Essay Excerpt from an application for AROHO Gift of Freedom Award for women writers

I will introduce this excerpt with a little context. I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust.  My parents, recent immigrants, bought a farm, hoping to be close to other "greena" (roll the "r"), the Yiddish word for refugees. As it turns out, my childhood unfolded in a virulently anti-Semitic pocket of rural New Jersey.  I was desperate for friends, but as the only Jew and quite an anomaly in my elementary school and even on our road, I had none.  The story I reference below is the first I ever wrote—at the age of seven. It was about two girls, the first rejecting the second who wanted so much to be her friend but was so terribly different from the first.

Essay Excerpt:

I was making my way to the sad but true ending when it struck me: I could write whatever ending I wanted.  In my own stories I could be like God.  I could make anything happen. The girls could become friends. It was an extraordinary discovery.  Not only did I have the power to invent happier endings than in real life, I could create worlds where people expressed kindness, love, and respect for each other.  Not too much later, I learned something perhaps even more remarkable, another pivotal, even life-saving discovery about writing.  Not only could I make things up, I could tell the truth.

            I had learned by then not to share either my troubles or my joys with my parents. It was best not to risk adding to their burdens of grief and guilt for having survived the Holocaust.  So when the children on the school bus searched my head for horns, because their parents told them Jews are devils, I wrote about it.  And when my third grade teacher ordered me to stand in front of the class on Passover and eat Wonder Bread or else, I wrote about that.  I wrote about everything that happened around me and within me.  I wrote freely, addressing the one I believed was safe to tell and who would be glad to listen.  The ultimate guardian of secrets and my best friend, God, the one I called HaShem, The Name, became my confidante.  HaShem was the invisible presence to be found in gleaming stars, in my dog’s eyes, in the moon, the night’s silence—everywhere, offering me consolation and company in a world wrapped in fear and struggle.  In my writing, I could talk about fear, without dreading that my words would hurt my parents.  And I could write about joy, despite the fact that I believed I had no right to it. Under my pillow with a flashlight sneaked from the kitchen, I wrote about spinning naked in the meadow until falling down in the tall sizzling grass, happy—in spite of The War.

Writing has always been my lifeline.  It is not only the way I express my deepest thoughts and feelings, it is the way I find out what they are.  Writing is a way to meet myself in my own heart.  Words are the vessels in which I carry the treasure discovered there, beautiful or not, to the world.  The eagerness and inner excitement with which I awaited learning to write, still accompany me over fifty years later, as I approach the blank page, and the blank screen.  Words are no less wondrous to me now….

Between the ages of 10 and 12, I attended a Hebrew Day School, where one of my teachers, an ecstatic Hassidic rabbi, taught Torah standing on top of his desk.  We would explore one word or phrase in Hebrew for hours, holding and turning the words like multifaceted jewels to see what they reflected in the light of our understanding.  The Rabbi often had tears of awe in his eyes as we did this.  I had moist eyes too, which I tried to hide from my classmates stifling their giggles at our rabbi’s eccentricity.  Words continue to be the most mysterious, miraculous, and attractive “objects” in my world.   No pleasure, play, or work is more sublime than choosing and arranging them to convey meaning, beauty, and inspiration.  

  

Weeds and Peonies by Donald Hall

I was led to this poem recently—a beauty!  Said to be the first poem that the poet, Donald Hall, was able to write after the loss of his wife, the stunning poet, Jane Kenyon.  Praise the poets of the ages compelled to hold ineffable experiences in the containers of words then share them.  (And lest you forget, there is a poet within each of us.)

Weeds and Peonies

by Donald Hall

(from his collection: Without: Poems 1999)

.

Your peonies burst out, white as snow squalls,

with red flecks at their shaggy centers

in your border of prodigies by the porch.

I carry one magnanimous blossom indoors

and float it in a glass bowl, as you used to do.

.

Ordinary pleasures, contentment recollected,

blow like snow into the abandoned garden,

overcoming the daisies.  Your blue coat

vanishes down Pond Road into imagined snowflakes

with Gus at your side, his great tail swinging,

.

but you will not reappear, tired and satisfied,

and grief’s repeated particles suffuse the air–

like the dog yipping through the entire night,

or the cat stretching awake, then curling

as if to dream of her mother’s milky nipples.

.

A raccoon dislodged a geranium from its pot.

Flowers, roots, and dirt lay upended

in the back garden where lilies begin

their daily excursions above stone walls

in the season of old roses.  I pace beside weeds

.

and snowy peonies, staring at Mount Kearsarge

where you climbed wearing purple hiking boots.

