Today I’m so excited to share my first podcast about my book, Teacher Dropout, on Beth Jordahl’s podcast, Beth’s Bookcast. It’s a conversation about the hard realities and high hopes of teaching in an “under-performing” urban school and the spiritual journey behind that difficult episode in my life.
Here’s the podcast link:
And if you’d like to read it, here’s the Amazon link.
Thanks for listening and thanks as always for reading about what God’s grace looks like in an ordinary life.
Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
Where do stories come from? What mysterious alchemy stirs fact into fiction? This week I’d like to talk about the writing process that led me to write a children’s story in the folktale tradition, so you can see concrete examples of the creative process at work.
When I was about six, I remember going to the farm of family friends for Sunday dinner. After the meal, my mom and I took a walk with the farmer’s wife down an overgrown lane on the edge of the pasture. At its end was an old cellar hole, all that was left of an abandoned home that backed up to a dark hemlock wood. There in the dappled sunlight, I first saw the flowers my mom called bleeding hearts, their delicate pink blossoms shaped like a heart torn in two by a single drop of blood. The flowers spilled over the lip of the deserted foundation and marched towards the forest’s shade. As a little girl, the plants came up to my waist, and their profusion reminded me of the briar roses that overtook Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Fast forward to when my adult children were leaving the nest, I was an ELL teacher, helping immigrant high school students learn English for the first time. In one of my classes was a handsome young man from Moldova whose stories of his village painted a picture of a place lost in time. Old fashioned hay wagons pulled by giant draft horses. Wrinkled old women dressed in kerchiefs and aprons. Farmers, woodcutters, and craftsmen coming to market to hawk their wares. All amidst the ethnic strife and religious persecution that caused him to leave his homeland.
Photo by Sven Fischer on Unsplash
While I was teaching this boy, sitting at my desk at home, these words came to me. 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.
This was the beginning of my tale titled Bleeding Heart. In my mind’s eye, I pictured a fairy tale Moldova and an old woodcutter and his wife living on the edge of a great forest not unlike the abandoned house on the edge of the farmer’s pasture from my childhood.
I had no plot in mind, but I let the heartache of a woman longing for a child guide me, a common theme in fairytales, a woman, watching her fleeting childbearing years with a frantic desperation. Perhaps a woman like me, no longer in her prime, childless in a whole new way as my little ones became adults, married, and moved far away.
This is where the Romani people entered the story. Ancient outcasts of central Europe where Moldova is situated, they’re called gypsies, and among other things, renowned as herbalists and musicians. So, I placed a very old woman in a kerchief and an apron like the women of my student’s village in a gypsy wagon in the dead of night and let her intersect with the desperate woodcutter’s wife’s begging for a baby.
Then out of my subconscious came a sac of magic seeds and the gypsy woman’s words, Plant these in your garden by the door, and in the spring a daughter, will be yours.” I didn’t know yet that they would be seeds for bleeding hearts, but my mind had long ago attributed magic to the beautiful flowers I’d first seen by an abandoned home.
I should mention here that I am adopted, a longed for child myself, cared for by a childless mother and father who cherished me. And shortly before I started Bleeding Heart, my adopted mom died. Out of respect, I’d never searched for my biological parents until both my adoptive parents had passed away.
Without spilling family secrets, I found my biological mom, and discovered I’m from a clan rich with writers, musicians, artists, and actors. This knowledge explained all the college majors I pursued even though my adoptive dad, an engineer, and my mom, a home economist urged me to choose more practical careers. Finding my birth mom was like finding my people even though we were absolute strangers.
So, I gave the woodcutter’s wife a daughter as if by gypsy magic, and the gypsy woman prescribed the child a gypsy name, Lavuta, the Romani word for violin. When the daughter comes of age, she awakes in the middle of the night and hears her name whispering through the trees.
I will stop here and let the remainder of the story tell itself below.
With the information I’ve shared about my tale’s conception and formation, I hope as you read the tale itself, you’ll be able to see how the fingers of the creative process flipped through my mental files and plucked seemingly disparate episodes from my past in order to make peace with the grief of losing my mom to death, the angst of losing my children to adulthood, and the power of discovering my true identity all expressed through story.
Those of you who regularly read my blog, know that I usually write memoir. But I also have a slew of stories for children. My point in writing this is that whether we write fact or fiction, for children or adults, God is the author of our lives, and as writers, we are free to use the material he gives us to portray his glory in any format that serves his truth.
So, like the Miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin, let’s spin our straw into God’s gold.
What facts can you spin into fiction that contain a deeper truth?
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 lived in the forest and kept to themselves, 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. She pushed aside a basket set upon the hearth and 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 open 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 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 loosened 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 your own happy home,” 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 trees 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 circle 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 circled wagons, and at the center, Lavuta. Her daughter’s 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 old 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.
It’s the summer of 1969 when Linda, moves out of my neighborhood, leaving behind the modest house where we’ve played since third grade. No longer can I walk two streets down, cut through a few yards, and in five minutes, find my best friend answering the door.
To get to Linda’s new split level, I have to either ride my bike three miles down a busy road or cut through the golf club. I prefer the golf course because weekdays it’s a silent world apart, except for a few irate men in pants the colors of rainbow sherbet. I stroll across lush fairways, over crew cut greens spiked with festive flags, and through a short wood that opens onto Linda’s quiet lane.
