May 11, 2013

Mother’s Day

(as featured on BlogHer.)

The other day I was wondering about my great-grandmother and the land she came to Illinois to Homestead with her husband and eight kids.  I have a photograph of the family in my office, all seated in their finest clothes around a buffalo hide rug.  Mid 1800s.  She looks like she could kick your ass if you were good enough for an ass kicking.  If not, she’d just turn her boney Yankee shoulder to you and you would understand for the first time what it is to be on the receiving end of disdain.  I wanted to know about my mothers. Especially this one.  I wanted to know what she was like outside this photo.  If she had a soft side.  I was wondering about the farm she’d left in Manchester, Vermont.  If she ever looked back.  And I was wondering about the china tea set that somehow made it to my china cabinet in Montana a hundred and fifty plus years later, along with a caned birds-eye maple chair…and if she’d like me to use them more often, or take care of them differently, or better yet, I wanted to know the story about them.  How she chose what she chose to make her covered wagon crossing from Vermont to Illinois.  I was wondering how I can serve her memory.  Mostly, I was wondering if I have her in me.  If I can look at my life like chapters instead of a tower of blocks that add up to some sort of art in the end.

So I called my mother.

My father is dead. This was his side of the family.  But my mother is the sort of person to marry it all—not just the man.  I’ve traipsed through cemeteries all over New England and Illinois with my mother in search of my ancestors’ resting places on both sides of the family.  She calls us “cemetery people.”  I never knew what that meant.  Now, at forty-five, I think I do.  It means that we hold our deceased in story and artifacts and we don’t let them go.  We firmly believe that we need them.  We believe that they are in our lives holding us from a mystic zone that might be called Heaven.  (We are also Heaven people.)  My mother actually prays for our deceased ones.  And asks them to protect us.  Like we go God both ways.

“They left in a covered wagon for central Illinois because the land was rich and they didn’t rotate their crops in Vermont so the soil wasn’t any good,” she rattles off like a memorized soliloquy from the phone between bridge and altar guild.  “I have some of their letters if you want me to Xerox them and send them to you.”

And suddenly I am in a panic.  She is turning eighty this October.  She’s vibrant and frankly looks better than I do after a rough Montana winter…but like she says, “Nobody cares about you quite like your mother.”

She’s always telling me how sad it is for her, an only child, to accomplish or experience or suffer something, and not be able to call her parents anymore.

“They thought I could do no wrong.”

Suddenly, I am imagining that day for myself and I dread it.  It will be a claustrophobic feeling:  I need my mother.  She’s not here.  There is quite possibly no one who has the answer to my question left on earth.  There is quite possibly no one who cares about my little story or my little panic or my little woe.  Who do I call?  A friend?  It would sound too needy or too braggadocio.  A child?  Children shouldn’t bear your emotional burdens.  After your parents pass…who is strong for you?

I called her the other day to find out about my great-grandmother, and ended up learning all about my mother.  I asked her questions instead of just monologuing about my life and my victories and problems.

She talked about the view from her bedroom window in Chicago’s Whitehall hotel.  “The Water Tower.  I believed it was my fairy princess castle.”  There is a newspaper clipping I’ve seen of her as a white-gowned debutante with Buckingham fountain behind her and the Chicago skyline.  “Virginia Aldrich has the City of Chicago in the palm of her hand.”  I always loved that my mother was such a beauty.  I haven’t told her that.  There is so much I haven’t told her.  (And I have to add here that when I asked her to send me a photo of her as a young woman…without letting her know what it was for…on top of the fact that she was packing to go to a fundrasier in Washington, she sent me this LOVELY photo of herself.  She is so loyal that she took the time in her nightie which you can see reflected, to do this for me, having no idea what I’m up to.  You can see it in the reflection and that is such a metaphor for who she is to me.  May we all have mothers like this.  Busy, in our nighties, who pull through in the eleventh hour for our daughters and sons…)

So, in honor of my mothers, and Mother’s Day, I’d like to tell her now.

Mom, I love the way you like to dance with abandon.

I love that you are a flirt.

I love that you have a big laugh.

I love that you love to skip.  I am sorry I stopped skipping with you when I was a teenager.

That's Mom in the bottom left!

I love that you love Gran Marnier soufflé.

I love that you give things up for Lent and stick to it.

I love that you never missed one of my school plays, and even drove the station wagon from Illinois to Connecticut to see me in Guys and Dolls and The Fantastiks.  That would
not have happened without you.  Dad wouldn’t have made that effort.

I love that you always make the effort.

I love that you know what time my flights leave and track them until they land.

I love that you read every single thing I write and I love knowing that you will read this.

I love that you told me to go to Italy for my junior year in college instead of Vienna.  I loved that you cried about it, knowing what cloth I am cut from.

I love that you go to church.  That you value community service and volunteer endlessly.

I love that you have your own business and are good at what you do.

I love that you gave me a solid foundation and did not make crazy in my life.

I love that you don’t watch a lot of TV.

I love that you are a good friend to many.

I love that you aren’t wasteful.

I love that every single time I call you, and ask what you are doing, you give an exhilarated sigh and say what you are doing.  Which is always a lot.

I love that you don’t “sit around and eat bon bons all day” and never would.

I love that you made us read aloud a Bible passage every night at dinner.

I love that you made us say Grace.

I love that you made us wear shoes at the table and learn where all the utensils are supposed to go and to say, “are you finished” instead of “are you done” and taught us to Remove from the right and Serve to the left.

I love that you made us take piano lessons.

I love that you were never late.  Never.  I am usually five minutes late.

I love that you sang to me and read me stories when I was little.

Where all the snapdragons and pansies and pink roses grew.

I love that you had me take horse-back riding lessons but told me that it would be too pressured a life if I got into competing in the horse world.  You were right.  I was not cut out for that kind of pressure.

I love that you framed my childhood art.

I love that you love pink roses and snapdragons and yellow pansies.  I love that you made little arrangements of them and put them on my bedside table.

I love that for someone who sure does know a lot of influential people, you aren’t a snob.

I love that you wear the same sweaters in 2012 that you wore in 1950.

I love that you love yourself.

I love that you love me.

At my hometown book signing-- look how happy we are. Wow.

What a class act.

Happy Mother’s Day.

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May 9, 2013

Mother’s Day Haven

Do you know a mom who needs a break?  Who longs desperately to dig deeper into her creativity?  Who always talks about how she wants to write but doesn’t have time, doesn’t know how to find “me” time, needs an adventure?  Are you one of them?  Are you spending time booking your kids for summer camp and internships right now?  What about you?  Who takes care of you?  Who says, “Mom, you know how you are always talking about writing that book, or how you used to love to write in school but you haven’t had time since?”  Unfortunately, most of us moms don’t have those champions.  We have to champion ourselves.

In the woods of Montana…there is a place for you.  I designed the retreat I needed and I hold them year round.  I am now booking for my summer and fall Haven retreats.  Come re-charge.  Be nurtured.  Supported.  Challenged.  And inspired.  All in the place that has been my muse for 20 years.  I want to share my Haven with you.  Please give yourself this gift.  If you don’t, who will.  YOU DESERVE IT!  Contact me at laura@lauramunsonauthor.com

yrs. Laura

August 7th-11th
September 4th-8th
September 18th-22nd


1.The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh
2.God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers. ~Jewish Proverb
3.“Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.” -Kate Douglas Wiggin
4.“There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one” – Jill Churchill
5.Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.- Erich Fromm, psychologist
6.“A mother understands what a child does not say.” -Jewish proverb
7.”Woman knows what man has long forgotten, that the ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family. -Clare Boothe Luce
8.“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” -Washington Irving
9.“When you were small and just a touch away, I covered you with blankets against the cold night air. But now that you are tall and out of reach, I fold my hands and cover you with prayer. Dona Maddux Cooper
10.’The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.’ ~ Honore de Balzac
11.’A mighty power and stronger Man from his throne has hurled,For the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world.’~ William Ross Wallace

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May 2, 2013

Lee and Me– Those We Love Most!

