Memoir
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Memories Like Shooting Stars

A few days ago, I heard from my old friend, Jake. We last talked when we were high schoolers, probably in 1977, in the school cafeteria. We were part of a lunch bunch then, known among our classmates as The Family. Now, after all these years, Jake contacted me online. That made me smile. Texting with Continue reading
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Another ‘Bad Mother’ Memoir

As the daughter of a bad mother, I admit that I am drawn to memoirs in which a child dishes dirt on a parent. When I saw the title of Molly Jong-Fast’s recently published book How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir, I suspected that, like Jennette McCurdy in I’m Glad My Mother Died, Continue reading
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My Hillbilly Parents: Vignettes from a Someday (Maybe) Memoir

I didn’t know it when I was a child, but my father was what some people might call a hillbilly. Daddy was one of the many Wilsons from Cameron, West Virginia, south of Wheeling. One of the few of them who left their birthplace, he escaped the poverty and isolation of his mountain home to Continue reading
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Hands, Revisited

My thanks to Jeff Cann, whose Windows to My Soul inspired me to keep thinking aobut hands. ….. When I was a child, my father taught me that the height of a horse is measured in hands. He demonstrated on his own horse, Azure, placing his hand sidelong up the length from the hoof to Continue reading
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Am I Just Painting This Old Wagon Blue?

I don’t remember if I taught him the song or if he taught it to me. But one summer, Grandpap Swayne and I sang, Little red wagon painted blue…, as we played dominoes, painted by numbers, and watched cartoons on TV. When I was a child, Mother and I traveled from our home in Richmond, Virginia, to Continue reading
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Food Memories: Prose Poems with Homemade Images

1 According to one of our family legends, one winter during the Depression my maternal grandmother fed her nine children nothing but turnips. One of her uncles, a farmer, gave them to her, fearing that otherwise her family would starve. He’d grown them to feed to his pigs. As adults, all of her children vowed Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
