Category Archives: Guest

When Your Bedroom Disappears

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

Days before, I found the phone number by searching the address on the Internet. A young woman answered, listened, and graciously agreed to give us a tour of our childhood home.

When the day arrives, my older sister and I drive familiar roads in a rental car. We’ve traveled from opposite sides of the country to this point in Illinois; she from Massachusetts, me from Colorado. Park Ridge is one big suburban grid of long, mature tree-lined streets and sidewalks on the northwest edge of Chicago. I roll down the window and whiff the familiar aroma of fresh cut grass mixed with airplane exhaust from nearby O’Hare Airport. It is the smell of roots and flight.

The rental car engine goes quiet by the curb in front of the two story brick bungalow at 704 South Crescent Avenue. Our parents raised the four of us kids here; three sisters and a brother. This was the address on all official forms and most letters addressed to me from 1973 to 1989; from Gerald Ford to George H.W. Bush.

We ring the doorbell on schedule, and a young, upper-class mom answers the door, smiles, and invites us in. We politely walk through renovated rooms where I am tossed between a sense of happy familiarity and disorienting displacement.

We walk through room upon room of fresh paint and updated designs: The front entry minus the cuckoo clock, the living room minus the teal carpet and large flowery wallpaper, the front sitting room minus the TV and plaid couch, the upstairs plus air conditioning, the kitchen plus new appliances and a stunning renovation. We linger in the kitchen and I notice the one big minus. They knocked out this wall, she points and explains, we wanted to make the whole space bigger. That wall once divided the kitchen from my bedroom. Every morning I used to lay in my bed on the other side of that wall, listening to my mom’s early morning WMBI radio programs and dishwasher clatter.

music-box-ballerinaNow the wall has disappeared and my bedroom evaporated entirely, replaced by functional upgrades and a redesigned floor plan. I lost the container that had been crammed full of my girlish years,

the hanging macramé plant holders,

clouds of Love’s Baby Soft Jasmin’ perfume,

the sound of tiny nocturnal pet hamster feet running on a creaking wheel,

the wind-up jewelry box ballerina spinning in front of a tiny mirror,

the puffy pink gingham quilt my mom sewed,

and the way I always slept beneath it facing the door,

the muted bass of bands like Boston booming from my brother’s bedroom,

a closet full of off-limits clothes my little sister borrowed anyways,

that one spot on the floor by the cast iron radiator where I sobbed over boys that I loved,

a secret drawer full of seashells and saved letters,

midnight poetry taped to my window.

Gone. The inner sanctum of my childhood entirely dematerialized.

Why do I feel so sad? It’s just a room, I say to my sister as we drive away. She nods. Gets it. Siblings hold pieces of each other’s’ history.

We head out of town and curve through neighborhood streets, past the red and white marquis of the Pickwick Theater and the stadium lights at Maine South High School. By that park swing, I feel the sway and twirl of the six-year-old version of myself. In that parking lot by the high school band door, I feel the wild heartbeat rush of my first kiss; under that one elm tree, the between-two-worlds melancholy of twenty-something. And somewhere around the corner on my way back home, I find the room of my childhood again.

Rooms are the containers that hold the past, for good or ill. They are the spaces that store roots and fragments of who we were, the lives we have lived. Writer, author, Frederick Buechner describes it this way:

“But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” *

Sometimes my little sister and I end our texts or emails with the first line from Harry Connick’s song, “Forever, for Now.” “Meet me on the corner of close and soon,” we write. Then, “oxox” we sign off. Over the years, we’ve come to shorthand it. “Meet me,” we say and understand in a way only siblings can.

Meet me.

Meet me in the place with no address.

Meet me where the remnants of a past still live in pieces and fragments unclaimed, shared by few, in a room no longer contained by walls.

The name of the room is Remember.

* Quoted: Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces (1992)

*   *   *   *   *

unnamed-2“When Your Bedroom Disappears” is by Kelley J. Leigh. Kelley is a mid-life writer and mom of four sons.  Kelley’s home base is a quirky little mountain town in Colorado where she writes openly about intimacy issues and recovery in marriage and faith. Find her over at www.kelleyjleigh.com and on Twitter: twitter.com/KelleyJLeigh

 

 

Ink, Blood, and Tears

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

I got off the bus at my new school and saw the parking lot filled with cars. This was nothing like my  former crowded, noisy, urban Philadelphia high school with the dark stairwells and constant police presence. I’d never seen so many Ford Tauruses in my life. Some even had monograms on the doors. I didn’t even have a bike. I had a skateboard. A skateboard. I couldn’t even do an ollie, but for me, my board was transportation. It had worked in the city.

Out in the suburbs, I’d tried to skate to the mall but only got about four blocks away when I encountered a county road. With a 55 mph speed limit. I tried for about 15 minutes before I gave up. This was a real-life game of Frogger I was not willing to play.

I was 17 and had lost too many places to count: foster homes, schools, churches, playgrounds. But this was the worst so far. I’d made this move alone. Three weeks before, I’d had a family, my own room, my chair at the dinner table, my hook on the coat rack. But when they discovered I was cutting, they sent me to the hospital. My foster family of 7 years felt they couldn’t handle me anymore, a social worker told me. I wasn’t going back. My parents couldn’t even tell me themselves. They’d gone on vacation.

