I remember this kind of weather one other year in my adulthood. It was 1981, and both my husband David and I were college students at UNI, living in married student housing with our young son, Danny. This is a photo of me taking little Danny for a walk on the UNI campus. It was January, and I remember marveling to my husband that I could get by with just a sweater on a January day.

I remember a lot of things, looking at this photo; the jeans I wore were too long and they skimmed the sidewalk when I walked, fraying at the edges. The sweater was a cotton blend but still itched a bit, the brown purse a cheap plastic. I couldn’t know it then, but Dan would be one of the few of our eight babies who would leave his hats on when we pulled them onto his little round head. Our second child, our daughter Elizabeth, was also a compliant baby and toddler in this regard, even submitting to the donning of a soft fur hat with large fuzzy balls on the ends of the ties and a matching fur muff to cover her hands.  Dan also eagerly stuck out his little chubby foot for shoes and socks whenever he heard the word “outside,” which he did almost daily that particular winter.

Yesterday morning, with Iowa temperatures in the balmy range we’ve all gotten used to, the weather forecast was startling in its predictions; 3-6 inches of snow, wind, sub-zero wind chills. We were bound to get this at some point. In fact, we expected it. Perhaps even anticipated it?  For despite the agreeability of a mild winter, there is no denying that tiny thrill at the first snowfall.  I woke up this morning long before everyone else, wanting to see what had transpired outside while we slept. It was obvious it had snowed; I could see the white garage roof on my way down the stairs. But how much? Would it be enough to use the snow blower my husband had bought me for my birthday? Would it be snowman snow? Snow-angel depth?  This was the view from my front door; the white stuff covering the sidewalks and road, a view that includes my son’s house across the street.

The forecast is for continued snowfall and blowing winds. It won’t be long before that little boy in the stroller in the photo, now 31 and refusing to wear a hat most winter days, steps outside his door to clean his sidewalks. I’ll be outside, too, trying out the new toy my husband bought to save my back. (Since we moved to town I have volunteered for the snow-shoveling chore, relishing the fresh cold air and the excuse for some good physical labor, but last year I hurt my back in doing so) Maybe we’ll call out to each other across the street, lamenting the abrupt arrival of a long-overdue Iowa winter. Despite the fact that I am aware of how eager Dan is to break free from Manchester, I relish living across the street from my firstborn and seeing him on a regular basis, having a son as a neighbor. He’s a hard worker; he often pitches in to clean an elderly neighbor’s driveway.  I might see him out the window later today, pausing from the exertion of shoveling snow.  He’ll look up to the sky, wondering how much more snow to expect.  He’ll spot his mother’s face in the window and wave.  I’ll wave back, not seeing my adult son, but instead seeing that little boy in the stroller, laughing the boisterous, contagious laugh he has retained.

And I’ll remember that long-ago winter, the last winter I remember like this, the winter of 1981.

