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For the Week of June 5, 2016: Anniversaries

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, music and healing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on June 5, 2016 | Leave a Comment »

 

He remembers the day with roses,

one for each healthy year, five pink buds,

not red.  Red reminds too much

of blood, the counting of cells…

But she is here, to take in his arms tonight

And tell her she is still beautiful…

 

(From:  “Five Year Anniversary,” by Kymberly Stark Williams, In:  The Cancer Poetry Project, 2001, Karin Miller, ed.)

One week ago, my husband and I returned from a short vacation, an anniversary road trip that took us from San Diego to Gig Harbor, Washington and back.  Along the way, we stopped to explore the Paso Robles wine country, celebrate our anniversary with old friends in the Palo Alto area, take long walks and share an evening with a dear friend in Ashland, Oregon before arriving in Gig Harbor, where we stayed with an old friend and his wife before making our way back to San Diego south and through the Willamette Valley.  It was an extended anniversary celebration:  nearly two weeks of driving by day, but time together rich with memories, reminiscences and reflection:  who we were when we first met, the significant events along the way and where we are now in our life together.  Isn’t that what, in part, anniversaries are?  A time to remember, to consider what we’ve endured or achieved, and how those events shaped and changed us.

Another, different anniversary occurred while we traveled, although I’ve all but forgotten it.  Sixteen years ago, the day before our wedding anniversary, I sat in a physician’s office and heard the word, “cancer.”  At the time, I was numb with shock and disbelief. Even though I was told it was “early” and “very treatable.”  I rarely remember that distant cancer diagnosis now, but I often think about how my life changed in the years that immediately followed.  I had the love and support of my husband and daughters, and with their encouragement, I embarked on a new and different life, something for which I am deeply grateful.

Whether birthdates, weddings or other events that alter our lives—cancer, a loved one’s death, a nation’s tragedy–anniversary dates often have poignancy attached to them.  In the first years following loss, trauma and tragedy, anniversary dates often ignite strong emotions–grief, old fears, relief, or happiness.  Rituals or celebrations marking those anniversaries are a way to remember a lost loved one or a significant event in our lives, but they also provide a chance to reflect on our lives and move on.

Last month, when the women’s writing group I lead met on a Sunday afternoon, one of the members arrived with a box of decorated cupcakes, part of her celebration of a five year milestone since being diagnosed with lung cancer.  Just last week I wrote about my father’s family tradition of visiting the family gravesites in Northern California each Memorial Day, and my aunts and uncles sharing stories of their deceased parents and siblings as they stood around the headstones.  In the weeks before his death from lung cancer on Thanksgiving Day, 1992, my father asked that we not linger in sorrow, but instead, invite his friends and family to share a glass (or two) of Jack Daniels whiskey and share the humorous stories of his life.  We still mark the anniversary of his passing every Thanksgiving with a small toast of his favorite whiskey and share a story about him, a ritual that preserves the father we knew in life—not death—and honors him with the tall tales and laughter  as he did throughout his life.

Celebrations and rituals can be an important and meaningful way to assist in healing, offering a way to acknowledge your experience and place it into the context of your lives.  You remember. You’re reminded of who you were, have become, and how much you have to be grateful for.

Certain milestones may recede in importance as life goes on.  The pain of loss diminishes.  You begin to discover new joy, hope, and gradually, move on, creating new chapters of life.  I often share the words of novelist Alice Hoffman with my cancer writing groups.  Recalling her cancer experience in a 2001 New York Times article, Hoffman wrote, “An insightful, experienced oncologist told me that cancer need not be a person’s whole book, only a chapter.”

That’s true of so many of the painful or difficult periods in our lives.  As we heal, we have less need to mark or dwell on the dates of suffering; instead, we move forward, immersing ourselves in the work of living. It doesn’t mean we forget, but rather, we celebrate rather than mourn.  We give thanks.  We honor.

I’m running for Pete, because she couldn’t be here today…

Pete shed her breast, then her hair, and finally her whole body.

