Nocturnal

You used to leave the light on,
for Mom, her security,
but especially for late-nighters.

We would tiptoe inside.
Grab the extra key
from the plastic utility drawer,
last on the bottom right.
Slide the key into the lock.
Slowly open the door to whatever
wrath of yours might await.

Sometimes, we pulled out Rice Chex,
craving a bowl of cereal
to coat the stomach after chasing beers.

You would wake from repose in the den,
always a den, as if you stayed hidden,

remind us to turn off the lights
when we went to bed.
The night-light over kitchen desk stayed lit,
as did the Virgin Mary lamp
on the stand outside your bedroom door.

That first Fall you moved near me,
I would steer past,
glance towards your fourth-floor apartment
- where you would be sleeping
- where you would watch football games.
Lights from the second room, christened “den,”
would be shining
on the path towards my home.
I drove that route on purpose
comforted by signals you were calling.

Now I look up, beyond the gas station glow.
Your studio has gone dark.
I cleaned out that room,
gave away couches,
flicked off the kitchen switch.
I carried out the aluminum lamp
that lit your den those years.
Even without current,
its afterglow would lead me home.

9/2012
AJW

Fruit of Labor

My tomatoes are growing unwieldy.  I hardly tend to them, busy with life, children, Mom and words.  Dad, my guardian gardener, must have been watching over my patch. I felt a nudge to pick a half-dozen beef-steaks, carry the plumpest one to where Mom lives and share it with her for lunch. I was only the intermediary, in this message of love.

Fruit of Labor

Tomatoes torn from stalks
after thunder and storm,
still warm from morning sun.
Bright reds reflect in her hazel eyes
when presented to her.

Whole, then sliced into quarters and chunks,
like she might have cut when canning.

Seeds glisten
like wet pebbles on sand.
Juices ooze over her fingers,
picking at the pieces, looking
for one last bite
of Summer.

September, 2012, Tomatoes at Arden Courts

What I learned on my first day at “school”... Reflections from the Alois

What I learned on my first day at “school”...
Reflections from the Alois
9/6/12


This is our first Sharing Circle session at the Alois Alzheimer’s Center since we left off in May.  We enter the Alois, leery of finding out who might have died while we were away.  Sometimes, we enter awash in guilt.  Today, I enter in curiosity after the events of the summer, my father passing away, moving Mom into another Alzheimer’s care center (not the Alois), one closer to my paths of work and home.

Mom survived three moves in two months, due to circumstances beyond her control and for that matter, beyond mine.  She is at peace now, a little more sedate (not drugged) from the trauma of her loss.  Mom sits comfortably in the out doors. We pretend we are in Florida, which is not difficult in these dog days. She evens extends her warmth to the resident dogs, which she didn’t used to.

I write those previous lines, having become an instant and reluctant student of care centers for those with memory impairment. This is not a review of any of those. I will save that for another blog. This is a reflection on where Mom is on her journey, and how I see the members of our Sharing Circle on their paths.

The topic today is school. Who doesn’t love that topic? Typically, kids still attending school.  But today, we were able to pull out many memories, including one where R. said she would pit her meatloaf sandwiches against my mom’s any time.  I would relish the challenge, if only it could be so. But we let them imagine here. We speak of futures. For that one moment, a purpose arose in R. that had not been apparent beforehand.

My attentions are focused on tasks at hand, reading Shel Silverstein, “I Cannot Go to School Today”, singing School Days, “you were my barefoot bashful beau” as W. plays air piano to the tune, and listening to M., a new member, proudly read his essay, which began with learning to play trumpet in school and concluded with pride and a sentence about his participation in the National Guard marching band.

Occasionally, I slip.  I look at ML’s nails, and think, I must tend to Mom’s, which are long and the sparkle is wearing off.  I see W.’s hair, perfectly coiffed and recall that beauty shop had not been able to fit Mom in this week.  I hear M., born in Scotland, recollect her time at school as being very different from others. She spent her school days in the midst of air raids.  She is one of our new members.  In her, I sense belligerence, distrust, setting herself apart.  I also recognize the signs, as they were once in my mother too.  So I listen, I remain calm.  I include. I validate her anger, her voice.  Hell yeah, I’d be angry too, if I knew to be angry about losing my memory.

Last Spring, I had hoped to bring Mom to one of these sessions. At the time, she literally lived around the corner. It would have been no effort to pick her up.  But Dad had begun his decline. I was constantly being called in by staff for one small incident after the other.  And that day, the one I had planned, I chose to take a break from my parents.

