Category: Sparks

  • In Praise of Christmas Tree Farms

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    In Praise of Christmas Tree Farms

    By Sus Pareto

    Yesterday I drove to Larsen’s Christmas Tree Farm, about two miles from my house. It was a balmy fall afternoon, and the road to the farm was lined with poplars and willows dappled in gold.

              Up ahead, I saw the red and green sign pointing to a narrow driveway which led to a dell where a yellow clapboard house and outbuildings gathered. Just a normal, traditional Petaluma farm — except when Christmas tree season opens. Like an explosion, the quiet dell surrounded by acres of orderly pine trees becomes a bustling hub of people and cars. As if by magic, gossiping groups of pre-cut trees have popped up while a tree-bagging station, ticketing station, and cookies-and-hot chocolate stand wait nearby. The barn has become a Christmas wonderland of sparkling trees and lights and ornaments. In the background, Christmas music weaves through the fragrant scent of pine trees.

              It’s the scent that gets me. So fresh and pure. Timeless. Like being in the middle of a mountain forest on a sunny day.

               I stroll along soft dirt through the aisles of trees. Voices float and mingle with the sunlight in the needles. Kids play hide-and-seek, parents discuss the merits of one tree over the next. Dads stand by with measuring poles and saws. Couples with their first babies. Grandparents and dogs. It feels all so safe and glad, and serene. The excitement of Christmas — the feelings that start to swirl and take on energy during the holiday season — is still on the horizon. This day is simply about strolling on a sunny fall afternoon through pine trees destined for felling with people you love, or like.

              I was not sorry to be alone. I enjoyed it. I paid my $95 (including shaking, bagging, trimming, and sales tax) and then watched my tree go through its handling: A quick shake on an old metal compressor to remove dry needles, then onto a rectangular table and into a funnel where it gets bagged in netting. A fresh cut to the trunk with a chain saw, and it’s ready for my car.

              I can hardly wait to get it home.

              No matter what I say about not caring about Christmas “this” year, about not wanting to make a big deal out of it, don’t believe me: I’m a liar. I can’t help myself. No matter how cranky I can be, every Christmas I temporarily forget any resentments I have, about how I don’t want to spend money, or don’t want to bother with decorations because nobody helps me put them away. When I hear the first Christmas songs, when I see the first decorations, when leaves start to fall and days get short and nights beckon for a fire, my resolve weakens.

               And when the Christmas tree lots appear, it fails. Every time.

              Trees beckon from parking lots, stores, and farms, and I’m powerless. ‘Oh screw it,’ I say to myself, ‘This year I want a really big, beautiful tree!’ And off I go to the Christmas tree farm. The floodgates open, my heart expands with warmth and joy in anticipation of another Christmas.

              Forget the thoughts of putting everything away in January, ignore thoughts of paying my credit card in February, now is the season to draw together, to love our lives, our homes, our friends, and even the worst family member. Let the house fill with the scent of pine and fake pine cones, cookies baking, hot roasted vegetables and meat. Let the pitter-patter of lights everywhere gladden our hearts. It’s Christmas.

    Sus Pareto writes and lives in western Petaluma, California with her dogs, cat and husband.

    Marlene C

  • Steady Going

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Steady Going

    By Christine Renaudin

    Two months into summer,
    three in retirement,
    one more kiss of the sun.

    I am starting to feel the change in ways that do not rub me wrong, like a shirt grown too tight,
    or a pair of new shoes    

    I am settling into a certain ease I didn’t know before, or I had forgotten.
    There is hardly any rushing through things unless absolutely necessary in case of an emergency.

    I walk the dog daily.

    Three months into summer,
    four in retirement,
    signs abound, changes beckon.


    I have trouble remembering what I did on a given day, and I resort to lists to keep track of the books I’ve read and places I’ve gone, so I can tell people when they are kind enough to ask.
    Morning and afternoon melt in one another.
    I glide along sweaty, in blissful abandon: losing sight of the shore no longer upsets me.
    I don’t even worry the oar, but trust the sail will hold the wind, and the wind will show me to my destination.

    Four months into retirement,
    five into what feels like,
    a whole other season,


    I cannot be bothered to wear purple, put on a bra, a mask, a face, pick an outfit, apply lipstick, or even darken an eyebrow.
    It’s too darn hot for the season, there are too many fires, time runs too fast to waste it on untruths.
    Voting is a disaster.

