The Wisdom Available at a Poetry Reading

/4 Comments/in /by

I’ll be reading poetry tonight in Wallingford — just on the open mike, J. I. Kleinberg is the featured reader — and you may as well come along. (Follow this link to learn more: http://easyspeakseattle.com/welcome-2/previous-featured-artists/j-i-kleinberg/)

I assume there will be some tributes to northwest poet Carolyn Kizer, who died last week at the age of 89. Several years ago, after a reading, I stood in line until about 10:00 at night to get my copy of her collected works signed. When I reached her, I blurted out, “I have little kids–I shouldn’t be out this late–my husband is going to be so mad!”

She looked up at me and her eyes widened, then she said, “Good!”

From the New York Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/arts/artsspecial/carolyn-kizer-pulitzer-winning-poet-dies-at-89.html

Fallen

/8 Comments/in , , /by

I think it was my friend Carla who told me that the opposite of Lent, or Lenten, that 40 days preceding Easter, is

Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels

Fallen. (I think this was fall of 2011, when I blogged for 40 days in a row.) My mother, after sleeping pretty much steadily for two days this week, was evaluated by paramedics on Thursday morning and transported to St. Anthony’s hospital in Gig Harbor.

Mom’s severe UTI (urinary tract infection), even after she was rehydrated and awake, and more or less alert, left her more confused than usual. Yesterday (Friday) I felt like Alice after the fall down the rabbit hole. It wasn’t that nothing made sense, it was just an…alternate sense. She wasn’t in the hospital, I was. When the nurse asked her name, she said “Bethany.” I was her sister, then I was my sister. I told her, I’m not the redhead, that’s Sharyl. And she said, Since when? She told a nurse that I’ve been combing my own hair for quite a while. I finally figured out that she thought I was my niece, Misti, who used to cut and perm Mom’s hair. When I tried to straighten her out, she said, Misti is a little girl! She can’t cut my hair!

Well, this went on…all day. I read aloud from our current Agatha Christie novel. I went to the cafeteria for my lunch and then I went to my car and napped for an hour. Later I coaxed her into watching some TV with me. (At the end of an episode of How I Met Your Mother, she turned to me and said, in perfect wonderment, “So he turned into a cat?” It must be pretty amazing to live in my mother’s head.)

Toward the end of the day she decided that she would move back into the farmhouse. She wanted me to call my nephew and tell him he would have to move out. At least we were in the present day (until she asked where my father was living!). I helped her with dinner, and then I left. I got turned around on highway 16 and ended up taking the ferry, even though Gig Harbor is pretty close to I-5. I began to think of how it isn’t just my mother — we ALL get turned around. I see a shadow from the corner of my eye and I disregard it, or I look more closely to see that of course it is just a shadow; my mother thinks there’s a man standing in the corner. I think about Mom’s sisters, visiting her on her birthday; Mom thinks of her sister Evelyn and then she tells me what Evelyn is telling her. I notice that the woman who brings mom’s dinner has gray hair and looks like a grandmother, and Mom asks me, Was that Mother? Did she cook this food? (And maybe that was why Mom ate better last night than I’ve seen her eat in a long time.)

I wish my Dad were still alive. I wish they were still living on the farm and I could visit and have them take care of me. But I know that isn’t reality, so I don’t say it out loud. Mom says it.

But maybe that’s a little bit what I do, after all. Because what is a writer but someone who gets to entertain every fantasy, every fancy that comes into her head? Or at least select fantasies and fancies. I get to share them with you, here, and I get to take out my manuscript and, well, not so much make stuff up, as be with the stuff that makes me up.

 

Happy Birthday, Mom!

/3 Comments/in , , , /by

1955My mother will be 82 years old tomorrow; I’m going to visit overnight, and three of her sisters and a niece will be meeting me and my sister in Allyn, at Mom’s new home, to have lunch–and cake!

Here is a picture of Beverly with some of her sisters, a sister-in-law, and a niece, and five of their young children. My mom is the young woman in the middle, looking right at the camera. In this picture, she is pregnant with me.

With my mother now in care, I’ve been thinking about my grandmother’s illness toward the end of her life, when she was still being cared for at home, and of this poem (originally published in Calyx, a Journal of Art and Literature for Women).

