The Incubator

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

Easter is coming,

which reminds me of the first time I consciously lied by not saying a word.

It was 1961.

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In Mrs. Sherwood’s second grade class, I sit next to Peter Beaumont in the corner in the back where we can whisper and giggle and not get caught. My desk is next to the window sill where we planted beans in Dixie cups. Peter’s desk is partnered with mine directly in front of the incubator where we’re waiting to hatch eggs for Easter.

My favorite part of second grade is when we get out our blue American Singer books, and Mrs. Sherwood plays the piano that sits kitty corner to the blackboard.  So far we’ve learned “Oh, Susanna,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Frère Jacque.”

I’d say Peter is my best friend except he’s a boy, so on the playground I usually go hand over hand across the horizontal ladder or swing way high with Connie Withers while he plays basketball with Donny Sanborn. 

Connie and I are both Brownies and my mom and her mom are the troop leaders.  Connie is adopted like me, so she doesn’t look anything like her mom or dad who has grey hair like a grandpa. 

I’ve been over to play at Connie’s house a bunch of times and crawled down the ravine behind her house to the rocky brook at the bottom. We like to find wild cucumbers, blackberries, and teeny tiny hemlock cones, then bring them back to her porch to smush into stew.

Once it got cold, we played in front of her huge fireplace in the living room because her house is freezing. The walls are crooked and there are old beams that run across the low ceiling. On the other side of a steep staircase, is the dining room with a table big enough for all the girls in Mrs. Sherwood’s class to come to Connie’s birthday party. After she blew out her candles, we ate angel food cake with strawberry/van/choc ice cream, trying not to spill on our poufy dresses. Then we played Pin the Tail on the Donkey and had a treasure hunt around the rest of the house. At the end was a pint-sized bag for each of us holding peanut M&M’s, and a metal clicker that sounds like a cricket when you squeeze it.

On Brownie days Connie and I wear our light brown uniforms with big buttons down the front to school. My mom braids my hair in pigtails because the felt beanie doesn’t fit over a ponytail.  Mommy and Mrs. Wither’s uniforms are the color of a green bean. They meet our troop in the cafetorium after school.

Last fall we hiked the nature trail behind the school, and learned to identity oak, maple, and ash trees from their leaves then pressed them between pieces of wax paper.  We get badges for stuff like that to wear on our dark brown sashes. We went camping once and made s’mores by the campfire. Lying in my sleeping bag, I don’t know why, but I thought it would be cool to have Peter in a sleeping bag next to mine.

We’ve also learned the Girl Scout motto, to be clean in thought, word, and deed.

Which reminds me, when Mrs. Sherwood noticed the incubator was unplugged and asked who did it, I didn’t say it was Peter. Or that he did it as a joke, and we both laughed.

Photo by Roble de Invierno

At the time, I didn’t understand that unplugging the incubator meant there would be no chicks for Easter.

I just remember our bean plants escaped their cups and overtook the window sill like a squiggly patch of weeds.  

Thanks to Gregory Hayes for the cover photo on Unsplash.

Posted in Flash memoir | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Taste of Kindness

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

It’s Random Acts of Kindness Week, so here’s what God’s kindness looked like to a third grader on a snowy February day in 1960.

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Some Sundays after church we drive forty-five minutes to have dinner with the Swensons at their farm in Sharon Springs. Arne is one of Daddy’s oldest friends. He’s a tall, ropey dairyman. Marta, Mrs. Swenson, is his round, smiling wife. Arne always sits at the head of the oval table in the middle of the dining room. His table is covered with a pink tablecloth, set with rosebud china, and adorned with his three daughters: beautiful Cindy, the eldest, sturdy Karen, my age, and Trina, a blonde baby. Mrs. Swenson sets a roast chicken before her husband and returns with steaming bowls of mashed potatoes and a slurpy gravy boat. We all dig in.

After dinner, the adults go through open French doors into the living room with two maroon armchairs and a squishy maroon sofa facing a roaring fire. Karen grabs a pink and black afghan off the back of the sofa, and we wrap up together on the piano bench in the dining room. She opens the red cover of John Thompson’s Teaching Little Fingers to Play and shows me how the black ants on the page match the white keys on the piano. With Karen’s help, I tap out “Row, row, row your boat. . .  life is but a dream.”  

This Sunday, Mommy has packed my round, red suitcase with the white poodle on the front and the white loop handle because I am spending a few nights with Karen during my mid- winter vacation.  After a quiet afternoon, I kiss Mommy, Daddy and brother Bruce, good-bye in the front hall amidst dripping boots, scarves and mittens hung over the radiator. Through the open door, I watch the taillights of the black Ford station wagon fade into the frigid night.

