Dibs in Search of Self

A year or two back, one of my daughters was obsessed with playing 'grandma'. Both of her grandmothers had died before she was born, and she was acutely aware of the deficit in her life. So day after day, for months on end, she'd announce me that I was grandma and ask me to tie a scarf on my head; then she'd provide the script: 'Now you say, 'hello darling, would you like some cake?'', and I'd dutifully parrot the words, holding a plate, while she worked out her next move. That play was incredibly important as she processed a grief she couldn't otherwise articulate, and I thought of it recently as I re-acquainted myself with Dibs.

I first read the story of Dibs while I was in high school, and he touched my heart. While he never quite left me, it's only this year that I found my own copy of the book. It was wonderful to re-read it now I'm an adult with her own young children.

Dibs was an almost wholly uncommunicative little boy. He did not play with other children in his pre-school; he would not communicate with his teachers or his parents except by way of tantrums. He refused to do anything for himself; he sat passively under tables or on the outskirts of the group, ignoring everything that went on; he did not speak. Some, including his parents, feared he was intellectually impaired; others suspected he was intellectual capable, but stuck in an emotional quagmire.

So Dibs was sent to play therapy. The book is the non-fiction account of his time there, drawn directly from transcripts and the observations of his play therapist, Virginia Axline. Dibs visited the play room weekly, and at each visit teased out a little more of emotions which suffocated him. As he became relaxed in the room, his imaginary world unfolded: he buried a father doll, locked up the mother and sister doll, and developed a great imaginary city in which he acted out his experiences, worked out how he felt about them, and developed his sense of self.

While Dibs worked, the therapist sat with him quietly reflecting back to Dibs his comments in a non-committal way. This makes the book a little stilted at times: 'I did it!' said Dibs. 'You did it,' remarked the therapist. It looks rather idiotic when transcribed; and yet it is clearly liberating and affirming for the young boy to have his comments and actions noticed but not judged.

The book suffers a little from over-explanation. When Dibs buries the father doll, it is pretty clear what is going on; we really don't need the symbolism explained. But this stylistic quibble aside, it's a tremendously moving experience to travel with Dibs as he slowly names his grief and rage; decides who he is and what he can do; and finds ways to transcend and even transform the family structures that have led to his emotional asphyxiation.

As a teenager, I found Dibs captivating. In the safety of the playroom, he revealed himself to be a very capable, articulate and resourceful boy; I only wished I could understand myself so well! Now I'm a parent, I'm still captivated; but I also found the book enlightening as I think about how I parent. While I'm not my children's therapist, the book makes it clear that there are modes of interaction that are more or less helpful in a child's self-development.

For one thing, it was good to realise that the simple reflection of a child's comment is often enough. I have noticed that many of my daughters' statements seek no further questioning or clarification from me; a comment such as 'I did it!' only needs me to reflect back, 'you did it yourself, huh?' for my child to nod with a satisfied smile, and move on to something else. Nothing more is required; in fact, further commentary is often brushed off as intrusive or unnecessary. But sometimes I feel a little silly merely reflecting back what my child says; it is helpful to see how empowering it was for Dibs, and to realise that my instinct to reflect here is good.

For another, the story affirms the time young children spend in free play – a rarity in this over-structured era. What may look like mucking about or daydreaming to us is actually their work. Watching Dibs use play to understand and forgive his family and work out his role within it helps me notice how much my own children inhabit a rich imaginative world in which they go about much serious work every day. It also makes clear just how imperative this play is for a child to develop a means to understand the world around them and develop a strong sense of self within that world. Kids need simple toys (sand, boxes, blocks, dolls, cars, trees, tea sets: things that reflect, or can be made to reflect, the world they inhabit), as well as opportunities to use paint, play with water and make a mess, in order to do their work. The simpler these toys are, the more their imaginations can use them. As parents, we have a responsibility to enable that work by providing the tools and, just as important, the time and space for it to happen.

Given the opportunity simply to be: that is, given the chance to work out what they want to do and how they want to go about it, then, like Dibs, our children will develop a profound sense of self, and find surprising solutions to the difficulties they are presented with.

Such a child is an absolute delight to be around. Even more, such a child becomes a powerful agent in the world: as we see in Dibs, and as I have observed in my own household, they can challenge adult behaviours and revolutionise family, even community, dynamics. And while living with an empowered child may be somewhat uncomfortable at times, overall I have found that providing the space for a child to become deeply grounded, and sharing my life with such a child, is one of the great privileges of parenthood.

