Excerpt from 'Face, A Memoir,' Part Three

This is Part three from Face, A Memoir, which I am serializing in posts on my blog. Here are Parts One and Two. The memoir is about my struggle to come to terms with a childhood trauma that haunted me well into middle life. It has taken me many years to write this, and I am revising it as I post pieces of it online. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Part Three

July 6, 1961 - Surgeon’s notes: Patient—a five-year-old girl—presented in the emergency room on June 17 with severe lacerations and subdermal abrasions on the left side of the face and upper chest. Primary concern was stanching blood loss and saving the left eye. Emergency closure of facial wound required pulling together tissue from both sides of the cheek. Pressure bandages applied. Loss of upper left eyelid and portion of lower left lid required fashioning of tarsorrhaphy to protect the eye.

I wake and I can’t see. My face itches. My ears itch. I am desperate to scratch my ears. I can’t move my arms! Why can’t I move my arms?

My mom’s voice comes to me. Soothingly, I hear her say: “It’s okay, Marcia. It’s for your own good.”

Every day for five weeks she came to the hospital and sat by my bedside, waiting for me to wake, enduring my fearful tears when I did, watching the nurses give me shots and adjust my bandages, listening to my screams when the doctors changed the dressings. Did she retreat? Crawl into a cavernous place of grief – perhaps denial – to deal with the shock, the pain?

Mrs. Medema and several neighborhood girls took turns babysitting the other kids while she was at the hospital. At the end of the day, she’d go home to her three other children. I know friends and family members helped out. But what was it like for her to watch me cry, seeing me bloodied and bandaged, knowing I was terrified, knowing I suffered, knowing there was nothing she could do but try to soothe me? Then going home to three young children who also needed her attention. She was overwhelmed, emotionally and physically. And still she came and sat. Sat with her knitting, absently crossing needle over needle, moving the yarn from left to right, right to left. I see her deft hands, her pointer fingers crisscrossing each other with each stitch, her mouth a set line, her brow furrowed. The ball of yarn unfurling.

Over time, she shut down. Sat and patted my hand as they pulled stitches from my face, or placed another needle into my arm, or held me down for another change of dressings. Emotionally, she left. Pushed her feelings to a deep place so she could manage daily life. How could she not? But it didn’t start with me.

His name was Patrick, Ricky for short, their second-born. Cherie was two and Ricky eight months when my parents were invited to go away with another couple for a weekend of sailing. Their friends Barb and Harvey Nedeau offered to take care of the kids. When they dropped them off, my mom was fretting. She wanted Barb to make sure Cherie had her blankie at night, that Ricky got his bottle at five and again just before bed.

Barb reassured her.

That night, Barb set up a vaporizer near Ricky’s crib so he could breathe easier. Sometime in the middle of the night, he pulled the cord and the vaporizer over into the bed, scalding his body with boiling water. The Nedeaus raced Ricky to the hospital. My parents rushed home. Ricky died two days later.

 A year and a half later, my mom was expecting. It was winter and the streets were icy. My grandmother was driving with my mom and Cherie, heading downtown to shop. As she negotiated the slippery streets, my grandma noticed a large spider above her head on the visor. As she watched, it dropped down near her face. She swatted at it, and as she did the wheel turned to the right and the car left the road. As Cherie bounced in the back seat, the car ran up the guy wire of a telephone pole and overturned. Mom was thrown out of the car. Cherie and my grandma were unhurt, but Mom suffered skull fractures and ended up in the hospital for several weeks. The baby, Robert, was born several months later, but died within hours. Mom knew she would lose him, because she hemorrhaged through the rest of the pregnancy.

The boys are buried together in the Muskegon Catholic Cemetery.

Before I was released from the hospital on July 23, my mom and dad gathered Cherie and Chuck in the living room.

“Marcia is coming home this afternoon, and she looks different than she did,” my mom explained. “You shouldn’t be afraid when you see her. She’s still your sister. She’s still the same Marcia.”

