Happy Places

My friend Tonya put a basketful of swiss chard in the washing machine to disastrous consequences. She swears the rinse cycle works splendidly with spinach. Apparently chard is of a more delicate constitution.

Tonya has a big, productive garden, and she is of good Mennonite stock which means she can never. . .stop. . .working. . .She tells me she's up to her ears in peaches and she's already canned enough beans to build a replica of the Empire State Building. Plus she works two mornings a week and educates her children at home by cyberschool. My question is: when does she sleep?

Did I mention she has a flock of chickens? And a penchant for personal, physical disaster? Since I've known her she has almost shot her eye out with a hunting rifle, stumbled backwards into a ravine that was hiding a nest of bees, and bashed herself countless times on countless objects.

Last evening, she was already doubled over with pain from a previous injury, but continued wildly chopping basil to more unfortunate consequences. . .the permanent loss of the tip of her thumb.

There are these miniature children's books that Merry used to like about sad bunnies (by Rosemary Wells, I think) who endure horrible things and get rescued by a Queen bunny named Janet who then takes them to the Bunny Planet so they can experience the day that should have been.

Tonya, let's go to the bunny planet.
Or to the shores of Orcas Island, on the placid cool waters of the Puget Sound. Only the sound of a paddle in water, mountains rising around you, the hope of a seal.
Ah. . . .

A Letter to, (but not exclusively), My Life Writing Students

My father has always been a patient man. Kids could climb on his head, stick their fingers in his eyes, pull his hair and hear nothing more than a mild redirection. The times we children remember him agitated are fabled and few: the morning the wheel rolled off our car at an intersection, the afternoon I insisted on taking home a large, rusty kid-car from the friendly swap at the dump, and the night my 16-year old sister telephoned from a shady train station in the bowels of downtown Paris. . . .
Whether we recognize that our lives are interesting or not, each person is a walking fount of history, humor, grief, and loves. To you, your life and the lives of those you know best may seem wildly fascinating or dull as bricks--no matter. The trick is in the storytelling. I'm a miserable story-teller; I forget bits and pieces (and sometimes the largest, most important bits), I interrupt my plots to apologize for possible fallacy and lies, and I feel my audience slipping away from me, slowly, then quickly, looking over their shoulders to the refreshment table or pinching their children until they cry.

Okay, maybe it's not that bad. But even if, like me, you lack a bit of confidence in your oral skills, you can find a home, a place where you can wander at ease in diverse terrains of memory and imaginings and my favorite things: Words. There's a whole world to each word; they're heavy things, sometimes holy temples, sometimes so hot you can barely hold onto them. And each person is full of words, the stories of their lives and longing, the idiosyncrasies that make each person so perfectly peculiar and fascinating. An editor once said to me that he was unsure that I'd have enough stories or ideas to write a weekly newspaper column. I smiled--as long as I'm living among people, there are more stories than I will ever have time to write down.

Really, this could be a class named: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Journalism. What story doesn’t find its start in the wrists of the writer, in her mind, history, and personality? Whether the setting in your compositions are as familiar as your own shoes or whether there’s only a kernel of familiarity in a character you create (that only you, and maybe one other person, knows), your writing will always flow up and out of you, and parts of you will cling to the words as they travel onto the page.

By this I do not mean that I want you to succumb to that annoying and facile task of navel-gazing. Rather, I’ll always recommend that you take the harder road. If writing is easy, if you think you’ve arrived, then you need to go to the beginning and start again. Bad writing bangs around in the writer, making echoes and embarrassing sounds. Good writing is like a shout: it originates with the writer, of course, but leaves immediately, travels far, and leaves the rest of us scratching our heads as to the source.

As writers have said for ages, you must be a good collector. Happy is the writer who keeps a journal in his pocket. Even scraps of paper, stuffed into an envelope, will do (but not for this class). You must sit quietly, learn to eavesdrop, learn to listen beyond mere words. Collect small things, such as the dip of a head, the crease of a mouth, unsaid things that bubble in silence. Don’t worry about their purpose; just write them down, or they will leave you. Maybe you've heard that we are sponges that absorb everything we need, but I do believe that's wrong--or just lazy. This is what I say to myself when I am desperate and undisciplined. Run, pursue, catch the details, and then take a pin and impale them to your notebook.