I was too old to tammyperlheaderpicplace, and I was going to age out of the system soon, so I was assigned a bed in a Supervised Independent Living facility managed by the children’s home handling my case. It was in a suburb of Philadelphia, an apartment with a roommate and a Residential Adviser. I was supposed to be learning life skills like banking, shopping, getting a job, making a budget, cooking for myself, doing my own laundry. I wasn’t great at most of those.

You’d think I would’ve reveled in this staged independence, but I didn’t. This was just another address I wouldn’t even have for a full year, and it felt like a punishment after my psych stay. I was removed from the home I’d lived in for middle school and junior high and taken from the city I loved. I would spend my senior year of high school, and my last year as a child, with strangers.

One afternoon a week I took the R2 train into Philadelphia for my counseling appointment. I don’t remember the building or the therapist. What I do remember is wandering the streets of Old City after my appointment, getting a soft pretzel and Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer at Wawa and just walking.

I would head toward the Delaware River and pass through Christ Church Burial Ground at 5th and Arch, where Benjamin Franklin and four other signers of the Declaration of Independence were buried. It was usually deserted except for tourists throwing pennies on Franklin’s grave for good luck. The earliest legible marker is from 1723. It was the perfect place for a suicidal teenager to spend hours alone. My time there didn’t make me want to die, in fact, it had the opposite effect. I felt at home there, comforted by a sense of permanence and presence.

I didn’t have much in the way of family or stability or even a future, but I had cobblestone streets, colonial flags, comforting row homes, historic markers, marble stoops with ornate cast-iron boot scrapers and hitching posts. And it wasn’t just the beauty I saw that made it home, it was the ugliness too. The empty lots, abandoned houses, broken windows, Free Mumia graffiti, and the box cities under the highway were the landscape of my heart. The soundtrack that sung in my head was the rumbling, shrieking el trains and the sparking, clattering trolleys. I claimed it for myself and it was all mine. Even Ramona Africa and the houses firebombed by Mayor Goode during the MOVE tragedy, consuming almost 4 city blocks, killing 11 people, and leaving 240 people homeless. They became a part of me, seared into my brain by flaming buildings seen on a cast-off motel TV with a tuning knob.

What little estranged family I have left in Philadelphia decreases by the year, but it’s not the people that draw my thoughts and my heart there. It’s the land–baptized by Franklin’s printing ink, revolutionary blood, and my own tears.

And William Penn in the distance, watching over it all. He prayed for his city to be preserved from those who would “abuse and defile thee, that you mayest be kept from the evil that would overwhelm, that thy children may be blest of the Lord.“

Tammy Punnamed (1)erlmutter writes about unabridged life, fragmented faith, and investing in the mess at her blog Raggle-Taggle. She is the founder of The Mudroom, a collaborative blog making roo
m in the mess. Tammy writes flash memoir, personal essay, and poetry, leads writing groups, and preaches on occasion. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Mike, and daughter, Phoenix, who has been called “the most interesting girl in the world.” She is the force behind Tammy’s blog series: “Life Along the Spectrum: Weird and Wondrous Tales of Everyday Autism.”

 

Photo is by Michael Perlmutter.

Leaving Home {part one}

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

I remember the emptiness of the moving truck after I backed it up to our garage in northern Virginia. I parked that behemoth, the largest truck they had, and walked quietly around to the back. I lifted the gate and pulled out the ramp. My two oldest kids ran up and down the clanging metal, jumping around in the back and leaping from the wheel wells, shouting their names and marveling at the echo.

I remember that echo.

The  emptiness was everywhere. The trees were shedding their leaves. The immaculate houses looked down on us disapprovingly, like a row of unhappy teachers,, their shapes dim against the slate gray sky. I felt like those beautiful houses (or perhaps their occupants) held us in contempt – we had not been able to make it there. We were not good enough.

Inside the house, rooms were either empty or had stacks of boxes huddled in their centers. I walked through the rooms to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. There, the third-floor room we brought Sam home to after he was born with that perfect knot in his umbilical cord. There, the room I painted pink for the girls. There, the kitchen with its marble countertops, the countertops we had leaned against with friends on late summer nights, the countertops that held me up when I told Maile the business wouldn’t take us through the winter. We were drowning in debt.

We didn’t breathe so much as sigh. I felt like a failure, unable to make enough money to keep my family in the place that we loved. I felt lost and fragile, as if one more tiny bit of bad news would be enough to send me over the edge, into the emptiness of midair.

That emptiness was everywhere. Including inside me.

* * * * *

My wife later told me a story about those last days in Virginia. Last nights, actually. She woke up after midnight to the sound of nothing. Our children were all sleeping, the neighborhood outside was silent. There was a large window by the bed that looked out over our tiny back yard and into the tiny back yards of the houses behind ours. Street lights threw dim shadows on to the ceiling, drowned out the stars.

My wife woke to a ball of anxiety about what was happening, about our business going under and all the debt weighing us down, about us having to leave a place we loved and move our family of six into my parents’ basement 150 miles away. She slid out of bed, down onto the floor, and put her face in the plush carpet.

How can this be happening? God, how can you let this happen?

She heard the closest thing she’s ever heard to an audible voice from heaven, and it echoed in her mind, one phrase reverberating and growing.

This is a gift.

When the phrase faded off into the darkness, disappearing beneath the whirring of the ceiling fan, my wife shook her head.

Well, she muttered, it’s a pretty shitty gift.

She stood up off the floor, crawled back into bed, and went to sleep.

* * * * *

I can’t decide which is easier, packing up an entire house and moving truck on your own, or having your entire community come out and help you do it. The first is physically difficult, nearly impossible. The latter is emotionally difficult, nearly impossible.

