A Nun in a Truck

Every week Sister Maria would drive a pick-up truck to campus for English lessons.  The campus was Northern Michigan University, snug on the shores of Lake Superior where winter came strong in late October and stayed as long as it wanted.  But as for the English lessons, Sister Maria didn't really need them having been educated in Latin, French and English since age four in a convent in Thailand.  Not only did Sister Maria speak nervously perfect English and flawless quiet French, she could belt the harmonica while playing the guitar and it wasn't just hymnals.  Her collective favorites included Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and The Beatles.  Blackbird was one of her favorites sang while taking breaks between studying for her TOEFL test and saying prayers for other students who had colds and sore throats. 

In that small class of English as a Second Language students that semester, Sister Maria wasn't the only nun.  Sister Juliana who hailed from Korea was also a very active and eager member who as you might have guessed it, also religiously did her homework.  Sister Juliana, who had once run a hospital in Seoul, yes that's right, ran a hospital, was both educated in Eastern Medicine as well as had gone to Medical School.  Needless to say, the textbooks geared towards apathetic teenagers learning English for the hopes of finding some cultural social exchange during a holiday in New York City a hopeful job in London, seemed well, dated and not quite applicable. Try telling nuns to pretend they are at a bar, "just small talk you know, speak casually."  Small talk in the minds of those who dedicate their lives to poverty and wear wedding rings bound in holy matrimony to God, well, small talk is hard to convincingly model.  So I had to adapt a lot of exercises to seem not only relevant, but also relatable.

But truth be known, I may have helped these women increase their TOEFL scores and gave them endless exercises on the present perfect, but really, they taught me more than I could have asked for that semester.  It was late fall and I had been riding my mountain bike into the golden dales around the Upper Peninsula where autumn color rusted out the grey sky.  Spent late afternoons riding after teaching in towns named Negaunee, Ishpeming and as far as the Keewanaw.  Pushing my body to memorize trails, to ride faster and sometimes more reckless that I would ever tell the nuns or anyone for that matter.  Fond memories of that semester include riding into the night with a headlamp as if the cold air pressured your lungs as if you were riding under water into the cold, the cold off Superior Lake which for those who know, don't ever forget it's power.  It's terrible cold beauty.

And one late October day, I was riding with a group of friends, mostly males younger than myself by a decade.  Sure, call me stupid or just determined.  If you want to get really good at a sport, ride with people better and stronger and spend your time watching what they do and always keep up.  Which I could apply to the nuns that semester as well.  If you want to ask challenging questions of your own self, spend some time with a group of Asian nuns who have not only dedicated their lives to Christianity, but culturally and interpersonally understand Buddhism well.  Want to spend some time working your head around the terrible beauties of your soul? Hang out with a South Korean Nun who reads people's energies, palms and looks into your retinas for answers from her readings of both the Bible and the Buddha.  

And so one day, I came to class with a broken left ring finger.  I had been on a mountain bike ride and navigated through a rocky knoll and fell.  Brushed off the gravel and dirt to see my finger deformed and without hesitation tried to set the finger back.  Later having gone for x-rays and to find nothing broken, the pain would still not subside.  At first, the nuns shook their heads, "Why so busy on your bike Emilee?" To which I told them that it was my way of prayer, but a bit more active than sitting in a pew.  I prefer to sweat out my existential questions.  But the pain in my finger did not go away even after almost two months.

I was rubbing my finger during break one day and Sister Juliana came over.  She sat down very close so as no one could hear her and said, "Emily, your finger has been broken long before you fell on bicycle" (Don't worry we worked on the definite article and prepositions a lot).  She continued, "Emily, I see you.  Your left finger is connected to your heart.  And your heart has been broken for very long time.  Long before.  You need to feed your heart Emiliee, you need to give food, meat, some power, you know, Emilee, yes?"  But really, I didn't.  Our break was up and Sister Juliana shook her head, not in frustration, but rather due to a loss in translation. "No worries, tomorrow I bring."