As I hear our circle members complain about Math, their least favorite subject, and recall taking naps in school, that one day comes back to me. The one day I could not muster up energy for my mother, but I could for everyone else’s mother and father who were residents of the Alois.

Our circle closed with recollections of art class, E.’s favorite, going home from school to play with friends, and cookies and juice.  As the residents returned to their couches, their naps and other activities, one stuck around. It was M.  In conversation with him, I wasn’t certain his disposition qualified him to be a resident.

“M.  Thanks for coming, did you enjoy this?” I recalled the skepticism on his face earlier, and the snickers that he and F. traded, the only two males, while they read the poetry aloud to each other before the circle began.

“I sure did.”  I offered him a shoulder hug. Personal touch remains of utmost importance to their self-esteem.

I began to turn away from M., when he stammered, “Boy, you are sure good with old people.”

I laughed because I thought he was half-flirting. And because I didn’t believe he was old. Later he told me he was 74.

Then how blessed was I to have had my dad ten years beyond 74, his mind intact before he died. How blessed was I to have had Mom for 80 plus years, before the dementia settled in.

“Thanks, M.  Well, I’ve had a lot of experience!”

Thanks M. For reminding me of Jesus’ well-worn words from Matthew 25, “Whatever you do for the least of my people, you do for me.”  Today, whatever I was doing for M., for ML, for the residents of the Alois, I was doing for my mother.

Revisiting “Thank a Teacher” on the verge of school beginning once more….

Several years ago, a former classmate, Tim Golden, got in touch with me. He found my book through the Internet, while searching for resources on his niece’s disease, Tay-Sachs.  What I have loved most about my book is not the money, but the opportunity to connect and re-connect with readers, friends and strangers alike.

Tim and I decided we would meet the next time I traveled to my hometown of Amherst.  I made contact and we met one morning over coffee. From our discussion of diseases and parents and life, we sequel into a conversation about our fifth grade teacher, Mr. Redman.

Mr. Redman was quite the character, as we fondly recalled.  And somehow he had garnered a classroom full of inquisitive, on the verge of hormonal changes, bright students. In that group, I count friends who eventually moved to Sweden, a writer, solider, photographer, teacher, musician, COO, mothers and fathers.

Tim’s recollection of Mr. Redman’s class was the same as mine.  He was always pushing us, to read, to know more, to understand more. This was 1976.  It was the bicentennial of our nation, and while our class focused on history, I know equally about North and South Dakota, as I do Boston or Gettysburg, including the recitation of the Gettysburg address.

I returned to Cincinnati later that weekend, rolling around the notion of writing Mr. Redman a letter, to let him know what impact he had on me, as a fifth-grader and now.  My son was ten at the time, the same age I was when sequestered in the corner room of Mr. Redman’s class, overlooking the kickball field, always nervous if one of the other classes had commandeered the kickball field before us, to warm up.  We were if not unbeatable then we were at least legends in our own mind.

Within that time,  I had remarried, published a book, and was trying to find time, space, energy and topics to write.  So, I pulled out a comp notebook and began a letter to Mr. Redman.  Later, I would type the letter on my computer, hit save and push it to the back of mind.  Afterall, writing it was for me.

Fast forward five years, 2012. During the summer of my father’s illness and subsequent passing, someone had posted a picture of our fifth-grade class on Facebook.  FB friends took turns identifying classmates, and I found it an amusing pastime to get me through the days of Dad’s illness.

The day following my dad’s death, Susan, another classmate, who has been in close contact with Mr. Redmond, posed a question to each of us who had responded, asking what we were doing occupationally so she could pass the information along to Mr. Redman. It was then I decided to not wait. Death has a way of propelling us back into life. I asked for Mr. Redman’s address, and sent off the letter.

Through a few more correspondences with Susan, I handed off my cell number to Mr. Redman.

Weeks later, I found myself leaving Kaitlyn at the College of Charleston.  I had already progressed through my father’s funeral, the disposition of their belongings, a move for my mother, another daughter moving back to IU.

Kaitlyn and I said our goodbyes following lunch. She was focused and engaged. Exactly how I like my kids.  There were no tears, and I was waiting for them to come later.  I checked out of my hotel, bought a few Charleston goodies for my mother in law and took to the highway.

I was looking at twelve hours driving time, split up by a stay in Winston-Salem.  Somewhere south of Columbia, my phone rang with a northern Ohio area code. It could have been anyone – the funeral home, the cemetery, the lawyer, the accountant, but I recognized the scratchy voice instantly.

It was Mr. Redman.  He was speaking loudly, as if I could not hear him, but in reality, he was probably having difficulty hearing me.  We began with the dance of “How old are you?” I was saddened and heartened to learn he was my father’s age.

