February 20 – A Big Red Bird is all that Remains of My Past

by Pat Bean

“It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.” — Barbara Kingsolver

Today, I hung all memories from the past on my wall.

The year was 1978 when I found myself single with two of my five children still left to support. It wasn’t an easy time, especially that first month when I had to borrow money to pay rent. Although there have been many difficult times since that day, as there are for all who occupy this planet, my life from this point forward only got better and better.

I spent the next 26 years finishing up a 37-year career in journalism, following it–and twice where my heart led me to go.

My career took me to the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas, for three years, then to Ogden, Utah, as features editor for the Standard-Examiner. I stayed for three years here before love took me to Las Vegas for eight months that included a stint working for the Las Vegas Sun.

When love betrayed me, I took myself away from the neon lights to Twin Falls, Idaho, where I stayed for two years as regional editor for the Times-News. It was then back to Ogden, where my former newspaper offered me a job as assistant city editor.

In 1987, I answered my heart once again and moved to Erda, Utah, and undertook a daily 56-mile commute to my job in Ogden. But in 1989, I moved back to Ogden alone, and happily stayed there until 2004, at which time I sold my home and bought my RV, Gypsy Lee.

With few exceptions, everything I owned was either packed into my 22-foot home on the road, sold or given away. The exceptions, mostly books, were eventually stored at my youngest daughter’s home here in Tucson, where I recently moved into a small apartment after almost nine years spent living on the road exploring America from sea to shining sea.

Sunday, my daughter brought me a few of those bins. And this morning, I hung the only remaining possession that remained from 1978 on the wall of my apartment.

As I stood back and looked at this simple sketch of a cardinal, which belonged to my grandmother, whom I adored and whom died when I was only ten years old, tears came into my eyes

The colored-pencil drawing, which even for a while accompanied me in my RV travels, held a lifetime of memories. It is the only thing I own that connects me to my past. As a person who prefers to look forward not backward, I have no regrets that there is nothing else.

But my heart tells me that this red bird may be the most precious thing I own today.

Pat Bean, who thinks of herself as a wondering-wanderer, is a former journalist who lived in an RV for almost nine years and recently moved into a third-floor apartment in Tucson. Her passions are writing, reading, hiking, birds, art, family and her canine companion, Pepper.

February 13 – First Blood

by Caroline Ziel

“I ring the bell
So we can tell
The story of her passage”.

The incantation began.

Leelee was a thirteen year old young lady who had just started her “first blood”. Night was unfolding around us and our circle of women stood in the shadows of a cold Saturday evening. We had come to honor this passage. We were eleven women. Some of us had already passed into being crones. Others were still of childbearing age. She stood in our midst and we asked her: “Are you ready? Are you really ready?”

We wanted her to know in the cells of her being that monthly bleeding wasn’t just about cramps and tampons and the need for protected sex. It was about being fertile for all of life–it was about possiblities. One by one we reminded her who she was:

“Leelee, you are creative. Leelee, you are spunky. Leelee, you are helpful and kind and caring. You paint and dance with abandon.”

We wanted her to be firmly rooted in the splendid reality of who she is so that she can blossom into all that she can be.

l rang the bell again and asked her if she was ready to move into maidenhood. She said “yes” and her grandmother walked her out to prepare her for the passage.

Later, one by one, we asked her to remember: “Your body is an altar. Remember that it is sacred. How you live your life is an act of worship. Your words have power. Bring light into a world that sometimes seems dark. Be the light in your own world.”

We then made an arc for her to pass through. Our arms stretched across her and we joined hands, remembering pieces of our own journey into maidenhood, into womanhood, into cronehood.

Later that evening we pondered the importance of having community, of being community. It’s so easy to get lost in the demands of the day and to become isolated with life’s expectations. What Leelee helped us learn that night was not only that we need to honor our passages, but that we needed to continue to extend to each other the hand of remembering. We need to hold each other in the light and remember to be the light in our own lives. We need to remind ourselves that our own lives are sacred and to find a way to renew that awareness day by day.

Caroline has been a delighted member of SCN for three years, and a member of Writing Circle 6 for all of that time. She is a gardener, grandmother, and goddess centered woman who is grateful to have the support of this circle.

February 12 – Weaving Our Way Through Asperger’s Syndrome

by Margaret Stephenson

I try not to cry as I sit close to my son while he shivers and cries on the floor – he won’t let me hold him. In the room across the hall, my daughters continue with the archery class that he has been asked to leave. My heart hurts watching him feel so deeply about something he is incapable of at this point.

Braden wanted to try archery and I thought it would be a good way to add some balance to his computer time. Everyone is required to do an introductory class before enrolling – the coach said the class would be easy, as long as the kids can listen and focus. So, I figured, Braden is super at listening and focusing. No problem.

“Pick your bow, grab your arrows, pin up your target, put on your safety glove, find a finger grip, stand behind the blue line on two whistles, shoot your arrows on one whistle, pick up your arrows on three whistles,” says the coach. “If you cross the red line before you have heard three whistles, I will yell and pull you back by your shirt because this is a dangerous sport.”

