The Warrior's Stance

Laura Jeanne Morefield
nee Costales
1978

Having received scans of certain pages from Laura's journals and having received typed versions (thank you, Kathryne Kieser) of what had been identified as poetry therein, I have set about comparing poems to be added to my late daughter's chapbook, The Warrior's Stance, to their original handwritten versions.

Laura's handwriting was always, at the least, shall we say, quirky. Due to chemotherapy's neuropathy it grew even more challenging to decipher as time went by. She wrote every day until the month before she died. Her final poem, "Me Again," was dated June 6, 2011. She died July 17. 

As editor of The Warrior's Stance -- Laura gave me the assignment -- I have done all humanly possible to make certain that the later poems extracted from her journals are as accurate as can be. Laura first wrote all her poems longhand and then put them through a meticulous process prior to sharing them with me and a couple of close friends. Because many of these late poems were never put through the usual process, I wrestled with the very idea of publishing them; however, some were added to what I had believed was the finished chapbook. 

Ready for the press, The Warrior's Stance will be published soon. When that process is completed, and I hold the first copy in my hand, I will let you know. 

Happy new year.

Charlene Baldridge

The silver bell redux

The back steps
101 Garrison Street
Wilmette, Illinois, circa 1936

Long ago, perhaps in midlife, I wrote about mother’s silver dinner bell. Its Zen like tone summoned Florence, who served holiday dinner parties when I was a child. Mother rang the bell when it was time for the next course, and Florence came through the swinging door moist with kitchen heat, the air in her wake bearing hints of wonders yet to come.

I can’t remember the content of that long ago story; perhaps it conveyed nostalgia for the home, the family unit in Wilmette, the visiting aunts, uncles and cousins, and a longing for my mother. When I was growing up, there was warmth like no other in her arms.

I’m certain I purloined the bell the day my two sisters and I sat on mom and dad’s bed after dad died, deciding on the division of stuff, large and small. Henceforward and always, the bell remained in my possession no matter my nomad life.

I say “always,” but that is not exactly true. The bell returned to me the day after Christmas this year, as we packed up things I’d given to my late daughter, things her widower has no connection to, things that will never be passed on because he and Laura were unable to conceive.

We wrapped the Spode dinner service, my sterling silver, and the chocolate set that belonged to one of the great aunts who sat at table in Wilmette. For now, they will reside with my son and his wife in Bellingham, perhaps eventually finding their way to my eldest grandson, who has progeny. The bell remains with me.

“Is this the bell you gave to Laura when she got sick?” Dan asked.

“Yes,” I replied as he carefully swathed it in thick paper towels.

I waited till Laura’s end seemed imminent, when almost all possible treatment options had been exhausted, when it seemed she might become too exhausted to rise. I thought she might spend some time in bed in their big house, might have need of a bell to summon help or at least a glass of water. But I was wrong.

Mostly she headquartered on the sofa in the great room from whence she could watch films and her favorite television series, at least until electronic gadgetry became too complicated. She complained loudly that there was something wrong with all of it, and so she merely held court, and when it was time to retire she hugged everyone and walked up the long, bent staircase on Dan’s arm. It was thus even the night she lapsed into unconsciousness, by then in hospice care. No need for a bell. Ever.

The silver bell, with its luscious reverberations at the ready, sits beside me now, December 27, 2012. I may use it to summon the muse as I strive to write my next assignment, a book about Loo and Moo; or perhaps it will summon mother, Aunt Sophie, my sisters, Jeanne and Lynn, and Laura – all strong women in whose arms I experienced profound comfort.

Laura Morefield and Charlene Baldridge
Christmas 2008

Our stories are legion. Our love, vast.

Good news

Two poets

December 15, 2012

Mother and daughter, one slapdash, the other precise,

mother accustomed to writing quick and dirty,

daughter preferring, even bound to, perfection.

Laura Jeanne Morefield and Charlene Baldridge
June 2008

I have spent the past 19 months laboring over my late daughter’s words, fulfilling my promise to collect and edit her post-diagnosis poems. There are many. They are good. There will be a book.

Other than the words I must produce – criticism and features mostly – my own creative work slowed to a trickle, partly due to anger and then, to grieving. Now that Laura’s collection is almost fait accompli, I’ve begun writing a book about our mother-daughter relationship. And I’ve also opened the desktop folder titled “My Work,” which contains my poems written since Laura's diagnosis and death.

It pleases me to announce that Laura’s poem titled “I Invented Body Surfing” has been selected by renowned poet Steve Kowit for publication in the next Serving House Journal, of which he is poetry editor. It further pleases me to announce that a recent poem of mine, “There Is a Stonehenge in My Heart,” will be published in the forthcoming issue of San Diego Poetry Journal.

These victories and recognition seem to indicate that our time was not wasted.

I have an ongoing relationship with Laura through words and dreams. I think of the children of Newtown with a heavy heart today, and I pity their parents, who were robbed of the richness of ongoing relationship and the privilege of knowing their little ones as adults. In light of their losses, I am ashamed to admit I still feel cheated, even though I had Laura for 50 years. I was fortunate to know my child as an adult woman. They never will have that privilege. May they find comfort.

The Warrior's process

Oh, she had her ways and her processes.

I wish I could find Laura’s first poem, written not in her hand (she couldn’t write yet) but printed by her teacher on a 3 x 5 card – was it first grade or earlier?

“Look what I found, mom,” she said one day, showing me the card, “my first poem.” It was titled something like “My brothers’ trousers,” and went something like, “My brothers trousers are green.”

“Funny,” she said, “Charlie and Bob never had green trousers.”

