Homecoming
It's been an amazing journey, this learning to live without our newly adult daughter who just voted in her first election, two thousand miles away.[Read more...]
View ArticleTradition? Tradition!
To build a set of traditions can be a joyful thing, but to dismantle them can be heartbreaking. And yet some shifting and evolving of tradition is necessary as children grow up, and families change....
View ArticleHome
So here it is. She's going to have a place called "home" thousands of miles from where her family lives.[Read more...]
View ArticleNew Section Added for “Literature of Parenthood” online class
Literary Mama's creative nonfiction editor Susan Ito will be offering a new section in her online writing workshop "The Literature of Parenthood." It starts next week so if you are interested, act...
View ArticleMore Filling, With Snake
Having housemates reminds me of the times that we've opened our home in the past -- various friends, a few relatives (niece and cousin), and once an entire extended family from Nicaragua who stayed...
View ArticleSailors
I had sobbed along with him, fearing my father was forever lost in a strange madness, a place where he didn't know me. But now he seems to have found his way back. [Read more...]
View ArticleThe Sandwich Goes on Vacation
"Where do five radically different people go for vacation? ...If on my own, I'd hightail it to a writing cabin. If with my husband solo, we'd pick some romantic spot or maybe take a quick trip to...
View ArticleA Bite Out of the Sandwich
"We're all balanced out here, the five of us, and she and my mother are an inseparable twosome ... When my daughter leaves, I fear the house might tip over." [Read more...]
View ArticleWant to Write a Novel?
Want to take the big plunge, and write a novel? Novelist and teacher Masha Hamilton is offering two online novel writing classes starting on September 4th, and is seeking both beginning and advanced...
View ArticleAround the Corner
I want to know where my mother went, the tough little woman who could do anything. She trained to be an EMT when she was sixty years old. She leaped into a pool and learned how to deliver a baby on a...
View ArticleThe Last Birthday Party
And then it was over. I didn't cry like I thought I might, but when the last girl went home and the helium-filled balloons started drooping, I sighed too. Seventeen years of birthday-party planning....
View ArticleTremors
My fingers hover over the "Find out more" button.... I don't know what lies ahead. I don't know if we'll ever have more than two daughters, or if we'll live anywhere beside this house, or if I'll find...
View ArticleWho’s Your Mama: The Voices of Unsung Women and Mothers
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Who’s Your Mama: The Voices of Unsung Women and Mothers http://www.yvonnebynoe.com/Whos-Your-Mama.html Looking for women writers in the U.S. who are mothers, trying to become...
View ArticleHappy Birthday, Mom, Whatever Day It Is
She used to be at the center of our family, running things, shopping, driving around, hosting large holiday parties with dozens of relatives. Those days are now the Ghost of Christmas Past. The...
View ArticleWant to Write a Novel?
Always wanted to write a novel? Does your parenting schedule keep you from attending a local class? The answer is here: Masha Hamilton's online novel writing workshops. You can take the class in your...
View ArticleReading Ahead
The rub is, of course, that you can read all you want, but nothing fully prepares you. You don't know what it's really like to parent, until that baby is there 24/7, and you're bleary with sleep...
View ArticleMy Mustard Valentine
I could hear the pages turning and then his inhalation: "Here...." Slowly, he read the words of Martin Luther King, one of his more obscure sermons. His voice cracked open a little bit and my heart...
View ArticleReading: For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth about Their Bodies, Growing Older,...
Bay Area folks! Come on out for a reading from the Seal Press anthology "For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth about Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance" edited by Victoria Zackheim. Saturday, March...
View ArticlePacking
I dreaded this last month, felt that our connection would just snap irrevocably, and she would drift away into her life like a bear cub on an ice floe.[Read more...]
View ArticleLetting Go
I don't want to be pregnant again. I don't want any more babies, or toddlers, or preschoolers, or even young school aged children. My dream was to adopt teenagers. Yes, with an "s" at the end. More...
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