Drink of Life Again

Dear Aidan,

It is a cruel element in the anatomy of grief that your birthdays continue to come and go even though you are not here.

You would have turned--should have turned--18 this year.

Every day I miss you, of course. But on your birthday, especially, I miss the marking of your journey toward adulthood. I am supposed to still be parenting you, helping you navigate this beautiful and scary passage. Soon we will reach the time when you would have (most likely) been gone from our house, living on your own. Adulting, as the kids say. But for now, I still grieve for the loss of young you, growing and maturing but still needing a mom and dad to help you along.

We spent the early morning of your birthday in the ER with M. Peevie, who passed out in the shower. It seemed an uncannily fitting way to start the day. You spent so much time there during your short life that the ER staff knew your name and your face. The scary circumstances evoked an egregious flashback to that traumatic day, three years and seventeen days ago, when we lost you.

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl observed,

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

For a long time, I felt unable to choose anything but grief and sadness. There were distractions, of course, primarily those that involve loving and taking care of my family. But everything else had been sucked into the black hole of grief.

Nothing is permanent except change. Now my grief is composed of the constant ache of your absence. Certain triggers cut my heart, and I cry: hearing American Pie, visiting your grave in the West Portal, an unexpected remembrance from a friend. But I am learning to live with this "new normal." I'm beginning to experience feelings other than grief, sadness, and depression. I am gradually gaining the strength to set aside grief in order to pursue meaning and purpose. I'm remembering to be grateful.

We spent the evening of your birthday eating pizza with your pals Ben, Nick, Alex, and Gabriel. Being with these boys--young men, really--gave me the feeling of having a part of you back for a time. I could almost picture you sitting at the table with us, abandoning your fear and anxiety and reveling in the silliness and comfort that these friendships brought you. 

Your pal Dr. Steve stopped by, too. We were so touched that he would take a break from the demands of his patients to celebrate and remember you with us. He loved you. He told me he thinks of you every day when he sees your poem on his desk. Your case comes up in his medical conferences frequently as the team of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons continue to improve their understanding of how best to care for their patients. He said that he has started recommending prophylactic cardiac catheterization to his asymptomatic teenage patients. If the parents decline, he tells them your story.

You are still having an impact on the world. I always knew you would.

All of us miss you terribly, darling. I wonder if you are OK. I want desperately to see you again, to receive a gangly, spontaneous hug from you, to hear your voice and your laugh. I yearn for the other side of eternity where the pain of losing you will be destroyed by joy and peace in the presence of Jesus.

When green buds hang in the elm like dust
And sprinkle the lime like rain,
Forth I wander, forth I must
And drink of life again.
Forth I must by hedgerow bowers
To look at the leaves uncurled
And stand in the fields where cuckoo flowers
Are lying about the world.                                            --A. E. Housman

Dear Aidan (Can you hear me?)

Dear Aidan,

Can you hear me?

On your birthday tomorrow we will be grieving the loss of yet another milestone that we don’t get to experience with you. You would be seventeen. You would have begged us to let you get your driving permit soon after you turned sixteen, and would probably be ready to take the test to get your license if you didn’t have it already. You’d been looking forward to driving since you were twelve or thirteen and trouncing everyone in Mario Kart.

Your friends are juniors in high school. They’re starting to write college essays, go on college visits, and narrow down their post-high school plans. It’s wrong that you don’t get to have those experiences, too—although your dad and I always said that you’d probably end up living in our basement until you were 30. What I wouldn't give.

I recently opened the birthday present that Grandmom and Granddad sent for you for your 15th birthday. You never got to open it. We stashed it behind the chair in our bedroom, ready to pull it out on your birthday. It was a sweater. You would have politely thanked them for the sweater--and you would have probably enjoyed wearing it, too. You were often cold, and you liked wearing layers to keep your skinny self warm.

They had also sent a Beatles souvenir book from the Beatles store in London, which they had recently visited. You would have pored over it, reciting facts about the Fab Four to anyone within earshot, and jotting down catalog numbers for your Christmas wish list: an All You Need is Love watch, a 
collection of plush band members, or maybe 
the complete book of sheet music for guitar including all 203 Beatles songs.

