Month: March 2024

Easter echoes

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

Easter morning. I am six. My little sister is four. We’ve torn apart our Easter baskets. The green plastic grass is strewn all over and we’ve eaten the heads off our hollow chocolate bunnies. We didn’t go to church because Mama isn’t feeling well. She has trouble with her back and sits in traction for a while every day, in a chair by the bedroom with her chin in a sling that hangs from the top of the door. I am in the kitchen when the phone rings and she comes to answer it.

Oh no, she says. Oh, no. She starts to cry. Tears stream down her cheeks.

Listening to her side of the conversation with her friend from church, I learn that our pastor died this morning. At church. Standing at the pulpit to give his sermon when he sank to the floor. People thought at first he was kneeling to pray, strange for a Baptist, but…it is Easter…

In the days to come, the church people will comfort each another by saying this is exactly how he’d have wanted to go.

*******

Easter morning. I am eighteen. I’m not in church. I quit going a few years ago. I have been cutting my college classes more and more to run with my colorful theater crowd. I’ve decided to make my living perfoming on stage. It’s all I care about. My aunt, Mama’s sister who never married nor had children, says I’m “caught between the moon and New York City.” Deep down I know this is not the best that I can do: I don’t want to be at home anymore, I’m not getting along with my father, my grandmother is worried about me. I know she prays, because…

I have lost my way.

*******

Easter morning. I am nineteen. I am not in church, but I’m looking at a card that arrived at the end of the week. A beautiful Easter card from Miss Margaret. I didn’t know she had my address. I met her during my recent hospital stay, when I ran a high fever with a virus and needed an IV. Miss Margaret was my roommate. A large Black lady with a beautiful smile and a voice as warm as as a blanket. She was in for a mastectomy. She’d asked me, just before I left and before she went for surgery: Do you go to church?

No, ma’am, not like I should…(I didn’t say not at all).

Hmm, she replied. That young man who’s come to see you. Brought you those flowers. Have you been going out with him for long?

No, ma’am. I haven’t been out with him at all yet, actually. I got sick on the day of our first date and ended up here instead…it was also opening night of the play we were both in and I missed that, too.

What I didn’t tell Miss Margaret is that I was afraid the guy would give up on me…but he hadn’t, yet.

She nodded. Listen to me, Child. You are young. Watch out for yourself, hear? He seems a nice young man. You ought to get yourself back to church.

So here I am on Easter morning, not in church, looking at this card she mailed me… an Easter prayer signed Love and Blessings Always from Miss Margaret, P.S. I’m doing fine.

II wonder: Is it too late to get to church today?

I call my boyfriend.

*******

Easter morning. I am twenty-one. I’ve come back to my childhood church with my husband…the guy who didn’t give up on me when I got sick and missed our first date as well as opening night of the community theater production we were both performing in…a play entitled “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” We’ve been married for a year and a half, we’re both working, we just left our one-bedroom apartment for a new townhouse, first time homeowners. Up until these last months, we thought we would move to New York and pursue acting careers. I’ve been accepted to The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and they have allowed me a grace period to come….if we can figure out how we are going to afford to live there.

But my husband has recently told me: Honey…we need to talk.

And then he just says it: I know God’s calling me to preach.

His beautiful face is so earnest. I tell him the only thing I know to say: If He’s really calling you, then you have to try.

The huge sanctuary is packed today. Hundreds of people. The pastor has been here for fifteen years, the successor of the one who died here on that long-ago Easter morning. Today he preaches from Acts 17, Paul addressing the Areopagus on the resurrection of Christ; Paul is mocked, but one man and one woman are called out here in the passage by name for joining him in belief: Dionysious and Damaris.

When the pastor offers the invitation, I grab my husband’s hand: We are rededicating our lives today.

We walk the aisle. In all that crowd, we are the only ones who do: One man, one woman.

I tell my pastor that my husband is called to preach.

He will take him under his wing, the fifty-third and final young man he ordains to the ministry.

He will tell us later: It won’t be easy; I had to step into the pulpit of a man who died there. But the Lord will provide. He always comes through…sometimes at last minute when you are thinking all is lost, but He always comes through.

Then he’ll look at me: You were in my teen Bible School class, I recall. It’s been a while. I remember you coming to church with your mother when you were a child. Your dad didn’t attend and your mother didn’t drive.

Yes, sir. That’s right. My dad works most Sundays. Mama didn’t drive. She’s just recently gotten her license.

