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The first Creative Nonfiction Podcast Audio Magazine is on the theme of ISOLATION: Essays about feeling alone.
We bring you essays from Damon Brown, Magin LaSov Gregg, Gina Cardarelli, Kristina Gaddy, and April Nance.
You'll want to share this with your fellow CNFers because we're going to want to showcase the beautiful work done by these five authors, and we want to open up the possibilities to others.
This issue will be free and available for all time on the CNF Pod feed, but in order to access subsequent issues, you'll have to be a member at Patreon.com/CNFPod. The introductory tier, and all the other ones, will give you access to the magazine (among other things).
You'll want to follow the show @CNFPod on social media and plug into what these courageous writers are doing as well.
I hope you enjoy this very first audio magazine and I hope you'll consider submitting your work to the next one (HINT: the new theme and submission guidelines are at the end of this episode!).
From all of us here at CNF Pod HQ: Riff!
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Transcript
Podcast Creation Motivation
00:00:00
Speaker
This is exciting. This is a long time coming. In my desire to make this podcast of greater and greater value to you and the people who will hopefully get on the CNF and bus after you, I had to dig deep. What do writers want? What do they really want? Writers want to be published, right?
00:00:25
Speaker
And here I've got this microphone. I've got this platform. And I got a little bit of game, right? So here we are.
First Audio Magazine & Submissions
00:00:41
Speaker
This is the first audio magazine. I wasn't sure if it would be the last, but I don't think it will. And you're going to have to stick around to this entire episode. And why wouldn't you? To the very end, because there's going to be a call for submissions for the audio mag of 2021. At this point, it might be yearly. It might be twice yearly. I don't know. But there'll be a call for submissions and a call to action.
00:01:10
Speaker
later in the show. So in any case, I put the call out in this this past spring. And at long last, I've put together what I hope is a tradition unlike any other. Take that the masters.
Essays on Isolation
00:01:26
Speaker
When I put the call out, the pandemic had just started and shutdowns were perhaps a month old.
00:01:34
Speaker
People at the time were just starting to feel the crunch, starting to feel the pressure of the isolation. Toilet paper was in short supply, remember those days. As was, strangely, tofu. This pissed me off, but I won't get on that soap box quite yet. Hoarders hoarded and stores had to open early for seniors.
00:01:58
Speaker
And so for the first audio magazine as part of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories, we're happy to bring you five essays on the theme of isolation. Now, the trap was isolation regarding COVID, of course.
00:02:15
Speaker
But I wanted to push the writers further into those moments of isolation that came into their lives, was a part of their lives, and just driven into that corner where you truly feel alone with nothing but yourself to fall back on in many ways.
00:02:36
Speaker
It's times like these that I was fully able to recognize and acknowledge my extreme privilege. My wife and I typically like being sequestered. We're introverts by nature. People drain the hell out of us. We've actually been really, really good during this time. At the start of the whole thing, everyone was wondering, like, oh, how are you guys doing? We're like, kind of never better. So take that world. Take that, friends.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, we've actually been really really good like I said during this time and we both work from home. We both have jobs, thankfully. We own a house with a nice little yard. Over the summer we drink Tallboy IPAs under our apple tree at the end of the work day in the shade. We have some space.
00:03:20
Speaker
Not a lot, but a nice little bit of space for two adults. We live in a neighborhood. We can walk. We have an amazing dog, Hank, at hooray for Hank on Instagram if you want to follow an adorable catahoula mix. And we adopted him right before the coronavirus made landfall. We can afford food, and we have the luxury of isolating. It's not that difficult for us, but I know it is for many people out there, especially the extroverts among us,
00:03:50
Speaker
You know, my wife and I, we have each other and that's more than a lot of people have and things could change on a dime. I work for a Gannett newspaper and as a result, I know I mean close to nothing. If I draw too much attention to myself or put up a stink or push back or make myself heard, it could be my last day.
00:04:10
Speaker
So I retreat into the mundanity of the routine and hope to survive for another day for now. Even when I was at the office, pre-COVID, working in my little silo and where I am in the cluster of desks, I was never really included in anything since I'm not one of the reporters and I'm not one of the editors who actually matter. So I'm kind of just there.
00:04:37
Speaker
I've pitched columns on spec and I'm actually a decent column writer and at my own newspaper writing a spec column and I got silence as rejection twice. Let that sink in. So naturally I don't really overextend myself in that department anymore. So I guess that's its own kind of isolation.
00:05:01
Speaker
But it brings me great pleasure to showcase five incredible essays with five different takes on what it means to be and feel isolated.
Damon Brown's Night Drives
00:05:12
Speaker
So here we go. Here's chapter one, The Endless Road.
00:05:16
Speaker
Damon Brown is an entrepreneur and working from home. He was the primary caretaker of his young sons. And when his son couldn't sleep, Damon had no choice but to get in the car with his boy and drive. Here's Damon.
00:05:43
Speaker
When my son was young, he would get up in the middle of the night wide awake. I would want my wife to sleep, and when we were at my in-laws' house, not to disturb the rest of the household. So I'd grab my pants, search for my keys in the lightless house, and then grab him and household to the car in the dark. Our summer baby must have been around six months old, as I distinctly remember seeing my breath in the chilly California winter air.
00:06:11
Speaker
He may fuss, but once we started moving, everything would grow silent. I remember the hallmark Southern California traffic would be virtually gone, aside from an occasional fast-moving pickup truck or slow driver with an out-of-state license plate. The stars would be clear and bright.
00:06:32
Speaker
I'd occasionally binge on a business podcast, so I was just getting into the pleasures of audio rather than reading. Being a baby's primary caretaker means you can't just sit and read a book, as your hands have to have other immediate needs. Often, though, it was just me, my thoughts, and the endless road.
00:06:54
Speaker
I imagined being a New York cab driver, an active participant in the scene, but still objective enough to appreciate the spectacle of the night, and tired from the time of day, but lucid enough to drive. It was like removing a filter from my emotional landscape. Odd memories from childhood, assumptions I suddenly realized were opinion, not fact, and new seemingly obvious business ideas floated to the blank dashboard ahead.
00:07:24
Speaker
It would happen anytime from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., and because he'd often wake up if I lifted him out, it wasn't unusual for me to drive until just before dawn. I'd come back tired, of course, but also invigorated, as if I'd taken a long, hot bath, or had amazing post-codo moment. It was as if I discovered something that made everything clearer.
00:07:49
Speaker
It took me many nights, though, to embrace this chaos. I remember being angry at my son for not sleeping, as if he were somehow doing it just to get under my skin, or perhaps I was doing something wrong and was, despite my desire to love, just an ill-equipped father. I would feel bitter because it was my job to chauffeur him around, a job that no one else could do and a job that my wife and I decided to have a baby I was stupid enough to elect to do.
00:08:19
Speaker
I sat salty, back sore from lack of sleep and arms tired from being at 10 and 2, as I drove for hours with literally no particular place to go. I was being pulled in directions I didn't want to be, physically and otherwise. Once I began to accept the interruption, then I started to relax.
00:08:43
Speaker
As an introvert, I realized these one, two, or three hours of silence could be part of how I recharge, like a bone of solitude away from the daily fatherhood ruckus. I began to lean into these moments, and when you thrust hard in the middle of the night, I embraced the challenge. The white space is, by definition, uncomfortable.
00:09:08
Speaker
It is the time before a decision is made. It is the gap from that first action to the next action. It is often without a definitive end and sometimes without even a definitive beginning. It is also a gift. Flowing between here and there, the white space gives us the objectivity to see how we operate. It exposes our systems.
00:09:31
Speaker
It widens the moment between response and reaction as it doesn't allow us to jump to the next conclusion. And if we do, our reaction just sits in space like a vacuum for us to see and digest. This clarity is a rare opportunity. All things eventually conclude, even the moments when we are too distant to see the shore and too far to see the destination.
00:09:58
Speaker
My son will be seven this summer. His younger brother just turned four.
Megan Lissov-Greg on Grief
00:10:03
Speaker
The endless road has ended. And that white space now is becoming a distant memory in itself.
00:10:23
Speaker
Damon Brown helps side hustlers, solopreneurs, and other non-traditional creatives bloom. His 25th book is Build From Now, How to Know Your Power, See Your Abundance, and Nourish the World. Comes out January 28th of next year. It's the follow-up to his critically acclaimed title, Bring Your Worth. Join his creative community at JoinDamon.me.
00:10:51
Speaker
Now we move on to chapter two, These Empty Cups by Megan Lissov-Greg. This issue of the CNF pot audio mag deals with isolation in its many forms. And what could be more isolating than grief? Of setting a table for a lost one? Of miscarrying? Megan takes it from here. Alice mugs. Bone China, Cheshire Cat, Alice and the Queen of Hearts, Hedgehog Balls,
00:11:21
Speaker
First apartment furnishings I bought at 23, after leaving the love I thought I'd marry and bear babies with, but would not, could not, and so put an ocean between us. My mother had been dead two years. Alice soothed my orphan self, my single self, my maybe no baby ever self.
00:11:44
Speaker
Alice always finds her way back home. I write on Instagram on first quarantine Monday as I sip coffee and taste Clorox. When I set the barren mug down, I twitch at details not noticed in 16 years. Alice's worry arched brow, her oh shit grim.
00:12:07
Speaker
Two Delta earrings, silver, four triangles, peacock iridescence. My husband gifted two Delta earrings to me after I miscarried our first pregnancy, before blood tests, before diagnosis, before a doctor said Lyme. I was almost 37, exhausted, aching, fisting doxycycline, azithromycin. Who knew when we could try again? Should we try again? Change me.
00:12:37
Speaker
What I wanted my illness to do because shouldn't suffering ennoble changed me. What I thought years before the sickness when I crossed the Mississippi and entered Louisiana's ripe river land. There in that Delta, I rebuilt myself in Greek, which my husband studied. Delta looks like a triangle.
00:12:59
Speaker
Delta means change in mathematics, my worst high school subject, wherein health class and upside down Delta stood for uterus. In that suffocating classroom, chalky residue watched me like a phantom. Vista Allegra, hand-painted Portuguese Castello Bronco, sea blue, sunshine yellow.
00:13:23
Speaker
could not justify the extravagance of wedding China, did not register. In the Deep South, my attitude was anathema, equivalent to refusing porch swings, sweet tea, and dessert. But one night in a shop, dishes gleamed on a middle shelf. The pattern invoked 17th century embroidery, high summer, women's weaving, browning sonnets.
00:13:46
Speaker
Soon, eight-place settings graced our tables during healthy years, not in sick years when I forgot who I'd been before. Strange how the pandemic makes me remember prior illness. Fluency and fear, confusion, isolation, uncertainty, fear of missing out, loneliness, the infectious nature of loss.
00:14:07
Speaker
Someone on social media suggests enacting new rituals. I choose after dinner tea and make a vista allegra service. In Portuguese, vista allegra means happy views. I realized this day, March 20th, was my due date. In another life, a happier view, I'd be serving a two-year-old birthday cake, placing three plates on the table and beside them, these empty cups.
00:14:37
Speaker
One delta earring. Silver, two triangles, mangled peacock iridescence. My husband unclenches a fist, holds a trampled earring to my face.
00:14:47
Speaker
What's this? Oh, no. One night I placed the pair in my pockets as I disinfected the kitchen. Then I've thrown my pants into the laundry basket, earrings stowed. Don't worry, we'll find them. Says my husband, so optimistic he did not think Trump would get elected. Thinks I can conceive again at 39 or 40. We searched the dryer, shake clean laundry, run our hands along each pocket and seam.
00:15:12
Speaker
Our palms cup empty air. What use is one broken earring, one empty vessel? Elijah's cup. Montgomery ward glass, fingerprints smudge on bowl, stick stem. My grandmother taught me to set a place for Elijah to sit a wine glass on her Formica table, sterile as a surgery. Earlier in the day, I'd watched her Windex each surface, no germs in her apartment.
00:15:40
Speaker
Was she thinking of her firstborn then, her boy, lost to contagion? We never said his name. But she took me to the overgrown cemetery where he lay in the ground near her parents. Hebrew letters marched across the stones. In English, a baby's marker, smaller than a shoebox, said four and a half months. On Pesach, when I sat down Elijah's cup, I thought about that half.
00:16:06
Speaker
how it held promise and limitation, pride and sorrow, his barely-begun arc. Out the window, dandelions withered in the sun. I poured manashevits. She swept hair from my face. Did she wonder what other hair on other children might have grown? Eliyahu ha-navi, we sang at Seder, when someone opened a door, recalled out into the night.
00:16:32
Speaker
Warmth bloomed in my chest, that stubborn hope of the ancestors, our millennia of longing. When I turned to the table, drops of wine settled at the bottom of Elijah's cup. Pink residue filmed the glass. I pretended not to see my grandfather's wine stained lips.
00:16:51
Speaker
We clapped our hands and applauded this cup drained, dry as the ancient sea bed our people crossed. This emptiness, a blessing, the separation, a miracle. Miriam's Cup Italian Warmioli Rocco Romantic Waterglass
00:17:11
Speaker
I did not mean to leave a cup for Miriam, even though she is my namesake. The Hebrew name my mother gave me to honor her Riga-born grandfather. Miriam Batzeldah is what I have been called at my bat mitzvah, my mother's funeral, my wedding, where no parent stood at the chuppah. My Hebrew name, a sacred secret, binds me to my biblical predecessor, the lone female writer in the first five books.
00:17:38
Speaker
Miriam, a wordweaver, reminds me how strands of life connect, how I experience joy and sorrow together, not singularly, how one moment of grief unspools all the losses that came before.
00:17:54
Speaker
At Seder, her unintended glass sits beside me, holding water near Elijah's cup. From an iPad Haggadah, a reed of Miriam's well. Her living waters, which wandered the desert with our people, enslaved their wilderness thirst. The Torah does not mention Miriam's genealogy. No boring begats follow her name. Not a wife nor a mother, she's counted nonetheless among great prophets.
00:18:22
Speaker
Her waters regenerated all who drank, sustained, healed, replenished. Tonight, I lift her glass to my lips and will her to refill me. If only I could heed the quarantine commandments, stop wanting, say amen. So be it. Dayenu. Enough.
00:18:49
Speaker
Megan Lassave Gregg lives, writes, and teaches in Frederick, Maryland.
Gina Cardarelli's Mental Health Journey
00:18:54
Speaker
Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post. Dallas Morning News, Bellingham Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, Under the Gum Tree, Full Grown People, Solstice Literary Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine.
00:19:10
Speaker
Shout out. And among other venues, a Pushcart Prize nominee. She's writing a memoir about love, loss, and going forth. Big ups. And we have come to chapter three. Quit by Gina Cardarelli.
00:19:31
Speaker
Ever wonder what the deal is with all those side effects for prescription medications you see on TV? Especially the one for quitting smoking while trying to quit smoking cigarettes. For a man, the medicine pushed Gina inward into the unknown recesses of her mind and psychosis. Here's Gina.
00:19:53
Speaker
The thing about psychosis is that you can't recognize it from within the experience. Collecting other people's recycling, trying on clothes in the street from boxes set on the curb, peeling stickers from poles in Portland, photographing trash, talking to transient graffiti artists, or talking to crows might have been my cue, but no.
00:20:16
Speaker
So it began with going to a bar with a co-worker one night in March, exactly two years before COVID shut things down in the US, when bar outings and physical contact were all green lights. Go. Live. I agreed because he said his female friend would meet us there. It made it seem safer. Plus, it was Taco Tuesday. But soon after the tacos and beers and whiskey, he proposed walking to his place.
00:20:45
Speaker
I was queuing up songs to distract myself while sitting between them when their hands shifted to body parts. My thigh, her hair, his neck. I was surprised to feel warmth thrown through me when he touched my thigh and when my lips met hers.
00:21:04
Speaker
In the following weeks, he was suddenly at my apartment more, and I was at his, and I was focused only on being a more spontaneous me. A relationship, not me. I just wanted to have more fun and be more experimental. Besides, his daughter was my age.
00:21:23
Speaker
In April, our bar tabs weighed heavy in my wallet. My alone time shrank. My bed was empty more nights as spring crept on. My drinking increased and along with it, smoking. He merely teased me about smoking, at first. It wasn't until a muggy May night when he told me a story about his allergy to tobacco.
00:21:47
Speaker
Only a week later, I resolved to quit, and three weeks later began a prescription to help me do so. I read the four thin fold-out warning pages carefully. The severe side effects seemed as rare as seeing a flamingo in Portland. Aggression, mania, increased depression, suicidal behavior, and more. I also ignored the warning to not drink while on the medication.
00:22:14
Speaker
June was hot, July hotter. I was nearly living at his place for the air conditioning. I rarely slept more than four hours at a time. Something shifted within that so that I was at his beck and call. My body was his squeeze toy. 12, 2, or 5 a.m. romps whenever he wanted. Cigarettes after sex are the best.
00:22:41
Speaker
By then, I was drowning myself in booze, but no longer smoking. He had told me not to quit for him. He eventually told me he didn't want a relationship. He always told me we needed to be secretive. I refused.
00:22:59
Speaker
In the end, it was nearly fatal. Those rare side effects took hold. The call that alerted my closest confidant that something was seriously wrong occurred on August 3rd at 3 a.m. He answered, he hates me. He hates me. I sobbed to my friend in California while sitting on a curb in Portland clutching the man's house key as he lay passed out on the couch. The next morning, I kissed him goodbye at seven as if nothing happened.
00:23:29
Speaker
and drank until clacking in at nine. He was off to see the friend from the Taco Tuesday night by noon that day, pushing me aside like wrinkled bedsheets. After my first ER visit in early August, I was referred to a program for crisis stabilization. In the first group, morning meditation, I hallucinated about him invading me. Two more ER visits followed, along with new medications.
00:24:00
Speaker
The program was meant to last two weeks, but lasted eight for me. But the late September nights of sitting outside in the stoop, watching homeless methetics wander, have felt the most like being alone in my mind. By then, I smoked simply to pass the nighttime. When the sun rose and my roommate went to work,
00:24:23
Speaker
I would often listen to music turned up all the way and make piles of whatever I found on walks to try to fill the apartment's emptiness. I took walks pretending I was a model of telepathy. My clothes hung loose by then, adding to the effect. The most isolating part was when the realm of sanity seemed to be on me. Even communication was difficult. Tried to convey the signs from the universe I was interpreting.
00:24:53
Speaker
or long buried rage towards relatives, but couldn't connect. But ever so slowly, it began to lift. By mid-October, I no longer believed that every piece of city sidewalk trash was a message to me from God. Even the crows were beyond my late September ultra-fluorescent thoughts, back when I had tried to talk to them and left them silver metal pieces and nickels, and once a muffler I found beside the street.
00:25:24
Speaker
In December, after watching the end scene of a movie that played Where's My Mind?, I turned to my roommate and said, I remember when I lost my mind. No, he said, you remember when you got it back.
00:25:40
Speaker
The isolation of quarantine took me back to those nights of being alone in my mind, idling and lost, unable to distinguish reality from my imagination. That's the type of isolation that feels beyond hope or reach. Being unable to socialize or leave home is nothing like being unable to escape a fractured mind.
00:26:10
Speaker
Gina Cartarelli is working on a book-length version of this story. She enjoys cycling, playing softball, swimming, and making woven paper collages. Her art is on Instagram at gwizkid. That's G-E-E-W-H-I-Z-K-Y-D.
Christina Gaddy's Medical Experience
00:26:33
Speaker
And for this isolation themed audio magazine, we are now coming up on chapter four, intensive care by Christina Gaddy. Christina Gaddy is a cancer survivor, plays the fiddle, plays the banjo. She's quite joyful in her essay. She's left wondering what's real and what's not. Was it all in her head? Was it all an illusion? How was any of it possible at all? Here's Christina.
00:27:08
Speaker
The world begins to appear before me, or at least I think it does. I can hear water drips through a fountain, gurgling slowly, sounding like words obscured by water running over rocks. I hear the droning minor chords of a Swedish fiddle tune. My mom must be here. I can hear her voice drifting in from somewhere.
00:27:37
Speaker
Then I can see a green film and unnatural photo filter distorts the small amount of light coming into the dark room. Excuse me, excuse me. I call to people walking past. They don't stop. I am a television program on mute. I am wearing camouflage, indiscernible to the human eye. I am a ghost.
00:28:06
Speaker
The limits of the space are far from me, yet I am the only thing here. The only life I see are the neon orange veins pulsing on the wall. I want to move, get up, and turn off the fountain, find the voices, find the musicians, and my mom. They must be nearby, just out of reach.
00:28:29
Speaker
but I cannot move. My arms are fixed. This room is nowhere I've been, and yet I'm trapped in it. If I am not here, the room would be empty, but I am here strapped to the whiteness, and yet the room is still desolate. A minute ago, I looked as if I was sleeping. A minute ago, I was sleeping.
00:28:55
Speaker
The room has no fountain, no flowing water. Instead, narcotics, benzodiazepines, and anesthetics drip into my veins. The air that moves through me isn't music. A tube disappearing into my throat pushes oxygen into my lungs at the rate of 13 breaths per minute. My mom is not here. The machines are my only company.
00:29:23
Speaker
They cannot answer when I ask what these tubes are doing. They cannot tell me how long I've been here. They cannot explain the sounds I'm hearing or the things I'm seeing. They express no care, no worry, no sorrow, no frustration. They do their job, and in this I must find comfort. The drugs, the machine, and the sleep were keeping me alive.
00:29:56
Speaker
Later, they will tell me what I don't know and can't remember. A week earlier, after a nurse practitioner told me I needed to go to the hospital and I probably had leukemia, I felt like I couldn't breathe.
00:30:12
Speaker
Awful, immature white blood cells had been flowing through my veins, risking explosion and poisoning my body. The doctor had given me pills that made all those cells mature, and they grew and got stuck in my bones and in my organs and in my lungs. The cells filled my lungs up, just like water would if you were drowning.
00:30:38
Speaker
My blood oxygen levels plummeted. The doctors thought they could give me oxygen. They could hook me up to a machine that forced air into my lungs. But that didn't work either.
00:30:52
Speaker
So then it was sedation, the ventilator, and an induced coma in the medical intensive care unit. I would be detached from my body. The tubes would be breathe for me, eat for me, heal me, and then I would be put back together when I was strong enough. When I was asleep, the only visitors I had were those in my dreams, which I don't remember anymore.
00:31:21
Speaker
When I woke up, the memories of being taken to the ICU had disappeared. When I call out to the shadows beyond the glass, the movements of what I think are people outside of my room, no one responds. I ask for help like a rabbit asking for food.
00:31:44
Speaker
My mouth must be sealed shut. My hands are tied down. If I could wave, if I could get up, I could say something. They might see me. I'm supposed to be asleep. It shouldn't matter whether someone is in the room or not.
00:32:05
Speaker
No one can tell me what happened next, because I am the only one in the room. And yet, they tell me I must be remembering it wrong. Now, I am outside of myself. You, this weakened being lying in the bed, find strength and force your upper body off of it. This is the only way out.
00:32:28
Speaker
You manage to lean forward just enough to bend your head backward, claw-like, grabbing the tubes. A swift pull. They slide out like an alien retreating from its host. With them come mucus and phlegm. You must start to cough.
00:32:48
Speaker
I must have coughed. Then I am no longer alone. You've pulled your tubes out, someone tells me. The nurse tries to calm me down. She's Asian with dyed blue hair. We have a whole conversation about partners and love and understanding. I'm glad she's listening and that she's there. My mom waits to be let into the room. I knew they were just out of reach.
00:33:15
Speaker
Pulling out the tubes had set off alarms and sent them make you into a panic. Nurses rushed in. What else would they do when a patient who is supposed to be in a medically induced coma on a ventilator self-extubates, bringing herself back to reality when she is supposed to be far away in her healing process? The medical case notes don't include the desperate lingo, paged to the relatively new anesthesiology resident on duty. If someone asked me, this is what I would say happened that night in the ICU.
00:33:46
Speaker
I also know it might not have happened like this. My family tells me I can't be remembering it correctly. There is no nurse with blue hair. There is no Asian nurse. I was alone on a lot of mind altering drugs and without enough oxygen to properly form memories. The doctors also had no explanation for how, when sedated and strapped down, I was able to wake up and pull out those tubes. That should have been a possible.
00:34:16
Speaker
The explanation I give is that the desperation of not being alone was stronger than the sedation and the straps on the bed.
00:34:33
Speaker
Christina Gaddy's writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Baltimore Magazine, The Baltimore Sun, OZY or Ozzy. I don't know how to pronounce that one. Atlas Obscura, among others. She has received awards and fellowships from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Logan Nonfiction Program, and the Library of Congress.
00:34:55
Speaker
Most recently, she is the author of Flowers in the Gutter, the true story of the Edelweiss Pirates, teenagers who resisted the Nazis. And at last, that brings us to chapter five.
April Nance's 50th Birthday Reflections
00:35:08
Speaker
It's my birthday, please wave. April Nance recently turned 50 years old, a milestone birthday that couldn't be spent in the usual ways on account of, you know, this whole thing.
00:35:22
Speaker
So many people haven't been able to celebrate the little things that we took for granted, take for granted, graduations, birthday parties, proms, football games, funerals. Here's April with our final essay. Today I turn 50.
00:35:42
Speaker
A few months ago I pictured this day differently. I pictured a dinner party with lots of my family and friends sitting at a long table at a favorite restaurant. Noise, laughter and clinking glasses. What I'll get is takeout served at the round table on our patio with my husband and two sons circled up with me. We'll watch Raising Arizona together later while we eat ice cream cake.
00:36:05
Speaker
A few days after the governor of North Carolina issued a stay-at-home order, I went to Ingalls, the local grocery store. I hadn't been in about a week, so it wasn't panic buying, just plain old routine shopping. I went early and it wasn't crowded, but there were more people than usual. They were out of wipes for grocery carts, so I wished I'd brought my own. I wanted to touch my face the entire time I was there.
00:36:30
Speaker
There was plenty of food, especially produce. The main bread aisle was empty, except for bagels and rye bread. Maybe because we're in the South. There was still bread in the bakery, so we'll be having fancy brioche rolls with hot dogs. The toilet paper shelves were empty. I wasn't planning on buying any though, because we still have most of a 12 pack at home and I'm not a monster. There was a sign posted, limit one package per customer.
00:36:58
Speaker
At the checkout, all cashiers wore gloves. I told the woman ringing up my sale and bagging my groceries that I was grateful for the job she was doing. She said she'd been picking up shifts for some of the older employees. The worst part was ringing up sales for people she knew were buying more than they needed, especially toilet paper before the limits were posted. She said it was depressing to see that side of people.
00:37:21
Speaker
Before I left, I saw a friend I hadn't seen in a few weeks that I normally would have hugged. But we kept that socially distant force filled between us. I never realized how instinctively I moved toward people to hug them. I miss that. This whole stay-home, stay-safe thing that we're going through together has got me thinking about when I was put on bed rest before my first son was born.
00:37:47
Speaker
It was early June and we were living in our first house in the cul-de-sac of Linstone Court. I heard the church bells from Gross United Methodist Church chime every hour and watched rabbits run through the yard. The kinds of things you never notice when you get up and go to work every day. My only job was to be still and keep track of the baby's movements. I remember reading Anne of Green Gables and being doted on by close friends and family.
00:38:15
Speaker
At the end of three weeks, that doting was transferred from me to a baby boy who was a little on the small side, but otherwise healthy. We're lucky because the neighborhood we live in now borders the Blue Ridge Parkway. A walk that begins in suburban Happy Valley, a communities of sixties and seventies era ranch homes, manicured lawns and dogwoods and azaleas blooming can turn into a walk in the woods.
00:38:43
Speaker
I found comfort on the trail through a forest of oak trees. There's a creek and wildflowers. The white petals of early bloodroot have been followed by the purple blooms of wild geranium. Fuzzy fiddleheads are unfurling into shiny green ferns. Over the course of these few weeks, I've seen maple leaves grow from the size of tiny stars to the size of my hand. The sunny trail is now shaded. Nature goes on. We wait.
00:39:14
Speaker
I am not great at waiting. My longing is to move forward. Home is the place you leave, it is not the place you stay. If I stay, I am forced to reckon with not only dusty baseboards and junk drawers, but also the unresolved stuff of life, the challenging and the painful. I want to be distracted from all that.
00:39:34
Speaker
If I have another errand to run, another pair of shoes to buy, another meeting or fundraiser to attend, I get to drive away, at least for a while. Now I'm trapped.
00:39:47
Speaker
Walking through the neighborhood a couple of weeks ago I saw a car with streamers tied to its hatchback, and words painted on the back window. A young couple smiled and waved from the front seat. I thought maybe they were newlyweds in a just-married getaway car. But the painted words were, Seventh birthday, please wave. The couple's daughter was buckled in the back seat, smiling and waving like a princess in a parade. I waved back.
00:40:16
Speaker
Maybe today I'll paint 50th birthday, please wave, on my car to celebrate. The turn of every decade leads to reflection, maybe none more than 50, when you realize dozens of things don't turn out like you thought they would, but sometimes they still turn out surprisingly sweet. You can say things like, this too shall pass, with more wisdom and experience. And hopefully folks will believe you.
00:40:51
Speaker
April Nance is a native of western North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and two sons. As a writer, she is drawn to reflecting on the stuff of everyday life and how personal stories provide insight into our collective past and future. Her work has appeared in The Great Smokies Review, where it was twice selected as editor's choice.
00:41:14
Speaker
I want to thank you for listening to this first ever audio magazine.
Gratitude & Future Plans
00:41:19
Speaker
What an experience, really. My heartfelt thanks goes out to those who submitted essays and to the tireless work of Damon Brown, Megan Lassoff-Greg, Gina Cartarelli, Christina Gaddy, and April Nance. They endured many back and forths with my nitpicky editing
00:41:40
Speaker
editing style, I mean demanding editor, but my thanks goes out also to you, the listener, your why I make this show. Primarily, it's an interview program, as many of you know, but now with this new wing to publish essays, it's a special experience and I hope to do more.
00:42:02
Speaker
So I'm happy to announce, you ready for this? In the closing minutes of this episode, here it is, a new call for submissions on a new theme. You ready? Here it is, one word, that's it, summer. Summer dreams, summer flings, the boys of summer, summer festivals, summer camp, summer vacation, summer jobs, summer, summer, summer time.
00:42:31
Speaker
Don't we all come of age during summer? It's all about summer. Essays about summer. Essays should be no longer than 2,000 words. That's roughly a 15-minute read. Submit your essays to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com with the subject line, Summer.
00:42:51
Speaker
deadline will be the first day of spring, give or take. So I'm going to just go out on a limb and call it March 21st 2021 is a hard deadline. I want to publish the second audio mag on the first day of summer. So this should give all of us the time we need to do this.
00:43:24
Speaker
If this audio magazine was produced by me, Brendan O'Mara, as part of Exit 3 Media, and the aforementioned five authors, you can follow the show on social media at cnfpod. The show takes a lot of work, but the audio magazine was a different production altogether. So you can now contribute to our new Patreon page for productions of this nature and to help subsidize the interviews you've come to enjoy.
00:43:51
Speaker
That's patreon.com slash cnfpod. So all that said, I'm just gonna leave you with that. I hope you enjoyed this. Please share this with people who you think might get a real kick out of these wonderful essays that these five wonderful writers put together. So all that said, stay cool cnfers. Stay cool forever.