Judy Shank Cyg's Blog: Fantasy, Books, and Daily Life, page 21
April 22, 2021
Is Elegance All in the Mind?
In a world of gazelles, I’m a shepherd pony.
I admire elegance, always have, and you think I’d absorb some from the graceful people I’ve known.
In junior high, I so admired Edna (and you know who you are). She was stylish and easy-going, accepted everyone, was liked by everyone. She wore the required skirts, but hers were pleated with matching sweaters or tops, and MATCHING TENNIS SHOES. I so envied that. I’ve no doubt that she grew up just as friendly and poised.
I did learn as much from students in school as from teachers and lessons. I’m not just talking about the “what not to do” lessons, either.
For example.
We all dreaded speeches in front of the class, regardless of topic. (In fact, at Lawrence Tech, I saved the speech class for the very last semester of the very last year.) I can understand the need for communication skills and getting out your view, but those teen years are probably the worst time in your life to instill that.
So, high school English, one of my favorite classes. I was the student in your class who brightened at the “write a poem” assignment and never groaned. But when our teacher insisted on a verbal book report, in front of the class, I did groan. Reading? Great. Book report? No problem. Speak in front of the class? Terror.
I didn’t volunteer, not having learned that the earliest done, the more relief (and sometimes, the better grade). So, I was one of the last to face the firing squad. Well, other than Marty.
Marty was another to admire. Smart, funny, clever, self-confident, good-looking. I’ve no doubt that he’s gone on to create a video game company or sell anything he wants to.
We lucked out on the last day to deliver the book reports. We had a sub. You all remember how awful we were to subs (especially Mrs. Lake in high school. She was courageous or desperate to keep returning. For any giggling or unkindness, Mrs. Lake, I thoroughly apologize). The sub had the names of those who still had to complete the speech, or fail the project, so I got mine done and scuttled back to my seat. Then Marty strolled to the front of the class.
I’m fairly certain he didn’t put it off because of dread, but just because. He announced his title and gave us a synopsis. A wonderful speaker, he fascinated us with the plot and suspense. The book, however, was one I’d read and the report he shared had nothing to do with that story. I decided to ask him what the title really was after class, since I was burning to read it.
“Oh, that?” he said. “I just made it up as I went. I didn’t actually read a book for the report.”
Now, that’s what I call self-assurance.
Self-assurance is my sister who decided to try out for baton twirling in our school band. She practiced with the dime store baton that my parents gave her, since she hadn’t mentioned her goal, merely an interest. Took the toy to the tryouts and was accepted.
And she’s elegant, too.
Marty, wherever you are, if you became a writer, let me know where to find your books.
And Edna, wherever you are, you left behind an appreciation for poise and beauty that comes from within.
My sister I’ve always admired, and do today.
Still wish I was more elegant.
I retired recently from an elementary school here in Florida as data entry secretary (student records, schedules, grades, state audits), and one afternoon, I was walking down the hall with our ladylike, refined assistant principal.
“Hey, Andrea,” I said, “why is it that you and I are wearing the same slacks, the same polo shirt, and you look elegant, while I…well, don’t?”
“My dear,” she said, “elegance is all in the mind.”
I’ve decided that writers don’t need to be elegant.
I admire elegance, always have, and you think I’d absorb some from the graceful people I’ve known.
In junior high, I so admired Edna (and you know who you are). She was stylish and easy-going, accepted everyone, was liked by everyone. She wore the required skirts, but hers were pleated with matching sweaters or tops, and MATCHING TENNIS SHOES. I so envied that. I’ve no doubt that she grew up just as friendly and poised.
I did learn as much from students in school as from teachers and lessons. I’m not just talking about the “what not to do” lessons, either.
For example.
We all dreaded speeches in front of the class, regardless of topic. (In fact, at Lawrence Tech, I saved the speech class for the very last semester of the very last year.) I can understand the need for communication skills and getting out your view, but those teen years are probably the worst time in your life to instill that.
So, high school English, one of my favorite classes. I was the student in your class who brightened at the “write a poem” assignment and never groaned. But when our teacher insisted on a verbal book report, in front of the class, I did groan. Reading? Great. Book report? No problem. Speak in front of the class? Terror.
I didn’t volunteer, not having learned that the earliest done, the more relief (and sometimes, the better grade). So, I was one of the last to face the firing squad. Well, other than Marty.
Marty was another to admire. Smart, funny, clever, self-confident, good-looking. I’ve no doubt that he’s gone on to create a video game company or sell anything he wants to.
We lucked out on the last day to deliver the book reports. We had a sub. You all remember how awful we were to subs (especially Mrs. Lake in high school. She was courageous or desperate to keep returning. For any giggling or unkindness, Mrs. Lake, I thoroughly apologize). The sub had the names of those who still had to complete the speech, or fail the project, so I got mine done and scuttled back to my seat. Then Marty strolled to the front of the class.
I’m fairly certain he didn’t put it off because of dread, but just because. He announced his title and gave us a synopsis. A wonderful speaker, he fascinated us with the plot and suspense. The book, however, was one I’d read and the report he shared had nothing to do with that story. I decided to ask him what the title really was after class, since I was burning to read it.
“Oh, that?” he said. “I just made it up as I went. I didn’t actually read a book for the report.”