He will nod: You walked to church until we got our bus ministry started. Your mother was the first person to sign up for it.

I didn’t know that.

*******

Easter morning. I am twenty-five. Life is a blur with a baby boy to care for. I meant to change the old wreath hanging on the front of the parsonage, over by the wide porch swing. When the weather is warmer I will sit here and sing to him, but right now it’s still a little chilly, with the beach breezes blowing up from the bay. Before we go to church, I will put up the Easter wreath. Better late than never.

When I reach for the tattered old wreath, a bird flies out, startling me. There’s a nest in it, with babies cheeping… I had no idea.

Awed by the discovery of brand-new life on this particular morning, I let it be.

I save the new Easter wreath for next year.

*****

Easter afternoon. I am thirty. My family is gathered at the Baptist church in Daddy’s hometown for the funeral of his sister, my aunt. She was fifty-four, spent the last years of her short life in a nursing home, bedridden with mutliple sclerosis. For all of these years my grandmother drove a sixty-mile round trip each week to visit, taking her daughter’s soiled laundry home and returning it fresh and clean, and trimming her nails because the nursing staff said they weren’t allowed to.

Beside her in the pew, Daddy is pale. He’s recovering from a heart attack and four bypasses.

When my husband and I followed the limo to the church, I could see Daddy and Grandaddy in the back of it, side by side…two silver heads, exactly alike.

Grandma is broken but her faith is not. She says, I’m truly glad she isn’t suffering any more but oh, it hurts. It hurts.

She died on Good Friday, Grandma, I tell her. Like Jesus.

Grandma looks at me a long moment, her watery blue eyes gleaming: I can’t belive I haven’t thought of that.

The service begins. On Grandma’s other side, Granddaddy bows his head. Tears are trickling down his cheeks.

This is the only time I’ve ever seen him cry.

*******

Easter morning. I am thirty-seven. My husband and our boys have only been in our new house for a month and I’m still scrambling to get organized. I love the house, not that I wasn’t grateful for parsonages having been provided all these years, it’s just that eventually we will retire and you can’t do that in a parsonage. Plus…I can’t say exactly why, but this place somehow reminds me of my grandparents’ home. The great irony being that they’ll never see it. None of my childhood family will. Granddaddy’s been gone four years. Grandma’s in the nursing home; she’ll never travel again. Daddy died suddenly seven months ago and I’m still trying to process it, especially since everything fell apart with my mother afterward and there will be no repairing the ripping apart of our family…I think about how she took me and my sister to church…how she was the frst person to sign up for the bus ministry…I have to remember the good, I must choose to remember the good, for it was there and real and even though a person may be destructive with those wheels already in motion long before she brings you onto the planet, there were always good things.

I cannot dwell on this anymore, I have two children of my own to get ready for church now and Easter is our biggest day…it really won’t do for the preacher’s wife to be late. Again.

*****

Easter morning. Today. Let’s just say my fifties will soon be coming to a close. Depending on when you read this, I will either be headed to church or having returned home. My husband is still preaching. Our oldest is in his fifth year of pastoring a church nearby, close enough that our two granddaughters come over often, including these past couple of days, to play with their Franna. Our daughter-in-law is an extraordinary pastor’s wife and mother as well as an incredible artist. So many gifts. Our youngest is playing piano for today’s worship service and he’ll sing the solo for the choir on “Rise Again” in his beautiful, beautiful voice… his fiancee is deeply compassionate, loving, always smiling. They are happy. Yesterday I wrote of digging the past and mining your memories for the stories that matter…today I write, my heart overflowing with abundance of life, for now, now, now. Today I write of the peace that passes understanding, for with God, the story does not end. The message of Easter that echoes through the ages is not one of death, but of life; not of lost causes, but of new purpose; not of despair, but of overcoming…it is a message of redemption, sacrificial love, forgiving, being set free. I think of those words, rise again, as I drive out of my neighborhood to see a hawk take flight, the morning sun flashing on its white belly, and discovering, that same day, the house finches have, indeed, built a new nest in the front door wreath, despite last year’s tragedy of all five babies dying here suddenly. The mother began laying eggs during Holy Week.

Five of them.

The father sang a beautiful song after each egg was laid.

A song of new life, hope, and joy.

I know it so, so well.

The echoes of Easter.

