To Give or Not to Give

Years ago, my family used to exchange Christmas presents: everyone gave everyone else something. Then one year, we decided to pick names, except no one wanted to draw names from a hat. Or maybe I just didn’t. There’s one person in my family who is very hard to shop for (you know who you are if you’re reading this!), so I wanted someone else’s—anyone else’s—name. 

The truth is a lot of us were hard to shop for, not because we were picky, but we were all adults and had jobs, so if we really wanted something, we saved for it and got it ourselves. Ye ol’ gift card became the gift of choice. It was easy! I loved it! Shopping for gifts wasn’t taking so much time, and then my sister complained one year, “All we’re doing is exchanging money.” She was right.

So then we moved to just doing stocking stuffers for each other, and I think we set a limit of $10, but some people adhered to that and some people didn’t, and my husband never knew what to get my family members, so I ended up shopping for both of our gifts to everyone else.

And then I became The Grinch. I decided one year that my husband and I wanted out of the gift/stocking stuffer exchange. “But then you won’t have anything to open,” one of my family members said to me. “Don’t you want to open something on Christmas morning?”

No, in fact, I did not. 

My family members continued to exchange gifts among themselves, and my husband and I sat with my family through the unwrapping of gifts. Did it bother us? Not a bit. Sure, we didn’t get any presents, but we also hadn’t had to try and figure out what to get everyone else. I found I was more relaxed through December. I loved it.

Gifts, apparently, are not my love language.

My husband and I long ago stopped giving each other gifts on special occasions. Not that we don’t do many other things for each other—or, often, buy something for the other. It just doesn’t happen on birthdays, anniversaries, or Christmas. And we both like it that way. There’s no pressure to find the exact right thing to tell the other you care. He does plenty for me all year round—fixes things around the house, watches a silly show just because I want to, does all the driving on long road trips, walks with me every morning, makes me coffee on Saturdays and Sundays, cheers me on in my writing career. I’m good with that. I’m more than good.

I love seeing my family on holidays—we don’t live in the same place, so it’s a big gift just to see them, to talk in person, to give each other hugs. 

My family eventually stopped the whole stocking stuffer exchange. We focus on what we will cook, what we will do, how many days together we’ll have.

Photo credit: Madison Kaminski

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Upcoming Online Seminars

Let’s Write Together!
Tuesdays at noon EST (on Zoom): December 7, 14, 21, 28; January 4, 11, 18
Having a hard time finding inspiration and motivation to write? Join me for any (or all) of these online one-hour sessions on Tuesdays at noon EST. We’ll talk about a piece of writing, I will give you a prompt, and then you will WRITE. These workshops are in partnership with Press 53. Cost: $10/session. Register for any of them here.

(NEW!) Take Two: More Tools & Techniques for Your Flash Nonfiction Toolbox
Sunday, January 2, 3-4:30 p.m. EST (online)
In this seminar, we’ll mine more powerful flash pieces for effective techniques you can use in your own writing. You’ll also be given a flash nonfiction prompt and time to write so you can take what you’ve learned and begin a first flash draft during class. (This class builds on my other seminar, “Moments that Matter: an Introduction to Flash Nonfiction,” but is not required to attend). Cost $30. Register here.

Make Your Titles Do More of the Heavy Lifting
Saturday, February 5, 10 a.m.-noon EST
Titles should serve your poetry and prose rather than simply helping to navigate the contents page. Using poetry titles as examples so we can cover more ground during this seminar, together we'll look at titles that work hard and offer zing and pizzazz so that your own titles will entice readers and better serve your writing. What is covered in this seminar applies to prose—especially flash fiction, flash nonfiction, short stories, and personal essays. This seminar is in partnership with the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. Register here.

Prompt-Writing like Speed-Dating: Prompt, Write, Next, Prompt, Write, Next
Tuesday, January 25, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST on Zoom
If you’ve attended Let’s Write Together with me, you’ll recognize the format: I’ll share a piece of writing to inspire you, offer a prompt related to it, and you will have time to write. Except I’ll be offering a new piece and prompt every 10-12 minutes during this 1.5-hour workshop. Think of it like speed dating—there’s another piece and prompt ready to inspire you just around the corner, with time for sharing at the end. This workshop is in partnership with Press 53. Cost: $30. Register here.

(NEW!) Addressing the “You” in Flash Nonfiction
Sunday, February 6, 2-4:00 p.m. EST on Zoom
In this seminar, we will look at flash essays that address a “you” in the piece (in some cases, this is called a literary apostrophe). Who the “you” is varies from piece to piece. We’ll look at whom each writer is addressing and pull out the strategies these writers use to draw out the reader’s emotions and tell these short, compelling true stories. You’ll have time in class to try your hand at drafting a flash piece that addresses your own “you.” Cost $40. Register here.

The Other Side of Trouble

Autumn is tricky. It’s a time of year when any piece of big, bad news has fallen into my life along with all those big, beautiful leaves. 

One year, a few days after Thanksgiving, my first husband said he wanted a divorce. Another November, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I was driving on a highway in North Carolina when I got the call that my dear friend had died. Another fall, I got a difficult diagnosis and underwent a major surgery and spent the holidays recuperating, traveling back and forth to the doctors. Another October, my dog was ill enough she needed a specialist, needed pills. I needed pills, too, that year, though nothing helped. It was the only time I wished I drank alcohol, and lots of it. Instead I faced just me.

