Tag Archives: Emily Dickinson

As a Matter of Stats

Posted on by
Reply

“Somewhere, an editor is waiting to fall in love with what I’ve written. That’s not ego. That’s faith.”

—Brent L. Kendrick (b. 1947). Blogger, literary scholar, creative nonfiction writer (who loves to fool around in bed), and once-upon-a-time professor who splits his reinvention time between restoring lost voices of American literature and discovering new ways to live, love, laugh, and write with meaning. He’s been sighted in the mountains of Virginia. (Authorial aside to all editors: Sit up and take notice—because if you snooze, you lose. This dude’s relatively cheap, cleans up well, once got compared to Garrison Keillor by someone in Tennessee, and yes—he’ll bake sourdough and seduce the annotations, headnotes, footnotes, and endnotes into (mis)behaving.)

Stats?

Oh. Sorry. I don’t mean my vitals. Though I do check them daily. Why not? My Fitbit provides it all, right on my wrist. Heart rate. Breathing rate. Temp. Heart rate variability. Blood oxygenation. Stress. So, yeah. I check those first thing every morning when I wake up.

I meant another set of stats that matter to me.

My WordPress stats.

I like to know how many people are checking out my blog on any given day.

I like to know what countries they’re from.

I especially like to know what posts they’re reading. That info lets me know what’s hot and what’s not. Every now and then, I lean in and almost let myself believe that what’s hot might just be me. I do. Really. I do. Especially when I see hits on my About Me or About My Blog or Contact Me pages. Like the time one lone reader from Lithuania clicked through twelve posts in an hour—and paused on “About Me.” I remember thinking:

“This is it. This is my moment.”

I guess I figure that if someone is going to all the trouble of background snooping, they’re probably on the verge of being the genius who goes down in history as the one who discovered me, thus ensuring that I go down neither unfootnoted nor unnoted.

Me? Discovered?

Don’t scoff! Stranger things have happened, you know. I mean, I wouldn’t be the first writer catapulted into history and literary fame by an editor with deep belief and keen vision.

One writer who has just been catapulted into history comes to mind immediately.

Alexander Gordon (c. 1692-1754).

Did I just hear you gasp:

“Who’s that?”

Surely, I did not, for if you don’t know who he is, then you must not be the faithful follower I know you to be.

If you’re following me–my blog, I should add for your clarity and my protection–then you know that I recently finished a book about Alexander Gordon, the long-forgotten colonial satirist who published his literary works pseudonymously in The South-Carolina Gazette in 1753-54 under the name The Humourist, and then—like so many voices history forgets—he vanished. No one knew who he was. One scholar asked. But he didn’t bother to find out. No one else did, either. Then I came along. I had a lot of curiosity. I had a tolerance for long hours in dusty archives. Eventually, I had a hunch, and I discovered a clue.

“What happened next?” you ask.

I found him. I pieced together the man behind the pen. I wrote him back into existence. Now, he lives once more for all the world—including you—to read and enjoy again. Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston.

So don’t tell me that a writer getting discovered is a myth. I just did that very thing with Alexander Gordon. Guess what else? It occurs to me that he now stands as the first American writer to be thrust by an editor into fame.

Yes. That’s true and, I’ll make that claim. Right here. Right now.

Someone just upbraided me:

“Excuse me. You’re wrong. Anne Bradstreet was the first.”

Being upbraided is something up with which I will not put.

“So ekscuuuuuuuuuuse meeeeee! You’re wrong.”

Here’s why.

I know. I know. You’re probably thinking about her one and only book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. In case you don’t know the story surrounding its 1650 publication, it goes like this. Her brother-in-law John Woodbridge spirited her manuscript off to England and published it behind her back, unbeknownst to her.

Bradstreet herself seems to back up that claim, especially in her “The Author to Her Book” offering up her well-known and oft-quoted lament:

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,
Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judg).

How convenient for Bradstreet. Her posturing created a persona of Puritan modesty and aversion to recognition as compelling as the narrative of her “stolen” book of poetry—the very tale that helped catapult her into public view.

But here’s the thing. Actually, two things. First, Woodbridge was not her editor. Second, despite the storybook notion that Bradstreet considered her womanly role subordinate to the role of Puritan men, scholars maintain that it was “a propaganda campaign” launched by Bradstreet and her family. I’m thinking particularly of Charlotte Gordon’s “Humble Assertions: The True Story of Anne Bradstreet’s Publication of The Tenth Muse,” maintaining that Bradstreet was not surprised by the publication of her book and that, in fact, she was actively involved in its publication.

So there! Bradstreet does not beat Alexander Gordon when it comes to the first American writer thrust into fame by an editor.

But let me not digress from the claim that I am making. Think as long and as hard as you will about American writers between the publication of The Tenth Muse and the publication of the Humourist essays, and if you can come up with someone else who can seize the claim, reach out to me, and I’ll blog it. Better still, reach out to me, and we’ll co-blog it.

But I won’t hold my breath. The Humourist remained pseudonymous from his first November 26, 1753, essay through his final notice on April 9, 1754, known but to God. That is until I came along and solved the greatest literary mystery in perhaps all of American literature. I unmasked The Humourist and revealed him to be none other than Alexander Gordon, clerk of His Majesty’s Council in South Carolina.

Now, through my dogged determination, my literary sleuthing, and my scholarly editing, Gordon will be known forever more and throughout the world as the acclaimed author of the Humourist essays, among the liveliest and most original voices in Colonial American Literature, right up there and on par with Ben Franklin’s Silence Dogood essays.

Needless to say, there have been other American writers who were brought into public view by editors–all boasting just a smidgen of modesty, of course, comparable to mine–who knew talent when they saw it.

I’m thinking of my lady Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and my book The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Although I edited the letters, provided thorough annotations, and wrote biographical introductions to the book itself and each of its five sections, I’m not the editor who discovered her on her way to literary stardom.

Credit for that goes to someone else. Here’s the brief backstory. Freeman started her career as a children’s writer but then extended her literary efforts into the realm of adult short stories. Lippincott’s, Century, and the Atlantic rejected her “Two Old Lovers.” Then she sent it to Mary Louise Booth, editor of Harper’s Bazar, who read the story three different times during three different moods, as was her custom, and accepted it for publication in the March 31, 1883, issue. From that point forward, Freeman wrote regularly for the Harper’s Bazar and Harper’s Monthly, and, in fact, Harper & Brothers became her regular publisher.

In a way, then, it was Mary Louise Booth’s editorial acumen that escorted Freeman into the international literary acclaim she continues to enjoy even today, though in fairness to Freeman, her talent was such that it would have found its way into the spotlight in one way or another. Talent will always out.

I could go on and on with this litany of writers who were discovered by editors, sometimes against the odds. I’m tempted to say that I won’t, but on second thought, I think that I will share with you snippets of some paired writers and editors who come to mind.

I’ll start with Flannery O’Connor, so well known for her bold and unconventional Southern Gothic voice. It was Robert Giroux, an editor at Harcourt who believed in her debut novel, Wise Blood, and guided it into print—despite its eccentric style and religious overtones.

Or what about Jack Kerouac? His On the Road was originally a 120-foot scroll—raw, unfiltered, and “unpublishable.” But Viking Press editor Malcolm Cowley saw gold and helped shape it into the beat-generation classic it became.

Then we’ve got a postal worker with a cult following in underground poetry circles: Charles Bukowski. He caught the attention of John Martin at Black Sparrow Press. Martin offered him a year’s salary to quit his job and write full time. It was the start of a prolific and gritty career.

No doubt you know the minimalist voice of Raymond Carver. His works might have stayed buried had it not been for Gordon Lish at Esquire. Lish gave Carver his break, though not without some brutal edits.

Closer to me and my situation in many ways is Frank McCourt, who, as a retired teacher in his 60s, wrote Angela’s Ashes. Nan Graham at Scribner wept when she read it and championed it into publication. Oh. My. It won the Pulitzer. It sold millions. My kingdom for a Nan.

And if McCourt was close to me occupationally—educator turned writer; I, of course, am still living according to most recent news reports—then I have to mention Jeanette Walls, whose roots are close to mine since we’re both West Virginians. Her memoir The Glass Castle was going nowhere fast until editor Deb Futter read it and saw its power. Her support turned it into a bestseller and reshaped what memoir could be.

And last but perhaps most important to the hope that I carry (like a well-worn talisman) that an editor will discover me and, in a poof, turn me into star dust is Andy Weir. He self-published his The Martian chapter by chapter online. Julian Pavia at Crown Publishing read it, loved it, and bought it. The novel became a bestseller and hit film.

Oh. My. God. I’m doing exactly what Weir did. I’m publishing all of my Foolin’ Around in Bed essays right here, week by week. Once again, my kingdom for a Pavia unless a Nan has already catapulted my bed into fame.

I could share other snippets, but I confess. Right now, I’m in a pickle. But don’t worry. I have a way out. It will work for me, and, as you are about to see, it will work for you too.

I’m going to do what Margaret Atwood did in her story “Happy Endings.” I’m going to give you options.

A. What happens next? Don’t be so impatient. History is based on facts and evidence. Come back for the ending when the ending is written.

B. What happens next? Dear Reader, you know exactly what comes next. Yours truly–Brent(ford) L(ee) Kendrick–aka TheWiredResearcher—keeps right on doing what he’s been doing with his writing and his research. And he keeps right on hoping that an editor–a believer—is out there, poised and ready to do for him what he’s just done for Alexander Gordon.

Not just this blog. Not just my Foolin’ Around in Bed essays. But Gordon. Freeman. Years of words, research, story, and sweat. A whole body of work—waiting for the right editor/reader to say: “This one. This voice.”

“Which ending do you like?” someone queried.

