The Best Book I Never Wrote
What’s nicer than helping other people feel that they can write? Encouraging them to, I mean? My chance to do this came the day an 85-year-old lady from my church called up to ask if I would teach a course to be called Writing from Personal Experience at the local Senior Center."We've all been talking," she said and we know you write for the paper each week." They had all already decided it seemed that I would teach them once a month - "on Mondays we thought, in the afternoon, since we don’t like to go out at night.” I would prepare a lesson each time and assign a writing topic. Then, at the next meeting, I would collect up all their pieces, take them home, write comments on them and report on them at the next meeting at which time I would repeat the process..."And oh!” she added cheerfully, “course we wouldn't be paying you anything; that’s our policy here at the Center."What do you think?"What did I think?! My palms had begun sweating at her first sentence. Why had I even picked up the phone? How could I POSSIBLY do this? I’m too busy! What about all these kids in my kitchen every night!Then I had one of those rare moments where I felt that someone way bigger than I am was nudging me forward.I gave in to it. “OK,” I said meekly.And so began a three-year odyssey that ended in a book whose title comes from a poem by Robert Frost about the near-impossible task of raking leaves, something we all know a little bit about at this season for sure. We began each class saying something about the day itself and then we would start.Once Bill Jeffery read aloud a remembrance from childhood, his voice broke and he had to stop. “Let it out!” cried the lady across the table who had been in his First Grade Class some 70 years before.“My wife says I’m emotionally unstable,” he joked before clearing his throat and going on.But permission had been given: from that day on we were unashamed to show our feelings.Looking back, I now realize there were tears at every session. We listened to one another’s memories and we cried. Because of this, class member Clarence, who wrote for most of his 96 years, called the classes my “séances.” (He once dropped me a note in his bold hand, “Lately I haven’t been well enough to get to too many of your séances...”)Maybe he thought we were conjuring the dead in that basement room with the orange tulips painting the outside of our little window come spring.Maybe he was right. Here is one of his poems now:
The Cat
The Cat is a creature of infinite grace,
It spits on its forearms and sponges its face.
It licks and it sponges itself every place.
It licks and it sponges itself without haste,
It uses no soap no powders, no paste,
No cold-cream, no napkins, no towels to waste
Very efficient - but how does it taste?
Witty eh? But his best work – indeed everyone’s best work appeared when they looked back to the early decades of the last century – the meadow and the field, the bucket and soapstone sink – and to those long-gone ones who populated that world.If you'd like to give this book to a friend download the same form I referred to in the last two posts. Again I’ll cover the shipping costs.I’m smiling now just thinking of those stories: of ladylike Eleanor Matson taking off her coat in church – only to look down and see she had forgotten her skirt. Ah bless them all for having the courage to believe that harvest was anything but meager! The evidence is all right there.This photo at the top is just me at a talk I gave on this and other books for the Friends of the Abington Library, speaking of cool older people.And underneath here is more about the book. Just click on it to make it easily readable.
