Author Archives: Diana

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About Diana

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Christmas Gift

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Originally posted on A Way with Words blog

This week we hosted a reunion of our family and former neighbors.

Our fourteen-year-old grandson, Henry, met two neighborhood children when they were all two-years-old. We were his full-time caregivers while his mom, our daughter, worked. Henry was at our home every weekday and grew up with the kids in our neighborhood. As time passed, changes were inevitable. Jill’s family moved to Washington DC and Bobby’s moved to a different part of Tucson. We kept in touch sporadically during the years as the kids grew. Our grandson was, for a while, in the same school as Bobby, when he lived across the street. But by the age of seven, they were all separated with Jill being the farthest.

2012

The boys get together several times a month and remain close friends. Our daughter took Henry to Washington DC one summer to visit Jill and her family. Another summer, they met halfway in Chicago. Jill’s family visited Tucson once and all three kids got together.

2013

This year they made the trip to Tucson for a short visit. We hosted the reunion at our house. All the adults wondered how the teens would react to each other after a four-year separation. By noon the boys sat by the window watching for Jill’s arrival. It was an amazing greeting. All three kids moved right into the space of their friendship as if only a day or two had passed. They chatted non-stop. In the afternoon they took a two-hour walk while we, grownups, were fixing dinner. They bought sweet rolls for our dessert.

2017

After dinner, the kids went into the room that we keep for Henry’s occasional overnights; the room that once housed his toys and where he napped as a baby. On his walls are photo posters that I made each year from when he was two until seven. All three kids are in those posters. They stayed in the room reminiscing over their pictures, laughing and talking for quite a while. I know those memories meant something to them.

Greater than any wrapped present, purchased or made, is the gift of friendship. We know these three will maintain their relationship as they become adults. Each is on the brink of adulthood now, each has their own interests, their unique set of talents, their own friends at schools but they will always remember the closeness that came of their time as children. Another reunion, possibly in California, is being planned for summer. Henry has no siblings, Bobby has no siblings, and Jill has a sister seven years younger. The relationship the three teens created is very like brothers and sister – family.

2022

Where I Am From

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Originally posted on A Way with Words blog

In this hurly-burly of year-end and holidays, it is nice to take a breath and reflect. Who am I now? With each year and the myriad of experiences it brings, it is good to assess the changes that may have been of consequence. Births, deaths, marriages, jobs, illness can all impact our sense of self. What is at your core and how was it created?

As Sally posted on Wednesday, I also admire Amanda Le Rougetel’s blog What’s My Story from her blogsite, https://fiveyearsawriter.blogspot.com/. I did not rise to Amanda’s challenge to make my story in sixty-five words or less. However, it is a great way to describe yourself by encapsulating your experiences in a short poem. In light of Sally’s post “Who Am I”, I was reminded of a prompt Beth Alvarado gave us in a 2013 writing group.  Write a poem that describes where you are from. (I know, I know – don’t end a sentence with a preposition – cardinal error). In 1998 George Ella Lyon, a Kentucky poet, wrote a book titled Where I Am From that was used as a model in teaching memoir writing. Clues to who you are come directly from your roots and experiences. Those memories are touchstones that reconnect me deeply back to myself in chaotic times, physical or emotional. Each stanza describes places that formed my view of the world, places where I was at home or where I lived tenuously until I could move on, ending in Tucson where I belong. I was born in Kansas, spent summers over many years with grandparents in Colorado, lived forty years in Western Washington, and finally settled in the Southwest that combines the sunshine of Kansas, the mountains of Colorado, and the extraordinarily high desert skies. These short phrases packed with images, smells, and sounds tell my story.

Where I Am From

I am from the traveling wind, wide blue skies, and waving wheat

Great-grandma’s raw onions by the supper plate

Great-grandpa’s coffee can spittoon beside his rocker

Refrigerator on the back porch and dirt fruit cellar

Fireflies on summer nights

I am from the deep dark earth, mountain highs

Fishing at Estes Park

Honeysuckle, snapdragons, and putting up the beans

A ringer on the washing machine

Cold fried chicken and white bread with butter and sugar

I am from endless gray skies,

Armies of black-green sentinel firs reaching to the clouds

City of a thousand cultures mingled like succulent odors of stew

The drizzle of cold, the smell of mold

Wind in the sails, islands in the fog

I am from the knife-edged mountain peaks with hidden crevices

That rise from the desert floor

Coyotes howling, javelina prowling

The soul-filling smell of the creosote bush after summer monsoons

The endless blue of sky and translucent flower of prickly pear

This is one of the poems published in our book, Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets; Chapter 4, page 285. I sincerely hope you are creating happy memories with family and friends during this holiday season.

