The Dollar Stays With

July 30, 2020 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP, Revision Tags: Poetry, Stonecoast MFA, Writing Exercise Leave a comment

This poem comes from an exercise led by Cate Marvin. Each month a Stonecoast faculty Zooms a writing session. I’ve missed poetry, was excited. The return was clunky. I kept at it, had some fun, shared the revision with my kids.

The Prompt

We needed a dollar bill to look at, better if we had one to touch.

The _____ is _____
It looks like a _____, a _____, and/ or a _____
When I see it, I smell _____
When I smell _____, I remember _____
I think of the time _____
It looks like _____ and it makes me dream of _____

We Got Five Minutes to Write

The bill is flat
It looks like a stock or play money or foriegn
When I see it I smell O’Hare
When I smell O’Hare I remember going home
I think of the time I cannot
It looks like my ticket here
And it makes me dream of staying

There was time left so I tried again:

The dollar bill is on my screen
It looks like play money, a game, something squandered
When I see it I smell sitting on a plane
When I smell dry, recirculated air I remember
Wisconsin, humid July
I think of the time we left last
It looks like that is what we did
And it makes me dream of first light

After ELEVEN Pages in My Notebook Over the Next Few Days

Noodling this exercise because I could not allow the poem to rest because it wasn’t really a poem yet. I like the challenge. For me, the point of a writing exercise is just that. I do yoga so I can run. I write from a prompt or imitate or try a new form just to see because all the practice feeds my work.

The Dollar Stays With

I forgot to tell you get a dollar bill. Shit. You
could use foreign currency but let’s stay with
America. Five minutes:

In my bag a Harraseeket keycard, a sleeve of
disposable masks, lip balm

a thousand won note shades of blue but no
one dollar bill

Let’s stay with America. Front back images
on my screen. I glance at

Washington delicate scrolls blue red fiber
squiggles heavy cream the eye

and light, cheap denomination almighty enough
that people live on

this, a day. The dollar is not in hand. In hand
it looks like a tip

for a tip jar at a cafe, a day old strawberry
doughnut at Skelly’s farmstand,

it looks like one of twenty I give my kids to
buy something American

(mint M&Ms, Lucky Charms, JoJo hairbows,
Doritos, fidget spinners, Silly Putty)

When I see an American dollar bill I smell
the recirculated air of a fourteen

hour flight home – cool dry antiseptic kimchi
lightly perfumed

When I smell a Korean Air cabin I smell
Wisconsin July – cut hay, bonfire

fish fry, my son’s sweaty hair like sun, clean
night slip through window screen

I think of the time when I stood outside during
a tornado warning

the night before our first flight to Seoul, Mom
and me watching dusk roil, churn

cold, strong wind cut a clear thought we could
lose everything here there

We really could. It looks like the four of us
fourteen hours ahead

this summer, and it makes me dream of
choosing this plenty, the dollar

not in hand

Do the Work

June 9, 2020 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP, Process Tags: black lives matter, childhood friends, Heart work, listen, live for the born, living abroad, love others, social justice 2 Comments

There are three friends I remember from Italy. My father was stationed at San Vito and I started kindergarten at the base school. During grade one I walked home with Rosa who was brown, and whose family seemed much more interesting than my own. Rosa’s family spoke Spanish and her older brother, according to Rosa, just stayed home because he felt like it. At sharing time, I stole all of Rosa’s details and brightly relayed that my family spoke Spanish at home. Really? Mrs. O’Brien said, and called my mother. One of many calls during those two years at the base school.

Yolanda was a black girl a year older or younger than me. Our families attended the same church and our mothers got the kids together to play. I admired Yolanda’s hair. Twists and braids. The plastic barrettes shaped like blue cats, green dogs, yellow birds. Hair ties with plastic marbles that click clacked at jumping, running. Yolanda said her mother could braid my hair, and her mother agreed. I sat in a kitchen chair and did not complain at the tugs. I was excited to have hair like Yolanda’s.

Sleep with a kerchief, Yolanda’s mother said. That night I could not sleep. All the tiny plastic barrettes poked my neck and shoulders. Each braid pulled a tight little square of scalp. I unclipped the barrettes and felt terrible. When Yolanda’s mother found out, she laughed. I cannot see her face but I remember her sound was warm.