I much prefer B. After all, keepin’ on keepin’ on is the road I’m traveling. Even if it is the one less traveled by, it makes all the difference. Especially when it leads past the stats and toward the stars. (Whew! What a relief. I figured out a way to bring Robert Frost into this post. It’s been too long–far too long.)

Besides, putting aside my own preference for an ending, I have no doubt in the world that right now, an editor is out there who believes in me, who might be scrolling through my “About Me,” pausing over a sentence, clicking “Contact Me,” and thinking:

“This one. This voice.”

OMG. I just felt the earth shift.

I did. I really did.

Did you?

No? You didn’t?

Don’t worry. Be happy. Somewhere, right now, someone’s opening a drawer, clicking a link, or flipping a page—and everything’s about to begin.

It’s just a matter of time and a matter of stats.

Co-Scripting the Postscript

Posted on by
13

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses — past the headlands —
Into deep Eternity —

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

–Emily Dickinson (1830–1886; pioneering American poet who explored themes of death, immortality, and nature with unmatched depth.)

Frank is dead, yet he liveth. I have proof. Well, it’s proof enough to satisfy me. I’ll share it with you so you can decide for yourself, as we all must do in the end.

Frank is my friend. My use of the present tense is deliberate. Remember: though he be dead, he liveth.

We became fast friends decades ago in the 1980s when we worked together at the Library of Congress. Frank was an attorney in the General Counsel’s Office; I, Special Assistant for Human Resources. From the start, wordplay cemented our friendship. Frank loved words as much as I, and when it came to verbal banter, Frank outdistanced me often, if not always. He was the perpetual prankster as well. I remember one occasion when his twin visited, and they switched roles. John became the attorney. Frank, the visitor. They duped all of us until well past noon, when Frank decided it was time to fess up, showing everyone the fun of being identical twins.

Beyond his pranks and his verbal banter, Frank commanded trust, and it was the kind of trust that went beyond attorney-client privilege. It was trust forged from seeing moral fiber in action. Frank was no stranger to walking the high road. He and I often walked it together.

Ironically, during those years, Frank and I weren’t friends outside of work. But that didn’t matter. Friends are friends. I will forever remember my last day at work when I took an early retirement. Frank came to my office wearing a deep burgundy casual shirt, one that I had admired time and time again. He smiled, pointed to his shirt, and turned around several times:

“You want it?”

“Of course, I do.”

With all the theatrics he could muster, he unbuttoned his shirt, took it off, twirled it around in the air, and tossed it to me.

“It’s all yours. Enjoy!”

I enjoyed it until its beauty was threadbare. Friends really do that sort of thing, literally and metaphorically. They take the shirt right off their backs and give it to you. Frank was that kind of friend.

Our friendship survived my move to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and, in many ways, it became stronger. We didn’t see one another as often, but our connections seemed deeper and more meaningful because they were more planned and more deliberate.

I remember several special get-togethers that strengthened our already strong bond.

The first was a visit here to my mountaintop when my home was still the weekend cabin that I purchased initially. Frank came up so that he could see what I saw living up here, but he ended up helping me transplant several large Leyland Cypress. One still stands in my lower yard, towering over the landscape. Friends, like trees, stand tall.

The next was a weekend when Frank visited me in Front Royal, where I lived while juggling a teaching schedule across two campuses. I’ll always remember the unexpected snow that started falling while we were out for an evening stroll that seemed to last for hours. Eventually, we stepped inside for a late-night dinner. We were the only diners in a restaurant reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, with its large glass windows and warm light casting an inviting glow against the stark, quiet night outside. Friends make unexpected joys more joyful.

Fast forward to more recent times. Frank and I decided to meet for lunch from time to time in historic Middleburg, VA, midway between his home in Springfield and mine in Edinburg. Before long, our occasional lunches became monthly rituals, always at the King Street Oyster Bar, always sipping Bombay Sapphire Gin and Tonics, and always sharing several dozen briny oysters on the half shell. When Frank’s wife Barbara joined us for the first time, it was as if I had known her as long as I had known Frank. Friends like that are rare.

Betwixt and between our lunches and our frequent texting were several special celebrations. Thanksgiving of 2022 comes to mind most readily. Frank, Barbara, and their friend James joined me for the day, and I served up a modest feast, including the one thing that Frank had requested: store-bought jellied cranberry sauce. Friends have quirks.

The next spring, Frank and Barbara flew to Burlington, Vermont, for the publisher’s launch of my book Green Mountain Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, just to make sure that someone came to the event. Friends look out for friends.

In 2024, the Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies (WAGPCS) invited me to speak at one of their monthly meetings in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress. Barbara was instrumental in orchestrating it all. When she first asked me whether I’d be willing to come back and talk, Frank commented that it would be like circling back home. Indeed, it was. I started my career at the Library of Congress in 1969, and it was there that Frank and I engraved our friendship. I loved Frank’s observation so much that I incorporated it into the title of my April 4th talk: “Circling Back Home: Thomas Shuler Shaw, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and the Library of Congress.” Frank and Barbara were there for the talk and for dinner afterward. Friends keep friends in their circle.

Frank and I were well aware that our friendship was special. I suppose that’s why every time we met and then parted to go our separate ways, we always turned around, in sync it seemed, to smile and wave goodbye at least once, sometimes twice, as if that goodbye might be forever. Friends know that one day, forever comes.

The last time that Frank and I carried out our turn-around-and-wave-goodbye ritual was last September when we lunched at the King Street Oyster Bar, with John joining us. Frank seemed strong despite having some health issues that his doctors thought might be related to his liver. Within a month or so, Frank was given the grim news that he was in liver failure, with perhaps four months or so to live. He called to tell me. Friends share tragedy, even through tears.

The details of our interactions since then are of little consequence except for my proof that though Frank be dead, he liveth. Here’s how I know.

During one of our conversations, Frank wanted to talk about dying. Conversations about death and dying are so important, yet so many people aren’t comfortable grappling with the topic. Frank knew that I was. We didn’t talk about the art of dying. Instead, we talked about the mystery of the Great Beyond. What awaits us when we are freed from our mortal selves?

We both talked. We both listened. Frank is Catholic. I’m Protestant. We talked about the Christian notion of the Afterlife as a divine manuscript of salvation or separation, with Heaven and Hell serving as eternal footnotes to a life well (or poorly) lived. Barbara is Jewish. We talked about Judaism often leaving the notion of the afterlife intentionally open-ended, a poetic ellipsis, focusing more on righteous living than on what comes after. We talked about the fact that while different world religions script the afterlife differently, each crafts a unique but converging narrative that points toward some form of existence beyond death.

We both agreed that death is not the end. We both agreed that religions, in their diverse and poetic ways, reassure us that the story carries on, that the postscript—whatever its shape—awaits. We reminded one another of the universal longing for connection—across faiths, lives, and time.

I jokingly suggested to Frank that if he died first, which seemed likely, that he should reach out to me somehow and let me know whatever he could let me know. He agreed. Friends reach out to one another, always.

And here’s where proof marches in.

Frank died peacefully on January 13th, at 10:04pm. I didn’t get Barbara’s text message until the next morning.

As I tried to process the weight of Frank’s passing, I turned to one of the things that always brings me solace—Gospel music. I have dozens and dozens of Gospel songs on my playlist, never knowing which song will play first.

“Alexa, shuffle my playlist Gospel.”

The song that started playing gave me goosebumps from head to toe. It was Ralph Stanley, the acclaimed King of Mountain Music, triumphantly singing “When I Wake Up to Sleep No More”:

What a glad thought some wonderful morning
Just to hear Gabriel’s trumpet sound
When I wake up (When I wake up)
To sleep no more

Rising to meet my blessed Redeemer
With a glad shout I’ll leave the ground
When I wake up (When I wake up)
To sleep no more

When I wake up (on some glad morning)
To sleep no more (jewels adorning)
Happy I’ll be (over in glory)
On Heaven’s bright shore (telling the story)
With the redeemed of all the ages
Praising the One whom I adore
When I wake up (when I wake up)
To sleep no more

I chuckled, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Frank had just paid me a visit.

True to his word, Frank kept his part of our agreement, and, in listening and believing, I kept mine. Together, we co-scripted the postscript—a reminder that the stories we write with those we love don’t end.

§  §  §

Frank Mack

December 13, 1952 – January 13, 2025

Invisible, yet alive—

Whispers. Touches. Sings.

What If I’m Not Who You Think I Am?

Posted on by
7

“Today you are You, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

–Dr. Seuss (1904–1991; American Children’s author and illustrator who used humor and rhyme to convey timeless lessons on individuality, kindness, and resilience; the quote is from his 1959 book Happy Birthday to You!)

How totally presumptuous of me to assume that you think you know who I am. But if you’re one of my faithful followers–or if you’re just an occasional reader–you probably know more about me than you care to know or than I care for you to know. Be that as it may, whatever you’ve read in my posts is all true, even if exaggerated occasionally, hoping to make you think or laugh. And, yes, sometimes I tell the truth slant so that I don’t razzle dazzle you with reality:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind — (Emily Dickinson)

The reality is this: I know who I am. But growing up as a kid, my siblings tried to teasingly convince me otherwise by telling me that I was adopted.

“You don’t look like us.”

“You don’t act like us.”

“You don’t talk like us.”

“You don’t walk like us.”

“Yep. You’re adopted. Brentford Lee Murdock.”

Imagine that. Making me doubt my own genetics. The nerve! How dare they tell me that I was adopted in one breath, and then without batting an eye, tell me in the next breath what they insisted was my real surname: Murdock! Well, their teasing never bothered me one bit, not one slightest chromosome. The way they walked, the way they talked, the way they acted, and the way they looked, I was glad to know that they were no kin of mine. None. Not one gene whatsoever. OMG! Did I just say that? How utterly nasty of me, if not downright, vicious. Well. They teased me then. I tease them now. Touché.

