joyful!

                                                                                             Non-Fiction 

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September

On Dancing With God

by

Leah Thiessen

When I do something wrong or embarrassing, I get a burning sensation inside my chest—a mixture of regret and shame. This emotion is linked with things that I don’t want to think about. When I lose my iPod or when I am fighting with Aaron, I feel it.  When I get this feeling, I force myself to focus on the pain. I try not to distract myself. Whatever the circumstance, I have to face the reality, no matter how uncomfortable. I feel worse if I ignore feeling the guilt because I can sense it lingering in the depths of my mind, waiting to ruin my mood.

Ever since I remember, my body has been able to tell when a thunderstorm is coming. As a child, I felt that tingling, electrified heat running in my blood, putting me on edge. I hid in my room and looked inside myself, expecting to find a red-hot poker pressed to my heart; but there was nothing there. All I found was dread of what was to come.

The beautiful rain always started to fall and then the flashes of lightning and the cracks of thunder followed. I found glory in the torrents. I imagined the drops that struck the roof cascading down the shingles, cleansing everything in their path. I believed that the rain was God’s gift to me, refreshing the air of my stagnant world. I felt safe as long as I did not hear the thunder shaking the atmosphere or see tongues of lightning in the sky. I did not fear the water, tangible and more likely to hurt me though it was. As I grew up, the thought occurred to me that floods and slippery roads held more danger than any thunder and lightning. Almost every form of precipitation had more of an impact on my life; and still snow, hail, and rain never bothered me. I was plagued by fear I could not explain.

My mom lives in New York. During her last visit to Des Moines, we stayed in a hotel. My brother and my step-dad lay sprawled, snoring on their respective beds; and mom and I sat cross-legged on the cot sharing Wheat Thins and a can of spray cheese at two-thirty in the morning.  That night, she asked me if I remembered when my father forgot me. I imagined being left in HyVee or waiting outside school for two hours before someone showed up to get me. “No,” I said. I hadn’t.

She replied that I had gone along with my father and grandpa to Menards. It had been about twenty minutes after they got back when mom went down to the basement and asked them where I was. My father said I was “around.” Mom persisted, but my father said that I was there somewhere. Mom looked, but I was not there. She found two-year-old me in the back seat of my father’s navy blue Lumina, screaming. I thought this was a good story. Mom said she did not want to tell me about it, in case I remembered. She was scared that I was scarred by the experience. She said that I did not quit screaming until the storm outside stopped. Naturally, I thought, I am terrified of thunderstorms.   

Earlier still that morning, I lay in the dark, restlessly thinking the story over. Just far enough below the surface so mom could not see, the vindictive part of me was pleased. I finally had something to be mad about. I could store this injustice in my back pocket and whip it out during my next fight with my father. Yet, this treasure mine of evidence was not really comforting. I pictured  little Leah’s face pressed to the glass, mouth open, gasping for air between screams, eyes puffy from tears, fists clenched in indignation. I remember that old house so well; I can see it all. This saga plays out clearly in my head—historical proof of my neglect. The image I have of my two-year-old self is screaming at my twelve-year-old self, telling me not to make the decision I was about to make – not to pick my father over mom. Not to choose a life in which I would be left locked in behind doors I could not open. I did my best to warn me that I would not be happy, that I would be forever shut in and not allowed to dance in the rain.

Like good mothers do, mine knew what I needed, even when that knowledge came to her on a subconscious level. She was able to gift me the freedom that comes in a raging winds and electric flashes of a thunderstorm.  The freedom that comes with conquering my fears.  She filtered out the bad that came along with the fat drops of rain, which I have always loved.  The worst part is that I cannot thank her for helping me identify my pain. I cannot tell her I made the wrong choice. I see now; she always unlocked the doors I was not strong enough to open myself. She unlocked the doors that others refused me.  If she knew about my regrets, it would hurt her even more. Mom wants me to be happy more than anything. I can give her that, if I just pretend. With my smile, I can say thank you. It is the least I can do.