Behind me is a huge stairway.  “Is your room up there?”

Karen shakes her head.  “No.”  

“How come?”  

“I’ll show you.”  She leads me up the creaking steps to two empty bedrooms with peeling wallpaper and windows that rattle with the wind. “Daddy hasn’t had time to fix the upstairs yet, so we all sleep downstairs.”

Karen’s room has two twin beds and a crib that line the wall opposite the frosty window.  Mrs.  Swenson positions an old mattress in between the twins made up with pink and blue bunny sheets.  A tall bureau stands on one side of the ruffled curtains. On the other side is a dressing table, its bubbled veneer topped with little girl bottles of pink lotion and violet eau de toilette.  

In the morning, Karen and I walk down the road to the barn. A concrete runway separates two aisles of cattle. Arne and his hired man are moving among the cows hooking up stainless steel milking machines that fill the barn with the sound of their squish and squirt. Karen and I pet the big-eyed Holsteins looking out the barn windows full of cobwebs.  

“This one is Maybelle. She’s going to have a calf in the spring.” Karen scratches the cow’s nose.

After a lunch of alphabet soup, Mrs. Swenson says, “You girls want to go sledding?”

Karen and I look at each other and squeal.

Mrs.  Swenson helps us squirm into our snow pants and zip up our parkas. We pull on our knit caps and flip up our hoods. She bends down and ties red scarves around our necks and clips our wool mittens to our jacket sleeves. All bunched up, we’re ready for the arctic.  

Two Flexible Flyers are waiting on the front porch. We grab their ropes, waddle down the front walk, and trudge single file along the country road towards the pasture.

Karen climbs over the fence, and I pass her our sleds. Our breath forms alternating clouds as we huff and puff up the steep rise. The snow is covered with a glistening crust, so our boots break through with every step, leaving jagged holes in the slippery slope. Finally, at the crest, we plant our bundled bottoms on our sleds and place our red rubber boots on the wooden cross pieces used to steer. We hold the ropes and push off.  

“Yee-haw!” We’re riding bucking broncos across the snowy plain.  

Down, down we slide, streaking shadows in the low winter sun. The thrill is but a heartbeat. Without a word, we climb the hill over and over. With each slide, we grow wilder.  We go down headfirst. Headfirst holding hands.

From cowboys to circus stars, for my next trick, I stand on my sled, the rope taut in my snow-pilled mittens.  

The thin metal runners hit a footprint in the crust and lodge in the soft powder beneath.  The rope yanks out of my grip. My chin cracks the ice. My slick nylon snowsuit accelerates my descent. Lips, nose, cheekbones rub and rip against every icy opening in my path.  

When Karen slides to my side, the snow beneath my face is the bright red of a bloody snow cone. We’re both too terrified to cry. Silently we toss our sleds over the fence and hurry for home. Up the country road, past the barn, down the walk.  

Karen pushes the front door open. “Mommy!”   

Mrs. Swenson carries me into the kitchen and sets me on a stool beside the white enamel-topped table. She flies to the bathroom and returns with a box of Band-Aids and two clean blue washcloths. With eyes as big as Maybelle’s, Karen watches her mother fill a bowl with warm water. Mrs. Swenson wets the terrycloth and gently wipes my abrasions. Blood clouds the water as she rinses again and again.

Karen winces as a deep gash above my upper lip is revealed. Mrs. Swenson pinches the skin back together and secures it with two tiny blue Band-Aids covered in silver airplanes. She opens the freezer, pulls out an ice tray, and fills the dry washcloth with a handful of cubes. Gently placing the cold pack in my palm, she tells me to hold it over my mouth. After gently peeling off my boots and snowsuit, Mrs. Swenson leads me to the squishy maroon couch, and Karen tucks me in with the black and pink afghan.  

I don’t know how long I lay there beside the fire before Mrs. Swenson and Karen are back at my side. Pretty Cindy is holding the blonde baby. Mrs. Swenson exchanges my bloody washcloth for what looks like an empty hamburger bun spread with butter. I sit up and take a timid bite. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. An empty hamburger bun?

When you’ve been served only foil-wrapped sticks of Blue Bonnet margarine in your seven short years of life, how can you imagine the glory of fresh, sweet butter, sun-kissed blades of summer grass transformed by the herd, churned and spread with the kindness of a farmer’s wife?

Photo by Screenroad on Unsplash

The scar above my mouth is still visible, a constant reminder of the taste of my own blood, exchanged for something infinitely better.  

