I am isolated by design. I wanted to write my own stories. I’d
been wanting to write them for years. So seven years ago, I earned my MA in
creative writing and I published my first book—a family memoir I researched in
collaboration with Grandma Hazel.
I closed myself in my house with a computer and printer. I
wrote and revised, worked with beta readers, and edited. I marketed, too, until
my grandson was born. I became his primary caregiver and an infant became nearly
my only companion.
A few weeks ago, I realized I’d overdone the solitude.
Trees that walk and talk and fight in a battle between good and evil
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, trees walk and
talk and take part in a war between good and evil. In the book, they constitute
a separate race of sentient beings called Ents. Little did Tolkien know, from his
perspective in the middle of a great world-wide depression, how close he was to
the reality of trees.
Now we know that trees communicate and take part in
skirmishes. Although individual trees don’t walk, as species they move. Right
now they are migrating northward.
As to the skirmishes, imagine this cooperation in a battle
to the death. Your gigantic American elm tree comes under attack by leaf-eating
caterpillars. How does it defend itself? It releases pheromones to attract
parasitic wasps. What about the pine tree next door? It detects the elm’s pheromones
and produces some of its own—and here come the wasps.
You go into the shelterbelt, find a convenient ash or elm
where you can settle your back against the trunk. Does that feeling of euphoria
come from the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze, from your cool escape
from the sun, or maybe from the tree’s pheromones?
A woman in Australia, Monica Gagliano, has evidence that
some plants emit a “crackling noise” in the roots at 220 hertz. We can’t hear
it, but maybe trees can. What are they talking about underground? I’ve written
before about trees communicating and cooperating underground where they share
water and nutrients over a complex network of interconnected roots and micro-fungi.
It appears to be a supportive system that nurtures all its members over acres
and acres of trees, especially the young ones.
While individual trees planted in isolation may not get lonely, their chances of survival diminish with solitude. And how about us? As we clear-cut stand after stand of trees to feed our hunger for everything from new houses to paper, where will we go to lean against a tree trunk and contemplate nirvana?
Trees even communicate and support one another among species. I like to think all of Spearfish Canyon is one network of interacting trees.
Another GirlieOnTheEdge challenge. Prompt word: Pine
Who can think of pines without the pine trees lining Jim
Croce’s winding road in his song “I’ve Got a Name?”
I first heard it on an eight-track album recorded by Helen
Reddy.
Or how about Pine Sol, that cleaner we poured in buckets and
washtubs to scrub our floors or scour our sinks and toilets?
I think of the row of pines my dad and grandfather planted
at the edge of a little game preserve at the foot of the dam where the overflow
from the spillway could keep them wet.
I can see my dad, lying in the pasture grass chewing on a
stem, hands behind his head, listening to the breeze shushing through the
trees.
My dad and granddad both died when I was just a kid, but
those trees have become giants, edging gnarled Russian olives, broken down
floribunda roses, and a variety of volunteer native trees and shrubs.
I know I have photos of Chip, but I don’t know where I’ve put them.
Animals are marvelous and surprising creatures, aren’t they? I could cite dozens of examples, but I submit horse lips to plead my case.
They look big and rubbery, not at all subtle, yet they function
almost like hands—with fingers. Have you ever fed a horse a ration that includes
something she doesn’t like? When you next enter the barn, you’ll find those
tiny bits in the feed trough, while the rest of the rations have disappeared.
You’ll never see her make the sort.
Hold out your hand with a carrot or an apple. Your horse
will hold hands with you. Those lips are warm and comforting as a handshake.
(That’s assuming you don’t have an angry horse that bites.)
I’ve never quite “got” horse humor, but once upon a time my
then-husband and I stood a racing quarter horse named Flying Chip Nine at stud.
Sometimes he would “laugh” at us—or jeer at us, I’ve never quite decided
which—with his long upper lip turned up showing his teeth.
My grandson sometimes effects that expression. In his case,
I know what he’s communicating.
This is an episode within my memoir about families, resilience, and how we made our lives work—or not. It’s my contribution to the GirlieOnTheEdge blog prompt for this week. The prompt word is exchange.
Cecil’s wife had left him and he didn’t know how he’d get
along without her and their baby daughter.
His mother, fearing for his sanity—and his life—insisted
that he go to a psychiatrist for help dealing with his multiple losses and his
combat fatigue.
Unable to figure out what to do, Cecil did what she
demanded.
The shrink had a simple answer—find another wife, he said,
handing Connor a lonely hearts newsletter.
Cecil took his advice, exchanging one woman for another who
also left him.
Cecil was left, devastated and out of control, trying to save a marriage—either one of them.
