Dear Friends and Readers,

I am delighted to have published a response to this captivating novel in which I’ve recently been deliciously immersed. The author, Maggie O’Farrell, transported me into a captivating world far from our time and place (Elizabethan England) yet reflecting so much that matters here and now, inwardly and out. The novel I read and loved is called Hamnet. For anyone who enjoys historical fiction, please, don’t miss this book. I won’t say anymore so that you will, I hope, read about it in my review on Christine Christman’s website, Goodwords Inc.

Here’s the review

Christine’s website provides a rich and bountiful resource for readers. Take a wander around it at your readerly leisure:  https://www.goodwordsinc.net/

The book reviews give you more than a good summary and taste of what the books are about. To focus my review, she asked me to respond to the following questions:

1. What did I learn about myself?
2. What did I learn about my world?
3. What new possibilities did this book help me imagine?

Attempting to respond to these points gave me an opportunity to reflect more deeply about the book than I otherwise would have. I hope you enjoy the review enough that it makes you want to read the book. It would be a great book club book.

Wishing all and each of you well and staying relatively sane in these challenging times.

Posted with love,

joan

At 5:35 a.m., a single ray of sunlight sneaked through the crack in the curtains. It sent just enough light into the room to rouse me from the tail-end of a dream in which a locomotive crashed through and devastated my dream-home.

Waking, I lay still, catching my breath, finding the morning, re-claiming the day-world. Eyes still closed, the light beyond my eyelids gratefully transformed the strange train-wrecked dream-world back into the golden peace of familiarity and a summer morning.

Breathing myself into the break-of-day, I opened my eyes.

Across the room, the ray of light landed with precision on the photograph of Philip that sits above my desk. A sunbeam spotlight lit his face while everything else remained in dusky darkness. Good morning, my love.

The words to an old song stirred in the cave of my memory.

But all I have is a photograph. And I realize you’re not coming back anymore.

What song was that? If Philip were here, he’d sing it instantly, no problem retrieving words or tune. His inner storeroom of old songs was remarkable.

I opened the curtains. Sunlight filled the room with light, dissipated sorrow. More and more, I learn to let the emotions of grief ebb and flow. The sorrow has mostly taken on a sweetness that’s gentler, easier to live with.

Later in the morning, thanks to the Internet, I found Ringo Starr and George Harrison singing the song, “Photograph.” I cried and sang along. Cried for Philip not coming back anymore, cried with the nostalgia of the music and those familiar voices.

I can’t get used to living here, while my heart is broke, my tears I cry for you. /I want you here to have and hold, as the years go by and we grow old and grey. /Now you’re expecting me to live without you, but that’s not something that I’m looking forward to.

Here’s the link to the song if you want to travel back to wherever that tune and those beautiful zany boys take you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhDKHo2wapM

And here’s my good news. The audiobook version of Life with an Impossible Person is now available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. Or you can use this link. Please, go there and listen to the Free Audible Sample.

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Impossible-Person-Memoir-Transformation/dp/B08BJC1ST6/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=joan+heiman&qid=1593316653&sr=8-1

The narrator, Katya Jadwick, is an actress with an exceptional ability to place herself fully inside the characters and the story. We have collaborated throughout this last year as she worked on the recording. The result is a reading that has the power to move me to tears, laugh out loud, and ache with longing. Her performance lifts the words off the pages and gently carries the listener into the scenes and emotions of the book.

Katya also happens to be the grownup version of the little girl I met when she was three years old.  Philip carried her on his shoulders, sang, and recited poetry to her. We had the great good fortune to be close to her through her childhood, her teens, and into her young womanhood. She has infused her love for Philip and the depths of her soul into the reading, and, hence, touches the heart over and over again. This performance is a beautiful gift to me, and I believe to all who will listen. Katya’s reading is a spoken-word sunbeam sneaking through the curtains, lovingly illuminating Life with an Impossible Person. Heartfelt thanks, Katya.

