LINDA C. WISNIEWSKI

Category: Uncategorized

• Toni Morrison and the “Woman’s Award”

  Posted at 12:35 pm by lindawis, on August 30, 2019

  

  My writing friends and I have been talking about Toni Morrison since her death early this month. Her influence on American letters is gigantic, and many have written about her effect on them personally. I have two small connections myself.

  As a docent at the historic home of author Pearl S. Buck, I point out her Nobel and Pulitzer prizes and say she was the only American woman to hold both awards for 55 years until Toni Morrison won the Nobel prize in 1993. What I don’t usually say, but might from now on, is that Morrison also received the Woman of the Year Award (now called the Women of Influence Award) from the Pearl Buck Foundation (now Pearl S. Buck International) in 1994.

  In her acceptance speech, Morrison said that after reading Buck’s work, she was disappointed to find the honesty and empathy with which Buck wrote about other cultures was not common in American novels. She decided to “fill the void,” she said, remarking with a bit of humor: ‘I’m grateful to her for misleading me in a sense.”

  Pearl Buck wrote what she knew: the culture and lives of the people of China in the early twentieth century. Morrison did likewise, becoming one of the foremost writers on the lives of African Americans. From The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, she was fearless in portraying the consequences of racism. The long list of her awards on Wikipedia does not mention the Pearl Buck Woman of the Year. A local newspaper at the time called it the Pearl S. Buck Woman’s Award.

  I like the fact that Morrison came in person to accept it, and signed books, programs and even slips of paper for admirers who waited in long lines to meet her. I wish I had been there.

  I saw her in person once, on a street corner in Princeton, New Jersey. The light changed and I started to cross the street when she sailed toward me, unmistakable in salt and pepper dreadlocks and a sweeping long caftan, a half smile on her lips. “That’s Toni Morrison,” I whispered to my husband beside me. She disappeared into the crowd before I could think of something good enough to say.    

  I never met Pearl Buck either, but it helps me to remember how hard they both worked to get it right, and how they tried to find out what they didn’t know so the rest of us could benefit from their stories, and see ourselves in their characters. A good writer transcends time and place and brings us together. 

  What about you? Have you ever been struck speechless by someone you admired? Let us know in the comments section. I’d love to hear!

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  Posted in book, ethnicity, fiction, novel, Uncategorized, writers, writing | 0 Comments | Tagged Pearl Buck, Toni Morrison, writing

• Note It, Name It

  Posted at 1:46 pm by lindawis, on August 1, 2019

  

  “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…” begins the song from Porgy and Bess. Easy for some, right? In my lucky life, summer really is an easy time, even more so now that I don’t have a regular job. I am more in touch with the seasons because I am not preoccupied with earning a living. From the window of my upstairs writing/quilting/yoga space, I can see cars move along a 35 mph road. I like to imagine the drivers heading to and from work, and remember the years I was one of them. I’m grateful I don’t have to do that anymore, though I’ve had some very fulfilling jobs.

  Summer for this semi-retired woman means farmers’ markets and the CSA, corn on the cob, leafy trees, no sweater, no socks. Ice cream, long evenings, reading outdoors, picnics, baseball teams, hot dogs. Sandy beaches, seagulls, cucumber cocktails. And equanimity.

  
  In summer there is less to do, it seems, though people with lawns to mow and gardens to weed may disagree. My herbs grow in pots on my deck, my tomatoes in a hanging basket.

  
  In summer, equanimity descends on my world. I’ve been listening to a meditation app called Ten Percent Happier. One of their popular teachers is Joseph Goldstein and today I practiced equanimity with him for 15 minutes. He said to observe whatever feeling comes and goes, whether good or bad, happy or sad, uncomfortable or not. Just note it and name it: “Bored. Sad. Frightened. Tired. Content.”
  

  Equanimity is in short supply these days. I don’t see it in the world around me or even in the books I read. A good story needs some kind of conflict, whether external or within the main character. Something to push against. But in summer, I don’t want to push. I just want to be. That’s equanimity. I’ll let you know when I get there.

  What is this summer like for you? I’d love to read your comments.

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  Posted in balance, Buddhism, mindfulness, peace, philosophy, simplicity, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged meditation, summer

• For My Grandparents in the Train Station: An immigration story

  Posted at 3:15 pm by lindawis, on July 9, 2019

  I worry about my landscapers. Once a week, a white flatbed truck pulls up on our street, delivering riding mowers, grass trimmers, short Hispanic men and one white guy, the obvious boss. They spill from the truck like bees, everyone in a hurry. At different seasons they come armed with gas-powered leaf blowers, jugs of liquid fertilizer strapped over a shoulder, or shovels and rakes to tackle the piles of mulch in the parking lot.

  

  I pay our homeowners’ association a monthly fee for this service, wondering what they are spraying from the bottles and why we need signs that say “Spraying in Progress” at the ends of the street. But mostly I have a bigger worry. I wonder if they are undocumented, if they have families here or in another country.

  A local human rights activist gave me two lists in Spanish: What to Do In an Emergency (when you have to leave home in a hurry) and Know Your Rights (when ICE comes to your door) with a phone number for free legal advice. I make copies and take them home.     

  One day I’m out walking and decide to try something. I look around for the white boss but he’s way down the street. I see a lone guy spreading mulch.

  “Hola!”

  “Habla?” He looks up, smiling?

   “No,” I say with a shake of my head and a rueful smile. He looks puzzled. What does he see? A gringo lady making fun of him?

  Almost all my neighbors are white. Some of them care about the ICE raids, the deportations, the family separation. The kids in cages, sleeping on the floor in silver blankets. We have talked about it.

  My country was unprepared for so many refugees and I fear we have lost our heart. We have tax breaks for the wealthy but not enough room for those willing to work. My busy landscapers look at me with wary eyes. Was it always like this?  

  Over one hundred years ago, my grandfather’s family traveled over land from Poland to Germany, crossed the ocean, then boarded a train in New York City to finally alight at a station in Amsterdam, New York. They came so far because they heard about jobs in the rug factories, the broom and the glove factories, lots of jobs needing workers. They were so poor and oppressed back home that they left loved ones, knowing they were unlikely to ever see them again.

  They sat all day in the train station, hot and tired, with no idea what to do next. They spoke no English.  In the evening, men who spoke Polish came down to the station and led them, on foot, to “flats” for rent. They took them to the factories and introduced them to bosses who taught them jobs. They were needed, if not necessarily welcomed.

