Uncategorized – Page 6 – Mary's Room With a View

HOPE

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Emily Dickinson

Hope is the first green-gold bud of spring on winter’s leafless limbs. To have a word for hope is a miraculous thing, for how else could we express the force that inspires us to move forward in times of despair? Some linguists argue that without a word for an emotion, you can’t express, maybe not even feel the emotion. I disagree, but I understand the clarity that comes with being able to say, “I hope…”

Hope is not expectation, the latter assuming some planning and reasonable certainty. For example, we wait to plant lettuces until the last frost has passed so we may, according to the seed package, expectabundant produce in 58 days. Hope ,on the other hand, takes over as a word of the imagination, so we plant in April’s cool earth, regardless of knowing there could be more frosts, even snow or ice. Nevertheless, I press the seeds, little flecks, into the cool, damp soil while I imagine June’s salad.

Because it is a word of the imagination, hope reaches for the poet’s tools – simile and metaphor. Emily Dickinson writes “Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” We see, in our mind’s eye, not an amorphous soul, but a small, fragile bird chirping in anticipation of attracting a mate, a bird so fragile it would be easy prey for my cat. Emily’s hope is one pounce away from extinction. Nonetheless, her poem moves to gratitude that hope comforts without expecting anything from her. True, it has none of the planning and preparation of expectation, but hope is not fragile. It holds us in our own sturdy hands above the grave.

When does Dickinson hear the hopeful bird song? She hears it in the gale or on the chillest land or the strangest sea. We are most aware of hope when our lives face challenge. It faces off against another strong emotion, despair. Hope was the flag that preceded the march of youth from Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School to the steps of their nation’s capital. Students did not march to scream their despair, like King Lear howling to the heavens. They marched to speak their young hope for a violence-free nation, and it is that hope that sings in the gale. Hope looks forward, not backward. Barack_Obama_Hope_poster Barack Obama based his drive to the presidency not on a slogan to “Make America Great Again”, but on hope. The Barack Obama “Hope” poster is an image of President Barak Obama. The image, designed by artist Shepard Fairey, was widely described as iconic.

It is President Obama’s version of hopethat connects with me in my seventy-fifth year. Words shift meanings when you enter the last couple decades of your life. My hopes are no longer so personal, though I may hope I don’t die of some long-drawn-out disease. I do know I will die, a knowledge I could shove aside in those years when my mirror didn’t offer me wrinkled skin and thinning hair. My hopes now are less personal and more universal. Having 75 years to look backwards, I have the courage to imagine 75 years forward in my absence. At a recent Seattle Arts and Lectures event, the host asked guest author Barbara Kingsolver where she found hope in today’s divided world. She replied that hope is a kind of energy she chooses to renew each day. To abandon hope, she would be abandoning her children, her grandchildren and the children of the world. Each day, as readily as pulling on her socks, she renews the energy of hope. I too renew hope in the storm for my grandchildren, for my planet. I may no longer imagine the June salad on my own dinner plate, but I can hope for food on the tables of a world where climate change has been acknowledged and ameliorated, where peoples around the world share the bounty of what each contributes.

April is almost here. I drive through the Suquamish Reservation to Hood Canal. The highway dips between stands of evergreens spaced by deciduous trees now wearing a yellow green hue, those fist buds on spare limbs, limbs that last week were winter stripped. The windshield wipers click rhythmically to clear steady rain. Like a chant, I hear the punctuated consonance of hope, hope, hope.

WHAT IS METAPHOR FOR?

Tell all the truth but tell it slant—

Success in Circuit lies –

Emily Dickinson

With metaphor, you know precisely what something is by explaining — if not exactly — then almost. You pinpoint a treasure by standing nearby. Long before Google, even before Johnson’s Dictionary, or the first written word, metaphorical thinking expanded the human world. I like to think of my cave sister explaining sex to her daughter when she ventures out to accept an invitation to mate. “Mating? It is like taking a long hike through unfamiliar woods with a person who will exhale his being into your being, like the wind that comes into our cave when we roll away the stone.” That may be a far-fetched example, but how else can a mother communicate the leaving home, then the joining of man and woman without using a comparison to something known? Such is the excitement of metaphor. It doesn’t travel alone into the unknown. It always has one foot in what we know so that we can extend the other foot into the unknown.

Metaphor is particularly useful for understanding abstractions, like TRUTH. Poets use metaphor for exactly that purpose. How do we communicate grief? It is both personal and universal. Archibald MacLeish writes in Ars Poetica, “For all the history of grief / An empty doorway and a maple leaf.” What profound absence he expresses in one metaphorical image, so that my heart hollows out with sadness as I picture that open doorway beyond which there is absence. In defining grief, a dictionary would settle for “deep, sadness, often lasting a long time.” The dictionary is accurate enough but cannot replicate the feeling of grief defined in MacLeish’s open door or the falling maple leaf.

My piano teacher explained to me how I should properly begin the music by Liszt that I was learning. He instructed me to first put my foot on the pedal, then slowly lift my hands to the keys — first the right, as the opening note is in the treble clef, then the left, joining it for the first chord.

“Think,” he said, “that you are giving a gift to the audience. Do you want to simply hand out the gift, or do you want to wrap it with a bow, then offer it? A polished performance is a beautifully wrapped gift.” Now as I play that first measure, I envision the notes, but I also see an exquisitely wrapped package. Without the metaphor, I might have played the measure correctly, but not with the same commitment his package metaphor describes.

