a river’s reflection of heaven and earth

 

Many years ago, there was a small ranch-style brick house on a large lot the next block over. Once a golden honey color, it had turned to a brown mustardy yellow. The house has since been demolished, and a larger, modern two-story has taken most of the space in the large lot. The new house is white, with black window trim and door, a far contrast in design from the seventy-year-old house once plotted there. When I pass the house, I remember the clouds of heavy dust created by a bulldozer when demolishing the structure. The giant puffs floated, dissipating into the air as they joined the heavens, then disappeared. The clouds carried memories, and lives, and generations, that had made that house a home. It was like spreading their ashes into eternity, to rest, to live on.

WordPress says I’ve been a member here since 2013, but I’ve been writing since way before that time. When I started writing personal essays, I found a home for them on what was then Blogspot, and is now Blogger. I called my blog “Magical Thinking.” It was a place for reflection, and wonder about the unordinary found in the ordinary. Years later, I outgrew my space, as memoir writing became a genre I studied and nurtured. I left Blogspot for WordPress, as a landing station, or staging area where all the critical parts of the writerly me could be found. My first book and memoir, Under the Birch Tree, made a showing there, along with newsy tidbits, and more published pieces. I created this website that showcased it all, bringing with it pieces from the old platform to a place with room to grow.

Old home to new – And how I’ve grown!

I didn’t really realize this until I looked into the chapters of this site among its tabs, and clicked back to the hundreds of essays posted on this blog. Experiences, lessons, and takeaways were embedded in those stories I had come to write. It has been a writer’s journey, indeed, starting from a bit of magical thinking.

Retirement – for websites only!

Sometimes years amass so quickly, you just don’t realize how many of them have gone by. Until one day, when you realize it’s time to move on, but before you do, you look back in retrospect. It’s like pulling out an old family photo album, paging through the years gone by, before starting a new one.

I started learning the craft of writing when one summer I took time off from an unfulfilling job to figure out what I wanted to do next. And I never went back. That was decades ago. I didn’t retire from that work, but reframed and reinvented, considering this writing thing seriously.

This site is all about my writerly life. It’s where I learned about the natural world and how trees are connected to one another and to us. It’s where I learned about the simple in our complicated world. It’s where my reflections took me to life lessons and to learn a thing or two about ourselves and each other. And it’s also where I excitedly balanced the non-fiction scale with my first novel, The Wisdom of the Willow, along with a catalogue of other content pieces published in anthologies, blogs, and literary magazines. This site became the limbs that have sprouted from the many writerly seeds I had planted over the years along the way. It’s now time to remember, before letting go the vestiges of the old writing layers. This website will soon retire, as a new one will take its place.

I never realized just how many years I have been writing, until now. This website tells me so. It’s time to put to rest this old house site of mine and to move into sharper, more contemporary digs, with a new foundation and room to grow, to once again look large on the page as it once did many years ago.

I think back to that house that sat for decades on its lot, the families over the years that would pull up their shades and open their windows one day to see a new, brighter landscape. I think of my new landscape, and new windows for new perspectives for all things creative and writerly.

OLD HOME TO A NEW ONE – additional writing platforms

This blog will stay on my author site as I want anyone who visits to have a sample of my writing available to them. To read more of it, please visit and follow me on MEDIUM Craft Shorts-Writing It Brief, and on Substack, Come Sit Awhile to discover a little simplicity in a complicated world.

. . . until next time, when writing from a new home.