Joanell Writes

This is isn’t a religious rant.

I can’t imagine the gumption of  telling anyone what to believe, in this time of indiscriminate turmoil.

Although, as we watch our waters recede,  fires rise up and the sea  swallowing up  entire islands, we have the makings of an excellent addition to the book of Revelations. If one was inclined to write new biblical chapters.I’m not.

And this is not a rant on the materialism of the Western world, or an environmental  cry to melt all the arms we’ve built in the last year and turn them into windmills.  But my mind goes there, late at night in my worry festival.

But rather  this is just a note of wonder.

It hits me every year, not unlike a revelation from the starry sky. Despite the parking lot hoopla and traffic jams. Between  the forced chatter on the elevators and the lonesome sound of the Salvation Army bells on wet nights, I note:

This seasonal hysteria  is  based on the birth of a child.

And whether you believe there was anything special about that child, that divinity is a gift bestowed on one woman’s womb or a drop of water sprinkled on every one, the story is a compelling one.

A woman carrying a seed of hope. A family seeking sanctuary. A revolution born in a rundown stable.

Stranger things have happened, from babes born on farms from Chile to the Ukraine, from women giving birth in the Dubai slums  to the shanties in Cape Town.

Every child is a seed of hope. Every mother feels the miraculous nature and heavy responsibility of ushering a citizen into the world. Every family seeks  solace at some point in their journey.

This story is universal.

Every day we struggle to keep the door of our hearts open, a light on in the inn.

Every Christmas is a chance to see our reflection in the shiny windows, and note our part in the drama the world plays out, day after day ,year after year.

Are we willing to have our hopes pinned to a child, born in difficult circumstances, somewhere?

It’s a terribly vulnerable position to trust a babe to someday save us.

But an even worse one if we won’t let the child in.

A few notes:

Children Apprehended crossing the southwest border alone (unaccompanied minors) this year: 10,588.

Syrian Children living as refugees:  2 million

Children seeking asylum in Europe: 700 per day.

Unicef estimates 30 million children are “on the run” world wide.

Site to learn more: https://www.hrw.org/topic/childrens-rights/refugees-and-migrants

Early morning, I rise, knowing it is time.

Before my tea has even steeped.

Before the sun has pulled itself from the mucky clouds of the east, and stretched across the sky to wake the world, including the daughter that slumbers beside me.

A hotel room far from home, in the wet world known as the Northwest, I consider moving deeper under the covers. Hiding from my own demanding self.

Life is a series of such struggles. The tide of my own resistance is higher and wider than Puget Sound’s.

My dreams, a jumbled confusion of lost love and found objects, float vaguely in the room. My unconscious and conscious drift together like marbled smoke.

Sleep rubbed from my eyes, I examine the murky darkness for a hint of inspiration.

I cannot consider the day ahead of me: Doctor’s appointments, long drives in wet traffic, a curbside, tearful, goodbye. Rental car rudeness, stale air in the airport, the awkward airplane conversations. Another long drive in the rain, now dark. Some days are better not to consider ahead of time.

Don’t think. Begin.

Inhabit the advice of so many prolific writers, to put my gaze on a blank page in the morning, not on the world.

Summon my compadres from Squaw, who might be staring at their own blank page.

The few who post the sunrise pictures daily, to remind the world: They have arisen, and face the day with pen in hand.

Imagine the writers everywhere who are leaping into this day, with its many fictional possibilities, pushing back on life’s mundane demands like mud from a long wet land slide.

The poet who scribbles words on a napkin in a diner in Des Moines.

The novelist ripping out pages of that do not serve the plot. Grieving the scenes she eviscerates.

The journalist digging for a fresh take on a weary problem, for the image that will shake his readers’ complacency.

My daughter who produced fresh prose effortlessly, like breathing, before she collapsed here next to me. Whose feet are still tangled in the sheets next to mine.

Summon them all to begin the hardest task of all.

The only task that matters.

To write.

.

I am susceptible to bouts of periodic hope, despite the way the world presents itself in the news, despite my sleepless nights thinking about global warming.

