Carol Smallwood, MLS, MA, Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, is a literary reader, judge, interviewer; her 13th poetry collection is Thread, Form, and Other Enclosures (Main Street Rag, 2020)

​https://literaryyard.com/2020/12/10/interview-of-the-author-of-the-grammar-of-untold-stories/
 
https://thebookendsreview.com/2020/12/02/interview-w-lois-ruskai-melina/
 
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/dec_20.htm#carolsmallwood
 
Wilderness House forthcoming winter 2021
 
Interview of Lois Ruskai Melina
 

​Lois Ruskai Melina, author
Paper back: 182 pages; $16.95: Kindle $5.99
ISBN-13: 978-1951651411
Publisher:  Shanti Arts LLC (September, 2020)
http://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/mno/MELINA_GRAMMAR.html
 
 
A reviewer, Rene Denfeld, longlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, observes about The Grammar of Untold Stories: “Each essay acts like the surface of water, inviting us to explore deeper. Family, children, infertility, and loss are just some of the issues explored in this brilliant book." After receiving a PhD in Leadership Studies, Lois Ruskai Melina taught in universities and her research focused on social movements and leadership. The word essay comes from “to try” and Melina’s collection with its touches of humor rises to the challenge on several contemporary issues. The author lives in Oregon with her husband where she enjoys rowing, and women's soccer; she has a grown son and daughter, and two grandchildren.
 
Smallwood: The title essay, “The Grammar of Untold Stories,” was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays, 2018 and a finalist for the North American Review’s Torch Prize and the New Letters Prize for Nonfiction. What other prizes have you received?
Kiese Laymon chose my essay, “Down in the River to Pray,” for the 2016 Best of the Net Anthology (Sundress Publications). “The Scent of Water” was a finalist for the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize at Crab Orchard Review. My short story, “Goat-Song,” was a finalist in the Lamar York Prize for Fiction contest at The Chattahoochee Review and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
The essay collection as a whole was a finalist in contests by three publishers before it was accepted by Shanti Arts.
 
 
Smallwood: Your economical use of words—lyrical to narrative with deft dialogue, covers several contemporary issues. Please share with readers some:
 
For personal essays to be meaningful for readers, they have to explore issues or experiences that resonate beyond the author’s life. In “Bread and Roses,” I describe my efforts to start a union at a newspaper I worked at in the 1970s, but I weave my experience in with historical material about women in the labor movement—many of whom were also newspaper journalists and suffragists. Of course, in talking about unions and activism, one has to talk about power. I consider how activism—from labor strikes to the 2017 Women’s March—creates an awareness of how power is held in the body.
 
“Obstruction,” which is about the last weeks of my mother’s life, explores ethical questions about end-of-life issues (and also the power of the medical establishment—I often come back to “power” in these essays.) “Down in the River to Pray” describes my efforts to find a missing nephew who had been diagnosed with HIV after moving to New York City in the late 1980s.
 
 
 
Smallwood: What are some literary journals you have appeared? Are they essays also? Do you write poetry, fiction? When did you begin writing?
 
 
I’ve had essays in some wonderful literary journals: Colorado Review, Lunch Ticket, Sport Literate, Literary Mama, and The Carolina Quarterly are just a few.
 
I don’t think of myself as a poet, but a couple of these essays were published as prose poems—“Still Life with Birds” in Entropy and “Wings” in Eastern Iowa Review. I wasn’t getting acceptances from journals that I’d submitted them to as essays, and I considered that perhaps they were more lyrical than some nonfiction editors liked, so I decided to submit them as prose poems. But I wrote them as essays so they are included in the collection.
 
I wrote nonfiction for so much of my life as a journalist that I’d never considered writing fiction until recently. Blood Orange Review and The Chattahoochee Review have published both my fiction and nonfiction.
 
I began writing for my high school newspaper, continued in college as a journalism major and after graduation worked in public relations a bit before taking a job as a newspaper reporter. After my husband and I adopted in 1980, I realized there was very little information for new adoptive parents, so I started a subscription-based newsletter, Adopted Child, which I published for about 20 years. During that time I also wrote three books on adoption published by HarperCollins. After that, I wanted to write about something different, so I followed nine of the top female swimmers in the United States for eighteen months leading up to the 2000 Olympic Trials and published their stories in the book By a Fraction of a Second (Sports Publications). I was happy with that book in a lot of ways, but I also realized when I was finished that I wanted to tell stories differently, and I began taking creative writing classes and writing personal essays.
 
 
 
 
Smallwood: You include your grandmother and mother in your essay collection. How have they shaped your writing? What women writers have influenced your writing?
 
I loved to read when I was growing up—I think most writers say that. When I was little, the public library was at the end of our block, and my mother and I would walk there and check out books. I had two sisters several years older than I am, and I became acquainted with a range of books through their interests and recommendations.
 
The Nancy Drew mystery series was an early favorite of mine, probably because she was spunky and adventurous with a lot of agency. I didn’t know until much later that the author Carolyn Keane was actually a pseudonym for a number of different writers, but most of the books were written by Mildred Wirt Benson. I still love to read mystery/suspense/thrillers—like those by Rene Denfield, which are literary and deal with contemporary issues in addition to being suspenseful.
 
When I read Lidia Yuknavitch’s, memoir, The Chronology of Water, it totally changed the way I looked at writing memoir and personal essay. She takes risks and pushes boundaries in a way that I hadn’t considered as a journalist who was trained in a particular relationship with narrative. Roxane Gay has also influenced me in that way.
 
I’ve been fortunate to take several of the Corporeal Writing workshops with Lidia. Many of the essays in this collection started in or were revised in one of her workshops.
 
I’ve been a fan of Terry Tempest Williams’ books for a long time, and I think my comfort with weaving the natural world into my writing is influenced by her writing.
 
 
 
Smallwood: The sixteen essays in The Grammar of Untold Stories are divided into Family, Work, Home. How did you decide on the title? How long did it take to write?
 
The title of the collection is also the title of one of my favorite essays in the book. But I also thought it represented one of the themes that shows up throughout the collection, which is how we make sense of what we don’t know. Grammar is the structure that we use to make sense out of words, and stories are the structures that we use to make sense out of experiences. But sometimes we have incomplete narratives, secrets, missing information. My interest in this goes back to my writing about adoption and the awareness of how often children who have been adopted must try to piece together their stories out of incomplete information.
 
