older siblings and I met for a Browns game, my brother Paul with his flask, me with my Browns blanket purchased a cold day in December. My then fiancé Devin was in tow, never having been to a Browns game. The wind blew off the lake that day, wouldn’t expect anything else. And I recall thinking Uncle Tony must be crazy to sit through this weather constantly. And so were we. My mom called the weather on Sundays Modell weather because if you waited a minute, it would change to blue skies. But I swear that never happened to me.

During the Browns’ seasons of winning, 1986, the year of the dreaded loss to the Broncos, my sister Laura and I camped out overnight at Sears for playoff tickets. We were successful only in that we got the tickets, but had persevered through what was probably frostbite, dirty jokes and taking turns driving to McDonald’s to pee. Uncle Tony was surprised, and proud.

When Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore, in the middle of the night no less, Uncle Tony was devastated. Laura and I composed poems to this dastardly deed. Her poetry won third place. Mine went into oblivion. I can no longer locate either of those poems, but our fervor was derived straight out of Sundays with Uncle Tony. Being a fan of Cleveland always required a heavy dose of stamina, a bit of faith and Uncle Tony smoking his cigarettes cussing out Art Modell.

Sundays with Uncle Tony was typical in most Italian families of our generation, we spent weekends with our extended families. Uncle Tony’s house was on 17th street. Grandpa DeLuca, who still lived there, would smoke endlessly in his chair. Uncle Tony, high strung, couldn’t sit still when the Browns were on. The cousins played out back, ran to the Lorain Creamery for ice cream and drank orange and grape Ne-Hi out of the frosted metallic glasses, playing cards in the basement. At the time, we were absorbing the meaning of family.

Uncle Tony appeared at my wedding, and funeral of my first husband Devin. He loved my father-in-law Don, and often traded barbs with him. Tony was the only one who put Don in his place when it came to joke-telling. No one could resist a good Dago joke, and Tony knew them all.

Q. How come Italian's don't like Jehovah witnesses?

A. They don't like any witnesses

Uncle Tony passed away last Thursday, from complications following surgery. I hear his voice in my head as I type, “Hey, Net Marie…did you hear the one about….” Why he called my sisters and I by our first and middle names remains a mystery.

I am disappointed my new family did not know him. My son did not experience the joy in having him as our Uncle. I am saddened my mother, now advanced in her dementia, cannot connect to the emotion of the loss of Tony in our lives.

But tomorrow, when the Browns play the Bengals, I will watch it on TV before traveling to his funeral. I will hear him in the stands, “G.D. this and that...” still be invoking Modell’s name. Every raucous in the crowd will be Uncle Tony. Despite the rain over the Ohio skies as of late, I pray the day will turn to Modell weather.

Even if I wait a minute for the weather to change, Uncle Tony never will.

Your Day So Far

2011-08-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

There is a welling up inside,

like the day’s rain,

just waiting to happen.

You spill coffee

on the overly scotch-guarded chairs

at the mammogram station.

You say station because you belly up,

or breast up, to the machine,

while the technician fills the room

with talk of non-essential topics.

You squeeze your eyes,

she squeezes your breasts,

like a bartender crushing a lime in your drink.

You tarry along to the car dealership.

You pray your son turns out

as pleasant and attentive as

Travis, the service manager.

You avoid eye contact,

not for fear of him thinking

you are cougar-like,

but tears will fall if you meet human eyes.

It is only hormones, you tell yourself,

and telegraph that thought

to the woman seated beside you.

You want her to know you have regrets

about everything right now –

your parents’ care,

communication in your marriage,

leaving the dog without walking him,

starting to write a new novel

without finishing the last,

leaving your character “Celia”

without resolution.

When Travis displays your filthy car filter,

you hold it in no longer.

Tears stream down. He is appalled,

Perhaps never having had

girlfriend or mom.

You excuse yourself, pay for the transgressions

then scurry out into the rain.

While in the grocery store, you spot a friend’s car.

You debate, knowing your fragile state,

whether to seek her out.

But there she is, with her mother,

lingering in the peanut butter aisle.

You greet each other and hug.

You discuss Love Cake

and its simplicity.

You turn away to find the hard stuff,

Romano cheese,

as close to religion as you come on this day.

Suddenly disoriented,

you cannot locate the cheese,

you forget to pick out leafy greens,

coveted because you cannot stand

a bland dinner table.

With one open hand still remaining,

you reach into the cooler,

a breeze penetrating your hot skin,

and swipe off the shelf

a six-pack of bottled beer.

Helianthus

2011-08-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

Early

summer,

beneath the iron trellis

a weed breaks through mulch,

my children chide me to dig it up.

One day, with pruner

toning down tomato plants,

I am tempted to snip at the weed.

Weeks go by, I am less at home,

stopping in for laundry

then leaving for the road.

Late July heat sears souls and skin,

encourages growth.

By some miracle,

where weed once stood,

a bloom unfolds,

a green sea anemone

readying for tides.

A golden sunflower

opens mid-week.

I am ecstatic,

my children retreat.

Five, ten, then twenty blossoms

perform sun salutations.

Just below,

another shoot presents more blooms.

Can it be if we are patient,

every weed will turn

into an object of wonder,

if only we forget its name?

The Summer I Grew Up

2011-08-19T05:04:00.000-07:00

Summer has always been a season of firsts. First softball game playing second base for the “Jumpers” in my dyed-to-match-the-uniform Converse hi-tops. First time swimming in the deep end at Maude Neiding Pool. First summer job not related to the family business, working the late-night drive-through at McDonald’s. First real move after college to Cincinnati to work for a chauvinistic boss at Star Bank.

Always summer had been a pivotal season, catapulting me into a new realm where I understood, in an instant that my life had changed, as I rubbed out the dirt on the leather face of the softball, drove to my first outdoor summer concert in my dad’s Suburban or drank my first beer at a graduation party for someone three years older.

This summer has been no different.

The season opened late May with the graduation of our first daughter from Loyola of Chicago. I cheered and roared, while the Irish side of the family sat more reservedly.

To send one out into the world, gives one a sense of accomplishment and relief. You hold your breath as they pass through the portals of high school and college, and exhale a teensy bit when they saunter across the stage at graduation. You buy them a satchel for their first job, and relish in the comment, “I don’t need a gift, you gave me a college education.”

Following that occasion, Mark and I signed a design contract for a home in Over-the-Rhine, the neighborhood once famous for its riots ten years prior. But young people are flocking there, and though not young, we want to experience the rise of a once great town returning slowly to prominence as The Queen City. It will be many months before we move, but the architectural line has been drawn. We have made a statement to our children to carry on with their lives while we do so with ours.

At the start of summer, we shipped another daughter off to Tanzania, where she tracked rhinos, jumped over waterfalls and drank African beer. She created a blog to keep us abreast of her activities, and kept me in tears as I read her words, day after day, witnessing her growth and the cultivation of her writing voice.

The third daughter, whom we have hardly seen, has one foot out the door pointed in the direction of college next year, and the boy, we have shuttled back and forth while he experienced his first taste of summer jobs, as caddy and part-time baby-sitter.

During the span of July, we celebrated two fiftieth wedding anniversaries, one for Mark’s parents, one for mine. Alas, there will be one more this upcoming fall to remind us of our place.

Early summer, I had also begun the arduous process of locating the right care facility for my parents, as they age through Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. We continued our tour through the months, traipsing through some communities resembling museums, and others that felt one step away from the graveyard. As Mom and Dad relinquish their rights as parents, so am I letting go of being their child, so that I can make the decision that best suits their needs.

Early August, my husband and I celebrated our five-year anniversary. We no longer look at each other as two parents the Fates cast upon the sea together to traverse through the turbulent teenage years. I look at my husband now and see my partner, my equal.

As for my physical makeup, I have more flab behind me, and as a matter of fact, plan to create a Facebook page for “My Backside”, so my husband can still “like” it. Early to give birth to my son and to every party ever attended, I am now in early menopause, with no particular end in sight. And despite my best efforts, my triceps flap just a little so I pretend they are eagle’s wings.

In a sense, these sweltering months have still comprised a season of many firsts, the foremost being the first time I actually felt like an adult, and not just acted like one.

A little Bruce to end this piece:

Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth, but I got me a nice little place in the stars

And I swear I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car

I hid in the mother breast of the crowd, but when they said, "Pull down," I pulled up

Ooh... growin' up

Returning to a Life of Pigtails

2011-08-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

Returning to a Life of Pigtails

8/12/2011

I sit across from my mother at lunch, Dad at her side. We are eating at Bucks, a rather rowdy establishment on weekends and during sporting events, but today, early afternoon, the only patrons are a few barflies and a table of elderly women, playing rummy.

My parents have been visiting for a few days, and our next destination is the Lodge Care Center, a long-term care facility located near my home. Dad knows this, but Mom's dementia blocks her understanding that a commitment would mean a move.

They are eating BLTs, which my dad still swears, “The best BLT in Cincinnati was down at that place at Findlay Market.” I nod, and say, “Paula’s,” then tell him she moved her café, but the restaurant perpetually wins Best BLT in the City award.

During lunch, we joke about their visits to Cincinnati over the years, when my sister Laura and I would tell them, “Oh, its right down the street,” and we would be driving to the west side from the east side just for dinner, which few Cincinnatians EVER consider. But we grew up in a family of drivers. My parents drove for miles to the Melon Festival. They thought nothing of caravanning us to the other side of Cleveland, if it meant the Feast of the Assumption in Little Italy, and homemade cannoli.

In the midst of our laughter, my mother stops. Her facial expression grows serious, “Oh Annette, you’re the best,” she says. But then she raises her finger and begins pointing at me, “But something you should have changed a long time ago was your hair, I don’t like those strings coming out of it.” She begins pointing, “You have one, two, three, four, why can’t you do something about them?”

Tears begin to leak out, not because my mother has just knocked my haircut for which people have stopped me on the street to rave about, but tears of happiness flow because that is the essence of my mother. She cut her words as sharp as her Christmas cookies.

During this same stay, she had told Mark, “Hey you’ve got a pot there,” and pointed to his stomach. She told Laura, “Hey you need a little sun on your legs.”

I am grateful for these snippets of my mother that reveal her true nature, and I revel in the fact that, despite the disease altering her mind, it has not altered her character.

In this state, Mom has a tendency to continue along the same lines of an idea for hours at a time, unless we introduce a new subject matter. For a while, driving to our new destination relieves her from the need to pummel me on the topic of hair.

We tour the care center, Mom walking endlessly, complaining often, and walking more as we tell her, “Just one more room to view.”

We return to my home, and are seated in the family room, with Enzo licking at Dad’s hands. Dad and I are attempting to have a grown up discussion about the pros and cons of the care community accommodations, when Mom interrupts the conversation.

“Hey Annette,” she says. I am grateful that today, she knows who I am, even if I look like the other sisters of mine floating around the house. She starts pointing her finger again, and I dread where this is going.

“You know, when I first met you…” she begins. I cringe, because we met in the womb, when I had no hair. Mom continues on, “I thought to myself, she is cute and all, but she needs to change her hair.” “Can’t you pull it back or something and get rid of those things sticking out of your head?” She jumps up with the energy of a five-year old and ambles over to where I am sitting.

“This is gonna hurt,” she warns me, “but you know, get rid of these things.” And with that, she yanks at the wisps that frame my face.

My father cannot believe what is happening. I too am wide-eyed, and laughing hysterically, when I should be in tears. Mom is pulling my hair as hard as when she made my pigtails in first grade.

In this moment of present joy, my laughter is derived from the sense that, Mom pulling on my hair is better than Mom not caring at all.

Chairs

2011-08-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

Anniversary

Music Hall will rise each evening,

deserving of its view

from our third floor perch.

Chairs once folded up and in

will now expand,

and beg us to stay.

We will sit side by side

but will not

share the same view,

nor would we want to.

For you will see, rising high,

the pinnacle of the front gable.

The intricate rose window

will remind you

of a church you once knew,

and the faith of your foundation.

I will see light, sunshine

reflecting in the window

bouncing back over

centuries of people

who built Washington Park.

I will see city, all dirt and gleam.

The Pecorino will sting the tongue,

the asparagus will snap in half.

Both will rest dreamily between us,

as if food is the only thing

on which we could ever disagree.

The View from My Backyard

2011-08-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

A View from the Backyard

7/26/2011

(pictured Austin, Davis, Reed, Cole, Blake, 2002)

It is not often one sits down to eat a meal amongst heroes, but yesterday was my blessed day.

A young man was seated next to me, lamenting the music choice of the DJ at an event we were attending, while chewing relentlessly on Montgomery Inn ribs. When asked about family vacations, he chattered endlessly that he didn’t have time for vacations, he’s got “stuff” going on… lifting for football season, then he shows me the picture of a young woman he had invited to attend the event with him. She had declined due to volleyball practice. He bemoaned another young woman whom he had accompanied to homecoming, said she wanted to get to know him better and then broke up with him shortly thereafter. Our table had quite the laugh. “Women,” I exclaimed, and my husband chimed in agreement.

The young man rose from the table and wandered about, talking to various guests. I was also privileged to sit at the table with this young man’s older brother. He talked about his summer spent away from his family, playing baseball up and down the East Coast at colleges such as UVA and UNC. He told me in the next breath that he would also be visiting Ohio State and Miami soon. Both coaches had made contact with him regarding their baseball teams. We laughed, “Thank goodness its not football!” (Sorry OSU fans!). When asked if he was considering East Coast schools at all, he mentioned the usual equation: out of state costs – minus scholarships = decision point. Having sent two off to college already, we understood the math of finding a college closer to home. He casually mentioned wanting to make is easier on his mom and dad. While his point may have been financially-driven, it was emotionally-packed too.

The first young hero was my backyard neighbor Cole. Struck by a batted ball two years ago, he suffered a traumatic brain injury, and on the road to recovery was met with many new challenges, including dystonia. His parents have traveled the country to find treatments (deep brain stimulation) that will allow Cole to regain more control over his motor movements. I love this boy, and had written about him before, how he held my son’s hand so many years ago and led him through the darkened wooded path that separated our two homes so Davis could be surrounded by this wonderful family of boys.

And while Cole was a first friend of Davis’, his brother Reed, the other hero, became the older brother Davis never had. Through teasing, baseball, food and general conversation, he modeled for Davis the actions - and antics - of an older brother.

As I sat through dinner, a fundraiser for children with TBI, I reflected on Reed, how he had matured since the backyard baseball days. And how much he had to grow up, when his younger brother was severely injured. And to speak of lifting the load of his parents was cause for me to hide my joy and tears. Not many teenagers could swallow the notion of making sacrifices for a younger sibling. While I assume he still beats up on Cole, compassion and determination have become his constant companions along the path these past two years.

The reality is that this has not been Cole’s journey alone. It has been a family trek. No one in that family has not been impacted by the turn of events on a warm May afternoon.

Before the fundraiser, I had been visiting with a sick friend in the hospital. Knowing she had been confined to a room at UC for over six weeks, I ruminated on my own marathon hospital visits, and certainly those of Cole and his family.

I was reading aloud to her a book of haiku, poems written mainly by Japanese poets, but also by the beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerourac. Poetry for me had always been a sort of prayer, but also an opportunity to capture a moment, like a Polaroid camera once did.

Jack wrote,

“The taste of rain –

why kneel?”

The author who had compiled these haiku also added her insights into the meaning and relevance of each. As she explained this particular one, she cited a Japanese phrase that translated to, “the poignancy of the transient moment.”

We cannot attach ourselves to the joy and pain of every living thing. But last night sitting at dinner, listening to talk about baseball and country music, I at once felt buoyed by my relationship with both these heroes.

It is a moment that I will remember, and remember the tenderness of it all.

Dear Menopause

2011-07-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Menopause –

I am writing because have a few things to get off my chest, not including my droopy breasts. First, can I have my brain back? I find myself tending to the wrong dental appointments, working on Banana-gram brain teasers, perplexed while staring at a word already created – “suffix”. When I speak, words tumble out of my mouth as if I were dyslexic. When I write, word choice and sentence structure elude me. I never know what time it is, and despite asking that age-old question, my lack of knowledge is not as poetic as Chicago’s rendition might lead you to think.

Second, can you please turn down the outdoor thermostat? Enough of these days where the heat index registers 100+ degrees. I am getting hot flashes when I greet the UPS man at the door, and he mistakenly thinks I am coming on to him. Also, for the sake of my once taut stomach, I would prefer not to be wearing clothes that bare or cling, such is the case with summer wardrobes. I should have stayed in Oregon, at least ‘til menopause had passed.

Ok, third, and this one is important. Can you at least write down your schedule on my calendar? I tell my kids, and even my husband, “If its not on the calendar, it doesn’t happen…” They hear me squawk, whenever an event appears out of thin air but shows no signs of having been written down. You are no different. If you can’t put it on the calendar with any consistency, you have no reason to show up erratically, and unannounced.

Fourth, previously I asked about turning down the thermostat, but is there any way you can turn it back up? I get chills in the evening and, when reading a book, with a nice glass of wine, need to cover up my feet with an orange, green and white afghan crocheted for me by a friend.

Finally, can you get together with the Pope and put my husband first in line for beautification? I know Mother Teresa and Pope JPII are already in the Vatican’s piepline. But I am convinced that my husband’s cross to bear (without including my family) is equal to theirs. Yes, there is already a St. Mark, and he’s got a whole square named after him in Venice. But I am thinking something more along the lines of St. Mark of Stonemark Lane. Has a certain ring to it, right? Just please, no pigeons. He hears enough clucking from me.

Sincerely,

An All-American Marriage

2011-07-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

An All-American Marriage

A Fourth of July Mediation

7/4/2011

On July 4, 1961, Ettore Anselmo Januzzi married Vincenza Jean Giuliani. They were both children of Italian immigrants, one set of parents from Abruzzi, “near Pescara,” Jean would say, the other set from Calabria, “you know the Calabrese,” Ettore used to taut.

They were married on that day because the shoe store that Ettore’s family ran would be closed that particular federal holiday. Ettore’s brother would be married on a New Year’s Day, another holiday that the store was closed.

Their marriage would come to represent the best America had to offer. The union of two immigrant families, whose migration saved them from the impoverished Italy. The families were entreprenuers who created their own opportunities in the shoe repair and bakery business.

When Jean was born, her mother's friends insisted the baby needed an American name, thus Vincenza became Jean. As children, Ettore and Jean were encouraged to speak the English language, out of respect for their new country. They lost their mother tongue, and only occasionally, as when Jean was conversing with a cab driver in Italy, could either of them slip back into that place of prior ease.

Prior to marriage, Ettore had served during the Korean War. Jean had been a school teacher, then a religion teacher. Then, she was free to choose to stay home with her children. Anyone who knew Jean recognized she would have had a stellar career, but being at home was her desire, and her children and their friends would benefit from her famed ravioli and meatballs, her nutroll and the home she created with care.

They were free to choose the number of children they wanted to birth. No Chinese government stepped in to tell them they had too many daughters (four, gasp!). No Catholic authority figuring telling them to have more (gasp again).

Ettore and Jean choose public school education for their children because that too was the foundation of America. They trusted the government and the good people of the town where they lived would funnel their talents and energy into high achieving schools, that level which is still achieved today.

When it came time to move the family to larger home, Ettore paid cash for the home he would reside in for thirty-five years. None of their children ever wore Jordache jeans, and even though the kids were a from a shoe store family, they often went barefoot anyhow.

Through fifty years, they had access to health care, through which they sought out the treatment of breast cancer, kidney cancer, heart disease, arthritis, appendectomy and now, sadly, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Jean sang in the choir, at church funerals, baked the Eucharistic bread and gave out communion. Together, they worked church fish frys and the county polls every Election Day for twenty years. Ettore would still be working his shift today, if he didn’t feel bad about Jean not being able to do so. With her dementia, she just might throw the election the wrong way. And Ettore still holds a position on the county housing authority, using his time to assist those in need. He may, at this stage, have become a figurehead, but his presence and perseverance is a model to others.

They gardened and canned, and froze and sauced every vegetable and fruit they could get their hands own. They had no expectations other than the one that has recently been tossed out of our society, and that is to work hard. While their lives revolved around their children, with five, it would be difficult for it to be otherwise, the children were never indulged or led to believe that they were deserving of all their blood, sweat and tears, only some.

Though Ettore and Jean, in their hearts and blood, were Italian-Americans, they never insisted upon the hyphenation. They knew who they were.

The weekend of their latest wedding anniversary, they attended a baseball game, were given a rousing Happy Anniversary by a tenor Ettore happened to have worked with a while ago, and later, in church, were called “heroes” by the deacon in his sermon. To which they humbly dropped down their heads in tears and gratitude.

On July 4, 2011, on a starlit cool summer evening within view of the shores of Lake Erie, only blocks from the families’ original bakery and shoe store, surrounded by children, grandchildren and fireworks set to no music at all, Ettore and Jean Januzzi celebrated fifty years of marriage, an American marriage.

Mother's Day Revisited

2011-05-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

Mother’s Day Revisited.

For Mother’s Day, I told Mark, “I don’t want anything, but I do want to be with my mom.” This proved to be quite the tall order, since my parents lived four hours away, and we were still obligated to picking up kids from college, staying put for other kids to work, and in general, wanting to give my dad a break from the winter winds of Amherst, which, as it was everywhere, had not turned yet to Spring.

I drove to Amherst and spent the night with my parents. It was rather late when I arrived, but both were waiting at the door, to welcome me. My mother, always happy to see me, hugged me. She will say things, “Oh Net, now, where did you come from?” And this I take to mean, where did you drive in from?

I tell her, “Cincinnati,” and she asks, “Is that with Mark Manley?” I shake my head yes, then we list all the children of the house, Cheryl, Shannon, Kaitlyn and Davis, and finally Enzo, the dog. Then she will say, “I remember Enzo was little just like this,”and she holds her hands about six inches apart. And she says, “Remember, you didn’t want that dog, that was our dog.” I agree, because its not worth wasting our time together rewiring her memory to include the fact that a few years back she and dad accompanied me to pick out what became my family’s puppy, and his first night with us was spent at my mother’s house.

We wake in the morning, and I pack for both of them. Well, my dad picks out his own clothes. I am tasked with getting mom to dress, and selecting a few clothes. She is adamant that she will wear her brown shoes, shoes that do not fit. But I figure we are traveling by car and I can encourage her to take off the shoes in the car. Days later, I would steal those shoes away and store them in the back corner of my closet, as they would become the bane of our existence throughout the entire weekend, my mother constantly asking for a shoe stretcher, and the rest of us scrambling to find out where she last left it.

The ride to Cincinnati is uneventful thankfully. We listen to (according to iTunes) 28 Frank Sinatra songs, and Mother knows every word. Sometimes, I wonder if she still dreams about Frank, the way we all did when we were teens, and had that one idol (mine was Bruce). We settle into my home, where Mom still knows where the cereal is kept, having spent a year’s worth of nights here over the years. But this time proves to be more a challenge. She does not like to be alone in a room. She forgets where the bathroom is. I sense another step in the progression of her disease. But I set that aside because this is Mother’s Day weekend.

When she is dressing the next morning, I want to get her mindset away from wearing tan so she won’t want to wear her brown shoes. I set out black pants and a black sweater. But she has pulled out the tan outfit. The confrontation begins. “Mom, you wore that yesterday.” “How do you know, are you God, that you know what I wore yesterday?’” I am arguing with a teenager here, for this I am certain. “ I tell her, “Yes, I am God and I know what you wore yesterday.” She retorts, “Well I don’t want to wear that today.” We settle on an outfit she can wear with gray pants. I am exhausted and it is only 8:30 a.m.

I take her for a pedicure. She is being pampered, with her feet soaking in the warm water. Rachel, the pedicurist whose mother is 90, is accustomed to dealing with stubborn wise women. She carefully tends to Mother’s feet, as if she is washing the feet of Jesus himself, I swear. When Rachel tends to Mom’s ingrown toe nail, Mom squirms, then tells Rachel jokingly but not, “You’re going to send me through the roof.” This gets such great laughs throughout, that Mom repeats it often.

We dine with the family three nights in a row. When we are out to dinner, she tells the waiter each time he arrives at the table, “I would like pasta and a salad,” and this is while he is only bringing waters or drinks. None of us are ready to order, but she is.

She sits in church on Sunday, and I am the one with the pursed lips, telling her to be quiet, because she is busy waving to the little children. She is enthralled by little children, wherever we are. She leans over and whispers, “ I used to be into God and Christ.” And I nod then ask, “What about now?” and she says, “Not really anymore.” Somehow her disease has freed her conscience too and for this I am thankful.