Now, that’s what I call self-assurance.
Self-assurance is my sister who decided to try out for baton twirling in our school band. She practiced with the dime store baton that my parents gave her, since she hadn’t mentioned her goal, merely an interest. Took the toy to the tryouts and was accepted.
And she’s elegant, too.
Marty, wherever you are, if you became a writer, let me know where to find your books.
And Edna, wherever you are, you left behind an appreciation for poise and beauty that comes from within.
My sister I’ve always admired, and do today.
Still wish I was more elegant.
I retired recently from an elementary school here in Florida as data entry secretary (student records, schedules, grades, state audits), and one afternoon, I was walking down the hall with our ladylike, refined assistant principal.
“Hey, Andrea,” I said, “why is it that you and I are wearing the same slacks, the same polo shirt, and you look elegant, while I…well, don’t?”
“My dear,” she said, “elegance is all in the mind.”
I’ve decided that writers don’t need to be elegant.
April 15, 2021
Since I can write this, I thank a teacher
If I can write this and you can read this, thank a teacher.
Teachers. My memory of them begins when we moved to the Heights.
Mrs. Parr in fourth grade at Auburn Heights Elementary who assigned leaf collections at the beginning of every fall. Caroline Street alone, plus the sassafras patch in the First Woods, gave us a guaranteed A+--sour cherry, catalpa, apple, banana cherry, pickling and Bartlett pears, box elder, sugar maple, silver maple, oak, black cherry, weeping willow…all carefully ironed between waxed paper and taped to notebook paper.
She also guaranteed that I memorized the multiplication tables from 0x0 to 12x12 by assigning them handwritten 100 times each as homework.
The unknown (to me) music teacher who came to her room once a week for tonette lessons. You remember those black plastic recorders. What a hero to stand in front of our eager class and pretend to be pleased by that screeching din which gave us such pleasure.
Mrs. Love in fifth grade at Stone School who informed me that I’d never amount to anything because I read too much.
Junior high produced a teacher for each subject. We all had the teacher there or in high school who threw things at mouthy or sleeping students.
Mr. Strayer in science who demonstrated the Doppler effect by leaving the classroom to stand at the end of the second-floor hallway, race up the hall hollering, in and out the science room doors, and to the far end of the hallway. We clearly heard the change in pitch as he rushed by. A simple description of a passing train would have been simpler, but not so memorable.
Mr. Welty, my first teacher crush, for two years’ Spanish. And our one year of Latin—was it ever offered again? —with Mr. Antista. He taught with enthusiasm, his forehead crinkled as his eyebrows rose and stayed high. We’d snigger at each other for doing the same thing, but touching our own foreheads, realized it was impossible not to imitate. Remember the song, “There she was just a-walkin’ down the street, singin’ ‘Doo wah diddy, diddy dum, diddy doo…’”? I will forever remember the Latin for the words we sang to the melody, “There she was just a-walkin’ down the street singin’ ‘Ubi ubi est mea sub ubi’—Where where is my under where. The height of wit at that time, thank you, Mr. Antista.
Everybody loved Mr. Parrott. He knew and remembered every student, and not only us, but who we married and who our kids were. Amazing man.
So many teachers whose names slip past me. The high school English teacher who taught me to love writing poetry. The physics teacher who finally pitied me enough to pass me instead of giving me the grade I deserved. The junior high chemistry teacher, gorgeous and passionate about a subject that eluded me then.
I know you could tell me plenty of stories about your favorites (and not so), and I’d love to hear them. They’d trigger memories and names of those who deserve to be remembered.
And this was just Avondale.
As my instructor at Lawrence Tech beamed at us when explaining a difficult concept in AC circuits, “Now, wasn’t that worth getting up in the morning for?”
Yes, Ken, it was.
Teachers. My memory of them begins when we moved to the Heights.
Mrs. Parr in fourth grade at Auburn Heights Elementary who assigned leaf collections at the beginning of every fall. Caroline Street alone, plus the sassafras patch in the First Woods, gave us a guaranteed A+--sour cherry, catalpa, apple, banana cherry, pickling and Bartlett pears, box elder, sugar maple, silver maple, oak, black cherry, weeping willow…all carefully ironed between waxed paper and taped to notebook paper.
She also guaranteed that I memorized the multiplication tables from 0x0 to 12x12 by assigning them handwritten 100 times each as homework.
The unknown (to me) music teacher who came to her room once a week for tonette lessons. You remember those black plastic recorders. What a hero to stand in front of our eager class and pretend to be pleased by that screeching din which gave us such pleasure.
Mrs. Love in fifth grade at Stone School who informed me that I’d never amount to anything because I read too much.
Junior high produced a teacher for each subject. We all had the teacher there or in high school who threw things at mouthy or sleeping students.
Mr. Strayer in science who demonstrated the Doppler effect by leaving the classroom to stand at the end of the second-floor hallway, race up the hall hollering, in and out the science room doors, and to the far end of the hallway. We clearly heard the change in pitch as he rushed by. A simple description of a passing train would have been simpler, but not so memorable.
