My memoir, “Under the Birch Tree” has been a work in progress for over ten years but it has been only the last year where I have been intent on completing it. It’s time for me to turn the last page and close it up. I have received critiques from two trusted editors/writers. Their feedback really came to the same [...]
Contemplating the opening words of my manuscript. I want to be descriptive, motivating and alluring, yet not too vague. And that's not meant to be an oxymoron, but rather to entice readers to keep reading, planting seeds of my theme in the hopes they will grow and weave their roots throughout my story. TO A TREE “The time has come [...]
Some here say to just wait a few minutes and the weather could change in an instant. There’s nothing quite like the seasons in Chicago. Some inhabitants surrender to the intolerance, moving elsewhere, shaking their heads. Not me, though. The seasons in Chicago are like yin and yang, or the Cubs and Sox, the Bears and Packers, the Mayor and [...]
In the sleepless of night, my mind loosens and my thoughts chase. Thinking too much . . . anxious feelings . . . unhappy ways . . . keep me from falling deeper into subconscious. And then in the beyond, where my mind hovers, I hear the rhythms of a train cutting through the darkness uniting with its tracks as [...]
You never know who you’re gonna meet once you start talking to him or her. My week was looking like a travelogue of nations united. Megan is my go-to person for all things related to painting fingernails and toes. I paid her a visit one Monday morning. We got to talking about business, customers, how long she’d been there. She [...]
The upstairs bathroom on Carlisle Avenue was at the top of the red carpeted stairs, middle of the hall. This kid’s bathroom came standard equipped with a bathtub, showering capabilities and a toilet on one wall and on the opposite wall a beige Formica counter ran the length of the bathroom. The muddy blue double sink holes, one for Timmy [...]
TO A TREE “The time has come for us to move on Let us nest that time in the Bottom of the tree To grow with each new branch Letting our leaves bud with Each new spring The nest is our home, the branches Our foundation It is the universal home of God For I am set in the ways [...]
Distractions in my head keep time with my travels of foot. Like any good shadow, it clings to my thoughts when I am alone or mingling with others, in my work room or in a public arena.My fidgeting brain tracks sensory stimulation of movement, sound and smell like any great horned owl zeros in on a tiny mouse or a [...]
“The Deerfield Commons, it used to be over there, that whole block, with Waukegan and Deerfield roads fencing it in,” I muttered with a heavy sigh looking west as I drove north on Waukegan Road. I say it every time I drive into Deerfield, where I grew up, and pass that intersection. I am flooded with memories and pictures of [...]
Roots seek their path through the ground of where they are nestled, marking generations of their families, expanding with the seasons and taking their time over the decades. They wander blindly but knowingly in search of water and sustenance, robbing the earth’s soil of her nutrients with an undeniable quest for growth. I was born a Chadwick, the DNA evident [...]