Time to Write a Letter

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Little House on the Prairie Historic Site
Indpenedence, Kansas

Samuel Gordon Lindsey
My grandfather's brother, in 1913; age 20.
In 1887 my great-grandparents headed west from Ohio to settle a homestead in Nebraska. By 1893, they had erected not a one-room but, proudly, a two-room home on the prairie, where my great-grandmother Sally (Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey) sat one summer day writing a long letter to her niece, enchantingly named Eyrie Winegarden. What I especially like is that Sally explains how the babies are napping while she writes. So many times when my children were small, my own letters began: “The boys are now asleep, so I have a moment to answer your letter.”

Some things never change! Sally begins:

Dear Eyrie

I am (nearly) alone this afternoon, with my babies Beatrice and Gordon both asleep. Jimmie went 5 miles away to see a sick horse this morning, taking Wayne with him. Mabel and Jim are at Sunday School 3 ½ miles distant since dinner. And I have a quiet time in which to write. You know, Eyrie, few of the homesteaders have another room where they can go and read or write undisturbed.

Sally goes on to describe a summer of severe drought, punctuated by a few severe thunderstorms. During one of these storms, her husband Jimmie was struck by lightning. While he was recuperating, some old friends

who used to live in J’s native town in Ohio, came eight miles to see him. They are well-to-do people spending a few months here for their health. They brought him some oranges, a can of peaches, and Gordon a new dress. After Wayne had eaten of the peaches, his papa was telling him we would move east where fruit grows and then we could have some. I was out, and when I came in, Wayne said, “And Mama don't you think they grow on trees”! It has only been a year since he learned there was such a thing as a tree. He scarcely ever sees one, they usually die in the first year.

In fact, Wayne, who was four at the time, did grow up to see many trees; and indeed, the Lindseys did move east, eventually settling in Kansas in 1895—the year that my grandfather, Paul Jones Lindsey, was born in a covered wagon as the family was traveling in search of their permanent home. It is sad and strange for me to think that my great-grandmother long outlived the two babies who lay napping that day while she wrote to Eyrie. Samuel Gordon Lindsey (after whom my own little Sam is named) died in France, 31 July 1918, at the Battle of the Aisne-Marne. And Edna Beatrice Lindsey Smith died in 1922, aged 31; though so young, she was already the mother of six.

Thinking of them all -- Sally, Eyrie, Beatrice, her children -- brings to mind the following tender-hearted poem that I have loved since girlhood:

THOUGHTS OF A MODERN MAIDEN

Throb of my heart, throb of my heart,
How did you get here, where did you start?

Ages ago in some lowly thing,
Pulsating since with unceasing spring?

Through countless lifetimes, from mother to young,
Heart throb, heart throb, a rhythm has sung.

Once in a queen, twice in a slave,
Wife of prince, wife of a knave.

Mother to daughter, down through the years,
Some heirs to gladness, some heirs to tears.

Defended by vassal, seized by a lord,
Sentenced to death but saved by a word.

Women of virtue, women of shame,
Women of desert, women of slum,

Down to my grandmere, sweet and demure,
Down to my mother, patient and pure.

Why was I forged as a link in this chain?
What of the past shall I break or maintain?

Heart throb, heart throb, wonder past knowing,
Where did you come from, where are you going?

by Edith M. Roberts

Roberts's poem can be found in the well - loved
anthology from my formative years:
The American Album of Poetry
compiled by American radio personality
Ted Malone, 1908 - 1989

Child Beheads Mannequin

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Neighborhood Mural, West Philadelphia

************************

"Sometimes a mannequin's blue summer dress
can make the window like a dream . . . "
(iphoto created by Karen Shen)
Yearning for an off-beat summer movie? Watch Francis Ford's Coppola's dreamy, magical, musical One From The Heart. Teri Garr portrays a heroine who works after hours, wistfully dressing the storefront mannequins to the pensive strains of "Old Boyfriends" (below). What is it about those mannequins? So odd, so beckoning.

I was lured by the mannequins long ago, on a shopping trip to the town square in Neosho, Missouri (where our family lived from 1962 - 67). Many of the stores were quaint and old-fashioned, including clothing stores with wooden floors and display windows that were wide open into the store interior and could be reached from inside the store simply by walking up a few wooden steps, kind of like walking up on to a stage.

