AN OPEN LETTER TO ESSAYIST, AUTHOR AND POET NANCY MAIRS

Dear Nancy,

Thank you for writing, for slogging along, for saying out what's within. Thank you for choosing life, time and again. Thank you for modeling so strong a response to what it is to be seen as different/outcast/less-than. Thank you for writing about loss, its lessons, contours and ordinariness, Thank you for your candor and courage in evaluating yourself and your motives. That’s worth saying again: thank you for modeling honesty and bravery; thank you for your candor and courage.

Thank you for questioning, for not pretending to have the answers. Thank you for lifting the lens of feminism, for allowing me to look through it with you at the world, our society, my motives. Thank you for thoughtful reflections, wry humor, truth-telling.

Thank you for offering hope.

I have read all your books save the most recent one, and that one I ordered today. Finding “On Being a Cripple” in an anthology of essays led me to ferret out your books at our local university library. I read Plaintext, Ordinary Time, In All the Rooms of the Yellow House, then before I finished Remembering the Bone House, I had to return the lot. I was hooked. I ordered a copy of each, paycheck by paycheck. By now I’ve also read and wept and laughed and cheered and underlined my way through Voice Lessons and Carnal Acts and A Troubled Guest and Waist-High in the World.

You show me myself. This dumfounds me. I am not a woman, a wife, a mother. I am not a cripple. I am no Catholic. Yet you lead me into the plain, ordinary, bone yellow house of myself. It stinks. It smells beautiful. It leaves a metallic tang on my tongue. You open one chamber after another, invite me to peer inside. This room reeks of growing up, that one of being different, discounted, discarded. This one smells of sex, cum and desire; that one carries a whiff of wholeness, of bodymindspirit. And here—oh compelling fragrance!—indignation, independence, inseeing.

Am I looking at you? At me? At me through you? You lead me to realize—no, to real-ize, to real eyes. You help me see what’s around and inside me. What you write, what I read rings true. You do not candy coat your experiences, opinions, evaluations. You look long and hard at life, at self, at society. You are candid about the pain involved in all of these endeavors. Yet you come down on the side of hope, of life, of joy. When my journey lands me in similar places I find you already there, already exploring the territory, explaining what you’ve heard, seen, smelled, tasted, touched.

Your writing inspires, instructs, encourages, equips. Your writing resonates, reverberates, reassures. In reading you I better know myself; I lean more deeply into my own losses and my responses to them. I am reaffirmed in my daily decisions to choose life.

Thank you for your acts of creation and co-creation. I remain

Gratefully yours,

Bryn Marlow

Nancy Mairs:

In All the Rooms of the Yellow House (1984)

Plaintext (1986)

Remembering the Bonehouse (1989)

Carnal Acts (1990)

Ordinary Time (1993)

Voice Lessons (1994)

Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled (1996)

A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories (2001)

Essays Out Loud: On Having Adventures & A Necessary End (CD) (2004)

A Dynamic God: Living an Unconventional Catholic Faith (2007)

ODE DE TOILETTE

If I had to guess, I'd say your bladder is two or three times the size of mine. Seems I have a teeny one. Probably I have a small large intestine, too. At home, I make tracks to the toilet far more often than does my husband; at work, my colleagues sometimes rap on the restroom door, tell me to get a move on. Whatever the reason, I am a peeing and pooping marvel.

It has occurred to me that I might be full of sh*t.

Indeed, this may come close to the truth. Although I grew up during the societal upheaval of the 1960s and 70s, my conservative mother and father, fundamentalist church members and rural neighbors did their best to keep the 1950s in full swing.

Children obeyed their parents. The spared rod spoiled the child. A woman's place was in the home, or in the hospital, delivering the latest baby. The Bible, especially as interpreted by our denomination, was the final authority on all matters of life and living.

These and other similarly self-evident truths I swallowed whole.

Only as my palette developed did I begin to sort out what is healthful and wholesome from what tastes likes crap. Looking back I feel abashed at some of the beliefs I held. No, I feel sorry for the youngster who ingested whoppers such as these:
I am a good boy. My sole chance at happiness in this life and the next rests upon my being good.

