April 29 – Relatively Resemblent

by Marjorie Witt

As Mother’s Day 2011 nears, I reflect on annual dual celebrations of Mother’s Day and Mom’s May birthday each year until her 52^nd year.  She would have been ninety this year.  As my 62^nd birthday rolled around this month, I went through the decade old process of sadness the turns to grief over her lost years. It feels strange, scary and uncomfortable to get older than her. But one thing I have learned is that when this annual reminder comes around, a sense of humor helps to create balance.  In that spirit I share the following weblog entry I wrote a few years back.

A few years back I was trying to train a new hairdresser. One day…
Hairdresser says: How about something a little different?
Note: This is the 2nd time she has cut my hair.

I say: OK whatever.

Wash…rinse…snip snip…gel…hairdryer…gook…teasing…hairspray…I look in the mirror.

Hairdresser: Do you like it?

Me: hmmmmmm

Hairdresser: Well I’m not letting you out of the chair until you say you like it.

Me: Do you think you can tone it down a bit?

Note: Is Aquanet back in vogue?

A little tugging here and there…actually she pulls on one hair and they all move. She pats the sides of my head but the mass just springs back into form.

Hairdresser: Better?

I look in mirror:

Me: Sure it’s fine.

I’m walking down the street. I look in windows. I see my mother:

I’m not dense. I know what comes next…grandma: 

Margie Witt joined Story Circle Network over ten years ago intending to “write the book.”  Memoir may be the goal but is currently best pursued in short stories as life unfolds with complex challenges. Balancing work, play, and raising a grandson leaves little time to write so blog posts appear with less frequency these days at www.wittbits.blogspot.com

April 26 – Something Happened That Day

by Jamuna Advani

 April 2, 1961 started as an ordinary day, as I headed for the Imphal airport. I had to go to Delhi for an interview for my post-graduate studies. I would have been bored all by myself, but my friend, Soroj, came along with me. We hired a jeep and reached the airport much ahead of time. After checking in my luggage
we took the vacant seats in the waiting area. Soroj and I chatted for some time and waited anxiously for the airplane to land. The aircraft was still at Kolkata airport and it was delayed for another twenty minutes. Soroj looked around and said, “ Jamuna, look at that fellow, he has the latest Filmfare in his hand.”

“Do you want me to ask him if we can borrow it?” I asked her.

“Sure, there is enough time; we can look at it and give it back to him in time.”

I got up and went to that gentleman and asked him if we could borrow the Filmfare for few minutes. Filmfare used to be a very poplar magazine written about movies stars. We both were crazy  for the movie stars and their stories. As the airplane landed and every one was ready to proceed to the aircraft, I returned the magazine to the gentleman with thanks.

Once we were inside the aircraft I took my assigned seat and buckled up. After few minutes I saw the same gentleman coming to the seat next me. Surprised, I wondered if he had changed his seat with someone else to get this seat. Anyway when the aircraft was in the air and we’d settled comfortably in our seats, he
introduced himself as Rup. He knew me as a nurse working in the civil hospital. We also knew a common friend, Kumar, who was a regular supplier of surgical equipments in our hospital.  That day he was heading for Mumbai but he changed his destination. Instead he came to Delhi where his family lived.

I married this gentleman after six months.

Jamuna Devi Advani graduated with a degree in Nursing at Delhi University in 1958. She has published articles and poems in school magazines, and recently in Story Circle Network magazines. During her school years she played badminton and women’s hockey, but golf has been her favorite sport since childhood and she took up the game only in her late senior years. She published her first book of poetry in February of 2011.  She is currently working on her memoir.

April 24 — Shine

by Georgina Mavor

Like Geoffrey Rush in a scene from the movie ‘Shine’ I found my seven year old daughter jumping on her trampoline in the rain, naked except for knickers and a bright yellow raincoat. Her face alive, eyes gleaming, blonde hair ‘stringy’ and wild, she was relishing the first drops of rain after a very long, hot, endless, dry, summer. Living close to the ocean, any summer storm rain clouds tended to pass over the rooftops, dropping their precious loads when they hit the hills further inland. There is a silence in the air here, rain hasn’t broken that space since Winter last year.

