A Day to Remember

October 6 will always be a day to remember. Starting back in 1948, when my husband was born on this day. Yes—we’re celebrating his 60th birthday today. Well, the celebration really started yesterday at St. John Orthodox Church, where he serves as Assistant Pastor. First of all, it was wonderful that he felt like going to Liturgy, just four days after his surgery. Downstairs in the parish hall, as coffee hour was beginning, Father John Troy, our pastor, called him over and said some nice things about him, thanking God that he’s healing from the surgery, but also for their friendship of 40 years. Check out this photo of them back in 1969! Then we all sang the traditional Orthodox blessing, “God Grant You Many Years.” (To hear this being sung at another Orthodox parish on a You Tube video, click here.)

When we got home, Reem showed up with our Goddaughter, Sophie, who brought Father this cool 2 liter Eco Logic hydration pack for jogging… you fill it with water and drink through tubes connected to the backpack to stay hydrated. Great idea! Thanks, Sophie!

A little while later our Godson, Damon and his wife, Weezie came by (they’ve been living in London for a year, where Damon has been doing master level work post-law school) and brought Father Basil a nice bottle of wine for his birthday. Damon’s mother, Madeleine, was with them, so we took a few minutes to celebrate her birthday, which was yesterday (October 5). I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures…. But here are Damon and Weezie at their wedding in 2006. And here's Madeleine, working on an icon at one of my icon workshops back in 2006. Happy Birthday, Madeleine! Thanks for coming over to celebrate with us!

Later we got together with yet another of my husband’s first cousins, this time on his father’s side—Fred Wright and his friend, Karen, both from California. They’re on a cross country road trip, visiting relatives and seeing the sights. Last night we went to Encore, in Peabody Place, for dinner. It was our first time there and wow! What a great place! Master Chef Jose Gutierrez even prepared my hubby’s entrée specifically to fit his post-op limitations, and everything was delicious…fish, chicken, duck, crabcakes, homemade mushroom ravioli…yum! Thanks to Fred for treating us for my hubby’s 60th birthday!

Fred’s mother and my husband’s father were brothers and sisters. They were around each other a good bit growing up, and it was fun listening to them retrace a few branches of the family tree. Fred spent years in aeronautic engineering, but recently he’s been exploring writing, so we had a great time telling craft stories. He’s taken some screenplay classes out in California, where he lives. But I think he’s got a great idea for a novel, so it was fun exploring that together. Karen was a professional photographer for twenty five years. This was the first time we’d seen Fred and Karen since the Cushman family reunion/cruise to Alaska back in 2005. There were over 70 folks at that reunion, which was a seven-day cruise to several ports of Alaska, out of Seattle. Amazing trip… but also a fascinating study in family dynamics. I don’t think I’ve ever been around so many smart, energetic, creative people at one time! Watching my husband interact with all those cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, it was obvious that they were his people.

So today as we celebrate his 60th birthday, we also commemorate a sad loss. Our dear friend, Urania Alissandratos, died one year ago today. You can read my posts about those beautiful but difficult last days with her in October of 2007 here and here . I’m sorry we won’t be in Memphis this coming Sunday when her daughters come from New York City and her sons from Nashville and Memphis will also be at St. John for the memorial prayers and (Greek) dinner which they are serving afterwards. We’re heading to Seagrove Beach, Florida tomorrow, so watch for posts from the beach later this week. But we’ll be thinking of Urania and singing “Memory Eternal” in our hearts.

Oh, one closing note. For those who listenend to River Jordan's radio show, "Backstory," from 4-6 pm on Saturday, waiting for her to read an excerpt from one of my essays, here's what happened. River emailed me part-way through the show to apologize... she forgot that she was doing a recast that day, so she'll read from the essay this coming Saturday... or the next. Thing is, it's a great show, so I hope everyone will enjoy tuning in for it from time to time. Her interview this past Saturday with Mark Childress, who wrote One Mississippi, was excellent, and the music was diverse and fun. Thanks to my friend, Herman, for introducing me to River and her show.

That's all for now... gotta' run errands and pack for the beach today. Next time you hear from me, I'll probably be posting from Amavida Coffee Shop in Seagrove Beach, Florida. Ahhhh... I can smell the coffee now.... and the ocean ...

The Good Patient and Coming Attractions

First of all, let me just say that not all doctors make bad patients. I’d like to report that my husband has been an exemplary patient, both in the hospital and since we’ve been home. Post-operatively he’s had a little fever, but not high enough for alarm, and he’s following all the surgeon’s post-op instructions well. Which means, of course, that I’m the one lifting anything over ten pounds, and we’re crushing his pills in applesauce, and gradually transitioning from clear liquids to opaque liquids to a “soft mechanical” diet, which he will follow for 4-6 weeks. We really appreciate the phone calls and emails from well-wishers—thanks!

One of the nurses at Vanderbilt that we liked so much said, at one point, “It’s all about you.” Meaning the patient. I’m trying to remember that now that we’re home, which isn’t always easy, since I’m so spoiled. For example, I’m used to him bringing me coffee in bed every morning. Yes, he’s been doing that for many years. So this morning we reversed the practice… I even took out the garbage and brought in the paper. This is my first time to nurse him through recovery from surgery, and he’s had two opportunities to do the same for me, both in the past seven years. Yes, it’s about about him now.

So, we get home from Nashville 24 hours after his surgery is over, and thirty minutes later he’s on a conference call for work. Yes. Not that I’m not writing, in fact, I’ve got some more good news on that front, so on to Coming Attractions!

