Fear, writing, and healing: How bereavement became a book

“Fear almost consumed me during the writing.
Now the fear is a memory, and my mother,
a real person.”

by Ali de Groot

My mother battled cancer for fifteen years, but she died in a car accident when I was a teenager. To my memory, nobody talked much about it, and after a weird and basically embarrassing funeral (don’t teens get embarrassed about everything?) filled with yellow roses, chicken salad, and strangers, life went on for me. The remaining family members and I spun off in our different directions.

Twenty-five years later, with three kids under the age of five, I finally sat down to face my mother. The oldest child had asked me about her “missing” grandma, and I realized I’d never mentioned her. I didn’t know how to, and I was scared. Thinking about my mother was the same as thinking about her death and the silent void. This filled me with a dark and ineffable panic. But I knew I had to talk. I took a workshop in bereavement writing, and set off on one of the most important transformations of my life: writing about my mother.

I could not have foretold that I would be diving into a place of pain and turmoil, a place filled with memories and treasures locked in caverns guarded by the likes of Cerberus. The first writing exercise was to bring in a photograph of the deceased and create a caption or story. I didn’t even have a photograph of my mother. Any memories of her eluded me. This led me to opening boxes that had fossilized in my attic for two and half decades. Again, I was terrified. I found her photos, her journals, her letters, and I gradually, slowly, reluctantly started to read them. And then something happened. Something at once painful and magical. I started writing. And remembering. And writing more.

Two years later, I would have in my hands a 170-page book full of memories, photos, journal excerpts, letters, recipes, and reflections. I entitled the memoir Learning to Speak because among other things, my mother was a cancer survivor who’d had her larynx removed before I was born, and as a laryngectomee, she was forced to learn to speak in a completely different manner.

My children are all adults now and I’ve given each one a copy of the book. They show an interest in it from time to time, as do my close friends. I’ve lived to see my girls through their teens, and I’ve lived past the age my mother was when she died, both crucial milestones. But most importantly, I’ve healed my wounds. They’re just scars now. Fear almost consumed me during the writing. Now the fear is a memory, and my mother, a real person.

And I continue to learn to speak.

*    *    *

Memoirs Salon 16, Snaddlegate Rudder, continued

Memoirs Salon 16

Welcome to Memoir Salon, Session 16, an excerpt from Snaddlegate Rudder: Going Back to the Land, 1971–1985 by Kitty Axelson-Berry

Short bio (from the author): In 1971, my then-husband and I moved onto 23 acres of woods near Amherst, Massachusetts and tried to live simply. We sawed down trees and created a spot for a house, a garden, and a rough mile-long driveway. We built a cold, leaky geodesic dome using hand saws and chain saws, our own and friends’ labor, and about $2,500, living in a tent with our nine-month-old baby for the couple of months it took. The dome burned down a few years later and we rebuilt, this time with electricity, running water, and gas heaters in several rooms to supplement wood heat. Fifteen years later, I later became a newspaper reporter and editor, and subsequently founded Modern Memoirs, Inc. publishing service and the Association of Personal Historians.

Short description (from the author): This stream-of-consciousness memoir began with dictation to my daughter, a professional transcriptionist (Kirsten Transcribes), and was later expanded upon. It explores my experiences of being part of the back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s, which we eventually gave up on to a large extent. We were adult children of privilege trying to raise a house, children, a marriage, and our own food. This is a continuation.

File 4 August 31, 2009. That winter, 1976, I had to get away—the cold weather, underprivilege poverty, and sullenness were overwhelming, so Jocie and I moved into Joan and Norman’s small apartment in Stuyvesantown, on 14th Street and Avenue D, and I helped Joan market The CB Slanguage Language Dictionary. I’d walk Jocie in her stroller past the drunks and addicts of 14th Street to and from the babysitter, and then every Friday night I’d drive with her up to North Leverett, then carry her up the driveway. When I opened the front door, it felt as if I was entering a house that had been empty of human warmth, cold and smelly. Kirsten’s hair would be matted and one time I found the guinea pigs, dead from starvation. I’d spend all day Saturday and most of Sunday cleaning and cooking, and read to Kirsten as much as possible, and then I’d abandon her. Every Sunday it near broke my heart and she grew increasingly downcast. At the time it seemed better than putting her in an inner-city kindergarten, but I was probably wrong.

I just want to go back to a moment in 1971, a sound, a scream, the scream of a child being attacked. We were alone in the tent, Kirsten and I, and I hugged her close, then opened the tent flap to see if somehow another baby had wandered over. Silence, all still. But the sound still haunts me….

Why were we doing this, you might ask. At the time, we felt that things were going to fall apart in the next twenty or thirty years and we wanted to be independent of the military–industrial complex and the system it thrived on. Inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing to live “the simple life,” we discovered belatedly that we were missing key ingredients such as money, knowledge, skills, love, a house, water, and arable land.

Anyway, getting back to food, not that it interests anyone but Okey and Sherri, I made a lot of corn fritters out of the corn I canned, doused with our own maple syrup, not from sugar maples but from woods maples so the ratio was eighteen parts sap to one part syrup instead of eight to one, not with evaporating pans but with saucepans on the woodstove. We would pick up our monthly allotment of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) surplus food, whatever the government was giving away, when we had some way to get to Greenfield and back. Usually it was two pounds of lard, eight pounds butter, a couple of huge boxes of American cheese, three pounds [sound of wind] of horrible powdered skim milk and powdered eggs, cans of stringy pig and cow meat, and some kind of ground-up meat to slice and fry. A far cry from my vegetarian days. White flour, corn syrup, cornmeal, mountains of sugar and noodles. Good peanut butter.

Other frequent chow was chili, cornbread, buckwheat pancakes, and homemade buckwheat bread, and olive and rosemary whole wheat bread—I’d grind the buckwheat groats and whole wheat berries. Sometimes I’d add ground-up eggshells from our chickens for calcium. Bread with eggshells had to be toasted or it felt there was sand in it. One Thanksgiving, my bread was sliced and served. Norman bit into a slice first—eyebrows went up. Every other face bit into the bread and did the same thing. Now it’s a favorite memory.

I combined the USDA items with back-to-nature organic food through our pre-order co-op. Our families thought we were stupid, crazy, and narcissistic for rejecting what they lived on, mostly desserts. Every week, a group of us would put a check mark next to the items we wanted. Then we’d pick it up at a prearranged time and place in town, which in winter meant getting home and walking up the icy driveway in the dark unless there was a full moon, carrying many pounds of fresh vegetables, dried fruits, grains (millet, cracked oats, whole wheat berries, rolled wheat), bean sprouts, cheese, eggs, peanut butter, soap.… Later, the co-op rented a storefront. (It was in the Alley and later became Yellow Sun Natural Foods, then a Mexican restaurant, a high-end restaurant/bar, then a natural foods market, and so on. It’s a restaurant/bar again.) That failed and the remnants moved to home deliveries by the organizers, who doubled as the town criers, sharing news and information.

In summer 1968, I had taken intensive Japanese at Harvard and become friendly with a macrobiotic commune. They were very certain of themselves and were horrified at how roly-poly and loud my baby nephew Greg was, accusing Lynn of feeding him milk, sugar, and meat, pointing out the sickly looking baby there who was being fed a strictly macrobiotic diet. “He is always calm and quiet, and never upset, because we only give him brown rice to eat.” That was the end of my excursion into extremism of any brand.

