Winter is Coming

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The fog is thick this morning, surrounding us in a soft blanket of grey, creeping close and closer still, cloaking the shrubs, disguising the gardens. The fog horn has blown all night long at intervals as regular as breath. In and out, in and out, in and out. I sync my breathing, pull up the quilt again, and soon return to my dreams.

I always look forward to the horn in the night, as it predicts the following day will begin with cozy quiet.

A hike in the fog is a mystery walk. Who knows what’s around the next bend? It alerts the senses to each snap of a twig, each rustle of wings leaving the brush, each croaky caw of the raven high in the top of a fir.

Winter is coming.

winter is comingFog on water. Clean. Fresh as laundry on the line.

Fog will soon become rain.  Batten down the hatches.

Except, no need to batten down hatches or shutter the windows. No wind is on the horizon.

I’m reading Ahab’s Wife—which must be the source of my windy thoughts. A nautical read—especially of an earlier century—always makes me think of cobblestone streets and scrimshaw from Nantucket town to Lahaina. Like Ahab’s wife, I would have made a fine New England whaler’s wife, I think, watching from the rooftop walk if I couldn’t be at sea. If I couldn’t climb the rigging in search of a whale’s spouting, I’d be stitching a cross-stitch sampler and minding the gardens before minding the hearth fires that follow. I would have plenty of time to write.

Winter is coming.

Winter is a writer’s blank canvas, as white as the snow, as empty as a new journal page.

Music shifts from blues to classical. And lots of musing.

Winter is coming.

I hear a flock of geese going by. Right this minute. There’s an osprey still occupying the nest down the road, but not for long.

Winter is coming.

I doubt that I could live where there is no change of seasons.

How else would I receive reminders to begin again?

How else to embrace the changes that are inevitable?

winter is coming

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Running

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I haven’t followed the sport of running in recent years, but this morning’s profile of Eliud Kipchoge in The New York Times caught my eye and I was only too happy to have it interfere with my writing frustrations.

Eliud Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner ever. He broke a world record in Berlin this morning. 2:02.

The only running I ever did was running from my mother in my toddler days when I perfected the long distance sprint through our apartment. My sprint always culminated with a flop and slide on the cold linoleum floor of my bedroom and ended on the far wall beneath my bed, clinging to the galvanized springs.

Why reading about running?

Because: Massachusetts. Because: Boston. Because: Patriots Day. Because: Boston Marathon.

The Boston Marathon is always held on the Patriots Day holiday, and in Massachusetts Patriots Day is more about the marathon than Lexington and Concord.

It was also a school holiday. As a young teacher, I turned on the TV and listened to the marathon broadcast in the background as I hung out on my day off, half-listening to Heartbreak Hill but especially the final mile and the laurel wreaths. The rainy days, the hot days, the snow and sleet days. The we-run-no-matter-what-the-weather days.

Johnny Kelley, Bill Rodgers, Kathy Switzer. Dick and Rick Hoyt. Even Rosie Ruiz. The Tsarnaev‘s. We know the names. The successes and the failures. The inspiration and the shame.

Running is about challenging yourself and about endurance for the long haul. Same goes for being a writer. Some days you wonder why you’re still trying so hard. You think of all the books you could be reading, if you weren’t so engaged in the writing.

Eliud Kipchoge attributes his success to Patrick Sang, his mentor and coach, a relationship that began years ago.

Kipchoge:

“If I hadn’t met him, my life would be different.”

Sang explains it this way.

“When you’re young, you always hope that one day you’ll be somebody,” Sang said. “And in that journey, you need someone to hold you by the hand. It does not matter who that person is, so long as they believe that your dreams are valid. So for me, when you find a young person with a passion, don’t disappoint them. Give them a helping hand and see them grow.”

I think about persons past and present who represent the milestones in my life. Those who supported me, and those who didn’t. More important—I think about those I hoped to inspire.

As a teacher, I remember those faces, the ones who looked up to me with such enthusiasm as I passed out construction paper  and scissors from my art cart.

My students had many questions for me. They shared their fears and family secrets. So many questions asked so innocently.

Why me? What did I know? I hope it was because they knew I would always be truthful and worthy of their trust.

