Miss Edith at Windy Acres

Pasted below is a synopsis of the manuscript I'm pitching to agents. What do you think? Does it hold too much information? It is too wide-ranging? The proposed title is, "Learning the Layers of Grief."

When I first arrived in the United States, I decided it was time for a makeover. I’d lee behind grief and conflict and show the world a cheerful face. Before heading for California to marry the man I met two years earlier, I visited my brother in upstate New York and a friend and her parents in Detroit, trying out my new persona. It worked.

Darold and I married the year hippies flocked to San Franciso, where they turned flower children, staged love-ins, and burned brassieres. In adjoining Oakland, the Black Panthers tested their mettle. Students jumped on buses for Freedom Rides into the South, some paying with their lives for signing up African Americans to vote. For the past ten years, beginning with Brown vs. Board of Education, the Warren Supreme Court had handed down a series of remarkable decisions enshrining civil rights even as Black writers decried the hatred and unfairness that burdened people of color. Bewildered parishioners sought social change in church-sponsored encounter groups.

My husband and I signed up for one such venture. We lived in Santa Clara, forty miles south of San Francisco, the parents of two young boys and surrogates to my brother Helmut, who had joined us from Germany at fourteen. Our town bloomed with orchards and walnut groves. Silicon Valley . . .  was two teenagers tinkering in a garage. My dad had arrived for Christmas 1968; as the new year got underway, he was ready to return to Germany.

In our encounter group Darold and I, along with three other couples, had filled out personality inventories; our pastor forwarded these to a computer at Stanford University that analyzed them. Every other week each participant received a slip of paper gently suggesting an issue that needed attention. The following week we discussed how we processed the new information. We met weekly for ninety minutes, with Pastor Williams mediating the encounters.

When we first skimmed them, our notices evoked silence. Eventually someone would say, “That’s not me! The computer made a mistake,” and read it aloud. His or her spouse would retort, “Oh, yes, that’s you,” and someone else might chime in, “I've noticed you to be . . . [rigid . . . authoritarian . . . secretive . . .].”

“You suppress all emotions except rage,” read one of my messages. “Are you in mourning? Do you wear a mask when you forbid your emotions to come to the fore? Ask God to help you accept the full range of your feelings: fear, jealousy, love, grief . . .”

The note left me stunned. I had no idea I was a stranger to my emotions. It was a relief to see that some participants seemed in similar jams. It dawned on me, I was as damaged emotionally as Darold was disabled physically.

Had rage driven me to leave country, family, friends? I’d wanted to escape the past and had managed to do so, hadn’t I? My brother Karl certainly had. Two years younger than I, he rejected the prospect of inheriting the family business in favor of emigrating—at eighteen! 

“We need you to help out at home,” said Father the Master Baker, back when I was fourteen. “Your mother, you know, is not well.” On Dad’s release from a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp, we’d fled East Germany. Since then, two more siblings had joined us.

”Just one more year,” I pleaded. “Let me stay in school one more year.” The Gymnasium had acquainted me with English and French; I was burning to learn more. Evenings in bed I entertained myself comparing what I knew of these languages. German and French nouns were gendered; English nouns were not. Der Vater or le père was “the father,” die Mutter or la mère was “the mother.”

Under guild regulations, Dad had the right to apprentice me even if I rarely set foot in his bakehouse. I prepared our midday meals, washed diapers, and hung them out to dry. In our small store of groceries and baked goods, I stocked shelves and cleaned the floor.

“You are the nail to my coffin,” Mother used to scream at me. She’d seize me by my braids, shake me like a rabbit, and fling me against cupboard or stove. For Karl she grabbed whatever came to hand: a frying pan, an electrical cord. Once, when the boy was five, she went after him with a piece of firewood. Karl crawled under the table and screamed bloody murder while I stood there, shaking with fear, anxious to rescue my little brother yet utterly helpless. Other times Mother, whom we called Mutti, told us she’d die young, of cancer, as had been the fate of her mother.

Mutti was friendly and accommodating with our customers; once alone with me, she turned into the three furies rolled in one. Was that what wearing a mask was about? I was eighteen when she died, my brothers were sixteen, eight, and four.

Eventually Dad resigned himself to renting out the family business so that he might raise the young ones. I signed up to work as au pair in Paris, France, where, in my spare time, I studied English and French; Karl, with only minimal English skills, chose the Big Apple in the USA, where he found jobs in German bakeries. Later I worked as translator for a German pump manufacturer just long enough to raise the money I needed for cross-Atlantic and cross-country travel. Still later Dad let go of Helmut who, in Germany, ran with a gang and got in trouble with the law, but in 1969, the boy graduated from Santa Clara High and, having been accepted at Cal Poly, began to live on campus in San Luis Obispo. Our dad, Vati, contributed financially to his studies.

