A Grad, Dad, and...Tupperware?

Also: Lenny, a writer's dog

Jun 19, 2021

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Inside this issue:

Grads, Dads, and …Tupperware?
Learning more about Juneteenth
Introducing our latest feature: The Writer’s Dog
Books, zen, and a new home for Andrew Sean Greer’s novel, Less

“My family’s life has been changed by Tupperware in so many ways. I watch my children and see how successful they are, and I know all that came from Tupperware and I what I’ve instilled in them from what I’ve learned.” - Sherida Brinson, Tupperware Business Leader

What Words Will Inspire Graduates? Hint: Not Tupperware

Last week one of my close readers, okay it was my husband, remarked on the whole graduation season thing and wondered aloud: what would any of us say to young adults who are launching themselves via Zoom into the world we’ve created for them?

While I’ve been pondering that question, senior high school classes all over the country have been winding up the graduation, some with more excitement than others. I admire, for example, the high school valedictorian in Texas who went rogue and delivered a passionate speech blasting the recent law passed by the state legislature instead of the one approved by her school. Whether her listeners agreed or disagreed with her, they walked out with a moment to remember.

So, before I go on, let me ask: what would you tell graduates if you were the speaker chosen to help usher them over the threshold into what we think of as adulthood at a time when so much has changed the world we thought we knew? Fire away in that comments section. We all want to know. Some of us are still trying to figure the whole adulthood thing out.

I don’t know what was said at my high school graduation because I skipped it. I told myself I didn’t belong there.

I was still sixteen when I graduated from high school in 1973. I was no wunderkind. I was just in a hurry. High school was not my happy place, at least in the beginning. During my freshman year, my grades plunged from A’s and B’s to D-’s. I was struggling with everything: my body, sex, friends, adults in general and certain teachers -- and my parents - - in particular. Experiments with various chemicals and alcohol didn’t always yield the results I’d been going for.

I wanted out. To get out, I needed a certain number of classes and credits. I no longer remember just how or when I realized that it was possible to squeeze the remaining credits and classes into two more years of high school instead of three but I do remember my meeting with the high school principal when I pitched my plan which hinged on his approval. He resisted. Then he told me that if I could maintain a B+ average in each of the remaining classes, he’d let me out.

Short story: his challenge worked. On top of that two more students in my class, both much higher achievers than I had been, also negotiated early exits. They did the whole cap and gown thing with the senior class; I just couldn’t. For me, the past two years had been a form of resistance. Even though I ended up with some good memories of high school, my decision to leave had been rooted in anger -- I wanted out of high school and part of me detached from it even before the end arrived. I felt hypocritical “walking” as though I were part of a group that I never felt part of.

Five years later, I graduated from college. This time, I wanted to celebrate. My circle wasn’t huge but all the people I wanted were there: parents, siblings, my husband, my three-year-old son, and some good friends. They sat in the bleachers on a hot spring day in Durham NH while I sat in the sea of blue gowns ready for the speaker to say something amazing to send me off. Instead, this businessman -- I’ve long forgotten his name -- talked about...wait for it...Tupperware.

I waited in vain for him to make a strong metaphoric link between the success of the company that made Tupperware to my achievement. I listened for some clues that might come in handy when I started my new job in ten days as a reporter for the Gloucester Daily Times. Then I just tuned out the whole thing until my name was eventually called and I received the folder that contained a piece of paper saying my diploma would be mailed as soon as I finished paying off a fee I owed.

Still, I was happy. I had crossed the boundary from school to “real life” as I thought of it then. I couldn’t wait to get on with it. I was still in a hurry.

I think if I were speaking to any student about to move on from high school or college, the sum total of my advice would be not to hurry. Turns out that the years I spent in school floundering, trying, failing, studying, learning, crying, dancing disco (yes, I did although not much and not for long), lying in the sun, hauling my infant to the store and wheeling him and the groceries back in the stroller, finding friends, losing friends, getting bad perms with money I couldn’t spare, getting married, getting divorced, continuing less frequent experiments with chemicals and alcohol, all of this was real life. The thing about having a goal -- graduating early from high school or getting through college to reach the job that lies on the other side -- is that it can make you discount all the work you do to get there. The cliche that fits this best: it isn’t the destination, it’s the journey.

I’d make a terrible graduation speaker but I wish the guy who had waxed eloquent about Tupperware all those years ago had simply said: slow down, look, listen, notice -- because this moment right here is more real than one that hasn’t happened yet, and you are missing it.