Oliver’s Travels

Question: What does a lover of books and word games do when she's stuck on the crossword and too tired to read? Answer: Watch an episode of Oliver's Travels , available on DVD.

After being made redundant from his job as a university lecturer, Oliver, a man obsessed by trivia, jokes and the mighty anagram, and a two-time question setter for Mastermind, decides to go on a journey to meet his favourite cryptic crossword compiler, Aristotle, with whom he has corresponded for years.

Soon after setting out, he encounters an intelligent and feisty policewoman, WPC Diane Priest. She does him a favour, and in return he offers to solve any outstanding local mysteries. She suggests that of the farmer found floating face down in the river. Oliver, a great lateral thinker, comes up with a plausible if outrageous explanation, and he and Diane stumble into a web of murder and corruption, aided by the clues they find planted in newspaper crossword puzzles.

As their joint quests – solving the mystery and finding Aristotle – take them north, they pass through a stunning landscape and meet a host of fascinating characters: an insecure and officious university chancellor and his 'wife Norma' (anagram: Fire Woman); an oracular maintenance man; a tramp who claims to remember the Restoration dramatist, George Farquhar, 'in his little coracle'; the jazz-loving 13^th Baron ('Dizzy blew in here!') Kite and his insignificant other, Sara ('but I'm his bimbo, really'); a stonemason who fondly remembers Jimmy James, Hutton Conyers and Bretton Woods; a knock kneed pigeon toed geologist; an elfin computer hacker; a motel owner who talks with his ghosts; and, of course, the sinister Mr Baxter who follows them wherever they go.

Like all good journeys, the joy is in the travel: the people they meet, the stories they share, the jokes they tell. Oliver's favourite joke is about frogs; his second favourite, about the horse that liked to sit on eggs; and his third, about a man walking in the forest, naked except for a bowler hat. He tells the latter when posing as a lay preacher to a small evangelical Scottish sect.

Absolutely incorrigible and utterly defensive, Oliver uses his quick wit to keep people away. Diane, his chosen and predestined companion (thanks to an anagram of 'Diane not Priest'), sneaks in through the chinks to become an energetic, passionate and grounding counterpart.

For all the jokes, overt and otherwise, the series is bittersweet. It is tinged with the sadness that often accompanies middle age. Oliver and Diane are both affected by marriage breakdown; minor characters have experienced grief, failure, and other losses. While the characters reflect on religion, class and inheritance, the series as a whole is about paying homage: to the past, to one's family, to one's gods (in Oliver's case, Beethoven, Lester Young, George Farquhar and Aristotle), and to each other.

This is television by, for and about intelligent, mature, good-humoured people. Like a good joke, it can be relished again and again. This particular intelligent, mature, good-humoured person likes to watch it late in the evening with a cup of tea, and the thought of some Chocolate Digestives.

(Oliver's Travels was written by Alan Plater. It features Alan Bates as Oliver, Sinéad Cusack as Diane, Bill Paterson as Mr Baxter, and a host of wonderful supporting actors too numerous to mention.)

Dead Man’s Chest

The kids are asleep, and my husband's out at a work function. In the supreme effort of getting three tired kids, two who have been sick, into bed on time by myself for the second night in a row I skipped the enforced clean up, and now dozens of tiny slips of cut up paper litter the back room rug; the lounge room floor is dotted with pieces of a marble run, a dolly pram and a heap of blocks. Books are stacked in a teetering pile next to the Big Green Chair, and the kitchen table – my writing desk – has a jungle jigsaw and a kid's code book at the other end. As for the mysterious fever which affected my daughters last night and today, well, it broke; but now I ain't feeling too hot. So I'm sitting here in trackie dacks and singlet, mysterious viral aches in my elbows and backbone, fingers pruny from the washing up: not exactly the height of glamour.

It could be depressing. Actually, it is a little depressing. Fortunately, there are means of escape. Tonight I am playing old jazz, sipping a glass of port and reflecting on Kerry Greenwood's most recent offering, Dead Man's Chest. It's the latest in a series of novels set in the roaring twenties in and around Melbourne. Her heroine is the racy Phryne (rhymes with shiny) Fisher: ferociously intelligent, terribly glamorous, deliciously sensual, fabulously wealthy, and drop dead gorgeous.