Love to see my bookshelves? Other than our own homeschooling books and a large educational reference section, I only owned copies of my favorite adult fiction books, books that were neither sought after by my customers or valuable. I didn’t keep any of the wonderful children’s books I found at library book sales. I couldn’t afford to. I hoped someday to begin collecting old children’s books for myself. Getting on the Internet as a bookseller made that idea even more remote, considering my need for income. I didn’t jump on the Internet bandwagon until 1998. The first thing I did was check out the website I’d been hearing about in hushed whispers at the book sales I’d been attending: eBay. When I typed in the search box to see what some of the books I couldn’t keep in stock were selling for, all of a sudden the recent behavior of one of my best customers made a whole lot of sense to me. This woman from New York had taken to calling me every month with her orders, to get a jump on the other customers. Not only that, but she’d started offering me more money if I’d become her personal shopper. “I’ll give you $15-$20 for every Janet Lambert you can find for me, and even more for the Maud Hart Lovelace and Lenora Mattingly Weber books you can find. We needed the extra money, and for a month or two I’d allowed this customer the heads-up advantage to my other regular customers. As I scrolled through the offerings of these books on eBay, I could barely take in what I was seeing. The same books this woman had offered me $25 for were selling for $250 on eBay! At that time, it was simple to discern a seller’s e-mail address just by clicking on their user name. Sure enough, one of the top sellers on the auction site was, in fact, my homeschooling New York mother, the same mother who’d told me the month before that she’d put her children back in school because she’d started up a home business that was taking up too much of her time. Apparently, a home business that involved re-selling $200 worth of books every month from me for ten times that amount on the Internet. The Lois Lenski books I’d hoped to own someday? They regularly sold for anywhere from $50 to $200. All except Strawberry Girl and Corn Farm Boy. I allowed myself to keep those two titles, and everything else I got my hands on went either on my mailing list or posted on eBay. Unfortunately for that New York customer, her rich Iowa source of books dried up, but so did the easy access to that type of book. Everyone who sold books was looking for the same titles, and most of the nearby libraries had already gotten rid of their supply of discards. There were a few golden years of eBay selling when certain authors and titles were so highly sought after, I couldn’t believe that I’d sold the same books for less than $10 on my mailing list. How fickle the world of book selling is. Now, when I do a search on eBay, some of the books that sold then for $250, can sell for as little as $5.00. But during the heyday of children’s book selling, I soon had to rely on the occasional garage sale and thrift store finds to make any decent amount of money through eBay sales. Once I was on the Internet, I stopped doing a mailing list. I missed the regular interaction with book-loving homeschoolers, the bartering, and mostly, dealing with all the books. We moved soon after I discovered Internet selling, and for ten years I lived in the country, occasionally selling on eBay, but mostly finding other ways to make money. I never stopped attending book sales, though. And occasionally, I would find a gem that I could rationalize keeping on my own shelf, until I’d filled one shelf of a bookcase, and started on another. I think about those days sometimes; the heady rush of finding the perfect book for one of my customers and the thousands of books that passed through my hands to find a new home; a home that wasn’t my own. It is only in the past few years I’ve started to stock my own selection of children’s books. As a little girl I imagined that only rich people could own books, and now I have bookcases bulging with books. As a homeschooling mother trying to stay afloat by selling books, I imagined someday owning the books I unearthed at sales and sold so easily. I carted home literally thousands of Childhood of Famous Americans volumes and sold them as quickly as I found them. I haven’t seen any of those for several years now. The Landmark series books were the same. I’d pick up dozens at each library sale. Now I only see one or two a year. And the Lois Lenski books I reluctantly sold to my customers? I regularly check their prices on eBay and while they don’t sell for $200 anymore, I still can’t rationalize paying $50 for a children’s book just to fill my own shelves. But I am picking up children’s books here and there, now and then. I do allow myself that luxury, the luxury of owning something that brings a smile to my face every time I pass my bookshelf.

I check the “Under $10” cart of nostalgia at the HalfPrice bookstore every time I shop there, too. Sometimes, I’ll buy one of the books that speak to me, like these two books that I found on the marked-down shelf last time I visited.

 The beauty of their covers fills me with a joy that far surpasses their $5 and $7 price tags. I even occasionally stop at the library in the small town where I grew up. I worked there as a teen, and then again in 2002 for a few months. Usually, I won’t find any books I want on their sale shelf, but last week I not only found a couple Vera and Bill Cleaver books I remember reading as a teen, but I unearthed an unexpected bonus. They hadn’t removed the card pocket or the library card yet, and there it was; my name, written on the top line in May of 1977. My little sister’s name was down at the bottom of the card. She’d checked the book out more than a year later.

I pointed this out to the librarian when I brought the book up to the desk to pay for it. She seemed a bit disgruntled that the card hadn’t been removed yet, and before I could stop her, tore the card pocket out of the book. I gasped out loud, and before she could tear it in half, I blurted out that I’d like to keep the card. She cocked her head and looked at me a little funny before handing it over. I would have had a difficult time explaining exactly why I wanted it; how looking at it was like taking a swift trip back in time to my teens.

Kind of like the feeling I get every time I hold a copy of a much-loved book from my childhood.

