Author: Sally Showalter

Flurries

Yesterday morning while having coffee with my husband our conversation rounded the corner to the last time it snowed in Tucson at our house. Currently we are experiencing a ‘cold snap’ and much snow sits prettily on the Catalina and Rincon mountain ranges. Why wouldn’t snow conversation float over the steaming cups of coffee? At that very moment, I noticed one of our cats sitting on the screen porch, her back to me. Her dark silhouette alluded she was keenly aware of something I could not see. I finally leveled my eyes in one spot and noticed something like ash in the air. Rising from my chair and moving closer, it was snow flurries! We all stepped outside.

Snow four years ago from our front yard.

If you are following our blog, you will see that our book has been accepted and included in the upcoming Festival of Books! This is a great pleasure and privilege. Attending this event will create numerous lists for presentation, coordination, what to wear and what jewelry to match. I say that because Jackie loves her jewelry of all sorts and chooses all in great taste. When we traveled to Steamboat Springs to a writing conference, in June 2003 (story can be read in Chapter 3), her biggest piece of luggage was her jewelry case. Her laptop was second. I relentlessly ribbed her of this treasure chest. While on breaks in the afternoons to work on stories, I would stand up to stretch and find myself aimlessly staring at this collection jumbled into her case and think she must have packed in a flurry.

Flurries come in many shapes, sizes, movement, and thought. Mine now is of course the Festival, Jackie’s arrival, and plans for the three of us to buzz about and present ourselves to a very large audience. I am anal enough that I want my compartments to be in order, and ready to fly as planned. But if a flurry comes along, I will step out and enjoy…stayed tuned.

Let’s Dust

As I look out my studio window, the sky is downcast like a slight frown, a bit lost and gloomy. It is to be this way for a couple of days, then nights in the low 30s, enough to cover several of my plants. When winter showers sweep through, the charcoal cold skies cages our bright sunshine and I can feel myself wither. Not that I do not enjoy rainy skies, but when accustomed to daily sunshine, my body immediately reacts. The weather change then drives me toward the internal action versus the external. Therefore, I look for my duster and see what I can shine up during this indoor space of time.

On our Home Page, we have a new feature and in case you may have missed it, here is the link to the most recent article:

 Three Writing It Real Members Publish the Story of Their 24-Year Writer’s Group – Sheila Bender’s Writing It Real

We have never kept Sheila Bender a secret and she is a fabulous poet, essayist, and instructor and has been large in our writing lives. Please take time to read and peruse her newsletter. We thank her grandly and graciously for beginning the new year of 2023 with our book and journey to publication.

Us gals are working on bookmarks and ordering the right pencils for giveaways at upcoming book signings. Such good advice and tips can be found from the experiences of other authors on how to showcase and bring people to the table. We just want to dress up in feather boas and do a bit of dance along with it all. If allowed, we may just try that in the pavilion at The Festival of Books this March! Please note updates on our Home Page as we move closer to the Festival dates and for all those who are local, or wintering in Tucson, please make an effort to join this outstanding book event.

Our winter break gave us all a bit of respite, time to regroup and contemplate the new year. Diana, Jackie, and I have returned weekly on zoom, writing from prompts, laying out former and new plans for marketing, visiting the local bookstores that are selling our books, and keeping up with our contacts.

I want to mention along our blogging hike, we are meeting wonderful and supportive writers from Australia, Europe, our west to east coasts, and other beautiful areas in this global park of writing. Please take time to put on your backpack and trek along. We shall keep you notified of our sunsets and horizons and the wide range of vistas we see ourselves in.

Oh, and one more add-in, we want to thank each of you who have bought our book and for reading our blogs. Thank you for those taking the time to comment and click the ‘like’ box. And one last sweep of the dust cloth…we ‘welcome’ new ones!

Beep – Beep

 Last week I read a heartwarming post at Writing Near the Lake (A Treasure That I Have Lost) that reminded me of a project my son, at the age of twelve, and I did for his grandfather. Vicki in her post shared an experience of making a quilt with her son for his grandfather. Her son was twelve at the time and picked out a fabric with airplanes since his grandfather owned a small private plane.

