Robert Frost and the Prima Donna

I volunteered to work at a fund raiser auction, and two half days this week I helped put together gift baskets full of donated goods which will be auctioned off. (An additional volunteer day will come on Friday to help move items from storage to the silent auction and live auction sites.) This was my second year helping on the basket project but I don’t think there will be a third. I discovered I have a low tolerance for making creative decisions by committee. My fellow volunteers were lovely people but I spent twenty years of my work life designing bouquets and backdrops for weddings, holidays and elegant parties. I have a degree in art and a great sense of scale, balance and color and it drove me crazy that every basket and cellophane bag size and every tissue paper filler and ribbon color decision we made had to be a collaboration. Lest you think I was being an artsy fartsy prima donna, I wasn’t. I wore my go-along-to-get-along persona. I oohed and awed in all the right places, knowing I could have done the work in half the time if left to my own devices or if we’d done the baskets assembly line style like we did last year. More than a few times I had to listen to my mother’s voice in my head saying, “If that’s the worst thing you’ve got to complain about, you’ve got it pretty good.” She was a smart lady.

Ohmygod! Now that I think about it maybe I really was an artsy fartsy prima donna if I had to give myself that Mother Lecture! Ooookay, I'll have to think on that some more but if I was being an in-the-closet artsy fartsy prima donna at least on the outside I was the Queen of Go-Along-to-Get-Along Land where I’ve resided most of my life. No wonder I don’t have many friends. I’m so fake and phony I’m surprised I don’t get arrested for impersonating a human being. Robot Lady says what ever you want to hear if her tactful little hints don't work the first time out.

Changing Topics: When a shirt-tail friend found out I’m taking a class on metaphors, she remarked, “I think it’s great that you’re taking up writing at this late date in your life.” I didn’t know how to response to that so I lamely replied, “Me, too.” I felt like an old dog being petted and praised for learning a ‘new trick’ that I’d actually known how to do all along. Though the ‘Fun with Metaphors’ Olli class is writing related, it’s so much more. This week’s class was a series of quality conversations and my classmates have a rich collection of life experiences to share. Sometimes I feel like a chimney sweep when they get to talking about their world travels. Ya, l’ve been to those tiered rice fields in the Orient---in my head. I’ve seen the Heidelberg Castle in Germany---in an International Geographic Magazine. Africa? Isn’t that the place where the elephants have their own mud spas?  Our class time went by too quickly as we talked about common metaphors like “it takes a village” “America is a melting pot” “life is a box of chocolates" and “life is a journey.” Tons of interesting topics came to the surface as the professor asked questions like, “Is there truth in the metaphor for you? Why or why not.” We ever talked politics which pleased me right down to my toenails that need a manicure soon or my shoes will no longer fit.

We also spent time in class discussing Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken and the professor made a comment about how different our observations were from when she teaches that poem to high school students. She laughed when she told about a student who read the poem in her high school graduation speech. I remember studying The Road Not Taken way back in my teens and now as an adult I don’t see how anyone that young could truly understand what Frost was saying. It’s not a credo for nonconformists as so often the poem is presented. It’s far more ambiguous than that. Who knew…except for the bunch of adults who just took part in a metaphors class? ©

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Day Trips and Metaphors for Widows

I knew this week would be exhausting but what are you going to do when you don’t want to miss anything?  Besides my Fun with Metaphors class, I went on a long day trip this week and to an oriental restaurant with my Movie and Lunch Club. (I skipped the movie because I had to pick the dog up from a boarding kennel out in the boondocks where he stayed for two nights and a day.) Tomorrow I’m going on a Red Hat Society walk-about to a deer park whatever that is, I shall know soon enough.

The day trip was billed as a Brown Bag Mystery Tour, an annual event so named because only the senior hall director, the bus driver, a fancy-shmancy restaurant and a handful of merchants know our destination until we get there. We took 150 people (three buses) staggering our stops in four small towns in mid-Michigan so we wouldn’t overwhelm the stores like a bunch of locust wanting the freebies they were waiting to put in our brown shopping bags. I’m not fond of mindless shopping without a list and a mission but I did manage to buy a jar of bourbon molasses mustard and---of all things---a bed spring turned into a note holder with the help of small, painted clothespins. After lunch, where I had the best cream brulee in my entire life, a guide from a small Presbyterian college hopped on our bus and gave us a presentation about the campus while our driver took us around. I’ve lived in Michigan my whole life and never knew we had a college so close by that has a Scottish Highlands dance troupe, a pipe band and its own registered tartan. Even their marching band wears kilts and the college hosts traditional Scottish games and revelry every summer. How cool is that!

A “cultural stop” is a part of these mystery trips, too, and this year it was a two hour stop at an educational center and museum of the Saginaw Chippewa and the Great Lakes Anishinabek Indians. It's a wonderful museum with a history lesson taught from the Indian point-of-view. I thoroughly enjoyed it but there were a couple of people on my bus who said they would have preferred to spend the time across the street at the Indian Casino. With that said, I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me when our museum guide asked for a show of hands on how many of us had heard of the Boarding School Era of Native American history and I was the only one who raised a hand. I came by that nugget of history through the back door, so to speak---by reading historical romances and wondering if this or that really happen. Back when I was hooked on the genre, I often did my own research and learned to trust the accuracy of the historical settings and events the authors’ had based their stories around.

In my Fun with Metaphors class I got my homework critiqued and if you’re not into discussing writing techniques you might get bored out of your tree by what follows so keep reading at your own risk. Those who are interested in what the professor had to say, keep reading. First, as a reminder, The metaphor I had written was: Widowhood is a vacuum sucking tin soldiers off the floor swirling them around in a dark void while other tiny souls still in its path of wrath struggle to pull its life-line from the wall.  The professor loved the last part but thought I needed to find a way define that the vacuum was a vacuum cleaner and not the other kind of vacuum. I was confusing readers right out of the gate. Then she asked what the tin soldiers represent which hadn’t even occurred to me to ask myself but I blurted out, “Parts of myself, my past and future.” Who knew! Then she asked who was pushing the vacuum and I answered, “No one. Widowhood was the driving force with no one in control.” I guess her point was that I need to learn to dig deeper when writing metaphors. Readers will asks these questions while trying to find the hidden meaning in what we write. Anyway, the changes in my re-written metaphor are subtle but they do make a difference, shoving the metaphor more into the realm of free-verse poetry. Here’s the version I’m handing in next week:

Widowhood is a vacuum thrusting forward

And sucking up tin soldiers off the floor,

Swirling them around in a dark, deep void

While more tiny souls, still in its path of wrath

Struggles to pull its life-line from the wall.

Also in class we were all given index cards with writing prompts on them to finish with a metaphor. After five minutes of writing about half the class read theirs out loud, myself not included. My prompt was: “His mind is___” And I wrote, His mind is a steel trap, leading you in with a tempting bite while you’re unaware of the game he is playing. You hang on every word of his bait. You are mesmerized, not seeing the cage door about to slam shut. He’s a storyteller, a gamester, with a purpose and you are his prize. Other writing prompts that people drew from a basket were: My house is___, my life is___, my past is___ my friend is___, and so on. The morning class went by quickly and I can see how a group like that can get to know each other on a deeper level than, say, a group of senior citizens going on a field trip. ©

Note: The photo above is of an Indian boarding school that operated in Michigan between 1893 and 1934 with the federal government sponsored purpose of assimilating the children away from their culture and traditions. The kids were forcibly taken away from their tribes and never allowed to go back home. Harsh punishments were given to any child who was caught speaking their native language.