Michelle Ule's Blog, page 104

Remembering the Dead as Living

As we walked through the graveyard dusk of a late July some 17 years ago, the dead came alive to me. There as the sun lowered to the horizon and the birds settled to bed, Uncle Ernest told stories at grave after grave.

 I was writing the story of my grandmother’s life that year and this visit was to fill in the facts with family “color.” I knew the names from books and letters and could recite their years and children. But I knew nothing of who they were, really, beyond the few mentions in local history books.

My great-uncle Ernest was a story teller with a slow drawl and a winking humor. People who grew up in Mayfield, Utah were like that. His wife, the snowy haired Aunt Ruth bore his stories with a patience grown over nearly 70 years of marriage. “Oh, Ernest,” she’d interject when the tales became just a little too wild for her librarian sensibilities.

“This here was Steenie,” he said in his soft voice. “My, she had a hard life.”  I knew her as Stena from my notes and she’d married a man named Jacobsen. “My pa would go over to see her, stand on the street because Ras wouldn’t let them near. When Ras was gone, her brothers would bring her food. A hard life.”

He brightened at another grave, that of Zenobia. “She had a frying arm and was always making donuts. ‘Come on in,’ she’d call when we walked down the street and she’d have us in for donuts.”

Uncle Ernest chuckled as he recounted the deeds of his long-gone aunts and uncles, my great-great-aunts and uncles and we laughed along with him.

At nearly 40, I was  uninitiated into final sorrow.  Death had stolen through my family but twice and my maternal grandparents were 92 and 103 when they died.  The forces of death were still a mystery, nothing I had experienced with savage grief.

I didn’t know that July dusk that I was on the cusp of death’s horror; my mother died five months later.

Ernest and Ruth, of course, had seen Mayfield’s cemetery fill with friends and relatives. We paused at my great-grandmother’s monolith and I recalled the sad story of Carrie’s death from childbed fever when my grandmother was a mere 18-months old.

“That was something,”  Uncle Ernest recalled of the woman who died long before he was born, “and very hard on Conrad [his father].”

Buried in 1906, Carrie’s death haunted my paternal grandmother and she passed it to me. The night I labored with my second child, I stayed up late reading stories and singing songs to my then 28-month-old first born. I couldn’t bear the thought he might not remember me if I did not survive his sibling’s birth.

Family stories will do that to you.

As a child, I’d always feared being lost, of people forgetting me. Thinking of death left me uneasy: the perpetual loss of personhood. Who would remember me after I was gone?

 If I was forgotten, did that mean I never existed?

Uncle Ernest pointed out graves of more people he knew near Carrie and he savored the tales. As the bird calls settled and the headstone shadows lengthened almost to dark, I realized a truth that has held me well.

As long as people remember you with love and stories, you’re never really forgotten.

Fond stories told by loved ones mean the dead can come alive once more.

Uncle Ernest with his laconic wit, bowed gait, and quiet affection, gave me that gift long ago.

Whose story do you need to remember?

Digging Up the Seed Root of Bitterness

Do you ever walk away from an unpleasant encounter and replay it in your brain?

Are your snappy retorts more clever and pointed in your mind the second time than what you actually said?

Can you imagine more ameanable responses from that person you just mentally pinned to the wall when you had a second chance?

Do you feel better afterwards?

Or do you replay it again and find an even more clever remark?

Or again. Or again. Or even again.

I did it all the time until one day Jim Wilson spoke to a VBS crowd of adults about digging up the seed root of bitterness.

I’d never heard the terminology before, but I recognized the symptoms as rampant in my own heart.

Jim was discussing the passage in Hebrews 12:14-15, which discusses how to get along with others. It reads like this:

Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.

He pointed out that when we replay our agitation in our mind over a verbal exchange, we’re not letting go of our anger or bitterness from that conversation. Instead, we’re pushing down the hurt and the desire to hurt in return, into our very souls where it can fester and bring forth ugliness.

You know, sinning.

We know a young woman who grew up in a family that did a lot of teasing, a lot of saying the opposite of what they meant in a humorous way. The concept is their remarks were so preposterous, they couldn’t possibly be true.

I happen to like that sort of irony myself.

The problem was, the girl had heard this sort of cynical humor so often growing up, she no longer knew what was true. Did her father really think her ugly, or was he just kidding? (She’s beautiful). Did her brother mean it when he implied she was an airhead, or was he joking? (Excellent grades all through college).