The collection took about three years to write.
 
 
Smallwood: Have you seen changes in women getting published, the questions they are asking?
 
I definitely think women are breaking barriers in publishing in terms of getting greater recognition for their work and in challenging some of the norms when it comes to forms, characters, and topics. Writers like Maggie Nelson and Rebecca Solnit are demonstrating that there is a big audience for smart writing. But at the same time, I’m aware that this is still a struggle—still requires effort.
 
What I would like to see is the age bias addressed in publishing—particularly as it relates to women authors and women characters. A literary journal recently announced a themed issue for writers over 60. To me, that’s an admission that older writers are marginalized and require an affirmative effort to accept their work. Older women often feel invisible and I think this bias is alive and well in the publishing world. I’d like to see more older women as protagonists—without them being stereotyped as sexless, clueless, and frumpy. I recently read a mystery by a male author in which the detective was a woman in her 60s who had not advanced in her job because of sex discrimination. She was an active hiker and skier and involved in a new romantic relationship. It was so refreshing!
 
 
 
Smallwood: Please share what you are writing now, and how living in Oregon relates to your work:
 
I’ve lived in Oregon since 2008. Before that I lived in Idaho for almost 30 years. I’ve been an active outdoors person that entire time. So my writing reflects the natural world—rivers and mountains and hiking and rowing. A sense of place is important to my work. I hope readers of “Wings,” for example, feel the heat and dust and steepness of that hike. In “The Synchronicity of Healing,” I hope readers get a sense of what it’s like to row in the hours before dawn or in a race
 
I’m working on a novel that has three intertwined narratives set in France, Iceland, and the Pacific Northwest, chosen in part because of my fascination with each of those environments and how it shapes the people who live there. The protagonists are women of various ages who are in relationships with other women—as lovers, as friends, as sisters. It’s a lot to take on for a first novel!
 

​The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want
Help me to have faith for each day and not worry about tomorrow. I know You care tenderly for me, what more is there to want?
He makes me lie down in green pastures
When my days are filled with endless anxiety, I can easily forget You. When there is suddenly a roadblock in my plans, help me to see this as Your gentle 
reminder to seek You first, Your will, Your direction. I don’t want to wallow in self-pity because my plans didn’t turn out the way I planned. I want to want only 
Your will.
He leads me beside the still water
Not rushing, turbulent waters but still, peaceful waters reminding me of how much I need that quiet time with You, where I can regain the strength I long for, 
focusing on You alone.
He restores my soul
You renew my mind. You revive my will and soothe my emotions, provide healing where I have been so wounded by this life.
He leads me in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake
You encourage me to always choose to do the right thing, helping those in need, comforting the elderly, caring for the sick, remembering that I represent You 
wherever I may go.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me
                When I am afraid, and I fear the darkness will overtake me, I will praise You through the pain. You encourage me to keep on walking,
               step by step, out of the shadow into Your light.               
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me
A shepherd protects his sheep if they should wander into danger or stumble on their path. You protect me from hidden dangers all around, many that are 
invisible. With Your staff You gently guide me back if I should stray from the path of my life. Your love and Your Word comfort me.
You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies
My enemies might be fear, sadness, or the corona virus-You have defeated them all! They are under Your feet at the victor’s table. I will praise You through the 
pain.
You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows
I have the presence of the Holy Spirit with me because You have anointed me. May Your presence overflow into the lives of all that I meet.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life
Because of Your great promises, because of Your great love, I have hope and I am never alone. 
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever
I know that when the door closes on today, You will be waiting to walk with me into tomorrow and I will be with You for all eternity!
 

​Dear God,

We’ve been friends even as my mother conceived me. You told her that you love me. You told her that everything that concerns me touches you in the heart. You told her that you knew me even before she conceived me. You said to her: that my expectation shall not be cut off by any man or any woman. You said to her, that you are my pillar and my fortress and my strong tower and nothing is too hard for you to do for me. I know you as you knew me right from the beginning of time immemorial. Then, why has the mountain failed to move? Why is the pillar holding the world shaking? Why the world has kept basking on my weaknesses? Why has evil triumph over me? Where are you? Where is your will? Why are your ears too far from my words? Why your mouth is close to command this sickness out of the way? Why have they tormented us this far like we have no father above? Why free the Devil to use us like he wants? Why? Why? I ran to mother in the deadly hours of the night, I saw her in supplication to no one else but you.
 I saw that Chinedu was still sick. I saw tears in the face of Father, father whose mighty hands built the church cathedral. I could remember when he said that you told him to give all his best and he gathered some of his brothers and sisters and sold the whole lands he inherited from his father. He gave the proceeds to the church of God according to the prophecy. He called it a seed, yes, he called it a seed to God and we all believed him because he believed in you. He was mocked by all but he waited. He waited for you to answer him but you were far, far from him. may the time has not come, maybe, he might be lucky if he waits a little longer. You were not there to rescue him when sickness came. You were not there to rescue him when he had an accident. You should have averted the accident to somewhere else because he pays his tithe and gives his offer.  Father’s favourite line from the holy Book says that:

 “…And you will devour the devourer and the cankerworms…” 

That was the lines we grew up hearing him quote each time he was counting his tithe and whenever he paid his tithe.   You were not there to heal his second daughter Chikamso. She died in pains of Cancer and was buried while you watched from heaven. 

