Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mom’s Embroidery and Syrian Dynasty Dolls

Several years ago, I lay on my back, eyes covered, acupuncture needles protruding from exposed limbs, soft music lulling me into oblivion. Feet warmed by a heat lamp, I sank into the massage table.

“Make pillows out of them,” a voice said.

“What,” I responded before realizing it was The Voice in my head.

“Make pillows out of them.”

The last time The Voice spoke to me I was standing at Chicago’s Midway Airport. “Maybe you don’t want to fly to New Mexico,” it had whispered. Had I listened and flown to San Francisco instead of our vacation home in Angel Fire, maybe I wouldn’t have broken my leg the next day? Four years before that, also at Midway Airport, The Voice had spoken with urgency. “Rent a car. Drive to Peoria.” What for, I’d asked? Had I listened, I’d have made it in time for my Mother’s death.

The Voice first spoke to me in 2002 on Maui. Laid off, I attended a manifesting your vision retreat. What to do with my life, I pondered for two weeks? Single and forty, all I knew was I wanted to write my memoir. “Stay, don’t go back to California,” The Voice had said on my last day. Staying on Maui is another story.

Laying on the massage table curious, I contemplated, “make pillows out of them?” Then it dawned on me. The Voice was referring to my mother’s framed stitchery.

Los Angeles, California, circa ~1962

My mother, she was something. Self-educated and well read, she delighted in talking circles around her captives. She was equally as snotty about classical music—the only music allowed in our house growing up. I suppose I ought to thank her? Because of her, I can recognize Beethoven, Mozart, Bach or Mahler on the first or second note.

A part of me loved my mother dearly. She introduced me to things I might never have known. But she was an opinionated, silently angry woman. Her college career was dashed when she gave up her scholarship to work so the family could send her brother to Bradley University. He dropped out and joined the navy. When she was forty, she asked my dad if she could go to college. After she died, vulnerable and willing to talk about anything, Dad shared that telling her “no” was his biggest regret.

Mom had raged wildly after Dad said no while I was in high school. Slamming her bedroom door when she felt maligned, swinging Gallo Wine jugs in my face, screaming, “you’re turning me into an alcoholic.” Mom mellowed while I was in college, and after graduation we fell into writing letters and Sunday calls. Then when I was 36, I went home to share news. I’d done what she once told me would kill my father and her—found my birthmother. “I had a bad feeling about your visit,” she’d quipped as I finished telling my search story. We spoke about my birthmother, maybe twice.

Circa 1973, West Falen, Germany

I believe my mother both loved me and seethed over me. I did what she’d asked. Gone to college. But I didn’t fall into marriage and children. I left Chicago and moved to California. Later danced wild and free on Maui. As the Alzheimer’s ate away her memory, she lashed out at me. Mad at me for asking her to turn down NPR during a Christmas visit when I was forty-five, she hissed, “You’re a pouty spinster. No wonder you’ve never been married.” Another visit, “the reason you still look young, is because you never had children.” It’s taken years to understand her anger I imagine fueled by jealousy. To realize my life choices that she hadn’t liked were okay. These altercations, her sideways comments, made me thankful for her forgetfulness the last time I saw her in the Alzheimer’s home.

“Who are you?” she asked as I sat across from her in her bedroom.
“A friend,” I said without hesitation.

She cocked her head. I waited. “That’s nice,” she said and went back to kneading the skirt fabric she’d sewn and embroidered.

I smiled at my dad, and shrugged off his glare.

One day after Mom died, I walked out of my office into the kitchen stymied by the direction my search-for-my-birthmother memoir was taking me.

“What’s the matter,” my husband asked me.

“My mother wants to be in my memoir.”

“What makes you think you can write a story about your adoption and not include her?”

I stuffed my manuscript in my desk drawer. The words I’d written about her were angry. Where were the loving and happy memories?

