Category Archives: Memoir

Dry January, Memoir, New & Old, Patience, Publishing

New. Old.

All sorts of new things to be learned in January. It is quite an exhausting month.

On a very bracing twenty-degree morning walk last weekend I saw ahead of me, in the middle of the street, a man reach into his wool overcoat pocket then hand another man something glittery. Money? Too bright. Car keys? Too small. Who am I — Agatha Christie? He turned to me as I passed and offered me the same, a local confection, wrapped in gold and silver foil. “You won’t see me again when I have given them all away” he answered when I thanked him.

Two things I learned about myself right then: I wanted to run go find him another box of candy because come on what a great way to meet and greet the new year and this exact second of pleasure — not for the sweet but for his cheerful smile and jaunty cap — made me want to keep knowing this gentle man, just giving away his Christmas box of chocolates on a winters day.

And two: turns out I will take candy from strangers.

January, 2023 was also a good month to identify the culprits for my crippling insomnia so my version of dry January is a caffeine- free month. Now, it also might have something to do with my new PCP shuddering in horror when I told her how much espresso I consumed in a day. Ok, Ok! Covid habits die hard. As do post-covid no taste or smell untenable consumption of dairy products. So. There’s that; decaf everything. Hold the cheese. This is not new news, but old news I need to take seriously.

Also learned: I can live without caffeine. Maybe my blood pressure will reduce to passable numbers. And I thank the Goddesses that decaf exists in all forms. When January is up I will reintroduce ONE double espresso and see what changes. I will report back.

We made it through the holidays with a revolving door, a full fridge and a lot of ribbon. But my kids are grown. Two will be married by next December. I have been giving this a hard think: what can I do to help them create their own traditions and still get some time all together on, true confessions, my most favorite time of the year? This is a work-in-progress thought explore.

I learned: quality time is the only time. So if we get the sleepover-gift exchange-all around a dining table somewhere near the holiday, all together, I can make peace with that.

Back in the Pacific Northwest for my migration away from snow and cold to rework and get cracking on my memoir project after a long hiatus of short essay and flash non fiction writing. See my piece “Itch” January 16, published online in River Teeth, Beautiful Things. FYI I submitted in March, 2022 and the publishing date was ten months later.

I learn, over and over: Patience.

Alexandra Dane writes by the sea in Seattle and Boston. Her memoir-in-progress explores coming of age twice at the mercy of cancer; first as caregiver, then as patient. Her most recent essay, “Found. Well.” was published by San Fedele Press. “Itch” is forthcoming in River Teeth: Beautiful Things. Read her thoughts at www.alexandradanewrites.com. She knits to think.

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Cake, Coping, Courage, Holidays, Memoir

November goals.

Leaves. Frost. Owl calls. Vests. November in the Pacific Northwest; squeezing a little time with my writer support group, the island, cousins and friends before the holidays. I am reading a piece on a virtual site tonight about cake, coping and courage. My mother loved that word ‘cope’and overused it, especially with a child who didn’t actually know what it meant but I knew — from the force of her voice — that this was an important action to take.

It has taken me so far a lifetime to accumulate and practice the nuances of coping. They include blind faith, closed eyes, simple pleasures, complicated relationships and love. How did you cope during 2020, 2021 and now 2022 when we still mask, worry and take great risks in the most mundane places — movie theaters, the grocery store, weddings? Coping or crap shoot? I carry N95’s and wear in groups situations. I fly masked and without drinking/eating/snacking. I still have a sneaky cold today, picked up despite five vaccine jabs and the flu shot. Crap shoot week.

There is an endangered squirrel that found it’s way into the walls of Wren Cottage, and chirps in distress all night. Today we cannot hear it, and hope — with crossed fingers — that it found a way out. A few days ago we watched a little family of them play tag on a tree, little black creatures full of bounce. How sweet, small and vulnerable it is; “cope” I whispered to it before I went to bed last night. Why not.

The holidays speed towards me and I love them, lugging home gifted cookbooks and full of ideas. I simply do not know how to slow down about now, but maybe, after I make David Lebovitz’s Pistachio Rolande, I will sit in front of the fire, fork in the deliciousness and cope with that affliction.

Kick up some leaves. Remember down time. Thinking of you.

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Easter, Father, flowers, Hyacinth, Memoir

Love, Delivered.

Funny what starts a trigger. For me, it is hyacinth.

My first: delivered to the back steps of my childhood home on a snowy Connecticut March day, the potted bulb cradled in pink foil tied with a white bow, buds tightly closed on verdant green stalks leaning bravely into the winter wind. Tucked between the stems, a minuscule florist envelope, the card reading From the E. Bunny penned in my father’s funny half-script-half-print, signed off with his signature smiley face adorned with a small squiggle of hair. Oh, Dad. I felt so grown up I thought I would burst.

And a few days later, as the centerpiece on the Easter dinner table, the flowers opened to bundles of lilac blossoms, the fragrance — mingled with lamb, mint jelly, roasted potatoes — imprinted on me forever. My first, of almost forty, potted hyacinth delivered by florists to my door over the next four decades, whether my dining table was in Connecticut, Seattle, San Francisco, or later, Boston.