  We don’t need migrants in 21^st century America. Our factories are closed. I understand the fears of the underemployed. I remember the layoffs when my parents worried about paying the mortgage and we lost our car and had to walk everywhere. I understand the fear that there is not enough to go around. But I don’t believe it. And I just don’t believe the latest refugees from crime and poverty are here to rip me off.

  I look up what I want to say, and memorize a sentence:

  “No hablo espanol, pero quiero darte esta.”(I don’t know Spanish but I want to give you this.)

  My heart pounds when I go outside, hold out my two paper lists and say my sentence to the man trimming my shrubs. He looks at them and nods.

  “Gracias,” he says, shoves them in his pocket and goes on working.

  That’s my immigrant story. What’s yours?
   

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments | Tagged immigrants, immigration, refugees

• Howareya

  Posted at 2:06 pm by lindawis, on April 25, 2019

  

  Hey, how ya doin’!

  How are ya!

  How are YOU!

  It’s not really a question. My neighbor says Heyhowyadoin every time he sees me. The man washing his car in his driveway says Howareya whenever I walk by. The cashier at the convenience store says HowareYOU.

  How do we answer this nonquestion? Like most people, I say Finehowareyou or just nod and smile. Nobody seems to feel they have time to give a real answer or that it’s even expected. But really, how long would it take?

  Once a month or so, I get fed up with the throwaway question at the cash register. Instead of grabbing my change and making room for the next person in line, I take two seconds and make eye contact. I have to wait for the cashier to look at me. Then I say, “I’m fine. And how are YOU today?” And I wait. They always say something back, usually Goodthankyouforasking. Then I tell them to Haveaniceday and leave because, you know, there are people in line.

  The other day, something different happened. A short woman with salt and pepper hair and a black uniform stood in line before me at the coffee counter. She asked How I was. Fine, I said, and waited as she ordered iced tea and paid for her seeded sesame bagel. I paid for my decaf hazelnut coffee refill to take back to the upstairs café, where four other women wrote on laptops as we do every Thursday morning, a hedge against the loneliness of writing at home. The short woman was in front of me again, at the row of coffee urns. She made deliberate eye contact and asked me again, How are you? Very well, thank you, I responded. How are you today? She mumbled Oh and some other words I couldn’t make out. Not good, I said? She told me she had a pinched nerve. I said I hoped she felt better. It’s not fun, she sighed. I told her to take care, and she said you too. Then she went back to work at the prepared food and beer checkout.

  All that took maybe 60 seconds out of my day but it added something important to me: connection to a real human being. Not that I think the neighbors or the cashiers aren’t real. Just that it’s rare to really think about what we’re saying. And when we do, what happens? We see someone. We remember them. I wrote this encounter down in my notebook. The short supermarket cashier with the salt and pepper hair is now in your mind too. Maybe you have a pinched nerve. Maybe your day is not so fine. Or maybe it is, and you could spread a little fineness with a smile, a sincere question, an eye lock. Just for a minute today. Imagine what could happen.

  Do you ever answer truthfully when someone says Howareya? Tell me about it in the comments and I’ll put your name in the hat for a copy of White Oleander by Janet Fitch, a mother-daughter novel about foster care and obsessive love.

  The winner of this month’s drawing is Gary Bennett. He will receive a copy of The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George. Congratulations, Gary and thanks for your comment last month.

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  Posted in compassion, mindfulness, Uncategorized | 4 Comments | Tagged connection, convenience store, eye contact

• 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

• Little Things

  Posted at 11:12 am by lindawis, on January 29, 2019

  

  In 1954, the Number One song on the U.S. Billboard chart was Kitty Kallen’s recording of “Little Things Mean a Lot.” (Yes, I was alive back then.) It’s stood the test of time, and was even recorded by Willie Nelson. I’ve always loved this song about the little kindnesses we do and maybe don’t value enough.

  According to Goodreads, it was Kurt Vonnegut who said “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you`ll look back and realize they were the big things.” Why big? Because they are the touchstones of who we are, who and what we love, and who we want to be. They warm our hearts even as a long ago memory.

  On this cold winter morning, I’m pondering some little big things.

  Last weekend, a foreign student told me her loneliness eased when a girl she didn’t know helped her find her way across an unfamiliar campus. She won’t ever forget that day.

  A surprise of daffodils blossomed in the front garden our first spring in a new house, planted by the previous owners. That splash of yellow is now something I look forward to as the days lengthen.

  My high school crush got us both out of a boring party without embarrassing me or the awkward, unpopular girl who was hostess. Though we grew up far apart on the political spectrum, I’ll always love him for that moment of kindness.

  On a Sunday morning when the national news was shockingly horrible, a guest minister at my church led a chant of Om, shanti, shanti and my gaze went to the round window far above his head where the bare tips of a branch reached upward to the sky, to the light, and even as I sat among the congregation, I saw my self as observer in the larger scheme of things.

  The poet Mary Oliver, queen of seeing beauty in little things from a blade of grass to a grasshopper, died this month and many people have been reflecting on her words. Check out any of her poems if you don’t know her.

  We do need to be present to enjoy these little things, not anticipating the future or reliving the past. Neuroscientists say that taking in the good, letting ourselves really savor it, can even rewire our brains to look for more of the same.

  What little things have enriched your life?

  Leave your reply in the comments and I’ll put your name in the drawing for a hardcover copy of The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton, just the things for a long cozy read on a winter’s day.

  The winner of this month’s drawing is  Linda Hoye! She wins a copy of The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Congratulations, Linda, and thanks for stopping by!

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments | Tagged meaning of life, positive

• 2019- Ready or Not!

  Posted at 2:47 pm by lindawis, on December 29, 2018

  

  As the old year ends, I feel an urge to finish what I started, as if I need a clean slate to begin 2019. And then I laugh. As if that’s ever going to happen.

  Just last month, I stopped reading a book I hated. It was for my book club. Which I’m dropping out of. I didn’t like the story or the characters or the writing. Or the members of the club. Or the hard wooden chairs we had to sit on. Can I quit now? It wasn’t worth my time, but I don’t like to leave anything unfinished. 

  I have a half-done quilt on my sewing machine, wrinkled clothes waiting on the ironing board, and a Christmas tablecloth with stains I haven’t managed to remove. And then there are all the short stories and essays in progress on my computer.

  My kids grew up before I was finished raising them. Wait, I wanted to say, I’m not done. I forgot to teach you to ice skate…or to make a pie…When they walk away, I still want to wrap my arms around their ankles.

  My parents died before I understood them. I didn’t ask my dad what his childhood was like. I forgot to ask my mom if she ever doubted her faith.

