Snores and Stories

A misty rain showers us with kisses as we file into the home of memoir writer and teacher Abigail Thomas. We are like disciples seeking a guru.  Eleven of us, all women, curl up in sofas and chairs, acting casual and confident as we prepare to share our stories. We are all shapes and sizes, most roughly middle age. Abigail sneaks a smoke on the porch as her dogs volley for a space amidst all the visitors. The chocolate dog, Daphne curls up near her mistress’ feet, chewing the throw rug. Abby grabs a tangerine from a bowl on the counter and tosses it to her as we round the circle of introductions. The hound, Carolina, approaches her sister, sniffing the tangerine. She considers claiming it. Abby grabs a second, pitching it her way to ward off a fight. What do these animals think, so quiet and relaxed at the feet of strangers?

I did an interview on Reiki for animals once. The woman explained it was all about energy. She calmed dogs and cats at the local humane society by sitting in the room and being quiet, exuding the right kind of energy. The restless cats would settle into plush beds and window seats. Are these dogs calm because we are?

I don’t feel calm sharing my story. Most likely few of us do. Each person offers a nervous disclaimer as it comes her turn to read – I did this quickly, I’m not good with prompts, I prefer to revise, I’m tired. The excuses vary slightly, but the message is the same: I’m afraid I’ll be judged. This is more important than I show. Be gentle.

No matter how many times I ask my students to do this, no matter how often I myself write and set out to share, it becomes no easier. I hate wearing the title writer/teacher when it comes my turn. Who wants to say you write for a living, that you teach memoir when you offer yourself raw and naked for judgment?

When my turn comes I read. My face grows hot. I press on. What’s the expression? The only way out is through?

The chocolate dog makes her way to my seat on the sofa. Solid and sure, she nudges me to the edge, claiming her space. My legs cramp with little room to move, but I enjoy the familiarity of her dogginess. I am at home amidst the quiet snorts and dog hair. Carolina approaches her Mom, stretching her neck to rest her head in Abby’s lap. Abby raises her journal to her eyes and tries not to see – “It will get her going,” she explains.

We talk about sex and suicide, longing and love – the gamut of human existence. We compare our stories to one another's like boys in a locker room, but encourage and support nonetheless. The dogs snore beneath our words, a comforting soundtrack. They do not worry what anyone thinks of them. They are dogs and if they are nervous about anything it is whether we will share the tuna and chicken wraps that we’ll be served at lunch.

We read and gradually relax, growing more comfortable with each other. The room exudes the right kind of energy. We settle into our stories like dogs to a comfy couch.

Alone

It might sound strange coming from a 45-year-old single woman, but finding myself alone is almost foreign to me. The only time I have lived alone was my sophomore year of college and even then my best friend lived next door with only a thin wall between us. We could hear each other’s phone conversations and practically talk without picking up the phone. The rest of the time I’ve had either roommates or family sharing my space.

My present house, located in the center of town, has always been a stopping place for family and friends. Its revolving door policy means that typically you can find someone coming or going day and night. Sometimes I’ll be sitting up working at 3:00 a.m. only to find my brother, Paul, has stopped by to grab a snack on his way home from night patrol. In the morning, before I even wake, family may have stopped and used the computer or the bathroom, and I will come downstairs to find traces of their presence. It’s sort of a Goldilocks moment – whose been sitting in my chair, etc. etc.?

Even when I travel it’s usually with someone or at least with the intention of meeting someone. For example, I travel back and forth to Cambridge, NY for my writers’ group, but the other members are always there waiting. When I make the hour-long journey between my house and Joan’s, I know there is someone on both ends to see me off and greet me. Even if my house has gone to bed for the night, my pugs wait patiently for their evening romp and snacks.

On my annual trek to the Woodstock Writers’ Festival, it’s true I meet up with other writers, but I know none of them. Although my name is on a checklist of having purchased a festival pass, no one will really pay any mind if I show up or not. There is a freedom in this. I am afloat and without boundaries, unsure how to take best advantage of this. I could go eat pizza or check in at the hotel. I could grab some soup or head to the story slam. There is no one else to consider. There’s just me. It’s a funny feeling. I have to stop and think – what do I want?