Thanks to Ciprian Pardau for the featured photo of a snowy barn on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Don’t Compete Complete

Posted on February 11, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

Last February I joined an online writers group called Hope*writers. Immediately, I began listening to their interviews with publishing professionals and reading through their library on the craft of writing, and the business of publishing and marketing. Drinking from this firehose, reminded me of the day King Josiah discovered the Book of the Law and realized he and his people had been doing everything wrong.

For example, I reread a book proposal I’d just sent to an agent and found a typo within the first paragraph. I was no longer sure the proposal was accurate or compelling because I learned I still needed to refine my message, my reader, and the book’s benefit.

I discovered I needed a lead magnet, whatever that was, so readers of my blog would subscribe. I needed an email list of subscribers, so I could prove to publishers or agents that I already had a following chomping at the bit to read my upcoming work. I had none of this nor the technical expertise to put it in place. 

Measuring myself by those who’d already accomplished all this and more, I became overwhelmed and paralyzed.

But then I engaged with smaller circles within the larger group, and found I was not the only one drowning in information or dropping off the steep learning curve. In fact, I knew some stuff others were happy for me to share.  So, I trudged on, learning how to use Facebook Live and how to Zoom. I learned how to create a free offering to thank my subscribers. My husband helped me figure out Mailchimp, and I networked with fellow bloggers to grow my subscriber list. Slowly but surely I moved forward.

I can’t believe a year has passed since I joined this online group of writers, a crazy, creepy year in the world at large, but incredibly fruitful for me creatively.

I self-published a book about what I learned from teaching in an urban middle school, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School.   

I’ve created this blog and have posted regularly.

I’ve edited another memoir about coming of age and coming to Christ during the cultural earthquake that occurred when Leave it to Beaver collided with Woodstock.

Just recently, I engaged with still another network of writers working on their book proposals, so it feels as if I’ve come full circle to where I was with my writing one year ago.

When I think of King Josiah now, it’s not only as a King who literally tore his clothes in grief at how he and his people didn’t measure up to God’s commandments.

But rather, as a King who threw out, burned up and ground to powder anything that competed with his God for glory.

Thanks to Indivar Kaushik for this photo on Unsplash

Comparison, I’ve come to realize, is a kind of idolatry, a way of gauging myself by other’s accomplishments instead of by the grace of God.

Instead, I need to trust I’m created with a unique body of experiences, and talents all my own to use for his purposes.

This truth sets me free me to take one step at a time, patient with my own pace, knowing that we are on earth, not to compete with each other, but to complement each other. Complement, as in the word complete.

Therefore, in this new year, whenever thoughts of comparison cross my mind, instead of being paralyzed, I will grind them to powder and look for those I can help and those who can help me complete our various missions from the Lord.

Thanks to Christian Kaindl for the photo of a measuring stick on Unsplash

Posted in Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Leave a comment

My Friend Gloria

Posted on February 4, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

In a world full of disease and corruption, some people shine like stars. You just know you can count on them, and what they say is the truth, THE TRUTH.

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I’d like to introduce you to Gloria. To see us back in the early 80’s, you’d never guess we’d be friends. Gloria still wore her hair in the short, curly style of the 1940’s and carried the kind of handbag that snaps shut and is heavy enough to be used as a weapon. I was a child of the 60’s, with straight long hair, cutoff jeans and a T-shirt from Smith College that read, “A century of women on top.”

I met Gloria when I moved to the small town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, and my husband and I bought a fixer-upper across the street from her immaculate home and manicured lawn which her husband, Bob, mowed every Saturday morning to keep it as short as his crewcut.

Up until my first child was born, I’d worked at a local publisher and knew none of my neighbors. But late one morning, postpartum, still in my husband’s plaid bathrobe, Gloria appears at my back door with some kind of goodie, I don’t remember, maybe snickerdoodles, and invites herself in for tea. I put on the kettle, and we sit at the small table that looks out on my back porch.

While we wait for the water to boil, she tells me how she met her husband in Germany while he was a serviceman and she a teacher on the base. She shares tales of their adventures and eventual marriage, interspersing the conversation with lots of praise the Lords which hit me like notes off key. I wasn’t used to including God in my conversations even though I went to Sunday School my whole childhood. But by the time we’ve eaten all the cookies, I decide I like Gloria even if she’s not my usual, pardon the pun, cup of tea. 

Gloria’s husband, Bob, is president of the Madison Circle neighborhood association Every year he organizes a caroling party for all who want to participate. The first Christmas I wrap my three-month-old daughter in a Snugli and sing with the group, songs like: “The First Noel,” “Silent Night,” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.” All are about the baby born far away, placed in a manger, and referred to as Emmanuel, which Gloria explains means God with us, something I didn’t know or believe at the time.   

