Greetings, poetic earthlings. I’m pleased and honored to be on deck once again in the BAP blogosphere. It has been a while since I’ve written here and a lot has happened since my previous gig. The last time I blogged for BAP was in the fall of 2011. I remember this time frame because it coincided with my brief stint as a grad student in the Masters of Counseling program at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
At that time, I was employed as the college’s alumni director (even though I am not an alumna of Lakeland). Now I’m the grant writer there, but no matter what one does at Lakeland, staff gets to take classes for free. Back then I thought, “What am I waiting for? Get a new master’s degree for heaven’s sake. It costs nothing!” A person can only go so far in life with a master’s degree in art history. (In a previous life, I had gone pretty far, though: 20 years as an art museum educator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Getty Museum, and then the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan. But I digress.)
Art educator, alumni director, therapist? What was I thinking? As much as I relished learning about pathologies, the ethics of counseling, and how to be sensitive to humans of all stripes, I realized that at my advanced age, becoming a therapist was not a stellar idea. I had this notion that I wanted to blend poetry and therapy to help people become more self-aware, more emotionally healthy. But I realized that, like they admonish on the airplane, I needed to secure my own air mask first. If anyone was going to get healed by writing poetry, it was going to be me. Selfish, but true.
So, I dropped out of the program after two semesters in order to focus on my writing. (I must digress again to say that after a strong start at Vassar in 1980 under the tutelage of Nancy Willard and Brett Singer, I slowed to a complete halt and did not start writing poetry again seriously until age 48. So to say I determined I had to focus on my writing means something particular in this context. I was choosing not to let my writing get stifled again. How could there be time for poetry if I was launching a new career? Better to stay in the career in which I found myself and allow poetry to grow up around it. Right?)
What happened next was I had some health issues that required surgeries and extended hospital stays and bed rest. I was off work for eight weeks, during which time I thought it would be a good idea to try my hand at memoir. (I read two at that time that inspired me, Peggy Shumaker’s Just Breathe Normally and John Daniel’s Looking After.) I veered off poetry a bit to tell the story of my life. I wrote over a hundred pages, but the memoir remains unfinished. I don’t know which arc of my life is the focus of the tale, so the text lies dormant for now, dangling, or maybe I should say, hovering.
I recovered from my health woes, but on the heels of that fiasco, my father fell ill at the end of 2012. Georg Vihos had just moved from Hamtramck, Michigan to Hallandale, Florida, to establish a “winter studio” for his art, when all his systems began failing. My sister and I went down to retrieve him and convinced him to move to Sheboygan. My next nine months were spent fretting over my dad, who endured a lot of pain and hardship as he shut down.
He passed on September 26, 2013. Soon after he died, I started a blog in his honor called Frying the Onion. I named it this because dad once told me that if he ever felt out of sorts or sad, he would fry up an onion and pretty soon, the smell would fill the house and make him feel calm and cheerful again. I used the blog as a field in which to exercise my grief. It helped. If nothing else, friends could follow me and comment and mourn with me. My words had meaning, not just for me, but for others. That is what every writer hopes for, isn’t it? To touch unseen readers.
The days leading up to Georg’s death were the saddest days of my life. As I approach the first anniversary of his leaving, many of the same feelings are rearing their ugly, grief-stricken heads. I am grateful to have the opportunity to blog for you during this trying time. Like frying an onion, writing gives me a chance to peel back layers and reveal what is hidden, stirring it into something buttery and carmelized, something therapeutic, an aromatic gift that makes me weep. I put on my air mask, keep breathing. I write, I share, I heal.
In the coming week on this blog, I look forward to examining with you some lessons learned from a variety of teachers, some poets, some not, some who arrived in unexpected packages. For today, I close with a poem on the power of the onion, by Lakeland colleague, friend, and mentor, Karl Elder:
Onion
Onion, Adam’s
Apple of Lucifer,
So long you’ve
Remained your own translucent
Tupperware
I hate
Halving your
Transcendental self
And am off-center
Having invaded your
Brilliant boundary
Against my wishes,
Against the grain,
Yet, Onion
Any way I slice you
On the cutting board,
Rendering a map
Of your world,
Concurrent lines,
Topographical
In spots I’ve fumbled
The dull paring knife,
I cannot now
Nor ever put
You together again
Though you fall
In piles of perfect
Ivory rings,
Treasure of Proserpine,
Poem in Many Parts,
Favorite of Mine,
My stewing
Gives you cause
For sleeplessness,
Your life
Extending long after your death,
You Haunt,
My teeth
Reek of your anguish,
My words
Your flesh
For I have known
The onion
Already,
Known all the onions—
Onion,
I weep for
Your radiant pain.
–Karl Elder
“Onion” appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of Salt Fork Review and was posted on November 1, 2013 on Frying the Onion.