Good and Exciting Things Still Happen

Sunny Juliet post-paddle

The puppy and I are home. SJ loves the yard at the farm, and she had her first dog paddle in Lake Leelanau. We are still adjusting, but in time what I call her “good girl potential” is going to come shining through, and we will be fine. Meanwhile, the world has gone on turning – and besides all the bad news and my personal grief, there are some wonderful and exciting things happening, too.

 

A Pulitzer Winner

 

For instance? Well, someone I know won a Pulitzer Prize. And she’s a Michigan poet, too. 

 

Originally from Niles, Diane Seuss (cousin of a friend so dear he and his wife and kids are like family) first appeared on Grath radar when she was one of a number of women poets (the event was billed as “women poets”) reading their work in a classroom setting at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. (Yes, there really is a Kalamazoo, but there is only one.) It was a small event that the Artist and I attended together, at the suggestion of our friend, Michael, the poet’s cousin.

 

Diane, as I recall her on that long-ago day, was young, barefoot, and wore a long cotton hippie sort of skirt. Instead of standing behind the desk and reading from the small lectern, she sat on the desk, bare feet swinging. I remember being somewhat dubious and not expecting much. 

 

Then she read.

 

At the end of her first poem, the Artist and I looked at each other in amazement. Had we really heard what we thought we heard? I wish now that I had made notes (and kept them) of the pieces that made our hair stand on end that day. I do remember going to see our friend, her cousin, Michael, soon afterward to tell him that I would be more than happy to type Diane’s manuscript for free if she needed a typist, so that her work could be published with the least possible delay. 

 

But her career did all right without my help. A Guggenheim Fellow in 2020, she received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021. And now, for her frank: sonnets, she has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The Pulitzer committee said of this book that it is “a virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form….” Wow. I mean -- wow! A Pulitzer!!!

 

 

Coming From Way Behind

 

Then there was another winner, the long shot, come-from-behind winner of the 2022 the Kentucky Derby, which I was unable to watch as I was on the road that day, traveling the last stretch of my cross-country odyssey home to Michigan from Arizona. I had no idea of the horses running that day, and the names would have meant nothing to me, but someone posted a link on Facebook, I watched it a couple days later, and -- Oh my God, I have never seen such a race! Has there ever been such a race? The announcer himself, focused on the front runners, never saw the upset coming, even as Rich Strike was coming up through the field, passing every horse in sight.

 

What a horse! What a race! Nunca te rindas! Never give up! 80 to 1 odds! Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! It is an exciting race every time I re-watch it!

 

 

Life Is Hard, Driving Is Easy

 

How many of my friends offered to fly out to Tucson and drive back with me across the country to Michigan? I lost count. There were a lot, and quite honestly, not to sound churlish or ungrateful, I had a few moments of annoyance at all the concern. Did my husband’s death render me suddenly incompetent and/or foolish? And how could I even begin to imagine making that long, familiar, cross-country drive David and I had made together so many times with anyone who wasn’t David? The very idea, so popular among my friends, I found unthinkable. 

 

I wrote recently, “This trip was, for me, a kind of pilgrimage but not to one particular destination: the entire length of the journey was its point.” It was, if you will, a kind of secular-marital Camino de Santiago, driven rather than walked, and I had to do it alone. We walked around the square in this little town. It was on this stretch of country two-lane road that we saw the armadillo. My memories would mean nothing to anyone else.

 

The other thing is that since the Artist died, missing him so terribly, I do a lot of crying in the car. A second person would have constrained that tearful freedom, conversation would have impinged on my memories, pushing them aside, and silence would not have been the comfortable kind that comes about in a marriage after decades of crazy passion, sturm und drang, quiet, mundane happiness, and all the rest, whereas alone on the road, I had no need to respond except to my puppy, and while Sunny Juliet occasionally makes demands (she is both vocal and physical in making her needs known), she never asks questions. 

 

“But who will help you with the driving?” people frequently asked. At the end of my odyssey, I was able to put into words what I had known intuitively from the beginning, which is, as the heading of this section of my post puts succinctly, “Life is hard (well, it can be), but driving is easy.” Driving for days requires focus on the task at hand, but except for puppy needs I had no other responsibilities. All I had to do was cover miles. I could take the roads I wanted to take – roads the Artist and I had traveled before – and stop when I wanted to or keep going if I didn’t need or want to stop, consulting only Sunny’s requirements and my own inclination. The hardest part of the odyssey had nothing to do with driving. It was that Sunny slept so much in the car that she wasn’t tired at the end of the day, and I had to amuse and entertain her for three or four hours in the motel when all I really wanted to do was fall asleep over a book or in front of a movie.