“Are These My People?” on Backstory tomorrow afternoon:

First of all, Nashville storyteller, author, playwright and radio host, River Jordan, is going to read part of my essay, “Are These My People?” on her show, “Backstory,” tomorrow afternoon, October 4, between 4 and 6 p.m. Central Time. Tune in to 98.9 WRFN-LPFM, “Radio Free Nashville,” or click here to see three ways to listen online, instructions for listening through your phone or on TV Cable Channel 10 throughout the Davidson County (Tennessee) area. River has a great show every Saturday, with literary and musical guests and the occasional shout out to fledgling writers like me. You can listen to some of her podcasts here. I’m currently reading her novel, The Messenger of Magnolia Street, which my friend, the author Joshilyn Jackson, blurbed, saying the book is “like A Wrinkle in Time for grown-ups.” River is an amazing storyteller. I hope some of ya’ll will tune in to her show tomorrow afternoon… and future Saturday afternoons!

“The Other Woman” in Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine in November:

Another of my essays, “The Other Woman,” will be published in this wonderful magazine, Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine, in November. It’s available online here and you can also subscribe to the print version at that link. I’m honored to be published by a magazine that recently published some of Beth Ann Fennelly’s poetry, “The Kudzu Chronicles,” which you can read here. (If you click on the link at the bottom of her bio, or just CLICK HERE , you can hear Beth Ann read from this poem, which is artfully illustrated in the video.) Beth Ann was in Memphis in May, reading from her new book, Unmentionables, which contains “The Kudzu Chronicles.” I’ll post again about the Fall and Winter Issue of Mom Writers when it comes out in a few weeks… just wanted to give everyone a heads up, and to encourage all my friends who are moms and writers, especially, to subscribe!

Another essay in skirt! Magazine in November:

Just as we got home from Nashville yesterday, I received an email from Nikki Hardin, the Publisher/Editor of skirt! Magazine, saying she’d like to use the essay I submitted for their November issue, but that she’d made a couple of changes (she is the editor, right?) to the essay, and that she’d like me to come up with a new title. Again, her prerogative as Editor. So, I sent her quite a few options for the title, but she penned one herself this time: “Super Sized Enlightenment.” It works. (The November issue is about food, pleasure, cravings, etc.)

So, hubby (recovering from surgery, remember?) and I went for a walk around the block (he’s used to running 20 + miles a week, but he’s starting with walking) yesterday afternoon, and as we were passing Fresh Slices, the deli/restaurant around the corner from our house, I noticed that the October issue of skirt! was out in their bright green magazine rack, so I picked one up. When we got home, I read every essay and yep, none of the titles appeared in the body of the writing. All the titles were short and catchy, like “Tending to What Matters,” by a part-time bar tender, and “Notes from Center Stage,” by a California writer who spent some time working in a music coffeehouse where “the women and their instruments … speak directly to our souls, reminding us of the power of each of our inner voices.”

I always find something that speaks right to me in skirt!’s essays, and this time it was Kim Lute, in her piece, “Citizen Mom,” about a young mother who recently deployed to Iraq. Like me, Kim is working on a memoir, so I was interested in her words about how her friend, the soldier-mom, inspired her own work:

She encouraged me to take risks in my writing, to offend as many as I needed to if it meant I was getting closer to the truth.

Getting closer to the truth. Yes, that’s what memoir-writing is about. And yes, it involves risk-taking.

Oh, and let me say how excited I was to read one of the reader letters in “dear skirt!” extolling the writing in the magazine:

“Your writers are fantastic. I am struck by everything I read—compelled to read past the first paragraph to the end of each article (which doesn’t usually happen with other mags). I appreciate clever, whimsical, true-to-life writing, but it is so rare. A constant “wow!” goes through my mind reading skirt! … so big thanks to you and all your wordsmiths.”

Wordsmiths. That’s what she called us… the writers for skirt! Magazine. This will be my third essay published by skirt! since last November, when the Memphis edition first came out. (skirt! is a national publication, with local editions in quite a few cities/states now.) Oh, and this month’s Memphis skirt! profiles Rebecca Skloot, who teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Memphis and runs the River City Writers Series. I enjoyed meeting Rebecca when she was a panelist at the Creative Nonfiction Conference in Oxford back in February/March. Congrats on being named one of the “Women to Watch” by skirt! this month, Rebecca!

Okay, that’s all for today. Remember to tune into Backstory tomorrow afternoon from 4-6 p.m. The essay River will be reading from, “Are These My People,” is based on my experience at the Neshoba County Fair back in July. If you miss the broadcast, you can read my blog post that inspired the essay, here. (Or, you might enjoy the blog photos while you listen to the essay on Backstory.) It's a gorgeous day here in Memphis, so I'm walking away from the computer for a while.

The Protection of the Mother of God... and Fundoplication

Blessed Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God! (October 1 is one of Her feasts… you can read more about that here and here.) This is an icon of the Feast.

The Orthodox Church offers such wonderful sources of comfort in times of sickness. Yesterday morning, before we left Memphis for the drive to Nashville, we stopped by St. John, our parish, where Father John Troy Mashburn, our pastor, said some prayers for healing and anointed my husband with holy oil, and then gave us some oil to bring on the trip. As we stood in front of the icon of Christ on the solea (the raised area in front of the altar) listening to Father John say the prayers, I had a moment of dejavu—of remembering a similar scenario seven and a half years ago, just before my surgery for cancer. It was just before my 50th birthday. I was so afraid, until Father John said those prayers and anointed me with oil and told me everything would be all right. And it was.

