Liver Coincidence

synchronicity (ˌsɪnkrəˈnɪsɪtɪ)

— n

an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more
similar or identical events  that are causally unrelated

Do you believe in synchronicity? It's basically a fancy word for spiritual coincidence. Tonight I was at a nice little church-related Christmas party. Ok, I laughed so hard my throat hurt, so don't think this a quaint church event. My church is a lot of things, but quaint isn't one of them. I like quaint, don't get me wrong, it's just not us. That's a digression.

Anyway, I met someone who a.) spent a career researching transplant science, b.) engaged in initial conversations about the ethics of transplant, and c.) witnessed the first liver transplant ever.

I thought that was pretty amazing since I am a.) fascinated with organ transplant, b.) writing a book about liver failure and b.) planning to explore liver transplant in my writing.

If the person I am referring to happens to read this dispatch, no pressure, but I think this is really cool and I thank you.

With love, T

The Education of Terri Dee Mork Speirs

Women do 2/3 of the world's work but receive only 10% of the world's income.

Women's education is the most powerful predictor of lower birth rates.

Of 1.2 billion people living in poverty worldwide, 70% are women.

Women own around only 1% of the world's land.

Women are 2/3 of the 1 billion+ illiterate adults who have no access to basic education.
 
And yet there is one lucky woman, lucky beyond words, who just might walk away in a few weeks with a Master of Fine Arts Degree. Thanks to willing references, a scholarship from the Women of the ELCA, a student loan, an understanding family, and the good fortune of being born in a time and place whereby she could imagine school in the realm of her reality.

And thanks to her desire to go west. That is the stupider part of the story. Because the only reason she wanted to go west was so to escape the pain she felt when she lost her eastern-bound job. As if going 1,000 miles in the other direction would make her feel better. It didn't. But thinking about it did.
 
She was so bound and determined to go to Antioch University in Los Angeles that she applied only to that one MFA program. There was no back-up plan. When she didn't get in, she agreed to be put on the waiting list. When she still didn't get in, she applied a second time. When she still didn't get in, she agreed to again be put on the waiting list. And when she finally got in, it was like Antioch had found her.
 
She was so focused on going west that she hadn't even checked out the fact that Antioch shared her value of social justice. She hadn't checked out its theories on education. During her first writing residency, she didn't know until halfway through the week that half of the instructors were actually students. It turned out to be a place where students and teachers learned together, which, coincidentally happened to be her philosophy of education. There was no hierarchy of the smarter people. She hadn't known that human decency would be valued above all. Which, as happenstance would have it, also matched her way of thinking.

When Antioch found her she didn't know that her cousin-in-law lived three miles from campus, had a spare house, an extra car, another bicycle, and boundless hospitality, thus saving her approximately $7,500 in hotel expenses and gaining her exactly three additional family members for the rest of her life. Not to mention hiking in the mountains and biking on the beach.

She didn't know that writers don't simply get exiled. They write about exile. They don't simply feel deceit, heartbreak, love, and truth. They seek to understand it. Baltimore had spit her out. Los Angeles scooped her up. Des Moines held her tight while she wrestled these real and imaginary demons and angels, for some dumb reason manifested in terms of miles and horizons. She learned that her exile and heartbreak were far less serious than others'.

Now, two years later, she feels all melancholy about it all. About what she put her family through to make this work. About how they happily obliged. About how her husband worked double overtime so she could write. About her kids who didn't get tucked in for about 50 nights. About her student loan and how it will be paid. About the things she's learned and the people she's met. About the fact that Mona Simpson keeps popping up on her Facebook as "someone she probably knows." She doesn't, but apparently nine of her Facebook friends do. She's now two degrees separated through nine lives to this famous writer, you know, not to name drop, but Steve Jobs' sister. About the fact that her mentor, Hope Edelman, is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and one of the most insightful teachers she's ever had. Yes, she now shamelessly name drops.

But mostly, she's infinitely grateful.

And now, she will go back to work on her senior seminar and reading prep, lest this all be a dream that goes puff into the night.

With love, T

Salon Expectations

Queen Noor

Tomorrow is salon day.

I was reminded of my high expectations when I mentioned the appointment to my 12-year-old son, Aidan.

We were departing his basketball practicee whereby the coach had them playing shirts and skins. (I texted Bob to ask if it's appropriate for boys to play shirts and skins because I thought it was weird.)

"Tomorrow you will have a new mother," I said, after settling the fact that the coach gave the boys a choice whether to be shirts or skins and Aidan had chosen to be on the fully clothed team.

"Oh, what happened to the queen?" he said.