The sun comes out and in the middle of the day, we sit outside. She is the original sun worshipper, I move the sun chairs two or three times, because she wants to be where Dad is, and I am trying to give Dad a break. So, I shuttle chairs from front yard to back, to front to back. Dad soon leaves us, but I bring out the music player again, and we play more Frank. She asks, “Hey, who is that?” And I know she knows, so I wait for her to tell me. And slowly, she does.

The Summer Wind plays, so I reach for her hand and encourage her out of the chair. We dance to Frank, we are all anxious for Spring here and at her home. We cheer for the “summer wind, a fickle friend,” and sway to the breeze blowing across the patio.

It was a beautiful Mother’s Day, despite some of Mom’s physical ailments removing her from the party at times. But she ate ½ of her dessert, then went to find Dad and ate all of his. I don’t think that day had any real significance for her, except that she was with those who loved her.

When Mark and I drove Mom and Dad back to Amherst the following day, we made a few more stops than usual for gas, bathroom (Mark), bathroom again (me). We were driving in a rental van, due to car in the shop. So, I would help buckle Dad and Mom into the bucket passenger seats.

When I went to my mom’s side, she reached for me and pulled me into her chest., and says, “Love you”. “Love you too Mom. I lay there for a moment, my head resting near hers, and chills engulf my being.

Over the weekend, I had been parenting Mom, as she returns to a child like state, I am leading her to bathrooms, telling her what to wear, or what shoes not to wear.

I don’t know I that am equipped to mother my own Mom. “Mother” is not a role, a title, or for that matter a position of prominence. There are no degrees, certificates, or graduation. But I do know, in that moment of buckling Mom into her seat, what I felt wash over me was pure grace.

Laughter as Salve

2011-04-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

Laughter as Salve 04-07-2011 Reflections from the Alois Sharing Circle

“I think this is a little crazy. What are we going to do with this? This “Jabberywocky” is crazy. What is “brillig” and a slithy tove?” F. could read well enough, but she was always leery of materials Leigh and I would bring to the Sharing Circle. Our day of silliness was no exception.

We had planned to make the participants laugh. Perhaps we wanted to laugh, more so than they. So, we opened the class with the explanation about laughing. I told the residents to close their eyes and just listen to the “Jabberywocky” poem. Even if the words were made up, the rhythm still existed to help create a story. And there were enough standard nouns and verbs, they could piece together a story, regardless of whether it made sense.

But so much in their world does not make sense. Their caregivers become strangers. Their homes become deserted islands with unrecognizable inhabitants. Names for their favorite food slips away on the dirty dishes.

While I tried with a tour de force to read Jabberwocky well enough for the circle to imagine a story, my reading may have fallen a little flat. Not to be discouraged, we had planned for a second poem to read, “The Owl and the Pussycat.” They found this poem much more to their liking, apparently an owl marrying a pussycat, with a turkey as priest, and a pig as a pawn shop king with a ring to peddle, are an easier sell to this crowd. Words, real words, not made up ones, still mattered to them.

The laughs were coming about, one by one. So we continued on with our next exercise, a podcast playing of Who’s on First, with Abbott and Costello. Thought the repartee was quick, the podcast also had a laugh track in the background. Now, some people might find those offensive, as if a studio executive is telling us what is funny. But the laugh track served it purpose that day, to remind the circle that this was funny, the notion of Who’s and What being a proper noun.

The goal was to get them in the mindset of considering what makes them laugh. Made up words, made up stories, mixed up stories. So, we threw in a mad-lib, despite Leigh’s last minute anxiety over whether this was an exercise that might create undue pressure on them to retrieve words or recall them. Over the phone that morning, we revised the plan to only include one mad lib, that being a nursery rhyme of Little Miss Moffett.

We began by brainstorming, asking them to give words for fruit – apple, banana and W. produced strawberry after much prodding of naming red berries. Then, we moved on to words that rhymed with “day”, so we got gay and bay, and when we ask J. to produce a word, we offered a few that others had mentioned, and after this she arrived at her own, way.

The final group of words to collect were animals, and just like that, out of the chute, D. said, “Jackass”. The entire circle began laughing, before they understood how we would use that word. Then we collected dog, and from J., who speaks to us mostly with her eyes, we retrieved the word giraffe. At first, as she was describing an animal with her hands, I asked, does it have four legs?”, s J. answered, “yes”. “Is it a horse,” I asked. “No,” J. shook her head. J. continued to make a large motion, so I asked, “elephant?, horse?” and then finally, because a new little giraffe had been born at the zoo the other day, “A giraffe”, and she shook her head, “Yes.”

With that in mind, Leigh produced a poster board with the original Miss Moffett rhyme on it, which we all recited. Then, we picked out one word from each category, and used those words in place of others, within a new rhyme.

“Little Miss Moffett, sat on her apple” (Laugh, laugh, laugh)

“Eating her curds and gay” (Laugh, laugh, laugh)

Along came a jackass who sat down beside her

And here the laughing was loud enough to cause us to wait to complete the rhyme.

And frightened Miss Moffett away.

Now, we put them on center stage, by asking them to write, “Who or what do you think is funny?” Amazingly so, with the prolific writers we have had, no one produced a body of work longer than a sentence with the exception of G. This surprised us, until we later determined that we need to lead the circle down a narrow path when asking them to write, offering something more specifics, such as “The person in my family who is funny… or “A clown is funny because…”

We closed our circle as usual, with the naming of “how the circle felt today” and many stated that it felt good. Afterwards, we discussed who in the room was ticklish. As I asked each in turn, every resident had a smile on his or her face, and L. offered, “Well, I don’t really know if I am, but I might like to find out.” Even P. who sits stoically through class, though that is more disease than disposition, cracked a smile at the thought of her feet being tickled.

Laughter is a complex emotion and what we find funny is subjective, and also unnamable. While we admitted to ourselves having some disappointment in the output of writing that day, there could be no doubt as to the output of fun we had.

If laughter was the salve to even one cell where pain or sadness dwelled, then this work brought healing into their day.

Opening Day Signals

2011-03-31T04:38:00.000-07:00

The weather forecast is not promising, though I have sat through a few Opening Days with long-johns beneath my jeans and Reds’ shirt. I will once again shiver until the game's end, unless it appears downright hopeless. And even in that case, I may recall a certain year, when the Reds were down by 3 going into the bottom of the ninth. We walked out, my son, aunt and sisters, all lamenting another loss on Opening Day. But soon, we heard fireworks, and other fans were running alongside of us, with radios attached to ears, jumping for joy. Barry Larkin had just hit a gram slam home run. Reds win. Reds win. (Davis - Opening Day, 2011. Reds. Win.)

So, I sit this morning, after enduring a few taunts from husband about money spent on scalping two tickets. I suspect he is jealous that I choose my son Davis, over him. But it only because of tradition that I do so. That, and a sense of obligation to honor what’s past and what is present.

I had always been a Cleveland Indian’s fan. I still am, or at least, I admire them from afar down in the reaches of the Ohio River valley. I don’t drive the four hours north to see a game, mainly because if I am to undertake that drive, I would rather spend it with my parents, heading into the ninth inning of their years here on earth.

My roommate in college was a bat girl for the baseball team. The entire team became friends, as well as potential love interests. As a bleacher creature in the old Lakefront Stadium, I was subjected to the summer wind that always felt more like Artic Blast and rooted for Doug Jones, the Stopper. I had a crush on Omar Vizquel and used to call him, Oh my, Omar. But mostly I loved how swiftly and effortlessly he moved to the field the ball and make the throw to first. I have seen ballet in the ballplayers and honestly, enjoy it more than the Ballet itself.

After moving to Cincinnati in my twenties, I went to Opening Day with my sister and a friend who would later become my husband. We hung out at Flanagans, before, during and after the game. I managed to secure a ticket to the first game of the 1990 World Series and looked hard to find a broom for the celebration that year on Fountain Square.

I have fallen off my couch while watching the Indians collapse in the World Series in 1997. I was living in Portland and it was the Fall of Devin’s diagnosis of cancer. I felt like if the Indians could overcome their troubles, then that victory would be transferrable.

After reluctantly moving back to Cincinnati, Opening Day came with a joyful memory attached – Despite his cancer relapsing, Devin attended the game with his friends from Dayton. It was rainy and cold, and I dropped him off and picked him up. I would have pinch-hit or been designated batter or swept the field to be a part of that moment. Devin would pass away that September.

That is where memory leaves off and tradition begins. Devin’s family, including grandparents, uncles and aunts were n Red’s fans. Grandpa Howard attended most Opening Days, of his 80 some years. A part of me wanted Davis to experience that connection to his extended family. Another part of me felt like I could stop time, by standing in the place where Devin stood, and continue the streak he began, to march on, in his place. We would watch the parade, cheering for Marge Schott, because I adored who I knew she was on the inside, and not who many appeared to think she was on the outside. I understood the need for her persona in a male dominated world.

But what occurred to me this morning, as I read many quotes about baseball, was this. I started going to Opening Day to embrace a city I never wanted to come back to, because I did not want to leave my beloved Oregon. I committed to Opening Day, as a way to put my stake in the ground in this southwestern Ohio town and say, I’ll live here - until I go back.

I continued going to Opening Day, in recognition of time spent in my youthful twenties, beginning a career, meeting Devin, life filled with promises, cup filled with beer. And then, as a homage to Devin and his legacy. As always, this final loss caused me to act most passionately.

So, I came to be a Red’s fan, reluctantly, the way I come to most things in my life - a hesitant, reluctant widow then writer, wife to a Cincinnatian, a stepmother of teenage stepdaughters, mother to teenage son.

I could wax poetically about the time I spend with Davis each year, and how I usually find something about the game and the day that reflect on where we are in our relationship. While that is all true, I buy my tickets each year, now in my eleventh because Oregon is a plane ride away, if I need to touch base with sea. Because my new husband Mark and I are close to signing a piece of paper that will put me in close proximity to the start of the parade at Findlay Market, a purchase that will challenge and solidify our marriage for certain. Finally, I buy those tickets because it is not baseball the game that beckons me each year, but the constancy of the tradition that signals I am here to stay.

Luck or Healing?

2011-03-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

2011-03-30 Luck or Healing?
Reflections on the Alois sharing circle.

Leigh and I sit in a coffee shop every few weeks, contemplating our next sessions for our sharing circle at the Alois Alzheimer Center. While we first began calling these sessions writing circles, we changed course, so as not to cause undue pressure on the participants to perform.

Sharing circle seemed appropriate in ways that date back to indigenous cultures who use the “sharing circle” to resolve issues for or amongst its members. These issues can often be contentious, emotional. The circle helps in healing by encouraging the opening of the heart, telling the small truths or the big secrets, unburdening themselves. Everyone is allowed to speak, with no particular time limit and no interruptions are permitted.

The elders hold the space, while souls spill out their deepest troubles. Men and women alike take part. Throughout the time of the circle, prayers are continuously offered up for the sufferer, to find relief from their emotional or physical pain.

This image comes to mind when we facilitate the sharing circle at the Alois. While roles are reversed, and we, the younger, take on the role of elders in the indigenous tradition, we recognized that we are not always the wiser.

Our most recent circle fell on St. Patrick’s Day, so we created a circle around this theme. The activities director directed the room be decorated with green balloons and a cake with a shamrock on it. I carried in a potted shamrock plant, which enthralled each participant, as they held it in their hands, said their name, then passed the “luck” on to the next person.

The poem for the day was The Shamrock, by Andre Cherry, written in the late 1700’s. How fun it was to read this poem to them with my fake Irish brogue. Several times I had to stop myself from slipping into an English accent instead. If I sang some of the words, the brogue flowed much more smoothly. My daughter Shannon, a petite red-hair, accompanied us that day. Dressed in green, she captivated the participants who commented routinely, “Boy she sure looks Irish.”

Following the reading of the poem, we always have a musical component. Sometimes, the residents sing along. Other times, they nod their heads in enjoyment. Danny Boy and Galway Girl streamed forth from my music player. For whatever reason, “I’m looking over a four leaf clover” did not make the transfer to my player. We warbled the words instead.

Then came our writing time. We offer a line or thought and ask them to write on that idea. We are somewhat specific, even not leading, as this helps them to focus. The residents are like me when I shop, less options make my life simpler.

The first prompt was, “I feel lucky because…” And many wrote to this beautifully.

The second prompt, devised after a few emails back and forth with Leigh, were, “At the end of the rainbow, I hope to find…” T. wrote, “my wife”, others included “my family” and yet another write, “peace and quiet.” While we had considered this an open-ended question, many of the writers had not. They were able to complete the sentence and put down their pens, with not too much thought associated with it.

I couldn’t help but wonder, how would they have responded, if I had utilized the other prompt we considered, “I feel unlucky because…” Leigh and I often joke that she likes to keep things positive. And she is the most uplifting person I know to be around. On the other hand, I like to dive deep, to push for more.

What words did the residents leave on the table that day because we didn’t use the “I feel unlucky” prompt?

I go back to the primal sharing circles. Members were encouraged to bring their deepest troubles, so that their hearts might shatter open and then heal. One of our regular “contributors” did not share that day. She pushed the paper away and kept repeating, “Its personal.” Would she have written, had she been asked to consider if she felt unlucky? Would she have found healing?

The Moon and Venus Ballroom Dance

2011-03-01T05:16:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, my senses are heightened by looking skyward....

The Moon and Venus Ballroom Dance

The moon and Venus climb together over the horizon,
The party soon ending,
night music quieting down.

Venus sashays past the moon coquettishly
flashing a golden dimple in a beam
that sets the core aglow.
She bats her eyelashes as she takes in
the tall cold drink that is the moon.

The moon shrinks back in her presence.
Her hold on his orbit is clear.
Aware of their pending split,
he continues his rise in the East
for the gift of one last glance

They travel their course
entwined like grapevines,
crossing behind, then in front of each other,
while sparks of star dust
fly off their heavenly forms.

How We Stand Is Important

2011-02-24T11:38:00.000-08:00

A f e w weeks ago, I had the honor of inter viewing Jeff Smith, a writ er in one of the WWFC co-ed classes. Jeff had come to WWFC while his son, Whit, had been incarcerated at a federal penitentiary. While in prison, Whit became a victim of an erroneous assault charge, and deciding he could take no more of his present condition, took his own life. Jeff and his son had exchanged a multitude of letters and thus, Jeff’s name had been mentioned as a podcast guest last summer. His grief, the most recent portion of it, would have only been a year old.

When Jeff first dropped off a copy of the compilation of letters he and his son traded, it was the holiday season. Following the buzz of the season, I stopped one bright cold January day, when the New Year was just rolling over and answering the wake up call, to read these words.

Jeff and I met for coffee following my reading and together, we developed an outline that would encompass letters, blogs and eulogies. The day of the interview unfolded with a quiet hum as opposed to the usual buzz on the day we produce a show. The circle opened with candle, intentions, introductions and a poem.

William Stafford wrote, How you stand here is important. How you

listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe

And the show began. Through a grueling hour, with breaks for tears, and water, Jeff and I created a container to hold what was precious to him, the words of Whit, their relationship, Whit’s death, how others viewed his death.

Whit had experienced challenges as a young man, a rampant mind trapped in a body that was supposed to sit in school all day. The more he was contained, the more he wanted to be free. Until finally, he was forced, via incarceration, to make peace and bring his old self in line with the new. He used letters to his father, and blog postings to the outside world to do so.

Though Whit’s voice had been silenced in solitary confinement, Jeff’s authenticity in dealing with his son helped form Whit’s voice, a voice filled with anticipation and imagination.

As we wrapped the production, we read the poem again. How you listen for the next thing to happen.

A yogi friend had shared a Ganges River meditation that involved ridding oneself of the non-essentials in life to come closer to one’s core, imagining those trimmings had been turned to ashes and encapsulated in a vessel that would be placed in the river. Toss flowers in the river, alongside the vessel, as a send-off and watch it float away.

Whit knew how he stood would be important later on, for his father, for those who loved him. In this interview, listeners will hear how Whit pared down his life to the essentials of forgiveness, compassion, and yes, love. The audience will be rooting for Whit to persevere.

Listen, breathe, and take in this podcast, as an extraordinary man courageously calls forth words of wisdom while standing in the river of his grief.

Brainstorming on Love

2011-02-11T05:57:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s at the Alois

There is a suspended moment in time from when we instruct participants in our writing circle on the activity that we are about to embark upon, to the time in which they take the pen to paper and begin to write. Even those that cannot physically write will attempt to compose a line that might correlate to what has been offered as a prompt. Some writers call that moment inspiration. Others call it breath or soul. As observer, as well as facilitator, one might also call it love.

The theme for this February morning is Valentine’s Day. Most participants, suffering from a broad range of memory loss symptoms, do not know Valentines’ Day is four calendar days away. When escorted into the activity room, surprised residents catch glimpses of red and purple balloons, a pink tablecloth and boxed candies on the table.

We greet each in turn, with a smile and a nametag, for us to remember. We too are memory challenged, and the roster often changes just enough to throw us off. Brief discussions occurred – “J: It’s cold in here”, “M: Don’t those balloons look fancy.” L: “What is the topic today?”

Poetry and Valentines. We are careful not to refer to this hour as a writing class, for writing brings up memories of crass teachers rapping knuckles with rulers or marking up one’s life story or belabored poem with a red pen. We are also sensitive when using the word “Love.” There is so much emotion in that word, which we want to encourage, but not inflict pain.

When L. is informed we will be reading Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edgar A. Guest, he responds with enthusiasm in his radio voice, “I know Edgar Guest. He was a poet from Detroit, had his own show for a while, colleagues didn’t like him too well.” L. is also aware he may be asked about love. The theme is evident to some. He speaks aloud, “I wonder if I am an emotional man. You know, I enjoy learning, but I don’t know if I exhibit a lot of emotions.” But L. will stay because of Edgar. Only minutes later, when L is asked to share with the group about Edgar Guest, L. will draw a blank. We capture in the moment what we can.

We open the circle with a candle, asking each participant to say his or her name. Some are prankish. F. calls herself Pete. P. states her full name. J. struggles to speak her name so we name her into the circle. We begin reciting the poetry, first Anne, then Elizabeth, then Edgar, selecting works that represent not only spousal love but universal love and friendship.

Next, we begin brainstorming about people to whom they might like to write a Valentine. Brainstorm when written out seems an ironic word choice as during the past months or years of the participants’ lives, they have experienced their own brain storms when memories are trapped in the tangles of their mind. Their only hope is staying rooted in the present and being supported by those who will weather the storm with them. Ideas begin to flow and extend from grandmother, teacher and brother, to the obligatory spouse or children. We write these down for all to see.

Then, the real brainstorm occurs. We instruct participants to begin writing at the top of their homemade Valentine, Dear _______. “Let’s write a letter to this person. Tell them what you loved them for, why you are thankful for them.”

In this instant we hold our breath, and dive into the waters of memory with them. Some begin immediately. Some look confused. We sit and review and write with each contributor who needs us. We prompt, we cajole. We mourn and celebrate. Twenty minutes pass.

We step away from the tables and turn down the volume on Louis Armstrong singing, “I can’t give you anything but love.” Whether through our transcribing or their own movement of pen across paper, in front of each participant lies a body of work.

Each contributor is asked to read his or her Valentine aloud. Those who cannot read will entrust their words to us to share. When the circle makes its way to L., he is not too proud to ask, “Well, I would like someone to read this for me.” His eyes are pooling with a tear or two, so one of us lifts his Valentine to read, careful to breathe before giving a voice to his words.

“Dear Grandma,

Thanks for all the love that you expressed to me when I was just a small boy growing up in the grocery.”

There is more from others:

“Dear R. - You have a smile that cannot be forgotten.”

“Dear T. - I love your quietness at times.”

“Dear Mom – Thank you for encouraging me to be a nurse.”

“Dear D. - The best son and helper that anyone can be.”

“Dear T. & K. - I wish you lived closer.”

There is never a full narrative elicited from these writings, only the fascinating fragments of the participants’ stories that come to life on paper.

We have incorporated various themes in our (not a) writing circle, including The Secret of the Sea, I’ll Fly Away, What I Would Dress as for Halloween, all producing smiles, sighs and admiration. But only love could let loose these fragments that float in the space between idea and paper, in a way no other subject could.

On Enzo Turning Two (Times Seven)

2011-01-31T11:03:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday Enzo. This is my ode to you today!

Ruler of the Home

Early morning, 5 a.m.
I cannot sleep
A headache rouses me from bed
My husband rolls over
asks what he can do
I tell him nothing
grab my fuzzy pink robe
and tumble down the stairs.

I open the crate
where the dog has been detained
to keep him from chewing
teenager leftovers
To entice him out, I reach in
scratch his curly white belly fur
Enzo opens one eye, then the next

His coffee colored eyes remind me
I too need caffeine
but first, sleep
I carelessly toss couch pillows to the floor
grab the sheepskin blanket
and sink into the sofa
Enzo comes to me
his tags jingling in the dark
He leaps onto my lap
then settles his nose near mine
as if to chase away the demons
hammering my head.

I touch his fur,
feeling the rush of my blood
settle into a rhythm
in sync with my breath
Somewhere in my mind
I have fallen fast asleep
dreaming of ski slopes
and friends I have not called.

My son once called Enzo “a peacemaker”
Family members reach for him
before they extend a hug to me
and I don’t blame them

His name means home ruler yet
he has not chased away my headache
nor protected me at all odds
but he has created a harmony I never knew

“People Living Near One Another”

2011-01-22T06:57:00.001-08:00

A large Cincinnati-based corporation, Western-Southern, wants to relocate a downtown shelter for homeless and recovering women, the Anna Louise Inn, owned by Cincinnati Union Bethel. W-S is willing to pay CUB $3million to move the Inn. Their claim, if they have a rightful one, is the shelter is located in a non-descript part of downtown where W-S would like to form a neighborhood.

There are many definitions of neighborhood. From New Urbanism – one where a community is walkable, and designed to contain a diverse range of jobs and housing. Another few from Merriam Webster – 1: in a neighborly relationship, the quality or state of being neighbors, 2: proximity: a place or region near : vicinity, 3: an approximate amount, extent, or degree 4, a : the people living near one another, b : a section lived in by neighbors and usually having distinguishing characteristics.

Neighborhoods are not created. They are built one sidewalk block at a time. They emerge one shop owner at a time. Neighborhoods are a work in progress and succeed best when the character is maintained, and the people who live, work and play in that area are left to define it.

Western-Southern’s first attempt was to purchase the building outright, of which two offers were been spurned because the owners of the Anna Louise Inn were awarded federal dollars to renovate. CUB simply does not want to move the Inn.

The Anna Louise Inn has long history of serving women in Cincinnati. According to the CUB website, “In the early 1900’s, young women from rural areas were coming to Cincinnati to work and could not find suitable housing. Often the cheapest rooms were in undesirable neighborhoods, or landlords would charge more because women required a sitting room for guests in addition to a bedroom, a separate bathroom, and more security. Recognizing a need for affordable and safe housing for women, the agency turned to the Tafts…who helped provide funding to erect a five-story building to accommodate 120 women in single rooms…. The Inn was filled to occupancy on its first day.

Western-Southern’s latest attempt is to force City Council to turn away federal dollars because the owners are not keeping in line with the original mission. Western-Southern is claiming the renovation of the Anna Louise Inn will also bring men into this facility, which CUB has outright denied.

Women in transition need a home. They need a bed and a safe space to allow for healing from abuse, addiction and caring for their families. They don’t need a bright shiny facility, located away from the heart of downtown where job prospects might be less so and they become isolated from “the rest of us”.

It’s essential for them to be rooted in a neighborhood, this neighborhood, which will support them, where businesspersons and residents can model for them behaviors they too are working on. Women need relationships and diversity, and neighbors who will reach out to show kindness. They need to be where they can find connections to some level of normality. They require “people living near one another” as Merriam-Webster puts it.

All of this is consistent with the concept of a neighborhood, disputing the comments in Western-Southern’s letter, “For a really successful neighborhood to develop, though, you’ve got to have a consistent experience. For that to happen, you can’t have a facility in the heart of it that is completely inconsistent with that experience.”

These women will benefit from the energy of a lively neighborhood where they can enjoy the green space in nearby Lytle Park, watch fireworks when Joey Votto hits a homer or walk the same path as those who are walking to work at Western-Southern. Women will strive more surrounded by others who are striving.

And finally, they will be standing in the place of so many women who came to Cincinnati to work for a better life. They will gain from the century of wisdom accumulated on those grounds.

The Lake Effect

2011-01-18T03:30:00.000-08:00

It swoops down from Canada,
this legendary mongoose
with a wingspan that plasters
the downwind side of the Great Lakes.

Descends on ordinary citizens
who just want to punch their card,
get to school, or arrive in time to see
the latest high school basketball phenom
that won’t make it out of there.

