August, 2021 - Jule Ward Writes

August 30, 2021August 29, 2021

A Memoir Is NOT about Me.

I almost quit blogging

When you write a blog you need to choose, according to the common wisdom, a topic about which you are passionate and upon which you have a great deal of expertise. For me, this narrows down to two subjects – one, my own life story, and two, love & committed relationships, my field of scholarly research and teaching.

A few years back I wrote a few sample blog posts upon the latter topic and submitted them for review to a small group of fellow writers. These colleagues, members of a Portland writer’s workshop strongly preferred the stories about my personal life to the essays on family life, love, romance, and marriage.

everybody is an expert–at something

Other writers, they stressed, already commanded the stage on the topic of committed relationships. And, frankly, these commentators told me, those bloggers did a much better job of elucidating that field than I did. On the other hand, many of my short tales about my life as a wife, student, teacher, and mother were quirky, warm, and captivating. Upon that subject, I was clearly the one and only expert.

So, following their advice, for two years I’ve devoted my blog, here on my website, “JuleWardWrites,” to vignettes of various moments in my life. Most of these stories focused on my time as a wife and mother, but a few reached back into my childhood. None have, however, examined my life since my daughter Kristy died in 2015.

blog posts as the “trailer”

That’s because while I’ve been writing the blog, I’ve also been working on a memoir. Through the memoir, I am trying to share with others the struggles, the failures, the mystery, and the moments of great joy that filled the forty-five years of my life I shared with Kristy. She was only nine months old when she experienced the first symptoms of what would prove to be an unpredictable, devastating neurological disorder. The scientists called it “Progressive myoclonic epilepsies/neurodegenerative encephalopathy,” but that is simply a description of what the patient suffers and not really an explanation of what causes the disorder. The known causes are many, but most of the time the cause is unknown. The disorder strikes like unseen, unheard lightning.

it just wasn’t working

I have submitted drafts of the memoir to writing colleagues for critique. And I hear familiar comments, not unlike those leveled against some of my blog essays. The blog posts, a friend claims, isn’t honest. “It only tells the good stuff.” The memoir, fellow writers tell me, doesn’t dig deep enough into the narrator’s emotions. It portrays a protagonist who always seems to be in control despite the complex challenges she faces. And they don’t believe that could have been true. And they are right.

Last week, I read an interview with Rebekah Taussig, author of the new memoir new book, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body. Rebekah, paralyzed since toddlerhood, has already gained audience for her book through her Instagram account, Sitting_Pretty. The interviewer praised both the Instagram account and the book, a collection of essays, for the way they were able to create an intimacy with the reader. One felt, she wrote, as though the memoirist had “hooked elbows” with you to walk you through her life.

come, walk with me

Reading the interview affirmed a resolve I had made earlier this week. Just nine days ago, one of the people I hold most dear in this world, my brother-in-law, Marty Ward, succumbed to Covid 19, despite being fully vaccinated. Marty had been quite healthy and had a long bucket list of grand adventures planned. People in his family usually have long lives. His totally unexpected death cracked my heart. It also jolted me awake to the fact that I could no longer dilly dally about writing my memoir. Kristy deserves to be remembered. Only I can tell her story. I must get going.

Like Rebekah, I plan to take you with me. For the next year, the blog will take a new turn. It becomes the story of my journey into the depths of my heart and soul as I struggle to give an honest account of my years as Kristy’s mother. This means it will include the challenges any writer faces such as dealing with critique, the hard work of rewriting, again and again, the difficult task of finding an agent, and the search for a publisher.

lots of questions, but also some answers

The blog will be full of questions that I’m hoping you’ll be willing to answer. I am open to critique as well. I don’t write simply for the positive feedback. Let me know what engages you and what leaves you cold. In return, I promise to share with you everything I learn about writing a memoir. I believe you probably have a story to share. Taking this walk with me might be the inspiration you need to sit down and begin that book you were always “going to write.”

September, the start of the school year and the month of my birthday, has always been a time of new beginnings for me. Next week, my first post of September will bring you up to date on where I am at this point. I’ll share examples of wisdom I’ve culled and how that’s working out.

