Joyce Maynard Treasure Hunt

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Neosho, Missouri: Where I Grew Up in the 60s

The works of Joyce Maynard entered my life a couple of years ago through one of those uncanny paths of literary coincidence, shaping themselves before my eyes into a fortuitously designed mini - course: "The Life of Joyce Maynard & Family." The path began in May 2007 when I finally read Catcher in the Rye for the first time in my life, something I probably should done twenty - five years earlier, but better late than never. At that time, I also read some background material on J. D. Salinger, learned a bit about his life, then moved on to other things.

A few months after I finished the novel, a fellow reader gave me a magazine featuring an interview / article about the two Maynard sisters, Joyce & Rona. The sisters both make a few passing references to Joyce's early, distressing connection to J. D. Salinger. Trying to recall why that sounded vaguely familiar to me, I reviewed the Salinger info. and, this time, looked up Joyce Maynard, as well.

What an astonishing life! And even more astonishing -- why didn't I ever know about this writer and about her youthful memoir: Looking Back: Growing Up Old In the Sixties? Why didn't anyone ever tell me to read this book, back in 1973? It might have opened my eyes to a few things! I ordered a copy right away, read it in no time, and then started in on her more recent memoir: At Home in the World (1998).

According to her autobiography, as she grows older and has three kids, she starts writing a parenting / family life column in a number of periodicals. Again, I got a feeling of de-ja-vu and went to search through a notebook of things I have enjoyed and saved over the years. Sure enough, there were three essays, torn out of Parenting Magazine during the years when my children were very young. Turns out I had been her fan after all, without even realizing it! Many of these essays are available in Maynard's collection: Domestic Affairs: Enduring the Pleasures of Motherhood and Family Life (1987).

Next coincidence, my son (older now) received a letter from the NCTE concerning the "Achievement Award in Writing" and a list of previous young winners: Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Robert Redford, and . . . Joyce Maynard!

After her first book at age 18, Maynard already had a plan for her next project, in collaboration with a family friend -- a book on doll houses, a subject dear to my heart (see my book, Created in Our Image: The Miniature Body of the Doll). As it turned out, Maynard's writing took off in another direction, and her co-writer completed the project singly (Joan McElroy's Dolls' House Furniture Book, 1976)

Another coincidence concerns the favorite genre of the friend who gave me the magazine in which I learned the story of Joyce Maynard's life -- true crime narratives, which just so happens to be another of Maynard's specialities. Maynard is the author of Internal Combustion: The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City (2006), and To Die For (2003), which has been turned into the movie starring Nicole Kidman. Maynard wrote the screenplay and has a bit part in the movie, as the attorney.

You can learn more about Joyce Maynard and her very talented family by reading her sister's autobiography: My Mother's Daughter: A Memoir by Rona Maynard (2008); and her mother's observations on child-rearing and family life: Raisins and Almonds (1972) and Guiding Your Child to a More Creative Life (1973) by Fredelle Bruser Maynard.

I have found so much to admire in Looking Back and At Home in the World that it was rather disappointing to come across a magazine article a few months ago in which Maynard explains her decision to spend a windfall inheritance on breast implants, which she describes almost glibly as a life- and self-affirming use of resources. Yet it seems to me an oddly inconsistent choice for a woman so skeptical of medical intervention that she insisted on entirely natural home-births for her children.

I was dismayed that she would respond with anything other than outrage to her unworthy boyfriend's suggestion that she consider cosmetic surgery. How dare he look at her with "a faintly troubled expression"? At times like these, let us not forget Dorothy Parker's sage pronouncement:"Now I know the things I know, and do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you." Surely this advice applies to our anatomy; love me, love my body. How long until we believe that we are beautiful just as we are?

