magic Archives - Lisa Duchene, Writer

As a kid glued to the TV in my grandparents’ living room, I relished every magical visit to the Land of Make Believe with Mr. Rogers. His gift and message — you are loved, just as you are — endures. We need it more than ever. With love stories, I’ll do my small part here to spread it.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — the new movie about Fred Rogers and his vision to create a quality, healthful TV show for children — is packed with gems of wisdom and great life advice. It’s well worth your time.

I’m always curious after seeing a bio-pic about what’s true and what’s a fictional product of movie-making, so I’ve been reading up and discovering wonderful nuggets of inspiration for my grown-up life and work.

Some quick background:

In the movie, a cynical magazine writer is assigned to write a piece about Mr. Rogers for an Esquire magazine issue on heroes. (True.) Fred Rogers took a personal interest in the writer — the relationship at the heart of the movie. (True.) Those interviews led to a rich, four-year friendship until Rogers died in 2002. (All true.) The writer-character’s name in the movie (Lloyd Vogel) and back-story on his personal crises are both fictionalized.

Tom Junod, the real-life writer, penned a gorgeous piece in this month’s issue of The Atlantic.

Junod tied this story to our times. What would Fred Rogers make of our times? A worthwhile read.

Here’s the gem from Junod’s story that struck me this week, as I was drafting this little post about writing love stories.

Junod once told Fred Rogers about seeing five motorists in Atlanta stop their cars to help an old, big snapping turtle safely cross a highway exit ramp. Fred Rogers asked if he would be writing about it.

No, Junod said, but asked Fred Rogers why he thought it would be a good story:

“Because whenever people come together to help either another person or another creature, something has happened, and everyone wants to know about it—because we all long to know that there’s a graciousness at the heart of creation.”
~ Fred Rogers

Love Stories

Holy guacamole. THAT gave me an A-Ha, validating moment.

I write love stories, mostly for my ThanksgivinginFebruary.com blog. That’s my most joyful work and “passion project.”

That real-life, big family turkey dinner in the middle of February almost 10 years ago led to my obsession with sharing real stories from my real life.

Why? Because I experienced something remarkable that February night and I’m wired to share it. That Mr. Rogers quote brought me a big step closer to understanding it.

You may wonder: What the heck do turtles and exit ramps have to do with roasted turkey, my crazy family and a snowy winter evening?

Love. Sweet. Love.

Graciousness over Pain

As my father lay unconscious, I believed there was some risk that one of his ex-wives or girlfriends could harm him. Not necessarily that any one of those women, nor that I, were capable of actually unplugging him from the ventilator. But that the stress of one’s presence — or an ugly cat fight between us — could perhaps trigger his cardiac arrest. Or something equally awful.

I understood their anger, even as I stayed close to protect him. I asked his ex-wives to stay out of his room, and loudly joked about this to reassure my dad, just in case he could hear us.

He had deeply hurt and betrayed all of us. I had witnessed these women’s pain. As his daughter, I shared their pain.

None of those dark products of my imagination actually happened.

Instead, my dad’s ex-wives — my mother and stepmother — his daughters and long-time girlfriend all beautifully worked together to help him survive and recover. Then we celebrated with a big turkey dinner in the middle of February.

Each of these women acted out of graciousness, kindness and love. They became the heroes of our family story.

The “graciousness at the heart of creation” as Fred Rogers put it to Tom Junod, was a bright, shining light in my family that night.

I witnessed my mom, stepmother and Stephanie all working together in Stephanie’s small kitchen, preparing a meal for our family. No catfights. The impossible became possible.

That experience changed our whole family for the better. It changed our dad. It changed me, helped heal me. That’s my truth.

And since we all long to know about that graciousness, as Fred Rogers’ words confirm, I’ll keep sharing this and lots of other love stories.

Love at the Core

I started writing about it, almost immediately. I’ve been a writer since I was a kid, but telling this story was my first real attempt at writing about my own life instead of the lives of other people, or scientific findings, politics, fishing communities, small town government, environmental issues or business trends.

These ThanksgivinginFebruary.com stories explore many themes: Gratitude, family, gathering, friends, pain, turkey, estrangement, apple pie, step-mom-hood, grief, divorce, making peace as we pass the dinner rolls and sweet butter, falling in love, making a new family.

Failing to make peace and finding hope to try again later. All of that stuff of life.

Yet — love is at their core. Love is their essential fiber, and stitches them together.

‘If it’s about love …’

Long ago, as I was just starting this work, I was on a bus trip in Montana, chatting with a group of writers and their spouses about my urge to write about my experience of my family healing over a turkey dinner.

“Does anybody care?” I asked. “Would anybody read that story?”

A woman answered me: “I would,” she said. “I’d read it if it was about love.”

I’ve never seen her again. I don’t remember her name. Just this: “I’d read it if it was about love.”

‘You are loved, just the way you are.’

To be clear: I’m not Fred Rogers. For one thing, I’m not as kind (but I’m working on it). I don’t have his vision and I talk way too fast to children. (I’m working on that, too.)

