Story
One can bear anything if one can put it in a story. - Isak Dinesen
-
strawberry memories
Not a single spring has passed for the last fifteen years that has not found me creating strawberry jam just like I saw my mother make. Always in the same too-large bowl in which my mother used to make her strawberry jam. And this year, as well as the past three years, I cannot help but be reminded of my mother. It’s inevitable. First, there’s the bowl. And the act of jam-making by itself. The jam may taste sugary sweet sweet sweet but the experience is always more of the bittersweet variety. I don’t know how to live it any other way. When I stir in that powdery sure-jell from…
-
Let Them Eat History
First copyright – 1931. Newspaper clippings of Paul Harvey articles slid between the thick, yellowed pages. A postcard dated 1969 and addressed to my mother before her last name was the same that mine used to be. The Searchlight Recipe Book. The binding is almost off the black and red cover and the paper tabs denoting recipe categories are torn and rugged. This was first my grandmother’s cookbook. And then it was my mother’s. And now it is mine. “Who will get this cookbook next in our family, Momma?” London asked. “I guess you’ll have to take turns with it,” I answered, hopeful that one day my girls would want…
-
London said . . .
I really loved reading what you guys had to say after yesterday’s post about my flaws and the fears of transparency and how we all are tempted to reveal one face, but live another face. And I won’t deny that I am sitting in a bit of a funk right now. And that always spills out into my writing. (Actually – it more than spills out – this writing is often my exact method of coping, understanding and wading through the highs and lows of what I call living.) I don’t know if I can blame it on my age, my exhaustion, my current season of life or the too…
-
thank you.
Someone (okay, my cousin Sherry) gave me what I think might be the greatest compliment to my blog the other day. She wrote . . . “Your post always remind me of Steel Magnolias…this scene in particular…because I remember being in the theater and watching the funeral scene and crying and then all of a sudden this scene happens and I cracked up……………That’s how your blog is for me, it’s so touching and deep and thought provoking and I cry a lot and then you say something adorable one of the kids said and I crack up…..laughter through tears…………..awwwww. . . . .” It’s probably my favorite because it’s really…
-
sighing. in words.
Completing errands this afternoon, I drove by tidy homes with twinkling lights and coordinating bows. Swept front steps and well-groomed lawns. Cars parked in order from small to large and color coordinated with the shutters. And I thought of our own sloppy yard. Two broken logs on our fence. The shanty town the kids are constructing in our front field with sticks and cardboard and blankets and apparently a living room pillow that has been MIA for a week now. Mushy leaf piles. A hammock with its cottony stuffing protruding, evidence of Magnus’ last jail break. My yard seems messier somehow than everyone else I know and everyone else I…
-
Date Night
Our lunch table. Any day of the week. Normal. Wilder crying about something. Anything. Conversation about Legos and puppies being tossed back and forth and requests for more milk and another sandwich and do I have to eat all of this banana? Kevin trying to finish a story about his morning at work. Me ignoring milk pooling up around my ankle from a leaky sippee cup or something. Kevin just stops talking, takes a bite, then sighs and looks me earnestly in the eyes, “I love date nights.” And I get up from my end of the table (why do we sit at the heads?) and I walk over and…
-
keep clicking. please.
I can’t deny it. I get pretty stoked when someone asks me to write about the things I normally write about on my blog on their blog. I like Nikkie. I like her writing. And what I like best about it is this . . . her honesty. Her vulnerability. Her clear desire to chase after God despite all the past that could keep her running in another direction. Her family looks a little bit like ours – a handful of kids, a mix of adoption and natural birth. And that’s what I wrote about for her today. Family. It starts a little something like this . . . …
-
more than.
We’ve been doing a little rearranging around the house recently. (And Kevin’s not even out of town!) And rearranging often prompts me to clean places I have not cleaned in years. Thus, I discovered a dusty copper bin. Brushed it off. (I’ll sweep later.) And dug around inside. The extra eagle for back up. (But we know Piper will refuse – he doesn’t even resemble his counterpart. It’s no stunt double here. It’s another being entirely.) And my old backpack. From college. Gift from my mom – freshman year. So much decision went into choosing that bag. Color? Brown. (Should match with anything. Not a trendy color.) Durable. But…
-
(in) courage post
Out of the bazillion sites that exist online, I have found one that is a pretty neat little community of women. (Maybe men read over there – I don’t know.) But the focus is women. And community. And building up one another. It’s run by Dayspring and it’s called (in)courage. I like what I read over there. And here’s the fab news for me today. I was able to post my stuff from here over there. Today. I’m pretty stoked! Here’s how it begins …. Maybe it’s taken all of my thirty-seven years and maybe it’s been a winding road but I think I am finally beginning to know me.…
-
the one in which I eat my own words. again.
Seriously. People do eventually overcome this habit, right? You do grow wiser with age – no? Or must I spend all of my life eating (and then eating again) the very words from my own mouth? Which ones, you ask? Upon which edible assembly of mouth vomit am I swallowing back down currently? These. I uttered this dish so recently that they are still warm from the oven. Still fresh. Still digesting But here’s the deal. I’m not going to have that LASIK eye surgery after all. Not yet, anyway. It’s not that I am not anxious to ditch these contacts and these glasses and this blurry vision. That isn’t…
-
friends like this
Do you have friends like this? Friends who sit in your living room and hear the worst days of your lives. Not leave. Not blink. Not get up and exit. But stay. Remain. Listen. Stay. Remain. Listen. Repeat. Over and over again. As often as necessary. More often than necessary. Do you have friends like that? Oh my goodness. I count it one of the greatest blessings of my life to have friends like that. And we are so unbelievably fortunate that I could list a small handful of friends like that. Because we have them. That’s real. And amazing. And so incredible. But I am just talking about one…
-
Story. The Middle.
I keep talking about Story. (The conference we attended. Not just “story” in general. Or – maybe that too.) It was so much good information. And so much good information takes me a while to process. One speaker – this guy – talked about the similar nature of every story. How every story follows the same pattern. Beginning. Middle. End. Usually the middle is the largest part of any story. And the middle usually includes some inciting incident. Some story line, some ordeal, some tragedy, some event, that propels the action of the story. That moves along every other detail. An inciting incident. And after the speaker shared his inciting…
-
the gift of boundaries
Real creativity thrives within well-defined boundaries. I first realized this truth when I was teaching writing to junior high students. “Write a poem about any topic you would like,” I announced. “No limits,” I gleefully told those fifteen or so blank-eyed barely-teenagers. Hands were raised. Puzzled looks increased. The poems that were turned in the next day were . . . horrible, frankly. They lacked form and interest and passion and anything that would hint at lovely poetry. A few weeks later, I tried again. But with a different angle. We had been reading The Hobbit and had just finished a portion of the book exploring Bilbo Baggins’…
