Tag: family (Page 1 of 3)

Everything You’ve Ever Loved

1 April 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Robin Greene

Forty years have passed, and this morning you find yourself
alone at sunrise—red and orange overtaking the forested
mountain in front of you, as you sit there, as early light
opens the day, turning it into something mutable.

Most of your life is behind you, but sitting there
on that old wicker chair, you hear a mourning dove’s
coo from a distant tree as a murder of black crows
sweeps the sky. Only then, you remember the midwife

lifting your firstborn from your body—his initial cry marking
the next two decades of your life—a life now almost over.
Then, you’re at a hospital, hearing your mother’s labored
breathing as she lies there, covered in white blankets,

mouth open, eyes closed, and you encourage her release.
Forty years dissolve into weightless memory on this chair,
as you realize that everything you’ve ever loved will leave you,
and that the cooing of the mourning dove is not so premature.

Robin Greene is a former English professor and current part-time yoga and writing instructor, living in NC. She’s published five books: Real Birth: Women Share Their Stories (nonfiction Kindle bestseller); A Shelf Life of Fire (novel); Lateral Drift (poetry); Memories of Light (poetry); and Augustus: Narrative of a Slave Woman (novel).

Image of author as young girl — Photo courtesy of author

Lucky Girl

1 April 2024 / Editor

Nonfiction by Carol E. Anderson

It’s 1950. I’m three years old, standing in our backyard next to a patch of wildflowers as tall as I am. My tiny right fist peaks out from the sleeve of my oversized double-breasted coat with crisscrossing lapels. Chubby knees extend into sturdy legs that lead to small feet housed in white anklet socks and polished white tennis shoes. Whisps of blonde hair flow back in the wind. My bangs, short and choppy, look like I took the shears to them myself. Atop my head is a tiny woolen cap.

My face is turned up. Eyes squint as I smile at my mom with the camera—my gleeful expression punctuated by a slight suggestion of a dimple in my left cheek. I’m anticipating something wonderful. The zoo? The circus? A birthday party?

I’m unaware that by the end of my fifth year, my father will suffer a visual disability wrought by incompetent doctors. He will never work again. My mother, a secretary, will numb her fingers typing away in a tiny cubicle to support our family, working for a boss half as smart as she. I will wish her to be like all the other moms and stay at home, fix me snacks after school, and teach me how to ride a bike. My brother will withdraw into a world of thoughts and books. We will never be friends.

Standing on the lawn in my miniature peacoat, I don’t realize that by the time I’m fifteen, I’ll be rejected by the Baptist church for loving a woman. I’ll begin to understand the word hypocrite. I’ll believe my parents’ teachings of love, kindness, generosity, and fairness are principles everyone strives to live by—tenets issued by God. I won’t know these tenets have exclusionary clauses invisible to innocent eyes, that I will witness Christian fundamentalism grow in twisted power and gird its flocks to act with naked cruelty on the belief that difference is a sin.

I don’t realize that at the age of twenty-one, I’ll be outed by my college classmates, introducing terror into my daily life. I’ll be astonished that all my efforts to guard this secret are as useless as a sheet of transparent tissue paper.

I am unaware that at age twenty-six, in my attempt to be straight, my boyfriend will dump me on our six-week road trip to be with a woman he met at his brother’s wedding the week before—and he will not repay the $800 he owes me.

Looking up at the camera without knowledge of the need for hope, I don’t know that my father will die one month before my twenty-eighth birthday, and that I’ll survive—that I will remain wrapped in the shimmering cords of his love even decades after he’s gone.

I am unaware that at age thirty-two I’ll start my own business as an organizational consultant and will coach leaders to inspire people rather than control them—that this work will help me understand the complexity of human beings, and their scars.

