Family – Nastasya Parker

Rooms Like Open Books

This Week’s Bit of String: A broken magnet and psycho kitty paintings

My last post ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger when our catsitter had to cancel. As with writing and other creative endeavours, I couldn’t plan for every contingency.

Now we’re back from our travels. In the meantime, our house was inhabited by my husband’s co-worker, her husband, and their two little kids. Like a tantalising story or at least a sitcom, their emergency of home renovations taking a turn aligned with our small crisis, and my husband managed the last minute arrangements on the Sunday. I finished my cleaning and caught my flight, rising at 3:30 a.m. Monday, while he joined me on Thursday before Good Friday and the other family moved in.

*I hope the kids weren’t old enough to fathom my magnetic poetry (a weird mashup of motherhood and Shakespearean sets).*

There was little time to childproof, or to worry how Obie the cat would tolerate sharing his home with children. Obie was very happy to see me on my return, but not desperately so. I think he was fine.

In the recycling, there are boxes from children’s chocolate Easter eggs and construction toys. I washed the sheets and replaced the towels. The only sign of young guests inside was a broken magnet. I have some shaped like tiny jam jars, perfectly tactile and definitely something I’d have reached for as a kid. Only, they haven’t been moved around much lately, and so when it was grabbed, the jar broke off. I’m disappointed for the children that they didn’t have a better experience with the magnets.

I wonder what memories they’ll take with them from here. What images will stick in their minds as they grow up, long after they’ve forgotten the circumstances of why they stayed? At least they’re probably too young to notice the bedroom paint jobs we never got round to updating, or the cracked kitchen tiles we’re too scared to lift up. Goodness knows what can of worms that would open.

Detail Selection

My family did a housesit/ catsit when I was little. We stayed at the new pastor’s house, with a big black and white cat called Asia. I remember lounging about in the living room patting Asia and listening to my new favourite tape on our brown Fisher Price cassette player. It was the Animal Alphabet tape, with a song for an animal starting with each letter of the alphabet.

(Yes, even Q: quahog. And X was a roundup of Latin animal names, a very catchy ditty.)

*Hello, Officer. I’d like to report an anti-cat hate crime.*

They had a sunny living room, whereas we rented a log end of a farmhouse which was rather dark. And they had a swingset. There was also a secret passage in the house, which we later pretended was Underground Railroad-related, although it probably was more modern than that.

I’ve no idea why my family of 6 were chosen for this job, because in addition to minding the house and Asia the cat, at least some of the pastor’s 6 kids were also there. I was 5 years old, meaning my youngest sister would have been an infant. It’s a bit of a mystery what we were doing there, but sounds and images remain in my memory. I can see why I occasionally opted to hang out with the cat, though, rather than 3-9 other kids at a time.

Packed with History

While we were away visiting my family just now, we helped with some sorting and packing, and also with house hunting. My husband and I aren’t doing the moving, but my family’s search for a new house—to meet the needs of my parents as they approach their 70s, my autistic cousin, and my neurodivergent youngest sister—has been quite consuming.

The first house they looked at, about a month ago, had 21 rooms. It was massive, built in 1910 and kept in the same family until now. We went along for my parents’ third viewing, last Friday. The rooms are filled with dark antique furniture and floor-to-ceiling metal safes. The extra furniture, in turn, is filled with vintage toys and books.

We saw broken baby dolls and Little People playground sets. Plus, the above paintings of cats which were clearly painted by dog people ascribing the wickedest intent to the feline species.

We also found that the house had maybe the original wiring (called knob and tube). The windows need replacing, the external paint contained lead so probably the internal paint did too, and the bathrooms were so dirty it seemed they’d need gutting. Outside, a covered in-ground pool was buried in dead leaves. Once it had been surrounded by a large patio and lawn chairs, with lantern posts now cracked, and a listing playhouse in a far corner.

It saddened me that no one could halt the decay of what must have been a beloved family spot. How did the late antiques dealer owner feel when he collected rare pieces but the grown children never helped maintain the home?

For me, traveling to see my family and assist with whatever I can is a bit tiring, sure, but it’s imperative. I hope international chaos or health crises never stop me from making the journey. Especially since my family did find a house to buy while we were there—practically all in one day. It came on the market Easter Monday, we all viewed, and the offer was in by Monday evening.

It’s light and spacious, built in 1993. It has fewer than 21 rooms, with some open plan which will be great for our lively gatherings while reserving quiet areas, too. There’s even a swingset and slide in the yard, viewable from the wraparound deck. 5-year-old me would have liked it as much my current self is eager to lend a hand turning it into a home.

What resonates when we peek into others’ houses can raise new questions while also illuminating our own thoughts and concerns. Are there random places that stand out in your memory and may have inspired your creativity?

Big Picture Thinking

This Week’s Bit of String: A hasty clearout

My family moved house only once. I was 8 years old, basically prepubescent and pretty melodramatic about it. I initially vowed that if our new house didn’t have a backyard brook like our old one, I would run away.

We got a backyard swamp instead. Home ownership is hard. But the New House never fully sank into it, and my parents remained there for 37 years. I first raised my kiddo in one of the bedrooms and we’ve returned there every summer.