We discussed mostly his life. This was about him now. He had ridden his bike across the U.S. for the Lung Association.  He and his wife had made it to all but three states, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, but his missed only seeing New Orleans.  Quickly, our Jeopardy map game, played out in his classroom nearly every day, came to mind. To memorize the states that border the Gulf of Mexico. “Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida.”  All the little ditties made up to absorb Mr. Redman’s teaching.

Then, he segued to the letter and I heard a catch in his throat. “As a teacher, you never know”…his voice crackled…”you never know what kind of impact you are having…” and his voice trailed off.

“I wanted fifth-grade. I taught fourth grade for one year, and knew that they were not mature enough to be taught in the way I wanted to teach.”  So he became the sought-after fifth-grade teacher.  The renegade, as I was want to call him.  With his safari hat, beard and mustache, hot or cold coffee in hand, it was not the “what he taught us” but manner in which he did so, that had the most profound impact.  Learning was hard, learning was fun.  You had to be imaginative when you are trying to learn.

He mentioned how he always tried to live his life the way he saw fit. “So, I‘m glad you noticed I was a renegade.”

We ended our conversation with my promise to visit.  But only to come to the back door, as “this old man is hard of hearing and won’t hear you at the front door.  You can see the portrait of my wife (who had died nine years prior), painted by one of the art teachers.  And pictures from my bike rides…”

“Do you still have the satchel?” I asked, recalling him tooling around with the bag strapped over his shoulder, always wondering about my test grade contained inside.

“I’m sure it’s here somewhere…”

“Well, maybe you can get that out too.”

“Well, yes I will…”

Only Fate could have delivered that phone call to me, as I was re-evaluating the life I was returning to, one less kid at home, one kid almost driving, father gone, mother’s mind slipping away. An 1870’s house to complete reconstruction and writing. More writing.

The tears followed then, thinking about Kaitlyn, who wants to become a teacher someday. How she will influence countless children.  Of teachers certified or not in my life. My first teacher of my mother, teaching me to love books. My father teaching me to drive.  And Mr. Redman, a teacher who, in that moment on the phone, quite possibly gave me more than he ever had in fifth-grade. He gave me the gift of himself.


The letter follows:



November 5, 2007


Dear Mr. Redman,

I had to look a little harder to find you, but now that I have, it was a great surprise to see you at my book-signing. I’m not too fond of these events, being somewhat shy and not quite the extrovert that most people assume.  That may be true for all of us.

I was struck by your condition and felt bad I hadn’t stayed in touch or kept up on all the happenings around Amherst. The hallmark of a great education requires we take our knowledge elsewhere, we apply our passion to other areas in the world.

I had coffee with Tim Golden the next morning following the book-signing.  Tim was always the artistic type, but had a lot of confidence in himself and others.  He was on the Internet one day looking up Tay Sachs disease, which had just stricken his niece and came across a link to my website, bought my book and got in touch – another surprise. If life has offered me anything, it serves up a constant reminder life is bursting with surprises, but we have to put ourselves out there to find them.  Tim has been in Air Force and now serves in the National Guard, he recently returned from a stint in Iraq, though not on the front line – thank god.  What he remembered the most about you may be what we all remembered – kickball.  He mentioned there was a possibility of him failing spelling tests because he was always thinking about the line up for the kickball games.

You became a favorite teacher for so many of us for varied reasons, but I was always intrigued by your renegade ways – the manner in which you dressed was not always in line with what expected our teachers to look like, outback hat and all.  You rode your bike to school and while I did too, none of us really thought it was cool for a teacher to do this.  We just found it different.  And we loved it.  There was a spirit of individualism that you promoted within the classroom, by being an individual yourself.  That beard you were always stroking while thinking while the rest of us were looking for crumbs in it. That’s what fifth-graders did.

You were a potter, a lover of Van Gogh and taught us that sunflowers were not Van Gogh’s only work. There was the map game – I still can’t remember is Bismarck the capital of south or north Dakota, but I’ve never wanted to spend time there anyhow!

Fifth-grade was an challenging year for me.  Our family moved from a small home on Ridgeland Drive near Rt 58 to the present family home on Lincoln Street and while that home afforded us the opportunity for independence and involvement in school, it was still a traumatic move away from our sledding hill at Golden Acres, the acres of woods that we used to tramp through for blueberries and creek where we used to stick our feet on hot days to cool down.

