My Mama's Eyes

Just over a year ago, the musician, Justin Townes Earle, passed away. It hit hard, like so many of the other losses we’ve experienced, John Prine being one of the toughest. But it felt as if Earle was a casualty of his own life rather than the pandemic. I didn’t know his music well, but we saw him one night as part of a folk festival here in town, and he talked about his life with addiction, described himself as a young man so high he could hunt ducks with a rake. Sadly, his passing wasn’t the surprise that it might have been.

            What captivated me that night was a beautiful song he did called Mama’s Eyes.  In the song, he describes traveling the same difficult path as his father, but then it shifts to this reassurance:

And I say to myself
I’ve got my mama’s eyes
Her long thin frame and her smile
And I still see wrong from right
Cuz I’ve got my mama’s eyes
Yea I’ve got my mama’s eyes

            As someone who spent most of their life estranged from their father, I recognized something of myself in the song. Both of my parents have passed, but even now, I look at my hands, their short fat fingers and wide, crooked nails, and know that they’re my father’s hands, that when I wear my glasses, my brothers see his face in me. But I never wanted to be like him. He was a leaver, a little-carer who walked away from our family, from me. Just like Earle, though, when I feared that I might have taken on the worst of my father’s attributes and habits, I could look in a mirror, without the glasses, and see that I too have my mama’s eyes. And, I hope, along with them, a measure of her patience and the sense of love and commitment to family that she never walked away from. I wanted to thank Justin Townes Earle for the song and the recognition it gave me, but I also wanted to say that I am thinking of his mother, of her losing her boy. I am so sorry for that loss.

We have cover art!!

Welcome everyone! We now have cover art for Seeing in the Quiet. I am getting excited for our upcoming release. Nicola’s Books in Westgate has said that they will carry it and we are tentatively planning an author event. Stay tuned for more details!!

We ping pong!

            In no surprise to anyone, that time of year came earlier than usual to our household. In Michigan, the winter weather often leaves us cooped up inside for days at a time with too much sitting and too much eating leaving us feeling crappy and unfit. Unfortunately, the pandemic has had much the same effect, with my husband working from home, one zoom meeting after another and me tiptoeing around upstairs or sitting for unhealthy lengths of time as I try to remain quiet.

            So what do we do to break the cycle you may ask? We ping pong! Our basement is not really conducive to it with one end covered in weightlifting equipment and the other filled with a stereo cabinet and boxes of abandoned toys. But with a few modifications, we make it work. Rule number one? Do anything you can to keep the ball on the table and not have to go hunting for it in the crowded and/or spidery corners. That means you play it off the ceiling or the heating duct, off the double bounce or the over-hit. Of course that means that rule number two is don’t keep score. Why wouldn’t it be?

            What those rules bring though, in addition to truly mediocre ping pong, is laughter and the freedom to experiment! How can you not laugh when the ball comes zinging at you off the elliptical machine and you manage to put it back on the table? And what about the freedom to practice every kind of back-handed, wildly spinning attempt to send the ball flying in a new direction?

            But you want to know the real secret, the magic that keeps us moving and playing in spite of the weather or the pandemic? He’s an amazingly good sport when I gloat! And I have to confess. I gloat. A lot. And he lets me. There are a lot of definitions of love but I swear, that has to be in there somewhere. I hope you and yours are able to find your own kind of magic in these tough times.

(All of this is on pause while my husband recuperates from surgery but I still think it rings true… We’re currently in the process of rewriting the rules to Scrabble!)

All quiet for now…

Poking my head out...

So, I’ve been away. Well, not actually away, but definitely down a deep, Covid rabbit hole. Perhaps you’ve been in one too. I find it’s a hard place to be, especially when you’re perfectly fine and have no real reason for being there. As ever, I am deeply grateful for my health and family, for my beautiful town that is filled with the colors of fall. Yet there are still reasons to grieve. My beloved Curves closed in March and I miss my coworkers and members like a leg. Never in my life had I been with so many amazing women and I mourn the loss of their company. For safety reasons, I also haven’t been able to visit with my son and daughter in law and their wonderful children. They are twenty minutes away but it feels like an ocean separates us. So I mourn the loss of their company too. Hence the hole.

A wonderful friend of mine loaned me a book recently called Intimations by Zadie Smith. It is a collection of essays that do the best job I’ve seen so far of describing the odd world we now find ourselves in. My favorite one is called “Something to Do”. She talks about how all of us who are not essential workers have found ourselves struggling to find something to do. She’s so right! Do I sit upstairs? Do I sit downstairs? Do I go for a walk now or later? Do I make chicken or pasta or scroll through dozens of on-line recipes? How much time have I filled? And here’s my favorite line: “There is no great difference between novels and banana bread. They are both just something to do.”