Mr. Welty, my first teacher crush, for two years’ Spanish. And our one year of Latin—was it ever offered again? —with Mr. Antista. He taught with enthusiasm, his forehead crinkled as his eyebrows rose and stayed high. We’d snigger at each other for doing the same thing, but touching our own foreheads, realized it was impossible not to imitate. Remember the song, “There she was just a-walkin’ down the street, singin’ ‘Doo wah diddy, diddy dum, diddy doo…’”? I will forever remember the Latin for the words we sang to the melody, “There she was just a-walkin’ down the street singin’ ‘Ubi ubi est mea sub ubi’—Where where is my under where. The height of wit at that time, thank you, Mr. Antista.
Everybody loved Mr. Parrott. He knew and remembered every student, and not only us, but who we married and who our kids were. Amazing man.
So many teachers whose names slip past me. The high school English teacher who taught me to love writing poetry. The physics teacher who finally pitied me enough to pass me instead of giving me the grade I deserved. The junior high chemistry teacher, gorgeous and passionate about a subject that eluded me then.
I know you could tell me plenty of stories about your favorites (and not so), and I’d love to hear them. They’d trigger memories and names of those who deserve to be remembered.
And this was just Avondale.
As my instructor at Lawrence Tech beamed at us when explaining a difficult concept in AC circuits, “Now, wasn’t that worth getting up in the morning for?”
Yes, Ken, it was.
April 9, 2021
Summer of the Lepreuchan King
My parents struggled, as so many others did, to pay bills and raise us six children. I can’t recall feeling without, though, and they did every extra for us that they could. (Can’t imagine how they managed all those Christmas gifts, and on our birthdays, we were treated as an only—except for my twin sisters!)
Still, movie theaters were out of reach for our family, between Dad’s afternoon work schedule, and Mom balancing from pre-teens to infants with laundry, meals, and housework.
One summer a Disney movie about leprechauns came to the theaters. My brothers and I watched the previews on TV intently, so that images of ghostly carriages, wailing banshees, and magical pots of gold became the topic of most of our conversations.
I was especially fascinated with the King of the Leprechauns. My brother Dave, my friend Kay, and I debated the reality of such beings, but reality never hampered my imagination. I decided that there was such a King, and there was no reason why, if I couldn't get to the theater, he shouldn't come to Caroline Street.
"Oh? So where is his throne room, then?" my brother demanded.
I pointed at the locked shed in our backyard, off limits by more than parental commands.
"There," I said. "That's his throne room."
I couldn't understand why Mom and Dad found that so funny, not knowing at the time that the mysterious shed was an outhouse, and that “throne room” was another moniker for such a structure. They did, however, buy a bird fountain for our middle yard garden, with a crowned concrete leprechaun to stand in the center of the stone bowl. The summer of the Leprechaun King became a testimony to a sense of magic and wonder.
Our Leprechaun King oversaw his realm of children and box elder bugs and flowers. Mom grew tea roses, bleeding hearts, lilacs, roses, and peonies.
We were charmed by the sight of a peony floating in a glass bowl, but there was no way of shaking out that last ant, and we either had to give up the idea, or spend the next few days squashing ants as they surfaced and marched across the table during dinner.
Our magic King reigned over his summer world and left behind, for me, a legacy of wishes coming true. Years later, when I did see the Disney movie, I was disappointed by the lack of leprechaun magic in comparison to what had been created in our backyard.
Thank you, Mom and Dad!
Still, movie theaters were out of reach for our family, between Dad’s afternoon work schedule, and Mom balancing from pre-teens to infants with laundry, meals, and housework.
One summer a Disney movie about leprechauns came to the theaters. My brothers and I watched the previews on TV intently, so that images of ghostly carriages, wailing banshees, and magical pots of gold became the topic of most of our conversations.
I was especially fascinated with the King of the Leprechauns. My brother Dave, my friend Kay, and I debated the reality of such beings, but reality never hampered my imagination. I decided that there was such a King, and there was no reason why, if I couldn't get to the theater, he shouldn't come to Caroline Street.
"Oh? So where is his throne room, then?" my brother demanded.
I pointed at the locked shed in our backyard, off limits by more than parental commands.
"There," I said. "That's his throne room."
I couldn't understand why Mom and Dad found that so funny, not knowing at the time that the mysterious shed was an outhouse, and that “throne room” was another moniker for such a structure. They did, however, buy a bird fountain for our middle yard garden, with a crowned concrete leprechaun to stand in the center of the stone bowl. The summer of the Leprechaun King became a testimony to a sense of magic and wonder.
Our Leprechaun King oversaw his realm of children and box elder bugs and flowers. Mom grew tea roses, bleeding hearts, lilacs, roses, and peonies.
We were charmed by the sight of a peony floating in a glass bowl, but there was no way of shaking out that last ant, and we either had to give up the idea, or spend the next few days squashing ants as they surfaced and marched across the table during dinner.
Our magic King reigned over his summer world and left behind, for me, a legacy of wishes coming true. Years later, when I did see the Disney movie, I was disappointed by the lack of leprechaun magic in comparison to what had been created in our backyard.
Thank you, Mom and Dad!
April 2, 2021
Wild Strawberries and President Kennedy
From wild strawberries to polliwogs (or tadpoles) to the day that President Kennedy died, Avondale Junior High and its property were a big part of our early years in the Heights. I understand that the complex is now Auburn Heights Elementary. Go figure. No more of our memorable school fairs, right?