The ogre wreaks havoc
on gas stations and grocery stores,
emptying shelves of substance and sustenance.
Funny though, the giant’s presence
is never unforeseen,
always arriving according to
the calendar of Old Man Winter.

Sometimes the colossal fiend
clips off a section of land
sparing Westerners as they cluck about their luck.
The tyrant travels with gusto
through eastern portions of cities
liberating layer upon layer of its wrath,

causing crashes and burned dinners,
reducing visibility into the future,
and forcing shovels from their bins.
Mittens and gloves dried by the heaters
are returned to service for the next round.

Forecasters treat the creature with reverence
praising the virtues of its might
while ordinary people combat it
with snow blowers, scrapers and picks,
digging out their dignity, only to lose it again.

It is hard to be happy here.

When finally weariness shows,
Spring comes
and the same titan
that barreled down on the populace
will gently soothe
their foreheads and tempers.
But sometimes it is too late
for the kindness that comes.

Because the Night Belongs to Us

2010-12-08T05:00:00.001-08:00

Because the Night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us.
Bruce Springsteen, 1977.

Bruce. Musician. Poet. On a recent drive back to my hometown, I listened to an interview with The Boss at the Toronto Film Festival for the screening of The Promise, a documentary about the making of his album Darkness on the Edge of Town. Bruce’s gravely voice took me back (30 years!) to Mrs. Garfield’s English class where Monica Doslak and I used to sit, scribbling about marriage to Cleveland quarterback Brian Sipe on each other’s spiral notebooks, and penning my first real piece of fiction – Netti Spaghetti and the Meatball Kid..

When asked about his success, Bruce termed the feeling “survivor guilt”, because he and his band survived Asbury Park to achieve success. The musicians weren’t trying to be bohemian, or best the beat poets. They didn’t read or write tomes about the Road. They lived in a darkness that was simple and created one where it was safe to explore.

When The Boss sang, “They can’t hurt you now,” on the track Because the Night, I believed him, disappearing inside music emanating from the family’s turntable. I took cover from forces unseen – those that would take away the family shoe business and my father’s livelihood and those of my own teenage angst. I hid from every day which looked good on the outside – national honor society, class vp, varsity volleyball - but days which contained plentiful rumblings underneath, including the malcontent of a middle child.

In my hometown, darkness reigned. We cruised out to Gore Orphanage Road, listening for the screams of children who supposedly burned in a fire years ago. Late night, we drove past parties we weren’t invited to, in order to stalk boys we thought we might date. When dusk descended over the lake at Andy’s beach house, the gloom of the water enveloped my naked body as I skinny dipped to prove that I could be cool – and stupid too.

Tonight I ‘ll be on that hill, Bruce crooned in Darkness on the Edge of Town and I recalled the sledding hill behind the Golden Acres Nursing Home where evening would fall and bodies would tumble on top of each other. Those winter nights we spent listening to Bruce inside a Chevette, a Subaru, a Citation or a yellow Spitfire that only a few rode in, whatever magical bus was not being used by siblings or parents.

Shadows crept up on us at the sandstone quarries where there were no neon lights or glare of video games. Boys would rather fumble with a girl’s bra strap than adeptly maneuver the remote control of an Xbox. After family dinners, we would bolt from the comfort of pot roasts and NYPD Blue to get to that edge and went past it to find Newport cigarettes and stale pot, Old Milwaukee beer and petting sex, fast friendship and even faster betrayal.

There had always been darkness and we liked it that way. We could be someone else, run off, forge a new road divergent from the back streets. The Boss belonged to me, to Monica, and everyone else in that small town from which we came. Even if we never shared our miseries with each other, Bruce Springsteen’s music tapped into our anguish and became our bond.

Bruce represented our sense of place, persuading us to make a home in the darkness of backseats and craters of sandstone quarries. His music, his words, gave us the brashness to seek out our own edge and stand in it, no matter the cost.

A Prayer for the Bengals

2010-11-09T03:46:00.000-08:00

Please Dear God –

Let the Bengals win today. For eight years, the headlines in the media have vacillated between – almost and not quite - brilliance and stupidity. Chad Ochocinco now has as many TV shows as he has receptions. And dear Marvin, that poor baby, looks like he hasn’t slept in years. Could you please send him some cucumbers for those bags under his eyes? I hear they work wonders.

Lord, you know my troubles as Cleveland fan. We stay the course, we curse our coach and we show in weather that tends to run on the negative side of the Fahrenheit and wind chill scale. Being a fan of Cleveland has always required a heavy dose of stamina, a bit of faith and Uncle Tony smoking his cigarettes cussing out Art Modell.

But week after week, as I have made Cincinnati my home, the taunts about the Cleveland Browns continue, even as the home team of the Bengals descends into madness, or at least the fans do. I turn the other cheek, as the gospels have counseled me to do.

Please take pity upon the citizens of Hamilton County who have been forced to pay for a stadium in exchange for an NFL team “to be named later”. Since I have helped pay the king’s ransom as well, Lord, help me increase my spending so that Mike Brown has more money to do less with.

Lord, only you know the challenges of living in a city where life stops, along with the traffic on the interstate whenever the Bengals play, because the fans are busy holding their breath, the sports columnists have run out of ways to phrase “another loss” and the Bengal’s receiver is all thumbs because he Tweets too much.

Please God, bring the Bengals a victory, so the rest of us can get on with our life.

Sincerely,

Annette “Little Dawg”

Things to Do - Switch Roles

2010-10-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

In the days before cell phones, telephone calls to my parents were a source of frustration due to the interweaving of my father’s silence and my mother’s protestations, “Ette, are you there? You can say something too.” The course of the conversation would devolve to where Mom and Dad would simply forget I was on the other end. If I happened to mention that I was doing something on a Tuesday, Mom would glance down at her calendar and then begin a conversation with my father about a dentist appointment and ask when he would have time to get to the barber for haircut. Three-way calling took on a new meaning.

My mother was not only the primary communicator in the family, but the source of organization too. She would pour over the AAA books, mark the pages of hotels suitable for a family of seven, and familiarize herself with the Triptik. She organized family dinners every night for a troop of seven, and when the troops diminished, she still managed a pot of tomato sauce and meatballs. She remained the primary disciplinarian, but detested that role more than cleaning the toilets.

Except for my mother’s perseverance through a bout of breast cancer and a hip replacement when my father became caregiver, Mom gave meaning to the word caregiver. Only recently, have I come to see my father and her as having switched roles.

No, he is not making meatballs, though he did always help with her cookies and raviolis. He was a willing participant in the kitchen for the Thanksgiving turkey, Wedding Soup, and the clean-up that ensued. Many nights, following parties and celebrations, the kids went to bed while the two of them stood at the sink, drying the dishes that my mother refused to let dry themselves. She never did allow for things to be left to their own devices.

Though I have done my mother a disservice in not acknowledging her as caregiver of the family earlier in my life, I am now tipping my hat to Dad.

Dad has become the primary communicator on the phone. He might say, “Hold on, let me get your mother on the phone.” Mom will ease in the occasional hello, mention something about the weather, “Oh, its cold here today. What’s it doing in Cincinnati?”, and then slip off the phone. This is typical for individuals with Alzheimer’s, as they cannot comprehend the passage of time. What was only two minutes on the phone, might feel like a lifetime to her. Of course, I recall evenings as a teen, when one of my siblings might call and relentlessly discuss the drama of the day. My mother would hold the phone away from her ear, and those of us still at home would chuckle, haltingly, wondering when she might have responded that same way to us.

These days, when Mom vacates the conversation, I imagine Dad, simply shrugging his shoulders, giving a slight chuckle and saying, “Well, Net, what are you gonna do?”

He is now keeper of the calendar, which involves a myriad of doctor and clinical appointments. They see their doctors more than their children, not necessarily by choice. And when I mention this to Mom, “Wow, that seems to occupy all your time these days,” she simply replies, “Oh, no, we’re not at the stage yet.” In the same way, in midst of telling a story where she has forgotten the flow of her words, Mom will mention, “Sometimes, I think I have that disease. What do they call it?” And I tell her, “Mom, you are doing just great.”

My father did not arrive in this role with fanfare and a ticker tape parade, though he would have welcomed the initiation. He came into the role mostly kicking and screaming. Weeks went by before he agreed to a part-time in-home caregiver for Mom, partly denying the reality of their precarious lease on life. Convincing him it was time to switch Mom over to a gerontologist, away from the convenience offered by the family doctor down the street, I watched him grit his teeth. He will occasionally confess to me that he still sees Dr. X, “just for some things”, of which no one can place blame.

When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer fourteen years ago, I mentioned a girlfriend that had battled the disease was attending a support group, which was still a newer concept. I suggested to Mom, “Have you considered a support group?” To which she promptly responded, “I don’t need a support group, what do I need one of those for?” She did recover, though I often wondered if she needed a place for her fears that none of us could house. But I also know we were her support. And we have performed admirably, but not without some hiccups ever since.

But the other day, my father called and proceeded to share on all sorts of topics that were troubling him. After my puzzled silence, he apologized, saying, “Well, Net, what am I gonna do? Your mother is the only one I have left to talk to anymore and she forgets everything I tell her.” I tried to bite my tongue, and not suggest a support group, but my tongue broke through, “Dad, what about a support group?” And he said, “Yeah, I been thinking about one.”

My father, reluctant to ask for help, silent in so many ways, always letting his actions show his love, was now talking about talking. When sharing with him that I had once been in therapy, he had asked, “Why didn’t you just go to church and confession?”

I don’t know what the Vatican says about support groups and the circles they create to hold everyone together, but they work. The reassuring uplifting compassion passed from one human being to another can only be described as the work of a Higher Power. God uses humans to do His work, so much that God perhaps orchestrated my father’s change of role and change of heart.

My father and I have grown in our relationship. I perceive him more clearly in this new role, as an avid supporter and lover of my mother, and their life. And that, though he always brought home the bacon, he has never loved her or protected her more fiercely than now.

10/15/2010

Missing Home - Scenes from the Lower Ninth

2010-10-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

Cinder blocks
stand like prehistoric Stonehenge
holding up
the stale bayou air
as it wafts across the Lower Ninth.

Did the ancients too
undergo tragedy born of man’s desire
to conquer canals
and barren fields?

The neighborhood’s landscape
is now blemished
by broken sidewalks,
grafitti masking cash machine as art,
and a lone mailbox with contents marked
“return to sender”.

No one is left
to tell the tale
of the wooden table and chair
strewn along Flood Avenue,
knobby leg poking through wildflowers
chair seat matting down nearby weeds

Imagine,
teetering atop the chair
as flood waters rose,
then stepping onto a wobbly table
to reach the ceiling,
crawl out a hole in the roof
and wait

for rescue.

And return
to the skeleton
of a home lifted off its haunches and carried away.

The burial of what died in the Lower Ninth
comes slowly
as seasons overcome the work of man
who long ago created channels
that could not hold back the surge.

A set of steps stays behind
to welcome its ghosts home.

Things to Do - Give Pause

2010-10-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

Four index cards sat on my car’s dash, each with their own list. Vacation loomed, and the laundry was piling up while I busied myself with lunches, work, and the exchange of a shirt for a son who didn’t fit into size 15 neck.

I had spent much of the week in the car, or behind a computer. Or writing, I was always writing. Writing a grant, writing about a writing class I teach, writing about writing - which I hated, writing the backstory for a new novel, writing emails, writing Facebook messages for friends who don’t check email, NOT writing about writing, or just plain not writing.

Earlier in the week, I could have accomplished more, but I dragged my husband from the comfortable confines of the family room to Fountain Square where we pulled into the parking garage at the EXACT moment Jay Bruce hit a home run and fireworks were let off, thereby missing THE moment in recent Reds history.

In all of that, I was told a story while on a morning walk with a friend. A young college boy at Rutgers asked his roommate for privacy. The roommate conceded, left the room and somehow turned on the webcam, to watch while the young man had sexual relations with another college boy. The video was then posted by the roommate for all to see. The boy committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

We had been walking amidst the early fog settling heavily across the Little Miami River. The fog thickened and suddenly, my pace slowed. My feet dragged. I felt pulled into the weight of the busyness of our lives. Earlier, I had bought a shirt at JCP and KNEW the quality was poor, but I wanted the task off my list. After one washing, the sleeve hems frayed and there I was, back at the store. Like those college students, I had stopped thinking about the consequences of my actions. Intentionality had been strangled by my busyness.

Fr. Lou Gunzelman wrote of this factor, as it related to the emptiness of church pews, “The people who are not at church on Sunday are not at home … They are sleeping, shopping at the mall, working in their yard, having team practices, jogging, walking, watching football, etc.”

I was one of them, ascribing to the “need to jog” notion instead of working out my spirit. I adhered to the “other activities”, out of town on a college visit with the kids, can’t find a church, or going to celebrate a Reds’ victory, school of thought.

I arrived home, index card lists still full, and sat again at my computer to edit a podcast recording. The young man’s suicide stayed with me, as I listened to a writer speak about sandcastles as a metaphor for life, surrendering to what is, not running. So I stopped - to write this down, knowing my words gave breath to life and redefined must-do lists.

There are many types of misdeeds in our lives. In an effort to be efficient, and make it to vacation day with nary a care, I had committed a few offenses of omission. The crime in that young man’s death was not one of hate or passion. It was BIGGER. It was the crime of unconsciousness. And the only solution is to give pause. For if we don’t stop, who for God’s sake will stop the kids?

Things to Do - Bless the Young Men

2010-09-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, two young men who were older classmen were killed while driving through a railroad crossing. Paul Opheim and Steve Shannon. They had been friends of my brother’s, and, if memory serves, there was the outside chance my brother might have been riding in that same car had it not been for the interest of a young woman.

The heartbreak our high school experienced was unmatched, in that none of our friends had experienced loss before this event. We had grandparents that had died during the course of our years growing up. But somehow, their actual dying was as far removed as a third cousin. Even in my own family, my siblings and I sensed the death of my mother’s first born, as we often marked his birthday and frequented his gravesite. But we did not carry the grief that my mother and father had to bear, only the imagined loss of elder brother.

When Paul and Steve were killed that fateful day, the young men and women of our high school had to learn how to mourn in community. St. Joseph’s church held a Mass, which my brother and parents attended. I still had to go to school. I don’t know why. My girlfriends and I had been close to my brother’s class, such that any one of those boys was considered an older brother(and dating prospect) to us. But we mourned in our own way, drinking beer, sitting at Andy’s Dad’s beach house, wondering how families and friends would move forward from that day on.

Fast forward twenty years. Today, I attended a memorial service for a young man, a senior schoolmate to my freshman. A senior at Moeller, he was struck by a car and killed. He would have been 18 tomorrow, falling short by four days of his 18th birthday.

How many times had parents around the world muttered to themselves, “That kid’ll be lucky if he makes it to his 18th birthday,” when their sons didn’t pick up their room or turn in homework on time, or when they danced to the beat of their hormones and not their brains. Tragically, this young man was simply on a skateboard assuredly doing something he enjoyed.

It is in how a community mourns that we understand how a community lives. Hundreds of young men of Moeller dressed in shirt and tie, seniors in suit coat, streamed into the auditorium, prayed and sang. When the priest invited the students to pray the “Our Father”, not one hesitated to grab the other’s hand to hold in prayer.

In that moment, I felt my own gratitude – that my son had elected to come here to school, in a setting where grief was as welcome as Friday Night Football and that I too could mourn in community for the families in this tragedy, feeling again the loss from my high school years, and the ones that have been strung together since.

While the boys will rise to the challenge of this tragedy, this is perhaps their first experience with grief so close at hand. Though the students are often nicknamed “Men of Moeller”, many wore ties that touched below the belt and shirts with sleeve cuffs turned up a few times. Their youthful faces and pants that sagged in the leg were a reminder that they will learn to grieve here long before they grow. It is in this that they will need our prayers.

For Josh. 09/13/2010

To Teddy Bear, With Deep Affection

2010-09-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

This morning, our writing circle at the Alois Alzheimer Center wrote to the theme of teddy bears, reflecting on bears they had while growing up, or stuffed animals belonging to their children. We created a group poem from their written and spoken words.

Teddy Bear, With Deep Affection

My children always had bears.
If you had children,
you had to have teddy bears.
He was given to me at Christmas,
with button eyes and soft paws.

He was a good friend.
Bobby.
My brothers would toss him in a tub,
my mother would dry him out.

I never had a teddy bear,
I was always doing adult things.

A tan teddy bear sat in a chair
by my bed at night
so he could watch over me.

He was a small bear,
I don’t remember his name.
I like the Big Bear,
he looks soft and squeezable.
I had a brown teddy
that I took to bed with me.

He reminds me of
the Mickey Mouse Show on TV.
We didn’t have a teddy bear,
we had a French poodle instead.
Winnie the Pooh
makes me think of warm weather.

Just Teddy.
Plain, medium-sized,
showing signs of wear and tear
from just plain loving.

Group Poem – September 9, 2010
Found Voices Writing Circle
Alois Alzheimer Center

Baby Steps for the Eighty Something Crowd

2010-08-24T11:29:00.001-07:00

Last month, my eighty-two year-old mother had abdominal surgery. The operation was a result of three days of tests and an abdomen swollen to the size of a basketball.

Following surgery, she was released to a skilled nursing facility, where she could continue to recuperate, with others keeping a watchful eye. She promptly refused admittance and begged (or told) my father to take her home. He did so without hesitation.

But this left my parents in a predicament. Mother has dementia. She and Dad have lived in the same home for 30 years, until now without help. They are without clear medical oversight. Their grown children are working jobs and balancing families, some far away. Surely they had conversations about their long term health needs, enough to fill out the Health Care Power of Attorney forms and Advanced Directives. Yet none of these pertained to where they would make their home, once their home was no longer suitable for their needs.

A subset of siblings began to make phone calls, pleading with my father, who in the stubbornness associated with his generation, refused to bring in a caregiver, on the basis of money, not wanting someone else in their house, and pride. On those points, I was unable to get him to move an inch.

For two weeks conversations went back and forth between siblings and father. He would play the role of martyr to one, and play a different role to the next. I would hang up the phone wondering if I had just spoken to Jeckyll or Hyde.

I can’t pretend to know what was in his head, his heart. I did however have the background of caring for my first husband through his cancer battle, and knowing the end result was one I still regret. I gave him more care than I did love. Maybe this point is more important to women. Perhaps my father feels it is his duty to give Mom more care and that the love came in the form of the testimony to their nearly 50 years of marriage.

But when I was at home during mom’s operation, I found food spoiled, towels unwashed, left stiff. I found baggies from store-bought cold cuts being reused, as if there were no such thing as salmonella. And I found Mom needing company and a hair wash.

My mother was always one for appearance. She too was of her generation, taking pride in what she owned and in her appearance. Before we even drove to the hospital for her surgery, she stopped to put on lipstick. Throughout her stay, she was always inquiring as to the location of her comb, regardless of when her hair had last been washed or set.

Several weeks following the surgery, my father caved. I clearly stated Mom is not getting what she needs, and he is not in a position to give it to her, because her needs are beyond what any one person can offer. This same man who had uttered, “I should have taken your mother on more vacations,” hesitated. So I finished with, “Well, Mom won't be going on too many vacations, but she can retain some dignity.” And her clean home and hair.

He relented long enough for Tamara to come into their home. He and I have not conversed in depth about the situation. It is too early. I don’t want to open the door for him to walk out on this deal.

But I did speak with Mom one morning, when Dad had departed for a meeting. Their caregiver, Tammy, had answered the phone then passed it on to Mom. She was laughing in the background as she came to the phone. I said, “Hi Mom. What are you up to?” And she replied, “Oh, well. I have a friend here and we are going to sit outside. It’s so beautiful today.” I could almost see her smile.

We didn’t speak long. I wanted Mom to hold fast to that feeling of friendship and freedom. I hung up and cried a little, called my younger sister, relayed the story, then cried a little more.

Baby steps, I had repeatedly told my father, as Mom progressed from the ER through surgery, ICU and finally home. Baby steps, I kept telling him, in regards to Mom’s recovery and in-home care.

Baby steps, I remind myself again.

8/24/2010

Blessing of the Lake

2010-08-19T05:25:00.001-07:00

May the fish frolic in places unsuspecting,
their pools casting ripples beyond the no wake zone.

While you watch, may your loyal ally rest upon your lap
and a light breeze lift your spirit
off the dock, separating from the body which aches.

May a red ball of fire suddenly announce its presence
on the horizon, its reflection in the lake
growing longer as it rises, pushing the day’s clock to begin.

When its light is splintered by trees, may you still know warmth
as you sit on the dock toes dipped in water
creating ripples to meet those of the fish.

And may the blue herons nudge you from this trance,
the long flaps of their sails
soaring over the morning’s grace.

8/14/2010

Praying the Rosary While Sleeping

2010-08-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

A machine drones on, squeezing
and releasing to keep her legs from clotting
She whispers, lips moving at rocket speed
She cannot be singing, not that fast
She is speaking, not aloud, but to her Maker
in an appeal.

Her hands curl around the finger probe
toying with imaginary beads
Parched lips struggle
to separate on the “Hail”
purse together for “Mary”
then finally form “full of grace”

She blesses the fruit of thy womb Jesus
while her own womb bears a new incision
“Holy Mary Mother of God” she murmurs
moving beads through bandaged hands

She clenches the rosary lifts it up
the beads speak back
a dialogue between hands and heart

Her eyes open, roll back into her head
looking inward for salvation
from this cruelty imposed upon her
She contemplates the Mysteries
joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious
in rhythm with the IV drip.

7/25/2010

Things to Do - Be a Stepmom

2010-07-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

As I churned the marshmallows in the large stainless steel pot, readying them for Rice Krispie treats, my phone rang twice. One stepdaughter was asking to go out to a party following Ultimate Frisbee practice. The second stepdaughter was going out as well. For now, they had the same destination, but different curfews.

As I hung up from the first, who I encouraged to go despite the early curfew, telling her she needed the practice to drive, her last words were “I love you,” streaming forth from the speaker though I had already set down the phone and hit “end” to stir so the marshmallows wouldn’t burn.

A similar situation occurred with the second. As I was hanging up, trying to keep the Rice Krispies from popping, an “I love you” was quickly muttered.

I was pleasantly surprised at how both conversations ended, but instantly my mood turned sour when I thought about Kyron Horman, the missing Oregon boy. More so, I thought about his stepmother who had been in the headlines of every Google News column and People magazine caption.

Stepmothers get a bad rap, and I tire of it easily. The girls have done things on occasion that I am certain their mother would have found abhorrent, and certainly would have disciplined them in a harsher manner than I did. The “evil stepmother” term has probably been tossed around behind my back, but I take comfort - and humor - in that.

And the fact remains, I am still here. I wash their laundry. I am at the other end of the phone when they call to tell me good news. I drive them to colleges and orientation, encourage them to shop for new clothes, which they don’t often do (who are these girls, right?). I am not perfect, nor do I have the patience for their nonstop speeches when I am ready for bed at 10 p.m. But I am still here.

A good friend told me one of her acquaintances in Arizona referred to her stepchildren as “bonus” children, and she their “bonus” mother. In our case, I tell folks, we are a blended family, but the girls are all mine. By this I mean, I treat them as if I birthed them. Sometimes there are discrepancies in my tone with my son vs. them, but there is also room to point out how different it is in raising girls and boys.

If Kyrons’ stepmom is responsible, shame on her. She will get what she deserves and most likely not be a part of any family that some one would trust her with. Mostly, shame on Disney, the Brothers Grimm, and the other fantastical media breathlessly waiting to type out, “The child’s stepmom…” They should work harder to find a better ending, I know I did.

7/5/2010

Top Ten Reasons to NOT Play Golf

2010-06-25T04:08:00.000-07:00

1. I don’t have the right hair cut for it. Really. I have this disjointed thing goin’ on that everyone loves, but its not right for visors or ponytails.

2. I get poison ivy whenever I am near the woods and I go there often with my drives.

3. I have a novel in waiting. My characters live in early 1900’s, they just wouldn’t understand. They don’t make a move without me.

4. My sister looks better than I do in the chic golf clothes that she sells.

5. My son can outplay me, though I outweigh him.

6. My husbands swears a lot when he is on the course, and I like to retain my view of him as calm and humble.

7. I am opposed to drinking and driving (a ball or a cart) at the same time.

8. One never has enough balls….

9. Number 18 at O’Bannon finishes at the clubhouse, with a veranda full of people in view, just waiting for my errant shot. I would hate to get sued….

10. Really. Novel. Still. Waiting.

Things to Do - Celebrate a 50th Birthday

2010-06-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday came and went so fast, I hardly had time to adjust to the knowledge that I had been dreading the day. My first husband, Devin, would have turned 50. So long as Davis has been able to walk and golf, we have played golf in honor of his dad’s birthday, sometimes not so successfully (of course, only speaking for myself).