Jessica was white and in my class at school. She had a parakeet and gave me a packet of smelly markers as a goodbye gift and really, that’s about all I remember of her.

I began second grade in Wisconsin and graduated from a small white town. Small white town: mostly/ predominantly. Diversity existed. An Albanian family moved to my hometown. A black teenager joined my sophomore English class. Our sport conference included a team from Beloit, the nearest city with a black population. Diversity existed: barely/ rarely. But my small American town isn’t different from many places around the world – I now live as the minority in a homogenous culture. I don’t fault a place for lacking diversity.

But populations migrate. I think this is a gift.

When we moved from Italy to Wisconsin, my parents eventually bought a house one town over from my mother’s hometown. I remember her joking that she’d never be local.

When we moved to South America, it was like going home. Maybe my childhood seeded the comfort of being foreign. Maybe I wanted to find another Rosa, another Yolanda after years of Jessicas.

I used to wonder what I’d be like if we’d stayed in Italy, if my father’s service moved us to another country, and another, if I learned alongside kids from Texas, Virginia, Japan. Here is what I am getting at: place is not at fault.

Our hearts. But when our hearts change, won’t our places also change?

All week, a growing tiredness. A necessary heavy spirit. Sisters and brothers, we have sisters and brothers born into an exhaustion made of exclusionary ordinances, inadequate healthcare, unequal and unfair education, voter suppression, racist criminal justice systems, and prejudice coming even from the mouths and hearts of people professing Christ. This ought not be.

Our hearts: we cannot know fully. Ask. And lament. We have much to grieve, and we ought to grieve, and we must accept that the process of this grief is not a season of protest or support but the ongoing work of repentance and restoration. Be a neighbor. Do the work of loving others. Listen. Listen. Listen.

I want to say this too. The American church permits the hijacking of its faith by a political party that does not love the least of these. Too many have been wrongly swayed to think that governments bear little responsibility for people in need. Systemic racism is just that. People do not choose to be born with a knee on their neck. We need social programs, from the government, church or other organizations: we must give food to the hungry, support people suffering addiction, offer literacy programs, and provide housing and healthcare. We must elevate those who are low. Lift. Raise.

The hijacking of our faith. I think this happened thirty years ago when the pro-life stance guaranteed Republican votes. I understand voters for whom the pro-life issue is their single issue. Moral contortion to vote against the least of these and for the least of these at once. What I say to these voters is: vote for the unborn, but live for the born.

Live for the born: sisters and brothers, we have sisters and brothers born into an exhaustion made of exclusionary ordinances, inadequate healthcare, unequal and unfair education, voter suppression, racist criminal justice systems, and prejudice coming even from the mouths and hearts of people professing Christ. This ought not be.

Be a neighbor. Do the work of loving others. Listen. Listen. Listen.

Yes, Let’s

March 18, 2020 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP, Uncategorized Tags: coronavirus, COVID19, social distancing, South Korea, work from home 2 Comments

This is week four of virtual school. At lunchtime I leave the apartment. I walk or bike to a nearby café where I order an iced latte and teach my afternoon classes. Today I biked to Shinsegae, ordered my latte and looked around. I started class. Afternoon shoppers got in line for a coffee, or bought pastries, or sat at a table for a late lunch. The space hummed.

For the third day, South Korea reported fewer than one hundred new cases to the WHO. Maybe the sense of urgency lifted? After class I scrolled through the Korea Herald, wondering if there was an announcement to get out, go somewhere, meet a friend, support the local economy. I miss a lot in Korea, for lack of language. And a few days ago I shut off emergency notifications to my phone – the texts announcing COVID19 cases in my area – because I was tired of the small fear that followed reading the names of my neighborhoods.

But maybe I’d missed the go-free-be-well text.

The Korea Herald headlines worried about travelers returning with coronavirus infections. (Our school, and others, asked faculty and students to return this week to begin the government mandated fourteen-day period of self-protection and health monitoring, limiting contact with others to ensure coronavirus is not unknowingly spread in the community. The idea is we’ll all be ready to be on campus after spring break). The Korea Herald also reported another delay to the start of the Korean school year, now pushed to April sixth. And another headline mentioned coronavirus clusters in Seoul: a call center, a church.

