memoir

National Poetry Month-2: Butter Love

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Is it inherited?

Six year old me watched Grandmother

look around, take silver knife, cut into pale

yellow rectangular prism, plop a chunk into

her mouth, close her eyes,

smile.

In Aunt Julia’s presence, this never occurred,

Was it our shared secret,

Grandmother and me?

Yesterday, I told the cafeteria lady,

“Please bring me biscuits, extra butter.”

Less courageous than Grandmother,

I use blue corn pancakes, homemade bread, pasta,

excuses to eat butter, lots of golden, melted

butter.

Who eats butter on conchiglie?

I do, scooping out a tablespoon

from the butter bowl, watch it melt

in hot, drained Italian pasta from a

six-hundred-year-old monastery,

sprinkle on some sea salt, plop

a spoonful in my mouth, close my eyes,

smile.

Note: This poem is published in my book “You’re Gonna Eat That? Adventures with Food, Family, and Friends”. My grandmother, Mom’s mom, rarely smiled. When Mom went to the hospital to have my sister, the family story is that Grandmother fed me so many bread, butter, and sugar sandwiches, I became fat. I was two. I remember a mint patch in her backyard. She’d gather mint, boil water, and make mint tea with cream and sugar. I liked it. When Aunt Julia traveled out of town, I remember seeing Grandmother eat butter and smile. This is Grandmother’s wedding photo.

One Book a Week-14: Trust, Hernan Diaz

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The first half annoyed me. I kept asking, “What? Why? What is wrong with these greedy, despicable people?” I almost quit reading it (I never quit reading a book) but plunged on. Then, about halfway through “A Memoir, Remembered” section entranced me. Aha. Now I “get” it. I became so engaged I read the last half almost straight through without stopping.

The title should be Truth. This novel deftly explores these questions:

-What is true?

-Whose truth is true?

It does this via competing narratives involved with financial markets, how investors have and can manipulate the stock market, and relationships. It also quietly addresses the issue of how men take credit for the acumen of the women with whom they are involved and the destructive power of wealth and influence.

One Book a Week-7: “Memorial Drive, A Daughter’s Memoir” by Natasha Trethewey

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Published in 2020, and a must read for anyone who cares about abused women, their rights, and how law enforcement often fails them, this book by Trethewey, 2007 Pulitzer Poetry Price winner for “Native Guard”, voices her struggle to deal with her mother’s untimely death. When Trethewey was nineteen and in college, her mother was shot and killed by her step-father after the police officer assigned to protect her mother left his post early. Additionally, the memoir details the effects of the racism she experienced as the child of a white father and black mother (married when it was illegal where they lived) in Mississippi and later in Atlanta in the 1970s and 80s before her mother’s murder in 1985. The book gets its title from the street on which her mother lived when she was murdered. Through this memoir Trethewey discusses how her parent’s divorce, her mother’s remarriage to an angry, abusive man, and her mother’s murder has informed her life and affected the enduring love she holds for her mother.

The First Time I Saw the Nile

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Riding hours through emerald mountains

to Bahir Dar.

We drove up a steep road,

monkeys begging near the roadside.

Car parked, we climbed a steep hill.

There she was

The NILE

a silver ribbon far below

grassy fields

two white robed people

walked, hippos barely visible.

The NILE

I cried,

a life’s longing fulfilled.

The NILE

Flowing from Lake Tana,

she lay below me,

the legendary river,

ancient people, ancient stories,

builder of civilizations,

of life.

The NILE.

One Book a Week-4: FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

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When it first came out in 2018, I read The Overstory by Richard Powell. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard appears to contain the endless years of detailed research and life story behind one of the characters in Powell’s novel. In fact, in her Acknowledgements, Simard thanks Powell for helping to make her life’s research more accessible to the general populace.

Simard’s book is part memoir, part detailed scientific explanations of her research and how a forest works and lives, and part how difficult it is to be taken seriously in the science world if you are female and your research contradicts the norm. She grew up in Canada. Her family made a living cutting down trees. Her family and life was and is intricately interwoven with nature. Even as a child, she was obsessed with tree roots, crawled around on the forest floor to see what lived there. A specific fascination was all the types and colors of fungi that grew just under the surface. Why were they there? What purpose did they serve? Later this became her life’s work, leading her to discover how trees of varying species use these fungi to communicate with and nurture each other. Of special significance are the “mother trees”, older, larger trees who provide nurturance to all the younger trees around them, recognize their kin, favoring them as they nurture all the other trees as well.

Traditionally, loggers and timber companies clear cut, then replanted with seedlings of all the same species of evergreen. It took Simard decades of research to convince them that it was not only the poorest way to grow new trees but also the least economical. For decades they saw her as some nutty woman, laughed at her research, laughed at her, even using epithets to her face. Ultimately, however, her work led to changes in how forestry is practiced.

This book relates her long struggle to save the forests. For those who are science minded, the final pages of the book contain 32 pages of Critical Sources. If you are interest in learning more about “mother trees”, go to http://mothertreeproject.org. It defines the term “mother tree” and explains how trees communicate. It also contains videos.

