Dear Niyi—Happy Winter Holidays/ Solstice to you!
It’s hard to say exactly how I’ve been wasting my time as I’m never idle. Sometimes I think the life of a writer is a proverbial black hole. I’m so relieved to be finished with my Breytenbach essay on translation (enclosed). I can’t believe it took so long to write, but I didn’t have the background or knowledge necessary to quickly write something. If I knew what I was going to write, I wouldn’t write at all. The essay & footnotes (nearly 10,000 words—verbose), very difficult for me. I hope J.L van Schaik Publishers (South Africa) will use it! If you have any comments or additions, I would be most grateful to hear them. I also included a manuscript, since you asked for a book of mine to teach my poems to your students.
Sadly, I can’t seem to get it published in the states. I also included some of my children’s poetry books for you. Niyi, I loved so much of your book on turning 40—I found myself underlining lines and whole passages (& it wasn’t even my book!). Some of it reminds me of the Irish Song of Amergin (enclosed). Did I tell you that in Irish my name means she of the sea—for you named me daughter of the sea. . .
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After the giddiness of Poetry International, and living a few months in Amsterdam, it feels a bit like a mausoleum here in this poetry mecca of the world (in my cabin too). I know I’ll grow used to it soon enough.
Here’s something nostalgic I wrote for a local newspaper:
THE CHRISTMAS WE HAD TWO TREES
The Christmas my grandmother broke with tradition and returned home dragging a bare madrone tree instead of the typical evergreen tree, I was thoroughly scandalized. Already on shaky ground with the thought of Santa Claus squeezing his girth down the stovepipe—no more than my plump Irish grandmother could do—I was convinced it was an unwritten sin NOT to have a real tree. These things Mattered. The world might end if we didn’t stick to the pattern.
The previous Christmas I’d had my Santa logic seriously challenged with multiple Santas ringing bells over black cauldrons on street corners. Then one Santa dragged my onto his lap, I could see his beard was fake so I wet my pants and cried. Early Christmas morning I tripped down the stairs, head over heels, but the sight of the Christmas tree with its multicolored glass bulbs and icicles caught my attention; I forgot to cry. All those presents! Since I was the smallest, I reasoned all the small presents were mine. Bewildered, I stared at a dozen sets of key ring nestled in shredded wrapping paper.
The New Year: we closed up the three-storey Victorian house on California Street with its leaded glass cabinets, mahogany paneling, hidey-holes, fireplaces in every room, and moved to our West Marin summer home with its firebox attached to the Wedgewood stove—our only source of heat. No fireplace chimneys, only a stovepipe the size of my leg. I was newly five and on loan to my grandmother to keep her company: from a bustling household of a baker’s dozen, we were reduced to only two: the aunts and uncles scattered, my parents were divorcing, both my uncle Myles and my grandfather, dead of cancer.
Etched into memory: the indelible image of my grandfather standing at the front door, with suitcase in hand, saying goodbye. Suspicious, I wanted to know exactly where he was you going for Uncle Myles hadn’t returned from the hospital, would never return. I remember an archipelago of freckles set adrift on the bilious sea of his jaundiced skin, his punishment for burning a mole with a cigarette. Later I learned to wrap my mouth around the word “melanoma” and to watch my moles.
My grandfather rasped, his soft Irish brogue interrupted by the throat cancer, “to the hospital.” I demanded, “When will you be back?” Startled by the answer of “heaven,” I asked where else it was beside in the vast painted dome of the Star of the Sea church. He pointed up to the clouds grazing the brilliant blue sky and mentioned something of angels. Of course I wanted to come; he’d need someone to blow out his cigar matches there too, I reasoned. They laughed uncomfortably and shuffled their feet. Born on his birthday, a month before Christmas Eve, we were twins separated at birth by 60 years. Incorrigible equals in temper and temperament, I was Grandpa’s little monster: at a tender age, I’d learned some nasty habits from him—to cuss, smoke cigars and drink beer—to the horror of my family. Between tantrums, I wasn’t above snacking on stale cigarette butts or licking match heads.
Uneasily I stood amid a forest of legs watching the stained glass window spill its crimson and green tide onto the black and white tile floor, the known world unraveling at the seams. If I went with my grandfather, would I see my family again? I was relieved when he didn’t ask me along. I wrapped my arms around my grandmother’s leg. I don’t remember my grandfather returning home from the hospital, but he did—only to die New Year’s Eve. The family all returned home from their New Years’ parties early. No one could say exactly why: a premonition. Our last year together as an extended family. Little did we know the loan of myself to my grandmother was to last twenty Christmases until I moved away from home.
