Finding a Path

September 12, 2012


Yikes! I haven't written anything in weeks, but since I doubt anyone reads these, I'm not feeling too bad about it. It is more the discipline of writing that I need. I always say I want to write, but I tend to put other things ahead of my writing. This morning, for example, I started the laundry, fed the animals, picked up the living room, made breakfast, made a phone call/ appointment, then checked FaceBook before I started to write. Why didn't I start to write sooner? Why do I always think that writing is not "real work" and therefore should come as an after-thought?

According to Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, it is a result of the way that we were raised. I started writing stories, poems, and plays when I was around 9. I wrote my first "novel"--a science fiction debut--in sixth grade. But while my parents and teachers always thought my writing was wonderful, no one really suggested to me that it could be a career. Someone would read what I had written and say, "Oh, you should teach!" And so I decided to become a teacher. I do not blame my parents or my own teachers in the least. Writing is a risky business. It demands time, patience, openness, honesty, and persistence. It is a lonely existence and often comes with much criticism and few rewards. Teaching, on the other hand, offers a stable career and a predictable paycheck.

Except that my own experiences as a teacher--much as I love it--has not been the predictable paycheck. In the 1980's, teachers were in short supply and in great demand, but when I graduated in 1995, the market was glutted with teachers and jobs were scarce. Government funding has continued to impact the educational system in our country, so that many teachers each year are laid off or take early retirement. For every teaching position, there are hundreds of applicants. My first year as a teacher was in the world of the substitute, a journey through fire that I happily only had to endure for one year. My first full time position was at The Christian Academy in Brookhaven where I made 19,000. Okay, not exactly a living wage, but Ron was working at the time and we managed. I left TCA in 1999 following Ron's breakdown, because I knew it would be up to me to support our family while he worked through his illnesses. I took an offer from Westtown that almost doubled my salary; I hoped that my position as the main financial support of the family would be temporary, but Ron's car accident in March of 2000 dashed those hopes to the ground. It was all me, just me.

Westtown did provide stability and medical insurance and most of a graduate degree, but did not challenge me in any way. I felt stagnate there, my talents as a reading specialist used to proctor study halls. If it had not been for the lost income and the lack of faith in how we would survive, leaving Westtown in 2009 as part of a cut-back would have been a relief. Three years later, it is a relief. I spent two years finishing up my doctorate degree and adjuncting at three colleges. The income was horrible, but we scraped along with help from my father.

Last August, I took the position as professional development mentor with Catapult. I am making less than I did at Westtown, so I still teach at Springfield College and provide the academic support for students. We get by; we do a little better than just get by and we can afford a vacation now and then. Still, the myth of a steady income and a solid future as a teacher was something from my parents' time, just as Dad was with the same company for thirty years. These things don't happen anymore.

So, that's why I became a teacher instead of a writer. And why am I not a writer now? Because habits are hard to change. This summer, I have tried to write in my companion journal to The Writer's Way in the morning before I got out of bed; for the most part, it worked, even though I had to ignore the stares of three animals who did not understand why their breakfast was being delayed! But now that I am back to my hectic schedule, it just will not work. What to do?

Last night, I watched part of Julie& Julia, a lovely movie that parallels the lives of two women, one the renowned cook Julia Child played by Meryl Streep with padding and Julie Powell played by Amy Adams, a young woman determined to cook her way through Child's first cook book in an attempt to "find herself." At the end of the movie Julie's efforts at both blogging and cooking earn her a book contract and a career as a writer.

And I could not help but wonder, "Why couldn't I do that? Why couldn't I blog every day for a whole year about whatever was going on in my journey towards writing and find a book contract at the end and a job that let me stay home and write my pajamas? Okay, I am a good deal older than Julie--her bio says she was born in 1973, the year I graduated high school--but I am every bit as good a writer. Maybe better, if you consider the fact that I have never, at least in my writing, felt that profanity was needed to express my feelings. The English language is full of wonderfully descriptive words that are not four-letters long and if a reader doesn't know what the occasional word means, perhaps vocabulary will be expanded.