A couple of days ago, I wrote down these words from Mary DeMuth’s memoir, Thin Places:

“I have this little idea that worms its way through my head, that perhaps God is redeeming my father’s writing through my pen. He’s completing my father’s genius in me, but He’s doing it through my own frailty. I’m no genius. I’m a mess half the time. But God’s great work of redemption spans the generations. When I put words to the page, I wonder if my Dad can see me. Does he smile?” (page 70)

I have wondered something similar since my mother’s death. My mother had many talents; among them woodcarving, sewing, painting, and drawing. The writing that she did later in life held the promise of talent as well. I never pictured her as a writer until after her death, though surely anyone who spends months on manuscripts is, indeed, a writer. That she did not live long enough to perfect that talent saddens me. In a couple of weeks I will be teaching a course for a community college, Writing for Publication. While interviewing a woman in her 80’s for the newspaper, I discovered she had written down pages of information in anticipation of our meeting. Without thinking, I gasped at the sight, “Why, you’re a writer!” The woman blushed with pleasure, and told me she had filled notebooks with memories for her children. “Mom writes down everything,” her daughter interjected, “I don’t know what we’ll do with all of it after she is gone.”  I told the daughter I owned a trunk full of my mother’s writing, and I hoped to do something with it someday. Even as I spoke, the image of my mother submitting to publishers and editors was vivid in my mind, and I felt like crying. She had so little published, but she stubbornly persisted. While I’d thrown out one notebook of carefully transcribed rejections, I kept the tangible proof of her continued submissions; the carefully typed drafts that had been mailed out to such places as the Chicken Soup publishers, the ones I have recently had three essays accepted by. My mother possessed the very stubbornness I saw in this woman’s face as she confessed she’d hoped to have something published someday. Her daughter seemed taken aback at this admission; she must have thought her mother’s scribbling had only been intended for the family’s posterity.

“Someone should give you a writing class for a Christmas gift,” I said then, with a meaningful glance at the daughter.  A week later, the woman called me on the pretense of complimenting my article, but the true meaning of the call became apparent when she blurted out, “I’m going to take your class.”  I could literally feel my mother’s smile when I assured the woman it is never too late to get published.

The day after I read Mary DeMuth’s Thin Places, an e-mail arrived in my inbox with a New Year’s challenge from the author. “If God were to give you a picture this year in anticipation for 2012, what would it be?” she asked, and then she shared her picture. It didn’t take me long to come up with a picture to frame my year. In fact, I would have to be blind not to have seen the obvious choice. What photo was on the front of the journal I’d written DeMuth’s quote in? What picture was on the personalized stamps I’d used on two letters that morning?

Where had I been writing most of last winter and early spring? I’d grieved, I’d dreamed, and I’d been inspired at the very table and in the very house where most of my mother’s creativity had flourished. On one of my many trips to my mother’s empty house I’d snapped a photo of my private writing retreat, and the memories of those writing sessions will continue to sustain me in this journey of faith I am taking. For it takes true faith to follow one’s passions and believe there is a future in the world of writing words. “Don’t quit your day job,” I’ve heard as advice given to writers, but writing is my day job. Income from writing, teaching, and public speaking is crucial to my family’s well-being. And as much as I know my hard work in writing and promoting has paid off in filling a 2012 calendar with deadlines, classes, and public speaking, I truly believe none of it could have happened without my faith. I believe God has a plan for me, and I am excited to see where he takes me this year. This photo will be my chosen guide this year.

Because with each article published, with each success, I can look at this photo and know HE is a part of it. HE is with me, and maybe, just maybe, my mother is too.

What do you picture for your life in 2012? Do you have a photo that inspires you?

It has been more than a year, and my heart still aches with thoughts of her.  I miss her.

None of the people I interviewed had a photo to submit, but one had a Christmas card he hoped would be included in the article, sent in 1944 from the ship Grayson.  I flipped through many photo albums looking for a picture of my mother at Christmas. 1950s photos weren’t appropriate for the 1930s theme, but I did find a photo of my mother as a little girl, standing next to a doll on a rocking chair.  I had no way of knowing the truth of the statement I submitted along with the picture to my editor, but I cannot tell you the thrill I got seeing my mother’s cute little girl facing staring back at me when I opened the newspaper yesterday. Normally I would skim my article to see how it reads in print, but this time I didn’t even care about what I’d written; my joy was in seeing that photo.