A good boy always makes God and his mother happy, not necessarily in that order.

As a good boy my self-worth depends on how well I please my mother.

A good boy follows the rules and does as he is told.

A good boy does not get angry.

A good boy has neither sexual thoughts nor sexual desires. And never, never sexual experiences.

Never.

Every good boy marries a good girl when he grows up.

These principles and their ilk hung in the air I breathed. They were stirred into my morning oatmeal. They were repeated by school teachers and radio preachers. We prayed them aloud at bedtime. Some I didn’t seriously examine until I came out as a gay man.

I started doing many things differently then. One, I pay attention to my nighttime dreams, peer into an interior world I long ignored. Recently I attended a weekend dream retreat led by a Jungian analyst who is also a Catholic nun. As I told her, a consistent dream theme for me is the elimination of bodily wastes.

“That’s usually a very positive dream symbol,” she said. “It may mean you are getting rid of a lot of shit.” (The Catholic clerics I know seem quite willing to use words good boys avoid.)

She set me thinking. In both my waking and sleeping hours I spend much time on the toilet. What lessons this humble instrument offers!
Oh porcelain fount that every day—several times a day—washes away and makes clean.

I marvel at your ability to accept that which good boys don’t want to touch, smell, admit, own.

You have learned the secret of letting go. You swallow a lot of shit; people dump loads onto, into you, but you allow it to flow through and away.

You model non-attachment. Grasp nothing. Material things are not worth holding onto. There is wisdom and utility and joy in release.

You understand with deep knowing, “This, too, shall pass.”

You do your work without complaint, without ado, no need for accolades.

I am flush with gratitude.

This essay appeared in the July 2009 issue of The Letter

LIKE A ROCK

When first I see him, my breathing goes shallow and quick. My pulse revs. My hands turn rubbery.

I’m on MySpace or Facebook and I’ve just seen his photo. It's no bigger than a postage stamp but its impact on me is billboard-sized—one of those roadside signs with a picture so arresting it causes traffic accidents.

I click on the word “profile” beside his name. Nothing. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing. Clicklicklicklicklick. Nothing. I am a stranger to social networking sites. Several eternities pass before I learn I must create an account if I want to view his profile. Fine. Sign me up.

I make up a first and last name, try to enter my real email@yahoo.com address. It goes in and through as me@yazoo.com. Fine. I’ll rename the company if I have to. Just let me see his profile. Let me see if there’s anything more to see.

There is.

He’s posted seven photos of himself. Two show a sandy-haired young man in a red argyle sweater, blue-gray eyes, slight smile. His hair is still curly, I see. His face still mingles considered seriousness with an earnest eager-to-please look. In one photo he leans against a tree. In another he looks directly into the camera. The caption: “Yah, my high school graduation pictures. I look like a dork.” In the other photos he holds a guitar. Stands on a backyard stage, in front of a microphone. Caption: “I play in a Christian rock band.”

My son plays in a rock band! I had no idea.

Four years after his mother and I separated, a few days after he turned 10, he terminated contact with me. “Dad, I don’t want to see or talk to you. Don’t think that anyone else has influenced me to make this decision. I came up with it on my own.”

Except for the two photos of him my mother has sitting out, I’d hardly know what he looks like nowadays. I could easily pass him on the street, not recognize him. These seven photos are the heart’s feast.

They've nourished me for four years now.

This past week I make another of my periodic visits to Facebook. I poke around, find a teeny photo of another of my three sons. He looks to have grown tall, lost weight. He’s dressed all in black—black fedora, too—with a red tie and white boutonniere, hands in pockets, stands beside a young woman, hair piled atop her head, red dress, plunging neckline. His senior prom photo? I can only surmise.

It’s been four years since I saw him and his twin brother. Just before they turned 14 they met with a judge, asked that visitation with me be terminated. I arrived at their mother’s home to pick them up for their birthday party, found the restraining order taped to the door.

