for Chris Fredericks, wherever you are

 a sketch for the Farmland Elementary crowd.

Not only did he never give a straight answer, but Mr. Fredericks, my third-grade art teacher, could stun people to silence, send a shiver up listeners’ spines.

“Mr. Fredericks, are you married?” I only heard this question once.

“Her name is Captain Midnight. She is six feet tall and black as coal,” he ended with a whisper, eyes wide as when telling ghost stories.

The questioner was my bold friend Shelley, polar opposite of my shyness, but I witnessed the whole interchange. No one said, “So what do you mean by that? Are you really married? Is she African-American, is that what you mean? What is her real name?” No one said a word. Mr. Fredericks was perhaps five-foot-eight, but larger than life—or at least larger than life in my little town.

Up to that point I had not found anyone of the male half of the species to be even remotely interesting, with the possible exception of my dad, but that hardly counts, as dad was strong enough, handsome enough, and very smart, but very interior, so as a third-grader, it was hard to feel like I knew him. Dad’s a non-fiction kind of guy, an adult, and I thought all men were non-fiction kind of guys. Something about Mr. Fredericks spoke of a story, a mystery, an adventure. He would be a good pirate.

I will admit that it does not take much effort to “stand out” in Farmland, Indiana. No pirates there, under most circumstances. He embodied difference in a dozen visible ways— unkempt hair and a sense of style, beginnings of a beard—but on a deeper level, he was playful and funny, which added up to mystique, at least in the heart of a third-grader. My brothers admired him as much as I did, but I found Mr. Fredericks not charming, really, but rather fascinating like a well-written book. It was hard not to follow his every movement around the room when I was supposed to concentrate on my art projects.

Later, my brothers and I would try to fill in the back story of why such an unusual man chose to teach in a rural backwater—how did we get so lucky? One possible clue, better for a novelist than for a simple story-teller: Mr. Fredericks would kick the wooden benches in the art room with an imposing thunk when he felt he needed our respectful attention, and it sounded like the crack of a bat. He kept a psychedelic-painted wooden leg in the closet, a spare, with a funky dress shoe and sock. And he also had a temper, when provoked, and a bit of what we would call An Attitude Problem. On the other hand, if I was teaching creativity to the dusty children of farmers and factory workers in some poverty-stricken flatland town, I would develop an attitude problem on arrival. A missing leg, a temper, a country locale: I wonder if perhaps he was a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, an ex-soldier in the process of healing. The year was 1970.

When my mother, my brothers and I registered for classes and picked up our text books for the year, Mr. Fredericks was penciling lines on the huge art room walls, using an overhead projector with a stencil of a Mt. Rushmore for activists: Lincoln, the Kennedy brothers, and a face I found out later to be Martin Luther King. Note: he was drawing on the walls, as if people were allowed to draw on walls. Privileged sixth graders would assist in developing this Peter Max-style fantasy in vivid primary colors, beams of yellow light stretching over three walls. But I was in third grade, and I was in stunned awe.

Our art teacher could not actually draw, which is strange for an art teacher. He drew lollipop trees, a circle on a stick with no pretense of being tree-like. He was talented with graphics, block prints, large-scale projects. And he taught photography so creatively I still remember his crazy lessons, with characters opening doors and giving people black eyes to illustrate how film takes in light but actually turns black.

I do know Mr. Fredericks moonlighted as a freelance photographer, and that perhaps his real mission or real joy was to photograph children producing art. He offered my parents a candid Kodak slide of me, sprawling on a sidewalk on a warm spring day, tongue poking out of the side of my mouth in concentration, crayons strewn. The light was perfect that day, and we had started Art Class outside, Mr. Fredericks with a guitar singing, Ain’t a Gonna Study War No More. In the photo, strands of hair curled across my face, just as my mother would hate it, but just as it always did. There was a fierce look in my eyes, a force of will bending the page to some inner vision—I never noticed the sneaky photographer, never heard the click of the shutter.

One winter night as we viewed a slideshow in my family living room, the carousel stuck too long at that photo of me, and it bubbled and dissolved before our eyes. I was heartbroken, my last trace gone, along with the nicest photo of me ever taken. Somehow it seems fitting, though, a self-destructing trail, for the mysterious Mr. Fredericks. He would be in his mid-sixties now, and I wonder where he went next. Somehow I bet he never taught elementary art again, or at least not in a small town. I wonder where he ended up, if he is happy with Captain Midnight, if he still has a box of Kodak slides labeled 1970, Farmland Elementary, or if his copies, too self-destructed without a trace, leaving dust motes in the light of the projector beam, a little disappointment, and a little puzzle over what on earth really happened back there, anyway. 

letter from the exotic faraway

Good morning!

Isn’t it miraculous how traveling peels back the surface of ordinary life? Every setting, every minute feels new like a freshly-cracked egg, and just as liquid. Anything could happen.