The day came in spurts of driving, drop offs, and errands. The girls were off on their mission trip and even Davis was not home for long until he reentered the house after a basketball game and said, “Welp, I just need to get changed and we can go!”

I sat in a kitchen chair, dumbfounded, having been living in the world of my fictional character, trying to develop a life for her mother who had gone missing and her father who had stayed. Of course, this was just the opposite of what Davis had experienced ten years ago. A father passing, a mother who stayed.

As I dug my nose out of the History of Cincinnati Opera book, Davis came back downstairs, carrying an envelope full of memories. His grandparents had been cleaning out drawers and passed along a stack of newspaper clippings and pictures from his father’s childhood and young adult years. A few snapshots made me wince, as I recognized a young self with BIG hair seated next to a young man, a smooth tan face, eyes engaged on his subject. Davis was quick to note he might never be as tall as his father, but I was quicker on the draw. "Yes, but you have his smile."

I’m sure it was difficult for Davis to read what an accomplished golfer his father had been. But Devin grew up on golf courses, had a father who was a golf coach, so he was already ahead of the curve that Davis is driving on now.

And here I sat with Davis, wondering. Have I made the right decisions for him? How will he serve others? Will he find his passion, or does he already possess it within?

The heat took my breath away and thus I took my time on the golf course, also savoring each minute with Davis. I had to admit, perhaps we were not there to honor his father’s birthday, so much as give me an excuse to be with Davis. He would soon be in high school. Months after Davis was born, a lunar eclipsed occurred. I wrote, “As hands travel around the clock, with you I have traveled the world. I have tasted more than I ever dreamed possible.” Yes, these were the gifts that kept on giving. Time with Davis, time to understand how to let go.

We began arguing about whether or not he was taking his time on his putts, which were a little off that day. He was using his Dad’s putter that had been regripped, “I’m still getting used to the new grip.” My claim was, “You need patience.” But really, no soon to be 14 yr old had ever developed patience without trying their parents. He turned to me jokingly and said with a smile, “Dad wouldn’t want us to be arguing on his birthday.” And I replied with a smirk, “We’re not arguing, your dad would have told you the same thing.”

Later, on the 14th or 15th hole, he made a shot from behind the trees that was quite spectacular. When he came out from the trees to find me, his smile was wider than any I can recall in recent memory. That is what his dad would have wanted on his birthday.
.

To Do List - Climb a Tree

2010-05-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

I amazed at how long it takes the seeds in my life germinate. They are unlike the lettuce seeds sowed only weeks ago and now I can enjoy the fruits of my limited labor. But the seeds that are cause for growth of others around me, or even myself.

Several years ago, I undertook the effort to become a certified facilitator in the ways of Women Writing for (a) Change. Though I had long been a published author, a writer in the WWFC groups, a board member of the foundation and a podcast facilitator, I had yet to commit myself to a life of writing. They were seeds scattered, hoping a plant or flower might grow. Hope triumphed over intention, and intuition reigned over planning or action.

Early last year in 2009, I found myself walking through a newly wooded path carved out near my home. I was listening to a podcast in which a well known author Don DeLillo and Alan Dienstag had teamed up to produce a writing workshop for individual in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

My mother lives in northern Ohio and I live in Cincinnati. At the time, she too had begun the descent into dementia, with family well aware of the potential outcome in years to come. At that moment, in those woods, with snow softening my heart, something inside of me melted as if to water a seed newly planted. I knew I may not frequently be in a place to offer my gifts to Mom but resolved to share them with others in a similar position.

With vigor, I created a lengthy proposal to create a writing circle that could potentially be administered and supported by the Alzheimer’s Association, in the same way they support an art program called Creative Memories. While researching, I found the Arizona Alzheimer’s Poetry Project and studied their findings. I misspelled Alzheimer’s each time I typed the word and cursed Alois Alzheimer, the neuropathologist who first described the condition back in 1906, on the surface because of his name, but deep down inside, for the disease itself.

Through the Internet, I came across the name of a former writing sister who had been a board member of the association. I made contact with her, asked for her input, and put my proposal to the association in the mail.

By now, it was summer. Six months had passed. Lifetimes had come and gone for Alzheimers individuals. Present day events were escaping their memory as fast as I could type.

Four weeks following my submission, I called the director. She seemed rushed, though took my call. I briefly explained who I was and asked was there interest in this program. She sucked in her breath, and brusquely told me they had plenty of programs they were already offering and had no interest in mine at the time.

I hung up the phone and sunk into my chair. Plenty of programs, but how many were designed to recover lost voices? As would happen, I was an avid newspaper reader, and because of Mom’s condition, had noticed the ads about the award winning Alois Center near Winton Woods. I knew nothing of the center, had not visited, yet I placed a call to the number indicated regarding activities for the residents and shared my thoughts. I no sooner heard back than was sitting with the Director Jennifer Delassandro and Activities Director Marvin Knoblach about the creation of this circle.

Though I was blunt about wanting funding, and my proposal would prove to be out of sync somewhat with what the residents were capably of, the center offered me the opportunity to launch this program, with the understanding that they would be my only client in the memory care field. This was a difficult decision to agree to, as it was also stipulated that there would be no monies available in the immediate future, but perhaps there would be access to funding in the long run.

Because this seed germinated deep in my heart, from a place only a higher power could have reached to plant, I agreed to let it grow within me. Luckily, a close friend of mine, Leigh agreed as well.

Over a set of four weeks, and then another four weeks, we threw out all my original poems and ideas. but one. It was the beginning class. “I am from,” the poem begins. We asked the residents to use this line as a jumping off point for their own writing. And when we did, we found residents “from a river town in Kentucky” and found others that wrote about where they were from, but soon tore up the paper in an effort to destroy the memories.

We captured each agenda and lessons learned, of which there were many. Focus on the rhythms of poetry as much as the words. Keep it simple. Facilitators should not be writers. Help them remember. Involve the use of multiple senses to evoke. The basic tenets of any teaching were all present. And yet something was lying underneath.

Though we were there to talk about poetry and writing and their lives, we also existed in a one hour vacuum that allowed for the residents to be present in moment, together in community. They would laugh at each other’s jokes. Hold hands. Pass the stone to check-in, which was one day a baseball instead. Smell rawhide. Eat birthday cake. Hold up a shell to their ears to listen for the ocean. Run their fingers through sand in a box. Croon all the words to “What a Wonderful World.”

Eat a hot dog while singing "Take me out to the ballgame," even if they “hated Sundays because my mother and dad always watched the ballgames on TV”, or while they recounted the memory of their “father working at the post office, and occasionally taking me to the game,” or even chastised “those who drink too much beer at a ballgame.”

For our “Jazz” theme, each participant was given a musical instrument, culled from our possession of preschool items, outdated in both our households. Each resident took up their instrument, in a call to arms, and shook rattles and bells to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Though some were not mobile, we encouraged those who could to rise up and march. Some looked at us with a blank stare, but two bold women jumped out of their seats, with urgency of someone who heard “Fire,” and began to clap their hands and shake their tambourine.

My mother would have been singing Louis and Ella, and for certain, she would have danced with the other bold women. One might think I could have facilitated this one on one with her, but I have found that it is the energy of the group which fosters the courage to grow, to dance.

The center maintains files with the resident’s writings. When the staff meets with the family of a participant, the writing is shared. Families are seeing loved ones in new ways, separate from their disease.. Someone who regrets “not buying that house on Cape Cod, when it was selling for pennies.” Someone who will write down simple words, “Elba, Italy with my wife,” as a special time spent at the ocean. And those simple words speak volumes for one who can’t.

What was lying underneath the participants and their writing was the seed that had been planted in me. We had now planted those seeds within them. Most residents don’t recall what day of the week that we arrive with more bags than a family of four on vacation. But they have a sense that they don’t want to miss it. “Make sure they remember to come get me when you are here,” one woman tells us each time. And hugs are always exchanged, both ways.

With gratefulness we were rewarded by the staff who provided us with support, inspiration, gifts cards to the Cheesecake Factory, and journals for our own words. And even more satisfying, a phone call came later in our last week, from the Executive Director, interested in meeting with us, to find funding so the residents could continue this method of self-expression.

There are tomato seeds that push through the earth to become food and seeds that grow into bursting dahlias for my vases. But some seeds take root farther below the soil. Seeds that become trees for shade on a simmering August afternoon, for leaning against while killing time, and those that perennially produce fruit and nuts. Best of all, some seeds become trees that are meant for climbing.

2010-05-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

Knowing What is Coming

2010-05-09 A somewhat fictional take on Mom’s dementia

One day, they remember Holden
from Catcher in the Rye - and can recall
Tony Bennett all brown-eyed singing
Close Your Eyes while their hips swayed

Soon they begin to ask to go home
while they are sitting comfortably in the wooden chair
where they rocked their babies and yours
They forget the name of your children and or their husband
They walk out of doors cleverly concealed
behind rock band posters from the 70’s
you thought they might recognize
because they hated kids listening to that music
and they would yell turn that damn thing off
but they find the door because they are on a mission

following fences or power lines
to reconnect with their chatty maid of honor
whose voice was silenced by sickness
or to find their child who will only exist
in a cemetery plot where babies are buried

or drawn to the lake
where you went together and watched the sun go down
They licked around the edges
of your banana ice cream cone
telling you don’t let it drip all over the car
while you watched the sandstone fountain
spray runny reds yellows then greens and blues

and only now, can they catch sight of rainbow’s end
which no one could see during those summer nights
when the ball of fire set late o’er the waves
From the front seat they would recite
red skies at night, sailors delight,
red skies at dawn, sailors be warned
And you took delight because you knew that rhyme by heart.

2010-05-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

2010-05-02 To Do List – Laugh with my Husband

We woke this morning to rain, lots of it. I considered the runners from the local Flying Pig Marathon. How would they cope? In my mind, I ran down a mental list of items I would want with me in the rain, should I have been one of those unfortunate flying pigs to persevere through the finish line. Luckily for myself and my family, I was not. My husband and I showered and dressed for church, ensured the teenagers were up and not snarling at our request for them to attend church this morning, gave Enzo several opportunities to go outside and perform admirably in the rain, to which each occasion, he rose then solemnly sulked away.

At mass, the congregation was celebrating First Communion, one of four classes that would celebrate that sacrament over the next two weekends. We met up with Mark’s parents, sat in our usual pew, Davis taking to his usual commitment of “going to use the restroom” as a means for distraction or procrastination towards actually sitting down for more than an hour.

Church was not overly crowded, as per typical on a sunny Sunday morning in Spring. Most had heard through the grapevine about the sacraments being celebrated. Coupled together with the torrents of water spilling out of gutters, the reasons were aplenty to stay in bed. But this morning, I had organized a sendoff for Mark, attended by our children and his parents, prior to his medical mission trip to Haiti. I had postponed this effort, mainly to postpone thinking about it, but the day had arrived when we had to all fully accept the reality of his decision to care for those who needed him more than we did for the week.

Fr. Anthony gave the homily to the second, and some third graders. He spoke about learning, and how coming to church represented the classroom of spirituality, and humility and love for God. And of course, the gospel shared was the one story that spoke volumes about any trip one might undertake to a ravaged country to which one has no ties, but only obligations, “Love One Another.”

I found myself through most of the mass holding on to Mark’s hand more so than usual. We laughed when I deduced that the music of late was not up to par for our Sunday Mass the Musical that we said we would one day bring to Broadway. The tempo had been slowed, perhaps a request by the newer pastor. The music still was uplifting, but nothing that would raise the roof or cause audiences to jump up from their seats and start singing.

When the service ended, the family headed home and Mark’s parents joined for a short order brunch. I had not really prepared any foods in advance, as I had done so for our Easter Brunch, no French Toast casserole, or Phyllo Pie. A few sausages in the oven. I could hardly ask Mark to stand in the rain, and cook over the grill, despite having done so for Thanksgiving and Christmas. A few slices of bread. Davis made the Pillsbury Cinnamon rolls, much to our delight, as we watched him struggle to open the rolled container, figure how to work the timer on the oven, and determine when the rolls were done.

During brunch, the conversation focused much on Shannon’s graduation and our disappointment that the ceremony would be held in the gym at her school, and not at the Oasis, as it had for Cheryl. There were rumors of families already securing reservations, when in fact, no word or letter had been sent to the parents with instructions to do so. A few zealous parents anxious to see their children off were nervous about not getting seats. These were probably the same that filled out their children’s college apps, helped with their homework, and made some calls to find them a summer job. Don’t get me wrong. We are as ready for Shannon to go, as she is to leave us. But I doubt one is ever really ready to admit their child has graduated into from the school of academics, into the school of life.

“Shannon, not to cut short this discussion, I said, “but since this was put together for your dad, I have a little exercise for us all today. I have a card I am sending around the table. I want to ask each of you to write down a one word prayer. One word that you want Mark to carry with you, that he can keep as a handy reference while doing his work.”

This was going to prove a problem for Mark’s Mom is who loves to chat and write in equal parts. It was agreed by all that I had the unfair advantage of knowing about the exercise in advance and therefore I knew what word I would write down. “Yep, when I thought of this exercise this morning, I knew what word I wanted to write, right away.” So, I quickly jotted that word down, and the card was passed to the others. In mere minutes, we had completed the task. Then, I asked each member to speak their word, and share a little of the sentiment behind the word.

Papa’s word was “proud.” How proud he felt that Mark had chosen this path and was following a call for help. Kaitlyn’s word was “remember”, to remember us all here, and that Mark would remember this experience for the rest of his life. Davis passed until he could clearly articulate the feelings behind his word. Shannon went next. “Changed” was the word she chose, because the Haitian people will be changed by Mark helping them, even just one person. And that Mark will be changed by this experience. Davis called for the chance to speak and used his word “hope” because Mark will be giving the Haitian people hope to believe in. Nana went next. The only word a mother could possibly write down. “Love” - because I love you and you have always shown so much love for others.”

Finally, my turn. “Openness”. Because Mark was open to making the decision to do this, because he will need to be open culturally, medically, in so many ways, when treating his patients, and because his openness will be a gift to others, to invite them into his circle of caring.

Of course, tears were shed. Then, I asked Mark, “What would your one word be?” And he barely squeaked out his prayer, “Starfish” We all looked at him quizzically, but Shannon knew right away what he meant. Since Mark was clearly choked up, Shannon went on to tell the story of a little boy who would go out after the storms, and throw the stranded starfish back into ocean. One day, a stranger stopped him on the beach and asked him, “Son, there are so many starfish out here, you will never get the job done. Do you think that’s going to make a difference?” The little boy didn’t respond, but instead, picked up another starfish, threw it into the water, and said, “Ït did to that one.”

As I write this now, I have just finished reading the orientation document for Mark so I don’t appear too ignorant when he starts speaking in acronyms. Kaitlyn is at work, Shannon with her boyfriend. Cher has yet to weigh in via text messaging with her “word” for Mark’s prayer card. Nana and Papa are probably making dinner, watching the evening news. And Mark is in the basement, playing Xbox with Davis. They are playing the FIFA soccer game and laughing hard at Davis who always loses at this game because he gets carded. A smile comes across my face when I hear Mark chuckle again. How lucky the Haitians will be to encounter Mark - smiling blue eyes and the vastness of his love.

2010-04-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

2010-03-31 No Day for Writer's?

First my husband Mark arrived home with paperweight. The next year, he returned with a crystal bowl for nuts. And this year, he proudly presented not one, but two gifts, a to-go coffee cup and a single serving thermos (Who drinks a single serving of coffee?). They were gifts from the hospital for Doctor’s Day. And they had been graciously accepted by my husband, an anesthesiologist.

So I posed the question, “If they can have Doctor’s Day, why is there no Writer’s Day?” And there’s not. There is National Writing Week. National Novel Writing Month, National Letter Writing Week (mothers may enjoy this). There is National Poetry Month. We have poet laureates. We have National Writing contests, local writing competition. Some have even created a March Madness poetry contest, which is pure genius if you ask me.

There is even a National Day on Writing, October 20, which in 2009, fell between National Boss Week and United Nations Day. On that day, I went to yoga at 9 a.m., came home and wrote some poetry. I recorded a podcast interview with a writer and then returned home to cook dinner. But I know I did NOT celebrate National Day on Writing, only because it sounded like a federal holiday, a national day of mourning when I should fly my flag at half-staff. And, it’s a day on writing, where one can explore topics on writing. The designation does not imply that one should be a writer not implore one to write. The declaration simply recognizes that people write, which can be accomplished by viewing hieroglyphics as well.

Still, there is no Writer’s Day.

In 1994, while enjoying Easter dinner at my in-law’s house, the family had this notion to go around the table and ask for new news and old news. I was still new to this family and would not marry into the family until September of 1994. Anything I had to say would be not only new, but possibly unimportant. My super smart brother-in-law, who would eventually earn his PhD in Mathematics, turned up the heat on the competition and announced, “Well, they discovered a new prime number today.” And certainly, the largest known prime number was discovered on the Cray research supercomputer. I would print the number, but don’t want to waste digital ink. Besides, prime numbers having been getting good press since the number two zero was invented.

I was again reminded of how science supersedes art, when I heard that the large Hadron Collider - the world's largest science experiment—shattered records in March, 2010, by successfully colliding particle beams at a combined energy of 7 tera electric volts (TeV). This marked a milestone in the collider's progress, and ushered in the beginning of up to two years of intensive investigations. The headlines of an Irish newspaper read, “Think making two bullets collide is difficult? Then try doing it at the subatomic level.” I wonder if the columnist had ever tried to write a ghazal or a cinquain, or a work of fiction or memoir. Even super colliders get more affection than writers.

Some states and writing groups have attempted to formalize a Writer’s Day within their own organizations. But I don’t want anything formal. No research grants or tera electric volts, though I could use the resulting energy to ramp up my level some mornings. I really just want a day when the phone does not ring, when the Internet is down, so I am not prone to surfing, when my husband is not quoting me from his Kindle, when someone feeds the dog or realizes it is OUR dog that is barking and the noise is grating on MY nerves.

I want a day when I receive a crystal bowl that I can use for my post-it notes full of ideas, or a stainless steel thermos bigger than the one my husband brought home because writers operate best under the influence of more caffeine than a doctor should consume.

2010-03-27T06:14:00.001-07:00

2010-03-27 To Do List – Open the Cage

Thursday morning came the realization that I have finally achieved “I am my parents” status, when Davis asked, “Is that what you are wearing to chaperone my (Christian fellowship) group this morning?” I had on a bright pink sweat top, with a clean, unwrinkled pair of black, not too tight, stretch pants, purposely selecting those pants aware that I would be in a room with 13,14 and 15 year olds boys in just an hour or so.

Davis, unlike his father, was not one known for fashion. We had lampooned his choices in our annual Christmas letter, stating that he was now working on Project Runway. The temperature was hovering around 40 degrees Thursday and he was wearing gym shorts and his orange school sweatshirt, which he had worn everyday this Spring, because its his “track” gear.

We managed to buy our donuts and make it to the church on time. I watched hungry teenaged boys walk in, eyes clamped shut, mouths wide open, ferociously consume 4.5 dozen donuts, in a fifteen minute timeframe.

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

They came for the treats and stayed for the fellowship and the understanding that they are loved by God, and the other boys in this room. A local father ran this group, meeting every other Thursday morning. He prepares an agenda, which includes a review from the past week’s meeting, highlights about Bible stories relevant for these boys (Sampson, Moses) and throws in some trivia about the NCAA, March Madness and the Masters.

The boys are asked to keep prayer journals, and use them to write their intentions, their questions. Even if they are never voiced, their words have a place that is secure from society.

That morning, prayer intentions included a young boy battling cancer, a school teacher recovering from cancer treatments, sports injuries, the lacrosse team, and another young man, a high schooler, in the same school system, who had committed suicide two days prior. Davis had informed us of this incident the night before, at dinner, where we promptly, but briefly, discussed the topic.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

At the time, I asked if counselors spoke at Davis’s middle school, separate from Scott’s (not his real name) high school. Davis said, “No, there wasn't much talk about it, other than from students.” Even at his fellowship meeting, before the impact of this event on the boys would dawn on them, they seemed content to speak of it and move on.

I too moved on with my day, feeding the neighbor’s dog while they were in Florida. I finished the last of the laundry, and decided the blankets in the flophouse part of the basement needed cleansing, which thankfully, I did. I found a pair of girl’s underwear (clean) and a men’s adult sized long sleeve jersey shirt. One cannot ponder these items too long for fear of where it might let your mind lead. I assumed the underwear came from a sleepover, and the men’s shirt was left behind during a recent party our kids had with their Mission Trip friends.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

I drove to meet my sister for lunch, with a stop at Ursuline to drop off paperwork to Shannon so she could order our couch through her Crate and Barrel discount. As I left, I was halted temporarily by the notion that I had selected the wrong color – Mocha instead of Sable. Quickly I ran through the printout of the paperwork in my mind and breathed a sigh of relief.

My cell phone rang as I drove the down the highway. I thought it would be my sister calling to tell me she would be late. That phone call would come, but it was my father, who always calls with a dire tone, asking if I could participate in a conference call with him and his lawyer sometime in April. “Dad, I don’t have my calendar with me, but I am sure, I can do it. I’ll call you after lunch.”

“Oh, my mom, interjected, “You are having lunch with your sister? That is so nice. Your father never wants to go out for lunch. We have all these restaurant cards that we never use.” Sure, I wanted to be in the middle of THAT conversation. I switched gears to talk about the weather. My mother always felt better when I told her the weather was as equally dismal here in Cincinnati as it was in Cleveland.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.

I have amazing and talented sisters. This one had been valedictorian and started several businesses during her working life. She was in the process of “becoming unstuck from a bad story” and “creating her new story” which has been my buzz line these days, thanks to Donald Miller, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”, and Jim Loehr, “The Power of Story.” Having been a writer now for 13 years (I use Davis’ age as a benchmark, since my first poem I wrote was about becoming his mother), and despite having penned my memoir and several anthologies of poems, and facilitating writing workshops, I never equated the word “story” with the word “life.” But today, I kept driving the point home with my sister. Either she finally heard me or was sick of me!

After lunch, rain continued to pound on the roof of my car, but I drove out to Benken’s for my annual pansy purchase. I spent an hour in the greenhouse, mixing and matching colors and sizes to achieve the look I wanted for my outdoor pots. I stayed a little long, because breathing in the oxygen created by those plants was certainly the closest thing to heaven here on earth.

I completed my rounds with a stop at Petmart for pizzles and Nyla bones for Enzo only to receive a text from Davis that Track was cancelled and he would be home shortly. I texted him back, “I will be home at the same time.” Then he responded “There is a video on Youtube about Scott. Can I watch it?”

Clunk. That was an imaginary sound. I did not really smash into another car at that moment, but it was my fears slamming into my insight. I did not know what was on that video. But if I didn’t allow Davis the space to open up about this, to grieve whatever loss he may be feeling, I would slam the door on an opportunity for him to grow in wisdom and compassion.

“Yes, but wait for me,” I typed back.

I arrived home first, let the dog out and welcomed Davis home with my presence. He could not drop his backpack fast enough, which is not usual, and ran to my office breathlessly waiting for me. “Davis, why don’t you search for the video and I will be right there?” In seconds, he called out, “I found it.”

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

From the kitchen, I took a deep breath and dragged my feet and heart into my office. He clicked “play.” The video was approximately four minutes in length and had been posted a few days prior. I will paraphrase his plea:

Scott was a junior, hoping to pursue teaching and photography, but now, he says, he was finding it hard to be interested in anything. He had been to counseling, took medication, but nothing seemed to keep him from this darkness. He went to sleep in class during the day, and stayed up all night. He could not understand what was happening. He used to be a good kid in school, made the honor roll, was a good kid at home. Now, he feared his girlfriend leaving him, he felt isolated from any friends, and felt that he was in cage he could not get out of.

Scott concluded with a cry for help. “If there is anyone out there that can help me, let me know what you have done to get through this”.

Scott presented all of this with a sense of practicality. His life was a problem he was trying to solve. I wept throughout the entire video. Davis sat stone silent until he could no longer keep his tears at bay. We remained in quiet for a few minutes after the video concluded. He did not have the words for this moment, so I began:

“Davis, it sounds like everyone was really trying to help him. We know so little about mental illness, except that there is a change in brain chemistry that alters that person’s perception enough to keep them in a cage.”

“I know because I’ve been there during some challenging times in my life, taking the medication, then gone off because I think I am better, sliding back into my lonely self.”

“But sometimes, a person gets so far down inside of himself, they cannot find the way out. And there is very little we can do to help them at that point.”

