I, an astronaut, a pioneer traversing the farthest reaches of a universe I once forgot that comes alive when I open my eyes and look up. In her first collection of poetry, Jersey girl Jamie Zwiebel offers memories as she comes of age and travels the world during the 1990s and 2000s. During a time when the Backstreet Boys monopolized the radio waves, Monica Lewinski dominated the headlines, and e-mail, blogging, and skyping were becoming ways of life, millennials each began their own unique journeys in an interconnected world. Zwiebel offers a compelling glimpse into an unforgettable period in history when a young generation began to question the past, discover new ideas, and feel love, loss, faith, and difference-all while uncertainty, fear, wars, and a global recession raged in the background. As she offers memories of sipping fanta con vino at a tapas bar in Nicaragua while realizing an appreciation for simplicity and the freedom that change brings, Zwiebel transports others through the emotions, hopes, and dreams of a generation like no other. The warm-hearted, relatable, and lyrical expressions included in Shared Memories encourage millennials and others to rediscover the true meaning of their destiny in an ever-changing world.

Shared Memories

A Millennial Kid Looks BackBy Jamie Zwiebel

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Jamie Zwiebel
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-6683-3

Contents

Did I Mention........................................1Before...............................................2El Regalo............................................4Tango Marbella.......................................6Mama Chenta in Five Parts............................8God's Sorrow.........................................15For A Mother.........................................16Luis.................................................20Allen Ginsberg.......................................23Drifting.............................................26The Streets Are Wet..................................28The Truth............................................32A Prayer in the Night................................34Frozen Gutter Rivers.................................35Ferris Moon..........................................36the conquered........................................38Back Into the Earth..................................41Forgiveness..........................................43God..................................................4418th Birthday Poem...................................45Lord's Prayer........................................47IOWA.................................................49You Free the Wild Birds..............................52always, you are......................................53Happy As Clams.......................................54Out of Place.........................................56Photo of Lincoln.....................................57Dance Party through European Art.....................60Bare.................................................64A Letter.............................................66To the Little Poet...................................67Acknowledgments......................................69

Chapter One

    Did I Mention

    the clouds drifting over my eyes
    my fascination with my own inner skies
    so if I seem a bit starry-eyed
    I've been star-gazing from the inside
    did I mention the thrill of leaving the atmosphere
    and I, an astronaut, a pioneer
    traversing the farthest reaches
    of a universe I once forgot
    that comes alive
    when I open my eyes
    and look up


    Before

    Before the words took to air,
    they weren't yet thoughts, weren't yet prayers,
    but unheard whispers lingering on
    the brink of possibility.

    Before the question was asked,
    the answer was waiting to be claimed,
    the mind willing to be stretched
    into a new form; the riddle there for the solving,
    knowledge for the taking
    consciousness for the waking.

    Before the dream was dreamt,
    the mind was restless, the soul stirring,
    the inner nomad preparing to cross
    the land-bridge to the uncharted,
    content in the journey
    to the world beyond reason.

When I was fifteen years old and about to be a sophomore in high school, I had the opportunity to spend the summer with a family in Spain, taking Spanish lessons by day and exploring by night. I spent much of my time in awe of Granada, where I was staying. It was there, looking up from the cobblestones of the Albaicin (Arab district) to the Moorish architecture of the Alhambra palace, that Bill Clinton saw what he called "the best sunset in the world."

