It's a dirty job, but...

I teach college composition, literature, creative writing and honor’s English at a state university. But I was never one of those kids on a clear, determined trajectory along a carefully considered career path. I was more the aimless wanderer who happened on my career fairly late in the game. Along the way, I’ve had some weird jobs, for which I’m grateful, because I learned important life lessons from every one…

1. Car hop at A & W. This was my first job at 14. I learned two valuable lessons: (a) It’s not okay to throw 50 cents in small change back in someone’s car and yell, “You need this worse than I do!” (b) If a pimp in a lime green suit, all kinds of high, jumps the parking curb and drives THROUGH the plate-glass storefront up to the counter, then leans out his window and orders a chicken dinner, get him chicken dinner. Now.

2. Nursing Assistant. I did this twice, once at 15 and again at 24. Two things happened that fundamentally changed me as a human being. First, a sharp but frail old man not allowed to live on the same floor with his non-ambulatory wife, hunted me down in the hallway and slipped a quarter in my hand. He thanked me for being nice to his wife. A frustrated NA had told her God didn’t love her for being such a bother. I had found her crying, so I’d brushed her hair and sat with her a bit. Nothing noble – just simple human decency – for which her husband felt he had to PAY. Second, a youngish man with cerebral palsy – Cletus Stalnaker – motioned with his head one day toward his dresser. Through a series of my questions and his nods, he directed me to a notebook in a drawer he wanted me to read. I sat in a chair beside his bed and cried as I read a notebook full of poetry he’d typed with his head, using an electric typewriter and a stylus attached to a headband.

 

3. Janitor. I cleaned dental offices at night. I learned I’d rather use old railroad spikes for toothpicks than EVER go to the dentist again.

4. Food service truck driver. I was 17. I had to wear an adorable little outfit (very French maid, though I didn’t realize that at the time), and drive a deli truck to industrial/factory sites, park, open up a side window, and serve food for coffee & lunch breaks. I felt like a lamb cornered by rabid wolves and lasted only a week. Plusses: I got to cruise Omaha driving a big-ass truck, and, as a redhead, I loved that the company was called Red Top Food Service.

5. Bronco’s Drive-In. I was 15. I learned you can eat a lot of fries in the time it takes you to save up for an Ovation guitar. Too many fries, really. Plus: My name was Prescher then, and my boss, Johnny, called me “Precious.” Cool.

6. Maximum Security bank teller. I worked for First National Bank, in the basement vault. I learned that a smart, skilled young woman may be forced to train a dull ex-UNL football player with only rudimentary head-butting skills, who will then move upstairs into a management position and make at least five times the money paid to the smart young woman who trained him. This was an invaluable lesson that I would re-learn again and again, in one way or another, in almost every job I’ve had since.

7. Taco Bell. I worked there one hour. I went in for my first day, put on my uniform, watched the boss spoon grease over and over the taco meat for 20 minutes while he talked, said I had to get something out of my car, and drove off in my uniform.

8. Drive-up bank teller. I learned that if your female co-worker wears pleated miniskirts and exaggerates her movements as she stretches up to reach the capsule in the vacuum tube, your male boss will give her a raise. I also learned that if you, in your smart & sensible pantsuits, threaten to quit if he doesn’t also give you a raise, you’d better be prepared to quit.

9. Residential Care Assistant. I learned about the incredible power of drugs. The organization I worked for provided care for folks with mental (and often physical) disabilities in neighborhood group homes. I took care of one woman who swore, screamed, stuck her finger in her eye, and constantly stripped and crawled around the house naked. After a year or so, the organization hired a new oversight physician, who reviewed & changed her meds. The last time I saw the woman I had cared for, she was calm, fully clothed, and clearing the dinner table.

10. Cocktail waitress in a hotel bar. I learned that RAF pilots who drop room keys on your tray have NOT mistakenly given you a key instead of a tip, you poor naïve girl. The key IS your tip. Drop the key in the hotel pool.

11. Ad agency copywriter. I learned that (a) Less. Really. Is. More. (b) Grammar is subjective when it comes to advertising. (c) There are only so many ways one can say “We care” before one comes around to, “We could care less,” and (d) ad agency people, unlike many academics, have senses of humor.

