It had been going on for some time before I noticed. My daughter was choosing an adult out of the people milling about at the Loft Literary Center after the Mentor Series Reading, taking him or her by the hand, and leading the person to open floor space. Once there she generated a dance routine for the adult to follow. After their two-minute routine was complete, she released the adult back into the gathering and chose a new person. Each person learned and performed a never-done-before dance routine. My son followed along videotaping each jig.
Who is this girl? And what magnetism does she possess that adult men and women will willingly leave the fold (and food) to dance with her? Even Jerald Walker and Mark Anthony Rolo, acclaimed authors and mentors, followed her as did many others.
All I could do was stare and see if anyone needed saving. They didn’t. They were enjoying the girl.
At three-years old, this girl could not talk intelligibly. Part 3 of my memoir, House of Fire, speaks to this. Thank God for the goat, it begins. During one of our camping trips, both my partner Jody and I thought that the other person had the girl. When I understood that neither one of us did all I could think was, The girl can’t tell anyone her name, where she lives, or who her moms are. We sprinted back to the the animal pens, which was the last place we saw her. She and the white double-bearded goat stood in companionable silence, the goat chewing her cud, the little girl waiting for her mothers to return.
The girl was diagnosed with articulation disorder and on two occasions we were asked by the school district to have her tested for autism. Jody and I refused. We were afraid she’d be mislabeled.
I mentioned this to a fellow mentee on Friday night, told her that I was in awe of the girl. She said that the girl just needed the right fertilizer and that Jody and I provided it for her.
I think she’s right.
I thought about myself. How my life’s work has been to be visible, to stand and speak my truth.
All this love, this fertilizer, brought the very best out of the girl and me on Friday night, the night of my Loft mentorship reading.
I recalled a quote,
“Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
I did the only thing that I could do when we got home. I presented the girl with a bouquet of tulips that I was given. After all, she gave quite a performance.
July, 2013. My cell phone rang. I stepped out of the dining hall at Tomahawk Scout Reservation, in Northwestern Wisconsin, wove through dozens of 10-year old Cub Scouts to reach the flagpole. “Hold on, hold on,” I said to the caller. I looked up to the sky hoping that a satellite would keep us connected. Jerod Santek from the Loft Literary Center was on the other end saying that I had won the 2013-2014 Loft Mentor Series for Nonfiction. “Can you hear me?” he said. I could. But after submitting to the competition for over ten years and being a finalist four times, I didn’t know what to say.
Friday, April 18th, at 7 p.m. I will read an excerpt from my memoir, HEALING FIRES.
“Whose belly did I come out of?” five-year old Crystel asks. “Yours or Mama Joey’s?” Milk spills from her spoon into her cereal bowl.
Thirty years of breaking free from the cycle of violence and discovering my true self prepare me to start my adoptive family. The challenge of creating a home of love, safety, and joy is tested by dysfunctional ghosts and dark memories from the Wisconsin farm where I was raised.
It’s the culmination of my work with mentors Mark Anthony Rolo as well as my work with Loft Literary Center instructor Mary Carroll Moore.
Also reading is Jerald Walker and my fellow mentee Pamela Schmid.
Mark Anthony is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. His memoir MY MOTHER IS NOW EARTH won the 2012 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award and was nominated for a 2012 Minnesota Book Award.
When I opened Mark Anthony’s book and read his first lines, “My mother wants to be buried in fire. She races into a burning farmhouse, letting serpent flames twist around her legs,”my mouth fell open. I had submitted a writing sample that started with these words, “I’m on fire. I scream. I run. Flames chase me. I fall to the grass, slapping at my shoulders, my back, my side. Digging my shoulders into the ground, I pitch back and forth, back and forth. The fire follows.”
Under Mark Anthony’s tutelage, I have restructured my memoir to merge my past and present story just as spring water runoff flows to creeks and further downstream joins the river and finally the ocean that embodies us all.
Jerald Walker’s STREET SHADOWS: A MEMOIR OF RACE, REBELLION, AND REDEMPTION was also very influential. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jerald is a recipient of the 2011 PEN New England/L.L.Winship Award for Nonfiction and his book was named a Best Memoir of the Year by Kirkus Reviews.
When I read Jerald Walker’s memoir, I finally understood how I could meld past and present together in my memoir. I studied his structure, counting the number of pages he used for his present story and then his past. I attempted to locate where he brought them both together. All the while, I resonated with his efforts to rise above the circumstances that he was born into.
