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Down Wedding Memory Lane

I’ve just arrived home from my niece’s wedding in Utah, where the bride and groom spoke of their love for each other under pine-scented air with majestic  mountains all around us. There were small touches the crowd couldn’t see, such as the tiny framed photos attached to the wedding attendents’ flowers of the grandparents’ marriages, three of them having passed away before this grand day.

This touching celebration made me flashback to her youth and my son’s, their escapades in the sandbox, water rocket bottle launches, Marco Polo water games in the pool. 

Then I flashed back to my own wedding, which didn’t flow as smoothly as this one.   Mine began on a sweltering June day in Fresno (111 degrees)  with the cake lady calling to report the frosting wouldn’t stick on the cake.  What should she do?  Maybe I shouldn’t have saved quite so much money after all, and gone with a professional baker . . . Next, after seeing the priest briefly at the church, my friend who played the piano, asked when she should begin. 

“The wedding starts at ten, so begin at ten,” I said.  Hey.  I’m from the Midwest.  We are prompt.  What I didn’t know is that California time begins much later than universal time. 

The music began and so did we.  And there we stood, at the altar, waiting for the priest to appear.  We waited.  And waited.  Where was he?  In the bathroom?  Ten minutes slowly ticked by.  We thought we’d have to get a friend to be a stand-in when he finally rushed on to the scene.

My Uncle Arnold, a sign-painter by trade, couldn’t travel to the wedding, but he made us a lovely sign which we put in the back of our car’s window.  After the ceremony and on the way to the reception across town, the sign fell down.  At a stoplight, a friend in the car next to us, opened my door to our two-seater car, pushed my seat forward, and leaned over to straighten the sign.  The light turned green and he slammed the door shut.  Problem was, I held on to the door’s frame when he pushed me forward. 

He jumped back into his car before he noticed my hand protruding outside the closed-door, and me with my mouth open, uttering sounds.

“What’s wrong?” asked my new husband.

“Uh, ug, uh,” I said which I thought were intelligible words. 

I cradled my swollen hand and refused the idea of an emergency room visit.  Fortunately, one of my bridesmaids was a nurse and knew my hand wasn’t broken, just bruised.  All the pictures show me with one hand behind my back.

The best man was so nervous he spilled wine on my dress twice – – red and white.  He shook so much before the wedding I promised him he wouldn’t be the one married that day.

And our photographer friend, employed by a newspaper, used different film he had never used before.  Only one photo came out that day.  Fortunately, we had other friends taking pictures so we did have some for our scrapbook.   And we did have memories, didn’t we?  Fortunately, compared to the wedding, the marriage has been a piece of cake. 

Writing Prompts:

1.  Write about a major celebration in your life.  What memories made lasting impressions upon you?  Others?

2.  Using a character from a current writing project, create a wedding scene.  Throw in a major or minor conflict.  What happens?  Make your reader cry or laugh or both.

3.  Use the theme of a wedding to create a poem, song or another work of art. 

4.  Write about your wedding or a wedding you have attended.  What made an impression upon you?

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This morning I learned a young acquaintance of ours ended his life this week.  Stunned, I stood in silence, images of the man and our dealings with him reeling through my thoughts like a movie.

Cheerful.  Giving.  Resourceful.   Three descriptions that come to mind when I think of him. 

As my neighbor  and I walked our morning trail, she said, “Don’t people realize the blues pass?”

“But depression isn’t just feeling down,” I said.  “It’s more all-encompassing.  I know because my uncle suffered it all of his life.”

Memories of his battle  floated to the present.  I knew he took pills which gave him side effects that weren’t pleasant.  So he got off the pills and would be all right for a while until he slid into the depths of misery again.

“And what about his mother?  Didn’t he think of her?  She had to find him,” said my neighbor of the young man’s suicide.

I nodded.  “But he wasn’t thinking about her, he was so inside his own pain and grief.” 

It’s another one of those what if stories.  What if you could have stopped him in time?  What if you hadn’t left? 

Modern medicine has come so far . . .  and yet it hasn’t. 

Writing Prompts:

1.  Writing can be cathartic.  Is there a memory you have been suppressing?  Writing about an emotional pain may bring relief.  Try it and see if it can help you.

2.  Write a poem, song, essay or story in honor of someone you know who has faced a battle – – either emotional or physical.  What do you admire about this person?  Why?