When my family moved to the Heights, I was nine, and early summer included excursions to the fields north of the First Woods with small ponds and patches of tiny, sweet, wild strawberries. The ponds offered countless polliwogs to scoop into jars and carry home. My brother Dave managed to hatch some into small frogs, and returned those to the swampy Second Woods.
The strawberries were the most delicious I’ve ever tasted, thimble-sized, but plentiful. Of course, we always promised Mom that we’d bring back enough for dessert, but they were so small and succulent, we barely managed to save enough to top morning cereal.
Our annual fun ended when the land was cleared for the junior high. Our “strawberry fields forever” were turned into a football field, and we were banned from the enormous construction site. I thought that I’d never forget our ponds and berry patches, but once the school was opened, it seemed to have always been there.
I attended for two years, 7th and 8th grades. My first dance was there, where Mom made me a dress and gave me shrewd advice. “No shy boy will approach a group of giggling girls,” she said. “Occasionally, walk away and stand by yourself.” So, I did and my current crush, Donald, asked me to dance. I don’t think I could dance very well, but that didn’t matter. I was ecstatic.
In Civics class, a subject that bored me terribly, our teacher gave us an extra-credit quiz that taught me a valuable lesson. “This is a timed test,” he said. “You only have minutes to complete it. Be sure to read all instructions carefully. Ready? Go!” We read and scratched and calculated and sweated until he called time. The lesson? Only one boy in our class passed. Question 12: Write your name on the top right front and wait until time is called. Do nothing else. “Always read the directions through first,” our teacher reminded us.
The day President Kennedy was shot, an announcement was made to all classrooms. School ended immediately for the day. I remember feeling excited and upset and overwhelmed at teachers sobbing, and the adults in our neighborhood and at home. The end of an era, they told each other, regardless of which political party they supported.
Walking to school, both to Auburn Heights Elementary and to the junior high, gave us a chance to enjoy the neighborhood and the seasons with falling oak leaves from the woods and flaming maples on the streets, snow crunching on the sidewalk and path, the scent of mown grass in early summer just before school freed us, and wild tiger lilies along yards.
Speaking of tiger lilies, I thought they were so beautiful, I tried unsuccessfully to transplant them in my yard after I grew up, married, and raised children in my childhood home. I did manage irises, although I could never figure out how to keep them standing tall. I’d prop them on stakes before I drove to work, but on my way home, they’d be studying the grass tips and wild violets again. Tiger lilies had no trouble standing straight for as long as they lasted. Go figure.
So, what were your favorite moments from junior high school?
(When did they cease to be junior highs and become middle schools, anyway?)
I’d love to share your memories.
When my family moved to the Heights, I was nine, and early summer included excursions to the fields north of the First Woods with small ponds and patches of tiny, sweet, wild strawberries. The ponds offered countless polliwogs to scoop into jars and carry home. My brother Dave managed to hatch some into small frogs, and returned those to the swampy Second Woods.
The strawberries were the most delicious I’ve ever tasted, thimble-sized, but plentiful. Of course, we always promised Mom that we’d bring back enough for dessert, but they were so small and succulent, we barely managed to save enough to top morning cereal.
Our annual fun ended when the land was cleared for the junior high. Our “strawberry fields forever” were turned into a football field, and we were banned from the enormous construction site. I thought that I’d never forget our ponds and berry patches, but once the school was opened, it seemed to have always been there.
I attended for two years, 7th and 8th grades. My first dance was there, where Mom made me a dress and gave me shrewd advice. “No shy boy will approach a group of giggling girls,” she said. “Occasionally, walk away and stand by yourself.” So, I did and my current crush, Donald, asked me to dance. I don’t think I could dance very well, but that didn’t matter. I was ecstatic.
In Civics class, a subject that bored me terribly, our teacher gave us an extra-credit quiz that taught me a valuable lesson. “This is a timed test,” he said. “You only have minutes to complete it. Be sure to read all instructions carefully. Ready? Go!” We read and scratched and calculated and sweated until he called time. The lesson? Only one boy in our class passed. Question 12: Write your name on the top right front and wait until time is called. Do nothing else. “Always read the directions through first,” our teacher reminded us.
The day President Kennedy was shot, an announcement was made to all classrooms. School ended immediately for the day. I remember feeling excited and upset and overwhelmed at teachers sobbing, and the adults in our neighborhood and at home. The end of an era, they told each other, regardless of which political party they supported.
Walking to school, both to Auburn Heights Elementary and to the junior high, gave us a chance to enjoy the neighborhood and the seasons with falling oak leaves from the woods and flaming maples on the streets, snow crunching on the sidewalk and path, the scent of mown grass in early summer just before school freed us, and wild tiger lilies along yards.
Speaking of tiger lilies, I thought they were so beautiful, I tried unsuccessfully to transplant them in my yard after I grew up, married, and raised children in my childhood home. I did manage irises, although I could never figure out how to keep them standing tall. I’d prop them on stakes before I drove to work, but on my way home, they’d be studying the grass tips and wild violets again. Tiger lilies had no trouble standing straight for as long as they lasted. Go figure.
So, what were your favorite moments from junior high school?
(When did they cease to be junior highs and become middle schools, anyway?)