Let me know what you think about this new twist.

Jule and Kristy 1969 — Kristy and Jule, Chicago, 1969

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. ~Anne Lamott

August 16, 2021August 1, 2021

Winter of My Discontent

Delayed gratification

Children watch snow through window — Photo by Kelly Sikkema

Well, at the end of my August 9 blog post I left you hanging. My husband Jay and I had moved our family to a beach house on the Indiana dunes in Michigan City, Indiana. We intended to spend the summer there while during the renovation of our Chicago Victorian rowhouse. At the end of the summer, however, months of restoration work remained. We extended our beach stay to Christmas.

As you might have guess, December came and our city home continued to be uninhabitable. We would be staying on the beach for the winter.

swimsuits to snowsuits

The eastern shore of Lake Michigan in summer is a sunny paradise of warm sandy shores lapped by cool rolling waves perfect for body surfing. Winter transforms it into a raging sea of surging, angry, crashing breakers eating away at the dunes. The blue skies turn metallic gray and the wind makes it difficult to stand upright. It’s a place of majestic beauty, but not a playground for small children. My kids and I confined ourselves to the four walls of the cottage for the duration. The few desperate forays that we took to explore the dune in front of our house began slowly.

Children building snowman — Photo by Ethan Hu

It takes quite a long time to bundle four young children into snowsuits, winter hats, mittens, and boots. Usually by the time, I finished gearing up the last child, the first one was unzipping her jacket, complaining, “I’m too hot!”

When we got outside, we trudged to the top of the dune and surveyed the fierce power of the winter lake. By the time, we trekked back to the house, everyone, including me was ready for hot chocolate. The house that had seemed quite spacious when we had first viewed it the previous spring came to feel very cramped as the five spent hours after hour indoors. One blessing of those months was that Johnny was a breast-feeding baby. The oxytocin that flowed into my blood stream during our long sessions of nursing helped me keep my sanity.

We had been promised Christmas in our renovated Chicago home. Instead, we celebrated it on the dunes, which turned out to be as warm and traditional as we could wish for – right down to the photo of the children and myself coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. Jay took the Christmas break off from work and we had a hilarious New Year’s Eve with the children. I concocted a Chinese dinner. I even baked fortune cookies with handwritten fortunes inside. Unfortunately, they were rock hard and we needed a hammer to get our fortunes out! The break refreshed both Jay and me. Just three more months, the architect promised. We crossed our fingers.

a storm like no other

Then the snows came. Our cottage stood less than ten miles from the Michigan state border and we were swept up in the great Michigan blizzard of 1978. No one could remember a storm quite like it, but anyone who lived through it remembers it to this day. Massive and powerful, it turned deadly before it was over. In the midst of it, I didn’t feel at all sure my children and I would survive.

Carrie and Kristy were home from school when the January 26 sky turned dark grey. The National Weather Service had been warning of impending storm, but even they had no idea how big it would be. Within hours blowing snow pummeled our house and the dune, accumulating so quickly it obliterated the children’s play climber within two hours. And it just kept coming.

The South Shore trains stopped running so Jay could not get home. He tried calling us, but the lines were down and while our phone rang, no voice came over. The snow didn’t stop until Friday afternoon. By then thirty inches had accumulated. The snow covered our ground floor windows and the cottage was eerily dark. Television reception had disappeared, but the radio kept broadcasting. This connection to the outside world saved my sanity. The broadcaster was snowed into the station for 48 hours. At one point, he offered $100 to anyone with a snow mobile who would bring him a six-pack.

Beer was the last thing on my mind. We didn’t lose electricity. I don’t know why, but simply felt grateful. It was a week before Jay could get home. Even then he had to bribe a taxi driver to bring him to the cottage since the beach road remained dangerous. The blizzard was over, but not the snows. Both in Indiana and in Chicago the next few winters would prove to be extremely snowy, but that’s the one that is seared on my memory.

escape from the beach

appalachian Mountains — Photo by Ben Bracken

At the end of February, we knew we needed to get away from winter. We rented a motor and drove south. It was tricky going because the snows followed us all the way over the Appalachian Mountains. After one twisting, turning miles-long drive down a steep mountain side, we pulled into a truck stop for a break. We piled into the diner for lunch.