    El Regalo

    At a trinket store in Granada, Spain,
    I stand outside on the cobblestones,
    peering at the selection of rings.
    I need something distinct—
    distinctly Granada—
    to remind me of the part of myself that the city awakens.
    The sophisticated part that sits
    sipping fanta con vino at a tapas bar.
    The part awed by the beauty of ancient monuments,
    whitewashed villages,
    giant sleeping mountains.
    This city is awake; it feels alive
    and awakens something in me I
    hadn't known:
    an appreciation for the simple life and
    the freedom that change brings.
    So I stand admiring the rings.
    The vendor invites me in
    his humble temple.
    I slip on a gleaming white gem
    set smoothly in silver
    and find it fits
    just right.
    Se llama la luna, he tells me.
    Moonstone.
    Full moon over the Alhambra.
    The deep darkness of the surrounding mountains.
    City lights twinkle below.
    Buy it, for 1200 pesetas.
    Because I like it and because, as he tells me in Arab-laced Spanish,
    This isn't Corte Inglés, you know!
    My fingers are closing around a wrinkled bill and some stray coins,
    but he gestures to a row of
    brightly-colored bracelets.
    Un regalo he tells me. A gift.
    A tradition for Arabs to give a gift to foreigners.
    Para decir Bienvenidos.
    But I must not choose on meaning; I must choose
    on instinct, and wait for what fate brings ...
    So I point to a thin one of deep turquoise, purples, and yellows.
    Deftly he unthreads it from the display and ties it around my wrist.
    It too becomes a part of me.
    La Salud, he explains.
    It means health.
    I thank him and step back
    out into the winding streets of the Albaicin.
    White buildings slope down cobblestone hills
    And vendors call out, selling their wares.
    Leather lamps, knitted handbags,
    incense wafts through narrow alleyways.
    Outside a café, a couple sits eating chicken schwarma.
    Down the street, a tourist e-mails home from an obscure internet café.
    And a nun sits gray-habited on the church steps,
    Listening to a blind man strumming his guitar:

Dale limonosa mujer
por no hay en la vida nada
como la pena de ser
ciego en Granada


Tango Marbella

The wind-surfer is out tangoing with his kite.
He moves the steering bar with his hands to the music of the wind,
Dipping toward the coast and
spinning back to avoid the jetty.
The Mediterranean is his dance floor.

A mother and daughter—
the latter in a sporty bikini,
the elder in a tacky green and yellow tube—
are dipping their toesies in the water, then wading in,
to emerge dripping as they walk up to their recliners.
A middle-aged man comes to flirt with the woman
under the shade of the tiki umbrella,
with passionate gestures,
rapid bursts of Spanish,
and flashes of her mahogany and gold-etched
designer sunglasses.

While the daughter sits oblivious,
watching the intricate movements
of the parasailor riding up to the shore,
the man leaves to buy a cerveza at the bar
and the dance ends.

    Mama Chenta in Five Parts

    1. Soup

    She shared breadcrumbs with the cat
    as her gray hair scattered to the wind.

    Mama Chenta got up to make us soup.
    She chopped the onion, skinned the chicken, peeled the tomatoes,
    and hung the big copper pot on the outdoor fire.

    When we arrived she was standing in the middle of the dirt floor,
    under that big sign that was always in her house.
    It said Bienvenidos in big red felt letters.
    Always welcoming.

    She stood under the sign on limbs frail as reeds,
    her eyes twinkling from within the wrinkles of her face.
    I knew, from the picture on the wall,
    that her face had once been rosy and plump
    before disease started stealing her body away.

    But in her eyes you could see she loved life just as much,
    and that evening she brought us all together,
    our laughter rising with the soup's steam.

    After that night, she mainly stayed in bed.
    It hurt too much to move, but still those eyes twinkled.
    She took care to match her bedsheets to her hat,
    so we teased that she was a coqueta, a flirt.


    2. Purisma

    Her favorite holiday, Festival of the Virgin.
    Each year she prepared a splendid altar,
    and loved to give sweets to the neighborhood kids.
    That last year, her entire outfit matched, and she
    wanted to get up and make dulces for the children,
    but it hurt too much to get out of bed.
    So friends sent a package full of toys and candy,
    and everyone squeezed into her room.
    When she peeked out of the corner of her mosquito net,
    and saw the children's faces, and the toys,
    she became young again.
    Whether a tiny candle, a set of stickers, or a plastic snowglobe,
    everything was, "¡qué lindo!"
    "¡qué precioso!"
    for she truly saw most everything
    as beautiful and precious.


    3. Mama

    Mama Chenta, you are mother to us all.
    You raised your niece and great-niece and great-great nieces
    and nephews.
    In the end it didn't matter if you were related;
    you just raised the children.
    While their mothers worked all the time so
    they could eat.
    Their mothers worked in Managua, selling empanadas on the street
    or sewing clothes in a factory,
    or as maids or nannies to rich people,
    if they were lucky.

    They worked in your town of San Ramón,
    cutting coffee for large landowners
    or cleaning the toilets of tourists
    if they were lucky.

