Writing Eddie's Wake

Cherry Blossoms and Snow

2011-02-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

I'm grateful that we didn't get the fifteen inches of snow that was sort of predicted, although out where we live it's pretty hard to determine just how much actually accumulated in this last storm. The wind has blown some areas almost bare, while there are two to three foot drifts in other places. The "plow man" came to dig us out yesterday afternoon while the wind was still howling, so the gravel driveway is drifted over already. But I'm thankful that the main driveway is still open enough to use.

I'm thankful for my husband, Tom, who allows me to laugh at him without getting mad at me. Like those times when he wears his hat in a funny way, or when, like yesterday, he had his turtleneck on inside out and backwards, so that just under his chin it said Land's End. "Did you get dressed in the dark?" I asked him, laughing. "Well, it was dark inside the turtleneck when I put it on." I'm grateful that he realizes (I hope he realizes) that I laugh with joy and delight because I love him so much.

I'm grateful for my kids, grateful that soon I will have a daughter (in-law). I'm thankful that Andy doesn't think I'm a lazy sloth when he sees me napping in the middle of the day.

I'm thankful that my Mom seems to be content with her living arrangement and that my brother maintains his sense of humor even while he deals with all too many medical issues. I'm grateful that he has been sober for a whole year now. I'm thankful for Tom's family, even though some of them post photos of themselves in warmer, tropical climes on facebook while I'm looking for my boots and gloves. Yes, I'm thankful for them, and glad they could get away.

I'm grateful that Tom has had a job for the past year even while we pray that it will continue for another year.

I'm thankful for my new-ish friends, people I didn't really know five years ago, but who were so kind and supportive of us after Andy's crash in '06. I'm thankful for old friends and the times we can get together and catch up. I'm thankful for colleagues who care about me and how I am doing.

I'm thankful for Valentine's Day flowers that cheer up the house. I'm thankful for battery operated LED candles made of real wax and that have timers so I can set them up high in the living room and dining room to help chase away the winter darkness without worrying about burning down the house.

A few weeks ago, I found a bucket filled with sticks in the floral department of the grocery store. I thought they were pussy-willows, but discovered that, no, they were branches from cherry trees, with blossoms just about to pop. There was no way I could walk away from something like that, so I bought a bunch, rationalizing that I could give some to my Mom.

The blossoming cherry branches in the big vase reached their peak on Sunday, while snow blew and the wind raged outside. It took awhile, but I was able to get a good picture of them and the snow. But now, the petals are falling and soon the mess will be enough to warrant tossing the sticks into the woods. That's ok, though. The sun is high enough that the snow on our black-top is melting. Spring is only a month away.

Thanks, Steve, for telling me I'd feel better if I sat down and wrote something. You were right. The cherry blossom picture up there is for you.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

2011-01-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

Today - January 7, 2011 - is my grandmother's birthday. She was born in 1897, which would make her... let's see... 114 years old! I had Grandma in mind, at least part of the time, when I wrote about Maggie Stern. Maggie was born in 1897 as well.
Grandma (Clara) always wanted to fill us up when we came to visit. Each dish on the table was passed around under her eagle eye again and again. "Go on, have some more," she would say in her crackly "cherman" (German) old lady voice. "What's wrong, aren't you hungry?" she would ask if you said "no thanks" to anything. I am amazed that anyone got home without falling asleep at the wheel because we were soooo full of food!

I wonder if my Mom, now very forgetful, will notice what day it is today? I think we should celebrate in some small way.

I am finally getting back to writing. The journey through my family trauma-drama has taken a toll on me, even though those more directly involved than I are doing much better. The clouds seem to be parting, however. The maddening thing about this writer's block has been that I've been out of work, and I've been feeling like I need to take advantage of the time off by writing. It feels like the clock has been ticking.

No calls or churches on the horizon, but I am doing a little supply preaching. I am going to be the mother of the groom this summer. My kids are doing well. Tom is working and we hope it will continue through April and beyond. (He's a contract employee.) I've been able to enjoy the unique personality of each one of our cats. They give us a lot to laugh about. So life is pretty good.

New Year peace and blessings to all!

So long ago...

2010-09-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

Well, yes, I do realize that it has been almost three months since my last post. I could give you all sorts of excuses, but the truth is, the well has been dry and I have been trying to pull myself together.

Since my last post was about the hailstorm that shredded the beautiful corn plants in the fields and the flowers in my garden, tore down about a third of the leaves on the trees on our property, and ruined our roof, I thought I ought to tell you about the recovery of one sedum plant. As you can see from the photo above, it was completely stripped of its leaves.

I can't remember if I cut it back, although I believe I did. And over the summer, it did begin to grow again. The other photo is what it looks like today. Life over death; life wins!

In my zeal for making the garden look nice again, I overplanted all those 75% off annuals, and added a new tomato plant as well. Now I have a jungle outside of my front window, including a tomato plant that is trying to escape. It hasn't given us any sweet, red, ripe fruit for our table, but is bearing plenty of green ones. Soon I will pick them to see if I can ripen them in the kitchen, then tear up the plant. Maybe I'll tear up some of the other annuals as well to clean things up a bit, then buy a few garden mums we can enjoy until we get a killing frost.

I want to start writing about Karl and Jacob and Maggie again, but I am a bit afraid that I won't produce anything worth reading. A part of me feels empty without them always in the back of my mind. So maybe with a little TLC and time at the keyboard, I will "recover" just like my sedum.

I hope to stay more current with this blog, or start a new one. Stay tuned!

Hail Damage

2010-07-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Heavy with water, the sky was terrible and beautiful at the same time. Blues and greens swirled into updrafts and downpours, with spears of lightning criss crossing the changing shapes and colors... The meteorologist on the radio kept saying this was "a dangerous situation, with hail and possible tornadic activity" and that we should "take cover immediately."

Since we had foolishly gone for sandwiches in a town set right between our house and the storm, my husband drove as fast as he dared, hoping to get home in time to get the car into the garage and shut the big doors of the pole shed. I twisted in my seat to watch the sky, finally insisting that we stop for just a moment so I could try to shoot some photos with my cell phone camera. (That's one of them above.)

We made it just in time. The skies opened, the sirens sounded, and we headed to the basement with our laptops in tow so we could watch the radar, since the rain had obliterated the TV satellite signal. Soon we had the hail the forcaster told us about and soon it covered the garden with white.

Back upstairs (who could hide away when there was such a mighty storm to watch?) the hail pelted the roof, the trees, the flower garden that was just coming along, the corn and soybeans in the field. Leaves from the trees fell as fast as the hail did. None of our windows were broken, but the growing things outside were utterly shredded. According to the local newspaper, the areas on either side of our road were the hardest hit in the county. Crops ruined, lowlands flooded, muck and mud everywhere!

Now, several days later, the air smells like autumn. The corn is drying out the way it's supposed to dry out in September and October. There are dry leaves on the lawn, but it's too hot to do much raking. I cut back many perennials with broken stems and torn leaves. It kind of looks like fall, too. I find it terribly sad.

Last week I learned that two great saints from my first parish recently died within days of each other. Both were 96 years old, each had been a member of her congregation since she was young. I could tell fond and funny stories about each one of them.

When I first became their pastor fifteen years ago, I remember looking from one face to another in their women's Bible Study groups and wondering how many of them I would bury. As it turned out, many of them did die while I served as their pastor, and others have died since. It was a sad moment to realize that I wasn't there only to befriend them, but that I would be called on walk their last days with them. I preached resurrection hope at all their funerals; some with joy because they had been released from their suffering, all with sadness at losing them.

Yes, the leaves on the trees around here are pretty thin. Yes, my garden looks nothing like it should. Sadly, the beautiful corn is done for this year, since it's too late to replant.

BUT, the garden store down the road is changing from nursery to local produce outlet - all annuals are about to be composted, most of them leggy and spent. For 75% off, they sold me two boxes of plants that are in good enough shape that they might just bring some beauty and life back into the garden. Death doesn't have to win this one! (Does it ever?)

I'll keep you posted and maybe even share a photo or two of the garden once it starts coming along again.

Peace, health and good weather to you.

A Lesson from Pansies

2010-04-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

In Eddie's Wake, Karl receives valentines from the girls in his class who befriended him after his pals, Jimmy and Elmer had deserted him. But he also receives a really nice storebought card that had pansies on the cover, with the words, Pansies for Thoughts. It was from Jimmy and Elmer, who wrote on the back, We still think you're a pansey, Stern... Karl laughed at the card from his stupid former friends; he'd given up on them and could see how childish they were. But deep down, I think he was hurt, too.

This is the season for pansies in my garden. It's cool enough that they grow nicely and stay compact; not like the way they will bolt and grow crazy once it gets hot. Then I will sadly pull them out and wonder if there is a greenhouse around where I can buy pansies to plant in the fall. (Maybe I should start my own from seed...)

The fun thing about these flowers, though, is that they reseed themselves and sometimes come back the following spring. So when I cut off the spent blooms during the growing season, I don't throw the flowers in with the compost. I either leave them in the garden or scatter them at the edge of the lawn.

My grandmother loved pansies, and I think I inherited that from her. I try to plant some every year. Once, when I had a patch by the back door of our house, I noticed the deep, deep purple that colored the inside of one of these sweeties... and I thought, "Ok, God, just how do you do that? Where do you get that color?"

That was a long time ago, in a diffferent place and time and life. But I just noticed the same thing the other day. The rich, deep purples and blues just blow me away; it's like you could fall into the color of eternity if you stared at it long enough. How can anyone walk by without noticing?

Despite whatever junk is going on in my life - and often there's plenty - God can still bring forth something amazing like a pansey, with all it's regal, velvety color. It puts things in perspective, somehow. God hasn't given up on us, on me. The Creator is still creating. I think the adjective is steadfast.
Until next time...

"Now the Green Blade Rises..."

2010-04-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, we burned "the Triangle," a patch of field bordered on two sides by driveways (both of them ours) and one side by the town road we live on. We intended to do a burn, as we do every couple of years to give our expanding collection of prairie wild flowers a head start in the race against the weeds and grasses. But this year things got exciting when the fire went faster than anyone expected.

But nothing that wasn't supposed to burn burned, and we had a big black patch between our driveway and the yet-to-be-planted corn field. Over the last few days, however, green has returned little by little. Yesterday it rained, and now the whole patch is kelly green; the charred grasses from last year are nearly swallowed up by new life. (The photos above are sort of "before" and "after.") This just about always happens when there is a grass fire, but it still seems like a miracle to me. Green returns, in spite of what we do.

The windows in our church santuary were covered with black sheer-ish curtains for Holy Thursday and Good Friday. All decoration had been removed from the church, and last night the environment was spare and grim, as you might expect. Some of the windows face west, and on a good evening you can watch spectacular sunsets from your seat in the church. Too beautiful, too distracting for Good Friday, indeed, so the windows had to be covered.

But last night, as the service went on, the sunset was so bright that you could still see it through the curtains. Dark a day as yesterday was, though, the darkness of failure, despair and death could not hide the beauty and brightness of the setting sun. Darkness is swallowed up by light in spite of what we try to do!

It's too late for me to be up writing this; the sun rises tomorrow at 6:49am and I will be with other believers at our outdoor sunrise service, celebrating the truth that the Light of the Risen Christ always trumps the darkness.

And not just the darkness of night, the darkness of failure, of confusion or despair... but the darkness of death. Death now becomes the portal to life eternal, where there is always light... where there is nothing but peace and joy.

So, even with the hard things in our lives, the sad things, the irritating things, we are bold to proclaim: "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia."

Words from a Cave

2010-03-17T06:58:00.000-07:00

Today I am going to try to sit still for long enough to write. Since the last
time I wrote, there have been more family crises that I've needed to tend, but I will spare you all the details. It has been stressful enough that I forgot the address for my own blog! I sadly admit that other than emails, this is the first thing I've written since my last post.

Today, I hope to get back on track...

Last week, we were fortunate to attend the opening of the Dead Sea Scroll exhibition at the Saint Paul Science Museum. The Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a shepherd who was looking for a lost goat in a cave near the Dead Sea. The scrolls had been hidden maybe 2000 years ago in pottery jars... The find was extraordinary because the scrolls contain ancient Jewish manuscripts, mostly biblical.

We snaked - more like crawled - our way through the exhibits, then came to the darkened room that held the fragments of scrolls. I could recognize the Hebrew lettering, but as I learned in seminary, there were no spaces between words and no vowels. The letters were tiny and barely visible due to the low light necessary to protect these ancient treasures.

My feet ached by the time we got to this room, and seeing the fragments themselves was almost anticlimactic. But when we exited the dark room, we saw a display of orginal pages from the much more recent St. John's Illuminated Bible. Color and words we could read and understand! (If you're not familiar with the St. John's Illuminated Bible, you can learn more at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/stjohnsbible/stjohns-exhibit.html)

Seeing the St. John's pages inspired and invigorated me! Both the words on the Dead Sea Scrolls and those in the St. John's Bible convey an important message. Both will undoubtedly stand the test of time. But they are both writings. Words set down on paper or parchment.

It all humbled me, a twenty-first century writer, who composes not on paper, but at a keyboard, who wrote a story about a boy who shoved all his bad feelings into an imaginary cave, then found love and redemption in a glorious dream-cave. A nice enough story, but one that will probably not stand the test of time. But while I am humbled, I am also feeling ready to being writing again. We all have stories to tell.