“Its so sad Mom.” I understood this to mean that he is a lover of life. Davis will go to school, enjoy track practice, sign up for classes at his new high school, eat a plateful of tacos, go to baseball practice, take out the garbage, and then come home and sigh, “Finally some me time,” and then we all laugh!

He cried a little while longer that afternoon then promptly announced he had to take care of the neighbor’s dog and walked out of the house.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.

I understand about cages, and how one can feel imprisoned, despite all the air that enters and exits between the bars, despite all the good intentions, therapy, friends and prayers. At times, I have been locked in my own pen. I have visited with others who are fenced in because of the law or their choices. Even our homes or diseases for which we are diagnosed become cages if we let them.

I pray God grants Scott the freedom from his cage that he so desperately deserves. And may we be reminded that healing begins in our own lives when leave the cage door open or hold it open for someone else.

* “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.

* The video has been removed due to its content which may or may not be good. What Scott said has a lot of relevance and could someday be used as an educational and emotional tool for others. While I deplore the use of social media for some to “showcase” their work, I cannot ignore the fact that for the next child, a posting such as Scott’s, just might save his or her life..

2010-03-25T06:47:00.001-07:00

2010-03-22 Middle Child

Red rocks band together, forming cup-like around me.
I do not worry about what I am keeping at bay –

the coyotes, the scorpions, who I was in Ohio,
steel grey clouds in my distant sight.

But instead, I think of what is keeping warm
the muscle that is my heart.
In this sauna of sagebrush and stones,
I am rediscovering my core and it is everywhere –

in the spiral petroglyph, while its loose end gives birth
to a fossilized human, its origin is etched stone.

And in the medicine wheel,
which steered many an ancient people.
I stand in its center and think,
“cob of corn, chewed apple core, elongated spine.”

Even the basalt boulders rise up like an altar
from beneath the sandstone seams in Cathedral Rock.

All my life, the middle was a birth order defect.

But here,
I am one and whole.

Stay rooted, I tell myself.

2010-03-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

2010-03-22 To Do List – Save a Child

A friend read one of my recent blog posts and suggested I continue writing on a similar theme. The theme of the first post was the creation of my to-do list for the day, and comparing that with the list of someone else, chosen randomly from my subconscious for their to do items impact on my psyche. So today, I begin again.

To do list for yesterday. Yesterday was Sunday, and yet it began at 2 .am. Our Saturday evening with our friends Jenny and Dan turned into Sunday morning, which happens quite often when Jenny is involved. The night also included a late round of euchre in which Jenny and I were partners, with my husband Mark and Dan as our opponents. We “possummed” them in the first round (this is akin to “skunking” but includes total anniliation). They in turn, skunked us (only “skunking” because we scored). We concluded with one last tiebreaker, though by now, my focus was on faces of the two dogs who desperately wanted to sleep, but could not bring themselves to do so, in the face of an opportunity to lap up whatever we might spill in the wee hours. Of course, pretzel crumbs and wine were not quite up to par for their tastes, as might be steak and eggs, but they persevered and their sad looks caused me to lose focus, and lose the final round.

Sunday began with an unusual waking by the Abby, a very large golden doodle we were dog-sitting for my in-laws. Our puppy Enzo sleeps in a crate, outside of our room, because I am a light sleeper and this was one concession that I won. Abby was still new to our household, and we wanted her contained so we knew her whereabouts. She slept in our room, until about 7 a.m. (which translates to 5 hours of restless, wine-induced tossing and turning).

From there the day’s race was on, including baking a French toast casserole with blueberries before our hungry bunch would rise and decimate the cereal aisle in our pantry instead.

Our breakfast conversation turned to the topic of Haiti. A local reporter had returned from that country and written a articles that kept my Mark entranced. Mark was heading to Haiti next month. When had he first told me about the opportunity that existed for doctors through his Notre Dame alumni connection, I simply said, “You have to go.” I never looked at our schedule, nor did I consider being widowed (again) if events turned sour in Haiti while he was there. He simply “had to go”.

Then, Mark received a lengthy e-mail with explanations about where he would stay, how he and his companions would travel and what vaccinations would be necessary prior to departure. Also discussed were malaria and other diseases for which there were no vaccinations. Swine flu wasn’t scary when one compared that to traveling in mosquito-infested countries with rains that wash away potential sprouts of corn or wheat.

I was still hungover, tired, dehydrated, and could take in neither what Mark Carnette had experienced and cataloged, nor could I absorb all that Mark would witness in the upcoming month.

I left the article about Haiti on the kitchen table, showered, attended a Mother-Daughter fashion show and drove out to Frontgate Outlet Store to purchase an outdoor lantern that matched one I purchased yesterday, when I was not convinced I needed two. But, the lanterns had been on sale, I reasoned. I even negotiated with the manager to include another set of pre-burnt pillar candles to match the ones paid for the day before.

We watched the XU basketball game in earnest, biting our nails until the very end. My daughter’s boyfriend thought the team had it in the bag when they went up by 6 or 7 with a few minutes left to go. But I needed to see things through to the conclusion. And sure enough, the game ended, but without our viewing (thanks Time Warner, CBS, NCAA, and Dick Vitale, or the obscure technician in the control booth). XU did secure the win. We all felt a sense of relief, until Thursday when they would play again.

During the game, we had seen snippets for the news magazine show 60 Minutes, which would follow the broadcast of the games. Mark, Shannon, Davis and I stayed glued to the couch when 60 Minutes began. Katie Couric interviewed White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He too carried a hand-written to do list, beginning with 3 minutes with President Obama, and ending the day with what Rahm called their “wrap up”. The end of their day was significantly different than mine or the rest of us. But his to-do list was no less impressive, and he probably did not complete his list with a hangover.

Then, a segment about Haiti began playing, and we sank into silence. To be honest, the camera footage was the first I had seen, other than pictures in the newspapers. I am not one for denial, but for the past two months have battled my own demons and could not take on those of the world. Devastation did not begin to describe the scenes which were shown and the apt title the Lost Children of Haiti scared me. Scott Pelley traveled to Haiti for 6 weeks. He first spoke with Moise Vaval, pastor of a local church who also worked for an orphanage. His eight year old boy, Jean Marc, had gone missing in the earthquake. What began as a father’s quest to find his child became an incessant drive to locate and match missing children with their parents. His restlessness drove him to support others in need until his son’s backpack was unearthed ten weeks later, and his small boy body removed from the rubble beneath the school.

The reporter then profiled Jean Robert Cadet – a Restevec – a former child slave. My husband and I had met Jean Cadet at a local fundraiser. Following the earthquake, he had visited Davis’ school, which raised $17, 000 for Jean Cadet to build schools in Haiti. He is a Cincinnatian, who has created his own foundation to save the children of Haiti from the fate he experienced as a child. Child slavery in Haiti is not uncommon nor is it illegal, so Jean Cadet uses his weight as a teacher to encourage families to give up ownership of children that do not belong to them.

Scott Pelley asked him about slavery. “The earthquake created child slavery?” “No, it created the opportunity for more children in slavery,” says Jean Cadet. “But Jean Cadet, if there are 175,000 child slaves, how do you think going door to door can help save any of them?”

Jean Cadet looked almost incredulous, as if to say, if you knew my story, you wouldn’t ask. Of course the reporter knew his story, but Scott wanted to draw it out of him for others, back home, sitting on a green leather pit group in front of a large screen TV, still nursing a hangover and yelling about the dog barking and no one letting him out.

“Someone made a big difference in my life, someone believed in me.” When Jean Cadet’s owner-family came to the U.S., they threw him out onto the streets. A teacher of Jean Cadet’s spent months with him, got him in the welfare system and help improve his education. He went into the military, became a teacher and returns often to Haiti to pry children from the grasp of slavery.

I looked beside me, Shannon to my right, her connection to Haiti through her French club activities, and Davis to my right. Both were children who had lost parents to a physical disease and not a societal one. Somehow they were easier to save than the little children on TV. Scott Pelley held a young boy in his arms, and cuddled with him, in the same vein that I recall Davis snuggling with my mother, so much that she called Davis her “little snuggler.” She would undergo breast cancer surgery after she held that baby for the first time.

I thought about what Jean Cadet said, “Saving one is worth it.” And while he is right, he is also mistaken. Children save us - from becoming inhuman.

When my writing is complete today, the last item will include reading Mark Curnette’s newpaper article or the e-mail on the logistics of Mark’s trip. I had put off learning more, which is unlike me, because I didn’t want to face the danger Mark may be in. But there was a part of me, some human part that knew, while he was administering anesthesia to a young child who may need amputation or surgery, he is the only person that I would want in the room rescuing any child with compassion and his care - and some child would save him too.

2010-03-08T13:58:00.000-08:00

To Do List:
1. Testify

It is 9 a.m. I sit at my desk, a ray of light traveling towards the doorway of my office, slowly creeping over towards and warming the sleeping pup at my feet. I look down at my “To do” list for the day: Call for hair appointment, complete update to master family calendar from son’s track schedule, pickup son at 4:15, ask daughter if she is attending driving class tonight so I know what time to have dinner ready. Since it is Monday, the list includes writing. So I do.

I keep imagining what it would be like to look down at my list and see “Testify in daughter’s murder trial,” as Lisa Siders-Kenney is doing so right now, on behalf of her murdered daughter, Esme.

I don’t know Lisa. I only know of her through the women at WWfaC. I bought a pendant from an artist friend of hers, a chiastolite stone, as part of a fundraiser for a scholarship in Esme’s name. Also known as the "cross stone" because of a natural cross pattern in the stone.

It is described as thus: “Chiastolite is a stone of balance, stability and harmony, as traditionally indicated by the cross. It can help with physical, mental, intellectual and emotional stability, enhancing problem solving and adapting to change. It can enhance spiritual awareness and inspiration, as well as astral travel and practical creativity.

Chiastolite is used for healing rheumatism, blood disorders, veins, blood circulation, balance of blood pressure (high or low), and lactation. It has a specific use in balancing all base chakra energies.”

When I researched which stone I wanted to buy, I knew this one instantly. Not from previous hands on experience, but heart experience. At the time, I was in need of healing, and a gentle reminder that I could always return to God, when the time came, with a whole heart, and a body that felt broken, or at least broken down. The astral travel is my favorite part of the above description. Astral Travel - or in layman’s terms – out of body experiences, seems a key in healing. If we can remove our selves (two words) from our bodies, and see how wrapped up we are in our body experiences and not the experiences of self, we would be further along in our healing, and certainly evolutionary emotional intelligence.

I pray that Esme experienced astral travel to escape the heinous acts that were done to her body. That the killer would sit with her body afterward, watching it burn, horrifies me in a way that I cannot articulate.

I wore that pendant everyday for a while, even promised myself I would wear it every day of the trial of Esme’s murderer, but I failed in the those efforts this morning as a barking dog usually throw my mind off track. I do not even have it on now, but am simply holding her mother in my care, in my writing hands and hoping that is enough.

My list also involved investigating vortices, in particular in Sedona, purported to also have healing energies, but this too reminds me of Lisa, Esme, her family caught up in a not so harmonic convergence of events – go for a run, encounter a man, offer him the wrong name, watch man turn into monster, remove self from body, become a force for change.

I am multi-taking now, trying to follow any news development that hinges on the words of this heart-sunken mother, for she must have pushed her emotions so far down, so as not to fall apart during her time of testimony.

She begins by telling about the day of Esme’s murder. She had been removing dust from their recent remodel. “Drywall dust is dangerous, you know,” she states. She is being asked to describe Esme for the jury. She says, “She just turned 13, just precious, so innocent and so sweet.”

Esme had asked her mom to go along on a run. “We usually went together as a family,” says Lisa. “across the street to the reservoir. Its where she learned to ride a bike. It was like our backyard.”

Some of Esme’s last words were about a cousin, “If Franny calls, tell her I’ll be right back.”

When the police arrived after Lisa’s suspected disappearance of Esme, they kept using the word teenager. "They just had a different picture in their mind,” Lisa confessed, obviously still frustrated that the police did not understand the true essence of Esme.

The police envisioned a picture different from the actual one shown by the prosecutor in the final minutes of Lisa’s testimony. I don’t know which picture it was. I hope it was not of her body wearing only socks and shoes. Lisa tearfully and proudly responded to the lawyer's question, “That’s my baby, Esme Louise Kenney.”

When I look back on this day, I want to remember what it was like to be a witness to Lisa Kenney testifying – tears and fears about my own children, wincing at the prospect of a chaplain at my door, the horrors that Esme endured in her final hours. There is no reconciling Esme’s fate with the outcome of the trial with the exception of a mother bearing witness to the life of her “baby.” - 2010-03-08

2010-03-01T09:56:00.001-08:00

2010-03-01 Thin Blue Line

The Winter Olympics closed, the torch passed.
It is March, and snow turns to slush, unlike Charlie Brown’s January snow
that Lucy declares is best.

Time now for swimming.
I dip my toe in the chilly water of the lap pool, and begin to think Summer and the athletes, winter and summer, who train long hours.

I once hoped to be an Olympic champ - super-sized hopes for a peanut-sized person.
I would jump over hurdles or glide down the slalom, and all the world would stare.

The pool is cold, steam fogs the windows. I cannot see out. No one can see in.
All three lanes are empty. The surface is still, the only noise is the buzz of the heater
and the jets of the spa nearby.

I lower my towel and slide in, wakened from my morning state.
I turn somersaults at laps’ end, and shoot through the water to begin the next leg.
The painted blue line below me remains visible so I do not go left or right of center.

My body’s shadow in the water becomes magnetized, pulled towards the line
in the moment Olympians live for – to become transparent, constant, fluid.

Many laps later, I toss my tired limbs onto the pools’ edge.
The surface ripples to the rhythm of a stroke I am no longer executing.

The body has left the pool, the spirit remains.

2010-02-08T12:48:00.001-08:00

I am resurrecting this one, after making my own fudge....

The Urge to Savor

I learned from my mother
how to make creamy chocolate fudge
that would keep
her children coming back,
a knowledge that did not come
from any recipe

but her habit of sending each of us
this box of chocolate
on Valentine’s Day
wherever we made our homes.

I learned from her how
to cut the squares
so that they were in number
divisible by five,.
each portion then
carefully cuddled
by plastic wrap and paper.

She with my father
carefully labeled
and packaged five boxes,
entrusted this treasure
to the local postmaster
who sent them off
to faraway colleges and states.

I learned that
for the gift to take hold,
we must share it –
with roommates, neighbors, spouses, kids –
but that it was still my gift to share.

Mother accepted praise
for this wondrous treat
and never let on
it was anything less than pleasure
though her arthritic hands
and crippling hip
might have said otherwise.

The stoop sat empty
this Valentine’s Day,
left me craving
her mind and her fudge.

Annette Januzzi Wick
In dedication to the miles that the Fudge has traveled.
2/18/2008

2010-01-15T08:10:00.001-08:00

I am From poem, written with the Alois Alzheimer Group, Found Voices.
Annette J. Wick
1-14-2010

I am from shoe stores
musky cardboard boxes cradling women's heels.
From a father who spent nights
calmed by the whir of the adding machine.
Lilac bushes – one white, one violet
at the back corners
of the house on Ridgeland Dr.

I am from apple trees and stealing Mr. Wittes’ apples.
From sledding hills and Harold, the tractor driver,
who mowed the grass at the sanitarium.
I am from passion and temper, gerbils and rabbits,
but never a puppy or kitten.

I am from parties for every birthday, communion and confirmation,
and from my father pulling at the covers
on Sunday morning, calling us to church.

I am from beefsteak tomatoes, hanging like Christmas ornaments,
in the garden, and thick tomato sauce always on the stove.
From 26 different kinds of Italian cookies – some with no names at all.

I am from families dispirited and hearts that have healed.
From Mother leading us in nighttime childhood prayers,
“Dear God, please watch over us,”
and the family motto, “To go where there is need.”

2009-12-21T05:12:00.001-08:00

An Honor Roll
12/20/2009

Mom is in the hospital this Christmas. A lack of eating, depression, dementia, or a bad combination of meds. No one is certain at this point. In consideration of the years she spent toiling over her Christmas cookies, here is an honor roll…of sorts. For those who were never the beneficiary of her fine tastes, well, I am truly sorry. You missed out.

1. Biscotti
2. Pizelles
3. Twists – Paul’s favs
4. Corn Flake Wreaths
5. Pecan Cups
6. Nut rolls
7. Nuthorns – B’s favorites
8. Chocolate Chip cookies
9. M and M cookies
10. Peanut Butter cookies with Kisses on top
11. Sour Cream Drops
12. Italian balls
13. Fudge
14. Bowties
15. Sugar Cookie Cutouts
16. Gingerbread Men
17. Italian knots
18. Chocolate Crinkles
19. Totos – my favs
20. Rosettes
21. Buckeyes
22. Pinwheels
23. Cookie Press cookies
24. Church windows
25. Thumbprint cookies
26. Candy Cane cookies

2009-12-08T17:21:00.001-08:00

How I Learned to Take a Nap

12/8/2009
AJW

The household hums in its daily chores:
heat the home, pump the water, let in the light.
A loud thumping comes from below
in the basement laundry -
zippers on hoodies thwack against the side of the dryer,
bass accompaniment to an unknown rock song.

Grey has settled between the cottonwood trees
blurring lines between leftover leaves and bark.
Even the grass, while still green, casts a hue
as if to hush and not wake up Spring, not yet, not for a longtime.

The puppy has completed his tasks too:
Dart outside, bark at the half-bitten moon,
relieve his body of impurities from the night before.
Chew Morning Glory seed pods hanging by threads off the trellis.
Lick at pant legs of boys before they climb onto the bus.

Sniff at the base of the trees along sidewalks,
hope for the scent of a new friend or long lost one.
Alert the neighbors across the street
their fake deer is eating up their patch of Vinca vines,
while next door the white wooden deer are kissing.

Dart back in for his daily dose of banana bites
and puppy rubs to strengthen his response
to the long winter about to commence.

Finally, he settles in where love and words flow.
His eye lids flutter slightly
at the sound of the pitter patter on the keyboard
before he slips into slumber.

This is the moment they sing about:
“Sleep in heavenly peace.”

2009-12-01T04:26:00.001-08:00

Januzzi Beach
12/1/2009
Annette J. Wick

She was always a sun worshipper,
her soft brown Italian skin like fine leather,
deepening only a shade.
Eternally bathingly beautiful,
she was at once shy and knowing.
Her caramel skin, perfectly aged at any birthday,
would not wrinkle under the weight of growing old.

Her folding lounge chair still sits at the ready
inside the garage.
If she cannot be located in the kitchen,
the back patio is where she sits and pay homage
to the golden rays rippling through arthritic limbs.
She finds peace amongst the truckers
who drive on the interstate hundreds of yards from her door.
They honk their horns at the distant sight of her -
causing such raucous
it is like wild geese flocking overhead.

When the North wind is too harsh,
she totes the chair around front,
sets it in the alcove of the mudroom doorway.
She is surrounded by the warmth of the brick
and her husband’s trademark geraniums,
their arrival so frequent
the flowers are as perennial as her appearance in the sun

A memory, Christmas afternoon: On another back patio,
she is reveling in sunlight once again.
Her white nylon scarf shields her from wind.
In her fire engine red fleece she is dressed
in camouflage to blend with the season.
She sits beneath bows hung from the outdoor mantle,
their angled ends flapping like wings,
and smiles for the camera.
Hail to her, filled with sun and grace.

2009-11-09T11:45:00.001-08:00

Hunter and Flower
11/1/2009 AJW

It’s sometimes said that the full moon
stays up all night
and sleeps all day
like a werewolf.

The full moon of November nights
will do just that
rise at sunset
set at sunrise

climbing to its highest sky point.
At near midnight
the frosted screen
of light will shine

through the burnt leaves left hanging still.
The Hunter will
take out his bow
after crops die.

Down in the southern hemisphere
the Flower Moon
coaxes roses
into plumpness.

The November full moon rises
just like May’s sun
its lunacy
wreaking havoc

on the sleeping patterns of all
who believe in
foolish myths that
moons rule our lives.

2009-10-27T04:56:00.001-07:00

Carmen 10-23-2009, Ohio St. vs. Minnesota 38-7.

Remember this moment, I say to myself, as I look over at his
brown eyes sparkling against the backdrop of driving rain
and red plastic ponchos.

Even the hot dog vendors stay beneath the steel girder overhang.
With each touchdown, the army troop
resolutely marches into the end zone and
executes the number of push-ups that match points on the board.
Oh how they must be wishing for this game to end.
No more so than I, as water trickles from eye,
not sure if from rain, runny nose or tears
for a time that will never be like this again

He is schooling me, on nuances of a game
I once taught him.
“See how they line up, in a spread.
They didn’t used to, until they got the new QB,
but that’s what all the teams are doing now.”
Next they line up in wildcat formation
shooting the ball from between the legs of the center
out to the running back, the o-line is unbalanced.
But then I think all of football is so,
as we sit high above the teams and band – the best damn one in the land -
while the wind blows at a temperature less than freezing
and rain forms droplets on my not so environmentally-friendly Styrofoam cup
filled with cider half-heated, half-spiced, half-drunk.

The hot dogs are long,
but the quarters of this game even more so.
Finally, at clock’s end we stand for tradition -
Carmen Ohio.
I have learned the words by now,
the crowd has sung the song so many times today,
that I have forgotten
I did not go to school here.
I only have vague memories of a sister and brother

at another game from another time…

“Summer's heat and Winter's cold,
The season pass, the years will roll;”

Remember this moment, I say to him, reaching out my arm
to cradle the young man that was once my boy
as the chorus of sodden fans warbles,
“Time and change will surely show
How firm they friendship…”

I let go of him, throw my arms up high,
He raises his arms too
and together, with the faithful fans,
we spell out the word that has been our bond today –
“O” “hi” “o”

2009-10-21T06:15:00.001-07:00

Passegiatta in Washington Park

by Annette Januzzi Wick

(This article was written in response to a prompt, “Being Awake to Change” and recorded for WWfaC - The Podcast Edition)

In The Teachings of Rome[1], Jay Walljasper writes of architecture students learning about community building through the study of Roman piazzas. “Piazzas put us in the present moment,” says William McDonough, a theology professor. Why then, not see Washington Park in Cincinnati as a piazza? If any public space needed a present moment, Washington Park is it.

In the 1800’s, Cincinnati hosted expositions in Washington Park providing information on new machines being produced. By the late 1880’s, Washington Park was considered for the Romanesque Cincinnati Art Museum heralded as the Art Palace of the West, but because of one powerful donor, the museum was situated in Eden Park instead. Imagine had that museum been built along Washington Park, we would have had a palazzo on a piazza.

I have strolled through Rome’s Piazza Navona with my Italian-American parents and licked up the last drop of Tartufo dessert in that square with my kids. We have had the pleasure of stumbling upon a Greek band on that piazza and had the misfortune of witnessing a homeless man, sitting astride a fountain statue wearing only a diaper. Each square we roamed took on its own personality and led one astray to some other unexplored part of the city.

William H. Whyte, the urban sociologist, wrote, “The street is the river of life in the city.” Cincinnati developers and city officials have focused on the actual Ohio River banks. But the real flow of life comes from streets that lead to an experience, similar to the Italian tradition of passeggiata, a gentle stroll through a main street of an old town. The phrase is reminiscent of the word “passenger”, as in passengers being carried along in an experience.

Italians dress up for passeggiata. Older folks sit along the route, nursing a beer or a glass of wine, and gossip; la passeggiata is where new romances blossom and new shoes rule.

Consider what a passeggiata would feel like around Washington Park. In Illustrated Cincinnati, an 1875 book, the author writes, “Over-the-Rhine is where a visitor would go if "he is bent on pleasure and a holiday… The visitor leaves behind him at almost a single step the rigidity of the American, enters at once into the borders of people …far more closely wedded to music and the dance, to the song, and life in the bright, open air."

Never is that experience more evident than within modernized Gothic Music Hall, first built as a choral hall, anchoring Washington Park. During the times of the expositions, the “back” of Music Hall sat up against the canal, which used floating gondolas to transport patrons. Inside Music hall, a large dome houses a painting by Arthur Thomas, The Allegory of the Arts, with figures representing Music, Science, History and Literature.

In 2010, the city and park will boast a new School for Creative and Performing Arts and offer residents a chance to revisit the use of Washington Park. Students should be encouraged not to rush home but rather to stroll, perhaps buy a gelato at Enzo’s across the street. While Music Hall represents the original Allegory of the Arts, the SCPA is a repository for youthful energy, a new metaphor for arts and community.

The Project for Public Spaces writes on their website, “Small steps to enliven streets, parks, and other public spaces are the building blocks of a thriving city.” Upon closer inspection, one would find these blocks in The Schickel Design Company at the north end. Martha Schickel manages the company rooted in her grandfather and father’s work of designing stained glass and creating architectural designs. Martha’s commitment to architecture and community were shown recently in her relocation to Over the Rhine, into a 19th century building which she redesigned and renovated.

