Losing vs Letting Go

Two days ago, I finished Caroline Moorehead's A Train in Winter, the story of French women sent to German concentration camps, women who worked to undermine German occupation in their country. Not everything that happened to them came at the hands of Germans. Many were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and died because of French collaborators, people along with German orders to keep their families safe. while others were rewarded for their actions.

I have read many books on WWII. I have heard talks given by concentration camp survivors. This book was different. I had to put this book down more than once, walk away. I dreamt of being held against my will. These are stories of loss and suffering beyond anything I have read about before.

I have spent much time healing from my own losses. They are many, but they are nothing compared with what these women experienced. The few who returned home mourned executed husbands, bombed homes, children who grew up in their absence. And the French people were slow to recognize the role they played in the suffering by the women, fellow French citizens. Who should be punished? What measures should be taken to hold them accountable?

Many women never could reacclimate to a life after after Auschswitz and Ravenbruck, in part because the return home took away the very thing that allowed them to survive: their reliance on each other. In the camps, when one women's meager food rations were withheld, the others all chipped in pieces of bread, often summing up to more food than she could eat. Women who worked as secretaires for the SS risked their own lives to find safe jobs for others. They hid sick women from the guards. Over and over they commited acts to guarantee survival, not necessarily their own but someone, anyone. It was the only way to keep themselves alive.

About Christmas 1943, Moorehead writes:

"Food, saved from parcels from France and vegetables pilfered from the gardens were made into

a feast of beans and cabbage, potatoes with onion sauce and poppy seeds. The women ate

little, having lost the habit of food, but the sight of so much to eat made them cheerful."

I copied this passage into my journal. I was so struck by the vision of starving women, deprived of food, that the mere sight of it was enough to sustain them.

Some children of women who did not survive refused to believe that their mothers were not coming home. Moorehead reports one child who went to the train station for years, despite being told that her mother had died. I am reminded of Anna Karenina's son, who refuses to believe she is dead, the lie that has been told to him by his father. Nine-year-old Seryozha looks for his mother's face in every woman he sees on the street, so certain is he that she is still alive.

One dead mother, one living mother, two motherless children.

We have all faced losses, some greater than others, but I suspect none felt more deeply to the individual than their greatest ones. Much harder to let go of than the thing itself is our own hope for how we wished it had been. I had lunch with my sister yesterday, and we spoke of much we can hurt each other and those closest to us when we refuse to let go of this hope for what we cannot have. In 2014, our parents sold their home, after months spent cleaning, throwing away and selling stuff that had been accumulated over several decades: a secretary desk belonging to my grandfather that crumbled to sawdust when my sister reached out to touch it, a broken ceramic windchime that was a gift to my dad, hundreds of pieces of well-seasoned lumber, walnut and cherry and oak, crates of license plates, and church statuary of the saints.

And tools.

At one point, we counted 14 pitchforks. I may be off in that number, but does it matter? Isn't 2 or 3 or 4 too many, especially when you don't have anything to pitch?

It's been almost a year, and still my father won't stop talking about what he has lost. And my sister said something so wise yesterday. She said, how do you make someone want something he doesn't want for himself?

In a few days, I find out if my short story collection might be published. For those of you who don't know, my collection Three Sisters: A Hybrid Collection has been selected as a finalist in the Sou'wester First Book Award with Dock Street Press. I want to win. I didn't think it mattered to me. I am playing all the mind games I can to convince myself otherwise. But I want so much to get that email that says, Congratulations! Some days, some hours, I am more rational about it then others. I tell myself, if I lose, then I will go back in and revise one more time, maybe I'll ask for feedback about how I can improve the piece. I'll read the winning book to see if I can glean any wisdom from it, and to support the press and the author.

At other moments my thoughts spin out of control and I am imagining how it will feel to hold my book in my hand, as if that is the thing I have been wanting. I imagine myself being interviewed on Fresh Air (when I confess that to another writer, she says, why do we writers always imagine that?). I dream about which story I will pick for readings.

I do not want to lose. But I don't get to make that choice. The only choice I have is to decide whether or not to be cheerful at the mere sight of a feast set on the table before me.

 

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Bathing Beauty

This morning I want only to curl up on the couch next to the dog and close my eyes and sleep. But then I receive a text from my walking and writing companion, asking if I am ready to begin. She knows that on Tuesdays, I walk to the Writing Habit, a weekly gathering with a few other writers where we...well...we write. We don't critique our work or do writing prompts. We bring our laptops and notebooks and we find a spot and we write for two hours.

To the text message I respond, I feel tired today.

Then I send another text to my writing group, repeating that I am tired and ask if anyone else is planning to come today, the implication being that if they stay home, I can too.

