Posts

WHY I WRITE….

,

This Covid isolation has finally gotten me down. I’ve begun to wonder why I do anything. Why bother cooking when there’s no one to eat what I cook. No one to eat the bread I bake. And if it weren’t so frigid and icy outside, I’d drive and drop a fresh loaf by a friend’s house. I still take basic care of my plants, but I’ve lost motivation for things in general.

One thing I lost motivation for is writing. I published a Thanksgiving book in 2012, then a deeper fuller memoir in early March 2020. I didn’t know the world would shut down the week after it became available on Amazon. All my usual library activities where I might have talked it up disappeared with Covid restrictions. Zoom workshops just don’t work for casual promotional connections.

I went forward and built a website with a plan to post essays in its blog every two weeks. Even sent a monthly newsletter to thirty friends. Now it’s been a month since I posted. I haven’t even checked for comments because I’m discouraged by the same forty-plus Russian language spam in the comments.

How can I get back on track? Why should I? I need to go back to square one and remind myself what my reasons for writing are.

Why do I write? Is it the same reason as when I began?

How is it different these days? How can I deepen its purpose when motivation fails me?

What is defeating me?

  • Nobody cares, why bother.
  • It’s too late; I might be gone tomorrow.
  • None of it is good enough, just not right.
  • People will be critical, of course.

What is my purpose?  I had a purpose before.  I sat quiet, listened to my soul, then wrote this list:

  1. I write because I said I would – to my younger self. It’s one of those declarations young mothers and wives promise themselves to maintain a sense of future value. My journals from earlier years are scribbled in pencil on wide lined paper on top of a toilet seat late night. Details and emotions documented fresh.
  2. I write because I’m obsessed with books and nonfiction articles. Words and phrases that turn information into music.
  3. I write because, always, in my early years, school years, married and religious years, my words were virtually spit on, trampled on, cut off. I write now what she could not speak.
  4. Sticks and stones only break bones; but words destroy us (me). I write to reset truth – for the moment.
  5. I write to integrate remote teachers and mentors into my author “apprenticeship.” I consume the tomes of adept authors and write in parallel, in spirit, in brother-sisterhood.
  6. I write to solidify an idea. To explain connections between seemingly disparate concepts or events.
  7. With no particular expertise, no deep wisdom to impart, my hope is that we may discover something as I write about it for us. Let us assay an experience.
  8. I write because I see things. My mind pulls up video unplanned. Recall of prior events or encounters in vivid detail and emotion. (This is also why I don’t write.)
  9. I write to bear witness. I’ve experienced miracles and wonders, mystical encounters. I have to capture them so someone – some future generation – might read hope in these happenings. Hope of the beauty of God in reality.
  10. I write because words are especially beautiful when their semantic offerings tweak the tone of a phrase.
  11. I write to finally own an ethereal thing.

Yes. Now I remember!

/by

ON THIS BRINK

Sit with me on this brink of time.

Tonight is the threshold of a new calendar year. It could be a turning point – we hope it is. And this kind of assessment could be part of any turning point, any transitional moment. I don’t make New Year resolutions, but I can assess the situation and evaluate my resources just like preparing to go on a road trip. Only this time, I’m traveling into 2021 and beyond. First, the question:

 

What did I do with 2020?

Well, I finished writing, then published my second book in early March. It’s a memoir of the ten-year period of paradox when my marriage dissolved and God became absolutely real and bizarre. Check it out here: Turn & Walk: an unexpected quest. My website went live shortly after I began self-isolating. Read more

/by

THANKSGIVING THROWBACK

Happy Throwback Thanksgiving!

This is not my newest book. I published a memoir in March and have another manuscript simmering – buried under a stack of notepads in my office. However, this baby-book developed from a sentimental dream and identified itself as my first-born. Its theme of gratitude seems as important today as any other year.

For nearly forty years, my family celebrated Thanksgiving as THE most important holiday of the year. The crowd typically included immediate siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and stray friends, staying over for three to ten days. The only year we all agreed to cancel our gathering was 2001. It was too soon after the 9-11 tragedy and many of us traveled ten or more hours, folks just didn’t want to be away from their homes. On the phone, after the weekend, everyone regretted canceling.