  I dropped freshman organic chem. I didn’t care about the experiments, my grades were awful, and a boy said I was taking the place of someone who had been drafted to fight in Vietnam.  

  I dropped friends who moved away. Staying in touch was too hard in our busy lives. Or maybe they dropped me.  

  It’s okay. If we hold on to everything we start, our lives would be a spaghetti-ball mess we could never untangle. Life is about choices.  

  A new year is about to begin, a turn of the calendar’s page, opening more possibilities. What will I choose to start this year? What will I finish? And what can I quit in the middle of, knowing full well that “enough is enough,” that forcing myself to complete something that is no longer important is just a waste of my precious time? Time I could use for the things that matter.

  Do you always “finish what you started?”

  Comment on this post and I’ll put your name in the drawing for a copy of The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, a practical book about inner peace and freedom.

  The winner of last month’s drawing is Susan Berrodin. She will receive a copy of Old Friend From Far Away by Natalie Goldberg. Congratulations!

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  Posted in book, life stories, memoir, memoirs, mindfulness, philosophy, Uncategorized | 14 Comments | Tagged 2019, lifestyle, new year

• Not About Gratitude

  Posted at 2:23 pm by lindawis, on November 27, 2018

  

  Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

  My friend is 95. She is dear to me, a sweet woman who is frail but feisty. Can you be both? I think so. She is kind and hospitable when I come to call, and offers me food: an apple, an orange, a cup of tea. The feisty part comes out when she argues with her caregiver about what to wear, and when to stop talking and get dressed. Over the last year, I have seen her mental sharpness fade. On the phone, she asks me over and over what time I am coming. She cries easily, missing her husband who died years ago. She talks to a life-sized photo of him propped on a chair in her living room, facing the couch where she sits. I know it’s not him, she says with a smile, but it makes me feel better when I talk to him.

  I bring food because it gives us something to do together, and is easier than trying to hold a conversation as she repeats herself, asking me the same question over and over, and generally making me crazy. I bring two cups of coffee and bagels with cream cheese. She enjoys them after she gets up and down for sugar, milk, and paper napkins for us both. I give up trying to get her to settle down and just wait her out. She’ll get there.

  We had a visit scheduled for the morning after the 2016 presidential election. She had the TV on when I walked in. How can Donald Trump be president? she screeched. I was in tears but she didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she did and understood.

  She likes to tell me about her childhood, growing up black in New Jersey. I asked her how she could stand it, being always put down, even by so-called friends, and told you were second class. She said you have to decide you’re not going to be angry all the time.

  I think a lot about what she said. I’m a little bit angry every day since the presidential election. I hate what I see – the incivility, the overt racism, the ugly nationalism. In my youth, there was hate and violence too. But I was white, and young, and sure the country would get better, more egalitarian. More compassionate. It did, for a while. I worked for the state government in the Great Society; I was a bureaucrat in the War on Poverty during the Lyndon Johnson administration. Sure, there was waste, and too many rules. But now, the subject of poverty hardly comes up in the public sphere, and not because poverty is gone. 

  Some days, it’s hard holding on to hope. I’m older too. Will I live to see a better day? My friend is getting ready to leave this life, and talks about where she’s going next. She’s not angry, that’s for sure. I almost envy her.

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

  Do you have hope for our country? How do you hold on to it? Comment below under “leave a reply” and you might win a copy of Old Friend From Far Away, a book on memoir writing by Natalie Goldberg.

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

  The winner of last month’s drawing is Carolyn Ferris Gombosi. She gets a copy of Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala, a beautiful story of grief and resilience. Congratulations, Carolyn, and thanks for sharing your thoughts here!

  .

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  Posted in compassion, elderly, memoir, Uncategorized | 10 Comments | Tagged aging, election, hope, Trump

• Eye Contact

  Posted at 5:07 pm by lindawis, on August 27, 2018

  

  Photo by Lum3n.com on Pexels.com

  Going to physical therapy reminds me of the nail salon. The manicure clients don’t look at each other and prefer to gaze into space, pore through a People magazine, or stare at the TV mounted high on the wall.

  At physical therapy, it’s much the same, except for the magazines. There is no TV and we are too much busy to read. Our determined looks and occasional winces remind me we are all in this together. Everybody is trying to do something physically difficult if not impossible.

  The husky fortyish guy prone on the table with his knee wrapped in a huge white bandage looks like he’s about to break into a sweat when all he is doing is lifting his leg a couple of inches. The old woman across from me furrows her brow as she oh-so-slowly climbs up and down a little step-stool.

  I make faces when my therapist forces my fingers down toward my palm to encourage my hand to make a fist. “Just two more times,” he says and pushes hard on my knuckles. “It’s hardest the first time. It gets better after this.”

  The woman at the next table with her hand wrapped in an ice pack says “That’s not true.” Not what I want to hear. I just can’t do it and it hurts. But I can’t scream here. Nobody else is doing that. I can’t cry either.

  The little boy across the room looks about eight or nine and he is doing the exact same hand exercises I am. All by himself. He looks serious but he’s not crying or wincing. I can be as brave as this little kid.

  I catch his eye, smile and ask, “What did you do?”

  “I fell off my bike,” he says with a shy smile, then goes back to work.

  I’ve been coming here twice a week for over a month. In all that time, I engaged a couple of other patients in a sentence or two, but the kid is the only one I’ve asked about his injury. Now I want to poll every patient in the room: “What did you do?” I want to tell them I broke my hand. I don’t know why. Maybe I think I can forge some kind of bond over our shared pain and misery. Maybe I think we can encourage each other.

  Fast forward a few years, and I’m doing therapy again, this time after shoulder surgery. Different, smaller office, same silence. No TV but they do have magazines nobody reads. Everybody’s working hard. I still try to make eye contact with the other patients but I quickly see how hard that is while you’re trying to focus on a nearly impossible task. I say a silent prayer for us all and get back to work.

  ********************************************************************************
  Have you ever been in a situation where you want to make eye contact with someone? Did you succeed? Tell us in the comments section and I’ll put your name in the hat for a drawing to win a copy of Cathy Lamb’s wonderful novel, The Language of Sisters, about family secrets and communicating beyond words.

  The winner of this month’s drawing is Judy Mitten! She wins a copy of Styx and Stone, by James W. Ziskin. Congratulations, Judy, and thanks for your comment!

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

• Quiche and Old Friends

  Posted at 12:26 pm by lindawis, on May 31, 2018

  

  Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com

  This week, three longtime friends and I met for breakfast at a newish café. We’ve been getting together for at least twenty-five years – no one remembers exactly how long – and I guess you might say we’re “set in our ways.” But things have begun to change.

