MaMoMeMo
May is motherhood memoir month

writing

All Poetry
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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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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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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In the Midst of Chaos, a Sacred Moment

writing

I was out walking on a trail near our house this morning, putting one foot in front of the other, when I looked up and saw four sets of big eyes looking back at me. A small herd of young bucks stood less than 20 feet away. I came to a slow stop and said a hushed hello. They stared, alert. I stared, in awe. Below and behind them the Columbia River flowed to the sea. Above us a hawk circled. My step count stayed where it was for over ten minutes while I watched them watching me, their short sets of antlers looking fuzzy and harmless. Earlier, a former co-worker’s post on Facebook convinced me that I should watch the footage of George Floyd’s death. I couldn’t get past the first time he said he couldn’t breathe. I know he calls out for his mother, and as a mother…

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Of Rats & Bees (no mice… no men)

Parenting

The bees seem to have settled into the hive. I can’t say for sure unless I open the hive and I’m not going to do that, so for now I cross the stream at the bottom of our backyard and gaze over at the log hive, which has a healthy amount of bees enjoying the sunshine and buzzing around it. I believe I can see them going in and out of the opening, a crack in the log. Meanwhile, Arielle, 13, is still vying for rats. To that end, she wrote a paper on rat responsibilities as she imagines them, given her research. Her first paper was a how-to written in the second person-all you need to know to care for a pet rat. She presented it to us last night. Part of our sequester entertainment and education is presenting ideas to each other. I found it informative, but lacking…

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bees outside the hive, reluctant to move in

From Bees to Rats

writing

The bees of yesterday are still outside the hive we put them in-deciding whether they want to move in, or cleaning out the hive and repainting for the Queen? We don’t know. We watch and wait. Such diversion. Meanwhile, I write, some. Not a lot. I often think, “This is going to be a writing day- get lots done! I’m not going to do much else…” But then life happens. Today, our youngest daughter is making inroads toward getting another pet. We have a Maine Coon, but he is not a very affectionate male cat. He mostly tolerates us, and we are amused by him, but Ari is pining for a small pet. She’s been trying to trap a mouse with a friendly trap, to no avail. Being quarantined or sequestered can be lonely for a 13-year-old, so I find my “no more pets” stance softening. I don’t want to…

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When Bees(&Words) Die

writing

The bee swarm we “rescued” last week off the curb at the corner of a main thoroughfare didn’t make it. And I don’t know why, although I have some theories. And as writers, not all the words we write are going to make it out into the world. It doesn’t stop us from trying, from stringing words together into sentences born of observations and ideas, some cohesive and some less so, knowing that many written words will be left behind, or left off the final stories. As a writer you just have to be okay with that, right? And as you get better at it you may be able to save more original words, but writing that first draft will always be an act of exploration and discovery. That’s part of the fun. It was fun, and a bit inconvenient to go get bees. Stop what you are doing and…

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La Grande Jatte by Seurat

Seurat and Social Distancing

Prompts

In Seurat’s pointillist painting, La Grande Jatte, notice how everyone is arranged in small groups with some distance between them? I never saw it quite like this before, but living through a pandemic changes your view on just about everything. Is there a piece of art that represents how life has changed for you since the onset of the pandemic? A painting might inspire a story or poem, or vivid imagery in a poem or story might inspire a painting or sculpture (reverse ekphrasis). Using art as a starting point, describing what you see until the story or idea behind the objects or scene reveals itself. That’s ekphrastic writing and it can bring new layers of meaning, along with new ways of seeing, to your work. Give it a try. And stay safe this Memorial Day Weekend. Writing, generally done alone, is a fairly safe activity.

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First Drafts

writing

The process of writing first drafts is a lot like climbing a mountain for the first time according to C.C. Humphreys, an author who spoke to Willamette Writers recently. He’s written eleven novels with more to come and he speaks with that charming British accent, easy listening. I heard the Nietzsche quote (post from two days earlier) from him, but he said it like this: You must have chaos within who gives birth to a dancing star. I have chaos within and without, so I felt rather encouraged, how you want to feel when you are writing a first draft and listening to one who has gone before you several times. This is not my first draft. But it is one of the first I am close to finishing, or so I hope. The thing about calling a first draft finished is, how do you know it is finished? It…

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John Deere/dear decanting honey left by the last bees

When Writing Disappears

Prompts

That happens from time to time, right? You forget to hit save like I did yesterday after starting today’s post… At least I think I wrote a post. I’ve been writing a lot lately and dreaming, both day and night, so I realize it’s possible I only dreamed I wrote a post. At any rate, it has not reappeared in my drafts folder where I thought, or dreamed, I wrote it. What I love is how comical this seems to me, when before, maybe last year, it might’ve caused stress or anxiety, like a bee swarm before I knew much about bees. When I’m writing a lot, I know I can just write some more. When I’m not writing much, every word feels precious, no matter how bad it might be. And when I’m writing a lot the writing seems better somehow, like I’m hitting more of the right notes,…

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