There’s a book sleeping inside me.It’s somewhere deep and warm, somewhere
just beneath my heart.At first,
the words free-floated lightly, whispering of love and longing.Then they somersaulted wildly, singing
of hope and victory.Then they
pounded for release, screaming their pain.
I didn’t know the shape the book would
take.Would it be a letter like
Robinson’s Gilead, written to
circumvent death?Would it be a
memoir like Norris’ The Cloister Walk,
tracking the daily life of faith?Would it be a novel like The Thorn
Birds, reckoning the secular and sacred?I didn’t know.I just knew it had to do with Father Tom.
Father Tom.Tall; salt-and-pepper hair.Jackolantern smile and eyes.From my pew I watched him die slowly.Each week I took communion from his
hands, listened to his voice praising God, my understanding growing with his
cancer, my birth in faith coinciding with his death.
Still, I did not begin the book.A book takes years from your life.Each day you have to stand upon a
cliff, take a breath, plunge into the chasm.You have to hit rock to make the words rise.You have to push friends and family to
the corners, shirk the world to live in the mind.Besides, I didn’t understand my motives.I barely knew Father Tom.What right did I have to write of
him?Would he mind that a stranger
had used his dying to—to what?What purpose would it serve?Better cook dinner for my family or for the homeless downtown.
What’s more, I’d just finished a memoir,
had peddled it to more than fifty agents, received rejections from all.And though I’d found a tiny, start-up
press willing to take a risk on me, I’d been warned, given our stature, the
memoir would likely not sell.How
could I justify another book, waste the future after the past?
No, the book was a stupid idea.
But the words kept pounding inside.
I talked to a church friend about it,
someone who’d known Father Tom.He
said sometimes when something is obsessing us, it’s a sign God is calling us to
task.He told me I should speak to
God to sort the matter out.
I suppose in one way or another, I’d
always spoken to God.I’d catch my
breath at a tangerine sunrise and whisper, “Thank you, God!”I’d start at an ambulance siren and
think, “Please, don’t let that person die!”But through most of my adult years, God had been a rainbow
trout to me; I’d grasp him for a moment, then he’d slip, glistening pink and
silver, from my hands.How could I
have spoken with intention when I
wasn’t sure he was real?And
though of late I’d become more certain that God was not a fantasy, speaking to
him still seemed crazy.There are
six billion people on the planet, but hey, Master of the Universe, let’s have a
chat, you and me.No, it’s not
about war, disease or famine; instead, I’d like to pitch a book.
As for the notion God was
calling—God could jingle John Updike; why would he bother with me?
Still, that night, I climbed into bed,
burrowed next to my husband, who’d already turned out the lights.Pulling blankets to chin, I closed my
eyes, fixed them on my inner world. “God, should I write this book?”Then I listened.All I heard was my husband breathing sleep-deep, so I curled into fetal
position, felt the flush of my foolishess.
Foolish:How I felt that night, having imagined
even for a moment that God would speak to me.
Foolish:How I felt one week later, when my
memoir was released at 1,245,362 (and falling) in Amazon’s book sale rank.
Foolish:How I felt tens days after that, when
the university I teach for cancelled my spring quarter writing class.
Foolish:How I felt, having fancied for an
instant that God was calling me to write when the world was screaming stop.
So I stopped.I turned off my computer, smothered every word that
rose.Father Tom—I’m not
writing your book.I’m not writing
again.
That’s when I lost myself.Mornings when my daughter called from
college, I no longer blew her kisses through the phone.Instead my mind hissed at her:What a pest!Don’t you know I need to dress?Afternoons when I was with my college students, I no longer
assured them they could write.Instead, my brain screamed at them:Can’t you place a comma?You should have learned that in third grade!Over supper when my husband spoke about
his law cases, I no longer tracked the parties or the facts.Instead I thought:I don’t care!You’re a flipping bore!Then came the night I asked my son to wash a pan he’d just
used to make an omelette.When he
said, “Mom, chill out!”I
shrieked, “You can go to hell!”
At those words, I started, caught my
breath:Oh God, did I really just
say that? Please, help me get a grip.Okay, writing’s not my future.But surely it’s not this.
