photo by Collyn Ware

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. —W. B. Yeats, “The Stolen Child”

The world, as Yeats declares, is “more full of weeping” than a child can understand—than a child should understand. And even at the cusp of adolescence, my grandson, Griffin, has yet to fully cross that inevitable threshold to understanding. There are so many moments when he is still that bare-chested little boy in a straw hat stirring the water with a stick, that sweet child who flings my front door open and exclaims, “I’m here! What are we doing today?” Too soon, he will leave this child behind. But not this summer, not today. Today, we have the “waters and the wild,” the magic of each new day, which breaks golden and true.

A few weeks before Griff’s 12th birthday, we stood at the edge of the pond in a small cove where bluegill spawn and school. As he looked into the water, he turned to me and said, “This is so beautiful.” Tears sprang to my eyes. We stood in silence for several moments watching the fish. We’ve shared so many moments like this during his 12 years. Griff sees the uncommon beauty in the most common things. He will stop to marvel at uniquely shaped rocks on the road. He will find the one red, ripe strawberry in a patch and eat it before he leaves the garden. He will uncap and smell any scented candle or bottle of cologne, his sense of smell always active and finely tuned. He will wax nostalgic about holiday memories and family traditions. From the moment I first held him, he captured my heart and recaptures it daily.

“Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies,” writes American lyrical poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Or when people die, their deaths are so removed they don’t wholly register. In Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Indian Camp,” a boy about Griff’s age makes a trip with his physician father across the lake to the Indian camp where a woman is in labor and needs assistance. The woman’s husband has been injured and lies in the bunk above her. Unable to help, he has listened to her screams for hours and, in a final act of desperation, takes his own life. The boy, Nick, witnesses this death and the cesarean section his father performs without an anesthetic. In the final lines of the story, Hemingway tells us that Nick rests against his father as they row back across the lake toward home, quite certain that he will never die. When one is very old or when the circumstances of one’s death are so foreign and so unnatural (a suicide at an Indian camp), it’s understandable that children may believe they will never die. Death is a distant galaxy. It might be glimpsed through a high-powered telescope, but its presence is a suggestion, not a cruel reality.

The child in Griff believes I can easily sprint across the lawn to retrieve the baseballs he’s hit. In the kingdom of his childhood, I will be forever young—or young enough to stave off infirmity and death. At 12, however, he’s begun to see the slower, less able me. When I didn’t move quickly enough and took a wiffle ball to the chest last week, he gasped. “Are you o.k., Grandma? I’m so sorry—are you o.k.?” Of course, I was o.k. I can still take a wiffle ball to the chest and stay in the game. But it was his quick concern that struck me. In that moment, I could see the shadow that crossed his face, the understanding that I was older now, that I would die. And even as I wished I could wipe away the shadow, he squared up at the plate and hit a ball deep into our neighbor’s yard. Smiling, I said, “That was a great hit.” Grinning, he replied, “I just love the sound the ball makes when it connects with the bat like that, don’t you?” And I knew that for tonight at least, we could both live happily in the kingdom of his childhood.

In her novel, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy writes, “Childhood tiptoed out. Silence slid in like a bolt.” This is the painful thing about the loss of childhood: it often comes with silence that slides in “like a bolt.” I want to hold on to the noisy Griff, the boy who talks your ear off and shouts as he leaps off the edge into the pool. When he was young and wanted to be a bull rider, he used to flail around the room, throwing his right arm in the air, whooping and hollering as I counted off 8 seconds. Then he’d collapse in a sweaty heap on the rug, panting and looking up expectantly as I announced, “Griffin Ware riding Red Rock, a new world record!” If anything, I don’t want Griff’s childhood to tiptoe out. I want it to go with whooping and hollering, to make a noisy last stand.

For every child, I suspect there is a parent or grandparent who wishes they could delay the onset of adulthood. It’s an unrealistic but universal wish. We consider the adult world our children must navigate, and we hold fast to those last days of innocence. In his novel, All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy writes:

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all.

I’m afraid it’s just this: we suspect if our children knew the truths of adult life, they’d “have no heart to start at all.” We chuckle when kids declare they will grow up to be professional athletes, rock stars, and billionaires. Let them dream, we say. We want them to imagine the lives they want to live. Yet, we also want them to have the heart to grow up and take on the real responsibilities and challenges of adulthood. If we send mixed messages, we confess it’s with the best intentions.

Griff just returned from a minor league baseball game. For a day, he had a VIP experience as he lived his dream. He spent time in the dugout, took photos with players, and came home with a signed jersey and too many memories to count. Like many boys his age, he can see himself taking the field and hitting the winning run in a championship game. The dream of becoming a professional baseball player is still alive and flourishing, even as the painful reality of its unlikelihood lurks in the dugout. I want Griff to have the heart to dream these dreams for as long as he can. And then I want him to have the heart to embrace new dreams as he moves into adulthood.

In truth, I could say so much more about this boy who’s blessed my life. I know that the day is coming when he won’t ask his grandma to pitch wiffle balls or ride around with him in our UTV. I know that he will soon experience a world that’s “full of weeping,” a world in which death abounds. This day will come soon enough. Until then, I will live happily with him in the kingdom of childhood. Neither of us can imagine a better place to be.

may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living —e. e. cummings “may my heart always be open to little”

Several years ago, my Philadelphia daughter and I were drinking coffee one summer morning when she turned to me and said, “Is this what you do?” “What? I asked. “Drink a morning coffee?” She shook her head and pointed out the wall of dining room windows to four bird feeders well-stocked with black-oil sunflower seeds. As I watched birds swoop in from the timber, I said, “Well, yes, this is what I do. I’m a bird person.”

