Ekphrastic Mama

motherhood

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Coming of Age

Adventure Mom

Happy Mother’s Day 2025 On May 1 our youngest daughter turned 18 making this the first Mother’s day in 43 years that all six of our children are adults. It feels like a huge achievement–on the Richter scale of motherhood, like at 6.0- enough shake to stir things up, but not do damage. In the spirit of celebration, I’ve taken up cold water plunging, or swimming, because after you get in and regain your breath, you might as well stay for a while. Arielle suggested we take a plunge and swim in the Columbia River for her 18th birthday. The river is about 52 degrees right now. In preparation I read the book Chill: the Cold Water Swim Cure. It was frightening, exhilarating, and breathtaking (époustouflant in French)– all at once. It was the perfect celebration for the occasion. I’m hooked. After about three minutes I don’t want to get…

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May is a Mother of a Month

Prompts

17 years ago today, at age 47 1/2, I gave birth to my third daughter, our six child.Somewhere along the line we realized May 1 is my 1/2 birthday (and Nov. 1, is Arielle’s 1/2 birthday). This is a child who loves to celebrate, and a child we love celebrating. at the wedding reception for Marie & Jerome in Burgundy France, 2023 Today, after birthday dinner and opening gifts, including 9 sketchbooks because she loves to draw and ran out of sketchbooks last week, she reviewed her life in pictures on my phone. She commented on our many trips together- Iceland, England, Germany last year, France several times… so many good times together, but all too soon it will be time for her to leave home. 17 begins a countdown to adulthood, graduation and college, and/or possibly marriage. Her sister, our middle daughter, is getting married at the end of…

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Untangling the Mess

Memoir

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.…

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Hawk's concepc
Conception by Rich Hawk

Where You Begin

Writing

May is Motherhood Memoir Month–You don’t have to be a mother to write motherhood: it’s where you begin. You had a mother, or someone who gave birth to you (or are you an alien?)… Write about that. Ideas for getting started: Download your thoughts onto paper or a screen- Ask yourself a question or simply record a thought you have on motherhood, mothering or being a daughter, or child of your mother. Or the absence of a mother. Or abandonment. Or Joy- what is the best memory you have of or with her? Or the earliest? Any or all of these can take you to a place where your story starts, or continues. Enjoy.

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Long and winding road tuscany
A long and winding road in Tuscany painted by the author

How This Began

Writing

I’ve done NaNoWriMo for several years- I was introduced to it by my sons in their early teens, both of whom finished novels- quite inspiring. I was in grad school then, and had a toddler, the youngest of our six kids. I wanted to write a novel but didn’t feel like it was feasible. The irony of getting a Masters in writing while watching my young teen sons each write a novel was not lost on me. I did NaNoWriMo for several years, but instead of writing novels I was really writing memoir. And then it occurred to me that memoir, especially memoir that focuses on the stories around motherhood, where we begin- even if we’re not mothers- is where I wanted to head. So hear it is: MAMOMEMO- May is Motherhood Memoir Month. Last May (2017) was a crazy month– we put our house up for sale to move…

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