for Nicole

Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass. –Nicola Yoon, The Sun is Also a Star

I’ve always had a thing for names. I first became aware of this as I surveyed my new box of 64 Crayola crayons. What a smorgasbord of names, a veritable feast for name-afficianados like me! Periwinkle, aquamarine, salmon, maize, emerald, fuschia, raw umber, orchid, tangerine, cerulean! As I pulled each crayon from the three-tiered box, I marveled at how its name was a perfect identity marker. To become a crayon namer, to examine the 64 perfectly pointed crayons and christen them with perfectly chosen names! Be still my heart! In time, I sorted and moved my favorite crayons to the top tier, vowing to keep their points for as long as I could resist using them. Even at 8, I felt something magical in these names. In late July when I see the aisles of school supplies begin to emerge, I still make a pass through the crayon section. As I stand in front of these big box crayons with new and spectacular names (macaroni and cheese, banana mania, Granny Smith apple, wild blue yonder, jazzberry jam, and timberwolf) I’m grounded in the time and geography of childhood. A name can do this: provide a kind of map to particular moments and memories.

British poet W. H. Auden claims that “[p]roper names are poetry in the raw.” I became school-age in the 60s when a name like Shannon was relatively exotic in a field saturated with Debbies and Julies. And I loved this. I loved that my name was unusual, that it sounded like a poem to my ears. When I began considering names for my own children, I spoke them aloud often, trying them on, listening to how the first, middle, and last names worked together. I rejected many combinations as being too flat. I wanted something musical and memorable. And I wanted my children to love their names as I loved mine. Above all, I wanted them to know that their naming had been a sacred act, for “[a] good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.” (Proverbs 22:1).

So, what if you aren’t blessed with a beautiful name? What if your name is common or odd? What if the very sound of it–its combination of consonants and vowels–jars the senses? In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People,” the protagonist’s mother refuses to call her daughter by the name she’d chosen for herself. O’ Connor writes: “When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it.” Although I’m certain there are worse fates, a name that evokes the broad blank hull of a battleship must come with a unique set of challenges.

Children’s novelist Katherine Patterson writes: “The name we give to something shapes our attitude to it.” I often shudder when I hear the names that some parents have consciously–or unconsciously–given their children. My dad told the story of a brother and sister in his hometown whose names sadly shaped others’ attitudes towards them. What were their parents thinking when they named their children Harry and Rosie Rump? Consider, too, the name of my former student, Kinda Short. When I called roll on the first day of class, I hoped that my pronunciation of “Kinda” with a short i was accurate. But she corrected me quickly. It was “Kinda” with a long i. And tragically, she was kind of short. As I was chatting with a group of students before class one night, a young woman announced that her brother and his wife just had their first baby, a girl. “What’s her name?” I asked. She shrugged and said, “They’re still deciding. But they’re considering Twin Towers.” Twin Towers? Did I hear her right? This was a name straight out of the Frank Zappa playbook (remember Moon Unit and Dweezil?) In his short story, “The Scarlet Ibis,” James Hurst writes: “Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle.” If this poor girl was to be saddled with a name like Twin Towers, I wanted the power to rename her, so that she might escape the legacy of terror and grief associated with her name. Renaming her would be, at the very least, an act of kindness. At best, it might save her life.

In L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea, we read a conversation in which Diana, Anne’s good friend, proposes a possible solution for an unfortunate name:

“That’s a lovely idea, Diana,” said Anne enthusiastically. “Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with… making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself.”

To beautify one’s name, to make it memorable as something lovely and pleasant is a lovely thought. Like O’Connor’s fictional character, Hulga, my maternal grandfather, Wilbert Zorn, had a name that sounded like the broad blank hull of a battleship. He lived such a wonderful life, however, that he beautified it, softening its hard edges with sunny days spent on the banks of sandpits, a bucket of crawdads and a whole lot of love between us.

Recently, I commented on Nebraska photographer and blogger (Sandhills Prairie Girl), Nicole Louden’s post, confessing how much I love how she names things that populate the Sandhills. Naming things, I wrote, is a divine act, for it calls them into the significance they merit. Confucius argues that “[i]f names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.” Nicole’s pratice of using correct names for the things about which she writes and photographs endows her work with a truthfulness and a profound sense of place: not plant but “soapweed,” not wildflower but “pucoon,” not shore bird but “phalarope,” not moth but “cecropia moth.” How well she uses the power and the majesty of particular names!

And speaking of particular names, my favorites are the names of my grandchildren, Gracyn Mae and Griffin Jay. Though they are 11 and 14 now, I can’t say their names without remembering their births, their name days. When I say their names, I can feel the sweet weight of their infant bodies in my arms. I can hear the giggles of sleepovers, and I can see them sitting companionably on the dock at the end of a summer’s day. I want to speak their names, proclaiming, “Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name” (Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn). Melodramatic, maybe, but nontheless true.

In the past few years, I’ve begun to lament my inability to remember names. Often as soon as I hear a name in an introduction, it floats away like chaff in the wind. I hate this. For I know that naming is ultimately an intimate act of knowing and blessing. I want to be able to say “wild chicory” to distinguish it from other roadside plants. I want to be able to say, “Hi, Laura” to distinguish my friend from other women. In the sanctuary of naming, I take solace in the unmerited grace for those, like me, who occasionally forget. And when I can’t recall the name “periwinkle,” I take solace in the fact that, with patience, I’ll be able to retrieve this name eventually. For a name is a powerful thing, and no self-respecting periwinkle would answer to “blue”.

The housing crisis—and the arbitrary regulations that fuel it—are killing off places to eat whether we like it or not, designing loneliness into American floor plans. If dining space keeps dying, the U.S. might not have a chance to get it back. M. Nolan Gray, “America’s Loneliness Has a Concrete Explanation,” The Atlantic, June 10, 2024

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what my life would’ve been like without a family dining room. But I didn’t have to think too long or too hard to know this: my life would’ve been much poorer. I cut my teeth on the discussions held around our family dining table. I listened and learned, laughed and cried around this table. I sat in second-hand wooden chairs that looked innocently enough like Ducan Phyfe knock-offs, but were–by everyone’s admission– really torture devices. To leave the table, however, was unthinkable. To leave was to miss out. To leave was to declare that you weren’t made of sturdy stock, that, even when your butt had gone numb and you’d consumed gallons of liquid, you didn’t have what it took to remain in the conversation. This may sound like torture, but it was anything but.

