Finding the Universal in the small private details

     This weekend, I got to participate in the 20th annual South Coast Writer's Conference in Gold Beach, Oregon.  It was the Friday and Saturday of Valentine's Day and had a reoccurring theme that you have to go back, and dig deep in your roots before you find your own unique voice. I think it is true that everything you write eventually points the way back to who you are.  Even when I published my first fantasy novel, I kept hearing old friends and my Mother tell me, "I keep meeting you on every page."  And I had thought that, Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog,

http://www.amazon.com/Duffy-Barkley-not-Dog-Uhrlin/dp/1452836779/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

was not my story at all - but it turned out to be almost autobiographical.  Not that I am a 9 year old boy with Cerebral Palsy who survives a school shooting because the shooter doesn't want to put him out of his misery, but yeah, I'm on every page nevertheless.

Gold Beach is only 50 miles north of my home, on a long stretch of sea cliff Hwy. 101 where all the towns are 25 miles apart.  Just far enough away to feel like a bit of an escape and close enough to feel like home.

for pictures and my other, more writerly based blog

http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/2015/02/20th-annual-south-coast-writers.html

     Back in 1984 when my husband and I moved to Ashland, Oregon we discovered this beauty of a sea coast town and a small motel with cabins on the beach where we came as newlyweds.  I made reservations tree, but my husband of 30 years, flew to Spokane, WA with his All Northwest Honor Choir Students for a Valentine's Day Festival.  That too is kind of tradition, the first date we had was a month beforeValentine's Day and that Valentine's he was out of town at a Jr. College Speech Tournament.  Funny thing (When he transferred from a Wyoming, Jr. College, to Southern Oregon, they gave him Biology credit for that Forensics Class.)

Twice I have posted about Ireland's on this Blog

http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/2010/11/irelands-rustic-lodges-gold-beach.html

and

http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/2013/12/1997-losing-two-grandpas-and-still.html

     So anyway, this time I went alone to this lovely gem of a motel, on a Beach with NO MOSQUITOES on a Valentine's Weekend with 78* weather and gorgeous sunsets and a hot tub deck with 3 hot tubs I had all to myself on the beach surrounded by coastal pines and beach grass.

Then I got to participate in one of the best writer's workshops and it all cycled back to Ireland's again.

In a workshop by Mark Bennion, titled "Close Observation and Resonant Sources" I found a solution to those deadly sessions of Writer's Block and it is simple and worked for me.  He was the only instructor who started out by shaking everyone's hand and making eye contact and stating their name, and he repeatedly stated that in the tiniest local detail can be found the Universal truths that we can all resonate with.  He said, we have to become immune to wonder in order to function, so that eating a banana for the first time is nothing like eating a banana for the thousandth time, but if we want our writing to matter and connect on the universal level than we need to dig down deep in our personal past.

So the first thing that he had us do was make a long list of the things that make us smile, and everyone scribbled away for a few minutes.  Then three more times we had to pick one thing from that list and make a list of everything that one thing meant to us.  By the time we were on the 4th list everyone had more memories and stories flowing through that room than we could have shared in a lifetime, and they did all come back at the core, to things that we could all relate too universally.

His final item was a small red jacket.  A simple, easily forgotten item of childhood clothing, until he wrote a poem explaining in detail how this particular jacket was the one his younger brother played in, lived in, and was buried in.

My lists started with people and places I've loved and narrowed to Ireland's pay phone where I took the call telling us when we could come pick up my newly adopted baby boy who had only just been born, and where I stood and told my Dad about my healthy second son, a year later on the day we got him out of the Newborn intensive care unit a month before my Dad planned to visit.  It was also where I was the night my Mom tracked me down to tell me my Dad had lost the battle with esophageal cancer.  So I started writing, inspired again, and that small act quickly took me back into the novel I've been stuck on.  Nice to find a tool for getting unstuck.  Just start by remembering what makes you smile, then you will find all the things that make you feel, that make you human.

1997, losing two grandpas and still going on

Merry Christmas      1997

in front of the cabin people paint memories

And Happy Thanksgiving, because as I sit writing this, today is Thanksgiving and I am once again snuggled into our favorite cabin on the Dunes in Gold Beach, Oregon.  Even though we only rent these cabins occasionally, they have become our emotional refuge.  We discovered Gold Beach only six months after we were married in 1984.  We were here in a fire warmed, pine paneled cabin when we got the call telling us we would soon have baby Austin, His birth Mom was in the hospital.  We were there watching the waves crash and the gulls soar and the black tail deer forage among the marsh grasses within a week of springing Emerson from the neonatal intensive care unit after his birth.  We have celebrated birthdays here, hosted family and friends and it was here on the morning of February 1st that my Mother called to tell us that my father had escaped the pain ridden existence which his cancer had forced him into.

the Irelands viewing tower

to the beach

fun to build a cabin while at the cabin

Ireland's Rustic Lodges

 Dad's Death, though expected, was an emotional bombshell which cratered our hearts and still has us reeling in its aftershock.  Then two months later when our children's daycare "grandfather" died on the treadmill the day that he was to come home from a week long, heart attack induced stay in the I.C.U. - we found that we still had heart enough left to be wounded all over again.  And our world, at the end of 1997 is an emptier place than when it began.

