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.

A Different Mothers Day

I’m in Chicago, it’s Mother’s Day weekend.  I won’t be with my husband and daughter on Sunday, and my mom died a few years ago, I’m here for auditions for the reading of SQUASHED The Musical, the most fun new venture -- a musical of my first novel, SQUASHED, the book that got me started in YA, the book I wrote after a car accident, neurosurgery, pain, and absolute despair.  I didn’t know what I was doing writing that first story! I’d never written a novel, I hurt like crazy, I was unsure, but my character Ellie Morgan -- she was sure.  I heard her voice, I let her show me, I gave myself to her story, and let her quest to grow the biggest pumpkin in Iowa be my quest for doing something big and bold.  SQUASHED was wonderfully reviewed, and now it’s got a new voice, a musical voice, and I’ve found my music after all these years.

I was surrounded by serious music growing up -- my mom was a jazz pianist -- that woman could swing. She had such a gift, such a love for it.  My sisters and I danced around the dining room table as Mom played.  I’m convinced there’s a great jazz band up in heaven.  I played the flute and Mom and I would play duets -- some of my best memories were standing at the piano doing that.  And here I am with this musical in the works and she’s not here.  It’s the one hole in the show.  I know, she’s in the soil of it, I know she handed me her love of music like a baton.  She told me to study the piano -- I didn’t listen -- why didn’t I?  But I’m listening now -- I need to get better on the piano, so much better, but every now and then I’ll play a deep bluesy chord and I know that my mom played that chord with everything she had.  

It’s easy to hold back on trying something bold and new -- oh, I’m too old, or too busy, or not old enough, or whatever.  For years I had carpel tunnel and couldn’t play an instrument, but those days are over, and when the stirrings came a few years ago to start writing songs, I could hear the melodies in my head, and I stepped out, so cautiously at first.  I found the nerve to sing one of those songs for a musician friend.  I waited for his eyes to glaze over, but they didn’t.  I waited for him to back out of the room when the song was over.  He didn’t do that either.  He encouraged me.  Keep going, keep at it, you’ve got something.  We need encouragers in our lives!  My husband, my greatest encourager, wouldn’t let me quit.  Keep going.  Okay!  I felt bolder and now here I am about to listen to singers audition for the SQUASHED reading with my collaborator, Jeff Bouthiette, head of Second City’s music training program. We wrote this show together.  

I can see my mother grinning, pounding out the beat with her mighty left foot, giving herself to the music.  You’ve got to give yourself to a thing, and let all it is and all you can bring to it come out.

How very cool to have a mother who taught me that.

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.

Perishable. Please Open Immediately.

Life's like that, the little moments that we need to open right away, or they'll be gone, the things we need to say now, the small moments of care, the mighty acts of courage.   A phone call with a friend, a longer chat than usual with a neighbor, snatching a moment with someone you love instead of picking up a room, I keep trying to make things perfect, but things are never perfect, especially rooms, but to stop and connect is the right thing.  Open immediately.  

The news of the day, well, it's going to get old, we need to understand the world we're in, the day we find ourselves, and think about this crazy planet and what we can do to extend ourselves to other people.  I've procrastinated on something for so long it's embarrassing, it's past the perishable stage, but I'm going to do it anyway.  Not just to get it off my list, but because I want to, I care about this person.  What do we want to do?  And if we don't act, will it be lost forever, or get brown spots, or turn to smelly mush?  

Please open immediately: the gift of this day, the moment by moment opportunities, even the things we don't want to do, sometimes doing them opens another door and it frees us up.  So much is perishable, a look at the news reminds us that.  So, open to the end of the year and bring into the new year all that is required.  May we forget and forgive, count our blessings and name them one by one.  May we open the box of 2013 with all the hope we can muster, the gift of a new year, a new beginning.  May we hug a child, rub a puppy's tummy, and look for the moments fleeing by, grab them like the string of a wonderful kite and let them catch the wind.  I've never once gotten a kite into the air, but in my mind, it's up there, flying.  Happy New Year!

Our Kids

The school shooting in Newtown CT happened to our kids, to our teachers.  The loss is too deep, it can’t be understood, but what we must do in their memory and in the name of rightness and reason is to draw a line in the sand and say, No More.  Everyone can do something.  People can adopt a school and work to make it secure.  People can look no further than their own families, their own children, and honestly ask, are we watching, reading, playing games with too many violent images?  We’re going to stop.  Colossal tragedy enlarges the heart, we must step out, everybody, and look for ways to help others.  What do we want to leave for our kids?  What do we want to leave for the world? What happened on Friday morning was evil.  Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”  May we be deliberate about this and insist that this impossible attack make us better, deeper, truer people.  May we act now in small and big ways, may we show our kids we’re serious about entering into the enormity of this crisis.   

