My funny friend; Elmo the clown
I was indentured at the University of Florida when I saw an ad in our campus newspaper looking for marketing managers for some unspecified “family focused” entertainment business. The ad promised the trifecta: travel, independence and big bucks. Well, big to me. I was a breakfast waitress in a restaurant lined with aquariums that smelled like dead fish. Even though I was in my senior year, close to the college finish line and anticipated an internship and subsequent job as a newspaper reporter, I had a dodgy relationship with patience and a...
read morePleasing Anna; Grandmother is hedgehog
It started with Zana and the Albanian lessons. When I turned 40, I moved to Albania for a year to teach journalism. Once there, I immediately hired a language teacher. Language is a decoder ring; three times a week I sat with Zana parroting the goofy, stilted dialogue that is the Albanian equivalent of Look Jane look! See Spot run! Zana stood no higher than my armpits, spoke no English and got down to business as soon as our appointed hour began. When I did well on my homework or mimicked a decent accent during oral pronunciation quizzes,...
read moreOrdinaria; Exalting in the everyday
“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” –George Eliot I visited New York City recently; my birthday coincided with an arts workshop I had flown there to attend. A longtime friend who lives in Manhattan offered to host a celebration and asked what I wanted. I told her something casual, low-key, come-as-you-are. “Most of all,” I said, “I want something that borders...
read moreThe tides of grief; Swimming through oatmeal
“The deeper the sorrow that carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” –Kahlil Gibran My father’s death in my mid-20s introduced me to grief and its idiosyncrasies. The sorrow I felt—and we all feel when we lose someone we love—had a language and texture all its own, one I’d never been versed in. Take a culture that is death averse, mix in a family upbringing intolerant of tears or sadness, and throw in a pinch of narcissistic control freak and there I was—bereft and fumbling with my response to loss. When would I be over...
read moreIt Takes a Poem; Living with poetry’s power
I went to grade school at St. Francis of Assisi, a Pepto Bismol-colored concrete building in the humid flatlands of South Florida. When I was in third grade, Sister Margaret Anina announced a poetry contest. I don’t remember that we were studying poetry or had learned much about it. Poetry back then was another unknown enterprise, and I had not learned to fear it. I just remember the contest. We were to choose a color and write a poem. I went for green and composed a three-stanza, singsongy bit of twaddle. It was my nine-year-old masterpiece....
read moreThat teacher; A love letter to Mrs. Permenter
It’s a Thursday afternoon, halfway through the school year. My 11th and 12th graders file in for English class. “Are we reading today, Ms. Kelly?” Tyler asks as he holds up his copy of “The Lovely Bones.” We are, I tell him. The room hushes. The students open their books and lower their heads. One by one, we circle the room; each reads a few paragraphs aloud. We make a soft chorus of papery whispers as we turn the pages in concert. They are quiet and engrossed. Their fidgety adolescent behavior is silenced by the world they hold in their...
read moreWaiting for snow; Momentarily quieting all the noise
I spent the first 18 years of my life living in South Florida where I spoke the language of sand, intuited the rhythms of the ocean, and trafficked in seashells. All this worked just fine for the wallpaper of my young life until this time of year rolled around. I wanted snow. Christmas television shows featured well-groomed people in coats delighted by falling snowflakes. Holiday cards showcased sleighs and earnest carolers in mittens or fireplaces blazing at warp factor 10. There was Frosty and the Abominable Snowman (who was scary on the...
read moreSoul train; Lighting the path
November 2, 1999. It is late afternoon when I board the train from Bratislava to Budapest. I’ve taken this three-hour train ride down the spine of Eastern Europe every Wednesday for the past two months, as I commute from my home in the Slovak capital city to the Hungarian capital city to teach. My coat stays on as I slide into an empty car. The seats are torn; the curtains are thickened with dust. Cryptic graffiti splays across the walls, and the car smells like a Goodwill store. The winter skies outside appear tufted with scouring pads....
read moreAll the way home; Signs of life from across the world
It’s 2001, and I live in Slovakia, an overlookable country with a language light on vowels. I’ve been here in Bratislava, the capital city, long enough to decode the essentials and enjoy the superficial mastery that bleeds into a muted smugness peculiar to ex-pats. But I’ve not been here long enough for social fluency. Instead I know just enough to be humbled by all I will never decipher. I teach journalism in this freshly minted country. My students are the Gen Y of post-Communist Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia,...
read moreRain now and then; Memories of furious water
Late August in Flagstaff. Outside it rains cold, fat and purposeful drops. I’m inside, and reminded by NPR about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew. In a shimmering flash I am back in Miami Beach, back in Florida, back enfolded in the landscape that forged me. The water and salt. The crippling humidity and hot weather mania. A tribe of beloveds remains there, a tribe that includes my mother and two brothers. It still feels like home to me. And so does Flagstaff. Standing in my apartment at 7,000 feet in this little mountain town...
read moreHalf a world away; Communicating with the outer reaches
My father died unexpectedly when I was 26 years old. My parents divorced when I was in high school; my mother remarried and moved to New Zealand. On the day of my father’s death, my brothers and sister and I tearfully converged at his two-bedroom home to divvy up his meager worldly possessions: thousands of tools, books and some dour artwork that used to hang in my grandfather’s house. The only thing I wanted was Dad’s oversized world atlas. For me, it was the holy book. In the 1970s, when I fancied myself a tragically misunderstood teenager,...
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