Sometimes we ate wild turkey – sometimes elk or venison. Sometimes we exchanged plates of sweets to begin December’s Christmas preparations. Sometimes we’d travel through deep snow and a deep freeze. Sometimes we’d pick fresh sage for the dressing. Always, we’d eat pie. If you planned to attend, your favorite pie would be added to the list of homemade pleasures. Mincemeat and sour cream raisin became standard. The plethora of beautiful pies and loving people made it a delightful yearly event.

In 2012, the head count in my household changed to one, and grandkids’ ages pressed toward the teens. So much of life as I knew it was disappearing like the steam from a teapot. I couldn’t make it stay, so I tried to capture tender moments and precious people on paper.  I felt driven to tell their story and pass down particular recipes interwoven with our particular Thanksgiving customs and western prairie culture.

Any library has shelves of cookbooks, but they’re just recipes. My focus had to be on our Thanksgiving and our family recipes – especially pie. My book would be packed with gratitude and stories told around the Thanksgiving tables of the last four decades and be tightly linked to the scrumptious foods these people created. Family recipes with distinct modifications are vital to our unique custom. When someone carried in a bowl of Aunt Ruth’s Salad, everyone knew what that meant.

Each recipe in this book reflects the story of its maker. Food we create or compose with our own hands partly tells who we are and are becoming. That year was the right time for family stories to be told. This year is a good time to look at such stories again. Then, like today, I realize the truth of the slogan: This too shall pass.

Because the future is never guaranteed; because the present disappears in a flash; because 2020 is a turning point in many families’ holiday norm, like 2012 was for me, today is again the right time to share this book.

My adult children have copies of Family Feasts: pies and people, but still call me for recipes. I don’t tell them its page number, but I still share the stories of those who brought it to the family. However we celebrate next week, we’ll be grateful. And they will possess the recipes and heritage they helped build and, hopefully, will carry on.

I hope you’ll get your own book and make it sticky with your particular ingredients.

With gratitude, me

/by

FALL BURN – GRATITUDE

I shuffle through ankle-deep crisp and crunch. All these leaves are sepia beautiful; they vary only in their shape. Pin oak, cottonwood, ash, and elm. But below this maple, a blanket of gold lays full-circle ‘round her graceful trunk. Twenty-five years I’ve watched her undress and dress, but the fascination never fades.

A few cut-offs from the new construction project mingle with yard tinder for this early morning fire. Match lighted before the break of day, hoping to be done before the winds come with the mid-morning sun. Bunches of low clouds already romping across the sky, south to north.

I rake a rogue torch back into the fire. Too many dry leaves poised to catch and fly.

My own forecast of a long winter compels me to capture video of these gentle flames and soft vertical smoke. I’ll replay it on repeat some dark cold day as I squeeze out pen lines on paper.

A golden lab watches from his deck rail across the way. A wisp of smoke makes me sneeze. He barks. Next sneeze is a fake teaser; he barks again. I belly laugh at our joke. We, and only we two, share this peaceful morn. And we are enough.

I am grateful.

Thank you Father.

Read more

/by

RATIONING IN ISOLATION

I made four cups of chickory coffee this morning – drank two. I’ll warm up the remaining two cups tomorrow. Enough.

Filled the car with gas the day before I began self-isolating. Bought over $100 worth of groceries at my favorite discount grocer, frozen meats and vegetables mostly. No hoarding of paper goods had yet been talked about. That same day, I picked up my regular armful of books at the library. Having all I figured I’d need, any other errands will be nonessential through April. Read more

/0 Comments/by

WHAT IF…..?

What if…..? What if I died tomorrow?

That may not be a typical ‘what if’ question, but this 2020 spring, it’s a more common consideration. The Covid-19 numbers have most of us realizing its potential. However, this question is not a new or distressing one for me.

In 2001, I got my first flu shot and spent most of the next two years near paralysis – looking death in the face. Incredible burning pain in all four limbs. Helpless. Watching my body get weaker and weaker. Trouble swallowing, trouble drawing breath. Suppressed neuro-muscular communication, misdiagnosed time after time.

Natural herbs and minerals, good water, my sister’s Ondamed healing therapy, and time got me back to my new normal. That’s another story for another time.

But during that season of torment, I really thought I was dying. And I couldn’t do anything but accept the possibility.

Read more

/0 Comments/by