We all listen. I watch Braden out of the corner of my eye. I see the signs. Covering his eyes with his hair, looking down, shifting around, complaining about the fit of his glove, not being able to put on his finger grip. I repeat the directions to him, slowly and calmly. He listens to me, but the coach says, “No mom – you can’t help him. He has to do it by himself. He needs to pay attention, stop being silly.”

He’s never silly, I think to myself.

“How old is he – isn’t he eight? An eight year old can do this,” the coach says.

“Watch what I’m doing and copy me,” I whisper to him. I know how much he wants this.

He says, “I can’t do it. The glove hurts. Where do I go. I don’t know what to do.”

I’m getting worried, his voice is getting higher – do I just quit now or do I let him keep trying? Will I be giving up on him if I suggest we just sit and watch the girls? I know he will freak out if I say we need to quit now. Sometimes there’s very little time between happily focused and overwhelm.

His body melts onto the archery room floor and the teacher barks that he is no longer welcome in the class.

He has Asperger’s Syndrome and I’m learning more each day about how to help him. He’s smart and capable of so many things that I’m often caught off guard by the things he has trouble with. By getting away from the computer, I was hoping for more balance in his life, but I realize we’re not out of balance because he loves to play computer games – we’re out of balance because other things are so hard for him.

Margaret is a mom to three wonderful kids in Austin, TX. They have been unschooling for six years and find it still so interesting and exciting that she has decided to to put her passion for alternative education together with her love of writing in a blog that she hopes “people will learn from and enjoy.”

January 21 – A Daughter, Sand Angels, and the Sun

by Tania Pryputniewicz

I woke curmudgeonly grumpy from a tangle of blankets, one son’s knees grazing my spine, husband and Husky hugging the far wall. At my feet, my middle son. Parallel to the bed on the floor, my twelve year old daughter, hair smothered by pillows as I turned off the alarm. Transplanted from northern to southern California, I should have been overjoyed after three years of two-city living without my husband to be reunited under one roof.

But I’d acquired a hyper-vigilance due to raising our children alone–a “too-little-to-go-around” self whose reaction to any sentence starting with, “Mom” opened with, “What?…can’t you see I’m….” x, y, z. My daughter, with infinite patience last year, drew note after note decorated with rainbow letters, “Can I come down for tea with you tonight?” Fatigued, as hard as I tried, I felt locked in internal sorrow, afraid I’d never rise above our circumstances to be larger of heart.

I feel my shortcomings as a mom most intensely in relation to my daughter. Because we are both firstborns? Female? Because her brothers’ needs seem easier? I only know I’m more conflicted with her. And she has no qualms about letting me know how I’ve failed her. Which took me to some dark places last year (given the struggle to raise the children, work, hold down the fort, and stave off the ever present poet’s dream of writing a poem worthy of eternity).

But even as we wrangled, I understood the only way was “through”–not over, not around, not under, but through. The sun would rise; I’d try again. Some nights we had tea; others I deferred to stacks of student papers, dishes, or her brothers, especially during the month the littlest broke his elbow and needed surgery.

We’ve only been in the new city for two weeks, but my shoulders have dropped several inches now that two adults absorb the field of the kids’ needs. The one place that soothes all of us remains the ocean, mercifully close by here as it was up north, so instinctively, we keep the ritual.

Within moments, I’m photographing patterns–the retreating waves make sand angels below each beached pebble everywhere I look. My girl comes abreast of me and delights in the find. My husband salvages a purple bucket and one tiny green plastic soldier; the boys catapult down the sand dunes. The Husky runs leashless in wide arcs, nipping at the waves.

Dusk finds my daughter and I walking together. She’s willowy, lovely, inching towards adolescence. Hard to believe soon she’ll yearn less and less for my attention. I ask her to stop long enough for a double self-portrait. Finally, we get it right, shoulder to shoulder, positioning the setting sun so it crowns half of her face. We found that when you tilt just far enough apart, the light of the sun breaks into a gold-red fan of spokes across both faces like a blessing.

Tania lives in southern California with her husband, three children, husky, and two disoriented housecats still recovering from the move. A poet by night (MFA, Iowa Writers’ Workshop) and a writing teacher by day, she is heading into her second year of teaching Transformative Blogging for SCN (next class starts February 4th) and is writing a book for women bloggers.

January 15 – Kitchen Window Thoughts

by Laurinda Wheeler

This morning I caught myself, as I often do, staring out the kitchen window as I puttered my way around; washing dishes, putting things away and tidying the counters. My mind began to drift as I realized that what I was seeing is not my own, in many ways, nor is it what I wish to see.

I wish for the simpler times; simpler in ways that seem to justify the hard, back breaking, painful side that also fully encompassed that life. Worries and concerns that were, perhaps, life threatening, changing, but real. Work, a lot of it, that fostered true appreciation for what was had, held, cherished, consumed.

I think about how different, how special, beautiful and healthy this world could be if only things were just a little simpler, not to be confused with easier.