Phryne is a Lady Detective with a pearl handled gun and a penchant for danger. This time, the story begins as Phryne, her maid Dot and her adoptive daughters Jane and Ruth decamp to the seaside town of Queenscliff for a holiday. They arrive at their accommodation to find the housekeepers missing and the house mysteriously empty. Meanwhile a pigtail snipper is terrorizing the young women of the town; a fisher boy needs a household and a purpose; and three spoiled toffs must be sorted out. Phryne gets to the heart of everything, unravelling mystery upon mystery, with her usual aplomb.

The book is packed with interesting characters: Irish fisherfolk, surrealists, nasty crooks, a film crew and a delightfully awful genteel neighbour, Mrs Mason. Phryne observes all with her insouciant eye.

As we can expect from Greenwood, Dead Man's Chest is a deliciously light confection, packed with loyal servants, good cooking, designer dresses, dangerous episodes, terrific metaphors and even, this time, buried treasure. It's escape, pure and simple... hallelujah!

You can read more about the Phryne Fisher novels here.

Arabel and Mortimer

Most chapter books for young girls are dross. They are churned off a production line, following a set formula and featuring fairies, or magic ponies or kittens. The asinine heroines become ecstatic over clothes and sparkles; they have a minor adventure which reconciles them with a jealous peer; and at the end, everyone's wearing pink. All in all, these books make me sick. Excuse me while I go puke in the corner.

But there are antidotes to this nauseating drivel. One of our favourites are the Arabel and Mortimer stories by Joan Aiken. Arabel is four and lives in Rumbury Town, an ancient suburb of London. One day, Arabel's father, a taxi driver, finds a bedraggled black bird in the road. He brings the bird home to be nursed; Arabel falls in love, and christens the raven Mortimer.

Mortimer is no end of trouble. Like all ravens, he's endlessly inquisitive and perpetually destructive. He's forever slipping away for a quiet bit of investigation, which usually involves his strong beak and some expensive piece of equipment. In Mortimer and the Sword Excalibur (found in Arabel and Mortimer, and also published separately), Mortimer wreaks havoc on Arabel's mother's sewing machine and the vile pink dress she is making for Arabel, then hurls a banana across the room where it is messily impaled on the bristles of a broom. Arabel and Mortimer are sent out of the house in disgrace to play at the park across the road, where they meet up with Arabel's friends: Sandy, a unicycle-riding teenage boy, and Mr Walpole, the groundsman. While they chat, Mortimer seizes the opportunity to hijack the council ride-on mower and terrorise the other park goers, mow swathes out of the daffodil beds, and send the mower plunging into a building excavation site.

At the bottom of the pit lies a mysterious round stone table. The mower smashes it to smithereens. Mortimer flutters out carrying a priceless ancient sword which had been stuck in the table... and then manages to destroy it also, to the shock and distress of the investigating scholar and the curious crowd. Adults will enjoy the mythical allusions; children will relish the destructive chaos.

In other stories, Mortimer shuts down the London Underground, destroys a radio tower, and generally drives everyone except Arabel mad. The stories are wildly inventive, and, to children at least, laugh-out-loud fun. Mortimer is fascinating; and Arabel is absolutely charming. She is a quiet bookish child who loves to skateboard, and gets into all sorts of scrapes thanks to him.

The books are also enjoyable for adults coopted into reading aloud. In The Mystery of Mr Jones's Disappearing Taxi, now sadly out of print, books featured include the Complete Oxford Dictionary, Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Mrs Beeton's Household Management; Freud and Cosi Fan Tutti also rate a mention. In a nice allusion to Poe's Raven, except for 'Kaark' the only word Mortimer says is 'Nevermore'.

Aiken fills her text with puns and spoonerisms, which some children get and others may glide over. An adult reading aloud may choose to stop and elucidate, or may choose simply to read with no interruptions. All the stories – and there are about fifteen of them – are rippers and can be read on several levels.

Although Aiken writes for children, she is not afraid to use metaphors and other sophisticated techniques to tell her story. The result is a text which is not only very lively and great fun, but paves the way to other writers; a four to ten year old child reading Joan Aiken and the like won't be afraid to tackle other playful intelligent writers – say Lewis Carroll, JRR Tolkien, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens – in later years.

And from books like these, real books written not for a corporate production line but because a story burned to be told, our children will be equipped for the big questions, and the mingled sorrows and joys of adulthood. Kaark.

PS The first book is Arabel's Raven.

An Advent List (reprise)

Last year I wrote an Advent list: the books my family will especially enjoy during December. In case you missed it, here it is again!

