Recently I did something long overdue: I read my Uncle Jim’s self published book of short stories,  A Hunting We Will Go.

First let me say that his name was James Tennyson Sizemore. With a middle name like that, he was as destined to write as I am to dream.

Though I would love to discuss his book with him, I’m also glad I waited. It was like having a visit with him, hearing him use his favorite pet names “Pal” and “Buddy” as I read them in his collection.

How many times did he say to me “Sit down, Pal, and tell me what you know. It won’t take you but a minute.” He said that to everyone. It wasn’t an insult — it was an honest invitation to sit and chat, one I took him up on EVERY TIME. I adored the man.

This is what Uncle Jim said about himself on his Amazon page for his books (he also has a novel called Cousin, Dearest that I read and helped edit slightly):

About the Author

He must have written that in 2003, because we lost him in 2007, and when I say lost, I mean it in the sense that bright corner of my life went suddenly dark.

Where do I start to talk about his work?  I’m too close to the situation to even begin to hope I could be a good judge of the literary merits of the book, but I enjoyed it immensely. Every story yielded clues: what I already knew of his life combined with what I gleaned from his fiction.

He described a sweaty West Virginia view of Morning Glories and I knew just where his character was sitting. I felt the mosquitoes because I’ve been there.

I learned things, too. Like that The Appalachians are called “The Appies.” Who knew?

Every story reminded me of what a good man he was. When his characters misbehave it’s so mild, so self consciously, that you know the author is deeply moral.

There are stories that sound autobiographical, even though I know how erroneous it can be to assume that. When a character gives up his dream of teaching at the college level to become a metal spinner to support his family, it’s hard not to recall that Uncle Jim did just that. I cried when I read the story where a character loses his job due to his escalating illness because I suspect it’s true.

Even though I know I wouldn’t really ask him such personal questions, I wish I could. I guess I feel as if I can assume that what he wrote tells me the emotional truth of his life. It’s important to me to believe that I truly “got” him. I think I did. Do.

Notice: Self indulgent uncle heroism ahead.

When I was a kid, Uncle Jim and his family would swoop into the hollow where we lived in West Virginia every few years. Grandma (just down the road from my childhood home) would start stirring up her famous fudge while singing, whistling, and cleaning as only she could.

Then the awaited carload of my beloved cousins, my Aunt Naomi, her mother, Aunt Pearl, and of course, Uncle Jim. No matter how tired the man was from driving all the way from Chicago, he always flung his wiry arms wide for me. I, the most backward child ever, ran into them.

He wore cuffed jeans, cuffed armed t-shirts and thick, intellectual looking glasses. They seemed just right on him. His skin was faintly olive and he wore his hair slicked back. He was a good looking man with a professorial voice and a confident smile. When he was making a point he’d extend his palm and let out a staccato laugh.

He’d take a huddle of kids hiking to his old WV haunts: up “Sizemore Holler” (which was a quarter of a mile above the mouth of Sizemore Hollow, where my family lived). He carried me on his shoulders, picking apples, handing one up to me.

I would sit and listen to him talk to everyone, his brothers, everyone else in the family. I was content to just listen but inevitably he would ask me my thoughts and treat them with great respect.

When my family visited his, he eagerly took us about Chicago. He bought me my first mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. The flavor remains one of my favorites. He took me on a carousel and bought me a paddle ball and a treasured box of crayons. He let me play outdoors until way too late, catching lightning bugs and singing with my cousins on the stoop.

Knowing he was a writer, I shyly showed him bits of my writing over the years. He was always beyond encouraging. I only wish I could have told him that I now have an agent. I know how much it would have meant to him.

While I was studying our family’s genealogy, at the end of one of our long phone calls Uncle Jim gently said, “Okay, enough with the genealogy. Back to writing.” And I listened.

In his collection, he worries whether or not his work will be read after he is gone. He need not have wondered. First of all, there’s no doubt that his beloved daughters and grandchildren will never forget his stories.