*

To Carry On

My grandmother’s name was Arada–
In another language, “fertile field.”
I am the second child of her eleventh
And grew up next door

On the old creek road. When Granma
Was old, she took six pills a day,
Thought she saw babies
On the chair, on the pillow, on the floor

Beside her bed. “Careful,” she said,
“Don’t sit on the baby.”
Her daughters cared
By turns, departing after

Like moons into the dark of planets.
From the threshold once
I heard her call, “Don’t forget me,”
But I had already turned into the hall,CAM00421

To a time before names were spoken.
My aunts moved aside invisible bundles,
Clucked their tongues
And counted pills. “She’s never been sick

Except to have babies.” They smoothed
A blue blanket under her chin,
Smoothed back her black hair.
When I dream of my grandmother, my dream

Is a word from a wordless deep,
A shaft of light. She is tiny
And wrinkled. I wrap her in my arms.
I bear her up the stair.

What I’ve Been Reading…

/4 Comments/in /by

I have been reading two books that “talk” to each other. Each of the authors is learned in his or her field, witty and charming, a good storyteller. Sometimes, when I’m quiet and listen carefully enough, they break through the walls of the resistance I’ve been feeling lately (about my own writing, about my mother’s journey) and I learn something that I can’t quite pin on either author. It’s something that emerges from the conversation.

The books are THE POWER OF DREAMS by Jeffie Pike and OUR GREATEST GIFT by Henri Nouwen. Subtitles: How an American Quarter Horse Impacted the Life of an Aspiring Grand Prix Dressage Rider, and A Meditation on Dying and Caring. Both books are quite short and both are full of wisdom. Other than that, most readers, I think, would not see that they share much in common. Nouwen is a well-known writer and spiritual philosopher, widely published. Pike is an accountant, blogger, and horse enthusiast who lives in northwest Washington State. She is also the daughter of a friend of mine.

One of the things the books are saying has to do with how our passions define us. Nouwen’s fascination with the soul and the soul’s journey drew him into caring for the sick and dying.Pike begins her narrative with this revelation: “I’ve loved horses my entire life. I think it must be something that you’re born with. I remember very clearly sitting in an ice cream shop when I was 6 years old and for some reason a very strong thought popped into my head—you love horses. Ever since that time, my life has revolved around them.”

These books have much to say about how our relationships define us. Pike is writing about an American Quarterhorse named Justine; her subtitle gives away that this little mare defied classifications and competed with bigger, more elegant horses , but—perhaps more important—Justine taught the author how to, well, relax and enjoy the ride. Nouwen begins his book with a personal story about a friend with Down’s Syndrome, Maurice Gould (Moe), who, as he aged, developed Alzheimer’s. Justine taught her owner how to live; Moe taught his friend Henri how to die. But they turn out to be the same thing.

Jeffie Pike was obsessed with the German Warmbloods who she typically competed with in dressage. She had enjoyed Justine, who came to her by a happy accident, and when she decided she didn’t have enough room or time in her life for her, went to considerable trouble to find her a new home. When she learned that Justine wasn’t valued by her new owner, Pike went to great lengths, again, to get her back, overcoming financial and geographical difficulties. “How much sense did it make?” she asks more than once. What made sense was that she loved Justine and cared for her deeply, and, as it turned out, that was enough.

Nouwen teaches the same lesson on the human plane: love is always enough. We are not valuable because we are a certain height, or have eyes of a particular color. We are not valuable because we graduated from a certain Ivy League institution, or because of anything we, personally, do or can do. We’re valuable because we are beloved children of God.

One of the features I loved about THE POWER OF DREAMS are the chapter epigraphs, which Pike draws from Temple Grandin, Robert Greene, basketball coach John Wooden, and Star Trek. Again, I found numerous intersections to Nouwen’s insights. “It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life” (Captain Picard to Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Peak Performance”). As Nouwen might put it: “The mystery of life is that we discover this human togetherness not when we are powerful and strong, but when we are vulnerable and weak.”

Late in her book, Pike offers a quote that I, on coming across it, immediately wrote down in my journal: “Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live” (Robert Greene, The Fiftieth Law). While reading both of these books I thought, often, of the prodigal son; I thought, too, of his older brother who doesn’t understand why their father welcomes the errant son home. (I am still thinking about this.)

THE POWER OF DREAMS and OUR GREATEST GIFT also reminded me of something I’ve read about the bumblebee, that, aerodynamically speaking, it should not be able to fly. But no one has ever told the bumblebee this, so it flies.