So, he said those same words yesterday, just a few days before my huband’s 60th birthday, and then we drove to Nashville for his surgery at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

What a beautiful day… we arrived in time to eat lunch on the outdoor patio at my favorite place in Hillsboro Village—Jackson’s Bistro. Then we headed to the medical center for an afternoon of appointments with anesthesiologists, nurses, and doctors for all the pre-op stuff, which was over by 5 p.m.

Just in time for a lovely evening with Father Basil’s first cousin, Ben Benoit and his wife Betty, who live in Nashville. They took us to an old Nashville restaurant, Jimmy Kelly’s, which was just a few blocks from our hotel.

It’s inside an old Victorian house… great atmosphere, delicious food (the cousins both had a rack of lamb… a nod to their New England roots—their grandparents were from Concord, Massachusetts) and we shared a couple of bottles of really good red wine and lots of memories and laughs. Betty’s an officer at bank, so we talked about how to fix the nation’s financial crisis… for about 2 minutes. Ben’s an entrepreneur… always cooking up marketing schemes for folks and we talked about writing books, designing web sites and other fun left brain stuff.

By 9 or 9:30 we were back at our hotel and on our way to sleepy time. [Note to self: always drink red wine the night before surgery.]

We arrived at Vanderbilt at 7 a.m. where more really smart, really compassionate people continued the admission process, and by 10:30 a.m. he was on his way to the operating room and I was on my way down 21st Avenue looking for a coffee shop with wi-fi. What a beautiful day! As I walked I prayed, “Holy Mother of God, protect my husband.” My anxiety from the day before was considerably lessened, and I found a place to enjoy the sunshine with a latte just down the street from the hospital—Bruegger’s Coffee shop with free wi fi. and a great view of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Shop which I managed to avoid, by the hardest.

So you’re thinking, your husband is in surgery and you’re at a coffee shop on the internet? Well, yes. But I can quit any time I want to. I just don’t want to, okay? And besides, what else could I be doing for 2 ½ hours? The surgery waiting room is no place to spend a beautiful fall day… and the nurse had my cell phone if they needed me. I got back thirty minutes before the surgeon came out to tell me the good news—everything went fine and we can go home tomorrow (Thursday) morning. So I call Father John Troy to tell him and he’s not surprised. Didn’t he tell me everything would be okay? He’s quick to add that it’s not his doing, but the prayers of the Mother of God.

Now my prayers are just thank you thank you thank you… like Anne Lamott says—she only has two prayers, help me help me help me and thank you thank you thank you. Keep it simple.

Now for those inquiring minds who have been patiently waiting all this time for some juicy medical information, here it comes. My husband’s procedure is called laparoscopic fundoplication. Here’s a site with good information and drawings about and here’s a site with an animated video, on the bottom right of the page.

So, now we’re looking at 2-3 days of a liquid diet and then 4-6 weeks of a “soft” diet… he’ll probably lose 10 pounds and I’ll gain it, if we have milk shakes and creamy soups every day! Anyone with recipes for low-fat creamy things, please send them my way! I’m sure I’ll be doing lots of business at Sean’s Deli on Union … best smoothies in the world. #8 is best—Mango—32 ounces but only 365 calories, no fat, and 5 servings of fruit. Sounds like a staple lunch for the next few weeks…

I’ve been back at the hospital for a few hours and just now returning to the coffee shop for a salad and to post this report before heading back to our room for the night.

Dr. Holzman came into the waiting room to tell me the surgery was successful, thank God, and that he’d be in recover for a couple of hours. While I was waiting for him to wake up, another of those wonderful Orthodox blessings just came our way… Father Stephen Rogers, pastor at St. Ignatius Orthodox Church in Franklin (near Nashville) came to the hospital this afternoon and kept me company in the waiting room for a while. Then when Fr Basil woke up we both went back to see him together and he said a beautiful prayer with us… part of it was asking God to give him “patience for his healing” … which was such a good reminder to both of us to accept whatever that healing process is going to look like.

It’s 5:30 p.m. and the patient is in a bit of discomfort, swallowing is difficult, but no intense pain. Dr. Holzman will be by to see him again in a little while, so I don’t want to be gone too long. I’ll post again on Friday. For now, I give thanks for the Protection of the Mother of God, and for all our friends and family who are praying for us, calling, emailing, and just showing how much you care. Much love to all.

Southern Writers on the River: The Burden of Memory and History

A dear friend recently asked to borrow some books for a trip to Mexico with her husband, who is battling cancer. I gathered a few paperbacks (easier for travel) from my shelves and took them to our regular meeting at Starbucks. That was about a month ago. So, last week when we got together, she told me all about their trip, and showed me the beautiful memories she had captured in her watercolor journal. As she was returning some of the paperbacks, she commented briefly on one of them, The Last of the Southern Girls by Willie Morris.

“I didn’t finish this one—it was just too… sad.”

“Really? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to send anything with you that might bring you down.”

My mind struggled to recall the plot of this book that I had read several years ago. I had remembered it as a romantic tale of an Ole Miss sorority girl taking on Washington society in the sixties and seventies… the same years that this Ole Miss sorority girl was still stuck in Mississippi. I was on a spiritual and cultural journey of a completely different kind. Some of the difficult parts of that journey are being recorded in the pages of my memoir-in-progress. And yeah, there’s lots of sadness there, but it’s a memoir, not a romantic comedy.

