Joan Bauer's Journal

Thoughts on Hope: from my speech at ALAN

    I Googled "hope" the other day.  I found a special hope formula for 70% off, a Hope TV Channel, a Hope Finance Program, Bob Hope, an official Hope website, and Wikipedia really went to town on hope, talking about the history of it, how to measure it, recognize it...
    There are millions of "hopes" to click on.
    I'm not sure what that will do for a kid who's close to the kind of despair that's a game changer; or a kid who's being abused at home or somewhere else; or a young reader who has a colossally dark secret that's crushing her; or a boy who feels close to doing something dangerous because he's got so much anger inside; or a regular kid who feels confused and wants to try to understand a little bit of what you do with a conflicted heart.
    It's so easy to toss hope around like a beach ball.  "Wheee!  Here it comes!"  And it just so happens that last week when I started working on this speech, we had a tsunami of complications hit our family.  It was, in a few of those places, quite easy to not feel too hopeful about much good coming out of these things.  In the midst of that, I sat down to work on these remarks, and as I did, I remembered an image that has so captivated me -- and I think it's a true visual of how a try to breathe hope into my characters lives.  And into my own life as well.
    In Asian pottery, there is a method called "golden seams," specially created by craftsmen to mend cracked ceramics. Instead of trying to match the color of the pot to make the crack less visible, they decided to flaunt the flaw by repairing it with lacquer mixed with powdered, flecked gold. It dries bold and shiny, the cracks fill in with gold. Brokenness made beautiful and more valuable.  
    That's what I hope to do -- use gold paint around the broken parts.  Humor certainly is a way to help life go down easier.  In my novel, Almost Home, a girl loses her home -- she's there when the sheriff comes.  How can lightness come in the midst of that?  Her mother is a southern belle wannabe who insists that her daughter always write the perfect thank you note.  And Sugar Mae Cole is a poet and she writes about wanting a home that won't go away with people who really think she's something.
    In Close to Famous, a girl who simply can't read decides to give it one more try.  In Hope Was Here, a girl wants to live with hope so much she changes her name to Hope as if to say to the world, "Call me what I want to become."  Seeds of hope planted in a story.  A touch of gold paint to illuminate the cracks and make them beautiful.
    Who are these kids we adult writers dare to create, as we limp back into our pasts and dust off the boxes we've put away?      
    Where do they hide their wounds?  
    What's their biggest strength?
    What's the thing about themselves they just can't see?
    What are the rules they live by?
    How are those rules challenged?
    How do they find their voices in this very broken world?
    What do they long to see made better?  Ah, that's the door to their hope.  Right there.  
    Now, how do they get on the road?  How do they put shoe leather to their dreams?  How do they learn to talk the talk a little, step outside their comfort zone, and go for it?  
    Here's the lovely thing about hope, it's really quite selfless, it's happy to take a back seat in lots of situations.  It partners in all kinds of moments and doesn't take the glory.
    Take courage -- you don't step out and do something brave without a hope that it could be better.
    Or truth -- you don't speak the truth without hoping someone will get it.
    And my heart goes to Hope Yancey of Hope Was Here, this courageous girl who wears her name like a flag.  Sometimes that flag crashes to the ground, but she's willing to have it be her identity -- that's how she wants to live.  
    We need to show kids what living with hope looks like, how it hides in all kinds of places -- how it's not really meant for exceedingly happy times.  Hope is built for the open sea with the sharks and the wind that's about to knock over your boat.  Let's not relegate it to a Hallmark card with kittens wearing sunhats -- let's take this thing out on the open road and see what it can do.  And if we're teaching a book, let's look for the hope and point it out, and ask kids, Where do you see it?  Where is hope in the building blocks of courage, sensitivity, and friendship?
    Hope is in the soil.  You dig in a garden in the spring and there are the earthworms dancing, they're preparing the earth.  Man, it's a good thing!  That's what hope does; it's there underneath when we don't even think about it, waiting for us to discover it, waiting to make our lives richer and better, waiting to reach out a hand to a kid who is more broken than we could ever know.  
    Years ago, I spoke in Youngstown, Ohio -- a girl came up to me; she took my hand and started to cry.  "Mrs. Bauer, I just need to tell you.. I read your book..."   She couldn't finish.  I was getting ready to speak to a group about humor in my novels, and now this girl was overcome by tears.     
    "Honey, tell me -- "
    "I think I read it 50 times.  I had leukemia, I read it every time I had chemotherapy.  Mrs. Bauer, I don't have leukemia anymore."
    Now I'm crying and the humor crowd is coming in.
    But, that was okay.  
    Hope is a glorious mess of inconsistencies.  It shows up places it has no right to be: at gravesites and horrific accidents -- how dare thing thing come?   And yet it does, sitting down on the couch with sorrow and pain and depression and lost love and terminal illness and anger and so much, so much.  We ignore it at our peril!   And here's what we tell the kids -- here's what we show them in our stories.  Hope isn't a feather,  it's an anchor.  It's not a butterfly, it's a 900 pound gorilla that's come to throw it's weight around.  It's the golden seams glistening off the paintbrush of a gifted artist outlining the cracks and the brokenness and saying, Look how it can be put back together -- more beautiful, more unique -- shining out bold and true.    
    So, we can say to trouble when it turns out the light:  "Go ahead.  Give it your best shot.  Guess what?  I glow in the dark and I am beautiful!"
    Hope is a game changer.
    May our eyes be open in new ways to the young people we teach and mentor.  And may we hold this hope out to them so they can see ahead to a better day.