“I am often so sad,” I said in conference with Pastor Williams, staring out the window at the February sunshine.

“Can you tell me why that is?”

“My mother used to say, “I won’t get old. I’ll die like my mother, of cancer’.”

“Go on.”

“She died at forty-two. I’m next, I’m sure.” I hesitated a moment, then added, “When my gynecologist took down my health history and I mentioned that my mother and grandmother had died of cancer, he said, ‘We are going to have to watch you, won’t we.’ It only confirmed what I feared.”

“You think it’s a family fate to die young,” the pastor paraphrased. “To die of cancer.”

“Exactly.” I was so relieved he didn’t dismiss the thought as trivial, I wanted to hug him.

“Your mother and grandmother are dead and gone. Forget what happened to them,” he said. “You have your own life to live.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “You are a lovely young woman. You have two precious children. You need to remember that.”

I stared at him, this counselor so innocent of trauma. Was it possible to rewrite one’s family story? Shake off the turmoil of the past? Might I become a lovely young woman?

“Darold and I are in trouble,” I blurted out. It sparked a frown of concern.

“If both of you will come in together,” said the pastor, “I’ll suggest counseling. You may need more help than what I’m qualified to give. What the group can give.”

“Maybe he’ll go for it.” I grabbed hold of the idea like a drowning swimmer clutching a piece of driftwood.

As I turned to leave, Pastor Williams asked, “Have you read anything by Dr. Frankl?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He pulled a couple of paperbacks from his shelves.

“In Germany I attended an academic school,” I explained. “To qualify, you had to take tests at age ten that lasted an entire day. Four years of English and two of French when my parents made me quit school.”

“Read these,” he said. “It may help.” I skimmed the covers. Viktor Frankl. Vienna, Austria. The Doctor and the Soul. Logotherapy. Auschwitz. From Death Camp to Existentialism.

“I love to read, Reverend. I’ll return your books soon.”

“No worries. I have another set. This one here,” he pointed to the death-camp memoir, “has been reissued under the title, Man’s Search for Meaning.”

Man’s Search for Meaning. I wondered what prompted the change. Did the German edition—there must be a German edition—retain its original title? I’d ask Edith, the cousin named after me, in my next letter. We stayed in touch by writing each other on onionskin airmail paper.

A week later Vati, eager to be on his way, was packing his bags. I worried we may never see each other again and still, I knew almost nothing about his life. I was eight when he returned from Soviet prisoner-of-war camp, a stranger to his two children. And so, because I was reading Frankl’s Holocaust memoir, I asked the question that, straightforward though it was, took all my nerve to put into words.

“Vati, did you know any Jews before the war?”

“I did,” he said. “At the bread factory in Leipzig, before I married your mother and started a bakery of my own. Jews worked to the right and left of me. One by one they disappeared.” 

I was dumbfounded. I imagined a father punching dough as uniformed thugs manhandled colleagues . . . and he not saying a mumbling word, only but shaping dough into loaves. Did you mourn the colleagues who disappeared, I wanted to ask but didn’t dare. What else of my country and family was unknown to me, secrets rendered ever more shameful for their withholding?

Had Mother been mentally ill? Not that I knew anything about mental health, but the comment about wearing a mask gave me pause. Did her losses in the First and Second World Wars push her into the screaming fits that drove us to chaos and hate?

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned essential information about rage. The tell-tale stumbling block to mental health, rage often springs from unresolved grief and guilt. It took me years to understand how my anger was intertwined with complicated grieving and feelings of guilt and worthlessness. I grieved a hostile mother and an emotionally absent father. I felt guilty over the relief I felt when Mutti died and I realized, life with her was over and done, yet I also despaired over her absence. Unbeknownst to me, my brothers harbored similar conflicts.

We live with overwhelming rage when burdened with unresolved grief, Holocaust survivor Edith Eger explains. She should know; she struggled for decades with grief and survivor's guilt.

“More than thirty years of silenced ghosts come roaring out. I feel the force of the rage, and it doesn’t kill me after all.” This description appears in Eger’s memoir, The Choice: Embrace the Possible. She published the book when she was past ninety.

Years earlier a fellow grad student had passed her Frankl’s death-camp memoir. Eger struggled to open it, telling herself she knew all about Auschwitz from her own dreadful time there as a teen. When she did start reading the book, Frankl’s candor brought her to the same electrifying insights he brought me decades earlier.