Ah, darling. I miss you. I hate that I can't know what you would be becoming, and see what new interests you would be developing, and how you would be changing as you grew closer to becoming a man. I want to make new memories with you, finish watching K-Pax with you, plan your new session of home school classes.

I miss talking to you, seeing you, touching you. You would hug me, hug all of us, SO OFTEN, like you could not get enough physical contact from the people you loved. 

Often I stand next to the table that holds your pictures, your poem, cards, and mementos. I re-read your poem, I look at the photographs of you and C. Peevie and M. Peevie, and I shake my head because it's not right that you are not here. It’s not right that we’re celebrating our own birthdays and watching each holiday come and go and taking family vacations without you.

M. Peevie just turned fourteen. You were fourteen when you left us--not quite fifteen, really. It's weird and impossible to get my mind around the fact that she has reached the same age as you, and in a short year will surpass your chronological age. This aspect of losing you, 
like many others, is confusing and surreal.

I did not know the work of mourning

Is like carrying a bag of cement

Up a mountain at night

The mountaintop is not in sight

Because there is no mountaintop

Poor Sisyphus grief

I did not know I would struggle

Through a ragged underbrush

Without an upward path

...

Look closely and you will see

Almost everyone carrying bags

Of cement on their shoulders

That’s why it takes courage

To get out of bed in the morning

And climb into the day.

― Edward Hirsch, Gabriel: A Poem

You used to talk about death and dying fairly often. "I'm afraid to go to sleep in case I don't wake up," you'd tell me in the middle of the night, and my heart would hurt. "Would you still talk about me if I died?"

The answer is yes. Some days, still, you're all I can think about, talk about, care about. Until we meet in eternity, darling boy, I hold you in my heart.

Happy birthday.

Love,
Mom

Hashtag FFWgr, Part Two: The Reading List

In case you missed part one, you can read it here.

I promised to put together a reading list based upon the books and authors I heard cited at the Festival of Faith and Writing 2014. I've organized the list list into four categories: books about writing, works of fiction, books about faith, other non-fiction, and poetry and poets.  The list that follows is only partially annotated because there were SERIOUSLY a LOT of books and authors mentioned. I got tired of annotating and linking. Sorry.

Books about writing

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction
--This is a college textbook. Interestingly, Amazon only offers an option to rent the book for a semester; it's not available for purchase new. You can buy a used copy on Amazon for $43.98, or on EBay for $52.89.

Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change; A Grammar of Motives.
--the latter work offers the dramatistic pentad, a model for analyzing narratives to understand human motivations and predict behavior. The five rhetorical elements include act, scene, agent, agency (or method or means), and purpose (or motive). 

A]ny complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answer to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose)." -Kenneth Burke

Annie Dillard*
--Mr. Peevie presciently gave me The Writing Life for Christmas, so I will be starting there.

Sol Stein, On Writing
Just reading the description of On Writing from Stein's own website makes me want to drop everything and read it, and while I'm reading it, start revising my novel-in-progress.

Works of fiction

Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
--I think I need to read more Margaret Atwood.

Raymond Carver*, Cathedral Stories,*, especially the short story A Small Good Thing; What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
--Carver's name was invoked at least three times during FFW.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
--I'm embarrassed that I have not read this yet, and I just downloaded it to my Kindle for zero dollars and zero cents.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
--If it took Harold Bloom three times to make it all the way through Blood Meridian, I don't hold much hope for my own ability to do so any time in the next century. But it's on the list anyway, because Bloom says McCarthy "has attained genius with that book."

Flannery O'Connor*, the short stories Good Country People and Revelation
--I have the complete short stories downloaded to my Kindle and ready for my summer beach reading; and I just read Good Country People for free here. Read Revelation for free here.

William Faulkner, Barn Burning, A Rose for Emily
Read Barn Burning for free here. Read A Rose for Emily for free here.

Ernest Hemingway, The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber

Khaleid Hosseini, The Mountains Echoed

Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
--Here's a switch: instead of reading it, listen to it!

Barbara Kingsolver

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace
--You probably read this one in high school, but in case you want to refresh your memory, you can read it online here.

