Category: grief

We Briefly Interrupt This National Poetry Month…

On By angeliquejamailIn cancer, cancer research, childhood, children's books, family, fundraising, grief, Jayne Pillemer, leukemia, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society2 Comments

…to bring you a quick update on my family’s Leukemia and Lymphoma Society campaign and to tell you about an amazing new children’s book you just might love. (Keep reading.)

First things first: if you don’t know what campaign I’m referring to, you can click here for the full story. But briefly, my cousin Meredith has been nominated for LLS’ Woman of the Year, and I’m on her team to help her raise half a million dollars to help fund innovative new treatments and the hopeful eradication of a bunch of different types of cancers. We’re doing it this year because it’s the 35th anniversary of her brother Chuck’s death at age 12 from Acute Monocytic Leukemia. Chuck lived for only 48 hours after his diagnosis, and this tragedy has left a profound impact on our family. My hope is that by raising money to help prevent other families from experiencing this horror, I can finally lay my own grief to rest.

My personal goal is to raise $5,000 before the start of June. Dear reader, I am almost halfway there!!! Thank you so much to everyone who has already contributed! It means the world to me and to my family.

And now, to make things even more fun and interesting, I’m holding a raffle! For everyone who contributes at least $25 to my fundraising efforts before the end of the day on May 4th, I’ll be adding your name to a raffle to win a personalized and signed copy of the gorgeous new children’s book Still Mine by Jayne Pillemer.

You’ll get one chance to win for every $25 you donate! (I’ve included in the raffle previous donors at the $25 level and above to show my gratitude for their jumping into our campaign right away.)

Jayne Pillemer’s new book, Still Mine, is an absolute treasure. I wish I’d had a copy of it when I was young. Here’s a sample of the extraordinary artwork on the inside by illustrator Sheryl Murray.

And here’s the blurb from publisher HarperCollins:

Our hands around a cup of hot chocolate, sweet and warm. Our boots splashing in puddles. The song you sing to me when the sun comes up. This is how we say “I love you” every day.

But what happens when the person you love is gone? Your heart hurts and you miss them, but even though your eyes can’t see them anymore and your arms can’t hug them, they are still there, still yours to love . . . just in a different way. 

Jayne Pillemer’s lyrical story and Sheryl Murray’s sweet illustrations offer gentle comfort and reassurance to anyone who has experienced loss that you still carry those you love with you in the smallest things—and in your heart—forever. 

STILL MINE is a timely and evocative picture book that provides comfort for anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one. Targeted for ages 4 -8, STILL MINE is a gentle way to approach the difficult topics of illness and death with children and offer them a sense of hope and peace. 

Here’s a review from Kirkus, which calls the book “tender and touching.”

Believe me when I tell you Jayne’s book healed my inner child, just a little bit. Her book gives us a perfect way to approach the subjects of loss and grief with young people in a way that is both clear and uplifting, which allows for sadness as a natural human emotion but helps us to understand that the sadness, and even the loss, aren’t the end of the story.

So join our fight to eradicate cancer and be entered to win a personalized and signed copy of Jayne’s book! You can donate at this link. And thank you, thank you, so very much.

 

Because of My Cousin

On By angeliquejamailIn charity, children, cousins, family, fundraising, grief, leukemia, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, parenting3 Comments

Many of you who know me well are aware that I always have a bunch of projects going on. One of the things I’ve been working on lately — one quite near and dear to my heart — is a very special undertaking my cousin Meredith asked me to do with her. She’s calling it Charlie’s Angels.

Not the kind with Bosley. I’ll explain.
(TW: death)

As a writer, I find myself revisiting certain events in my life through my creative work. These include growing up in my family’s legendary grocery store, laboring with my classmates in tenth grade to free a trapped deer from a barbed wire fence on the side of a highway, the unexpected death of my cousin Chuck when we were in middle school.

This was Chuck’s last school picture, taken in 6th grade, less than two months before he died.

These events that had such a profound effect on me during my formative years keep coming back, in various ways, in my writing, as I continually try to parse out their meaning and effect on my life.

You’ll see from the following post by Meredith, Chuck’s younger sister, that his death was quick and shocking. Meredith was nine, I was thirteen, and Chuck was twelve when he suddenly passed away from what my mother had called “acute adult leukemia.” Meredith and Chuck were my primary social circle at that time in my life, and my ensuing grief was transformative: I retreated; I quit playing the piano; I cried myself to sleep every night for six weeks. The adults around me, also spiraling in their shock and sorrow, had no way to help me, and so I kept my sadness as far inside me as I could. But later, when I had children of my own, I found that the normal fears involved in parenting had become compounded with my buried grief, so that every unusual headache and every unexplained bump or bruise had me calling our pediatrician for reassurance.