All of these experiences have made me a more patient, compassionate, light-hearted and sometimes cautious teacher. And above all, they remind me that what my students learn outside the classroom will ultimately be waaaay more important than my third (or thirteenth) lesson on the evils, of, comma, splices.

All Hail the King: WATER

“Water is King,” I says to Ray. “Yes,” says Ray, head bowed in reverence. “Yes it is.” Then we pull down our face masks, cross our arms over our chests, and fall backwards off the steps into the depths of the…basement. But let’s back up a minute.

I used to think nicotine was king, the way it can twist you around its little finger practically before you’ve even met. But this spring on the Row has taught me that nicotine is just the naughty playboy prince. Water – covering about 71% of the earth’s surface and making up 65% of YOUR body – reigns supreme. So yeah, go ahead and redirect rivers to build your sweet little farms, but just don’t get too comfy; any time he feels like it, the King can take it all back.

Last spring and summer on the Row were unusually wet and cool. This past winter, we were buried in snow. And so far, this spring has been a delightful mix of rain, thunderstorms, wind, and more rain. The upshot is saturated ground. The water table is, oh, maybe a bazillion feet above ground level with nowhere to go. Creeks (cricks is what you get in your neck when you play Rise of Atlantis for four hours straight), streams, and rivers are brimming or overflowing. Closer to home, the dog pond out by our meditation tower has spilled into the tower yard. The shelter belt and half the pasture to the south are under water. I slog around in a daze of ancestral muscle memories of the primordial bog. I’m driven to root for cattail tubers. And we live on HIGH ground. Below and a few miles to the west of us, in the pre-dam-system river valley, the iconic Midwestern “sea of corn” is now literally the sea, whitecaps and all.

So when we got home from a lovely, restful trip to Minneapolis last weekend, we had a new basement swimming pool. Our basement isn’t finished; we use it for storage and Ray’s workshop (and storage for all our kids’ stuff, "just for a little while, honest, Mom"). There’s no sump pump – we’ve never needed one. But the King welcomed us home with about 4” of water when he discovered he could rally his troops in the flooded old stone windmill well at the east edge of the property, march along the ancient unused underground iron pipe from the well to the house, then storm – drip by gurgle by drip – our basement. (“He” is appropriate here – only a snooty monarch would do this to a woman’s sacred canning & wine cellars.) We’ve spent this past week digging a sump hole and installing a pump, burning waterlogged cardboard and elevating stuff. But thanks to Ray’s BFH (big frickin’ Thor hammer), my new boyfriends (the Campbell’s Supply & sump pump sucker guys), the tireless work of our youngest son, and our good friend who had the bad luck to stop by mid-bailing, we’ve arrived at a truce punctuated by thrice-daily wet-vac’ing.

We know it's temporary. We know the King wants his stuff back. The forecast calls for more rain. I’m sewing sequins on my Esther Williams outfit, and we’re growing gills (a plus for underwater mowing). But the iris, alium, and coral bells are gorgeous. We planted tomatoes, hot peppers and corn during a brief 2-hour sun window, and the peacocks are learning to quack. And the King has spared us the unbelievable rath dealt to Missouri, Mississippi, Minneapolis, even Pierre in South Dakota, and so many others. Some folks have lost everything. People are missing. Many have died.

We’re lucky. So we won’t whine or complain. We’ll spend this holiday weekend memorializing the dry years, wet-vac’ing in shifts, emptying dehumidifiers, and moving fans around. We’ll count our blessings and lotion up our webbed toes. We’ll pay our tithes to the King, trusting he’ll soon be distracted by that steamy vamp, Summer.

The "Crapshoot Theory" of Parenting

I had the best Mother’s Day ever this year. Mom farm/critter-sat so Ray and I could road-trip to the Black Hills, where we got to hang with my oldest kid and his family. He had a gig at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, a benefit for the Americana Music Festival. He was on the bill with other friends of ours – Boyd Bristow & Kenny Putnam, Hank Harris & Jami Lynn, and others. At the end of Ryan’s set, he announced that he didn’t usually do un-original music, but he wanted to do a song that was a poem by his favorite poet – his mom – he’d set to music. And he said his mom was in the audience, so he’d “better not screw it up.” It was a total surprise to me, so of course, Ray and I both sat there crying like the babies we are. And before the night was through, I also got to sit in on a couple songs, singing with a stage full of jamming musicians. Could I BE any luckier?!?