John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums

Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Mark Twain

Anne Tyler, The Beginner's Goodbye

Books about faith

Walter Brueggemann
--There are 68 publications listed on his Wikipedia page; where is a beginner to begin? That's not a rhetorical question, Internet.

George Herbert


--You can (sort of) read The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations online--but you may need a stronger prescription in your glasses when you're done. It might be worth it. 


Julian of Norwich
--Read the complete Revelations of Divine Love online here, as well as excerpts from the Revelations.

Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism
--From the Amazon book description: Turner "argues that the distinctiveness and contemporary relevance of medieval mysticism lies precisely in its rejection of 'mystical experience,' and locates the mystical firmly within the grasp of the ordinary and the everyday." A quick look tells me I'll need to read it with my dictionary at hand.



Karth Barth

Frederic Buechner

Andrew Krivak, A Long Retreat

C. S. Lewis*, The Screwtape Letters

Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

Walker Percy*, The Second Coming

Eugene Peterson

Jan Richardson

Teresa of Avila

Other non-fiction

Henry David Thoreau
--I read Thoreau's essay The Last Days of John Brown because FFW speaker James McBride's new book, National Book Award Winner The Good Lord Bird tells John Brown's story from a brand-new perspective. I was delighted to see Thoreau refer to his neighbors as pachydermatous--which he used in reference to the thickness of their heads, not their skin. Awesome.

Mary Karr, Lit, The Liar's Club
--Stephen King wrote this about Mary Karr's writing: "I was stunned by Mary Karr's memoir, The Liar's Club. Not just by its ferocity, its beauty, and by her delightful grasp of the vernacular, but by its totality--she is a woman who remembers everything about her early years."

Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Rural Life
--Interesting. The Rural Life is a weekly column in the New York Times about life on a farm and boots getting stuck in mud and stuff. Some people think it's a little pretentious and condescending.

Michael Perry

Poetry and Poets

Maya Angelou

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Mary Oliver

Ron Padgett, Center of Gravity 

Lucy Shaw, The Crime of Living Cautiously

...

So now we have a reading list for the next two years--until FFW 2016 gives us another one.

Which of these books and authors have you already read? Which are you going to look for the next time you head to Myopic? (Shout out to M. Peevie--that's her favorite bookstore.)

I'm starting with Flannery O'Connor.

Poem in Your Pocket Day

For Poem In Your Pocket Day, here is my selection:

A Warning To My Readers:

Do not think me gentle 
because I speak in praise of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace 
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I 
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

--Wendell Berry

It's not too late for you to grab a poem, print it, and put it in your pocket. Then it's ready for you to pull out during the day and read to a friend or to a stranger on the train.

What poem did you put in your pocket today?

Someday, Maybe, I Will Be

SURPRISED by joy--impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

--William Wordsworth

Anniversary

What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen
each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,
to share with each other in all gladness,
to be one with each other in the
silent, unspoken memories?
                                                 --George Eliot

"What am I going to do with you?" I would ask Mr. Peevie, before he became Mr. Peevie.

"Fall in love with me and marry me," he would answer every time.  So I did.  I fell in love with him because he laughed at my jokes and made me laugh; he always made me feel like I was the smartest and most beautiful woman in the room; and the way he loved me pointed me to Jesus.

We were impecunious graduate students for whom a ten-year-old Chevy and a stereo symbolized great wealth; and my parents still had one child in college and a house that had lost a significant chunk of its market value--so we did the wedding on the cheap.  My borrowed wedding dress had to be altered for my narrow shoulders and slightly-less-than-average height.  The bridesmaids did not complain (much) about their green polyester skirts and floral blouses with lace around the square necklines, sewn by a local seamstress.

My pastor and my cousin performed the ceremony together, with my pastor doing the homily (I remember something about not fighting over who takes out the trash, but that's it) and my cousin officiated the vows at our church in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma.  We were, I think, my cousin's first wedding as an ordained minister.  It seems to have taken.  So far.

The cake-and-punch-and-little-bowls-of-nuts reception in the church fellowship hall was like something out of Lake Wobegon.  After the photos and circulating and smiling and cake-eating, we headed to my parents' home for cold cuts and ambrosia salad with family and close friends.  It was simple and sweet and slightly dorky.