Some of my married friends with children look at my life longingly, imagining secret freedoms and independence. It is not a life I’ve known. Seldom has my life been untethered. And, true, it is not really this independence and freedom I crave. Although I always seem to have people around me, I am frequently lonely, craving a family of my own. And, yet, at moments like this, when I find myself truly alone, I can’t help but observe with scientific objectivity that it is an interesting experience. The feeling is alien, but potentially exhilarating as if every action holds the promise of adventure. I wait to see what may happen next.

Writing Prompt: Hopen 4 Peace

Four years ago I stumbled upon information advertising a memoir-focused writing conference in Woodstock, NY. Because I teach memoir, I signed up. I have to admit that I was drawn to the allure of the famous or should I say infamous town, known in name at least for being the home of Woodstock, the 60s music festival. The actual festival took place in Bethel, but it is Woodstock that is forever linked with this cultural milestone.

I fell in love with the town and the festival and have been going back annually ever since. It’s always been a bit of a retreat for me. It was one of the first places that I actually “escaped” to on my own – traveling alone and not really letting anyone know where I was – so that first year, I felt a wee bit of a rebel. I celebrated my freedom and honored the Woodstock mystique by getting a spontaneous tattoo of a peace symbol on my way out of town. I had two other tattoos when I got this one, but both of those had been planned out and held very specific meaning, this one I got on the fly without thinking. And, I was so proud of myself for doing so.

It was at the Woodstock Writers’ Festival that I befriended or was befriended by Maria Wulf and Jon Katz, two people that have become friends and powerful creative influences on this blog and my work. Last year I was sick when the festival rolled around, so I missed the first day. I remember showing up in time for an evening event. It was cold and rainy, but I was excited to be there.

To me one of the joys of the event, in addition to being exposed to a wealth of world-class writers, is wandering the streets taking photographs. Color, light and character fill the streets. I have stumbled upon drumming circles and a  “hippie” parade that made me feel like I had actually traveled back to the sixties. My first year there I visited this eclectic gift shop and bought myself a pink wig. When I am there, I am unfettered and free. The pink wig reflected this somehow.

Shortly after I returned home I attended a class on using the computer to create art. Unfortunately, the class was horrible. Students had so many computer problems just getting started that the teacher never even got a chance to start the class. The good thing was this gave me plenty of time to experiment and I ended up creating my first digital collage, using images I had snapped in Woodstock. It was a self-portrait and looking at it now, I realize I was already doing some of the things that have become my signature such as combining hand drawing with the digital photography. I loved the result both as a work of art and as a self-portrait. I didn’t think much when I was creating this, I just enjoyed myself, but there is something about it that is just me.

The woman in this picture is a free-spirit, she seems to be smiling, happy, energetic, but she is also peering from behind a curtain, lace covers her ace, she is not looking out with her own eyes, but rather those that are bedazzled – you question whether the eyes mask her from you or vice versa. There is a part of me that is out there, open and free, a part that is veiled. Perhaps that is the case with most of us.

The cranberry peace symbol in the upper right corner, by the way, is my actual tattoo. If you look below it the girl in the mirror where’s a different face. Her reflection is more open. It is not veiled. I like the words for which the piece is named, Hopen 4 Peace. These were snapped from a sign on a Woodstock storefront. They speak of something both universal and personal. It is what we all seek.

I leave for the Woodstock Writers’ Festival tomorrow and will return on Monday. I will be bringing my computer and ipad with me and will try to blog as I can, but the days are pretty packed with activity, so bear with me. I’ll post as I can.

Writing Prompt: Where Do You Go to Escape?

News

When my brother Paul left for boot camp he asked for letters. He warned against drawings, photos or gifts – anything that might make him stand out. He’d heard horror stories about guys who received cookies from their families and were forced to eat all of them at once while the rest of the men did push-ups. I’m not sure if his worries are justified, but we were warned no extras, just news – news of home, news of family. “I’m not sure how much we’ll know about what’s going on in the rest of the world,” he said.

