Unfrozen

        For the past year I've been driving through south Toledo nearly every morning on my way to Perrysburg.  I pass the shopping center where Mr. Kregel, Bowsher High School's football coach, taught me to drive.  The place that used to be the Glenbyrne Theater where I watched Star Wars eleven times with my little sister.  The vacant lot where Byrnedale Junior High once stood, the building where my seventh grade language arts teacher, Miss Kurtz, taught me to love writing.  I drive by the convenience story that was once a 7-Eleven that provided eggs and milk and bread during the blizzard of 1978 (I still can't believe my mom let me pull a sled all by myself through the intersection of Eastgate and Glendale to get provisions for the family).  Right before I reach Front Street, I pass by the Rec Center where I swam in the summer and visited Children's Wonderland each Christmas. 

         Every morning I'm blocks away from the house I grew up in on Eastwick Drive and pass by landmarks of my childhood that bring back a treasure trove of memories:  six-year-old Katie enjoying a peach flavored ice cream cone at the UDF that was scooped by Mrs. Heumann, my next door neighbor.          Seven-year-old Katie playing softball in the Glendale Elementary backfield being yelled at by the coach for not getting in the game.  

        Ten-year-old Katie tooling around Southwyck Mall with my sisters, exploring Walden Books, Coach House Gifts and Old Towne.  

        Thirteen-year-old Katie singing a solo in the junior high school play "Wheels".  

        Seventeen-year-old Katie driving to school her senior year, grateful to escape taking the Tarta bus and the teenage boys who pinched and mocked her body.  

        Twenty-one-year-old Katie helping pack up the Eastwick house when her parents moved away.

       At first, all of those moments seemed frozen in time as if I was a different person who lived through the 70's and 80's in a middle class house on a middle class street in a middle class neighborhood.  Who I am now at fifty-five is a far cry from the kid who loved hearing the church bells ring through the field behind our street, telling me it was time to come home for dinner.  Still, over the past twelve months I've had the opportunity to drive day after day after day past places that are now vastly different than they used to be.

       Our world is now unlike anything we've ever experienced -- even more so since the pandemic started.  Yet long before the lockdowns and testing and divisions over what is best for the common good, there's been a crumbling of common ground.  Our culture has a long history, but a short memory, and so it seems do most people.

       It's been a unique blessing to have the opportunity to gently revisit my past in the early morning hours as darkness slowly turns to light.  Over the weeks and months, I've slowly realized that all the Katies of the past are still within me, the memories even easier to access since they've been unfrozen from the silent places inside.

        Seemingly insignificant moments come back like reading a book while waiting at the bus stop by Rudy's Hot Dog.  Other more dramatic ones resurface, too, like the time my mother walked away from the house when my sisters and I were fighting and I was scared she'd never come back.  She did an hour or so later, telling us she was at the same Rudy's having a cup of coffee to take a break from all the noise.  It used to be that I couldn't pass a Rudy's without bitterly thinking about my mom's escape, that moment lodged in my mind like an iceberg.  But now after driving by the restaurant a hundred times, it's become a neutral place as the memories have melted into a new awareness of why she left and why she came back.

        After all this time I can look back on my long history and find a common ground in everything I've remembered.  Even though I'm not the same person I was as a kid, in my teens, twenties and beyond, in many ways I've been able to see how seamlessly my past set the stage for what was to come.  Everything I experienced as a child informed who I became as an adult.

        For a long time I used to lock my memories away, compartmentalizing them in journals, thinking about them as if they happened to another person, someone I had long buried in the past.  Now as winter is slowly turning to spring, they've magically melted into the present during my morning drive.  In an instant I can recall the taste of a soft-serve cone with chocolate shot from Penguin Palace.  I can smell the corn and burgers roasting on a grill at the annual summer block party.  I can hear the echoing laughter of children playing Kick the Can and Red Light, Green Light.  As I drive by Rudy's Hot Dog, I can see in my mind's eye Glendale Elementary School that used to stand across the street, the place where Jimmy Marsh kissed me on the cheek in second grade. 

