Dear Writing Circle Friends,
Spring is just around the corner and our new collection is a perfect companion to welcoming it forth! We’ve combined several selections from our November and February circles (missed December due to inclement weather.) In November we wrote about the Return to Silence and in February, Enduring Love. The themes partner-up so well, a delightful albeit unplanned outcome. We hope you will enjoy our offerings.
As we leave one season to enter into the next, may we walk in gratitude for all we’ve experienced and find the gifts in each moment – in the exciting and the mundane, through the heartbreaks and the exuberances. “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.” St. Claire of Assisi.
With gratitude to Marge Dukes, Sue Edmondson, Kathy Herald Marlowe, Michael Marlowe, Janet Maulbeck, and Maureen West for your generous sharing. And to all our friends – please remember you are always invited to share your writings should a particular theme speak to you. Whether you join us in person or from afar, prior writing experience is not necessary. We hope to ‘see’ you in the circle!
Warm Regards and Happy Spring,
Lorri and the Writing Circle
March 2018
A Poem Comes
By Margaret A. Dukes
I passed a field of new mown hay
On this – a beautiful summer day
I stopped my car and turned around
I had to contemplate what I had found
The beauty of driving past an open field
With a view of the sky
– my soul unsealed.
I stopped my car –
took out my phone
soon I was not – all alone
Another driver could not resist – we took our pictures –
then I wished and wished
You all had been here with me
to share a Dickinson reverie-
“To make a prairie it takes a clover
and a bee and reverie- the reverie alone will do
if bees are few.”
Silence
By Sue Edmondson
Silence is golden the saying goes. The mother’s silence about her daughter was for many years kept in the dark, so deep and so quiet.
It was twenty or so years ago, when a person comes to the daughter and says:
“Your mom told me how a doctor told her at your birth
Your daughter will never hold her head straight
Your daughter will never walk well
Your daughter’s speech will be slurred and her hearing will not develop very well.”
All because she was breached and pulled out headfirst.
Yet today the daughter, whose mother was given the devastating news of doom for her daughter, is now blessed to have the faculties of her body in near perfect condition.
That daughter’s name is Sue.
And, now my silence has been broken and now I feel with gladness a joy to be blessed in this life of mine.
Stories
By Lorri Lizza
Silence in the face of abuse
Demands release
Courage gives birth to voice
Planting stepping-stones along the way
So others may walk more easily
Aged granite fountains and beautiful stone benches
Provide rest and strength
Along this pathway of rebirth and recovery
Returning long last to the silence
Pristine and pure as the fresh snowfall
Once the stories have been told
When I Count my Blessings
By Maureen West
There is a power greater than myself. I need look no further.
In my dreams, there is hope, promise and redemption.
With age comes wisdom, trying things on – see if they fit.
Gently discarding if not right.
In nature, late afternoon, watching the foxes running through the snow,
looking for dinner. They don’t go to Shop Rite.
Knowing that the Super Blue Moon is there, even if I don’t see it.
Mornings, there is earlier light, 7 am and creeping to longer days.
Memories of my mother and I dancing in my early teens. It brought us great joy, made me giggle. She had a remarkable spirit, always ready to celebrate.
God’s enduring love is forever, always with us.
Small Cups
By Janet Maulbeck
I remember how you would take an avocado pit and dry it out to plant
It amazed me how, by what seemed to be a miracle, it would become a living thing
How many of your small actions stay with me.
The lessons of the heart are the lessons of a life time.
You were my teacher
Even in your mis-takes and mis-steps, you were teaching me
No meek player were you in the game of life.
Often, I saw you do this trick –
where are a small woman could make herself 10 times her size
A giantess, a Lioness of love there to protect her cubs.
But it was mostly in the small movements that the lessons came.
Good morning to you – a song to the tune of happy birthday
and accompanied by a cup of tea.
Or a small silver Christmas tree transformed into a valentine blossoming with hearts.