    And you, Mama Chenta, you never turned anybody away,
    for children are children,
    and you are Mama Chenta.
    You never married,
    never gave birth,
    but you are and will forever be
    Mama Chenta.

    The children you raised are lawyers, town council members,
    national representatives for UNICEF,
    artists, entrepreneurs,
    even a female taxi driver.
    All knew the weight of poverty,
    all felt hunger's sting;
    but they went far,
    and they gave back,
    because you are Mama Chenta
    and that's how you raised them.

    And when travelers needed a place to stay,
    you took them in.
    When nonprofits came to your town,
    you welcomed strangers,
    took in foreigners,
    and adopted them too.
    Volunteers, tourists, adventurers.
    Swiss, Italian, American.
    Ages 20, 40, or 60.

    It didn't matter.
    You welcomed them.
    You welcomed me
    into your family.
    Even as you were dying,
    you were making new friends.

    At a time when most would draw closer to their families,
    you showed me that "family" need know no bounds.
    I was just a 20-year-old gringa living with your great-niece.
    You didn't owe me anything.
    And yet, you wanted to know me.
    You made me feel special,
    though we didn't think in the same language.
    Sometimes when I visited you, you'd be lying in bed
    in your cute matching outfit.
    Sometimes, you were in great pain,
    but when you heard me come in, you'd peek outside the mosquito net,
    eyes twinkling.
    "¡Wepa! ¡La chela!" You'd motion for me to sit beside you.
    And sometimes we wouldn't speak; you would just reach for my hand.

    You had mastered the art of true communication.
    Sometimes the breeze would take your gray hairs out the window,
    and you would joke that you were shedding.
    Sometimes the twinkles in your eyes would fade away,
    as you braced yourself for pain.
    And how I would sigh of relief
    when that twinkle returned
    and you were yourself again,
    back with us.

    Mama Chenta,
    on the anniversary of your mother's death,
    you kept a candle burning
    under her black-and-white picture.
    I remember her long, dark, braided hair, her sweet smile,
    the twinkle in her eye she passed on to you.
    That day you drifted in and out;
    sometimes you called to her.


    4. Herbs

    Mama Chenta,
    you knew the methods of indigenous healing.
    You taught your children which herbs to pick and boil
    for tea to ease what ailed them.
    You knew how to grow and harvest,
    how to live when the world was
    churning with insanity.
    With generations of dictators and
    revolutions and
    socialism and
    capitalism.
    From Sandino's struggle to the Somoza Dynasty,
    to the Sandinistas,
    Chamorro, Bolaños, and now Ortega,
    you lived in these green mountains
    as history unraveled.
    As the roads were laid, as the cars careened through the streets,
    as the American corporations came to leech
    as the earthquake shook Managua in '72
    as Hurricane Mitch desecrated your house in '98
    and as you built it again
    and kept on going:
    as the health workers came to preach about contraception
    as potable water first emerged from the pipes
    and electricity lit your two-room house
    as the women struggled against machismo for their rights
    you raised your children like strong tall plants that
    would not bend to oppression,
    that would nourish their communities
    and sustain their families.


    5. Legacy

    Mama Chenta, we call you "Mama"
    because you cared for us,
    we your children all over the world.
    You deserved better than rewashing the same gauze every day
    and hanging it on the line to dry before you
    used it again to dress your neglected wounds.
    You deserved better than wasting away from a preventable tumor
    and never seeing the doctor until it was too late.
    Still, you took my arm as we entered the doctor's office
    and teased me about the snug black shirt I wore that day to stay
    warm.
    "Now you're the flirt!"

    Mama Chenta, you loved life,
    but it was too late to save you.
    All I could do was hold your hand.
    Oh Mama Chenta, who shared breadcrumbs with the cat
    as her gray scattered with the wind.
    Oh Mama Chenta, who made us soup.
    Mama Chenta, I like to think you are with your mother now
    and she is brushing your long, thick hair.
    I like to think there are soft cats and children that don't cry of hunger
    and every day is Purisma.
    I like to think your spirit is wherever your children are.
    Your legacy stretches across the globe
    like a warm embrace.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Shared Memoriesby Jamie Zwiebel Copyright © 2011 by Jamie Zwiebel. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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