My sister was in first grade when we moved, and since we all have a storytelling streak, she had moments of drama too. Before the move, she arrived home from school ahead of me one day and later recounted to me that she found our Mom on her knees in front of a closet, grabbing everything and then throwing it behind her like a cartoon puppy digging under a fence. That created image has stayed in my mind all these years when I think about moving: chaos combined with hard, focused work.

*The New House. Taken about 26 years ago.*

At the time, we kids were 8, 7, 4, and barely 3, so on the rare moments when Mom could tackle a sorting or packing project, she undoubtedly did so at a frantic pace.

It was then, too, that Mom started using a certain expression which has stuck with me as well. We’d ask what about this, is that coming with us, or how is such-and-such going to work, and Mom would say, “It’s in the plan.”

We came to dread that phrase and Mom ended up alluding to it more as a kiss of death. Anything “in the plan” was like any garment consigned to her Mending Pile. It wasn’t about to emerge for a very long while, if ever (through no fault of her own, I hasten to add).

Now, my parents plus my youngest sister and my cousin, who both live with them, need to move again, and somehow pack and clear everything my family owns from the last 37 years plus some of my late aunt’s things at my cousin’s house.

Zooming Out

When 2026 began, I knew my parents’ move was on the horizon, plus this summer our kiddo’s wedding. This meant a fair bit of extra transatlantic travel, while balancing my job, growing my little garden crops, drafting at least half a novel, keeping up with two different critique groups and various other deadlines…

My planner had spaces for monthly goals, which proved highly useful. Before returning to work after Christmas, I’d organised 2026 through July, listing where I need to be each month to ensure every aspect of the year runs smoothly.

*Also important to make the most of each season. I spotted my first opened bluebell while foraging for wild garlic.*

In January, we’d decide if my husband would join me on my Easter trip, so he too can see the family house for the last time. We’d book airport parking and meanwhile support kiddos with choosing a wedding venue and setting a summer wedding date. I’d also begin decluttering my own house, and plant seeds.

By February, I was looking into housesitters to stay with Obie during our April trip to the US, my dining room table was covered with seedlings, I was finishing a whole new section of my novel, and buying my plane ticket for the summer.

This past week, as March and school Term 4 draw to a close and my flight is coming right up, I’m cleaning the house as deeply as I can manage for the housesitter, while arranging for the summer’s sitter. It’s a constant organisational cycle. And funnily, making space for someone else to stay involves me frantically stuffing things into closets rather than pawing it all out.

Plot Twist

In a way, I’ve applied story-plotting technique to life. In order for this to happen, that must come first. While engrossed from afar in the travails of my family’s house-hunting—and keeping a wary eye on chaotic current events—I’ve kept up with my novel-drafting.

Depending on how many other writing commitments I have in a week, I write either 2000-3000 words. This is made easier by the plotting I did before I started writing. With a rough idea of events needed in each section, I can keep myself going, even when life is distracting.

*Welcome distraction: the cherry tree beside the church in town*

Of course, the planning is a means, not an end. My characters have to be real and rounded enough so the story doesn’t feel like paint-by-numbers. The fact that I enjoy writing about them might mean I’m on the right track. There’s still delight as I see them in action, as they show me why they do what they do.

In real life, similarly, a plan is never ironclad. Having fewer people depending on me than my parents do gives me more control as I organise, but with our little Obie cat, we do depend on house sitters. And just this morning, at 5 a.m., our April sitter messaged that she’s been injured and can’t drive or walk. Or housesit.

So, less than 24 hours before I have to be at the airport, I’m reviewing the situation. Was it a mistake to put something “in the plan?”

How far ahead do you manage to plan things, and does it ever fully work out?

New Year, New Doom

This Week’s Bit of String: Things that growl in the night

3 a.m. The cat is finished napping. Although unlike myself, Obie is naturally blessed with an ability to see (and hunt) in the dark, he doesn’t like to go downstairs alone. So every time he wants something downstairs, he scratches the wardrobe or mews chidingly, and I walk down with him. He goes to his food dish and I turn promptly around.

But then he starts growling at the back door. He makes those feline siren calls, starting low and building to a high whine. Then come the full-throated snarls and hisses. Something out there, through the full-length double-glazed glass, terrifies him. My husband and I don’t see anything, but I am shaking violently, thoroughly spooked.

While awake for ages afterward, I didn’t know exactly what I was afraid of. What could realistically have been out there that would pose a threat to us inside? An axe murderer? Maybe the proximity of another living being’s terror was enough to drive my own without any logical reason.

Scrolling, Scrolling, Scrolling

It wouldn’t have helped that I was anxious anyway. I’d been scrolling social media before bed and even during the night while already awake. Flinching past the attempted justifications for violence against immigrants and protesters in Minneapolis, worrying about the tensions over Greenland, horrified by the cost in human lives fighting for freedom in Iran.

2026, what is WRONG with you? I came into it excited, albeit cautiously. Looking forward to visits with my family, to working hard at writing, and especially to my own kiddo’s wedding in the summer. One reason I’m obsessing about the news is because I fear being separated.