Consider this: I’ve had several essays included in Chicken Soup books in the last few months, but it is the short memoir that will be included in the February-released So Long: Short Narratives of Loss and Remembrance from Telling Our Stories Press that I am even more excited about. Why? The short memoir includes essays about my mother’s cancer diagnosis, her subsequent death, and the months of grief that followed. When sample galleys were sent to me to review, I immediately scrolled through the pages until I spotted the photo of my mother that was indeed, going to be included.  I smile every time I think of it. My mother would be pleased.

Much of my writing has become a way of honoring a creative mother who encouraged me to use my talents. It is only fitting, then, that I occasionally include her in my essays and articles.

Even when I sneak a photo of her into an article on Christmas memories. The dolly and rocking chair may very well have been homemade and a Christmas gift. Or not. But that cute little face? It definitely adds something to the column.

According to my calendar, it has been five weeks since I returned home from the HACWN Writer’s Conference, and I still haven’t had time to process everything I learned. I do know I would highly recommend that writers attend conferences. This was only my second conference ever but both were amazing experiences I won’t soon forget and hope to repeat in 2012.

So, what exactly did I learn at these conferences, and how have I implemented the advice and inspiration I netted?  These are the five main areas I, and every writer, needs to work on in the coming year;

#1 Writers, especially non-fiction writers, need to build up their platform.  I’m working at this one, so that by the time my book is sold my platform will be broader and stronger. I have couponing workshops set up in the beginning of 2012 as well as a new column appearing in a larger newspaper. I’ve also got queries out to some national magazines for articles on my subject of interest.

#2 Non-fiction writers should make themselves an expert.  Not only have I started a second blog that centers on my book’s subject, CrazyCouponer.blogspot.com, but I will soon be writing a regular column for a larger newspaper on the subject of couponing. I have several upcoming couponing workshops set up, as well.

#3 If God opens a door, walk right through it.  I love this advice. God has been opening many doors for me this past year, and while initially, I was somewhat hesitant to discover what is on the other side of the door (public speaking, coupon workshops, interviewing people for feature articles) I am finding that I love all of it! After I did my first coupon workshop and the coordinator was walking with me to the parking lot, she mentioned sending the check on the 16th and I blurted out, “Oh, yeah, I forgot I get paid to have this much fun!”  When a newspaper editor e-mailed me, as a coupon expert, and asked if I would meet with him, I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I didn’t hesitate at all. I was eager to meet with him, and that meeting might well develop into a regular column for their paper.

#4 Don’t hide your light under a bushel. This is a bit difficult for me. It doesn’t come natural to me to toot my own horn but I need to be able to promote my writing and my classes.  Why should anyone take a  coupon workshop or a writing class from me? If I can’t tell them, who can? So I write the class description that includes my qualifications, include a glowing bio along with my essay submissions, and hand out business cards and learn to talk about myself and my work. It is getting easier, and I remind myself; if God gave me the talent to write and talk, why would he want me to hide either? I also remind myself to always use those talents for good, not evil.

#5 Keep your blogs updated; twice a week or more.  I’ve done pretty well on that front for the last couple of years but now my time is torn between two blogs and I’m afraid I’ve sluffed off recently. Certainly I can get back on track after the holidays. One workshop presenter suggested posting a photo or a favorite saying during those weeks when you can’t seem to get a decent post written.  I’ve dug in my files many times for articles and essays I’ve written that were never published, and used those when I am low on time and inspiration, but haven’t resorted to a simple photo or quotation too often. I’ll likely have to consider doing so as I get even busier.

After last week’s lament about not getting my Christmas letter written, I could have posted the final product for those not on my list.  Perhaps I’ll do that if my inspiration well runs dry the rest of this week.