So now I’m running with thousands of other people all in the same T-shirts.

And Pete’s name is carefully lettered on the pink sign on my back.

I’m running for Pete, because she couldn’t be here today.

(From “Peter Rabbit,” by Carol Grommesh, In:  The Cancer Poetry Project 2, 2013, Karin Miller, Ed.)

There are many ways to celebrate or honor important milestones in the in our lives.  Here are some suggestions from an April, 2016 Cancer Net article by Greg Guthrie. While these suggestions are written for cancer survivors, they are applicable to many of milestones and anniversary dates of many significant life events.

Take time to reflect. Plan a quiet time to think about your cancer experience and reflect on the changes in your life.  Writing in a journal, taking a long walk through the redwoods, along the ocean, or anywhere you enjoy being, offers the quiet time for reflection.

Plan a special event.  One of the women in my writing groups celebrated with a trip to Costa Rica after completing  her treatment for a recurrence.   Why not plan something special, like a hot air balloon ride a trip somewhere you’ve always wanted to take, or plan a gathering with family and friends.

Donate or volunteer. When I first joined the ranks of “cancer survivor,” I was the interim director for Breast Cancer Connections, a Palo Alto, CA nonprofit.  I was impressed by the number of cancer survivors who, daily, gave their time to volunteer at BCC.  Many cancer survivors find that donating or volunteering helps give positive meaning to their cancer experience.

Join an established celebration. Many of us have walked, run, or participated in support of one of the annual cancer survivor walks hosted by patient advocacy groups and cancer organizations.  Many hospitals and treatment centers hold events for cancer survivors or join in celebration of National Cancer Survivors Day and/or World Cancer Day.

Celebrate Your Way.  Celebrating milestones doesn’t have to involve elaborate or expensive activities.  Simply do something you truly enjoy.  Take a walk along the seashore or through a public garden, go to a film or the theater with a friend, place flowers on a loved one’s gravesite, or, share time with family or friends, those who supported you during the roller coaster of treatment and recovery.  Cancer, or other difficult events in life, isn’t, remember, your whole book, only a chapter.  Celebrate your life.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

(“Love after Love,” by Derek Walcott, in Sea Grapes, Noonday Press, 1976)

Writing Suggestions:

What anniversaries are important to you?  Which do you remember most vividly? What images or feelings do those dates evoke? Write the story behind that date.  What happened?  Why was it important to you? How did your life change because of it?  Do you celebrate that anniversary?  Why or why not?

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For the Week of October 25, 2015: The Comfort in Personal Rituals

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, music and healing, writing and nature, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on October 25, 2015 | 2 Comments »

The shoes put on each time
left first, then right.

The morning potion’s teaspoon
of sweetness stirred always
for seven circlings, no fewer, no more,
into the cracked blue cup.

Touching the pocket for wallet,
for keys,
before closing the door.

How did we come
to believe these small rituals’ promise,
that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,
tomorrow will be?

(Excerpt from “Habit” by Jane Hirshfield, in Given Sugar, Given Salt)

I awakened this morning to an aching body, one that I can only blame on myself.  After a month and a half of disruption, our home visited each day by a variety of contractors:  arborists, painters, plumbers, electricians, landscapers and roofers, this weekend was a chance to reorder the house and patio.

And re-order I did.  Against the advice of my husband (who was busy cleaning the garage) and my better judgment,  I set to work:  moving potted plants, chairs, creating a fountain from an old Chinese porcelain bowl, on and on.  I bent, pushed, and lifted—for hours.  As the afternoon sun began to set, I sat alone on the deck in quiet satisfaction,  feeling as if I’d reclaimed the necessary quiet and calm that I hunger for in my daily life.  It was worth the aches and pains, I told myself, the ones already beginning to throb in my knees and back.  I confess  I am a person of habit.   I needed to reclaim the space for my daily ritual, beginning each day outdoors, sitting in silence, drinking in the morning sunrise, birdsong and canyon view.  In the midst of our go-go world, I need the solace and comfort of this small ritual to begin each day with a sense of calm and gratitude.