Down the street is a three-story historic building, housing Azzi & Wolf, a luthier of well-crafted string instruments. Andy Wolf is the elder who was raised in OTR and as early as the 1990s was spending seed money to rehab properties in the area. Jules Azzi, the younger, is Lebanese, was schooled in France and had once established himself in New York.

Like the “city of 100 churches” in Lucca, Italy, OTR boasts numerous churches as well. I can feel the pulsating rhythms from the original pipe organ in First English Lutheran. From the end of Race Street, I hear the bells of Phillipus Kirche which long served the German population. Both worship spaces carry enough history to stand as pillars for a piazza.

Tender Mercies, a provider of housing for the homeless who are mentally ill, renovated a nearby 1870’s hotel. Its upgrades include green concepts as rain water retention and tankless water heaters. And while no one should promote homelessness, a parks employee explains in the Emeralds in the Crown documentary that, “In the 1900s, Washington Park was opened over night during the summer for residents of the tenements to sleep outdoors.” Parks were and will be a place to breathe fresh air.

The most recent proposal for the Washington Park upgrade shows a lawn larger than a football field facing Music Hall. Brick pavers will mark corners and pedestrian crossings. Game tables and benches will be conveniently situated. A concessions building will be housed along the east side which could showcase the city’s beer making and wine-producing history. There is even a promenade from which to begin a passeggiata.

In Teachings, Architecture Professor David Maynik tells his students, “Look for the connections that are not apparent at first.” When we look into Washington Park, we view the present in crime stats, homeless residents and closed swimming pools. From its outer rim, I also see the building blocks from the past – Gothic architecture, sleeping outdoors, and First Lutheran’s original organ. I observe real work in Tender Mercies, Martha Schickel, and Azzi & Wolf.

And I see a future filled with industrious young people who parade their SCPA portfolio or DAAP designs through the square while old men play chess and watch them stroll by. I see people sitting with a glass of Christian Moerlein beer or Burnett Ridge wine beneath strings of light hung from tress, or slowing down because they have found a place to breathe, a present moment.

[1] The Teachings of Rome, Jay Walljasper, Notre Dame Magazine, October, 2009.

2009-09-30T06:11:00.001-07:00

Closing Down Summer

The water shimmers in early morning.
Fog slides away into coves, gloves coming off fingers,
Exposing nearby fishermen huddling in their brawny bass boats.
Blue gills hunker down
into the dark recesses of cat tail stems and roots,
bobbing around black walnuts
that plunk into the water to the tune of nature’s beat.

When we close the lid on summer,
floating the green tarp, then the gray, over the boat,
the lake is brimming with memories –
of a kayak under a full moon
with each stroke of a paddle,
a quick glance over the shoulder –
is that a chainsaw
or the buzz of cicadas leftover from last year?

Of mornings made new by a puppy
first learning to boat, then float
finally to paddle, a stroke backed into, after losing his footing on the dock.
Of meanderings in the marital bed quietly taking a back seat
to canines, canoes and cornhole.

Of learning to drive a boat – again.
“Idle” moves the boat forward –
has someone reported this to Webster’s?
And in “neutral” the boat slithers across the water,
drifting into buoys and sludge.
Of cuss words when ropes are caught in the motor
and kudos when a skier cuts a swath through the wake,
drops the rope, then slowly slides away.

Of fireworks bursting above the walnut trees.
Then after, while silently watching these side by side with my brother,
boats putter past the dock, lit up green and red like Christmas.
Of Left-Right-Center, a game for all ages.
Mother removes her chips from each pile instead of giving them up
determined to win though she has forgotten the game.

Finally, when smoke off the fireworks fades, the sky fills with stars,
a Lite Brite board after the holes have been poked.
Each star is reflected upon the crest of the silent waves,
each light point becomes a memory
when we look back in the mirror
of our summer and see ourselves -
Young, old, tan, rested, aching from hauling wood and furniture
and kayaking through coves, catching the same stinky fish twice,
suspended in the water by jackets, buoyed by life.

The next morning, the ladder is lifted from the lake,
jelly-like eggs still cling to the rungs
waiting to be hatched in order to be caught.
The last campfire is resurrected,
sturdy cherry logs stubbornly will not burn away.
Brief flames consume stale marshmallows
that slipped off sticks the night before.
Then, in the smoldering,
a distant memory drifts across the ghost in the graveyard field –
summer taking its last breath.

09-2009

2009-09-02T14:07:00.001-07:00

2009-09-02 Pear-related Questions

As Leigh and I walked on the Loveland Bike trail, we were discussing why it was we remembered certain trips more vividly than others. As if the details were engraved on our hearts. I explained that I thought I could recall my Italy trips with precision because it was a soul connection I made there, vs. a trip to Phoenix, or even California.

In the midst of this explanation, I inserted, “Mark is painting a large pot for our patio with a scene from the Amalfi Coast in Italy.”

“Wait, Mark is an artist?” She asked, confused. “Like he didn’t just go to Lowe’s and buy paint? You mean, he is really painting a picture on the pot?”

“Oh yeah,” I exclaimed. “I should have shown you his work when you came to my house the other day. Half our walls are filled with his paintings. As a matter of fact, long before I met Mark, my neighbor Michelle remarked to me that the perfect man for me was someone who equally liked sports and arts. And, well, she was right!”

“OK, so I am learning something new today about Mark.”

“Well, the funniest story about our first breakfast involves his art. I wrote about it…”

“Wait, don’t tell me!” Leigh liked to be surprised, “Send me the writing.”

I went home and searched through all my Word files and could only come up with two instances in which I wrote about my meetup with Mark, neither of them did justice to the event. So, I rewrote history.

It was a November day. Mark and I were meeting at Skip’s bagels for breakfast before Mark headed into work. He was on first call that day, which breakfast really meant an early lunch prior to an 18 hour shift. Though I can recall what he wore for our first lunch, I cannot recall what he wore that day. Neither can I recall what I ate, or what we discussed. Talk about not remembering!

As we made our way to the parking lot, he mentioned something about taking art classes. Greg Storer owned a studio and held classes in what was called the Powder Factory, one of the old ammunitions plants in the Kings Mill area. Mark would occasionally attend, as art was calling him to respond to his wife’s recent passing from lung cancer.

I asked him, “Do you have any work on you?”

As clouds were gathering, he confidently showed me the way to his car, where he pulled out a charcoal drawing of a still life. I detected a full shape of an roundish object set atop a table, with a lamp in the background and a pen by the side, but it really wasn’t clear to me what that shape stood for.

I had an artistic eye. I had plenty of photographs of a sunset on the Oregon Coast to prove it. But perhaps what I lacked was imagination or the ability to improvise upon a scene that did not make sense to me. What else would sit beside a table lamp, other than books or games? I went through a litany of objects that graced my own end table tops around the house and came up empty.

So, I decided to just ask.

“Is that a pear?” I said, pointing to the unknown object.

I know Mark was hurt. I could see it in his eyes, bright blue without any reflection off the sky. But, in seconds, we broke into simultaneous smiles proceeded by guttural laughter.

Four years later, he and I were married.

The topic of my being Mark’s muse, or not, arose again, this past week, when Mark was painting the pot. He was quick with his brush strokes, and as a writer, I understand that inspiration hit and you went for it. But inspiration still required editing and I felt the same about art. Someone had to ask the pear question.

When Mark called me outside, I surveyed his work, quickly and decisively noting the cerulean blue sky and blue water, with rows of homes in the middle, could use a little pop. The sky and water appeared flat, as if there were no movement. I had been on that water, I had floated beneath that sky, and it certainly was not motionless.

Mark rolled his eyes. He knew I was been right and in the end, he created a better product. But I doubt he would ever refer to me as his muse, and would prefer that I be rendered mute instead!

2009-07-22T04:38:00.001-07:00

Hold You

Here I am at 7 a.m., holding the dog’s tattered blue leash,

hoping he will unload last night’s business in the same spot

before the neighbor’s goldens see the puppy out early

and begin their chorus of discordant barks.

I am holding the calendar for this year and next,

one full of commitments I am loathe to make for fear I am missing

my big chance at life outside the paved sidewalks of my home.

Here again, while my mother’s memory slowly erodes,

I am holding the memory of her canning tomatoes late summer

while she would curse my father for having planted so many.

Here, I am holding my breath for a 737 to depart,

first on Sunday for my son’s trip to Florida, and again on Friday,

during thunderstorms, while his plane attempts to land.

With my loving spouse,

we hold each other every morning

before the day is washed away in the tidal wave of work.

Even my purse is not averse to this task, taking on

recipes torn from waiting room magazines,

maps of Chicago, and the last swath of Tahini pink lipstick.

And while sometimes I tire from this, I go on holding,

as if by some miracle, the state of the world or health of my family

depends on the flavor of chewing gum at the bottom of my bag.

2009-05-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

Cole

Blogs seem so inconsequential in the real world, when young boys, doing as we would wish them to do, like play ball, or roll around in the dirt, get hurt in the process.

My neighbor Cole, a little boy who was like a second son to me, and a brother to my son, Davis, was hit a week ago in the head with a ball. Doing what he loved to do - Play ball. Cole grew up in my backyard, making his way through a path we carved out when he was four and my son two. We had no idea that years later, they would walk home from the bus on that path, that others would use it to check in on me, that the deer would trample through, that it would hold so many memories.

Though many tributes are already surfacing for Cole, I can think of nothing better than to share a piece of writing in my blogsphere from the night of vigil for Cole...

To Cole

A Prayer for My Backyard Boy

You are the little boy who made nose and hand prints
on your mother’s back door,
reporting the status of our dinner - hot, cold, pasta or pork -
while through our sliding door, my son reported on yours.

You are the reason we cut a swath through cottonwood trees,
the prickly holly bushes and native vibernum,
so that you two could run freely to our home and back.

You are the freckles and smile that greeted my little boy,
mornings on the path, evenings for slip and slide,
and a few water balloon launchers and snowballs at our back door.
You stomped through the creek, picked up turtles
and loved the life that God placed in your care.

You took the hand of my little boy as a younger version of you –
though you already had two -
and loved him when he needed a place to belong.

Together, you ate pizzelles, cookies whose name you could never say,
made mud pies and built forts with branch clippings and duck tape
that caused us to curse,
though today, we would resurrect every last inch.

And now we await your movement again,
You speak but only in the actions of a simple peace sign,
a thumbs up, agitation through the night.

Though you are the one we pray for,
it is us that needs the prayers.
So tonight, we pray

while the bullfrogs bellow out into the late spring night,
and ambient light wafts over the fields,
dissolving into the glare of the news van spots.

And somewhere in the distance, neighborhoods away
where they have not yet heard of your tragedy,
children shriek and dogs bark, as it should be.
And we sing, Heal me Jesus, but this is not singing,
we are praying with our souls.

We cry because we forget
God does not weep for those whom he has chosen
to teach us lessons that surpass our grasp.

You are still that little boy who steers his bike
through the backyard, over the cedar bark path,
to your dinner table or ours -
where a plate of pizzelles awaits your return home.

AJW

5-21-2009

2009-05-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Selling Ourselves

Look busy Father and Uncle would crow
to employees
toiling in the shadows
of 26^th and Broadway
beneath the banner of Januzzi’s Shoes.

Together they paced the aisles
before Father returned
to the back office space
to pore over “the books.”

We would be dispatched to our stations -
Brother to the store room to unpack
the cartons delivered by the man in brown.
It would have been like Christmas,
if Brother had been me,
caressing each style
before pricing and stocking.

Sister would slowly wind her way
towards the counter
to stand stoic
beside the rigid cash register queen
who scolded her when wrinkled ones and fives
were turned opposite of tens and twenties.

Grandpa, founder and mender,
would retire to his repair stand
where the musk of newly-shaped leather
mingled with the scent of cobbler’s glue.

Customer names were recorded on cards
kept in a metal cabinet.
Filing the recently pulled or
pulling the filed always fell to me.
I would make it a game
see how fast I could order the stack
or search for the cards
of boys with whom I was madly in love,
later to be stung by their betrayal
of wearing of new loafers
bought elsewhere.

Tension lingered in the air
on the days of sales
causing the aisles of shoes to quake -
the children’s section leaning into men’s boots,
rows of nursing whites
holding back women’s heels,
and ice skates teetering on the top
shelves above my head.

Retail was never easy
even before big box stores
swallowed up ideas and families.

But the business had been blessed
by the presence of the mill, the hospital,
and those who needed orthopedic shoes.
As if the store was a ministry itself -
serving and fitting -
and that purpose fed the family,
not the money collected
and carefully counted at day’s end.

Yet customers were never completely content
with the price, style or fit.
Ladies prattled
and squirmed in green vinyl chairs
squeezing bones into shoes too small,
waiting for us to admire their toes
in the slanted mirrors.
We could never lie to them,
we could never tell the truth.

We only knew that the odor of unwashed feet
would cause us
to seek out Grandpa’s shoe glue
or steal away to the store room,
relieved for a moment
from the duty and pride
of selling the shoes, the business, our selves.

Testing blog updates from my

2009-03-24T09:02:00.001-07:00

Testing blog updates from my mobile.

2009-03-24T05:26:00.000-07:00

Annette J. Wick

awick@cinci.rr.com

What’s in a Name?

My mother was careful about the names she chose for her children,
never wanting to bestow one that others might
abbreviate, mutilate or annihilate altogether.

“Annette Marie”, my mother called,
when I ran afoul of normal.
“Peanut”, my father endowed me with,
despite Mom’s pleas for no pet names.
I was tinier than my siblings at that same age,
or perhaps it was the time gap, when I remained the youngest
for over three years.

Then came “Shorty”, because I never grew.
Followed by “Red”,
as in crimson, my face flushed with
embarrassment in seventh grade Spanish class or algebra.

When my older sister and brother were nicknamed “Shoes” and “Big Shoes”
after my father’s shoe store, I became “Little Shoes.”
And Jeff Thomas took to calling me “Slippers.”
So I had visions of my pink fuzzy ones at home,
that always accumulated dirt, though I wore them inside only.
Jacuzzi replaced my real last name of Januzzi
Followed by “Shoesies from Januzzi’s”
which really had nothing to do with me
only the jingle on the local AM station.

Soon, after creating a superhero story in Mrs. Garfield’s ninth grade,
I did it to myself. I sealed my own fate by penning a story about“Netti Spaghetti and the Meatball Kid.”
Thankfully, only the “Netti” and “Spaghetti” parts lived on.

Having survived those barrages of nonsense,
I answer to Mom, “Hello, Beautiful”, and a friend who
puts the emphasis on the first syllable and calls me “Ann – ette.”
But I no longer answer to Netti,

unless Aunt Lynne berates me for not writing
or Uncle Dennis calls.
To my father, I am now ‘Net Marie, as in “Yeah, ‘Net Marie, what’s going on?”
And my mother, she too shortened my name,
and says, when answering the phone,
“Oh hi, ‘Net. I was just going to call.”

2009-03-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

Becoming Italian

You cannot just “be” Italian
even if you are born into la famiglia.
You start by teething on buttery pizzelles,
ingesting a bit of anisette
to soothe your tummy.

You begin to eat dittalini,
“small fingers” of pasta
drenched in sauce
from tomatoes drenched in the summer sun.
You pick them up with chubby hands
and imagine all Italians eating with gusto.

You savor the rind from a chunk of Grana Padano -
nutty, tangy cheese with a wretched stench
that drives your friends away
and all the better, there is more for you.

Your lover thinks of your body
as the Italian countryside
his fingers rolling through the richness
of rivers, valleys, vines.
And when you explode with emotions, it must be
because you cannot sit idle
while the world calls you dego, wop.
You are padre, amico, madre, que bella italiana.

To be Italian, you must feel the bows rocking
on the Madonna or Lafayette
as the ships cross the Atlantic,
inhale the smoke of hot iron
or the steam off the rising dough,
put in years of hard work
in the garden and kitchen,
like the Etruscans who fended off
those from foreign lands,
to keep pure the race of olive-skinned.

You slurp calamari with the same delight
that ‘mericanos slurp spaghetti
and know that someday
your two eye brows will become one,
not from hair,
but from the creases on your temple
where your determination
has met the world head on.

AJW

2/9/2009, rev. 2-19-2009

2009-03-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Journey of a Flower

What is this, the danger of growth?

The daffodil succumbs to that risk late summer,

falling below the musty mulch,

no longer in rhythm

with the events taking place above.

Waits through the wintry mix

for the warmth of the March sun

to begin poking its arms

through the shards of birchwood.

Then slowly,

rolls it golden saffron head around

neck stiffening slightly

in an effort to awaken.

Begins to lift up its chin and unfurl its face,

outstretch it arms.

The pendulum of progress

forces the full bloom of the flower.

Oh how dangerous

to be made noticeable for the singular act

of living, breathing, growing

out of the shadows of the dwarf cherry tree

or pink spirea bush with its fairy dust blooms,

each time discovering new strength

should the frost come to strip away

its sunny disposition

or feet tread upon it.

Its bulbs still multiply beneath,

Its soul still spreading the good word.

That is the nature of the daffodil,

it refuses to stay stagnant, below the ground forever.

Rilke once said, ‘Live everything.’

And the daffodil risks rising before the calendar says its time.

2009-02-16T06:20:00.001-08:00

Check out these new blogs from Cincinnati Women

2009-02-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

All Points Bulletin:

Missing: One young son, his brain and his hat. Last seen all intact Monday, getting off school bus profusely preaching the gospel of the weatherman and his teachers at school. Went to bed with pajamas on, but turned inside and backwards. Last heard flushing his toilet at midnight. Who wakes at midnight to flush their toilet unless they really have to pee? Only kids who want a snow day. Was found in bed in the morning, at 5:30 after being informed school was closed, was noted to be high-fiving his stuffed animal that he still sleeps with, though he probably doesn’t want anyone to know publicly, so if you can keep that out of the media, that would be appreciated.

Disappeared only hours later into the new fallen snow, having did his share of shoveling, retrieval of the sleds and then headed for parts unknown. Was believed to have had lunch at the neighbor’s house, as hot chocolate still formed a ring around a few mugs left in neighbor’s dishwasher and a squished marshmallow on the floor. Was last seen with brown moustache - from chocolate has not hit puberty yet. Was witnessed to have been flying and then colliding mid-air with other such young boys, after having built a ramp out of the corn hole game and sledding down a hill and across ramp. Was heard to have hurt himself and quite possibly left his favorite Oregon hat somewhere in the dregs of the snow plow’s path. Arrived later for dinner, to cook for parents, only watched his sisters do most of it while he turned on the TV and checked the computer simultaneously for any indication of snow falls that would increase chances of not returning for a second day. Was rewarded for this effort with second snow day.

Was called in an emergency relief effort to the neighbor boys house for a sleepover in an effort to offer relief to said boy’s mom who had been the host of her four boys and another round of four boys through the day’s white death. Returned home at 10 next morning with said boy in two, to retrieve more outdoor wear, as other outdoor wear not suitable for an entire day outside. Warning, it is not known when missing boy last had a shower. It is unknown as to whether or not he was wearing clean underwear despite his mother’s protest to the contrary.

Busied himself with his duties of shoveling with sisters then building igloo in case of need of emergency shelter for the homeless in the area or for his friends, it is unclear what his motives were at this point. Stayed in that same spot all day, with exception of retuning inside for lunch of peanut and jelly and said moustache now contained purple jelly and chocolate. Again, stayed out all day, returned for dinner, movie and another cancelled day off school. Felt need to be rescued from his family by calling in another of said friend, only said friend had to stay home so said friends father came to pick up missing boy, take to their home, where missing boy was said to have remained until 2 pm the following day. Missing boy answered neighbors phone three times when his mother called that number, only to turn down a chance to return home. Mother then appeared frightened that he had turned to runaway status or had forgotten everything he knows, including where he lives. Mother left him at neighbor’s house regardless.

Missing boy’s school cancelled for a fourth day. Boy’s mother now OK with his runaway status. If found, please return his hat and his brain, which by now should have grown considerably smaller. Do not, I repeat, return missing boy’s underwear, or boy himself without a shower.

2009-01-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

Here is what I know on this snow day – 1/27/2009

1. Stanley’s Driving School is closed and their classes are cancelled. With two teenage drivers in the family, I believe Stanley to be a wise man,

2. The Open Door Food Pantry is closed - they should change their name.

3. At 5:27, my husband looked out the window and said, there’s really not that much snow out there. At 5:28, the school called to cancel classes for the day. At 6:30, the newspaperman had made it through the street and the plow had not. At 7:00, I began shoveling five inches of snow.

4. On the local TV station website, the number of cancellations were closing in on 500. I may need to adjust that figure later, when the Get Fit with Frannie class shows up scrolling across my screen. However I did just notice that Curves in Kentucky is closed and that will directly impact their state’s fitness goals.

5. Following the webcam mounted on the TV truck of the Fox News Channel is making me car sick, like I am on a roller coaster called “The Cut in the Hill”.

6. The Christ hospital, the one hospital that “stands about all the rest”, is canceling their afternoon outpatient clinic appointments. Their tai chi class is cancelled as well. If you have ever waited in the outpatient of a hospital, you know you can’t have one without the other.

7. The Clermont Recovery Center and the Office of Comprehensive Counseling are closed. They work to offer support for alcohol and drug abuse. I hope they’re open tomorrow, I’ll need it to recover from being at home with the kids today. Do you know how hard it is to get kids motivated to go shovel the driveway so that you can drive them to go sledding on a day when the buses couldn’t get moving and somehow you are supposed to.

8. The winter storm advisory has forced organizers to cancel a class on weather spotting where students are taught to observe and identify different types of clouds, dust whirls, rain shafts and tornado related conditions. Apparently, it does not apply to snow storms which is too bad because they would have hands on experience today!

9. My friend Carol is venturing out to feed the birds and calling that an accomplishment.

10. I laughed at yesterday’s headlines, “Expect Big Crowds in the Milk Aisle Before Nightfall” - words that created panic at the grocery store. Now, not laughing as that last jug of milk in the extra frig is past due. Perhaps a little sugar will help.

2009-01-15T08:32:00.001-08:00

Diary of a Woods

1-15-2009

Here’s she comes. I can spot her a mile away, pulling her pink hat atop her fancy do, walking out of the house. The keypad for the garage door opener is not working again – she checks to be sure the key is still under the ceramic pot which once grew fiber optic grass hair.

She hurries past the neighbor’s homes, but I can still see her across the backstreets which she must trudge, out onto the main road, careful to avoid attention or falling into the sewer ruts.

Last week, she was here with her husband. They walk here occasionally though there is still a sign posted No hunting, fishing, shooting. Trespassers will be prosecuted. The sign hangs more as a reminder that once she did not walk here and merely as a suggestion for her days now.

But since the Fall, when the township took ownership of the land, she did too. She has been here, following its progress from overgrown brush to path of stones to paving. She wishes the paths will not be entirely paved and we do too. We that soar above are protection enough for even the weakest of souls, people do not need paths, they just need encouragement to create their own.

She feels she must still sneak in here, but she should not fear. We want her here to document the fall of a landowner and the rise of the woods, if only for her. Today, she stumbles in, fearful that the trucks across the street are on to her. Perhaps she should quit wearing that neon pink ski coat which she cherishes for its warmth.

She is agitated, for no reason. The wind chill is at zero and the snow is softly falling, like gratitude, for finally the sky is releasing its pent up moisture from the clouds and rewarding us with something to cover the paths, so one can make new paths from here. Trucks across the street are idling noisily creating a white noise with which the snow cannot compete.

The deer have already been by, so has the dog from the neighbor’s home. The dog once chased away by her husband, who now insists on carrying a stick when they steal away into these our woods.

She is now past the barricade, which had been moved aside weeks ago. Again, she was grateful that the little signs forgave her for her trespasses, even if the law would not. She busies herself thinking of these sins, looking down at deer hoofs, rabbit prints and is jostled back to the interior by sound of branch cracking. She looks up in time to see an incredible winged creature. She calls this stranger Mystery. This is twice now the creature has appeared to her, she only glimpses it from the back, as the bird flies away. Is it the owl she hears in the morning when at the bus stop. Is it the falcon that made its appearance one day in the tree of the Foxes – the neighbor’s real name?

She shudders and snaps her fingers in a darn like fashion, the trucks idling is still like a roar in her ears, she wanted the quiet, but even her clothes –bundled like ralphie’s brother in a Christmas story – preclude her from enjoying the peace – what will it take one wonders.