So nothing about tossing caution.

I heard five people cough during the four hours I taught and wrote at Shinsegae. I washed my hands four times. I wondered if there would be a Jukejeon cluster next.

At a table near me, three women in their forties and fifties were talking. “Do you speak English?” I asked. One nodded. She wore thick rimmed cat eye glasses. I asked why so many people were out. I explained that last week when I came here in the afternoon, there was hardly anyone out. “Did the government say it’s okay to be out again?” The cat eye woman laughed. She said, “No! It is not recommended to be out.” For a moment the four of us looked at each other, all of us out. “Then why are you out?” I asked.

I know why I’m out. I’m out because I cannot stay in my apartment day and night. I’m out because I want to go for a walk or bike ride midday and get an iced latte. I’m out so I can teach while not glancing at the pile of dishes in my kitchen sink.

But maybe I should stay home.

Last week I took the subway into the city for an appointment and the carriages were Sunday morning light during rush hour. People work from home if they can, and students too.

Should I also stay home? I don’t know.

I like to get out of the apartment.

I’ve appreciated the lack of panic in South Korea. The response to COVID19 is measured. Informed, thorough and transparent: and because of this, I haven’t felt panic. Caution, yes, but not animal panic. For a couple of days people stocked up on milk. And then a few days later, it was ramen. But we shop as we need. Walkers and runners and bikers are on the river path. By late afternoon most cafes are full of friends catching up, or students and professionals telecommuting.

But today was the first day I registered a greater volume of people out, moving through public spaces, touching counters and buttons and rails and doors.

To my knowledge, public health officials here have not imposed a social distancing rule as suggested in the States, to keep individuals a certain physical distance apart. So when I stand in line at the grocery store or bakery, the next customer is right behind me, breathing. But I think the worry is somewhat removed by the assurance that we know if a case is near us, or if we had contact and need to quarantine, because South Korea is vigilantly tracking infections, warning citizens and residents, and ensuring proper testing and medical care.

Today at Shinsegae when I asked the women why they were out, we all paused. Then the cat eye woman laughed again. She said, “We are bored of being home!”

Which makes me wonder how long we can go along with the recommendation to social distance, self-quarantine, work from home, attend virtual school. Because when things begin to look good, when it feels like we can all head out for the day, that is when we need to practice social distancing for another week or two. Or three.

I wonder what happens in South Korea as the coronavirus circles the world. Does East Asia wait for the curves to flatten on other continents before we start commuting into work again?

I did not worry until cases in Iran and Italy spiked. Watching Italy, I sense the care we’ve had in South Korea. Watching Italy, I fear for the States. In January and February I read about China, Japan, Cambodia, the cruise ships, and now I read about Iran, Italy, France, the States.

When I called home, my mom gave the rundown of closed schools, my brother’s canceled AP Government trip to D.C., the likely upgrade of internet service to accommodate work and school from home, and my grandma’s report that people really are stocking up on toilet paper. When I talked with Kate, she sent me photos of her trip to the grocery store, the produce and meat gone. My sister joked that homeschooling makes social distancing a little easier.

People talk about living history. Living through history. Yes, let’s.

But after, we live too. We should consider what that might look like.

“Tracking the Coronavirus: How Crowded Asian Cities Tackled an Epidemic” from the New York Times
The Korea Herald
“The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff” from The Atlantic

I Touch My Face A Lot

February 27, 2020 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP Tags: #nohustle, coronavirus, COVID19, East Asia, South Korea, virtual school Leave a comment

Mid-January, I connected in Hong Kong on my flight back from the States. Within days there was conversation about coronavirus and within a week our school asked any faculty member or student who traveled to mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau over Lunar New Year to remain off campus for two weeks. When I woke up in the morning I checked the WHO situation report before getting out of bed. Korea held steady at twenty-some cases. I read about quarantined cities in China, and the cruise ships docked and waiting. (For so many reasons I will never take a cruise). Teaching friends who left China for their Lunar holiday resettled in other parts of the world while Covid19 spun through the country’s population. Korea asked universities to push back the start of the spring term, to delay the expected influx of Chinese students.

(Read more about this elsewhere, but East Asia is a tightly connected region – Korea and China have important diplomatic, economic and educational ties. A swift travel ban on all Chinese could have caused long term harm to their relationship).