Lee Woodruff and me in NYC

I have found that writers are generous with one another.  We have to be.  Generally speaking, our families and friends think we’re half-a- bubble-off-level for devoting our lives to the written word, and our editors and agents and publicity people (if we have them) are so overworked and underpaid that we feel sort of guilty bugging them at all.  That leaves us with our characters, and sometimes they’re not so kind.  They tend to sneer when we’ve neglected them.  For instance, I’ve had a pair of lovers standing in a labyrinth in Tulum, Mexico for over a year, and by now they’re really really sunburned and dehydrated and they’re begging for a margharita…but oh no…their author is holding them to the small task of self-actualization, never mind finding the meaning of life.  Problem is, she can’t seem to find the time to breathe life into them these days.  And to add insult to injury, they live in a stack of dissheveled coffee-stained papers, topped off by bills and mouse turds, not to mention a layer of dust.  No, it’s writers who buoy writers.  We get each other.  We cut each other slack.  We connect each other.  We forgive each other.  We cut to the chase and we bleed easily with each other.  That is who Lee Woodruff has been to me.   Sister in words and heart.  Fairy god-mother of my muse.

I met Lee because she interviewed me for a Redbook piece when my memoir came out in 2009.  It was my first magazine interview and I answered the phone with my “business” voice, which was one cleared throat away from the way I talk to my golden retriever.  In other words, unimpressive.  A husky voice came through the phone:  ”Girlfriend!’  And I knew in that moment, we would become just that.  Friends.

I love Lee.  I love her honesty, her depth, her style, her self-deprecation, her wisdom, her willingness to connect kindred spirits, her drive, her compassion, her humility, her example as wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, community member, charity maven.  But most of all, I love that she talks about her dirty underwear.  Literally.  Any writer on tour knows what a precious commodity clean underwear is, and because you are living out of a tiny roller bag for weeks on end, it’s quite likely that you have, yes, some pretty skanky drawers.  Lee likes to open with that fact when she is the MC at womens’ conventions in front of thousands of nattily dressed professionals.  You’d never expect it, as this lovely, angelic, petite blonde in a twin set takes the stage.  I love her for this.  And so much more.  She’s one hell of a writer and one hell of a gal.

The first time I actually met her in person was at the end of my first book tour.  I was in New York, and the limo dropped me off at her house where we’d planned an afternoon together.   I had read in her book “Perfectly Imperfect” that after a tour, she gets out of the car, flings her rollerbag to the side (by the way, it’s red with pink hearts on it), drops to her knees, and kisses the ground.  Well, I did exactly that.  I was so happy to be at the front stoop of a writer sister who GETS IT.  Who would allow me to be puny and complaining and a miserable wreck for at least the time it takes to have a cup of coffee and get over my self.

She said, “Oh, my dear.  Come on in.   I’ll take care of you.”  No one does that on book tour.  You are the one delivering.  You are the one who supposedly knows something.  And somewhere in the sea of fans, old boyfriends, relatives, and scrutinizing potential readers…you hope you will find at least a teaspoon of grace in your time-zone-challenged, sleep-deprived, airplane-ozoned, out-of-shape poor excuse of a body.

I looked at her, in her T-shirt and shorts and bare feet, and just burst into tears, fell into her arms.

She knew it was triage time and she ushered me to an outside deck where we sat in Adirondack chairs and looked at Long Island Sound, cormorants diving, two authors being as raw and real as it gets.  No hair and make up.  Nothing eloquent to say or feel or share.  No audience member to comfort.  No message to get across or nasty question to field.  Just a gushing of understanding from someone who knows that the very thing that got you to this place, that keeps you balanced in your daily life…your sacred writing life…is in the crapper. You haven’t been that girl for weeks, or if you’ve gotten a book published recently, likely months.  You don’t recognize yourself.  You don’t really even like yourself.  You feel like a social media whore.  And you just plain miss your precious practice.

I’ll put it this way and hopefully it will help you understand:  The writing life ain’t for sissies.  It requires intense vulnerability and empathy almost to a fault.  Plus, it’s totally solitary.  Until it’s not.   And sometimes it’s weirdly full-frontal public.  Writers are ridiculously driven, nay obsessed with our craft.  Our writing is our lifeline and that means it can be blood sport.  No one asked us to do it, so we feel lead like Joan of Arc, but also sort of ashamed of the whole thing too.  Like, who do we think we are, anyway.  Writing books.  Thinking we have something that the world needs to hear.  Add to that pesky personality disorder, the fact that most of us are some sort of cross-section between being total wall-flowers, and the one wearing the lamp-shade, sometimes all in one fell swoop.  Think Hunter Thompson.  Think Fitzgerald.  Think Steven King.  In short, we’re whack jobs.  Our friends and families, and yes agents and editors too…all know this.  I had one publicist say, “I’m glad you said it, not us,” winking at her marketing buddy.

I like to think of writers like Lee and me as being only minor offenders in this regard.  We dress up nice.  We know our way around firm handshakes and eye contact.  We know not to chew gum.  And we’re not mean chicks.  Sure we both like to throw around the F bomb from time to time and who cares.  You would too if you spent most of your time channeling the human condition.

All this to say that I am starting a Lee Woodruff fan club and I’m the president.  So there.  If you have not read her three very different (this woman has range!) books, RUN to your local bookstore.  Get all three.  Put them on your bedside table.  Savor them with cups of tea and many pillows propping you up on back-to-back Sunday mornings.  She is an immediate friend on the page whether or not you are lucky enough to call her friend in real life.  Frankly, I think the page IS real life.  Realer than real.  So that means…we’re all in luck.

Now out in paperback!

Here’s a bit of what Lee has to say about the writing life and life in general.  Enjoy!

Click here to buy her fabulous novel, now out in paperback!

LM:  You’ve written a memoir, a book of essays, many interviews and featured articles, and now a novel. Which is your favorite genre and why? 

LW:  By far my fave is fiction.  It’s what I always thought I would do.  If you’d told me that my first two books would be best-selling memoirs, I would have chortled in your face. Notice a chortle and not a laugh-riot because chortle is such a cool thing to execute and type.  In memory you have to color in between the lines– you are playing with material that is real so you can’t stray too far from the facts– but with fiction– you make these characters out of clay and you can have them do anything really, so the artifice is to make it authentic, interesting and believable.

LM:  Which came most easily to you and why do you think that was so? 

LW:  Memoir came easily.  I think it’s from years of being a freelance writer and doing articles and essay pieces on family life.  I learned to know “where the line is” when writing about other people– namely my kids– who didn’t ask to have me as a mother, let alone a memoir-writing mom.  I have always enjoyed mining my own life and life as a parent to draw the parallels to other folks who have collectively experienced the same over-arching themes.

LM:  What did you learn from each about the written word? 

LW:  I learned that less is more.  Each book has taught me to be a more demanding editor of my own work and forced me to end up with a more minimalistic paragraph than the first draft would have suggested.  Memoir writing taught me that we don’t have to  go through life in a particular sequence nor should we feel compelled to include the every day, the mundane, or life in a linear world.

Perfectly Imperfect taught me to hone my funny bone a little and refine my every day sarcastic wit on the paper.  It helped me focus on how to make things funny- which is a big challenge when you are armed with only words to create a mental picture as well as dialogue.

Fiction taught me the balance between character development and dialogue– it also taught me that you may not have to like every character you write but you have to root for at least one.  The reader always wants to root for someone.

LM:  What did you learn from each about yourself? 

LW:  In an Instant— that I could write a book– a feat I’d always thought was only possible when the kids were out of the house and I had giant stretches of time

Perfectly Imperfect — that I love the essay genre and always will and that I have a good knack for knowing where to end things.

Those We Love Most — that I loved getting inside the character’s head and describing things far more than I like writing dialouge.  But real dialogue is tricky– it’s not easy to write the way people actually talk.

LM:  Do you think it’s important to consider your reader in constructing your writing? 

LW:  I do think so.  But I don’t write with the reader in mind. I think I EDIT with the reader in mind but when I first write the story I want to get it out of my head and onto the paper.  I want to see where the characters will take me and what will happen– I don’t start out with a firm outline and a precise idea of every little twist and turn– but at some point you need to consider how it will all hang together for the reader – and that was probably on my second or third pass through.

LM:  How was the editing process different from one genre to the next?

LW:  Memoir writing was so much more straight forward.  Editing the novel was much more like taking a serious scalpel to real plot and character parts, whereas editing the first two books was just about letting material go so the book would be tighter and move along.