One ear up and one ear down

But, as I said up there at the beginning today, we made it, and now we go on from here, day by day. Thanks to David’s gift of a puppy and Sunny Juliet’s presence, I am not alone. Then, too, there are all our friends! 

I'm not alone

So feel free to quote me: "Life is hard, driving is easy."

And then, the other evening in Leland –

 

Summer art classes in Leland, Michigan, began in 1922, a century ago, thanks to Allie Mae Best. Fifty years ago Michigan State University began offering six-week, for-credit art classes every summer in Leland. My late husband, David Grath, a.k.a. “the Artist” here on Books in Northport, came to Leland to study as a master’s student from MSU (having discovered Leland somewhat earlier, but that’s another story), and so for the 100^th anniversary celebration I was asked to loan one of his paintings for the show, which opened Thursday evening, May 12, and runs through May 18 (open 11-3 daily). The show included works by students and instructors from as long ago as the 1960s.

 

I wasn’t sure I was up for a big public event. What would it feel like to be there, in the building where the Artist had so many one-man shows over the years and where so many friends and acquaintances would be gathered? Could I handle it? I just didn’t know, but a friend said she and her husband would meet me outside and we could go in together. 

 

It was a lovely, lovely evening! I was so, so glad to be there and was so glad in retrospect that I didn’t miss it that I had to stop by again to photograph a couple things I missed on Thursday evening. Here, then, are a few of the images that touched my heart. 

 

"Every Day You're Getting Prettier and Prettier"
and 
"Tricoastal"
by David Grath

Paul Welch

"Painting of Portrait," by Paul Welch

"Vanitas," by Paul Welch

"Gauntlet," by Janine Germaine

"Cat? What Cat?" (from the Monster series), by Janine Germaine

screen by Jane McChesney

"Eden," by Cliff McChesney (typical large work of his)

"Soul Catcher," by Cliff McChesney (atypically small for Cliff)

You must forgive me some sentimentality in these choices. I was never a student in the summer art classes but fell under the spell of Cliff and Jane McChesney (as had all their summer art students) when I met them at a dinner party at the home of Jim and Linda Harrison. They were truly lovely people. So while I have no personal memories of the summer art classes, I have my own set of memories, and many of the names invoked on Thursday evening were names I recognized, calling up fond thoughts of years past. 

Where We've Been, Where We're Going

It Wasn’t the Same at All

 

Sunny and I went over to the Dragoon Mountains the other day. I knew it wouldn’t be the same without the Artist, but Sunny had never been there (true of so many places for one as young as she), and I wanted a different destination for our day, so I drove west on Ironwood Road from 191, Sunny’s mind a pretty blank slate, I'm guessing, while her dog mom’s was a crowded album of memories.

 

The first time our old pack, David and Sarah and I, explored up that road was in 2019, and I remember the mountains coming gradually nearer and nearer as the road left civilization behind, my excitement growing so that, by the time we reached Mile 1, I had to jump out of the car to photograph the sign. Somehow this time it looked quite ordinary. Because it wasn’t my first time? Well, yes, I've seen it many times since 2019. As we went on, however, it wasn't only the fact that I’d traveled this road before or my acute awareness of the Artist’s absence that made this trip with Sunny feel so different. 

Cochise County was very snowy in the winter of 2018-19. This past winter, by contrast, was warm and dry, so that places where before we forded running water in the past had nary a trickle this year. And that’s not all. Last year the Forest Service apparently decided that having roads underwater was – not a good idea? hazardous? Whatever their reasons, the most exciting crossings of our 2019 adventure are now not only dry, at present, but when water does flow there again, it will flow in culverts underneath cement. Not the same at all! I’m glad the Artist and I made our safari when we did. Look at the difference between the way it used to be and the way it is now. Not the same at all, is it?

It was still a lovely day, though, with bull thistles and prickly poppies in bloom, and Sunny found everything she saw and heard and smelled new and interesting. It's all new to her.

Not Only About Horses

I've read other books by Mark Rashid and written about them in this blog, so you won't be surprised when I say I was thrilled to find one I hadn't seen before over in Benson the day my friend Juleen and I met for a few hours together. Horsemanship Through Life called out to me from the shelf -- and it did not disappoint. Many years ago when I took a dressage class one winter in Kalamazoo, it was in part to be around horses and in part to cultivate in myself traits necessary for being around horses but also good in other areas of life: I wanted to become more calm, confident, and consistent overall. The lessons Rashid learned in his study of the practice of aikido and transferred to working with horses are similarly transferrable to other general life experiences, and a disarming feature of the personal stories he tells is that he doesn't gloss over his own failures and shortcomings. Rather, he presents the times he has gotten "stuck" as, eventually, occasions for learning new lessons he realized he needed to learn.

