I get it!

Yesterday was trending downward in spite of all the natural beauty around me. I’m a creature of comfort and I wasn’t comfortable. I am embarrassed to admit that I literally stomped out of a restaurant last night, hangry.

This morning didn’t start well either. I was sleepy this morning after being awake last night—a combo of someone snoring (ahem), water so hard in the shower that you had to chip it out of the faucet, crappy coffee and no coffee cups. Seriously, who services a room with thin plastic glasses and no cups for the coffeemaker?

I found good coffee in big mugs at the Madeline Island School of the Arts and settled into a place around the big table where today’s workshop unfolded. No, wrong word—(and my instructor, Allison K Williams, emphasized the importance of choosing the right word or phrase.) The workshop was an assault of information fed by firehose. I couldn’t take notes fast enough. She opened me up to so many new concepts, ideas, possibilities, resources. I was exhausted by our first break.

There are the usual personalities in class: the Know-It-All, the person who isn’t aware of social cues and never stops talking about a personal tangent and the person who thinks while she talks. But there were so many great resources among the group, asking just the right question, pulling me aside with useful suggestions and encouragement. I had my one-on-one consultation with the instructor this afternoon and rattled on like a physic woodpecker primed by the avalanche of ideas from her instruction. I didn’t even make sense to myself, but sounded like I was 40 again and confident that I’d work it out.

While I was in class today my husband did some exploring and located a tiny grocery that helped us make lemonade out of lemons. I did a grocery run after class and returned with smoked whitefish, Boursin cheese, crackers and chilled wine for dinner in our room. We had cookies for dessert. It wasn’t gourmet or close to nutritional, but it was better than swatting flies and breathing grease fumes like last night’s fiasco. I also borrowed two mugs from the school for this week’s coffee and will return them on Friday morning. He scored some extra coffee, soap and shampoo from the motel to get us to Friday. I talked non-stop about the workshop tonight as we grazed and he cheered me on.

I not only can do this, but I now have a list of ideas for writing projects and the enthusiasm to pursue them. Who said an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

Road Trip

It was an inauspicious start to a road trip. Tornado sirens wailed at 10:30 jostling us out of bed the night before we were to hit the road. We sat in the basement for a half hour watching the radar and then returned to bed unable to fall back to sleep. We anticipated an easy 5 hour drive to Hurley Wisconsin where we’d spend the night before continuing on to Bayfield Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Superior. From there we’d take the car ferry to Madeline Island where I’d attend my writer’s workshop and my husband would enjoy the island for a week.

We loaded the car and pretended to be wide awake and ready to go. The first hour went well and then we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic in Madison Wisconsin. A huge lighted marquee on the side of the road warned us that “the left two lanes are blocked.” Obviously, this wasn’t a recent occurrence, but a chronic issue. We never saw a blockage, but traffic merging from both sides of the heavy traffic slowed us to a crawl. An hour later we covered two miles and then traffic opened up again.

We entered north country—land of Days Inns, Pizza Huts, taxidermy shops, fishing guides and bait stores. The drive through small towns took longer than expected and we were glad that we decided to break the trip into two days. We spent the night in Hurley Wisconsin and inadvertently joined the Class of 73 class reunion in the one popular restaurant in town. They were loud! My husband and I had what might be our last decent meal of the trip while we attempted conversation in sign language. I had fresh walleye, which was delicious.

The next morning I went down to breakfast before my husband was awake. I passed the desk clerk who was wielding a fly swatter—not the invitation to breakfast I hoped for. I grabbed some coffee and a yogurt and went back to the room. We hit the road again around nine and arrived in Bayfield about the time that the shops opened there. Spent several hours browsing in bookstores and galleries before having lunch on a restaurant deck that overlooked the water. We were warned that food options were limited on Madeline Island so we stopped into an IGA and bought bottled water (me) and Pepsi (him). We should have bought food.

