The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Category: Sparks

Memorable writing that sparks imagination.

  • History Lesson

    By Susan Bono

    I’ve been rummaging around in already full closets lately, trying to find space for all the stuff I brought home when I emptied my parents’ house last May. It’s been rough going, but I stopped wondering why when I realized Mom and Dad lived in their house for thirty-seven years, only eight years longer than we’ve lived in ours.

    Our youngest son often encounters me staring into space clutching a quilt, wood carving, or photograph. I think my uncharacteristic attempts at organization are making him nervous. “What are you doing? What’s that?” he asks.

    “Oh, this is some of your Great Aunt Emily’s needlepoint,” I tell him a little too eagerly. “These are my Barbie clothes, and here are the baby rompers your great grandmother made for your grandfather back in 1925. You wore them once yourself.”

    I give him these family history updates knowing full well it’s all drifting into one ear on its way out the other. At twenty-two, he doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body. But as long as he keeps asking, I continue to supply the disregarded answers.

    Telling these stories is a kind of test. I’m trying to figure out how much I actually know about the Scotty dog napkin ring, the china baby doll, the anniversary clock, the piece of Native American pottery. If I don’t remember what my parents told me about these things, what can they really mean to me?

    “It’s just stuff,” I heard myself say as I watched people carry off Christmas decorations, books, camping gear, and clothing from the garage sale I organized to clear my parents’ attic. But I might as well have said, “It’s just stories.” Stories that connect me by an ever-thinning thread to a world that is disappearing.

    I remember asking my own mother, “What’s that?” and “Who are those people?” when I caught her sorting drawers or photographs. I thought I was listening to her explanations, but I didn’t retain much. The tiny, mirrored powder box with the ostrich puff, that silver thimble—I know they were her mother’s, but what about the rest of the story? I’m sure she told me more than once, each time straining to remember what her own mother, dead before I was born, had told her. It’s only now that I understand how the story of an object becomes more precious than the thing itself when there’s no one left to ask about it.

    Susan Bono, a California-born teacher, freelance editor, and short-form memoirist, has facilitated writing workshops since 1993, helping hundreds of writers find and develop their voices. Her work has appeared online, on stage, in anthologies, newspapers, and on the radio.

    From 1995-2015, she edited and published a small press magazine called Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, as well as the online component that included quarterly postings of micro essays and a monthly forum dedicated to craft and process.

    She was on the board of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference for more than a decade and was editor-in-chief of their journal, the Noyo River Review, for eight years. Susan often writes about domestic life set in her small town of Petaluma.

    This essay can be found in her book, What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home. Find out more at susanbono.com.

    Originally published in Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, Editor’s Notes, Contest 2009 issue

  • Calm

    By Kathleen Haynie

    I drive by her turn-out, roll down the passenger car window to greet her with my best whinny. I can see her whinny ripple through the flesh of her sorrel and white soft muzzle. That muzzle will soon be buried in the red wheat bran she knows is coming. This time it is laced with bute to ease her pain from her sprained right knee. I hope the alfalfa sprinkles camouflage the taste of bute.*

    She is not too distracted with the hay and grain to lift each foot in turn so I can clean out the V ruts of each frog. After seventeen years, we know the drill. The curry comb pulls off twigs of the white winter coat on her back and haunches.

    Somehow the earth tells her body that it’s time to start letting go as the days grow longer. Yet the nights are still so very cold. Her new coat is a little whiter, a little redder, a little softer to touch. I have to lean down to nuzzle in that soft dipped curve between her shoulder and neck in order to take in the smell of sweet salty horse sweat. At nine years of age my nose was at the same level of that spot.

    Now I look up at the open blue sky and see a few puffs of white cumulus, and feel on my face the crisp ocean air coming across the valley. The constant rhythm of her teeth grinding the grain soothes the time. A desperately needed calming moment.

    *Phenylbutazone, often referred to as “bute, “is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug for the short-term treatment of pain and fever in animals. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylbutazone)

    Kathleen Haynie. This City Girl turned into a Sonoma County Horse Girl, and then retired from decades as a professional in health care. She is now acting out a latent inclination for the dramatic arts as a drama student and cast member of Off the Page Readers Theater. Surprisingly, the journey continues into the newly found delight discovered in written expression. Kathleen felt honored to have her work, What They Did to Alice, performed at the 6th Street Playhouse 2020 Women’s Festival. She has decided that dark chocolate is perfect with a full-bodied red wine.

