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.

Posted in Flash memoir | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

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.

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

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.

Posted in Flash memoir, Uncategorized | Tagged | 4 Comments

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!”

Posted in Flash memoir | Leave a comment

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!

Posted in Flash memoir, Uncategorized | Tagged | 2 Comments

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

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. 

Posted in Writing Process | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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

The Onion Principle

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

Understanding life happens in layers. I’ll call this the onion principle. You think you know how things work and what is important and then it is disproved or refined by experience, and another layer of the onion is stripped away getting you closer to the truth of the universe. For example, I grew up in an upwardly mobile suburb with the understanding that you are what you do, therefore the goal of life is to achieve academically and succeed professionally.

This was my original onion, problematic for all the years I was a stay-at-home mom because motherhood is unacknowledged work. So, who was I? A nothing? During this time, I became a brand-new Christian. I went to a woman’s retreat, and the speaker said words that struck me as rocket science. “You are not what you do. You are who you are as a result of your relationship with Jesus Christ.” As a nothing, I was thrilled to learn that God had given me infinite value as evidenced by sacrificing his only son on the cross for all my inadequacies. But this new understanding only peeled away one layer of the onion.

When my kids were in middle school and high school, I went to work as a teacher. Now I was doing something. Therefore, I was something, an educator. And when I found a free master’s program, I eagerly signed up to become an even more valuable something. Looking back, even as a believer, I was still conforming to the pattern of this world.

The problem with this paradigm, of course, is who are you when you fail? This is the question I grapple with in my book about teaching in an under-performing urban school rife with racism and generational poverty, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School. When my students, labeled under-achievers, failed to progress as I’d hoped, I also felt like a failure. Did this make me an under-achiever too? I cried for myself and my students as if a literal onion had been chopped.

The words from the women’s retreat came back to me. “You are not what you do. You are who you are as a result of your relationship with Jesus Christ. Through the son of God’s sacrifice, I was made the holy, chosen, and beloved child of the king of the universe. Col.3:12. A child is a relationship that can’t be negated by behavior or performance. You can’t stop being a child of God. Not as teacher or student if only you believe.

The thing is, you can know a truth in your head. It sounds logical. You accept it, but it is another thing entirely to have to trust that truth when all hell breaks loose. But this is often what it takes to loosen another layer of the onion.

Memoir is my favorite genre because it tells the messy truth of our lives. I love to read it, and I love to write it as a way of peeling the stingy, tear-soaked onion together as we get closer and closer to living the truth that God’s grace is the only thing that can set us free no matter what we do.   

Here is the link to Teacher Dropout

Posted in Flash memoir, Writing Process | 4 Comments

New book, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School

Posted on July 11, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

My first ebook, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School, is FREE this Sat.- Sun. 7-11-20 thru 7-12-20 on Amazon.

I wrote this book a decade ago, but it takes a while to sort out what events really mean in your life. This is a book about finding my core identity in Christ after my professional identity and self-worth burned up in the cauldron of an under-performing school rife with racism and generational poverty. But feeling like a failure ushered me into deeper understanding of the cross, and changed the way I saw myself, others, and God. Funny how God’s perfect timing brings things to fruition at just the right moment. In light of current events, I hope it helps you sort out whatever you’re struggling with.

Here’s the link to Teacher Dropout

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Is it Done Yet?

Posted on July 3, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

How do you know when you’re ready to publish something you feel absolutely compelled to write? For memoir writers, especially, this question is paramount. This week I watched Michele Cushatt interviewed by Emily Freeman of Hope Writers and found answers that helped me move forward with one of my memoir projects.

Another memoir guru, Marion Roach Smith, says that memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through. And how do we know anything? For writers, that usually means scribbling our thoughts and feelings for sometimes years to get at the meaning that Cushatt says makes our suffering worth it. Yes, until I can clearly express the significance of an incident, a relationship, a trauma, a season of my life, I’m not ready to put down my pen nor file it in my memory as a done deal.

Cushatt’s basic question concerning publishing is: are you still writing for your own catharsis, or are you  writing out of compassion to connect with others who may have suffered as you have? This is not an easy answer because this transition, for me anyway, came in stages.

What I enjoyed so much about Cushatt’s interview was what I’ll call her publishing readiness checklist. If any of the following are true, then you’re not ready to publish:

Are you still volatile on the topic?

Defensive?

Desperate to talk and write about it.

Do you still feel confused or wounded?

Do you need the approval of your reader? What if someone disagrees or can’t connect with your topic?

Are you healed and in a stable place?

I spent years within all these categories. Somehow, I always found a way to include my issues in a conversation. And was I volatile? You bet. And if you disagreed with me, let me tell you a thing or two! And yet I was still so confused about why I felt so broken, bruised, and desperate to have my story published even before it was completely written. I needed someone else, my listener, my reader, to validate me, to say yeah, you’re right. You were the victim and the other guys; they were the villains. If you are where I was, then according to Cushatt wait a while to pursue publishing.

But she adds, even when it’s not time to publish, it’s always time to write because writing is what brings clarity and clarity ushers in healing as we are able to name our hurts, desires and needs to the Lord, the God who sees. In my own experience, until I’m able to surrender my scars to the Lord, I’m not able to forgive. I’ve heard the definition of unforgiveness as drinking poison and expecting your enemy to drop dead. Only when I relinquish those who’ve hurt me to God’s justice, am I able to get well and move on.

This is the moment when you’re ready to think about publishing. Back to Roach Smith, what do I know now that I didn’t know before I went through the episode I want to share? What I learned is my theme. Be sure you can put it in a concise sentence or two.

And who needs to know? They are my audience. This is the harder question of the two for me. Who needs to know? Doesn’t everybody? Yes, but no book is for everybody. Ask yourself perhaps, why did I need to know this? What misconceptions or lies was I living under prior to the incident, that I now see differently? Who might share those misconceptions?  What hurt the most about my incident? See if you can name it in one word. Who else might be hurt by the same word? Why? Now you’re getting closer. This is the reader you can serve. Cushatt suggests creating a kind of avatar. What do they look like, how old are they? Keep them in mind as you move onto the next step.

What is the objective of your book? What are you offering your reader specifically for their benefit? There can be more than one thing, but they must be few, related, and succinct. Cushatt cautions, every  part of your story must meet your objective. If it doesn’t, you’re off the map. A reader who finds him/herself wandering for meaning may lose interest.

Understanding your objective is especially important for a writer of memoir because a memoir contains no overt takeaways but trusts the reader to find them on their own within the narrative. This is why I love to read memoir. No preachy inserts. No pre-digested thinking, only intact story that draws me in until I’m living vicariously with the author, elbow to elbow, thought to thought, feeling to feeling. So, your memoir must be tighter than tight. Every detail pointing toward the epiphanies you hope for your reader. This is a tall order for any author, but it’s what differentiates writing from literature, and literature is what lasts because it connects universally through lyric specifics.

So, thank you Michele Cushatt, Emily Freeman, and Marion Roach Smith. And fellow writers, I hope this moves you, like it did me, closer to publishing worth publication.

Posted in Writing Process | 4 Comments