    Five months in,
    Halloween spooks
    the hell out of me.

    Detachment has set in. I couldn’t care less about those many things that used to matter so
    they dictated my every move and mood.


    I’d rather light a candle for the latest friend who passed and for the one who hopes to last a bit longer.

    I’d rather watch the flame settle into the night and pray.

    Christine Renaudin’s writing has been featured in various publications by The Sitting Room, several of The Write Spot’s Sparks, as well as in The Write Spot anthologies:  “Discoveries,” and “Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year,”  available at your local bookseller and on Amazon (print and as an e-reader).

    Christine lives, writes, and paints in Petaluma, CA. She is also a dancer. Her most recent performances in 2022 include Sunset in Spring (Fort Bragg), and The Show Show (San Francisco).

    An avid practitioner of Contact Improvisation, she facilitates the monthly West Marin Contact Improvisation Jam at The Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station. She loves to see these various practices interact and inform her art-making process.

    Marlene C

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  • Print Dreams

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Print Dreams

    By DSBriggs

    Back in the day when I was a teen, I wanted to be a writer. I picked out my pen name, Kelly Brione.

    I began to dress as a writer. My image, based on a Stanford University guide, was to dress in black tights, a gray skirt, and a pink fluffy sweater over a black leotard.

    I had plans to write the Great American Novel, even though I did not have a clue how to do that. 

    I talked enough about being a writer that my Dad purchased a Smith-Corona portable typewriter for me. It had Elite type rather than the larger Pica type. Elite was the size of type that newspapers used for writing news stories in columns.

    I dreamed about being a columnist like Herb Caen or Erma Bombeck. 

    One thing about writing is that I have always loved libraries.

    Back in the day when libraries were stocked with books and magazines, tables and chairs for studying space and enforced quiet. So different today, with cases of CDs, DVDs, media, and computers in place of  drawers filled with index cards that let you finger thru author, title or subject cards.

    There are, of course, still books, but stacked in tall narrow aisles. So narrow in fact that a person with a backpack cannot turn around. If two people are in the aisle, one has to back up so the other may squeeze by. 

    Back in the day when aisles were wider, a girl could sit on the floor and read a chapter or two before deciding whether to check the book out. The library limit was two books and two weeks before it was overdue.  

    Back in the days of my late teens I had a summer internship at the local paper that published only on Wednesdays. I got to write features. That was really fun and some were even published. 

    However, when the Sports Reporter was sent to Alaska to cover our hometown’s quest for the Little League World Championship,  I was assigned to cover the local sports desk. I never had to go to a game but would wait for the scores to be phoned in to write up before midnight deadline.

    What I remember most was struggling to come up with forty different ways to say beaten or defeated. That was probably the most colorful coverage of weekly scores the readers ever had. Despite having been published, I was not offered a job at the end of my internship.

    So in the fall I went onto college to start my major in Journalism. The required English classes killed my interest in writing. I was not interested in why a comma was placed where it was. Line by line analysis of Cotton Mathers’ 17th century sermons extinguished my dream of becoming a writer.

    So I switched to Social Science, a major for people who didn’t know what they wanted when their dream became a nightmare.

    I stopped writing. 

    As a side note, I recovered my  love of writing.

    DSBriggs began writing again by journaling. It was, however, Marlene Cullen’s introduction to prompt writing thru Jumpstart that reignited DSBriggs love of writing just for the sake of writing.

    Dreams of being published were realized when her work was included in The Write Spot Anthologies: Discoveries, Possibilities and Path To Healing.

    DSBriggs still lives near a library in Northern California. 

    Marlene C

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  • Simply A Shoot

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Simply A Shoot

    By Jane Person

    I was born a sweet onion

    my core protected by layers of peel

     

    As the brown dry layers peel off, a stink

    surrounds.  Eyes water

     

    There will be more

    down to my core

     

    Under the faucet dirt and grime

    the externals simply slide off

     

    There will be more

    down to my core

     

    Tender layers peel

    a bulb thinner, lighter

     

    There will be more

    down to my core

     

    Fear.  What will be left of me?

    A little voice coaches—Just peel.

     

    There will be more

    down to my core

     

    Protecting peels now gone.