  • A Patch of Joy

    By Christine Renaudin

    Slowly the idea grew from seemingly random pickings at the local thrift store a month or two ago, to design a painting along the seams of a small piece of patchwork discovered in the sewing notions section. Bold colors and markings drew me in, sharp contrasts, black acting as prevailing background: yellow on black, and vice versa, bright colors in between, the kind I have dreamed of playing with but never dared throwing first thing together on canvas. Circles and crosses, stars and stripes, straight and curvy, thin and think, flowers, abstracted and not, leaves, pink and red, bees and dragonflies, plain black on white: all patterns placed side by side in surprising, shockingly daring ways that made my mind bubble with joy, and my heart dance with the desire to play along.

    I bought the small rectangle of motley fabric and brought it home, where it sat abandoned in my grandmother’s wicker basket for a few weeks, thrown half folded with its price tag hanging over the brim, not so much forgotten as left to gather worth under the dust, each glance adding to the marvel of a whooping four dollars for a treasure— a steal, really— before making it to the empty wall of the study, where it suddenly hung, secured by three wooden push pins, for me to see, absorb its charm, and succumb to the second calling. 

    “Yes, beautiful, clever, and curious one,” it said in a soft, almost childlike voice. “Don’t you be so shy,” coaxing me, “there, not so shy. Come closer. Closer still. Linger with me here by the wall under the slanted western light. Let me talk to you silently and sprinkle fairy dust in your brain so it may grow fireworks worth writing home about.”  Instantly, I was a child again, bursting out in protest.

    “I don’t believe in fairy dust, and I do not have a home left where to send letters. Nobody sends those anymore anyway.” The patchwork bit seemed to shrivel for a moment under the pinch of the three pins, flat and mute against the wall in the declining light, as a passing cloud shaded the sunset glow. Sadness hung where joy had bubbled before. I felt the urge to leave the room, go cook dinner in the kitchen. 

    At dawn, I saw the piece wake up, unfold its colors like wings under the oblique and cooler eastern light flooding through the study, my breath a mist of everyday magic blowing a warmer drift into the frigid room. I wanted to apologize, but felt timid and did not. But the strip of patchwork heard me just the same and said in a voice that felt slightly older: 

    “No need. There is no need to apologize, my sweet. Fairy dust is not for everyone, especially when you’ve grown up without a television. I should have guessed by your wrinkles and graying hair, but I was fooled by your curious appreciation, and the exuberance of your heart.” 

    “Now this is a phrase I do not often hear.”

    “Because you don’t listen properly. What do you think I hang here for, if not for your eyes and yours only. You picked me up out of a dusty crate and absolute oblivion. You gave me a place on your wall, like a mirror, to send you back a new life. You, who are starting to listen at last, and smile a little, I see. Don’t be shy. Don’t hoard the joy inside, or it will choke you. Believe me, you do not want to drown in a few inches of bliss at the edge of the lake. You want to let it move your brain down to your heart and follow the odd bedfellows with pen and brush, or both, and dance with them until you have something to . . .” 

    “. . . write home about?” I heard myself interrupt in a voice that didn’t quite sound familiar. “I told you there is no one left there to care about the miracle of my life. No one to . . .” 

     . . .   read and listen?” I swallowed the bitter end of my remark and paid attention. “ You, older younger person, need to listen again, harder. Home is wider, way stranger than you think. Home is here, under your nose and feet. Writing is not overrated, nor is care. You chant and cultivate the miracle of your life, you take it out there, and move forward what you have to give to the world. I see you want to share the joy that I give you. Go do it. I’ll stay and watch from this wall in the empty study. I’ll hold the fort for you. Go send your letter out into the world.”

    Christine Renaudin’s writing has been published in various publications from The Sitting Room, as well as in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, available on Amazon in print and as an e-reader.

    Christine lives, writes, and paints in Petaluma. She is also a dancer and performs occasionally in the Bay Area—last seen on Halloween sweeping the entrance of the De Young Museum with a pride of witches. She likes to mix art forms, see what comes out, and share.