In retrospect, I have one regret. I wish I had hugged them. I wish I had given them big, squishy, “I believe in you” hugs. At that point in my life, I didn’t know the value of hugs. I had experienced only one significant hug in my life.

I was in the last stall in the darkest corner of the second floor girls’ lavatory when the heavy door to the hall swung open with a squeak. Quick, clattering footsteps crossed the tile floor. Searching footsteps, pausing, moving forward again. Sister Florentine’s voice rose above the chatter of the other eighth grade girls.
“Where’s Linda?” she asked.
What? Why? Questions formed between my worried eyes. I left the stall cautiously, its door swinging shut behind me, and dragged my feet down the dark aisle into the light streaming through the translucent glass blocks above the porcelain sinks.
Sister Florentine ran to me and enclosed me in her arms. The fire had been reported on the radio. Her wooden cross pressed against my chest and the woolen sleeves of her habit enclosed me in their folds.
I stiffened, unsure of how to respond.
Sister’s arms were wrapped tightly around me, squeezing and rocking as I stood stiffly in place.
It was my first hug.

When I feel down, I would love to have a dream in which I could see all of my students lined up in a row, the hundreds who have sat in my classrooms and made me feel special. I would remember the connection that we shared, and I would begin again.

on my way

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On my way…

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on my way“I’m on my way…” said the Travelocity gnome.

And so am I. After a crazy (read: hectic), stressful (read: brutal), downbeat (read: depressing) series of hours, days, weeks, months, I think I’ve finally come out the other side.

I’m on my way to a wedding in Hamburg, Germany. Traveling solo—but isn’t that what I’m used to?

Dancing shoes packed. Check! Dresses for each of the events. Check! Manicure, pedicure, color and cut. Smile in place. Check!

A German wedding begins with the Polterabend—or as the happy couple has announced it:

Kein richtiger Polterabend— “not a proper stag party”.

It’s the breaking of the porcelain. Bring your own plate! Bring good luck to the marriage!

Last night I was remembering a wedding I attended at the age of 12. Cioci, my godmother, had invited me to come along with her family. I guess she always knew there was a storm cloud that followed me from place to place. It hovered over me, casting a dark shadow and spewing drops of rain that fell in the form of tears.

At this wedding—a traditional Polish wedding—there were all the traditional Polish foods—gołabki, pierogis, kielbasa, kapusta! Men wore their Sunday suits with white shirts and tion my wayes. Black pants, always. They peeled off their suit jackets as soon as they entered the reception at the Polish-American hall. It was a hot, steamy day in Connecticut.

The women wore floral dresses with lacy petticoats. (Mini-skirts were a couple years away.) I had a dress just like this one—the same kind of chintz that became popular for draperies in the Laura Ashley days. It was a hand-me-down that didn’t fit me quite right. I was self-conscious of that and my weak posture reflected as much.

What I remember most was the band, the music, and the dancers. As  soon as the accordion sounds of the first polka filled the air, dancers poured onto the slippery hardwood floor. I sat quietly at the linen-covered table, sipping my glass of water as the dancers circled the room, smiling, bouncing, petticoats revealed, and soon, sweat dripping from their foreheads in the New England summer heat. No air conditioning. Just lots of beer.

Contrary to the infectious joy that weddings and polkas generate, I felt overwhelmed with an unexplained sadness. Before the first song had ended, I had fled to the ladies’ room where I sat in a stall and let the tears flow.

Before long, word reached Cioci and I heard the door swing open, bringing with it the sound of the polka music beyond and then, the tap, tap, tap of kitten heel pumps crossing to the tile.

“Linda, is that you? Come out, please.”

I unlocked the stall and did as she asked. If you knew me then, you’d have seen a shy, young girl standing with eyes cast downward, clutching and unclutching her fists in a self-soothing action that didn’t quite work.

“What’s the matter, Linda? Why are you crying? she asked.

I was speechless. I had no explanation. It was just a part of me that blurted out unexpectedly, but especially when I was surrounded by happiness.

I craved that happiness. I wanted so much to feel that laugh-out-loud bliss that I saw in others.

“Do your parents beat you?” she asked.

“No. No!” I said.

We left the ladies’ room and I returned to the table and my glass of water for the rest of the afternoon.