*A beautiful place: the Minneapolis skyline viewed from its famous Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Sculpture Garden on the Loring Greenway*

The US is planning to tighten entry restrictions even for tourists. To visit with me, my husband will have 5 years’ worth of his social media scrutinised. What if he liked a meme that hurts their feelings and they don’t let him in?

I promise you, I know how fortunate I am. My life ticks along, even if sometimes on about 3 hours of sleep per night. Our house doors are sturdy and the country where I’m an immigrant hasn’t completely turned against me. But awareness of privilege doesn’t ease fear.

When I’m scrolling through news and social media, I’m not seeking personal affirmation. I’m looking for a sign that truth and empathy are winning. I crave universal agreement on what we see with our own eyes: that a human being with different beliefs or skin colour is still a human being, that a woman turning her car, maybe scared because some swearing paramilitary-looking dude was trying to force open her door, did not deserve to be executed.

Looking Ahead

We’re not going to get that, though, are we? A reasonable, empathetic consensus about human rights. It weighed heavily on me last week, exacerbated by the fact that a couple of students at work are so cruel and thoughtless, they’d fit right in with the Republican cabinet.

Another little group of students had asked me about guns violence in America. Kids will often make that association, and they want to know if I witnessed any. No, but there was a shooting at my school a couple years after I left, and another shooting widowed my sister’s best friend.

“How do you go out over there when you could get shot?” one of the British kids asked.

All I could say was, “You have to still live your life.”

We’ll vote for change and share the truth and advocate for empathy. In the meantime, I’ll plant my little crops, the first wave of which sits in compostable trays all over my dining room table. I’ll work on my writing, and I’ll try to read more than scroll. Panic doesn’t serve any use, and as my cat proved, it is infectious.

I’m also making use of the somewhat hospitable British climate, where I can take walks and admire the shape of bare tree branches against the sky. My final recommendation is to take in some art. We went to the Wilson Gallery in Cheltenham. It has an exhibit on the Arts and Crafts movement, and the sight of beautifully polished wood grain soothes me like flowing water.

How are you ensuring fear doesn’t get the better of you?

All Over the Place

This Week’s Bit of String: Expanding brackets

Back in school for the Christmas term, I spent 40 minutes working with a student on algebraic practice expanding brackets. Guiding him to multiply each bracketed term by each term in the other brackets, explaining why we’re multiplying here.

He was making progress, starting to remember a couple more steps as we moved on to the third problem of his online homework—and then he was sick of it. He insisted on guessing, repeatedly and incorrectly, stabbing the keyboard, for the fourth problem.

I sputtered reminders that he could work out the right answer if he tried.

*Autumn leaves at Mascoma Lake, New Hampshire*

He stabbed another wrong guess. “Miss, I just saw, like, three stages of grief pass over your face in one second.”

He may well have seen anger and bargaining and depression, but his comment then immediately made me laugh. It’s fitting, I suppose. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks.

Across the Ocean and Back

Just a week ago, as the half-term break ended, I arrived back from the USA. I published my previous blog post from Heathrow Departures on my way out, and spent the entire flight westward on writing tasks. Caught up on the latest Mslexia issue, scribbled about the journey, and wrote answers to interview questions for a Writers Showcase I’ll be participating in at the end of the month.

I made the trip for three reasons: to be with my family as we cope with bereavement, to start finding some private closure for myself, and to help out in any way possible. My parents are now in charge of my aunt’s house as well as their own, and my autistic cousin is now a wonderful part of our family. There’s a lot going on.

For example, on my first full day there I woke up at 4:15 a.m. and started scribbling about the previous evening’s reunion with my family. At the vaguest sign of daylight, around 6:45, I embarked on a 5-mile hike. I started in awe of the New England autumn colours which I haven’t seen much in 22 years and eventually made my way to the cemetery where I had a good cry at 8 a.m. over the family graves. I thanked our lost loves for giving us such good examples of how to look after each other.

After helping my mom with weeding, organising the pantry, and then hoovering up cobwebs from the basement ceiling, we left my aunt’s house for my parents’ and met up with my brother and his kids, plus my kiddo and their fiancé, for raucous family times. This included, among other random moments, me bouncing my niece on my lap while singing a sped-up version of a Sunday school song about Daniel in the lion’s den, in honour of my cousin’s middle name Daniel. Junie demanded it twice more.

And that was just one day! It was a wonderful week, I managed to squeeze a fair bit in, although it feels surreally separate from my back-to-term life. Despite the lack of sleep on the overnight flight home plus hints of jet lag, I made it through this past week at school while also cleaning my own house this time, running the BlueSky channel for Women Writers Network, critiquing 3 different pieces for other writers, editing the opening section of my new novel to submit that for feedback, starting my Thanksgiving cooking, and writing this masterful piece.