Meanwhile, father trusted in you. You said that those that trusted in you will never be put to shame but he did.  Look at mother in supplication every now and then. She had made the kitchen her home. The kitchen where the memories of Chikamso started, the kitchen where she first collapsed, the kitchen where Kambili died; the kitchen where her dog was poisoned; the kitchen where she birthed Mary, her memories started right here in the kitchen not in the bedroom but here where seeking for freedom is the deadliest thing that ever happened to mankind. Nothing is worth anything to a dead man, not even his money. It is how boys were raped and we could not see God come to their rescue in the midst of many deadly torments and torture. It is how girls were abused and we could not lay hands on the mercy of God rather his words came before the sun of the day to hurt us fiercely on our craving skins. It is how we were taking into exile and the spirit of God was nowhere to be found. It is how  our brothers and sisters were killed on the gory land called Nigeria. We could not fine God in their midst yet, we believed that he is ever present to us. 
Mother is still in the kitchen, father is still holding on tears just like  what the society told him that a man must not cry because he is a man, that a man must not show his weaknesses because he is a man. God, now that Mary is no more here to sing of how great you are, our mouths are ceased of praises. How could you have allowed Mary to leave us here alone? How could you have allowed her to journey alone in the void places holding no one by her side? Who would then sing in this morning devotion? Who would then raise a song of praises to you without holding back his tears?  We are all dying, and we must all die if Mary did not return home. Maybe death is the safest place to lay down ourselves till eternity. Her smiling portrait rests on the heart of every one of us, capped with a lonely empty feeling. How could you’ve allowed death to snatch her away from us? How could you have allowed her the freedom to paradise without first consulting her?  You further made her pass through pains and sorrow before you took her away. Why?

 Now, who will go to church with her Bible to worship you? Who will then clap hands like her in the church if she did not return?   Is Cruelty served in your plate? You took her down so bitterly with no complain; agony randomly blue ticked all her texts. She endured the pains and wished for the best but the best never came to her. Even when the world within her was at rest, no favors, and no gains, just a troublesome quest, but wait, why do we run to you after being frightened? Why do we forget you’re the same God that cares nothing about us in this side of the world? Why do we pray if not for it to be answered?  The Demons use us here like we were some rolls of paper, like we were a blunt meant to be finished but make sure their feelings were satisfied, they use us like a peddler, only when they need us.

Should I tell papa to go to the altar and take back the money he sowed as a seed for the wellbeing of Mary? Should I tell mother to stop fasting or to go to church and request for her car that she sowed as an offering for Mary’s recovery? Anyways, you are still God with or without those things and us. You are still there as God and no one can question your authority as they rightly said. But, I am bringing this to you that Satan is not at rest and you should not be at rest also. If Mary after all she had done in the house of God could die then life itself is meaningless to every human being. Having this thought all day long makes me think of losing myself to the wind. It makes me want to rest myself in the vacuum of lonely days till the trumpet will sound for Christ to come to our rescue if possible. Tomorrow sounds good and poisonous defining the art through which we were made. Tomorrow is a school of thought with the definition of unknown and you know you made it so. If only we could number our days here on earth; man will be better than he is now. If only tomorrow is known to us, man would learn how to manage himself to the fullest but tomorrow is unknown.  
Papa has being on a wheel chair for the past fifteen years. He had an accident doing your work. Sister Amaka has not given birth for the past ten years and she is among the pastors in the church. She counseled a sister who wanted to abort her child yesterday. Later today, she heard that the same sister has ended up aborting the child. I know your time is the best but she is being mocked by people she is better than. They looked straight into her eyes and mock her aggressively. Even those she called sons and daughters in the Lord mock her also. We were told that the devil locked up her womb because she is a Christian. Is that so? Where are you, God?

 Brother Ezeugo lost his job last year because he was caught preaching the gospel to one of his coworkers. We all know that these are temptations to show your supremacy over all things but you are still God with or without all these temptations. And now Ogba is suffering of pile…! I know you know about this but, when will all this end? Should we switch places and find peace somewhere else? Should we tell them that you are no longer God? Should we continue to plead that we may be called humans? No!  
Yesterday, I was in the church again and the man of God spoke about heaven and hell. He  taught us about paradise on earth and an ensnaring hell fire for sinners. He said there is a Hell fire waiting for all sinners, those who disobeyed God.  I was surprise hearing this again. I was astonished of how a lovely father would punish his children in the lake of fire because of disobedient. I was wondering why but I could not get an answer to the question. I wonder how you will feel seeing your children that you created burn and scream for help from the fire. Would you just close your eyes and ears for us to burn till eternity or would you quash the fire when you have mercy on us or would you just allow us to perish? If so, why did you create us, for you to burn us like that?     
 
When Mary was alive, she was a chorister. Later, she was ordained as a pastor and she was up and doing. She did all that she could to put smiles on people’s faces. She won many souls to the kingdom and was called mother Theresa of our generation. She built many foundations where the motherless and the orphans could be taken care of but after all, she died as a no body. 
She died just like a fowl.  She asked that I suck her memories away; she asked that I be her eyes, so i began from the beginning of her making until she gave up the ghost— i touched her like feathers on the wings of a seabird on the day she gave up as a human. She floated and ached in my bones but I asked for peace but it was far away from me. Peace which no one could give but only you. I shivered and woke in her skin, i nibbled into her nipples but all was lifeless to the core. I and her mother and her father moaned looking at her face lying on the bed.  Her spirit taught us how to run, to disallow little demons from telling us how her vagina looks like. I think you know all of this. I know you know them all, God.  Life has taught us to wear the cloths of our fathers and that of misery — "riches are never available” that was what misery told us. Life said that we should be scarce; we cannot cut our heart for a river flowing with dismissal. 

Life is a docile, a door less room where everything escape at will.  Life is a misery only known to it by itself. 
Let’s learn how to plant our lips only on our mouth day and night so that we could suck out mother and her mother’s dirge and her father's mother elegy before the black goats go into the dark night to look for yams to misuse.  Let’s turn our hands into a song from which your mouth ache again and again at your inabilities. We are all humans learning to throw ourselves to the world like our kites dangling to wind songs without holding anything as a common desire to hurt others of their misfortunes. In the terrain of blue skies, we will become tired humans learning to empty our wisdoms through the names of the grave but before then, let’s knit to our father's names to look for why our prayers take time to be answered and why we die and where we could find death. How do you think you carve the name of death after you die? 

On the sand towers? On the bridge of hope or on the bodies of the skies?  

God, do you know I gave myself big eyes and big dreams and big faiths and big distance and bigger height just like the Egyptian’s pyramid? Do you know that when time becomes darkness we must beat with torchlight? I may not likely tell you that I am not asking, you know I  have being asking and waiting for the answer; no Raven remained in the sky to convey  my messages to you, none. I seek the boldness of the wind to take my pleas to you so that life will not make me feel like a fatherless when you are still alive.  Just in case I misstep, just in case I no longer dream; just in case I may think of losing it all,  just us in separate worlds dancing in the wind. 