After acupuncture, I raced home to the storage closet, and one by one pulled the framed stitchery from cubby holes. Behind streaked glass I saw intricate flowers, abstracts, birds, a girl with a hat, a woolly mammoth. My mother was a talented artist, an expert seamstress, a gifted embroiderer. Women in her stitchery guild marveled at her French knots, how she mingled fabrics, fibers and gold threads. For a time, I had hung her pieces upon walls in my apartments, but in the end, stored them in closets. Her tastes weren’t mine. After Dad died, I’d gathered more of her pieces and attempted pawning them off on cousins. No one wanted them.

In the storage closet, I grabbed a slot-head screw driver, dug it into frames to rip them apart, and pulled fabric stapled to cardboard away from glass. It took hours to remove the staples. The pile of needlework was dusty so I stored them in Ziploc bags, and made an appointment to visit my friend Aida at her atelier. I had purchased several of Aida’s “topper coats”—original designs made from European small-mill textiles, hand-embellished with French and Italian trims, and decorative buttons. If anyone could help me make pillows out of Mom’s stitchery, it was Aida.

Shopping for a Topper Coat at Aida Dalati Atelier

Aida’s atelier, located in the Allied Arts Center in Menlo Park, California, is a delightful space. One room with French doors that open out on to a wisteria covered patio.   Inside is a feast for the eyes—an array of colorful topper coats hang on two racks, some coats featured on Global Model Forms, two bookshelves stacked with ribbons, boxes of buttons, and a table with stacked rolls of brocade fabrics sometimes organized depending on the day. Aida, whose mother was American and father Syrian, grew up in Damascus. She tells her story in her memoir, Restoring Damascus: with watered down paint. I imagine her flare for mixing textiles, textures and colors stems from her upbringing in Syria.

Standing with Aida at her table choosing fabrics and embellishments for the pillows, I watched as my mother’s designs took on new life. And at the same time, something stirred inside of me. For four years since her death, I had searched my memory for nice thoughts, anything good about my mother. It was as if an eraser had wiped clean my mother’s slate, leaving only flakes of chalk that fell from my fingers whenever I tried to pick them up. My heart had grown heavy remembering only her soiled pink bath coat, mis-matched slippers, lipstick drawn around her lips before she went to the Alzheimer’s home, and how she and I had screamed at each other across the dining room table the last time she had an inkling I was her daughter.

“I don’t like you,” she hissed, flanked by my Dad and brother.

“I don’t like you either,” I snarled, pushing back my chair, grabbing my coat and suitcase, pulling out of the driveway in tears.

Going home in the back of my Subaru

How to explain the joy I felt when I returned to Aida’s weeks later to pick up my pillows. The textures. The ribbons. The buttons on reverse sides. Awestruck. Weepy. Aida and I imagined my mother was hanging there in the atelier with us. Admiring her work, and smiling at the fabrics Aida and I had chosen for her embroidery work. I’d like to say all the harsh memories of my mother’s decline faded into the past. But, I can’t. They’re still there waiting for nicer memories to surface and take their place. However, every time a gnarly one tries to highjack my consciousness, I remember the pillows. Each day I make my bed, I touch a pillow, and I think kindly about my mom and the legacy The Voice gave me by suggesting I make pillows out of her embroidery.

Epilogue: Last summer, I happened upon a needle point piece my mother had made of a church. I imagine this to be the first piece of stitchery she made back in the 60’s. With a trip scheduled to the Bay Area of California, I texted Aida.

“Hey, you remember me? You repurposed my mom’s embroidery into those gorgeous pillows?”

“I was thinking about your mom, just today. Look at my embroidery project @aidaandtulip on Instagram. I learned to do free style from your mother, and taught a bunch of women in New York.”

Me with several of my new dolls

Aida, along with her Syrian-born friend, Tulip, have teamed up to present their colorful, opulent Syrian heritage by designing a Syrian doll collection with the help of sister Syrian refugee guests across the USA. Contributions directly support Syrian women in America by providing an income, independence, and happiness. Check them out on Facebook—Aida and Tulip.

My mother, a history buff who believed Damascus to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, must certainly be proud.

