(A weird picture on a hot summer day from Sewanee, Tennessee a long time ago with Lucy and Flannery - we were all into stripes and not in the mood for picture-taking)
I am teaching a workshop called “Rock Bottom” this coming week in a place called Shakerag in Sewanee, Tennessee. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also tied up in knots with anticipation and fear.
Why do I do this to myself?
I’ve compiled a slew of writing sparks and backup writing sparks, but I still doubt myself - what if it’s not enough?
Trust me, it is more than enough.
We’ll begin with the trusted and true “I remember” thanks to dear Natalie Golberg. I always begin new workshops this way because it never fails to spark new stories and connections. We’ll read our work aloud and share it with partners or in small groups or big groups. I have props, books, stories, and 30 pages of Writing Sparks to give them when it’s all over, and I also get to teach in one of my favorite places in the whole world - Sewanee, Tennessee.
Shakerag is on the campus where James Agee, author of “A Death in the Family” went to school after his father died in a car accident outside of Knoxville due to a loose cotter pin in the old Tin Lizzie he loved driving. I don’t even know what a cotter pin is but it broke loose and that was that. I went to high school and college in Knoxville and lived in James Agee’s old Fort Sanders neighborhood. I played Great-Great Grandmaw at age 23 in Agee’s adaptation of his book into a play called “All the Way Home” at the Bijou Theatre on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville. I was only on stage for five minutes, but it took almost two hours to get into full Great-Great Grandmaw makeup with napkins from McDonald’s and latex and paint and wig. I had to hug my five-year-old great-grandson, Rufus, from my old-fashioned wheelchair and cry out, “I been borned again.” I wanted to play Mary, the widow, in “All the Way Home,” but the actress playing Mary, Sarah Byler, was so painfully good, and so that was too.
At Sewanee, I met and came to love and adore my dear late friend, Cheri Peters, who had more grace, mercy, and humor than anyone I’ve ever known. At the Sewanee Writers Conference, she would talk to a crowd of rowdy literati about late-night complaints from the community and say, “As to the noise level in the courtyard, the fiction writers are blaming the poets and the poets are blaming the playwrights AND the fiction writers, so I know y’all are not going to make me have to come over tonight to check on things, right?”
I brought my kids to Sewanee every summer for years, teaching at the Young Writers Conference. At the main conference, I studied with Francine Prose and Romulus Linney, and I bonded with Alice McDermott on a strange afternoon in a rock house made of sandstone, watching coverage of the search for John Kennedy Jr's missing plane, the camera panning over long expanses of peaceful water on the Eastern Shore. She and I spoke all things Irish and Catholic, and I felt like she was one of my relatives.
My favorite interview was with a stonecutter named, Houston King, who was one of the stonecutter craftsmen who built the rose window of the Sewanee Chapel. I was so sorry to learn of his passing a few years ago because I never got to thank him.
I taught Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild) when she was fifteen and she was such a sweet and lovely kid, and she and my Lucy (five at the time) bonded over their names.
The memories are endless at Sewanee. If I hadn’t gone to Sewanee, I would not be teaching at UAB for it’s there I met Danny Anderson, one of my very favorite poets, and more than a decade later, he invited me to apply for a job at UAB. I remember the day Kiffen dropped me off at the Sewanee Writers Conference, I felt like I was going to summer camp, and my throat was sick with homesickness. I even considered not going because Flannery and Lucy were only seven and five, but the following summer I started bringing the family, and the kids went to day camp and sports camp at Sewanee.
At nine, Norah was at sportscamp and recalled a ball flying toward a boy’s head and him crying out, “Oh dear Lord,” and of course, Norah found it hilarious.
Anyway, that’s how long it’s been.
I also get to teach with my dear friend Doug Baulos who is the best and stay with dear friends from college, Robie Jackson and John Holleman. I first saw Robie in Pippin when we were teenagers at the Carousel Theatre in Knoxville with my best friend, Pattie Murphy, and Robie was magical.
Kiffen and the dogs are coming too. Anyway, now it’s time to pack.
***
Here is an “I remember” I wrote a long time ago to get warmed up for the week…
I remember being a new girl in a place called Manhattan, Kansas. I remember my father was the defensive coordinator for the Kansas State Wildcats.
I remember all the purple and white and all the Wildcat insignias everywhere. I remember we lived in the football dorm because our house wasn't ready. I remember I looked like a boy but that was okay because girls were weak in the world of football or they were cheerleaders. I didn't want to be a cheerleader. I knew I was too big, too ugly with chipped teeth. Mom told me it wasn’t noticeable - hahaha.