3.  Create a piece of art expressing a mood you are in right now.  You choose the form and style.

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Your Lucky Break

I read Anna Quindlen’s lovely memoir, Lots of Candles Plenty of Cake and paused at her question, “Do all of us, by the time we’re grown-ups, have something that was our signal lucky break?”

Thinking back, I can construct a time-line of lucky breaks, but I don’t really believe in luck.  I believe everything happens for a reason, both “lucky” and “unlucky.”  If it’s not something we desire, perhaps we learn more from those stages in our lives?

But no matter what my philosophy is, there are moments for everyone that there is a click . . . everything comes together perfectly.  Whether it is in a career, level of creativity, knowledge, or a special relationship that changes a life forever, it is a break. 

Writing Prompts:

1.  Answer Anna Quindlen’s question through a personal narrative, poem, song or another work of art. 

2.  Create a time-line of creative learning experiences you’ve had in your life.  Choose one to express with an essay.

3.   What about the characters in your most recent project?  What have been their lucky breaks?  Create scenes about theirs.  What about their unlucky ones?  How have they dealt with these?  Favorably?  Unfavorably?  Show their character’s growth or weaknesses through these scenes.

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Writing About Your Life . . . Will it Harm Others?

Are you interested in writing episodes of your life?  Working on a memoir?  Personal narratives? 

You must be willing to be honest.  What do you owe the other people in your life who will make appearances in your scenes? 

At the moment, I’m writing about how my life intersects with others.  As I read my aunt’s diary for research, one line changes everything. 

Do I include this in my story?  If I do, it alters perceptions. 

I pause.  It is true the people in my narrative have passed on.  But I do not want to cause hurt to anyone on this side or the other.

Yes, it is important to the storyline. 

But. 

We must choose our words carefully in our daily life and in our writing. 

Crash!  A dove has just flown into my office window.   The universe has sent me a message. 

Writing prompt:

Choose a moment from your life that has emotional meaning for you.  It can be funny or sad, small or large.  Write the scene using sensory description, dialogue, setting and your feelings.  Set it aside for a few days and then come back to it.  Can you recall any other details you may have left out that are important to the story?  Do you have a journal  you can check which may refresh your memory?  Anyone that was there who might provide insights to the moment in time?

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Funny but true: Wedding Snafu

Yesterday, my husband drove us in the car to complete errands, windows cracked open a few inches to allow the cool breeze inside. My right hand rested outside on the window frame. As the car picked up speed, it got a bit breezy for Bob, so he hit the power button window on his door. Only he hit the other button. It closed my window.

Zzzzt. The sound made me react immediately. I pulled in my hand so fast Bob whipped his eyes from the road.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“You pushed the wrong one. My hand was out there!”

“Oh, sorry,” he said, searching for the right switch.

Memories flooded back to our wedding day. My Uncle Arnold had painted a JUST MARRIED sign which we placed in the back window of our car. After the church service, on the way to the reception, a friend pulled up next to us at a stop light.

Mike had noticed our fallen sign. He opened the passenger door of our two-seater car, shoved my seat forward, forcing me nearly into the dashboard. I gripped the door frame for balance. Mike straightened the sign as the light turned green. He threw my seat back, and slammed the door. Mike jumped back into his own car. 

My husband was about to take off when he saw my face.

“Uh, bluh, glug . . .” sounds emitted from my mouth. They were sort of a sob/scream/gurgle. For once, pain made me speechless.

“What’s the matter?” my new husband asked. “

Uh, bluh, glug . . .” I clearly articulated.

Fortunately, our friends in Mike’s car saw my protruding fingers; Mike leaped out of the car to save them.

After I refused to go to the hospital, we raced to the reception hall where one of my bridesmaids, a nurse, assured me my hand was just badly bruised and nothing was broken. I kept an ice bag on my swollen hand for the rest of the day.

That wasn’t the only mishap of our wedding day, June 20, 1981 in Fresno, CA. It was 110 degrees, and I remember wondering if everyone in church could actually see the beads of sweat rolling down my back.

Before the church service, when my friend Carol, the pianist, asked me what time she should start playing the entrance music, I knew the answer. Being from a prompt Midwestern family, when something starts at ten a.m., it STARTS AT TEN A.M.