In the introduction to her second book, an intro titled, “Unlocking Our Mental Prisons,” Eger discloses that she remained “a prisoner of the past” for many years, and that the most damaging prisons exist in our minds. As she details the prisons we build within, of which “The Prison of Unresolved Grief” applies to yours truly, she states, “Even late in my graduate training . . . I was still in hiding, running from the past, denying my grief and trauma.” Twelve Lessons to Save Your Life is the subtitle of her second book, The Gift.

We must process our mourning to free ourselves. “I’m a prisoner and a victim when I hold on to regret,” writes Eger. Regret conceals powerlessness: something has happened, and we can’t do anything about it. It’s tempting to avoid the thought.

Yes, I harbored a prison within, its outward sign the mask of “I am fine, thank you.” Merle Haggard’s “The Running Kind” played on the radio, his confessional “Within me there’s a prison / surrounding me alone,” striking a sympathetic chord.

Not until I examined the history of my parents and grandparents, not until I recognized their wounds and emotional injuries that never healed, did I begin to forgive. In the process, I forgave myself. Forgave my young woman’s “stiff upper lip,” which was a lie. Forgave the mask, which was a lie.

Eger returned me to the puzzle of how I suppressed all emotion except rage. Either of my parents would have benefitted from a note like the one that came to me from a Stanford computer. Are you in mourning? Do you wear a mask? Withhold love from people near and dear?

Mutti’s obsession with an early death may have been her way of denying traumatic losses. My dad likely suffered similarly, in silence, his losses not unlike his wife’s. Not only were our parents’ lives forever damaged by the upheaval of two wars and attendant occupations, we, their children, suffered the inheritance of their traumas. So did my cousins, the offspring of Dad’s sister, his only surviving sibling.

I could not keep my brothers alive. The two youngest died by their own hands, Reiner at eighteen in Germany, Helmut, though a graduate of Cal Poly, at thirty-one in Idaho. Then Karl, who lived near us with his family, succumbed to cancer when not much older than Mutti at her demise.

I am forever saddened to be their survivor; nevertheless, I remain faithful to Edith Eger’s and Viktor Frankl’s. message. We can come to grips guilt and grief. We can dispense with rage, not through contempt but by facing it like a visitor, saying, This, too, shall pass. It won’t kill me.

All of us, at some point in life, suffer a loss, a tragedy, a conflict. If the ordeals of the past don’t allow us to live in the present, we can learn from peers who moved from trauma to triumph. No one recovers in a straight line; still, we, too, can make peace with the past and embrace the world.

Writing weekly columns: can it amount to creative writing? Here are two recent examples. 

Guitarist from France, read here.

On primatologist Frans de Waal, read here.

It is early April 2023. I'm trying to recover from a series of adversities, which has pretty much stopped my creative output. The exception is, I have picked up again on my column writing for the online Cheyenne Post, see the page with its corresponding header. My hope is to use the "Patriarchy" column as a jumping-off point for a creative-nonfiction piece that touches on the heartaches of weeks past .

I am writing this on Sunday, October 2, 2022, at a time of leave taking. Saying goodbye is a huge event, one that has cost me much anxiety--see my column in the Cheyenne Post on "Downsizing." The process itself has been full of exasperating twists and turns. My house finally sold on Sept. 30, and the purchase of my Saratoga house will be happening within the next few days. After that, the movers will arrive to take my stuff to Saratoga. I've been packing boxes and cleaning closets and rooms as they get empty. My Saratoga house will be half the size of this one, with no acreage as I have here. 

Take a look at my Book Gallery's recent entry (under "About Me") and my article under "Columns Cheyenne Post," July 2022. Both talk about an essay I'm working on re mental illness in my family.

Isent the following notice to my google group in April 2022:

A few days ago I had shoulder surgery and now I'm in recovery. So far it's going as anticipated. I have had some essays published online in thecheyennepost.com The latest is on the brutal and unjust drone warfare waged by the Pentagon, in which countless innocent bystanders lose their lives and become "collateral damage." If interested in reading the piece, please use this link: 

Of my recent publications, I narrate both the "Oxygen" and "Black Stones" on their respective publication sites.

My personal essay, “Oxygen, ah Oxygen!” appeared in the Spring 2022 Issue of Tint Literary Journal. This journal publishes writers whose first language is not English. To read it, click here. 

"Chaos and Consolation" appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal on January 1, 2022. This journal publishes essays and stories that have to do with music. To read it, click here.

“The Black Stones of Regret” appeared in December 2020 in Inklette Literary Journal. The story is an autobiographical essay covering a slice of life of yours truly as a young immigrant and mother, circa 1966. In Inklette the printed version is preceded by a recorded reading of the story by me. To read it, click here.

“Virus in America” appeared in the Special Election Issue of The Courtships of Winds on November 1, 2020. The essay's primary focus is on the differences between the German and American responses to the pandemic. To the right is the essay in its original. To read it, click here.