I have a thing for all birds, but especially small, blue birds. A bluebird or indigo bunting sighting can make my day. I’ve been known to creep around the edge of our timber like a crazy woman, eyes peeled and breath held, in search of an indigo bunting I can hear but not yet see. I’ve been known to make a dead stop in the middle of a trail, believing that if I stand there long enough, a bunting or bluebird will simply appear. And when an indigo bunting visited one of our bird feeders last year (a first! a miracle!), I crawled on my knees through the dining room, crouching low under the windows—much to the amusement of my family—in hopes of getting an even closer look at it. Biologist and bird artist Julie Zickefoose claims, “[t]he presence of a single bird can change everything for one who appreciates them.” Although I’ve yet to see another indigo bunting on our feeders, I’ve lived in wonder of this single sighting, transfixed as a shaft of sunlight ignited a blue so brilliant, it defied words.

“Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much,” writes Gregory Maguire in his novel, Out of Oz. This may be what I love most about birds. The way they navigate the world at the “margins,” “on the edge of things.” In my father’s Jottings Towards an Autobiography, he writes, “I have always been like Thoreau, preferring broad margins between myself and others.” I learned to love birds from my dad. And I grew to love the “broad margins” that allow me to notice the small but infinitely valuable things on the edges. As I walked this morning at the nature preserve and heard the distinctive song of the indigo bunting, I looked high into the trees, searching the uppermost edges of their silhouettes to find a lone bunting perched at the very top of a cedar. He was singing at the edge where earth meets sky. I might’ve missed him if I hadn’t learned that treasure lies at the margins.

And I might’ve missed him if I hadn’t learned to live by the words of American naturalist John Burroughs: “If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.” I walk and watch with expectation, with confidence. Because I have birds in my heart. Because I walk without earbuds, listening. “In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence,” writes Irish essayist Robert Lynd. To see birds, you must hear them. To hear them, you must be quiet. In this season of my life, I’m learning to relish silence. I’ve always valued solitude, but I’ve discovered an intimacy with the natural world that only comes, I believe, from “becoming a part of the silence.” Birds have much to teach me, and I’m still learning.

I’m learning more, too, about the ways birds inspire us. Burroughs understood their particular significance to writers:

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

For eight years, I’ve had a blue parakeet named Billy. He lost his partner two years ago, and several months ago, he lost his ability to fly. As I worked in the kitchen one day, I heard a thump and was horrified to see that Billy had plunged from his perch at the top of the cage to the bottom, where he scrambled to right himself, his wings flared awkwardly to each side for balance. But what happened next amazed me. He used his beak to climb up the cage and positioned himself, once again, on his favorite perch. Since then, he plummets to the cage floor several times a day, but he always makes the laborious climb back up to the top. The first time this happened, I thought he had days, maybe hours to live. But Billy is a force of nature; he’s “large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic” and refuses to let his age and handicap dampen his spirits. He sings in the mornings, his voice more tremulous now but joyful nonetheless. As a poet—and a 70-year-old—Billy has become for me a symbol of the kind of joyful perseverance and “buoyancy” I seek.

Last week, on my 70th birthday, as I was rounding the trail by the turtle pond, I spotted an indigo bunting in the cattails about ten feet ahead of me. For a few glorious seconds, it stayed there, letting the sun catch its iridescence. This must be a sign, I thought. Hours later, as I looked out my kitchen window to the new purple martin house my husband recently built, lo and behold, not one, but two male bluebirds were perched on top. This has to be a sign, I thought.

A sign of what? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I really have no idea. I just like the fact that several small, blue birds showed up for my birthday. And so, as I enter a new decade in my life, I’m amazed, again, at the great mystery of the natural world, how it welcomes you, and as poet Mary Oliver writes, announces “your place in the family of things.”

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
― Mary Oliver (Dreamwork, 1986)

Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others—it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it. —Yo-Yo Ma

As track season comes to an end, I’ve hung up my running shoes. Figuratively—not literally. As a nearly 70-year-old, I’m certainly not in competition form, and it’s been a few years since I ran more than the 50 yards from my house to my daughter’s. I remember my running days, though, and my muscles remember. They remember how it felt to explode from the starting blocks, to make up distance on the first curve, to lengthen my strides on the backstretch, and to run the final curve of the 400 meters into a headwind. They remember the slap of a baton into my palm and the urgent lean across the finish line. In her novel, Dearly, Margaret Atwood writes: You’ll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that’s not there any longer. This is it exactly. Unbeknownst to the spectators around me, for years, I’ve been running races from my stadium seat. I’ve been there with them, but not there at all. My muscle memory transports me to the many track meets—high school and collegiate—where I braced myself against the wind, set my starting blocks, and flew down the track.

As we learn and practice a skill, our brains create neural pathways and connections controlling the associated muscles. The more we practice, the more efficient these connections become. Muscle memory, then, is more about brain-building than actual muscle-building. Athletes, musicians, and other professionals testify to how they’ve improved their performance as they’ve strengthened the neural connections created from repetition. I haven’t played the piano for decades, but my fingers still remember how to play the major scales. When I first began taking lessons in elementary school, I often practiced these scales in bed at night, moving my fingers across my percale pillow case as if it were a keyboard, deftly tucking my thumb under my middle finger when I reached F to continue the C major scale. Even though I haven’t practiced or played for years, the neural connections are still there. If I were to sit down at a piano today, I’d be no virtuoso, but my muscle memory would carry me through the scales, one note, one finger at a time.