School is out, and I’m drifting like a heat wave above the scalding asphalt.
Greg Meyers takes me out a few times. Our encounters are unmemorable save the fact that one night, on the way to pick me up, he runs over a mother raccoon. What to do with the baby circling the furry mush in the middle of the road? When Greg phones, I remember Linda nursed an orphaned robin into adulthood. Greg secures the ring-tailed infant in his glove compartment, and at my suggestion, drops him off at Linda’s sprawling new home.
The black-masked baby is welcomed by Linda with open arms, but her parents say the racoon must remain in the family room on the same level as the garage with the couch and chairs from the old house. The newly furnished living room, mid level, is decorated with a sofa upholstered in avocado velvet. Linda’s mom has gone back to work as a Spanish teacher, and the wrought iron lamps and accessories reflect her enthusiasm for all things Latin.
Up another flight of stairs is Linda’s bedroom. No more rock maple furniture from Ethan Allen. A wicker African chair with its grand circular back makes a cozy spot for cuddling the wild animal.
This same summer my father buys a small, ocean-going sailboat and announces we’re cruising Buzzard’s Bay for our family vacation. We put the vessel, named Dilly Dally, in at Marion, Massachusetts and sail across to Pocassett, spending our first night of many at a public pier. From there we cross to Matapoisett, touring the shoreline dotted with gothic cottages, picket fences and beach plum roses in full bloom. In New Bedford, we go ashore to view the massive jawbones, and delicate scrimshaw at the whaling museum.
My father’s plan is to pass through the Elizabeth Islands at Woods Hole, and sail to Martha’s Vineyard. But thick fog and heavy rain keep us moored in Woods Hole’s enclosed harbor, the Eel Pond.
To get from the boat to the small town, we must row our dinky dinghy. It accommodates only two passengers at a time. In my old Girl Scout rain poncho, I take a turn with my mom, rowing to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Before returning to the boat, my mom buys a few necessities at the Rexall Drug Store while I browse a kiosk of paperbacks. I select Black Like Me and Rosemary’s Baby. When it’s my brother’s turn ashore with my dad, he chooses Mad Magazine.
Dilly Dally’s cockpit barely seats two people on a side. The cabin barely sleeps four. My parents bed down in the bow. My brother and I sleep in the stern, our sleeping bags stuffed underneath either side of the cockpit. Only our heads stick out into the cabin. My skull butts against a teensy nautical sink, my brother’s a midget stove. This means, in the rain, inside the boat, for two days straight, I’m cocooned in my berth, blazing through tales of the segregated South, and a demonic incarnation in New York City.
When the sky clears, my father steers us under the drawbridge and through the narrow cut with its treacherous currents. In open Vineyard Sound, we’re quickly out of sight of land, blown before the wind like a speck upon mountainous swells that heave like water breathing.
We make landfall at Oak Bluffs and spend the afternoon in the fairy tale village, riding the carousel’s flying horses and touring gingerbread houses painted the colors of cotton candy. For days we circle the island, enjoying Vineyard Haven, Menemsha, Gay Head, Chilmark, and Edgartown. We sail by Chappaquiddick and towards Hyannis, the Kennedy compound, on our way back to Buzzard’s Bay.
Summer’ is almost over when I return from the family voyage. Linda’s raccoon is nearly grown and too feral to contain in the family room.
She calls, “Hey wanna go to Woodstock. It’s a three-day concert.”
Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash
How could my mom have known what would happen on a dairy farm just an hour or so down the thruway? Whoever heard of black men like Richie Havens or Jimi Hendrix, singing anything but Soul? Whoever heard of a white woman like Janis Joplin wailing the blues? How did trippin’ Grace Slick of The Jefferson Airplane dethrone good-girl singer, Doris Day, as female role model?
By the time I start my junior year girls are allowed to wear pantsto school. Not sleek, side-zippered slacks, but baggy men’s carpenter pants, overalls, and bell bottom jeans from the Army Navy store. The unmistakable scent of marijuana wafts through the school wherever students mingle in tie-dyed T-shirts and dashikis .
At home, the cover of The National Geographic on our coffee table is devoid of giraffes and baby elephants and full of photos of Vietnamese children fleeing napalm.
Somehow my whole generation came of age in three days of Aquarian peace and music only to be mired in mud. I can’t believe that was fifty-two years ago this week!
But no matter where you sail, the times are always changing, and the answer to every question blowing in the wind is
Jesus.
Therefore, “Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. 3 This is good and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. 5 For,
There is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus. 6 He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone.” 1 Timothy 2:2-6 (NLT)
This another excerpt from my upcoming memoir, Looking For God in All the Wrong Places: Coming of Age and Coming to God in the Woodstock Generation
Summer 1962. Every house is manned by a mom. Every kid is roaming the neighborhood looking for something to do. I ride my turquoise Schwinn over to my best friend Linda’s which means I’ll have to play with her older sister Laura too. Laura is only a grade ahead of us. She has her dad’s bushy curls cut short while Linda looks like her pretty mom. Most important, Laura has a secret power to somehow make you do stuff you don’t really want to do. It’s like she has a dog whistle and you’re the dog.
