Bleeding Heart

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

           

As we head toward Halloween, a season of the supernatural and masquerade, here is an original fairy tale about the illusion of control and the consequences of taking matters into our own hands.

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In a time when magic still quivered above the earth and wishes were sought through enchantment, there lived an old woodcutter and his wife whose desire for a child had never been fulfilled. They kept to themselves in the forest, for whenever they brought their wares to the village, children’s laughter filled the market and made the old woman long all the more for a little one. One day as their cart wended its way home, she wept, “Dearest husband, my golden braids have become a silver crown. I fear I will never be a mother.”

Drawing her close, he whispered, “Dear wife, can you not be content with my love?  Fear grows only itself, not a child.”

That very night, the old woman awoke to the jingle of a gypsy wagon rolling through the wide meadow between the forest and the village. Surely it was the fortune teller she’d seen in the market. Silently she slipped out of bed and crept down the steep stairs. Pushing, aside a basket set upon the hearth, she lifted a loose stone. Underneath was a small pouch of golden coins. Clasping the coins close to her heart, she hurried through the dark wood until at last she came into the lavender light of a full moon spread across the field.   

Running beside the wagon, she held up the pouch and pleaded with the toothless crone, “Tell me, will I ever have a babe of my own?”

The fortune teller drew her horses to a halt and opened the old woman’s palm. “Yes, I see a daughter, and her name is Lavuta.”

“The name is strange,” said the old woman, “Are you sure? My hope has drifted away like a dream in the morning light.”

“I am sure,” said the fortune teller, exchanging the clinking pouch for a wrinkled sack of seeds.” Plant these in your garden by the door, and in the spring a daughter, will be yours.” She shook the reins and vanished into the distance.  

The old woman hurried toward home clutching the charmed sack, but at the edge of the wood an owl swooped from the top of an old oak and startled her. Raising her arms above her head, the seeds scattered. She fell to her knees in tears, for there was no way to reclaim them.         

When she opened the cottage door, her husband was kneeling beside the loosed stone. “What have you done with our bit of gold?”

The old woman confessed.  

“Foolish woman,” he pounded his fist, “sorcery plays only tricks, and now our small treasure is gone for naught.”  

But in the spring a babe was born, a daughter with jet black curls.  

“What name shall we give this child?” asked the old man.  

“Lavuta,” the old woman said for fear another name would break the spell which had brought this long-awaited gift despite her fumble.    

“Why this odd name?” her husband tilted his head.  

The old woman lied, “It has such a melodious sound.”   

“Very well, Lavuta,” said her husband, “for she will be the song of our hearts.”

As Lavuta grew, she picked up her little skirts and danced for her parents in front of the winter fire.     

“Oh, child, how you warm our hearts,” her mother said.  

In the spring she waltzed about a broom made of sticks as she helped her mother sweep the cottage.  

“Someday you will make a happy home of your own,” said the old woman.  

Summers she wandered the woodlands and sang as she picked bouquets for her family.     

“You have the voice of a lark,” said her father, “and your maiden beauty rivals the petals you’ve put in our hands.”

On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Lavuta awoke to the sound of her own name. She rose from her bed and followed the call out the door, through the black tunnel of the forest and into the meadow where a full moon spilled its silver upon the dewy grass. At the center of the field, under the twinkling stars, were a dozen gypsy wagons around a blazing fire. The silhouettes of men and women whirled before the flames. They clapped and shouted, “Lavuta, Lavuta.”  Irresistibly she drew near.

At the core of the ring was a handsome young man with a shock of dark hair. He cradled a violin beneath his chin and sawed upon it like her papa sawed a log. Music soared towards the heavens with the sparks, music Lavuta seemed to know by heart, and in an instant she understood. Her name was the Roma word for his instrument shaped like a voluptuous lady. And out of its long throat, the young man caressed the very melody of her soul.  

The old woman awoke from a nightmare in which she heard Lavuta’s name.    Seeing only the curves of her daughter’s body carved in the feather bed, her fears gathered like a great storm cloud ready to burst. She scurried, gasping for breath, down the path to the meadow.    

There were the wagons, and there was Lavuta, her cheeks flushed as she danced in front of the fire. Her eyes flashed as she circled the fiddler as she’d circled her broom. Her voice harmonized with his instrument like a lark calling its mate. The old woman pushed through the throng and begged, “Please, please, don’t enchant my daughter.”

A large man in a leather vest stepped forward and silenced his people. “Old woman, it is we who have been enchanted. For this we give your daughter a gift.” He summoned the wise woman of the clan from the far side of the flames. The toothless crone laid a necklace made of golden coins around Lavuta’s neck.     

Without any thanks, her mother yanked Lavuta’s hand. “We must go.”

They spoke not a word as Lavuta fingered the necklace and looked back at the young fiddler. At the edge of the meadow, the old woman turned to her daughter and whispered,” We cannot accept this gift. I fear it’s laced with sorcery and will only play us tricks.”  She tore the chain from her daughter’s throat and watched its coins scatter under the big oak.     

Lavuta fell to her knees and sobbed. “Is it magic to fall in love?”

The old woman pulled her daughter to her feet, “It’s magic that brought you to me, and magic I fear will take you away.” They walked home as if struck dumb by a curse.  

The old man and the old woman had grown too deaf to hear the departing bells of the gypsy wagons, but with the morning light, they saw Lavuta’s bed was again empty. Hand in hand, they trudged through the wood, stopping at its edge. Before them new grass waved in the wind. In the dappled sunlight under the oak, was a blanket of brilliant pink flowers.  

The old man fell to his knees and plucked just one blossom. “Is this where you spilled the fortune teller’s seed long ago?”

“Yes.” His wife stared.  

Something sparkled amidst the blooms, and she stooped to reclaim what she knew must be the scattered coins of the necklace.     

“Foolish woman those coins are the price you paid for this.” Her husband held out the flower in his hand.

The old woman gasped at the petals shaped like a miniature heart dripping a single tear of blood.

And this, so they say, is how the wildflower, bleeding heart, found its name.   

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Over the Edge of Doubt

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Anyone remember this ditty my teacher taught us to introduce explorers of the New World?

When my youngest daughter was the same age, she crafted a two-foot papier mâché Christopher Columbus for a class project. Her father helped her make a metal skeleton that stood up, and I took her to the fabric store where she selected silky material to fashion red and gold striped bloomers, a red renaissance jacket, and a golden cap. Hands deep in newspaper glop, she carefully formed his body, and when he hardened, painted his face.

Christopher’s expression came out as surprised as she was that she couldn’t dress him. His outstretched arms didn’t bend, and his feet were sunk in a solid chunk of wood. So, she slit his jacket between his bumpy shoulder blades and sewed it back up after sliding on each sleeve. Of course, she also had to split his shorts and stitch them back on one leg at a time. She stuck a found turkey feather in his golden cap, and he was magnificent. But after his glorious moment in her fifth-grade class, poor Chris stood in the corner of our basement for a decade, staring at spider webs, until we moved and threw his silken splendor in the trash.