A Weekend Project

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Originally posted on A Way with Words blog

I recently read a poem by Tom Chester titled Sedimentology (Sedimentology – TURN-STONE) in which he more or less describes my writing room. I don’t know about all writers but some I know have a similar problem – collections of words that pile up in various forms to make hillocks and eventually mountains of paper, bound and unbound. I looked around my room and decided that this weekend would be dedicated to moving those mountains. Books were replaced on shelves where they belonged – the easiest task. It took the better part of two days, but I excised a Hefty bag full of detritus that has been collecting for weeks and months; piles on every horizontal surface including the floor. The remaining notes, papers, letters, and clippings were properly classified and tucked into labeled file folders, then housed in one of three file cabinets according to their category: business, personal, or writing references. I also have a small box of mementos that don’t fit in files but will reside on a shelf in a closet until I forget why I kept them.

These pictures are not MY writing room but a close proximity to what it looked like. I didn’t take a photo of my room in its disarray.

The file labeled Bits and Pieces is the thickest. It contains jagged pieces of envelopes and napkins, published thought-provoking articles, and scribbled lined-pages of half thought out ideas that didn’t make it into one of my notebook/journals. The journals, themselves, take up a couple of shelves in a bookcase. Much of the time spent in this exercise was rereading those precious scraps of writing, so urgently recorded that, at one time, seemed quite brilliant; tossing most. The saved ones are worthy of becoming a short story, a poem, or a blog post. I rediscovered letters from friends that need to be answered – better late than never. Of course, my three cat-comrades, Nunny Catch, Oliver, and Sadie, assisted by roaming among the sorted piles, and across my lap insisting on head rubs while I sat on the floor where they could easily reach me. It was labor, long overdue, and totally worth the effort. A cleansing of sorts. Now I can enter my tidy room and get right to my desk without moving or avoiding piles. Ahh, that feels good. The sad reality is that those mountains will rebuild over the next year – despite the best of intentions.

Why I Write

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First posted on A Way with Words December 5, 2022

It’s about Power.

As a writer of fiction, I can create a city, a village, a country, a world. I can fill it with characters that I love or love to hate. I can imbue them with a certain amount of free will and, if I don’t like how they use it, I have the power of the eraser or delete key. The characters I create may be human or they may be animals, even mechanical beings, or a combination of these.  I can ride down a country road feeling the fluid strength of the steed beneath me, enjoying the bucolic scene of field and meadow, knowing that around the next bend there is a plot twist that will change my story, transform the world. I can change the weather from stormy to sunny and back again. In short, I am god.  I can wander through forests of words and chop down the one I want to take to a sentence I’m constructing. I can plunge into oceans of emotions to catch the one that will give my character motivation to propel the story forward.

Similarly, when I write memoir or creative non-fiction, I take an event from the headlines or from memory and, while sticking to the reality of it, invent or reimagine dialogue I did not hear or do not remember. I give the incident a spin to emphasize the part I think is important or transformative. It is my story told my way. This kind of writing does require research to authenticate it. I enjoy research because it opens the discovery of things I did not know and enriches knowledge that I then mine for other stories.  I prefer fiction and poetry because I am not bounded by facts, annoying facts that constrict my imagination.

Writing is an inexpensive form of entertainment and also therapy. The cost of a pencil and paper can set me up for hours and hours of diversion. I disappear into a world I create. Sometimes it is hard for me to resurface, to attend to my daily tasks and the real-life characters, human and animal, who live with me. I am glassy-eyed and slightly incoherent for a time when I leave my writing desk depending on how long I have been immersed in writing. My dear husband can attest to the state of suspended animation that surrounds me. I gave up the idea of writing the great American novel by the time I was thirty. I write for myself because I love to play god.

