Things I learned as a Child

Don't talk.

Don't feel.

Don't cry.

Don't express.

Push it down.

Bottle it up.

Let it eat you alive, but don't talk about it.

Don't think you're important.

Don't think anyone cares.

Don't ask questions.

Don't dredge up the past.

Don't cause trouble.

Don't talk back.

Just don't.

We love you.

Saturday night outside a local dive

It's Saturday night. I have two parties to attend and I'm wearing that rare kind of red dress that makes me feel sexy. An old colleague I've missed is in town. It's a good night.

I meet up with work friends at the second party – a medieval murder mystery affair. That's what the red dress is for. I'm the saucy chambermaid.

When the mystery is solved and the party is done, some of us decide to go sing karaoke at a Chinese restaurant that has a lounge in the back. We meet outside and we're chattering pleasantly. Talk so small I can't remember it.

We walk toward the door and we notice a couple about half a block away. They're stumbling, hanging on each other. Drunken lovers.

The guy shoves the girl to the ground. She gets up and runs away. One of my friends runs after them brandishing a plastic sword. I fumble in my purse for my cell phone, but another friend finds hers first and is talking to 9-1-1 before I can get mine out.

We run after them, partly because we're afraid of what our friend with the sword will do. He's been drinking and I worry he's acting out of an alcohol-inspired bravado. But we're also trying to give information to the police – tell them what the couple look like, what they're doing, where they're going.

We follow them around a corner. A police car rushes by us, but goes past the couple, who are now walking back toward us. The guy has his arm wrapped around the girl. She looks conciliatory.

Our sword-wielding friend reaches us first. He says the girl said she's okay, but what we saw wasn't okay. We look at each other, all thinking the same question but no one saying it out loud. Should we just leave?

But the guy breaks away from the girl and shouts at her, accuses her of throwing a beer bottle at him. She lifts her finger to her lips, trying to shush him. She's seen the police car drive by.

But the guy lifts the girl up and throws her against the ground, like something you'd see on one of those wrestling shows on television.

My friend is still on the phone with the police and starts begging them to hurry. The girl gets up and the guy leads her away, around another corner.

I start walking faster. The cop pulls up beside us and we point, saying, “It's them.” He whips around the corner and stops them.

We stop at the corner and mill around, waiting to see what happens. I can already tell from the girl's body language with the police – she's tossing her head and laughing – what story she's weaving. No, he didn't do anything. Nothing happened. He didn't hurt me.

She's done this before.

And I'm waiting, watching the police, wanting them to lead him to the patrol car, but knowing they won't.

I edge closer and fish in my bag for my business card, the one that says I'm a reporter. I think maybe this will give me some credibility when I say, “I saw him do it.”

And the cop finishes talking to the girl, and she and the guy walk away. The cop walks toward us and I ask, “Did she say nothing happened?”

“Of course she did.”

“I saw him throw her down twice,” and I hand him my card.

He jogs back around the corner. When he comes back, he shrugs, explains the girl was drinking and both the girl and the guy say they were just playing around.

“That's not what I saw,” I insist.

But he shrugs again, says there's nothing he can do, even with four witnesses. He says something about my “perception of an assault,” like I didn't see what I saw. Like what I saw wasn't abuse, wasn't a crime.

And his face isn't the face of someone who can't take action. It's the face of someone who doesn't want to take action.

“But thanks for calling,” he says.

The sense of futility strikes me so hard I blink back tears.

I'll tell myself tonight that I did what I could, that it's beyond my control, that it was brave of me not to walk away, to give the police my name and insist what I saw was a crime. And maybe that will let me sleep tonight.

A sampling of poetry

Time is a slow physician.
I never believed its healing power
Until I tried to write an angry poem
And found my anger had left me.
I tried to dive to the depths of despair,
but I landed in the shallows.
And as I stood with firmly planted feet,
a song rose up.
A song of beauty and of joy.
A song of strength and of peace.
A strand of dulcet tones spiraling to the heavens.
As my ears delighted, I wondered,
What creature could create such a melody?
What voice could ring so true and clear?
With a wisdom brought by slow-healed pain, I realized
I am the singer.

-- April 2007


Poetry is a cruel bitch
She demands to be written longhand
In bed
At 2 a.m.

-- April 2007

Because poetry can heal the soul

I bought a book recently -- a dusty collection of the poems of W.H. Auden tucked away on a clearance used book rack -- simply because of the inscription.

For Heather,
Because poetry can heal the soul.
Love, Jason

I may never read the book itself, as I find I don't much care for Auden's brand of rhyming poetry. But it was worth the $2.99 I paid to have something I can carry to remind me that, yes, poetry can heal the soul. I don't know who Jason was or why his gift was discarded, but whoever he is, wherever he is, I love him for writing that simple statement, six compact words conveying all the truth and beauty that I, a stranger, needed in a moment of darkness.

