LINDA C. WISNIEWSKI

Category: NY

• Carol Ann and the Lumberyard

  Posted at 11:25 am by lindawis, on October 19, 2021

  

  Today I started to write a post about my love of the smell of fresh lumber, but the words felt familiar. I looked up previous blogs and saw that I wrote about this same exact thing in May! Of this year! Covid brain? Maybe. But what about this:

  Coming out of the shower at my sister’s house, the shower rod came crashing down to the floor. In the restroom of a museum later that day, I locked myself in the stall and could only get out by crawling under the door. And after my book talk, I walked out of the building into a downpour, having left my rain jacket and umbrella in the car.

  Now, I know some of these things are not my fault. One is mine, one is the museum’s and one is my sister’s. (Just kidding, Judy!)

  But as I approach a big birthday this month, I can’t help but notice things changing. Like getting aggravated over minor setbacks. Like middle-aged people calling me “sweetheart,” and holding out a hand for me on the stairs.

  Some are funny, most are just little glitches in my otherwise charmed life. Charmed because I know how privileged I am to have a car, rain jacket and umbrella. And money to put gas in it. To have written and published books people like, to have hot water and indoor toilets. I could go on and so could you.

  So when Carol Ann came up to me at my book talk, and I saw her big brown eyes above her Covid mask, and heard her voice, I flashed back to the lumberyard on the corner of her street. We met there to walk to school together, and that memory of joy and friendship and the promise of our young lives got all mixed up with the smell of fresh two by fours in my mind.

  And today I wanted to write about it again. To revisit that memory and savor it. Rick Hanson has studied how we can actually rewire our nervous systems so that we don’t cling to negative news, as we evolved to do in the early days on earth, and to take in the good instead, savoring it with all our senses. Smell is an especially evocative one, I find. But so are sight, touch and taste. Perhaps this is another way to be mindful in this world of distractions.

  So as I flash back to high school, forget my umbrella, or lock myself in a bathroom stall, I plan to not dwell on these experiences, and instead savor good things like surprise meetings with old friends. And the smell of two by fours.

  I also plan to get some good writing out of it. And laugh at myself, too. I really am a sweetheart.

  What memory can you savor? I’d love to know in the comments!

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  Posted in Amsterdam, balance, book, children, compassion, elderly, hope, life stories, memoir, mindfulness, NY, writing | 9 Comments | Tagged aging, lifestyle, memoir, writing

• Near Miss

  Posted at 11:54 am by lindawis, on March 27, 2019

  

  One spring morning when I was four, I had a brush with death. My mother had just walked me and my little sister to “The Butcher’s,” a corner store two blocks from our house in Amsterdam, New York.  Its real name was Partyka’s Market, after the family who owned it, but we never called it that. To me, The Butchers meant Bill and Ray, two nice men who worked behind the big white case with kielbasa, pork chops, and cold cuts inside, the men who smiled at me and gave me a slice of cheese. Many of my earliest memories are images inside and around that neighborhood store.

  Besides Bill and Ray, I knew the family who lived above the store: the tall silent father, the house-dressed white-haired mother, and the childlike middle-aged sister who tended the zinnias, snapdragons and sweet peas climbing white string in the garden behind the store. I see three cement steps to the front door, big windows with cardboard ads for Lucky Strikes, and inside, three or four aisles of canned vegetables, cellophane wrapped loaves of bread, jars of pickles and sauerkraut.

  I don’t know who gave me the Lifesaver that day. The hard candy with a hole in the middle is supposed to keep you from choking on it should it become lodged in your throat. My mother said that in a split second after she saw me choking, a salesman who happened to be in the store picked me up by my heels and while I was hanging upside down, slapped my back hard with his free hand. The candy popped out onto the hardwood floor.

  I’ve been thinking about how long I have lived since then, and of friends who have passed away, some years ago and some more recent. I see, these days, how fragile life can be.

  My mother told this story many times, so I know it made a big impact on her. But I don’t remember it actually happening to me. Decades before the Heimlich Maneuver was posted in grocery stores, supermarkets and restaurant dining rooms, how did the salesman know what to do? What if he hadn’t been there? And why don’t I remember it? Why do I remember all those details of the store and people but not the traumatic event that scared my mom and almost killed me?