Carol played our cue at ten o’clock sharp. We made our way down the aisle.

We waited.

And waited.

The minutes ticked by.

Bob and I exchanged nervous glances. Where was the priest? Did he get an urgent call from nature? A rich, talkative parishioner stop by with an offer for a donation? Did the priest get cold feet?

Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably ten minutes, Father appeared, upset we started without him.

Obviously, he wasn’t from the Midwest.

Writing Prompts:

1. When has a sound motivated an action? By you? By a character?

2. Write a scene where a sound plays an important role in saving someone from emotional or physical pain.

3. Familiar scenes can trigger memories from long ago. Write a scene for a character which triggers a memory that is important to your character.

4. Write an important scene in your character’s life and have things go wrong. How does your character handle it? Throw obstacles in his/her way. First make the scene painful. Next, make it funny!

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California Writer Club Young Writers Contest – Check your newspaper THIS WEEK for the photo and article about the Young Writers Contest Banquet.  Jacquie Oliverius writes YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD and it’s in her column TODAY in the Pleasant Hill/Martinez Record.   Thank you Jacquie for letting me know!

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Hot Button Memories

While choosing fresh vegetables at a farmer’s market, I wandered upon an unusual jewelry display.  A woman had fashioned bracelets and rings out of old buttons that acted as a door to decades in the past. 

“Wow!  I can see this on a 1940s coat,” I said, examining a large green button. 

The woman at the booth pointed to a pink button on a bracelet that jangled at her wrist.  “I remember the exact housedress my mother wore,” she said. 

Just the other day when I rummaged around in my closet I came upon a box of buttons my mother had given us. When my son was little he loved playing with those buttons.  Now it was my turn to treasure them.  “If I gave you some buttons will you make me. . .”

“Sure!  People do it all the time,” she answered. 

I couldn’t wait to get home.  Digging out the button box, I felt like a kid, spreading the buttons on the table, sorting them into colors.  Sadly, I didn’t have any concrete memories of the outfits they had been attached to.

Until one flipped over.  There!  Black and white material, still on the button!   An image of my mother wearing the white and black dress she had made, her trim figure standing with her enviable posture next to me in church, with a little black veil on her head.  Or if we had forgotten our veils, we’d attach a piece of Kleenex with a bobby pin.

Of course, that day at the farmers market I walked out of there with a $15 bracelet, and a longing to come back with my very own buttons. 

Writing prompts:

  1. Find an object of your past that brings a flash of an old memory for you.  Write about that memory.  Can you recreate a scene? 
  2. Choose a button or a piece of clothing.  Let it take you back to a memory.  Write about it as if it were today.  Then change it slightly and make it fiction.  What could have happened?  You can star in this yourself, or create a completely new character. 
  3. Interview a member of your family about a special piece of clothing.  What was their favorite thing they EVER wore?  Why?
  4. Write about your favorite piece of clothing.  What makes it special?  Using details, describe what it looks like and how it makes you feel when you wear it.
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Young Writers

On Saturday,  May 21, the California Writers Club, Mt. Diablo Branch held it’s annual Young Writers Contest Banquet at Zio Fraedo’s Restaurant in Pleasant Hill.  The twenty-seven award-winning students along with their teachers, family and friends were invited to eat the delicious banquet Tony and his efficient staff prepared, receive their cash, and their lovely awards created by Joanne Brown.

Guest speaker editorial agent and former Tricycle editor Abigail Samoun spoke about actually being an editor.  To the threatening sounds of  the music known from JAWS, we saw on the screen before us an actual room filled with slush pile manuscripts. (Yes, we WERE frightened!  We could have gotten smothered by those stacks of large manilla envelopes!)  The young writers discovered that slush refers to  manuscripts sent to the publisher without an agent.    The audience learned how busy editors really are, and found out it can take years for a manuscript to turn into an actual book and appear on bookstore or library shelves.

Congratulations to all of the winners of this contest, and to everyone who took the big step and risk of putting pen to paper and writing.  Each time you bare your soul on paper, it is a risk.  You are brave!   Congratulations to everyone who entered the contest.  Each time you do something brave like this, you learn and grow.  We hope if you are a Contra Costa middle school student next fall, you will enter your short stories, poems, and personal narratives again.  It doesn’t cost anything but the postage.  And you can start writing this summer!  Hope to see you at our FREE July 27 writing workshop at the Clayton Public Library!