When my parents moved to the southwest in the early 70s, Dad immediately became enthralled with the Roadrunner. The only one he had ever seen was on Bugs Bunny and he laughed his head off at every cartoon. ‘Bobby’ as everyone called him, was always on the watch for a roadrunner and each time one was spotted he would shout, “Look, a roadrunner!” Often if conducive, he would stop the car to pull over, or if on a walk, follow as closely as the gangly smart bird would allow. Mom bought a beautiful set of coffee cups with a roadrunner on each and of course, one was Dad’s favorite coffee mug. He saw many over the next thirty-plus years. And his voice still rose several decibels at each sighting.

My son and I came up with the idea to paint a picture of this renowned bird as a gift. I laid out watercolors, heavy-duty paper, various brushes, and set to work sketching the bird. My son watched as this serious speedy bird in the taxonomic genus Geococcyx and a member of the cuckoo family took shape. Dad thought this family relationship to be hilarious (no doubt reminders of his own) and that is how he always referred to one as a ‘cuckoo’. My son drew out the landscape and we both added cacti. I showed him how to mix certain colors and the painting began.

We took turns painting together and found that in the quiet secret space of our work, stories of my dad surfaced. It was in those afternoons that I began to tell stories when I was small, Dad laughing because I wanted my own ‘hammo’ instead of a hammer, close calls of losing the ‘big one’ on fishing trips, squirting milk from a cow into kittens’ mouths as they sat on their haunches, and many things which made my dad chuckle. Things my son could not see unless through some ones vivid memory. I shared stories of before I was born, stories I was told. We also made lists of words about the roadrunner, its temperament, and remarks Dad said about it when he noticed one and wanted to work those into a poem that rhymed.

            By the time the last feather was painted and the last blossom on an ocotillo was brilliant orange, we had worked up the poem and painted it with the help of a ruler to keep the lines straight across the paper. Dad wanted that painting on a wall at all times and so it hung. Wherever they moved, the roadrunner found a spot to be noticed per Dad. When he passed at ninety, it was in his bedroom and remained until Mom passed two years later. At that time, I removed it from the bulky frame and brought the painting back to Arizona. I carefully slipped it into my portfolio until I read the blog from last week and pulled it out yesterday.

            I smelled the wet watercolors, heard the chuckles, the stirring of water with a paintbrush, stories that were heard for the first time shared with my son. That silly bird made my dad laugh every time.  

“Beep-beep Bobby, beep-beep.”  

The Writing Desk

Watercolors, paintbrushes, easels, canvas, and oils—a desk was not necessary. That’s all I needed from grade school into my late twenties. In the early 80s, as I applied to elementary schools for employment, I went late at night to my husbands’ office to practice on a typewriter, then eventually bought my electric one. Thank goodness it had a backspace that auto-deleted. This Marmaduke sat wherever I could find a spot.

Later on, during a short break between jobs, I decided to take two-semester classes, Writing 101 and Beginning French, and a six-week non-credit course in Creative Writing. I used the bar area in our kitchen, perched on a tall stool to do homework and write while my son was at school, and my husband was at work. By the late 1990s, I had acquired a simple smaller used office desk, with two drawers on each side that my husband and I shared. I began to write and paint less.

When I got a ‘room of my own’ as Virginia Wolf cried out that every writer should have,  I wanted my desk with privacy. Shortly after my husband and I drove back to Illinois to visit family. While there, I found this little treasure in the cellar of my grandparents’ farmhouse. It wasn’t exactly a writing desk, but it had history, a story. I toted the desk with four water-soaked legs up the stairs to a local wood restorer. I planned to pick it up on a future trip back to Illinois from Tucson. This piece was probably a hall table or a small kitchen side table. The restorer did wonders in reviving its pale wood to a walnut luster and its surface smooth as a worn stone. I used an old table chair (found in a barn) and this became my writing space. The desk was just long enough to house my small laptop, a notebook, pens, disks, and one cat, which much of the time sat on my notebooks. We both wrote happily in my studio with no phones, no TV, and no visitors unless invited.