And sure enough, the next day, Sister Juliana brought in what we might consider a Bento box of some fresh venison.  "Only 24 hours old, killed by the man who fixes lightbulbs, male deer, more power Emilee. You must eat it today. Must only cook three minutes, each side." After our lesson, I put the Bento box in my bag and peddled home as I always did, up 3rd street, up and towards the wind that is always in my mind and felt on my face off of that Great Lake.  My cat meowing, the wood floor echoed from my steps and my absence.  My cat jumped on the counter and then shook his head as I uncovered the dark steak under perfectly folded wax paper, drips of blood and even a few wisps of hair.  My cat jumped away. Cast iron pan readied with a bit of olive oil and my eyes on my wrist watch.  I seared the steak as followed and placed on a white plate and watched the color bleed.  Watched as for the first time I sat with the smell of something more alive than butchered.  More beating than bled.  

I'd love to tell you I ate that steak with wild abandon.  Love to tell you I walked out of that kitchen, steak in my stomach and myself placed in this world.  Heart set back in place like my crooked finger.  Love to tell you I went back to Sister Juliana with clear retinas and a new sense of self clarity that only being in the wilderness can give you.  Sure, no matter how much I had felt like a deer in the woods, riding all hours and temperatures, had walked those woods alone and unafraid, no matter the good nun's intension, I didn't feel different.  I wanted to, wanted to tell Sister Juliana she was right.  But I cannot.  I cannot lie as much as I wish I could.  Spend enough time in the wilderness and with the spirit of nuns, and your soul is about as beveled as any glass window will ever be.  You are forced, open.  I sat with that venison and the smell forcing myself to chew.  Chewed it all. And nothing changed.

Or so I thought.  It didn't happen the next day, or even the next month and I cannot fully tell you it happened the following year either.  But I can tell you now, now after all these years and broken layers of my heart later, something has changed.  I can feed myself.  Sure, it might not always be or need to be venison, might just be an apple with cheese standing in my galleyed kitchen or a bowl of salmon chowder at a table by myself, or a pear and sausage pie for someone I love, regardless of the meal, I make something.  I make sure I am fed.  And as my good friend says, who is not a nun, but has the resident status of soulful understanding as someone holy would say, "And so you learn to mother yourself, when you are broken, feed yourself like a mother would." And so Sister Juliana you were right.  

Here's a revised version of a poem, 
nun sponsored with love. 

Atrium

I stopped believing in birds for awhile.  
A nun said my heart was broken, before
I started dating.  Even a sparrow
in an unlocked cage waits to start singing.
To mimic off-key is song, but not song
of yourself.  Before the cross of Romans,
men followed the flight of swallows 
to build temples as nests for their gods.  
But I cannot live in city gardens, more poppy 
along train tracks in Poland.  To field yourself
in countries where orchard is season, is to rejoice 
the potato as pigeon.  Use your tongue as dove.  
Divorce yourself from the body 
as burden.  You're an atrium of love.


















  

Underwear as Super Powers

During the summer of 1979, I wore two articles of clothing.  One being a green one-piece swimsuit and the other a coveted and often garbed outside in the garden or woods, two-piece Wonder Woman Underoo set.  I recall wearing those blue star specked underpants and red with golden emblem undershirt with such sure pride in knowing I possessed super strength.  So sure that when my cousin, my same age came to visit, we were going to practice our underwear driven powers.

My cousin Tim owned Superman Underoos which made our collective abilities in my mind, insurmountably superior.  We ran on fallen tress, jumped off steep hills to roll and find ourselves unscathed, hardly scratched and fully and supremely powerful.  Until we found a pile of concrete blocks.  I remember yelling as I picked up a piece of broken block, "Tim, use your super-strength and break this block with your x-ray vision," as I hurled it at his head.

Needless to say, Tim's x-ray vision, super-breath and boy of steel strength jammed as the rock came at thankfully a five year-old's speed towards his head.  Tears, blood and six stitches at the hospital later, I still recall saying to my mother in full earnestness, "But we both had our super powers, I thought Tim was going to blow up the rock, I swear."  I swore I was Wonder Woman.  I had no idea my "powers" could also include actually hurting someone.  Thought my underwear was just a vehicle to the power I possessed.  Maybe this is what Victoria Secret tries to tap into the female minds of once Underoos wearers?