"Huh?" I was confused. Was the tween boy being a smart aleck by implying that my long needed salon appointment was making me an diva mother? Was he making fun of me? Should I cancel the appointment?

"No, remember your last hair-do was that queen," he said, sincerely. He wasn't being a smart mouth, he just had a really good memory. He was right. Last time I went to the salon I took a picture of Queen Noor's hair. Straight the shoulder, layered on top. I was confident that my hair magician could transform me into the former first lady of Jordan whose husband died in spite of long stints at the Mayo Clinic, purple Royal Jordanian Airliner parked at the Rochester, Minnesota, airport for weeks and months. Noor means "light" in Arabic.

"Oh yeah, you're right," I conceded. "I did go for for the queen. I think this time I'll go for the Diane Keaton." A whispy, whimsical bob. You may remember her as the bad parallel parker in "Annie Hall." Bob and I still laugh at the line when she parks in Manhattan and her date, Woody Allen says, That's OK I'll just walk to the curb from here. Bob and I actually say that to each other fairly often, when one or the other of us parallel parks.

"Oh, what's that hair like?" Aidan said.

"I'll show you a picture," I reassured him. I got the feeling that he was afraid that I might actually do something really outlandish.

You see, lately, I've been sporting the recession hair-do. Long, thick, stringy, often pulled into a severe bun. That's when you avoid the cuts and costs of the salon and do the best you can with your cheap shampoo and hot flat iron. If you're lucky, your natural color blends with the color of gray, until your daughter one day discovers your secret.

"MOM! Holy cow, you've got a ton of gray hair!" my Zena-like, statuesque 15-year-old daughter, Amanda, informed me the other day when she hazarded to lift my hair and look underneath. But that's another story. Back to my salon appointment for tomorrow. . .

So anyway, my Queen Noor do worked fairly well for a long time. A loooooong time. I had thought that my next plan would be the Talia Balsam, otherwise known as George Clooney's ex-wife, look. One elegant length, straight the the chin. That's before my hair turned into the recession do, and to be honest, I think it has transformed kinda Michelle Bachmanish. Or maybe it's the serial killer mother eyes. My daughter, who happens to be a varsity cheerleader, says that I tend to evoke serial killer mother in pictures. Sadly, she's right. For some reason when I'm in a picture, I try to present a happy smile and I end up looking menacing, in a middle class kind of way. I get those crazy Michelle Bachman eyes. I'm not crying in my soup about it, I'm just saying all the more reason for a salon appointment.

Diane Keaton

Goodbye recession hair. Goodbye liquid assets for this pay period. Hello high expectations.

I wish my salon medicine woman all the best. You're invited to do the same.

Bob hasn't texted me back yet regarding the shirts and skins dilemma. And just in case you're wondering, this blog post is actually a cleverly disguised yet elaborate procrastination tactic to avoid writing my cumulative annotated bibliography due soon and very soon.

Thanks much for coming over! Hair prayers welcome.

With love, T

Notes from three women

She told me she needed to interview someone for her community college class on nonprofit organizations. And so we agreed to meet in my office, where I do communications for a small nonprofit that runs a network of 12 food pantries. She was skinny, her voice was gravely, and her face was potholed as if she'd smoked cigarettes since she was a baby. Her hair was overly blond and kinda stringy yet she was well presented with a long skirt and pretty top. I had to listen hard to understand her words because she didn't enunciate like I'm used to; it was almost like hearing a heavy accent, the accent one talks when they've lived hard. I thought stupid, patronizing thoughts like how great it was that people like her could go to community college. She got right to her assignment, pulled out her notebook, and asked me questions.

"What's your mission?" she asked. I answered.

"Who do you serve?" she asked. I answered.

"Where do you get funding?" she asked. I answered.

And on with all the typical nonprofit questions, until she got to this question: "Do you have interns?" Yes, I answered. Not a lot but sometimes, I said. Why don't you send me your resume and tell me about your interests, I said.

And that's when the conversation shifted. She put her notebook down. She put her student persona down. She put her pretenses down.

"I'll tell you what my interests are," she said, looking straight at me, talking with confidence and conviction that she didn't exude a few moments earlier. Suddenly I could understand her very well. I no longer needed to strain my ears to pick up her sentences.

"My interests are women who are doing prison time and who shouldn't be," she said. "I'm not saying all of them, but I'd say at least half the women in Mitchellville (women's facility near Des Moines) shouldn't be there. They are victims. They were defending themselves. They did drugs to escape. They shouldn't be there and there are no services for them when they get out. They get sent to a halfway house but they don't need a halfway house, they need a chance. They need to get back into the world.