Someone respond quickly.

"I'm coming! The kids are back in school!"

And so, I drag my ass up off the couch, leave the dog sleeping soundly and head upstairs to shower and dress.

I don't shower every day, less frequently since spending the summer in Michigan. The water pump at the cottage does not allow for excessive water usage. I am always trying to find ways to conserve water, which is kind of funny when you look out my window and see a beautiful blue lake.

When I cook, I start by bringing the water to a boil while cooking seven or eight eggs, which go in the fridge for lunches. Then I cook broccolli or green beans, next some ears of corn and finally, the rice. All these things go in to the fridge to be used at another time. If I am not cooking rice, maybe I am ending with potatoes that day, I cool the pan of broth and use it water the basil growing in boxes on the front porch or the hanging basket of morning glories.*

We encourage sailor showers, where one rinses off, shuts off the water, soaps up, then turns the water back on to quickly rinse again. One of the kids, who shall remain nameless, asked if he could shower with a "friend," to save water. While he made a convincing argument, we did too: there was a good chance that shower could take longer than the ones they would take separately.

By July, the lake is warm enough that we stop showering altogether (as opposed to all together).

We bathed instead in the lake. We carried our biodegradeable soap and shampoo out to the end of the dock. The girls jumped in right away. 13 even took to shaving with the lathery soap we bought from a local alpaca farm, the soap encased in a felted wool cover that exfoliated the skin as well. We would lather up our hair too, pile it on top of our heads and swim around. We gave ourselves mermaid names. My favorite part was after scrubbing clean and stacking the soap and things on the dock, we waded out to the deeper water. I have never been partial to diving, but here, I would lift my arms over my head, hands outstretched to part the surface and dive down into the cool lake water. This bathing left me feeling cleaner than I have ever felt in my life. No bath in a porcelain tub has ever left me feeling like that, no shower of water from overhead either.

I remember a scene in the novel where Dolly, Anna Karenina's sister-in-law, has been banished to the country with the children. Anna's brother, Stepan Arkadyevitch, arranges this as a way to save money. He finds it less expensive to raise a family in the country. Their cow provides milk; chickens give eggs. On Sundays after church, Dolly takes the children to bathe in the creek. The children splash around, playing and cooling off until the governess makes sure they are scrubbed and polished. Dolly admits to herself that bathing with her children is one of her most pleasant activities. I remember well the feel of a child's slippery naked legs clasped around me.

A group of local peasant women join them at the river, and at first Dolly is self-conscious. As the two groups of women begin to strike up a conversation, they talk of children and breastfeeding. Dolly, whose youngest child is still an infant, is surprised to hear that the peasant women nurse their children for two or three years. The whole time they are talking, Darya and her children are half-dressed; the peasants in their good Sunday clothes. The scene remains, five hundred pages into the novel, my favorite moment of the story. The intimacy of the moment comes not from their nakedness, though it does provide a backdrop that suggests we humans are not all that different from each other. Tolstoy could have written Dolly ashamed, made her run away in the bushes to dress and whisk her children away. But he doesn't do that. He imagines instead, an opportunity for the women to come together on equal ground and find the other women more pleasant and engaging than they expect and probably than they had been taught. Dolly finds herself not wanting to leave the women's company.

This morning, standing in the shower, I pick up a bar of lavender-scented soap and rub it over the washcloth spread across my hand. I watch as the outline of my hand emerges in white lather set against green cotton. I spread out my fingers to make the shape more distinct. I could, in theory, stand here letting the hot water run, but I don't. My experience of water is different now. It has changed me, and I can't change it back, even if the lake is hundreds of miles away.

*I discovered this idea in An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler.

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Two Markets

Not long after I set out, I realize the bike ride from home to the farmer's market downtown is almost the same distance as from our cottage to the market in Elberta. All summer, I rode those six miles on a trail that follows the Betsie River, past turtles sunning themselves on logs, water the color of milky tea, and numbered bluebird houses.

Also sweet peas growing wild.

And campsites.

And homes of people who live here year-round: snowmobiles covered in blue plastic tarps and parked in front yards, snow plows unhinged and set beside the garage, gardens already bearing fruit, unlike mine, planted in mid-june and still has only blossoms.

I have moped around since my return to the city, fretting the noise and the air-conditioned air.

Riding along this hot pavement, I am finally glad to be home. And it is an abandoned building which brings me joy. I park my bike and look inside each of the shops, their back walls busted out and letting in sunlight.

I am hot. I have sweat running down my back, along the sides of my face. Drops of it rest in the curve of my eyelashes. My water bottle forgotten, I cannot believe the peace I feel at being back in this rundown place. Right then, I decide that I will take pictures of this trip, to share here with you, because I have been trying to understand how Sophia felt, returning to Moscow after a summer at their country home. I thought she would have been sad, like I have been, but maybe by leaving and coming, she was able to see the beauty in both places.