Each morning I’d lay in bed and read another expert counter the effectiveness of closing borders or scroll through the search results of “south korea coronavirus” before returning to a page listing symptoms of Covid19, reassuring myself that for most people (for eighty percent of those infected!) the illness is akin to its more popular cousin, the common cold. There was comfort knowing that only a minority of those infected experienced serious, hospital-visit-worthy symptoms, and that around two percent of infected people die.

Covid19 favors killing elderly men. I am not an elderly man. But I am the favored age of the 1918 flu, the pandemic that killed my great-great grandmother and her infant son. So I am glad it is not 1918. For weeks I woke up like this, with these thoughts.

My nose was a little runny. Grant had a cough. At school a student would sneeze or cough and another student might shift in their seat. I wore a mask on the subway. The masks – and we should all know this – are best worn by ill people to catch sprays of fluid. Covid19 lives in snot and spit and can survive on surfaces: so wash your hands. And quit touching your face.

I touch my face a lot. I just touched my face. I may as well lick all the surfaces near me.

The comparisons to SARS and MERS did not help me. SARS and MERS are more deadly coronaviruses, but less contagious. Covid19 spreads through a population quickly, perhaps because its symptoms may be mild and dismissible by eighty percent of us. Or perhaps because the incubation period is two weeks and we may be contagious before exhibiting any symptoms. So I only appreciated the two percent mortality rate of Covid19 for a few days. Then I looked at the tens of thousands infected, the hundreds (now thousands) dying. But how many people are exposed who do not get sick? Millions in a city do not catch the virus, or do not get terribly ill, but we fixate on the hospital lines and empty streets.

Please don’t die, I whispered to my husband one night in bed. Okay, he whispered back.

Monday night I could not sleep. I lay awake at midnight, at one. I sat up and cried. On Monday our school prepared to launch virtual school. All day on campus we learned online platforms to facilitate teaching classes linked by screens. I whispered “fuck.” Not because I am uncertain about manipulating the tech, but because I worried what the shift means to classroom dynamic: what is the dynamic when you are together apart? I am a month into covering a maternity leave and I still mix up a few students’ names. I wondered how to ensure the academic integrity of an in-class essay. How do I teach while parenting my own kids who are home too? So I also whispered “please” because I need help to accept more change.

Teachers and their families started booking flights out of Korea. Justin messaged me about a couple more departing families. I’m fine staying, he texted. Some people worry about the stress Covid19 places on Korea’s medical infrastructure – if you have a small child or baby who needs care, will you be able to see a physician easily or safely? Some people worry about home country borders closing or quarantine times. I understand the decision to leave Korea.

But I am also fine staying. When the SARS and MERS comparisons were no longer reassuring to me I thought about how viruses just do this to a population. Covid19 will carry on and we might get ill. The unlikely could happen too. On Monday I was more overwhelmed by the change to our daily routine.

Our school is on a synchronous schedule which means I see my students during our usual class time. So I am trying to do what we’d do in class. It takes more time to share content or generate discussion because we aren’t physically present to read cues. Today I let a few long pauses sit until a student filled the gap. This will work!

But while I am teaching and Justin is EdTeching (and teaching) we have two kids who are doing school. Claire is on the same synchronous schedule as me and has set up a camp (lair) under her loft bed. Twinkle lights, lots of pillows and blankets, and one hot laptop. During a lull in my work I peak into her room. On the first day the novelty of being allowed unfettered screen time for eight hours was a marvel and she balanced her device on the kitchen counter while cutting an apple at lunchtime, laughed at something her friend chatted. She is occupied by her teachers and classmates, all of them meeting virtually each block.

But Grant is free range. Or neglected. We have to figure out how to do Grant’s school, I said to Justin this morning. Yes, he said. Next week, I said.

In the morning Grant shows me his Google Classroom posts. The kid has quite the schedule, all of the tasks connected to a pdf or video or doc. Yesterday I thought a change of venue might be nice so he and I headed to a favorite café after lunch. While I taught two classes he sat glassy eyed, hunched over his device at a nearby table. I checked in with him a couple of times. Did you watch the video about student-led conferences? Can you listen to the read aloud? How about writing? You can do math when Papa gets home. And then I gave up because I had grading and planning to do and I am not a person who thrives on doing more than one thing at a time. I don’t feel efficient or accomplished or #hustle when I whack-a-mole life.