Hope is pervasive, invasive even. It has a way of pushing through, like shoots of grass between the cracks in the sidewalk.

Aspen, where I am spending the week, seems to brew optimism, along with the cannabis shops and breweries, the art galleries, bear statues and wandering musicians.

In the afternoon, I explore the valley, following rocky pathways alongside a rushing stream, the famous Aspen trees turning brilliant hues of yellow, shifting in the breeze. An almost religious fervor wells up inside of me, the moment steeped in natural beauty. Dizzy from the altitude and the beauty, I want to lie down in the meadow and stare at the sky, watch the tree tops bend in the breeze, and the hovering rain clouds move in.

Burry me here, I think. And I’m content. But my man awaits, and I rise and follow him down the dusty pathways, accompanied by impish chipmunks and a buzzing hummingbird. I feel like Disney’s sleeping beauty wandering the forest, picture them adorning me with acorns and ribbon.

After we arrive in town, sipping cider at an outdoor pub, our table balancing precariously on cobblestones, I people watch.

A little girl wanders the square, walking from tree to tree – Aspen, oak, pine. She examines each one closely, looking up and down the tree, poking the indentations, the places the tree has succumbed to life, the circles and ripples, running her small fingers up and down each tree. Then the young scientist stops and wraps her small arms around their trunks, leaning in, resting her cheek upon the bark. She inhales the scents and rests.

She has a red windbreaker on, not unlike the one I remember sporting at her age. I suddenly remember being her, age four, leaping from rock to rock in natural forests. Building tiny houses for the chipmunks. Twirling in meadows.

I’m grateful, so grateful in this moment, for my parents’ endless efforts, bringing me from one end of the country to the other, with their small budget and a heavy personal load. We travelled from the everglades to the lakes in Maine, from the Adirondacks, the Rocky Mountains. We went to the places where the main event of the day was the sunset. I’m awed at their determination – climbing on sail boats, spiking the tents, hitching an old trailer to the station wagon. They taught me that the limitations were only as real I permitted them to be. And the absolute importance of climbing mountains.

In the evening the rain descends, leaving the town misty and clean by the time we emerge from dinner. We breathe in the fresh damp air, a combination of wet wood, dirt, stone, and fallen leaves. The earthiness of fall.

I look for the little girl, the young tree hugger, but do not find her. I regret not speaking to her earlier.

I should have kneeled down, looked right into her baby face as she released one tree and headed off to the next and said “Good job, young explorer. Keep doing this, Keep on seeking love in nature. Keep exploring the way things stretch and grow. Keep embracing anything with roots. Keep your arms wide open to the world. You will be blessed by the grace of trees.”

I’ll look for her tomorrow.

Aspen. Standing in the shadow of the mountain, hints of sanguinity drifting with the yellow leaves in the breeze.

I breathe it in.

Several conservative looking mid-life women score some pot and share it.

I’m not sure why we always find this so funny, but we do. When you think of the popularity of the TV show Weeds, or the scene of Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated, whispering giddily “I’m stoned!” –  you smile.

Women of a certain age, with sensible shoes, varicose veins, mortgages and retirement plans hitting the pipe together – it’s just funny.

Perhaps that’s what the playwright Marisa Wegrzyn was counting on when she wrote Mud Blue Sky, and it worked. Opening last night at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, the play could have been just a fun, silly romp. The teaser sounds like the beginning of a joke: Three stewardesses and a high school pot dealer check into a hotel and. . . but the play, while bitingly witty and laugh-out – loud funny, is much more than a farce.

Mud Blue Sky, set in a hotel room at O’ Hare where three career stewardesses reunite, is filled with poignant moments that force us to think about the things we hold dear. It has ugly moments, revealing the vulnerability we face as we age – our bodies likely to betray us, our employers quick to disown us. And there are poetic moments, moment when I wanted to ask the actors to stop, rewind, and say the lines again. Because they were beautiful.

