The Yearling, A Review

I was never much of a reader. My parents weren’t highly educated. Mom made it to eighth grade and Dad through high school, and then they met, had six kids and no money. Reading was low on their priority list. It doesn’t explain my lack of reading completely though, because one of my sisters reads like a madwoman. I guess I never had much interest, plus, I’m a slow and deliberate reader and can’t seem to sit for long periods at a time What I did read as an adolescent was teen romance magazines. Oh, the drama, the longing, the love … it was all I needed - on a single page. But, whole books? Unlikely. And the classics? Never.

The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was my assigned precursor for what is now termed Young Adult Literature and it took me three solid days - all of Labor Day weekend minus a movie here and a breakfast there - to get through it. Difficult? yes, but worth it. The Yearling was a long, luxurious meander through a year in the backwoods of Florida in the early 1900’s. Thematically a coming-of-age book, Ms. Rawlings skillfully intertwined setting and character development to give us a glimpse into the rough and laborious entanglement between the natural world and the Baxter family. Respectful encounters as well as intense struggles with the earth and its animals allowed the reader an intimate view of the rambunctious, animal-loving protagonist, Jody, and his kind-hearted (what we would now call) naturalist father, Penny.

There wasn’t an overarching plot per se, and so, for me at least, there was not a strong drive to read on for most of the book. It was more like a series of plots, popcorn plots, little arcs of drama as Jody and Penny would go on a hunt for large or small game, or deal with severe weather or an animal intruder, or even just go off together to haul water for the family. Conflicts came up within his family, with other families- like the family of brutes nearby who lacked the spirit and knowledge of Penny, or within Jody himself as he wrestled with his own conscience, a common theme in young adult literature. But, these issues were usually resolved within a page or two.

However, these experiences built on one another to form a foundation for a final, more intense, set of conflicts/plot found in the last few chapters. It was here that the drive to read on picked up. One minor plot was a feud between two of Jody’s older friends over, naturally, a girl. Jody had to repeatedly decide with whom to place his allegiance until one started the other's house afire. This brought both the best and the worst in human nature into clear focus for Jody. The major plot (which was a little long in coming, in my opinion) peaked when his adopted and beloved fawn, Flag, had to be killed to prevent him from eating any more of the food on the family farm than he already had. This was a great challenge for Jody and it was magnified, another common theme in young adult literature, by the fact that he blamed it on his parents, who, in Jody’s mind, couldn’t possibly know what was right, let alone understand his perspective. So, of course, he had to run away, during which time he faced discomfort and danger.After he cried and starved out his grief over the loss of Flag, who he actually had to shoot after his mother’s poor aim only wounded the animal, he realized how much he missed his home and loved his parents. He returned with a clearer understanding of the meaning of, and a willingness to take on, a more grown-up role in the family. If this wasn’t a precursor, I’d suggest it was all just a little too, well, cliché.

The language and use of dialogue was my favorite part of the book. Ms. Rawlings used specific and accurate dialect and historically interesting words, both of which helped to develop both the setting and the characters. For example, Jody had spent all day building a pen to house Flag, his new fawn, so Flag wouldn’t continue to eat the growing potatoes. Flag jumped out of it as soon as he was placed there and Jody started to cry. Penny said, “Don’t git in a swivet* boy. We’ll work this out, one way or t’other. Now the ‘taters is near about the only thing he’ll bother, do you keep him outen the house. They’d ought to be under kiver anyway. Now you just take down that tipply-tumbly pen, and build a coop to kiver the ‘taters.” (*A swivet is a flustered or agitated state.)

Ms. Rawlings made delightful and abundant use of metaphor, most of which referred to how nature can represent the common relationships and situations in life. About half way through the book, Jody finds his fawn, Flag, and he’s surprised that Flag had stayed put after his mother had been killed. Jody said to Penny, “Pa, he wa’n’t skeert o’ me. He were layin’ up right where his mammy had made his bed.” Penny responded by saying, “The does learns ‘em that, time they’re borned. You kin step on a fawn, times, they lay so still.” I think this can be interpreted as part of the human condition, one Jody discovers by the end of the book, that none of us, ultimately, stray very far (at least, emotionally) from where (how) we were raised.