So yesterday when some of the folks in my writers critique group gave me their gentle but wise feedback on the pages I had just penned—the pages about some difficult and dark things that happened during those same years that Morris chronicled in The Last of the Southern Girls—I listened to their suggestions because I respect their journeys and their own personal endeavors to capture their memories, and our collective Southern history, in the short stories and novels they are drafting.

Morris told an interviewer in 1979 that “if there is anything that makes southerners distinctive from the main body of Americans, it is a certain burden of memory and a burden of history.... I think sensitive southerners have this in their bones, this profound awareness of the past.”

Doug, Patti and Herman (and Tom, who couldn’t join us yesterday because, well, because his loyalties were torn—he was at the Ole Miss-Florida game watching the Rebels whip up on the Gators down in the swamp) are all “sensitive southerners” who definitely share this burden of memory, and this profound awareness of the past. All four of us are working on memoirs, stories and novels involving those memories and histories, across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

So, it was fitting that our group, the Yoknapatawpha Writers Group, met down on the banks of the Mississippi River Saturday, since the name “Yoknapatawpha” (the fictional county in many of Faulkner’s writings) means “water flowing slowly through fertile ground” … which is what we’re trying to capture with the slow but important work of illustrating a culture with our writing. The work is slow, but hopefully, the ground is fertile. We usually meet monthly in Oxford, but with the Presidential Debate, we knew the traffic would be wicked, so Herman proposed that we meet out behind the Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, with its amazing view of the river. Herman is a member of the Museum, and a contributing sculpture/artist.

It was beautiful on the lawns behind the museum and workshop, where folks were setting up a tent, tables and chairs for a late afternoon wedding. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures.

This one, “The Whistling Pig,” is part of the current Art Cookers III exhibit, and is actually a working steam powered calliope, like the ones found on riverboats. I heard one for the first time back in May, when I was in New Orleans.

I love the “Friendship Bridge”

And this crazy bird.

And this welcoming bench.

And even this flower on the bluff by the river, signaling the rare and glorious days of an Indian Summer here in Memphis.

We took a break for lunch at the nearby Arcade Restaurant, on South Main Street, where we sat in the “Elvis Presley” booth, the last booth in the back of the main room.

Back on the grounds of the museum, we continued our work, amidst the buzz of the wedding set-up. It was also fascinating to watch the "boat stores" on the river, carrying groceries to the tug boats that pushed the barges up (or down) the river, so that they never needed to stop their journey, even to refuel or change crews.

Herman enjoyed sharing some of the history of the museum with us, like this memorial gate and the artists who contributed to it.

Doug captured Herman, Patti and me posing in front of it.

Earlier, Herman had told me the story of this unusual metal sculpture of the top of a man's head, which appears to be drowning, sinking into the fountain beneath. The sculptor was dying, with Lou Gherig's Disease, but he designed the piece and even in his wheelchair, gave directions for its installation.

After we finished our afternoon critique session, we enjoyed a cool evening on the deck outside at Bosco’s Squared in midtown.

What an incredibly beautiful day. And today,as I reflected on some of the encouragement I had received from my fellow writers, I read again Willie Morris’s words in the preface of The Last of the Southern Girls. When Morris wrote this book, he was broke, his dog had died, and his relationship with a Washington, D.C. celebrity (upon whom the book is based) had ended. Friends and peers who read early drafts of the book said he had “undergone some sort of odd psychic breakdown,” and others said that even his words, “which had apparently never failed me, had certainly done so now.”

To Morris’ surprise, the book made more money than anything he’d ever written, and even got a substantial Hollywood option. But he never reread the book, saying he was “brushed with dark ambivalent wisps of memory and emotion….” and that “any book has the writer’s surreptitious scars on it in perpetuity.”

The writer’s surreptitious scars. I wonder if they will be visible to our readers, or if they are only seen by the ones on whom they have been inflicted? Oh, the burden of memory. Why do Southern writers endure it? To reclaim a part of our life, as Scott Morris said at the Yoknapatawpha Writing Workshop back in June.

And also, as Elizabeth Berg said, “You have to be in love with writing itself, with the solitary and satisfying act of sitting down and watching something you hold in your head and your heart quietly transform itself into words on a page." The love affair continues. And I can see the fire burning in the work that Doug, Patti and Herman are doing. Oh, and congratulations to Michelle Bright, a fellow student at the workshop in Oxford this past June—Michelle’s a journalism student at Ole Miss, and won herself a ticket to the debate with her essay on why Oxford should be the venue for the Presidential Debate. Can’t wait to hear her take on the doings there this past Friday night! Kudos, Michelle! (That's Michelle, joining me and others for coffee on the balcony at Square Books during the workshop.)

We Didn't Start the Fire

As Americans wait to see how our leaders in Congress will deal with the current financial crisis, thousands of folks working on the first official Presidential Debate, scheduled for tomorrow night at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, must be going nuts. They've spent over $5 million on preparations for the debate, and Mississippi Governor Haley Barber is still smiling and saying "We're planning on having the debate," but don't you know it's crazy down there? My writing group that usually meets monthly in Oxford moved our gathering to Memphis this Saturday, not wanting to deal with the traffic or the crowds that might still be hanging around the next day. With the debate "up in the air" at this point, I hope my husband's flight home from Washington, DC tonight isn't affected by the last-minute crazies that might be also hitting the airlines, with candidates and their attendants also flying into Memphis, either tonight or tomorrow, since our airport is closest to Oxford. Traveling mercies go out to him and to everyone else coming our way!

