What Do You Really Want?

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Mom and me in October, 2015

Yesterday morning, my life changed.

It’s not that this hasn’t been coming for a long time. Nonetheless, it’s a profound change.

In October 2008, my sister called me on a Sunday evening to tell me that our mother was having memory problems, and I needed to step-up. For the last ten years I’ve been on “team-Mom,” juggling a teaching career, mothering, and writing alongside my role as one of the major support people on my mother’s journey with Alzheimer’s.

In spring of 2009, I took time off work and spent a lot of time with my parents. We went grocery shopping and out to lunch every week, and we took Mom to see a neurologist.

In August of 2010, my much-loved father (still good with a crossword puzzle, still teaching Sunday School) suddenly died.

Four years and three months ago, Mom had a major stroke, and while she had, up until then, maintained much of her independence, the stroke put her on the fast train into dementia. We moved her into a skilled nursing facility, thinking we would lose her soon. Four years…

Yesterday, Mom’s journey ended, or — as a wise friend put it — her brand new journey began.

During the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to carry on as though nothing was changed. After Mom took a turn for the worse (and was no longer speaking) in September, yet continued to hang on, I told myself that I’d better get on with my life. I was scheduled to teach two classes at my college, and on the first day of classes (completely unprepared) I pulled myself together and got started with that.

I also had an on-line course all set up and ready to go, and I launched the free opening of it from my blog. The on-line course is small — just a few prompts so far (possibly an actual course, depending on interest) — you can read about it here (if you haven’t already). But one of the reasons I wanted to blog today is to say that my heart is really not up for it right now. Laura Day, in The Circle, says that our desires, our hungers, are what make us human, and I agree. I continue to believe that it’s helpful to identify what we want to achieve — in our writing lives as in the rest of our lives. I think it’s better to see these things clearly and I think it’s better to bring them out into the open, than to keep them buried. I also think it’s good to winnow through our desires and decide which are the truly important, which are for “some day” but not now, and which are really the universe’s job, and not ours at all. I want to talk about that in later posts.

For some more pictures of my mother, you can revisit this post. I’m also sharing a poem (below) that I wrote about cleaning out the farmhouse when we moved Mom in 2012. It first appeared in Pilgrimage.

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be taking care of Mom’s final business in this world, things like death certificates and bank accounts and social security. And I’ll be celebrating my mom’s life with the rest of her very large extended family. For the next couple of weeks (while teaching, while being a mom of three young-adult daughters who have just lost their only grand-parent…etc.) — so far as the blog goes, I think I’ll lie low. I’ll let go of some things.

You’ll hear more from me after that.

Love, Bethany

 

Writing THE CIRCLE

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If you follow my blog, then you already know that I read a lot of books. I love sharing my books with friends and passing them along to the exact right person. But every so often, I come across a book that is so wonderful, I want to buy copies for all my friends.

One of those books is THE CIRCLE, by Laura Day.

Laura Day has written a number of successful books, including PRACTICAL INTUITION, WELCOME TO YOUR CRISIS, and HOW TO RULE THE WORLD FROM YOUR COUCH. But THE CIRCLE is my go-to favorite. I’ve read it several times, and I think I have an effective, “anti-woo woo” way to share it with you.

To my mind, THE CIRCLE isn’t necessarily “woo woo” (what do we mean by that? Spiritual? And what would be wrong with spiritual?), unless you want it to be. In the Prologue, Day reassures readers that The Circle is “not in conflict with any religious or spiritual beliefs,” and my experience has borne this out. You could understand it as an Irish Caim, a blessing circle. But it is not magic, and it is not about any realm of being other than the one we live in right now.

As Day explains, you have probably walked the circle before. My most powerful past experience of it came when my husband, Bruce, had a major health crisis. He was already in the hospital, and had undergone successful surgery. It was Mother’s Day and our daughters were 8, 8, and 2. My parents had been helping out, and planned to go home later that day, as Bruce was scheduled to be released. I had everything under control (hah!)—I had even worked out my teaching schedule so that I would miss only one day of classes! Long story short, my mother got up that Sunday morning and cancelled everything I had orchestrated for my Mother’s Day. She told me that I was to go to the hospital, by myself, and see Bruce.

Long story short, the supervising nurse met me as I got out of the elevator. My husband was hallucinating, he had ripped out his stitches and his catheter, and done some other damage to himself, and he was headed back into surgery.