The next morning I rose and checked my
email, as I always do.From Akiva,
a former student, now attending college in Quebec:
Dear Mrs. Vallone—
I just got the copy of your
memoir—I think I got it out of divine intervention. I just got back
from class this morning to meet the mailman on his way out. He asked me
in a thick French accent, “Do you know who this ‘Akiva’ is? Can you give
him his package?” I saw your name on the package and claimed it with
delight. Just to think had I not returned in time, he would have left a
pick-up slip or something and it would have been much harder to get it.I started reading it, and to be honest,
I’m incredibly engrossed. Though I know a compliment from a student is
kind of silly, it’s excellent so far!
From Father Mike, a priest-friend who was
preaching at Stanford:
Dear Jan—
I’m enthralled by your book.I hope you don’t mind that I’ve written
Sunday’s homily about it.Is a
second one in store?
From the head of the English department at
the college where I teach:
Jan—
I just wanted to let you know that, if
you’d like to teach writing for spring quarter, there’s an afternoon slot
that’s opened up.And I want to
let you know right now that I will have 1-2 writing sections per quarter next
year available, if you’d be interested in signing up for teaching in 2010-11,
too.
As I read this trinity of emails, the
Father Tom book twitched beneath my heart.And on that day, the first anniversary of his death, I turned
to my keyboard, let the words rise.
On December 4 I had surgery.I suppose that in the vastness of creation, the precipitating problem wasn’t much; with age I’d lost peripheral vision due to drooping eyelids.For several years I’d lived in shadow, sight obscured by canopies of flesh that made it difficult, then dangerous, to drive.
My ophthalmologist prescribed blepharoplasty coupled with an endoscopic brow lift.If I chose to have the surgery, he’d put me under general anesthesia, incise along my eyelids’ natural creases and in several places in my scalp.He’d remove excess skin, muscle and fat and close the gashes with stitches.The procedure would take about two hours, healing, four to five weeks, after which—he hoped—my field of vision would appreciably improve.
When I woke up in recovery, my body tensed with terror, my eyes and head pulsed with pain.I could scarcely press open my eyelids—was anybody there?I felt my husband’s hand in mine, heard a nurse calling my name, but saw only an under-ocean swirl—searing light, hovering glow spots, miasmatic silhouettes. Had my surgeon blinded me?
The first few days at home, I lay supine on the sofa—inert—ointment in my crusted-closed eyes, pads on my livid, battered lids, bandages around my throbbing head, icepacks heavy on my face. And for some reason I still don’t understand—anesthesia, pain medication?—I lost control of my thoughts, which tumbled into pondering the past, spiraled into panic for the future, pummeled me so relentlessly that my physical black-and-blueness paled before the bruising of my heart.The focus was my job.Recently I’d learned that the university I teach for had hired a young Ph.D. who’d take over my favorite writing class; she’d requested a course load that required trumping me. And so I brooded.Why did this person’s Ph.D. outweigh my J.D., M.A.T. and M.F.A? How could the college discard me, despite my tireless work, my boundless zeal and deep affection for my students?Had I done something wrong?Had my students complained?Or was my age the problem?I was twice as old as my replacement; she wouldn’t need blepharoplasty until I was in my grave.
Curled up on the couch, I wept through my ointments and dressings, tears streaming into my ears.In my sightless and mummified state, I couldn’t shake my melancholic thoughts.So desperate was I to divert them that I flouted my surgeon’s orders—I took a book from the shelf, though he’d forbidden me to read.
The volume was God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas.It includes daily Advent readings that explore the Incarnation and seek the divine in everyday life.Straining to part my eyelids, I turned to the readings of the day, which began with Isaiah:
The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom. They will bloom with abundant flowers, and rejoice with joyful song . . . Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God . . . With divine recompense he comes to save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened . . . They will meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee.
Next came a meditation by the poet Scott Cairns, who told of a hiking experience he'd had in Utah’s Arches National Park.Walking along the trail, dwarfed by red rock towers and limitless blue sky, he’d looked down, where a flash of vivid color caught his eye—the deep magenta of a cactus flower right beside the trail.Cairns elaborates:
The plant itself actually seemed more dead than alive; still from the tip of one scarred, paddle-shaped appendage poured a marvel of brilliant color, a renewal of brilliant life.And then, having noticed that one flower, . . . that one burst of color, my eye was thereby led to another just beyond the first, and then just beyond the second, another . . . brilliant flowers dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see.They had been there all along, but until I had seen the first I’d been oblivious to their presence, blind to their broadcast beauty.