The Yearling was first published in 1938 toward the end of a lengthy economic depression in this country. It’s not surprising then, that the author held in high regard a poor family who made way in the world solely on the land. And the role of women could be appreciated in the historical perspective as well -- primarily good or bad -- wife and mother or “one of them leetle chipperdales”. While not originally from the rural woods of Florida it is clear that once Ms. Rawlings moved there she studied in detail the local people and culture in order to bring it so alive in her writing. She won the Pulitzer Prize for the Yearling in 1939.

As for me, I’m grateful to have one of the classics under my belt. The slow pace, use of metaphor, and detailed description of place will all be useful for my own writing. And I will not soon forget the back woods life in Florida or the wonderful characters, especially Jody with his new grasp of animal and human nature and (maybe even more so) his patient and loving father, Penny. I enjoyed this so much, not in the reading of it necessarily, but in the having read it, that I find myself looking forward to reading other “classic” books of young adult literature. Huck Fin, here I come.

Not Just Yet

Nectar leaks slowly from the dark red center of each waxy Hoya bloom this morning. The large old plant sits in my sunroom, in front of the sliding glass door that leads out to the second story deck where the birds await their seed and the grill needs to be cleaned from last night’s chicken dinner. The sun breaks through the branches of the tall maple and lends the deck and the sunroom the feel of nature, unusual this close to the city. I write here in the mornings, kicked back in a yellow flowered recliner with my laptop and a cup of coffee. But, in truth, I haven’t written for quite awhile. My last blog was four months ago - that’s a long dry spell. Of course, I have all the right reasons: real life gets in the way; I lack inspiration; my inner critic is winning … the usual.

Today, I will start here, with the Hoya. A cutting from my mother’s plant, it is a vine with deep green leaves that wind round and round the handle of the basket that holds its pot-bound roots. The rich fragrance reaches as far as the kitchen, but only in the evenings and only when it blooms, which is rare. I’ve had this plant for over ten years but found my first bloom just two years ago. That it blooms at all is the envy of my sister, Kathy. She waters hers religiously and keeps it in a good spot, but, still, it never blooms.

The drops of nectar can last for days and this morning they appear like tears. Perhaps they’re for my mother – she’s eighty seven and has ovarian cancer. She’s endured multiple bouts of chemo but is now ready to say ‘enough’. I’m proud of her for choosing that path now, at a time when she’s still up and around. She’s able to walk to the dining room and does chair-exercise every day at her independent living center. Still, she depends heavily on Kathy, the sister who lives nearest to her, making it all the more unfair that it’s Kathy’s Hoya plant that won’t bloom.

I wonder what’s next for my mother – in all likelihood it will be a steady loss of function and friends. Already, I’ve watched in awe as she’s incorporated the deaths of many whom she’s loved - three in the past month alone. One of her chemotherapy agents has made her already thin skin exquisitely sensitive to heat so she rarely bakes her loving gifts of apple pie or strawberry cake anymore. Her day-to-day memory is diminishing along with any hope of watching her great-grandchildren grow to maturity, including my own son’s newborn daughter. And every day she deals with dizziness and pain, abdominal swelling that requires periodic needle taps, and of course, the foreboding loss of appetite … even for ice cream.

I can barely stand it. But she can, and does – with grace. How she does that is my question. She is Catholic and her faith in God is strong, so that helps, but it’s more than that. Her ability to accept what comes her way would impress the most devout Zen Buddhist. Honestly, she counts herself as extremely lucky. Where I see that she grew up poor and without parents, she’s grateful that her older sister and brother kept the family together and “raised ‘em up right”. Despite the deaths of her granddaughter in a house fire and her daughter from Hepatitis C, she sees only her five remaining children and multiple grand- and great grandchildren who are healthy and happy. And there are times that I wonder how she can live another day without her life-long love and best friend, a man who was kind and smart and fun, who took care of many of the details of living. She tells me not to worry; he’s holding a spot for her in heaven. He promised.

