Category Archives: Memoir

A Ride with Memory

When I first started this blog, near the end of 2012, I posted this blog post. Something Colleen Chesebro wrote reminded me of it, and I thought I would share it again. It’s about memory and how the line can be blurred between fact and fiction in memory.

I have a box of old photographs my grandfather gave me before he died.  They are family portraits and snapshots dating from about 1890 to 1920.  We sat in his living room and wrote names on the ones he could identify.  Dozens of other photographs bear family resemblances, but they remain nameless and can’t assume their positions on the family tree.

My own mind houses memories in the same way.  Many of my memories bear a resemblance to my life and my relationships, and while minute details might be clear, the facts are hazy or forgotten, perhaps unrecoverable.  A memory illustrated by vivid details and accompanied by still-present emotion began on Trimble Street, in front of the next door neighbor’s house.  I was two, almost three.

Mrs. Becker babysat me for my parents that day; she let her girls watch me outside.  The day felt sun-warmed, with a slight cooling breeze rustling through my play clothes.  The oldest girl, Donna, and a teenage boy were the ringleaders of the group.  She wasn’t yet in high school and didn’t have her later characteristic beehive hairdo.

Her younger sisters, Susie and Denise were with us.  All the children ringed a brown horse standing in the street looking very out-of-place.  From my perspective down near the sidewalk, the horse looked like a city square equestrian statue—massive, gigantic, forbidding.  Perhaps the boy had ridden the horse to our street.  Donna turned to me, kneeled down to my level, and said, “How would you like to go for a ride?”

I shivered, though the sun shone down on my honey-colored hair.  “No,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” said Susie.

“No!” I backed away.

“Honey, there’s no need to be afraid,” Donna said.  She scooped me up and plunked me down on the saddle positioned across the back of the horse.  From this height I looked down at the tall teenagers, feeling dizzyingly and irrevocably beyond their reach.

“Put me down,” I said.

The teens giggled and chattered.  Suddenly I heard a loud SMACK, and the horse bolted forward.  I swayed backwards for a moment and then righted myself by grabbing hold of the saddle horn sitting in front of me.  The horse trotted up Trimble Street.  We left the teens behind, just the determined horse and me.   The breeze flew through my flimsy hair.  I held onto the horn with every muscle I could harness to the aid of my hands.  Both my hands and feet tingled and turned numb.  My thoughts condensed into one little pinhole: stop stop stop!  I couldn’t tell the horse to stop because the pinhole only allowed that one thought; I was beyond the power of speech.

The horse trotted up to busy Gull Road, a main artery without sidewalks, where he turned right.  I expected to fall off his back into the path of an uncaring automobile.   I clung on.  He carried me swiftly to Henson Street where he took another right, and then onto Junction and back to Trimble Street.  My powerful hands, drained of blood, were my only compensation for the utter loss of control I felt.

When he trotted to the front of the Becker house, the horse stopped short.   I rocked again and almost tumbled.  The teens laughed, and Donna’s friend tried to lift me off the horse, but my hands would not unclamp from the saddle horn.  I realized then I had been crying; my cheeks, soaked with tears, seem to burn as if the saltwater seared the tender skin.

I couldn’t speak, not even that night when I saw my parents.  All these years later, the details vibrate within me, but I’m missing one fact: I can’t be certain if the horse existed or came to me in a dream.

With my mother and the two younger sisters from next door

The names have been changed to protect people who may or may not have participated in this act of baby abuse.

Are you sure of your memories?  Do you have any like this one, where you aren’t sure if it really happened or if you dreamed it?  How do you handle a hitch like that in writing creative nonfiction?

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Filed under Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Memoir writing theory, Nonfiction, Writing, Writing Talk

2023 Coming In Like a Monster

First an apology: this is not an uplifting inspirational Brand New Year post.

While I was desperately hoping that the new year would bring a lessening of troubles into my life, a couple of days ago I got a call from the veterinarian that told me 2023 is going to be another difficult year.

