​The last installment of HeartWood—the story of a young writer’s devotion to his grandmother and her literary legacy—got me thinking about other stories of art and devotion, which took me back to a trip to Albuquerque three years ago.

​Albuquerque, nearby Santa Fe, and their surroundings are spilling over with creative people whose devotion to their art is evident. Painters, sculptors, mosaic artists, multi-media creators, jewelry designers—they're everywhere, and so are the fruits of their talents.

​​Evident, too, are signs of a different kind of devotion: works of art inspired by spirituality and religious faith. I learned about one type of this art from two women I chanced to meet on a Sunday morning in Albuquerque's Old Town. Felis Armijo and Ramona Garcia-Lovato were sitting at a table in front of San Felipe de Neri Church, signing up volunteers to help with the upcoming Santero Market. Santeros (and santeras) are artisans who craft religious icons called santos. Originally created for churches, these statuettes of saints, angels, Mary and Jesus, usually carved from wood and often decorated with home-made pigments, are now sold to tourists. 

​My conversation with Felis and Ramona rambled from topic to topic, touching not only on art, but also on writing, life stories, geography, and human nature. From their curiosity and warmth, it was clear these two women were dedicated not just to the event they were promoting and the parish to which they belonged, but also to connecting with other people—an art in itself.

​



​After our time in Old Town, Ray and I ventured out to Petroglyph National Monument, a short drive away. One of the largest petroglyph sites in North America, the monument features designs and symbols carved onto the surfaces of volcanic rocks by indigenous people and Spanish settlers 400 to 700 years ago. The site and its images still hold spiritual significance for the descendants of both groups of people.

​The meanings of some symbols have been lost over the centuries; others are known by a few indigenous groups, but it is considered culturally insensitive to reveal the meaning of an image to others. For me, it's enough to know that the symbols meant something to the people who created them and to ponder the combination of location and inspiration that gave rise to their work. 

​​Not all works of devotion have religious significance. They also can be inspired by a more secular kind of admiration. Case in point: my friend Larry Schulte, an artist who now lives in Albuquerque, created his own "Saints" series, featuring mortals who have made a difference in his life.

​“I was raised in a fairly strict Roman Catholic home, and I left that faith many years ago—mostly because of their stance on gay people, that we were sinful,” Larry reflects. “These saints in some way replace the saints I learned about in my childhood . . . They are all loving, sharing people who have made my world a better place. We all need something to believe in. For me it is love, art/creating, and people, rather than any organized religion.”

​​Some of the fifteen mixed media pieces, which Larry created at the Ragdale Foundation, an artist's colony north of Chicago, feature well-known figures—such as the innovative composer Lou Harrison and Harrison's life partner Bill Colvig, an instrument builder who collaborated with Harrison on gamelans and other percussion instruments. But they also include more personal choices: Larry’s undergraduate art instructors, St. Jack and St. Keith, for instance.

​​“Jack was particularly influential in my pursuing art,” Larry recalls.

​​St. Elvira’s son Peter was Larry’s roommate and best friend during their days at the University of Kansas in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Elvira lived in New Jersey but had visited Peter and Larry in Kansas. “After I moved to New York City, she included me in holiday family gatherings when I wasn't able to get back to my own family in Nebraska. She adopted me as another son.”

​


In 2016, Larry and his partner Alan Zimmerman, a percussionist, traveled to San Francisco for a concert of Harrison's music to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday. Two of Larry's art works (St. Lou and St. Bill) were exhibited at the concert, which was sponsored by the non-profit organization Other Minds. ​

With in-personal author events still on hold indefinitely, I've decided to devote one blog post each month to an author interview.

I'm kicking off this new feature today with a Q&A that tells the remarkable story of a young writer's devotion to his grandmother and her literary legacy. For reasons you'll understand as you read on, it wasn't possible to interview Barbara Mahase Rodman, author of the recently published novel Olas Grandes. Instead, this interview is with her grandson David Kuhnlein, who edited and published the book after the long lost manuscript was unearthed.

For the most part that’s true: the manuscript sat in her trunk since 1979, full of potential, charging up like a battery. Barbara Mahase Rodman (my grandmother, known by her grandsons as Babbie) got many rejection letters in the 70s and 80s, due to a couple factors, one of which was her animosity towards the editing process. Another was her interest in larger publishing companies.

I hadn’t heard of Olas Grandes, or at least I’d forgotten about it, until I read my great grandmother’s autobiography My Mother’s Daughter – a testament to growing up as a strong Indian woman in Trinidad. My mom told me that I was mentioned in the back of the book where Anna Mahase Snr. wrote about the family. So, of course, that’s the first place I looked! Sure enough I found mention of me, but more rewarding was a typo – it said that Babbie had published two books: Love Stories for All Centuries, which I had read, and Olas Grandes. My mom, uncle, and I quickly searched Bab’s house for the manuscript, and hidden in a massive wooden trunk, brimming with so much of her writing, we found it. 

Well, first I wanted to read it. There’s something incredible about reading a book written by an elder like Babbie who, at the time I found the book, suffered greatly from dementia. The manuscript's weight in my bag became a talisman, and as I walked around with it I felt like I was hanging out with her, aeons ago, in Trinidad.

After reading the first few chapters I took a train across the country. I didn’t want to take the only copy of the book on the trip, so I let those early chapters linger in me. I talked to my friends Adam and Katie a lot about the project. Even speaking of the project excited me, and it was in the tangle of conversations -- and questions I asked every reader and writer I encountered -- that I decided something had to be done with this book.

​At the time, I was writing a series of lyric essays on illness and a recent surgery I’d had. But while writing them felt important, it also made me physically sick. Focusing my energy on transcribing Olas Grandes was a way to keep writing, while also taking a needed break from my own project. Gail Kuhnlein, my mom and Barbara's daughter, is also a writer, and lucky for me she agreed to help edit the book. I couldn't have done it without her. 

Honestly, her reactions depended on the day. In the two years before Barbara passed away, my visits to her house increased, and I began to help informally caretake. Because of her memory, we had certain conversations regarding Olas Grandes over and over again, to the point where I observed patterns and ways to create shortcuts around them.




​


​For instance, sometimes she’d tell me that Olas Grandes was not a novel, but a story, and it was already published. So I’d have to preface a conversation about her book by showing her the physical manuscript and explaining that it’s different than her other book. But other times, like magic, she knew exactly what was happening and was thrilled.

​“Never could I have imagined,” she once told me, “that this darling, darling little boy would be helping me publish my book.” She was 90 when I re-discovered Olas Grandes, and the project took roughly two years to manifest. She was involved peripherally. I would read passages to her that I didn’t understand, either because of her diction or place names, and asked her to explain. Cultural words, fauna, flora, and Trinidadian myths stayed with her, and she usually had no problem giving me details or stories associated with these passages.  

It was easier than I thought it’d be. I have a knack for imitating other writers, and have a lot of fun impersonating. I think of it like a painter trying to paint . . . oh anyone, to use a Trinidadian example, M.P. Alladin, by sight. (A more accessible example perhaps is how musicians “cover” other songs, which is not a rip off, but a compliment, a head nod, perhaps even an advertisement.)

​It’s a fantastic exercise to let go of the ego that writers so often cling to around their work, and this release opens up a unique freedom to explore the architecture of language from a new vantage point. Also, I hadn’t written much fiction yet (that’s changed significantly since then), so perhaps I had a leg up there. 

​At heart she’s an island girl fortified with the blood of a princess. She was born and raised in Trinidad, where her grandmother Rookubai (a princess escaping an arranged marriage) arrived around 1887, a stowaway on a ship from India. I mention India because many Indians held onto Hindu traditions – celebrating Diwali and the belief in reincarnation – even though Canadian missionaries attempted to convert all the Indians on the island to Christianity.

Although Hindu themes are peripheral in Olas Grandes, I think that Barbara’s interest not only in Hindu customs, but also her interest and study in the occult, was nurtured by island life. She called the Caribbean “the perfect background for dreaming.”

One of my persistent, and unanswered questions I posed to Barbara, was: who is the character Ma Becky based on? Many of her characters are fictionalizations of family members, usually adorned with pieces of herself. Ma Becky is the only character I could never see clearly with this template. Bab knew some Trinidadian witches when she was growing up, who lived on the beach, but part of me thinks that there’s quite a bit of herself in Ma Becky.

​Babbie always loved fairy tales, fables, and myths, partly because of their appeal to both children and adults. She stayed rooted to the Caribbean landscape because it’s where she spent her youth. She had also recently and tragically lost her son, David Rodman, in 1977, just a couple years before writing Olas Grandes. I think that writing the book was a way for her to enter an alternate reality, in which Davey was a young boy again, and she was living in an idyllic gothic romance in her home country, but that’s just a guess.

Did working on Barbara’s novel give you any new insights into her life? 

​The review copy for her book arrived twelve days before she died. The same night we got the first full box of Olas Grandes copies was the night she passed away. Seeing her hold the book and flip through it was an incredible moment of this journey. With people still reading and buying and reviewing her book, that journey continues.

Between my mom and me, we read Babbie about seven chapters before she died. She didn’t remember writing the book, but at the end of each chapter she'd say, “I like this story, keep reading.” Usually when I'd read her the Detroit News she’d get burnt out listening about half-way through an article. Not so with Olas Grandes. I can only imagine what went on in her mind, listening to her grandson and daughter read words to her that she wrote some forty years ago. There was some magic there for all of us. 

My uncle Ken and I sat at the kitchen table for hours, discussing the project. When we decided that we were going to independently publish the book for temporal reasons, as well as “sweet romance” not being as salable as some of the more hardcore stuff in the romance marketplace, we decided that he’d paint the cover. I gave him some ideas, and we read some passages from the book aloud to give us a sense of voice and place. But Ken was born in Sangre Grande, so he knew what the coastline looks like better than I do!

One funny thing about the painting was that he started painting these tiny waves, but since olas grandes translates to “big waves”, my mom suggested making the breakers a little bigger. It was a Homer Simpson moment, I think he even smacked his forehead, “D’oh!”.  

​
​Love Stories is a magical little book weaving together love stories across three continents, the common thread plucked from a dreamlike vapor, the mist of eternity on which every story’s loomed. It’s her first book, published in 1985 by the International University Press and printed in an underground style. I’m biased but I think it’s an exceptional project. She mingles famous love stories with her own; lovers meet in and out of dream worlds, recognizing one another by their eyes, and it’s all built on the history of Trinidad, India, and Spain – her spiritual home.



​

Babbie would say to me, “I don’t believe in reincarnation. It’s not something I have to believe in because I know that I’ve lived another life in Spain.” Reading her books and articles in the Detroit Sunday News Magazine, which used to come folded inside the Sunday edition of the Detroit News, it’s clear that for Barbara, death was not a barrier but a reprieve. She concludes one of her many articles by writing, “I am a dreamer living in my own world of dreams. I hate reality, but Life is reality, therefore I compromise and leave my dreams alone for a while, as long as Life lasts. After Life, I can have my dreams and all the things I love all to myself.”

This entire project revolves around a sense of duty. Not only to my grandmother, or our family, although that’s a large part of it, but there was also something more elusive, and larger.

I have a few practices I perform religiously. One is writing. Another is listening. Longstanding systemic health and social inequities disproportionately affect Black people in the US – and the coronavirus pandemic is highlighting that fact. It’s important to know where our money’s going. The decision to donate to Detroit Will Breathe is just one way to support the amazing anti-racist work being done right now, as people continue to march, and people continue to buy.

I just finished my first novella – it’s a work of literary fiction about the notorious Austro-Hungarian vampire Béla Kiss. I’m still waiting to hear back from a few of my favorite small presses. I’m also continuing to write flash fiction, film reviews, and poems.

Much of my own recent writing is forthcoming or published in online lit journals, and easily found if interested. (davidkuhnlein.wordpress.com) Also, sitting in my “to-do” pile are three more of Babbie’s full length manuscripts, two of which I’ve read, and are fantastic. I’m not promising anything, but if they get transcribed and edited, I’ll update the Olas Grandes fans on our Instagram, which I’m most active on @olasgrandesnovel.

​I absolutely love your blog, Nan, and I’m so honored. Babbie would have been ecstatic. Thank you, from all of us, for the interview.

If April is the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot contended, then July must be the friendliest.  At least ten countries celebrate Friendship Day in July: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
 
What better time, then, to commemorate a 33-year testament to an even longer friendship? 

​​This particular tradition began in 1987, when I bought a blank book and wrote an entry in it for my friend Cindi’s birthday, promising to add another entry every year. With the exception of a few years that I somehow let slide by, I’ve kept my word, documenting the ups and downs of our lives—often eerily parallel—and our passage from thirty-somethings to senior citizens. 

​Our friendship goes back even further. My first recollections of Cindi are from fifth grade, when we were in different classes but sometimes hung out together on the playground. We got to know each other better in junior high and were best of friends by high school, when we spent countless hours cruising the Sonic together. When I moved away to Samoa, Cindi saved my letters, which proved invaluable in writing my memoir Mango Rash: Coming of Age in the Land of Frangipani and Fanta. In college, we were protest and peace-march buddies. 

​Then we moved to different parts of the country: Cindi to Texas, me to California, then Kansas and Michigan. Yet we never lost touch, continuing to exchange letters and phone calls, then transitioning to email, and visiting each other when we could. In time, our interests and political leanings diverged. Quite a bit. I wouldn’t say we’re on opposite ends of the spectrum now—we still agree on many issues—but we do have distinct differences. Once that became apparent, though, we made a conscious decision not to let those differences undermine our friendship. 

​As memories have filled the book, and it’s become more precious to both of us, we’ve wondered if mailing it back and forth might be too risky, if maybe I should find a different way of adding entries.
 
That thought crossed my mind this year as I put the book in the mail a few weeks ago, intending for it to reach Cindi in plenty of time for her June birthday. 

​And then—oh, no—it happened. 

​Due to a post office snafu so byzantine it would take another whole blog post to detail, the book was lost in the mail. Not only did it not arrive in time for Cindi’s birthday, it went missing without tracking information, so there was no way of finding out where it had gone.

​We consoled ourselves with the knowledge we’d both made photocopies of the pages. Cindi wasn’t sure where she’d put hers, but I was pretty sure I’d made a copy just last year and put it in a file under her name. Sure enough, I found the copy in the file, only to discover I hadn’t made it last year, I’d made it nine years ago.

​Now, as we wait for the book to show up—and we have to believe it will show up—I look back at pictures from all those years and re-read the entries I managed to save and know that, book or no book, we’ll always  have something worth celebrating.

​In recent months, we’ve all had to adapt in ways we never expected: new ways of shopping, socializing, working, entertaining ourselves (jigsaw puzzles, anyone?). With Ray and me both retired, the changes weren’t as drastic for us as for many people. While there have been challenges, our adjustment has been relatively smooth, for which I’m grateful.
 
But this home-centered span of time has also shown me how un-adaptable I am in other parts of my life and how I’ve been holding onto expectations that don’t square with reality.

​Take my activity patterns, for example. For most of my life, I was an early riser. During my working years, both as an employee and as a freelancer, I usually got up at 5 a.m. and started work at 7:30 or 8:00. For a while after I retired I continued waking up and getting out of bed by 5:00 or 6:00, whether I wanted to or not. I seemed to be hard-wired to get up and get going early.
 
In the past year or so, though, I’ve started sleeping till 7:00, 7:30, and sometimes even later. I feel like I need the sleep, like my body demands it, especially if I’ve done something intensely physical the day before, like a long hike or hours of outdoor work. 

​Yet every time I get up later than 6:00, I scold myself for being such a slug, and I still try to keep to a routine that’s based on getting up earlier: meditating and doing yoga before breakfast, then making and eating breakfast, doing some reading over breakfast, cleaning up my dishes and myself, getting dressed, making the bed, doing whatever else needs doing, like taking out the mail, and still being ready to start the day’s main activities (writing and book promotion in the morning; chores, errands, and recreation in the afternoon) by 8:30 or so.  
​
 So every day starts with this ridiculous and totally unnecessary tension about keeping to a ridiculous and totally unrealistic schedule.

​I’ve experimented with various alternatives—putting off yoga until later in the day, meditating before bed instead of first thing in the morning, streamlining this or that.
 
But I’m starting to see the problem isn’t with the routines themselves, it’s with my attitude toward them. So what if some mornings I get a late start and only have time to write for half an hour instead of an hour or two? Maybe I’ll make up for it another day. And if not, so what? Yes, I feel better on days when I write and I feel off-kilter when I don’t—writing is my happy pill, after all. And yes, I get great satisfaction from seeing the word count and page count increase by the day. But if the world comes to an end, I doubt it will be because I wrote 100 words today instead of 1,000.

​My reality has shifted, and it’s high time to adapt to the new one instead of clinging to the old one. The truth is, I’ll probably never again routinely get up at 5:00. So why not try to see my sleeping-later habit for what it is—a response to a physical need, not a sign of sloth--and just enjoy the luxury of being able to structure my days around it.
 


​Which brings me to another realization about reality. Structure is something else I sometimes feel conflicted about. As I wrote in a 2016 blog post, we all have our own tolerance levels for chaos and structure, and finding the right balance between them is crucial for creativity.

​As I’ve been examining how to adjust my usual routines to my unpredictable sleep patterns, I’ve questioned whether I still need a routine at all. After all, I’m retired. Most of the things on my to-do list are want-to-dos, not have-to-dos. Why not just do what I feel like when I feel like it?
 
I’ve thought a lot about that lately, and I’ve come to this conclusion: There may be a time to ditch my routines, but this isn’t it. Experts say having consistent daily and weekly routines gives us a sense of certainty in these uncertain times. The trick is to make your days consistent, with enough variety to keep boredom at bay.

Sounds like exactly what I’m aiming for as I try to adapt to new realities. I’ll let you know how that works out.
 
Have you adapted in any surprising ways over the past months? Have you discovered aspects of your life you can let go of and others you still need to hold onto?

If you've been a HeartWood subscriber for a while,  you may remember the Last Wednesday Wisdom feature that appeared on the last Wednesday of every month. When I switched to publishing blog posts only twice a month--on the first and third Wednesdays--that feature went away, except for occasional appearances in months with an extra Wednesday.

During these troubled times, though, I couldn't think of anything better to offer than a collection of wisdom from other minds. I hope you find comfort and inspiration here.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others . . . On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. . . but if we were only wretched . . . we'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.
-- Pema Chödrön

You only get one chance. You have one journey through life; you cannot repeat even one moment or retrace one footstep. It seems that we are meant to inhabit and live everything that comes toward us.
-- John O'Donohue

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being is already a form of violence.
​-- Eckhart Tolle

When you can't find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example.
​-- Roxane Gay

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
-- Rabindranath Tagore

My sense of the holy . . . is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.
​-- Richard Rorty

We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
-- Etty Hillesum

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
​-- Maya Angelou

You say to yourself when you are at liberty how desperate you are for your solitude, you love your periods of solitude, you scramble for it, you find ways of being by yourself so you can do what you want with yourself and your mind. But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship.
​-- Wole Soyinka

In the last installment of HeartWood, I wrote about some of the ways I've been filling my unexpected free time during the weeks of social distancing and Stay Home - Stay Safe. In this installment, I'm giving other folks a chance to share what they've been doing. And what a variety of things they've come up with!

Check them out!

​I've been puttering around with a few drawings and one of Eldon eating soup.

We have been watching too much TV, Netflix and Amazon Prime.  Also, managing to work out at least three times a week. ​

And we're enjoying housebound happy  hours with the help of our new margarita maker!

​I have joyfully been working in my garden (look how big the garlic is already!) and last week canned a couple gallons of maple syrup. Keeping very busy around here even though my regular artsy muse took off for parts unknown.

Last Tuesday was a special Covid day. I got to hang out 2 loads of wash and get out the very quiet weed whip and head down to the river for some enjoyable work. I also got the clippers out and cut the grasses out of the iris bed.

Many games of Scrabble have been going on in our house, and each night now we seem to gravitate to The Newshour on PBS. Making a call to a friend or family member is an almost daily event. Meditation is becoming a regular part of my day and I hope it continues.

When I'm not patrolling the area in my role as self-appointed neighborhood watchman, I've been spending time in my workshop. My latest project is making hand-turned bottle stoppers.

I also created a fairy fire station for Camp Newaygo's Virtual Enchanted Forest event last month.

And like Cindi and Dale, we're enjoying home-centered happy hours, too.

​One thing I spent too much time on was adapting my (famous) lecture on the Beatles for an online popular music class at the University of Washington using Zoom - weird not to be able to engage directly with the students. Also, I gave blood.

​After initial quarantine tasks such as cleaning out drawers and closets, the promise of birth, growth and renewal overcame the need for order. We talk everyday: me and these little giving friends who awaken like babes from a nap. They give me hope.

And every morning I take a barefoot walk into my "woods" - about a dozen trees at the end of our drive - to see how my shady native plants are faring.

Stay home and stay safe was a gift in some ways. My gardens have never been so well tended. Really enjoyed knowing the plants are going to good homes.

The most beneficial thing (much better than vacuuming, which I have not done) has been the free Coursera from Yale called "The Science of Well-Being." It's really about what makes us truly happy and how to get there. Spoiler alert: it's not what our culture tells us.
 
Also, these days it's a bit disconcerting to see the non-virtual students sitting close to each other and hear them coughing!  (Has anyone else been yelling at their tv screens? It can be the most innocuous old sitcom and I'm all, "Don't shake hands! OMG, now you're hugging each other! OMG, OMG, OMG!" I'm better at this now, but it was rough for a while there.)
 
I have been knitting up a storm - charity knitting, mostly with "legacy" yarn I inherited from a friend's stash. I also made miles and miles of chain stitch cord and mailed it off to a friend who is converting her fabric stash into face masks she's giving away. (She and housemate totally ran out of elastic, old t-shirts and potholder loops. Their dining room is like a small factory.)
 
I think doing things for others is especially good just now, though it was more than sobering to consider that the hats, sweaters, and ponchos I was making for the Navajo school kids might . . . well, you know.
 
I dusted off my elderly Kindle and learned that, with a newer software download, it is Way Less Annoying. I've read and read and read!
 
I have been going through my DVD collection and Watching All The Bonus Features. The directors' commentaries for Bend It Like Beckham, Seabiscuit, and Monsoon Wedding were almost better than the films.
 
This last one might seem counterintuitive.
 
It started when a Facebook friend (a friend of friends in real life, one of the few FB friends I've not met) shared a post from the Holocaust and Humanity Center in Cincinnati. They were having a virtual book club. First up was Elie Wiesel's Night, which I had never had the courage to read by myself. Being part of a group was helpful. The next book was Anne Frank's diary, which I had read, so I fired up the Kindle and read Francine Prose's book about the book and its author. Wow! I learned all kinds of stuff.
 
I also learned how much I swear when figuring out the arcane magic tricks of the multiple websites required to borrow e-books not owned by my library.
 
I did not, however, curse during any of my several calls to the library staff who helped me gain access. I think one of them wanted to, though; that episode was something goofy in the library's circ software.
 
It was all worth it in the end, though, AND WHAT ELSE DID I HAVE TO DO? A jigsaw puzzle of Easter eggs, shaped like an egg. Also coloring, knitting, and - OK! - vacuuming, like that's gonna happen.

This organization, the Holocaust and Humanity Center, offers all kinds of online sessions. There's one later this week about preserving your family artifacts: photos and other things. (They have a website and multiple FB pages.)

AND, because I attended a bunch of those, I got invited to a series of Holocaust survivor presentations from a community college in New Jersey that is absolutely inspiring. They tell the tale, but the focus is on resilience.  
 
Also MSU Extension "Cabin Fever" presentations. The most hilarious thing there is that I forwarded the follow-up email with its many citations to a cousin, who replied, "I was 'there' too!"  
 
And the mourning dove chicks on the front porch have flown the coop. Stupid birds! But I did learn that just before they fledge, a normal human being will be convinced that their no good rotten birdbrain parents have abandoned them. That was good to know, because it was gonna be one Huge Moral Dilemma whether I fed those things or not. Last I saw them, they (two of them) were standing up in the flower pot under the porch light and looking like it was time to steal the car keys and light out for the Dairy Queen.
 
WHAT WOULD WE BE WITHOUT THE INTERNET IN ALL OF THIS? Mostly insane. I might even be vacuuming.
 
Another thing I have done is re-read Salinger's story "For Esme - with love and squalor" or whatever it's called. The whole thing is online as a pdf.
 
It has come up in multiple conversations (because I MAKE IT), because I firmly believe that the ONLY thing that we must do during this time is "survive with our faculties intact." Job One, right there.  ​

I realize the past couple of months have been anything but a holiday for many people: those who’ve faced illness themselves or cared for ailing family members, those who’ve lost loved ones, others who have lost their jobs or whose professions put them in harm’s way. My heart goes out to all those people and everyone else who has been negatively impacted by COVID-19.
 
I feel fortunate that so far, at least, this time of isolation has been a kind of respite for me. When it all began, back in mid-March, I thought to myself: Well, I always wanted to go on a creativity retreat in some peaceful place. Here’s my chance!

​And for the most part, that’s how I’ve approached it. Here in our quiet patch of woods, with no outside commitments, I’ve been free to focus on projects I find it hard to concentrate on when I’m always on the go. And a funny thing has happened: The further we get into Stay Home – Stay Safe, the more protective I’ve become of my free time and solitude.
 
Like most people during this time, I’ve been deluged with a mind-boggling number of invitations to Facebook Live events, Zoom gatherings, free webinars, and other virtual happenings. My internet service’s dwindling data allowance won’t permit me to join in most of those, and while I truly regret having to turn down some invitations—especially From the Heart Yoga’s Zoom classes and chats with my yogini sisters—I haven’t minded passing up the rest. They’ve felt like distractions, in the same way that outside commitments often do.
 
So how have I been spending my precious retreat time? Let me count the ways . . . 

I’ve been working steadily on my novel-in-progress. Rather than spinning out pages, I decided to take a more disciplined approach, guided by the process Lisa Cron champions in her book Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere). The title itself was enough to sell me on the book, and as I work my way through it I’m becoming even more of a fan.
 
It’s hard work, requiring a lot of thought and a lot of writing, followed by digging deeper, thinking more, and writing more. Being able to spend hours in concentrated work, not just stolen minutes here and there, has led to much-needed breakthroughs. Finally, I’m getting some clarity on how to achieve what I’m trying to achieve in the story I’m working on.

​Early in our Newaygo life—around a decade ago—I scoured flea markets, antiques shops, and ebay for interesting picture frames, visualizing a gallery of old family pictures in our upstairs hallway. Those frames have sat in a trunk in the guest bedroom all these years, waiting for me to fill them. Every month of every year I’ve thought I’d get to it, and every month of every year has somehow gotten filled up in other ways.
 
Finally, I gathered frames and photos, did the necessary prep work, and with Ray’s help, hung them in the hall. Here are the pictures that now have homes:

​While I was at it, I framed a few more of my nature photos to hang in my studio and the guest room. I’m happy seeing the empty spaces filled and even happier having done something that had been on my to-do list far too long.

​A volunteer opportunity cropped up: entering data for a ballot initiative for which I’d helped gather signatures. I thought, Why not? I certainly have the time! It’s a simple task—just taking names, phone numbers, and email addresses from cell-phone photos of petitions and entering the info onto a spreadsheet. A little hard on the eyes, but easy on the brain, which suits me fine right now.
​

​​Every spring, one of our tasks is cleaning up downed trees and branches in the patch of woods around our house. Ray cuts up the wood and runs the small and medium-sized pieces through the chipper. I gather up the chips and spread them on the paths we’ve made around our property. This year has yielded enough chips for me to create a new path or two. In the process of making many chip-laden wheelbarrow trips, I rack up an astonishing number of steps, according to my Fitbit. Between that work and my wanderings in the woods (see item #4), I’ve been covering some serious miles.

​Enter the North Country Trail Association’s Hike 100 Challenge. The idea is to hike 100 miles in a year. Normally, those miles have to be on the North Country Trail (though it doesn’t matter whether you hike the same mile 100 times or cover 100 unique miles of trail). But this year, in response to shelter-in-place directives, the association bent the rules to allow all miles walked in April and May—in your backyard, around the house or neighborhood, on the treadmill—to count toward the total.
 
I’ve been keeping track, and I’ve already passed the 60-mile mark. I could very well hit 100 by the end of this month.

True, I do this all the time, not just when we’re on lockdown. But spending time in nature has been particularly restorative during this time of unprecedented events and uncertainty. I hauled out my cameras, which I’d been neglecting while busy with book promotion, and discovered anew the joy of wandering around, photographing flowers, flowing water, and woodland creatures.
 
Here are a few shots from my wanderings. You’ll find more at the end of this post. 

​I read an article by nature photographer Melissa Groo about an unusual technique for photographing fast-moving birds in flight. Intrigued, I tried it out that very afternoon, trying to catch chickadees and nuthatches coming and going at the bird feeder.
 
While my results aren’t quite where I’d like yet, in terms of sharpness, I was happy to at least capture a complete bird—not just tail feathers at the edge of the frame—on a fair number of attempts. I’m showing you these not because they’re anything to brag about, but because they represent the kind of patient, try-try-again attitude that’s easier to adopt when you’re not trying to fit so many things into your day.

​Emptiness is the pregnant void out of which all creation springs.
-- Wayne Muller

​The above quote is from an article titled “Fear of Rest” in the May issue of The Sun magazine, excerpted from Muller’s book Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest. As so often happens, I came across the article at precisely the time I needed to read it. Musing on the necessity of rest—and our resistance to it—made me more appreciative of having time to intersperse rest with periods of activity. The older I get, the more I respect rest, but I still need reminding sometimes that it’s a legitimate use of time, not only to restore the body, but also to feed creativity.

​How have the past couple of months been for you? How are you feeling about re-entry?

​Even in this strange and uncertain time, we can find reasons to celebrate. Two big reasons come to mind this month.

​April is National Poetry Month, and if ever there was a time to read poetry, it’s now, when many of us have extra reading time and are looking to fill our minds with something other than dire news reports.

​​This month also brings the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day next Wednesday, April 22. Though the mass celebrations that had been planned will no longer be possible, we can still commemorate the day.

Combining these two celebrations, National Poetry Month and Earth Day, I asked local (and not-so-local) poets to contribute Earth Day poems to today’s blog. I’m happy to share those with you now, along with the collage I created for the occasion.

As I worked on the collage, I went back and forth in my mind about whether to portray the vision of a healthy Earth that many of us had on the first Earth Day in 1970 or the reality of Earth in 2020. In the end, I opted for the more hopeful vision, because I want to believe there's still hope. 

​Once the piece was done, however, I noticed it's darker than most of my other collages (many of which are now posted on the COLLAGES page on my website). Perhaps in the end, my Earth Day collage reflects both hope and concern, themes you'll find in the poems below.

And now, poetry.

The way the sun drips through the trees
feels like the tart sting of oranges
sliced through on a cold winter morning
the shadows sway on uneven stilts 
purposeful but perhaps a bit drunk
hawks flying through the thin mist
 
we did not come here to talk
but to recall bloodlines and bruises
to watch the ache of God's wounded finger
find its solace in the sky
we came to watch the forest settle
shivering around an old circle of coals
 
To pull new yarn out of old wool
to re-dye the worn, faded blue
to an unspoken, holy red
to choose new stones to throw
into the solitude of the lake
to settle into the night
and watch the fireflies shiver and shake

​I struggle to recall the words of those long-ago incantations,
but I can still feel the sun, and the sand spray of those of us
 
who ran down to the continent’s edge to shout wild oaths
and promises, twisted and torn from the wind itself.
 
Hoping for what exactly? I don’t recall. A certain slant of light,
or a feeling of home on the sun and sea-blasted turf?
 
It all looks so weathered now in a way that has grown familiar;
the landscape possesses the face that it has earned.
 
Not searching for monuments, though open to any eventuality,
I remember us, suddenly, as pleased and shy as deer in fields of spring,
 
not as tail-less, lumbering animals, growling and sniffing
for the bones we had buried and lost.
 
Ferns sprout large and primordial where none had grown
in the shaded region above the tides.
 
The sea has crept in closer; it has taken on an ancient aspect.
 
Through broken teeth I whisper a few broken words
and listen for those long-ago incantations.
 
Our footprints left a faint impression of our lives,
but the wind has carried the songs away to the sea.

 
* First published in Blueline: June 2011, Volume 32
Collected in Wanderings at Deadline (Aldrich Press, 2012)

Ninendaan gaawiin waa-babaamendanzimowaad
I think they will not mind that
 
wiikaa bi-dagoshinaan.
I arrive late.
 
Gijiigijigaaneshiiyag gii-giimoodaanagidoowag noopiming
The chickadees were mumbling in the bushes
 
besho naadazina’iganing.
by the box where I get mail.
 
Andawendaanaawaa Manaadendamaazowin
They needed an Honor Song
 
mii wenji-nagamotawagwaa
so I sang to them
 
nisidawenmangwaa miinawaa
because we understand them again
 
ezhi-manaadenimangwaa ingiw wiidokawiyangidwaa
the way we respect those who keep us company
 
gabe biboon
all winter.
 
Gaawiin da-giizhokoniyesiiwag misawa
They do not need to dress warm and yet
 
giizhokawiyangidwaa gidode’iminaaning.
they warm our hearts.

I am Soulofhawk come to sing my song – may your ears and heart be opened.

I stumble in this foreign tongue and try to make the talk
I speak of when this land was young, and of my brother hawk
My spirit voice is hard to hear, I have so long been gone
But I will whisper in your ear, and having spoke, move on

This finger pushed into the sea of sand and swamp and pine
Has been a welcome home to me – I sing this land of mine . .. . 
Of night song sung in joyous trill by every kind of fowl . . . 
Of chickadee and whippoorwill . . . of warning from the owl . . . 

Of plenty fish and wild oats . . . of berries blue and red
That danced their way down happy throats to bellies always fed . . .
Of rivers coursing through green world of gleaming golden lake . . .
Of alligator, hog and squirrel . . . of moccasin the snake . . .
​
The screaming panther ruled the pine, the eagle ruled the sky –
Oh, will you hear these words of mine? Will you even try?
I have no words on talking leaves for you to read, my friend
For all this simple man believed was written on the wind.

​While we bow our heads to the ground
and our hearts seek meaning among the stars,
wild creatures assert their presence
in the here and now
and the just here and gone.
 
Unknowable in the way one speaks
of the alien and other-worldly,
the title to their kingdom is forged
in their absolute
manifestation of the flesh.
 
If this seems ironic and abstract,
then so be it.
 
For irony and abstraction
are our great gifts--
not to the world, but to ourselves--
invented for our survival.
 
And we, of course, are the real aliens;
Each a world unto one’s own,
orbiting a sun of its own devising.

 
* First published in Sixfold, July 1, 2013, Summer 2013
Collected in Jeremiad Johnson (In Case of Emergency Press, 2019)

Listen!
          Do you hear her – Our Great Mother?
                      In this moment, in time - a reprieve -
                      when all human activity
                      has slowed to bare bones minimum,
                      She inhales an expanse of cleaner air.
                      Exhales a wasteland of toxins.
 
          Do you hear her – Our Great Mother?
                      She weeps for us, her children – All
                      Residents, two-legged and four,
                      winged, finned and serpentine. We
                      share the same earth, sea and air.
                      We, the two-legged ones, hold
                      the choices in concert with Our Mother.
                      Even as forces seem out of control, and
                      the playing field remains unequal.
 
          Do you feel her – Our Great Mother?
                      She shudders as the sludge venoms
                      from Frack wells, the vast desolation
                      from wildfires, and endless wars’ ravages
                      do a rival dance with the C-virus.
 
          I wonder about this massive
                      Blue Marble in our universe. The
                      one we call home. Our Mother. 
                      There’s nowhere else to go.  We cannot
                      just walk off or fly away.
 
          I wonder, if I were an astronaut, or
                      could hitch a satellite ride, how - in this
                      Pandemic blink of time –would
                      Our Mother, our home - look?
                      Would her greens be greener, her blues
                      be bluer,  her storms less turbulent,
                      her mass free from veils of smog?
 
          Like a cataclysm, would I see
                      a rotating orb, vibrating
                      glimmers of brighter, kinder energy?
                      Perhaps violet or white? Would
                      I know – would we all know- we’ve
                      begun to exercise our choices for love?
 

Control and fear became our story
Addiction lies between the lines
And love was lost to pride and glory
This ego virus made us blind
 
Your mother's dying by your hands
But you won't listen
Her blood is all over your hands
Will you listen
 
The soul was lost beyond the shadows
The fog will choke us into dust
Collective conscience chose the gallows
The time of man will turn the dust
 
Your mother's dying by your hands
You won't listen
Her blood is all over your hands
Will you listen 

​I hear it in the river.
I see it in the buds of the maple.
I hear it in the sounds of the red wing black bird.
 
Inquisitive cat so happy to be playing outside
Warm breeze on the back of my neck
 
I see it in the new bright yellow feathers of the gold finch.
I hear it in a distant barking dog.
 
Ever grateful to be walking this Earth mother experiencing my spring soul

​Once the land was green
And the buffalo could roam
The rivers clear and clean
Washed by our simple homes
And all turned in the wheel
And the sacred song was sung
To teach us what was real
And the earth stayed young
Once a man would take
No more than he could use
Set bones back in the lake
When a meal of fish was through
And all turned in the wheel
And the sacred song was sung
To teach us what was real
And the earth stayed young
     
Once the earth was young
And men saw with their hearts
That everything was one
And man was but a part
And all turned in the wheel
And the sacred song was sung
To teach us what was real
And the earth stayed young
Now the earth is old
The buffalo are gone
The rivers have been sold
And man stands all alone
Let all turn in the wheel
And sing the sacred song
To teach us what is real
So the earth stays young

​You can't eat the money
That you've all been praying on
That God has only destroyed you
And you can't drink the oil 
You've been pulling out of the ground
Your momma's shaken and torn . . . fool
 
Do you know what you are
And what you're here for
When it all comes crashing down
What have we learned
 
Distractions have kept you
From what's really going on
Keeping you away from your mother
Her life source you could tap into
Can heal that broken bond
Yes, you can get there inside you
 
Do you know what you are
And what you're here for
When it comes crashing all down
What have we learned

​There is a sudden authority to nightfall
in the flight of a heron, and to the surrounding
darkness where countless feed.
 
But so much that is unattainable, so much
that lies beyond the sovereign dark, rises up
out of the pale blue season of twilight
 
like fireflies summoning among the trees
as the moon loses her translucent and ghostly pallor
in the evening’s first clear and troubling dreams.
 
***
 
Toward daylight, the deer rise up
from among the flattened grasses
and low-lying hummocks,
 
emerging in the cool of morning
from indiscernible swales
and cedar swamps,
 
wary and shy, but alive with owning
at least a part of this
pale blue season of wildflowers.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, social distancing has forced many authors to cancel or postpone readings and book signings they’d scheduled for spring. A dozen of my fellow authors and I got our first taste of this when the West Michigan Women’s Expo, at which we were all selling books (or trying to), was shut down only three hours into what was supposed to be a three-day event.
 
That’s when I came up with the idea to host a couple of virtual Author Expos on HeartWood. I posted the first one two weeks ago. The second installment opens today.
 
Here, you can visit the virtual tables of seven authors and check out their varied offerings. If you find a book you love—and how can you not, with this many authors and books?—please consider using some of your unexpected free time to write and post a review on Goodreads, Amazon, or both. The author will thank you and so will readers who learn about the book from your review.

​http://normalewisbooks.com/
 
Forget San Francisco, Norma left pieces of her heart in Alaska. No cruises or packaged tours for her, she prefers experiencing the state independently via ferry, mail plane, rental car, train, motor-home, bush plane, and an occasional bus. In 2014 she was Jason Mackey’s IditaRider. Many of her Alaska adventures have ended up as magazine articles, though now she is focusing on books.
 
To be fair, she loves Michigan too, as her books on Michigan history attest. In Norma’s view, history isn’t dates and wars and documents, it’s people and how they reacted to the events that unfolded around them. In researching her books, she’s drawn not to dry facts, but to the quirky.
 
Norma’s nonfiction titles include Wild Women of Michigan: A History of Spunk and Tenacity; Lost Restaurants of Grand Rapids; Legendary Locals of Grand Rapids; Grand Rapids: Furniture City; 100 Things to Do in Grand Rapids Before You Die; Muskegon; Grand River; Dutch Heritage in Kent and Ottawa Counties; Wyoming; and Connecting the Coasts: The Race to Build the Transcontinental Railroad, and Show Me The World Eskimo-Indian Olympics: Casey Ferguson.
 
In addition, she is the author of Kasey’s River Song: Spinning Dreams in Gold Rush Alaska; and Dear Santa, I Know It Looks Bad but It Wasn’t My Fault.
 

​https://contentqueens.net/
 
Author, adventure traveler, volleyballer, biker, hiker, and yogi—Laura is not one to sit still. She’s always on the go, looking for the next big idea. Co-owner of a marketing communications company, FineLine Creative, she advocates life-work-play balance and encourages others to immerse themselves in different places and cultures, as she has through her travel adventures.
 
In her spare time, Laura writes a monthly travel blog. Her recently-released book Travel Light is a memoir that explores the lighter side of travel with doses of humor, adventure, and personal transformation. Through her stories, she takes readers along on journeys to Italy, Ireland, Spain, France, Alaska, Arizona and her home state of Michigan.

https://www.sherryaburton.com/
 
Born and raised in Kentucky, Sherry and her Navy husband lived in nine states before settling in Michigan. She got her start in writing by pledging to write a happy ending for a friend who was going through tough times. The story surprised Sherry by taking over and practically writing itself, and launched her into a new life as an author.
 
Her historical fiction series, The Orphan Train Saga, follows the stories of children who were transported from Eastern cities to foster homes in the Midwest between 1855 and 1929. While the children in the stories are fictitious, each child’s story is told with the use of history from the era to add flavor and excitement to the tale.
 
Her other novels include Tears of Betrayal, Love in the Bluegrass, The King of My Heart, Surviving the Storm, Somewhere in My Dreams, Seems Like Yesterday, and Always Faithful.
 
Sherry also writes children’s books under the name Sherry A. Jones.

​http://tueborbooks.com/book/tuebor/
 
A former Michigan State Police officer, Robert was launched into police work as as the first full-time patrolman with the Bridgeport Township, Michigan police department, initially without the benefit of formal police academy training. After surviving those eighteen months of on-the-job training, he began his career with the Michigan State Police, where he was first assigned as a trooper near Detroit, conducting countless criminal investigations. From there he went on to a variety of assignments over his 25-year career, furthering his education with an associate’s degree in criminal justice, a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Madonna University, a Juris Doctorate degree from the Detroit College of Law (now MSU School of Law) and a Ph.D. in Public Affairs and Administration from Western Michigan University. He currently practices civil law and is working on a new book about his experiences as an attorney.
 
His first book, Tuebor – I Will Defend: An anatomy of a Michigan State Police Trooper, is the story of an honest, hard-working yet naïve young man who chose to leave the safety of civilian life for a career of a dedicated police officer. The book depicts the daily lives of officers and captures the human side of police work.

​https://www.quittandquinn.com/wendy-sura-thomson
 
Wendy’s memoir, Summon the Tiger, is a story of surviving and thriving in the face of extraordinary obstacles. Born with congenital skeletal abnormalities, she had a leg amputated as a toddler. Her father suffered from World War II induced PTSD, and her mother was emotionally unstable. Wendy coped by escaping to a world of books and music. But when her father sold everything to buy a freighter and travel around the world, Wendy signed on as navigator. She jumped ship in Miami and headed out on her own, as what was left of her family disintegrated. As she pursued her studies and met a coterie of colorful characters, she was forced to evaluate what was most important to her.
 
Wendy’s other books include The Third Order and a children’s book, Ted and Ned. In addition, she contributed to Postcards from the Future: A Triptych on Humanity’s End.
 
Besides writing, Wendy’s pleasures include sipping coffee outdoors first thing in the morning, rain or shine; listening to the waterfall and the birds; and watching—often with amusement—her two beloved Irish Setters explore.

https://principiamedia.com/authors/kimberly-mocini/
 
Kimberly grew up in Rockford, Michigan and went on to earn a degree in business administration from Aquinas College and to study art at Kendall School of Design. Early in her career, when the microwave oven was first introduced, Kimberly traveled throughout Michigan teaching hundreds the “how to” of microwave cooking. That led to her first foray into publishing, a cookbook called For Better Meals The Microwave Way.
 
Her more recent book, My Child Wasn’t Born Perfect, is a personal and inspiring story of the challenges she and her family faced while raising a child who had a learning disability that was classified under the autism umbrella.

http://www.nanpokerwinski.com/
 
Nan (that’s me!) is a former science writer for the Detroit Free Press and the University of Michigan, whose award-winning work (under the byline Nancy Ross-Flanigan) has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and online publications. Her blog, Heartwood (http://www.nanpokerwinski.com/blog), focuses on creativity, connection, and contentment.
 
Her memoir Mango Rash: Coming of Age in the Land of Frangipani and Fanta, which won first place in the memoir/nonfiction category of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association literary awards, chronicles her search for adventure—and identity—in two alien realms: the tricky terrain of adolescence and the remote U.S. territory of American Samoa. Against a backdrop of lava-rimmed beaches, frangipani-laced air, and sensual music, she immerses herself in 1960s island culture with a colorful cast of Samoan and American expat kids. The lessons she learns in the process prove invaluable when she’s faced with crises as trivial as a mean girl’s put-down and as staggering as a fire, a hurricane, a drowning, and her own health crisis.
 
