Memoirous

We sort of built up the idea. The box arrived and sat in a corner until time to assemble. New sheets and pillowcases were ordered. The crib was taken upstairs for the baby. Would this next level be accepted or rejected? Would he miss the security of what he was used to or would the new bed be received as a sign of being a big boy? With all the changes of a new baby would Jack feel he was being replaced or “losing” parts of himself? Not at all. He loves the new dino sheets and the independence that comes with being a big boy. At night he runs to settle into bed while we read stories. Before turning off the light we turn on a turtle light projector that splays stars on the ceiling and put a card in his Yoto player, with bedtime stories. Thankfully he falls right to sleep. Mainly because he is growing out of the afternoon nap. We’ll still put him down after lunch with high hopes. We’ll do the whole routine and close the shades and turn off the light. On the monitor we can see him ...

For the longest time Jack was in a “resting” period before active with language. We rarely employee baby talk—with the exceptions of owie for a cut or scrape and coldie, something I picked up from living in community in Chicago. We always said it was coldie, maybe to soften the winter blasts, the wind blowing off the lake that turned a summer day into parka weather. Coldie didn’t sound as bad. At library toddler storytime there were the children that sat in their caregiver’s laps, quietly listening, while Jack ran around in the background. Or the little girls with complete vocabularies interacting with the story. I doubted Jack recognized there was a story let alone that any of us existed. He was the center of his own orbit, interrupted by having to put on shoes, time to eat, etc. It was my Swiss friend Monica, a professional speech pathologist working with special needs non-verbal children, who used the word resting when I referred to Jack not really speaking. I knew he had a lex...

This morning I was awakened not by my alarm but by a train whistle. I lay there confused—Why was there a train inside my room? Where I live in Michigan, in Okemos, right outside of Lansing, I am bounded by train lines. A very active line parallels the library and on the way to work is another line heading to Canada, which Amtrak also uses. Both lines access the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway for shipping. It seemed an unseemly loud train whistle awakening me, pulling me out of sleep. After being in Chicago for over 35 years, there are times when I wake up and wonder where am I? That hazy middle place between dream and day. I could be anywhere, except in reality. I’ve sometimes been on a bike trip, traveling an open road, or back in my childhood home on Princeton Ave. in Kettering, or in the dining room back in my Chicago community. In Chicago there were different sounds that accompanied going to bed and waking up. Gunshots, for example. Because I lived between a fire sta...

Hello, kids! How is it that for months you lay dormant, scrubby, blah—and then, open? I saw activity about a month ago in bleak January when it was cold but snowless, a little snow, always cold: There were brimming buds. Of hope, I thought. This is new, my heart said. Ah! There is only so much I can do to beat back the blanket of depression that falls on me in weak light, dark mornings, early evenings, a day that never ripens but stays a leaden gray. I light candles, turn on my grow lights over the spider plant, eat comforting hot oatmeal, get a Netflix subscription. I plan a garden and reread my blog where I ride my bicycle . . . everywhere. For example, last year at this time I was dreaming about my upcoming  Rhine River trip .  Five hard little buds formed at the end of what appeared to be a dead stem. (I never know whether to trim them back or tack them up.) I did a bit of research. Orchids like cold nights and warmish days; they love sunlight but not direct light. So ...

I’d like to remind readers, both of you, about my seminar at Calvin University (Grand Rapids) coming up in April. If the schedule for the Festival of Faith and Writing wasn’t already jam-packed, attendees have the option to sign up for Lunch Circles where they pay for lunch and sit with others and discuss their writing in a casual, relaxed environment. It’s a nice way to 1. Have a lunch plan and not have to worry about what to eat or how to source it on the busy campus 2. Network with a group of others who have an interest in writing and literature, and finally 3. Not be the kid holding a lunch tray wondering where to sit or with whom. Festival Lunch Circles solves a number of “problems.” My seminar—I use that word because it will be a discussion—revolves around Sister Corita and her unique way of viewing the world and helping her students to see things from another perspective. We can all get bogged down in editing something over and over and not seeing the meat through the sauce. ...

I just read a great piece by the wonderful Annie Lamott in the Washington Post about aging and acceptance. About resting in the idea that most things will work themselves out, I’m hoping that spring will make up its mind. Okay, maybe the problem is winter, not spring’s fault. The neck-snapping whiplash of the seasons is killing me. Yesterday me and my son-in-law were sitting out on the deck with hot tea, the baby snoozing in a stroller while Jack combed the backyard for “worms”; we were basking in sunshine and warmth (while still wearing knit hats and hoodies). Nevertheless, it felt great. I cast a glance at the snow shovel and thought, I’m gonna have to put that away. Right now, this morning, ten hours later, it is snowing an inch an hour. Big fluffy flakes coming down. I’m thinking of Lamott’s piece and wishing I were retired, a famous writer, not having to ride my bike into work in 30 minutes. What’s up with this weather? Finally, thinking, There’s nothing I can do about this...

