During that summer, I also went to the admissions office at the University of Washington to learn how I might study with David Wagoner. What I learned was thrilling–as a credentialed public school teacher, I could enroll in the University as a non-matriculating student and take one class at a time if I wanted. Next, I found out that prospective students of David Wagoner’s had to submit samples of their writing for him to review.

I needed moral support for that venture. A friend and I strolled our babies in their umbrella strollers past the many trim coeds to Padelford Hall, where I dropped off my packet of beginnings, feeling shy and even guilty to be attempting a class that might label me a poet, a writer, not only a mom and a teacher. Who was I to seek such a role in life? I had no idea, but I knew I loved those evenings under the big tree on the lawn at the university looking at poems and talking about how to develop them. I wanted to learn to write them. I wanted to publish one.

It wasn’t long before I heard that David Wagoner had accepted me and I could enroll in his class. I had no idea what he saw in the attempts I’d made that summer, but I was going to meet with a class led by David Wagoner (whose poems I had begun reading) two times a week!

And that is where my writing life took what I considered a giant step. All fall I read as much poetry as I could, and I listened to everything everyone had to say about every poem by a class member that came up in workshop. I listened especially hard to David Wagoner’s words–be they gentle or harsh. I learned that my reading tastes didn’t match David Wagoner’s: he asked each student to take a turn starting off class by reading a poem they admired. I brought in a poem from Erica Jong’s book, Half-Lives, which he criticized. I read what he recommended and what I still liked, despite his dislike. I learned that the revision I did on a workshopped poem pleased him. I learned that it didn’t matter if the young rising star poets in the class didn’t particularly care about my response to their work since I had no publication track record. They were teaching me plenty and by comparing what they were saying with what David Wagoner was saying, I was learning at warp speed.

And I made a friend. The class was a mix of undergraduates and graduate students, newcomers to poetry writing and those who had studied intensively with other poets before entering David Wagoner’s class, because they wanted to be sure to impress him with their ability and publishing record. Paula Jones was one of David Wagoner’s protégés. He’d already published some of her work in the literary journal he edited, Poetry Northwest. He cared about what she said. And Paula Jones asked me if I wanted to spend a day with her doing writing! We would take one of the ferries from downtown Seattle to Bainbridge Island and back and write in our notebooks. We’d read what we wrote and talk about it.

I had never done this outside of class. She taught me a lot about how to respond to another’s writing directly but with kindness, with a real caring for what the poem could eventually accomplish if the poet wasn’t squelched by other’s pejorative statements. We talked about the ways of the class and the ways we might do things if we were in charge.

So now, there was one person in the class and then two, Nancy Reikow, a mom like me, who I could share my work with and my feelings about how grueling it could be sometimes in class. And I could read their poems and learn about the larger network in their writing lives–workshops they attended outside of the University, reading series they went to and participated in, information about the places they sent their work out to for publication, poets they admired and read when they were writing, and the literary journals they thought were worthwhile. I no longer felt like I knew nothing. I didn’t know a lot, but I realized I had found a way to learn more and more, a way to “catch up” with those who had been in the game longer than me.

****

For those of us who write or long to, our lives are not the same without commitment to writing and the writing life. We write to express and nurture our understanding of our lives, our intimacy with others and to honor our humanity–our sense that loving ourselves, our human condition, nature and the others in our world is important. The writing life you are building fosters all of this and brings not only more knowledge, but an increasing feeling of stability in this chosen vocation or avocation.

What do you have on hand for extending your writing life right now? As a member of Story Circle Network, you have already created a resource for yourself as a writer.

• Can you also enroll in a class at a nearby college or university, community or literary arts foundation, or online (Story Circle Network offers wonderful ones)?
• Can you join a writing group online through Story Circle Network or in your community or by emailing with others you know who write and may be scattered across communities?
• Can you read about local writers and read their work in local publications?
• Can you continue to attend readings regularly, alone or with new writing friends?
• Can you arrange writing days or café time or email exchanges with some of the writers you are meeting (you can divide the time between doing writing, sharing writing, and supporting one another with writing information)?