*******

Composed for the 31st and last day of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

—thank you all for being such a loving, supportive community;
please keep writing ❤

Dig the past

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

Way back on Day 10 of this current Slice of Life Story Challenge, I had a lot of fun playing around with a prompt asking what the first line of my autobiography would be. I really prefer the idea of memoir…my definition: Mining one’s memories for the stories that matter most, digging in the storied strata of one’s past.

I came up with this “opening line” for it:

My father named me for his mother, and that was the beginning of everything.

Truth.

From the moment I entered this world, my grandmother and I were bound together by blood, love, and namesakery. Long after she’s left it, our bond remains unbreakable.

Were I ever to write an extended memoir, her stories would be layered throughout. I am part of them; they are part of me.

She would say, You were named for me like I was named for my Papa. I loved him so. He was very religious, sang in the choir every Sunday. He had a beautiful bass voice…he used to keep bees when I was young and I’d help him get the honey.

She was sixteen in March of 1932 when her Papa, Francis, died by suicide. On his sixtieth birthday. I don’t know the whole story but what little I do know, I shall keep for now. Grandma told me they brought him home in a wooden casket lined with black oilcloth and that she sat up with him all night before the burial.

The point is that my grandmother’s stories made me hungry to know as much as I could about her childhood, daily life long ago, how people endured such hard times. Many didn’t. The old cemeteries tell stories of their own.

I asked her about the 1919 influenza epidemic: I don’t remember it. I was little. I do remember people talking about “hemorrhagic fever” and Mama saying she made big pots of soup for the neighbors who were sick. Papa carried it to them and left it on their porches. He wouldn’t go in because he didn’t want to bring the sickness home.

I asked her about meeting my grandfather: Oh, we always knew each other. He’s nine years older than I am and he and Mama used to pick cotton together…

Granddaddy would say: We’d all see who could pick the most cotton and it was always Lula [Grandma’s mother] or me. That was before the boll weevil came along and people started planting tobacco.

Grandma said: When tobacco came along, I was a looper…you had to be careful. That juice was sticky and would stain your clothes; it was hard to get out…using a wringer washing machine or washboard, I might add.

The setting of all this is a tiny community called Campbell’s Creek, established around 1700, way down east in the far reaches of Beaufort County, North Carolina. It’s part of Aurora although the actual town is five miles away. Most of the town is now in serious disrepair and the place is so remote that when I happen to encounter people who’ve been there, they typically say something like “I thought I was going to the end of the world.”

It is one of the places I love best on this Earth. The beginning of everything…Aurora is Latin for “dawn,” you know.

My grandparents, Columbus St. Patrick and Ruby Frances, were born here in 1906 and 1915, respectively. They married during the Great Depression. Their first home was a tenant house; their first child, my father, was born there. Granddaddy was a sharecropper. He plowed fields with mules. He was skilled with farm tools that people seldom use now, like an adze. This would give him a unique advantage when he “couldn’t make a go” of farming and went to Virginia to find a job as a shipwright, just as war broke out and ship production went into overdrive. When the war was over, he tried his hand at a number of things, but he had two more children to provide for; he went back to the shipyard until he retired.

All of his life, Granddaddy was a farmer at heart: I can remember when we ordered chickens by mail and they’d be delivered in cages by horse and buggy. I was three or four when I saw my first automobile…

That would have been around 1910. A Model T.

Time was, he’d say, in his country dialect bearing faint traces of Elizabethan English, that the whole family could go off for a week to visit somebody and you didn’t have to lock your house or barns because nobody would bother them. People looked out for each other. There won’t no nursing homes. When somebody was sick we all took turns helping out.

Grandma said: I was sitting with a friend’s mother. She’d been sick awhile and we all knew her time was near. She hadn’t spoken a word in days, hadn’t moved or responded to anyone. She was just lying there in the bed when all of a sudden she sat up and opened her eyes. She started laughing: “Can you hear them? Can you hear them?” Her face just glowed...it had to be angels. A little while after, she was gone.

I grew up on these stories and so many more.

My summers were spent learning things that I wasn’t even aware I was learning, things that will drive my interests for the remainder of my days: story, history, culture, nature.

Faith.

And science.