The grad (me) and the dad, May 1978, a time of bad hair for both of us

Graduation: Words To Live By

None of these collections of graduation speeches by famous writers or quotes by famous people mention Tupperware. Not one. They do inspire, though, even if you graduated long ago.

Dads: A Quick Memory and Some Short Reads

The other day I harvested yet another giant zucchini from our garden when an image of my father popped into my head. He was digging carrots out of a garden that lay under a six-inch layer of freshly-fallen snow. Newly divorced, he was on his own then. We were visiting for dinner and he’d discovered the carrots by accident. They weren’t frozen, they were just perfect. It was a moment of light during a period of upheaval for him and for all of us. I liked remembering it. And him.

Short Reads by Dads

Top Essays By Queer Dads in 2020, a selection of essays by gay, bi, and trans fathers that speak to the experience of having and raising children in the world today as queer men who capture their experience of fatherhood during a pandemic and a time of racial reckoning.

The Child I Love - Jon Ralston, a political reporter based in Nevada wrote this short essay about falling in love with his child twice: first when she was born and then when he changed his name and began the transition from female to male. Here’s an interview NPR’s Kelly McEvers did with Ralston in 2016.

Lyle McKeany -- When you read this short piece, How To Write Better Stories in Four Easy Steps by Lyle McKeany, linger over “Step 3: Have Life Changing Experiences.” For McKeany these include the traumatic moment when he learned his newborn daughter had cerebral palsy and the moment, not long after when he had to help his dad leave the world. His newsletter Just Enough To Get Me Into Trouble is fun to read because McKeany is open, unsentimental, and has a sense of humor when he writes about his journey as a father to a child who he adores but also requires so much more from him than he ever anticipated when he and his wife were trying to conceive. He is diving into writing to help him make sense of it all and, as a writer, I totally get that which is why I loved his piece, “I Broke Up With My Therapist.”

Today is Juneteenth

Good news traveled slowly, very slowly, for the Black people of Texas back in the 1860s. The Emancipation Proclamation took effect two and a half years before enslaved people in Texas got the news. They did not learn they’d been freed until June 19, 1865 with the arrival of Union troops who made the announcement. In this short piece, “What Is Juneteenth,” Henry Louis Gates outlines the progress of June 19th as a holiday celebrated by the freed people of Texas to its spread across the country as Black families eventually migrated from Texas. The day was just declared a national holiday. To learn more about it, I bought On Juneteenth by Harvard historian and Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed, a book I first learned about over on “What to read if…”: A slim book with six essays, it provides a deeper and more personal look at the history of June 19th against the backdrop of modern times. I started it yesterday and I’m already understanding how little I understand about June 19th and Texas.. Here’s an interview with the Annette Gordon-Reed.

Introducing The Writer’s Dog (or Cat)

I need dogs in my life but I’m not yet ready to bring a new one home. So, I’ve become a dog voyeur. I watch puppy videos online, I check out adoption sites, I watch the private conversations other morning walkers seem to be having with their dogs. Then it occurred to me that lots of writers have dogs. Dogs are the beings that feed our souls even as they sometimes distract from the writing itself.

I came across this fun look at some famous writers and their dogs and it hit me: why don’t we get to know some writers through their four-legged companions? So today, drum roll please, we launch Spark’s new regular feature: The Writer’s Dog. Okay okay, we will also feature the cats of writers and, if there are animals I’ve been too narrow minded to imagine right now, then... let’s just see where this goes.

First up is Lenny, one of my favorite dogs in the world even though I’ve never met her in the flesh. She is the reason I went back to Instagram even after the unfortunate cloning debacle. Lenny’s writer is Kristen Tsetsi, author of three novels and a host of short stories. More on Kris in a minute. First…

Meet Lenny

Full name: Lenny Ftesyektsi

Known for: “My gift of communication. I use my body, nose, ears, and eyes (for facial expressions, mostly), so there's no risk of not being understood. I am also known for understanding English. I don't speak it, naturally, but at least 15 words or commands make sense, somehow.”

Expert at: “Self control. When I hear the words "Leave it." I'll leave a piece of steak sitting a centimeter from my nose, if I must, and if there's food on the coffee table and no one to guard it, I won't sneak a bite.”

What I live for: “Like many dogs, breakfast, dinner, and treats, which include morning banana bites and evening tomato bites at salad-making time. Also car rides. And new walking places. And some other dogs, but only one at a time, and in moderation. I'm an introvert.