I’ll see it again. The actor who plays the lost, awkward but endearing, high school senior (who happens to deal weed) is our own Devin O’Brien. Being the proud mom in the audience might have made me a little biased and  more likely to cry (have I ever made it through one of his shows without tears?!) But just a little.

I’ve seen the play twice now, and last night I watched and listened keenly not as a mother but as a writer, for the rhythms in language, the reversals in the plot, the surprises from each character, the truths beneath the dialogue.

Wegrzyn is a gifted playwright, able to stretch an unusual but not impossible encounter – three stewardesses and a boy on his prom night – into a heart breaking evening, to make the audience laugh in unison, and then take a collective, sad sigh. To make us think about the meaning of work, identity, and the way our losses shape our future, but don’t have to define it.

Great work, Aurora Theatre, for choosing a complicated and unusual play, and inviting us into the room. And to the four amazing actors and director, take a bow. Mud Blue Sky made me want to fly again.

Here’s a link to get tickets (quickly! They are selling fast!) and a Chronicle review that came out today.

Mud Blue Sky: Comedy. By Marisa Wegrzyn. Directed by Tom Ross. Through Sept. 27. $32-$50. Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. One hour, 40 minutes. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org.

http://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/Prom-night-in-hotel-room-with-3-flight-attendants-6485059.php

Turning fifty is a lot like going on the Tower of Terror, at Disneyland.

I approached that particular contraption of madness on a whim years ago, with my eager 13 year old daughter and friends. They reassured me –not a lover of amusement park rides – that it ‘wasn’t that bad’.

It didn’t look that bad. People walked away from it with seeming composure, giggling even.

I could do this.

We were strapped into seats, not tightly enough, in a closed room -a large elevator -and told some creepy tales I didn’t listen to. I was too busy checking my buckles.

As the elevator rose, the floors ticked away, higher and higher. I told myself I was alright, that it was almost over, actually.

When the doors flew open and the floor tilted, so we hung precariously over the park displayed below us, a sound like the bellows of a wounded lion came pouring out of me.  I knew this was a technological disaster, someone had lost control of the buttons. Surely they didn’t mean for us to be in an elevator, tipped sideways, with the doors open? We were going to be on the news. Mother-daughter death ride.

But out of the corner of my eye, I saw my daughter grinning. As if .. she was having fun?

And then we fell.

The floor seemed to drop from beneath us, we descended at least ten floors, plummeting like helpless and stupid baby birds thrown from a useless nest.

I cried, I buried my head in my daughters shoulder, and squeezed her arm until she screamed for me to stop. I hated her for making me do this. I begged God to let us live.

Finally, thank God, it was over. We’d stopped.

Only it wasn’t really over.

I cursed as only an Italian girl can as they dragged us back up. They did it all again.

Dragged us up to the top, opened the doors, and dropped us into dark nothingness,  slamming my neck a few times on the way down.

Sheer Hell.

Turning forty was like the first time on that ride.  My anxiety drove me higher and higher into the atmosphere, and then I was free falling, watching for the edge of something to grab as I went down, hoping I would survive a crash landing. I was unaware I wore a parachute, that I could have pulled the string at any time. I hit the earth of reality hard.

Today, I turn fifty. My second time on this existential tower of terror.

I wake this morning feeling quite mortal, with, most likely, more time behind me than ahead of me on this world.  Sand slipping through the hour glass at an alarming rate, all tautness gone from my belly, joints creaking as I climb the stairs.

I have a ticker tape running through my brain this week. Things I will probably never do, as I turn this corner from my forties: go to med school, publish a novel before fifty, become the president, have perky boobs, run a marathon, be on the list of 30 under 30, raise my children abroad, be a young woman, have sex with the lights on, stop climate change.

Of course, I can write a much longer list of the wonderful things I have already done, will do, and hope to do. Aspirations I can approach with some level of optimism, although with an acute awareness that I should get going already. Time’s not waiting.

There’s also a tribe of women out there who have saved children in Nepal, published first novels, become CEO’s, joined the peace corps, and reduced climate change  – all over fifty.

