The Memoir-Writing Journey

Last week, I laid out the health issues of this past year. As I did so, the word fallow came to mind: the seed of my life lies dormant within dark, rich loam. In the weeks ahead, I hope the seed will crack open and that from its broken shell a sprout will inch its way upward to the freshness of air, the warmth of sun, and the vast view of what is possible for me in the coming year.

If that doesn’t happen—if the ill-health continues—then what I know is that I need not only to live the day, but to embrace it. All truly is possibility if I look for the good within the fallowness. I’ve tried to do that this year as first the pain captured most of my attention and then the months of recuperation slowly—ever so slowly—helped me reclaim the activities I’d once done so easily. Now, I am hoping that the recent eye operation will help my sight stay stable.

As we all know, we can control only how we respond to the fluctuations of life. I know I’ve quoted my mom to you before, but I want to share her words again: “Dolores, you find what you look for. If you look for good, you will find it. And if you look for bad, you will surely find that too.”

Given that Mom said this to me repeatedly as I was growing up, I learned to look for good, Mostly I have found it. Some events, some years have been challenging, but one of the advantages of aging is that I can look back over a long life and see that all—ALL—has worked out to good.

Now, having wrapped up my health report, I want to spend a few moments sharing my writing life with you. I’ll be blogging about that off and on for the next few weeks, perhaps months, as I prepare to self-publish a memoir entitled Prayer Wasn’t Enough.

Two friends and my oldest niece are helping me with the intricacies of self-publication. One artistic friend designed the cover of the book. It pleases me mightily! Another friend is going to format—through Create Space, a subsidiary of Amazon—the print and the e-book that will be available on Amazon at some future date.

My niece is trying to help me figure out Facebook and Twitter. We’ve had difficulties because when I first began my Facebook account I didn’t know what I was doing. (Do I ever???) Consequently, I messed up the author page, the Timeline page, and another page as well.

It’s a real muddle as to what I presently have and how I can establish one of these pages as the place where readers can contact me. My niece has spent hours sitting in front of my computer trying to make sense of what I did and also talking to fellow computer whizzes about this. So far, we have no solutions.

I’ve begun Twitter and have to admit that I’m puzzled by how all these things connect. None of this makes much sense to me. Would it, if I were younger? Was my mind more eager to solve a challenge then? I’m not sure. I know only that I now dwell in social-medium-confusion-land.

Have any of you experienced difficulties in understanding how to use Facebook or Twitter? If so, please share your confusion with me OR how you met the challenge of the Facebook-Twitter Alps and conquered it.

Today I wish for you peace, pressed down and overflowing.

Photo from Wikipedia.

Is Beauty Ever Ordinary?

Last weekend, a friend and her youngest daughter came to visit me. Sarah, whom I met through blogging, has become a daughter to me. Age-wise she is more like a granddaughter, but the feelings of mother/daughter seem mutual. Her four children call me Grandma Dee, and that is such a gift to someone who has never had children.

Their visit delighted me in many ways, but it was two typical Missouri evenings I spent in their company that gave me something to ponder and embrace. Here’s what happened: Saturday evening, Sarah and I sat talking on the patio when suddenly she looked beyond me. The expression on her face mixed wonder and concern.

“Dee,” she said, “see those sparks by that fence? Is it on fire?”

I looked and saw that the lightning bugs were out. “Sarah,” I said, “there’re just fireflies.”

“What?”

“Fireflies. Lightning bugs.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this before!” she exclaimed. Then, “Katie, come and see the fireflies. Hurry!”

Seven-year-old Katie came running through the house, thrust open the patio door, and burst outside.

“Look!” her mother said, “Look at the fireflies!”

Katie stood still as a statue, gazing outward. When several fireflies twinkled at the same time, she yelled, “Mom! What are they?”

“Fireflies. Bugs that light up!”

As dusk became dark, Katie chased the lightning bugs. I got her a clean mayonnaise jar and punctured its lid so she could engage in the game I’d so enjoyed as a child. Her mother and I sat on the porch, watching her run from one side of the back yard to another in her excited hunt. It was like watching a ballet. She ran and leaped and twisted in the air in her attempt to capture fireflies without squashing them.