In my church community, we regularly discuss how literally or metaphorically we read the Bible. Many Americans have left religion altogether because the Bible remains the cornerstone of churches, and in an empirical age, people will not subscribe to a belief in miracles such as virginal birth. Others, in some fundamentalist churches, turn off the reality button, permitting their literalism to deny what science disproves. The Bible itself abounds in contradictions, making “the word of God” as evasive as mercury spilled from a broken thermometer. For me, literal readings can make the Bible as shallow as a puddle in which we look no deeper than the reflection of our own face. Metaphorical readings expand in lakes and oceans, often feeding channels between islands no one mapped. Christ does not have to resurrect in the flesh, offering his wounds to Thomas or anyone else in doubt. Christ can “come again,” among his followers who, despairing his death, realize his teachings never left them, but will endure. Christ had risen!

For those of us who love to read and to write, metaphor is an engaging friend. I recently finished reading Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming. I will never be the First Lady of the United States and cannot possibly experience living in the White House for eight years when every move the family takes necessitates hovering protection from secret service agents. Even the windows of the White House are so thick that a helicopter landing on the roof cannot be heard from a top floor room. These are facts about Ms. Obama’s life there, but it was her metaphorical descriptions of her life from the South Side of Chicago to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that helped me to feel what she felt. Metaphor opens the envelope for empathy. What a wonderful organ our brain is that we can look at the moon while Alfred Noyes describes “the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,” and we can see a full sail sailing ship in rough seas and at the same time a real moon, flitting in a tumultuous dance among clouds.

What Can I Do?

Holiday parties bring together long-time friends who don’t keep in touch on a regular basis, so conversations often begin with inquiries about what engages us these days. Telling my friend Lynn that I had started a blog featuring thoughts as a septuagenarian, she suggested I write one on retirement. Lynn complains that her husband, who recently “retired” after 40 plus years teaching high school art and coaching soccer, has retired his regular paycheck but not his person. Soon after packing up his classroom, he volunteered to show up for any little jobs around school. He can fix anything, no payment required. There he returns many a weekday morning, in his green VW bug, its odometer brimming with commuter miles.

I sympathize with both Lynn and her husband. When I retired from teaching high school over twenty years ago, my identity felt as unstable as a leaf clinging to an autumnal oak. My daughter consoled me with her version of an old saying: “You can take my mom out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of my mom.” I would continue to behave and to think of myself as a teacher. In “retirement,” I became the nanny as well as Nana, to my grandchildren, reading them books, instructing them on names of mushrooms on our walks to the park, and later pressing their chubby palms in to dough as we kneaded loaves of bread.

While working in the pay-day world, we fantasize about retirement, especially when our backbones ache for sitting through late-day faculty meetings, or our Sunday afternoons disappear under stacks of essays in need of grading. I had two fantasies: one was to wait tables so I could still enjoy the company of others, even serve them a pleasant dining experience, but not wake up in the middle of the night revising a lesson plan to better suit a challenged student. The other fantasy was to drive a big truck, sitting high behind the wheel watching the landscapes exchange their variable beauty from one state to another. There would be no student hovering by my side to complain about a grade — the cacophony of high school pep assemblies replaced by soft jazz from the truck radio. This fantasy focused me so completely that one morning I almost missed my freeway exit to school when I saw the sign: North to Vancouver, B.C.

No doubt, restaurant servers and truck drivers would educate me on these naïve perceptions of their jobs. My husband reminds me that driving the truck is only part of the job. I would have to be strong enough to unload it upon arrival. Fantasies serve to get us away without getting away. Once retirement comes, we have finally escaped those parts of our jobs we didn’t enjoy. Yet clinging to those displeasures like a demanding child, are those tasks that actually fulfilled us. In teaching, fulfillment might be that very clinging child whose progress depended on our support. From serving others, our work and ourselves gain importance. I confess that upon leaving Woodinville High School, I couldn’t imagine how seniors unable to take my college prep English class would ever survive in college. (Time here for laughter)

Retirees miss not only their jobs but the routine that employment offers. Sure, my friend’s husband is still driving back to his old school. I walked to and from the University of Washington my final years teaching on campus. I walked down the hill each morning, stopping for a latte and scone on the way. At the coffee shop, Jackson, a garrulous Scottish baker, swapped stories with me as I bit into one of her jam-filled scones she pronounced as “Skhanz.” On the way home, I took the opposite bridge across Lake Washington’s ship canal and back up Capitol Hill. Seasons blessed my exercise with meditation on falling chestnuts and blooming early plums. In retirement, I missed that walk, though I could still walk down and around the university whenever I wished. But without a purpose? Years passed until I began offering to walk my daughter’s golden retriever down the hill and through campus, where the dog’s “I love people” expressions and wagging tail attract undergrads who miss their dogs left at home. Now the walk resumes with “purpose. ”

Routines plug us into the circadian rhythms of a day. My husband’s friend who this year accepted “forced” retirement for those over 70, is depressed. “I don’t know where to go mornings,” he said, with the grief of loss. Something needs to call us, and now it is time to listen for new voices. With time, they may speak from within.

