Writer’s look for stories. But just as often stories find us. And sometimes the stories wait within until we have the capacity to let them speak, whether we turn them into memoir or fiction or poem.
The first morning of a trip to visit my sister in California, she looked at me across her kitchen as a deep rumble and hard shake disrupted her sentence. Under the table, she said, and I never questioned. Now we wait. This was not our first time in at the epicenter. Fifty-five years earlier to the day, we had woken in our twin beds as the phone rang and heard our aunt say, I’m so sorry to our mother who was calling. Our younger sister had died from leukemia after being diagnosed three months earlier.
As we crouched under the table, I don’t know if either one of us thought of that long ago moment, but the body memory was there of holding together when the world tilts. When the earthquake subsided, we went ahead with our plan to drive to Ventura. We walked to the pier and along the length of the boardwalk, headed up into Ventura center, walking for hours. Back at the car, I realized my 3”x 4” slide wallet was gone. We retraced every step. Several shop keepers took my name and phone number. I called the Ventura police and left a message. I cancelled my two credit cards. I couldn’t accept the loss, my identity and stability swept away. The odds of finding it: nil. I have tried to accept the truth that nothing stays the same, and to ride the thudding boulders of grief. I thought I knew this insistent and displacing lesson. Every time I feel loss, I look up and my sister’s eyes are waiting, clear blue, the light steady and penetrating.
We drove back to my sister’s house. I called my daughter, told her the story, and asked her to mail my passport so I could fly home. As we talked, she suggested I check Instant Messenger, which I never use. I did. There I was looking back at myself from my driver’s license photo. Is this you? We drove back to the Ventura Pier the next morning, and there was a young man waiting with my wallet. I had dropped it on the pier, and he had walked along the boardwalk calling my name.
A circle of losing and searching and finding, of being willing to let go and learning what to hold onto: my older sister, Caroline, and my younger sister, Colleen. We find ourselves because we find one other. Stories find us whether we ask for them or not. What we writers do with them is our choice. We have the tools and the skill to turn a set of facts into a life lived on the page filled with metaphor and meaning. We carry our steps into shared arrival.
Upcoming Events
Writing Beyond the Academy: Scholarship as Storytelling.
Join me online, July 7 – 13, 2024, to write freely, in your genre, your voice, with your experiments from facts, memory or imagination. Leave the curriculum and publishing pressures behind. How do you create metaphor, lyricism, and plot in scholarly work?
I follow the Amherst Writers & Artists Workshop Method closely. Every writer is treated with respect and all writing is treated as art and separate from the writer. I offer writing prompts, not assignments. We listen acutely for what uniquely engages and surprises the reader.
Sunday – Saturday, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. EDT. Cost $1000. Non-refundable deposit $250.
For more information: maureen@maureenbjones.com www.writingfulltilt.com
Writing Retreat at Stump Sprouts in Hawley Massachusetts: August 5 – 9, 2024
Join me on a sunny, quiet hillside with views of the western Massachusetts hills for three days of imagining, remembering, restoring, and inventing. Writers with all levels of experience and genres are welcome. The retreat is firmly based in the AWA Method with respect for all voices and an atmosphere of adventure. Single rooms, shared baths, organic, home-made meals, and time to rest and wander. Fee is $1325 with a $200 deposit by June 1st. maureen@maureenbjones.com
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