Middle-Age
by Pat Schneider

The child you think you don't want
is the one who will make you laugh.
She will break your heart
when she loses the sight in one eye
and tells the doctor she wants to be
an apple tree when she grows up.

It will be this child who forgives you
again and again
for believing you don't want her to be born,
for resisting the rising tide of your body,
for wishing for the red flow of her dismissal.
She will even forgive you for all the breakfasts
you failed to make exceptional.

Someday this child will sit beside you.
When you are old and too tired of war
to want to watch the evening news,
she will tell you stories
like the one about her teenaged brother,
your son, and his friends
taking her out in a canoe when she was
five years old. How they left her alone
on an island in the river
while they jumped off the railroad bridge.


Pat Schneider, "Middle-Age" from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © 2005 Pat Schneider published by Amherst Writers and Artists Press. (buy now)

It's the birthday of Alice Walker (books by this author), born in Eatonton, Georgia (1944). She was the youngest of eight children, the daughter of poor sharecroppers. Walker graduated first in her high school class and won a scholarship to Spelman College (1961). She transferred to Sarah Lawrence after two years, and a short story she wrote there was sent to Langston Hughes, who became an early champion of her writing. In 1968 she published her first collection of poetry, Once, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, in 1970 about a family of poor sharecroppers in the 1920s. Throughout the '60s and '70s Alice Walker had a modest following, but it wasn't until her third novel, The Color Purple (1982), won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award that her work reached a much larger audience. She once wrote, "Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence."

Her memoir, Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965-2000, will be released in April 2022. (preorder now)

It's the birthday of poet Amy Lowell (books by this author), born in Brookline, Massachusetts (1874), the daughter of a prominent Boston family. Her first poem, "Fixed Idea," wasn't published until she was 36, and she threw herself into studying the latest trends in poetry — imagism and unrhymed meter. She once said, "God made me a businesswoman and I made myself a poet." Her posthumous collection of poetry, What's O'Clock (1925), won the Pulitzer Prize.

It's the birthday of J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee (books by this author), born in Cape Town, South Africa (1940). He's the author of many novels, including Dusklands (1974), Life and Times of Michael K (1983), and Disgrace (1999). He's known for his intense self-discipline and dedication to writing. Someone who worked with him for more than a decade claimed that he only saw Coetzee laugh once. He's lived most of his adult life in England, America, and Australia, but much of his writing deals with South African apartheid. His breakthrough novel was Waiting for Barbarians, published in 1980. In 2003 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

Coetzee’s lastest novel is The Death of Jesus (2019), the third in his “Jesus” trilogy following the life, and now death, of Jesus Christ.

On this date in 1943 the Battle of Guadalcanal ended. Code-named "Operation Watchtower," the battle marked a turning point in the Pacific theater. The United States had already won important battles at Coral Sea and Midway but they had been on the defensive since the attack on Pearl Harbor; the Guadalcanal Campaign was the Allied Forces' first major offensive against the Japanese.

Guadalcanal lies in the Solomon Islands. Ninety miles long and averaging 25 miles wide, the island is made up of dormant volcanoes, thick rainforest, and steep ravines. Japanese troops had landed on the little South Pacific island in June 1942, intending to build an airfield and, from there, launch long-range bombers that would disrupt the supply and communication routes from the United States to New Zealand and Australia. Two months later, on August 7, Allied forces — mostly American — invaded to put a stop to the plan. Half the forces landed at Guadalcanal and the other half invaded the nearby islands of Tulagi and Florida. Guadalcanal has no natural harbors and its southern shores are protected by a coral reef. The Allies had no choice but to come ashore on the north central coast. They secured the airfield — which they renamed Henderson Field — by 4 o'clock the next afternoon. The Japanese waged war on land, sea, and air, and launched a major counterattack in November. Although heavy casualties were suffered on both sides, the Allies managed to hold them off.

The American troops were eager and enthusiastic, but inexperienced. Their enemy soon figured out that they were uncomfortable with night operations, so the Japanese planned attacks and major troop movements for the midnight hours. In addition to their human enemies, both the Allied and Japanese forces struggled with swarms of mosquitoes, tropical diseases, and an oppressively hot and humid climate. Disease carried off more American troops than the Japanese did in the first few months of the campaign. For every soldier that fell in battle, five fell to malaria or dysentery. The Japanese also suffered from malnutrition, many of them forced to live on coconuts alone.

By December Japanese commanders were beginning to talk about withdrawing from the Solomon Islands. After six months, three major land battles, seven naval battles, and nearly continuous air battles, the Japanese began to evacuate their troops in the early morning hours of February 7. On February 9 the United States declared victory. Japan lost 25,000 experienced ground troops compared with 6,300 U.S. Marines. Both sides lost many ships, but the Allies were in a better position to replace them than the Japanese were. Japan also lost most of its elite naval aviators. Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi, a commander in the Imperial Japanese Army, later said, "Guadalcanal is no longer merely a name of an island in Japanese military history. It is the name of the graveyard of the Japanese army."

Once the campaign was ended, Guadalcanal and Tulagi were developed into Allied bases to support their Pacific campaign. The Japanese forces, now on the defensive, never regained the upper hand and eventually surrendered in August 1945.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

^