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

The Ungenerous Reader Recommends Five Books

“How’s that book you’re reading,” I ask Ed, my husband.

Ed learned how to speed read in a one-room school, and is always reading a book.

“Ok.”

“It’s good?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Then why are you reading it,” I ask.

“I don’t know? ‘Cuz I bought it.”

“You’re a generous reader,” I say.

That’s me, Ana the Ungenerous Reader.

I say that a lot in my book club, in my writing group critiquing my fellow writers. If a story doesn’t grip me by the end of page one, at the very least by the end of the first chapter, it ends up on the bookshelf in the unread section waiting for library donation, or on the nightstand by my bed collecting dust. You know that pile? Maybe you’re reading your pile? I suppose I ought to use the library more. Borrow books and bring them back if they end up by the bed. But, I can’t. Because if I’m gripped on page one, or somewhere in chapter one, invariably I reach for a pen, underline or make a note in the margin, and dog-ear the page. I cherish my dog-eared books.

Dog-earing and making notes in margins is how I learn from other authors as a writer. I read for great dialog, descriptions and descriptor names, color name usage, you name it, I’m scouring the page. And more than that, I’m looking for myself in another author’s writing. Things I can relate to regardless of whether it’s a memoir or a novel. I think we all read for that.

It’s called reading for the universal.

The books I’m recommending today touched me in a myriad of ways. Two, (My Ántonia and Hourglass—Time, Memory, Marriage) I’ve read more than two or three times. I hope you enjoy these books, and that they touch you as well. Enjoy!

Fiction

Isabel Allende—Maya’s Notebook

What fascinated me about this book was how Isabel Allende got into the head of a nineteen-year-old. But why would I think for a moment that Allende couldn’t master that?

Maya, a grieving, rebellious character goes on quite a romp to find herself. I could barely put down this book that begins in San Francisco and ends on a remote island in Chile. Maya the protagonist is headstrong, audacious, and her grandmother and I just want to shake sense into her. But Maya has to find that sense on her own. This book is also a thrillera race from bad guys. You’ll be rooting for Mayabeginning to end.

 

Willa Cather—My Ántonia

For years, I have touted this book as my all-time favorite. It’s actually been years since I’ve read it, but this year I suggested it for my book club because of its centenary publication. As I began reading it againcover to coverit felt like a different book than I had read before. Probably because I was in high school the first time I read it. And a young adult when I read it a second time. As I read Jim Burton’s (the protagonist’s) descriptions of the Nebraska prairie, still waving in the wind when Cather wrote My Ántonia, it dawned on me why I find myself telling people that I love the Nebraska topography. Cather’s prairie descriptions must have seared themselves into my psyche. And as I continued to read on, meeting the independent women in her book who went on to have careers and not to marry, I wondered if these fictional womenwomen Cather must have known in real life, as she fictionalized people she knew—had somehow influenced my early life as a career woman, choosing not to marry until later in life. And lastly, I found it fascinating how the plight of and discrimination towards immigrants described by Cather hasn’t budged one iota since the time she wrote. My Ántonia, still my favorite, is a timeless book that should be taught in schools, and is meant to be read over and over again.

Ruth Ozeki–A Tale for the Time Being

OMG! I loved this book so much, I got lost in its reality. You’ll have to read it to figure out what I mean by that. Dog-eared, notes in so many margins, no time to count them. Several years ago, I saw Ozeki interviewed at Kepler’s in Menlo Park, California, and she discussed writing this book. Fascinating. Can’t remember everything she talked about. But, the writer character in the book is loosely based upon herself. But it is fiction. And the writer-protagonist finds a lunch box washed upon the beach of the island where she lives. It’s a story about searching—for things, people, and self. I could barely put this book down to live my own life. This book still haunts me, in a good way. I look forward to reading it again.

Memoir

Maria Bello—Love is Love, Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves

I stumbled upon this book because one of the chapters was published in the NYT Modern Love column. Perhaps you read it, or know Maria Bello as an actress? That’s how I first knew her. She now plays a psychologist on NCIS and I love her character as much as I love her book.