The next day we headed off to Cancun for our honeymoon.  We both promptly got sick with Montezuma's Revenge, and spent the next week fighting for the bathroom.  "Things can only get better from here!" we assured each other; and they have.

Thanks for 26 deliriously happy years together, honey.  Being married to you is a most excellent gift.  Here is another little poem in honor of me being the lucky one:

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
                                              --Ogden Nash

Poem in Your Pocket 2010

Sheesh! I almost forgot! Tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day, brought to you by the Academy of American Poets. So quick! Choose a poem from this page or this website or this list, print it out, and put it in your pocket. Pull it out during the day and read it to yourself, or share it with a friend or colleague.

At the recent Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, poet and memoirist Mary Karr said that writers must do two things, and one of them was memorize poetry. (The other was rewrite.) Yes, that's right: memorize poetry. I'm not a poetry-memorizer (yet), but I'm putting it out there as a good idea for everybody, not just writers.

Why memorize poems, or put one in your pocket? The NYTimes published an editorial last year that attempted to answer this very question -- but Jim Holt's answer is "because it's deeply pleasurable." Interesting, but is it persuasive?

Two more reasons why it's good to read and occasionally memorize poetry:

1. Memorizing, in general, exercises the brain, and improves your brain's ability to remember other shit. That's good, right? I'm going to try to find some research that supports that statement.

2. Memorizing poetry, in particular, embeds vocabulary, syntax, and rhythmic language patterns into the brain so that you have them available for your own speaking and writing. The Well-Trained Mind elaborates on this theme quite well.

3. Maybe this goes back to the NYTimes editorial, but I'm convinced that poetry is worth the extra effort it takes to read, ponder, and digest. Even if we don't "get it" when we read a poem, if we spend time with it, read again more slowly, and possibly memorize it, that poem will likely gradually reveal itself to us, like the sculpture reveals itself to the sculptor, like a fingerprint shows up with the dust and the microscope.

Anyway, here's the little poem I'm putting in my pocket tomorrow:

Hope is the thing with feathers, by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it on the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea,
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

I'd love to know what poem you're putting in your pocket tomorrow (or today, probably, since it's almost after midnight).

Surprised by Joy

Today I should be heading to the Secretary of State's office with my daughter to get her driver's license. We should be playing hooky together to celebrate her 16th birthday, and maybe going shopping, having lunch, and getting her hair cut.

But Caitlin was born too soon and did not survive; and I lost not just my tiny daughter, but my entire future with her. The future looks different when you lose a child, and especially when you lose a baby with whom you have not even had a chance to make memories. You've started to make plans, you've started to wonder: what will she look like? Will she be a princess or an athlete--or both? Will she inherit math-phobia from mom, or have a knack for numbers, like dad? Will she be a rock star? A poet? An engineer? A mom? Every expectant parent imagines and anticipates the moments of sweetness and connection: sitting in a rocking chair singing lullabies; stretched out on a bed reading books; walking in the door at the end of the day and hearing, "Mommy!" (or "Daddy!").

Getting through those first few months was painful and lonely, but losing Caitlin eventually supplied me with a mission: to walk beside others who are going through the same painful loss of a pregnancy or infant. I don't have anything to offer except empathy and compassion. Sometimes it helps a grieving parent to know that someone else has gone through that dark valley, and come out on the other side, where eventually, hope and laughter return, where we can again be surprised by joy.

The brief lives of Grace, Jonathan and David, John Paul, Abigail, Jeremiah, Luke, Willow, and Jack touched many people besides just their parents and siblings. The continual presence of their absence changes the future, and we may never understand why God allowed these lives to be conceived and then cut short.

And now there's another one. Tomorrow I'm getting together with Matthew's mom, two weeks after his birthday, which was also the day he died. Another mom struggling to put one foot in front of another, watching the rest of the world go about its business while she wants to scream, "I had a baby, and he died!" I'll sit with her, and ask her to tell me Matthew's story if she wants to, and I won't try to cheer her up by telling her, "Don't worry; you can have another baby!" I'll try to help her feel a tiny bit less alone.