The violets above are from another year... but with any luck, they'll grace our brown garden again soon.

Points of Light in a Dark Time

2010-02-10T21:05:00.000-08:00

Sister Anne in "Eddie's Wake," one of the two real theologians in the novel, says to Karl, "God doesn't always keep bad things from happening to us, Karl. Of course God cares about you...and all of us. It's how God takes bad things and makes something good of them that matters, and how God never, ever abandons us."

I have been spending the last week or so trying to think of something positive to write here, at a time when life feels so dark and my spirit cries out for a release from all the tension and stress I am feeling. Maybe you noticed that I edited my last post a few days after I wrote it in an attempt to make things sound better than they are. The truth is, I feel terribly low, and am unable to focus on writing fiction (or much else), which only adds to the sorrows.

My Mom is staying with us for a couple of weeks, confused as to where she really lives or in whose bed she is sleeping (mine) or whose clothes are in "her" closet (mine). My brother is as stable as he gets, separated from me and from Mom by the whole state of Wisconsin, big old Lake Michigan and the U.P. of Michigan; but he needs some kind of support, too. It's not the way I would like to see either of them living their lives. I am not one prone to tears, but they are sure close to the surface these days.

This morning I had an appointment in the Cities, got a late start from home because Mom decided today would be a good day for a shower, something she couldn't handle yesterday. I planned to take US 61 north, but when I got to the turnoff, the road was blocked by a snow truck and several cops. I was forced to turn the opposite way and drive several miles before I could stop or turn around. I learned that a propane tanker had tipped over due to a patch of ice, so I frantically called the clinic to see if I could get a later appointment. "Latoya," the woman who answered the phone, sounded a little gruff at first, then ended the call by saying, "You be safe, now." It took me a while to realize what she had said, to realize what a gift it was.

A walk through Target, not finding the item I needed, but picking up a few other things for the house - and a new scarf - but not dropping a lot of money. A visit with my kindly physician and good friend, whose compassion for my pain reminded me why I drive all those miles to see him. Sharing a church meal with other friends, amazed at how loving they all are to Mom. The promise of coffee with another dear friend tomorrow, someone I've deeply missed for the past three months.

These are all points of light, and they made my day end way better than it began.

I've learned an important lesson: never withhold a small kindness, because you may have no idea how it may turn someone's day around, how it could be the only thing bringing light to a heart that hurts.

I'm thanking God for Latoya tonight and remembering the driver of the propane tanker. I sure hope he's OK.

Musings on Family Dilemmas/ Family Dynamics

2010-01-27T18:25:00.000-08:00

Maggie Stern, furious with Jacob Denver, stood with her hand on his upper arm, staring directly into his eyes. "...I believe when you're in a family and one person is sick or weak or hurt, everyone else works for the good of that person, no matter what it takes, because if that person isn't well, no one else in the family is, either."

Yes, I know Maggie came from the deeps of my...head? heart? spirit? laptop? She's wise and sounds like the kind of mother, daughter, sister and wife I want to be. I love her - I love the idea of her and I love many of the ideas she has. But these days it feels like I'm living out her words in ways that are not very healthy.

What if the person who is sick, weak or hurt keeps hurting or damaging the others? What if that person drags everyone else into his or her illness, so that attempting to take care of or help that person only makes everyone else sick, weak and hurt? And is it right for everyone to work for the good of that one when doing what might appear to be good is really more like enabling and co-dependency?

I have to wonder what Maggie would say to this, but I'm too tired to try to figure it out. If you know her, if she resonates with you, what do you think she might say? I'd like to know. I wish I could share a cup of tea with her and ask her myself.

RE: the photo above: Here we are in the middle of winter, when blue sky and sunshine is a treat, when the sight of green grass, budding trees and blooming tulips seems light years away... Even so, I found some beauty a few weeks ago in the gray and cold.

And the hours of daylight are getting longer. The earth is turning and hope hangs on.

The New Year

2009-12-31T16:15:00.000-08:00

My sister lives three time zones away, which is altogether too far. We can't meet for lunch or go shopping together, so we find other ways to stay close. Of course, there's the phone, but we have to time our calls just right, because one of us might be sleeping. We e-mail and send each other hilarious photos of questionable taste. It helps that the men in our lives hit it off last summer and now are friends, too. But the best way we stay close is by sending each other crazy gifts, a tradition that started when we were in college.

A few years back, she gave me a Jesus Action Figure. (She gave me Moses, too, but he's not nearly as much fun. Tom says, "Moses only divides the water. Jesus makes wine!") Jesus has jointed, bendable arms and little wheels under his feet so he can move quickly to help the helpless and bless those who are wavering in faith, unsure of what they really need.

My Jesus Action Figure has been the visual for any number of sermons (which only works because I have preached in many different places.) Imagine, me seriously preaching about "be what God made you to be, do what God calls you to do" then reaching into the pulpit, and whipping out my favorite toy: "Be a Jesus Action Figure!" I love the surprise, the giggles and then the laughter.

As I write this in my time zone, we have only about five and a half hours of the old year remaining. 2009 has been good and bad for us. Job uncertainty, no jobs, our son needing surgery (and, oh, by the way, since he had no health insurance, we had to pay thousands of dollars up front). Then there was the failing health of our parents and the loss of my father in law, a traumatic move for my mother, worry for her well being and for that of my brother, many trips to visit them in the next time zone east... But then "Eddie's Wake" was published after all those years of work and the book itself looks fantastic, I left my last interim-pastor job feeling pretty good about how things went, our son went back to work, then back to college and got A's and B's his first semester... Our needs have been met often miraculously - more than once - just when we were about to panic.

What will '010 bring? Probably another mixed bag. Sometimes I'm afraid about what's ahead, sometimes I can't wait (will I be able to write a whole first draft of book two by the end of the new year? I hope I've learned enough about writing fiction to be able to do that.)

The thing is... the true, real, live Jesus Action Figure is already there in 2010... and beyond, ready and waiting to move quickly to help the helpless and bless those who are wavering in faith, unsure of what they really need.

Happy New Year, friends. May 2010 be for you a time of joy and blessing upon blessing! Thanks for reading.

The Huddle

2009-12-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

When I felt that our boys were old enough to “be very careful” with breakable things, we set up our nativity set on a low shelf so they could see it. We remembered the story of Jesus’ birth as we placed the angel, then Mary and Joseph, then the baby in the manger, then the shepherd and sheep and finally the kings. With Christmas lights all around, it was a beautiful sight.

But the next morning as I walked through the room, I noticed that the figures were all bunched up in a tight little wad around the manger. Hmmm... I was a little annoyed that I had to put it back in order, along with everything else I was picking up and putting back in order.

Not too long after that, it happened again. Who was doing this? As I recall, the dog got blamed for it. Once more, I fixed it up and went back to chasing my two little boys.

But the next time I looked, Mary and Joseph and their baby were again being suffocated by sheep, shepherd and wise men. What on earth? “Does everything in this house always have to be so messy?” I thought.

Then it dawned on me. We had been singing about the Baby Jesus, things like, "I love thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky, and stay by my cradle till morning is nigh." We’d been lighting candles on our Advent wreath and had been talking about Jesus’ birthday. To this day, I can’t get either boy to admit that he was the one who did it, but whoever it was understood this Christmas stuff way better than his Mom did.

Who doesn’t love a new baby? Who wouldn’t want to get close to this wondrous Babe, who’d come to bring healing to a hurting world?

My wish for all of you, my friends, is that you huddle close around the manger this year, for herein lies your hope and salvation.

A Blessed, Merry Christmas to all!

A New Day

2009-12-06T18:31:00.000-08:00

This morning when I went into the kitchen to fix my oatmeal, I looked across the living room and out the picture windows and was stunned by the beauty of the sunrise. The house was dark, and the "automatic on-off LED Christmas candles" still shone brightly on the window sills... but outside and across the yard, I could see the deep night brighten to blues, then rose, then burning orange; the silhouettes of bare trees fancying it up, even though there was no need.

It didn't last long. By the time I'd finished my oatmeal,it was gone. But it made a difference that I was able to behold such a spectacular sight at the start of my day.

Like many others, our household has been hit by the bad economy. (I get really sick of hearing the term "touch economic times." I think it was coined by someone who's had little if any first hand experience, someone who wanted to package up the uncertainty of being able to pay all of next month's bills into a nice p.c. phrase when there's really nothing nice about it!) As I was saying - we've been hit here, too, and there are moments of high panic, moments of hope, moments of impatience.

But seeing a sight like I did this morning makes me thankful I had a reason to get out of bed. (Supply preaching that pays!) One way or another, things will work out. They always do.

It was worth getting up for. Try it sometime.

November Changes

2009-11-22T18:39:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago today, I said good-bye to the congregation (CLC) I'd been serving as interim pastor for nearly two years. "Bittersweet" is the only word to describe the day; "bitter" because I knew I would no longer be kept in the loop about this parishioner's illness or that parishioner's family troubles; because I would not be there to watch and perhaps guide the growth of some exceptional young people I'd come to know and love. "Bitter" because it meant I would no longer have day to day contact with the dear friends who made my time there so much better than I'd expected it to be. The day was "sweet" because by the grace of God and with a lot of help from others, I was able to leave the congregation in better shape than when I'd arrived, "sweet" because of the love that was palpable as I said "farewell."

With little time to relax in between, we set out to visit my mother and my brother, and help close the sale of the house she'd lived in for nearly 20 years, the last seven without my Dad. I didn't go over to Meadowbrook Drive for "one last look," wanting to remember the good times we had there instead of the sad emptiness that was sure meet me if I ventured in. Now my mother lives in an independent living apartment building for seniors, which doesn't really feel like home for her, except for the familiar furniture and pictures on the walls. She participates in some of the planned group outings, but is more forgetful than the last time we saw her. Which is another change...

(We are somewhat humbled to realize that we - my husband and I - have reached the age when we are eligible to live in that same building!)

All this while, we knew that the return to our own home meant coming back to the same old worries about our own lives, not sure at all as to what the future holds for either of us. We need at least one, regular, good sized paycheck coming in if we are to continue to pay our bills and live in this wonderful home.

"Trust and be patient," "the Lord will provide..." "And be thankful, for that is the will of God for you..."

Through the window of our hotel lobby in Michigan, as we ate our free breakfast every morning, we could see one red rose blooming at the tip of a long stem in the neighbor's yard. Although the daytime temperatures were fairly warm for November, the nights had been very cold and frosty; even so, that rose still bloomed. Maybe it flourished because it had been planted so close to the house... so close to the house that I didn't dare go traipsing across the lawn to take a picture of it. With or without a photo to show you - that rose was a thing of beauty and a sign of hope for every day we saw it.

I remember the saying I used to see on posters: "Bloom where you are planted." This rosebush grew in sandy soil, surrounded by needles from the white pines in that yard. Now, I don't grow roses, but I think that's hardly an ideal place for such a tender plant. "Bloom where you are planted," indeed, but I think you do a whole lot better if you're nourished with just the right plant food and planted in a warm place, like the sheltered spot next to the house. If you were going to bloom where you are planted - and flourish - who or what would be your warm place, your sheltered spot? And what would nourish you?

Alas, (does anyone use that word anymore???) when we came to breakfast on our last day in Michigan, we saw that the rose had shed its petals. Another change. I could have grieved such a loss, but instead am very thankful for the promise and hope it represented at a time of upheaval and sadness.

The embroidered cross in the photo above is from the back of my new green stole, lovingly created by a friend on the occasion of my departure from CLC, and lovingly, thankfully, received by me. The stole is a patchwork of greens - my favorite color and the color of "ordinary time" in the Church. All of our joys and sorrows and changes and thanksgivings are woven and pieced together by the Master Weaver/ Seamstress to become the one piece of life we are given. Treasure yours... and give thanks for it. Peace be with you!

P.S. I tell you this so I'm accountable: this is the week Karl and Maggie and Jacob will all come together again in my writing. On to new adventures with these good friends.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

2009-10-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

What a difference eighteen hours makes! No wonder it's called the "Theatre of Seasons."
Hope the sun is shining where you are.

I'm not ready for this!

2009-10-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

I am amazed at how quickly time passes. Is it really time to start thinking about Thanksgiving and (gasp!) Christmas? No way, I'm not ready. But if you look out my window, you'd see that everything is jumbled up, confused. The corn stands in the field, proud and tall; the precious ears, ripe with kernels and ready, point down to the earth, not up to the sun like they did a few weeks ago. And today, the stalks are frosted with snow, but not because the farmer is late or lazy.

We haven't raked leaves yet because most of them are still on the trees. The hose is still in the garden. Leaves on the black walnut tree are still green but they're wilted and sick looking. Branches sport leaves and snow. The birdbath has a layer if ice across the top. Snow is falling, heavy and wet. Six months from now, you'd say it was an April Fool's joke, but today...

What's going on? "The last shall be first and the first shall be last?" Not quite. "For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert..." This is snow not water. How about "Praise the Lord from the earth...fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command..." That's nice...but then there's "He gives snow like wool; he scatters frost like ashes. He hurls down hail like crumbs--who can stand before his cold?" That's right: Cold!

Yes, indeed, I am complaining. Not ready for winter, haven't enjoyed fall yet. The turtle necks have not yet replaced the t-shirts in my dresser. The windows haven't been washed yet; the garden still needs to be put to bed.

