in memory of my mother🌀

      

         That summer Mom painted the walls in our house like a tropical bird: deep blues with white trim, the dining room a kind of parrot green. Mom said, the house is big enough to hold all this color. Mom said, when I get tired of green, I’ll roll red raspberry over the walls.

         That summer Mom and I danced in our house on the edge of New York City. Records, Hello Dolly, The Fantastiks, flopped like pancakes onto the console. We’d sway, then twirl across the bright navy rug splashed with red and white. Sashaying into the hall, then running leaping laughing, arms flung out like wings. One two three one two three, dipping whirling into the dining room dipping ourselves over chairs dipping our heads down, toes tearing air. We circled back through the kitchen for a swing on the chin-up bar, then up the stairs, up two three, down two three one two three, waltzing our way back, ending in each other’s arms.

         Mom said, in my next lifetime, I’ll come back as a dancer.

                                                               

                                                                 🌀 

                                               Dorothy Southam Jackson

                                          July 7, 1926 - December 19, 2001

                                            Thanks for the dance, Mom. xo 

I'm So Glad You Asked The Question

December 9. 2019

This is the message my pen gave me this morning. Here's a little tale about asking ~

Last week I sent an email blast to people from my MFA program. Some were friends I'd gone through the program with, others new students I didn't know, faculty. My plan had been to send an email to one, maybe two people tops who had published their books and get some advice. But then I thought, cast the net wide. See what happens.

Here's some of it:

12.4.19

Hello MFA friends,

It’s me, Betsy, Cedar Crest MFA Vienna 2015, writing to say hello + also seeking help, support, guidance, ____________ regarding getting my memoir, Please No Life Stories, published. 

I’ve sent pieces out, had a couple of stories from the book published, most recently Little Witch, in Paris Lit Up 7.  Admittedly, my submission practices are lacking. I go through bursts, then feel lost (and lazy?).

I sent a story to Catapult in NYC, the editor liked it (didn’t publish it) but was “keen to hear more about my memoir." So I sent her the manuscript - she told me it would be best if “my agent” sent it. 

I don’t have an agent. 

...The writing part comes easily for me, but the “business” of writing continues to throw me. I get easily stymied. Some of you have gotten your books published. How did you do it? Where did you start? I'm casting my net wide to see if any of you wise and wonderful writers will share your experience with publication, or writing in general, or simply to say hello.

With gratitude,

Betsy

________________________________________________________________________________________


With a mix of relief and trepidation, I hit send.

Relief because I need help with the business of writing and honestly, even though there are a million blogs and books about how to do it, it's awfully nice to hear from people you know with some first-hand experience.

Trepidation because who wants to look like they don't already know? But there's so much I don't know about so many things, who's kidding who? Why not ask? I'm happy to help people with any questions they have about all kinds of things. I tell my college students @ the beginning of the semester:  Ask. No question is a dumb question... (except maybe if the due date for the assignment  is clearly posted on the Assignment Board and you want to know what the due date is)



I don't know
I don't know
I should know                           really?



Not even five minutes after sending my help email, this arrived.

Hi Betsy,

I don’t know you but I’m so glad you asked the question. I too struggle with the publishing piece, even just sending single pieces. I look forward to the discussion this generates. 

Another person wrote: I am interested in hearing what others have done. Thank you for having the humility to cast this net so wide to seek guidance from the group. 

Most of us don't like to ask, yet we all have questions, daily. This is true of little kids in second grade, college students, teachers, doctors, gardeners, painters, accountants, crossing guards - everyone. We learn early that it's probably best to keep our head down and fake it until we figure it out, somehow. No one wants to look like they don't know. No one wants to get found out.

From my humbling SOS, I heard back from a lovely crowd. Some emails were long, some short. All wonderful that they took the time to respond to me. Some snippets:

• The story of my own publishing experience is a long and tangled one. • I just emailed out what I had to say, but I know the frustration and it is a long haul. • As far as actually getting the published, I can share my story (if it helps). • If you want help with your query letter, you can send me your letter and your first 20 pages and I can have a look. • While I believe writing is a life and not a career, there is still a job aspect to it. • You already know these things: perseverance is critical, writing keeps you motivated, keep your best work out   to publications (can’t win the lottery without a ticket), don’t let rejection discourage you. • They're not paying me, except for royalties, and I'll do all the promotion, but the book will be in the world.

    

The book will be in the world 🌀

We need to remember that we're not alone. That we don't need to know everything. We can't so let that one go. Everyone deals with joys and frustrations, no matter your life or calling. You don't need to be a writer to get something here. Whatever you're working on, wanting to work on, whatever you desire to create, or do, it's so worth the ask.

Mark wrote,

Don’t lose heart, Betsy. In the end, it’s all about the writing itself. That’s what we have, and its rewards are not slight! T.S. Eliot: “But perhaps neither gain nor loss. / For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”


xo b

You Are My Sunshine ~ In Memory ☀️

after our road trip from the Cape...

I was to give Dad's eulogy.