As we age, muscle memory is both wonderful and awful. Our synapses twitch, our neurons fire, and our muscles remember the way. For a few glorious moments, we feel as though we still have it. We could still run 400 meters in under 60 seconds, no problem. We could still turn a perfect cartwheel, easy peasy. We could still march and play an entire band show, bring it on. For these moments, we remember how it feels to rely on muscle memory. And then, we’re reminded our muscles aren’t what they used to be. Years ago, when my best friend and I chaperoned a group of teenage boys to a Christian music festival, they kept encouraging her to crowd surf. “Do it!” they said. “You know you want to! Just fall back and let yourself be carried along.” For a moment, we both could remember the freedom, how it feels to fall back and float above the heads of concert-goers. Until I broke the reverie with caution. “You really don’t want to break bones and face orthopedic surgery,” I warned. “I speak from experience—don’t do it. You don’t want to be pinned and screwed back together.” Age often does this. It rides in with common sense and caution. It tames a moment of wild glory into a lap dog.

Regardless of our age and muscle condition, however, we can take heart. In her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Krista Tippett tells us that “hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a habit that becomes spiritual muscle memory.” I like this notion of practicing a virtue until it becomes spiritual muscle memory. To do this, you don’t have to have a strong core or biceps. You can do this even if you can no longer play your favorite recital piece or make a lay-up. This is a different kind of muscle memory, neither dependent on age nor physical ability. And consider the smorgasbord of virtues from which you can choose: hope, gratitude, humility, generosity, compassion. Fill your plate, and then go back for seconds. Create new neural pathways and practice until habit becomes spiritual muscle memory.

Some might argue that today, more than ever, a healthy diet of virtues would go a long way toward creating and sustaining a better world. They might argue—and rightfully so—that this is easier said than done, though. It’s likely we all remember the pain and tedium of practicing the same skills again and again. I recall the hours I spent running my fingers through scales when I desperately wanted to play from my Jackson 5 Greatest Hits book for piano beginners. I’m reminded of the hours I spent with relay partners, running through handoffs long after our teammates had gone to the locker rooms. The proverbial words of coaches and teachers still ring true: No pain, no gain. Trusting that temporary pain and tedium will ultimately benefit us, we muscle on through challenging practices.

Whether we’re creating muscle memory or spiritual muscle memory, there’s always a cost. Despite my best intentions, I often struggle to greet the day with gratitude or hope. It doesn’t come easily. The neural pathways I counted on one day are weak—or nonexistent—the next. The spiritual muscle memory I’d previously trusted is gone. When this happens, it’s back to the scales. When my spiritual muscle memory fails me, it’s back to repeated practice. This may take the form of prayer, meditation, or guided reading. I’m reminded of Mother Teresa’s decades-long struggle to feel the presence of God. And yet, she rose each day, and faithfully served India’s most neglected populations, trusting in the God she could neither feel nor see. Through these seasons of darkness, she moved through each day, fully trusting her spiritual muscle memory.

American cellist Yo-Yo Ma reminds us that “your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.” I can imagine myself doing a passable cartwheel, but truthfully, I’m not going to risk it. It could, likely would, end badly. But spiritual muscle memory is another matter. And Yo-Yo Ma reminds us there’s good news. For even when, perhaps especially when, we fail to practice the virtues we’d like to live, we can imagine ourselves practicing them. We can rise each day and imagine moving through the hours with hope, gratitude, generosity, and humility. We can build—or rebuild—these neural pathways by first imagining them. And then? Well, we can trust where our imaginations will take us.

“Perhaps that is the best way to say it: printed books are magical, and real bookshops keep that magic alive.”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

In the past month, I’ve held book signings at two remarkable Iowa independent bookstores: By the Hearth Bookshop and Coffee House in Bloomfield and Beaverdale Books in Des Moines. These bookstores are two of the country’s 2,844 independent bookstores, according to The American Booksellers Association. Like their fellow bookshops, they’re keeping the magic alive.

In his blog post, “How Bookstores in America are Thriving in 2025,” John Roberts cites how these shops create and nurture a sense of community:

One of the most significant ways bookstores are thriving in 2025 is by fostering a sense of community. Stores are hosting author talks, book signings, and writing workshops that bring readers and writers together. These events not only drive foot traffic but also create a loyal customer base that values the bookstore as a cultural hub.

While I was talking with employees from Beaverdale Books before my book signing, they spoke passionately of their loyal customers who supported the store during the pandemic. Although the store was closed for months, many customers phoned in their book orders and gratefully received them in the parking lot. Others made donations to ensure the business stayed alive. All felt bound by the sense of community their favorite bookstore offered and eagerly returned when it reopened. In my community of Bloomfield, I’ve heard so many residents confess how much they love By the Hearth Bookshop and how it has blessed our community. The bookshop hosts book signings, book clubs, writing classes, Bible studies, and children’s events. It also offers exceptional food and coffee. Like so many other independent bookstores, it serves as a cultural hub.

During the past decade, I’ve read many books about bookstores: historical and contemporary fiction, fantasy, best-sellers, and debut novels. In these works, the bookstore is a place to fall in love, to pass and receive secret messages, to meet with other spies and resistance workers, and to find refuge and delight when life takes us to the mat. Although most of us don’t visit bookstores to drop off coded messages, we do come for the sensory experience: the smell of so many books in their neat stacks, the feel of a book spine in our hands, the sound of customers murmuring recommendations for future reading—or the absence of sound, the beneficent quiet that invites browsing and soulful wandering. You can’t get these sensations from a Kindle or phone. It’s the tangible book in hand. It’s the way your fingers know the way through pages. It’s the way you can talk easily with anyone in the store about the characters in your favorite series, the way you can openly lament finishing a book and bidding farewell to characters who’ve become like family to you. It’s the way you move through the shelves in wonder, eager to discover a book that will make your day and likely change your life.