Candidly, I think they were just downright jealous because I was not only the youngest, but I was also the only one born in a hospital, one named after a Saint, no less. They were born in a coal-camp house. Not me. I was fancy-schmancy from birth, and, unlike theirs, my birth certificate is fancy, too. My goodness. I pulled it out just a few minutes ago. It’s gorgeous, gloatingly so. 8 inches x 12 inches. Parchment. Real, feel-good parchment. Enclosed in a smooth, velvety envelope. It even has my cute little newborn footprints on the back, labeled Left and Right. Beside my left footprint is my mother’s left thumb print. Beside my right footprint is my mother’s right thumbprint.

Adopted? Right. I could have extracted that certificate in a moment’s notice, proving my identity to my teasing sibs, because I knew exactly where my parents kept it. I never bothered. Some things just aren’t worth the bother, you know. When you know who you are, you know who you are. And believe me: I am who I am, and I have always known who I am, and I’m sticking with it. Besides, time was on my side and proved it for me without my having to do one single, solitary thing. As I got older and older, and balder and balder, I started to look more and more like my father. Today, I could nearly pass for his twin when he was my age. But so be it. I still don’t act like them. I still don’t talk like them. So you can rest assured: whenever it’s convenient for me to do so–in times of family disputes and in times of family disagreements–I simply look at them ever so innocently and I remind them, ever so teasingly:

“You are not going to drag me into your petty little family battles.

“I’ll have absolutely no part of it whatsoever. No part whatsoever.

“Have you forgotten? I haven’t. I’m adopted. I’m a Murdock.”

Without a doubt, I’ve always known how to use being adopted to my advantage.

However, it always struck me as rather unusual that I exhibit the exact same physical traits as my adoptive parents and my adoptive siblings.

My mother always boasted of her English ancestry, and when she really wanted to appear hoity-toity, she chronicled her French Huguenot ancestry. A close examination shows all of us–the whole family, including me as the adoptee–having fair complexion, blue eyes, and brown hair, consistent with my mother’s lineage as well as my father’s since he was also English mixed with German and Dutch. His father was exceedingly tall–6′ 4″–which he attributed to his being part German. His mother, on the other hand, was exceedingly short–4′ 8″–which he attributed to her being Dutch. Say whaaat? Unless I’m mistaken, the Neanderthals Netherlands boasts some of the tallest people in the world. Be that as it may, two of my sisters are short, and I’m certain that they blame their Grandma Kendrick.

Personally, as an outsider, I’m not certain that I give any more credence to all that malarkey than I do their ridiculous claim that I’m adopted. Besides, it doesn’t matter. They’re no kin of mine whatsoever. But with their mixed lineage–oh, I forgot to factor in Irish on one side or the other or both–they could have given me any number of surnames since 75-80% of Americans around the time that I was born came from the same stock. Aside from Murdock, my last name could just as easily have been Butterworth, McGinnis, LaFleur, or Freitag. Or maybe even Vanderpoop. I’ll have to try those on, one by one, with Brentford Lee affixed to the front, before I decide whether any one of them sounds better or affords more advantages than Brentford Lee Murdock.

This is all such fun that maybe I’ll stick with being adopted and be done with my identity once and forever.

But first I have to tell you what I’ve gone and done to celebrate my 77th birthday on November 20. I can’t believe I did it, but I did! And I can’t believe that I’m telling you what I did, but I am. I trust you. I know that you won’t tell another living soul. I decided that once and for all, I would prove to the clan that I got stuck with that I AM adopted. I’ll show them that they need to be careful about what they say because what’s spoken becomes reality.

Anyway, I ordered myself one of those highfalutin DNA tests to prove who I am! It shipped out from Salt Lake City. Then, it stopped in Bridgeport, NJ. I know all the details because I felt compelled to track its journey since, in a way, its journey will be tracking mine. Tracking is part of the fun of ordering anything online, including a kit that might tell me who I am. I confess, though. Waiting for it to arrive in Edinburg made me so antsy that I felt like my pants were on fire!

At last, it arrived, and I opened it ever so carefully. I followed the detailed directions ever so precisely. I wanted to make sure that someone somewhere had enough saliva from my swabbed cheeks so that they could sequence every strand and map every marker of my identity.

I am pleased to say that I swabbed the good swab, I sent my whoever-I-am-DNA back to Salt Lake City, and I have been notified that it’s better than good! My sample met the “high standards” required for DNA testing. Oh. My. I love being validated in high places.

The next steps are fantabulous:

● Extract the genetic information from my sample. Ouch! I hope that doesn’t hurt.

● Isolate, purify, and copy my DNA. Please say it ain’t so. Please say it ain’t so. One Brentford Lee Mudock at a time is quite enough for this world.

● Transform my DNA into a blueprint for discovery. Go for it! Find my bluebloods and make them come out of their closets, even if they don’t want to come out.

● Dig deep into my ancestral roots that span across continents. My God! I thought I was done with weeding.

● Weave a family tree. Woo hoo! While they’re at it, maybe they’ll weave me a hairpiece, too.

● Update me as my landscape unfolds. Hmmm. I guess these DNA folks like gardening as much as I do.

In about eight weeks, I’ll get a report with all of that information and more. Voila! My jeans genes will be transparent for all to see.

Here’s where it starts to get funny. Chances are beyond good that I will never explore my DNA report when it arrives.

It’s not that I’m afraid of what I might find out. I’m not. And I really don’t think that the results would change anything anyway. All right. Perhaps it might validate the outlandish claim that one of my no-kin-of-mine-whatsoever relatives made about being descended from John the Baptist. For all I know about them, they might be descended from Queen Elizabeth I, Brian Boru, Rembrandt, or even John Calvin himself! La-di-da. But why would I care? Like they’ve always reminded me, “You’re’ adopted.” And like I’ve always retorted with all the civility they don’t deserve, “You’re no kin of mine. Not one chromo, Bro.”

Besides. I know who I am, and I am anchored strong to my identity.

I’m a vital part of the universe, rooted in Nature and connected to Her. I draw lessons from everything in Nature, seeing the world around me as resilient metaphors for growth, transformation, and stability in life. Nothing can ever take that away.

I’m dedicated to personal growth and to declaring and maintaining my authenticity. I have always been the real thing, and I will continue to be. I embrace self-examination and transformation, and I am open to change. Nothing can take that away.

I’m creative in all that I do, whether it’s in writing, cooking, or gardening. I bring a thoughtful, personal touch to all that I do, and I like to think that I can weave philosophical insights into anything and see truths in everything. Nothing can take that away.

I’m comfortable with both tradition and innovation. I value the old and the new, and I am committed to learning from the past while seeing potential in the future. Nothing can take that away.

I’m strengthened by community and my connections with others. Although I am introspective, I cherish my relationships. I celebrate ideas, value honesty, empathy, and the bonds that tie me to all others. Nothing can take that away.

I’m passionate about intellectual curiosity and lifelong learning. I believe that education transforms lives, and I believe that an education is the best investment that anyone can ever make in themselves or in others. Nothing can take that away.

I’m anchored to the world around me. While I am at home right here on my mountaintop sanctuary in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I am confident that my appreciation of place would make me feel equally at home anywhere in the world. What I find, I’ll make mine. Nothing can take that away.

I’m an integral part of a spiritual tradition that is open and deep, that is inclusive, that respects universal truths, and that leads me to see my interconnectedness with all living things. I kneel before the wisdom of the ages. Nothing can take that away.

Above all else, I’m a man of heart—generous in spirit, passionate in purpose, compassionate by nature, and unwaveringly true to who I am, with just enough mischief to keep life, and those around me, delightfully off-balance. Nothing can take that away.

Nothing–absolutely nothing–that I know now or that I might come to know in the future–can ever undo my identity anchors. That’s why my DNA report will remain sealed, as far as I know right now.

It does occur to me, however, that one thing might push me over the edge enough to make me want to know my genetic past.

The next time that I have a sibling spat, I might open the report so that I can prove to them–and them only–that I am none other than the illustrious and inimitable Brentford Lee McGinnis LaFleur Kendrick Freitag Murdock Vanderpoop.

Embracing Your Inner Cupid: A Valentine’s Day Journey of Self-Love

Posted on by
6

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose – 
A Ribbon at a time – 
The Steeples swam in Amethyst – 
The news, like Squirrels, ran – 

The Hills untied their Bonnets – 
The Bobolinks – begun –
Then I said softly to myself –
“That must have been the Sun”!

But how he set – I know not –
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while – 

Till when they reached the other side – 
A Dominie in Gray – 
Put gently up the evening Bars – 
And led the flock away –

–Emily Dickinson (1830-1866; one of the most important and influential poets in American literature).

I almost never devote an entire blog post to a special occasion. Well, now that I think about it, I suppose that I have done so on a handful of occasions. I’m thinking of my “Old Anchors for the New Year;” “Memories of Christmas in the Country;” and “A Halloween Obsession.” Then, of course, I recall posts that I wrote on my birthday last year and the year before: “Happy Birthday Me! My Journey from Machines to Artificial Intelligence” and “Hor(r)o(r)scopic Contemplations.”

Yes. I really do consider my birthday to be a special occasion. And, yes, as I have disclosed before with candor and transparency, I really do buy myself birthday gifts in advance. I have them wrapped in over-the-top paper and tied in fancy ribbons and bows. I include a note reminding myself of what an extraordinarily special and one-of-a-kind guy that I am. Then I hide the gifts so that I’ll be surprised on my special day. If I don’t love myself, how can others love me? That’s true for you, too. Love yourself.

Actually, reflecting on self-love and my birthday posts is what got me to thinking about today’s post. Many people struggle with self-love because of negative self-perceptions, comparison to others, fear of selfishness, and emotional baggage. However, we need to remember that self-love is essential for our overall well-being, and we need to prioritize self-care, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. By cultivating a deeper sense of love and appreciation for ourselves, we can experience greater resilience, fulfillment, and authenticity.