But, then, there is soup on the stove and bread baking. Candles seem to warm the house a bit. It's dark early enough that I can ignore the dust and the carpet that needs vacuuming. Good news (we think) from the business; Eddie's Wake is selling and people seem to like it.

I think that's called grace. No, more like grace upon grace.

Peace be with you...

Summer Glories

2009-10-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

From a piece I wrote for the Pastors' Column in a local newspaper yesterday, which helped me remember how much I love to write. Gotta get started on the next novel!

All summer, I babied my Morning Glory vines along, hoping they would put out those beautiful blue blooms just like the picture on the seed package. In June they sprouted, in July they spread all over the trellises, but there were no flowers. The green vines looked nice, but something was missing.

So I read up on Morning Glories, discovering that they like soil that is poor and dry. I’d had no luck with nasturtiums in that same spot last summer, maybe the soil was too rich, even though it’s mostly sand and I didn’t add any fertilizer. Maybe they were getting too wet when I watered the rest of the garden. Maybe, it was just too cool for most of the summer. I decided to make a mental note that Morning Glories are just one more flower that won’t bloom in that spot. Next year, I’ll try something else.

I had to go out of town for a period of time, and forgot all about my disappointment with the Morning Glories. When I returned in the middle of August, there were a few flowers on each vine. They were such a gorgeous shade of blue that I grabbed my camera and took some pictures, just to prove that they actually flowered. As the weeks passed, and Labor Day came and went and we went deeper into September, much to my delight, the vines erupted with dozens and dozens of new blooms. By evening, the flowers would be pulled back and shriveled, but when the sun came up again, new flowers would be there to greet the day. Except for planting the seeds, I did nothing to make this happen. It was all God’s miracle of creation.

Now here we are at the beginning of October and we’ve had frost warnings two nights in a row. There was no way to cover all those vines, so I hoped they’d survive just for a few more days, maybe even a few weeks. On the morning after the first frost, the flowers bloomed, but when I went to check on them, their edges were purple and curling inward already. As I write this, the plants are still valiantly making flowers, but the wind and rain and cold make them wither and fade well before noon.

Every fall I am reminded of what the Prophet Isaiah says. The grass withers, the flowers fade; but the word of our God will stand forever. As we move into the darkest time of the year, when no grass grows and all flowers have withered, when we burn candles to ward off the edge of night, this verse sustains me. Isaiah also says surely the people are grass, and so we are, mortal and fragile, not only in our bodies, but in our spirits as well. But God, Creator of all, sent the Word, Jesus to save us from all that. No matter how we bloom and fade and watch our loved ones bloom and fade, the Word of God stands forever, steady, constant and always with us.

May God’s peace be with you

P.S. It was so windy overnight that the trellis holding the biggest M.G. plant blew over. Bye, bye, blue...

A Cake - for Me?

2009-09-29T19:06:00.001-07:00

Well, I did share it! It was the afternoon treat when I attended a book group at a golf resort with my sister-in-law and mother-in-law a couple of weeks ago. (The rocks were yummy - like m&ms!) I was amazed to see my name on the events sign at the entrance to the park. I was really amazed to see 33 people in the clubhouse, waiting to hear what I had to say about Eddie's Wake, waiting to ask some great questions. It was fun, but kind of embarrassing, too.

Soon we'll have a book celebration at our church for friends and family. We sent out 50+ invitations today! What will I fix to feed all these people? Wish I had time to make Maggie's apple pie. True comfort food, if it ever existed.

And tomorrow, I'll be talking to a reporter from the local newspaper, who wants photos.

This is all fun and exciting, but I want to remember - and maybe you can help me with this - that writing Eddie's Wake was never meant to be about me. Yes, I love writing, and I'm antsy to start the next book, but that's not what this is about, either.

I wrote Eddie's Wake for every person who has lost a loved one, who has pined for someone who no longer walks on this earth; it's about everyone who knows first hand what "vain longing" is like. Eddie's Wake might be a good read, but it's supposed to bring the message that life goes on and healing happens - even though the scars of loss never really go away. It's about love, and how true love comes about in the strangest ways. It's about how love does, indeed, conquer a whole host of problems, or at least make them a bit more bearable. Most of all, it's about how the love of God trumps all.

No, Eddie's Wake is not about me. It's all about you, my friends.
May peace be with you.

A Tribute

2009-09-25T10:24:00.001-07:00

Where have you been?
I know it has been a very long time since I have posted.
You do know how important a web presence is to selling Eddie's Wake, don't you?
Yes, I do, but... well, a lot of things have happened. Like my 'day job,' which isn't really a day job at all, with all those evening meetings.
You missed some of those, too. You're becoming a slacker!
And then there's my family. It's been a busy summer helping my Mom weed through her belongings and move. I missed lots of work for that and had no time or energy to think...
You're making excuses.
They're all true. And then, we we thought things would settle down, someone important died. My father-in-law.
Oh, dear.
He used to terrify me, but once, before I was even officially in the family, and I was visiting their house with my beloved and it was winter and I was freezing even with an extra sweater on, he turned up the furnace. I told him he didn't have to do that just for me, and he said, "What's the matter, don't you think you're worth it?" And the truth was, I didn't think I was worth it. That has stayed with me for over 35 years. Somehow, I thought I was being a good Christian or at least a good girl if I always put everyone else first, which would have meant, if the family wanted to save money on fuel oil, I should ignore my own needs and go along with it. It took a scary person telling me I was worth something before I began to believe it.
You've come a long way, baby.
Most of the time. But now I hear myself saying those same words to others. Maybe that's the greatest tribute I could pay.
Indeed.
So now do I have an excused absence from blogging?
Of course. You're worth it. Just don't forget about us.
Never.

"How can I get a copy?"

2009-08-19T05:28:00.001-07:00

It just occurred to me that I've been telling you about my getting my hands on copies of "Eddie's Wake," but that I haven't mentioned where you can get a copy. They are available through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. I ordered one copy through Amazon last night; will let you know how long it takes for it to come. Haven't tried B&N yet.

My Morning glories are finally beginning to bloom and the weeds in the garden are thriving. Between the book and more family crises, I haven't been able to do anything about the weeds or enjoy the flowers.

But wait! I just went out to get a shot of the Morning Glories, and discovered, on August 19th, that we have ripening tomatoes; the first of the season. I will have tomatoes on my cucumber cream cheese sandwich today. And tomorrow I will make salsa!

I have a BOOK copy of Eddie's Wake!

2009-08-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

My stomach was in knots and my hands were shaking. I wasn't sure if I would laugh, cry or throw up as I when I opened the box... but I did none of those things. Just signed a copy for my Mom and left it on her chair. It's a beautiful book with some heft to it, thanks to Dave Aldrich. Yay, Dave!

I've been with my Mom for three weeks helping with family stuff, but am on my way home, sleeping in the shadow of the Mackinac Bridge (above).

We'll be planning some "Book Events" soon and will announce them here. Hope you can come help us celebrate!

They're Here!

2009-08-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

Finally, it's a reality. Two boxes of books arrived today, but since I'm in Michigan with my Mom, I had to ask my son to open the boxes. He says they look great. Will keep you posted as to availability.

Beware of that perfect parking place

2009-07-31T19:27:00.000-07:00

It was a shady spot in a gravelly lot on a warm day. Nobody else is parked there, what luck! In fact, the whole lot is vacant. We pull in, park, get out, and start walking; Mom forgot her cane, so she hangs onto my arm. She mentions something about these little black blobs on the ground. I am very preoccupied. Looks like leftover asphalt crumbs, I say. You know, it's road construction season in the Midwest, and some of those workers can be pretty sloppy.
We return to the car about 30 minutes later. This time I look down, and I look closely. Oh-oh, those aren't asphalt blobs, they're... berries?
I look up. A-hem. A big tree with red and blackish-purple berries, like big ol' raspberries... The source of our coveted shade. Well, I say, at least no birds have blessed us with droppings on the car.
Now, I look down again. At my feet, at my sandals. At Mom's feet. If we'd been barefoot, it would have looked like we'd been stomping out the grapes of wrath before his judgment seat! (OK, self, settle down, now!)
Back home, we decide to wipe our feet on the grass. Picture: elderly woman, hanging onto daughter as they wipe gunk off their shoes. We look up. Neighbors watch us from their stoop. Almost fall over laughing, wondering what they must think of us.
Later, same neighbors watch as I scrub said shoes and sandals with a brush, Fantastik and water from the hose.
Shoes cleaned up pretty well... then I notice the asphalt driveway, little bits of dark berry from our shoes, waiting for someone to walk all over them and tromp them through the house. More hose, more water.
Neighbors still watching: "Whatever they stepped in must have been good, Ray..."

The berries in the photo above are wild black caps from my yard, much tamer than seedy mulberries mixed with gravel.

Great news: Eddie's Wake publish date, July 31, 2009. Today! Mom says we need to celebrate with ice cream. Chocolate, vanilla. NO berry!

Books soon to come.

"We're On Our Way!"

2009-07-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

No photos for this post... (Can't think of anything to use. Maybe if I had a photo of a car...) We're on our way! Eddie's Wake is in production. In a few more weeks, we should have books. Yay!
Thanks for reading.

Wild Things

2009-07-20T07:15:00.001-07:00

It seems like I've been seeing (and hearing) all sorts of wild critters lately. On the way to work last week, poking its head from the weeds at the side of the road was a bald eagle. I'm sure it was lunching on roadkill, maybe a whole deer or a raccoon. I remember fifteen years ago or so, when the eagles were just coming back from the brink of extinction, we took the kids on a hike down to the Mississippi River, hoping to see one. It was late December and the water was open and there were at least four or five big eagles feeding on Mississippi River fish. What a thrill that was! And now there are enough eagles that seeing them around here is a pretty common occurrence.

And then there are the deer. This time of year they are more of a traffic hazard than anything. Two fawns at the edge of the road, trying to cross then chickening out, back and forth to the center line then finally across. I was glad I saw them soon enough to slow down and take in the show. On Saturday while fixing breakfast, I heard the strangest noise... was it a bird or squirrel? I looked, and saw a doe, 20 or 30 feet from the house, looking down at something and making that whistling-snorting noise. I opened the window a little and she looked at me. Then down. Then at me. I'm not sure I like having deer so close to the house (my hosta plants, you know) so I made a little bit of noise and she took off into the woods. And there, just above the weeds, went the furry tail of our mouser cat, Cougar, after her. Did she really think she could catch a deer?

I think I saw a groundhog heading into the corn the other day. And there are the howls of the coyotes and fox at night, making me go out looking for little Betty, my favorite cat, the one we don't think is smart enough to run from predators. And of course, there are the bluebirds and hummingbirds who like it when I water the garden. I quit filling the regular birdfeeder, since it attracts raccoons and possum this time of year, and I do NOT like having that kind of wildlife on the deck!

All this is diversionary for me. We are still waiting for approval of the cover for "Eddie's Wake" from Outskirts Press. They have to OK it, then I have the final say, and then it goes into production and then, in three to four weeks, I'll see the book. The real deal. Next post I hope to be able to say, "We're on our way!" but for now... wait, wait, wait.

The photo above is Betty, soooo busted.

The water in my blood

2009-06-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

On my way home from Michigan, I usually cross the Upper Peninsula on US Highway 2. The highway runs along the north shore of Lake Michigan, between sand dunes and through forests. The Lake was stunning yesterday in the cool sunshine and I was amazed at her colors, from deepest blue to crisp aquas to greens so transparent that I could see the sand beneath it. I stopped twice to take pictures and wondered at the sense of urgency I had to capture all the colors in my camera.

I love Lake Superior, and Lake Michigan, too. I grew up vacationing in the U.P., swimming in Lake Michigan and picking rocks along Superior's shore. I think I take pictures because I want to hang on to both lakes and all the memories I have of being there with my parents, sister and brother. My father died seven years ago this week. My sister lives in Alaska, my brother is ailing and my Mom is growing older. Maybe if I can hang on to the lakes and the dunes and rocks and white pines, I can hang on to the family I grew up with, too.

Karl Stern in Eddie's Wake felt the same way, I think, when he discovered that he and his family would be leaving the Lake where his father lived and fished and died. He was positive that everyone would forget all about his father if they moved away; he was truly afraid that he would forget, too. I wish I could tell him that moving away wouldn't make him forget... he'd just never be able to visit the big Lake without the feeling presence of his father. And that he'd probably take a lot of pictures trying to take the Lake home with him.

The image above is the "Mighty Mac" -- The Mackinac Bridge. It was completed fifty years ago this year and is a marvel to behold.

Traveling Sawmill

2009-06-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

Our nephew builds extraordinary furniture... beginning the process by cutting down trees, hiring a sawyer to cut boards, and letting the boards dry and age. (Find out more about Adam's furniture by clicking here.)

I thought of Jacob Denver, the lumberman from "Eddie's Wake." Wonder what he might have thought about something like this? It was sure fun to watch!

Speaking of Eddie's Wake --
I finished proofing the proofs (galleys) and returned them (again!) Next comes work on the back cover... then the book goes into production. Soon...

Green!

2009-06-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

Lots of rain over the past 24 hours and the tomato plants look bigger and the corn out in the fields looks green and lush. Of course, this means the mosquito population will pop, but hey, it's part of summer.