In Gray’s recent Atlantic article, he reports that the death of the dining room plays a significant role in Americans’ loneliness, a condition that has only increased since the pandemic:

According to a 2015 report by the Food Marketing Institute, nearly half the time we spend eating is spent in isolation, a central factor in America’s loneliness epidemic and a correlate to a range of physical- and mental-health problems.

Gray cites real estate developer, Bobby Fijan who contends that “[t]he reason the dining room is disappearing is that we are allocating [our] limited space to bedrooms and walk-in closets” and that many apartments now offer only a kitchen island as a place to eat. This, Gray argues, is literally designing loneliness into American floor plans.

Yesterday when a neighbor stopped over for a visit, she commented on our large kitchen island. When we opened up our small galley kitchen, we built an octagonal island that seats 8-10 people. This is our dining room table, and we spend the majority of our family holidays and get-togethers around it. We play games and eat grilled burgers here. We share news and memories here. We celebrate birthdays with cake and homemade ice cream here. We drink coffee and watch the birds here. No one who gathers here is lonely; like those who value the dining room table, we intentionally designed fellowship into our floor plan.

When my children were young and we visited my parents over school breaks, I recall the utter joy at sitting at the dining room table after the kids were excused to play in the basement or outside. This table offered genuine adult conversation, and I sucked it up like a dry root. Add to this the fact that I could talk about teaching English with my father, and I felt as though I’d won the lottery. These hours rejuvenated me, sent me back to my classroom with new vigor and conviction. I would’ve been so much poorer, so much more discouraged and anxious without them.

Undoubtedly, most of us have read reports and testimonials regarding the impact of the cell phone on personal relationships. It goes without saying that the cell phone has played a significant role in America’s loneliness problem. This technological barn door has been flung wide open, however, and it’s unlikely it will ever be shut. The dining room may be dying, but it’s not dead. Not yet. I’ve watched enough HGTV to know that there are buyers and builders who still value the dining room as a gathering place. These folks may want grand kitchen islands topped with granite or marble, but they understand that regardless of their size or beauty, they are no substitute for dining room tables.

Now that both of my parents are gone, I’ve imagined what it would be like to have one more dinner in our family dining room. We’d be eating my mom’s famous hamburger cassserole, Marcia’s Mess, my grandmother’s frozen cherry salad (with and without nuts), and at least two kinds of pie. To prepare for this occasion, I would’ve put in some serious endurance training, so that I’d amaze my siblings with my capacity to stay seated, numb butt, full bladder, and all. No one would leave the table, and everyone would feel as though there was no place they’d rather be. Gathered around our dining room table, we’d happily do our part to make a dent in America’s loneliness problem.

When I discovered that my Facebook proflie picture had somehow disappeared into Meta’s black hole, I added a new photo. This is a photo my traveling buddies took when they encouraged me–goaded actually–to buy some food from a vendor in the plaza in front of the Duomo di Milano and feed the pigeons. (Even at their insistence, I drew the line at singing “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins). We were traveling through Italy and on this day, we were seeing the sites of Milan. Go on, they cajoled, You’ve got history with pigeons! You’re a natural! Make your dad proud! And so, I spread my arms, opened my food-laden palms, and to the delight and cheers of my friends, several pigeons immediately swooped in and ate right out of my hands.

It’s true: I have a history with pigeons, and I might be considered a natural. For as long as I can remember, my father raised and raced homing pigeons. When we moved into our family home in Kearney, half of our garage quickly became a pigeon loft, and over the years, my dad’s pigeon operation expanded into the backyard where he and my husband built another loft for “breeders.” My dad and his racing pigeon club sent crates of birds by air to Texas where a designated airline worker released them on the tarmac. A good homing pigeon could fly the 500 miles from Texas to Nebraska in a single day. The rookies were often sidelined in Oklahoma or Kansas, returning days–or weeks–later. Determining the winners of these races involved mathematically calculating the bird that flew the fastest air mile per minute. It involved special racing pigeon clocks, a large table around which club members would gather to calculate and eat snacks, and time. After moments of quiet calculation, an announcement would be made and a winner declared. The whole process was a common event in our home. The pigeon guys are coming today, my mom would tell us, and this was our cue to make scarce, so they could do their work. If there were any snacks left over, we had permission to partake.

One of my dad’s birds returned from a race, dehydrated and so fatigued that she flew right into a utility wire that hung across our alley. When she fell into the yard, her breast split open from impact, my dad solicited my help as he scooped her up and prepared for surgery. I held the trembling bird, pushing back her feathers as my dad stitched her up. At ten years, I witnessed the miracle of of life-saving measures with a needle and a little fishing line.

In second grade, I began the yearly ritual of bringing a homing pigeon to school. I’d explain how these pigeons had an natural instinct to return to their homes and then show my class the bird my dad had outfitted with a special leg band that contained a message capsule. My class would write a message to my dad, and I’d insert it into the capsule. Then at the beginning of recess, I’d take the pigeon out of the crate on the playground and release him to fly home. When the local newspaper photographed this event one year, the caption beneath the photo read, “Shannon Welch releases a homing pigeon on the Park School playground (see blur).” The photographer had captured the pigeon in the blur of takeoff. On the day after the release, I’d proudly return to school, message in hand, to the delight of my classmates who’d exclaim, He made it all the way home! The fact that I lived a scant three blocks from school was largely lost in our wonder.

As momentous as these yearly school releases were, however, if I had to rate my pigeon moments on a scale of 1-10, one experience stands out as a resounding 10. I was teaching at a community college that had just been awarded a National Endowment for Humanities grant to bring humanities into technical programs. A colleague and I were tasked with a group of tractor maintenance students whose classes met in a large Morton building. Suffice it to say that when two women pedalling humanities showed up, these students were not impressed. I recall the art teacher whose class proceeded ours confessing that he’d flown through 500 years of art history slides in 30 minutes in an attempt to keep their attention. And I remember thinking that this didn’t bode well at all for two young English teachers. They’ll eat us alive, I thought.