When she’s not writing, Nan takes photographs, makes collages, and wanders the woods around the West Michigan home she shares with her husband Ray Pokerwinski. 

​I know it’s not the week for my regularly-scheduled blog post, but I’m offering this special edition as a tribute to very special person.

​Reeling with grief when my dear friend John Tanasychuk died last week, I posted photos of him on Facebook, along with obituaries that were published in Florida and Detroit newspapers. Doing those things—and reading the comments from friends who were kind enough to take a moment to reflect on John’s life, whether or not they’d known him—was a comfort.

​But there’s so much more I want to say and share about John, and HeartWood seems the right place to do that. After all, this blog was his idea.

​​It all started when he and his husband Steve visited Ray and me here in Newaygo about five years ago. Over lunch at Hit the Road Joe Coffee Café, I groused to John about how authors and would-be authors nowadays can’t just write books, they have to create “platforms” to make themselves visible to publishing professionals and potential readers.

​“I guess I’ll have to start a blog,” I whined. “Everything I read says to do that. But I have no idea what to blog about.”

​

​John, in his characteristic upbeat manner, refused to buy into my glum attitude. “You’d be great at it,” he insisted. “And I bet you’d love doing it. Just write about your life here—all the interesting and creative people you know, the places you go, the things you do.”

​Hmmm. He had a point. I thought it over, came up with the theme of “creativity, connection, and contentment,” and began to get excited about the idea. And so HeartWood was born, with John as one of its most loyal readers and cheerleaders.

That’s the kind of friend he showed himself to be all through our thirty-plus-year friendship. 

​We first met in 1985, when John was a reporter for the Windsor Star and I was the science writer for the Detroit Free Press. We were both covering a geography convention at the Renaissance Center and happened to sit next to each other at a press conference. I told him I found it hilarious that a group of geographers needed maps to find their way around the Ren Cen’s maze-like passages. He saw the humor, too, and laughed his delighted, almost childlike laugh. We traded business cards, and instead of throwing his into a drawer as I did most cards I collected, I put it in my Rolodex, hoping our paths would cross again.

​​That didn’t happen until three years later, when he showed up in the desk next to mine at the Free Press, having just been hired as the food writer. I knew I was going to enjoy being desk-mates when the first thing he did was tack a picture of Liberace on his bulletin board. 

​Before long, we were sharing laughs and confidences, so easy to do with John. Both fans of the Canadian comedy group The Kids in the Hall, we could crack each other up with a line or a gesture from one of their routines. He also liked to tease me about being such a compulsive neatnik about my work space. Many times I would return from a bathroom break to find mail strewn across my desk. It looked like an accident, but eventually I realized it was John’s deliberate work—a trick to see how long it would take me to straighten things up and put everything back in its rightful place. (Answer: About one nanosecond.)

​​John did silliness better than anyone I know, absolutely unselfconsciously, but he did serious just as well. He had a gift for putting people at ease and giving his full attention to every conversation—never distracted, always fully present. 

​And curious! Which made his visits to my house interesting. Not only was he constantly asking questions, some of them most unexpected and fascinating to consider, but he also had no qualms about opening cupboards to see what was inside or poking through my closet, bureau drawers, and file cabinets. If anyone else had done that I might have thought it nosy. But when John did it, it was just part of the who-knows-what’s-next fun of having him around.

​Cooking for John was part of the fun, too. He knew and loved food and cooking, but he wasn’t a snob about it. He appreciated everything I made, from the simplest bean salad to the most elaborate . . . huh, now that I think about it, I don’t recall ever making anything elaborate for John. He was so easily pleased with simple fare, why get fancy?   

​Before one of my moves, I cleaned out a huge accordion file of recipes I’d collected throughout my life, including some I’d inherited from my mother decades earlier. Jell-O molds, casseroles, layer cakes, Christmas candies, that sort of thing. I mentioned the project to John—who by this time had moved with Steve to Florida—and said I hated to throw all those recipes away but couldn’t imagine anyone would want them. “Send them to me!” he said. So I stuffed them into the biggest mailing envelope I could find and sent them off. Soon after, he called, having gone through a good number of them, wanting to hear stories about the dinner parties where my mother served some of the dishes and curious (always!) why I had so many recipes for roast chicken and anything containing bananas, figs, or eggplant.

​While both at the Free Press, we got in the habit of taking lunch-hour walks together. Sometimes it was to actually go to lunch—usually somewhere like Ham Heaven for bean soup—but usually it was just to run errands and talk about anything that came to mind or resulted from John’s incessant questioning.

​Over the course of our friendship, we saw each other through staggering losses: the death of my husband Brian in 1989 and five years to the day after Brian’s passing, the death of John’s partner Joel. We designated October 15, the anniversary date, as “Widows Day” and made sure to check in with each other on that date every year.

​So often were John and I seen together at the credit union and in shops and cafés, the tellers, clerks, and servers thought we were a couple. We found that assumption terribly funny, since John was gay and I, recently widowed and recuperating from cancer treatment, was about as interested in a romantic relationship as I was in flying to the moon. Which is to say not at all (unless John had been going to the moon, in which case I might have considered it).

​Eventually, though, new romance came to both of us, and we both reacted as good friends do, thoroughly checking out the other’s suitor.
 
The first time Ray picked me up at work for a date, John and another dear friend, Emily, stationed themselves in front of the Free Press building, pretending to take a smoke break, but really scrutinizing the shady-looking guy in the black truck. And when John took up with Steve, I was perhaps a bit more discreet, but still did due diligence to be sure Steve’s intentions were honorable.

​John and Steve’s wedding in 2014 was one of the most joyful marriage ceremonies I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. And one of the most interesting, blending John’s Ukranian and First Nation Anishinaabe ancestry and Steve’s Jewish heritage. 

​When John was diagnosed with lung cancer four years ago, I was heartbroken at the thought of illness stealing his energy and élan. Yet I had a feeling John would handle cancer as he handled everything, with grace and even good humor. 

​He did. When he came to my book launch last fall, he was as vital and full of fun as ever. He didn’t just attend, he participated, helping out at the signing table, chatting up guests, and charming everyone he met. 

​I have a feeling that wherever John is now—and I want to believe he’s still somewhere—that’s exactly what he’s doing.
​
And in these uncertain times, instead of giving in to sadness and worry, I’m doing my best to channel a bit of John’s bright spirit.