When I heard my story from my mother’s lips, perhaps the first of innocence fleeting, I began to remember. I do not know if I actually conjured a memory from the catacombs of my head, or if I composed a memory from all the broken ones. Nonetheless, I could finally identify the source of the pain. I knew whose hand had a grip on my heart, squeezing it tight. I was able to focus on what had tortured me internally for fourteen years; and now that I could explain the fear, I could let it go. 

I enjoyed my first thunderstorm the day after the softball team won state this past summer.  Sitting on my front steps, I watched as wind whipped the trees and horizontal lightning blazed across the sky. I had to force myself to sit there, at first. I wanted to prove that I would not be controlled by fear. Just as I cannot ignore the blackness in my chest, I cannot be allowed to run from anyone.

The longer I sat, the more I wanted to stand up and run. But this time, I wanted to run into the weather.  I could see myself spinning around and around, whirling and twirling. My feet did not move, however, my heart leaped from my chest. I understood that the second I stepped into the storm, my father would come pull me back. He would not want me to be in the midst of the tumultuous weather; anything could happen to me. A lightning bolt could strike me. A car could come out of nowhere and run me over. A bout of pneumonia could set in and make me fatally ill. There was no point. I stayed where I was. He had said it all before.  I had heard it all before.

I can remember the last time I was able to dance freely in the rain. Mom was living in England. We had a house with a big backyard surrounded by stone walls and the most beautiful English garden. The kitchen was small compared to those of the States; but a window sat above the sink, looking out upon the mirage of color. It was a cool day, though not bad for spring in that part of the world.  For a girl who cherished the opportunity to enjoy the rain without lightning and thunder, England was perfect. Typically, at least twice a week, Mother Nature guaranteed precipitation. There was usually nothing but damp drops in the sky. When I felt moisture in the air, I did not need to stop eating so as not to worry myself sick during the worst of the storm. During one particular downpour, in a T-shirt and Sofe shorts, I went out into the yard. Who knows how long I stayed out of doors. I sang and did cartwheels. I lay in the soggy grass and danced around. 

When I grew cold, I slipped in the patio, drops spilling off my skin to puddle on the floor.  Mom stood at the sink, washing dishes. As I sat at our table and dripped, she grinned at me. She thought I was beautiful. She saw the untainted joy that came as the downpour purified my soul. I think she probably washed clean dishes for an excuse to watch me frolicking through the window. I was being ridiculous, which was alright.

I can see how free to be myself I was, and I am jealous. I didn’t have to hide my joy for fear that someone would snatch the elation from me. I cannot fathom letting someone see me doing something so embarrassingly intimate and beautifully foolish. And yet I trusted Mom to understand.

My foolishness was justified.  I thought often of all the ways that adults attempt to explain rain, thunder, and lighting to frightened children. Whenever I thought of my cowardice, or sat waiting for a storm to pass, I kicked myself for not believing any of these trite explanations. God was bowling.  Angels were jumping on the bed.  I resented my lack of trust in God, who made a covenant with Noah after His greatest storm ever, to keep me safe.  God might not have been bowling, but He still had a plan.

I wondered if most parents explain the miracle of the ark properly. If children know the rest of the story, they can find solace in the torrents. Society underestimates the ability of a child to comprehend God. I think about how moms and dads dole out kisses whenever a child is hurt. Children never doubt that these kisses have healing powers. Their parents tell them it is true, and so they believe. Why then, would a child not trust in God’s promise? I do not understand how, if I truly comprehend the consequences of this covenant, I can think of the rain as anything but holy. If I honestly believe in baptism, how can I not think that when I dance in the rain, I am dancing with God? If ever there is a time to neglect one’s inhibitions, it is in the presence of God. With Him, I have no social standing to uphold or any parental expectations to live up to. With God, I am cleansed and renewed.

by

Roy Barnes

Diane’s Nonverbal Dialogue, Upstate New York, 2007

by

Joseph S. Spence, Sr.