The internet is full of blogs, of course. It is quite possible--probably true--that no one will follow mine. Not even my mother, who died in 2002, or my father who knows how to use a computer but wouldn't know a blog from an e-mail. Perhaps I can get my best friend Chris to follow it. She's pretty loyal. The thing is, though, the hook. Julie Powell used the idea of Julia Child's cookbook to interest people in following her. what have I got?

I have a chronically ill husband. I am the Well Spouse, a term I only recently learned and one I think will become a part of Mama's Secret Letters if I ever get around to working on it. And having an ill husband, one who is not "the saint" that Julie Powell describes--one must wonder why she cheated on him after her first book was published if he was all she said he was, unless she was more of a whiner than the movie really portrayed--complicates life in ways that those with a wholly--or even partially--functioning spouse cannot imagine. That, of course, requires honesty.

But God has planted the idea in me, the need to come clean, tell the truth, air the laundry, open the door, spill the beans. Pastor Jim Carroll's sermon several weeks ago has given me the title for this work: Life:Altered. It is a topic I am set to speak about on October 14 at Memorial Presbyterian Church.

Can I keep it up? Well, I managed to finish a dissertation while working three jobs. This is probably harder. But, I begin.

I bought this skirt for $3 at a thrift shop, then needed to ask my facebook friends what to wear with it! Today, I am rocking it with red, but the turquoise shirt looked great, too. Maybe for school on Wed. I'll pair the skirt with the turquoise shirt and some fab earrings.  You can look fabulous on a shoestring!

Making progress on another prayer shawl, this one for a friend of my daughter.

8/8/12
This is a story about acceptance, how a young boy needs to learn to accept both his father's mental illness and his own learning disabilities.

An excerpt from "Dad...Again"

 

I never liked going there. Mom went almost every day after work, except for the nights she attended graduate school. Granda went with her on Saturdays, carrying one of the laundry bags of clean clothes she’d ironed and folded the night before. But on Sundays, right after church, Mom and Annie and I all went together. On Saturday nights, I’d try to think up a good excuse for not going: too much homework, a headache, a stomachache. Even though the stomachache  was generally real by the time Sunday morning rolled around, none of my excuses ever worked. My mom is what she calls a “used mother.” I’m the youngest of three and I’ve never been able to get away with a lot. Mom says my brother and sister did it all before me and that there’s really nothing new I could try. Most of the time, I just don’t try. But in the case of the dreaded Sunday visits, I kept inventing new excuses.

            “You’re going,” Mom would say in her that’s-the-end-of-that voice. She used it a lot lately, setting her mouth into a thin line that made her look older and sterner. I wondered if that was the face she showed to her high school English students. When Mom smiled, little dimples popped up on the sides of her mouth, but she hardly ever smiled anymore. Mostly, she just looked sad and tired.

            Annie would muss up my hair, as if I was still six years old, and tickle me under the arm. “Come on, kid,” she’d say, “it won’t be so bad.”

            But it always was.

            We never talked much on the way up, although Mom would start the drive real cheerful-like, still wearing her Sunday dress and her church face, the one she showed to the members of our congregation. Whenever anyone would say to her, before or after the morning service, “And how are things, Minnie?” she would nod and say, “God will take care of it.” Then whoever it was who had asked—Pastor Wade or one of the deacons or a church lady—would pat Mom on the arm and say, “God bless you, Minnie.”

            People said that to us a lot, especially in the first few weeks. “God bless you, Minnie.” “God bless you, Annie.” “God bless you, Jake.” And once in a while, if he was home, “God bless you, Brian.” After a while, though, people didn’t say it so much. Annie said it wasn’t that they’d forgotten exactly, just that life continued to move along. But we—Annie and Mom and I—still had to keep going, Sunday after Sunday, even if our congregation has stopped blessing us. Mom would make a right turn out of the parking lot and, if she’d gotten paid that week, we would stop for hamburgers along the way. I would each mine as slowly as I could, swirling each French fry into ketchup three times, chewing each bite of hamburger carefully. I like to drink Cokes most of the time, but on Sundays I would order vanilla milkshakes, extra thick, and wait it until the ice cream had melted enough to such it through a straw.