I raise my seven year old daughter in an eclectic suburb originally built upon European migrants and the vegetables they toiled. The market gardens have been taken over by later generations of Vietnamese refugees and moved further afield. What remains is the architecture and lifestyle of (formerly) Yugoslavian, Greek and Italian peoples. Terrazza porches, fig trees, broad beans, the odd white lion or pillars at the front gate, the outdoor living areas around the back of homes, families often still living next door to each other, speaking their native language or its regional dialect.

In a rough attempt at self sustainability I converted my original English style front lawn into a vegetable garden. But with increasing shortages in water and time, I have replanted with native trees and plants, a small food source for a rich local birdlife. Brightly coloured red, blue, green and yellow cockatoos, pink and grey galahs, endangered black cockatoos, singing wattle birds, greeneyes, black and white magpies, their smaller cousins the mudlarks, the cheeky willy wag tails and the endlessly procreating doves. Of an evening, with the sun setting behind the Eucalyptus trees in front of my home, I sit and enjoy the cacophony of this birdlife in my raggle taggle garden while I write and reflect.

But my soul wrestles with this place. The colours are vivid, the light intense and the air filled with the oil of the Eucalypts. They are a pivotal counterbalance to the unsettling feeling that prevails here. Perth is the most isolated city in the world, but I don’t think this accounts for it’s aloofness in spirit. Those closest to some of the Aboriginal Elders say it is rich in Dreaming energy here. Our homes are built within 50,000 years of indigenous terrain.  Trees and huge stretches of native bush interspersed throughout the built environment, transmitting their energy to confuse and unsettle us.  Like my daughter on the trampoline flying high in the air, her face calling to the heavens, her feet searching for the earth below, I often experience the same, vacillating between one or the other. Maybe my home really is part of a built environment plonked in the middle of Dreamtime, maybe that accounts for its quirkiness. And maybe it’s just all the eucalyptus oil in the air sending us all a little bit dreamlike as we meander about our day.

Georgina Mavor is a Psychologist and Book Artist combining her love of words, writing, art and story with healing. Visit her blog at: http://www.georginamavor.blogspot.com

April 23 — Arrival Part 2

by Khadijah

Our first house in Old Sana’a was comforting- it was a little different, but not too different, and it had a stove and refrigerator and couches- things we simply did not have when we had just arrived. The rent, however, was very high, and we had a very tight budget. So Khalil started asking around and, through a German student at the language institute, found what would turn out to be my favorite house here in Yemen.

Old Sana’a is a magical place…winding alleyways, sometimes only wide enough to walk single file, lead one past tall tower houses reminiscent of castles or fortresses. They sport gingerbread facades, windows seemingly sprinkled randomly across the stories, each one outlined in white. The cookie cutter tops jut into the blue sky, symbolizing the joining of heaven and earth. There are several suqs, or open markets, scattered throughout the old city, selling everything from cheap transistor radios to intricately embroidered wall hangings. I fell in love with the Old City as soon as I saw it, and our new house became my refuge for our first months in Yemen.

Five stories high, the door of the house was tiny, as if meant for creatures smaller than human size. Its key was huge, taking two hands to turn it. The house was in the old Jewish quarter of the city, and we were told the doors were like this so that the occupants would have time to flee through the roof if soldiers came in from below. Above the door was a chute which extended up the side of the building with a decorative grate in it. This made it easy for someone in one of the higher floors to look down and see who the visitor was when the bell rang. Inside, the rooms looked as though they were carved from the earth itself- all light and curves and fluidity. Over each window was a stained glass window, sending a kaleidoscope of light into the room to dance across the floor at different times of day. The kitchen had a built in tanoor oven in one corner, which was fueled by wood. Mornings brought the scent of woodsmoke and baking bread wafting through the windows, reminding me of home, while connecting me with the history and traditions of my new home at the same time.

My room was small, with built-in cupboards all around and legless couches covered in a rather garish red print surrounding a squat table. One of the couches was wider than the rest, and that was our bed. Mornings were cold in the old tower house. First thing, my son would brew tea for everyone, and then the children would gather in my room, where we would sip the hot, sweet beverage, talk quietly, and feel the sunrise as it climbed slowly up the walls of our little fortress. A little later we’d climb to the mafraj, the room at the top that offered a panoramic view of the Old City. Looking around at my new, I longed to find my space amongst the people, and to become a part of this enchanting, fairy tale world.

