A Place To Return To And My Mother’s Hair, Hands And Feet

Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Deck Prompts — Tell me about a place you need to return to.

Once I found the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), at the age of thirty-four, I have had to return year after year. It is a place for me that calms my soul. I had been in recovery for ten years when I went up there the first time in 1988.

I went every year for 11 years. Most years, I went three times: once with another couple, once with family, and once with female friends. Then, in 1999, I was divorced. Wildfires devastated where we had gone during those years, so in 2000, I didn’t go back for several years.

It took me years to get back up there. Now as I’ve aged, I am lucky to make it there with friends each year, and we stay in cabins. A few years ago, I went with my son and that was great for me. Not the trip he had planned with a friend that bailed the last minute, but a perfect trip for me.

It was important for me to ask for prayers on a prayer chain as I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get in and out of the canoe on the landing. I would rice when younger and spent many days paddling. It was no problem.

Then I thought I may have trouble getting in and out of the tent. My son said, "Don't worry Mom, I have all the equipment, just bring your personal things." He did too, the tent had a large opening on both sides and he had cots, and I had no problem getting in and out of the tent.

Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Deck Prompts - I could have written: “Place. Go ten minutes.” But do you see, turning it a bit — “a place you need to return to” — creates a hook, a hunger for the imagination: even if the place is one you thought you didn’t care about. Perhaps it held three -- or nine -- years of your life, and has some weight, some gravity, you couldn’t admit while you were there.

Place is an important part of writing. Often it’s a third character in a novel. We live in place, whether in the desert, on a farm, in a city, under a bridge. Honor wherever you are. You hate where you live? Write about that. Because the place is familiar you might find pleasure in writing its details, even if you don’t like the place.

Be aware of place in your peripheral vision even if you are writing about a sandwich, a car, the threat of nuclear war. Everything exists in place, so make sure to add a concrete line about it. It helps to settle the reader’s mind.

Sitting on the dock by the cabin in the BWCA

It is not the same as the paddle in, and hey

it doesn’t matter as the memories are there

and the reminiscing is there about where

we spent our time, all those years ago.

When we were young and carefree, no

not always, however, the time there felt so.

~~

The beauty experienced is hard to describe

setting out over water to find the perfect place to imbibe

The clean water, untouched by the pollution

was my perfect place to find a solution

to problems I would bring with me

I could set them aside fairly quickly

and relax in the sun and fun of nature to see

and have the enormous energy and will to be free!

Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Deck Prompts — Tell about your mother’s hair (or an aunt’s, grandmother’s, stepmother’s, foster mother’s sister’s).

My mother didn’t color her hair and she had salt and pepper hair until her death at age 75. Her hair was straight and thin. Not as thin as mine, and she would curl and later perm her hair.

My sister always wanted longer thicker hair, as children I remember her wearing clothes or fabric on her head and treating that as more hair. She would pretend her hair was longer and thicker.

For most of her life, she had long hair that she would wear in a braid most often. When she died her hair was short, with some curls caused by the chemotherapy she had for the leukemia she died from.

I remember my aunties having thick, full heads of hair, curled either by perm or curlers. Some completely grey, to white, and some salt and pepper hair.

Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Deck Prompts — Texture, color, how they wore it. Did they dye it? The salon or beauty parlor they went to?

How about their hands — or feet?

I only remember delicate, beautiful hands and feet from my female relatives. Some with manicures and some not. My mother soaked her feet regularly and checked them often as she was diabetic and she saw too many people lose their feet and legs from diabetes. And she thought it was from not being careful enough with their feet.

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First published by Mercury Press on medium.com