Infected by a parasite she contracted in Haiti, Maria falls ill, and while recuperating she reads through old journals that cause her to question herself. Those questions became this book. I suppose I began reading it because of the structure of the book. Each chapter, a question, is basically a stand-alone essay. But together the chapters braid a book of her life that I found fascinating. Many of Bello’s questions caused me to question myself. Of course, you can just read the book and enjoy it. Love is Love is funny, evocative, and a thoughtful read.

Dani Shapiro—Hourglass, Time, Memory, Marriage

If you know me, you know I love and have studied with author Dani Shapiro. I’m waiting with bated breath for her next memoir. Last summer, I woke one morning remembering she was in Minneapolis that night giving a reading for her recently-published memoir, Hourglass, at Mager & Quinn bookstore. A three-hour drive from Ames, I pondered for a minute. Two hundred and sixteen miles isn’t too far for me to drive to see Shapiro. I’ve read Hourglass two times now. What I love about this book is how Dani structured it. It’s a mosaic of stories about memory, love, life, and motherhood. If you are reading for a definitive thread, then maybe you won’t like it. But for me, my mind works that way, and so does yours if you think about it. Hourglass is a gem—a wonderfully insightful and tender read that reaches into the depths of what it is to be human.

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Postcard from the South | Number 4

A WRITERS’ TOUR OF THE SOUTH
Trip Highlights #2

A lot of Ed’s and my trip after we deposited the grandkid at Huntsville Space Camp was unplanned. Our one known destination was the battlefields at Vicksburg. As we lounged in our hotel room in Birmingham last week, plotting our route, I Googled “authors of Mississippi”. There are many. But two, Eudora Welty and William Faulkner were in the regions we intended to drive.

EUDORA WELTY
(b 1909 -d 2001)
Born and died in Jackson, Mississippi

Sadly the Eudora Welty House and Garden Museum was closed on Monday when we drove through Jackson, Mississippi. But we stopped anyway, and I posed on the front steps of Welty’s house.

Eudora Welty’s name, to me, seems to pop up everywhere. Yet, I’m sure I’ve not read her stories and books? A short story writer and novelist, Welty won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter (1972).

Eudora typing back in the day

Born in Jackson, Welty studied at Mississippi State University for Women, then transferred to the University of Wisconsin to further study English. Following graduation, she studied at Columbia where her father suggested she study advertising. Graduating in the depths of the Great Depression, no jobs in advertising were to be had in NYC. Welty returned to Jackson. (More can be found on Wikipedia.)

That speck is me on the steps of Eudora’s House

It was disappointing the Welty Museum was closed. Perhaps reading her memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings (1983), I might learn more about the influences in her life. I am fascinated by parents, fathers in particular, of that era (thinking of Willa Cather) who encouraged female higher education. I remark to Ed frequently that there are windows of time where women were schooled and encouraged to study subjects other than nursing and teaching. (A common complaint of mothers of my generation.) I’ve gotta list growing of these intriguing women.

WILLIAM FAULKNER
(b 1897 – d 1962)
Born in New Albany, Mississippi
Died in Oxford, Mississippi

Well, I hate to admit it. Faulkner would be abhorred. I’m pretty sure I’ve confused him for years with William Styron, who wrote Sophie’s Choice. Um… Both Williams. But I’m pretty sure I read The Sound and the Fury in high School. What a nincompoop I am. Especially when William Faulkner is internationally acclaimed as one of the greatest writers in the twentieth century.

Why admit it? ‘Cuz that’s what I do. And I’m glad to have been able to re-educate myself on our road-tour of the south.

From what I’m reading in my thin and compact William Faulkner biography by M. Thomas Inge, Faulkner was a bit of a pill, undaunted, and sly.

