Connections: Tuesday's Reflection

Spillville
Text by Patricia Hampl
Engravings by Steven Sorman

This summer Patricia Hampl spoke at the Memorial Service for Melissa Sorman, Steve Sorman's wife. We have known the Sorman family for many years. Bruce knew Melissa from college days and later when he was in family practice he delivered their daughter Clare. We were living in Ohio when Melissa and Steve moved to New York, and one night they stayed with us. I have a vague memory of us at the dining room table, but that's about it. A long time ago!

I can't believe Melissa is gone. 

This past weekend we went to a gallery opening in Red Wing. Steve is an internationally acclaimed artist with work in museums throughout the world, and how lovely it was to see a roomful of his work. When we checked in with him and gently (I hope) asked him how he was doing, he said, "I'm not lonely, but I am so alone."

I caught a glimpse of Patrica Hampl across the room, too, and I thought to myself, "That's something she might say in one of her books." 

I have an Ohio memory about Trish (I always think of her as "Trish," although I think only close friends call her that.) as well. I was in our farmhouse kitchen. As always, I had the radio tuned to Cleveland Public Radio and heard that Hampl was going to be on the Diane Rehm Show broadcast from Washington DC. I decided to call-in to the show and tell a story about Hampl. Much to my delight, I was selected to tell my story on air. 

Here's the story: Hampl was a frequent and much loved customer at Odegard Books in St Paul where I worked at the time. One night she asked all of us on duty to help her select the title for her new book. Her editor was pressuring her. She recited several possibilities, and we voted for A Romantic Education, and, in fact, that became the title. When the book was released, Dan Odegard, who along with his then wife Michele were the owners, handed out copies of the book to each of us on staff. We were so excited to have been part of the development of the book. Of course, we had a big booksigning for her. Hampl seemed so touched by the story when I told it during the program. 

Back to Spillville. After the service for Melissa, I decided to re-read Spillville, which is about the time the composer Antonin Dvorak and his family spent in Spillville, Iowa.  The summer of 1893. Spillville was a Czech settlement. Melissa had encouraged Hampl and her husband to collaborate on a project, and this was the result, a book published in 1987 by Milkweed Editions, a Minneapolis publishing house.  

One day last week I camped out in the snug, thanks to a de-energizing cold, and re-read Spillville, cover to cover, and now I yearn to re-read A Romantic Education and Virgin Time and her newest The Art of the Wasted Day. Her essay, " Memory and Imagination" in I Could Tell You Stories is mentioned in every class on memoir writing I have ever taken it seems, and it is a wonder. In my library her books sit right next to Maxine Hong Kingston's Warrior Woman and my collection of journals by May Sarton. When it is time to disperse my shelves of books, those titles will remain. I'm just saying! 


Steve's engravings in the book are simple and sensuous. Flowing and full of intersections, and Trish's words lead me on pilgrimages through known and unknown memories and places and connections. I wander the Iowa roads with Trish and the Sormans, including little Clare, and this time I noticed what I might not have when I first read the book in 1987. Thoughts about immigration that seem just as relevant today-- as a form of "banishment. A reference to cilantro, and I am quite sure at that time I had never heard of cilantro and never ate it, and now I grow it in my little herb garden. In the acknowledgements a list of familiar authors from Minnesota--people who used to come into the bookstore or I had met in other ways, like Christina Baldwin. I blame (and honor) her for the bins of my journals stacked in a storage closet. What will become of those? 

"I don't make things up on purpose; it's the desire for accuracy that causes me to see these details, Hampl writes. (p. 83) and earlier

                 The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage
                 without a destination, but the destination is also
                 not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination,
                 but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes
                 pilgrimage. Willingness to hear the tales along the
                 way...That's pilgrimage--a mind full of journey.

My mind was full of journey as I read: Being on a walking tour of F. Scott Fitzgerald landmarks in St Paul and the guide pointing out where Trish lived; reading a section of A Romantic Education to my long ago journal group and how they asked me to read it aloud again and then we sat in silence; walking in our old neighborhood wondering if Trish and other writers, maybe even Fitzgerald, had ever walked past our house; thinking about my present day self sitting in my garret writing, attempting to open to my own pilgrimages of thought and feeling. 

Friday afternoon I attended the monthly writing session at Wisdom Ways led by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, and the topic was "Making Connections." She encouraged us to be receptive to "unexpected connections." She believes that doing that in our writing opens us to making connections in the rest of our life too. This is not about nostalgia or staying stuck in the past. Instead, how can connecting the past to present lead us into a new way of living and being now and in the future? Connections that are healing and inspiring and expanding. 

 "Don't try to force connections. Let them resonate, " Andrew says.

They are all part of the pilgrimage, I say. And I'm still on the path.

An Invitation
What connections between past and where your current place on the pilgrimage are appearing in your life now? I would love to know. 

Links
 Patricia Hampl 
Steven Sorman
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Wisdom Ways