I left off my last post in the Bebelplatz in Berlin, atop the glass covering the Empty Library below. The swirling colored lights bouncing off the buildings added to the hallucinogenic feel to being there. I wasn’t quite sure where I was. Yet, watching the movie Origin , I recognized the location and déjà vu—personally and historically—washed over me. It’s happening again. Book banning. Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste , upon which Origin is based rests on the premise that the othering of Jews in early 20 th -century Germany and how we treat people of color here in the States informed each other, The writing and examples in the book are irrefutable. The end of the film goes back to an interview Wilkerson did with a subject who as a young boy, white, growing up in what is presumed a southern town, though I guess it could have been Illinois, when his Little League team wins a championship and is rewarded with a day at a town pool. The whole team goes, even the star player who score...

I remember as a little kid waking up on Valentine’s Day and coming downstairs to find a little plastic cup, pink and red, filled with candy hearts, heart-shaped redhots and a package of Reese cups beside my breakfast plate. My Mom did that every year on up through high school. I need to Google those cups—do they make them anymore, is it possible to source them from Marketplace, a vintage store?? Or do they exist only in my memory? Anyway, this memory now stands in contrast to the bitterness of my parents writing me out of their will, dismissing me from their lives and legacy. I’m not sure how to feel about this memory. For Mom there was this attention to detail, almost a slavish exertion to celebrate the holidays—even Sweetest Day, which I’ve never heard of outside of Mom—again giving redhots. She kept the home spotless, fixed terrific meals, made cake and cookies from scratch. While, on the other hand, the “loving” part, the emotional side of the relationship was difficult for her...

I went to see the fictionmentary: Origin written and directed by Ava DuVernay based upon Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: Origins of our Discontents . It takes a particular skill to adapt nonfiction to the screen; you’re actually telling a couple stories at once and most or all of it has to be TRUE. On a personal note: I couldn’t stop crying through the entire viewing. Am I highly emotional? Maybe, but I’m the kind of person you want in the middle of a disaster because I tend to keep my head without panicking. But once you start intuiting a lynching—I’m gone, and the movie opens with the murder of Trayvon Martin, the young man/teenager who was killed merely for walking home in the rain on a dark night wearing a hoodie. You know the end of this story before it even begins, and you get a sick thud in your belly just watching the Skittles slide across the convenient store counter. It’s all going to go so bad. It is a complicated story to tell, weaving the history of black oppression in...

One other memory, moment of transcendence—though I didn’t have the language to call it that—occurs to me. A time of mystery and innocence—and genuine enthrallment with the unseen, the unknowable, with the Holy. I was maybe four or five years old. At the Methodist church we attended in Kettering there was a spaghetti supper fundraiser. The whole family went. Afterwards in one of the side rooms was a craft sale. I begged my mother to buy me a bookmarker made out of felt shaped like a mitten that clipped onto the page. I kept that trinket on up through high school in a treasure box. Anyway, the fundraiser was a perfect time to explore the church outside of regular Sunday-service. Remarkably, it was just a regular building now empty of people, the pastor in his robes, the choir, the booming organ (no worship band with its fake rock and roll hipsters). I wandered into the sanctuary, lights out, dimmed, street lamps radiating in through the stained glass windows. There was a holy hush, the...

Lately I’ve been exploring transcendent moments. I’ve tried to let go of the strictures of dance, override the bodily chemical reaction of fear, the memory of shame that surrounds the times I’ve allowed myself to move and react with a whole heart to a spiritual impulse. But it’s hard. Since my divorce I knew if I wanted to travel, I’d have to go alone. It’s okay, I almost prefer it, then I don’t have to worry about if someone else is hungry, overtired, their feelings. I only have to worry about me—and getting lost. When I traveled this past fall, I’d already overcome many anxieties that come from traveling solo—with a bike. I managed to get me and my bike on the train to Berlin despite the fact that it seemed I had no real seat assignment, despite a fellow passenger telling me in English that I must have a valid ticket to ride. Thankfully, when the person coming through the cars asking for papers scanned what I produced from my backpack, all was settled. Then at the Berlin station, h...

After reading Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, I’ve been contemplating moments of transcendence I’ve experienced. Many of these occurred while on my bike—or maybe it was simply being in the zone, a state of mind achieved by athletes, a process of chemicals in the body allowing the brain to detach, rest, while being physically active. I’ve also been in a zone while writing—able to get down pages and pages that seem like true art, until I reread them, mortified that nothing makes sense. Leaving me questioning the validity of these moments of transcendence. Are they actually delusions? Mini psychotic breaks? A vacating of my body and “normal” personality to adopt a persona, a person who takes risks and enjoys making a spectacle of herself. For instance, dancing. I’m oblivious to rhythm; I clap on the off-beat. Four/four time means nothing to me. It’s as if the gene for dance is missing from my DNA. Yet, I longed to move to music. In not too subtle ways I’ve been told I lack what ...