Tag: writing

Tummy Time

Little baby cries on the floor of our small blue house. Trying to calm the tears of tummy time, I join her on the floor. This does not help and instead she firmly places her face into her mat and screams as if she has been abandoned to the elements and will never see her family again.

Deciding that this is enough, I scoop her up, my hand greeted with tears, spit up, and baby boogies, and place her in my lap. In the safety of her mama’s arms, she lets out a few sneezes and some excited coos as she flexes her fingers over my arm.

Notebook, pen and baby feet

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Pumpkin Spice Lattes: A Poem

A picture of a coffee mug that says, "pumpkin spice everything" surrounded by pumpkins

My daughters are pumpkin spice lattes.

October-born with cloves and cinnamon, they fill autumn with change. A new birth, another year older, the anticipated benefits of age–“When I’m five years old–”

Leaves the color of nutmeg and ginger shower their heads as they play in festive canter. They laugh as they gallop around the yard, chasing their youth like squirrels stashing acorns.

Fall in New England is a caffeinated season. Eagerly awaiting frosty celebrations, they sparkle with excitement as they snuggle in warm blankets and drink from warm mugs.

Creative Spaces

Creativity demands space–space to digest our experiences, reflect on emotions, contemplate the human experience. This space provides us with opportunities for introspection, a necessary component of artistic processes. Without such space, we find our muses have left us and the distractions of our daily lives leech beyond their usefulness and rob of us any creative impulse.

This is the old trope of writer’s block. There is nothing new about “letting life get in the way” of creative processes. The creative experience and the creation of art in its many forms provides a window to our soul and insight into our worlds. Yet, it also exposes us to critics and criticism. Sometimes it is simply feels safer to succumb to the “busy-ness” of our lives than it is create a space for vulnerability.

 

Writing in April

Writing is hard.

It is especially difficult when managing the unyielding demands of a three-year old social butterfly who demands the limited emotional life-force that survived from a day of constant civil interactions that stress the introverted self.

It is notably difficult when April does not just bring rain showers, but snow, wintery mix, and icy roads that restricts any out-of-doors excursion such as shopping in crowded grocery stores where the produce is not quite seasonal and the ring of the cash register, not matter how calculated, tightens the chest.

It is extraordinarily difficult when distractions, like the children in the front yard of the apartment across the street howl “yard sale,” shift focus from the opportunity of writing mean poems and super short shorts to the present fantasy of the kind of financial security promised by degree, job, homeownership.

Writing in April is hard.

Leaves below the stoop