My father died in March, 2011. I held his hand those final days and rambled on about all the things I could and would remember about him and us, thanked him for so many things, even got a faint smile once or twice. But I forgot the flowers. When Easter came a few weeks later there were lilies on my table. My doorbell didn’t ring. I lost him all over again: it’s the little things that can hurt the most.

Spring is here in Seattle, the bulbs are bursting. Walking a neighbor’s puppy this afternoon we chanced upon a garden flocked with those white, pink, purple spring bulbs. The fragrance staggered me and left me breathless. All those memories firing and triggering and my heart bleeding just a little. Did he realize that eight years after he died I would still half-anticipate the doorbell, a florist delivery person standing on the step holding a foil wrapped pot? That I would miss seeing the lopsided grin of his silly squiggle person on those cards? That just a tiny whiff of the blossom would make me cry? I will never know what made him begin that tradition. I do know that at Easter I miss him the most.

As a parent I often reevaluate before the holidays and think well the kids are grownups now, they can’t possibly care about this tradition anymore. Then I remember his simple gesture, repeated over and over; the pink foil, the little skip of joy in my chest, the smell of a hyacinth bursting from the bulb. How it felt to have a father.

We are never too young, or too grown up, for love to be delivered, in any way.

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 Kingsland Kitchen, Portland, Oregon

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#AWP2019, Memoir, New Vocabulary, writing

Gathered Together.

I am in Portland, Oregon, for the yearly AWP — Association of Writers and Writing Programs. I am not on a panel, am not a published book author, will give no readings and cannot expense this: I am, however, one of 15,000 attendees that have paid the fee to marathon through three days of fast-paced workshops and readings on topics that will range from sexuality, travel, teaching, #metoo, memory, trauma, health, gender, publishing, literary agents, every and all literary genres to digital poetry. I will learn new words. My feet and head will hurt by Saturday night.

I did a trial run to the conference center on light rail this afternoon. Our 2019 host city chose to rain hard today, the humidity rising from our shoulders as we were corralled through the the registration area like airport security. Behind me, I saw a famous author I hoped remembered me from a workshop in Seattle. Waving madly at him, I thought; what gives me the cred to be here with him?

Tomorrow quite early I will  have a good coffee with an extra shot, probably swallow three Advil, purchase a day pass for the train and swim upstream through the escalator masses to find the ballroom where author Pam Houston’s panel convenes on writing about intimacy. Then I am off and running: Colson Whitehead’s keynote, Lidia Yuknavitch’s reading, Cheryl Strayed’s talk about her writing process, workshops on trauma, healing and humor. I will end the three days with a panel talking about being 60 and writing about death. If I hold up, eighteen sessions. And I may even attend a yoga class or two for writers.

I will watch people read famous author’s name tag as they pass him in the hallway, stop him, talk with him, ask him to sign one of his books. My name tag —  Alexandra Dane — won’t ring any bells. I will be handing out my business card to anyone who smiles at me, and if I am lucky they might read my blog, a few of my articles, remember me next time.

Yet a common denominator brings us here; on Monday morning, all of us will face a blank sheet of paper. Each of these 15,000 writers will search to find the first word of many to write something that will make you, the reader, think.

Our name tags are the same color at AWP2019 for a reason: under the dome of this conference center we gather together — young, old, famous and not famous —  and learn how to be better writers.

Humbling.

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Billboard on the building across from my hotel room.

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At The Fault Line, Bravery, Memoir, Read, Support, writing

At The Fault Line

Today, Friday June 8, I am reading one of my recent essays at a ticketed event in Seattle. Eleven writers in my memoir group have crafted, honed and polished their words with grace and guts for the last few months. Writing a personal trauma story is a naked enough feeling. To read it in public takes exposure to a whole new level.

Last year, after my diagnosis and series of surgeries, three years of writing a manuscript went up in smoke. The questions came fast and hard, especially at night: do I bury my mother’s story, interweave mine, move on from past to present or take the story present to past? Do I even have the skills to do any or all of this? Do I want to?

When I finally wrote down the words which became my essay, “We Don’t Know Everything,” I felt there had been a nuclear explosion in my head; the collision of my story, my mother’s story, cancer information and understanding illness, all locking together in believable — and unbelievable — ways. All the pieces will be sharing, for lack of a better word, the radioactive fissure — the cracking of the fault lines —  that comes from speaking out on trauma. Eleven times over.

This is the second year of this event At The Fault Line. I hope we do this forever. The experience of professional coaching — by our mentor Tara Hardy —  speaking our words aloud into a microphone, into the atmosphere, into the ears of friends and strangers, validates our writing. And our existence. And our purpose.

Last year we sold tickets at the door. This year we have been sold out for almost two weeks. I am watching the seedling of a mighty tree of storytelling grow and grow and grow.

The stories will crack open hearts, from the mundane to the profound, from folding laundry to holding an Alzheimer patient. I am so proud of all of us.

Buddha

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