I love a good list. Elsewhere, I commented on developing rituals for Christmas; and I'm thinking that they will include a lot of good stories. So what follows is a dozen stories that my family will read aloud between December 1 and 24. Most of them are not Christmassy per se. Instead, they are about hope, joy, bravery, generosity, vocation, sacrifice, community, and love.

'The Singing Bus Queue' (Margaret Mahy, in The Chewing-gum Rescue and Other Stories (London: JM Dent, 1982)) sings rain or shine in seven-part harmony. No matter how hard the town grumps try to silence them, they continue to warble joyfully. Eventually, they are imprisoned for creating a public disturbance - yet even there they sing so sweetly, in such high and pure tones that the prison crumbles. They walk out through the ruins to sing through the night with the moon and stars.

Continuing the singing theme, in 'Four Angels to my Bed' (Joan Aiken, in Past Eight O'Clock: Goodnight Stories (London: Puffin, 1990)) Little John sees four angels carved on wooden bedposts. As he falls asleep, the angels sing him a fugue, and he joins his voice in a new tune that dances with, through and around the heavenly music. Downstairs, his mother smiles at the sound of her little John Sebastian singing as she realises he has discovered his calling.

'Brother Ninian's Blot' is also about calling (Robin Klein, in Ratbags and Rascals (Ferntree Gully, Victoria: Houghton Mifflin Australia, 1989)). Brother Ninian, a messy medieval copyist, spills ink across a nearly completed piece of parchment. In his horror, he tries to disguise the blot with doodles of leaves, flowers, birds, butterflies, and even a jolly abbot. He becomes completely absorbed, and in his absorption creates something wonderful, beautiful and entirely new: the illustrated manuscript.

The illustrated manuscript recalls Jane Ray's lavish illustrations in The Happy Prince: From the Fairy Tale by Oscar Wilde (London: Orchard, 1994). She retells Oscar Wilde's fairy tale in which the statue of a prince gives all it has to the city's poor - its ruby eyes, its gold leaf - via an obliging swallow.

On the theme of gifts, in 'The Gift Giving' (Joan Aiken, in Up the Chimney Down and Other Stories (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)) a blind grandmother can, with the help of a special tune played by her adult son, Mark, see and describe gifts and vistas in rich language. When Mark dies, the gift fades until Mark's nephew and namesake and Mark's daughter together make a new pipe and work out the tune that recalls Grandmother's gift.

Tomie dePaola has also written about gift giving between young and old. In Now One Foot, Now the Other (New York: Puffin, 2005), Bob teaches his grandson to stack blocks, tell stories and walk. When Bob has a stroke, it is the little boy who patiently teaches his grandfather to stack blocks, tell stories and walk again, using the same loving words his grandfather once used with him.

In a similar vein, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge lives next door to an old people’s home. He is particular friends with Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, who has four names, just like him. Miss Nancy has lost her memory, and Wilfrid Gordon sets out to find it for her (Mem Fox and Julie Vivas (Gosford, NSW: Scholastic, 1984)).

Thinking about neighbours recalls Rose Meets Mr.Wintergarten (Bob Graham (London: Walker Books, 1992)). In this lovely book, a young girl moves into a new neighbourhood. When she loses her ball over the fence, her openness and fairy cakes disarm the miserly neighbour who has terrified the area’s children for decades.

Other misers are persuaded to share in Nail Soup (Eric Maddern and Paul Hess, (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007). A traveller, denied all but the meanest of shelter and sustenance, convinces his host that he will make soup out of a nail. As the 'soup' bubbles away, the host is gradually persuaded to add ingredients that turn it into a generous meal they can eat together.

The Mousehole Cat is also about sharing food. When a Cornish fishing villages faces starvation, Old Tom and his cat Mowser brave the winter storms to catch fish for the town. On their safe return, the town celebrates with a feast of morgy-broth and stargazy pie (Antonia Barber and Nicola Bayley (Aladdin, 1996)).

One of the most lively renditions of the Christmas story is by Julie Vivas (The Nativity (Gosford, NSW: Scholastic, 1986)). She illustrates the story in her singular style: the angel Gabriel is a ragged punk and shares a cuppa with Mary; we see the newborn baby, hands outstretched, still attached to the umbilical cord; the shepherds loom, peering into the cot; and in the final scene, Mary pegs out nappies. In Vivas's interpretation, the Christmas story is not a far-off super-spiritual event, but something immediate, physical, real, that happens even now. I particularly love that Mary is enormously pregnant, pendulous breasts and all, rather than resembling some medieval nymph.