On the drive back, our youngest son called just to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day – just a cheerful, non-emergency thinking-of-you call. While we were gone, my daughter and her family went out to the farm to spend Mother’s Day with Mom, and when we got back home that night, my daughter’s beautiful, delicious pink champagne cupcakes were waiting for us.

I’d like to take credit for the amazing adults our kids are becoming. I’d like to say I have wise parental advice. But I know the truth: it’s a crapshoot. I learned this important life lesson back when Ray had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery at age 50. He’s a fit, lean, non-smoking, tofu-eating, hard-working man. One evening during his recovery, we were sitting in Ray’s room at the Heart Hospital when a man walked past his door, looking for a friend he meant to visit. The guy was 60-ish, had a belly like a full laundry sack dangling and swaying over his belt, smelled like bad cigars, and – seriously – was eating a cheeseburger. He was strolling around the HH in his devil-may-care oblivion, while Ray had just been cut, probed, stuck, sliced, power-sawed, and cracked open like a walnut. Ray and I looked at each other for a long minute as the guy went by, and that’s when the Crapshoot Theory hit us.

The Crapshoot Theory, as it applies to parenting, accounts for crack moms whose kids grow up to be volunteer dentists with Doctors Without Borders or theoretical physicists whose kids grow up to be serial 7-11 stickup men. We can talk about nurturing, nutrition, good karma, guidance, education and the rest all we want, but there’s simply no clear reason why some kids grow up good, some go astray, and some end up Wall Street grifters.

All I can say about my own parenting is that I did the best I could. I made LOADS of mistakes. I had TONS of help, including my mom and grandmother – the Super Women – and Ray’s patient love, tolerance, and quiet determination (crucial balance to my hyper-parenting style). I was sometimes waaaaay too intense. I was overprotective. Or I was completely in the dark.

I pushed inner stuff over outer stuff. I didn’t drive my kids to get straight A’s, dedicate themselves to sports, or go to church every Sunday. Maybe as a result of this (or planetary alignments, barometric pressure, Universal whim…), none of my kids was interested in college. They’re all artists – in music, with cakes, or on skateboards (maybe I should have drilled in some sort of ‘make a decent living’ lesson…).

Instead, I pushed (nagged, harangued, harped on) my kids to trust in family, love, and peace; to write thank-you cards; to see everyone – even big meanies – as part of the Big Community; to be grateful for the richness of their lives (even back when we were on Food Stamps & living on Kraft macaroni & cheese); and to be aware of others’ suffering. And yes, you should be visualizing me in a peasant blouse and a tiara of daisies right now, with “Get Together” playing in your head. And maybe as a result of this (or more likely the Crapshoot Theory), our kids have all become kind-hearted, affectionate, generous, compassionate human beings. And THAT’S a pretty incredible roll of the dice.

Here's the poem my son set to music...

Old Family Photo

This is the grandmother.

You see how she has dressed

the daughter in dark broadcloth,

eyelet at the sleeves, each fold pressed.

The sons on either side,

smooth and starched,

circles of cropped hair shining,

form the beginning and end of the arch.

You see how the grandfather

looms black and white

above them all, unsmiling,

hands hidden, small eyes glaring, frightened.

The seated grandmother

spreads her flowering hands,

touches them all.

Below the waist, she melts into shadow.

Rescue Me

I’ve recently been diagnosed with an anomalous gene mutation – the HHN-i (Human Hyper-Nurturer-insoluble) gene. It appears to be a dominant mutation passed along familial female lines, causing an overdeveloped nurturing instinct. Carriers typically take in strays (animal and human), cook in stadium-sized quantities, cut other peoples’ food into bite-sized morsels, and tell other adults what not to wear in public. Another effect of the mutation is an invisible aura emanating from carriers – a sort of magnetic beacon – that sucks in like a wormhole any passing life form the carrier thinks would benefit from tuna casserole and a fluffed pillow. The diagnosis came as no surprise to us here at Uncannery Row Convalescent Care Facility & Home for Wayward Creatures – the evidence is everywhere.