In my last update about my dear darling Perry’s health, I explained that the results of his abdominal ultrasound showed that he had either IBD (irritable bowel disease) or lymphoma of the GI system. We were going to decide on treatment after he underwent an echocardiogram to make sure his heart was ok. The reason for this was that the vet had noticed that Perry had developed a heart murmur.

Now, going back to 2017-2019, the first three years Perry came into our lives, the gardener and I were concerned about heavy breathing episodes that Perry would have. We worried about his heart or possibly a lung condition. We didn’t get very far with the specialists at the time. In fact, the esteemed cardiologist talked us out of an echo at that time.

For anybody who doesn’t know, by the way, Perry is the kitty who showed up in our yard in spring 2017 seeming completely feral. I worked so closely with him (reading, singing, reciting poetry, holding his food bowl while he ate) that he got over his extreme fear of humans and showed himself to be the most amazing cat EVER (and that is saying something since I was “mom” of the amazing cat Pear Blossom and have been mom to many cats). One of the many Perry highlights: Perry lies on his back nestled in my arm like a napping toddler.

Back to the echo we didn’t have at that time. Sure wish we had done it. Turns out now his heart is very bad. Three of the four heart chambers are enlarged, and he might have a hole in his atrial septum. He is so ill from his heart that the vet says it’s a moot point whether he has IBD or lymphoma. He also tests positive for the feline coronavirus (which causes FIP) so it’s possible it’s behind his illnesses. He will begin two new medications as soon as we receive them from the compounding pharmacy.

I can’t tell you how HEARTsick I am over this turn of events. Perry is seven years old. So far his worst visible symptom is severe diarrhea. Please send healing vibes and, if you pray, pray for my dear catboy.

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Filed under #poetswithcats, Cats and Other Animals, Memoir, Nonfiction

Violent Crime & the Family: New Essay at South 85 Journal

writersite.org

The beautiful South 85 Journal has published my essay, “Family History,” in the new issue. This creative nonfiction piece is about a violent crime that occurred within my extended family. Writing this has been so difficult, but also necessary. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what happened, so I explored it in this way. I hope you read this piece because the sharing of it also helps me process it all. But a warning: it is about violence and family.

https://www.south85journal.com/issues/spring-summer-2022/family-history/

My great-grandfather’s gavel

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Working on 100 Small Steps at Everything Art UK–this is day 15

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In the World Again

After I got home from the Master Workshop at the Tucson Festival of Books I was exhausted. What in the world. Maybe the pandemic, by making us homebound for so long, has done this because the gardener was exhausted, too, and he didn’t even go to the sessions. But he did drive around a lot. While I was at the workshop, he went on household errands!

The sessions were fabulous, and the nonfiction workshop was a real treat. We had a stellar group of writers.

One of my favorite parts of the time was the poetry session by Felicia Zamora about hybridities. I’m so inspired to try some new and more experimental forms of poetry.

I woke up with a complicated migraine on Friday which might have been triggered from the lights in the conference rooms and/or the dehydration I experienced in Tucson. For some reason it feels much drier there than in Phoenix. This is the exact reason I can’t drive long distances and had to ask the gardener to take me to the workshop. I can’t risk having one of these monsters when I have to drive a long distance.

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Have you heard that you can help individual Ukrainians by purchasing goods through their Etsy shops? This way they can get some $ coming in whether they are still  in Ukraine or are refugees elsewhere. Some of them can still ship regular goods, but most are selling digital items. Lots of graphics and artwork, especially about Ukraine and #standwithukraine. The items are not expensive. There is a Facebook group devoted to this subject, and you can also communicate on there with Ukrainians (almost all women, though not entirely) and hear their stories and give them verbal support. They are so grateful even when you buy a $2 item. Many of them are giving some or all of the money to their army.

UKRAINIAN ETSY SHOP OWNERS

If you don’t have Facebook you can search Etsy for Ukrainian shops.