Ups and Downs

My day job itself is a microcosmic whirlwind of emotion. I’ll spend an excruciating hour with a student who refuses to go to classes so it’s down to TAs to educate her 1:1. An hour despairing of my career choice while she refuses to do anything while she glowers at her phone under a fur-lines parka hood. Try to make conversation and half the time I’m met with a sneering, “You WHAT?” The next hour, I might be fortunate enough to attend a Photography class, prompting and scribing a student’s self-evaluation of his work while a couple other boys in the class exchange corny jokes.

“Miss, what do you think of this one: What did the first hat say to the second hat? —You stay here, I’ll go on a head.”

I told my husband’s favourite joke which involves an elephant impersonation so I could never do it justice here. This surprised the boys so much, they cracked up. Meanwhile, my student tried his best to bite his smile back and I could claim my revenge:

“Pretty sure I just saw all five stages of grief pass over your face when I told that joke,” I quipped.

While acknowledging, and celebrating really, that our lives are made up of such emotional tempests, and that progress is often two steps forward and one (or two or three) back, I don’t necessarily like that portrayed too realistically in a book. I like a story to have a fairly orderly trajectory.

Yes, the protagonist, having been made suddenly aware of a problem during the inciting incident, will over-compensate and mess it all up. Yes, all will seem lost at the midpoint and they’ll have to rally again. But it irks me when a writer reconciles characters just to fall out over something else, for example, or gives them a crucial self-realisation only to forget it in the next chapter and have to learn it again. This seems common in stories of middle-class angst.

Maybe my intolerance makes me a selfish reader, but I don’t need fiction to resemble real life that much. I can read about real, sometimes harrowing issues, but give me some kind of actual trajectory through it. The ups and downs of real life are tiring enough.

Does that bother you in a book? How firmly do you like stories plotted, or are you happy enough to spend each moment with a character?

What We Do It For

This Week’s Bit of String: The attention-seeking habits of adolescent male humans

Most Year 11s in our bottom-set class aren’t interested in the problems of the past. They’ve been taught about the workhouses and Thomas Malthus’s Poor Law of 1834, but our Trio of Fortitude just smirks over their A Christmas Carol essays when I prompt, “So why did Dickens write about Scrooge in that way? Why did he write this book?”

“Fame. Money,” they say.

And what surer way to earn those than write a book? I hear my fellow creatives laughing wryly at that.

*Centre of attention, or chance for reflection? Mirror spiral in London*

There’s probably an element of projection here, assuming every adult from every time period will share the adolescents’ lust for money and fame. These are, after all, the same boys who’ve ridiculed me assuming my job is low-paid.

“You’ll never own a Lamborghini, Miss, so what is the point?”

As for fame, I don’t think these students crave it, but they do like a certain quantity of attention. The Year 10 boys have taken attention-seeking to new depths. They like to watch each other accuse staff of misconduct.

We squeeze through the crowded corridors to hear a boy shout, “Miss, did you just assault a minor?” One of our longest-serving, high-level TAs walked into a classroom to have a boy ask, grinning, “Didn’t I just see you chuck a pen at a student?” It happens with such frequency, we wondered if it was a TikTok trend. This particular group of boys get such a kick out of joining in to make bizarre claims.

Fame and Money

Attention-seeking is no fault, to my thinking. We all need attention, and I aim to give it to those I love without them needing to seek it. Ideally, we would know the students in our classes, even the ones not technically on the special needs register, well enough to cater to their personal interests and goals. But in a low-set Science class of thirty, many of the students with high need and low focus, while we’re trying to teach the entire GCSE curriculum, we’re mostly running around shushing and confiscating hazards.

Attention-seeking tactics, performances for peers, sometimes choke out opportunities to gain deeper, more constructive attention.

Obviously, when I write I do hope that certain pieces will gain favourable attention. Sometimes, in conversation, I prize making a witty riposte above empathy. Then I regret it after, even if I won a few gratifying laughs. Attention is great, but it’s not my raison d’etre.

*I also put up the harvesty decorations. Here’s Obie looking perfectly autumnal.*

My writing jobs in the last fortnight have consisted of preparations to feature as a Showcased Writer on another writer’s blog, and maintaining writing group correspondences and completing critiques, while also adding more to the new novel I’ve been working on. There’s a mix of promoting myself, others, and creating for the fun of it (which will hopefully one day appeal to others too).

Our Women Writers Network on Bluesky also hosted one of our Skychats, inviting other creatives to join in on the hashtag #WomenWritersNet. This month’s topic was the Writing Mindset and it was inspiring to listen to people’s thoughts about what this entails, and hammer out my own idea of it.

For me, a writing mindset is open to ideas, no matter how mundane the source, and is flexible in switching from gathering mode to the hard work of expanding an idea. My writing mindset is fed by such discussions with other creatives, and by taking in art of all forms–reading, listening to music, walking city streets–and yes, by affirmation.

Time Well Spent

By far, the most writing I do is in my daily scribbles. For 5.5 years, I’ve written on and about every single day, chronicling interactions and noting ideas. I sometimes worry about the amount of time this takes me, usually at least an hour each day.

Is the time I spend trying to preserve memories and thoughts distracting from the now? Or do my reflections enhance my present?