I don’t know that on my fiftieth birthday I’ll start a non-profit called Rebellious Dreamers to lift up women to reclaim their dreams—that it will last twenty-five years and eventually fund microloans for women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

I don’t realize that when I turn fifty-four, I’ll meet my great love, each of us destined for the other, that knowing her will smooth the jagged edges of terror and loss, that we will build a home on nine acres of land surrounded by trees and be rich in our chosen family of friends.

Standing with my beloved, in our own garden now, I’m anticipating something wonderful.

Carol E. Anderson is a life coach whose passions are travel and photography. She holds a doctorate in spiritual studies, and an MFA in creative nonfiction. She is the author of You Can’t Buy Love Like That: Growing Up Gay in the Sixties. Carol lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Nutcracker Memories

2 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Marianne Lonsdale

I was in my attic, organizing the boxes and piles of the stuff of my life, when I came across a theatre program from 1961, for The Nutcracker Ballet, that transported me to the steps of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. My memories of that day surged back.

I am six, my sister Cathy is nine and our big brother, Jimmy, is ten. Mom bends down, holds my coat collar and tells me to obey Jimmy and Cathy. No squirming around and no talking during the performance. Her voice is firm and strict, but she hugs me too. She will meet us back on the steps after the ballet is over.

I’d not thought of that sweet day in years, the gift of a day. I wrote to my mother that December, sharing my memories on holiday paper, a soft red with a banner of green wreaths across the top. My mom and I spent more time being annoyed with each other than we did feeling affectionate. I wanted her to know that I remembered her kindness.

My mother had scraped together the money for our tickets but could not afford one for herself or to pay a babysitter for my two younger brothers. Mom was thirty years old with five children, making ends meet on dad’s firefighter’s wages. But she wouldn’t let her older children miss the magic of The Nutcracker. She drove us from our suburban home to San Francisco, dropped us off in front of the theatre, and picked us up a few hours later.

I wrote of the beauty and sequins of the ballerinas, the enchanting music, the fighting rats and sugar plum fairies. Swirling collages of colors, and sparkling silver and glitter. That ballet was the most glamorous event of my young life; the beginning of my love affair with dance and theatre.

After Mom received the essay, she called to say she loved the piece. Her voice choked on the words. We talked a bit more, and as I got ready to end the call, Mom said “I don’t remember taking you to the ballet.” I was taken aback but she’d had lots of kids and memories to keep track of.

At our Christmas gathering at her home, Mom shared the printed story with my older brother and sister.

“That is so sweet,” my brother commented.

“I love that story,” my sister said. Then looking at my brother she asked “Do you remember going? I don’t.”

He shook his head. I was flabbergasted. A standout event in my mind, and none of the main characters besides me even remembered. If I hadn’t saved the theatre program, I might have wondered if I’d made it up.

Marianne Lonsdale writes personal essays, fiction and poetry. She’s looking for an agent for her novel, Finding Nora, a story set in 1991 Oakland about love and friendship during the AIDS epidemic. Her work has been published in Literary Mama, Grown and Flown, The Bluebird Word and several print anthologies. Read her nonfiction essay Parting Gift from last year’s holiday issue.

autumn leaves placed on ground — Photo by Tim Samuel on Pexels.com

The Rains of November Have Come Again

13 October 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Lisa Ashley

nailing the metal roof. It falls steady on,
clicking like a bad wheel bearing.

The brilliant reds and golds
are getting battered, drenched
until they drown, mush up underfoot.

I want more of the sun’s colorcalling,
less of its slantburn in my squint here
where day gives way to black night by five.

I want to clutch that low down fire dazzle
before the clouds lower themselves over me,
a wet blanket disgruntled.

I want more sweet melancholy
autumn stretched over more days,
days that could bring back the siblings

that once surrounded me with noise,
sheared off like widowmakers
under winter’s snow-weight,

yet still moving about their lives—pinioned
in time, some strangers to themselves, one dead,
all lost to me.

I want more of our childhood games,
jumping in piles of leaves we raked,
undoing our work without care,

the lift of the leaps, the screams,
the soft landings we banked on without question.
I want to walk along small-town streets

lined with brilliant red maples,
leaves so blazed I can’t pick out singles.
Whole trees, torched and engulfed.