Having completed the readings, I put the book aside, noticed my eyes no longer ached much; neither did my heart.For the first time in several days, I stood up from the sofa and began to look around.Out the window, my neighbor Colin was hauling a ladder to his shed; he’d just strung up his Christmas lights, which blinked blue, yellow, green and red.On my porch I found a box of navel oranges left there by a friend. And in my computer I discovered an email sent the day of my surgery:
Dear Professor—
I have loved taking a course with you this quarter.I loved seeing your smile every Tuesday and Thursday :) I feel like I have grown a lot as a writer because of your class.As the quarter has been winding down, I've had a lot of papers in all of my classes and your techniques with writing a thesis and breaking down the parts helped me with each one.I had issues staying on topic and staying organized in my papers before the class, and you have helped me so much with improving on those skills.
Christmas lights, oranges, kind words: a trio of brilliant cactus flowers, a restoration of sight. Faith that if I looked carefully, I’d find more flowers on the trail.
One of the last things my father did before he died in 1994 was dictate a story into a tape recorder. He was seventy years old, had retired only months earlier and had spent those months pursuing long-deferred dreams. One of those dreams was to take a creative writing course. My father had always considered himself a raconteur. No longer able to attend classes or sit up to type or write by hand, my father completed his last story from his hospital bed, using the tape recorder.
Like my father, I’ve always enjoyed writing, and, like my father, I postponed doing anything about it for the majority of my life. But I decided several years ago that I was no longer going to wait. After eighteen years of practicing law, I left my firm, went back to school and became a high school English teacher at a yeshiva—an Orthodox Jewish high school. Teaching English kept me in constant communion with the world’s great writers, both classic and contemporary. By immersing myself in their voices, I hoped to develop my own and help my students develop theirs.
I loved teaching writing to teenagers. The writing teacher is confidant. The writing teacher is mentor. The writing teacher is cheerleader. The writing teacher is the center of a community composed of people striving to reach others, the facilitator of human connection, and, as such, experiences the joy of being touched.
My students quickly figured out that their teacher was an idealistic and sentimental person. I told them that their goal as writers was to enable their readers to live vicariously, to gather insights about life. I explained that they wouldn’t be able to reach this goal unless they allowed their work to be inspired by what moved them, both intellectually and emotionally. I urged them to write from their hearts.
I meant what I said to my students, and they actually seemed to believe me. Take, for example, Zach. As a senior, he asked me if he could do an independent study course in writing, an opportunity not normally available at our school. I agreed, if he would do two things: (1) revise a rough but promising memoir he had written in my class as a junior and (2) submit it to a writers’ contest sponsored by a leading magazine. For the next eight weeks, Zach and I met regularly to work on his story. I commented; he revised. We did this over and over, and when the story became more polished, we solicited comments from friends and family. Again he revised. The result was a poignant piece about the night that Zach’s brother died, which Zach submitted to the contest. Later, he described the outcome in a speech to an audience of teens whose loved ones were ill:
A couple months later I heard I was a finalist and that during school the next day I’d find out what I had won and where I had placed. I received a phone call at lunch telling me that over 10,000 applicants had entered and I had placed second. Needless to say, my jaw dropped, and when I told my teacher, we were so overwhelmed we couldn’t push down our smiles. Then I began to think what about it is so special? Winning is fun but writing is not exactly a soccer game; the thrill of winning is not the same. Then, as I thought about it, I realized that my story is going to be published and distributed in over eight million homes worldwide. If in one of those homes one person will read my story and possibly be consoled or gain an insight from it, then I will have done what I thought could not be done, I will have brought hope and optimism out of something that I thought would only be sad and depressing.
When that hit me, the excitement and thought of winning was secondary to the idea that I might be able to help someone who otherwise may not have been reached on that same level.
How proud I was of Zach, and how personally gratified. For Zach had learned—miraculously from me—several things about writing that I believe and had taught him: writing is a process, and although it begins in the individual heart and depends on the individual writer’s toil and perseverance, it often develops within a community of supportive writers and readers who are willing to react and comment as the writer, through repeated revision, brings the piece to completion. Thus, most good writing is a joint effort. Collaboration is what gives writing its special, and to my mind, greatest potential: to work positive change not only on the writer, but also on the community that reads.
Now, amazingly, it’s my turn. My first book, Pieces of Someday, a memoir, is about to be released by Gemelli Press, a small Seattle publisher. The memoir is the product of four years of work on my part, and like Zach’s story, countless hours of writing and revision. Also, like Zach’s story, my memoir would not today exist were it not for the community of people who inspired me to write it, and who read it, commented on it and cheered for me as I wrote. Just in time for Thanksgiving I now offer them heartfelt thanks.