I’ve written much about the little dirt road that ran past Granddaddy and Grandma’s house. It’s one of my life’s greatest metaphors. I can recall, in the 1970s, when it was covered with gravelly “rejects” from phosphate mining, Aurora’s biggest industry since 1964. Granddaddy and Grandma were so excited for their grandchildren to come digging in the road to find sharks’ teeth—some were quite large — coral skeleton, and various fossilized bones of sea creatures. Someone of official status must have soon realized the value of these rejects and they weren’t scattered on the old dirt road anymore. Instead, they were taken to a newly-created fossil museum in town. Today, children from all over come to dig for fossils they can keep, and they can learn about the history in the little museum. There’s even an annual fossil festival at the end of May; last year I went for the first time with my seven-year-old granddaughter.

This excerpt is from an article in the April 2023 edition of the magazine Our State: Celebrating North Carolina:

Beneath our state’s soil and waves is a lost world waiting to be discovered—a geologic trove we claim as our own…about 50 years ago, coral specimens were found in drilling samples near present-day Aurora. They were sent to the Smithsonian Institution, whose scientists soon visited—and identified the area as one that proclaims the most prolific fossil record of the Miocene (2.3 million to 5.3 million years ago) and Pliocene (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago) marine life on the Atlantic coast.

About fifty years ago… I’d have been a child playing in the gravel on the old dirt road, collecting shark’s teeth, unware of the true treasures of my life.

The Aurora Fossil Museum, writes the author, “continues to keep the past alive.”

It’s analogous to to me: Scientists finding bits of ancient creatures, trying to piece them together to understand stories of this “lost world,” and how I hold to bits of story from this same place, the lost world of my grandparents.

Generations rise and fall…layer upon layer of story strata settling in their wake.

I am a remnant of their world. From early childhood Grandma infused me with story, unknowingly turning me into amateur oral history exacavator, archivist, curator…the stories still live in me.

My father named me for his mother, and that was the beginning of everything.

Imagine my delight when I learned last year that the Aurora Fossil Museum had been approved for an official historical site license plate with the NCDMV. I applied for one right away….it finally came, a couple of months ago. I’m among the first to have it:

I imagine Granddaddy’s beaming face. I hear Grandma’s typical expression of surprise: My land!

Dig the Past! the license plate reads.

I do it every day that I live. I go on mining my memories for stories, working their meanings out bit by bit, trying to preserve them for the priceless treasures they are.

Keeping the past alive. For the future. For right now.

That’s what memoir is for.

*******

Composed for Day 30 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Cluttered recollection

/ Fran Haley / 13 Comments

During the March Open Write over at Ethical ELA, host Rex Muston invited participants to craft “Junk Drawer Affirmations” because, writes Rex: The most urgent motivations to fix something or do something purposeful are tied to the things often gathered there.  The eventual rummaging through the drawer lends to varied levels of reminiscence…Pick your favorite junk drawer and explore it with a search that settles on something that carries deeper meaning.

I could have chosen one of several drawers, truth be told. But this one called to me. I’d already gone to rummage in it recently, and…well, it takes writing a poem to get to deeper meanings.

Cluttered Recollection

I forgot
what brought me
to the old rolltop desk

and what I was looking for
in this drawer

it isn’t the box 
of sheet protectors
left behind by my youngest
marking his time
in high school band

not the psychedelic folders
I bought to hold
copies of songs for
kids at church to practice
the neon-swirl flower-covers 
peeking out from under
the folded map of
the British Isles
this juxtaposition
conjuring a sense
of the 1960s 
and The Beatles…
can’t buy me love, oh
no no no no…

not the bag
of unsharpened pencils
I won at a staff PD session
(why haven’t I used them?)

or the phone chargers,
wires twisting and coiling
over and around
five clear marbles
I hid here last year
to keep them away
from my toddler granddaughter

or the tag she tore off
my Princess Diana
Beanie Baby bear
(ripped away,
just like
the Princess)

or the flat little Ziploc
lying so unobtrusively
in the midst of it all
like an untold secret
carried within

—don’t know why I saved it,
this tiny snakeskin
pale as sand
fragile as a minute,
an exhaled breath

I found it
in the garage last spring
just a remnant
of a shy earth snake
that was once here
then gone
leaving only this papery bit
of itself behind

I remember putting it
in this baggie

I think I meant
to show it
to the granddaughters

but I forgot
just like I forgot
what brought me
to this old rolltop desk
that I’d given to their dad
when he was still a boy.

*******

Composed for Day 29 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Backward glance

/ Fran Haley / 14 Comments

Today I muse about the serendipitous nature of writing.

