At school we kept our prayers to ourselves. The main thing I said thanks for was art. The blackboard in the Rec Room had a chalk drawing of a tree with pumpkin-colored leaves and a mother hen with chicks in a row. There was another drawing on the blackboard in the schoolroom next to my row. Teacher drew a new picture every week and wrote a rhyme alongside. I liked to get there early and watch her chalk move free. One day, I said, “I like the roses beside the sheep, Gram,” but corrected myself right away. Gram would sometimes draw pictures in her letters, but not like Teacher. And Dad did drawings too but no one I knew drew pictures like Teacher. She drew a man, dark outlines of color, then used sideways chalk to fill it in. It was wondrous … wise, he jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes. But when he saw his eyes were out, with all his might and main, he jumped into another bush and scratched ‘em in again. Dark spiky thorns and dabs of black raspberries surrounded that man. 

Teacher gave me jobs to do before the bell. She had me unpack a box of blue readers and put them in a neat stack on the shelf, careful not to bend any covers. They smelled brand new. Then she gave me a basket of pencils. I was at the sharpener grinding dull pencils to points when she rang the bell and the kids filed in. Sharlane looked my way and puffed her lips out.
During Language, I copied what Teacher wrote and drew because Language was when words and art go together, she said.

In Arithmetic, we added and subtracted. I finished early so I drew on the other side of the red fence line, away from my arithmetic problems. Peppy. Then a smaller Peppy and a couple teensier ones. A pile of Peppy puppies, hungry ones.                                                                  

“Breese, what are you doing?” Teacher stood over me, the pattern on her dress, tan bones on green. 
She surprised me so much I felt hot all over. “I’m done with my problems.” “Yes, but I asked what are you doing?’” Peppy and her puppies smiled at me. “Practicing art,” I said. “Arithmetic is not art,” she said. “Erase that doodling, then get the brown book and do an extra page of addition if you need more to do.” 

My eyes filled as I removed Peppy and his family from my page. Brushed the pink sawdust into a row. Got the brown book, opened it up to the first-grade bookmark, copied down three problems.
I drew a hat on the five. Eyes on the 6. A whole face on the zeros and colored in the 9s, lightly so no one could see. At recess, Sharlane started chanting. “Breese got in trouble. Breese got in trouble.”  I didn’t know why she would do that.

On days we didn’t have school, Peppy and I were free. Actually Peppy was always free because he didn’t have school responsibilities. He didn’t spell ‘dog’ frontwards during class and backwards (with a capitol G) at recess like me. Actually I never figured out what Peppy did with his free time. Not counting that one clue, which had to be an expection as it was a side I’d never seen before -- and almost missed when I did see it, because the long skinny tail coming out his mouth was black like his lips. If you call what’s around a dog’s mouth, lips. That dead mouse could have dropped into his dog dish out of nowhere. Probably the three-legged Tom Cat or a chicken hawk did it, and Peppy gobbled and swallowed without chewing. Some things you can’t explain. I’m thankful he didn’t choke, which can happen if a dog takes too big a bite of a chicken bone, for example. Usually the drumstick’s the problem with that sharp needlestick poking up right beside. All I know is, when Peppy and I were together, we made fun out of nothing and we didn’t hurt anything to do it. We walked in the pasture and ran in the fields and I could feel my name, Breese, like the wind only spelled different.

Saturdays, we didn’t get freedom till after Catechism.
Catechism was down a long dark hall and into a classroom with high windows in the basement of St. Victor’s church. At Catechism, they had lavatories instead of bathrooms. Catechism is where I heard it first: About God making the world out of nothing.

Sister Anne told the few of us sitting folded-hand quiet. She wore a long black robe, white at the neck with a black veil and a white headband snugged low on her forehead with lots of heavenly material hanging around. I couldn’t see how old she was or what color hair she had or if she had any hair under there at all but her face glowed like the Mary on Mom’s dresser.

“Who can tell me what ‘create’ means?” Sister Anne said.
I raised my hand partway. “That’s when you make pictures,” I said, thinking of Teacher’s chalk pictures -- the butcher, the baker, the candy-stick maker, red-winged blackbirds flying out of pie, and little boy blue blasting his horn, the sheep in the meadow, the cows in the corn…

Sister Anne’s eyes crinkled like cookie wax paper. “Not quite what I was thinking. “Create means to make something out of nothing. That’s what God did when he created the world.” She made a moon circle with her hands.

Mom’s cross necklace from when she was a kid, the one I bore on Saturdays, created a green ring around my neck. “Only God has the power to create,” Sister Anne said. She raised her eyebrows on me and smiled like one of God’s elves. 

My eyes had nowhere to hide; Mom chopped my bangs again that morning three inches above my eyebrows, creating more forehead than ever before. She pressed a line of scotch tape on for a guide, trimmed, then yanked the tape off and kept snipping and straightening until there was nothing left to fix.     

Create. I thought about it on the way home from Catechism, riding in the middle of the back seat, squish-squashed between the boys who wriggled like puppies let out of a cage. Sometimes Chick sat up front with Mom, but that day she had four dozen eggs for a passenger.  

I asked Matt what he thought about Sister Anne’s words as soon as we settled in. “I think she’s wrong about God being the only one who can create.” Matt opened his mouth wide. “Did you tell her that?” I shook my head no. “Did you think it while she was watching you?” I nodded. “Did she look in your eyes?” I bit my lip and nodded.
Matt whispered fiercely. “Ooooh, that’s bad. You’re definitely going to hell.” He stared at me like he was sorry to see me go. My heart beat loud and I felt a headache coming on. Then he started in on what he learned that day. 

“Old Sister Catherine listed all the reasons we’d burn in hell for eternity.” He didn’t mean for Mom to hear but his voice broke through the whisper. “Were you misbehaving at catechism, Matt?” Mom talked to Matt’s reflection in the rearview mirror.“Not one bit. Sister was reciting the 10 commandments,” Matt said, then squinted his eyes, leaned into me and whispered. “‘Thinking you can create’ is number 11.”

“Well they shouldn’t’ be that hard to follow, should they?” Mom said, in an encouraging voice. The Catholic school and church were now in the rearview mirror.  
Matt shook his head no, coughed and said under his breath. “Deliver me from evil and get me the hell-o out of there.” Then he started jabbering with Chick about how they’d play cowboys and Indians when they got home and how their teepee was already set up and about who was gonna get which rifle and which knife because they got lots to choose from. 
My body rested back against the seat. I folded my arms, stared at the sky-blue seat back and started making something out of nothing in my mind.

For more on "I Love Iliff", email gjeidy@soclever.com.

A decade ago, Dad sent me hand-drawn instructions for the rustic bench I had admired on his farm. Ron built and customized one for our city yard, and over the next several years we adapted the design into imaginative wood-burned and painted benches for our local school auction. Each bench took on a life of its own.

Seasons passed. In fall, pre-auction, I'd keep Dad posted on our theme for the year, and in spring, post-auction, make him guess what it brought. Though we lived 2,000 miles apart, this annual bench-building act bridged the continent, our relationship and generations.

Dad died last year , and not long after, a mom surfing the web sent an e-mail requesting the bench pattern. I passed it on and she made two benches on behalf of her children's school auction. And now I pass Dad's original sketch on to you. If you build a bench, send us a line and a photo for inclusion in our growing gallery.
 

Gail Jeidy
503-284-2812
gjeidy@soclever.com

Ron's METAL SCULPTURES

Gail's Screenplays
Contact gjeidy@soclever.com for a synopsis or the full screenplay.

TOUCHDOWN
A Sarasota opera singer cut from his company accepts the directorship of a fledgling opera in a tundra of a town where the only culture is football, an avocation he considers garbage until he meets a hometown girl whose passion for garbage and football threatens to change his mind.
(musical, romantic comedy, 100 pages)

H.O.G.
Farmer Horton Oscar Goodfellow III dreams of raising pig hearts for human heart surgeries. But when his high-tech operation goes up in flames, he resurrects a ramshackle barn for a group of misfits who help him realize his dreams in ways he never imagined.
(dramedy, 116 pages)

LILY AND IRIS
Thirteen-year-old Iris is assigned flower-fairy Lily to serve as her logical brain, channeling wild emotion into a secured spot at her dream arts school, with summer camp the first obstacle. Problem is Iris doesn't do logic, and Lily doesn’t compute feelings.
(coming-of-age dramedy, 114 pages)

RETREAT
Exhausted protesters Jess and Evie recharge at a tiny farm in the woods not far from Portland. But when their refuge is interrupted by visits from a mysterious doll, everything they’ve been so sure about is suddenly unclear. Will the best friends survive their stay? Will they clarify their purpose?
(drama/thriller, 97 pages)

DABBLING
The idealistic new First Lady, under pressure to launch a social initiative, clears her head with a power walk through the bowels of the White House where she discovers oil paints left by Dolly Madison with a note instructing their use. Dabney soon discovers that whatever she paints comes true. Now she must deal with the
unexpected consequences of her power as she works towards ending violence in America.
(dramedy, 104 pages)

All properties are original and registered with the Writer’s Guild of America

(Gail's bio)

(publications)

Plus check out my stories on "A Prairie Home Companion"

A Little Feedbag
Fried Corn Meal Mush

I can't stop writing because when I'm not concentrating on words and ideas, my mind wanders to subjects unworthy of my attention. Things like stray socks.

Instead of writing, I calculate the hours I spend each year sorting socks, multiplied by the number of years I've been doing laundry, magnified by the number of my offspring, adding a bonus for the fussy ones tween-aged and older plus a few for the boomerang adult and his friends.

The hay-sock-stacks on my laundry counter become props in my memory game, "Life Socks!" It's similar to the picture game my once five-year-old whomped me at every time: three or four matches and my brain is mush. The rules of "Life Socks!" are: leftover stacks get swept into a wastebasket every six months; occasionally you snag back a loner to match a clinger found inside a shirt; and sometimes stray stacks linger longer. The other day, I said good-bye to toddler anklets with a daisy on one cuff and a butterfly on another. That was the day my once-toddling-memory-whiz- kid turned 10.

This drills down to three truths. Socks are a problem. I need to get out more. I can't stop writing.

First things first: simple white socks. No pair's the same. Crew tops, low tops, socks with gray heels, yellow heels, gray heels and gray tops, yellow heels with yellow toes. Varying degrees of white, mother of pearl and gray. Big swooshes and mini-swooshes with a black stripe. Or three black stripes. Little girl socks with teal or pink or yellow thread at top, others with a pompom on the back, others with the purple pompom cut off because pompoms are nerdy.

How I feel about socks on any given day is an indicator of where I'm at in my writing life. Some people get their undies twisted in a bundle over cluttered papers. Socks get me undone. (And mops with mismatching replacement sponges. Don't get me started there.)

This says a lot about focus and some days it does become about paper. The newspapers and reports and articles with sweet language to work into my novel or screenplay or essay or poem. Recently, I poured over a tower of things I'll read someday feeling proud to have reached the bottom of the pile on one surface in one room, when I came across an artist profile from a Taos gallery I visited recently. (I do get out sometimes.)

Peggy McGivern was the artist, and her wildly emotive painting redrew in my memory. Loose, sweeping strokes of color depicted a pensive, melancholy woman alongside a windswept clothesline of billowing sheets and animated garments. Distorted and dreamy, figurative and landscape at the same time and roughly mid-point on the clothesline a tiny article of clothing, hence the title: "Red Striped Sock."

I think there was just one.

Perhaps life wasn't meant to be all tidy and matching. Perhaps facing the page each day is precisely what I need to sort it all out. - gj

Why I'm a Sustainable Writer

The mail carrier, in brimmed hat with a shower-cap cover, slogs up our steps and shoves the bundle through our too small slot. He doesn't have a particularly sunny disposition, but who would, wearing a pack load of letters in weather like this.

Wonder if one's for me.

I grab the mail and stand by the picture window cradling a Smithsonian/New Yorker taco and let my fingers walk through mailers trumpeting amazing new products I don't want or need. Smart, simple solutions for problems I didn't know I had. What I want, I can't seem to buy, and if I read about another choice, I'm going to puke, wretch, vomit. There is no letter from the editor here. Just another solicitation, what's this? Sustainable. Now that makes sense.

continue "The Sustainable Writer"

Art
My son Robert gave me the vase when he was seven. He made it at school out of clay -- a cylindrical vessel, about four inches high, with a curved handle up top. Gray green with scored lines criss-crossed all around.

This childhood art object has been a treasured object on my kitchen windowsill for 16 years. When we moved about a decade ago, it came with us and found its rightful home on my new window ledge. An altar of sorts.

My vase holds tiny flowers in spring, which never last because the depressed thumbprint of a seven-year-old forms a pool under the handle so miniscule it holds a scant half-thimble of water. So strawflowers are best. Purple ones go good with green. They last forever as long as I take care when I dust.

Last time I dusted, I pulverized the flowers by accident, and I was being careful. I have to be, otherwise I’ll smear the details. Modeling clay isn’t designed to be permanent.

And while I’m coming clean, my vase isn't really a vase. I've known this for some time. Robert told me the cold, hard facts when he was 10:

"It’s a hand grenade Mom. Why do you put flowers in a hand grenade?"

Perhaps I didn’t want to hear it; maybe I don't care. He made it; he gave it to me. It is mine. It will rest on my windowsill as long as I am.

This June Robert turned 24. He gave me a CD of his original music because that's what he's doing now. Creating rap and hip hop beats. Loud, sometimes raucous expressions of his soul. I hear flowers. -gj


What I do when I’m not writing

A couple decades ago, I attended a film conference where producer David Lynch was asked what he’d been working on. He rambled on about his current film projects and concluded with, “and I built a shed.” Many in the audience didn’t quite get the tagged-on clause, having forgotten the question that prompted it 10 minutes earlier, but I found the tidbit delightful.

I thought about Lynch’s answer this past January. Even for puddle-savvy Oregon webfeet, the month was a tough one: a series of dank, drab days filled with more rain than any other month in local history. My success is that I survived not only intact, but in a bright frame of mind. How? By hiding out several hours each day in my full-spectrum basement “studio” engaged in the project shown here, hereafter referred to as The Bench.