Marcia Meier's Blog, in which she writes about writing, publishing, memoir, poetry, and just about any other aspect of life.
Posted in: Hope
A very personal and political piece posted this week on WritersResist.com, a little out of the ordinary for me, but the times are anything but:
I have been sleeping with the enemy for more than two years. Rob is a Republican. But on the morning after the election, he held me close as I sobbed and promised, “It will be okay.”
He promised. But he doesn’t know. And nothing that has happened since that morning has made either of us feel better....(continue reading)
My friend Kathleen Barry and I write together every couple of weeks, and yesterday we both wrote about wonder. You can read her take on it here. Here's mine:
I love the concept of wonder. It conjures up the image of a child gazing at a colorful butterfly, or watching a bird's egg open, the tiny feathered creature inside emerging into the light.
I have been in that dreamy state of wonder, whether at some physical world delight, or in contemplating the metaphysical. Lyanda Lynn Haupt says wonder "is contingent on the habit of being that allows it to arise...." In other words, you have to be in a constant state of openness and wonderment for moments of wonder to find you.
How can we bring more wonder into our lives? Can you discover the wonder in an everyday cup of coffee? Or in the choosing of your clothes for the day? Or in washing the dishes after a meal? It's easy to see the wonder in a stunning sunset, less so in the drudgery of vacuuming the house.
If we are called to see the extraordinary in the ordinary (and I believe we are), then we learn over time to recognize the moments in our lives that God (or the Universe) asks us to appreciate, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
Where do you see wonder in your life? I see it in the purple bougainvillea outside the window, in the hummingbirds which flit among its petals, in the distant ocean and the tides that govern its movements.
Life is both fragile and fleeting—wonder is our opportunity to appreciate it in every moment: the touch of a friend's hand, beach sand between your toes, ice melting in your double scotch. Wonder abounds.
A dear friend had a severe stroke over the weekend. She and her husband, who live near Fresno, had been out gardening in their yard early, to beat the heat. When they came in to get breakfast, she collapsed onto the floor. Her husband knew right away it was likely a stroke: the left side of her face sagged and she was paralyzed on her left side. At the hospital, doctors immediately tried a drug called tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), which works by dissolving blood clots. In this case, though, it didn't work, and they rushed her into emergency surgery.
That night, after surgery, doctors told her husband they'd gotten the blockage at the top of her carotid artery, but couldn't get to the one near her frontal lobe. It has been touch and go. Monday she moved her left leg and arm, and she was alert and asking for her phone and glasses Tuesday morning. Yesterday the report wasn't so good. We'll know more about the extent of damage in coming days and weeks, but we are all hopeful. She faces many months—perhaps a year or more—of recovery.
I've known these friends for more than 25 years. They just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, having married as youngsters on the eve of his going off to fight in Vietnam. He became a journalist and, later, a businessman. We met when we worked for the small daily newspaper in Redding, California, along with another friend. As couples, all six of us became close friends and have remained so to this day, though we all ended up in different cities far apart. We watched our kids grow up and vacationed together. We also supported each other when one of us was diagnosed with breast cancer many years ago. Last fall, her cancer returned. Her husband, meanwhile, struggles with rheumatoid arthritis.
Earlier this year, my younger sister died unexpectedly, and another dear friend succumbed to ovarian cancer last month. Other friends are dealing with the sudden loss of his job; he is in his mid-60s.
This season of life for me has brought many joys—and, increasingly, illnesses, difficulties, sorrows, deaths. It is sometimes hard to remember that life is also death, and struggle.
As I have gotten older, I find myself more introspective, seeking answers, looking for the reasons behind the events of our lives. I do not have the answers, but this I do know: None of us is immune from heartbreak or sorrow, and the only response to any hardship is trust, and gratitude for what is, and perseverance. And faith. I always come back to Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
My friend Lisa Lenard-Cook died on May 22, at her home in Albuquerque with her husband, Bob, by her side. She had fought ovarian cancer for almost two years, and at one point we thought she had it beat. But it came back with a vengeance last fall, and she ended up spending 40 days in the hospital. She went home in January, but in March she sent her friends a note none of us wanted to read.