Those who know me well know that I'm not a very political person. I'm not smart enough or committed enough to spending the time needed to figure this mess out. You won't read many opinions about political issues on this blog. Oh, yes, I'll vote, but I place my hope in a kingdom that is not of this world, so I pray for our leaders more than I campaign for them. Yeah, I'm sure some of you are thinking that's a cop-out, but again, I'm paying attention when I can, and I will vote on November 4.

But in the meanwhile, as we're all waiting for results from Congress, I'll share something I ran across while researching for an essay I'm polishing up to send to a magazine soon. I'm considering leading with this:

Maybe Billy Joel was right. Maybe the generation that came of age in the fifties and sixties didn’t start the fire, but we certainly fanned the flames.

(The essay is about the pursuit of pleasure, something I know a bit more about than politics.) For a fun ride down forty years (1949-1989) of historic and political highlights, check out these videos of Billy Joel's song, "We Didn't Start the Fire." The first one is an actual music video:

The second one is more like the newsreels we used to watch before the main feature started at the movies. Remember that? Anyway, I hope you enjoy the videos, and I'll be back sometime over the weekend.

Ready to Make Nice II

[Ready to Make Nice II refers to a bigger struggle with anger that resulted in a published essay, here. Not that I'm advocating anger as a good thing, but, as my Goddaughter Stacy always says, it is what it is.]

A couple of weeks ago, while I was in Jackson (Mississippi) visiting my mother, my car got ploughed into in the parking lot of the hotel where I was staying. When I got back to Memphis, I called our insurance agency, and they told me to call “Betty” at the company who carries our policy. They also told me that if I had reported it to the police we wouldn’t have to pay more than $200 of the cost of repairs. (We have a $1000 deductible.) So I called the Jackson Police Dept toldthem what happened, and asked if it was too late to file a report. She said yeah, that I would have had to call it in the day it happened. My ignorance would probably cost me $800.

The next week I get estimates at two different body shops to see how extensive the damage is and decide to file a claim with our insurance company. Betty calls to set up the appointment for an adjustor to come look at the car. First she asks me to tell her what happened, so I relate the story of coming out of the hotel into the parking lot in Jackson and finding my car bashed in. The 24-hour security guard wasn’t around (he circles the building and can’t see the front and back at the same time) and there’s a sign by the door to the hotel that says “We are not responsible for damage done to vehicles in the parking lot.” I had an appointment with the nurse at my mother’s assisted living home, so I didn’t take time to go in and tell the clerk at the front desk about it… thinking it wouldn’t help.

She sounds like she’s twelve, but as soon as I tell her the story, she says, “I don’t mean to sound condescending, Miss Susan, but you should always report anything that happens to your car, even if you like hit a deer, because then we can like open an uninsured drivers case….” Blah blah blah.

She basically just says back to me what I had just told her, so I say, “Yes, I understand that now, as I just told you, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

She continues to tell me about setting up an appointment and that the adjustor could even give me a check on the spot, so I ask if I could take the car anywhere I want to have it repaired and she says yes. So I tell her I’ve already taken it to two shops and she asks which ones and when I tell her and she says one of them is one of their “VIP” shops. I say great, it’s right around the corner from my house, so it will be convenient.
Then she says, “Let’s get them on the phone, for a three-way, (was that a giggle?) to set up an appointment.”

So she gets the manager at the body shop and me on the phone and I suggest11 a.m. on Monday and the manager says that’s great. Then I say wait—what about the adjustor. Does that time work for him? At that point Betty says to the manager at the shop, “Oh, um, thanks so much, I’ll talk with you later,” and he hangs up.

Then Betty says to me that sometimes the adjustor, whose nickname is “Speedy” (or something like that) can’t make it to an appointment when he says he can, due to a previous appointment, but it really isn’t necessary for him to even be there.

I’m confused now. I thought the appointment was with Speedy, not the body shop.

So I ask, “What if I choose to use a different body shop?”

“Oh, you can use any body shop you want. And if the estimate the shop gives us doesn’t jive with Speedy’s estimate, we’ll just make an adjustment on our end.”

“So, how will you even know the difference, if Speedy doesn’t show up?” At this point I’m irritated and finally give Betty a piece of my mind, beginning with telling her that she did sound condescending when she gave me the little lecture earlier, and when she called me “Miss Susan,” and that she sounds like she’s twelve years old. And that she’s changed her story at least twice, beginning with saying the adjustor could come to my home and ending up with the adjustor doesn’t even have to be there. And that I’m 57 years old, and my time is as valuable as Speedy’s, so if I make an appointment to show up somewhere at 11, I’ll be there, because I’m an adult, etc.

She says, “I’ll assure you that I’m not twelve years old either, but I’m sorry that you are upset.” Not, “I’m sorry for being rude, condescending and confusing.”

In the midst of all this she asks, “do you have lots of accidents?” in another condescending tone… and I still don’t know why she asked that, but I say, no, and that this wasn’t an accident, either, it was a HIT AND RUN in a motel parking lot when I wasn’t even in the car.

She also asks if we have a lien on the car… that her records show that such-and-such-a-bank is the title holder and I say no the car is paid for, and that bank doesn’t even exist any more.

In the end I just say I’ll take the car to the shop and it doesn’t matter if Speedy is there or not or what kind of deal her insurance company has with the shop, since I’ll only be paying the $1000 deductible anyway.