If I wanted this introduction to be twice as long, I could tell you the astounding number of coincidences (besides my mother’s initial insight) that then ensued–including a woman I scarcely knew showing up at the hospital to take me to lunch because it was Mother’s Day and she thought it would be nice to do something for me. For the next ten days, I lived inside a circle where the right conversations, unexpected help, and loving encouragement flowed to me.

Here’s how Laura Day has helped me to understand this personal story.

Sometimes, often in a crisis, we get intensely focused on what we need. It’s kind of like the way radio waves are all around us, all the time, but we don’t always have a receiver tuned in to them. When my husband had his health crisis, I tuned in.

THE CIRCLE is about creativity; specifically, it is about living and creating consciously.  And it can help you to tune in to what you
really really really want to create in your life.

Day has divided the journey into nine parts, with three main headings: Initiation, Apprenticeship, and Mastery. My favorite subsections might be ritual and synchronicity, and these are the parts I always incorporate into my own classes, even my intro-to-composition classes that I used to teach at my college. (Now, of course, I’m sharing all of it!)

I hope I’ve intrigued you with this introduction. Over the next several weeks I’ll be writing my way through The Circle and I’d love it if you could join me.

Of course I recommend purchasing Laura’s book, but the posts will be enough to move you all the way through what I am calling WRITING THE CIRCLE.

In order to get started, all you have to do is subscribe to my blog. (See the link below.) If you want to know a little more, three of the posts will be available on the blog to everyone, and you can read the first one by clicking here.

7 Ways to Get More Writing Time

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This week I went back to school. Some time back in August I got a little panicky about money, and after brainstorming what I might do for $$$ while waiting to be discovered as the next Anne Tyler (sell courses on my blog, work at Edmonds Bookshop, read books aloud for Audible), I thought, “I can teach a couple classes.” Easy peasy, right?

So I emailed my old college, and sure enough they had a couple of composition courses lying around, unclaimed. (They had several, but I wisely took only 2.)

I turned in my book order. I started working on my syllabus. The opening of the quarter was looming. (Meanwhile, the college had more classes available–and were begging adjunct teachers to take another; I did not.)

And then my mother had another stroke. And then we called in Hospice. And then the family visits began. And then I had an itty bitty breakdown (and canceled my readings for Body My House, which was dumb, but felt absolutely necessary last week). I called the college and someone helped me come up with a plan, should I not be able to meet my classes the first few days.

And then, Mom got a tiny bit better, and the good Hospice people stopped saying she would die any minute.

So I took my hand off the panic button, and I pulled on my big girl panties, and I trudged off to the college yesterday morning.

If you want to write, if you want to be the writer you dream of being, then you have to write. And yes, you, too, have a life. So how do you carve writing time from that busy life?

  1. Write first thing in the morning, before everything else gets in the way.
  2. Write for a short, doable amount of time. Decide how much time that is, and if it’s only 15 minutes or 5, don’t fret about it. Set a timer and write.
  3. Write an email to yourself (or to your mother), but instead of “Hello, how are you / I am fine,” write a few lines for a poem, or a character sketch or a summary of the greatest blog post ever. (I find that I dash off emails, and within that framework I can sometimes circumvent what’s keeping me from writing.)
  4. Write ONE great 140-character line and Tweet it. Apply this principle (see #3) to whatever sort of writing you find easiest–just hijack it and go.
  5. Write in your car (parked of course, preferably in a very safe park, but a parking lot will do). Five or even fifteen minutes of writing in your car will not make you (too) late to dinner.
  6. Write during meetings. If nothing else, write a character description of the person leading the meeting. (I have a very interesting poem in which my former boss morphs into a dragon.)
  7. When you feel blocked–try writing out someone else’s words (attribute them clearly, of course) as a way to kick start your own words. Try following up with a close imitation, but with your own subject matter.

If you’re a teacher–here’s one more suggestions: WRITE WHILE YOUR STUDENTS WRITE.

If you want to write, then writing will be one of those things that fills the well of your being, enabling you to give to others.

No matter who’s dying. No matter whose paper is waiting to be read. You need that well filled. You must write.

Stop Making Sense!

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I wrote this little essay when my mother had been living in care for over a year. After four years in a care home, she has lost additional ground and is even more bedridden, and no longer speaking. I miss her loopy stories and the way her eyes used to brighten on seeing me, even when she didn’t know my name. So, I’ve decided to share this with you. Thanks for indulging me.

When I was in an MFA program for poetry, one of my professors chided me for my reliance on narrative, on story. “Stop making sense,” he advised.