“What’s up? You always have your Christmas cards out by this time every year.” a friend asked recently, speaking a truth that weighed heavily on my own mind. Even the year my husband went through cancer, and last year when I lost my mother in November, I had my Christmas cards addressed and sent by St Nicholas Day. Last year I’d even gone through my deceased mother’s address book, adding her Christmas card list to my own, still finishing up by December 6th.  http://marypotterkenyon.com/2010/12/01/odyssey-of-an-address-book/

But this year the writing of the Christmas letter seemed too much.  Every time I pulled out the cards and the paper, I found myself uncharacteristically moping a bit, and everyone knows that a Christmas letter is meant to uplift and cheer, not become a litany of complaints. Surely, the events of the past eighteen months had finally caught up with me; the loss of my husband’s job in July, my mother’s death in November, my grandson’s December cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery and chemotherapy treatment.

Up and down, my emotions went, causing me to wonder if I was experiencing an as yet undiagnosed mental disorder. The highs and lows had been frighteningly more frequent since Thanksgiving, until I realized that for all I was doing for my writing career in the way of designing a new blog, sending out queries to magazines, and networking, the one thing my life was lacking was actual writing. My husband noticed the difference. For several days I was blissfuly happy while I worked on an essay with a December 31st deadline. Of course, I had no time during those joyous days in which to work on my holiday letter. The funk hit once again, shortly after I pushed that “Submit” button. I could not bear to interview a local person about the lap robes they made each year for residents of a nursing home. Just the thought of something called a “lap robe” was depressing. I e-mailed the editor of the newspaper and asked if someone else could do the interview, using the valid excuse of the death of two close friends and my need for grieving time. The editor, unaccustomed to me asking for an “out” on anything I’d agreed to, swiftly responded that it would be no problem. One less stressor, but still that letter would not come.  I got up early every morning, put on my favorite Christmas CD and willed it to appear, to no avail.

I must be depressed, I told myself, even as I wondered how I could make that work in an article.  We writers are not very nice people; we take the pain and anguish, despair and despondency, of ourselves and others, and work it in our minds until we can put pen to paper and describe it in excrutiating detail. We mean well, but standing in line at a wake yesterday, I hated myself for wondering what words I could use to describe the crumpling of the face and the sobbing of the woman behind me.

“It is no use! I will just send out cards without a letter this year!” I exclaimed to my husband this morning, and he nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders, likely wondering what difference it made. He does not understand the burden of the writer who must put words to everything, including another year’s passing. I got out the boxes of cards and the address book, but decided to check my e-mail first, the ultimate in the writer’s procrastination arsenal.  An e-mail from the newspaper editor informed me that our county historical society wanted to feature one of my newsaper interviews in their promotional materials. My breath quickened, my heart leaped in excitement, and I jumped up from the desk chair to share the news with my husband, who smiled broadly back at me as I shared this good news.

And then it hit me. I was happy! I was most assuredly excited! Life was good. If I were so inclined, I could sit down right at that moment and crank out a grateful and inspiring Christmas letter.

I reflected a bit then, on the busy days since Thanksgiving. When had I been the happiest? Being alone with my husband brought contentment, as had the few quiet contemplative moments I’d managed to grasp.  When working on that essay I’d surely been happy, but also every time I got an e-mail or an acknowledgement of my writing; the book signing at Barnes & Noble for the two Chicken Soup books I was featured in, the e-mail from the newspaper editor who wanted to speak with me regarding my “expert” status as a couponer, the e-mail from a Chicken Soup editor regarding the acceptance of an essay…

I wasn’t depressed.

I’d become a writing junkie, needing the “fix” of a good writing session, the “jolt” of an acceptance, or the “drug” of accolades for my writing in order to feel good.

And we all know there is only one antidote to that kind of desperate need:

Keep writing.

Even if that writing is in the form of a Christmas letter.

I “met” Pam 19 years ago, through an ad in the Couple to Couple League’s Family Foundations newsletter. I had four children and was pregnant with my fifth, lonely for a friend with like-minded values. Pam answered my pen-pal ad and immediately became a mentor of sorts. Pam was older than I; married for eleven more years, and the mother of eight children. Eight children; it boggled my mind. Her first letter to me was pages long, introducing herself, her husband and her brood. I thought then that she was a writer and I admired the power of her pen. Simple ideas about sorting laundry and other mundane household tasks gave me ideas for wielding control over my own burgeoning household. Upon discovering my penchant for using coupons, Pam started sending me Priority mailers full of coupons at that time, and continued to do so for the next 19 years, along with newsy letters, cards of encouragement, and in the last few years during David’s cancer, then my mother’s and finally, my grandson’s cancer, many prayers. We never met in person, but Pam was my friend.