Maybe I'll bring her a copy of this poem by William Wordsworth, which my friend Irish read at Caitlin's memorial service:

SURPRISED by joy--impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

So I'm not doing normal mother-daughter birthday things with Caitlin--but I'm saying her name a lot today. And maybe tonight we'll have cake in her honor. I'll bet she'd like that.

Blogging the Festival of Faith and Writing:

Dateline: Chicago

Getting excited about the Festival. Arranging logistics: what time are we going to leave? Who will drive? Can we get there in time for the 1:45 interview with Wally Lamb on Thursday? Can we stay until Mary Karr gives the final plenary on Saturday night? (By the way: click on that link. It's an interview with Karr in Salon.com.)

No, no. We MUST stay until after Mary Karr's talk. To leave before Karr would be like going to the Oscars and leaving right before Tom Hanks announced Hurt Locker for Best Picture.

Here's what I'm slating on my dance card in between Lamb and Karr:

• Possibly Michael Perry on "Life as a Bumbling Agnostic," or Matt Ruff confessing "An Interesting Moral Education; or How I Learned to Lie for a Living."
• Another Wally Lamb event: "There But For the Grace of God: What My Writing Has Taught Me About Sin, Redemption, and the Complexity of the Crime-And-Punishment Equation."
• The talk by the poet Christian Wiman sort of intrigues me, even though I am not a poet, and only barely a reader of poetry. His topic is "Hive of Nerves: On Modern Anxiety and Its Ancient Remedy." I loved his essay, Gazing Into the Abyss."
• Maybe I'll check out Kate "The Tale of Despereaux" DiCamillo's talk on "Why Writers Write: Questions and Answers on the Craft of Writing."
• And, fondly remembering my conversations with Andras Visky both in my own home and also in Romania (name dropper!), I am interested in seeing his new play, Backborn.
  

There's more, of course; so much more. But this is a good start.

The primary reason I love to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing--other than the fact that it is three days of NO KIDS! NO DISHES! SHOWERING ALONE AND WITHOUT INTERRUPTIONS!--is that it is inspiring to me as a writer.

So far, the first thing I've learned from the FFW this year: I'm too lazy to be a real writer. These writers are prolific, focused, dedicated, focused, hard-working, focused, and apparently un-distracted by Facebook, 24, and Angel DVDs. So far, in reading through the speaker biographies, I have not read about any writers who seem even a little bit like me. They're all very evolved, spiritual, and terribly, terribly focused on their Craft.

Maybe I can spin that to a publisher as some kind of advantage.

Awful Christmas Music

I confess: I love Christmas music. When WLIT switches over to their holiday music programming, I play that station all the time. The kids and I sing along. It's very corny and lame.

However, I am not so lame that I don't recognize truly awful Christmas songs when I hear them, and I've heard a few this season that provoke the same type of response as ipecac syrup.

One of them is Christmas Shoes, written and performed about 10 years ago by a group called NewSong. It's about a little boy whose mother is dying, and he wants to buy her shoes so she'll look great if she "meets Jesus tonight." It is awful for many reasons, but primarily because it is more manipulative than a tween with a joystick.

Hilariously, the guy in the video almost rolls his eyes at the little boy (at 2:20 in the vid) when the little boy looks up at him and asks him, "Sir, what am I gonna do?" If the song had gone dark at this point, it would have at least had entertainment value. But no. We're stuck with horrifying theology suggesting that God sends pathetic, poverty-stricken children and cancer as object lessons to teach a cynical, shopped-out guy "what Christmas is all about."

And what is Christmas all about, anyway? From this song, I gather it's about waiting until the last minute to buy a useless gift that the recipient will never use. Or sending your unwashed child out after curfew to do your Christmas shopping.

Another Christmas song I love to hate is My Grown Up Christmas List, made popular by Amy Grant and covered by dozens of artists hoping to cash in on its sappy manipulation. It's like the interview portion of the Miss America Pageant set to elevator music:

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown up Christmas list

These are all good things to wish for. But there's nothing compelling, nothing personal, nothing challenging or new about saying, "I want all war to end." It's kind of a "duh" thing to say, even if you say it in a song.