  • Fruit Tree

    By Camille Sherman

    I will plant a fruit tree and she will be my legacy. The neighborhood children will recognize her stature, her fullness, as a landmark. They’ll traipse over her fallen blossoms in the spring, ride past her on their bikes, see her from their windows. They will think she has been there forever, like the houses and street signs watching over their restless afternoons and summer evenings. They won’t know she was planted by someone who was once a child too. They will stand at her base and look up at her, thinking that she, like their mothers and fathers, has always been this tall.

    Camille Sherman is a professional opera singer from the Bay Area. She trained at The Boston Conservatory and the San Francisco Conservatory of music, and served as an Artist in Residence at Pensacola Opera and Portland Opera. She currently lives in Portland, where she continues to sing and develop projects with local artists.

  • Humor

    By Karen Handyside Ely

    When the day is dark

    humor will light my way.

     

    When the world crumbles

    humor will shore me up.

     

    Tears will flow, not from sorrow,

    but born of laugher.

     

    Nothing is so bad that

    humor cannot soften it.

     

    Nothing is so sacred that

    humor cannot humanize it.

     

    When the only way “through”

    is a walk of fire,

     

    humor will insulate my path.

    As long as we can laugh

     

    at the absurdities of life,

    we can persevere.

     

    Humor cannot change our challenges,

    but it can grease the skids,

     

    shepherd us along,

    help us to survive.

     

    I will face each day with humor and the grace it provides.

    As long as I can laugh, I can breathe.

     

    Humor is my lifeboat,

    my safe space,

     

    the fuel my soul runs on.

     

    Karen Handyside Ely

    Karen was born and raised in Petaluma, California. Upon graduating from UC Davis, she worked in San Francisco and New York City in corporate finance. After a 30-year career as a mom and “professional” volunteer in Scottsdale, AZ, Karen returned to her beloved hometown in Sonoma County.

    She delights in difficult crossword puzzles, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and traveling with  her husband (of 35 years) James.

    Karen has been published in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, The Write Spot: Reflections, The Write Spot: Possibilities, The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing, and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.  (all available on Amazon).

    “Humor” is featured in the newly published The Write Spot:Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, available at Amazon.

  • The Sound of Wind

    By Su Shafer

    The sound of wind is cold – gray waves, frigid and broken, 

    rushing up a Northern shore.

    It’s a hollow sound, like a flute without music.

    An echo undying. Emptiness longing to be filled.

    A mournful wail unanswered. The despairing lamentation 

    of invisible hands searching, sweeping ahead blindly.

    Dry leaves scuttle sideways like old crabs on stick legs.

    They rattle their empty claws at its passing,

    then lay still.

    Su Shafer is a creative writer and sometime poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest, where flannel shirts are acceptable as formal wear and strong coffee is a way of life. There, in a small Baba Yaga house perched near the entrance to The Hidden Forest, odd characters are brewing with the morning cup, and a strange new world is beginning to take shape . . .

  • A Life Not Unencumbered

    By Ken Delpit

    A life without encumbrances, now that would be something. Can there possibly be such a thing? Among mortal human beings, it is hard to see how. Living encourages encumbrances. Living entails encumbrances. To live is to be encumbered. Encumbrances are the baggage fees that we pay for our journey.

    Encumbrance-free living for most ordinary humans is a foreign concept. For some, it may be a distant dream. For many or most, though, it is beside the point. For these folks, navigating the encumbrances is what life is about. “Next,” as a primal motivating force. Where to go next, what to do next, what to think next.

    The trouble with navigating head-down from a mental map, however detailed or vague the map, is that it necessitates a removal of self from the process. You are not the observant traveler. You are the bus driver. You transport yourself here and there, mentally as well as physically. You check boxes in your mind as “Done.” You relax when you’ve accomplished something, but just for a couple of seconds. Then, you close the bus doors and it’s on to the next stop.

    Periodically, we celebrate people who have taken a different path. Gandhi, Thoreau, Buddha, Jesus, they speak to us of shedding encumbrances. They advocate not just leaving the luggage behind, but not even packing in the first place. They teach us to trust what is within. They preach that the self is wise, if only we would listen.