Is it too much to hope that I can use the wisdom from this book on horsemanship and life to my very, very challenging puppy project? I certainly hope so, because I need all the help I can get on the road from puppyhood to good dog with Sunny Juliet!

Other Books Read Since Last List Appeared

43. Crais, Robert. Suspect (fiction)

44. Smith, Alexander McCall. The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe (fiction)

45. Crais, Robert. The Promise (fiction)

46. Tyler, Anne. A Spool of Blue Thread (fiction)

47. Rooney, Kathleen. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (fiction)

48. ??? [I know there was one in here but forget what it was.]

49. Field, Rachel. Hepatica Hawks (fiction)

50. Levine, Stephen. Meetings at the Edge: Dialogues with the Grieving and the Dying, the Healing and the Healed (nonfiction)

51. Juanita, Judy. The High Price of Freeways: Stories (fiction)

52. Weiner, Ellis & Barbara Davilman. How to Raise a Jewish Dog (fiction? nonfiction? You tell me!)

53. Watson, Richard. The Philosopher’s Demise: Learning to Speak French (nonfiction)

54. Rashid, Mark. Horsemanship Through Life (nonfiction)

Please note that I actually read two humorous books #52 & #53) and, yes, laughed out loud over both!

And now, in closing, a heartbreaker -- if, that is, you see what I saw.

Last; Latest; Puppy

January 16, 2022: the last picture taken of us together

I’ve been compiling mental lists of “lasts” lately, for instance, the last photograph taken of the two of us (above), smiling happily, blissfully ignorant of what the near future had in store. A last finished painting, last visit to the coffee house, our last good day at the cabin, and last hopeful day in the hospital. Since much of our life together, from the very start, had to do with books, naturally I see around me the last books the Artist was reading in his final days. 

 

Last Books He Was Reading

 

The Book of Unusual Knowledge was a Christmas gift from one of my sisters and just the kind of compilation of esoterica that the Artist loved. (Bettie, I hope it pleases you to know that your gift pleased David!) Italy Fever was something I picked up for David in Tucson when he was recovering from his January surgery. (He had always wanted to go to Italy.) Paris Was Ours, a book he loved, is a collection of nonfiction essays, one or two of which he read aloud to me and at least one I read aloud to him. Naturally, the title speaks to my heart, also, because although we never got to Italy, we had a glorious time together in France, so we will always have Paris.

David and I have always been happy to re-read Jim Harrison’s books, and Off to the Side traveled to several Arizona hospitals with the Artist in January and February. Peter Matthiessen was another writer who was an acquaintance (it would be too much to claim him as a friend), and we had – I have – two copies of The Snow Leopard here in the cabin, a hardcover and a paperback. Born to Kvetch was something David acquired very recently (maybe on our last visit to the FOL bookstore in Sunsites?), and since he kept insisting that it was a book I would really enjoy, I have now begun to read it. As he assured me, it is much more serious than the title suggests.

Born to Kvetch and Italy Fever he had not finished when he set them aside at the time of his final hospitalization, and the same was true of The Little Prince, though I was gratified by his appreciation of the opening pages of that book I love so much. Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, on the other hand, he had been carrying around for years, dipping into it on frequent occasions. When I took it to him in the hospital and apologized for bringing only one small book on that particular day, he protested that it was more than enough: “It’s a whole world!” A day or two later I took him two more books, which he set aside to open on his birthday -- and then he inscribed the Tao Te Ching to me. It was the last book he gave me. His birthday turned out to be one of the five days he was in a coma, and on the following three days (his last), when he was fully present to Maiya and me, none of us gave the slightest thought to birthday presents. 

 

Latest Books I Have Read Since Last Listing

 

27.      Curtis, Christopher Paul. The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 (fiction – YA)

28.      Chatwin, Bruce. In Patagonia (nonfiction)

29.      Siegal, Mordecai & Matthew Margolis. I Just Got a Puppy. What Do I Do? (nonfiction)

30.      Charles, Janet Skeslien. The Paris Library (fiction)

31.      Fraser, Laura. An Italian Affair (nonfiction)

32.      Muir, John. All the World Over: Notes From Alaska (nonfiction)

33.      Portes, Andrea. The Fall of Butterflies (fiction - YA)

34.      Tweed, William C. King Sequoia (nonfiction)

35.      Shafak, Elif. The Bastard of Istanbul (fiction)

36.      Howard, Maureen. Expensive Habits (fiction)

37.      Howard, Maureen. Facts of Life (nonfiction)

38.      Rowlands, Penelope, ed. Paris Was Ours (nonfiction)

 