 

Another person in my building died last night. Living in a building for seniors, I am increasingly less shocked, if no less sorrowed, by death. Is this a good thing?

I didn’t know Vicki well. Still don’t know her last name. My friends and I referred to her as Smoking Vicki … This to distinguish her from the other Vicki With the Little Dog. That’s the way we remember names in an 11-story building filled with people who joke about memory loss.

Smoking Vicki – who sat in her car to smoke — was someone I learned to look for. Someone I stopped to talk with. She had answers to my practical problems or questions: Where do I go to buy new tires? What time should I get to the courthouse to avoid waiting for hours to register my car? Where’s the closest UPS store? The cheapest carwash?

But I also gave her my book when I learned that her husband had died, too, years back. She read it, sitting in her car, smoking, and crying. Commiserating about the challenges of caring for complicated and difficult men as they made their way towards death, we laughed through our tears. We talked of picking up the pieces, of carrying on when the reason for carrying on had died.

Smoking Vicki was ready for a laugh, a story, a frustration. She was kind, thoughtful. There for those in need. She drove and sat in the emergency room with a resident after he’d fallen off his horse. Went to the store for Saltines or Fresca when stomach flu’s hit. Always aware of what was going on in the building and who needed what. No big deal. No flap. No hesitation. Ready to help with words and deeds.

Curious and intelligent, she listened with interest and one more question rather than waiting to reply. Still working on herself, she was usually reading when I’d approach her car window. And she’d look up, stop reading … welcoming and eager for conversation.

She’d lost 40+ pounds in this last year. Was up at 4 a.m. and off to the gym by 4:30 to get her treadmill time in while most of us were rolling over for that last sleep.

Smoking Vicki was always “coming up to the final day of smoking.” Tuesday is the day, she’d tell me. This is the year I’m going to beat this damned habit once and for all. But now, instead, the final day of smoking has come up on Vicki. The smoking struggle is over and done.

Having watched my mom struggle through her final year … maybe two, I’m getting better at standing back, finding a kind of peace underlying my tears … or is it resignation? I hear myself say, Better … kinder … for her for death to come so quickly. But for myself and even more for her friends like Carol (not Cleaning Carol but Blue Van Carol) and Ruby and all the others who called Vicki friend or mother or sister, the loss is – as loss must be – yet another break of the heart (as another grieving friend wrote recently).

We are resilient and fragile, courageous and frightened. We face loss, accept death even as we grieve it. And, hopefully, we are (on good days) a little stronger, a little more compassionate, a little more appreciative of our lives and our loves.

Rest in peace, Vicki. I will miss you, am grateful for having crossed paths with you.

My mother was born on October 16, 1923. She died less than a year ago, on December 2, 2018, and would have been 96 today.   Her name, Winnie (Winifred Marion), was so endearing to me, I lovingly, whimsically called her that as often as I said, Mom. (In later years, she’d often introduce herself to new people, saying, I’m Winnie, as in Winnie the Pooh. So, I think she came to feel the giggle and pleasure of her name, too.)

So, here we are … on her birthday (how has a year gone by?), and I’m feeling the need to honor her in more than thought. Hence, this blog post.

At her funeral, my brother asked his two children – Winnie’s beloved grandchildren who always called her Winnie-Mom — to speak in her memory. He suggested that he and I let them speak so we wouldn’t have to battle tears in front of an audience. I was exhausted and sorrowed by her final days – though only grateful to have been present. So, gladly accepting my brother’s generous proposal, I listened to my nephew and niece with deep gratitude and love as they struggled through their tears. They were brave when I wasn’t, and I hope they know how grateful their dad and I were to them on that melancholy day. Their eulogies were heartfelt … moving … filled with their love for her.

In the few days between her death and the funeral, I stumbled about Winnie’s apartment in that odd state of emotional incomprehension that tends to protect us in the first hours and days of loss. Grief for Philip (who died three and half years earlier) reemerged, bundling itself up with Winnie’s death and leaving me weary to the bone.