It is how I and father and mother and the remaining brothers of mine took the stairs in our lives with bowties of everyday barriers because the songs of human are a case in the courtyard of perpetuity. There are stories in the eyes of those boys who went and never came  to this world. There are somehow prices in the eyes of those women and men who are murdered every day in our streets? There are untold tales in the mouths of those our brothers and sisters who were killed by terrorists groups and herdsmen! There are many stories, dear God. Why were they brought to this world in the first place? Why are we here? To drink, produce and die?

Flinging mangoes against the window netting and making the electric wires hit each other and spark bright orange flames, is how men and women are lured into brokenness, because each time day breaks, it reminds men to work harder and toil more than the veins in their bodies because sweating is how a man poses and take pictures to remind himself of how he started. This is how our stories are told anywhere where the world is said to be round and flat. Every day, the human race is scrunched up with the noses at the smell of bloody fresh meat and musty dried fish and their heads are lowered from the bees that buzzed in thick clouds over the sheds of the honey sellers. This is what you made us to be, it is how we became skeleton in our memories and talking to a father who made us became somehow rowdy and sometimes we scream and curse and clap our hands knowing very well that those pastors that were said are called by God told us to do so. It is how men and women became thirsty on the tongues of sweet neglects. Like one time, a boy and a girl were raped like a moth-eaten blouse slipping off from a woman's shoulder just how every day explains how tailored the tears of a boy child and a girl child, a man and a woman become once its drops from their eyes and you were nowhere to be found to rescue them not even their fellow human came to rescue them.

You walked on oceans, i stretched into my body into your eyes, we both wanted to see what it really meant to be called a God; one small, one big.  To course through the skin of a sky or float into the windpipe of yesterday when we were still blood and water will have us thinking like we once existed here. Tell me, is there really Hellfire? Is there really ghost? Is there really spirit? Is there really Satan? How did the fight of the growing gods broke out in heaven? Who were the judges, Angels? I am confused here just like everyone else. The African traders are home now, all wailing of their lost sons and daughter whom they will never see again.  The street has ceased to accommodate us, it’s deserted.  What are our offenses?  They said human blood had redesigned their bodies. Tell me, why do you allow much blood to spill all over the place?  And those who were killed without their knowledge of it, will  they still go to hell fire to be burned?.  Your skin our iris, is a monument, is a collection of fire of anguish to burn us all till eternity. We burn, you gnash like a father watching his children dying silently. This is not what every book called a lover's God should contain. They said it is not everything I find here that looks like you but you create them all. They said you are white or Pink or what have you, who does Africans look like, Ape? But you created us in your Image isn’t it? I am confused here! Totally confuse but it is a mystery why we are here. 

Remember, Ogba is still sick of pile. Yesterday, a prophetess laid hand on him to be healed and gave him holy water to drink but he is still hoping for healing.  Remember he must not die on the 4th of May. He must not die just like Mary died. You have to bless him and make him the light you promised. He has to bring his family to the lime light, he has to.   
I may not be able to share kola nut with you as it is being done in the heart of Igbo men when they gather to deliberate on the issue hurting them. I may not be able to render some praises to you at this moment because of the urgency tailored for my voice to be hearkened.  
Maybe we’ll switch places and find peace somewhere without the gospel or maybe we hold the gospel waiting for that glorious day of the coming or the last day between death and life.

​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.  The Smithsonian selected her photo to represent all teens from a specific decade.​

Few remember the printed Sears Mail-order Catalogue. It vanished like coal for home-heating, oil lamps, match-lit ovens, ice boxes. When grandma came for dinner and her dress smelled of mothballs, I knew it was time to seasonally shop. My mother's twin brothers had December 25 birthdays. Buying presents in person was work; having a heavy Sears book handed to me, along with request forms, was fantasy.
 
I first always searched for the newest ice figure-skates, pictured in white-leather, and pretended they were mine. In my daydream, I could actually smell the leather and also hear silver bells jingling on laces. I already had tiny bells strung on my current skates’ fasteners.  I imagined myself twirling wearing a velvet skirt lined in crimson silk, and could almost hear my mother’s voice telling me my legs are going to get cold. I wondered why there were no such things as warm stockings that pulled on like leggings. Oh, well, I wasn’t shopping for me.
 
Fantasy needed setting. I turned on the almost-hidden radio; it was built into the side of our wooden French-Provincial style living room false-flame fireplace; then I squat and switched on an electric knob near the non-burning clump of logs. A tiny fan, with red cellophane covering a small light bulb, gave weakly illuminated logs the illusion of flickering fire. That was the place to review the yearly catalogue.
 
Scented bath salts? Maybe for my mother instead of the purple-bottle perfume from Woolworth’s. Oh, gauzy gowns, on pages, looked as if they'd float while waltzing with my uncle, the best dancer ever, who'll ballroom dance with me when I grow up. Must find his birthday present...the men's section. Yes, I have enough allowance-money left to send for a silky new shaving brush for daddy; the sable hairs are so soft, just like my oil paint brushes.  Can I print my order with South Seas blue ink, my trademark?  How my teachers hate my lack of conformity.
 
With radio's Battle of the Baritones, and faint whirring of tiny fan blades forcing the red cellophane to ripple under the false fireplace logs, I imagined a future of romance, energy, giggling, achievement. Grandma's mothball smell on her winter wool clothing always signaled year-end contemplation and mail-order.
 
Gone are my parents, the uncle twins, other relatives. Their deaths are truly forever while there are a few "things" that have a way of resurfacing. Remember 'never again' convertible phrase when air-conditioned cars became widely available? How about 'never again' ceiling fans with wide blades to circulate steamy air; bulky bed comforters; returning glass bottles or other items for deposit? Wasn't radio considered finished when television became accessible to all? Who'd buy natural cotton with maximum maintenance when polyester sheds wrinkles? Fountain pens with leaky ink were made obsolete by ball point clean, but they’re status symbols and comfortable writing pieces once more.
 