LM:  What’s your next project?

LW:  Working on another (very rough) novel and I know it needs tons of work.  But I love/hate having a project.  Love it because it inspires me and makes me feel like I have a secret love– hate it because it’s alway sitting on my shoulder and I never have a regular period of time in which to write.  Someday — oh someday, I’ll put that empty nest to good use, but I’m not about to wish these years away!

THANK YOU, LEE!  oxoxoxoxoxoxoxox  Here’s the link to buy Lee’s books!

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April 27, 2013

Thank God!

Retreat in Big Sky Beauty!  Haven Writing Retreats: 

June 19th-23rd (Full)
August 7th-11th (Now Booking)
September 4th-8th (Now Booking)
September 18th-22nd (Now Booking)

I’ve noticed something lately that I wish I’d noticed a long time ago.  Maybe if I’d been listening in church as a kid I would have learned it then, but I was too starry eyed– staring at the blues in the stained glass, dreaming about all the things there were to dream about.  That’s what church was for me:  a time to dream.  And believe.  And feel tucked into community between my loving mother and father, to harmonize on good old fashioned hymns, and to take the Holy Eucharist and really believe I was having a feast with my other loving parent:  The Big Guy.  Who somehow could make himself small too, wafer and wine-sized that fit into the cup of my soft little girl fingers.  I was always so thankful for that.  It was the thing that stood out for me Sunday after Sunday:  God could be bigger than the night sky, and small enough to rest on my tongue and be swallowed down with sweet communion wine.  I learned to be grateful because of the Holy Eucharist.

Somewhere along the line, I started expecting things to happen.  And I lost much of my gratitude.  I guess they call that entitlement.  It’s a highly unattractive quality, and one to skip at all costs if you can.  I started to get easily angered when the smallest hardships would happen.  Not the big things– those I took in slowly; piece meal.  I had faith that the Big Guy would handle that stuff.  I just had to pray for grace and for God’s “will” to be done.  That was what my sister, mother, and grandmothers told me, and I listened.  It was a much easier prayer than, “Gimme gimme gimme.”  But the small things…were another ball of wax.  I’d stub my toe and fling the F word.  I’d lose my place in line and want to make “a federal case” about it, bringing in words like “justice” and “fairness” and “wrong.”

Maybe it was because my parents had been brought up during the Depression and wanted my life to be light and blithe, but I don’t remember being taught the lesson that life is not fair.  There is no such thing as “fair.”  And if you think there is, you will suffer.  When people were mean to the little guy, I’d barge in and try to come to their rescue.  Or at least sit with them at lunch if I didn’t feel so brave.  When a kid would cheat in class and get an A to my B (especially when they cheated off of ME), I would fume in my diary, and fume in the school halls, and fume in general.  Sometimes I’d take it out on my Bichon Frise during our obligatory after-school walk around the block.  I’d tie him to a tree, and climb it and hide from the world.

Somewhere in the mix, my very best friends’ lost a sister and a father to cancer, and I realized that the safety I felt standing between my mother and father at church was not the rule.  It was the exception.  I was mad at the world.  Life wasn’t fair.  I did not feel grateful at all.  I felt duped.  The Communion wafer only worked in church.  So that meant…I was mad at God.

I brought my anger to a teacher in high school.  He said, “Well if you’re angry with God, that means you believe in Him.”  That really pissed me off.  I didn’t want to believe in a Creator who would be unfair.  And I took a long break from the whole mess.  I was mad at God, period.

I travelled around, studied other religions and spiritual texts, asked a lot of questions, and started writing books as a way to sort things through.  And somewhere after the birth of my first child, when everything was so pure and full of wonder and mystery and total surrender, gazing into the miracle of birth and new life, I realized…I wasn’t really mad at God.  I was mad at institutions:  school, family, church, society.  I felt like I’d been lied to.  Things didn’t all add up if you showed up a certain way in life.  They just didn’t.  There are no promises, no matter how good of a person you are, or how bad of a person you are.  Life happens.  Life is daily.  And life is painful.  And beautiful too.

And the only thing that made any sense at all was something that glimmered and winked at me from my past.  The Love message.  The Final Commandment.  So I took it and ran.  I wanted to forget about unfairness and suffering.  I just wanted to know what it was to live that final commandment.  I wanted to Love God, and my Neighbor, and maybe even in-so-doing…I’d learn that last little piece:  I’d learn to love Myself.

By and by, I had another child, and both of them grew, and I started to see them raging against a stubbed toe, or a mean girl comment to the underdog, or an injustice in the classroom, or a bad call on the soccer field,  or any number of “unfair” things life dished up.  And I sat them down and said, “I wish I’d have learned this a long time ago:  Life is neither fair.  Nor unfair.  Life is just life.”

They looked at me like I was an anarchist.  And maybe living into the Final Commandment renders a person just that.

“Stop expecting things to go a certain way.  Just love.  Be love.  Forgive.  And love some more,”  I said with the fervor of an Evangelical.  Maybe not the best way to sell a teen on something.

It fell flat.  In a kid’s mind, there’s no muscle in that way of thinking.  Because school teaches us that life is structured and the structure keeps us safe.  We get rewarded for certain behavior, and punished for others.  If we work hard, there are rewards.  If we look the part, we will be rewarded.  If we have certain types of friends and excel at certain types of activities, we are rewarded.  There is no Worst Student award.  There is no So You Had a Bad Year award.  There is no You Sat on the Bench award.  There is no You Eat Lunch Alone award.  You Didn’t Get Into Any of the Colleges You Applied To and Yer Going to the Community College award.  And yeah.  That sucks.  And the very best mothers, and teachers, and aunties will tell you:  When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

But I want to teach something different.  I want to say that there aren’t lemons and there isn’t lemonade.  It’s all in your perspective.  That’s all.  For that I can breathe deep.  Feels good, doesn’t it.

So what does that look like in daily life?  Here’s how it played out last week and why I’m driven to write this post this Saturday morning in Montana, with the kids still asleep and no one rushing yet to get anywhere, on time, in uniform, to perform, to “battle,” to win…  Even when I say that it’s not about winning.  They hear Blah blah blah.  For now they are just quiet, and breathing, and warm in their beds and I’m on my second cup of tea, in my pajamas, with nowhere to go.  These are the moments to really receive what the week may have taught in the way of lessons.  And I got served up a good one.

I was having lunch with a friend and she was telling me about her divorce settlement.  She’d just finished her last mediation and she said it was the bravest she’d ever been.  They didn’t have the money to hire lawyers, so they negotiated the Parenting Plan, and all the division of assets, including the house, stock, back taxes…all of it…without any real legal counsel.  Just the mediator making sure they didn’t decapitate one another in the process, making minor suggestions based on who was crossing their arms in front of them and sneering.  “It was terrifying,” she said.  “But I got everything I wanted.  With the exception of my marriage.  But I guess that’s been over a long time.  It’s like a death, though.  You have to grieve.  You can’t skip steps.”  She sighed.  “But I think I came out okay in the settlement.  The mediator seemed to think so, anyway.  And my mother.”

“Thank God,” I caught myself saying.

She looked up at me with a sharpness in her exhausted, cried-out eyes.   “You know…why do we only thank God when things work out the way we want them to?  You know what I’ve learned in this whole divorce experience– watching my kids lose their core family, watching them have to accept another woman into their lives, watching them feel embarrassed in front of their friends, watching the break down of what was for years such a strong foundation…like trying to hold water.  Impossible.  You know what I’ve learned watching that water drain through my fingers no matter what I do to be a better vessel?  We don’t learn from the good times.  I didn’t learn anything from nice vacations to the tropics or years of perfect Christmas card photographs, or theme birthday parties all recorded for posterity’s sake to show what?  That we had something precious and beautiful and powerful and unshakeable?  No.  It didn’t end that way.  And what does that mean?  That we’re all fucked now?  That nothing from the past was real?  And that nothing in the future matters because the water fell through our hands and we couldn’t do a damn thing about it?  No.  No.  No.”

Her face was red and her breath shallow and I wanted to hug her, but I was sort of scared of her.  I’d never seen her so strong and present.  So I just sat there, waiting.  I knew I was about to learn something big if only I had my mind open and my heart wide.

