Tag: memories

I am not resigned

As noted previously, April is National Poetry Month. Today, Tim tweeted a link to this evocative blog post by Megan Mayhew Bergman about Steepletop, home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. An exchange between Tim and me in reference to those dreadful stairs made me want to read some of Millay’s poetry.

This collection is from my late mother’s library, so the first thing I did was open the book to the page the ribbon marked. One never knows if that’s random, or is meant to provide quick access to a favorite poem, or was just a stopping place for a reader. But as I’m one to want to find meaning in even the simplest acts, I can easily see my mother reading this poem. Stopping to look away and think. Reading it again. Dreaming over it. Remembering. Being moved by it and relating to it.

My mother and I are alike that way.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind.
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,–but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,–
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

My mother, Millay, and I are alike that way.

Doodling

Are you a doodler? I doodle when talking on the phone. I don’t talk on the phone a lot, because I mostly don’t enjoy it. Especially when I worked for That Major Corporation and often had to be on conference calls. To keep myself from becoming agitated, I usually played games of solitaire on my computer while enduring those bouts of torment. But then management had IT run a program to see what all the employees were doing on their computers, and I got in trouble for playing solitaire. That was, oh, a LITTLE annoying, since at the time, I was working sixty-hour weeks and filling in WITHOUT COMPENSATION for my manager, who was on maternity leave. So I asked IT to take solitaire off my computer, and also take away my access to the Internet. No temptations for me! I went back to the old-fashioned pen or pencil means of doing something with my hands while being forced to listen to phone conversations in which I had no interest and that had nothing to do with my job.

Even though my phone use these days is limited to being on hold while calling businesses and waiting for a real person to talk to me, or having conversations with people I actually enjoy talking with, I still like to doodle while I’m on the phone. I figure I may as well make my doodling worthwhile, so I keep my angel books and a container of colored pencils nearby.

Stickered


Earlier today while I was preparing my breakfast, I suddenly remembered that in every house of my childhood–and there were many, thank you United States Army–we always chose the inside of one cabinet door to put all our Chiquita Banana stickers. I don’t know who started that, although it was as likely to be my mother as my brother, even though she was the one who’d eventually have to scrape all of them off when it was time to move again.

Do other people do that?

Being a writer = being at least a little crazy

The other night I was proofing a cookbook for someone–into the wee hours of the morning–and it was making me so hungry. Not hungry for any of the recipes in the cookbook, but for a specific meal from a specific place.

It was about thirty years ago. Lynne was managing a restaurant and going to school, and I was working three jobs. Yeah, that’s right. We were five. Girls have to grow up fast in small Southern towns. Shut up.

Basically, we never slept. Sometimes late at night we’d go to a little all-night diner because they had the best freaking hamburgers and French fries. I’ve never tasted any others that came close to either. The diner was managed by this guy who vanished one night. Rumor had it that he was connected to some criminal types and had skipped town because he was in trouble with them.

A year or so later, both Lynne and I had moved–she to Texas, me to a different city in Alabama–and I went to a sort-of dive restaurant with a guy I was dating. Who should be there–not managing, but waiting tables–but Mr. Crime Guy. My paranoid switch got flipped to overdrive. I was sure he knew I recognized him and he was going to snuff me so I couldn’t tell the bad guys where he was. I demanded of my date that we leave IMMEDIATELY, and then I wouldn’t just drive back to my place. We had to take this complicated, circuitous route so I could be sure we weren’t being followed.

A few months later I found out I had a thyroid disease, and my doctor asked if I’d been having panic attacks, imagining myself in dangerous situations, apparently a common symptom of my illness.

I thought it was just part of being a writer.