Again, I don’t know if they’ll share with my brother and the other men at boot camp news of the Boston Marathon and the tragedy that occurred there or if they do how it will be presented. I know it won’t be the same as if he heard it here at home.

Boston holds a special place in the heart of our family. My parents, who attended Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy for a time, were engaged on Washington Street. Paul, too spent some time at ENC and to my brother John and I, Boston was the Emerald City – our destination spot. When we crossed the bridge over the Charles and saw the city looming, we knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore or more accurately our rural town of Bethel, Vt.

We went to Boston for concerts and Star Trek conventions, to hear the likes of Prince, U2 and Sting. We went to visit the boy I loved and to tour Newbury Comics and Tower Records for vinyl and to search for specific songs we had heard on TV shows or on the radio as we entered the city. This was in the days before I-tunes and the Internet so finding a song you sought was like embarking on a scavenger hunt. You poured through bins of records in seedy used record stores tucked in basements or back alleys, searching based on a remembered lyric or a phrase that sounded like so and so, and when you scored the coveted item, when you took it home, put it on your record player, heard the first notes and realized you’d hit pay dirt, oh, the feeling was sweet. Then again, everything was. We were young.

Boston was exciting, but safe. For teens that had never ventured far beyond their one-street town, it held promise and possibility and the assurance that you could head out in the world and find your way. I learned to ride the T and where to get on and off for all our favorite haunts. I sometimes still hear the static-y announcement “Ahrlington” cried in its distinct Boston drawl in my dreams.

We would hit Boston in the morning and stay until late at night, speeding home, windows down in my brother’s mustang. We blasted cassettes of our favorite songs, creating our own soundtrack.  We were cool, we were young, we were part of a world larger than ourselves. We might live in Bethel, but Boston held our hearts and it stands frozen in my memory, a time capsule of all that’s right.

These are things my brother Paul understands although he was still too young when we were making these journeys to come along, but he has his own tales of the city to tell. The last time we were there together with his wife Leah, he took us on a tour of some of his college hangouts, ending in a field in the darkness. Leah and I joked as he parked the car that he was taking us out to the woods to kill us, but somehow as we walked the narrow path together we felt safe. The bright lights in the distance looked out over us, keeping a watchful eye. We called home to let my Mom, who was watching their kids, know we would be late, and we stopped for pizza at a greasy Italian sub shop. Paul and I volleyed tidbits of conversation back and forth as we battled to share with Leah all our memories of the city.

If Paul were here he’d likely have called me on his cell to ask if I’d heard the news. He is always the first to inform me of world events. He probably would have made some jibe, as we are likely to throw at each other, turning it into something political. But, it would be half-hearted in light of such tragedy. I don’t know if someone has shared with my brother this horrible event, likely he’ll hear about it before I tell him. There are no real silver linings in tragedies like this, but we cling to those things that bring us hope such as the good in those who tried to help. We offer our memories of marathons and cities that once seemed safe. We pray for a better world. And, in our confusion we turn to each other because it is not news we revel in at times like this, but in our shared humanity. We reach for those we love, seeking safe harbor and nod to everyone else, drawing them too, a little bit closer. The news is, at times like this, we realize everyone's our brother.

My Brother's Home

The rain falls lightly to the ground as we pull into the mud-lined driveway of my brother’s home. The raw, comforting smell of wood smoke burns my nostrils. The brook gurgles with mirth: spring is here she announces even as the nip in the air tries to deny this inevitable fact. Green grass already pokes up through the brown earth; this and the red shed to my left, the brightest splashes of color against this earth-toned world. Mom and I walk the rain-slicked stones to the porch and knock on the door.

Sophie, my brother’s boxer erupts in a string of raucous roars, leaping up and down against the door. I wonder if she is looking for my brother, away at boot camp. His wife, long and lean in a black-and-white apron, thick, red hair piled high on her head, answers the door.

“Hiii,” she drawls, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m just making dinner, y’all.” She may be a Vermont housewife now, but her Texas roots are showing. My eight-year-old niece and eleven-year-old nephew, Catherine and Adam, tackle me, such a wave of long entangled limps that I can barely make out who is who. “We’re writing letters to Daddy,” my niece declares.