My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2011. My father had recently died, and Mom managed okay for a couple of years—but only with a lot of support from me and my youngest sister. Eventually we called in the clan to help and we moved Mom from the farmhouse where she was born in 1932, the house where her parents raised 14 kids, the house where my mom and dad raised their five children.

In her new apartment, she was able to hold onto most of her independence. At her insistence, she kept driving. (I kept borrowing her car, thinking maybe she’d forget that she had it—not at all a stretch of the imagination—but no such luck.) She had a small kitchen, but took dinner with the other residents in the main building, usually. She loved it when I came and spent the night. We could still watch Monk reruns on her television; we could still talk, even if she looped through the same stories again and again.

In the summer of 2014, however, all that changed. A stroke paralyzed her left side and plunged her into a world that my former poetry professor would have admired. In short, my mother stopped making sense.

When Mom first moved into a skilled-nursing facility, my sister and I kept trying to make sense of things for her. We moved Mom’s bed from the middle of her room to the side, thinking her line of sight (from her right side, the neurologist had explained) would be better. Maybe she’d watch TV again. She could read, and sometimes pointed out words. She still wore her glasses. But she didn’t read. I tried reading aloud one of her Agatha Christie novels, and she stared at me, puzzled and alarmed. Then said, “You got all of that, from in there?” Just as with moving the bed, reading aloud to her seemed another of our relentless attempts to make sense of what didn’t make sense.

Yesterday, Mom wanted to tell me about two horses. Not the horses of my childhood, at least it didn’t seem so, but maybe her brother’s horses from her childhood. I asked questions, but the conversation had taken the bit in its teeth and Mom was intent on the poetry of it. When I looked out her window, I saw green trees and rain. When she looked, everything was in bloom. She seemed to be riding farther and farther away from me.

It’s only because it’s late in the day, one of Mom’s caregivers told me. She’ll be better in the morning.

But this morning, Mom doesn’t know me at all. She is telling a story, however, that somehow includes my name. Bethany did this, Bethany did that…it’s hard to follow. “I’m Bethany,” I tell her after a while, and her eyes focus on me, wide with surprise. “I thought you were Evelyn,” she says. Evelyn, her dark-eyed, dark-haired sister (I am blonde, like my father). Evelyn, her older sister, walking with a cane the last time I saw her, but still with her wits pretty much about her.

Mom does get a little better as I coax her to eat lunch. She knows me now, if only to scold me. “I’m the mother,” she says. “Stop telling me what to do.”

“What do you want me to do?” I ask her, feeling elated, as though my mother is back in the room and ready to take charge. But, no. Mom turns her big-eyed, little-girl expression on me again and says, “Will you call my mother and tell her where I am?”

From time to time I have tried to embrace the stop-making-sense school of poetry. I like poems of all kinds, after all, even the absurd ones that spin a kind of magic spell over a reader, transporting us to another world. Mom’s world.

Tonight—home again—I get up at midnight, after my daughters have abandoned the living room. I turn on the TV and find a 73-minute movie called “A Poet in New York.” That title is all I have to go on, but I start the movie and discover that it is about Dylan Thomas. I think of my favorite poetry professor, not the “stop making sense one,” but a professor who liked my story-heavy, narrative poems. I think of how he adored Thomas. He could do a fair impersonation of him, with a swaggering, Welsh accent. “When I was young and easy under the apple boughs.” There is frightfully little of Thomas’s poetry in this movie. Mostly there is whiskey and sex and poor Caitlin Thomas’s mad passion for Dylan (he pronounces her name Cat-lin and writes her letters telling her how much he misses fondling her breasts). The movie does not make a lot of sense, but that, in itself, makes a kind of sense to me. Tonight it does.

Mom, me, and my big brother Eric

Immediately after the stroke, while still in the hospital, Mom told me, “Bury me on the hill beside your father.” (My sister, hearing this exchange from the doorway, slapped her forehead and said, “Geez, I hadn’t thought of that!”) The slow slide into complete dependency—into nonsense—continues, though she no longer has to be reminded that she can’t get out of bed, or that she can’t walk. She no longer asks to be buried on the hillside.

In my mother’s non-narrative, non-linear mind, of course she can walk. She is a child, running through a field (and I picture the young Dylan Thomas running through a field of tall grass). Her brother’s horses spook and wheel and she runs after them. This is the world, too, of the poem. We want to make sense of it. But we might allow ourselves a little more rein to be in the non-sense. To take the poem’s hand, and run with it.