My daughter grows to be a toddler, and Gloria’s son and daughter sometimes babysit. I select them above other sitters because they seem like nice kids, and I know if anything happens, Gloria and Bob, Mr. and Mrs. Rock Solid, are right across the street. Gloria is becoming a kind of local mother and friend rolled into one.

I say, mother because she’s always ready to offer her guidance whether I want to be guided or not. If what I’m doing is wrong, she’ll call a spade a spade. If it’s right, then more praise the Lords. She doesn’t scold, but in her gentle, elementary-school-teacher way, there’s no question her compass points towards True North.

Gloria comes over another morning when I am still in my husband’s bathrobe and pregnant enough that it’s barely big enough to wrap around my baby bump. Over bagels and tea, I let slip that I’m considering divorcing my husband.

Interesting to note here, I don’t remember anything she said except, a seeming non-sequitur, “Would you like to come to adult Sunday school with me this week?”

I didn’t know adult Sunday school was even a thing, but because it’s Gloria who asks, I say, “Yes.”

And because it’s me, the skeptic, who answers, I add, “But I’ll drive myself.”  

Long story short, Gloria in a way, saved my second child from being separated from his father before his first breath.

Gloria also hosted a lavish baby shower for my third child who received a stuffed lamb with a Jesus-Loves-Me music box inside that two of my grandsons now play with.

Yesterday morning, Gloria’s daughter called to say her mom had gone home to heaven. Forthright like her mother, she didn’t use euphemisms like passed away, or no longer with us. Yet, the word dead had no place in our conversation because we’ve both come to understand that souls are eternal, and that God is like our infinitely good heavenly father who can’t stand to be separated from his children. Not from before our first breath or after our last. No matter the many evils in our hearts and deeds.

That’s why God sent the babe named Emmanuel, I sang about so many years ago with my own first born strapped close to my heart, to pay the universal retribution a just god must demand.

Towards the end of our conversation, Gloria’s daughter shares, even though her mom, at 90, had become a bit senile, she still knew all the words to the old hymns they sang together at the piano.

Surely one of those songs was, “What a Friend we have in Jesus.”

I write this to say, what a friend I had in Gloria, whose name means something like praise the Lord.

Photo thanks to Eberhard Grossgasteiger on Unsplash

I hope to see her again whenever I move to her new neighborhood.

For now [in this time of imperfection] we see in a mirror dimly [a blurred reflection, a riddle, an enigma], but then [when the time of perfection comes we will see reality] face to face. Now I know in part [just in fragments], but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known [by God]. (1Corinthians 13:12 AMP)

Posted in Flash memoir | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Share Don’t Compare

Posted on January 30, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

This week I’ve been consumed with writing my first guest post, so I figured I wouldn’t have time to write anything new here.

But during my composition, my mind settled on Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

I couldn’t get this bit of Biblical wisdom out of my head, and all week I’ve been trying to figure out how it fits in with what I’m trying to express in my guest post.

Because I’m writing for someone else’s site, I want to get it right. I’m worried my words will be judged not good enough, and it makes me shrink back and hesitate to finish. What if I somehow get it wrong and screw up.

Then I stumbled across a writer with a brand-new blog who quoted the same verse, Proverbs 13:12 and capped her piece with this,

You say, “But what if I fall?” as Erin Hanson stated, “Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?”

This made me realize I’m still struggling with the same issue of comparison that I wrote about in last week’s flash memoir from my childhood. I guess this proves comparison is a head game I will play all my life.

And my only weapon is the helmet of salvation that says I am enough because of the blood Jesus shed for all my inadequacies and failures.

The truth is we are all unique with important gifts and experiences God wants to use to build his kingdom.

So, there is no need to compare, but to share the gifts God has given others for the benefit of all.

How appropriate then, that the week I’m preparing my first guest post, I’m also sharing my first guest post on my own blog.

Readers, I encourage you to read the brand-new blog of Colette Allen, The Water I Give

and be strengthened to fight your own battle of comparison.

God loves you and longs for you to soar.

Thanks to Somin Khanna for her beautiful photo on Unsplash.

Posted in Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Tagged | 10 Comments

Never Satisfied

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

Linda Leary is my new best friend in third-grade. She has a dark chocolate ponytail. Mine is the same color as Sampson, my orange tabby. We share the same bus stop and every morning ride to school in the same seat.

Every afternoon when the bus drops me off, she asks, “Wanna come over?”

My answer always, “Sure.”  

After changing into play clothes, I walk down a block, cross the street, then cut through the Jensen’s backyard on the corner, through the Paisano’s and the Mendelson’s until I get to her house with red salvia planted in the triangle between the front porch and the diagonal front walk.  I ring her doorbell, and she ushers me into the front hall beside the telephone table. We bypass her perfect living room with matching furniture and a maple spinet piano, and head straight for the basement.