I've been experiencing one of those long, cold winters of the soul, heartache blocking the sun like a steady gray sleet. But like the first desert wildflowers pushing their way to renewed life along my favorite hiking route, I am emerging to feel the warm spring air. My mind is in tenuous bloom, with petals of essays, poems and stories unfolding from long-dormant shoots. They're still fragile and will require tender care to reach full blossom. They could easily be trampled by rough, careless feet, or driven back into sleep by a sudden snap of cold. But in this moment, it feels impossibly good to have petals stretching their way into the sun, to have creativity healing the soul.

Snow Day

Today is the kind of day to stay inside, curled up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a blanket. It's December 9, the day after my 34^th birthday, and snow is falling in the Tri-Cities. It's wet, sticking snow – the kind that's good for making snowmen, snow forts or snow angels. I looked outside a few minutes ago and there was a boy, probably about 10, with a snowball in his fist, arm wound back like a pitcher, and a look of delightful expectation on his face. I imagine it was his first snowball fight of the year.

Rather than stay inside, I felt inspired to drive to Columbia Park and take a walk along the river. The park was deserted, and the snowfall so thick I could barely see the water. But it felt good to walk, to be alone, to be cold, to have snow on my face and in my hair. It was a time of simple, natural bliss – the kind that's been missing from my life for the last several months – a time of communing with the sublime, of reawakening the Romantic in my soul.

There was a time in college when I was captivated by the Romantic poets, Wordsworth chief among them. Their words inspired in me something buoyant and alive. I could walk across campus and not just see, but feel the beauty in every leaf, every flower, every stone. I could feel it on every breath of wind. I would walk with my face to the sun, soaking in the expanse of the world and feeling confident about my place in it.

As I grew older, my enjoyment for simple beauties was displaced by the stress of living an adult life – work, balancing my checkbook, paying the car insurance, grocery shopping, vacuuming, working out, trying to get enough sleep, heartbreak. These things have filled every crack and cranny of my life, demanding attention and importance, until there was no room left for anything else.

I'm trying to do a better job of finding the hidden spaces in my life where things like a love of Wordsworth still lurk, and the hidden hours that I can spend walking in the snow.

What's in a moment?

I've spent the last few weeks immersed in the world of Mileva Einstein Maric, the first wife of Albert Einstein. To be more specific, I've been reading Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl by Michele Zackheim. The book chronicles the author's efforts to solve the mystery of Mileva and Albert Einstein's daughter, born before their marriage and so considered illegitimate. The little girl disappears from the record when only a year old, and no one knows whether she died, was adopted, or merely hidden because of the shame her existence brought upon her family.

The book is largely speculative and one-sided. I'll have to pick up a more objective biography of Albert Einstein at some point to get a better picture of him, I think. But I'm haunted nonetheless by the crushing sadness of Mileva's life as portrayed by Zackheim.

Mileva starts with such promise -- likely could have been a great mathematician or scientist in her own right -- until she succumbs to love for her genius, and Albert becomes her world to the extent she fails her university exams and ultimately gives up her first-born child as a condition of her marriage to the man she adores. Even though their marriage may have legitimized little Lieserl, Albert apparently feared the child's existence would jeopardize his chances at gainful employment as a patent clerk in Switzerland. Mileva finds happiness with Albert for a time, but he eventually grows weary of her obsessive love and dissatisfied with her age and leaves her for another woman.

Mileva looks deeply sad in nearly all of the photographs reprinted in the book. In addition to the loss of her great love, Albert, and the loss of her daughter, Lieserl, she had to contend with another child, Eduard, who descended into severe mental illness and had to be institutionalized. The expense of Eduard's care drove Mileva into poverty. Albert shared with her his Nobel Prize money and some real estate holdings, but it wasn't enough.

I keep thinking about why Mileva's story resonates so strongly with me. I know the feeling of obsessive love for someone else, of becoming subservient to that love to the exclusion of self. I wonder what Mileva could have been if she'd been less desperate for Albert's affection and had more equality in their relationship. I wonder what Lieserl could have been if she'd been raised by her parents. Would she have grown to greatness? Would her parents have been more willing to claim her as their own if she'd been a son instead of a daughter?

Mileva had moments of happiness with her Albert. Perhaps that's all happiness is. Moments. Flashes. Impressions. A glance across a cafe. The intimacy of sharing a bite of cake from the same fork. Those instances when it seems finally that everything is aligned in your favor, when a touch is warm and conversation flows like wine. But the question, the unanswerable question, remains. Are those bright, fleeting moments enough to fill a life? If not, how do we survive in the void that remains?