Then, we debated who should take custody of the card. I can’t find it, and it was not among the things in her office following her death, so we’ll never know how brilliant or mundane this bit of juvenilia was. There was nothing ordinary about Laura.

Right now, her post-diagnosis journals are being mined for poems. Not by me, but by an acquaintance with literary skills. Apparently, poems came in a torrent toward the end of Laura’s life.

According to her process, and so far as I know it was lifelong, she hand wrote poems first in her journal or poetry notebook, selected the ones she felt worthy of development and put them into the computer. Then she printed them out to work on them further. Eventually, if she was pleased, they were shown to others for comments, and eventually a finished poem emerged and was archived and shared. In her “finished” archives, still, some poems had two or three versions with minute differences.

Invariably, if a word bothered me, it was a word that had bothered her because something about it was not quite right.

What we’re learning now is that in her handwritten versions an ampersand isn’t always an ampersand. In the finished poem it is usually the word and. We’re also learning that Laura’s line breaks were never defined by the width of the notebook page, but by the poet as she labored over the process.

The dilemma therefore is how does one take handwritten poems from the notebook and refine them as the poet would have, had she lived? This dilemma is exacerbated by the fact that during the last few months of her life, as the flood of words flowed onto the page; Laura lost her ability to complete the process. The television remote, the intricacies of hand-held devices and her laptop all became unsolvable mysteries. One by one she handed her devices to Dan and said, “Here. Give this away. I won’t be using it any more.”

Invariably he said, “I’ll just put it away for later.”

“Oh, no,” Laura responded vehemently. “I won’t need that any longer.” And so, the device, whatever it was, was put somewhere out of sight. The stream of spoken words continued unabated until she closed her eyes two days before death. Her last words were, “Oh, Dan. I love you,” and  “Thank you, God.”

On Thanksgiving Day, as we gave thanks for the blessings of the past year, I gave thanks for the time spent with my beloved daughter through her work. I am certain that the year to come, which  promises production of The Warriors' Duet, will produce further blessings. Further evidence that it is possible simultaneously to ache and to bloom. 

Hallowe'en and Dia de los Muertos

November 1

I see photos of people who with bare hands claw through a mixture of sand and debris in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, and I think of precious personal items retrieved yesterday.

Sixteen months after the death of his wife, my daughter Laura, Dan Morefield, my son-in-law, is still combing through the detritus of her life. Like her mother, Laura kept everything, including the things I gave her because I no longer had room for them when I downsized. Her house had copious storage spaces, and she put all I gave her -- my overflowing file folders and photo albums -- into big plastic tubs and put them up on shelves in the garage.

 In one of the straggler file folders Dan gave  me yesterday, I found a poem Laura must have written when she was around 16. I believe I first kept it, and then she inherited it, along with other precious things I’d forgotten just as surely as if they were buried in the sand.

The box I brought home contains my mother’s high school yearbook, June 1913, John Marshall High School, Chicago. Each time I saw this yearbook in the past, and even now, I turned the pages eagerly to find mother’s graduation photo under Thelma Good. Time and again I’m surprised to find that someone has torn her photo from the yearbook. All that remains are the accompanying words: “Her face is fair, her heart is true.” I know that. I always knew that.

I also found a snapshot of Laura’s father, Samuel Costales, who died when she was 2. He promised me a girl and was so delighted with our infant that he carried her around in his arms, singing and dancing with her. She never knew his warmth and how much he loved her. I am comforted that if what I believe is true she knows now.

                     A Poem for Mother

By Laura Jeanne Costales

Circa 1976

Sometimes I feel as if

                  I’m all “grown up”

And I think that I’m free to do what I want    

                  Without needing help.

But then something will happen

                  And I’ll hurt so bad inside

It’s like falling into a pit

                  And landing very hard on the bottom.

I’ll stay in my room,

                  Lost and hurt

And then there will be

                  A knock on the door.

Her head will pop around the corner

                  And her eyes will sadden.    

She’ll come and put her arms around me

                  And all of a sudden,

I’m not all “grown up”

                  I’m just her little girl again.

She asks what is wrong

                  I’ll tell her and cry.

She comforts me when I need it most   

                  And so

My gift to her this mother’s day

                  Is

All the love I can give her

         For all the times

                  She understood.

Note to Laura

Oh, my girl, I hope I never disappointed you

when you needed my love.

I’d give anything to knock on your door,

pop my head around the corner,

and take you into my arms right now.

Thanks for saving all my stuff.

November 2, Old Town

Dia de los Muertos

Celebrate Small Victories is engraved on Laura's silver bracelet, the talisman that was supposed to restore her health. I read the inscription at my table in Old Town. Next to me is a lamp of brass, with a lavender shade encircled with pink teardrops, each tipped with red. 

It is the Mexican Dia de los Muertos. Trollops and matrons alike dress as if it were still Hallowe'en, odd little knots and combs atop their heads, flip-flops or impossibly steep platforms upon their feet.

The Catholic church is right across the street from my window. People carry roses and candles in their hands. Earlier, I observed a teen nervously eating her rose outside the tour ticket booth on Twiggs Street.

A mother comes into the coffee shop with two children, identically dressed in skeleton tees, the boy around 3, the girl, 1-1/2 or so with pacifier. She is intent on carrying off the wine display bottle by bottle, while he, all menacing arms, hands and aarghs, wants only to scare the other children as they enter.

Outside, on my way to the theatre, I find myself caught up in the Dia del los Muertos procession, and I am overwhelmed by grief, sit on a bench and shed tears for the communion of saints so recently joined by my longtime friend George, who was certain that Laura awaited him.

Small victories are good. They allow us to put one foot in front of the other as we plod along the road to our own epiphanies.