In those days,  feelings of depression were unexplained, unlabeled, and never to be discussed for fear of being branded “crazy”. One simply made the best of it, which was usually the worst of it, and left a child like me with a stomach ache and a tear-soaked pillow at the end of the day.

This wedding celebration will be different. There will be dancing and beer and smiles all around. I can’t wait.

I’m on my way…

on my way

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Cancer, the Lesser of Two Evils

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I have a friend—a fellow writer—who sold it all, packed up, and moved to a foreign country this year with her nearly blind 90-year-old mother and a little French poodle named Prose. Impressive, right?

Alison took it all step-by-step, sharing the ups and downs along the way with her Facebook followers and newsletter subscribers.  Mostly “ups” because what’s not to love about beautiful scenery, village life, starting over, and being inspired to write about it? And, living in the country where the subject of her historical novels takes place.

In a recent newsletter, she shared how she’s dealt with a series of recent “aggravations”.

1. Alison was robbed of her cellphone, wallet, charge cards, and their passports in one fell swoop.

2. The US Social Security system says that they overpaid her and now they want their money back.

3. Half of her newsletter subscribers were “unsubscribed” in one day by a glitch within the system of the very well-known newsletter service that she uses. Zap. Gone.

Being an eternal optimist, Alison focused on positive ways to dig out from under this mess without getting discouraged. She told herself these were merely aggravations. They weren’t real problems.

“Cancer is a real problem. Your house sliding down a hill is a real problem,” she wrote.

That got my attention.

“Cancer is a real problem.”  

But you know what? I’ve had cancer, and I’d rather have had cancer than those three “aggravations”.

Why? Because when I learned I had cancer, it felt like it was happening to someone else. My general practitioner gave me the news over the phone on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

“OK. What do I need to know? What do I do? What’s first? ” I responded.

I listened carefully, made a list, and proceeded to research the “who-what-where” that were going to help me.

After the research part, I was able to trust my decision and give the responsibility for the cure to my health providers. Done.

cancerI didn’t even cry. Not even once. Some people might think that’s not a healthy response, but for me, it was important to think of my cancer problem as something survivable by means of educated professionals doing the hard work while I lay there receiving the care—not quite like a guinea pig—but sort of.
It’s been six and a half months from diagnosis to completed healing.

A few days ago, my last open wound has sealed and healed.

Of course, it hasn’t been easy. Parts of this cancer stuff are a real bitch. I’m still fairly new to the place where I live, so I didn’t have a support system here. I spent a lot of time lying alone in my bed, waiting for sunset.

I love to read. I love to write. I had no motivation to do either. I couldn’t even enjoy watching Netflix, and I haven’t yet turned on the TV in 2018.

But still, if I had to deal with a robbery, a federal department screw-up, and a computer glitch with negative ramifications, I’m pretty sure I’d have taken to my bed, having a good long cry under the covers.

The difference between dealing with cancer and dealing with bureaucracy is that I would have had to deal with the bureaucratic issues all by myself.

Does any of this make sense?

I guess what I mean is that I never felt fearful or stressed about the cancer, but I’d feel very fearful and stressed if I had to make a lot of phone calls (I hate phone calls) and push a lot of sensitive paperwork to restore my life.

I know that Alison (Check out her website here: www.alisontaylorbrown.com) has probably gotten it all sorted out by now because she has an amazing attitude when faced with high seas.

She’s an inspiration, and that’s what we all need: inspiration from other people, showing us that if they can do it, we can do it, too. We may not be side by side, but we’re virtually together on this planet. At some point, we all need inspiration from someone like Alison to get us through the deep water.

I’m hoping for the water to recede soon.

Thanks for listening.

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A Return to Morocco after 42 Years

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In 1975 I was twenty-three years old and had never traveled beyond the borders of North America. Yet one day, I got it into my head that I wanted to tour Morocco. Long story short, a few months later my new husband and I were singing “Marrakesh Express” at the top of our lungs in a shiny blue Renault. We were traversing the mountains and deserts of Morocco on a journey that would take us through Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, and Fes along the undulating ribbon of freshly paved highway that connected them all to the oasis of Marrakesh.

Fast forward. 2017. Intrepid Travel’s Walking With Berber Nomads trip appeared in my Facebook feed. Whoosh! Suddenly I could hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, smell the spices in the medina, and feel the breeze lifting my hair off the back of my neck on the Barbary Coast. I signed up the very next day.

