Poetica Magazine

On my computer monitor I have stuck a photo from the 1970s of my sister holding me in her arms when I was a baby and she was thirteen. It was once colour but the chemicals that were used in photographic production at the time do not age well. It is now faded and looks almost monochrome, the image present being seen through a fine warm mist. I was tiny and a month premature my fists tightly balled, my eyes firmly shut. She is looking down at me with affection.

.

My sister is no longer living. She died at the end of 2007 because of complications caused by the treatment she received for leukaemia. Now in my mind she will always be a woman in her mid-40s. I will not see her grow old as I once expected. When our parents die she will not be here to take matters in hand and keep us all together. She was very good at keeping things together.

.

I remember this when I no longer feel like continuing. The shock of her death has done strange things to me. I liken it to an earthquake that still sends out unsettling ripples. It was the first tragedy I have had to deal with in my adult life and it changed everything. The pieces of my personal jigsaw were thrown into the air ending up fragmented and scattered. I am still trying to locate them all. Sometimes I am unsure if I ever will.

.

I think her passing marked the end of my young adulthood and brought about the first real realisation I had that my time was limited. Of course you know you are one day going to die but you do not really accept or appreciate the finality of this until something brings it sharply into view. Then I became fearful. My body is a fragile vessel. What if I wake up tomorrow and discover a lump where a lump should not be? What if my partner did the same? What malevolent bodily squatter am I incubating?

.

It is now nearly three years since my sister died and still I am trying to piece myself together. Sometimes I feel as if I am doing fine, that the loss is real but the sun is shining and she would want me to be happy. At other times I am struck by a deep and profound sense of emptiness, both personal and universal. When that happens a slide into mundane depression usually follows. You are told by the doctors that this is biological but it always feels more philosophical.

.

I have become fascinated by grief and mourning and how it affects people. In the Western world there is a culture and expectation that you will after a short period step up to the plate, slap a smile across your face and re-engage with the world in a upbeat way. I have tried to do that. I have presented a public face that is amenable and not marked by mortality, the one thing our consumer society cannot rid us of. The bereaved threaten our cosy self-deceit which is why we work so hard to ignore them or chivvy them back in line, shaking the scattered ashes out of their hair, dressing them in bright colours.

.

In learning to let my sister go I have given her a new role. She is now the voice behind my shoulder that whispers encouragement to my better self. She is freed from inconsistency and human failings to become an ideal. I remember her in her hospital bed. I remember her as my big sister taking me on fair ground rides for the first time. I see us both on the faded photograph and know that our experiences had and always will intertwine, even though hers is to be felt as an absence in the lives of those who knew her.

.

I lost all faith. I look at the sky and it seems empty, but it no longer feels quite as threatening. Certainties might be gone, but love seems real enough.

.

Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Martyn Clayton, Guest Blogger

.

Martyn Clayton is a journalist and writer. He is the author of a non-fiction book about the Roma people and his debut novel Take Me Out was published by Subculture Books in 2008. He lives in York, England. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

A few weeks ago I went on vacation and took a break from daily writing. Before I left, I fired off a few trifling pieces to post on my blog, set up WordPress to post one each morning, and then closed my laptop, giving it two weeks of true hibernation. Up to that point, I had made time every day since launching my blog to sit down and write. But only when I stopped this routine did I realize that I had not only made time to write, I had also made time to think. The act of writing had allowed – had ushered in, really – the acts of thinking, of observing, of seeing the ordinary in a new way.

                                                                                              .

And I started to wonder: if I stop writing, will I also stop seeing?

                                                                                 .

Since starting to write, everything I do, everyone I talk to, everyplace I go has become possible material: a baking session with my son, a phone call from a friend, a trip to the grocery store. And that is both good and bad. On the one hand, I have begun to find new meaning in each moment and have started to think more about being present in every encounter. But on the other, I worry about making characters out of the people I love most; I do not want to mine my family and friends for stories or truths they had not intended to broadcast to a wider audience. I do not wish to use them as means to a revelation.

                                                                              .

I went into my vacation thinking about finding a balance, contemplating turning off the x-ray vision of the writer, and wondering if I wanted to.

                                                                                            .

And then I found some help in the person of Anne Lamott.

                                                                           .

During my vacation, I blazed through two of her books. Her writing bubbles over with the wisdom, humor, and truth of the everyday, whether she is writing about her first year raising her son or about, well, writing. In Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Lamott offers some clarity and encouragement for fledgling writers trying to figure out what role writing should play in their lives:

                                                                  .

"In this dark and wounded society, writing can give you the pleasures of the woodpecker, of hollowing out a hole in a tree where you can build your nest and say, 'This is my niche, this is where I live now, this is where I belong.' And the niche may be small and dark, but at last you will finally know what you are doing."