  For many years, we got together at a diner midway between our homes, each of us ordering our favorite breakfast special – the #2, two eggs with bacon and toast was most popular. Then the business started going downhill. It changed owners and the food and service weren’t as good as we were used to. We tried a new spot down the road, owned by a young couple, and were pleased at the fresh nutritious breakfasts and the friendly service at a reasonable price. All natural, nothing frozen, local produce, because we were now into the twenty-first century and conscious of healthy eating. Fast forward just a couple of years – and I do mean fast –  and the couple opened a branch farther away in a sweet little town. It sits beside a creek in an old mill reclaimed for office space and our new breakfast spot.

  The food is upscale and we’ve changed with the times. Instead of the bacon and eggs special, we have a choice of quiche and fruit cup, scrambler of the day, lattes and cappuccinos and other good stuff that feels so trendy. We sit at a high-top table and don’t mind climbing into the chairs because we have other things to complain about: our aches and pains, to be sure, and our spouses’ health issues. We share concerns about life and politics and church activities. And we’re still the same friends who love and support each other. We’ve had our problems: marital strife, job loss, deaths of parents, diseases and broken bones. The hassle of  “customer service” is a frequent topic.

  So why do we still meet? Yes, it’s therapeutic to vent, but even better, we share and rejoice in our joys. One friend moved to Florida a few years ago, but she joined us this morning on her way to her summer home in the Adirondacks.  Because she still misses us and online doesn’t feel the same. Gray haired, grandmothers, retired, we are still active, vital women doing good work in the world. We try new things. We ate quiche. And we talked for two hours, just like always.

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

  Do you have old friends? Tell us about them in the comments for a chance to win a signed copy of Meredith Jaeger’s novel, Boardwalk Summer. Set in California in 1940 and 2010, two young women generations apart follow their dreams, unraveling a family secret and a love story.

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

  This month’s giveaway is a signed copy of The Gardener by Irish novelist Thomas Dunne. And the winner is:  cyclinggrandma! Check out her blog too!

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

• The Irish Complaints

  Posted at 3:28 pm by lindawis, on April 27, 2018

  

  Puffed up Irish pigeon, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on a cold April day

  I’m just back from a week in Ireland. The brogue is still in my ears, and this morning’s gentle rain and greening lawns remind me of the island I left yesterday. I’m in that jet-lagged head-space, neither here nor there and moving around in a kind of daze. With that in mind, I’ll share a few impressions and ask you a question at the end.

  Our group of 45 American tourists traveled by bus from Galway to Dublin, viewing a wide range of landscapes and getting a taste of the history, the people, and the charming pubs, snug and cozy in the April chill. Our first three days were sunny, with temps in the low 60s. “It’s like this all the time here,” said a young barkeep with a wink that made me smile.

  I come from a culture notorious for complaining, often with good reason. Polish people had it tough in the old days with all those Cossacks invading and now it’s stuck in our DNA. And let’s face it, Americans have taken up the cause in recent years. It was a nice break to get away from CNN and MSNBC. I marveled at the cheerfulness of the Irish people, friendly and laughing despite the gloomy weather.

  And I wondered about Americans, the ones on our trip, and the ones I encounter in my daily life. Me too, of course, for I’m a complainer raised by complainers, and I struggle to rid myself of the habit, not with a faked rosy outlook but by re-framing.

  My husband would surely say I saved my negative comments for his ears alone, but I really noticed, this past week, how many little things people turn into catastrophe. One lady “hated” the breakfast at our hotel. Another “couldn’t stand” the heat in the dining room. Two people at dinner said the Polish people collaborated with the Nazis, the proof being “all the camps were there” and the world was a mess because of “radical Muslims.” My husband and I politely disagreed, but they weren’t really listening. The service was slow, the waitress “didn’t need or deserve” a tip. Can you imagine the look I got when I tipped her anyway?

  Our flight home was cancelled, and we found out at 5 a.m. in the hotel lobby, with suitcases gathered around. Worst-case scenarios spread but, in the end, we were rescheduled on a flight that brought us home just three hours later than planned. I watched two good movies on the plane and had a nice long nap.

  The line at immigration in Newark was long, so more doom-saying ensued. “Have you ever seen it like this?” “This is ridiculous!” Etc. Etc. Etc. In fact, we were only in line for 20 minutes or so. Not bad for re-entering a country where we aren’t refugees and have good homes, our own cars to drive there, and people we love waiting for us.

  Yes, this blog post has been a big complaint about complaining. I haven’t changed, but I did try to re-frame. Or, writer that I am, rewrite!

  How do you handle negative experiences? Tell us your tips in the comments section and you’ll be in the drawing to win a signed copy of The Gardener by Seamus Dunne. This paperback was a happy discovery at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop in Galway. It’s a perennially relevant novel about a former German soldier living in Ireland and how he handles his town’s reaction to a band of gypsies.

  This month’s winner of the anthology containing my story, “Dinner for Five,” The Collection: Flash Fiction for Flash Memory, is Bobbi Smisko. Congratulations, Bobbi and thanks for your comment last month!

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  Posted in Ireland, Irish, Uncategorized | 26 Comments

• The In Between Time

  Posted at 3:53 pm by lindawis, on December 28, 2017

  

  This is the week in the year when I feel most in-between.  Thanksgiving and Christmas are over and a New Year waits in the wings. I feel like the director of a play in which I hold back the actors for just another moment. Not yet, it’s not quite time, we’re not ready, please wait.

  This is the week I launder the tablecloths from Christmas dinner, recycle dented gift boxes and toss out leftovers nobody wants to eat. It’s the week to relax and enjoy the pile of new books I received and to binge watch The Crown and A Place to Call Home, an Australian drama my husband and I both love. We’re both retired from our careers and enjoy artistic pursuits and volunteer work, but this week even those things take a back seat to just lounging and reflecting, reading…and eating.

  As a writer of creative nonfiction, I’m a “reflector” by trade. This in-between time seems made for me. No rush, nowhere I have to go. I’m preparing for a party in the New Year, but even that feels relaxed, checking if we have enough wine, beer, plastic ware and ice.

  I journal every day, but this week I read about other people doing the same. The newspapers, internet, and even TV all offer stories about new resolutions and looking back. It’s quite a lot of pressure to do something.

  But not right now. I took a year off from teaching to finish my first novel. The second one is outlined, but I just can’t get into it yet. I have a new memoirs class coming up in March, so I need to plan. I’ve published four essays this year, and I’d like to write more. I finished editing A Woman of Worth, a project I’d been working on for a couple of years.  I have an idea for another book-length memoir. But none of these projects is calling me right now.