What better time of year to show ourselves some self-love than on Valentine’s Day, which is fast upon us, heralding a flurry of romantic gestures and heartfelt sentiments. Obviously, Valentine’s Day is associated with romantic love and expressions of affection between couples and lovers. Obviously, too, Valentine’s Day has morphed over time to encompass broader expressions of love and affection, including friends and family. We’re talking more than 250 million roses; more than 150 million cards; more than 36 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate; millions of romantic dinners out at fancy restaurants; and lots of gifts, averaging around $196 each.

Cards. Roses. Chocolates. Dinner. Gifts. All for special people on Valentine’s Day.

I hope that you show the special people in your life how much you love them on Valentine’s Day. Showing others that we love them nurtures the roots of connection, fostering a sense of belonging and solidarity that transcends boundaries and enriches our shared human experience.

I hope that those who think you’re special show their love for you on Valentine’s Day. It’s good to be reminded that we are valued, worthy of affection, and capable of inspiring joy in others. In the embrace of love, we find the courage to flourish, to reach higher, and to bloom into the fullest expression of ourselves.

But, more, I hope that you take time in the midst of these Valentine’s Day gestures, coming and going, to wrap your arms around yourself and to remind yourself of how special you are. Celebrate your own inner Cupid. Loving yourself nurtures the roots of your being. Loving yourself helps you cultivate resilience. Loving yourself helps you find solace in your own company. Loving yourself helps you embrace the beauty of your imperfections and your brokenness. Loving yourself radiates outward and brightens the world around you.

With that in mind, let me offer you a little gift that might help you move a little closer toward self-love. It’s an Emily Dickinson poem. It has nothing to do with love, yet it has everything to do with love. I was smitten as soon as I thought of the poem, and it occurred to me that the lines of her poem, expanded with some prose of my own, might serve as a compass to guide you through the day. Let her words coupled with mine serve as a roadmap to self-discovery and love. So, amidst the bustling festivities, let this post be a steadfast companion–a suitor if you will–illuminating your path. I hope that in some small way, it helps you find the inspiration and courage that you might need to walk in harmony throughout the day with your inner Cupid. Be bold. Put your one hand in the other and hold tight. In loving yourself, you will unlock the boundless potential within, paving the way for a Valentine’s Day filled not only with outward expressions of affection but also with a profound sense of self-worth and empowerment.

§    §    §

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –

Maybe start your Valentine’s Day by getting up early so that you can see the sun rise. Then enjoy your favorite breakfast. Go ahead: indulge in a sugar splurge of heart-shaped pancakes and maple syrup. Damn! Why not include a large caramel latte? Do whatever you want that best suits you, but be sure to take time to appreciate yourself and your journey.

A Ribbon at a time

After breakfast, take a moment to reflect on your journey of self-discovery and growth. Here’s a wild idea, but it’s no more outlandish that my buying birthday gifts for myself. Cut ribbons to celebrate each major step forward in your life, each lesson learned, and each milestone reached in your journey of self-love and acceptance. Write affirmations on the ribbons and tie them around items in your home as reminders of your worth and inner strength. Let the ribbons reign supreme for a few days. Turn on a ceiling fan and let them flutter in the breeze. See how you feel.

The Steeples swam in Amethyst –

Look out your windows and really take time to see what you see. What’s out there, inviting you? Maybe go outdoors and commune with nature. Believe it or not, Nature will hear you and will respond to your need whatever it may be. Let the morning light bathe you in all of your favorite colors, real and imagined. Be reminded of how important it is to nurture your own spirit. Be present and grounded in the beauty of the world around you and appreciate the love that you have for yourself.

The news like Squirrels ran –

When you get back home, focus on the knowledge and information that you need to nourish your mind and soul. Engage with the world around you, staying informed and educated, knowing that self-awareness and personal growth are integral parts of self-love. Spend some time learning something new or engaging in a hobby that brings you joy and happiness.

The Hills untied their Bonnets –

Hopefully, you’re starting to feel rejuvenated. Go ahead and let your hair down, perhaps literally and metaphorically. Celebrate your independence and ability to thrive on your own, nurturing the love you have for yourself.

The Bobolinks begun –

In the afternoon, listen to the rhythm of your own heartbeat and dance naked with yourself in front of a mirror. Embrace the freedom to be yourself fully and unapologetically. Remind yourself that happiness comes from within and that true fulfillment is found in embracing who you are rather than in forcing yourself to be who others would have you be.

Then I said softly to myself –

As the day draws to a close, whisper sweet nothings to yourself, Practice self-affirmations and positive self-talk: “I am enough.” “I embrace my worthiness.” “I am deserving of love and happiness.”

That must have been the Sun!

As the sun sets on Valentine’s Day, let yourself thrill to the realization that you have witnessed the unknown: the sun! Remind yourself that even on the cloudiest of days and even in the darkest of times, your inner light is bright and can lead. Be grateful for the love you have for yourself, knowing that it is the foundation upon which all other love is built.

How he set – I know not –

As the sun dips below the horizon, casting a golden glow over the world, remind yourself that you don’t need to know everything. Sometimes, it’s enough just to witness the beauty of a sunset or the laughter of a child or the feeling of warmth from a hug.

There seemed a purple stile

In the evening light, envision the steps that you have climbed in your life, the steps that led you to greater heights of self-discovery and acceptance. Be reminded that the path may be winding and uncertain, but it is also filled with possibilities. Lean in and ready yourself for whatever lies ahead.

That little Yellow boys and girls

Embrace your inner child and celebrate aspects of yourself that are playful, curious, and full of joy. Blow bubbles. Watch as they float and pop. Have a pillow fight with an imaginary friend. Fall asleep reading yourself a bedtime story out loud.

Were climbing all the while–

As you climb higher and higher towards a greater sense of self-awareness and self-acceptance, your journey may be challenging at times, but it is also deeply rewarding. Recognize the strength and resilience within yourself as you continue to climb towards greater self-love and acceptance.

Till when they reached the other side –

Day by day, you will make progress, and eventually, your self-love will bring you closer and closer to living authentically and wholeheartedly.

A Dominie in Gray –

Be your own Dominie–your own teacher–guiding you with compassion and insight as you navigate the complexities of loving yourself fully and unconditionally. Acknowledge the presence of your inner guide and teacher and trust their wisdom and guidance.

Put gently up the evening Bars –

As the evening descends, embrace the idea of setting boundaries and creating space for self-care and reflection. Let the evening bars remind you to honor your own needs and prioritize your well-being, knowing that self-love requires nurturing and protection.

And led the flock away –

As you bid farewell to the day, gently wrap your arms around yourself, give yourself the big hug that you deserve, and enjoy some of those scrumptious chocolates that hopefully you put on your pillow, just for you. You deserve them.

§    §    §

Valentine’s Day will come, and Valentine’s Day will go. Yet, we can carry forward the love. By loving ourselves wholly and unconditionally, we not only enrich our own lives but also, we inspire others to do the same. May every day be filled with self-love, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. May we awaken every day to “I’ll tell you how the sun rose” as a gentle reminder to embrace our inner Cupid who resides within forever.

The Teasing Sound of Silence

Posted on by
9

“Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the delight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881; Scottish essayist, historian, and social commentator, known for his influential writings on history, society, and culture, especially his essays “Sartor Resartus” and “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.”)

Shhhhh. Quiet, please. I need to talk. I’ve gone and gotten myself into a mell of a hess this time. Here I am writing about “silence” simply because I took the time to look at my draft posts, and I came across one rather stupidly titled “Silence.”

“Say what?” I screamed before turning my Smartphone face down on my bed to hide the odious text that I was reading on the screen. Screaming was perfect because it broke the silence. Well, you’d scream, too, if you detested silence as much as I do. It grates on my ears. I suffer noise far more readily than I suffer silence.

So here I lie in bed, working on a post whose essence I deplore. But write the damned post I must because I have started it, and I will finish it, ever mindful of what my parents told me over and over again, never giving me a moment’s silence:

If a job is once begun,
Never leave until it’s done.
Be its labor, great or small,
Do it well or not at all.

Well, I don’t know how well I’ll do it, but I will do my best to write my way out of this mess. Don’t worry. This will be a fast read: I, who knows nothing about silence, will be forced to speed things up when I start gathering my thoughts about silence because I have so few thoughts about the subject. You’ll reach the end sooner than you expect. When you do, listen carefully. I might burst forth with the Hallelujah Chorus. If I do, join me and we can make a joyful noise together.

Fortunately, I had captured enough notes that I recall what prompted me to start the idiotic draft in the first place.

My electricity went out. Unexpectedly. Silence washed over the afternoon soundscape of my domestic sanctuary. My refrigerator, the unsung hero of my kitchen, stopped serenading me with its constant hum. My ceiling fans ceased their purring and hushed their constant chatter about my secrets. My bedroom air conditioner no longer piped its melodious duet of “whoosh and hush.”

I wasn’t using my dishwasher, but if I had been, it would have stopped belting out its “splish-splash” just as I would have stopped chiming in with “I’m taking a bath,” both as if to wash away my culinary blues. I wasn’t using my washer and dryer either. But if I had been, they would have paused their spinning, tumbling symphony of cleanliness. As for my television, I have one that’s never on, but I can still faintly remember the mysterious hum of its digital dreams.

By now, you surely understand the sudden and imminent danger that surrounded me: all of my usual household sounds had been silenced.

All, thank God, save one. In the very moment of my most silent despair and in the hushed stillness of my living room, my grandfather clock came to life as the hour hand gracefully settled upon the number two. With a solemn, almost reverent demeanor, it stirred the silence with a deep, resonant chime. I had been rescued. The God of Noise had heard my silent prayer.