Each Labor Day I feel called to buy notebooks and new shoes. I have not returned to a classroom of my own; however, I have volunteered for after-school homework help at the library and a couple of years tutoring in a ninth-grade classroom at Garfield High. In 2004, a poetry box I affixed to the fence surrounding our home offers a routine of selecting and printing a poem I copy each month. I email the monthly poem to those not close-by to take a poem from the box. On telling those folks this is my 15^th year with the poetry box, my husband’s niece wrote, “We appreciate the lessons and places you’ve taken us with your 15-year commitment to the Poetry Box. Roger and I would likely never discuss poetry without the Poetry Box so thank you for this gift!”

The recent government shutdown leaves many feeling helpless. Many complain, “But what can I do?” That sentiment is akin to the helplessness experienced with retirement. Our years after the routine of salaried employment may offer time to put usefulness in perspective. For me, often a poem rises from memory. John Milton, who felt his career as a writer was his service to God, lamented how his blindness curtailed his writing. From his sorrow came Sonnet 19, that concludes:

“God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

images

The Widow in Winter

When companionship comes in the hum of the Frigidaire,

Sarah spills a mound of dough on a board

swathed in flour as fine as the frost

on winter windows waiting for mid-day sun.

That noonday will bloom over her backyard,

low in branches of the persimmon tree

where feeders hang like pendulums for chickadees.

Here the dough waits for her palms pushing

it into submission, her hands and the yielding dough

in an agreed upon attraction. It wants to rise

slowly as an old hound, having curled within

its nest of a bed, yawns itself to life.

And the loaf she forms, it too knows

her longing for crusts and butter melting.

January 2019

TRADITION

We do something on a regular basis and call it habitual. But when does Habit become Tradition? Tradition is an aggrandizement of Habit that brings people together. When my daughter was eight years old, she asked that I bake for her birthday the same cake her friend Katherine’s mother made for her. Winnie Sperry, known for her famous Mother Sperry’s Plum Pudding, made a birthday cake that requires four hours to finish. Even so, this year as my daughter turned 49 years old, I made that cake again. Once during her 14^th year, I thought I would save time by making from scratch only the frosting, then using a yellow cake mix instead of the 5 eggs, 3-times-sifted, everything-at-room temperature recipe Winnie used. My daughter, clearly disappointed, complained, “Mom, how could you? That cake is our Tradition!” All it has taken over a lifetime with our daughter is for her to announce something is Traditional, and it might as well be etched in stone with gold-leafed letters.

December, including Christmas and Hanukkah, is weighted with traditions. We can easily trace traditions from lighting Menorahs or evergreen trees to Black Friday sales following Thanksgiving. Yes, some traditions have more luster than others. And we cannot judge Traditions by reason as much as a by familiarity. Today, some may be frosting cookies to set on a plate by the fireplace for when Santa descends. The custom may continue each year, long after the children have left for college. Many families either follow established traditions or stumble on to their own, without realizing a little habit or ritual grows like a child whose appetite wants feeding.

For many Traditions, a new one may hang like a leaf on the branch of an established one. Take Christmas cards. In the early lean years of our marriage, we decided to join the card tradition by making our own. My husband graduated with an MFA in printmaking, and the heavy steel presses lined up waiting to be used in his basement studio. Influenced by the etchings of Rembrandt, Allan drew an elysian image of a descending angel, etched it in a metal plate, and ran twenty-five original prints for those to whom we wanted to send our Christmas greeting. We made no commitment to ourselves or to others that there would be another the following year.

Over forty years later, this week we are sending out four hundred original prints. As the recipient list lengthened, my husband moved to silk screened prints. He completes a watercolor painting of his image. Then he cuts a stencil on a film for each separate color. There are several pigments. Next, he runs each color on every card, layering the stencils as he goes, and hanging each to dry between colors. In the early years, as he pulled each color, I would run the card to a drying rack. We were still under a hundred cards then. Recipients collected them, made special Christmas books for their coffee tables with a new page for each year’s card, framed the cards and hung them in their homes. Every time I climb the stairs from the first to the third floor of my friend Loui’s home, I follow the framed cards she has hung in increments along the stairwell. It is like climbing our history. Inevitably, we needed to trust the reproducing work to a professional with a large studio. Allan still creates the image and cuts the stencils before passing on the stencils to Tori, our third professional printmaker.

In the twelfth year, as I admired Allan’s watercolor of ducks on a frozen bay, I told him, “This one reminds me of a winter solstice poem I wrote.”

“Why don’t you copy it and include it with the card?” he suggested. Shyly, I included Winter Solstice on Quilcene Bay. Our friends liked getting a poem with the print, and so . . . fifteen years later, my poem, Thin Spaces, accompanies this year’s print.

More than a repetitive practice, Traditions can be the creative force in a marriage. I don’t know when Allan first thinks of next year’s image, though he starts on the watercolor between October and November, getting it to the printmaker to allow her a few weeks’ work. I wait to see the watercolor, sit with it for a bit, and let it take me where it will. I never ask him what he intended. I don’t tell him what inspiration ignites me. Here we are separate creative entities. It may not be apparent why this poem and this image would be in the same envelope; however we ride this Tradition on different horses set out for the same horizon.