        I've never longed to go back in time, to stay eternally twenty-nine.  I've yearned to be separate from the past, to pretend events never happened, to forget moments in time that were filled with fear, embarrassment, and shame.  How fascinating that a daily drive through the south end of town has given me the time to remember in the safe space of solitude.  It's a meditation to allow those memories to melt, then float downstream into the ocean of the present moment, knowing every experience is a part of who I am now.

        

First grade school picture from Glendale Elementary, 1972

        

Snow White...revisited

Snow White…revisited

 

 

         My mother kept meticulous records in my baby book.  In the "Famous Firsts" section, she wrote:  "First cartoon movie:  April, '69 Snow White."  I was two at the time and, of course, have no memory of the event.  But when I turned six, Mom insisted that I have a birthday party and invite some girls from the neighborhood.  Not wanting any attention focused solely on me, I balked endlessly.  Finally, after some cajoling, Mom promised the party could be any theme I wanted.

         Now satisfied that I could have some choice in the matter, I replied, "I want a Snow White birthday party." 

         "What's that?" Mom asked.

         "I want you to find a Snow White at the store and put it on the dining room table with all your little ceramic animals." 

         My mother had a delightful collection of birds and fauna that decorated the corner shelves of our kitchen and living room.  I cheerfully explained that they could be like all the animals Snow White met in the forest before she discovered the seven dwarves. 

         There's only a brief mention of this party in my baby book, accompanied by a short list of the girls who attended.  What I remember most is that I absolutely did not want to play games, so we went to the movies instead.  And I can also remember sitting in the darkened theater at Southwyck Mall relieved that everyone was paying attention to something other than the fact that it was my birthday.  Yet, I also felt disgusted that the movie I had chosen ("What's Up Doc?") was not about Bugs Bunny at all, but a tedious love story between Ryan O'Neil and Barbra Streisand. 

         Enter the pattern of my life:  I can ask for what I want, but it rarely turns out as I imagined or hoped it would be.

 

         Still, my favorite memory of that birthday is standing in the doorway of the dining room, looking at the table where Mom had carefully assembled Snow White in a makeshift forest surrounded by her collection of little animals.  Even now, I can see myself as a young girl, wondering what those animals would say if they could speak. 

         What would Snow White say? 

         What would I say?

         Longing to discover my own voice, I started keeping a journal in my adolescence and eventually became a novelist.  In the process, I've created dozens of characters who marginally personify pieces of myself.  Many of them have been written into a life I had once planned, yet never experienced.  None of them reveal my own life as it has truly been.  

         Through it all, I've been amazed that the story of Snow White continues to shape my life's lessons.  Like her, I have encountered wicked, green-eyed queens who have wanted to diminish or silence my existence.  I have escaped to the silence of a solitary forest in order to recreate myself beyond what I had been taught to be.  I have spent decades as a teacher, working with little people of all ages, unearthing jewels of learning while they mine their own talents and abilities.  I have been terrified of the unknown, the unfamiliar, and the endless search for who I am and where I belong. 

        

         Naturally, my favorite part of the story of Snow White is when she enters the forest and all the animals befriend her.  They take her to a little cottage in the heart of the woods where she will be safe.  Where she will eventually meet the seven dwarves and face the trials of being the object of the Queen's wrath.  Deep in the forest, Snow White is nurtured by the natural world and it is through being in nature that I am continually healed.  Like Snow White, I live in a little cottage and tend to the lovely gardens which surround it.  What a blessing to touch the earth and experience more clearly the unspoken, yet profound life lessons flourishing in my own back yard.

         Throughout this conscious awakening, the tale of Snow White keeps me ever mindful to listen carefully to that which sparks my attention, which engages me beyond words or thought.  Which allows me to feel my authentic heart that has never been stolen.  This journey echoes a message I have spent a lifetime trying to decipher: my truth, my own enchantment is not what I had been taught to want, but rather a new reality that has risen from its ashes. 

         Everything I’ve ever written has become a literary phoenix.  

Through my books and blogs, I hope you see yourself, a friend, a sister or an aunt, a lover or a wife.  Most of all, may you discover you are not alone in your journey, neither before nor after this moment in time. 

         Those of us who are creating new paradigms are blessed to find each other along the way.

The actual Snow White centerpiece my mother used
for my sixth birthday party.  What a keepsake!