I sat there wondering how long I’d have to put up with this sorry state of near silence. I didn’t have to wonder long because it was 95 degrees outside, and my house was becoming unbearably hot inside. I decided to go outside and sit by my Koi Pond.

As I was walking out, I automatically turned off my kitchen lights. Silly me. I had forgotten that they weren’t on. Still, I could hear the tune of the see-saw switch. I’ll bet you didn’t know that light switches make noise. I didn’t either until Charlie Pluth released his “Light Switch.” If you don’t know that song, get to know it. As you listen, lean in and be super quiet. You’ll hear light switches being turned on and off. It’s awesome, so much so that Pluth documented the sounds on TikTok. Check it out for yourself and hear what I’m talking about.

After I turned off the lights that weren’t on, I stepped the few steps that I had to step to get from my kitchen to my Koi Pond. There I sat, poised in the pose of Rodin’s The Thinker, forever contemplating silence. I started thinking about how I could make the best of a bad situation even though it was a double-whammy combo of record-setting temps and deafening silence.

No problem. I decided that I would just sit there and think about everything that I had ever read or heard about silence. Immediately, I started crooning a poor rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.”

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

[…]

“Fools”, said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

I loved that song as a 1960’s young idealist. It reminded me of the consequences of remaining silent and complacent in the face of social issues. Despite my lackluster vocal talents, I sounded far better than I expected, and even if I didn’t, my singing broke the silence.

“What about silence in literature?”

“Excellent question. I was worried that no one would ask.”

I can think of many examples, and since you asked, I will share a few. For novels, I’ll start with Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Silence is personified by Captain Ahab’s obsession with the enigmatic white whale, and his monomaniacal pursuit of it creates an atmosphere of foreboding silence as the crew hesitates to speak openly about their fears.

Then we have one of my all-time favorite novels: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. I read it in high school. I had never heard the F-word. In my youthful innocence, I was surprised at encountering such explicit language in print. I didn’t hear the word, of course, since I was reading silently, but I still put my fingers in my ears so that I wouldn’t hear myself just in case I started reading out loud. Then I dog-eared that page for future ready reference. But I digress. Here’s my point. Poor Holden Caulfield’s inner silence is a prominent theme in the novel, as he often feels misunderstood and unable to express his emotions.

As you might expect, I thought of a third novel, too, while contemplating silence. It’s One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Silence in this magical realist masterpiece often signifies the unspeakable, as generations of the Buendía family grapple with their own secrets and tragedies, unable or unwilling to communicate their true feelings.

More novels came to mind, but for now, several plays are waiting in the wings, ready to make their grand entrance. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot enters first. I read that play in college. One passage often takes center stage in my mind, just as much now as it did then when I equated silence with existential waiting:

VLADIMIR: “What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come—”

Another play, also from my college days, remains a favorite today. Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and its exploration of the haunting silence that follows years of conversation in the Tyrone family:

MARY: “You can’t imagine, can you, what that silence can mean after all these years of having someone talk to you every day and then suddenly stop, and yet that silence, still saying something but what you don’t know yet—”

For the third act, Lillian Hellman’s Children’s Hour came to mind. Silence is a central theme in the play as it grapples with the consequences of a malicious lie that silences the lives and reputations of the accused:

MARTHA: “I do not like the silence. I will go on talking until you answer me.”

More plays bubbled up in my mind, but those three will suffice, thereby allowing me to briefly mention one short story that yelled riotously for attention.

It’s not Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” with Bartleby’s repetitive “I would prefer not to” showcasing the power of passive resistance and the silence of non-conformity. It could have been “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The entire story screams of the eerie and unusual quietness of the townsfolk before the annual lottery. But it’s not.

Instead, it’s a story by Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The story’s climax, where the Misfit and the Grandmother engage in a fateful conversation in the woods, marks an ominous final silence.

As for the last literary genre embracing silence–poetry–I immediately thought of Amherst’s recluse, Emily Dickinson, and her famous quatrain etched in my mind forever. It seemed especially poignant, as I grappled with having been plunged unexpectedly into silence:

Silence is all we dread.
There’s Ransom in a Voice –
But Silence is Infinity.
Himself have not a face.

Needless to say, I can’t have a poetic reverie about silence without including a poem by Robert Frost. The one that popped into my head, first, is so appropriate for my home in the woods. It’s his “The Sound of Trees.” Listen as he teases in the first few lines:

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?

[…]

They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.

The third poem that spoke to me in my silence was by Kay Ryan, one of the most powerful voices in today’s contemporary poetic soundscape. Her poem “Shark’s Teeth” suits me well because of the interplay between silence and noise that it explores.

Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth-
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.

The poem suggests that noise, in its relentless and pervasive presence, has taken over and devoured silence, leaving only small, sharp remnants. The poem evokes terror, not in a literal sense but rather in the metaphorical notion that silence, once a prevailing and powerful force, has been reduced to fragments and is now as elusive, scarce, and sharp as shark’s teeth.

Ironically, as I sat in the stillness of a torridly hot afternoon contemplating various literary nuances of silence, a single drop of water fell from the lower most rock of the Koi Pond waterfalls that had stopped cascading. It landed with a delicate and shimmering grace, creating a mesmerizing ripple on the pond’s still surface. The concentric circles expanded, radiating outward like echoes, breaking the silence, and bringing me out of my reverie.

In that instant, I realized that I had tapped into a powerful and personal paradox. I found myself both repelled and intrigued by the multi-faceted nature of silence.

Silence may grate on my ears, but I came to realize that it can be a space for reflection, contemplation, and understanding. Just as a great poem or short story or play or novel holds within it the power of silence, so, too, does our everyday existence. Maybe–just maybe–it is in the pauses between our words, the stillness before our actions, and the quiet moments of our introspection that we can truly have glimpses into the essence of life.

My Literary Fruitcakes

Posted on by
6

It’s always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: “It’s fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat.”

“A Christmas Memory” ~ Truman Capote (1924-1984; American novelist, playwright, screenwriter and actor)

It’s no secret. I love food. I love to cook. I love to bake. And, when it’s fruitcake weather, I love to lose myself in baking fruitcakes.

Yes. Fruitcakes. MAHvelous fruitcakes! Say what? You don’t like fruitcake? No way! I’ll bet that you’ve never had a really good fruitcake. Not to worry. I’m not going to try to turn you into a fruitcake or into a fruitcake lover.

But, hey. Come on. Show me a little respect, too, won’t you? Just stop it right there. Right now. I’ve heard them all, heard them all already, all the fruitcake jokes.

What baffles me is how the ancient, noble, beloved fruitcake became the loathed butt end of some of the worst jokes in the world.

I’m tempted to blame Johnny Carson for them all. Every last one of them. I’m sure, though, that fruitcake jokes didn’t start with him, but his fruitcake joke is, without any doubt in the world, the worst in the annals of baking. Maybe that’s why it’s the most well-known. I’m sure you know it. On his Tonight Show during the 1960s, Carson quipped:

“The worst Christmas gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other, year after year.”

People keeping sending Carson’s fruitcake joke to each other, year after year, too. Look. I just sent it to you.

And, no doubt, you’ve heard others like this one:

“Why does fruitcake make the perfect gift?

“Because the U.S. Postal Service hasn’t found a way to damage it.”

And who hasn’t heard this one?

“If you don’t like it, use it as a doorstop.”

But it gets worse than any of those dried and false jokes that couldn’t come to life if they were soaked in all the finest brandies in the world! There’s one fruitcake joke that is truly alive and lives year after year in Manitou Springs, Colorado. It comes to life annually during its Great Fruitcake Toss, celebrated since 1996. People pitch fruitcakes. People launch fruitcakes. People toss fruitcakes. And if my post makes you want to pack up your cake and join the people, you still have plenty of time to make arrangements. The next Toss will be on January 28, 2023. No fruitcake? No problem. (Don’t you dare ask for one of mine! You’ve got your nerve.) Rent one at the festival. You can, for one dollar. Go. Go on. Let your fruitcake fly.

That’s quite enough about fruitcake jokes. I’m not certain how I got pulled down that rabbit hole anyway.

My intent was simple and straightforward. It occurred to me that it might be fun to explore fruitcakes in literature. No. No. I don’t mean writers who are fruitcakes. They all are. (Trust me: I know firsthand.) I simply mean literary works about fruitcakes. You don’t even have to like fruitcake to be intrigued by such a hefty intellectual pursuit, especially if you like literature–as I do–and even more especially if you like fruitcake, too, and I do (but only the ones that I bake using my mother’s legendary recipe).

The first literary work involving fruitcake that popped into my mind was Truman Capote’s 1956 autobiographical short story “A Christmas Memory” featured in the pull quote to this post. Even if you haven’t read the short story, I’m betting that you’ve seen a movie version. I’ve seen several, but my favorite is from 1966, featuring Geraldine Page, one of my favorite actresses. (No actress can evoke heartfelt longing and nostalgia with a scrunched face better than she, and she did it at my tearful best in her Trip to Bountiful.)

What popped into my mind next wasn’t a literary work at all. Instead, it was a writer–one of my favorite poets: Emily Dickinson. Though famous and acclaimed today, she was an obscure poet in her lifetime–with only 10 of her poems known to have been published while she was alive–but she was highly regarded as a baker. Her father would only eat bread that she had baked. Recluse though she was, children in Amherst (MA), where she lived from 1830 to 1886 and only left on three occasions, would stand in the yard beneath her bedroom window as she lowered baskets of her freshly baked gingerbread. She was especially known for her black Caribbean Christmas cake. Houghton Library at Harvard University owns Dickinson’s handwritten recipe and the tradition of baking her cake continues today. It is so important that Canadian poet M. NourbeSe Philip wrote an essay, “Making Black Cake in Combustible Spaces.” She will read it as part of a moderated conversation from Dickinson’s home on December 12, 2022: “The Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute.”