As much as making that birthday cake for my daughter, our Christmas card, like any tradition, requires time. In addition to old friends and relatives, our list includes my Bible Study group, Allan’s basketball buddies, our neighbors to whose mailboxes we hand-deliver the cards on Christmas Eve. Then there is the Washington Athletic Club group. What started as a small gathering of early-morning athletes celebrating a Holiday Season breakfast, grew to sixty strong. Gordy dresses as Santa. After handing out our cards, Allan describes the artistic process, and acknowledges the fellowship of starting each day with a workout among friends. I read the poem aloud. Each year, we wonder if maybe we should forego the task of contacting catering, renting a room, taking sign-ups in the locker rooms. But each year, club members ask, “What is the date of this year’s breakfast? We love that tradition.” Suspending a “Tradition” can feel like desertion.

Within a weekend or two after Thanksgiving, my husband and I turn up Christmas music and sit down at the dining room table, one across from the other, while we address, write notes, and slip those cards and poems into envelopes for mailing. As tired as we are with that long sit, we are also remembering each recipient, sometimes sadly erasing the names of those deceased. We smile when a friend’s name takes us back to those early years when not having a lot of money to buy Christmas cards, we started a new Tradition and made our own.

Thin Spaces

The space is thin

where heaven and earth meet,

shallow as an ebbing tide.

Thin is winter wakening

beneath diaphanous snow

on hills seen through leafless limbs

of an oak planted in hopeful spring.

Thin is that hovering hush

before the raven calls,

a cry we know will come

with the returning tide.

The year divides itself in half,

speaking in a space without words.

Mary Kollar

December, 2018

OPINION OR OPINIONATED?

My husband startled me once at dinner with another couple, where we were discussing marital contentment. He said, “I married Mary for her opinions.” He meant it humorously, because before his statement, I was freely offering opinions about the upcoming elections. After his publicly parting the curtain from my prominent practice, I have pondered whether I am opinionated, or a woman who offers opinions. Connotations matter. We don’t discount people who have opinions, but we don’t like “opinionated” people. Opinionated people leap like an eager dog on visitors without being sensitive to others’ willingness to be accosted. Do I want to abandon sharing opinions, or do I want to avoid being opinionated?

Opinion or Opinionated may seem an unlikely subject for a blog Thoughts After Seventy; however, what shapes our opinions and how vigorously we voice them fluctuate with time. Thus, here I am, at seventy-five, weighing in on when I should open my mouth and when I should keep it muzzled, fully aware that the opinions of older folks get readily dismissed as old fashioned. Whoever made the connection between old age and wisdom?

My friend Kristin recently forwarded a quotation from a prominent philosopher that one should only offer opinions when one can argue the opposing viewpoint with equal vigor. I admire the sentiment, but not all opinions have opposing views. Nonetheless, if I cannot or will not study an opposing view, I can be sensitive to a listener’s perspective.

images

Last summer, I was discussing with a close friend the eulogies given by G.W. Bush and Barak Obama at the memorial service for Senator McCain. I opined that both presidents were eloquently presidential, to my surprise, for during Bush’s administration I found his speeches bland. Bush’s eulogy was as eloquent as Barak Obama’s. My friend had not heard the speeches, and may have had other opinions associated with Obama, so she expressed her disdain for him whom she accused of speaking only at exclusive events sponsored by wealthy people, and then exacting lucrative fees from which he was living a “high life” in Washington D.C.; whereas, he had once determined to live in Chicago following his presidency.

images-1 I jumped to Obama’s defense. “Are you aware?” I asked my friend, “that you regularly disparage people who have money, although you are quite wealthy by any standards?” My words reduced her to tears. I felt as if I had wounded my sister.

Clearly both of us had strayed from the initial opinion of the eloquence of the two eulogies.But could I have phrased my Obama defense in a kinder way, rather than take her to task for comparison of wealth? Could I have let her express her opinion without countering? I want to learn to express opinions without attacking the person giving the opinion.

As to seeking the opposing point of view, once I tried to level the playing field of my political opinions by watching an hour of Fox News to collect information that may have passed under my blue radar. I hoped at the least to discern motives that might lead the Fox commentator to a political podium opposite my own – a kind of empathy strategy. I failed. Before the commentator completed the segment, I was tallying up my points for attack. Some of that tallying closed my mind to what was coming up next. It is the timeworn, self-inflicted wound that curtails following an argument. So much for empathy. Impartiality is really hard. photo (1)

Timing and frequency of opinions deserve some thought. My friend Judy says her mother claims that Judy was born with her hand raised. What an appropriate image for her, a respected and outspoken 1^st amendment attorney. I have the similar urge to raise my hand at every opportunity. But it is not true for everyone. What about those who refrain from offering opinions? Do they have none? Take Tuesday Morning Bible study, for example. Among the 30 people who regularly attend, only seven or eight of us regularly contribute to the discussion. Some silent members comment after the meeting how much they enjoyed the discussion. I want to challenge them: “How can you enjoy an experience where you took no active part?”Yes, but I also envy one who is intelligently observant without participating.

A favorite student from my honors senior English class comes to mind. Elizabeth sat in the first row of the class. Whenever I led a class discussion on literature, she raised her hand to answer almost anything I asked. I often ignored her, hoping others would join the discussion for the first time. After class one day, when only she and I were in the room, I told her I hoped she wasn’t offended when I overlooked her raised hand.