Galley proofs were returned on Wednesday and I am going through all the edits I already sent in to make sure they were all addressed. Thought it would take a couple of hours, but I've been at it all day. All this means, we're getting closer to the day when I have an actual "Eddie's Wake" book in my hands. It's a joy to have this to work on when other things become so stressful!

Photo above: "Hens and Chicks" from my garden.

Dry Places

2009-06-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

I returned the galley edits for Eddie's Wake on Monday. Today is Friday. Other than that, my week has been pretty unproductive. I sure would like to start writing again, but it's like trying to decide whether or not to make that phone call when you know your company will show up as soon as you do.
I'm thinking about some marketing ideas... visiting book clubs, sitting with a pile of my books in a coffee house, looking for new ways to get "out there" through the internet, sending copies to famous people(?), peddling them to artsy shops. If you, readers and followers, have any ideas - please leave a comment or email me.
Before I put the sprinkler on my already-dry garden, I couldn't resist taking a shot of the above moss-roses. They are amazing little plants that flourish even when it's dry.

Update

2009-06-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post an update: I'm about half done with the galley edits; glad to be doing them because I'm finding many mistakes by the publisher. I have until Tuesday to finish.
I also wanted to show off another clump of wildflowers in our field. We've been trying to grow lupine for years, and this year we have maybe 6 good sized plants in shades of blue and purple. Another case of "wait for it...wait for it..."

It took years

2009-05-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

Driving home today, I noticed these vivid blue wildflowers growing in our field. I had some wildflower seeds some years ago (maybe three years?) that I cast out in hopes of one day having a field of flowers. It took years - but aren't they great?

It took years (six, to be exact) to write Eddie's Wake, but today the galley proofs arrived! I'll be busy for a while doing edits, but keep checking back, and thanks for reading!

Possibility and Promise

2009-05-25T06:01:00.001-07:00

Everything that needs to be planted in my main garden is in, as of yesterday. It's a good feeling, although there are weeds in another garden and a perennial or two that still need to be split. The fields around us are greening up, and close inspection says we have corn growing on both sides of the road. Come tasseling time, it will be gorgeous, the golden strands reflecting the long rays of sunrise and sunset in amazing ways.
It reminds me of lyrics from a Stan Rogers song: "Watch the field behind the plow turn to straight dark rows. Put another season's promise in the ground." ("The Field Behind the Plow," Home in Halifax, recorded 1982.) I can't listen to the song without weeping; partly it's the melody, partly it's because I've pastored so many farmers here in western Wisconsin and I can see each one of them in my mind's eye, turning around on the tractor seat to watch their progress. And partly because one-of-a-kind Stan Rogers died in a plane crash in 1983.

When I put in my two tomato plants, I set the tomato cages around them right away. It's easier to contain them that way. My son saw them and wanted to know what kind of animal I thought I was keeping away from them using those fences. We both had a good laugh. But the tomato cages are already in the garden, signs of possibility and hope - for large, tasty, home grown summer tomatoes.

Still no word from Outskirts about when I'll see the galley proofs of Eddie's Wake. But when I finally see them, you'll be the first to know!
Give thanks for veterans today.

Eddie's Wake

2009-05-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

There's still nothing new from Outskirts Press on the progress they're making with "the book." I should have the galleys to proof very soon, which will mean I'll be quite busy for a while. I looked over the first paragraphs I wrote for the next novel, and didn't like any of it, so I'll be starting from ground zero. I have ideas but no outline. But Stephen King in On Writing says to just go with it. As I learned with Eddie's Wake, characters take on a life of their own and do things you had no idea they were even thinking about. I'm excited for the next big adventure.

Above you'll see the cover for Eddie's Wake, designed by Dave Aldrich of Aldrich Design. (The link is to Dave's blog). He does great work; even told me that he thinks the cover for Eddie's Wake is his best so far.

Thanks for reading!

From Where I Sit

2009-05-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

Although my "office" is one corner of the living room, I think I have the best view of any other room in the house. It's irritating when I have no time (or will!) to straighten up the clutter of papers, books and important artifacts; when it spills out from behind the nice wooden room divider and the Norfolk Island Pine that make up my pretend wall. I appreciate neatness, but I can't seem to get beyond my clutter. Even when I decide to spend the day picking up, I get engrossed in other little projects that sometimes even add to the clutter. If I could close the door on an office, I think it might be better. It drives me nuts sometimes!

But from where I sit, I can watch bluebirds darting in and out of the bird house; I have a ringside view of the orioles eating jelly from the orange rinds I put in an old flower pot; I can watch the budding fields to our east and to our south (I'm pretty sure they're all planted with soybeans this year - corn is so much prettier to watch.) From where I sit, I can see when someone comes up the long steep driveway, I can tell when the birdbath needs water. I can watch the "hummingbird wars" as they all want to drink from the feeder at once, but refuse to take advantage of the multiple feeding spots.

We have no flowering trees, but I wish we did. At work, though, there are two of them, gushing with flowers. (See photo above.) I crawled around underneath them with my camera last week - briefly, because I could hear many bees feasting in the blossoms. I used to think we called this time of year "spring" because things spring up from the ground, but now I wonder if it's because of all the flowers gushing from trees and bushes, like water gushing up from a spring.

Enjoy these days of sun and warmth and new growth.

The Story is Everything

2009-04-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

Think of all the ways we tell stories; think of all the reasons we tell them. From "What I did on my summer vacation" to "It was awesome, you shoulda been there!" From "Once upon a time" to "In the beginning was the Word..." Our stories don't just tell what happens to us, they tell about who we are and what's important to us. I've been thinking a lot about the significance of "story" in our lives lately, thanks to the women who asked me to lead a morning retreat last weekend. (I learned that I'm much more comfortable putting things on paper than I am talking about them!)

We talked about our stories intersecting, those places where our paths cross. We become part of one another's stories, sometimes for life and sometimes just "for a season" as my friend and co-worker says. When our lives touch and relationships develop and our stories interesect, your story teaches me about myself, and a my story teaches you about who you are. We are so interconnected; we need one another to be who we are.

Music is moving - well, some music is moving - because I think it touches us somewhere inside and lets us see a bit more about who we are; helps us know our own story. Last night, a wonderful choir visited the church where I work and told THE story of our salvation. It's a group of folks some of whom have been singing together for thirty years, each spring presenting Easter cantatas to area churches. Each year the music is different and the story is told a little differently, but even so, I think by singing together, THE story and the stories of each other's lives become part of all the others. (The photo above is of the choir.)

Now that Eddie's Wake is at the publisher's and there's not a lot I can do to move the process along, I'm feeling like I need to gather my characters together again and get back to work telling their stories. I've learned that ultimately, in some deep and mysterious way, the stories of their lives are actually some part of my own story.

Oh, brother, this is getting too deep for me... my brain says it's time for bed. Until next time, may you find peace amid all the scary news we hear from all over the world these days!

Margueritas Tonight!

2009-04-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

Tonight my husband and son accompanied me to our favorite little Mexican restaurant to celebrate. Yes, indeed, I submitted all my materials to the publisher today! I'm sure there will be some tweaking and redo-ing, but this feels like we're almost there. Now maybe I can focus on a few other things I need to finish sometime over the next few weeks, like three assignments that are due for my continuing ed program, and the retreat I've agreed to lead this weekend. Thanks for reading and watch for new posts!
(Photo: White Pine trees in Rhinelander, WI)

Susan Boyle

2009-04-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Like so many others, I have been watching the amazing performance of Susan Boyle that' s been playing on TV news and on You Tube. I have never cared for the nasty attempts to humiliate performers on "American Idol;" and now it's counterpart, "Britain's Got Talent." It is clear that "Simon" (whoever he is) was ready to do it again during the pre-performance interview with Susan. "What is your dream?" "To be a professional singer." "And what has kept you from that, do you think?" It seems to me that he and the audience were waiting for her to say, "Because I am middle aged and not very attractive." I loved her response: something like, "Because I've never had the chance and I'm hoping this is it." The audience snickered and looked at one another as if they were saying, "Can you believe this?"

But Susan triumphed. I only hope that she didn't die a little inside as the judges waited for her to fail, hands poised over those red "CUT!" buttons. She is feisty and confident and a beautiful jewel of a person, and would be even if she couldn't sing like a Nightingale.

And somehow, she so reminds me of Maggie's best friend, Will Denver's wife, Bernie, from Eddie's Wake. It makes me love her even more! I, for one, hope to see and hear a lot more from Susan in the future.

Yes, she's a jewel of a person, that's for sure.

And the truth is, in God's eyes, so is "Simon" with his handsome bod and stuck up attitude. Both loved, both treasured, both creatures of the same God.

I could almost hear God chuckle as Susan sang her heart out. You go, girl!

Easter

2009-04-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

Today is Thursday in the "Octave of Easter." Even though I have not yet wished you a Happy Easter, it's not too late. In the Church, we celebrate 50 days of Easter, a week of weeks plus one. So - Happy Easter! Watch for signs of new life wherever you find yourself.

In writing Eddie's Wake, I've noticed that the passage of time (October though June), especially the holidays, seem to correlate with events from the plot. It wasn't really anything I did intentionally, but it just seemed to work out that way. Without giving the plot away, I can say that Easter brings a promise of peace for Karl. In the end, he is satisfied not to have all the answers, knowing that the answers he does find will ultimately bring healing.

Jumping up and down excited!

2009-04-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

Greetings! Spring has arrived: the tulips are poking up through the soil; the bluebirds are back; the binoculars have found their place onto my desk, so I can watch the bluebirds; the grass is in that brownish-greenish state that promises true green with a little rain, and there's rain in the forecast for the weekend. And if all that wasn't enough... Dave Aldrich, who has designed the cover for "Eddie's Wake" has posted it on his blog as part of a slide show and will soon have it on his website. If you'd like to see it go to Aldrich Design Blog.
I am also hoping to submit the manuscript to the publisher today or tomorrow. When will books be available? Late this summer --I hope.

I will spare you a photo of me jumping up and down excited (no time for a visit to the chiropractor.) The photo above is Lake Superior from the shoreline of Bob's Cabins in Larsmont, MN. It's our favorite get-away place, also the place where I finished the first draft of "Eddie's Wake."

Palm Sunday

2009-04-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

This morning it occurred to me that I should have posted my Palm Sunday story. Some of you have heard or read it, but it's one of my faves so here goes:

A Story for Palm Sunday
Matthew 22:34-46
That is Not Enough!

It was after that long discussion we had with Jesus in the temple that I began hearing voices. Actually, it was only one Voice. At first it was a tiny voice, a voice I was able to ignore. But then it so grew in volume and intensity that even when I covered my ears I could still hear it. I was sure I was going mad!
I am Phinehas ben Eleazar, Pharisee, lawyer by trade. I know the law of Moses and all the holiness codes that go with it; I know it like I know the back of my hand. It was my life, you understand. I was a man respected in my community, well known in the temple for my expertise, so you can see that I was of sound mind and no fool.
Along with the other Pharisees, I saw Jesus as nothing but trouble. True, he was a teacher with exceptional insights... But his radical new ideas would lead our people into chaos and confusion. If they listened to him, we reasoned, our position and our standing would be gone; our authority and our knowledge would be worthless. And if any of us - the chosen people of Israel - if any of us listened to him - we would become soft and unwilling to resist the forces of Rome. Jesus said to the people You have heard that it was said ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Israel was our land, promised to us through Moses. We had lost it once long ago, but now we were back, even though the Roman forces occupied the territory and tried to govern us. We needed to fight so that we would not lose our homeland again! Do you see what would happen if we listened to Jesus and started to love our enemies -- the Romans? If we loved them, we would not be able to fight them. We would most certainly lose this land again forever. Can you see what a threat this man Jesus was to us and to our whole way of life?
On the day following the Sabbath before Passover, Jesus and his followers paraded into the city. What a spectacle! The people waved palm branches and threw their clothing on the road before the donkey upon which he rode. It was a mess! Some in the crowd were chanting Hosanna to the Son of David! Others became unruly, with everyone asking, “Who is this? Who is this?” The city was filled with many visitors because of the Holy Days and the Romans were touchy - they didn’t like all the uproar and commotion... And when the Romans didn’t like something, it made all of us in the temple nervous.
After all that, Jesus came into the temple and caused more trouble, tipping over the tables of the merchants and money changers. It was a riot, I tell you. Outside they were still chanting Hosanna, hosanna to the Son of David, and inside was another mess. The blind and the lame in all their rags teemed around him, crying out and begging to be healed. It took us hours to get rid of them all and clean things up again.
Several days later, he came back. We tried to talk to him, find out just who he thought he was and what he was doing - he had to know that he’d put himself in grave danger. We debated back and forth and he told us stories - about two sons, about wicked tenants in a vineyard, about a wedding banquet where the invited guests refused to come. We asked him about paying taxes. We asked him about the resurrection. He gave us answers that we puzzled over, answers that we eventually realized were insults to us.
So we conspired together to test him, to see what he knew of the law. “Phinehas, you find a question that he will not be able to answer” they asked me. “He has not studied like you have, perhaps we can trip him up and get rid of him, prove he’s a fake.” After a few moments, I came up with the question: Which commandment in the law is the greatest? Certainly his answer would be incorrect, we thought, what with all the talk of loving one’s enemies.
At this, he astounded us. He had it right. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. Nothing about loving enemies! But then he said, And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Jesus told us what we already knew - that we are to love God with everything that is in us... But then he added what we’d ignored, what we had let slip away from our thinking, what we didn’t want to connect with loving God. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
We know that! I said, even though in the back of my mind I was considering the truth of it. We know that! I said, and that is when I first heard the Voice that would come to torment me. That is not enough, Phinehas!
Jesus went into a tirade against us, the scribes and the Pharisees. What he had to say stung, made us angry. The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat; therefore do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach! He said we’d laid burdens and requirements upon others that we ourselves were unwilling to bear. My heart told me that was true; inwardly, I had to agree with him. But we needed to be more careful - why give charlatans like this anything else to say against us, true or not true? That’s when the Voice spoke again. That is not enough, Phinehas! I shook my head to rid myself of the bad feeling I was getting.
Woe to you! Jesus said. Woe to you about this and woe to you about that! And on and on he went, and we became angrier and angrier. Did he have a death wish or what? He probably would die if he wasn’t more careful!
And then he wept: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Jesus never returned to the Temple after that.//

