“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
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Saturday Newsletter: August 25, 2018
Ken carefully picked up the fledgling in his palms, taking care not to cause it any more pain Illustrator Keysun Mokhtarzadeh, 12, for ‘The Forgotten Fort’ by Andrew Lee, 13. Published January/February 2009. A note from William Rubel Whew! What a week! I flew to London on Monday, arrived on Tuesday, and with my Stone Soup colleague, Jane Levi, went the next morning went to see a friend of ours who is a book collector. He collects early books on gardening—books from the 1500s to the 1800s. His wife collects early British detective fiction. Do any of you have book collections? Have you ever thought about making a specialized library of your own focusing on books of one subject? If you have a book collection and would like to tell others about it, write something up and submit it to the blog section of our online submission form. If you still remember, tell us about the first book you bought, which of your books mean the most to you, and what plans you have for your collection. The first book I recall buying is a Bible from 1771. It is a big old book. Several of the people who owned it before me signed it on a blank page at the front of the book. When I read it I am always aware that I am just the current person in a long chain of owners going back over two hundred years who have sat down with it. From our our book collector friend’s house, Jane and I went to Oxford where I had been invited to give a talk about the history of bread and where Jane and I were asked to present something on our project in Kenya that I have mentioned in a previous newsletter. We stayed at Christchurch college. This means, we ate breakfast in the hall used to film the meals for the Harry Potter movies. Yes, it’s true! We ate breakfast at Hogwarts and walked up the stairway where Dumbledore greeted Harry and the other students when they first came to the school! Those of you who are fans of Philip Pullman’s books, as I am, will also one day want to come to Oxford to be in the place where Lyra begins her adventures. Jordan College is an invention but is closely modeled on walled colleges, like Christchurch. In the evening, in the early morning hours, and in the fields that still exist within the Oxford City limits you can get a real feel for how an author takes a busy modern place and finds within it inspiration for a fantasy story of unparalleled depth. December Food Issue! I wrote about this last week—the deadline for the December food issue is coming up in a couple of weeks. What I want to say to those of you who have not yet started on this, is that it is both a writing and a cooking project. Yes, we are interested in recipes for foods you love, but to get the recipes published in the Stone Soup December issue there has to be a well written introduction. In cookbook language, the introduction to recipes is called the “headnote.” Last year, when I first put out the call for recipes I mentioned how I used to make a gingerbread house with my mother every December. We did that from when I was in elementary school through high school and even into my first year of college, just before she died. I have published a gingerbread recipe along with this very personal story of why it meant so much to me in a book called Celebrations. You can also read other personal and creative stories about recipes—the headnotes—in last December’s issue of Stone Soup. Other foods I remember cooking… Bread. When I was eleven my mother gave me a beautiful two-volume cookbook. One volume was about the history of American food and the other volume was recipes. I was very interested in the headnote for the recipe for Anadama bread. I made that bread, loved it, and was hooked. I have been making bread since I was eleven and for the last fifteen years researching and writing about bread is what I’ve done virtually every day. I write articles about bread, I write books about bread. And this interest really started when I was your age. From that same American Heritage Cookbook there is a recipe for eggnog. It is a very rich eggnog—eggs, of course, cream, and lots of alcohol for the adults. I started making the eggnog for my family’s holiday party when I was eleven or twelve. The headnote is a story. It can be a story about the dish you are making: why you like it; when you make it; what it reminds you of. Sometimes, cookbook authors also use headnotes to help people with a tricky part of a recipe. For example, if it has an ingredient that may not be easy to find, you might suggest an alternative in the headnote. Recipes for Stone Soup must have three elements: the headnote, the list of ingredients, and the instructions. The list of ingredients and instructions fall into the genre of technical writing. Your work for Stone Soup is also judged on the clarity of that technical writing. The way I test recipes (and the quality of my technical writing) is to get someone else to make the recipe just from reading what I wrote. If you get moving on this project this week you ought to have time to get a friend to test your recipe (and of course we will test it that way, too!). To write the technical part—the part about mixing the ingredients together—I want you to take notes as you are cooking. Then, when you work up the notes into a more final text, please visualize your hands—what are they doing? What are the steps? “Take a bowl, break two eggs into it, mix with a whisk, then…” The more you explain the gestures of cooking—like, “when mixed, set
The Mountains from the Stories
At that moment, I was truly grateful for the wonder of nature. How lucky I was to be able to witness something this remarkable, to see what seemed truly divine.
