Let's write about meditations with children, nature and sharing our memories with nature

An reflective essay to share with generations, for meditation and personal memories, published in the Portland Press Herald....

Get out for a walk, forge new memories

At this time of year, get going before the fog has lifted, bring a child (or two) and remember how fortunate we are to be an audience.
By Todd R. Nelson, a former teacher in Penobscot. His essay collections, “Cold Spell” and
“The Land Between the Rivers,” are published by Down East Books.

It is very early. Before pancakes and Cheerios, before the adults have had coffee or truly opened their eyes, before the fog has lifted from the meadow, it is time for a walk.
The dew is in the funnel spider hammocks. The woodland nightshift is clocking out; the day shift beginning. So there’s a chance to see a deer or porcupine finishing their grazing. The birds are the soundtrack: red-eyed vireo, catbird, bobolink, song sparrows are in voice.
And in spot after spot, as cousins Freya and Malcolm and I wander the road, there is a recollection or story. I am having the recollection; they are forming them for the next visit and its walks on this road.
“Here is the very tree where we saw a porcupine up in the branches nibbling,” I say, as we pass the black locust in my neighbor’s yard. I had sent Freya a photo as a “report of nature,” our ritual correspondence. Malcolm concurs.

“And sometimes, when you see a branch or some leaves on the ground, it means ‘Look up.’ There’s a chance the porcupine is still at work.” There is a branch and leaves on the road. A calling card.
The dew is in the funnel spider hammocks. The woodland nightshift is clocking out; the day shift beginning. So there’s a chance to see a deer or porcupine finishing their grazing. The birds are the soundtrack: red-eyed vireo, catbird, bobolink, song sparrows are in voice.
And in spot after spot, as cousins Freya and Malcolm and I wander the road, there is a recollection or story. I am having the recollection; they are forming them for the next visit and its walks on this road.
Stop, look and listen. There is always a critter watching or intending to appear. The wildlife is as intent on a Freya and Malcolm-spotting as vice versa … I like to think.
We too are an audience.
The old apple trees are laden with fruit auguring a bountiful pie crop. The kids take a bite. Too soon, hard and tart. The deer no doubt await the drops, and each year I see a few bucks at my ancient trees savoring the fruit at night.
Here is a handful of blueberries. Yum. And here is a raspberry patch that could attract a bear, which could enjoy the fruit for breakfast, unless we poach them first. We will share. And this stretch of our walk could become The Place Where we Saw a Bear Last Summer … I like to think.
“Look up. See the barren branches? Porcupines have been there,” I explain. “And right there, in the front yard of the green house, I saw a young porcupine just last week.”
“And right here in this spot is where I always see a deer. Or the deer sees me. You never know,” I reflect, “how long a deer has been watching you before it melts back into the woods.”
Here is the branch where an owl likes to perch, and here one where an owl nonchalantly held my gaze for several minutes before flying back to other perches in the woods. Here’s where the skunk scurried by; here where the young buck jumped the fence; here where another porcupine eyed my dog as I kept him at bay. Here’s where the milkweeds are that monarchs love. Here’s where a snake warmed itself on the tarmac. Hear the bullfrogs in the neighbor’s pond?
The walk down these familiar paths reviews our personal history; a family story; a gallery of prior walks and discoveries and eras. But with a young walker it is always fresh, a stocking of their core memory banks.
My pockets fill with pebbles plucked by little fingers from the verge of the road — quartz, circle rocks, the rare and precious double circle rocks, fake slate. A walk is a collection.
My own formative walks come to mind, as I hope Freya and Malcolm’s will, and I am at the old farm in New Hampshire, purchased by my grandparents in the 1950s, still in original condition. The barn had a rope swing, the horse stalls were nibbled and the planks worn by generations of hooves. I can summon the fragrance of the old beams.
There was a hay loft, and a well in the dooryard with a pump handle. In the photo album, I see that it was my grandparents who drilled a modern well for family visits.
My own parents bought an A frame camp farther north, with a dirt road I recall strolling, looking and listening, summer and winter, no doubt their attempt to start new memories and echo the old ones of their camping youths.
And now at my house, in the evening, after s’mores and before bed, when the owls and coyotes are commencing their night shift, we can take another walk and listen far into the dark distance for the story of moonlight and fireflies.

Let's write about the 70th anniversary of the blockbuster "Peyton Place" and the tragic life of the book's author

(Maine Writer:  I recall how our Dundalk, Maryland public library kept this book hidden under the distribution desk so minors like me would be unable to read it.)

70 years since the scandal surrounding the publication of 'Peyton Place'. Echo report published in Elmundo America by Luis Fernando Romo. 

Grace Metalious and her husband, George, at home in front of the typewriter.

The anniversary of the provocative 'best seller' that made a poor American housewife rich and famous is celebrated. She ended up ruined, alcoholic, and estranged from her family.

Grace Metalious' name may have been forgotten, but not her scandalous novel Peyton Place, which is now celebrating its 70th anniversary. Fame exacerbated her alcoholism, she fought with her three children, and her lover inherited everything.