Elvis

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First posted on A Way with Words, November 28, 2022

There is only one. My husband and I went to see the movie, Elvis, with Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker. Let me just say, Austin may be a good actor, but he is no Elvis. The 1979 movie with Kurt Russell as The King was a more convincing portrait. This new movie, however, was heavy on the portrayal of Parker and his relationship with Elvis. Tom Hanks disappeared into the role of the Colonel. He was amazing. How sweet Tom H. could embody the sleaze that was Parker makes it clear he is an incredible actor. This is not meant to be a movie critique. Many of my friends saw the show and have differing opinions. I think it is doing well at the box office but I would not recommend it. The music, of course, carries the show.

I was twelve when Elvis entered my life. He had been around for a while by then, but it was his music played on KJR in Seattle that got my attention. I think the fervent plea Don’t Be Cruel was my introduction. With the urgency only a teen can understand, I talked my mom into taking me to the record store. In those days there were stores dedicated to vinyl records, where you could spend hours listening to your favorite songs at individual turntables with headphones. It was a Saturday pastime for me and my friends. I bought a 45 of Don’t Be Cruel with Hound Dog on the B side.  Don’t Be Cruel was played until there were no more grooves, Hound Dog not so much. With my babysitting money, I bought each album as they came out from 1957 to 1963. Elvis was the guest of honor at all sleepovers with my friends – swooning, giggling, weeping, whispered secrets, popcorn, hot dogs, layered jello dessert, and coke, the order of the night. The walls in my bedroom were papered floor to ceiling and wall to wall around windows and closets with Elvis pictures taken from fan magazines. That is impressive in my memory because my mother was a stickler for clean and orderly. Nothing in her house was less than perfect – except my room. I teased her that she lived in a Doris Day movie – sheets and underwear ironed; closets, cupboards, and drawers in color-coordinated tidy stacks and rows. The fact that she accommodated my obsession with Elvis adorning every nook and cranny of my room for six years is, as I look back, a testament to love or maybe just giving up to a headstrong teen. When I married and left home, the room was quickly reclaimed.

In 1963, as a newly engaged woman, I believed it was time to put those teenage things away and become the adult my new status decreed, even though I was still 18. I had my own real-life love (even better looking than Elvis in my eyes) so dream lovers were no longer significant. I gave all my LP’s and 45’s to my sixteen-year-old neighbor who was as ga-ga about Elvis as I had been.

Now fifty-eight years later I am an Elvis fan-atic once again after being reintroduced to his music.  I listen to his channel on SiriusXM Radio, on Amazon Music, and Alexa. I rediscovered songs I forgot. His voice is unmistakable and moves me whether I’m listening to heartfelt gospel, crooned love ballads, or feverish rock and roll tunes. They send me back in time, but in another way, I enjoy a new perspective after living and loving for so many years. Thank you, Elvis. Your legacy is very much appreciated.

This is one of the stories in my life, a short version. It is important to recognize all the stories that make up a life and honor them. Sharing tales, fiction, and non-fiction, is how humans connect. We discover that we have more in common and our differences become less important. As we show in our book, Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets, a writers’ group can help a writer develop those stories for themselves and their families. Take some time today to write a memory.

Gratitude

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First posted on A Way with Words blog

This prose poem was written during the excesses of Tucson’s summer heat but the sentiment can be applied to any of God’s seasons. Today, preparing for Thanksgiving this week, I remain grateful and aware of the treasures of nature and the love of family and friends. Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and the gift of gratitude.

Unfolding from sleep I turn toward the open window.

A desert breeze puffs gentle kisses across my eyes and lips.

Sage and desert broom play luscious harmony for my nose.

With feline grace dawn arches blue-gray-pink over the mountaintop

Bringing another day.

Thank you for the new beginning.

I walk the park path in the cool dawn air.

Desert heat will rise soon.

A voyeur, I listen to the gossip of palo verde leaves

Am I the topic of their soft whispers?

The park is alive with rumors of the coming day.

Thank you for nature’s secrets.

Rabbit romps across the path,

Coyote slinks among the shadows, 

Bobcat shelters under the creosote bush,

Quails strut in formation,

Hawk soars in lazy circles seeking breakfast.

