April 28, 2012

She’s backing out of her parking spot as you’re leaving the Carrboro Harris Teeter lot. Does she see you?

You hit your horn. She brakes hard, jolting to a stop, and pulls forward so you can get by. You glare as you pass her.

Of course. She’s talking on her phone.

Another scene: The light has turned but, not being a New York driver, you wait a polite moment. You do not sit on the horn the second you see green. Her head is down, the driver’s in the car in front of you.

You finally tap. “Beep. Beep.” She bolts up, glances at you in her rear view mirror, and accelerates into the intersection. She’s holding something in her right hand. Is it a phone?

Yes. She was in the middle of a text. At the next light she’ll add the last words and hit “send” or maybe up ahead on that long straight patch where the traffic always slows at school dismissal time.

I confess. She could be me. So could the woman backing out in the HT lot.

I talk while driving. I text while driving.

When the decision passed to ban cell use while driving in Chapel Hill, my Manhattan-based daughter texted me a humorous “Listen up, woman” message – which I read while driving.

Funny. Especially from a woman who spends all day texting and talking to her real estate clients from a car – a taxi and she’s in the backseat. The fact is, even though I’ve texted while driving for years, I always felt unsure about it. I imagine there are responsible people who know when and how to text and talk while driving. It’s just that I am not one of them.

I have to admit, once the ban becomes law, I’ll feel better. In fact, I’m weaning myself now.

But there are some aspects I don’t understand. It seems I’ll still be able to talk to my spouse and to my children.

One of the people I chat with most while driving is that daughter in Manhattan. Will our endless banter be legal? Or will only calls like this be permissible? “Do not answer the doorbell. I’ll be home soon.”

And what will I be able to discuss with my spouse: “I don’t know where you blue tooth is. Last time I saw it? On the kitchen counter, maybe this morning?”

Speaking of husbands, I imagine mine will want some new rules around our house too. The April 16th New Yorker features a cartoon with a man and woman sitting in their living room. The man says to the woman, “If anyone wants me, I’ll be right in front of your face while you’re furiously texting.”

My husband gets annoyed when we sit down for a cup of coffee or a cocktail and I’m “furiously texting.”

“But I’m almost finished,” I’ll say. “I just have to let this client know about our meeting.”

He’ll sigh and wander off to get his own phone. By the time he’s back, I’m finished, ready for conversation – the face-to-face kind – and he’s texting.

I also wonder about driving while talking to a passenger. My good friend and I were deep in conversation the other day. She was driving, I was riding shotgun, and had I not called out “red light!” she would have run it.

Some day cars will lock into a control strip in the highway allowing a remote controlled driving system to take over, like in the movie Minority Report. They first promised this back at the World’s Fair GM “Futurama” in 1939. But anything like that still seems a long way off, and I can’t say I’m sorry.

Giving up the phone in the car will sting, but I can do it.

I do have my limits, though. The day they outlaw listening to books on CD while driving, is the day I’ll have to put my foot down (as it were). But please don’t tell anybody: it’s really not safe.

December 21, 2011

I’m heading off to visit my father in Philadelphia, a pilgrimage I don’t make often enough.

These trips are exhausting though nothing much happens. Like an old dog, my 93-year-old dad sleeps – a lot. When he’s awake and has something to say, his voice is barely a whisper and his thoughts come out muddled.

But I’m hopeful this time. I’ve got something that just might jumpstart a coherent memory bank.

Let me explain. When he called recently (my sister did the dialing) the conversation began the way it usually does.

“I’m so glad to hear your voice, Daddy,” I said.

He mumbled something I couldn’t understand.

Instead of saying, “What?” I’ve learned to move on, to tell him something, anything. That day I picked up the book I was reading, “Unbroken: A World War ll Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption,” by Laura Hillenbrand. It’s about an American POW named Louie Zamperini, who, like my dad, was a track star and served in the Pacific.

“Dad,” I said. “Did you know a guy named Louie Zamperini when you were training out in California?”

“Louie,” my dad said, his voice suddenly crisp and loud. “Of course. We ran together.”

“And he served in the Pacific during the war Dad.”

“I know. I remember him. He was shot down. Survived in the water for weeks.”

Delighted by my father’s clarity, I named some Pacific islands from a map in the book. My father volunteered others.

He faded again, but at least synapses had fired.

When I visit I usually wheel Dad around the gardens of his retirement community. He’ll perk up at the names of flowers and trees and he enjoys listening to the birdcalls. My father was an avid gardener, an Olympic qualifying runner, a Princeton graduate, a WWII veteran, the father of three girls, and an unfulfilled public relations man. He’s been a widower for almost a year.