I may not fully leave my hole until after this election has finished, but one bright star that is drawing me out is the news that Sunbury Press has agreed to publish my book Seeing in the Quiet. I don’t know how long it will take or what the process will involve, but I can’t wait to get started! As we head into what is likely to be a very dark and difficult winter, I hope that you will find your own bright stars to lead you up and forward and away from the holes.

By the way, any tips on getting rid of what Oliver Sacks called earworms? I am currently on day four of Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War and although it is a lovely song, it is NOT four days worth of lovely. Suggestions are welcome!

Measuring our days

There is sunshine today. For many people, that’s an everyday occurrence, but that is not true where I live. Here, the first day of spring is simply another day on the calendar, not a true beginning of change. It comes with no promise of warmth and growth, only more shadow and cold.  One day last week, it snowed all day long. Big, fat flakes fell constantly and the neighbor’s tree that was trying to bloom, seemed to shrink and droop under the weight.

Winter here begins with a dimming of the light as the days grow shorter and the clouds more omnipresent. If it had been the first snowstorm of the year, it would have been wonderful, holding the promise of cozy nights by the fire, warm stews and thick, hand-knitted mittens. In April, however, it conjures none of that. Instead, it only signals more darkness and dread.

But as I said, today there is sunshine and it holds a new promise. The light is finally growing. It seems to start with the move to daylight savings time, an odd practice in our digital age. The mornings, which had been steadily crawling toward daylight, are dark once again. But the late afternoon grows brighter, lasts longer, and there is a sense that something inviting may follow.

On my back deck, there is a spot where the light bears down, heating the dark surface. It is still too early for patio furniture so I sit on the wooden floor and lean against the house, absorbing the sun and warmth. In this light is the promise of leaf covered trees and T-shirts, of bare feet and sprinklers. The light tells us that summer will come, that we will finally emerge from the long night of winter.

Here, we measure our days in light. In these difficult times, may yours be filled with it.

More gratitude

The last time that I wrote, I talked about gratitude and the importance of appreciating the small graces that fill our lives. I have to say, those ideas have been challenged recently. My husband and I were planning a grand holiday, a luxurious trip to Southeast Asia that would return us to an area that we have not seen in three decades. We enjoyed sitting at dinner and talking about the language we remembered, testing each other’s vocabulary and recall. We talked about the foods that we had loved and the sights that we looked forward to seeing. The news about the coronavirus was daunting, but we are healthy, vigorous adults and figured we were game.

Then one evening my husband began seeing flashes of light and suddenly, without knowing it, he had stepped onto a roller coaster of ER marathons and doctor’s visits. As someone who can’t even put in eyedrops effectively, I have been amazed at his patience and fortitude, his bravery in the face of scientific tools and techniques that are equal parts incredible and terrifying. He received more daunting news today and the plans we had made for a small consolation trip were dashed as well. The roller coaster continues.

I left the poor guy, in pain, hiding behind those ridiculous plastic glasses, sitting in the car while I picked up a few groceries. I wanted to do a little something for him, so I was picking up a cup of coffee to go with a cookie I’d bought. As I pumped the carafe, a woman came to the counter, eager for her own cup of coffee. She was about to order when she spotted her husband out the window. She explained that he has Alzheimer’s and she was worried to see him standing outside of their car. The clerk pointed to seats by the window where he was welcome to sit, but the woman shook her head. He wouldn’t come in, she explained, and he had reached a stage where he’d been wearing the same clothes for three days. She hadn’t been able to get him to change so he wasn’t really presentable anyway. All she wanted was a simple cup of coffee and I thought, every day, every moment even, will become more and more difficult for her before it becomes easier.

I returned to the car, handed my husband his cup of coffee and headed home. We are so lucky, I told him, before describing the situation with the woman inside. And he agreed. We are indeed lucky, for a hopeful prognosis, for the miracles of medicine and science, for the meal and comfort that we will find at home, for the days and weeks and years of our lives that we get to share with one another. I remain grateful.

In small moments

It’s early January now and we’ve just passed through a raft of holidays, that season of promises and grand statements, of charitable offers and good deeds, of silent desperation and forced cheer. I enjoy celebrating the holidays very much, but I am not a religious person. I don’t know if the stories are true. I have no faith that buoys me along during difficult times. I don’t imagine a life after this one although I fervently hope that what others believe in and dream of comes true for them.

‘Thankful’ is my religion, the gospel I have chosen and endeavor to follow. Daily, hourly even, I try to focus on a deep appreciation and gratitude for all that I have. I sip tea and sit in a well of sunshine beside a window that protects me from the harshness of a winter day. In the silence I see so much of what I am grateful for, warmth, shelter, food, and safety. In the evening I sit down at the table across from my husband and again, I am thankful. He has come home from the world, delivered back to me once again with laughter and affection and a shared history that spans decades. I am grateful for him.