Later, as I walked down the street, a quick trip to the corner store, my mind was still challenging the world, weaving words together, thoughts I wanted to get out, when I began to take in the sounds of cars that were passing by; the whiiiirs of motors, the constant whispers, shelu, shelu, shelu, as tires tread through the muck of melting snow, the sudden blast of muffled music as a car speeds past.

And then, I was standing in the middle of an intersection, having been narrowly missed by a car that had mindlessly sped through the red light, as it came to a stop only two feet beside me.

The thoughts swirling around my mind cemented as truth.

The way that we are living should be different…

…it should be nothing like this!

Laurinda is a Stay at Home, Homeschooling Mom who is always trying to find time to write. She is also a contributor in SCN President, Pat LaPointe’s recent book, The Woman I’ve Become.

January 14 – A CALL FOR HELP

by Patricia Roop Hollinger

“God, I am not in the mood for a formal prayer, but I need HELP!” This was my plea as I lay in my bed while my left shoulder throbbed with pain.

This was the same throbbing pain I experienced in my right hip as a result of Lyme’s disease. Within the span of three months a perfectly formed and functional hip dissolved into “mush.” Using a walker had become my method for mobility. After yet another MRI the technician exclaimed, “I don’t know how you are even walking with a walker.” The pain was controlled with Vicodin. Hip replacement surgery was scheduled ASAP.

I wasn’t even able to consider having a shoulder replacement.

With 7 hungry cats weaving in and out of my legs as bacon was frying for breakfast there was a “knock, knock, knock” on the kitchen door. “Who would be knocking on our door at this hour?” I exclaimed.

With reluctance I opened the door. “Hi!” said the familiar voice of Tony. “I just wondered if you needed any help.” I threw my arms around him and exclaimed, “So, you received the prayer request!”

Tony was my “lawnmower, fix whatever” person. This was the first time he arrived without first receiving a phone call from me. The cats and the bacon had to wait.

“My shoulder is killing me, my husband is ill and the lawn needs mowing” I exclaimed frantically. “But….you must know that there are deer tick back here in the woods. Cover up, spray yourselves with DEET.”

“Butch has already had Lymes,” Tony said matter of factly. “Lost his sight in one eye. Would have the other if I hadn’t found a Lyme’s literate M.D. in Hanover, PA.”

“What’s his name, phone number, address?” I cried, as I ran for a paper and pencil.

As soon as I had the necessary information I called the M.D., made an appointment and was treated successfully with 6 months of antibiotics accompanied by supplements and probiotics. My pain subsided and I have had no ensuing symptoms of the dreaded Lyme’s Disease.

Most of my prayers have not been answered so dramatically, but no one can tell me divine intervention was not at work that day.

Patricia has been a Chaplain/Pastoral Counselor/Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor for 23 years at same hospital where once was a consumer. “Seeker of the “truth” which has set me free. Third marriage to high school heartthrob 2010 the best yet. Musician, voracious reader and hopeful writer. Cats a must.”

January 12 – One Rainy Day in the Life of a California School Teacher

by Lisa Rizzo

Standing in the doorway, I watch the rain pour down. The gutter has come loose again, and a waterfall gushes right outside my classroom door. If it weren’t for the eave overhead, I would be drenched now, completely at the mercy of the water forming puddles on the uneven concrete. I stand outside in the rain because 60 years ago when this school was built in Northern California, someone had the bright idea of long banks of classrooms joined by covered walkways exposed to the elements.

The door to my classroom has recently begun to stick a little when opening, and I know that this means the screws at the bottom of the door are coming loose. I am an expert because this has happened two times in the past. Soon the door will either refuse to open or close–whichever action comes at the moment when the screws give way. Then I will be forced to call the district maintenance guys again, and they will put wood putty in the holes and re-screw the door. This will solve the problem for a couple more years before the whole process will have to be repeated. Just like the gutter that streams waterfalls outside my door.

Last year the maintenance guys spent days welding the gutter seams together as if their puny efforts could hold against the pressure of water pushing against the steel. The welds held last winter when we got only 37% of our normal rainfall, but this year the rains have already fallen long and hard. Nature is winning.

Standing in the doorway, I can see that the enormous puddle in the middle of the courtyard is growing. In the 22 years I have taught at this school, after each storm the water pools. Long ago the drains filled with roots from the bottlebrush tree that grows there. Every year when the water rises, unwary students slosh through it–sometimes above their ankles–until they learn to find a detour around it. I tell them we call this Lake Rizzo.

This year the leaks in the walkway roof are getting worse and it is harder to pass from one hallway to another without getting wet–without a stray drop down the back of my neck or in my eye.

And it is all this that makes this day seem almost unbearable. I might find the pressures of trying to teach in a beleaguered public school system more tolerable if I could walk down the hallway or stand at the door to greet my students and stay dry.

Lisa Rizzo is the author of In the Poem the Ocean (Big Table Publishing). Her work has appeared in such journals as 13th Moon, Earth’s Daughters, Bellowing Ark and Calyx, as well as her blog Poet Teacher Seeks World. She won 1st prize in the 2012 BAPC Poetry Contest. By day she teaches middle school in Northern California.