We walked beside friends carrying our boxes, our furniture. We laughed and joked about how only the best of friends help you move because everyone hates losing friends and everyone hates moving. We let one of the guys take over the truck packing duties, and he wielded his engineering skills like a champion-Tetris player. The door to the behemoth barely shut, but everything was in. That slamming sound was it. The latch clicked. The lock connected. Our four years in Virginia were nothing more than a closed door.

We hugged them, perhaps the closest friends we had ever made, and we promised to stay in touch, though we knew it was unlikely. They walked off into the night, one family at a time, and we went back inside the empty shell.

I can’t remember if we spent that night in the house, slept on the floor, and left the following evening, or if we drove off after our friends left. It seems like something one should remember.

What I do remember is making the three hour drive to our new locale through the pouring rain. I led the way, alone in the truck, my wife and our four kids in the minivan behind me. I remember the way the headlights of oncoming cars streaked down the windshield.


That was one of those drives I’ll never forget, when my thoughts weren’t deep inside me, but out in the open, like residue on my skin. There was a tangible sense of loss, as though someone had died. One phrase kept circling back through my mind over and over again with the rhythm of the windshield wipers.rain


Now what?

Now what?

Now what?

I remember arriving at my parent’s house – it was quiet there. They were away. We left our stuff in the truck and carried the sleeping kids to their new beds in the basement. Our new home. Our new life.

Our “gift.”

***

Shawn Smucker (1)Shawn grew up in a ramshackle farmhouse with one of those enormous porches where he would sit and read far too much for a boy his age. Across the street was everything he could ever need to live an adventurous childhood: an empty church, a large cemetery, a winding creek. Every book he read during that time is set, in his mind, somewhere in that square mile.

The Grown Up

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Two years ago, I entered adulthood. Not by virtue of turning eighteen; I’d already done that. I found myself at thirty-one, untethered. Until then, I’d led a life of quiet habit and order, hoping that eventually I’d be recognized as a great talent. But I tired of waiting and so I quit my normal routine, church, and several lifelong friends.

There were now gaps in my weekly habits. I went around industriously filling them up by hanging out with people I hoped would become my friends, getting involved in bad romances, and spending money I didn’t have. I tried to get several people to marry me. Along the way I learned that the last thing that will endear you to someone is to suggest marriage in the first three weeks of a relationship.

My problems were threefold: I was not married (and badly wanted to be), I was a writer who did not write, and I was not in the kind of job I dreamed, when I was in college, that I’d have at thirty-one. Instead, I worked in a sleepy realty office, reading ebooks all day long, and dreaming of being the next Barbara Pym.

I tried to solve these problems by switching to a new job in downtown Hartford that promised a more lively environment, and moving back to my parents’ house. I’d spent the previous five years with roommates who married and moved regularly, which meant I always had to find a new place to live. Living with my parents again—in the basement no less—felt like a big step backwards. I continued seeing one of the well-intentioned but frightened men I was trying to convince to marry me.

But what had happened? Why had my life curdled and become so wretched? Why was I walking around in a desolate daze of dreariness?

Most days at at my new job, in the well-appointed office on the eleventh floor of a posh skyscraper, I forced back tears while balancing spreadsheets. My job performance suffered, something that had never happened before. I grew despondent.

I could not sleep, partially due to perpetually analyzing my life with its dearth of accomplishments and partially because I spent most of my non-work hours with the boyfriend I was afraid to leave alone for fear he’d have time to assess me and conclude we’d be better off apart.

I wanted peace, but I was heading toward an internal crisis of massive proportions. It was like drowning but not wanting to call attention to the shameful fact that I couldn’t swim.

Finally, in a fit of desperation, I told the boyfriend that I needed to be alone for good. I told my bosses I would start work an hour later in the mornings and make up for it in the evenings—I decided that time to read and write in the mornings was essential for my recovery. I began reading Madeleine L’Engle’s book Two-Part Invention, a memoir of her early artistic development and later marriage to her husband, the actor Hugh Franklin. I began writing in earnest. I began to listen to the advice of my worried parents asking me to sleep and eat more and go to writers workshops.

photo-1428790067070-0ebf4418d9d8The nascent grown-up in me began to move, struggling for breath and life.

I had tried to extend my adolescence for years: the naive expectation of what I thought life should  be. I thought it’d be an easy, pain-free way toward accomplishment, like the stories of people getting discovered by a famous producer and becoming famous overnight.

I quietly put the adolescent away in a shopping bag I used to deliver used clothes to the thrift store. She would be happier companioning a younger person, anyway.  

My grown-up was far more peaceful than the adolescent had been. Yet real peace was elusive for me. I think it is stated best by Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote: “O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu/ Some good!/ And so he does leave Patience exquisite,/ That plumes to Peace thereafter”. I clung to patience as a new adult. Peace could come later after patience laid its groundwork. Patience helped me start writing a book. Patience sat with me when loneliness made its frequent visits.

My grown-up showed me how to sit, to work, to choose to be alone, to be silent sometimes, to avoid bad relationships, to say “no thank you”. She showed me how to accept sleep as a friend and not a thief of time. To not get tipsy every time there was wine present. She showed me the promise of good work that only my hands could do.

****

image1 (1)“The Grown-up” was written by Elena Shekleton. Elena lives in Denver with her husband, the artist Dan Sorensen. She is currently working on a novel and a book of fairy tale short stories. Elena loves hiking in the Rockies, and exploring the breweries and book shops in her city.  Her apartment is now free of roaches.  