There’s a laundry area to the right of the stairs. Shirtwaist dresses and blouses hang on an exposed pipe, above an ironing board. Against the perpendicular wall is a turquoise washer and drier. The other half of the basement contains shelves stocked with canned goods above and toys beneath. Linda digs out a doll made of coconuts that her parents brought back from Florida. I reach for a can of Dole pineapple rings. We crouch inside an empty TV console and make up a commercial. Linda shakes the doll into a hula while I hold up my can, urging homemakers to use only Dole pineapple rings for all their upside-down cakes and ambrosia salads. Our sales pitch dissolves into giggles, and we lurch out of the set, in search of more products and props.

After spring vacation, Linda comes back from her grandmother’s house in Florida with a tan.  She has the same pretty face. She wears the same school dresses buttoned down the back with a bow tied above the poufy skirt, but her skin seems to glow. Her teeth and white ankle socks appear even whiter.  

She invites me to sleep over on a night her parents are going out to a dinner dance at their country club. A babysitter answers the door. Holding a pillowcase stuffed with my pajamas and a toothbrush, I stand entranced as Mrs. Leary applies coral lipstick in front of the mirror above the telephone table. She looks like a movie star in her slim indigo evening gown, a thread of stardust around her bronzed neck. Mr. Leary clumps downstairs wearing black pants with a black satin stripe on each leg, a white dinner jacket, and a black bowtie.  

After they kiss Linda and her older sister, Laura, good-bye, Mr. Leary winks at me and says, “Be good.”  

When the door shuts, the babysitter slumps into the seat beside the phone and dials her boyfriend. Linda, Laura, and I race upstairs and bounce on Linda’s bed until our foreheads gleam with sweat. We boing off the mattress and Laura leads the way into her parents’ bedroom. No clothes hang on chairs. No slippers litter the floor. Ceramic lamps with barrel-shaped shades stand on twin bedside tables. Teal throw pillows accent a golden spread. A sleek modern dresser is topped with a golden tray filled with lotions, powders, and a perfume bottle attached to a puff ball sprayer. Laura squeezes the puff ball and mists me with the fragrance Linda says is her mother’s favorite, Madame Rochas. She slides open her mother’s closet to display even more evening gowns in tangerine, turquoise, and black lace. The long dresses brush a shoe rack lined with Cinderella heels.  

I ask Linda how to get tan like her and her movie star mom. She explains you just put on your bathing suit and swim in your grandmother’s pool. Somehow the sunshine gets into your skin, and it changes color. She finds an album and shows me a snapshot of her grandparents’ mansion, made of brown stucco with wrought iron curlicue balconies.

During summer vacation, my family visits my Memaw and Granddaddy on their farm in Virginia. They don’t have a pool, so I leave my right arm out the car window for the eight-hour drive and wait for it to change color. The next day my skin is so red and sore, my mom sprays it with Unguentin.

Upon our return, I notice a National Geographic on the coffee table. The cover shows a Mexican girl in an embroidered blouse. Her face is even tanner than Linda’s. Her lips are brown and full. I open the medicine cabinet and accent my own lips with my mom’s Maybelline eyebrow pencil. I look nothing like Linda or the girl on the magazine.  

Linda and I decide our parents should be best friends like us. I beg my mom to invite Linda’s mom and dad over for dinner. Our two families share hamburgers, homemade French fries, and toss salad at a metal picnic table in our mosquitoey backyard.

Linda invites me to swim at the country club. Mrs. Leary watches our underwater handstands from a chaise in a stiff, black bathing suit that zips up the back and shows off her coppered skin. I notice her toenails painted the same coral as her lips.

My mom is now Linda’s Girl Scout leader too. She takes our troop camping and teaches us how to build a small fire and fry an egg on top of a Hi-C grape juice can.  

I have a photo of Linda and I from the summer after third grade, sitting next to each other cross-legged, and smiling in my front yard. I don’t recall who took the picture. Must have been my mom. But I do remember what I gave my mother that year for her August birthday, a bottle of Madame Rochas.  

Photo by Eduardo Gorghetta on Unsplash

I have another picture of Linda, as an adult, still tan and as glamorous as her mother, she’s standing on our front stoop hugging my mom, her old Girl Scout leader.

They say a good photograph captures the heart of a thing in a single image. Comparing those two shots, I see all the moments I wasted wishing I was chocolate instead of strawberry, not understanding it’s God’s love that gets under your skin, making you glow against a dark world eager to sell counterfeits that never satisfy.

