I was racing my bike around the block, happily flying down the hill on the last leg, before bombing down the sharp decline into my yard. My friend was on the sidewalk tossing his football up in the air. A mischievous smile crept across his face.
“I bet I can nail this football right in front of your bike tire!” His eyes danced with glee at the prospect of the challenge.
Mine did too, and I could feel the spark of excitement rush through me. It would never occur to me to show fear or back away from a challenge, especially one from a boy. In fact, this was all about showing him up and proving, yet again, that I was as good as any boy.
Taunting him back, I threw down the gauntlet with, “I DARE you!”
Then I shot past him down into my yard and started my next circle of the block. This was too good to pass up.
Rounding the corner of his street, I pedaled to the top of the hill and stopped. I could see him waiting for me, tossing the ball in the air, then taking his position to throw, a big grin on his face.
I grinned back at him, lowered myself flatter against the bike, and pushed off. Pedaling with all my might, I flew down the hill. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his arm go up. I pedaled faster. He took aim. I leaned flat against the bike. He spiked the ball.
From the moment I came “galloping into the kitchen” on my stick horse at 5, I was bound to be an adventurer. I grew up with TV shows like Zorro, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Cochise on Broken Arrow, and Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger. So I was always swinging a sword, galloping my horse, or sliding across the floor.
Of course, that particular day I fell, slid headfirst into the cast-iron radiator, and learned what it meant to get stitches in my forehead at the local hospital ER. I wasn’t scared at first, more intrigued by all the medical tools and equipment. At least, that is, until the girl across the hall started screaming. Not sure what was coming, I panicked and started screaming, too.
I did survive it and even got homemade chocolate chip cookies from Mom when I got home. So, I was an old hand at stitches when I ended up back in the ER again the next year, when I fell off a bench and cut open my jaw. The bottom line is that in spite of my reticence to ever let go of the side of that YMCA pool, I not only learned to swim, I became the adventurer.
Nothing was more exciting at the beginning of every summer than the Saturday night family shopping trip to a discount store in Unionville called Myrtle Mills. It had everything, but most especially, sneakers! The new summer sneakers’ trip. To this day, I still remember the smell of rubber as we approached the basement area in the back, where all the new sneakers were on sale.
In many stories, the place and the time period are considered characters in their own right. Certainly, I would agree given the unique flavor of where I grew up, and when.
Torrington, Connecticut:
Nestled in the valley between the foothills of a section of the Appalachian Mountains known as the Berkshire Hills, Torrington is built around the Naugatuck River, which flows south through that valley, right through the center of town. When the town was originally founded, it was located on the hillsides east and west of the river valley, where the climate was healthier and less swampy and mosquito-infested in the summer.
A lot of the surrounding county area was, and remains, rural, with dairy farms, state forests, and nature trails. It is hilly countryside, and as such, the geography itself gives a sense of “constriction” between those hills, and isolation from nearby areas because of them. There are a lot of hardwood forests, including things like oak and sugar maples, and in spite of steel-gray cold skies in November, Fall, with its amazing color display, is my favorite time of year there.
The town and surrounding areas are steeped in history. Whether it is of ancient Mohawk tribes living in longhouses, or the story of Connecticut as the Charter Oak State, the state is living history.
The latter story is based on the fact that the state was given a royal charter in 1662, allowing for self-governance. During the Revolution, the charter was hidden in an oak tree to prevent it from being confiscated by the British.
Many locations around Torrington and throughout the state have markers noting various sites of importance from the 1700s and during the Revolution. The culture of the area was heavily influenced by the strict ethics of the Puritans, who had moved there from England to have religious freedom. And throughout the area, there is still a strong sense of individual ruggedness. That ruggedness is further fostered by the climate, which can suffer extremely cold winters with blizzards, and summers and falls with hurricanes, tornadoes, and Nor’easters.
Torrington was and is a small former factory town in that Northwest corner of Connecticut. It was an industrial powerhouse in the 19th and part of the 20th century, providing employment, a decent standard of living, and a strong economic base for the towns there. Industry included things like brass production, arms manufacturing, skilled tool and die companies, and small factories providing parts for the automotive and aerospace industries. Most of those places shut down and moved south during the 1960s-1980s, and later those things moved overseas. So the employment and economy of the area have taken a hit. But during my childhood, especially with the ’60s space race, things related to aircraft and aerospace industries were still thriving.