"But I can't do anything until I get my education," she continued. "That's what I'm focused on now." She working towards her associates degree, then her BA in Human Services.

The interview was over. We shook hands and she walked out of my office. I'd given her my business card but after she left it occured to me that I didn't even ask her name. For all I knew, she didn't really exist and I'd simply imagined her.

*

She told me she couldn't get food until Friday. It was Wednesday. She was eyeing the leftover food from our weekly dinner at church. It's food that we put in to-go containers for anyone to take home; food that otherwise would be thrown out during clean up. She told me she didn't want to take the leftovers that others might want. I talked her into taking it. My goodness, take it please. I put the food containers into a plastic bag so it wouldn't look so conspicuous that she was taking it. I asked her to wait so I could forage the church refridgerator for more food. I grabbed a gallon of milk and disguised it in another plastic bag. I gave her my work telephone number so we could chat tomorrow about what food pantry to go to. Later I realized that I could have also given her apples and oranges from the kitchen. I could have run to the grocery store for a gift card. I could have told Bob who could have come up with assistance from a church fund to give her. I could have fixed her life right then and there. Except there are a zillion people like her, thank you very much double dip recession and a cold hearted congress. And I can't fix anyone's life. But I tried as hard as I could to not have a pathetic look of pity on my face as she told me that her cubboards have never looked this bare, that she's never been in this situation before. "I'm a giver," she said, "Not a taker." And by the way, she works full time. She works full time and has no food in the house. Explain that. "We're all givers and takers," I said.

*

She told me she's transitioning from a man. I knew that but I pretended I didn't because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Her new name is Rebecca Grace. "I got to pick my own name," she said with the most innocent tone of voice you can imagine; a sweetness hard earned by 50 or so years of utter anquish. My Lutheran friends believe that "grace" is a special word. It means loved unconditionally. It means loved nomatter what. It means loved in spite of who we are, what we do, and where we go. We Lutherans believe that but by grace alone do any of us thrive, survive, die, or stay alive. And for those who are into counting heaven, grace is the direct line in. It certainly has to be hard to transition from Michael to Rebecca. For those who are into counting hell, living in another body might be one way to do it. You've got so many people to freak out -- the wife, the kids, the family, the friends, the coworkers. She said that people at her workplace are scared of her. "All they have to do is talk to me," Rebecca Grace said. "I'm happy to answer questions. I won't hurt anyone."

*

These are just a few of the people I've encountered recently. There are so many more, and I wish I had time to write about them all.

Thanks for coming over to the Charmer blog! Wish you all a good night.

With love, T

Dear Planet Earth

Dear Planet Earth,

Hello, how are you today? I understand that you are due to deliver the 7 billionth inhabitant today, according to U.N. estimates. That's about double the global population since I was born, a few years ago in 1962. Evidently, there's a bit of concern how you will sustain all these people. How will they all eat? How will they all stay warm? How will they all get from point A to B? How will they all not fight over things such as water and oil on your crowded space?

If you don't mind, I wanted to offer up a simple 10-point, 10-word solution to ensure sustainability for you, dear Planet Earth. Let's call it the 10-10-10 plan. Here goes:

10 ways to ensure global sustainability, in 10 words:

  1. Women.
  2. Women's rights.
  3. Women's safe healthcare.
  4. Women and girl's education.
  5. Women in key leadership roles.
  6. Women who vote, women in charge.
  7. Women empowered to make their own decisions.
  8. Women who make choices over their own bodies.
  9. Women who are not beholden to decisions men make.
10. Women working in tandem with men for a better world.

You're welcome. Happy 7 billionth birthday!

With love, T

P.S. Dedicated to my husband, who gets this. (Love you!)

For my parents' 50th wedding anniversary

Yesterday we celebrated my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, hosted by the fabulous folks at United Methodist Church in Dexter, a small farm town in SE Minnesota. My mom asked me to give a little speech and here it is:

Today we’re here to celebrate 50 years of marriage of my mom and dad. Five decades of two people being together. If I did my math right that figures to 600 months of patience. 18,250 days of forgiveness. 26,280,000 seconds of commitment. One half century of ordinary days and extraordinary events. A golden anniversary of love—for better and for worse, as they say.

So what was it like 50 years ago? How many of you remember 1961? (show of hands) Was anyone born in 1961? You know, 1961 was a great year:

President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps.

Barbie’s boyfriend, the Ken doll, made his first appearance.

The number one song this week in 1961 was “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles.

Pampers disposable diapers were available for the first time.

The cost of a first class stamp was 4 cents.

The academy award for best movie went to West Side Story.