We Pharisees were known for our devout prayer life. I stopped in the public square on my way home and remembering the talk about loving God with heart and soul and mind, I prayed that Israel would understand and live by that. Then I went on and on, saying all sorts of things to make myself look righteous and holy. I prayed so loud that the people couldn’t help but hear me. Satisfied, believing I’d done quite well at loving God with heart and soul and mind, I started for home, only to hear the Voice again, this time louder and angrier. That is not enough Phinehas! The evening meal was like sawdust in my mouth. I went to bed afraid of what else the Voice might say to me in my dreams.
The rest of that week was trying. Even as we made preparations for the Passover feast, we worried and wondered what to do about Jesus. Then one of his disciples came to us, offering to take us to him that very night. We agreed, though we were not really sure what we’d do with him.
I am ashamed to say that I was so caught up in all of this that I did not listen to the joyful chatter of my wife, Susannah as she scurried about cleaning and sweeping away any crumbs of the old leaven that hid in the house. She was lighter of heart than I had ever seen her, yet I didn’t bother to ask her why. Well, she had reason to be happy, since Passover represents new start, something we all needed. I did notice our home, though, so fresh, so clean... I glowed with pride when I thought of the fine rugs and things I’d been able to provide for Susannah! Then again the Voice. That is not enough, Phinehas!
I was barely there for our Passover meal, distracted and unsettled. I left as soon as I could. We arrested Jesus in the Garden, hauled him all over the city during the darkest hours of the night - you know the rest of the story, I don’t need to tell you. Some who had cheered him on a few days before were now begging for his death. The whole thing got way out of hand. I talked myself into believing that we were doing this for the love of God, for the good of Israel. Then the Voice began to berate me, and I heard it constantly... It is not enough, Phinehas, it is not enough, it is not enough...
We got the Romans to crucify Jesus. It was the worst of all possible ways to die. While he hung there, my cohorts and I sat in the temple, righteously praying, keeping ourselves from being defiled by that wretched scene on the hill, not knowing that we had just played the most despicable role in the drama of all times. It is said that Herod and Pilate became friends because of all this, so love your enemies became a reality that day. It had been the very teaching that we had worked so hard against.
Suddenly, midafternoon, under a darkened sky, the curtain in the temple was split from top to bottom with noise that made me think of the cracking of bone, the tearing of flesh, the breaking of a heart. There was deafening thunder, then a violent earthquake. We were terrified! Was God himself angry with us?
Evening was approaching, the Sabbath was about to begin, so we all set out for our homes, where we would do nothing for a whole day, according to the law. I will never forget the sight that greeted me when I arrived. Instead of finding Susannah waiting for me in the doorway, our home was a crumbled mass of rock and mortar. A wisp of smoke snaked its way out from the spaces between the debris, then suddenly the quiet poof of a fire igniting, then the whole mess was engulfed. The earthquake must have knocked over the oil lamps and the brazier that kept us warm at night. The oil and the charcoal must have been dumped all over our fine, imported rugs... Surely Susannah had enough sense not to try to put it out, for that would be to work on the Sabbath.//
Surely she gotten out...
Our whole district came alive with wailing and I saw for the first time that others had lost homes, too. I could not find Susannah among the weeping women. I called for her over and over, until our neighbor, Jacob, appeared at my side and said, “She’s still in there, Phinehas, we heard her call for you a few minutes ago.” I looked up and saw that the sun had set - it was, indeed the Sabbath.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” I remembered. If I was to love God, then I must obey his command not to work on the Sabbath... And then suddenly there was the Voice once again, crying out in agony. That is not enough, Phinehas!
Quickly I tucked the hems of my long robes into my belt and began pawing through the rocks and rubble to find her. I did not feel the burning of my hands or the wetness of my tears, I did not hear Jacob telling me to stop because it was too late, I did not know that I was breathing smoke, I did not see that it was hopeless. I did not realize that the fire had become hot enough to explode bricks - I remember a “pop” and then nothing else.
When I awoke, I was in Jacob’s house, which the earthquake had jostled and rearranged, but had left standing. I was in Jacob’s bed, Jacob’s wife was bringing in a jar of water, and there Jacob sat by my side. Bandages covered my hands and encircled my head, my legs and arms were covered with ointment that smelled of aloe. Patiently Jacob and his wife had cared for me day and night, taking turns sleeping out of doors in a makeshift tent, never leaving me alone for a moment.
After many days, I was well enough to leave the house and I saw the mess that Jacob still needed to take care of in his yard. I couldn’t believe his generous hospitality! They had given me the best bed that was left, and had waded through rubble and filth to bring water so I would not die. All this for someone who had always been too high and mighty to associate with them. Such wonderful neighbors!
There was that word. Neighbor. Hadn’t Jesus said that the second greatest commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself? Was this what he meant? I wished that the Voice would speak to me again, but it remained silent.
Jacob finally agreed help me search through the rubble for Susannah. Do you know that the rocks were still warm? After several hours and much backbreaking labor, we found what was left of her, face down, buried beneath the blackened bricks and rocks. We paused and Jacob put his hand on my shoulder... I remembered that I would be defiled if I were to touch the dead - but for once I wasn’t worried about being holy. With my still tender hands, I carefully turned Susannah’s fragile remains, thus revealing the strangest and most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Clutched in her charred hands and held to her breast was the leaf of a date palm, soft and green and supple, as fresh as the day it was taken from the tree. It was not dried or scorched in the least! A miracle: life in the midst of death. Susannah now lies in the family tomb. She is still holding the palm leaf. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was still green and full of life. //
But questions still remain. Was Susannah among that rabble when Jesus rode into the city? Is that where the palm leaf had come from? She had been so full of peace - and joy - what did she know that I could not understand? In all of our years together, this woman never had a wrong instinct. Was Jesus the Messiah? I think she believed it was true, and I... I helped kill him!
From that time, my life changed. Although I could not thank Jacob and his wife enough for all they did for me, I could not rebuild my house. I went to the temple less and less often; seldom was I called upon to settle disputes of the law. I admit that I was confused and riddled with guilt. Soon I left Jerusalem to live out my years in Bethany, where I was befriended by Mary, Martha and Lazarus, who told me many things about Jesus; stories of his compassion and forgiveness - and of his resurrection. I wish I’d known him like they did.
I studied in the synagogue there and tried to teach the law through the lens of the greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love is more important than any law of rule.
I admit that I continued to be a model of arrogance in many ways. One afternoon, a father and son came looking for me at the synagogue just as I was leaving. Their request was simple, but I tried to put them off until the next day, when, I said, I would have plenty of time for them. I was a tired old man and I wanted to go home. That was when I heard the Voice for the last time - now it sounded gentle but weary. That is not enough, Phinehas! Something in my soul smiled, it was like hearing from an old friend. I could see that the two had traveled some distance to see me. “Please excuse me,” I said to them, “won’t you come to my home for the night? We can talk there.”
I never heard that Voice again, although there were many times I wished that it would speak. Loving God and neighbor is a difficult thing! But I tell you Christians: You must do it! For we learn love by being loved - and you have been loved by the greatest Neighbor of them all, who gave his life for you. I tell you, if you do not love your neighbor and your children and your families as yourself, how will they ever learn how to love? More important - how will they ever learn how much God loves them?

Copyright© 1999/2008 Carol A. Peterson. All rights reserved.

I Did What I Could

2009-04-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

Greetings, everyone! It has been nearly a month since I wrote and there are too many reasons to explain why -- another trip to Michigan, family needs, Lent, Eddie's Wake, Lent, family...

The BIG news today is that the line edits are finished; I've cleaned up everything on the manuscript I could see that needed fixing. There may be other errors, but I will have to catch them when the galleys come for me to proof. If I had an extra $1500 laying around, I might hire someone to do it professionally, but I don't have the cash.

Now I am working on summaries , headlines, synopses and all manner of other little "book reporty" things I need to submit to the publisher. I used to write a lot of book reports for school, but it's been years... And have you ever tried to write a book report about a book you wrote? For some reason, I am finding it daunting. But I did decide on the size of the book - 5.5" X 8.5". My goal is to have a publication party or open house or some other kind of event before August 1, 2009. It takes about 90 days from submission to publication, which means I'll need to have everything in to Outskirts Press by May 1.

My latest trip to Michigan was under difficult circumstances. I am so blessed that the congregation I serve gave me emergency family leave and allowed me to miss two Lenten midweek services and one Sunday. And they prayed for me and my mom and my brother! Other family and friends, did, too and I want to thank you all. My concern for my mother's well being and my brother's many health issues, both physical and emotional was overwhelming. I learn it again and again - when I don't have well thought out prayers, or any prayers at all, there's someone else who is doing it for me.

Sleeping in my mom's "antique bedroom" gave me ten days to look at one of my favorite family portraits: my maternal grandmother with her parents. Grandma was born in 1897, so I think the photo was taken in 1898 or so. I was able to take a digital picture of it and have included it with this post.

Hopefully - even with Holy Week and Easter next week - I'll be able to write again much sooner than last time. Until then - blessings!

The wilderness in Eddie's Wake

2009-03-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

Photo - last year's Easter lily replanted in my garden; a green sunburst with a new lease on life.

"Wilderness" has shown up in several of the recent RCL gospel readings. Not the refreshing, renewing kind of wilderness where a person can get away from it all and pick wild berries and sleep on a bed of pine needles. Nothing like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota. More like a desert wilderness, where it's nothing but sand, and the sun ruthlessly sucks away any moisture that might appear. I learned again what happened in those New Testament places of "wilderness" (heremos in Greek)... How Jesus, especially, went into the wilderness to struggle, to meet a crucible head on, to make a weighty decision.

And that made me think about Karl Stern and his struggle in a wilderness dream. (Maybe it could be called a vision.) There he meets his true enemy, and there he realizes he can't fight it alone. Since I haven't shared much from the book lately, here's just a bit of Karl's wilderness dream.

Karl dug his toes into the warm sand as he stared at the hand painted road sign. It had markings like nothing he’d ever seen before in a green so full of life that when he traced them with his finger he felt a surge of something better than love, better than hope, more powerful than the strength of his father and Will combined. He had no idea what the markings meant, so he bent down and copied them in the sand, returning to touch them again and again. If he ever got home, he’d draw them in his sketch pad and show them to Sister Anne. He drew a box with the upper right corner rounded off, a stick that curved slightly to the right from the top, a bent fishing hook and a slanted pitchfork. Whatever they were, he didn’t want to forget them. He drew them over and over, until they were part of him.
(Here Karl meets with a cobra that tries to squeeze the breath out of him. He untangles himself and flings the snake to the ground.)

Suddenly a sword appeared in his hand. He swung it at the serpent, swooping it in a wide arc. The serpent reared its head and spit out a stream of brown liquid. Whiskey. Karl dodged it, but stumbled with the weight of the sword. The snake laughed at him with Melvin’s voice. Rage filled Karl’s body and made him strong, stronger than he’d ever felt before. He would end this wickedness once and for all; he could do this! He stabbed the snake, impaled it to the ground, and left the sword standing in the sand. But even before he moved his hand away, another sword came out of nowhere, which was a good thing, because he hadn’t killed the snake at all, only divided it. Now two heads laughed at him, two tongues flicked at his bare feet, and two sets of red eyes bored into his soul. With trembling hands, Karl stabbed at one of them, again plunging the sword into the ground, leaving it standing. Now there were three snakes. Another sword, another stab, another serpent; another and another until he stood in a slithering mess of evil broken only by the countless swords which stood like crosses in a cemetery. Even though he despaired and grew weary, Karl knew he would die the moment he stopped fighting. Stab, thrust, stab again... Bitter disappointment filled him. He’d thought this was a place of goodness and peace; with all his heart, he wanted it to be. Stab thrust, stab. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. He wanted to call for help, but who would come? Stab, stab, stab. This must be hell.
Poor Karl, at such a young age learning that despite wanting to end the wickedness in his life, he could not do it by himself. Poor Karl, at such a young age desolated and despairing; weary and wondering if he hadn't found his way into hell. I won't share the rest of his vision here, but I can tell you that as he's lifted away from it all, he gets a taste of what love can accomplish.

Time to wind down for the night and reset all the clocks; spring ahead, fall behind. I'd love to get all the sleep I need before the busy Sunday ahead.

Shalom!

I'm Covered!