How well can one know a person they have never met? Some might ask this. And yet, through letters and occasional e-mails, Pam and I learned the desires of each other’s hearts. I knew she wanted to write, had told me for years she had so much to write. When I heard last night that she had died, just three short weeks after she had lost her son Jamie, I was shocked. Another loss for her family! A loss for all who knew her. A loss for me. And I couldn’t help but feel the loss of what she would have written someday.

In an attempt to understand how someone so full of life like Pam could be gone in an instant, I called her friend Sharon on the phone. She loved you, Mary. She is the one who told me I must read Mary Potter Kenyon’s blog. We prayed over the phone for your grandson. Tears streamed down my face. How many of us have someone who loves us like that, who will pray with others over the phone for our grandson, who encourages our writing and lifts us up? Those of you with 300 friends on Facebook; how many of those “friends” truly lift you both in spirit and in prayer? Pam always encouraged my writing, even as she lamented the lack of her own writing. She encouraged her friend Sharon’s writing.

For no other reason than I had to have some connection with her last night, I frantically shuffled through the papers on my desk, looking for her last letter. I hadn’t even clipped and filed the coupons she’d sent along. Surely the card and letter was still there? Of course not~In a vain attempt to keep my papers and my desk under control, I have been throwing away most letters right after I read and respond to them. This one I had read portions of aloud to my husband. Pam had wryly commented on the changes in her body with age; the aches and pains and fatigue. She pondered how this could be when  she still felt like a teenager in bed with her husband! Her love for him was evident in everything she wrote. I had envied that relationship years before and revelled in having something similar with David since his cancer. My thoughts went to her husband and her children. If only I could find that card, that letter, I could send it to them and they would see how proud she was of them, how much she loved them. She had mentioned them in every single letter she’d ever written me, and always with great pride and love. I was heartened to hear from her friend Sharon that she had kept journals. They will have her written words, after all.

My search for that last letter was fruitless. So I delved into my e-mail next, and unearthed a prayer she had sent me during the period I was fearful David’s cancer had returned. I hadn’t dared to pray that David didn’t have cancer. In fact, I hadn’t known what to pray at all. But Pam did. Pam always knew what to pray. I felt an inexplicable sense of relief when I discovered that prayer still in my inbox.

Hearing of Pam’s sudden death reminded me of a passage in the recently read The Journal Keeper so I found it again this morning:

“Last night, by the fire, Reber, Pat and I talked about how Mom was a person who shone light into other people’s lives. Reber told a story from a Robert Fulghum book about a man who used to ask people what they thought the purpose of their life was. He was always laughed at until one time he was in Greece and he asked the question of an Orthodox priest after his sermon. The priest said, “I’m glad you asked. For me, the answer is found in an experience I had as a young shepherd. One of my sheep had gotten lost, and I searched all over until I came to a cave. I couldn’t see into it but I had a bit of metal and I angled it to reflect the sun and the rays lit up the interior, where I saw the lamb in the back of the cave. Since then I have thought that this is what I want to do- shine light into other people’s lives.’” (The Journal Keeper, Phyllis Theroux, page 162)

That is what Pam did. She shined light into other people’s lives. She will be sorely missed, but her light will shine on.

‘Thinking about Mother, I compare her to the late stage of a dandelion. All the earlier, fleshy brilliance is gone. Now she is a fluffy globe of light, holding herself erect as ever but ready, with one puff, to fly away, be gone.” (page 39)

That was my mother, after her cancer diagnosis.