Once you dive in, keep track of days you feel like you are an outsider and days you learn something that allows you to feel more connected, more sure footed in your writing world. What makes the difference? Once you know what that is–learning about a body of work, an organization, what language writers use to articulate their responses to work-in-progress, jargon that goes along with particular genres, the names of publications others in your genre are reading, the history of groups of writers, something pleasing about your own writing– you can concentrate on learning what you need to learn without worrying or feeling badly about your position as a new-be. Keep a list of the things that have helped you. Write them down for someone else (sharing what you know is the best way of connecting to learn more from others).

All the ways you study and practice writing in whatever mixture of venues, you are following your path and further negotiating the lay of the land you want to explore.

Richard outside his historic shop building with "Matriculation" on the hand-crane he designed for moving boulders and large sculptures.

I’m up to my ears and out of my comfort zone. I’m working with Colorado Art Ranch to get our guest cottage and Richard’s shop ready for the Terraphilia Artist/Writer Residency program beginning later this year.

Working with Art Ranch isn’t outside my comfort zone; it’s the remodeling and renovation part of the “getting ready.” Design of built spaces was Richard’s thing. I paid bills, kept him semi-organized, chose colors and dreamed landscaping. I don’t have the “object manipulation gene” he and Molly share that allows them to see intuitively how physical objects and buildings work.

The bigger project–and scarier to me–is finishing the renovation of Richard’s historic brick shop building, built in 1902 as a millwork shop for a long-defunct lumber company. It had been essentially abandoned for several decades before we bought it in 1997.

Richard spent about ten years (in between building our house next door) getting its structure in good shape, but never finished. Still to come: installing a ceiling (did I mention the building is 1,700 square feet, and the ceiling is two stories high at the center beam of the timber frame?), some rewiring (ditto the above) and repairing the aging plumbing.

The main door to the shop, surrounded by some of the stuff collected by a sculptor who worked with found objects.

Before we can even start on the renovation (which will be done mostly by volunteers, and will likely use up my small hoard of shop-repair cash), there’s a LOT of cleaning and organizing to do. My love was a pack rat. He collected old industrial metal and gears for sculptures, saved scraps of wood to use for levers and fulcrums and chocks in moving boulders, and seemingly hoarded every piece of paper that came across his desk in the almost-three decades I knew him.

“Our” Molly and her sweetie Mark Allen tackled the six four-drawer filing cabinets last fall, hauling 65 pounds of paper to a shredder. That cleared two file cabinets. Then there’s his office, and the boxes and boxes of books. I’ve been going through shelves and drawers and cabinets, all coated with years of dust, sorting out what can be saved from what can be recycled and what is simply trash. That’s where the stories of the title come in.

Tucked into every pile and file, whether it’s outdated supply catalogs or receipts, are mementos he saved: love notes  I wrote, sketches for sculptures, jottings of favorite quotes, cards from Molly, and in one case, a whole folder of precise pen-and-ink botanical illustrations I sketched for my newspaper columns thirty years ago, and had completely forgotten. (I think he was saving them to frame… someday.)

An illustration of a mariposa lily I drew for a newspaper column some 30 years ago.

I lifted each sketch, shaking off the dust, and my hands remembered the feel of the old rapiograph ink pens with their interchangeable points that always got clogged. Feeling the paper, seeing the detailed shading, I recaptured a forgotten part of me. I wouldn’t say I had ever been an artist, but I used to draw plants. That’s a story about myself I didn’t remember.

The sorting-through is slow work. And hard on my tender heart. When I come to things like the shirt-pocked-sized notebook containing the sketch for a Craftsman-style pergola and bridge he planned to build in our front yard, I dust them off, read them, and then must wipe my tears and blow my nose before continuing on.

Cross-section sketch of a Craftsman-style pergola/bridge for our front yard

I miss my love–his brilliant mind, his soaring creativity, the inborn affection for this numinous Earth that showed in all his work, and most of all, his company. I will always miss him. And because he was a packrat, I have a growing stash of poignant–and dusty–treasures to remind me of stories I have yet to write about our journey through this life, together and separately.