Just Friends

by

Jack Swenson

Joker was off his feed.  I called my wife at work and told her that the cat wouldn't eat, and there was some drool coming from his mouth.  I said I thought he had a bad tooth.  She said she'd be back at the usual time, and she would check him out.

Joker slept curled up in his basket on the porch for the rest of the day.  That afternoon my wife called and said she was leaving early.  She had made an appointment to see our vet at five o'clock.  She got home at 3:30, and at 4:30 we packed the cat into a carrier, belted it into the back seat of her car, and she drove off.

I didn't think anymore about it until about an hour later.  My wife called and said it was bad, a lot worse than we thought.  He had a tumor in his stomach.  He didn't have a lot of time left, she said.  I was expecting it to be minor, so I was shocked.  I hate it when we have put down an animal, but there was nothing else to do.  Do it, I said.  My wife asked me if I were coming down to the vet's office, and I said no.  We had both been there for the last one.  My wife said that if she were in my place, she wouldn't come down either.  I don't know; maybe it's callous, but once is enough.  I'll bring the next one in, but I won't watch when they put in the needle.  It's so sad, I want to die myself.

The irony is that Joker is one of our youngest cats.  We've got a herd of them, and most of them are senior citizens.  Joker's got quite a story.  He brought Grifter in.  Grifter is an old gray tom, for many years a stray.  We couldn't trap him.  We fed him, but he kept his distance.  Then Joker, also a stray, began hanging around, but he was used to people, so we could pick him up and handle him.  Well, Grifter watched us doing that, so I guess he figured we were okay.  We snatched him up one day and brought him to the vet to be fixed and to get his shots.  We then installed both cats on our back porch.  We couldn't bring them into the house because our house cats would have had a fit.  Cats are territorial.

Joker was not a handsome cat.  He was a black cat who looked as if he had been sprayed with white paint.  He had little tufts of white on his body and legs.  He looked like an Appaloosa.  He also had a bum ear.  He apparently lost about half of it in a cat fight.  On top of all that, his whiskers were funny.  They were black on one side, white on the other.

Joker was the sweetest cat I have ever known.  And he took care of his buddy, old Grifter, like a mother hen.  For four years they were inseparable.  Then Joker got sick.  I'm worried about Grifter.  He doesn't seem to know what to do.  I let him out, he comes back in, then he wants to go back out again.  I think he'll settle down in a few days.  I hope so.

I like and admire cats with a good heart; I like and admire people like that, too.  You don't find to many of them.  Most folks--and most cats--look out for themselves.

It's a good lesson: hang on to your friends.  Cherish them.  You don't know when they are going to be taken from you, or you taken from them.

Image by Kristina Rogova

The Resilience of Faith

by

Margaret Burton

By the time my mother entered the final stage of her ovarian cancer, my sister and I had been living with the idea of her death for two years.  What we had not considered was that, in the meantime, the rest of life goes on as if nothing has changed.  Work schedules continue, your children stay in school, laundry, groceries, bills, even birthday parties and weddings remain on the calendar.  What the medical jargon is telling you does not always match what you can see with your own eyes.  My mother looked the same.

One weekend, my sister and I were snowed in at our childhood home, where our parents still lived.  As my sister and I caught up over tea in the living room, we could hear my mother chopping vegetable in the kitchen.  By all appearances, she was still the capable, nurturing mother she had been for nearly forty years.  If the doctors hadn’t told us the cancer was back and the statistics were bad, we would have had no way of knowing it.  We chose, in many ways, to ignore what our intellectual sides knew was most likely inevitable.

My children embraced the circumstances with the same energy and zeal with which they embraced all of life’s events.  They managed their knowledge fearlessly.  My daughter asked questions that the rest of us could only think.

“When will you die?” she asked my mother one startlingly beautiful August afternoon very close to the end.