“That’s okay, Mrs. Kollar” she said, “I can’t NOT raise my hand.” Her voice held a note of apology as if she wished she could be one of the confidently voiceless, but popular students who couldn’t or wouldn’t risk their posture of being too cool for class discussion. I may not always have called on Elizabeth, but what joy I heard in her voice when I acknowledged her hand, and she shared her opinion.

Do Americans more freely offer opinions than people from other countries? If so, perhaps there is a link to the way we teach our students. When teaching high school English, I may have started the class with “What happened” questions just to review the plot of our current book, but I soon moved on to the Why questions, those asking for opinions, granted opinions backed up by the text. We call it critical thinking, and American schools pride themselves in educating not only willful students but also ones who think critically.

Our media backs up the practice. Even televised football games wave the American flag for opinion. The game itself is supposed to last an hour, but after eliminating commercial time, a viewer still endures at least an hour of pre-, mid-, and post-game time where commentators toss around opinions. So many balls in the air at one time. Then back to Fox News, or CNN, or any other show touting itself as a news source. Good luck at finding anything approaching factual news. A body lies on the pavement, a VW in the ditch, but the commentator is rushing around with a microphone asking twenty people what they THINK happened.

How challenging to validate opinions for the expertise of the one giving it. Clearly the most authentic holder of opinions must be “They,” for so often we hear “they say” before every opinion from upcoming elections to the weather report.

Are opinions poisoning our water? Should we refrain from forming, expressing, or critiquing opinion? Would doing so make us more affable? Cutting opinion from newspapers might save a forest without lighting a match to our brain. Besides, who wants a quiet brain? Our determination to think, to share, to shape what we experience will not lie down like an exhausted hound. Today, that’s my opinion.

GIRL TALK

Having paid for my coffee and scone, I seek a favorite corner table at the Volunteer Park Café. It is one of two tables by a front window with a view to the orange leaves of a sweet gum tree and a sidewalk café table under its autumnal branches. It is 7:00 AM on an October morning, the first rainy day of many to follow, so the café lights hold us warmly inside, and with the darkness outside, I cannot see the tree I usually enjoy. At the table beside me, sits a woman in her 30’s, checking her I-Phone until she looks up to welcome another woman, perhaps a decade older, her hair graying in a stylish bob. The newcomer hangs her rain jacket on the chair, slips her umbrella under the table, and the two of them begin talking before she sits down. Although I am close enough to eavesdrop, I don’t intrude, and besides, I can infer by their exchange, the way they lean in to their shared space — gesturing and taking turns as they speak –that they are helping each other through some little thing.

“That is what friends do,” I think, “especially women friends.” They tell stories about what happened, and to confirm the friend has listened sympathetically, the other tells a similar story. Two stories are better than one. One of the stories echoes the veracity of the other. Are women naturally narrators, or do we tell stories on ourselves to confirm those told by our friends? Is it a kind of “group think?”

Later in the morning I meet with a woman I have known for twenty-five years. She asks to meet with me to discuss a sadness in her life for which she believes I might have a shared experience. We have family and friends in common, and they are the subject of her grief. First, we catch up on little things we do to fill our days. Then, testing a shared comfort, she begins to tell her personal story of a loss she experienced years before we met. She pauses. Because I know the Girl Talk script, I sense she is waiting for me to tell of my own loss years before we met. From our stories, there might not arise exact similarities, but there will be a kind of universality of experience that brings understanding to a sad occurrence. People seek reasons for their pain, but will settle for parallels, if reasons can’t be found.

Perhaps others around us might think we are gossiping. It is sad that even in Shakespeare’s plays, women are portrayed as Gossips. The word Gossip itself, when used as a noun instead of a verb, implies a woman, usually an old woman. So much literature and art tells or shows women in confidences sharing those stories, usually about others in the community. Gossiping suggests the stories are negative. Rather than telling a story to arrive at some truth, the Gossip tells stories to denigrate another or elevate herself by juxtaposition. “Did you hear that Maggie Jones spent $500 dollars of her husband’s social security check on new shoes?” 62f4f28099400943d273b309608c5eb5 Gossiping is inherently judgmental, and I regret that it is more often associated with women. But men gossip too. They tell about a business rival who cheats on his income tax. Men’s Sports Gossip (sometimes referred to as “Locker Room Talk”) can be as rough as the sports they discuss.

Another common perception of Girl Talk, is that women talk more than men. That seems situational. When with their own gender, women may speak rapidly. There is a delight, like a bubbling fountain, when two female friends discuss the best way to do something they both love, such as reading fiction, or when they are sharing complaints from work or home. When in mixed company, I find women speak less frequently, or turn away from men, to carry on a separate conversation with other women present. It wasn’t that long ago when after formal dinners, women were escorted to the parlor for music or knitting so that men could converse civilly in their absence. The male talk was to be more serious and consequential than what concerned the women in the parlor. Certainly, the masculine talk was more consequential, because white men held all the power. Why share it with the powerless?

