Writing is one more reason to make healthy choices when it comes to being active, and eating or drinking moderately. Those choices help me show up to write each day and keep my mind clear and focused.
Things You Might Miss
about your partner… It’s inevitable, I suppose, after being married a certain and very large number of years, like 42 or so– your friends start losing their partners in various ways… They’ve tossed or replaced them, and some have died. So you start thinking of what you might miss about your own partner. I start with his arms around me, the way our bodies, somewhat similar in height, meet each other on equal ground, wrap around, fit together. His stomach at 63 is still flat, almost concave on some days when he doesn’t remember how much food he actually needs… My stomach has no such issues, having housed six children (not in my stomach exactly, I know), and often thinking about the next food fix, but I tend toward not allowing myself to fill out too much so we still fit together well. After this many years, I’m thankful he…
Ekphrastic Mama meets Mama Matanuska
Like a huge bird our airplane touches down on the tarmac and soon makes a turn–we are here in Cordova, Alaska, turning away from the mountains and rivers so immense it tries the mind, taking in this northern tundra from above–what specks we are, yearning for meaning, traveling at high speeds, and covering so much ground in a day that we may never catch up with ourselves. Next stop Yakutat; just for fun, the milk-run flight. Grounded for 45 minutes my mind turns back to home where a small urn sits on a shelf with all that is left to me of my mother, but once was arms and legs leading to toes turned into appendages from tadpole-like little pieces inside her mother, my grandmother. As we take to the air again, the image takes shape like a plane ride, the kind that turns upside down and right-side-up again just…
A New Thought for Today
I have lots of old thoughts that circulate regularly so when a new thought flits by I notice it and see if it’s one I want to keep. Today’s thought, early on this Sunday morning Mother’s Day, was about privilege, a hot topic and one I’ve been entertaining in new ways. This new thought took me by surprise, as new thoughts often do, being new. It was a privilege to be my mother’s daughter. Many of you might think these kinds of thoughts quite often; I confess that I haven’t had a lot of thoughts like this, but the thought seemed beautiful to me. I decided it could stay, that I would like to think this way more. It is a thought that serves me well. After it came another I liked equally well, maybe even better: It’s a privilege to be a mother of my three daughters (three sons…
Walking Away
Small plane goes off runway and crashes in San Diego County; pilot walks away. https://www.newsbreak.com/california/fallbrook/news/2101199393210/small-plane-goes-off-runway-and-crashes-in-san-diego-county-pilot-is-able-to-walk-away?s=oldSite&ss=a3 My friend sends me this snippet on e-mail, a thin connection to our past lives from ten years ago when I lived in the village near the runway where the small plane went off and a man walked away. Later, this morning when I am out running—a carpe diem act done during a break in the frequent PNW rain—that runway unfurls itself in front of me, my steps paved by that snippet. A first kiss from my then future hub happened at that airpark where the runway runs short. I hoped to never marry, but I couldn’t pass up someone who kisses like that, beneath low flying planes. Years later, my hub’s father learned to fly, his long-time late-in-life dream launched off the end of that too short runway. At different times, we all went…
John Deere/dear decanting honey left by the last bees
When Writing Disappears
That happens from time to time, right? You forget to hit save like I did yesterday after starting today’s post… At least I think I wrote a post. I’ve been writing a lot lately and dreaming, both day and night, so I realize it’s possible I only dreamed I wrote a post. At any rate, it has not reappeared in my drafts folder where I thought, or dreamed, I wrote it. What I love is how comical this seems to me, when before, maybe last year, it might’ve caused stress or anxiety, like a bee swarm before I knew much about bees. When I’m writing a lot, I know I can just write some more. When I’m not writing much, every word feels precious, no matter how bad it might be. And when I’m writing a lot the writing seems better somehow, like I’m hitting more of the right notes,…
Paper doll Mom
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,…
Why We Write
