Memoir Archives - Ekphrastic Mama

Memoir

Paper doll Mom

Adventure Mom May 15, 2020

Have you ever imagined a character you’re writing, or your mother, as something you might play with, some relic from your past? I’m going through my dead mother’s artifacts when I find a youthful head shot of her, colored and cutout, like the bust of a paper doll. Back before color photography, my mother painted her sepia photos with a set of Marshall’s photo-oils, bringing a rosy glow to her cheeks, shading her lips to set off her straight white teeth, dotting her eyes deep blue, and adding a touch of auburn to her hair. In the 50s, my mother was starlet pretty, a once-upon-a-time model, so the tinted head shot of her, taken before she stood next to the wrong man, is easy to imagine as an iconic paper doll I’d dress with my youngest daughter, the last one left at home. She’s 11, on the cusp of adolescence,…

Devious Dolls

Memoir May 8, 2020

What do you do with your mother’s doll collection after she dies? No one wanted them, except my youngest daughter, but we had to fly home from Las Vegas, and she already had too many dolls for the size of our house. “You can have one box of dolls. One small box,” I said, giving in, trying to think where we would put them when we got back to our down-sized house in the Pacific Northwest. We’d gone from 6 kids to 4, to 2, and now finally, to one; one child who still wants to play with dolls at 11. In today’s grow-up fast culture that’s got to be a good thing, right? A year and a half later, as our daughter turned 13, she asked for only one birthday gift: a dollhouse for her American Girl dolls, which are quite large. But when your quarantined daughter becomes a…

Being Called Dottie

Memoir May 4, 2020

Escape from the murder hornets with me for a moment on this first Monday of May during the sequester and let’s write something fun. Does life feel crazy? Do you have a crazy mother? All good subject matter… Last spring I wrote this: Two men sitting on a bench waiting to play pickle ball greet me as I walk up. You look like Dottie, one says. I was thinking the same thing, says the other. I smile, then laugh. That’s my mother’s name, I say, surprised by the amusement in my voice, the lightness in my heart. She died about six months ago, I add. Oh, I’m sorry. We’re in a group now, all heading out onto different courts calling for players. Well, we all die some time, I say, wanting to keep it light. I don’t want to be comforted by these men I don’t know. Actually, I don’t…

Writing About Bees

Memoir July 7, 2019

I’m writing over at Ekphrastic Mama (LoriLynGreenstone.com) most of the year, and here in May… come over and see what’s happening: Here’s a post about my life as a neophyte beekeeper (not the right word since one really can’t “keep” bees…). https://lorilyngreenstone.com/my-second-swarm/

He went off to the Korean War and never came back

Mother’s Only Brother

Memoir May 27, 2019

A Memorial Day reflection on the trickle down effects of war deaths He went off to the Korean War and never came back My mother was a high school girl when her older brother went off to the Korean War. Not until her recent death have I thought deeply on how this event affected her young life. She only talked about her brother in brief outbursts, then tears overtook her, as if she were experiencing his death all over again. This mystified me. It was so long ago, why wasn’t she over it already? As a child of 10, I remember awakening one night to the cacophony of her playing both the piano and the organ at the same time. They sat at right angles to each other in our open dining room. I peeked out from the sliding pocket door that separated the hallway to my bedroom from the…

get back on the horse- Photo by Mark de Jong on Unsplash

Back to the Bones

Memoir May 24, 2019

the skeleton of the story- Photo by Danielle MacInnes After a mid-month slump (something I’ve come to expect might happen now, and maybe because of that it just does…), I’m back in the saddle with writing a memoir in a month, at least the bones of the story. I return to the bones, that inner framework; every story has a skeleton it hangs upon. The backbone of this memoir is a series of three trips made in one month to see my dying mother. All flashbacks and side stories hang from this time frame, the central story. But how to stick with just the bones and not get carried off with the flesh at this point- this is the challenging question. I’ve pondered the pantser vs. plotter assessment and know that I’m not as much a plotter as a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants writer. But I also know that every story, including memoir, has…

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…

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…

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…