In time, a piece of property became available two houses down the street from where we currently lived. We bought, remodeled, and added a studio off the master bedroom as before, but a bit larger. I seriously wanted to replicate my ‘room of my own’ and I now wanted a true writing desk. The little farm table could fit in the entryway. I shopped in person locally and in other states as I traveled. Online, mail order catalogs until one day, two years later, I found it from a pop-up advertisement on my computer. The depth of the desk was narrow which I liked. Everything looked as if it could be within arm’s reach with space in between. It had three file drawers, two smaller ones, and a long middle drawer with built-in wood dividers. I called Pottery Barn and indeed they had a floor model. I threw on my shoes and went to see. I chose the white wood and the desk was delivered within two weeks. I lingered in glorious hours and days arranging files of to-be-written novels, blank and filled notebooks, cards, pens, sticky notes, an antique magnifying glass, submissions accepted and rejected, past and present short-shorts, scribbles, notes and our writers group history and so much more. One of my favorites about the ‘look’ of this desk is three of the six drawers are louvered which match the master bath and closet doors. Such perfect planning, or a happy accident?

The second feature was the extra length of this desk. At first, I hesitated because this was uncommon for an office or writing desk. It turned out to be ideal because it lent itself to my new paper cutter, a few reference books, more cups full of colored pens and pencils, and most importantly, company at each end to muse and amuse as I write. 

Tucked In

I came across the paragraph below in an article from a year ago. I saved it because, at this time of year, I feel exactly like any of my friends above. It reads:

The winter solstice time is no longer celebrated as it once was, with the understanding that this is a period of descent and rest, of going within our homes, within ourselves, and taking in all that we have been through, all that has passed in this full year which is coming to a close… like nature and the animal kingdom around us, this time of hibernation is so necessary for our tired limbs, our burdened minds. 

Once again, the tail end of December is here, and it reminds me of a blog I posted a year ago on my personal website. I would like to repost with a bit of revision.

December achingly and brightly slides away, I nest into my usual non-quintessential self, retreat and withdraw inside my home, my studio, my sunlight, and my soul. Up until last December, I worked at the University of Arizona for thirty-three years and each year the ‘U of A’ closes its doors before Christmas and reopens after the new year.

During those early winter breaks, I found myself diving into projects such as closet cleaning, drawer rearranging, trying new recipes and revisiting old family holiday favorites, pushing or pulling big items of furniture to clean under and behind, organizing garage shelves, catching photo albums and scrapbooks up to date. In the last several years I began to notice a shift, the need to retreat for reflection and respite. Over time, my secular job allowed me to work fewer hours during the week leaving me much more time at home, and with Covid, more days than not. Then and since retirement a year ago, the above-mentioned tasks are done before the winter solstice is upon me. I find ways to sleep in, roll under the covers, and wait for the sun to spread across the room and onto the walls, waving a warm welcome not expecting me to reply in the least. During this year my husband and I began to stay up late, watching British shows, and favorite movies, a cat purring beside me in front of a warm fireplace. No reason, no thought, no malfunction, it’s just that I can.

I continue to keep the expected daily duties in check and spend more time outside with my two cats as we walk together and pace through the gardens and around the yard. Inside, floors are clean, pillows fluffed, fuzzy little lap throws refolded, and an extra cup of coffee in the carafe. No hurry. I imagine the bears and foxes snug in their dens, tails or paws curled and wrapped up to their noses. I stretch, do up a few dishes, enter my sunny studio and my eyes filter over the small table of alcohol inks, watercolors, paintbrushes, a writing journal, or a stack of books, and decide which to do first.

Monday, my husband turned another year older as I did earlier this month. This year truly brought changes for both of us due to the aging process and existing health issues that keep clawing away at our daily life. Now we are kept more on our toes and my sunny plans as mentioned sometimes have to wait a bit longer. As each new year is ready to begin, I am still ready to begin with the new month of January no matter what state I may find myself in. I am determined to be more in control of a schedule to help stay borderline and now focus on shorter distances rather than longer ones.

Like the earth and its companions, I take time to go inwards, to reset my clock, to revamp my spiritual self. Patrice Vecchione in her book Step In To Nature states “Time alone is the best way for imagination’s generative knowledge to become securely imprinted in the very sinew of self.” For me, I acknowledge a fresh year will arrive and am prepared to greet it like a new seed pushing through the soil, ready to climb and give back in whatever fashion I am capable of. Earth’s cycle I can count on for my renewal of self, find relief from burdens, and reach out for the gifts and promises to come.