“Hurry back.  Be careful, climbing down.”

your peonies lean their vast heads westward

as if they might topple.  Some topple.

What is it about losing a mother?

I was re-reading some posts in a blog I started almost exactly a year ago shortly after my mom's death.  (The blog is Speaking of Miracles. www.speakingofmiracles.com) I shall post something here that was posted there a year ago to the day.

"What is it about losing a mother?  Here I am, doing some work and I come across a picture of my mom eating a meal on a sunny balcony with my oldest son.  I stare at her smiling and then realize, or is it feel: she's dead.  My mother is dead.  It is more a feeling than a statement.  An irretrievable part of me is gone even if my belief is that her spirit is not gone.  Nonetheless, something profound and unnameable has been lost--a loss unlike any other I have known.  This does not mean that I will not recover.  But I will not be the same." 

I warmly invite anyone who has lost their mother to address the question "What is it about losing a mother?"  (Write in any manner, including stream-of-consciousness writing).  If you would like to share this, please click below on "comment. It would be wonderful to hear some of your responses.  If you post a comment and do not wish it to be public, just let me know.  I will see it before it is published and can simply indicate that it not be made public.

"Getting Cozy" with Teenagers

I sit in a room with seven young women between the ages of 14 and 17.  It is a Sunday afternoon and they have come to my home, (the location of the Dance of the Letters Writing Center), to write.  We call these afternoons, "Getting Cozy."  This is a bunch who could easily have "I'd rather be writing" bumper stickers on their cars if they had cars.  It is deep winter in New England and a perfect day to hunker down with writing.  But then, isn't most any day?  

I have offered a few sparks to inspire today's writing.  The primary spark was to play the girls a video of the Starbucks Love Project, in which people from 156 nations, sang "All You Need is Love" on the same day in December of 2009. (For every voice, Starbucks and (RED) donated money to buy and distribute medicine for aids therapy in Africa.)  The reflection of our stunning human diversity and the hope of our unity never ceases to inspire me and moved the girls today as well.  starbucksloveproject  

The silence in a room of people all focussed on what they are creating moment to moment is incomparable.  It is one of my favorite energy fields, (this and being in the midst of a group of meditators). I hear pencils scratching across pages, the tapping of keys. There is pausing and staring into space, then resuming.  In a half hour's time, we will have created what did not exist when we entered the room and first sat together.  Small universes are being created out of "the blue."  

In a few moments, we will read to each other, bearing witness to the emergence of people, places, ideas, fantasy, emotion, and more.  We will be stirred by suspense, laugh together, and feel deeply touched.  Our curiosity will be aroused along with our amazement.  Listening, we will again and again, appreciate the infinite powers of the unleashed imagination, given full permission (and gladly invited) to do its thing. 

There really is no place that I would rather be.

Here's a mind stopping question that can generate some writing, perhaps stream of consciousness.  A question to revisit and write about on different days, in varied states of being.  Maybe after a deep, still meditation.  Or after an exhilarating walk or run.  Could be great to sit down for 10 minutes, less or more, and write after making love or right after an intimate encounter with a friend, your child, a tree.  Come to the statement & question with discomfort, anger, fear.   Here goes.  I thank my friend, Jayanti, for handing this to me last night:


We are all one.  What does this mean to you?


Take a few breaths.  Be present.  Write beyond spiritually-correct answers. 

The Beginning

Almost the end of January in New England, and it's pouring today.  To the right and left of my house, sudden ponds form from the combined snowmelt and ceaseless heavy rain.  Strong winds wrestle the pines and hemlocks visible from my window.  The weather on the days I gave birth to each of my three children is vivid: the glory of peak foliage celebrating my first son's arrival; verdant spring when my daughter emerged, and a frozen, brilliantly white winter the morning my third came—his arrival an unforgettable unity of tumultuous and miraculous.  Then again, what birth is not to some degree a blend of tumult and miracle?

Today, in a climate of unseasonable warmth and rain rains, this blog is coming into the light—a dormant seed sprouting from a subterranean, fertile darkness.  The desire to share the joys of writing, particularly journaling, has finally made its way to the surface.

In this ever-expanding container, a virtual basket, I shall gather and share the harvest of a half century love-affair with writing.  This ever-new, intimate relationship just gets more satisfying and delicious as time comes on.  I welcome you to the feast.

Pull up a chair and a journal, laptop, or whatever you writing implement of choice, and join me in harvesting the feast of your life.