Why Morocco? Why now?

Well, you never forget your first time, right? I had thought of Morocco periodically over the years, and now I wanted to see if Morocco in the digital age had managed to remain the kind, eager-to-please country I remembered so vividly.

“You are Welcome in Our City”

This sign of hospitality on the outskirts of Fes remains my most enduring memory of 1975 Morocco.

See the young man on the motor scooter in the distance? He offered—undoubtedly in the employ of the hotel—to lead us to a reasonably priced guesthouse, petite dejuener included. We followed, and it was lovely. Tiled floors and a balcony overlooking the city, upstairs from a French bakery. Merci beaucoup. At the time, Arabic and French were the prevalent languages.

In those days before Trip Advisor, we traveled unencumbered by reviews. It may have been naive, but times were different.

We never met another traveler on that trip, and once we were outside the cities, we never saw another car. No wonder Jimi Hendrix was hiding out there! We did chat with some Peace Corps volunteers in Rabat whom we recognized as Americans by the Clarks Wallabies on their feet.

Early each day, with an Orangina in one hand and an open box of fresh croissants between us on the seat, I spread the road map on my lap as a napkin and off we went.

In contrast to the few lodgings in 1975, today there are now over a thousand hotels of all sizes—mostly in the cities—in a country the size of California. Frankly, other than these small differences, the countryside we experienced during our Walking With Berber Nomads trip remains very much the same beautiful, undeveloped landscape that I recall.

Morocco

Between Ouarzazate and the mountains

The twelve of us arrived from the US, Canada, UK, Germany and Australia to join Abdellah, our nomad guide, in Marrakesh. Most of the group were millennials, along with three 40ish, one 50ish, and me, the baby boomer senior citizen at 67.

Abdellah briefed us on our trip details before dinner. We were the very first participants—the guinea pigs as it were—so flexibility was going to be our motto. The next morning we set out on the same switchback roads I recalled. During the 7-hour drive from Marrakesh, we chatted, laughed, enjoyed the scenery, and bonded rather quickly with our shared love of traveling, hiking, and worldwide cultural experiences.

Soon we crossed the mineral-rich mountains of the Low Atlas and rolled off-road to the desolate location where we would join our Berber nomad family. It was springtime in Morocco. The nomads were ready to move their winter camp from the lowland desert to higher elevations for summer, and we would be hiking alongside, 9 to 15 km (6 to 10 miles) a day, an average of 4 to 5 hours a day on foot.

For three weeks prior, I had laid out my duffle contents on a coffee table back at home, adding and subtracting the vital and frivolous contents. Most valuable items: broken-in hiking boots with wool socks, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, trekking poles, solar charger, journal. We each were allowed a duffle bag (40 lb/ 18 kg max) and had purchased drinking water along the way. There would be no water available for bathing or showers.

Morocco

Meeting our Berber family

As we approached the Berber camp, our van drove ahead to drop off our gear, and we walked the final couple of miles to stretch our legs.

Our Berber nomad family was waiting for us across the plain at a location with smoke darkened caves that had been hand-carved into the banks by nomads hundreds of years ago.

A cook, as well as a contracted team of three men to transport our tents and gear on mules, rounded out our group.

 

MOrocco

Tucking in the Baby Goats

The animals consisted of 3 adult camels (1 of them very pregnant, and no—darn it—she didn’t give birth that week), 3 mules, 4 donkeys, 53 goats, 8 baby goats, 120 sheep, and 2 chickens. The baby goats tolerated being tucked into blanket pockets on the back of a donkey every morning with the two chickens decorating the top of the blanket pile like the bride and groom on a wedding cake.

Day temperatures averaged low 80s F./ 26 C., and dropped to 40s F./4.5 C. at night. Not too hot, not too cold. “Just right,” said the baby bear.

After dinner in the cave, we retired to our tents and fell asleep listening to the murmur of animals around us. I slept deeply in my silky long underwear with a change of clothes stuffed in the pillow shell of my sleeping bag.

Morocco

Sunrise Slowly Coming over the HIlls

At dawn, we were awakened by a symphony of cellphones with a back-up chorus of goats and sheep. I hustled into my clothes, laced up my boots and sprang from my tent to greet the day. Watching the low rays of the sun swim over each hill until we were all bathed in its rosy warmth never got old.