One of the truckers ambled over to Jay, “Did you just drive that rig down the highway?” he queried.

“Yep,” my husband said, “And it was damn frightening.”

“My, god, man” the trucker said, “No one’s been on that road all day. You’re luck you’re alive.”

“Oh,” Jay replied. “I thought it was odd we didn’t run into any other traffic.”

much needed magic

Little girl at Disney World — Photo by Joel Sutherland

Overall, however, the trip was a great success. The girls reveled in their first trip to Disney World although after coming out of the Haunted Mansion, Betsy chided Jay, “You shouldn’t have taken me in there. I’m just a little girl and I was really scared!”

We continued on to Delray Beach to visit Jay’s mother at her condo. It was great to get out of the trailer and into real digs for a few days before heading back up north. By that time, there were some signs of spring.

spring revival

With spring comes hope. On Mar 20, we moved back to the city in time to celebrate Easter in our new home. The house shone with gleaming new woodwork and freshly painted walls. The stained-glass windows now not only sparkled but no longer rattled. The kitchen appliances were not in working order yet, but our neighbors brought us meals for a week.

I fell in love with 832 Belden the moment I first stepped inside two years before. It had been very dusty and rather dilapidated, but I imagined how love and polish would bring out its true beauty. It had taken a lot of love and much more than polish to bring it to its present splendid condition, but now its warm, welcoming presence made my heart sing. My children radiated joy as they claimed their new bedrooms. Undoubtedly, I would have adored this house under any circumstances, but after our year on the dunes, my appreciation for this wonderful place overwhelmed me with the shear joy of being home at last.

“Life takes you unexpected places. Love brings you home.”

August 16, 2021July 31, 2021

Dream of the Beach – Plan for Reality

summer dream

What could be better? A whole summer living on the beach. Days ruled only by the ebb and flow of our appetites for food, sleep and pleasure – just my children and me for three idyllic months. Well, of course, there were glitches. There always are. But things held together pretty well. The worst trauma of the summer was a swarming wasp attack on my six-year-old daughter that nearly sent her into anaphylactic shock. Other than that, the weeks passed without grand drama.

back ‘n forth, up ‘n down

The hardest part for me was I couldn’t leave any of my three daughters at the beach on their own. Every time one of them needed to pee or poop, I had to sling their infant brother across my hip and parade with all three up and over the sand dune and back to our beach house. Plus side – between breastfeeding a lusty baby boy and climbing that dune a dozen times a day, I easily dropped back to my pre-pregnancy weight.

Mon and kids at beach — Photo by Dylan nolte

Late afternoons were a bit of a see-saw. Most relaxing was just staying at the beach until the kids were so bushed, I could feed them a simple dinner followed by a quick rinse in the tub and into bed just as the sunset. Time to pour a glass of wine and enjoy a good book. Down side – that meant my husband Jay was staying in the city for the night. Because we were brand new to the beach community, I didn’t know any close-by families. After a long, adult-free day, I yearned for some grown-up interaction, but Jay’s long hours at the office often meant he missed the last commuter train out to our distant community.

yay! dad’s home

On the other hand, the children and I got excited if we knew he’d be home, but that meant getting everybody off the beach by three, up to the house, properly bathed and nicely dressed so that we could meet his train. Pulling this ritual off was touch and go. We too often found Jay waiting at the station for us, hot, sweaty, and feeling deserted. Still, whether we made it on time or not, the reward was dinner at Swingbelly’s, a boisterous sandwich shop that catered to beach families. For me, at that time, it was as good as, if not better than any fine Chicago Loop restaurant.

the end of good enough

All in all, the summer plan worked until it didn’t. By the end of August, we found ourselves mired in disaster. Our Victorian row house in Chicago needed far more renovation than we had anticipated. We had expected the work to be completed by Labor Day in time for the new school year. On the third weekend of August, we drove with the children into the city for a tour. Many of the rooms were still down to the studs. None of the bathrooms had been plumbed. The kitchen was an empty square. True, we had new windows, repaired flooring, and a cleaned-out basement, but we didn’t have a living space. To ice the cake of disaster, our architect informed us there was no money left in the renovation budget.

now what?

