Memoirous

Riding home at night from my job at the bike shop the streets emit a slick glow. You see, I’m in Eugene, Oregon where winter is foggy, cold, rain persistent. It has rain almost every day for the last 2 weeks—and rain is in the 15-day extended forecast. I’ve gone from a dry lube for my chain to a superior heavier lubricant. Almost overnight it can rust—as do my knees. I’ve begun to stretch in the morning in order to lubricate my joints, to get moving. Meanwhile, back in Chicago, my friends this winter are dealing with photo credit: Hilde Bialach And   photo credit: Colleen Davick They are battling snowstorm after snowstorm, 15 inches at a time and negative 15 degrees. So I ride the wet street, shining beneath street lights, my tires making sizzling sounds on the pavement, car headlights reflected like a thousand fractured fireflies.

Nomadland Director, Chloé Zhao For viewers of a certain age, this film will scare the bejezus out of you. Nomadland highlights the tenuous thread keeping older Americans from completely unraveling. Starting with the Great Recession of 2009 up to today when many of those same people decided to storm the American capital, there is a segment of society that feels forgotten and marginalized. Unheard. Desperate. The character of focus in the film, Fern, is laid off from her job in a gypsum sheetrock factory in Empire, Nevada, a place she remembers as being on the fringe of the desert, where her house looked out onto . . . nothing. Desert. She loved it. And, she loved her husband. She is grieving so much. A facet of most everyone on her same journey, a slew of losses that they are trying to reconcile or run from. Fern decides, or else fate has decided for her, to convert an econo-van into a tiny house and sets out to make a living as an itinerate worker. She works the seasonal shift at...

This week I’m taking the long view. Those who know me, know I can be impatient. It’s why I have to gobble my food so quickly, drink in gulps. Attack my bike trips as if I am expecting to finish by the end of the week. Imagine my disappointment when I did not complete riding across Iowa onschedule !  There is nothing I love more than a puzzle, but then I go and ruin it by obsessing, working endless hours to get it done—whereupon I immediately break it apart and box it up. Done! So on this past Presidents' Day (I know! Who cares, right?!) I had an interesting conversation at work where we discussed some of the worst presidents and how in comparison we’ve had to revise some of our opinions. Such as George W. Bush was the worst president ever. That is until #45. I said Trump made Nixon in retrospect not to be so bad. In comparison that fiddley 17-year war Bush started doesn’t seem like such a big deal. In the short-term. But history takes the long view and when it is written and ...

I last wrote about riding home in Eugene in the darkness—but I also have to mention Peeper Pond. Still not sure what this is all about. Winters here are rainy, barely dipping below freezing and sometimes getting up into the low 50s during the day. In the park next to Amazon Creek bikeway behind the community swimming pool there is a low area of standing water. I’ll pass it in daylight and see a blanket of steam rising off the heated pool and hear voices from the basketball court. There are always walkers and runners, folks walking dogs. But, coming home at night I am like a slalom skier poling around gates, turning here and there on the path. When I come upon Peeper Pond. I can hear it as I approach, a high-pitched buzz as if electrical lines have come down and snaked across the path. A sizzle and hiss, the decibels in a range that would drive a person berserk and which completely throws me as I round a dark corner. What is this?! I’ve come to think it is peepers, neophyte frogs,...

I used to think my measly 100 lux bike headlight was sufficient. While in Chicago there were always street lights—even lining the Lakefront Trail. Sure there were pockets, curves where a raccoon might accost me, but for the most part it was lit. The sky above Chicago because of light pollution is never without a simmering glow. In Eugene, when I leave my daughter’s house after visiting her and the baby, I have to head downhill (steep) in darkness with only the advantage of a few porch lights. Black pavement under my wheels, a blank landscape around me until my headlight picks out the backhoe planted at the side of the road by the utility company for the continuous pipe project underway on Donald Street. I quickly steer around it and the bike-eating holes. I careen down for what seems like a mile, the wind making my eyes water, usually no traffic, just me and darkness cut by a small headlight. Once past the Safeway corner I head into more darkness and continue downhill. I shortcut t...