But I wasn’t.

(Part Four)

Excerpt from 'Face, A Memoir,' Part Two

This excerpt from my book, Face, A Memoir—is Part Two of many parts to come. You can read Part One here. It is about my struggle to come to terms with a childhood trauma that haunted me well into middle life. It has taken me many years to write this, and I am revising it as I post pieces of it online. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Chapter One, Part Two

As Muriel and Roscoe approached the stop sign, my ten-year-old sister, Cherie, was walking home from her friend Marilyn Green’s house. Just as she turned the corner toward our house, she noticed a car driving slowly, and heard a distinct scraping noise, as if something were being dragged underneath. People on the sidewalk started to scream,  “Stop! Stop!” As she watched, Cherie realized my new bike was trapped under the car. When the sedan stopped it was nearly in front of our house. I had been dragged, caught with my bike under the car, for nearly two hundred feet.

Cherie ran to the front of the car and looked underneath. I was lying on the street under the driver’s side. The bike was stuck under the carriage; I was still holding the handlebars. The left side of my face was missing.

Cherie ran into our house. Mom was in the front hallway, talking on the phone with my grandmother, Mimi.

“Marcia’s been hit by a car!” Cherie screamed. Mom dropped the phone and ran out to the street. My sister picked up the phone and shouted,  “Marcia’s been hit by a car and she’s dead!” She hung up the phone and ran after Mom.

Mom’s morning had begun early. Dad was gone by 6:30. Mom woke three-year-old Chuck and Molly, the baby. She helped Chuckie get dressed and brush his teeth. She got a bottle for Molly, and cereal for Chuck. With four children and two adults in the house, our cramped kitchen often seemed like Grand Central Station. A large chrome table with a marbled yellow top crowded one corner, surrounded by five chrome chairs with padded yellow vinyl seats and a highchair. The cupboards were dark, the appliances spare. A small window above the sink, decorated by a frilly white lace curtain, looked out onto the side yard. Once we were all fed, Mom sent us out to play and cleaned up. She was petite, though thick around the middle with the pudgy remnant of six pregnancies. Her dark-brown hair was clipped short and styled, and her deep-brown eyes were accented with thick, black brows. Mom put Molly down for a morning nap and started some laundry in the basement. The telephone rang. It was my grandma, calling to check in, as she did every day. They fell into an easy conversation.

Suddenly, Mom heard yelling outside, people screaming. She was about to tell my grandmother to hold on when Cherie burst through the front door.

“Mom, Marcia’s been hit by a car…”

She didn’t hear any more. She dropped the phone and ran to the street. As she drew near the car she saw the blood. She saw my bicycle. She felt her chest tighten, and thought, “not again, not again….dear Lord, don’t let it happen again…”

By midmorning, Dad had made his rounds of the dry cleaning plant and stores and was pressing pants in a back room where one of his workers, Carl, was operating the dry cleaning machines. Hot pipes and machinery hissed and moaned. Dad was wearing shirtsleeves; but Carl was wearing a tank top already wet with perspiration. It was insufferably hot, and big fans droned and blew stagnant air from above. The smell of cleaning solvents permeated the plant. When the phone rang, it was Judith, a longtime Meier Cleaners employee, who brought Dad the news.

“Bob, there’s been an accident,” she said. “It’s Marcia. Go to Mercy. They’re taking her there.”

He dropped the pressed trousers and rushed through the plant, careful to duck under the pipes and conveyer racks that hung low from the ceiling. His Ford station wagon was parked in the back alley. On the way to the hospital, all he could think was, “Please God, not another baby. Not Marcia.”

What is a face? Eyes. Nose. Mouth. Cheeks. Chin. Forehead. An invitation. Or a warning. A reflection. Or a misrepresentation. The surface of a still pool, or a raging creek. Does a face say anything about a person? Or everything? If a face is destroyed, does that person change? If you rebuild a face, can you rebuild a life?