I used to watch her get frustrated by not understanding the joke–or was it a joke? That brought to mind the Scripture passage about not provoking your child to anger. Often she ended up confused and thus reacted with hostility–thus being labled “difficult to get along with.”

Is it no wonder she’s a little bitter about her childhood?

What is bitterness?

How about this definition: resentment, a feeling of deep anger and  desire for ill will.

What causes bitterness?

Sin, misunderstandings, frustration, a thwarted expectation of what we think we deserve.

I may be more sensitive to bitterness than to other sins because this is one that hits me often. Perhaps linked to self-pity, it stems from my way/choice/desire/clever remark being ignored or dismissed by someone else.

It makes me want revenge–which is why I so often rehash conversations that did not go well for me.

Thanks to Jim Wilson, though, I’m more senstive to that sin now. When I find myself continually reviewing a conversation and coming up with better lines, I now stop and ask myself, “What am I going to do about that bitterness?”

Left unchecked the sin of bitterness can corrode the soul and destroy the life of anyone–Christian or not. I prefer to confess the sin of bitterness, ask God to show me how to deal with the disappointment, and move on, guilt-free.

I see bitterness all around me in society, not just in my own heart, and how it demoralizes and destroys everyone it touches.

There’s no reason to allow someone else’s reaction to me gut my peace of mind. I refuse, now, to clutch the sordid pus-riddled corpse of self-centeredness to get in God’s way of  teaching me a lesson, or allowing me the relief of confessing a sin.

How about you?

JimWilson feels so strongly about the prevelance of bitterness in our American culture, that he wrote a free pamphlet available on the Internet. I’ve bought copies and given them away for 20 years. It’s called How to Be Free from Bitterness, and you can read it yourself by clicking on that title.

It’s the least we can do. 

Wearing the Cross

 Standing in line to tour the Hungarian Parliament building in Budapest, I got into a lengthy discussion of recent history with my sister-in-law’s cousin, Attila (“the Hun,” as he likes to say). The English conversation had become quite pointed when I noticed the woman standing behind him was nodding.

Indeed, she stepped forward and interjected her own point.

Attila turned in surprise and then we included her in. Eventually she introduced herself as a tourist from Berkeley, California–which means she lives about 50 miles away from me.

I noticed she kept staring at me, but didn’t think anything of it until she blurted out her question. “Why do you wear that cross around your neck?”

I fingered the gold cross. “As a symbol of my faith.”

“Why? Are you some sort of Catholic?”

I grew up in San Pedro, California, the port of Los Angeles and home to many Mediterranean immigrant fishermen. The Catholics in our town (that was me as a child) had two large Catholic churches to choose from: Mary Star of the Sea or Holy Trinity. Women always wore small gold crucifixes around their necks when I was growing up; I thought it was a badge of adulthood.

My own mother, a native of Milazzo, Sicily, wore a small gold saint’s medal around her neck as long as I could remember. She never took it off–her godmother had given it to her at birth.

Somehow, I never got a fine gold necklace like my mother and countless friends wore. (I didn’t get my ears pierced at birth, either. My mother was a modern Americanized woman). So, when I became a Christian as a teenager, I bought myself a cross necklace, latched it around my neck and never took it off.

Until it broke or I lost it, and then I bought a new one.

I never thought anything about it until the woman in Budapest asked her perplexed question.

“No, I’m not a Catholic anymore,” I said. ”I attend a Lutheran church, now.”

This smart Berkeley sophisticate was still confused. “Do Protestants wear crucifixes?”

Attila, of Jewish heritage and a Nazi occupation survivor, raised his eyebrows at me.

I seldom think about it except when I pull it out of my clothes or when it twists around my neck during aerobics. It had not occured to me Atttila and his Jewish relatives might find it curious, too.

So much for cultural awareness.

“Actually, this is a simple cross,” I explained. “Protestants don’t wear crucifixes–which have Christ’s figure on them. I wear it to remind myself of what I believe and who I belong to. It marks me as a Christian.”

As my friend Kay Strom demonstrated when she had a Coptic cross tattooed on her forearm,  it’s helpful for me remember just who I worship in our secularized society, and to be marked as such.  (See my blog post Tattooing Your Soul ).

But apparently many Christians don’t see it the same way.

Several months ago a woman I’ve known 15 years and attended church with, approached me on the same topic. “I’ve noticed you always wear a cross and I wondered why. It also made me wonder if I ought to do the same thing myself.”