Swabbing at Memories

Posted on by under Guest, Scent & Place

For years, I shot up nightly. Didn’t matter where I was, I had a small vial, a hypodermic needle and an alcohol swab. I had to have my “fix” at the same time every day, so if I was at a friend’s for dinner I’d take my stash into the bathroom and do what I needed to do.

Sure, I could be off by a short time, but I was compulsive about maintaining the consistent schedule. If that meant that I had to quietly excuse myself from a picnic in order to go to the car and dose up, I’d do it. I even fashioned my own sharps container out of a small Tupperware container until I got home and could dispose of the needle. On my dresser sat the official version– the one I got each month from the pharmacy. With one or the other, I could safely dispose of the tools necessary to administer meds for infertility.

“Super ovulation” drugs are meant to crank up the volume on the normal cycle of things. Where a woman’s ovaries might typically release one or two eggs of a size sufficient to be found by certain swimmers, the drugs took me from your basic medium size scramblers to a dozen or more extra jumbo free-range beauties. Basically they helped provide a larger, more enticing target for the swimmers. The drugs also helped create a cozy den in which those two crazy kids could get to know each other.

Every day for half of the month, I’d administer the injections. Open the alcohol swab, inhale that fresh, sharp scent and reach for the needle. For balance, other days featured numerous extractions, as I had blood drawn every few days to see how things were progressing. The smell of those alcohol swabs before the blood draw was somehow sweeter because it meant I was closer to an answer.

And then I would wait.

The reminder alarm would continue to go off each evening, and I swear I could almost smell it. I became one of Pavlov’s dogs. Only I didn’t salivate, I hallucinated the smell of rubbing alcohol. Most months, I was betrayed with a crimson enemy confirming that the target wasn’t cute enough, the swimmers weren’t charming enough and the party den wasn’t alluring enough.

But I needed to wait until three days after the betrayer had left, in order to begin the cycle anew.

Those days of waiting were roller coaster rides of a different kind. The highs were stacked up ridiculously tall, strengthened by brand new hope for the coming month. It was like the fresh feeling of a brand new backpack on the first day of school. Hope and possibilities abounded. This one’s going to be great. This one’s going to work.

My stash – the drugs and the supplies – became my tools. Tools I prayed God would use to help my husband and me be fruitful and multiply. I prayed over all of it. From the prescription, to the box delivered by UPS, to the tiny glass vials of what looked like very expensive water.

My routine became part medical intervention, part sacred ritual. Though the details would change each day, a typical evening went like this:

Wash hands – Father you know the desires of my heart; let them be fulfilled through this process – Gather supplies – Lord, thank you for this medicine and the doctors who use it on my behalf – Swab injection site – Please, please, please, please, please (and yes, I believe that is a holy prayer) – Injection – God, I am in your hands; I trust in your wisdom that you have a plan for me.

I remained in God’s hands, continuing to trust in his plan for me as I stayed on the roller coaster for five years. As I approached the top of each month’s ride, the combination of excitement and dread built up anew until I reached the top and had to wait in that in-between space that seemed to take forever. Most months I was sent crashing downhill at breakneck speed, spun around until I was dizzy and confused, and ushered to an exit where I came to a stop, exhausted and shaking.

3666169861_81b9b746df_o
A few times, the roller coaster rides indeed ended with the desire of my heart: I became pregnant. The fear of the never-ending-ride gave way to grateful, giddy joy when I was able to step off the platform of constant cycles. My heart pounded loudest of all when I heard the heartbeat of my own baby, and my heart broke hardest of all weeks later when the heartbeat stopped.

It took several months – physically and emotionally – to get back on the roller coaster. But I eventually climbed back on and resumed my nightly rituals, perhaps with a tad more urgency. Wash hands – Father you know what I want;  Where’s the needle? – Thanks for giving me another shot!  (Sometimes humor is what got me through.) Swab, swab, swab – Please let this work; Injection – I’ve done all I can do, it’s in God’s hands. Round and round I went until the doctors gently suggested that the ride was likely to always end at the same empty destination.

That was six years ago, and I still sometimes struggle when I see a pregnant woman (which, by the way, to wannabe-momma me, seems to happen almost daily). But God has been faithful. I used to have to pray away envy – Lord let me happy for her, (i.e., not secretly “hate” her) – and now I can truly pray for her well-being – Father keep her safe and healthy that she might raise a child who serves you.

I still have a long way to go. But whenever I happen to catch a whiff of rubbing alcohol, I smile. Sometimes it’s bittersweet and those roller-coaster days seem like a dream. But I like to think that God is answering my prayers in some small way by reminding me that he is not done with me. He continues to help me heal. The fact that he might use the smell of an alcohol swab to encourage me to keep trusting and seeking him? I take delight in that.

* * * * *

AldermanPatricia Alderman’s passions include serving and doing life with those in her church community, maintaining the home she shares with her floppy-eared beagle, and getting her hands dirty in the garden. She also solves many of the world’s problems while relaxing with a skein of yarn and a crochet hook. She can be found online at patriciaalderman.com and @patricialderman on Twitter.

“Cotton Ball Clouds” photo by Swerz on Creative Commons

New Lessons From My Hometown

Posted on by under Guest, Learning & Place

I grew up in Claremont California, a town often called the “City of Trees and Ph.D.s” for its well-known colleges and graduate schools and the matching tree species that lined the streets, including my favorite, the periwinkle-blossomed Jacaranda.