But I also know one proud niece who misses her dear uncle who will surely read his fiction, especially when she misses him. My daughter also had a sweet bond with him. Guess who’s getting a copy of his book next? 😉

If you’re not laughing at this post’s title, you have never had the privilege of having the luminous, engaging, and caring Rowan Keim Daggett for a professor.

When I transferred to Manchester University (at the time Manchester College), I was a shy first year student. Rowan’s small literature classes and exuberant take on books meant I quickly found myself speaking up without meaning to.

She made even the most obscure work easier and worthwhile to tackle. She introduced me to Atwood and Morrison. I later won an award from the Indiana Collegiate Press Association for a book review on Atwood’s Cat’s Eye which we read in Rowan’s Contemporary Literature class. And I have fallen in love with Beloved multiple times since first reading it with her. I once desired to emulate Morrison’s writing because of that blessed book. Turns out my writing is nothing like hers in form, voice, or content, but it gives me much pleasure to read her novels.

Okay, so I never took to Updike, but Rowan tried.

If you made a particularly salient point she’d say “that would make an interesting paper.” Nothing you said was ever stupid or off topic. You could make the most fragile connection and she’d support it.

Teachers and their ilk have often been a safe and happy place for me, and I must confess that I spent quite a lot of time in Rowan’s corner office just talking. She was knowledgeable and fun.

Her class was the first place I ever found myself uttering the “f bomb.” She was teaching us about voiced fricatives (I think) and she used the word to get us to feel it, telling us to put our hands to our throats. “Say —-,” she said and I did along with everyone else, though so quietly I doubt I could be heard. I was simultaneously horrified and delighted to utter the word.

I wish I could say that was the last time I ever said it.

She once had one of her classes (Women in Lit?) over to her lakefront house. There was great food, conversation, and I seem to remember a brilliant songwriter bringing out his guitar and later jumping off the pier — sans guitar, of course.

I unexpectedly returned to college from Christmas break a married woman (crazy kids that Barry and I were). He and I had a couple of Rowan’s classes together, and he soon loved her as much as I did, though I was scandalized when my naughty new husband passed me notes and whispered to me during her class.

When I decided to leave college with an AA rather than finish my bachelor’s (though I was pretty close to finishing my bachelor’s — someone time travel backwards and tell me not to leave!), I didn’t tell Rowan. I feared she would be disappointed, and I thought she’d try to help me fight the battle that may have allowed me to stay, and I just couldn’t handle it anymore and I didn’t think it was anyone else’s responsibility. I’d done all I could do. I’ve always regretted not telling her that I was leaving.

In 2007 I returned to (then) MC, determined to earn my bachelor’s. With age and experience under my belt, I figured I’d slay any dragon I must to accomplish my goal. How touched I was to receive the Rowan Keim Daggett scholarship. They had a dinner for scholarship recipients and I was able to sit with her for the first time in years and tell her how much she meant to me.

I found myself talking with her about my latest paper on Woolf’s Lighthouse which she found, of course, “Interesting.” She had introduced me to Woolf’s “Three Guineas” and “A Room of One’s Own” in her classes years before, but she said it had been a long time since she’d read Lighthouse.  I refreshed her memory and then told her the connections I was making and she had, of course, wonderful suggestions. I felt as if I were back in her unadorned office surrounded by her piles of books.  What a memorable place that was.

Thankfully, I asked someone to take a picture of us at the dinner. The photo was taken during my pre-running days and clearly I thought Nashville sparkle was slimming, so please be kind.

Sometimes when I criticize an idea I have, I stop and just hear her words: “That would make an interesting paper.” And you know what? Usually that’s true. But nowadays I turn that paper into a story or a book. How sad that I wasn’t sharing my fiction in those days with much of anyone. How supportive she would have been. Maybe she would have said “That would make an interesting novel.” Chances are, I would have listened, and I would have gone for it much earlier.

Still, that I have gone for it at all is due in part to her gracious support. We love you, Rowan, wherever you are, and we hope you will be reading interesting papers and books forever.