A few years back, I watched a documentary about Laura Dekker, a fourteen-year-old determined to sail solo around the world. Courts in the Netherlands tried to prevent her voyage, arguing her goal insane and unsafe. As looney as Columbus sailing off the edge of a planet shaped like a pancake?  Despite official discouragement, Laura completed her voyage at sixteen, setting a record as the youngest person ever to circumnavigate the globe alone. Soon after her accomplishment, she set sail again, most content at sea. 

Most content at sea. Aren’t we all? The wind at our back, bucking the waves of adventure? No one wants to be at anchor, staring rigidly at the cobwebs of their lives.

I’m sure Columbus had no idea how his discoveries would contribute to the rise and fall of many in the New World. Times have changed, and for some, Christopher’s glory has turned to infamy. Can any of us predict how our lives and work will influence others?   

And so, it is still a brave thing to set sail daily with childlike hope, over the edge of doubt, ignoring the approval or disapproval of men, to follow the trade winds of our divine destiny.

Nowadays, I weigh anchor from my desk, writing stories I hope someone will discover and enjoy.  Maybe it’s insane. Certainly, unsafe. But God gives each of us a set of sails, and there’s a new world ahead.

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Slaying the Monster Shame

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

Shame, if we’re human, we have it. It dogs us, discourages us, keeps us in hiding or striving to prove we are worth more than the whispers of our self-condemnation.  

So, where does shame come from?

How does shame affect us?

What’s the antidote to shame?

First, let’s distinguish between guilt and shame.

Guilt is the feeling that we’ve done something wrong.

Shame is the feeling that there’s something wrong with us.

How do these things affect us?

  • Confessed guilt leads to repentance. Hidden guilt leads to shame.
  • Shame leaves us hiding and masking who really are.

To show you how guilt led to shame in my own life, I include a flash memoir about when the monster shame was born in my life.

Ice Blue Secret

After Christmas vacation, after sleeping with the first boy I ever slept with for all the wrong reasons, I come home from school, turn on the tiny TV in the den, and change the channel to Dark Shadows, the soap opera I used to watch with my best friend, Linda.  Flopped in the chair, my hand deep in a can of Charles chips, an Ice Blue Secret commercial pauses the plot.  I see a young woman seated at a dressing table facing a round mirror.  She wears a satin wedding dress.  Her veil, swept back over a tiara, looks like a crown.  Her mother stands next to her in a sedate mother-of-the bride suit with matching pill box hat, demi-veil and silk pumps. The mother hands the daughter the deodorant, leans in and whispers. The daughter smiles.  The ad’s intent is clear, to link the long-awaited thrill of the wedding night with the need for an anti-perspirant able to withstand the impending steam. The implied bliss of course requires a pristine bride whose snow-white purity has never been melted, a figurine bride waiting atop a wedding cake for her perfect groom.  A princess awaiting her prince, no portcullis lowered by pot or alcohol, no pressure vented, a young woman entering the marriage bed at full throttle.

When the ad is over, I turn off the TV, pull on my coat, grab my mother’s snow shoes, and head towards the bird sanctuary at the far end of the neighborhood.  In the frigid air, I walk through the small clouds of my own breath.  At the edge of the forest, I strap the awkward rawhide netting to my feet and climb into deep powder. Tramping through the trees, I hear the coo of mourning doves, the squawk of blue jays, the chick-a-dee-dee-dee of small black-capped birds. A bright red cardinal slashes my view, and as the winter sun begins to set, I confess to no one, that by abdicating the virgin throne atop the aforementioned-cake, I am secretly damaged.  My ice blue conclusion—I’m no longer worthy of true love.  

So why did I react to my guilt this way? Why did I conclude I was no longer worthy of love? Because I am a descendant of Adam and Eve, we all are. And Adam and Eve were created without the ability to cope with sin because they were created for a world without it. Makes sense, right? Hear that. Humans have no ability to cope with sins we commit, or sins others commit against us. On our own we’re defenseless.

Defenseless because that’s how we’re made, plus we now have a sin nature and are living in a fallen world where everyone else has a sin nature too that doesn’t disappear at the moment of salvation. That means every day, like Paul says, we don’t do things that we want to do, and we do stuff we don’t want to do, stuff that’s destructive to both ourselves and others. In our flesh, we are unable to love our neighbor or even ourselves.

Sounds horrible, but God always had a plan. Jesus paid the price for all our sins on the cross. We know this.

Or, we think we do. When I was a brand-new Christian, my understanding of the cross was a kind of basic arithmetic. All my past sins plus Jesus equaled zero. The cross brought me back to ground zero, with a get-out-of hell-free card, but from then on, I assumed I was on my own to keep clean by obeying God’s commandments.

Thankfully, my early Christian arithmetic was completely wrong. Our salvation doesn’t rest on our behavior before we come to salvation or even after. Jesus plus my entire lifetime of sins past, present and future doesn’t equal zero, it equals the infinity of God’s unchanging, eternal love for me and you, and the supernatural work of his grace. This is why the gospel is good news because as long as we live, we’ll continue to screw up.

But as a believer, when God sees me naked without pretense or mask, He sees me through the lens of Christ as holy, chosen and beloved, the purified bride of Christ. The book The Cure says, “Grace, is the face love wears when it meets imperfection.” This is the face of God.

Then why do I still feel lousy about myself at times? Why won’t shame let go?

Perhaps because the past seems like more concrete evidence of our shame than the word of God.

But this is the same twisted lie straight out of the garden that asks us to trust what Satan says about us instead of what God has already done on our behalf. There is nothing wrong with me that isn’t wrong with every human on the planet. All of us are stuck with the same sin nature this side of paradise. No temptation has seized us except that which is common to man. And the sins against me may be horrific, but Jesus carried them too once and for all.

Just today, I found a letter my daughter wrote me after her divorce which said, “There is only today. God grants us freedom from worry of tomorrow, and the past is an immovable object that cannot be acted on, changed, fixed, or erased.” But God’s love is molten able to transform our past into compassion, mercy, and wisdom.

God prophesized through Isaiah 43:18-19 to, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; don’t you perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

What is that new thing? 

2Corinthians:17-20, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.”

This is why I write memoir, as a testimony of the reconciliation of God in my own life.

My point is God hears, God sees, God knows, think, Hagar, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery. Whether it’s sins we’ve committed, or sins committed against us, he never condemns. We blame shift, resent, and condemn ourselves. But Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set you free from the law of sin and death.”

 Psalm 18:16-19 says, “He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from foes who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”

So, why do we still feel bad about ourselves at times?

For me, the solution lies in focusing on who God is and how much he loves me instead of focusing on all my dirt and flubs. When shame enters my mind, I recall God’s truth. As a believer I am now a child of God, the high king of heaven. I have infinite worth. No sin can be counted against me. I am not what I do or what anyone else has done to me. When God looks at me, he sees the perfection of Christ on my behalf. I am pure, loved, and in the ongoing process of redemption.