 

I love the symmetry of these two doors.

 

An empty lot beside the house is now an urban garden.

 

Years ago, a giant clock on the side of this pet shop used animals in place of numbers.

 

 

 

These wildflowers (as opposed to weeds) grow around a gray utility box. This is the last picture I take before riding on to the farm market, where I buy corn, red potatoes, 2 cantelopes, and pork burgers.

For lunch I eat a saugage slider and a roasted Indiana sweet corn popsicle.

After that, on a whim, I ride to the fabric shop on Massachusetts Avenue. I buy three fat quarters of fabric by Liberty of London, which remind me of my story titled "Liberty," part of my current collection. It is named after the department store famous for these detailed floral prints. I also buy a pattern to make throw pillows for 17's bedroom and one button, shaped like a fawn.

I refill my water bottle in their bathroom and ride home.

 

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Vinyasa Writing

Back home again, in Indiana.

For two months, no one looked at me at 6pm and asked, what's for dinner? We survived on an odd mixture of pie, frozen pizza, bagels and salads. Or my personal favorite, a bowl of fresh cherries, pits disposed into the grass, or in 13's case, at the person sitting across from her. Once I made stir-fry, another time pasta, which we ate for several nights in a row.

The kids and I took turns washing dishes. Each person was responsible for their own laundry. I had more free time than I have had since childhood.

 

And yet, I did not write. Not one blog post. Not a letter home. Not a draft of a single word for the new story collection, even though I had set the lofty goal of finishing a first draft, just a shitty first draft (thank you, Anne Lamott) by the end of the summer.

What was I thinking?

My completed collection took five years to finish, and who knows, made need another revision before it gets published. It has been a long time since I wrote a first draft. I forgot how much time is spent in the percolation stage. That's what a composer/musician friend calls the period of time when an artist feels or looks to other people like she is doing nothing, when in reality, lots of good stuff is brewing inside. Twyla Tharp calls this scratching. This summer I did lots and lots of scratching. I plan to share some of those things with you in the coming weeks.

In addition to scratching, I also did the hardest work of my life.

I learned to sit still.

Easy, you say?

Well, hold on. I don't mean sitting still on the couch, stretched out, binge watching The Food Network, or even reading a good literary novel.

I mean sitting upright, muscles tightened around my spine, my pelvis and the bones of my thighs; shoulders relaxed away from my ears; my head and neck aligned with my spine; an imaginary thread lifting from the top of my skull into the sky so that I feel tall and straight. I mean feet planted firmly on the ground as if I am standing in mountain pose. I mean working so hard to sit straight and tall, strong and yet not tensed, that sweat rolls down my back and along my temples, a line of it across my upper lip.

That kind of sitting takes more strength than I ever imagined.

I was able to do this work with the help of the yoga teacher I found in Michigan. I did some research about area yoga instructors, finally settling with Jess on instinct after I read her bio. It was a huge splurge, but the best money I ever spent. We began with private yoga sessions. 90 minutes focused only how I am moving my body. I was pretty closed up at the beginning, and those first stretches left me feeling exhausted and tender. When we finished our first session, I stood up and walked straight to the tiny bathroom at the back of her studio and threw up.

We continued to work together, transitioning to classes with her or other instructors in the area. By the time I left Michigan to return home, I was going to yoga class three times a week. This might not seem like much, but that practice extended far beyond the mat. I was paying attention as I rode my bike, walked, bent over to pick up the newspaper, swam in the lake or lay down at night to sleep.

Even though I did not start my own new writing project, I did continue copying Anna Karenina. I found that when I sat with my feet planted and stayed aware of the placement of my spine and shoulders, kept my jaw relaxed, focused on my breathing, I could sit still and copy much longer. If I caught my mind wondering how many pages until I would finish a chapter or thinking about what I needed to do when I finished or, the worst, how much longer it would take to finish copying the whole novel, I brought my attention back to my breath, I moved my hand word by word, until I reached the end.

When I told Jess about this, about how I felt like I was truly developing a "practice" for the first time, after years of attending yoga classes, she said this:

"The physical practice of yoga was designed 1) as a way to make the body strong enough to endure long periods of stillness and 2) a way to understand what we are capable of with discipline, practice, mindfulness.

All this time I thought writers did yoga so they could let go and be creative. Turns out, yoga was giving them the strength to sit in a chair for long periods of time, to hold that pose, even when the character was about to make a huge mistake, or when we wanted to walk away because writing that story hurt too much. I have never felt more acutely how important my physical body is to telling a story.

 

 

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