“But we can’t live here!” I needlessly told him.

“Well, we could throw something together for about $10,000 more and you could move in next month,” he offered. “But it wouldn’t be the restoration you were hoping for.”

“What,” Jay asked, “wouldn’t get done?”

“The woodwork and staircases would remain unfinished. We could board up and cover the fireplaces. The kitchen cabinets and the new breakfast room would have to go.”

“In other words,” I confronted him. “We would be worse off than if we had never tried to fix the house up in the first place.”

“Not exactly true,” he said. “You have a new heating system instead of the old coal burner and the house is now much better insulated. And we’ve shored up the wall that had bent partially burnt away by that old fire.”

I didn’t find much consolation in his words. “If instead we go ahead and do what we planned, when could we finish?”

“You’d be in your new home for Christmas,” he assured me.

I looked at Jay with pleading eyes. “We need to talk about this.”

The situation had muted him and he only nodded. Johnny has thankfully slept out this encounter in his carrier on my chest, but now we rounded up our daughters from their risky romp through the half-finished house.

two steps back, one step forward

As the children slept on the way back to Indiana, Jay and I grumbled and muttered, half in conversation and half in self-talk. We were too numb for a real discussion. That took place the next day. Neither of us felt ready to let go of the restoration plan we had put our heart and soul into for months. This would be our forever house. If we could, we would complete the project. Two main issues took priority. Could we afford to proceed with the remodeling? What would we do about school for Kristy and Carrie? It was divide-and-conquer time. Jay would approach the bank about increasing our renovation loan. I took on the school situation.

the new us

As soon as Jay possible on Monday morning, I phoned the Michigan City school district. For Carrie, there was a straightforward schooling solution. The local public school ran a bus which would pick her up right in front of our house. I really like the open, Montessori-type structure of the school Carrie would attend, and her teacher, a twenty-year veteran first grade instructor, struck me as both competent and extremely caring. For Carrie, our shy child, it wouldn’t be easy to start at any new school, but this one, at least seemed would ease her in.

Child's painting — Photo by Dragos Gontarium

Kristy’s special challenges meant she would need testing before placement. Setting up an appointment for this meant Jay would have to stay home from work for a day, but in the scheme of things that was a small adjustment to make. As things turned out, the class into which Kristy was accepted was considerably better formulated to meet her needs than the one she had been attending in Chicago.

With Carrie and Kristy’s school issues settled, I began to look into a pre-school which Betsy, age four, could attend. But she put her foot down and refused to go. “I’ve gone to nursery school already,” she said, “but I’ve never had a baby brother before. I want to stay home.”

Pre-school isn’t mandatory and the truth was her company during my long days would be lovely. I didn’t press the matter. In the meantime, we did receive the loan extension from the bank. The restoration work would proceed as intended. We hunkered down to spend another four months on the beach.

commuting becomes a dilemma

Because we now had to wait until Kristy and Carrie got on their school buses before I could take Jay to the train, it meant he wasn’t getting to the office until eleven in the morning. He then had to leave by five to catch a train back to the beach. It was impossible for him to complete his work in such a short day. We had to consider that he stayed in the city for part of the week, but he couldn’t live at our wreck of a house. Could we afford a studio in town for him? That would really stretch our budget beyond control.

Chicago apartment buildings — Photo by Chris Dickens

Then the blessings of having a large extended family kicked in. Jay’s aunt Florence worked for the city, which meant she had to live in the city to keep her job. But her elderly father lived in his home in the suburbs and she was responsible for overseeing his care. Her solution had been to rent a one-bedroom in the city as her official address, but actually live in River Forest with her dad. This apartment was just off Michigan Avenue not far from Jay’s office.

