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Back to the Beginning

photo: Flauschige Frühlingsboten, Fluffy spring messengers by Hansjörg Keller on Unsplash

Today I returned to one of my favorite circles of writers, the senior citizens at Harwood Place, who invited me to lead a writing class nine years ago when I was very green as a teacher. Some of the writers at the time, despite their age, were very green at putting their stories to the page. But over the year, and the next several years, we grew together.

We wrote about our mothers.

We explored cloth and memory.

We reflected on the spaces we inhabit.

We celebrated each other.

My god, how I love – and have loved – these men and women.

After covid hit and everything shut down and I spent almost two years away from them, I got busy with so many other projects that I didn’t think I would have time to spend teaching the group\ once the doors opened up again to volunteers. But in August I got a phone call from Mary D. who asked if I might come back. I pretended to have to think about it, but really, I knew I would return. Not only because Mary is all sweetness and joy and smiles wrapped up in one tiny, soft-spoken, beautiful-with-her-white-hair woman and saying no to her is impossible, but also because spending time with this group fills my cup in so many ways.

If we have learned anything from covid, it’s that life is short and some things are not that important. Other things, however, sustain us, heal us, connect us, carry us forward.

There were several faces missing today, some who more recently have moved on (Chuck, Val, Mary L., you are greatly missed) and another who couldn’t make it downstairs to class. So when we finished our hour together, I walked up to see Betty. She’s been a staple in the group for years. She’s always been a strong woman in voice and has brought so many fun and inspiring stories to the table. If I’d known Betty decades ago, I would have followed in the wake of her spirit and energy. She’s written flash fiction, a children’s book, and poetry, and I asked if I could share one of her newer poems, written in during the fallout of covid, as a testament to her creative spirit and the inspiration these writers continue to offer each time I visit.

She graciously said yes and let me take her photo, too 🙂

Some Poems Demand To Be Heard by Betty Sydow

The writing group is postponed once more.
But poets always keep words in store.
To rhyme for any occasion–
And do so with little persuasion.

The writing closet in my mind
is just the place where I can find
words and phrases soon to be
starring in my poetry.

They all fly off that closet’s shelf.
My poem writes itself.

Stories connect us, they reunite us, with them we rebuild our history and stake claim to the missing pieces of our memory. In fact, that’s the prompt I left with them this month — missing, a prompt inspired by the words of Beth Kephart in her chapter, “Remembering to Remember,” from her new book, We Are The Words.

The story of me (of you, of us) is elastic. We will never completely know ourselves. We will never flawlessly remember. We will perpetually adjust our assessments, appraisals, announcements, analyses — or we will if we are genuine memoirists.

~ from “Remembering to Remember”

When you go back to the beginning, when you return to the blank page after a long hiatus of writing, don’t worry about what’s been dormant for so long (mind or pen). Don’t worry about what may be hidden behind the clouds of age or, say, too much fun in your twenties. Grab onto the first word, the first image, and let your pen guide you. Your poem, your story, will write itself.

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Listening, Writing, Thinking

from Ojibwe.net, Traditional Songs, sung by Margaret Noodin

There is a place, there is always a place, to which you return, in mind or in spirit or in the movement of your own two feet, where you rest a moment and appreciate the quiet, the solitude. Just you. And the water.

The yellowed leaf from a cottonwood tree, its tip pointing south, the whole of it — blade and stem — riding the current between this stone and that, until it comes to rest beside you, between rock and moss.

Granddaughter.*
The water can hear you.
The water has memory.

The water trickles by. The sun warms your back. The wind on your neck, relief.

Oh I am thinking.**
Oh I am reminded.

How far you have come. How far you have yet to go.

*Granddaughter …. from Sing the Water Song.
**Oh I am thinking … from Nindinendam

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Begin again.

I might have cried, but for the moon and for the thought of you tracing the places we once had been, the person I had promised you I’d be.

~ from Journey: a traveler’s notes by William Sulit and Beth Kephart

On the flight home to Texas, you realize just how long it’s been. Since you’ve flown. Since you’ve seen your father, your sisters, your mother’s sister, those who know you best. Of course, it feels like forever, but it’s only been two years. Still, you are not the same person you were when they saw you last. When you last saw them.

Of course, there’s the pandemic, where you’ve been forced to slow down and take in more of what was right in front of you. But in the last two years, you lost your footing in a few places, got back up bruised, fractured, heart worn and weary. The bruises heal. The fractures dredge up an old pain you thought you had put to rest. Where weariness sets in is during the weeks of stepping gingerly, barely breathing. There was the month of anger. Of course, anger. And to measure it by a month isn’t entirely correct; anger, like grief, comes in waves and is marked by varied lengths of intensity.

This pandemic was nothing.

When the weather warms and the restrictions ease, you open the door, step outside. The yard is beat up, in front and in back, and full of dandelions. You gather your spade buried somewhere deep in the garage and begin carving out each one that has taken root, like you might cut around a festering sore. You pray for forgiveness. Dandelions, after all, have merit. This simple act of attention becomes a meditation so, of course, you stay outside longer than you had planned. You dream about summer, schedule a long visit with family, buy the plane tickets.

You are greeted at the airport by your sister who looks just like your mother, so much so that your heart skips and you whisper, Thank you.

She chauffeurs you for miles to each cornerstone (because there is more than one). It’s strange to feel lost in the place where you grew up. The roads have changed – names and directions, are still changing. But when you take the wheel, you take your time and drive with the windows down.

The rush of the Texas heat, the sound of your cousin’s laughter, the spirit of your kids and the joy as they tap into your roots (why have you kept them away for so long?), the wide-open spaces, your father’s tender heart, the words of your aunt who says, Your mother would be proud.

There it is. Everything you need to begin again.