Preface
Today I’d like to share with you some of what I’m working on.
Since the fall of 2013, shortly before the death of my wife, Mindy, I have felt a deep purpose to write a memoir. Many of you know this already, since I wrote actively on the project for many years and shared often about the work with colleagues and friends and readers alike.
Since early on, I’ve had a plot line, and an aim for the point of the story, and even a target reader in mind. But I was missing a third load-bearing beam, a theme which would both link the people and places and scenes, and allow freedom to write outside direct chronological order.
Then last summer I had lunch along Mississippi with Matt Mikalatos (his Substack is listed below and highly recommended) and Matt encouraged me to explore pitching a spiritual memoir because he feels they are needed right now. Well, I take advice from fellow writers to heart, so the memoir started spinning around my head again.
Then an idea for the third beam arrived a few months back through visions of plant life: grasses, fungi, fruit, trees. I saw how greenery flowed through my life, from Doug firs to Japanese maples to grapevines and Streptomyces peucetius. And I figured, Flora is a fitting theme for a writer by the name of Green to build from.
This idea added energy to a project I’ve dreamed of and worked on for over a decade, and I immediately turned my focus to putting together a book proposal. Essentially, a proposal consists of three sample chapters, an overview of the book, and a breakdown of marketing considerations. Once this proposal is compiled, I will reach out to literary agents I know in search of someone who wants to sell this book.
Right now, the three sample chapters are in various draft states, and there’s a prologue I’m not read to post yet. Eventually, I’d like to send all of it to you, but I’m sharing today what feels most complete: a chapter centered around my Grandpa Green.
I am sharing this for a few reasons:
Because I saw an interview recently where Mark Duplass said sharing his writing projects collaboratively almost always improves the work.
Because some of you may have your own memories of my Grandpa, and I hope these memories spark yours because I’d like to hear what you recall, and to know if this truly represents him.
Because I hope posting will add momentum to this project.
Here’s the caveat. This is still a private work-in-progress, so only paid subscribers will have full access to this chapter. Besides making this post an exclusive form of thanks to the Green Room’s generous (and oft-underrewarded) supporters, I’m also hoping the paywall will keep A.I.’s grubby little robo-mitts off my work for a little while.
Of course, if you’re a family member, knew Grandpa Green directly, or are even just drawn to read this piece and aren’t in the position to pay, drop me an email and I’ll share access. If you do have some bucks to spare, please consider supporting the Green Room, if even for a month or so.
Now, without further preamble, here is some of what I’ve got so far. I hope you enjoy!
The Tree
A lot of legends from all over say there’s the Tree. The Tree is called Ashvattha, or Irminsul, or Yggdrasil. Sometimes the Tree is a cypress, sometimes a cedar. In scattered Slavic cultures, the Tree is an oak and in Siberia, the Tree is an evergreen which runs from the center of the earth to the stretches of heaven. Shamans are born in boughs and raised around the Tree’s roots.
“Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden and from there divides into four rivers.”
Genesis 2:8-14 MSG
1987
In Oregon’s forests and gardens and parks, we have the Douglas fir, our land’s most copious and massive creature. You can see them most anywhere, crowns towering like Arvydas Sabonis over their deciduous cousins.
Before their finest groves were hacked down in the late 19th century, the Doug firs likely reigned over even redwoods as the world’s tallest trees. Pseudotsuga menziesii—or false hemlock, which is a weak Latin name for such a majestic lifeform—can live for millenia and often loomed over three hundred feet. The largest reliably-measured Douglas fir was 393 feet tall, a shade higher than Hyperion, a coastal redwood south and east of Orick which is the world’s tallest living thing. Doug firs aren’t pines, or even technically firs. They’re their own tree altogether.
The Doug firs are what Tyler and I saw first most every morning out our bedroom window, a row of behemoths which crowned the sunrise face of Mount Tabor, steady sentinels overwatching the east.
Beyond those Douglas firs, on the other side of the cinder cone, was the place our family began one day in the summer of 1969, when my Grandma and Grandpa moved in across 56th Avenue from my other Grandma and Grandpa, and from there in the shade of the acorned pin oaks and whirligig-laced maples along Yamhill Street, age-old tributaries flowed into two families, the Greens and Flachs, who would join together through Mom and Dad and branch out again into Tyler and Kailyn and me, who would branch out further.
I’m here to tell you about the view from my branch, about the family I’m from and the ones I joined and about faith in Old Tales of life woven with life since the beginning. I aim to tell you this story in shades of floral green, and my humble goal is to keep you entertained.