So, while I watch her stare down the throat of death, she simply smiles and taps it nonchalantly on the cheek and says, “OK ... but not just yet”.

And me? I stand next to the Hoya plant and swirl in my own discontent. The litany seems long this morning but on top is the impending loss of my mother and my own lack of direction: I’m fifty-four, my life is half over; I’ve changed my career path so I can write, but I’m not writing. What am I doing?

The clear and tenacious nectar simply waits for me. Finally, I touch a drop from one of the waxy blooms and ask the universe - the vague godlike energy of truth and love and nature - to help me find and be the best of me. Aiming for what I vaguely understand to be my chakra energy points, I rub cool fluid between my thumb and middle finger above my head, to remind me that I’m connected to everything and inspiration and comfort are available. I place another drop on my forehead to pull out trust in my own intuition, a third on my lips and throat so I may cut through fear and ego to communicate a respectful truth. I note the hint of sweetness and take a few slow breaths before I place a fourth drop on my heart to remind me to both nestle and release the gift of love. The next drop goes on my skin at the level of my adrenals, my solar plexus, for the energy and the stamina to take on whatever life offers. I linger here long enough to notice the fluid gets sticky as it dries and I know I’ll have little reminders of this blessing all day. Two drops are left. The first of these I rub onto on my lower belly, near my ovaries, to draw out creativity and openness to the new and sensual, and then, warmed by the dappled sunlight and an inner calm, I aim the final drop for the base of my spine as I sense myself connected to the earth, whole, and, in fact, exactly where I need to be.

There, I am blessed. Not by the Catholic God my mother loves, but no less so. It’s different, I know, and in a future blog, I’ll detail my connection with spirituality through nature. But in this moment I’ll simply notice that I feel shored up, more able to emulate my mother’s resilience, at peace with my place in the world. I can wait for the blooms and will breathe in their intoxicating fragrance when I can.

As for today, I’ll upload this writing to my blog, despite its imperfections; and then, after I feed the birds and clean the grill, I’ll email my sister, Kathy, to share what I’ve learned about the Hoya plant while writing this – turns out a long dry spell between watering will actually increase the chance of a bloom.

Upload revision 9-28-09

Essay for Application to Chatham University MFA in Creative Writing

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Writing. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was doing it for the attention. I suspect I didn’t get enough as a child. Don’t get me wrong my parents were great. Best ever, I’d be willing to wager, the kind you just want more of. But, just as it’s said to a woman having her third child -- take care when the new one arrives, as you will be out of lap room--by the time I came along, fourth in a family of six, five girls and the youngest, a boy, I guess I was left hanging onto my mother’s left leg. My younger sister must have been stuck with … an elbow, maybe. And baby brother? Well, for some reason he ended up with a spot on her lap just the same.

The first time this shortfall of attention hit me was during an evening meal when I was eight. We lived in a row house half way up the hill on Limit Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland. A wide sloping alley connected the back yards of everyone we knew and loved. From her kitchen window my mother could respond to, “Hey, Mom, watch this!” no matter whose yard we were in.

Our dining room looked the same every night of the week. Patty, our little green parakeet stood chirping in her cage in the corner. Dad sat at the end nearest the window next to Theresa - the middle child and his favorite. Mom and baby brother Jack, or “Jackie,” as we called him until he begged us not to, were at the end closest the kitchen so Mom could jump up and down a dozen times during meals. On either side an older sister sat next to a younger one - Kathy along side Donna and Eileen next to me. Everyone who needed it had someone to cut his or her meat.

Dinnertime, for the most part, was lively and warm. Everyone chimed in. I can’t recall everything we chattered on about, but I know it was competitive, each one trying to hold the floor a little longer than another, or even better, get a good laugh out of the rest. This included my father, who usually won.