Fellows styled their hair in crew cuts and ladies styled theirs in bouffant.

Minimum wage was $1 /hour.

A baby named Barak Obama was born.

And two teenagers in a small town in rural Minnesota decided to flirt.

It was a town called Pine Island where a couple of youngsters, 17-year-old Milford Edwin Mork Jr and 16-year-old Diane Pauline Stromback, were hanging out with their friends one summer night in front of the Rainbow Café on main street. These two crazy kids, Jr. and Diane, ended up crammed together in a carful of friends and road tripping to Rochester to buy a jar of pickled eggs. (Not recommended, by the way, for all you 16 and 17 year olds in the crowd! I'd definitely go for the deviled eggs.)

I’m using words like “teenagers” and “youngsters” and “crazy kids” but in reality, even at this tender age my dad had already taken on serious responsibilities of a hard working adult with the full time job as a truck driver. My mom was entering her senior year of high school.

They kept seeing each other to the backdrop of the music of Elvis Presley and country and western. Dad had a ’49 Ford with pin stripes and no reverse so he had to be careful where he parked because there was no backing out. And there was no backing out of this thing he had with my mom. I think it was one of those junctures that happens without even realizing it happened; no one knows exactly when it was decided but during the next months as they spent more and more time together, they just knew they’d eventually be married.

But the day it became real was into the next year. My mom had graduated from high school, finished beauty school, and worked as a stylist in Mantorville. One day my dad brought over an ad for Goodman Jewelers in the Cities. Apparently engagement rings were on sale – and so that was final proof that getting married was their destiny.

One “Starbright” diamond and one payment plan later -- Pine Island had themselves a newly engaged couple.

The wedding was at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Pine Island, Minnesota. The bride wore white. And the groom was late. I mean, getting married isn’t any excuse to skip out on your grain haul. It was October for pete’s sakes, a grain hauler’s busy time, wedding or no wedding, as my Dad’s strong sense of work ethic was already firmly set into the fabric of his character. (Invite crowd to view gorgeous wedding pictures and memorabilia.)

In what surely was the most romantic honeymoon on record, Mom and Dad took off in the truck for the destination city of Oneida, South Dakota, population 37. The truck had no heat but it mattered not to my Mom because she knew there was a special addition to this honeymoon – her father-in-law. Yup, that’s right, they honeymooned with Grandpa. The blissful threesome headed west and when my mom got cold, she ditched my dad and rode with my grandfather, whose truck had a mighty fine heater. This seemed like a pretty strong indicator that this family was going to last.

And so this marriage was off and running . . .and so was my dad in his truck, and so were the babies that were to be forthcoming, and so was my mom in her amazing way of running a household often times on her wits and grits and guts alone.

So, how exactly does a couple stay together for 50 years? I asked our resident experts, my Mom and Dad, and they had some pretty good advice for the rest of us.

Mom said it’s important to keep your individual interests yet to also develop common interests. For example, she nurtured her love for growing flowers by becoming a master gardener and starting her own greenhouse. My Mom enjoyed her yard and her house and her swimming pool and her friends. Yet she also made a specific effort to spend time with Dad by doing things together such as enjoying Nascar and wintering in Arizona. And we all know that she literally learned how to drive one of those big old trucks herself so they could go on the road together.

When I asked my Dad this same question – what advice he would give to a couples – his answer was quite a bit shorter. He said it takes “a lotta love, a lotta dedication, and willingness to compromise.”

Mom grows things and Dad delivers things. Petunias and lily’s. Potatoes and apples. Children and puppies. Humility and hard work. Now here we are in the year 2011, 51 years after that magical night in front of the Rainbow Café, 50 years after that lovely day at St. Paul Lutheran Church – we can see so much of what they grew and delivered.

Gratitude is one of those things that we often don’t think about until we miss something. It’s hard to be thankful for something that you don’t know you have. The air you breath. The legs you walk on. The house you live in. The people around you. For some reason it seems far too easy to focus on the things you don’t have – a better job, a nicer car, more money, more time. It seems that most often family and friends get together for sad occasions, such as funerals or tragic events, and then they wish they had spent more happier times together, or even just more boring times together. For anyone who’s experienced tragedy, you know that boring times are a blessing.

But if you can turn that around and take stock of all that you have, then it’s hard not to be grateful. The old fashioned way of saying it is “counting your blessings.”

And that’s why we’re here today – to count the blessings. 50 years of marriage brings a lot of blessings. Mom and Dad do see what they have. When I asked them about the things that they’re grateful for they listed so many things that I can’t even mention them all, but I’ll tell you a lot of them.