But I do believe in my bones that no one else has my stories and can tell them the way I can, because I had the good fortune to grow up knowing I was loved.

And that I can be brave, tell my stories and keep working to share the most important message of all: You are loved, just as you are.

This is true. Mr. Rogers told me on TV.

In these times, we face darkness on our planet, in our country and in our families. As I write, news alerts pop up on my phone about another shooting, today in Pensacola. I can’t pretend all of that way, nor can I fix it.

I can pray. I can speak. I can vote. I look for and tell love stories. They surround us.

We can love each other through the darkness. One gracious moment at a time. One friend, one neighbor helping an imperiled turtle, wounded soul and broken family.

One love story at a time.

~~~

The world needs love stories. To share mine with you is a great joy, honor and privilege.

A few, recent posts:

Blessed & Grateful: When Wishes Come True — Meeting my Super Hero

I was a mess in the summer of 2005. Excited about big life changes — getting married, starting a freelance business, moving with my new husband to a new state. But I felt lost for a long time in my new central Pennsylvania town.

The way people talk here reminded me of my relatives, so felt a bit familiar. Otherwise, I felt disoriented. Landlocked and claustrophobic. No big water — like the mighty Kennebec River or vast Atlantic I’d worked and lived beside. Nor cool sea breeze in summer to flush away the heavy blanket of humidity. The scent of fresh pig manure spread on the farm fields was a cruel reminder to me of how far I was from the sea.

So I walked and explored, looking for footholds.

My new town was both adorable and gritty, built into steep hills among emerald ridges. Ornate, crisply painted Victorian houses with tidy lawns along tree-lined streets. And, closer to my not-so-fancy, petite “folk” Victorian house, some run-down homes, the ugly brick back-end of the county courthouse and jail, small-town dive bars below street level.

One September morning, I spotted bright orange through grey light. An enchanting pumpkin vine. Hidden far behind and down the hill from the house it belonged to, a fresh, shining small pumpkin swelled among lush vines spilling over a stone wall.

A welcome anchor

The pumpkin felt magical, and somehow just for me — although it was hardly a secret. It grew in plain sight of anyone who walked along the back alleys, public less-traveled lanes spanning backyards.

This pumpkin vine had broken loose from the patch, or perhaps just grew from the seeds of the previous autumn’s jack-o’lantern after rot had consumed its toothy grin.

Perhaps I felt a certain kinship with that rogue vine. Or we were both confused. Who knows.

The vine and the pumpkin were beautiful, and became one of my little mental anchors as I settled in. Instead of quiet mornings on the shore of a tidal river, watching the tide come in one teensy bit at a time, I watched the pumpkin grow day by day.

“I saw my magic pumpkin today,” I remember telling my dad over the phone. “It’s almost all orange now.”

Cool, he said. I could hear he was smiling. We’d reached a nice place, where we could actually talk about little ordinary stuff, because we’d tackled most of the big, thorny stuff.

Tucked among the wild patch

Now, the central Pennsylvania town where I live has much more flat land and room to spread along the valley floor.

Four ripening pumpkins grow hidden among the messiest part of my messy garden, beside the wood pile. They remind me of that magic pumpkin, that there is always magic to find in the mess. I remember to bloom where planted, to keep growing and reaching for the sun.

It all worked out — exactly as it was supposed to. Just not as I planned.

Yes — there is plenty of mess beyond my weedy garden: Huge and complicated problems we face as people finding our way day-by-day, healing our wounds, as families raising children, as a global community facing unprecedented loss.

I see and grapple with those messes.

Yet, we can’t forget to look for the magic in the mess, for what delights us and keeps us going. That magic surrounds us. It gets us through.

Among the Wild Plants

You can barely see the four little orange pumpkins below the tall green stalks of cup plants with spent blossoms, the compost pile with summer’s watermelon rinds and mussel shells, the sprawling scraggly volunteer tomato vines, the potted plants parked and awaiting a home — and lots of weeds.

I keep the front beds much tidier.

A hidden pumpkin growing out of compost in a wild patch of garden reminds me to find magic in the mess.

But here is where the magic lives — in this wild patch out back. This is where the tidy, precise corners and solid strength of my husband’s woodpile meets my beautiful mess. He is not who I’d married and moved here with in 2005 — but the man and family I needed to come here to find.

Magical, orange reminders that I’ve landed in a place surrounded by beauty and love. That we’ve made a home here.

The bees love the yellow blossoms of those cup plants. An army of mighty critters — worms, ants, beetles and the “roly-poly” pill bugs — turn our food scraps and grass clippings into fresh, rich soil. As they work their wonders, surviving seeds sprout into new life. Surprise vines bearing surprise pumpkins and the gourds the little boy next door, my garden buddy, calls “skooshes.”

I look into the messes and trust they hold magic, often hidden. Today, let’s find a “secret” something just for us, that delights and lifts us — or just find a bit of time to quietly wander, be still and let it find us.

magic

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