            “Hurry up, Jake,” Mom would say.

            “Not done yet,” I would mumble. She and Annie always finished ahead of me, but Mom didn’t eat much these days. Mostly she just fiddled with a salad, pushing the lettuce and the tomatoes around with a plastic fork and spearing an occasional cucumber. Mom would sign and look at her watch and go to the ladies’ room.

            “She’s going to catch on, you know,” Annie said one Sunday. “You know you have to go. It’s not like she wants to go either.”

            “Brian doesn’t have to go.”

            Annie bit her lip. “Brian doesn’t live with us. Besides, he goes when he can.”

            “Not every Sunday,” I complained. “He’s been there twice. Only twice! And we’ve been there a hundred times.”

            “Only seven,” Annie whispered. “It’s only been seven weeks.”

            I stopped and stared at her. It seemed longer. Much longer.

            “It could be worse,” Annie said.

            “Worse? How could it be worse?”

            She grinned at me. “It could be one of the Sundays that mom packed our lunch and we had to eat soggy PB&J’s and drink juice boxes in the car.”

            “Gross,” I said. “I hate when she does that.”

            Annie nodded. “I know. Me, too. But, Jakie, she’s doing the best she can. She never…expected any of this, you know. And she’s trying to do the right thing. Take dare of everybody the best she can.”

            “I know,” I mumbled, looking down at my milkshake. I felt pretty selfish all of a sudden, acting like a spoiled little kid when I was twelve years old and knew better. “I wish Brian was here,” I said. My big brother had a way of making things seem okay. Annie leaned over the table and punched me in the arm. It’s not that I don’t love Annie. I mean, she IS my sister. But sometimes a guy needs another guy. Annie still had Mom. But who did I have?

            I gulped down the rest of my milkshake, giving myself a brain freeze, and cleaned up my wrappers. By the time Mom came out of the restroom I was ready to go. She sort of smiled when she saw Annie and me standing by the door and I was glad I’d made an effort. “All set?” she asked brightly.

            “I guess,” I said. I tried to smile myself, but my lip got kind of caught between my two front teeth. I probably looked like a Halloween Jack-O-Lantern.

            “Onward and upward then,” said Mom and we headed out the door.

            Before we made our first Sunday drive, Annie logged onto MapQuest on our computer and showed me how far away it was: less than forty miles. My grandparents—Mom’s parents, not the Granda that goes with her on Saturdays—live one hundred miles away at the beach, but the drive to their house always goes by quickly. Maybe it was the constantly changing scenery or knowing I’d soon be paddling in the ocean that made the drive go quickly. The scenery on our Sunday drives, though, never changed. Highway after highway, then more highways with bridges to cross and rivers flowing under them. Rows of run-down houses with overgrown front yards and carcasses of old cars lined the highways. At first, I thought it was sort of interesting to count how many abandoned cars there were along the drive that still had their tires, then see how many more had been stripped the next week. But I stopped counting after a couple of weeks. It just seemed too sad, all those cars that were no longer running and going nowhere. They just sat there, doing nothing but rusting.

            Mom usually kept up what Annie called her “cheerful chatter” on the drive up. “Annie, don’t forget to mention the ‘A’ you got on the history exam. And Jake, make sure you talk about the game point you scored on Friday.”

