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!
Category: Uncategorized
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.
5 Minute Stretch
“you won’t fool anybody”
“You won’t fool anybody, dressed like that,” he sneered. “They’re all gonna know you’re trash.”
She considered pausing, the application of her lipstick almost complete, but didn’t. She finished out the bottom lip, pursed her lips together, grabbed a tissue and put it between her lips. A gentle press, the tissue rolled up and thrown away. She was slipping into her shoes, the ones from the thrift store that looked brand new but had cost her “only” three precious dollars.
“They all gonna know the minute you open your mouth and them bitchy little words start falling out.”
She had slipped the shoes on now, they fit her right foot perfectly but the one on the left was slightly too large. It had been a problem her whole life and she always tried to by a half-size bigger and let her right foot swim a little. But beggars can’t be choosers, or so she’d been told. She grabbed the same purse she’d been using
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 Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See.
5 Minute Stretch
“she locked the bathroom door”
They were a family that only locked doors when they were out: restaurants, hotels, gas stations. At home, the very idea of closing and locking a door was the antithesis of the home they’d created. The act of closing a door could be acceptable for a phone call or a nap, although even then doors tended to be left open, a quick retreat from one room to another, all that was required. The forethought required to close and lock a door, the meaning of the lock in particular, was not lost on anyone. Who were you keeping out and why, were we not a family? And yet. She locked the bathroom door, and not a quick closing and turning either, this was subtle, surreptitious, the door brought to a close with a slow and deliberate attempt at silence, the handle held at full rotation to keep metallic parts from clanging, the lock turned with bated breath and a prayer that it wouldn’t make an echoing click. Her face burned with the shame of it but she tried to ignore it.
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 Another Name for Madness by Marion Roach (Smith).
5 Minute Stretch
“sparse inventory of reasons”
There were always excuses. Always. Excuses are easy to come by and sound as weak as they are. True reasons, now those were harder to come by. In a world with a sparse inventory of reasons, she picked and chose with a delicate hand. She became adept at saying, “I could give you excuses, but they’d be just that. I do have a reason though.” People would stare for a moment, perhaps give a long slow blink, digesting this bit of information that supposedly made sense. Eventually they’d realize it did make sense, and they’d want the reason…or not. Usually they didn’t. Usually people were very much aware that they walked this same tight wire of excuses vs reasons. Most people were simply happy you’d cancelled. Unless they truly needed you. Those people, the needy ones, couldn’t understand the difference, couldn’t find any justification for why you weren’t where you’d said you’d be or worse, why you wouldn’t say you’d be there at all. There is nothing wrong with being needy, of course, we’ve all been there, but the ability to have someone drop everything and be there for you…that’s a big ask. It’s a huge ask. And she’d always thought of herself as a person who would drop everything, who would always be there…until she realized she was not that person at all. She could be, sometimes, but with children of her own and a sparse inventory of reasons that she wasn’t even allowed to voice, she was now relegated to
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 Last Tango in Melrose, Montana by Dan Vichorek.
5 Minute Stretch
“the dry season came”
She had a way of loving people instantly, fully, with her whole being. It took nothing really, a look, a smile, a word said with just a hint of irony or with a bit of a lilt. Anything could do it. She’d be sunk, One minute friends, the next minute smitten. In a snap. This ability to fall quickly in love ought to have been a curse perhaps or a blessing, some sort of super hero power: “Go-Go Gadget Love!” But it was simply her; she loved fully and often and with no rules. A great way to live really, until the dry season came. And it always came. Not tied to moons or winds or the migration of the birds; the emotional dry season always came. One minute she was in love and hte next…she still loved, of course she still loved, but the all-in quality, the off-a-cliff quality, the depth and intensity were gone. Suddenly, she could hardly
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 Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir.
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