  I could be anxious about that, but I feel lucky I can stay here a while. The kids are grown and living their own lives. Whatever I choose to do or not do is up to me. The weather is freezing cold and we’re in between snow storms here in southeastern PA. I know another one is coming but we’re not sure when.

  So, this is the week I ignore the inner urge to “do something productive.” I read over the Christmas cards and newsletters, remember the leisurely conversations shared with family and friends by the fireplace, and allow gratitude for the love, warmth and companionship that graces this time of year.

  There is a certain pressure to make a “to do” list for 2018. I know I work best when I choose one project to put most of my energy behind. This in between week feels a bit uneasy, but I’m going to stick with it. If we hurtle from project to project, we don’t fully appreciate what we’ve accomplished. We don’t allow ourselves to enjoy having written, being published, hosting a dinner party, receiving gifts. I’ll meditate every day and let myself off the hook for productivity for now.

  What about you? What do you do when you’re not sure what to do next?

  Comment and I’ll put your name in the drawing for my next giveaway: The Promise of Pierson Orchard by Kate Brandes.  Written by an environmental scientist, it’s the story of what happens when fracking comes to a rural community, told through the eyes of a family already breaking apart. Speaking of what to do next! You’re sure to enjoy this balanced look at both sides of the environmental debate.

  **********

  The winner of last month’s drawing is Nannette Benson-Nicol. She gets an autographed copy of An Uncertain Path by Sandra Carey Cody. Congratulations, Nannette!

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  Posted in anxiety, balance, book, compassion, fiction, home, memoir, novel, philosophy, simplicity, Uncategorized, Waiting, winter, writers, writing | 16 Comments | Tagged anxiety, home, lifestyle, memoir, writers, writing

• Justice and Mercy

  Posted at 3:55 pm by lindawis, on August 22, 2017

  “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” – Psalm 23:6

  This beautiful phrase from the Bible comes near the end of the prayer that begins: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” When it popped into my mind today, I thought it was “justice and mercy,” but on looking it up, I found the above translation.

  I had been thinking about my essence, and how it informs my writing, after a workshop I took this weekend with Corey Blake at the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York. In Corey’s interactive exercises, I zeroed in on the important role judgment and forgiveness have played in my life. Justice and mercy are my touchstones. But there is a very subtle difference between justice and judgment, isn’t there?

  In my memoir, Off Kilter,  I wrote about learning to stop judging my mother (and myself) and to just do what makes me happy. I recalled an incident from my childhood. During recess in elementary school, I was unjustly accused of a malicious act that was an accident. The school principal was a nun who showed me no mercy. She had me stand beside her at the entrance to the building as all eight grades of students streamed indoors, staring at me on the way to their classrooms.

  Until that day, I was a “good girl.” I tried very hard to do what was expected of me. But it didn’t matter to Sister Principal. And so, for the first time, I understood what it felt like to be one of the “bad kids,” the ones who were held up as examples of how not to be.

  We rarely saw what these kids had done that was so bad. We only saw their embarrassed or defiant faces as our principal put them out for public viewing like criminals in the dock.

  And now I was just like them. From good to bad, in an instant. I threw a snowball at another girl, aimed at her back. She turned and got it in the face, and there must have been ice inside, because her nose was bloody. I apologized, crying just as much as she.

  My pleas went unanswered, and I wondered how guilty the other “bad kids” were. Did anyone ever stop to consider whether they had meant to do wrong?

  I was so traumatized I never stepped a wrong foot again in that school. I knew that my intent would not matter if my actions caused damage.

  Have you ever experienced a personal injustice? What did you learn from it? Does it matter to you if people misjudge you?

  Let’s talk about it. Comment below.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

• Imperfect Nation

  Posted at 3:02 pm by lindawis, on November 22, 2016

  

  photo by Eric Duvauchelle at unsplash.com

  Since the recent presidential election, I have struggled for words. Today’s calendar has unlocked me, bringing back the feelings I had on this date in 1963 after the assassination of President Kennedy.

  I am angry. I am sad. I am shocked.

  I have read columns and blogs and Facebook posts to figure out what happened and why.  I didn’t want to add to the noise. If I said anything in print, it had to be good.

  Paralyzed and at a loss, I recalled these lines from the poem Anthem by the late Leonard Cohen:

  Ring the bells that still can ring

  Forget your perfect offering

  So here goes.

  The president elect pulled the scab off our national infection and the pus is oozing out.We have long covered over the ugly symptoms of hate and tried to ignore them but now, with this election, we see how they fester. We can’t look away. And it hurts. Oh, how it hurts.

  This essay  by Charles Eisenstein opened my eyes a little more and had me nodding in agreement.

  So what do we do now? Michael Moore has a pretty good list. David Brooks offers some thoughtful advice. There’s loads more: Wear a safety pin, write your elected officials,  march on Washington,  speak up and donate and share your imperfect offerings.  Mr. Rogers said his mother responded to scary news by telling him to look for the helpers. Now we can be the helpers.

  Before the election, I tried a little experiment to understand why any of my Facebook friends would vote for a man so divisive. I still don’t understand why racism and misogyny were not deal breakers for them. But I’ve been reading that  many people felt forgotten. In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for a Marshall plan for the poor in America, black and white. Maybe that’s an idea worth revisiting, beyond name-calling and labeling.

  And finally, this: In her book, No Ordinary Time, a great comfort to me these past two weeks, Jan Phillips encourages us to “practice speaking as if your life were a manifestation of your words.” To me, that means say what you want to see. Imagine that.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

• That Wall

  Posted at 2:18 pm by lindawis, on August 22, 2016

   

  

  Photo by Andis Selvigs, unsplash.com

  “I want that wall,” she says, and my back arches like a cat’s. I know exactly what she is talking about, and it’s not a Pink Floyd album. A leading Presidential candidate wants to erect a wall to keep out immigrants and my petite blond massage therapist likes the idea.

  She leads the now rankled me down a quiet hallway to a dimly lit room in the spa I visit every month. The soft music and floral scent are pleasant as always, but her words have unnerved me. She looks like the same woman who is so good at working the kinks out of my back and shoulders. We have shared opinions about many things: raising kids, her brush with breast cancer, my back pain. I like her. A lot. And I can hardly believe my ears.

  “I want to be Donald Trump’s massage therapist. I wrote to him.”

  I sit on the chair to remove my shoes and my words rush out, too fast.

