Category: Writing

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, visiting his home state of Michigan for the first time in a long time, said how glad he was to be back “where the trees are the right height”.  

Hilarity ensued, in the media, the punditry and most everywhere else.  How can trees have a right or wrong height?  Such a ridiculous notion from, by extension, a ridiculous candidate.  Let’s see what else is ridiculous about him!  The reaction pretended to be insightful analysis of a potential national leader.  (Though neither the comment nor the “analysis” did not prevent Romney from gaining the Republican nomination.) 

But I knew just what he was talking about.  This narrow affinity with Romney didn’t mean I wanted to vote for him.  But I appreciated his nuanced view.  Living in San Francisco at that time but keenly missing my own home state of Connecticut, I knew the difference between the trees in those two places and about so much else that mattered to me about where I lived. 

For now, I’ll stick to the trees.

In Connecticut, which is a small but “heavily forested state” (that’s what the internet says!), the trees are not very tall. Certainly, they are no match for the eucalyptus and the redwoods and the sequoias of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area.  Yet they are the “right height” for a state where there are no mountains, only hills and higher hills.  

Connecticut’s trees blanket its gentle contours, making for a cozy environment.  When I would travel back to Connecticut during the years I lived in San Francisco, I would feel coddled and safe.  Can’t say that for being under the eucalyptus in Golden Gate Park or the redwoods in Muir Woods.  Those trees seemed to thrust themselves away from the ground, far up into the sky.  I experienced emotion from them, sure, but it was different.  Aggression, maybe?

Now that I live in Oregon, I can appreciate that the Pacific Northwest (also “heavily forested”) offers a new metric for proper tree height.  Doug firs and the other mighty evergreens will do that!  At the same time, there are plenty of maples, oaks, birches and other tree species that offer me the same kind of cozy comfort that I felt in Connecticut — including the two dogwoods in my front yard.  Amazingly enough, these are Eastern dogwoods, the kind I grew up with, rather than their cousins the Western dogwoods.  Here, I am rooted.  That gives me the freedom to reach up and out.  And leads me to wonder if, maybe, feeling safe in Connecticut also meant that I was muffled and constrained, held down by an arboreal force.

***

This next observation has nothing to do with the height of trees in Connecticut or anywhere else.  But it does say something about how I experience “place” and geography. 

Take as a given that my physical orientation works like the needle of a compass: it always points towards the North.  That means that my head faces N, my right arm reaches to the E and my left arm to the W.  My rear end, I guess, points S.  Well, on the East Coast, the big body of water — the Atlantic Ocean — was always off to my right.  Very reassuring.  When I got to San Francisco, I had to re-orient myself to the fact that the nearest relevant big body of water — the Pacific Ocean — was off to the left.  How disconcerting this was for me!  It threw off my whole sense of cardinal directions.  Do you know how long it took me to adjust?  How many times I drove off in the wrong direction?  

In Oregon, I had to adjust again.  We live about 90 miles from the coast, nestled into a huge valley between two mountain ranges (yes, mountains, not tall hills).  There is no big body of water nearby, to my right nor my left.  But there are a lot of rivers …

***

My observations may seem light-hearted.  But they are designed to disguise the fact that “place” is a delicate concept for me.  Yes, I have successfully made my home in three very different places.  But I consume myself with questions whose answers change every time I ask.  

Where, in fact, are my roots if I am estranged from what remains of my family of origin back East?  What does it say that I chose to live for so many years, constantly on edge, in a deceptively beautiful city that, at any moment, might crack apart in an earthquake?  And now, am I hiding in the woods of the PNW, seeking safety and covering up deep sadness? Or is that what thriving looks like?

Maybe the answer is just this simple: I can bloom where I’m planted.

Writing class assignment for the prompt “$100”.

Some years ago, standing in the checkout lane at the supermarket, I glanced down on the floor and caught sight of the tell-tale green of … a bill … a folded-up piece of paper money.  There is no mistaking that color.

Aha!  I thought.  Lucky me!  I’ve found a dollar!   Good for me!   

As I bent to pick it up, intending to slip it into my pocket — finders keepers, right? — I saw that there was another number next to the “1”.  A zero.  Oh my, I thought.  It’s a $10 dollar bill.  My excitement ebbed.  Keeping a random  $1 bill is one thing, but $10 …?  How could I rationalize keeping the money?  My conscience began to prick at me, and I tried to ignore it.

And then when I actually picked up the money, guess what it was — a $100 bill.  

I’m happy to report that my conscience didn’t need to prick at me.  The message was loud and clear; I knew what to do.  I gave the $100 bill to the clerk, who summoned the manager, who said, “Someone will be back looking for this!” and took it safely away to the office. 

Dad taught us refinements in the proper usage of electric wall outlets.  We already knew not to stick fingers or other foreign objects into them.  But we didn’t know how to take real advantage of their design.  Turns out that it’s easier to plug anything being used temporarily — a vacuum cleaner, say — into the top socket, then unplug it after use.  The lower socket would be reserved for anything that was going to be plugged in all the time — a lamp, say.  Test it for yourself!  Every time I plug or unplug anything, I think of Dad and this lesson about the need for flexibility and stability. 