After so many wonderful, heartfelt stories shared by my brothers, nephews and nieces, friends. My brother, Rob in his kilt, offering a kind of timeline of Dad's life adventures. Dave, laughing and weeping at the pulpit telling a travels with Dad story I'd never heard before. Pete had O Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Gospel Choir cued up at the end of his story. The Church of the Mountain filled with music, people swaying. 

O Happy Day! Dad loved that song. 

When it came my turn to speak, I fumbled so much with my glasses, one arm snapped off, rendering them useless, unless I wore them cockeyed on my nose. 

I can't remember having anything written down, maybe a list of ideas? 

I'm good at speaking from the heart, words usually come easily. 

But my throat stuck. 

The pews were a blur of kind faces.

I didn't say how he took us backpacking on the Appalachian Trail, or across the ocean to Scotland. I forgot to tell about the time Dad and I went out on our tiny sunfish sailboat in Little Neck Bay and got caught up in a rough storm, the two of us shouting over the thunder at each other, We're fine, we're fine, he kept saying, as we made our way back in and the storm calmed. 

Broken glasses in hand, and so many friends and family listening intently, I didn't tell about his love of ice cream. He and I would stand in the kitchen digging for the pecans in the carton of Butter Pecan. Did I tell about his writing and love of books, so many books, his penchant for hats and colorful clothes? I honestly don't have a clue what I said that day. He was a peaceful man.

Dad would say, You're beautiful. It was beautiful. I'm so grateful for all of you. 

I left out his way with an autoharp, me and my brothers singing in the living room. I left out his singing voice. Clear and booming.  

The car ride from Cape Cod with me and Dad and Claire took six hours, most of it filled with singing as we sped through Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York State. On 84 East through the Pennsylvania landscape, we sang Won't You Stay in my Red River Valley, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, and then Claire burst in from the back seat with Jesus Take the Wheel by Carrie Underwood. 

Dad made himself (+ me and Claire) giddy with his radio announcer voice, 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Sister Claire says Jesus Take the Wheel, why not?! Welcome to the Gospel Hour. Send in your requests, and offerings. Yes, we accept donations to keep this fine show on the road. Checks, money orders, Jesus loves you. 

How fun would it be to have your own radio show? 
But we did have it. 
Right there in the car on the highway. 
We opened our mouths and sang for miles. 

Thanks for the singing, Dad.

You Are My Sunshine 🌞

In Memory of Sunny Ellsworth Erskine Jackson, Jr.

July 5, 1926 - November 6, 2015 



xo B

All Her Dresses Float Up

              

 On the occasion of Claire's 20th Birthday 🍂

                                                                            •

          Bear wears four dresses, layering one over the other, her fine silks and tulle. The purple one, her favorite, a faded cotton, is frayed at the hem. She will not let me mend it. The nightgown, a fairy blue, is flouncy and full. See how it spins, she says.

         She throws her arms out, turning in the patch of morning light catching glimpses of herself in the teapot cabinet and the glass of the fireplace doors. At three, she is small enough to make these her mirrors, no need to bend down.

         The third dress is deep blue, with straps wrapped over her shoulders. She wears it like a cape, streaming behind while she races through the kitchen. The long pink one gets tied around her waist. It has to be tight, she says, cinching it with little hands. She watches over her shoulder, as the long train of pink sweeps across the cherry floors.

         Bear wears no panties, no socks. Her pink satin slippers, trimmed in gold, scuffed and dirty around the edges slip easily onto her feet. The plastic crown rests on her round head. Quietly, she gathers up all her dresses in one hand, and dips herself into a curtsy.

         Bear and I get married, most days. She wears the dresses, pink shoes with gold trim, the crown. She is always the bride. We stand before the fireplace while I hum the wedding march. Bear watches herself in the glass, tilting her head to one side.

         We hold hands and say our vows. They are simple and easy to remember.  I promise to be kind and good. We kiss, on the hand and cheek, on the lips. We hook arms and the wedding dance begins, a kind of square dance with leaps and skips. Bear likes it best when I spin her around.  All her dresses float up around her legs.

                - from my memoir, Please No Life Stories 

        

  

Such lucky ducks. We've kept our vows. 

    xo  

Eddie at the Home Depot 🌻

Me and Pearly at the famous Pink's Hot Dogs in Hollywood

September 16. 2019

Dear Lovelies,

I'm thinking about the lady at Ralph's during the freakish heat wave in Los Angeles. We were standing by the broccoli crowns. I said something about how cold I get in the produce section and she said, "My people are from the Baltics. I love the cold. I cannot abide this heat."

I'm thinking about my birthday last week and all the love that flowed my way. Wow.My best friend, Pearly (aka Lisa) flew west to be with me and that was the best gift ever. We went to Pink's Hot Dog stand in Hollywood, walked a labyrinth overlooking Malibu, watched Queer Eye, Not Just A Makeover, spent a gorgeous day at the ocean. Come on.

Double Wow.

Currently, I have a car pile up of tales to tell.

I'm thinking about the things that add up to make a day, how funny and sometimes sad, and all the stuff in-between that goes on. I like lists. They're my way of tossing the dice and seeing more clearly. I'm especially fond of bullet points (option key, 8). 

