The Magic Of Ordinary Days Part 20

Martha brought in fried chicken and roasted potatoes, and of course dessert. We sat together and shared a plate of consolation at the table. In this farmland I have come to call home, food is seen as a sure cure for just about anything that ails you. People shovel in piled-high plates of heavy meats and ca.s.seroles, salads and desserts, even during the most trying of times.

After we finished eating, I stacked the plates in the sink, and Reverend Case readied himself to begin our prayers. We sat around the table, Ray, Martha, Reverend Case, and I, with hands clasped together. Speaking softly, Reverend Case began praying to G.o.d, asking Him to help me to weather this storm.

I stopped him in midsentence. "Please."

I don't think anyone had ever interrupted Reverend Case in prayer before. The dear man's eyes couldn't hide his surprise and concern.

I told him, "I don't desire prayer for me, personally." Because I hadn't paid such a high price after all. When I'd headed out here on my wedding day, I hadn't realized I'd bought a ticket to my own history, a different one from studying Akh-en-aten and Horizon-of-the-Aten, maybe, but a living, ongoing one. I pictured Daniel, all the other dead soldiers and civilians, and prisoners all over the world. "Couldn't we pray for those who have paid with their lives?"

Reverend Case prayed as I had requested, then he and Martha stayed for coffee before heading out. "We have congregation members and others out there without adequate heat," he explained. I hadn't realized that others around me were going cold. Before he and Martha left us, I gathered up our extra quilts and carried them out to the car.

"Careful," he said to me as I peered over the load and made my way down the porch steps.

"You sound just like Ray," I told him.

Reverend Case looked pleased with himself. "You two seem to be getting along mighty well."

I placed the quilts in his trunk, then turned back into the sunlight. I was open, exposed, without intending to be. "I love him," I said to Reverend Case. Then I turned to Martha. "I love your brother."

On the plains, people rarely speak openly of their feelings, especially of one so personal as love between husband and wife. Reverend Case raised his eyebrows for a second, then he smiled and said, "I'm so happy for the both of you."

But Martha didn't respond with words. Instead she walked up, kissed me on the cheek, and turned toward the car door in a waltzlike move. In all the years I've come to know Martha, I've never heard her talk of such personal feelings as I'd just done. It seems that certain lines of privacy aren't often crossed in a land where physical distance keeps people independent by necessity and by choice.

This land of distances, this land of buffalo gra.s.s, locoweed, crops, and churches, became my home. Change comes to these farmlands slowly. Harvest time is still the best season, everyone still talks endlessly about the weather, and contrary to what Ray once told me, he has always been kind.

One afternoon the following August, I took the baby, whom we named Daniel, outside on the porch and left him to nap in his ba.s.sinet while I worked in the flower garden. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had just exploded onto the pages of history, V-J Day had pa.s.sed, and negotiations over the terms of j.a.pan's surrender were under way. Earlier in the year, before the war's end, Camp Amache had been closed. Finally, the shadows had begun to fall on the most deadly war in human history, and on the Singleton farm, the tall Shasta daisies and black-eyed Susans in my garden nodded their heads and sc.r.a.ped against each other's arms as a warm prairie wind blew in ever so gently. The whirligigs that once belonged to Ray's mother, which I had repainted in red, white, and blue, stood above the flowers, and her collection of stones scattered out among waxy geranium stems.

Earlier that morning, I'd pulled weeds that had taken root and wrapped themselves around the flower stems. As Daniel slept nearby on the porch, I stood out in the sunlight, looking for any remaining weeds and examining this flower garden that would most certainly have pleased my mother.

One small yellow b.u.t.terfly floated in and landed on a daisy petal. I didn't know the name of that species, but as I watched it open and close its wings, I thought how it reminded me of a single petal of a yellow rose.

Rose.

Then I watched as more came, until perhaps a dozen of the same kind of b.u.t.terfly did a sunny swing over the flower heads and landed on their centers.

Lorelei.

I thanked the b.u.t.terflies, as if they were responsible. Memories are fragile things to hold, but many times, it's what we have. The flowers grew for my mother, the whirligigs twirled for Ray's, and the b.u.t.terflies came for the sisters-Rose and Lorelei, Abby and Bea, Aunt Eloise and Aunt Pearl-perhaps for all sisters everywhere.