She offered it to him to use whenever he needed. Gratefully we accepted. Now, I took Jay to the late train on Monday morning and picked him up from a post-dinner train on Thursday night. He spent long weekends with us. This was our plan. Very often, however, he had stay in the office through Friday as well. Autumn at the beach was spectacularly beautiful. I was lonelier than ever.

no end in sight

And autumn extended into winter with no end in sight for our renovation project. What happened next will be the story of my next blog post.

“Send your dreams to places you can’t reach; they will go there and they will pull you up there!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

August 2, 2021July 17, 2021

Forever Our Favorite House

a sense of deja vu

Beach house interior — Photo by Hutoo Abrianto

“Here it is,” my young friend Sarah Forsythe gleefully announces as she moves aside to usher us into her newly acquired cottage on Highway 30 along the Florida Gulf Coast.

I duck into the tiny light-filled living room. Something feels strangely familiar although I’ve never been here before.

Sarah chats away about how there was no kitchen before so she had to carve it out of a corner of the front room. I agree it’s charmingly done, glancing around with chills of déjà vu running up and down my arms. We move into the bedroom hall. Sarah continues her merry monologue about the effort it had taken to transform what had been a hoarder’s shack into the exquisite beach cottage we now admire profusely. The hallway ends in a wonderful surprise. The entire back half of the house is one enormous master bedroom looking out over a small lake. Our friend has bought a house no one wanted because it was in such bad shape, and now she owns a home set between the ocean and a lake.

ah, it’s the paneling!

“It’s incredible, Sarah,” I say. “And somehow it feels familiar.”

She smiles. “It’s the paneling.” She points to the ceiling, which is covered in knotty pine.

“Of course,” I reply. “It reminds me of our beach house in Indiana.”

“I felt the same way the first time I saw it,” she tells us. “It was one of the reasons I knew I just had to have even though Bill (her finance) thought I was crazy to take it on. The Indiana house was my favorite home ever!”

My daughters, I knew, feel the same way she does. “Carrie and Betsy often say they really wish we could have held onto it.”

“Why did you and my parents give it up? We all loved it so much?” she asks.

“There just came a time when holding on didn’t make sense any more, but that didn’t make it easy to let go. The weird thing is none of us set out to buy a beach house in the first place. Yet, it was one of our best moves ever. One we never regretted.”

unexpected acquistion

Almost half a century had passed since Sarah’s family, the Forsythes and we had purchased the ramshackle house in Michigan City on the Indiana Dunes. Eventually we fondly dubbed the place, “1618,” its mailing address even though we never received mail there. Desperation drove us to buy it in the first place.

In the autumn of 1976, Jay and I undertook the renovation of the 1895 Chicago row house we had bought the year before. What started as a fairly simple project ballooned into a blueprint for a major restoration. We originally envisioned updating the electric and plumbing throughout the house while remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms. By mid-October and after multiple sessions with our architect, John Drummond, we had a very different design. It now included restoring all six fireplaces to working order, reducing the four bedrooms on the third floor to two, stripping and staining every bit of woodwork throughout the 5200 square-foot house, and installing a new heating/air-conditioning system.

In the same week we committed to this major makeover, we realized I was pregnant with our fourth child. The new baby was due in May. Caring for an infant while surrounded with workmen sounded horrendous to me. I pressured Jay and our architect to get the project going. Finalizing the design work, getting work permits, and lining up contractors, however, proved to be a long-drawn out process. By January we knew that the beginning deconstruction would not happen until May. Our baby’s due date was May 15. John, the architect, thought the renovation would take about four months.

close to drowning

How, I wondered, was I going to get through a summer with four children under the age of eight with our home literally being torn down around us? The answer came to me as I waited to pick up my youngest daughter Betsy from preschool. On the bulletin board, an index card offered a four-bedroom cottage on the dunes in Michigan City, Indiana, for rent. Maybe we could live there for the summer. Jay liked the idea. I called the cottage owner.