Never forget that you are many things beside a writer. Do not aim to be a writer alone, just as you would not plan to be just a parent or just an accountant or just a student. If you want to be terribly unhappy, work to be just a writer. Then, when you fail as a writer, which you will, then your identity will crumble as well. Gird yourself with many identities, interest yourself in diverse and wonderful things; remember to be surprised and let yourself wander into new houses and countries and shake the hands of many people. Drink tea with many people. Then you will be whomever you are first and also a writer.

You are in college. I know the miseries and joys of college, and chief among them was never being able to run away from myself. While this is a common malady, it seemed worse and more painful because I was a writer. I never experienced anything without tucking it away, sanding it down, ironing it into prose. Now, a busy mother of three, a writer but also a gardener, wife, reader, cook, friend, and still a child of my parents—this has not changed. What has changed is my attitude toward it; I relax and do not let this sense of never engaging fully bother me. Perhaps “engaging fully” as an adult is unattainable, unless you are hysterical, on drugs, or struck by pain. The older I grow, the more I forget about myself, but still carry around that writer-tendency to always be drafting experiences in my head even as I am experiencing them. (And I don't mean Face Book stuff, those pithy barks that we send into the darkness. I mean essays, stories, even novels). But I find that while I do not always remember things well naturally, I remember them when I write. Though I do not always perceive correctly, especially about myself, the fog clears when I write. Many writers start their memoirs just this way—searching for answers.

Clarity comes with many drafts and a whole lot of editing. Good memoir, good fiction, good poetry, makes connections. These connections between experiences, thoughts, flashbacks, dialogue, characters, and setting—they hold together a story like the studs of a building. You might purge yourself and even do some really great writing, but if there are no real connections, no structure, your composition will fall apart immediately, lack movement and strength, and you will, as I often have, feel a deep sense of discontentment when you reach the end. And if you know, deep down, that you’re not done writing, you can bet that your readers will know, too.

But that’s what workshop is for. Being a writer all alone with the computer glowing on your midnight face may make you feel powerful and confident (or it may make you feel the opposite), but isolation will rarely produce final drafts. Many is the time I have finished a story or poem and congratulated myself heartily on my talents, to show it to my in-house editor (whom you all probably know) to disastrous results. A few times I have really written something good the first time. Okay, maybe one time. Mostly, I have learned to buckle myself in for a long, long ride, for many drafts, for frustration and also a great deal of laughing when I realize just how bad my wonderful writing is. Many times I have shelved a story, thinking it was done, to realize a year later I must rewrite it again. Just relax. You have lots of time. You have endless energy. Writing is not the best thing that will ever happen in your life; it’s good, maybe you can’t live without it, but it’s not anything that should fill you with the fear of loss or failure. The best advice a writing professor once gave me was this: “You think you can’t write right now? Going through a rough spot? Frustrated? Good! That means you’re growing as a writer.”

To be in a room with people who have come together for a common purpose, to celebrate something they love—this is a good place to be. It’s a safe place, a place to grow without fear, a place to trust one another. I feel this deeply when I eat with others in my home, and a workshop class is just like this. We bring our dishes to the table; we eat slowly, thoughtfully, with appreciation. Of course, unlike the well-mannered people we are who would never complain about Aunt Martha’s bland stew, in workshop we make suggestions or ask sometimes uncomfortable questions. But nobody is afraid that their dish will get thrown in their faces; no one will leave empty.

Did you reach the end? Hurrah for you! Here's your circus, courtesy of my girls and their cousins:

For reflections on back-to-school/Autumnal stress and the importance of slowing down to watch caterpillars, please click on the geranium at right to read my article this week.

Bottom Dwellers

Check these guys out. I want to call the fish "A Mudsucker" or a "Dogfish" but I don't think either of those were right. My eight-year old nephew, Josiah, flipped over a barnacle-covered rock, swooped his hand down into the muck underneath, and fished (ha,ha) this fine fellow right out of his fearful floundering. (Ha,ha, and it's definitely not a flounder). Wait, wait, he perched on the edge of the rock. . .I'm trying hard but I my fishy puns are at an end. My public will be devastated.

He flounder, and then, sadly, he lobster. (I stole that line from an unknown source).