When mom got out to the street, the car had been backed away. Someone had lifted the mangled bike off of me and laid it aside. Mom cradled my bleeding head until the ambulance arrived. A neighbor took Cherie and Chuck inside to comfort them and check on Molly. After the ambulance left, Mrs. Medema took her garden hose and washed the blood from the street.

At the hospital, the family prayed silently in the stark white waiting room, sprawled on avocado-green couches and chairs.

I have often thought of my mom in those hours, drenched in my blood, holding vigil with my dad, reeling from the realization she may lose another child to an unspeakable tragedy.

When our family physician, Dr. William Bond, saw me in the emergency room, he doubted I’d survive. My cheek was scraped to the bone, my left eyelid was missing, and the bottom lid was carved away from the eyeball, though the eyeball was intact. There were deep cuts and scrapes on the rest of my face and upper chest. I had lost a lot of blood. Emergency room doctors worked feverishly to stem the bleeding. They inserted intravenous lines into my arms as they frantically tried to keep my heart rate and breathing stable enough to take me into surgery.

One of the three doctors who worked on me was a thirty-nine-year-old plastic surgeon who happened to be at Mercy when I was brought in. Dr. Bond asked him to see me as a personal favor. Dr. Richard Kislov was a brilliant surgeon who immigrated to the United States from Germany. He was known best for re-attaching severed limbs, a particularly handy skill in Western Michigan where automotive factories were common. Dr. Kislov and the other doctors worked for hours, pulling skin together to fill the vast hole that had been my left cheek. Somehow, they formed a bridge of skin to cover my left eye, sutured the wounds on my chest and bandaged my head. They kept me alive

There is a place one can go, a dream state where it is easy to imagine that whatever your five senses may be telling you, whatever sounds you hear of oxygen tanks or rustling uniforms, whatever piercings of your skin, or peeling of gauze from your torn face, whatever smells of alcohol or ether you sense, they are not to be trusted. The only true thing, in that liquid place, is the comfort of remembering, of feeling the warm encirclement of your dad’s arms, of knowing the drone of the box fan in the window down the hall means there will be at least a slight breeze to offer relief from the sticky heat, that your mom’s voice will always be there, softly assuring, so satisfying, so deeply resonant. All reality fades into that place, and holds you suspended and safe.

Was that deep-water suspension induced? Or does the mind take over, knowing the psyche may not be strong enough to comprehend, and so it protects by obfuscating, by creating a separate reality? How long did I lie there, blissfully unconscious? Days, weeks – it could have been a heartbeat. But when I awoke, all that amniotic protection evaporated into the harsh whiteness of a hospital room.

I didn’t know where I was. My head and eyes were wrapped in bandages. My hands tied to the sides of the bed. I did not feel any pain, but my head was heavy and I felt woozy. I was afraid. People around me smelled of antiseptic and starched clothing.

I heard my mom’s voice. She said, “We told you never to cross the street without looking.”

But I did.  I looked both ways.

(Part Three...)

2016—A Year for Writing

It is not the New Year; it is barely Christmas, but I am in a mood to celebrate the turning year.

What a momentous year of change this has been. (See my post on Dec. 18.) I have a sense we are not done. I have been blessed to have worked with nearly 100 authors over the past seven years, coaching and helping them craft their memoirs, novels, self-help and poetry books. What an immense privilege this has been. And most especially seeing the result in tangible fashion—12 books successfully published both independently and traditionally. (See the list here.)

In 2016, I am shifting my focus a tiny bit to put my own writing first. You’ll see more regular blog posts and excerpts from my memoir, which I am revising after an unsuccessful tilt at traditional publishers with two agents. I don’t know what the end result will be, perhaps independent publication—we’ll see. For now it feels good and right to be revising. I have other writing projects in the wings, too—a novel and an anthology of essays by women in collaboration with my friend Kathleen Barry, who writes the blog Whispers of Wisdom.