For example: In a writing community, the same idea or topic will mysteriously come to several people at one time, without their ever having discussed it. Like a blanket settling over people’s minds. Then there’s the peculiar corollary that, the more you write, the more you can think of to write…an exponential growth kind of thing. As long as you’re not completely exhausted, that is. Then there’s a shared writing encounter, an exchange, that suddenly awakens an experience or memory that’s long lain latent.

Case in point: On Day Two of the current daily challenge with the Two Writing Teachers community, I had a lot of fun sharing a story about spelling names backward. I never expected it to resonate like it did with others…this bit of wordplay is obviously a common rite of childhood (after all, my no-nonsense dad even admitted to using his name backwards as a child, to my extreme amusement). In the midst of it all, I remembered a book I loved as a child, in which the plot hinged on a backward name. The titular character was a Siamese cat, “The Piebald Princess,” formally styled as Princess Renekrad Riah Sretsevlys. I haven’t seen it in years, but I recalled being thoroughly enchanted by the story and stunned by the revelation at the end: Princess Renekrad Riah Sretsevlys was not, in fact, a real princess OR Siamese. She was a plain cat who wanted adventure… so she disguised herself with a little help from a bottle of Sylvester’s Hair Darkener, spelled the name backward, and took it for her new royal persona.

I hadn’t even thought to read her exotic name backwards. Magic!

Upon remembering this book, I so wanted to read it again. I wanted my granddaughters to have it. An online search revealed that it’s out of print now. I was able to find a copy on Etsy, however (“vintage,” alas—how am I this old??), so I ordered it.

The story is even better than I recall. Pure delight. And I’ve learned that the author based it on stories she made up about her dolls when she was a child.

The fragile, faded dust jacket of The Piebald Princess inspired today’s post; the illustration shows Princess Renekrad Riah Sretsevlys casting a backward glance at herself in the mirror.

A perfectly serendipitous segue, if you will, because…

The time has come, the Walrus said… for a confession.

I’ve been working backward.

With my post titles.

Alphabetically.

Here’s the thing… I got the idea, two years ago, that if I thought of a title word starting with each letter of the alphabet, well, that would cover 26 posts out of 31 for the Slice of Life Story Challenge. It worked so well for the first year that I did it again for a second.

This year I almost didn’t sign up for the Challenge at all because…in a word, life. Was I actually up for Slicing it? I hadn’t been writing much of late. At the last minute, I took the plunge. First thought: I need some kind of plan if I’m going to sustain this. Second thought: I don’t feel like going in ABC title order again. Done that, twice.

But… what if I worked backward? As soon as I thought of it, the first story idea crystallized.

Seemed a sign to me.

From that point on, most days I had an idea of a story to write. What word might work for the title, with the given letter of the day? Some days, I had no idea what to write; was there a word for a title to help me frame an idea? A synonym, maybe? As ideas or titles came to mind for the next posts, I jotted them down. I worked them into order. There was always a way.

Here’s how this year’s posts played out:

Zen
You, reversed (backwards names)
XIII and XIX (cicada broods)
Wedding music
Verily
Universe of possibility
To build or not to build
Serene senryu
Rosary beads
Q: What to write now?
Poetry possum
Otters
Nature’s divine voice
Moments
Life’s a cupcake
King no more
Jewels
Interpretation of Grandmothering by AI
Huh?
Grim tale
Franna’s house
Eagles
Dream-double
Chanticleer
‘Bad things are going to happen’ poem
Angels

This, of course, leaves me with five Slices of Life to go, so, I started going “backward” again, which is actually forward, in this case: Yesterday was Awakenings; today, Backward glance. Tomorrow will be a title with C, the next day a title with D, and on the last day, E.

The last day happens to be Sunday.

Easter.

Serendipity every which way.

Princess Renekrad Riah Sretsevlys, casting a backward glance in the mirror

*******

Composed for Day 28 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Awakenings

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

Today’s post is inspired by Kim Johnson, who’s organizing a community event for National Poetry Month. Her local arts council chose the theme of “Awakenings” and in her Slice of Life Story Challenge post of March 12th, Kim sent out a call for short poems of 4-6 lines. Featured poems will be displayed on canvases in windows around the town square throughout April.

Kim: Here’s to power of awakenings, poetry, and community! Much success to you, my friend, and all involved in this exciting event.

Now…how might I play some little variations on this theme, let’s say, with snippets of my life?