For example, we just picked up Rickie Lee, a 7 or 8-year-old spayed, declawed cat we “inherited” from our son, from the vet. She had a $300 tumor removed from her leg. While we wait for lab results to decide on our next move, she sulks around the house in her brand new Elizabethan collar, and I try to follow an impressive list of post-operative instructions that include “no jumping or stair climbing” (she’s a CAT…they knew that, right?).

In the onion-domed dog house just outside our back door, Kitty Wells, a tiny stray calico cat someone dumped at the Row a few weeks back, tends to four 2-week-old kittens while we tend to her – organic cat food, goat’s milk, and flannel sheets to line her kitten box. I spent yesterday making a nice new box the kittens couldn’t crawl out of, and drawing up an extensive application for those brave enough to offer a home for one of the kittens – 2 orange tabbies, a grey calico, and a black “skunk” kitty with white nose & paws. Home inspections are mandatory.

Our 10-year-old Australian Shepherd, Jada (a Humane Society rescue), is now on a daily aspirin & glucosamine regimen, and our 3-year-old Schnoodle, Yogi (the dog version of Denise-the-Menace), has been bringing baby bunnies back from the pasture – lovely little offerings on the back porch, which I mourn and Kitty Wells steals.

I’ve also been baking parrot bread – organic corn meal, chopped nuts, vegetable puree and organic eggs – which I cut into little squares and freeze in weekly portions. Triggered by the longer spring days, our rescued Lilac Crown Amazon parrot, Polly Hester (she’s between 15-20), does daily rainforest calls at mind-numbing volume. Meanwhile, about the time Kitty showed up, Stella Faye, our 13-year-old African grey parrot, began incessantly calling “Sophie!” followed by the whistle we use to call the dogs. Sophie, a cat we had when Stella was a baby, has been gone for 10 years or more. Spooky.

Then there are the peacocks, of course. We’re heading into nesting season with 16 adults. Our 6 adult males have been doing their loudest “HELP! HELP!” mating calls for weeks now, starting just after dawn, bless their hearts. Four hens have already gone to nest out in the tall pasture grass, and a couple younger hens are eyeing the window wells, so I need to get out there with screen. The nesting hens do a “fly in” each evening to snub the boys and to check out the buffet, which I keep stocked with corn, black oil sunflower, and a little Wal-Mart cat food for nesting calcium & protein.

Our newest victim of my HHN-i beacon is Jeremiah the invisible frog, who’s bad sense of direction led him to tunnel through the dirt and come up not out by the frog pond, but under our greenhouse boardwalk. We’ve never seen him, but his intermittent soft croaking adds to the crazy Row symphony.

There’s no shutting down the HHN-i gene (in her 70’s, my mom is STILL taking in foundlings). So the best I can do is hide inside, hoping our metal roof temporarily blocks the beacon, while Ray calculates the lumber we’ll need to build a corn crib and add on a cat wing…

The Mother of All Days

Mother’s Day Shmother’s Day. What about the other 364 days? There’s nothing tricky or particularly noble about springing for a last-minute garden gnome or potted geranium one day a year to thank your mom for…oh, I dunno…willingly pushing your bowling ball head through her own tiny, delicate passageway so she can suffer & toil through the next 20, 30, 40 or more years of this experiment that is your life. Just ask me. I KNOW what I was like as a teen (O lord), and I got my mom a garden statue for Mother’s Day this year…

I’ll try to contain my rant about how women are (as John Lennon suggested more controversially), the slaves of the world. Or how moms who work outside the home are STILL expected (often in unspoken but well-understood language) to also provide the bulk of child rearing, home care, meal planning & prep, laundry & sheet-changing, wifery and other essential services. Or how moms (because they’re typically the primary child care givers) so often bear the brunt of tantrums, ER visits, serious sass, disgusting petrified socks in the back of a closet, broken hearts, and torturous years of brooding teen angst—not to mention frangi-pangi incense and bad electric guitar. Or how Mother’s Day dinner often involves Mom in the kitchen again, sweating through another hot flash, looking for 6” of free counter space amid the piles of dirty dishes she’ll wash later, as she tries to perfectly time your baked lasagna and broccoli au gratin. And then she’d better come to the table smiling, dammit. Yikes…did I say I’d try to contain all that? Silly me.