After lunch we got in line for the small ferry that took us over to Madeline Island. The trip lasted 25 minutes. Unfortunately, our car was in the very front and our view was obstructed by the deck that the ferry attendant lowered once we were ready to depart. We spent the trip staring at a wall in front of us and too hemmed in by the cars on each side to see much else.

The town of La Pointe on Madeline Island consists of about three restaurants (hours vary), a yacht club, a convenience store and a post office. Our room wasn’t ready until 3 so we drove as far around the island as we could without taking gravel roads. The weather was gorgeous and the scenery is beautiful. There are a lot of simple houses and trailers tucked into the woods or bordering the lakeshore once you leave the town.

Our home away from home for the week is a spacious, clean room near the west shore of the island where I hope we will see some great sunsets. I went to a meet ‘n’ greet for my workshop on Sunday at 6. The facility is really well appointed and will make a nice setting for the workshop. There are two quilting workshops running at the same time as my writing workshop. The meet ‘n’ great was for all participants. I met my instructor for the week and a couple other writers. We all shared some wine and cheese and heard the operations person for the school outline what to expect for the week.

I went back to our room to find my husband doing what he usually does at home—“reading stuff” on his computer. I convinced him to go with me to find dinner. Finding dinner was harder than expected. All the outdoor tables at the restaurant closest to us were occupied by people who looked like they planned on staying. We were seated inside after a long wait. The ventilation system in the open kitchen is poor and the whole building smelled like stale, burnt grease. The air quality was worse than the recent Canadian wildfire smoke. The flies liked it, however. We killed two at our table while waiting for service that never arrived. We left and went downtown to check out the other two restaurants that were open. We ended up getting takeout and sitting on a patio. The food wasn’t good. We’ve already eliminated two of the three restaurants that are dependably open on the island.

I start my workshop today anxious to meet the other participants and see how the instruction will unfold. My instructor said a few words at the meet ‘n’ greet yesterday. What I remember is: “You arrived with a draft. Some of it is probably great, some good. This week we will get rid of the good.” Okay then. After class my husband and I will see what the grocery/convenience store on the island has to offer. We didn’t prepare well for a week of eating in our room. Not sure how well I will be able to write if I’m hangry. I’m hoping the sunsets are inspiring.

Ready or not

I haven’t posted much lately. The Summer’s been busy. We’ve had celebrations and babysitting duty in Illinois. We hosted four 18 year-old girls here for three nights when they attended Country Thunder. There were nights out at the Belfry Theater, a reunion of high school friends and their spouses at a brewery in the cornfield near here and several dinners out with friends. But I spent most of my time this Summer writing, working on a document for my upcoming writer’s workshop on Madeline Island.

My husband and I leave in the morning for a week there. I’ve never been to a writer’s workshop before and I’m nervous. The instructor emailed me with a description of the time we will spend together as a group of 12 next week. She asked for a reply describing what I was working on and what stage it was in. How do you politely tell a stranger, an expert in her field, that you’re only 30,000 words into a train wreck? She was supportive in her reply. I’m hanging onto that. She lined up a group text so all the participants could introduce themselves. I’m pretty sure that I’m the oldest participant, as well as the greenest writer. There is one male in the group. Eight of us are working on memoir.

I chose to write a memoir of my childhood. In part, to experience the process that I’ve been supporting as a ghostwriter to capture the memories of residents of my over-55 community in Arizona. But, I’ve also been reminiscing a lot myself and I wanted to write about my experience growing up as a female in the 1960s in a small Midwest town. As always, I hoped that the content would be relatable to others.

I’ve never had such a hard time writing! I’m sure part of that difficulty has to do with the fact that my work will be exposed to other writers who know what they are doing, but I didn’t realize how hard it would be to relive my youth and put those memories into words. I worked hard to find a balance. Could I portray myself and others objectively and capture both the good and the bad realistically? Some of those memories are stories I’ve been telling for decades. Where was the truth in the nostalgia? I’d hate to know how many hours I’ve spent hammering this document that I feel okay about one minute and hate the next. This morning I’m pretty sure it’s garbage.

