Archive for the ‘back at ya’ Category:
The Hen House
A new column is up here.
And many thanks to all of you for your comments and emails about the church. I am, as always, so grateful.
Calling All Mother Writers
I will be teaching a one-day writing workshop for mothers on Saturday, January 23 from 9:30-1:30 at The Remington Lodge in West Cummington, MA (35 minutes west of Northampton).
The class is called Stories From the Shuttered Room (an allusion to Deborah Garrison’s poem, A Short Skirt on Broadway). Participants will read the work of published authors, listen to each others’ work, and do writing exercises that will help them learn how to turn their mother anecdotes and memories into narrative. The class is open to all mother writers, regardless of how long you have been a mother or a writer. Tuition is $40 ($25 for members of the Cummington Family Center.)
It promises to be a wonderful workshop. I would love to have any HBTC readers join!
Please leave a comment or email me at valleywritersschool@gmail.com for more information.
The Hen House
New column is up here. Check out the beautiful new site design!
Many thanks for all your lovely comments here last time– could I ask you the favor of commenting over at Literary Mama if you are so inclined? As always, I am so grateful to you for reading.
He Came for the Penguins, Too
(photo courtesy of my sister, penguin lover extraordinaire)
Advent
There are so many things I want to write about our trip to Chicago, and about Advent, about preparing for Christmas in this novel phase of my life when I am not waiting for the arrival of anyone or anything. It is divine, and I am enormously grateful and wildly busy. So I offer you two things this holiday season: a favorite poem by Jane Kenyon, and a bit of advice: Go forth and buy a canister of Martha Stewart craft glitter and decorate something–anything–with it. It is pure and glimmering magic.
* * * *
Mosaic of the Nativity
Serbia, Winter 1993
On the domed ceiling God is thinking:
I made them my joy, and everything else I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:
“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary, and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must come for water?”
God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.
–Jane Kenyon
Away
The girls and I spent last week in Chicago with my parents and sister. We are home now, enjoying our first snow day of the year.
I will write soon.
The Hen House
I am happy to announce that my first monthly column is up at Literary Mama. I’ll be writing stories about my so-called rural life for the next year or so. Thank you in advance, dear readers, for following me there.
Nine Days Down, Twelve to Go
Twelve days from now will mark the three-week anniversary of the night we discovered that Grace had pinworms. Pinworms. Pinworms! Pin. Worms. How did we know, you ask? Oh, you really don’t want to know how we knew.
I am so tired. I wash so many things these days. I wash hands and I wash sheets and I wash car seat covers and legos and pacifiers and plastic animals and slings and dish towels and wool hats and anything I can’t wash I put in garbage bags in the attic. I use diluted Clorox and full-strength Lysol and I don’t use any Seventh Generation. I don’t even use Method. Method is for sissies.
Did I mention how tired I am? People whose children are grown tell me that their kids had pinworms and they didn’t clean as much as I am cleaning. I am comforted by this, but I have not stopped cleaning. And I don’t entirely believe them. I don’t know if it would be possible to see what I saw coming out of my precious child’s tush and not want to spray the entire house with a fine mist of full-strength bleach.
If I didn’t know it before, I know it now: I hate cleaning. It is exhausting, demoralizing, boring, and endless. Didn’t someone once say that cleaning when you have young children is like shoveling in a snowstorm? I think it is more like blow drying your hair in the shower.
Nearly all the girls’ toys are in the attic because they are too soft to be washed. I’ve left them with wooden blocks, a wooden doll house, a wooden play kitchen, and a few puzzles. It is very Waldorf around here. Which means that the girls are spending most of their time looking at the most recent American Girl catalog and playing with loose change. June calls her stash “my moneys”, and she screams when you try to take it away from her. She likes to count it: “Two, two, two, mine!”
On Monday we will all take our second dose of pinworm medicine and the next Monday all the pinworms and their spawn will be dead. We can stop cleaning, the dolls can come down from the attic, and I can go back to changing June’s crib sheet every other never. That Monday cannot come soon enough.
Rolling Over the Blogroll
My dusty little blogroll has gone more than two years without an update. I’m going to try something new– a new listing of blogs I’ve been enjoying that changes every few weeks (or months). Suggestions? Leave a comment or send an email.
Also, those of you who have kindly inquired about why it is that you can’t list my blog as one you follow on your Blogger profile, well, now you can! That little snafu has been fixed. Thanks for your patience.