I’m writing from my studio, my three-room writing paradise at Dairy Hollow Writers Colony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. While I’m still taking it all in, Eureka Springs feels to me like a mix of Rivendell (Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings) and Madrid, New Mexico—maybe with a bit of Farmland, Indiana thrown in there, too. Everyone greets one another. People talk to strangers. While the writers’ colony is located in town, the space between houses is wild and wooded. From my living room porch, I watched a fox cross the street this morning, and I saw a deer on the way to church. Neither of them looked too nervous about my presence. Public walking paths travel behind old haunted inns, past the towers of Victorian houses, right through the backyards full of cliffs and healing springs with mythical qualities. Everyplace is uphill, both ways.

My home for the next week is “the culinary suite,” a pale green and cream living room/office, arranged around a rustic fireplace of local stone. My suite also includes a KitchenAid dream kitchen, with a six-burner stainless steel stove and an array of cobalt blue appliances. Surrounding the dream kitchen is a patio. 

I arrived Saturday to an outdoor temperature of 104, so I unpacked and napped in the air-conditioning. (Folks here tell me this heat is not normal for this place—Eureka Springs is typically the cool and shady part of the state, a vacation hub in summer.) After walking through the crowded downtown in the evening, I found a small pub with a menu of “little bites.” The lettuce-shrimp wrap reminded me of Vietnamese summer rolls in Chinatown, and the olive tapenade reminded me of a favorite restaurant on Eastern Point in Gloucester, a restaurant my husband and I frequented many years ago—now long gone. Is it travel that knits all of time together into one story? Gloucester friends, one of the pub’s specials of the day was a lobster tail dinner for $65. What on earth can one do to a lobster tail to make it worthy of that investment? My little bites added up to $10.

St. James’ Episcopal serves Sunday brunch after church—eggs, fruit, and sticky buns from heaven. I met twenty new people who all love Dairy Hollow writing center, and they all wanted to know about what I am writing. I almost got to meet a retired author of Harlequin “super-romances,” but she was busy with the altar guild. (I am so NOT a romance-reader. This near-miss might be providential for her and for me. What is a super-romance? Anyone? Another of my writing companions enjoys a sub-genre called “cozy mysteries,” which include recipes. Who knew?) The church feels much like St. Mary’s Rockport, a place filled with artists and people who chose to live here instead of living anyplace else on earth. When I returned to my studio, I worked on research, journal writing and just catching up with myself. Went back to the pub for lettuce shrimp wraps and tapenade with my two colony compatriots—shared a bottle of wine and talked about our work. A nice introduction.

Then I hunkered down yesterday—all the world was waiting for rain to break this miserable heat wave. Spent the morning writing, reading, researching. Spent the afternoon finding a ride to the grocery store (good coffee, rice crackers, juice, pinot grigio). After my first Dairy Hollow dinner, more work and a little knitting. It took me a few hours to realize how silent this place is, aside from the cicadas, and to remember how much I love silence and solitude as a respite from my regular day-to-day life.

The rain came in the evening, pummeling, pounding, an all-night deluge. I woke to 72 degrees, outside—my online weather forecast said the cool temps would only last an hour, so I found the shortcut path through the woods and walked downtown. Most stores are closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. So I’ll make a date for the yarn shop tomorrow. Meanwhile I returned drenched with sweat from walking uphill both ways again.

Later this week I’ll tell you more about the project I’m working on. For right now, the temperature is climbing again, and I’m watching the butterflies on the porch. I tossed this morning’s coffee over ice and I’m sitting with my feet up on the hassock, my stack of books, and my notes. This time is a gift, and I’m enjoying myself and enjoying my work greatly.

Denise

from the corner of Birdsong and Windy River

Dear friends,

Happy summer to you!

My writing desk faces north over the Eagle Hill River, where I see the clam-diggers are parked on the point this morning. I’m situated on the second floor, with large maples shading me to the east, with vistas to the north and west.

The marshes flourish, grasses of chartreuse-green along the river, a bright contrast to the deep green of our lawn and the trees. Sometimes the birdsong threatens to overtake me—beginning at 3:30 a.m. rising in slow crescendo through six a.m. Then we adapt to the ongoing symphony, and even the cat sits to watch the mourning doves on the porch rail. At the end of the day, I know I should get to bed early since the birds will wake me repeatedly, but I love the night sounds, too, and I wait for the summer heat to relent a little. The house is uniquely unsuited to air conditioning—odd windows, few doors. But we are uniquely situated to catch any breeze.

Breeze, birdsong, spectacular views: am I painting a picture, here? I don’t know if I need a larger writing desk in my corner perch in the master bedroom, or if I need to go hide in the basement to get some work done—like Annie Dillard covering the window of her cinderblock writing cell. So far, I’ve indulged myself in the beautiful world with only a little self-discipline for my writing. This past year has been so very hard (the move, the loss of hope about buying a house, the long wait to hear about my adjunct teaching position). I am soaking up the beautiful world like a balm, reading books to feed my writing life, helping kids adapt to our new neighborhood and our new town.

