Spring, Are You Coming?

It is almost Valentine’s Day, but I am not feeling particularly bright and amorous today. I have heard that the last week in February has three possible storms for us, one a major winter storm. Try as I might, I am losing out to Winter Woes! I have wrestled with winter weather and withering writing all week; I can do nothing with winter and I am losing out on all writing fronts. It was hard work today to turn the mood, to keep thoughts from matching those cigarette ash-colored skies!

However, I spent the day with words again. I started by continuing reading East to the Dawn by Susan Butler. This is a biography of Amelia Earhart and is so much more insightful than the movie. I enjoyed the movie Amelia, but this book shows the woman’s true depth. She was much more than just a woman aviator. She was a social worker and a writer among other things. Fascinating woman!


Seeing the writer at work in this biography inflamed my own writing urges again. I wrapped and readied a submission; I wrote and sent a query. I dug out an old story I like but no editor has-yet. I will think about it this week, and maybe I will be inspired to find it a “home”.


In the digging of files, I found a special paragraph written by a member of my Madeleine L’Engle Discussion group years ago—me. If writing does nothing else, maybe it talks to ourselves when we need it, as we need it. It comforts, shakes, nudges us, or merely saves a “snapshot” of our inner selves to see later.

Other things I am homesick for are the musky smells of my maternal grandmother’s skin, the taste of my paternal grandmother’s fat, yellow homemade noodles, the sight of my dad loading up his gun and hunting vest for quail season, the sound a cry from my own babies, the feel of a little child on my lap for sharing a reading of books…how do I alleviate this homesickness and longing…by remembering that even as these experiences have passed never to be had again, today I am doing things and living ways that will also pass and someday I will long for them…I remind myself to live in a way so that I will remember these things also with fond memories and no regrets.

PS. And friends are our sunshine!!! Look what my friend brought me for Valentine’s Day, a new corn bag! Thanks, Bonnie, for warming my heart—and other parts!!