It’s all this and so much more writes editor and publisher Jason Epstein:

A civilization without retail bookstores is unimaginable. Like shrines and other sacred meeting places, bookstores are essential artifacts of human nature. The feel of a book taken from the shelf and held in the hand is a magical experience, linking writer to reader.

For me and many others, a bookstore is a sanctuary, a sacred meeting place. Like the best poetry, it offers us, in the words of Robert Frost, a “temporary stay against confusion.” In her book, Tilly and the Bookwanderers, Anna James writes that a bookshop “is like a map of the world. There are infinite paths you can take through it and none of them are right or wrong.” Amidst life’s confusion, a bookshop, James contends, gives readers “landmarks to help them find their way.”

As we navigate our loud and increasingly divisive world, we might consider the words of author Jane Smiley:

A bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order, and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.

In a bookstore, competing voices live within the pages of its books, and we’re free to pick our poison—or not. Smiley is right: a bookstore is one of the few places where all these voices—traditional and progressive, spiritual and material, real and fantastical—live companionably within the same walls.

Writers have a particular love affair with bookstores. In Stephen King’s Wasteland, he describes the smell of entering a bookstore as “coming home.” Author Anna Quindlen believes many writers and readers feel about bookstores “the way some people feel about jewelers.” In Paris by the Book, Liam Callanan describes a bookstore as “a safe-deposit box for civilization.” Novelist Nicole Krauss describes a bookstore experience as “a little bit like studying a single photograph out of the infinite number of photographs that could be taken of the world: It offers the reader a frame.” And writer Jen Campbell claims, “bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.”

Before we sold our family home in Kearney, Nebraska, we investigated the possibility of transforming it from a home to a bookstore. Two of my sisters’ friends were hunting for a bookstore location, and located a few blocks from the university, our house seemed a perfect site. I was thrilled with the prospect of others browsing, reading, and drinking coffee in the places my family had enjoyed for years. But an architect delivered bad news: our home lacked the structural bones to hold the weight of so many shelves and books. Still, these entrepreneurs continued the search and secured a wonderful location. Soon, they will join the family of independent bookstore owners as they launch their new store, Open Book, where they will keep the magic of printed books alive.

As I was packing up to leave Beaverdale Books, I discovered both employees were ardent Elizabeth Strout fans. Within moments, we shared our mutual respect for Strout’s ability to craft characters who felt like real friends. We spoke of the loss we felt as we finished her books. We confessed our great hope that Strout would continue writing, giving us more of the characters and settings we loved. We shared a sense of community: with each other, with these fictional characters, and with the world of booklovers at large. I left the store inordinately happy.

In his novel, American Gods, British writer Neil Gaiman confirms what many of us believe:

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

So, here’s to the independent bookstore, the heart and hub of our communities! And let’s not fool a soul: a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. Perhaps now more than ever, we need the magic of printed books. A bookstore is vital in keeping this magic alive.

for Gracyn

On April 30th, my granddaughter, Gracyn, will celebrate the birthday that’s traditionally marked as an adolescent’s coming of age, a transition from the innocence of childhood into the realities of adulthood. Culturally, we mark the 16th birthday with an official driver’s license and all its ensuing freedoms and responsibilities. I think we can say this about coming of age: it comes–a little or a lot, sooner or later–to all of us. But it’s an entirely different experience when you’re not coming of age but rather witnessing it.

Before Gracyn was born, I made the decision to leave my full-time high school English position to take a position as a literacy consultant. After decades of devoting all my evening and weekend hours to grading student essays, I wanted to devote them to her. I wanted to be a grandma who could say, “Yes, I’m free! I can babysit–whenever and for however long you need me. I’m absolutely available!” I wanted to be a grandma who turned her dining room into a playroom, who was always scouting garage sales for dolls and dollhouses, books and puzzles. I wanted to be a grandma who singlehandedly perfected the Slime recipe that had gone internet viral, one who knew when and where to find the newest Squishmallows (and would wait as long as it took for the weekly delivery truck to pull into the Walgreen’s parking lot). I wanted to be a grandma who was always up for “recreational baths” that lasted a full 60 minutes, that required several “warm-ups” to keep the water at least tepid and involved a legion of plastic mermaids with shiny, pastel hair. I wanted to be a grandma who’d spend the better part of a morning or afternoon on her knees beside the tub or in front of the dollhouse and who could eventually stand up with little assistance and some feeling still present in her legs. I wanted to be a grandma who was a joyful regular at the Dollar Store and made semi-annual trips to the outlet mall, returning triumphantly with bags of new summer or school clothes. I wanted to be that grandma.

I wanted to take a lead role in my granddaughter’s life, standing straight and true on center stage. As the years have gone by, however, I’ve seen how much life goes on beyond me, and I’ve realized–as parents and grandparents inevitably do–that I’ve become more of an understudy, waiting in the wings, ready and willing to take the lead again if called upon. I know the part so well. I’ve played it for years: the playmate, the helper, the confidente, the mentor and protector. This is a once-in-a-lifetime role, and I’m continually astounded that I’m a grandma to such an incredible human being.

During the pandemic, I was fortunate to homeschool Gracyn, a sixth-grader, and her brother, Griffin, a second-grader. I planned lessons for her, sat beside her as we read and discussed, marveled over science experiments, and laughed as we attempted to speak the Spanish we were learning. I will never again have this dedicated time with her, and I count this as one of my greatest blessings.