The rich odor of chicken and roasting potatoes fills the air. “I’m making purple potatoes,” my sister-in-law proudly announces. She and I had taken a trip to Hawaii together a couple of years ago and eaten lavender-tinged taro root, so their mention is a nod to me.

“I’ll have to take pictures,” I say.

I glance at the dish-clad counter and notice a stack of letters. My brother has been gone for less than a week, but his wife and kids have been writing daily, stockpiling the letters until he calls with his address.

“We just stopped by to say, hi,” Mom and I announce. “Can I write a letter to Daddy, too?” I ask.

My niece grabs a piece of unlined paper and a pencil, serving me pink lemonade in a fancy glass as I sit down to write. “Everyone misses you,” I write. “I don’t know why! LOL.” Actually I miss him too.  “Maybe I should enlist and see what people think of me,” I note. “This is like faking your death and attending your own funeral just to see what people really think of you. So far so good.”

We finish the letter and as Leah starts dishing out the food to the kids, I snap a photo of the purple potatoes and get ready to leave. The kids’ artwork hangs on the kitchen walls. A colorful self-portrait by Catherine, a wildly colored pastel forest by Adam, and Catherine’s latest an “army guy” in camouflage. Homages to their Daddy are everywhere.

We discuss plans to get together next week, say our goodbyes and walk out the door. “Love you,” we say simultaneously.

Mom and I hop in the Honda and as we get ready to leave the driveway I look off to the hillside and spy two deer grazing in the field. I get out of the car and stroll down the hill toward the open field, trying to get as close to the deer as I can. As I near the crimson shed, they stop their grazing, look up and freeze. Realizing that I am not disappearing, they eventually take off, leaping across obstacles invisible to my naked eye, their white tails flirtatiously waving as they go.

We live in a painting, I think, a portrait of rural Vermont. Damp woodpiles, thick mud, and gray rain surround us. Across the road, my grandparent’s former farm, now my uncles’, looks worn. The farmers who lease it have stockpiled tires around the precariously tilted silo. Photographers have made postcards of the nearby bridge, the farm in its shadows, but today the naked face of the landscape shines through.

My family has lived on this land for 200 years. One of us has wandered from home. I sit in his drive-way, listening to the song of the brook, basking in the smell of burning wood, watching the white-tail deer dance by, hoping they are a sign of good fortune. I wait with his mother, wife and children, expectant like his dog, for the days to fly by and he to return safely home. We are tied to each other like the soil to this land. We are bound by blood and love. We never wander far.

Mothering and Bumbling Along

I’ve never been a mother, but I’ve been mothering most of my life. When I was a little girl, my best friend Madeleine and I had imaginary children. We kept a list of all the children we knew – my baby brothers and baby cousins, her brother’s girlfriend’s children – and we would pretend they were our own, shopping the Sears catalogue for clothes for them. We would keep empty chairs for them in the school cafeteria so they could sit near us. When I turned 12, my mother would leave Madeleine and I to babysit my toddling brother Mark and newborn baby brother Paul. We would push them through town in their strollers convinced that all the neighbors would be scandalized believing these were our children. And, in many ways they were. When there is a 12-year difference between you and a younger sibling, you end up being a second parent in a lot of ways.

When Paul was very little and would get upset and retreat to his bedroom, I would go upstairs to comfort him, donning a black-and-yellow bumblebee puppet on my hand and talking to him in my funny “bee” voice, until Bumble would bring a smile to my face. As my brothers grew older, our family went through a series of financial and legal problems that led my parents to be away in court a lot. My brother John and I were left to care for the two younger brothers – “the boys” – treating them to a lot of homemade ravioli and pizza.

As the youngest and the eldest my brother Paul and I have been, if not polar opposites, at least on opposite ends of the poles. Being a parental figure means you are also subject to some acting out and it probably wasn’t easy on my pre-teen brother when I moved home from college, but in many ways we are alike and although we’ve had our share of sibling rivalry, neither of us has ever forgotten the days of Bumble. Now he often works the night shift as a cop while I am teaching late and I pass his car on the road, calling or texting just to say, “I see you.” Once when the light was out on my car, a fellow cop ran my plate, called Paul up and he tracked me down in a snowstorm, taking me to a parts store to fix the bulb. He was no longer my baby brother. He was taking care of me.