One of the many things I love about being a midlife woman is that I now have a strange panoramic vision that lets me view at once my children, grandchildren, the Grand Matriarch (my mom), and ghost images of my grandmother. And because I can now clearly see from each of these perspectives what my mom endured, I slam my head against the fridge several times a day in penance. And I’m probably a baaad person for secretly grinning, now that I have grandkids, whenever my children run smack-dab into their own karmic dirty socks.

So this Mother’s Day, I offer a poem for my mom. And EVERY day, I honor the difficulty, sacrifices, power, sorrow and continuing beauty of her life. I offer my gratitude to the Universe that she’s still here, still patiently teaching me (clearly, I have MUCH more to learn). I apologize to her for, well, 1961 through 1985. And I bestow whatever blessings I can on my daughter, my daughter-in-law, my sisters-in-law and my granddaughter—to all mothers and mothers-in-the-making. And for those of you moms expected to cook a Mother’s Day dinner, remember that a boatload of cayenne pepper in the sauce livens up the party, and you won’t be hungry by the time it’s all on the table, anyway…

INVOCATION

If you were any more alive in me, Mother,

my heart would burst, split open

like a ripe peach soaked in holy water.

Whisper from every corner of this clapboard

cathedral, Our Lady of Perpetual Chores,

your small and powerful prayers:

white coral bells

itsy bitsy spider

battle hymn of the republic

Chant caramel pudding and corn casserole

recipes, ancient sacred texts handed down

from your own mother, that dark marble saint

atop the bell tower, one arm wrapped around

a gilded laundry basket, a silver pressure cooker

cradled in the other. Her heart, too, burst open.

Keep me, I ask, in your blessing of trying, failing,

laughing about failure. Grant me the grace

of history, repeated mistakes, and promise.

Look down on me with love when they raise you

to the bell tower, at the way I sing your praises

off-key, from behind my daughter’s stove.

St. Dymphna, keep our heads on straight...

Though I’m not Catholic, I can probably thank my 11^th-grade total immersion in Catholic doctrine by the nuns of Notre Dame Academy for Girls in Omaha for my obsession with saints. I’m fascinated with how sainted individuals, especially women, might have seen their own lives, as opposed to the romantic re-writing of history that seems to come with canonization.

Dymphna, according to legend, was the 13th-century daughter of an Irish pagan chieftain. She converted to Christianity at the age of 10 or 11, shortly before her mother died. Her father, crazy with “grief” (I’m biting my tongue here), tried to bed his daughter because she looked so much like his late wife. Dymphna and a priest, Gerebernus, fled, taking refuge in a chapel. Alas, her father found them, had his minions kill the priest, and chopped off his own daughter’s head for disobeying.

I always feel a wee bit closer to St. Dymphna, patron saint of the mentally ill, at the end of the semester, when my own mental health is in desperate need of a blessing. So on this last day of National Poetry Month, here’s my petition to the determined Irish lass. (For more info on the sile na gigh mentioned in the poem, see http://www.sheelanagig.org.)

ST. DYMPHNA

            patron of the mentally ill

In fitful dreams I find you shivering

in rowan and ferns along the Blackwater

river, wreathed in St. John’s wort

& anointed with yellow-rattle,

half-starved and wrapped in a celtar

cinched at the waist with an oak rosary,

humming strains of your mother’s brief

lullaby. But your father was a chieftain

and knew the magic, found you anyway.

Grief or madness drove him to finger

your small bones for signs of her

in the curve of your emerging breasts,

the winged cup of your pelvis, your

silky down, and you a fugitive

child with courage enough to keep locked

that garden gate, though he found you

again, sealed the gate forever. Forsaken

daughter, in my own trembling delusion

I am your Síle na Gigh, we offer up

a novena to our Mother and for nine days

I give you this blessing too—my stone lap

cushioned with heather & moss, pillow

for your bruised and worried brow.

(Amen.)

