Category: Writing

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

Writing class “flash” prompt; 10 minutes.

The stubbly grass dusted with overnight snow

Powdered sugar on a crumb coffee cake

The sun struggling for freedom against a pall of clouds

A tongue of light darting out for a taste

I know it’s not the same

That a dog is not a person

But when my dog

(Elderly, diabetic, so diminished)

Unable once again to rise up from his bed

His legs spayed uselessly akimbo

Raised his eyes to mine

I knew what he was saying

And a few days later

On the last day

When he did rise and stagger to me

And laid his forehead against my leg

I knew what he was saying