Fall Arrives Early: A Failed Surgery, Visiting with my Nephew, and Applying for a Big Grant

Late multi-colored sunflowers

Fall Arrives Early in Seattle

Fall seemed to blow in early this week with colder temperatures and a bunch of thunder and wind storms. It was a bit of a rough week for us because Glenn’s vocal cord surgery was a failure, and he arrived home bruised and swollen.

The good news was the scope he had did detect some slight movement in his paralyzed vocal cord, so instead of more surgery they are recommending vocal therapy. Still the week began on a down note. I’m not used to being the caretaker – but I wasn’t a total failure at it – we had to eat soft food for a couple days while Glenn’s throat recovered and he had to ice his neck where a few needles bruised him (ouch!), but I did figure out the perfect recipe for mac and cheese without using a flour-based roux – the secret is combine cream cheese, American cheese, mozzarella, and goat cheese – and I grated veggies into it to make it healthier but still easy to swallow. Anyway, it turned out terrific! Glenn is usually the cook of the family but I guess we could survive a few days with just me cooking. (To be fair, we ate a lot of frozen yogurt and sorbet.)

A field of cosmos in Woodinville – late blooms

Applying for a Big Grant

While Glenn was recovering, I managed to apply for a Guggenheim grant, which is very difficult, demanding, and just generally harmful to my self-esteem. For instance, if you do not work for an “institution” they have approved by putting in their pre-made drop-down box in their form, it’s really hard to move forward from the first page of the application. Just as an FYI, approved institutions listed did not include Microsoft (where 100,000 people work, ahem) or the City of Redmond, where I worked as a Poet Laureate. So that’s fun.

There’s also the intimidating and humiliating fun of asking for four people to be your recommenders, and you need so much personal information about them – I mean, info I wouldn’t know about a good friend – that it’s ridiculous. You also have to write a narrative of your entire writing life – they want every grant, all your education, but make it succinct (!) and track down all your publications, but not a writing sample, which seems like it should be the most important component, right? Ah well. I don’t make the rules. It just seems to get harder every year applying for this bad boy.

Me and my little nephew (He’s 6 foot 5 now!) at Chateau Ste Michelle

Visiting with a Nephew

The good part of the week was that one of my nephews from Tennessee visited, with an eye towards possibly moving out here. I do not get to see my nieces and nephews enough, as they mainly live in faraway places like Cincinnati and Knoxville, so it was really nice to have some one-on-one time with Dustin.

Dustin and Glenn got along really well (of course Glenn couldn’t talk much, but they bonded over the grill) and my little brother also hosted him on the other side of the water so he got a chance to see all kinds of beautiful scenery. It’s a nice reminder that 1) my nephew is surprisingly not 10 anymore and 2) I really do like my family members! He seemed to really enjoy the Seattle area and we are hoping he finds a job out here so he can move out here for real. The more family here, the better, I say!  He’ll be visiting again in the spring, hopefully with his older brother, so that will be something to look forward to.

An unusual backyard visitor for us – a lovely Scrub Jay!

Considering Changes in the Air

Besides the changing temperatures and sudden deluge of rain, there’s change in the air metaphorically as well as physically. I am losing a lot of my mainstay doctors (another one quit – so much burnout in the industry, which I understand) and so I’m rethinking how I manage my health.  I’m also considering applying for more things – not just grants, but jobs and residencies that I might have thought before were too hard for me – energy and health-wise. Have I been setting myself too many boundaries, I wonder? Shutting down my own horizons? During the pandemic, I’ve had repeated dreams about traveling to Paris. I don’t know exactly what this symbolizes but I think I should pay attention since it keeps coming up. Paris could represent art, literature, a life of the mind, maybe?

Rita Dove just announced she was diagnosed in the late nineties with multiple sclerosis, which made me feel more hopeful about my own future – after all, she was the United States Poet Laureate and still does public readings. I just got ahold of her Playlist for the Apocalypse and am looking forward to reading it. Rita Dove has been one of my favorite poets since I first read “Parsley” in a Norton anthology when I was 19. She is an inspiration.

Peach flower field

I’m also reading a fascinating book about women in an experimental program for middle-aged “gifted” women in the sixties called The Equivalents by Maggie Doherty. The book focuses on how friendship, camaraderie and institutional support made a huge difference in the lives of five midlife women: Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, Barbara Swan, Marianna Pineda, and Tillie Olsen – in the 1960s. (They called themselves “The Equivalents” because the program required a PhD or “equivalent” artistic achievement.)

What do women need to succeed as artists now? Well, things haven’t changed all that much – we still struggle to get institutional support, to get paid and respected, to get our work reviewed and in the public eye – and to make friends with women who can inspire, support, and push us forward. I know a lot of men my age with fewer books/accomplishments than me who walked into tenure-track jobs without much effort. A lot of the people doing the hiring, the grant-giving, and the publishing are still men. How can we midlife women put change in the air in the literary and art worlds? Definitely something to think about.

Anyway, change isn’t always a bad thing.