My adult children sometimes like hearing stories of a time before television, computers, air-conditioned cars, smartphones, and other technology that is familiar in their lives. These must seem as dated as log cabins, outhouses, single-room schoolhouses, I suspect. But they have asked if shopping was complicated when gifts were inked on paper-forms submitted by regular mail. I’d rather have a computer than my Remington portable typewriter that weighed about 26 pounds, I prefer self-cleaning ovens, speakerphones, climate-controlled houses/cars, airline cabins that are pressurized, high-definition television sets, CD’s rather than cumbersome 78 rpm record, and so forth. But I remember, years ago, saying that much comes full circle so it’s possible, though not probable, for glossy catalogues to come back for other generations to ink in requests on printed forms.
 
December 2020.  Global virus has affected all humans.  Sears doesn’t exist even as a physical store anymore. There’s a different way of shopping without entering a premise.  Online.  So we search the ‘net’, press a digit on a desired-visible item, fill out a form via speaking or typing it on the tech device, let the next ‘page’ have a credit card number, and the process is complete.  Santa’s elves don’t pull our requests from shelves and ship them out, but many robots do the work releasing humans to pick up other tasks.  Didn’t I do a bit of that with the cumbersome catalogue and mail-in forms?
 
Gas-lit fireplaces are more popular than woodburning, and, with just a switch, offer a glow to a room.  Some heat is provided as a bonus.  My childhood false one completely covered a real brick behind it, and that was usual for the time-period; no heat, but cellophane crackle and gentle illumination happened.
 
Eventually few will remember the Pandemic, and life will resume with social gatherings, live theatre, shopping malls busy, crowded streets.  Some online purchasing probably will continue for convenience.  Yet, for me, just a distinct aroma from a box of mothballs will still signal seasonal changes.
 
 
a version of this was published 1994 Gannett News
reprinted 2008 The Jewish Press
​

When springtime buds slowly become flowers, and birds return to the northeastern part of the country, a fresh season starts.  For me, it's also a new year:  the celebration of my birthday.  How do I feel pulling away not just a calendar page but another twelve months of recorded living?  I dislike such a question since a real answer requires introspection not just a glib response.  
            This past-April birthday, as my eyes watched a plump robin struggling to pull an earthworm from the front lawn’s moist grass, my mind traveled to a budding time in my life...becoming thirteen:
            "Not too many years left before I'll be wearing sugar cubes dangling from sixteen skinny satin ribbons,"  I whispered to my bedroom's wallpaper patterned with large yellow roses.  I smiled as I thought about a milestone event three years away and its traditional corsage made not of flowers but real sugar.  I liked birthdays, being the center of attention, the private way my mom and dad treated the date, even though I often had a separate party with friends.
            "So?  How was the show?"  Joy, my four years younger sister, entered my room.  She was pleased yet envious that my surprise-gift was I'd gone to Manhattan with just with my father to see Alice in Wonderland.
            "Oh, Bambi Linn is so pretty.  She's the perfect Alice." I danced as I spoke.  "And the theatre was in a crazy place.  Columbus Circle.  Not near the others.  I liked it."
            "What else?  What else?"  Joy sat crosslegged on the chenille bedspread.  Lint was gathering on her skirt but she didn't yet notice.
            I continued to pretend I was Bambi Linn.  "What a swell name.  Bambi Linn.  The Mad Hatter was cute.  Oh, we went to Rumplemeyers for ice cream.  Then we clopped-clopped around Central Park in a carriage pulled by a huge horse...bigger than horses I ride.  I wore my pink dress with the backwards bolero that buttons down my spine.  Guess what else?"
            "What?  There's more?
            "I wore stockings!  They were the ugly silk not the sheer Mojud nylons.  But real stockings.  I hate a garter belt, though.  I don't know whether to put it under or over panties." I stopped swinging in circles and plopped on the bed.
            "I hate cod liver oil," Joy interrupted.
            "And creamed spinach," I continued making a game out of 'hates'.
            "And liver.  Phew!"
            "And tunnels."
            "Tunnels?"  Joy uncrossed her legs then sat on her knees.  "Why?"
            "I just don't like long dark places and having mountains of water above me that can come crashing through."
            "Never knew you were afraid of anything," Joy commented, then giggled.  "What about presents?  Bet you don't hate those."
            I moved to my dresser and lifted a small bottle.  "Heavensent.  This tiny bottle cost $1.00.  Remember you gave it to me last birthday?  You wanted to buy me La Cross nail polish but knew Mom'd never let me put it on.  I like this smell."  I opened the tiny top and pushed it under Joy's nose.
            "Can I put some on?"
            "Sure.  Behind your ears.  That's right.  Let me smell.  Pull your hair back."  I bent over to inhale the cologne's smell.  "I like it on you, too."
            "Do you feel older?"  Joy pushed her hair back in place.  Parted in the center made it fall into two clumps.
            "I'd like a pinafore and puffed sleeved dress just like Alice and I could pretend I was falling down the rabbit hole."  I returned the cologne to the dresser.  "I feel just like I did yesterday, day before, day before.  I just feel like ME.  Everyday.  When my Sweet Sixteen comes, and I then have grown-up parties forever and ever, I'll just be an extra-special me that day."
            "Three years from now is forever," Joy dropped flat on her stomach leaning on her elbows with her face resting between her hands.  "I wish I was older," she continued, "'cause my nine is not even a two-number age!"
            "Next year you'll have two numbers.  That's forever and ever."  I loved birthdays no matter that time was moving me through its passage, "unless you get to be a hundred!"
            "Or a zillion?"  Joy giggled again, then moved herself into a sitting position.
            "Maybe when I'm old and wrinkled and in ugly brown dresses and old lady's stockings, I'll feel different.  I like most everything now."
            Outdoors, April robins began singing, perhaps from delight of accomplishment.  The daffodils I'd planted last autumn were open and one bird lifted quickly as if it didn't want to disturb this fresh burst of yellow.
            New springtime.  Do I feel older since pinafores, cod-liver oil liquid, perfume for a dollar, sugar cube corsages, and Bambi Linn are considered 'history'?  I'm calendar aged, slender, have some face wrinkles, prefer fitted feminine pastel dresses, and transparent nylon stockings.
            The telephone disturbed my meditation.  "Joy?  Oh thanks," I responded to her best wishes.
            "So, senior, am I glad you're the one four years ahead of me," Joy giggled the same pleasant way as when single-digit years.
            "I love life, love today, its specialness.  Balloons from my family," I spoke with childlike magic of this celebration.  "Many years ago, I had a theatre weekend in Toronto as pre-celebration.  Joy," I asked, "did you see 'Miss Saigon' and cry for the innocent and their hurts, or 'Beauty and the Beast' and the quiet way it says don't judge by appearances?"
            From the other side of the country Joy's voice rapidly transmitted, "You're still worried about the rabbit holes and 'Alice in Wonderland'".
            "Listen.  I still feel like ME.  The cherished gift, as Mom used to philosophize, is being alive and having a birthday."  I paused, "Oops. doesn't that sound like an older sister?"
            "Go ahead."  Joy urged me with a hint of humor in her tone.  "It's been a long time since sugar cubes and pink satin ribbons.  You've finally got enough years to talk like an old, I mean older," Joy deliberately hesitated, "sister."
            I wanted her to remember Bambi Linn and my thirteenth, but it was only mine to really retain.  "So my physical decades have multiplied and I'm categorized with the yuk-term senior citizen, but..."  Then, without any inhibition, I admitted, "Joy, inside my mind is still a giggling girl who likes most everything now."
           