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Sing Your Song

I haven't been blogging.  It's been quite a while, actually, but I have been writing, some in entirely new ways.  I've actually started writing some songs, and it's all quite wonderful and crazy, because I used to do this when I was a teenager.  I taught myself the guitar and I wrote songs back then. There are things you think are lost to you -- you know, keys and glasses and earrings, an old diary you kept as a kid, and you have this rolling anxiety about that diary that it's out there somewhere being read by people who knew you back then.  But if it is out there, then I'm sure I wrote something like: If I couldn't write and play music, I think part of me would die.   

Well, the thing is, I did stop playing the guitar and the flute and I think a little part of me died.  But then I got used to not doing it, although not entirely.  I would pick up my flute, having not touched it for years, and play something that sounded so truly bad that I despaired, and put the flute away.  I would pick up the guitar and strum a bit, and it was fun for awhile, but then it didn't sound all that great, and then I'd remembered once sounding downright decent on the guitar, but that was gone, and the thought it was gone was stronger than the desire to get better by practicing. 

And I would listen to music and think, someday.  Then came carpel tunnel, surgery on both hands, and having to wear braces when I typed -- and I thought, no way.  I had always played the piano just a little by ear, I had a piano at home, but it was an upright, and I found it easy to walk past an upright and ignore it, or use it to pile laundry on or mail or books.  But then something happened.  My husband's grandmother's  grand piano came to live at our house.  It's hard to ignore a grand piano.  It doesn't want you to put laundry anywhere near it, it's quite certain of its purpose.  And in the middle of  the coming of the piano, I wrote a novel called Close to Famous.  In that book there is a mother who is a singer/songwriter, and as I was writing the story, I could hear some of the songs the mother sang. I wrote the lyrics to them, I had the melodies in my head.  She kept singing and the songs kept coming.  Something broke through for me with that book, and now I'm back to my music again.   

I suppose the moral of this story is -- if you have something you know you're pretty good at, if you've ignored it, or left it behind, or buried it, or just not been able to do it for whatever reason -- think about that thing now.  Sit down next to it, like you're meeting an old friend, stop telling yourself, no you can't -- change that to, hey, I'm going to try.  And just in case it's morphed into the size of a grand piano, pay attention.  Your laundry can find another resting place.  It's time to sing your song.  

 

A New Season

A hydrangea that I thought had died pushes up in my garden.  A vine I thought wasn't going to make it began thriving in the last two weeks.  The age-old lilac tree that we were going to cut down because it never bloomed, flourished this year.  I took a tree class today with my neighbors and we all officially adopted the trees on our street, pledging to care for them.  I do not consider myself a gardener, but I would like to be a real one someday. I wrote a book called Stand Tall where the seasons in a boy's life change as a great white oak in the park near his house changes color, drops its leaves, and fills up lush again in spring.  I was reminded today of the root system of trees and have great guilt that I've not been watering the tree in front of my house.  It seemed so big, you know, and it didn't seem like it needed any help from me, but it does -- twenty gallons of water per week, according to the man who spoke with us.  How I have neglected this tree, but I won't anymore. 

It makes me think of what else I've ignored that's right in front of me.  I've had one of those years when I have focused in tight to a few things and I've not been able really to step back and take in the big picture.  I've had one of those years that sped by and I found myself trying to grab at the things racing past.  I know I missed some of those things -- they were passing by so quickly. 

The black squirrel Zorro runs atop my fence. Zorro doesn't like me; he thinks I killed his brother -- I didn't.  I got home last fall and a black squirrel was lying dead in my garden, but Zorro walks atop my fence glaring at me.  "I'm innocent," I tell this squirrel, but he doesn't buy it.  My dog Max comes out and the squirrel runs off.  Max trots to his place in the garden, in charge.  There is something uniquely joyful about my garden this May.  I'm beginning to understand the soil, beginning to understand what plants won't die, beginning to understand my style.  I will turn a wretched age in July, but I suppose that's really okay.  I feel new dreams coming, old dreams being realized, branches being cut off and pruned, and new life taking hold.  

FOR THOSE IN THE CHICAGO AREA, I was recently awarded the Chicago Tribune's Young Adult Literary Prize.  I will be at the Printers Row Book Festival on Saturday, June 4th.  Please come by and say hi.