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Whatcha Readin’: Seasonal Choices
Looking for your next great read? Check out my latest article with The Sanders County Ledger: Whatcha Readin‘ or help support me by purchasing one of the recommended books from Bookshop.
Thanks to the new The Storygraph feature, here’s a collage of all the books I read in July.
First Fiction Published
Hey everybody, I got my first fiction piece published today in Lunaris Review. Check it out free here.
Sunday’s Scrips: Monthly Newsletter July 2024
My monthly newsletter is free on Patreon! Check it out here, and sign up for free for other free posts or become a supporter for less than you spend on books each month HA!
Selfishness or Boundaries?
Please enjoy this excellent blog by K.S. Wood Writes. And mayhaps give her a follow if you enjoyed it.
Publication in Paper Dragon
Paper Dragon, the literary journal for Drexel University’s MFA program, has published my creative nonfiction essay Friendship Sting. Please check it out here. Enjoy!
Cuddle Time
My mother allowed me a half hour of television a day. I was supposed to come home from school, finish my homework, and then have one thirty minute show. Of course this isn’t how it worked.
I came home from school, sat down at the coffee table, pulled out all my homework, turned on the TV and during commercial breaks, if I wasn’t jumping up for a snack, I did my homework. I always made sure to have my homework done before my mom came home, and I always made sure to turn the TV off before she came in the door.
“How was your day?”
“Good.”
“Did you get your homework done?”
“Finishing up now.”
“Did you watch your show yet?”
“Nope. I want to watch it with you.”
For it wasn’t so much that I cared about TV as I wanted to do something with her that was ours.
I can’t remember the lineup anymore, what show on which day, but there were shows we’d watch together: Family Ties, and The Wonder Years. I’m sure there were others, but those were her favorites. She’d let me pick whatever I wanted and watch it with me, but Punky Brewster and Growing Pains weren’t really her thing. I always picked a show she liked if I could help it, my greatest fear being her calling an end to this daily ritual.
As a parent, especially a single parent as she was (a feat I can, thankfully, only imagine), your time is limited but your time is all your child wants. It wouldn’t have mattered if we were laying on the couch with no television, simply being together for thirty minutes. I would have loved that. I’d gladly watch anything she wanted to watch just for the chance to be together for thirty minutes.
I try to remember that with my kiddos now. Every morning when they wake up and come out to the living room and find me typing away, I put the computer on the end table and hold out my arms. They come flooding to the couch, climbing up on either side of me. We readjust my throw blanket across all of us and snuggle up. Sometimes they ask to do a puzzle on my iPad, an app I keep just for them; but usually we just cuddle. It’s better than TV. Cuddle time is my favorite time of day.
Where Did Your Name Come From?
“My parents are hippies,” I say. The easiest explanation, and not untrue.
My parents are hippies, or were…I’m not sure how that works when one is dead and the other has mellowed happily into the role of grandmother and matriarch.
The truth is much less interesting, at least to me. Mainly because I have to imagine it, as I was there but not old enough to remember myself, being a baby and all.
My father is an alcoholic, or was before he died of “Alzheimer’s related complications.” A fancy way of saying his body forgot how to function and he drowned in no water whatsoever. Because my father was an alcoholic, I can’t imagine the scene of my birth as being anything other than a moment in which he is drunk and celebrating.
When I was born you still had to name your baby before leaving the hospital, and my mother wanted to go home. She was holding me, I’m told, and my father and his best friend and his best friend’s wife were all in the room congratulating my mother and trying to come up with names for this new baby so everyone could go home and the party could really get started. (I imagine my poor mother, unaware of what she’d married into, but about to learn).
I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you who said what, but I’ve heard the story enough to know names were being bandied about for a long time. Eventually the time and the alcohol caught up and the names being tossed out were raucous, no longer serious but desperate.
“How about Tuesday? Like Tuesday Weld!”
“Wednesday, from the Addam’s Family!”
“My Girl Friday!”
“Sunday!”
And then I imagine it got a little bit quieter, a truth in the room spoken and ringing clear.
“Sunday is my favorite day.”
“There’s nothing I love more than a Sunday.”
Something barfingly close to that.
And thus, I was named. My parents were able to go home. I’m confident the party continued for one of them anyway.
When I tell people about my hippie parents naming me I shrug it off and laugh, “It could be worse,” I say, “I could be Rainbow Moonbeam!” We all laugh, every time.
Sometimes when you have an odd name, you have an odd story to go with it. And sometimes that odd story would be a bit sad and dark if told in full. Sometimes it’s a bit better to have an easy ruse.
“I love your name!”
“Oh, thank you. My parents are hippies.” Smile. Laugh.