But then, I found, tucked away in a zippered compartment in Winnie’s handbag, the Mother’s Day card I’d sent her seven months earlier.  That she’d been carrying it with her since May brought on yet another bout of tears along with the grateful tenderness that had deepened between us in the final years of caring for her in her weakening body while she continued to care for my grieving soul.

Ultimately, I tucked the card in the zippered compartment of my purse, not sure but thinking I could possibly read it at the funeral. However, when the time came, my mouth stopped working, my body felt leaden and nailed to the pew, and, well … it didn’t happen.

In honor of this birth date, therefore, I want to share the words that she’d secreted away and carried with her in her final months of life.

*****

May 2018

Dear Mom,

Thanks … for all you are … and all you do!

Happy Mother’s Day

I want to thank you for …

• Encouraging me to write (handing me a blank journal as early as elementary school).
• Showing me the wonder of books and how they invite us into so many new worlds.
• Teaching me the value of kindness.
• Sharing your love of art, music, and theater.
• Giving me a safe and happy home, a secure ground from which to venture out.
• Being there when I was hurting.
• Being there when I was happy.
• Teaching me to be tolerant, open-minded, and fiercely fair.
• Supporting my dreams.
• Teaching me how to dress tastefully 😊.
• Loving and tolerating Philip … in all his Impossible-ness.
• Your generosity beyond measure.
• Your love that never faltered.     

Wishing you so much love and ease on Mother’s Day and always. Ever yours, joan

*****

Some of you know I’m currently working on a second book based on the three years (2009-2012) Philip and I spent in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) where I taught at a women’s college and felt as though I’d stepped onto the wildest, no-exit roller-coaster ride I couldn’t have imagined. Some also know the content for this book was another gift from Winnie. After writing to her nearly weekly (to appease some of the guilt I felt for leaving her on the other side of the world), upon our return, she showed me the boxes holding all my letters. “You have a book to write,” she said with both glee and gravitas.

I’ve been slowly making my way through letters, postcards, and photos over the past months. Transcribing the large basket filled with those that were hand-written, and finding, copying, and pasting those I’d saved in an, unfortunately, less than orderly fashion on my laptop. Ultimately, there will have to be an enormous culling, but for now, I’ve spent the past months being awed and entertained by the adventures and misadventures Philip and I had in Abu Dhabi, as well as on our trips to England and Europe during summer and winter breaks.

If Winnie hadn’t thought to save the letters, my memory could never have reproduced so many of the details of those three richly challenging years. But more surprising perhaps than being reminded of the many little and big incidents I’d lost to time are the many instances in which I found solace in confiding in her. The letters were therapy and Winnie the therapist/confidant. With her as my audience, I regained equilibrium and perspective because that’s who she was and what she’d always given me.

I hope it won’t take yet another three years to get to the bottom of the basket and create something resembling a book. But, for now, and on her birthday, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation for the person I was so graced to have beside me and behind me for 66 years of my life.  I couldn’t have asked for a more loving or loveable mother.

Happy Birthday, 2019, Winnie. With all my love and gratitude. Always.

 

This morning.

Eyes open on a new day. Consciousness returns to the familiar. I am wearied with the return to this same self. Stop. Remember to remember a reason to be grateful. But honestly … the gratitude-project feels forced.  Roll this same self out of bed. Drag through first steps … lift the blinds to gunmetal grey sky, drink water, turn the bed into a daytime couch.

Reluctantly clear space on the carpet for start-of-day stretching while listening to an online conversation between authors Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Such intelligent women. Such pleasure to listen to clear, precise British accents of a Jamaican-Brit and a Nigerian. Easy humor. Gems of thought that carry weight and clarity, depth and heft. At last, I’m waking into something better than my ungrateful self.

But … eye on the clock. 6:40 a.m. Should get out to walk before the build-up of the August heat. Stop to meditate first? Stop to catch a dreamy thought in writing before it dissipates? No. Get out … ahead of heat, ahead of procrastination.