Lisa Ashley (she/her) Pushcart Prize nominee, descends from Armenian Genocide survivors and supported incarcerated youth for eight years as a chaplain. Her poems appear in Last Leaves Magazine, Amsterdam Quarterly, The Healing Muse, Blue Heron Review, Thimble, Snapdragon and others. She writes in her log home on Bainbridge Island, WA.

Ruth and Oscar

12 August 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Angela Townsend

Ruth and Oscar have been married forty years, and they have drawn stares for every one.

Oscar, crafted exclusively of knees and elbows, is the word “jaunty” sprung to life. Eighty-six and five-foot-two, he commands eyes bluer than the Earth from space.

Oscar will neither retire from paid work nor stomach being told that he is in any way impressive. What he will do is elbow you, an instant co-conspirator in this majestic business of being awake, and call you “kid” until you wish it was your given name. His polo shirts are sky and indigo, bright enough to spot him across a century.

Statuesque at seventy-eight, Ruth is a cloud of concern, claiming herself unworthy of her white halo. Her mouth is mournful, and if she didn’t love you, she would distrust you when you insist she is one of the kindest people you know.

But Ruth does love you, almost enough to believe the unfathomable things you believe about her. Proficient in ganache and genealogy, she makes cold rooms feel like dens. She feeds strays, only a few of them feline, and lies awake worrying who might be alone this Thanksgiving. Ruth cried when she learned that introversion is an honest, honorable trait, not a shortcoming.

Oscar and Ruth have toilet paper emblazoned with the face of a political figure.

When Oscar sees me, he hugs me so tight I nearly need to have his elbows surgically removed. Ours was one of those instant bonds that makes you wonder if your families touch fingertips above the treeline. Far beyond DNA, Oscar is family now, equal parts scampish brother and Father Abraham.

Ruth learns through cautious eyes but raced through the pages of my affection like one of her Revolutionary War novels. For ten years she has been perplexed by my admiration, telling me I’m kinder than cats and twice as daft. But when Ruth sees Ruth in my mirror, the truth makes her taller, and she shines like God’s angel in her sturdy denim dress.

On my birthday, Ruth carefully lays out cards on her desktop computer, photos of their cats with wry bylines like, “Sage was going to wish you a happy birthday, but she had to eat her third breakfast instead.” I save every one.

Ruth and Oscar are the rare friends with whom I’ve discussed our rare friendship. None of us has any explanation for why we loved each other so quickly and entirely, only that we are very, very fortunate.

I had to downplay the distress of my divorce to Oscar, who shuddered with tears anyway, lip quivering. “This, to the best person we know!”

But Ruth and Oscar found each other after divorces of their own, pasts they don’t discuss, histories that had to happen for us to have Ruth and Oscar.

Oscar and Ruth give me hope.

Oscar and Ruth had better both reach one hundred years.

Angela Townsend is Development Director at Tabby’s Place and has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and B.A. from Vassar. Her work has appeared or will be published in upcoming issues of The Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Fathom Magazine, and Young Ravens Literary Review, among others. Angie loves life dearly.

The Visit

12 August 2023 / Editor

Poetry by R.M. Kinder

This house bursts with loving you—
all of you—our voices, vernacular:
“going out of a night,” “Virgie’s man,” “I had went.”
Dear to me, that peasant language I once spoke freely and well,
but it charmed only a few.

Our breed laughed often, sometimes so heartily
the laugh itself was the greatest pleasure of a day,
a day of work—toil—thorough and demanding and done!
We laughed before supper and after,
prayed before the meal and before bed.

What was class and status
but a cloud over land not ours?
We had dumplings, and pot roast, weather,
and animals close to us, named, and well kept.

I loved all of you, and, then, even our enemies
who seamed us together, separate, whole,
a nature, bearing the flags of ourselves,
nothing but that, and proud, proud, proud.

