Ekphrastic Mama, Author at Ekphrastic Mama - Page 7 of 8

Ekphrastic Mama

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I am the mother of three daughters, each born in a different decade, and three sons in a somewhat closer clump. One "hub" hold us together. This is not what passes for wise family planning in American culture, but as the beat poet Alice Notley wrote, “I didn’t plan my pregnancies. I’m an experimentalist.” When I was writing Ekphrastic Mama for Mothers Creating/Writing Lives: Motherhood Memoir, I took stock of our family span: with one child married, one in college, one in high school, one in junior high, an elementary schooler, a toddler, and now a grandbaby, I was experiencing all phases of motherhood simultaneously. Years later I'm still experimenting with ekphrasis- art that speaks out- and hoping to inspire others in their writing ventures.

lost love letter 1949

The Secret Letter

Memoir May 20, 2019

Tucked into the flap of The Sphynx, my mother’s high school yearbook from 1949, a folded note falls out. It begins Dearest Marvin, an old love letter that feels like a find, a message from beyond the crematorium, a hidden bit of my mother’s life. There is so much I didn’t know, may never know, but here is her voice at 17, penciled onto a piece of yellowed notebook paper from 70 years ago. The letter was lost, or forgotten, a chance find when I noticed the outer binding separated on two sides to reveal a hidden pocket. I’ve been going through my mother’s stuff with renewed interest since she died. When she was alive, her manic meanderings about people I didn’t know didn’t interest me, and I was impatient with her continual complaints. I was interested in her past, but I could rarely get a cohesive answer when I…

In Over My Head

Memoir May 8, 2019

Photo by William Daigneault Ask yourself every once in a while: Am I in over my head? Am I posing questions in my work to which there can never be satisfying, final answers? Am I trying to tackle a project here that is well beyond my capacity as a writer? Am I just a little afraid of the direction that all of this is going? If the answer to each of these questions is yes, then you are heading in the right direction. Steady on. These questions and quote from the The Mindful Writer by Dinty Moore speak directly to where I’m at on Day 8 of Memoir Month.

Running from Writing

Fitness May 4, 2019

Why I run to and from Writing ( photo by nathalie d. mottet) Writing makes me run. Sometimes I sit down to write, get a few sentences in, and want to jump up. Suddenly something seems more important- I’ll be able to work better with more coffee, or water, or a snack, my mind says. This is not my higher calling mind. This is my primitive feed-me-now toddler mind, the one that does not want to work hard. The one who loves pleasure and avoids pain. There is something both painful and pleasurable about writing. But most of the pleasure comes after the work of writing, so I discipline myself to stay on the ball (I sit at my desk on a balance ball) and keep writing for as long as I can. The pleasure, if it comes, is usually later, after I’ve written, maybe when I’m reading over what…

Permission to Struggle

Memoir May 2, 2019

It’s okay to struggle. painting by L.Lyn Greenstone Give yourself permission to struggle, Char, the Pilates instructor says. She also says things like, it’s okay to wobble. I never see her wobble, and none of the HIIT Pilates moves we do seem a struggle for her strong body, but I trust she knows what she’s talking about. As I take in her words, something settles within, allowing me to focus and be okay with weakness. So I take this bit of wisdom home, mull it over as I write this memoir. I’m struggling with organization, structure, and cohesiveness–all things I shouldn’t worry about right now. But I want to name all 31 chapters, know more about where I’m going, what the stops along the way will look like, and how I’m going to get there. It turns out writing isn’t like that for me. It is always a surprise journey.…

Write a Memoir in May

Memoir May 1, 2019

I’m writing a memoir during the 31 days of May- since May is (Motherhood) Memoir Month–I deemed it that–now I have to do it. On Day 1 I decide my memoir will have 31 chapters, a chapter a day. The writing will be lean, maybe just the skeleton of the story. It sounds do-able, yet ambitious. Both impossible and possible. Impossible goals scare me. I hear my mind saying, No, no, no, don’t try that- you’ll fail, And then you’ll feel like a failure. Stay in the cave (as Brooke Castillo, The Life Coach School says; I recently spent a year being coached…). This is the primitive part of my brain talking. But I want to live from my pre-fontal cortex, lean into a higher calling. So here is my new thinking on this: If I know I will most likely fail, why not do it anyway? Trying and failing…