This particular evening I had been trying my darndest to tell everyone something special about my second grade day but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So I huffed and I puffed and I finally screamed: “No one ever pays any attention to me!” and slammed my fork into my pile of peas. I stood up with gusto, my chair would have tumbled to the floor behind me had there been room. I stomped off through the kitchen and as I rounded the bend at the big white fridge with my final, “I’m running away!” I turned to see necks craned and forks frozen in space.

I’m sure my parents glanced knowingly at one another - possibly amused, and, I’d like to think, a tiny bit guilty, before my mother calmly placed her napkin on the table and said, "Kathleen, keep an eye on your brother," then excused herself to come help me pack.


Forty-six years later, with a child of my own and a successful practice in family medicine, I’m no longer stomping off when people don’t listen to me. But, I've recently weathered a brief but serious bout of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which included a run-in with an unsympathetic legal system. Soon after, I decided to take writing classes at Chatham University to help me to make a coherent narrative out the months of journal entries I had been keeping during that process. There, I found that I had a reasonable ability to write in prose form, including scene and dialogue (though I feel my real strength as a writer may be my ability to be honest).

Thus, I’ve decided to officially apply to the MFA program. I see Chatham as a place where I can not only backfill the educational deficits left from a career focused on science and medicine, but also further my writing with guidance (and deadlines) from the extraordinary faculty in the MFA Department. And by majoring in Creative Nonfiction I hope to learn how best to interest, and possibly educate, readers in the little understood concept of small-t-trauma, PtSD, if you will – as when a life that is humming along gets interrupted, rerouted to an entirely new landscape, by an experience that might otherwise be viewed as minor.

Am I doing this for the attention? So my voice can be heard, without interruption, until a complete thought is expressed? Perhaps. My family forgave my dramatic trip to the front step, which was as far as I ventured. I returned to be folded among them like a sheet still warm from the dryer. But maybe it’s time I let go, finally, of my mother’s left leg. To venture beyond my own back yard. To harvest from my own life the time and focus I need to tell the story of an imperfect life and follow through with my passion to write, and, if the stars line up just right, publish, my memoir...

(Hey, Mom, watch this!)

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fears and dreams

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Monday morning blues. Let them be brief...

--My son turned18 yesterday. He and his girlfriend and their babygirl came over for bagels and chocolate pudding pie. We gave him four new tires, how’s that for symbolic? See ya. Stay safe.
--I have a disappointing resurgence of an irritating and mildly debilitating injury. I have nursed it along, including thrice weekly rehab, since January.
--This past weekend I retreated with other faculty from my family medicine residency program. Our annual event. The group has been stable for over 15 years. We’ve recently lost two to retirement and by next fall will have two new members.
--My mother’s cancer chemical number is rising, ovarian. I just loved every minute (even the hard minutes) that I spent with her on her recent two-week visit here.
--I am heavily involved, hours a day, in writing my final for Memoir Class. I am trying to show how it was to be me during the early reaction phase from an indecent sexual assault that occurred in 2007. Not to tell, mind you, and not to summarize! for god’s sake, but to show my life in reaction, acutely and realistically – so the reader can live it on the page. Again and again, until I get it right.
--I have a card sitting on my kitchen table. It tells me I missed certified mail and need to pick it up. It’s hot. Scary. It is from the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Body Work, NCBTMB. I sent in a formal complaint about the sexual assault in late 2007. They took my statement by conference call six months ago. I’ve been waiting for the determination. It’s here; I just need to take that card to the post office this morning to find out whom they believe in this ongoing He said-She said saga.

Is it any wonder then, that I had a dream last night that I was under dark murky water, alone and scared? Or that once my feet hit bottom it was heaped up with dead bodies? Men mostly, middle aged and bald, or shaved with growing stubble, naked and muscular, buoyant somehow when I had to kick off of them to get back to the surface. I woke up in a start with palpitations and a long and intense hot flash.

I took an antacid and wandered reluctantly back to dreamland as the trees outside swayed noisily in the wind and the rain dripped down my window.