But fortune struck when a barn pigeon swooped across the class room one day and took refuge behind a large metal cabinet in the corner. Without thinking, I walked over, reached behind the cabinet, grabbed the pigeon (all the while teaching), opened the door, and released the bird. Nothing I’d said or done previously–or after–this moment had much, if any impact, on my students. When I closed the door and turned to face them, they were gobsmacked. Mouths open, eyes fixed on me, dumbstruck. Finally, one young man said, You caught that bird! You just reached back there and caught him! It was the closest I’ve ever come to pure adoration from an entire group of students. It had nothing to do with my intellect or educational training, and everything to do with my pigeon skills. I basked in the moment, for I knew that this was about as good as it would get; I’d never again have such a rapt audience. This was the stuff that legends are made from.

Another pigeon moment that ranks right up there occurred during the night of one of my dad’s 500-mile pigeon races. Homing pigeons don’t generally fly at night. They’ll roost in trees after the sun sets and fly again at daylight. I was lying in bed at about 10 that night when I heard a pigeon land on the roof above my bedroom. My dad hadn’t gotten a single bird back from the race that day, so I rushed downstairs to announce that a race bird had just come come back. Skeptical, my dad rose from his chair and made his way into the backyard with a flashlight where he scanned the roof. And sure enough, there was Apollo, his race bird. My dad rushed into the pigeon loft, grabbed a can of food, returning to the yard as he shook the can, whistling. This was his way of coaxing birds to enter the loft. Hearing the familiar call, Apollo left the roof and returned to his loft, securing my father first place and several hundred dollars in prize money. For years, Apollo’s framed photo proudly hung in my dad’s office.

One afternoon as I pulled into my children’s school parking lot to pick them up, their principal ran from her supervisory post towards my car, motioning for me to roll down my window. There’s an injured pigeon by the front door. You know what to do, right? I parked, found the pigeon huddled up against the building, picked it up, and walked towards the playground where I released it. It had been stunned and took to the air again, circling the school once before it flew off. There were collective sighs of relief as I walked back to my car. All was right with the world again.

In the world of birds, the pigeon is pretty commonplace. In the bird world, it’s tough to compete against the plummage of a mandarin duck, the grace of a trumpeter swan, or the music of a nightingale. But how about a little praise for pigeons? After all, it wasn’t the mandarin duck, swan, or nightingale who braved enemy airspace to carry important military communications during World Wars 1 and 2.

In WWI, a homing pigeon named Cher Ami was one of the 600 Army Signal Corps pigeons used in France. Cher Ami flew 12 successful missions, an amazing record considering enemy troops began to recognize these birds’ role in communication and actively sought to shoot them down. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918, Cher Ami was stationed with the 77th Division, referred to as the “Lost Battalion.” Trapped behind enemy lines and unable to communicate their position, the 77th relied on their assigned pigeons for communication. German soldiers quickly shot down almost their entire group of pigeons as they took to the air with crucial communication. Only one bird remained, Cher Ami. American Maj. Charles Whittlesey attached a note to Cher Ami’s leg,: “We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.” Dodging German bullets, Cher Ami flew, suffering a shot to the chest which grounded him. Miraculously, he took to the air again, covering 25 miles to the American base in less than 30 minutes. Army medics were able to save Cher Ami’s life, but he lost his right leg and was permanently blinded. Cher Ami’s successful mission saved the lives of 194 soldiers. Later, the French government awarded Cher Ami with the Croix de Guerre for bravery on the battlefield. In gratitude and with respect, U. S. General John Pershing exclaimed, “There isn’t anything the United States can do too much for this bird.”

If I ever return to Milan, I plan to feed the pigeons again. I may even channel Dick Van Dyke and bust out with “Feed the Birds” as I open my palms to the sky. Because I’m a natural and happily share a rich history with those who appreciate pigeons. Because I want to make my dad proud. And because the pigeon is worthy of a little praise.

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

A single indigo bunting appeared on one of our bird feeders a few days ago. Since then, he’s returned multiple times, and I’m equally astonished each time. Buntings are small birds–think bigger than a goldfinch but smaller than a robin–but their splendor is great and immeasurable. In the right light, they are neon blue, otherworldly blue, a blue that makes bluejay-blue wave the flag of surrender. In the jewel box of summer birds, here is a true sapphire, a real sparkler.

Seeing this bunting makes me happier than I can say. I’ve waited for almost 24 years to see one at my feeder. My family can attest to my obsession with the elusive indigo bunting. They tell tales of how I’ve nearly walked into all sorts of objects, my eyes trained on the tree tops, my ears fixed on the bunting cries. They’ve been known to say things like, “If you see Mom standing in the middle of the yard looking at the tree line, she hasn’t lost her mind. She probably thinks she’s spotted an indigo bunting” or “If Grandma shushes you, don’t take it personally. She probably thinks she’s heard an indigo bunting in the timber, and she’s trying to locate it.” It’s safe to say that my obsession manifests itself in behavior that some may call crazy. I call it necessary. For one intent upon small things hardly noticeable, such vigilance is necessary. You have to be prepared–even if it means an occasional run-in with a parked car or lawn chair.

Yes, you must be prepared to look for those small things which often become immeasurably great. Years ago when I was walking the rural roads in late summer, the roadsides and ditches were largely mown off. The county crews had cleared them of Queen Anne’s lace, wild chicory, trefoil, and occasional stands of daylilies. There was something funereal about these shorn shoulders of gravel roads that stretched for miles along the creek bottoms. One day, however, I looked down to see a 50-yard stretch of roadside where wild chicory had begun to grow again. Here were miniature versions of the chicory’s summer self; small but stout stems held star-shaped periwinkle blossoms. You can’t keep a good wildflower down, I thought as I marveled at the life that had risen against all odds from the hard-packed clay of late summer.

In her 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard reflects on the time she spent at Tinker’s Creek in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. With Dillard, I find myself in good company, for she, too, is unabashedly obsessive about those things in the natural world that simply amaze her:

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.

I’m certain that I’ve fixed family and friends with that wild, glitt’ring eye as I’ve recounted my hunt for the elusive indigo bunting. If I could hear their thoughts, I’m guessing that I’d hear collective groans: Oh no, she’s going to talk about that bird again. . . . But, like Dillard, I don’t set out to make idle chatter with my bird talk but to change lives. Because the preternatural blue of the indigo bunting is life-changing. Oh, there may be innocents who flee the tales of bunting or goat moth sightings, but I’ve learned to let them go. You just can’t force this kind of wonder on those who have no eyes to see.