Where did so many ideas about starting a day come from? Why can’t I get them into a working order? Why chase after routine? And why demand … expect to get so much done in each day? I retired, for god’s sake. Worked plenty for plenty of years. Prepared, provided, and served. Why go on forcing a work schedule?

And I’m so enjoying Zadie and Chimi (as Zadie fondly calls her, and, now, I fondly think of her). And suddenly the glimmer of a thought gains a touch of light … a counterpoint to all the Chronos-driven questions of the last paragraphs … the last weeks, months, years.  The light of insight. Like the light-limned cloud that floats now outside the window, white-gold sun glinting from beneath the elongated underbelly of a pearly grey fluff that looks more like an alligator by the minute.

What if I were to throw out Time and Expectation and Should? Oh, heavenly day. What if I allowed myself to enjoy each morning move … and each transition to the next? What if the mindfulness teachings were finally to come home? To be lived. If each endeavor, each moment was savored instead of automatized: brushing teeth, washing face, hesitantly checking to see if someone new might be gazing back at me in the mirror? (For whom am I waiting? And waiting with anticipation or trepidation or disappointment? But that’s cogitation for another day.)

What if that first glass of clear, cool, filtered water quenched soul as well as body? What if each movement and moment were experienced and enjoyed … outside of time?  What if I stretched with the languor of the neighborhood cats who wind themselves sinuously ‘round my legs? Can I notice, feel, enjoy muscles warming into moves? Could I slow down and pay attention instead of pushing through? Be grateful that I can still move this way.

And what if I chose to go on listening to the two ladies with their deep and rolling laughs, witty repartee, and foreigner insights into a country they’ve come to care for despite the fact that it doesn’t love them back? What if that means going out a bit later? Or what if instead of pushing along with should’s and time pressure and dutifully ticking items off the list, I decide to walk in the evening instead. Turn the day on its head. And if it rains, and I don’t walk at all… that would be ok. I would still be ok.

What if I picked up the book I started last night that is calling to me? What if I make a cup of tea and settle into my chair – with the alligator already gone, an amorphous winged snaky beast having replaced it – winding, floating lazily across an increasingly azure sky – and I sit lazily and read (when this is not my allotted time to read? How did I come up with so many rules?)

What if?

My rational self, my educated-into-new age-thinking-and-meditative-practice-self cheers me on. Says yes! Let go. No should’s. Let life unfold. Give up control. Note with fondness that the alligator has come and gone, the winged creature also morphed. Hundreds of undefined billowing puffs now blanket a silvery blue sky. Nothing defined, nothing permanent. Everything changing.

But I write those word and the fleeting ah-ha threatens to fall flat. It too has morphed … but out of true and into trite? Has this become one of the thousands of essays being published every day – in every mindfulness magazine and meditation instruction manual? All the overused words remaining unembodied. Are there other words for longing? Can words ever carry us home? Asks a writer!

How to make Real? How lift longings and deepen them into authentic, sensed inner and lived being? How take yearning into heart, mind, and soul, into daily action and attitude? Color the day with release. Paint freedom indigo. Nonjudgment green. Heartfelt action the color and scent of roses. Can the body digest, absorb, assimilate truth before the words threaten to flatten into clichés? Every day, I hear well-meaning people attempt to move closer to the truths, the inspirations, the aspirations of the few who claim to embody Wisdom. And with gentle but frustrated humor, I wonder how to get from here to there.  What does it take to sink down and deep from head into heart and body? From word into lived being?

To arrive in the here and now. Is it always just a glimpse? A moment’s sighting of the truth of presence before the alligator and the snake dematerialize, shift into something unrecognizable? Well, then, can I find gratitude for this glimpse … this glimmer, this which is just a tiny bit more than not this?

Awareness, forgiveness, presence, surrender, humor, tenderness. One forgiving step at a time. Two steps forward and one back? But keep stepping. Keep longing. Keep letting go. Watch the clouds morphing and passing with wonder. Keep loving and keep living … yes, even with gratitude … into yet another slightly less structured, slightly more gentle day.