MaMoMeMo
May is motherhood memoir month

Ekphrastic Mama

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He went off to the Korean War and never came back

Mother’s Only Brother

Memorializing

He went off to the Korean War and never came back When her only brother went off to the Korean War as a medic, my mother was a junior in high school. They lived in the small town of Geneseo, Illinois, southwest of Chicago, near Davenport, Iowa. Born late in the lives of my grandparents, my mother’s older brother was also her only brother. Not until my mother’s recent death have I thought more deeply on how this loss 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. How could it still ache like such a fresh wound? 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.…

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The Ekphrastic Letter

Prompts

Dear Mother,
I should’ve cleaned your fingernails before you died. I know dirty fingernails never bothered you, but in that last photo I took of you where your hands wrap around the ceramic mug of fresh coffee I brought with real cream, instead of the styrofoam cup of instant with powder packets you’d been getting—-in that picture the gleam is back in your eyes, feisty again, but a dark, dirty rim lines each fingernail. I regret not offering to clean your nails, but at the time it didn’t occur to me. You had lots of life left in you. You could’ve cleaned your own fingernails….

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close-up of a chicken's cute face looking at you
Would I lie to you? (Hana Oliver/ Unsplash)

The Jesus Chicken

Childhood

The other day our middle daughter came over to celebrate our youngest daughter’s 15th birthday. Arielle asked what we were having for her birthday dinner. Chicken Alfredo? I said, knowing it’s her favorite. Where is the chicken from? Arielle asked. She’s taking AP Environmental Science in her freshman year at Camas High School. We try to buy mostly free-range, usually organic chickens, but this class has raised the bar on what she finds acceptable. She’s nice about it, but she won’t eat it if she thinks it might not be responsibly sourced and humanely treated. Or if it contains palm oil. From the kitchen, her father called out some details–it was a heritage chicken, woodland bred, fed a diet of sheep’s milk, soy and hazelnuts, local and organic with at least 4 acres to graze upon with lots of friends… (Portlandia episode–ordering chicken) I added that it was a happy…

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blue ink pen drawing of woman sitting, head down

Can Drawing help Writing?

Drawing & Writing

Do you ever draw as a warm-up to write? It can relax your reticular activating system (RAS) that makes writing seem like a risky activity, creating resistance and procrastination. Try drawing and breathing for just three minutes before you start writing. You might find it is the ticket in to that white hot creative space of flow. Here’s a short post with some resources and inspiration to get started. https://lorilyngreenstone.com/drawing-for-the-health-of-it/

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graffiti of a woman in a gas mask, hands held to chest

May (MaMoMeMo) is Here

writing

Are you ready to write, even just 5-10 minutes exploring your story in May? If so, bookmark this site and subscribe to my newsletter… which I admit I’ve never actually sent out. I write my blog posts (here and more regularly on Ekphrastic Mama https://lorilyngreenstone.com/) but I don’t bother with emails. Some of you have asked me about this… I’m working up to it, is my best answer. I’m still figuring out the public side of writing. Mostly, writing is private, something I do when I’m alone, although I do write in groups https://www.pdxwriters.com/ and with partners, which I find drives my writing forward in surprising ways, but more about that later… I find memoir a bit unwieldy- it tends to run off in directions I didn’t think I was going. Sometimes I have to stop and ask, what is the story that wants to be written? However, during May…

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Can Memoir Kill You?

writing

“…It almost killed me.” -Harry Crews, author of A Childhood: The Biography of a Place Both shocking and understandable if you write memoir, right? Have you ever felt gutted when writing your stories? The natural reaction to pain is avoidance. Quite often we flinch and move away from that hot center of a story, afraid we’ll get burned or at least singed by it. But that red hot spot is where the heart of story lies. I’ve taken a break from the red hot center that memoir is, but recently I got back on the horse, to severely mangle some metaphors… though I like this image now of riding a flaming Arabian for all I’m worth. I will not go down in flames. I will rise from the ashes. These are the affirmations I think of as I free flow write… on this hobby horse… Free flow write with me.…

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Having a blast hiking at Beacon Rock on Mother's Day with daughter #3

A New Thought for Today

Motherhood

I have lots of old thoughts that circulate regularly so when a new thought flits by I notice it and see if it’s one I want to keep. Today’s thought, early on this Sunday morning Mother’s Day, was about privilege, a hot topic and one I’ve been entertaining in new ways. This new thought took me by surprise, as new thoughts often do, being new. It was a privilege to be my mother’s daughter. Many of you might think things like this quite often; I haven’t had a lot of thoughts like this, but the thought seemed beautiful to me. I decided it could stay, that I would like to think this way more. It is a thought that serves me well. After it came another I liked equally well, maybe even better: It’s a privilege to be a mother of my three daughters (three sons too, but today, as…

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Ending May: 31 Days of Writing

writing

Today is the last day of May- what a month. I focused on words, writing a lot of words, a redemptive story. I got distracted and sometimes felt disheartened, probably a lot like you. But we press on. We realize it is a privilege to be able to press on, to breathe clean air (at least where I live), to write in peace. I spoke with my middle son today. He’s a reporter for the Seattle Times and was downtown last evening doing his job. He got sprayed with tear gas and said he feels “shaken.” He’s never seen anything like this. Who has? None of us have lived through riots in the face of a pandemic. Meanwhile, I’m still writing, still believing the story I’m working on matters. Some days it’s difficult to believe, especially when I look around. But art elevates us all out of the mire, dusting…

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