Rituals not only calm, but they help us heal, and have been recognized as part of the healing process since ancient times.  They help us cope with life difficulties, but, As Jeanne Achtenberg and her colleagues tell us, rituals also provide significance to the normal passages of our lives.  They are our outer expressions of inner experiences, important in helping us relax, re-connect with ourselves and re-discover simple joys of everyday life (Rituals of Healing, 1994).

According to a 2013 article in Scientific American, even simple rituals can be extremely effective. Rituals performed after experiencing losses …do alleviate grief, and rituals performed before high-pressure tasks – like singing in public – do in fact reduce anxiety and increase people’s confidence.  The article cited recent investigations by psychologists which demonstrated that rituals can have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  Some of their examples, taken from the world of sports revealed rituals were common among sports figures, for example:

Basketball superstar Michael Jordan wore his North Carolina shorts underneath his Chicago Bulls shorts in every game; Curtis Martin of the New York Jets reads Psalm 91 before every game. And Wade Boggs, former third baseman for the Boston Red Sox, woke up at the same time each day, ate chicken before each game, took exactly 117 ground balls in practice, took batting practice at 5:17, and ran sprints at 7:17. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/)

Our personal rituals even function as talismans against fear in times of illness, offering a kind of assurance we will be all right.   Alice Trillin, describing her experience as a lung cancer patient in “Of Dragons and Garden Peas:  A Cancer Patient Talks to Doctors,” discussed how her reliance on ritual, talismans and personal will provided a constant source of renewal and a reminder of the constancy of everyday life throughout her illness(New England Journal of Medicine, 1981).

In “Girding for Battle, “cancer patient Amy Haddad described the talismans and rituals she used to go her doctor’s appointment during her treatment:

The tiny, silver Celtic goddess
placidly hangs from a burgundy cord
around my neck…

My husband’s shirt fastens the wrong way…
My last name stamped in black ink
inside his collar…
His idea to wear the shirt…

So I wear these talismans
to protect me in the doctor’s office.

(From:   The Poetry of Nursing, Judy Schaefer, Ed., 2006)

Rituals, whether to reduce anxiety, alleviate grief, bring “luck” to an athlete, or help us abate fear in the face of illness, and be active participants in our healing process.  Our rituals, as Trillin, Haddad, and others affirm, offer time for quiet and a time to focus ourselves.  They can help us feel connected—to the world, each other and ourselves.

Healing rituals can take many forms.  They may be ones of release, for example, drumming; of nurturance and self-care, like having a massage; or of healing, such as journaling, meditation or prayer.  What they have in common is that they help us find solace, feel grounded and replenished in the midst of life’s upheavals or  day-to-day living.  They don’t require a lot of preparation.  They can be as simple as a warm bath with candlelight, time for prayer or meditation, a solitary walk along in the woods, an afternoon run, listening to music, gardening or sitting quietly at a window with a cup of freshly brewed tea or coffee.  What matters most is that your healing ritual gives you the space or quiet to replenish your spirit and listen to what is in your heart and mind.  In the noisy and rush-rush world we live in today, our  daily habits, these healing rituals, help ground us, clear our minds and rediscover ourselves.

Writing Suggestion: 

This week, reflect on the habits or rituals that are most comforting or calming in your daily life.  Which have helped you in times of pain or illness?   What helped you find solace in the midst of doctors’ appointments and treatments or a period of time that threatened to consume you with its demands?,  Think about your habits, the small comforting rituals of your daily life.  Why do they matter to you?  Write about their importance in your daily life.

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For the Week of October 17, 2015: What Does It Mean to Heal?

Posted in art and writing, expressive writing, healing arts, music and healing, writing and nature, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on October 19, 2015 | Leave a Comment »

“What does it mean to heal?”   I posed the question to my writing group at Moores Cancer Center Friday morning.  Being healed.  It’s a topic never out of consciousness in the experience of cancer, used often in combination with terms like “treatment”, “recovery”, “cure”, or “in remission”.  Yet “healing” connotes deeper meaning, and what we consider healing may be entirely unique to each of us.