It was Paul who also gave me the gift of my nephew Christian when as a teenager he became a father. Seeing a teenage pregnancy as a gift might have been a challenge at the time, but Christian proved an unexpected miracle. I have truly experienced the joy of motherhood in being his godmother, watching him grow and mothering him alongside the other women in his family.

It was my brother Paul who first introduced me to pugs about the same time he had Christian. He and his then girlfriend Chesne, Christian’s mom, saw a litter of pug puppies one day and he begged to bring one home. He named her Buffy because she was fawn or buff colored and like Nana in Peter Pan, she became a guardian over the soon-to-be-born baby Christian. When she died at the age of 13, Christian said, “She raised us all.”

Now my baby brother is off to boot camp having joined the National Guard. He leaves tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. and like a mama I worry over the little boy I used to try to make smile. I’m very proud of him, but I like it when my brood’s nearby, when, like in the television show the Waltons, you can call out in the night, “Goodnight John-Boy,” and they can answer with a hushed whisper because you’re close enough to hear.

Children and siblings grow and as any parent knows there comes a time when you have to let go. After all, I’m in my forties, my brother in his thirties and we’ve both gone on to live full lives, but you don’t have to be a mother to know you never stop worrying because when you’ve loved and nurtured anyone from birth, seeing them through tears and smiles, they, like the Hallmark cards say, wear your heart on the outside. They go off into the world and you hope all the “bumbling” you did to get them there will help see them through.

My Students

Last night I wrote a blog post called “My Children” about my nieces and nephews and the void they fill in my life. Lately, I have been feeling a parent’s sense of pride in another group of individuals – my students.

I teach at a local community college in Lebanon, NH and my students there run the gamut from 18-year-old matriculating college students to middle-aged men and women, often teachers, seeking professional development to seniors there for adult enrichment and everyone in between. For the last five years or more, I have also been teaching privately in the home of another student, where a small group of select writers have been working on long-term projects. This week I added a new student to the mix, a young women with a great story to tell of working for a large corporation during the economic recession. I found myself excited by her vivid detail and equally as proud as my long-time students shared their work. One of them has been working for the duration of our class on a children’s fantasy book about a girl with cancer and the magical adventures she takes to experience healing including playing soccer with an elephant. This student asked me to try my hand at helping illustrate the story and I came up with the above photo. I haven’t shared it with him yet, but I know his wife follows the blog, so they may get to view it here first.

Another student at Lebanon College is writing her mother’s story. Her mother is a Holocaust survivor and this student is well on her way to creating a publishable work targeting middle-schoolers. I have been sharing with my students some of what I have learned as part of the Hubbard Hall Writers’ Project including the necessity of a blog in promoting one’s writing. This message has been underscored by some of the guest speakers who have come to class. I was pleasantly surprised to learn this week that my student had taken the advice to heart and launched her own blog: Popjeaandme, Popje being her mother’s childhood doll, who plays a prominent role in the story. In addition to being pleased by the fact that she had started a blog, I was also thrilled to see my student exploring some of the memories we discuss in class: the difficulty of faulty memory in writing a memoir, the definition of memoir and its ever broadening genre. In one of her most recent posts she asks the question that if she is writing her mother’s story is this truly a memoir? Is she a memoirist, a biographer? Is her work a pseudo memoir?

On my Pinterest page I keep a board called “A Memoir By Any other Name” which is a list of all the memoir-related books I thus far have found, attempting to deal with some of the challenges of memoir by redefining what the genre is called; thus, we get a para-memoir, a true-life novel, a biomythography, a mostly true memoir and a metaphorical memoir as well as new ways of telling stories such as graphic memoirs. I find this such an interesting part of the genre and I am thrilled that my student will be addressing some of these issues on her own blog even as she takes us on the journey of writing her book.

