Choose three random phrases from a stack of cards and rank them in a 1, 2, 3 order.  The first phrase goes in the first sentence, the second in the middle, and the third in the last sentence of a paragraph.  Timed write for 15 minutes.  PHRASES:  A foul odor, a repetitive noise, a stuffed grizzly bear.

The smiling waitress sets a steaming bowl on the table in front of my eager husband at the Longhorn Restaurant.  The elk meat in brown gravy releases a foul odor and the steam sets off my loud sneeze.  Our dark, leather-curved booth is in a corner, back-to-back to the kitchen wall, where I hear and feel the repercussions of a repetitive noise – a whack-whack-whack, which I imagine is a chef hitting a cleaver on meats that I don’t eat, such as bison, elk, and alligator.  It’s hard to eat in this place as every square inch of wall space is decorated with man’s trophies from hunts around the world – a brown-striped zebra, an honorable eagle, a wild boar, and one stuffed grizzly bear with smoky eyes who offers his out-stretched paws in a “why me?” way.

I consider Art – in any form – a painting, embroidery, poem, book, to mean the same thing, a way to express or recieve emotions.  This pre-class exercise involved writing about a randomly chosen painting.  Write a scene that takes place inside a painting for 15 minutes. No research.  Here’s my take, where a painting and words express feelings.

Maaloula by Louay Kayyali (1964).  Style: Expressionism.  Genre: Cityscape.

A steady stream of soft gray smoke flows out of the opening in the wood-timbered roof.  I watch our spiritual leader climb down a strapped branch ladder which leans into another roof opening.  The room, where I sit upon a neatly swept dirt floor, is made of the soft red and gray clays found in our land and from which we make our Maaloula cliff dwellings.  Father tends to a small fire at the center of the room, making sure the smoke flows out to the gray sky.  The spiritual leader kneels near a small, rectangular opening in the floor near the fire.  This is where our ancestors’ spirits race into the room and into our souls.  His presence takes over the room and stills my family into statues.  He readies for the religious ceremony, whispers prayers to himself, closes his eyes, and fingers a buffalo horn hanging on a leather strap around his strong neck.  A belt made of eagle feathers, colorful beads, and rings of gold, wrap his waist.  The belt was made by Mother, along with the shimmery gold band clinging to his upper arm.  Father gives me a harsh look which means that I should take my spellbound eyes off of the spiritual leader.  Ashamedly, I bow my head and wait for grandparents and great-grandparents to meet me.

Dear Readers,

I’m taking a writing class with Kirsten Bakis and will post some of the exercises:  Here’s the first –

Here’s my answer to the question, “How does your identity shape your writing?”  Identity is formed by experiences.  Simple and complex experiences, such as the learned craft of embroidery and belief in a religion, form my identity which shapes my writing.  In the following passage, I compare myself to experiences with familiar objects and mention people who are important to me.  The reader knows details of my identity:  how I dress, that I embroider, have relationships with “Mom” and “Uncle Pippi,” and that I’m religious, along with other characteristics, such as consistency and honesty:

“I am dependable, like the tight, gold button that never loosens on a lush, red-hooded jacket.  I am constant, like the yellow, embroidered French knot on blue jeans that never frays, no matter how many times cycled in Mom’s washing machine.  I am reliable, like Uncle Pippi’s hoe, a metal and wooden tool that hangs on his garage wall, ready for a hand to use in the spring garden.  I am honest, like Dear, Sweet, Jesus’s Father taught me, and cannot lie, steal, or deceive.”

I am Pluto.

Sometimes a planet, and sometimes not a planet.

Sometimes a mom, and sometimes not a mom.

A woman caught up in her own solar system

flung far away,

holding others in an imaginary line,

in an orbit,

rotating around the sun.

(Written 7/23/07)

“Let me draw you a picture,” said Mom.

I roll my eyes.  She thinks she knows everything and makes a point of telling me.

“Don’t make a federal case out of it, Jeanne,” said Mom.

I roll my eyes.  Some things are much more important to me than to her.

How I wish she were just simply here today to talk about the trials and tribulations of life.