When I received word that I’d been awarded a 3-week writing residency in another state, I prepared weekly packets of work for both grandkids and made plans for my husband to take over their schooling. On the morning of my departure, I moved my suitcases from the bedroom to the foyer and mentally reviewed my checklist of things to do before I left. When Gracyn pushed open the front door at 8:00 A. M., her face fell as she surveyed my suitcases. While I gave last minute instructions and made one last sweep through the house, she was painfully quiet. Finally, when I turned to say my goodbyes, she couldn’t even look at me as tears spilled down her cheeks. In that moment, my heart broke. All of my false bravado, my cheery assurances I’d be back before they knew it, left me in a violent sob. Neither of us could speak as we desperately tried to gather our wits. And for a few precious moments, neither of us moved, rooted as we were to the familiarity of the kitchen and each other.

The March wind buffeted my car as I pulled down the drive. I stopped by our mailbox and wondered if I could actually leave. When I finally pulled onto the highway, I knew I’d always remember this moment. And I have. In this moment, Gracyn and I both came to understand how we’d become more than grandmother and granddaughter; over the course of that pandemic year, we’d become true friends as we homeschooled and sheltered in our rural neighborhood. Saying goodbye was terrible–and wonderful. Parting was, indeed, such sweet sorrow.

Coming of age may be a universal rite of passage, but it’s also uniquely individual. As we watch those we love grow up, we understand their days will be fraught with challenges which will shape their lives. These challenges may be similar to or very different from our own. As we watch others take on these challenges, we recall the times we were knocked down and struggled to begin again, the times we were hurt and deceived, the times our optimism was tempered or destroyed. As witnesses, we’d like to prevent loved ones from pain and disillusionment, but we can’t. Too often, we can only stand on the sidelines and wait to pick up the pieces.

I can’t say much about the poignancy of a child or grandchild’s coming of age that hasn’t been said and felt before. I am just one grandma in centuries of grandmas who’ve lived and loved fiercely. And most days, I’m without words to describe the tsunami of emotions that crash over me. As Facebook memories pop up with photos of and sweet posts about the little girl who stole my heart, I find myself wishing for a “do-over,” just an hour or two with the Dora the Explorer dollhouse or an afternoon of slime-making. But then as I see her take the track to begin the 3000 meter run, I find myself marveling at the young woman whose dedication and discipine during the winter months has prepared her for this moment. I watch her round the far curve, blond pony tail streaming behind her, resolve evident in each stride, and I think it can’t get much better than this.

But it can–and it will. This, too, I know. For it will be a pleasure and privilege to witness her growth through each season of life. And so, on the occasion of Gracyn’s 16th birthday, I wish her many blessings–now and always.

Why I Am Without Words
 for Gracyn

Rooted to the kitchen floor, I stand before you
as sobs crash against your tight-lipped resolve,
your tongue useless to stay the flow
of something dark and cold that rises within
and threatens to undo you.

I’m leaving for three weeks,
and you’ve just helped me load my suitcases for the trip. 
We can’t bear to look at each other,
and shoulder to shoulder as we close the car door,
we quake, our fragile souls quiver.
It’s not for long, I say, just a couple weeks.
But the March wind seizes my words 
and whips them away like chaff.

Today, you’ve sent me a photo of the hyacinth
blooming in my garden.
Because I know you were waiting for them to bloom, you say,
because they might die before you get back.
Miles away, you think of how I’ve waited for these first blossoms
and how I might be missing you as much as you miss me.
Best friends do such things.
For eleven years, you’ve been my granddaughter,
but now—

Now, I’m without words.
I have no language to speak this mercurial joy that washes over me
each time I think of you thinking of me.

What can I say but that the blossoms here are lovely enough;
that time crawls on as it must;
and that even if all the hyacinths wither and die,
my best friend is watching the road
waiting for me to come home.

Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause. –Bruce Feiler

As I walk at the nature preserve, I play a shell game. In the western corner of one pond, a dead limb has fallen into the water, and turtles happily sun themselves here. Each time I pass this spot, I hold my breath and try to walk so quietly, so unobtrusively that not a single turtle panics and dives for safety back into the pond. So, this is my shell game: to keep each algae-slicked shell in place on the limb.

I’ve counted as many as 14 turtles shuffled across the limb in neat stacks. And as I walk by, I smile recalling one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books, Yertle the Turtle. Although there’s a heavy moral in Seuss’s book, one reminding us of the follies of pride and the consequences of climbing to the top (literally and figuratively) at the expense of others, as a child, I was originally fascinated with the illustrations. Seuss stacked turtles on top of each other, creating a pyramid of shells reaching into the sky. The turtles at the base of this pyramid were selfless souls, for they bore the weight and responsibility for maintaining the entire structure. In preparing to teach poet Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” my father had written these notes:

Oliver says we can become good—or better—by giving ourselves up to the natural family of things, to things in nature who are vitally celebrating themselves, calling us out of our loneliness and despair to join them in a sacrament of elemental communion. We only have to give up the unnatural and enter the world of the natural, and in the words of Romantic poet William Wordsworth, to “come forth into the light of things and let Nature be your healer.”

The nature preseve turtles are”vitally celebrating themselves” each spring. As members of the “natural family of things,” they’re holding their weight in our environmental structure and doing their part to help us maintain our natural health.