I’m so grateful for my friends—the ones who not only read what I write, but offer words of support and encouragement. I had one friend send me a packet of info on the area where the workshop will be held along with recommendations from the trip he took there with his wife. Another friend sent me a book on Haunted Wisconsin that describes the spirit life on Madeline Island. She bookmarked the relevant chapter with an illustration of a skeleton. Other friends acknowledged my vulnerability and offered praise for things I wrote before and added, “you can do this.”

I’ll spend today washing clothes, packing and making one final revision before we head out tomorrow. I woke up in the middle of the night realizing that the story I really need to tell didn’t happen in the timeframe I’m focusing on now, but happened in my 40s and 50s. The current story is a prelude, a warm up. I’ve already learned so much from the work I did over the last few months to prepare for this workshop.

Next week will just be the frosting on the cake. I’m looking forward to the beauty of Madeline Island, the cooler temperatures and a week away with my husband. The process of writing the memoir has been a search for what I’ve learned over the course of my life and how I’ve grown. Next week will be another chapter.

Wasted

I had dinner with some younger friends the other night. One of them, who has been a teacher for over 20 years, said she recently signed up for a certification program to become a personal trainer and also joined a volunteer fire department. Wow! Big changes and a big commitment. She is clearly rethinking the path she’s been on for years and craving a new direction. She’s in great physical shape. I could see her doing both things well. She went on to have second thoughts about the certification, though, saying, “Here I go again. I won’t make much money.”

I thought about something I read recently that said, “don’t waste a mid-life crisis.” I thought about friends years ago, who discarded spouses and careers midlife, and still ended up miserable. You can’t reboot a life as easily as you can unfreeze a computer. Change—without some deep reflection about what really matters to you—will stay superficial and won’t get you any farther ahead no matter how different the new version of you looks on the outside. It’s easy to know what we don’t want. It’s a lot harder to understand what really makes us happy.

A “midlife crisis“ can happen at any point in life. Life constantly provides triggers, opportunities for us to reevaluate where we are headed and to course correct. Those triggers sometimes arrive on an individual level as a result of loss—death of someone close to us, marital discord, getting fired, a health scare. Or, we experience a collective reckoning like 9/11 or the pandemic that begs that we take stock of how we are living. Many of us make vows to change when we are in the midst of a crisis, but scramble to return to the status quo, even knowing that reality fails to support our best selves.

There’s never a shortage of wake-up calls, but the willingness to dig deep and realign to values, is rare. We want change…as long as we don’t have to. My friend needs to decide what it is that she is looking for and what she is willing to give up to have it. If wealth is a core value and is driving the change, she doesn’t need to give up her goal of being a personal trainer, she just needs to make sure that she has a sound business plan. The factors precipitating a change in her life are complex. She’s disillusioned with the educational system, newly divorced, financially recalibrating. Maybe my friend needs to find a better-paying career, one that excites her again and also allows for her to spend more time in the gym. It’s easy to be seduced by a quick fix, but meaningful change only comes from understanding what you really need and being willing to let go of the versions of yourself that you’ve outgrown.

“Wanna fly? You gotta give up the shit that weighs you down.”

Toni Morrison in Song of Solomon

The trick is understanding what needs to go.

Cheers

My younger son and his wife recently returned home from a Florida vacation that they shared with old friends from Texas. They had a great time. His comment was, “I wish they lived next door. We don’t have friends here to just hang out with.” His comment came to mind as I read an article in The Atlantic yesterday by Allie Conti about “third places”—what she labels “physical spaces for serendipitous, non-productive conversations.” Hanging out. A lost art.

People used to find those spaces in their neighborhoods: on their front porches, stoops, in pubs, taverns, beer gardens. Then, the majority of us holed up with immediate family on our decks or patios or gathered around the TV set. I suspect that now, not even that happens. Instead we isolate on our electronic devices content with online conversation, text or other numbing diversions.

