May 27 – A Walk to the Mailbox

by Sherry Bannan

 My mother-in-law, Nellie, had been living with us for over six months. She was 88 years old and had some type of dementia. On this particular day, Nellie was getting ready to walk down the lane to the mailbox for the third time in the last two hours.

She did this almost every day and I rather encouraged it. The mailbox was at the end of our long winding pine needle covered driveway, and I felt the walk was good exercise for her.

I watched her make her way slowly down the drive, swishing her cane at the Spanish moss that had fallen from the oaks, stopping to check out a flower, or just staring up at the sky.

Some time later, I looked down the driveway and she was nowhere in sight. I ran out of the house calling her name. Where could she have gone?

I rushed to Bill’s shop and hollered at him to help me find her. He jumped on the golf cart and decided to head down the road to see if she had gone that way. I headed for the dock, my heart pounding out a staccato tempo that hurt my ears. Mom loved to sit out on the dock with me in the early evening. I didn’t think
she would go there alone because she didn’t know how to swim and was afraid of water, but what if she had?

I hurried out on the dock looking for any sign of her, peering into the water, which was fairly clear and not too deep. I saw nothing out of the ordinary and heaved a little sigh of relief. I headed back up the hill and met Bill, who had not found her either. I got on the golf cart and we drove up the hill to go down toward the end of the road. As we rounded a corner, there sat Nellie in the neighbor’s yard. She was pulling weeds and singing her finest rendition of Sweet Georgia Brown. Life was good.

Sherry Turner Bannan is married with two adult daughters and seven grandchildren. Before retiring to Lady Lake, Fl. in 1994, Sherry and her husband operated a print shop in Coral Gables, Fl.  Sherry began writing four years ago and hopes to publish a memoir about caring for her mother-in-law, who had Alzheimer’s disease.  The working title of her book is Life with Nellie, but Really It’s All About Me. 

May 18 – The Tree

by Khadijah

Nothing has made me more appreciative of the every day, ordinary things than my life here in Yemen. We came with a suitcase apiece- three changes of clothing, some pots and pans, each child’s favorite two toys and books, and lots of my husband’s books. To have gotten rid of and left behind the things that had been accumulated over the years was difficult, but in a way it felt good, clean, to be starting over with so little. When we arrived my husband went out and bought a couple of plates, some blankets and portable mattresses for everyone to sleep on. As time went on, though, as always happens, we started to gather, well, stuff. Now, while we still have little compared to most people, we have enough that it takes us a lot more to pack and move.
 
I find, though, that the “stuff” we have still isn’t that important to me. I am thankful for all of it, but I know that if we have to leave it all behind, it will be with only small regret. So what are the “ordinary things” that make the most difference to me? Take a minute and look outside the window, and you’ll see.
 
Yemen as a country has a surprising variety of ecosystems. Harsh,hot,dry desert that takes hours to drive across- all you see in this region are the oil refineries shooting black smoke into the air, eminiscent of a barbarian feast in days gone by, occasional small hut-like dwellings, and camel crossing signs. Sana’a is a mountain aerie, with cool nights, warm days, and blessed rain that comes seasonally and washes away the dirt and freshens the air like nothing else can. Ibb is a land of fields and greenery, terraced crops growing in in a lush green waterfall down the steep mountains into the valleys below. Now we live on the coast of the Arabian Sea. It is hot, sandy, and dry, but the ocean, at least, is there to provide much-needed relief. When we first came here we lived in a very small, very hot house in what must have
been the hottest part of town. A few months ago, though, we were blessed to move into a small valley off the Sea, and now its breezes help to make the heat more bearable- as does the shade from our sidr tree.
 
The first thing you see when you look down to the sea from the road down the way is our tree. Its branches, covered in tiny leaves, thrust joyfully into the air, bringing a much welcome shout of green in the midst of shades of brown, and, in the background, the blue of the sea. It’s full of birds. A small community of gray birds with brown heads who bicker amongst themselves like a bunch of siblings.
Beautiful yellow weaver birds, a splash of color flitting from branch to branch as they build their nests high up in the tree, as far out of sling shot range as they can get. Grey or white doves who coo coo coo us into the evening, and who tease the cats in the yard mercilessly. 

When I look out at our tree and feel the blessed shade that it provides, hear the various strains of bird song, and see the antics of all of its inhabitants, I am reminded again of the importance of being thankful, always, for the ordinary things. 

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.