Baby hands,

Playing hands,

Wringing hands,

Praying hands,

Housework hands,

Taking hands,

Pointing hands,

Pinching hands,

Hitting hands,

Attacking hands,

Shielding hands,

Pleading hands,

Giving hands,

Artwork hands,

Embroidery hands,

Ravioli hands,

Loving hands,

Book-holding hands,

Working hands,

Writing hands,

Old lady hands,

Praying hands.

My husband shows me the way to peace with Mom.  He bends over backwards to please her and to help me.  When Mark and I start our own family, Mom’s nurturing spirit makes our world on the 41st Parallel better.  For just about the first ime in my life, Mom and I find a common ground when my daughter is born.  She releases her inner spirit, something I never saw before, and supports us in the new roles of Mother and Father.

It is no surprise that Mom talks about Mark, years later, when she lives in a nursing home and is almost 82 years-old.

“He’s the only man who’s ever cared about me,” said Mom.

Uncle Pippi was on my mind last night.

I woke remembering this dream:

I see a beautiful woman.  She reminds me of an angel, well, the feeling of an angel, from heaven.  She has blonde hair that falls in soft waves, in the style of the 1950s.  I don’t know her.  I’ve never seen her before.  She seems very kind to me.

My husband, Mark, and I sit on Nanny’s front porch, on the slate.  There are others with us, but I’m not sure who they are ˗ maybe our children.  I feel relaxed.  We see a car, a style of the 1950s, slowly pull up alongside the sidewalk, next to the hill of Nanny’s front yard.  We watch the driver from above.  The blonde woman gets out of the car and walks up the hill easily, towards us.  She says she’s looking for a Jean DeVito, and I say that’s me.  I shake her hand.  She says someone she knows gave her this paper, as she hands a paper to me.  She says someone else, a third person, gave it to the person she knows.  She doesn’t know the third person.  She says that they just told her to find me and give me the paper.  I don’t know how she knew to find me at Nanny’s.  It feels as though it was easy for her to find me, and as though everyone knows that I can always be found at Nanny’s.

The woman turns to leave, but I don’t watch her go.

I look at the paper.  It’s a map.   It measures about 10” square.  It’s an old map, an antique, colored by age, frayed around the edges, with many fold lines, as though folded over and over again, studied many times.  I’m overwhelmed and start to cry.

I tell Mark that I had a dream about this map.

There’s a black and white sketch of the stone foundation and Uncle Pippi’s garden on the map.  It is a 2-dimensional sketch.  It is a treasure map.  The wood-sawn fence surrounds the garden.  The stones of the foundation are drawn.  There’s a shovel, and a dotted line arrow that goes through the floor of the foundation, down deep into the earth, below the garden.  There is an X marked at the bottom of a shoveled out tunnel.  It is deep in the earth, through Uncle Pippi’s garden.

I don’t feel as though there is buried treasure, like a chest of gold, in the physical aspect of the earth.  I feel as though Uncle Pippi is telling me that there is treasure in the garden, in the emotional sense.  I feel as though he’s telling me to write about the garden.

There is handwriting along the edge of the map.  It says “Pippi.”  It’s in my mother’s handwriting.  I recognize her loose writing style.  On the other side of the paper, Mom wrote a note that describes what the X mark means.

It says, “You will find love here.”

It’s a bird-chirping, sky-blue Sunday on April 18, 2011.

“Let’s go to the cemetery,” said Mark.

My husband hankers to visit relatives that moved to heaven.  With our young son, Joseph, we cross town to St. John’s Cemetery that borders Darien.  We toss prayers to Mark’s grandparents, Uncle Bino and Aunt Lettie, then, on a whim, I’m on a look-out for Daddy’s grave.

I remember the directions that Maria gave me to find his grave, near a pillar of an oak tree that’s close to a chain-link fence that separates a neighbor, Harisonic Labs, where Mom worked long ago.  Can’t find him.  I watch my feet circle round the baby-green grass of Spring, think of Daddy’s icy, sky-blue eyes, that had a touch of green, listen to Joseph’s “He’s not over here, Mom” updates, then see daffodil shoots near a grave marker overgrown with grass.   I know Barbara planted flowers at Daddy’s grave.

The daffodils beckon.

I look for Daddy.