Just this morning I was leaving the nature preserve and noticed some hefty waves in the pond across the road, so I decided to investigate. I suspected the work of muskrats, but I was wrong. At the pond’s edge, there were two behemoth snapping turtles mating. For a time, they circled each other in a ritual dance. And then they locked up, their prehistoric claws wrapped around each other, their tails, like antennae, shooting straight for sky. They floated entwined–an eight-legged reptilian marvel–as mist burned off the pond, and curious sunfish moved around and below them. For at least ten minutes I stood there, rapt. When one of the naturalists pulled into the parking lot to begin her day’s work, I considered yelling and beckoning her to come and see. But I didn’t. I stood there alone, bearing witness. Eventually, I ran to my car to get my cell phone, so I could take a video. For proof, I thought, as I imagined recounting this event to my family who would almost surely question that this was what I’d really seen and might chalk it off to a just another new obsession. For nearly 10 glorious minutes, it didn’t occur to me to take a photo. I inched towards the pond’s edge, watching, barely breathing, and fully present. This is the power of an ordinary, natural act that unexpectedly becomes great and immeasurable.

In Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” he writes of the peace of wild things like the wood drake and heron which “do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” He commends the “grace of the world” which gifts us with “still water” and “day-blind stars.” I love this poem, for it speaks to the heart of those, like Dillard, who contend that “[b]eauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” It speaks to the heart of those who want to do their part, to bear witness to their share of beauty and grace. It speaks to a world grown weary of ugliness and evil, a world that too often sacrifices the natural for the artificial. It speaks to me as I continue to explore my own habitat in search of small things of inestimable worth.

In her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, Annie Dillard claims that “[a]t a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.” Although it’s taken decades, I believe that I’m ready. I want to be present for those small things that poet Rainer Maria Rilke believes may unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. And I want to know the names of all these things, for to name them is to see them–and to love them.

There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you’re going is as good as where you’ve been.
― Richard Proenneke, One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

Even as I write this post, I can hear my critic-voice accusing me of being too maudeline. Still, I must confess that I’m sad. Sadder than I’ve been for a long time. There’s no getting around it: packing up is sad business.

Yesterday, my family home became someone else’s home. When I close my eyes, I will always be able to walk the rooms and see where my mother placed all her treasures, most secondhand or inherited finds from family and friends. I can see my father’s racing pigeon trophies high on the book shelves in his den and the gallery of family photos that completely took over the upstairs hallway. I can see the bedroom where I slept under the eaves and the small galley kitchen where we once ate on stools, barely an inch of space between us. When you pack up a house, you also pack up the glorious and the painful moments that have lived companionably in that space. And I suppose that, as author Richard Proennecke writes, you wonder if where you’re going is a good as where you’ve been.

I recently learned of the death of a dear friend. Her unflagging optimism and quirky sense of humor sustained me throughout junior and senior high school. We shared secret jokes that insulated us from the sharp edges of the “popular girls.” We cooked up missions that sent us into unsuspecting yards to pose with the lawn ornaments there just as cars of college students passed. We shared an appreciation for the humor of Jerry Lewis and regularly greeted each other in the school hallways with “Come fly with me!” We got each other. And this was more than enough to make the slings and arrows of adolescence bearable. We pack up homes, but we also pack up lives, boxing up moments and images that we’ll carry with us. Today, I remember my friend and know that I’ll need a storage container for the friendship I’ve packed.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been really lousy at leaving places and people. While others may part in what appear to be graceful exits, mine are most often messy, slobbering affairs. I always had to circle the block several times when I left my parents’ home, hoping to get one last glimpse of them on the terrace. When I finished a school year, I always planned parting celebrations for my students, so that I could memorialize all we’d shared. As a young mother, when I drove out of town without my children, I felt the compulsion to formalize my goodbyes, just in case I died and never saw them again. Each time I drive into town, I still pass the Queen Anne house we left decades ago. It never occurs to me to take another route; it’s a ritual I must perform. Before I left my family home a week ago, I walked through each room and into each closet one last time, as I formally and tearfully let go. Then I packed up the life I’d lived there and drove away.

It comes as no surprise to me that I’m struggling with this season of packing up. As people I know and love die or move on, as familiar places change hands or are torn down, sadness seems inevitable. But it’s a particularly sweet sadness that comes with boxes of treasures, all waiting to be opened again–and again. It’s a sadness that overwhelms you with tears one moment and smiles the next. And it’s a sadness that reminds you that you have loved and been loved and that your storerooms are full.

Packing Up
--for my siblings

I’ve been trying to pack up all our treasures:

that bright space we leaped into,
our nightgowns like flannel sails in the evening air
as we jumped from bed to bed,
the wooden slats underneath trembling—once breaking—
and our father, cajoling and laughing,
urging us higher, but quietly or your mom will hear;

the moments after supper
when dark mounds of fudge cooled on wax paper
and us crowding the kitchen doorway, salivating
and asking Now, now?

the history of us around the big table,
warming our lives over casserole and pie,
each of us refusing to be the first to leave,
all of us tethering ourselves to the wooden chairs
which numbed our butts beyond reason.

All these things I’ve tried to pack,
knowing that soon I’ll shut the door 
on our family home one last time,
fearing that I may not remember the magic of my closet,
the sweet hours there with dolls and books and plastic horses,
fearing that I won’t hear the gray cat purring on our mother’s lap
or the low cries of mourning doves from the eaves,
fearing that I may not be able to close my eyes
and see the walls papered with our father’s words.

Yet even now as I close the door,
there is the soft hum of the black Singer from the basement
and our mother’s able hands
stitching these remnants into a family.

Monsieur Geroux collected small good things. The unexpected sound of birdsongs, a half-price sale at the bakery, a smile from a passing child. Storing them in his mind for later, when needed. –Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

I started young. With my 15-cent-allowance in my pocket, I headed directly to the mezzanine of Kaufman-Wernert Department store in downtown Kearney, Nebraska. There amidst bunches of gaudy, artificial flowers were trays of small glass animals: dogs, cats, horses, forest and jungle creatures. Most cost a dime, so a quarter bought you two treasures. I could never be rushed; I would look through the boxes at every animal, searching for just the right ones. The top of my bedroom dresser held my collection of small, good things, which grew and changed as I did. Before I moved to the dorm for college, the collection held a legion of glassed animals, a POW bracelet, my great-grandmother’s blue glass powder box, and an antique iron elephant bank I’d inherited from some relative. As I opened my eyes each morning, It gave me great pleasure to survey my small treasures.