I hope to go on retreat several times in 2016. I’ll write more about that in coming weeks.

I am excited about the coming year and all the possibilities it holds: travel, writing, working with my incredible client/writers, and love!

Who could ask for more?

What are you doing to feed your writing muse next year?

Solstice—Dark Unto Light

Solstice—Dark Unto Light

As we move toward the darkest day of the year—the Winter Solstice—I’m mindful of the light to follow. I think that might be the theme of my life, at least over the past few years.

It’s been almost seven years since my life fell apart—lost my mother, my marriage, our house, the writers conference. It seems a millennium ago. And yet, the lessons are so present with me today. That loss and grief give way, eventually, to light and hope. That trusting in yourself and the goodness of others will always turn out right in the end. That friends and family are treasures beyond reckoning. I am surrounded by light and love.

The last time I wrote on this blog was almost a year and a half ago. So much has happened since.

As some of you know, I decided in June 2014 to move to Santa Fe. After almost 30 years in Santa Barbara, I sought a new life in a new place that called to me. I love Santa Fe. Love the warmth of the people, the arts community, the architecture, the mountains, the snow, the extraordinary light. So I started to make plans and to pack, with a target date for moving of mid-September.

I found an adorable short-term rental with a woman artist named Bonnie Coe and made arrangements to stay through November, just to make sure I wanted to put down roots there. I planned to put everything I owned into a storage container and pack my belongings and Chevella, my dog, into the car for the trip across the country. Then….

In late July, I went to a benefit concert for Youth Interactive featuring Michael McDonald (LOVE the Doobie Brothers), and there, at the end of the concert, I met a man. He invited me to dinner that night, at the Lark around the corner. We had a lovely time, and, of course, I mentioned I was moving to Santa Fe in a month or so. He gave me his business card, and I sent him a nice thank-you email that night. I didn’t hear from him. Odd, I thought. So I texted him several days later just to make sure he’d received my thank you. He called that night and we talked for twenty minutes or so, and then hung up. And I didn’t hear from him again. My sister said, “Well, of course not; you told him you’re moving to Santa Fe.”

One evening a couple of weeks later I had a couple of glasses of wine and decided to text him (this is not advised, by the way). I wrote: “Hey, I haven’t heard from you, and I’m guessing it’s because I told you I was moving. That’s okay if it is; just tell me.” And when I didn’t hear back that night, I tore his business card into six pieces and threw it away.

The next morning he texted me and said, No, it wasn’t that. He’d just been really, really busy (his office was in Pasadena) and he hadn’t had a moment to call. Could he call the next afternoon? And what time?

I texted him back and said, yes, after 2 the next day. I fished his business card pieces out of the trash and taped them back together.

And then…he didn’t call.

I decided that was that. Went on with my life, packing, planning the move, saying goodbye to friends.

On Labor Day, he emailed. Some lame excuse about dropping his phone in the ocean and losing his contacts and he’d finally found my first email and if I was still even willing to talk with him could he call me?

Honestly, I had to think about it. He’d already failed on two occasions. Yet…something made me say yes.

He did, and we went out that night and talked in a sweet little restaurant for five hours. A week later he brought me roses and took me to the El Encanto for dinner, and we walked on the beach.

I left for Santa Fe six days later.

But, you know what? He came to visit me two weeks later. Then I visited him in California three weeks after that, and we went back and forth two more times before he asked me to come home for Christmas. And why didn’t I plan to spend a couple of weeks here?

I did, and we’ve been together ever since.

We’ve gone back to Santa Fe to visit, and in September and October we went to London and Ireland for three weeks. My life is gloriously wild and madly uproarious. Back and forth between Pasadena and Santa Barbara for almost a year, he’s finally moving up here full time in January. He makes me laugh every day, and it feels like we’ve just met yet been together forever.

So much change, so much transition, so much newness and joy. I think back on past years and all the heartache, and I am thankful for all of it, and for all the light that has come to be. This new life, this wonderful man, this exhilarating love. His name is Rob.

