Featured Writers 

Lisa Buell: Purple Dress Pease

Lisa Buell was a founding member of the Thursday feedback class. She attended the Memory to Memoir retreat and is participating in the inaugural Memoir Intensive. A published author, Lisa is writing her first book, entitled “Call Button,” a collection of essays about the continuation of life in the face of treatment, navigating the waters of grief, celebrating communities and the clinicians who care. This piece, "Purple Dress Pease" describes a critical period in her oldest daughter's life.

It had been a warm summer, the breeze filled with the scent of sweet jasmine. The bright magenta of the Bougainvillea bloomed with fiercness, its roots running deep, tapping into the water below. It bloomed despite the lack of watering and stood as a physical sign of our family’s battle with cancer, just as we continued to bloom. It was early spring and Madison had just finished her last chemotherapy. We were at the hospital getting what was supposed to be a series of scans over several years, this was our first, we would be able to wait three months till the next and six months after that.

Jodi Richardson: Hair

Jodi Richardson is a member of Laura's writing practice and feedback classes. She is also working hard in the Memory to Memoir Intensive. Jodi is writing a memoir about her experiences as a support person to her good friend, Joann, who had cancer. This excerpt, "Hair," is typical of Jodi's unique style--the ability to tackle a difficult subject with irreverence and humor. 

I shaved down my hair three times during my friend Joann’s illness. Shaving my head felt good, but not like the big sacrifice some people gave me credit for. Some people would comment, “ I don’t know if I could cut off my hair for my friend, my sister, or whoever…” I usually spared people that didn’t know me very well my personnel encounters with loss and death, which in part fueled my decision to go hairless.

In early spring of 2007, before she was diagnosed with leukemia, Joann had said to me, “You know Jod, if I have cancer I’ll probably have to get chemo and lose all my hair.”

 “Yeah,” I agreed. I was way ahead of Joann in having these thoughts but I wasn’t worrying only about hair; I was worried about Joann’s life. Secretly, I thought if I acted optimistic enough on the outside, maybe I could convince myself that things would work out. I had seen cancer’s handiwork and I was sensitive to Joann’s predicament. She was good-looking and much more conscious of her own outward appearance than I’d ever been. I worried how cancer might ugly her up.   

While contemplating these private thoughts, Joann hit me with a zinger, “Yeah, but Kenny would probably like to see my muff hairless.”

Cooper Gallegos: The Driving Lesson

Cooper Gallegos is a student in the Friday morning feedback class who has just completed the manuscript for her first full-length book, The Waterhauler, a series of interconnected stories set in the Mojave Desert in the 1970s. This piece came from a guided meditation leading the class back into a time "long ago, long before this time, when you were sitting in the back of a car..." The visualization when on for a along time, then ended with the words, "Now tell me what you saw and heard, how it smelled and felt in the back of that car." 

The good thing about braids is you don't have to sit on a kitchen chair with your mother unsnarling the knots in your hair.  Braids just stay in and the fray around your head keeps growing until you look like a dandelion or some other weed from the back yard.  I get one of the window seats, me and my big brother because we're the oldest.  My little sister and brother are wedged into the middle between us.  My brother and I are not charitable, especially in the dark, and we spread out, squeezing our younger siblings into thin immobile planks who don't have enough air or space to complain.

Once in a while just to be sure that doesn't change I pinch my sister's elbow and she moves sharply away like she's been bitten by a mosquito.

We're on a road trip, just for tonight, so my stepfather can teach my mother to drive.  Or so she can pass the test.  She already knows how to drive.  She's a brash driver.  She drives down the center of the road. My stepfather who isn't much of a talker and always drives in the ivy on the side of the road, keeps his eyes on the glove compartment like there's a pistol inside and at any moment he could pounce on it and finish us all off.  My mother is taking the back streets out of town.  Our windows are rolled down and the summer night air is like a blast furnace.  My sister's hair is a tangle, a thin web that hangs on her neck in the heat.  But mine, tied up with ric rac around the ends of my braids to cover the rubber bands stays put.  We're all sweating.  I can see the sheen across my sibling's faces like we're a line-up of garden snails.

Laurie Simpkinson: I Never Got to Say Goodbye

Laurie Simpkinson is a member of the Thursday feedback class. She wrote this piece in response to the prompt, "Tell me about someone or something you never got to say goodbye to."