I remember enrolling in Seven Dolors Catholic School. I remember a girl named Rita Umscheid became my friend. The teacher, Sister Marie, called Rita a "rough girl." She had to be. She was the youngest of seven all with R names - Robby, Roger, Roberta, Rhonda, etc...Her father was a plumber, a racist plumber, who sat in a thin undershirt and yelled at the TV. He never said a word to me. Her mother answered the door in a bathrobe, looking exhausted.
Why do I remember these things? Rita introduced me to Lisa and Mary Kevin. The three had gone to school together since kindergarten. My kindergarten days were two states away. Sister Marie arranged the desks in new seating arrangements every week, but her walls were bare except for pictures of saints.
This is what else I remember. Before school started, before I met Rita, it had been a long hot summer of being in Manhattan, Kansas, and missing Ames, Iowa, and the Iowa State Cyclones.
My three younger siblings all had summer birthdays, and my mother was over it and said, "Adults don't get parties" after she'd made her third birthday cake of the summer. My dad was busy getting ready for football season, so we rarely saw him.
So I decided to throw Mom a surprise party and invite the coacheswives. My sister thought "coacheswives" was one word because that's how we referred to them. The “coacheswives” all had names like Mary Lynn, Norberta, Sue, Marilyn, Marcia, Nancy...
So I got out my mom's address book and I called up the coacheswives and I asked them to come to her surprise party on a Tuesday at 4:00 after swimming. I think I said, "I'm having a surprise for my mom," and they said, "Wow. Okay, when?" I might have said, "After swimming," and they probably helped me figure out the time and day.
They might also have asked, "What should we bring?"
I had no idea. I didn't think about food. I only thought about people coming and surprising my mom. I didn't invite coaches. They weren't fun like the coacheswives who told good stories. The coaches were too busy getting ready to beat Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas. (Spoiler. They didn’t beat them or many other teams that season.)
So on that Tuesday afternoon or maybe it was a Wednesday or a Thursday, we were at the pool as usual with my mom. She always sat at the adult pool reading a novel called GREEN DARKNESS soaked in suntan oil.
I said, "Mom, we have to go home," and she might have said, "Beat it. This is the adult pool. Go back to the kid pool. It's my birthday. I'm reading."
I would have pleaded, and eventually, we did go home.
I remember as soon as we walked in the door in our bathing suits, the coacheswives began arriving with presents.
Mom stared at them in her bathing suit and coverup and said to me, "What is happening? OH MY GOD! What did you do? The house is a wreck."
But then she started laughing as the coacheswives came in with their kids and presents for her. And when my mom laughed, she made the whole room start laughing. It was silly to have a surprise party on a weekday at 4:00 pm.
Did I serve food? Maybe I made a bundt cake. I had been making them that summer because they were easy, and Mom taught me how, and it was for a Girl Scout Badge.
I remember we all sat around the living room while Mom opened presents. What did she get? I don't remember, but I remember being in our bathing suits and possibly eating bundt cake. Did the coacheswives have cocktails? It was the 1970s. Kids were running around everywhere.
I think they had cocktails and maybe bundt cake.
What else do I remember? I remember we had an old dog, Jennifer. She was a German Shepard, and she was having trouble walking but she was sat there amongst the festivities, smiling/panting. My mom had gotten Jennifer before she was married, so she was like our older sibling. Mom loved dogs and she used to say, "I don't tell kid stories. I tell dog stories."
I remember after that summer, I started Seven Dolors, and I met Rita, but because she was a rough girl, I wasn't allowed to spend the night. I remember Mom making purple outfits on the sewing machine to wear to Kansas State games. I remember losing almost every football game that fall. We went three 3-11.
I remember Mom said, "I miss Ames, Iowa."
I remember at Christmas, Dad said, "Kids, we're not going to be Kansas State Wildcats anymore. Do you know why? Because we're going to be Pittsburgh Panthers! How about that, you big turkeys!"
Everybody cheered. I didn't cheer because I was just getting used to being a Kansas State Wildcat and making friends with Rita, Mary Kevin, and Lisa. There were boys too. Michael and John. I also carpooled with twin boys, Brian and Brad. A family with 14 adopted children had just moved in down the street. When my grandmother visited she said, "No one in their right mind adopts 14 children."
I remember all these things, and I put some of them in a novel I wrote a long time ago.
Postscript: If you want to see a great show about Manhattan, Kansas, watch “Somebody Somewhere” on MAX, which just finished shooting the third season.
Now, it’s really time to pack.
Some pictures, stories, and links:
moments of mystery happen all the time. Each person who will be attending your workshop. This is their moment to connect with creativity and the divine. You will assist them in building bridges between their minds and souls and bodies, and what they remember, which is brought them thus far on the journey of life. You will assist them in pivoting with possibilities of what is to be
I still use "I remember" not only as a prompt but as a lead in to many sentences in my essays/stories/substacks. Thanks for that! have fun in Sewanee