Redemption

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

I’ve been revising a story about a military drone designer’s gradual decision to leave his job. Themes of redemption play through the second half of the narrative.

Rē’ dem(p)SH(e)n/  noun
  1. the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.
  2. the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt.

On a spectacular summer morning redemption at many levels could be possible. The country will come back from the brink of constitutional mayhem and inexcusable narcissism. I’ll reconnect a relationship that has faltered. The dog will stop chewing his toenails. Kiss and make up. A gift to right a slight. A hug to heal separation. A simple prayer of thanksgiving.

Every student attending Marquette University was required to take a course called “God and Man” when I was a student. The Jesuits demanded we think about the bigger question of why we exist as well as complete a degree. I don’t remember a lot of guidelines in pushing beyond vacation bible school or confirmation preparation. The course was tough.

In an increasingly secular country we shy away from mention of believing in a force more powerful than those created by people. I believe that there is some central spiritual source that provides me with freedom and responsibility to make decisions. I am a complex human being, far more than a Social Security number or data point

The character in this short story does not exist by my terms. For three years his existential crisis has not had found a sound fictional answer that I am willing to accept. So I’ve given myself a deadline to finish the relationship and call the story complete. No kiss and make up. More of a figure it out buddy or kiss off. This character may not experience sweet redemption, but he has been interesting to have in my fictional neighborhood.

 

 

 

 

Of What We Remember

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

In decades past, around ten in the morning on Memorial Day, the veterans of foreign wars marched down Main Street in our small town with the high school band, tractors from the local implement dealer, the mayor in a convertible, the Knights of Columbus and enough other groups to call the gathering a parade. Many came in from the surrounding farms to line the streets then follow the marchers to the fairgrounds for a town picnic.

That’s the belief system I in which grew up. The Vietnam War tested Memorial Day. Vietnam vets weren’t welcome in the feel good ceremonies. VFW posts frequently didn’t allow Vietnam vets membership for all kinds of sad reasons. Vietnam vets changed from their uniforms to street clothes before leaving the airport at discharge, were spat at on the street by anti-war protesters who confused fellow citizens with policy makers, were let go from jobs by ignorant folks who called them wicked names.

One Memorial Day weekend my employer sent me to a national editorial association meeting in New Orleans. I was young and excited about the trip, but also sad about missing our traditional holiday gathering. I asked another attendee why the conference had been scheduled on this weekend. Southern born she gave me a sixty- second history of how her family considered Memorial Day a Yankee holiday to rub defeat in the faces of Confederate states.

There have always been divisions in this large nation. Sometimes the schism is about human rights, sometimes about policies too onerous for one large group of people to accept, often about disparity in the quality of the illusive American Experience. Television was blamed for delivering the Vietnam War to families’ living rooms and for pushing the curtains back on civil injustice. Social media has the praise or curses for changing the tone of political discourse today.

What do we remember on Memorial Day?

When veterans were asked to stand during the St. Paul Saints baseball game yesterday I felt the same quiet tears begin that I’ve experienced since September 11, 2001. Old and young, male and female, they raised a hand. Shoulders were set, chests puffed, heads held proud. Rightfully so.

It would be comforting to believe these brave citizens could continue to protect our country against divisiveness within, sinking respect abroad, and the powerful war weapons of nuclear devices, digital mayhem, and men greedy for their own power.

“Life played a giant joke on those of us living unassuming lifestyles twenty years ago. When the men who played with power ordered those who played with destruction to send out their weapons, billions suffered.” — Minnesota Cold

I say that I write speculative fiction to deal with what I fear about the future. Minnesota Cold was written ten years ago about a time ten years from now.

If only everyone from Washington, D.C. to the people living in our neighborhoods can remember what we hold in common, find our way to shaking hands, and talking about a common future over a plate of picnic foods. On Memorial Day, we could honor the sacrifices of the past by building for a better future.

More Baby Goats!

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Sometimes news stories reach resolution. Bad storms end, a small airplane crash results in no fatalities, a child is returned to family. But the big stories involving a certain cast of Washington D.C. personalities have no immediate resolution. The bells they ring reverberate night and day in our lives.

