Looking for You

After "Looking for You,"
by William Stafford.

"Looking for you through the gray rain."


In writing group, we used Stafford's poem as the basis for our own memories of a special house where we had lived. The house I wrote about was from 1967, the farmhouse Nick and I rented on Vashon Island, WN.


"Looking for you through the gray rain," the house on Vashon Island is the one I remember most fondly. It's the house we lived in when our daughter was born. The place where I was a young wife and mother.

It's the house where I read "Lord of the Rings" late at night while I waited for Nick to get home on the last ferry from Boeing's evening shift. And sometimes missed it when he got off late.

It's the house where Hallie and Alan, our hippie friends, lived down the road. And Hallie taught me to cook on an old woodstove. And Alan got arrested for public drunkenness, and I went with Hallie to bail him out.

It was the house where we had people drop in and stay a while--to my dismay, sometimes for months.

It was the house on Vashon Island, accessible only by ferry.

The house we lived in when I slipped on wet grass, as I was walking our Alaskan malamute, Shami. And had to hobble across the road to get a neighbor to take me to the doctor's office, because I couldn't use the clutch in our Jeep. Turns out my ankle was broken, and on my first visit to the obstetrician a few weeks later I was wearing a cast. The first weigh-in had to wait.

It's the house we lived in when I had to take my driver's license test in the Jeep, when I was 8 months pregnant. And the examiner said, "Pretend there's another car back there and parallel park between it and this car in front. " And so I did. And he passed me--maybe partly because he wouldn't be back on the island again before the baby was due.

The house with no shower, and when I washed my waist-length hair, I had to do it leaning over the bathtub--very pregnant. (Remember, these were the hippie years.)

Where I drove myself to the ferry in the Jeep, to go to Swedish Hospital in Seattle to have our baby. The last ferry for 2 hours at that time of day. If I'd missed it, she would have been delivered by a ferry attendant. (Yes, they knew how to deliver babies.) Where my worst fear had been that the baby would come in the middle of the night, and they would have to call out the emergency ferry from Bainbridge Island. Nick met the ferry on the Seattle side, and drove me to the hospital. She was born soon afterward.

It was the house where I locked the baby in the clunker car that I kept just to drive on the island. And panicked and broke the big window by the driver's seat to get her out.

It was the house where we could hear the scream of peacocks from the farm behind us.

And Shami brought home a dead peacock, and laid it at my feet. So proud.

And later got into the babysitter's father's sheep pen, and killed a sheep. We had to move Shami off the island ASAP. We were lucky he didn't shoot her.

The house was a farmhouse on 5 acres. We had fruit trees, and made a big vegetable garden. I made curtains, and baked bread, picked apples and made apple butter.

It was the rental farmhouse where I have wonderful memories--of happy laughing times. One of the best years of my life.


Nick, this is for you.

Appalachian family

In many ways, we were a typical Appalachian family. My father's "good job" was in Oak Ridge, as it grew into The Atomic City. But he was from the country, and his family lived in the country, or small towns, a little distance from us. So about once a month, when he had the weekend off, we traveled to see them. This was when I was very young--before the interstate system. Primarily we would drive from Oak Ridge to Sweetwater, where my dad's brother lived. We wound through the countryside, passing farms, hills and valleys, going through small towns on our way. We went through Lenoir City, then passed over a big bridge (or so it seemed to me), just before we got to Loudon, and then we were almost to Sweetwater.

My mother and I would play "cow poker" to help pass the time. If you have somehow missed out on this experience, cow poker was a game of counting cows along the way. I would count cows on one side, and my mother would count them on the other side. The only catch was if we passed a cemetery, our number was wiped out and we had to start over. After all those trips, I knew where the cemeteries were, of course, so I picked the opposite side to count my cows. (My mother also knew, but she allowed me to have this advantage. Did I mention that I was an only child?)

I was never a patient traveler, being a very young child. And one of our first trips to Sweetwater, as we went over the Loudon bridge, I plaintively asked, "Are we almost to Hotwater yet?" My dad really laughed at that one, and it became a family story, greatly amusing my parents.