This morning I did not check the WHO situation report. Last night at eleven an emergency alert interrupted my sleep to tell me via Google Translate that a man with coronavirus had visited our neighborhood. I touch my face a lot. More families are flying out. Justin texted me: I’m fine staying. We are fine staying.

This afternoon I biked to run class from Shinsegae. I asked my advisory students to give high/ lows of the week. More sleep is a high. No morning or afternoon commute is a high. Autonomy is a high. My latte from Baekmidang is a high. Where are you Ms. Marslender? one of them asked. Most students are sequestered in their bedrooms. I walk ten steps a day, a sophomore told us. I tell the group to try yoga, if you can’t leave the apartment.

I started yoga at the end of December. I wake up and move my body through an hour of held poses. My feet are stronger. My left side is finding its balance again. When coronavirus headlines began showing at the top of a scroll, I told my kids to wash hands, drink water, sleep. The idea that if we keep our body well, our body has a better chance at resisting Covid19. I quit thinking about this during yoga. I am quiet. I breathe. I go through the poses and wonder if I could live in our apartment for a month. I make a note to buy more soap and pick up dishwasher tabs. Outside today the air is clean, the sky unseasonably colored.

WHO COVID-2019 Situation Reports
Reuters Graphics: “The Korean Clusters”
“Why the Coronavirus Seems to Hit Men Harder Than Women”
Baekmidang coffee is a definite high

Portland, Maine

January 11, 2020 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP Tags: Narrative, Pat Schneider, Portland Maine, Writing Alone & With Others, Writing Exercise, Writing Practice Leave a comment

I am in Maine to begin my MFA program. I arrived a couple days early to shift my body to east coast time. Yesterday I walked downtown and sat to write.

When I return to Korea I am covering a maternity leave. One of the classes I’ll teach is creative writing – I’ve missed teaching this course and had fun planning. One of the books I pulled material from is Writing Alone & With Others by Pat Schneider, and yesterday I practiced the following exercise from memory. Which means I didn’t do the exercise exactly.

Take a small bit of writing – a page or so – from your journal. Or write a straight narrative account of something that happened to you. (Give yourself only five or seven minutes to do this, and write fast, without editing).
When you have finished, put it aside, and without looking at it, begin again to write the same narrative. Do not look back! Allow yourself to say exactly the same words if they come to you, or to change it in any way you wish. After a bit, introduce into the narrative an object that was not there in the first draft, and that was not there in your memory. Make it completely imagined. Go on writing the narrative for a bit, and then introduce a character (again, completely imagined) that wasn’t there, and give him or her a significant place in the narrative.
This is fun – and for many people it simply magically erases the big problem of how to break out of literal memory into imagined scenes and characters.

I wrote for a couple of hours. What I did was quick write the narrative. One block page. Then I rewrote this narrative twice, introducing a new object in the second telling, and playing with dynamic between the two characters in the third. The point is to get comfortable pulling from life, turning fiction. Successive rewrites are a constraint too, pressing your creativity to work with your immediate imagination – one, two, three – rather than giving space between drafts. Successive rewrites are also a challenge to keep yourself interested as you write. I like the way I finally describe the salt rimed sidewalk, and the subtle (uncomfortable) conflict of the third draft.

Try this by way of Schneider’s original exercise, or with my accidental modification.

One

Continue reading →

Give Thanks

November 30, 2019 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP Tags: Faith, Give thanks, Gratitude, Heart work, Thanksgiving Leave a comment

I started a gratitude journal once, years ago. I made a numbered list of things I was thankful for and a few months later when I needed a writing notebook, I tore out the single sheet. The entire notebook was supposed to be full of thanks. I’d barely managed one page.

I am better practiced at fear and complaint. And I suppose that is the point of keeping a gratitude journal, to counter the inclination to worry and wallow.