Twenty years living in a little southern town proved interesting and fun, but now it was time to move on—give up the yellow and white bungalow with towering pines and friendly porch and get back to city living. We had spent the morning slicking up the house. We couldn’t ask our friend and house-sitter to put up with our personal mess, and there was always the chance we might want to take the plunge and sell it. Time for a break. We sat at our friend Holly’s bakery-café debating whether to share a piece of her wicked apple pie when two friends strolled in.

Time for us to go leave the front porch behind and go back to the city. But what a lovely reading spot.

“Can you believe it? We got these great books for a dollar apiece at the library.” Basil said as they pulled up chairs and started piling books on the table.

“I didn’t even know they sold books and they’ve got shelves and shelves of them.” Patrick, the English professor, patted one fondly, “I’ve almost bought this from Amazon a couple of times but it just isn’t in a teacher’s budget.”

Bob and I started laughing at the same moment. Yes, we could believe it! These came from the three carloads of books we’d hauled to the library two days earlier—483 in all. We shared the source of our mirth, and I regretted I hadn’t known so I could have given them straight to the guys. We finally decided that this way we’d all supported the library. That made us all winners. The two of them insisted on buying our pie.

It's hard to say good-bye.

This wasn’t the end. We still had more books to give. (ouch!) Politely, the library told us “thanks, but no thanks.” In a town of 10,000 the library is small and we’d stretched their gift capacity. Patrick eagerly accepted my fifteen-year collection of The Paris Review—I miss them still, and nearby Tallahassee Goodwill runs a bookstore (still does, I hope) —they were happy to have the rest. We decided to haul the ones (way too many) that we can’t live without toHouston.

Now, four years later and still in the rented house (we gave a resounding ‘yes’ to city living), I’ve got the problem—no problems—again. We’re smothering in books. The one-in one-out rule isn’t working. The house teems with books. We look like one of those English country houses described in novels where you have to move a stack of books before you can find a place to sit down. I don’t want to give up most of them, and when I finally make that brutal decision, then comes the question where do they go?

First, which ones go? Some are easy. The paperback I buy on a whim at Walgreen’s because it’s rainy, and I‘d rather read than watch TV.   Not a problem. I keep a pretty gift bag in my workroom. I toss in the book and that’s that until the sack is full. (Rule 1—no sifting back through the sack to reconsider. In the sack; out of the house.) It gets tricky when the bookcases—there is no room for more—start overflowing.  Even the ones that are double-stacked. Okay, I tell myself, two boxes before lunch. Some are easy.  Dorothy Sayers put it in a nutshell:

“Books are like lobster shells. We surround ourselves with them, then we grow out of them and leave them behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.”

      I took it to heart and began to ask myself, will I read it again; will anyone else in the family? Then I ask, and this is what tips me over many times, do I want this book to take up a place on the shelf, or do I want a new one? Many times, easy answer. Bingo.

Not always though. Little Women, I decided, could go. After all, my own daughter is almost Marmee’s age. But as I headed for the box, I realized that I couldn’t quite remember how the book ended. I scooted for the couch instead of the box. An hour or so later I was deep in the story. Carryout for dinner, for sure. I loved the story as much as when I was about thirteen and determined, as are so many girls, to grow up to be another Jo,  although scrawny thing that I was,  I probably looked more like Beth. This time around I did love the story, but I wasn’t involved with Jo. My identification had changed—all I could think of was Marmee. That poor girl (girl, to me, anyway) with all those rowdy teenagers and her husband off running after that war while she worked hard all day, barely keeping things afloat. It was the same book, but my-oh-my was it a different story.

Or take the case of Gargoyles. Now why did I have a picture book about these funny creatures? No telling. I looked inside for a last look and saw the inscription—suddenly, I was inFrance scampering from cathedral to cathedral on a gargoyle chase with John and Linda. This book was my next Christmas gift from Linda. No way. Back on the shelf.

Slowly, too slowly, the sack is filling up in the workroom I share with Ginger-the-Cat.

I’m getting better. Not good, but better. The boxes are slowly filling up. Now there’s a new problem. . .I’ll deal with it later, I hope with your help. Once I get these books boxed up and sealed (to keep me out of them), where do they go? The library? Goodwill? Second-hand bookstore? Suggestions please!

