“Can’t you hear them?” she whispers. “Can’t you hear the angels?” When I think about my grandparents, my head is flooded with vivid memories of them. I hear my grandpa’s deep laughter ringing in my ears as he tells me a story about camping. I see a flash of green as I remember the color of the vest my grandma used to always wear. It is as if I can feel the soft fabric against my cheek like I did when I hugged her. For me and many others, memories of our grandparents are engraved into our thoughts. But sometimes, even though we so distinctly remember them, grandparents don’t always remember us in the same detail. This is the scenario that the main character, Maggie, in the story “Grandma’s Angels” by Mariana Stevenson, 12, finds herself in. Maggie’s grandma has Alzheimer’s, a disease that causes memory loss and cognitive impairment through the deterioration of brain cells. In the story, 13-year-old Maggie is visiting her grandmother. Although Maggie loves and vividly remembers her, her grandma has no recollection of Maggie or Maggie’s father. When Maggie’s father realizes that his mother’s wedding ring is missing, a frantic search to find it ensues, and emotions run very high. Through this ordeal, Maggie finds herself evaluating her own feelings about her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s and questioning whether her grandmother is truly okay. From Maggie’s heartbreak and sadness when her grandmother does not remember who she is to her father’s panic when they cannot find her grandma’s wedding ring, the piece brings you on an emotional journey that I believe holistically portrays the effect of Alzheimer’s on a family. It is an experience that I can personally relate to. While my own grandma was never officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, there was no denying that she showed signs of cognitive impairment. Sometimes I think about how she could never remember that my name was “Sam” not “Jennifer” or that I couldn’t speak Chinese. I was a preteen when it first started to happen, so whenever she called me by my cousin’s name and asked me for something in a language that I didn’t understand, I just sighed and gave my mom a look in the stereotypical annoyed teenager sort-of-way. However, looking back, I realize that my “annoyance” was just a facade. I was trying to hide how sad and hurt I was that my grandma couldn’t remember something as easy as my name. Deep down, this is why I love “Grandma’s Angels.” The author’s characters express hurt and sadness that I had been too fearful to express in the past. The story doesn’t shy away from more difficult emotions. “My heart aches for a moment as I look at her. Grandma’s faded blue eyes show nothing. There is no sign of recollection at all,” and “I’m angry that Grandma has to experience a disease like Alzheimer’s” are just two snippets in this story that demonstrate the feelings of fury or dejection that Maggie experiences. For the protagonist to so clearly accept emotions like this conveys a message that it is okay to be sad or angry about things that seem unfair to you. This speaks so much in itself. How often do we hear the words “don’t cry” or “there is no need to be sad”? When did we get to the point where feelings like this are something that we need to hide? Often, when we think of children’s writing, it’s associated with a “happily ever after.” Sometimes children’s stories are expected to be blindly optimistic. But we must remember and recognize the pieces that are honest about reality even when reality isn’t perfect, like this story. Because, in the end, life isn’t perfect—it’s filled with complications, twists and turns, and unexpected challenges. Don’t be afraid to write about things that are hard or sad. In Stone Soup, one difficult topic that there are a lot of stories about is illness. One of my favorites is “We No Longer Go Outside” by Stella Lin, 12, which is told from the perspective of a dog whose owner has cancer. One thing you will notice in both “We No Longer Go Outside” and in “Grandma’s Angels” is that although there are feelings of sadness, there is also an overwhelming feeling of hope. This hopefulness evolves from the fact that writing about something difficult helps you heal. This is an idea called catharsis, often characterized by the release of emotions and the subsequent relief that comes from this. You can see this in action through the last lines of “Grandma’s Angels”: “I realize everything will be OK. Grandma will be OK. I can hear the angels.” Through processing her emotions, Maggie realizes that even though her grandma and her family may be facing a challenge, everything will be fine in the end. Sometimes we all get signs in life that tell us this very message. My grandparents passed away recently. I think often about where they are, and how they are doing. Are my grandparents with each other? Are they happy? Do they think about me or the rest of family at all? In a way, this piece was a sign for me; a sign that although I will probably never know the answers to these questions, everything is still okay. This story encouraged me to face my emotions, emotions that everyone will go through at some point in their lives. And I hope that like Maggie, we can all be brave enough to express and face these more difficult emotions head-on, comforted with the knowledge that, in the end, everything will work out. So next time you are sad or upset about something, consider writing about it! It just might help you feel better. Author Bio: Sam Rozal is currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is studying Biology and Environmental Studies but is also exploring other fields in the humanities and social sciences. Growing up, she absolutely adored books, especially the Boxcar
Teaching Writing
Writing Activity: personifying objects in poetry