Thankfully, Tim still talks to me, doesn't have any visual scars and finds this story only a fragment of a funny memory.  But during a recent reading of Rob Brezsney's Free Will Astrology, I was reminded of the idea of super powers again.

If it were in my power, I'd help you identify the new feelings you have not yet been able to understand.

I would infuse you with the strength you would need to shed the worn-out delusions that are obstructing your connection to far more interesting truths.  And I would free you from any compulsion you have to live up to expectations that are not in alignment with your highest ideals.  Alas, I can't make any of these things happen all by myself.  So I hope you will rise to the occasion and perform these heroic feats under your own power. 

Okay, sure, perhaps you might think of astrology as being about as believable as a five-year old using their underwear as a means to tap into "super strength".  But maybe it doesn't matter.  Maybe all we need to know is that believing makes it so.  And what we believe is our power.

Let's look at Wonder Woman for example.  According to William Moulton Marston, the creator of  Wonder Woman, she represented, "a distinctly feminist role model whose mission was to bring the Amazon ideals of love, peace, and sexual equality to a world torn by the hatred of men." She does this by her own super powers which include, superhuman strength and speed, limited telepathy, profound scientific knowledge and the ability to speak every language known to man and beyond.  She is even fluent in caveman and Martian. (Seriously, I cannot make this up, just google it.)  But what I find most fascinating about Wonder Woman besides her fashion sense, are her bulletproof bracelets and her lasso of truth.  The fact she can make people be truthful seems far more powerful than bangles of fire.

This past summer when all of Missoula was covered in a layer of smoke for six weeks, I desired some sort of super powers to make the smoke go away.  Instead I went to some dark places in my head.  A lot of people had a hard time.  Imagine waking up everyday and thinking you are on a set for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Your dreams are filled with ash and opening the window you're filled with the scent of burnt toast. Thankfully during week four of the smoke, we left the valleyed city for a weekend in Glacier Park.  Truth be known, I had hoped to drive north and find ourselves literally crossing into a world of blue clear air.  We kept driving and driving and even to the entry of the Park there was a faint hint of smoke, the taste still heavy in the air.  Thankfully, we were determined to climb and this photo is taken from almost the top of Allen Mountain.  Truth be known, I never doubted getting to the top, but knew I needed some internal powers to make it there.  Ironically, Wonder Woman underoos are not sold in adult sizes or I would have worn them that day.

But that day climbing Allen Mountain as I did on that same summer day when I hurled concrete, I used strength I didn't think I had.  We all posses super powers.  It's just not something we wear in the form of a bangle or cape.  It's believing in the strengths we already have.  But here's the hard part, our strengths are also our greatest weakness.  Our strength to be able to hurt someone can be as strong as our ability to love.  You don't need a lasso of truth to figure that out nor do you need the right underwear.  It is just putting action toward making your ideals, real instead of imaginary.  Sometimes just one word at a time.

Here's a new poem.
Enjoy.

Volleyball in Hell

Charon carts you across to a gym,
concrete congested with the pang
of body odor trapped under polyester.
Positioned under a net, forced to play
volleyball with a group of semi-professional
Evangelists who you only disappoint. Charon,
now gym teacher, blows a whistle
with your every move, fouling out
your life, your now un-life where you didn't bring
any skills suited to win.  You, who never high-fived,
never arrived triumphant to a high school
locker room.  Your god didn't ass-slap
or pick sides.  More architect burdened
by the arc of a butterfly, built sky
to net stars and you, junior varsity
who forgot their shoes.  Perfectly unimproved.

Carl Benner Doesn't Talk Much

Carl Benner doesn't talk much.  Carl, who I have known since age four as my good friend's dad, spent years walking to and from their home to the hospital at all hours of the day and night.  Carl was a vascular surgeon and in the mind of a four year-old that meant when you played the board game Life and landed on being a doctor, you made the most money.  But in reality, Carl was rarely home and when he was he was usually really quiet.  It wasn't until later in life that I had the fortunate opportunity to talk with Carl.