I had never seen them again after the day we took that drive. Once I'd tried to visit them while they were being held in Denver awaiting trial, but they had refused me, probably out of shame. After their arrest, reporters and others had tried to ascribe all kinds of political and ideological reasons for what Rose and Lorelei had done. It was conjectured about and editorialized and discussed by the so-called experts, and many times during those days, I felt that I alone understood their reasons. Maybe the girls had at times questioned how much they owed to this country that had imprisoned them, yet it hadn't been nearly as complex as most people believed. They were simply two lonely, isolated women who fell in love and gave their trust away.

In their well-publicized trial, the German corporals testified against them, and the jury returned a guilty verdict to the reduced charge of obstructing justice. Rose and Lorelei each received a three-year prison sentence and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. After their release, I could only a.s.sume they returned to their home state of California.

The baby let out a cry. By the time I reached the ba.s.sinet, he was yelling, as if he'd awakened from a bad dream and found me missing.

"I'm here," I said, then lifted him and held his face to my cheek. My love for him had come as a surprise to me. Once he had arrived in howling perfection, it had come swiftly, intensely.

As a child, when I first heard the story of Creation, I'd closed my eyes and pictured the earth as a ball rolling off the palm of G.o.d and into dark s.p.a.ce, then drifting around until it found its home in sunny orbit. Never perfect, but ever spinning, and holding on to her course, despite it all.

A PENGUIN READERS GUIDE TO.

THE MAGIC OF ORDINARY DAYS.

Ann Howard Creel.

AN INTRODUCTION TO The Magic of Ordinary Days.

History has a way of bringing the past to life, conjuring up people and places that have long since disappeared. Living in the past is also a way to flee the present, to experience and perhaps live in a world that is not complicated by emotion and regret. Livvy could never have imagined that her life would take a course that was so distant from the dream she had for herself-her hopes to become an archaeologist, to lead a cloistered yet fulfilling life. But she becomes pregnant and unexpectedly finds herself far from home and her family, married to a man she does not know, as the country is on the brink of war. As she explains it, "in one fleeting moment I stripped away the petals of my future, let them catch wind, and fly away."

At first, Livvy feels almost as though she is in exile as she struggles to come to terms with her feelings of loneliness. "Ever since I had been quite young," she admits, "I could resist those who went against me, had been able to deny their opinions.... My inner strength came from an ability to handle, then separate myself from adversity." But the strength and intellect that allowed her to break through the barriers faced by most American women in the 1940s are frustrated by life on a prairie farm where there is no one to talk to, few books to read, and nowhere to go.

Slowly she takes to exploring her new environment and immersing herself in the history of the Plains. She begins a friendship with Rose and Lorelei, two j.a.panese American women confined at a nearby internment camp, and begins to find stimulation and comfort in the companionship.

Meanwhile, through radio and newspaper reports and her friendship with Rose and Lorelei, Livvy becomes aware of the history being made in her own lifetime. Stories of n.a.z.i concentration camps, reports of enormous American losses in the Pacific, and the realities of Rose's and Lorelei's lives remind her daily that her own troubles seem small in comparison. But when Livvy plays an unwitting role in the escape of two German POWs, she finally realizes that she, too, has a role in the history being made around her.

A history buff, Livvy yearns to know more about the circ.u.mstances behind this mysterious event. Though she has forged a strong friendship, she suddenly realizes that she knows very little about Rose and Lorelei and their dangerous plot-a scandal to which she had suddenly become an accomplice. She observes, "Rose, Lorelei and I had started swimming together on the surface of the water. We had at times dipped below the surface as we went along. But we hadn't taken a deep dive, hadn't delved into those dark waters, the ones where we kept hidden the unseen frailties that lie in wait."

Through her relationship with Rose and Lorelei, Livvy slowly begins to accept her present life, finding a new appreciation for the kind of freedom she had always taken for granted, and a growing love for her simple yet kind husband who is devoted to her happiness. She realizes that the most valuable lesson in life is how each person creates her own history day by day.

A CONVERSATION WITH ANN HOWARD CREEL.

1. Until this book you have been known as a writer of young-adult fiction. Is writing for an older audience different? Whether it's a book for children or for adults, when I sit down at the keyboard, the writing process is essentially the same. The same story elements-character, plot, setting, style, voice, etc.-must all be present. The difference comes from finding the voice of a child versus that of an adult. Subject matter may differ, too; however, children's books involve serious topics now more than ever before.