Thank you.
Roxana Arama, Teresa Daggett, Bea Gates, Elena Georgiou, Les Lamkin, Jocelyn Lieu, Gwen Mansfield, Sean Roberts, David Sobel—
for your encouragement and invaluable comments;
Cristina Rinaldi—
per la tua amicizia e la piu` bella copertina che io abbia mai visto;
Jason Enterline—
for your beautiful print design and limitless patience;
Barbara Elliot and Fr. Michael Fones—
for assuring me that even I have gifts;
Rick Hamlin, Bill Hesse, Kari Hock, Nan Holmes, Steve Kaufman, Karen Landes—
for opening doors;
Fr. Tom Kraft and Fr. Daniel Syverstad—
for personifying love, hope and perseverance;
Akiva, Jack, Chelsea, Mira, Zach, Shoshana G., Shoshana R.
One week ago today was All Souls Day, the day that Western Christianity sets aside to pray for loved ones who have died. Historically, the Christian tradition grew from a Jewish practice first performed after a battle described in Maccabees.According to the story of that battle, many faithful soldiers died in combat and their leader Judas fretted for their souls.Desiring to ensure their resurrection, he took up a collection, amassing two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem as an expiatory sacrifice. The Bible tells us that in doing so, Judas “acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.”
While the general custom of setting apart a special day to pray for the dead is ancient, there was no official Christian celebration until 998 A.D., when Saint Odilo of Cluny decreed that Catholics pray for souls each November 2. The tradition first spread to dioceses in France, then throughout the Western Church, and reached Rome in the fourteenth century. While the liturgical celebration remains November 2, the Western Catholic Church now prays for souls throughout November, when lists of names of the departed are placed upon the altar during Mass.
This year, on November 2, my church held a special evening Mass, an All Souls Solemn High Mass according to the Dominican Rite.The Mass was said in Latin and included Dominican chanting and polyphonic Renaissance hymns.A coffin was placed upon the altar surrounded by six man-tall candles that burned throughout the Mass.Inside the otherwise-empty coffin were the names of our parishioners’ lost beloved—hundreds and hundreds of names, among them my parents and grandparents and others I’ve known and loved well.Also inside the coffin was the name of a man I barely knew who for some time had moved me greatly, though I never took the time to tell him until November 2 last year, when I sent him an email, my first words to him.I pray that in the future I remember to say I love you long before All Souls Day.
November 2, 2008
Dear Father Tom—
If I had a magic wand, I would wave it and there would be peace, and no poverty or illness.And you would be well, but probably out of a job.
But I don’t have a magic wand, which is why I started going to Blessed Sacrament the week after Easter this year, after a thirty-year almost-total lapse in church attendance.I chose Blessed Sacrament because I liked the bricks and steeple, and it’s close enough to walk there from my house.
What I found at Blessed Sacrament was more than bricks.I found music so soulful I ache, stained glass so lovely I fly, and a sweet, consistent community that sounds like they mean it when they shake my hand and wish me peace.They look right into my eyes and I look back.
I also found a priest who doesn’t talk much, but smiles and glows from the altar, like the prayers and songs and readings and community really mean something, and like God is actually up there—or even better, down here with us. And when I walk home each Sunday, the sky and flowers and leaves somehow seem more vivid, and the homeless make me bleed even more than they usually do.
It’s probably for this reason that I thought of you a few weeks ago.My son Sean is a sophomore in college who will defend just about anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, social stautus or sexual orientation.The only people he doesn’t understand are those with religion.As far as he can see, God is an excuse for committing atrocities.If you go to church on Sunday, you can be as awful as you like the rest of the week—pray, then denigrate Arabs, Latinos, the poor and gays. To him, religion is a show without interiority.
And this, I think, was one of many reasons that the recent death of Sean’s friend Luke shattered Sean as it did.Luke was a good, caring person, and Sean kept on repeating that he didn’t deserve to die. And Sean didn’t want to believe that he’d never see Luke again.So I wished I could send Sean to you because I had a feeling that you could open a window that would enable him to hope that he would see Luke again, and maybe even God.You seem to have so much inside.