I’m not saying this is the only way to help Ukraine, but it is a very personal way and means a great deal to a few individuals. It’s also a very small amount of money for each purchase, so if you accidentally send to an imposter (word is that it’s pretty reliable) it’s not a lot of money. Be sure when you message back and forth that you don’t use specific words like stand and support because Paypal is being a real jerk.

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I have a review of Jess L. Parker’s brand new debut poetry collection, Star Things, in the current issue of the phenomenal Rain Taxi Review of Books. This will give you an idea.

What a great magazine to subscribe to. Here’s what it looks like.

 

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Anybody else register for the AWP conference? I signed up for the virtual format, and I am dismayed how few sessions there are. I keep wondering if I am reading the schedule incorrectly.  I must be?

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Make it the best week you know how!

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Does Shockwave Therapy Work?

Let’s see if I can write this post without any talk about the horrors going on in the real world.

When I got Valley Fever at the very end of September 2020, I whined a couple of times on this blog about my shoulder getting very bad at the same time. In fact, I might always wonder if my flu shot caused the damage. Before you laugh, that’s a real thing. Vaccines can cause bursitis, calcifications, and all manner of painful shoulder issues. In my case, when I finally got an xray, I was diagnosed with both rotator cuff calcification and frozen shoulder.  The reason it took months to get the diagnosis was that with Valley Fever I was terrified of getting Covid. They both tend to look the same on a lung xray, and at my age, I really didn’t want that double whammy.

After the diagnosis I began physical therapy and attended dutifully for almost three months. Then I kept doing the exercises for several months afterward. Surgery wasn’t the best situation for me because of another health issue. But then the shoulder pain began to increase again instead of decrease.

Bottom line about physical therapy: it completely unfroze my shoulder, so that’s a good thing. But it did nothing for the calcification, which was in a particularly painful spot. This pain went on for 1 1/2 years.

This winter I found a sports doctor who believes in non-surgical alternatives. I was specifically looking for someone who could prescribe shockwave therapy. I’d read online about it, and it sounded very promising. When I saw the doctor I found out that he had had the treatment himself and swore by it. I also discovered that he only recommended one place in the entire state of Arizona. It was luckily in the greater Phoenix area.

I went 4 times. Two times I had treatments by one therapist, then the 3rd and 4th were by a second therapist. I could tell immediately that she was more powerful in her administration of the therapy. After the 4th treatment I started feeling a lot better, but was still uncertain about the outcome. However, daughter’s wedding was coming up and I wanted to hibernate for a couple of weeks ahead of time so that I didn’t get Covid and miss the wedding.

Guess what happened? Those treatments had broken up the calcification. Over that two week period they were absorbed into my body. My shoulder is now completely better.

This is my testimonial for shockwave therapy. Why won’t insurance companies cover it? Is it because somebody is making money off all those shoulder surgeries?

I’m not a doctor of medicine (just literature which has a different sort of healing power haha), so this is just my story. From my story, my cautions would be to only get shockwave therapy under the supervision of a medical doctor and licensed physical therapist with shockwave training, not at an alternative medicine office of any kind. Read a lot online about it. Be sure never to get shockwave therapy in areas of the body where there is danger (again, research and doctor’s script).

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Next Monday I’ll be at the workshop in Tucson, so I won’t be posting. I’m excited because the other nonfiction entries have been good reading, so I think the interaction at the workshop should be a good one.

I’ve been #amwriting, #amreading, and #amrevising lately, although not too much of any of them. Just enough to keep me going. My focus has been off because of “world events,” and I am trying to be kind to myself.

That means arty junk journaling :). Here’s a video of a journal I just finished. It’s not one of my favorites, but some of the pages are decent. And I painted it in pale pink after the war started because somehow that color was calling to me.

Here is a reminder that spring is here, and the birds don’t know about all the horrors around the world. They are in “tryst” mode.

 

Make it a good week in the world around you!