“I found him!”  I call to Mark and Joseph.

I got the lucky penny, the four-leaf-clover, the Italian horn of good luck, the Cornicello, the golden egg of the Easter hunt, the not-even-replaceable-with-$300,000, bloom of love that races in my heart.  I don’t know why I’ve never been here before.  I am here now.

Daddy’s buried in an area for veterans.  The grave marker reads:

Joseph T. Bankowski

PFC U. S. Army

Korean

1927- 1979

I look up at Mark for strength.

“I never knew he served in Korea!”  The imaginary cord to Daddy snakes out of my mouth.  That cord isn’t cut yet.

“I always thought it was Uncle Pippi giving you signs, Jeanne, but it was your father all of the time,” said Mark.

We clear the grass that fringes the edge of the grave marker.  Joseph cleans it, works meticulously, swipes the dirt away with fingers.  Joseph, who I named after Daddy.  He finds a small, American flag, lucky, as only some kids are lucky, and pokes it into the dirt.

“Let’s come back here at Easter and bring flowers, Mom,” said Joseph.

Thank you, Dear, Sweet, Jesus, for my son.

At home, Joseph lines up army men toys and a small gift box on the kitchen counter.

“Which one do you think your Dad will like, Mom?”  He matter-of-factly points to the men.

I’ve never heard those words before.  The strange words might as well be an ordinary chat about Joseph’s grandpa, as though he’s a rich part of our everyday life, with a recent visit and a shared lasagna for supper.

“I think he’d like the blue guy,” I said.

“That’s the one I’ll bring on Easter,” said Joseph, and he put the army man into the box.

Thank you, Dear, Sweet, Jesus, for your great suffering, for rising from the dead, and giving me the hope of life beyond the grave.  Thank you, Dear, Sweet, Jesus, for my Easter love that falls into my son’s sky-blue eyes.

The mother of all snowflakes lands on my tongue.

This moment is perfect joy.

Grandpa waves hello to me from the kitchen window that overlooks the driveway.  I wave back, then push long hair away from my face with my armor, a red, hand-me-down mitten, as fluttery snow dusts me and my sisters.  I don’t know it yet, but one day, Grandpa will be gone and tears will catch in my throat when I see his gray sweater lying alone on his chair.  No more waves from Grandpa at the window.

It’s winter in Darien.  I grab Maria’s fake-fur trimmed hood and pull her along, and order Barb to follow me.  We run to Nanny’s yard to make snow-angels, our bodies crazily thrash about in the snow.

Angels in heaven look at me.  My arms pump up-and-down to make wings on the ground.  I pump hard, hope to get rid of the fear that silences me.  I try hard not to be afraid and pray to Jesus to give me strength, just like Mom does.  I try hard to think of good things.  Christmas is almost here.  And with that day, Baby Jesus!  Baby Jesus!  Baby Jesus!

Yesterday, I put Baby Jesus in the manger of my Polish grandparents’ nativity.  Babcia and Dziadzio brought it with them when they immigrated from Poland.  I know that God loved the world so much that he gave us his only Son.  I know that God loves me, and I hold onto this as tight as I can, especially when I feel that no one loves me.  Maybe this is why my grandparents carried the nativity from their homeland, to have something to hold onto.  I don’t know it yet, but one day, Babcia and Dziadzio will be gone, and somehow, some way, I carry the nativity with me.

I follow the tracks of Donna’s white rubber boots as the four of us girls go inside, to Nanny’s warm kitchen.  It is here where I feel that God will protect me from my enemies.  I think Mom must feel this way, too.  It is here where I don’t have to think about the butcher knife weapon that Mom threatened Drunk-Daddy with last night, as she crazily stood on my bed, a mad-woman-as-protector, in front of me and my sisters.  In that moment, I knew that Mom will divorce Daddy.  Her defense is over.  Our world is gone.  I am gone.  I don’t know it yet, well, maybe I do, and my stubborn-self won’t accept it as I fight God’s plan for me, but someday, some way, I believe that there’s not a battle in life that I’m left to fend for myself.  Dear, Sweet, Jesus is with me.  He was always with me.  He was with me in Nanny’s kitchen.  I am armed for all kinds of combat.