Morocco

Tents Pitched on the hill over the Caves

Breakfast: Mint tea, English breakfast tea, sweet Moroccan oranges, cheese, flatbread and jam.

While we ate breakfast, the crew took down the cook tent, packed up, and set out ahead of us. As Karen Blixen’s houseman Farah had longed to do in Out of Africa, the mule team went ahead of us and prepared for our arrival.

Each day had a similar routine, except for the days when they didn’t. Yes, pleasant surprises were frequent, but the common denominator was the same relaxed pattern.

Privy

  1. Rise and shine. Use privy, a hole dug in the ground with a canvas privacy stall around it.
  2. Pack up, take down tent, refill our water bottles.
  3. Eat breakfast.
  4. Hike for a couple of hours, enjoy a 15-minute break with a snack of tangerines, nuts and some bite-size cookies/biscuits like American animal crackers. Maybe some chocolate.

    Morocco

    Break for Tea in a Dry Riverbed

  5. Continue hiking to the night’s campsite.
  6. Enjoy the lunch that awaited us in a cave lined with rugs and our sleeping mats.
  7. Rest for the afternoon in our

    Solar Charging my iPhone

    tents or communally in a cave, write in our journals, or explore.

  8. Meet for dinner in a cave around an oil lantern. Share stories and comradery.
  9. Before or after dinner join the nomads in their singing, dancing and drumming.

 

Mule Team Transporting our Gear

 

Day Two. The High Atlas before us. Seven hours. Crossing two valleys, countless ridges and a dry riverbed.

Abdellah and Linda Summersea pause at the first 1000′ climb in elevation. Low Atlas behind us, High Atlas ahead of us.

Our guide Abdellah with a member of the nomad team.

What did We Talk About on the Trail?

Everything except politics. Exclamation Point.

When you’re traveling with strangers, you don’t have the same reservations about being judged, so you tend be more frank. In the group, we rarely, I think, spoke about ourselves. This was about cultural immersion and we wanted to learn as much as we could about the nomadic lifestyle. For myself, I found that the conversations I had were about comparing travel destinations, discussing religious philosophy, and asking Abdellah questions about everything under the Moroccan sun: halal vs. non-halal, education, solar energy in Morocco, and more. Abdellah frequently addressed us on topics related to our passage: farming, crops, exports, irrigation, the structure of village politics, cemeteries and burial customs—anything we saw that caught our interest. Other times, we walked along alone with our thoughts, the rhythm of our footsteps the only sound.

After many miles, a village.

The nomads follow the old caravan routes, so our trek eventually brought us to some of the original 1000-year-old kasbahs (walled towns) in the mountains. The family herded the animals around their perimeter, while we passed through two villages. We saw the architecture and gardens up close, and stopped for tea at a B&B.

Approaching the Village

As in Moroccan households, in camp, fresh mint tea was a ritual at every meal. The silver teapot is held high while pouring into the traditional glasses with lots of Moroccan lump sugar.

Fatima shared her daily tasks, teaching us a variety of skills from flatbread baking over the fire to goat milking at dawn. She even applied kohl to the eyes of our women and organized a mock wedding with the “bride” selected from our group and the cook serving as “groom”. The wedding took place on our final night in camp, a celebration that coincided with reaching the nomads’ summer location. There was a bridal procession with singing and dancing, and even “parents” of the bride and groom to demonstrate the details of a typical Berber nomad wedding.

Morocco

Fatima with Flatbread

Morocco

Linda Summersea with our Berber Nomad Family

That night was our final night in camp. The following morning we expressed our heartfelt thanks to the family for being such kind hosts and so generous in sharing their culture with us.

We passed along items from our gear that we thought they might be able to use. I contributed my trusty roll of duct tape.

After many hugs and shukran’s (thank you’s), we reluctantly lifted our backpacks for our last hike as a group.

Just before rounding a bend in the trail, I turned back for one last look at the scene of camp activity in the distance. Generations of nomads have repeated this tradition annually in the deserts and mountains of Morocco, but for how much longer, I wondered.

Ahead of us, our van was waiting, ready to return us to the bustling streets of Marrakesh—and our first showers in a week.