My students are not my children. Most are adults with fascinating stories to tell, but I can’t help but feel a pride in guiding them and seeing them gain more confidence and an increasing body of work. They continue to inspire me.

My Children

When my nephew Christian was just learning to talk, I walked by him sitting in our kitchen with his Mama. He looked me in the eye and said, “Hi, Bee.” The nickname stuck. Most of my nieces and nephews call me Auntie Bee including the newest my 14-month-old niece Ellie.

Today, her mommy sent me a text saying that she and Ellie had the day off and when she asked Ellie what she wanted to do today, she said “Bee, Bee!”

Each of my nieces and nephews is special. Adam and Raine are both so smart. Adam, I love, for his perseverance and problem solving. If he wants something he goes to work figuring out how to get it and I have no doubt he will be successful in whatever venture he undertakes. He has promised me that when he grows up he will take care of me. “If you need it I’ll give you money,” he says.  “If you don’t, I won’t bother.” Did I mention he is very practical? He shares my love of movies and knows as much Hollywood trivia as I do.

Raine has been serious since birth. He is gorgeous – a blue-eyed toe-head with an affable laugh and a mischievous smile. I love to talk to him and share his wealth of information. Once I took him on a special Auntie-Nephew outing to a book signing by Rick Riordan. He carried every hardcover Percy Jackson book with him to be signed. I gave him a $10 bill to buy some candy while I went to the bathroom and he spent all $10 and came out with bags of Peppermint Patties. Returning home high from sugar and adrenaline, he started an hour-long giggling fit, which of course was contagious. We drove red-faced and raucous through the night.

I am thoroughly convinced his seven-year-old brother Avery is an alien from another planet, observing us and reporting back to the mothership. He once told me I was correct and I’m not sure he was joking. Like his father, he carries music in his pores. He also has excellent rhythm, a freckled face, small stature, big-blue eyes, and a quiet, but deadly sense of humor.

Tori rounds out this trio of siblings. Five-years-old, she is powerhouse of imagination and fun. In looks, she is a throwback to an older time. Brown-haired, cherub-faced with rosebud lips, she is able to rumble with the boys and still be a girl. My grandmother Gifford, who spoiled me with handmade dresses that I would don with a cowboy hat and gunbelt, would have loved her. In her zest for life and fondness for fun, Tori reminds me of me. The other day my parents picked her up from school and took her downtown to buy some milk. “I love buying milk,” she exclaimed. They then took her to get the mail, “I love getting the mail,” she said. Apparently, life is just a good time to her.

My eight-year old niece, Catherine, Adam’s sister, is a beautiful clown. She’s gorgeous and kooky and the world does cartwheels around her when she erupts in a fit of bubbling giggles. I love to take her on shopping sprees and see her twirl and model her dresses. She used to pose and model for me while I snapped her picture, but has become increasingly self-conscious. Every once and awhile she’ll still accommodate me. A couple of weeks ago when her cousins were up from Texas, she knew I wanted to take pictures so she showed up at the restaurant where we were meeting having done all their makeup and wearing a get-up she called “Funky Fashionable.” When I asked her if I was funky fashionable as well, she declared, “No, just funky!”

This strange little tribe comprises my best friends. When the family is around, I can often be found with the little ones – photographing them, teasing them, making up stories. I have been blessed by sisters-in-law willing to let me share in their lives.

In the case of the eldest and the youngest, Christian and Ellie, I have been blessed with something more – a chance to fill a void left by not having children of my own. When Christian was just a baby -- his parents, my youngest brother, Paul, and his then girlfriend Chesne, only high-school students – his mother came and dropped him off in his car seat for me to babysit. She has been letting me share him ever since. Christian grew up at our house, coming here every other weekend and on vacations. I tucked him in each night, after he had drifted off to the television and watched as the Beanie Babies he took to bed turned to Lego men and Star Wars figures and eventually i-pod, laptop computer and Doritos, his interests growing alongside his body. I still go to his room to clear the remnants away once he is sleeping. Chesne named me his godmother and gave me the opportunity to mother him alongside her and his Nana. Sometimes at night, he will tuck his lanky, broad-shouldered body alongside mine on the sofa and we will talk and watch scary movies together. He can’t be 17 already.