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On Tuesday, May 24, I visited Mrs. Laird’s fourth grade classroom and the students impressed me with their intelligent questions, comments and ease at writing.  The moment Mrs. Laird turned on classical music, the kids’ pens hit their paper and didn’t stop moving until the music came to an end. 

Wow!  Very cool!  Most classrooms I visit today don’t have time for writing, and when I ask them to pick up their pen to write, kids are plain stumped.  “How shall I begin?”  they may ask.  “What if I spell something wrong?”  They don’t realize that first drafts are the place to make spelling mistakes!  It’s okay!  It’s fine to be messy or to make a punctuation error.  In a first draft, you just want to WRITE! 

I was very proud of how well this class wrote, and how eager they were to share their writing.  It was wonderful how they included their personal thoughts and feelings in their words. 

At one point in my talk, I mention an author I interviewed for my book, The ABCs of Writing for Children.  Jane Yolen likes to say BIC is the most important rule for being a writer.  I agree!  What did the kids think BIC stood for?  They talked with partners and came up with some possibilities:

Brain in classroom

Butt in conversation         (Hmm.  This could be a funny story, but I’d hate to assign it . . .)

Butt idea chair

And finally, one group got the answer Jane came up with:  Butt in chair! 

How can you be a writer?  Sit down and write!  Turn off all of the distractions in your life and pay attention to the sounds in your head!  Write your thoughts, feelings, senses, and memories.  Create characters, stories, poems and combine them with art if you can.  Let your imagination run wild!  But you can’t do that if you don’t take time. Sit. Let you mind wander and pick up a pen.   

As one student told Mrs. Laird, “Now that Liz came to our school, I know what to write:  moments from our lives.” 

They don’t have to be big moments.  Some of the best writing can be a small detail that makes all the difference in your world.

Writing Prompts:

1.  Write about one small (or big) thing that happened today to make you smile.

2.  Take out the last story or piece that you wrote.  Now add a sensory description.  Is there a sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell you can add that will give your piece more depth and make the reader feel like he or she was really there?  Can you add more than one?

3.  Recently, I posted a photo of a gopher that my husband took onto an online sharing site. I thought a couple of people might think it was cute.  Twenty-five people began a discussion about it! Who knew so many people could talk so much about a little gopher?  Something so un-important became a heated discussion!  Write a conversation where you say one little thing and suddenly people react in ways you’d never imagine!

4.  Keep a diary/journal for one week.  You don’t have to write everything that happens to you.  Just choose one thing each day that you want to write about. What will you choose?  Whatever you choose, make the reader feel like he or she is right with you by writing your thoughts, feelings, and a sensory description.  You can even put in some dialogue!

5.  Write about an animal you have met or known.  Make that animal come alive!  Describe it.  Make it move.  How did it make you feel?

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Wimpy Kid Contest, California Writers Club Young Writers Contest Banquet, and Pleasant Hill History Contest

Enter the Wimpy Kid Contest!   $500 for you and $1000 for your library!

Deadline is June 10, 2011  For more information and guidelines, visit:

http://wimpykid.com/contest/

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Remember:    This Saturday, May 21, is the California Writers Club, Mt. Diablo Branch’s Young Writers Contest Banquet which will be held at Zio Fraedo’s Restaurant in Pleasant Hill. 

    • As we’ll have many guests, REGISTRATION WILL OPEN AT 11:00 AM, a half hour earlier than our regular 11:30 schedule.
    • To acknowledge this special event, the cost per guest is reduced to $20 per person, the equivalent of our regular member rate.
      • Sign-in:  11:00 a.m. – noon; Buffet Lunch
      • Presentation follows
      • Zio Fraedo’s Restaurant, 611 Gregory Lane, Pleasant Hill, CA, 94523

      About Abigail Samoun

      Abi has worked in children’s publishing for over a decade. During that time she’s edited board books, picture books, middle-grade novels, and early young-adult novels for Tricycle Press, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Little, Brown. Her books have received numerous honors including a CCBC Charlotte Zolotow award, an SCBWI Golden Kite, a Pura Belpre Honor, a Smithsonian Notable, and a New York Public Library Ezra Jack Keats award.

