Sneak Peeks by Louise Yeiser

Uncensored, Unedited Joy, Rapture

Yesterday my diploma was handed to me by renowned poet and memoirist, Toi Derricotte, whose brilliantly written The Black Notebooks was assigned reading in our memoir-writing class last year.  If only some of her talent and courage could have rubbed off on me during that handshake and quick kiss on the cheek, then I would forever be one happy University of Pittsburgh graduate!  It doesn’t get any better than this.

Dad is here, my son Nicholas is here and my Jeffrey is here.  Last night, I dined with friends and family, received hugs and presents, and slowly savored a pistachio crème brulee for dessert, which topped off a perfectly broiled fillet.  It doesn’t get any better than this.

Today, I’m piling everyone in the car so we can toot around the city, explore the river banks and take rides up and down Pittsburgh’s inclines that are crowned with the most brilliant view of the city imaginable.  It doesn’t get any better than this.

Tonight we dine at the Grand Concourse with an old family friend, the godson of my father’s best friend, who is a scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers; so I plan to poke, prod and pry to get the inside scoop on the weekend’s NFL draft.  During dessert, I am presenting dad with a hand-knitted, black-and-gold scarf (to go with his terrible towel I gave him last year), and making him an honorary Steelers fan.  It doesn’t get any better than this.

I think these are the most unforgettable two days I’ve experienced in my entire life and I know it’s only going to last another 24 hours, so I plan to savor, relish, love, memorize, freeze-frame every single, solitary moment of it.  I will seal these soon-to-be memories in an airtight container for permanent storage in a gray vault, which will be brought out and relived, whenever I need them.  And it doesn't get any better than that.

Lightbulb!

Every time I set out to write a new blog, I find myself wondering why I never have any new material.  I think I've been reworking the same old stuff over and over for weeks now, maybe months.  I know I have a good excuse, since I'm getting ready to graduate and getting ready to pursue further study in Ireland this summer and have about hundred jillion books about Ireland to read and about a thousand jillion more books to read that were written by Irish authors in Irish settings.  I suppose it would help if I actually wrote something in my journal now and then, instead of digging up rejects from the corners of my computer's basement and reworking them.  Oh, the challenge of breathing some semblance of life back into dead scrolls.  I may love the rewrite, but it keeps me from producing anything new.  And today, on the brink of graduation, with spring going nuts outside my window, blossoming here, bursting out there, I'm all about new.  Maybe this is the reason my "Memoir Writing" instructor required three pages in our journal for every day of the term last fall.  He was trying to cultivate healthy writing habits, yes?  Oh.  I get it.

Have a terrific weekend and may you discover something fresh and new while you're having it!

From Louise

Rounding the Corner, Striding, Crawling or Flying, Can't Tell Yet, The Jury's Still Out: My Blog for Today

The countdown has begun.  I am only a few days away from my graduation, in the throes of excitement, as I bustle about, trying to prep the house for an onslaught of fullness—laundry, flowers, clean towels in every bathroom, toilet paper. Oh, my God!  Don’t let me run out of toilet paper! A local son moving back for the weekend, another son flying in from LA (thank God I have HD ESPN or he’d just skip the whole thing for the Stanley Cup) and a father flying in from Cincinnati. Needless to say, I’m squirreling my resident 125, 155 and 180-pound mastiffs off-site. All my big ole Charlie  has to do to throw my back out is bump me the wrong way and pop! out it goes. Imagine what he could to do an octogenarian.  Not to mention the liberal imparting of drool. Drool that I washed off the walls and ceiling of the hall and family room last weekend. No.  Off they will go for the weekend, safely out of the way.  Dad will be relieved, the boys will be mad.  Oh, well.  We do our best.

Anyway, with the long weekend poised to happen, I have nothing to write, nothing to say.  Except private things, non-bloggy things. Soppy things.  Weepy things.  Things like disbelief that I’m graduating with honors in the top 15% of my class, or things like second chances, or things like it’s never too late to start something new, and other things like that. Things nobody wants to read about or hear.  Too flowery, too sentimental.  So I’ll just keep them to myself ― and delight in them.

Spring Things

Telephone Pole

It bristles with possibility.  Never slumping during sorrows or jumping for joys.  Ambulance, fire truck, police car, accident.  Another sorrow added.  The first bike ride, the first walk pushing the pram, strolling by snapping pictures, another joy.  It confesses its favorite pastime is smelling the new daffodils, as they creep out of their hiding places around his feet.

Branches

Powder puff corals on the tips of bareness, which last week shivered spindly with cold, begging for a shawl or even a blessed blanket of snow—any covering would be better than that icy nakedness.  Alone.  Today, they are blushing with their first spring kiss.

