Favoring Springtime

I've been noticing a maroon mist around all of the winter-bare trees. Small, tender leaf buds are forming and soon will burst. These next few days of 60 degree weather will further encourage their unfolding. Ah, springtime once again!

Sensing Cybele

Remember winter’s darkened hues
Tints of shiver, collage of cold
Bare branches freeze-framed
Against sky’s canvas

Seed and soil endured death’s brush
Enfolded their unborn,
Recalled a promise
Earth warmed by spring’s insistent push

Restless nature donned her gown of green
Butterfly and tulip exuberantly emerged
Singing choruses of color
Spreading awareness of rebirth

~ Cybele: Roman goddess of nature and fertility

Memoir Musing

Avoid worrying about whether what you write will be worth reading. Instead, ask whether it is worth writing; and, if so, how it may best be written. Avoid worrying about whether what you write will be original. When originality occurs at all … it occurs as a by-product of conviction.  Laughable error and profound discovery are born of the same freedom. 

~ Robert Grudin

At the end of 2009, after an intense twelve months of remembering, reconstructing and connecting, I finished a 250-page memoir for my adult children. When I began the endeavor I had no idea I would become so thoroughly involved and invigorated—as well as puzzled and perplexed—by the process; I had no idea I would uncover and eventually connect so many latent memories. Writing just a line or two had the ability speak volumes as wave after wave of recollection effortlessly tumbled onto the page.

Every day I awoke energized because I knew I had something in the works and I was joyous at the prospect of each new day delivering another moment of discovery, another string of connections; or as Abraham Lincoln said, finding "...those mystic chords of memory."

So many times as I began writing a new essay I would stop midway, stunned by what my mind was recalling and how those recollections were streaming onto the pages. I know this should not have puzzled me; I have always been completely aware my writing often takes me down uncharted paths. Paraphrasing E. M. Forster, there are times I do not “…know what I think until I see what I say.”

My life has been rife with perplexing and contradictory issues; most of them exacerbated by my actions; many of them not near as mystifying as I felt they were at the time and far too many where I wish I had shown better impulse control.

All in all, maybe there’ve been times when I have just been too given to angst; when I have made a mountain out of that old molehill; when I have examined too closely rather than just ‘let it be.’