Puma–2

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Years ago while visiting Albuquerque or Santa Fe, I acquired a Zuni puma fetish. It is the only fetish I own. I bought it because it is a puma, the Directional Guardian and prey god of the North, representing independence, personal power, intensity, and loyalty, carried by travelers to protect their journey. It resides on a dresser in my bedroom, watching over me, protecting my life journey.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my puma obsession extends to researching them and writing poems about them. The following poem was originally published in my book, “On the Rim of Wonder”.

My neighbor walked out her door

found a puma lying on the lawn.

Puma rose, stretched, disappeared.

At night when I open my gate

I wonder if she lurks

behind the cedar trees,

Pounce ready.

A Zuni puma fetish guards my sleep.

I run with puma

Night wild

Free.

I scream and howl

Moonstruck

Bloodborn.

I hike the canyon

stroll around my house

look for puma tracks.

I see none.

I would rather die by puma

than in a car wreck.

Pumas — 1

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Some people possess obsessions. For me only one really exists–pumas. I kept hoping I might see one when I lived at the edge of a canyon in the Panhandle of Texas even though I knew where I lived was probably too populated. Now, living in LA Country, I realize pumas can be anywhere. Have not seen one yet, but I keep hoping. I’ve considered driving 1/2 hour up into the Los Angeles National Forest to hike and hope. Since one of my walking partners refused to go any farther when the sign said “Watch for Bears”, I would have to take the hike alone. The bear sign did not deter me, but she could not go home since I drove so I went back to the car with her. People see bears in town all the time, but rarely pumas or if they are around, they hide. My puma obsession includes dreaming about them and writing poetry where they star. Here is one of the puma poems I wrote while I still lived in Texas.

I watch for eyes, blue changing to amber and back.

I put my palm, fingers stretched to measure, into the footprint.

Too small, bobcat

No puma.

My thin body squeezes between the rocks,

climbing quietly down the cliff.

Watching, listening, searching.

No puma,

Pale amber rushes across my vision line.

My hearth quakes.

I watch; I wait.

It is Isabella, a golden whir chasing rabbits.

No puma.

At sunrise, I walk the rim,

watching.

At sunset, I walk the rim,

waiting.

At night, I walk the rim,

dreaming.

No puma; not yet.

I’ve had this photo, taken by a famous wildlife photographer, for at least a decade. She, yes, it is a she, watches over me daily. In my bedroom is a puma Zuni fetish and a painting. I have a couple of others here and there in addition to books about pumas. Someday before I die, hopefully.

Road Trip to Palm Springs

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Life brought me to the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California late last summer. A few months later, my childhood friend from elementary school in the farmlands of Northwestern Missouri moved back to Palm Springs. Today I drove out to the desert to see him, Craig Prater. I arrived a little early so drove around, took a walk downtown, and took some photos. We were so intent on catching up and visiting, I forgot to take a photo of Craig and me together. Here are photos I took as I walked and drove around.

Palm Springs shopping area.

Desert mountains surround Palm Springs. It is hot compared to where I live. When I returned to my car after lunch, the thermometer said 121. It really was not quite that hot, only 103. 1.25 hours later when I arrived back home, it was 87 at my house.

I took this to include parts of the palo verde tree and the mountains. Palm trees are everywhere as you can see from the photos.

This is one of the largest palo verde trees I have ever seen. I want one for my backyard. You see them everywhere in the desert. Now that LA County has water restrictions, it would seem to be a good choice.

Palm Springs is Mid-Century Modern architecture country. This photo and the following photos are some examples of the types of houses I saw as I drove around.

While some houses still have grass, the trend is desert landscaping to save water.

There is a house behind all this desert vegetation.

Blackwater Draw

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

I walk the mile long trail down into the depths,

caliche, gravel, larger rocks strewn by millennia.

The ancients–Clovis, Folsom, Portales

Man–hunted here at the shores of a lake

nearly 12,000 years ago. In 1929, an amateur

archeologist discovered a spear point lodged in bone.

Scattered cottonwoods whisper in the wind,

timeless voices call me, beckoning.

Who were these people? What did they

look like? Where did they come

from? In whose gods, goddesses, did

they believe? Doubtless hunger

drove them to this place of water

and plenty. Columbia mammoths, giant

sloths, dire wolves, saber toothed cats.

I walk this long path, read signs

that tell what diggers found at specific

spots along the trail: bison horns

spanning seven feet, mammoths twice

the size of elephants. I stand in the shade

of the cottonwoods. They whisper to me.

They tell me ancient tales of hunger, strife,

beauty, love, endurance, woe, war, weaponry,

courage and community. How did they overcome

danger, fear? My skin tingles strangely

in the summer heat. Now this land is dry,

desert, the water that sustained teeming life

evaporated in the crystalline air.

Twelve thousand years from now who will stand here?

Will this place exist? Will someone wonder the meaning

of our bones, who we were, what we believed?