We began by reviewing the dictionary definition, “the natural process by which the body repairs itself,” “tending to cure or restore to health,” “improve or make better.”  Heal or healing is a word used frequently in many contexts.  Google it, and you’re confronted with multiple variations in its use whether by traditional medicine, psychology, religion, alternative healing methods or even “writing as a way of healing.”

In a 2005 article entitled “The Meaning of Healing:  Transcending Suffering,” appearing in the Annals of Family Medicine, author Thomas Egnew explored the meaning of healing and attempted to translate it into behaviors that could help doctors enhance their own abilities as healers. He includes three major themes in his definition:  wholeness (to become or make whole), narrative (a reinterpretation of life), and spirituality (the search to be human; to transcend).

Jeremy Geffen, MD and oncologist, defined seven different levels of healing in his 2006 book,  The Journey Through Cancer: Healing and Transforming the Whole Person, which he argued are necessary to regain our whole selves. They are:

  1. Information or knowledge
  2. Connecting with others
  3. Exploring safe and effective ways of tending to our health
  4. Emotional healing
  5. Harnessing the power of the mind
  6. Assessing our life’s purpose and meaning
  7. A spiritual connection

Geffen’s work, like Egnew’s, went beyond the traditional concept of healing, and both are particularly relevant to the cancer experience.  A serious illness like cancer threatens your very sense of self.  What you took for granted is turned upside down.  Your life is redefined, but so is your perspective on life, death and healing.  Who better, then,  to ask what it means to heal than a group of cancer patients and survivors?  Here are some of their responses emerging out of the writing last Friday morning:

“A process of making me whole”

“Peace with what is.”

“Three grandchildren.”

“My mind and soul at peace.”

“Acceptance of unknown challenges”

“Connecting the mind and body”

“Things that make me forget I need healing.”

“Wind chimes, homemade soup, a kitten’s purr”

“A gentle smile, a sunset, the smell of moist soil”

“leading me away from fear toward hope”

As we went around the table, I was touched by each person’s expression of what it meant to heal.  But one response in particular stayed with me.  M. began by telling us of the years she and her family lived in Japan where they learned about the Japanese legend of folding 1000 origami cranes to have one’s wishes granted.

In Japan, cranes are symbols of good luck and longevity, but after World War II, the act of making 1,000 cranes to grant wishes took on larger meaning:  a hope for world peace and healing.  It began with the work of a 12-year-old girl dying of leukemia due to radiation exposure from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  She was, apparently, determined to fold 1,000 cranes to have her wish, that she continue to live, granted, but sadly, she died with just over 600 cranes folded.  Her classmates finished folding the remaining cranes for her, and now, her statue stands at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, along with strings of paper cranes. (From:  “Paper cranes to bring message of healing,” by Robert Miller, Newstimes ,December 31, 2012,)

As it turns out, when M. was diagnosed with cancer, her daughter set to work and began folding paper cranes for her mother.  “It took her two years,” she said, “but she folded 1000 paper cranes for me.  Every time I look at them, I feel healed.”  M. had tears in her eyes as she read what she’d written aloud—and frankly, so did I.

Writing Suggestion:

This week, think about how you use the word “heal” in your life.  What does “healing” mean to you.  What, in your experience, has been a healing experience for you?  What people, places or activities have been important in your healing process?    Write about healing.

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For the Week of July 5, 2015: Music: It’s Good Medicine

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, music and healing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on July 5, 2015 | Leave a Comment »

(Portions of today’s post previously appeared on July 14, 2013)

When our semi-conductor
Raised his baton, we sat there
Gaping at Marche Militaire,
Our mouth-opening number.
It seemed faintly familiar
(We’d rehearsed it all that winter),
But we attacked in such a blur,
No army anywhere
On its stomach or all fours
Could have squeezed though our cross fire…

By the last lost chord, our director
Looked older and soberer.
No doubt, in mind’s ear
Some band somewhere
In some Music of some Sphere
Was striking a note as pure
As the wishes of Franz Schubert,
But meanwhile here we were:
A lesson in everything minor,
Decomposing our first composer.