What we need on social media and television now are more baby goats in pajamas, more baby otters nursing from tiny bottles, ducklings climbing out of fountains. More emotional cowbells to cover Washington D.C.’s discordant sounds for at least a few minutes.

Let’s go out and buy puppies or tiny mice that will eat off spoons. Let’s get together with friends and teach each other how to play banjo or drums. Maybe during the summer we should bring back the Macarena and hold neighborhood dance parties.

Prolonged stress doesn’t do the body any good. Let’s make a pact to stop recording TRMS and watch only the early evening national news before gathering with others to practice our stress relievers. For fifteen minutes let’s give control over to a three year old doing the hokey pokey followed by graham crackers and apple juice. Or vodka and tonic for the adults.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aldo Leopold Weekend

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March 4, 2017, sixty-nine years after Aldo Leopold penned his final contribution to A Sand County Almanac, a marathon reading of his work begins in a small building called The Schoolhouse in the Clearings Folk School in Door County, Wisconsin. Pine trees can be seen through every window. A few birds flitter past during the ninety minutes. Eight inches of snow dumped during a nasty storm earlier in the week glistens outside with puddles beginning to form where the day’s sun and temps clear out cold stuff one more time. Leopold, the man known as the father of wildlife ecology, would appreciate the setting for this local event celebrating Aldo Leopold Weekend.

Young and old, writers and environmentalists, students and philanthropic retirees, wait their turn to read selected pieces. Everyone willingly hands their attention and time to listening one more time to Leopold’s insights about the ways of nature as highways and manufacturing were changing America in the 1930s and 40s. No one checks cell phones or watches. Stories about fishing, about birds, about snow melt, about prairie flowers lost to road construction written near The Shack in Baraboo, Wisconsin by a wise man. Humor, detailed description, a few lessons tucked into each about caring for the land because it is ours communally.

A Sand County Almanac would be a good read for any person who thinks about the land, or to nurture awareness of our environment. It could be a nice present for Ryan Zinke or even Mr. Trump, who might prefer the audio format.

 

 

Washington, D.C. 2017

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Visiting Washington, D.C. can startle me. People empty the Metro to fill the streets. They carry briefcases, messenger bags, purses, paper bags and wear suits, ties, jeans, short skirts, tall boots, torn sneakers. Many are quiet, some heads move to songs or voices piped into ears slightly deafened by the volume needed to cover city sounds. Some debate public policy in terse, political terms. And others just move with the flow of cars and buses and their fellow commuters.

Each trip I stand in front of the White House like a poor relative who will never be asked inside. It’s enough to know that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue belongs to the big family called America, but I want to walk through its doors. We almost made it this time except transition logistics of a new dweller cancelled all unimportant visitors.

For the first time the Vietnam Memorial Wall did not rip away the healing bandage of decades. Maybe it was school children moving respectfully along the path. Even their teachers were too young to feel how this war tore apart America, but their steps become quieter, their eyes looking for the end of this list of thousands of names of men and women lost in a small country far away.

On this February day that felt like June, kind strangers gifted us with tickets for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Beginning below ground we walked one mile through the history of slavery, reconstruction, segregation and civil rights. It was a walk heavy with emotions. Like the National Museum of the American Indian, truth stares back at visitors about others have denied their part of the American dream. What is there to celebrate about the largest forced migration of a people, the eradication of tribal nations, the shameful denial of freedom because of skin color?

Schoolbooks don’t really texturize colonization, treaties, wars, slavery, Western expansion, the building of railroads, the internment of citizens, the gulf between those who own the wealth and the majority who work hard for their daily bread. We all need to see the chains, manacles, bars, whips used by our founders and hear the words of those who suffered. Who still suffer.

