Michiana Chronicles

Friday, November 27, 2009

Celebration

I love any excuse to open a bottle of cheap champagne.  I wear a sparkly gold rhinestone tiara when I run 5Ks, just to make it more fun.  Feather boas used to be part of my going out wardrobe.  Of course, this was before having kids marked a decline in ‘going out’ to places where a feather boa would be festive rather than a subtle clue of mental instability. But I still have three of them.  I like to celebrate anything, everything, and I think that is why I enjoy my life so much.  Even amidst these troubled times, a shiny bit of fun can help see us through.

When is the last time you celebrated?  For me, it was crazy pink hair extensions for breast cancer awareness.  Then there was the silly happy dance when the scale in my bathroom whispered sweet nothings to me about big weight loss.  The time before that was when I invited a bunch of friends to celebrate my hubby’s birthday with a surprise dinner.  That was actually really cool--everyone managed to show up including some folks I wasn’t expecting. Even my husband showed up despite me giving hideously incorrect GPS coordinates and sending him sixty miles in the wrong direction.  I’m glad he called first to double check.  Sheesh.

I’m the type of girl who gets very excited over the little things...there are so many more little things to enjoy!  Don’t you think it is more fun to enjoy the little surprises and joys in any given day than to hold your breath for the big ones only a few times a year?  Why rest all your delight in the hope that someone will finally get you that pony you have always wanted this Christmas?  Why balance the quality of your birthday on the level of high tech gift your wife surprises you with?  Why wait for a rainbow to take your breath away when you could find fun and beauty and breathlessness in the rain instead?  (Is that too ‘puppies and kittens and rainbows’ for you?)

Okay, okay, before I get too Pollyanna, I’ll admit this is a choice, an active decision on how to live your days. It is not for everyone.  Some people thrive on conflict, melancholy and drama.  Some people have to carry the bad mood around with them or they do not know who they are.  But the rest of us...really all of us...could choose to seek out occasions for joy, for celebration.  If you cannot find it in your own life, then celebrate someone else!  Actually send out the birthday cards this year, send thank you notes.  Take a coworker out for a lunch celebration when they conquer their In Box.  Call your parents and thank them for whatever it is they did well raising you.  Buy the little trinkety thing that makes you think of a friend or family member...they will be surprised and feel appreciated in a big way.  Get one of those “You Are Special Today” plates or pull out the good china and use it even just for leftovers!

The thing is, at the end of the day we all could do well with more celebrations.  We all will be better people with some extra thanksgiving and a little silliness on top.  The dog got a bath; bake some special cookies.  You conquered Monday; turn off the TV and have a swing dance contest.  The neighbor helped you with the yard work; send a cookie bouquet.  You choose to be grateful for the small happiness in your life; throw on a feather boa and pop the four dollar champagne!

Friday, November 20, 2009

Action Heroes

The ER staff and I are standing in the empty trauma room, nothing to do but make restless bad jokes until the patients arrive.  The EMS radio only said it was a house fire, one adult female and two minors.  The ambulances are three minutes out.

We’re ready.  Oh man, are we ready.  We’ve got a half million dollars worth of technology in this room stocked like an arsenal with medical supplies: Allegiance gauze pads, Kimberly–Clark face masks, NovaPlus powder-free exam gloves, an Agilent EKG monitor, a Newport HT 50 ventilator and the main attraction, sitting on a shelf like a smug Napoleon, the Philips Heartstart XL defibrillator, green light on, fully charged.

I used to think all this medical weaponry was cool.  But it’s not the hardware that heals.  It’s the people.  Real action heroes waiting to use their superpowers.  We’ve got radiology, lab and respiratory technicians, staff nurses, anesthesiologist, two ER physicians and on standby the trauma rock stars: orthopedic, neuro and cardiothoracic surgeons.  During routine shifts the staff bicker with each other, complain about their exes and wade through the uninsured earaches and foul-mouthed drunks.  Until a critical patient hits the door.  Then they snap into high form: professional, efficient, calling orders, clamping arteries.  They can handle anything.

