The scrapbook

Seventy years old, the scrapbook

is in surprisingly good condition, filled

with yellowed news clippings, each

carefully cut, trimmed, pasted into place,

clipping from two newspapers, back

in the time when two newspapers

per town was the rule, when the news

was more yellowed than the clippings

would become.

Each clipping, the one from the Journal

and the same story from the Times,

is about fire, a fire, a specific fire, scores

of yellowed clippings about fires, scores

of fires that burned orange red and yellow,

yellow like the clippings they’d become.

The scrapbook and its contents at first

a mystery, a puzzle, until a memory

yellowed in time surfaces, a memory

of the time before I knew him, the time

before I was, the time he was both

a newspaperman and a firefighter,

one calling supplementing the income

of the other.

The yellowed clippings chronicle both,

the fires and the news, and had to be kept

or burned when memory failed.

Photograph by Society of American Archivists, Manuscript Repository Newsletter.

The Valentine’s Day That Mattered

I first saw her in a college newsroom. She was seated, waiting like a new reporter to talk to the managing editor. “I’m Janet Lowrey,” she said. “Do you have anything for me to do?”

I did: a story on the new chemistry building. And off she went.

Student reporters could request beats to cover, but the final decisions for assignments rested with the managing editor. Every reporter – every single reporter – requested the student government beat. It was the source for numerous stories because of Student Assembly meetings, controversies and the spring elections. She asked for it, too.

She was one of the five students in the reporting class identified by the professor who taught it as the best writers in the class. In addition to student government, she also asked for the religion beat.

She was the only reporter who asked for the religion beat. I was surprised (who would want to cover religion?), but ended up giving her both the beats she requested.

Her requests and my decision changed both of our lives. I could draw a straight line from Janet Lowrey writing “student government and religion” on the request form to my becoming a Christian weeks later.

By the time Valentine’s Day rolled around, we were dating. I decided on flowers, and had them delivered to her dorm: red carnations and a single blue iris.

That afternoon, through the big picture window of the newsroom behind my desk, I saw her coming on the sidewalk across the street. She was beaming, and she was carrying something, which turned out to be my Valentine’s Day present – the soundtrack album for Godspell. The flowers long ago turned to dust (although she did take a few pictures). I still have the album with its red , black and white cover.

Eight months after we met, we were married. It will be 39 years in August.

Today, when I see her smile, when I watch her dance with our grandson, when she gets that perplexed look on her face, and when I hear her pray, I see the girl I met, and the girl I still fall in love with.

Somewhere in the words

somewhere among the flowers

somewhere within the music

somewhere between the sprinkles

   of a slight snowfall

it was born

it grew

it remained