"I know it's been a while since you've heard from me, but there hadn't been much to report, except that I wasn't recovering as quickly as we'd hoped. Now we've learned that the abdominal discomfort I've been experiencing...is because of tumors run rampant....
"This morning I was admitted to Rust Medical Center in Rio Rancho, but after talking with my doctors, & with hospice, we headed back home late this afternoon. As I am unable to eat, & have lost a great deal of weight already, this isn't going to drag out for long...
"I'm sorry the news isn't better. I knew what I was up against from the outset, & I know you all hoped for a better outcome. But I'm 63 years old, & have lived a good life, thanks, in part, to each of you.
"Thank you for your love, caring, prayers, & yes, cussing. Love you all. ~L"
Lisa posted something similar on Facebook that week, and one more post a week or so later.
I met Lisa when I was the owner of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I was looking for new workshop leaders to add to our faculty, and my friend and workshop leader Catherine Ryan Hyde suggested Lisa. We hit if off instantly. Not only was she an amazing novelist (her books include Dissonance and Coyote Morning), but she was one of those people who has a gift for teaching and inspiring others. She was an extraordinary instructor, and the writers she coached and edited absolutely adored her.
She continued with the conference until last June, when she was in remission and came to Santa Barbara wearing scarves and wigs, always exhibiting her sense of humor and resiliency. She had pushed back against the cancer and forced it into remission in barely nine months.
In the fall of 2014 I moved to Santa Fe, and spent a night with her and Bob in their lovely home in north Albuquerque. Last August, Rob and I had dinner with them on our way to Santa Fe, and toasted the apparent triumph over the cancer. Sadly, it was not to be.
I will miss her ready smile and generous spirit, her love of literature and words and her dogs and the New Mexico landscape, and her absolute commitment to the writers she shepherded over the years. Rest in peace, sweet friend.
A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. June 11 at their home in Albuquerque. If you want to attend, let Bob Cook know, at bob.d.cook@gmail.com.
And if you'd like to remember her in a special way, please consider donating to one of these wonderful organizations, which she loved:
Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, Ramah, NM: https://wildspiritwolfsanctuary.org/index.php
Animal Humane NM, Albuquerque, NM: http://animalhumanenm.org
Ovarian Cancer Research Fund: http://www.ocrf.org
July 21, 1961 - Surgeon’s notes: Surgery to assess extent of injury and healing to date. Patient’s cheek and eye are stabilized enough to send her home. Additional surgery to be scheduled for the fall.
My grandmother’s cottage on Lake Michigan was a cozy place, with a screened-in porch that connected to the living room. Once, a bat flew down the chimney and into the porch, and lighted upon the back of a wicker chair. What an inexplicable thing, for a bat to wing its way down a brick chimney and fly through the cottage. Amid our excited squeals, my grandmother ushered all of us into the main room in the cottage and shut the glass doors as my grandpa put on leather gloves and went out to the porch. We pressed our faces against the glass and watched. I held my breath as he gently pried the tiny creature from the back of the chair. It resisted, opening and flapping its wings even as Grandpa closed his leathered hands around it. I could feel my heart beating hard as I watched him walk to the side door and release the bat to the darkened sky. I was awestruck. It was the most tender thing I ever witnessed.
The summer after the accident we spent a lot of time at the cottage, playing with my cousins. It was out past my grandparents’ small house in Glenside, on the west side of Muskegon. Before the lake began to rise in the late 1960s and early ’70s, there was a small boathouse and sailboat tethered at the bottom of the stairs to the beach.