“I’ve learned that the best Thank God we can utter is when things DON’T go the way we want them to.  When life serves up total and utter SHIT!  That’s the time to drop to our knees and say, Thank you, Lord.  Thank you.  Because that’s where the lessons are.  That’s when we grow.  That’s when we can really understand what it is to love in its most pure and simple way.”

I could feel myself resisting it.  Why don’t we want this to be true?  What are we so scared of?  I remembered the last night’s sunset and how it yielded to star after star popping into sight like, “hey– I was here the whole time, you just couldn’t see me.  Maybe you could remember a thing or two about holy mystery and all that dreaming at church you used to do.”  I had felt gratitude that night sitting there, parked by the meadow, watching night come.  But being grateful for divorce?  Or cancer?  Or death?  That takes a master.  Doesn’t it?

I gave it a whirl.  All week when things came up that I didn’t like or that felt uncomfortable or dangerous or just all wrong…I mouthed, “Thank God.”  When the toilet, dishwasher, and hot tub all broke in the same day, I mouthed, through clenched teeth, but still:   “Thank God.”  When I found a pack rat nest under the hood of my truck and black smoke billowed through the tail pipe, I screamed, “Thank God,” but it kind of sounded like a swear word.  Still.  When my kid threw up at school, I said, “Thank God,” and stocked up on chicken broth.  When I tried to release a mouse into my yard rather than snapping its neck with a conventional trap, and my dog attacked it…I whispered…”Thank God,” but with a question mark.  I decided there is no right Thank God.  It’s just an openness to the flow of life being exactly as it is, and even exactly as it should be, if you believe in should.  Or design.  But even if you don’t, gratitude busts through suffering, and I think we could all use a dose of that.

I’ve decided to try to get back to that little girl in church who didn’t necessarily need things to go a certain way.  In those days,  I had the safety of my mother and father and this Creator called God that the minister promised existed and on top of that, loved me.  That was all I needed.  That kind of blind faith is what I want back.  I don’t know who or what God is.  I’ve had hundreds of ideas about this subject for years.  When I was little I used to say, “But who is God’s God?”  I don’t want to have questions like that any more.  I like the mystery.  I often say to my kids, “If we’re supposed to know, we would.  Just receive the message.  Just love.  That’s hard enough.”

But does it have to be so hard?  I think the way to it being easy is in the spirit of what my friend taught me this week.  If we can find gratitude for EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING, and receive it as a holy gift…well, I dare say, with tears in my eyes and the tea kettle telling me there’s a third cup for me this fine Montana morning…that holy gift is the gift of freedom.  May you have thanks for everything that makes up this day.  And may you feel free in it.

 

 

 

 

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April 15, 2013

The Glamorous Writing Life

Kelly Corrigan and Laura Munson Books Inc. San Francisco

So I wanted to be a published author. For A LONG TIME. I used to go to bookstores and hear writers speak and put my head in my hands and pray to God that I could just have the bravery to ask that one question. In fact, I would sweat that question the whole reading. “How do you do this writing life thing?” That was really what I wanted to know. How? How? How?

I asked a few of them. Isabelle Allende. Natalie Goldberg. Anne Lamott. They told me to pray. Put inspiring messages under my keyboard. Make mango tea. And I did. And I wrote. And yeah– I got published. And here I am…still writing. And wondering. And TRIPPING OUT on the fact that people come to hear me say things at bookstores and at conferences and at my Montana Haven retreats. With that same look in their eyes, head in their hands. I so get it. And I just want to say one thing: DO THE WORK! No tea or inspiring message or prayer (well maybe prayer) can help you. The work is IT.

I just had the pleasure of doing a gig with the fab writer Kelly Corrigan in San Francisco. My daughter took this photo as we were walking in. I can promise that the two of us felt honored that people showed up to hear us have a conversation about life etc. And I can promise that we both felt a bit weird too. We happen to write. And people read what we write. And that rocks the free world, especially after writing a LOT of things that nobody has read. (see: me…not Kelly).  Still, I love that my daughter captured this moment in which we are two women, walking into a bookstore with an audience waiting, with our bags and our hopes of delivery, and our vulnerability. We even had a heckler. So there you have it. The ego really never explodes. We just keep creating. May you create something you love today. yrs. Laura

p.s.  Kelly is FREAKING hilarious!

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April 4, 2013

A Pilgrimage for a Dog

St. Ignatius mission-- Montana

 

A few weeks ago I had two thriving dogs—a black lab and a golden retriever.  Both around seven years old.  Both run free in my Montana land.  Both have wagging tails and healthy appetites.  Then I went away for a week to lead a few writing retreats.  When I returned, my black lab was emaciated.  She must have gotten into a gut pile, I figured. The hunters leave the guts behind in the fall and they melt this time of year, back in the woods near where I live and where my dogs play.  Maybe she’d swallowed something rotten that had messed with her system.  But she had zero appetite and that’s odd for her.  “Maybe it’s pancreatitis,” my friend the vet tech suggested.  She’s never sick.  Has the constitution of an ox.  Both of them do.  Well I’m sorry to say that you can tell where this is going.  Cancer.  “Ziggy has final stage cancer,” the vet told me with tears in his eyes.   He also doubles as my son’s baseball coach and is the father of one of his best friends.  “She’s not in a lot of pain now.  But she’s so tired.  I think the right thing to do is put her down.”

When I announced this to my kids, they both got mad before they got sad.  “How can we play with a life?”  “Who are we to decide when a creature dies?”  I couldn’t argue with them.  I agreed.  I called my vet, bawling.  He said that we could wait it out.  But with that waiting, comes quite often loss of dignity.  Urination and defecation in places she would normally be too polite to consider.  Seizures. Organ failure.  He promised that it’s painless.  Calm.  The right thing to do.

So after a few days of enthroning her in the kitchen on her dog bed, the kids lying next to her while she slept and they pretended to do their homework, crying most of the time, I kissed her, and said, “Want to go in the car?”  She came slowly, but surely, wagging her tail, skin and bones and a bloated stomach where the tumor throbbed and ruled…I put her into the car (she couldn’t jump in, though she tried), and drove her to town.  She looked out the window the whole way. I was glad for that.

Inside, we sat in a waiting room where she tried to get into it with another lab, but collapsed supine on her dog bed.  Then we went to the examination room, the same place I’d gotten wellness checks, and discussed ear infections, worms, gotten the cancer diagnosis.  My vet friend described the protocol.  I held her head in my hands.  She lay there, not moving, as if she was already half gone. He inserted the needle in her leg. I said, over and over, “May you journey well, may you journey well, may you journey well…” and suddenly I felt this sharp, nerve twinge in my left hand where it met with her head.  So intense that for a moment, I thought I’d been given the injection– not Ziggy.

It took two seconds.  “She’s gone,” the vet said.  That quick. She was that ready to leave her body.

My yogi friend says that the soul leaves the body from two places—the feet or the head.  You want the latter.  I told him the blast of energy I felt.  He said, “It was her soul.  Good.  It left through her head.”

I took a road trip after that.  Drove to a small mission church about a hundred miles from where I live in Montana, in a town called St. Ignatius.  I cried most of the way down, along the 30 mile long Flathead Lake in the sun, the water sparkling, thinking about souls.  Dog souls.  People souls.  Souls.  And I got to the church.  No one was there.  I went up the steps and opened the tall doors.  No one.  Murals all around.  Light casting across the pews.  Holy week this week, I realized.  Palms on the altar.  

I put in a quarter and lit a candle and knelt and cried.  Didn’t know what to say other than thanks.  To this beautiful vessel of love and light that lay by my feet for at least two written books and many moments of emotional life-wrestling.  Then I sat in a pew, opened the hymnal, found a few hymns that I knew, and sang.  Quiet at first, but I was alone.  So I sang louder.  Loudly. Very very loudly.  Angels and John the Baptist and Jesus and Mary looking down at me.  Dogs barking in the background.

Then I went to a bird sanctuary.  It’s spring.  Holy week even in the world of migration, and maybe especially there.  I sat on a rock in a boggy field at Ninepipes and watched blue herons fly and land.  Fly and land. Fly and land.  Long legs.  Long beak. Such trajectory and grace.  Then I drove home along the other side of Flathead Lake.  “How was it?” my children asked me.  They meant the death.

