Memoirous

Here is a Throwback to a post from 2013. I've been thinking of Suicide Hill lately--all the snow and cold this season. It was a place I'd go to on "Snow Days." ** I was reminded in a recent conversation about a sledding hill I always went to growing up near Kettering, Ohio. It was famously named Suicide Hill. This was a real sled eater. Approaching the climb there were barrel fires fed by broken wooden sleds sacrificed to Suicide Hill. The hill was deceptive. Trees lined the descent so that any veering brought the sledder into contact with them. As a kid I was always bailing, letting gravity take the sled into it’s gentle good night, the tight fist of death. I cannot count how many sleds my brothers, sister, and I ruined. The back of Suicide Hill was just as dangerous as the front—though perhaps not as many trees. A ride this direction was longer and not as fast, but full of moguls or bumps that sent me flying. The community golf course where the hill was located was ...

A Personal Calling, or Vocation Vocation—the difference between work and putting your passions into action. Yes, I labored, getting up early before the sun and sometimes working an overnight shift at the community’s magazine Cornerstone. Volunteering outside my other volunteer hours. You see, the work was not compensated monetarily. We worked together for the benefit of others and basically for room and board. It is a complicated kind of communism where ideology is supreme and we corporately strived to see that the greater whole grew, got better. It is a concept almost entirely archaic. No one does this except maybe a recent grad taking a gap year—except this was no grand tour or backpacker’s dream trip; we wanted to share Christ’s love in action by providing meals, housing, relationship. Ourselves. Outside of the practical work of feeding the community (sammies, kitchen crew) I did visitations to the elderly, in the form of light housework and wellness checks, taking them to the docto...

Finding Community, Finding Home, part 2 Community in Chicago at Jesus People USA did not immediately feel like home and it took a while for me to think that they “got” who I was. There were a lot of misunderstandings along the way. One of my first jobs was making sammies. Our work crews that went out during the day (comprised entirely of men) required packed lunches. I was on a crew that made sandwiches, slapping peanut butter and jelly between two pieces of bread. Not the most nutritious lunch for those doing hard manual work all day outside, but it’s what we had. The addition of chips and homemade cookies if you were lucky. A piece of fresh fruit was considered a luxury. I then got moved onto a kitchen crew where we literally worked ALL DAY, from 4 a.m. getting breakfast out first for the workers, then for moms and kids going to school. If you were late, then nothing. The day finished around 7 pm after cleaning up. At first none of these jobs were me; I could identify with hardly any...

Finding Community, Finding Home, part1 It took a while. I finished high school. I started at Wright State University. I dropped out of Wright State. I went to Maranatha Bible Institute associated with my church. Then there was a church split and I was excommunicated. Friends were told to mark, admonish, and avoid me—a sermon preached from the pulpit, as laid out 2 Timothy chapters 2 and 3, Scriptures taken out of context and perverted for power over others. I suffered a breakdown. I went back to Wright State while at the same time moving out of my parent’s house. I was struggling for clarity. I dropped out of Wright State—again—and traveled out West, getting a seasonal job at Yellowstone National Park. I extended my work contract, as I had no future plans. Late 1979/early 1980 found me in Athens, Ohio enrolled at Ohio University. I chose this school as I wanted to be close to a very solid friend, someone who would call me out and also encourage me: Keith Wasserman, who would go o...

Who Am I? Questions of identity outside of community The women of Women Talking were born and raised in their colony. Every part of their life was regulated by their faith. How they ate, related to others, and their eternal soul. That was not my experience. I chose to join my community as a young person right out of college. Even as a child I felt called by God. Call it prayer or talking to the sun, I held conversations in my head, sometimes audible, asking for help, guidance, begging for love, mercy. I had a chaotic childhood where I constantly wondered about my place in the family. It’s hard to reduce into words how I felt, much like an outsider. I do not believe anyone in my family “got” me. I was certainly lonely. I yearned for acceptance and was open to fairies, to a make-believe. I imagined a world on the underside of the real one that was perhaps more real than the one we can see and hear, touch, taste, and feel. That there was something MORE to this life. Thus, even as a yo...

As I mentioned in my last post, Peter Orner has a shtick. He’ll maybe start with a memory, an anecdote and then weave in family details that then leads to a wider context, perhaps a contemporary perspective. He’ll also tie in a book citation, a detail from something he once read—usually an author that has flown under the radar and deserves to be read or revisited. For example—every time I pass a rock, the kind left behind as glacial debris, moraine, of which there are many such random big rocks here in the Great Lakes region (I grew up in Ohio) I always remember 1) I live in a post-glacial region, we are formed by our environment, remnants left behind litter our past 2) my sister falling and chipping a tooth on our neighbor’s rock on Princewood Avenue in Kettering. I don’t know how old she was? Nine, ten, eleven but this incident followed her. Not only did the initial fall leave her with a jagged tooth (it was a permanent one, something that as a kid I always wondered about?? perma...