©1999 Inkwell Press
reprinted 2006 The Jewish Press
reprinted 2013 go60.us

​Privacy.  Hiding a diary in a nightstand drawer after turning the metal key in its tiny latch meant no family member would ever see my pre-teen rambling.  Today’s young share special thoughts on social media.
 
The Internet: someone photographed then posted a picture of my house, and even listed my offspring. Looking at that data, I noticed many-many errors.  Online, once I touched the Enter-key in a ‘search’, were public records, even information that need not be ‘public’.  There were a lot of mistakes on some of those sites, but if I tried to fix anything then the places might learn web addresses.  There’s no guarantee data would be made accurate, nor companies stopped from buying lists of names/addresses/credit ratings, and so forth.  I may as well be Don Quixote fighting windmills.
 
I miss being able to choose when I want or don’t want to be noticed.  In tiny spaces, at the bottom of my Google e-mail’s Inbox, are possible replies.  Besides the recipient, who is reading my correspondence?  I’ve put my telephone number on the do-not-call registry but some Robo-Calls are cleverly using local area codes. My home Artificial Intelligence is probably listening, and recording, since it’s certainly keeping track of music preferences and posting those on its screen.
 
Identity Theft happened to a family member.  Be aware, I was warned.  Okay, I personally read my gas and electric meter.  Monthly I phone, give account number, name/address, and then am asked for the last 4 digits on my social security card.  The company’s records have my decades of reading, so compare, I decided to tell the agent while trying to sound assertive.
 
I saw the century change, and reach ‘cool’ with a cellular telephone, Hi-definition television, VCR, DVR,  e-reader, convection oven, home four-in-one ‘printer’ copying machine, digital cameras.  Eventually wireless printers, artificial intelligence, smart lights, and voice-activated ‘whatevers’ began to make those advances passe. Now there’s a ‘smartphone’, ‘smart-wristwatch’ computer tablet, recorded music coming from an electronic item almost as small as a holder of dental floss. I can voice-command a device to set bedroom alarm clock, play “oldies” songs, and such.  With remote control, television commercials are muted, DVR records series when I don’t even have the set on.   But what’s private as the watch ‘tells’ me I’m working out when taking a long walk?  
 
Okay.  Instead of feeling the victim, let’s see what I might control.  I can’t be anonymous, so, given the 21st century, need to learn new ways.  
 
Well, with the gas and electric company, I forcefully stated it had all the necessary information and I will absolutely not give out any social security data.  It worked!  Okay, that was successful, but the Internet personal data is beyond control.  I can turn off my Artificial Intelligence when I don’t actually need to have it on; rely on the phone’s answering machine; speak up with a ‘no’ for releasing digits on my government ID; not sign Guest Books when visiting public institutions; not give out e-mail address to craft stores and such for their mailing list.  Small steps, but, at least, steps. 
 
There are choices with Social Media.  Does the Facebook reader thousands of miles away really need to see vacation photos, what university was offering an opening, or a family’s newborn?  Twitter, Snapchat: might these show a narcissistic side of people who prefer to be seen but not touched, physically?  I avoid that.
 
I remember a scent of real-leather that covered my girlhood diaries.  And, in my mind, I can see the exact placement in the slender solid-maple nightstand drawer.  A liquid ink fountain pen lay next to the daily journal.
 
No, I would not want to go backwards and give up messaging, email, and so forth, but I’d like to better learn how to cope with selective privacy.
 
 
 
 

​‘Come back in two weeks’ will soon be pleasing words as the first injection gets pulled from your arm.  So what if lines are long. The entire planet is preparing to produce and administer the magic potion. Covid will cease to be fearful.  
 
I played with my radium jewelry blouse pin, during World War II.  I’d expose it to light, then loved the glow when I intentionally entered a dark closet.  When a mercury thermometer accidentally broke in the bathroom sink, I fingered the silvery ball watching it escaping my fingers.  It wasn’t childhood innocence but, rather, society did not yet know these were potential dangers.
 
Scientific minds, circa 1940's, figured out a way to eliminate my chronic sinusitis: radiation.  In a lead-lined room, all alone, with sandbags holding my head still, radiation destroyed my sinuses.  Magic.
 
Polio scared adults; the young couldn’t comprehend such a disease.  I knew I could go to summer camp for 8 weeks, but visitors were not allowed.  Parents’ weekend was cancelled.  Didn’t bother me as I was having a wonderful summer in the Berkshire Mountains with sports and social life among people my age group. I’d be with the family once the season’s last singing around the flagpole ended.
 
My husband was finishing medical school when we married. Working in physicians’ offices during my teaching-holiday-breaks, gave me a slight scientific-educational edge.  A couple of years later, pregnant with my firstborn, and having problems that meant I could miscarry, I was given a promising drug, DES, that might allow the baby to continue to term; he did. 
 
Eventually I learned that my sinus radiation might be a problem later in life.  Then I heard that DES could cause a male offspring to be sterile, but a female one had a greater cancer risk.  I waited until my first son entered medical school then told him about the drug; happily he was fertile.  Other pregnant women, from my generation, had taken thalidomide accepting safety, and several delivered infants minus full limbs.
 