So, I've had to discount Maynard's approach to mid-life crisis; but the honesty of her parenting essays and her youthful insights stay with me. She recalls, for example, hearing the phrase "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off," for the first time, when she was eight or nine. "I remember perfectly...That Stop-the-World phrase, anyway, seemed so familiar, and so telling, struck so deep, it was as if I'd thought it up myself. I knew the feeling, all right -- the frightening, exhausting realization that no matter what, from now till my death, I could not really take a rest" (Looking Back, 54).

For more on Joyce Maynard's Memoirs
check out my LIST: "Joyce Maynard Treasure Hunt"

A Horse Is At Least Human

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Spring Break in England 2008
Looking Through the Windshield, near Liverpool

Above: Yes, there are still those who trundle to the speed of a different wheel! As Ghandi said, "There is more to life than increasing its speed." Left: Here we are heading off to college in our Dodge Dart. Now, just exactly what color is this car? Forest Green, Jungle Green, Pine Green? Tropical Rain Forest? Maybe Asparagus or Fern.
[See my previous post:
"Burnt Sienna"]



Before the Burnt Sienna Omni, there was the Dart (please feel free to pronounce as Click and Clack do: Dartre--to rhyme with Sartre). When my twin brother Bruce and I started our second year of college, our parents got us this car with a standard shift on the column, a nightmare for me since I had failed at every attempt to learn about shifting gears. So one Friday in late September, my brother decided to teach me a lesson. We had lined up a few girls from my dorm to make the four - hour drive home for the weekend with us and chip in for gas. Bruce usually kept the car over at his dorm, so on Friday afternoon, he pulled up at the appointed time to pick us all up.

As we were piling all our stuff in the trunk, he announced, "I think I'll just stay here for the weekend, Kit; you go on home." I had no idea how I was going to drive that car, but I couldn't disappoint those girls at the VERY last moment. So after berating my traitorous brother, who merely shrugged his shoulders and trudged off across campus, the rest of us got in, and I guess my riders hung on to their seats while I ground the gears all the way home. Anyway, I learned. And the old Dartre nearly got us through college.

Dorm Girls, Heading Home for the Weekend, Fall 1976
Going back even further, there was my dad's Station Wagon, the one I crashed when driving home from highschool band practice on a Saturday afternoon, on the county roads out where we lived (lots of accidents out there). I shudder, even now, thinking of how I might have killed myself, my sister, and those two other kids. Sometimes I wonder what on earth our elders were thinking! Couldn't any of them have given us a ride? For some reason, my mom's car, the one that I drove more often, was not available that morning, and I protested when my parents said I should drive the other car, rather than have one of them drive us there and back. Filled with reluctance (and fear), not used to power brakes and steering, I was a nervous wreck waiting to happen.

Distracted for a fleeting instant -- when one of the others in the car said, "Why is there a school bus out on a Saturday" and pointed off to the right -- I barely edged off the right side of the road. As soon as I felt that gravel shoulder under my tires, I steered left to get back on the road, over - corrected, and ended up in the left lane, heading straight at another car. I totally panicked, over - corrected again -- back to the right this time, went beyond my lane, across the right shoulder (where I had been the first time), and crashed right into a telephone pole, which broke in half, dangling dangerously over the car.

And that was in broad day - light, stone - cold sober! Yet another scary statistic of a teen-ager driving with other teens in the car. Not good!

As you could probably guess, after surviving the crash, my passengers and I were entirely heedless of any electrical issues, and all jumped right out of the car and ran to the nearest farm house to call my parents. Luckily, we weren't electrocuted, on top of everything else. I know my parents paid for the replacement of that telephone pole, which was NOT covered under our insurance. They were cross for a little while but went easy on me, knowing that I had very specifically, not to mention tearfully, requested a ride from them.

Shortly after the accident, my dad found a cartoonish advertisement for a corny movie entitled "Kitty Can't Help It." The caption read: "She doesn't mean to drive men wild, but Kitty can't help it." Well, my dad cut this ad out of the paper, crossed out the word "men" and changed the "y" to "i" to make it like my name: "She doesn't mean to drive wild, but Kitti can't help it" Hahaha!