April 22 – A Bit of Magic

by Linda Austin

The familiar song of the cell phone alarm forced my eyes open to a dull gloom washing into the bedroom. Another rainy day, the fourth in a row. I lay in bed thinking of what was ahead: fix a school lunch for my daughter, clean the house, visit Mom in the nursing home. I wondered what home-made dinner treat I could cook for her to tempt her appetite as lately she had no interest in eating.

I rose from bed to wake my daughter, dressed, then headed downstairs to start the day. After my husband left to drop our daughter off at school on his way to work, I headed for the front door to fetch the newspaper and check out the weather.

The weight of my mother’s deteriorating condition was on my mind. Drops of rain spattered my face as I stepped outside and looked at the pale gray ceiling above me. On the sidewalk along the street, the newspaper lay limp in its plastic wrap. I headed back to the house with it, ignoring the scatterings of rain that played like a preview of the coming main event. Stepping up onto the front porch, I paused to look down. There, plastered on the doormat, lay a bit of magic—a damp, red feather. My spirits rose at this little miracle, and floated upwards into the gray clouds.

Linda Austin wrote Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, a memoir of her mother’s childhood in Japan around WWII. She encourages others to write the stories of their lives via her blog, Cherry Blossom Memories. Her website is http://www.moonbridgebooks.com and her blog is http://moonbridgeblog.blogspot.com.

April 21 — Arrival

by Khadijah

I remember my first sight of Yemen. Our plane arrived at 1:30 a.m. To say I was tired would be a huge understatement. I was exhausted, suffering from motion sickness (on top of being four months pregnant), and bedraggled after one nine hour flight, a layover of several hours in the dead of night in the Jordanian airport, and a last short hop to Sana’a- with five children in tow!! I was ready to pass out…I didn’t feel the least bit excited to have finally reached our destination. I just felt intense relief.

The first thing that greeted me when I stepped off the plane was the sight of men with guns- lots of men with guns. The airport was filled with soldiers, most of them sitting in a half crouch, smoking cigarettes, their machine guns on their backs. Not a comforting sight to a small town Wisconsin girl like myself. That is almost the only thing I remember about the airport itself. The process of getting the correct paperwork done, the extensive bag search, keeping the children together and on their feet- is all a blur to me. Finally a representative from the language institute showed up. He and my husband went out to get a van to take us to tour temporary house. I dropped, exhausted, into a chair and leaned over, huddling into myself for warmth in the cool, drafty airport. Suddenly a pair of army boots stepped into my line of sight- a soldier gestured with his gun for us to go out the doors. “My husband is gone- he told me to wait here.” I said, in my broken Arabic. He simply gestured at the doors again. Obviously, we went.

The ride through the late night streets of Sana’a was equally disturbing. The only people we saw were armed guards at the checkpoints- other than that the streets were ruled by packs of wild dogs. One friend of mine who came a few months after us said, “It was like Beirut during the war.” Through the haze of my exhaustion, it certainly looked barren and foreboding. Walls were edged in barbed wire and broken glass, storefronts covered with huge metal doors, and armed soldiers. I tried to decide how I would describe it if I ever got to talk to my family back home again.

We were shown to a comfortable three story tower house in the Old City. There was a stove and refrigerator and a set of low couches around the walls of one room. Paradise after the hours of travel. I shook out the blankets that were on the couches and got the children settled into bed, then lay in the curve of my husband’s arm trying to process all that I had seen and done in the past two days. Despite the comfort of having my family near, I still felt alone, alien, and unsure. Then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, the first call to prayer began, a lonely voice from a faraway masjid. Then, another voice joined the first, a soulful duet in the darkness of morning. Then another voice, and another…and that was when I realized that I was less alone now than perhaps I had ever been. This was what we had planned and striven for- the chance to live in the lands of Islaam. As the last of the muedhins’ calls faded away, I drifted off to sleep, sure that in the light of the approaching day I would see the city in a whole new way. I looked forward to the chance of starting over, and living a dream that I had cherished for many years. And that is exactly what I did!

