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I realize that I had the advantage of being at Penn State when there was some awesome football going on — Franco Harris, Lydell Mitchell, John Cappalletti. For part of that time I worked at the Kentucky Fried Chicken just down the street from Beaver Stadium and on game days we were run ragged supplying buckets—nay, barrels—of chicken for the throngs of fans. I never dated any of the players but I remember seeing Franco Harris around campus, he was hard to miss, and having a massive crush on him. Naturally, I’ve been thinking about all this in preparation for tomorrow night. Steelers-Super Bowl. Just seems to go together doesn’t it?
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Anyway, the memories brought back a frozen, snowy, terrible night and I for some reason was stuck on I-80 headed back home, probably for Christmas. I just remember that I had the radio on, listening to the Steelers-Raiders game when the most amazing play happened. The crazy thing was all these cars battling the snow on I-80 must have been tuned in too because all up and down the freeway horns started blowing. People were actually pulling over and getting out of their cars and hugging one another. Lights were flashing and it was total pandemonium. All because of this:

Unbelievable. Franco did it and all the freaking snow on earth didn’t matter.

So tomorrow night I’ll be thinking of that night and the past Super Bowl wins.

Way to go, guys!

P.S. May I add that I LOVE this YouTube tribute to Troy Polamalu. I’m looking forward to the Coke commercial…. though it’ll be hard to come up to Mean Joe’s performance.

Thanks for reading.

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Even when you think you are doing pretty well coping with the loss of someone dear you can get blind-sided by things that don’t seem to make a lot of sense. This week has been difficult and I have been inordinately crabby for no — seemingly — apparent reason. The weather has been brutally cold and we’ve had alternating snow, sleet, and just enough warmth to melt the ice before freezing it again. All of which means it is treacherous out there. Business has been a mixed bag, some good things but too many things to worry about despite that. At least I can stand to listen when the President is scheduled to speak, something that is refreshing after 8 years. So why am I sad and plagued with this nagging sense that something is wrong?

And then I remember…. the birthday.

I’ve never been particularly interested in birthdays, my own or anyone else’s. I forget to send cards. In fact I almost never remember birthdays of people I have been close to for years. Other than my immediate family I am lucky if I remember what month a birthday takes place in. But, nonetheless, this week has been difficult and, when I looked at the calendar yesterday, I remembered why.

A couple years ago we were in Halibut Point on his birthday. It was a bitterly cold night, much like the weather this year. I had made him a batch of cookies to honor the day and he was being rather adorably bashful about that. He kept telling me to forget about his birthday, that he wanted to forget it and I should help him out by forgetting it too. But then he would say things that sounded suspiciously like little reminders: “I’m an Aquarius,” he would say, “do you think that’s why I became a fisherman?” I don’t know, I’d tell him. Maybe you became a fisherman because you’re too contrary to do anything else. He’d laugh.

So anyway, we were in Halibut Point and I bought him a drink to celebrate his birthday. “Don’t do that,” he said. He didn’t like it when I bought him drinks. He could be hopelessly old-fashioned about some things. But I bought him a drink and we talked about what a strange and unimaginable thing it was that we had managed to live past fifty. Neither of us could quite believe that fifty had come and gone and we were still here… Though one of us not for long.

It’s just life, you know. Part of the deal when you are born is that one day you will die — and so will everyone else. My birthday is the same day as my grandmother’s and though she has been dead for over forty years I still think of her on my birthdays… I don’t know what I am talking about. Birthday — day of our birth, the day we come in to the world and accept the inevitability of our death. Funny how that works, isn’t it? The cloud that surrounds the silver lining.

I’ve learned something in the last few months since he is gone. You always know that death is final, at least intellectually you know that, but it is only when someone who was an everyday part of your life is gone forever that you gradually realize how final final is. You keep looking for new pictures of him that you haven’t seen before or forgot about. You look at the photos and study little details and wonder about the oddest things: why did he wear that shirt that day? Why did I never notice that scar on his hand before? You run in to someone who knew him and find yourself hoping they will talk about him, tell you something that you didn’t know. Twice he was interviewed on a locally produced book discussion program on cable TV. I keep meaning to go up there and buy the DVDs of those two programs but then I put it off. If I have them in the house I won’t be able to resist watching them and I don’t know if I can stand that.

You hope that things will change with time. You hope that next year it won’t feel this way… And yet, and yet you don’t want to forget just how difficult missing him is.

Thanks for reading.

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Anyone who does not want to learn entrelac but would like to come and knit is invited to bring their projects. Some refreshments will be available and you are invited to bring a treat to share. For more information contact the library or Leslie Wind at 978-546-6539 or Kathleen Valentine at 978-282-1518.

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Several years ago my sister Chris and her two daughters, Tasha and Alicia, spent some time with me here in Gloucester. Chris married an African-American man and her two girls are biracial. One day Alicia, who was 6 at the time, and I walked to the library so she could attend Story Hour. I left her at the Children’s Library and went upstairs to read and wait. When I went down to get her I noticed a bunch of children playing together but Alicia was sitting alone in a corner reading a book. I didn’t ask but I knew what happened.

We checked out the books she wanted and started the walk home. As we were walking Alicia said something that broke my heart. She said, “Auntie, if you don’t like the color of your skin is there anything you can do about it?” It was all I could do not to cry. I told her I thought she was a beautiful color and I wouldn’t want her to look any other way but, of course, I knew those words weren’t much comfort to her.

Later we were in Yankee Candle and I saw her holding a candle near her arm. I asked her what she was doing and she said, “This candle is the same color as me.” It was Sandalwood and after that I called her My Little Sandalwood Girl.