While the rest of us sucked in our breaths and avoided eye contact, my mother answered with grace and serenity, “Only God knows that, Love.”

“Well, what will heaven be like?” my daughter persisted and without waiting for an answer she added, “I think it will be a big comfy bed with all your toys lying around.  When you get there, will you call me on your cell phone and let me know?”

We all laughed, as my mother answered, “I would love that.”

As time went on, my daughter continued to take the situation in stride while the rest of us struggled with denial and sadness.  One evening, when my emotions were at their lowest, I hissed as my husband in frustration, “Where is God in all of this?  Why is this happening?”

The next day on the beach, Isabel was drawing in the sand with a stick.  A funny smiley face appeared with wild, curly hair.  Her drawings in those days were nearly always of herself or a princess, in her mind, perhaps, one and the same.  “What have you drawn today, Sweetie?” I asked.

“God,” she replied.

I looked at my husband to see if he had heard the same thing I had heard.  “Excuse me?” I said, “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“It’s God, Mommy,” now she was the one who sounded surprised.  “Can’t you see how happy he is?”

For the next couple of weeks my daughter’s drawings grew and developed.  And God was included in almost all of them.  Including one on a paper bag, where she had several scribbles designated as a kitty cat, the sun, an ice cream cone, the ubiquitous princess, and last, but not least God.  “See, Mommy” she said, when describing this particular drawing, “Here’s God at the center of everything.”

My daughter, who had not been to church or Sunday school in months was exhibiting the beliefs I had held my entire life, but now questioned for the first time.  She had found the faith I had lost and, in more ways than I can recount here, given it back me.

Photo by Ned Horton

SEPIA

by

Patti Dean

I always thought the picture of my grandmother and grandfather was mine. A 1920’s sepia portrait. Maybe their wedding picture. My grandmother wore her best trench coat and cloche hat. No wedding dress. My grandfather decked out in his only coat and tie. It’s the Depression. Lucky to look nice. That’s it. Enough for the times.

When I visited their house in those “stay at grandma’s for six week” summers, I loved to look at that picture. Soft brown in a special gold plated frame next to the magazine rack that held years and years of McCall’s magazines. It was a picture so different from the Polaroid’s my dad insisted that our family take every Saturday, random shots that always excluded the dog and the neighbor kids that were more family than family. My dad always wanted a picture after his out of control blow out Friday’s of drink and destruction. It was his way of saying, “I’m sorry, back to normal.”

This portrait of my grandparent’s new beginnings must have been planned for weeks. Taking pictures was still an auspicious event. My grandparents stare out from the faded 8X10, completely aware of the occasion. Their faces unlined, hopeful.

That face of promise was a sharp contrast to the vacant stare of my grandfather that last summer he lived, now back from the loony bin. He’d been strapped to a gurney; house surrounded by police, his stash of guns and ammunition no longer a fortress of safety containing the restless demons that no longer just resided in a bottle of whiskey. He’d taken to chasing imaginary boyfriends that he insisted my grandmother visited nightly when he could no longer stay awake. Waiting for her to slip out of the house, she always seemed to elude him. He zigzagged his ten year old Plymouth, dodging imaginary cars with one hand on the steering wheel and another clutching his shotgun. My grandmother kept this horror to herself until the police came. People did that back then.

We children knew my grandmother as someone who talked to the birds each morning as she hung the laundry out to dry. The birds told her all the news of the neighborhood and in particular snitched on us kids. They knew everything. They knew when I’d climbed out the window and gone over to play in my short nightie at the neighbor’s house. I thought it made me look like Ann-Margaret in the movie, “Viva Las Vegas.”  I’d just learned how to do the Twist. They knew when I tried to be good and washed the dishes and still broke her favorite plate and slipped the pieces behind the stove. They knew each night I prayed that I wouldn’t wet the bed, and each morning woke up to a reason for my grandmother to hang sheets on the line and discover the latest from the gossipy birds. An endless cycle I didn’t stop until I was 14.

