Memoirous

I have on a side table a little Christmas crèche scene surrounded by plastic angels. It was Jack who noticed that one of the three golden-haired cherubim was missing its wings, on her back a little glob of exposed glue. Hmmm. Did they fall off? What happened? Are they lost? Are they in the garbage? I’m presented with questions—each a metaphor for how we treat people with differences. But, before, I can use it as a teaching moment, he’s moved on. To touching other things, all breakable and liable to losing heads, halos, wings. I tell him, We’ll have to go to the wing store and get her a new pair. Would he like me to get him wings? He nudges the wingless lass closer to the manger. Another metaphor, without wings we stick close to home. Soon will come the day when he’ll fly away. Until then . . . he drops an angel. Another wing down.   Merry Christmas.

Another Christmas memory is setting up the card table. I remember Mom at the beginning of December setting up a card table in the living room, where she’d sit and write Christmas cards. The warped cardboard-ish top pockmarked, no longer used for gaming, relegated to crafts and other projects, the metal legs uneven, wobble. That card table. Later she’ll bring out the wrapping paper and a box of leftover bows, bits of ribbon, scraps of tissue paper, etc. Nothing was wasted. Remnants were kept, like how frayed clothes became quilt squares. Like how now I do the same thing. I have a small fold out table and my own box of bows. The tiny house is cluttered—until I’m sick of the mess. Already I’m thinking this weekend I’ll put it away and relax, hopefully, the few days left before the big day.

Corners in the Tiny House are so dark. So I turn on my plant grow lights. We all have SAD. I can see the rain splatter the deck and remember--- The blue jay and cardinal cavorting in the wet grass a moment earlier, the colors decorating the brown grass, and remember--- This too shall pass. My brother Steve sent, in a series of emails, Google pics of the houses our family lived in (not including the serial moves my parents made when fully retired). He used each image to riff on flash memories, really just skimming the surface, of what he recalled most about each place. He should commit to doing a writing study, micro series, of flash memoir using the images as prompts. I used the “the Kettering house on Hackney” to get an overhead view and found the name of the creek I fell into, that my mother had to come pull me out of. It looks like a cement ravine with a trickle of water running through it. Little Beaver Creek. Steve also sent an image of the Wick’s house, former neighbors...

 At our last class Cheryl threw out the prompt: changing seasons Changing Season The light of late autumn slants across the sky before finally disappearing, leaving a hologram upon the deepening shadows. She walks to the river, breathes in the molting leaves and biting air. There on the bridge she waits . . . like tears falling fast she rues the coming of night sad to see day end Again, the changing season was a metaphor not just for this time and place but my mental space of late. I’m planning to read more Basho in 2025 and use his works to inspire a revision of a creative nonfiction project on bicycling the UK from top to bottom that a small independent press MIGHT be interested in. I had a nice phone conversation with an editor who was interested, but unable to commit to the project. I know, we’ll see how it all goes—it’s a Basho journey.

A play on the title “The Narrow Road to the Interior” by the Japanese poet master Basho, who created the haibun poetic form, which combines prose and haiku to create a prose poem. As someone who experiments in hybrid, the 2-night workshop on haibun led by Cheryl J. Fish out of the Art Basin in the Bronx appealed to me. I signed up, as it was remote. Haibun isn’t entirely new to me. When exploring the form tanka : https://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2019/08/juan-fujita-writer-of-tanka-and.html https://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2019/07/tankawaka-approaches-to-writing-flash.html The haibun starts as a sensory vignette, a bit of flash, prose poem. There can be a story arc, but does not rely heavily on plot. It is mostly there to set up the haiku attached at the end. Basho employed the art form in his travel writing to give more of a sense of a place, to evoke emotion, to help lead the reader into the exterior and interior. The minimalistic approach avoids the kind of purple writin...

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 I'm reposting from Dec. 2019 a memory from the early 80s. I was reminded (re-reminded?) of this memory the other day as I received in the mail a newsletter from Assumption Abbey , Richardton, ND--a refuge I stayed at on my cross-country bike trip. The brothers were very welcoming despite it being a pandemic. I felt a great affinity for them and their work. I've continued to financially support the Abbey and love receiving their newsletter. Monastery Christ in the Desert Nearly 40 years ago I went to visit my sister who was spending her Christmas break at Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian conference center outside of Taos, New Mexico. She had spent time working there as part of the college staff the summer before. Soon after arriving we grabbed snowshoes off some pegs and trudged back into Box Canyon where our voices echoed off the icy walls. During the long twilight, we slowly made our way back to the house following a trail of twinkling lights, like sparkling crystals in the haloed...

  Memoirous gets about 7,000 hits a month! I want to say thank you and encourage all my readers to BUY my books. If just one in 100 of you buy a book (or books), then I will . . . I was never good at math, but I like the sound of 1 in 100!  Freeze Frame  is available as an eBook for 2.99.  Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper. 365 Affirmations for the Writer , an eBook for 3.99. Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. 365 Affirmations for the Writer is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own trials. By reading what others have said, we can survey the path before us, count th...