*******

awakening (plural awakenings)

noun

  1. the point of morning coffee (may require more than one cup)
  2. a soul-spark generated by infinite possibility
  3. a heart condition caused by beautiful language
  4. (plural) the celebration of poetry at a local literacy event

*******

Sisters Seeing

One winter’s night, when I was ten, I dreamed of an angel.
My little sister stood by me at the window, watching it pass.
Morning brought this revelation: she had dreamed of it, too.

*******

First Rhythms

Love of words was born in me
upon my grandmother’s lap
reading stories in rhyme
rocking chair keeping time
with the beating of her heart.

*******

Cicada Rhythms

High in the oaks against the bluest of skies
the rattling swells as its season dies.
A paradox, this buzzing call
from amid the leaves, soon to fall.
This song of my childhood, lingering still
in the last of the light, before the chill.
Full force, cicada sings—don’t you know?
—summer’s gone on the wings of a song long ago.

Yet it returns, when you rise from the ground
Awaking the child I was, with that sound.

******

Lullaby for My Granddaughter

Precious darling, while you’re sleeping
I’ll be here, safe watch a’keeping
This time is such a fleeting thing
When you awaken, love, let’s sing.

My precious Micah after I sang her to sleep

*******

Composed for Day 27 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

with thanks to Denise Krebs for inspiring the Dictionary Entry poem

Angels

/ Fran Haley / 21 Comments

There are times in life when a theme chases you, and you find you need to write about it.

Such is the case today.

Angels.

They keep reappearing.

There’s the neighborhood rooster I wrote about on Sunday, and the ancient Muslim belief that a rooster crows because it has seen an angel.

There’s the memoir Angela’s Ashes that I returned to for my St. Patrick’s Day post, wherein author Frank McCourt’s mother keeps having babies and his father says an angel brings them, specifically the Angel of the Seventh Step, where he claims to have found Frank’s newest baby brother. Young Frank starts looking for the angel. When he wakes in the night, he goes to check the seventh step: Sometimes I’m sure there’s a light there and if everyone’s asleep I sit on the step in case the angel might be bringing another baby or just coming for visit…I’m sure the angel is there and I tell him all the things you can’t tell your mother or father for fear of being hit on the head or told to go out and play.…

There’s my husband’s sermon series over the last months, in which he mentioned times of trial, temptation, suffering, and the appearance of ministering angels, with this repeated exhortation that I scribbled down on two different Sunday order-of-worship bulletins: Look for the angels.

There’s his sermon this past Sunday, which referenced the greedy soothsayer, Balaam, and his donkey which refused, three times, to not travel down the road where the increasingly irate Balaam was trying to direct it, because the donkey could see the angel of the Lord there with a drawn sword when Balaam could not; and haven’t we all experienced, in some way or other, animals seeing what we can’t? (Remember the rooster…).

There’s another book I pulled off my shelf this week, The Art of Comforting, in which author Val Walker tells of being diagnosed with premature ovarian failure; she will never have the child she’s longed for. Shortly afterward she’s laid off from her job in a massive downsizing. As her husband goes away on a business trip, she cries for the loss of the life she thought she’d been destined to live: “My angel books and angel music could no longer comfort me. I prayed to God to send me a real angel. I was ready for a bona fide spiritual visit from heaven.” To her shock, the doorbell rings…chiding herself for thinking it could really be an angel, she answers it to find a “small, sweaty man in a filthy T-shirt and muddy shoes. He must have been one of the laborers working on my neighbor’s lawn…” and with him is a golden retriever, staring at her, wagging its tail.

Turns out the man has come to ask, in broken English, if this is her dog (it’s not). He then asks for water for the animal; it’s a terribly hot day. Walker gives a bowl of water to the dog. She offers a glass to the man. The visitors leave together, and she reflects: Just ten minutes earlier, desperate enough to go begging to God, I had prayed for a brilliant, glowing angel to come to me…was this stranger my angel? I don’t know. But I do know that in witnessing his beautiful kindness toward that dog I was reassured that comforting still existed on earth…always remember, comfort is all around us. We are never alone.

I’m not sure the man was the angel, either.

I’m pretty sure the dog was.

Then there are experiences much closer to home, some of which I shared in yesterday’s post with my “Bad things are going to happen” poem.

There was my husband’s diagnosis of ocular melanoma…shortly after which, while driving and contemplating having his eye removed, he stopped at a traffic light and saw, he says, the brightest flash of white light before him. Nothing was there to cause such a flash. He’d never experienced anything like it before. Optical illusion? Maybe. Stress? Possibly. But he said he was instantly flooded with comfort and knew everything would be okay.

