If. Whatever's burning up your mind, freewrite (Merrill Gardens journal)

And so they asked me, it was my turn, and I had asked them to ponder on "if." A hypothetical question, but also a loaded statement in a rest home. Especially when asked if you had to live your life over. By asking them probing questions, I was asking them to not only to delve into the past, but also to share their souls with each other. 

Many of these folks had lived together for years and still didn't know each other's life stories. I thought, these were the lucky ones, the ones who lived charmed lives, an ambassador, a designer, a concert pianist, and an organizer. What emerged, was that each, thinking the others life was more glamorous than their own lives. Envy. 

One person chose to say her life was perfect. She was content. Another devalued her life experiences. We all gave her a mouthpiece. And another added her story to the collective invisible pile, as if the laundry of the soul was laid out to dry on the breakfast table. 

Then it was my turn. They called in the chips, and here I was, 3 to 4 decade younger than there, feeling valueless and fragile and the Oldsters were telling me that I still had plenty of time left. But I was not convinced. 

Madeline Bedal from Montana, who took just turned 91 wasn't with us. I miss her terribly, as she is my touchstone for the residency. She, who was a kindergarten teacher, who became legally blind, who thought she had nothing of value to contribute, told us extraordinary stories of her pioneer childhood, enthralled us.

In the rain, dancing without an umbrella (Westlake/Merrill Gardens journal)

Singing, dancing in the rain, the world is transformed, even the gutters lose distinction with the sidewalks and curbstones. The rain pounds the pavement with such vigor that the streets are transformed into vast, gray trampolines, and the Magritte’s Golconda jumpers are falling from the clouds. Not to mention the cats and dogs. The rain bounces up and blurs that distinction between street and curb, ocean and sky. 

Today, in my Elder writing group at Merrill Gardens, one old woman from the northern provinces, tried to reconstruct images of home. She wanted to become a phoenix and rise up from her own ashes in another country. She studied hard to be a doctor. Tomorrow I’ll be 88, she said. I have not thought about China for many years. She is beginning to remember after forgetting the atrocities of the past for so many years.

She said, Once it was raining in her village, the Japanese had invaded, so she walked to school in the rain without an umbrella. She needed to be the strong one, she didn’t let go of her young cousin’s hand, not even when the rain beat down with such force, that their legs turned yellow from the mud. She tells me that the Yangtze means yellow river.

Rivulets made their way to the ocean, to the China Sea, and the school became a raft across the sea to Africa, to the Sahara, and then to Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, the place of flowers, where she made her escape and met her husband in transit, waiting there for years as he perfected his surgery on the open heart. 

The breakthrough operation was the first of its kind in a country of parched thirst, under siege, in a drought. She wears an umbrella for the sun. She is waiting for her people to go to Cold Mountain, where she watched her first movie of a man with an umbrella, singing and dancing in the rain, and his heart was full. He was dancing with an open heart. The rain rose up, like a flock of phoenixes, seeking the eye of the sun.

11/12/2004 Writers’ Group