And there went an hour of my valuable time and a severe break in my concentration as I’m writing and revising my book-in-progress… which is at least as important as Betty’s work at the insurance company.

But over the weekend I go to church and we have the memorial prayers for Mary Allison and I take my five-year-old Goddaughter, Sophie, up for communion with me, and, well, it begins to bother me that I was angry with this girl at the insurance company. On Monday morning I find my way to my icon corner and say my prayers, and my heart softens. Peace begins to return. After all she’s only, what, twelve? So I call to apologize to her, believing that my anger is only hurting me, right? I’m responsible for my own behavior, not the behavior of others—especially not twelve year olds who are not my own children. I get her voice mail, but leave a humble pie message, and then take my car to the shop.

“Speedy” is at the shop on time, but spends 45 minutes doing his inspection, talking with “his people” and all that, while I visit with the owner of the shop, inside. At one point I mention how confusing it was, my conversation with “Betty” … and he says, “Yeah, we’ve been doing business with this company for years, but something has changed with them recently.”

About then Speedy comes inside with a check, made payable to me and the body shop, and says all I need to do is sign it over to them once the work is done, plus another $500, for my deductible.

“Only $500?” I ask. “I thought it was $1000.”

“Our records show it’s only $500.”

Who am I to argue with the likes of Speedy and Betty? Or an insurance company? So I smile and say thank you, and Speedy leaves.

I turn back to the body shop owner and say, “Well, he was nice.”

“Yeah, but that girl, Betty…when I talked with her on Friday, she sounded like she was about twelve years old.”

I just smile. Ready to make nice. No more anger.

The (Sometimes Lonely) Journeys of Poets, Pilgrims and Writers

It’s been almost two years since I dove into this writer’s life with serious abandon. It was October, in 2006, when I met Cassandra King, Lee Smith, and Beth Ann Fennelly at the Southern Festival of Books here in Memphis. Each of them inspired me—some by their personal interest and encouragement, others by their contributions to panels and interviews during the weekend, others by the treasures I discovered, purchased, took home and devoured, their books. Within three months I had drafted a novel. And although that first book is on a shelf, waiting for major reconstruction at some point in the future, the writing of it propelled me into this writer’s life that is at times exhilarating (like when the words come flowing from my pen with passion and speed, or when an editor emails to say she’s going to publish another one of my essays, or when a faculty member at a writer’s workshop compliments my work) and at other times discouraging (like when the words that come flowing from my pen, slowly, are boring, even to me, or when I receive yet another rejection email from a potential agent) or disparaging (like when I find myself listening to the “watchers”—the negative voices saying you can’t do that or what will people think) or, just lonely, like I felt a good bit this last week.

Yes, I know I complain a lot about not having enough uninterrupted, personal, private time for writing. So this last week, I found it. And I drafted seventeen pages of the book I’m working on, which is a lot for me, for one week. But it was a dark week. I’ve been depressed a lot lately, but I tried to let the dark side fuel my work instead of suppressing it, and at the end of the day, it felt good to be moving forward.

A friend and fellow writer (she’s a poet and an artist) shared an essay with me this week called “Of Power and Time” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Mary Oliver. It’s from her book, Blue Pastures. You can read more of the essay here. Another friend had shared Oliver’s book of poetry, White Pine, with me this spring, so when two friends, both soulful women, share the same treasure with me, I usually pay attention. Here’s an excerpt from the essay:

It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone.

Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart—to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

But just a often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist.

What a great reminder that it’s not just outside factors, and people, who interrupt the writer at work, it’s our own inner noises. This isn’t just true of writing, other serious pursuits require silence. Take prayer, for example. When my children still lived at home and I would complain that I couldn’t find a quiet time to pray, then suddenly they’re all gone and I’ve got nothing stopping me from standing at my icon corner, all noises off, and entering into diligent and meaningful prayer first thing in the morning. There are no school lunches to prepare, no carpools to drive, and my husband gets his own breakfast. So what do I do? I sleep an extra hour, then get up and immediately jump into a day of busy activities, and sometimes slots for writing, but often without that precious spiritual food I craved when the house was full of noises—that time of prayer.

Elizabeth Gilbert writes about that struggle in her wonderful book, Eat, Pray, Love, which I’ve only read half of so far and planned to wait and do a full review here when I’m finished, but I’ll go ahead and share this one quote. She’s writing about her struggle to be still, to learn to meditate and pray:

Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the “monkey mind”—the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined.

Later Gilbert explains how the heart helps the mind:

The other day a monk told me, “The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That’s where you need to go.”

Virginia Woolf discusses on this struggle in her book, A Room of One’s Own :

…the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent…. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed.

Gilbert paid attention to Woolf, mentioning her in Eat, Pray, Love:

Virginia Woolf wrote, “Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.” On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where “all is correct.” But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, “all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.” Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.

So here I am. Monkey-mind working. The shadow of the sword to be crossed, the perilous existence to be lived. The loneliness and solitude to be embraced. The privacy and courage to be found. And then maybe, just maybe, the words will become art and the prayer will bring peace. Here’s to the next seventeen pages, and to a week lived with the mind in the heart.

Memory Eternal: September 18, 1998

Ten years ago today, my 20-year-old Goddaughter, Mary Allison Callaway, was killed by a drunk driver. Mary Allison and her mother, Deborah and her brother, Carter, were part of the early group of seekers who became St. Peter Orthodox Church in Jackson, Mississippi, back in March of 1987. My husband and I were part of that group from 1970 until we moved to Memphis in 1988.