R. M. Kinder is a Missouri writer, author of three collections of short fiction and two novels. Her poems have appeared in Cottonwood, SHR, Appalacian Journal and other journals; her collection, The Likes of Us, was a semi-finalist for the 2019 Cowles Poetry Book Prize at SE Missouri State University.

Haleakala Sunrise

18 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Sherri Wright

The sky is pitch black and the temperature drops from seventy degrees to the thirties as our son-in-law drives the switchback road up the mountain. The trip is only twenty miles but it will take us more than two hours to reach the summit of Haleakala at 10,023 feet. Cramped into the back seat my husband, our nineteen year old grandson, and I flop into each other on every hairpin turn and our ears pop as we continue the climb. My daughter follows the route on her phone warning Azi of steep drop offs and approaching turns. Jenny wants to share with her husband and son the experience she remembers when she came here as a child.

At the top we step out of the warm car into a cutting wind and an immense dark sky — not just above but wrapping all around us — uninterrupted by tree or cloud or human made thing. And millions and millions of stars unobstructed by light pollution. The landscape is a monochrome grey surface of lava and rocks like I imagine on the face of the moon. We make our way up an uneven stone path toward the rim of the crater. Hundreds of people in parkas, rain coats and blankets murmur over the whisper of the wind. Jenny and I talk about how years ago we’d worn sandals and wrapped ourselves in beach towels but today the air feels so cold and the wind so bitter that I can’t stop shaking. Harry gives me his hoodie and swears he’s not cold. Sunrise won’t happen for another hour and a half. The thin air makes us feel light headed.

As the dark begins to lift, a warm blush rises above the horizon and exposes the width of the bowl and the depth of the cavern below. Few plants are able to survive here but scattered down the cinder slopes of the crater I see round grey bundles of silver sword. This ahinahina can live up to ninety years. Once in its lifetime it sends up a spectacular six foot stalk of vibrant purple flowers, then dies and scatters seeds to the wind. Here on Haleakala is the only place in the world the ahinahina grows. The mood is mystical. Early Hawaiians believed that the demigod Maui stood at this summit and lassoed the sun to slow its journey and lengthen the day. Thus, the name Haleakala means “house of the sun.”

In a swirl of light and grey and yellow, mauve and orange hues, a hush comes over the crowd and then an eerie silence. A silence I can feel in my chest and my bones. When the sun appears then quickly rises above the rim, the throng breaks into gentle applause. Black silhouettes in the glow, my daughter hugs her son.

Sherri Wright is a member of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and the Key West Poetry Guild. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Dreamer’s Creative Writing, Persimmon Tree, Ocotillo Review, Delaware Beach Life, Raven’s Perch, and Quartet.

close up photo of birds — Photo by Hal Moran on Pexels.com

Wizardry

5 June 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Shea

While I was choosing a
casket for my father a bluebird
tapped on our front living room window
flew to the back window
kept tapping until my husband
stood up to join him
he flew to a nearby branch
making his tu-a-wee sound
sitting right next to a female

my husband immediately believed

it was my father making him know
that he was now with my mother again
tu-a-wee two are we

I mentioned this story to my niece

two days later I gave the eulogy
mentioned that my daughter
repeatedly noticed me singing “we’re
off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard
of Oz” while driving to visit my father

right after the eulogy my niece presented me
with a framed photo of two bluebirds on a branch
with the quote “somewhere over the rainbow
bluebirds sing…the wizard of Oz”
we all made the connection at that moment

tu-a-wee
tu-a-wee
tu-a-wee

you are here
out from behind the curtain
here from beyond the veil

Susan Shea is retired school psychologist who has been a poet since third grade. She has been published under her previous married name, Susan Townsend in Plainsongs, Pudding, Poetry Forum Newsletter, Oxalis, The Orange Review, and the Accordion Flyer. Poetry is what keeps her pilot light on.

bunch of photo print — Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

The Old Photographs

3 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Joan Potter

My ex-son-in-law, who’s been out of my life for several years, just mailed me two photographs. I’m looking at one of them now. It’s an 8 x 10 print, in muted colors overlaid with a faded golden tint. Resting on a table in the foreground is an oblong Pyrex dish holding the remains of a green bean casserole, some creamy sauce still coating the inside corner. Next to it is an earthenware bowl with a spoon balanced on its edge, and a glass half full of red wine.