And it was.

Then there was his cardiac arrest on a Sunday afternoon, driving home from the gym. He lost control of his truck; it veered into coming traffic, then crossed back over and ran off the road into a grove of trees…without striking anything. The last thing he remembers, as all went dark and peaceful, are voices saying He’s in trouble. We have to get him off the road.

Angels?

You decide.

As for me, I realize the words were written on my heart long before I scribbled them in the Sunday bulletins. I know, whatever the days may bring, or how long the darkest night may seem, in times of my greatest need, I’ll heed my preacher’s advice:

Look for the angels.

They’re all around us.

“backlit Golden Retriever“. theilr. CC BY-SA 2.0.

*******

Composed for Day 26 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Works cited:

McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir. New York, Scribner, 1996. (Pages 102-107)
Walker, Val. The Art of Comforting: What to Say and Do for People in Distress. New York, Penguin, 2010. (Pages 241-244)

‘Bad things are going to happen’ poem

/ Fran Haley / 30 Comments

On the last day of the March Open Write at Ethical ELA, host Shelly Martin-Young invited participants to write a poem modeled after “Relax” by Ellen Bass. Shelley said: “Think about all of the things that are happening in your life right now, good or bad. Make a list and write your ‘relax’ poem. When my students write their Relax poems, I have them start with Ellen’s first line: Bad things are going to happen. So start there and just write. Maybe by the end of the poem, you will be able to relax, let it go, and taste the sweet fruit.”

So I took the first line, and wrote…

Carrying On

Bad things are going to happen.
Your husband will break the handle
off your favorite coffee mug
(the one with Shakespeare’s signature,
that you’ve had since your freshman year
of college). Your young son will lose
the basketball pendant that belonged
to his grandfather in the 1930s. 
It will never be found. Your car dashboard
will burst into flames midway through
a long trip in the mountains and you will discover 
there’s not enough Dr. Pepper 
in that bottle you’re holding 
to douse them. People will disappoint you
and confuse you with their chameleon loyalties
—“fickle,” your mother will tell you, 
while you are still a child.
And the time will come when you no longer
have a relationship with your mother.
You’ll learn, to your astonishment, that your
father is the family glue and everything will
fall apart when he dies. The baby finches
in the nest on your front door wreath
—so perfect, so wondrous—will also die
without warning. You’ll find all five
with their yellow beaks frozen open to the sky,
their tiny bodies quivering with maggots.
Your husband will be diagnosed with
the beginning of ocular melanoma.
He will sacrifice his left eye in order to stay alive. 
Then, one Sunday afternoon,
he’ll go into cardiac arrest
while driving home from the gym.
He’ll be resuscitated. He’ll endure two surgeries.
When he’s over all that, it will be time for 
his spinal fusion. He will depend on you
more and more…you’ll break your left foot twice
and still keep pace with the days as they unfold…
for the days become years 
and the years will bring you 
two little granddaughters.
This, this will be the richest time
of your entire existence,
as rich as the red on the breast of 
the reddest male finch you’ve ever seen,
singing so beautifully there on your porch
that your heart will be filled to bursting with the sound
of life, carrying on.  

*******

Composed for Day 25 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Chanticleer

/ Fran Haley / 14 Comments

He comes a-strolling with dignity and purpose, bobbing majestically, robed in royal red, as fiery as embers in the grate on a winter’s night. He’s huge, he’s beautiful, and he knows it, the neighborhood rooster leading his ladies on a foraging expedition though all the front yards.

Sometimes he brings three ladies. Today, it’s four.

He doesn’t partake of the ground-feast himself. He leads the way, strutting to and fro, keeping watch while the hens scratch and peck.

Naturalist Sy Montgomery writes in Birdology:

Most roosters are very solicitous of their hens. When he’s not patrolling for predators, he’s often searching for food his flock might enjoy. When he finds it, uttering his food call…he stands aside while his women enjoy the treat, and only after they’ve had their fill will he sample the snack. The Talmud praises the rooster, and its writers advise the Jews to learn from him courtesy toward their mates.

I watch from the kitchen window as the chickens work their way over to my yard. The rooster crows. Montgomery calls it “the soundtrack of rural life.” In my mind, it’s the quintessence of rustic. And something more. The rooster’s crow calls to something deep in the human spirit (long before and long after the Apostle Peter wept in contrition).

