The 8th Wonder by Laura Oliver

I found something cool the other day and my first thought was to share it with you. 

My mother died at the age of 95. She married at 22, gave birth to three daughters. Moved us from the Midwest of her youth to a river on the east coast. She remained married to my father for 20 years, and then?

She lived alone for the next 53 years of her life. That’s 19,345 days.

She was a psychotherapist and a poet. To combat the isolation, she wrote in journals to review the events of her day the way partners share anecdotes in the evening over grilled salmon and a glass of wine. To have a witness, a place to explore her fears, resolve anxieties, to express her opinions. A place to store memories, and often, to receive inspiration from a spirit greater than her own.  On North Carolina beaches, in blinding blizzards, waiting for the brake pads to be replaced, Mother recorded her thoughts. Often those observations were about my sisters and me—who was pregnant, not speaking, had bought a new car–and I admit this practice was met with an eye roll more often than not. 

I picked up a journal from 2002 the other day. If she hadn’t written it down, I’d have not remembered that was the year I blew out a disc in my lower back. I’d been hauling 15-foot Leyland cypress trees from a nursery and 40-pound bags of mulch around the yard for days, my theory at the time being that if you can lift it, you should lift it. I was in excruciating pain, unable to even walk. The ruptured disc had been confirmed by an MRI but mother-the-therapist penned, “I think Laura’s back pain is emotional.”

I blew out my back because I was …mad?

I hadn’t blown a disc; I’d blown a gasket?

Sigh.

But I am writing to share a different entry and you’ll see why. In a marbled black-and-white, wide-lined composition book Mother wrote: I want to put down something I thought was very interesting. A group of students was asked to list what they thought were the present Seven Wonders of the World. They ended up with:

1. Egypt’s Grand Pyramids
2. The Taj Mahal
3. The Grand Canyon
4. The Panama Canal
5. The Empire State Building
6. St. Peter’s Basilica
7. China’s Great Wall

One girl was having trouble completing her list. There were just so many, she said. The teacher asked her to read what she had so far, maybe the class could help. She hesitated and then read; The Seven Wonders of the World are:

1. To touch
2. To taste
3. To see
4. To hear

She paused again, then added:

5. To feel
6. To laugh
7. To love

My mother characterized the anecdote as interesting, but I suspect she found it beautiful and there was no one to give it to—and don’t we all have the impulse to share what moves us?  What is that instinct to press wonder into another’s hand? To say, “Wait till you hear what I saw, what I heard, what I found!”

If gratitude is joy, love is generosity. Pass it on. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.