Also years ago, a Lebanese woman named Adele took my hands after a church service in Kuwait. She was tender with her wisdom, and I prayed with her often. That Friday morning Adele opened her eyes at amen and said, Sarah, I see you like a child in a field of flowers. So much joy. Laughing. I nodded. I was glad someone could imagine joy for me. Adele spoke a promise I needed at the middle end of a dark run, and I still keep her words. I remember her warm hands holding mine, that we kissed cheeks at parting. I remember walking into the bright heat of day, looking at the sky and whispering please. Later that summer when I laughed like a child spinning circles I whispered thank you.

I am just out of another dark run. When I look at the shadows I lived in for months I am sad. I don’t want to go back. But I want to carry what I understood in the shadows. A thought came when I curled in bed, unmoving after sobs, to give thanks. A thought came at the tightening of fear in my body, to praise. When I prayed, gladness was like rocks in my mouth. Praise tasted like metal. But I expanded my prayer, reading the Psalms to speak wild glory like a new language. I practiced the sacrifice of praise.

My circumstance did not change. I was not suddenly content in my work, or healed in my body. I was still sad most days. But last spring, a ripple of impatience: I did not want just healing or just satisfaction in the day. I asked instead for peace in the middle. I asked for joy. What I wanted was to know that God really is enough. Enough is a tough measure. Enough is letting go of the scramble for more or better. Enough is trust that what I hold is good.

Last Sunday our church celebrated Thanksgiving. We sang “Blessed Be Your Name.” This was a song at my brother’s wedding. Blessed be your name in the land that is plentiful. A perfect marriage song, our mom said. This was the song I cried with my dear mom friends in Kuwait, the morning after Liana delivered a son who lived an hour in his daddy’s arms. Blessed be your name when I’m found in the desert place. This is the song my friend Els chose for her funeral. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, given slim hope of living another five years. Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering. Though there’s pain in the offering, blessed be your name. After the service, Els told me that in the weeks after her diagnosis she understood that no part of her illness was a surprise to God. She read from the Psalms. She ached for her young children. She ached for her husband. But she also lived. Els made dinner, read to her children, nurtured friendships. She is alive today, and that is a miracle. All that she knew of her faith was pressed into daily practice during her illness, and she has not forgotten her God who was present in her suffering. She sings her funeral song.

So I do not want to forget what I understood in the shadows. Again and again I read from 1 Thessalonians, writing in my notebook

Rejoice always
pray without ceasing
give thanks in all circumstances
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus
Do not quench the Spirit

On Sunday the message centered on this passage. Such direct instruction. I have learned this before. I know this. And in the shadows these past months I obeyed. I lived my sorrow deeply, honestly. But I also recognized the everyday swells of joy: the limbs of my children stretched either side of me at bedtime, as we read or talked about the day. My son playing with Lego, scripting the minifigures and animating planes and boats. My daughter bent over her sketchbook, humming. My husband turning to me in the night. The mountains on our summer drive west. The taste of a gin fizz twenty minutes in the making. The fun of a full dining table, a card game, and family stories.

Singing praise as you fall apart is heart work. Singing praise is trust, naming a God whose glory transcends circumstances. There is so much I do not understand. There is reason for this exhortation to give thanks. Gratitude is good for the body and mind. Something intangible turns on thanksgiving.

Knowing my proclivity for fear and discontentment, I couple my sacrifice of praise with another prayer. Renew my mind. I live in a body that will go to ash. I cannot hinge joy on what I touch. So renew my mind, I ask, so that gratitude becomes a natural breath in my day. I do not know what will follow this practice, but I am far enough in my faith to choose to continue on, even after a long stretch of darkness.

I am not starting another gratitude journal. But when I flip through the muddle of my notebook, I want to see thanks between the story drafts, petitions, and wandering thoughts. So too in my day. Amen.

One Year To The Next

November 5, 2019 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP, Process, Thirty-Nine Stories Tags: Inventory, Personal Essay, Thirty-Nine Stories Leave a comment

I started my thirty-ninth year thinking things would just turn out. I was newly recovered from an injury, running again. My kids were settling better, their second year at our new school. Good friends had just moved to Korea. I had a writing project to occupy my mind. I decided to return to the English classroom, and applied for an opening. I was just beginning to see a shape for our time in Korea and I was cooking dinner again, sometimes. The year just had to be good.