One Saturday morning, I had wandered away from my parents and siblings (not exactly sure who else was along that day, or even what we were shopping for), irresistibly intrigued by the sight of some child-sized mannequins up in that tempting front window. I had never before seen--or at least had never been so close to--a mannequin that was exactly my size! I glanced over my shoulder at my parents, and, on the hunch that they wouldn't miss me for a little while, gingerly mounted those few steps, and in an instant became part of the window display!

I was not what you would call an audacious child, but I just had to investigate those little creatures and could not keep my hands off of them. Destruction was the furthest thing from my mind when I reached out to touch the child mannequin's hair. Imagine my mortification (or the 7 - 8 yr old's equivalent of mortification) when my innocent pat resulted in the head rolling right off the mannequin's shoulders and landing on the floor with a plunk!

I stood there paralyzed, in shock over what I had just done, and pretty certain that my life must be near its end. Now I was REALLY glancing over my shoulder; but, even though luck was with me and my parents were not yet paying attention to what I was doing, I could not fathom how to get out of this fearful situation. My cheeks were burning (mostly in apprehension of what kind of trouble I was going to be in) and I was on the verge of crying--but not yet.

At precisely that miraculous moment, some shoppers happened to stroll past on the sidewalk right outside the window! Now children are notoriously bad at guessing the age of adults, but I remember this kindly elderly couple (a man and a woman) as seeming older than my parents yet younger than my grandparents. What they thought at the sight that met their eyes I can only guess, but they clearly read my distress and with great gentleness motioned to me to kneel down, pick up the head, and place it back atop the mannequin. I've often wondered how that head was fastened on, but I just can't remember. Somehow, though, I managed to balance it in place and high-tail it back down the steps as those sweet, patient strangers waved me off the stage and mutely promised that they would keep my secret.

As guilty as you please and flooded with relief that apparently no one had witnessed my mischief, I skedaddled across the store quick as a wink. I sidled right up to my unsuspecting parents and loitered there just as if I had never wandered off at all. I can't really guess how long my escapade had taken, but it's one of those occasions that seemed like an eternity to me, despite the fact the others apparently hadn't missed me at all. Could it really be true that I was going to get off this easy?

As for my omniscient parents, they had no idea, not until I broke the news to them many years later, sometime when I was in highschool or college and the whole family was sitting around recounting anecdotes from the good old days. I asked if they had been aware of my guest appearance in the window glass. Maybe those people on the sidewalk were friends of theirs who had later told them about the beheading? But no, it was all news to them! Luckily I had waited to make my confession until the statute of limitations for childhood misdemeanors was up!

Sadly, even now none of us have any idea who those Good Samaritans were; but what a lucky girl I was that they walked by when they did! How I'd love to go back in time and stand as an adult on the sidewalk, looking in on that astonished little child who had climbed right into the storefront window to see what life was like among the mannequins.

Here are the song lyrics:

Old Boyfriends
from the soundtrack, One From the Heart
written by Tom Waits, sung by Crystal Gale

Old boyfriends

Lost in the pocket
of your overcoat
Like burned out light bulbs
on a Ferris Wheel

Old boyfriends

You remember the kinds
of cars they drove
Parking in an orange grove
He fell in love, you see
With someone that I used to be

Though I very seldom think of him
Nevertheless
sometimes a mannequin's
Blue summer dress
can make the window like a dream

Ah, but now those dreams
belong to someone else
Now they talk in their sleep
In a drawer where I keep all my

Old boyfriends

Remember when you
were burning for them
Why do you keep turning them into

Old boyfriends

They look you up
when they're in town
To see if they can still
burn you down
He fell in love, you see
With someone that I used to be

Though I very seldom think of him
Nevertheless
sometimes a mannequin's
Blue summer dress
can make the window like a dream

Ah, but now those dreams
belong to someone else
Now they talk in their sleep
In a drawer where I keep all my

Old boyfriends

Turn up every time it rains
Fall out of the pages
in a magazine

Old boyfriends

Girls fill up the bars
every spring
Dark places
for remembering

Old boyfriends
All my old boyfriends*
Old boyfriends

*All my old boyfriends?
No not all, only some of them.
And my old boyfriends' old girlfriends?
No, none of them.
I have to draw the line.
I know, I know, you're probably wondering
just how shallow and juvenile can I be?
Well, I'm sorry to say that the answer is
pretty darn juvenile.
All that highschool crap --
does anyone every really get over it?

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