Our first Christmas season on our own, I was miffed that my grandmother managed to sneak out of the house undetected on the morning of St. Nicholas’ Day without me (Dec. 6th; Old Saint Nicholas/ Sinterclaus/ Santa Claus is the patron saint of children and sailors). She hiked up the hill with saw in hand, bundled in sweaters, longjohns, and baggy homemade black pants; she returned home the hunter dragging a bare madrone tree, a nest of leaves and twigs in her hair—smelling faintly of Wildroot—she swore by the men’s restorative hair tonic. Not that she was in any danger of going bald with a thick white thatch of hair she trimmed herself in front of the bureau mirror, an audience of Jesus and Mary behind their gilt frames and a crucifix overlooking the unused bureau brush set and a small harbor of bottles—unopened Christmas gifts. She preferred the heady scent of Bushmills. Uisge beatha, she’d say, giggling, water of life, dabbing it behind her ears.
At a loss, I wasn’t prepared to let go of the Christmas Tree symbol too, ever the curmudgeon, I trudged up the ridge in a drizzle and dragged home my own tree: a spindly Douglas fir that was more sprout than tree. We made another cross for the base and the two trees stood side by side, my green tree was far too weak to hold ornaments or lights, the one angel we had kept doing swan-dives off the top. But the red-skinned madrone tree, aglow with its lights, silver glass balls and songbirds, was strong enough to hold up the Christmas angel. Begrudgingly, I climbed up the ladder and placed her at the crown of Grandma’s tree.
In retrospect, her madrone tree was beautiful, but at the time it just didn’t feel right. Only now does the metaphor shine through the branches of that tree, ten years after her death. Resurrecting pieces of the story of Rhiannon’s Birds, we were building a new life, starting with the bones of the tree, the grief shining through the skeletal branches, the red-skinned flesh of madrone, peeling from the heat, revealed the green heartwood beneath, with the promise of the life to come in spring.
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Dec. 30: When I started this letter over a month ago, it was raining; would you believe it’s still raining! We had two clear days: Christmas eve & day. I think we got our entire 1997 rain allotment in November - December, 1996! We had a flash flood warning (wherever roads and creeks or culverts intersect, the water can rise several feet within minutes because the ground’s so saturated, the rivers so overfull, they can’t carry their payload to the sea.) A major river flood warning for this afternoon: the Russian River is to crest 36 feet above its summer banks at Hacienda Bridge—just 2 miles from my cabin. I’m above 50’; thank god for small favors like mountains. The power’s threatening to go out all day, flickering on and off; my computer’s not a happy camper. We’ve had terrible winds. Small branches falling on my roof and the hood of my truck. Another storm due in New Year’s Eve. Think I’ll practice growing webbed feet and feathers, or build an arc. Luckily the post office is nearby, though I may need a snorkel to get there!
Niyi, I loved that story about you receiving your copy of Mother Earth Journal at the post office in Ibidan, and everyone excitedly passing it around from hand to hand, so that you didn’t even have a copy for yourself. Thank you for telling it to me—for making this journal has truly been a labor of love under adverse circumstances.
I still have to write to Tanure Ojaide, Tayo Olafioye and Frank Chipasula—I’m so behind on my correspondences—my parents and uncle died within the year 3 years ago, and I’ve let a lot of things slide. The African issue is the last issue I designed; the Latin American issue I typeset, but didn’t do paste-up, Herman Berlandt did. (Going to Poetry International was my first big venture out into the world as an orphan!) I’m so glad to have personally met you after reading and publishing your work.
Tayo was recommended to contact us by you? or possibly Syl Cheney-Coker, I don’t remember who. . . and imagine our surprise when we found out that he was teaching at the local college in Santa Rosa! A message from us for poetry traveled to Africa, then boomeranged back to our very front porch! Small world. Tanure got a residency at the Marin Headlands and we all (& Herman) had dinner together.
I can’t remember how Frank was contacted—I’ve never met him though we’ve corresponded and talked over the phone a few times. Kofi Anwoor was in the area at the time—so many connections effortlessly fell into place it was truly magical. Now that I’ve actually finished this letter (and it’s 1:30 AM, and officially Dec. 31), I realize I don’t even have your address. I hope 1997 will bring you prosperity and joy & that we may meet again soon.