 Here's today:

• I woke very early, graded two batches of my community college English class reflections - one on procrastination, anybody? The other was on the art of listening, especially as it pertains to our creative muse(s). Stop forcing, let things bubble up.

I was done by eight am.

• I pumped out twenty push-ups on the kitchen counter 2 sets of ten. I'm a candidate for some kind of boot camp, give me twenty more! I love this stuff.

• I made oatmeal with raisins for breakfast and later ended up talking about my parent's divorce (circa 1974) in my therapist's office, feeling oddly drained and surprised to be revisiting something that happened so long ago. I likened it to a house being turned upside down and all the pieces rolling down the street.

My parents brothers me the family dog 

• After looking up feeling drained from therapy and reading about emotional therapy hangovers, and taking a weird nap, I pulled my well-worn copy of Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach, unopened for years, off the shelf. Somewhere in the divorce story, I veered into my writing life, telling my therapist how Sarah had written much of this book from her bed unaware that she'd end up with a gigantic bestseller. She writes in the forward that the book she started with had no resemblance whatsoever to the book she ended up with. 

There's a freeing message. Most everything unfolds in its own time and way.

Inside my copy of Simple Abundance were pieces of my past:

• A card from a friend thanking me for all our kitchen table talks. We parted ways abruptly years ago.

• A beautiful kind-of-Christmas newsletter from a wonderful artist friend

• A page torn from a Silent Unity magazine given to me by a woman at the library. I was there with my three year old Claire (now almost twenty) stacking our weekly pile of books. Edith was with her grandson. Over the course of that winter, we became Tuesday morning library companions, chatting about life, change, loss -  at some point she felt called to share this one page on Faith.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen  - Hebrews 11:1

• a maple leaf

• a business card for a local California restaurant - did we go there?

• a New Yorker postcard of the woman diving into a pile of leaves from my mother's best friend, Nan.

Flipping through the book I found this underlined sentence, each (painful) memory comes bearing a peace offering. There is nothing to fear. The past only asks to be remembered. 

Everything is tucked back inside to be found (again) another day.

___________________________________________

I'm thinking about Eddie at the Home Depot. Such a friendly young man.

"I've been here for five years," he said."The first four I handled only succulents and cacti. I got stuck a lot. This year they've moved me to the flowers and chrysanthemums. It's much better."

love b
xo

Kind and Patient

September 2. 2019

I've got stories to tell about moving across the country - it's been a year, having a piece of writing accepted and rejected in the same week, drawing snake plants over and over, and the serious nuttiness of people and their dogs here in California. You have no idea.


🌀🌞Stay tuned.

I keep this quote on my desk, courtesy of Tiny Buddha.

It helps to soothe any jarred up thinking I've got going on. Why would I have that? 😳

For this Labor Day, wherever you are, find some time to rest and renew.

Be kind and patient with yourself (and others).

Sending peace, lovelies.

xo b

Elizabeth Taylor Was Really Nice 🌞

August 12. 2019

I woke at four this morning, read, then willed myself back to sleep. Then I had a dream with my mother-in-law (this was a visitation as she's been gone for almost 3 years now), Elizabeth Taylor, and Claire's 12th grade lab partner, Leon.

I was traveling in Southern California with my mother-in-law, visiting her old home? while Leon, the lab partner, was a waiter, or something like that, who kindly ran off to get me a glass of water. Elizabeth Taylor, looking at the top of her game, was standing above me on the stairs assuring me with a smile that she'd have a look in her closet because she had just the right thing for me to wear.

I was barefoot, but Elizabeth didn't mention anything about shoes.

Years ago I took a dream workshop with four other participants. The deal was this: when responding to someone's dream, you were supposed to keep it focused on yourself.

Such as, If that were my dream ___________ and then you could ramble on about whatever.

It was one of those wonderful dreams where you wake up and want to go back

It was a calm friendly sweet place to be. And Elizabeth Taylor was really nice 🌠

Feel free to add any interpretation in the comments below.

______________________________________________________

So there's calm and friendly, and incredibly sweet, like a smiling baby, but there's also mass shootings. These things dwell in the same universe. Everything does. This messes with my head and heart. Mass shootings last week, not one but two, and all the ones that came before, are lodged in my body. There are the families whose lives are radically altered in an instant and how life still goes on after these horrific things. People march and pray and go food shopping and take out the garbage and vow to make changes while the NRA blames people with mental illness + there's photos of Crazy giving a thumbs up while blink twice Melania, holds an orphaned infant in El Paso.

I'm the baby bird on the ledge. Fly? Hunker down? Get back to the nest?

I invite you to:

Pick one person and send them a note, preferably snail mail, but if you can't get that far, write a peace email, text, leave a peace voice mail. My brother, Rob, is one of the last humans who regularly sends notes through the mail. The one above was a simple note, three words. As soon as I opened it, I felt washed in love and peace. Thank you, Bertie.

Today I am Sending You Peace xo b

pass it on 🌻

      Love, Bennett