A large plate-glass window stretched across the front of the cottage. The expansive view took in all the majesty of Lake Michigan, from its glittery thundering waves in springtime to the cloud-covered buildup of icebergs along the shore in winter. The main room was furnished in wicker and bamboo furniture with brightly colored cushions. The whole interior was paneled in pine. On one side of the room a large wooden cupboard held dozens of multi-colored Fiestaware: plates, bowls and cups, salt and pepper shakers, pitchers. The various colors made meals at the cottage seem like a perpetual celebration. There was a dining room table near the kitchen, a tiny space that looked onto a sun porch where we often had breakfast. There were big shutters over the sun porch’s screens, and it took the strength of an adult to pull the chains to open them. The chill morning breezes would flood the porch, along with the sun. Oatmeal never tasted so good.
There were three bedrooms, two off the main room and one off the kitchen. My grandma and grandpa always slept in the front bedroom, which was connected to the other by a tiny bath, also paneled in pine. My grandfather died at the cottage when I was eight. Fell asleep next to my grandmother and never woke up.
Every year in the early spring, probably April or May, my grandparents, parents and uncles “opened” the cottage for the summer. They took down the heavy wooden storm shutters that covered all the windows and aired everything out. It would have been imprudent to try to spend a winter there. Snowstorms were too severe, especially at the lake, where cold blasts froze the shoreline into icebergs that often stretched half a mile out.
In the fall, just before the first snows, the family would spend a day or two shuttering it up once again. There was a huge piece of plywood that was nailed over the front entry, and on it was painted, “Stay Out. Poison Gas.”
“This is Marcia,” Miss Black says.
I am standing next to her chair and all the children are sitting on the floor in front of us. She has her arm around me, and I feel safe.
“Her face looks like this because she was in a bad car accident.”
I look out at their faces. It is my first day of kindergarten, not quite three months after the accident. I don’t understand why this is necessary, but I will come to love Miss Black for thinking to do this.
I am vaguely aware of my mom standing off to the side.
Earlier that morning we had walked the several blocks from my house to Nelson Elementary School. I remember feeling anxious, but also excited. There were a lot of kids on the playground when we arrived, and I wanted to play, but I stood close to Mom, watching. Miss Black and the other kindergarten teacher came out and lined us up at the classroom door before we were allowed to enter.
The classroom seemed huge. There were tables with paints and clay, and a playhouse area with pint-sized kitchen appliances, including a stove and sink and cupboards. I played in the playhouse, pretending to make dinner like my mom. One of my favorite activities was “reading circle,” when we would sit on the big rug and Miss Black would read storybooks.
For snacks we had graham crackers with chocolate frosting, and at naptime we each had our own colorful mat to lie on until it was time to go home at noon. No one ever asked about my face or teased me that school year. I felt like a normal kid.
Automobile factories and wood pulping mills fueled the economy of my hometown – and all of Western Michigan – in the mid-twentieth century. When the wind blew from the north, the stench from the paper mill on the southern edge of Muskegon Lake wafted over all of downtown. My mom’s best friend, Norma, lived with her family in the suburb of North Muskegon on the north side of the lake. Muskegon Heights, which was primarily African-American, was just east and south of downtown. Two of the three Meier Cleaners plants my dad operated were in Muskegon Heights, and when I was old enough to work for him, it was there I learned about prejudice and – from my dad – tolerance. On the southwest, as the city population expanded, the suburb of Norton Shores grew. My parents would build a house there when I was in junior high.
Routine, it’s said, breeds boredom, but it also establishes place and time and provides a stability that can be comforting when all else around you is in turmoil. We walked to St. Joe’s for Mass every Sunday and saw all the Meier clan. My dad continued to go to work early every morning. Supper was always on the table at six, just after Dad walked through the door. We sat down together, and Dad said the blessing: In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost… Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive …
We ate the same meal every night: meat, potatoes and canned vegetables. Sometimes we would have a Jell-O salad with celery or mandarin oranges. I hated that Jell-O salad. Something about the combination of a soft, wiggly substance with the crunchy celery repulsed me. After dinner, we always had dessert, usually homemade pie or cake with ice cream. If there was no pie or cake, we made do with cookies. My father loved dessert. Even years later, when it was only my mom and dad at home, they still shared dessert every night – a comforting routine, one of the many daily constructs we create to ignore the passage of time.