I was steady enough that I started going to therapy to work out a few sticking points, address wounds. That check in was essential when I was not hired for a classroom position at our school. I wondered if a midlife crisis was waking up at midnight to run and cry. I did not know what to do. I had just assumed I would have a place in the English department and losing that meant I could not retreat to a familiar, comfortable role. Subbing kills me, at least once a week. Nicking pride, mostly, killing self. So I started retooling my image of the next year or two. I decided I had to figure out how to stand in a roomful of kindergarteners and find a snip of joy to keep my shoulders from tightening.

I also decided to apply to MFA programs. I was afraid of wasting my time when subbing is an unusual professional gift. Here I have a job that is taxing in the weirdest ways during the workday but leaves my mind largely free to create. I may track my way through the elementary, middle and high schools on a single day, but I am not also consumed by prep or marking work. So I spent the winter researching low residency MFA programs, and the spring revising a fiction portfolio and compiling essays about why I want to be part of this program, where I see myself in the literary landscape, which writers I admire or learn from.

Also in the spring my body fell apart. It was odd to pursue an MFA, understanding I would finally get the guidance I crave as I put together a narrative collection, and be glad for the way the years ahead might now look, while also feeling like shit. I reinjured my knee, got depressed, and wanted to die. A cave would have been nice.

I am glad for the patience and kindness of my husband, for the warmth and silliness of my kids, for the good counsel of dear friends.

At the close of my thirty-ninth year: I am okay. I am accepted to a strong MFA program. I begin in January but am already drafting for workshops and reading for seminars. My body continues to shift its slow way to healing. Most mornings I walk what used to be my warm up run. The miles and miles remain far away, but I will run them again. I cooked a little the other day. My kids are wonders. My husband walks unscathed. I do not hate God but in church last Sunday it was difficult to sing that he is perfect in all of his ways.

Because I think this past year was a painful stretch of faith. I am more worn than a year ago, but I want it to matter that I remain before God. I messaged a friend that I want my fortieth year to be fucking awesome. Like I deserve reprieve, lightening by way of healing, contentment, joy. Like I deserve blessing. This whole life is blessing, by grace, one year to the next. I would like to know that better.

I’ll count this as thirty-one of thirty-nine. 616 words. Done enough!

One Day A Mosaic

October 4, 2019 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP, Process 1 Comment

I rarely know the response or conversation my posts generate but in her comment to my last post, my mother-in-law suggested I find an antidepressant and see a therapist. She opened with love, but my first thought was that her note was great email content. But if I write publicly about being sad, well.

Each day there is something – a gesture or conversation or street, a layer of sound or smell – that I think how to turn into words. This is me being a writer. And sometimes the things I turn into words are difficult or sharp, complicated, unflattering. And sometimes I choose to write about my mental health, not to mire in a situation but to be plain about the experience.

I write, pray and talk to process the workings of my mind and settle my heart. Some of that shows up in essay drafts here, but the purpose of Piecemeal is to share my writing practice. When I sat to write about that conversation with my son I was not sad or anxious. I was curious how to write about the idea that one year measures differently to a child than to an adult. There was a lot I wanted to put on the page and I had thirty minutes at a Starbucks before meeting my family for dinner. I listed, started with unwieldy thoughts before deciding to make all of it bite size. How could I compress complexity into a vignette?

Yesterday morning on a walk (early and dark, light rain, swollen river) I pulled at a few ideas. I am thinking about the confrontation of vulnerability and the physicality of emotions. I also return to my motivation in sharing such personal experiences. I write my own life to examine, understand. But my mother-in-law’s comment makes me wonder why I choose to share details that make me weak. My temperament tends toward melancholy, yes. Darker moments are the go to stories of any day. For a few years I have written a lot about suffering as I’ve been near to those who suffer, gone through our family transition to a new country, learned more about how grief wracks a body, and walked through another long round of depression. I am comfortable being open, because I believe storytelling increases our empathy. I also believe that telling your story shapes your sense of self: know the narrative you carry. So the present answer to why I share is that this (the writing practice, drafting) is part of my process.