Other classmates may have a better memory of certain aspects in class, like Tim mentioning his argument with you over the Alamo and its roof – does it or doesn’t it?  But what I mostly remember was a passion, a striving.  As if the competition in the classroom was preparing us for the world outside, a little early, but keeping our minds sharp, not letting them wander to the neighbor’s desk or out the window – though it did occasionally.  I can still picture the corner room, up on the second floor, seated at tables of maybe 5 or 6 desks.  I liked sitting by the door, since I could line up early for lunch (look at me, I don’t look like I eat, but I can put it away, and did then too.)

My son now is about the age I was in your classroom.  They have so many chances, so many more than we did, student council, runner’s club, flag football, golf. In those days, fifth grade was mostly about school and boys, the occasional band concert and the all-class camping trip.

The classroom I remember was stuffed full, every inch of the wall covered with maps, Van Gogh, the chalkboard with the Jeopardy. Each morning, I walked into your class feeling the butterflies when I would see the Jeopardy game set up on the black board, or wondering what surprise learning the day might bring.

But mostly, I recall a certain passion that has stuck with me, that I have carried through challenges thick and thin. I hope for days when you can stoke that fire, that there are others who felt the same as I did and this, I wanted you to know.

Sincerely,


Annette Januzzi Wick

On Being a Mother

So often I have written about my own mother, and father too, as I try to depict their last journeys, and my childhood. I am mixing it up in honor of Mother's Day, so my kids will know I write about them too!  One for the girls, one for the boy.

To Daughters I Did Not Birthe

On Mother’s Day

At first, we were polite,

thrown in to the stepfamily ring,

like boxers eyeing rivals.

Later, I cajoled you

to clean up your rooms.

When that failed, I called in

reinforcements. You still

spoke to me in the morn.

I have whooped and hollered

for your accolades,

cringed for you, at the invite

to mother-daughter teas.

I have sighed over the neckline

of dresses worn for prom, boys

you were dating, boys who were friends,

your health, happiness, and your hair.

We have called out names -

none worth repeating -

beneath fiery breaths.

Your pain has been mine,

as my mother slides

towards her immortal state.

We become the best mothers

when our own are gone,

though we still try

to measure up to memory.

Because you already understood,

perhaps its been you

these 2000 days

mothering and tending,

encouraging me

to step from the ring.

5/1/12

The Elegance of the Teenager

Your years have been pressed together -

between peanut butter sandwiches

or crusty glove and ball,

milestones disappearing in the crush.

You gesture for me to order first,

eat enough to wreck my credit,

save salad for dates with a girl.

You are happy on the track

splayed out in the sun,

after a solid 100m run.

“Ask anybody, they see me smiling.”

watching the scene, eyes full of poetry.

Later, we dance, quelled only by

awkwardness, The Piano Man,

and a baffling line dance,

in a gym corralling hormones

and sweat.

Prince drones on,

“Never gonna let the elevator

 break us down, oh no, let’s go

let’s go crazy, punch another floor.”

We stand - my shoulder to your waist -

for this musical jaunt

where the night has captured

all your teenage possibilities.

 3/26/12

Away

You have to lie down
like water grass.

Let the stream,
its cold waters fed by April’s rain,
tickle you, pass over you.

Bend and float
at the urging of the current.

There is a dam of broken sticks
on the other side of the bridge.
White bags litter the course.
You can’t know
you will be stopped by debris,
or burdened by limbs forming
a cross.

You cannot see far downstream –
nor should you look.

But in front of you,
see how water has already carved
your path through rocky mud?
And how plants do not attempt
to grow upstream?
They bow down to the water’s whims
marking your way.

4/18/2012

Making the Beds with God

Making the Beds with God

Doors bang open,
pairs of feet – shoes off in the garage –
run rabid towards
powder room and cookie drawer.

Books are lobbed onto countertops
There is shouting out,
but no one answers,
No one answers the children anyhow.

She is upstairs
creasing the corners
of the bed in the yellow room
folding over Life-saver candy sheets
flat-handed, crisp and precise.

As she stuffs pillows into cases,
she shares a cup of tea
with God.

What should I make for dinner? 
God answers, Meatloaf.
Will it rain tomorrow? Buckets.
What will my youngest grow up to be?

With a snap of the wrist,
she shakes out the bedspread.

Had God changed places
He would have lain down
with countenance covering
a cherry candy image,
exhausted
from questions she is asking,
answers she is seeking.

She is in training to save souls,
including her own.
But not today.

Today, she shares with God
chatting about her day –
phone calls, baking Easter bread,
too many damn tomatoes to can.
Books and torments are still being
tossed around downstairs.

She glances at the mirror,
sees herself, not her imperfections.
Her life has not been by accident,
but by creation –
a making of the bed.

In Reading I Become....