When women talk, they are expected to keep their voices soft, at least softer than men are permitted to speak. If women speak loudly or aggressively, they are called “shrill.” I have never heard a man’s talk referred to as shrill. At best, angry. Women are not expected to express anger. It somehow lessens the power of their message. Recently our daughter suggested we watch Nanette: Comedy Hour on Netflix. MV5BY2I3MThmYTctZTU4YS00YWNmLTg4YzktNDY0ZGE5MmQ3Y2Q3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTMxODk2OTU@._V1_UY268_CR4,0,182,268_AL_ The stand-up comedian, Hannah Gadsby from Tasmania, based her humor on the awkward lives of lesbian women. A lesbian herself, she told about her own experiences suffering criticism and misunderstanding. As the show continued, what was at first humorous, became tragic. Annoyance grew to righteous indignation. What she said was no longer funny. The show was, however, profound. My husband didn’t enjoy the show, because of Hannah’s expressed anger, even though he sympathized with her many grievances. If she had spoken softly and slowly, her voice not pitched in indignation, I wonder if he would have more readily accepted the truths she offered.

Women and narrative are one. The process is not quantitative. Years ago, when the UW physics department bemoaned the lack of women enrolled in their classes, they researched the differing ways men and women learn, hoping to find an answer there. They did. Women are more than twice likely to learn something through a story than are men. Facts alone won’t stick. Women are more attracted to a subject embedded in narrative.

There is no more dramatic illustration of the power of Girl Talk than the #MeToo Movement. The conversations do not stop with “Me Too, I too was harassed or raped.” The talk continues, “And this is what happened, and this is who did it, and this is what I want now.” The stories pour out from abused women, not merely for retribution or even for justice, though both are needed. The stories are also for healing. Carrying unspoken stories is like dragging around a stuffed suitcase of clothes so old and worn you wouldn’t be seen in them in public. Telling the stories, one old coat after another is cast away, leaving the abused woman weightless, ready to wear a new story that fits comfortably, perhaps helping her feel attractive for the first time. images

“So get to the point,” my husband said yesterday while I was telling him a story about my day. We were driving in heavy traffic, late to meet friends for dinner. He was trying to concentrate, while I was talking in my circular way about my day. But when he said, “So get to the point,” I wanted to protest. For me, it wasn’t the point that mattered, but the process of telling the story. Some of my stories intertwine with others, so I cannot just slide down them like a rope that ends in a coil of understanding. The unfolding of the story is as important as the point, if there is a point at all. There need not be one, or there may be many. In the process of telling, I may find a point I didn’t know the story possessed. Meanwhile, let me tell it. Let me tell it my way.

Don’t cut me out of the story. In my parents’ life, there had been a series of infidelities by my father when he was in India in WW II. All my life, I intuited my mother’s distance and lack of intimacy with him when he returned to the States. I stumbled across photos of unfamiliar women in a jeep in Delhi, another, a woman sitting on an army truck, her legs crossed so her skirt rode high on her thighs. My mother did not remove those photos from the album. Only in the year before she died, when I took my now-widowed mother for a weekend on the Oregon coast, did she tell me some of the story, of her loneliness back in Iowa with three children, of letters my father sent suggesting their marriage might end when he returned. They did not divorce, by the way, although I think my mother’s life may have been better had they separated. Because she finally told me the story behind those photos, my heart was less heavy than it had been throughout my childhood. I was in no better place to repair her life, but her story with that history, helped me experience our mutual love. grandmahainerbirds 2 . And there you are — all stories are love stories, because through them we bond as we walk along the tangled paths of our human condition.

What Remains Hallowed on Halloween

Nostalgia is the Achilles Heel of septuagenarians. Discussing anything, but especially holidays, people expect you to start out, “Well in my day ….” True, some of us start every sentence that way, even without expectations. Nonetheless, nostalgia has its literary value, so let’s talk about Halloween, in my former days and today. What endures in this one-day celebration of gluttony and horror?

I think it was back in the 60’s when some misanthrope put a razor blade in an apple meant for trick or treaters. The media spread the story, and almost overnight folks handing out treats for Halloween abandoned homemade delicacies for foil-wrapped, all-the-same versions of mass market chocolate. How many Snicker Bars or Peanut Butter cups does one child need? Does any child remember what house gives out Milk Duds and which Nestles Crunch? Little distinction, even less distinction in flavor or freshness. Super markets shove bags of Halloween candy on their shelves in late August.

As a child in an Appalachian college town (1950’s), I was rarely lucky enough to be given a candy bar. There were no mini-wrapped versions, so if someone were to give out candy bars, it would be a whole Hershey’s that could set the host back a nickel each. Instead, mothers baked cookies the week prior to Halloween. Cookie cutters shaped the shortbread dough into pumpkins, ghosts and witches. Orange frosting added authenticity. Mrs. Cooper, the wife of the Geology Dept. chair, made caramel popcorn confections the size of little cannon balls. She wrapped each in waxed paper, the tops twisted and tied with orange curling ribbon. They were my favorites. New neighbors, the Theopolis family, lived in a brick house down a side road yet to be paved in the new housing development. I wonder now who clued them in about the Treat or Treat custom. Someone did, for when we walked tremulously down the unlit drive, Mrs. Theopolis greeted us with true Greek hospitality. In each held-out hand, she placed a baklava, warm and dripping with honey, a clove stuck in the top like a fragrant toothpick. We thanked her, then ran gleefully down her driveway to where the ornamental persimmon trees grew. Unknown Below them we dumped the unfamiliar, and therefore suspect, sopping honey confection. My adult self longs to return to the front door to be given a second chance. From many houses we got apples, always apples, barely welcomed in our greed for sweets. Mom separated them out from our Trick or Treat bag, parsing them out for school lunches. She also saved the nickels given by those unprepared to bake. Once there was a quarter among the change.