I never return home from here quite the same. The art galleries are filled with portraits of the privileged. The memorials and national museums tell the stories of the rest of us. Words of President Obama’s final speech whisper in a city where legislators fight around the clock: “It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy. To embrace the joyous task we’ve been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”

Winter Stillness

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Rabbit tracks are the only interruption of a stretch of yesterday’s snow stretching from my window to a neighbor’s stone garden walls. Lines of sparkling white rest on the bare tree branches that fracture a cloudless blue sky. Sunshine is decorative when the temperature stops climbing.

As a writing prompt snow has a lengthy positive playlist—a blanket hiding all that is gray, an invitation to be a child, flakes on lashes, a fairylike sparkling dust. And there are days when the snow prompt elicits other words—glaring cold hiding the garden’s green, icy curse on a safe journey, smothering the earth, driving animals further to find food, treacherous underfoot, frozen tundra, blinding, endless, isolating.

The newspapers this morning are filled with grave concerns about the future of our country. I am caught in an unhealthy ennui, held captive creatively, unable to find peaceful stillness. A sentence begins, crawls on screen, then my eyes return to the rabbit tracks on yesterday’s snow and wonder if the furry critter is nesting under the stones in my neighbor’s garden, what it eats in the winter, how badly the next four years might be. Will Minnesota Cold become my reality?

Mo Udall once said something like Reaganomics promised all people equal ice, but for the poor it would all come in the winter. And while our departing President challenges us to continue to hope, his words are tempered by the reality of the world where there is a whole lot of hostility and inequality.

If I wrote romances or mysteries instead of literary and speculative fiction, winter might be easier. Passion and puzzles sound like better mental escapes than thinking about emotional change or dystopia.

Complex Joy

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

One year ago we gathered at the wedding of my husband’s nephew. My mother-in-law danced with her two granddaughters and a great-granddaughter under a white tent on a very warm September night. Ninety plus years old, she wore a pastel outfit purchased for this occasion including matching shoes.

The young women moved around her gently, swaying on tall heels, holding hands, smiling at the joy of being together for the first time in decades and sharing this experience. The little, white-haired, woman with large glasses was no longer the strong single mother who shepherded three children through college on a teacher’s salary. Her health was failing, her feet not always steady, her heart working as hard as it could.

Adult children and their spouses watched from the side, each of us quiet with our own thoughts. The youngest grandson would be marrying in twelve months and she wanted to there, to dance at his wedding and welcome his bride to the family. There were so many reasons to think that was not going to happen in spite of incredible drive in that tiny woman’s body. She passed away weeks later.

The circle turns and we are here on another September evening, for another gathering of generationsimg_0045 around another loving young couple. There is so much joy during the ceremony that it is natural to expect the grandparents, who gave their blessings to these two years earlier, to be in the room. The future promises only its best on this night and the past reminds us of what was good. There is joy.

 

My Grandfather’s Face

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Urban shoppers might walk away from farmers’ markets in the rural area where I grew up. There’s IMG_3626nothing exotic among the produce displayed. Tomatoes look like those ripening on a backyard vine. A dozen green peppers, as many red, and a handful of orange are the choices today. Big onions with dirt still clinging to the skins wait next to baby red potatoes. For fruit lovers there is a bin of large red pears, apricots, baskets of plums. The first of the new apple crop waits in plastic bags on large flat tables. They are costly, but will be in pies all over the county this weekend.

My grandfather worked a half-acre garden, berry patch and fruit trees, to feed his five children and wife. Potatoes, carrots and onions filled the winter fruit cellar. Tomatoes, peas, beans, corn, cabbage, cucumbers and fruit were canned. Into his nineties he spent time in his garden daily during the growing season. Family or friends could stop for a visit and leave with cabbage and a sack of potatoes.

Feeding his family was tough. While holding a job working the on the railroad during the Depression, my grandfather liked to end his day at a local tavern. He had a reputation for losing his way home in a very small town.

My step-grandmother raised chickens and baked bread. He hunted and they canned venison stew, rabbit stew, wild turkey with gravy. Hams he earned by working weekends on his brother’s farm dried in the attic with other meat stored in the town’s cold locker. His family ate decently because of what they could put away during the good times. And there were plenty of bad times when dinner was bread fried in bacon grease. My father found it hard to forget or forgive those years.