One last-minute thought: magazines. A dear friend gave me London Review of Books. The first one came today. I’m in bigger trouble than if she’d given me five pounds of chocolates. I read it during lunch. The articles are fascinating, but—the ads for books! Look! Harvard University Press has just released Patricia Meyer Spacks memoir, On Rereading. And here I was just writing about that. If I find three more books for the sack, maybe I’ll just go to Amazon or see if Brazos Bookstore can order it for me.

Date line: Evergreen Heights, the Big Brown House, January 30^th and 31st 2012

Photo: Pop. Erwin A. Thompson. (photo by Janet Grace Riehl)

The story so far:  I’m part of a three-person family care team that works to keep my father at home with dignity and independence. Pop lives in the house where he grew up, raised his children, nursed his wife for five years before her death, and now plays out the end game of his life. We each have our jobs. My brother focuses on business. I do my younger daughter thing. My niece lives next door to the Big Brown House and tracks all things medical. Pop’s doctor is only a phone call or a text away. He is prone to Heart Thingies—more accurately known as “atrial fibrillations” or “A-fibs” for short.  “Thus, the background,” as my father would say.

Monday, January 30th

The phone rings. I throw off my warm covers and lunge to answer it. Who on earth calls at this time in the morning?  “Have his vitals changed?” I recognize the voices of my father’s doctor and then my niece Diane as they consult over the phone. I rush downstairs to my father’s bedroom. My niece turns her head from the phone. “Give me five minutes.” I retreat upstairs, splash my face with cold water, and pull on some clothes before my niece arrives with the update.

“He’s been in A-fib since 2 a.m. He called us at 5. His vitals are low. Dr. Miller wanted to talk to him directly, so she called the house. It’s a hard way for you to wake up.”

I trot downstairs.  Pop looks up from his bed. “I’m still here. We’ll make it.”

“That’s what we like to hear.” I touch my forehead to his and inhale deeply. The smell comforts me.

I text my brother. “Daddy in A-fib since 2. Now back to sleep. Everyone is doing their part. I slept until Dr. Miller called the home phone to talk to daddy.”

“Call me when you can.” I do. He comes down from the Upper Brown Cottage.

Thus begins a day of watching and waiting. The A-fib continues, and continues, and continues. Afternoon finds Pop sacked out in his chair. My niece—an expert on the mortgage lending crisis—hunches over her laptop. Her makeshift desk is his desk. Our long dining room table is piled high with his projects: historical clippings, photos in binders awaiting commentary, a novel-in-progress, and whittled critters in all stages of completion.

I poke my head in from the kitchen where I’m making ginger cookies. “How’s it going?”

“His pulse is still rapid and erratic.”

Since his big heart thingy on New Year’s Eve Day, the A-fibs just keep a comin’. For the past four years they’ve usually lasted 6 to 9 hours, now they go on and on. Amazingly he snaps back, but each time his heart gets weaker.

“I need to go on some errands, but I can sit with him when I get back,” I say.

When I do, Pop’s pulse is slower and more regular. He eats a bit and then takes his medicine. It’s not quite over, but the crisis has passed. My niece goes home.

Tuesday, January 31^st

“How are you?”

“Not too good. I can’t get a reading on my blood pressure or my pulse.” He keeps a blood pressure rig by his bed and records the readings every half hour. If he can’t get a reading, then he’s definitely in A-fib.

I cradle his wrist to feel for his pulse.  My nursing skills are pretty limited. I can fluff a pillow and fetch a meal, but I’m not too good at this pulse-taking. Even I, though, can feel his heart’s wild beats.

“We’d better call Diane.”

She’s good at this stuff. When she comes, she grabs our clock with the second hand and counts as well as she can with a heart that’s racing to the finish line. Not good. She steps out to contact Dr. Miller, and then comes back to take his temperature. It’s 92 degrees. Finally we get a blood pressure reading. Not too good, as Pop said. Low temperature. Low blood pressure. Back to Dr. Miller.

“His systems are shutting down. He may have 24 hours. Keep him as comfortable as possible.”