(From a talk given to the Fairfield Women's Club)

* Resources Listed at the End

In Reading I Become....

In the book, An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis argues that 'good reading', involves surrender to the work in hand and a process of entering fully into the opinions of others: 'In reading great literature, ‘ he states,  ‘I become a thousand men and yet remain myself'.

The year was 1997.  My husband Devin had been diagnosed with leukemia.   We were living in the Northwest.  Friends and family began sending books, tapes, CDs, on topics ranging from vegetarianism to golf.  In the solace found in a bookstore, I came across a small book about a young sports writer who returns to visit with his teacher after that teacher is diagnosed with cancer and had progressed to the terminal stage.

My husband and I were engaged in our own battle with leukemia. We deemed our struggle an assured win, and were not intimidated by the reading of this book., thus began recommending the book to friends and family.   They reacted surprised by the fact we would offer something struck so close to home. 

But we didn’t view it that way. We felt the book was speaking for us.  By now, you probably recognize that little tome, as Tuesdays with Morrie, which went on to inspire a movie and millions of supporters.

Through sharing Tuesdays with Morrie, we could offer a glimpse of our present life to others, allowing them to become individuals living in our brave new world of cancer. 

But we also took comfort in that Mitch Albom could represent in words, what we were feeling inside.  The impetus for our reading Tuesdays with Morrie was also derived from another quote about C.S. Lewis’ life, “We read to know we are not alone.”

I have always been a lover of books, from the time my mother would sit and read nursery rhymes from the Family Treasury of Children’s Stories, which sits on my bookshelf today.  I learned from my mother not just how to read, but how to love reading.

I had moved away from that love until my early thirties, when Devin progressed through three years of his disease. In that time, we both did a lot of sitting.  Reading became an escape, an exercise for the mind when the legs had no strength.

The Northwest was known for their bookstores, and I had occasion to pick up a few paperbacks prior to Devin’s treatments.  I randomly selected David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, without knowing why.  Later, a leading bone marrow expert would give me the raised eyebrow for reading this during Devin’s transplant, arguing I could certainly have found a more engaging read than Dickens.  But I underlined this quote:

“It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among such boys, or around any companions of my own age…that I felt as strange as ever I have done in all my life.  I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age, appearance and condition, as one of them, that I half believed it was an imposture to come there as an ordinary little school boy.”

This trove of paperbacks included Katharine Graham’s Personal History.  Katharine Graham lead the Washington Post through the Pentagon papers and Watergate. Her awkwardness as I child, I identified with. Her tenaciousness as a grown woman, navigating the storms of a male world was admirable. She writes of her mother’s guidance in raising she and her siblings, taking them mountain-climbing.

I was immersed in her story at the time Devin was undergoing another round of treatment prior to a transplant.

“The fatigue of the climb was great but it is interesting to learn once more how much further one can go on one’s second wind. I think that is an important lesson for everyone to learn for it should also be applied to one’s mental efforts. Most people go through life without ever discovering the existence of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as second wind. Whether mentally or physically occupied most people give up at the first appearance of exhaustion. Thus they never learn the glory and the exhilaration of genuine effort.”

This next passage, from Love in the Time of Cholera, came to me as Devin was in the final stages, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes, “Contrary to what the Captain and Zenaida supposed, they no longer felt like newlyweds, and even less like belated lovers. It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love.  For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, any time and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.”

Though on the outside, I would have appeared to have nothing in common with any of these character. In these times, I became David Copperfield, Katharine Graham and those of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels.

During Devin’s illness, the added reading, the time to immerse myself in other worlds, lit a new spark.  I began to write, first as a task,  a true past-time, to absorb some of the boredom that bounced off the walls in waiting rooms.  Next, the words became news, an outlet to share, as David Copperfield had, experiences which none of our peers could possibly have known or witnessed, and third, as with Katharine Graham, it fast became a second wind, a way of life.

As I wrote in greater length and frequency, I achieved a depth that could only come through repetition, a flexing of the writing muscle.  In these deeper waters, I experienced a peace that only came by putting words on paper. For had I said them aloud, in our little family of three, a toddler and husband on pain medication, the words would have floated away, but on paper, each sentence carried weight, anchored me.  And I went from being a reader, to a writer, and experiencing writing from the inside out.

I was also realizing when one uncovers a gift, the gift is to be shared.  We had gained many insights through Devin’s cancer and we were adamant they be revealed if not through his life, then through my words.

When my husband lost his battle with cancer, I discovered an organization called Women Writing for a Change, founded 20 years ago, by Mary Pierce Brosmer, a former English teacher, who recognized women often needed a safe, supportive environment in which to write and share their stories. I brought my evolving manuscript to those writing circles, which held my words and confidences.  Six years following Devin’s death, I would publish my memoir, I’ll Be in the Car.