Some days it sucks being a homosexual father in rural Indiana.

I look at this small photo, let sadness wash over me. I keep learning to acknowledge, accept and feel my feelings. No sense running from them. No use trying to hide. Buried, they only rot to rise like zombies unbidden and at inopportune times.

Instead, I open myself to my emotions, open wider yet to let them wash over, through, past. Sadness keeps coming, sometimes like waves pounding the coast. I imagine myself as a rock, deeply rooted in living earth. Waves of sorrow, rage and fear may wash over it, but the rock remains.

My feelings are not me. No emotion, no judge, no other person can determine who I am at core.

This essay appeared in The Letter mid-month online issue, June 2009.

WEREWOLVES, WEREFOXES, WERE’POSSUMS, OH, MY!

No moon or stars visible when I finally go out to gather eggs. The hens have long  since gone to roost. Unable to see in the dark, they always settle in early. And chickens don’t sleep walk.

But someone or something is.

I open the coop door, find the hanging feeder swinging back and forth. Some creature has just been digging in  it, and it warn’t no chicken. My eyes widen; my heart thumps.

I shine the flashlight all around. Nothing out of place. No signs of struggle. Chickens all present, all okay. What could it be?

A few years back, same summer cancer was eating its way through my dad’s body, some predator raided our coop almost nightly. Chickens disappeared one by one. Or, as with a newly hatched brood of chicks, a dozen at a time. My husband Dave and I didn’t know what was after them, or what action to take.

We doubled the height of the barnyard fence to eight feet. Next day, another chicken gone.

We barred the doorway with chicken wire. Next day, two chickens gone.

We sealed the coop doors tight. Next day, all present and accounted for. Day after that, another chicken gone.

Whatever it was—snake, opossum, raccoon, weasel, mink, marten, fox, coyote, wolf, mountain lion, grizzly bear, Big Foot, Loch Ness monster—it was voracious. It was canny. Fearsome. Stealthy. Smarter than we were.

It upped the ante, started making daylight raids. We foiled its attacks only after enclosing our flock in a high-security fence. We dug a trench, started the chicken wire barricade a foot below ground to discourage digging underneath it, then fenced the sides and up over the top as well. At last the chicken population stabilized. 

We never did identify the perpetrator.

Has it now come back? I watch the feeder swinging to and fro. What creature breached our security? A human? 

The answer pokes out from under a nest box. I spot the scaly tail of an opossum. The beast must have crept in the other day when I left the gate open, let the chickens roam the lawn.

Next day Dave chases the opossum out using a shovel as shield, the end of a rake handle as motivation. I cheer him on from behind the coop door. Our foe snarls, hisses, bites, leaves. All is quiet for a few days. Then I find the feeder swinging back and forth again. Just our luck, I tell Dave. We’re being haunted by a were’possum with supernatural powers of translocation. 

Nope. 

Dave thinks to check the maximum security fence, finds a hole big enough for a horde of were-opossums to tromp through. 

I fix the fence. No more nighttime visitors. 

Yet I’m grateful they showed up in the first place. They gave me a wake-up call, set me thinking about my inner life, put me on the lookout for trespassers. Suddenly (or maybe not), there they were, coming out of the woodwork. What, translocating? Strangers, friends, family, institutionalized religion, former employer tromping willy-nilly over personal boundaries I thought were secure, draining my resources. 

I reminded  myself that I am only one person, can do only so much. I examined my inner fences, patched the holes, said No.

Out of the coop, ’possum.

Life is like this. Exquisitely coherent. The ’possum in my outer life prompts me to look inside for something similar. What do I notice? What is happening there? How am I feeling about it? What would I like to have happen? How might I feel then? What will I do now? 

Out of awareness, change.

An earlier version of this essay first appeared in The Letter, May 2009

A SQUARE OF BRIGHT BLUE SKY

“I woke up 42 years ago,” she said, looking me dead in the eye. “I woke up and all I could see was a square of bright blue sky.”