It told her to wear a cross only if she wanted to.

We don’t have to wear jewelry or have crosses tattooed to our arms to demonstrate to the world we are Christians. They should know we are Christians by our love, by our willingness to forgive, and by our open hands to God’s creation.

The cross is an offense to some, and can be downright dangerous if you wear it in the wrong place (I hid it under my clothes in London). It can open doors for discussion as it did in Budapest, or remind other believers of how you should behave if you proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In the first century, wearing a cross around your neck would be the equivalent today of wearing an electric chair medallion–it was an offensive way to kill criminals.

And yet, it’s the way God redeemed the world.

That’s why I wear it –in thankfulness to the one who saved even sinful me.

Thanks be to God.

Checking Out with Kristin Lavransdatter

And it came to pass I had had enough. All I wanted was to be transported far, far away–I didn’t even care where–just to be relieved of the drudgery of my life.

My children were perfectly loveable and ages two and four. My husband had been out to sea on a submarine for a very long time; I did not know when I’d see him again. Everything in our old, saggy house was broken–even the telephone–and I lacked the skills to repair anything. My family lived 3500 miles away.

We lived on a  plot of land high on a granite slab carved out of a military installation and we had no neighbors. At 29, I was the “senior” wife on our submarine–because all the wives who “outranked” me had fled to different lives. I felt that I had to hold it all together and be strong for the “junior” wives.

But I was going to pieces.

I remember the fall day I let go and drifted off. Piles of vivid red, gold and dull brown leaves needed to be raked in our Connecticut yard. Pumpkins and carrots needed to be plucked from the garden. Diapers needed to be changed, clothes washed, bills paid.

I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So I checked out for a couple days.

Physically, I stayed home tending the boys. I fed them, clothed them and watched them–sort of. But mentally and emotionally I was gone. I didn’t read to them. Didn’t play with them, or even pray with them. I just existed in a place in my head and went through the motions of motherhood.

I felt guilty. But I couldn’t help myself anymore.

For what it was worth, I found my partner in a book–a big, fat, sprawling story of 14th century Norway called Kristin Lavransdatter. The 1936 “Nobel Prize edition” I read was over 1000 pages long and contained three different books: The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby and The Cross. It was translated from the Norwegian by Charles Archer and J.S. Scott.

I’d checked the book out of the Groton Public Library because I’d seen fancy versions of it in paper catalogues about great books. It had won the author, Sigrid Undset, the 1940 Nobel Prize for Literature.

I didn’t know anything about Undset when I read her book in two days, sitting on the rock wall outside while my children played in the fall sunshine all those years ago. A strong, intelligent woman whose circumstances had taken her to places she didn’t want to go, Undset poured herself into her books, even as she raised her three children in an isolated house in Norway–their father long departed.

Kristin Lavransdatter is not an easy read even now. A medieval story of love, adultery, passion, fury and even motherhood, it took me out of my personal circumstances for a needed time. While not exactly giving me an alternate life to live (adultery makes me squirm), it helped me deal with the life I was living in an isolated spot.

Good literature can do that for you.

While the children frolicked outdoors until their cheeks turned red and then came inside to watch Mister Rogers before eating hot dogs for dinner, I poured through the emotions of abandonment, love, hope and commitment to someone outside of me.

The final book tells it all: The Cross.

And we all know who went to the cross.

The lover of my soul, the one who not only knew my circumstances but fashioned them for me; the God who cared enough for a lonely, hurting woman to give her two days of fall sunshine for the children to play outside. The same God who provided healthy children to love me even when I couldn’t bear to hug them, He was there on those two days while I consumed a novel of ancient times that reflected my feelings on those days.

I checked out with Kristin Lavransdatter, but He checked over me.

I finished the book late the second night and awoke the next morning with the heaviness lifted. I cooked pancakes for breakfast, took the boys to the library where we checked out brightly colored picture books to read together. I prayed for them, and for me, and for my husband still not home from sea.

The days grew shorter, the nights colder and one day he returned to make our family whole again–for at least a little while.

I’ve never touched Kristin Lavransdatter again. I’m surprised now to learn it carried controversial themes. It just reminds me of a time when I needed to be transported away and that thick book did the trick.

Are there any books or stories that have taken you far from dismal circumstances? How, why, and what were they?

Research: When Enough is Enough

“Stop the research and start writing!”