After we split up at the hotel, I spent a couple extra days unwinding in the city, eating ice cream, getting a hammam (traditional scrub-down, bath and massage), and exploring the Djemma el Fna Square to see how the cobra charmers were doing.

But that’s a story for another day.

#RockTheCasbah

MoroccoFollow my adventures on Facebook.

Earth Day 2018

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Earth Day 2018

Coffee. Walnuts, banana, cheddar cheese. Journal. Coffee. Email. Coffee. Coffee. Feed pets.

Gardening trousers, wooly socks, Black Dog t-shirt, 20+year-old Coolibar hat, ancient Merrills. leather gloves. Basket, trowel, hand fork, weeder, wheel barrow, kneeler.

Kneel, dig, pull, gather, worm, smile, sun. Move, dig, pull, gather, smile. Greenhouse, bonemeal, potash, pour. Garden, bonemeal, potash, sprinkle, rake. Mulch. Water.

Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow.

Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Bonemeal, Potash. Rake. Mulch. Water. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow.

Irrigation pipe. Connector broken. Male+Male connector.

Earth Day 2018 Recycle Event. Long line. Drop off dead TV. Smile.

Farmers Market. Donut. “Early Girl” tomato plants. Smile.

Garden center. More mulch. Male+Male connector. Check.

Irrigation pipe. Male+Male connector. Wrong. Hmm. Frown.

Garden center. Exchange Male+Male connector.

Irrigation pipe. Male+Male connector. Right. Check. Turn on water. Success. Turn off water.

Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow.

Greenhouse. Fish fertilizer. Raised Bed. Dig holes. Bonemeal, fertilizer, potash. Tomato Plants. Mulch. Water. Garden Journal.

Porch. Shoes Off. Kitchen. Refrigerator. Leftovers. Water. Water. Water. Aleve.

Fir cones, storm branches, wheel barrow. Dump. Clouds, Rain.

Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Mulch. Repeat. More rain. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow. Sun.

Fence repair. Check. Replace section.

Drainage troubleshoot. Pencil, paper. Check. Aleve.

Rock wall analysis. Move slates. Dry wall, think, design. Smile.

Peel trousers, shirts, socks, shoes. Hot tub. Sigh. Float. Sink. Sun. Trees, blossoms, birds.

Shower, shampoo.

Sofa, cheese, wine. The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, Alan Bradley. 5 pages. Doze. 2 pages. Doze.

Leftovers, email, NY Times crossword.

Alan Bradley. Doze.

Journal. Bed. Read. Doze. Lights out.

6,884 Steps.

Earth Day 2018.

Linda Summersea Follow me on Facebook.

seasonal blueThanks!

Seasonal Blues: Eventually It All Comes Together

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Except when it doesn’t. But hang in there—this isn’t a blog about pain and misery. It’s about life’s surprises.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2017, I actually wasn’t too freaked out. My first response to my primary care physician, who was delivering the news from the other side of the country, was “OK. What do I do to fix this?”

We had the conversation about oncologists, surgeons, reconstruction and hospitals. A few days later, I returned home to Washington state and began the interviews, appointments, and education process. A lot to learn! A lot to take in, and more importantly, a lot to decide.

seasonal bluesFast forward to today. My first surgery is eight weeks behind me.

Where did the time go? It’s almost as if it never happened. Or maybe it happened to someone else. I did, very often, feel as though I was watching someone else’s life. Except for the long voids of empty space in time. The long period of not writing. All the blog posts that I never finished. The long period of doubts and fears and alone-ness (not loneliness).

My point is: when you’re in this situation, the one thing you realize is that you damn well need to get rid of anything that isn’t working because you only have this one life to live (that I know of in this current space in time) and you’d better make this current life the Best it can be.

Then, just when I could do the simple things that were forbidden for weeks—rolling onto my stomach in bed, enjoying a hot restorative bath, easing into a hot tub—doubts crept in.

Yesterday I was seriously— and I do mean SERIOUSLY—considering leaving this writing stuff to the next generation. Maybe, I thought, maybe I was meant to have more time for walking on the beach or binging Netflix. I’ve been reading Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life, and I’m watching other parts of my life teetering on a seesaw each day.