In Michigan, the seasons are distinct, glaringly so. Winter punishes with its icy blasts of wind and snow. Drifts grow and wither with each passing storm, moving from one side of the road to the other, or building to piles on the beaches and parks. Spring was walking to church on Easter morning wearing a pale yellow or pink Easter dress and matching straw hat, my gloved hand thrust between my dad’s strong, boxy fingers. Tulips and daffodils greeted us from the neighbors’ gardens as we walked to church. Summer was swimming in Lake Michigan with my dad and siblings at dusk, the lake water still warm from the day, then running up the stairs to have s’mores by the fireside as mosquitoes buzzed our ears. Fall, well, fall is my favorite time of year. The leaves changing color on the maples, oaks and elms; the acrid smell of leaf piles smoldering in the street after a day of raking. The sweet bite of the apples we bought from the vendor who drove the streets hawking fruit from the back of his truck.
We had a milkman who placed fresh bottles of milk at the front door every two or three days. And the “egg man” – a local farmer – brought fresh eggs to the house every week. There was a farmer’s market on the outskirts of town every Saturday where in summer we bought cherries, blueberries and raspberries, tomatoes, peaches and plums. In fall, we bought apples and pears, and in winter, butternut and acorn squashes filled the stalls. In the summer months, my mother would often buy a bushel of one fruit or another and then spend the next several days canning.
All of these things happened predictably – year after year – creating a sense of serenity and comfort in the certainty of sameness. And every few months I went into the hospital for more surgery.
(To be continued...)
My dad made me feel like I was floating in the warm summer waves of Lake Michigan, placid and enveloping as dusk falls, protected and lifted up and held gently in the lapping waters. Like I had just won the biggest jackpot that exists. Like my world would crumble and splinter into a million pieces if he left me. While Mom was with me through the surgeries, a concrete ghost, he was always in the background, an assurance that comforted and allowed me to dwell in a safe space.
I don’t have any memories of my dad visiting me in the hospital, though I know he did. Perhaps he came in the evenings after work, to spell Mom. Or he might have come in the afternoons. I don’t remember. But I know he came, because the nurses were on a first-name basis with him.
My dad was a member of the Optimist Club for more than fifty years, and when I was little, the club had a Father-Daughter Dinner every year. Dad had three girls, so once every three years I got to be his special “date.” Mom would buy me a fancy dress with a tulle skirt, and sometimes I’d wear gloves and black patent leather shoes with buckles. It was the only time outside of Easter that I got a new dress. After dinner, the men would stand up and sing to us, all the old standards including “Tea for Two,” “Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” and show tunes like “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
I was enthralled, with all those men, and with my dad. At the end of the night, they sang, “Goodnight, ladies! Goodnight, ladies! Goodnight, ladies! We’re going to leave you now.” Which made me feel sad and happy at the same time.
When we are young, certain experiences become concrete in our memories, and this is one of them. I am sitting next to my dad. Long rows of tables are set with dishes and glassware, and everyone seems to know my dad, wants to shake his hand and say hello. I am so proud to be his daughter. No one says it, no one shows it, that his daughter’s face is disfigured, like a wax figure whose face is melted, whose eye is wilted. I am with my dad, who loves me, and those men, who acknowledge through their actions and their unspoken understanding they know: I could be anyone’s child. Thank God for these good men, who held my dad in love and respect, who held me in a place of acceptance – for my dad, and for me.
My dad was the only one who made me feel like Marcia, not the scarred child, but the bright spirit I knew dwelled within. There is a photograph of me taken probably a week or two before the accident. In it I am standing next to my older sister, leaning in toward her with my hands on my hips, smiling as if I had just gotten away with something really naughty. That is the Marcia my dad knew and loved unconditionally. It is the Marcia I lost.
When he died, I felt like someone blasted the rock I stood upon to smithereens, like the world had suddenly turned from safe to perilous, and I didn’t know how to find solid footing.