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged | 10 Comments

The Art of the Memoir

Posted on January 8, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

I just reread Mary Karr’s book, The Art of Memoir. As a memoirist myself, excavating the past for the page, it was a godsend the first time around, giving me permission to write the truth, the complicated, tricky, embarrassing truth about one of the most difficult seasons of my life, scenes that haunted me. Karr’s book counseled me to write them down anyway, even if I wasn’t emotionally ready to share them because it’s the writing process that untangles the truth, revealing the inner conflict that propels any story, and I might add, begins the healing of any soul.

It’s the writing process that untangles the truth.

So, write I did, scribbling the unflinching truth, my internal editor turned off, recording raw facts and reactions, sensory details, and cultural artifacts, without concern for the order in which they manifested. Without concern for any reader. My own discovery and wholeness my only purpose. I took solace when Karr said, “The need to rout out my own inner demons is why I always start off fumbling through my own recollections.”

As actors in our own lives, we are seldom aware of an event’s meaning or impact at the time it occurs. Karr points out that the writer is often the last to know what his or her story is about. It may be a friend, a critique group member, or a beta reader who tells the writer what themes rear their head in almost every episode.

The writer is often the last to know what his or her story is about.

But as we churn out scene after scene Mary says we will find our inner enemy, which acts as the spine of the story. “However random or episodic a book seems, a blazing psychic struggle holds it together either thematically or in the way a plot would keep a novel rolling.”  

But as we churn out scene after scene Mary says we will find our inner enemy, which acts as the spine of the story.

The very memories we “gnawed on,” “the ones eating us up” are those that Karr says help us find our book’s shape.

At first this might seem too personal to be interesting to a reader outside our circle of suffering, but Karr claims telling the truth about our “inner agonies” always produces a work that reads deeper than ones based on “external whammies.”

During the writing process, Karr cautions the writer to be ready for reversals. By pinning our episodes to the page, we gain broader perspective on the whole puzzle, and we may find that what we thought was true about an event, a relationship, a person, even ourselves, may not be true at all or at least nuanced. So above all, love the people you’re writing about. “If you want revenge,” Karr quips, “hire a lawyer.”

Photo by Rioji Iwata on Unsplash

Telling the most transparent truth we can, Karr affirms, is our contract with the reader. What they want is our story unvarnished, character flaws, misconceptions, and misadventures intimately portrayed, so they can share in our discoveries and revelations and apply them to the through line of their own lives.

Telling the most transparent truth we can is our contract with the reader.

For until we understand our own healing, we have no insight to offer others.  

It’s been six years since I first read The Art of Memoir. I’ve written and published one memoir, Teacher Dropout, and have almost completed another. And although the journey and setting of the two books are vastly different their “spines” ask similar questions. Who am I, and what am I worth? Finding the answers has been my healing. And what I have to benefit my readers.

So, who are you dear reader, and where do you find your worth?

No matter if you write a yearly Christmas letter, keep a private journal, or if you’re a memoirist of great renown, like Mary Karr, may your written words be healing for yourself and others.

“None of us can ever know the value of our lives, or how our separate silent scribbling may add to the amenity of the world, if only by how radically it changes us, one and by one.”

Mary Karr

Top photo by Jan Kahanek on Unsplash

Posted in Writing Process | Tagged | 3 Comments

Shame Free and Brand New

Posted on December 31, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

After a year full of fear, sickness, grief, and lies, I want to wish you, dear readers, a very happy, New Year full of God’s truth, the truth that Jesus says sets us free in John 8:32.

Photo by Tomas Sobek on Unsplash

The truth that if you believe his sacrifice on the cross cancelled out all your sins, past, present, and future, then you are:

shame free 

brand new

and invited to live in God’s presence now and forever more.

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash

So here are a few verses to help you stand free as the chosen, purified, lovable woman God sees when he looks at you through the lens of Christ.

I hope they help cancel out any lies you may believe about yourself in the upcoming year.

Psalm 25:3
No one who hopes in you (God) will ever be put to shame.

Lam. 22-23
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Photo by Resa Cahya on Unsplash

2 Cor. 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!

Romans 8:1-2
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 

Photo by Sammi Vasquez on Unsplash

1 Pet. 1:3
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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Photo by Roberto Vasquez on Unsplash

Col. 3:11
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

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Photo by Simon Maage on Unsplash

 I hope this helps you trust you are:

  • Beautiful
  • Purified
  • Enough in every way
  • and worthy of love
  • as God’s child
Photo by Christin Noelle on Unsplash

So, please share this truth that sets us free from low self-esteem and struggling with our mistakes and regrets because everyone needs it. Everyone. You are not alone. Jesus is the savior of the world.