During that time, I did not read much. I did not want to veer from the voice I had exposed. I did not want other writing voices to interfere with mine. I was finally hearing myself speak from the inside, and through that, was embracing life.

Fast forward to present day.  I am in what the media terms the sandwich generation.I call it of the big mac variety or club sandwich, with the extra bread in the middle.   Remarried, raising four young adults, overseeing the care of aging parents, and maintaining focus on my vocation and self-care.

When I was asked to speak here, Pam mentioned the topic of reading and writing and summer diversions. I began pulling books off my shelf and my nightstand. During that effort I rediscovered the three books mentioned earlier.  As I examined that stack, and the recently read pile I was creating, the common threads remained the same. I am drawn to reading books that resemble my life.

For instance, several years ago, I initiated a writing circle at the Alois Alzheimer Center, a seed planted from experience with my mother’s disease.  As that work progressed, my focus on fiction and non-fiction related books on Alzheimer’s remained steady.  Still Alice was written by Lisa Genova. The author is a neuroscientist, and she has written one of the most accurate portrayals of early onset Alzhiemer’s, as well as characterizing family reactions to the disease. I also find the read fascinating, as she is able to translate her scientific knowledge into fictional world.  Another book I enjoyed along the same lines is Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin, told from four viewpoints of daughter, son, husband, mother.  Not only was I drawn in by the mother’s disappearance, but the author’s ability to capture four narrators in this novel.  Other works in the Alzheimer category are Myth of Alzheimer’s by Peter Whitehouse., which offers plenty of statistics on misperceptions of a cure for Alzheimer’s and the ignorance about care, as well as The Forgetting: Alzheimer’s Portrait of an Epidemic, by David Shenk, a straightforward, humanistic look at the disease.

I also work with a non-profit called Starfire, and create writing opportunities for young adults with developmental disabilities to write.  As I immerse myself more into this new landscape, my students find poetry particularly attractive and accessible, esp. helpful is the volume Beauty is a Verb – The new Poetry of Disability.  When I ask students what topic they want to address in writing, sometimes they list dogs or family or sports, but always, they want to write of their disability.

Kenny Fries Excavation:

Tonight, when I take off my shoes:

three toes on each twisted foot.

I touch the rough skin. The holes

where the pins were. The scars.

If I touch them long enough will I find

those who never touched me? Or those

who did? Freak, midget, three-toed

bastard. Words I've always heard.

Disabled, crippled, deformed. Words

I was given.

Recently published books I have read include –

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (tolls).  This I happened to discover through an Amazon’s “if you like reading this, then you will like this too.”

Christmas had been descending upon me, and I found a book where I could escape, to the 1930s boardinghouse, young women beginning to work, to envision a life not in the home. Jazz, coming of age, Manhattan, mysterious love interest.  You will fall in love with Tinker Gray and wonder what ever happened to him.  And too, I am rivted by male authors writing from a woman’s point of view. 

Death comes to Pemberly was written by  P.D. James, a mystery novel writer who is 91.

Her best known hero, the detective Adam Dalgliesh, is a man. When asked what it has been like being, as it were, inside Adam’s head for the past 47 years PD James responded: ‘Well, he is a male version of me. Brainier than me but his emotions are mine. The empathy is mental rather than physical. I never describe Dalgliesh getting up and getting dressed.’ When asked if she was like her hero, unsentimental? She replied, ‘Yes, I’m very unsentimental. Very.’

She wanted to combine her love of Jane Austen, with crime novel interests, and at 91 wrote Death Comes to Pemberly, where the Pride and Prejudice’s character Elizabeth Bennett, who had wed Fitzwilliam Darcy on the large Derbyshire estate, becomes the scene of a murder.

My intrigue at PD James’ age drew me into this novel, and also set me on a path of re-engaging with Jane Austen, perhaps giving her a second look, as I had done with Dickens years before.

Another favorite was American Dervish by Ayad Ahktar.  I have a daughter pursuing Near Middle East & Muslim studies.  And recently, WWFC co-sponsored a play culled from stories of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.

A young Pakinstani American boy is charmed by his aunt, who comes to stay in his family’s household in America. The aunt’s presence is, at first celebrated, but the customs of the old country and gender discrimination bring about many challenges for the family.  It is one of many books being read, as insight into cultures we so rarely appreciate except from the point of terrorism or war.  Here is a quote:

"Hayat, her intelligence has been the curse of her life. When a Muslim woman is too smart, she pays the price for it. And she pays the price not in money, behta, but in abuse."