And who knew starfish could look like this? Actually, the creature below is not a starfish but a seastar. Look at all those legs. . .so much more amazing than the stock starfish I learned from preschool flipbooks.

They come in plummy purple, too.

I was walking among the tidal pools when I slipped on a mass of seaweed, flew in between two rocks, and grated my leg on a patch of barnacles. Following this event, I enjoyed a round of antibiotics, one tetanus shot, and many evenings of discomfort. The scabs have just fallen off, and my leg is pink and gorgeous. Nobody else whacked themselves. . .the children are like goats on the rocks, surefooted. If anyone can think of a better, more oceanic simile, I would be grateful.

Today I am once again with the children while Martin pays the piper at school. Why did I think going to Target (through construction traffic) was a wonderful idea? I have a massive bag of toilet paper but I'm not sure it was worth it. I threw the kitchen sponge at my middle daughter today after she smeared toothpaste on the wall. My zen is shot and I am becoming a bottom-dweller, a Mudsucker, a Dogfish. School starts in one and a half days. . .60 hours and 12 minutes, not that I'm counting. (Just kidding, I didn't really count--I just pulled that number out of midair.) There's some really great stuff under rocks, for the record, and it stays pretty cool and shadowy. Maybe you should crawl under one and join me.

Seattle Summer

I thought I'd start with Seattle photos and move up the coast toward Canada. Look for: the Space Needle, the International Fountain, and the Rock n Roll museum. Should be a three out of three for all of you. :) The kids that are not mine are my niece(s) and nephew.

Saucing

This morning I spent the hours with a couple of good women, saucing a mountain of garden tomatoes into deliciousness. There's nothing more soothing than a pot full of homegrown tomatoes, simmering slowly, or more glorious than a cutting board crowded with two-foot stalks of basil. I even love the smell of garlic that clings to my fingers and the sizzle of the red wine when I drown the onions and peppers.

Slow food. It makes fast friends. It makes the heart happy. It hinders the spinning of the crazy world just long enough for a good laugh.

Three heads of garlic, man. I mean, what's better than that? Makes me feel like a truly rich woman.

Hello Again

Ooo. This is a little awkward. I've thought about you plenty of times over the last month, but I didn't write. I kept waiting for the right time. I had so much to share I didn't know where to begin or end, or--do you still remember me? I'm at the edge of the water; it's cold; my arms prickle with goosebumps. I'd better just jump in!

It's coooold in here.

After rain, the trees that have sprung up all over the hill gleam dark in the blank, white humidity that I will always associate with Pennsylvania summer. Insects are so loud that when Martin recorded a poem for the British literary magazine Anon the other evening, his voice was a stone at the bottom of a river of crickets' song. We had to shut all the windows.

Let me reach into the last busy week and pull a few things to show you: Elspeth's starfish, wrapped in tissue, perfectly intact even after a day in airports. Beatrix poised on the landing, riding her tricycle down our stairs. Elspeth boarding a big yellow bus for her first ride during kindergarten orientation. Martin swapping his yard clothes for a dress shirt and tie, heading off to work again. I, buried in books and papers, my eyes crossed in the effort of figuring grading percentages for a syllabus for the class I'll be teaching, "Life Writing." Merry at the edge of a circle of adults, her long limbs never still, not quite knowing where she belongs.

Last night, I just about finished my syllabus, and now I feel as if the world is opening up again. I feel as if I should throw myself a party. Martin's not quite in party mode yet.

Brr. It's a little chilly in here yet, though I'm stroking as fast as I can to build up the heat. I haven't written regularly in so long, my limbs are stiff.

I find myself thinking of Nancy all the time, tucking away tidbits to share with her or reminding myself to save a magazine to pass her way. It's strange to be back, walking up her front steps by the garden she watched carefully, planned at one point, picking out plants, digging holes, settling them into the ground. Her garden is still blooming, still producing fruit and vegetables. At one point as I fell asleep, I started, as if jerking to the surface of water, realizing afresh that she was gone, that her body was buried, under a tree, in a graveyard outside of town. Most of the time, though, the strangeness of her absence feels less profound than the presence of a new reality: her smiling face, her body moving as it often did through my house, settling at the kitchen table for tea--all so strong in my imagination it feels as if it must be true that she is still with us, that if I could only open the doors to what is truly real I would understand how she can be gone and here at the same time.