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This is Today

I try to keep my blog a healing and nurturing place for myself and maybe a bit of an escape for readers. So I don’t like to write here about political issues. In fact, I hate politics, although I recognize how important they are. I can wish for permanent world peace, but I know that humans are deeply flawed and that the concept is a utopian ideal. Even without taking into account sociopaths and psychopaths, humans are gnarly, snarly selfish creatures. That said, there are plenty of mainly wonderful people doing wonderful things in this world.

Anyway this is leading up to me saying something about a political situation. And that is war perpetuated against Ukraine by Putin and Company. I find it so distressing, both for the Ukrainians and for world stability. There are constant wars against people all around the world, but the reason I am commenting here on this isn’t because these are white Europeans, although I’ve seen people argue this. It’s because there is a domino effect that can occur and there is a pattern of war in Europe contributing to or leading to war in many regions (world war).

Additionally, all four of the gardener’s grandparents were Jews from Ukraine, although it was part of the Russian Empire in those days.  Jewish history beyond the Pale has a lot of sad chapters, but there were also happy times and some good neighbors. Volodymyr Zelenskyy being selected as president of Ukraine was a big deal. He not only was a comedian and not a politician before this top office, but he is Jewish. How significant and hopeful that someone Jewish could be elected president of Ukraine. And now this horror.  Please send Ukraine what you’re good at: prayers, protesting, positive vibes, money, whatever you can do.

Here is a poem Rattle just published by a Ukrainian poet. She took Putin’s speech from Feb 21 and created an erasure poem, where words are erased to find a different meaning. Mir in Ukraine

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I had to get a piece of my memoir ready for the workshop at the Tucson Festival of Books. I received the manuscripts from the other participants the other day and am eager to read them. Some of them are probably the same pieces that made them finalists. For mine, I chose a different one. For the contest I sent in the first section of the memoir, about when I was a little kid. For the workshop I sent in the next section, where I was ten to 14 or so. I know that makes it sound like an autobiography, but it’s definitely a memoir, focused more on my relationship with my father.

On the subject of my arty junk journals, I began to prep the book to use for daughter’s wedding journal. First I had to gut my 2nd year French book. That felt great! It also provided me with some collage materials–music, maps, French passages. When I first saw people altering books, I didn’t like it. I couldn’t imagine violating a book. The teaching I had received about treating books like treasures was strong within me. But now I realize that there are plenty of books that end up in landfills and that there is a difference between an out-of-date textbook and a first edition of Peter Pan. It’s fun to give the book cover and the “collage materials” from the inside new life.

Reading some good books, such as Ashley C. Ford’s Somebody’s Daughter, a memoir, and Caroline Goodwin’s Madrigals, a collection of poetry and collage art.

 

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Who Are Those Matching Ladies, Mommy?

Continue reading

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Filed under #amreading, #AmWriting, #writerlife, #writerslife, #writingcommunity, History, Memoir, Nonfiction, Vintage American culture

The Case of Alice Sebold

I’ve been dwelling on the case of Alice Sebold (author of the beautiful novel The Lovely Bones) and the trial of her accused rapist. I wrote about her memoir Lucky here: [P]lucky to Survive The book was structured in essentially two parts. Part one is about Sebold’s rape as a college sophomore and her resulting trauma. Part two is about the rape trial. When I wrote my earlier post I latched onto the opening rape scene because I was reading memoirs with the eye of a writer who wanted to write a memoir. I ignored the rest of the book. A reason, though, was that I felt confused by the book and also found the trial section icky, but I failed to analyze it enough.

Now, it turns out, the man she had identified as her rapist is innocent. Talk about gobsmacked. Anthony Broadwater, the man who went to prison and has now been exonerated, seems to have suffered because he was a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can read about Sebold’s apology here: Alice Sebold Apologizes

I have some thoughts about this matter. My heart goes out to Anthony Broadwater for the ruination of his life and his reputation. I can’t even imagine what his life has been like or how it felt every day knowing he didn’t deserve what was happening. In articles, he sounds like a very balanced, kind man. Can you even imagine what he went through all this time? It seems just BEYOND.