IMG_3627Buying sweet corn in my car at a farmer’s stand, I saw a handsome old man getting down from a tractor. He wore faded jeans, a long-sleeve shirt tucked into a belt circling a slim waist. Turning, he smiled at me and touched his forehead, a gesture I remember in the good memories of my childhood. He winked as he walked past. Blue eyes in a tanned face topped by thick white hair. Not quite fifty miles from my grandfather’s original home, this man could possibly be a relative.

Twenty years ago a priest delivered my grandfather’s eulogy. He spoke of the kindly old man who loved to be surrounded by children, about the cardboard boxes of produce left at people’s door when they most needed help, about a person I hardly knew. My father moved us away from our hometown when his father’s reputation followed us into grade school. My grandfather was still working, still drinking.

I didn’t get to know the man the priest described. The man who remarried a kindly woman and changed the way he approached the world. Through the last three decades of his life, my grandfather became a man who would be missed. Knowing of his evolution made a deep impression in me, one that often drifts into my writing.

Another revelation on a quiet September day.

Shim Sham Shimmy

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Adriana introduced the Shim Sham Shimmy to our class at Dancin’ on the Door studio while I was away. A fellow dancer found floor space to bust a move from the recent lesson as she waited tables at IMG_3575the restaurant where we had dinner. I was nervous about matching the speed of her steps.

On the fourth day of air so heavy even the dog didn’t want to be outside, ninety minutes of highly physical activity in a lightly air-conditioned building held minimal attraction. The alternative was continuing to reconstruct a really good short story that fell apart during revision.

I knew I shouldn’t leave my computer or walk away from the three “finished” versions of the story. Guilt nicked the happiness of seeing my dancer friends. Lack of focus knocked me off rhythm during our first warm-up. Yet all the stretches, the delightful readjustment of a tense neck, easing of raised shoulders, the disappearance of leg cramps and curled toes shut the door on my rabbit hole of writing doubts. Here was music, movement, and the camaraderie of seven women working our bodies and minds.

The classic Shim Sham Shimmy, a 32 bar sequence of choreography, began roughly ninety years ago in Harlem music clubs. We built on stamps, steps, shaking shoulders, Tack Annie’s, freezes and breaks. After walking through steps to moving with a gentle tempo, we laughed together during a glorious attempt at dancing the shimmy to Beyoncé. Most of us are far beyond twenty, but that made no difference. Not one of us looked in the mirrors as our feet made music. If anything ached in the morning, I wouldn’t care.

IMG_2537On the way home from class I knew I had to shake the wounded story back to its original structure and concentrate on language. It is a story built for readers’ pleasure—a classical structure with good vibrations and defined direction. Worked carefully, the story will move slowly until it needs to move fast.

That’s the second reward for staying with the awkwardness of learning something new and creative instead of pushing paragraphs around and around another full day. Step it out of the comfort zone, sister.

Sunday Mornings

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

IMG_3514Sunday mornings have their own vibe, a crazy mash-up of past traditions, leisure, family time, friends time, me time, maybe spiritual time. It is a day important enough to spawn memories of Sunday clothes, Sunday funnies, Sunday dinner, a Sunday drive.

The Catholic Church broke my parents’ routine dressing up and attending Sunday Mass as a family with the introduction of Saturday evening service. No more riding together in a car smelling of aftershave and hairspray, listening to the adults talk about important stuff then the reward after church of stopping for donuts. We scattered attendance, began to lie about attendance, ceased attendance. Started going when our kids were of the age, pushed until confirmation, lost faith in the Church, gave up the struggle. Pray at any time in any place sometimes with, sometimes without an intermediary or community.

Writing fills the quiet time where church going existed. In this time, other issues and questions are left IMG_2537outside the office door. I wrestle with characters, locations, plot, what to share and what to keep private. The years of priests preaching, nuns praying and parents dressing us up and attending Sunday Mass are layered in the writing like bedrock under ground, top soil and leaves of grass.

Sunday dinner, Sunday visitors, Sunday baseball or football games come later. After my workweek is launched.