Swish, swish from her ski pants overrides the red cardinal’s call until she is directly upon it. She stops, to find it in the collage of brush and leaves and logs, modge-podged together by the fallen snow. The bird is startled, stops its tweaking and twitching and flies off in the direction of another object moving away from her – the white-tailed deer. Had she not stopped to hear the bird, she never would have seen the deer. Such lessons she is learning today, for it feels like she is pushing through life now, not really enjoying it, hardly breathing. One wonders if that is why she is here.

She is coming upon the creek. Unable to wait til Spring, when the rains rush down this ravine here and the swish of water overrides all that is on her mind today. It is the ski trip, the prepartoin for, and the unwillingness to be away right now, right when her life fells on the verge.

But perhaps everyone with the state of affairs in the world, the Israel- Palestinian wars, the historicu inauguration, the economy, everyone is on the verge - suffering from an unknown grief. And she always came to the woods to grieve what was lost and find what was left – the black walnuts. Oh she hopes there are not hoarders that will come by and pick these up – that they will be left to sustain that for whom reaches them first.

Her first step at the creek is on ice, not as it was last Sunday, when she and the He were there. In a playful act, she stepped first, balancing on log with barely a branch to support it. Her foot slipped off and into the water, that day the weather stood in the 20s, but with her wool socks, she persevered through three more miles. Today hope is written on her face that she can cross without breaking through the ice. Alas, she is surprised that she must weigh more than she thought, for the ice breaks through, but alas she is also surprised that her boots stand in 3 inches of water without taking on an ounce.

Safely across, a set of man’s footprints appear and soon join in with tire tracks from a truck. Her pulse quickens despite the plummeting temperature outside. This is just what she always imagined, being found here, alone with no protection other than her phone. She quickly reaches inside her pocket to ensure its presence.

Luckily, the tracks stop near a path entrance from another neighborhood. Workers trespass here more than she can imagine, though they are the ones allowed, according to the law. She sees the orange twp cone in the middle of the sticks of trees. She notes the ancient water heater, set aside from possilbly the meade owners, how historical can their home be if the well behind no longer works and at least one water heater has been tossed aside. Plenty of intruders have come and gone before her.

She reaches the stream again, crossing it from the other leg of the “U” in the path. She can still hear the diggers – she says that word in her mind, yes, diggers, that is what the little boy always called them. He would spot a construction truck driving down their street and say, “wow, would you look at that big digger mommy.” And mommy would exclaim with delight.

As her neighbor, we recall those days of looking over our shoulders, when the construction was finishing off on her street. The trucks roared, interrupted our peace, came in two by two, like the animals in noah’s ark. And on one bright and sunny day, she and the boy had a picnic outside, on their driveway, so he could exclaim, would you look at those big diggers. This is what she is thinking now. How those days have slipped past. And how sad and lonely she must be without that child at her side, always at her side, in the woods, across the creek, in the backyard and she at his side at bedtime.

Maybe she has been running away from his growing up. Keeping him small with her hugs. Maybe his grandparents frustrate her in not spending more time with him, because she sees such goodness in this child, who comes home from school and says, everything was great, but doesn’t have a reason why, why would you not want to spend time with him. He is not special, but perhaps she sees more than most see in their children. Because they have had to look each other in the eye, in the same she will someday come face to face with this mysterious creature in our woods and they will meet, and then he will fly away.

The rest of the walk, she tramples grass not yet grown, nor able to, to avoid the gaze of anyone who still might be out there, creating parking spaces and restrooms. And while this appears to meet the original covenant with the owners and township that this land would always be used for park space, now there will be a flower show and a log cabin placed here that does not belong. So much out of place in this family of things, that her neck goes limp, head falls down in recognition that she may soon have to share these woods.

2008-12-05T05:45:00.001-08:00

Something Brighter

When the local fire department
set the Royal house ablaze,
grey confining smoke billowed up
over the woods of Cemetery Rd

The home had rested in a barren field
with its barn only yards away
and a tiny shed standing like its sentry nearby.
The barn’s paint had been washed out
but you could still make out
streaks of royal blue and red and a faint rusted orange.

If the sun from the west
was shining on the chubby apple tree
something brighter would quickly catch your eye.
Parked along the rear of the barn
was an old chevy truck
painted construction cone orange,
its polished chrome headlights and rusted grill
peeking out as if to let some passer by know
that life still abounded around that barn.

If you knocked,
feet would shuffle inside the home,
a space eclipsed
by a local college dorm.
A gentle man would open the door,
his long hair graying to white,
wearing a faded college t-shirt
and the presumed uniform of a farmer.
He would greet you
with a smile, lips turned up five degrees,
“Phillip Royal, but folks just call me Royal,”
he would say,
“been Royal all my life
so long ‘s I’ve lived here.”

On his land, no dirt had been turned
for the sake of crops,
no corn stalks were weeping in the wind,
or rows of garden
burrowing beneath themselves.
What life had Royal abandoned –
on the river, on the run –
for this retreat here?

The paper ran a story about a new public park -
the old fireworks factory was moving -
There would be a missing link between old park and new.
Thus the Royals negotiated a sale
as a tradeoff
for a town’s need for green.

Where would they go? Was there a “they”?
With a care center located minutes from their door,
would you drive by the entrance one dawn
and find a homemade sign,
Happy 100th Phillip Royal – King of Cemetery Rd?

The firefighters had left only straw
to cover the footprints of the three Royal plots.
At last sight, on that ground
stacks of trees that would never be climbed
sat in piles with a sign marked “dump”
holding the damage from the latest wind storm.

A spotted owl had migrated here,
one street over from where its giant oak had split.
And a man with two kayaks atop his truck
gazed through his binoculars
at a soaring skeleton of a tree, seeking the owl,
or waiting for Philip
to offer wisdom from this noble land.

Annette Januzzi Wick Manley

2008-11-26T08:03:00.000-08:00

Food for Thought

I don’t spend much time volunteering in the schools as of late, with my youngest in the seventh grade. In his youth, I was a reading tutor for years, helping other students in his school develop the same sense of joy that he now enjoys, reading through pages of the latest fantasy fiction or sports novel.

Back in September, during PTA sign up week, I checked off November food drive, thinking that was far enough away for me to not have to plan for it in the present. There were no dates to mark down, so I tucked the notion away.

Following Halloween, a pleasant e-mail arrived, gently reminding me of my commitment. It was also a quite lengthy e-mail regarding all the volunteer opportunities that existed to serve one single purpose, using the Loveland students and families to help stock the pantry for Thanksgiving.

Each classroom and grade was given specific assignments for boxed rolls, canned broth, bags of stuffing. Each volunteer was asked to take on one or several of many roles, including sign maker, box bringer, children organizer, hot chocolate money collector. I speed read through the list of wants and needs, offered to make signs and committed to being there on the day of, to collect the food staples and stack them high.

When the day arrived, I showered, had my coffee and literally felt as if I were going of to work. The space for the food pantry drive was the gymnasium of a church I once considered attending. Because I liked their music, because I liked the time of their services and mostly because I could sit in the back, with Davis in the Sunday school and contemplate my life. Space to be at peace.

So it was I the same building, where children snaked through lines, sometimes missing the right pile, placing canned fruit in the canned broth section, or mistaking stuffing mix for roll mix.

But my favorites were the muffin mixes instead of roll mixes, creamed rice as an alternative to what, I don’t know. The expired labels on canned goods, the non readable labels on canned goods – how do manufacturers get away with that one? The beef broth instead of chicken broth and the gallon cans of golden yams. I have a family of six, but had no clue they came in these hefty sizes.

The group of volunteers mixed and matched canned veggies until I would later see the labels in my sleep – aftereffects of a Kinkead Ridge Red and Jeff’s BBQ in Landen. The tables were late in arriving due to power outages, so first, we stacked the goods on the floor, then we boxed, then we stacked again on tables.

As I began to make my way through he myriad of vegetable offerings, a chill traveled up my spine. I began to consider how often I had donated to food pantries in the past – rather nonchalantly. I would simply peek inside my cupboard, too tired to drive to Meijer – only a ½ mile from my door – places where I have walked to in the past. In the past, I might have been the contributor of the creamed rice, or certainly, being Italian, provided canniloni beans or chi-chi beans. I would have donated beef broth, because it was what I had. And yes, some blueberry muffin mix, instead of the rolls. And while I think the patrons of the pantry would appreciate the variety and my intentions were always clear, my mind was not.

In that space, when that thought occurred to me, I was rather embarrassed of my past actions when I hadn’t taken the time to check expirations, when I might have been in a hurry in the grocery store and perhaps picked up pork –flavored stuffing for the turkey or muffin mix instead of roll mix. Or even bought the generic jellied cranberry sauce instead of Ocean Spray, because it was closest to the cart.

I don’t discount any of the offerings or donations made that day by students who were participating in the activity with some sense of understanding of the predicament of the homeless and the hungry. Clearly, there are students in the district that may visit the pantry later that week, with a different purpose. They will be the client who gets to choose which canned vegetables they want – even if it is baked beans- or pick out pancake mix, instead of bread mix. Who knows, the pilgrims probably served some version of them!

But I will think clearly next time that this food passes from my hand to that of someone else in need and even if the ink for the expiration date rubs off on my hand as I pass it on, I will know its safe.

AJW
11/22/2008

2008-11-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

After my recent stints of sales person at Kenwood for my sister's business - Golf-Chic Boutique - I was reminded of how hard retailers work for such little reward. I want to be mindful of that fact this season when sales are down and so are spirits. This is my ode to such.

Selling Ourselves

if Brother had been me,
caressing each style

before pricing and stocking.

Sister would slowly wind her way
towards the counter
to stand stoic

beside the rigid cash register queen

who scolded her when wrinkled ones and fives

were turned opposite of tens and twenties.

Grandpa, founder and mender,
would retire to his repair stand
where the musk of newly-shaped leather
mingled with the scent of cobbler’s glue.

holding back women’s heels,
and ice skates teetering on the top

shelves above my head.

Retail was never easy
even before big box stores
swallowed up ideas and families.

with the price, style or fit.
Ladies prattled

and squirmed in green vinyl chairs
squeezing bones into shoes too small,
waiting for us to admire their toes
in the slanted mirrors.
We could never lie to them,

we could never tell the truth.

We only knew that the odor of unwashed feet
would cause us
to seek out Grandpa’s shoe glue

or steal away to the store room,
relieved for a moment
from the duty and pride

of selling the shoes, the business, our selves.

2008-11-10T07:09:00.000-08:00

Becoming Mom

The evidence is above my head. Old t-shirts from Davis’ basketball teams, old hand towels from my first wedding, a Loyola shirt that someone has grown out of, leftover t-shirts from charity events hosted. All these sit atop the wire shelves in my laundry room, in plain sight, pointing to my guilt.

Each day, a new piece of evidence appears. Just last night, I rinsed out a carry home salad container from the pizza parlor to store with my Tupperware. And when my friend Leigh and I are out for lunch and she offers me lotion, I watch as she squeezes the lotion out of the tube into her palm, while I flip my hand over and nudge a little lotion onto the top of my hand, then rub both bony tops together.

My sighs are heavier now, my worries a little deeper. I have set laundry days and usually threaten that any remaining items in the laundry will be donated to Goodwill. When did this begin, this becoming my mother? I ask and laugh to myself.

Surely, I have always been her, in some fashion. But now, I want to bake more of her cookies, try my hand (again) at ravioli, create my own sauce from homegrown tomatoes. I sink further into this writing chair knowing it is because she is slipping away.

Were I to survey my friends, my cohorts, would they reply the same? That “becoming their mother” occurred when they noticed she was not really available to them anymore.

There has been no official diagnosis of dementia, but even if there were, my mother would forget that she had dementia anyhow. If it werent so sad, it would be quite a funny running dialogue about her either forgetting to take her meds, or not wanting to all because she forgets she has the disease!

Oh sure, mom still answers the phone. Oh sure, she still makes cookies, better than I ever will. But for Fall, she iced the cookies with Easter colors. When asking about the stepdaughters’ birthdays, two of whom were born in November, my mother cannot understand why the third daughter’s birthday does not also appear on her November calendar. I answer quietly, “If you flip to April, Mom, you’ll see her name there.”

As we speak over the phone, I envision her scrutinizing her calendar. She mumbles back and forth about this April birthday and that, while in my mind, I am wishing, “I don’t want you to go, mom. Inside your body to a place where none of us can find you. I know you will be safe there. I know it is a good place to be. After all those years of fighting back the arthritis, which I swear was caused by the stress of your worries, you are lighter. The telling is in your face, your oh so youthful, almost angelic face. Your soft cheeks, not yet hollowed all the way out. You were and are the original Ivory girl. There was never a need for a Sephora in your life. No cosmetician ever asked you to sit in her chair. There was no need, they could not have sold you on any product that could soften or lighten your face and cheeks.”

Her actions, her quirks, her ideas are now lost in a jumble of neurons. As of late, I have been telepathing them, almost intentionally performing actions that define her as Mom so as to hold on to her as she was. Her thriftiness that she displayed by saving all the old tees and towels for rags, I too am coveting, as if there are stories attached to each piece of fabric or rag. Stockpiling peanut butter, when it’s on sale or not, though it is the cheapest lunch item by far in my grocery cart. I leave my shoes at the foot of the staircase, when I go up the carpeted steps to the 2^nd floor. When I descend, I put those shoes back on.

I find myself shopping less, because I know she doesn’t anymore, considering more duties in the community or the writing center. She was a committed person, who taught first grade CCD every Saturday morning for ten years. Who could blame her for choosing the first graders, they had to be so much cuter than we were at 14. And too, she had been trained as a teacher for the young ones, she was at her best, reading the Bible stories, emphasizing the Ten Commandments, she was never deep, but always firm. And then, immediately following her classes, she would rush us off to bowling leagues.

Her energy I have never duplicated, but I also recall her naps – and am prone to my own – on the couch when we came home from school, her daytime attachment to General Hospital – I guess that’s no different from my attachment to West Wing or 30 Rock.

Just last night, I looked up from my post at end of the kitchen table and was caught off guard by my reflection in the sliding glass door. I may someday fear looking in any mirror, seeing myself actually age into my mother. But for now, I observe a woman who saved the world- the world she lived in - through photos, dinners, traditions and green stamps. I am trying to become a little piece of that woman.

2008-08-27T15:32:00.001-07:00

08-27-08

My husband Mark once said that I write best about loss. But if writing is about capturing a moment, one that was formerly present, then writing is truly about finding a container for the past.

First, I tell you, I carry an ocean with me everyday. I have since the day I first dipped a tentative toe into the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon Coast some fourteen years ago. My son Davis was birthed there, my first husband’s ashes spread there, but mostly, it is where my soul resides. Every year since I moved away, I return to spend days at a time strolling the sands of Oceanside, and the many other beaches where my spirit found peace and healing in the tide pools and sand dunes. It helps that my son’s grandparents now reside where we once did.

I used to plan my Oregon trips according to the tides. When the moon was at its fullest, at the height of the July summer, the tides were at their lowest due to gravitiational pull. A tug that not only impacted the water levels, but pulled at me too, to take flight and return to my place of peace. I would pack up my son, and then my not quite yet ready for blending family, and head West. This year, that date coincided with a family trip to Europe.

So I gave up the notion of traveling when the tides talked the loudest to me. My consolation was that I could use my frequent flier miles to travel to Oregon with Davis, my son, for a quick trip on the heels of the European tour. Such was the plan, until an e-mail arrived in my inbox one day with a flier about his tryouts for the golf team.

To understand the importance of golf in Davis’ life, one should know it is of equal or greater importance to the tides. His father was a golfer, his grandfather and great grandfather. We held golf outings in memory of his father. And when it came time to spread his ashes, we did so with a 21 golf ball salute into the ocean. We still comb the beach looking for the return of any of those balls, but that would be a pointless as expecting his father to arise from out the ocean and walk back into out lives.

Davis had to make a decision on whether to travel to Oregon or stay at home and tryout for golf. And regrettably I would have to follow. In the back of my mind, my hope for peace washed away, carried out to become an actor on someone else’s stage that night. Sadly, Davis placed the call to his grandparents – he would tryout for the golf team. And they were ecstatic – there are dreams of families and then there are family’s dreams.

In the end, Davis would call from the car phone, to tell me he made the team. The coach had expanded the team by three places because the coach couldn’t make the cut. In Davis’s mind he questioned whether he would have made the first cut. In my mind, I knew that to choose an ocean over the greens, one must surely be in favor with the golfing gods, or at least a golfing dad.

Yet I still feel like I let Davis down. It has always been my job to help him remember his father, and for me to honor his memory as well. I could never have imagined that allowing Davis to choose between sandy beaches or sandy traps that he would have chosen the latter. And that this too would be a way, albeit a mature one, in which he could honor his father.

It is true, Mark was right. I can only write about loss. But I am writing so that I can let go of those moments of birth and death, son and father, and of course, my own rebirth as mother and writer, and give that moment away when necessary – even if I am only giving it back to me.

2008-06-10T08:46:00.001-07:00

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old

6/10/08

We left behind the house on Observatory, a sunny yellow Victorian, with greenery everywhere, and its olden brick patio, moss ever so slightly creeping through the cracks. The stars were out, the moon in its banana form, with a few milky white clouds in the form a mouth, preparing to consume the moon. These are the nights when friendship is meant to be consumed, in between slurps of borscht, bites of Tuna Niçoise and chucks of blue cheese.

Our small group of writers had been together for one semester of Women Writing for (a) Change, but we had shared lifetimes, in the fifteen minutes that we often aired our writing. Inga, Allsyon, Naomi and I shared our values through our feedback and our compassion through our silence, or sometimes, from Naomi, the occasional, Ooohh.

It’s no secret in middle age we all struggle with making new friends. I have never given a thought to how close we were as writers and women, just always knew we were. And yet here we sat, Inga, the Danish mother of three, Allyson, so entrenched and liberated as a modern Jewish mother, now moving to support her husband’s new work at a Jewish Center, Naomi, a sixties-ish WASP, recently remarried, after time alone or spent advocating for the environment, and me with my Italian Catholic roots, my blended family, and my love for all things Oregon, and yet we could save the world in one night.

As I drove home with Allyson and Inga in the car, Inga riding shotgun – we had to explain that one to Naomi - my thoughts drifted to Lynn, my close friend now faraway in Phoenix. I never did call her back yesterday because the car pooling was horrendous, and then I needed time to get ready and be present for this outing with my writing friends.

I have been having a friend “crisis”, possibly just reimagining, which began shortly after my training within the Feminist Leadership Academy. This crisis was caused by a few events that occurred while I was proceeding through the weeks at the academy and only after last night could I put them into words that made sense.

The first event occurred while in conversation with my neighbors. I happened to be discussing my middle step daughter, a bright child with so much hope and desires for the future to truly find a way to eradicate hunger, educate the homeless. These are no small tasks and require not only a bright mind, but a solid core. Of course, I was bragging about her, because here was a child that lost her mom when she was 11. Her mother had been ill since she was six years old. For a young woman with poise, potential and compassion, I would brag on her all day. As we continued our discussion, one woman suggested that Shannon was a show off about her grades. (Shannon has a 4.6). And I said, “Of course, she should show off. I would show off too.” But then, I also said, “I find that hard to believe because she does not do that at home, at all.” At an all girls school, there are plenty would be happy to start that rumor anyhow.

As Allyson, whose mother died when she was young, declared later when retold this incident, “I’m an uber person too, and sometimes, I think it because my mom died when I was young, when she was young, I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”

The second event occurred while in conversation with another close friend. We were eating lunch, discussing a separation between my sister and her husband. I simply shrugged my shoulders and said, “She doesn’t feel happy and isn’t sure this is the life she wants.” To that my girlfriend replied, “It sure seems like she has everything, what’s not to be happy about?” I replied, “There’s plenty in her background that she dealt with over the years that’s not my business to share, but everybody has their stuff.”

And from this I learned something else. When those who appear to have everything begin to “crack”, confusion reigns because someone is making a choice that may not be in line with societal expectations, but may certainly bring that person happiness from within.

These two events had caused me to rethink my relationships, in particular with women. While I missed my Monday night writing class, I had found solace in the company of women from my leadership classes. But with summer approaching and both classes and the academy ending, I missed those women more. When I am feeling lonely, my writing friends are the ones I think of. They are so authentic. They own their own problems and recognize when they are having problems they are simply pulling too many outside factors into themselves and not allowing themselves to be out in the world.

At the beginning of year, I embarked upon a journey to make new friends without the knowledge that Lynn would be moving. How refreshing to tell my young girls that I am making new friends. And I want to be intentional about my friendships. After writing the above stories, I see how easy it is to be unconscious and how quickly we can cause pain with our outbursts.

So this morning, I am taking time to write this, to put down in words, my commitment to be intentional with my new relationships, as well as the old ones, recognizing they could take months, years to build and they only take seconds to dismantle. For my longtime friends, for Allyson and Lynn, for Inga and Naomi, for Leigh and my FLA sisters, wherever their life will take them, I will put my energy into growing that which can be grown or cultivated regardless of how near or far.

2008-05-16T13:08:00.001-07:00

Designated Mother

Mark is in Scotland, or perhaps his flight has already departed for home. I don’t deny him the joy of this trip, for he has learned that life is not measured by days on the calendar but by the miles of life he explores.

In this week of his absence, I have found myself to be a different mother, a kindler gentler mother. In the days of Marks’ presence, in particular with his girls, he had always been mother and father, there seemed little wiggle room for me. While my son Davis was content to go to whomever was available, for tossing balls or quizzing on homework, the girls still went straight to their dad. And oftentimes, I would just be the maid, the cook, the cleaning lady, the chauffeur, the signer of the many declarations of independence, but never mother.

This week, while Mark was rounding the greens of Scotland, I was traversing the state of Indiana to reach Cheryl in Illinois and return her home for a few weeks before she returned to Loyola for the summer. My stomach was often tight during this trip, on the way up, as I listened to classical music and the return trip, wondering what she and I would have to talk about. But she surprised me, I surprised myself by actually finding common ground, talking to her specific interests. She does not need me for advice, she needs me to just show up, keep her apprised of family events that she or may not attend to, and offer her dinner which she may or may not eat. But she is here, and she is home.

While the middle of the week was occupied with Davis and baseball and Davis and Strings concert, I found myself readily handing out cash to the girls, which most of the time, I don’t do. Shannon, here is money for groceries for Relay for Life. Kaitlyn, here is a ride back and forth from Kiera’s for the science project, waiting up, picking her up later than that time I suggested to eliminate the prospect of being such a taskmaster. The girls readily ate dinner and with aplomb entertained Davis’ grandparents, their step-grandparents, with their stories of boys and grades.

At week’s end, I was scheduled to pick up Kaitlyn for the OB/Gyn appointment. Since the beginning of her periods eighteen months ago, her periods have been irregular, lengthy, heavy flow, unpredictable. I understand her deceased mother also had this problem as a teenager, so we are having her checked out for thyroid, blood and hormonal issues. I have come into raising teenage girls without the benefit of giving birth to them, to knowing their bodies cradled in my arms, such that when the doctor asks, I too can respond with knowledge of their bodies. So all I can offer them is another woman who has a broader knowledge of bodies than me. We discuss periods and breasts and frequent urination with a teenager who is giggling during the doctor’s instruction for a self-exam of her breasts. I glance over at her breasts and see that they are more like the women of ancient times, round, full of life, whereas mine have disappeared, or are at least below my sightline. I tell her, I know that was not fun, but you may as well make friends with your body, so you don’t feel as if you are coming up against the enemy each time you are at the Ob/Gyn.

My final hours of interim single parenthood were filled with boys and baseball cancellations and sub sandwiches for dinner. For as much as I enjoy eating green and red and orange and yellow, I could not fathom another dinner without Mark, cooking at my side, or cooking in my place. Shannon called from the Relay for Life for Cancer Event, first to find out if we had received a letter from her school about academic awards. I confirmed this to be the case. Second, she wanted to tell me that the Relay luminaria ceremony would be held at 10:00 p.m.

During the ceremony, they turn out the lights in the stadium, light bags that spell out HOPE, and then light bags that have the names of those who have died from cancer or are still in the midst of treatments. Shannon had written two – one for Devin, and one for her mom – Susan.

I told her I wasn’t sure I could make it to the stadium, my legs were aching from running around all week, and my eyelids were finding themselves more relaxed when I closed them. But after a quick board game with Davis and a friend, I sprang into action, baked my “love cake” for Mother’s Day, and decided to join Shannon.

I called her from the snack stand at the stadium, and she walked around the track to meet me. Her friends joined in welcoming me, noting that they missed having Shannon’s dad there, as he was last year. We walked in the rain for a half-hour, then made our way up to the main tent. Danny Strunk, a survivor, talked about how he bears the burden of finding a quick cure for cancer. We all do. Shannon stood apart from me, but I could feel her sadness. Quick cure vs. long-term grief. Looking at Shannon’s face, it was an easy choice.