I didn’t know when Luke died—I didn’t know until today—that you are fighting cancer, or that you have a CaringBridge blog-site with 911 letters and almost 25,000 hits, all expressing the same prayer—that you go on glowing from the altar.I can’t predict the future, but I know one thing for sure, one way or another you will.
I suppose I’m pretty old now, but even with my thirty-year lapse, I’ve listened to lots of homilies.Three of them stand out.Father Spitzer at Gonzaga, who reminded me that you’re facing loss, you have to listen to the silence because the voice of God is there. Then the priest from San Francisco who came to Blessed Sacrament and sang from Fiddler on the Roof—“Do You Love Me?”He reminded me how lucky I am to be able to answer yes. And last, but not least, you, a priest blushing over an old girlfriend, who reminded me how very blessed we are that you gave up that girlfriend to give yourself to us.
Thank you, Father Tom.Please keep fighting.And I’ll keep praying.Make it 912.
I was recently out on a walk with a friend who’s had a tough year; not only did she decide to divorce her husband, she also decided to send her daughter away to therapeutic school; both have drug and alcohol problems.At first my friend was devastated by suddenly living alone; she had difficulty focusing at work and would unexpectedly break into tears at social gatherings.But then she read a self-help book she claimed had healed her overnight; it had taught her to live wholly in the present, enjoy every flower she sees, block all but the here and now.
I’m glad this philosophy works for my friend, but it saddens me.I do believe in cherishing the present, both in time and place, but I also couldn’t live without the past or without the present but unseen. The past has taught me which flowers smell delicious, and which harbor poisons to avoid.And when I can’t see any flowers, I’m glad to recall they’re blooming somewhere and all I need to do to find them is pull weeds or change my path.
It’s probably because of this that I so enjoyed Annie Dillard’s book For the Time Being, which reflects upon time, the known and the unknown.I love the way it assembles bits of data—stories from China and Israel, the natural history of sand, wisdom from Confucianism, Christianity and Kabbalism and medical facts about birth and death.I love the way it poses statistical questions:Do you remember what you were doing on April 30, 1991, when a series of tsunami waves drowned 138,000 people in Bangladesh?; Do you know the dead outnumber the living in the ratio of twenty to one?And I love the way it withholds commentary so we can stir its ingredients together, add our own connections and marvel at the subtle, complex stew.
Mostly, though, I admire Dillard’s daring; not only do her words take us round the world, they transport us throughout time—from the days of the Chinese Emperor Qin, who unified his country in 221 BCE, to the days of the Galilean Rabbi Isaac Luria, who reinterpreted the Zohar in the 1500s, to the days of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher-priest-paleontologist who discovered Peking Man in the 1920s, to the days of our own time. What better way to highlight that we humans, each unique and precious, are at once common and insignificant, and that this paradox unites us all.
This brings to mind a personal connection.I’ve never believed there’s one correct religion. My tradition is Catholicism; I'm moved by the liturgy, the icons, the organ, the incense, the light through stained glass. But you might be moved by something else.And the students I once taught at a yeshiva—an Orthodox Jewish high school—by something different still.
But what should we make of the difference?Last year I signed up for a yoga class—something I’d not done before—as a means to stay in shape.As the first class opened, I followed the instructor’s directions and the advanced students’ example: I sat cross-legged on the floor, straightened up my spine, pressed my palms together, relaxed my face and closed my eyes.
Then the instructor began to chant:Yogena chittasya padena vacham.And the veteran students responded:Yogena chittasya padena vacham. And the instructor continued to chant:Malam sharirasya cha vaidyakena.And the students responded again:Malam sharirasya cha vaidyakena.And because I don’t speak Sanskrit, which I’d never heard before, I couldn’t understand the words, but I discerned far more.For sitting closed-eyed in that yoga studio, I felt the presence of all of humankind, its people calling, listening, responding—searching for each other and for God.And the dissonance of their separate voices—many pitchy and off-key—combined strangely into harmony.And that harmony rose around me.It ran through me, expanded within me—a harmony distinct from all others, and yet identical to all.It was the harmony of Gregorian chanting, Jewish Torah cantillations and Southern a cappella hymns.It was the harmonies I have yet to hear and those I never will.And in it, I sensed God.
So, for the time being, I’m determined to cherish that harmony, as I know my walking partner would.But unlike her, I’ll let it blend and rise with the songs I can’t hear in the present and those resounding from the past.And I hope to preserve it in my memory so I can let it rise to buoy me when the next tsunami comes.