My hometown was a working man’s town. Taverns were an important part of the history of that blue collar town and they were more than a place to consume liquor. Each ethnic group, construction trade, union, or neighborhood had a favorite spot where the men gathered after a hard day’s work to have a drink with friends, relax or just “shoot the breeze” before heading home. Later, food was served in most establishments and women joined the clientele — sometimes popping in at lunchtime for a sandwich, other times joining their husbands for a “night on the town.” In 1959 there were 45 “taverns” listed in the city directory and many of them clustered along Main Street vying for the title of “best hot roast beef” or “ham salad sandwich.” Most of these taverns had elaborate wooden back bars, some of which I’m told remain intact today in the remaining taverns. They are beautiful examples of the craftsmanship that built our town and served as a backdrop for good conversation.

During my youth people dropped by our house on a regular basis. There was no calling ahead or scheduling a visit. If you showed up and it wasn’t an opportune time, no big deal, you went to the next house on the list of places where you were welcome. There was always a long list. I seldom remember an evening at home when someone didn’t come by. We were all richer for the time spent together.

I remember when COVID restrictions were just starting to lift and I felt comfortable resuming a somewhat normal routine. I was almost giddy exchanging small talk with the clerk in the grocery, the librarians in my little branch library in the village, the people I met on my walks. There was a built-up hunger to connect. There’s science behind that need that explains why a FaceTime call just doesn’t cut it. Our bodies release oxytocin—a feel good hormone—when we are face to face. We crave it.

I suspect my son felt the contrast from a week of hanging out with friends when he returned home to working online and sharing his home with his daughter who lives with her phone in her hand, a son who loves his video games and a wife who is best friends with Google and Amazon. An hour at the gym where everyone wears ear buds doesn’t cut it, nor does dropping in to Starbucks where patrons sip their lattes without looking up from their phones.

I’m doing an old person’s lament again for the good old days when people dropped by or gathered around the bar wanting nothing more than just the pleasure of each other’s company. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop in!

Gifts

I’ve been spending hours cranking away at a draft of a memoir of my childhood to use during the writer’s workshop coming up in a few weeks. I feel like I’m throwing spaghetti at the wall hoping that something will stick. Once I primed the pump, however, the memories flooded me and I can’t stop. I’ve captured 17,000 words, but it’s rough. I lack descriptive detail, insight and organization. The title of the workshop is “Second Draft.” I hardly feel like what I have qualifies as the price of admission.

I flew through the writing of the two novels that I self-published on Kindle in the last two years. It never takes me long to write a blog post either. But writing about my past as a potential book, isn’t easy. I had a great childhood for the most part, but as I write about it, I’m flopping between sappy sentimental anecdotes that can’t possibly have interest for anyone but me and the parts of my life that might be TMI. It’s like doing therapy on the page and it’s slow going. I got the dreaded “what are you working on” email from the workshop instructor this morning. I replied describing three works-in-progress and hope that she will direct me to one. In the meantime, I’ll keep reading classic memoirs looking for the key to writing a good one and I’ll keep cranking on mine.

The one insight that I pulled from days of recording memories had to do with the abundance of love and attention I was given as a child. I took my family for granted growing up, not realizing how unusual my circumstances were. I was surrounded by my grandparents on both sides and all of my great grandparents. A couple great grandparents died before I got to know them, but I have years of memories with others. My last great-grandmother died when I was a Junior in high school. My relationships weren’t superficial either. They all spent quality, one-on-one time with me.

I’m not sure where the memoir is going, if anywhere. I want it to be a relatable account of growing up female in the 1950s and 60s and finding my place in the world. I learn as I write. The first gift was understanding how fortunate I was to have an extended family involved in raising me. I plan to keep at it even if my instructor points me to a different project. I suspect that there are other valuable gifts waiting to be discovered, if only for me.