On this trip, it’s going to be cold and gray, probably not garden-gazing weather. He’ll want me to park him in front of the television by the nurses’ station.

“No, no!” he’ll say, sometimes shouting it, if I try to take him to his room so we can “talk.” He’d rather watch “Jeopardy,” old movies, sitcoms, cooking shows, whatever. Ironic for a man who forbade television, and insisted on family conversation, when his daughters were young.

This time, with “Unbroken,” I just might be able to lure him into his room, a lovely space with a portrait of his late wife, familiar furniture from my childhood, and lush plants.

My dad had served on the staff of Admiral Nimitz, whose title was Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. I now have a large photograph of the admiral – it used to hang in my father’s office – with an inscription by his boss, the admiral, thanking my father for his WWII service.

“Dad,” I’ll say. “Louie was also honored by Admiral Nimitz.”

Growing up, I paid little attention to the sagas my father told at dinner. I watched the candles burn and tried to remember to keep my elbows off the table. If I didn’t he would poke them with his fork, and it hurt. I would wait, stony faced, until all the plates were cleared and I felt safe to ask: “May I please be excused?” His answer wasn’t always “yes.”

Now all these decades later, I’m going to read to him from “Unbroken.” Hopeful he’ll remember some of his tales and tell me again. I want to hear what I was too scared and distracted to listen to when I was a little girl – those stories I never knew I’d want, some day, to know.

When I arrive he has just come out of the bath and I’m able to wheel him to his room without protest. I pull a chair up beside him and thumb through the book, showing him the accompanying photos and reading an occasional paragraph.

“POW’s, yes, there was Frank and …” he waves his arm, searching for more names. Other tidbits follow.

Then I read my dad the two-page preface. His face squishes up, his mouth turns down, and he begins to sob. He can’t stop.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I say. He places his long bony hands over the open book as though it were a sacred tome. His head nods up and down.

“Should I continue?”

“Yes,” he whispers. No more words come from him, but as I read he grabs my hand and squeezes, his head bobbing with recognition.

It is my turn now to tell him his story.

November 12, 2011

I’ve often been surprised by what I’ve found at UNC Hospitals.

As I headed in one morning, I saw a man balancing two large watermelons on his shoulders as he walked out the main entrance. I thought I was in a dream until I saw a farmer’s market going on in the lobby.

A volunteer recently told me about the new permanent labyrinth. We were standing in the entrance to the women’s hospital.

“It’s right out there,” she said, “between here and the street.” All I could see were cars, vans, people, entrance drives, and, beyond, parking decks.

“Really?” I said. “Right over there?”

“Yes, she said. “Trust me.”

She told me this was the ninth labyrinth to be built in a North Carolina medical center, that walking the paths has been shown to promote a sense of wellbeing and healing. The UNC labyrinth is modeled on the one built inside Chartres Cathedral in France.

I wove through the traffic and followed the sidewalk, stopping to read a plaque:

“An ancient meditation tool, which has found its place in the modern world. Most of the experiences that occur in the labyrinth are guided by a sacred wisdom, a creative intelligence that knows more about what we need than do our conscious selves.”

- The Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress

“Walk Pray Receive”

“To access the labyrinth continue down the sidewalk or enter the N.C. Cancer Hospital and take the elevators to the B level.”

The entire text then appeared in Spanish:

“Camine Rece Recibe”

I continued down the walkway, the labyrinth nestled into the steep bank to my left. A boy about 7 was sitting in the center of the large circle of stones.

“How long is it going to take me to get out?” he called to his father, who stood off to the side, a crying infant in his arms.

“Probably as long as it took you to go in,” the dad said.

“Not if I run,” the boy shouted.

He bolted up and raced back along the path, the sleeves of his oversized sweatshirt flapping at his sides like flags. I’ve walked labyrinths before, but I had never seen anyone run the entire path.

Landscaping around the labyrinth includes shrubs, grasses and memorial trees, some bearing wind chimes. A shady area, under a pedestrian overpass, offers plenty of wooden chairs, tables, and benches. Beyond that, a grassy section leads to the lower level of the cancer hospital.

I listened to the hammering of construction echo off the tall hospital buildings.

I heard the beeping of trucks backing up, car doors slamming. Two large cranes criss-crossed the sky, people strode or hobbled on sidewalks and overpasses. A motorcycle roared up Manning Drive.

Yet the labyrinth sat serene, almost hidden, right in the middle of all the commotion. It’s pleasing to the eye.