Thank you for the companions of morning

Clear skies gather hazy bits of cloud

Building monuments to the midsummer heat.

Monsoons hiss, rumble, boom, crack and clap.

Summer torrents cool, coaxing fragrance from the earth’s bounty.

A kaleidoscope of color frolics among the wrinkles of Pusch Ridge.

Thank you for the intricate interplay of nature’s ensemble.

A Day of Sighs

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Originally published on A Way with Words blog

The sigh as I walked outside to feed the doves, cactus wrens, cardinals, and sparrows that gather in the morning and looked up at the mountains haloed by the rising sun. How beautiful, how peaceful, how enduring.

The sigh when I checked my email, waiting for news of a friend in the hospital with a serious medical condition and found nothing yet.

The sigh when I fixed breakfast and realized I am out of spinach for the morning smoothy. I knew it yesterday but forgot to go to the store.

The sigh when I got ingredients out to make a cake for the tea I’m having this afternoon with friends, still thinking of the one who is in the hospital, hoping he is doing better.

The sigh when I sat down to write this blog. A task I eagerly tackle every Monday morning but there is a shadow over it as I await news.

I know the day will unwind hour by hour and all the trivia of daily life will be tended to. There is another sigh. At this time in my life, I am getting used to having friends and loved ones in medical crises but it doesn’t get any easier, wishing I could DO something, and knowing there is nothing I can do. Prayer is my go-to. Prayer as I walk. Prayer as I cook. It is the refuge, the strength beneath the sighs. All will work out in God’s time.

Weekends

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Originally posted on A Way with Words Blog

I recently had a discussion with our eldest daughter about time, specifically weekends.  My husband and I have been retired for fourteen years and filled the first six years with the care of our grandson, born shortly after we retired. We were his caregivers on the weekdays from when he was one until he started school while our daughter worked a full-time job. It was the biggest privilege of our lives. A time I wouldn’t trade for anything. It kept us active and engaged watching this little human begin his exploration of life. So much better than when we had our own children and had all the responsibilities of parenthood along with making a living. We had time to enjoy each stage of his development, each triumph from first steps to first lost tooth, in a completely present way. No distractions. He is now a teen with all that entails and an interesting, lovable person. I could brag endlessly but that is for another time, another post. Now we are Sunday grandparents because he is busy with his school, sports, and social life. We all have brunch together and catch up on his activities and viewpoints. I learn something new from him each week.

Back to the discussion of time. I told our daughter we were having friends over for dinner on Monday. “Monday?” she asked. “Why a weekday?” The question took me by surprise. Monday for us is no different than Saturday. We’re retired, as are most of our friends. Our social schedule doesn’t have anything to do with days of the week. It reminded me of Maggie Smith’s question as Violet, the dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey. “Weekend? What is a weekend?” She is one of my favorite television characters and now I identify with her.

Days are weighted in value by our activity, no longer regulated by an employment schedule. When we were employed, weekdays had a significant importance and weekends were assessed very differently as precious free time. As a retiree, however, the distinction goes away quickly. Each day has its own importance depending on the plans we make. Our social schedule, balanced with workout time (nearly a full-time job for us) and other interests creates a varied shape to weeks and months. A trip to Home Depot or the grocery store can be done anytime, not scrunched into a few hours on weekends. A road trip to Tubac, Bisbee, Patagonia Lake or Mt. Lemmon is a fun outing taken whenever we choose and usually when employed people are at work.  So, like the Countess, I no longer recognize the concept of weekend. My life is a weekend.

A few other salient quotes by the Countess:

At my age one much ration one’s excitement.

Don’t be defeatist dear, it’s very middle class.

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

Principles are like prayers, noble of course, but awkward at a party.

A lack of compassion can be as vulgar as an excess of tears.

Never complain, never explain

If reason fails, try force.

There can be too much truth in any relationship.

Hope is a tease designed to prevent us from reality.

You are a woman with a brain and reasonable ability. Stop whining and find something to do.

Meaning well is not enough.