Most people during the early and middle of the 20th century lived in the main town because they worked in the local factories. This allowed them to walk to work, shops, churches, and doctors. My grandparents did not have a car, nor did most of the older Slovaks. In fact, our house was just down the street from the church and school we attended, so easily within walking distance.
The homes in town, including the one we lived in, were multi-family 2- and 3-story homes, in keeping with the blue-collar, industrial flavor of the area. There were some single-family homes scattered around in town, but more of those were on the outskirts, in more residential or agricultural areas.
As a scientist, one of the best ways to capture what happens in a reaction, especially a chemical one, is to set up a formula. On one side of the equation are all the reactants, the items that are mixed together for the reaction to take place, and on the other side is the final product or outcome.
I wasn’t aware of what was happening to me all those years, because when I was living in the “water” of that house, I just considered it the norm and never questioned anything. But now, when I look back, I can see the patterns. If I want to visualize life in that house, I could use the following formula:
As usual on any afternoon, my Mother was preparing a full meal for dinner, including a homemade dessert. Dad expected full dinners, including desserts, with his meal. While store-bought” Oreos were allowed for snacks because Dad liked them and he brought home the paycheck, desserts had to be homemade.
On this particular afternoon, Mom had two cake layers cooling on top of the stove, and they gave off the sweetest vanilla aroma that I couldn’t miss as I ran into the kitchen. I stopped near the stove to examine them because they smelled so good, and that’s when I spotted the problem.
Poor Mom! She always worked so hard to make all her desserts from scratch, usually from recipes out of the red binder — her Betty Crocker cookbook. But today, looking at the cake tops, I felt bad at how they were turning out. That’s when the perfect idea popped into my head for how to help her and fix the problem.
Happily, I set to work with a knife. A few minutes later, I was almost done when Mom came into the room. She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes wide in horror, and she yelled, “What are you doing?!”
“I’m helping you!”
I pointed to the piles of cake chunks I’d cut off the top of each tier – the uneven bumps that, to my mind, marred the smooth surface.
“The cakes were all bumpy, so I figured I’d cut them off and make it all smooth for you!”
My mother stood there, staring from me to the cakes, then back again, as she struggled to process my logic. For several moments, she said nothing. I wasn’t sure what was wrong. This was not the reaction I expected.
Then, she took in a deep breath then let her shoulders drop as she exhaled slowly, and said quietly, “It’s okay. Go play. I’ll fix this.”
Now, many years later, I realize the artful skill it must have taken her to spread frosting onto those two cake layers whose tops were almost totally crumbs….
**
I love looking at pictures of my Mother from her early years. She was beautiful and had a radiant joy that seemed to burst out from within.
A “talisman” is often defined as a magical object that brings luck or special powers to its owner.
If it is not obvious by now, maps, mind maps, charts are talismans for me. Being a visual person, these tools empower me to bring order to my life. It is how my brain works. Whether it’s a road atlas, a treasure map, or a topographic map, I love them all. Give me a map and I can do anything.
Maps give you knowledge, and thus, power. They show you everything that exists, where it is, how to get there. Maps make the unknown visible, clear, quantifiable, and possible. With a map…a plan, you can get anywhere you want.
So maps would become one of the key tools in my life, both for my journeys and my understanding. When I discovered “mind maps” I became a power user. Just a sheet of paper and some markers let me plan my life, a project, or my writing. And it all started with one Christmas when I was very young.
“David Foster Wallace’s ‘This Is Water’ speech uses the metaphor of fish and water to highlight how the most fundamental aspects of our existence often go unnoticed. In the story, two young fish swim past an older fish who greets them with, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ After a while, one of the young fish turns to the other and asks, ‘What the heck is water?’ This illustrates how the most pervasive elements of our lives can become so familiar that they become invisible to us.
Many things go into forming a person, especially if the programming starts right from birth. As I tried to find the “entry point” to tell my story, I was overwhelmed by all the things I needed to weave into the narrative.
So, I resorted to what I always do when confronted with too much information: I throw everything I can think of onto a large sheet of paper to see it all at once. That way, I can then notice if there are key pieces that stand out — relationships, patterns, repeating elements.
In my true scientist way, I made a list of all the different influences over my young life:
I guess I expected that, like after Dad’s death, I would feel relief…or maybe more correctly, peace and serenity, given how it all ended.