I pulled together a ragged story for The Glen East Workshops in early June, where I studied with Scott Russell Sanders and a room full of talented writers for a week. In a writing workshop, each writer brings 20 pages, and we discuss each story around the table: what works? What prevents the story from working as well as it could? Watching SRS draw out insights and form mini-lectures from the content of these stories—that was well worth the investment of time and money to attend these workshops. My stack of notes will help me root out any traces of self-indulgence, and to clarify some confusing sections of my story. I highly recommend Sanders’ A Private History of Awe, and you can find some of his shorter works on the website of Orion magazine.

While staying at The Glen Workshops, I roomed with Andi Schrader, a woman who is dear to me from a dozen different points in my life. We lived in a dorm, ate in a cafeteria with endlessly fascinating conversationalists. Throughout the week, I drank in the readings and lectures by SRS, by Brett Lott, by Gregory Orr and Sara Zarr. And by the end of the week, I was enjoying the artwork Andi created in her calligraphy class with TimBotts, and the galleries of art created by the fiber arts and figure drawing classes. I haven’t even touched on my phenomenal classmates—this post would go on forever—but I’ll say that Justin McRoberts was in the room, and AmyTimberlake, and Jan Vallone was nice enough to give me a copy of her memoir.

In the past, I’ve been lucky to attend four Glen West workshops in Santa Fe, in conjunction with my masters program, and it’s a delight to be a part of the very first Glen East. It does me good to take my writing vocation seriously, along with other writers who me seriously, too. I will continue to mull how “the Glen” --the community of people working hard in the arts, wrestling with questions of faith—makes my life sane and rich and solid. I’m not sure words can frame this yet. And I'm still asking myself how my picture of The Glen is shaped by people I didn't see this time: I missed the SPU MFA crowd, and the Overstreets, and the Huppert-Volcks and the Guslers. And Mary and Nancy and Ann and Allison. I send unending thanks to IMAGE for hosting the Glens, all of them.

During the rest of my summer, I will teach conversational English for three weeks. Then I travel to Eureka Springs, Arkansas to accept The Duncan Eat/Write Fellowship for 2011—my award is two weeks of writing time in a private studio, and I’ll tell you more about that, soon. When I return, I’ll be preparing for my professor-life and I’ll be traveling a bit more with my family.  A full summer.

I need a second cup of coffee, friends— the breeze is sweet and cool, and I’m so glad to emerge from the heat wave. Scott went to work hours ago. Kids will continue to be draped across their beds for another hour or so, and I must dig into my journal with a pen. I’m hitting send, and not editing. You have a good summer, too.

Denise

snippets from journals past

Hello, dear readers! 

We moved. I didn't forget you-- okay, I kinda forgot you in comparison with all of my other obligations. I've taken to writing by hand, as often as possible, which makes it more work to find my blog-post pieces. I am digging through journals, now, finding paragraphs for a long essay about moving. 

Found this. Thought you'd might like it. I'll keep looking for more. 

Every day that passes brings a touch of nostalgia, not for this outgrown nest of a home, but for the ghosts of childhood past, for the images of childhoods fully lived, here. Already Brendan’s workbench sits abandoned, much of the time. When we bought it at a yard sale, how he loved it and how lucky we were, happy with our ten dollar investment, happy for a place to park his handsaw and his hand-crank drill. When we returned home, the workbench was wedged between the stove and the washing machine in the kitchen. I tacked a child’s apron to the front, to cover the storage area below and to provide pockets for cat treats.

When we move, he may find he’s outgrown the bench entirely. We will prop it up on blocks, to raise it to the right height, but I will miss its presence in the kitchen, where we kept one another company, each at our own work, him with his hammer and paint, me with the flour and the rolling pin.

A childhood passes. And one half of motherhood passes—not nearly all, and perhaps not nearly the hardest part.

 

luggage

When I claimed Shelley Wallace as my best friend in third grade, it was because she was new, and somehow she never learned that I was considered a social pariah. She liked me, and we laughed, and it was wonderful. I didn’t care so much that she was popular, and she didn’t care so much that I was not. No one told me that basketball coaches move—along with their wonderful daughters—every two years unless they can produce a winning team. So at the end of fifth grade, Shelley announced her family was moving. I suggested that she lash herself to the bedpost and refuse to leave our town, but she shrugged. She’d moved before.

I didn’t move. I lived in the same house until my 18^th birthday and my graduation from high school, when my parents put the house on the market and bought me a set of luggage. By then, luggage was exactly what I wanted. I would laugh with my college friends when they said they’d “go back to square one,” which meant going home. I had no square one, and there was no going back to anything, anywhere. My mother shared a trailer in the country with her new husband, the trucker whose company I loathed. My father had moved on to his new step-children and their teenage dramas.

I could form a homey room from the sterile cinderblock walls of a dorm cell.  I never traveled light—I carried everything with me. I became my own square one, forming my own path through college and summer breaks. And I was infinitely happy with my independence. Luggage: I was all about the luggage.

back soon!

Hey! We moved! Sold the condo, packed up our stuff, hauled it to the new place-- all while enduring several blizzards, weeks of freezing rain, several high water warnings.

So the new place is full of boxes, somehow. The light is (once again) spectacular.

I'm writing about this moving process, and I'm unpacking stuff as best I can. I will post more, after we catch up with ourselves.

Blessings to you.