My patron of the arts had heard enough whining, even if he had been the source of some of the anguish with his periodic question, “Have you found the key to your heroine yet?”

No. So I continued to read about her and amass more information.

But he’d finally had enough.  ”You’ll feel better if you just get started. Maybe you’ll find her in the writing.”

I dithered a little more, then plucked up the nerve to type those sobering words: Chapter One.

Which brings me to a question. When do you know you’ve done enough research–if that’s even possible–and it’s time to write?

(That is a yardstick behind the wall of books I currently have in my house. 17.5 inches high)

How many books do you need to examine? How many people interview? Is there ever an end?

There should be.

I’ve got a few clues.

I had read enough about my heroine that by the time I sat down with a local historian, I knew more facts about her, her family, and the life in the town than the historian did. The woman with a PhD in history blinked rapidly as I questioned her on details she didn’t know the answer to.

When I asked how often the train came to town, she gained some control. “I know what you’re looking for and why. Another author came to town last year seeking the same sort of details. You want color for your story.”

Of course. I’m trying to make it as real as possible so my readers can feel like they’ve been in that time and place.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know.

I figure if the local historian doesn’t know and thus probably doesn’t care, than I’m safe to let my imagination play.

1. Quit when you can throw off the experts. You’ve mastered the topic.

I read over a dozen books about my hero. I’ve examined all the websites and am now reduced to reading novels written in 1903 and 1864 for more insight into him. (The novels are awful).

2. Quit when you’ve exhausted the canon. You really are grasping for straws when you read poorly written novels complted 118 years ago. Enough!

Because I’m dealing with historic characters and I’m interested in placing them physically and emotionally within time, space, and their families, I’ve looked through all the genealogical records I can find. As any good genealogist knows, you also need to explore the auxiliary family members.

I did that, too, and found interesting family connections between my hero and heroine. The reader doesn’t need to know any of that, but I do so I can move them plausibly among family members in different cities.

3. Quit when you’ve mastered the genealogies and can discussing second cousins twice removed fluently.

My patron of the arts has traveled with me to explore some of the sites mentioned in the story. He’s heard the tales, walked the grounds, examined the museums, intelligently commented on the military operations, and asked more than once, “so, when are you going to start writing?”

4. Quit when your family is bored with your subject and doesn’t want to hear about it anymore.

But there might be one last fact, one last tidbit of information that could make the story unique.

5. Start writing anyway. The muse will take over, research serendipity will occur, pieces will come together in your subconscious and you’ll never be done writing at this rate, anyway.

Chapter One.

What joy I felt to start typing, freed from worry.

I had so much background, so much thought, so much examination of facts, behind me, the writing flowed.

“Wow,” my husband said after reading the first five chapters–completed in two days. “Your heroine has come alive.

He was right.

“But what about the hero, he needs a little work . . . “

So, when DO you know it’s time to write?

Traveler’s Tales: The London War Zone

Married to a now-retired naval officer, I’m still often involved in military matters and that holds particularly true while on vacation.

We’ve actually dubbed some of our trips by the wars we wound up investigating. There was the infamous French and Indian War trip (Maine, Quebec, Fort Ticonderoga), the Civil War outings (Gettysburg, Smithsonian, Battle of Stones River, Civil War museums), Revolutionary War (Williamsburg, Yorktown, Virginia in general) and several iterations of World War II: Hawaii, Italy, Normandy and London.

We traveled to London straight off a trip through the Paris Musée de l’Armée and a visit to the actual Normany beaches. From there we chunneled to London where we saw Les Miserables on stage and then spent the next day reviewing the war at various sites around the British capital.

There were plenty.

No surprise; Londoners stood stalwart against the Axis evil and revere the memory of their finest hour. After admiring St. Paul’s Cathedral, which remained standing amid the smoke of war, we headed to the Imperial War Museum–a place I never would have visited without the interest of my husband and son.

We enjoyed the exhibits, particularly those detailed ones down in the basement which had all sorts of miscellaneous tidbits of army uniforms, hats, playing cards and paraphernalia carried through the wars. I enjoyed seeing the medals and revisiting the tales of British gallantry through the ages.

In the main atrium, airplanes hovered overhead while tanks and other armaments filled the ground floor.

I thought the trench exhibit particularly sobering; can you imagine sitting in a slit in the ground while poisonous gas crept across the landscape toward you?

The best war museum, however, was just up the street and not far from Big Ben’s shadow:  The Churchill War Rooms, another branch of the Imperial War Museum.

