Yesterday, I accidentally found myself hiking the Appalachian Trail. How does one “accidentally” hike the Appalachian Trail? By hiking a trail that overlaps the A.T. for a short distance. Pleasant surprise! I’m here in western Massachusetts visiting relatives for the Easter holiday. Under Saturday’s brilliant sky, I went looking for a trail to hike. Decided […]
Posts in the Childhood category:
More Editing
Three days after creating my chapter and scene notecards, I’m making sense of my category and themes, ready to continue editing. The category is Coming of Age. The themes were not so obvious to me. However, when you simplify the contents of your childhood into a patchwork pattern on a table, suddenly the themes that […]
Editing Memoir
Editing memoir is a long slog. The first draft is easy. It’s bleed onto the page. Dance on the page. Sing on the page. Burn. Cry. Get angry. Pour it all out. Dig back to the beginning. Try to remember every last detail. Then the editing began. Editing is when the doubts creep in. Who […]
The Hunted
I was breathless. I darted barefoot across the length of my mother’s kitchen on the second floor of the creaky hundred-year-old farmhouse, bumping around chairs and pushing off the harsh edge of the table top as I cut a vee through the pungent scent of the morning’s coffee and burnt toast. The chilly floor was […]
Babci and Me. Courage.
My babci (grandmother), Róża, was only seventeen when she boarded the train to Antwerp—alone— near Kolno, in northeast Poland. It was December 1911, three years shy of the turmoil of World War I. Stars sparkled in the moonlight on the coarse crust of the deep frozen snow and young Róża drew her cheap coat closer […]
Two Birthdays
This is a re-write of my earlier chapter “I Am Born”. Two Birthdays It was a few days before Memorial Day 1929, the last week in May. My maternal grandparents were out on the town, partying in the rumble seat of their best friends’ Buick Coupe. Mémère loved to dance and sing, personifying the quintessential […]
The Swimming Lessons
It’s the August full moon of midsummer, a time which always brings back memories of summer Sundays at my grandparents’ cottage on a lake in Massachusetts. By 4th of July, the hand-dug well on our farm had always gone dry so baths and shampoos were out of the question. As a substitute for Saturday nights […]