Don't Go

To A High School Senior by Pat Schneider

Don't go. Don't stay.
Daughter. Morning after afternoon
the last year slips away.

Singing all the old songs, you will go
(ambivalence of moon, certainty of sun)
we know

only half of what we are.
The earth is earth to us, star
perhaps

if apprehended far enough away.
Daughter – don't go.
Don't stay.

How many parents of high school senior daughters have I talked to, encouraged, commiserated with when it was time for their daughters to move away, to start that new chapter of their lives, to soar with the rooted wings? Without ever having had the dilemma of saying "Don't go. Don't stay," my words should have rung false for all of them. When I said, "Don't go. Please stay. You must stay. You can't go" to my daughter, it was a fruitless plea. I do understand on some levels the dilemma Pat Schneider lays out in the poem. Oh, yes. But I have wished now for 13 years to be able to voice that dilemma, so simple, so transitional, so cusp-like. I just never got to the cusp. A car crash wiped out the choice, and replaced it with a soul-wrenching lament instead.

Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry?

Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry: Stories by Elizabeth McCracken

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The characters were so well drawn that I didn't notice so much when the plot lagged a little in some of the stories. My favorite was "Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry" with the "aunt's" connections.


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Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I hardly have words to describe how Immaculee Ilibagiza's story of her survival during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 affects me. I thought of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Eli Wiesel's Night, and a recent read: What is the What? by Dave Eggers. In its simple and direct way, the story's horrors seemed magnified. The light and faith and hope within this young woman shines through. When Immaculee says, "Forgiveness is all I have to offer," she is not being sanctimonious.


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The Last American Man

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
In the Epilogue, Gilbert says "The history of Eustace Conway is the history of man's progress on the North American continent," and she has done her homework charting the path of the American male hero from Natty Bumppo to Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett to show parallels in Eustace Conway's life. She makes Eustace both hero and human, showing his enormous vision and passion for restoring us to a more natural lifestyle and also showing his failings in some human interactions. Gilbert's style is conversational--she becomes and is part of the story, not just as a reporter but as a friend of Eustace and of his family members. I'm still a little uncertain about her being so personally involved in the story, but I suppose that may be because my own frame of reference does not usually prefer "gonzo journalism." Still, there is so much to like about the book: Gilbert's writing is engaging and Eustace Conway is larger than life, warts and all.


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Photo book layouts

I enjoy making photo books. I've used iPhoto templates and blurb.com templates. I've also used lulu.com to make family calendars. Lulu was less expensive, and they offer more variety in sizes and types of books, but you must create the book online instead of downloading free software as blurb offers. For iPhoto, everything's already on the computer (as part of the iPhoto/iLife program) and you can print pages (or calendars) on your own printer if you choose to. Lulu and blurb don't allow this. The proof PDF for blurb has a watermark on each page.

I linked to this page from one of the Peachpit Press writers because I wanted to look at the examples in more detail before starting the next book project: stories about my daughter.

Also blurb has a photo book contest that I'm interested in trying: http://pbn.blurb.com/.

Goodreads Link

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Elizabeth McCracken's memoir about her pregnancy, the baby who was stillborn, and the pregnancy that followed is a memoir that is a gift to all of us, whether we have experienced the loss of a child or whether we have wanted to comfort someone close whose child has died. It's true that "That's how it works. When a baby dies, other dead children become suddenly visible: Daughters and sons. . ."(136).I remember walking to the graves of my father's three siblings who died at birth or very young on one of the days soon after my own daughter died. How had I never noticed these losses before? An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination is a beautifully written book, one I feel honored to have read.


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National Punctuation Day

Just to follow up the Unnecessary Quotation Marks link in the last post, here's National Punctuation Day. Click on the title to view the link.

Unnecessary quotation marks

I am no longer surprised at the entries on the blog reached by clicking on the title to this post. Quotation marks are second only to apostrophes for misuse and misunderstanding. And what about commas?

Ginkgo Gift

I am a lover of ginkgo trees and the beautiful fan-shaped leaves, the idea that a prehistoric plant can survive through chance and great change and a few monks' cultivation, that a small Moravian man who brought back plants from a trip overseas could plant one in the middle of God's acre--all of this is amazing. That a friend could bring a basket of newly collected golden ginkgo leaves to my room and hand them to me wordlessly as I was in the midst of the most horrible time in my life is a gift I will never forget. Nemerov's poem is one I want to savor and comment on:

The Consent

Late in November, on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone: the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?
What in those wooden motives so decided
To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,
Rebellion or surrender? and if this
Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?
What use to learn the lessons taught by time,
If a star at any time may tell us: Now.
poem by Howard Nemerov
from "The Western Approaches" , 1975

Starting a discussion of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Every time I read this book, I find a new part of myself. My favorite English teacher offered it to me to read when it was newly published--and because my name was also Harper, I was sure it would speak to me personally. It did, but on many more levels than just the coincidence of name. I have lost count of how many times I have read it or taught it now.


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January's surprises

Januaries have often held deep surprises for me. For example, the one 34 years ago when I had just begun my first maternity leave from teaching comes to mind. I remember eating tangerine after tangerine—I think I ate a dozen in one day—and watching early Saturday Night Live shows as I waited for my life to change irrevocably and completely with the birth of our first child. My husband and I went to the hospital on January 26, only to be sent home because the labor wasn't "productive." For two days, I measured the space between contractions and reviewed my readiness for great change as Janus must have done as he looked both back and forward. We returned to the hospital on January 28, and Matt was born shortly after midnight on January 29. Now he and his wife have three daughters who are 6, 4, and 2.

The surprise I am thinking of wasn't that babies change everything. The surprise is the depth of those changes and the intertwined threads that tangle and weave and web themselves into a heart. Who would I be if I had not been a mother first?