Everything has risks, I began to realize, and I’d try and balance what’s offered with my own health concerns.  When my husband was in medical training, I’d seen people my age in iron lungs unable to breathe on their own, and read that airborne droplets could spread the disease I’d once never taken seriously.  I held my breath as I walked through the hospital’s polio ward. This virus had no distinction for social status, race, regions; I thought about my parents who kept their fears to themselves allowing their three daughters to enjoy childhood. A site on the Internet noted: “Researchers began working on a polio vaccine in the 1930s, but early attempts were unsuccessful. An effective vaccine didn't come around until 1953, when Jonas Salk introduced his inactivated polio vaccine.”  Oral polio vaccine came out about 1961 and my older two were given it. When my third was born, it was routine and part of immunizations.   
 
Many diseases, from my childhood, have faded with preventive injections.  The measles, mumps, and chicken pox my offspring had are seldom showing up in vaccinated populations. Pneumonia vaccine gets injected into my arm whenever it’s scheduled, and I have had serious flu even with the ‘shot’ but it might have been fatal without it.  So, I think about the rush to get out the Covid 19. Might there be the possibility of nerve damage, guillain-barre syndrome, that happened in some after the Swine flu shot?  Might the world be just really a part of the testing of its efficaciousness?  Is the risk not taking the two injections greater than or lesser than..... This, for me, is new territory and no matter how much I consider my past, my medical knowledge, I cannot give myself a solid answer.