2009-02-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been a while since I've written... I don't know if anyone is even checking this blog anymore. Life has been stressful and dark for me lately, in many ways. BUT, I now have a cover design for Eddie's Wake! Mr. Dave Aldrich did some fine work - fabulous work- and it feels like this book might actually happen. I'm not ready to share it with the world, but think blue. It amazes me how God can give such a bright spot at just the right time. Until next time - peace!

February Thaw

2009-02-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

After being stuck in the deep freeze for weeks, today it is 39 degrees. The sun is shining on the west side of the house and melted snow is dripping from the eaves. It's warm enough to let Betty and Parker Barnie (our little cats) spend their energy outside instead of nibbling on my plants in the house. In some places there is blacktop showing through our icy driveway, thanks to the efforts of the men of the house. The days seem to be getting longer, too. I remember hearing a meteorologist say around December 21 that by the end of January, we'd gain 55 minutes of daylight. We're halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. I checked the weather report for the south shore of Lake Superior, and it's as warm there as it is here!

No doubt, however, the cold will return and we'll feel cooped up again, and have to dress in layers when we go out instead of throwing on a jacket, and my son will keep a fire in the fireplace pretty much around the clock. But it's a little easier to take all that when the days lengthen and the snow melts a bit and we know that winter will not last forever.

One of the inside projects we've had on the to do list for the past few years finally got accomplished last week, thanks to the efforts of my husband. The bathroom has a new coat of paint, new lights, and new hardware on the vanity. I've always liked the shades of turquoise, gold, orange and deep maroons of the southwest. (At least, it seems like the southwest to me.) Trying to work with those colors got a little frustrating until I realized that Lake Superior agates, tinged with iron, are often reddish or light maroon. Gathering all the agates we've collected over the years into a vase to put on the vanity got me thinking that we could hang those framed posters of Split Rock Lighthouse on the bathroom walls (we have very high ceilings), and oh, yeah, we had this decorative map of Lake Superior, and ShopKo had the perfect frame for it, marked down from $50 to $15. So now we have a Lake Superior themed bathroom. HGTV wouldn't like it, but hey, it's our house and we're both crazy about the big lake!
Till next time - watch for spring, watch for the return of the light.

Hoar Frost

2009-01-23T14:19:00.000-08:00

Hello, Everyone. I know that I have neglected this blog and haven't posted for three weeks, now. Just when the Christmas season is over and I think I'll have time to do normal things, I get stuck with all the stuff that needs to get done because it's a new year. Annual reports and tax stuff, Sunday preaching and Wednesday teaching, newsletters, a funeral and some sick calls... not to mention the bathroom we are finally painting and redecorating after too many years. (I always seem to have an excuse, don't I?)

Yesterday when we got up, we were socked in with fog, the kind my folks used to call "pea soup fog." We couldn't see the road in front of our house, and we couldn't see the highway across the fields. I had some errands to run, so I waited around for a few hours. When I finally decided to go, I realized that everything outside -- trees, weeds, bushes -- was covered with feathery frost. Hoar frost. I ran back inside to get my camera. (The photo above is at the edge of our woods.) As I stepped through the snow to find the leftover bittersweet berries in the "raspberry thicket", I realized how fragile the frost was. All I had to do was touch a branch or stem and the frost would float to the ground. Just a slight brush or bump meant that the old weed or tree would be transformed back to it's normal state again.

All this made me think about how fragile we all are, how fragile life is. We need more than a little bump to make us fall apart, but our lives are tender enough to collapse every once in a while. (For some people, that happens a lot more often than once in a while.)

In Eddie's Wake, Maggie realizes this with great longing as she grieves for Eddie. When she receives a letter from Jacob Denver after his second visit, she writes back to him, saying: If there is anything I have learned since my husband’s death, it is that life is too short to waste on things that are not good and honorable and true.

Life is short, my friends. Make it beautiful by sharing your compassion and kindness with someone you love!

P.S. I'm still working on edits. *Sigh.* This process is taking longer than I thought way back in August when I decided to self publish Eddie's Wake. Thanks for waiting. And thanks for checking in on my blog.

The Love Shuffle

2009-01-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

"The Love Shuffle" (see photo) sounds like it could be the name of a dance, and in a way, maybe it is. Our household is in a moderate amount of chaos these days as we shuffle things around to make room for some family members to take up residence in our walkout basement. This means moving an office and turning the upstairs guest room into a combo office/sleeping space. It means moving my bookcases to new places; finding a new home for a dresser; throwing away a lot of useless stuff we've accumulated over the nearly ten years we've lived here; recycling old computers and printers. It's a pain in the neck, and yet... we are blessed to have room enough for such an arrangement and we're happy that we can provide help to these two. It's why we have this place; it's one more way to show love to people we love.

I've had a little more time this week to work on edits for Eddie's Wake. It occurs to me that the word "shuffle" describes much of what happens in families, both in a physical way and in ways of the heart. When Eddie Stern dies, his family shuffles roles and responsibilities. When Maggie's mother is seriously ill, Maggie leans on Karl, finding comfort in his being there, something that would have been done by his father. Jacob Denver shuffles his home in the hopes of having an instant family. Will and Bernie shuffle their household so there would be room for Karl and his sisters to stay with them when... Oh, dear, I'd better not say too much more; it could spoil the read.

Thanks again for reading, and a Happy New Year to all. May 2009 be a year of happiness and contentment for you, despite the bad news we keep hearing about, both in this country and abroad.

P.S. Went to see the Tale of Benjamin Button on New Year's Eve. It was great, I highly recommend it!

Merry Christmas to all!

2008-12-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

It has been a busy Advent. The older I get, the faster December seems to go, but I guess that's true for everyone. I have had very little time to continue working on the line edits for Eddie's Wake, which is very frustrating. I miss my connection to Karl Stern and his mother, Maggie; Jacob Denver and his brother, Will! Since it will take about 90 days from final submission to the time I have a real, honest to goodness book in my hands, I doubt that I'll have the book available until after Easter. (I hope Lent will be a bit more sane than Advent has been.)

But I do want to thank everyone who reads this blog, especially my seven "followers." Thanks for checking in, and for your supportive comments; they mean a lot. Let me know what you'd like to see on the blog, and I'll be happy to see what I can do.

I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a Blessed New Year. Enjoy the holidays! May God grant you warmth, kind people around you, peace of mind, good health and happy reading.

Blue Christmas

2008-12-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

Hello again. I've been feeling guilty about the last post - it just seems too depressing for this time of year. So--I apologize for throwing out such a downer.Here's one of my early attempts at writing something that wasn't a paper for school or a sermon or some other important thing like that.

Angel Word

Three ate with Abraham and one fed Elijah in the wilderness. Gabriel interpreted the unthinkable for Daniel, Zechariah and Mary. And now we knew that someone was to go again, for we had felt the undertones of Their deliberations. The whole of Heaven lay still with the deep anticipatory calm before...we knew not what.

All the other times we were as children underfoot, begging to be made privy to the secrets of the universe, hoping in our hearts to be the one honored as bearer of His message. For you see, this Great One, this One in Three is our Beloved, the One whom we are pleased to serve.

This time, every one of us was well behaved. Rank upon rank, we hosts of heaven begged only in our hearts and stood at solemn attention, each ready to be chosen. Then came the Three of Them, linked arm in arm, the Word flanked on either side. We saw then that the choice had already been made. For an instant, sun and moon and stars and all the cosmos failed in their ordered paths, so tender was the embrace, so longing was the farewell. This time, the Message was too great for us to bear. He went to you Himself.

The Door of Heaven, always so tightly guarded, was flung widely open as He left. As we clamored around the Door to see Him off, He turned and said, "You come, too; come and see!" And the distance became nothing, the eons became now, and the Word became flesh before our eyes. The young girl wrapped her new son in blankets and cradled him with a mother's love. Then we comprehended all that we had seen and understood all the messages that we had carried.

O you foolish, rebellious people!
Why would you not listen to His messengers and prophets?
O you favored, fortunate people!
Do you not realize how greatly you are loved?

For not only did He Himself come to you; He became one of you.

O the awesome wonder of it!
How could we help but sing you to your senses?
O the awesome wonder of it!
How can you help but sing?

For the distance has become nothing, the eons have become now,
the Word has become flesh, and the Door is still open...

Advent 1993 Hebrews 2:14-17

The photo is from a bonfire last summer -- keep warm!

Wild Advent (Warning: She Waxes Theological!)

2008-12-10T21:50:00.001-08:00

Advent--the four week long season of the Church Year that rolls around every year before Christmas--is supposed to be the time to prepare for Christ's coming; meaning, on the most obvious level, that we're getting ready for Christmas. Great. Kids in churches are getting ready for Sunday School programs while they also are waiting like crazy for Santa. We set up our Christmas trees, either by dragging the big box up from the basement or by bringing home a natural, formerly live tree tied to the roof of the car. Christmas music is everywhere, from the aisles of Walmart to risers set up in school cafeterias, where the events are called Holiday Concerts.

But there's a more interior level, for those who pay attention to the lessons from Scripture we read in church on any of the four Sundays before Christmas, and most people aren't very comfortable with it. We're preparing for Christ's coming, yes indeed, but not as a baby in Bethlehem. We're supposed to be preparing for Christ's second coming at the end of time. And if we think we're off the hook on that one, since none of us really expects to be around at the end of time, we're sadly mistaken. Sure, we're supposed to be ready for that second coming; but I think the coming of Christ we're supposed to be prepared for is much more intimate than that. This "second coming" is your own personal death and mine, when the Lord closes our eyes for the last time, when our hearts still, when the blood coursing through our veins no longer carries life to every reach of our bodies. When Jesus comes to take us "home" at the end of our days.
"Oh, that second coming!"
Yikes.

The thing is, working in the Church, I'm torn and I'm really tired. It's ever so much more fun to say that Advent is about decorating the church building, practicing music for Christmas Eve, or having tea with the Women's Group with a smile on my face. But the reality is that I am spending way more time planning special things than I am sitting with those whose own personal end times are immanent. The reality is that it's the time of year I walk around with a lump in my throat, I don't sleep well, and I don't feel well much of the time, either. Oh, and then there's my own family's Christmas to think about. (When was I going to do that?)

Working on the last phase of Eddie's Wake is a rare thing during Advent, as is writing in this blog. But I woke up before 5:30 this morning, so I wrapped up in my bathrobe and blanket and am sitting next to icy windows to tell you I haven't forgotten about you. Next time I'll share a poem I wrote nearly twenty years ago and maybe bit more of the novel. May your preparations for Christmas be meaningful and filled with peace. Thanks for reading!
P.S. The photo above was taken from the window by my desk yesterday morning, after an all night snowstorm.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T05:01:00.000-08:00

There are apples in the fridge waiting for me to put them into a pie this morning... But first a few thoughts on the day.

There are two ways to celebrate Thanksgiving. One is a festival of gluttony, followed by gluttony of a different kind out in the malls and big box stores tomorrow. When you finally get to read Eddie's Wake, you'll meet the king of self-centered gluttony, Uncle Melvin, who, on Thanksgiving, shovels in the food even as it's being passed around the table; who is the only one talking for most of the meal, but the one who eats the most. His gluttony goes beyond food to include his other self indulgent appetites.

The other way to celebrate Thanksgiving is not just to feast on traditional foods after a great prayer of thanks to God (although you wouldn't want to miss out on that!); but it is to take on a permanent attitude of thanks. It is to make gratitude a part of who we are, to live our thanks in our actions and words.

AA and Alanon talk a lot about being thankful and saying thanks... Could it be that there is a kind of deliverance in giving thanks? Could it be that there is some kind of amazing transformation in saying thank you? Could it be that giving thanks is as good for the “thanker” as it is praise to God? Maybe we could say that Thanksgiving Day is a great time to practice giving thanks, for in the thanking there is healing, and in the healing true gratitude comes to life.

So --
For the color of blue spruce against turning oak leaves...
That mosquitoes and houseflies have gone dormant for another season (at least in Wisconsin)...
For sunshine and blue sky on any day of the year...
For buzzing smoke alarms to let you know the turkey's done...
For dishwashers of every brand and every gender...
For the mute button on your remote control...
For friends and family...
For hearts overflowing with gratitude... Let us give thanks to God.

In Eddie's Wake, Thanksgiving Day brings a glimmer of hope and possibility to both Maggie Stern and for Will Denver. May your Thanksgiving bring the same to you. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

A hard, cold, autumn day

2008-11-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

It's been nearly two weeks since I posted last. Between some travel and returning to work to attend to all the tasks that come with the busiest weeks of the year, I have had little chance to think about Eddie's Wake and Karl, Maggie, Jacob, Will and Bernie.

When I awoke this morning, I had kicked off all the covers. I was too warm; had put too many blankets on the bed and the furnace was running, toasting up the house. I checked the indoor/outdoor thermometer, which read 67 degrees inside; 10 degrees outside. The absence of our four cats waiting for breakfast on the deck indicated that they were still hunkered down in their cat "houses." The water in their outside bowl was frozen solid. Why would they want to come out, even if the sun was shining?

I think about the people who don't have a warm place to sleep, and I think about people who have no idea what it would be like to have a thermostat that can be programmed to start the furnace before they get out of bed in the morning. Even though I like it cool in the bedroom for sleeping, and even though I was too warm when I woke up this morning, I am thankful for the roof over my head and a new furnace with a programmable thermostat.