Mom used the word “respect” and how thankful she is that she received so much of it from my Dad and from us kids too. Mom is grateful that she is given the freedom to be creative with her yard and her house, to make it the home she’s always dreamed about. Mom is grateful that Dad was home for every birth and every Christmas – which is quite an amazing feat given the merciless demands of the truck driving industry.

When I asked my Dad about what he’s grateful for, he mentioned work, the fact that he’s had constant employment all these years. And indeed, even now pushing 70, he’s still at it driving truck coast to coast. He mentioned being grateful for good health and for a lotta luck. He said that he’s thankful for his wife, and I quote: “I think I got the best.”

And of course, Mom and Dad see their blessings whenever look at their children, their grandchildren, their greatgrandchildren. And if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to name us all of and ask if family members could please stand when I say your name.

Children - Tom, Trey, Russ, me

the ones who gave them grandchildren – Jennifer, Amy, Julie, Bob

grandchildren – Priscilla, Danielle, Brandee, Mackenzie, Mallory, Ashley, Paige, Aaron, Amanda, Aidan

great-grandchildren – Kylee (Kyle) and Hunter (Jake)

the Strombacks

the Morks

the friends and neighbors

And my parents see their many blessings when they see you all, their dear family and friends. As we look around this room and we see just small part of what Mom and Dad grew and delivered in their 50 years of marriage. And we give thanks for all the blessings.

Thank you. You’ve been wonderful. Please stay. Eat more food.

Before the mommy blogger there was Shirley Jackson, the mother of horror.

Life Among the Savages

By Shirley Jackson

Farrar, Straus and Young 1953

An Annotation

Life Among the Savages is s sweet mommy-memoir by Shirley Jackson, the same author who wrote a story that has terrified me since sixth grade, “The Lottery.”

As I read Life Among the Savages I couldn’t help but to wonder how her life experience of raising kids in a small town informed her creation of the horror masterpiece, The Lottery, set in a small town with a ritual of annual human sacrifice. Even the title begs the question, who does she mean when she refers to the “savages?” The kids? The townspeople? The parents? And what kind of writer includes the word “savage” in a sweet mommy-memoir title? But then again she titled her second sweet mommy memoir “Raising Demons” so there you go.


The book is full of stories of how it is to raise children, the tender, the frustrating, the funny, and the futile. As one who likes to write about the chaos of my children, I could easily relate to her setting. She opens by describing their house:

“Our house is old, and noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily a half million books; we also own assorted beds and tables and chairs and rocking horses and lamps and doll dresses and ship models and paint brushes and literally thousands of socks.” (1)

She uses the word “and” over and over instead of inserting commas, a stylistic choice that emphasizes the chaos. As the book unfolds she often refers to the white house, its rooms, its pillars, its characteristics; almost as if it were an entity unto its own. She often places household elements as the subject of the sentence, and the people as the object, for example, when describing how the family moved into the house Jackson writes: "One bedroom chose the children, because it was large and showed unmistakable height marks on one wall and seemed to mind not at all when crayon marks appeared on the wallpaper and paint got spilled on the floor" (19-20). Focusing on the house itself is an effective way to tell the story of the people who live inside it, and it inspired me to consider writing my own mommy memoir centered around our big white house, which is a source of as much joy as incredible frustration. Think money pit meets the American dream.

But the other consideration in Jackson’s choice in lifting up the house as a character is knowing that she also wrote a famously frightening book, "The Haunting of Hill House," which I have not read yet but I’m curious if there is a connection in Jackson’s creative process. (This book has been sitting on my shelf waiting for me for months. It's first up after December graduation. :-)

While funny and sweet, Life Among the Savages seems to hint at that part of Jackson’s brain that can concoct the scariest tales ever. For example, she describes her search for a paid mother’s helper, recounting all the reasons why this or that household helper didn’t work out for the job. The mother’s helper, Amelia, who baked a batch of almost evil cookies helps show Jackson’s skill at blending funny and sweet with the slightly eerie:

“Amelia had but one major failing. The second day she was with us – which turned out, coincidentally, to be the last – she made cookies, spending all one joyous afternoon in the kitchen, droning happily to herself, fidgeting, cluttering, measuring.

“At dinner, dessert arrived with Amelia’s giggle and a flourish. She set the plate of cookies down in front of my husband, and my husband, who is a nervous man, glanced down at them and dropped his coffee cup. ‘Sinner,” the cookies announced in bold pink icing, “Sinner, repent.” (98-99)

In this short passage alone, Jackson manages to artfully join words like cookies, joyous, pink, nervous, sinner, and repent. I count her as one of my main influences.