My daughter lives in Eugene in what is called the Southern Hills neighborhood. And it is hilly. By the time I arrive on my bicycle I am winded and gasping and trying not to look like an old lady. The four days a week I work at the bike shop I head south, Spencer Butte rising in the distance, often shrouded in rain, fog, low clouds. This is how I know I’m not in Chicago, there are hills. Actual hills, not that mount trashmore or Cricket Hill as some call it, a sledding mound created after the Great Fire and likely containing debris from sledging the harbor. So much of Chicago’s shoreline has been contoured and sculpted that it is difficult to imagine Native Americans, skunk grass, and dug-out canoes. I’m sure it was a mosquito-filled swamp next to Lake Michigan. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciated being able to ride my bike or run next to a great body of water and at times feel its tumult as a storm approached, but with the paved parking and hundreds of visitors and dogs lining the pa...

Why? I wake up when it is still dark Stars outside my window Black square of sky Cold dawn To write these few lines Shout out to the universe A distant simmering on the horizon It is this interlude where I feel the most lost Powerless and waiting I can’t change my life, my fate, the coming day A halo, lightening slowly, anxiety, believing That scary place where I’m not sure what I’m capable of I haven’t disappeared, yet Dusky tree branch-outlined unknown The future is too hard to see What?

There are these half-second yet intense random moments when suddenly I remember. I had one at the bike shop I work at the other day. A mechanic was sorting out a box of weird collected stuff and brought me string wound around a card. “You want this?” It made me think of my daughter. We were so poor when she was growing up. I used to scavenge the loose toy bin at the front of the thrift store for ten cent items to add to her “People” menagerie. These consisted of McDonald’s Happy Meal cast-offs, figures from movie promotions, and other odd pieces. It was impossible to gather a cast to make a whole, for example we had Esmeralda and her goat but no Quasimodo. The Hamburglar but no Ronald. Strays from discontinued campaigns. Before it was a thing, we had a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-anamorphic family of people. It was the little things that made her happy: cheesy Goldfish crackers, stickers, a ball of string. We had a sticker book and plastered the pages, Disney characters sur...

Since becoming a grandma I’m still trying to figure out what it means. He’s still pretty small and doesn’t do much. The first week or two while I visited his eyes were never open. My most basic interaction is giving him a bottle while my daughter showers or cooks dinner. We’re working on a schedule—meaning we’re thinking about how that might look. At this point he dictates. Meaning my daughter doesn’t get a lot of sleep. I stopped at the grocery on the way up the hill on my bike to get a few things for dinner. I saw Goldfish crackers were on sale. These were the go-to snack when she was little. I remembered her little head with a blonde top-knot bobbing up and down the hallway, and her dropping a trail of Goldfish crackers like breadcrumbs always to find her way back home. Once at the house and catching my breath after the ride, I pulled the Goldfish out of my bike bag. There was an audible gasp. I needed these! she exclaimed. I can’t tell you exactly what it feels like to be ...

AMC 5.0 out of 5 stars   A good book for writers Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2015 This is a lovely and helpful book. Sometimes just the right quote is all it takes to remind me that we writers are in this together--that it's hard for all of us, but that a writing life is a considered life and a terrific life. I came across a number of quotes in this book that I had never read before, almost all of them provocative and useful. I recommend this book to other writers to dip in and out of, for that little bit of inspiration and affirmation whenever you need it.

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Wintry Morning   The sun breaking through frost fog First she was in one place—then another. Mail, forwarded. First pink hue, dark blue—then yolk orange. A strumming hum breaks forth, new dawn. Suspense waits. With cold, ringless fingers she First turns on the kettle—then basks. At home at   last.

  So to start this new year . . . 2021.   I applied for a grant from the City of Chicago, deadline Dec. 1—but, first, in order to get the money I needed a project, which propelled me into researching possibilities. Since there was/is a pandemic, I couldn’t apply for residencies or conferences. As a mid-level (at best) writer/author I didn’t want to do seminars, especially of basics. I’ve been a part of OCWW, SCBWI for the past ten to fifteen years—and wanted to go beyond what those organizations offered. The grant was specific: monies couldn’t go to a graduate program. As a Chicago resident I’ve been aware of and actually visited Story Studio  (coincidentally up the street from where I lived). Lived. I was also contemplating some left turns. Story Studio Novel-in-a-Year class for YA/MG with James Klise  seemed perfect. The class was selective; I had to apply at once and still not know if I made it in by the deadline for the grant. Well, I got into the cla...