Even through a cloud of sorrows
you were the queen of hearts
Serving up love in small cups
But you were the vessel.
Valentine Poem
By Margaret A. Dukes
It doesn’t take the fastest route
it often misses the most scenic
Google maps doesn’t help it.
It travels on the clearer roads
of honest communication,
avoids one-way streets,
takes wrong turns
then yields the right of way.
Derailed on its worst days
it goes beyond any temporary anger,
impatience, unkind words, mistakes,
and misunderstandings,
the transportation of love
endures
after the last stop.
Love’s “Lost and Found”
The Mystery of the Missing Cardigan
By Lorri Lizza
Lately things have gone missing: gold-toned wristwatch with a white face and bold black numerals for easy viewing, navy blue Vera Bradley shoulder bag (very smart-looking), bright teal blue windbreaker with hood, brand new soft brown cardigan sweater with white pearl buttons (so pretty, I’d wear it myself.)
Over the five years since my mother joined her assisted living community, items she “lost” always turned up. Eventually. She of Olympic-status hiding abilities squirreled things away guaranteeing mere mortals like her daughters and her aides could never, ever find them. I’ve been on my hands and knees in her room for hours (well, maybe one hour) looking in every conceivable place. Then, days later on my next visit, whatever had been lost would be back. The watch would be on her wrist, all anguish forgotten; the navy purse would be swinging gaily from the handles of her walker.
So we settled into this comforting pattern. Until like most patterns it changed. Months passed and the list of the lost items grew instead of diminishing. Nothing turned up. I didn’t mind the watch so much and even managed to make peace with losing that classic navy blue bag. But when it came to the cardigan sweater, which I’d been so very pleased to find for her, well that was really hard to brush off. After all, it was brand new and those pearl buttons . . . honestly it reminded me of something Greer Garson would have worn.
Then last Tuesday as I entered the building, the Executive Director, nabbed me at the front door. “Great news,” Donna said. “We solved the mystery of the missing sweater, watch and coat! It turns out your mother is a very generous woman.” Donna went on to explain that she and the staff noticed a new pattern. When Mom had something another resident admired, they caught Mom giving it away! “You take it; you take it,” Mom would insist. And so the cardigan sweater had lived awhile in her neighbor’s closet, along with the watch and windbreaker. Never really missing, just lent out. I was thrilled.
Now as I sit here mulling over our theme about Enduring Love – which is a bit redundant because, after all, isn’t all real love enduring – I think about this episode with Mom. I easily imagine her passing along her wrist watch (or sweater) to her lady friend, as they watch “Mrs. Miniver” in the living room, side-by-side in the quiet afternoon hours. “You take it. You take it.” And I realize, love is like this – never truly lost, always lending itself out, always allowing itself to be found.
We Will Miss Her Smile
By Kathy Herald Marlowe
Photo by Michael Marlowe
What do we say of Pretty Girl Miss Molly
Who left us today
Betty Grable legs, pure white stockings,
Brilliantly bright as gold,
Brimmed with happy, filled with bold
Playful Girl Miss Molly
Leaping like a dolphin in winter’s deepest snows
Puttering in the Brook on a summer’s day
With her Berner buds romping across grasses
In stick-locked endless dashes
Protective Girl Miss Molly
Voicing with imperial weight
Stern warning to all afoot or biking
On her family’s Keeler way
“Don’t you here dither, dally, or delay”
Sassy Girl Miss Molly
Of whom wary tales are told
To pups, to lads fully grown
Tread her spaces at your own loss
For here, indisputably, Miss Molly is boss
Ten Years Our Miss Molly
Shared her days, nights and seasons
Warming our hearts, feet, and bodies at rest
Erupting in joy at our return
Clear about the treats & the cuddles she’d earned
Age came today taking our Miss Molly
Having robbed her slowly of spring and pop
Age couldn’t mar or extinguish her delight
In living and loving
We will miss her smile
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