It was Mother's Day

The Great Aunt never had children, though we assure her, she’s been like a mother to us and we love her for it. I don’t think this is enough to heal ancient feelings of bereavement – anyway, she rather despises the notion of being “in touch with one’s self.” She just knows it’s Mother’s Day, we’re getting ready for church, and she’s in a bad mood. She looks beautiful in her pink turtle-neck and gray wool jacket. She adds the finishing touch – dangly earrings. She manages to hang the left one. Then she hands me the other and commands, put it in. It’s a crap shoot. Sometimes I can get it through, today I can’t, no matter how I try. She’s giving me orders as she leans her head this way and that and we move toward the light so I get a better view. I push aside her hair and grasp her lobe between my thumb and forefinger for the umpteenth time. She says, just push it through the front hole. Have you? Have you? Now push down, angle it down. DOWN! PUSH! I get it in the front hole, but it refuses to come out the back. I’m wiggling the post, watching it pooch out against the transparent pink flesh, groping for the back hole. The tissue is so tight I’m afraid I’m going to pop another hole in her ear. I think I’m hurting her. You’re NOT! she says. She sighs deeply when I give up.

At church I notice the one earring still swinging from the side of her head – we forgot to remove it, but I won’t embarrass her by taking it out during prayers. She’s still in a temper about Mother’s Day, and has already anticipated that the pastor will make a big to-do over it. He tells us the church is blessed by women, that all of them are our mothers in Christ whether they have children or not and we honor them. But she’s not buying it, even though she is to us. Even when the kids pass out carnations to every human remotely resembling adult female.

We rush out after the service into driving wind and rain, knowing she’ll quickly forget this was a “special” Sunday. We take her to Elly’s Pancake house because, she informs us, she hasn’t had pancakes in years and years. Comforted by coffee and bacon fried crisp, her face softens and she smiles broadly as she watches the bobbing two-year-old at the next table - whose father is forking bits of pancake into her mouth, syrup dribbling down her front, and she, clapping sticky hands. I reach across and briefly hold The Aunt’s hand, thank you. Not for anything in particular, just thank you.

Respite

We’ve been in Chicago area the last six days taking care of the Great Aunt, 87, while Marsena & Jeff get away for a vacation. Way away – to the Florida Keys. Jeff was looking forward to driving the Seven Mile Bridge. Marsena – lying on the beach and reading 50 pounds of books which when Jeff questioned amount of while packing she threw in two more.

I’ve been trying to write Notes from Toad Hall between reruns of Law & Order and trips to The Kelsey Road House for fish & chips where when we walk in, the Aunt jauntily swings her cane, which she refused to bring until Denis threatened her, and she is greeted by all the barmaids who recognize her and yell, The Usual? which causes her to blush because of her very fundamentalist background and while it still seems sinful to enjoy a white zinfandel, until the first bracing sip when she reminds us, oh, that’s right I’m a Presbyterian now, ha. After I ate half my meal, which causes her to frown, I order a cappuccino ice cream truffle and ask if she wants to share. NO. I HATE CAPPUCCINO. What is it anyway? Well, I don’t like it and I won’t have one bite. It comes and she tries a bite. You’ve had this before, I say. No, I haven’t. Yes, you have and last time you ate almost all mine and tried to get me to order another so you could snarf that one down, too. I DID NOT, she says. She does the same thing again. Which is just O.K. with me.

There Will Be Blood etc.

“My current project is writing a talk I am to give to the Macon Parish Catholic Women’s Council on the dizzying subject – 'What Is a Wholesome Novel?' I intend to tell them that the reason they find nothing but obscenity in modern fiction is because that is all they know how to recognize.” - Flannery O’Connor.

Watching Last Week

There was a robin huddled near my back doorstep. I think it was sick or depressed cuz I got this close to it.
In Zimbabwe, Mugabee continues to off his own people. Now it includes children and babies.
We’ve been getting updates on little Jace, just a month old, going from hospital to hospice at home, the only home he’ll know in this life because he has Trisomy 18 and isn’t expected to live long.

We live in tension, knowing these exist while we eat broccoli cheese soup with friends (thanks, Kelly) and sleep under polartec while the cold wind howls out there. (And it really did blow this week. Only yesterday another foot of snow fell in northern Minnesota.) There are comforts I love and celebrations that are so fine. But, I often grip the sides of life, asking what it means to be faithful wherever we turn up in life. How to be here or there, and do it well. One thing is sure, some of us need to remember what this little song by Katy Bowser is about -- The Weight of the World. Only Jesus can carry it -- it’s unbearable for us. Thanks to tech, the burden of knowing is heavier than ever. But think of it, while peoples in some other parts of the world had to have been killing one another and sacrificing their children to whatever gods, Jesus went to a wedding and made wine. I need to remember he did this on his way to the cross.