Today, a milk glass dish in my office holds the small, good things my grandchildren and I have collected over the years: snail shells, buckeyes, acorns, and unique stones. As lovely as these things are in their own rights, they pale in comparison to the small, good moments during which we found them. What gives me the greatest pleasure these days is the knowledge that my grandchildren have developed the sensibility to see and appreciate the objects and experiences of our ordinary days. Having such eyes transforms the ordinary to the extraordinary. You can’t put a price on this. This gift–and it is a gift, indeed–bestows wonder on a world that too many find mundane and simply bearable.

During one of my guest visits to an elementary classroom, I was preparing them for a creative writing exercise by asking them about their own small, good things, their keepsakes. I always came prepared with a toolbox of activities, for I’d learned early that 8-year-olds could often fly through what I’d prepared, devouring exercises like a woodchipper. So, I’d anticipated that this keepsake activity would be a kind of warm-up and had designated a few minutes to work through it. But I was wrong. As I asked the class about their keepsakes, hands went up and stayed up. Kids patiently waited for their turn to share their keepsake with their classmates. And they listened with an intensity that took my breath away. As each student shared, a reverent hush came over the room, and all eyes fixed on the speaker. One by one, they shared their treasures: a pocket watch passed down from grandfather to grandson, a magic fountain pen from a vacation gift store, a locket that opened to reveal a friend’s photo, a frog dagger (this from a tiny, freckled girl who announced that her grandfather was keeping it for her until she was “more responsible”), and a Nolan Ryan autographed baseball (this from a tall boy in a desk that barely contained him who said, quietly, that this was a gift from his mother weeks before her death).

I was not prepared for the power of these small, good things to transform an elementary classroom into a museum of treasures. The marvel of it was that these kids didn’t have to actually see or touch these treasures to appreciate them. They could imagine them. In an article in Science, “‘Like a film in my mind’: hyperphantasia and the quest to understand vivid imagination,” David Robson cites studies that suggest that hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery, is far more common among children. One study by Professor Ilona Kovacs at Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary reveals how our brains store more sensory details in infancy, details which are slowly replaced by more abstract ideas as we age. Professor Kovacs writes, “The child’s memories offer a more concrete appreciation of the world, and it seems that only a small percentage of people can maintain this in later life.” Standing in this room of 8-year-olds, I could feel the power of their sensory details and their profound appreciation of the concrete world.

Years and many such classroom visits later, I lamented the loss of such details that were too quickly replaced by “right answers” and generalizations. I might ask a kindergartener what she had for breakfast, and she’d lay out a smorgasbord of details before me: “Well, I wanted to have the new Lucky Charms with the birthdaty cake sprinkled marshmallows, but my brother ate them all. So, I had to have a frozen waffle. But it was really good, too, because I spread Nutella on it before I put syrup on. It’s really good this way. You should try it.” If I asked her 5th grade brother the same question, I’d get a much different response: “I don’t know. Cereal, I think.” By fifth grade, most children have learned to generalize “cereal” for the host of sensory details they might offer as kindergarteners. The small, good things that once delighted them are relegated to childhood, and abstractions mark the passage into adolescence.

Over the decades during which I’ve taught creative writing, I’ve mourned how quickly we lose our love for small, good things. And for small, good moments. Perhaps, what I really mourn is our propensity to rush children from details into ideas. Don’t get me wrong: I love ideas, having devoted much of my life to reading, discussing, and teaching some of the world’s greatest ideas from the world’s greatest thinkers. I understand the value of learning to generalize, to draw big ideas from literary works and experience. Still, it seems a shame that we not only rush children into the world of ideas but that we also communicate–consciously or not–that this world is preferable and should replace any childish love of detail.

I came to my own love of small, good things naturally–both through genes and through modeling. As my siblings and I prepare to sell our family home, the process of cleaning and sorting has resulted in so many small, good things: paper weights, wooden trinkets, Depression glass bowls and plates (lovingly restored and painted by my mother), pigeon paraphenalia (collected by my father, a homing pigeon raiser and racer), letters, notes, papers, and photos. All of my ideas about what makes a good home have grown from these things. Through who they were and how they lived, my parents modeled how to see the ordinary world as extraordinary. It was years into adulthood when I realized–much to my surprise–that I’d grown up barely middle-class. For me, my life with my parents and siblings had seemed unusually blessed, marked with a deep love for each other and the world we lived in. The things my parents leave behind testify to their power to transport us again into Christmases and birthdays, Sunday afternoon drives in the country, meals around the family table. Our family house will soon pass to another, but the little pieces of our lives there have found special places in our own homes.

I’m not sure if it’s possible to better nuture and sustain the natural hyperphantasia of children. But I think we should try. There is time enough for abstractions and generalizations. There may be far too little time for those small, good things which color our lives so brightly.

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy.
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses 

Constancy is not a flashy virtue. Dressing modestly and speaking demurely, it lives quietly in a noisy world. Few champion its cause or sing its praises, and many consider it to be old-fashioned and just plain boring. On the dance floor where virtues such as courage, determination, and passion whirl wildly about, constancy stands at the edge, a wallflower with a glass of warm punch in her hand.

But I confess: I’m a big fan of the quiet virtues. A few weeks ago, I was at my granddaughter’s trackmeet. As a former sprinter, I still get unreasonably nervous when I watch running events. When Gracyn took the track to run the 3,000 meters, I realized that I was holding my breath. And then I realized that I’d better relax and breathe because she had 8 laps to run. At dusk, the wind picked up and whipped across the metal bleachers. On the track below, the high school girl runners looked particulalry vulnerable with their bare legs and thin jerseys. After the first 800 meters, I watched Gracyn on the back straight-away and thought: pick it up. But I was also painfully aware that I had no experience as a distance runner and no real idea about pacing a 3,000 meter run. Still, I could see the runner a few meters ahead of her and willed her to take her before the curve. With each lap, however, Gracyn’s pace remained the same. It was as if she were a metronome of will, ticking off lap after lap with constancy. Though she didn’t win, she did place.

Weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan claims that [p]art of courage is simple consistency. Novelist Cormac McCarthy echoes the same sentiment when he writes Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy [All the Pretty Horses]. There is something courageous about taking the track alone and running 3,000 meters. And there’s something quietly remarkable about running a consistent pace you can sustain until the very end.

Oh, there are those like Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde who argue that consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative. No doubt, Wilde wouldn’t have been impressed with Gracyn’s run that night. Nor would he be impressed with anyone who lives and performs with that sort of constancy. We often find comfort and joy, however, in the very constancy he claims is unimaginative. I always knew that my grandma would make me a chocolate pie for every family dinner. There would be other pies, of course, but there would always be chocolate pie. My grandma might have been more imaginative, branching out into coconut or banana cream. If she had, though, my disappointment would’ve been palpable.

Pie is one thing; love is quite another. My parents’ love for each other wasn’t flashy. My dad’s idea of a perfect first date was a dime cup of coffee and a cozy spot behind a haystack in a field where thousands of Sandhill cranes were feeding. My mom’s Christmas gift to him one year was a sweatshirt on which she had printed: Strictly for the Birds. Their love story wouldn’t have made great reality TV with its elaborate dates, grand gestures, and Oscar-worthy proposals. Their love story was not the sort that flashed but invariably fizzled after the filming is done, but rather one of quiet constancy through sickness and health, for richer and for poorer. This is the kind of constancy on which to stake your life.

Today, realtors will begin showing my family home at 611 West 27th in Kearney, Nebraska. For my parents and siblings, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors, friends, visiting poets and pigeon-racers, this home has been a reliable place to gather. My family home is an ordinary house whose walls my mother lovingly filled with family photos, my father’s poetry and awards, and artwork. The wall at the top of the stairs has been a family gallery with photos that range from the endearing to the humiliating (you know the kind: the official middle school photos with braces, questionable hair styles and attire). Still, in spite of our pleas that some of these photos might be removed, they remained. And there has been something quite wonderful about knowing that every time you climbed the stairs, you could expect to find the same photo gallery spread out before you: a constant reminder of you of who you are and to whom you belong.

In her novel, Her Name Was Rose, Claire Allan writes:

Watching the sea never ceased to ground me. It was unchangeable. It was constant. Whatever happened – whatever seasons came and went, whatever way the wind blew, whatever was going on in the world, whatever was going on in the lives of the people who walked along the shores – the waves always just did what they did best. They came and went.

I know that my family home is a house: a foundation, a set of walls, and a roof. And yet, even as I understand the necessity of selling it, I’m grieving the loss of it. Like the sea, it has been unchangeable and constant for me, a port in the storms of life, a place that has blessed so many simply because we’ve spent time there. I mourn the loss of such constancy, for it has sustained me in ways I’ve only begun to understand.

For many of us, things can’t move and change quickly enough. We entertain ourselves by scrolling quickly on our phones and computers, searching for the next image or video which amuses us–or at least moves us. In the background of all this, however, are those people, places, and things which remain quietly but firmly constant. I’ll set my heart to these.

My Granddaughter Runs the 3,000 meters

At dusk, the sun bruises the horizon 
with deep orchid, and the south wind whips 
across the metal bleachers.

On the track below, she is ticking off meters, 
each lap the same as the last.

As former sprinter turned spectator,
I stuff my gloved hands in my pockets, turn up my collar 
and think: pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.

But she is ticking off curves and straight-aways
with bare legs that are pistons of resolve.

She is a metronome of will:
pounding out strides in iambic regularity,
her face cloudless and open.

On the far straight,
she drops her head into the wind
as the bell signals the last lap.
And I think: she will start her kick now.

But her pace—furiously constant—holds. 

As she takes the last curve, I can read her, 
measure after steadfast measure.

And I think: I will set my heart to this.

--Shannon Vesely

It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.
― Eugene H. Peterson

A single forsythia bush is blooming along the path at the Nature Center where I walk each morning. Canadian geese have paired up and nest in the inlet of the pond along the trail. At dawn, the trees, just beginning to bud, are alive with birds. After months of walking in the dark and silence, all this seems a miracle. Of course, I’ve anticipated the arrival of spring. I’ve known that it will come, and that the earth will green again. Still, as pastor, theologian, and poet Eugene H. Peterson claims, it’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard. And each morning when the sun blooms above the hills–all orchid and rose–I find myself thinking: how could I begin to put this into words? It seems that I should try. And, as a poet, I do. But this kind of wonder requires some sense of being there, some sense of engagement.

Years ago, I bought a bag of tulip bulbs from one of my children’s school fundraisers. Eager, but naive, I planted them in a bed just outside our backdoor, imagining the riot of color that would bloom in spring. When my tulips didn’t bloom, I asked friends if they’d ever had this happen. One friend asked me to recount how I’d planted them. What do you mean? I said as I felt a growing sense of shame. I just planted them. Tenderly, she suggested that I may have planted the bulbs upside down. Later, I learned that bulbs can bloom regardless of how they’re planted, but for whatever reason, mine didn’t. Until one morning, I looked out my kitchen window to find that–against all odds–one bulb had broken the earth and stood alone in the flower bed. Days later, there was a glorious pink bud and then a blossom. I recall thinking that this was resurrection wonder. From an empty bed of earth, from seemingly hopeless odds, a tulip broke free. I was sorely amazed.

The earth, by its very nature, grounds us in our mortality. Like the flora and fauna around us, we live and die. And yet, the earth gives us glimpses of immortality, as the death of winter gives way to the abundant life of spring. And this abundance, this victory over death, astounds me. Every time.

In an epitaph for his wife, Joy Davidman, author and theologian C. S. Lewis writes:

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.

This is resurrection wonder: that we might cast off our clothes, that we might be re-born from holy poverty, that we might have our Easter Days. Wishing you a blessed Easter.

Resurrection

A wood thrush has thrown itself against the window
and sits stunned now on my front porch.
It must have seen a way through 
into the day that was blooming so brightly over the hills.

It must have felt a quickening 
in its small bird bones, a joy flickering
through its small bird wings, building

into a desire so great that it must have flown 
without thought, just given itself to the air,
as birds will. 

And wingless now,
it works to quiet the riot of heart 
threatening to undo it.

What must it take to pull yourself in like this? 
To pull in and down,
to shut out light and flight,

to move deeply into the core
where all-things-bird germinate.