We continued our walk, noting each individual candle and name, first finding Devin’s name. She asked if I wanted to stop, but I shook off that notion, wanting her to know I was here to support her. I have made my share of memorials to Devin over time.

We walked on another 200 meters and found Susan’s name. Shannon and I stopped and she turned to me. I offered her my arms and tears. Soon we were joined by friends who stood by her side, crying in the rain. Why is it always easier for tears to come in the rain? As she sat by her mother’s candle, many more classmates stopped by to share in her sadness. As I stepped back, another group of classmates approach Shannon, only to be surprised by that fact that she had indeed lost her mom. Shannon, her friends and I walked on another lap around the track, slowly they all peeled off. It was she and I for one last lap.

Before we approached the main HOPE luminaria, the announcer was calling out names of those we were honoring. Shannon said, “I don’t know why they say in memory of, because I really don’t have much memory of her, maybe just at the end.” I nodded to agree. “I think they should all be in honor of…”

We continued around the oval and Shannon asked of us, “Let’s listen.” We walked more in silence, and instantly, upon reaching the stadium bleachers where the HOPE was spelled out, the announcer called out, “In memory of Devin Wick.”, then “In memory of Susan Manley.” Shannon and I looked at each other with near delight. A sign, I am always looking for one from above.

We found Devin’s name again and this time paused. I put my arm around her and said, “You know, when I was pregnant, Devin and I were convinced I was having a girl. He knew I wanted a Januzzi girl, really bad. But obviously that didn’t happen.” “And so now, you have three,” Shannon spoke out. “Yes, now, I have three – three bonus girls.”

We passed by her mom’s candle one more time, then she walked me to the entrance. We said our goodbyes and I love you’s. I cried all the way to the car. I was grateful for this time of Mark’s absence, not for the task of driving the kids all over the city for baseball, doctor’s appointments, school functions or Chicago. No, I was thankful that his trip allowed me to be, even for a week, the designated mother to my bonus girls.

2008-02-01T05:46:00.000-08:00

Ski Dreams

A long time ago, in a land far far away, there was a little girl from Amherst, Ohio, who came home from school one day waving a flyer that said she could rent equipment and learn to ski all for the cost of seventy-dollars over six weeks. Her mother looked at her with a dazed look in her eyes, wondering, will my child be safe, and weighed that with the fact that her mother too had always wanted to ski, but girls didn’t do that in her day. So, with reluctance and prayer, her mother said ‘yes’. Her parents faithfully took her shopping for attire and patiently waited each week night for her return, when she would regale them with tales of diamonds, only these were black and double black.

Soon enough, the time came for her to pick a college. Her parents were not wealthy and not knowledgeable enough to encourage her to follow her dreams to attend school in Colorado. She settled on a college called the University of Akron. In those days, the university sported a ski club which once a year offered a trip to “Ski West”. She knew of this trip and dreamed of it often. When her junior year rolled around, she enlisted, without any friends to accompany her.

She would travel 2000 miles by bus through states she hardly remembered the capitals of, over a twenty-four hour timeframe, which eventually turned into 30 hours, after their expedition was besieged by a snowstorm somewhere in Kansas and as she would learn, all of Kansas, is really just nowhere. She would survive on her mother’s famous Italian Christmas cookies which had been packaged carefully in bubble wrap, bypassing the stops at McDonald’s.

On this trip, she would flirt with a football player who played for Gerry Faust, learn about grain alcohol, acquire more friends that she could have imagined, but mostly, she would fall in love with the West. And someday, when she grew up, really grew up, with a real job and a real life, she would come West for good.

On those mountains of Crested Butte, she would learn that skiing was meant to be a solitary sport, no matter who she rode the lifts with. And that someone else could tell her about the gentle slopes or steep drops, but no one else could really tell her how she would feel about them that day. And that she really could fly downhill, if she held your arms out just so. And in the woods and powder, she could tell the trees her secrets and they would be safe. She could stand quiet there, hear her heart beat, and the branches would flutter in rhythm to hers. And she would come to understand that winter would always be her season, one that not many others would claim, and she would claim it just for that reason

She went on to join the ski club out West for five more years, even after college, though by then, the allure of riding the bus had been lost in her youth. She would fly by plane, but miss those times when bonding happened in the backseat of the bus over cookies and cards.

She married a young man Devin, who knew little of the sport. But they would ski Big Sky and Mt. Hood and Mt. Bachelor all the same. And when the time came, she would finally make her move West, only this was further west than the Rockies, this was the Oregon Coast. The mountains would still move her, but the sea would still her heart.

In subsequent times, she would give birth to a young son, Davis, lose a husband to cancer and teach her son to ski in areas she could only describe as hills. Together, they would attempt Wyoming skiing and snowshoeing, but somehow, she was still deep enough in grief to resist the pull of the powder.

Years passed and she met someone else, Mark, who had also attended college in a land far far away. And he had three daughters, older than her son. And they decided to become a family, but it would not happen instantly or gently for her in the months that followed. His college friend would come to own a home in the mountains of Utah and invite him to ski. After amusing her with stories from his time on the slopes (and off) with his friends, he suggested they ski together, as a new family.

So, they would travel during a blustery January day to take respite on the slopes of place called Deer Valley. The first day would be filled with constant activity of moving the children from slope to slope. The second day would be filled with motherly frustration for her son who needed to leave the slopes and sleep instead and motherly angst for the teenagers need to be themselves. And wifely resentment for the husband who always found the glass and never cared if it were half-empty or full. And on the third day, the sun would rise over the mountains, first in flesh tones, then pink, then yellow and she would be happy again.

And she would ride the lift to the top of Flagstaff Mountain and stand tall, gazing at the other peaks in the range and think, everything is insurmountable and nothing is as well.

AJW
1/30/2008

2007-10-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

20071012 – Thoughts My Own Private Italy

What have I left behind for my child? What did my parents leave for me? I asked this question of Mark as we flew blindly over the Atlantic Ocean, awaiting the sleeping pill to take its effect. I was drifting off but still bothered by the oaf sitting next to me who huffed and puffed every time he changed his seating position as if it were someone else’s fault that he was here on this flight to Genoa or that he could control when dinner was served or the lights go out. I tried to keep my mind on other things.

What had my parents left for me? Did they really leave me the legacy of our Italian heritage or was that something I chose. I have four siblings. Did they remember being served baccala (smelt) at Christmastime? Does the scent of anise wafting in through their noses bring on a dance of joy?

My grandparents, Enrico and Stella, had both died before I turned 18. The same was true of my mother’s mother, Rafaella, who died before I was born, and her birth father, Vincenzo, her namesake, who died before she was born. I remember the Italian language spoken at various holiday meals, but don’t recall anyone specifically trying to teach us this language in order to help us absorb the culture.

We pronounced most Italian foods dropping the last vowel, prosciutto was proscuitt, in same way Americans drop the a in Roma and just call it Rome. We were told it was a dialect thing and shook our heads in agreement. I had a waitress once who corrected me with the pronunciation of a certain kind of pasta I had ordered. “I’ll have the gnocchi,” I asked.

And she corrected me while writing it down, “It’s gnocchi , with an e sound at the end.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed for her. Devin, my first husband, rapidly put his head down as if he could feel the confrontation at hand. He smirked into his empty plate.

“Well, I continued, “in the Italian language, there are many dialects, just like English and yes, I know how to spell gnocchi, but growing up in the my house, we always made gnocchi(i). So. I’ll have the gnocchi(i).”

Our service that night did not improve, but at least I had won the battle.

But there were other things that my family has left behind. Banquet tables filled with tradition were the backdrop for every family gathering that was captured via Polaroid or Kodak. Baptisms, Holy Communions, Graduations, Christmas and New Years. Every Christmas since I can remember, Mom has made her famous raviolis, filled with either meat or cheese. She has never veered from this, despite the new fusion which might call for vegetables or crab as filling.

Just as the interiors of the pasta remained the same, so did the exterior. The raviolis were always served in the same bowls, with a toile (twal) like scene around the bowls, the scene on one bowl depicted in red, which has now turned pink, and the scene on the other bowl depicted in blue. And so it become that the red bowl coddled the meat filled raviolis, while the blue bowl held the ones with cheese. I have begged my mother not to put those bowls on any garage sale because for me, they have held more than pasta over the years.

My mother’s birthday cakes were somewhat legendary at least in our own family. They ranged from an elephant and bunny to a fire engine cake with marshmallow wheels. The only store bought cake we ate was for graduation. When Davis was born and started having birthdays, my mother arrived with armed with cakes. In his eleven years, she has produced a puppy, Scooby doo Mystery Machine, fire engine cake, a golf course, a bowling alley, veggie tales, dinosaurs, trains, and baseball and some other cartoon character that is no longer in my memory or his.

This year, though visiting for his birthday, my mother arrived with a Kroger cake in hand. Davis is 11 now, and though we would have been hard pressed to come up with an appropriate theme for nana to bake his cake, secretly he was looking for one too.

My father has been an avid gardener. This summer of 2007 was the first time he had not planted a garden in the forty-one years I have spent with him mainly because my parents are encroaching upon their eighties and selling their home. Each summer, my father would fret about the rains and when could he rent a tiller to turn the garden. May 15 was too late, April 15th too early. My father staked the tomatoes – the romas, the beefsteaks, and as life progressed, he succumbed to our culinary whims or branched out by growing cherry tomatoes and grape-size ones too.

I was more of a homebody in my teenage years, and I would wander out to help my father water the garden and flowers. We would discuss nothing in particular, other than the size of the zucchini or how my mother would kill him this year because of the huge size of the crops or that the darn weatherman was wrong again about the rain and its arrival, because no where on the horizon did dark clouds appear and as a matter of fact, the sun was so red it prompted us to both repeat – red skies at night…

We picked apples from his miniature trees and swore at the bugs infecting his cherries and pears. They froze their own produce, unheard of at the time in our little burb of Amherst, and canned their tomatoes. The freezer still contains green beans from 1984. But my father stood side by side with my mother in the freezing, the canning, and the dishes. After every one of the banquets referred to above, my greatest memory is also of my father in the kitchen. He never cooked, but he is always there.

And each spring, I watched him carry out the scarlet pot containing the fig tree, which had hunkered down in the winter beneath a blanket of burlap, a tree handed down to him from his father. Funny all those years, until you start missing your own father you don’t realize how much he must miss his. The fig tree never produced more than a dozen figs in any year’s span, but we lauded them as each one was the prodigal son returning home. As the fig tree grew, dad’s strength waned, so much that he decided to put the pot on wheels, so he could roll it in during the harsh winter and then roll it back out. Spring came not when any crocuses bloomed, but when the fig tree appeared on the patio.

My parents drove us to all our sporting events, gave advice when we least wanted it, and yelled and grounded us for our many infractions against curfew, grades and general malaise. But when I take stock of all they offered to us, what they gave us mostly was not food filling our stomachs, ravioli filling out the meat and cheese bowls, tomatoes filling the sauce bowl. But passion to fill our hearts.

What to leave behind for Davis? I struggled with this too. He is part German, part Italian. He is part meatball, part saurkrautball, though I have to say he likes the meatball part better.

His father died when he four, fought cancer for the three years before that. Tradition was absent for fear we would take hold of something that wouldn’t stick. So we piggybacked on to everyone else’s, which is as good or the same as coming up with your own. Now with a few Irish in the household, there are other traditions to consider as well.

Davis’ father and I moved to Oregon with the notion, “this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” and we were right. After his diagnosis of cancer, we returned to Cincinnati, with the subconscious contract we had made with ourselves that we would return to Oregon in five years. But two years following that declaration, Devin would pass away. I have since returned to Oregon with and without Davis, but never with Devin and never permanently. It was, a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Kaya, a writing peer, recently approached me to inform me “I was told to read your book, the way you describe the northwest and what you found there for yourself, your love for a place,’ Another writing peer had counseled her to do this. My book centered around not just love and loss but finding who you are in the midst of chaos and tragedy. The book boasted of the Oregon Coast and how its stark nature allowed me to strip down to the bare necessities to be the me I wanted to be. Kaya loves California, the northern redwoods, the southern sun in the same way I love the Douglas firs and northwest rain of Oregon Coast. The northwest is a gloomy beauty in some of the ways that I have often thought of myself.

Davis will surely recall those days that I cried, alone, and wiped tears from my eyes to shield him from pain and the days I wiped tears from his eyes, with me, as we missed his father’s presence and guidance and hugs. Those were certainly days that Davis will recall as gloomy beauties – there was something sorrowful in our days and yet something magical at the same time. We were becoming our hopes. He was growing up and was doing so in a fashion that even I could not imagine, wise beyond his years, having fun – “yep, that’s how I live my life,” he told my mother once when asked if he was off to find more fun.

He is proud of his birth in Oregon, because that makes him different. I gave him that, the ability to proclaim yourself separate. He returns each year to visit with his grandparents who still make the Oregon Coast their home though we had been first to call the coast ours. He calls Oregon home. Every walk on the beach is blazing a new trail, every agate he gathers up is another just recently let go from its mother rock needing a home. I will leave behind for him the western sunset, the bow to the day that had just been completed, a reward for a day well lived, a salute to a good life.

I have not left him any traditions of food. And instead of recalling me bending over my garden and digging with hands for summers on end, he will recall the steam from tea or coffee or whatever was hot as my fingers flew over the keyboard to capture a moment in the same way my father tried to capture the perfect tomato, or my mother roll the perfect ravioli.

Kaya, my writing friend said after reading my book, “I understand what you mean about finding yourself in a place.”

I replied, and yes, once you find that place that makes you who you are, no one can take that away from you. You can carry that (confidence and love of self) with you wherever you go.”

No matter how far away from Oregon I am, that I am still there, I go there in my mind in times of pain, I go there in my mind in times of confusion and I can feel the arctic winds from the north blow down and blow away the cobwebs of confusion. When I need to stand firm in my life, I picture the three arch rocks, standing erect in the open sea, no one allowed to come within 500 yards of their structure, letting only the sea lions rest and sing at the foot of these rocks. When I need strength, I reach back across the miles to the tiny town of Oceanside, its 200 some inhabitants clinging to a way of life that is eroding elsewhere. And when I feel a loss, it is the first place my mind travels to, the place of Devin and his blue-green eyes that were a reflections of the pines on the sea, the loss of dreams.

I travel to Italy in my mind when I need to feel life. When I need to conjure up joy, I recall a certain meal at La Stalla, being greeted with Prosecco. I let myself recall the stinging coolness of the Mediterranean when I want to be awakened, not in the morning, but to feel awake in life. When I am flabbergasted, in awe, in wonder at what surprises have been brought into my life. When I want to remember and celebrate my family, especially my parents, I think to the tiny towns clinging to a hillside that helped spawn this new generation. I travel to the Liguria sea when I want to remember Mark and how his eyes matched the color of the Ligurian sea, and yes, it is a blue different from the Mediterranean, which is so deep, it seems to block out the light. The Ligurian sea is blue, but light bounces off the waves all day long.

I have given Davis a sense of place in Oregon through my words in the same way my parents and their love of food gave me a sense of place in Italy. Someday when he makes his trek to his Mecca, he will be the beneficiary of my having given him the Oregon Coast to house his soul and Italy to light his fire.

2007-09-12T10:18:00.001-07:00

20070911

It is that day again. It arrives always with much anticipation, for him and for me. And now, for the others who fill up our house with chatter and love. It is September 11. Davis was born on this day, or shall I say this morning, at 2:18 a.m. His father Devin and I had been traveling in Portland, Oregon, but upon my hitting my mark of 5 out of 7 sevens of being in labor, we hurriedly checked out of our hotel and raced back towards Oceanside, our little retreat on the Oregon Coast. We didn’t quite make it to our home, which is OK because the hospital was on our way and we thought we should stop there first, and have our baby – considering we had no knowledge of that process ourselves.

As a newborn, Davis arrived in true Davis fashion which over the years, he has come to be known for being first up, despite the last to bed , or at least later than me. He has arisen early, dressed for his first baseball game of the year, then plodded into my room, to let me know he was ready – three hours before the umpires would be.

Davis original due date was October 5, 1996. And now, here he was, wanting to show up a little early, maybe check out the competition, of which there would be none for many years to come, or perhaps he was just hungry.

As a newborn almost premie , the doctor recommended I feed him every two hours. Anyone who has ever had a look at my breasts, with or without shirt on, will testify to the fact that this is nearly impossible. I tried nonetheless. The Tillamook visiting nurse association even brought in a contraption that came straight out of Dr’ Suess’ Horton here’s a Who. We were running out of strategies, so I switched him to formula instead. I promised him as a mother that he could always rely upon me, no matter the situation, but apparently, I forgot about failing him within the first six weeks. The two hour feedings were brutal, in particular, because his father traveled through the week, though helped out tremendously on the weekends.

I have to say, he may eat fast now, because I always encouraged him to drink up when he was a baby, knowing, that I could put him down, somewhere, a stroller, a nap, the floor, and have some time to myself. I also have to say, he still eats every two hours. So it is true that the first five years determine so much about a child later in life.

But what a day it was. Prior to giving birth, Davis was the breech position. There is a well-known technique that doctors can perform which will allow the doctor to attempt through massage to turn the baby in the womb. Apparently, the doctor had lost sight of my frame, what with the extra 28 pounds and all, and did not see that there was really no room for him to move. He head was stuck beneath my upper rib cage, and when Dr. Saylor attempted to turn him, I thought my ribs would bust, and not in a funny way. I soon put a stop to that, loud screaming will do that to a doctor, and we decided to “go for” the C-section instead.

This of course, involved a not so small incision 5 inches below my belly button, the number of inches grows each year, depending on my stomach size. I recall making friends with the anesthesiologist on staff, or maybe he was making nice with me, especially if he heard about the screaming incident earlier with Dr. Saylor. When the surgery was complete, I had delivered a 5 pound baby boy. I could never imagine that someone or thing that had caused so much physical pain, caused me to grimace every time I made a move to the bathroom, that he could bring me so much joy.

He woke this morning to the sounds of his grandparents, grandpa wick playing the piano and the two of them signing Happy Birthday, as recorded on my cell phone. Can’t wait to see the phone bill for that message. Unfortunately, Davis day also began with that fact that his stepsister’s mom had died on September 11, and a suggestion from school that he wear red, white and blue, in honor of September 11th attacks.

“Why did I have to be born on a bad day?” Davis always asks. And I tell him, “First, you came into this world before that happened, and second, you were born on this day, as a reminder, that good things happened too.” With so many dates that we honor for something tragic, we have to find a reason to go on. He is that reason to go on.

2007-06-25T09:04:00.001-07:00

Last night’s book club for my recent release I’ll Be in the Car was the most educational to date. The women, in their late forties or perhaps slipping into their fifties gingerly, were not some high-brow group wanting to know more about the structure of my book nor were they fascinated because they knew me. They weren’t even seeking a spiritual lift. One member had simply acted a whim at the local hair salon, believed in a cause and passed it on to her dearest friends.

Bonnie Gulker twice had sat in the Eva Ribero’s stylist chair before asking Eva about the book prominently displayed on her workstation amidst Bedhead products Control Freak and After Party and other assorted names meant to imply something else!

Bonnie finally got up the nerve to ask about the book. “That’s my Annette,” Eva had likely replied. Eva had cut my hair through perm days, long and short. She had come to understand my bad hair days during Devin’s dying and appreciated my good hair days, the day I remarried Mark. I would put my hairstylist up against a bartender any day. I don’t need margaritas, but I need my fix of Eva to stay sane.

Eva explained to Bonnie why the book sat at her station and what our relationship had been over the years. Later, Eva called me at home. She never does this, despite the number of times we have promised to call for margaritas, red wine or both. Hours before, I had sat in the same chair as Bonnie while Eva worked her mojo. I must have forgotten something important or had forgotten to pay. But Eva called to tell me that Bonnie was interested in the book for her club and passed along her number.

During my phone call to Bonnie, I offered to make a dozen or so copies available because not only did I have access to my own stash in a warehouse in Kansas somewhere, but had access to the dozens or so sitting at my feet while I wrote, like a loyal puppies curled up at the foot, waiting for their next owner to buy them and read them lovingly.

I delivered these copies to Bonnie despite her offer to pick them up. Really, I had explained, they were doing me the favor, exchanging quality time with their husbands, which I later learned was OK, versus spending time engrossed in my book.

The evening of June 20th arrived and I was welcomed into the group with a Oregon Pinot Noir (I noticed the rest drank beer!) Once we chowed through Bonnie’s spread, chatter turned to discussion. Patty or Mary mentioned they had been caught up in reading about the transplant process in Seattle, living it with me. Yet, they remained fixated with reading the rest, knowing that Devin was going to die. For this, they had sacrificed their relaxation time.

Thus the talk turned to death. Susan mentioned the death of her father. She felt as if in bubble when speaking with the thoracic surgeon about her father’s condition. Everything was happening in slow motion. And the question arose, “Did you ever stop once to think, Devin may not make it?” But the breathless energy it took to be caregiver during that time seemed to convey otherwise and this was true. When in the midst of a system that prescribes every waking breath, failure was not option, unless all other remedies had been exhausted. Devin thought so too. And when each morning, we woke to the warm brown eyes of little Davis, I would say to myself, “No one dies today while I am taking care.”

It was not the healthiest of attitudes, but we had been in it long enough to rise up with determination, in particular during Devin’s good days. As time dragged on, the good became less and less so, and we struggled with staying focused on his life. In the end, as discussed, Hospice was an easy choice to make, to provide comfort and not remedy, to choose for Devin to die. Sometimes, I am in awe that Devin’s parents had allowed me to make this decision. Partly out of respect for Devin’s wishes, partly out of trusting me, but partly out of not wanting to be the one to make that choice. No one should ever have to make that choice.

Ideally, we would all like to die in our sleep. Susan recounted how the move to put her dad in hospice, while welcomed, was still not easy to accept. “I knew it was the right thing to do, but I thinking whoa, I don’t want this. No, I’d prefer if they kept him alive with some machine next to him, the rest of my life, in my house.” Susan said this with biting irony because there are no easy choices. It’s not lot like waltzing into Graeter’s and choosing between peanut butter chip or black raspberry chip or mango sorbet, depending on if you wanted to taste salt or sweet.

Our choices had not been dependent on taste, or even how Devin felt for the day, but over the long term, was there any hope for a reasonable shot at coaching Davis in basketball, ever making love again and producing offspring, celebrating his father’s 70th birthday?

The intimacy of Bonnie’s backyard lent to the mood of that evening. Friendships here had been cemented in deaths, cancer diagnoses, sons who were friends, kids attending the same school. In our neighborhood, school choice is mandatory, as if one has to pick somewhere different from two catholic schools, a few private Christian schools and an excellent rated public school, which leaves us all only a common a plot of land.

The pool offered a reflection for these women and me on life, on relationships. I thanked them for welcoming me into their circle. They wanted to know, “How do we stack up to the other book groups you’ve been to?” There was some casual joking about a “box of rocks”, but only casual. “I’ve never been to a book group that bought wine just for me, because it came from Oregon.” “I’ve never been to one where for three hours, we talked about my book for only thirty minutes and debated life the rest of the time.” No one suggested I should be on Oprah or that I should consider injecting a little more of Jesus Christ into the spiritual aspect of the story. Other than one group led by my girlfriend Kristi, no where had I walked away wishing I could have been friends with these women. Their circle was tight, but flexible and willing to open and extend an arm to welcome me.

Recently, I had received an e-mail from a reader in Dayton who wrote, “I will be 67 in August and just this past year have grown to where you already are.” She thanked me for putting my experience down in words and offered that she envied me for possessing such wisdom an early stage in my life, wisdom which she is just coming into. But like any child who skips a grade or has to grow up in a hurry, I missed out on playing with my friends while acquiring this wisdom.

Last night, this group of women laughed about how great their kids were in sports and school in the early years, but now, they are just thankful their kids were not in jail or on drugs. Bonnie or Susan suggested, “Its amazing how over time you lower your expectations of your kids, of your life.”

As I struggle through blending families and coping with the absence of my name on any best seller list, I am thankful for their lesson in lowering expectations to enjoy life. That’s what kids do best. I hugged each woman before Bonnie showed me the door then I hugged her once more saying thanks. “Omiogsh thank you for coming,” she blurted. But I hadn’t been thanking her for the invite to speak, but for the opportunity to learn. They had distinguished themselves from other book clubs through their willingness to put themselves in my shoes, to speak so frankly of heartache and erectile dysfunction and teenagers. It wasn’t just their intellect or their wine or their spirit, but the wisdom that comes from loving friendships which had separated them from the rest.