We keep a little pill handy that lowers the heart rate, but, sadly, it also lowers the blood pressure. That’s the tight rope we walk in calibrating the medication. Should he take it?

“Yes,” says Dr. Miller.

Later I visit Pop as he lies in bed. “I’m cold.” He’s shaking under the covers, but in no pain. “This isn’t moving in a good direction,” he says. “It’s not following the usual cycle. This thing is just going on and on. We’re in a new phase.”  That’s the curse of a clear mind. He knows. But, he doesn’t know all. We’re not about to march in to tell him he has 24 hours to live, right?

These prognostications of his imminent demise have been in play for the last five years. It’s not just the doctor thinking out loud. It’s us. It’s him. “Janet, I don’t think I’ll make it to spring,” he told me the fall of 2007. But he did. And time and time again he’s made it beyond his due date. As Mark Twain said, “Reports of death have been greatly exaggerated.” But this time? It seems ever more real that the end could be in sight.

There’s no hospice here. No professional caregivers. Not a blink of a thought about trekking to the hospital. Just us. Just Daddy. Just whatever is going to happen. But, if he were to die today, it would be a dream death. The family members who live on top of our hill are all here. We’re on our best behavior. I’m strong and steady. Daddy is charming. It’s a day of tender and funny moments. A day of reconciliation.

While my niece and I love each other, it’s not an easy relationship. We’re not easy people. None of us in the family are, really. But, after she and I discuss how this all might go down, she starts toward the door to head out for a walk. Her nerves are stretched tight. She’s on the medical front line. Then, she turns.

“I want you to know that I see you reaching out to me. Time and again, even when I rebuff you. Even when it doesn’t connect with me. It’s like a marriage vow. You don’t give up. You’re constant in your effort. I appreciate that.”

Constancy isn’t my strong point, though god knows I try. I’ve taken it as my watchword for the year. My hand flies to my heart in surprised fullness. To be seen—even when my wish to make it work falls on its face. I tear up a little.

“Thank you. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.” We hug lightly and she slips out the door.

Even though we don’t tell my father directly that we fear his time is nigh, the steady stream of visitors throughout the day must give him a clue. My brother and his wife, my niece and her husband, their girls, and me.

“My, I have a lot of people coming to see me today,” he jokes.

And, I’m around to greet them. Daddy likes it when I’m a good hostess. Diane’s husband drops by on his way to a job.

“Is he awake?”

“No, but that’s not a big deal.” He’s been sleeping lightly most of the day. I go in first.

“Daddy, wake up,” I whisper. “You’ve got a visitor.” Then, back to the kitchen where I’m cooking bacon in the oven.

My niece comes back to work on her laptop. In the afternoon my niece’s children come home one by one from school. Her youngest shows up first; she sets up shop across from her mother. Even math homework must go on.

“Would you like a snack?” She looks askance at her mother who nods “yes.” We peer into the refrigerator reviewing her choices.

“Would you like something sweet or something nutritious?”

“What about both?”

We settle on lemon pudding, and she goes back to work on her math. She’s wearing a blue fleece jacket. When she goes to see Daddy, he says “Oh, it’s my little blue bird come to greet me.”

Later my older great niece comes by on her way home. She sets down her book bag, and goes in to greet him.

“I love you, Papa.”

“I’m glad you do. That’ll help me get through it. Have you watered your farm today?”

Her farm is several flats of different kinds of grain that look like grass. It’s her experiment for her science project. She’s fascinated by erosion. This is one of her days to water it; she scoots down to the basement.

When she comes up, I walk with her to the porch. Much to my surprise she comes to hug me. I hold her for a long time while she cries. “We’re gonna make it through,” I tell her, echoing the words I’ve heard my father say so many times.

Then I rejoin my niece and her daughter. Diane and I speak softly about Pop’s condition. It’s a bit hard for my great niece to concentrate on her homework. She looks up, concern shadowing her young face.

“Would you like a hug?” her mother asks. And she comes for a cuddle.

I draw a straight chair close by. “Come on over here. And, none of those wimpy hugs.” I draw her to my lap where she puts her head on my shoulder. We rock.