I had no idea what she meant. She leaned in, eager to talk. I leaned in, too. Her speech was hard to understand. Her top teeth protruded from her mouth; her bottom teeth were missing. Her words came out fuzzy. I listened carefully. It took time to untangle her story. With no one to corroborate or clarify her narrative, I had to sort out the details for myself.

She is now 83. A month ago she moved into the nursing home where my father-in-law resides. Her husband, at age 42, lost his life in an automobile accident; that was 42 years ago. She was in the car, too. She lost her memory in the collision, had to start over from scratch at age 41. When she woke up she recognized no one, not even her children. She had no recall of her past or her purpose in the world. “I woke up 42 years ago and all I could see a square of bright blue sky. I said, ‘thank you, Lord, for that square of bright blue sky.’ That was all I knew.”

As she spoke, she brushed her white hair back from her neck and I saw a small praying hands pin attached to the collar of her purple velour dress. Her Sunday best, I surmised. She had listened to a Catholic television program that morning, she said. “It helps me, you know.”

It was a challenge for her, reconstructing a life from thin air at age 41. It still is. After the car accident, she was transferred to a Veteran’s Administration hospital, evidence she had once served in the armed forces. She has been in and out of VA hospitals ever since, most recently when she fell this past winter and broke one hip, then fell and broke the other. She was transferred from the VA to this nursing home. Her daughter lives in the next county over.

“It’s not easy to wake up at 41.” She said this several times throughout the course of our conversation and laughed each time in apology. It seems she takes personal responsibility for having misplaced four decades of her life. Here’s another phrase she often repeats: “You just never know.”

“Things change. You just never know.

“I lived with my son down in Florida until he passed away. You just never know.

“I’ve lived too long. I don’t want to be here anymore. Maybe the Lord has some reason for keeping me around, but I don’t know what it is. You just never know.”

I nodded and agreed with her each time. No, you never know. She sums up her life with this one phrase. And no wonder.

I don’t know what it’s like to lose 40 years of memory; I hope I never find out. But I do know that what she says resonates with my experience of coming out. I felt as if I were waking up at age 35. It was upheaval and it was exciting; it was terrible and it was wonderful; it was life and blue horizons and I was grateful. My husband recounts a similar awakening experience at age 48.

He and I often voice regret and sadness over lost decades, lost opportunities, lost life. We also recount joyful memories, our present happiness. And I usually voice anger. I feel angry to see my former self reflected in several people whom I see sleepwalking through their lives. I want to shake them, wake them up, shine blue sky square in their faces.

Of course, I can’t talk. I can barely keep my own eyes open. My husband just reminded me that income taxes are due in a matter of days. This came as a complete surprise. No, I have not the wisdom, wit nor authority to take responsibility for another’s awakening. But what I can do is tell my story. I can lean forward, look you—or anyone who will listen—dead in the eye, and in words that may or may not sound fuzzy say, “I woke up 15 years ago. It’s been hell. It’s been heaven. I woke up and saw a square of bright blue sky, and I said, ‘thank you, world. Thank you for that square of bright blue sky.’ I’ve been looking up ever since.”

This essay first appeared in The Letter, April 2009

UNASSUMING CONQUEROR

My husband Dave and I tend chickens—a small barnyard flock, but enough hens that we have eggs coming out our ears at the peak of the spring laying season. When production drops in the heat of summer we enjoy something other than egg white omelets for supper.

Every so often during the warmer months one or another of our hens goes broody. She gets a glint in her eye appropriate to a religious acetic about to don a camel’s hair shirt and retreat to the dessert. Approached by rooster, hen or human, she fluffs up to twice her normal size and utters a cry of righteous reproach that one soiled with the affairs of the world should intrude upon the presence of the holy. She clucks aloud as if already addressing a nest of newly hatched chicks. The wise intruder trammels no further motherhood’s sacred domain.