May 15 – The Bird Lady of Bell Center

by Khadijah

Every year, spring swept into Gays Mills, Wisconsin, on the tail of my Aunt Mid’s RV, as she and Uncle Byron returned from their winter sojourn to parts south. Aunt Mid was my favorite great-aunt, perhaps because she reminded me so much of my mother dark hair, snapping brown eyes, a wonderful sense of humor…but Aunt Mid was something more, something that was just her she could talk to the birds. And perhaps, more amazingly, she understood when she talked back.

My great aunts from my grandmother’s side were by and large of the cute grandma type by the time I knew them gray hair, sweet smiles, cookies on demand. But Aunt Mid, who was my grandfather’s sister, was something else. My first memory of her was as my kindergarten teacher. She was one of those teachers who really love what they’re doing, and therefore instill the love of learning in their students. She didn’t mind if I called her Aunt Mid instead of Mrs. Ambrose, which was good because I couldn’t fit any other name to her but the one I knew her by.

I don’t know when I first realized that Aunt Mid’s birdtalking was something out of the ordinary perhaps when I saw a newspaper feature called “The Bird Lady of Bell Center” and saw a big photo of her with a bird sitting on her hand, she leaning forward as if whispering in its ear. I had seen this numerous times when my mother and I would visit her, sitting on her patio drinking iced tea. I would listen to them talk, mostly about family, as Aunt Mid was an amateur genealogist. I would watch all the birds flitting from place to place on the yard. Every once in a while one would approach my Aunt, and she would pause in her discussion and talk to it. This seemed perfectly normal to me or maybe it just fit in with the sort of magical aura that Aunt Mid had for me. I would have accepted just about anything from her, as I always felt that she was different from everyone else, someone extra special.

I have found that I have some of Aunt Mid’s magic in myself, in my gift of healing. Aunt Mid could do this with her hands. If you had a burn, or scraped your knee or elbow while visiting her, she didn’t go for the alcohol and Bandaids. Instead, she would blow on her hands, rub them together, blow on them again, then place them ever so lightly over whatever was hurting you. Within minutes, the red would lessen, the swelling would go down, and you would feel almost one hundred percent better. My mother inherited this gift from her, and I in turn inherited it in my less flashy, more conventional methods of healing, with heart and hands and herbs. Whenever I help a child with a bruise, or a friend through a cough, I think of Aunt Mid, the Bird Lady of Bell Center, and I am thankful that a little bit of her, and of my mother, lives on through me.

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.

May 10 – Hasna’

by Khadijah

Having arrived in the village only a few days before, I was nervous about visiting my new neighbor’s house after the Eid prayer- worried about who would be there, what I would say, hoping I would understand what was said to me. She graciously led me into a small, bright room with two long cushions along two walls and bade me sit down. I sat, lifted up my veil, and looked into the eyes of Hasna’

I remember the first time I met her, in East Orange, New Jersey. I was the new girl back then as well, having moved into this inner city neighborhood with my family, feeling like I’d landed on another planet. I was selling handmade dolls and clothing at a masjid event, and Mujaahid, who was nine, was selling friendship bracelets he had made. A teenage girl in a colorful scarf came with her mother and started looking through the bracelets. I don’t even remember how we started talking, but we did, and thereafter I felt a soulconnect with this young woman, over ten years my junior.

After that first day in the village, I saw her sporadically she had come to get married, and study, and lived across the valley. Seeing her, though, was always a joy. She even played the duff and sang an REM song at her own wedding party, to get me to dance, and I realized that I loved this about her –  she helped me to remember who I was, apart from being a mother, wife, and student. She valued beauty, and she looked for it and saw it in so many things – possibly because of the light that shown in her own beautiful soul.

We had some tough times in the village, and it seemed that often when things were toughest, Hasna’ would show up at the door, bearing powdered milk and cookies, or a bag of rice or dates. Sometimes she would twist or braid my eldest daughter’s hair, chatting the whole time. She always said exactly what she was thinking, and I valued that, as I found it hard sometimes, myself, to speak up. One day after I had been sick with typhoid, she came over and took off her outer garment, rolled up her sleeves, and started cleaning my house. I was so embarrassed I had been unable to keep it even slightly clean due to my illness, and I hated that she saw just how filthy it was. She filled up some buckets, grabbed some rags, and, ignoring my anger, cleaned all morning. We started writing notes to each other and sending them by messenger across the valley, and more than once she invited me to her little houses and made me lunch. We would talk about life, I would tease her, and she would roll her eyes at me, and I was reminded again of how much she meant to me.

Hasna’ is still here in Yemen, but across the country from me. We write back and forth, though, and I still have the feeling of connection with her that I had when I first met her all those years ago in America. In her I see friendship, and the light of faith, and remember tougher times when she listened, and laughed, and sang, reminding me of the value of sisterhood.