Khadijah grew up in the Kickapoo Valley in Wisconsin and now lives in Yemin with her husband and eight children where she teaches Arabic and Islaamic studies to women and helps them recognize their importance and the need for their stories to be heard. Khadijah was the winner of the 2010 Story Circle Network Lifewriting Competition.

April 20–Appreciating Freedom As We Witness Opression

by Marlene Samuels

Several months ago I participated in a thirty-day gratitude challenge initiated on FaceBook by a close friend – not exactly the most original of ideas. Numerous sites had posed similar gratitude challenges at the time. But it did get me thinking about gratitude on a regular daily basis–both the concept and the reality. Every single day, for an entire month, those of us who agreed to sign on took one challenge: “write about something for which you’re grateful today but that’s different from the gratitude you wrote about yesterday.”

Gratitude–so what exactly is that? Within the context of our complex, high stress, western life styles, too many Americans take for granted the most obvious – albeit intangible, gifts of our lives. Yes, it very well may be cliché to say, “I’m grateful for living in a free country,” or “I’m thankful for my health,” especially when, during our conscious hours, we’re bombarded with messages that prioritize material acquisitions.

During my gratitude challenge, writing about a different gratitude each day became progressively more challenging – a total surprise to me. Suddenly, one day mid-challenge, I really got it! I grasped how much we assume our freedom is a basic human right, an entitlement, simply just a part of being alive. Few Americans have grown up without it.

The first week, the posts were overwhelmingly trite and superficial. One participant was grateful that the car dealer had his new car on time, another for an Aruba vacation, a third for having won a bet with his wife. But as the gratitude challenge calendar clicked forward, war and unrest erupted across the Middle East. And during the remainder of our gratitude challenge, it seemed that all our posts evolved – thankfully! Gone were the materialistic pitches. Expressions of gratitude for living in a free country began to dominate the screen. Each post – while different from those posted the prior day as required by the rules – elaborated upon gratitude for freedom. Amazingly, it seemed there was no end to the ways in which we can be grateful for the freedoms we tend to take so much for granted.

I’m an independent sociologist and writer and teach research methodology to non-fiction writers. I’m completing a short story collection, have published essays, short stories and food articles. I’m co-host of www.expendableedibles.com and www.expendableedibles.com/blog. Contact me through my writer’s website, www.marlenesamuels.com.

April 19 – A New Perspective

by Teresa Werth

 Everything in my environment is ordinary. The sun is shining. The dog is jumping and ready to play. The morning newspaper proclaims disasters great and small. The oatmeal, raisins. and walnuts all tumble together and cook in the microwave just as they always do. It’s on ordinary days like this I feel especially far from my son and his wife. They live and work in the Caribbean on the island of Barbados in the West Indies.

As I take my breakfast out to our screen porch, I try to imagine what they might be doing…same time zone, same bright sunshine, but half-a-world away I realize that I don’t really know what their ordinary day is like. From our infrequent visits there, I remember some of their routine, which is really no routine at all. Everything that’s said about “island time” is true. Their friends, a chef, a Long Island insurance guy who works from Barbados half the year, a bar and restaurant owner, some or all of them drop in for breakfast sometimes. Or our son gets up and goes surfing or golfing or to the college to teach or help students with their projects.

I’m still sunk in this decade-belated “empty nest funk” when I finish breakfast, clear the dishes and go to my desk. Turning on the computer, I start to plan the rest of my day: chores, meals, correspondence, projects. I call up my Gmail, and there’s a message from the far away son with an attachment. Nothing in the text box. I open the attachment.

It’s not an ordinary day, after all!

Teresa Werth writes because she must. Ever since kindergarten, she has written poems, stories, songs and plays. Writing and revising words give her great joy. Her most recent experience as a breast cancer “thriver” informs her latest work and admits her to a unique sisterhood. A retired communications professional, she celebrates life daily, making memories, providing ample inspiration for observing life through a new filter!

April 15 – Sana’an Reflections

by Khadijah

I sit looking out a third floor window at a sky scape punctuated at intervals with minarets, their spires seeming to pierce the clouds, climbing upward a physical reminder of the ultimate goal of life on this earth. I see narrow, winding paths snaking through back streets, past gardens pregnant with cactus fruits and greenery, past stone houses out of the Arabian Nights with metal doors and inscriptions to ward off the evil eye. A solitary woman in a colorful overwrap threads her way through these passages, a splash of color in the dull, sand colored street. A child runs past, a plane made of a soda bottle held aloft over his head I can’t hear him, but I can imagine the universal child sound of a plane coming from his lips.

