Monthly Archives: November 2013

(Re) Discovering Tutankhamen’s Tomb

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

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On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter and Lord Caernavon opened the tomb of Tutankhamen, the boy king of Egypt. Howard Carter held a candle up to a small crack he made in the door. In response to this sudden illumination, 3,000 year-old gold glittered its greeting while long, lithe likenesses of animals stared back, dispassionately, with ebony eyes. This cache of ancient treasure left its discoverers and the Western world breathless. Dazzling the imagination with images of wealth: bright, decadent, and exotic.

And at 5:30 p.m. every weekday, until I turned ten, I helped Howard Carter and Lord Caernavon open the tomb again.

Getting teased on the morning bus and eating a somewhat soggy peanut butter sandwich for lunch didn’t seem to matter now.

Dad at the office, Mom in the kitchen, my brother in his room—I was alone, happy to keep the company of my thoughts. Opening the bottom cupboard of my bookcase, where I kept my favorite books, I pulled out an ink-colored paperback: Tut’s Mummy Lost…and Found. It was a little above my reading level—the sentences were long and winding, easy for a second grader to understand, but still too labyrinthine for a first grader. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t the book’s words that enthralled me, it was the pictures.

Sitting cross-legged on my family’s living room floor, I turned the pages until I found the picture that I wanted: the illustrator’s interpretation of what Carter saw. Getting teased on the morning bus and eating a somewhat soggy peanut butter sandwich for lunch didn’t seem to matter now. I had discovered something! With Carter and Caernavon by my side, we stood in an ancient ante chamber, lined with three golden couches, sleek and animalistic. Chests and statues, stunningly be-jeweled, were piled from floor to ceiling. Delicate flower wreaths, a brittle witness to our wonder, sprawled across the hoard—untouched, since the day of Tutankhamen’s funeral. I no longer sat in the living room. I sat on the floor of a desert tomb, each sand crystal glistening quietly in the glow of Carter’s candlelight. While a perfume, definitely floral, but drier than the smell of a spring hyacinth and muskier than the smell of a cluster of summer honeysuckle, seeped into my nose.

“SARAH! Come now or your dinner will get cold.”

Dad was home, calling me away from my thoughts and into the kitchen. The multitudinous grains of dessert sand lost their crystalline edges and softened back into the small, fuzzy bulbs of Berber that carpeted my family’s living room floor. Slowly, I stood up, turning off the living room light. I slipped Tut’s Mummy Lost…and Found back into the cupboard. King Tutankhamen’s tomb was closed, once more sealed up in the darkness of time.

Until 5:30 tomorrow.

Sublime Fluff or, How the English Countryside Failed Paula

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

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It was all going to be so Spiritually Moving. That was before a damp, five hour walk through the English countryside. Instead of arriving at her destination, an abandoned Victorian church, full of poetry and prayers, Paula arrived moist and cursing. The church was not the majestic Gothic ruin the travel section of the New York Times reported it to be. Barely a tracing of walls and roof, it was a sublime disappointment. Clover covered the ground where pews and floors used to be and thickets of blackberries tumbled over a cracked, multi-angled display of rock and rubble, all that remained of the altar.

And there, waddling through the jagged stones was a rabbit. Lop-eared, furry, and brown, it reached out its silky neck to bite off one the berries, voluptuously swollen by many days of rain.

Paula saw it and snorted. A rabbit grazing in the foundations of a church seemed to be further proof of the Englishman’s godlessness. Like this pathetic non-structure, the church she attended in London was void of life, including peckish rabbits. When she showed up for Mass on Sundays, the rector, abandoning his stereotypical English reserve, would sprint down the main aisle to meet her: He is starting a young person’s reading group. Would she be interested? Would she be willing to bring some of her American university mates?

A rabbit grazing in the foundations of a church seemed to be further proof of the Englishman’s godlessness.

If Paula wanted to see the hearts of the English moved by something greater than themselves, she nipped down to her neighborhood’s pub after Sunday service. There, she found men and women clustered around flat-screen tellies, watching the local football match. She often heard the tune “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” robustly accompanying a good-natured exploration of Player A’s sexual prowess or Team X’s lack thereof.

Paula sighed. She missed being in a crowded church where people sang hymns instead of football songs. She missed a God that she could recognize.

Thunder rumbled. Exasperated, she looked up into the graying sky. If she tarried much longer, the five-hour walk back to her Bed & Breakfast would be in a downpour. She departed, her heavy steps carelessly treading on twigs and sod. There were no churches here.

The rabbit, usually frightened by loud noises, did not notice Paula’s departure. Back tensed and rigidly arched, it crouched on the altar’s remains, laboriously expelling tiny droplets of excrement.

In one of those droplets was a cluster of blackberry seeds.

As the rain began to fall, the seeds sunk deep into the soil, blessing the loam with the promise of new life.

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Icons at 3:19 A.M.

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

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“Icons” is my newest non-fiction. Published in the The Living Church, this little piece is getting a lot of attention. It was even mentioned as a story “worth noting” by AnglicansOnline. The editor writes that:

S.L. Woodford writes in The Living Church (Milwaukee) on death, grief, and text-messages.

And, I do just that. Yet, I cannot think of it as a stand alone piece. In my mind, it will always be linked to something I wrote for Hartford Faith & Values entitled “3:19 A.M.” Both deal with my shock, grief, and yearning for beauty after the unexpected death of my mother. “3:19 A.M.” explores the morning I received the news and “Icons” tells the story of the day after.

Mom’s been dead for five months and I’m deeply glad that I wrote both pieces so soon after her death—each one preserves the hardest, but richest, moments of my life, while setting my love for her as a permanent reality, like a leaf within amber.

Read “Icons” here.

Piles: A Beginning of Sorts

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

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I am a pile sort of person. My office desk is a formidable installation of stacked books, papers, and pamphlets:  each pile a silent observer of my daily tasks. My writing desk at home is the same. As I write, books slowly but surely pile at the foot of my chair, creating towers, content with their rectangular chunkiness.

I need the presence of piles as I work. Nothing else reminds me so viscerally  that ideas are not just for thinking. If they are the right sort of ideas, they can knit themselves together, form into a book or an action, and have a physical impact on the world.

I’d like to think of Poetry & Pushpins as my virtual pile of writings. A place where my professional works can mingle with my less formal musings. A place where all of my varied pieces on religion, feminism, literature, fashion, gardening, and daily life can stack themselves, and in the process become something real.