In Eddie's Wake "feeding the furnace" was the first thing Karl was expected to do every morning. From the coal pile in the basement, he shoveled in enough to warm the house at least through breakfast. When his mother, Maggie, needed to save money, she didn't feed the furnace on school days until it was almost time for Karl, Lizzie and Anna to come home. Having coal in the basement was almost important as having food on the table.

The Salvation Army operates a shelter and food pantry in the community where I work. Whenever a man, woman, boy or girl leaves, they are given their own blanket and their own pillow, warmth and comfort for a new life. I think I will go through closets today and find the blankets we're not using and maybe give them away.

Leaves

2008-11-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, we had our first hard freeze overnight. The hosta plants in the garden looked like cooked spinach the next morning, and so did the one potted plant that I'd decided not to try hold on to for another year. Early in the morning, a few yellow leaves began to fall from the ash trees, and the higher the sun climbed into the sky, the faster the leaves fell. It was like someone had flipped a switch. By the end of the day, the trees were mostly bare.

But the oak trees on our property are completely different. The oaks never seem to want to let their leaves go. Some of them hang on through rain and snow, blizzards and ice storms, all winter long, until they get pushed off by the new buds in spring. As if the old, brown, dead leaves were somehow still feeding the tree!

Here in the north, November is a time of transition in the world around us; a time when what was once green and growing has become brown and dormant. Winter hasn't quite arrived and the beauty of autumn is past. Being in the pulpit every Sunday, where the scripture readings for the weeks before Advent all deal with the End Times, I'm thinking about the ash trees a lot. What symbols of faith they can be for us! At the right time, they let go of the foliage that nourishes them, trusting that when spring comes there will be new growth and new life. It doesn't seem to bother them that ice storms could break them and the winter kill them. Gracefully, they just let go.

I would like to be like an ash tree, trusting that God will give all I need through the storms of life, and that when all is said and done, I'll be with God. But I'm afraid I'm more like the oak that clings so tenaciously to the glory of the past, scrambling to find ways to assure myself that I'll always have what I need. Like the oak, we all hang on to things that we think make us secure, but time after time, God pushes all that away--like the new oak leaves push off the old ones come spring-- and gives us new life.

Thinking about this reminded me of a short scene from Eddie' Wake where in early spring Karl notices an old oak leaf flying away in the wind.

Chapter 27 A Reckoning
Karl turned up the collar of his jacket as he waited for his sisters outside Holy Angels School. The wind blew from the east, gathering cold air from the ice caked shores of Lake Superior and spewing it over the town. He remembered his father saying that a wind from the east meant they’d have bad weather in a day or so. Even though there’d already been a few days of sunshine and warmth, Karl knew winter wasn’t finished with them yet. The overcast skies made the day downright gloomy.
As he crouched beside the gnarly old oak tree trying to keep warm, a car pulled up in front of the church. He got up, thinking Mr. D had come to give him and his sisters a ride home, but he stopped short, stunned, when he saw Melvin Straus get out. All hunched over in the wind and holding onto his brown fedora, Melvin scurried across the church yard, and went in the side door, the door where you were least likely to run into another person...
Karl’s clenched jaw began to ache. He took a deep breath. Although he didn’t know what he was going to do, he knew he couldn’t just go home and do his homework like any other day.
Lizzie and Anna came running toward him, the edges of their coats flapping in the wind. At almost the same moment, Mr. D arrived. Karl helped his sisters get into the car, and said, “I think I’ll walk, Mr. D.” He tried to act normal despite his anger.
“In this wind?”
“Yeah, don’t worry. I need to talk to somebody. I’ll be along in a little while.”
“Everything all right?”
Karl smiled, knowing it looked phony. “Yep.”
“When should I start to worry?”
“Nothin’ to worry about. I’ll be home before supper, for sure.”
Mr. D looked Karl in the eye without saying anything for moment. “Breathe deep, boy.”
“Yessir, I remember.”
Karl watched the car pull away. Soon his mother would be well again and Mr. D would go home. He realized he’d miss him, then thought of his father and felt guilty.
He leaned against the tree, shivering. He watched a few leftover oak leaves break free of their branches and sail away like little brown boats in the air...

Thanks for reading!

Reunion

2008-11-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Down the road a bit from our house is a small, very old cemetery. In all the years I have driven by, I have never seen a new grave being dug, or a group of mourners standing around saying their good-byes. I'd call it a lonely place if it wasn't at the intersection of a busy county road and a state highway. But last summer, I noticed a bit more activity going on there. One day folks were there doing some tree trimming, a few days later, a couple of port-a-potties showed up, then one Sunday morning a party tent was there, along with a few garbage cans. I'd like to think someone had a family reunion at the cemetery.

Today is "All Saints' Day" and tomorrow is "All Soul's Day;" the two days together making up the Day of the Dead festival. I don't know much about it, except for what I Googled - in Mexico, the dead are remembered; families gather in cemeteries, sometimes having parties, sometimes decorating the graves of loved ones. I've always thought having a picnic near Grandma and Grandpa's graves would be a really great thing to do; telling stories, remembering, eating Grandma's famous hot dish and the meringue cookies she liked to make. It would be a time to remember and honor our dead without necessarily being in the throes of grief.

At Eddie Stern's burial, Karl's mother takes him "visiting" his dead Grandma Stern and Grandpa O'Keefe. It's a sad time for them to begin with, but the remembering is good, and does bring smiles in the midst of tears. Here's a little of that chapter:

“Karl, come here,” called Maggie. “See, this is your Grandma Stern’s grave.” It wasn’t far from where they were standing. "Eleanor Burktold Stern, 1859 –1918" Uncle George followed. “Do you remember her?” “I think so, I think I remember playing with her on her bed. She called me little bear or something.” Maggie laughed a little. “No, you were her little berry boy. She had a basket full of strawberries once, and she cut some of them into tiny pieces so you could have a taste. Well, you gobbled them up and surprised everyone by saying clear as day, ‘More, more!’ She got so excited about you talking that she gave you more than anyone else. You couldn’t get enough berries and your Grandma Stern couldn’t get enough of you.” Karl noticed tears in his mother’s eyes. “She was a wonderful lady.” “Yes, indeed,” said Uncle George. “I still miss her.” Maggie bent over and touched her gravestone. Karl looked around. “Where’s Grandpa Stern?” “They buried him at the asylum before they wrote to say he was dead. That always bothered your father.” Uncle George crossed himself. “What happened to him? Did you know him, Mama?” “Before he got sick everyone knew him. He owned the newspaper, edited and wrote for it. A good man, but no one wanted him around after...” Maggie looked across the cemetery. “Come here, I want to show you where my father is buried.” Karl didn’t protest when his mother took his hand as if he were still a little boy, although he hoped none of his classmates could see him from the school. Uncle George stayed behind at his mother’s grave; Will went back to Eddie’s. Karl and Maggie stopped at a stone marked with the words "Michael Liam O’Keefe 1861-1917." “Do you remember your Grandpa O’Keefe?” “He smelled like peppermint.” Maggie smiled. “He always had candy for the children. He was one of the town constables, but he loved to have fun, too.”

That's all for now. Remember your dear departed this weekend, and say a prayer of thanks for their lives.

(Above photo of fern growing in rock was taken on the north shore of Lake Superior.)

The serpent

2008-10-24T16:38:00.000-07:00

Ever since I picked up a rock when I was five or six years old and found a snake coiled up underneath it, I have had an aversion to snakes. Up at the cabin, whenever we went on a hike, I had to walk in the middle of the line or right next to one of my parents. I was afraid of even seeing a snake. Needing to go to the outhouse meant someone had to come with me because once I saw a Blue Racer all stretched out on a sunny stretch of the dirt road, and who knows, he might come back.

I have to admit, I still don't like snakes. As part of my kids' birthday party one year, we had a friend who was an expert on reptiles and snakes bring a few of his "pets" over in pillowcases. (My husband "bought" his service at a church auction.) I reluctantly agreed, but said "show and tell" had to stay on the porch. The party guests seemed to have a great time while my skin crawled.

Sometimes when I am writing, I have to wonder where my ideas come from. Poor Karl Stern is sentenced to scrub the church floor on a Saturday for a misdeed that was not of his doing, and what do you think he sees carved into the floor right next to the altar? A snake of course. It's a reference to Genesis 3:15, where the Lord is coming down hard on those first sinners, Adam and Eve; coming down even harder on that serpent who got them to eat the wrong fruit. The Lord says to the snake, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between her offspring and yours; he will strike your head, and you shall strike his heel.

I knew that I'd heard of a church somewhere that had a serpent carved into a stone floor, then realized I had family connections to the congregation. I took the photo above when I was there for a conference over a year ago.

Months after he sees the serpent carved into his church floor, Karl finds himself battling snakes in a horrible nightmare. I guess most dreams have their origins someplace in reality. I find that to be true for writing fiction, as well.
Until next time...

Life and Death

2008-10-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

For someone who loved English class, even way back in grade school, I am certainly having a hard time writing a decent synopsis of Eddie's Wake. How does a person condense a five year project down to one paragraph, one page, even three pages?

Perhaps it's because I do a better job spreading my sights out broadly than I do pulling something in to look at the bare essentials of it. And it's not just in writing fiction that I find this difficult. It's taken me my whole life to learn to look at a situation or set or problems, wrestle with them, figure out what the core issue is, then consider possible solutions. Being able to step outside the situation and realize that it's not necessarily my problem has been helpful; still, the truth is, I'm not too good at it. I get too involved with people.

But daily, my work takes me into life and death issues: things that can be fixed, issues and conditions that must be lived with, issues and illness that lead to death. Working in the church means that everything--everything-- is about life and death, both for individuals and for the organization.

I'm going through Eddie's Wake with a fine tooth comb--again--looking for typos and punctuation errors, and as I do, I noticing how nearly every character and every scene is about life and death or what is live-giving versus what is death-dealing.

Today I performed a wedding at a former congregation for a woman with whom I worked closely those years ago. The church seemed smaller than I remembered it. There were lots of people I didn't know. I was so happy to be there for this one person; the old connection with her was still there, but I've been away, no longer a part of the life of that place. I've been able to step back and see things a bit differently.

Maybe if I wasn't still so involved with Karl, Maggie, Jacob, Will and all the others, I might be able to step back and boil the novel down into a nice, tidy couple of paragraphs. Maybe I need to remind myself that they are not real (nor are they parishioners!), but figments of my over-active imagination.

Maybe I could do that for an hour, maybe even a day. But not much longer than that. The characters are still too real for me. More later...
P.S. The photo above was taken in northern Michigan, from the front porch of my Dad's first cabin.

Jacob Denver

2008-10-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

As I promised you last week, this post is all about Jacob Denver, one of the three point of view characters in Eddie's Wake. Jacob is the brother of Eddie's fishing partner, Will. Like Maggie Stern's character, Jacob is a composite of many men I've known. My grandfather was very interested in history, especially anything having to do with lumbering in Michigan; but I didn't know him as a young man, and I never saw his anger or passion, just his integrity, his love of family, and the stories he told about pranks he played as a youth. You can see some of the lumbering tools he collected over the years in the photo above.
Jacob Denver believes he has a great reason for acting like a jerk--which he does from time to time. Will has the guts to call him on it, taking away his flimsy excuse. The brothers grew up in a family of wealth; Will rejecting it and Jacob becoming the rich boy/man who believed money could solve almost every misfortune he'd hit in life. Yet he learns by the end of the novel that true love can take a person into disagreeable and dangerous situations that money could never fix.
Here's a short passage from the novel all about Jacob Denver:

The long drive north went smoothly, and although patches of snow covered the ground in places, the roads were clear and the sun shone. From Wakelin, Wisconsin, Jacob drove north and west along the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, past lake after lake in what once was a forest thick with white pine. At Carson Village he turned pure north, skirting the state of Michigan at Hurley, and from there drove west into the sun along the south shore of Lake Superior. Tomos Bay clung to the eastern limits of Ashland like a jealous little sister.
Jacob stopped twice along the way to check the white pine seedlings he planted two springs ago, caressing the soft needles of this one or that. He loved the way they felt: supple, tender, pliable enough to survive the heavy snows to come. Jacob’s grandfather had amassed a huge fortune for himself in lumber and Jacob’s father, Henry followed in his footsteps, clear-cutting the land, ignoring the wounds they made in the rapidly dwindling forests. Once they’d finished with it, their generations sold it to unsuspecting immigrants who soon found it unsuitable for farming.
Even before Henry died, Jacob decided it was up to him to atone for the sins of his forebears. He bought up acre upon acre of stump-studded, rocky property and endured his father’s ridicule for making such foolish investments. Jacob paid a fair price to the immigrants, employed some of them and began to restore the great pine forest by planting new trees wherever he could. It would be many years, however, before the land looked anything like a forest again.

Till next time...

No Window Washing Today

2008-10-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

Today is supposed to be window washing day, but the wind has picked up. Great excuse not to go outside and climb a ladder...

I've spent a good amount of time this past week reconsidering my choice of publishers. There are a lot of them out there who would be happy to take my money, but can't really tell me what I would get for it, at least not clearly enough for me to be interested. And comparing them is often like comparing apples and oranges. We've poured over websites, sent away for information, gone back and forth between two companies then settled on the one I'd thought to go with in the first place. Even then, there are so many options to think about. Of course I want an IDSN number, of course I want to be registered in the Library of Congress, of course I want an official copyright. But do I really need 500 business cards for $199? Or postcards? Or bookmarks? I don't think so.

