Why I Wake Early, a Happy Poem! by Mary Oliver

Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and crotchety— best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light— good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness. "Why I Wake Early" by Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early: New Poems. © Beacon Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission

PARADE Magazine, Sunday, November 3, 2013:

LIVING

Lessons of Loss: Melissa d’Arabian Reflects on What She Learned From Her Mother's Suicide 

NOVEMBER 2, 2013 – 5:00 AM – 14 COMMENTS

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By MELISSA D'ARABIAN

(Courtesy of Melissa D'Arabian)

Food Network’s Melissa d’Arabian reflects on the ways her mother’s suicide taught her how to live.

One spring evening in 1989, I called home from college with a simple request: I needed my mom’s credit card number for a GMAT prep course. But I didn’t get it. I didn’t even get my mom.

Instead, an unfamiliar male voice answered: “Hello?” He was an officer with the Montgomery County, Md., Police Department. We had a short conversation, but I still remember it vividly 25 years later. My mother had died by suicide.

Losing my mom crushed me logistically, financially, and emotionally. But losing my mom to suicide almost crushed my spirit. I was 20 when she died, and it plunged me into a decade-long crisis of faith.

My 20s were a mess. But the only way out is through, and sometimes the other side is so glorious you’re grateful for whatever got you there. That’s how I feel about that season of my life.

Here are some of the lessons that decade taught me:

Happiness is an inside job. Of course, that’s both good and bad news. Good news: I don’t need a new car to make me happy. Bad news: A new car won’t make me happier. Second, I believe I have more value than I can always see. I remind myself not to compare my insides with others’ outsides, or, as a friend puts it, my blooper reel with others’ sizzle reels.

Mostly, I emerged empathetic. My anger at my mom for leaving me morphed into imperfect understanding. For years, I’d seen her as the perpetrator, but I grew to see her as her suicide’s victim.

Those years of reflection gave me another gift. Mom was found on April 13, but she had died on April 12. The death certificate said April 12, while the police report and tombstone said April 13. So the anniversary of her death always lingered over 48 difficult hours—a black hole of loss, a sense that the world was diminished without my mom’s warm hugs, goofy wit, and wise advice.

One year, I decided to start commemorating the two-day anniversary by creating something to contribute to the world. It takes surprisingly little effort to comfort me on these days. Making brownies for a neighbor or writing an overdue note to a relative soothes my sense of imbalance.

In 2004, my husband and I were struggling to get pregnant. When I finally got the coveted two lines on the pregnancy test, I met with my doctor, and he told me what I already knew: I had become a mom sometime between April 12 and April 13.

The most important job I have today is being a mentor to my four young daughters. My children know that my mother died, but they don’t know the details; someday soon, I will have that conversation.

Being a mom doesn’t make me miss my own any less—it makes me wish she were here even more. She would have adored her many grandchildren. I live a few houses away from my sister and her five kids, so I imagine Mom might have moved here, too, and been a part of our never-ending cycle of birthday gatherings. And my Food Network career? She would have been so jazzed, probably asking weekly if I ever run into Brad Pitt. (Nope.)

Without my suicide season, I wouldn’t be the mom I am today—or the wife, the woman, the friend. Most days, I like who I see in the mirror. I am pretty sure my mom does, too.

How to Help
Nov. 23 is the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (afsp.org)’s International Survivors of Suicide Day. Click here to find out the warning signs of suicide and how to help a loved one or get help for yourself. And on Nov. 4 at 2 p.m. ET, join Melissa and an expert from AFSP atfacebook.com/parademag to share your stories and ask questions about depression and suicide.

Immortal Longings, Poem by Robert Pinsky

Immortal Longings by Robert Pinsky Inside the silver body Slowing as it banks through veils of cloud We float separately in our seats Like the cells or atoms of one Creature, needs And states of a shuddering god. Under him, a thirsty brilliance. Pulsing or steady, The fixed lights of the city And the flood of carlights coursing Through the grid: Delivery, Arrival, Departure. Whim. Entering And entered. Touching And touched: down The lit boulevards, over the bridges And the river like an arm of night. Book, cigarette. Bathroom. Thirst. Some of us are asleep. We tilt roaring Over the glittering Zodiac of intentions. "Immortal Longings" by Robert Pinsky, from The Figured Wheel. © The Noonday Press, 1996. Reprinted with permission

It's the birthday of poet Robert Pinsky (books by this author), born in Long Branch, New Jersey (1940). He played the saxophone in high school, and he said: "My first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing [...] The fact that it was my breath making a party out of things was miraculous to me, a physical pleasure." His parents wanted him to be an optician like his father, but he chose to go to college, the first person in his family to do so. At Rutgers, he took a class on poetry his freshman year, and he was amazed by "Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats. He said: "It was the speed with which he covered the ground. Wow: 'artifice of eternity'!'' Pinsky typed up "Sailing to Byzantium" and hung it on his dorm room wall, and decided to become a poet himself. He went on to graduate school at Stanford. When he arrived at Stanford, he thought he was quite talented, so he took a bunch of his poems to the poet and critic Yvor Winters and announced that he hoped he would receive credit just for having written them. Instead, Winters read his poems for three minutes and then said, "Well, there may be some gift here, but it's impossible to tell, because you simply don't know how to write." Pinsky begged to be let into one of the professor's courses, but the prerequisite for all the other classes wasn't being offered that term. Winters took pity on Pinsky and offered to take him on as an independent study, and he became Pinsky's mentor at Stanford. Ten years later, Pinsky published his first book of poems,Sadness and Happiness (1975). In 1993, a group of 19 poets, including Pinsky, were each asked to translate a section of Dante's Inferno for a reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Pinsky was so excited by the work that he just kept going, and he ended up publishing The Inferno of Dante: A New Translation in 1995 to great acclaim.He said: "I got hooked on the technical challenge [...] It was more like having an absorbing new video game or sewing pattern or boat-building pattern than a large undertaking. It was like trying to master a song, or working on your jump shot or something. It was not consciously a scholarly or even a literary process: more athletic or musical or puzzle solving: working on a wonderful jigsaw puzzle or sudoku." His books of poetry include The Want Bone (1990), Jersey Rain(2000), and Selected Poems (2011). He said: "I think that if an audience for any art is having a good time, they are willing to suspend the need for comprehension for a while — that's part of the pleasure. [...] And if it doesn't sound good, it is boring even if we understand it. That's the trouble with a lot of boring art: you understand the stupid cop show, or the tedious sitcom gag, too soon and too completely. Same for the stupid middlebrow poem."