And redemption is not a re-do. It’s a re-am. God is the great I Am, and I am made in his image. God recreates me, reclaims me, re-news me, rejoices over me, and reconciles with me. Reconcile sounds like domicile, meaning he wants to live with us again like back in Eden’s garden.  Everything that’s happened that Satan meant for evil, God transforms for my good and the good of everyone I have the privilege of influencing. If I am not the product of my achievements, neither am I the product of my sins or those done against me.

It’s also important to note, God, my heavenly father, is nothing like crummy earthly fathers, absent fathers, or abusive fathers. Norm Wakefield, in Living in the Presence of God, says, “He is a joyous happy person who delights to have us near. Always immediately available and attuned to our every cry. He is a dad who cares deeply about our well-being and who wants to guide us in decision making that will be wise and fruitful. He is a father who provides security and safety in the midst of life’s storms. He is slow to anger, and rich in love. He is always seeking us. He is patient with our failure and sin, and quick to forgive.”

So, sisters, cling to these truths. Recognize toxic people and influences in your life that treat you as if you are worth less than God says you are and set boundaries. Surround yourself with a community of trustworthy friends willing to unmask and be real and remind each other of all we mean to our daddy, God.

So, this is my prayer, from Psalm 34 “May our souls boast in the Lord; let the afflicted (those still bruised and healing) hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears (that I’m not enough, worthless, bad, unusable, polluted, unlovable). Those who look to him are radiant their faces are never covered with shame. “Be radiant in the confidence of God’s over-the-moon love for you.

If you remember nothing else from what I shared today, remember this:

We are not what we do or what has been done to us. We are who we are as a result of our relationship with a God who is our savior, our redeemer, our friend, a mighty counselor, the prince of peace, the door, the way to a fresh, clean, lovable identity forever and ever AMEN! This is the antidote to shame. This is how we slay the monster.

I will leave you with these books that may help you understanding how much God loves you:

The Cure— about trusting rather than performing for God

Lay it Down— about not striving but resting in our identity in God

Who Gives a Rip About Sin— about how to overcome the power of sin by the grace of God

Living in the Presence of God—about how God is the perfect Daddy many of us never had.

Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School—about how God revealed my core identity in Christ while I was striving to prove myself at an under-performing school and felt like a failure.

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A Beautiful Life

Posted on September 19, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

At the end of the summer, my husband and I discovered e-bikes, bikes that provide electrical assistance, at my age, a welcome boon even though I’ve been riding a bicycle almost as long as I can remember.

My first two-wheeler was a hand-me-down from cousins who lived in a neighborhood near Washington, D.C. that in 1959 seemed exotic because their playmate across the street was an Indian girl with a golden ring pierced through each ear.

The pint-sized bike they passed down held no less enchantment. It had thick tires, maroon fenders with white tips, and was small enough that my six-year old legs could brush the ground when I sat on the seat. It had no training wheels, so my dad held the back of the seat and raced along beside me until I was flying down the sidewalk on my own.

When that bike was too small, he took me to the hardware store where we found a used bike with blue fenders trimmed with white pin stripes. I also picked out plastic, pink streamers to stick in the ends of the handlebars. The boys on my street clipped playing cards to their spokes with clothespins causing a noise like a motorcycle, so I did the same. Day after day, I explored my neighborhood discovering new streets and how to find my way home.

In fourth grade, I got a brand-new turquoise Schwinn for my birthday. It had the graceful swoop of a girl’s frame, plus a headlight with a built-in generator, so I could ride home after dark. The basket in front was just like the Witch’s in The Wizard of Oz.

I rode that bike all over town. To the ten-cent store on Union St. To Central Park where I buzzed by the toddler equipment and straight to the big kid swings under the pines.

In junior high I had a friend who lived down the steep hill that went past my church. One day, pumping home, I realized I’d reached the top of the rise, my body completely unaware of the effort it had spent.

My mind had been elsewhere, taking in the scenery, daydreaming, high above reality’s cares. Pedaling, pedaling, my bike had become my Pegasus.

By high school, my territory expanded. On hot days, I’d ride to Union College, through the iron gate and across campus until I came to Jackson Gardens, its entry ensconced in a jungle of rhododendron. I’d clunk down the stone path and dismount where the trees parted, revealing a manicured perennial bed edged in red salvia, blue ageratum, and white baby’s breath. Walking my bike on the grassy path between the flowers, I’d come to rest on a bench where I inhaled the sweet breath of summer. An arched foot bridge led me over a trickling stream and out of this hidden paradise.

The summer before college, I worked as a typist at the General Electric plant on Nott St. down by the Mohawk River. In the early morning, I’d put on a sundress I could pedal in, my hair in a ponytail, and glide downhill in the fresh, misty air.

At the height of afternoon’s heat, I’d head uphill towards home, traversing shady side streets, past grand old houses owned by General Electric executives, and doctors who worked at nearby Ellis Hospital. Daily, I’d select my favorite manse. Maybe the one with walls of gray stucco and a bright blue door. Or the one with the side screen porch that overlooked a bank of ferns. Perhaps the green Victorian with the wraparound porch highlighted by orange daylilies.

Although I never imagined I’d live in a mansion like these, they represented the quiet life I contemplated somewhere, someday in my own little house under a leafy canopy. It was a life I couldn’t fill in, but I knew it would be beautiful. And I knew I’d recognize it, when beyond the fog of the present, there it was waiting for me, in the clarity of the future, a life just for me, planned, perfect, like the dreams you can miraculously remember and recount in great detail upon waking.

The morning before my first e-bike ride, I was sorting through old family photos. In musty albums, I found my Memaw and her two sisters as young woman. Even in black and white, you could see the vitality of their youth, the rosy lips, the thick hair piled on their heads in Gibson-Girl topknots. There were photos of my mom as a chubby toddler posed with a basket of posies.                                  

Another of my mom as a young woman, holding her younger brother’s first born. I see the wistfulness in her face, knowing, at the time she was childless, wishing for a babe of her own.

Then there I am in a photo as a nine-month old baby girl on the rug next to an Airedale terrier. I see the insecurity in my face. Who is the lady sitting next to me in saddle shoes and bobby socks? Who is that guy petting the puppy? They are my new adoptive parents, grateful beyond measure, yet obviously as unsure as the baby.

Every photograph catalogues the past that became my future. My husband as a handsome young man, bare-chested, standing beside his first car, a yellow VW bug. Our children playing with kittens on the steps of our first house in the shadow of a giant oak. Me standing with a class of immigrants from exotic places like India. These are the dreams I pedaled towards on my winged turquoise Schwinn.