“Peaceful,” I said.  “Death does not have to be scary.”  I paused and braved the next sentence because when you’ve held an animal while it passes, you feel unafraid.  ”And souls live on.  I’m sure of it.”

Pilgrimage.  Sanctuary.  Souls.  The question is:  can we feel them?  Can we believe in what we can’t see?  Can we receive holy mystery?  I did that day.  And I’d like to keep receiving it.  Ziggy’s gift.

Ninepipes bird sanctuary-- Montana

 

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March 27, 2013

Welcome Spring!

 

 

 

 

2013 Haven Writing Retreats

June 19th-23rd (full– wait list)
August 7th-11th (now booking)
September 4th-8th (now booking)
September 18th-22nd (now booking)

Thank you for my winter haven respite, wherein I gave over These Here Hills to you, worked on a book, and watched from afar while you created community in your blog entries and beautifully rich interactions.  It was a joy to think that community can happen whether or not face to face.  It can be word to word.  Congratulations to Darla Bruno for winning the contest!  She is the recipient of a scholarship to my Haven Writing Retreat in Montana!  I will be back now at These Here Hills and look forward to sharing with you here.

Some people object to social media.  They say it is not a real community.  Well I just recently did an hour live chat with Book Trib and I loved every minute of it.  I might be a talking head on an awkward laptop camera, and I might be alone in my office answering questions typed in from participants, but in this format…there is still community.  Something happens when we make ourselves available to question and answer whether in person or not.  Thank you Book Trib, and to those who participated!  For those of you who didn’t catch it, here you go.

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March 25, 2013

Long Ago: Community Entry #28

These trees keep watch like three ancestors, believing that I can write this book, even when I wonder...

As you may know, I am spending a few months in the dormancy of winter, working on a book. And, like last year at this time, I am offering my blog to you. Last year we looked into our Breaking Points and found community and grace in grief and vulnerability. This year we are looking into our past, and finding the weaving of community that stitches us to our present. I will be posting these pieces at These Here Hills. Their authors will be happy to receive and respond to your comments.  Here is the blog post I wrote about this subject.

Contest submissions closed. Winner will receive a scholarship to one of my upcoming Haven writing retreats in Montana, announced mid-February…

Now I am further stepping into the wilderness of Montana and the wilderness of writing. If you’d like to create haven for your creativity…come to a Haven Writing Retreat here in Montana. June, August, and September retreats are now booking and filling fast.  Email me for more info:  Laura@lauramunsonauthor.com

I love how we can touch who we are in the faces and hearts of our forebears.  Please enjoy this lovely piece from Michelle Roberts. 

yrs. Laura

Freckle-faced Filipino, by Michelle Roberts

“Ah que linda!”, Mara squealed as she stepped through the front door putting her warm, plump hands on my freckled cheeks.

My mother told me it meant “oh, how pretty” but it didn’t help me get over my pale skin and strawberry blond hair. Strawberry blond because kids teased little girls with red hair and my mother specifically said mine was the most beautiful shade of strawberry blonde. “Women would kill to have your hair color but you just can’t get it in a bottle”, was her way of comforting me.

I was born in 1970 at Cape Canaveral Hospital smack in the middle of the sunshine state. Even though I grew up in Florida I never once managed to get a tan. A day at the beach meant I’d burn, sunscreen or not. By afternoon I was red as a lobster, peeling a few days later and then white again with nothing to show for it but a few extra freckles.

My grandfather was from the Philippines with dark hair and olive skin. Even though he was in his late seventies when we moved in after my parents divorced, he always had lovely Latin ladies visiting him. I envied their dark complexion and thick black hair. Mara was a regular and brought him food, shared stories and rolled her R’s even when laughing. His was the first stable, calm home I could remember and I relished the routine of dinner served every day at exactly 5:30pm. He wasn’t exactly affectionate but a man who tended to his plants every morning before most people got out of bed had a kind heart whether or not he’d admit it. The neighborhood kids were scared of him because he yelled from his front porch when they took a short cut through his flower beds. My mother used to say that he’d mellowed with age. None of my friends would believe it.

It must have been difficult to have three young children move in after retiring but we always felt welcome. My problem was that I never really felt like I fit in. The adults often spoke Spanish to keep their conversations from little ears. Especially my mother and her twin sister who talked so fast Spanish lessons probably wouldn’t have helped. I loved to hear the story about how she learned to speak the language out of necessity as a little girl. When my grandfather married his second wife from Cuba my mother made so many trips to the corner store to buy a sack of sugar? No. Flour? No. She was tired of the store owner shrugging his shoulders and finally taught herself how to decipher her new step-mother’s pantomime.

My grandfather immigrated from the Philippines in 1925 through the port of Seattle and worked for a year in Detroit while living with his uncle, the first of the Owano clan to make the trip across the ocean. He later moved to Chicago where he studied to become a doctor and met my grandmother at a party. A tall, gorgeous blonde with men buzzing all around her, she didn’t notice the handsome man of modest height who kept refilling her glass and fetching her food. She gave her number to another man and my grandfather memorized it. When I asked him what he thought when he met her he admitted, “My children would be tall.” He never became a doctor but they raised five children on his salary as a porter on the Pullman trains.

So it was my grandmother’s height and fair skin and her mother’s strawberry blond hair that I inherited so many years later. The Filipino relatives that visited over the years found humor in meeting their first freckle-faced Filipino. I grew up hearing tales of the huge parties the Owanos threw for family visiting from the United States.

“You’d be treated like royalty the moment you stepped off the plane,” my mother used to tell me. “They’d roast whole pigs and serve eight course meals in your honor especially since you are so fair skinned. The women in the Philippines shield themselves from the sun so their skin doesn’t get too tan.”

Years later when I moved to Washington, DC, after college my grandfather was the first to warn me about the murder capital of the country. He jotted down the address of a cousin who lived in Maryland and I dutifully wrote it in my address book. I wasn’t the shy girl that lived with him as a child but I knew I’d never pick up the phone to call on a relative I’d never met. My college roommate and I were sharing an apartment with another friend in Virginia and moving to a new city without jobs or even prospects. He had every right to worry.

But somehow we managed. I worked a couple of jobs through temp agencies until I was hired by a downtown trade association. The first thing I did when I got medical coverage was flip through the providers list to find a dentist. I made an appointment for the following week with an office that listed Filipino under “languages spoken”. I was hoping she was the hygienist and a mention of my grandfather might spare me the usual lecture about never flossing.

When I went to my new patient appointment I asked them who in the office was from the Philippines. They told me one of the hygienists was working toward her certification and should be there when I returned for my cleaning.

The day of my cleaning I recognized her accent right away. There’s something about the way Filipino’s pronounce their n’s and g’s that reminds me of the smell of my grandfather’s adobo and hours spent in his kitchen.

“You must be from the Philippines.” I said to the woman preparing the instruments for my hygienist.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“My grandfather is from Cebu,” as I waited for her surprise.

“I am from Cebu.” Most people I met would say they were from Manila or tell me they had visited Cebu.

“My grandfather is an Owano.” I was used to locals recognizing his family name since many relatives held political offices and owned land.

“I am an Owano!” By this time the woman trying to clean my teeth was looking back and forth between us, mouth agape.

“Really? Well, my grandfather lives in Florida.”

“Not Bern?”

“That’s my grandfather, Bern Owano.” Now the hygienist was laughing in disbelief.

Joanna, explained that on her first trip to the United States her mother Bernadette stopped in Florida to visit my grandfather and bring him packages. They were cousins and she was named after my grandfather because they shared the same birthday. Joanna insisted that I come to dinner to meet our other cousins. By the time I left the appointment she’d made all the arrangements and gave me her phone number and the address for dinner on Sunday evening.

Sunday I drove to the suburbs of Maryland and to the very same address my grandfather wrote down for me three years earlier. It was the home of an older cousin whose nanny opened the door, took one look at me and, puzzled, called upstairs in Tagalog. All I could make out was the word “Americana”. She invited me in and explained that Joanna had gone to the Metro to pick up some other relatives.