2. What could a young reader learn from Livvy's story? A young reader might learn that mistakes don't always hinder, that growth may follow mistakes, and that happiness may be found in unexpected places and in the company of unexpected people. Livvy's outlook on her mistake began to change as the book progressed, as Ray's love began to touch her, and as she started to see the special qualities that shimmered beneath his surface.

3. Some readers might disagree with Livvy's decision to stay with Ray instead of returning to Denver. What would you say to them? Livvy ended up staying because in Ray's presence she learned to love and trust again. I wanted the choice to be a difficult one without a clear or easy answer, and certainly for some women, leaving might have been a better choice. I enjoy the disagreement on this point because in my experience, each person views it differently based on his or her past and inclinations. It makes for heated discussions, too.

4. You have said that the novel was inspired, in part, by an actual event that occurred in a n.a.z.i POW camp. Can you tell us more about this incident, and why you found it so compelling? Is Livvy herself based on a real-life person? Livvy is fict.i.tious; however, I based Rose and Lorelei on three j.a.panese American sisters who were interned at Camp Amache and who aided in a POW escape. They were later prosecuted for treason. I latched onto this story because the aid rendered by the women seemed to be motivated by love, the results were tragic, and the story, although widely sensationalized in the past, has largely been forgotten, even in the area of Colorado where it took place.

5. You have also said that you wanted to write a novel about an arranged marriage. Why? I'm fascinated with relationships and marriage to begin with, and arranged marriages, which have been a common occurrence throughout history, are particularly compelling. I've always wondered how two strangers, thrown together most often by their parents, would manage to open up the doors to each other. Given the daunting task of maintaining a good marriage in any circ.u.mstances, I've wondered how often love ripens between people who didn't know each other to begin with.

6. Although Livvy calls herself a practice rug, "she is determined to find her own way in the world and wants to put off marriage until after she has settled into a career. What kinds of role models were available to independent-minded women like Livvy? During World War II, women entered college and the work force in numbers never seen before. Women did everything from a.s.sembling fighter planes to organizing Red Cross disaster relief to serving in the military in several newly established women's corps. Role models ranged from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to Rosie the Riveter.

7. Can you recommend any other books for readers who are interested in learning more about rural Colorado and its history, or about American life during World War II? Although there are a host of excellent books available about America during the war, the following painted a vivid picture of life during that time period:* V is for Victory : America's Homefront During World War II, by Stan Cohen * The Homefront: America During World War II, by Mark Jonathan Harris, Franklin Mitch.e.l.l, and Steven Schechter * Prisoners without Trial: j.a.panese Americans During World War II, by Roger Daniels * n.a.z.i Prisoners of War in America, by Arnold Krammer 8. What are you working on now? I continue to be fascinated by our country's history and enjoy weaving together fact and fiction. Unlike other authors who tell me they often begin with a character or a plot, my inspiration usually comes from history and from a particular place and time. My current endeavor takes place in the West and is an exploration of family ties, love, and loyalty, and how they relate to human connectedness to the land.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION.

1. Was Livvy's father right to insist on her finding a husband before she gave birth? What other options were available to her? What would have been the repercussions of these options?

2. It takes Liwy a while to warm up to Ray, let alone love him. Do you think she was too hard on him? Were you surprised that she could come to love him at all?

3. What are some of the qualities that make Livvy and Ray such well-developed characters? How does Creel make them human? How does each surprise you?

4. Creel reveals the story behind Livvy's pregnancy gradually; we don't find out what really happened until more than halfway through the novel. How does knowing she is pregnant change the opinions you had begun to form about her?

5. Why is it so easy for Livvy to make friends with Rose and Lorelei? How are their situations similar?

6. How did you feel about Rose and Lorelei after they used Livvy to help the POWs escape? Did they betray Livvy's friendship? Did you, like Livvy, feel any sympathy toward them because of their feelings for these soldiers?

7. Do you think the girls befriended Liwy because they knew she could help them with their plan? Why or why not?

8. What is the significance of Rose and Lorelei's fascination with b.u.t.terflies?

9. What did you learn from this book about World War II and its effects on the home front?

10. Did Liwy make the right choice in remaining with Ray? What was she giving up by not returning to Denver? What do you think you would have done in her situation?

11. Would you attribute her whirlwind romance and pregnancy to grief over her mother's death? Why would a sensible, self-a.s.sured, independent woman "strip away the petals of her future to let them catch wind, and fly away?" Why is this metaphor so suitable to the book?

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