Lost and Found

I would like to continue with ‘who am I/where I am from’ and tie it to the history of people with generations of storytelling and when those people are gone, perhaps you received something that belonged to them as to where they were from and something they loved. One of my passions is the restoration of pieces that did belong to my family or a ‘find’ belonging to someone I have never met. Even if not known to me, in their lifetime they had likes and dislikes, a style, a desire. Sometimes their story simply lies in a piece of furniture, lamp, or carved pretty box without a word.

Many of the pieces in my home have stories, those untold and those I have attached to them. ‘Where I am from and who am I’ can be seen in many of these scattered about in particular spots throughout. The story I’ve chosen to share is about this delightful chair I stumbled across in the mid 1990s.        

            Inside the threshold of my front door in Tucson sits an antique wicker rocker. Its body is solid as a stout farm woman—boxy bottom, firm legs, back slightly curved for a hug, (please, no one take offense, I am trying to use a metaphor here). I found this gem in Illinois at the annual Prairieland Steam Show held in a community of Jacksonville. This annual event draws crowds from counties all over the state. It takes months of planning and spreads across several acres of neatly mown grass. A partial acre is left untouched for one of the local farmers to showcase his Clydesdale and/or Belgian horses hooked up to harnesses to plow the field for planting as in the days before tractors. A shady corner is set aside for all sorts of miniature steam engines that tweet and puff and larger ones are on display in one of the side buildings. A huge barn sits center where the quilters are set up in former horse stalls along with other wares and homemade goods of jellies, canned vegetables, handmade rag rugs, carved toys, and much more from the local craft people. A nearby kitchen serves fresh ham and beans, cornbread, and a choice of apple, peach or cherry pies at noon. 

On that visit in September, my parents, son, husband, brother, and his family traipse by table after table and small vendor tents of every new and old item to be found within 1,000 miles and 150 years. The weather that year was perfect, no rain, no mud, and the sun broke through the autumn sky like a Rockwell painting.    

We entered the Steam Show through the threshing building where sorghum cane was being boiled and pressed to syrup and out unto the grounds when I spotted a flatbed wagon with ‘stuff’.  Big ‘stuff’. As in, trunks, furniture pieces, cellar ‘finds’ or barn ‘finds’. I noted a worn-out black wicker rocker and took a closer look. The fabric was rain stained, thin, worn threadbare, but the piece itself was in perfect condition. No cracks, no breaks, and the tightly threaded wicker ropes were intact. I walked on through the waves and willows of tables, and my mind kept drifting back to the wagon with that wicker rocker. By the time we had walked miles in a circle, bought sorghum, eaten ham and beans, and stuffed a bag of warm kettle corn in my bag, I was ready to go back to that wagon to buy myself a chair. My mind was made up.

A small travel trailer sat parked alongside the flatbed, a wicky–up tied to it for shade, and many more boxes and crates scattered around with ‘stuff’ on and in all of them. I stood at the wicker rocker and found a tag with faded ink that read $75. Giving it another look over, I then ask the first person I saw if this was his ‘stuff’. 

            “Naw, it’s his.” The man pointed to the little travel trailer and a tall lean man stepped out wearing a beard, straw hat, and bib overalls with no shirt underneath. I walked over to him and said, “Is that your stuff?” and pointed to the flatbed wagon.

“Uh-uh.”

            “Is that your rocker?”

            “Uh-uh.”

            I fingered the $50 dollar bill in my jean pocket and looked him in the eye.

            “You take a $50 dollar bill for that rocker?” And held the bill in front of him.

            “Uh-uh. Today is a good sale on that chair.” I handed him the fifty and motioned to my husband to help me get the chair off the wagon. He rolled his eyes up until they disappeared in his hairline and came over to help.

            “How are we going to get this back home?”

            “In our truck of course. Why do you think we come back to Illinois in a truck?”

            Now it was my turn to roll my eyes upward.  Sheesh.

That long ago day, the old lonesome rocker waved me down as I went by, knowing it would have a new home and gladly welcome anyone to sit and tell me where they are from.

Who Am I?