Writers Need Wingmen

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Originally posted on A Way with Words Blog

Writing is a solitary endeavor. When one conjures the image of a writer it is often of a lonely soul sequestered in a garret pounding away on a computer or scribbling with a pencil to transcribe the dispatches from their imagination. In truth, writers need wingmen. 

I recently reread Stephen King’s On Writing. He describes the first draft as being written behind closed doors; no one allowed as the muses impart their magic. Then in successive drafts, the door is open, inviting input as he edits. This is where a writers’ group becomes essential. Even though I am not a professional with professional editors, I do want to improve my skills. That makes writing more fun. I take classes to learn how to create scenes, characters, and dialogue. I enjoy employing the tools of the craft to make better prose and poetry. My writers’ group is invaluable as a means of testing those skills. They are my wingmen. They support me and protect me from the threats of dangling participles, passive voice, misdirected sentences, and weak prose. I get positive feedback from Jackie and Sally when they read my story. Positive feedback doesn’t mean making only affirmative comments. On the contrary, it means they look for the divots in the course. Does the story hold together? Are the characters believable? Does the narrative draw the reader in? As a solitary writer, I know what I want to say but sometimes it gets stuck in my head and doesn’t make it to the page. They spot places where something is missing in the narrative or a character. Their critique lets me know if a sentence doesn’t make sense or a scene doesn’t carry the story forward. They help me clarify my intent. That support makes me a better writer, a better communicator.

It is a pleasure to share my writing with a group of trusted friends and have them share their stories with me. Thank you Jackie and Sally. We learn from each other. In Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets we three coauthors describe our journey as a group, learning to be better writers while expanding our friendship. We encourage writers to create small groups and discover the support within that close dynamic.

Ghost Story

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Originally posted on A Way with Words

Here we are in October, rolling toward the holidays with the anticipation of ghouls, ghosts and goblins that visit on October 31, All Hallows Eve. Many cultures celebrate November 1st called by different names All Saints Day, All Souls Day and Dia de Los Muertos, a day to honor those who passed before. The practice goes back centuries in Christian culture and ancient civilizations such as the Aztecs. A day of prayer and remembrance after a night of hijinks and revelry.

Well, I have a real ghost story. There have been times in my life when the unexplained/unexplainable occurred. Are they mind tricks? Is it wishful thinking? Or are there spirits reaching from the other side? I’ve journaled about these times and told friends about them. Now I will share one such experience with you.

It happened over fifty-five years ago and is as vibrant in memory as if it happened fifteen minutes ago. My father passed away unexpectantly. He had serious heart issues, but I did not think he was on the brink of death. Dad and I were very close. He got me. He was the loving bridge, firmly anchored on my side, across a chasm of mother-daughter expectations.  Dad was an invaluable ally to a headstrong teen.

Married at eighteen, by twenty-two I was in my own home with a husband and two young children (a baby of one month and a toddler eighteen months). Our little family lived out in the “sticks”, the only place we could afford a house. My parents and brother lived a few miles away in another town, so we saw them about once a week.  Dad loved being with his grandbabies.

Mom called to give me the news that Daddy had passed. Devastated, inconsolable, I descended into a robotic state doing only what was needed. Grief held my heart in a spikey vice grip, severed from my body.

Several nights later, I was driving home on a dark, rain-slick road after going to the grocery store miles away for a few necessities. My husband was home with the babies. It was mid-February in the Pacific Northwest, cold, dank, and dreary. I was enveloped in a blackness not only of the night but of spirit. The empty country road bordered by an ominous phalanx of fir trees was unlit, no traffic ahead or behind me, only the thin beam from my headlights to guide me. I wept, thinking about my father, cheeks drenched in tears, the deepest sorrow I had ever known. In a haze, I pictured accelerating off a curve in the road into the woods, slamming against a tree to stop the pain. No thought of my husband, children, mother, or brother – just the unbearable ache of wanting to be with my father.

“Honey, you have many, many miles to go before you are done.” My father was next to me in the car telling me to go on. I glanced at the passenger seat, nothing, no one; yet his voice was as clear as crystal and so was his message. My sobs stopped instantly. The death grip on my heart released. My attention focused on the road. I felt wrapped in a warm embrace. He was with me. His voice is still distinct, those words still in my ear when I recall that night. I know my father saved my life. We will meet again.