Yet I love autumn. It’s still my favorite time of year. I love the colors, the chill, the softening, slanted light. I love the season’s sweaters, fireplaces, flannel shirts. And I love the brightness of our Christmas tree, which for a decade we’ve put up as early as November 1—my choice, not my husband’s, but he indulges me. He hauls it out of our garage and out of its box, sticks the “branches” into the metal pole, and I fluff the fake pine needles, decorate the tree with ornaments from my childhood and from our years of marriage, a perfect union of past and present.

But last year, of course, autumn was different. We didn’t exactly get bad news, we just kept living through what was by then months of pandemic isolation and uncertainty. No one knew how to gather safely, and even gathering felt selfish. My family disagreed on what was safe, and in the end, I served red lentils for Thanksgiving and forgot it was a holiday. I forgot the Christmas tree. I forgot to celebrate. December came and it wasn’t until mid-month that I even remembered that a major holiday was looming. It felt too late, by then, to put up the tree, or maybe it was just that I didn’t care. The tree stayed in the box in the garage. We spent Christmas by ourselves, and it was like any other day. 

This year, true to autumn’s fickle promise, my family faced a a handful of medical issues, and off we went to so many doctor’s appointments I stopped counting. I worried at night but pushed that aside to tackle the day’s challenges. And now, it seems, we’re past them, or at least we’re on the other side of something. 

And this year, on November 1, I remembered it was time. I mentioned it to my husband, and I didn’t even have to ask: by evening, the box was in our den, and by the next day, the tree was standing in the corner like a long-lost friend.

There will always be trouble, but there will always be the other side of it. You just have to get there. That’s what I keep telling myself. Put up the tree. Dangle ornaments from branches. Tie the velvet tree skirt around the base. Count my blessings; celebrate the now; plug in all those brilliant, beautiful lights.

(Photo credits: autumn road by Benjamin Voros; Christmas tree by yours truly)

The Walk Home

I’ve been walking and thinking and facing life’s small and big challenges. I keep remembering this passage I wrote years ago, a passage that ended up in my memoir, The Going and Goodbye. It was the shortest chapter, but it’s one of the longest in the sense that I keep living it. Here it is once more:

The Walk Home

It wasn’t an emergency, but one morning when I still lived in Chapel Hill, after a particularly heavy snow, I had to go to the hospital for a medical appointment, the kind not easily missed and rescheduled. My friend offered to drive me in his four-wheel- drive behemoth, which I gratefully accepted. I told him I would walk the way home.

It wasn’t too far, just four miles, and I had good boots, a warm coat, and a love of the outdoors. After the appointment, I emerged from the hospital worried and fearful—not because of something said in that one appointment but because of all the trips I’d had to make there, the heavy glass doors I’d had to push, the elevator that rode up slowly, the long hallway of doors that all looked the same. And because of all the rest: the fear of trouble happening, a kind of fear that emerges when a doctor tells you that you are at a higher risk for something you don’t want to have. I was lucky because I didn’t have that something, but I remember that on that snowy day I worried that one day I would. 

Then I walked. 

I walked on the main road, out of the hospital’s reach, and past the university buildings and downtown with its brick fronts and boutiques, though that day the town lay quiet, asleep in snow. I walked and I breathed and I saw the white on roofs and driveways and trees. The branches bent down under the weight of it all. I felt the chill in my lungs, which I liked, which I craved. It reminded me of the place I was from, the cold that had made me who I was. I trudged past people’s homes, their histories hidden behind doors and shutters, some of their stories easier than mine but others so much harder than I would ever know. I walked past covered cars and blankets of lawns, past forks in the road and stoplights and stop signs. 

I could look back or look forward. I could remain or I could walk. 

So I walked and I walked, even after I turned the key and pushed open my front door, I walked on the day after, and the next and the next. 

(Photo credit: Jaunathan Gagnon, Unsplash)

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UPCOMING (ONLINE) WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS

The Art of Memoir & Personal Essay: a Four-Week Workshop
Tuesdays, November 2-23, 2021 2:30-5 p.m. EST
Join me in this four-week online (Zoom) workshop during which you will generate new writing, read writing that inspires, and learn tools and techniques on the craft of personal essay and memoir writing. There are no critiques in this workshop. The goal is for you to leave with first drafts and a writer’s toolbox ready to help you finish and write the rest of your own life stories. Space is limited to 12 participants. All levels of writers welcome. No memoir experience necessary. Cost $279. Early bird registration $219 until October 20 or until spaces fill. Learn more. Register here.

Let’s Write Together!
Tuesdays at noon EST (on Zoom): October 19; November 2, 9, 16 (more dates to come)
Having a hard time finding inspiration and motivation to write? Join me for any (or all) of these online one-hour sessions on Tuesdays at noon EST. We’ll talk about a piece of writing, I will give you a prompt, and then you will WRITE. These workshops are in partnership with Press 53. Cost: $10/session. Register for any of them here.

The Nuts and Bolts of Submitting Your Work to Literary Magazines
Wednesday, December 1, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
Are you wanting to submit your work to literary journals but feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? In this online seminar, we’ll talk about how to research literary magazines, how to submit your work, how to track your submissions (for free), and what to put in (and leave out of) your bio statement. (Please note that this seminar is not focused on finding an agent or book publisher.) We’ll also leave time at the end for your questions. This seminar is in partnership with Press 53. Cost $30. Register here.

Moments that Matter: an Introduction to Flash Nonfiction
Thursday, December 9, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
In this online workshop, we’ll talk about what flash nonfiction is, how it works, and why it works. Together we’ll mine some powerful flash pieces for effective techniques you can use in your own writing. Cost: $30. Register here.