memories

Essence Objects

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

While reading the novel “Landscapes” this afternoon, this passage struck me: a man, recently blind, explains, “I rely on my other senses. I get by. But in another way I’m not sure I ever knew where I was headed, not even when I had eyesight, you know what I mean? I doubt anyone really knows where they’re going. But you walk ahead anyways, no?”

This caused me to reflect on a video I saw earlier in the day at Mendez High School where I work for College Match LA. The purpose of the video was to help students address what they will write about in their college essays, how they will write about themselves. It’s called “Essence Objects”. The task is to think about various objects you would put in a box, objects that represent how you see certain things or people, how you think. Here are some examples:

  • What object reminds you of your mother?
  • What object represents your favorite piece of music?
  • What object reminds you of a fear you have?
  • What object would you choose to illustrate your favorite book?
  • What object would a friend associate with you?

The list goes on and on, thought provoking questions. I don’t have to write a college essay but I’m going to go over the whole list and think and think and think.

Note: I picked this photo because the objects that make me think of my mother are roses. She had a rose garden in front of the barn on our Missouri farm. All summer when the roses were blooming, she floated roses in a glass bowl on the kitchen table where we ate.

“Barbie Doll”–in honor of my mother

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue-eyed and blond, my

mother, one fearless, controlling woman. Long after Mom’s

death, Dad said, “Barbara was afraid of absolutely on one

and nothing.” They married late, 34 & 38. He adored her

unconditionally. She filled my life with horses, music, love,

cornfields, hay rides, books, and ambition. Whatever she felt she

had missed, my sister and I were going to possess: books,

piano lessons, a college education. Her father, who died long

before I was born, loved fancy, fast horses. So did she. During

my preschool, croupy years, she quieted my hysterical night

coughing with stories of run away horses pulling her in a wagon.

With less than one hundred pounds and lots of determination,

she stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying across the Missouri

River Bottom, strong, willful, free.

Note: This was first published in an anthology and later in my poetry memoir, “On the Rim of Wonder.” My mom loved the color pink and roses, had a rose garden. In the summer there were always crystal bowls on the dining table with roses floating. Today I have roses floating in two stemmed crystal bowls in my kitchen.

Celebration in Downtown LA

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

As a counselor for College Match LA, I joined a group of current students in college and alumni at Perch LA, a restaurant in downtown with a rooftop venue. The views there are fantastic, the finger food yummy, and seeing some of my students delightful–they are at Oxy and loving it. Here are a few photos.

The view after dark.

Ice skating.

A Tribute to My Mother

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Barbie Doll

Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue eyed and blond, my

mother, one fearless, controlling woman. Long after Mom’s

death, Dad said, “Barbara was afraid of absolutely no one

and nothing.” They married late, 34 and 38. He adored her

unconditionally. She filled my life with horses, music, love,

cornfields, hay rides, books, ambition. Whatever she felt she

had missed, my sister and I were going to possess: books,

piano lessons, a college education. Her father, who died long

before I was born, loved fancy, fast horses. So did she. During

my preschool, croupy years, she quieted my hysterical night

coughing with stories of run away horses pulling her in a wagon.

With less than one hundred pounds and lots of determination,

she stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying across the Missouri

River Bottom, strong, willful, free.

Note: This poem about my mother has been published in at least one anthology and my book of poetry. My mother loved roses, had a rose garden. I now grow roses too.

Mother’s Roses

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

roses, lush

pink, red, coral

roses floating in crystal bowls

remind me of my mother

her rose garden by the barn

summer roses on her kitchen table

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.

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.

A Christmas Tree Story

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Decades ago my parents, long deceased, started going to warm Arizona from cold Missouri. They gave me their artificial Douglas fir tree. It was the old fashioned kind of tree where you had to put together a column, add alphabetically labelled limbs one by one, then add the lights of your choice, and finally the rest of the decoration. Every year I unpacked it and went to work. This year was no different except a crucial part of it was missing. I still do not know whether moving was a factor or somehow I did not pack it up correctly. Regardless, it was obvious I would not be using it. What could I salvage? The limbs, the top so I used parts of it to decorate.

I used various limbs and some unbreakable, red Christmas balls to decorate the front of my house.
I stuck the top part into a big pot and added some Christmas balls I have had for years and stuck a star on top.

Then my daughter, Ema, told me I could use her tree which is too wide for her current place. We took it out of the box, she showed me how it works, and I decorated it this afternoon. It is wider and I had to move some furniture but I love the result. I have a tree, but still could salvage parts of the tree I have treasured for all these years since Mom and Dad gave it to me.

Daylight view.
Evening view.

Now it is time to finish the shopping and wrap the gifts.

In Memory of Mother’s Roses

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Mother’s rose garden

flowers for the family table

all my childhood summers.

Red, pinks, snowy.

No roses for decades

except those given, bouquets,

mostly red.

Now, I look out every window, roses

Pinks, reds, orange, lavender, yellow, snowy.

I love them, cut them,

And remember my mother.

Boxes and Handprints

/ Juliana Lightle / 6 Comments

This morning my house looked close to normal in spite of all the packing I had already done. I began with meditation, made coffee same as always, completed my yoga routine, ate some yogurt with walnuts. Normal ended there. I moved the car out of the garage, hiked to the gate and opened it, waited for the professional packers, figured it would take them two days. These two guys–twins probably in their 50s–are speedy. Even after getting lost and finally arriving close to ten and taking a lunch break, they have packed a lot of my life today.

Mom’s crystal, hand-painted dishes, Grandmother’s (whom I never knew) dishes, the silverware Dad gave mom on their first wedding anniversary, all the little painted china pieceds D’mitri made for me reside somewhere in these boxes.

These hold CDs and movies collected over a couple of decades, corn maiden Kachina dolls, a Navaho hoop dancer, Talavera pots, a Thai spirit house–so much of me.

I thought last night would be my last here, but I am staying tonight. All they have left to pack now are clothes, the TV, and this computer. They said they would leave this to last so I could still use it. It is a lovely evening looking down the canyon, a golden light hard to capture with an iPAD.

One of the hardest things to leave is D’mitri’s four year old handprints in the cement by the garage. He graduates from high school one year early on Friday. Yes, I will miss this beautiful setting, what I thought was my dream house, the canyon, the wildlife. Nevertheless, I am looking onward to new adventures in a new setting, making new friends, and seeing old ones more often whom I rarely see now.