  “Are you kidding? He’s a racist bigot.” My friends have been saying it for months. In here it sounds like a knee-jerk liberal talking point.

  The young woman shakes her head, her wiry curls bouncing. Her dark eye flash. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  My mind goes to his face on the TV news – every day, all day, angry, vitriolic, threatening.

  “I’m just shocked,” I say, holding a sock in my lap. “I don’t know anybody who likes him. I’m 180 degrees from where you are on this.”

  “Well, I’ve had it with Obama. I can’t afford my health insurance.” She taps a foot. “Anything going on with you today?”

  I say no, just give me a regular tune-up. She knows my issues – side pain, my need for pillows under my knees and stomach, stiffness in the hand I broke years ago – and reads up on them to better help me.

  “Okay, I’ll give you a minute to get comfortable.” She leaves the room closing the door behind her.

  Comfortable? How do I get comfortable with a woman I like voting for Donald Trump? I undress and lay face down under a blanket.

  When she comes back I imagine her touch is unfriendly. I tell myself nothing has changed but my attitude toward her. Which means everything has changed.

  I can’t let it go. “You can’t afford your health insurance?”

  “No, I’m just a lowly massage therapist.”

  “That’s too bad,” I say. And that’s all. I’m not going to argue during my massage. Instead, I concentrate on my slowly relaxing muscles. We are silent for the next 50 minutes.

  On the way out, I don’t reschedule as I usually do. I’m still shaken. I think I’ll quit and tell the manager it’s because of her inappropriate political remarks. But then I’d have to go somewhere else for my body work. Shall I give up my principles for convenience? Or do I try to convert her to the “good” side?

  In no way do I want to add to the rancor all around us these days. I believe strongly that most people just want to be heard. I teach my students to write their personal stories, to express themselves on the page. But this is the first time someone I like has come out in favor of a candidate I abhor and I don’t want to hear it.

  My husband does not share my outrage. “He won’t win,” he says. But I’m not so sure. Now that I’ve heard from my young massage therapist, I wonder about all the others like her. As we progress toward the future, some people feel left behind. They want someone to blame for that. And they want what they perceive to be a strong leader, someone who says he will protect them.

  My friends post anti-Trump messages online comparing him to Hitler, ridiculing his hair and other body parts. It’s way too easy, on social media, to get carried away with the vitriol. No one is standing right there, looking back at us. Someone we might know. And like.

  Today I made another appointment for massage at the same spa with the same therapist. I don’t plan to bring up politics, but if she has something more to say, I plan to upgrade my listening practice. Maybe I’ll ask a few questions. That doesn’t mean I’ll ever support her choice. But I may learn something. And she may feel heard. We’ll take it from there.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments | Tagged lifestyle, massage politics, society

• Joyce Carol Oates and Her Happy Chicken

  Posted at 5:36 pm by lindawis, on October 26, 2015

  The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age by Joyce Carol Oates
  My rating: 4 of 5 stars

  Not a big fan of her fiction, but I teach and write memoir, so I picked this one up and am I glad I did! Though when I got to the chapter written by her pet chicken, I rolled my eyes. She is such a good writer that I couldn’t stop reading what the chicken said!

  Some of her childhood and adolescent memories foreshadow what she will write about in her novels: incest, murder, child abuse. The lost landscape of her youth (and mine) is poignantly portrayed – rural western New York State, the 1960s. Discovered that she taught at Detroit when my husband was a student there (he doesn’t remember her but he does remember the 1967 riots she describes) and that the radial Weathermen’s bomb blew up a townhouse in New York a few blocks from where she was doing a photo shoot for Vogue. Evocative of her era (and mine) as a young woman, and a loving homage to her parents, this memoir is a wonderful selection from a famous writer’s “life and times.”

  I was interested that she doesn’t believe a memoir should have a narrative structure, because our lives are not lived that way, yet she acknowledges that memoir is selective, like picking “up a handful of very hot stones.” One “has to drop some, in order to keep hold of others.”

  View all my reviews

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

• Her Sister Was a Chimp

  Posted at 2:18 pm by lindawis, on May 13, 2015

  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

  My rating: 5 of 5 stars

  Told from the point of view of a woman who was raised alongside a chimpanzee, as an experiment, this novel raises big questions about human treatment of animals, especially in medical and psychological research. Karen Joy Fowler’s name has been on my radar for years, but this was the first book of hers I read, and I will be reading everything else she has written. I was completely taken by the beauty and emotional power of her metaphors – “bad mood walking,” “the whole of the Internet laid out before me like a Candy Land board,” and “the government can’t be wrong about everything; even a stopped clock, etc.”, so much that I stopped to read them aloud to my husband. She had me laughing to myself and feeling very sad many times as I read this novel, and I read it slowly, savoring the story, the words and the strong poignant voice of Rosemary Cooke, protagonist and sister to a chimp named Fern.
  This novel is about love, family dynamics, politics, what we do when we don’t want to face the truth and what happens to us when we do. Fabulous.

  View all my reviews

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

• Happy Mother’s Day? (or not)

  Posted at 9:19 am by lindawis, on May 10, 2015

  Thought I’d bring this out again, because I still feel this way. Enjoy the day!

  LINDA C. WISNIEWSKI

  It’s that time of year again, when arguments against Mother’s Day appear, at least against the way we celebrate the holiday in the United States. It’s too commercial, mothers aren’t any more special than other women, some people had bad mothers, some mothers don’t like their kids, some women want to be mothers and can’t, some miss their deceased mothers or were given up for adoption, etc. etc. etc. On days like this, I don’t think we’ll ever run out of things to complain about.

  Ann Lamott wrote in Salon in 2010 that she raised her son NOT to celebrate Mother’s Day. She didn’t want him to feel obligated. This sounds to me like the worst kind of manipulation females have been accused of for centuries, probably because it was the only way we could exert any power over our lives. “Oh, no, don’t worry about me, I don’t want…

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments

• The Layers of Forgiveness

  Posted at 3:59 pm by lindawis, on April 7, 2015

  On a recent Sunday afternoon, my husband and I took the train to Philadelphia to see the world premier production of a new play at  the Arden Theatre Company. Under the Skin, by playwright Michael Hollinger, was one of the best plays I have seen at the Arden where we have been season ticket holders for the past three years.

  While trying hard not to give anything away, I want to encourage anyone who has a parent or has been a parent to see it, and so I will offer a short summary and review here. The play is no longer at the Arden, but I hope it continues to be produced at theaters around the country.