Linda and I want to make up commercials in the empty TV console in the basement, but Laura says let’s ride bikes. We ride over to Helen Thompson’s. Helen, Linda and I want to play in her woodsy backyard, but Laura says let’s play badminton. Helen gets the racquets out of the garage. Linda and I want to be on the same team, but Laura says that’s not fair. I have to be on her team, and Linda has to be on Helen’s. We play in the sun till Laura says let’s get a drink. It’s like Mrs. Thompson can hear the dog whistle too. She offers us not only Tang, the astronauts’ favorite, but Pecan Sandies, Laura’s favorite. It’s like the whole earth orbits around Laura.
We go down into the cool basement to play house. Laura takes all the clothespins, the clothesline, and some old blankets to make her house. Linda gets the space under the stairs. Helen, beneath the workbench. I get the corner by the oil tank.
When Helen pulls the red wagon for her car, Laura grabs the handle and says, “Thanks for sharing.”
When Linda takes some canned goods off the shelves for her kitchen, Laura says, “Hey, I already called those for my grocery store.” We all know she didn’t, but no one crosses her. And we all know where we’ll shop.
By the time Mrs. Thompson serves us tuna fish sandwiches and potato chips for lunch, huge thunderheads have formed. Heat lightening rumbles in the distance. My legs stick to the red vinyl seat of the dinette set. It hasn’t started to rain, but we know it’s coming.
After eating, we head upstairs to Helen’s room over the garage. Laura herds us into the huge closet under the eaves. Laura asks Helen to get a deck of cards, and she fetches. Linda and I squish under the sloping ceiling. Helen crouches below the dresses.
Laura sits upright by the door, shuffling the deck. “What shall we play?”
Linda raises her hand like we’re still in school. “Crazy eight?”
Helen cracks a smile. “Gin rummy?”
Laura deals. “How about strip poker?”
I didn’t know how to play, but it’s easy. When you lose a hand, you have to take off a piece of clothing. In shorts, blouses and barefoot, it doesn’t take long before we’re all sitting in our underwear, all except Laura who has only taken bobby pins out of her hair. I’ve never seen Laura use a bobby pin before. But she says they count, so they count.
That’s when the thunder cracks. We all jump and instinctively get dressed. It’s the break that overrides Laura’s secret power. A cloudburst pounds the roof, and we pour out of the stifling closet. A breeze blows through the bedroom. Helen smacks the western window shut and mops up the deluge with a dirty sock. Lightning flashes, and we flow downstairs. I’m sick of Laura. I wish she’d fall off the face of the earth.
I blast out the door and hop on my wet bike. Muddy spray pocks my legs. Who cares? I want to get home where Laura can’t boss me. My kickstand scraps the dry concrete of the garage, and I look back at Laura peddling hard in the opposite direction. Linda eats her wake. Why did we all have to strip when Laura didn’t reveal a freckle? What is she hiding?
As a child, I never guessed Laura could be afraid like me. Afraid without her beautiful sister, no one would want to play with her. Me, afraid if I didn’t put up with Laura, I’d lose her sister as my friend. How ironic, Laura’s fear turned her into someone nobody could like. Mine made me not like myself. Both of us aching for a friend we could trust. How do any of us break free from the horrible gravity of our own solar system?
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
Now I know, it’s the overwhelming, never ending, perfect love of God that frees both bully and bullied from having to win the approval and affections of others.
“Love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it… shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”
1John 4:18 (NLT)
This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir, Looking for God in all the Wrong Places: Coming of Age and Coming to God During a Cultural revolution
But in 1963, at age ten, headed home from a summer vacation at my grandmother’s farm, I learned, for the first time, I had another name when I was born. Here’s the story.
At the end of August, we’re headed home from Virginia on the new interstate, but it’s still five hundred miles in our maroon Ford station wagon with no air-conditioning. We leave the Blue Ridge Mountains, climb through Pennsylvania coal country, cross the mighty Susquehanna, and stop at a gas station in Port Jervis. I’m lounging in the way back in a nest of luggage when my dad gets out and talks to the gas station attendant who pumps our gas, checks the oil, and washes our windshield with a squeegee.
Photo from the Austrian National Library on Unsplash
My mom gets out too, herds me and my brother to the grimy gas station office and obtains the keys to the restrooms. We walk around the side of the building and my mom unlocks the one toilet Ladies room. I go first while she hands my brother, still sleepy, his cheek imprinted with the pattern of the vinyl back seat, the key to the men’s room.
There’s only two and a half years between us, but I’ve always known I was adopted as a nine-month-old baby, he as an instant four-year-old. I envision my parents adding water to a package of sea monkeys and voila, Bruce. We look nothing alike. I’m a strawberry blonde. His hair is dark brown and curly. Because his skin never burns, he calls it fire-proof.
I carefully place toilet paper on the seat before tinkling, and a thought pops into my head. When my brother was adopted, he was already Bruce. He got to keep his name and the red tricycle he had at the foster home. I’m named after my memaw, whose real name is Annie. I must have had a different name when I was born. Surely, I wasn’t baby X for nine months.
I explode from the rest room, “Did I have a different name when I was a baby?” The question pushes itself out of my mouth before I understand all I’m asking.