*A bit of notebook-ogling while waiting at the airport*

This week, as I prepare to visit my family in the US the instant half-term break begins, I’ve looked back through my notebooks. There are dozens of them now. I found the ones from each summer visit, and flipped through specifically to find each time we saw my Aunt Laurel, who passed away just weeks ago.

Since I’ll be helping my family in the wake of her loss, it fortified me tremendously to read family stories she told me that I’d recorded in my journal, and little bits of conversation, the ways we made each other laugh, how she’d reach up at least a foot over her head to hug my husband and call him “Sweetie.”

My journal also reminded me of her words: “It takes a lot of disasters to make a grown-up, or even to feel fully human.” That puts all the attention-seeking antics of young people in perspective, doesn’t it?

So, my favourite reason to write is to preserve love. To lay down a thread guiding me back to the best kind of attention, from the people dearest to me. It often works out that those people are the ones who give me strength and inspiration to keep creating.

Do you have people like that to fortify your writing mindset? How do you balance preserving relationships with gaining attention?

Weighing Ideas

This Week’s Bit of String: Notre Dame towers and a dog called Unity

Last weekend, we were in Paris. It was a wild idea, the trip planned in less than a fortnight. From 3:00 Saturday morning, when we woke up to shower and catch a flight from Bristol to Paris CDG, until 10:15 Sunday night when we fell into bed back in our own home, we walked 54,000 steps. We stayed Saturday night in a tiny hotel room in the 14th Arondissement, but the bed was comfortable, we had climate control, and there was a full Parisian breakfast included.

We had a bittersweet reason for this enjoyable adventure. When my aunt Laurel died a couple weeks ago, one of my cousins already had a trip booked to Paris. Laurel and my cousin were great Francophiles, so the family was inspired to send some of her ashes over and scatter them in the Seine. I couldn’t be at the full funeral in Vermont–busy though the weekend in Paris was, it didn’t shatter me the way a whirlwind cross-Atlantic trip with a minimum of 16 hours travel each way would have done–I could be part of this goodbye without missing work.

My cousin chose a spot across from Notre Dame’s dome, where we could walk down a cobbled ramp to the river. We found as we approached that as well as a cathedral view, we would be leaving my aunt alongside a weathered wooden statue of a turtle bracketed onto the stone wall, quite fitting as she’d had a beloved pet turtle for decades.

She loved dogs too, and soon after we’d poured her ashes into the river, a dog came bounding in, bucking jubilantly, snapping at her own splashes. Her French owner told us the dog’s name was Unity, and we did feel a strange synthesis at the resting place.

I was happy with this sendoff for Laurel, but my heart aches that all the life erupting around her in this location will never know her or her story. I wonder what other remnants of lives we step over all the time, and what unimaginable events will unfold later.

Interlocking Stories

Paris is particularly suited to such wonderings, with its many plaques honouring students and others who were killed in the Resistance against Nazi occupiers, and other signs memorialising Jewish families that were deported. Behind Notre Dame, there’s the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, which I researched for part of a story I wrote in January. The main character spent time in Paris and met his fiance, changing his life.

I certainly didn’t imagine I’d be visiting Paris later, and scattering my aunt’s ashes across the Seine from the same Memorial. Once again, there’s a strange unity of past and present, fiction and nonfiction. As Julia Ormond says in the 1990s remake of Sabrina, one of my aunt’s “Chicken Soup Movies” which she believed had restorative powers: “Paris is always a good idea.”

*Back to the writing work, here’s a picture of the incredible Our Lady of the Workers church in the 14th Arondissement*

I’d actually forgotten about the story I wrote in January, with its Paris turning point, until my cousin told me where we’d take our aunt’s ashes. The story needs a lot of work. I wrote it during my January short story binge, when I slapped whatever idea I had onto paper: new ones, old and previously rejected ones, half-dreamed ones.

Since then, I’ve had a couple short stories I’ve worked hard at polishing, and I’ve started a new novel while still working on the final edits to my book about Eve and Creation. These projects are still keeping me pretty busy alongside my day job and everything else, so the fictional Paris encounter will probably wait a long while.

Ideas to Remember

It’s not possible to remember every idea or story, good or bad. So just because one thing has to wait doesn’t mean it will never get its time. When it comes to assessing our creative choices–and our life choices, really–there are so many possibilities that it seems unfair to judge one as entirely bad or good.

While I’m making up a new novel, I haven’t decided yet whose voice to lead with out of my new characters, and I keep switching. Would 5 points-of-view be too many? Yes, I know. But I decided while making myself write just four days after Laurel’s death, my work-in-progress wasn’t fun enough. So I pried its bars loose, and went back to page 2 to introduce an entirely new character, outside the pages of development I’d explored and planned in the pre-drafting stages.

Have you ever felt the need to do such a thing? Did it work?

My middle-class protagonists who take themselves somewhat seriously needed a foil, or maybe that was just me. Either way, I’ll see what comes of having someone else in the mix. A story undergoes so much evolution and so many rewrites, most ideas turn out to contribute something worthwhile.

I wouldn’t usually slide in an extra character, but it’s earlyish still, and who’s to stop me? In real life, there are people who appear out of nowhere and brighten everything.