While his aftermath was the relief of a threat finally extinguished, hers was the completion of caregiving done honorably. Though we parted with many unresolved things, I felt such peace at her transformation at the end…a kind of redemption from the rest of her life.
So I expected something more like: “It is done.” With both parents gone, and it being the end of that whole era, I should be able to “get over it,” “move on,” and “leave the past behind.” All those things people say, as if just the fact it is finally done means it is “over.” But nothing was further from the truth.
Instead, there was an intense explosion of a whole mess of emotions, ranging from love and grief, compassion and confusion, to anger, disappointment, abandonment, and back again to grief.
“Why write…now?” Three simple words, but a vital question that demands an answer to the motive for my change of heart.
Dr. Edith Eva Eger, in her 2017 book, The Choice, about her experiences both as a Holocaust survivor and a psychotherapist, talks about the question, “Why now?” Whenever she was confronted with a new patient, her approach was always the same–questions. I loved her description:
“Why now?…This was my secret weapon. The question I always ask my patients on a first visit. I need to know why they are motivated to change. Why today, of all days…Why is today different from yesterday, or last week, or last year? Why is today different from tomorrow?”
So it’s a fair question.
But before I can even answer why I would write now, I need to answer the question that came before it: “Why write?”
Given it’s Monday, you expect to see someone sitting at their desk with a coffee cup sipping tentatively before plunging into whatever awaits. So it’s not a surprise that I have this Styrofoam cup on my desk. The odd thing is it sits next to my regular ceramic mug, which is what’s actually holding my caffeinated drink of choice – tea. So why the Styrofoam cup?
Ah, a throw-back to yesterday’s post – start this one with a question, right? Well, questions are the order of the day, and that’s exactly the point with this Styrofoam cup. It doesn’t contain caffeine. It’s loaded with . . . questions. No it’s not some mystical beverage, or some liquid whose swirls you gaze into or whose curls of steam you study for the secret of life. It’s a game. And to a writer, it’s like a playground.
Questions are the staple of a writer’s life. It doesn’t matter if it’s nonfiction, essays, or fiction, you write to answer questions. Whether it’s what killed the dinosaurs, why we should care, or a story about bringing them back to life in a doomed amusement park, all three start from a question. No questions, nothing to contemplate, and hence nothing to write.
A question here: In an era of You Tube, My Space, video games and Instant Messaging, how do you cultivate a love for, and the ability to confront questions? No this isn’t another essay bemoaning all of this technology in our kids’ lives. Technology is here to stay and frankly, a lot of it is great. Just see the effect on homebound elderly who’ve embraced email and the web and thus feel connected not isolated. And let’s be honest, even adults are glued to all of the above, not just teens. It’s simply a realization that unless the power goes out, everyone is plugged into something electronic (like this blog?) and when is there time to sit across the table from someone, ask a question, and ponder an answer?
One family confronted this on a vacation trip. They realized each was plugged into their own electronic device, and hence, their own world. Fine up to a point. But there was no conversation. No connection. Now I’m not dissing this completely because hours of several people jammed together in a closet on wheels can get old. Each having their own space for a little while can be a relief. However, I did grow up in an era of “See how many different states’ license plates you could find” or “look for whatever object came up next on a list” as you traveled down the highway. Like it or not, you interacted. So I can understand this family’s concern.
They came up with a simple yet elegant solution. They came up with a list of questions, things like: “What is something about you that would surprise most people?” “What word do you really dislike?” “What is the biggest risk you’ve ever taken?” Simple questions. Yet even one person’s answer could lead to not only an extended conversation, but a newfound appreciation for people you reside with and ordinarily take for granted. We often find talking to “new people” exhilarating because it’s something new and different. Yet how many new and different things are within the very people sitting next to us that we may have grown bored with?
The family went ahead and created a product – a bunch of question cards in a Styrofoam coffee cup – and have recently started to market it. It’s called “Gab to Go.” It started locally and is beginning to spread as people realize what a gift asking a question can be.
For myself, I could probably take each question and write at least one post on it, maybe more, depending on how I slanted it. The possibilities, if not infinite, are pretty extensive. In fact, I may use a question/essay approach on a regular basis in future entries. For now, I revel in the new worlds and travels never imagined, with people very close to me, all because somebody thought to ask a question.
If you’re interested in learning more about the how and why behind this couple’s game, and news articles on their idea, check out “Gab to Go.”
Soul Mosaic 