Joan and Norman were visiting us one time in the dome with baby Jonathan, and I served buckwheat pancakes with local maple syrup and USDA butter. “Would you like more pancakes?” I asked Norman, who said sure, so I went to work making another batch. Norman tells this story often and here’s what he says was involved:

1) bring in cordwood, split some kindling, build another fire in the woodstove

2) walk to the water hole a quarter of a mile away, chop through the ice with an ice pick—a sturdy hand-held tool with sharp teeth—scoop out the chunks of ice (a bare hand was better than a gloved one because it’s easier to dry off);

3) plunge empty milk bottles sideways into the water, releasing trapped air bubbles, then hold the jug under until they are nearly full;

3) strain out the snow fleas that appeared in March (we melted snow and icicles too, if it was heavy wet snow and clear icicles, and did our best to save water—and use very hot water for washing—rotating soapy water and rinse water)

4) get eggs from the chicken coop;

5) grind wheat berries and buckwheat groats into flour;

6) fuss with the woodstove to get a good temperature for cooking;

7) whisk the USDA powdered milk with water;

8) mix and cook.

Voila! It took an hour and a half. We all laughed and I realized that it would be OK to, at the least, buy flour. “I don’t have to grind the flour” became a mantra, and I got better at prioritizing, with help from The Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes, Jr. (Living Love Center, 1975), which taught me to distinguish between needs and wants. What do we need? What do we want? What do we choose?

***

 Modern Memoirs writes and preserves clients’ personal histories in high quality books, specializing in the as-told-to memoir genre in which the text is authentic and based entirely on the narrator’s own words. White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides full editorial and production services for self-publishing authors, especially poets and memoirists.

MEMOIR SALON, Session 15

Welcome to Memoir Salon Session 15, which features an excerpt from Linda Stenlund’s West of Skellefteå

West of Skellefteå   by Linda Stenlund

Short bio from the author: Linda Stenlund enjoys writing memoir stories and traveling. Organic gardening, hiking and cross-country skiing are some of her favorite outdoor activities. She lives with her bi-cultural family in Western Massachusetts.

Short description from the author: This story is about discoveries and reflections on a light summer night, the culmination of a journey to Northern Sweden.

 *   *   *

West of Skellefteå

    It is midnight, and although my body is mellow from a long swim at Boviken Beach on the Baltic Sea and my mind is weary from speaking Swedish all day with relatives, I am still awake. Here in the tiny village of Forsbacka—west of Skellefteå, in Northern Sweden, where my husband was raised—the sun never sets in early summer. It is light all night. I am intrigued by the soft, pale blue-gray sky glowing silently behind the stands of tall, dark green fir trees. There is something magical about the clear light with a hint of translucent blue that illuminates everything outside as far as my eyes can see.

At bedtime, we purposefully pull down the window shades that block out the light, just like all Swedes do in July. But there is the littlest crack of light that creeps past the narrow gap between the window sash and window shade. I am drawn to the midnight light like a moth that makes its appearance just about this time of night. Tiptoeing out of the bedroom, where my husband is already asleep, I pull on a fleece jacket and sneakers and creep out the front door.

After the heat of the day when we walked barefoot in the sand and across the soft grass, there is now a sharp chill in the air. It feels like living in two seasons at once; all day the sun shone brightly. We sat on the back deck eating lunch with our cousins and then took group photos by their little pond and flower gardens. By evening, we were cold in our shorts and pulled on extra clothes stashed in the back of our rental car. Stopping by the cemetery to visit the graves of parents, grandparents and great-uncles, we wore long pants and jackets. It felt like a cold fall evening then, fitting as we walked together and read the headstones we had not visited for many years.

My shoes are wet with the dew as I sneak away from the little red cabin with white painted trim, perched on a hill and surrounded by a small clearing in the woods. My sons, in their twenties now, are still awake too. I can hear them talking in low voices through a slightly open window in their room. The window shades don’t fool them either. We are southerners in comparison to the natives here. We didn’t grow up with this timeless summer light, midnight and beyond.

I continue walking down the grassy path, out of earshot of my grown offspring, towards the river. It is dark moss green in the clear illumination and as wide as the Connecticut River. Only it is not called a river, even in translation. It is called an älv, the Nordic name for a river.

Last night, after dinner, my son Daniel and I swam in the cold Skellefteå Älv, in the clean dark water. No one else in the family or neighboring cottages would join us. They lacked the sense of adventure or foolishness to brave the coldness and fluctuating current of the river. First, Daniel and I crawled across the slippery rocks by the shore, along a stand of wild daisies and bluebells growing at the water’s edge. Then we ventured out into the deeper water, heading for a group of boulders a short ways upstream. We stayed within shouting distance of the shore, where the others stood watching, keeping away from the brisk current in the middle of the river—lest we be swept downstream, east towards the town of Skellefteå. The water was cold, but exhilarating. After a minute, we agreed that our skin was sufficiently numb allowing us to stay in the river long enough to make it to the boulders and back. As I swam the breaststroke towards the rocks, I marveled at my good fortune of having a son who would swim with me under such hearty conditions and that he had even been the one to suggest it.

I was thankful that I didn’t know then what I learned from a local resident later the same evening. The neighbor man explained, gesturing with his hands, how the ice had been so thick and forceful on the älv last winter that it had broken the massive boulder into smaller, multiple stone pieces. Since it occurred during mid-winter, when it was dark all day and all night, no one realized it had happened until early spring when the light returned. He said that the big rocks that we had swum out to had been one giant boulder last year, a local landmark for many generations. The image stayed in my mind like a message from the dark winter, as I thought about our recent swim towards those very same rocks. The summer was short and celebrated here in the North Country, while the memory of winter was never very far away.

By now, I realize I have been walking along the packed dirt path by the river for over an hour. There are large patches of wild strawberries, called smultron, along the path and I stop to pick the ripe red ones. They are tiny and sweet but tart. A taste that is hard to describe; like wild renegade forbearers of the domestic strawberry. Small and intense with crunchy seeds like raspberries. An old Swedish children’s saying goes like this: It isn’t really summer until you’ve threaded smultron berries on a hay straw (to eat them).

A large white-tailed hare crosses my path. Like me, he is slightly dazed; it is the middle of the night. The birds are quiet, sleeping in trees. I am impressed that they manage to keep a regular schedule of waking and sleeping despite the twenty-four-hour light. There is no wind tonight and the stillness over the countryside is profound. Time stands still now. The red clover, which has been there all along my walk, leans slightly into the path and brushes against my pants. I spot wild, deep blue delphinium growing on a hillside and many great stands of lavender-colored lupines, their proud spikes standing erect in the soft light. I see jagged white ripples of current in the middle of the dark water on the Skellefteå Älv. It is so quiet, I can hear my own breathing in the midst of the living, calm nature. I know I should go back, crawl under the soft feather quilt and lie down in the darkened cottage where my family is sleeping.

But something pulls me silently by my sleeve and I continue past other cabins and summer abodes along the narrow, grassy dirt path by the river. The tall white birches are regal in their beauty, standing together in groups and informal rows. Here they are called “glass birches” because their pale, peeling bark has a clarity to it, a translucent loveliness, and I understand why Swedes that moved away from here in the 1880s longed for them and spoke about them. That upon arriving in the new land of America, the Scandinavian immigrants searched for this type of birch forest, which included rivers and lakes, until they finally found them in Minnesota. Then they settled there because of them, despite the fierce, life-threatening winters.

It is my last night here before we travel fifteen hours by train south to Stockholm. There are so many impressions that capture me in the wee hours of the morning: the steep slant of the roofs which keeps the snow from piling up too deeply, the reserved heartiness of the people who live here year round, and the lacey leaves of the Mountain Ash trees which will produce big clusters of bright orange berries come autumn. I notice the white fluffy blossoms of tall wild Astilbe and Queen Anne’s lace, and long green blades of soft meadow grass. I take note of how the current has picked up even more in the wide river, clearly swifter than last night, and I am relieved that my son and I are not out there now, swimming against that current towards the boulders so recently cracked and divided by last winter’s ice.

Then abruptly, I feel tired and say out loud, “goodnight” to all the nature around me and to the illuminated sky. Reversing direction, I calculate the quickest way along the path leading back to the little red cabin and my awaiting bed. Back on the porch, just before opening the cabin door, I turn around and let myself feel the embrace of the summer night one last time. Then I whisper into the light air:

“I’ll be back again, someday, I promise.”