I laughed and laughed and so did everyone else. That cartoon must have stayed on our refrigerator for the next ten years. I wish somewhere along the way I had pasted it into my scrapbook for safe keeping, but I'll never forget it anyway, so I guess that's about the same. That was my father's humor! Plus, that's how I knew I was forgiven for my recklessness.

Another way I knew was that a mere seven days after the accident, my parents needed something from the store and told me to go hop in the rental car (that we were using while the station wagon was being repaired) and run and get it. I did NOT want to do this, but they insisted. I was not allowed to refuse or convince myself that it was impossible. No more avoidance. "You can do it," they said. And I did it.

But that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. I share Holden Caulfield's skepticism of the automobile: "Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake" (from Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 17).

And Holden Caulfied isn't the only one. Although I can't recall a time in my life when I didn't know what a car was, I can understand perfectly the qualms of startled little Chiyo when she is first exposed to the hectic streets of Kyoto: "I'd never seen a car before. I'd seen photographs, but remember being surprised at how...well, cruel, is the way they looked to me in my frightened state, as though they were designed to hurt people more than to help them. All my senses were assaulted" (Memoirs of a Geisha, italics Golden's, 35). Like Chiyo, I've never really overcome the apprehension that when it comes to cars danger is lurking everywhere.

Quiz Time:

I am most afraid of: Losing a loved one in a car accident; even worse, being the cause of that accident.

My favorite car is: One with a driver.

I never really got the hang of: Driving.

On Facebook

Burnt Sienna

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Here I am sitting atop my first car, a 1979 Dodge Omni that I purchased while in grad school. It was a stupid little car, probably not very safe, though trustworthy enough. It really didn't have any special qualities to recommend it, but one thing that I grew to appreciate was the paint job--that goofy two-tone, bronze on the top brown on the bottom, that Dodge used for several years on some of its models.

A few weeks after getting the car, I happened to see the terrific movie Heartburn, starring the ever eloquent Meryl Streep and that old coot Jack Nicholson. In an early scene from the happier days, they discuss interior design, color schemes, and childhood crayon choices with some friends. Here's the same passage as it appears in the book (hilarious reading). When asked about the color taupe, Arthur shakes his head:

"I've always been terrible at colors," he said. "It comes from having grown up with the single-row box of crayons instead of the big box. If I'd had the big box, I would now know taupe and cerise and ecru. Instead, all I know is burnt sienna. And what good does it do me? Never once have I heard anything described as burnt sienna. Never once have I heard anyone say, 'Follow that burnt sienna car.'"

"I think there's a column in this," said Mark (135).

Of course, anyone who ever colored anything knows that a box of 8 crayons would never include burnt sienna. In order to get that color, you would need a box of at least 16, maybe even 24! Still, I found the conversation amusing and right then and there decided to be the woman in the burnt sienna Omni. I figured it was a fairly accurate description since the brown and the bronze averaged together might have produced something along the lines of burnt sienna. So that's how I answered anyone who asked about my new car, what I wrote on insurance forms and parking permits that requested the color of the car. It was a fun little private joke while it lasted. I was proud to drive a car that embodied the droll humor of Heartburn, and if you had ever wanted to track me down, you could have been the one to say, "Follow that burnt sienna car."

Yes, I had that car (and now I have the column)!

I still owned the Omni when I met Gerry, but I don't think it was the dual-toned burnt sienna that won him over . . . no, it was my irresistible bread pudding recipe, taken straight from the pages of Nora Ephron's novel. She refers to it as "caramelized mush" (133). Yummy!

Try watching Heartburn if you've never seen it (dated but not hopelessly). The theme song, "Coming Around Again" by Carly Simon is lovely. If you have an hour, read the book. It will make you laugh. You'll find Rachel's recipe for Potatoes Anna easier than you might think and absolutely delicious!