Finally, I have to give a nod to historical fiction.  I discovered Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon while listening to a podcast about Mallon.  Henry and Clara is a story of the couple who sat in Lincoln’s box at the theatre the night he was assassinated.  We never learned in history class about the collateral damage this event brought on this couple.  You will find Clara a headstrong determined woman of Washington, and in Henry, you find compassion for a man who never knew if he did the right thing that fateful night.

Waiting in the wings. One book that I am itching to read by Jonah Lehrer: Imagine: How Creativity Works. In it, Mr. Lehrer advocates that creativity is not limited to those with a gift, there are certain processes individuals can utilize more effectively to become creative. He also describes blue-colored rooms which foster creativity and proposes that the urban setting is a prescription for creativity and invention due to the “proximity of all those overlapping minds.” As writer, this book has piqued my interest, as well as the fact that I will be moving to Over the Rhine, in a year so, when the home we are reconstructing is complete.  We are moving for the very reason the author states, "the overlapping minds.”

Before closing, I want to offer information for those who might be interested in a jump start of your writing life. At Women Writing for a Change, we believe everyone has a story to write.  The practices of WWFC, including small groups, time divided equally, development of listening skills through tactful feedback, were created to invoke, inspire and improve upon writing, without fear of criticism or embarrassment. 

For the first few classes of WWFC, I was sharing material full of raw emotions over the death of my husband, and guilt in being the one left behind.  Like reading a book where I identified with the characters, each writing circle where I participated, the women identified with me, and likewise, I with their stories.  Together, ordinary women embarked on journeys to write of their extraordinary lives.

I have put flyers on the tables, listing upcoming classes, samplers, mother-daughter workshops.  You can access our website for these listings and others.

I want to end with a poem, by Mary Oliver. Mary Oliver was born in Ohio. Much of her poetry is rooted in nature, in part due to her raising in Ohio.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Thank you to Pam Nothnagel for inviting me here today. Thank you for lunch, for listening. I hope you take the summer, to read other’s words, to put your own words on paper, and take the time to imagine, perhaps in a blue room, who is it you will become in your reading of books, who it is you want to become in the writing of your words?

Fairfield Women’s Luncheon, April, 2012

Books Referenced Today:

1.     David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

2.     A Personal History by Katharine Graham

3.     Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

4.     Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

5.     American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar

6.     Death Comes to Pemberly by P.D. James

7.     Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin

8.     Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon

9.     Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer

10. The Myth of Alzheimer’s by Peter Whitehouse

11. Forgetting by David Shenk

12. Beauty is a Verb – The New Poetry of Disability

13. Swan by Mary Oliver

On My Wish List:

1.     If Walls Could Talk:  A History of the Home by Lucy Worsley

2.     Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye

3.     A Book of One’s Own by Thomas Fallon

4.     Island of Vice by Richard Zacks

5.     Gods without Men by Hari Kunzru

Other Books Recommended:

1.     Tabloid City by Pete Hamill

2.     Leaving Van Gogh by Carol Wallace

3.     American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin

4.     In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

5.     Picking Cotton by Jennifer Thompson Canino

6.     Freedom Writer’s Diary by Erin Gruwell

Other Resources:

1.     Mercantile Library of Cincinnati – Author Series

2.     Public Library of Cincinnati

3.     Book Review New York Times – Podcast

4.     Poetry Foundation

5.     IllBeintheCar.com / ThreeArchPress.Com

6.     TheseWritingShoes.blogspot.com

Somewhere Hearts are Light - Baseball at the Alois

It is time to talk baseball at the Alois Alzheimer Center today.  I wear my Cincinnati Reds gear, as proudly as any Cleveland convert.  It is a concession I make every Spring and Fall - to cheer for the home team.

Mostly, my friends here in the sharing and writing circle, are or were Reds fans.  A few did not grow up here. One used to watch the Toledo Mud Hens, as he was originally from Findlay, Ohio. I want to ask him if he had ever been to Tony Packo’s (Klinger on MASH owned a restaurant there) but I would be pushing his memory over the cliff.

So we open with my interpretation of Casey at the Bat, written in the 1880's.  It is not quite James Earl Jones, but I use a little Kentucky twang picked up after years of living near the border to snicker, “That ain’t my style!”, and the audience delights in the performance. I do too. I am getting lost in the game.

N., always first to raise her hand and offer her story, tells us how her grandfather, a state legislator, used to read and perform the poem to her and her brother.  She was amazed he would make time for her, given how busy he must have been.

F.  just wants to talk about the baseball going “whack” then “zoom”, and he motions like one who knew how to hit it out of the park.