Mary Allison often visited my parents’ store, Bill Johnson’s Phidippides Sports, where her mother took my aerobics classes in the 1980s. Here she is, in the center of a group of children who gathered in my dad’s office in the back of the store. Yeah, some of ya’ll might recognize those other kids, who are now all in their 30s! Clockwise from bottom, left: Jordan Henderson, Jonathan Cushman, “Papaw” (Bill Johnson), Joanna Meadows, David Algood, Ben Skirtech, and of course, Mary Allison in the center. This picture holds bittersweet memories for me, because my father died in July of 1998, just two months before Mary Allison. And their graves are only a few feet apart, up on a hill at Natchez Trace Memorial Park in Madison, Mississippi. I like to stop there on some of my trips to visit my mother and sit on the bench under the tree that overlooks the hilly cemetery. In February of 2006 we buried my brother, Mike, in a third grave near Mary Allison and Papaw. I’ve cried lots of tears sitting on that bench over the years.

But back to Mary Allison… she graduated from my alma mater, Murrah High School, in 1996. Here we are at her house, just before her graduation that May.

She had already begun to spiral into some dark holes, and continued to struggle with substances and behaviors that she hoped would numb the pain of some really difficult things in her life. But in December of 1997, she made the brave decision to face the pain and turn away from the things that were bringing her down. Part of that decision meant moving away from Jackson, so we offered for her to live with us in Memphis. She moved in with us in January of 1998 and began working, with plans to enter college after establishing Tennessee residency.

Those early months with us were a joy for us, but difficult for Mary. I’m sure she’d say there were joys for her, too. Our two younger kids were still living at home. Jason was 16 and Beth was 15. One of my favorite memories of the three of them together was on the some evenings when it neared bedtime (for my husband and me, the teenagers stayed up later than us by then) Mary Allison would grab Jason and Beth by the hands and find my husband and say, “Can we have a blessing?” The Orthodox tradition is for the father (or either parent) to give the children a blessing before bed, making the sign of the cross over them with the blessing. At the end of the blessing Mary would pull them into a group hug. I often fought back tears watching this scene play out night after night. I think Mary Allison reminded us all of things we took for granted at that time. Or maybe of things we still struggled with ourselves.

On September 18, 1998, Mary Allison was driving to Indianola, Mississippi, to visit her mother and grandmother. It was both of their birthdays. She had gone to prayers at St. John Church that morning, then on a picnic with two friends before leaving our house for the drive to Indianola. She was bubbly and happy, having found the peace she had been searching for during those eight months in Memphis.

I got a phone call from her mother early that evening. “Mary Allison has gone to heaven,” was how she began, through her tears. She related what had happened. The highway patrol had called to say that Mary Allison had been hit, head-on, by a drunk driver on the way to Indianola. Evidently, a pickup truck in front of Mary saw the van coming at it and swerved off the road to avoid being hit. Mary didn’t have time to react, and took the full force of the vehicle coming at her. The coroner said she died instantly.

I packed up some clothes for her burial, along with a few of her icons and other personal things from her room in our home and headed down to Jackson the next morning, to help Deborah prepare her daughter for burial. Like the myrrhbearing women, we combed her hair, applied a modest amount of makeup, and attended to a few other details that were difficult but healing for both of us.

Tiny Saint Peter Church in Madison was full to overflowing, with some people watching on a video screen in the fellowship hall during the service. There was a steady stream of people, especially young people, during the all night vigil the evening before. Some brought photographs, pieces of jewelry, even hand-written notes to place in the coffin as they said goodbye to Mary Allison, and thanked her for what she had meant in their lives.

See, Mary Allison had been telling everyone that people can change. That wounds can heal. A couple of entries from her journal, which her mother found and shared later, are indicative of the journey she was on:

January 11, 1998… “I have turned away from all the craziness and begun to seek God. When I say ‘seek God’ I mean allow God to be present in my life, because it doesn’t take much seeking to find what has always been there.”

February 23, 1998… “Today I am a person who has made many mistakes. Today I am a person who is forgiven. Today I am a person who is repenting. I never would have thought it could be so satisfying.”

Our oldest son, Jonathan, was a pall bearer, and Father Basil participated with the other priests and deacons in the funeral and burial.
This Sunday we’ll pray memorial prayers for her at St. John, and I’ll make kolliva, the boiled wheat with raisins, nuts, and honey, for everyone to share afterwards. (One recipe is here .) The wheat represents resurrected life; the nuts (or any seeds) the faith of the grain of mustard seed from the parable Jesus taught; and the honey to sweeten the suffering, because death no longer has power over us. Prayers for the dead are traditional for Eastern Orthodox Christians.

One of the verses from the Akathist Prayer or the Repose of the Departed speaks these healing words:

All who have been taken by the grave in the brightness of youth, who have been pierced on earth with the thorny crown of suffering, all who never saw earthly happiness, do Thou recompense, O Lord, through the compassion of Thine infinite love…. O Lord, receive into the mansions of Paradise youths and maidens who have departed, and vouchsafe them rejoicing at the supper of Thy Son; O Lord, soften the grief of parents over the loss of children; O Lord give rest to all who have no family, those who are alone, who have no one to pray for them, that their sins may vanish in the rays of Thine all-forgiveness.

O Lord of unutterable love, remember Thy servants who have fallen asleep.