Today, these women’s stories are my parachute. (I will remember I have one this time.)

The free fall has begun, and I reach for the string, pulling hard, listening for the shoosh sound as the parachute takes the wind and slows down my descent.

I float through the sky this time, and take in the wider view, examine the many paths to be taken, enjoy the sun filtering through the trees. A balloon rises to greet me, a memento of birthdays gone by when things were simpler. Most importantly, I see a parade of women in wide hats.

My guides. Women of a certain age – a certain productive, prolific, poised and poetic age.

In the Presence of Mountains.

I am the unknown writer in the corner of the room, two hundred or so of us packed in to grasp greedily at Annie’s Lamott’s dry wit, warm self deprecation, and carefully chosen pearls of wisdom, mined not only from deep oceans, but the everyday tragedy of being human.

I am the center of attention, across the table from the editor of Zyzzyva, a literary magazine I would be honored to publish in. A plucky west coast literary magazine, it defies the limits of geography – it’s not on the East Coast – and is a formidable presence in the literary world. The editor, Laura Cogan, offers not only her time as she reviews my story, but the wisdom of having read hundreds of stories that were a draft away from perfect. She offers a question, and I offer an answer, and the story, in front of my eyes, grows stronger.

I am alone, climbing, the sun chasing the fog up the mountain, taking gulps of the air, thin but so clean, amazed that I am out of bed at six AM, forcing myself in one direction – up – because that is where I will find perspective.

I am among friends, wiping tears from my eyes late at night from the laughter that caught me unaware, curled up on a couch, enjoying the curious intimacy of new friends.

I am overwhelmed, intimidated, and almost afraid to write another word, as I listen to the readings of the faculty in the evenings. We gather in the largest of the lodge rooms, heavy beams and wide windows lend it an aura of being in a castle, as if we should light torches. The sky shifts from grey to luscious hues of pink, as each writer stands in their own small spotlight, offering delicious prose. Their images leave me speechless. These are craftsmen that create sea-worthy ships with their bare hands, with the wood of redwoods felled in a magic forest. I tie together a small raft of driftwood, and yet I must follow them towards the same tossing sea.

I am stopped on the stairs by a Janet Fitch, who wrote a novel my daughter and I fell in love with, simultaneously, years ago. A stunning story, and important book. She wants to tell me some ideas she’s had, about a comment I made the day before, a book or two my son might enjoy. She doesn’t know my name, but she knows a book my son should read.

I am touched by the generosity of spirit that abounds.

I am inspired, encouraged, on fire with optimism, as the teachers remind me that words carefully placed together can tell the story in my heart. And that the story will find its way out of me, onto the page, then out to the world. It will be in the presence of epic tales, romance novels, tragedies and nursery rhymes. It doesn’t matter. As long as I’ve told my story.

I am a writer, at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.  Exhausted, exhilarated, grateful.

I am flattered to have one of my essays chosen for an online Mother’s Day Rally by Post Partum Progress. Glad to help in any way to break the isolation of new moms facing depression and anxiety.

Batman to the Rescue

Three days before Christmas, alone in my kitchen, I slammed my dishwasher door so hard I heard the brittle crack of something breaking inside. I thought of opening the dishwasher back up and slamming it shut again and again pouring my frustration out on to every peanut butter smeared plate.

That’s when I knew it was back, the wild anger in my soul that rose from nowhere and blasted through me, from my toes to my fingertips. A tidal wave of outrage, unpredictable as the wind in March. Oh shit, not again.

A week old baby down the hall, finally down for her morning nap, and a four year old hopping around the playroom in spastic angst between having a new sister Christmas on the brain.  But my sleep deprivation, hormonal imbalance, and sheer exhaustion from delivering another child into the universe, had resurrected my dormant demons.

I clung to the counter, hearing the broken glass falling between in the ribs of the dishwasher rack. I imagined letting myself slide to the floor, curling up and in and crying as I might have done if didn’t have a child in the next room.