I wouldn’t usually spend a middle-of-the-term weekend gallivanting around Paris, either. I don’t know if Paris, is, in fact, always a good idea, but it worked for us this time. And there’s a lot more we’d like to see. Strange to think I now have a bit of my aunt on this side of the ocean, over the Channel. Wondrous to imagine the places and people we have yet to be part of.

True Colours

This Week’s Bit of String: Jewelled hedgerows and painted roundabouts

The mini roundabout by Tesco has received fresh stripes. St. George’s red cross is now painted over the white, courtesy of an undoubtedly patriotic local citizen. I don’t think it makes much difference to how anyone drives or feels. Do some British citizens in this fairly homogenous town feel safer because someone spraypainted the emblem of a Roman soldier of Greek descent whose worship started in Palestine? Whatever works for them, I guess.

What surprised me was the title given to this campaign of painting and flying loads of extra English flags. “Raise the colours.” Before I remembered the military and scouting origins of the phrase, I thought it odd. The English flag isn’t spectacularly colourful.

As an immigrant (21 years living in Britain this past week!), I have my own perspective on the UK and its colours. They are sometimes dull grey skies and the stifling black or navy blue of school uniforms that I see at work. But they started for me with red double decker buses and purple cross-country trains, the pulsing bright lights of Student Union discos and the green of grass that grows through the winter.

Every late August, when I return to Gloucestershire from my summer visit to my family in New England, the colours of old England are deep purple berry-black and deceptively soft stinging nettle-green. I forage in the hedgerows and make blackberry-elderberry syrups and jam.

This year, the hedgerows are particularly festooned with colour. Dark blue sloes and so many little red hawthorn berries, you can barely see the leaves. Apparently, drought can stress trees into making extra fruit in a more desperate bid to pass on their genetic material. Hopefully they don’t feel too downhearted that some of their DNA is going into a crumble. It’s doing all kinds of good!

Full Spectrum

Ask my five and a half year old niece her favourite colour and she will tell you it’s rainbow. I didn’t know that was an option when I was a kid.

I hope no one nitpicks her and tells her rainbow isn’t one colour, it’s all of them. Of course it is, that’s why people are so enchanted by rainbows. Shining colours melded together more closely than a hedgerow, with far more beautiful range than a red cross on a white background. We all have an innate love of mixture and brightness.

*A baby bear and their great aunt Laurel, 23 years ago*

In my dining room, next to the spiderplant grown from a student’s gift and a felted leaf garland crafted by another student, a prism hangs. It is no tear-shaped slip of a thing, it’s a weighty diamond capable of pitching a whole swathe of rainbows.

My aunt Laurel gave it to me when I was struggling as an adolescent. “Sometimes you just need more rainbows in your life,” she told me, her voice catching on her compassion.

Three days ago, Laurel died suddenly of a heart attack in her Vermont home. On that side of the ocean, my family rallies to honour her and to support my cousin. On this side of the ocean, a friend gives me yellow gladioli at work and another drops an orange-papered Tony’s Chocolonely bar through my letterbox. British colours at work again.

Making Rainbows

More vibrant fruit yields can come from jeopardy, and rainbows don’t happen without storms. My aunt Laurel had her share of storms, but she absolutely sparkled for us.

She loved the lupins that grew in the median strip of Highway 91, she loved candied almonds and jewelry. She gave me my first CD of Les Miserables, and instigated the nerf gun battle that ended in my husband proposing. She invented her own evil twin to blame pranks on, and encouraged all of us to do the same. She was the source of many a thoughtful gift, and constantly opened her home to us, no matter what annoying phase we were going through.

When my baby was born (I mean, they were a baby then…) she was the one with me in the delivery room. Despite the tragedy and horror of the terrorist attacks that day, Laurel always reminded me how she couldn’t stop smiling after the birth. She strove to see the world through the most hopeful prism, and sometimes that’s awfully hard.

Even better than a prism, she’s left us with her wonderful son, my cousin, who will now be even more part of my immediate family. It’s excruciating to know she won’t be there the next time I get back to see my family. But she’s left us so much to be grateful for, especially an undying impression that no person or place is as dull as just two colours.

Wishing you rainbows this week, friends, and hopefully not too many storms.

Taking a Moment

This Week’s Bit of String: Fairies of all sorts

Last week my entire family stayed together in a lakeside house in Maine. This included my 5-year-old niece, who moved expertly from one of us to the next, with wide-eyed invitations for our attention and imaginative assignations for us.

“Want to pretend you’re my mommy and I’m a toddler?” she asked me one morning. I was hardly about to turn that down.

*Our view as Lily Pad and the Moment Fairy*

Later on, she had my brother-in-law at her command in the role of big brother, while her own big brother (actual age 6) was her little brother. She’d gone from being a toddler to being 13 and a half, and her name was Lily Pad. My kiddo’s fiancee was now her mommy, and I was briefly a co-worker. My niece’s job was testing beds, which after various hikes and kayak-paddles and swims, I was more than willing to help with.