The path stones look like Chiclets or cobbles, in beige and gray. Unlike a piece of art admired from a distance, a labyrinth is created to be entered and walked. Some people crawl.

My boots crackled on bits of gravel as I walked. The path reminded me of thoughts – little short jaunts followed by hairpin curves and long uninterrupted stretches.

Unlike a maze, which is full of dead ends, the labyrinth leads you steadily onward.

In places, the path seems to be taking you in the wrong direction. This illusion is intentional; the journey seems preposterous, impossible.

As I walked, a one-sided cell phone conversation came at me from the overpass. A jackhammer drilled. Wind chimes tinkled.

Just keep going, I told myself. At the curves I admired the carefully crafted arches of stone. My breathing calmed. Then I was all the way in.

Looking around, I marveled at this sacred spot smack in the middle of the day and the fray — a place to stop and reflect and walk — or maybe even run — knowing the path will always deliver its followers to the center.

Carol Henderson is a writer and writing teacher.

With generous support from a foundation and Project Compassion, I will be offering a series of Reflective Writing Workshops for hospital staff, social workers, counselors, caregivers, and bereaved mothers. More information coming soon.

My spring workshops are full. Email me to get on the waiting list for the fall.

I will be teaching at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. Women’s Writing Week, June 25 – 29. Contact Ashley Hogan for more information and to register. hogana@meredith.edu.

The annual weekend workshop with RCWMS happened at the end of March. We’ll offer another next March–if not sooner. Stay tuned. Some comments from this year’s participants:

“Carol Henderson’s workshops always take me out of a writing rut. Her exercises, words of wisdom, and opportunity to write with others jumpstart my creativity, which lasts well beyond the workshop. I know I’m in the hands of a pro, one who is knowledgeable and humane. She makes everyone feel they can bring their whole beings into the room and take risks on paper.”
–Sheryl Kleinman, Professor of Sociology, UNC

“As always (many times now) Carol inspired, educated, and illuminated both me and my writing life.”
–Jenny Lewis, UNC Administrator

Bill and I are back from our annual Powerful Narrative Workshop, at Wildacres Retreat Center, in the stunning Blue Ridge mountains.

This was our third straight year at Wildacres, and we were fortunate to have what’s probably our best group yet.

The four days of the workshop passed as one continual high, with “aha” moments happening it seemed, every few minutes. Our writers, two of whom came all the way from Seattle, all report progress and breakthroughs. (One of them, Fabienne Worth, is pictured above.)

Here’s what one of our participants had to say:

“A true inspiration. Bill and Carol you certainly focused the dynamics and the chemistry that we brought to the workshop. That is an art.”
– Sandy Mason, Asheville, NC

Bill and I were delighted with the group, their responsiveness, and their creativity, and pleased to see them making so many connections both on and off the page. All of which proves to us that The Powerful Narrative really is powerful, and we can’t wait to offer the workshop again.

I continue to write once a month with the WriteGirls. Last summer I led, for the second year, a two-week day camp for the girls, one I think I would have enjoyed much more than the overnight camp I attended at age 12. At that Y camp, I had to be rescued during the swim test. I panicked because I couldn’t see or touch the bottom of the lake.

I would have loved to sit and write the way the girls do at this camp: no backstroke tests, no teams, no lanyards. The girls are eager to produce. They’re working on stories and novels and poems.

I asked them to write quickly about summer. Here are their impressions.

Julia: The air settles heavily on my shoulders, and I swirl to the floor in a tangled heap. The tepid linoleum offers little comfort. “Why me?” I ask the ceiling, thinking what a stupid question. The heat seems to be melting my reasoning as well as my skin. I live in North Carolina, after all, where the weather has mood swings more drastic than those of a 16-year-old girl. I close my eyes to the sun.

Brenna: Lemonade on ice cools with sweet, juicy sourness. Ah, perfect bliss and easy. My mother mixes sugar and powdered lemon in water to create the best summer drink, so thirst-quenching. Who knew that liquid happiness could come from a white plastic container, pre-powdered for our convenience.

Sabrina: Ocean, how I once loved you. Your waves, how cool and refreshing you were to me. But after one story by an author that shall remain unnamed, I no longer go near you. Never again will I be able to enjoy you. Not a pond or a lake, either. Nothing for me anymore but a pool.

Olivia: Outside the heat wilts the trees and the flowers bend their heads under the July sun. But I get to sink into the squishy couch cushions. The cool air of my basement lair surrounds me and I open the first in a large stack of books. Sighing comfortably, I dig in. This is my summer – devoid of heat and sweat.