Treasures

I received a packet of letters and memorabilia from an old friend this week. He bought them at an estate sale. In the packet were letters from two sons to their mother sent while they served in the Army post-WWII. It also contained letters from the mother to them, from a wife of one of the men, letters from friends, a couple of greeting cards, receipts for a lawyer’s service during a divorce, the divorce decree, a restraining order, a birth certificate, check stubs from the military, orders to report for basic training, a brochure on the Wounded Knee monument, an ad for E-bonds and a guarantee for a set of silverware—the odds and ends of a family.

My friend sent the packet to me hoping that the materials would inspire a story. I spent a morning this week sorting through the materials, organizing them by type and date and then reading the letters. I tried to let the content fuel my imagination, untethered by detail, but my urge to research kicked in. In a matter of hours, I found most of the people on familysearch.org viewing census reports to see where they lived, when and with whom. I found obituaries and pictures of gravestones. I even located a picture of an empty lot where the family home once stood. I found information about the bases where both boys were stationed in Japan. I also found information about the town they returned home to, the companies that they worked for and clues about their lives after the period of time captured in the letters.

The community where they were raised had many similarities to the one I grew up in: located in central Illinois, near a river, coal put the town on the map. The people in the letters seemed familiar, too. They were simple people, hard working with a love for family and home. The mother wrote about canning, visiting with friends, the local gossip. The sons’ letter reflected their homesickness. One son went so far as suggesting how his mom could petition Washington D.C. to get him released from service. The wife’s letters were the most entertaining, full of affection calling her husband “Daddy” and using the slang of the late 40s—“well hot dog!”

There were three letters from a young woman, a friend of the mother’s, written from a TB sanitarium. I found an obituary that documented her death at 24–a few months after she wrote the letters pining for her three children and confused about why she was kept from them. I found evidence that the mother of the soldiers lost a third son who was only seven months old.

There’s definitely enough raw material in the packet to create a story, maybe several. My friend said he felt like he was intruding when he read the letters. I did too. Unearthing details about a family that isn’t mine felt voyeuristic. My writing projects are starting to pile up. I may put this one aside and let my unconscious digest the details for a while. I only hope that whatever I write honors the lives of the people I was privy to view.

Small Town 4th

I suspect that whatever version of a 4th of July celebration is lodged in your memories of childhood, it is the best. I’ve enjoyed firework celebrations in my neighborhood, near a lake, on the river, and once from a boat moored in Puget Sound. But nothing tops the annual fireworks that capped off a full day of celebration in my hometown.

My dad was an electrical contractor. His office fronted Main Street on the parade route. We’d gather in the air-conditioned office with most of my dad’s employees and their families to watch the parade from the large plate glass windows. Our parades went on for an hour or more—homemade floats with beauty queen riders, farm equipment, semi truck trailers pulling flatbeds, veterans marching in their too-tight uniforms, half-drunk Shriners weaving along the street on go-carts—and my favorite: the drum and bugle corps. Each year our town hosted a drum and bugle corps competition the evening before the parade. Many of the competing bands that came from all over the state would stay over to march in the parade. I was thrilled by their precision and strut. I felt the boom from their drums deep in my chest.

I usually had a younger sibling on my hip and watched down the street for the floats that had riders throwing candy into the crowd. I’d run out the front door just in time to set my little brother or sister on the sidewalk so he or she could grab a piece of candy. I had my own reward inside where a cold bottle of Coke was waiting in the small office fridge.

My dad gave me a couple dollars after the parade and I’d walk with friends to the city park that had been transformed into a carnival. We’d have a hot dog or cotton candy and carefully budget our money so we could ride the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Ferris Wheel. I loved being at the apex of the Wheel where I could look over the town and see as far away as the river. I never wasted my money on the games of chance like some of my friends did, but always reserved a nickel to buy some penny candy at the store on the way home.