                                                                                           .

I love this image of myself as a woodpecker, carving out some space in the world for my ideas. And Lamott’s metaphor also helped me find a solution to the question of how to apply a writer’s scrutiny to the business of living and interacting with real people. Now I just might think of the stuff I do, the people I meet, the places I go, the fodder of my life as the twine and twigs that make up my woodpecker’s nest. These fragments support me, they are the foundation of my little hole in the tree, but ultimately it is my pecking – my writing – that tells the story.

                                                                               .

Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Kristen Stiefel Levithan, Guest Blogger

                                                                       .

Kristen Stiefel Levithan is a teacher and writer. Her graduate thesis, “Balancing Act: Massachusetts’s Racial Imbalance Act, the Lynn Plan, and School Desegregation in One New England Town,” won the Wesleyan University Rulewater Prize for outstanding reflection and writing. A New England native, she now lives in the Midwest with her husband and two young sons. Kristen shares her cultural commentary and musings on modern motherhood at Motherese. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Calling cards, the precursor to the business card, originated in fifteenth century China, and were popularized in Europe in the 1800s. In pre-telephonic eras they were basically paper answering machines, providing notification that a guest had attempted a visit while one was absent, indisposed or not receiving.

.

We don’t hear much about calling cards any longer. Unannounced visits to acquaintances homes are no longer socially acceptable, yet we leave our imprint in many places, showing where we’ve been. If not a physical calling card then a technological one, something to show we’ve been there, we’ve visited, we’ve thought of another.

.

Outdated objects commonly get relegated to the verbal compost pile. Once an innovation is no longer a fad, it seems de rigueur that it instead becomes a turn of phrase. The Dictionary of Slang is full of words which once had literal meanings but which were then overused, abbreviated for the sake of convenience, and then altered into incomprehensibility, like the children’s game Telephone.

.

And so the phrase “calling card” has changed as well. In this age of instant technology, in which it is almost impossible to avoid cell phones, computers, and texting, a “calling card” no longer refers to an object but is now an expression meaning a trademark, one’s modus operandi. If it’s almost impossible to find an object that hasn’t been computerized, from books to pens, to picture frames and toothbrushes, then why shouldn’t calling cards have been computerized as well?

.

Which brings up the question, now that paper calling cards have been phased out by text messages, how do we define calling cards today? What do we as a society leave behind, and how do we make those legacies known? How do we show where we’ve been? Have we left our imprint behind, even in this day and age of technology?

.

Einstein left behind a theory of relativity. Darwin left On The Origin of Species. Da Vinci, the “Mona Lisa”, Picasso, “Guernica”. Artists, writers, scientists, and inventors have left future generations paintings, books, advances in medicine and technology. Teachers influence their students in the way they think, parents their children.

.

The real question is how do we want to be remembered? How have we enriched our society? What have we created? What is our legacy? What is our calling?

.

Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Jessica Goody, Guest Blogger

.

Jessica Goody’s work has appeared in New York newspapers, anthologies such as Timepieces, Moonlight Café’s Poetry By Moonlight, and The Sun Magazine. She was a Featured Poetess of SpiralMuse.com. Her work ranges from poetry and song lyrics to short stories and children’s books. A dedicated environmentalist, she is interested in publishing a volume of poetry and a mystery novella. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Well what can I say; I am one of seven daughters of a Tsarist father and Mother who survived the Holocaust but barely survived their daughter’s teenage years. My grandmother, who lived to her late 80’s (her real age was never known to me or my sisters), managed to get by without ever having any surgery; my mother, who is now 79, has never had any surgery. So, here I am, a reasonably healthy 51-year-old woman with a ruptured disk and nerve pain that curls my hair and makes me weep. I opt for surgery, and lo and behold, have an abnormal EKG. I go through the battery of heart-related tests and I am cleared for surgery. I tell no one about the heart irregularity, but it slips and I immediately receive call after call from my mother. You see, telling one or more of my sisters is a pipeline to my mother; I don’t care how often or how strenuously I request that the news of my imminent surgery or heart irregularity not be relayed to her, she finds out. So, the calls begin; the first message is friendly, cloying me into returning her call, “Debbie, I heard that you may have had a heart-attack, I know it’s not true please call me back.” I know this brief prelude, is merely a ploy to suck me deep into the abyss that is my mother. The next five calls are decidedly less friendly and have a sense of urgency; “Debbie call me [low sobbing sounds accompany this] I am worried about you. Debbie for G-d’s sake call me” etc.

.