O Holy Night is a well-known Christmas carol composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to the French poem "Minuit, chrétiens" (Midnight, Christians). I remember it as the finale to the Christmas Eve program at the Presbyterian church we attended in Kettering. It can be a long night until the next morning to hold off on opening presents. At least the car ride and time at church filled those tense, anxious hours. O Holy Night seems to be the perfect vehicle for a soloist, and, indeed, the woman who sang it annually was a trained professional, the daughter of one of the congregants, who came down from New York City. I remember one snowy Christmas in particular when there was speculation whether she would make it in time. Yet, always, in the end she rose up from the robed choir to take her place at the podium. The lights in the church were dimmed, lit mainly by the Advent candles, all of them now burning. The coughing and fidgeting ceased—in expectation. Or perhaps, we were all t...

Stories of a Family Christmas, 1963 1) I loved these pajamas! I wore them until the pants became shorts. I kept the cap, for a favorite stuffed animal. This was the house on Hackney Street in Kettering; I must be about 4, almost 5. Nancy is 6. The metal kitchen set was a shared toy, though I might have appreciated it more. Eventually it got moved to a backyard playhouse where it rusted and one day I opened up the oven door to discover a nest of spiders. After that I never touched the kitchen set. 2) A rare instance of Nancy and I playing together—though to be exact it might be more parallel play. Growing up we were nothing alike. Never one to fall into gender prescribed roles, she was more a tomboy, at home on a basketball court rather than in a kitchen. My sister was a mystery to me. I think today she might be referred to as on the spectrum. Someone with sensory issues. She could not abide clothes with tags on them; they had to be removed. Clothes in general made he...

Holiday @ Home Parade It’s that time of year—back to school—when I recall the Holiday @ Home Parade in Kettering, Ohio. Here is a flashback post: from an earlier post:  http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/search?q=holiday+at+home Holiday at Home Parade Labor Day weekend. School was right around the corner. Which meant autumn was coming, falling leaves, and change. But things would never be different. Freshman year I was a nerd. As a sophomore I was a more experienced nerd. Junior year I entered school thinking halfway done, only 2 more years of being an ostracized nerd. Finally as a senior, I knew it was my last year. I'd never be popular but forever a nerd. But at least a nerd on her way out. The only good thing about Labor Day weekend was the Holiday at Home Parade. I looked forward to getting there early and finding a seat along the curb. Friends of my parents lived close to the parade route, so I rode up to their house and parked my bike in their garage. The Centervil...

Flash Memories: I was a childhood insomniac. Sometimes in the middle of the night, the quietest hour right before dawn, I’d slip out of my bed and drop out the window to the spongy dew-grass—and under the wan light of the moon I’d twirl, my night dress lifting up like a gypsy dancer. Later I’d sneak back inside, the dog lifting his head monetarily before closing his eyes, and return to my bed. what a strange child I was

Flash Memories: Behind our house was a woods. More like undeveloped land. I remember trekking through drifts of snow with my brothers and sister to go ice skating on a pond. It was big enough to support a pick-up game of hockey and for the beginner such as myself to make circles. Once (or maybe more than that, but at least once as far as I recall) my sister fell in and kids made a chain, the last person, possibly my brother, on his stomach, to fish her out. She walked home with us soaking wet. A few times my mother drove us and we were able to put on our skates in the warmth of the car. She waited for us to finish with thermoses of hot chocolate. --If not, the way home felt long and shivering cold in the grey twilight.

Labor Day weekend. School was right around the corner. Which meant autumn was coming, falling leaves, and change. But things would never be different. Freshman year I was a nerd. As a sophomore I was a more experienced nerd. Junior year I entered school thinking halfway done, only 2 more years of being an ostracized nerd. Finally as a senior, I knew it was my last year. I'd never be popular but forever a nerd. But at least a nerd on her way out. The only good thing about Labor Day weekend was the Holiday at Home Parade. I looked forward to getting there early and finding a seat along the curb. Friends of my parents lived close to the parade route, so I rode up to their house and parked my bike in their garage. The Centerville Elks marching band and Coed Drill team would be in the parade along with both Fairmont high schools, East and West. Schools from as far as West Carrollton and even ones from Dayton, the big city, might show up. There were the floats and people I had no...

Already this winter we’ve had a couple of snows with more predicted for this weekend. Yup. A White Christmas!! I was reminded in a recent conversation about a sledding hill I always went to growing up near Kettering, Ohio. It was famously named Suicide Hill. This was a real sled eater. Approaching the climb there were barrel fires fed by broken wooden sleds sacrificed to Suicide Hill. The hill was deceptive. Trees lined the descent so that any veering brought the sledder into contact with them. As a kid I was always bailing, letting gravity take the sled into it’s gentle good night, the tight fist of death. I cannot count how many sleds my brothers, sister, and I ruined. The back of Suicide Hill was just as dangerous as the front—though perhaps not as many trees. A ride this direction was longer and not as fast, but full of moguls or bumps that sent me flying. The community golf course where the hill was located was the product of glacial moraines: imagine icy fingers...