It’s Saturday - writing day in my world. (In between running errands and doing “mom” things like taking my daughter for her driver’s knowledge test this morning.) On top of that, it’s raining - and has been for two days - after a few days of record-high temperatures. Thirty degrees Celsius on May 3rd (a … Continue reading Today’s Playlist and Music For Piano by Alexina Louie
Snow, rain, snow again, rain.Chill silver air gusts, threatens.Clouds obscure mountains, mist shrouds the river.It is morning in April, grey and dreary. Rushing pattering raindrops on the windows.Warmed by coffee, I cocoon inside,resisting. The storm takes a breath, a lull in the wind.Listen, listen! says the silence. I listen.The birds, unbothered, have retreatedinside the tall … Continue reading Secret Joy
Yo-Yo Ma: Our Common Nature classical.music.apple.com/ca/playlist/pl.bc5b6e6ddc3b45a484899b065cb97e25 Have you tried the new Apple Music Classical app? I recently started using it and enjoy its specific categorization and recognition of the different eras and genres, composers, artists, and other criteria. Today was busy with chores and selling Girl Guide cookies with my unit. Afterwards, I walked to … Continue reading Today’s writing playlist
We know what kind of woman she is,wearing eyeliner and a suitand a new surname. Changed her name? We know what kind of woman she is. We know what kind of woman she is,a rabenmutter, workingwhile her children go to daycare. My wife knows her place. We raise our own children. We know what kind … Continue reading raven mother
I come from a teenage mother a blue-collar father a small mining town where they don’t know MBA-speak. I come from parents who split up on the wrong side of the tracks in a dirty home in the trailer park and I smelled like cigarettes. I come from love and contradiction shame and abandonment the … Continue reading Origin Story
A mother’s world consists of countless interruptions, smashing her thoughts back to reality, back to the spilled cranberry juice, a red puddle of accusation on the carpet. All attention, however fragmented, must be aimed at the child at hand, by the mother. Ideas fall away in a shower of glittering fragments, yet tiny moments of … Continue reading Treasure Chest
If I cross off all the days on the calendar that you weren’t here, whole months would be cast adrift into oceans of black ink. Disconnected, broken apart from the other months, only reachable by telephone. Hello? When will I see you again? My island is too far from shore to remember what you look … Continue reading Presence / Absence
A brief memoir of my childhood in the 1970's and early 1980's. All of us with Dad at Peckham's Lake, around 1986 or 1987. Photo by Mom. This must have been taken in early spring, judging from the snow pants and K-Ways. When I think about my early childhood I remember the long, sunny days … Continue reading Peckham’s Lake and Old Ugly
an excerpt from the novel-in-progress/story collection Jupiter Creek Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. – Proverbs 4:23 Present day The streetlamps of Jupiter Creek cast cold white globes of light into the night. They were strategically placed, so the artificial light showcased the public walkways and driveways of … Continue reading Edward Arrives
Jenny’s little sister Alicia went missing on Tuesday after school in 1984, but no one realized until bedtime. No one realized she was dead until late Wednesday afternoon when Mr. Berg found her body. It was an innocent time. Alicia was eight, with a Jack-o-Lantern grin, tangled golden hair, and loved to play outside for … Continue reading New White Keds
Gwen Higgins 