Acts 5:20
An angel who rescued Peter from jail told him, “Go, stand in the temple courts, and tell the people all about this new life.”

Photo by Ian Dooley on Unsplash

Hope you have a happy brand-new year, dear readers!

BTW thanks so much for your comments and encouragements in 2020. And if you haven’t already subscribed to my blog, just put your name and email in the box in the sidebar above, so we can stay in touch in 2021. And remember God loves you to the moon!

Posted in Spiritual Growth | Tagged , | 2 Comments

First Contact

Posted on December 23, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

Is there a God? Can you talk to him? Does he answer? As a fifth grader I wasn’t sure.  This is the story of my first earnest attempt to find out—on a Christmas Eve without snow.

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Upstate New York is known for its heavy snowpack, but on the day before Christmas my front lawn is brown and bare. Sorry, Christmas without snow is like Niagara Falls without water. Plus, I asked Santa for my first pair of skis.   

With much regret, I know it’s really my parents who put the orange in the toe of my stocking. My parents are the ones who enjoy the milk and cookies my younger brother and I set on the coffee table. My frugal mom probably puts the carrots for the reindeer back in the fridge. I know skis are a huge present, and parents can say no to any item on my list, but if God is real, only he can bring snow.    

So, before bed, alone in the dark hall, I open the front door and step into the slim space between the solid white door behind me and the storm door, rattling with the wind. Selfish, desperate, as only a child can be, my breath fogging the frigid panes, I appeal—for the very first time—not to the rote God of Now I Lay me Down to Sleep, or God is great and God is good and we thank him for our food, but to the highest authority, far above the black winter sky, who I hope can hear my wish for the world to be made right by morning with a thick blanket of powder.   

I’ve wanted skis since first grade when Polly Handel invited me to Hickory Hill with her family. I’ve been invited again and again by my best friend, Marie, to Stratton, Bromley, Gore, even Mt. Snow which she says has a heated pool. But my parents are from the South. They don’t know about renting skis, about lessons, about anything, so I can never go. I’ve taken the bus downtown with Marie and wandered through Goldstocks and Fox and Murphy’s sporting goods stores, pushing through aisles of puffy parkas, goggles, and tassel caps. I’ve ogled row upon row of the latest metal skis like Heads and Harts, but I would take anything that can schuss down a hill.    

Not an avid reader, I even checked a book out of the school library. It was fully illustrated with black and white pictures of kids demonstrating snowplows and stem christies. But neither the arrows on the page nor the captions below were enough. My dream is to wedel through a cloud of untouched powder like Marie’s dad in the 8mm home movie of their family on Mount Fuji in far-away Japan when he was in the Air Force. What more can I do than leave my milk and cookies, as usual, and wait for a miracle?

Before daylight I awake and ease into my blue dust-bunny slippers. I throw on my quilted robe printed with forget-me-nots and sneak down the stairs. Around the corner, I flip on the soft light of the Christmas tree, and take in the sight of black wooden skis propped against the mantle. Beside the fireplace tongs, stand two aluminum poles with black rubber handles. Set on the hearth, below my green felt stocking, is a box wrapped in red Santa Claus paper.    

I kneel before the skis and open the box. Just as I’d hoped, black leather boots with red laces. I pull out the contents of my stocking: rag wool socks, black leather mittens, candy canes, a Rudolph- the- Red- Nosed- Reindeer Pez dispenser, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and my orange. I pull on the socks, lace up the boots, set the skis on the floor, and place my right toe under the front of the binding. I pull the springy cable around the back of my boot and duplicate on the left. I slide my hands into the mittens, wrap the ski pole strap around my wrist, like I saw in the book, and ski across the carpet towards the Christmas tree.   

That’s when I see it. Out the picture window. The snow. Flakes falling almost imperceptibly against a leaden sky. Wall to wall white covering the whole woodsy backyard. Enough to take my skis to the municipal golf course and try them out.    

My parents find me and my brother peeling our oranges, amidst my brother’s stocking loot: a Frosty-the-Snowman Pez dispenser, candy canes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and several boxes of BB’s for the BB gun I hardly noticed propped on the other side of the hearth.    

After breakfast, after picking up my Grandmother, after opening the rest of my presents: a blue and white ski sweater, and stretchy black ski pants, I am chomping at the bit to call my friend, Helen, across the street to see if she will teach me how to ski.   

It’s two o’clock by the time she can come over and show me and my dad how to sling my skis over my left shoulder while carrying my poles with my right hand. The neighborhood has been plowed, so while my brother and dad pop BB’s into a target nailed to the tree where squirrels raid the bird feeder, I follow Helen two blocks up to Delarosa Road in my stiff ski boots. Then one more block to the right before we can cross busy Balltown Road to the virgin hills of the golf course.    