*    *     *

To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

     White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

Modern Memoirs writes and preserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high quality books, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.

One of the oldest personal memoir-assistance service in business, Modern Memoirs writes and preserves clients’ personal histories in high quality books, specializing in the as-told-to memoir genre in which the text is authentic and based entirely on the narrator’s own words. White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides full editorial and production services for self-publishing authors, especially poets and memoirists.

MEMOIR SALON, Session 15

Welcome to Memoir Salon Session 15, which features an excerpt from Linda Stenlund’s West of Skellefteå

Short bio from the author: Linda Stenlund enjoys writing memoir stories and traveling. Organic gardening, hiking and cross-country skiing are some of her favorite outdoor activities. She lives with her bi-cultural family in Western Massachusetts.

Short description from the author: This story is about discoveries and reflections on a light summer night, the culmination of a journey to Northern Sweden.

*   *   *

West of Skellefteå by Linda Stenlund

            It is midnight, and although my body is mellow from a long swim at Boviken Beach on the Baltic Sea and my mind is weary from speaking Swedish all day with relatives, I am still awake. Here in the tiny village of Forsbacka—west of Skellefteå, in Northern Sweden, where my husband was raised—the sun never sets in early summer. It is light all night. I am intrigued by the soft, pale blue-gray sky glowing silently behind the stands of tall, dark green fir trees. There is something magical about the clear light with a hint of translucent blue that illuminates everything outside as far as my eyes can see.

            At bedtime, we purposefully pull down the window shades that block out the light, just like all Swedes do in July. But there is the littlest crack of light that creeps past the narrow gap between the window sash and window shade. I am drawn to the midnight light like a moth that makes its appearance just about this time of night. Tiptoeing out of the bedroom, where my husband is already asleep, I pull on a fleece jacket and sneakers and creep out the front door.

           After the heat of the day when we walked barefoot in the sand and across the soft grass, there is now a sharp chill in the air. It feels like living in two seasons at once; all day the sun shone brightly. We sat on the back deck eating lunch with our cousins and then took group photos by their little pond and flower gardens. By evening, we were cold in our shorts and pulled on extra clothes stashed in the back of our rental car. Stopping by the cemetery to visit the graves of parents, grandparents and great-uncles, we wore long pants and jackets. It felt like a cold fall evening then, fitting as we walked together and read the headstones we had not visited for many years.

            My shoes are wet with the dew as I sneak away from the little red cabin with white painted trim, perched on a hill and surrounded by a small clearing in the woods. My sons, in their twenties now, are still awake too. I can hear them talking in low voices through a slightly open window in their room. The window shades don’t fool them either. We are southerners in comparison to the natives here. We didn’t grow up with this timeless summer light, midnight and beyond.

            I continue walking down the grassy path, out of earshot of my grown offspring, towards the river. It is dark moss green in the clear illumination and as wide as the Connecticut River. Only it is not called a river, even in translation. It is called an älv, the Nordic name for a river.

            Last night, after dinner, my son Daniel and I swam in the cold Skellefteå Älv, in the clean dark water. No one else in the family or neighboring cottages would join us. They lacked the sense of adventure or foolishness to brave the coldness and fluctuating current of the river. First, Daniel and I crawled across the slippery rocks by the shore, along a stand of wild daisies and bluebells growing at the water’s edge. Then we ventured out into the deeper water, heading for a group of boulders a short ways upstream. We stayed within shouting distance of the shore, where the others stood watching, keeping away from the brisk current in the middle of the river—lest we be swept downstream, east towards the town of Skellefteå. The water was cold, but exhilarating. After a minute, we agreed that our skin was sufficiently numb allowing us to stay in the river long enough to make it to the boulders and back. As I swam the breaststroke towards the rocks, I marveled at my good fortune of having a son who would swim with me under such hearty conditions and that he had even been the one to suggest it.

            I was thankful that I didn’t know then what I learned from a local resident later the same evening. The neighbor man explained, gesturing with his hands, how the ice had been so thick and forceful on the älv last winter that it had broken the massive boulder into smaller, multiple stone pieces. Since it occurred during mid-winter, when it was dark all day and all night, no one realized it had happened until early spring when the light returned. He said that the big rocks that we had swum out to had been one giant boulder last year, a local landmark for many generations. The image stayed in my mind like a message from the dark winter, as I thought about our recent swim towards those very same rocks. The summer was short and celebrated here in the North Country, while the memory of winter was never very far away.

            By now, I realize I have been walking along the packed dirt path by the river for over an hour. There are large patches of wild strawberries, called smultron, along the path and I stop to pick the ripe red ones. They are tiny and sweet but tart. A taste that is hard to describe; like wild renegade forbearers of the domestic strawberry. Small and intense with crunchy seeds like raspberries. An old Swedish children’s saying goes like this: It isn’t really summer until you’ve threaded smultron berries on a hay straw (to eat them).

            A large white-tailed hare crosses my path. Like me, he is slightly dazed; it is the middle of the night. The birds are quiet, sleeping in trees. I am impressed that they manage to keep a regular schedule of waking and sleeping despite the twenty-four-hour light. There is no wind tonight and the stillness over the countryside is profound. Time stands still now. The red clover, which has been there all along my walk, leans slightly into the path and brushes against my pants. I spot wild, deep blue delphinium growing on a hillside and many great stands of lavender-colored lupines, their proud spikes standing erect in the soft light. I see jagged white ripples of current in the middle of the dark water on the Skellefteå Älv. It is so quiet, I can hear my own breathing in the midst of the living, calm nature. I know I should go back, crawl under the soft feather quilt and lie down in the darkened cottage where my family is sleeping.

            But something pulls me silently by my sleeve and I continue past other cabins and summer abodes along the narrow, grassy dirt path by the river. The tall white birches are regal in their beauty, standing together in groups and informal rows. Here they are called “glass birches” because their pale, peeling bark has a clarity to it, a translucent loveliness, and I understand why Swedes that moved away from here in the 1880s longed for them and spoke about them. That upon arriving in the new land of America, the Scandinavian immigrants searched for this type of birch forest, which included rivers and lakes, until they finally found them in Minnesota. Then they settled there because of them, despite the fierce, life-threatening winters.

            It is my last night here before we travel fifteen hours by train south to Stockholm. There are so many impressions that capture me in the wee hours of the morning: the steep slant of the roofs which keeps the snow from piling up too deeply, the reserved heartiness of the people who live here year round, and the lacey leaves of the Mountain Ash trees which will produce big clusters of bright orange berries come autumn. I notice the white fluffy blossoms of tall wild Astilbe and Queen Anne’s lace, and long green blades of soft meadow grass. I take note of how the current has picked up even more in the wide river, clearly swifter than last night, and I am relieved that my son and I are not out there now, swimming against that current towards the boulders so recently cracked and divided by last winter’s ice.

            Then abruptly, I feel tired and say out loud, “goodnight” to all the nature around me and to the illuminated sky. Reversing direction, I calculate the quickest way along the path leading back to the little red cabin and my awaiting bed. Back on the porch, just before opening the cabin door, I turn around and let myself feel the embrace of the summer night one last time. Then I whisper into the light air:

           “I’ll be back again, someday, I promise.”

 *   *   *

To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

     White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

     Modern Memoirs writes and preserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high quality books, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.

One of the oldest personal memoir-assistance service in business, Modern Memoirs, Inc. writes and preserves clients’ personal histories in high quality books, specializing in the as-told-to memoir genre in which the text is authentic and based entirely on the narrator’s own words.

White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides full editorial and production services for self-publishing authors, especially poets and memoirists.

 

MEMOIR SALON, Session 14

Welcome to Memoir Salon, Session 14, which features a short story by Jennifer Atkins.

Short bio:  Jennifer (Jenny) Atkins is a writer, a biologist, and raises angora rabbits, among many other things. Thus she is a spinner—a spinner of tales, cells, and skeins of fluffy angora hair. Feel free to visit her blog of spinning, knitting, and photos at http://twistedmysteries.blogspot.com

Short description: This memoir/short story describes a small child’s view of the large woman who comes to clean her house each week.

