Slice of Life: A slice of life from my dad's moleskin journal

On Tuesdays, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

  

"Would you ever consider a writing class for older people?" a woman asked me last week. 

Over the six weeks since opening The Writing Clinic, I've had several requests for various sorts of writing classes, and classes for adults has come up. Classes for people with dementia is very much on my list of possibilities. 

"One of the most special things I have in my office is the moleskin journal that my dad used to write it," I responded. 

The moleskin journal is green, and the first several pages contain entries my father wrote during the time when we were all suffering from his dementia. My four daughters were in middle and high school, and we had a family ritual of writing after dinner. For five to ten minutes, everyone stayed at the table and wrote a slice of life. (Yes, we really did that.) The girls complained at first, but it became another thing they had to do to keep their compulsive mother happy. They complied, sometimes more than others. To be honest, we didn't do this every night, but we did all write together on many of them. The girls laugh about the ritual now, and they are even planning some family write-nights next week when they are all home for the holidays. 

The woman's question about class offerings inspired me to open the pages of Doc's notebook. What a gift is was to read his words from 2013. How has it been so long? Weren't we just at that table sitting around and telling stories?

Slice of Life: A Safe Secret

  On Tuesdays, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

  

A lot of people had morning coffee on their agenda this morning, making a quiet spot at The Coffee Spot a tough spot to find. My friend and I ordered our drinks and peeked in various rooms on a quest for a place to sit and discuss some ideas for research and work. We settled on a corner table. 

For a while, the corner table was perfect. Several other coffee-drinkers chatted and worked around us, and we were able to focus on each other and our conversation. But things got a little trickier when she wanted to record my responses to her questions for a research project. The women next to us weren't exactly monitoring their volume. 

After perusing the room possibilities, we gathered our bags and coffees to head into the back room where two men were settling in, clearly with similar intentions. It was an almost perfect place until we realized that our corner, out-of-the-way spot was directly beneath the speaker...and the music was loud. 

"Do you think you could reach that volume button?" I asked my friend. 

She didn't need any encouragement to step on a chair and hit the "-" button. The volume decrease was far from gradual, and the room was suddenly silent. The two men looked at us. We weren't sure what they'd say. 

Then...

"Thank you," the one said. "What a better way for a conversation."

"Maybe keep this a secret," I said. 

"That's part of my job," he said. 

I hadn't noticed the black and white color around his neck. 

Our secret was safe, and both our conversations were had with a quieter background. How lovely. 

Slice of Life: Inspiration for Winter Planters

 On Tuesdays, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

  

Last week, winter planters sparked my curiosity, and I spent time looking at different combinations of greens that could color up the grayness of my outdoor spaces. Lo and behold, facebook offered video after video of creative approaches for arranging white pine, cedar, and holly. Those digital algorithms were working in my favor. 

My mom loves flower-arranging, so on Sunday morning, I brought over an arts and crafts project that included several planters, vases, floral foam, dried hydrangea blooms, and six yards of mixed green roping. With clippers in hand, we pilfered her backyard evergreens for additional offerings. Her gardens are spectacular, even in late November on cold gray mornings, so it didn't take long to have a pile of rhododendron branches, leucothe stalks, andromeda sprigs, weeping hemlocks sprays, red twig dogwood branches, and holly swatches. 

"Think about heights and textures," she said as we clipped. I've grown up as a gardener thinking about heights and textures because she always thinks about that in her gardens. "But don't take any of the branches with berries on them. Those are for the birds." I've also started to plan my gardens around birds and butterflies, inspired by her commitment to nurture the backyard wildlife. 

Back in the kitchen, we went to work. 

"How about a border of the hydrangeas?" she suggested. 

I sat on the floor, clipping and snipping, aware of the mess I was creating, but also with a vision of planters and vases. 

By the end of our arts and crafts session, I had planters, vases, and pots that were rivaling some of the facebook videos. 

I used to love being on the lookout for the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon has to do with the concept that once you learn about something, you keep seeing that something or something to do with it all over the place. Social media has messed that up. Now, once I see something that's new to me or curiosity-sparking, I'm apt to google it. And then, that something shows up all over the place. I've learned the importance of selective googling. 

Turns out that googling holiday planters produced some inspiration for a memorable November morning and some beauty for the gray spaces of home.