Too often, we walk through the world carrying a big stick. We mark our territory and leave indelible footprints. Today as I walked the trail, I shuffled through remnants of a bridal shower held in the community barn over the weekend. Artificial flower petals in every pastel color had blown from the tables onto the trail and into the meadow beyond. Plastic bags littered the pond’s edge and flew like banners from several branches. So how do we walk so softly that we leave little footprint, softly enough that we might slip–like a breath on the breeze, like a ray of sunlight between the reeds–without notice? How do we join “the natural family of things”?

Perhaps this is the greatest shell game of all. We work to sustain and protect one environmental element, and invariably we impact another–sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. We lift the shell under which we’re certain the solution lies only to discover we’re wrong and must look again. This is often a frustrating sleight of hand. For example, as we build up grey wolf populations in Rocky Mountain states to restore environmental equilibrium, we also face inevitable losses in livestock, elk, herd dog, and pet populations. We implement CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) to prevent soil erosion, improve water quality, and create wildlife habitat. Despite the obvious benefits, however, there are potential drawbacks. Planting native vegetation and protecting wildlife habitat aren’t requirements of the program. Farmers may choose to plant introduced species that provide little to no benefit to native wildlife. They can actively farm adjacent fields–a common practice–leaving smaller wildlife who live in the CRP ground vulnerable to predators. Years ago, a neighbor sold her farm to an individual from the East coast who wanted to create a “deer refuge.” Anyone familiar with southeast Iowa understands the folly (and tragedy) of this, for our deer population is more than healthy. Iowa routinely manages this population through regulated hunting. Chronic waste disease spreads more quickly through larger populations, which also reduces the numbers. All of this is to say that it may sound virtuous and environmentally kind to create refuges for deer, but it’s unnecessary and ultimately detrimental.

Today, I zipped my jacket to my neck and braved the blustery April wind as I took to the trail. I counted a dozen turtles on the fallen limb as I rounded the corner of the pond. Fifty yards out, I slowed my pace. I watched where I stepped, avoiding sticks and rocks on the path which would signal my approach. I willed my shadow to cast its long body to my left and not my right over the water. Finally, I held my breath. But to no avail. All but three turtles dove back into the pond in a choreographed move that looked much like synchronized swimmers leaving the pool deck for the water. Bummer, I thought. Not a good day for my shell game stats.

But each day as I walk with my turtles, I “behold the world in pause.” To the extent that I can, momentarily I become more of the natural world and less of myself. I think about a world without turtles. I’m grateful for this nature preserve and its 2,000 acres of protected land. As I consider efforts to preserve and maintain our environment, I’m painfully aware that this is a kind of shell game. We find one solution, only to find we have to mitigate its effects. And so, we keep searching for better, more environmentally beneficial solutions. Although some contend we’re not winning this shell game, others argue we should be playing the long game, one marked by a lot of misses and near-misses. They insist we keep up the good fight. As a self-appointed turtle advocate, I couldn’t agree more.

Spring

After a long winter’s grimace,
the pond parts its lips—

in a whisper of algae
below the surface;

in a sigh 
of spun sugar over dark water;

and then,
in a wide smile, the slick backs of turtles 
stacked along fallen logs like mossy teeth.

Now, gluttonous hours that refused
to leave winter’s banquet have retired, 
sated,

and light stippling the undergrowth
releases its breath.

Everything exhales.

Turning our faces to the sky,
we purge our winter bowels.
We tease our thin, cold pages
into sunny sheaves.

And calling our winter vapor to matter,
we let the March wind spirit us brightly
into green fields and beyond.

         Shannon Vesely

There is something unique about the color purple: Our brain makes it up. So you might just call purple a pigment of our imagination. –Tammy Awtry, Science News Explores, Jan. 28, 2025

Purple is the sweetness of plums, the promise of spring in wild hyacinth, and the richness of royal robes. It’s my mother’s favorite color and the 2018 Pantone Color of the Year. But is it really just a pigment of our imagination? Yes, writes science reporter Tammy Awtry who marvels at “how the brain creates something beautiful when faced with a systems error.”

Although I confess to not deeply understanding the science behind this, I understand the basics. The backs of our eyes contain light-sensitive cells called cones, and this is where we perceive color. Most people have three cone types: red, green, and blue. Our cones don’t actually see color, but they do detect certain light wavelengths, long, mid, or short. Light enters our eyes, and when a combination of codes are activated, this, in turn, creates another code, which our brains translates as a color. Colors in the visible rainbow are created by single wavelengths of light stimulating a certain combination of cones. At the red end of the color spectrum, long wavelengths are at work, while at the blue end, short wavelengths operate. There is no spectrum color, however, created by combining long and short wavelengths. Purple, then, confuses our brains because it’s a mixture of long and short wavelengths. Amazingly, our brain’s response is to bend the visible spectrum–a straight line–into a circle, thereby placing blue and red directly next to each other and filling the gap between them with purple.

Colors that are visible in the spectrum are identified as spectral colors. Colors that are not are called nonspectral colors, for they’re uniquely created from combining a short and long wavelength. Purple, writes Awtry, “arises from a unique quirk of how we process light. And it’s a beautiful example of how our brains respond when faced with something out of the norm.”

Not to be confused with violet, which is more blue, purple is more reddish. It’s only visible naturally on birds, fish, and some plants. In the past, people could harvest just a small amount of Tyrian purple dye from a certain shellfish species, making purple a unique and highly valued hue. Writers and artists have long recognized purple’s magical qualities. Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw believed purple was a hue “where fantasy and reality meet to create something extraordinary.” Artist Vincent Van Gogh claimed, “There’s a kind of magic in the purple shadows of dusk.” Purple may be a creation of our minds, but perhaps this has only heightened its allure.