            “No big deal,” I said and sank into my seat as far as I could. Mom knew I never talked much while we were there. It wasn’t the way I planned it. All week long, I’d think of stuff to talk about and try to plant ideas into my brain, but on Sunday all the clever words flew out of my head. It was as if I hadn’t gone to school for five days and spent Saturday mornings at baseball practice or messing around with Jay or Jon. The minute we drove through the gates that guarded the long driveway, the real world disappeared and plunked us down into another, sadder universe, where talking didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

            The first time we’d made the trip, it hadn’t seemed so bad. I’d been nervous but tried not to show it. After all, I was the man of the house. That’s what Granda had called me the night Dad left. “You’re the man of the house now, Jake,” he’d said. “You need to take care of your mom and your sister.” I was trying as hard as I would, making sure all the doors and windows were locked every night and the trash put out on Mondays and Thursdays without Mom having to remind me. I tried not to act like a dumb, scared kid.

            It was two whole weeks before Annie and I were allowed to visit, time for a lot of stupid stuff to build up in my mind. Mom had already been there with Granda and she told us about the duck pond with the benches around it and the cafeteria that sold ice cream bars and the game room with Ping Pong and chess and Scrabble. So the first time we went up, I brought Stratego with me because Dad had taught me how to play. Mom had looked a little doubtful when I arrived at the car with it tucked under my arm.

            “Oh, Jake, I don’t know…” she’d said, then stopped. She bit her lip and tears came into her eyes. “Well, bring it anyway, “she’d said. “Maybe.” She talked during the hour it took us to make the trip wile I sat in the front passenger seat, holding the game on my lap. Annie had let me have the front seat when I called “shot gun” without a fight. Mom went on and on about the winding paths and the paintings on the walls and the art classes. I knew what she was doing. She was trying to prepare me. It’s what she always does when I have to do something new. She’s done it since I was really young and we found out that I learn, well, differently from other people. No biggie. It just takes me longer sometimes to figure things out and stuff like history is hard unless someone reads it to me. So Mom kept on talking and somehow she made the place we were driving to sound like a summer camp for grownups. I’d been to summer camp last year, Bible camp actually, so I was expecting something familiar.

            Mom had told us to be on the lookout for the brick wall; it would mean we were almost there. When it appeared to the right, it was higher than I thought it would be and topped with metal spikes. We had to stop at a locked gate and Mom showed a yellow card to the guard who opened the gate with an electric button and said, “Have a good afternoon!” Then we drove down a winding lane and past the duck pond. I looked for tents and campfires; I saw a few people walking about or sitting on benches. Some wore white uniforms, but none looked like they were having fun.

            Then we pulled into the parking lot behind a big stone building with columns on the front. It had a sign that read, “Turk Hall.” We parked the car and walked up the steps into a long, cool hallways tiled with black and white squares. There were large vases of red and white flowers on low tables and paintings of stern looking men in gold frames on the walls. Quakers, Mom said. We walked through the hallway and exited down some steps and across a little wooden bridge that only went over another sidewalk. Then we came to another building—a long, low one—with a revolving door that led us into a foyer pointed a lemon yellow. Mom pressed the elevator button for “2”. We rode up with a man wearing old khakis and a pajama top. He had a red band around his right wrist. I tried not to stare at him, but I held tightly onto my Stratego game.

            The elevator door opened onto another hallway which ended at a set of double doors. Mom walked up to the doors and pressed a buzzer. On the other side we heard footsteps and a woman dressed all in white stood there holding a key on a long string. Her name tag said, “Rita Morgan,” but the face on the tag was a younger version of hers.

            She smiled and ushered us in. “Ah, Mrs. Pendle. I see you’ve brought your children with you. Why don’t you have a seat in the recreation room and I’ll bring Craig out. He’ll be glad to see you.” Then, still smiling, she locked the door again and went down the hallway, leaving us to find seats on the sagging sofas or plastic chairs in the big, open room.

            Craig was my dad. And he didn’t have a key to the door.

This is a detail of Dee's Butterfly Shawl.

One of my great joys is to make prayer shawls for people who are ill are in need of comfort. This shawl uses the Fan and Feather stitch and is called "Butterfly Wings." It was designed by Carole Nichole and can be downloaded for free from http;//www.knitlist.com/97/gift/quickthrow.htm. I made this shawl for Dee.

