1957

The inspiration for this poem…

In 1957 my family made the trek from Burrton, Kansas, where my father was recruited from being the bus driver/teacher, to becoming a full-time teacher in sunny Santa Ana, California. I was an infant with no recollection of any of this, only a collection of the stories that were told. In addition to the hot sticky weather, the underlying story was we were leaving an extensive network of extended family behind, and all that comes with running from them. This was a significant move into the life of a nuclear family all alone in the world. California certainly came with the promise of a new start in a fresh new place. However, the plot thickened with six different people on their way to new lives while the two people in charge were certainly had their baggage with them. I was always taken by the story of myself only crying once we landed at a motel creating enough of a stir for someone to have to find a doctor who then had to wake me up to tell my parents I was just suffering from exhaustion. If that isn’t a metaphor, or an omen, of what lie ahead I don’t know what is!! Not being known for creating drama in my family I love the fact that at least I did before I knew better. The point is that I took the assortment of stories I was told during this tumultuous time and made them into a collection of one of the most consequential years of my life. Does it have a happy ending? The poem ends with us driving into the dark with the hope of what was to come. This poem only shows snapshots with many happy and sad moments along the way. I still have a memory of that large compass on the dashboard, probably years later, still dancing and bobbing as we took many more twists and turns in life together in the blue and white Chevy station wagon with wings.

Writing/Meditation Prompts:

• What are the stories of your life that need a container to put them in? To put them together in one place?

• Name a year in your life that was consequential in some significant way. Explain why and how?

• What was going on in the world that year? Do some research into how your experience might fit into the bigger history of the time in which you were living. Can you find the markers in this poem that would hint at the time if you didn’t know the year?

• Are there people in your family that need to be interviewed or remembered in writing?

• How might you share your writing and with whom? What if you hung it on the wall to see its chronology…