For several years now, I haven’t ridden a bike, my legs no longer able to climb the hills to my house in the forest. But mounted on a rented e-bike, it’s like I’m back in fourth grade, able to ascend any incline.  And I’m reminded of that moment when my father raced along beside me until I was flying down the sidewalk on my own.

Looking back, I was never on my own, especially not for the nightmares you never record in photos.

That said, it’s been a beautiful life, a life I could not have pedaled without a powerful God.

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Cheap Thrills

Posted on September 11, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

The pandemic has cancelled many county fairs, so let me share my trip to the fair the summer before I entered junior high in 1964.

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The last thrill before school starts is the County Fair. My mom will walk the dusty fairgrounds with my brother, Bruce, and his best friend, Eric Snell, because they’re only going into fourth grade. My best friend, Linda, and I are going into sixth, and Laura, her older sister, into seventh, so we get to go off on our own.

Before we part, my mom says, “Remember, meet me at the front gate when it gets dark.”

Linda, Laura and I wave and charge towards the Tilt-a-Whirl.

A short, muscly man with black, greasy fingertips takes our tickets.  Laura jumps into the middle of one of the red saucers, so Linda and I have to sit on either side of her.  When all the seats are taken, Mr. Muscles, chains the entrance shut, and pulls a lever. We spin, round and round, tilting up and down, faster and faster until our heads are plastered against the high back upholstered in blue vinyl. The man lifts his hand from the lever and lights a cigarette. Stale smoke mingles with the aroma of sticky, sweet candy apples, cotton candy, and fried dough, and I feel like I might barf, but when the saucer swivels to a stop, we rush down the rickety steps to our next thrill.

We hurry through the crowd of pokey parents holding hands with little girls in sun suits and little boys in cowboy shirts to get to the Scrambler before all the cars are loaded.  We hand our tickets to a skinny guy with a sailor tattoo on his forearm. This time Linda beats Laura to the middle seat.  Linda and I smile at our operator as the car spins and jerks, hoping he’ll lengthen our ride.  But he stares into space as if he’s bored.  Who could ever be bored running a carnival ride?

We dip, tip, swing, and swirl until we’re ready for the game tents on the outside of the midway.

A man in rainbow striped pants and a yellow T-shirt tosses a ring over one of the million milk bottles filling his tent floor. “Look how easy that was. Step right up and win one of these fabulous prizes.”

Giant rabbits, over-sized dolls, and huge bears hang from the ceiling of his stall, but stuffed toys are for babies. My eye spots a blue spangled jackknife dangling among the trinkets hung from the edge of the tent. I pull Linda’s sleeve to stop. All I have to do is get one ring over one bottle, and the knife is mine. I hand the man a ticket, and he hands me five plastic rings. First, second, third, fourth, fifth all bounce off.

“Here, let me help you.”  The man in the yellow shirt strides over. “Watch how it’s done.” He slowly tosses a ring, and it clinks squarely on the bottle’s neck.  “Want to try again?”

I focus on my target and hand him another ticket.  How hard can this be? I was in the Olympic Club all five years at Greenwood Elementary. My fifth throw I get a leaner.

The man removes my ring.  “Oh, so close.”  I hand him another ticket.  He hands me five more rings. Still no glittering knife. 

Linda tugs me towards the sound of the shooting gallery. A woman dressed like Annie Oakley hands each of us a rifle. We line up in a crush of junior marksmen. A row of yellow ducks travels along a track at the back of the tent.  Puff, pop, ping—one ducky down.  Annie Oakley hands the boy next to me an orange balloon. Before my rifle is out of breath, I hit a duck, and Annie hands me a blue balloon. Wow! But then Laura hits a duck too, and the novelty is gone. 

A man in a red tuxedo, a top hat, and a black mustache calls from the next tent painted with life-size illustration of a fat lady, a midget, a two-headed Holstein calf, and Siamese twins, “Come see the wonders of the world.”

We hand the man our tickets, and he lifts the flap revealing a wooden walkway next to a long table covered with one large jar and several pictures placed on elaborate easels. I stoop to look inside the jar, labeled Two Headed Calf, Elmira, NY.  It contains a lump of pickled, gray flesh shaped like two erasers sticking out of the top of a shrimp. What a jip. The adjacent easel displays a photo of two Asian men wearing a suit joined at the chest. Their label reads, Chang and Eng Bunker born 1811 Meklong, Siam. This looks real, but creepy and sad. The next easel shows a small man in a military uniform standing on a table next to a regular-size guy. The label says General Tom Thumb was only three feet four inches tall.  The man beside him was P.T. Barnum of circus fame.

At the end of the table an arrow points around the corner.  We follow Laura into a back section where a fat lady in red bloomers, a sleeveless blouse, and a frilly bonnet takes up an entire Victorian sofa like my grandmother’s.  Really, she’s no fatter than Mrs. Snell, Eric’s mom, who never comes out of her house at the end of our street. I try not to stare at the woman’s doughy arms, or her elephant legs that come to a point in tiny ballet slippers. She fans herself as we exit the stifling canvas and waves good-bye. I wave back, suddenly glad that Chang and Eng and General Tom Thumb were only pictures. 

The loud speaker announces the draft horse draw. Linda, Laura and I race to the bleachers at the end of the midway guided by the smell of hay and manure. An emcee in a box atop the stands, introduces a team of humongous black horses he calls Percherons. They prance into sight in fancy harness barely controlled by two men on either side holding leather straps. A third holds the reins and backs the pair up to a metal sled loaded with concrete weights. At the touch of the hitch to the sled, the enormous pair lurch forward, their great hind quarters digging at the dirt until a whistle signals they’ve pulled their load across the mark. They compete with teams of Belgians with braided manes, and Clydesdales with shaggy fetlocks, pulling ever increasing burdens until they’re covered in frothy streams of sweat.

When stadium lights click on, flooding the arena, I nudge Linda, “Hey, it’s getting dark. We’ve got to meet my mom at the gate.” 

On our way back, we pass through 4H sheds of blue-ribbon lambs, grunting piglets, pygmy goats, ornamental chickens, Holstein calves,with only one head, giant pumpkins, and prize-winning pickles. 

We pause in the Quonset Hut of Tomorrow to watch a radar range cook a hot dog in seconds.    

Passing the Ferris wheel, Linda points. “One last ride?”

We pile into a car and sway as other cars finish loading. Then up we go to the tippity top above the twinkling lights, the din of carnival tunes, and the smell of fried sausage and peppers. 

From on high, I spy my mom corralling Bruce and Eric at the gate. She appears no bigger than the dolls hanging above the ring toss. The giant wheel turns, taking me down to the level of excited children lined up for the next ride. In three days, I will officially cross the border from elementary school to junior high. I guess a fair is about pushing boundaries, flying higher, zooming faster, the biggest hog, the smallest dog. Beyond normal limits—at once dazzling and terrifying. 

