Reading, Listening, Thinking, ...

Last night, I attended a reading at Hiram College--something I've done many, many times. This one involved some of the twenty-three women who had contributed to From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines (Michigan State University Press, 2016), a work co-edited by my wife, Joyce, who also contributed an essay, "My Mother's Singer" (about her mom's sewing machine).

Last night's reading involved a half-dozen of the women, most of whom had a direct Hiram connection. I sat among the almost-full house in the Pritchard Room, a common Hiram College venue for readings, and chatted amiably with a few current students, one of whom had written a review/publicity piece for an online Hiram publication. I was shocked, of course, when they asked me when I'd graduated, and I had to mutter the words, "Fifty years ago." How can that be?

Anyway, after some fine introductory remarks by Mary Quade (a Hiram professor of writing, a noted poet, a contributor to the volume), the women took turns reading portions of their essays--a motley assortment of pieces that involved tractors, a curling iron, a grandfather's radio, the 1986 crash of the Challenger (was that really thirty years ago!?), a small stapler, and a mother's sewing machine.

The essays displayed a variety of tones--from nostalgia, to regret, to amusement, to hope. Virtually all tempted tears into my eyes at various moments.

But what I noticed last night? Well, this is not all that remarkable an observation, but I found myself sort of traveling on several different pathways of words, pathways that led not only into the minds and memories and hearts of the writers but also into my own memories.

I recalled ...

• ... in the tractor essay: a story about my great-grandfather Dyer, who, a farmer himself, died while delivering milk in his horse-drawn wagon out in Oregon; the horses took him home ...
• ... in the Challenger essay: a reminder that I had applied to go on that mission--the "teacher-in-space" mission--a process that required, among other things, seven essays and an application form that seemed to go on forever, like Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Dickens' Bleak House ...
• ... in the radio essay: the memory of my own grandfather Osborn's wooden radio that stood, sturdy, back in his study; I can hear the Saturday matinee broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera (and see my older brother on the floor, listening); I can hear as well one of the Rocky Marciano-Ezzard Charles fights in 1954 (Grandpa had interesting tastes!); I was 10 years old ...
• ... in the stapler essay: a reminder that I, too, hang onto things far longer than sense would dictate (the essayist had written about how she has had a little Swingline stapler since elementary school) ...
• ... in the curling iron essay: ghosts of the bullies I encountered as a student, as a teacher ...
• ... in the Singer essay: my memories of Joyce's mom, sitting at that machine, her later inability to use it (Alzheimer's), her daughter's superb companionship (with me) for forty-seven years ...

This is what reading and listening do: They remind you, transport you, liberate memories of all sorts, memories that once again illuminate, inform, define. And as you enter the literary world of the novelist, the essayist, you may find yourself, initially, as I said, on an unfamiliar path. And then--soon, soon--you notice that the pathway is lined with your loved ones, that your own memories dance in the air above you, once again in reach.

So ... so much thanks last night to the writers and the readers, to Hiram's Prof. Kirsten Parkinson (head of Hiram's Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature) for arranging it all, and to Hiram College itself. For being there. Again.