So, I finally muster up the courage to call her and confront the surgery issue; she tells me she is against it, she tells me (this is the ultimate threat) that she is coming to the hospital like it or not…much to my husband’s chagrin. I finally tell her it’s going to happen, accept it, and fine, come to the hospital. I do make the final move of deception for my husband’s sake, and tell her that the surgery is a couple of hours later than it actually is…smart move and one that may ultimately save my marriage. This is outpatient surgery, no heart transplant, kidney removal or potentially life-threatening move on my part. As luck would have it, the hospital makes a boo-boo and after surgery they move me to a room; my mother has decided it is because of some underlying medical condition or glitch during surgery. Despite the fact that I am up and around attempting to decipher the hospital’s error, she is pretty certain that I am in imminent danger and is crying. I send her home because the last thing I need at this point is a crying mother and an inept hospital; I can only handle one breakdown at a time.

.

The following week I spend speaking to my mother who cannot handle the fact that I am seemingly okay, and even a little bit better than that - I am walking and in almost no pain. This cannot be true and is a twist of fate for my mother, who is certain I am lying to her; insists on coming over and, after finagling a matzo ball soup ransom for her visit, I allow it to happen. Unfortunately, a visit means a clean house, so I am forced to overexert and help my hubby clean; we prepare a lunch as well. My mother and her liege (husband Bob) show up; she has brought her own lunch; a hard-boiled egg and piece of bread in a napkin. When she sees I am alive and kicking and a lunch is readily available she is thrilled. The daily calls go on for the better part of a month until I am recuperated, and am able to drive to her house to personally strangle her.

I like to see the reaction I get when I tell people that I am an Irish Catholic Jew. I don’t espouse either faith so it’s more for shock value than anything. I consider myself spiritually eclectic but that’s another story.

                                                                                                                  .

Bloodlines don’t lie though. Bessie Kahn, my maternal grandmother, was born April 3, 1899 in New York City. Her Jewish immigrant parents were poverty-stricken and unwed, so when she was about two months old they deposited her in a white cradle that sat in the foyer of the New York Foundling Home. The cradle had been placed there by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul for mothers to anonymously leave their babies. Though it must have been a difficult decision for her parents, undoubtedly they hoped that the orphanage would open the door to a better life for their daughter. Because the foundling home was run by Catholic priests and nuns, they wasted no time in baptizing this Jewish baby and bringing her into the fold.

                                                                                                                                                       .

When Bessie was just over two years old, she and 13 other children from the orphanage boarded a train bound for the Midwest to meet their adoptive families. They were part of The Orphan Train movement, which was so named because of the nearly 200,000 orphaned, abandoned and homeless children who were delivered by train to their new families between 1854 and 1929. Bessie got off the train in Frankenstein Missouri; she was adopted and brought up by the Gentges family. Her 61-year-old adoptive mother renamed her Rose and raised her as a devout Catholic.

                                                                                                                                           .

I can’t help but believe that my grandmother always felt a sense of abandonment, so perhaps that was why her union with my Irish grandfather produced 10 children, 39 grandchildren, 74 great-grandchildren and who knows how many great-great-grandchildren. Every one of the children and grandchildren was raised in the Catholic faith, which was largely due to Grandma’s influence. She was the most devoted Catholic I’ve ever known; her faith was steadfast and profound. I am sure of this...had she been raised Jewish, Grandma would have approached Judaism with the same passion and conviction that she had for Catholicism. That’s just the kind of person she was.

                                                                                                                    .

So here I sit as I often have over the years, wondering what it would be like to live and breathe Jewish tradition. Questions run through my mind: What traditions could I have experienced? Which could I learn about and practice now without subscribing to the faith? Am I entitled to do this? Is there a nice Jewish family who would ‘adopt’ me and teach me their ways? Even though I’m technically considered Jewish, there’s a part of me that feels no sense of belonging. It’s like having a membership to a club but not being able to walk in the front door. Or owning something but not being able to use it. Or receiving a license to practice medicine but not being allowed to practice it. It’s a part of me that I don’t know how to express. There’s a certain irony in knowing that while I don’t have a close connection to the culture, there is enough Jewish blood running through my veins for me to have been sent to Auschwitz.

                                                                                                                                   .

It’s not like I was raised without tradition. There was plenty of that in my growing up household, much of which revolved around food, holidays and gatherings. We always joked about having been dealt double the guilt as a result of our Catholic/Jewish roots. I feel though like I’ve missed out on embracing the Jewish part of my heritage. I’m not angry about it...just a bit regretful I suppose. So instead of having a grandma who made me matzah ball soup, my grandma filled my bowl to the rim with her hearty turkey and rice soup. And instead of baking challah she lavished upon me the world’s best cinnamon rolls. No doubt Bessie would have gotten the same satisfaction and contentment Rose did as she watched me savor every spoonful, every bite.