As we continue our give and take moments, K. talks about being left on the sidelines, and she never knew why. Only that she and her brothers were always into “some monkey business when it came to playing baseball”, and they played until the street lamps came on, and even later.

R. begins to share, then holds back. I sense this was a common pattern in her life.  When its time to write, she refuses, while the rest of the group busies themselves with words on paper, or telling us their words so we can transcribe them.

When it comes time to read aloud our stories, we go from ML. to W. to P. and N. Then D.  tells us, “We had to decide what to wear and how much money to take.” And RU., whose mother was the only baseball fan in the house, writes,  “She was always in front of the television. She would move the chairs and wouldn’t pay any attention to us.”

Around the other side we move to hear L., R., F. and D. who was obsessed with winning, and finally back to R. I am fully prepared to skip her, though I do always ask, when she blurts out, “Baseball was my second life.”

What she had heard this day, about stadiums, home runs, hot dogs and listening to games on the radio were a barrage of images that penetrated the bunker of her memory. In that one instance, a hole had opened up, as if someone had pitched a fastball right through her hippocampus.  “Baseball was my second life.”

When she uttered that phrase, it was like we all, circle members, staff and myself, had hit one out of the ballpark. Because from that, she opened up and shared how she didn’t know anything else, other than days sitting around the radio, listening to baseball games.

While R.’s revelations were the highpoint of the morning, there was poignancy in B’s piece, who related what baseball meant to me, and the many legions who still hear the game called on the radio, attend the ballpark, and renew their hopes each Spring.

“My dad and I would talk about the ups and downs of the world’s oldest game,” B wrote, apologizing for her writing, saying it wasn’t deep. But I, and others, objected. The attraction to the game exists for that sole reason – because baseball parallels the ups and downs of the world’s other oldest game – life.

3/27/2012

A Way Station - SWAN Day Revisited

Yesterday, I ran away to here. This building. It’s not much, a singular, non-descript gray building in the middle of Silverton.  The doors have now been painted a Chinese Lantern orange.  Someone pulled the old taxis bushes from the window box and planted a colorful array of pansies which sway gently in the wind or as I whisk by.

Upon entering, I am immediately greeted by old friends.  They are old friends in that we know each other in our souls and through our words, our writing words that is.  Everyone here is a writer, not because they have all published books, but because we believe that every one here is a writer. Everyone outside these doors are writers too.

It is SupoortWomen Artists Now (SWAN) Day. The vast interior of the building is filled with folk music, landscape art, intricate quilts, and laughs about bowling, middle age, white chocolate peppermint bark.  As I settle into a chair and put my purse on the floor, I let my shoulders down too.

I am carrying so much weight these days, not on my frame, not in my purse, but in my heart, my head.  I wanted to step outside all of that and be free for a time.  I was met by hearty renditions of the Andrews’ Sisters, Bei Mir Bistu Shein, To Me you are beautiful, originally sung at the Apollo Theatre, and a stirring tribute to Raison  d‘ Etre’s lead signer’s grandmother, as she imagined the two of them, sipping tea, listening to grandmother’s stories.  I leaned my head against a column and slipped away into this portrait she was painting.

Someone asked if I planned to read later, at the open mic readaround.  I had no copies of any of my work, other than a book published years ago, which languished on a bookshelf for others to take down and ponder.  I didn’t even have my smart phone, where I could have accessed my blog, and read one of many entries about Alzheimer’s, life in the city, or the sunflowers that grew rampant last summer.  I wondered if I had purposely left the phone at home to disconnect from the flurry of calls I had received earlier that day about the sale of my parents’ home.

No, I was hear to listen.  To hold others’ words.  That was no more apparent than when I found myself in conversation with a gentleman who had been one the guests on our podcast show.  His son had committed suicide but his son’s life was now being lifted up in a play.  He asked if I was available attend the reading of the script.  We discussed many facets of the play and life for a period of time, and I found myself realizing how gratifying it can be, to sometimes be the listener of the stories and not the teller.

To sometimes be the holder is equal an escape from ordinary life. If one is the teller, you are in the midst of trying to figure it all out.  But if one is the listener, you are holding the words upon their release, as one might a special gift. In it, you might find delight, sadness, or your own wisdom.

I left the day, with a tune by local artist, Shelley Graf, in my head – an earworm worth keeping around…”I’m amazed that her spirit dances on.”  And really, resilience is all we can ask for in this life, that, and a way station, a place and time to rest, contemplate, and gather strength from the journeys of others.

Women Writing for a Change

SWAN Day, 2012

 3-30-12