​The way the Latigo reveals its story, as if wishing it had a toe to tap impatiently and a vocabulary that included, “It’s about time buster.” That’s how I picture it going down whenever I would clue in to another one of its confidences. As if the stalks of the Little Bluestem bobbing in the breeze were patient nods of forgiveness and, dare I even presume, maybe even an invite to become an accomplice in future tellings of these discoveries.
            I was meandering across a flat stretch of pasture, the steers scattered about, Dancer, her running walk bobbing over the plain like a salty sloop on a close reach in an afternoon chop, and me lost in some internal monologue long since forgotten. A Hudson River School landscape of a June day, carpets of blue, yellow and fire orange wildflowers in evidence and the wind faded to a whisper. The chorusing of birdsong was the first clue that a new Latigo exposé was afoot. I was probably hearing it before I knew it. The multiple chattering’s from above drew me in as if the volume was slowly cranking up. Male Lark Buntings, black sparrows with white wing patches careened about in low level flight patterns barely out of reach. The sky all around me was peppered with soaring birds, like an itinerant dance troupe commandeering an open-air performance space. I tracked the aerobatics of a succession of performers as I rode along. The little guys seemed to be staking out territorial air space by repeating a precise choreographed series of maneuvers. First winging into a steep climb until, almost vertical, easing into a stall, hovering midair for some seconds before executing a half role to a gentle, gliding descent; the whole sequence accompanied by a coordinated series of chirps, warbles and trills. With Dancer passing beneath the living canopy of songbirds and the afternoon sky a backdrop of chalky blue, I embraced the pageant—imagining it a tribute to me, an honored exile coming home.
     Losing the Doctor was losing the dream. A dream that began with a ten-year-old and a book. In it the story of a boy and a horse marooned on a deserted island. They bond and then return to the states to win the big race. Back then me a city kid growing up on the Polish near Northside of Chicago who, at the age of ten, could probably count on one hand the times that I’d ever even seen a live horse. But that tale fixed in me the notion that it was possible to connect with an animal of such profound beauty and that thought, from then on, gave new order to my world. Though over the years other obligations intruded, college, the Peace Corps, there was always the sporadic but persistent voice reminding that what I really needed to do was find my way back to becoming the boy in that book. What was I thinking? A thesaurus lists longshot as a synonym for fluke. It also lists dark horse. What then the stuff of dreams? I had to wonder as I watched the ritual overhead. These tiny birds, each the weight of a business envelope, plying invisible currents with singular purpose. Serenading hopefuls, staking out fleeting territorial claims.
****
          I had ridden lots of horses in the years of my self-inflicted apprenticeship on ranches before I got to the Doctor. At times, being in the company of that elite class of riders for whom the practice of their craft is all there is. And, along the way there were tricks shared and philosophical treatises dispensed, tips offered, and cautionary tales told to me by these riders, this distinguished faculty of the horse, the guardians of a priceless knowledge base that can only be known through direct experience, of this I am sure and for which I remain forever thankful. So, I had some foundation in me the day that Stanley said he thought he had one for me and I should go out to the barn and have a look.
          As I rounded the corner of the barn, I got a look at him for the first time. The head partly hidden in shadow but with just enough light to reveal a chiseled refinement and a dark brown eye that signified recognition, like he already knew something of my story. He was craning over the stall door scanning about impatiently, as if his confinement was an obvious mistake for surely the world beckoned. I stood transfixed, unable to move. For some seconds there in the barn alleyway I was that ten-year-old kid again. He turned to study me nostrils flared, gauging me by scent. Our eyes met but only for a few seconds, probably as long as it took for him to reckon that my purpose for being there was not to liberate him. Then, with a toss of his head and a snort that spewed contempt, he turned to a back corner of his stall to half-heartedly nose at a flake of alfalfa.
          I came to the stall door and leaned in to get a better look. He raised his head to give me a second onceover. He stood in profile, save his head turned to me, ears perked forward, copper coat shining. So balanced in form and flex of muscle that he looked to be in motion just standing there or made you imagine him running in the moonlight scattering the creatures of the night before him. And I remember the tears welling up—that there could be such impossible magnificence in defiance of a world sorrowed by so much pain. Up until then it had been a hypothetical—to someday be mounted on a horse like this. To ride to fame and fortune in competitions, a magical partnership taking on all comers. But there in his presence I got a sense of something else. It was as if in that moment I’d caught a glimpse of an apparition flickering in my mind’s eye. I couldn’t make it out exactly or even if it really happened. But of its symbolic significance I was sure. “Take heed cowboy what’s before you is so much more than glory in the show pen.” What that more was I didn’t know then. What I did know in that instant was finding that out would be the most important thing that we could do together. Because a horse of this consequence deserved nothing less than the pursuit of the truth. So now here is this stallion that clearly fits an A list film script. And there is Fortuna prodding me, “OK Don Quixote, here it is moment of truth, all that. What’s it gonna be?” A part of me, still clinging to that ten-year old’s scenario, thought yeah sure me and this pony, in the cards, right? But the thought persisted that the old dream had changed in some fundamental way that meant taking things to the next step was a big unknown. And where Unknown hangs out his cousin Mischief salivates. When the dream amends, the universe ups the ante. Still, there he was looking at me.
****
               The Lark Bunting aero drama was winding down. The sky was thinning of showboating birds. Only a few diehards persisted as I reined Dancer in to drink at the Lone Tree, a spring tucked into a bench of land that paralleled the Latigo’s northern boundary. It was the highest point in the pasture. While Dancer slurped, I scanned the whole of the prairie sloping to the South, the rolling plain carved in relief by lengthening shadows cast by the late afternoon sun. In silhouette the indigo triangle of Pikes Peak stood moored to the far West horizon.  Dancer and I stood on the same spot where the Doctor and I had ended The Ride on that day.
****
          I was up before daylight. It was the last day that I would have the Doctor. I saddled him up, jumped him in the stock trailer and headed for the Latigo. It was still some weeks before I would make the move to a permanent camp on that prairie but I knew the country well. Its big open was a good place for putting miles on colts that needed seasoning. I stopped at the cluster of weather worn cattle pens in about dead center of the five thousand acres and unloaded him just as the sun was coming up. He had never been to the Latigo. He stood stock still and vigilant, scanning the vast plain. Dual plumes of steam jetted from his nostrils as he tested the chilled morning air for any clues it might hold. The day-breaking sun burnished his coat to an amber sheen.
          I don’t remember mounting up. Only being into the ride at speed. No safe, careful warm up. He wouldn’t stand for it that morning. He was straightaway into a sprint over a flat stretch of dew drenched gramma grass, flying through an opened gate to the South Latigo. I could have nudged him back down but we’d worked it out long ago in arena competitions when to defer to the other’s request to be the pilot. This ride was his show, as if it was his way to tell me everything he needed me to know to remember him by—to keep with me after he was gone. He found another gear and the tempo picked up. No longer a scrambling dash, now the lengthening, ground eating reach of the long distance runner. In the urgent rhythm of the breakneck pace, I became an extension of movement no human can ever know. He did not break stride at the fifteen foot drop down the soft, sandy bank to the arroyo. We vaulted from the rim, landing halfway down in a skidding plunge, a cloud of shimmering sand granules exploding over us like a dying constellation. I blew a stirrup on the landing and had to fish around with my boot toe for it as it flailed wildly, at the same time, trying to get back in sync with the Doctor’s rocketing gait. My boot found the fugitive stirrup and I slammed it home just as we hit the trickle of spring runoff snaking down the center of the arroyo. The Doctor’s hooves shattered the surface sheen, parting the placid stretch of water with a strafing line of successive splattering pockmarks, enveloping us in a rippling tunnel of sunlit rainbow spray as if beamed into our own space-time continuum. Changing leads on the fly, he veered sharply to the right toward a stretch of arroyo bank that was more cliff than slope. I could feel him tense under me as he took the measure of the bluff, neck bowed, ears locked forward, stride collected and gauging. Then a burst of speed that rocked me back in the saddle, for the last time to be a part of the unbounded promise of his private fury, that there was nothing he could not do and of that purpose he was—for the world to know, for me to know. We were flying toward what looked to me more like a wall with the distance to it swiftly closing. I could see the horizontal bands of earth toned colors of the soil profile and the bare roots of grasses dangling where weather erosion had exposed them. We reached what must have been his top speed on that flat. Then the sudden lift as the momentum catapulted us up against the steep, the g-force pitching me forward in the saddle. As he scrambled to find purchase in the buckling soil I threw my weight forward grabbing a hank of mane with my free hand and burying my face in his neck. Then we were surging up in what felt like a vertical series of eager, bucking lunges as if he deemed gravity a dignity to which he need only grant a passing nod. For a frozen-in-time instant, I felt centered beneath me a perfect calm, a symmetry as if, amid the anarchy of his driving thrusts, deliverance was within reach. But the Doctor allowed no time for existential musings. With a final bound he was back up on the rolling plain and settling into a breezing gallop. His breathing though not labored was noticeable now with staccato snorts coupled with each exhale and I could see dark sweat-stained patches in the creases at the base of his neck. But he felt relaxed and still very much up in the bridle. We were crossing the long sloping stretch heading up North to the Lone Tree spring just visible in the distance. A faint breeze, the first of the day, came over us and I could feel the Doctor recharge a little from its relief and dial the pace up just a notch.
               And so we would run the rest of the Latigo that morning. We would run beneath a sky watching over us shaded in its most unselfish blue. We would run where the coyote stopped snapping up grasshoppers in midflight just to watch us running. We would run with the guardian winds in ceremonial escort and, from above, with the soaring Redtail hawk scouting our uncharted way. We would run, me and the Doctor, hearing his hoofbeats ringing their final rhythms upon the Latigo. And, entwined with them could we not also hear the beating of our hearts? For surely the coyote could, the hawk could.
****
            The last of the Lark Buntings had gone to ground, their fleeting spectacle secreted with them in the cavities of their downy nests. I took in a last look at the panorama from the Latigo’s high point while Dancer alternated drinking and playing in the Lone Tree; first sipping then, muzzle submerged, splashing and blowing bubbles. The first time I saw the Doctor I had that Paul-on-the-road to-Damascus moment when it hit me that we were meant to be something other than players in the commercial venture laid out by our financial backers. Still, through all the years together how we tried to do what was expected of us in training regimens, competitions, contractual obligations—the commodification of things equine. But to try to fix the Doctor within those boundaries was like trying to take the measure of the dawn, as if it were possible to know the instant when night yields to the breaking of the day. This horse that would change my life. So at ease within the steady beat of his own transcendence—that part of him that I would carry with me and always strive to be and never again be otherwise.  
             The sun had dipped below the horizon while Dancer drank but its twilight rays beamed up catching a wind-sculpted cloud bank hanging in the West, transmuting it into a sky scatter of luminous orange red smears that bathed the Latigo in hues of redemptive crimson. I don’t know if we ever suffered a truth worthy of the Doctor or even if we ever could, but I think that together on the ride that day we got pretty close. And I think that’s what he wanted me to know.
I pitched Dancer some slack in the reins. She knew the way home.