I just recently subscribed to https://fiveyearsawriter.blogspot.com/. What drew me to the first post I read yesterday gave strict attention to writing a bio when submitting your work. How does one encapsulate oneself in a few words she asks? I have struggled with this for years, how to ‘nail’ myself down in a few words, a few sentences and how to do that? Reading dozens of other bios (and I still do), I worry wart over content, depth, possible arrogance, lack of an MFA, teaching in a creative writing department (once being a Phys Ed assistant, I will assume doesn’t count), and so on. How do I pose myself properly, interestingly enough, and professionally, as a knowing writer? There are many short versions on my computer. Many…yawn. Yet, I have tagged a required bio along with pieces I have submitted and yes, accepted and published.

The blog begins: Who are you? This writer mentions how we shift and change and we do throughout our life. I agree because our styles and choices mulch over time and are altered by unforeseen events, shaping us differently whether physically or emotionally. And if a writer, or an artist of any type, ever-changing events does have solid merit upon who you/me are at that moment and how these shifts can variate when expressing ourselves in our craft.

As I thumbed backward once again in one of my writing group notebooks, I knew I wrote a piece similar to answer this question who are you? I found it in May of 2013. The delight and acknowledgment are parcels of myself that will always stay with me.  

How exactly to take from this piece and write myself into a bio, well, a tiny flash of a writing challenge lay ahead if I so desire.

I am curves that shape the Mississippi alongside tall grass and tilted porches, and belong in Grandma’s apron of flour from freshly baked bread and blackberry stains.

I am a humid black night full of daydreams that change me deeper to me and hide from teachers that scowled and made me cry.

I am a small spring of fresh water chasing frogs through fields encompassed of endless horizons. I am a home somewhere over my shoulder.

I am silence and loudness chasing me in my room. I am words and watercolor that no one can take.

Sweet are the uses of adversity. – William Shakespeare

,

Embrece December

Everyone surely has played this game…take letters from a chosen word and see how many other words you can derive from it. December for instance—beer, crème, deer, red, and so on. True, embrace is not spelled with an ‘e’, but to make my point, embrece December. This month patiently waits on eleven others to begin its display of snowy, bristled, glittery, at times costly, sleds, skates, hot cocoa, icy roads, snowplows, and aromas that fill an entire house. One can do much with December.

For me and many in my family, it also ages us. We have several December birthdays. By now, that is the one thing of this eight-letter month I have come to despise. But as a kid, it held all the wonders I could shake in a snow globe. Holiday vacation from school was the first and foremost. I guess that is where my list-making began. I used my tablet from school and filled pages with things to do; an uncle who tied sleds behind his small tractor and pulled us over the icy country roads, skating on one of their ponds, digging tunnels through huge snowdrifts with cousins, following deer tracks across fields and over fences, spotting and counting bright red cardinals, glorious snowball fights, being fussed over in fear of catching cold, hot cocoa, warm fires in stoves, popcorn balls, chocolate fudge and peanut brittle, and more pages to be filled!   

Once again I look through treasures that have been passed on to me from the writing world of relatives. One of my paternal great-grandmothers began a diary which is entitled, Diary of Lois Orr, January 20, 1897. Here are a few passages from her December of that first year.

Dec 4- Froze up last night and the ground and trees are covered with ice. The men can’t hardly stand up.

Dec 8 – Perry took the carriage down to get it mended up a little. I made the boys some candy. I have got a white heliotrope in bloom.  

Dec 14 – Went to town. Roads bad and getting worse.

Dec 22 – Me and Perry went to town in the sled.

Dec 31 – gone.

Lois’s last entry was on March 14, 1936. She became ill and passed away eight days later on March 21 of what was thought to be scarlet fever. Her recordings reflect hardship, love, humor, slim times, craftiness, generosity, and much more.

My mother as she read through this diary took lines from the recorded 866 pages and wrote a very long poem to capture many of these moments.

Here is a passage to share December…

Temperature down

without fail, the wind will blow

a perfect gale.

My how it blew

this perfect hurricane

and right behind

snow, sleet, and rain.

Oh what chunks of gloom

The sky is sad, people sick

And the roads are bad.

Gather the eggs, the chickens fed

sat by the fire

a good book read.

The children are coming

husbands and wives

the kiddies and goodies

and forks and knives.

My what a blessing

we’ve had year to year

giving thanks

for just being here.