Rawhide Bone

My mastiff’s prize possession, untied and shortened.  Pieces have wandered into his huge jowls and stayed, as if resting in a swaying hammock, sipping lemonade through a straw.  Tart, icy, with a single bead of sweat blazing a cool trail down the sides of the glass. Now all he needs is a warm, spring day filled with bright sun.

Wishing you a terrific spring weekend!

From Louise

Prescription for Peace

Today is one of those gorgeous spring days with a sky so intensely blue that it wants to suck you right into itself.  Indeed this is the very weather Pittsburgh is totally not known for, so I am feeling joyously non-productive, yearning to loll around the yard, watching the mastiffs play, and reading my latest book.  The sun's warmth reminds me that when I was young, I was passionately committed to losing my winter death pallor by spending four hours a day, 10 am to 2 pm, primetime, soaking up the spring and summer rays, which we believed to be healthy, not the cancer-producing, killer bolts they have turned into today.  We knew the sun sprinkled vitamin D into our pores or something, sort of the same way Tinkerbell dispensed her magic pixie dust, not that pixie dust actually soaked into the pores, but you get my drift.  Anyway, I am personally in favor of sunshine and pixie dust, and think everyone should have a good, healthy dose of each at least three times a day.  I think that would fix things up quite nicely, don't you?

Why I Love School

Juggling armloads of books and papers, we stepped from the lobby and piled into the parking garage elevator to go down to lower level 2.  The three girls and their tall, male companion were engrossed in conversation.  They were discussing someone’s performance in a class or a job.  Maybe an oral presentation of some kind?  This is not surprising, since we University of Pittsburgh students are coming up on finals, which some professors waive in favor of end-of-term projects due during the last weeks of class.  Alas, it is once again that sink-or-swim, performance-eval time of year.

“He did a really awesome job,” girl no. 1 said.  They all stood facing the elevator door, squinting up at the numbers, which were slow like the elevator was, but not as creaky.

“God, he, like, always does.  He’s really cool,” opined girl no. 2.  Rigorous head nodding ensued.

“And he’s, like, really nice to look at too,” girl no. 3 chimed in.

"Yeah, but he’s married,” said girl no. 2, which brought about a vast array of grimaces, head shakes and frowns.  The guy in the back swayed, as if he had shifted his weight onto the other leg.

“God.  They, like, all are,” said girl no. 1, which resulted in titters and renewed head-shaking.

“Well, I’m not,” the guy in the back of the elevator finally chimed in.  I was hopeful for him, since I thought he was cute.   "I'm not married," he said.

At this, girl no. 2 leaned against the side wall of the elevator, looked directly at me through thick, brown glasses, and then at him, and said, “But you’re in a serious relationship; what do you want from us?”  She turned and rested her eyes directly on me with no hint of a smile.  Serious.  Even grave.  Then they all burst out laughing.

I laughed all the way to my car.  And that, my friends, is exactly why I love being a student at the University of Pittsburgh, despite the fact that I'm almost 60 years old.

Study well this weekend and have a good laugh or two in spite of it all!

From Louise

Havin' a Ball

People’s ingenuity never ceases to amaze me.  Take my father, for example.  Having bumped the rear garage wall, the wall near the kitchen, with the front of his Beamer on numerous occasions, he has figured out a remedy.  If I were to walk through the garage from the driveway, which I do once a month upon my arrival for my weekend visits, I would observe dad’s Beamer, with windshield resting against a fluorescent, green tennis ball that dangles by a sturdy string from the ceiling.

“Stop right there!” the ball shouts as dad creeps toward it, in his quest to return home from an afternoon at the office and pull his car into the garage, listening to one last Count Basie song on his super-duper, deluxe, ultra modern car speakers, unusual toys for this terribly low-tech octogenarian.  He doesn’t want to worry about where the wall begins and his car ends, or having to explain what that loud bang was in the garage a minute ago that shook the house and scared everyone inside half to death.  He simply wants to sit with my stepmom and enjoy cocktail hour of gin and tonic, wine, chips and nuts, and spend a few minutes watching the early evening news.  The stop spot makes it all happen.

With that in mind, have a ball this weekend.

From Louise

Carlow, Warm Baths and Chocolate

I have surprised myself by being accepted into Carlow University's low-residency MFA Creative Writing program, which offers two 11-day writing residencies per year, one in Carlow, Ireland in June and one here in Pittsburgh in January.  And while I may sound all matter-of-fact and reporty about it, I am actually bouncing off the walls, fighting for my composure, since I am in the throes of planning a writer's residency in Ireland this summer!  At the moment, it is 4:45 am, I have been awake and tossing around in my bed since about 3, and have so many questions, excitements, worries, concerns, ecstasies and yearnings that I can hardly think.  Should I put on my coffee pot and get an early start to my day, or soak in a warm tub to lull myself back to sleep, or knit, or read a book to pass the time until I know what to do with myself?  And why the hell is there no chocolate in this house when I need it?