**This speech was recently publihed in the ALAN Review Fall 2014

 

The Eggs

I adore eggs -- I eat them, I collect them. I love what they symbolize -- new beginnings. And every now and then I'll open a book or a drawer and an egg will be there. Not the chicken variety -- the small ones I've cut out of paper and written on when I was stuck.

I want to be a writer, but it's not happening.

My daughter's stomach keeps hurting. What do we do?

I am so angry at (fill in the blank)...

Then I tuck that egg away as a prayer, as a hope for things to be made right. I'd read of this small way to deal with concerns and anxieties years ago. What is so wonderful about finding an old egg, is that it doesn't stink at all -- time after time I've smiled and seen how the problem was resolved. 

It is not possible to finish this book!!!!!!!!!

Sure it is. My 12th novel, TELL ME, just came out this fall.  May we find the eggs we've tucked away and remember how far we've come.

September 11th

The strongest emotions we have as people are hate and love.  Both, if we open ourselves to them fully, will change us and the world around us.  Of the two, I believe love is the stronger, although it might not make nearly as much noise as hate and it certainly won't get as many headlines.  Today in New York is as beautiful a day as it was twelve years ago.  I'm in my garden.  I love working with flowers.  I've come to believe that beauty is in this world to remind us of the good.  I pull down a high branch with huge pink blossoms and look at the bright center of these flowers, the petals still sturdy in September.  I think about the September eleventh of twelve years ago.  I can't capsulize the time, that would trivialize it, but if one theme has stayed with me all these years it's about being  a peacemaker.  Not someone who just loves peace -- we all love the absence of conflict -- but someone who rolls up their sleeves and says I'm going to get in there and try to make a difference.  Sometimes hope feels a bit out of reach, we have to pull it down and look at it closely.  Today, may we do that.  Pull it down, look at it square and work with all our hearts for a better, more beautiful world.  

 

When It Hurts

I had a dumb accident two weeks ago,  browning a chicken in a 450 degree oven; my wrist touched the heating element and...well...it was a bad, bad burn.  I iced, covered it with antibiotic cream, non stick bandages, picturing the scar that would come. Day after day I slathered it with ointment, kept it covered, protected, so protected. 10 days passed, it wasn't healing. My pharmacist looked at it: "You have to take the bandage off, Joan.  It needs air to heal."  I was afraid to do that, afraid it would get wounded again somehow, but I took the bandage off and in one day the scab formed, the redness reduced.  Each day it's gotten better.  And I thought of the hurts we get in this world, physical and otherwise -- sometimes we overdo the medicine and the bandaging, we don't want the air to get anywhere near the injury, but getting out there again can be the best thing for that.  That's when the real healing begins.

Turn Left

I'm back from walking in the park and just had one of those moments that makes you wonder.  I wasn't wearing boots, it's still snowy and slushy here from the blizzard, I didn't plan to go into the icy park, but I felt strongly I was supposed to go, so I did.  Then I felt strongly I was supposed to turn left, and I did.  A woman was sitting on a bench, head bowed, crying.  I didn't want to interfere, I didn't want to walk by.  I asked, "Are you okay?"  She wasn't.  Her dad had died suddenly, it had happened a few months before, but she was still so sad.  I put my arm around her and she wept and I did, too, a bit.  We talked, we prayed, and then the work day had to begin. 

I have my routines, but I need to be open to turning left more.  I don't want to miss the moments.

Are We Sure?

I came upon this after a paritcularly noisy weekend, it was in an old book of meditations that my grandmother loved, Springs in the Valley: "The greatest forces in nature are quiet ones." The example given was the law of gravitation -- no sound, but utterly sure and powerful. Another example: the center of a whirlpool where waters surge madly, but in the center, there is stillness.

I think of the ability to stay calm and caring in the face of anger and mistreatment, to choose not to speak when harsh words come rushing at us. This world is so noisy, and yet we're made, I believe, to need peace. Mary E. Shannon wrote, "We need not be noisy if we are sure."

 

Honk If You Love Stories

When I was trying to break in as a new writer, sometimes I would drag myself to my desk,  asking the wrong question —Does the world really need another story?  

Early in my career, I posed a similar question to a rowdy group of high school freshman who were not listening to much of what I had to say.  Everyone knows you're not supposed to ask a surly crowd a question, especially a surly crowd of teenagers.  But I did.

"Why are stories important?" I shouted.  A boy in the back yelled, "They're not!"  I was ready to crawl out the door and find another profession, but when you love something, you defend it.  I hollered back, "Why not?"