We rise above the Quonset Hut of Tomorrow.  If I could really see into the future, I would know that no one will ever call the contraption that cooks a hot dog in seconds a radar range. The miraculous microwave will mainly nuke leftovers. I would know that within the year, Mrs.  Snell, will be skinny enough to finally get off her couch and exit her suburban tent to die of cancer.

But at that moment, teetering on the cusp of adolescence, crisp autumn air cool on my cheek, I was content to leave the freaky fair, squeeze back into our black Ford station wagon, and find my old cinnamon bear, Fritz, and my ordinary green Girl Scout knife waiting for me at home.

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Gimme Shelter

Posted on September 4, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

In honor of Labor Day, I share this flash memoir about a summer I worked in an industrial laundry as a privileged college girl with so much to learn.

************************************************************************************

In 1974, my plan was to spend a romantic summer on Nantucket renting bicycles with  my college boyfriend, but when he broke up with me, I decided to stay in Syracuse with my best friend, Gretchen. Unfortunately, she’d already found another roommate, Ida Chernoff, to share the apartment she secured on Euclid Avenue. George, my boyfriend’s buddy was still looking for someone to sublet, and desperate me fit the bill. George gave me the one bedroom and slept on the three-season porch he’d plan to give the poor shmuck who showed up at the last minute to split the rent.

My relationship with George was purely platonic. He agrees to scrub the clawfoot tub and clean the toilet if I do all the dishes. Our place backs up to Oakwood Cemetery and is closer than Gretchen’s to downtown Syracuse where I walk to my Kelly Girl job at an insurance underwriting company in the assigned risk department.

Every morning I sit at my gray metal desk behind a Himalayan pile of red folders. My task: to pull out the page containing the name of the risky customer and the insurance company to which they’ve been assigned, turn to my typing stand, roll two blank forms and a carbon beneath the platen of my Selectric, and type said information in the appropriate space. It’s a mind numbing routine I repeat for each folder with only half an hour for lunch, and two ten-minute breaks during which I sit with other personnel who drink coffee and nibble Twinkies and Ding Dongs from an unreliable vending machine. 

To save my sanity, I save the names that tickle my ear: Angel Hernandez, Emery Kornitzer, and John Beaverwetter, to name just a few. Thank God, it’s only a week before Gretchen rescues me with a job where she works at Coyne Industrial Laundry. It’s not Nantucket, but at least we’re together.

I’m stationed at a waist-high table in front of a dusty window made of glass brick. Before me, a Himalayan pile of men’s pants. My assignment: to sort according to inseam, waist, and color. Any with holes or frayed cuffs, I throw in a box marked rags.

When my mountain of laundry is organized, I catch Gretchen’s eye. She’s been ripping off names and company emblems (Amoco, Sunoco, Cadillac, Reese’s Peanut Butter) from men’s uniform shirts, and sorting them according to collar size and sleeve length. We file our clothing in cubicles according to the Dewey Decimal system of laundry and hide in a half-full cubby in the back. Gretchen has also saved name tags that amuse her and shuffles through: Mortimer, Constantine, and stops at, Pheep. 

I roll my eyeballs. “Who would name their kid Pheep?”

We’re stifling laughter, when Nobila, our supervisor, appears at the head of the aisle. “Get back to work.”

Nobila, now there’s a name, but we don’t snicker. She’s from Lebanon, where George’s mother escaped from a war. Besides, I certainly wouldn’t want to be in charge of us or any of the other workers.

Take Wanda, for example. She’s the first one I meet in the break room, the chubby one with straight dark hair who Gretchen says is from the Onondaga reservation. Wanda’s passing around an Avon book. When it gets to me, she exhales cigarette smoke in my face. “Try Skin So Soft it keeps away mosquitoes.”

I reluctantly fill out the order blank and pass the booklet to Gretchen. But before she’s pushed into purchasing Rapture perfume, the buzzer rings, and we’re back on the floor.

Outside of work, Ida and George are who we hang out with. None of us knew Ida before she responded to Gretchen’s ad for a summer roommate on the message board in Kimmel dining hall. She’s an SU student too, pre-med, I think, but her dark wavy hair, rosy lips and thin plucked eyebrows remind me of a 1930’s Busby Berkeley dancer. All she needs is a giant feathered headdress, tap shoes, and a sparkling tank suit. Gretchen and I watched Berkley classics as dollar flicks on campus along with Buck Rogers’ adventures in outer space, and Brando favorites like Viva Zapata.

Tonight, we’re driving to the new Fayetteville mall in George’s Ford Fairlane 500 to see a new movie, Chinatown, with Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson. George is developing a crush on Ida, so when we pick them up, I switch to the back seat with Gretchen.

After the movie, we stick around Ida and Gretchen’s to share a joint or two. Then Ida  heads into the kitchen. “Anyone want deep-fried bananas with chocolate sauce?”

We stand around the stove while Ida masterminds the bubbling batch. I can’t believe how much I eat, and what a mess. But I don’t have to do these dishes.

I can tell George and Ida don’t want to say good night, so we all pile back in the Fairlane and drive to our apartment. Strangely, the back door is ajar.

I look at George. “I thought we locked it.”

He goes in first. “I did too.”

Gretchen and Ida follow into the living room. Record albums are strewn across the floor. George’s stereo is gone.

I peek into my bedroom. The cheapo record player/radio I bought at the GE employee discount store with my dad is still on my bedside table, but the decoupage box I made for my bits of jewelry is open. A silver ring my dad brought me from his first business trip to Mexico is missing. The window is open, both glass and screen. A steamy thunderstorm is brewing, and the curtain is sucked outside towards the dark. I slam down the sash and lock the latch. It weirds me out that a stranger, roamed my private space. Had he been watching the apartment? Did he escape out my window? George calls the police, but nothing is recovered.

Monday morning at 6:00 a.m. I awake to the wall phone ringing in the kitchen. I throw on my bathrobe and answer. It’s Gretchen. “Do you think George could give us a ride to work? It’s raining cats and dogs.”

I pull the curly cord to its limit and part the curtains. “I’ll ask.”

Resting the receiver on the red Formica counter, I tip toe into the three-season porch. George is on his back snoring when I wiggle his toe.

His eyes open wide.  “What are you doing here?”

“Gretchen and I were wondering if you could give us a ride to work.”  I turn my head towards the bank of rain-splattered screens. “Just for today.”

George’s gaze shifts to his cut-offs lying in a puddle on the floor. “Yeah, yeah, give me a minute.”

I race to tell Gretchen and get dressed. We have to punch in by seven o’clock or we get demerits. Three strikes, and you’re fired.

At the intersection of University Place and Comstock Avenue, we drive through a massive puddle. The Fairlane churns a wake until we climb the hill on the other side. A right, a left, and there is Gretchen waiting on her stoop. Just running from the front door to the car and she’s soaked.

My Timex says 6:35. We head downhill towards Coyne. At a railroad crossing the road dips below the track, forming a pool. Before our sleepy brains think twice about driving through, the water becomes deeper than it appears. The brakes fail. The engine goes silent. The car drifts into water up to the door handles. 

Without a word, we crank down our windows and climb on the roof. Gretchen’s lunch floats out the window. A baggie full of snickerdoodles escapes the brown sac along with her liverwurst, lettuce, and cheese sandwich.

My attention turns to the lights on a police cruiser which pulls up behind us on dry pavement. We wade to the officer who calls a tow truck. It’s already 6:45, so Gretchen and I wave to poor George, and sprint through the underpass on the sidewalk which ironically is high and dry.

When we clock in, Nobila tells us to pick out a dry uniform dress and change in the rest room. She’ll launder our clothes for us before the end of the day.

By noon, the sun is out, at least until the next storm blows off the Great Lakes. Wanda and Drew, a woman, shaped like a giant oatmeal container on toothpicks, asks if we want to eat with them on the roof. The flat asphalt is strewn with loose pebbles and a skim of steamy water.  Hearing our lunches were washed away, Wanda offers me half her tuna fish sandwich. Drew gives Gretchen half her bologna and cheese. We share the two packets of cheese curls the vending machine spit out when we selected potato chips.

Wanda takes a sip of coffee. “You know, you guys could have drowned. Want to come to my Fourth of July party?”   

The first part of the non-sequitur doesn’t sink in. My answer to the second, “Sure.”

Gretchen asks, “Can we bring anything?” I’m sure she’s thinking potato salad.

But Wanda winks, “Just BYOB.”

The afternoon of the party, I pedal my turquoise Schwinn to Wanda’s. Gretchen borrows Ida’s ten-speed, and we park them together on the front porch of Wanda’s three-family tenement.  Walking through the narrow space between houses, I can’t help but see into the window of her first-floor neighbor. There’s a guy in a grimy wife-beater T-shirt brushing his teeth at the bathroom sink. We lock eyes until I look away.

In the center of Wanda’s small patch of grass is a picnic table covered with bowls of chips and dips. A grill smokes in the corner of the yard next to a rusty garden shed.

Wanda smiles at the six-pack of Schlitz I brought in my bicycle basket. “You can put that in one of the coolers on the back porch.”

To start with, we chat with Wanda’s brother who is plugging an extension cord into a stereo system. By the time Drew arrives in a red wig and cat-eye sunglasses, Jimmy Hendrix is wailing “All Along the Watchtower.”  The backyard fills with dancing. The party spills down the block. Day becomes night, but the more we drink, the more time stands still.

Then there are sirens. Men in uniform pants and shirts explode from a vehicle with a flashing light. They enter the first-floor next door and exit with a man on a stretcher, a cloth over his face. Is it the guy who was brushing his teeth? The word dead echoes like a foreign term among the crowd celebrating Independence Day. Was there a gunshot I didn’t hear? A fight I didn’t see? I think someone whispers alcohol poisoning, but I’m too drunk to absorb it. Not until the sirens retreat, and the flashing light disappears, do I realize dawn has drawn a searing orange line across the horizon.

Gretchen and I ride home, and I climb into bed beneath the window where a thief recently climbed out. The curtains flap in the breeze of another incoming storm.

I turn on my record player and place the needle on a Rolling Stone’s album, Keith Richard’s unnerving guitar is my morning lullaby as I ponder why the law cannot prevent crime, why the police arrive after the flood, why all our lives back up to a cemetery. It’s Sunday, and I pull the covers over my head at the thought that God is nothing more than an unreliable vending machine, giving you a body like an oatmeal container when you pressed the button for a Busby Berkley starlet. Placing your birth in war-torn Lebanon when you pulled the lever for peace. What in the world can ensure that a boy named Angel won’t grow up to be a risky customer? 

Mick Jagger shrieks, “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away. Just a shot away….”

And for the first time, I understand the title of the song, “Gimme Shelter!”

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Woman of the Year

Posted on August 28, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

If my mom were still alive, she’d be 100 years old this August. Born the same month and year that the women’s suffrage movement gave women the right to vote. As a child, I saw her as the happy homemaker of the 1950’s. As an older woman, looking back through the telescope of time, I see her as a product of her era, and much more complicated.

Evelyn was born the eldest child on a small farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Her mother, my Memaw, only went through the eighth grade and never learned to drive, but she raised a large family in a farmhouse full of love and a few mice. When my mom was thirteen, her last two sisters were born a little more than a year apart. With the final birth, Memaw got blood clots in her legs, and before blood thinners, was bedridden. One of Memaw’s cousins helped during the day, but before my mom went to school, her chores were to concoct a daily supply of homemade formula, and bath and dress the babies in front of the wood cook stove, the only heat in the home.

As much as she loved children, and had plenty of practice with babies, my mom was never able to have her own, so after she’d graduated from college and worked for General Electric for ten years in their appliance test kitchens, I was adopted.

One night while visiting Memaw’s farm, my cousin and I looked at my mom’s old yearbook from Virginia Tech and laughed at the dated hairdo’s of the 1940’s. Neither of us realized that what we held in our hands was V.P.I.’s first yearbook that included individual pictures of female students. Even though women had been admitted since 1921, most were expected to major in the newly formed department of home economics which my mother did.

During high school, I considered home ec a boring elective where you learned how to measure flour, make an egg sauce, or gather a skirt. Off to college in 1971, the year Gloria Steinem founded Ms. Magazine, I poo-pooed my mom’s major as a glorified certificate in professional housekeeping.

But after she died, I found a portfolio from a tailoring class that contained examples of every kind of pleat, dart, lapel, hem, and buttonhole imaginable. As a child, I never thought my mom creative or artistic although she made almost all my clothes except underwear. For cotton panties and undershirts, we went to J.C. Penny’s at the new shopping center. The department store downtown was for Girl Scout uniforms, Christmas presents, and window shopping for ideas for back-to-school outfits.

Then it was off to the fabric store to pick out material, notions, and a pattern if she needed one. While I was at school, my mom would clear off the salt and paper shakers, the floral arrangement, and the candle sticks that always adorned the dining room table, and lay out the fabric, carefully pinning the pattern on top to make sure the grain lines matched up with the arrows on the crinkly pieces of beige tissue paper.  

Every night until the garment was done, I fell asleep to the nick, nick, nick of her sewing machine on the other side of the wall in our teensy guest room. This is how she manufactured dresses, shorts, skirts, blouses, nightgowns, pajamas, tailored coats, even my first two-piece bathing suit. She made the blue and white stripped bedspread that covered my trundle bed along with blue and white stripped curtains trimmed with appliqued daisies. And whenever our old couch looked a bit tired, she gave it a new skin with a snazzy new slipcover and matching drapes. None of these projects looked homemade. They were the normal masterpieces I’d come to expect.

As I grew, we became a design team. I would draw a sketch of the satin pajamas I saw in an old Katherine Hepburn movie, and she would make them a reality. After watching Dr. Zhivago together, she made me a coat like Julie Christie’s with a satin lined hood trimmed with fox fur that I wore traipsing across Syracuse University’s frigid campus.