    Left a small, green shoot.

     

    There is more

    down at my core

     

    The person, me

    The small shoot unmasked

    Free from disguise

    Perhaps free at last

    Jane Person, who has lived in Petaluma since 1986, is on the third leg of her Triathlon—Aging while trying to shuck the protective layers.  Run, Jane, run.

    Marlene C

  • Herald

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Herald

    By Su Shafer

    After all these years

    She’s letting go

    No more worrying

    If she’s too fat

    Or too old

    Or what he’s thinking

    Or feeling

    Or if he’s alive or dead

    No more waiting

    For the rock to roll

    The hope when it moved a little

    But found a new dead end to be still

    So she’s letting go

    Dropping the over-packed luggage

    She carried with both hands

    For so long

    Her arms feel like wings

    As she walks in the sun

    Her steps so light, she might take flight

    On her way to the mailbox

    She sees a golden jewel beetle

    Resting on the sidewalk

    A living gem that stuns her breathless

    Spreading amber wings, it lifts effortlessly

    Into the air and buzzes regally away

    Sometimes messengers are more beautiful

    Than you can imagine

    She closes her eyes and takes

    A deep, deep breath

    Has the air ever been so fresh?

    Su Shafer is a creative crafter, fabricating bits of writing in poetry and short stories, and other bits into characters that appear in paintings or sit on various bookshelves and coffee tables. She lives in a cottage on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, where the tea kettle is always whistling and the biscuits freshly baked.  One never knows who might stop by to share a rainy afternoon.

    Marlene C

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  • Reality’s Ruse

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Reality’s Ruse 

    By  Mary O’Brien  

    Summer shakes Winter’s hand,
    proposing a fling.
    Autumn’s wind scurries them
    both away –
    not a fan of farce.

    Martinis at three,
    come by and get me.
    Loose lips sink ships:
    my mouth full of
    sharp torpedoes.

    My reality is often
    a ruse, driven to other
    worlds on printed pages,
    between covers
    in greedy hands.

    I left my scarf in
    that dream –
    the one with the pulled
    thread I
    tied round your finger.

    We never made it to New York.
    That was your ruse
    to keep me interested
    long enough to marry
    in Vegas.

    “Reality’s Ruse” inspired by Just For Fun . . . Prompt #672 on The Write Spot Blog,

    Mary O’Brien is a Retired Trophy Wife (RTW) from the Pacific Northwest. She has volunteered for the Court Appointed Special Advocate program, founded local therapeutic hospital humor programs, and supported various other non-profits and do-goodery. 

    Enjoying the artistry of music, the music of words, the words of healing, and the healing of art, Mary is spending her pandemic hibernation immersing herself in art journaling, watercolor and writing. 

    She lives in Idaho with her tolerant husband near her comedic grandchildren, and is managed by an elderly, sugared golden retriever (send treats). 

    Marlene C

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  • Defrosting

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Defrosting

    By Patricia Morris

    After all these years, I stand in front of the refrigerator this afternoon and hear my mother’s voice, “Don’t stand there with that door open!”

    I chuckle. I’m standing here because I can’t remember what I came to the refrigerator for. As that kid, some 60 years ago, I was probably looking for something to eat. Maybe a slice of bologna. Maybe the green Jello salad with a layer of cream cheese on top. Maybe that rare delicacy – a green olive stuffed with a bit of red pimento. Whatever it was, I’d grab it and close the door at my mother’s command.

    I imagine what she was thinking. Holding the door open meant using more electricity, which meant a higher electric bill, which meant more financial worries. It also meant more ice build-up in the small freezer compartment that sat along the top of the interior of that short squat white machine. This was long before the days of automatic defrost. Ice would build up on the top and sides of the narrow shelf every time the door opened and closed. Every couple of months or so it took pans of boiling water and a strong dull knife to clean it out, making room again for the ice cube trays and freezer paper-wrapped blocks of hamburger and bacon.

    A few years after my mother was gone, of all the household tasks that fell to me, defrosting was the one I dreaded the most.  I would let it go for too long, until the contents of that small compartment were engulfed by a virtual glacier. It would take hours and multiple pans of boiling water to loosen it enough to chop away at it with my small freezing hands. Tears were shed. I felt like Cinderella – before the ball. And I never actually made it to a ball. I just kept cooking and cleaning and doing laundry and homework, knowing I didn’t want this to be my life forever. I was too dutiful a daughter to plot an escape, and yet one ensued.