I’d love to share your memories.
March 25, 2021
My Great Grandma is Nineteen
When I was little, I spent time at my Great-Grandma Miller’s tiny cottage on Grant Street in Avon Township, Michigan, (long gone now and replaced by an impressive home). During my earliest years, she had no running water, but a hand pump in a dry sink. Even the kitchen and her bedroom were lean-tos added onto the original one-room home. I learned early that she had to “prime the pump” to keep it from freezing in the winter or to start the water running again. She was thrilled to finally get cold running water in the kitchen years later. She never did get an indoor bathroom of any kind.
Great-Grandma Miller kept chickens when Mom was young, and still maintained her flowers and berries and vegetables when I visited. She also had an outhouse and a creepy, scary shed with a rotary mower, hoes and spades and rakes, and ghoulies and ghosties and things that went bump in the night. She warned us away from the shed because of the wasps, and we added that danger to the ones lurking in dark corners of the interior.
Great-Grandma Miller never said an unkind word about anyone. Ever. She shared her faith quietly, read her Bible, and cherished her ceramic crucifix that hung in her living room.
Time spent at Grandma’s included the silence of her small house, so that ticking clocks were noticeable, and the scent of lavender filled the rooms. She had a day bed in the living room which I thought of as mine, but was really her winter bed since the only heat in her home was the Franklin stove in a corner of the living room.
I don’t recall being bored at her house. The oldest of six siblings, I felt special on my own. She never entertained me, but would explain to a curious girl what she was busy doing. We ate meals at her tiny kitchen table surrounded by a ceramic glass-fronted cupboard, almost doll-sized to my eyes, a refrigerator with a freezer big enough for two stacked ice cube trays or a half-gallon of ice cream, and a gas stove with an oven that simply turned on and off. Baking meant turning on the heat, watching the temperature gauge on the rack, and learning when to turn off the heat.
Her yard had patches of “hens-and-chicks” (Sempervivum tectorum) that squeaked when you walked on them, and of course, she ordered us not to do that. There was a long driveway lined with cedars for world explorers, and a back yard ending in a garden and an enormous (to us) field. She had a root cellar for jars of homemade pickles and jams and relish. Every year on our birthday we received our own jar of homemade jam or jelly, with our name printed on the label. Those gifts were precious, appreciated, and completely off limits to anyone else.
Great-Grandma Miller taught me so many life lessons about trusting with your eyes open, faith, and kindness, I didn’t realize how grateful I was until she entered her waiting Kingdom. On one occasion, she pulled out a photo album of her family and younger years. I remember one picture of her in a long white dress, hair pulled back with a ribbon. “When I get to Heaven,” she said, “I’ll be nineteen again.”
Enjoy your endless youth and beauty, Grandma. When we reunite, I’ll share with you the joy you gave me, and the gratitude I feel for sharing the life of such an amazing woman, one who saw so many technological changes during her lifetime, she believed that movies were actual events, and was startled into calling Mom when an actor, who’d died in a movie, was alive again in another program. She accepted whatever life gave her, and life wasn’t always kind, never lost her kindness or faith or love for her granddaughter and great-grandchildren.
I think I’ll be nineteen, too, Grandma, with you.
Great-Grandma Miller kept chickens when Mom was young, and still maintained her flowers and berries and vegetables when I visited. She also had an outhouse and a creepy, scary shed with a rotary mower, hoes and spades and rakes, and ghoulies and ghosties and things that went bump in the night. She warned us away from the shed because of the wasps, and we added that danger to the ones lurking in dark corners of the interior.
Great-Grandma Miller never said an unkind word about anyone. Ever. She shared her faith quietly, read her Bible, and cherished her ceramic crucifix that hung in her living room.
Time spent at Grandma’s included the silence of her small house, so that ticking clocks were noticeable, and the scent of lavender filled the rooms. She had a day bed in the living room which I thought of as mine, but was really her winter bed since the only heat in her home was the Franklin stove in a corner of the living room.
I don’t recall being bored at her house. The oldest of six siblings, I felt special on my own. She never entertained me, but would explain to a curious girl what she was busy doing. We ate meals at her tiny kitchen table surrounded by a ceramic glass-fronted cupboard, almost doll-sized to my eyes, a refrigerator with a freezer big enough for two stacked ice cube trays or a half-gallon of ice cream, and a gas stove with an oven that simply turned on and off. Baking meant turning on the heat, watching the temperature gauge on the rack, and learning when to turn off the heat.
Her yard had patches of “hens-and-chicks” (Sempervivum tectorum) that squeaked when you walked on them, and of course, she ordered us not to do that. There was a long driveway lined with cedars for world explorers, and a back yard ending in a garden and an enormous (to us) field. She had a root cellar for jars of homemade pickles and jams and relish. Every year on our birthday we received our own jar of homemade jam or jelly, with our name printed on the label. Those gifts were precious, appreciated, and completely off limits to anyone else.
Great-Grandma Miller taught me so many life lessons about trusting with your eyes open, faith, and kindness, I didn’t realize how grateful I was until she entered her waiting Kingdom. On one occasion, she pulled out a photo album of her family and younger years. I remember one picture of her in a long white dress, hair pulled back with a ribbon. “When I get to Heaven,” she said, “I’ll be nineteen again.”