Writers Talk

Some quotes from the Festival of Faith & Writing. I wrote them down as spoken. I hope I got them right, but can’t vouch for every comma.

….most machines were put on earth to hurt me.
- Mary Gordon. From her lecture: “Is Fiction Moral?”

I was raised a pagan, a savage, and I still need to be careful not to convince myself that Jack Daniels and crack are not sacramental.
- Mary Karr. From her lecture: “Writing & Praying Your Way to Truth.


Last night I [Alan Jacobs] met Mary Karr who asked me, ‘What made you write a book about sin?’
I said, ‘Didn’t they teach you to write what you know?’
‘Oh,’ she replied, ‘I thought they said, you reap what you sow.’

After a lecture a young man approached me and said, ‘Mr. Jacobs, I love your work, it has changed my life. I don’t think I have the talent to be a fiction writer or a poet, but I think I could be an essayist.’
- Alan Jacobs in his discussion on personal essay.

As a historian, I ask: which would be more interesting? A memoir by Louis IV or a memoir by the servant who emptied his chamber pot? The farther down the social scale, the more interesting.
- Carlos Eire. From his lecture: “Where Falsehoods Dissolve: Memory as Witness.”

If you lie in a novel – you’re a terrible writer.
If you lie in a memoir – you’re a terrible person.
- Haven Kimmel. From her conversation: “Writing a Life.”

I followed the mosquito.
- David Athey from Moose Lake, MN, on the 18 years it took to bring Danny Gospel to press.

Eternity is written in the hearts of saints and fools. It’s in their movies, too.
Sometimes we learn of glory through its absence.
- Jeffery Overstreet. From his lecture “Through a Screen Darkly.”

The artist who can’t play, can’t create. Go home dancing – to create beauty in your life and in the lives of others.
- Katherine Paterson. From her lecture “Stories of Beauty.”

For "that" or "which"

On the eve of the writing conference I’m attending. Staying alone in a hotel room, I made a decision. Because, you see, being here is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing will be to sit with my jaw dropped, listening to so many talented writers, Carlos Eire, Edward P. Jones, Mary Karr, Yann Martel. The wonder of their gift, their determination to write no matter if no one cooks and you eat boiled eggs five days in a row. The curse is that when you meet the writers of the writing who make it hard to breathe, you start to wonder what the -- were you thinking YOU can write? You can’t even remember when to use “that” or “which.” So I made the decision: re-read something you’ve written. Sometimes it comforts. I can see, okay, no Pulitzer Prize here, but not too bad, it flows. And yes, I’ll keep doing this. I give God a lot of credit, you know. He’s helped me delete a lot of adverbs and other things. So I pulled up a chapter I revised just two weeks ago with some of my best, newest insights, written with just the right twist. We even went away for five days so I could fully concentrate. I worked until my eyes ached. The old one was there, but I can’t find the revised work. It’s gone. I don’t know where it went or what I did. It’s just gone. All that work. I suspect I had too many open documents, mis-named one, deleted it later, who knows? And Denis is at a concert tonight so I can’t call him.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to meet with an agent. We’ll pitch each other and try to figure out if either of us are worth it and will we be able to work together and make good business. Or not.

Maybe this post is cathartic and a Starbucks will cheer me in the morning? No. That’s deluded.

So many have passed this way before us.

Evening Prayers on the Sixteenth Day.
O Thou whose eternal love for our weak and struggling race was most perfectly shown forth in the blessed life and death of Jesus Christ our Lord, enable me now so to meditate upon my Lord’s passion that, having fellowship with Him in His sorrow, I may also learn the secret of His strength and peace. - John Baillie

If You Are Moving

Last week the NYT told what $500,000 would get us in housing.

Providence, R.I. 6 Bedrooms. 4 Bathrooms. Sq. ft.: 5,010.
Happy Valley, OR. 4 Bedrooms. 3.5 Bathrooms. Sq. ft.: 3,700.
San Diego, CA. 2 Bedrooms. 2.5 Bathrooms. Sq. ft.: 1,475
Paris, France. 2 Bedrooms. 1 Bathrooms. Sq. ft.: 740.
Brooklyn, NY. 0 Bedrooms. 1 Bathroom. Sq. ft.: 700.

What this tells me:
You don't sleep in Brooklyn.
Most Americans bathe alone.
We could probably afford a home in Koochiching County, MN. (see above)