Snow on Daffodils

Snow falls quietly and sits heavy on the daffodils this morning. Must be the anniversary of my sister, Eileen’s, death. It’s been fifteen years now, if I’m doing my math correctly. Although she was from New Jersey, she died here in Pittsburgh. Failed liver transplant. Hepatitis C. The sad part is that I think of her only in post-death terms now. The incredible conch shell I found in a moment of utter hopelessness, on the beach where had spread her ashes years before, sits on my mantle. The unusual butterfly that visited us on that same beach months before found its way into my writing just last week.

Maybe it’s because I’m in medicine, or maybe because my friends are of an age where death appears in their lives more often, but I think about the last day of Eileen's life a lot, the regret I have about giving my consent for her final operation. The stupid monitor and fake pacemaker that they kept running until my sisters, Theresa and Kathy, and I were phoned in the waiting room, told to dress up into space suits, and finagled into the operating room (we had to give my eighteen-month-old niece to the front desk nurse to hold on our way). They had promised we could “be with her when she died.”

It is difficult, in the high tech world of medicine, to define the moment of death. You’ve seen it, on "ER" - the arbitrary decision to “call it” and note the time out loud. I think my sister actually died in the middle of the night, well before the morning we were called into the hospital and asked for permission to try one last, heroic, thing. I wrote a poem about that in my creative writing class last term. I'll print it on my blog. (see last blog "Time of Death" (I'm resisting the urge to add a disclaimer)).

And then I’ll spend today trying to remember her when she was alive and passionate, funny and flawed. Her big fat round bear hugs. Her full-throated laughter. Her obsession with blue. Or the late night phone calls, like one I sleepily received at one o’clock in the morning to ask, “Hey, Jan, do germs crawl?” because my sister, Theresa, had put a cold infused Kleenex down on her bed as they sat there giggling, pajama party style. Or, or… see, I can’t remember all the good stuff.

Today I will try. Today I will remember that on my way to her hospital, quite possibly in the hours between the time her spirit left her body and the time medicine's machines were switched off, I stopped in the garden to say a prayer. Today I will remember what I knew in that moment, and why I knew that finding snow on the daffodils was just perfect for the day she died.

Time of Death

Operate again? I ask. But, isn’t that…
No, they say, it’s not heroics.
It’s just before dawn; I throw off my covers.
Ok then.
What do you wear on the day your sister dies?
I wonder as I hang up the phone.

On my way I notice a light snow lay on the daffodils.
I stop, dip my fingers into it like holy water.
Say a prayer.

It’s not going well, they say, come into the operating room.
We crinkle as we enter the sterile space
in our white paper suits.

Dialysis off
Ventilator next
Finally the
Pacemaker.

Sorry.

Silence hovers.

We cry, say goodbye, we’re sorry.
Sing “Don’t weep after me.”
As four sisters become three
in the still, cold room.
…

Is that when she died?

Or, was it the night before
when a great gust of wind
blew in as we slept?

It opened the French doors of my bedroom
rushed down the steps
and lifted the paper poster,
her ethereal version of afterlife,
right off of the wall…

I wore blue, 'cause I knew.

****

uploader's remorse

I planned to write my blog this morning on regretting with hot faced embarrassment the quality of my most recent piece, "The Hand of Justice" (future blog)... but my memoir classmates did it for me - I've plagiarized the words they used when uploading their own pieces:

enjoy.

roughest draft in the world...
I am "telling" a lot
scenes are coming
pick the best ones
for the piece.
question is
working?
for or against?
Should I
choose one issue,
stick with that?
or should I
tie them
together,
connected?

I’ve bitten off
more then i can chew.
back there again.
an early draft
as yet unfinished
very rough
working on that!

a little overwhelmed
with information
so I feel like
is there?
a lot of telling
not enough showing.
still struggling
what it wants
when it grows up.

two essays here
I'm wondering
what to keep
what to save
another time.

DRAFT.

forgot
add a title,
open this one.
(so far)
never managed
I'm sorry
it's late—
trouble.

Let me know!