Flying Home

Last Labor Day, we flew back from a quick visit to Marilyn's sister in Virginia.  As we took off from Chicago, where we changed planes, and headed home to Champaign, I took these photos. 

When I moved to east central Illinois sixteen years ago, I was struck by the vastness.  Seeing the sun rise over cornfields from the window of my study startled me and left me lonely.  I was still new to the Midwest and felt exposed in the openness; I missed the embrace of the Pennsylvania valley I had left behind.  

Now, I look forward to the big sky and the view of the horizon.  This flatland is home.

When Someone Dies Young

                       

                        Today I thought about how everyone I know

                        is sad, how amazing that the forests and deserts

                        and plains can hold us as we get up and walk

                        from one season to the next.

  --From the poem “Sadness in Spring” by RobinBecker

Yesterday, a thirty-six-year-old woman who loved life and loved her young son even more died from cancer.  And I thought once again how final death is.  We can’t rewind to before, no matter how much we might want to. 

And we usually want to.  We want to ask questions.  We want to hear a familiar voice.  We want to show our love.  Did they know, we wonder, that we loved them?  Did we tell them often enough?  Those questions are clichéd--because they are so commonly asked. 

The young woman who died, Jennifer Arnold Smith, was a colleague of mine before her illness changed her life.  Jen knew for years that her death was nearer than it should have been. She fought it, looked for treatments, but she knew it was likely she would die soon.  So she lived.  In the time she had, she really, really lived.  She called it “living legendary.”  She wrote and self-published two books.  She told her story.  She supported others with cancer.  She went on trips and talk shows.  A year ago, she took her son to school on his first day of kindergarten; she had wanted to see that day, and she made the most of it when it came.  A week before she died, she gave her son an early birthday present, a motorized scooter that made his eyes open wide.

When my brother-in-law Mo died by suicide this past summer, I thought of Jen, fighting to live.  Jen wanted more time, more life.  Mo was done.   He could not tolerate life anymore.  I wished they could have traded.  I wished he could have given her the years he had left, and she could have given him a way to go.  If only it could work like that. 

I miss them both, Jen's lively spirit, Mo's sense of humor, both their gorgeous smiles.  And I have no choice but to say goodbye to them both. 

Kay Ryan, in her poem “Things Shouldn’t be so Hard,” writes,

“And when life stops,

a certain space—

however small—

should be left scarred

by the grand and

damaging parade.”

Mo and Jen leave their marks on us and on our world.  And we feel them.

Busy Bees on the Prairie

We walked in the prairie on Sunday afternoon and met these bees in the midst of the thistle and goldenrod. 

Baking on a Saturday

After a sleepless Friday night worrying about how I would juggle writing a conference paper with prepping and grading for my composition and poetry classes, I knew what I had to do on Saturday. 

I pulled out the old, steel mixing bowl and my favorite wooden spoon. I measured flour and whisked egg whites and rinsed raspberries. Soon my fingers smelled of lemon zest, and the kitchen of vanilla and warmth. 

Later, my shoulders relaxed in the September sunshine as Marilyn and I bit into muffins and listened to the ruckus of the birds in the trees. 

When I came in to wash the bowls and measuring cups, I knew I'd sleep well that night. 

Last Weekend in Three Photos

On Friday evening, entering the mall to run errands, I noticed this sign.   I immediately read it as, "One world separates," and thought, sarcastically, "Partition--at a discount!"  I have been transcribing interviews with family members who experienced the 1947 Partition of India, so the Partition has been on my mind a lot.

Crossing the street in Chicago on Saturday afternoon to attend a performance of The Book of Mormon, I looked up and saw this huge sign (a 2011 piece by Kay Rosen).  After watching the musical about missionaries in Uganda, I thought again about the idea of "doing good" for others.  What do we intend?  And what actually happens?

On Sunday morning, I read the paper on the deck, a favorite weekend ritual.  When I got up to go in, I looked down at the table and saw this. 

Looking up

I have been working on the patio of the neighborhood coffee shop, sitting in the sun to stay warm on this unusually cool August day. Just now, getting ready to pack my books and head to campus for a meeting, I happened to tilt my head back and look up. This is the sight I had nearly missed.

Grounding

           The landscape changing before my eyes—that is what I had hoped to see this summer on our twelve-day road trip through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, ending at the Grand Canyon.  On the way back, we were considering stops in Colorado and Kansas.  Thirty-six hours before we were to leave, our clothes were packed—unusually early—and most of our hotel reservations were made.  Then the phone rang, and the landscape of our summer and of our lives changed.  Marilyn’s brother Mo was missing.  Twelve days later, we found out that he had died by suicide in the woods not far from his home. 

            I know I have written about this before.  Those twelve days and the news we received at the end of them were so strange, so unexpected, so devastating that I expect I will write about them again and again, if only to try to make them more real. 

            Even as we cope with Mo’s death, we are figuring out how to ground ourselves in our lives, how to go on. 

            All through June, we made hour-and-a-half-long trips back and forth across the flatland on Route 72 to meet with detectives, to search for Mo, to plan the funeral, and then to attend the funeral.  The landscape did not change, but the skies did.   

            At the end of June, we drove west on 72 one more time, this time to celebrate Marilyn’s aunt Dorothy’s 90^th birthday; the invitation had come before Mo had ever gone missing.  We weren’t sure how we would do at a birthday celebration.  But seeing cousins and siblings again sounded comforting.  On the way there, we drove through a rainstorm—and then drove out of it, as is so common here in Central Illinois.  As I looked at the sky, ominously grey in the east and showing blue in the west, I realized I was once again seeking a metaphor for our grief. 

            The flatland grounds me. 

So does our newly remodeled kitchen.  Recently, I labeled jars and organized spices on the shelves of the narrow cabinet to the left of the stove.  I was proud of myself for tossing out spices that were old, for letting go.  And I found satisfaction in organizing what was left so that it would be easy to use.  I did all this on our new, bright white countertop. 

            This week, our nephews, ten-year-old twins, are visiting us.  This visit was also planned before Mo’s disappearance.  The countertop is now a place to experiment with the slime the twins bought at the dollar store last summer, when they were also here for Aunty Camp.  Boxes of sparklers and the twins’ novels and math exercises cover the kitchen table.  Occasionally, the boys break into the theme song for Gilligan’s Island, the 1960s TV show their “Aunty Mellon” introduced them to and which they now love.  Cutting up a peach for Sanjay and combing Sameer’s hair after his shower ground me.  I hear Marilyn giggling with them and am grateful for this reminder that life goes on, that we will all go on. 

 

The twins read every night.  They sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed.

The boys each have a cow they chose at the bookstore at Cedar Crest College, where they met me when I went out east for my 25th reunion.  The cows traveled to the Midwest with them and have had many adventures.  In a rare, quiet moment, Spotty here was reading A Midsummer Night's Dream.  The children's capacity for play and delight has been a comfort to Marilyn and me.