To see more of Hasna’ and her work, please visit: http://hasnalogy.blogspot.com/

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.

May 7 – Caution

by Sally Jean Brudos

Walk, run, hop, skip and jump and by all means take the stairs; the mantra for the weight loss program at the Stanford Department of Dietetics.  O.K.  I can try that – and I did.  But, now I am more cautious. 

My son Eric had just started a new job in a tall building 50 miles away in downtown Oakland.  “Come for lunch and I’ll show you around the office.” he said. “Call me when you get to the parking garage and I will greet you at the office door.”

After maneuvering the freeways 680, 880 and 980, I finally arrived at the tall building.  Following instructions, I called him and started to go up in the elevator.  The only problem was his office was on Floor 17 and the elevator that I had taken only went to Floor 15.

So – Oh, I can take the stairs two floors up.  The stairway door; quite a heavy door at that, slammed shut and I began my ascent.  When I got to Floor 17, the door to the hallway was locked. PANIC! What do I do now?  Go back to Floor 15 and find the other elevator.  But, the door was locked on Floor 15 as well.  PANIC!  I took off my Patten leather dress shoe and pounded on the door to no avail. 

Then I saw a phone – but no one answered.  PANIC!  I raced down the stairs and tried every door.  I’m not sure which floor it was that I finally found unlocked or how many times I picked up the phone on each floor, but I do know it took fifteen to twenty minutes before I walked out of the elevator to Eric’s questioning eyes.  We calmly looked around the office and then went downstairs in the elevator to the café on the street level.

Just as we were ordering our lunch, we heard the loud scream of sirens and saw three huge fire engines approach the building.

(I guess that telephone did ring some where after all!)

Sally Jean Brudos was a closet writer until breast cancer showed up on a mammogram and she began writing with other women in the “Sisterhood.” From the positive comments she realized there is a writer in everyone. A survivor, Sally Jean now leads a small group of women writers who encourage each other with laughter, tears and compassion.

May 5 — In the Suq

by Khadijah

Our house in Old Sana’a was near to two major outside markets–Bab ash-Shuab and Bab as-Sabaa. To get to either one of them, we had to walk down cobblestone streets, doing our best to avoid goats and the small children that seem to be everywhere in Yemen. Even after we had been in the neighborhood for a bit, the children would still stop and stare, their eyes huge as saucers, their fingers stuck in their mouths like pacifiers. I didn’t think we looked all that different–I wore the all-enveloping black garment that I’d worn in the States and which was similar to what many of the Yemeni women wore, my face covered with a veil, and all of my children are a mix between me and my African American husband–so their coloring is similar to that of the locals. I hesitated to uncover my eyes, though, knowing that my baby blues would certainly arouse a lot of unwanted interest! My eldest son, though, is blond and blue-eyed, and there was no hiding that. After being here for a few years, I realized that culturally there is simply no problem with staring. If you’re interested in something, you stare at it. It still seems rude to me, but I understand it is a cultural difference, that’s all.

The suqs of Old Sana’a are incredible places. While some of the vendors have small spaces in actual shops, most of them conduct their trade from wheelbarrows or blue tarps spread on the ground. As you weave your way between them, they all call out, “bi miya bi miya bi miya” (only a hundred riyals) or “ahlan wa sahlan!” (Welcome!). Small boys selling anything from sponges to rat killer to watches tug at your sleeves, earnestly trying to convince you that whatever they have, is exactly what you want. Colorful dresses wave in the wind, delicate embroidery flashing in the sunlight. Bright silver jaambiyas, the daggers that almost all northern Yemenis are never without, march across the blue tarps, along with their gold and blue embroidered belts. Socks, toys and dishes all “made in china” fill the storefronts, along with cheap hair baubles and flimsy electronics. The spice stores are a special treat- baskets and canvas bags filled with spices–cloves, cardamom, cinnamon sticks–send their heady fragrances out into the street, beckoning you to come and look, come and buy.

The sellers are usually friendly and helpful, though they automatically raise their prices, assuming that you will bargain them down. Some, though, usually those with a wad of qat in their cheeks, are barely civil. I learned early on to find the helpful shopkeepers and always go to their stores, rather than have my day spoiled by a rude or offensive one.

Open-air restaurants abound, selling boiled potatoes and eggs to dip in a fiery mixture of powdered spices, bean sandwiches, falafel sandwiches, chicken and rice or even, in some areas, hamburgers and fries. The markets are full of men, women, and children, voices raised as they enjoy their daily bargaining, or gossip with their favorite shopkeepers, or sit on the curb sipping hot, spicy tea. The suqs in Old Sana’a are a feast in every sense of the word- for the eyes, the nose, the ears, and the spirit!