As for costumes, we never ordered anything more than a simple mask from a department store. Costumes were important, very important, our chance to try on a fantasized identity. But costumes had to be assembled. First stop was the linen closet, where we pawed through old sheets, feeling which were thread-bare so Mom would let us cut ghost eyes, or drape ourselves like Roman senators who would return home, our togas dripping inches of Virginia’s red clay that would never wash out. My mother encouraged me toward girlie costumes, to dress me as a princess or Snow White. Yet having two older brothers, I wanted nothing less than finally to get to dress like a boy. No Dale Evans for me, when I could be Roy Rogers. 121498191-1024x1024 I borrowed my brother’s leather cowboy vest, redolent with his own sweat that I identified with horse flesh. His cap gun hung heavily from my non-existent hips. If I were lucky, he would share a red roll of caps, their explosive pops filling my lungs with sweet sulfur.

Bunching in cadres of siblings and friends, little ghosts, goblins, and a few witches with broken brooms, swarmed across vacant lots and between new homes set in spindly landscaping. The screams of banshees drifted over the dewberry fields: wait for me . . . Mama said you have to …you’re too slow … I told you that gun was too heavy for you … let’s not go there … let’s do . . . I will if you will. Groups of other kids ran in and out of sight. In spite of their disguises we guessed who they were, meeting up under one or two street lamps that offered the only light other than the moon. Like thieves, we exchanged our targets thus far: the best places to hit up — who gave more generously — who already turned off their porch lights. Each year, there was the thrill of unknowing in a custom as familiar as home.

Halloween 2018 feels more packaged. The 30 to 40 children who climb up our front steps are costumed in child-sized versions of super heroes. The costumes are purchased, so one Ninja looks identical to the one a few minutes earlier. CIMG3768 It is only an occasional child, usually a young one, who has changed identity for the night, who growls like the furry beast it is. I long for role-playing, for the ferocious tiger who will dare me to open the door wider. I hold out the wide wooden bowl brimming with mini Snickers and Tootsie Pops. Each year the packages shrink, but the kids don’t seem to notice. Their plastic pumpkin carriers are brimming with replicas of what we are giving. Over their shoulders, the little monsters thank us as they race back down the stairs to the sidewalk where an adult or two waits to escort them to the next house. As they secure their children’s sticky hands, does their tongue remember the taste of their own childhood? Gone are the days when children ran out the front door as soon as dusk swallowed the maple trees, to tag along with older siblings, combing the darkening streets until the soiled pillow case, filled with treats, weighed them down. Then it was time to return home to parents, unconcerned about absence after dark, sitting by a lamp reading until their costumed children had played out their one-night characters and were ready for sweetened sleep.

_DSC1108

Heron

The Heron

How do I know she senses my presence

long before her needle-thin throat

rises from ochre reeds, also thin,

bending agreeably with shore breeze?

The incoming tide hastens my spotting.

I silence the oars, letting the current carry

me to her eye, set unblinking

in a shape that might be an upturned scythe

poised in grasses not meant for mowing.

Hers is a lesson in patience,

mine a lesson in measured paces

like an elderly man

practicing tai-chi in the park.

I would not startle her to flight,

that I might be with her

together in what is timeless,

although the shoreline separates

like the division of cells

who belongs to the shore

who with the sea.

Only the two of us now,

where recognition destroys acquaintance.

I watch her blue-gray wings

lift as if exhaled from updrafts —

those wonderful wings

wider than my arms

always out of reach.

1-great-blue-heron-in-flight-brian-wallace

Mary Kollar

Why Run?

race55433-customSectionAttachment5ab423dc5b2b27.37780431

Other than listening to folks describe their medical procedures one of the least favorite topics is the athletic endeavor. That said, when over seventy-years-old, I am running – rather, jogging—along East Quilcene Bay and up the cedar lined hills, the kilometers demand an examination of why I am doing this and why I feel so good.

Last Sunday, we awoke to steady rain, and would have crawled back under the quilt, but we had volunteered to man the water station at the 5-mile mark of the annual Quilcene Half-Marathon Oyster Run. By the time we dressed, the skies began to clear, so I asked my husband to man the water station alone, and I went to the starting line at the Linger Longer Stage where I signed up to run the 10k race. I don’t think I have run more than 6 miles in 2-mile increments, since 2016, when I ran the half marathon (another last minute decision) . This Sunday, I turn on I-Tunes on my phone at the start of the 10K. It will take only two complete replays of Pink Martini’s “Get Happy” album to keep me company until the finish line.

The scenery alone will keep me running. Morning shadows lengthen, stretching across the dampened road so the tree shadows appear even longer than their height, and I am running from one to the other. After a kilometer up Center Road, the course dips down past a farm, its green barn open like a mouth to exhale its hay-fresh breath. Sunflowers shine from the garden, September heavy with produce. Behind the garden, ochre grasses cover the tidal flat intersected by Donovan Creek. The salmon will soon work their way up that creek, and though I can’t see them from the road, their perseverance energizes me. After the farm, McGInnis Road ends at East Quilcene Road, that hugs the bay like a necklace around wavelets of white, because the wind that brought that daybreak rain still billows from south to north. Its force reminds me that I am a slender woman who with a big gust could be blown off the road to topple on to the grassy fields. I pass ancient apple trees, their trunks bent in testament to the wind, fallen apples fragrant with fermentation.