Finally, what would an Australian Christmas be without a reading of Wombat Divine (Mem Fox and Kerry Argent (Scholastic, 2009))? Wombat desperately wants to be in the Christmas play, but he is too short, too clumsy, and too heavy for any of the parts. But Emu finds him the perfect role, and Wombat is, quite simply, divine.

As are all these stories. Read, prepare, enjoy.

PS For out of print books, try here.

Wifework

A few years ago, I was dining with a group which included a clearly exhausted woman; she was nodding off at the table. I asked her why she was so tired. 'Oh,' she said, 'by the time I got home from work yesterday, cooked dinner, fed everyone, put the kids to bed, did the dishes, vacuumed, tidied, did a load of washing, put it through the dryer and ironed my husband's shirts, it was 3am.' Needless to say, while she was ironing his shirts, he was sound asleep, recharging for the next day at his busy job - her frantic juggle of paid employment, childcare and housework notwithstanding.

His excuse – and hers – was that his job was very demanding. It was. It was also possible for him to slip out and grab a coffee in the morning, eat lunch in a cafe, share a joke with adults in the staffroom while fixing himself a cup of tea, and go pee anytime without a child tugging at his leg. His work began and ended at fixed times, and he could read the paper on the train on the way home. Such freedom is unimaginable to those caring for young children.

It would be easy to make fun of this woman ironing at 3am – how could she let herself be such a doormat? – but her story is common. I have certainly heard it enough times from all sorts of women. The woman whose husband looks after the kids so she can go out occasionally; she returns to water in the bath, nappies on the floor, dishes in the sink and a total pigsty because he doesn't perceive cleaning up to be part of the care. The women who tell me their husbands are great at looking after the baby – after they run the bath and set out the towel and the clean clothes and go fetch him, he'll bathe the baby; then the women clean up. The many women who have reeled in shock when they realised my husband was changing a nappy off his own bat; I hadn't even asked him.

I recently thought of this state of affairs as I read Susan Maushart's Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women. Maushart's observations, drawing from great swathes of sociological data, are simple: despite the gender revolutions that have taken place over the last few decades, most men still do vastly less around the home – physically and emotionally – than their wives, even when their wives work full-time. Women still do the bulk of cleaning, cooking and housework; the bulk of planning household tasks and social activities; and the bulk of the emotional work which glues the family together and makes men feel good about themselves. Worse, men defend their lack of participation by trivialising the work of the household; and women defend their men by infantilizing their husbands and living in denial.

Maushart argues that unless men and woman find ways to share the load more evenly, there is little incentive for many women to enter into marriage or to remain married. This certainly rings true in our society, where the divorce rate is high and the majority of divorces are initiated by women. In the words of one exasperated friend, 'I have three kids at home. One of them is in his late forties and he won't cook, clean or even chuck his damn socks into the washing basket. I don't know why I bother!'.

Yet despite our acceptance as a culture of no-fault divorce, Maushart reminds us that it is not so straightforward. Her survey of decades of research shows that, except in cases of abuse, divorce is rotten for kids. Like it or not, sociologists have found that an emotionally arid father is better than no father at all; a brittle empty marriage better than no marriage at all – for kids, at least. In what is a radical statement from a divorced feminist socially liberal researcher, she reminds us that marriage is primarily about children, not adults; and she calls for a renegotiation of marriage which recognises the priorities of children, equips men to become co-caretakers of the household, and encourages women to allow their husbands more room in the house, so to speak.

This work will be hard, yet she points out that marriage is hard: research shows that the rewards of marriage tend to be experienced in the first couple of years, then after fifteen or so years. In between, it's a slog. She suggest that if we can get our heads around this, then we will have a better chance of staying married – shocking stuff in an age of instant gratification.

Women might be able to manage this by demanding both less and more from our husbands. That is, Maushart suggests it is unreasonable for us to expect our marriage partner to fulfil every need (lover, parent of our children, breadwinner, best friend, confidante – the latter roles should be served by our friends, and breadwinning may be better shared); yet we might demand more physical contributions to the household.