Alongside despair, hope. I journal. I meditate. The work of hope is like. The gift of hope is like. I wrangle my faith and hope into tangible images. This year prayer was desperate. My whole body prayed. In the middle of being afraid or angry, clear thoughts came, scraps of childhood church songs and memory verses from the Bible. Give thanks. Give thanks in all circumstances. Praise. Offer a sacrifice of praise. It is a choice, to speak thanksgiving. But I cannot help but remind God how glad I would be if – and I follow my thank you with another plea. And that word sacrifice! Again, the choice to give up self. I am not required to sacrifice my very breath, but with my breath I offer sacrifice, speak what is difficult, praising a God who is at work in the middle of these light momentary afflictions. So hope is present in the mystery that centers my heart again on Christ.

Suffering is a rich mine. But before I posted a rough start to my thoughts confrontational vulnerability, or about the physicality of emotion (rage, sorrow: the favorites), I thought I should interject these notes. Just so you all know I am doing okay. I am at the middle end of a difficult stretch. Feeling that furious impatience to heal or understand or move on: recognizing the turn of my heart, the peace in my body. I want a thoughtless, easy day, and soon. But I also accept that I trade one bit of suffering for another. As I go I glean from each trial. But I also cry because when you are broken you cannot see how the pieces might form a beautiful mosaic.

Ms. Avery’s Serial

September 11, 2019 By Sarah Marslender in Daily WP, Thirty-Nine Stories Tags: Fiction, Thirty-Nine Stories, Writing Leave a comment

Likely the last of this I will post, though I will continue to write the story. So twenty-six of thirty-nine with 1714 words (624 new).

On her drive to Colorado, Jennifer stopped a night in Nebraska. She went through a McDonald’s drive thru and watched half an episode of CSI Miami before turning off the television. The motel was near the interstate. There was the hum of traffic, even that late, and the sounds of a family just arriving two or three doors down, and a ringing in her ears brought on, she guessed, but driving at ninety with the windows rolled down and the radio cranked. She remembered to call her mom. Later, signing the lease in Denver, and then the teaching contract, seeing Pete for an evening that closed with a handshake, spending a Sunday night meal prepping for the week, purchasing a coral cardigan from a shop her mom liked, deciding that she would be Ms. Avery even if she married (someone, someday) – later, Jennifer would feel like an adult but that night in the motel she considered driving back to Wisconsin. Her job was gone. Her classroom was already someone else’s. The last week of school she told her students she was moving west, like it was an adventure, and she wrote her personal email on the board, promised to write back, thanked them for such a great year of learning together. The news traveled through the grades and her former students stopped by to write their emails on slips of paper Jennifer tucked into a manila envelope. In Nebraska Jennifer was afraid she would not be as loved ever again.

But she was loved again, by childlike eleven and twelve year olds who wrote fantastical stories or single sentences in the course of two hours, who played Bananagrams, who brought tamales to share. A dozen of her Wisconsin students emailed that first year, and fewer in the second year, and then it was only Vanessa sending out a line every year or two as she graduated university, married, had a baby, surpassing Jennifer who dated occasionally and thought her students were babies enough. Vanessa continued to address Jennifer as Ms. Avery, though Jennifer signed her replies with Best, Jennifer. Best, but far away.

Vanessa’s emails were mostly bright, a little gossipy, returning Jennifer to names and situations she would otherwise forget. I went to the five year reunion at Riley Lake which was a mistake, Vanessa wrote, because Bethie came up to me when I was talking to Del like she thought I was coming on to him. I’m only telling you this Ms. Avery because you were there when I broke up with him. And now I’m engaged so I showed Bethie the ring and she said out of nowhere that her and Del slept together while he was dating me. Jennifer read that email during a lull at the cafe one morning. She remembered Bethie at the high school commencement practice, rolling her eyes at the partners, glaring when Vanessa laughed at something Del said. And after the ceremony when all the families gathered in the foyer, spilled onto the school’s lawn, when Jennifer moved from student to student to wish the best, shake hands, offer brief side hugs, she found Del and Bethie standing together, Bethie wearing heels she tottered on and a brown lipstick. Stunning, Jennifer said, and Bethie smirked. So Vanessa’s emails were like a rope that went slack for a time but snapped tight to connect Jennifer again to this other time. She was surprised by what Vanessa would confess, maybe a holdover from the journal practice Jennifer instilled in each class, the permission to write anything. Jennifer wrote back a congratulations on the engagement, and observed Vanessa was the exact age she’d been when she moved to Cross Plains to teach her first class ever.

Piecemeal

this is how I write

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