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.

All photos courtesy of Jorge Tutor (http://www.jorgetutor.com/)

May 3 – A Window Opened

by Ruth Hetrick

It started as an ordinary day. Can I possibly explain how magnificent that is? It has been almost two years since I have enjoyed an ordinary day, for every day I have awakened, not knowing who I would be. Would I be lost, fearful, powerless, exhausted, lonely, sick, confused and worried?

Those are just some of the words that described me, a woman trying desperately to recover from being an “accidental addict” to a prescription drug given to me many years ago for anxiety due to a serious health crisis. Now, after almost a year of being drug-free and suffering horrible withdrawal symptoms, existing
through a life that I no longer recognized, becoming a negative, sad, frightened version of myself, I awoke to an “ordinary day!”

No longer shaking all over, I lay there for a while. There was no heavy darkness weighing down my brain, no fear that some unknown horror was going to descend upon me, no body jerking, no anxiety, nausea or crying.

No, this day I was not lost to myself. I felt normal, just as the people in my internet support group had told me would happen.  They told me a window would open and give me a glimpse of normalcy and then I would know that the “real me” was still there. Two year is a long time to be “lost” from yourself and I
had doubted that my brain and central nervous system would ever heal and that I would get my life back. I had prayed every day to just be “me” and to have an ordinary day where I would not be afraid to take a shower, get off the sofa, go grocery shopping, cook a pot of soup, make a bed or a phone call or step
outside, just to do things that most people take for granted.

Today, what started out as an ordinary day has turned into an extraordinary day for me. I am no longer lost; I am found and I am—oh, so gratefully—finally going forward with my life!

Ruth is a married sixty-five year old woman with two grown children who lives in Pennsylvania. She finds herself, at this stage of life, fighting for her life since becoming an “accidental addict” to a drug she did not know was addictive. As she says, “I WILL WIN!”.

May 1 — Alma

by Suzanne Sherman

When I was 10, kittens were born in the wall hamper outside
 my bedroom. I counted them as they entered the world, documented the births in my
 new diary. I wrote that Debbie’s mom took us to May Company and I bought opaque tights. It thrilled me. That same day I wrote that my mother took too many pills and went to the hospital. A few days later I wrote that she was coming home, she was feeling better. The only entries for the rest of that year 
were a few sentences, but the new friendship—writing to myself—quickly
 grew.

Through junior high I wrote in three-ring binders so I could add
 pages as needed, and I needed a lot of pages now. I chronicled scenes of 
talking to crushes, or not talking to them, catching their eye in the 
hall, I wrote poetry about my aching heart, wondered what life was all
 about, longed for love, pined for a friend who moved away. In high 
school the writings went deeper as I tried to find “home,” chronicled my
 fervent resolve to change my ways so I could stay with my father and
 step-family. I took poetry classes in high school, majored in creative
 writing at college, wrote short stories, a novel, graduated into
 publishing, and missed writing more than I could have imagined.

At 26 I led my first writing workshop, at my dining room table. When I left two
 years later to move across the country, one longtime student wrote me a
 note: “Thank you for seeding a new tongue to flower.” I keep that note
 still on my bulletin board. At 36 I was hired at the local junior
 college to teach memoir writing for older adults. I have done it since 1996.

Some days there is nothing else I would rather do. Other days I 
think I should be with people in the middle of their life story, not
 those gearing up for its final chapters. On one of those mornings a few years ago, a small woman was walked into class by her attendant. She was stooped,
 folded in on herself. Students of that class were the most lucid 
ones at the assisted living facility where I taught for the summer, the ones who could write about their lives for the half hour I gave them every week.
 I’ll bet she doesn’t even know why she’s here, I thought. I greeted her 
and gave her my name, she gave me hers–pronounced very
 carefully–”Alma,” and then her attendant seated her at the far end of
 the table opposite me. When she was settled, she announced, “I’m hard of 
hearing.” I suggested she move up next to me, which took her some time,
 but she did it. I welcomed and introduced her, and she repeated her 
name: “Alma.”

I said, “Your name is unusual. Where is it from?”

“It’s
 Latin,” she told us. “It means the soul.”

Everything around me lit up 
then. Of course. Thank you, Alma. Thank you for reminding me how 
important it is that every tongue find its flowers.

Suzanne Sherman is a writer, writing consultant, editor, and writing teacher (including SCN online classes).  http://www.suzannesherman.com