*   *   *

Cleaning Lady

When I and my older sisters were little, my mother, who had grown up with a cook, maid, chauffeur, gardener and nurse, had none of these. All she had was a Cleaning Lady. When we were even younger and there was a succession of babies in the family, my mother found college girls to come in and watch the babies while the grown-ups, my parents, had their dinner. But we moved away from the college, and were apparently old enough to join in the family dinner, so now there was only the Cleaning Lady.

How one goes about hiring a Cleaning Lady, or for that matter a cook, maid, chauffeur, gardener or nurse I have no idea, since the most I’ve ever had to do is find someone to repair our roof. I would guess that a lot depends on hiring the person your sister uses, or someone recommended by a friend from church. Our Cleaning Lady also doubled as my babysitter so that my mother could go shopping and do her various errands while my older sisters were in school.

I never liked the Cleaning Lady, who was fat and sounded different from my family. She had a grandson just my age and she was sure that if we met we would be best friends. I was sure we would not. She was loud and her favorite phrase was “Spic & Span & Sunshine Bright!” She seemed to delight in telling me, with her loud, unfamiliar accent, that everything was “Spic & Span & Sunshine Bright!” I mostly did what I could to avoid her with her loud vacuum cleaner and buckets of sloppy soapy water. It usually meant playing by myself while I waited for my mother or sisters to get home.

One day I was downstairs in my room playing by myself with my paper dolls, the special French ones my Grandmother had sent to me, when I heard a strange noise coming from upstairs. It sounded like my name being called, but very low and heavy, like a moan. Mommy was out, as usual, gone shopping, and I was home with the Cleaning Lady. My room was far away from upstairs, way at the end of the hall, so I had to go down the hall past my sisters’ empty rooms, past the playroom and workshop, then up the stairs very slowly.

I could hear the vacuum cleaner going upstairs, and above it I could hear that moan, “Oohhhhh,” a very scary sound. Both sounds come from the dining room, so I stood at the door frame and peeked in. There was the vacuum cleaner with the hose and sucker part on the floor. The table was pulled out of place and there was the Cleaning Lady, under the table. She didn’t get up; she just lay there and groaned again. She said my name, “Jenny….” I didn’t know what to do, so hugging the wall, I went to the nearest chair and sat down.

I sat for the longest time, just waiting, while the vacuum cleaner ran, and the Cleaning Lady lay there and moaned. Finally, finally, Mommy came home with a great stomping of boots and rustling of bags. She was very surprised and in a big flurry to see the table out of place and the Cleaning Lady on the floor and the vacuum cleaner running. She turned off the vacuum, and helped the Cleaning Lady and called the Doctor and the Doctor came and he helped the Cleaning Lady and finally they put the table back and the vacuum cleaner away.

Later, Mommy and Daddy were both there and they were telling me that I should always dial “O” for Operator if something bad happened, and would I remember that? My sisters were there listening and I knew I must have done something bad, but I wasn’t sure what. I said I would always remember to dial “O” for Operator.

It was days later that the Cleaning Lady came back. Mommy was home, thank goodness, and I didn’t want to see the Cleaning Lady. I hid in the kitchen, but then she called me, “Jenny.”

I peeked over at the door.

“Look at this,” she said. “I want to show you something.” And then she lifted her heavy skirt to show me a huge dark bruise on her thigh, all purple and blue. “See what I got when I fell.” She laughed a big hoarse laugh and I ran away back into the kitchen.

What I didn’t know, and didn’t find out until years later, was that for a long time my parents had noticed that liquor was disappearing from the liquor cabinet. Good help is hard to get, and once gotten, no one wants to go through the ordeal of finding someone new. And someone who will clean and watch your four-year-old must be harder to find, and more important, to hold onto, even at the expense of a little bourbon. Still, I never saw that Cleaning Lady again, and in fact, we never did have another one.

 *   *   *

To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

   White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

Modern Memoirs, Inc. writes and preserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high quality books, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.

MEMOIR SALON, Session 13

Welcome to Memoir Salon, Session 13, featuring an excerpt from Snaddlegate Rudder: Going Back to the Land, 1971–1985

 

Snaddlegate Rudder: Going Back to the Land, 1971–1985

by Kitty Axelson-Berry

 

Short bio from the author: In 1971, my then-husband and I moved onto 23 acres of woods near Amherst, Massachusetts and tried to live simply. We sawed down trees and created a spot for a house, a garden, and a rough mile-long driveway. We built a cold, leaky geodesic dome using hand saws and chainsaws, using our own and friends’ labor, spending about $2,500 altogether. Our first daughter was nine months old at the time and we lived in a tent. The dome burned down a few years later when I was pregnant with our second daughter, and we rebuilt, this time a warmer house with the added virtues of electricity, running water, and four gas-powered room heaters to supplement the wood heat. I later became a newspaper reporter and editor, then founded Modern Memoirs, Inc.,  and the Association of Personal Historians.

Short description from the author: This stream-of-consciousness memoir, dictated to my oldest daughter and then expanded upon, explores some of the graces and mistakes of going back-to-the-land in the 1970s. We were adult children of privilege trying to raise a house, two children, a marriage, and our own food. This is a continuation.

 

                                                      * * *

Why We Were So Stupid… and What We Ate (continued)

What a mess we were, first-time parents, first-time farmers, first-time builders. Had Jerry learned some farming, maybe construction, too, at one of his prep schools in Colorado and Vermont? Or during his family’s cross-country and Alaskan camping trips? First-time adults. He at twenty-four, a father, rock-and-roll band “manager” or was it supplier, I at twenty-one a new mother with no skills, experience, muscles, or money, which left me with mostly resentment, trying to turn ourselves around from the comforts and blinders of the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called Greatest Generation.

Perhaps instead of trying to build a house and raise our own food, we should have bought a house and raised our own food. Dozens of deteriorating farmhouses were for sale for the equivalent of a beginning high school teacher’s salary, with barns, well-water, streams, fields, and vistas (and difficult to heat). Again, this was 1971, small is beautiful, grow-your-own-food, get off the grid, don’t spread poison, don’t support the military-industrial complex, don’t have many needs, don’t have needs that cost money.

We were babies in the woods. First we cleared the land and a half-mile-long driveway with a chainsaw that only Jerry could start up and use. The pull-cord was impossible for me to yank, and I spent my time, in-between nursing and getting water etc., lopping small branches from already-fallen trees with an ax or a lopper and hauling them around, making piles for later burns, and bringing cordwood closer to a wheelbarrow and eventually the shed.

I was a waitress at the Lamplighter Steak and Seafood Restaurant, the place with a two-story milk bottle out by the road, and I had to look clean, bathing in local streams with a wary eye for wandering fishermen; Kristie was nine months old. Would I have cut big trees if I’d had more muscle and time and was right-handed? Not likely. Even a thin tree, ten inches diameter, grows very tall if it’s in the woods and can’t find sun. And when trees go down, they fall on other trees, and you’re balancing precariously on a tangle of branches, maybe some bees, a snake now and then, trying to get through both of them.

We weren’t strong enough for the work, we women. One afternoon in about 1976, with maybe four feet of snow topped by three inches of glare ice, we were exceedingly cold indoors, with the house insulated by undershirts and a few newspapers. It was Denise, who lived in one of the cabins built on the Hill by friends, and Lana, who was an apprentice stone-mason, and me. Jerry and the boys were out of town traveling with the rock band or something, mostly hanging out and making new friends, and we had run out of wood, not even green wood to burn. The closest down-tree that we could get to was a good-sized hemlock near the driveway split, going straight ahead to Vinny’s and left down the hill. We all burned a lot of hemlock and pine, and we all had a lot of chimney fires. Later, we pushed potato peels into the fire to loosen the creosote and help it break away, come down in chunks from the stovepipe.