For now, to start, here is a story about my Grandpa.
Warren
“Your faithfulness continues through all generations; you established the earth, and it endures.” Psalm 119:90 (NIV)
1987
What I remember first of Grandpa Green was our solo time. This typically included a walk to Seaton’s, the pharmacy where Mom poured out root beer floats when she was a teenager; where Gus Van Sant once filmed some of Drugstore Cowboy; where I sometimes stopped in for candy before boarding the 71 bus which carried me to high school. Seaton’s was a few blocks up from Grandpa’s house, and there’s an alleyway between Yamhill and Belmont we could shortcut through.
Grandpa’s gait was certain and steady. He was tall, and his belly preceded him, and his limbs were long and narrow, and he had a kindly manner and a wry smile. I don’t currently recall his voice. He was generally quiet, though he smiled often and laughed and listened well. He’d buy me candy or a milkshake or a burger from the griddle.
On family visits to Grandma and Grandpa Greens’, Tyler and I and all our cousins—Adam, Danny, Emily, and Dave—would enter the den to greet him, one by one, and then we’d find our places to sit, maybe on the couch or the floor, or near the side chair where Bill or Dad sometimes sat, or, if you were small enough, held in Grandpa’s arms, but all of us facing the TV, and we would watch Cheers or M*A*S*H, or A Christmas Story on Christmas Day. The walls were decked with paintings of owls on limbs, and an old telephone commemorating Grandpa’s retirement from Pac-Bell, and a quilt we made for their 40th anniversary, and he would pass out capfuls of Planters dry-roasted peanuts or a packet of Red Vines, though Grandpa Warren preferred black licorice.
We saw him most on Sundays, because their house was a block from church. We all attended Mt. Tabor Presbyterian, a congregation formed in 1892 which first met in a humble cross-shaped house on Stark Street, and later built a stately stone bell tower and timber-beamed sanctuary at the swayed corner of 55th and Belmont along the Mt. Tabor streetcar line and catty-corner from the ivy-covered Masonic Lodge.
On Sunday mornings we sometimes walked together and were greeted by ushers we knew at the door and crossed through the threshold under Povey Brothers stained glass and through the foyer into the warm-wooded worship hall where we filed into pews, the Greens taking up a row or two, and alongside each other we spoke the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. Then the great pipe organ would sigh and we’d turn to the right page in Hymns from the Family of God, bound in red with gold embossing, and then we would sing.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee
And sometimes during the final verse, if the congregation was really in flow, the star at the top of the organ would begin to spin and chime. And our voices would rise as one.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
After the childrens’ sermon, the cousins and Tyler and I filed out to Sunday school until we were old enough to sit through the full service. Aunt Debbie taught elementary and Dad taught junior high and Uncle Bill led membership classes. On Saturdays, Grandma Gwen coordinated weddings in the sanctuary.
Grandpa lived out his last name by keeping the church grounds. He mowed the grass, trimmed hedges and rhododendrons. He raked leaves fallen from trees growing on church grounds, the largest of which was the willow in the backyard with long limbs which bowed down to form a shady bowl and brush the lawn when summer breezes blew.
What did Warren the greenskeeper consider and recall as he shaped the plants and the land?
1918
Warren Turner Green was born on the Albertan prairie, the first child of William and Lela Green. His parents were American Midwesterners who’d emigrated to Canada and married less than a year earlier. Warren was the first of four, followed by Louise, Eileen, Wilma, and William.
When Warren was eleven, the stock market imploded, sending waves around the world which, among other tragedies, crashed crop prices. William and Lela were concernd for their children and saw improved prospects further south, so the Greens left Alberta, returned to the U.S., and settled near an cousin in Lebanon, Oregon.
The family was still fresh in the Willamette Valley and staving off the Great Depression when Warren’s father William died. Grandpa was fifteen when he became the Greens’ primary earner. He found work at a local creamery and at Kellenberger Hardware store, and the family sold milk from their cow to survive.
Then the world went to war and in 1941, while the Luftwaffe bombed the land of his ancestors, Warren enlisted in the US Army. He was added to the Air Corps, which became the Air Force, and Warren was assigned to fly B-24 Liberators, an 18-ton monster of the air, and the most widely produced heavy bomber in history.