“My Late-in-Life Romance” appeared in November 2020 under “Writing" in OyeDrum. The editors of this journal were very complimentary. To read it, click here.  

A reminiscence about a service watch that's someone else's story appeared in The Cheyenne Post on October 26, 2021. To read it, click here

I regret to say, Ageless Authors seems to have gone permanently offline after its creator, Larry Upshaw, suffered a stroke. Apparently he's not in position to continue to project. I sent an email to his wife, wanting to help. but go no response, and no one else has stepped up to pick up the pieces. 

Here are a few publications of my work in online literary magazines. To get from one pdf file to another, click "return" rather than "close" as you exit. 

The comments to my Slater friends on masks, below, is included in "Virus in America," see above.

The Wyoming Writers' Conference sponsored my session on Risky Writing via Zoom on Saturday, June 20, 2020. Scooter Smith of Texas was my guest author, whose memoir cum short story, "Come the Revolution" was published in the most recent anthology of Ageless Authors, Dang, I Wish I Hadn’t Done That (see cover image in the Book Gallery page). We also discussed a Wyoming Writer’s poem, Carrie Naughton's "Moose Bell." Regrettably, the author was unable to join us. Her poem appeared in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (see cover image on Book Gallery page).  "Moose Bell" contains a dynamite section on a conversation that lays bare religious intolerance.

Larry Upshaw, Director of Ageless Authors, joined us. He was impressed with the subject matter and later requested I undertake similar webinar events for his constituency. 

After my story "Windy Acres" appeared in an anthology of Wyoming Writers, Inc., I recognized (too late) its flaws. So, began polishing and submitting my personal essays and fictional stories to literary magazines. My newspaper-column writing at The Wyoming Tribune Eagle has come to an end; thus, I have time on my hands for creativewriting and revising. 

In January 2020, I submitted the proposal below to Wyoming Writers Conference, which was accepted by its committee a month later. I look forward to giving the presentation at the conference in June. Spring 2020 I'll offer similar workshops for smaller venues: at Platte County Library in Wheatland, WY, and at Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne. 

Ageless Authors Has Something for You!

You’ve looked forward to retiring and now that it’s happened, you are faced with a lot of hours. Why not fall back on the ingenuity that once helped you find your way in the world, raise children, develop a career? Ageless Authors can help. In a community of experimenters from all walks of life and every corner of the country you’ll learn to share stories about yourself, create essays, dip into fiction, try poetry writing. 

The goal of Ageless Authors is to give people 65 and up a venue for their creativity. It came to life and continues to flourish under Chief Cook and Bottle Washer Larry Upshaw. On agelessauthors.com readers find blogs on how to get started, how to gather and develop ideas, how to organize ideas into essay or story—last not least, how to stick with a project when you’re discouraged. The blogs have been created by yours truly and will continue to appear off and on. Then there are contests to enter and anthologies to purchase that can help the novice get started on—or polish—a piece of writing. One interesting feature of an Ageless Authors: Its anthology doesn’t just feature prize winners but publishes three or more “Honorable Mentions” and three or more “Recognizeds.” I was a judge in last year’s “Memoir” category. 

My third career (1991 to 2004) comprised teaching literature and writing—expository, business, creative writing— at a number of colleges and universities, first as teaching assistant (TA) at University of California at Davis, then as faculty, including at two Tennessee HBCUs (Historically Black College or University). [Below] you will find my CV and Addendum.

In this seminar I’ll discuss highlights from a story in the Dang, I Wish I Hadn’t Done That Anthology, see attached copy of cover. The story I want to choose, “Seven is the Magic Number,” won Honorable Mention last year and was created by Kenneth Stewart, who describes himself as born in Memphis, TN, with a science degree in math and physics. After working for IBM, he formed his own company in a career that spanned forty years. The seminar will show that Stewart’s essay, interesting as it is, actually comprises several mini-stories. The essay could be fashioned to suggest a timeline, with details to help readers orient themselves. It should begin and end on the same topic, with this or that anecdote of another topic worked into the main story. Some mini-stories are so evocative, one or the other could be expanded into an essay of its own.

Great news! In late October 2019, the Wyoming Arts Council notified me that my application for a Professional Development Grant has been approved. The application was a lot of paper work and documentation: Along with a CV (above, left) that covers my professional years, I attached an Addendum Resume (above, right) covering the ten-plus years of my Wyoming residence of volunteer work, creative writing, and performances of guitar and vocals (see Music Gallery page). I also filled out a six-page application form. Well, it was worth it.

I was a previous recipient of the Council’s Frank D. Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award.