After high school, I moved to the east coast for college and graduate school, on campuses with buildings and foliage reminiscent of my hometown. Eventually I landed in Williamsburg, Virginia, pursuing my editing career and training to teach yoga classes on the side. Ten years on, I was a married mother of a twelve-month-old baby boy. I was settled in my career and the very best nest, but in spring 2011, something out of my control lured me back to my lifelong friends in Claremont. I had always known the town was filled with academe, but my recent leukemia diagnosis soon opened my eyes to a different type of learning: I needed to learn the real meaning of kindness.

  *   *   *   *

image (1)One day about a year after my diagnosis, when I was feeling tight and uncomfortable in my own body from the lingering side effects of treatments, I wandered into Mint Leaf Thai Massage near Claremont’s railroad depot. I asked the lovely woman at the front-desk for a gentle massage. The petite Thai woman, my mother’s age, stood up and beckoned me to her massage room. When I pointed out the port protruding under my collarbone beneath my skin, she knew all about the tough road of chemotherapy because she had gone through breast cancer. She gave gentle, thoughtful massages that would lengthen my tight muscles. After several monthly visits, she insisted I come to her twice a month. When I explained I did not have the budget for so many massages, she offered to give me free massages until I felt better. And she did. Her kindness gave me a safe place to face my changed body after enduring chemotherapy, radiation, and a stem-cell transplant. Often, I would be crying with relief by the end of a session, thanking her for her caring touch.

I began taking classes at Claremont Yoga in summer 2012. Out of shape and with “chemo brain,” I quietly introduced myself to each teacher, explaining my circumstances. The teachers took me under their collective wing, adapting and accommodating poses I could not do because of my port or lack of flexibility or stamina. Other students in classes came to know me, my son, and at least some of my leukemia journey. At Claremont Yoga, where the teachers and students support me with encouraging words, I’ve been able to laugh at moments when I blank on a pose or name. From my hometown yoga community, I’ve come to embrace the light, joy, and kindness that yoga has brought to my life.

unnamedDown the street from Claremont Yoga in the Village is a store full of singing bowls, fountains, incense, gongs, flags, books, figurines, and all types of jewelry. Called Buddhamouse Emporium, the shop intrigued me. At first I would visit for heat relief in the form of air conditioning. Soon, I came to know shop owner Charlotte. During our wide-ranging conversations surrounded by art on the walls by local artists, she and I would talk of gratitude and generosity. She encouraged me to put together strands of what I called Pranayama Beads, with each string of beads following a breath pattern. I showed her several, and she liked them so much she wanted to sell them in her shop. It was a creative endeavor that I never would have pursued without Charlotte’s friendship.

In summer 2013, I followed another passion all the way to a writers’ workshop. Filled with creative people as enamored of the written word as I am, these folks have helped unlock my creative writing juices. Though I had written short professional pieces before, I had never followed my writing passion on a more personal level. In the workshop, I shared essays about the harrowing first year of my leukemia journey with the group. Members gave not only constructive criticism but also encouraging words, hugs, and chocolate. Their feedback on my work always left me feeling strong and courageous about my writing life. For the cost of admission—photocopies and a dollar or two donation per session—I’ve been buoyed by a camaraderie I had missed from my publishing days.

  *   *   *   *

Today, I’m a die-hard Claremonter. My son and I visit with longtime gal pals and their families. I am teaching in a limited capacity at Claremont Yoga. And next month, I will give a reading from my newly self-published book at Buddhamouse.

I’m also embracing a whole new community of intellectually engaged parents at the elementary school where my son just started kindergarten. Like my son, who is progressing from a toddling preschooler to a more independent youngster, I am moving beyond my cancer identity, transforming into something better and kinder. Just as this village will help raise up my son, I’ve learned that it takes a village to heal a person physically and spiritually. I’m grateful to all who have taught and loved me along the way.

  *   *   *   *

image“New Lessons From My Hometown” is by Erin Michaela Sweeney. In February 2011, Erin was diagnosed with ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia), a rare and aggressive blood cancer. This story is an adapted excerpt from her self-published memoir: Every Breath Is a Gift: Reflections on My Leukemia Journey, which she is releasing in September to coincide with National Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness month. Erin is now a writer, mommy, yogini, daughter, editor, sister, and napper extraordinaire who lives in Claremont, California. For more information about her memoir, visit www.ErinMichaelaSweeney.com .

Photo credits: Welcome to Claremont courtesy of the Southern California Violin Makers Workshop; Pranayama Beads and author profile image, courtesy of the author.

All the Unavailable Lives

Posted on by under Guest, Learning & Place

It was the smell of old paper. Of dust and must, history and mystery.6927396329_ec18eb6669_o

Where did these books come from? What journey had they been on to end up piled high on the table, just waiting for me to stop by on a Saturday morning and add them to my bag?

We wandered the tables, my dad and I, used books piled high. There was nothing like enduring to the end of the sale, claiming the prize of an all-you-can-fill bag for $2. The books we sought were the kind that you open and smell, inhaling the knowledge and wisdom resting in their dusty binding. They were books that, upon grabbing, you first turn to the front, looking for the published date, buying it if the year was before 1920, even if you had no intention of reading it. I loved the feel of the old cloth-bound covers. I grew up with my dad always asking ‘are your hands clean?’ before we touched the very new or very old books. Books were a treasure, a cheap vice, and we were rich.