My mother hands me a stick of Teaberry gum, snaps her purse shut and says, “Yes, do you want to know what it was?”
Something about her face makes me slow down. When we’re all done with the restrooms, I let Bruce beat me to the way back, so I can sit in the back seat closer to my mom.
As my dad starts the engine, I realize there’s more to a name than just the name; it’s everything behind it. What does it mean if my name is Darlene or Lulu? What kind of parent names their kid Denise or Ermintrude? What if my real mom is mean like Mrs. McGinty, the playground supervisor? What if she has a moustache or wears a hairnet like the cafeteria ladies? What if my real dad has a temper like Bill the bus driver who tells us kids to sit down and shut up or we’re going to be penalized, a word that sounds an awful lot like one I know you’re not supposed to say?
Still, “Yes, I want to know my name,” comes out of my mouth. Instinctively I want my mom to tell me I’m a long, lost princess like Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia, an old movie I watched on TV with my Dad.
But before my mind can fully prepare for a former identity, she says, “Your name was Leslie.”
“Leslie,” I voice my long-lost name, the l’s curling off my tongue like a melody.
“Do you want to know more?”
I swallow and nod.
“Your mom was petite like you, and you have your dad’s coloring. Do you want to know more?”
I nod again, mesmerized by facts only now crystalized.
“They met in college.” She continues. “He was an engineering student. She was a music major. They weren’t married, so they couldn’t keep you. Your father’s family was Irish Catholic, and your mother was from old New England stock. That’s all I know. Oh, and your grandmother was some sort of journalist.”
Old New England stock makes no sense to me. Stock is the broth my mom makes by boiling down beef bones and chicken carcasses. My mind moves on to Irish Catholic. All I know about Ireland is that’s where leprechauns live. Linda and Laura, my best friends, are Catholic. That’s why they can’t play on Wednesdays after school because they have to go to something called catechism.
Bruce interrupts my train of thought by asking about his parents.
My mom tells him, “Your mommy was very pretty. In fact, she was a model, but your daddy already had another family, so they couldn’t get married, and keep you. Your grandfather was a full-blooded American Indian who owned a hardware store.”
This last part, the Indian part, is what grabs my attention. I look at my brother in disbelief as if I’ve been living with Tonto, from The Lone Ranger, and no one thought to tell me. And I can’t picture Geronimo behind a hardware counter.
Photo from Boston Public Library on Unsplash
I cycle back to Memaw’s name, Ann. I lean over the front seat to ask my mom, “What does Ann mean?”
“It means grace.”
“Like a ballerina?”
“Yes, but also like an unexpected gift from God. Your other grandmother was named Grace because she was born after her older sister died as an infant.”
I sit back. “Do you know what Leslie means?”
My mom turns to face me. “Sorry, I don’t.” She snaps her purse open and hands me a pad of paper and a dull pencil with a smeared eraser that won’t erase. “Why don’t you and Bruce play Hang Man.”
I draw the empty gallows and six blank spaces for the letters of my secret word.
My brother looks over my shoulder and guesses the vowels one by one. I write an E in the second and final spaces and an I in the next to last space. He tries a string of consonants before he’s swinging from the hangman’s noose.
When I fill in the blanks with Leslie, he says, “That’s not fair. It’s a name.”
He’s right, but I don’t care. It’s my name, and I needed to write it down, to try it on. Am I the same person under another name? My mom said she doesn’t know the meaning of Leslie, and neither do I.
This is an excerpt of a memoir I’m working on that portrays how God has carried me since I was conceived and adopted me into a new identity in Christ solely by his grace.
“4 Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
Isaiah 46:4 NIV
Cover photo from Boston Public Library on Unsplash
After a short vacation, I’m finding it hard to get back into the groove, especially my writing groove. And my thoughts are telling me to:
Take a little more time off.
It won’t make any difference.
Who reads your stuff anyway?
Does your writing make any difference?
Who cares what you have to say?
Did God really call you to write about your ordinary life?
Who do you think you are?
Why don’t you just quit!
Sound familiar?
So, feeling discouraged, rather than write, I decided to organize my messy desk. But towards the bottom of an overstuffed in-basket, held together with a paperclip, I came across this small stack of quotes:
Photo by Wonderland on Unsplash
“Unflinching, uncomfortable, and unapologetic honesty is what makes a memoir stand out.” Shannon Leone Fowler.
“When we share our real selves, others are inevitably emboldened to come forward, out of hiding, towards us and say those magic words, ‘me too’.” Glennon Doyle
“If you’ve got a story burning inside you, it’s likely that somebody out there is burning to hear it. The more personal it is, the more universal it is too.” Glennon Doyle
“Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but content will stay in his mind.” Joyce Carol Oates
“Do not despise the era in which the Lord has chosen to make you an influence.” Katie Emanuel
“Your book is not self-promotion, but a gift to your reader.” Emily P. Freeman
“You publish to influence others for good. You’re not done until they read it.” Gary Morland
“I’m the one who must give myself permission to release my memoir into the world.” Karen Pickell
“All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things because they believed God would be with them. Satan too has his creed: Doubt God’s faithfulness. Has God said? Are you not mistaken as to his commands? He could not really mean that. You are taking the meaning literally. Ah! How constantly, and alas how successfully are such arguments used to prevent wholehearted trust in God, wholehearted consecration to God.” Hudson Taylor, First Missionary to China
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
These quotes remind me that writing can be a hard row, and sometimes it’s hard to keep your head above water, but please notice, I quit cleaning my desk and wrote this blog.
