This is what I’ve got: A skeleton, a story with a beginning, middle, and end, the bones in place- not as much sinew, ligaments or flesh as I would like yet, or lumps of flesh that will need liposuction later, but enough, definitely more than I’d have if I hadn’t committed to writing everyday for the month of May. Next up: an excerpt from the memoir I’ve been working on about my being my mother’s daughter, and my three daughter’s mother in the face of my mother’s recent death–for an anthology with a due date halfway through the month of June. And more writing, more wrenching. “No matter how self-aware you are, Mary Karr writes in the introduction to The Art of Memoir, “memoir wrenches at your insides precisely because it makes you battle with your very self–your neat analyses and tidy excuses.” It’s tempting to excuse myself and take…

• 0
• 0
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
• 0

A Memorial Day reflection on the trickle down effects of war deaths He went off to the Korean War and never came back My mother was a high school girl when her older brother went off to the Korean War. Not until her recent death have I thought deeply on how this event affected her young life. She only talked about her brother in brief outbursts, then tears overtook her, as if she were experiencing his death all over again. This mystified me. It was so long ago, why wasn’t she over it already? As a child of 10, I remember awakening one night to the cacophony of her playing both the piano and the organ at the same time. They sat at right angles to each other in our open dining room. I peeked out from the sliding pocket door that separated the hallway to my bedroom from the…

• 0
• 0
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
• 0

Tucked into the flap of The Sphynx, my mother’s high school yearbook from 1949, a folded note falls out. It begins Dearest Marvin, an old love letter that feels like a find, a message from beyond the crematorium, a hidden bit of my mother’s life. There is so much I didn’t know, may never know, but here is her voice at 17, penciled onto a piece of yellowed notebook paper from 70 years ago. The letter was lost, or forgotten, a chance find when I noticed the outer binding separated on two sides to reveal a hidden pocket. I’ve been going through my mother’s stuff with renewed interest since she died. When she was alive, her manic meanderings about people I didn’t know didn’t interest me, and I was impatient with her continual complaints. I was interested in her past, but I could rarely get a cohesive answer when I…

• 0
• 0
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
• 0