It can all be chalked up to wishful thinking, to love, to denial or the wanderings of hope. I realize too that I will always be partly the skeptic of my own faith, raising an eyebrow and shaking my head at my childlike imaginings. But I have lived so often in the world of my faith that it is almost more real than the shifting plates of this earth, vibrating in the air filled with cricket song, under my hands when I lift a plant from the soil, waiting for me in the morning when I step outside, in the far-off call of a bird or even in the ants that cover my kitchen counter in late summer. "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, and at times I feel that charge so acutely I can believe in the unseen, believe in the eternal depths of a small stone or a lifted voice--believe it with every fiber of my material existence. At times. At times I feel a sort of murky sadness or dullness that is hard separate from my joy, and the older I grow, the more I realize that this is okay, and should not go away. I can be comfortable with this question, just as Rilke encourages, to live questions.

And. . .speaking of shifting plates of this earth, I experienced my first earthquake two days ago. . .sitting in a chair in the sun room, I felt a wave pass underneath me, as though someone had taken my chair from behind and tilted it first one way and then the other. I hushed to hear the sound of rattling or shaking, but there was nothing else. Martin was evacuated from his building for a half an hour, but I went on drinking tea in the bottom floor of our brick house, trusting that one little wave was the end. And so it was. We felt just part of the quake that brought down the National Cathedral's spires in DC, and many of us, including Merry and Elspeth, who were playing upstairs, didn't even notice.

Better get the water going for mac n cheese. Oh, one last thing: yesterday I looked outside through a morning rain, and there were the girls, with three good friends, huddled under a little lean-to of rugs, one pink umbrella titled toward the wind, their faces upturned like a little crop of wildflowers. I felt indescribably happy. Childhood should always be so sweet.

Snatched from an e-mail from Martin to his staff at the literary magazine back in PA

Hello, Editorial Staff!

I'm writing you from a craftsman bungalow on an island just west of Victoria, Canada, in the shadow of the North Cascades and towering Mt. Baker. Yesterday I kayaked around a rocky point, water clear to depths of ten or more feet, seals bobbing their heads all around me. At one point, both a bald eagle and a sea plane flew over me at the same time.

This is part of why I haven't been as motivated as I should be to get things going for the fall.

Pittsburgh Airport Note

It is 5:19. We're waiting with fairly subdued, sleepy people for our flight to Chicago. Martin's already eaten half of his sandwich and we still have 18 hours of travel stretching in front of us. But I feel as though we could fly to China and back without much trouble--so easy is it to fly without children!

Our time at home was marked by sorrow, grace, and an astounding outpouring of love. We saw all our dear friends, ate wonderful dinners full of healing humor and good food, stayed with friends who feel like family, who mourned and laughed a lot with us.

Nancy's funeral was extremely moving, led by several Orthodox priests who sang the liturgy in English. Her grave is under the shade of a big pine tree. The whole time I was back at home, moving through her house, walking down their familiar street, loving her children, I kept seeing her face, and her gentle blue eyes were laughing and loving, just as they so often were. I continue to mourn for her, and grief catches me throughout the day at different times. Nancy was so tender that her eyes would suddenly fill up with tears spontaneously when she was talking about her children or recounting a moving book she had read. Nancy knew loss intimately and turned that grief into a desire for compassion, a wonder for the world, and gentle, quiet spirit. I hope I can do the same.

The children are doing okay, wrapped up by the love our community, the intensity of the week, and the calm, peaceful presence of John, but they will need our love especially when everyone has gone home and the house is quiet. Then Nancy's absence will ring loudly and we will have come into that space and help to fill it.

We'll board soon, and at the end of this day, we'll be with family again in the San Juan Islands. Thank you to all our dear friends, and to our wonderful family for caring for our three daughters.

Seattle Airport Note

We're in the Seattle airport, waiting to board a huge jet, a 737. It just came in from Tokyo, unloaded at the customs dock, and rolled on over here. A cluster of anxious people crowd the gateway, but Martin and I are still sitting, unconcerned, buried in our books. Such a luxury when I am used to travelling with children, all three lovely girls home with Grandma, splashing in the Puget Sound today.