The Other Shoe

8/7/12

I live in a state where I am always expecting the other shoe to drop. Despite the years since Ron's accident, there is a part of me that is always waiting for "something bad" to happen. I cannot seem to accept that good things will come my way. I know that I release negative energy this way; I know I should come to accept that the Universe can and will send good things my way.

But it is hard to renegotiate with a Universe that has, at times, been so punitive...

Broken
8/6/12

Putting together the pieces of anything is difficult and time consuming. Sometimes the pieces are so shattered that it is impossible to fit them all back together again, neatly. There are always gaps that simply cannot be repaired. They hang open, letting in wind and rain and all manner of ill weather and ill feelings. And there is always the possibility that the pieces may lose their grip on one another, simply stop holding on and let go, falling away from each other.

My family has been broken; the glue that holds us together has been strong, but there are always gaps, spaces that will never be filled again. We miss things: Ron playing baseball with the church team, building castles at the beach. We know we can never have those things again.

So we try to fit the pieces together into a new way, hoping that the gaps might not be so noticeable this time around.

Learning to Breathe

I am finally learning to breathe again. I no longer feel the palpitations of my heart when an ambulance passes by. no longer hear the screech of the sirens in my dreams. I have lost the smell of Clorox and antiseptics in my nostrils and I can drive past the hospital without an anxiety attack. When people leave my presence it no longer means they will return in an altered state. But it has taken twelve years to get to this point, twelve years to begin to put back together the pieces of my life that were scattered to the four winds in March of 2000. It was our own Y2K, our own nightmare of an unimagined proportion. We lived through it a day at a time until pacing the waiting areas of trauma centers seemed normal. It turned us inside out, divided our lives neatly into Befores and Afters.

For twelve years, I have been holding my breath. I am daring to breathe again.

August 5, 2012

Dad...Again tells the story of a young boy's difficulty in accepting his father's hospitalization in a mental ward. In part, it is Allen's memories of that time back in 1999, when Ron had a mental breakdown and spent the summer at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. Little did we know it was only the first steps in a journey that would take us on a long, long road. Along the way, there would be a serious car accident, long hospitalizations and surgeries, therapists and psychistrists, and two suicide attempts. In continuing work on Dad...Again, I am reliving those moments. Last night, I wrote of the first time Jake, Allen's alias in the book, visits his father. Recalling the path we followed from the administration building to Turk Hall, where Ron was housed, brought back the memories I have long surpressed. I promised myself I would do it this time, relive it all, tell it all, so that others could be helped. My only purpose is to show others that they, too, can survive a devastating change in life.

My summer has been busy with writing! I have finished the final edits to Surviving College: The Adults Only Guide and the print copies should be available this week. How exciting to see my name in print! Of course, all of my students at Springfield want to buy a copy and have me autograph it. A student in my Advanced College Skills class yesterday suggested I write a second book in the series, called "Surviving College: Learning from Your Professor". He said that not all professors have an interactive teaching style such as mine, and he thinks I could give students some hints on how to learn from all of them. He may be right!

I expect to finish Dad...Again sometime in September. I'll keep you all posted!

July 30, 2012

I have unearthed the journals and find myself once again reliving the story. I read some this morning and felt the tears begin to stream down my cheeks. How much it hurt! And yet, we have survived. Pieces of my journals will find their way onto this blog as a start to put it all together.

 July 27, 2012
It seems as if this journey is taking forever! It began years ago, when that darn red pickup truck ran the red light. Our lives changed in a" split second. Twelve years and 26 surgeries later, my husband is a patchwork quilt of scars. But our family is intact. Despite it all, as a unit we continue to work together to journey along the broken road. A lot of healing needed to take place to bring me to the point where I could begin to write about it. Now, with the help of those spiral notebook journals which saw me through many a hospital vigil and enabled me to come to grips with my new roles as " dad", caregiver, and primary breadwinner, I am ready! You're welcome to join me, a step at a time!