Undaunted and Sly: When Faulkner was rejected from the aviation branch of the United States Army Signal Corps, he put the “u” back in his name, affected a British accent, created a fictional persona of British clergyman for himself, and enlisted in Canada. He wanted to experience WWI combat like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and E. E. Cummings. During training, Faulkner is purported to have crashed two planes. War ended, he didn’t see combat. He returned home to Jackson and strutted around town with his swagger stick, resplendent in his officers uniform, earning himself the nickname of “Count.”

On the steps of Faulkner’s Rowan Oak Home

A Pill: I’m kinda gathering he had a haughty attitude as a slight and short-statured man. He left Old Miss (University of Mississippi) after a semester because he was disinterested. Went to NYC to work at Lord & Taylor Bookstore while he sought publication (He had a friend mentoring and promoting him), returned to Oxford and took employ at the Old Miss post office. He resigned after three years, but not before being scolded for neglecting to timely stamp and send mail, and the delay of sending magazine subscribers their magazines until he had read them.

Faulkner’s novels were made into movies, and he was prolific. And, in 1950 Faulkner won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature.

Visiting his home at Rowan Oak was a treat. Not only to see where he wrote, but how modestly he and his family lived, and to experience the serenity of his property. In Faulkner’s writing study in the back of his house (an addition which he built), Ed and I marveled at the timeline/plot points he penciled upon his walls. He learned to do this in Hollywood during the writing and making of his novels into movies.

One last comment. Something I’ve noticed about authors such as Cather, Welty, Faulkner. They all had mentors. Some (as in the collective some) were their life-long editors, others publishers, other their champions. When I get my book(s) published, I  pass this tradition forward.

Photo credits: photograph of Eudora Welty, first Published April 21, 1962; photograph of William Faulkner, © Library of Congress.

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Postcard from the South | Number 3

A WRITERS’ TOUR OF THE SOUTH
Trip Highlights #1

BOOKSTORES & COFFEE

As I sit waiting to fly back to Des Moines, my thoughts return to a couple of trip highlights—authors, bookstores, and coffee. This brief post features coffee and bookstores. (Check out Postcard from the South | Number 4 for Author Highlights.)

Highway 61 Coffee | Vicksburg, Mississippi

Vicksburg, Mississippi

If you visit Vicksburg, Mississippi be sure to visit Highway 61 Coffee located next to Lorelei Books. Both are outstanding. At Highway 61 Coffee, cappuccinos don’t require an extra shot. “Ausgezeichnet” for a Starbucks quad-shot Vente cappuccino kinda gal.

Lorelei Books | Vicksburg, Mississippi

And, Lorelei Books. Wow! What a delight. According to the manager, Haley Sellers, who let me pick her brain about how to own, operate, and make a success of an indie bookstore,  the owner and she tailor selections for travelers. Their local readership knows books not on bookshelves can be ordered. Some of the genres Lorelei Books carries for travelers are local and regional history, and new memoir. For locals, Lorelei Books hosts author events and Storytime for kids on Saturdays. I love their bookstore tagline on their website:

“Luring Booklovers to Lore. Books of paper and ink sold in a brick-and-mortar bookstore by human beings. Come enjoy real life with us.”

Oxford, Mississippi

In Oxford, Mississippi, I’d mention Uptown Coffee just off the square, but their cappuccino scalded my tongue and throat badly, and the guy sporting a cap and convict-worthy-body tats told me when I asked for another, “just let it cool off.” He was obviously too young to remember the McDonald’s lawsuit.

Square Books | Oxford, Mississippi

Whereas the bookstore on the square, Square Books, is über-worthy of mention. Man, what a selection of Mississippi writers they have. Picked up a slim and compact biography on Faulkner written by M. Thomas Inge.

Bookshelf inside Square Books

It’s an awesome thing when you stumble upon communities supporting bookstores with coffee and espresso shops worthy of mention.

Snapshot of book logo up top, snapped from the side of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Along the Loess Hills Scenic Byway

Leaving Omaha today, I chose to take the scenic route home to Ames. So, I headed north up I-29 to Mondamin, and turned off to hook up with Hwy 183 to 141, which took me on the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway. Then on to Dennison where I met up with Hwy 30, the Lincoln Highway. The intent: to see prairie and rolling hills, and to drive through Jefferson where I’ll join RAGBRAI for the first of my a two-day ride at the end of July.