Montgomery, again:

In the sacred book, the Hadith, the prophet Muhammad tells us why roosters crow: they do so because they have seen an angel. The moment a cock crows, the holy man advises, is a good time to ask for God’s blessing.

I remember the story-name given to roosters in fables: Chanticleer. From Old French, meaning “clear song.”

I slip outside through the garage to see if I can record it.

The chickens are under the crape myrtle at the old dog’s grave, scritching about in the mulch, flinging it every which way. The rooster is immediately aware of my presence. He turns to face homeward, in case.

Here’s my recording…wait for it…

At the end of a required re-interview for a job I’ve had for years (another story in itself, involving all staff) I was asked if I had anything else to add. I said yes. “I’ve learned a lot by watching birds. There’s nothing random in their actions.”

I likely left the interviewers scratching their heads, but I held my position.

Chanticleer crows. God, please bless me, my family, the work of my hands, my heart. Give me strength.

In the words of Montgomery: At the end of my prayers…birds teach me how to listen.

*******

Composed for Day 24 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Dream-double

/ Fran Haley / 22 Comments

Have you ever seen yourself in a dream?

I have. Long ago.

I remembered it last Saturday during Ethical ELA’s Open Write when the host, James Coats, invited participants to write a poem that’s “ultimately a reflective piece – a moment to examine who we were, who we are, and who we might want to be.” He called this “Looking Back to Look Forward.”

Something in this language sparked the memory…as vivid as if it happened yesterday…

Me Seeing Me in a Dream

When I was nine
I dreamed
that I was watching myself
sitting at a desk
in the classroom

I could see myself
so clearly

writing something
on paper

then looking up
in contemplation

I knew there was some
urgent message
I needed to tell myself

but I couldn’t get
my attention

I couldn’t get me
to look my way

The me in my dream
sat completely unaware
that I stood before me,
invisible,
unable to break through
some forbidding
force field

I stood before me
as if I were
my own ghost

Five decades later
I remember this dream
and the despair
of being unable to
communicate with me

and I wonder:

What could that message
of such urgency even be
from child-me
to child-me?

Other than
dear me
pay attention
please save yourself
so much trouble

in life

keep learning
keep dreaming
keep writing

these will
navigate you through
all the unseen things
ahead

including
you.

“Reflection“. toddwendy .CC BY 2.0.

*******

Composed for Day 23 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Eagles

/ Fran Haley / 10 Comments

I grew up in the city, a child of sidewalks, stoplights, bridges, and clattering trains. I could walk to church, to the 7-Eleven for Slurpees or candy, to Woolco buy the latest hit song on a 45 RPM record, and to all three public schools I attended from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

The memories of nature from my neighborhood, other than the maple tree which dropped its leaves in the front yard every fall, are the gray roly-polies I played with on the concrete steps at the back door, the slugs I salted to watch them dissolve (sorry, slugs), ants, and eastern tent caterpillars with their beautiful rainbow patterning. I caught them put and them into recycled butter tubs with lids, to be disappointed when they turned into such plain moths. Oh, and the random mouse that got in the house to startle my mother, who screamed. And the ditch rat that got into my bedroom… another story for another day, that.

I know there were birds. There had to be birds.

I can’t remember them.

I longed to live in the country, with my grandparents. Even though the mosquitoes, yellow flies, and ticks might eat me alive, I could find tiny gray toads the size of my thumbnail. I would marvel at the dazzling colors of dragonflies, once I got over my terror of them. Hummingbirds zoomed past me for my grandmother’s flowers, never minding my presence, their emerald and ruby feathers gleaming like jewel-fire. Cicadas rattled the earth and my heart with their rhythms. There were deer, rabbits, snakes (alas!), and birds, always birds, chattering and singing incessantly in the dense woods…

The longing never left me, so when my husband and I settled in the countryside, I knew I was home. I rejoiced that our boys would grow up treasuring a closeness to nature…

So I thought.

The oldest always wanted to live in the city (is this always the way? Wishing for the exact opposite of what we have?).

He grew up. He went to the city.

He was miserable.

He came back…got married, became a father…

He texted me a photo recently, with tremendous excitement: Look what I just saw!

A barren field along a deserted country road…

Where stood two bald eagles.

His eyes sparkled when he saw me later: They were huge! So beautiful…

It is better than I ever dreamed, this life, here in the country.

Isn’t it, Son.

*******

Composed for Day 22 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers