Readings of original works by four UU women:
Barbara Seibel, Helen Stiefel, Marian Dornell, and Joan Creager

Barbara Seibel

She's a tall woman, taller than I when young.  She was slender then, and always wore her hair fashionably bobbed. She is heavy in old age. Her hair is short with waves and curls circling her face. Her nose is small, her face square and pleasing, with blue eyes that usually twinkle. She looks English, which she is. Admirer's called her a handsome woman, when her young family clustered around her. My mom called her stubborn.

"See that bull?" she'd point angrily and nod toward a neighbor's pasture as we drove past.
"That's just like your grandmother.  Stubborn as John Bull."  She rarely told the tales behind the anger, just the outbursts. From the little information she let slip, the arguments seemed to center on mom's smoking and the fact that she, as a single parent, couldn't save money from her $2,000 a year job. Grandma's only money was egg money, so she couldn't imagine why mother couldn't save with a salary as large as hers. And, smoking. Well! There was hardly any reason to even discuss why a lady shouldn't smoke. Only floozies smoke.

I hug grandma's large soft body, and with her head close to mine, smell her dry scalp and fine gray hair. As a child, one of my tasks was to comb this hair with a small, very sturdy, fine- toothed comb grandma kept just to scratch her head. I stood, as she sat in front of me in a favorite chair.  I combed. And I combed. And I combed. It was like scratching the ear of a hog, or petting a cat. There was no quitting. Grandma rocked, alternately grunting and purring in her contentedness.

As we separate, I look into her face, her scowl softens and I know how thrilled she is to see me, to have someone to talk with.  I am the first to visit in a very long time and she misses those visits, even though friends surround her.  Grandma and I used to walk slowly through the town's cemetery, never a grave yard as my mother teasingly called it, and she would tell me stories to go with each stone. This one was a distant relative. Shorty.  He did well farming, and later owned one of the town car dealerships.
"Don't you remember him," she'd always questioned my mother who sometimes walked with us? "His farm was just west of the crossroads several miles." Actually mother did remember him, though sometimes she pretended not.  They dated briefly in high school. Mother said he was a companion of convenience. Years later, she'd discuss her car purchases and problems with him when she visited his dealership for oil changes, a wash or minor repairs.

Grandma and I continued our slow pace through the cemetery .The next stone belonged to the neighbor to the east.   You remember," she asserted, forgetting I was a granddaughter, "when their hay stack caught fire. "

Visiting thrashers stacked the hay too close to a smoldering stump. The wind blew straw over it and before the men noticed, the hot embers set the entire stack on fire. The shouts, leaping flames and smoke caught everyone's attention in this flat land. Grandma and the girls watched from their front yard, as the boys and grandpa ran in from the fields to offer help. There was no damage to the out buildings or the house, but excitement and stories among local families lasted for years.

The third stone was a lady from her Tuesday quilting group. When small, I played under their quilts as they stitched, hidden beneath the stretched fabric surrounded by knees and feet that formed the walls of my fort.   Next came a member of her book club, then a member of her Sunday school class.  As we walked, stories blossomed, each filling the air with a slightly different fragrance. People appeared, mid-life, smiled at me, the granddaughter with the long curls, and continued their conversations. Years ago, when grandma was in her eighties she commented sadly, that there was no one in her small town with whom she could talk. All the people her age had died, and she was left, where she had lived for more than fifty years, in a town of strangers.

Grandpa didn't speak. He smiled. He is a slender man, tall even in old age. His hands are strong and rough, his eyes a deep sparkling blue. An old family photo shows grandma and grandpa standing on the front porch of their frame farmhouse --four gangly children scattered around them, grandpa holding the fifth and youngest, her face framed with golden curls. Pride lights his handsome face. Concern clouds Grandmas:  How could she ever contain this brood of jumping, running children, some in muddy overalls, for the long moments required of the camera?

Grandma and I continue our slow walk through the markers, my arm on her elbow steadying her as I have done for years. We look for familiar names. Grandpa' s mother and father are there, as
is a younger brother, who had polio as a small child. He remained crippled, never married and died in his thirties of measles. Another brother, Charlie, with his wife Bessie and a son of theirs who died just at the end of WW II, is buried a few rows away in a newer section. Charlie, a small, slim man, always smiled broadly as he warmly welcomed mother and I on our family visits. Small towns hold many secrets, none well kept.  Local gossip reported that Bessie liked few people in our family. Her life must have been difficult, since she and Charlie lived across the street from Charlie's parents’ town home in this tiny farm community.

Grandpa and grandma's farm was near his parent's farm, just a few miles south of town.
Grandpa took over his father's farm in later years, and worked the two farms with his and grandma's two sons. The second son farmed his grandparent's land when he became a man with a family. He didn't own it until just before he died, mid-life, when grandma quickly deeded it to him. His death left his only asset, this farm, to his family. His son, a late teen when his father died, worked too hard to keep the farm going and died much too young from the effort. Grandma and I, Bob listening at our sides, continue our walk through the names, families and lives.

After the cemetery visit, we drive grandma out to the farm. The barn fell down from disrepair years ago. The young family who moved into the farmhouse removed the porches, and left the house unadorned, without the softness and grandeur of those porches or a yard of perennials to soften its two and a half stories that rose sharply from the rolling prairie fields. Now, even the house is gone --destroyed by lightening. A house that once sprouted lightening rods from every peak of its tin roof.

Grandma doesn't seem to mind. We climb the small hill that held the house and yard and look out over the giant modern corn field that once held an orchard, machine sheds, chicken houses, pig pens, a corn crib, the barn, a large family garden, and pastures and fields filled with crops and animals. The new fields still rise and fall to the same small creek at the crossroads. The bridges are there, as is the road leading to the other family farm on a nearby hill. The farmhouse to the east remains with its surrounding trees providing shade and protection from the harsh spring sun.

The land holds grandma's memories lightly and releases them quickly: Wild roses spring from
the road cut across from the front porch swing. Gold finches flit in the bushes and a redheaded woodpecker pounds importantly on a backyard stump at her summons. Hens cluck their finds to chicks, as crickets crick in the woodpiles cool dampness. Fat tomato worms, soon to be picked and squished by a visiting grandchild, chew vigorous plants. Bees buzz in the honey tree that grandpa empties each fall. Pigs grunt sleepily from a mud wallow, and the back yard gate creaks and slaps shut as grandpa walks in from the barn yard to wash up on the back porch before lunch. Grandma has a basin of water, bar of soap and a towel sitting on an old small table, waiting for him. It all returns and hums in her presence. We smile softly to each other, I choke back tears as we walk return to our car and drive back into town.

In town, we stop briefly at the house where grandma and grandpa lived after they retired. Those porches remain but the flowers and garden are gone. Climbing sweet peas no longer shade the side porch from the morning sun, and the garden is empty of rows of grandma's raspberries with grandpa's treasured potato patch nearby. Even after a stroke that left him lame and using a cane, he planted then dug potatoes with a pitch fork marveling to the attending grandchild at each unexpected find. A huge gooseberry bush, with it's sharp barbs and fat, tart berries, no longer stands next to the backyard walk that runs past the garden toward an alley, where a magnificent outhouse once stood. An old cellar, just off the side porch was plowed flat into the soil. It held grandma's canning and grandpa's potatoes stored for winter months, and visiting grandchildren hidden in its cool musty dampness, as spiders stood sentry in the corners. The spiders kept the citified cousins huddled under the cellar's vaulted roof, far from their webby, protected corners.

We drive back to the cemetery. As we leave the car, I hug grandma and smile into her eyes. Grandpa nods as grandma returns to her space beside him. Her scowl is gone, her face glows.  The stone beside her reads: Walter S., died 1946; Mary E., died 1954. She knows now that I did not forget and will return more often to give her company in that too silent space so rich with lives.
 

Joan Creager

 I registered for the conference months ahead of time.  John agreed to go with me.  I said I would worry about him staying at home by himself.  He said he would worry about me driving that distance alone, so it was easy to decide to go together.  Shortly before we were to leave, I got a touch of “cold feet.”  What business had I dragging John along to while away three days during which I would attend sessions?
 But my feet didn’t get quite cold enough to make me to cancel out.

 We hit the road near daybreak to arrive for a 9:30 session.  We were right on schedule until we drove through downtown looking for 4th Street and suddenly found ourselves on the Ben Franklin Bridge irreversibly headed for Camden and an unplanned tour of a massive riverside construction site.  I was furious.  John, bless him, said something consoling.  Otherwise I might have yielded to my momentary
overwhelming urge just to forget the whole thing and drive straight home.

 Fortunately, there really was a policeman on the corner when we needed him. He gave us directions to the bridge.  On the way back across the bridge we discovered that 4th Street is easy to find.  It’s a simple right turn from the bridge –IF you’re coming from Camden.  Eventually we found the right hotel, got parked, and agreed on where and when to meet.

I soon knew coming to the conference was the right decision and worth all the hassle of getting to it.  Among the sessions offered, I chose a series on magazine articles, another on memoirs, and a third on books.  I wanted to learn about writing for magazines because my book of 61 essays had already been rejected by 37 publishers and I was hoping to rewrite some of the essays as magazine articles.

   The very first series featured a magazine editor with a down-to-earth way of getting her points across.  “First you need a good idea,” she said.  “That’s an idea you can turn into an article that will sell.  You’ve probably passed ten good ideas already today.  Pay attention.   Eavesdrop on conversations.  Carry a notebook and use it.”

 “Second, you need to know where to publish your good idea.  Study the market.”  That means making such a thorough analysis of the format and content of various magazines that you could detect nuances between very similar magazines, such as Family Circle and Women’s Day.  Ah, ha, I thought to myself.  I can do that.  It will be tedious, but I can do it.  Already I was fired up to get started analyzing magazines and revising essays to fit particular magazines.

At the memoir series, the speaker talked mostly about good writing.  “Use all your senses when you write,” she said.  “Help your reader see what you see, hear what you hear, and feel what you feel.”   She gave us ten minutes to practice using all our senses in a personal essay, starting with:  “I was standing barefoot on the cold linoleum floor when . . .”  I enjoyed the writing, but the real fun was hearing participants read their different stories.  My mind was swimming with ideas for how I could liven up my essays.

 Next the speaker offered a three-step writing technique:  pre-writing, free writing, and shaping.  I’ve been practicing at home.  In pre-writing I collect facts, dialogue, and images about a topic.  In free writing, I set a timer, say, for ten minutes, pick up a pen, and “let ‘er rip.”  No editing, no stopping to think, no worrying about organization, just writing.  In shaping, I underline powerful words and phrases and discard garbage.  I repeat these three steps until I develop a piece and polish it as near to perfection as I can get.
 

 Next came the book writing series.  The highlight was a speaker who has written several historical novels.  He drew everyone into the discussion when he read from a list of 19th and 20th century inventions and challenged participants to say when common objects were invented.   Which do you think came first, the wristwatch or the fountain pen?   Any guesses?  --------  The pen came out in 1884,
twenty-six years before the wristwatch in 1910.  How about contact lenses and cellophane?  Which came first?  --------  The lenses appeared in 1887 and cellophane not until 1904.  Our speaker made his point:  know the times about which you write.  He also fired up my enthusiasm for revising my historical novel, Pigeon Roost.

 Everyone at the conference had an opportunity to meet with a literary agent. Mine listened intently to my carefully rehearsed presentation.  But then she shook her head and said, “Your essay collection would be easier to market if it had a single theme.  My heart fell as I recalled how hard I had worked to organize the essays into five sections.  Then she asked if any of my essays had been published, and I had to answer, “no.”   I thought I was out of luck, but the agent offered to consider marketing a book of essays if they were focused on a single theme and four or five had been published in reputable magazines.  She had recommended exactly what I thought I needed to do.  That was a reassuring confirmation that I’m on the right track.

 By the end of the conference, I had experienced a kind of gestalt of ideas from the various sessions.  The pieces fit together.  I floated out of the conference tingling all over.  I was on a writer’s high.  I still get tingles up and down my spine and butterflies in my stomach just thinking about all the things I want to do because of what I learned.  If getting tingles can be a kind of spiritual experience, my
writer’s high certainly qualifies.  I do hope tingles aren’t just a joke left over from Humor Sunday.
 

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