      Abigail also edited the middle grade series Edgar & Ellen which has sold over a quarter of a million copies worldwide and inspired a cartoon series on Nickelodeon. She has just launched a brand-new children’s literary agency with agent extraordinaire Karen Grencik.

      For YOUR reservation, please send an e-mail to Joanne Brown.  [email protected]  by noon May 18.  Seating is limited. 

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    • Pleasant Hill History Writing Contest
    • More information will be posted here this summer, but in honor of Pleasant Hill, California’s 50th anniversary as a city, there will be a middle school writing contest with $ awards $ for essays about living in Pleasant Hill.  Students may research and interview people to discover the rich history of Pleasant Hill. 
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Writing From Your Own Life

You may not realize it, but as you live your daily life, you are creating memories, details and history that is invaluable for you, for other writers, researchers and historians.

I wish I had kept a diary as a teenager.  Not one where I wrote every thing I did every day, but one where I jotted down important feelings that moved me.  What did someone say that hurt my feelings?  What did someone do that made me feel great?  What were the details about school that I loved?  What were the ones that made my stomach turn?

My father and his brothers and sisters kept journals.  They are tiny little books with itty-bitty lines.  For instance, during one of the most horrifying times of their lives, when their brother Leo became ill with what they later learned was an infected appendix, words in the diary reflect this:

“Leo sick.”

“Leo worse.”

“Doctor called.”

“Leo’s operation. ”

“Leo died.”

No thoughts, or feelings of sadness or grief, or shock.   Since there were no antibiotics in 1925, after Leo’s surgery on the kitchen table in their farm house, Leo lingered a few days and then passed away at home.   His body was in a casket in the parlour, as was customary at that time, where a rosary was said before the funeral service in the nearby Catholic church. 

But none of this was in any of the Koehler’s diaries.  Just the facts.  Midwestern Catholic German farmers were stoic; they shed tears but they moved on.    My aunt told me she remembered her mother placing her head on the kitchen table and silently crying.  Then she wiped her eyes and finished her farm chores. 

I asked dad as a youngster, was he ever afraid of the dead bodies which were in their living rooms?  He shook his head no.  Death was so much a part of life.

Or perhaps he was afraid but just no longer remembered those feelings of so long ago?

Over the years, life has changed.  Feelings and thoughts are expressed more freely.   Reading about a character’s thoughts and feelings help the reader identify with the character. 

So take a moment in your busy life and express your feelings now and then on paper.  It may help you in your own writing.

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Last night as I drove in darkness along a city street,  two bright lights attached to a large vehicle turned directly into MY lane. 

Holy hot fudge.  My foot slammed onto the break.

Unwavering, the lights barreled forward, without slowing in momentum. 

At my right, pedestrians walked.  On my left, cars whizzed by.   A head-on collision flashed before my eyes. 

What was this driver thinking?  Was he drunk?  Drugged?  Confused? 

I leaned on the horn. 

At the very last second possible, he turned into a driveway to his left leading to a church. 

I gasped.  Weakness spread me; my arms felt as though I could barely hold the steering wheel. 

He saved himself a few minutes of waiting in traffic by driving on the wrong way of the street at night, in order to sneak into the church parking lot.   If I hadn’t been paying close enough attention and braked I wouldn’t be writing this blog right now. 

Writing Prompts:

1.  As writers and readers and people of the universe, we need to pay attention to everything.  Write about a time in your life where someone wasn’t paying close attention to their surroundings. 

2.  Write about a time where you weren’t paying close attention to what was happening to you or others around you. 

3.  Take 15 minutes of your day to practice “slow-down-the-moment.”  Pay attention to every sense you experience.  Walk outside into nature.  What scent do you smell?  How can you describe it with words on paper?  What do you see?  Hear? How does your skin feel in the weather at that moment?  Touch tree bark, a plant, an animal or an object.  How does the texture feel? 

4.  Practice gratitude.  At the end of each day, think of three things you are grateful for in that very day.  Had a lousy time of it today?  Then think small.  Did your breakfast cereal have a good crunch?  Your teacher or friend give you a smile?  Or think big.  You had breakfast, unlike many homeless people.  Write about the act of gratitude in a poem.

5.  Ever have a heart-thumping life-threatening moment?  Write about it or them in detail.  Show how it made you feel.  And make this moment a learning experience.  How can it help you in your every day life?

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