Over the next few hours I was greeted by almost two dozen new relatives who dropped everything to be there. They brought food, introduced me to their children and took out copies of the Owano family tree. They explained that their own grandfather was the uncle my grandfather lived with in Detroit. They all felt so deeply indebted to both men for paving the way for their families to be educated in the United States. This room full of doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants was so excited to meet Bern Owano’s granddaughter.

They explained that my grandfather’s grandfather had two wives and that most of them were descendants of the first wife while I was a descendant of the second. And at one point when they were raising their voices in Tagalog I asked them what it was about.

“Oh, she’s just bragging because now she has a tall blonde on her side of the family,” Joanna pointed to another cousin from wife number two.

Another relative laughed because he had arrived late and thought I must be a American friend of their cousin. He was still patiently waiting to meet her.

That night was my first visit to my grandfather’s homeland and my first roasted pig. They welcomed me like royalty and admired my fair complexion. Somehow the universe brought me to the very place my grandfather wanted me to be. With my Filipino family, my Owano clan, in a big city that seemed like our own little island.

 

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March 22, 2013

Long Ago: Community Entry #27

 

Amazing how a wheelbarrow full of wood can mean the difference between life and death, never mind comfort. Mindful living beats button pushing any time.

As you may know, I am spending a few months in the dormancy of winter, working on a book. And, like last year at this time, I am offering my blog to you. Last year we looked into our Breaking Points and found community and grace in grief and vulnerability. This year we are looking into our past, and finding the weaving of community that stitches us to our present. I will be posting these pieces at These Here Hills. Their authors will be happy to receive and respond to your comments.  Here is the blog post I wrote about this subject.

Contest submissions closed. Winner will receive a scholarship to one of my upcoming Haven writing retreats in Montana, announced mid-February…

Now I am further stepping into the wilderness of Montana and the wilderness of writing. If you’d like to create haven for your creativity…come to a Haven Writing Retreat here in Montana. June, August, and September retreats are now booking and filling fast.  Email me for more info:  Laura@lauramunsonauthor.com

It’s amazing how the simple things bring happiness when we’re brave enough to stop and pay attention.  Please enjoy this lovely piece by Katie Andraski.  yrs. Laura

 

How the Teacher Introduced Herself to her Class on The Joy Diet Or The Teacher Writes About The Happiest Time of Her Life , by Katie Andraski

 

This happy time I’m in now, started with a pot of soup three years ago. It’s been the longest, most consistent time I’ve been happy. My husband, Bruce, and I had just driven five hours from Albany to Bath, Maine. We’d almost bought it three times when semis merged into our lane with us in it. Our nerves were shot. And we were headed for our second family, the Proctors.

I’ve known them since I could think. Gene has told the story that she met my mother when my brother started kindergarten and met her son Bruce. I had to be two, so I’m not kidding about how long I’ve known them.

There are all kinds of stories I could tell you about the Proctors. Martha Beck’s descriptions about how doing nothing can be a frightening exercise because “if you have suffered greatly and not yet resolved your pain, you may find it literally unbearable to become physically still, the moment you really quiet your body, you’ll feel the monsters of unprocessed grief, rage, or fear yammering at the dungeon doors of your unconscious mind” reminds me of my own resistance to taking up Buddhism. Bruce Proctor had challenged me to look into it, but the weird visions a person might see while sitting seemed too close to the demons I didn’t want to welcome into my life. Bruce Proctor literally did nothing for hours on end, days at a time. Sitting practice. I saw him move from a jiggly would-be rock star who couldn’t keep his legs or his eyes still to a man with a calm presence. It was as profound a conversion as I ever saw. Though to be truthful I saw him blast right past that to seeing auras on trees and gremlins hopping in branches and hearing Jesus’ voice. It was creepy how he’d sit on the love seat and weave like a cobra. He’d walked from Paris, Maine to Albany, New York by himself, following old rail beds. He had hooked up with the outfit in Boulder that became known for its excesses and sexual abuse during those years. Eventually he found his way to the Zen Center of New York. Now he photographs his visions using the light and shadow of desert landscapes and junkyards.

I could tell you about Ron Proctor sitting behind me in eighth grade because Proctor came right after Pauley, and he’d kick my chair and call me The Beast. But I was vindicated when I saw what he wrote in Donna Wright’s yearbook how she should be more like me. He is drop dead gorgeous and never been married. One year we were visiting his parents, and he took us to Pemaquid Point, the site of a well-photographed lighthouse where I imagined riding a brown horse along the rocks and into the sea.

He borrowed a skiff and took us to the Kennebec River fishing. The Bath Ironworks are awesome anytime you see them, but we were down in the river looking at sparks bright enough to blind us. Cranes big enough to tower over a naval frigate frightened me; they were so big. Hell, all that iron swept up like cliff faces frightened me. Somehow a hull that is halfway made is more awesome than a finished one. Is it the emptiness that makes it so big? My husband pulled a striped bass as big as he was out of the river. And the water was alive with chop and the amber colors of sunset.

These are men who I fell in love with as a young girl. Bruce Proctor as much as anyone inspired me to write and to think. Ron was my gorgeous classmate. I tried to convert them both to evangelical Christianity in these wonderful arguments about faith and atheism, Buddhism and Christian mysticism. My prayers and Bible readings around them shaped me into the kind of Christian I am, someone not so sure the hellfire preachers of my childhood told the truth. Oh I’d cry they’d come to know Jesus because hell was real as the gravel road and night I walked into. Then the Bible started to speak mysterious things about God not willing anyone should perish, about how praying in God’s will would make it so. So if I prayed for Bruce and Ron, even their whole family to know Jesus, than it was in God’s will, and they’d come to know him. They’d be saved. Don’t ask me how free will plays into this. I don’t know.

The apostle Paul himself talks about the Judeo-Christian mythology—Adam bringing death into the world–universal death that none of us escapes. Then the mystery—Jesus brings life and resurrection to the world, more so than Adam. None of us escapes. As far as I know neither one knows the Lord in the traditional evangelical sense I was thinking of as a kid.

Even after my father tried to talk Bruce into Christ, he’d lean back and say, “I don’t know about that. but you’re my second family,” which flipped when my parents and brother died and suddenly the Pauleys weren’t a family and the Proctors became my second family. It was Bob and Gene who took in my husband, Bruce, and I, giving us a second shot at the kind of love parents give—the pot of soup waiting at the end of a long day kind of love.

The wind had caught the sea at Birch Point, and the water was amber and the wind caught us as we got out of the car, whipping our shirts with enough chill that I didn’t want to walk out to the point. But my beloved Bruce settled himself as the wind and the waves blustered around him as joyously as a barking golden retriever.

Bob and Gene weren’t going to be home when we arrived because they had a wedding to attend. There was a slow cooker of vegetable soup and a pan of chocolate cake, and a Post It note telling us to eat up and enjoy. Which is what Bruce and I did. We took our bowls to the table and looked out their window at the amber light and point jutting across the way with a dock floating at high tide. Opposite us was a lobster boat tied to a buoy. We stared out the window hoping to see the funnels of the Scotia Princess below the horizon as the ship plied her way from Portland to Halifax. On the window ledge was a carved wooden fisherman, a wire hanging down, a line into the air, a line into water.

Part of hospitality is the home a family sets around themselves. That empty space where people live and move and have their being. The Proctors’ house is bigger than it looks even though it’s built on the foundation of a cabin, Maine’s rules for building on the coast, holding the Proctors to that space. It’s full of nooks and crannies with little things Gene has found at garage sales and flea markets here and there. When I’m there, I delight in looking at the dish full of sea glass, delight in the glass frog I sent one Christmas. I sit in the covered easy chairs, staring at the wooden ships and grandfather clock standing straight like a tall person who doesn’t have to stoop, standing tall under the cathedral ceiling, the moon in its face.

Part of hospitality is the home a family sets around their guests—two bathrobes hung on hooks in the bedroom, and orange juice on the front porch, the ocean as glassy and quiet as it was chopped the night before, the air balmy.  Gene has stepped into a mother’s role, taking me shopping at Renys, a Maine department store or buying me a necklace and earrings because that’s what moms do for daughters. Bob has told stories of when he worked as a civil engineer in Alaska and New York, family stories that don’t belong to me because I didn’t grow up with them, but stories that welcomed us to the hearth. They have welcomed us into a solitary space and listened when we’ve needed counsel for our lives. And they have delighted in the gifts we’ve sent, the bulb garden that bloomed in January adding color to the front window, and the black raspberry jam Bruce made from wild bushes in the field across the street.