And this:

“Whenever I think of Mom, I can’t help feeling somewhat inferior to her. By temperament and spiritual habits, she was more refined than I am. It would not make her happy for me to be thinking this way, and I am, in fact, grateful that she left behind such an astonishing life to emulate and love. But it is daunting to feel that so large a mountain remains for me to climb. By slipping over the top, she compels me to follow.” (page 167)

I finished over half the book with Jo-Jo in my lap. Later in the day, while I played cars with him for what seemed an interminable amount of time, I couldn’t wait to get back to the book. The irony did not escape me; wanting to hurry up some precious moments with my grandson in order to get back to reading a book that reinforced the importance of living in the moment. Determined to do exactly that, I played yet another round of “push the cars back and forth, while making appropriate vroom noises.” My patience was rewarded. By 2:00 in the afternoon he was sleeping in my arms once again and I finished the book.

When I got home last night I rushed to my cabinet where I had stored this lovely journal until I knew its purpose. On the front is a picture from my mother’s house last winter. Her table and chairs where I spent so many writing sessions after her death. My laptop, piles of papers, and a bright red cup of hot tea. In the background, you can see the snow through the windows. I will always treasure those months of writing in her empty house.

“Some days I can think of nothing worth writing down. Fortunately, I am not alone. By my chair, I keep a small, revolving collection of essays, spiritual autobiographies, poetry, and other writer’s journals to inspire me. When I’m out of fuel, they pull me out of the creek and into a broader, deeper river.” (page 275, The Journal Keeper, by Phyllis Theroux)

Now I know my journal’s purpose. I will begin writing down the inspiring words of others, so that I can refer to them when my muse runs dry.

“Listening to the scanner, we’d often hear someone with the same voice as Bud’s. Riding in the ambulance to Finley Hospital I heard that voice, and looked down to see a bumblebee on my rosary just as I’d finished praying it. I took it by the wings and put it out the window.”

These were my mother’s words, inscribed on simple notebook paper that she’d entrusted to my care years before she died. Bud was my father and he’d died in the hospital the day after that ambulance ride. When my mother gave me the papers, I’d stashed them in a cabinet. In May of 2011, six months after her death and more than 25 years after the accident that took my father’s life, I came across those papers and read that sentence to my daughter over the phone.  “I’d forgotten about that,” I marveled, and Elizabeth reminded me of how we’d seen a bumblebee in my mother’s house two days in a row while she lay dying. A bumblebee; in November.

Later that day, entering my mother’s house, I was greeted by the sight of a fat bumblebee sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. Without thinking, I squished it with a satisfying crunch beneath my shoe.

“You killed Grandma!” my daughter was aghast when I told her about it.

“My mother isn’t a bumblebee,” I reminded her, but I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of unease, remembering how my mother had gently lifted the bee from her hand to put it out the window.

On the day I spotted the bee at my mother’s house I was contemplating yet another impending loss; the loss of what I’d come to consider my own private writing retreat.  Soon, the table would be removed by the sibling who’d claimed it, and the house sold. Not only had I lost my mother, I was about to lose my creative space. Would I also be losing the tenuous hold I had on the creative muse of my mother?

I’d been going to my mother’s empty house once or twice a week all winter, using the table she’d sat at to work on her art as my writing desk. Whether it was the lack of an Internet connection or the spirit of a very creative mother, I’d had many productive writing sessions within the walls of the home my mother had lived, and created art in, for almost 45 years.

Occasionally, I’d take a break and wander through the nearly empty rooms, pausing at boxes and stooping down to rifle through what few possessions of my mother’s hadn’t yet been claimed. I’d pull out a notebook filled with her handwriting, and end up carting it home with me. I filled a trunk with her writings, designating myself the “keeper of her words.”

All winter, and well into the spring, I drove to my mother’s house for writing sessions. The house became a sort of haven for me as I grieved over the loss of my mother. I’d spent many hours as a teen working alongside her at that table or in her front porch workroom. We’d sit together companionably; painting, drawing, or writing.

Nothing dulled the sharp pain of losing my mother like writing about her.  I wrote about many things during those days of grieving; a grieving that began with her diagnosis. I wrote about my mother’s bravery in facing terminal cancer, her fight to live the fullest in her last days, the sharp pang of loss I experienced after her death and in subsequent months. What I didn’t write about were bumblebees. It felt slightly ridiculous to believe the bees were a sign from Mom.

“I feel like I’m supposed to write about the bumblebees. I don’t want to,” I told my husband one day.

“Then don’t,” came his simplistic answer.