Enjoy your endless youth and beauty, Grandma. When we reunite, I’ll share with you the joy you gave me, and the gratitude I feel for sharing the life of such an amazing woman, one who saw so many technological changes during her lifetime, she believed that movies were actual events, and was startled into calling Mom when an actor, who’d died in a movie, was alive again in another program. She accepted whatever life gave her, and life wasn’t always kind, never lost her kindness or faith or love for her granddaughter and great-grandchildren.
I think I’ll be nineteen, too, Grandma, with you.
March 18, 2021
Journal, Diary, or Commonplace Book
Do all writers keep a journal? Do you? In a notebook, a blank book from Barnes & Noble, online?
And what do we mean by a journal?
As a child, I was fascinated by the small, locked diaries for secret record-keeping, but was hampered by small pages and dates written boldly at the top. No room for wandering on the page.
But, to keep a journal. Now, that was a goal for any serious daydreamer or writer. Didn’t some of the famous authors keep journals, a few of which were published and shared with us so that we could see the genius, the struggle, the details of their lives?
Turns out, I haven’t been “keeping a journal” at all over the years. Certainly not a diary with strict adherence to daily activities, recording a way of life, a time in history. Many of the major political or world-shaking news make a brief mention between a recipe for plum pudding and a quote by Sarah Young.
Commonplace book. Not such a pretty name, but an accurate description of my shelves full of no-longer-blank books, bulging with pictures from Victoria magazine or Google Images, poems by Mary Oliver or Rumi (and many others), song lyrics, daily activities, complaints, worries or hopes, story ideas, Scripture quotes, weather reports…just about anything that wanders through my mind in the morning with coffee at my table, or in a café or diner, on a picnic table at Bayport dreaming over water and mangrove islands.
Commonplace book. A tumbled collection of anything at all. Anyone perusing mine will see bare glimpses of national and political health, more of family doings, a lot of written thoughts, interspersed with printed paintings or scenic views—I’m fond of gardens, woods, fields, tea tables, galactic vistas.
Commonplace book. Anything at all, in any way you want to collect your passions, goals, hopes, favorite quotes. Many of mine open with Muriel Rukeyser’s “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Or a prayer, “Thank You for letting me hold the pen.”
Try it. It’s fun. Whether you prefer a keyboard and the Cloud, or a blog, or a lined notebook on a kitchen shelf, or a delicious hardcover blank book from your bookstore (online or from inside walls with a parking lot), there is joy in collecting what can be carried with you.
What do I collect? Scenes, verses, pictures, stories.
What do you collect?
And what do we mean by a journal?
As a child, I was fascinated by the small, locked diaries for secret record-keeping, but was hampered by small pages and dates written boldly at the top. No room for wandering on the page.
But, to keep a journal. Now, that was a goal for any serious daydreamer or writer. Didn’t some of the famous authors keep journals, a few of which were published and shared with us so that we could see the genius, the struggle, the details of their lives?
Turns out, I haven’t been “keeping a journal” at all over the years. Certainly not a diary with strict adherence to daily activities, recording a way of life, a time in history. Many of the major political or world-shaking news make a brief mention between a recipe for plum pudding and a quote by Sarah Young.
Commonplace book. Not such a pretty name, but an accurate description of my shelves full of no-longer-blank books, bulging with pictures from Victoria magazine or Google Images, poems by Mary Oliver or Rumi (and many others), song lyrics, daily activities, complaints, worries or hopes, story ideas, Scripture quotes, weather reports…just about anything that wanders through my mind in the morning with coffee at my table, or in a café or diner, on a picnic table at Bayport dreaming over water and mangrove islands.
Commonplace book. A tumbled collection of anything at all. Anyone perusing mine will see bare glimpses of national and political health, more of family doings, a lot of written thoughts, interspersed with printed paintings or scenic views—I’m fond of gardens, woods, fields, tea tables, galactic vistas.
Commonplace book. Anything at all, in any way you want to collect your passions, goals, hopes, favorite quotes. Many of mine open with Muriel Rukeyser’s “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Or a prayer, “Thank You for letting me hold the pen.”
Try it. It’s fun. Whether you prefer a keyboard and the Cloud, or a blog, or a lined notebook on a kitchen shelf, or a delicious hardcover blank book from your bookstore (online or from inside walls with a parking lot), there is joy in collecting what can be carried with you.
What do I collect? Scenes, verses, pictures, stories.
What do you collect?
March 12, 2021
Accepting Your Life Purpose Before Birth
Annabel moved her hands inside the blanket.
"I am earth and air and fire and water," she said softly. "I come from the Dark where all things have their beginning."
- P. L. Travers
What if you decide your life purpose before you’re born? What if you announce that vow to God and your angel? But forget afterward? Do we live our lives yearning for that long-ago dedication? Wish for a way of life, and feel restless or unfulfilled until we choose to follow it?
I write short stories and a series of novels based on that concept. Ariels are intimate friends of our Holy One, and declare their individual gifts before birth, the specific service that will be offered in whatever world they live once they’re trained to recognize and develop it.
We’ll never remember what that declaration is, but maybe it steers our passions and hobbies and interests?
What’s your passion? What’s your hobby?