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said.
Matthew 14:28-29
Where are you drowning in your own negative thoughts? Let’s trust the Lord instead.
The same year I graduate from eighth grade, my dad accrues thirty days of vacation from the General Electric Company. He proposes a cross-country road trip pulling an Apache pop-up trailer. My parents plan all year for this month of visiting every relative, long lost friend, and national park from Niagara Falls to Disneyland.
In the dark of winter, I fall asleep to the nick, nick, nick of my mom’s sewing machine in the guest room on the other side of my bedroom wall. She stiches drawstring cases for each of our sleeping bags. Mine is pink calico with turquoise flowers. My brother’s, a Navajo print on a maroon background. My mom and dad’s, nautical strips. She makes herself a mumu in a psychedelic pattern for the baking Southwest. For me she fashions summer blouses, shorts, and my first two-piece bathing suit with padding in the cups.
My Dad buys a series of Rand McNally maps and guides, and with snow on our roof, marks our hot, dusty route.
The day after school is out, Dad double checks all the belts, hoses, and fluids of our maroon Ford station wagon. Mom packs the bottom of our red, metal Coke cooler with ice, ginger ale, Orange Crush, and grape soda. Bologna, cheese, and tuna salad made with pickle relish go in the top tray. In a picnic basket she arranges: a loaf of Wonder Bread, potato chips, and homemade oatmeal cookies. My brother calls the way back with the snacks and the cozy sleeping bags, and I start out in the red vinyl backseat.
Our first night we stop in Erie, PA with an aunt and uncle. After hamburgers, corn on the cob, and watermelon, my cousins and I do handsprings and cartwheels across a lawn blinking with lightning bugs.
In Council Bluffs, Iowa we visit my mom’s college roommate, Lucy, and her husband, Dick, an elevator tycoon. We park in the driveway of their towering Victorian, and Dad and Bruce, pop up the canvas roof. There are two bunk beds on one side. I sleep on top by a zippered screen. Bruce sleeps below. My parent’s bed fits over a dinky kitchen table.
After a hot day on the road, without air conditioning, I’m happy to hear we’re going to dinner at Dick and Lucy’s country club—with a pool. I pull on my new two-piece bathing suit and exit the club’s locker room. Lucy’s daughter has thin blonde braids and is younger than Bruce who is two years younger than me. Lucy’s son is a year older than I am with braces, a blonde crewcut, and acne on both his face and back. They are waiting in the pool when I dive in. Without asking, the son swims between my legs and surfaces with me on his pimply shoulders.
He grins. “Hey, wanna have a chicken fight.”
My brother dips below the water and rises with the little sister above him. It’s no contest. King Kong and Fay Wray against a fairy on a lily pad. I wriggle off the gorilla and swim to the deep end. He cannon-balls me from the side. On a steaming, mid-western day, I can’t wait to get out of the pool and go to dinner with adults I don’t even know.
The sleeping arrangements at the Victorian Hilton are: my parents upstairs in a guest room with red flocked wallpaper, my brother and I in the trailer in the driveway.
At the dinner table, King Kong looks at his little sister. “Hey, wanna sleep in the trailer too?”
My dad eyeballs him. “No son, I don’t think there’s room.” I want to kiss my dad.
Next morning, our trip continues . We travel through The Badlands and Mt. Rushmore. We head for the Tetons, and the water is so cold in Jenny Lake, I jump in and out so fast, I almost lose the top of my new two-piece. In Yellowstone we mustn’t stray from narrow wooden walkways beside bubbling mud, and boiling geysers.
Climbing into the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, a gust of wind whips my mom’s carefully planned mumu, over her head, revealing white undies to all the tourists at the bottom of the ladder. Thank God she made me shorts and blouses instead.
Photo by Dino Reichmuth on Unsplash
We travel through Monument Valley and the spiky Joshua trees of the Mojave. Under cover of night we enter the neon jungle of Las Vegas. We enjoy sizzling steaks at the Golden Nugget, and afterwards, my dad gives Bruce and I four quarters each for the glitzy line of slot machines. He wakes us at 3:00 a.m. to drive out of the desert before sunrise. I fall back asleep in the car and awake to surfers riding the waves of Huntington Beach, California. We made it. Next day—destination Disneyland.
An oversized Goofy takes our tickets at the gate. I spot a too-big Minnie and Micky on our way to the Matterhorn. As our little train climbs the artificial Alp, I view the land I’ve dreamed of. In the distance is the castle where Tinker Bell has waved her magic wand for as long as I can remember. I plunge down the mountain, my heart in my throat, and the ride is over.
All I remember on our return trek is miraculously floating in the Great Salt Lake, and miles and miles of Kansas dotted with an occasional buffalo burger stand.
That is until our next to last stop at The Lincoln Boyhood Memorial. Once the camper is popped up, and the cooler unloaded, Bruce and I run across a bridge towards a shady playground. Below, a boy about my age stands in the stream skipping stones. I notice his brown hair, his bare, bronzed torso. When he flashes a smile, my body melts in a way I don’t recognize.