The whole family piled in the car in the evening and jockeyed for a good parking spot near the ball field for the fireworks display. We’d get there early, sometimes bringing a picnic lunch or a cooler with cold fried chicken and potato salad. Dad let us put a blanket on the hood of the car and climb up there to get a prime view. I remember laughing at my little sister, who ducked every time an aerial display started its graceful descent like so many stars falling from the sky. They always blasted a rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” just before the grand finale. The sky filled with red, white and blue fireworks that looked like huge, sparkling flowers in the sky. They left us breathless and smiling, full of pride to be an American.

Times seemed so much simpler then. I can only go back to that time in my memory, but as I write this I can see an American flag flapping in the breeze on my front porch. I’m happy to have my memories of a small town 4th and I’ll always be proud to be an American because of the good people in all the small towns across our country.

Deadline

There’s a deadline looming. I’m attending a writer’s workshop the end of this month on Madeline Island in far north Wisconsin on Lake Superior. I’m supposed to have a draft of a book to take with me. I have two drafts and a vague concept for a third, but none of them seems workshop-worthy.

I have about 30,000 words in a document that I’m calling, Strange and Wonderful: The History Of My Marriages. It’s a string of funny anecdotes about my eccentric husband, to whom I was married twice, juxtaposed with angry memories of when things went off the rails. Both extremes are too harsh. I don’t want my husband to sound like a fool and I don’t want to come off as a shrew. Somewhere in there is a story of two strong personalities navigating marriage.

The second book is in an even rougher state. It’s a memoir that I’ve titled Common. I suspect that a lot of people at my age want to hit pause in the action and see what made sense in their lives. I’ve always been fascinated with life stories and claimed that “there are no ordinary lives.” Now that I’m trying to write about mine, it feels awfully ordinary, possibly boring.

As a warm-up to writing my memoir, I’ve been devouring the memoirs of others. I read four this past week. They were riveting. They had plots! But I wasn’t abused, addicted or raised by a mentally ill mother. I didn’t live in a war-torn country, question my sexual identity or walk the Pacific Coast Trail. I had what I think was a normal childhood. Yesterday I made a list of potential scenes for my memoir—just a brain dump of memories. It was a fun exercise, but nothing jumped out as a hook that would interest potential readers.

I read an article online this morning by the late William Zinsser, who was a well-known American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher. He suggested taking a list of memories one at a time, writing about one for several pages and then putting it away in a drawer and starting the next day on a different memory. He went on to suggest that once you have drawers full of work, you spread them out on the floor, see what draws you in and look for ways to organize your work. I can do that and started today with a memory of going to the cemetery with my grandmother one Decoration Day.

I read another article that suggested you start by getting clear on the theme of your memoir. Ah, that was the sticky place for me. I thought that people wrote memoir to derive the meaning of their lives. Was I supposed to know that in advance? I drove to pick up my grocery order at Walmart this morning, asking myself over and over, “what’s the theme in that long list of ordinary memories that I generated yesterday?” I now have a working theme—subject to revision based on my daily writing: “A small town girl can’t wait to get out in the world and make her mark, only to realize that she wants to go home again.” It’s a start.

The third book—that is just a vague concept right now—dropped in my lap serendipitously this week. An old friend told me that he bought some letters at an estate sale and was going to send them to me. The letters were from two sons to their mother during WWII. I laid awake one night envisioning ways to frame a book based on those letters. I also wondered if I could research the people through my genealogy sources to get a perspective of their lives beyond the letters. I worried about being able to write about the male experience, especially related to war. I’d have to find another way in. I’m hoping that the letters themselves will guide me.

I’ve never been to a writing workshop before and have no idea of what to expect. Will other participants arrive with polished manuscripts? Will the instructor see me or will I be just another old lady with a hobby? Will the instructor and the participants view my drafts as unworthy of serious review?

Regardless, this small town girl continues to make her way in the world and find her way home. I’m looking forward to a month of serious writing.