In the evening, we all gathered in lawn chairs to watch the sun set over the lake. Then my niece invited me to sit on the dock with her, dangling our feet in “Waterworld.”

She told me, “Sometimes if I need a moment, and I tell my mom I want to go to Waterworld, then I come here and you’re the fairy who meets me. You’re the fairy for people who need to take a moment, so they can talk to you and not be lonely, and you won’t tell anyone.”

I couldn’t have been prouder than when she led me back to the rest of our family, now doggedly roasting marshmallows around a campfire despite the 30 C/ 90 F heat, and she introduced me as The Moment Fairy.

Ongoing Stories

When I was in second grade, our teacher read us the 1953 chapter book Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett, about a witch’s daughter who would prefer to be a fairy. This book had me convinced I, too, was a secret fairy, and I eagerly assigned the role of captor witch to whichever family member incurred my unspoken wrath.

*Fairy house at my hometown’s lakeside park*

It might be my mother for making me drink my orange juice even though I said it tasted sour, or my little brother for faking naps and then being allowed to stay up later than me. If you think these reasons are far-fetched, wait till you hear my solution.

I was certain that if I woke up at the right time, and went into my closet with the correct numbers on my little calculator, then the fairies would rescue me. I tried it once and it didn’t work, but I figured I needed a different moment of the night.

Nothing really dissuaded me from that story. It dissolved into new fantasies I nursed in my imagination. Similarly, in my niece’s game, she was constantly accommodating new roles for us. While most were outside making s’mores, she led my husband by the hand through the holiday house.

“He’s the Show-You-Something Fairy,” she explained when I went in for extra ingredients.

Sure enough, she was picking up various objects and explaining them to her engineer uncle as if he’d just materialised from a fantastical dimension (it probably seems as if we do, appearing once a year from the UK). The Something she was Showing him as I went back outside was a flyswatter.

Moments to Remember

I was inspired by my niece’s imaginative efforts, and moved by her confidence that at any given time, at least one of us would want to duck into her world. As she gets older, she will desperately need a variety of people she can slip away and have a moment with. She’ll have so many things to show and explain to us.

Sometimes, as I wrote a couple weeks ago, I worry about my stories getting stuck in my head and progressing no further. But while I value being a writer and long for success, my roles as mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt are more important. It’s nice to remember that I serve some purpose there, and it’s truly a privilege to do so.

For now, the fairies have flown. Back in the UK, I’m the Moment Fairy for myself. I have to keep going, finding ways to be present from afar for my family while remaining present in the life I sought elsewhere. It means choosing which of the dozens of times I think of them each day are the most valuable to pass on. That’s the challenge, when we’re not rubbing up against each other regularly and experiencing life together.

Sometimes, separation hurts too much. Maybe it’s a pleasant evening with no extra family to share it with, when I have no one to bake for but my husband and me, when it’s warm but there’s no place to swim. I miss the feel of a little hand in mine so much. It’s tempting to dig myself into chores or into writing assignments, but maybe I should surrender to those moments, too, to keep my caring fully kindled.

Which moments matter most to you? How do you make the best of them?

Objects in the Rearview Mirror

This Week’s Bit of String: A library visit and hometown changes

On the first day of my summer visit from old England to New, I went to the library with my mother. It’s recently been refurbished in my hometown. The children’s area boasts a full play kitchen, and a teen reading room features a whiteboard table for doodling. On top of the bookshelves in the grown-up section, a community craft exhibit includes three-dimensional scrapbooked cards, patchwork quilts, carvings of birds, embroidered landscapes, and a whole felted ark full of animals.

What a lovely place. I did wonder, though, as Mom and I left, “What happened to that mysterious cabinet of dolls that used to be at the back of the library when I was a kid?”

She responded, “I keep wondering what happened to the collection of international creches at the Catholic shrine after it was bought out.”

Another good question. The lakeside Catholic retreat in town ran out of funds and was bought out by the Shaker Museum across the street, an ironic reversal of fortunes which I may revisit in a later post because there’s an intriguing story at the heart of it.

For our purposes this week, suffice to say that the Catholic site had a Christmas specialty. They ranged an immense collection of lights along their hillside. Coming home on a December night, we’d see them reflected in the lake from a couple miles away. They also took donations of nativity sets from all around the world, many of them beautifully crafted.

It’s funny how objects that may not have tangibly impacted us can anchor in our minds and resurface later. As writers, we’re often character-driven and particularly fascinated with people. But lately, I’ve noticed inanimate objects asserting importance in my short stories. What does it mean?

Living in a Material World

For me, writing a short story has generally included a central image, which may well be a natural or material object. Mudpies, a book of mazes, lipstick. Usually these are sort of thematic, whereas lately they’re practically plot points.

In the past year, I wrote a story about a fairground tragedy involving a ferris wheel, and the wheel additionally functions as a wider symbol. Another story currently on submission is about a family, each child represented by a colour from the gumballs in a vintage candy machine. Two decades of mid-twentieth century history are magnified through the machine’s glass sphere.