There was nothing I liked better than curling up on the couch with my purchases. The out-of-print Landmark and Chimney RockSignature books were the most treasured. I learned about everything from my piles of pages. I know where the Catskill Mountains are and what spelunking is from Trixie Belden. Thanks to her, I still have an inexperienced fear of tight spaces in caves. I learned what Geiger counters were from the Hardy Boys, and I know ‘misle’ isn’t a word from Encyclopedia Brown.  I’ve loved pieces of furniture with secret spots and unfolding parts, ever since I first read about Jefferson’s writing desk. I crossed the ocean countless times with Pilgrim Stories, cheered the defeat of Custer, mourned the death of Pocahontas over and over again, and I still think Jo and Laurie should have gotten married.

As I aged, my tastes changed, and I read more mature works, even if they were beyond me. I read The Great Gatsby in high school and didn’t understand it. It took me 6 months to read Gone With The Wind, and I only read one chapter of Crime and Punishment in 8th grade before giving up. Yet, I kept trying. I read The Stranger in college, most of it going over my head, but relived my love of the prairie with O Pioneers. I constantly wanted to be exposed to new people, new ideas. I wanted to live all the lives unavailable to me.

Platte RiverMy love for reading meant I was present at so many historical events, and it’s utterly embarrassing how many of these events occurred under the category ‘Christian Historical Fiction’. The Battle of Shiloh with a side of Jesus, right down the fiction aisle, shelf ‘Morris’. But the Battle of Gettysburg was more impressive because I began when Abe was formed by splitting rails. I rode the length of the Pony Express. I traveled the Oregon Trail more times than I can count, not dying of dysentery once. I visited Fort Laramie and the Platte River as an adult and thanks to all of those prairie romances it was more than crumbling concrete and a calm, thin slice of water for me.

These are cornerstones of American mythology, and walking through the Oregon Trail cemetery on Rt. 92 reminded me that myth is rooted in fact. These people, their histories, and their experiences are all true even if learned about in fiction. They formed me as I grew.

Reading filled me with a sense of independence and grit. If kids can hide themselves in heavy kettles in King Phillip’s War, surely I can mop a floor without complaining. I remember saying things to myself like, “if Laura and Mary were here, what would they do?”. If Laura could clean the house and air out the tick mattresses while Ma was gone, then I could move a bookshelf by myself, hole in the plaster wall be damned. If people ask me to help them with something I think should be a solo job, I want to yell “if you lived on the prairie, you might not have anyone to help you!” But I resist the urge. Usually.

So, if you decide to stop by your annual book sale, and you grab a book off the table for a dime, just be aware that while you might think it’s just a book waiting to be discovered, it’s actually waiting to discover you.

* * * * *

CarisProfile

A midwest native transplanted to Virginia, Caris Adel is passionate about justice and is continually looking for ways to disrupt her status quo. A homeschooling mom of five, she is also pursuing a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and Public History.

Book photo by Bernard Walker, Chimney Rock and Platte River photos by Caris Adel.

 

You don’t have to wear a skirt to follow Jesus

Posted on by under Guest, Learning & Place

It’s always in the in-between spaces where freedom seems to creep in unnoticed, filling up cracks and crevices of latent longing.

My final year of college, I left my fiancée, boarded a plane with my black umbrella, and touched down where the Inklings once walked. I was spending a semester in Oxford, and I planned to drink it all in–the architecture, the academic rigorousness, the living on my own.  The main dorm was full, so I was placed with six other young women in a tiny, run-down flat a few miles from The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

We rode our bikes back and forth between classes cutting through Christ Church Meadows. There we met Zoe, an old woman draped in the velvet colors of wood nymphs. She could always be found on her bench, communing with a reality we couldn’t see, her eyes full of poetry and fire. She sat with the tree branches bending back towards the water, their designs on the cards she sold. I slowed down to hear her voice.

In all of the in-between spaces, there was time to meander home each day, to make dinner in our closet of a kitchen, to see deer grazing at Magdalen College.

We’d tape up medieval history timelines on our living room wall between the stenciled fleur-de-lis; we covered it in 5775852977_bc6eb9c7fe_ocolored post-it notes and memorized until we were bleary-eyed. We’d have brilliant thesis statements for papers on Spencer’s Faerie Queen or Jane Austen and forget them in the morning. We quickly learned the routes to and from the city center, hopping on bikes to seminars and spreading out around the city, often leaving bikes in a tangle at the Bodleian Library.

We were thirsty for knowledge and we drank our fill.

Some of us came from more fundamentalist Christian colleges, where women were still required to wear skirts to chapel. Others, like me, came from classically evangelical colleges, where following rules made you holy. If we kept our doors open when our boyfriends visited, if we didn’t skip out on chapel, if we got A’s, then we’d have the boxes checked on the list of Good Christian Woman. We were all caught right in the middle of all of the “if…then’s…” and we hadn’t even known it.

Sometimes it takes moving places to see where you’ve come from. It was in that land of willow trees and spires, where C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein seemed to haunt our Christian memory, that we gingerly stepped into freedom.

We moved out of rules, out of guidelines, and out of cultures that told us how to be a Christian woman. We said goodbye to boyfriends, we jumped on planes to France, and we toured Scotland and the Isle of Wight. We figured out train timetables for ourselves. We drank wine and cooked together.

Slowly, over the course of weeks, our walking, biking, and traveling created intimacy. Then, it was the scholarly living-in-community I valued, where I was finally surrounded by a cohort of similarly serious women. Now, I realize it was my first foray into womanhood and freedom. 

