A Winter Haiku – in memory of Midori

[a short story in ten short poems

I reread God’s Mountain, by O. Snow, and thought about Midori.]

The summit rises / a snowy, distant haven; / time will not stop me.

The snow in my path / is no longer fluffy white / but brown and slushy.

A steep icy trail / ascends before my unshod feet / and freezes my steps.

Beside the pathway / bodies sit, tired and worn, / baggage strewn around.

Lamenting, wailing / fill my silent trek, echoing / the canyon’s answers.

The apex is near; / futility closer still. / Darkness creeps forward.

Daylight breaks the sky, / bouncing shards on ice and snow, / slivering the cold.

At the top I smile / my lips curving in delight. / I have made it here.

Melting snow makes way, / A rutted, muddy road shows / dark, wet puddles and stones.

Starting, slipping, stop. / The journey calls me onward / to the next mountain.

Book Club Start: God’s Mountain by Midori Bamba

For this next book I’m going into a slightly different direction with God’s Mountain by Midori Bamba. This is another novella, since so many of us are getting busy again right now and finding time to read can be hard.

I knew Midori (and honestly, I know most of the writers I’ve read books for these book club posts). Midori passed away last September from cancer. I wasn’t able to go see her before she died because of the pandemic.

She didn’t want to give me COVID just because she had cancer. I think she was bitter about her diagnosis. That came across in her emails and socially distanced conversations. I think anyone would; she was diagnosed at stage 4. It was basically a fait accompli that she was dying.

She was also conscious that this brought back memories of my mother’s diagnosis of stage 4 lymphoma back in 2012. My mom died in 2018.

Midori was deeply religious, but also deeply Japanese (she was born in Otaru), and I think this book will reveal something of that. Please join me in this read. You can find God’s Mountain at Amazon.

Book Club Finish: A Timely Revolution

I hope you got to finish book 1 in this series by Tempie W. Wade. Alert, there may be spoilers here if you haven’t, so proceed with caution.

Let’s continue discussing character; especially the advice that you have to like a main character from the beginning to keep reading.

I didn’t like Maggie. She is young and a bit selfish when the book starts, and frankly, she pisses me off. However, the time travel aspect kept me reading long enough to discover that Maggie grows and develops into someone I start to like by the end.

Writing wisdom states that a reader needs to connect with a character and like them to keep reading. This is an example of how to not do that, and succeed. Maggie matures in this book, and though is sometimes a bit of a “Mary-Sue”, in the end that makes her mistakes much worse.

This is an author who did her research into history, but then gives us characters that our modern sensibilities can relate to. Hint hint: I mean Gabe. You want to know more about Gabe, read the book.

Not just the main character, but side characters (like Gabe) who I hope will stay with us through the series. I mean, there are 5 more books after this one!

I hope Maggie keeps developing and growing, and that I learn to not just like her as a character, but grow to love her. I think that is definitely in the cards.

Did you like Maggie from the start? Why? Or why not? Let me know in the comments.

Mourning Haiku

So on Monday, a friend let me know she was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in the lungs and is foregoing treatment. She is older, and I can understand her decision.

My husband’s grandmother made the same decision when she was diagnosed over a decade ago with breast cancer at 82. She lived for a few more good years, without going through the sometimes painful and stressful treatment.

My mother, who died a couple of years ago, was only 62 when she received her diagnosis and nearly died–and her decision to undergo treatment was made by my brother (for the record, I would have made the same decision in that instant). We had six more years to spend with her, but the treatment was almost a year long and brutal for her. Her last three years was very hard as the initial treatment to save her life was radiation on the brain, and eventually caused early dementia.

I am eternally grateful for those extra years, though.

This news from my writing friend threw me. It is hard losing folx you love. I’ve lost more people to cancers, friends and family alike, than I ever thought I would when I was younger. I’ve lost a younger friend who battled breast cancer three times (I found out from the newspaper); three women from my church (two more who survived–so far).

My grandfather said once that it was hard to read the obituary columns when you recognize the names you see more than you don’t. I now know what he meant, the feeling he felt.

I don’t read obituaries. Not anymore.

And as I’ve discussed before, I write when I mourn.

This is a little different, as I’m mourning before she’s gone. Which may be easier–I know I have things I should say, and though she does not want visitors (talking causes coughing which causes pain), I have written some emails to her, expressing my joy at meeting her, reading her writing, and eating her wonderful Japanese cooking.

I’ve also let her know that I will deeply miss her and that my heart is already aching for her.

So, here is her poem:

For Midori

My aching heart hears
one last gasped breath of friendship
and you will be gone.

Sayonara