Except one thing.

Which is why I’m here.  The hospital chaplain.  Amidst all this weaponry I seem about as out of place as a Mennonite on a military base.

Bam two EMTs roll the first gurney through the doors and it’s a young woman strapped down, her face black with soot, coughing and yelling through her O2 mask, “Where’s my kids, where’s my kids?” Then boom two firefighters clomp in pushing a boy in Sponge Bob pajamas coughing and crying so hard the veins on his neck stand out.  They all reek of wood smoke.  The mom and the boy, hollering like that, will be ok.  But then the third victim arrives, a little girl flat on a gurney with an EMT squeezing a ventilator bag above her face.  The girl’s not moving, her skin is the wrong color, and as they veer into the third trauma room her limp arm swings off the cart and thumps the door frame.  I walk toward her room but a nurse jerks the curtain shut in my face.  Ten long minutes pass.  Finally, the physician inside looks up from the useless defibrillator to the clock, “How long now?” he asks.  Somebody says 45 minutes since the house.  “All right,” he says.  “We’ll call this one.” And that’s it.

Then we all hear it.  The girls’s mom two rooms down, her voice rising from a loud question to a spine-tingling cry.  “Is Nicky all right?” she demands.  “Where is she, what room is she in?  No, I will not lie back down!  Where is my daughter?

As I glide over to the curtained doorway of the mom’s room the exhausted action heroes all look over at me.  I don’t want to go in there.  But all of a sudden, I’m the only one who can go in there.  The firefighter at the door, this huge guy in red suspenders over a sweat-stained blue shirt, has a tear in his eye.  I couldn’t do your job, he whispers, and he pulls back the curtain for me.

And here I go.  No gear, no helmet, into the fire.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Telling Stories

Could there be a more delicious time of year for lovers of stories?  When I was a kid, the return of cold weather meant happily slouching near the heat register of my bedroom, rereading fat classics like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and puzzling over the one line that never rang true to me – Meg March’s lament that November is “the most disagreeable month in the whole year.” For me, and maybe for you, November holds all the pleasure of holiday conviviality without any of the angst of gift-giving.  November is about drawing our chairs close to the fire, tucking into pie, and sharing the quiet pleasures of story-swapping.

Of course, “everyone has a story to tell,” but that worn chestnut has broken open freshly for me in the past few weeks.  My college students and I have been conducting writing workshops for women in our community, as we gear up for the February production of the “Michiana Monologues” on the IU South Bend campus.  The “Michiana Monologues” is a community writing project that raises funds for local organizations working to stop violence against women. The audience gets the chance to hear remarkable true stories written - and submitted anonymously—by local women.  To encourage writers, over the past months we have held workshops in campus classrooms, in public libraries, in agencies for women in need, and at the adorable Red Purl knitting shop in Niles. And while we offered hot tips for telling big stories briefly, mostly those workshops were about listening – the lost art of shutting up … so others can open up.

This point struck home recently, when I got to hear journalist Alex Kotlowitz speak in town to a standing-room-only crowd.  His subject was his bestselling book, There Are No Children Here, for which he recorded dozens of stories of families living in the Henry Horner housing projects in Chicago in the early 90s.  As an earnest journalist who wanted to reveal the visceral hardships of everyday life for the urban poor, Kotlowitz confessed that on occasion he accidentally shut down the stories that his young interviewees, brothers Pharoah and Lafeyette, really wanted to tell.  Kotlowitz recalled one time in particular, when, over pizza he’d bought for the boys, he kept asking them about the latest neighborhood gang fights, about stray bullets … when the boys were bursting with news about the spelling bee at school.  The more telling story – the truest and often least-expected one—is always the one we have to really listen for.

Lots of spiritual traditions include the idea of “listening others into speech,” a practice of active listening meant to foster a deeply respectful I-thou relationship with others.  And we all know, sure, that listening is important.  But often we find ourselves just shuttling between the two states of being that comic Fran Lebowitz described as: “There’s talking … and there’s waiting to talk.”