I run to the swings and pump higher with eyes fixed on his shirtless back, I watch his biceps bunch and lengthen as he releases each flat stone across the brook. He leans over to find the next rock and pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead. From above, his perfection makes me ache for something I can’t name. I lean so far back my ponytail brushes the ground. The toes of my navy blue sneakers kiss the sky.
My mother calls Bruce and I from the other side of the bridge for supper. I jump off the swing and float for a moment in mid-air like a cabbage moth, aware that I am somehow suspended between where I was and where I am going, my destination nowhere on the Rand McNally guide which lists which campsites offer pools, hot showers, flush toilets, and electrical hook-ups. The soles of my feet sting with the impact of hard-packed earth. I run across the bridge and laugh to make the boy notice me.
He looks up. His white-toothed grin, however brief, takes away my appetite for hot dogs, baked beans, coleslaw, and even butterscotch brownies. This boy has flipped a switch I say nothing about as I place my napkin on my lap and drain my Dixie Cup of Kool-Aid.
Under the stars, I unzip the canvas screen beside my sleeping bag and let the humid air blow across my baby doll pajamas.
After our road trip, the summer is half over. There are boys in my best friend, Linda’s backyard. High school boys who want to put us on their shoulders for chicken fights, even without a pool. Boys who ask me to dance at summer dances at the high school I’ll be attending in the fall. Boys whose smiles light me up like a lightning bug.
Back in my own bed, a summer breeze ruffles my sheets, and I realize I’ve outgrown Disney’s Small, Small World. The floor beneath my bed is as unstable as the bubbling ground of Yellowstone. I am as vulnerable as my mom with her mumu over her head.
History books record 1967 as the year Elvis got married and the year of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour.
But what I remember from the summer of 1967 was the magic boy who lit puberty’s match.
In the time it took for the moon to circle the earth, I left my driveway on one side of the continent and returned to another.
Photo by William Christen on Unsplash
Have you ever gone on a road trip, and where did it take you?
Is the past gone? Duh, yes. But does it control you? My honest answer, much more than I’d like. As a memoirist this is both a blessing and a curse. I can remember events as if they happened yesterday. The sensory details still intact. The faces, the personalities, the events and their emotional impact still potent. I want to move on. I know better than to let my mistakes define me. But the past is like spider glue, much stronger than it looks.
You who read my blog regularly know that last Saturday, with some reluctance, I went to my 50th high school reunion on Zoom. I’m here to report that it was actually a treat to see the faces of kids who were in my gym class, who sat next to me in science lab, who went to Methodist youth group with me. It was interesting to hear happy endings for kids who appeared headed for disaster at seventeen. And it was sad to see the photographs of those who’ve already left this earth, among them the first boy who wrote me a love note, my best girlfriend from fourth grade, a boy I’d always thought was cute from afar. All those remaining had aged and matured, just as I have, wrinkles and wisdom a universal duo. Apparently, the high school itself has grown and reconfigured, so my high school past is physically gone in every way. At the end of the Zoom, it was announced that our 50thlive reunion, postponed until next fall, will be the ultimate reunion, this group united by age and education never to be convened again.
The following week, a family member went to the hospital with complications from newly diagnosed cancer. The prognosis lethal. Age and death another inseparable duo that hit me square in the face.
It’s time, far past time, for me to release a past that exists only in my mind.
Peter describes the devil as a roaring lion prowling around for someone to devour and urges us to stay alert to his schemes.
In this instance I think of the enemy of our souls as more like a spider trying to wrap and trap me in the web of who I was at my worst, in order to eat me one shameful bite at a time.
Photo by German Rodriguez on Unsplash
Therefore, whenever a trigger reminds and rewinds a mental video I regret, from high school or beyond, I need to remember what else Peter said,
“To humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” 1Peter 5:6-7 NLT
In the vernacular that means God’s love is far stronger than spider glue.
And the freedom and joy I felt at my reunion is the proof.
This Saturday at four o’clock it will be exactly fifty years since I walked across the stage of The Saratoga Performing Arts center as a high school graduate. And this Saturday at exactly four o’clock, there will be a class reunion on Zoom. Of course, I’ve been invited like all my classmates, but I hesitate to sign up for the link because the love/hate relationship I had with high school still clings to me
Zoom, link, these words didn’t exist fifty years ago. That reminds me of something my mom said when my children were young, “There will be ways for your kids to get in trouble as teenagers that you could never imagine.”
My parents were part of the Greatest Generation who fought the Nazi’s in Europe and the Japanese in far off Asia.
Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash
I was part of the Woodstock Generation who witnessed the corruption of Watergate, the insanity of the Vietnam War, and the riots that erupted when national guards shot protesting students at Kent State University. Was it any wonder we rebelled and came up with slogans like Make Love Not War, and Question authority?
Photo by Priscilla Dupreez on Unsplash
What was my mom thinking when she made that prediction anyway? Was she remembering the time I came home so drunk from a school dance, my dad asked me if someone had slipped me a Mickey, a term from his era when good girls didn’t drink? Did that make me a bad girl? I’d left the dance with friends and older boys and felt so socially awkward I got drunk for the first time on a coke-size bottle of Ripple.