I’ve never made Dickinson’s black cake, but just this past weekend, I baked a Jamaican Black Cake that’s close to hers. My home is still redolent from more than four cups of rum and port that I soaked all the dried fruits in for several weeks before my bake. The cake is a beauty! I will let it age probably until Valentine’s Day 2023. After I taste sweet success, I may reach out to Houghton Library and invite myself to join Team Cake, a group of Houghton bakers who recreate Dickinson’s cake, rigorously adhering to her recipe, and share it with colleagues and friends on Dickinson’s December 10 birthday. Wouldn’t that be a grand culinary adventure. Look out Houghton. Here I come.

The next writer with a fruitcake recipe is none other than Eudora Welty–American short story writer, novelist, and photographer. Her fruitcake is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s a White Fruitcake that sounds similar to mine. (For mine, I use brandy to soak the fruits before baking and to preserve the cakes after baking. If a little brandy is good, a little more is better, especially when it comes to fruitcakes.) Welty redeems herself, though, by adding a cup of bourbon to the batter. She redeems herself further with the note at the end of her recipe:

“From time to time before Christmas you may improve it with a little more bourbon, dribbled over the top to be absorbed and so ripen the cake before cutting. This cake will keep for a good white, in or out of the refrigerator.”

Her fruitcake recipe–given to her by a friend, Mrs. Mosal–was immortalized in the 1971 Symphony League of Jackson cookbook for which Welty wrote the “Foreword,” commenting:

“I often think to make a friend’s fine recipe is to celebrate her once more, and in that cheeriest, most aromatic of places to celebrate in – the home’s kitchen.”

See there. Books give life everlasting to everything, even fruitcakes.

Dare I confess that those three literary fruitcake associations–Welty, Dickinson, and Capote–were the only ones that I knew readily.

I suppose that I could end the post now, but I can’t. Not just yet. If I did, I wouldn’t get to share the fruits of my research.

So let me start by sharing when the word fruitcake was first used as a reference to a type of cake. 1687 is a long time ago, but, candidly, I expected the word to have been coined far earlier. I was a little disappointed. But, anyway, it appeared that year in a heading in J. Shirley’s Accomplished Ladies Rich Closet of Rarities: 

“Instructions for a gentlewoman in making of marmalade, paste of fruit … fruit-cakes, honey ” (vi. 38).

Since I was perusing the OED already, I decided to see when fruitcake was first used to suggest extreme eccentricity or insanity, as in nutty as a fruitcake.

It was first used in that context on March 5, 1911, in the Chicago Sunday Examiner :

“Isn’t Ethel a sweet girl, as sweet as a piece of cake?”

“Why, I think that she is as nutty as fruit cake” (v. 5/2).

At this point, my research into fruitcakes in literature took a turn that surprised me. Really surprised me.

I browsed “famous short stories about fruitcakes.” No famous ones.

Then I tried “famous poems about fruitcakes.” No famous ones.

In a search of desperation, I tried “famous novels about fruitcakes.” Again, no famous ones.

At last, I tried something straight forward: literary fruitcakes.

O. M. G. What I found left me trembling in my virtual research tracks.

I landed on an article with nearly that exact title: “The Literary Fruitcake” written by Don Webb. It chronicles the literary travels of one specific fruitcake, from its first gifting in 1843 all the way up to its being stolen on Christmas Eve, 1993.

The story line alone is powerful. Imagine. A fruitcake–whether beloved or maligned– deemed important enough to have survived for 150 years, without having been eaten; to have been passed on from one writer to the next; and to have been documented meticulously with every gifting. It is nothing short of amazing. I doubt whether most of us could document our own family lineage that far back with the precision that Webb achieves in his first-person narrative.

Aside from being a story of surviving against all odds, it’s made all the more fascinating simply by the famous writers associated with the cake. They are beyond belief, but they are the very reason I kept reading the narrative. How could I not be aware of the fruitcake associated with so many famous writers?

Well, I was not. So I kept reading. In fact, once I started, I could not stop.

Queen Victoria, it seems, gave the fruitcake to Charles Dickens in 1843 after the first dramatic reading of his A Christmas Carol.

Some years later–in 1865–Bram Stoker stole the cake at a publication party for Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. For years afterwards he showed the cake to friends every now and then. But eventually the spell of the fruitcake novelty wore off.

When Stoker published his Dracula in 1897, he passed the cake on to Arthur Machen (The Great God Pan) who passed it on to Algernon Blackwood (The Willows).

Wouldn’t you agree that this is deliciously fascinating? Yes, indeed. It is captivating. And to think that I still have to share how the cake was passed on through more literary hands for another hundred years.

Not to worry. I’ll speed it up. This fruitcake was old to begin with and it’s getting older by the word. But before speeding things up, let me state–just for the official record–that my interest in this narrative lies not with the fruitcake but rather with its famous literary owners.

After Algernon Blackwood, the fruitcake ended up with Gertrude Stein (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) who didn’t really want it, but her partner Alice Toklas persuaded her to keep it. It might amuse you to know that it was around this same time that Alice came up with her famous recipe for hashish fudge. It might amuse you even more to know that the “recipe” wasn’t hers after all. When her The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook was about to be published in 1954, the book had empty pages. The publisher added filler recipes, including one for Hashish Fudge submitted by avant-garde artist Brion Gysin. Alice was clueless and had never tested the recipe! Read all about it in the Scientific American. Yes. Scientific American. Whoever says that the humanities don’t matter needs to read “Go Ask Alice: The History of Toklas’ Legendary Hashish Fudge.”

But let’s get back to our famous, traveling literary fruitcake.

Stein gave the cake to Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea) who then passed it on to James Joyce (Ulysses).

When Joyce died, the fruitcake went to Samuel Beckett, prior to the publication of his Waiting for Godot.

Then in 1959, William Burroughs went to Paris to finalize publication plans for his Naked Lunch. While there, he managed to meet with Beckett–his literary hero–for 30 minutes or so. When he left, he wanted a memento and took what he believed to be a brick in the bottom of Beckett’s closet.

As you might have guessed, it wasn’t a brick at all. It was the famed fruitcake. Burroughs gave the cake to Allen Ginsberg (Howl) who gifted Jack Kerouac (On the Road) who passed it on to Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow) who traded it to Mary Denning in exchange for her knowledge of Pre-WW II chemistry.

(Dayum! I didn’t know that I could go so fast. Note to myself: Leave out all the nitty, gritty details and hasten the pace every time.)

Don Webb–the narrator of “The Literary Fruitcake”–bought the cake for $150 dollars, took it home to Austin, Texas, and eventually decided to eat it on Christmas Eve, 1993.

Sadly, when he and his wife came home that evening, they discovered that their home had been robbed. The thieves had taken the fruitcake along with other valuables.

The police never located the fruitcake. Over the next few months, though, graffiti began to appear on wall after wall throughout Austin.

And then I read:

“… the driven thief released the intensity of his soul. … We never sought out the writer, for we feared our presence might interfere with his process, but we grew fiercely proud of the words that covered our walls. Soon all of Austin was obscured by the words by the words of perfection:

“‘We, who dwell in the holy shrines, will preserve this treasure unto the ends of time.'”

It was not until then–not until the very end–that I realized: I had been had. I had been had big time.

I could not believe it: I, the English professor who knows fully well–and even warns his students–not to trust first person narrators, especially in first person accounts of fruitcakes passing through the hands of royalty and an incredible number of auspicious British and American writers.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

But it’s okay. It’s really quite okay. I’ve been had many, many times down through the years. Sweet Scorpionic revenge is always mine.

I just made reservations to fly to Manitou Springs, Colorado, so that I can participate in their January 28, 2023, Great Fruitcake Toss. I have reached out to Collin Street Bakery to see whether they will sponsor me.

Here’s what I’m going to do for my Fruitcake Toss Extraordinaire that will make world-wide headlines. I’m going to wrap Duper Don Webb up real tight in all the printed and virtual copies that I can find of his “The Literary Fruitcake.” And then I’m going to give a celebratory “Heave-Ho” as I catapult the nuttiest fruitcake of them all–the author who pulled off the biggest fruitcake heist ever and told the biggest fruitcake joke ever–as far into the thin air as possible.

For once, I’ll let a fruitcake fly with glee.

Writers: Our Forever-Friends

Posted on by
16

“Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long been forgotten by me…”

Walt Whitman, “Once I Pass’d through a Popular City” (Leaves of Grass, 1855)

Whenever I teach a literature course, I tell my students that aside from celebrating their achievements as they master the course content, I have one special hope for each of them. I want them to find one writer who will be their friend. One writer who will never unfriend them as other friends sometimes do. One writer who will be with them through all the storms of life, for a lifetime. A writer who will be a forever-friend.

What I have in mind is similar to the handful of real-life, forever-friends whom we might have, if we are lucky. It’s never many. At least it has never been many for me. I have perhaps one handful of such friends. All right. Perhaps two handfuls who are in the friends-forever category. With us, we’ve shared so many past experiences that even if we have not seen one another in years, when we reconnect, we pick up magically on the same conversation that we were having when we last met, and we do so without missing a beat. Friends. Forever-friends.

Writers can be our forever-friends, too, with an added bonus. We can have lots and lots of them. As we read more and more, we discover more and more writers who might end up as our friends. We like them. We like what they have to say to us. We like how they inspire us. We like how they make us believe. We like how they make us feel…unalone. We like how they heal our…brokenness. Before long, we want to hang out with them. We can. Whenever we want. For as long as we want.

The great thing about writers who are our forever-friends is that when they pop up unannounced and uninvited, it’s never a problem. We don’t have to clean for them. We don’t have to cook for them. And we don’t have to clear our calendars for them. They can tag along with us just as we are. And they will do just that if we let them.

All that we have to do is be attentive, smile when they arrive, and even smile when they leave, knowing that they will come back to visit us again and again and again.