Then there's a version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas out there--maybe Mariah Carey sings it?--that's set to such a slow tempo that you can leave your house when the song starts, drive to St. Charles to chop down your Christmas tree, bring it home, and finish decorating it before the song ends. Or you can just switch the station, which is what I do.

This one might get some flack, but I absolutely hate The Soldiers' Night Before Christmas, a bastardization of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, set to sappy instrumentals. It's just simplistic, manipulative, clichéd rhyming. Here's a sample

His face so gentle, his room in such disorder,
Not how I pictured a United States soldier.
Was this the hero of whom I'd just read?
Curled up in his poncho, a floor for his bed?

I couldn´t help wonder how many lay alone
On a cold Christmas Eve in a land far from home.
Just the very thought brought a tear to my eye,
I dropped to my knees and started to cry.

I think those who serve deserve a far better tribute than this lametastic sentimentality. There are plenty of poems that honor the sacrifices that a soldier makes without resorting to maudlin clichés.

So, there you have it. I'm a giant Scrooge. Songs that are supposed to move me and touch my fossilized heart instead trigger cynicism and ridicule. But I suspect I'm not alone. What Christmas songs do you love to hate?

Get Ready for Poem in your Pocket Day

Go here to enrich your life with poems and poetry-related ideas and activities.

Start thinking about what poem you'll put in your pocket for Poem in your Pocket Day on April 30. Will it be a classic that reminds you of your 8th grade English teacher? Or a sentimental favorite that you first read when your love was young?

Maybe the poem you put in your pocket will be a brand-new find, something that makes you think, hmmm, I should seek out poetry more often. Or maybe it will be a Psalm, or other poetic verses from the Bible, which of course is packed with poetry and all sorts of other literary forms.

I'll help my kids choose a poem to put in their pockets on PIYP day. It'll probably be something by Shel Silverstein, a perennial favorite among all Peevies, not just the short ones. (FYI, if you only click on one link in this post, click on the Shel Silverstein one, because it's fun.) Maybe this one, called Messy Room:

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!

You are going to think I am terribly predictable and lame when you hear what poem I chose to put in my pocket on PIYP day. Too bad. I came across it by accident while cruising around on poets.org, and at first I was going to choose this one instead, because when I read it I thought, wow, this woman is my psychic twin! Only smarter and more literary.

But then I clicked to read about the author, Elizabeth Alexander, and I was reminded that she read a poem at Obama's inauguration--and I remembered liking it when I heard it; so that's my poem in my pocket: Praise Song for the Day. Here it is:

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.


Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

I would love to hear your PIYP selection.

Good News, Bad News

Good news! I'm working on five different projects this week.

Well, actually, two of them are somewhat inactive, but technically still in progress. The other three are all on tight deadlines.

I am so very grateful to be working. Me--the Player! Grateful to be working. Must be a sign of the apocalypse.

Bad news! I had this tender red lump on my neck which I thought was probably a baby alien, a la Sigourney Weaver. The surgeon took one look at it and disagreed with my diagnosis (so ridiculously arrogant, these surgeons).

"It's an infected cebaceous cyst," he said confidently. "It needs to come out now."

[I want you to know that on purpose I did not make the words "infected cebaceous cyst" a hot link because the pictures are kind of gross. I'm not a little proud of myself for having that kind of self-control and respect for my readers TMI boundaries. Feel free to look it up on your own if you want...Bucky.]

Um, now? I have my busiest work week in eight months, and you're telling me I must have surgery?

"Yes, now," he reiterated. "I'll squeeze you into my schedule tomorrow, first thing in the morning. You don't want to mess around with that thing."

"That thing"? Here I was fondly thinking up names for it, and imagining it's four tiny arms and six tiny eyes--and he rudely calls it a "thing." Surgeons--they're so artless and businesslike.

Good news! I had the surgery yesterday (well, it's late, so technically it was the day before yesterday) and was back in the Green Room saddle by 10:30 a.m. The surgery took 15 minutes, I was told--all I remember is the anesthesiologist, Dr. Mayer, telling me he'd be giving me something to help me relax, and then I felt all happy, and I said, "Aaahhhh, I like that." Next thing I know, I'm waking up in the recovery room, wanting to propose to Dr. Mayer.