There we wandered in the basement of the Treasury building, exploring the rooms where Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his cabinent ran the war. To see the phone he used, the tiny room where he slept, and the actual map where his officers plotted the war was to step back into a time where right and wrong were more clearly defined than today.

Midway through the museum, a modern gallery documented Churchill’s life using photographs, memorabilia, audio and visual stories. We got so absorbed, we completely lost track of time.

Perhaps because the man and his government seemed a little outside of time.

Our final stop was the oldest one: The Tower of London whose last prisoner was Nazi Rudolph Hess.

There we wandered through ancient buildings and remembered, yet again, the sacrifices made by so many in defense of their kingdom. The chapel is a poignant worship site and burial spot for many beefeaters–those who guard the tower.

The British crown jewels reside in the tower now, but during the war were taken to another more safe spot. The ravens apparently never left despite the bombing and the walls remain secure.

London is justifiably proud of how it withstood the Nazi blitzkrieg during World War II. We were honored to see the sites and remember just how difficult life must have been.

Churchill said it best in June, 1940:

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

Thanks be to God.

Patterning a Fictional Motherhood

The children paused at the front door when they  returned from school if they heard loud classical music.

They’d scan my face and ask, “is someone coming over?”

If the music was something particularly dramatic, like Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries, or possibly worse, Tchakovsky’s 1812 Overture, the odds plummeted I was cleaning for company.

Which usually meant only one other option: I was angry.

I always cleaned to classical music, particularly if I needed a constructive outlook for my fury, but it was only years later I realized why.

That’s exactly what Mrs. Austin did in Madeleine L’Engle’s Meet the Austins.

During one child’s birthday party, my husband took everyone to the movies and I stayed home to “get things ready,” for the sleepover to come. Since I had a couple hours to myself, I painted the front and back doors of the house.

In the middle of a birthday party.

Later, I realized that’s exactly the type of thing Mrs. Belford would have done in the Katie Rose series by Lenora Mattingly Weber.

The summer my daughter turned eight, I realized she had never seen The Sound of Music, so I went to Blockbuster Video to rent a copy. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I asked the young pierced man behind the counter. He started typing, “Sound of what?”

“The Sound of Music.” I spoke slowly and enunciated everything with care.

“Music?” he looked puzzled.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of The Sound of Music.”

“Nope.”

So help me, I turned into Woody Allen and addressed the middle aged man behind me in line. “You’ve heard of The Sound of Music, haven’t you?”

“Of course,” he grunted. “Chick flick.”

The clerk shook his head.

So I became Julie Andrews and broke into song: “Doe, a deer, a female deer.”

The female clerk behind the counter joined me and I only wish, now, I’d danced through the video aisles with my arms outstretched as we got more and more enthusiastic.

Paralyzed at his screen, the male clerk watched with his mouth open. I suppose this was a two-woman flash dance . . .

The point of these stories is to show how fiction has affected my life and my mothering in unexpected ways. When I read and reread those YA books by L’Engle and Weber as a lonely teenager, I had no way of knowing how they were imprinting me and thus my own family. The musicals I loved added music and joy to my life.

Is that what YA fiction is doing now?

I’ve heard stories recently of wonderful teenagers I know cutting themselves. What would make them think to do such a thing, particularly young teenagers?

Could it have to do with the media they consume?

What we put into our minds, particularly those stories we reread and think about, has an affect. If your society emphasizes the “dark side,” the negative, the ugly, the brutal and the cruel, do you really think you can “consume” those ideas and not be affected?

I didn’t wake up one morning and think, “I’m going to clean house to classical music because that’s what Mrs. Austin did.” I just did it because it made sense.

It still makes sense.

But I’m far more conscious now, on the potential affects on my life if I read too much in the negative. How about you?

The Moment Life Spun Away

Can you pinpoint a moment in your life when everything changed?

You wouldn’t have recognized it at the time, but there may  have been a seemingly random, minor event that turned into, well, years of your life diverted elsewhere, or maybe your happiness recharged for the rest of your life.

One decision: what are these papers? If I run, can I catch that train? Why won’t my watch work?

And the course of your life veers away.

Some people call it the changepoint.

I can’t find the classic watch commercial in which a man is walking down a crowded street while the narrator describes his promising future: “Today you’ll meet the woman of your dreams. You’ll be swept off your feet with love. You’ll marry and have three adorable children. You’ll be a success at work because you know she’s behind you and encouraging you. You’ll live to a ripe old age with peace and financial security. The entire world of happiness awaits!”