I see, transposed over the scene, the streets of fourteen hundred years ago, when Muhammad, the Messenger of Allaah, walked streets similar to these in Makkah and, later, Madinah. I can imagine his emissary, Mu’aadh ibn Jabal teaching at one of the old masaajid that dot Old Sana’a, spreading the message of Islaam to the Yemeni people; or, later, Imaam Shawkaani, who would not leave his parents who needed him, to seek knowledge, but instead became one of the lights of Islaam for the world, in this very city.

I remember when I gave birth to my first baby. The doctor placed him on my stomach, umbilical cord attached. As he urged the baby’s father to cut the cord, I found myself overwhelmed for a moment with sadness, that this connection had to be severed. When the physical had to become the emotional, the connection of body had to shift to heart, when the unconscious nurturing of self would have to become the conscious nurturing of love and touch that sometimes seems so inadequate.

This is what I feel here, in the lands of the Prophets and Messengers, so near to the heartbeat of Islaam, the beautiful city of Makkah, so near to the second home of the Prophet, the home of the people who welcomed him and strengthened him through the Grace of Allaah, Madinah. The connection is so strong here, through the scholars, men and women of knowledge and wisdom who devote their lives to studying and teaching the people about Islaam. The soil resounds with the steps of the pilgrims, echoes of the tread of the Messenger and those who followed him. The air is the air they breathed, the sounds of the street vendors and the bleating of the goats the sounds they heard. The heart beats so strongly here, and the connection has not been severed.

Dusk falls and a light breeze gives life to the cloth covering the window. In the distance, a lone muedhin begins the call to prayer. It is picked up here, then there, then over there, throughout the city, until there is a chorus of voices calling the people to come to worship, reminding them of the glory of God. My heart hears the call and responds, and I go to my prayers full of gratitude for the generosity of my Lord that allows me to be blessed to live in the lands of Islaam.

Khadijah grew up in the Kickapoo Valley in Wisconsin and now lives in Yemin with her husband and eight children where she teaches Arabic and Islaamic studies to women and helps them recognize their importance and the need for their stories to be heard. Khadijah was the winner of the 2010 Story Circle Network Lifewriting Competition.

April 12 – Wonder

by Suzanne Sherman

 This evening I walked the Sonoma Coast headlands the hour before a sunset that lit the sky with crimson and gold. How good it felt to be high on a cliff seeing seagulls form a flock then cast apart on gusts. White caps pounded rocks for miles in both directions and beyond them the sea looked almost placid, readying for the night.

Suddenly, a siren sounded, something rarely heard here. I watched three police cars pass and wondered where they were headed as I walked back to the car.

Ten minutes up the road, there they were, parked in the lot overlooking the beach where the Russian River finishes its long run, fanning across the sand like a mirror for the crimson sky. Near these converging waters a helicopter sat parked, red lights flashing. I pulled in beside other onlookers and got out of the car in time to hear a teenaged boy say into his cell phone, “Yea, we saved a life today. Here at the beach.”

Who would need to be saved on a night like this? The tide was low, the ocean calm. I was puzzled.

Just then, the helicopter began to rise from the sand. A beautiful boy with almond eyes came up carrying a guitar under his arm, here, maybe, to play for the sunset. “She’s going to be alright,” he said.

“Do you know what happened?” I asked.

“She was trying to commit suicide but they saved her,” he said. “Can you imagine? Couldn’t she see what she has?”

I watched the helicopter turn toward the full moon that hung luminous in the eastern sky, toward a city where no one will see that moon, away from where I stood realizing a woman had nearly ended her life at the same time so many of us were filled with wonder. How unsettling it was to remember what different experiences we’re all having, to be reminded that not everyone could go breathless by a sky like this, that they could want to die under it, taken away by the cold, cold waters.

 Suzanne Sherman is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and writing consultant with over 30 years in the publishing business. She helps writers develop their work in a variety of genres and find publication. Her short memoir has appeared in The Sun, Skirt!, Women’s Voices, and other publications. Visit SCN Online Classes and see her website for more.