One summer I had been going to the hospital everyday to check on a good friend of mine, George a 99 year-old man, who was dying.  I had no idea what to do other than go and sit and when he would wake remind him of where he was and sometimes who he was.  Needless to say, I don't think I was very helpful. Perhaps when you get that old the last place you want to be is in a hospital and if you are, you hope you came as someone else.   But for two weeks straight, I went everyday after a writing job I had at a local magazine.  All day working on articles about wood ducks and accessible walking trails, late afternoons at the hospital drinking water out of paper cups and trying to ignore the smell as much George was trying to forget where he was.

I recall going to my childhood friend's house after one of these visits, but only to find Carl.  And maybe it was because I had been in the awkward silent hospital for hours next to a dying man that when I saw Carl, I wanted to talk.  Or maybe it was because I wanted to talk to someone who would tell me what I was supposed to do in a hospital: bring music, cribbage, read the Wall Street Journal or make soup.  I just hadn't been around anyone lying out their last days in a hospital bed and I wanted to make sure I was helpful.  Carl laughed.  He told me that's there is nothing right or wrong to do other than to comfort someone, which seems about what you are supposed to do when someone is just as alive as they are dying.  Makes sense.  But Carl also said, "You know Emily, people walk around all their lives thinking there is this great wall between life and death, but really, really it's just a thin line.  And you or I or anyone can cross it at any time."

I've been thinking about that line a lot lately.  No, not so much in the existential sense, but about the idea of lines we build in ourselves.  Lines people draw against you, lines you draw against someone else, lines or walls we build to have as some social worker told me on a chair lift once, "healthy boundaries lead healthy lives."  We see chalked-drawn lines in political ads, debates, arguments, wars, and as you might have guessed it, lines we create in the process of a divorce.  Again, just try to google that idea.  You can google the ideas of anger and retribution with better results than you will with regret.  A lot of break up songs have lyrics of loss and sadness, but not so much on forgiveness and far more rarely can you find a song that isn't a hymnal about forgiving yourself.  Or as my sister has referred to this stage of loss, "yeah, that's the country western song stage of divorce, when everything feels like an absolute."  And maybe for some people, lines or absolutes are part of the process of loss for something you cannot ever have back.

The photo at the top is from Moon Lake in Glacier Park and I adore the reflection of the mountain and snow in the water.  It's hard to differentiate between reflection and mountain.  Hard to see a clear line between.  And this is where I am today.  Maybe you are too in this early autumn air between the warm sun and the cooling coming of winter.  Seasons help with the abstract concepts of the heart.  They remind us of how real change takes so much time and how lines are really useless. And autumn is such a thin line between golden leaves and winter whites.  But when we can sit with it, just sit with the inbetweens maybe then can we become present, and maybe that thin line Carl told me about, isn't so scary, but more like a gift.

Here is another old poem, but one I hope you enjoy about sometimes the best thing you can do for another, including yourself, is just sit with it.

Enjoy.


Men in Parks

In Kielce, I was mugged
by a man who wore eyeliner.
With three teeth,
he told me I was beautiful.

Here, most men in parks smell
of foul meat, wash their faces
in beer and piss
standing up.

They curse Mary,
their mothers and call out
to Cyclops or buses
they never get on.

One night, I passed a bus
stop and heard a man crying
Przeprazam, Przeprazam,
Polish for sorry.

I just sat with him in the snow
and never once tried
to say anything. I just nodded,
and mouthed the word with him.

Storm Troopers Coming out of the Woods

My sister met a man who dresses up as a Storm Trooper for birthday parties in a Kroger parking lot.  Yup, just like that.  Just like that the highlight of a toddler's birthday went from cake in the shape of a hammer to a group of adult men, who might work for a local insurance company or maybe at a tech lab, but in their free time: they run out of the woods dressed as storm troopers.  She told me she's debating about hiring Darth Vader for an extra fifty bucks.  I asked if there were any Ewoks.  Sadly, there are not.  And no, none of these men will reenact any of the battle scenes.  Not even as you might hope, Darth Vader verses Obi-Wan Kenobi.

And really, I cannot stop thinking about how these men will drive, not in costume but perhaps all four in a Honda Civic, up to my sister's new home, nestled in hills and woods outside of Nashville, to "gear up" and hide until they are given a cue to descend upon the backyard of birthday goers and well, do their storm trooper thing.  Which personally is unclear.  All I know is I am so enamored by these men because personally, for the last year, all I want to do is hide in some costume.