Now, it drops its head.
It’s so still that I think it must be dying.
So, I close the door on a life that’s been
and might be. 

But an hour later, it’s gone.
Not even a feather marks the place where it fell.

And I’m senselessly happy that it’s risen,
finding a way through to the sky and the day
and beyond.

          --Shannon Vesely

And one perfect day can give clues for a more perfect life. ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

My grandson has been driving since he was a toddler. From the battery-driven plastic car in the photo above to a small 4-wheeler to a full-size riding mower, he’s driven with confidence and joy for years. So, when he burst through the door a few weeks ago on an unusually mild February day–the 4-wheeler idling eagerly in the driveway–I grabbed my jacket even before he could say, “Do you want to go for a ride?”

I’ve been Griffin’s passenger for years. He’s earned my complete trust as he’s navigated the northern edge of the pond which is a veritable minefield of stumps. He’s given me acceptable thrills as we’ve gained speed across the pond dam, gravel flying in our wake. And he’s often narrated our journeys as if he is a naturalist or a historical tour guide, offering such comments as: “This is Indian Ridge, Grandma. See how high up we are? This is where the Indians could see the buffalo below” or “If you look closely in this corner of the pond, you might be able to see the koi. This is where they like to hangout.”

On this spectacular Sunday afternoon, we drove around for almost an hour. At one point, I turned my face to the sun just as Griffin said, “I’ve really missed this.” “Me, too, Griff,” I said. And I struggled to hold back tears, for I’m painfully aware that I’m living on borrowed time. Soon, Griff will pass into adolescence, and such intimate moments with his grandma will be relegated to childhood memories.

Still, as I consent to one more time around the pond, I will myself to be present in this moment on this fine day. I’m grateful, so very grateful for the sun and the speed and this boy. In L. M. Montgomery’s classic novel, Anne of Green Gables, Anne exults:

Isn’t it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one.

Yes, this is it exactly. I’m so happy to be alive and to know that, although others may have fine days, they can never have this one. This day is mine–and Griff’s. This day is particularly fine because it is ours alone. Despite–or perhaps because of–this ownership, I can pity those who aren’t born yet for missing it. In truth, a perfect day may evoke both a sense of possession and magnanimity.

American naturalist and “Father of the National Parks, John Muir contends that our finest days must be cherished:

These beautiful days must enrich all my life. They do not exist as mere pictures–maps hung upon the walls of memory to brighten at times when touched by association or will, only to sink again like a landscape in the dark; but they saturate themselves into every part of the body and live always.

To live in the sanctuary of a fine day demands this kind of saturation. For Muir–and for me–such days can’t exist simply as photos or fond memories; rather, they must penetrate us wholly. Living in this sanctuary, then, is a willing immersion into the essence of beauty, love, peace, and joy. It demands that we arm ourselves with these virtues as we move into and out of other days, days which may sink again like a landscape in the dark. This is a sanctuary of submission. Having waded into the beautiful waters, we give ourselves to a life-sustaining baptism. We offer our finest days as the best of who we are, and we’re born again, and again, as we invite them to saturate every part of us.

American writer and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh claims that one perfect day can give clues for a more perfect life. Thirty minutes into our 4-wheeler ride, I remember the niggling thought that came to me, first as a whisper and then as a proclamation: be present. Throughout my life, I’ve perfected a look that says: I’m listening. I’m present. And yet I know that this is often a facade, for even as I’m desperate to be present, I often unwittingly project myself into the future. Walking the tightrope of now-and-then, I’m often left unable to recall the names of those to whom I’d just been introduced or to simply savor a moment. Riding with Griffin always offers me clues for a more perfect life: be fully present.

In his speech, “The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes of his age: This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we know what to do with it. There’s something sentimental about holding a fine day in the scrapbook of your life. If you know what to do with it, however, it can be so much more than a pretty page. But this means that you do what you know you should do. This means you must get down off your high wire and abandon your balancing act.

Truthfully, I’ll continue to struggle with staying present. Such is my lot as a worrier. Too often, I project myself into the future, as if imagining every possible scenario might give me a measure of control over my life. Sadly, this has been my default position: always be one step ahead. At times, this has served me well. More times than not, however, it has prevented me from being present. When Griff drives the 4-wheeler, I’m simply along for the ride. I let time run its course. I let the sun shine as it will. I give myself to the moments when I’m reminded that the notion of “one fine day” is a perspective and a choice. And as I do, the sanctuary of fine days stretches endlessly before me.

Haunted and haunting, human and inhuman, war remains with us and within us, impossible to forget but difficult to remember.
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War  

I have no real rights in this matter. I’m neither soldier nor loved one of a victim or survivor. Still, nearly five decades later, the Vietnam War haunts me.

Kristin Hannah’s most recent novel, The Women, is Frankie McGrath’s coming-of-age story, a searing tale of a young woman gone to war as an Army Corps nurse in Vietnam. Frankie’s story brought it all back to me: the nightly news stories of the early 70s, the images that assaulted the covers of news magazines and television screens, the impending draft that threatened to take my high school classmates. Mostly, it brought back the nights when I lay awake imagining what I would do if I were male: Would I enlist? Would I wait, in hopes that I wouldn’t be drafted? Would I find refuge in college deferment? Would I flee to Canada? Would I conscientiously object?

My mother once joked that I excelled at living vicariously through others’ experiences, recalling how I’d begin to cry during the opening theme song of Lassie. Even before little Timmy got into trouble, you cried, she said, anticipating tragedy as you lived through Timmy’s pain and fear. It has been this gift (or curse) that has marked my Vietnam War experience. For reasons I couldn’t explain as a 17-year-old, I felt compelled to watch Vietnam movies and television series, to read Vietnam accounts and to listen to survivors. I agonized through Platoon, my knees drawn to my chest in my theater seat, my hands gripping the arm rests. I suffered through Apocalype Now–several times–and to this day, can’t hear Wagner’s The Ride of Valkrie without seeing images of helicopters vanquishing a Vietnamese village. I watched the television series, China Beach, and marveled at the persistent trauma that beleagured nurses, medics, and doctors encountered each day. I read veteran Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, and wept. And with each film, each television episode, each written or spoken word, I found myself mired in the same moral quandary: What would I have done? How would I have survived?