A perfect, wonderful barrage of loving offers to pick us up at the airport in PA has arrived, and we feel so loved I almost teared up over my last Seattle Starbucks, at least for a few days until we are back. To go back to a place I know so well and not to see Nancy there seems terribly strange. But there's such a wall of love there, strong, wonderful in its solidity, that I am filled with peace and gratitude, and it puts me at peace. A community like ours, moving together, is so rare, and I feel enveloped in grace.

I am so grateful too for a family to leave the girls with, so happy that we did not have to drag all three girls from the ferry to the train, from the train through the airport.

Gotta go. We're really boarding now, even the relaxed, unconcerned people without kids.

Nancy

I am sad to tell you all that our dear friend, Nancy, passed away today at three in the afternoon. She battled cancer for three years, and most of that time, she felt relatively little pain, which was a miracle, considering the nature of her illness. During a rapid decline, hospice was there to keep her comfortable and free from pain, and she was surrounded constantly by people who loved her. Thank you for all your prayers and thoughts; now, please turn them increasingly and faithfully to her three children and her husband, John.

Martin and I will fly back for the memorial service on Thursday, stay for a few days, and fly back to Seattle. In mid-August we will conclude our summer travels and settle back at home. I have felt so torn in the past week, knowing Nancy was so sick and I was so far away. I thought for a while I would be able to reach home in time to say goodbye to her in person, but her body's decline was astonishingly rapid. I was so grateful I was able to talk to her on the phone, to say goodbye and tell her I loved her.

Nancy and John were the first friends we met in Pennsylvania--they walked up our front steps with a plate of cookies and their children days after we moved in. She and I had many long, warm conversations; she often took care of me when I was miserable early in my third pregnancy; we could chat about gardens for hours, and I named her "Nancy Greenthumb" for her productive gardens and her love of all vegetables grown in good dirt.

Her mind was constantly alive and fertile, and not only did she care deeply about the education of her children, but she loved books and new ideas. She and I even audited one of Martin's writing classes together, and she also attended one of his summer writing classes with members of our community. I loved cooking vegetable curry for her and making her desserts with no sugar or fats (first she was vegan and then she was on a very restricted diet). She was gentle and kind to my children, she laughed often, and very near the end of her life, she was still walking about the neighborhood. I remember clearly watching her and her daughter walk away from my house, her daughter slipping her arm through her mother's.

Nancy helped me think about God in challenging and wonderful ways; she painted icons and understood incarnation in many ways; she loved her children and my children, and she was a woman I could call sister. I feel fortunate indeed to call Nancy my friend. I will celebrate her for the rest of my life.

Mixed up

Now is the time of mixed-up things. I am in Washington, on a clear, cool evening. My sister, her husband, Martin and the children chat, clink silverware, laugh and raise their voices in a political discussion of some kind. Today was so brilliant that Mt. Rainer shone brightly on the horizon; we could even see Mt. Hood behind its peak.

Back at home, in her familiar green house with the garden full of tomatoes and the herb bed that I know so well, with its climbing rose by the porch--in a place where I often chatted on the steps with my dear friend, Nancy, after pushing the stroller down the road or parking and letting her daughter climb out--here in this house my friend Nancy talked to me on the phone today from her hospital bed, and told me, somewhat lightly and humorously, "I've got hospice!"

And I, in my mind, had all the things I wanted to tell her so clear, in paragraphs. But over the phone I was choked, emotional beyond my own expectation, full of sadness, and all that I wanted to say tumbled out. I am unclear as to how all this works, losing a friend I love. It is hard to be so far away. I am comforted that Nancy is surrounded by good people, her community and family; I was able to talk with her though it was over the phone when I long to be with her and touch her arm, hand, lean over and give her a hug.

Mostly I am comforted by the knowledge that God is with her, beyond my own understanding, full in her, speaking in voices that flow through her like warm, comforting waters. When she can't hear her own family, she will hear God, and the voice will be sweet, as familiar as her own breath, the arms of her mother, the singing of her children. God will never leave her alone, nor will God leave her family alone, and this I hold to even in my deepest sadness.

Then there is waking and sleeping and laughing and crying for the rest of us, and that is good, too, though under it all these days, flows always a current of loss, a sense that something that should not have occurred happens now in spite of our longing, and in this brokenness God is there, too.