Cautiously, I push off the first precipice and try to snowplow like Helen at the bottom.  Of course, I fall, but it’s easy to climb back up the hill using the herring bone step she shows me. With increasing confidence, I try planting my pole for a stem christie, shift my weight, like Helen, and discover I’m turning. Up and down, up and down, I’m figuring it out until Helen checks the new Timex she got for Christmas and announces it’s almost four, the time she’s got to go home. But I’m not ready to leave.   

Alone, in the flat light, I glide further and further into the course until mine are the only tracks on acres of pristine snow—as if it’s all for me.   

Flakes are still coming down when I tumble through a spray of powder and land unscathed on a crystalline pillow. Spread eagled under the vast white sky, my mouth open, as if to speak, I let the glittering shards melt on my tongue.    

In the distance, through the hemlocks on the edge of the road, I see a string of tiny headlights. It’s time to go. But how can I leave this magic?

Did the supreme being of the universe, who alone can sprinkle the earth with this glory, really hear my prayer? At age ten, I can’t express any of this.

I simply unfasten the safety straps to my tangled skis and sweep my unfettered arms and legs in the shape of an angel.   

Thanks to Thomas Galler for the beautiful photo of a winter morning on Unsplash.

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Princess for a Day

Posted on December 17, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

Although this incident occurred a few years back, it continues to bring meaning to the name Immanuel, God with us.

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A few Saturdays before Christmas, I’m browsing some open studios in my town, and find my way to the workspace of Ruth Sanderson, my favorite children’s illustrator, famed for her luminous depiction of fairytales. Rummaging through a bin of discounted prints, my eye is captivated by the image of an auburn-haired princess gazing at her reflection in a pool of water lilies. I lift the picture from the others and proceed to the register even though I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. It’s just beautiful.

On the way home, I stop at Big Lots for an inexpensive frame. I place the print on the counter during check out, and the cashier, whose face appears carved by a hard life, says, “Isn’t that pretty!”

We exchange smiles, and something in me responds, give her the picture. But that makes no sense, I don’t know her, I haven’t even framed it yet, and with a long line of impatient shoppers behind me, I ignore the prompting and leave.

Because of its aqua tones, the print ends up in the bathroom. Its placement on the wall opposite the throne, allows ample opportunity to study the composition. In the distance, a castle on a hill. In the foreground, a pond surrounded by gardens. The focal point, a maiden, her reflection distorted by languid waters. Gazing at the image over the course of a week, it occurs to me that the cashier has long auburn tresses like the princess. On a good hair day, in a perfect world, they’d even look alike.

The next Saturday, I awake with the distinct impression that I’m supposed to give the cashier the print. I shrug it off as I make my tea. How awkward to give a stranger a gift for no reason. Then it strikes me, perhaps this is how God sees the cashier. As his lovely daughter, princess of the high king of heaven. Through the sacrifice of Christ, no more pain or shame marring her identity. In a moment, I realize maybe I don’t need to understand why I’m supposed to give this woman this gift. My part—just do it. Besides, what do I have to lose? Never being able to shop at Big Lots again?

 I decide to wrap the picture like a Christmas present from God, but the only paper I have on hand is more appropriate for a child’s birthday. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I procrastinate until late afternoon.

Finally, heart pounding, package in hand, I venture into the store. My cashier isn’t at the register. I wander the aisles in search of her, bypassing boxes of candy canes, catnip mice, and reindeer sweaters made in China.

At last, I spot a supervisor. “I’m looking for a woman who works here. She has kind of wavy, reddish hair. I don’t know her name, but I have something for her.”

The supervisor squints at the blue wrapping paper covered in puppies.

My eyes read the label on a giant red tin behind her, Poppycock, which suddenly seems to sum up my mission.

Then, she points behind me, “Is this who you’re looking for?”

I turn. It’s my princess.

“Remember me? The picture?”

She bites her lip and nods.

My words tumble out, “I think God wants you to have this. I’m not sure why. I wanted to use Christmas paper, but. . .”

She interrupts, “Do you know what day this is?”

“What?” I’m not following.

She takes the gift. “It’s my birthday!”

Chills race up my spine.

Only God could know I’d end up using birthday wrap, that my hesitation would land her gift right on time, and that for some reason, this woman, needed a tangible expression of His love for her today.

 Back in the parking lot, I gaze into the star lit sky, and like the shepherds, shiver at the mystery of Immanuel, God with us.

Thank you Vincent Guth for the lovely photo on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , , | 4 Comments