Pamela is the creative nonfiction editor for Sleetmagazine. Before receiving her M.F.A. degree from Hamline University, she spent more than a decade reporting and editing for the Star Tribune and the Associated Press.
Pamela says this about her memoir, “In MY BIG BOOK OF YEARNING, I chronicle my son’s arduous journey to speech and reflect on the way words empower and ensnare. I also try to untangle the threads of silence that took root in my family generations earlier, before giving rise to this little boy who desperately wanted to speak but could not.
”Pamela will be reading an excerpt that explores Eli’s fascination with music, and the way music can bridge the gap to speech. “When I sang, I became somebody else, someone more certain and sure. When it was just Eli and I and the songs, I felt the scales of a dragon on my back.”
Please mark your calendars for April 18th at 7 p.m.
Join Jerald, Pamela, and me as we read to you from our memoirs.
Our writers group is missing and remembering our founder Lisa this month by . . . what else? . . . sharing stories. Rosemary, Brenda, Jill, Elizabeth and I have added our remembrances to Jean’s
Brenda, Jill, Elizabeth, Ellen, Lisa, Jean. Rose is behind the camera.
Ellen
The stepladder teetered a little, jiggled by my efforts to scrape the excess paint from Lisa’s storm windows. The sun heated my neck but a light breeze lifted my hair and cooled my sweaty head. The day was one of those glorious September days that appear in calendars but are rare in real life. In the narrow garden behind my ladder, yellow chrysanthemums—a traditional fall flower—competed with top-heavy tomatoes—summer’s best.
About ten of Lisa’s friends were positioned around her one-story twinplex to get her windows ready for winter. In assembly-line fashion, we scraped old paint, recaulked, repainted, or razored off dried paint.
The project was classic Lisa. When her stomach cancer returned and chemo left her too weak to handle household projects, Lisa allowed her network of friends to help. She was always uncomfortable with asking for help, but recognized that it was necessary. Lisa struggled to believe our assurances that we wanted to help—but we did, because there was so little else we could do in face of her relapse.
Someone sent out an email to about 30 friends and close to a dozen people responded. Because so many people were involved, the work went quickly and no one had to devote more than an afternoon to the effort. Many of the helpers didn’t know each other, since we were drawn from Lisa’s large network of friends—I knew Lisa from the writing group she started a dozen years ago. Several people were former coworkers, one was a former beau, two were from her QiGong class, another person knew Lisa from her church’s social justice committee, and so on.
I’ve never known anyone with such a wide circle of good friends. Long-divorced (but still friends with her former husband and his new wife), Lisa had a remarkable capacity for making and keeping friends—we became her family.
* * *
Rosemary
Lisa. Writing group member. Friend.
Lisa was in the process of dying for many years. When her stomach cancer returned after a long absence I kept a short, but distinct distance, not wanting to experience another loss. But at some point during the last year or two of her life, I consciously decided to join her ever-growing group of supporters and personal pals. I was very lucky.
In doing so I gained a thoughtful, emotionally evolved companion for movie excursions, photography exhibits, group dinners, poetry readings and QiGong. I met many of her friends from other spheres and interests. We also spent some time alone together – buying and bringing to her home a bookshelf, and getting a frame for her favorite piece of art.
I was going through a tough period myself with anxiety and depression. Lisa sat with me when I could not tolerate being alone. She and I walked a small neighborhood labyrinth together one fall afternoon. I brought her into my circle of friends where for an evening or two she did not have to think about dying or be known only for that. She could escape cancer.
Lisa taught me a few things about dying. Not one to be sentimental about it, there was mostly a calmness, a practicality in her attitude. She didn’t stop living: Qigong every Wednesday morning with a breakfast group afterwards, trips to Northern Minnesota cabins for outdoor experiences, times set aside to play with her grandchildren. Most of all, she showed me how she took care of herself. Resting when she needed to. Talking when she could. Hauling her meds and apparatuses with her. She planned parties, decorated her house, and made a chapbook. Writing memoir, reading poetry and editing till the end.
Lisa. Friend. Writing group member. Teacher.
* * *
Brenda
There are few things that I make time for outside of work and family. One of these things is my writer’s group. I have Lisa to thank for that.
Many years ago, after completing my graduate degree in writing, I was looking for a place where I could continue to nurture my love for words and improve my ability to put them together. I saw a tiny ad in the Loft Literary Center newsletter that said a nonfiction writing group was looking for members. Hoping I could become a part of a new writing community, I answered the ad. And now, eight years later, this group has become an essential part of my creative life. I have Lisa to thank for that.