    So, after all these years, here I stand in front of a refrigerator with a completely separate, frost-free freezer compartment, powered by 100% local renewable energy that I don’t worry about paying for, trying to hurry up the search in my memory bank for what I opened that door for anyway.

    Patricia Morris lives under the trees in Northern California and writes on Monday nights at Jumpstart Writing Workshops. She dates her love of stories to being read to while sitting on the lap of her Great-Aunt Ruth, a children’s librarian. Her writing has appeared in Rand McNally’s “Vacation America, the Ultimate Road Atlas,” and The Write Spot anthologies “Possibilities” and “Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year,” edited by Marlene Cullen.

    Marlene C

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  • The Old Gray Mare

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    The Old Gray Mare

    By Susie Moses

    After all these years I am beginning to understand that I have to face the fact that old age is getting a toehold. I am not exempt. I am loathe to use it as an excuse, not wishing to define myself by numbers, but the signs are there, harder and harder to ignore. Harder and harder to resolve or fix. There has been a resetting of the bar. Firm reminders that I cannot slow this process down by sheer will.

    I have come to accept certain limitations. It seems I will not be hiking the entire Appalachian Trail after all. It does remain beyond my capabilities, no matter that someone else born in the same year might accomplish that very thing. I face the fact that I have missed my window. Cross that dream off the list. And others, on and on.

    Acceptance does not mean capitulation. I continue to fight the good fight, in search of The Answer. Or at least An Answer. Miracle foods, diet plans, sleep improvement strategies, exercise regimens, body work, anti-inflammation protocols. But the bottom line is, no matter how well we treat them, our bodies will not last forever. They will fail us in one way or another. Physical decline, mental struggle – the old gray mare just ain’t what she used to be.

    I see it in daily banter, my cohort joking about various calamities of our advancing years. Or commenting to my daughter about my sense of abrupt aging and waiting for reassurance that it is not so. It is not forthcoming. Apparently, she concurs. I might have been willing to be talked out of it, but it seems we are on the same page, acknowledging the limitations of my years. I am caught up short. I had not expected her to agree so readily. I vow to double down and prove us both wrong. Cleaner diet, more yoga, Pilates, massage, and meditation. I will show her! And myself. But the task seems more daunting by the day.

    I spent the weekend with dear friends just a few years ahead of me. I am alarmed by what I saw. They have capitulated to failing bodies in many ways and I want them to take action! To be proactive, do things to improve their lives. I watched him put on his hiking socks. Sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, it must have taken him ten minutes to wrangle his feet into the woolen tubes. He could barely reach, trying to move up and over his expansive belly, breathing hard and grunting his way, he cursed as the sock got hung up on curling toenails which he can no longer manage to keep trimmed. It was not a pretty picture. His wife commented that we really were not meant to live this long. Our bodies just wear out. But I stiffened my resolve to work towards staying limber and active, determined to avoid the fate of not being able to reach one’s own toes. I will never let that happen to me!

    I reassured myself as I headed out on a brisk morning walk, full of self-righteousness. No need to let oneself succumb to the vicissitudes of aging. Just keep moving I told myself as I strode out, arms pumping. By the time I returned home, my hips had stiffened to the point that I was hobbling up the stairs and wracking my brain to find a remedy for this ridiculous outcome. Tart cherry juice! Good for inflammation! Green tea laced with turkey tail mushrooms. Yoga poses, acupuncture. I may go down, but I will go down fighting, always believing that somewhere in there I will find, if not the fountain of youth, some fix for what ails me. There is an answer somewhere and I am determined to discover it.

    I read a book not long ago which describes aging as a spiritual process. At some point I will have to embrace that premise, that aging is a master course in acceptance, of infirmity, of pain, of loss and ultimately of death. It’s not that I am afraid of dying, just getting old and dependent. So I fight the good fight, understanding I may have to hang up my gloves for good one day and focus on the spiritual aspects of the end of life. But not yet! Not just now. New books to order, new podcasts to watch. New hope to be excavated – magical supplements and elixirs, intermittent fasting, cold water plunging, avoidance of alcohol. Maybe it’s all just a distraction, but I’m not ready to throw up my hands and admit defeat. I am determined to keep my toenails cut and the ability to ease my socks on without strain.