Hope of a Nation

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Hope of a Nation
Painted by James Haines in the 1920s
When I was a small girl, this picture, "The Hope of a Nation," hung on the wall in my grandparents' living room. I would stand before it mesmerized by mystery. Where was this place? Where was the river flowing? Where did it end? Then one day, I heard the grown-ups singing the equally (to me) mysterious final stanza of "Battle Hymn of the Republic": "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me." Ah ha -- that was it! This was the "beauty of the lilies," the place "across the sea." Perhaps it was even the same place that we little kids sometimes sang about:

My body lies over the ocean,
my body lies over the sea;
my body lies over the ocean,
so bring back my body to me.
[see related post]

At the time, of course, I didn't know that the word was Bonnie; I knew nothing of British history or Scottish folksongs; but the transmigration of souls -- now there was something I could get a handle on.



Here's the picture,

hanging in my hallway,

Thanksgiving 2004





"We had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel." This sad, beautiful, ironic sentence is one of my favorite in all the New Testament. It is spoken a few days after the crucifixion when two minor followers of Jesus are walking along the road to a town called Emmaus (even the sound of this place name seems so sadly poetic). They are joined by a stranger who asks them "Why so sad?" In answer, they recount the recent arrest and execution of Jesus, concluding in despair, "But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel." What they don't yet realize is that this stranger is the risen Christ.

Click for excellent sermons by
Richard Swanson & Nadia Bolz-Weber.
That's how the story goes, but for me, this sentence has always seemed so appropriate to any number of our once and future leaders of whom we expected so much and who left us too soon -- King Arthur, Princess Diana, and those four American guys in the song:

"Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John."

~ written by Dick Holler
~ sung by Dion
The Beauty of the Lilies

Missouri Poets

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Fair Easter, Queen of all the days, of seasons, best, divinest!"
~ John of Damascus, 8th C ~
Yet another uncanny literary coincidence played itself out last month when I was looking through my old notebooks to see what inspiration I might find there. I came across a letter I had saved from my undergrad (1975 - 1979) professor Jim Barnes (who is now Poet Laureate of Oklahoma). In this note from 2003, he mentions the retirement of Jim Thomas, another professor and poet from those years at Northeast Missouri State (now called Truman State) University. I had not remained in contact with Jim T. as I had with Jim B. However, seeing this reference to him prompted me to google his name for current information, something I could have done--but had not--anytime during the past decade. I entered "Jim Thomas American Poet Missouri," and surprisingly / coincidentally, the first entry to appear was "Native American Authors: Jim Barnes" -- the other Jim!

So I omitted "American" and tried again with "Jim Thomas Poet Missouri." This search yielded a recent article (January 2009) by Missouri Poet Laureate Walter Bargen, commenting on the work of writers from around the state and featuring a poem by Jim Thomas entitled "Three - Dollar Bill." It was a delight to read, but even as I was savoring the exuberance of Jim's poetry and the rush of re-connection with my days in his classroom, my eye caught the lone reader comment, informing of Jim's death in late February, just a month after the article had been written, just 6 days previous to my taking the time to look him up on the internet.

First, I felt dismay at the irony of rediscovering his work only to find him gone from this world. Then I realized, No, it's because he died that I thought of him; that's how this Universe works sometimes.

"Three - Dollar Bill" is vintage Jim Thomas, a portrait of the artist as a second - grader, in which he recalls one of those early moments when it was revealed to him that his way of being in the world might not be quite the same as his classmates. My favorite, however, has always been the "The Quilt": " . . . new with recent patches / and old with originals . . . it doesn't look like much till you / Stand off to one side and squint."

POEMS

THE QUILT
by Jim Thomas

I spread it out again, noticing
the dominant pattern of killing
black, the warm juicy reds,
and all those other shades that tend
to trail off into gray:
hawks view of fields.

The ladies stitch the blocks together,
quilting away, their murmuring
filling the back porch
or church basement, biting thread
and tying off tufts.

My quilt is new with recent patches
and old with originals; it keeps
me warm, except where the holes are;
it doesn't look like much till you
stand off to one side and squint."