I believe it’s the in-between moments when I should be the most conscious, the most appreciative of what I have. In those small moments spent waiting for a kettle to boil or a ride, for bread to rise or dinner to finish cooking.  Yet those seem to be the easiest moments to let slip by. As we move from one unconscious task to another we forget, we assume and much too often, take what we have for granted. Relying on the idea that this moment, this fortune will continue is just hubris. We have no way to see the future, to anticipate the good and the bad that will follow in life.

So, I choose to be thankful. As many times in a day as I am able to pause and remember to be grateful, I am. And each day that I wake up, I hope to find even more of those small moments. I appreciate my life and everything and everyone in it.

Ageism or why I'm kind of mad at Ellen DeGeneres

I work part-time at my local Curves fitness club. I’ve been a member there for over 16 years and began working there once I retired. It’s not a place where you’ll find a lot of pert ponytails or color-coordinated spandex workout clothes. Our demographic skews older than that, and maybe because it is solely for women, it’s a place where people just don’t care that much about how they look while they’re exercising. I like that. The baggy shorts, the long, faded t-shirts, the spotless, indoor sneakers all say that we’re there to exercise not to impress someone. But really, you should all be impressed by these women and that’s why I’m mad at Ellen.

On her recent Netflix show Relatable, Ellen does an excellent job of handling a lot of topics with fun and kindness while generating a lot of laughter. But late in the show she does a bit about dancing where she shows a woman delighting in getting out on the dance floor. But then she says, here’s the same scene at age 85. Bent over and frail seeming, she shuffles without moving forward, grins and mimes her earlier steps but fails to reach the dance floor before the favorite song is over. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t kind and most importantly, it wasn’t accurate.

Working at Curves has changed all of my attitudes about aging and what a privilege it can be to grow older. The women I see aren’t shuffling without moving, they’re strength training and dancing, they’re bending and reaching, they’re checking their heart-rates to be sure that they’re working hard enough. They’re doctors and cashiers, teachers and nurses, architects and engineers, university professors and stay-at-home moms. Many are retirees. But I dare you to watch one of our women work out and accurately guess her age. In fact, I double-dog dare you. On the wall we have a heart-rate chart to help members monitor their exertion level. I watched a puzzled look come over one member’s face recently and when I asked what was up, she said she was a little frustrated because our chart topped out at 80 and she is 84. She is not the oldest or the fittest member we have, but I’ll be damned if she couldn’t kick Ellen’s ass on a dance floor.

Amazing Pittsburgh

I’ve lived in Michigan now for more than half of my life, but my beginnings were in central Pennsylvania. One of my favorite memories as a child was our drives west to the small suburbs north of Pittsburgh where my father’s family lived. We would measure our progress by counting our way through the tunnels, more numerous then than they are today. (Of course, being total eggheads, my older brother and I absolutely loved the modern, well-lit ones where we could read as we traveled through.) Sadly though, I don’t recall that we ever visited downtown Pittsburgh. I wish I had seen it then so that I could fully appreciate the transformations it’s gone through.

Recently, my husband and I had the luxury of spending a long weekend in the city and both of us fell in love with it. It’s almost as if you took a bouquet of smaller towns and tied them together with the wet strands of the rivers and then tucked them in among the ridges that surround the area. We especially enjoyed the Brookline neighborhood where we took a walking, culinary tour that introduced us to my latest love, Burnt Almond Torte. The almonds in it aren’t burned and it’s more of a cake than a traditional torte, but it is undeniably the most amazing dessert I’ve ever tried.

So guess what, being a total smarty pants and imagining that watching The Great British Baking Show has imbued me with skills that I don’t actually possess, I figured I’d make one at home. The final product was tasty and the outside looked quite nice, but it was so complicated and in the end, such a pale imitation of the original, that I threw the recipe away before we’d even cut into the thing. Trust me on these two points. One, it is incredibly delicious and two, unless you’re the caliber of baker that could actually survive a week or three on the baking show, you should just order one. Prantl’s Bakery. Amazing!

Prantl’s Bakery

Brookline

In praise of Fifth Avenue Press

Mid-September 2019

Have you ever been given a gift and not realized its true value?

I knew that I was incredibly lucky when Fifth Avenue Press, the imprint of our local library, selected my first book to be a part of their second book release. They provided me with everything! The services included editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design and to top everything off, an amazing launch party to introduce the book to the world. It was an unforgettable experience. Then, just a few months later, they did the same thing again for my second book.

At both launch parties, more than one author expressed what I was feeling, that Fifth Avenue Press had made a lifelong dream come true.  I know that I said thank you to them at the time, but it wasn’t until I began moving forward on my own with my third novel that I began to really appreciate what I had been given. The individual costs for all of those services that they provided represent thousands and thousands of dollars. What a gift indeed!

So for all of you Ann Arborites with a novel, short story collections, non-fiction work or children’s book languishing in your computer, check out Fifth Avenue Press through the Ann Arbor District Library. Perhaps your dream will be made a reality too.