This writing activity by Allison Finley is based on the poem “A Fraction of an Inch” by Abigail Rose Cargo, 13, published in Stone Soup, March/April 2017 Seeing Fractions of an Inch Everywhere After reading the first two couplets of Abigail Cargo’s poem, “Fraction of an Inch,” I was nostalgic for the many days I have spent fishing with my brothers and exploring the bays in Lake Tahoe over school breaks. Abigail’s poetic description of the connection the water and boat share reminds me specifically of how those trips almost always ended: when leaving a lake or ocean, it was always a fight to return the boat to land. Since my friends and family only went out boating once in a while, there was always a comical and stressful chaos in remembering how to get our boat back on its trailer. While the more experienced people on both sides of us would trailer their boats away quickly and effortlessly, my fellow shipmates and I would clumsily fight the water to claim back what was ours. Once the boat would finally start to get onto the trailer, we would slowly crank it further out of the water, a fraction of an inch at a time. At the beginning of the poem, Abigail does an amazing job depicting the back and forth that goes on between the truck and the water. The water’s “new prize”—the boat—must be skillfully put back onto the truck’s trailer. The water fights the truck back when “the waves bouncing off/ the boat’s hull” are a fraction of an inch from connecting with the rubber of the wheels. But this fraction of an inch is enough to cause the red truck’s wheels to spin ineffectively on the muddied concrete slab. Even though this poem is specifically from the point of view of the boat and the water, it reminds me of how this experience is always such a chaotic shift from a peaceful day we just had out on the water. Ultimately, I’m drawn to the way Abigail’s style emphasizes the fact that even the smallest measurement can add up, and that you’re always only a fraction of an inch away from something changing at anytime. Instead of focusing on all of the action happening around her, Abigail beautifully focuses on the little details of the scenes: the “Waves of green foam/ rolled over the railing/ in a calm firmness” and “the rippling water/ pool[ed] at the edge of/ a concrete slab.” It’s these little details in the first scene that bring her to talk about life and death. I love the way that breaking down the scene in front of her in this way makes her think of such complex changes in life. After considering “how closely/ life and death are related,” Abigail introduces a completely new scene: two birds circling each other above their prey. While this scene is much darker to reflect the tonal shift, the image presented is just as familiar an image to me as the first one, and it is as effective in depicting how all it takes is a fraction of an inch in one direction or another to change everything—especially “a fraction of an inch/ to the left,” for the chickens below. Abigail’s perspective throughout “A Fraction of an Inch” is mature. She personifies the water and the boat and then looks into the relationship between the two. To personify an object means to make something that is not a person like a person. In this poem, both the water and the boat “did not want” something. If you are inspired by the style of this piece, I encourage you to try personifying the objects around you to think about how they relate to their setting and to each other. What do they want or not want to happen? What do they see or experience? You might also try, like Abigail, to slow down a moment of chaos to focus on what each object is experiencing. Once you start slowing down, like Abigail, you’ll probably start seeing these fractions of an inch changes everywhere. Author Bio: Allison majored in Literature at UCSC. She first got involved in the literary journal world through Matchbox Magazine, which features and distributes poetry, prose, and art across the University of California system. Allison has been involved with Matchbox during her entire time in college and she has filled the position of editor in chief for the past year. She loves the entire, magical process of making a journal—which is what made her want to get involved with Stone Soup. This spring, Allison graduated from UC Santa Cruz. She plans to pack up her two rabbits and her ridiculous amount of used books and move to LA.
Writing Process: Sounding the Key Word Outline
Years ago, when I was doing contract negotiations for a small advertising agency, the CFO gave me some good advice at the start. Always know what you’re talking about, she said. If you do, you’ll do fine. I’d never negotiated contracts before but nevertheless, was placed to work for their biggest client, JCPenney. I renewed our client’s media contracts with small circulars, monthly or weekly newspapers all over the U.S. I had to do a lot of talking. I had to know what I was talking about.Now, I teach my son to read and understand what he’s reading. It is a skill, to comprehend what is unfamiliar. More still, it takes a good grasp of this unfamiliar material to be able to speak about it with others, to share it with confidence. My son, like me, is starting to hone that instruction I was given on the job. Sounds like tired advice, but really, it is something we tend to overlook. In my previous post, I wrote about how young writers can use the reconstruction method into their writing process repertoire. I mentioned how in the homeschool, I give my son source material to create a keyword outline. This outline is what he uses to orally introduce his subject. He reads from the outline, summoning familiar information and details cued up from the outline. It is a rudimentary exercise, for my fifth grader, since he will produce a written work only after he can listen to himself present it in public speaking. When we write, we cannot hear the words, until they are vocalized. And this is when we are able to catch nuance, extraneous information that may not fit our written purpose. It develops over time, to know the material well enough to the point where an outline is only a guide, and not a script. He is getting closer and closer to learning this well. Aren’t we told as writers of the long form to read aloud our work anyway? The principle is the same and reveals much of may be left out or vice versa. One way to train the young writer to exercise confidence in their writing with the outline as a guide to speaking the material is to have your writer observe public speaking. My husband teaches Bible study at our church and my son will observe similarities between his father and his own practice at home. We are happy that the language arts curriculum my son uses has encouraged him to bolster his outlining performance, and I throw in the public speaking factor for good measure! After he’s confident about how the acquired knowledge of the material he’s learned sounds (whether he is writing about Peyton Manning, or writing a story based off three pictures in a series), then he can proceed to draft it, and dress it up with because and who/which clauses, adverbial clauses, strong verbs, quality adjectives, prepositions, and all other manner of mechanics, devoid of banned words. The benefits of sounding the key word outline as a precursor to writing a draft go transcend to other skills that will eventually grow writing, public speaking and reading comprehension.