My dad’s greatest vice was smoking cigars, so how could he imagine I’d ever walk out the back door by the school library to smoke pot at a friend’s house on the other side of the woods.
My mom was valedictorian of her small rural high school and one of the first women admitted to her state college, so how could she imagine I’d rather skip school one sunny June day and ride a tandem bike all the way to Ballston Spa as if my friend and I were the Double Mint twins instead of budding scholars.
My mom was a home economics major and able to make me trendy mini-skirts and maxi coats, so how could she imagine I’d rather wear bell bottom jeans and pea coats from the Army Navy store.
I’m certain neither of my parents ever imagined I’d skip school one bright October morning to try mescaline and witness the forest floor turning into a magnificent, interlocking puzzle.
My parents thought I was happy in high school because I got A’s and B’s. For a season, I was even a cheerleader. I was in a school play. I went on school ski trips. I stayed after school to play field hockey, basketball, and do gymnastics on the trampoline in a harness that made me feel like I was Peter Pan able to flip and fly as if gravity had no hold on me.
All to say, I was a girl in an excellent suburban high school, completely unaware of my privilege, and yet my four years there, made me feel like I was never enough. Not pretty enough, strong enough, smart enough, cool enough, and so I pushed every boundary.
Today, I think of myself more as a high school survivor than graduate, my soul swept up in a social whirlpool that almost drowned me. I suppose that’s why I hesitate to zoom back into that time warp, afraid I’ll be sucked under again by who I was back then, a girl I’m not particularly proud of. I wonder how many others shrink from reconnecting for the same reason.
That said, I realize the love/hate relationship I had was not with high school, but with myself.
So, after fifty years, a senior in a whole new way, I realize my parents probably knew more than I could imagine, and could only pray that their insecure, rebellious daughter wouldn’t make the same mistakes they did.
Thankfully our heavenly father, promises not to remember any of us according to the foolishness of our youth, but according to the unfathomable depths of his mercy.
Therefore, I’ve decided to make peace with my past and link back up with fellow survivors of one of the most perilous episodes of my life, high school.
My father always had a sailboat. He knew about hoists and turnbuckles, jib sheets, and rudders. He knew how to come about, how to go before the wind, and how to tack on a close haul. He knew how to jibe without knocking anyone out of the boat. He understood buoys and lighthouses, channel markers and currents, and how to read charts. He taught me starboard was on the right and port was on the left because, “We just left port.”
He put me on the bow in shallow water to call out rocks, and he measured the depths in fathoms. He knew how to dock and moor a boat. He knew how to scull in a dinghy so small, you had to sit back-to-back if there were two of you. He taught me how to row and how to paddle. He let me hold the tiller with his hand close by. He taught me how to hoist the mainsail when it was time to embark and how to lower the boom when it was time to go home. He could navigate between rocky islands and beach a boat on the sand.
He took us through Woods Hole in a pea soup fog and all the way to Martha’s Vineyard. Our little vessel surfed wing on wing up and down gigantic ocean swells that heaved like mountains breathing.
He could read the water like a map. When the waves rippled with ridges as tight as corduroy, he knew to head straight into the wind because it spelled a gust so strong it could slap the sail to the water in an instant. He was a steady captain, and when he was at the helm, I knew no harm would befall me.
When he died, I felt at sea. We sold his sailboat and emptied out his workshop in the basement. He was born during the depression, so everything was saved. He went to work as an engineer during WWII, so everything was raw material for fixing what was broken. There were peanut butter jars full of flat head screws, and jelly jars of roofing nails. All labeled and sorted from every other kind of nail, screw, grommet, or fastener in pickle jars soup cans, and Sucrets tins. There were jib saws, table saws, and bow saws. There were batteries and jumper cables, oil cans and oil pans, grease guns and tubes of grease. There were ropes, chains, pulleys, drills, chisels, screw drivers and hammers, pinchers, pliers, wrenches and axe handles, just in case your axe handle broke, and your axe head could still be sharpened.
Photo by Ricky Kharawala on Unsplash
I went to college in the 1970’s with a revamped toaster from the 1940’s. When I got straight A’s he bought me new tires for the bicycle he’d bought me in fourth grade, my first 26 inch turquoise Schwinn with balloon tires, coaster brakes, and one speed. He babied his 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado into the mid 90’s, its engine still throaty as a cabin cruiser. When all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again, they could always call my father.
At his funeral I realized that the most important people in his life were not important people. The congregation held no Nobel laureates, but couples my father had served sauerbraten or hush puppies from the head of our dining room table, couples who’d played bridge at card tables crowded into our skinny living room, a cut glass bowl of peanuts on their right elbow, a matching ashtray on their left, both wedding presents.
Mr. Beck worked with my father. He was 6’5”. My father was 5’6”. Mrs. Beck was close to six feet. My mother barely five. Munching canapés and crackers in the kitchen, where people always end up before dinner parties, they reminded me of the giants and the midgets I’d seen chatting behind the tent at the Altamont fair.
