Honor Thy Mother

Posted on December 21, 2011 by

When I completed my most recent Christmas “Manchester Memories” (interviewing senior citizens about their memories) column for our local paper, I found myself wishing my mother was around to interview. She would have been a font of memories for the subjects I have covered thus far; back-to-school, canning and gardening, Halloween, and Christmas.  She would have loved both the reminiscing and the media exposure.

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.

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Five Important Lessons I Learned at Writer’s Conferences This Year

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

Five weeks.

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.

 

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The Writing Junkie

Posted on December 9, 2011 by

I thought it was the upcoming holidays and the stress of all I had to do; write my annual Christmas letter, send out cards, baking, decorating, buying gifts and wrapping.  It seemed too much this year, with my other responsibilities added in. I am busier every year, and this year in particular, with the fire from two Christian Writer’s conferences still burning in my belly. I’d put the mundane household tasks on the back burner while I feverishly worked on building up my platform, expanding my speaking engagements, adding another blog onto my already full blog plate, cranking out essays for anthologies and features for the local newspaper.

“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.

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A Life Too Short, a Tribute to Pam Pierre

Posted on December 4, 2011 by

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.

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When Words Inspire

Posted on December 3, 2011 by

It was still dark out when I walked down to my daughter and son-in-law’s house to babysit two of my grandchildren while they took Jacob for a three-month post-cancer CT scan. (which turned out all clear, praise God) Before I left home, I grabbed a cup of coffee, my writing bag and a book off my “to-read” shelf.  Three-year-old Joseph (aka Jo-Jo) woke up before his parent’s left and allowed me to snuggle with him on the couch. While he watched a cartoon, I started reading The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux. Few authors have spoken so many of my own thoughts about writing and about losing someone so well. Madeleine L’Engle was another.  I yearned for Post-It notes to mark passages. I wanted my own journal to jot down pertinent paragraphs and sentiments. Nuggets of wisdom like this:

‘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.

 

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Sign of the Bee

Posted on November 28, 2011 by

“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.

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Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving

Posted on November 24, 2011 by

More than a week has passed since I returned from the Heart of Christian American Writers Network (HACWN) conference.  I still haven’t “recovered” from the very spiritual experience I had while there, and hope I never do. How does one follow up a blog posting like my last one? For those who have experienced something similar, I don’t have to. For others, no explanation will suffice. It cannot rationally be explained, so it didn’t happen.

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.

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