For their part, she suggests men should take responsibility for some of the business of running a home: not just cooking, but shopping beforehand and cleaning up afterwards; not just putting clothes in the machine, but hanging them out, bringing them in, folding them up and putting them away; in other words, not just helping, but taking ownership of the jobs. Research across the English-speaking world shows that the average husband adds five hours' extra housework each week which is picked up by their wives; Maushart rather warmly suggests that men could instead become net contributors to the labour of running a household and raising children, rather than net beneficiaries.

As I have come to expect from her, Maushart is passionately engaged and engaging. While not every observation she makes about marriage and male-female relationships rings true for me personally, she is certainly making acute observations about the general state of affairs. Time and again I found myself nodding in agreement, recognising elements of my own marriage or that of friends.

One small observation – that the time men spend with their children tends to be fun while the time women spend with their children tends to be functional or disciplinary – brought me to tears; this is certainly the case in our household, where my partner, a very present, responsible and proactive member of the household (he washes children's hair, buys milk and changes nappies and never has to be asked or praised), is always the one who gets to have fun with the kids. I'm too busy peeling vegetables or loading the washing machine.

Wifework is full of such insights, uncomfortable but true. Maushart articulates many of these rough spots in marriage, and it's helpful to have them named. The book is a terrific conversation starter; I would recommend it for every couple with children. It provides a starting point for a couple to critique their relationship, and encourages a thoughtful examination of gender roles. It may even lead to a new form of marriage, where running a household and caring for children are understood to be the work of all householders, male and female; and where men take seriously the emotional and sexual needs of their wives.

And if, in the renegotiation, men find themselves with a more important role in their children's lives and living with much happier wives – then what more could they want? Change might involve a difficult and somewhat painful process of trial and error, but the long-term rewards will be abundant, indeed.

The Blizzard Voices

Everyone I love who has died has been cremated. The coffin disappeared with a mechanical whoosh, or a discreet curtain covered it up, and that's the last we saw of it. It's cold, clinical, institutional, fake, and it's not enough for me. I want to watch dirt cover the coffin and know that it's done. I want a place to visit, a place to sit and chat and cry and think.

So my husband and I will be buried. We will sink into the soil and turn into good earth. We will be in a place where our children can hold a picnic, and listen to the trees, and breathe goodbye over and again. In my fantasy world, I will be buried at a friend's block, quiet, unremarked, ignored for the most part, but a good place for a picnic; a place where the wind sings and a rainbow is often to be seen spanning the valley. In reality, we're visiting country cemeteries and seeing what's available.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to The Blizzard Voices. I find most poetry to be unutterably omphaloskeptical (I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence) and excruciatingly tedious.

And then there's Ted Kooser. Kooser is a poet who uses the cool spare language of the Great Plains. He is the poet for people who like stories, and other people. His language is clear, strong and wiry; and he tells the most wonderful tales.

The Blizzard Voices is a collection of poems about the terrible storm which struck the Plains in the late nineteenth century. Teachers and students were trapped in schoolhouses with limited fuel and food. Farmhands perished in the fields, unable to find their way home. Fathers sheltered under upturned wagons with their livestock, and lost hands and feet to the cold. Mothers sat anxiously at home waiting for their husbands and children to return: from school, from the neighbour's house, even from the barn just yards away.

Kooser collected the stories from those who remembered, and from old diaries and other reports. He shaped the material into a series of short poems, each speaking in a different voice to relate an image, a snippet, or an experience. Together, the poems form a chorus, and provide a sense of the many faces of the blizzard: finding a loved one dead in a snowdrift, and the methodical calm of a plainsman in dealing with it; the surprising experience of discovering turkeys days later, buried by the snow but alive and well; the quiet devastation of a young teacher who lost her way and held three young charges close as they died in the night; the sight of a man who lost arms and legs to frostbite being loaded onto a train; the line of sunflowers which led a teacher and her children to safety.

Reading the book, I felt I was sitting at the feet of a grandmother or a great-uncle, listening as they told stories by the fire. It is a deeply nourishing set of poems, tied to a particular time and place, but drawing the reader into a collective history, and giving the reader a sense that the history is part of our shared story.

As in his book Local Wonders, Kooser finishes the collection with a deeply moving piece which is a benediction of sorts; here, a blessing on those who died. He writes that the names of those buried unremarked and unremembered in the corners of fields are still carried on the wind. And I'm back to where I began. Two lifetimes and half a world away, I think of those lines whenever the wind blows, and hope that I too can one day be buried in a field somewhere, remembered for a few years, then left to the song of swaying grasses, and the ever changing crooning of the wind.

(You can read more about Kooser's book Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps here.)