In our many Monologue-writing workshops, I had to work hard to stay in that different space of just … listening.  And, yes, stories poured out.  Most of us, after all, share a lot with the pomegranates now piling up in grocery stores – we’ve developed tough, but smoothly presentable outer skins that hold us together through life’s daily indignities. But if you break us open – what glistening jewels we contain! Sweet, bitter, tart, luminous. So, mild-looking matrons, if offered an ear, reveal terrifying stories of family violence, or bravery, or loss.  A carefree-seeming teenager offers the story of a prom-night rape that turned her into an advocate for other women.  A tweedy grandmother, with a sly smile, describes outrageous acts of feminist liberation – involving no burning bras, but instead spray paint and biting wit.  That’s just a start.

During November’s cozy weeks, when we might have more than the usual chance to sit with beloveds or acquaintances, let’s remember that the most compelling stories – the stories that might transform our understanding of our families, our communities, and ourselves—are often hidden.  Let’s hold out our hands to them.  Like Max in the fantastic modern fairy tale, Where the Wild Things Are, what we’ll find is what we suspect: That we are, all of us, wild things—more monstrous, tender, terrifying, more sorry, and more loving than we often remember.

WWW Michiana Chronicles

A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:

April Lidinsky -- Telling Stories / More essays by April

Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe

Ken Smith -- At the Circus / More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- Celebration / More essays by Heather

David James -- More essays by David

Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth

Jeff Nixa -- Action Heroes / More essays by Jeff

Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise

Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan

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About the series

Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, Ken Smith, Heather Curlee Novak, David James, and Elizabeth Van Jacob.

Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.

Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.

Recent pieces

Useful to Be Useless -- Is it better to be useful or useless? I can’t decide, and that’s a problem. I have the age-old drive to “do something” with my life. I feel compelled to be practical, to pursue realistic goals, and to turn my skills toward earning money or helping people. Those goals allow me to justify my existence. But I also feel the strong tug of uselessness. I enjoy creating for no purpose and thinking for its own sake. I could be a happy lay-about. But always that other drive to please people, to fill my resume, to prove my worth, to show my team spirit – that residual sociability keeps me from wandering away entirely. By Joe Chaney.

Good Eaters -- Reflections on the topic of food, brought about, no doubt, by this time of harvest and Thanksgiving, led to my reading Thomas Keneally’s recent book, “Three Famines.” In it, he gives a general overview of the physical and mental processes of starvation – pretty horrifying and unimaginable from where we sit – then writes specifically about the three hunger-events. Ireland in the 1840’s, Bengal in the 1940’s and Ethiopia in the 1980’s are the “three famines” of the title. Although seemingly unrelated as to world-area and time period, there is a striking commonality and it’s not the traditional “act-of-God” explanation. “Acts of God:” droughts, floods, etc. often begin the privations, but the human hand exacerbates the problems into a cataclysm. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.

The Excellence of the Long Distance Runner -- Consider cross country, the sport of choice for our family’s young athlete. That’s a 5000 meter feat of speed and endurance. At practice each day the teams run even farther, so on Saturdays they’re ready to race each other hard for 20 or 25 minutes. Near the end of the course they speed up because that’s the kind of people they have become, and they don’t stop until they have travelled the length of 54 football fields. By Ken Smith.

Bacon Before Husband -- Do you have a daily list? I don’t mean tasks for work or chores for home, I mean a Happy List. I have a Happy List running through my head most of the time. This list tends to be fickle and definitely changes with my mood. It is rare that something gets crossed off of it but I get immense satisfaction from my list just the same. My list makes friends laugh and strangers think I am...stranger. By Heather Curlee Novak.