My sister-in-law Gretchin and my brother Mark have a picture of the three of us that used to hang in their dining room. They took it down to make room for a painting and left it on the floor where it would be at Ellie’s eyelevel. Since she was born, they have pointed at the photograph and at me saying, “Auntie Bee,” ensuring that she could not help but know who I am. And, so on a day like today, she says it herself, “Bee, Bee!”

I look at Ellie’s big brown eyes, the tilt of her face and I see what could have been – my little girl. And, instead of feeling blue, I smile, because her mother graciously says, “She looks like you.” She says this not once, but again and again, as if Ellie herself is a secret we share.

Self-Portrait #14: Symbols

When my best friend adopted her son from Korea, she also adopted a tradition. On his first birthday, they place some objects before him and what he grabbed first was supposed to reflect what he would become later in life. I wonder what this would mean for my niece. The other day she carried a zucchini with her from her house to her cousin’s birthday party. When her parents asked her what she had she announced “Zoo-keen-ah!” Perhaps she’ll be a chef when she is older. She also carries balls with her everywhere and has been fascinated with them for the last few months: “bawl, bawl, bawl” is her frequent refrain. An athlete?

When I was little, I surrounded myself with stuffed animals. My “teddy bear” (in reality a stuffed boxer puppy named Sam) was my constant companion. When I got older I even took him to school with me. I still have him today. When I look back at my baby pictures I am not surprised to frequently see a number of the same animals around me – a yellow bunny in blue bloomers, a red hound, and of course, Sam. So what did this say about me? Was I destined to become a vet? A taxidermist (stuffed animals, get it?) I became neither, but it’s not surprising to me when you compare my baby picture on the bed with the adult one, that you now find me surrounded not by my stuffed animals, but by live ones. From the time I was a little girl, I was a nurturer, a caregiver and someone who didn’t like being alone. My two pugs satisfy all those needs: They give me something to love and nurture, to care for and keep me company. I was destined to have something to love by my side.

And, so who knows where my niece will be years from now? I googled the symbolism behind zucchini and stumbled upon the web site, My Islamic Dream. It says the meaning of a zucchini in a dream is similar to that of a gourd, squash or pumpkin; they represent a scholar or a trained physician who cares about his patients. A doctor, huh?

There are always clues in childhood to what we may become. When my grandmother first gave me Sam, she called him a Teddy Bear. She even made up a rhyme about him, “Sam the bear I am that eats the jam.” But as I said, Sam was not a bear, he was a dog, and it is not with bears I spend most of my days, but with dogs. They are the things for which I reach. They help define who I have become.

Writing Prompt: Excelsior!

If you’ve seen Silver Linings Playbook then you’ll understand this reference: I feel like it has been a week of “Silver Developments.”  In the movie Bradley Cooper’s character, who suffers from bipolar disorder, has been released from a mental institution and is trying to improve himself with positive thinking. His mantra becomes “Excelsior!” and he attempts to see the silver linings in his daily life. When something good happens, he declares it a “Silver Development.”

I have had such a series of Silver Developments this week. Number One: Our mentor, Jon Katz, announced this week that the Hubbard Hall Writers Project, the group I’ve been a part of since last June, will be having a reception and reading of our work at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY on May 31^st. This is an exciting opportunity for each of us to share our writing in a wonderful venue.

Number Two: I received a call from a fellow writer on Thursday. We used to work together at The Valley Business Journal and she now writes for our region’s primary newspaper, The Valley News. She is writing an article on memoir writing and wants to interview me for the piece. I think it will be fun being the one interviewed for a change and it is great exposure.

Number Three: After a lovely lunch with the Common-Thread-Give-A-Way members at Jon Katz and Maria Wulf’s new Bedlam Farm, I had a great talk with Jon helping to define some future goals for my writing and this blog. I have some brainstorming and hard work ahead, but am really thrilled with the possibilities. I share all this not to boast, but to celebrate. This blog has been the beginning of a new creative journey for me and I can’t wait to see where it takes me. Excelsior!

Writing Prompt: Write about a Silver Development in your life.