Pub Fiction
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The Salem Wife: Reflections on Paris, Lake Arrowhead, and the Writing Life
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA
The ridge is always alive. This morning the oak leaves, the color of peaches and chestnuts, reflect the early sun—small curved hands opening to birdsong and bells. It is Easter week. I’ve just reread the prologue to Paula McLain’s captivating book, The Paris Wife, born again to words unfolding the Paris of the time between the great wars, describing the weight of despair felt everywhere, a place “full of ghosts and the walking wounded.” Yet also a place where “On any given night, you could see Picasso walking from Saint-Germain to his apartment in the rue des Grands Augustins, always exactly the same route and always looking quietly at everyone and everything. Nearly anyone might feel like a painter walking the streets of Paris then because the light brought it out in you, the shadows alongside the buildings, and the bridges which seemed to want to break your heart…”
Over ninety years later, Paris is not so different, nor the world. Such a lovely place to suffer. Loving, seeking, and undergoing the process of constructing a life wherever we might be. Breathing. I am not in Paris now, nor anywhere like it, but having been there, if you were one who walked the streets as an artist, means you keep it always, tucked safely close to your poet’s heart, drawing on the images and the memories of those exquisitely crowded streets.
It can be intimidating to write after that. How does one earn a credential that in essence joins your mean scratchings to the great ones’? Better to stay home, you sometimes think. Give up these grand ideas and dreams and do something practical.
So you do, something practical that is. But you never actually become practical. A cloud never goes unnoticed, nor a perfectly expressed thought, nor a moment of harmony. Well, you can, at least, keep a diary. Sometimes years go by in this way. Practically. But the inner search never stops, never quite gives up on you. Reading feeds your urge to write. A drive alone. The heartbreak in your child’s cry. Your divorce. Your mother dying. The hummingbird glimmering near your head, begging for nectar, as you drink your morning coffee.
Somehow, if you can steal some time to write it down, you know you will capture some of it, store it away in your poet’s heart right next to the spot where you keep Paris. So it is this morning, in Lake Arrowhead, California, on my daughter’s deck. My home here is no more. Soon I will steal away from these ridges, and the mighty oaks, and the pines. Away from many happy years spent teaching, raising children, and welcoming grandchildren into the world, going toward the once known, now foreign place of my childhood, toward a future day where I will sit at a desk near a river in Salem, Wisconsin, my husband by my side, being practical no more.
©Rachel “Lori” Pohlman, 2014
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Anniversaries, Retirement, and Finally, Storms
February 28, 2014
Lake Arrowhead, California, USA
My sister-in-law and her husband are just celebrating their anniversary in Arizona today. Heard they had some great Italian food. Tomorrow, my mother and father-in-law will be celebrating their anniversary with lobster or shrimp or something-seafood in Wisconsin. This makes me think about my marriage. I’m a lucky girl. I will see my husband in about six weeks, after a two month work-related separation. I look forward to his phone calls the same way I did when first we met. “Will he call? Does he miss me?” But more than that, “I adore his voice and his stories.”
And then, wonderful news, California is finally getting relief from our drought. This has arrived in a twin package–two storms, the first a mild-mannered rainstorm from the south, and the second, hitting now, a real ripper from the north. I drove home from school today in water deeper than my tiny New Beetle tires are high. Walked into the cabin, lit a fire, and poured a glass of wine. Deep red.
As my dear brother used to say, “Life is wonderful, if you let it be.”
Blessings to All.
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Eight to Twelve
Mom’s new husband, Oz, a 5’3” tall Cuban American, was very much in the picture now. He and Mom would literally roll up the carpet and dance for hours. The music had changed. There was no more Keely Smith—now there was an astonishing variety of country, Latin, jazz, pop, even gospel—anything that caught their fancy. Oz was irrepressible, singing and dancing in his every movement. So different from my dad, so good for my mother. At 5’8” barefoot, she fairly towered over him when they danced.
They embarrassed me, but I had to smile, just as long as they didn’t keep me awake on a school night, which they often did. I became the “little warden.” They were so inconsiderate and out of control, I knew someone had to step in, and of course that would be me. They seemed to find these little upbraidings of mine quite amusing. “We really must be more civil, dear,” Oz might say, his big white teeth gleaming at Mom. “The little warden has to go to school tomorrow.” And then, of course, they would continue dancing and forget all about me. One of their favorite lectures of mine was the one that began with my charging out of my bedroom yelling at them to turn down the music and ended with me sliding all the way across the living room floor on my ass. This party involved a group of middle-aged swingers swimming in the neighbor’s pool before rolling up the rug. “Oh, if you could only have seen yourself,” I’d hear over and over afterwards, “so indignant.”
“And with her little nightie flying up in the air like a sail.” Oz couldn’t control his snorting laugh.
Okay, fine. So I guess I didn’t make much headway with them… Their music, laughter, and the occasional rip roaring argument continued to disturb my sleep for the first few years of their marriage, and this was especially hard on me, because I really liked to sleep. A lot. It was similar in an odd way to the earlier experiences I’d had of trying to sleep while Mom cried. But now she was fine, so why was I still so upset? So tired? Sad?