In real life, I’ve tended to wax sentimental over objects. After moving house when I was 8, I carried a little box of favourite things with me everywhere. A stone from the lake where we used to live, a broken necklace charm from a long-distance relative, I can’t even remember what else. When called upon to correct a sentence on the blackboard, I didn’t leave my seat without my box. I dropped it once and scrambled on the floor in front of my new classmates to gather my treasured crumbs.

Objects stand in for people in my mind. One of the many details I plan regarding my summer trip is coordinating my contact lenses. I wear monthly ones, and I always time the changing of them so that I put new ones in on the last day with my family. That way, I can linger for longer back in the UK with lenses that have “seen” my loved ones. It’s silly, but I’ve not been able to shake that symbolism.

Object Permanence

*Please look after this bear thank you.*

Maybe I am holding back a bit from attaching deeply to characters in a short story, placing a central object between us for distance. Will that impede the reader’s experience? We’ll have to see. It’s a new angle from which to look at characters—how they handle objects in their lives can tell us a lot.

It’s not as if this is wholly without literary precedent. Objects are important in children’s literature. A glass slipper, a golden ticket…A wardrobe becomes a new world, a boxcar becomes a home, dolls come to life. I remember a book in our church library about a penny. Each chapter focused on a new owner of that penny, from a child abducted by native Americans to an enslaved boy running toward freedom.

What could objects say about us, if they could speak? We did an assignment like that in our Journal As Literature college class. A friend wrote from the point of view of the socks she always wore to bed. I wrote about the teddy bear I’d bought my baby from London, to connect them to their then-estranged father. If I’m remembering correctly, I think the bear assessed me as guilty of some misplaced sentimentality, but he felt compassion for me too. Of course he was compassionate; he’s a teddy bear.

What would you write about? If your main character had to flee with a handful of possessions, what would they take?

A Creative Start

This Week’s Bit of String: “What shall we make?”

In our first year of married life, my husband started a Saturday morning pancake-making tradition with our little kiddo. While I hiked the hills, they’d make pancakes from a Jamie Oliver recipe, my husband fluffing up the eggs with a hand-cranked beater. Our preschooler helped measure and mix.

Despite them doing it almost every week, it stirred in our little Bear an almost unspeakable excitement. Early on a Saturday morning, they would plonk next to their dad in our bed and ask, wide-eyed, almost vibrating with elation:

“What shall WE make?”

The correct answer, of course, was pancakes. But it was as if it couldn’t mean nearly as much if Bear asked directly for them. They had to be Daddy’s suggestion, every time.

My husband would draw out the game. “Mandrakes? Bran flakes?” Until at last: “Pancakes!”

I often think of this when I’m starting a new project. That relish, that possibility. What shall WE make, I ask myself, summoning some semblance of youthful vigour.

Whose Idea is It, Anyway?

There’s a perennial hope, too, that the idea I work with may appear from an external source. I mean, to an extent, all ideas do. But as creatives we must at least invite them, if not invent them. We have to wake the muse from her blissful weekend sleep and badger her until she divulges something. When she’s sleeping extra tight, we must remind ourselves, perhaps, that we’ve known what we want all along.

Funnily, a lot of my story ideas materialise in the night. Sometimes between dreams and sleep, sometimes when I’m trying and failing to relax into slumber, a line pops into my head. What on earth does it mean? What sort of a person would think this? What happens next?

“My sister devoured the whole of history.”

“In the boys’ minds you left so fast, you didn’t bother wearing shoes. Just ran barefoot down the dirt road.”

“As a boy, Tom believed every grandpa came with a matching grandfather clock.”

It is possible, when interrogating a line or an idea, to over-beat it. I devise so much backstory, I lose sight of which bit I might zoom in on to convey the pivotal moment that is a short story. At the moment, I’m trying to find my way through that predicament with my third random short story of the year.

Traps and Tricks

Similar to making their dad suggest pancakes anew every single week, our Bear had other funny, roundabout ways. When we went on walks, they’d try to make my husband chase them. They’d stick goosegrass on his clothes or sneak up and tickle him.

Then our kiddo would say, “Do you want to catch me? Do you have any traps for me?”

They’d be hopping in place, not wanting to run away because they loved the game of being tackled and tickled, or dangled upside down.

That’s another great challenge when concocting something new. It must be exciting, but we can’t force the stakes. Sometimes an idea remains just a concept because I can’t work out how to nudge it toward a plausible, engaging crisis. Embarrassingly, I’ve developed and drafted whole novels only to feel the climax falls flat. Does that happen to other creatives? Or do they have more exciting imaginations?

Maybe I need to add more ingredients. More dark secrets, a love triangle, a dragon? But not necessarily. I might just need to be bolder, to more fearlessly mine the ideas I have, and to get messy with them. Currently planning a new novel, I’ve got my characters’ flaws in mind from the beginning. Sometimes I like them so much I’m determined to keep them blameless–not this time.

Creative habits are hard-won. I’m proud that I sit down at the end of a long day and push myself, wearily, to make up stuff. But it needs to be fresh, too, and that’s one reason why I like remembering our family tan-snakes…scran-bakes… PANCAKES tradition.

What makes you smile as you craft chaos into order?