He’s smiling broadly and wonders when it will happen and so he glances at his watch. It’s stopped ticking so amid all those New Yorkers pushing their way up and down the sidewalk, he looks down to wind his watch.

She walks by and his glorious future evaporates.

One small decision.

I love the premise of Sliding Doors. In the movie, a woman leaves work early and then the movie splits and we watch how her life differs because she either runs to catch the subway, or she waits for the next train. Fascinating premise. (This movie, sad to say, isn’t very good).

One meaningless decision made in a mindless flash and the future is never the same.

For me the decision wasn’t that significant–it only swallowed five years of my life–but was equally simple. “Here are your grandmother’s papers. I figured you were the best person to keep them and possibly the only one to want them.”

My mother carried a bag’s worth of information out of her mother-in-law’s house when they cleared it out. I was delighted to read through the innumerable cards, including ones I’d designed as a child, photos and letters. Through her writing, I could spend time with my aging grandmother who lived far away and no longer behaved like her capable self.

At the bottom of the bag, I found gold. She had sat down one day with a brand new yellow legal pad and on the top left corner began to write the story of her life in precise, clear Spensorian handwriting.

Grammy continued, front and back of each page, all the way to the back of the final page on the tablet. That’s where she ended her story.

Turning the pages, amazed, I saw no words crossed out, no mispellings, no errors. I, who cannot write a note without one correction, was impressed. She’d written a masterpiece.

Written, that is. The story itself needed a little massaging.

And that’s what I did for the next year. I wrote my grandmother’s biography.

But those papers didn’t swallow just that year. As a journalist, I needed to do a full job: interview relatives, travel to where she was born, collect pictures, read history against her life.

The investigation took me to Utah, where my Mormon great-aunt said, “There’s no point in coming all this way, Michelle, if you don’t take in the movie about our family coming across the continent in Salt Lake City.”

While waiting for the movie to start, I wandered downstairs to the computerized family history center and wondered about my grandfather’s ancestors.

That’s the story I spent five years on.

Can you pin point a moment in your life when a seemingly small decision changed everything? Perhaps the day you met a spouse, discovered a calling, found the Lord?

What choice spun your life down a different road?

Just Another Writing Birthday

I spent my twenty-first birthday in the University Research Library writing a paper on King Lear.

It was the Friday before finals and my 20-page Shakespeare paper was my whole grade. Since I was taking four English classes that quarter, most of my grades were based on papers. This was the final one, due Monday.

(Pity me. I took twelve English classes my senior year at UCLA in order to graduate in three years. That meant on the first day of each quarter, I already was 1000 pages behind on the reading!)

I got up at 6 am and went to the library where I slaved away with paper and pen (this was pre-computer, mind you!) until five o’clock when my parents took me out to dinner. My father wanted to buy me my first legal drink. (I had a glass of white wine).

My mother had made a popcorn cake (don’t ask), we sawed ourselves slices, gulped them down and I said goodbye about eight o’clock. Delighted to have some space from my words and thus a potential ability to examine my paper with fresh eyes, I picked it up and read it straight through.

 I tore it in half and threw it in the trash.

 I was back at the library at six the next morning where I consulted the text, thought a little more (prayed some) and then returned to write of the mad king and his daughter Cordelia.

(Writing this just now, I realize my fascination with Cordelia steadfastly loving an ill father stood me in good stead twenty-five years later with my own father. I’ve written before on how literature subtley prepares us for life experiences. See here and here.)

The same thing happened to me this week on another, much higher in number, birthday. I had another Monday deadline and plenty of writing to do. I came home from church, sat in this computer chair and wrote for ten hours.

Writing on a computer in 2012 is a comparative breeze. Does anyone use whiteout anymore or even know what onionskin paper is?

I thought I had my fourth and fifth chapters done late in the afternoon. I handed them to my husband to read while I made dinner.

We enjoyed our meal (red wine this year), skipped the cake and discussed the paper, er, chapters.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Your heroine has come completely alive but you made your hero dull. How could you even do that?”

Hey, it was my birthday. How could he say something like that to me?

I reread the chapters and saw his point. SoI  highlighted and deleted the first two pages of chapter four–not quite as dramatic  as tearing up my 20-page paper, but just as disheartening.

I thought about my story, consulted my books and saw what I needed to do.

Back to work.