Okay, so maybe yesterday’s writing day wasn’t quite that bad, but it felt as if it were. Mondays are always bad writing days because I’ve had a weekend away from it. Once I’ve started writing, it’s hard to stop. But get me away from it and every doubt and fear comes flooding in.

Yesterday wasn’t Monday, of course, but it was the first day of the work week after a holiday. Same difference. We are just back from a fast yet heartwarming trip to Nashville to see our kinder, which was awesome.

So yesterday was a “Monday” after a trip. But wait, there’s more: my Dear Husband has been fighting a nasty cold/sore throat for a couple of weeks now. My body is flirting with that as well…it hasn’t decided yet whether it wants it or not. I say not.
I never sleep well when we travel, so there’s that, too.

Anyway, after this much anticipated trip I was expecting to sit down with my WIP and just blaze along as I had been doing before I left it.
Do you suppose novels pout when you take time off? Because I’m thinking that’s a real possibility. I have a writing quota I insist on meeting at each writing session, so I plugged along, but it was work. And it’s no good at all. As in, I can’t imagine more than a few paragraphs will make it into the final book.
The point is, though, I kept to my quota. I’m proud of that even though I’ve not written so poorly since I wrote those ridiculous article summaries for Mr. Chafin in 8th grade science. He’d assign us ten a month, more if we were loud. I counted the students in class, multiplied that by the number of classes he had, and quickly decided that there was no way he was going to read everyone’s summaries. So I began with a decent paragraph or two on topic and then I started writing about whatever I wanted to or, more frequently, I wrote nonsense: repeated lines reading “My dog has fleas,” (IDK why), the injustice of teachers who make you do assignments that you know they’ll never read, how my hand was cramping after writing a whole page of nothing.

I may even have inserted paragraphs about the story I was enthralling my classmates with at the time, a tale called “Armithea the Wild” about an ancestor of mine. I got her name off a faintly etched tombstone in the family cemetery. Someone in the family thought she might have been half Cherokee. Note: this was never confirmed and later I learned I misspelled her name terribly. Those seated closest to me in lit class always asked to see the latest pages about her and I furtively handed them copies of my romantic tale of the young woman with the long dark hair. I seem to recall she rode a horse and she was pursued by someone tall and dark and yes, handsome. That’s about it.
Back to my science tale: The first time I turned a bundle in that way to him, I was terrified. After that, not so much. I had the urge to let him in on the secret after the school year, because I knew he had a sense of humor. But I also had seen his ire, so I decided to keep it to myself and a few well chosen classmates who crowed along.
The sad thing was, I really liked science, but not as punishment. Had he given us the fascinating science mags and not made us write summaries of articles, I would have read them anyway. Had he discussed the material with us I would have possibly considered a career in science. So maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t.

One quick Mr. Chafin story: He was teaching us about measuring and he had me pour water into a beaker at the front of the class. Somehow I over poured and the water ended up all over the floor. Of course I apologized profusely as he and I cleaned it up. “Yes, yes, dear,” he said, wiping at the desk with a piece of brown paper towel, totally unphased. I’ve never forgotten his kindness.

Hey, I just sneaked a peek at this terrible, horrible, no good (okay, I’m truncating the title of the book I’m ripping off, I know) writing from yesterday. Get this: “Nature gives without asking for anything. I trust it so much more than other things. Nature doesn’t dissemble.” I’m not saying that’s good writing. Ugh on so many levels. I’ll be ripping that out for sure. I’m just pointing out that my writing yesterday could be said to have some science in it.
Maybe Mr. Chafin got through without even trying.
And maybe today’s writing will be better.

P.S. I realize that there aren’t spaces between some of these paragraphs, but after trying and failing to make that happen, I’m actually eager to get back to my real writing, so I’ll have to try to cure this later. And I want to go ahead and post it because I think it may help me with today’s writing. So sorry in advance…

In the meantime, enjoy some more photos of my beloved family. I miss my children already.