Mary took Mary of Egypt as her patron saint (as I did), and so I’ll close with an intercession to this model of repentance and love for God:

Holy Mother Mary, pray to God for us.

I love you and miss you so much, Mary Allison.

UT Architecture, Old City, Robinella and Bubble Tea

The final day of my weekend in Knoxville arrived on Sunday… another morning of sleeping in, more of my daughter’s yummy by-the-cup (pod) coffee, a trip to Target (where we ran into Missy,the daughter of our old next-door-neighbor, Jim Meng, the architect who designed the house we lived in at one time! Missy's a student at UT now) and delicious veggie sandwiches on 9-grain bread for lunch. Another swim in her apartment complex pool (for me, while she watched football on TV--we know what we like!) and we’re off.

First stop is the University of Tennessee’s College of Architecture and Design (Beth's a second year grad student) building which, in my opinion, wasn’t photo-worthy on the outside, but oh, my gosh, the inside was awesome. You can’t quite get the overall look of the place from the downstairs level. First I took a picture of just the lobby itself, But then, thinking about Brooks and Dunn's song, "Put a Girl In It," I cajoled Beth into being in the shot. Okay, maybe I wasn't really thinking about the song at the time, but the next day (today) driving home from Memphis listening to their new CD, "Cowboy Town," when they got to that song, I thought about putting Beth in the picture. Huge leap from architecture to Ronnie Dunn, right? But he's kinda' nicely designed, don't you think?

And here's one of the art student’s designs that I particularly liked (the skirt)…

But upstairs, check out the view! The professor’s offices are the wings that jut out over the atrium. The studios are along one side of the upstairs. I didn’t take any pictures inside the studio, since quite a few students were busy working on a Sunday afternoon. Or any day of the week. Pretty much 24/7.

Next we headed downtown to Market Square, which has a few cute shops, (I liked one called "Earth to Old City,") bars and restaurants all around a walking square. Then on to “Old City,” for our final destination, Barley’s Taproom and Pizzaria . We had planned to arrive just ahead of the 8 p.m. show, but got there at 6, so we enjoyed the outdoor patio, some of the best pizza I’ve ever tasted, and a couple of drinks, until the drizzle chased us inside.

Here’s what Barley’s looks like inside. Finally 8 p.m. came, and with it, one of my favorite musicians, Robinella Contreres . Her web site is fun… you can click here and then click on an “ornament” on the tree to hear a sample lyric.

She’s also an artist, and designs her own tee-shirts. With new designs underway, she was selling out old ones for $5 each at the show Sunday night, so of course I grabbed one up. I like the design. (and it’s soft—very important feature)

I already had one of her CDs, “Solace For the Lonely,” and was thrilled when she played the title song at my request. (You can listen to it here .) I got two more CDs at the show, “no saint no prize” and her first CD, “Robinella and the CC String Band.” If you’ve never heard her, I recommend “Solace For the Lonely,”but they’re all great. Her music has been described as Appalachian church music, straight bluegrass, honky-tonk, jazz, blues and more. On Sunday nights Barley’s isn’t crowded, so we sat fairly near the stage where we could actually see her expressions.

During the band’s break, I went to buy tee shirts and CDs, and did the ultimate groupie thing--getting my picture made with Robinella...

and then Robinella said, “Hey, wanna’ go with me down the street to get a bubble tea?” (It was really hard not to look over my shoulder and ask, "me?"....)

So of course I did and off we went to this cool little place called The Knoxville Pearl. It’s a CEREAL BAR! Yes. That’s what they’ve got… rows and rows of cereal. And great retro furniture, like a coffee shop for high school kids or health nuts. Cool atmosphere.

And while we were at the counter waiting on Robinella’s bubble tea (also known as boba tea or pearl tea, because of the tapioca “balls” in the bottom which bubble up) to brew,

she grabbed a Sharpie and autographed my tee shirt (and one for a friend) and we chatted about our lives.

“I’m just an ordinary girl,” she began. “I grew up in Maryville, where I live now with my four-year-old son Cash and my husband.”

She asked what I did and when I mentioned writing of course she wanted to know about that but when I mentioned art she said what medium and then told me about her art, which you can see some of on her web site. She designs her own CD covers, too.

As we walked back to Barley’s, I felt like I had made a new friend. Her voice has star quality, and of course I asked her how much she was touring, making plans for more CDs and all that stuff. "Some folks are pushing me to tour more, and all that, but I really want to spend more time with my family,” she says in her hillbilly accent with her charming, innocent smile.

When we got back to Barley’s and she headed to the stage for the second half of her show, I sat back down at our booth with Beth, who’s a good sport about her aging mother’s embarrassing groupie adventures. I think she’s just grateful that I didn’t get up and dance when Robinella started singing again. I wanted to, but I was a bit intimidated by the professional-looking group who danced nonstop in front of the stage all night.

I didn’t take photos of them (again, trying to keep my groupie-ish and tourist-esqu activities to a minimum for Beth’s sake) doing some quick-stepping moves … not sure what you’d call it… looked like a combination of the Two-Step, the Quick Step and the Jitterbug! It was really fun living vicariously through them…and much safer for my knees!

I’ll leave you with a few of my favorites lines from “Solace For the Lonely”:

Some glad morning when I rise,
See the light and shed this disguise
I’ll become what I envisioned in a far away dream
And I will smile and I will sing…

When I go the last mile of the way
Tired and trembling from life’s long day
Farther along the lonely will see
Nothin but the blood can set you free

Cause there’s power in the blood
And solace for the lonely….