How I met my writer: “She drove to a strip mall to visit the liquor store (it had missed her), but she stopped at PetSmart, first, "just to pet dogs and definitely not bring one home" during a dog adoption day.”

How it’s been going so far: “Four stars! Five is reserved for when I get to go for a ride in the car every day. It does not happen every day.”

Something you should know about my writer: “She will sometimes sit on the floor with me and pet me during writing time, but I don't think it's because of me. I think it's because she's stuck, and I'm a good excuse to stop writing. That's okay, though. It doesn't matter how you win.”

Meet Lenny's Writer: Kristen Tsetsi

Known for: “Three novels: Pretty Much True (wartime; semi-autobiographical), my third and latest, The Age of the Child (reproductive rights; antagonistic, but, I hope, entertainingly so), and the middle child, The Year of Dan Palace, an Irving-esque story about the awkwardness of being a man suffering a midlife crisis and desperate to live life to its fullest.”

What Lenny’s writer does when not engaged with Lenny: “Most recently, I wrote a short story I'm both very proud of (my picky sister loves it!) and am very attached to: Sandi and the Man in the Hole. Before entering the novel world, I was exclusively a short story writer. I wanted nothing to do with novels and loved, loved, loved short story writing and submitting/publishing. But novels take a long time, so short stories fell away. This one begged to be written, though, and now that it has been, I can (I must?) focus on revisions to a new novel's completed first draft. (I also recently wrote this humor piece for/about writers when I was procrastinating on completing that draft: A Hopeful Author Apologizes to a Literary Agent for an Email Error.) And because I love talking about writing and writing-related things, I'm also a somewhat regular contributor to Jane Friedman's all-things-business-of-being-a-writer website, JaneFriedman.com.

Where to find us:Website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook

"Kristen Tsetsi has done the most frightening thing any artist can do by taking a current threat to human rights and following it to a logical conclusion. ... The Age of the Child packages important social commentary in a moving story." - Readers' Favorite

Sparkers Recommend…

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. “I am blown away by the quality of the writing and storytelling. In mentioning it to my book and writer friends, I find that few know about it in the US though it has won numerous awards in the UK. It is about Shakespeare’s family during the Plague. It is fiction because little is really known about Shakespeare’s family. Best book I’ve read in a long time. The historical details are incredible.” - Carol F.

Coming Soon: Fierce Little Thing by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Fierce Little Thing, coming in late July, is a thriller that has been called “propulsive thriller full of rich detail and a story that won’t quit.” Publisher Weekly says, “Beverly-Whittemore delivers a twisty, rewarding tale of friendship, secrets, and childhood trauma. Donna Tartt fans, take note.”

You can enter to win an advance reader copy (ARC) and read it (free) before anyone else does. To enter, just help spread the word about this new book on social media, by sharing this post with your friends, and/or by preordering from the Spark Community Recommendations Page at bookshop.org and then let the author know about it by emailing her at MirandaBeverlyWhittemore@gmail.com by end of day Monday, June 21. She’ll draw from all the respondents using a randomizer. You can read more about the novel and sign up for updates here.

Before I go, congratulations to Roseann C. of CA who will be giving my signed copy of Andrew Sean Greer’s novel Less a new home. We’ll be rehoming another book next week. But for now, that’s all folks. If you like something you’ve found here today, let me know by hitting the “like” button (the heart) down below and/or leaving a comment. It’s fun to hear from you and I am ready to pay very close attention to your feedback :). Also - spread the word! Here’s a button for that:

As always, browse for any of the books mentioned in this or any issue of Spark at the Spark Community Recommendations Page at bookshop.org where every purchase supports local bookstores. Any commission we make on the sales will go to support a literacy program we all choose when we’ve got enough to make a difference.

Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Blue Water from Sparker Jeannette M.

“I love to swim. I don’t swim fast and I don’t swim slow, I swim in my own rhythm. Breathe in, breathe out. I count the laps. Back and forth. One one, two two, three three and so on. Up to 20. Sometimes I miscount. I don’t care. The reflections of the sun on and in the water, the way the light hits the water and breaks into ever changing weblike structures consisting of hexagons and octagons, that stretch and contract, the periodic shimmer and flicker add to the my feeling of being calm and quiet. Everything moves.”

Looking at the seemingly randomly changing shapes, I see time. - Jeannette M.

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.

I can’t wait to see what you send!

(And if you’ve gotten here, liked something, and still haven’t hit the heart below, now’s your chance! )