  Raina is a young mother who cannot forgive her father for not being there for her. . Her father contacts her because he needs a kidney and she might be a match. At first, she is outraged, but as the story unfolds she learns more about him and herself. Now she is raising a child of her own, and to her horror, she loses her temper and calls her a name. There are some big surprises in the course of this two hour play, for all four characters: Raina, her father Lou, Lou’s former mistress and her son. Some of the characters play more than one part which only serves to accustom the audience to seeing the interchangeable flaws, feelings and behavior among human beings.

  Most people vow to raise their children differently than they were brought up. And many of us end up disappointing ourselves, as we become aware of carrying the same mistakes forward. We judge our parents, then we judge ourselves. It’s not a big leap to go on to judge other people we meet.

  Why do I want you to see Under the Skin? Because there is so much keeping us apart these days –  fear and terrorism and war and economics and racism – and because a little thing like going to a play and sitting quietly with others for a couple of hours, paying attention to a story not all that different from all our stories, could move you closer to a sense of inner peace.

   

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

• A Simply Christmas Birthday Cake

  Posted at 12:14 pm by lindawis, on December 20, 2014

  

   

  At Christmas, or maybe just because it’s the end of the year, I try to make everything perfect. Big and little worries come out and tug at me to fix them. But I can’t.

  It’s just a holiday, that’s all, I tell myself, albeit a big heavy one laden with all kinds of expectations. It does not have to be so fraught. Like December 26^th, it’s just a day until we make it something more.

  Going downstairs this morning, I saw the photos of my family on bookshelves, some gone, all of us older, and perhaps because I was ruminating on life’s imperfection, I saw them in their flawed beauty and I loved them. Each one has strengths and quirks and weak places, traits that make them who they are. And I wonder whose story shall be next. My mission as a memoir writer is to bring them all to light.

  Do not worry and whine about how hard it is, I tell myself, or how widely your words are read. Love it and do it.

  In the kitchen, I see the cookbook, open to the page for Simply Cheesecake. My husband wants it for his birthday cake. He and Jesus have the same birthday and guess who has felt overlooked on December 25^th since he was a little boy?

  The origin of the recipe is lost in the mist of time. It has been published in two fundraising cookbooks, one for my faith community where you are welcome if you are open-minded, and one for Dining for Women, a nationwide giving circle of bighearted women. Openhearted church, generous women: two communities where I am welcome, with or without my perfect cheesecake.

  Lighter than the densely packed New York style, my cheesecake can be served with or without topping. My husband has chosen strawberries and whipped cream this year, and I plan to whip the cream myself, no pressurized can of chemicals for me. This will be a pure and natural gift of love. I slowed my worried mind and made a list of what I’ll need, and felt calmer, knowing I can grab that list and go, or even let him, the one who actually enjoys grocery shopping, take it and run.

  Sipping my coffee, relaxed, I remembered that when I slide that cake into the oven, I will bless it with the sign of the cross, a salute to my mother, who made the sign before the open oven door whenever she baked. I wonder if she did it as a salute to hers.

  Feeling close to her, I look down at the cheesecake recipe in the open cookbook on the table before me.  “After one hour, turn off the oven,” I read, “and leave the cake inside for one more hour. Do NOT open the oven door at any time!” I never have, in all the years I’ve baked that cake. Will it “fall” if I open the door just a crack? Why chance it, I reason, after all that mixing and blending of cheeses and sour cream, eggs added one at a time, vanilla. Even when it’s done, after two hours in the oven, one with the heat turned off and the DOOR CLOSED, the cake needs to set, to cool on a rack then chill in the fridge. I don’t question the magic and the mystery.

  My thoughts turn to the friend who tells me every time she bakes this cake, and I realize: This is my specialty. I don’t do everything well – who does? – But this I enjoy, both the making and the serving. It is my birthday gift to my husband– this year we will light long thin candles for him to make a wish on – and the Christmas dessert for the friends who will join us for dinner. All this cannot be rushed. And it’s damn near perfect.

  photo credit: Flickr.com by quinnanya, Creative Commons licensed.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged birthdays family, Christmas, family, home, writing

• Who Are Your People?

  Posted at 11:08 am by lindawis, on June 3, 2014

  Thrilled to be a guest on Birth of a Novel this week!

  BIRTH OF A NOVEL

  I’m especially pleased to have Linda Wisniewski as a guest this week. I’ve known Linda and admired her writing for a few years and a year or so ago we became critique partners. 

  
  Writing about ethnicity
  by Linda C. Wisniewski

  When I was a child, the image of America as a “melting pot” appealed to me. Everyone would be welcome and blend in with the rest of society. As an adult, I saw the risk of losing some of our most beautiful stories when we assimilate into one homogeneous whole. Today I like to think of America as a “mosaic” where everyone is beautiful in her or his own way. Many readers agree. Memoirs about culture and ethnicity often make the best sellers list. Stories like Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and Carlos Eires’ Waiting for Snow in Havana invite us into the strange (to us)…

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

• Happy Mother’s Day? (or not)

  Posted at 2:12 pm by lindawis, on May 10, 2014

  It’s that time of year again, when arguments against Mother’s Day appear, at least against the way we celebrate the holiday in the United States. It’s too commercial, mothers aren’t any more special than other women, some people had bad mothers, some mothers don’t like their kids, some women want to be mothers and can’t, some miss their deceased mothers or were given up for adoption, etc. etc. etc. On days like this, I don’t think we’ll ever run out of things to complain about.

  Ann Lamott wrote in Salon in 2010 that she raised her son NOT to celebrate Mother’s Day. She didn’t want him to feel obligated. This sounds to me like the worst kind of manipulation females have been accused of for centuries, probably because it was the only way we could exert any power over our lives. “Oh, no, don’t worry about me, I don’t want you to feel you have to buy me presents, take me to brunch, yada yada…” I love Anne Lamott’s writing but this time I have to disagree.

  What’s missing here is communication. We don’t know how to talk to people. If you don’t like Mother’s Day, ignore it. Really, you can do that. If you like it, go ahead and enjoy it. I plan to. Mom is the best job title I ever had.

  But if you don’t like brunch, or candy, or flowers, or your mom was mean to you, or your kids moved far away and don’t call, find a way to talk to someone. Or write. Without attacking or being defensive or justifying bad behavior. Don’t let anybody make you feel guilty. And don’t try to make others be who you want them to be. Just talk and listen.

   

  Here’s a picture of my mom, Lucille Smitka Ciulik, and her mom, Marianne Rutkowska Smitka. The older I get, the more I understand them. And love them. And think of stuff to tell them.