5 Minute Stretch
“a man of wide reading”
He’d always considered himself a learned man, well read, going deep into topics he found interesting, a jack-of-all-trades and ignoring the master-of-none. His insight was always welcomed in the circle he travelled, for everyone in them knew he was a man who knew things, “a man of wide reading,” they’d say. And he consumed their adoration like air, like water, their adoration the thing keeping him alive. It’s not easy, however, to be a man of wide reading. It requires time, patience, and the ability to remain curious about anythin and everything. This would seem appear, but it truly is not. For how is one to be curious about something like a stubbed toe, an egg that doesn’t hatch, or a lost set of keys. And yet…. It was only as he leaned into the things he’d previously ignored, only when he picked up the medical book he’d been avoiding based solely on it’s recommendation by someone whose tastes he found basic that he discovered a stubbed toe could be interesting, could actually be so much more, could be related to spinal chord injuries, brain injuries
5 Minute Stretch Exercises are a creation of Laura Munson and were learned at Haven Writing Retreats. Write for five minutes, no corrections or stopping.
This prompt was taken from The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick.
Attending Haven I Writing Retreat: Part Two
(If you missed Part One, you can read it here.)
Despite the comfortable bed, I struggled with sleep. It was my first night in a new space and my insomnia is ever at hand. I woke repeatedly to hear the Great Horned Owl talking outside, and sometime around 3:30am I gave up and quietly turned on a light to read and write. It was finally light enough outside to go for a walk at 5am, and I quietly slipped out of the bunkhouse. I chose a walking path and let my body move, the blood flowing, the aches soothing out.
I startled ducks onto the pond, and songbirds out of song. There was evidence deer had been through but I didn’t see the deer themselves. I could hear the wild turkeys but found only a feather. The rock structures were amazing and everywhere. I’d walk til I came to one that needed photographing and then I’d move on. I went to the echo chamber, modeled after one in Scotland, I’m told. It was stunning, fascinating, and it worked.
I stood inside on the central stone and whispered my gratitude, listening to the hundreds of me’s saying “thank you.”
By the time I hiked back my boots were soaked through. They’re the most comfortable work boots I’ve ever had and I wear them for everything, but apparently they’re water resistant, not water proof. I grabbed my notebook from my room and went over to the Lodge where smoke was coming from the chimney. I sat by the fire, took off my boots and socks to let them dry, and I wrote.
The ever amazing staff said “good morning,” let me know when coffee was ready, asked how I’d slept. I was overwhelmed by the kindness, thoughtfulness, and care. “Thank you,” I said, over and over, an echo chamber myself.
The coffee was perfect, the fire was fantastic, and I wrote and wrote and wrote, stopping when breakfast was announced. The other women slowly trickled in, all in various stages of morning, grabbing cups of coffee, grabbing plates filled with food, all of us congregating at the table. I don’t remember what we spoke about aside from the general panic when it was determined we were supposed to be in the school house in ten minutes. The rush as women took their plates to the bussing station, called their thanks into the kitchen, grabbed a bit more coffee on their way out.
Every building felt like my favorite, but the schoolhouse: with the bell-pull on the right and the bathrooms in the back, the light streaming in from all sides…I could live in it happily for all my days. There were snacks laid out and more coffee and water, but it was evident these things were here as fuel: we’d come to work. We ran exercises, learned several writing lessons, ran more exercises. When we finally broke for lunch it felt like we’d been there the entire day already, although part of this feeling could be attributed to my lack of sleep, I’m sure.
Every meal was phenomenal although I can’t recall what we ate. After lunch I put my things away because I was heading off-site to the ranch of a horse whisperer. I met Bobbi at her cute little VW Bug which whipped us through the traffic of Whitefish in no time flat. The ranch was a sea of horses, all out in three or four pastures, all out in enormous herds. We discussed how to see through the eyes of another, how to claim our energy and space, how to communicate with movement.
It was fascinating and overwhelming and I found myself having multiple epiphanies about how I exist in this world, how I show up or don’t, how my mixed signals confuse more than just myself. I met several horses and the one in the photo is the one who reminded me I don’t have to acquiesce.
Bobbi raced me back to the retreat in time to wash my hands before social hour, a mandatory event that I would have skipped if it weren’t because I needed to work on my piece for that night and because I’d much rather be an introvert. I would be reading a piece that night along with one other writer, and my piece needed to be cut in half and still make sense, still be emotionally moving. I had all of ten minutes to pull it off, and with the exception of one little hitch, something I likely would have taken out if given a bit more time and opportunity, the piece went well.
The feedback that night was phenomenal, it was all the things I wanted to get from a roomful of peers.
Continue to Part Three here.
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