A broody hen sets 21 days upon a clutch of eggs. She’ll use her own eggs if she has been able to sneak away and fill a hidden nest. If home is a hen house with shared nest boxes, she uses a collection of her neighbors’ eggs. We have a separate pen for setting hens so they will be undisturbed. The hen keeps the eggs warm for three weeks, turns them every few hours, gets off the nest only for her daily constitutional. Motherhood is no small commitment. 

And so an egg—common, ordinary part of my daily repast—becomes the stuff of miracles. I’ve seen the insides of an egg. It’s all goop and goo. No feathers in there, no chicken feet, no little life form peeping with its own temperament. But keep an egg warm enough, long enough and at 18 or 19 days out it starts talking to you. I’ve heard it. Its mother hears, too, and she answers back, bonds with her baby before its hatched. Love knows no walls. At last a hole appears in the egg. The chick uses its egg tooth, a sharp temporary nail at the tip of its beak, to poke through, then scribe a rough line round the middle of the egg before finally breaking the shell apart. This process can take up to 14 hours. A wet bedraggled ragamuffin emerges, unassuming conqueror who has dared split the world open at its seams and step into a vast beyond imagining. When privileged to witness this process, I feel compelled almost to take off my shoes. The place I stand is holy ground.

Gathered under mom’s soft wings, the chick dries to a fluffy fuzzball of downy feathers—cute and adorable. Precocious, too, soon scurrying about, pecking, peeping, keeping close by mom’s protection, answering her summons, seeking her comforting bosom. 

But no matter the joy I take in watching newborn chicks, we need no more additions to our barnyard. We have too many chickens already. Dave and I talked it over this spring. He noted it’s easy enough to control population growth—don’t let any broody hens set this summer. We could try my grandmother’s remedy, I offered, put a broody hen under a bushel basket for a few days to disabuse her of the notion of motherhood. Were we agreed? I let him think so. But a few weeks later Blackie went broody, reminded me how much I enjoy seeing baby chickens. Sorely tempted to let her keep a few eggs, I put off putting her under a basket. I removed the eggs from under her each day, figured one of us would lose our resolve. She gave up first. I was relieved.

Then Thruff and Flighty went to setting at the same time. Golden brown Thruff hatched out a brood of chicks last year; I know her to be a good mother. Black and bronze Flighty is a first-timer. I was amazed she stayed on the nest, let me get within five feet of her. She was serious about this motherhood thing. Surely such commitment demanded I make allowances. Besides, when I consulted our hatchery catalog to see what they charged for fertile eggs one could put under a setting hen, I had dropped my jaw to learn we could order 10 eggs for a little over $40, or take advantage of their special deal—three common white eggs for $30, shipped post-paid, overnight express. Those are $20 omelets we eat each night. Greed tipped the balance. I moved both hens into a small pen with only five brown eggs between them. They could probably handle a dozen apiece. Such restraint on my part made it easier for me to tell Dave what I’d done. This news was better received when I stated aloud my intention to cull our flock, dispatch at least five aged hens to keep our population constant. Two days later I slipped a sixth dark brown egg under Flighty, hoped for the best. So much for restraint.

Come hatch day, four chicks appeared—one black, one dark brown, one buff with feathered feet, one yellow with brown speckles atop the head. The chicks had gathered at the front of the pen near Thruff; Flighty had pushed her way up there, too, asserting her claim to joint-motherhood. Flighty’s nest was now empty save for a dark brown peeping egg. Left cold and unattended, it would die. That would be my fault. This was probably the Johnny come lately egg I’d put to setting two days late. Thruff had one unhatched egg, as well; hers sloshed when I shook it. Apparently, it had not been fertile. I put mothers and babies in the coop, slipped the peeping egg under steely-eyed Fegan who had gone broody a few days earlier. She had been given six eggs. (Dave received a promise of more culling.) Fegan would keep this egg warm, no problem, I knew. Problem was, if it hatched out, I doubted she would tend it. She would keep her focus on the still-to-be-hatched majority. I would check in the morning. If if had hatched, I’d move it in with the other babies. 