The Watsons and In Patagonia are books I read in Chandler, Arizona, to distract myself, first from dread, later from sorrow. I thought I would never finish the Chatwin (and that those hours would never crawl by), then wondered if I would ever be able to finish another book again in my life. Well, you see that I have, and yet there are stacks everywhere around me with bookmarks showing where I stopped before laying them aside. In at least two cases, they were books the Artist hadn’t finished reading, either. Somehow it is difficult for me to read past the point where he left off.

 

The Puppy

 

Sunny Juliet

I always told David that he and Sarah were my most popular blog topics, much more appealing to my readers than any of my musings on books or philosophy or politics or even nature. A nature walk was fine, as long as Sarah was in it, too, but the best outdoor posts were those in which the Artist’s presence also figured. Sarah, then Peasy (“Give Pease a chance!” was the cry from my readers), but always, any chance image or utterance of my husband was guaranteed to be a hit. 

 

Labor Day 2021 - walking in the meadow - a beautiful day

Now there is Sunny, one of the Artist’s last gifts to me. (There – another “last” or, in this case, “almost last,” as those squeezes of the hand during his last days were really the last and most precious gifts he gave me.) “Leave the gun, take the cannoli!” became “Forget the motorcycle, get the puppy!” So I am not absolutely alone, because Sunny Juliet is here with me, night and day. 

The puppy and I visited a friend in Tucson last week.

Every day is an outdoor day.

Whether or not Sunny will be a bookstore dog remains to be seen, as she has a lot to learn and is not at all the “easy” puppy that Sarah was, by any means. For starters, unlike my last three dogs, she is a barker, with a very sharp, insistent little yap. I am hoping to train her out of the barking but have my work cut out for me and only hope the nipping and chewing is a teething stage and will, with continued encouragement, cease and desist as she grows up. And right now I have to be on the alert every minute she is awake and not crated, because the books on my shelves draw her like a magnet!

She is smart. She has almost unlimited energy. She is not a cuddler but does greet each day and each reunion with me or friends, after a night’s sleep or a quarter-hour’s separation, with happy, wiggling, kissy enthusiasm. She is a good dog. And come what may, she is my dog, for keeps. We are a pack of two. One other thing is certain: a puppy does not let a person live exclusively in the past. However tempting the memories of happy days gone by, a puppy has needs that must be met now! Yes, Sunny, mama sees you!

"Too Much," Part III

 

Sunny Juliet and her cuddly elephant

Another overly eventful week has passed in the life of the Artist and the seasonally retired bookseller, with continued hospitalization and another surgery for the Artist -- who is now well launched into what will be a slow, but we trust steady, recovery this time around -- and, for the bookseller, long hours of waiting for phone calls, taking care of the new puppy, and a couple of all-day expressway commutes to the Phoenix area and back to spend 20 or 30 minutes each time with my darling. With each visit to the hospital, I am struck by the essential and priceless importance of presence, the irreplaceable comfort of immediacy. Cell phones have helped immeasurably in the last couple of months, making conversations possible across distance, but there is no substitute for being side by side, holding hands, and looking into each other’s eyes. 

 

That’s pretty much all I’m going to say today, except for books I’ve read since the last time I listed titles. As you can see, I have spent a lot of my waiting time with reading. That and finding soothing lullaby music on my cell phone to help Sunny Juliet get to sleep at night in her crate. Last night we had cello lullabies, and I couldn’t even read a whole page before I was off to dreamland myself.

 

19. Scott, Ann Herbert. Cowboy Country (fiction – juv.). This is a book for children about the real life and work of cowboys, and the illustrations by Ted Lewin are just marvelous.

Beautiful images!

20. Morrison, Rusty. After Urgency (poems).

21. Airgood, Ellen. South of Superior (fiction).

22. Herman, Michelle. Dog (fiction).

23. Henkin. Joshua. Morningside Heights (fiction)

24. Felsen, Henry Gregor. Two and the Town (fiction - YA)

25. Collins, Billy. The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems.

26. Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Passions (fiction)

 

Note #1: Two of the novels in this week’s list are books I have read before. Sometimes life’s unexpected curve balls make the comfort of familiar books necessary good medicine.  

Note #2: Overwhelming as life can be, it is still far, far from "too much," and the Artist and I look forward to more, together.

More of this beautiful life together, please!