(From: “The Junior High School Band Concert,” by David Wagoner;  Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems.  University of Illinois Press, 1999)

I thought again of Wagoner’s poem this past week as I dusted off my old alto recorder, struggling to remember fingering and play a simple piece I’d once done easily.  I found the recorder and a stack of sheet music as I went through boxes of old belongings. When I opened the box and held the recorder it in my hands, my desire to play rekindled.  My first attempts were awkward and unmelodic.  I’d forgotten fingering, and my fingers lacked the agility I once had.  It wasn’t unlike how I felt when I first learned to play the French horn as a twelve-year-old.  I wanted to play in the band. Our music teacher and  band leader needed French horn players, so I volunteered.

It wasn’t the musical experience I hoped for, but I went on to become first horn throughout junior high and high school  The trouble was that the  bulk of my musical in the high school band was relegated to football , September through November.  I remember how the icy brass mouthpiece banged against my frozen lips as the band performed on the field at every halftime.  Worse, I was forced to wear a most unattractive uniform covered in shiny brass buttons and gold cord, which only made look like the toy soldier out of “The Nutcracker. “

So it’s little wonder that given the opportunity to “shine,” as it were, in our annual spring concert, we French horns quite literally blasted out the theme to Dvořák’s “The New World Symphony.”  We played with all the enthusiasm of musical students who’d been denied anything but the after beat in the dozens of marches that made up most of our repertoire.  Our fervor over-rode our appreciation for subtlety and modulation.  The look on our bandleader’s face has stayed with me all these years later.  His surprise, no, shock, registering on his face as we belted out those unforgettable bars in our few moments of glory.  I quickly gave up my career as a French horn player when I left for college.

It turns out that all those years of piano lessons, singing in the church choir, doing pliés while a pianist accompanied my ballet class,  playing French horn in the marching band–even playing in a recorder quintet as an adult– were beneficial in ways I didn’t realize at the time.  Not only can music enhance youthful self-esteem and academic performance, musical training helps protect our mental sharpness and brain functioning.  As I’ve aged, I’m now intent on maintaining my mental acuity for as long as possible.

It’s one of the reasons I signed up for classes in African drumming four years ago.  I’d never played a drum, but I’ve played with the same enthusiasm as that youthful horn player I once was.  I often joked that I’d remain in the beginner class indefinitely because an accidental  shoulder injury cut my drumming career short.  Now what?  I love music and rhythm.  Drumming in a community of other drummers was joyous and exhilarating.  But it’s not just drumming: Anything to do with music makes me feel better.  Music is good medicine.

“The power of music to integrate and cure is quite fundamental,” Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author of Awakenings wrote. “It is the profoundest non-chemical medication.” Music has a long history in medicine and healing. The ancient Greeks believed music could heal the body and the soul. Ancient Egyptians and Native Americans incorporated singing and chanting as part of their healing rituals. Even the U.S. Veterans Administration incorporated music an adjunct therapy for shell-shocked soldiers after World War II. Today, music therapy is widely used in hospitals and cancer centers to promote healing and enhance the quality of patients’ lives.

Google “music and healing,” and you’ll find a number of articles attesting to the physiological and emotional benefits of music.

  • It aids our autonomic nervous systems, positively affecting blood pressure, heartbeat and breathing.  In fact, music can actually improve the overall functioning of our cardiovascular systems.
  • It helps reduce stress, aid relaxation and alleviate depression.
  • In cancer patients, music can decrease anxiety. Together with anti-nausea drugs, music can help to ease nausea and vomiting accompanying chemotherapy.
  • It relieves short-term pain and decreases the need for pain medication.
  • It’s effective in diminishing pre-surgical anxiety and beneficial for patients with high blood pressure.
  • Music even plays a role in improving troubled teens’ self-esteem and academic performance.