On the day of his funeral, friends and family gathered at the Catholic parish where Mom and Dad belonged for nearly thirty years. A couple of days earlier Mom and I had met with the parish priest, who said he would do the service though he didn’t really know my dad. I wanted to do the eulogy, and the priest kept trying to dissuade me. Finally I prevailed. But that morning, I wasn’t sure I could stand and talk about him without falling apart. I remember asking him to be with me and give me strength, and when I stood to go up to the lectern to speak, I found a sense of purpose and calm I hadn’t before. I talked about how much he’d meant to me, how much he’d given me, and how grateful I was for him, and for Mom, through all those years of surgeries.
One of the things I found most touching on that morning was all the guys who golfed on Wednesday mornings at Community Golf Course gave up their games to be with us, and Dad.
Several years after my dad’s death, I was at a loss to understand my mom’s inexplicable distance. Why was she so quiet? Why did she answer my questions with single-word answers, with shrugs? I wondered what I should have been doing for her, what I was lacking. She was so happy with my sisters and my brother; quiet and strained with me.
Finally, it occurred to me that she might be jealous of my relationship with Dad.
I couldn’t imagine. No mother would feel that way, would she? And if she did, I certainly never saw it. I think about the way she removed herself when I was with Dad, disappeared to knit in the den, or headed upstairs while we watched TV downstairs. Even now as I write this it sounds so inconceivable. But, then – perhaps.
My parents married in 1948, twenty-somethings full of confidence as the nation was recovering from war and creating a future of possibility. He joined the family business; she had an English degree and was teaching at a local junior high. They settled into a small house – purchased from my dad’s parents − in 1949. Cherie was born in September 1950, followed shortly by Ricky and Robert, the two boys they lost. I was born at Mercy Hospital on Christmas Eve 1955. My brother, Chuck, followed in September 1957, and then my youngest sister, Molly, in September 1960.
Our house had two stories, with white clapboard siding and a long, glass-fronted porch that stretched the length of the house. There was a wooden front door that opened into a small vestibule where winter boots and coats were stored. A stairway to the left and just inside the front door went up to the second story, where we had a bathroom and three bedrooms.
In the front hallway was the little telephone table where my mom was sitting when I was hurt. The living room off to the right stretched almost the entire length of the house and opened at both the front hallway and the dining room, which was between the hallway and the kitchen at the back of the house. Flecked wallpaper in crimson and black lined the dining room walls, and the living room had beige carpeting and equally bland walls. There was a blond console TV against one wall. I watched the assassination of President Kennedy on that TV, and Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk, and swooned when the The Beatles first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Off the kitchen was a stair that led to the back door on the alley and then down to the basement. It was damp and dark there. Shelves held dozens of canned goods and storage boxes, and there was a washer and dryer against one block wall. A tiny window high above the laundry let in a small bit of natural light, and a bare overhead bulb hung from the ceiling.
I saw my mom cry for the first time in the basement. She was sitting on a small chair among the laundry, and I had crept down the stairs halfway to see where she was. Then I realized she was weeping softly. I don’t know why, but I knew it was because of me, because of all the pain I’d caused her and the family. And I didn’t know how to make it better, to make her happy again. So I just sat there, watching her from the darkened stairs.
I keep coming back to the basement. Monsters and ghosts, and my mother weeping. Once, there was a tornado warning. I was seven or eight. Tornados were not uncommon in Michigan, but this one was serious enough that my dad came home from work. He made us all go down into the basement, Mom, Cherie, me, Chuck and Molly. But he stood near the back steps and stared out the kitchen window. At one point I crept up the stairs, wanting to be near him, worried for him. He admonished me back down to the basement.
So I sat with Mom, anxious and fretting. I am trying to put myself back in that space, trying to remember how she was. I was so worried about Dad, I didn’t notice her demeanor. Perhaps she tried to soothe us. Was she holding Molly on her lap? Was Chuckie clinging to her side? I know I would not be mollified. I was certain Dad would be taken, pulled out the window by the tornado, and I would never see him again.
(Continued here.)