The next evening the egg was peeping louder than ever, now had a small hole in it. Fegan was characteristically silent. (Her nickname is “Sphinx.” ) Did the little peeper need a mother’s coaxing to hatch? Should I put in under Thruff or Flighty for the night, hope it hatched by morning when the mothers would leave the nest with their brood? Should I leave it under Fegan? She’d stay put all night, in the morning, too. I opted for this latter course of action, went on to bed, would check at daybreak. Before midnight I got up, trekked out to the coop, moved the egg under Thruff. Coming-out efforts might better succeed with a caring, comforting, clucking response. When I checked in the next morning there was a dun-colored fluff ball in the coop and a smile on my face.

This essay is unpublished

DEAR JACK, DEAR ME

Notes From the Afterlife

If I were a cat I'd have seven lives left. I’m not and I don’t. I’m 15 years into my second life, no promise of a third. The first ended at age 35 with my coming out. Try as I might to reconcile my two lives, they resist union.  

Recently I contacted an acquaintance from my first life. I remember him as a tall, sexy  graduate student with an infectious smile and an outsider’s insight into our society. A U.S. citizen, he’d grown up overseas. We enjoyed long philosophical discussions. I lost track of him when he returned to Europe.

Thanks to the internet, I learned he now lives stateside, works for a religious institution. I emailed him this innocuous note:

Jack (not his real name),

Warm greetings and (mostly) good wishes to you in the midst of the yammering and clamoring of daily life.

I stumbled across your name today and smiled to think of you back when you wrote for the magazine I edited. Back when I yet called myself Doug, before I named myself. 

My file of abandoned to-do projects includes an airmail letter I started to you overseas. Perhaps this note is by way of laying that obligation to rest. <

I hope you are well and happy. Interesting how life continues apace, how it carries us along on its currents, how we do the best we can. How much this matters; how little.

Life and peace to you. And light, 

Bryn

He replied, addressing me by my birth name. Red flag. People who refuse to honor my name change also tend to discount the person I am now. Jack wrote:

Dear Doug,

Thank you for your note. I enjoyed writing for the magazine. There is something you write here that lacks wisdom: "I named myself." It is folly to think that we can name ourselves. We are not our own authors. We are the clay, not the Potter. 

What's in a name? "She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Everything's in THIS name: "For there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). 

And this is my only hope—that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He alone is true peace, light, and life,

Sincerely, 

Jack 

What gives? His response seems overblown. Somehow he must have learned I've come out. Apparently my making contact threatens him. What, is he afraid I’ll assault his belief system? His person? I feel angry.

At the same time, I've been where he is, smug and secure in self-righteous conviction on his side of the church door. If I write Jack off as a lost cause, I also throw out the former me he represents. I want to believe my first lifetime was not a total wash, that some part of what I did or who I was outlived my coming out. That's why I emailed Jack in the first place. When I answer him I also address the man I once was: 

Jack,

Curious (or maybe not) that you and I address comments to persons who lived some 14, 15 years ago, who are no longer present to life in a physical way. I write a Jack whom I perceived/projected to be in the thick of continued learning, able to pose questions, feeling his way into the future. You write a man named Doug, earnest, sincere, sure he knew where if not what the answers were. Peace to both those men. And to the men they are at present, may one day become.

Thank you for your response, for your time, energy and expression of hope/belief. Given the tenor of your words, the judgment I hear in them, and my desire for health, I choose to terminate contact with this email (leaving me the last word, I note) and say to that ages-ago Jack and his present incarnation, as I did to my father four years ago on his deathbed, three years later to my dying mother, then to my beloved grandmother, "I love you; I let you go."

Bryn

When I was little I wanted to be a cat when I grew up. In childhood, all bets were off, all options open. My world has narrowed since then. Nowadays the thought of having to endure nine lives leaves me feeling tired. I can’t seem to reconcile the two that have been granted me, let alone nine. I grieve the loss of my first life and my inability to bring people from my past into my present. This life after death is deeper, richer, fuller, different. I wish those I once loved were here to share it.

This essay first appeared in The Letter, February 2009