Austin and Emerson especially have struggled to deal with the reality of DEATH happening twice.  They often say how sad or angry that their Papas both had to die.  They seem to have created their own image of comfort from a day which really happened in August of 1996 when Papa Paul and Papa Dale were at our house for a barbecue.  They spent time tossing a ball onto the sloping roof of our house and racing to catch it as it fell.  The boys tell us that their Papas are playing catch together again and that they sometimes stop to watch Austin and Emerson and be proud.  Austin told me, "The part of you that loves someone is too strong to die." and even three year old Emerson said it pretty well, "I'm sad because Papa died but I'm not sad that I loved him."

We have received a ton of support in cards and letters and sympathy from friends and family but each time I try to sit down to try to put onto paper my gratitude, I start to cry. So, now, on Thanksgiving day, let me tell you how much it meant to get those paper jugs.  To have you tell us that you care makes us feel loved and supported in a time which could have been very lonely and frightening.  And it was frightening to see the healthiest, most vital man go from racing my brother Lance to the top of Battle Rock and helping my kids back down, from riding the ferris wheel and climbing rocks in August of 1996 - to being thin, yellow and barely able to stand up in October, to looking older than my 98 year old great grandmother and being confined to a hospital bed in his living room in December.  When he finally died, it was a relief but God, We Miss Him!  Still it was special to be given those months to realize how precious our families are and to see his courage and sense of humor never fade no matter what happened to his body.  Right to the end, his conscious moments were spent telling his family that he loved us.

And so, on Thanksgiving, I turn my thought away from what I lost so quickly and force myself to see the treasures I still have and appreciate them for they are ours for all too brief a time.  I celebrate having been loved by Paul and Dale and I am so glad that my Dad knew how to live for today.  He always told us he loved us and took the time to enjoy this world with his family and friend.  We are still blessed to have many wonderful friends, one special Grandpa for our children, and three dynamic, beautiful Grandmas, and a loving family.  We love being in this world that can be cruel but that has, most often given us great beauty.

A big change for our family this year is that only one of us has been working since June, so the boys have been home instead of at Grandma Nadine's, finally able to sleep til 11:00 if they choose instead of being pried out of bed before 7:00 and dumped into a car set as they have been since they were six weeks old.  First I (Dixie) worked summer school and then went on Child rearing leave for a year beginning in september.  I'll go back in the fall of '98 when Austin starts Kindergarten and Greg will take a year off which will take us to the 1999-2000 school year when Emerson starts kindergarten.

Greg has valiantly gotten up and gone to work each day so that I could stay home and play with the boys.  We have doe a lot of fishing and hiking in the redwoods or beach.

Each of them is taking a dance and gymnastics class and some swimming lessons. Austin also did some horse riding.  They like doing school with Mom, starting to read and add and subtract but mostly they love music and singing songs that they make up.  We really enjoy our time together but surviving on one income requires some adjustments, but with no daycare bill or car payment we're doing it.

I'm also working on some children's books which I have wanted to write and illiterate for years.  I don't know if I'll ever be published but I have had a lot of experience reading and teaching from "Kiddy Lit." and my kid at home and at school always ask for more stories.

Greg is also taking a Spanish class two nights a week.  He's pretty good at languages and he's teaching some of it to our boys but language classes always make me sympathize with my handicapped students.  I don't learn easily.

Austin at 4 years, 8 months is still a joy and amazement.  He only has one volume, extremely loud, but he's full of enthusiasm and he's so smart.  He's racing a bit, knows all his letter names and sounds but prefers to look at the pictures and retell a story in his own words.  He is a funny mixture of fear (won't go in another room in our house alone even in the daylight) and courage (jumps off the high dive at the pool, rides a big horse, tries new flips and handstands in front of an audience.)  He's mean and gentle, sweet and sassy, WONDERFUL and we love him.

Emerson at 3 years, 7 1/2 months is very much our character actor.  He's more independent and plays aloe for hours and he's surely quieter, but quiet and independent can be a dangerous combination when teamed with his imagination i.e. a $1,400 damage to our van when fireman Emerson decided to wash his "fire truck" with a river rock "sponge."  He is Chief Cornplanter to John Smith, Long John Silver or Black Dog and if he has chosen a role then we all have our parts assigned, "Mommy's the witch and Austin is Hansel and Daddy's the woodcutter and I'm the Witch's helper."

It's hard to be happy at Christmas without my Dad but impossible to be unhappy at Christmas when blessed with two such marvelous sons. We wish you and yours much peace and health in 1998.  Merry Christmas and when you look at the picture of us at the local park remember that you are looking at people who love you and value your friendship,

Dixie, Greg and Austin and Emerson Goode