When I was a young woman with my first home, she made me a queen-sized quilt out of all the scraps she’d saved in the bottom drawer of the guest room dresser. I can look at it now and recognize the green calico I picked out for a blouse because the print contained figures that looked like leprechauns. I see the royal blue cotton she used for a blouse with a sailor suit collar that I wore for my buck-toothed, pig-tailed, fourth-grade picture. I see the lavender and turquoise kettle cloth of my favorite dress from high school, and the black and white madras she used to make me the halter-top sundress I wore for my Phi Beta Kappa induction in college. 

As my children grew, she again recovered the old couch and donated it to our new home. For Christmas she made matching nightgowns and bathrobes for my little girls and their dolls. When my little boy only wanted to wear camouflage, she made him multiple pairs of camo sweatpants and T-shirts.

I never thought my mom and I were alike. She tried to teach me how to sew, but whenever I sat down at her machine it tangled the bobbin or broke a needle as if it knew I were an interloper and not its master. I would gladly spend my extra pennies on an avocado, a food I didn’t know existed as a child. She still made meatloaf according to her Betty Crocker recipe.

We were from different blood. She was a brunette. I was a redhead. Different generations. I grew up a baby boomer and turned sixteen the summer of Woodstock. She grew up during the great Depression and came of age with WWII. My cultural mantra was do your own thing. Her motto (no one had yet heard of a mantra) was make do and serve others.

But looking back, we were both stay-at-home moms when our children were small. And both teachers after our kids went to middle school. Although I taught English and she taught life skills (the new term for home economics), our favorite students were both brand-new immigrants.

She liked to entertain, and so do I, but we both valued a few close friends as our confidants. I never thought her much of an intellectual, but she was a whiz at bridge, president of her garden club, and  valedictorian of her hometown high school.

I sit at my desk reminiscing about my mom, as summer draws to a close, and my mind’s eye fills with a scene from the year I went away to Girl Scout camp at Hidden Lake. I see my ponytail among the other fifth graders in my unit. We’re standing together as the sun dips behind the mountain, and the color guard takes down the flag and folds it into the tight triangle we all learned how to make for a merit badge. And as the evening damp settles on our shoulders, the whole camp of girls sings “Taps” in unison, the song my mom taught my brownie troop.

“Day is done, gone the sun,

From the lake, from the hills, from the sky.

All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.”

If in her hundredth year, my mom could look down from heaven, and see me writing this, I’d want her to read that we were never so far apart, and in this moment of celebrating women heroes, I miss you so!

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Back to School

Posted on August 21, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

Cicadas drone in the sharp afternoon sun. An evening chill snaps off more of each crisp day. As a child, my stomach flip-flopped at these signs that spelled back-to-school.

In the 50’s, back-to-school meant a brand-new pair of Buster Brown saddle shoes after romping all summer barefoot. It meant wearing frilly dresses that let boys see your underwear if you climbed on the jungle gym after care-free months in shorts. It meant no more running through the sprinkler in your pink-stripped bathing suit. It meant no more Ding Dong truck cruising the neighborhood selling Fudgsicles, Creamsicles, or Twin Pops that melted in the road if you tried to break them in half to share with your friend. It meant no more playing hide-and-seek till nine o’clock when the sun finally went to bed. The paradise that was my childhood summers slipped away every year when I went back to school with a brand-new teacher.

I remember each one. First grade, Miss La Valley, the one who yelled and gave me a stomachache every day before reading group. Second grade, Mrs. Nottkey, the one with horse teeth who taught me to sing “America the Beautiful” and “Oh, Suzannah” at a tinny piano beside the window. Third grade, Mrs. Duval, the old lady with a steel bun who taught me my multiplication tables and how to make change. Fourth grade, Mrs. Harrington who introduced the New World: Marco Polo, the conquistadors, and Queen Elizabeth, my first role in a school play, and my first crush on the boy who played Sir Walter Raleigh. And fifth grade, Miss Spaugh, the one who read Johnny Tremain aloud after lunch and invited my whole class, to her wedding.

Little did I know that I would one day be a teacher too. I’ve taught English to first generation immigrants from kindergarten to college, and I learned that the American dream is alive and well, and that immigrants are the jet fuel of the U.S. economy. What a privilege and pleasure to be their first teacher in the promise land.

I’ve taught remedial reading to students from generational poverty, and I learned that racism is real and deadly, a disgusting waste of talent and potential. I wanted to be the hero teacher you see in the movies, the one whose struggling students miraculously make it to Harvard, but I have shared their American nightmare, and it disturbed and discouraged me too.

I’ve taught in suburban and urban schools. I’ve taught in public and private, and I learned that schools reveal the inequities in a society that education alone is not equipped to fix.

So much has changed since my school days. My anxieties are larger now than frilly dresses that showed my underpants when upside down on the monkey bars. My oldest grandson went to first grade last fall. What will he remember from his first year in school? His teacher? His classmates? Or the day in October when his school was locked down because of an active shooter? Or the day in April when he was sent home, and Covid 19 ended education as we know it?

Still, some things remain the same. It’s August, and the cicadas drone. The days grow shorter. The Persied meteors shower the night with stardust, and I’m reminded of their creator, high above politics and pandemics, who knows how far we’ve fallen from paradise.

My stomach flip-flops at the fact that this Father of lights sent his son, Jesus, to save us, we, who so obviously cannot save ourselves.

And I recall that Jesus has many names besides savior: messiah, redeemer, healer, provider, king of kings and Lord of Lords. Yet, his closest friends called him Rabboni which means teacher. So, Lord, in this challenging, back-to-school season, teach each one of us what we need to learn and trust.

Ann C. Averill is the author of, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School.

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Backwards and Forwards

Posted on August 14, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

      

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward.” This is a quote from the movie, The Experimenter, part of my pandemic movie-thon.

When I googled the quote’s source, I found Soren Kierkegaard, a Christian philosopher, who Wikipedia calls the father of existentialism. Why did Kierkegaard’s aphorism ring so true? Because in the present, experiences bombard the senses with such velocity it’s hard to decipher their significance. But as a memoirist, patiently recalling episodes of my life, it’s much easier to decode the meaning of events and see how my personal story fits into the saga of my era.

The Experimenter, set post WWII, is about American scientist, Stanley Milgram, who performed experiments that examined what people do when their conscience conflicts with evil authority. Milgrim was the son of eastern European immigrants who fled the Holocaust and hoped to find evidence that the Nazis’ obedience to Hitler was a fluke. However, his results pointed to the contrary. Participants were asked to test a person in another room, and shock them with ever increasing volts when the unseen person got the wrong answer. The unseen person was in on the experiment and not, in fact, shocked, but responded with, escalating gasps and groans as the fictitious volts climbed. Most of Milgrim’s subjects shocked the other person at levels beyond what they knew to be safe. Few were able to stand up for what they knew was right when pressed by the authority in the room to continue.