Anonymous: You go on Sunday. Check-in is from one to five. You get your dorm assignment, your roommate, and your schedule. Then you have your first rehearsal. You’re independent all week, except at night, when your counselors take roll to make sure you’re still alive. Other than that you’re on your own. Freedom and music are what I like best about summer band camp.

It’s great to take a vacation

It doesn’t matter the location

To the beach where the sand castles loom

Only to fall when the waves seal their doom

It doesn’t matter where you go

Just do let your fragile heart grow.

- Eleanor

Sadie: First allow me to describe a tick bite. You reach down absentmindedly to scratch. Your fingers dig into your skin and you sigh with relish. But wait. What’s this? Your fingers have pulled off a wiggling black shape now stuck under your fingernail. You pry it out and kill it, perhaps pulling at its head or flushing it down the toilet. Over the next few days your skin bubbles and blisters. It turns a bright red and soon crusts up and bleeds. Finally it heals, leaving only a puckered pink scar.

Spitting out dark seeds

watermelon tastes so good

red and green and black.

Red and white and blue

fireworks crash in the air

lighting up the night.

- Mary

Kayla: Dancing, playing games, running around, screaming, laughing, sweating, swimming, sliding, drinking pink lemonade, eating ice cream, hamburgers and chips: these are summer parties. But then there are the annoying ticks and mosquitoes that suck your blood and the flies that get in your food. Still, party all summer.

[originally published in slightly altered form in the Chapel Hill News]

Keeping a journal is perhaps the most productive of all methods for reconsidering the world, preserving our experiences, exploring our deepest selves, and developing our writing skills. I’ll be teaching my 5-day workshop, “Mining for Gold,” at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC again in 2012. The workshop is part of the Meredith Summer Institute for women. It’s a great opportunity to learn how to unlock the full power of journaling as a multi-purpose tool for creative development.

Here’s what some of my students said this year about the workshop:  

“Carol Henderson is an energetic yet laid-back, full-of-ideas, expert guide into the world of journaling. What emerges from the journey surprises, delights, challenges the writer in me to observe and record my life, my world, in a  whole new way.” ––Phyllis Mayo, Raleigh, NC, Retirement Community Chaplain

“Carol has had a wonderful impact on my writing life. Her workshop was informative, fun, and supportive. I wrote much more than I thought I would. I feel good about writing again due to Carol’s treasure trove of helpful techniques for accessing the unconscious.” Elyse Krasnogor, Raleigh, NC Psychotherapist

“To go or not to go; that is the question! I went to the workshop with Carol Henderson. I entered the gold mine and discovered nuggets of truth.” Kathy Gluch, Raleigh, NC, former teacher

Each day, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., we’ll explore memory, point of view, dreams, life chapters, character portraits, poetry, dialogues with aspects of ourselves, and more. We’ll acquire new techniques to enliven our writing and help us find fresh ways to view our lives and creative selves. The emphasis is on process-not product—that means we’ll write a lot. For information about the 2012 workshop, email: Ashley Hogan at Meredith <hogana@meredith.edu>

June 8, 2011

I bit into the apple and spit two hard black dots into my small palm. “What are these?” I asked my father. He told me they were seeds and that we could plant them and they would grow into apple trees.
We dug two little holes by the back door and dropped one seed in each. We patted the dirt down, and I sprinkled the area with water from our old metal watering can.

What my father didn’t tell me was that we would be moving in two weeks and wouldn’t be around to watch the trees sprout. Still, this is one of my formative memories during those early years when we moved five times in five years.

Children are fascinated by growing things. Michael Pollan, author of “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education,” remembers his delight in gardening when he was a little boy: “Cradling the globe of a cantaloupe warmed by the sun or pulling orange spears straight from the sandy soil, these were the keenest of pleasures.”

Growing Healthy Kids, part of the Orange County Partnership for Young Children, is a local program that provides young people and their families garden plots so that they can experience the magic of growing fruits and vegetables. Participating families must have a child under the age of 7. Families are required to work in the garden two hours a week, but “required” is hardly the right word. Many families go every day.

“It’s incredibly satisfying to see the excitement in the faces of the children,” says Maria Hitt, project manager. “They’ll dig up a radish or potato plant and see that there’s something growing underneath. They are so proud that they grew it.”

If you visit a local garden you’ll hear at least three languages – Spanish, English, and Karen, spoken by people from Burma. There are currently 38 families with 77 children involved in the program, ranging in age from 6 months to 16 years old. For these kids, whatever their ages, gardening is a passion. A mother told Hitt recently that her young son “cried because I was too tired to take him to the garden and he so wanted to go.”

Basic lessons in sustainability are a byproductParents who work in the restaurant business bring home discarded vegetable waste to add to the community compost rather than throwing it away.

“And each site harvests rain water to irrigate,” Hitt says. “If it doesn’t rain for a few weeks, we’re in trouble.”

The staff teaches the children how to prepare the foods they harvest.

“My hope is that people are learning how to grow their own food,” Hitt says, “and that they’ll be inspired and able to continue to grow food for their families that’s fresh and organic.”

Kids’ eating habits benefit from the experience. The parents say that when their children help to grow it, they will eat foods they never would have touched before.

One of the gardens is at Carrboro Elementary School, another at the site of the future MLK Park on Hillsborough Street, and the third is at the Duke Energy power plant on James Street.

“It’s tricky to keep everything and everybody organized,” Hitt says, “especially when dealing with three languages, three locations, fickle weather, and our three-person staff is all part-time… And we’re facing funding cuts.”

Michael Pollan writes. “We need to use nature without destroying it, diminishing it. Nature and culture can, in the garden, be wedded. In fact I find in the garden some grounds for hope.”

I’m sure everyone involved in the gardens would agree. And, by the way, they always need volunteers. Contact the group at 967-9091 or online at www.orangesmartstart.org.

April 20, 2011

Last week I woke up to that dreaded sound – like a train roaring through the back yard heading straight for the house. My husband stirred. “What in the world?” he said sleepily.

“We’ve got to get downstairs,” I said, jumping out of bed and running into our narrow hallway. He was right behind me. As we turned the corner to start down into the basement, the house went completely dark. The power – out.

We lay on couches in our dim basement and listened as the wind howled and limbs tore. If a tree cuts through the roof, I thought, at least we have a half-attic and a first floor between us and the trunk.

I wasn’t being overly dramatic. A huge oak from across the street had crashed onto our driveway during Hurricane Fran, tearing the gutters off the house and crushing two cars. On the next street over, a large tree fell through the roof and almost killed our friends as they slept.

A heavy rain a few years later uprooted another oak that fell across our back area, totaling another car. Later still we discovered that tree roots had grown into our sewer system, collapsing the piping under our house. The cement cellar floor had to be jackhammered, new pipes installed.

After that we took a good hard look at the towering trees close to our house and decided to remove two of them. The arborist who did the work told me that the remaining trees out front, the regal poplars and oaks, were what he called “butter knife trees.” Gazing up at them and straightening his visor he said, “Yup. If those come down, they’ll go through your house like a knife through butter. They’ll build up some speed on their way down and BAM!”

In my last column I wrote about tree men coming through the neighborhood earlier this year and cutting branches and entire trees that threatened the power lines. As my husband and I huddled in the blackened basement against this most recent storm, we decided that clearly the guys had missed a few. We heard sharp snaps and felt the earth shake as wood hit the ground.

Finally dawn came and the savage wind and rain stopped. All our trees had survived but the power was out.

I talked that morning with the parents gathered on the street with their children, waiting for the school bus. Our neighbors on both sides had power but houses across the street didn’t. As we chatted we hauled some large branches off the road so that the school bus could get through.

Our next-door neighbor told us that two trees in his back yard had snapped halfway up, throwing limbs all over his yard and, it turned out, ours. He had wondered earlier why the tree men hadn’t trimmed or removed those leaning candidates – probably because they weren’t directly threatening power lines, just a small one-story house with a young couple and their two small children inside. Luckily they were all OK. Around the corner, though, a big oak had butter-knifed right into a recently-renovated second story dormer.

When Duke Power called 10 hours later to let us know our electricity had been restored, an automated voice reported that our outage was the result of a felled tree and that 114 houses had been affected.

Sometimes I admire what the celebrity Mr. T did on his palatial suburban estate North of Chicago. Despite his neighbor’s protests, he had all the trees taken down, dozens of them, because, he said, they exacerbated his asthma. I love trees but as they green up, rustle in the spring breeze, and offer cooling shade over our house, I can’t help but think – giant butter knives.

My husband, novelist Bill Henderson, and I have created a 4-day intensive workshop, The Powerful Narrative, and presented it for number of years at Wildacres Retreat.

The Powerful Narrative focuses on how to use storytelling techniques to power your writing, whether fiction or nonfiction.

If you’d like to book The Powerful Narrative for your organization, contact me at cd.henderson@gmail.com For more information, Click Here.