Today as I watched the Inauguration in Washington I kept thinking about Alicia. Our new President is about the same shade as Alicia was then — Sandalwood. And I kept looking at those two beautiful little girls of his and thinking how much I hoped that they and all the other children who share their skin color would never have to ask if there was anything they could do about that.

Every time I listen to Barack Obama I start crying — not because he is such a fine speaker (though he is) but because he represents something that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. I hope he will be a good president — I know he will try. He has an uphill climb all the way and I don’t envy him the task but he is President and that alone speaks to something very significant: our country has matured. He didn’t talk very much about race in his speech but he didn’t have to. He was standing there as the 44^th President of the United States and that’s all that mattered.

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama writes a very powerful chapter on Race. He begins with attending the funeral of Rosa Parks and he says, “to think clearly about race requires us to see the world on a split screen — to maintain in our sights the kind of America that we want while looking squarely at the America that is”. And he goes on to say that “…the feeling that as a group we have no store of goodwill in America’s accounts, that as individuals we must prove ourselves anew each day, that we will rarely get the benefit of the doubt and will have little margin for error. Making a way through such a world requires the black child to fight off the hesitation that she may feel when she stands at the threshold of a mostly white classroom on the first day of school….most of all, it requires fighting off the temptation to stop making the effort.”

He goes on to talk about the challenges and ends by saying that he believes America is big enough to accommodate the dreams of all people.

The truth is our country has changed dramatically in the past eight years and that is sad. In some ways I suppose it is the mess of the last eight years that made it possible for us to elect the new President that we did. In some ways it seems bitterly ironic that it took such disasters as we are in now to get us scared enough to overcome our prejudices and fears and elect a man who is inheriting a God-awful mess. But here we are.

I think all of us—black, white, red, yellow… sandalwood— are going to have to fight off the temptation to stop making the effort to make life better. We have to do it for ourselves and for each other. Our country can no longer support divisiveness — we don’t have that luxury. We either work together or we fail. Those people who seem to thrive on stirring up enmity had better wise up. Those who indulge in prejudice, bigotry, and Rovian smear-tactics are the enemy now.

Alicia lives in Ireland now. I don’t know if that has been better for her or not but one thing I do know is that she can look at the girls who now live in the White House and feel some comfort. But most of all I hope that it won’t be long until it would never even occur to little sandalwood girls that they were anything other than beautiful.

Postscript: My sister Chris emailed to tell me that Tasha, her older daughter, was present at the Inauguration yesterday. She said she was absolutely thrilled beyond words.

Thanks for reading.

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I have been involved in an email correspondence with a friend who is a wonderful writer and who has also suffered a hard loss in the past year. She is getting back to writing and we have been talking about writing and the role it plays in our lives. Sometimes it is the best thing in our worlds and sometimes the worst.

I recently began re-reading John Gardner’s On Becoming A Novelist and, as happened when I read it before, it explains a lot about myself to me. Thank heavens somebody can. One thing I often wonder about is why I have so little patience with people who are always making puns and jokes based on words. You would think that someone who deals in words on a daily basis would enjoy word play but I don’t and, in fact, usually find it annoying. Gardner made a similar observation about himself and noted that, while word play may be clever, witty, and amusing, it is also superficial and novelists — more than other writers — have difficulty dealing with the superficial. We are accustomed to delving deep and when a conversation (or whatever) is interrupted by superficial witticisms, it aggravates us. Well. I certainly can relate to that. It is not my favorite aspect of myself but I appreciate knowing the reason for it.

Yesterday I went out for coffee with a good friend who spent her career as a psychotherapist working with abused women. Since I am beginning work on a third novel and since one of the main characters in that novel is traumatized by childhood abuse I wanted to get her perspective on the progression of my character’s character. It turned out to be an exceptionally interesting conversation and gave me a few ideas and perspectives I lacked before. For me that is one of the best parts of being a novelist — it gives me permission to delve deeply into somewhat unusual fascinations. I’ve long said that every time I start to work on a book it requires a hundred books to write it. With The Old Mermaid’s Tale I read books on shipwrecks and folklore and Brittany and oral tradition and Great Lakes weather patterns and music theory. It was fascinating. Then for Each Angel Burns it was sculpture and theology and mysticism and angels and serial killers and wildflowers and Amish culture. Now I seem to be collecting books about art and voodoo and parapsychology and abuse…. well, who knows where this will go?

I ordered a bunch of books from Amazon today. I am convinced that authors are also the primary purchasers of books but I have no problem with that. I believe in supporting other authors where I can. I am looking forward to long, dark evenings under my down comforter with hot tea and books and ideas that will, I hope, distill into something. A novel.

Even though I have been a fan of novels all my life it has only been in the last few years that I have truly come to appreciate what a novel is. As a fellow writer always says, “A novel tells the truth unencumbered by the facts.” I think that is brilliant and so true. Non-fiction works only deal with the specific situation or subject the book is about but novels are deeper and more far-reaching and truer in a universal sense than a non-fiction book can ever be.

Gardner says that novelists are strange and mysterious creatures. They are often humorless, wounded and odd. If they were not, they would probably not be inclined toward the long, painstaking, deep process of writing a novel. Maybe that is also why so many novelists look forward to the deep, dark, cold winter months when there is nothing to distract them from the page and all the ideas that fuel it. Right now I have friends who are writing memoire’s, plays, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction. All ofthem will complain about winter if you give them half a chance. But the novelists, the novelists are different. We are peculiar people and we know it and this time of year suits us.

So I have a lot of work ahead of me. I want to wrap up the knitting book and get it off to press, get the e-press up and running so I can forget about it and finish the final edits on Each Angel Burns. Another set of characters are beginning to find their way through the mist and I want to spend time with them in the dark silence of winter. That’s when I hear their voices most clearly.

Thanks for reading.

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