Their arrival coincides with something that we are experiencing that makes us think of something else. It’s the power of association. Robert Frost captures it best:

“All thought is a feat of association; having what’s in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn’t know you knew.”

That’s the beauty of having writers who are forever-friends. Their arrival is based exclusively on what’s right in front of you or something that you’re thinking about. Something that you almost didn’t know you knew.

No doubt, you have your own writers who are your forever-friends, just as I do.

Obviously, I don’t know about yours, but mine visit me multiple times throughout the day, every day without fail. I never know which writers will visit or when. But I go forth daily, confident of being strengthened and girded up by their company.

For example, Walt Whitman shook his silvery locks right in front of me as I was writing this post. I was thinking about the fact that only a snippet of a writer’s work comes to my mind during an association, while all the other details of the work are seemingly long forgotten. Instantly, the lines from Whitman’s “Once I Pass’d through a Popular City” flashed across my mind:

“Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long been forgotten by me…”

Here’s another example.

When I met with my Creative Writing class for the first time this semester, I had a slap-stick time promoting this blog. It was nothing more than nonsensical banter aimed at entertaining my students, but they picked up on it.

Not long after I managed to restore myself to a modicum of seriousness, one student raised her hand as if to ask a serious question.

“Professor Kendrick, did you say that you have a blog?”

I started laughing, as did the rest of the class.

A little later on, her hand went up again. I was on to her by then, but I was having far too much fun, so I acknowledged her.

“Professor Kendrick, did you give us the name of your blog?”

(When our laughter died down, my forever-friend Edward Albee paid me a momentary visit. He has chummed me since the 1960s when I was in college and he was a controversial Broadway playwright.)

“Very funny! You know, Caitlin, my hell-bent banter to promote my blog to a brand-new group of students, reminds me of the first line from Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story.”

In the play, Jerry approaches Peter, a total stranger, sitting on a bench in Central Park.

I’ve been to the zoo. [PETER doesn’t notice.] I said, I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO! 

I was thrilled by Albee’s visit, especially since I was able to share it with my class. He came as he did and when he did because of my dogged determination to tell my students–a group of strangers, if you will–all about my blog. In the process, I remembered Jerry’s insistence on telling Peter, a total stranger, that he had been to the zoo.

My students got it. They saw the association with great clarity.

On another occasion, something similar happened at the start of the same class.

As I drove on campus. I was aware–painfully so–that the grassy, undeveloped acreage all around the college was being gobbled up by townhouses.

At the start of class, one of my students shared the same observation.

In that nanosecond, former United States Poet Laureate Phillip Levine appeared. Immediately, I walked to my teacher station, googled his poem “A Story” and flashed it on the screen for students to see as I read it aloud.

It captures perfectly what my students and I had witnessed with pain that morning.

Levine chronicles the life and death of the woods that once surrounded us and ends with a chilling doomsday prophecy:

where are the woods? They had to have been

because the continent was clothed in trees.

We all read that in school and knew it to be true.

Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows

of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes

into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,

there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles

of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.

And right now as I typed the above quotation, Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell popped into my head, chanting a few lines from her “Big Yellow Taxi”:

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’ve got

Till it’s gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot.

My writers–my forever-friends–visit me far more in my alone times than they do when I am teaching or, for that matter, when I am socializing.

Maybe they appear then because they know that in my alone times friends can add a richness to any moment, even ordinary ones.

Ordinary moments like weed whacking. Somehow, I end up doing that chore on Sunday instead of going to church. That’s no big deal to me. I consider myself Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR). Emily Dickinson must be SBNR, too, because she is always with me on my Sunday morns. Her “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church” overpowers the Stihl noise through all the stanzas, rising triumphantly in the final one:

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I’m going, all along.

Or sometimes it’s as simple as visitorial moments that occur when reading emails from regular friends who aren’t writers. Recently, a friend who is my age wrote that his hands had grown old. I sensed his sadness and immediately thought of a poem about aging by former United States Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz: “Touch Me.” It includes the poignant lines:

What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.

One season only,
and it’s done.

[…]

Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

And then I immediately thought of Ben Speer singing “Time Has Made a Change in Me.” The title alone was touchstone sufficient. And that led me to W. S. Merwin reading his “Yesterday” with the ever-chilling line:

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father’s hand the last time

It’s amazing: the rich literary company that embraced me, all because of one single solitary email sent my way!

Sometimes, though, my forever-friends arrive as I try to make sense of all that’s going on in our world. The ongoing COVID pandemic. The invasion of Ukraine. Recent SCOTUS decisions. The January 6 Hearings. Global Warming. Poverty. Food scarcity. Gender inequality. Homophobia. Transphobia. Growing humanitarian conflicts and crises. The 21st anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on America.

Need I go on? Sadly, I could. Gladly, I won’t. It’s far too sobering.

But in those dark moments when I find myself spiritually staggering under the weight of it all, I take strength from William Faulkner’s Nobel Acceptance Speech, delivered in 1950 when the world was staggering under the burden of the Cold War:

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? […] I decline to accept the end of man.  […] I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

Maybe, just maybe, the need to have writers who are our forever-friends, boils down to nothing more than this. They come regardless of what we are facing. They reassure us that goodness and mercy shall prevail. They remind us to grapple with our soul, to grapple with our spirit.

They come, as Robert Browning came to me just this second, to calm us and anchor us in the full and steadfast belief that despite all the injustices, all the wrongdoings, all the travail, and all the sorrows,

God’s in His Heaven,

All’s right with the world.

Pippa Passes, Song I (1841)

Why an Education Matters | The Softer Side.

Posted on by
4

“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard’s Almanac)

This week I’m thinking about education, far more than usual. The reason is simple. Exactly one week from today, I’ll be meeting a new group of community college students who have decided wisely that getting an education is their best move. With them, I’ll be standing on the brink of now and the future. It’s a new beginning for me and a new beginning for them.

As an educator, my role is to provide students with the knowledge base they need in English, especially American Literature, Appalachian Literature, and Creative Writing.

Aside from equipping them with the needed knowledge base, my goal is to turn them on.

“Turn students on to English? No way!”

“When pigs fly,” someone else squealed.

I understand. I have understood since I started teaching. From the first day that I enter a classroom at the start of a brand-new semester, mine is an uphill battle. But that’s perfectly all right. I love challenges. I have every confidence in the world that by the end of the semester my students will see that language and literature can help them discover their own worlds and the worlds around them. I have every confidence in the world that by the end of the semester my students will see that language and literature matter. “He can inspire a rock to write,” wrote one student in my early teaching career at Laurel Ridge Community College.

Nonetheless, I am aware that I may not have one student who is majoring in English. So, while I am passionate about language and literature and while I know that I can turn my students on to those subjects, I feel an equal responsibility to be passionate about education. I want my students to believe that education–their education–matters.

Sometimes getting them to believe that is an even greater challenge than turning them on to English.

I have to meet that challenge, too, right from the start, because I know that the community college graduation rate nationwide is about 62%.

I celebrate the students who make up that percentage. And I celebrate the 30% of community college students nationwide who transfer to four-year colleges and universities.

Yet, while celebrating all those students, I want to do my best to reach out to the others who might not be part of the 62% graduation rate or the 30% transfer rate unless I convince them that an education–their education–matters.

Why an education matters is abundantly clear to those of us who are educated. Career options. Job security. Expanded earnings. Networking. Professional connections. Increased happiness. Friendships. Better health. Even longevity.

I could include statistics to support those claims. I won’t. Candidly, they don’t do much for me.

And, candidly, when I talk about the practical benefits of an education–and I do–eyes glaze over and my students search for imaginary exits, especially when I start bringing in statistics to support my claims.

On the other hand, when I switch my focus to the softer side of why an education matters–the side that allows me to be personal and passionate–vision returns to glazed eyes and students return to the classroom that they just fancifully exited.

Sometimes–actually almost always–I’ll start the soft-side conversation by asking my students how many of them are the first in their family to go to college.

Usually about one third of their hands go up–a response that’s consistent with national data for community college students.

They seem to take notice when I tell them that I am a first-generation college student, too. They really take notice when I share some personal information about me. Son of a West Virginia coal miner and his wife, a Pilgrim Holiness minister. Grew up with three books in my home—the King James Bible, Webster’s Dictionary, and Sears Roebuck Catalog. Made it to the halls of the Library of Congress, which for 25 years became my home, with more than 20 million books. Then to the halls of Laurel Ridge Community College which for the last 23 years has been my home, where I’ve taught more than 7,000 students. Without being boastful, I want them to hear and see firsthand how an education transformed my life. I want to convince them that an education will transform their lives, too.

They get turned on more when I tell them that with an education they can go anywhere because they will be experts in their field. These days, I seem to have more and more students in health sciences, so I make a point of emphasizing that they can go wherever their credentials are recognized. Their eyes light up when I talk about the option of being a traveling nurse or a traveling surgical technologist. Their eyes really light up when I talk about the bonuses and salary increases that go hand in hand with adventuresome, free travel.

I remind them as well that an education empowers them to become their own knowledge navigators. I share with them what Robert Frost once wrote: “We go to college to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven’t learned in High School. Once we have learned to read the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us” (“Poetry and School,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 1951). Frost, of course, is talking about developing critical reading skills and critical thinking skills, both at the heart of all education.

Or perhaps I help them understand that an education matters because books matter. Emily Dickinson says it best: “There is no frigate like a book / To take us lands away.”

Some days I emphasize that an education matters because it emboldens you to follow your passion. I share with them my own undergraduate struggles as English, Pre-Law, and Pre-Med messed around with my head. One day, after switching majors several times, I allowed my passion to take hold of my heart. From that point forward, English prevailed.