“I got another one!” she cried out as she came running to where I held the jar. Carefully, she placed the lightning bug in it and I screwed shut the lid.

For over an hour that night and the next, she became acquainted with the wonder of fireflies. The second night she caught eighteen. One by one they twinkled in the jar that she held up in the dark night.

When the lightning bugs returned to their own homes and left the yard, Katie examined her jar carefully, commenting on their red heads and their yellow tails. Finally, she screwed off the lid of the jar. Wishing them good-bye and good luck, she watched as they flew away.

Those two evenings, wonder captured her and her mother and me. Fireflies didn’t live in Idaho where their home was. They’d never before seen these wonderful bugs. Their awe prompted mine. For years, I’d seen fireflies as an adult and never felt the wonder of childhood. Katie gave that back to me.

The evening of the day they returned home, I went out into the backyard and looked up at a sky lit by stars. There, too, was a wonder I’d forgotten. So much beauty that has become so ordinary. I want to reclaim the miracles that surround me.

Peace.

Photographs from Wikipedia.

A Poem + A Print + 10 Rugs = Equilibrium

Nearly fifty years—during the years of psychedelic painting—a friend showed me a print of a dense, deep, almost black green, fir-tree forest against the broad sweep of a turquoise sky. A path of pink splotches wended through the trees.

A poem by St. John of the Cross was painted in calligraphy across the sky, among the trees, and along the path. The print and the poem have remained in my mind’s eye and my heart all these years.

The poet, known today as a mystic, was born in Spain in 1542. He studied with the Jesuits—esteemed teachers then and now. At twenty-one, John entered the Carmelites, a contemplative monastic order. A few years later he tried to reform the order, considering it too lax. When that attempt failed, he and several other men established a strict monastic society in a farmhouse.

Because of this, he aroused the animosity of the first Carmelite order he’d entered. This resulted in his imprisonment, during which he wrote the poetry for which he became famous. The poem I’m quoting to you today came from those lonely years of captivity. The “he” of the stanza is, I think, Jesus of Nazareth, whom I think of as Yeshua—his Jewish name.

Pouring out a thousand graces,

              he passed these groves in haste;

              and having looked at them,

              with his image alone,

              clothed them in beauty.

That treasured poem and the rugs in my house brought equilibrium to me this past week. Here’s how that happened: Because of the possibility of falling after I left the hospital on March 23, the rehab department asked me to clear my carpet of any throw rugs, furniture, or boxes that might hamper my walking. “Get rid of anything that could trip you,” I was told.

I’ve always liked wall-to-wall carpeting, but I enjoy having thick, Persian-like, throw rugs scattered here and there on the carpet—in the hallways, under the tables, by the bed. So when my eldest niece brought me home she rolled up ten throw rugs and stacked them on a large table in the garage.

That same afternoon, she took from my cabinets, storage areas, and pantry any food items, pans, or dishes I might need and placed them on the extended counter and the round table in my kitchen. Having everything at waist level would keep me from bending and twisting, which was a no-no for the next several weeks.

I hope you are getting the picture: clutter, clutter, clutter on every table top and counter, and no lovely rugs on the carpet. The poem comes in here. Ever since learning the poem and seeing the print, I’ve thought of throw rugs as the bright blotches of color in the forest through which Yeshua walked, strewing beauty in his midst. Those Persian-like rugs were my path through the forest of my home. They were a path of beauty on which I sought to walk with grace.

Last week I wrote of physical and emotional imbalance. This past week a sudden realization came to me: I was partly imbalanced because my home didn’t seem like mine anymore: All that clutter on the counters and tabletops. No path of beauty on the floor.

My home seemed stripped of who I am and try to be.

Thus it was that two friends came, put down all the rugs, put away the canned good, pans, and dishes and left me with a home that breathed contentment: Space. Beauty. Balance.

So today I’m posting in a much better frame of being than has been represented by my past three postings. Equilibrium has come to my life. I feel as if I truly have come home to myself.

Life is good. Peace.