  Best way to celebrate Mother’s Day: Call your mom. If you can.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged Ann Lamott, Lucille Smitka Ciulik, Marianne Rutkowska Smitka, Mother's Day

• A Veterans’ Day Salute

  Posted at 3:30 pm by lindawis, on November 11, 2013

  

  My cousin Wayne rode into town with his mother on the Sunday afternoon train and arrived at Grandma’s house wrapped in a whiff of danger. My sister and I were good little girls who knew how to  behave. We sat on Grandma’s porch glider, careful to push off gently, toes to the floor, rocking slowly with just a tiny squeak on the backstroke. When Wayne arrived, things got kicked up a notch. His bottom bounced onto the seat and he pushed off the floor with both feet, the glider squeaking like a rusty gate. Wind whistled past our ears.

  The grownups said to stop it right now, but Wayne couldn’t resist temptation. A few minutes later, he’d start again, faster and faster, until we heard an awful scraping sound as metal hit wall. “If I catch you doing that again…” his mother frowned.

  “Let’s play inside,” I suggested. Wayne dumped a bag of green plastic soldiers onto Grandma’s coffee table and arranged them into battle scenes. Then he showed us his bag of war comics. For my sister and me, he was the perfect Sunday playmate, who brought us the fun kind of danger where no one got hurt.

  After high school, Wayne joined the army and was sent to Vietnam where he earned three Purple Hearts. When he came home, we watched an antiwar protest on TV. “They ought to send ’em all to Vietnam!” he said. I was a college student, against the war. I didn’t know what to say. I loved my cousin, but he wasn’t playing soldiers anymore. I wished we could all go back in time and sit on Grandma’s glider again.  Our eyes met and his grin collapsed. “Nobody should go there,” my cousin said, looking at the floor.

  Previously published in a different version in The Rocking Chair Reader, Adams Media, 2005.Image courtesy of Gualberto 107, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net.

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  Posted in life stories, memoir, memoirs, peace, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged family, peace, war

• Origami Morning

  Posted at 10:47 am by lindawis, on October 7, 2013

  

   Her little fingers fumbled with a sheet of yellow construction paper. An over-sized white camp T-shirt hung down over her ruffled skirt. Her bright pink sneakers matched the headband in her jet-black hair.

  Inside the activities room, nineteen other kids, ages five to twelve, sat at tables scattered with sheets of colored paper. A middle-aged Chinese American woman demonstrated how to fold paper into origami flowers. I was learning, too, and having a hard time of it.

  When I answered the call last spring for volunteers at a Chinese Culture Camp, I imaged a fun-filled week with little children, maybe something like the days when my boys were small. Instead, it turned into quite the unexpected challenge.  The arts and crafts were so complicated, I felt inept from the start. The only thing I was good at was untangling yo-yo strings and handing out snacks.

  I work best when I have explicit instructions. Do A, then B. “Help them with this” was not remotely clear enough for me, and that was all the training I got. The first morning, I wanted to go home. I thought of saying I was sick and had to leave. The second day, all morning, I practiced another excuse: I forgot, there is somewhere else I have to be!  But I couldn’t find the right time to say it.

  The third day, the children sang “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in Chinese, complete with hand signs, and I was hooked. I wanted to be with them, to bask in the joy on their openly eager faces. At snack time, I put out bags of pretzels, helped little hands peel oranges and passed out water bottles.

  Still, no day was easy for me. And origami made me feel just plain stupid. Although I concentrated on the teacher’s flying fingers, my folds all went in the wrong directions. I followed her from table to table, watching her turn ordinary construction paper into beautiful flowers. But try as I might, I just couldn’t do it. I felt a tug at my shirt.

  “Can you help me?” The little girl with the pink headband asked. Uh oh.

               Do not fail this child, I thought to myself. Breathe and focus. I picked up a sheet of bright red and working slowly so she should follow, carefully turned my precise folds of paper into… a crumpled ball. She threw her own paper down on the table.

  “I want to go home!” she said with a frown. Me too, I thought.  But I was one of the grownups, the people who are supposed to know how to do things. My face felt hot.

  “Can I make something else?” she said.

  “Of course,” I said with authority, my grownup shoulders relaxing. “You can make anything you want.”

  “I need scissors,” she said. I could help with that. She took them from my hand, snipped here and there at her folded paper, and opened it, triumphant, to display a lacy pattern of holes.

  “Can I hang it up?” The walls and windows were already plastered with coloring pages and paper snowflakes autographed in crayon.

  “Yes, you can.” Her little shoulders wriggled. “But put your name on it first.”

  “I need some tape,” she said. I could help with that, too. I held the chair steady as she climbed up and taped her work as high in the window as her little arms could reach. Sunlight poured through the holes of her design.

  “Beautiful,” I said. She smiled back at me. I believe she thought I meant the paper.

  Have you ever wanted to just quit and, as my mother used to say, “Pick up your marbles and go home?”  Did you leave or did you stay? 

   

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Tagged anxiety, children, Chinese

• Knitting Knotes

  Posted at 1:14 pm by lindawis, on April 17, 2013

  

  This is the second in a series of posts by Kat Kowalski, protagonist of my novel in progress, Memoirs of the Queen of Poland.

  Now that I’m back from my journey, I’ve thinking more about life in the 21st century. It seems like everyone blogs these days, especially writers, and I wonder if we do it just to get our voices “out there,” and if we take enough time to think about what we truly want to say, what truly needs saying.

  My intention is to write here every month or so, after considering carefully what it is I need to say.

  For this month, I’ve been thinking about my relationship with knitting, and how I love it. It soothes me, heals me, makes me feel useful. But I’m usually doing something else at the same time. Watching TV and knitting. Talking to someone and knitting. The excellent memoir writer, Louise DeSalvo, was an inspiration to me when I began to write my own story. She says “I can’t seem to write unless I knit a little.” That got me wondering: Is writing a kind of knitting? We weave our words together like yarn, following a pattern, always with the end product in mind. And is knitting a kind of healing, too?

  These days, there is so much heartbreak and pain in the news. I don’t want to watch it anymore. In fact, I’m not sure I want to watch TV at all while I’m knitting. Meditating always helps me feel better, if I can get myself to sit down and actually “do” it. And knitting, all by itself, is a form of meditation, if I do it mindfully. I’m going to try this and see how it goes. Knit and meditate. Or knit and pray. Or just knit and breathe.

  What’s your take on crafts and writing and healing? Do they go together?

  Namaste,
  Kat

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged crafts, healing, home, knitting, lifestyle, writing, yarn

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