There’s something about simple loving hospitality that helped put me in my skin after a hard, hard winter that was as close to a dark night of the soul as I’ve come, that began with a sentence small as a lemon twist from relatives I wanted to visit, saying in essence, you’re family, but not for Christmas, not even the Christmas right after September 11, when I wanted to touch my own blood. Amazing how a sentence can twist open a whole bottle of loneliness.

It didn’t help to be reading the classic by St. John of the Cross, wishing I wouldn’t go through a dark night of the soul. But sure enough I did. The details aren’t important—my beloved cousin died, my students didn’t come to my classes, my writing turned me inside out so much so that I felt like an emotional burn patient thinking nobody wanted to be my friend I was so dark–but what is important is how one seems to go with the other—mourning shall last for the night, but a shout of joy will come in the morning.

And somehow that pot of soup and cake and wind tossed evening changed everything. Somehow Gene and Bob throwing their arms around us, saying, “It’s so good to see you” stopped the rule of darkness in my life. Stopped it dead in its tracks. Everything flipped, and I found joy and light and quiet in the simplest of things. And the people I felt were far away suddenly drew near on their own, without me doing anything. Maybe that’s why Jesus says it all hinges on a cup of water or should I say a pot of soup.

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March 20, 2013

Long Ago: Community Entry #26

May we open ourselves to the gift of self-expression with empathy and courage.

As you may know, I am spending a few months in the dormancy of winter, working on a book. And, like last year at this time, I am offering my blog to you. Last year we looked into our Breaking Points and found community and grace in grief and vulnerability. This year we are looking into our past, and finding the weaving of community that stitches us to our present. I will be posting these pieces at These Here Hills. Their authors will be happy to receive and respond to your comments.  Here is the blog post I wrote about this subject.

Contest submissions closed. Winner will receive a scholarship to one of my upcoming Haven writing retreats in Montana, announced mid-February…

Now I am further stepping into the wilderness of Montana and the wilderness of writing. If you’d like to create haven for your creativity…come to a Haven Writing Retreat here in Montana. June, August, and September retreats are now booking and filling fast.  Email me for more info:  Laura@lauramunsonauthor.com

I HAPPY, by Ani Bell

You like me a lot.

That’s what Brian (pronounced Bree-ahn) said to me on New Year’s Eve, nearly nine years ago. We were salsa dancing at an outdoor club in Samara –a hard-to-get-to coastal town on the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. 

You like me a lot.

Hands on my hips, smile on his lips, a direct gaze connecting his brown eyes to my blue.

You like me a lot.

I was — for once — speechless. A confident, strong, thirty-eight-year-old woman – yet a twenty-three-year-old Tico rendered me unable to connect two articulate words together. 

You like me a lot.

I felt I’d landed the leading role in a silent remake of ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

You like me a lot.

His words were cool water splashing my face, electricity shock-coursing through my veins. I was stunned. I’d never encountered a man so self-assured, so straightforward, so bold. Or so right. It was true. I liked him a lot.

Once I could breathe again, I managed a chuckle, looked into his eyes. ‘Si,’ I mumbled — proving my continued inability to construct a sentence. Just as well. The instant the acknowledgment left my lips, Brian’s came to meet them. And meet them. And meet them. And meet them. His friends stopped dancing to watch. 

Thus began one of the greatest love affairs – & most unexpected learning lessons — of my life.

Five minutes after that incredible kiss, worry set in. Mi dios!  What was I THINKING?! A twenty-three-year-old?! Seriously — besides that. Sure, Brian was exotic & smoldering & sexy & had a head of long, crazy-curly hair any supermodel would covet. But he was twenty-three. What — besides a sweet-hot tropical fling — could he bring into my life? He was twenty-three. What — besides how to speak Tico-slang — could he teach me? He was twenty-three. What — besides sweaty-steamy-beach-sex — could he do for me? Did I mention he was twenty-three?

Being so close to the equator, I can plead heat-induced dementia. Being on vacation, I can plead being-on-vacation. Being single & thirty-eight (& no dummy), I can plead sweaty-steamy-beach-sex. 

At the time, I probably did plead those things, & I’m sure What-Happens-In-Samara-Stays-In-Samara occurred to me more than once whilst considering the pros & cons of a romance with Brian.

But the real reason I said, ‘Si’, was because I felt a connection to him that surpassed sex –even the sweaty-steamy-beach variety. I felt a connection that circumvented language & cultural barriers. I felt a connection that magically transformed the fifteen years between us to mere seconds. I felt a connection I couldn’t explain. But he could.

The night we first kissed, walking home along a deserted stretch of beach, I asked, ‘Por que`?  Why me?’ I hadn’t yet made peace with a holiday dalliance, especially one involving a markedly younger man. Brian stopped walking, took my hands in his.  ‘You have big energy,’ he said. Well, I silently mused, THAT’S original!  I thought I’d heard every pick-up line in the book, but this one certainly takes the tortilla.

Instead of attempting to translate cynicism into Spanish, I opted for confusion. ‘No entiendo.  I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘Big energy,’ he repeated.  ‘You have big energy. First I see you, I say my friends — I marry that woman.’

‘Marry?’ I squawked. ‘No.  No.  No marry.  No marry!’ Fear turned me into a wing-flapping parrot with very bad grammar, ‘You no mean marry!?  You no mean marry!?  No marry!  No marry!’ He grasped my hands again, attempted to calm me. ‘Marry.  Yes, marry.  I say marry.  No because you beautiful. No because sexy.  You have big energy.  Good vibration.  I see it.  Light around you.  My friends see.  I see.  Good energy.’

Even with Brian’s broken English, understanding began to blossom. I stopped squawking & started breathing again. He smiled, encircled me with his arms & said, ‘We have connection.’ I didn’t know what to say, but I knew what to feel. He was right.

There was an energetic connection between Brian & I that had little to do with sex or romance or wanting to wrap my fingers in his crazy-curly hair. We were old souls — & we’d recognized one another.  I’d felt it from the beginning, but hadn’t known how to convey it in words or whether he’d grasp the concept even if my Spanish were sufficient to do so.

But he was twenty-three. I couldn’t fathom what I’d get –besides sweaty-steamy-beach-sex –out of a relationship with a twenty-three-year-old. I fell for him nonetheless. How could I not? We genuinely liked one another, danced well together, talked easily & openly, laughed a lot.

One afternoon in bed, lying in the crook of his arm, I reminisced about the New Year’s Even he’d been so brazen as to declare, ‘You like me a lot.’ When I told him I couldn’t quite believe he’d had the huevos to say such a thing to me, he looked perplexed. I was fairly sure I’d used Tico-slang correctly. [Translated, ‘huevos’ literally means ‘eggs’, but Ticos use it more as a colorful description for ‘man-eggs’ -- if you get my drift.] But Brian appeared flummoxed. Between his broken English & my shattered Spanish, it took ten minutes to unravel the miscommunication. When we did, I laughed & screamed so hysterically, my landlord poked her head in the window to make sure I was OK. I was.We’d discovered, when Brian boldly said, ‘You like me a lot,’ he’d actually meant to say, ‘I like you a lot.’

Realizing his gaffe, he smiled shyly, said, ‘Lo siento.  I sorry. I no mean say that.  I mean say — I like you a lot.  Oh, man!’ Then he kissed my cheek murmuring, ‘Lo siento, lo siento, lo siento.’ I assured him there was nothing to be sorry for. He liked me a lot. I liked him a lot. We have connection.

The next day, after a first-ever surfing lesson (big waves, bigger wipeouts), we sat on the beach laughing at how terrified I’d been at the prospect of encountering sharks –which I was convinced wanted nothing more than to chew me to bits, JAWS-style. Truth to tell — I had no plans to become shark-bait on my vacaciones, & if I hadn’t trusted Brian & already seen firsthand what a gifted surfer he was, nothing could’ve lured me into the deep waters of the Pacific. But it was obvious the ocean was his home, & he was born to surf –perhaps even born to teach others how to surf?