The Baby I had at 47 1/2

Adventure Mom May 1, 2019

My youngest daughter is 12 today. I am 59 1/2 exactly. I know this because today is May 1, exactly 6 months until my next birthday, November 1, when I will turn 60. It still does not fail to amaze me that I have a 12 year-old, but especially this 12 year-old, this child I was sure I didn’t want. At the time I found out I was pregnant I was applying to grad school, literally filling out applications in the physician’s office, just getting a yearly check-up, but feeling a bit tired. We already had five kids. The oldest daughter was 25, trying to get pregnant. The oldest son was in college. One son was high school age, and another junior high. Our youngest daughter, a surprise when I was almost 40, was a third grader. It was finally my time to go back and get the graduate degree…

Untangling the Mess

Memoir May 1, 2019

First drafts are messy. We’ve all heard that, but I always think no draft can be as messy as mine. Given enough time, I will restart and restate parts of the story, losing track of what I already wrote. I’ll rethink it until the story swirls around and leaves my head spinning. Finally I have to print it and cross out areas, bracket and draw arrows to new places, cut and paste, with scissors and tape, old school. Actually, I start with my journal, so lots of scratching there too. I wonder how it will ever come together. But if I stay with it, like the bucking horses my mother used to put me on, it finally calms down and becomes something cohesive and wonderful- a great ride, a story readers can inhabit. I live for that. Believe in it. Believing keeps me going. Writing is an act of faith.…

The Barbed Wire Within

Memoir April 23, 2019

When I sit down to write about my recently dead mother I am overcome by a sense of dread. I want to write this memoir, I tell myself; it is an important story that needs to be told. the hard edges of writing difficult stories tear like barbed wire on the inside marika-vinkmann Her death was untimely in many ways, a wrongful death I might have prevented, had I not been somewhat ambivalent at the time, eager to go back home and spend Thanksgiving with my real family. In my absence, my older brother, who our mother trusted to take care of her, and who she had signed over everything to, put on Lorzepam, a heavy anxiety med, and morphine. He moved to a group home where she was given occasional sucks of water from a dirty sponge. When she lived more than the two days our brother got nervous,…

Where You Begin, Again

Adventure Mom April 20, 2019

Forget the flowers- write about fears, and all else your heart runs from. May is (Motherhood) Memoir Month- You don’t have to be a mother to have a motherhood story- It’s where YOU begin, or began, or begin again. I am always and forever beginning again, a firm believer in new beginnings, but also in finishing what I’ve begun. I’m not as good at that. I’m better at starting over. I’ve been writing a memoir about my mother- what it means to be a daughter of a manic mother, and how mania trickles down, becoming either a driving force for creativity or a stumbling stone. And, how my mother’s death has changed, but hasn’t ended our relationship. The mother-daughter relationship is a complicated, conflicted one, and writing about it helps us understand it better, and helps me understand myself better. Meanwhile, the writing feels messy. However, I’ve found some tools…

Mothering Bees- quilt boxes convert traditional hives

Adventure Mom April 16, 2019

Our bees housed in Langstroth hives died in winter when we lived in Central Oregon where it gets cold and snowy. But now we live in the Columbia Gorge near Portland and I’m making quilt boxes for bees- me who does not quilt–luckily, no quilting involved. Converting Langstroth boxes to bee-cozy habitats We live in Camas, Washington- soon to be designated a “Bee City, USA”, the 3rd in the state, after Seattle and Puyallup. What a great place we’ve dropped into- https://www.beecityusa.org/current-bee-cities.html But bee survival is still challenged here by wet weather and other factors. Our interest in bees was piqued by our middle daughter a few years ago when she asked for bees for her 16th birthday. We attended Glory Bee’s beekeeping weekend event in Eugene. $1000 later we returned with bee boxes, bee suits, 16,000 bees, and a myriad of beekeeping paraphernalia. It turns out most of this…