Or what about the notion that an education enables us to be anchored and hopeful amidst the storms of life that are certain to come our way? I’m thinking again about Robert Frost and his poem “One Step Backward Taken.” The speaker in the poem is shaken by a universal crisis, “But with one step backward taken / I saved myself from going. / A world torn loose went by me. / Then the rain stopped and the blowing, / And the sun came out to dry me.”

And how about this one that I like to use when students wonder whether an education is worth the cost, especially as their student loans grow larger and larger. I remind them that an education is one of their best investments. No one can take it away, ever. Perhaps even better is the way that the investment keeps on growing through lifelong learning.

Those are just a few of the “soft” reasons why an education matters to me. They are the ones that are on my mind this week as I anticipate next week’s new beginnings.

There’s one more, though, that’s always on my mind. It’s the University of South Carolina’s motto surrounding the seal on my doctoral class ring. It’s a quote from Ovid, “Emollit Mores Nec Sinit Esse Feros,” which translates to “Learning humanizes character and does not permit it to be cruel.”

The Story of Angel Falls

Posted on by
17

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

from “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

This is a story about a weeping pine.

But it’s not just any story. It can’t be just any story, because this isn’t just any weeping pine.

This weeping pine is a special weeping pine. It’s one of a kind. It’s unique.

I bought it about four months ago. Actually, I bought it on March 17. In case you’re wondering why I remember the exact date, here’s why. It was my late partner’s birthday.

I had not planned to buy anything that day. I was just browsing the local nursery’s new arrival of plants, mainly West Coast conifers.

As I walked past one conifer, it looked like a stunning, younger version of a stately, older weeping pine right outside my kitchen door. “Gorgeous!” I thought. “But no need for another one.”

At about the same time, the manager walked past and saw me looking. Lingering. Pondering. Wondering.

“You don’t want to miss out on this one, Dr. Kendrick. It’s super special. We only have two, and they’ll go fast.”

I’ve known John since he was a youngster, when his dad owned the nursery, and I trust him just as implicitly as I trust his dad.

“Oh, yeah?” I teased. “What makes it so special?”

John started telling me all the details, reassuring me that it’s mature size would be perfect for the small area where he knew that I wanted a unique conifer.

I leaned in close to take a closer look at the tag, and as soon as I saw the name–Angel Falls–I knew that this tree was going home with me. It had to go home with me. Aside from being Allen’s birthday, I had written a blog post about him two months earlier, “Honoring an Angel.” But this story is not about Allen. This story is about a special weeping pine.

I had an immediate plan. This tree would become one more focal point in the garden that I had designed for Allen. But, again, this story is not about him. This story is about a special weeping pine.

I had just one concern. Even though the tree was small–no more than three feet tall–it was in a large tub, the size, perhaps, of a bushel basket. I knew that John would help load the tree into my Jeep, but could I manage to unload it alone?

I decided to figure out the logistics after I got the weeping pine home.

And figure it out I did. I stacked bags of mulch below my Jeep’s lowered tailgate. I slid the tubbed weeping pine onto the top bag, and, then I continued stepping it down onto the ground.

From that point forward, I knew that dragging it downhill to its intended destination would be as easy as stepping into the future.

And, for a second, I stepped off the sharp edge of now into the softened expanse of tomorrow. I stood there–looking beyond the spot where I would plant the weeping pine–gazing ahead into years, each stretching beyond the next, further and further and further into the memory of forever.

And there it stood, as majestic and as grand and as unique as I ever dreamt or hoped that it would become: days, months, seasons and years melting into fluid time.

Then, suddenly, a March wind blew me back to my present reality, and I pushed the tub right beside the spot where, tomorrow, I would dig the hole that would become forever to my Angel Falls weeping pine.

The next day, I did the early, chilly morning needful. I dug the hole. I measured it precisely, making certain that it was the perfect width and depth. I added loam to loosen and enrich the soil. And I had my water hose at the ready to give a good soaking once the weeping pine was in place. I wanted to make certain that I did everything within my power to get the weeping pine off to the right start.

Then I locked the unsheathed blade of my utility knife and cut the sides of the tub so that I could free the weeping pine and anchor it to its new earth home.

The heave-ho that I gave was far more than needed. I found myself standing there with the weeping pine mid-air, with little more than a 5-pound ball of clay securing the roots of its foundation, the roots of its future, the roots of my hopes.

Where was the balled and burlapped bundle that I had always seen before whenever I gave a heave-ho to lift a tree from its tub? Where were the tender, wondrous roots pushing through the burlap? Where were the reassuring signs of life?

As I stood there, decades of gardening whispered to me, telling me to take this one of a kind, unique weeping pine back to the nursery and get a refund. The root ball was wrong. All wrong.

But I had dug the hole. I had freed the weeping pine from its tub. And I really wanted that tree in that spot. Now. Forever.

I sighed a sigh of hope, and I planted it. Now it was mine. All the worry about its well-being. All the responsibility of taking care of it. Today. Tomorrow. Beyond. Mine. All mine.

Nonetheless, I was so convinced that my weeping pine was a loser that I stopped by the nursery the next day and told John all about my experience and my misgivings. He was more optimistic than I, but he agreed to put my name on the second weeping pine as a replacement, just in case.

When I drove back home, I stopped beside my weeping pine. It looked stunning with its twisting, green-needled, falling branches contrasted against the fresh mulch.

As I looked, I wondered whether my morning assessment had been too harsh. I wondered whether my morning  conversation with John had been too direct. I wondered whether I had been too stern.

Confident that my assessment was correct and my conversation on target, I drove a little further up the hill and turned left into the driveway.

March melted slowly into April. Every day I visited my weeping pine. I was so proud. I wondered whether my neighbors admired it, too, as they drove past daily.

No one had said a word. Not one neighbor. Not one word. Finally, I asked one neighbor what he thought.

“You just planted it? You’re joking. I thought that it had been there all along.”

I thanked him for what I took to be a compliment. It was a compliment in my mind, because I like my garden plants to look as if they are growing in forever.

It was too early in the season for me to see new growth. But even so it was now my responsibility to water my weeping pine weekly during times with no rain or no snow.  And that’s just what I did.

By mid-May, my world was a mountaintop of spring growth and spring blossoms. Bleeding hearts. Clematis. Daffodils. Dogwood. Peonies.

More important, all of my specimen evergreens were putting out new-growth candles, especially my white pine outside my kitchen door: candles six inches long, if not longer.

Sadly, my Angel Falls looked exactly as it looked the day that I planted it.

“Well,” I thought, “at least its needles are still green.”

I checked, every day, attentively. It became my routine.

By the start of June, something started happening: yellowing, browning needles appeared on the lowest branches of my weeping pine.

Armed with a cell-phone photo, I stopped at the nursery the next day to show John the death that I was living.

He grimaced. “Not good.”

“Yeah. I know. Maybe I should go ahead and replace it with the one you’re holding?”

“Hmmm. Not yet. Try cutting off the dead branches and wait two weeks.”

My weeping pine looked better with the dead branches removed. Actually, it looked rather healthy once again. I was cautiously hopeful.

One of my neighbors agreed, reminding me that my weeping pine was probably in shock just from being transplanted from the West Coast to here.

“But you know,” he said, “It’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. It will all work out the way it’s supposed to work out. That’s how life is.”

Two weeks later, more branches had died.

Armed with more photos, I went back to the nursery.

“Should I give it some fertilizer?”

“That would just stress it more. It’s probably a goner, but let’s wait a couple more weeks, just to see.”

I had never lost a tree before in all my years of gardening. I kept replaying everything that I had done since planting my weeping pine. I couldn’t help but wonder whether what was happening was my fault. What had I done wrong? What could I have done better?

When I weeded the garden where I had given my weeping pine a home, I talked to it, encouragingly and out loud, especially as I sadly cut off more and more branches.

When neighbors walked past, I lowered my voice, hoping that they would lower theirs. I didn’t want my weeping pine to hear them as they bluntly asked whether I had noticed that it was dead. Dead. That’s exactly what they said. I was shocked.

“I’m not so sure. It’s still trying. It’s a fighter. You’ll see.” I know how to put up a front when I need one.

My weeping pine kept fighting, all the while that its branches kept dying.

“How long do I hold on?” I pondered.

Two more weeks passed. My weeping pine was an embarrassment, to me and to neighbors who, by then, didn’t know what to say. Sometimes, saying nothing is the best thing to say.

I resolved to take one final photo, show it to John, and drive back home with the replacement weeping pine.

The next morning, when I got up close to my weeping pine, I witnessed a few short candles, no longer than an inch. Not many, but enough to make me believe that my weeping pine was alive, that it really was fighting. I zoomed in really close on those candles, determined to capture their bright green.

“Dr. Kendrick, you’re holding on to false hope. Let’s get that replacement loaded into your …”

“But look!” I took my fingers and stretched the image as far as John was certain that I had stretched my hopes. “Look at how green those candles are. See? Look. Right here.”

“All right. If you insist. Maybe give it another couple of weeks.”

Every day, I visited my weeping pine, witnessing more and more green candles of life in the midst of more and more brown needles of death.

A little more than a week after that, I was ecstatic when I made my daily visit and discovered that all the green candles all over my weeping pine had unfurled into short, stubby, vibrantly green needles. At this point, my weeping pine was certainly not much of a specimen. In fact, it was just a shadow of what it had been. But it was a livng witness to life’s fierce determination to keep on holding on, against all odds.

By then it was near the end of July. One morning, I stopped by the nursery just to check out their inventory.

John approached and inquired about my weeping pine.

I beamed as I shared the recent turn of events. Beam begets beam.

“Here’s the deal, John. Go ahead and sell the replacement pine that you’ve been holding for me.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m absolutely certain.”

“Okay. I will. One thing’s for sure. If your weeping pine doesn’t make it after all this, at least you have a story.”

“You bet,” I thought, as I walked away. “It’s a story of survival.”