My brother and his wife come to visit throughout the day. We eat supper together. I’ve made a seafood gumbo that goes down pretty good. Pop’s better now, and asks for his favorite supper: bacon with little tomatoes.

He’s pulled out once again. How, I don’t know. None of us do. “Who knows but God?” as the lorry slogans in Ghana proclaim.

On a Masterpiece Theater program I first heard the term “end game.”  Though “end game” comes from chess, in that context “end game” referred to the end of a lineage—the end of a way of life for the landed gentry. It works here, too. Pop is the family patriarch. When he goes, a generation passes and with it a way of life. He’s trained us up well, and we carry his line, each in our own way.  But, there’ll never be another him, that’s for damn sure.

Only a few pieces are left on the chess board. The king stands alone facing the dark knights of old age and death.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_____________________

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog. Learn more about our audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music.” Become a Riehlife villager.

It goes back to the holidays when my visiting daughter suggested she help me with my resolutions. I needed help and jumped at the chance. Of course, me being me, several of the resolutions involved books and reading.

“I want to read more.”

Katy looked amazed. “You already read more than anyone I know.”

“I don’t care. I want to read more.” She shrugged and wrote it down.

“And,” I went on,” I want to go to an independent bookstore at least once a month. I’m so lucky to have three nearby.” She wrote it down.

She also wrote down my next resolution that I simply had to stop buying so many books. I must discipline myself to buy only what I was going to read. I have stacks of books I haven’t read; I’ll go through them. No more buying on speculation. Now, usually pacific Katy became a bit edgy. She pointed out that I had just resolved to visit bookstores. Was there a smidgen of conflict there?

What do you think?

Resolution One--read more

Shift to New Year’s Day. Facebook informed me that Brazos Bookstore was open all afternoon. Not far away, it’s one of the three. Abandoning the football-filled living room, I headed out. When I got to Brazos, I was the only customer. I had a good chat with the manager. I congratulated him on introducing new evening hours and promised to come back some evening. Then I browsed through the books and magazines and especially the blank journals. I have a big thing about blank journals. It seemed like a shame to leave empty-handed and so I grabbed a copy of Salvage the Bones. I love owning National Book Award winners. I knew I’d given it to my daughter-in-law for Christmas, and she’d promised to lend it to me. Still. . .

Resolution 2--Visit an independent bookstore. I was at Brazos on January 1, 2012

Just think. The first day of the year and I’d met a resolution. Visit an independent book store! Good girl!

I was back on Thursday night; after all, I’d promised. Plus, I’d been thinking about those journals. One of the elegant Moleskines was a book journal. What a great idea. I could track what I read –and what I buy. The manager welcomed me. While he was ringing up the journal he told me

Paradise. Inside the Brazos Bookstore.

about the store book club. Gosh! December’s selection The Worst Hard Time looked fascinating. After all, my current writing project is about Texas and the New Deal and this book is about Dust Bowl survivors, and it won a National Book Award. It was the third entry in my new journal.

So the month has gone. I’ve tried. I can’t say that I’ve been good. I read the review in the New York Times of Death Comes to Pemberly, P.D. James extension of Pride and Prejudice. The order was in at Amazon before I realized it. Then I thought I’d better revisit the original book, so I got it for my iPhone, but it was free, or almost.  I enrolled in a poetry class and realized I couldn’t get along without Billy Collin’s new book. But I’m trying.

I’m deleting my e-mails from Amazon. I open the journal to the wish list section when I read book reviews—latest entry The Flight of Gemma Hardy, an extension of Jane Eyre. No buying until I’ve finished Pemberly. Did you hear me, Self?

Starting the wish list.

Last Friday a friend gave a party for the launching of a mutual friend’s book. What’s a friend to do? So many friends bought Robert Leleux’s new book that Brazos ran out before I could buy one. I might have taken that as my good luck, but as I said, “What’s a friend to do?” You can read my review of Robert’s excellent memoir of his and his grandmother’s journey through Alzheimer’s, The Living End: A Memoir of Forgetting and Forgiving, at http://amzn.to/zFgglD .

Now there’s one more resolution that’s giving me a problem: I must follow the “one in—one out” rule. Come on! More about that another time.