Save the Date! Sunday, June 4th!!!I at 1pm PT / 4pm ET – in just one week – it’s Memoir Church at Manuscript Mentor. Our hour-long Zoom Program on the First Sunday of Every Month has stories sure to move you. On the 4th of June, I get to have a conversation with Katherine Burger about her work, her process, her muses and the writing life. It’ll be a rich hour. Please mark your calendars.
Suze Muses
Any story that comes over my door sill, wafts through my window or is told to me over coffee or a meal is my life’s blood. I am one of those people who will come to your house (if invited of course) and enjoy looking at your family photo albums, even if I don’t know a soul in them and ask to hear their stories and your stories because it connects me to you in a deeper way. Today I called my Aunt Phylly in Maine. She is not my blood auntie. I found her by way of marriage but I have adopted her as my own. She is 93 and lives alone and is just brimming with joy and light. She’ll also give you a piece of her mind with a curse word or two thrown in for good measure. Phylly is not to be trifled with but she loves to laugh, will burst into song as she’s talking and she is an ace storyteller. Mind like a steel trap. She grew up on Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine’s Little Italy. I lived there for a year when my children were babies. It is a beautiful part of the city with views of Casco Bay. Aunt Phylly’s stories are rife with city history, fun family anecdotes and steeped in Italian heritage. She tells of sledding down Munjoy Hill in the middle of the road that’s how few cars were on the road. Her take on the way the world works is hilarious, open, full of schoolgirl memories and the good old days but she doesn’t shy away from talking about her hardships – an abusive husband, a beloved son’s death at 29 and being the only one left of her siblings. When I am home for the summer, Phylly and I get lobster rolls at Becky’s Diner and drive around and she regales me on what used to be where and the time when she and her sisters took the ferry to Peaks Island for a picnic and to lay in the sun (without sunscreen – “We never thought of such a thing as that.”) on the ocean rocks overlooking the bay. And all the young boys back then– all the good-looking boys and the USO dances she went to at the Grand Trunk on Commercial Street where my ex-husband’s parents met. Receiving her stories is like getting the best Christmas gifts ever. I am richer and more in love with the world because of them. And I am forever in love with her and delight in our time spent on the phone but especially in person because she is very affectionate and likes to hold my hand or give a long tight hug. Oh, how she makes me blush by showering me with compliments and awe like I am a rock star. But Phylly is the real rock star and her sing song stories filled with energy and her easy laugh are music to my ears, always.
Soulful Shared Stories Sunday Writing Prompt ~ What is one of your favorite stories to tell about your life? Write it down with all the detail you can muster so whoever reads it or hears it feels like they are in with you.