I returned to my desk and heard an unmistakable buzzing near my right ear. I tilted my head slightly to look down at my shoulder, and froze. On my shoulder was a bumblebee. I hurried out the front door and quickly removed my sweatshirt, letting it drop to the porch floor.

“What’s wrong? You ran out of the house so fast,” my husband questioned as he came up behind me.

“There was a bumblebee on my shoulder.”

“Sure,” he commented wryly.

I gingerly lifted the sweatshirt from the floor and held it out to my husband. His eyes widened. He looked at the bee, then my face, and back to the bee.

“No way.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“Guess you’ll have to write about the bumblebee, after all.”

So I did.

And yet it did.

To borrow the expression of someone else who’d attended the same conference, I hit the ground running when I returned home. I had two days to plan my youth writing class, and a week to plan a couponing workshop, which ended up being so enjoyable, I can’t believe I am being paid to have that much fun. I made an important decision regarding the future of my book. I began the arduous task of following some of the advice given to me at the conference; beginning another blog which centers on the “dark side of couponing,” (see http://crazycouponer.blogspot.com/) writing some query letters, doing some editing of my book proposal, and working on descriptions  for some workshops I may be presenting at an April retreat. What I haven’t done much of is write. And that is very unlike me. For more than a year now, I have written every single day. Every. Single. Day.  But right now I feel like I need to process everything that occurred at the writer’s conference, and I’m waiting for some quiet, contemplative, “un-busy” time to do so. And that hasn’t happened. It reminds me uncomfortably of the years I spent snatching writing moments between crying babies, changing diapers and marathon nursing sessions. I’d sit on the lid of the toilet, scribbling away in a notebook while a toddler splashed away in the bathtub, or eagerly pull over the curb when a baby fell asleep in the car-seat, only to pull a notepad out of my purse and immediately begin writing. It wasn’t easy, but something made me write, the same something that still pulls at me, even during these occasional dry times when writing takes a back burner to the pressing tasks in front of me. I used to wonder then; when will I have time to write? And now it is; when will I have time to think?

The first opportunity for that was this past Sunday. After a week of power point preparations, planning and conducting my youth writing course, schlepping my son to the dentist to have his wisdom teeth removed, strategically doing some shopping trips to include in the coupon workshop, and writing queries, I found myself sitting in a church pew with some contemplative time. In the peaceful quiet of the church, I replayed that moment at the conference when my eyes locked with a stranger’s and I recognized the unmistakable eyes of my mother. How could that be, I marveled again, and my throat filled with tears even as I felt a surge of pure joy. I knew right then that I never want to forget what that moment felt like, and I always want to remain open to it happening again.

Today it is Thanksgiving. The turkey is in the oven and seven pies are on the back porch. I have spent the better part of two days cleaning my house in preparation for company, company that includes the people I love most in this world; sons and daughters, a son-in-law I include in the son category, three grandchildren, and a girl I have yet to meet who loves my son. Later in the day, a sister and nieces will come to play card games. With temperatures hitting nearly 60-degrees in Iowa, I am hoping to imbibe in one of my favorite activities; what I call the “walking-off-the-pie” tradition I have shared with sisters other years.

And in this brief moment before the children are up and the Macy’s Day parade blares from the television, I can take the time to be thankful for my many blessings; my husband, my children and the people who love them, my grandchildren, my siblings and David’s siblings, good friends, a warm house, good food, and the bliss of the sweet sound of silence.

Thank you, Lord, for this bounty of blessings you have bestowed upon me. And thank you, too, for helping me recognize, through a mother who was my inspiration, the talents you have bestowed upon me in the form of writing and speaking. And let me remember always, as my father told me so long ago to “use them for good, and not evil.”

This photo is of the two pictures my long-time friend and companion at the writer’s conference, Mary Humston, brought with her and displayed in our hotel room. They inspire her and speak to her creative soul. She brought them with her for creative sustenance, and shared their beauty with me. I felt a little sorry for myself when I saw them. I had no framed piece that spoke to me, no portable artwork to add to this display.

It hit me this morning; I don’t need one. I carry my muse, my mother, inside.