In the end, my grandfather came back from the mental institution with brain cancer and spent his last months in bed, asking my grandmother why she stayed with him. She always said, “Don’t you know, I love you.”  She lived on those memories, her own pictures. She remembered:  Him playing semi-pro baseball, hitting homers, asking her to marry him after he ruined his shoulder; Him, during the depression, making a swing set in his shop out back, a perfect playmate lure for their only beloved child; Him partnering a grocery store with her during the lean times, endlessly extending credit to the community until World War II came and the town got rich from factory work.

They were a tight team. People did that long ago.

My grandmother lived another six years after his death. She learned to wear pantsuits. She went to plays. She visited art galleries. She bought a house near my parents and mowed her own lawn until one day she doubled over from cramps. When she went to the hospital, her insides were a battleground of gangrene. She died the next day. My parents said she’d never complained.

I looked for that picture. She’d always talked about giving it to me when she died. I never could find it. At one point I believed that I had imagined the handsome couple of the Scottish red-haired man and the tall Irish and one quarter Indian woman. So strong, so hopeful. So ready to start out on their life together. Two people who stood for something in sepia. For something that would tell a man on his death bed endlessly asking why someone would stay, “Don’t you know by now?  I love you.”

The swing set still stands. It’s been passed down now to great-great grandchildren. How did he know to add a basketball hoop?  How did he know that girls in the future would practice dunk shots?  That subsequent boyfriends would shoot hoops while waiting for his string of female descendents to make their entrance on their first dates. The swing set is my grandfather legacy.

The sepia picture of dreams gives way to the tangible root of family.

 Photo by: Sanja Gjenero

Evolution of a Novel

by

Adriane St. Clare

Negotiating with a Kitten

By

KJ Hannah Greenberg

Dear tufted, striped, underfoot creature, your very existence on this planet is yet unresolved. Despite your status as my family’s much beloved ornament and plaything, and as my small children’s favorite possession, I am increasingly finding you to be merely an ever-too-sharp-clawed surprise.

Recall the last time during which you tackled my toilet paper. Confettied bits provided kitten wonder, but also caused us two-footed creatures problems. Reflect, as well, on the occasion when you climbed the diningroom door’s trim. Small, baby-cat-sized indentations continue to evidence that episode.

Young cat, were we to allow you to roam freely, to utilize our sideyard, our frontyard, and the area beneath the kids’ swings, likely we would find that you had became a “road pizza.” I have no intention to wake up to a report that you have been diminished to fur and viscera. Scavenging birds inconvenience us urbanites.

Let’s negotiate the drapes. If I yield the bathmat and the remnants of my indoor plants, you must agree to hunt only dust bunnies and the rare cereal moth. I’ll even acquiesce to you growling at the squirrels and to your shredding my backdoor’s screen.

I’ll pay you in tolerance, too, agreeing not to become more than gently agitated when I find you at work on our geriatric cat’s back. Scabs heal.

If you want, in addition, I’ll remind my children not to toss you from the furniture like some ill-scored math test or like some siblings’ laundry. I’ll look the other way when my husband coddles you, though both of us know who really stole the defrosting hamburger meat.

We must reach an understanding. I am the mama. You are the darling.

A lyrical purr, at two in the morning, is insufficient serendipity to compensate for that broken picture of my first baby. A small, rough tongue dragged against my ankle, during dinner, does not make up for the torn sweater I had saved from college. In particular, settling, all warm and soft, on my lap, does not put an end to the associative guilt connected to the sudden disappearance of my heirloom barrette.

Tiny, no weight, impossibility of a feline, it is despicable how you manipulate my family. Stop staring, all large eyes and disproportioned belly, directly at me. I would have no trouble reducing you to ear muffs if I did not feel so compelled to keep on petting you.

 Photo by Rodolfo Clix