Grandpa Warren would outlive the war, but the Greens were still devastated. On the first day of 1944, Grandpa’s sister, Wilma, was on her way to deliver her fiance to duty at Camp Adair when their car was struck by a troop train. They were each killed instantly. Lela, who was in the back seat, survived. Almost a year later, William, a 20 year-old combat medic sweltering in the jungles of Burma, was killed while attempting to rescue a fellow soldier. Nine months later, the war was over, and only Warren, Lela, Louise, and Eileen remained.
Some branches grow their own and some are pared away. These weren’t stories Grandpa told us while we sat next to him, watching Norm wisecrack over the bar and shimmy his head and sip at his mug of lager.
After the war, Warren returned to Lebanon and went to work at Pacific Northwest Bell. His life as a pilot left him unfazed by heights, and he knew a bit about electrical work from his time at Kellenberger Hardware, so Ma Bell made him a lineman. The job moved Warren to Eugene, where he met a charming brunette secretary from Lenoir County, North Carolina, named Gwendolyn. They were married in 1951, had two sons, Bill and Richard—who would someday be my dad—and the Greens moved north to Portland to a house a block away from Franklin High School, where they added a daughter, Nancy, and a son, Brent.
Then in 1969, Warren and Gwen moved to their last home, the house on Yamhill under the pin oaks and maples, with a red-leaved Japanese maple on the corner which grew a low dome of leaves we could find shade under in the summer or build a fort around when it snowed.
1992
On the weekend before my birthday, Mom and Dad drove us to a trolley museum on the way to Tillamook where there were old streetcars to ride on lengthy loops through the coast range forest and fields and we learned about the history of Portland’s railways, and about how one time a street car hurtled it’s tracks and bulldozed into a house just down the block from us on Taylor.
Mom told us how our other grandpa, Grandpa Lewie, would hop on the back of the street cars with Uncle Vic when they were little and dodge their way into Hollywood or Northeast Broadway. I was almost twelve so that degree of independence called to my soul and before we left I asked to ride the loop once more on my own and Dad said yes and I shuttled down the tracks, mesmerized by the sun setting through the tops of the Coast Range Douglas firs and the breeze of the hot day cooling. In my hand was a holofoil trading card in a hard plastic case, a depiction of Cable, the star-eyed and gray-haired leader of X-Factor, diving toward the camera, pulse pistols blazing, glimmering in the golden hour.
We got home after dark and there were two messages on the answering machine. The first message was that Grandpa was on a walk with Grandma around the reservoir and he fell near one of the corners and an ambulance was called and took him to the hospital. The second message was to tell us Grandpa Warren was gone.
I was standing on the edge of the kitchen, and when I heard Grandpa was dead I ran but there was nowhere to go except the living room, where I dove into the corner of the couch and covered my head in pillows.
Later, Mom sat next to me there and put her hand on my back. I was already sort of melancholy and she may’ve been concerned I’d stay that way and she told me that sometimes, even in the deep sadness of grief, there would be moments of joy, and that it was alright to feel that joy and laugh and smile.
From then on, we were a new iteration of the Greens, because any time someone dies that family dies too, and in the old family’s place is a new one, differently woven, aimed another way, each part called to play their new role and equally vital.
One thing I’ve heard is our first images of God are rooted in our own fathers, so some of how I see God is: towering smooth and certain besides me; always eager to share sugar; a life spanning history; His den warm and inviting, paintings of great horned owls on the wall; tears from laughter at Woody’s line delivery; tending the land and His family.
So Grandpa Warren’s death—and his steadfast faith—seeded a hope in my heart: that those walks to Seaton’s and stories in the den were not truly gone, not forever, that they could happen again somehow, were maybe mere echoes of what’s ahead when we’re reunited, when the Whole Family rests together and nestles near our Father, and we have all the time we need to go on adventures or watch from comfy couches—or the boughs of trees—as He tells us every story ever told.
So beautiful. So many good lines here, like this “because any time someone dies that family dies too, and in the old family’s place is a new one, differently woven”
I remember Warren as tall with stiff but smooth, deliberate movements. Quick with a smile, though I always had the sense he didn't care for my ego-centrism... or that he thought there wasn't much to me though I generated a lot of energy back then.
Warren was dependable. A man of his word. A very important volunteer at church.
I think Bill's voice is more similar to Warren's than your dad's, though I think Warren's was a little deeper. And whenever Bill says (something like) "Gyaw-ley!", I hear Warren.
One historical factoid I would encourage you to check: I think the original Mt Tabor Church was also on 55th & Belmont, but that it was then moved down the hill when they had to make room for the current sanctuary, built around 1910.