We were trying to saw the tree trunk up for firewood but the chainsaw kept stalling and then we couldn’t get it started. So we got out the two-man crosscut saw. But we couldn’t get any leverage in that tight space and didn’t have the arm strength anyway. I’d left the kids alone in the house and knew they were probably fighting with each other by now. It was starting to get dark but we still had no wood at all to burn. We realized we could not do it and burst into tears, all three of us, bleeding tears that of course froze on their way down our faces.

Back to the topic at hand, food.

OK, the garden. The first summer, we used a chainsaw to clear the driveway, six-tenths of a curving hilly mile, and land for the house, garden, and future orchard, and we built the dome, and we started bringing and dumping soil and manure. There were about ten of us camping out. The driveway was undriveable between October and June (too wet or too much snow) so we were carrying everything like kids, food, laundry, tools, and lumber on our backs.

We did the world’s worst job of growing our own, despite hard work and sincerity. The soil was not only heavy with clay but belched rocks, and there was no water for about a mile. We filled five-gallon containers from Len and Missy’s at the bottom of the hill or at any of the local post offices, Leverett or Montague, and Jerry drove them up in the Scout when he could. Females supposedly weren’t strong enough to move the bolts on the wheels to put it into four-wheel drive. When he wasn’t around or the driveway was undriveable, I filled one-gallon plastic milk containers and walked two or four of them hanging from a broomstick for a yoke, stooped over because Kristie was also there on my back, in a backpack. We never watered the garden because there was no water. And we didn’t know enough to start the seeds in a cold frame. We put them right into the ground, which meant they didn’t have a good start or a sufficient growing season.

We did end up with a few vegetables, mostly oversized zucchini. Zucchini are best at about an inch wide, eight inches long. Ours were the diameter of a canning jar, about five inches wide, cut into thick slabs. The first summer of the garden I canned about four dozen jars of this zucchini. It was like a dishwater, leather, and wood medley. The flesh itself had turned into watery greyness, the dark green skin was an approximation of leather, the seeds were close to wood. I made soup. Watery, tasteless. Fortunately, the dome froze often at night, even when we stoked all four stoves, and at least a quarter of the jars broke. I’d pick up a jar of zucchini (or tomatoes, string beans, applesauce, or worse yet, grape jelly) and it would break into a mess of food and glass on the floor and countertop, usually down my legs too. Did I get all of the shards out of the jam? Off the floor? Worrisome! I tried not to serve glass shards with the bread, butter, and jelly. And I tried to get all the glass off the floor, using wet rags because paper towels were too expensive, and cleaning the rags by hand. But those shards tended to get stuck in the spaces between plywood sheets, which meant we had to walk with care.

Anyway, during the summer I’d hear Jerry whooping up the driveway in the Scout and then he and his “buddies” would haul giant garbage bags filled with ears of corn for me to shuck and can right away, before the sugars converted to starch. Surprise! I felt like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin, the female version of Sisyphus. And it was hot, too, when the corn, zucchini, tomatoes are harvested. Canning on a woodstove in a geodesic dome without window openings or insulation is like being in a greenhouse in Las Vegas. Add mosquitoes.

Anyway, Jerry would come roaring in, dragging heavy garbage bags filled with corn, string beans, or grapes, or with joint-compound buckets filled with tomatoes. “I brought you a present!” Then he’d sit down, pop a beer, smoke a bone, pass out. I began to develop ulcerative colitis then, if not before.

I hope it’s OK to share all this with you. Maybe it isn’t…

* * *

      To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

     White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

Modern Memoirs, Inc. writes and preserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high quality books, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.

MEMOIR SALON SESSION 12

Welcome to Memoir Salon, Session 12, which features an excerpt from Healing in the Storms, a memoir by Julie DeGon about her life as a twin, a widow, and a mother bereft of her child.

Healing in the Storms  by Julie DeGon

Short bio from the author: Northwest author Julie DeGon, born a twin, grew to be a single woman, a wife and mother, a widow and single mother, and a bereaved mother.

Short description from the author: What happens when a young woman finds herself raising her child alone after six short years of wedded bliss to her husband, the love of her life? What happens when the son she so bravely and tenderly raised is lost to a tragic car accident just seventeen years later? Julie DeGon takes you on her stormy journey.

***

Prologue

Jeff and I were born on September 27, 1961. Jeff weighed 5lbs. 3oz. I weighed 2lbs. 10oz. Mom was sick during her pregnancy, but we were both full-term babies. Jeff came home from the hospital after five days. I stayed in the hospital for three months. I was in an incubator. With me being in the hospital for so long, this became a hardship on my parents. Mom and Dad had to pay so much money for my hospital bills and food; it was hard to make ends meet.

One day, Dad didn’t have the money to pay my hospital bill; the doctor’s office gave Dad twenty-four hours to get me out of the hospital. Mom took me to the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. I am blessed with having been in the incubator because I did not become blind or deaf or have other disabilities to have to deal with.

Growing Up a Twin (The Twin Thing)

I have one of the best brothers one could ask for. Jeff and I are twins. We were born seven minutes apart (a twin will tell you how many minutes apart they are – some twins will go so far as to say for seven minutes they had it made).

People used to ask me, “What is it like to be a twin?” Some of these people would even answer for me, “You always have someone to talk to, you have someone to play with, and you have someone to help you with your chores.” (Well, until one of us wore out his or her welcome.) Some people will say that if one twin gets sick, then the other will have the same illness. Or, “If her car breaks down, the other twin should watch out, this will happen to you also.”

I always thought this was funny. People refer to it as “the twin thing.” What people need to realize is if one twin is good at a sport, then maybe the other twin is good in math. Just because one twin won the basketball championship doesn’t mean the other twin is expected to do the same thing.

Twins are individuals with their own talents, gifting, desires, and independence.

I know people probably didn’t mean to compare us, but it happens. What people don’t realize is it is very hurtful. I wonder if Mom and Dad ever felt like they were seeing double with two sets of everything. I do know and I have seen plenty of pictures of this event: Jeff was in the playpen and I was outside the playpen on the floor. (Something about our fighting all the time.)

Jeff and I were the only set of twins born on either side of the family in forty years.

Mom was surprised after Jeff was born; I came kicking out seven minutes later. Dad said that by the time he had Mom signed into the hospital, Jeff was already born. I think the nurse came out and told Dad, “It’s a boy,” and then the same nurse came out and told him, “It’s a girl.” I think Dad said, “What?”

Jeff and I grew up on a ranch on California. We participated in the 4-H Club. We raised rabbits and sheep. When Jeff and I bought our lambs, Jeff wanted to name them Bonnie and Clyde – I didn’t like sound of those names (wonder why) so I named my lamb Sunflower. Sunflower won Grand Champion in the fair that year, while Jeff sold his lamb at market at the fair.

The next year, Sunflower gave birth to twins. The newspaper came out and wrote an article. The article was titled “Twins for the Twins.” Sunflower had three more sets of twins, and all of her babies were Grand Champions.

When Jeff and I had graduated high school, we moved to Idaho because Dad was sick with cancer. Dad needed to be in a drier climate. Jeff had culture shock moving to a small town and he enlisted into the Marines right away. This was the first time Jeff and I had been separated; this time was a difficult time for me not seeing Jeff everyday.

Some twins are fortunate to live in the same town. Others, like Jeff and me, live miles apart. After Jeff was discharged from the Marine Corps, he got married and had a beautiful daughter. I always appreciated the fact that Jeff worked all day, then would go and have “daddy/daughter day.”

Jeff had always wanted a daughter and I had always wanted a son. I married in 1984. My husband, Jerry, died in 1990 from diabetic complications. We had a son, Levi. Levi died tragically in a car accident in July 2007.

Everyday is a struggle without having my son. God gives you strength and peace to move forward in Him everyday. I am working, writing my first book and living life to the fullest. I had to realize even though my husband and son went to Heaven before I did, I still have goals I want to achieve before I am called home as well.