I hadn’t re-read my manuscript since pre-diagnosis and yesterday was the day I was going to put aside the delays of the past three months, open Scrivener and see what was there. It was HARD. I did everything I could to avoid it, including walking 7,000 steps in the cold. (I’m on the other side of the country again.)

But then, after nervously consuming multiple items that were beyond a reasonable person’s calorie count for the day, I did it.

That is, I opened Scrivener and re-read Chapter One.

I found a couple of words that needed replacing because they echoed each other’s sounds in a non-complementary manner. I re-shaped the first two sentences to remove any triteness and draw the reader in. I was careful not to change anything just for the sake of changing it. Then, I renamed the chapter to reflect more depth of the content: From a blah “My First Memory” to a significant “A Fierce First Memory”.  In short, this three months absence from writing was beneficial. I’m back in the saddle.

Fierceness is my strength. Some people might call it stubborness, but, no, I say that it is fierceness. Tenacity. It’s what has had my back throughout these sixty-seven plus years. I can see now that “A Fierce First Memory” at age three is all about everything that would—and will—keep me together for the rest of my life.

I fell asleep feeling pretty good. Feeling as though I’m on the right track and able to assess the memoir content from a reader’s point of view.

This morning, if any doubts were lingering, I was surprised to greet three reinforcements from the Universe:

  1. A person I do not know, and who does not know my Polish heritage, was in touch with me, and she is from Poland.
  2. When I clicked on a New York Times article about tackling difficult challenges to self in one’s later years, I found that the subject was Polish and had much to say about tenacity. The article was a revelation for me because I only know the Polish-American point of view. Aleksander Doba reveals something I had not ever heard:

    “The more you don’t believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. To prove themselves, Polish people will endure everything. If you aren’t willing to suffer, you can do nothing. You can sit and die. This is the only one thing you can do.”

    Doba has a deep, almost performance-art-like sense of this. You can be made small by life or rage against it. “Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem,” he told me. “I do not want to be a little gray man.” This is a common expression in Poland — and a good motto for us all.        (*Dziękuję, Mr. Doba!)

  3. I had an email from John Guzlowski’s blog. He is a poet, a Polish Chicagoan whose Catholic parents survived Buchenwald. Until chancing upon his blog a couple years ago, I hadn’t even known that the Nazis had rounded up any non-Jews.

I accepted this trifecta of Polish-ness as a positive message because I rarely come in contact with much that touches on my heritage, so I am happy to acknowledge this as a happy accident of communications.

Seasonal Blues. Eventually It All does Come Together.

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*Thank you, Mr. Doba

Make Beautiful Music

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Last night I dreamed that I was getting married. My female relatives, young and old, were gathered all around me. It was a consummate summer scene in a fragrant apple orchard with vivid green grass and brilliant blue sky.

Instead of a frothy veil, I wore a simple crown of daisies in my hair. This crown was just like the one I had braided in my kitchen from a bouquet of Stop & Shop daisies shortly before I was married nearly forty-three years ago. This time there was no groom to be seen.

I innately knew that this marriage was mine alone.

I watched my sister approach carrying a banjo, in spite of the fact that she has never played a musical instrument.

She handed the banjo to me, in spite of the fact that I also have never played a musical instrument.

I sat down with this instrument in the midst of the wedding guests and looked down at the fretboard that crossed my lap. It was a light-colored wood that made me think of birch forests. Or maybe aspen.make beautiful music

I tentatively strummed across its taut nylon strings with my thumb, and was surprised to hear amazing music, so I continued to play. I played as if I knew what I were doing and the music kept coming, clear and beautiful.

The relatives moved in closer, surprised at my sudden talent.

And then it was gone.

I think that my dream means that sometimes we underestimate our abilities and our capacity for creating our own joy.

The banjo is a less respected instrument than guitars and violins and cellos, but it’s capable of beautiful music. Just because we’re different doesn’t mean that we can’t be beautiful.

This year, embrace your uniqueness and your dreams of the future. Don’t depend on anyone else to get you there or you may find yourself disappointed.

You and your path, like the banjo, might be uncommon, but they’re no Linda Summersealess deserving of success. You can get there on your own. I know you can.

Happy New Year.

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Write from Passion. Write from Pain.