A poor housewife, uneducated and addicted to alcohol, overnight became one of the great literary phenomena of the 1950s. Amidst the scandal involving Ingrid Bergman after leaving her husband and daughter for Roberto Rossellini and Elizabeth Taylor's excommunication by the Vatican for her affair with Richard Burton during Cleopatra, there was another uproar that left conservative American society disturbed.

In 1956, Grace Metalious published Peyton Place, the most transgressive and sinful novel to date, exposing the most shameful human miseries such as domestic violence, racial and class hatred, corruption of religious power, and taboo conversations like childhood sexual abuse, the right to abortion, and women's sexual awakening, among others.

But, until success came, Grace couldn't shake off the memory of that lonely girl who escaped the poverty of her home by taking refuge in her aunt's bathroom where she wrote poems and fairy tales.

An avid reader with an unfathomable imagination, Grace wanted to erase any trace of the impoverished ghetto in which she was trapped. The small Franco-American community of Manchester, a town in New Hampshire, New England, was not meant for her.

Therefore, she didn't hesitate to change the spelling of her last name, DeRepentigny, to invent a French aristocratic lineage while in high school. She tried to convince everyone that her full name was Grace Marie-Antoinette Jeanne d'Arc de Repentigny, but she became the laughingstock of almost everyone.

In her quest for a glamorous past, she took after her mother, who used to sell trinkets like antique French furniture at flea markets. She never heard from her father again after he enlisted in the Navy.

Despite opposition from both families, Grace married at 18 years old her high school friend George Metalious, from whom she took her last name and with whom she had three children, Marsha, Christopher, and Cynthia.

Once again, writing helped her cope with a tubal ligation, her husband's service in World War II, and their infidelities.

After moving to Gilmanton, New Hampshire, Grace sought a way to type her first major novel while enduring severe poverty. To concentrate, she sent her hungry, blue-lipped children out into the street, while neighbors criticized her behavior. To them, the writer was a strange specimen sabotaging the strict conservative norms by dressing in an androgynous manner.

Rising above adversity, in the summer of 1955, she completed her first manuscript titled The Tree and the Flower.

Several publishers ignored the story until it landed in the hands of Kitty Messner, the founder of a small independent publishing house and one of the few women in the field.

After changing the title to Peyton Place, the novel was released in September 1956. The story exposed the hypocrisy, scandals, and dark secrets behind the moral façade of a small town in New England. On the 70th anniversary of the work, the publisher Blackie Books releases Return to Peyton Place, which the writer marketed in 1959.

The puritan and self-righteous society collapsed. How dare she, a woman, insult the image of so many respectable citizens? Critics called the work sensationalist garbage, immoral, obscene, and devoid of literary value.

Some bookstores even displayed a sign saying: "We don't have any copies of Peyton Place. If you want this book, go to Salem." Punishment soon followed. Children didn't want to play with her kids, her husband was fired from his teaching job, the townspeople thought she was talking about them, and they tore her apart with gossip.

Revenge also came. In the first month, she sold 100,000 copies, and Twentieth Century Fox paid her 250,000 dollars for the film and television rights. In 1957, the movie was released under the title "Peyton Place" starring Lana Turner and Hope Lange, receiving nine Oscar nominations. And in 1964, the TV series of the same name was created with Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow.

Wealth revealed the dark side of fame for Grace Metalious, who succumbed to alcoholism and stopped speaking to her children. 

After divorcing George in 1958, she married a DJ, from whom she also separated to return to her first husband. Tragically, she passed away at 39 from cirrhosis after becoming a grandmother.

Shortly before her death, her last lover, the journalist John Rees, persuaded her to leave everything to him. The family contested the will when he had already spent it all.

A commentary about snow shoveling in New England

Topsham, ME: February 8, 2020: 

After two days of snow and ice falling in Maine, this back page essay, published in the AAA Magazine, "Northern New England Journey", describes a somewhat positive experience, considering the alternatives.

Winter Workout- illustration is by Virginia Vallely published in Northern New England Journey

In other words, some people like snow. Nevertheless, I'm not sure this description about snow shoveling is convincing enough to encourage me to take on the challenge. I stopped shoveling snow when my sons learned how to operate our snow blower. Today, we hire a snow plow guy who charges us $50 a plow! Ouch.

Congratulations to Erika Cohen, for publishing this perspective about snow shoveling:

Winter Workout- The Joys of Shoveling Snow, by Erika Cohen, who lives in Chester New Hampshire
(No link is available to this essay)

"I love snowstorms in New England!", she wrote.

Especially the first one of the season, when the meteorologists warn us about how it will snow all day, and night and leave a multi-foot blanket of white in its wake.

First, the roads get too slick for regular car traffic, and the rhythm of passing cars through the woods on the main road slows.

Then, traffic is limited to the occasional passing vehicle. Their tires leave tiny slivers of bare pavement that the falling snow quickly fills. 