Another Christmas memory . . .  O Holy Night is a well-known Christmas carol composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to the French poem "Minuit, chrétiens" (Midnight, Christians). I remember it as the finale to the Christmas Eve program at the Presbyterian church we attended in Kettering. It can be a long night until the next morning to hold off on opening presents. At least the car ride and time at church filled those tense, anxious hours. O Holy Night seems to be the perfect vehicle for a soloist, and, indeed, the woman who sang it annually was a trained professional, the daughter of one of the congregants, who came down from New York City. I remember one snowy Christmas in particular when there was speculation whether she would make it in time. Yet, always, in the end she rose up from the robed choir to take her place at the podium. The lights in the church were dimmed, lit mainly by the Advent candles, all of them now burning. The coughing and fidgeting ceased—in expectation. Or...

During the 1960s and '70s, the Goodyear and Firestone tire companies peddled annual Christmas albums in their stores, usually for a dollar each, to customers who waited to get their tires changed or wheels aligned. I remember going with my mother to pick up the Firestone Christmas Album. We might have also stopped by the S & H store to redeem stamped books—but that’s another blog post. My mother was a sucker for all deals and promotions. The fill up the tank and get whatever the gas station was offering or buying heavy boxes of soap detergent that contained--yes! for real!—water glasses. We also went for the prize in the cereal box—again, worthy of another blog post, another flash memory. I’m trying to think of why I was always my mother’s buddy for these errands and the only thing I can think of is that I didn’t object. I was the youngest and couldn’t be left alone at home, but also the other kids could have watched me. But, I would tag along and store up all these things ...

                     Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. We never know how it is going to turn out. Oh, we have a certain idea, like most pioneers or explorers. But, these journeys can take detours; we have to react to circumstances and often go with our gut. 365 Affirmations for the Writer  is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own trials. They know the terrain, how harsh it can be; they know where we can find water, shade, and rest along the way. By reading what others have said, we can survey the path before us, count the cost, and plunge ahead. My motivation for compiling  365 Affirmations for the Writer  is to offer light along the way. From day to day, week to week, we are getting further inside our writing, further down the path. The ...

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I got an acceptance in early December from a journal that posts on Facebook called Ancient Paths. I was slated for Christmas Eve, The small prose poem has to do with waiting not just for the arrival or birth of Jesus but about waiting for the arrival home of loved ones. I composed the poem when Grace was in college (or perhaps off somewhere). The sudden appearance of youth, of someone who left lights on, stayed up most of the night, who ate at unregulated hours--a whole shambles to my routine and schedule, my house rules, whatever--and then gone, the place empty of life and now sad. "Waiting for Christmas" by Jane Hertenstein At Christmas every light comes on, in the basement where my daughter home from college retrieves ice cream, in the dining room a lamp illuminates the abandoned puzzle, the laundry nook dazzles, while the back porch radiates a smoky incandescence, the TV flickers a blue twilight, in the middle of the night my heart pulses as I reflect. Soon the house will...

 A Wassailing We will Go This time of year brings its own particular memories—usually brought on by the five senses. The smell of fresh-fallen snow reminds us of sled runs when we were younger, the velvety taste of hot chocolate reminds me of sipping cocoa from my Santa mug when I was five or six years old, the ugly ornament half broken and losing its shiny luster is the one I am most fond of, the one my mother gave me that used to be hers. The lights, the carols, the yummy smells all work together to bring forth memories—some good, some not so good. I remember one particular weekend before Christmas when I was a Girl Scout leader for my daughter’s troop. At best it was like herding cats. Trying to get a dozen or so girls to cooperate, for one minute to shut up and listen. We had plans to go downtown to the  Museum of Science and Industry  for  Christmas Around the World . Does the museum still do this? It is where in the Great Hall trees representing Christmas in ot...

I originally posted this Thursday, December 6, 2012 “December” by James Schuyler. I was first attracted to it for the snide oblique personal references, people’s names—as if trying to puzzle out relationships, decode the poet’s life. Schuyler’s sarcastic tone as I perceived it: *Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event” * The giant Norway spruce from Podunk Podunk. That one word illuminating his disgust for Middle America, the fly-over regions, folks—people who take the holiday seriously, who refer to it as Christmas, who over-spend while afterwards always say, Next year I’m keeping to a budget. The gaudy tinsel and shiny balls and bright lights. Yet . . . It grows on each of us. We re-visit the sights, sounds, smells in memory so that when we are surrounded by Christmas we can’t help but sink into sentimentality. The poet confesses: catching glimpses, hints that are revelations: to have been so happy is a promise, and if it isn’t kept that doesn’t matter. Wh...

My ophthalmologist thinks I’m a miracle. My eyesight is that good. It’s only lately I’ve had to up the number of magnification on my reading glasses which I get from the Dollar Store. She said at night my eyes, like all the rest of my muscles, gets tired and needs a little extra help. I’m up to a 2.5 for daily tasks and a 3.0 at night. But the number of times I need the glasses during the day varies to the point that I stash a pair of glasses in key places so that if I need to see tiny print or focus on something small, I can just reach for a pair. *My Desk Yes, I know, I can always increase the text size—and I often do—but I also like a pair there on top of my scribble pad in order to see my own writing or in case I don’t feel like bothering with text adjustment. The glasses serve as a pause in the strain, not otherwise eyestrain, in my creative process. Especially when I need to feel closer to my work. *The Kitchen Counter I keep the junky-est pair here. One arm is broken off...