I imagine myself in time looking back on myself--
Jane Hirshfield

This pen in hand, this self-moving pen on this day of bright sun after bright moon--
what would I give her, this self, in a year or a decade, if there were something I could give?
Besides desire. Besides platitudes aimed at quieting her frantic life.
I would give her the truth: she is who she is, no different, no reason to be different.
Pen in her hand, in love with words: their sounds, the way they can pin a moment so she can see it. The way they stop her mid-sentence, mid-thought, with the exquisiteness of noticing.

Photo by Barry Troutman

The world is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We give our hearts away. . .

William Wordsworth 
(1770-1850)

Photo by Barry Troutman

The world labors and labors, spins its replications over and over, faster than I can follow. The starving child, the exploded bomb, the woman beaten and raped, the innocent held guilty, the treaties broken, the powerful taking more. It goes on, the whirling, goes on and on.


I sit in the midst of it, a small center, a warm glow, a breath. A breath doesn't stop the world. Nor does the end of breath. Outside my window the ancient cedar, the singing frog. I go on. We go on together, the world and I, and I find how to love it, how to bless its lack and richness, how to speak of it, to feel my bones, reclaim my heart.

Last night I went to hear a favorite local band. They started the night by saying it was a farewell performance, celebrating one of their members who is moving out of state. They've been through this before, losing a beloved musician to the vagaries of life, so they also used the evening to honor their founding members. I watched their faces, so full of joy and sparkle as they played, yet at moments I saw sadness, too, as they let the music speak.

I was primed to think about partings, because in a couple of days it will be 35 years since I saw my father for the last time. We'd gone to visit my grandmother at a nursing home and then went to a restaurant for dinner, just the two of us. We headed home in opposite directions, and I caught a glimpse of him as he descended the entrance ramp onto the interstate: his flashy gold Mercury Cougar and his beloved profile. I didn't know it was the last time I'd see him; he died that night in his sleep.

This is my favorite photo of my dad. He was 23 and on his honeymoon, crazy in love and full of cocky youth. As he stood there challenging that warning sign, he didn't know what his message would mean to me so many years later--his invitation to stand fully in my life, not to shy away from the dangers it poses for the heart.

I've always loved the word bittersweet. So much of the English language is inexact and convoluted. But this word is direct and clear, naming that sharp fullness at the top of the throat, those tears just under the surface. I've had many losses since my dad, some through death, others through the complications of life. Sometimes I've known it was the last time; sometimes life has hit me over the head. What I've learned as I've integrated loss is that the bitter half of that word loses its force, replaced gradually and lovingly by the sweet. It has to do with gratitude, with what I keep.

As I settle more deeply into fall, I've been reflecting on how I mark the passage of time and how time marks me. When I set out to describe my sense of time in the simplest way I could find, this poem arrived, bringing with it memories of a place where I lived thirty years ago.
Photo by Barry Troutman

The release of my book, Against My Dreams, a collection of poems in my grandmother's voice, has me thinking about what she would say if she could speak to me now.

One morning recently when I sat down to write, this letter arrived at the tip of my pen.

Translation Note:
Jeg elsker deg means "I love you" in Norwegian. 

Dear Linda,

Words halted on my tongue. Always two languages tangled, Old Country and new. Instead, thoughts came through my hands, into clean cups and saucers, beaten rugs, starched pillowcases smoothed by the iron. My whole life all I did was housework. Morning to night: housework. I could speak fresh laundry snapping in wind. A cake of soap. A scrubbed entryway. The warm, bitter scent of coffee. A loaf of rye bread.

Your world is larger than mine was, yet I crossed an ocean and dwelt in the great buildings of New York City. You followed me there and found what I left for you. I learned to love the silver as it turned from dull to glow, and to love my hand in it. But it was a love I could not speak, only do. You rise from a well-kept house.

Trust your bones. They carry all of us who came before you. You have the strength to stand and withstand. Call upon the muse of bones each day as you do your work. Yours is a love of words that gleam with the polish of angels. Each word turns your soul to silver. Remember the soft cloth, the gentle pressure, the rub. Feel my hand over yours as it holds the pen. Above all, shine.

Jeg elsker deg,
Your Nana

I'm not good with heights. I get panicky, forget to breathe. Even when my brain says I'm safe, my body has its own thoughts: hands curled into fists, heart pounding to feed my shaky muscles. At times, the future feels the same way.

This is a photo of the suspension bridge over Lava Canyon on the south side of Mount St. Helens. It's 100 feet long. Crossing it is described in more than one hiking guide as walking on a suspended trampoline: each board that makes up the deck sinks when you step on it. And there are spaces between the boards, so as you watch where you step, you can see the rushing Muddy River 100 feet below. Plus the bridge sways, and on the recent day when I visited, one of the four cables that lessens its swing had come loose, so it swayed even more.

I crossed it anyway. In the middle, I stopped to look at the view.

Last night was the reading and book signing to launch my new collection of poems, Against My Dreams, written in the voice of my grandmother, a Norwegian immigrant. Sharing my poems and the stories that surround them was a profound experience. So many people came out to support me--a full house. After the reading, people shared stories and memories of their own ancestors, some by speaking to the whole group, others by speaking informally to each other or to me, still others by sending an email my way today. The air is still alive with the spirits of all our ancestors, with the family secrets that can direct our lives unseen, with the healing that comes from recognizing who we are and all that made us.

Uncle Ollie and Aunt Ellie had a farm. Ollie was my uncle, not by biology, but by commitment. Ollie's parents took in my father's whole family following my paternal grandmother's death in 1922, when my father was only five. Combining families allowed my grandfather to continue working. So my father and Ollie grew up as brothers on the two-family farm.

When I was a girl, Uncle Ollie and Aunt Ellie bought 150 acres and a herd of holsteins, and my family spent countless weekends and summer holidays there. During one summer visit, Ollie's brother Herbie stopped by. Herbie was an avid hunter, and he brought with him the spoils from his latest hunt, including the bear suit in this photograph.

My father, Uncle Ollie and Herbie concocted a practical joke. They recruited me. My job was to run out screaming each time a car approached, with Herbie in the bear suit lumbering behind. Ellie and Ollie's farm was on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, so the number of passing cars was minuscule, and they crept along to keep down the dust. Still, I'm sure my mother and Aunt Ellie cringed each time I went running into the road with the bear in pursuit. 

Even with the low volume of traffic, we managed to stop three or four cars before Herbie nearly passed out from the heat. I never thought about where that bear suit came from. I was too taken with getting real bear hugs and experiencing the peak of my acting career.  
 

I met my cousin Kari when I traveled to Norway to do research for my newly-released collection, Against My Dreams, poems written in my grandmother's voice. Kari's mother and my grandmother were sisters.

During the weeks I spent with her, Kari drove me all over the countryside to show me the farms where my ancestors lived and to share cultural museums and other relevant sites. She made a photo album and written history of my family for me. She fed me, listened to me, told me stories, gave me space to wander and write.

Kari died this spring while I was working on publication of this book. But I can still hear her earnest voice that day in her apartment when she pulled me into the hallway to show me a photo of my great-grandparents. 

"One day before you came, I walked by this picture and I heard their voices," Kari said in her lilting English. "They told me to be good to you, because you are the one who cares, the one who will tell the story."