After Levi passed away, people would comment, “I can’t imagine being you.” I would tell them, “I can’t imagine being me either.” I wouldn’t trade the hardships I have gone through for anything. God knew in His strength I could walk through this pain and be victorious for Him.

***

      To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

     White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

     Modern Memoirs writes and preserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high quality books, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.

MEMOIR SALON, Session 11

Sunglasses

by Alison de Groot

 

Short bio from the author: Alison de Groot is associate publisher at Modern Memoirs, Inc. She loves writing, modern dance (improvisation, KazDance, and Isadora Duncan style), and Chihuly glass sculptures. Among favorite movies: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?

Short description from the author: My dad is 84. (He just stopped skiing in 2013.) In this story we go to the beach together on a weekend in the summer, as we do every summer. He sits under an umbrella and reads the newspaper.

***

Sunglasses

I could write about the ocean and spazzles of sun on salty ripples on the hottest day of July, or a head-on dive into the embrace of a cool wave, or the sensation of people all around and their voices all together with radios and gulls and swishing sand. But I really want to write about my father, and leading up to the dive into the water. Because without my father, I would not be at the beach on this weekend that I take every summer with my three daughters.

When I call my father to say we’re coming, he writes it on the calendar even though I’m never sure of the date until a few days before. We really just want to stay at his house for the night and hang out at the beach all day, the three teens and I. We imagine that Grandpa Bob will never want to join us in the hot sun and crowds. But when I confirm with him—the night before—of our arrival time and plans, he says, “You’re going to the beach? Hm. I’ll go with you.” And I feel a mixture of sweet comfort and slight burden.

He goes shopping before we arrive: the cold cuts—turkey, roast beef, Swiss cheese. Iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, rye bread. Dinner—some meat thing, one baked potato each, frozen vegetable. For the kids and himself he gets 2 boxes of frozen blueberry waffles for breakfast. Makes sure the large plastic bottle of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup isn’t getting low. Frozen bagels, English muffins, cream cheese, orange juice, and his regular grapefruit juice.

When we pull in the driveway leading up to a pale blue Cape-style house with black shutters, we see leaning up against the car his beach umbrella, camping chair, mini duffle bag, and mini red & white cooler. Dad comes out the front door and calls each person by name as he greets us with a gentler version of a bear hug, his head held back and turned slightly, with a smile. “Aleeee….” . Angelaaaa….”. “Violettttt.” “Lilaaaaa…..” He will do the very same hug for the farewells, smiling the same way, and it will sometimes feel to me, for just a millisecond, like he might not let go. But that is not so.

“I’ll drive,” he insists. “I have the in-state sticker for parking.”

We head off in his 6-speed car, and while he checks the radio and the fan, I notice that he has put on his oversized sunglasses and that there’s one lens missing. I feel that sunken adolescent embarrassment when I realize he doesn’t even notice the missing lens. I cannot, will not tell him, but after looking out my passenger window and thinking deeply about it for a few minutes, realizing there’s no way out, I finally say it. Quickly. Quietly:

“Dad, you have a lens missing!” I feel even worse now.

“Huh?” he says softly. “Gee, what happened here? Must’ve popped out. Hm. Luckily I have an extra pair with me.”

Phew. I suddenly LOVE absent-minded, dusty, musical engineers who collect clocks and cats. He has me reach into his mini duffle and get out another pair.

We drive for a half hour and then wait in an interminably long line of scorching cars all going to the one parking lot we are going to. It takes about 20 minutes to traverse one mile. He says not a word, except a few comments about how they more than doubled the fees this summer, from $7 for seniors to $14, and to $28 for out-of-staters. He retrieves a 20-dollar bill from his wallet and puts it in a crack in the dashboard long before we reach the parking lot booth.

Eventually, slowly, and finally on the beach, we spread the blankets and towels to earn our various supine, prone, and sitting positions in the sun. Next to me is the compact space occupied by my father and his things: the folding camping chair, the sunshade umbrella, a newspaper, and 2 towels. In his cooler: a thermos of icewater, 2 O’Doul’s non-alcoholic beers, 3 oranges, 1 apple. Dad sits and stares at the water most of the time. Reads the newspaper. He gets up twice to walk the long walk to the bathhouse restroom and back. He says one or two sentences in the hours that pass as imperceptibly as the revolving of the earth.

Rare sidelong glances at my father give me a funny familiar feeling. It’s the same thing that people wonder about their cats: What does he think about as he sits there?

At the end of the salty day, we head back home, and perhaps a bit sun-struck, I daringly suggest going out to eat. Unheard of for my father. He pauses, then replies.

“Hm. Well…maybe we can go to the fish place on the way home. It’s a little road off Route 1.”

I feel a grand accomplishment has just been made. I hold my breath.

“Hm, it should be on the right, coming up here,” he says.

There it is. A little fish shack, off the side of the road. I’ve never been there, though I grew up in this town. A nice shack, for locals.

Dad orders. “I’ll have fish and chips. Flounder. And a Bud.” His sheepish grin; he usually drinks the O’Doul’s.

I impulsively order $78 worth of heavenly fried fish for the famished kids and me, and as I go to pay, Dad hands me a $10- and a $5-bill.

“Here’s for my dinner, $15. Wait. Whoa, the beer costs $4! Here, let me give you a 20. Give me back the $15 and here’s a 20.

I daresay my sisters will be jealous when they hear that I got him to eat out.

***

      To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

     White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

Modern Memoirs writes and preserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high quality books, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.

Memoir Salon, Session 10

Welcome to Memoir Salon, Session 10, which features an excerpt from Body Insubordination, My Struggles with a Rare Brain Malady by Heidi Morrell, a memoir by a former actress and filmmaker who became disabled due to a brain disorder, and has learned to approach the realities of her life with humor and new perspectives. The excerpt brings us into her world before her malady, when the lives of her premature twin infants were in jeopardy.

 Short bio from the author: Heidi Morrell is a former television actress, short-filmmaker and college graduate in English. After being diagnosed with an atypical movement disorder, MSA, she had to retire from acting and deal with her condition, but she continues to write fiction and poetry. Several of her poems have been published in print and online journals. Heidi is married and has boy and girl twins, age twelve. Her disease has caused her to lose her walking ability, balance and speaking clarity. “Comedy is the key to facing reality,” she says. Being disabled provides a landscape of perspective where once, there was none. Please visit her website at Heidi Morrell

 Short description from the author: My life took a frightening turn when my kids were but two and a half years old. Gradually I noticed my speech was slower and slower and I began to slur soon after that. Then, muscles in my left thigh began to hesitate on a walking stride. I feared the worse as I contacted my first neurologist, but a subsequent MRI turned out to be normal. What was happening to me? Was it all psychological? Not so fast, after a new neurologist and a PET scan, they had their awful diagnosis: Multiple System Atrophy. A devastating movement disorder with an umbrella term—Atypical-Parkinsons disease—that would put me in a wheelchair in little more than four years. Not MS, this condition can not really be slowed down or arrested as in that disease. I’ve had MSA for ten plus years, and I’m doing better than many, but it robs me of communication (speech) and the ability to walk freely. My hands are curling up and have no dexterity whatsoever, and my balance is shot to hell. Meanwhile my husband and I are trying to raise twins, a boy and girl thirteen years. My patient husband is my main caregiver, and I’m ever gratified he hasn’t left me. I love them so much. This excerpt contains a letter and an e-mail, and the whole manuscript, additionally, has poetry and other letters. Enjoy.

 Excerpt from Body Insubordination, My Struggles with a Rare Brain Malady

by Heidi Morrell

 ***

Chapter 8: But for Them, My Children

 They grew up with my dysfunction, my verbal communication stunted, and my sweeping frustration. And still they turned into fine kids; indeed probably because of it. But oh my. Somehow, I grow to actually believe I could check out, END IT, fly the coop; in a couple of years or three when I’m confined to a wheel chair and my husband or a home aide has to wipe my ass. That’s my belief, BUT for my children. So, not now, not when they’re so much a part of this today. As my quote at the beginning of the saga says, ‘comes a time’.

     Am I honorable for wanting to stay around to see my sweet ones grow up? No way. But I do want to see them through, so ardently that I’m willing to suffer this inexorable decline. I’m also curious to see them evolve/transition into adults, with all the stumbling, sadness, triumphs and pleasures, and all the challenges required.

 Dear ones,

 Forgive me for all the weeping I foisted upon you. My unintelligible words in the mornings when you were off to school and I hadn’t ‘warmed up’ yet. All the missed fun at the beach, on a hike, or acting goofy in an ice-cream shop.

 I never got to show you my cartoon voices, or after second grade, join in many of the volunteer activities at your schools. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for the never heard wordy explanations I wanted to provide when either of you asked a question, they are lost to this damn disease, taken away. This infuriates me even more because each of you are so intelligent. So many opportunities, connections lost have been stolen from us.

 But, what have you two gotten and shared with me (and your father)? Incredible joys and shared knowledge. So many movies and all our travels. My cooking and baking with you, the Christmas parties and our roaring costumes at Halloween. You reading to me at night, after I read to you as babies. I love the slow moving but special discussions we have and the knowing glance that signals a giggle fit.

 Early on, when you were infants to about age five, I was able to influence and vocalize enough to guide your language skills and that, combined with good schools and your father’s speech, set you on your way.  —Much love, your Mother

 A fifth grade teacher, a very cool fifth grade teacher, got me thinking and I responded to an e-mail he wrote about teaching young kids:

 Hey Rob,

 I know of this mysterious place of happiness and crucible of myths! And if you mosey closer and peer over the walls it looks and sounds like the cries of unfocused energy, rubber balls hitting the pavement, TV thundering in the next room, and dish filled counters, with wrappers and spoons laying on tables, the smell of popcorn and chocolate and happy faces sighing into a pillow or chair. See the bikes strewn on the driveway, scooters and skate boards amid the piles, laughter and shouting, dirty socks and denials, carefully crafted excuses, arguments and deals.

 This is the stuff of legend, the magical land of grade school -Spring Break; but you knew that all along!

 Thanks for your note. Good break to you too.

                                           —Eleanor and John’s Mom  5/2009

***

 What amazing children! They were born at two pounds ten ounces and two pounds twelve ounces! Premature of course, they showed up at 29 weeks. This was two and a half years before I had any symptoms of MSA. I never would have gone through the IVF procedure—those stressful anguishing days of “Did it work?” Or “Damn, that’s ten thousand out of our pockets!”—if I’d known I would get this awful neuropathy.

 At 29 weeks, Jeremy was just leaving to go to a show at a club when my water broke. Thank God it was at that moment because he often turns off his cell or can’t hear it when the show is on. He was just bending to kiss me good bye when, sploosh, all over the bed sheets!

 Thus began a turbulent, trying chapter in my life, and in our marriage, and that maybe, when I think of it, prepared us tangentially for my MSA. Actually I have no idea if this is true; but the premature births did strengthen our marriage bond and we soon saw life as very precarious, precious and fragile.

 My OB had sent me to a neonatologist to stem the bleeding of my ruptured third embryo (my body wisely decided it couldn’t deal with three implanted embryos). But obviously we didn’t want the third one’s demise to cause the other two to miscarry. It was tough going and I became tortured with every pad I saturated.

 I had the Mozart music all picked out for the caesarian three months later: Kleine Nacht Music. I was awake during delivery, and had pre-clampsia (high BP and edema/swelling), so much so the anesthesiologist could not find a line in my swollen hand, nor could he find a good place to give me the spinal. I was bursting with fluid. Before that caesarian, someone MIGHT have mentioned this on my diet recommendation, while I was in the three day plus holding period, staving off delivery. They, the docs, want you to be given medications for the babies’ lungs to function more normally and to prevent delivery. I should have had a low sodium/salt diet!

 I had a very powerful drug to stop the contractions of course, to prolong my gestation as long as possible. This haunts me still because it tore me up with body shudders, chattering teeth, shivering, and a complete speed-like reality.

 After that nightmare, my OB suggested we change it to another medication; which was equally disturbing and horrific. But this time I was in a jelly consciousness, swooning, looping, zombie- like and a gauziness over all.

 Perhaps, for me, who tends to overreact to medications, this imprisonment for three and a half days contributed to my MSA. What do they say? “Your genes(predisposition) load the gun and environmental factors pull the trigger.

***

 The neonatal intensive care unit was our nursery for awhile. They were known as Morrell baby A & Morrell baby B.

 You don’t want to name them when you don’t know if they will survive. And they stayed without names until about three or four weeks of age. Every morning we headed to the NICU, and every morning we didn’t know how they would be. The NICU doc would have called us if one had died, so we knew they were alive at least. But had one of them had a brain bleed or caught a bacterial infection, or not eaten or lost weight? They used gram weights because all these preemies were so little. Other mothers were there, consumed and distraught with far worse cases than ours. Some did die and some were forever spastic or deaf or developmentally stunted. In my opinion, a few times, they should have passed away.

 They divided various NICU rooms by prematurity mainly, and that would be weight. One room I never saw, for the tiny one-pounders with all the problems and few of the chances. There were three rooms to progress through until they went into a bassinet, breathing room air on their own, maintaining their body heat and happily eating well, when they moved into a fourth room, awaiting discharge.

 But they got stronger with each passing day. Well, Morrell baby B did. She never looked back, adding weight and, after just three weeks, breathing on her own. Baby A, the first-born, had to be transfused, and didn’t put on much weight. One day, I walked through the various rooms of the NICU to his incubator. Astonishing me and causing my heart terror, I saw my son, all white, not moving and presumably dead. He finally moved just as I called out for someone, anyone. I was light headed, gasping, and dizzy. This is how it ends, “not with a bang, but a wimper.”

 “He needs a transfusion,” they said. My own new, gifted, neonatal pediatrician agreed. So we did the blood add for Morrell baby A. All that day, I thought how my newborn could pick up some deadly disease or condition through the transfusion. We were sooo stressed. If that NICU experience prepared us, our marriage, for my own disease three years later, I’d venture a distinctive yes.

 After John came out of that one, he gained weight, moved from the ‘problem babies’ room to the ‘okay babies’ room, and I was quasi relieved enough to eat at home and make more milk. Fearfulness didn’t grasp me every moment, especially when those elevators opened on the sixth floor.

 But not so fast; apparently God wanted us to go through another round of agony and terror. Soon after John graduated to the ‘waiting to go home’ room from the ‘okay babies’ incubator room, he contracted a bowel infection; E.coli to be exact. I came into and surveyed the room where Eleanor was in a bassinet, and hoped John had been put in one too. Instead, I went to him and “looked at the baby” (the mantra in the NICU) finding immediately that something was wrong.

 He was breathing hard, had had several brady episodes where the heart stops, and didn’t look at all well. I found the nurse who had last attended him and wondered out loud why the high number of heart stops? He wasn’t sure why, but had started a blow by oxygen source because of the babies labored breathing. I was just choked up. I had to find a doctor right then, so I dashed into the main room. Fortunately, a group of doctors were  clustered in consult on another newborn, and it included my own neo-natal pediatrician. I rushed up knowing I was interrupting, but Dr. K. took one look at my face and got it. I still had to convince him though, that time was of the utmost importance. I did that as I dragged him by the sleeve to John. The others followed.

 They made me leave the room where John struggled…I was nearly dying inside when they told me to go wait in the Mom’s pumping room. I had showed Dr. K the grave condition he was in, minimally covering my anger at the way the nurse had left him with nary a concern! They rushed him back into the ‘problem babies’ room and began antibiotics while they cultured the bacteria devastating him. Indeed, now threatening his life. I called Jeremy immediately and told him to come and why.

 Later that night, unknown to me (I may have gone home or was wandering from the tension), John did nearly die. He  shut down and stopped breathing altogether. Dr. K was there still and called out, “Bag him!” to the nurses while poor Jeremy numbly watched. All the while, Eleanor, like many female infants, grew stronger. She was nearly ready to come home!

 What if I hadn’t sounded the alarm about my infant? It turned out that those several minutes, and the immediate administration of those prophylactic (preliminary) antibiotics, might have saved him.

 I pointed out to Jeremy later, the moldy wet facial tissue box perched on a table not five feet from John’s incubator. Besides the obvious mold, what other airborne microbes were imbedded there? Alarmed, we pointed it out to a nurse, but in retrospect we should have called in a supervisor and raised hell, maybe even threatened a lawsuit.

 The NICU experience was a sobering learning curve that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Overall, the staff was competent and hardworking and most of the doctors were excellent. While there in the NICU, Jeremy and I often talked about having that job, day in day out, with brain bleeds, transfusions, one pound babies with little skin, and a steady mortality rate. Many nurses can’t take it for more than a year or so, and I clearly understand why.

***

      To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

     White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

     Modern Memoirs writes andpreserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high qualitybooks, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.

 

Memoir Salon, Session 9

Welcome to Memoir Salon Session 9, which features the introduction and part of the first chapter of Swedenborg’s Daughter, Memoirs of a Mystic by Donna Wolfe Gatti, offering readers a gracious invitation and path into angelic realms.

Swedenborg’s Daughter is available for purchase at http://www.angelacademy.com and on amazon.com.

Short bio (from the author):

        Donna Wolfe Gatti is a medium, a spiritual counselor, the author of three books about angels, and the founder of Angel Academy, an online school for the study of spirituality in an atmosphere of unconditional love. To learn more about the angels, please visit www.angelacademy.com.

Short description (from the author):

       Swedenborg’s Daughter is the true story of a modern mystic. Gatti’s first mystical experience occurred in 1953, when she was four years old. Since then, she has had a near-death experience, a cosmic consciousness experience, and numerous visions, angelic visitations and out-of-body experiences. In her memoirs, Gatti describes the places she visited in the spiritual realm, such as the River of Life, the Green Healing Chamber, the Hall of Knowledge, and Spirit’s cinema, where she saw movies of her previous lifetimes. She explains the events leading up to each mystical experience, the story of how it came about, and the lessons learned after the event. Included in the book are new messages from angels and spirit guides, and readings from Gatti’s psychic counselors.

Testimonials forwarded by the author:

       “Writing simply and at times searingly, Donna Gatti shares a fascinating journey through pain and karmic suffering to spiritual understanding and wisdom. A treasure trove for students of spirituality and metaphysics.” ––Christine Duewel, LPC, NCC

      “Gatti is a humble guru with a powerful message of hope and love told through her extraordinary true-life experiences with angels and the Spirit world. I dare you to finish Swedenborg’s Daughter, Memoirs of a Mystic and remain skeptical, unmoved, or unenlightened.” —Candi Byrne, author of For the Record

Excerpt from Swedenborg’s Daughter, Memoirs of a Mystic by Donna Wolfe Gatti

Introduction

When I was around nine years old, I overheard my mother talking to a friend.

        “I don’t know how we got Donna. She doesn’t look like anyone in the family, and she doesn’t act like us either. I can’t figure her out. She just sits in her room reading books. You never know what’s on her mind.”

        I wasn’t hurt by Mother’s assessment of me and my behavior, but I wondered if something was wrong with me. My physical appearance seemed normal, but my eyes and ears were super sensitive. I could see angels and spirit beings, and converse with them through mental telepathy. Once, when I was four years old, a beautiful angel lifted me up — out of my body — and carried me to the spiritual realm, where a white-robed monk taught me a lesson about life, death and reincarnation.

       I was much happier in the spiritual realm than on Earth. To my way of thinking, home was Heaven and I was merely a guest in my parents’ house. They loved me and provided for my welfare, but I spent lonely hours staring out my bedroom window, silently asking the angel to come back and take me away. I often felt homesick and out of place, and these feelings continued to plague me, off and on, for many years. Then one day, when I was in my thirties, an angel whispered in my ear.

       “You are Swedenborg’s daughter,” she said.

       “I don’t understand.”

       The angel didn’t explain her message, but she repeated it a number of times. It seemed as if she wanted me to research Swedenborg, to think about him and his work, and come to my own conclusions. So I read about this extraordinary man and studied his writings.

       Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish inventor and scientist, died in 1772. At the age of 56, after experiencing a series of dreams and visions, he had a spiritual awakening in which he saw Jesus Christ and “heaven was opened” for him. So he resigned his post as assessor at the Royal College of Mines and became a philosopher, a Christian mystic and the author of 18 divinely inspired books.

       In Arcana Coelestia Swedenborg wrote, “I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels as long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all imagination, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections. But I am not deterred by all this, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt.”

       Swedenborg neither married nor claimed to have fathered an illegitimate child, so I doubt that I was his biological daughter in a previous lifetime. I’m not a scientist or an inventor, and I’ve never held an important position in a corporation. But I’ve had many mystical experiences and I feel a kinship with Swedenborg. We’re from the same tribe and we speak the same language. He’s my spiritual father.

       This book is a memoir of my mystical experiences. Each chapter highlights a particular kind of experience, the story of how it came about, and the lessons learned after the event.

       Scattered throughout these pages are quotations from angels, archangels, ascended masters, universal teachers, an ancient goddess, a former queen, an unidentified voice, several deceased human beings and a dolphin. Some of these quotes were given directly to me. The rest were extracted from channeled messages that were delivered to Mary, my spiritual counselor. In order to protect Mary’s privacy, I have omitted her full name.

       In 1988, while reading a book about enlightenment, I had the ultimate mystical experience. I pray the same thing will happen to you.

Chapter 1:  Earth School

        There are times when you feel there is too much to learn, but no, there is never too much. It is like the man who is hungry and comes to dine. The more he eats, the hungrier he becomes, the more that is provided. The table of knowledge is endless and you may take your fill. Your fulfillment brings us great rejoicing.  —Titus, Universal Messenger

       In September of 2000, the angels showed me the world from their higher and more enlightened point of view. For a brief moment, I could see humanity through the eyes of an angel. It was a humbling and yet comforting experience that would ultimately shape my philosophy of life.

       At the time, I was living in the Federal Hill district of Baltimore, Maryland. My home, like several other homes in that area, was originally a church. Built in the 1850s, it had outlasted an array of pastors and congregations. After a period of abandonment, a developer renovated the interior and turned it into condos. My unit, located on the uppermost floor, had a panoramic view of the shimmering Inner Harbor.

       During the five years I lived there, I saw many angels. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it was the building’s history as a church, its height, or the close proximity to water. Or perhaps the people who attended meetings in my home brought their angels with them. For whatever reason, that condo was a magical place.

       Real estate agents call Federal Hill “a walker’s paradise.” Indeed. Considering the traffic and limited parking spaces, it’s faster to walk than to drive. So, as a city dweller, I saved gas by hiking to the Cross Street Market, the post office and the library. One day, while I was out and about, running my errands, I felt drawn to a different part of town. At first, I resisted the pull. I thought: Why should I go up that street? It’s out of my way. I don’t have time to fool around.

       A familiar voice in my head answered, “We want to show you something.”

       I knew from the tone and intensity of the voice, plus the chill traveling up my spine and the feeling of goosebumps spreading all over my skin, the speaker was an angel.

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      To send an excerpt from your own memoir, go to:
https://publishmemoir.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/to-send-us-an-excerpt-from-your-memoir/

     White Poppy Press, The Sensible Way to Self-Publish provides complete editorial and book, e-book production services for self-publishing authors.

     Modern Memoirs, Inc. writes and preserves clients’ memoirs and family histories in high quality books, specializing in full-length as-told-to narratives.