My cousin’s faith sustains her. I admire this kind of strength, but I have found in my own life that action is the surest way to dispel my own anxiety. Meredith has brought our shared trauma back to me in a way that allows me to act, and so I have joined her campaign to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this spring. (There are more details in her post; I hope you will give it a quick read.)

This October it will have been thirty-five years since Chuck died. This spring’s campaign feels like a powerful way to acknowledge the raw sadness we’ve all carried around with us for so long.

My own personal goal is to raise $5,000 over ten weeks (starting today), so that other families will avoid the loss and pain that ours has known, so that other critically ill children will benefit from the newest, life-saving treatments being developed even now to fight these horrible cancers. No donation is too small or too large, so if you are able to contribute and feel motivated to do so, please follow that impulse, because action dispels anxiety.

If you feel encouraged to contribute to our campaign, you can do so by clicking here to visit my personal fundraising page. On that page you can also see an absosmurfly ADORABLE picture of us when we were little kids. 

The campaign launches today, and any team (such as Charlie’s Angels) that raises the most money by 5:00 p.m. today gets an additional $2,500.00 to add to their total from a dedicated fund meant to bolster our efforts.

Without further ado, here’s Meredith’s post, which also contains exciting information about advances being made even now in the field of cancer eradication. Thank you for reading it, and thank you for reading about my own part in this story.

***

from Meredith:

My family and our entire community were changed forever on Saturday, October 31, 1987. That was the day my 12-year-old brother, Charles Joseph Jamail (better known to friends and family as Chuck), was called home by our Lord.

It all started just a few days earlier. Chuck was complaining of headaches after having played soccer. They continued with no relief, so Mom took him to the doctor. They ran some bloodwork, and after getting the results, my mom was told he needed to go to the hospital immediately. He was admitted to Texas Children’s Hospital on Thursday, diagnosed with Acute Monocytic Leukemia, coma-induced on Friday, and brain dead on Saturday.

I was just nine years old when Dad delivered the news. I had just arrived home from being at the museum’s Halloween carnival with a friend. There was an overwhelming number of people scurrying around my house, inside and out. Having been at the hospital just the day before and seeing Chuck in the ICU, my heart leapt for joy at the thought of him already being home! When my dad knelt down to greet me in the front yard and told me that Chuck had passed away, I only felt one thing…absolute disbelief. I can’t recall how long it took for me to realize this was our reality.

Since then, I periodically ask my parents to share with me their recollection of the details of that week, although, my questions for them have changed over the years. Recently, I asked my mom how in the world she was able to turn off the life support. Her response? The Holy Spirit. Wow! My mother, an absolute pillar of strength. As a mother, I have tried to imagine myself in the same situation. I can’t.

My own memories are spotty, the details fuzzy – after all, 35 years is a long time passed. The loss of my perfect brother, the one frequently mistaken for my twin, has shaped me maybe more than anything else in my life. My prayer, my hope has always been that no other mother, father, sibling, son, daughter, cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or friend will have to experience what our community experienced. But what could I do to make an impact?

Chuck and Meredith together, probably in the late 1970s.

A wonderful opportunity finally presented itself: I have been nominated by a childhood friend to be a candidate for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Man & Woman of the Year “MWOY” campaign. Seems to me like the perfect way to make an impact!! When asked to do this, I felt excited, but also overwhelmed and nervous. This is a huge task, and an even bigger honor! 

Since 2000, 40% of all new cancer therapies approved by the U.S. FDA are blood cancer therapies. Breakthrough advances in blood cancer research are now helping patients with other diseases, including diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis, as well as non-blood cancers, including breast, pancreatic, brain, bone, liver, lung, kidney, ovarian, prostate, skin, stomach, melanoma, and lupus nephritis. You don’t have to look far to find someone you know who has been impacted.

With the mission and work of LLS, prayers are being answered. From the efforts of MWOY candidates who have come before me, LLS has been able to provide financial assistance for travel and medical costs for local patients, fund research, and provide general information, education, and support for patients and family members (including identifying clinical trials, support groups, etc.).

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is also reimagining pediatric blood cancer care with the LLS Children’s Initiative. LLS is striving to make children’s treatments safer, less toxic, and more effective—and ultimately, they will find better treatments and cures. While many children survive acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common type of pediatric blood cancer, the treatments are harsh and outdated. The long-term effects of current therapies can create severe life-threatening complications. And survival rates for children with other high-risk types of leukemia, such as acute myeloid leukemia, are very poor.

LLS Children’s Initiative is investing over $100 million over the next five years toward global, groundbreaking children’s blood cancer research and patient support. They are tackling pediatric blood cancers from every angle as they are the leader in a global pediatric master clinical trial and they continue to offer a wide range of free education, 1:1 support services, financial assistance, and advocacy on behalf of all young patients and their families.

LLS Children’s Initiative is investing over $100 million over the next five years toward global, groundbreaking children’s blood cancer research and patient support. They are tackling pediatric blood cancers from every angle as they are the leader in a global pediatric master clinical trial and they continue to offer a wide range of free education, 1:1 support services, financial assistance, and advocacy on behalf of all young patients and their families.

I am so excited about this opportunity to make, what I intend to be, a significant impact in the cancer community! I would love your partnership in doing so. My personal goal for our team, Charlie’s Angels, is to raise $500,000. Please know any amount you give could mean the gift of life, to a stranger or a friend.

***

Once again, if you feel encouraged to contribute to our campaign, you can do so by clicking here to visit my personal fundraising page. Thank you for reading!

 

 

Poem-A-Day: Sally Ridgway

On By angeliquejamailIn C.S. Lewis, grief, National Poetry Month, poetry, Sally RIdgway3 Comments

I really like this poem by Sally Ridgway because it reminds me of the comfort of quirky routines, even if that reminder also highlights the bereftness of their absence. The melancholy in this poem is what makes the satisfaction of the routine valuable. As C.S. Lewis wrote about grief, “The pain now is part of the happiness then. That is the deal.”

When I saw U2 in concert last May, Bono said something that resonated with me enough for me to remember it: “There is no end to grief. That’s how we know there is no end to love.” Scoff all you like about Bono and rock concerts and the idea that there might be anything profound coming out of them, but that quote is worth hanging onto.

So there are two iterations of an important idea. Here’s the third:

***

Hardly Worth Mentioning
                            for Laura Guidry

that squirrel dead in our street
the one that sharpened its teeth on the white antlers on the balcony

the resonance of its gnawing
bone on bone on the balcony floor
friends cocked their heads
at the sound in our still house

I’d tell them it was our squirrel brushing her teeth
Do you want to see?
No, they’d say, but I did—
antlers I’d placed there, the squirrel leaping rooftops to find them
me, watching from my morning window

then the squirrel headed for the neighbor’s maple
and a car in a hurry, oblivious . . .

*

the sky is bone white behind the maple
my silent morning ritual, the white structure of antlers

I need something the same each morning
unconscious, unimportant—trivial sound, insignificant
time, while big things drop off that were unnatural anyway

I’d lifted the antlers from a forest floor, admiring lines,
hauled them home, a thousand miles
art for three balconies, two marriages’ worth, a quarter century
before that daily sound of determined life

my part—provision, witness
now the sunrise behind the maple is pink as if suffused
with the tiniest drop of blood

***

Sally Ridgway is a longtime Houstonian whose poetry has been published in anthologies including Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair and Untameable City and in literary journals including Gulf Coast and The Texas Review and the newspaper The Texas Observer. She has taught Creative Writing through Writers in the Schools and The C.G. Jung Center and English at high schools in Galveston and Houston and at Houston Community College. She has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.

Poem-A-Day: Outspoken Bean

On By angeliquejamailIn celebration, grief, mourning, National Poetry Month, Outspoken Bean, performance poetry, Poem-A-Day, poetry, slam poetry, spoken-wordLeave a comment

Last month I had the genuine pleasure of reading my work as a feature in the Poetry FIX reading series here in Houston. The basic set-up is that the night has two features and also open mic opportunities. It was one of the best venues I’ve ever read in: large enough for a good crowd but intimate enough for them to fill the place, and a gorgeous coffee bar environment. I don’t read my work in public often, and it was a real treat for me to do so as part of this series.

I’m what I suppose many people would call a “page poet,” in that my work translates well on the page. Much of my work can read well at a microphone, too, but I’ve never been able to create the kind of energy and presence that performance poets do. This is a mild regret of mine. I think I might have somehow enjoyed being a poetry rock star in my twenties. (Slam poetry is still quite popular in Houston, by the way, along with two or three other established poetry scenes, because our fair city is big enough for all of us.)

The other feature that night was a local slam poet who’s very much admired and respected here and elsewhere. He goes by Outspoken Bean, and you can find several videos of his performances online, but I want to share this one in particular. This video is not of the night we shared a stage, but it is of a poem he performed the night we did. I admire his perspective.

If you ever get a chance to see him perform, take it.

***

Emanuelee “Outspoken Bean” is a performance poet, writer, compassionate mentor, electric entertainer, and an educator. Bean travels the country performing his original works and inspiring creative minds. Bean is a military brat, but calls San Antonio, Texas, home, and since high school Bean has been producing shows and performing continuously. That work ethic has taken him to Trinidad to Miami to South Dakota to Off-Broadway New York City and across the vast Houston Metropolitan where he inspires people from all walks of life to find and claim their voice. He is a 2011 Texas Poet Laureate nominee, ranked 9th in the Individual World Poetry Slam 2013, ranked 2nd in collaborative poetry at Group Piece Finals 2013, and ranked 11th at National Poetry Slam 2014 (both with Houston VIP). He started performing spoken-word in 2005. In his senior year at Prairie View A&M, Bean founded and coached the University’s first poetry slam team. In their first year, they won the title in their region and grabbed the 8th place ranking in the country at College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI ’08). Bean has also worked with the Harris County Department of Education, Houston’s Young Audiences: Arts for Learning and Texas Commission for the Arts, Houston Grand Opera, and coached Miami’s youth poetry slam team, Tiger-tail WordSpeak in the summer 2016.  He serves as the Project Coordinator, Lead Coach, and mentor for Meta-Four Houston, a project under Writers in the Schools’ WITS Performance program, where professional performance/slam poets encourage self-expression and literacy among Houston’s youth through creative writing and performance. Fins him online at http://outspokenbeanpoetry.com.

National Poetry Month — Day 26

On By angeliquejamailIn grief, Melanie Rosin, National Poetry Month, origami, paper cranes, poetry1 Comment

And here is another by Melanie Rosin, a poem which has to do with the magical thinking of paper cranes.

 

***

 

Paper Cranes

 

I grew up hearing the legend
of the power of paper cranes,
that if you make a thousand for another,
a wish will be granted.

We set to work
the day after your diagnosis,
spending our breaks between classes
and nights in our room
after we finished our homework
making art out of origami.
We brought them in bags to your hospital room,
and instantly knew what our friend wanted—
to never admit defeat.

In your old room, the paper cranes
make a chandelier, strung together
and hanging from the ceiling.
When your father cracks the window
and the wind blows,
the cranes come to life
and dance about your bed,
and we can see the magic to the legend
that somehow lives on even when people cannot.

Now allow the cranes to grant another wish,
that of your family, which is to heal.
Mend their aching hearts.
Give them the peace they need to live on
even though you cannot.
It takes time to heal, can’t be achieved
in a matter of days,
but it gets slightly easier with the help of a chandelier
made out of a thousand paper cranes.

 

***

Melanie Rosin, a Houston native, is currently a J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. Her collection of poems, Four Feet from the Surface (Neo Literati Press), was published in 2011 and can be found on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble. She plans on returning to Houston upon graduating law school this upcoming December.

 

Women Writers Wednesday 9/9/15

On By angeliquejamailIn book reviews, Elizabeth Alexander, grief, Jackie Parker, literature, loss, memoir, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, tragedy, Women Writers WednesdayLeave a comment

First, I must apologize for the hiatus. School started, I got a novel out the door, we’re still settling into the new house, and there’s been some travel. The hiatus ended up being rather longer than I anticipated. Hopefully we’re back on track now, and even more hopefully I’ll be producing more original content on the blog again this fall.

This week’s installment of Women Writers Wednesday comes to us from Jackie Parker, who has written a response to Elizabeth Alexander’s memoir The Light of the World.

***

How does a woman survive when the light of her world suddenly is blotted out? Her husband, soul-mate, beloved father of her two boys, painter, chef extraordinare, her best friend, lover, and the carrier of her African DNA, dead, right before dinner, having bought the salmon, opened the frosty white wine.

Even though this is a memoir of loss and survival, it is a celebration of life. It tells the story of a marriage of depth and passion, friendship, and joy, a marriage of art, one that lasted fifteen years but felt to them like twenty-five. “So much struggle and joy.”

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD cover

The author is the celebrated poet, one of our finest, Elizabeth Alexander, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the author of the beautiful “Praise Song for the Day,” delivered at the 2009 inauguration of President Barak Obama.

How can she bear to write this, I kept wondering, as I read, breathless, the beauty and loss unfolding on the very first pages. What gave her the courage to begin? It is so intimate. So present.

The answer is buried in the acknowledgement section at the end of the book, where the author thanks her publishers and editor at Grand Central: Gretchen Young, Jamie Raab, and Deb Futter, who “envisioned this book before I did, dared to ask for it…”

Ah, so it was their idea, I thought. That’s why she wrote it. And what a good thing for us to know, as women, as writers. We hear so much about the terrible aspects of the publishing business, but there are wonderful aspects as well, the women who encouraged Elizabeth Alexander to do this, write this, the support she was given in order to bring forth this brave book.

And, such a beautiful book. Written in sections, it has amazing recipes — for Ficre’s food was legendary — it describes meals, gives us the names of their many friends, as well as imaginary conversations, dreams, takes us to farflung parts of the world Eritrea where Ficre was born and his family still live, to France, Italy. Teaches us history, for the author is also a professor of African American Studies at Yale.

There are titles of loved books, artists. Favorite music. The description of the paintings Ficre did, the one he made to commemorate their first meeting containing an eye on a plate! And images of their children to be, spirits.

And there is the story of their meeting, their powerful love. Their family story, all of it an extended love story. Friends and family always present, gatherings around their large tables. The garden that Ficre loved. And flowers, always flowers. Wait till you read about The Plum Blossom!

The lines bite like poetry. No ideas but in things. To tell you the way the book begins is to spoil its impact. But we must know the end first, I think, because everything that comes after it is even richer. No matter how much beauty a life holds, it will end. If there is love, the end is tragic, Elizabeth Alexander teaches us, right from the start. Only beauty can redeem loss.

At the center of the book is Ficre, from Eritrea. Have you ever heard such words? Eritrea the tiny country in Africa. Ficre walked through its killing fields at sixteen, to escape, to live. How he made his way to the United States is a book in itself.

Ficre is a man who lights every corner of the world he inhabits with his beautiful being. The phrases he speaks, the food he makes, his gentleness and patience. His fathering. His husbanding! His clothing — the bright pink shirt. His painting studio.

The language of Elizabeth Alexander is precise and gorgeous. The meticulous attention to things, the things of this world, that is at the heart of poem-making animates every sentence.

To read The Light of the World is to be invited into lives that make you want to stand up and dance for joy, and weep for the journey that we humans must take.

One week after her husband’s death Elizabeth Alexander returned to teach her final class of the semester. She gives us the words with which she ended her lecture. They include this: “Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives…”

By the end of this book we know what is left. The sons, taller than their father had been. The wife, alive and able to feel, once again, the beauty of the world. The move to a new city.

And yet, days, weeks, months after finishing The Light of the World I felt Ficre, his living essence, as if I had known him in life. I mourned that he was no longer on the earth. What a gift Elizabeth Alexander has made for us. What a book!

***

Jackie Parker
Jackie Parker

Jackie Parker is the author of the recently published Our Lady of Infidelity: A Novel of Miracles (Arcade Publishing), available on Amazon, OUR LADY OF INFIDELITY coverthrough Booksamillion, and in bookstores throughout the US. She is an award-winning poet who leads workshops for writers and for people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities in community and health care settings in Los Angeles and throughout the country. She is also a teacher of meditation and occasional blogger for the Huff Post. Connect with her on Jackieparker.co.

***

To see more kinds of reviews like the ones in this series, check out these blogs by Melanie Page and Lynn Kanter. And of course go to the Sappho’s Torque Books page here to see other reviews by me and by other contributors to the Women Writers Wednesday series.

The Women Writers Wednesday series seeks to highlight the contributions of women in literature by featuring excellent literature written by women authors via reviews/responses written by other women authors. If you’d like to be a contributor, wonderful! Leave a comment below or send me an email, tweet, or Facebook message with your idea.

Ekphrasis #1

On By angeliquejamailIn cousins, ekphrastic poetry, family, grief, photography, poetry, sonnets10 Comments

kids, ca. 1981
photo taken by MaryBeth Jamail, probably in 1981

I originally wrote this poem as a sonnet when I was in college, meditating on the theme of love presumed to be inherent in the sonnet form. I thought, love takes many forms, and so. This updated version of the poem appears in my book The Sharp Edges of Water, published by Odeon Press in 2018.

***

Lullaby for a Crying Child

When my cousin died, olive skin and thick
.     black hair and twelve years old laid under
.          dirt and roses, I found out death’s simple

trick: it’s no one-way gate, but a long silk
.     skirt in the rain. I peel the silk from my
.          skin, hang it dripping in the bathroom.

My cousin defies death’s veil, ages beyond his
.     allotted years, finds me in a dream, touches
.          my hands. I look at him, through him, and

wake to rain. Left but not alone. My skirt
.     dripping on the tile.

You can order a copy of The Sharp Edges of Water here or at just about any bookstore or online bookseller.

Embracing my Inner Goth (part 5)

On By angeliquejamailIn Anne Rice, anxiety, creepy, fangs, goth, Goth culture, grief, humanity, Interview with the Vampire, Ken Dracula, New Orleans, summer travel, teeth, vampires10 Comments

Look!  It’s another installment of my six-part gothiness series.  You can read the previous four parts by clicking on these links:

Embracing My Inner Goth (part 1)

Embracing My Inner Goth (part 2)

Embracing My Inner Goth (part 3)

Embracing My Inner Goth (part 4)

***

Part V:  More Fangs!

A few months after Tiny Beowulf, our second child, was born, my husband and I went away for the weekend.  Not far, just a few hours’ drive, but this getaway vacation was a big deal.  We headed to San Antonio, where I have family and friends, and which is also a great city to get away to when you don’t want to be gone for long or be too distant.  We saw a friend’s acting re-debut that Friday night and gallivanted around downtown and the Riverwalk that Saturday night with my cousin Andy.  It was a fantastic time that also taught us the valuable lesson that it was, in fact, perfectly okay to be away from our toddler and infant for a couple of days while they hung out with their doting grandparents.

But I also had a mission on this trip.  Ken Dracula (remember him from Part 2?) had moved away from Houston some years before, and my brother had told me he’d resurfaced in San Antonio — and Robert had his number.  Of course he did.  It had been over a decade since my last fangs.  Their color no longer matched my pearly whites so well, and as I’d grown into an adult, my jaw had grown too, so the bridge didn’t even fit well anymore.  I’d decided it was time for a new set.  I rationalized that I could be a vampire at school for Hallowe’en instead of the same predictable witch like so many of the other teachers.

I made an appointment with Ken to get some new fangs made.

I could not, however, entice my husband to come on this appointment with me.  “I want to take a nap,” he said that Saturday afternoon.

I certainly didn’t want to go alone.  But Andy was coming to meet us; maybe he could show up a little early?

“I like that idea,” my husband said through his yawn.  “Go spend time with your cousin.”

Andy was happy to go with me.  He seemed to look on this errand as a weirdly grand adventure; I looked on it with excitement, an exuberant throwback to my younger days to prove I hadn’t lost my sense of self in becoming a mom, as so often I’d seen happen to women at my stage of life.

We got to Ken’s apartment, and immediately I felt something was off.  For one thing, it was hard to find him.  Not the building itself, which was actually rather easy; it was difficult to figure out where the entrance to his apartment was.  The building was a retail storefront of indeterminate identity, closed on the weekends.  Ken’s apartment ended up being in the back of the building.  A few phone calls and some wandering in the driveway later, Ken came out of a screen door onto his porch to meet us, all flip-flops and bermuda shorts and faded t-shirt, all tousled hair and bags under his eyes and anemic, gaunt frame.  It had been a very long time since I’d seen Ken Dracula, but in his younger days, he’d been reasonably good-looking and spunky and generally entertained by every aspect of his life.  This Ken was a changed man; he did not appear to have weathered the intervening decade well.  He’d gone all nosferatu; instinctively I worried about him, but then I brushed the feeling away.  I barely knew the man.  He was my brother’s contact, and even Robert barely knew the man anymore.

Suddenly I thought, What the hell am I doing here?  I’m a mother, for pete’s sake.  I’m a grown woman.  The image of myself as a twenty-year-old traipsing up the stairs in my parents’ house as quickly as I could to hide my fangs from my own mother — that woman who is a grandmother now — shimmered briefly and then faded like a ghost in the clear reason of self-awareness.

I was on a fool’s errand.

But Ken had seen us; we couldn’t leave now without being jerks, and jerks we were not.  Clumsy, manic, he bounded down the few porch steps and held out his hand to me to shake it.  I had the impression of someone who never got many visitors anymore.

Andy gave me a sideways glance as if to say, Is this the guy who’s going to make you fangs?  Honey, I love you, but you’re kind of a freak.  What he muttered quietly was, “You ready?  Because it looks like Ken Dracula is.”

We were ushered up onto the porch and then through the screen door into a cramped kitchen that was more clutter than function.  Pots and pans and tupperware pieces piled onto tiny squares of countertop.  A few half-empty supermarket-brand spice bottles littering the top of the ancient stove unit.  A sink whose white enamel was chipped, rust stains dripping from the drain vents.  On a fridge too new to be vintage and too old to be trustworthy, crumbling newspaper clippings and fliers from the San Antonio club scene.  The walls were covered in empty cardboard daiquiri carriers with here and there an early 90s-era CD box.

This place was such a far cry from Ken’s former, tastefully decorated apartment in Houston I was actually afraid, for a moment, of what I had gotten myself into.

He gestured for me to sit upon the red chair in the middle of the kitchen.  It was one of those dinette models that in another setting would have been cutesy-kitsch sitting next to a sparkling formica table against a turquoise wall.  But here, resting with its back up against a cluttered one-foot-by-one-foot butcher block island — because that’s all that this kitchen could fit — it took on the aspect of a dentist’s chair.  Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. came to mind.  And then so did Sweeney Todd.

Andy had been discreetly peeking through the doorways — there were two.  When Ken stepped out to retrieve his tools, my cousin hissed me over to take a look.  One opened into a hallway, which Ken had disappeared down into, that led to other rooms in various states of disarray.  A pile of laundry in a corner, a short stack of yellowing Anne Rice paperbacks next to an end table.  The other doorway revealed a large room that might have been great for entertaining with its hardwood floor and lack of furniture.  And maybe it was used for parties: we saw festive crepe-paper decorations and man-sized cardboard character cutouts of Frankenstein and Darth Vader.  A frayed straw sombrero topped an ancient stereo cabinet, and large speakers stood a sad sentry in the corners.

Andy said, “Where did you find this guy?”  I couldn’t tell if he was terrified, bemused, or in awe.

“Um…” I began, but then Ken came back.  He glanced at us as if to wonder why I wasn’t sitting in the chair but said nothing, and I quickly sat down on the puffy red vinyl seat.

Ken had brought his denture acrylic and latex gloves.  Instead of using metal tools, he used a bamboo skewer and some Q-tips.  In spite of his apartment and his general appearance, it was clear to me that he was operating safely.  His materials were reliable.  I felt ashamed of my inner voice for questioning the situation.

It was just fangs, that’s all.  Easy-peasy.  Just like he’d done hundreds of times before.

While Ken worked — and, I had to admit, with competence — he chatted easily with Andy about the night life in San Antonio and about Anne Rice.  The club scene was all right, Ken guessed, but then he took on a slightly sad tone when he began talking about the woman who had been his idol.  While my bridge was curing, the acrylic heating up in my awkwardly open mouth as I tried not to compulsively touch my tongue to the bar behind my teeth, Ken patiently answered Andy’s questions about the author, who had in recent years (a.k.a. Andy’s adolescent and early adult life) fallen out of the mainstream.

“She sort of stopped writing her vampire and witch books a while back,” Ken said with…was that a hint of wistfulness?  “After her husband died a few years ago, she just sort of…stopped.”  Ken was quiet a moment, checking on my fangs, putting the final shaping touches to them.  I looked up into his eyes, which focused intently on his handiwork and not at all on me, though my face lay in his gaze.  I wondered if Ken still worked in a dental office.  Then he said, “Of course, losing your partner…well, no one ever really recovers from that, do they.”  It wasn’t a question.  And no, it wasn’t wistfulness, either, but commiseration.

Ken himself had lost his partner a few years before, he informed Andy, as if I were supposed to have known about it already and just hadn’t brought my cousin up to speed because I couldn’t speak while in the dentist’s chair.  And then suddenly Ken’s appearance, his apartment, his bizarre decor came into clear, puncturing focus.

“But Annie used to throw these amazing Hallowe’en parties every year in New Orleans,” he continued.  “I used to go out there and make fangs for people.”  He began shuffling around in a clutter of papers and photographs from one of the nearby stacks.  “I’d set up in the corner and just crank them out for the guests, fifteen dollars a pop.”  He half-smiled.  “That was back in the day.  Fangs were cheap then.”

I’ll say, I thought.  These are setting me back fifty.  I mentally shrugged it off.

He dug out an ancient photo of himself in full Dracula regalia and make-up, fangs prominently protruding from his grin, the affectionate arm of Anne Rice herself, cloaked in black panné velvet, slung around his shoulders.  As he showed off his photo to us, a little of the spark of exuberance the old Ken Dracula had radiated back in the day tried to shine.  I would have smiled politely had the bridge finished curing.  Andy did so for both of us.