You see when you get a divorce there is a list, a long list of things, you cannot google.  You cannot google all the things that keep you wanting to hide, but you can google hiring Storm Troopers for a toddler birthday party.  You can google pretty much anything these days and the odd thing is while you are typing in your request such as how to move on..You might get how to move on Sims 3, which I really have no idea what Sims 1 let alond 3.  But you don't really care because as soon as you type in any words in regards to divorce, depression, forgiveness, living in the same town as your ex, etc. you realize you might as well, move on.

And so you do for while.  You move on, you wear your own storm trooper costume of sorts, very well-organized outfits, you make sure you have a good hair cut, you eat breakfast, do daily sit-ups, borrow weights from a friend and you even try dating because well you've moved on.  But while you are on your first date, the lovely-handsome man across the table asks you for a piece of paper to deposit his gum.  You look in your purse which is the purse you haven't used since the court date and all you have for paper is the receipt you paid for your lawyer.  And to which you say, here why don't you use this?  Extending your shaky hand with the paper, he puts his gum out and you fold the paper and put it back in your purse.  Because really, you've moved on.

There are countless ways you've moved on such as falling in love with the quiet of your immaculate apartment.  While you dust a closet of your new "home" which you fondly refer to as junior dorm, you find a small magnet once used for poetry and it is a simple word, me.  You cannot ignore the irony and again you look at the now very clean closet and think, not really that bad of a place to hide.  But you cannot.  You have a job.  A good job where you teach people how to cook, where people feel so at ease with you that they ask you questions in front of other people listening and knives in their hands, Emily Walter, you've changed your name, did you get married? But you tell them no, I got divorced with such confidence and ease to ensure no one, especially the person who asked the question, feels awkward.  Because remember, you've moved on.

Despite your amazing ability to look good everyday, your apartment to look like an Anthropologie catalog, your dedication to eating well and having friends over for dinner parties and your painful choice to break up with that incredibly handsome and kind man who spat out his gum and who you broke up with because you needed to "deal" with yourself.  You tell yourself you're really doing all the "right things".  But remember you cannot google this.  You cannot google what is right or wrong or the fact that you have metaphorically and now literally dusted yourself up.  And what is harder, you've dusted up the idea of yourself in the quiet, clean and morally right parts of you in a dust bin you took while storming out of your once home.  At the moment, you cannot storm anything.  Now, you are falling apart.  Really you cannot move.  There's no on or off switch to falling apart really.  And again, don't even try to google it.

Sure, you've memorized all the five stages of grief, you can google that, but no where and no one can tell you how to sit with grief.  Sure, you've read almost every Buddhist book the lovely woman who washes dishes at work has given you on loss.  You've read When Things Fall Apart given to you by the loving and kind woman who has an organic orchard and has been divorced, twice.  People who understand give you so much.  But you have to sit with it.  Just you.  And this is what no one tells you.  This is the part of loss that you cannot get out of nor hide from or costume yourself no matter how badly you want to make it look like something else.  Even if you want to refer to yourself as a divorcee because it sounds French.  You and only you get to sit with loss until you start to write a new story.

And so, middleWest which I started years ago as a way to get back into writing regularly, to share recipes and poems and insights is back on Wednesdays (in the middle of the week seems logical, right?) It is still about the idea of being in the middle of your life as a means to explore your dreams you still want to reach.  I am just well, writing from a different angle than before.  

And of course a(n old) poem, I couldn't resist:

Placing Her

There's no mirror in the sea.  I google 
my name to see if I exist and surf
the waterless cities like Cash and Hoople
to find eighteen version of myself.
I live in New Jersey and scream Wagner
at trains.  Sometimes rooster brag
in my fourth floor walk up.
The best version of myself teaches preschoolers
to bend forks after nap time.  I believe this
reduces crime.  I want to call myself, ask,
do you believe in the myth of Emily Walter?
Forget about the nightmares of Katherine Hepburn.
Forget about your mother as Katherine Hepburn
alone in her underwear.  I am more than 
glass and less than the sea.  I don't look like
either of them in a dress.