I did end up crashing for a three-hour nap shortly thereafter because the general anesthesia and the extremely short night of sleep the night before wiped every last ounce of energy and alertness right out of me--but now I'm back to my perky and cheerful self.

Wait. Perky and cheerful? They must have performed a personality transplant while they were at it.

OK, this is meandering and completely unprofessional, as blog posts go. Chalk it up to the pain meds. Lovely, lovely pain meds.

I'll be back tomorrow to talk about National Poetry Month. You can get prepared by pulling a copy of The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson off your bookshelf and reading a couple of poems to yourself. Out loud, of course.

80 Steps: A Poem About Being Out of Shape

80 steps.
Four landings
with benches. Thank God.

Down is bad enough.
But up?
Bring oxygen tank.

Mr. Peevie grins
and runs past me
up the stairs.

The show-off.
I hate him.
Maybe he'll trip.

At the bottom
we kick off crocs and
cross a soft, sandy beach.

At the top,
if I make it,
the pool, the playground, the cottage.

Maybe I'll just stay on the beach a little longer,
and postpone the inevitable climb
up 80 steps.

Ode to a Garlic Press

Ode To A Garlic Press

Ah, happy, happy cloves! that cannot shed

Your skins, nor ever bid the Bulb adieu;

And, happy culinarian, unwearièd,

Forever cooking stews for flavor new;

More tasty love! more tasty, tasty love!

Forever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

If not to be roasted, then any artiste young

Will find in such a Press a passion far above,

That leaves a clove nigh juicèd and cloy'd,

For pungent spirit, and a pleasèd tongue.

You're wondering, no doubt, the reason for my waxing poetical. I recently purchased a small kitchen utensil that has dramatically enhanced my enjoyment of cooking with garlic.

I've always loved cooking with garlic, but I have been less than satisfied with the performance of my off-the-rack garlic press. It never really performed the way I envisioned it should: garlic shooting out, juicy and fragrant, from the tiny holes with the smallest of effort.

That all changed about three weeks ago when I attended a Pampered Chef party. The hostess, Angelica, was still preparing the snacks while the guests were arriving. I was glancing through the catalog and trying to narrow down my preferences to fit my teensy budget.

All of a sudden, it happened. Angelica picked up a large clove of garlic, popped it into a PC garlic press, gave it a squeeze--and out squirted garlic like noodles from a Play-Doh® noodle maker. I fell in love at first sight with that garlic press--and I've used it almost every day since it arrived in my kitchen. I'm putting the old press in the box with the Play-Doh gadgets, because that's all it's good for.

For those who would like to do further research, here's a thorough review of other garlic presses, plus an interesting take on the press-versus-chef's-knife-controversy, from the Book of Joe. (Props to J.Ro for the heads-up on said controversy.) Most of the presses that Joe reviews are more expensive than the PC one. If you order the PC press, you can give Pampered Chef consultant Angelica Tobias credit for your order by typing her name, and Chicago, IL in the "Find Your Consultant" section of the website.

Of course, this post is NOT a paid commercial announcement. I'm not getting a kick-back from Angelica or from Pampered Chef--although, I wouldn't turn down a friendly retroactive bonus. I just thought you should know about my culinary happiness.

(Apologies to John Keats for appropriating his Ode on a Grecian Urn.)

Poem in Your Pocket

I'll bet you didn't know it was National Poetry Month, did you? Put a poem in your pocket today in honor of Poem in Your Pocket Day.

(Since I didn't give you much notice, you can do it tomorrow, too.)

Take your poem out throughout the day and share it with your colleagues, your neighbors, your family. Come on, do it. It'll be fun.

I chose the poem I'm putting in my pocket in honor of my mom and in memory of my grandmother, Libby. This might be my mom's favorite poem. She had a copy of it on paper that had turned brown with age, in a tarnished frame, hanging on the wall in her kitchen. I think it used to belong to Libby.

Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918

119. Trees

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Let me know what poem you put in your pocket, and why you chose it. We all need a little more poetry in our mundane lives, don't we?