As the idea erupted in my brain, the life coach in me shifted into high gear. I realized Brian could turn his passion for riding the waves into a lucrative way to earn a living. Genius! I shared my inspiration, described in detail how brilliant Brian would be to quit his job at Hotel Giada, start a surfing school, maybe ask his cousin to help run it. Thrilled for him, I thought of the money he’d make, the independence he’d have, the exhilaration of success at his young age.  I chattered on for two or three minutes before I realized – Brian wasn’t chattering back.

Halting my dream-scheme in midsentence, I asked, ‘Well, whatdya think?’ He kissed my cheek, seemed to struggle for words. I assumed the language barrier prevented him telling me what a ridiculously talented coach I was, that he was busy translating glowing words of praise from Spanish to English. I sat patiently, awaiting the accolades to come. He kissed my cheek again, smiled. 

‘Ani — your idea, I thank you,’ he began. ‘Is good idea.  Is bueno.  I thank you.’ He squeezed my hand, continued, ‘Is good idea.  Verdad.’ His eyes locked with mine, guileless. ‘But my work is be happy.  And I happy.‘

You coulda knocked me over with a palm frond. He went on, ‘I understand your country is good to success. Is bueno.  Is good for you.  But my work is be happy.’  He shrugged his shoulders, a light in his eyes. ‘I happy,’ he repeated, the smile on his face confirming his words.

It was true. He was. Even working long, hard hours as a waiter. Even catering to tourists who could afford to vacation in Costa Rica, but seemingly couldn’t afford to tip. Even going without the conveniences I took for granted –owning a car, an overstocked grocery, air conditioning. Even living with his mother, his father, his sisters, his brother — in a home with little privacy. On an occasion when I asked if he wouldn’t prefer to move out of the family casa — get his own place – he searched my face for answers, bewildered.  

‘Why I want leave my Mom?’ he inquired. ‘Um, maybe to have privacy, be on your own?’ I offered. ‘Oh, no, Ani — I love my Mom.  If leave my Mom, I no happy.  Nooo happy.  I happy with my Mom.’ I couldn’t argue with that. He was. I knew firsthand.

The morning after Brian & I first spent the night together at ‘my place’ – a rental casita located a few houses down from his own — he awoke early, jumped into the outdoor shower, crawled back into bed squeaky-clean, a half-grin on his face. 

‘Come, Ani.  No sleep.  We go.  We eat breakfast.’ Receiving no response, he reached under the sheets, threatened to tickle me if I didn’t get a move-on. I closed my eyes, mock-snored as loudly as I could, ‘Conk-shuuu.  Conk-shuuu. Cohhhnnnkkk-ssshhhuuuuu.’He wasn’t buying it. ‘Aaaaanniiiii,’ he coaxed, ‘is time awake!’ ‘Cohhhnnnkkk-ssshhhuuuuu.’

Trying a new tactic, he put his lips to mine, puncuating his words with kisses. ‘Aaaaanniiiii!’ KISS. ‘Is time,’ KISS. KISS. ‘Breakfast!’ KISS. ‘Cohhhnnnkkk-ssssshhhhhhuuuuuuuu,’ I replied against his lips.

Assessing the situation, he played the sympathy card, sighing, ‘I have hungry.  Think I die if I no eat, Ani. Think I die if I no eat, ahora!’I opened my eyes, made a funny face. Giggling, I said, ‘You look bueno to me!’ He whistled in exasperation, started grumbling in Spanish, faster than I could translate. 

One thing was apparent —  the way to a man’s heart really is through his stomach, even in Costa Rica. I laughed, told him I’d cook something muy delicioso as soon as I had energy sufficient to lift my head off the pillow. He rolled his eyes, said, ‘No, no, no.  My Mom cook! She want meet you.  We go.  Is late.  She wait.’

Suddenly I had no problem lifting my head off the pillow.  I bolted upright — speechless again — mouth agape. My heart danced a merengue, my mind twirled to the pumping beat: I’ve spent the night with a twenty-three-year-old, & his mother — who happens to be a mere six years my senior – wants to meet me & cook breakfast!? 

I found my voice. ‘Mi dios, tell me you’re kidding! Tell me you’re joking!  Tell me you’re not serious! Por favor, tell me your mother isn’t waiting to cook me breakfast?!’ I pleaded.

‘She wait y she cook. Pero no eat if we no go ahora,’ he said, pulling me into his arms.

‘Oh, God, Brian — I can’t walk into your family’s home the morning after we’ve had sex & expect your Mom to cook for me!  Are you loco?!’ He handed me my flip-flops.

I pulled the sheet over my head. ‘No way.  I’m not going.  I’m NOT going. She might try to poison me or something.’

‘No, no.  She no poison.  She no poison!  She cook with love!  Have big, love energy in eggs, gallo pinto.  You see.  She no cook bad energy except when she mad.  When she mad, I taste difference.  Taste muy malo. Last time she mad with Papi, I no eat nothing for two days!’ In spite of Brian’s disturbing attempt at reassurance, I got dressed, trudged the dirt road to his family casa, A Dead Senorita Walking.

 A howler monkey in the low branch of a mangrove screamed bloody-murder.  ‘You can say that again,’ I mumbled, feeling sick. Brian held my hand the entire way, had the grace not to mention how slick & sweaty it was. Smiling, oblivious to my dread, he walked into the house, pulling me along behind him. We entered the kitchen. There she was. This woman — quite nearly my contemporary — whose son was falling for me. My mind begged the question —  Oh, Blessed Maria, what have I done to deserve this?! But my heart already knew the answer – I’d slept with a twenty-three-year-old.

Brian kissed his mother on the cheek, lingered in a hug, gestured my way. He seemed so proud & happy. Dizzy with fear, I hung back in the corner, leaned against the stucco wall, bracing myself for the tirade to come. Silencio. I wondered if I’d comprehend whatever curses she’d hurl my way, thought I’d be lucky if I didn’t. I said a last-minute prayer. Oh, God — please protect me and forgive me for my sins.  Please let this Mother Hen spare me and let me go on living another day on Your Great Green Earth.  And if she does and if You do, I promise to never sleep with another twenty-three-year-old again!  And if I do, I promise not to show up at his mother’s house the next day for breakfast.  Ever.  Again. Amen. 

I resisted the urge to cross myself, took a step forward, resigned to my fate. With a rigid smile plastered on my face, I waited. She closed the distance between us in two steps, kissed my cheek, & took me into her arms.

‘Hola, Ani!’ she crooned.  ‘Mucho gusto.’ I’ve never felt so welcome. Or so relieved. The meal — rice & beans & eggs & plantains — was cooked with such Big Love, I tasted it. I understood why he never wanted to leave. I understood why he’d miss his Mami if he did. And I understood why he was so happy.

A week later, an illness hit Brian fast & hard. Feverish, swollen glands, aching all over, he was barely able to get out of bed. Afraid for him, I advised a visit to the doctor in a nearby village. He said he wanted to surf instead. I pushed him back into the pillows, covered him with the sheet, mopped his brow with a cool washcloth. I thought he was delirious.

‘Bri, you need a doctor.  This is serious,’ I warned.

‘No, no, no.  I need surf.  I need medicine.  Surf my medicine.  I go surf.’

Once again, I found myself speechless in the face of a young man whose wisdom defied his years.   I wanted to argue, force him to see things my way, coerce him into seeking a professional so he’d be healthy again. But since I’d underestimated him more than once, I held my tongue, decided to trust.  Maybe the love he felt for surfing would heal him? Weak but determined, he labored out of bed, got dressed, kissed me ‘adios’.  From a sore throat, he croaked, ‘Hasta luego!’ over his shoulder as he ambled down the dirt path to the beach.

Somehow I knew he’d be well in a few hours. While Brian went in search of surf-medicine, I curled up in a hammock, watched colorful parrots flitting from lime tree to mango, back to lime again. An iridescent blue butterfly fluttered onto my hand. I smiled, burrowing deeper into the hammock & into my reverie. I thought about all I’d learned in six weeks in Costa Rica, how I hoped to carry the lessons with me back home to the States. I thought about how a twenty-three-year-old taught me more than I ever dreamed possible. I thought about how love finds its way through words, through food, through cultures, through the joy of dancing & surfing & passion. And about how love found its way through two old souls born years & miles & countries apart. We have connection, I thought. And I happy.

That’s My Story,

ANI

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