"Mala," an April holidays poem

It’s Easter weekend on the Row, and I’ve just come off of three days straight of 40 productive, rewarding, but exhausting back-to-back student conferences over literary research papers. By Thursday, Day 3, I was doing a lot of thinking about death and resurrection, believe me. I’ve also been thinking about the American commercialization of Easter – coordinated outfit/handbag shopping, forced childhood scavenging for outdoor-contaminated candy, mutant egg-laying bunnies, and a lust for patent leather shoes. The fact that so many people live comfortably with the bizarre commingling of a high holy day and a shopping holiday is a testament to our flexibility, I guess.

There are loads of other commemorative days being celebrated in April, too, like Hindu Ramayana, traditional Chinese Qingming, Jewish Pesach, Baha’i Ridvan, Theravadin Buddhist new year, Earth Day, Cosmonaut’s Day, and probably many more. And, it’s National Poetry Month, for Pete’s sake! So here’s another poem, this one long. I wanted to see if I could (1) write a poem that sounded like a “universalist” chant; (2) write it in 9-line stanzas to represent the multiples of 9 beads commonly found in Buddhist malas, Islamic tasbih, and other kinds of prayer beads, and (3) incorporate John Lennon’s mantra, “Love is all you need.”

Happy holidays, whichever ones you observe…

MALA

In the beginning

was the breath

inspiration exhalation illumination.

It was and was not, stirring

pale light, salt, clay

in a deep cauldron of stars

pitched to one side

spilling gaseous invocations

into thin air—

ohm mane padme hum

ohm namah shivaya

our father our mother

Saturnian retrograde yin yang

nameless spirit unified heart and mind

mitakuye oyasin tanzih tashbih

St. Jude thin ray of hope

grandfather grandmother

Jahveh I Am That I Am

and the breath shaped its perfect

full mouth around the Word

formed us from three elements

set us down in the fourth, fire of the Word,

let us play and burn for ten-thousand years

making oblations in the fire

tears wine sperm tears blood

let us tease spark from vein

and hold it against our skin

until cinders worked their way beneath our nailbeds

until flame licked the bone

until spark curled up in the belly

until the only heat was in the belly

until the air was cool and dry

until the ground went cold

until we understood flame and ash

until we sat naked and shivering

until the rain fell.

Pools formed in indentations

footprints of wandering gods

and on the slick surface of the water

we saw ourselves, clumsy, too fat or thin,

aching and wounded

we saw each other only in that rippled mirror

eyes cast down and fixed

on an image of our own bluing upturned hands

so delicate so hypnotic that we

would not cross the water with a poultice

would not set the bone

would not speak the Word

and darkness fell.    In the blackness

silhouettes against a pocked moon

we pushed and pulled the muck

into mountains snowcapped and treacherous

until fenced in, we came to adore

the dark and silvered mirrors

distorted images of bent knees, sloping backs,

small breasts, muscled thighs.

We formed our small trembling mouths

into awkward shapes

stood half-erect with heads tilted

filled our lungs with air

filled the air with only hoarse wavering

grunts and hisses

could not fit our mouths around the Word.

The earth, this pool, is the cracked mirror

in which we are still caught as

ten thousand planets heat and cool

ten thousand stars blink to life

scatter, explode in the watery night

while we shiver, naked,

dim shadows against a cave wall, mouthing

the Word that would release us

the Word we clamp behind our teeth.

In the dark, in the cold

in crags or on sudden plateaus we strike

blindly at rocks, dig at the root

but always make our way back to the water

back to our selves

rippled and silver in brief glints of fog or moon

broken when the breath moves the Word

across the surface of the water

where we lean in, locked in a long gaze.

And sometimes we hear it,

the perfect Word skimming the water, pushing up

along rock faces, drifting into gaps with a sigh

a beautiful sad tremolo

that clashes in dissonant chords

with cries from across

a distant mirrored pool

brackish now, encircled in a white salt ring,

our temporary crust of light.

ohm mane padme hum

ohm namah shivaya

our father our mother

Saturnian retrograde yin yang

nameless spirit unified heart and mind

mitakuye oyasin tanzih tashbih

St. Jude thin ray of hope

grandfather grandmother

Jahveh I Am That I Am

make my jaws unclench

make my fists uncurl

make my heart split open like a ripe plum

make my arms reach out over the water

make my eyes look up from this illusion

make my silver blood pour out over the ground

make my lungs fill to bursting, my mouth round,

help me make the sound, the only prayer, the Word—

            Love