One day Dad gave all three of us kids a bed-making lesson.  Not about how to pull up the bedspread and neaten the bed after you’d gotten up in the morning.  We already knew that, and were supposed to do it every day.  No, the real deal — stripping the bed down to the bare mattress and then putting on fresh sheets and making the bed up anew.  

Dad told us that we were lucky that there was now such a thing as a fitted sheet, whose elastic corners slipped under the mattress corners to keep itself in place.  Before the invention of the fitted version, the bottom sheet would have been flat, just like the top sheet.  To make up a neat bed back in those old days, he told us, it was essential to know how to make really tight folds at the four corners of the bottom sheet.  Such tight folds were called “hospital corners” for reasons that Dad did not know but that can now be found on the internet.  He also told us that, when he was in the Navy, the quality of one’s hospital corners was assessed by whether a superior officer could bounce a quarter off the bottom sheet; if so, one could continue making up the bed; if not, well …

Lest we think that hospital corners were mere relics of the past, Dad also told us that the two folds of the top sheet at the foot of the bed — our beds — needed to be tight as well.   And so, he taught us what to do.

Every time I’ve changed the sheets on a bed, this lesson has come back to me as I’ve attended to those two folds.  What doesn’t come back is whether we demanded — and Dad provided — a demonstration of a bouncing quarter. 

I never set forth a five- or ten-year plan for my career.  I don’t have a bucket list.  Don’t make to-do lists either.  It’s not that I’ve never had goals, or that I’ve wandered aimlessly through a life devoid of ambition or mileposts.  It’s just that … my approach has mostly been to do what needs to be done when I see that it needs to be done.  To assess what comes to me and move ahead accordingly.  To put one foot in front of the other, foolishly or confidently or blindly assuming that each step would lead me to the next, and that all would be well. 

Is this attitude why I resist the idea of a leaving a specific legacy about myself — a summary of what my life has meant?  More precisely, what I hope it’s meant for the people coming after me?  A message for others?

Looking back on my life, I can see that things have generally worked out — almost in a way that I could claim that I planned.  For what it’s worth, I am happy.  Would I be happier if I had fulfilled a certain career plan or have a bucket full of checked-off items, or if I’d ended every day with a piece of paper showing lots of cross-outs?

I may not have made lists for myself, but — believe me — there was plenty of assessment and measurement going on, growing up and through adulthood.  There was always someone — in my family, my schooling, my peer groups, my church, my career — hinting or telling me outright — or giving me that silent lingering once-over glance.  Letting me know where I stood.  Hard not to internalize all that judging, which may be why I have avoided externalizing it, putting it down somewhere where it could be judged. 

I’m thinking now of the Celebration of Life event for a close friend who died several years ago.  Throughout, I was emotionally mute and unable to speak a word about my friend.  But listening to the eulogies — which were beautiful and loving and simple — I realized that I was hearing my friend’s legacy in those words of reminiscence.  She didn’t write her vast and unique legacy.  Others did, because of the way she had lived her life. 

That’s how I want it to be for me.  

I am delighted that I am now part of a regular feature of the Catholic Artist Connection’s blog: interviews with artists, conducted via an emailed questionnaire. The answers that I submitted — to questions about my ID as a Catholic artist (an artist who is Catholic?), where I find support and fulfillment as an artist, my spiritual practices and more — are here, along with a selection of my paintings:

https://catholicartistconnection.com/blog

The July/August issue of Spirit & Life, the magazine published by the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, MO, contains my story, “My Oldest Friend”. That’s the piece that kicked off this writing blog earlier this year; scroll all the way down to the first entry, March 26. I am delighted and grateful.

If Dad told me that the sun rose in the West, I would have found a way to believe him. (“What an imagination!”)

If Mom told me that the sun rose in the East, I would have found a way to gainsay her. (“Well, at this time of year, the sun’s position is actually more towards SSE …”) 

First-grade me is standing next to the bus driver on the school bus.  I’m holding onto a pole.  We are at my stop, and some kids get off.  But I stay there, telling the bus driver, “I’ll show you where you go next.”

So he drives away, to numerous other stops around Queens before he comes back around to mine.  I climb down the steps of the bus, to begin walking as usual towards our apartment building.  That’s where my own memory ends.  Other people have told me the rest of the story.

Imagine the hysteria with which I am greeted — at the bus stop.  Mom is there, waiting, beyond agitated — understandably so, I now know, as a parent.  Where have I been?  Why didn’t I come through the front door at home when I was supposed to?  What happened?  

What had happened, apparently, is that the bus driver was new and did not know the route.  I did.  Don’t ask me why I knew what stops came after mine, but I did.  I was a smart little kid, even though I had skipped kindergarten and entered first grade earlier than usual and was a year younger than everyone else.  And I guess, even at my young age, I was allowed to walk home alone from the bus stop.  Even in Queens.  (It was a long time ago, and many things were different then.)

Family lore has it that Dad paid a very stern visit the next day to the principal.  Imagine that conversation.  I wonder if the bus driver lost his job.  I wonder if I ever took the school bus again.

What are you supposed to to when your

Assigned

Assumed

Acknowledged responsibility

All these years

Happily or not

Has been to put 3 meals a day on the table (or in the lunchbox)

60+ years x 3 x 365

Not only are they not there any more for those meals

(And even if they are, they graze instead)

(Sorry, Mom, I already ate)

You can’t remember how anyway

What are you supposed to do