I must have promised to write stories and poems, since that fills me with delight and gives me a reason to run to the table with a journal and a pen. My niece is an Earth mother, and can soothe and encourage any soul she meets. Her house is a haven for everyone invited. I have a friend who walks her faith in service of those she meets. Do you bake or crochet or run or craft wood or sew or serve meals or lead prayers or comfort children? Do you heal animals or nurse the elderly or teach classrooms or create music or master an instrument? Do you program or design circuits or repair fuse boxes or build houses?
What skill or gift did you promise before you were born? And how do you know you’re living close to that dream? How? Are you happy? Are you satisfied?
Or are you ready for a change?
Give yourself permission to enjoy the vow you offered before your eyes were opened to the world you serve. Live your passion.
"I am earth and air and fire and water," she said softly. "I come from the Dark where all things have their beginning."
- P. L. Travers
What if you decide your life purpose before you’re born? What if you announce that vow to God and your angel? But forget afterward? Do we live our lives yearning for that long-ago dedication? Wish for a way of life, and feel restless or unfulfilled until we choose to follow it?
I write short stories and a series of novels based on that concept. Ariels are intimate friends of our Holy One, and declare their individual gifts before birth, the specific service that will be offered in whatever world they live once they’re trained to recognize and develop it.
We’ll never remember what that declaration is, but maybe it steers our passions and hobbies and interests?
What’s your passion? What’s your hobby?
I must have promised to write stories and poems, since that fills me with delight and gives me a reason to run to the table with a journal and a pen. My niece is an Earth mother, and can soothe and encourage any soul she meets. Her house is a haven for everyone invited. I have a friend who walks her faith in service of those she meets. Do you bake or crochet or run or craft wood or sew or serve meals or lead prayers or comfort children? Do you heal animals or nurse the elderly or teach classrooms or create music or master an instrument? Do you program or design circuits or repair fuse boxes or build houses?
What skill or gift did you promise before you were born? And how do you know you’re living close to that dream? How? Are you happy? Are you satisfied?
Or are you ready for a change?
Give yourself permission to enjoy the vow you offered before your eyes were opened to the world you serve. Live your passion.
March 4, 2021
Open Your Window to the World
It’s a wonderful thing to sit at a table with a pen and a page and an open window.
Windows. Eyes are a window to the soul, but windows are an invitation to the world. When I worked full time, I savored scenery from my office window. Can’t resist the view at church from ceiling to floor windows onto cattle pastures, live oaks, pond, sandhill cranes.
During tours in manor houses, I go immediately to the large casement windows overlooking gardens and lawns, distant views. Place a table near a window, and my fingers itch to write a letter or poetry in my journal. The Rochester Hills library had the genius to build alcoves with windows around the tables to look down on the river and bank of oak trees. Bok Tower Sanctuary build a Window-by-the-Pond on one side of a hut at the edge of a pond for “nature’s show,” soothing and absorbing and satisfying.
Windows should have a screen, if necessary, and open to fresh air, birdsong and pattering rain and windchime music.
Picture windows…French doors…blowing sheers…views…ways to dream about momentary pleasures during the day or evening or starry night.
At one office job, between letter typing and phone calls, I gazed at a distant tree in a small field, imagined myself beneath the branches, no clock, no schedule. That was my first prayer tree. (Others were found on lunchtime walks. Now that I’m retired, I’m looking for a current prayer tree. Can’t see the tops of the ones outside my writing window, and that’s part of the tree’s lure--top branches waving in the wind.)
So, why bring up windows and prayer trees? If you’re a poet or a writer, you already know. If you’re not, maybe you’re waiting for someone or trying to sort a problem or dreaming of faraway shores. Your window can offer that, and more. Dreaming out a window is like opening a delicious book, with quiet adventure ahead.
Wild sword ferns in a jam jar on the window ledge become a garden. Sheers waving in the breeze are elegance. Spring peepers or children laughing, lawn mowers, birds trilling are a symphony of life, no less than the gift of an orchestra.
My current favorite window is the one next to my writing table.
What’s yours?
“There’s a world out there. Open a window, and it’s there.” - Robin Williams
Windows. Eyes are a window to the soul, but windows are an invitation to the world. When I worked full time, I savored scenery from my office window. Can’t resist the view at church from ceiling to floor windows onto cattle pastures, live oaks, pond, sandhill cranes.
During tours in manor houses, I go immediately to the large casement windows overlooking gardens and lawns, distant views. Place a table near a window, and my fingers itch to write a letter or poetry in my journal. The Rochester Hills library had the genius to build alcoves with windows around the tables to look down on the river and bank of oak trees. Bok Tower Sanctuary build a Window-by-the-Pond on one side of a hut at the edge of a pond for “nature’s show,” soothing and absorbing and satisfying.
Windows should have a screen, if necessary, and open to fresh air, birdsong and pattering rain and windchime music.
Picture windows…French doors…blowing sheers…views…ways to dream about momentary pleasures during the day or evening or starry night.
At one office job, between letter typing and phone calls, I gazed at a distant tree in a small field, imagined myself beneath the branches, no clock, no schedule. That was my first prayer tree. (Others were found on lunchtime walks. Now that I’m retired, I’m looking for a current prayer tree. Can’t see the tops of the ones outside my writing window, and that’s part of the tree’s lure--top branches waving in the wind.)