Then the road turns to a slight rise by the Sunday Egg Stand a girl from a nearby farm built to sell eggs and flowers. White dahlias smile from the stand by the egg cooler. I begin the slow ascent south that will take me by the field where Racer the horse used to run to greet me for a fistful of grass. Gone now, his spirit keeps me running. Soon I approach the water stand outside our own drift-wood fence where my husband sets out paper cups of orange and lime Gatorade on a small table. I grab, gulp and go on. I know the hill rises steeply for another eighth of a mile, the open view from the top, showing the bay is at high tide, the longer autumn shadows splitting the sun on the water’s surface. Blackberries thrive on that hill top, berries now dried and fragrant as old wine. Turn-around for the 10K comes in a dip in the road, darkened on both sides by Palmers’ woods, old as the peninsula itself in giant Doug Firs and Big Leaf Maple trees. If I were not mid-race, their deep woods would invite me in. But here is turn-around, monitored by Linda and Stan Herzog. Linda calls my name. Stan snaps a photo.

And that is another reason to run — the people. Two years ago, when I ran more often, I would do this 10K stretch alone. Some days it felt demanding, lonely and masochistic. Running in a community is exhilarating. Back at the start line I stood among families who would walk the 5-K, some with toddlers in strollers pushed along like envoys on a mission. Kids in t-shirts and jeans, twenty-year-olds in fashionable running tights that show off the ripple of taut muscles, people my age wearing rain or sun hats tied securely under sagging chins. Then there are the thin men in short shorts. They are lithe and slim hipped. Have they never stopped running? Some might be 25, some 65, but the way they stretch out their hamstrings, you know this will not be their only race of the year. Around us white tents cover food stands staffed by volunteers. Unknown This is an oyster run, celebrating Quilcene’s famous oysters, so the aroma of wood coals and garlic bread already permeates the air. Depending on where you stand, it is fried food or local ale to keep a mind motivated for returning to this spot after the race. Everyone is happy. Those who know me, cheer me on. They seem more confident than I that I will make it the whole way. I will make new friends as the race begins, when I discover whose pace falls in with mine. That is how I meet Michele and Meg. We don’t talk much during the run. All of us are tuned in to whatever music lifts one foot in front of the other, but there are moments of encouragement among us. Good going. Feel free to pass. Yes, the hills are tough for me too. I pass a woman with her arm around her young son, a stalky boy who clearly has some cognitive impairment. He smiles widely at me.

“You brought out the sun for us,” I tell him.

He laughs. My voice and his voice fill the same space on the road. That connecting moment energizes me all the way up the hill.

The sheriff at the bottom of the road directs me to keep to the right until I am at the police cars where I can safely cross over to the finish field. She applauds me as I run. Her green shirt has an oyster image: Sheriff Volunteer it reads.

And finally, the physical part. I want to remember when the endorphins kick in after the 2^nd kilometer. I am running downhill by the green apple tree where yesterday I stole enough for a pie. I look up to Mt. Walker ahead and my chest fills with autumn-washed air. Breath is wonderful. Deep, deep breath is exhilarating. I could run forever on this feeling. I could spread my arms and mimic the gulls and ravens swooping over the bay. I start to write this essay in my head so no feeling will fail to remain.

Farther into the run, my legs get heavier. I need to remind myself that I pronate on my right foot. I might trip over my foot if I don’t consciously lift it. Remembering coaching from my friend, Jan, I extend my legs, more forward, less up and down. My face flushes in the sun, so I scold myself for forgetting sunglasses and sunscreen. I have long ago left the cool morning start, so I toss my rain jacket to my husband when I pass his water table. Sweat alternately warms and cools me. When the finish line is in sight, I imagine myself lying in the park grass. I imagine how good it will feel to pull my knees to my chest and hug my shins. When I do arrive at the finish, I stride out as I had not for the entire run. Here I am about to cross under the finish balloon, people on each side applauding, the announcer calling my name and town. The friends I know who are standing behind tables loaded with water, fruit, oysters and beer, smile at my success, but show no amazement that I did it. Only after one takes my picture, do I realize my face is raspberry red. I sit by another runner on the grass while our bodies cool. The sun is full out, but I am beginning to chill. My newly acquainted runner drives me back to my cottage where I peel off my running pants and shirt. My tongue tastes salt. My skin feels like salt. I realize I have excreted a good amount of salt water. As soon as I persuade myself to leave the hot tub jets, I will drink a tall glass of water. Every part of my body has been used: my feet, my legs, even my shoulders and neck. I should feel beat up, but I don’t. I feel twenty years younger. Maybe I will get back into this running thing.

The best way to feel like a big fish is to select a small pond. There were 40 runners who ran or walked the 10K. There was one 81-year-old walker, but I was by far the oldest runner at 75. I finished smack dab in the middle at #20 with 13 minute miles. I am proud enough of my over-seventy pace, my over-seventy race.