Finally, the verge between the road and the lawns is barely distinguishable and night falls.

When the sun comes up, our lawn glistens, revealing hundreds of tiny footprints from mice along with dual tracks of snowshoe hare and signature two-toed deer prints.

The distant rumbling of snow blowers and the occasional screeching of metal plows against pavement on our street fill my neighborhood. I hear these sounds, but I do not contribute to them. Because, my family hasn't owned a snow plow in more than a decade. Tiny rocks from our unpaved driveway would get stuck inside. We fixed it once, maybe twice, the blades would always stop turning. And, since we needed to get our kids to day care and ourselves to work, we just switched to shovels.

We have not switched back.

Instead, we have shoveled ourselves out from every major snowstorm that has come our way since - a foot of fluffy snow here, a few feet of wet snow there and many smaller 6-10 inch storms. Our close friends have stopped asking when we will get a snowblower or hire a plow guy.

Our routine has been perfected by many storms. After dark, we shovel what we can with the driveway light to guide us. While shoveling, I've heard owls and the skittering of nocturnal animals in the woods next to the small pond on our land. When our kids were little, my husband and I took turns. Now that they are older, my son joins us, alternating between shoveling, sledding and snow shoeing around the front woods.

Shoveling snow has a rhythmic quality to it. I outline 4-foot-long rectangular chunks and shovel out the middles before moving down the driveway. Push, lift, throw, push, lift throw. Deep breath. Push, lift, throw, push , lift, throw. Deep breath. The world smells and tastes clean.

My shoulders and hands ache, but when I am done, I am very grateful for our warm house.

(Maine Writer Julie's response is "Amen".)

Meaningful Christmas essay

We Hardly Knew Ye: an essay about the Season, by Dorie McKeeman, of Hollis, New Hampshire.

This lovely essay was published in the AAA Northern New England Journey, January/;February 2019 edition.

In the narrative, the author McKeeman draws out the human emotions in response to the traditions, and symbols we hold dear. She describes how nature and traditions converge, while reflecting on the ritual of taking down our Christmas Trees.
We share her experience, each in our own way.

In my home, when growing up in Baltimore, this symbolism was evident to our neighborhood, as well as to those of us in the family, because our tree did not come down until after the Epiphany.  

This was because, in the Eastern Rite religious beliefs, those of my father's heritage, it was our tradition to observe the Feast of the Epiphany, by keeping up the Christmas Tree, although, most other families had taken theirs down.

Dorie McKeeman wrote:

Taking down the Christmas tree is always bittersweet.  

Behold our Christmas tree, so welcome a guest some weeks ago.  The stalwart symbol still stands tall and trimmed, releasing its fragrance of fir.  Hardy, hearty branches, like arms uplifted, refuse to droop, green needles still cling. But, the calendar has turned over its 12 days since Christmas, Epiphany - Three Kings Day - has come. The annual ritual is upon me.

And yet....

I come to the task with apology on my lips, a twinge of regret in my heart, and a final, full embrace.  Burying my face into the tinseled, twinkling boughs, I remember the rush oficy air that swirled up the stem when this vibrant visitor first arrived in our living room- such a bracing anticipation of the season! The, the colors of the day were warm, regal, and bold; crimson, violet, green, gold. Music in the air sounded - even felt- full, and round, and lush, expansive with dancing, and reverence and joy: The first noel....fa-la-la-la....and lo...ye faithful....sleigh bells...snow...O Tannenbaum...a midnight manger...holly...holy...I'll be home.

Now, across the snow-laden yard in the late afternoon's dimming light, a skimming layer of fog amplifies January's bleak palette. Naked oaks and maples in lengthening silhouette peer through our window.  Having shed their own decorations months ago, they've been savoring our cheery indoor display of colored lights, and ornaments, beads, and garland. As winter's spare watchmen, they sympathize with this cyclic undressing.  They understand what "season" means.

I hesitate, release a breath, and nod an affirmation. For its weeks as the gracious, steadfast overseer of our family's celebrations of the coming of the Light of the World, our Christmas tree accepts my respectful thanks.

Now, it is dusk. Storage boxes huddle with a knowing patience, converging at the doorway. Outside, the dispersing fog reveals the current season's stark colors: Black, scraggly branches pierce a sky of deepening midwinter blue, and dark trunks sink into a coat of white.  The view looks like the cover art on my favorite winger music, there atop our stack of holiday music CDs. Aah- what do the sages say about coincidence?  I tuck A Winter's Solstice in to play, close my eyes, and invite this haunting spell of songs to stretch and span the seasons.

For a few more moments, Christmas lingers; time holds its breath. The, music meant to greet the dawn tip-toes in and (so fitting even at twilight) the serene yet stirring strains of "New England Morning" usher me through this turning time.

Because, no matter the fervent resolutions or the partying crowds or the date on the calendar, until I honor this rite- taking down the Christmas tree- my heart does not fully embrace the new year.

I reach up and lift the golden star from the highest bough.