You didn’t have to wear a skirt to follow Jesus.

You could discuss postmodernist literary theory and the practices of St. Benedict in one breath and not be looked at askance. You could be smart and thoughtful and strong and beautiful. You could be everything.

We didn’t want to choose between love and family, and living a thoughtful life. We imagined more for our futures than the version of stay-at-home motherhood our Christian subcultures told us was the epitome of womanhood.

We craved a grounded womanhood, a womanhood rooted in the poetry of the land, with ideas that mattered and voices that were heard – no matter what we did for work or family life. We wanted a womanhood where we could stand sure-footed, warrior-strong, and wear our gentleness like a glorious garment.

We flung our hands from covering our own mouths.

We were women whose voices were no longer silenced, but freed. At the end of the semester, we met around a table in a pub that used to be a church and affirmed one another, our womanhood, and our personhood. We knew it to be a bit silly even then, but with our umbrella drinks in hand, we reclaimed the evangelical rites of testimony. Our words were thick with feeling as we testified to the goodness of each woman, to the Spirit within.  We pushed back our individual darknesses, the lines in sand that said this was how you were to be a woman. We saw one another while the fading icons watched from the walls.

There was more holiness around that table than in the rules we had left.

When I took a plane across the land and across the ocean, I thought it’d be the seminar rooms and the spires of Oxford that would stay with me. It was to be a sort of squeaky clean, pristine memory of old musty libraries, endless cups of tea, the solitary scholar behind a desk, and reams of notes signifying academic progress.

But freedom was somewhere in the spaces between. It was in the orange walls of a run-down flat, and the hallowed halls of pubs; it was the paths between our home and seminars, and it was in a group of women finally released to affirm their personhood instead of static gender roles. It was in all the little particulars – it was in all the places of imperfection where I found freedom, and wholeness, and how I, too, had a voice.

* * * * *

ashleyAshley Hales describes herself as a recovering good girl who’s been caught by the wide mercy of Jesus. She clings to stories, hot cups of coffee, and “me, too” conversations with girlfriends. She’s mama to 4 littles, wife to her church planter husband, and holds a Ph.D. in English. She writes at Circling the Story and The Mudroom and loves to make friends on Twitter.

“Oxford in the Mist Photo” by lorenzaccio

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Posted on by under Guest, Learning & Place

Newlyweds have the best stories. The travails of the freshly married are used at cocktail and dinner parties as an amusing source of friendly one-up-man-ship. Who has the worst story? Whose honeymoon was the biggest disaster? From the cliche (“It rained the whole time!”) to the strange (“Bears ate all our food!”), fun messes are what happen to other people, certainly not to calm people like me.

Dan and I married a month ago. We had a quiet wedding in Connecticut and honeymoon on Cape Cod. Then we drove to our new home in Colorado for four days, listening to a Game of Thrones audiobook and talking about how we’d do life on one income while I looked for jobs in Denver. Our driving time was leisurely and as I’d never really been off the East Coast, I found the American interior both a marvel and an education. Pennsylvania so long!  Kansas so flat!

We got into our new apartment a couple of weeks ago. We were delighted with it.

“I won’t have to clean that much!” I crowed to Dan.

I loved its freshly painted beige walls and brand new carpets and the trees that shade timage3he patio and windows.  “Looks a little bit like Connecticut,” I mentioned off-handedly.  

We hung a big painting of his over the mantelpiece and felt at home.

Our friends moved us in and we all sat on the carpet afterwards eating pizza and drinking soda.   The next morning Dan went to make coffee and I sat in bed reading a novel. He came back a moment later and sat down next to me.

“Don’t get upset,” he said. “I think we may have cockroaches.”

I blanched. I’d seen a couple of reddish fast-moving little bugs in the kitchen when we moved in but had no idea what they were. We tiptoed to the kitchen and Dan showed me four he’d killed in the sink, next to the new pizza cutter we’d neglected to wash, with a couple of shreds of cheese still on it.  

“Those aren’t roaches!” I cried.  “Roaches have hard black shells and live in New York City!”

I pulled out my phone and Googled “cockroaches.” As we suspected.

One thing I’ve learned: roaches are the bugs nobody wants. They’re not helpful like ladybugs or praying mantises. They leave their droppings everywhere, help spread salmonella, and cause asthma attacks.  They breed at an amazing rate. Once you’ve got them, they’re nearly impossible to drive out. The archaic word “pestilence” comes to mind.

Everyone we have spoken to about our problem has been horrified.  So we don’t talk to many people about it. I can’t help feeling there’s an implied judgment in others’ responses. “We are clean people!” I want to say. “We aren’t gross!”

I’ve started to blame the neighbors.  This makes it all the more difficult to live in the place. To accept what is happening. To receive the pest control treatments and wait for the roaches to lessen and die.

On the practical level, we have learned to clean our new space like it’s never been cleaned before.  Like I’ve never cleaned before. We use bleach regularly on all counters, after every image2meal we eat, after every snack. We vacuum like mad and hand-wash dishes so they can be put away immediately. Our dry food and silverware we store in airtight containers. We use only two coffee cups and one pot and one pan. We are living by deletion. We accept dinner invitations from friends but let them know we can’t return the favor yet.

Neither of us is particularly house-proud. In fact we’ve both been pretty indifferent home-makers before marriage. Dan is fine artist who needs precious studio time and I’ve always resisted housework because it cuts into reading and writing time. These days, it would not occur to me to leave an unwashed dish in the sink or crumbs on the counter. My past kitchens and bathrooms have never been so clean as this one.

A couple of years ago I heard the poet Luci Shaw talk about embracing the “slow pleasures.” Washing dishes. Ironing. Using chore time to set the mind free, slow down the self, and make room for contemplation.

Until I find my new job, I spend lots of time cleaning the kitchen, keeping pests at bay, disrupting old habits of haste and carelessness. Accepting a slower pace. Accepting the pride that comes of a task done thoroughly and well.  

We’ve joined the ranks of the newly-married horror-story tellers. When the pests recede, we’ll throw a cocktail party for all our friends and tell our story. And pray they’ll come back for more. Our guests, that is.

*****

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“Things That Go Bump in the Night” was written by Elena Shekleton. Elena lives in Denver with her husband. She is currently working on a book of fairy tale short stories and is learning how to get around in her new city without getting lost.

 

Rocks on the Way

Posted on by under Creating Place, Guest

I skateboarded down to the park to find a place to journal. In about 5 seconds of tiny wheels rolling on rocky asphalt, I almost decided to go back home. The only place I’d ever boarded is on the smooth concrete of San Jose State University. This was the complete opposite.

I forced myself to ride through my own reluctance, because something within me kept saying that 8 minutes of bumps would be worth the ride.

Once I arrived at the park, I slowed down and looked for a place to sit and write.

I found myself drawn to the place I usually avoid—the baseball field park bench.  As I sat on its cold, aluminum surface, I took in the sun’s heat and the flood of unwanted memories.

It’s been three years since I’ve had the strength or courage to revisit the bench.  park bench

Three years ago, I sat on the bench with the person I fell in love with, who’d eventually leave me. We had been together for less than two months, and in a few days we were to separate for college. Him to LA and I to Spokane. As we sat, I tried to hold on to him because, even then, I was always afraid that “we” would end.

The bench was an evocative object that seized my mind into the past. I had been told too many times that I wasn’t “supposed” to return to those thoughts. “To reminisce is only to miss something that doesn’t exist anymore.”

But in the end, I deliberately chose to sit there. I sat exactly where we did back then, accepted that this time I was alone, and wrote. Writing required me to reflect, to remember and I was forced to verbalize the thoughts that plagued me.

With my pen, I scribbled, “There are three places that for some reason, I’m oddly rooted to. This park bench, an ATM, and a rose garden.” Chewing on the cap of the pen, I realized that these three every-day objects in every-day areas had a hold on my attention.  I struggled to keep up with the memories and insights that were suddenly clear as I captured my thoughts in the hardbound journal..  

On the park bench, we shared a kiss while someone awkwardly passed by. After we noticed their disgusted glare, we eventually laughed off our embarrassment. He looked me in the eyes then and said, “Oh well,” and simply held me. He didn’t care about the world around us. He cared about me.

At the ATM, I stood with him while he withdrew money. He followed through with the chivalrous expectation to pay for me, even though at the time he wasn’t financially stable. I didn’t stop him, but it was the first time I saw myself as more of a burden than a blessing in his life.

At the rose garden, we had celebrated our first month as a couple. When we were leaving, we crossed paths with a little old Hispanic lady who, at my goodbye to her, laughed and said, “There are no such things as goodbye! Only ‘see you later!’” For the first time in my life, I felt comfort at a departure.

I looked around again. Children were scattered throughout the park running, biking, and squealing with delight at whatever tickled their attention. In the distance, a Hispanic family danced salsa with one another to the faint tune escaping their tiny radio. I moved the skateboard back and forth under my feet and recognized that the sun was lowering and it was becoming colder.

But I continued to write. Returning to, sitting, and writing on this park bench forced me to remember for the first time what had actually happened. Once that memory was viewed in full, I watched it all play out through a wiser pair of eyes.

As I sat recalling these vivid memories, I imagined that my current self, with knowing eyes, sat next to my past self.

“You know…one day you’ll return to this park bench alone,” I tell her. ”You’ll come back and there will be a rush of pain like a baseball at full speed.”

My past self cringes at the corniness and unpleasant knowledge.  “If it will hurt, why come back?”

“Because,” I begin carefully, “Although it hurts, you’ll see that things always come full circle. From here, I can see that our biggest fear came true. We loved, we lost. But you’ll keep moving forward. You’ll fall in love again, you’ll get hurt again. You’ll continue on, and then you’ll wind up here.”

We both sigh deeply, aware that truth is never an easy burden to bear.

“Coming back here will not be like regressing to your old thoughts.” I continue with an experienced voice, “It will hurt, but you’ll see that everything that has happened molds you into who you’re meant to be.”

My past self scoffs. “And then I’ll have to do it again, right? Return to places I don’t want to go back to?”

I push a bit more. “You’re right. There will be many benches that we’ll have to return to. Benchmarks of experience. But look– this isn’t so bad.”

The sun was setting, and my mind was tired. I picked up my skateboard and started towards home. Though the asphalt ground remained the same, bumpy and jarring but all I could think was, “It feels a little easier now.”

*****

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Sarah Michelle Cruz is an incoming senior at Whitworth University. She is a psychology and English Writing major, with a Chinese minor. She spends her free time mostly making music, writing, watching Filipino soap operas,  or eating cheap but delicious international cuisines with friends. She is in the editing process of her first novel, and is currently writing a second book called, “At the End of the World.” She hopes to inspire others and help people reclaim their own stories through arts and writing.