Music also improves memory functioning.  Think about it:  We associate songs and other musical pieces with the people, places and emotions we experienced in the past. Not only does music our trigger life stories, but it can enhance memory functioning and face-name recognition among Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. (http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/230.php).

My mother died of Alzheimer’s several years ago.  On one of my final visits with her, I was shocked by the physical and mental deterioration in the few weeks since I’d last  seen her.  Unresponsive and no longer able to walk, and she sat motionless in a wheelchair, her head bobbing listlessly to her chest. I tried to elicit a reaction from her, but without success.  I pushed the wheelchair outside and walked around and around the building, before finally stopping to rest, stationing her next to a Bougainvillea  furious with red blooms hoping to see a glimmer of life—some sign my mother was still inside her wasting body.  I took her hand in mine and impulsively began singing.  It was a song she often sang when I was a child.

“Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you,” I began, struggling to remember the lyrics.  “Let me hear you whisper…”  My eyes filled with tears, but I kept singing as much as I could remember.  Very slowly, my mother raised her head to fix her eyes on my face.  With great effort, she smiled.  “Why,” she said, struggling for words, “it’s Sha-ron!”  She nodded and smiled once more, closing her eyes.  “I’m hap-py,” she said.  So, as it happened, was I.

This week, think about music as medicine.  What role does music play in your life?  Have you used music as part of your healing during illness or loss?  How did it help?  What memories does a particular song ignite for you?  What stories?  Music, even a song like “Happy Birthday,” is also a powerful prompt for writing.   Here are a few suggestions for writing:

  • Perhaps there was some particular music that helped you through cancer treatment or another difficult time.  Listen to it again, closing your eyes, and try to remember that time and how the music made you feel.
  • Recall a lullaby from childhood, a favorite song, a bit of classical music, or even the somewhat dissonant music from your high school band. What memories or stories does the music trigger?
  • Take any favorite recording, classical, jazz, new age, or pop, and listen to it.  Keep your notebook nearby. As you listen, capture the random thoughts and associations that come to mind. Once the recording ends, open your notebook and begin free writing.  Do this for five minutes.  When you finish, re-read what you’ve written and underline the sentence that has the most power for you.  Use that sentence to begin writing again on a fresh page. Set the timer for 15 minutes and see where it takes you.

I think I should have no other mortal wants if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.– George Bernard Shaw

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Week of June 14, 2015: Memories of Birthdays Past

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, music and healing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on June 14, 2015 | 3 Comments »

(This week’s post drawn from material originally published September 22, 2013 and June 10, 2012)

I celebrated another year of life this past Friday, reminding me that despite my resistance, advancing age is unavoidable.  I alternated between thinking I’d ignore the day altogether, yet peering in the mailbox to see there were any envelopes, greeting card size, with my name and address carefully written on each.  There were, but I had to laugh at myself.  Birthdays bring up the memories of that just-turned-six little girl I was so long ago, the one I see now in an old photograph.  Blonde hair curled for the occasion and topped with a giant hair ribbon.  The picnic table piled with gaily wrapped gifts and a chocolate cake in the center, six candles aflame.  My child’s face, lit by the candlelight, bears an ear-to-ear grin.  Those were the years when I eagerly counted the days until my next birthday, becoming a “big” girl with each year promising many more possibilities than the one before.  I was ready then, even impatient, to claim an older age.

Not now.  I swear I’m going to stop counting.  The smile I wear, although pleased, as friends and family wish me a “Happy Birthday!” is tinged with something other than just enthusiasm.  I’ve resisted joining the category of “senior citizen.”  When I discovered that my husband planned an early birthday dinner on Friday evening so we could attend a jazz event afterward, one that began at 7:30, I protested.  “What?  It’s too early.  No one eats that early except…”  My voice trailed off.  Why complain?  He was doing his best to orchestrate a celebratory evening.  Yet as we walked into the restaurant at 5:25 p.m., it was empty.  We were the first  seated; the first served; the first to leave, reminding me of that slow, but relentless march toward older age, year after year, and life changing.