Another aspect is that a lot of writers and others have been quick to condemn Sebold.  But remember she went through a horrific and terrorizing experience where she thought she would die and was never given proper support afterward. She was young and the rape must have damaged her emotionally. Then she had only the police and prosecutor to rely on. They were hell-bent on getting a conviction and manipulated the situation. She must have been like putty for their purposes.

To me, this is one of those horrific tragedies that happen in life where so many issues converge. There are innocents, like Broadwater, and bad actors, like the prosecution. Then there is Sebold, a victim of a horrible tragedy herself. Is she guilty of a travesty against Broadwater? Or is she being victimized all over again by people who were quick to denounce her?

When Sebold saw Broadwater on the street and thought he was the rapist, she was operating under a problem that everyone in the world operates under. Cross-racial identification is known to be very problematic. At least, we know that today. That wasn’t the case in 1982. I’m not sure how to solve this, but it needs solving so that we can trust identification of criminals. I do understand the phenomenon, though. We see the details that identify individuals more clearly in people we are most used to seeing. So if we come from a white family, we are best at identifying white individuals, etc.  I think we can all get better at this, but it takes being around people of all races! So is Sebold responsible for pointing out the wrong man or a victim of a natural phenomenon? Both?

Ugh, I hate situations like this. It’s so much easier when there are clear bad guys and good guys. Please help me organize my thoughts on this matter. What do you think?

What is clear to me is that a grave injustice was done to Anthony Broadwater. And all of us who read Sebold’s memoir were made complicit in it.

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I made my first mini junk journal last week. The video is a minute and a half and shows all the pages inside the journal, if you’re interested. The project was to put my “stamp” of authenticity on it. I feel like I did that.

 

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I will leave you with Perry to start your week. By the way, you know what my mother said the other day? That Perry looks like a rat!!! What kind of Grandma says that?! Sigh. More like a ferret or possum? In the following 6 second video, Perry learns that in the “Mouse for Cats” video game when he catches a mouse it squeaks.

NOW you will have a good week!

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“The Gamemaster and the Reluctant Daughter” Published by Rind Literary Magazine

The editors at Rind Literary Magazine have published my creative nonfiction piece, “The Gamemaster and the Reluctant Daughter,” in the new issue, #15. You can find it, beginning on page 33, here:

RIND: AN ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE, ISSUE 15

I hope you enjoy the story. Again, it relates very closely to the memoir I am working on.

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Our bobcat, as seen through the window.

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My positive hopeful plans for 2022 include making my daughter a wedding junk journal, which she’s excited about. I am collecting pretty little scraps and ephemera for that. Then I joined the Ugly Art Club, and I’ll see how that goes. Also, I want to study drawing faces a bit. And I need to get the publisher all the pieces for the poetry book. I really need my headshots retaken. I don’t like the last ones, except the accidental one of me holding Perry. (Should I just use that?) And, finally, I will be attending a special workshop at the Tucson Festival of Books for my memoir. I’m working on a collection of Red Riding Hood poems. So we’ll see how the year goes. Lots of plans. We’ll see what God has in store for me heh.

What are you planning for yourself this new year? Go get 2022!!!!

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3 Poems Up at Furious Gazelle and More Writing News

Hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had a lovely one. My daughter’s in-laws had us over for an Italian Christmas feast, including gluten free versions for the gardener.  We had a wonderful time, needless to say.

I had some minor good news the other day. An excerpt of my unpublished memoir Scrap was a finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. Woot! That feels like a step in the right direction for this project that has been in in the works since 2008 hahaha.

Coincidentally, on Christmas Eve, the journal Furious Gazelle published three poems, and these poems all relate to material found in Scrap. A big thank you to the editors.

You can read them here:

3 POEMS AT FURIOUS GAZELLE

In this photo my father is on our left and his twin brother is on our right. They look like they belong in an Our Gang movie, and it’s true they were raised by the streets as much as by their mother or sister.

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