  I believe we all have near misses when we might have cheated death. Do you remember yours?

  Tell me about it in the comments and I’ll put your name in the hat for a copy of The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George. No choking incidents, but a good read.

  The winner of this month’s drawing is Nancy Taylor. She wins a copy of Kate Atkinson’s Transcription, a story of espionage in WWII England. Congratulations, Nancy, and thanks for adding to the conversation!

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  Posted in Amsterdam, children, life stories, memoir, memoirs, NY, Polish American, Uncategorized | 10 Comments | Tagged 1950s, Amsterdam NY, childhood, mothers, New York State, Partyka's Market, safety

• Big Girl Pants

  Posted at 2:26 pm by lindawis, on July 25, 2018

  

  Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

  It was raining lightly when I got to the Borough Hall Station. I saw the sign on the street; all I needed was to find the entrance. People walked snappily by, like they knew where to go, and I wanted to look that way too.

  When I was young, New York City was my dream place to live and work, the apex of my career girl life. In the 1960s, we called grown women girls and didn’t think anything of it. You could count the career girls in my upstate New York mill town on two hands: teachers, nurses, one doctor. Was a “private secretary” a career girl? My parents wanted me to go to Mildred Elley Secretarial School in Schenectady. But like Richard Russo’s mom, who lived in a nearby town, I longed to be Elsewhere.

  It took a while. After college, there were business trips to midtown on the train to and from Philly, and whole days in big convention hotels with other librarians. Post-career now, I write and teach. I want to write well, to learn how it’s done, and so I travel to writing conferences in the literary city, sophistication town, like the big girl I want to be.

  Sometimes I’m still the scared Catholic schoolgirl inside, remaking herself late in life. After two times crossing the street in drizzle, I found the subway staircase from the street. A young black man held a door for me as I deliberately stepped down. I thanked him, pleased that of all the busy people, he stopped for me, because he saw me looking uncertain. My son who lives in Brooklyn said, take the 2 train uptown, it’s best, to Times Square, then the 1 right across the platform to 50^th Street. On the 2, a young Hispanic woman offered me her seat. I smiled no thanks, then saw the sign: Please give seat to the elderly or disabled. Okay, fair enough. I feel slow, unsure, and frazzled by the rain, the confusion, the tangle of people in every direction. My son was right; I got off the 2 and the 1 was right across from me, waiting. It all seemed to work for me that day. It has to, my son’s girlfriend says, in a city this big you have to be civil.

  At 50^th, I walked upstairs and took out my foldout laminated map, walked to 6^th between 53^rd and 54^th  and laughed as I spotted my conference hotel.

  People around me paid no attention. Cars, buses, and taxis clattered by. Storefronts glittered, the rain stopped, and my heart lifted like the red one on the T-shirt I refused to buy because it’s too tourist hokey. I heart NY. I really do.

  *********************************************************************************

  Have you done something you were scared to try? Big or small, share it in the comments and I’ll put your name in the hat for a copy of Styx and Stone: an Ellie Stone mystery by James W. Ziskin. Ellie is a career girl in 1960s New Holland, New York, a thinly disguised version of my home town of Amsterdam, who travels to New York City.

  **********************************************************************************

  The winner of this month’s drawing is Cheryl. She gets a signed copy of Dorothea Benton Frank’s By Invitation Only.  Visit her terrific blog, Mind Kind Mom. Congratulations, Cheryl, and thanks for your comment last month!

   

   

   

   

   

   

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  Posted in Amsterdam, anxiety, book, conference, elderly, feminism, fiction, memoir, NY, writers, writing | 10 Comments | Tagged aging, Amsterdam, anxiety, memoir, NY, society, writers, writing

• Time Enough

  Posted at 3:48 pm by lindawis, on October 23, 2017

  

   

  Seventeen years ago this fall, I collected acorns from my driveway and put them in my pocket as symbols of rebirth. When I entered the hospital for major surgery, I took the acorns with me, as well as these affirmations for the surgeon: “I am very pleased with this operation.” “Linda’s surgery is a big success.” “Linda will heal quickly.”