Across the table sit three of the dozen or so family members celebrating Thanksgiving in my daughter’s dining room. I’m on the left, wearing a red ribbed turtleneck, my grey hair cut short. I’m looking off in the direction of someone out of the picture.

Next to me is my youngest grandson, still with the chubby cheeks of a twelve-year-old. He’s smiling as he digs into his plate of food; he always loved to eat. On his other side is his teenage cousin, face partly hidden by the wine glass in the foreground, glancing with amusement at his young relative.

We always gathered for Thanksgiving dinner at the house my daughter shared with her then-husband and their two girls. It was just a few miles from where my husband and I lived in our New York City suburb. Their house had the most room, as well as a fireplace we could relax in front of after dinner.

The second photograph my ex-son-in-law enclosed was taken in the living room. In this one, my eldest granddaughter, a teenager then, is in the foreground, strumming a guitar with her lips parted in song. My husband, wearing a colorful sweater and khaki pants, is seated in a chair near her, looking thoughtful.

These pictures were taken almost twenty years ago. I don’t know why my former son-in-law decided to send them now. Perhaps he’s feeling sentimental. He and my daughter have been divorced for several years – amicably, she says. The chubby-cheeked grandson is now thirty, an engineer. His older cousin, my second daughter’s son, works on an upstate horse farm. I never hear from him.

The guitar-playing granddaughter lives in a small Midwestern city where she moved to be close to her younger sister, whose husband is studying at the university there. The younger sister is now planning to file for divorce. The older one, the guitar-playing one, is pregnant with her first child. She says she’s been having some problems with her boyfriend, the baby’s father, but they’re working things out. My husband, who was pensively listening to his granddaughter’s song, has been dead for six years.

Now that I’ve pored over these two photographs long enough, there’s no reason to keep them. They’re too big to store and the quality is poor. I already have closet shelves full of albums and boxes stuffed with hundreds of pictures of family as toddlers, teenagers, new parents, grandparents. It can be both enjoyable and painful to sift through them – my mother and father smiling in front of their California house, my four kids eating lobster rolls in Maine, and the many images of my husband, looking proud and content, with various babies resting on his lap.

Joan Potter‘s personal essays have appeared in anthologies and literary journals. Her piece, The Blur, appeared in the January, 2023 issue of The Bluebird Word. Her work has also been published in Persimmon Tree, The RavensPerch, Bright Flash Literary Review, Iron Horse Review, and others. She has published several nonfiction books.

home for the holidays

3 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Nicole Farmer

the cold the waiting
the airport the anticipation the anxiety
the arrival the introductions the hugs
the car the road the talking
the home the familiar the suitcases
the shopping the cooking the eating
the mess the cleaning the dishes
the board games the laughter the competition
the fire the warmth the stories
the traditions the movies the quoted lines
the photos the misunderstandings the confrontations
the alcohol the overeating the teasing
the gifts the hugs the texting
the sore throats the tea the tissues
the cold the grey the wind
the accusations the whispers the hurt feelings
the love the irritation the exhaustion
the suitcases the packing the loading
the car the road the silence
the airport the departure the hugs
the cold the relief

Nicole Farmer is a reading tutor living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in many magazines. Her chapbook entitled Wet Underbelly Wind was published in 2022. Her book Honest Sonnets: memories from an unorthodox upbringing in verse will be published by Kelsay Books in 2023. Read more at NicoleFarmerpoetry.com