Are we ever ready for the changes life presents to us?  It’s never either/or.  Each stage has challenges, but there are rewards too.  I’m quite content to embrace the title, “Gramma,” for example,  but on the other hand, I am less enthusiastic about my physical changes—the relentless pull of gravity, loss of muscle tone, and the silvering of my hair.  I balk at regular visits to my cardiologist, reminding me of a condition I once thought belonged only others, elder others like my grandparents.  Ready or not, you can’t escape aging.

“Ready,” the title of a poem by Irene MacKinney, begins with a memory:

I remember a Sunday with the smell of food drifting
out the door of the cavernous kitchen and my serious
teenage sister and her girlfriends Jean and Marybelle
standing on the bank above the dirt road in their
white sandals ready to walk to the country church
a mile away, and ready to return to the fried
chicken, green beans and ham, and fresh bread
spread on the table…

 Memories.  Every single birthday reminds me of others long past.  Memories come alive:  the scent of chocolate as my mother baked my birthday cake, the candle flames dancing as everyone sang to me, eyes shut, wishing as hard as I could for something I wanted to happen.  In a role reversal that made me smile, Flora, one of my four-year old granddaughters, belted out “Happy Birthday” over the telephone.  She sang with all the enthusiasm of a youngster who revels in celebrations, parties and birthdays.  She will, many years from now, hear that same song and as I do, remember the delights of her birthdays from much younger times.

There’s an exercise in Roger Rosenblatt’s wise little book, Unless It Moves the Human Heart (Harper Collins, 2011), a glimpse into his “Writing Everything” class, I’ve used in my writing groups, always with great results.  It began with Rosenblatt asking if anyone in his class had recently celebrated—or was about to–a birthday.

I…then burst into song:  “Happy Birthday to You.”  They [his students] give me the he’s-gone-nuts look I’ve come to cherish over the years.  I sing it again.  “Happy Birthday to You.  Anyone had a birthday recently?  Anyone about to have one?” …just sit back and see what comes of listening to this irritating, celebratory song you’ve heard all your lives” (pp.39-40).

I tried the same exercise with one of my writing groups.  They looked at me with curiosity as I began singing, laughing a little before joining in.  “Now write,” I said as the song ended.  “What memories does that tune inspire?”  I wrote with the group too, my mind flooded with recollections of other birthdays: the blue bicycle waiting for me the morning of my sixth birthday, the surprise party my husband and daughters managed to pull off few years ago, the headline in my small town newspaper’s society page:  “Sharon Ann Bray turns six today.”  (Never mind that my aunt was the society editor!)

What happened in the group, of course, was that everyone had a host of memories associated with the birthday song—like so many writers.  Rosenblatt isn’t the only writer who used birthdays for inspiration.  Go to www.poets.org and you’ll discover William Blake, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti and many others inspired by birthdays, like Ted Kooser’s “A Happy Birthday,” a short poem that captures the introspection another year can bring:

This evening, I sat by an open window

and read till the light was gone and the book

was no more than a part of the darkness.

I could easily have switched on a lamp,

but I wanted to ride this day down into night,

to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page

with the pale gray ghost of my hand.

Poems about birthdays reflect the passage of time, aging, even the opportunity for change, for example, Joyce Sutphen’s “Crossroads:”

The second half of my life will be black 

to the white rind of the old and fading moon. 
The second half of my life will be water 
over the cracked floor of these desert years.

So try it.  Hum the tune, or if you’re feeling brave, sing it:  “Happy Birthday to you.  Happy Birthday to you…”  Then take stock of the memories, good or bad, this traditional birthday ditty evokes  Whether you’ll soon have  a birthday, recently celebrated one, or joined in the birthday celebrations of family and friends, explore your memories of birthdays past as a way to inspire your writing.  In each memory lurks a story or a poem…   Write one.

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