  He was, it was and I did. Life went on, as it does, and I got older. A big birthday last year jolted me into a state of anxious rumination. Had I done enough with my life? Short answer: No. So, what’s an older woman to do? I journaled and pulled my spiritual reading off the shelf. I started a new spiritual practice, lighting a candle and reading something inspirational, then journaling about it for 20 minutes, first thing in the morning.

  That year of rumination is almost up, and I’m pleased to say the anxiety is going away, albeit slowly. Somehow, I realized I had done quite a lot. That the years I remembered as preoccupied, worried, angry or scared were my learning time. The twenty years since I began writing about my life have been my practice time. Some of my work was published, much of it not. Some of my time was spent writing, much of it not.

  Yesterday, after an outside appointment, I thought of stopping to pick up some birdseed, or to spend that coupon from the clothing store, or maybe pick up a latte. But my writing had taken over part of my mind and so I drove straight home and sat down at my desk.

  One reason I’m motivated to write these days is the example of other women like myself. Women like romantic suspense author Alice Orr. Her latest novel, A Time of Fear and Loving, is the fifth in her Riverton Road series. I met Alice through the International Women’s Writing Guild. She is a former book editor and literary agent who suggested I turn my complicated first novel into a trilogy, advice I am happy to say I am following.

  Alice is the author of 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells. She is a mother and grandmother, and she’s not letting the passage of time get in her way.

  I hadn’t read romantic suspense since I was in my twenties, but reading Alice’s work reminds me how much I loved this genre. I was pleasantly surprised to find her series is set in the North Country, the beautiful part of upstate New York near the river town where I was born and raised. In this latest book, a young widow investigates the disappearance of her old friend and soon runs into a long ago crush who is now a police officer with his own issues from serving in Afghanistan.

  So, here’s the question: how does the passage of time affect you? Do you ignore it? Do you use it to motivate you? Something else? Comment on this post and I’ll put your name in the hat to win a signed copy of A Time of Fear and Loving.

  I’d love to read your thoughts.

  The winner of last month’s drawing is Susan Schoch.  I’m sending her my copy of Dorothea Benton Frank’s Pawley’s Island.

   

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  Posted in anxiety, autumn, book, fiction, NY, writers, writing | 15 Comments

• Not Great Grandma’s Babushka

  Posted at 2:07 pm by lindawis, on July 23, 2010

  

  I just had to touch these headscarves on sale in Warsaw. I’d seen them many years before, in the Polish neighborhood in Amsterdam, New York. Old ladies wore them to church. I fondled them in Warsaw and Gdansk and in the touristy market in Zakopane. Nostalgically, regretfully.

  I wrote one of these scarves onto Regina’s head in my novel. But last week in Wroclaw, I saw a panorama of the year she was thirty. Peasant women wore headscarves of plain white. Oh well. I must be historically accurate.

  I learned her village, Wojtowa, was about 100 km from Krakow, a half day drive each way, and decided not to go, in the 35 C temps and humidity, to a place where nobody from my family is left. I did travel through many little towns and villages and collected information and pictures.

  The trip is so recent, however, that I’m not in mind of her world as much as I am of the Poland of today. I’m so proud to be connected genetically to these strong, brave people, to the heroes and heroines of Solidarnosc who started the toppling of Communism in eastern Europe, to the music in Kashuby that brought tears of recognition, and above all, to the overarching hopefulness of the people, young and old, happily building homes and roads and their first true democracy.

  I’m rooting for them, heart and soul.

  

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  Posted in Amsterdam, Gdansk, Kashuby, Krakow, NY, Poland, Solidarity, Warsaw, Wojtowa, Zakopane | 0 Comments

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• Blog Posts

  • Carol Ann and the Lumberyard October 19, 2021
  • Get It Down (While You Still Can) September 17, 2021
  • Blue Chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace August 11, 2021
  • Summer Mornings July 16, 2021
  • Good Enough is good enough June 17, 2021
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