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When I began writing my memoir, it was a bonfire burning brightly, my fingertips hot on a keyboard that had never revealed my thoughts or memories. To anyone. I looked down upon my small-child-self from a bird’s eye view, flying low, watching the small child whose introversion was created by responsibilities and fear.

The small child ran and ran, never getting away, and the story ignited.

It burned tall as the trees, like the annual winter brush-burning that took place in our woodlot. We pulled scorched potatoes and sweet corn in twists of aluminum foil from the ashes and ate them greedily while setting fire to yet another pile of scrub.

The writing has been like that. I have grasped the fiery memories, explored the value of what stays and what goes. Yet even after several front to back revisions, and a chronologically accurate piece, I still didn’t feel comfortable that it was done. Whole. Meaningful.

It was accurate in a literal sense, but the pulse beneath the outward story was lacking.

I kept looking for guidance and have finally found it in the opportunity to study my work and the work of seven other writers meeting weekly since August.

I began what I’m now thinking of as a “Misfit’s Holiday”, taking the train down to Portland on Tuesdays and returning on Wednesdays after a manuscript class with Lidia Yuknavitch and a sound night’s sleep in the bunk room at The Society Hotel (Seattle Times: “Hotel Hip”).

We’ve met eight times with four to go, and man, I have grown!

The class series is called The Body of the Book and involves going deeper, going Corporeal, Lidia’s unique approach to teaching writing. It’s for eight writers who dare to go beyond the traditional critique models to “engage in collaborative art making.” (from Corporeal Writing)

As it says in the course description, after acceptance, participants agree to commit to “helping one another see the patterns at work in their material, helping them hunt for hidden metaphors, pointing out distinct rhythms and repetition and images, and supporting the writers in daring to develop them further, in the ways that other workshops insist on plot, narrative, and action.”

In a sense we are sharing the role of teaching and I dare say that, with Lidia as our teacher facilitator, it has clicked for all of us. After about four weeks, we were all in the groove, seeing those patterns in our own work as we saw them in each other’s, and you could see the growth in our pages. For me, it was the eighth week that was the bombshell.

I had set up a spreadsheet where I transcribed the notes from my peers for each chapter, so that I could go back and take another look at my work.

Bingo. Some hidden memories blasted to the surface. Other chapters fell out of the manuscript, no longer necessary to the overall story. My language evolved, advanced, grew. Paragraphs moved, watery chapters thickened.

Eight weeks in, I have nearly 30,000 words revised. Along with reading and critiquing 90 pages of my fellow students’ work per week, it’s a big task to tuck this into a life being lived.

I’ve been staying up till midnight—no— till one, till two in the morning—not wanting to close the lid on my laptop, and often remembering a better way to say something as I fall asleep, then sitting up to quickly note it before it disappears on the back of my eyelids.

Most importantly, I’ve gone full frontal “corporeal, in the body” in this revision and I’ve regained my writer confidence.

writingI suppose it’s not a coincidence that Lidia’s  The Misfit’s Manifesto launched this past week at Powell’s City of Books. My fellow misfits and I sat together front and center, knowing that we shared a special secret.

I can’t wait for Tuesday.

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Misfits

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Misfits are all around us, sitting next to us on trains, wrapped in sleeping bags on wet sidewalks in doorways of businesses darkened for the night, taking deep cleansing breaths on adjacent yoga mats, directing us in traffic, speaking to us from the fronts of classrooms, handing us change at cash registers, sipping a mug of coffee beside us, selecting a disk of perfectly matching matte makeup masking much. Glancing sideways at stop lights, ignoring the rain dripping inside collars, shivering, sweating, disguised, dark, diagnosed, undiagnosed.

Misfits probably maybe definitely usually hide themselves from the general public from their mothers from their fathers because they have to want to need to today tomorrow forever maybe.

Misfits walk with eyes shades drawn with minds scarred more than wrists than knees. They’ve fallen gotten up fallen again. And again. Again.

Misfits, if they’re fortunate, find a kindred spirit in their midst.

Lidia Yuknavitch is such a kindred spirit.

The Misfits Manifesto arrives October 24, 2017. Embrace it.

Lidia Yuknavitch will be speaking at Powell’s Books in Portland OR on 10/24/17.

She’s a wonder.

Lidia also has a TedTalk of the same name. View it here.

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