This past March, as those of you following my blog already know, my partner Karyn and I took my 86-year-old mother, who is frail and suffers from dementia, on a trip from California to Florida so she could see her last surviving sibling one final time. The two sisters hadn’t seen each other in seven …
The Ethics of Writing About Family: Laura’s Dilemma Read More »
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” –Ernest Hemingway There is a deep excavation process that goes on when a writer is trying to write from the deep places that real, true writing come from. This is true regardless of genre—whether the writer is composing fiction, …
It’s our last morning in Florida. I booked a late afternoon plane so we could get a direct flight home—and not have to rouse Temme for an early morning flight. This morning, Uncle Ben had to go to dialysis and I knew he’d be there for five hours, so I knew I had to say …
The morning went smoothly. Mom was disoriented when she woke up and had taken all her clothes off in the night, but I dressed her easily and helped her into the bathroom. When it came time to help her into her Depends and lift her off the toilet, I felt nothing but tenderness—and then my …
Over the next few weeks, I brought up our trip occasionally. Some days Mom thought her sister was coming to see her at Sunshine Villa. Other times she repeated the story about sharing the good news with Esther. “She was so delighted and surprised,” my mother informed me, every time. Esther had learned a thing …
This is the second post in a series about my trip to Florida with my mother…. A few days after I bought our tickets—paying an extra $150 per seat so we could sit in the bulkhead, right next to the bathroom—I brought up our trip to Mom. “Hey, Mom, in a few weeks, we’re going …
I debated whether to blog this trip and once I decided to, I wondered whether or not I could possibly call it a Virtual Vacation. This is clearly not going to be an exotic armchair adventure in Bali or a Scottish adventure or a travelogue through Mexico. It’s going to be a journey into old …
Sid Roth joined my Tuesday night writing class with his father on the “new student special.” I loved his response to the prompt, “Ode to an Ordinary Object,” and thought it was particularly fun when paired with his classmate’s response (see below).
Mr. Pencil, your uses are many. I know your ancestry; perhaps your humble beginnings from tree and mountain deep reflect your strength and resilience, and the strength and resilience you lend to me. I know the other humans despise you; they say your glyphing is faint and your point is weak. It is, however, your inner integrity and inflexibility that makes you most valuable to me. Pens, they either work or they do not. I know your failure will come as you openly disclose it; your length describes your time left among the living.
The question must be asked, in your favor as it is, ‘Why it is people think pens are superior?” The pen was invented first, and as such the natural course proved the Pencil as the successor. Truly those are fools, who turn their back on you in favor of inky inconsistency, just as those are fools who set their mistakes in stone.
Shannon LaGrandier is a committed member of the Wednesday morning writing group. She wrote this in response to the prompt: Write an Ode to an Ordinary Object. I loved it because we writers are often obsessive about our writing implements. Oh how I love you, purple pen, let me count the ways. The way your …
It’s my last day in Mexico and we’re heading back to San Miguel. We passed once again through Tzintzantzun. We drove through the wonderful gauntlet of huge statues, past the town market, and there the carnival we’d seem disembodied on the road day after day. Now it was all set up and ready for children: …