On both writing days, starting over was the best solution. I had done the hard work–thought through my ideas, scribbled down notes, marked up the text and knew what I wanted to say. I just hadn’t put it together in a scintilating way that got to the meat of the story.

This is where experience helps. I knew the text and the story. I had spent a lot of time thinking and planning. I just needed to trust the muse, or God, to take the paper and story where they needed to go. As long as I didn’t panic, stare at the clock or distract myself from the task at hand, I knew I could do it.

Back at UCLA all those years ago, the Saturday rewrite went well on lined paper in blue ink. The Sunday typing on onionskin paper with white out handy produced a twenty-page discussion of a daughter’s love through thick and thin that produced closure for an old man at the end of his tortuous life.

I got an A.

This Sunday, the four-hour slugfest produced a much stronger chapter that showed my hero in action. I know him well, I just wasn’t letting his over-the-top character blow open my novel so early.

I sent the proposal to my agent at 11:54. We’ll see how my hero manages in the assessment of other professionals.

Both nights,  I went to bed exhausted–even though I did nothing more physical than write all day. I guess the creative genes take something more out of you than is evident to a casual observer.

To celebrate all those years ago,  my roommates took me out to the movies. We saw a brand new film at the Graumann’s Chinese Theater. My English major brain went into overdrive analysing and delighting in a story of a young man’s search for meaning and purpose.

Who can ever forget seeing Star Wars for the very first time?

Normandy: Making History Come Alive for the Kids

We took our youngest children to Normandy three years ago, to tour the beaches and pause in thanks at the American Cemetery. It was important, and they came back with a new appreciation for service.

All those crosses will do that.

I’d been there as a child myself. My father, a history-lover, felt his children should learn what happened in Europe during World War II by visiting the actual sites and really thinking about what it would have been like to be there. We needed to see with our eyes so that we could reverence with our hearts.

We prepared our children the same way my father did: by watching the movie The Longest Day.

A long film featuring American movie stars in cameo roles, it told the tale in an engaging black and white. Because the pictures we’ve seen from D-Day were all black and white, this seemed completely natural. The Germans (German actors) spoke in German and the French spoke in French. It was the first movie I ever saw with subtitles.

My children, 16 and 22, knew the story well by the time we arrived.

We got off the train in Caretan and were met by a battlefield tour guide who looked a lot like Field Marshall Montgomery: mustache, clipped accent and English officer cap. We liked him and he was extremely knowledgeable.

He took us to his home first, across the street from the infamous church at Sainte-Mère-Église, where the Red Buttons character hung from a parachute for several hours during the invasion while a fire fight went on in the courtyard. He survived by playing dead. The church has never forgotten him, and a dummy parachutist resides on the steeple to this day.

It was just pretty countryside to us, green and fertile, until we arrived at that church. The movie, the sounds, the horror flooded back and I could hardly tear my eyes away.

We reviewed the invasion, toured the church–where a beautiful stained glass window commemorates the American paratroopers who crossed the channel on June 6, 1944–and spent time at a local museum devoted to the war.

We didn’t say alot. We had to take it in by ourselves individually and with awe. Normandy was like that.

A thin breeze blew that March day, but the sky stretched clear and blue. A visit to Omaha Beach filled us with amazement as we examined the the cliffs men had to climb under fire at Pointe du Hoc.

The beach also startled us: the sand had a red hue to it that day in 2009.

We puzzled over that reddish color for some time until my son suggested perhaps rust from the ships and equipment still under the water? Eerie.

Our final stop was the American Cemetery which our guide told us actually has been given to the United States by France–so our soldiers could be buried on American soil.

Our hush fell into silence there. For an hour we wandered the green grass, read the names on the white stone crosses, stood with tears in the chapel and wondered, yet again, how these men found the courage to come ashore that grim rainy June day.

My memories from 1970 were of the rows of crosses stretching to the water. I’ve never forgotten the solemnity of that moment. My daughter could scarcely speak.

“This is how we should be taught history,” she said. “By visiting the places where it took place.” She’ll never think of World War II the same.

Just like me.

Since our trip, many members of my family have visited Normandy. Some of them are very sophisticated people who have traveled the world. ”The American Cemetery was the most memorable place I saw in Europe that summer,” my sister-in-law said.

My twenty-year-old niece: “I was never so proud of being an American as when I stood in that cemetery.”

A piece of America, in Europe, made us all think about history from a new point of view.

Visiting such a place will do that to you.