     We’ll see how it goes.

    Susie Moses is a generative writing junkie, enjoying the process and dreaming of actually doing something constructive one day with the piles of papers and notebooks she has accrued, that are spilling out of closets and off shelves and out of drawers.  But for now, just getting words down on the page is an accomplishment and a delight. She spends a good part of each year in Marin County to be near her daughters, but always is drawn to return to her beloved Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia for a fix of East Coast flora and fauna.

    You can read more of Susie’s writing here and here.

    Marlene C

  • The Seagulls Came and I Knew

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    The Seagulls Came and I Knew

    By Norma Jaeger

    The seagulls came to the back yard. We didn’t live that close to the coast, Portland, about 80 miles inland. We had never had seagulls in the yard before, as best I recall.  But there they were, drinking out of the bird bath, flapping around querulously, and generally making strident seagull noise, breaking the otherwise early Saturday morning quiet. 

    I had returned the night before from an intense, two-day job interview in Seattle.  With the seagulls in the backyard, such gulls and their cries, being ubiquitous in Seattle, I knew I would be offered the job. Because I had become disenchanted with my job in Portland, I was pretty clear I would accept the job. What I did not know, but realistically what I should have considered, based on what I had always observed about government in Washington, was how the decision would ultimately turn out.

    While I thought I was moving to Seattle, what was really going on was a short stop on my way home to Idaho – there, to an unclear future but one that became the best future of all – 22 years ago. 

    Birds, as ancient augurs, have always conveyed both positive and negative omens.  

    It takes time to sort it out.

    Norma Jaeger spent more than thirty years managing and evaluating addiction and mental health programs in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.  She developed programs for pregnant and postpartum women, children’s mental health programs, and several programs for individuals in the criminal justice system. 

    She was the Program Manager for offender programming at the Idaho Department of Correction for one year leaving to become the Statewide Coordinator for expansion and support to Idaho’s 70+ Drug, Mental Health, and Veterans’ Courts.

    She served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, and received the Stanley M. Goldstein Hall of Fame Award from that association in 2018. 

    She taught for fifteen years at Boise State University in the Department of Criminal Justice.

    She currently serves as Executive Director for Recovery Idaho, a statewide recovery community organization.

    She holds a Masters’ Degree in Health Administration and is completing a dissertation for a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Boise State University, focused on procedural justice. 

    She is honored to serve as Executive Producer for “I Married the War,” a documentary film illuminating the stories of wives of combat veterans.

    Believing that writing can be a meaningful pathway of support for recovery from mental health issues, addiction, and trauma, Norma organized “Poetry for Recovery and Writing for Recovery,” a successful online program.

    Marlene C

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  • The Divorced House

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    The Divorced House

    By Simona Carini

    At the Greenwich Observatory once
    I straddled the brass line in the courtyard
    One foot East
    One foot West
    Heart at longitude 0°.
    Felt familiar.

    Walking around North Berkeley
    I happened on a house bisected
    Yellow on the right
    Gray on the left.
    Felt finely honed pain
    wafting out the divorced house
    East and West facing off at a meridian
    running down the front and a short flight of stairs
    Bright red on the right
    Burgundy on the left.

    Felt like the child going home
    having to decide whether to enter
    the door on the right
    or on the left
    To inhabit my father’s world
    or my mother’s
    Heart at longitude 0°.

    Except home was one apartment
    with one door
    one kitchen and one bathroom.
    One family
    never divorced.

    The mystery of the divided façade
    of my parents’ marriage.
    From the sidewalk across the street,
    the halves conflict.
    At close range
    the shift across the line is not a chasm
    but a shade easily traveled.

    The line they drew between them
    grew into a wall.
    They lost sight of each other
    talking to the wall
    yelling across it.

    I visit two cemeteries
    bring flowers to two tombstones
    balance on the line of compassion
    Heart at longitude 0°.

    “The Divorced House” was originally published in Star 82 Review.

    Simona Carini was born in Perugia, Italy. She writes poetry and nonfiction and has been published in various venues, in print and online. Her first poetry collection Survival Time will be published in 2022 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in Northern California with her husband, loves to spend time outdoors, and works as an academic researcher.

    Marlene C