Good-bye REI

Adventure Mom February 13, 2019

It just so happens I gave my notice at REI this week, just ahead of Jerry Stritzke handing in his letter of resignation over a “consensual relationship” with the head of some other outdoor company. I didn’t play a big role in REI- I was an Action Sports Specialist in the Bend, OR store for 5 years, and then again in Portland for the last two years, mostly part-time. Before the ride with CEO Jerry Stritzke and other REI high-ups- no helmet head yet. Even so, I got to know Jerry just a bit. He came down to Bend to mountain bike, and my manager asked if I could help lead the ride, the token female. Almost everyone went down on that ride, and when Jerry hit the dirt I was off my bike fast, grabbing my phone, just for the fun of getting a pic of our CEO eating…

Scott in Chase's Timber's T-shirt

Ode to an Other Mother

Motherhood May 14, 2018

Sons #2 & 3 just left to return home to Portland and Seattle. #3 was wearing a Timbers T-shirt. My hub commented that it was a pre-Alaska Airlines influenced logo (he works for AA now). Chase gave me this shirt the last time we were together, he said. And he told the story again that we love to hear, but are sad for too, for Chase is no longer with us. A few years ago Chase called Scott and said he’d be in Portland where Scott was living, interning with OPB, and could they catch a Timbers game together? I don’t have the money for that, said Scott, the starving student/intern. My treat, said Chase. And I’ve got nothing to wear. I’ve got that too. And Chase brought him the T-shirt. It was on loan. Never returned. Worn with a deep sense of nostalgia now. But it is the mother…

Lily by Fealing Lin

Growing Pains

Childhood May 11, 2018

Mothering is difficult. And then it gets better. Here’s poetic evidence for Mother’s Day: Yesterday I wrote about Daughter #2, the poet. At the Central Oregon Writer’s Guild this last year she read her award winning poem, and then she read this: Growing Pains Thank you for teaching me to fold things I am still not good at it when it comes to cloth but when it comes to feelings I can sort by color, texture, pattern, And put them to bed in the right drawers Sorted and named and placed All because of you And for dusting the blinds in my room I know you hated it (and so did I) but now I am so good at letting in the light growing towards its warmth even when I’m not sure how clean I am myself I am lighter because of you And for letting me ruin your horsehair…

Of Winning with Daughters

Memoir May 10, 2018

You might remember that daughter #2 won the Central Oregon Writers Guild poetry award last year at 17( http://www.lorilyngreenstone.com/marking-milestones/). She won it again at 18, and I won an award for non-fiction by wrapping a story around one of her poems. It started as a letter to her (see http://www.motivation.com/posts/48/the-power-of-the-journa There is a lot of power in reciting someone’s own words back to them sometimes, in the right spirit. Here is the story: Such Unkind Things The way your dark mascara dripped and blurred under your eyes when you peeked out from behind your pink blankie made me think of a Pierrot doll, and I asked if you were okay. Your whispered response turned into a sobbing storm, so I encircled you with outstretched arms, and I thought, how much are you willing to put up with? I see…

reminding myself to dream big

What it Means to Dream

Writing May 8, 2018

Dream is a multi-faceted word that takes us from sleeping to the most wide awake knowledge of ourselves and our purpose here on earth- what are our deepest longings? These are our dreams, the things we might pursue if only… If only we had the time, or the resources, or the support. Or the belief that our dreams could reach fulfillment, become our every day reality. And then time goes by and we realize we need to be about our dreams, before the time is past. The word DREAM, cut from wood, sits above the kitchen cabinets, a reminder. I need reminders. Lots of them. A pewter pin I sometimes wear reminds me to “Dream Big.” I have this dream of writing, writing as my job, as my my past time, as my priority after the people in my life, but it keeps getting bumped by other things. Right now…