Often, instead of mother, now it was me lying in bed crying.
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My Daughter’s Smile
My Daughter’s Smile
I have spent a lifetime working toward that brilliant, instant, pure uplifting.
The corners of that perfect mouth, turning up to God. Never forgetting the miracle that she came in part from my own imperfect body.
I love you, Hayley Noelle. Now.
My moving is not away. This world doesn’t work that way. There is no leaving love. No closed doors. We are two women, with journeys that come together, over and over. It’s a circle, you know?
A grand circle, too.
Never forget that circles never end.
Future, past, and today, this moment, all of these are ours—to share.
My Daughter’s Smile is a miracle.
Love, Mom
January 2014
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Leaving Lake Arrowhead
Staying Up, Falling Down, and Surviving Sea Level
January 7, 2014
Over the edge. That’s a very genuine concern I’ve had as a mountain citizen. Staying up here, not falling over the edge, I mean. And I’m sure I’m not in a minority. It happens all too often; a vibrant life taken by a curve, a boulder, a patch of ice, another driver. Going over the edge is the risk we mountain folk take living a life which propels us along a highway called Rim of the World, many of us climbing up and down and far into the tangled freeways below on a regular, if not constant, basis. I tuck the fear away and try to imagine myself connected to the road, guided by an invisible yet powerful track that won’t ever allow me to really experience that dream sequence free-fall into nothing. You know the one. That’s my secret for staying on the Rim. But it’s more than the roads; it’s the life. The life above. The views, the air, the bears, the lake. Knowing you’ve been granted something very rare, somehow you’ve been allowed to live for a while in a place of great beauty.
We’ve been approaching that edge, my husband and I, none-the-less, for quite some time. As much as we’ve tried to maintain our security here, the ground has been relentlessly slipping away beneath us. It began, as far I can tell, about the time my brother became ill and we brought him to live with us. I had idolized him all of my life. My husband loved him dearly. Despite our efforts, hopes, and our very deep love, we soon realized that he wasn’t going to get better, was in fact getting worse, and that we weren’t going to be able to save his life. Slip.
That was also a time of financial hardship for much of the country. While my job was secure, there were no foreseeable raises, and benefits were costing more. My husband, used to working long hours and getting plenty of overtime, was reduced to part-time hours and part-time wages. Slip.
Soon, my emergency appendectomy, a surprise in itself, removed another wedge of stability when we learned the appendix had contained a rare goblet cell adenocarcinoid tumor. Slip.
I began to hear a quiet rumble. Felt it under my feet and inside my soul.
Mike was no longer working at all.
Billy was so sick.
I was scheduled for surgery and then chemotherapy.
Over the edge. Slipping. Fearing a violent end. Praying for peace.
When Billy died, so did a part of me. We mourned him as we tried to maintain our balance, still on the edge, and teetering. Within two weeks, our dear old dog died. She had refused to eat after losing Billy. Then our darling seventeen-year-old cat followed.
We lived in a house of death, set on top of a purple mountain, surrounded by deep green forests, and lit by gentle sun and easy moon. I held on to the beauty, clung to it for life, dug my heels into the slivering earth wanting nothing more than stability…that and an end to death and was that too much to ask?
Slipping.
Those months, those years, did take us over the edge. And we’re leaving the mountain now. But not into the abyss. We chose Wisconsin, instead. It’s pretty flat there, and Mike has a new job. It’s a bittersweet compromise. My grown children and grandchildren will be so far away. They are sad, and I am torn. I trust we will find wonderful new ways to connect, both in Wisconsin and back here in California when I’m able to visit. I’m also leaving friends, a church family, and the amazing students, teachers, administrators, and staff of Rim of the World Unified School District. A career that’s given me a heart so full that I know I will never be lonely. A community I love.
But we didn’t fall off the mountain. We leave here whole and nourished. Back at sea level, Mike begins a new job doing what he loves most. I will rest and write and maybe escape the ghosts I loved and left up in a beautiful place, on the edge of a continent, a place called Lake Arrowhead.
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My Little Mission Inn
This is my newest Christmas ornament, made by Cora Lee, my dear Mission Inn writing friend. She is a docent at the Inn, a National Writing Project Fellow, a teacher of writing, a world traveler, and a very genuinely fun human being. If you haven’t written at the Mission, do. For us it is a twice a year dose of writing magic.
December 20, 2013 · 3:21 am
Kenosha, Retirement, Thanksgiving, and Love
Wouldn’t it be magical if Mike and I could go home? We are trying to get there. I’m thankful for so many things, and freshly grieving for so many others. I made pumpkin pie for my grandkids today–couldn’t make the second pumpkin nor the pecan due to crazy poor planning and no pie tins–and I tried to say goodbye to our tiny new grandchild, a boy, never given a breath on this planet. I celebrated an anniversary yesterday–a Lake Arrowhead marriage that has sustained me and given me new life. And I recently spent time with my husband’s sisters and two of my nieces–gifts to my heart and soul. There isn’t anything I’ve lived through that wasn’t blessed, though I was for many years blinded to the blessings. Now I know. And I give thanks,
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