Why do you write? Every now and then I return to this existential question. Like Flannery O’Connor, I don’t know what I think until I write. I need to see my thoughts spelled out in words, and then I can edit them, put them in order. When I see them in black and white, or purple- I love purple gel ink pens– I can shape them. But until then they are floating and abstract. Have you thought about this? I’m almost certain you have, but it’s worth revisiting now and then. Like Henri Nouwen, I’m seeking to articulate the movement of my inner life. As writers, maybe we are also trying to rephrase the world, take it in and give it back better, “so that everything is used and nothing is lost” as Nicole Krauss writes.Or, like Anaïs Nin maybe we want to create a world in which we can…
Things We Say
“Get back on the horse,” is something my mother said quite a lot. I fell off quite a few horses… And “things will look different in the morning.” She was right, they generally do. “No good thing ever came from alcohol.” Said with a pointing finger as I recall, and a scouring look, eyes tight. Of course I had to debate that one. “What about when Jesus made water into really good wine for a wedding?” “That was because the water was no good,” she answered, then changed the subject. Even though I don’t ride horses much anymore, “get back on the horse” has become an adage to live by, a saying I quote often, usually to remind myself. What sayings do you carry around in your mental pockets or notebooks? May is a great time to get them out, write them down, maybe write them into dialogue between your…
Retreat: Girl in a book on a bike at the beach
The Trees-to-Sea highway over to the Oregon coast was a dream of a drive for a writing retreat, crisscrossing streams until it delivered me to Oceanside, Oregon, my mountain bike on the back of my car, my trusty tent inside. Rooms on the coast are expensive, but camping is a boon. South of Oceanside is Cape Lookout State Park where I pitched my tent in the trees just beyond the sand dunes. At night, I listened to the ocean purr, cozy and content like a kid on an adventure, sunny and glorious for three whole days. In between writing spurts, I rode my mountain bike down the Netarts Spit, the only bike in the sand. My tires are wide but not super fat, so sometimes they bog down. I turn to sand that is either wetter or drier and pedal harder. Riding and writing have a lot in common. Sometimes…
activity in the bee bait hive!
My Second Swarm
My friend, Stephanie, just texted me- another swarm! This time it’s in the bait hive I put near her house, up in a tree. Stephanie is the same friend who called me last time, where we got our first swarm : https://lorilyngreenstone.com/first-bee-swarm/. This time, there is no one around to help… Can I go collect this swarm alone? activity in the bee bait hive! I decide I can. I put on my bee suit, leftover from our days in Bend, OR, when Lily, our then teen was into beekeeeping (busy “adulting” now in nearby Portland, but still a bee enthusiast). The swarm, if it is one, is in my “bait hive.” I made the bait hive at Bee Club in April, then hung it in my backyard/forest, but never got any action until I took it over to Stephanie’s. She owns http://oneearthbotanical.com/, a nursery with some bee hives. We met…
First Bee Swarm
Today we collected a swarm of bees, our little family of three. A friend said bees swarmed up into a tree on her property, maybe 25′ up. Did we want to come get them? We have never collected a swarm of bees, but Arielle and I have been going to Preservation Beekeeping Council meetings here in Camas, learning natural ways we can help the bees. https://preservationbeekeeping.com/ When we lived in Bend, Lily got bees from Glory Bee in Eugene, so we have a bit of bee-ing experience, but mostly a lot of studying or doing the wrong things (our Bend bees froze in winter- see Mothering Bees post on how to convert those hives to insulated, happy ones). https://lorilyngreenstone.com/mothering-bees-quilt-boxes-convert-langstroth-hives/ How to keep your bees from freezing in winter, or boiling in summer… We got our hives ready back in April- one double Langstroth conversion and one hollowed out log hive…
In-laws, Steps, & Halfs
We need some new terms for family relationships… Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash I accidentally referred to my half-brother as my step-brother in a post, and he was quick to text me about it. I was writing about my stepfather who begat my half-brother, so you might understand the confusion. The slip-up highlights the problem with these terms– these are my real family. My “step”-father was a step up from my real, or biological, father; my “half-brother” is more whole to me than my real, DNA-equal brothers. And I once had a son-in-law that felt every bit like a soul son. Putting an X in front of that term didn’t cross out any of my familial feelings when he and our daughter divorced. I have a sister-in-law who is more of a sister to me, and more of an aunt to my daughter than my real sister, and that’s…
The Baby I had at 47 1/2
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…
Where You Begin, Again
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…