    I’ll have to take their word for it. I’ll think about all of this later. Meanwhile, I’ve got a hundred things to do before 4:00 o’clock.

    Ken Delpit has been writing for quite a while, that is if you count computer programming and technical documentation as “writing.” Since leaving those professions behind, Ken has discovered an exciting new world of creative writing. He is now giddily exploring new devices, such as adjectives, subtlety, mystery, and humans with emotions and feelings.

  • Blessings

    By Cheryl Moore

    Despite the pandemic, despite the looming drought, despite the growing tensions in the world—we are living in a wonderful time.

    On clear mornings, I see the warm pink in the eastern sky where the sun is about to rise.

    This time of year, April, it rises between two tall palms across the street—in June it will rise behind Sonoma Mountain.

    This is the most beautiful time in the garden —leaves on trees just breaking open, giving a lacy feel against the blue skies. Rose buds are opening and iris unfolding on their tall stalks.

    California poppies are everywhere and fields are full of mustard.

    Bird song fills the air as males find mates and begin nest building. Soon there will be small yellow ducklings trailing their parents down at the river and fishermen will sit on the bank to see what the incoming tide will bring.

     Besides a cozy house and garden, I have good health, enough funds, and loving family and friends—so many blessings. I cherish them all.

    Cheryl Moore grew up in the Midwest then lived in San Francisco to finish high school and attend college where she studied biology. During the late sixties and into the mid-seventies she lived first in Sweden for a year, then for four years in Iran where she served as librarian in a small research library for wildlife biologists.

    Nature and science have always been among her interests. Since returning to the U.S., she has lived in Petaluma and has dabbled in writing stories. Since retiring from employment at Sonoma State University, she has taken up painting

  • Waking Up on a Spring Morning

    By Deb Fenwick

    On spring mornings, after a long brittle winter, the truth is everywhere. It begins at dawn. Not that I wake up that early anymore. These days, I sleep until the sun is high in the warm sky.

    But I remember thirty years of sunrise drives—drives where a glowing, golden-pink ribbon stretched languidly across Lake Michigan. Like it had all the time in the world. Unhurried. Unlike me.

    The sky had no need to rush to work. To meet deadlines. To prove its worth. From the driver’s seat, I watched the morning clouds, dumbstruck some days, because they seemed to delight in their own essence. Those early morning skies seemed, somehow, to speak to something truer than the life I was living at the time.

    In those days, I didn’t have time for walks where I watched the earth wake up to its magnificent self. The glory song of forsythia bursting into bloom was muted. Of course, there were hyacinths, tulips, and spring snowdrops emerging—calling my name, beckoning me to take pause. But I pretended not to hear them. Even though their joy was riotously loud, I played deaf. I was preoccupied with the slow-strangle-everyday crush of the mundane.

    Learning about the nature of truth and living the dharma is the work of a lifetime. Some say many lifetimes. We can choose a religious faith, a spiritual tradition, a guru, or a master teacher. Take your pick. We can obsess over finding the perfect prayer or the most meaningful mantra. We’re taught that we have to search for truth. We’re taught that it’s elusive and that unless we’re willing to renounce our worldly goods, shave our heads and check into a one-star monastery, we probably haven’t earned it. But the irony is, it’s everywhere once we decide to wake up on a spring morning. There’s an all-access VIP pass. It’s in our pulse. It’s in that redbud branch that’s blasting its neon pink blossoms into the breeze.

    The truth patiently whispered in my ear for many years. Then, it shouted. 

    These days, I sometimes see truth so real that it burns my eyes. Right now, there’s a blaze of life outside my window. Right now, the fragile, translucent petals of lemon yellow daffodils are exploding into spring sunshine. There’s wisteria on the wooden gate. It creeps slowly—just waiting to share its wild purple life force. The dogwood’s unfolding leaves are ever-so-patient in saying yes to the warmth of spring.

    Spring reminds meto say yes to this moment. This one. Right here, right now. Can you believe it? There’s a now. And it’s alive with possibility. What will you do with me? it asks, almost like a dare.

    Look away from your screen for a moment. Poof! That now? Gone. It only lives in the past. A new now, blank-slate opportunity is always being born. What good fortune!