For many, purple is synonymous with creativity, mysticism, and spirituality:

• “A purple world is one where art, poetry, and love collide.” – Edgar Allan Poe
• “Dive into the purple depths of your mind; that’s where genius lies.” – Leonardo da Vinci
• “Purple is the color of spirituality, connecting the earthly with the ethereal.” – Carl Jung
• “Nature always wears a hint of purple when it wants to speak to your soul.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Purple flowers are nature’s whispers to dream.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

After reading this praise of purple, I think my mom was onto something. She embraced Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s declaration that “[t]he world needs more purple – more creativity, passion, and a sense of wonder.”

There’s a special power inherent in purple, too. Fashion designer Coco Channel argued, “Purple is not just a color; it’s an attitude, a declaration of uniqueness.” Among utilitarian browns and grays and sweet pastels, purple “commands the room without saying a word” (Edith Wharton). Anne Morrow LIndbergh confessed that although she wanted to be “pure in heart,” she liked to wear her “purple dress.” Unabashedly, uniquely itself, purple announces, “Here I am.”

I think I’m genetically predisposed to color. As a child, I remember my granddad looking up into the summer sky and exclaiming, “Sky-blue-pink!” His brain was gloriously bending the color spectrum and filling the gaps to create new colors. I was the lucky recipient of some seriously good color genes. Since I received my first box of Crayola crayons, I’ve lived and breathed color. I loved the individual crayon names. I especially loved the big boxes with complete rows of various shades of primary and secondary colors. For years, I treasured my favorite colors, using my periwinkle and robin’s egg blue sparingly to prolong their lives. Even today, I find myself magnetically drawn to paint sections in home improvement stores and often stand transfixed before their neat rows of color samples. In another life, I might’ve been a paint mixer, reveling in the hallelujah moment when I opened a paint can to reveal the final color. Or maybe if our brains hadn’t made up purple, I might’ve been its creator, devoting my life to extolling its virtue and nominating my mom as its chief ambassador!

So here’s to purple, a splendid pigment of our imagination. Here’s to the incredible brain and its ability to “respond when faced with something out of the norm.” And lest you fail to take purple seriously, think twice. In Alice Walker’s 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple, she cautions: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”  

,

There was once a time when picking up a phone call was the main mode of communication, but now with endless choices available, some tech-savvy Gen Z are consumed with anxiety by the ringing of a phone. –Sawdah Bhaimiya, “Gen Z battling with phone anxiety are taking telephobia courses to learn the lost art of a call,” CNBC, Feb. 17, 2025

Welches, Shannon speaking. This was the official telephone greeting for the Welch kids when I was growing up. Because the incoming call was invariably for one of our parents, our greeting was quickly followed by just a minute please as we placed the heavy black receiver on the padded seat of our telephone stand and scurried off to locate Don or Marcia.

Like most families at this time, we had one telephone, and ours was a big, black creature who rested on a Duncan Phyfe telephone stand complete with a padded seat and special cubby for housing the local telephone book and designated note pad for taking messages. There were no private conversations, for the phone lived in the main hallway off our living and dining rooms. Let’s just say that it was wholly accessible to any and all who wanted to make–or listen to–a call. As teens, we removed the phone and stretched the cord, pulling it as far as possible into the den or downstairs bedroom. But this was largely futile. Our phone had a mind of its own and remained stubbornly tethered to its home base.

In Bhaimiya’s article, she cites Liz Baxter, a careers advisor at Nottingham College, a U.K.-based school for pupils aged 16 to 18 and older. Telephobia, Baxter claims, is a relatively recent phenomena most evident in Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012:

“Telephobia is a fear or anxiety around making and receiving telephone calls,” Baxter told CNBC Make It in an interview. “They’ve [Gen Z] just simply not had the opportunity for making and receiving telephone calls. It is not the main function of their phones these days, they can do anything on the phone, but we automatically default to texting, voice notes, and anything except actually using a telephone for its original intended purpose, and so people have lost that skill,” she explained.

A recent Newsweek article (Alice Gibbs, “Gen Z Have a Problem with Telephobia”) explores this phenomena, citing a 2024 Uswitch survey of 2,000 U.K. adults and revealing that “nearly 70 percent of those aged 18-34 preferred texting over talking, with 23 percent admitting they never answer calls at all.” This study noted that over half of those in this age group perceive phone calls as “bad news” and report being afraid when their phone rings. They also confess they are uncomfortable talking on the phone because they have no visual cues to navigate their conversations. Many prefer a Google Teams or Zoom call for this reason. Truthfully, many of us are often hesitant to answer the phone to avoid political, sales, and scam calls. The authors of these studies claim this phobia is different, though. To address this, some institutions are offering seminars during which participants practice a “series of scenarios where you have to make a phone call, for example, calling the doctors to make an appointment, calling in sick to work, and other everyday scenarios.” Participants are seated back-to-back to simulate a phone call and practice their calls using designated scripts.

I’ve heard many Baby Boomers lament the fact that their children won’t answer the phone (or make actual phone calls). “I’m literally all thumbs when it comes to texting,” they say, “and it’s just so much easier to pick up the phone and call.” Easier and preferable for some of us, perhaps, but clearly not for others. Texting, emailing, or social media posting offers a layer of protection between you and others. You have the advantage of delayed response; there is no “real time” pressure to react. You can think about what you want to say and how you want to say it. Through social media, you can curate the information you want to share, creating the self-portrait you desire. With this degree of control, you may be less vulnerable than committing yourself to a phone call during which you’re put on the spot to respond immediately, whether you’re prepared or not. And, of course, you have the benefit of refusal. You can refuse to respond to a text or message, leaving others to question whether you actually received it, will respond at your convenience, or will not respond at all.