I had a friend—a gnome-like fellow who said he’d thought,
when he was a child, that every six-year-old spent a year in an iron lung. He
was a canny bulldog in local politics, supporting rights for people with
disabilities. There’s the time he argued for wheelchair ramps at the
courthouse.
“We’ll help them up the stairs,” said the councilmen.
“Look,” said Roger, “someday you may have an accident. Maybe
you’ll need a wheelchair. Then, how would you like to sit at the bottom of
those stairs out there waiting for someone to notice you?”
Hope. I’ve written and thought about resilience and about
people who keep showing up. I’ve wondered how they do that, over and over. In
my just-released book, I’ve written about the Great Depression and World War
II—two of the most hopeless times in history. My characters, like the real
people in those times, did what needed doing, often at the cost of their
health, their peace of mind, and sometimes their lives.
We act now like those people are all gone and there are no such people left, but I beg to differ. As I reread an article from a year ago (October, 2018, National Geographic) I wonder about the role hope played in those real people’s lives. The article, entitled “Despite Perils, Decide to Hope” lists our current era as a good time to hope. “Our planet is beset by conflict, climate change, pollution, disease, and other hazards, what better time to be hopeful?” reads the title.
Indeed.
The author, Anne Lamott, says we should look to the helpers.
Aren’t they the same people who keep showing up and doing what needs doing?
Lamott writes that they represent our hope these days. They’re the ones who
vaccinate babies and care for ebola patients. They plant trees and study
glaciers. They recycle; they develop new drugs; they protect our civil rights;
they petition the government; and report on its activities. They keep doing
what needs doing—what’s possible. I believe there’s reason to hope, and that
all those people doing stuff are driven by hope. Sometimes that’s a radical act.
I’m taken by the presence of absence in WWII survivors
What follows is my response to the new GirlieOnTheEdge word prompt for this week. The word is absent and the instructions are to write six sentences, no more no less. So here are my six sentences.
Since I published a novel set during World War II a month
ago, the first thing that came to my mind when challenged to think about
absence was “absent without leave.”
To me, though, the outstanding characteristic of that period
was people’s unyielding presence.
I wrote about a family, an ordinary family, who just kept
showing up—not just to fight the war, but also to support the warriors who did.
I know mostly about farm families because I came from one,
and one of my favorite photos depicts my aunt, in a dress she made herself out
of flour sacks, sitting next to a pile of worn-out tires saved for the war
effort.
I have a newspaper clipping, accompanied by a photo of my
grandfather with some of his hogs, that reports on stepped-up farm production,
with much of the labor force gone, to feed the troops—and some left-over ration
books with icons of commodities punched out.
In the end, the survivors’ faces held the presence of absence—the
sons who never returned, the lost peace of mind in the faces of the ones who
did, and the years torn from lives that never quite recovered.
This bit of flash fiction, or more like essay, is a result of this week’s Carrot Ranch Literary Community blog prompt: key lime pie. It’s funny the kinds of associations one makes, isn’t it?
Key lime pie tastes of freedom in tropical paradise.
The lime, a citrus hybrid, grows in places like the Florid Keys and the islands of the Caribbean, reminding me of Ernest Hemingway, tucked away in the Keys, writing of the Spanish Civil War, Fidel and Raul Castro, and Che Guevara overthrowing the Batista regime in Cuba. Farther back in time—probably before agronomists developed key limes—the blacks in Haiti rose up in a slave rebellion that freed Haiti from French colonial rule and abolished slavery there.
Do you suppose any of those revolutionaries celebrated with key lime pie?
Can’t you see Hemingway lounging on beach with a mojito?
I’ve read about near death experiences several times,
including an article I saved from Discover
Magazine. These experiences really
fascinate me—not that I want to have one.
There seem to be some consistencies among the near deaths of
many people. Most seem to “see” their dying bodies as if they’re
outside themselves. Many see a bright light—or a shadow. They report them as
the most powerful, intense, and
important experiences of their lives. The scientists seem particularly confused
about how those NDEs could leave such memorable and intense impressions.
I have a theory.
It seems to me that dying, even for only a few seconds or
minutes, would be about as intense as it gets. It is, after all, the end, or at
least a reminder that the person experiencing it could end. Period. No more
chances.
Many people change their personalioties as a result,
becoming friendlier, kinder, more tolerant. I can’t help thinking that’s the
Ebenezer Scrooge effect. Once you’re faced smack against your ending, wouldn’t
you have more perspective about what’s important and what’s not worth worrying
about? Wouldn’t you think about how you’ll be remembered—because, after all,
our lives do go on in some ways in other people’s memories.
I know there are probably scientific explanations for the
NDE effect, but I’m thinking I’ll go with what seems obvious and not try to
explain it out of existence—and that from a lover of science.
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