Category Archives: Strands

When It Seems Too Good To Be True, . . .

It could have been so wonderful. In a flash, I saw just how perfect it might be. After all, this “Sharon M. Torres” so obviously, so exquisitely, so sensitively got me, got Strands!  And “she” wants to promote my book?! (Even now, even after discovering that “her” adoring email’s first sentence is a scam classic,* I struggle to use those quotes; I still cannot fully accept that “she” isn’t real. Somehow I feel uneasy; as if I’m betraying a kindred spirit?) What a joy it would be to work alongside such an insightful and thoughtful woman—who writes so well!

It’s odd:  At eighty-one, mostly I feel as though I’ve weathered a spectrum of feelings over the years; life’s thrown me enough curve balls that, mostly, I’m “Oh, that again?” But as if I were some benign, Other-Me poised a few feet above my desktop as I read “Sharon’s” email, I watched myself, as my sister would say, be torn.  At my age, I have had plenty of disappointments, of course. I am no stranger to cynicism; to mentally sneering “Yeah, right!” So, immediately, I told myself: “This is obviously too good to be true.” But how thirsty I was, apparently, how much more desperate than I’d actually understood or acknowledged I’d been to be so thoroughly seen, understood, lauded! I watched myself sneer as I read—yet drink in and linger over every AI-generated syllable.

Sigh.

* In case this happens to you, here it is: I hope this message finds you well, and perhaps even finds you smiling, because I have just finished Strands: An Apprenticeship with Grief and Loss, and I have to tell you: it stayed with me long after I put it down.

Who Tells The Story; Who Listens

Mulling over facilitating a smallish group—maybe six to eight people—taking turns telling stories online. And they’d meet for a finite amount of time? Six to eight weeks? And each week’s stories would center around a pre-determined prompt? And I would offer different time slots for these six-to-eight-week sessions so as to accommodate different time zones? Lots of details to work out, lots of logistical questions remain, lots more mulling required. But such an absolutely-free venue feels like the next, organic, and faithful iteration of my leading to write Strands.

In order to ground myself better as I begin this exploration, this morning I did an online search for a well-remembered short story I’d read twice in 1959, first as a freshman at Fayetteville-Manlius High School, outside of Syracuse, New York and then, after my family moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, as a sophomore at (segregated) E. C. Glass High. Though my classmates and teachers in those two English classes radically differed, “Sex Education” by Dorothy Canfield Fisher remained solid, fascinating, and illuminating both above and below the Mason-Dixon Line. (And, let’s face it, what teenager, whether northern suburbanite or southern small-city dweller, wouldn’t devour a story entitled “Sex Education”?)

Why do I use the word “solid”? Not only does Fisher’s story address the fundamental questions posed as the title of this post, that a piece of writing I’d admired in one classroom again showed up in a completely alien and confusing place and time and setting? What an enormous relief! Finally! Here was something I’d actually known, experienced, had opinions about.

Because Fisher’s work had been so pivotal and so gratifying, over the ensuing sixty-seven years I’ve searched for that still-treasured story—although I couldn’t remember its author or title. But this morning, either because I finally entered the salient keywords (“women on porch telling stories,” “cornfield,” “minister”), voila! And, BTW, just to underline one of the story’s basic themes of how a remembered story shifts over time and when told to different-aged audiences, “women on porch telling stories” is not exactly right. That’s not exactly what happens.

Close enough, though, apparently. Or maybe this graced, “Open Sesame” moment is the Universe telling me: “Keep mulling. You’re on the right track.”