My belly was still sore and embarrassingly bloated. The circles under my eyes were purple, bruise like, and I had stretch marks everywhere. Even my toes still looked distended, like someone else’s feet at the bottom of my body.

My only plan for the morning had been to scour the kitchen, a legitimate health hazard after days of stacking dirty pans in the sink. Oh yes, and I needed to plan a Christmas dinner?

The week before, my daughter had been born on a Tuesday. My husband was back at work that Friday. While my parents lived right down the street, and were usually a source of strong support, my mother was dying. We didn’t say that out loud quite yet, but we knew.

So I bravely agreed to make Christmas Eve dinner. Deep down, I wanted to instill some Martha Stewart calm and poise into my messy reality. I’d make place-tags with my four year old! I’d write baby’s first Christmas on the baby’s pajama top, in glitter. I could create the dinner of my childhood – an Italian seafood platter. I had visions. But perhaps the visions were born from a brief, manic, hormonal high. They were fools’ fodder if my postpartum madness was back.

After the birth of my first child, my son Devin, I’d ridden a roller coaster of euphoria and despair. I paced the house like a crazed lioness convinced the world was threatening my son, then I’d wake at five AM to write pages in my journal about the love that rocked my soul, filling my every atom. Later in the day, I’d find myself weeping on the back steps, the baby finally napping after another two hour colic marathon.

My OB diagnosed postpartum depression after five minutes with me. I refused medications, but dragged myself to a therapist. I did everything she told me to do. I set boundaries with my family, ate more often, hired a babysitter just to take a run. I slept every time the baby did and gave myself permission to do nothing more productive than nurse the baby. After a few months with the therapist, I was not only feeling better, but the woman had taught me a lot about parenting.

Four years later, I told myself I’d sail through having baby number two. But here I was, breaking dishes, crying at the sight of the pile of cookbooks I’d gotten at the library, brimming with guilt because my four year old was watching his sixth episode of Batman. I’d watched the first two of the episodes with him, swaying back and forth while my fussy baby girl hiccuped and squirmed. When she finally fell asleep, Devin panicked.

“Do I have to turn it off?” he asked, his emerald eyes huge with fear.

My child was addicted to bad cartoons. This show was older than I was. Batman still said “pow” every few minutes. Oh Lord, rescue him from my parenting.

“Buddy, why don’t you come in the kitchen while I –

“No!” His wail was loud enough to wake me from my stupor. It could easily have woken the baby, at which point I knew I would have lost it. I felt the sleep-deprived hormonal flush of anger and it scared me.

“OK. Keep watching it. I need to load the dishwasher.”

The next thing I knew, there I was, picking pieces of a broken wine glass from the bottom of the dishwasher, cutting my finger in the process. I watched the blood flow in the sink for a minute, almost relieved to see a sign of normal biological life. And it felt right to know what to do: wash it, put on a band aid. A simple task, unlike shopping for the ingredients of a traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner or finding an end to colic.

“Mommy, why are you bleeding?”

Devin, a black cape thrown casually over his Batman pajamas stood at my side. He was still in his pajamas. Had I ever made him breakfast?

“I just cut my hand on something.”

“I’ll help you!” Devin kick boxed his way across the kitchen, theoretically knocking three or four invisible masked bad guys out of the way. “Pow! Ug! Gotcha!” Then, with lithe grace, he scaled the counter, opened a high cabinet and pulled out the Band aids, a handful falling to the floor.

“Did you ever have breakfast?” I asked him.

He shook his head no, as he carefully opened a band aid for me. We worked together at applying it.

“You’re making me eggs, remember?” He pointed to a dozen eggs on the counter. I vaguely remembered taking them out, hours earlier.

The lessons from that therapist floated to mind. Eat Often. Get help. Set boundaries. Get rest. Everything else can wait.