May this season of hope and new light bring you peace and joy. And may gratitude be the guiding force in your heart and life, as it is in mine.

Review - Thrive, by Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington’s latest book, Thrive, the Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-being, Wisdom and Wonder, is the Huffington Post founder’s effort to get us all to stop and smell the roses.

Huffington decided to write this book after she collapsed from exhaustion in 2007, two years after founding the Huffington Post. She realized, she writes, “my life was out of control. In terms of traditional measures of success, which focus on money and power, I was very successful. But I was not living a successful life by any sane definition of success. I knew something had to radically change.”

Thrive offers Huffington’s advice on how to do just that, working through what she calls the three metrics of Well-being, Wisdom and Wonder. In the section on Well-being, she recounts copious research reminding us to get plenty of sleep, eat well, and slow down. Our succeed-at-any-and-all-costs culture is killing us, she says, and burnout, stress and depression have become worldwide epidemics. She recommends daily meditation, walking or some kind of daily exercise, and getting a full night’s sleep as first steps toward countering burnout.

Her sections on Wisdom and Wonder offered deeper insights into living a full and balanced life, exploring spirituality and faith, death, and the development of an inner life that allows one to really thrive. Ultimately, she reminds us that giving to others is the way to give to yourself.

Anyone who struggles with today’s constant barrage of doing more and consuming more would benefit from reading Huffington’s story of how she was forced to put down her smartphone and pay attention to her inner world instead.

(Disclosures: I have known Arianna Huffington for many years as a friend and colleague. I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.)

Review - Anne Lamott's Help Thanks Wow

My God box

Anne Lamott’s new book, Help Thanks Wow, The Three Essential Prayers, is a sweet, moving guidebook to what Lamott considers the three most important prayers one can utter. I love Anne’s books. Her Bird by Bird has been on my bookshelves for many years, and I especially enjoyed Traveling Mercies. One doesn’t have to be religious, or even particularly spiritual, to appreciate Help Thanks Wow, as Anne mentions in the introduction. You only have to believe that something is bigger than you, and that if you ask for help and express gratitude, things will happen in your life that will make you say “wow.”

What I love about Lamott is even though she is a firm believer in Jesus, she also knows that neither she nor Christianity (or any other organized religion) has the answers. In fact, she says, no one does, and if they try to tell you they do, they’re delusional.

Anne Lamott's Help Thanks Wow

She had me close to tears with the first section on “Help,” because what she describes is so perfectly the human condition. We all go through difficulties, and most of us will not be spared life’s harshest experiences. But, she says, just uttering the simple entreaty, “help,” can shift things within us, can allow us to give over the suffering to something bigger than we are, and that can make all the difference in our ability to handle whatever we face.

“Most good, honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge,” she writes, “that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something. These prayers say, ‘Dear Some Something, I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t see where I’m going, I’m getting more lost, more afraid, more clenched. Help.’”

And then, she says, let it go.

Lamott says she has a “God box” that she puts her prayers into, then closes the lid and lets whatever universal power is out there take care of it. It could be anything, a glove box, a crayon box. I like this idea.

For my birthday last week, a dear friend gave me a lovely wooden box with the tree of life and birds carved into the top. I have made this my God box (I just mistyped God as Dog – that works, too).

I also especially believe in the second prayer, “Thanks.” Gratitude is a powerful emotion, and I can attest to its ability to shift perspective. Every day I mindfully say thanks, for everything, and more often than not something even more serendipitous or fortuitous comes into my life. 

The final prayer, “Wow,” is a wonderful expression and acknowledgement of how wondrous life is.  Look around. You will always find something, even if it’s just a tiny hummingbird flitting around a bottlebrush tree – to be amazed about. Wow.

Help Thanks Wow is a slim volume – I read it in about an hour or so – but it packs a powerful message. And with the world we have today, it’s a message many of us need to hear.