I am eternally grateful to my husband, "TP Dadman," for giving me his time and asking questions that I wouldn't think to ask. He looks at all this through the eyes of a business-techy person which is something I don't do very well at all.

This coming week I hope to finish one more read though of the novel as I have it, looking for typos, words in the wrong places, redundancies, unnecessary dialog, punctuation issues, etc. And yes, I am finding things to correct. It's a painstaking process. To my instructor from Writers Online Workshops, in case you ever read this -- everything you have taught me is still floating around in my head whenever I look at a page of manuscript. I'm eternally grateful to you, as well.

I've included a photo of a White Pine tree that was taken in northern Michigan. The White Pine is lumberman Jacob Denver's favorite tree. The next post will be about him.

A Mother's Heart

2008-09-25T17:15:00.001-07:00

In the antique room at my mother’s house there are several old family portraits. I love looking at them and trying to imagine what some of these long-gone family members might have been like. My favorite is the portrait of my grandmother’s parents holding Grandma between them when she was just old enough to stand. It was probably taken around 1898.

My Great Grandmother, Katherine, was a beautiful woman. In the picture she’s not grinning or anything outrageous like that, but she has a pleasant, friendly face that seems to welcome you in to whatever she’s doing. I wish I’d been able to knock on her back door and spend time with her over küchen and coffee in her kitchen.
Katherine had plenty of sorrow in her life. Her daughter – her first I think – died in infancy, and my grandmother, Clara, was so scrawny and sickly when she was born that the doctor told Katherine and John (Great Grandpa) to hurry up and get her baptized, because “this one isn’t going to make it.” Actually, Grandma outlived the whole family: parents and all four sisters and four brothers.
Grandma had her share of troubles, too: her own ill health, losing a son to polio, caring for a dying mother in law… But even with her own sadness and challenges, Grandma never stopped being a mother to her five other children, even as they grew older.
And of course, there’s my own mother, Dorothy, hundreds of miles away from me, but still taking care of family members who should be taking care of her. And even though I scold her about it, I understand where her heart is. I’m a mother, too, proud of my sons at times, my heart bleeding for them at others.

What does any of this have to do with Writing Eddie’s Wake? I think Karl’s mother, Maggie, is a mixture of these women and many others I have known and loved. You have only met Maggie for a tiny moment in the first post below, but I think you’ll like her. She’s not perfect, with her hot temper, but then who is? Through all her own heartache, fear and adversity, she is absolutely, completely and undeniably committed to Karl and his sisters, Lizzie and Anna. Moments when any of them are in danger are nearly as devastating to her as… Well, I shouldn’t say too much more here; I sure wouldn’t want to spoil the story for you! Till next time…

2008-09-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

Hello, there! It's been almost a month since I decided to try my own blog, and this is only the second post I've made. Just two weeks ago, Tom and I spent four days on the north shore of Lake Superior at our favorite place, Bob's Cabins. A highlight of the visit was our trip to Tofte, MN to visit the commercial fishing museum there. We were able to see some old photos of fishing boats from 60-80 years ago and found one that might be similar to the Maggie O'Keefe -- Eddie and Will's boat. Sizable enough, but small enough for three or four men to operate.

The publishing process is moving along. I have a graphic artist ready to design the cover for Eddie's Wake and I've signed on with Outskirts Press and now have an author's rep. I hope to move forward quickly, although having a printed and bound copy in my hands is still a few months off.

Soon I will post a revised version of Never Alone, the story that started all this. It's about Karl Stern -- the main character of Eddie's Wake -- as an old man. In 2003 I took it to a writers' workshop in Chicago and someone who read it said they wondered what Karl was like as a boy. So began the writing of Finding Home which morphed into Eddie's Wake.

For now I will leave you with the verses from scripture that seem to add a little wisdom to my first attempt at writing something BIG.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one's house, it would be utterly scorned.

Song of Songs 8:6-7

Welcome to "Eddie's Wake"

2008-09-18T21:00:00.001-07:00

October 3, 2009

Hello and welcome to Eddie's Wake. This is the first entry I made on my blog (http://karlsstory.blogspot.com) back in September 2008. Using the archive links in the box on the right, you can read all the posts I've made from this first entry to the very latest. Some entries are personal reflections on times and events in my life, some are about Eddie's Wake characters and some are combinations of the two. Eddies Wake is available from Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com and in a few small bookstores in Wisconsin. As my time permits, I love to visit local book groups, discuss the novel with you and tell how I experienced the writing process. You may post a comment to any entry; or you may contact me directly at capeterson@eddieswake.com.

Here are a few pages from Chapter 1. Happy reading!

Chapter 1 Love Strong as Death
October, 1928 Tomos Bay, Wisconsin

The way his flannel pajamas bunched up around his knees that morning as he dozed, the blood-red linoleum of the kitchen floor, the smell of wet wool and fish mingled together, the feeling of cold air on his bare feet as it swept through the house: these were the things that chiseled themselves into his memory as his world tilted and came crashing down around him.
Thirteen years old and a seventh grader at Holy Angels School, Karl Stern had to stay home for the day, sick again. October was only half gone, but he’d already missed three days of school because of the wheezy cough he came down with every fall. His mother, Maggie, blamed it on the damp lake air that settled over Tomos Bay whenever the weather turned colder. Since the kitchen was the warmest place in the house, his father set up the roll away cot between the cupboards and the table before leaving for work that morning. There Karl’s mother could watch over him while she took care of her other housework.
Wrapped up in his blanket with his feet dangling off the end of the cot, Karl dozed and dreamed about the summer just past, when his father, Eddie, had finally given him real work to do on his fishing boat. Karl liked to think he was truly helpful and needed, and in the dream, he was; his young, strong muscles casting and hauling nets, sorting fish and throwing back the ones that were too small, keeping the boat on course when his father had something else to do. But just as his father said Good job, son, Karl heard a ruckus on the boat and someone calling for his mother. When the voices came closer, he awoke to the sound of a frantic commotion on the front porch. Bleary eyed, he got up and stood at the kitchen door in his bare feet and wrinkled pajamas.
Before his mother crossed the living room, the front door burst open and hit the inside wall, cracking the grey plaster behind it. The framed picture of Saint Andrew that hung there bounced once and crashed to the floor, face down, its glass shattering into a thousand pieces. Eddie’s partner, Will Denver, and their crewman Rob Holstrom each tripped on the threshold, nearly dropping Eddie’s limp, wet body. The many layers of waterlogged wool, the long underwear, heavy jacket, sweater, and two shirts underneath it all added to the load Will and Rob had to carry. Panting, they laid Eddie on the worn grey and maroon rug.
Maggie spit out the question Karl wanted to ask.“Is he dead?” His heart began to beat the way it did when he raced his pals around the schoolyard and down the block after school.
“No, but he will be if we don’t get him warm right away.”
His mother took charge. “Rob, get some wood from outside and stoke up the kitchen stove, then go feed the furnace. Will, help me get these wet clothes off him. Karl, move your things off the cot. We have to get him into the kitchen where it’s warm.”
Too stunned to move, Karl watched with dread as his mother and Will fought with swollen, nearly frozen buttons and buttonholes. His pounding heart reached down and clutched at his stomach.
“Karl, go get my sewing scissors, and bring the quilt and the featherbed from our bed. Hurry!”
Karl jumped and did as he was told, grabbing the scissors, racing through the house, nearly tripping on the bedding as he brought it from his parents’ bedroom. He gave the scissors to his mother and took the quilt and featherbed into the kitchen, where he removed his pillow and book, but left his blanket for his father. When he returned to the living room, his mother was cutting every button from Eddie’s sodden, smelly clothing while Will helped peel it off, layer after layer. Finally freed of it all, Eddie Stern looked like a corpse lying there, even though his chest moved up and down ever so slightly.
“We need the quilt out here, Karl.”
Karl ran to get it from the cot.
Rob returned as Maggie and Will wrapped Eddie’s icy body in the quilt. Now the two men carried him easily into the kitchen, where Maggie pushed the table away and pulled the cot close to the wood stove. There they laid him, cocooned in the quilt and featherbed. Karl thought this would certainly revive him.
After Karl’s mother sent Rob for Dr. Lyman, Will told them about the black ice that covered the deck when they arrived that morning; treacherous, invisible ice, slick as all get out. “No one saw what happened, we didn’t even realize he’d fallen in. When we found him, he was already going under.” He turned away from Karl and Maggie, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He didn’t turn around again for a long time.
The fishermen had a saying: if you fall in, swim to the bottom because it’s warmer there. You might as well give up the fight and die quickly. The northernmost and deepest of the five Great Lakes, Lake Superior’s average temperature is 40 degrees, cold enough even in summer to suck the life right out of a body. Yet Will and Rob refused to let Eddie go. Together they outweighed him, but holding on and trying to pull him in stretched their muscles and their determination. Rob slipped and almost fell in himself and Will hit his head hard enough on the railing that he had a goose egg before they got Eddie on deck, drenched, freezing and waxy as death.
When Karl and Will came back from hanging Eddie’s wet clothing in the basement, Maggie lay on the cot with his father, all wrapped up in the featherbed with him. Maybe the warmth of her body next to his would help; for a moment, Karl had the impulse to climb in, too. His mother held his father’s hands close to her heart and kissed his face - something he’d seen her do a hundred times.
“Eddie, can you hear me? Open your eyes; you don’t have to say anything, just open your eyes so I know you’re still here. Please? Can you do that, can you open your eyes for me?”
When his father’s eyes fluttered open, Maggie cried out. “Oh, there you are! I love you, Eddie, I love you...” She kissed his cold, motionless face again and again; she brought his stiff, white fingers to her mouth and kissed each one of them, too. “We’ll get you warmed up, don’t worry...”
She lay still, staring into his blank eyes. “Eddie... Edward... Eddie? Where are you?” Her words wobbled; her voice rose in panic. “You don’t know me, do you? You can’t see me, can you?”
Although he refused to admit it, in the pit of his clutched up stomach, Karl knew how this was going to end.

Late that night, after the priest had been there and Grandma O’Keefe, Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Melvin had come and gone; after his sisters, Lizzie and Anna were asleep; after Dr. Lyman had come and gone a second time, Karl woke up and crept through the darkness and down the stairs. A dim light spilled through the kitchen door, a beacon to his father’s sickroom.
His mother sat on the floor next to the cot where his father still lay, his face now flushed with fever. She’d propped up his head with three pillows and covered him with only a light blanket. The familiar smell of Eddie Stern’s sweat filled the kitchen; his tall, sturdy body seemed shrunken from its dousing in the cold lake. Every few minutes he coughed weakly.
Maggie still wore the faded green house dress she had on yesterday, green like a sick, stormy lake. Her long hair fell around her shoulders, its reddish flecks brought to life by the lamplight. Karl thought she looked like a young girl, her arm across his father, her head resting between his upper arm and his chest.
“Mama?”
Maggie raised her head. “Karl, what are you doing out of bed? Where are your slippers?” Deep shadows filled the curves beneath her eyes and her puffy eyelids drooped, half open, half closed.
“I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. How’s Daddy?”
“He took in too much lake water. Dr. Lyman said his heart isn’t beating very well.”
“Is he going to die?”
“I think so.”
Karl’s brow wrinkled, his throat suddenly tight. “No!” He wanted it to be yesterday at this time, he wanted to be able to warn his father to watch out for ice on the deck.
“Come here, sit with me.” His mother pulled the blanket he’d left for his father onto the floor, making a place for him to sit between her and the cot. She wrapped him in the blanket and then in her arms, smoothing his curly blond hair away from his face. They sat without talking for a long time as she rocked him and he cried. She had no words or wisdom for him, only the strength of a sorrow shared.
“I wanted to be his partner on the boat. I wanted to work with him. I wanted to be just like him.” Karl pulled away and looked into his mother’s eyes.
Maggie smiled a little. “You two have been squabbling an awful lot lately, so you’d better tell him, Karl, you’d better tell him everything you want him to know before it’s too late.”
“Do you think he can hear us?”
“I don’t know for sure. Just believe he can, and tell him everything.” She stood up and rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m going to change out of these clothes and look in on the girls. You stay here and talk to him.” She kissed the top of Karl’s head and disappeared up the stairs.
All alone with his father, at first Karl felt foolish, like he was talking to himself, but it didn’t take long before he remembered all the things the two of them had done together. He talked about the sunburn they’d both had after the first day on the lake last summer.
“But that didn’t matter, ’cause it was the best summer of my whole life.”
He talked about their wrestling matches and told him how proud he felt when Eddie quit letting him win, laughed and said, “But I still hate losing.” Karl remembered the day they’d gone out to the woods to see the huge sugar maple that Eddie climbed as a boy, and how they’d made plans to tap the tree for syrup next spring. “I can almost taste it, Daddy, you have to get well.”
Karl buried his face in his father’s blankets, crying. He said, “I love you” again and again. He kissed Eddie’s bearded cheek the way he did when he was still small enough to be swooped up in his father’s arms and lifted high into the air. And he whispered over and over again, “Please don’t go, Daddy. God, please, don’t let him die, please. He has to get well. I’ll never be bad or talk back ever again, just let him live. Please!”