Writing Workshop

Last month I took a writing workshop offered as part of the One Book One Community program for MSU freshmen and East Lansing residents.
I thought I'd share my assignments with you.

The first was a 5 minute class assignment after we looked at some rocks the teacher passed around the room:

Rocks
All sizes, shapes and colors,
Washed smooth by eons of time
Joy to find in Lake Superior's cold water
Agates are the treasure.
I found one!
Now a necklace to wear with memories.
What a vacation!

Another week's assignment was to write about the familiar becomming unfamiliar or the unfamiliar becoming familiar. I wrote this untitled piece.

A few days before our parents moved into an apartment Dick, my brother, took photos in each room of our family home. Did the prints get forgotten at the developers? Were they accidentally discarded? Did a book of photos lay hidden in a drawer at the office or home? My sister and I never saw them. Dick died twelve years ago and the location of the photos died too.

Dick’s widow recently moved into a new home and the long lost photos came to light in a box stored in a basement corner. I rejoiced with surprise when I heard the news!

Turning pages of the photo album was a nostalgic tour of home. There was the formal dining room where festive holiday meals were served. There was the cozy breakfast room where we got a nourishing send off to school. In my mind’s eye I saw the stockings “hung by the chimney with care” near the beautifully decorated Christmas tree surrounded with gaily wrapped gifts. There was the lavender bathroom where I primped for high school dates. In my bedroom were the twin beds I shared with Grandma when she stayed overnight. The house looked just like I remembered.

Today that feeling of nostalgia is different. Grandma’s reupholstered love seat looks perfect in my sunny living room. As I dust the ornate, marble topped table beside our bed, I remember how I hated dusting its curly cues as a child. The large oval dining room table where numerous family dinners were served with my Dad seated at one end and Mother at the other serves another growing family in my son’s kitchen. The tall, beloved grandfather clock chimes the hours in my sister- in- law’s foyer. The grand piano gives another generation music lessons at my sister’s home.

New owners and located in new homes there is the mixed feeling of family history and 21st century lifestyle. We have made the furniture our own but in some ways it is still Mother and Dad.

The other assignment was to study a pine cone, see something new in it and write about it! I wrote:

Pine cones can be found from California to Maine. I have had the fun of gathering them, very small Hemlock cones to large Sugar Pine Cones. But never have I contemplated a pine cone as much as I have this week over the Austrian Pine cone assigned to me.

Whatever the size or shape, a pine cone is an incubator of seeds. Ripe seeds disperse to start sprouting around the mature tree, the cone dropping from its attachment to the tree.

Isn’t that like friendship I wondered? There around the cone’s stem are close knit “petals” like my childhood friends, next door and down the block. When I left home for school, Girl Scouts, church choir, high school clubs and activities my friendship circle opened up as the petal layers of the pine cone I hold. My circle of friends expanded as I matured, creating a beautiful “pine cone flower” in my life letting go from the parents.

Down at the tight, firm base of my pine cone friendships are Ann and Carol. As children we saw each other everyday growing physically and sharing experiences. Then they moved away. We nurtured our long distance friendship with Christmas cards and finally, as adults, meeting again to discover our “pine cone friendship” was held together at the base with those concentric circles of memories and similar experiences.

Newer friends, near the top of the pine cone, open my mind to new challengers and opportunities as we spread wide to grow and experience life together. There is Jane who encouraged and supported me to take a responsible job. There’s Win who said, “You might like to read this book.” There’s Maud who needed my encouragement and hospitality.

I discovered God creates beauty and new life through friends and pine cones. All this from spending quiet time with a pine cone!

Love, Grandma/mother