Eventually I got to know the route very well. And I could always see when we were almost there, because we'd come up over a hill, and in the distance I could see the towers of TMI (Tennessee Military Institute) surrounded by trees. TMI was on the highway going into Sweetwater.

Now the interstate has replaced that old route, and I have not gone on the old highway in many years. But I still remember the old landmarks--the turkey farm, the Loudon bridge, and TMI towers giving me the good news, "We're almost there."

The waves come

Writing from "On the Oregon Coast," by Robert Bly



"The waves come . . .
all this fury . . .
and the ducks don't help.
Settling down in furry water, shaking
Themselves, and then forgetting it within a minute."


How do they do that?
The ducks shake themselves and then forget it.
How do they do that?
The dog shakes himself and then moves on.
When I am swamped by a looming wave,
I also try to become small, in order to withstand it.
But rather, I am flattened, and lie, gasping for breath.

I roll away, and then try to get to my feet,
But I don't shake myself and forget it.
Instead, I hang onto it,
and revisit it again and again,
relive it, and re-experience the hurt, and the pain,
over and over and over.

Maybe I think that by doing that,
I can change the outcome.
Maybe if I remember and relive,
it will end differently.
If it matters to me, how can I shake it off and walk away?
I want a different ending.
I want a more satisfactory ending.

On the other hand . . .

The emotional fury, finally faced and acknowledged.
No longer stuffed down and denied.
Maybe not healthier,
but definitely more honest.

"It is what it is."
I feel what I feel.
I am who I am.
So be it.

Diving Around

Writing group worked with "Diving into the Wreck," by Adrienne Rich (from Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972)


"I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail."
(From Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck")


I need to write, what I have discovered. words as purposes, words as maps. I need to re-examine the wreck; I need to re-examine the damaged structure. And glean, one by one, the treasures that have survived. And there are treasures that have survived.

Rereading the journals from all those years ago. Hearing again my words, my mantra, going again and again through the same experience. I ask myself, "Didn't I learn anything? How could I keep going around and around in circles?" It was like a deadly whirlpool--I rushed in, then was caught in the dizzy swirling, down to the bottom and back up again. I pulled myself out, crawled up on the beach, coughing and choking. Lay there until I finally got my breath back. Then, instead of walking away from the water, thankful to escape the madness, I turned around and went right back into the water, into yet another whirlpool. And the experience repeated itself. Again and again.

Counselor Mary Elizabeth was the Coast Guard boat, who picked me up and brought me to land. And warned me not to go back into the water. Eventually, reluctantly, I heard her voice and what she had said, over and over again. And eventually, I walked up the beach and away from the water, found a new place to be, totally different and protected from the beach.

Twenty-five years later, I returned to the beach--fortunately very briefly. And then I went home.

The treasures that prevail still need to be identified and claimed.

Water

The prompt at writing group was a plastic bottle of water, that you buy at the store.
The word I drew was "comfort." But it went unused. There was no comfort here.


"Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink."

Water in a bottle--soon all we'll have to drink, I'm afraid.
The grocery shelves will soon be empty of water, I'm afraid.
Images of water on television--much too much water.

Unforgettable images.
The Cumberland creeps up--Riverfront Park steps, First Avenue, Second Avenue, and still it rises.
LP Field--a bowl of dirty water--no Titans playing today.
Ghost dance artwork--standing surrounded by water.

Look up at the downtown Nashville skyline,
then look down to street level,
at the lake surrounding the buildings where I used to work.

Antioch, Nolensville, Bellevue, Clarksville,
Nashville itself--overwhelmed by water.

Life-saving water--one water treatment plant inundated,
the other barely holding on.

Life-taking water--20 deaths, older couple swept away in their car,
young men swept away when their innertubes broke apart,
children allowed to play in contaminated flood water.
What are those parents thinking of?

Images one after another, after another!
The best and the worst.

I'm safe. My family is safe.
But I'm overwhelmed. My heart is breaking.
And we seem to exist in a vacuum.
Local news media come through spectacularly.
The national media give it hardly a mention.
Facebook is the lifeline out, but we spend a great deal of time explaining what happened.
Who knew?

Surreal
Bizarre
Terrible!

The weekend from hell.