A girl raised her hand: "Because stories teach us about life."  I almost gave her money for that answer.  It was the first time I ever led a group of students in an exercise developing a character from thin air. Who was this person?  What kind of a family was he from?  What kind of a heart did he have?  What were his dreams, his fears?  What kept him going...and on and on...

By the end of the assembly, we'd formed a living, breathing fictional character (that is not a contradiction in terms), and a boy in the back shouted, "You're okay, lady."  I wrote that down and slept with it under my pillow.

Does the world need another story?  I don't ask that question anymore, no matter how tired I feel. I know the answer—not just for my work, but for the millions of writers (published and yet-to-be published) out there.  Absolutely, positively, and undeniably YES!  

One of Those Miracles

I found it in an old book, a letter from a friend dated Friday, 18 March, 1994.  The friend had been battling leukemia, undergoing chemo, looking toward bone marrow transplants, while holding tight to his community of friends and, especially, to God's hand. 

Here's what David wrote:  "...there's more to affirming life than to denying life...there's more to defying cancer than letting it consume and control me..." 

He beat that cancer.  Still today, cancer free, living out the miracle.

 

Keeping Thanksgiving

The turkey is gone, the carcass has been made into soup, Black Friday is history, and maybe the spirit of Thanksgiving feels like it's wearing thin.  Keeping Thanksgiving is a lot like keeping a friend's place in line.  You guard it. Very deliberately... 

Each day, no kidding, no exception.  No matter what's going on, how you feel, what new hassle has come your way, stand up and announce something you're thankful for.  Write it down, put it in a box (I love boxes), and maybe even pat the box when you do it.  Find a child -- this might not be difficult if you have children.  Say to the child, "What are you thankful for?" The child might shout, "My Mega Bloks Halo Warthog." This is valid.  Write it down, put it in the box. And you now have another thing to be thankful for -- there is yet no Ultra Supreme Mega Halo Warthog that, say, glows in the dark.  If you are in a child-free zone, pull out your inner child -- you know, the one you used to be.  Ah now, you might not have had a conversation with that child in some time.  Think about what you might have said at age 6 or 9 or 12  when asked, "What are you grateful for?"  The young you shouts, "Chocolate!"   

See, some things never change.  Have some chocolate, don't put it in the box. 

Keeping is a great word, a word we all think we know, and then somebody, like a writer, looks it up.  Keep means to preserve; to maintain; to take care of.  And we need to do that with thanksgiving, not just the day, but the attitude, it needs help beyond what a Mega Bloks Halo Warthog could ever provide. It needs to be guarded and tended and preserved.  After Thanksgiving, I was interviewed on radio station KFBK, Sacramento's #1 news station.  I talked about maintaining thankfulness and the anchor Tim Lantz asked me a great question:  What do people do who just don't feel thankful?  I said, "Think about a time when you were thankful.  Try to take some steps to get back there again."  That's preserving the memory, I think.  I've continued to ponder the question in these complicated days when so many are hurting.  

What are we thankful for?  It's a great question to pose to your family (all ages) and friends.  Their answers might surprise you, inspire you.  Write them down, put them in your box. You might find that you run out of boxes.  I hope that you do.  If that's the case, just write it all on your heart and keep thanksgiving alive. 

**My new novel, Almost Home, is about holding onto thankfulness no matter what. 

 

 

Words for the Storm

A bad storm like Sandy keeps coming long after it stops.  We're left with the wreckage and the clean up and the ghastly feeling, and all the while trying to hold onto hope.  I've always had a bone to pick with Emily Dickinson who said, "Hope is the thing with feathers..."  I suppose some hope can be blown away by the least little breeze, but hope, real hope, the kind you need in a storm, needs to be made of steel.

IRON ORE

COKE

FLUX

MOLTEN IRON

That's what makes steel, all of those ingredients either extracted, crushed, purified, or melted down:  Iron ore is found in mines, coke is made from crushed and washed coal, flux is a term for the minerals used to collect impurities during the making of steel and iron, molten iron is all about turning up the heat in a blast furnace. 

The strength we need is like iron ore -- we have to go into dark places to find it sometimes.  Grief is like coke, crushing us for a while and then using that crushed part in new ways.  I think hope is a lot like flux, it helps collect impurities, it helps us go through the tough process, and it aids us in growing stronger.  Tough times are like molten iron, melting us down in the heat of challenge.  But together, this process makes steel, one of the strongest compounds in the world. 

It's been said that the greatest strengths grow out of weakness, the greatest trees have weathered the biggest storms and their roots have gone deep.  To find strength in the midst of trial is a gift.  Here are words of strength given to a granddaughter by her grandfather, words he wrote after a tornado leveled his home, words she carried around with her during the worst time in her life.  This is from my newest novel, Almost Home. 

When you don't think you can keep going,

You might be right,

But just in case you're wrong,

Keep marching.

When you're flat out and don't know what to do,

It might be a while before you know,

But don't give up,

Keep marching.

If your feet are sore,

Keep going.

If you hear a roar,

Keep moving.

When the worst that can happen has come and gone

And you're still standing,

Remember that you won.