CHOCTAW CEMETERY
by Jim Barnes

Stones,
hand-hewn symbols
touching four winds.

Familiar glyphs:
ushi holitopa.*
The dates:
short years.

Pollen settles
down on quickened stones,

and from the east
a distant roll of thunder.

*Beloved son

Beloved Sons ~ World War I War Memorial
Little Crosby Church, Merseyside, England

Rocky Road

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS


To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
to conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
to look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you,
however long but it stretches and waits for you.
by
~ Walt Whitman ~
from
"Song of the Open Road"
When my friend Catherine flew out to visit me a few years ago, she spent her time on the plane reading Anne Lamott's Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith. She loved the passage about the Virgin Mary's frustration with her teen-age son: "What on earth did Mary do when Jesus was thirteen? Here's what I think: She occasionally started gathering rocks." Lamott imagines Jesus driving his parents crazy and sassing back: "'You're not the boss of me. I don't even have to listen to you.' And what is Mary doing this whole time? Mary's got a rock in her hand" (98 - 99). And so does Lamott, though of course she never throws it. The tactile sensation of its polished solidity calms her heart, absorbs all the anger. She and her son resolve their conflict. Rock gathering as natural therapy.

When I picked Catherine up, she insisted that before going home we stop by my favorite bookstore, VON'S, where you can get, in addition to books, every kind of way cool bauble, bangle, bead, magnet, or lucky rock imaginable. She bought not only a brand new copy of Plan B for me to keep, but also a handful of the most beautiful rocks ever! I love them all, but my favorite has to be the rose quartz, a soothing stone believed by some to convey unconditional love and tolerance. I keep it along with my rose quartz necklace and earrings (gifts from another friend) in a pink seashell dish, right beside my bed, along with my Little Book of Peace of Mind, which may sound trite but is not.

Quite the opposite, this little book by Susan Jeffers is full of accessible mantras that help me think better: "When entering a room . . . focus on what you are going to give rather [than] what you are going to get in the way of approval"; "Visualize those who [are] nourished by your gift"; "In everything we do, we have been handed the Kingdom. May we always remember this"; "By definition, if we say THANK YOU often enough, any trace of poverty consciousness disappears; we begin feeling incredibly abundant!" That sort of thing.

In the introduction Jeffers writes, "I'm amazed at how obvious are the causes of our upsets in life, big or small." She recounts an ancient saying: "'The road is smooth. Why do you throw rocks before you?' We all throw rocks before us, sometimes making our Journey very difficult. So let's begin clearing the debris to make way for a more joyful, abundant . . . and peaceful . . . life! (ellipses, Jeffers). Later, she says, "Feel the relief this freedom brings. Feel yourself lighten as you let go of all the unnecessary burdens you have created for yourself" (Jeffers, xii, 30; see also 67 - 77). When I read these words about throwing rocks and letting go, the strains of an old favorite song -- "By My Side," from the Godspell soundtrack --echoed through my head, a song whose verses have intrigued me for years with their concept of making a CHOICE on a DARE, to put a pebble in your shoe; then to take it out again and give it back to the Universe -- "Meet your new road!"


Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Will you take me with you? . . .

Oh please, take me with you
Let me skip the road with you

I can dare myself
I can dare myself
I'll put a pebble in my shoe
And watch me walk, watch me walk

I can walk and walk

I can walk!

I shall call the pebble Dare
I shall call the pebble Dare
We will walk, we will talk together
We will talk
About walking
Dare shall be carried

And when we both have had enough
I will take him from my shoe, singing:

"Meet your new road!"

~ lyrics by Jay Hamburger


Ah ha! Now, I think I know what the Wise Fool answers when the Wise Old Sage asks, "Why do you throw rocks before you?"

I do it to dare myself!














seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

~ E. E. Cummings

And in closing:

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. . . . Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

Carlos Castaneda
from The Teachings of Don Juan
("Chapter 5": Monday, January 28, 1963)