In 2017, filmmaker Ken Burns produced an 18-hour documentary series, The Vietnam War. Burns understands the impact that this war continues to have on Americans:

The Vietnam War was a decade of agony that took the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. Not since the Civil War have we as a country been so torn apart. There wasn’t an American alive who wasn’t affected in some way. More than 40 years after it ended, we can’t forget Vietnam, and we are still arguing about why it went wrong, who was to blame and whether it was all worth it. (“Ken Burns to preview Vietnam War documentary at free San Diego event”, San Diego Union-Tribune, April 22, 2017)

As a high school and college student, I was keenly aware of the political and social aspects of this war. But my Vietnam experience remained grounded in the most personal, philosophical, and ethical bedrock. I anguished over “what-ifs” and tried myself in the court of morality. I recall one moment during college when I came face-to-face with my biggest fear. As I imagined myself working through the jungle with my platoon, I saw a shadow–or maybe just a movement–shouldered my gun and fired. I remember thinking, I don’t fear being shot; I fear shooting–instinctively and unthinkingly pulling the trigger and killing someone. I sat up in bed, my heart racing and my hands trembling. I could kill, I thought, and this awareness slayed me.

Years later as an English teacher, I taught Tim O’Brien’s short story, “Ambush.” He opens this story with a scene in which his 9-year-old daughter asks him if he’d ever killed anyone. She knew that he’d been a soldier in Vietnam and that he wrote stories about the war. The story that follows is a grown-up answer to her question, an account that he hoped she might read and understand years later. He writes of being on a two-man watch, the heat oppressive and the fog thick. He describes seeing a man dressed in black with a gray ammunition belt emerging from the mist. Gun at his side, he was making his way down the trail. In this passage, O’Brien recounts the next moments:

I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away—just evaporate—and I leaned back and felt my mind go empty and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. (“Ambush”)

After killing the man, O’Brien realizes that [i]t was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will always be that way. He concludes the story by confessing that he hasn’t finished sorting it out, that sometimes he can forgive himself, and sometimes he can’t. O’Brien’s account here is one that I’d imagined so many times through the decades. This is why I can’t forget the Vietnam War. It stripped away the veneer of the person I thought I was and uncovered someone who could be–who probably would be in the right circumstances–a killer.

Although Hannah confronts a host of political and social issues regarding the Vietnam War in The Women, she does an exceptional job of profiling in-country field hospitals. She writes of the relentless trauma of 18-hour shifts, the crude facilities, the incessant heat, the constant threat of attack, the dying and the dead piling up in mind-numbing numbers, and the tragic inexperience of many doctors and nurses. In their article “In Country: U.S. Nurses During the Vietnam War,” Aaron Severson and Lorilea Johnson report that although the average age of a Vietnam nurse was 23, many were as young as 20, and only 35% of these nurses had two or more years of nursing experience when they enlisted. Most were recruited directly out of nursing school. Such is the case with Hannah’s protagonist, Frankie, who is thrust into trauma surgery after several weeks of stateside nursing duties which amounted to emptying bedpans and filling water pitchers. Severson and Johnson explain that [a] nurse who had been in Vietnam for six months had more credibility than a doctor who had just arrived, even if that doctor was very experienced in the States. These nurses had to learn quickly; this was trial by fire.

I’m haunted by Hannah’s Frankie as she is thrust into trauma surgery. I’m haunted by her experiences with devastating mortar wounds and napalm burns. And I’m haunted by her relentless terror, a terror that soldiers, helicopter pilots, doctors, medics, and nurses often tried to drink and laugh away, finding refuge in whatever might bring them temporary relief. I know that watching a film or reading a book is not active service. As I said, I have no real rights in this matter. But to the extent that I could, I’ve imagined this. In a sense of duty–perhaps misguided but nonetheless sincere–I’ve forced myself to imagine all this.

I can’t forget the times when Vietnam vets shared some of their experiences in college courses I taught. One vet admitted that he’d volunteered for a second tour, as my 18-year-old freshmen looked on in sore amazement. When one student finally asked why he’d gone back, the vet looked him directly in the eyes and said, Because I liked it. Because I was good at it. You could’ve heard a pin drop in that classroom. The look on his face still haunts me. He knew that they didn’t understand. How could they begin to know what it was like to serve in a unit of men who depended on one another, who’d give their lives for one another, to live on adrenaline and the hope that you’d see another day, to stay alive? And to return to a country in which many would rather you didn’t talk about your war experiences, and others condemned you for your service? He knew that they couldn’t understand, and his painful awareness haunts me.

Until I read Hannah’s novel, I wasn’t aware of the reception that most Vietnam nurses received upon coming home. Again and again, her protagonist, Frankie, tries to convince people that there were, indeed, women in Vietnam, that she was truly a veteran. They don’t believe her, insisting that there were no women in Vietnam. And to confound matters, after two years of experience in combat trauma surgery, she’s relegated to changing bed pans and filling water pitchers again, for hospital administrators argue she doesn’t have the proper raining or experience to be a surgical nurse. Hannah’s portrayal of Frankie’s struggle is tragically accurate.

In a profile of Army nurse Edie Meeks (The Washington Post, Nov. 8, 2013), Ruth Tam recounts an incident in 1992 when Meek’s daughter told her that her Mount Holyoke College professor proclaimed that you women will never know what it’s like to be in war. Aghast, her daughter approached the professor and asked if her mother could address the class. To her professor and classmates, she introduced her mother by saying, This is my mother, Edie Meeks. She was an Army nurse in Vietnam. I’m so proud of her. Meeks confessed that this was the first time that anyone had truly acknowledged her service. Twenty-three years later, she finally felt as though she’d been welcomed home. Like many combat soldiers, these nurses suffered from PTSD. It wasn’t until 1978–three years after the war ended– however, that the VFW accepted female veterans. I can’t begin to imagine what this must have felt like, and I can’t begin to forget these women’s pain and disappointment in reentering a country that didn’t appear to know–or care–that they’d even served.

I’m quite certain that I’ll never be able to forget what I’ve learned and what I’ve imagined about Vietnam. I don’t want to forget. It’s important that I don’t forget. Living vicariously through real and fictional characters has helped me experience the moral complexity, the indelible trauma, the exceptional comraderie, and the inconceivable costs of war. For me, the Vietnam War continues to be a moral testing ground, one on which I’ve discovered who I am–and who I’d like to be.