The implications of these experiments are, of course, ghastly. Our built-in need to please and follow authority, can be grossly perverted against our better instincts.

Another biopic in my movie-thon was Rebel in the Rye, about J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye. How many of us remember Holden Caulfield from ninth grade English, Salinger’s privileged, adolescent, character disillusioned with the world’s hypocrisy? The movie chronicles the author’s progress as a young writer, and at a critical point in Salinger’s development, his mentor asks, “Do you write to show off your talent or to express what’s in your heart?”

This quote was a zinger for Salinger.

His response was to write what was real, and it propelled him to fame as prince of The New Yorker and onto publishing his iconic novel. Holden Caulfield’s sarcastic voice, filled with angst and pessimism, somehow captured the zeitgeist of a generation who, after the horrors of WWII, even wondered if God was dead.

Unfortunately, clamoring fans drove Salinger into the life of a recluse in Cornish, New Hampshire, and after two more slim volumes, he never published again.

In the midst of this pandemic, when we’re all literally living in the valley of the shadow of death, I realize it’s not enough to write what is real. I want my pen to also offer hope, so we don’t all go off the deep end like J.D., journaling his anger and disappointment in mankind in service to no one but his own sanity.

In the light of Milgrim’s experiments and the history of the holocaust, mankind is a huge disappointment, and certainly human authorities have proven hideously hypocritical and corrupt. But God is not dead.

Reviewing the movie of my own life, I see I have no more ability than Milgram’s subjects to overcome temptation. And yet so much about me that was lost or damaged has been reclaimed by the love of Christ.

I’m not a famous scientist, philosopher, or author, but I have this equation taped to my desk:

Zero plus infinity always equals infinity.

So, when I look back and see I am nothing special, I remember that with Jesus as my everything, I can move forward through anything. 

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Staycation

Posted on August 9, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

These past two weeks I’ve been on a staycation, a pandemic vacation. That means I’ve disconnected from my regular duties and routines and done things that refreshed me body and soul while staying mostly at home. So, I binge watched some old Seinfeld, watched a movie about Mary Shelley, read two e-books, bought a new bedspread at Big Lots, went canoeing with my husband, and found a pretty basket at my dump’s swap shop. Doesn’t sound very exciting, so let me explain why it was a fabulous!

First, what was I taking a vacation from? For the past few months, I’ve been in the final throes of publishing a book about what God taught me through a traumatic chapter in my life as a teacher, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School. That means a vulnerable part of my life is now visible to readers who may judge me and/or my art. Obviously, this is not why I wrote a book. Rather, I hoped to share my experience and insights, in order that others who resonate with my story may gain insight into their own struggles.

Why was fear of judgement my first thought after I pressed the final send button to launch my book on Amazon? Because I self-published. Anyone can do it, and just because your words are in print, doesn’t mean they’re worth reading. Sounds harsh, but this is what was in my head. In the past, self-publishing was considered vanity press. Authors who couldn’t attract the attention of a traditional publisher paid large sums just to see their words on a page. Now that my book is available to the public, will it prove valuable to others or prove me a vain fool?

To reset my brain from negative chatter at a time that should feel satisfying and triumphant, I read Emily P. Freeman’s, The Next Right Thing When Emily challenged her reader to name the narrative that was driving their decisions, I realized my anxiety about promoting my book was because I’d skipped the step of being chosen by publishing professionals. How then, could I be sure of my book’s caliber? Maybe because I’m adopted, or maybe because I’m just human, I have a desperate need to be chosen not rejected. Chosen means valued, significant, seen, worth something. There’s that word again, worth. I thought I knew better than to equate the worth of my writing with my worth as a person. Ironically, Teacher Dropout is about defining my worth as a child of God through Christ rather than my professional status. Maybe I’m relearning the same old lesson in this new chapter of my life as a writer. Maybe this question will always dog me, dog us all, if we don’t cling to what God’s Word says about us, instead of relying on the world’s opinion.

Speaking of new chapters, another bit of wisdom from Emily was it’s okay to be a beginner at things you’ve never done. This helped me relax into all I need to learn about lead magnets, public speaking, YouTube, podcasts, etc. even if it feels overwhelming, especially for an introvert.

The other book I read was Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson, all about the creative process. The major takeaway, for me, was that community nourishes art and art nourishes community. This concept ran through my head as I watched Seinfeld and the story of Mary Shelley, wife of a famous poet, and author of Frankenstein. Whether comic or tragic, fictional or true, both Seinfeld and Shelley lived in communities that directly influenced their art. Even if I chose to self-publish, I was not alone. Everyone who had encouraged my writing, critiqued it, or listened to my thoughts and feelings through the writing process was a critical part of bringing my book to fruition. According to Peterson, artistic community is something I must continue to pursue.

Another thing I got from Peterson is that beauty matters. Natural beauty, the beauty of a home and its surroundings. In a way, he gave me permission to spend my staycation puttering around my house and garden. As a writer, I’m always editing what I put on the page. As a woman, I’m always editing my home, trying to find a theme, or a pleasing palette. As a treasure hunter, I’m always looking for that small item, put in the perfect spot that ties a room together like the kicker at the end of an essay.

One day, to escape the heat, I browsed in an air-conditioned Big Lots with an idea from Pinterest for refreshing my bedroom. In a bargain bin, I found a bedspread complete with decorator pillows that made the whole room look new.

Saturday, I took my weekly trip to the dump, and in the shed where you can take or leave useful items, I found a small basket in the shape of a star. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it. Maybe a Christmas decoration? Anyway, I brought it home because something about it pleased me.

That evening, my husband and I took our green canoe to a small pond for a cool paddle before dusk. We meandered the perimeter passing a stone dam decked with Queen Anne’s lace, a family of mallards, and a great blue heron flushed from shore by the quiet swish of our old boat.

Lying in bed that night, I reviewed my staycation’s quiet refreshments: how reading Emily P. Freeman on my back porch helped me name the deeper things beneath my decisions. How Andrew Peterson was right, gliding over glassy water in a silent canoe with the man who promised to love me for better or worse, was a tangible echo of God’s omnipotent love whether I’m full of doubt or confidence.

As I pulled up my cozy new comforter, I scanned the room. Satisfied with its new harmony, my gaze fell upon the star I’d decided to hang above my mirror, the free star someone else had discarded. And I saw, even though I’d decided not to use it as a Christmas decoration, it was still a symbol of the babe who was God incarnate. That star was the one thing, in the perfect spot, that somehow pulled the whole room together, and I thought, the theme of my whole staycation.

Now, every morning when I consider my reflection, I’ll look up and remember the one who chose me and gave me stories I have to tell, Jesus, the person Emily calls, the smartest person in the universe, willing to take my hand as I take one step at a time in my new adventure as a writer. What could be more refreshing?

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Uncategorized, Writing Process | 4 Comments