    So for today, I promise to pay attention to my now—to listen to the truth of the sky. I say that in such a cavalier way, right? Like it’s easy. Like the grocery list and the laundry chores aren’t going to derail me. But when they inevitably do, I’ll remember to trust the now and the beauty of the sunrise. Even if I sleep right through it.

    Deb Fenwick is a Chicago-born writer who currently lives in Oak Park, Illinois. After spending nearly thirty years working as an arts educator, school program specialist, youth advocate, and public school administrator, she now finds herself with ample time to read books by her heroes and write every story that was patiently waiting to be told. When she’s not traveling with her heartthrob of a husband or dreaming up wildly impractical adventures with her intrepid, college-age daughter, you’ll find her out in the garden getting muddy with two little pups.

  • Hello, how ARE you?

    By Sharmila Rao

    Writing Prompt on The Isolation Journals: How ARE you?

    What happened yesterday evening motivated me to attempt this prompt. I dropped in to meet one of my friends whom I was seeing after a year because of the Covid protocols. She is a cancer survivor and I had gotten closer to her during this challenging journey of hers. We exchanged the usual pleasantries and she replied I am fine, Sharmila.

    I could see her eyes were saying something else though.

    As we got talking about the past year and how it has affected each one us, I told her of the many changes I have begun to incorporate in my life, one of them being giving due priority to myself—something I felt I had seriously lacked all my life.

    The moment I mentioned this to her I was taken aback by her soft almost immediate plea to guide her as to how she could go about this herself.

    Then, swearing me to secrecy she slowly revealed without a pause, the story of her married life and the issues she was facing.

    It seemed to me the fall out of having an insensitive husband and the typical vacuum she and many women face mostly around middle-age. They grapple, often unsuccessful, like she was, as the opposite party denies or lacks the need for empathetic communication.

    Clearly, she was anything but ‘fine.’

    As I walked home, I couldn’t help but ruminate over this. I stopped to ask myself how often had I been able to respond honestly to: Hello, how are you?

    As far as I can remember, only till I was living in childhood.

    I remembered how I was called, “The Happy child” in my family as I was always attuned to the many little wonders of the world around me. I am still sure fairies sit on toadstools!

    It did make me feel special but undeniably a trifle embarrassed, even at that time, for it felt like being singled out under a spotlight for being different.

    Life however took care of that. Sometimes it can work efficiently overtime at the wrong time and so it ensured I was quick to learn that nothing comes for free. And, happiness? Never.

    Lots of water has flowed under the bridge. I swam along mostly fighting against the current, sometimes out of breath and at times even thinking I would drown. I continued to wear the “I am fine” badge. After all that is what is expected of you: be courteous, be brave, be stoic, be mature. Be everything, but yourself.

    And me, the good student, carried on living in the classroom of life till I realized the truth: there were no prizes for the best performance.

    Behind the ‘I am fine’ mask it gets suffocating; the self begins to decay in layers of untruth. Whenever I tried to lift it, only a few people accepted what they saw.

    It reminds me of my father who was an eternal optimist. I remember all so clearly, when anyone greeted him with a regular ‘How are you, he would cheerfully reply, “Can’t grumble.”

    I never thought much about it then but as the years pass by and I find it increasingly difficult to answer, I find his two little words so relevant and imperative to adopt.

    More so in these strange new times when I see people around me who are suffering untold pain and for whom even the next meal is a battle. For us, India does offer a conscience check every so often, even on my daily evening walk.

    The next time around, the answer to “how are you” will be for myself.  A reassuring, Well I AM fine. After all, aren’t I?

    And, maybe just, on an especially grey day I need not hide behind ‘I am fine.’ I can be my true self to the ones who really care to see what lies beneath.

    These are the ones I keep.

    Sharmila Rao

    As a child my father led me into the enriching world of books and my relationship with them continues. I am Sharmila Rao and I live in Western India in Mumbai, a hot, noisy and crowded city, vibrant enough to make you want to live nowhere else.

    A background of Journalism and a degree in teaching the Physically Handicapped broadened my mind and sensitized me to the imperfection of life. 

    I chose to be a stay-at-home Mum and enjoy the growing years of my son. My empty nest is now lined with books (I love the smell of old hardbound ones) and I sit in its warmth embracing the beauty of words.