Melissa Ostrom in the garden.

I spent the first years of my life in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and most of what I remember about that time involves me playing in the dirt like a hen taking a dust bath—digging in my mom’s vegetable garden, rolling around in the driveway, and stuffing gravel and clumps of soil into my baby brother’s cloth diaper, which was already sadly, er…full. I have photographs to corroborate some of my filth-related memories, though not, thankfully, of that last one, which requires no visual reminders, as the incident is seared into my brain on account of the spanking the deed earned me.

We were dirt poor, so I guess it made sense that dirt was my preferred medium. Plus, we lived in the middle of nowhere. Dirt was plentiful; friends, not so much. Fortunately, there was Lisa: She was around my age and lived close enough to join me in mudpie-making and puddle-jumping. Our other nearest neighbors were a houseful of rough and rowdy boys. They liked to boast, bray, swear, and swagger, and (similar to my brother’s diaper that one afternoon) they were full of shit, lying readily, frequently, and extravagantly.

One of their tall tales became legendary in my family. I don’t know much about the story, only that it had to do with a chicken farm (an enterprise my family, later, in private, agreed probably never existed). What I do know, however, is, not long after sharing their chicken farm story, the boys told another tale, but this one didn’t mesh with the details of the earlier account. When my parents called them out on the discrepancy, one of the brothers hesitated, then said, “Well, that was before the chicken farm.”

[Read more…] about That Was Before the Chicken Farm

As I write this September post, August still surrounds me—a humming time. Cicadas drone during the day; katydids chirr after dark. And in the morning, if I move very quietly outside by the Rose-of-Sharons and hollyhocks, a hummingbird will eventually whip past me to dive in and out of the flowers for their nectar, treading air with rapid wings that make a wonderful whir.

My kids’ voices join the late-summer chorus, an under-the-breath murmuring as they add narratives to their play. In the basement, tense Star Wars crises accompany the Lego building. In the living room, plastic ponies, colorful and sweet-faced, argue viciously, make up, then go on journeys to the ocean of the couch or the desert of the coffee table.

But my house will sound empty soon.

School is around the corner. My kids dread it, the sitting for hours, the tests, tests, tests—math tests, social studies exams, spelling quizzes, the horrible looming specter of the state assessments, and the daily trials that come with human interactions. And then there’s homework, that hard-consonant-ending word, punitive and harsh. Oh, how they despise all homework—or think they do. [Read more…] about The Good Work of Play

My grandma, when she was a young mother.

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweeping of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
—William Butler Yeats, from The Circus Animals’ Desertion

My grandmother worked in a rag shop. That’s what the family called it, and as a child, I understood it to mean precisely what it sounded like: a business in our hometown of Jamestown, New York, where rags were made. According to Grandma, the Salvation Army provided her employer with the raw materials, donating the clothes the thrift shop couldn’t sell. I used to picture Grandma sitting ramrod straight among coworkers, ripping shirts, pants, skirts, and dresses into pieces, while she told her ribald stories, making people laugh and laughing along with them. [Read more…] about Rag-and-Bone Tales

I recently read Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water. In the beginning of her book, L’Engle shares a wonderful quotation by Jean Rhys: “Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”

What a gorgeous piece of wisdom. Rhys does more than simply meditate on her craft or her role as a writer. She celebrates the creative community. Eloquent, evocative, inspiring, reassuring, this quotation speaks to me.

The opening is a command: “Listen to me.” Rhys has something important to tell us, a special knowledge learned through hard work and experience or perhaps through epiphany. But before she shares it, she wants to make sure we’re paying attention. [Read more…] about Our Lake

Late yesterday afternoon, the kids and I walked around our property. The daffodils are blooming. Their yellow heads, like cheerful bonnets, fringe the house, dot the meadow out front, and form bright clumps along the thicket. In the woods, I spied my first trout-lily of the season. The hyacinths are also opening, but that’s pretty much it. It’s too early for the tulips, forsythia, and violets and too late for the pussy willows. Thinking I might cut some willow branches for the house, I trudged over to the ditch where the scrubby trees grow, but their silvery catkins had already puffed into yellow balls. [Read more…] about Uncomfortable

In junior high, I kept a diary. Diligently, every night before bed, I recorded my day, from what happened first to what happened last, and included the relevant people and places.

I remember something peculiar about this ritual. While writing (perhaps about the potato side dish my mom prepared to accompany the roasted chicken), I felt…uneasy, dissatisfied. Bored out of my freaking mind. In fact, the diary could have won an award for the most BORING writing ever committed to paper. What I resisted including in my bland log—and yet, what would have added the necessary spice—was conflict. [Read more…] about When Geometry Proves Useful and Sexy

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his preface to The Marble Faun, directly addresses the audience—calls the reader “indulgent,” “gentle,” “kind.” I rather like wading through Hawthorne’s prose and finding myself so respectfully and hopefully described. Can you hear the plea in his choice of words? It is as if he were begging, “Go easy on me, reader. I’m about to pour my heart out.”

After you have finished writing something, you, too, will long for a gentle reader. You might confront this completed something, whatever it is (poem, story, play, essay), much in the same way that a new parent gazes upon an infant. “Why, look what I made. How remarkable. Wonderful!” And then, with consternation: “But so vulnerable.”

Alas, the world is a cold, cruel place. (Sorry, but it’s true.) You will send your precious masterpiece out into the wilderness with a basket crammed chock-full of your hopes and dreams. And though your darling might fall into the hands of a gentle, indulgent, kind grandmotherly sort, it more likely will bump into a vicious wolf (who works as a fiction editor for a literary magazine and delights in issuing speedy rejections. His den harbors whole piles of shards and rubble—the jagged remains of hapless submitters’ crushed egos.) [Read more…] about Writing Pals