Lisa was the one who started this group years before that little ad appeared. I got to know Lisa through her essays and poems. Whether penning an essay about life as a child in the ’50s or a poem about birds sweeping through the sky, Lisa showed me that words have power, that words can communicate with beauty and grace, the ephemeral experiences of our daily existence.
I loved reading Lisa’s words, but the truth is, she was always a little hard on herself about her writing. She chided herself for not writing more and more seriously, yet in her last bit of life, she documented her experience with cancer on her Caring Bridge site in posts that were honest, funny, heartfelt, self-deprecating, and totally Lisa. She published a chapbook of poems so lovely they often left me in stunned silence. She hosted her own reading to celebrate her writing and her life.
At one point, Lisa was worried about how much she could still contribute to the group, so she tried to quit. We didn’t let her. We weren’t quite ready to say goodbye and knew she wasn’t either.
By now, we have said goodbye but I still think of Lisa when we gather on Saturday mornings, talking about words, sharing our lives, and helping each other with more than just our writing. And I thank Lisa for that.
* * *
Jill
What Lisa Taught Me About Dying Living
As members of the same writing group, I knew Lisa primarily through her beautiful poems and her CaringBridge entries about her slow death from stomach cancer. We were acquaintances, not close friends.
When her cancer started to win its years-long duel, Lisa’s family and friends rallied to her aid. As part of her circle, I received the email requests to help with household projects that Lisa could no longer manage. Later, I was invited to use the online calendar another friend had created so that Lisa’s many friends could schedule their visits and not overwhelm her family.
I opened the calendar, but never put my name in one of the slots, never drove to her son’s home to see her in her final days. I felt I would be an intruder in that intimate landscape. But I also felt guilty for not joining the rest of our group in supporting Lisa and her family.
The last time I saw Lisa, she was in the hospital, a few months before she died. I visited during my lunch break from the adjoining hospital where I work. I entered the room to find her sitting in bed, smiling. I tried to apologize for not taking part in the house-repair projects, or stopping by to see her sooner. She brushed me off. “Oh, don’t worry about that. You have a busy life,” she said. “I have lots of people to help me. Tell me about your writing.”
And in that moment, I learned that it was OK to be a different kind of friend to different people. I didn’t need to run errands for Lisa, or drive her to appointments, or offer to clean her house, the way I had for my best friend years earlier as she lost her own battle with cancer. Lisa had other people in her life for that. I had done for Lisa what I was capable of doing. Hosting our writing group at my home for a marathon submission party for her work. Being in the audience at the beautiful reading she hosted as a celebration of her writing and life.
So during my last visit with Lisa, we talked about writing, the thing that connected us. She encouraged me to keep working on my novel. I told her how much her thoughtful criticism of my work had helped me over the years. But what had inspired me most, I shared, was her constant presence at our table, even when her health was at its worst.
Lisa had reserved time and energy for us. We had given back to her in our own ways. As it should be. Lisa taught me that we don’t have to be all things to all people. But we can give of ourselves what we’re capable of giving. We can come to the table with open hearts.
* * *
Elizabeth
“Lisa’s on a trip.” When I first met Lisa, she was a palpable part of the writing group although she wasn’t physically present. The group talked about her as if they were placing pushpins on a map, keeping track of her whereabouts. At every meeting, they described another trip that Lisa was on, another location, in another part of the world.
When I finally did meet her, I took stock of her diminutive form. Wondered how so much spirit and energy could be packed into such a little person. She was not ever to be dismissed, to be gone around, or not taken into account.
And when she gave you feedback on your writing, you felt good because she had read your work and prepared a thoughtful response.
It made me feel special when she was talking to me.
Even now, I know she’s just on a trip. I feel her during our gatherings. She is still present in our thoughts and in our conversations.
My experience as a Loft Mentor Series speaker.![Yellow tulips flowers. (3)[1]](https://wordsisters-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/yellow-tulips-flowers-31.jpg)
I did the only thing that I could do when we got home. I presented the girl with a bouquet of tulips that I was given. After all, she gave quite a performance.
![dsc00095[1]](https://wordsisters-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/dsc000951.jpg)
![7ac30fe0b702dd387b1f0ab4fcd06c36[1]](https://wordsisters-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/7ac30fe0b702dd387b1f0ab4fcd06c361.jpg)
