WordSisters

Category: Connections

  • Connection

    “I see you, Crystel,” I say. She’s hanging in the apple tree above me. I pause my reading. Decide to snap a photo to send to her. She flits away before I can reach my phone. Of course. She’s elusive like that. Later, I’m sitting in the living room when I hear, “Chip, chip, chip” through the open door. “I hear you, Crystel,” I say. She sometimes follows me when I walk the dogs. Flying from tree to tree as we make our way around the neighborhood.

    Crystel is currently a senior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “Why am I a male cardinal?” she asks when I tell her that in her absence, she has embodied that symbol.

    It’s simple. “Because I can see you. It’s hard to miss a red cardinal perched in our trees, settling on our fence line, or resting on electrical wire,” I tell her. Really, she could have easily been a yellow finch that visits our purple anise hyssop for their dried seeds, or a monarch butterfly that reminds Jody of her mother, or a dragonfly that dips into our pool for a drink.

    “There’s Granny,” we all say when we see the colorful monarch. Jody and Crystel were at Granny’s gravesite shortly after she died. They were sitting on the ground facing Granny and reminiscing. A butterfly suddenly swooped towards their faces. There was no mistaking that was Granny.  

    For our wedding announcement 22 years ago, Jody and I used the dragonfly and a poem by Scott Russell Sanders: To be centered… means to have a home territory, to be attached in a web of relationships with other people, to value common experience, and to recognize that one’s life rises constantly from inward depths. The dragonfly represented transformation.

    The male cardinal transforms my energy connection to Crystel into physical form. A sighting of the brilliant red birds and their distinctive whistle awakens my sight and hearing senses. I smile, laugh. Send her love.

    Juan is a constant presence. His car is in the driveway. If I’m up early enough I can hear him leave in the morning for work and ask him how his day went when he comes home. Jody and I bring him keepsakes from our travels. He’s solid, steady, a known entity. I like having him at home. It’s a gift. I prefer he doesn’t become a symbol, though I expect some day he will.

    Change is the one thing we can count on.

    photo credit audubon

    • Holding the Lantern High

      When I first suggested that the WordSisters should road trip to Michigan in Beth’s still-a-dream motorhome, I didn’t really think it would happen. But now, more than a year later, I pull into the campground five miles from my new home in Michigan to see Beth sunbathing in front of a 28’ Winnebago. With the help of her wife, Jody, they’ve driven 10 hours from Minneapolis to visit me in tiny Byron Center, Michigan. Soon Ellen and Brenda emerge from the rig and I’m near tears. They’re here. They’re really here. The power of a 20+ year friendship is made manifest.

      L: Sunbathing, R: Beth & Jody

      A lot has happened over the two decades that we’ve known one another (no one can say precisely when we first met). I came to the writing group last (as I remember, but it might have been Brenda). There were other writers in the group then, friends and fellow writers who went their separate ways over time until the four of us remain, bonded by the love of writing, a mutual respect for the craft, and compassion for one another’s lives. We’re no longer just writing group acquaintances, but friends. Through our writing we’ve exposed ourselves to one another in ways we don’t to others. 

      A lot has happened, too, since that day in May 2023 when the idea of a road trip first took root. My husband and I emotionally dismantled three decades of living in our Minnesota home to move to a townhome in my home state. Ellen became a grandmother. Brenda’s daughter (who we met when she was an infant) successfully navigated her first year of high school. And Beth and Jody bought a motor home, which now sits before me in all its glory.

      During the past year I also read Tom Lake (stay with me here) and had the privilege of seeing Ann Patchett at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, talk about the book, writing, and life with Kerri Miller for MPR’s Talking Volumes Series. At the end of the night, Miller surprised the audience by bringing Kate DiCamillo on stage. For a group of writers and readers, a surprise visit by the hometown star was, I suspect, the same feeling that music fans had back in the day when Prince used to show up unexpectedly at First Avenue. The crowd roared.

      The dedication to Tom Lake reads: “To Kate DiCamillo who held the lantern high.” Patchett explained that while writing the book she and DiCamillo would exchange a short email in the morning and again at night. “She would always say, ‘I’m going down the rabbit hole. Good luck in the orchard today,’ and at the end of the day she would say, ‘It’s time to come out of the orchard. I’m holding the lantern up. Just walk towards the light.’ ” 

      I sat in the balcony of the Fitzgerald next to my book club members (another group of wonderful women I’ve known for over 15 years) and fought back tears. All I could think of then were Ellen, Beth, and Brenda standing at the edge of my proverbial orchard for two decades guiding me with their light. It’s who we are and what we do for one another as writers. So, on the last night of our way-too-short visit, we sit in my sunroom, and I give each of them a lantern. I want them to remember me, which I really don’t fear will be an issue. And I want to remind them to always “hold the lantern high.” I’ve bought one for myself as well, to hold for them as they make their way out of Guatemala, or the ER, or a spiritual labyrinth or one of the many places our life journeys will take us. I want them to know that I will always be there for them holding the light.

      Jill, Ellen, Beth, Brenda

    • Peach Seed Mystery

      I have very few memories of the man I knew as my grandfather (Mimmie, my great aunt and Pa, my great uncle raised my father). Pa was a white-haired smiling presence during our weekly visits to Mimmie and Pa’s duplex. He was a quiet man, but many 77-year-olds would struggle to find something to say to a 5-year-old. During one conversation, I recall him teasing me about having “strawberry blonde hair.” I was sure he was mistaken. I had “yellow” hair. 

      He also fed squirrels on their wide front porch. Pa would make a clicking sound similar to a tsk to call them, and the squirrels would take shelled walnuts from his open palm. Apparently, he was unaware or unconcerned about squirrel bites or rabies. He taught me to make the clicking sound but told me never to feed the squirrels without him. He’d gotten in trouble with Mimmie when a squirrel slipped into the house and climbed the drapes. After that he was more careful.

      I’m not sure how I came to have his peach seed monkey—whether he gave it to me because I liked it or if it came to me after he died when I was 8. It’s a peach pit carved in the shape of a monkey and it has tiny red eyes. As a girl I was sure they were rubies, my birthstone. That peach seed monkey was forgotten in a drawer of keepsakes until recently, when I read The Peach Seed by Anita Gail Jones (a novel I recommend). 

      Before the novel, I didn’t know carving peach pits was a thing. I used to assume Pa carved it, but now I speculate about its origin. Born in 1882, he’d lived through WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII by the time I knew him. Was the peach seed monkey a bit of tramp art he bought during the Great Depression to help somebody who needed a handout? Did he pick it up as a novelty at a county fair? Did a friend show him a peach seed monkey and Pa decided to carve one? He might have.

      Pa liked making things. He was a firefighter stationed in a neighborhood that had few fires. To pass the time during slow shifts, he made a small burgundy afghan using a technique that was a cross between weaving and braiding. Mimmie, and later, my mother used the afghan when they took naps.

      I’m left with this odd artifact, scattered memories, and a lot of questions. I keep it in my office along with other mementoes that bring to mind my parents and grandparents. 

      I still prefer to believe the monkey’s eyes are rubies.