We drove out to see her place, but knew as soon as we stepped in the front door that we couldn’t possibly live there for four months. Yes, it had four bedrooms, but each was minuscule and the common room was just as small. The miniature kitchen appliances were at least forty years old. This little cottage was meant to be a two-week summer refuge for a family who would “live” at the beach the whole time. A family of six, however, would be crawling all over each other by the end of less than two weeks. By the end of a whole summer here, we’d be at our wit’s end. Yet, as much as that house disappointed us, the idea of living at the beach for the summer still sounded like a good plan.

disappointing search

Lake Michigan Cottage — Photo by Josh Hild

At first, we read classified ads in our search for a summer place, but not full-summer rentals turned up. So, we hired a real estate agent who did rentals as well as sales. For several weekends in a row, Jay and I drove over to Michigan City to look at possible rentals. We stuck with Michigan City because the South Shore Electric train rail ran from that town into Chicago’s Loop and provide an excellent way for Jay to get to work. For a thousand reasons I no longer recall, none of the houses that the agent showed us seemed feasible. February was almost gone. Panic took over.

“Let’s consider buying,” I told Jay. “If we hate it, we can sell next year. But we might love it. The beaches are lovely and it’s close enough to have a permanent summer house there.”

risky choice

Lake Michigan from beach — Photo by Jeff DeWitt

“Are you kidding me?” Jay exclaimed. “We barely know how we’re going to finance this renovation of our house and you’re talking about buying a second one?”

I pushed back. “We have to come up with a solution for the summer. We can’t stay here. It’s not like we’ve never talked about a cottage on the dunes. Whenever we go up to Michigan to rent a place for a couple of weeks, we talk about buying a place someday. So do Bill and Mary Florence. They’d love it if we found a place on Lake Michigan.”

“We’ll look, but I’m not committing to anything,” he said.

The next weekend I felt certain we’d find a lovely spot just right for us, but the homes we loved were way beyond our price range and ones we could afford were too far from the beach to make the purchase worthwhile for us. By mid-March, our whole scheme looked like it would go down the tubes.

a crazy idea

“Maybe there are families who are ready to sell but haven’t contacted a real estate agent yet,” I said.

“That could be true, but how would it help?” Jay asked.

“Well, we could put letters in the mailboxes of all the houses we like. We tell them we’re interested in buying or in renting for four months. If they are open to an offer, please contact us.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Maybe. But what can it hurt?”

The following weekend we slipped our letter into fifty mailboxes up and down Michigan City’s Lake Shore Drive. On Wednesday, we got a call. When we arrived at 1618 Lake Shore Drive on Friday evening, we immediately fell in love with the location. The house sat several steps down from the road and away from what little traffic noise there was on that quiet street. A small sand dune sat between the house and the lake, protection the home from Lake Michigan’s winter storms. Up and over the dune was a two-minute walk to a deep beach lapped by lake waves. At this point the lake offered enough shallow waters for children to play safely.

The house took our breath away quite differently. It was jammed full of furniture and people and appeared to not have been cleaned in some time. Still, it had a long, spacious living/dining room, a good-sized if badly furnished kitchen, and five good-sized bedrooms. From the front bedrooms, you could see the blue-grey lake turning scarlet under the setting sun. Best of all, every wall and all the ceilings were glowing knotty-pine despite the poor upkeep of the rest of the house. We both knew we wanted this house. The asking price of $52,000 was, however, way beyond what we could swing.

The owner agreed to wait a week to hear from us. The minute we arrived home, Jay called Bill Forsythe, “I’ve got a deal you can’t pass up,” he said.

cross your fingers.

The next weekend, the Forsythes drove out to the beach with us. They walked slowly around the house with us and the down to the beach, where we could see a faint outline of the Chicago skyline at the edge of the horizon. As we mounted the steps back to our car, Mary Florence said, “It’s one of the ugliest houses I’ve ever seen, but, of course, we’ll buy it!”

So, we did. Over the years, Mary Florence transformed the “ugly” house into a beautiful home for all of us – the home that became everyone’s “favorite house of all.”

Of all the places you have lived, do you have a favorite? It would be great to hear about it right in this space?

“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson