Welcome to new subscribers, and welcome back to everyone else! Thank you for reading this newsletter! When I last posted a year ago, I was in Ireland collecting data for my memoir about Ireland and my ancestors. I had intended to continue giving you updates about my research and writing, but I returned home with COVID which turned into a rather long recovery, and to family health issues, and never got back to this writing.
This was my first full school year retired from being a college professor. I admit, while I do miss my students and colleagues, I have not missed class prepping or grading. I waited to retire until I had alternative ways to spend my time that would bring me joy. I’ve certainly found them, albeit perhaps a bit ambitiously.
Since last September. I finished the first draft of my memoir, had a developmental editor review it, and I’m about 2/3 done with the first round of revisions. I’m hoping it will be ready to send out to beta readers by the end of the year. In writing the memoir, I’ve been participating in Author’s Lab with Charlotte Lit (Charlotte Center for Literary Arts) and their support, education, coaching, camaraderie, and friendships have been invaluable. I love the working title of my memoir, although it will undoubtably be changed by an agent or publisher, Searching through Time: A Memoir of my Irish Motherline. I’m writing about my experience living in Ireland, and my research on the Magdalene Laundries, and on being an Irish woman, and being a woman, and finding myself through my Irish ancestors. I’m really excited about the book and I can’t wait to finish it so you can read it!
I have not done much clay art lately, but I have lots of ideas and I’m hoping to get my hands in clay soon. I have been painting, though. I watercolor painted the illustrations for my poetry book which is coming out in a few weeks. I’m now painting bookmarks to give away to the first buyers of the book. The poetry collection, titled Life and Death and Holy in Every Breath, is being published by Wild Rising Press, and, as I said, it’s illustrated with my watercolors. It has poems inspired by the death of my newborn grandson, the life of his twin, the death of my younger sister, social injustices, nature, and the holy.
With my co-author Ken Lachlan, I’m working on the 4th edition edits of my research methods textbook (Straight Talk about Communication Research Methods, Kendall Hunt). The edits are going slowly, but I’m excited about the updates we’re doing with the book — updating examples, especially industry examples (as opposed to scholarly examples), and updating the qualitative methods section to discuss even more arts-based methods. I’m even adding some examples from my research in Ireland.
I’ve spent some time in the mountains, done a little hiking, practiced enough ballet to injure my shoulder, and started learning to tap dance. I’m trying to learn a different way to engage with time, that I don’t have to do multiple things in a day, I don’t have to self-flagellate with self-imposed deadlines, don’t have to fight the demons of productivity. I’m catching up on reading, and TV watching, and movies, and sleep. I'm listening to a book about quantum physics, and I’m watching the birds in our feeder, and the leaves change on our trees, and the orchid plant gifted to me by a former student blossom new blooms.
All this post-retirement energy has got me thinking about endings and new beginnings. We’re downsizing our stuff; not that we’re necessarily going to move any time soon, but we’re cleaning out what we don’t need, releasing the energy of the past to clear the way for whatever is ahead of us. In my memoir, I write about the furniture, antiques, china, silver, and crystal glassware inherited from the ancestors, and I write, “my house has more ghosts than a cemetery.” Maybe it’s time to let the ghosts go, or at least the more bulky ones. The energy feels lighter with less stuff weighing me down.
My younger sister has been dead for 2 years; my older sister is living in an Assisted Living Facility, and my husband Jerry and I are feeling older every day. Looking in the mirror is now an exercise in tolerance and compassion. The leaves on the Yoshino Cherry tree outside my window are already dotted with gold. My hair is turning silver.
Perhaps, the meaning of life is not found in memories attached to furniture or china, in writing books or painting pictures, or in exercising or even reading books, although there is much joy in all of those. I’d like nothing more than to have my eulogy say, “she was loved by dogs and children.” I hope I’m remembered most for the love I’ve had for my family and friends. Maybe I’ll be remembered for any kindnesses I’ve shown, perhaps bravery, perhaps joys. I’m reminded that while I’m living is the time to create what my eulogy will memorialize.
Ernest Becker, in his book, The Denial of Death, talked about our ‘causa-sui,’ or immortality projects. He said we give our lives meaning to negate our fear of death through things like religion, politics, children, possessions, and artistic and creative acts, all resulting in giving ourselves a legacy that leaves something of us behind after we are gone. I write and paint because the words and images won't get go of me until I get them down, but I hope the books I write and the art I make will bring joy, or delight, or be helpful. Studying my ancestors, though, is teaching me that very little of us actually remains after we die. Books eventually fall out of print, pretty quickly in fact, paintings fade, pottery breaks, bodies decay, and it takes a mere three generations to be long forgotten. I’m thankful for ancestry.com, so I can at least see the names and dates of ancestors I never knew existed. When your ancestors were as poor and historically inconsequential as mine, not much else about them is findable. I don’t know who they loved, what they loved, ways they were kind, ways they were brave, what brought them joy.
Yet, the butterfly effect suggests nothing is inconsequential, and the ancestors have been speaking to me through my DNA, my research, and the voices in my head. My hope is that my writing might bring them back, leave a mark on the reader, a new ripple on the wave of time, and, maybe, I admit, a legacy for my motherline.
My poetry collection is dedicated to my late sister Kelli, and I’ll close with this description of the book. It will be available in mid-September.
Life and Death and Holy in Every Breath, 2024, Wild Rising Press:
With “a stunning collection of poetry” and “a treasure of a book that stirs the senses,” poet, writer, and artist Christine Salkin Davis debuts this collection of beautiful and inspiring poems that explore grief, loss, social justice, life, and spirituality.
In her debut poetry collection, Christine Salkin Davis explores everyday experience through reflections on life, love, death, and the holy. The poems in this collection – from beautifully written sonnets to deeply thoughtful free verse – weave grief, loss, social justice, spirituality, nature, and love, to speak to the general chaos and mayhem that characterize the messiness of life. Illustrated with Davis’s own original watercolor paintings, this book will inspire you, transform you, and teach you how to face “disappointing plotlines”:
“yet, this bird sings in the midst of the rain.
I want her eyes to see instead of mine.”
- From Disappointing Plotlines
Writing through multiple deaths of loved ones, political mayhem, social unrest, and everyday life, Christine Salkin Davis hands us hope, beauty and inspiration through the holiness that emerges from decay. She gives you permission to doubt, to cry, to believe, and to love, but always to keep your eyes wide open to the miracles that restore beauty to the world.
Notice the way the light sparkles on a leaf in the rain.
Notice the way the moon shimmers with stardust.
Notice the way silver blinds in sunlight.
Notice the dandelion weeds – do not discard,
for they are the favorite of the cardinal,
and she loves yellow flowers, like daisies.
- From Ritual to Restore Beauty to the World
For women, men, your best friend and your neighbors, buy this book for yourself and for gifts. It may change the way you see your world.