“A feminist walks into a fraternal lodge …” -- Today’s story begins like a joke: What happens when a feminist walks into a fraternal lodge? The answer isn’t very funny, and it isn’t really about me -- it’s about who runs for office, and who doesn’t. But, yes, in this scenario I am the feminist cheerfully walking into the fraternal lodge, of the kind gently lampooned in The Flintstones as the Royal Order of the Water Buffaloes. By April Lidinsky.

South Bend Spring -- Would I ever think I’d find myself parting from one group of young adults yesterday, and then actually tearing downtown to join another? My knee-jerk reaction would normally be to slip into my hidey-hole on the third floor of Wiekamp Hall on the IU campus, or to run home—only three blocks—to read in solitude and eat Raman noodles. The first group—my first-ever class of college freshman English students—seem bemused at my political positions and ready to describe me as “professor,” but as a hopeless product of another day and time. By David James.

Call Me Bartman -- It’s that time of year when we wait in expectation of another World Series victory by the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies, while recalling (or trying to forget) another lost season in the sad history of the Chicago Cubs. Anyway, that’s the way Cubs fans talk about it. I don’t see it that way. In my view, the Cubs are the greatest team in the history of sports, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. By Joe Chaney.

Autumn -- Have you noticed too? Can you feel it? Are you as excited as I am? After the wait of nine months for its rebirth, autumn is back. The real weather for football is here. The heat has abated, there’s a nip in the air, spiders are extruding blankets of webbing, and if you look up into the trees, here and there you see a bit of fall color beginning. Like so many of you, autumn is my favorite season. Time to clean up the detritus of summer – those only semi-successful tomato plants, for example – and to move on to the planting of crocus, bluebells, tulips and daffodils: the dreams of spring. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.

Casting the Bronze Bust of Dr. Lester Wolfson -- There on the floor was the hand-made barrel-shaped white plaster matrix into which the molten metal would be poured. Near it stood a small furnace with a hole at the top the size of your fist. A stream of yellow flames roared from this hole and had been roaring for a long time. The metal inside was now over 1000 degrees. The sculptor’s wife cautioned us, If anything goes wrong, don’t rush up to help, back away—if it touches you, the bronze will burn right through your body. By Ken Smith.

Complaint Department -- I have struggled to maintain the peace and raise my girls well, but the stress of my days often means by the end of each one I am not the sweetest woman to be around. I often hurl the myriad challenges of my day at my husband as soon as he walks through the door. Sometimes dinner isn't made and the house looks like a toy bomb went off and I feel guilty about it. When I try to explain how the day went down I think it is a lot more like complaining than anything helpful. By Heather Curlee Novak.

Mad Men’s Maddening Style -- Oh, the elegant style of the early 60s. For men: the narrowly tailored suits and knife-thin ties; for women, the pencil skirts with wide cinching belts, the clinging cashmere sweaters punctuated by pearls. Take a look around and it’s clear that this season we are mad about Mad Men – and not just the TV show. Suddenly, in the “ya-gotta-have it” world of merchandizing, the winking vintage sex appeal of the early ’60 is being cranked up to sell upscale mall clothing, batwing eyeliner, and even retro telephone handsets so you can have Bluetooth technology but still look like you’re answering the phone for Don Draper in a red-lipsticked whisper. What the heck is going on? I’m a sucker, myself, for vintage fashion, but I wonder why now – in this political moment – we are hungry for the style of those very conservative “men will be men” and “women will be objects” times. By April Lidinsky.

Mandala -- I remember that year as the spring when my dad roared down the driveway at our home near Emory University in Atlanta in a new Austin Healey, a roadster, the proper name for a British rag-top sports car. This one was red with all the trimmings and served as waterproof glue for the closest period of bonding between a father and son. I say “waterproof” because the top on that car was a tight fit from the start, and had maybe fifty snaps to secure it around the cockpit; and of course after a couple times getting wet it shrunk, so there it stayed, behind the back seat squab—British for the seat’s backrest—for seven years, molding in peace. When it rained we got wet, so we cultivated raincoats and laughing. I didn’t mind a bit. By David James.

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