So, why bring up windows and prayer trees? If you’re a poet or a writer, you already know. If you’re not, maybe you’re waiting for someone or trying to sort a problem or dreaming of faraway shores. Your window can offer that, and more. Dreaming out a window is like opening a delicious book, with quiet adventure ahead.
Wild sword ferns in a jam jar on the window ledge become a garden. Sheers waving in the breeze are elegance. Spring peepers or children laughing, lawn mowers, birds trilling are a symphony of life, no less than the gift of an orchestra.
My current favorite window is the one next to my writing table.
What’s yours?
“There’s a world out there. Open a window, and it’s there.” - Robin Williams
February 26, 2021
10 Sounds of Summer from My Childhood
• Lawn mowers in yards up and down my street
• Ernie Harwell on TV or George Kell on radio announcing Detroit Tiger games
• Distant thunder rolling in from the west
• Kids shouting across yards
• Robins singing
• Crickets at night
• Frogs croaking and booming from ponds and swamps
• Ice chinking in frosty glasses of iced tea or lemonade
• Water from the hose washing a car
• Mom calling us home to go to the beach
• Ernie Harwell on TV or George Kell on radio announcing Detroit Tiger games
• Distant thunder rolling in from the west
• Kids shouting across yards
• Robins singing
• Crickets at night
• Frogs croaking and booming from ponds and swamps
• Ice chinking in frosty glasses of iced tea or lemonade
• Water from the hose washing a car
• Mom calling us home to go to the beach
February 19, 2021
Uncorking Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine
My brother made dandelion wine for several years because of Ray Bradbury, making sure to pick only the first blooms. The end result was light, crisp, and knocked your head off. We stored it in our fruit cellar, early summer in a bottle.
I wrote poems and sketches because of Ray Bradbury. Spent hours listening to Bolero on the living room rug while reading “The Martian Chronicles,” leaning on my upstairs bedroom window ledge reading “Dandelion Wine.” I longed for space travel and the stars of his stories, spent nights peering through a telescope as I dreamed about colonizing Mars or soaring farther in his rockets. Inhaled his writing and tried to exhale my own version of his memorable phrases.
Our writing styles are worlds apart, literally, but the content? I love to dabble in “what if” and capture a moment where I grew up, hold my family in time. Love small towns, star songs. Would I want to have wings like Uncle Einar? Would I spare the last Martian and not expect him to replace a long-missed family member? Would I hide Grandma’s glasses and return her cooking skills to pay a debt forward? Clever, that.
I still try to realize that I am alive, and celebrate that awareness, even if I use my pen and not a Ticonderoga pencil. I followed Mr. Bradbury for years, through rocket travel and electronic grandmas to carnivals and darker, shadowy shivers. My great-grandmother was a time machine. My mother warned us of the Lonely One. Front porches still call my name, and my childhood neighborhood recognized summer, oak-falling Halloween, and encouraged children to chase fireflies.
Mr. Bradbury, you couldn’t have known that my desire to finish stories came from your insistence that I, too, could leap from my bed, jot down words or a phrase, and follow them into a portable adventure on paper.
We traveled the stars together. We played with poems and delicious phrases together. We sipped dandelion wine together and dreamed from attic-type windows.
I believe that a smile can kill a witch, that laughter is powerful, and that the word “love” across spacetime can unite souls.
I believe that you will continue to inspire and encourage me as long as I live and write, and look forward to sharing more of your stories in the New Kingdom.
I wrote poems and sketches because of Ray Bradbury. Spent hours listening to Bolero on the living room rug while reading “The Martian Chronicles,” leaning on my upstairs bedroom window ledge reading “Dandelion Wine.” I longed for space travel and the stars of his stories, spent nights peering through a telescope as I dreamed about colonizing Mars or soaring farther in his rockets. Inhaled his writing and tried to exhale my own version of his memorable phrases.
Our writing styles are worlds apart, literally, but the content? I love to dabble in “what if” and capture a moment where I grew up, hold my family in time. Love small towns, star songs. Would I want to have wings like Uncle Einar? Would I spare the last Martian and not expect him to replace a long-missed family member? Would I hide Grandma’s glasses and return her cooking skills to pay a debt forward? Clever, that.
I still try to realize that I am alive, and celebrate that awareness, even if I use my pen and not a Ticonderoga pencil. I followed Mr. Bradbury for years, through rocket travel and electronic grandmas to carnivals and darker, shadowy shivers. My great-grandmother was a time machine. My mother warned us of the Lonely One. Front porches still call my name, and my childhood neighborhood recognized summer, oak-falling Halloween, and encouraged children to chase fireflies.
Mr. Bradbury, you couldn’t have known that my desire to finish stories came from your insistence that I, too, could leap from my bed, jot down words or a phrase, and follow them into a portable adventure on paper.
We traveled the stars together. We played with poems and delicious phrases together. We sipped dandelion wine together and dreamed from attic-type windows.
I believe that a smile can kill a witch, that laughter is powerful, and that the word “love” across spacetime can unite souls.
I believe that you will continue to inspire and encourage me as long as I live and write, and look forward to sharing more of your stories in the New Kingdom.
Fantasy, Books, and Daily Life
We love books, love to read, love to share.
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