Ekphrastic Mama

Childhood

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12th birthday

Last Day of 12

Childhood

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 46, 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 I’d put off for 20 years. Except I was pregnant. Our oldest daughter wanted to have a baby but was having trouble conceiving. She asked us to pray for her. As I…

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Ari 12 bday

The Baby I had at 47 1/2

Adventure Mom

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…

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Where You Begin, Again

Adventure Mom

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…

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Lily painting
Lily by Fealing Lin

Growing Pains

Childhood

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…

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Marking Milestones

Childhood

Life is good, as it should be at 17. But it’s also scary and uncertain at times.
She wants to save the world, but she’s starting to see how difficult that might be. Yet she still wants to do her part, so she created her own internship with the Global Immersion Project. Read what she writes about crossing the San Diego/Tijuana border: http://globalimmerse.org/embers-silent/

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The Gum Graft

Childhood

I sat in the chair breathing deeply, calmly trying to relax since I opted out of sedatives, thinking novocaine should be enough. After all, it wasn’t much of an area that needed a gum graft, just a small nick at the top of number 8, my right front tooth. I fell down a waterfall when I was 8, more of a chute actually, but to my 8 year-old self the water fell down an expanse of cement and was therefore a waterfall. or more possibly a waterslide. What can be slid down begs to be climbed up, and slid down again, and again. It was at the end of Wildwood park in Vista where we used to play as kids, circa 1967. On one end of the park this steep cement flume led down into a tunnel under a bridge. We thought of it as a waterslide made extra slippery…

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