As I read these recent studies about telephobia, I couldn’t help but think of a particular stanza in Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock, Fall 1957”:

In Little Rock they know 
Not answering the telephone is a way of rejecting life, 
That it is our business to be bothered, is our business 
To cherish bores or boredom, be polite 
To lies and love and many-faceted fuzziness. 

There is this, too. To refuse a call–or message–is “a way of rejecting life,” of rejecting the business of being bothered or bored, of refusing the duty of forced politeness. Most of us are guilty of screening calls for one reason or another. We’re running out the door to go somewhere, we’re in the company of others, we’re too tired and lack the emotional energy to meaningfully engage–the list goes on. Certainly, there are times when it’s not only reasonable but necessary to call back at a better time. Still, I wonder about our current preference for texting and growing telephobia. What does this reveal about us?

In the years since my father’s death, I can still conjure his voice as he answered the phone. His deep, rich Welches resounds in my ears and persists in my memory. Before cell phones and email, a long-distance call to my parents was a real gift, a lifeline to the people and home I cherished. Because I couldn’t afford many calls at that point in my life (and because I was long-winded!), I anticipated and relished them. Although it might’ve been nice to see them via video technology, I could always see them in my mind’s eye: sitting in the hallway, big, black receiver in hand, or later in the living room or den on a cordless phone. It was their voices, more than these images, though, that brought me home.

Cell phones, email, and social media are certainly here to stay. I can’t imagine a world in which we’d willingly return to the days of the rotary or cordless phone. I can imagine a world, however, in which we balance our propensity to text, email, and post with a willingness to pick up the phone and call. I can imagine a world in which my grandchildren will one day conjure my voice in the same way I conjure my parents’ voices. And I can imagine a world in which the audible voices coming into our homes through phone calls are treaured, not feared.

Letter to a Blind Girl

Just outside the Humanities building,
you were trying to kick your dog.

Fury had smashed your face. The dog
kept wrapping itself around your legs.

Closer, I saw how your irises
had shot up into your head,

how your head was thrown back
as if dog were something in your skull,

as if you had to arch to reach it, as if
if you couldn’t kick the darkness,

you could kick the dog. 

--Don Welch

We’ve all kicked the dog when we really wanted to kick the darkness. In our frustration, we’ve punished what we could. Call it scapegoating. Call it projecting. Call it being human. In my father’s poem, “The Blind Girl,” he reminds us that, in our distress, too often we kick what is closest and most available to us.

Our continued struggle with the darkness is embedded in the monomyth or hero’s journey. Made popular by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the monomyth outlines a common pattern found in many stories and myths. In this pattern, heroes set off on adventures–sometimes willingly and other times not–leaving the safety and familiarity of the known world for the unknown. As they enter the unknown and descend into darkness, they experience trials, overcome obstacles, and fight battles, so that they may return home victorious and changed. After the dragon is slain, the enemy vanquished, the treasure or lands returned to their rightful heirs, a hero’s return is the ultimate destruction of darkness and restoration of light and order.

We know this story well, for it’s ingrained in our movies, video games, books, and television series. We revel in heroes who set the world right again, destroying the dangers that threaten to subdue or undo us. We never tire of tales of such heroism and restoration, for the darkness may take different forms, but it’s a clear and present danger in every age.

Whereas the monomyth hero engages in direct battle with the darkness, confronting the enemy face-to-face, we’re often left to battle indirectly. That is, because we can’t confront employers, legislators, experts, lobbyists, or spokespeople directly, we’re often left to write letters or emails, to attend meetings or assemblies in hopes of voicing our concerns. Now, I fear our battles have become even more removed. In our desire to drive out the darkness–whatever form it may take–we often attack the people most available through our social media posts and conversations. We know they’re not the source of the darkness, but in our frustration and powerlessness, we kick the dogs in our literal and digital proximity, unleashing our fury on them any way.

Certainly, there are times and situations which call for civil disagreement and disobedience. One of the most powerful examples of this is “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written by Martin Luther King, Jr. In this letter, King refutes the claims of eight Birmingham clergy who argued his acts of civil disobedience were “unwise and untimely.” Using biblical examples and reasoning they’d understand and respect, he constructs a logical and spiritual argument in defense of the Civil Rights Movement. He doesn’t kick the dog by attacking these clergymen personally, by name-calling or hate-mongering. He understands these men aren’t the source of the darkness but rather symptoms of it. And even as they nip at his heels and threaten his work with misguided, ill-formed arguments and criticisms, he refuses to unleash his anger directly at them.

I recognize that some who criticize others for the political, social, cultural, and theological views believe they’re engaging in legitimate civil disagreement. As such, they argue they must speak up, for to remain silent is to passively accept the darkness. I suspect some contend they must “school” other less informed folks, arguing that if their means are harsh, their desired ends are righteous. I confess there are times when I’ve read social media posts, and my fingers have hovered dangerously above my keyboard. In my rural Iowa home, far removed from the legitimate source of the darkness, I’ve yearned to kick the dog before me. As every synapse twitched, I longed to type responses that would bring some immediate relief. Thankfully, I’ve stepped away from the computer many times, as I recognized my struggle to distinguish the dog from the darkness.

By nature, I suspect we’re all at risk of some dog-kicking. In rereading my dad’s poem, I’m reminded of how vulnerable I am and how I must seriously consider how I battle the darkness. Like many, I’ve often failed to fully consider the sources of darkness and to employ ethical battle strategies to confront them. In failing to kick the darkness, I’ve projected my anger and fear onto whomever and whatever was closest and most available. I’d really like to do better.