“That’s really cool,” he said.  He sounded sincere.

I sort of waved my hand a little in the direction of my mouth.

“Oh, of course,” Ken said and removed my new bridge.  I relaxed my jaw and took a deep breath.  He inspected my new set and then smiled.  “All done,” he assured me and handed them over.  As he explained the rules for caring for my new fangs — rules I’d heard before and remembered well — I noticed that the color was slightly too dark, that the bridge itself was a little jagged in places.  I put them back in and tested the fit.

Just a bit too snug to be comfortable, like wearing retainers I had grown out of long ago.  I knew I wouldn’t be wearing these again.  But I didn’t say a word other than a very sweet “thank you.”  Ken smiled.

“So does Anne Rice still have that big Hallowe’en party every year?” Andy asked.

Ken blinked his eyes thoughtfully a couple of times before answering.  “Well, I haven’t been back for some time,” he said.  “But last I heard, the party was still going strong.  Annie, though, she hasn’t been seen there in years.”

***

Click on this link to be taken to the final installment in this series.  Thanks for reading!

Embracing My Inner Goth (part 6)

 

A Poem, A Lament

On By angeliquejamailIn grief, Matthew Olzmann, mourning, poetry, Sandy Hook tragedy, school2 Comments

In the months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, I remember people making the comment that in times of national tragedy it was natural to turn to the arts.  That in moments of unspeakable sadness and incomprehensible horror, sometimes rhetoric and punditry fall even shorter than usual in helping us to heal.

Yesterday morning, I cried after I dropped my son off at kindergarten, even though I teach at his school, even though our campus is far more secure than most.  I held it together until he kissed me goodbye and bounced, laughing, off with his friends.  And then I couldn’t hold it together any more.  My husband, who dropped our daughter off at the same school later in the morning, had the same experience.

Today was a little better.

I’ve been told that on The Voice, they made an incredible tribute to the Sandy Hook victims.  Everyone stood onstage together, each holding a sign bearing a single name, and sang Leonard Cohen’s heartbreakingly beautiful “Hallelujah.”  I love that song, and one day I might feel strong enough to look up the clip on YouTube, but today is not that day.

I’d like to offer you this little gift, reposted here with permission from the author.  This poem originally appeared in Cortland Review.

***

“The Man Who Looks Lost as He Stands in the Sympathy Card Section at Hallmark”

by Matthew Olzmann

 

The man who looks lost as he stands
in the sympathy card section at Hallmark
looks so sad with his bent umbrella
that you want to place a hand on his shoulder,
say, “It’ll be Okay.” But you don’t.
Because you also look like a crumbling statue
narrowed by rain, because you too have been abandoned
by language and what’s there to speak of or write
among so many words. There are not enough words
to say, Someone is gone and in their place
is a blue sound that only fits inside
an urn which you’ll drag to the mountains
or empty in an ocean with the hope
that the tide will deliver a message
that you never could. Because even those words
would end like a shipwreck at the bottom
of clear water. Someone would eventually look down,
notice the shattered hull, the mast
snapped in half, and believe those words
meant ruin, when they really meant,
starfish, iceberg, or scar tissue.
And even those words would fail. In this room
that smells like lemon candle wax and wild berry
potpourri, you pick up a card, set
it down again. Pick up a card, toss
it aside. In leaving, you take only an empty envelope.
Or you are an empty envelope. Or you’re the boat
searching for the glacier to gouge its side again.
You’re the door that opens to the sleet outside.
You’re the bell that bangs above the door as the door slams shut.

 

Three of the Best Books I’ve Ever Read Which Made Me Miserable While I Was Reading Them

On By angeliquejamailIn anxiety, books, Dalton Trumbo, death, grief, high school, Johnny Got His Gun, Lev Grossman, teaching, The Lovely Bones, The Magicians, war protest literature4 Comments

It seems like everyone comes out with a list of must-read books each summer.  And since I’m clearly too late to jump on that bandwagon, I thought I’d do it up a little differently and give you some suggestions of books which are very, very good but which made me rather unhappy while I was reading them.  These are books which were well written or technically astute enough to break through my misery, distaste, or other negative reaction to convince me they were still awfully good books.

And a warning: this post isn’t just a series of book reviews.  I’ve often said that one Continue reading “Three of the Best Books I’ve Ever Read Which Made Me Miserable While I Was Reading Them” →