Not versed in geological history of the region, I can say before heading into the Loess Hills, I saw Iowa farm land as flat as a pancake. I image if I’d had a level, the bubble-blob would have rested smack dab in the middle. And in the hills over looking that same flat valley, a path trailed off atop looking akin to the range along Skyline Drive above Palo Alto, California where I used to live.

And heading into Dennison, and eastward towards home, I noticed what appears to me farmland rimmed in prairie grasses. I’d heard rumors farmers were doing this, as the root systems of prairie grass cleanses nitrogen runoff. Wizzing by switchgrass and other grasses whose names are not known to me yet, hope gurgled up inside me.

Of course I had to eat. On recommendation I dined on the five-dollar Monday special at Cronks in Dennison (three fried chicken legs, fries, coleslaw, biscuit and a cookie (I didn’t eat the biscuit nor cookie hoping for ice cream down the road.), and delighted in a peanut butter fudge waffle cone at an ice cream spot off the cute historic square in Jefferson.

What struck me most today was the expanse of land, a sea of waving green.

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Country Seemed to be Running

Today, my long-time chum, Mary and I took a a break from the annual Willa Cather conference in Red Cloud, NE celebrating the centenary publication of My Antonia, and headed due south on US-281. A pilgrimage of sorts to stand on the Geographical Center of the 48 contiguous states, a mile north of Lebanon, KS.

With pilgrimages, one might hope for an epiphany, perhaps. I hoped for nothing driving 19.1 miles with Mary to stand at the contiguous center. What I did encounter from our quick journey was wind, fields of waving wheat trimmed at roads’ edge with switchgrass.

Willa Cather in My Antonia writes of wine-red prairie grass waving in wind, pioneer women went stark raving mad from the wind, I am fascinated by and love wind.

As I stood in the dry 95-degree heat, mesmerized by the rolling waves of green, I didn’t care about the contiguous center, I cared about wading in Cather’s words:

“As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.” ~Jim Burton, My Antonia

And yes, gazing out upon the waving wheat, the country did indeed appear to be running.

 

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Mexico Nature Photo Essay

Elk on the lawn in New Mexico

Elk on the lawn in the New Mexico dawn.

Any early morning trip, leaving New Mexico for Iowa. The elk are up and busy being majestic, while the sky over Taos threatened retribution from forgotten gods of old. Take care, intrepid traveler.

taos sky at dawn

Fierce morning sky over Taos

Sky over Taos, NM, threatening-looking clouds

Taos sky, more fierce dawn clouds

Threatening clouds in the Taos morning sky

Threatening Taos sky

 

 

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Skunk River Photo Essay

Today, Avy and I walked three miles along the Skunk River Water Trail, which I learned stretches for thirty-two miles from Story City to south of Huxley. (Map, next-to-last pic.)

Avy and I set off from a parking lot down the road from the historic site of Soper’s Mill.

The terrain similar to my walk last week, I wondered what I’d photograph.

And then, we discovered a dilapidated bridge stretching over the Skunk. And of course, there were a few other photo ops along the way. (more…)

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Lone Hiker, Blessed Day Photo Essay

On our walk today, Avy and I encountered a lone hiker in the forest.
“Hello. How are you?” I asked
“Oh what a blessing to have this day,” she said, passing.

What else is there to say?

(more…)

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ames Woods Photo Essay

Today Miss Avy and I went on a hike in a wooded area in Ames. I’m loathe to say where as we encountered only a mom and her son, who delighted in petting Avy’s nose.

Avy’s good with little kids.

The only noises we heard were the occasional bird chirps and chipmunks clicking. What a marvel the woods were. Leaves mostly fallen, moist, ready to wither and mingle with the rich dark soil.

Ahhh. Did me good to walk behind Miss Avy as she sniffed her way ahead of me.

(more…)

Posted in Blogs, Uncategorized | 2 Comments