Devin and I ate scrambled eggs together on the couch. I convinced him to let me read him a book, with the TV off. The baby woke up, and together we changed her, dressed her, and went outside for a walk. It was an enormous undertaking, requiring shoes for all of us, blankets on the baby, three layers on Devin. It meant bumping down the five steps in front of our house to the city street, and shivering when we turned a corner and the winter wind hit us. I almost turned back. But in the playground, Devin ran around and laughed, cheeks reddening. He made friends with strangers, and laughed when I pushed him on the swings, the baby in my arms. His joy was infectious. I realized he wouldn’t care how well Santa wrapped things, or what we ate for dinner. The dinner would not, I decided, be cooked by me.

I’d forgotten how a baby levels one to the absolute basics. How advice like “Eat and sleep whenever you can,” is not trite, or obvious. It is life-saving.

I don’t remember who cooked Christmas dinner, or what Devin had under the tree that year.

I remember we spent it with my parents. I remember it was one of my mother’s last holidays, and the baby’s first, and we were all together. I remember I took a little better care of myself with that baby than I had the first time, and did so even more with number three.

I didn’t avoid all of those moments, slammed dishwashers, raised voices, despairing afternoons. They came with the hormones and stress, I was never immune. I was a human, trying to keep several other beings safe, alive, and happy in a full throttle world. At times I was humbled, tired, every drop of nurturing squeezed out of me.

But there were also times, many times, when I reached down for one little hand or another, and just that feeling of my child’s small hand, placed with trust in mine, made me wild with joy, and fleetingly immune to the stresses of the world.

In short, I was a mother.

Link to see it live- and see many other great essays on this topic. Please share!

http://www.postpartumprogress.com/batman-to-the-rescue-joanell-serra

My mother chose words like gems she needed to pluck from a pile of baubles and trinkets. She never settled for the first, easily discovered word. Her hands, increasingly crippled over time by a relentless disease that twisted her limbs, would move gently through the air as she searched for the right descriptive.

He was. . .recalcitrant. She might say, in describing her grandfather. She was infatuated when she met my father, at seventeen. He, the handsome man who walked up and down the aisles of her high school business class reciting the letter A,S,D,F for the left hand, H,J,K,L for the right, was dapper. Even debonair.

As a writer, I find myself longing for her expertise. Eighteen years after her death, I look up from a cup of luke-warm tea, curled up on my old lounge chair on a chilly afternoon, wishing she could weigh in as I muse over the page. I examine the shadows, half hoping she’s there, that I might catch a mellifluous whisper.

I’m searching for words, I want to tell her, that will make my readers’ heartbeats  accelerate. Words that are sweet to taste, like honey on a spoon, that pull one sentence to another, like we used to watch the taffy be pulled in the summer time at the Jersey shore. Words that stretch. Words that  wake us up to all the possibilities of prose. Words that shift the lens from blurry to startlingly clear.

I say to my ghost mother, who is as real to me as the characters that gather in my mind, hesitantly perched on rickety chairs, “Here is my struggling scene, still embryonic:

My character is not just old but . . very, very old?  The beer he drinks is too warm, because he neglected to drink it quickly, caught in the web of and old man’s thoughts. The cane, dragged across a room, makes that scratchy noise. What is that sound? And the first star that has pushed into the twilight sky, early and unexpected while the sun sets, awakens in the old man a sliver of hope, a feeling so unusual it pains his slowing heart. But not hope, that is too mundane, too pedestrian, an overused word altogether.”

And my mother reaches across the divide of time and space, from death to life, from the Elysian Islands to San Francisco, and forces the words out of my unconscious and onto the page. As she once guided my steps as I wobbled across the wet grass, or my hand as she taught me to write letters with long, guiding strokes.

The man is not just old, he is archaic. The beer is tepid. His cane rasps across the rotting wooden floor. And the hope he feels, as the first star appears? Just a sliver of expectation, a breath of anticipation. Perhaps a slight shiver, in recognition of his previous sanguinity?

Yes. That’s it. A recognition of previous sanguinity.

My mother instilled in me a hunger for the right word, and then fed them to me with each meal. Words that stretched like my grilled Swiss cheese sandwiches, words as tart as her apricot and plum pie, words that dripped like honey from the spoon, words that wafted like the steam now wafts from my fresh cup of tea.