Mr. Wanty was our neighbor. He’d sit opposite his wife Clara, holding his cards in his left hand, picking at them with his right, nothing more than a shrunken pincher, a congenital birth defect. Sometimes my parents were invited to parties, and my brother and I would beg for the Wanty’s mischievous son, Doug, to be our babysitter. We played Hide and Seek amongst the boxes of sewing scraps, suitcases, sleeping bags, window fans, summer suits, winter coats, and family photos all piled in closets where Doug could never find us.
Mr. Kittle also worked with my dad. His wife had polio as a child and hung her cane on the side of the card table. The Palmers were second generation Italians. I marveled from across the dinner table that their skin was always tan. The first time my dad said the Pospisel’s were going sailing with us, I thought he said Mr. and Mrs. Popsicle.
One summer we went camping with the Bollingers. Mr. Bollinger drove his motor oat and my father sailed his sailboat to a small island in the middle of Lake George. It rained all night, and with the morning light, the Bollinger’s boat was almost sunk at the dock. But my father tinkered, bailed, and got the boat up and running. On our way home, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d walked on water.
I was not my father’s natural child. At age thirty-five he and my mother sought me through adoption. I was the cherub he pulled through the snow in a bright red sled. I was the little monkey he teased at the breakfast table, telling me if I drank all my milk, I would see another monkey at the bottom of the glass.
I played the straight man, curled up on his lap, as he read me the paper. “Mr. Schultz of 1632 Union St. reports his schnauzer, Fritz, has been missing since last Tuesday. Anyone with information as to the dog’s whereabouts should call Dickens 6-8045. Mr. Schultz fears little Fritzy has been eaten by a monster he noticed in his backyard. It had four purple horns and smelled like a dead rattle snake…”
The story got more and more preposterous until I realized he was making it all up.
At age six we played flying angel. My father stretched out on the living room carpet on his back. With my hands in his and his feet on my belly, I flew until giggles toppled me from the sky. At sixteen I practiced cheerleading jumps in front of our picture window. At night, with the curtains opened, it became a huge mirror against the darkness. My father sat on the couch, watching my acrobatics along with re-runs of Bonanza.
When the Vietnam War appeared on our television set, my father and I argued at the dinner table. When I went off to college and started living with my boyfriend, he called it shacking up. But by the time I married that boyfriend and brought home three grandchildren, it was smooth sailing again, my father’s hand on the tiller while my toddler daughter put pink barrettes in his balding comb over.
Finally, there came the day when my mother called, “There’s nothing more they can do for your dad in the hospital. I’d like to bring him home. Will you help me?”
We set up a hospital bed in the same dining room where my father had served his friends and neighbors pork chops and apple sauce. Now they were coming to say good-bye as he struggled for breath.
Looking at him, pale and diminished, I remembered the day he pulled the halyard, the rope that raises the mainsail, before he’d clipped it to the sail, and the end got stuck at the tippity top of the mast.
“Annie Girl,” he used my pet name, “Do you think you could shinny up and bring down the halyard?”
My little biceps bulged as I climbed the million miles of aluminum towards the heavens. Looking down, my father seemed small. I couldn’t believe he’d made a mistake and was asking me for help. When we docked the sailboat in a bay beside an old Adirondak farmhouse, there was a Free Kittens sign over a basket in the front yard. “Go on,” he said. “You can bring one home.”
The day before he died was an ordinary day, as ordinary as any day before death comes to call. I was vacuuming the living room. My mother was washing dishes. My father called from the dining room. “Annie, who’s behind my chair?” We’d moved his ten-ton recliner from the living room next to his hospital bed, so he could sit up and look out the window.
I walked into the room. “There’s no one behind you Dad.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“In the kitchen.”
I went back to the living room to vacuum.
Again, he called, “Annie Girl who’s behind me?”
I returned and proclaimed the space still vacant.
The next afternoon his spirit slipped away, and my soul went as white and numb as the lifeless shell remaining in the same naugahide chair he’d sat in since I was four.
The morning of his memorial, I rose from my seat on cue and walked to the pulpit. It was the lonely public moment to speak a few words of eulogy. As I looked out at the ocean of grieving companions, I spotted the Becks, towering above the rest. There was Mr. Wanty, his thumb and forefinger holding the program of my father’s farewell. Mrs. Kittle rested her cane on the cushioned pew. I saw the brave Bollingers who’d shared our small island in a storm. There were the Palmers, the Pospisels, the Lordis, the Rockwells, the Mac Laurens, all fellow sailors. I don’t remember what I said that day, but as I opened my mouth to pay my father homage, I realized he’d trained me all his life for this moment. This moment when his hand would leave the tiller forever, and I would navigate solo the rest of my life.
I sat back down then rose again as the congregation sang my Dad’s favorite hymns: “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Silent tears streamed my cheeks as I recalled how my dad had chosen me like a kitten in a basket and treasured me as his own. Words can lie, but actions speak the truth. He’d chosen friends of every size and shape, the crippled, the lame, the outsider. In his basement, in his closets, there was no such thing as junk, only raw materials. Everything saved to meet whatever collapse or calamity appeared on the horizon.
Just follow the chart no matter the weather, no matter the waves, and never give up.
Photo by Jarrett Fifield on Unsplash
That day he called me, called me three times, perhaps there was someone behind my father’s chair, an angel, come to ferry him to his final harbor, my father, my captain!
