I hope it’s ok to share this, what’s going on in the world today brings up old fears I had while my son was serving his country. I came across this poem I had written while he was in Afghanistan.
There's a soldier who stands,
In a cold and lonely desert sand,
With thoughts of family back home.
Dark and silent he’s all alone.
Strong and determined is his young face,
But his heart and his mind long to embrace
The loved ones he carries in his heart
The new comrades somewhere in the dark.
They said the mission was one of peace.
He waits with comrades for the gunfire to cease,
To finish his contract, and return to his life.
Propose to his girlfriend and make her his wife.
His tour of duty comes to a close.
He grips his suitcase of civilian clothes.
Not sure what to wear, or how to react,
To the family waiting for him to come back.
The day has arrived, they wait at the door.
His plane has touched on the tarmac floor.
He squares his shoulders, puts on a smile,
To embrace his family, he's not seen in a while.
I look in his young face and I wonder,
What those old eyes have seen torn asunder.
They hover with microphones, what will he say.
"Tell us in your words, son. What happened that day?"
As his words slowly fall, from his twisted face,
The tears he holds back, so not to disgrace,
The country he fought for, and rules he lived by,
Now ring empty, untrue, in this cold November sky.
The reporters are gone now, on to the next story.
He turns to face his family, and knows they are sorry.
Sorry for the boy who turned into this man,
That faces them now, as strong as he can.
He lays in his room, in his old childhood bed.
Too weary to absorb the things that were said.
He is asleep now, as his mother comes in,
Just to look at his face, in the moonlit din.
So many days and nights, she cried,
Prayed for his safety, and the soldiers that died!
The War is never over, more people will succumb,
To the memories that come after, the things that were done.
For now I can relax, and enjoy the scene.
My boy is back home, no longer a teen.
No young friends hangingout, he is all alone.
But my soldier is safe, they sent him back home!
I am trying to write again,
Words typically fail me when they are needed most -
thank you, Laurie, for sharing your beautiful poem. i have two 'soldier-age' sons. it's honestly not hyperbole to say i feel deep in my heart that every young soldier, man or woman, is my child.
Omg - I LOVE this prompt 😆!!! Suleika, I thought my notes app of lists was a record breaker nearing 100’s … I kneel before you Good Lady!!
I was really moved to consider that lists can be literary, a sign of something greater (your list of what you don’t want to forget is an essay itself). But what really moved me was this consideration of what our lists tell us about ourselves, particularly in what is crossed off and what remains. Ooommph!
6. Look for songbirds when they sing above my head
7. Look closely at the earth, any signs of Spring birthings, crocus, daffodil?
8. Wave in a gentle, friendly manner to nearby deer, especially when they look up and gaze my way
9. Wave to the bald eagle who sits near her nest, or when she perches on a favorite tree along the creek where I walk daily
10. Given it is still chilly outside, breathe deeply when I am walking and I suddenly smell someone’s burning wood for warmth, and possibly cooking
11. During my Sunset walks, gaze with deep appreciation at houses with lamps lit and warm inviting light appearing in windows
12. Recite my morning poem twice, coffee in hand, at the two windows in my living room, begin by saying good morning to this world, by saying “L’chaim Jesse”. 🏮
Live life as a poem unfolding one moment at a time, one word, one phrase, one line. Be a poem as it is created. As you are created, and creating.🏮
Hello All. I love today's writing. I love " The lists and the entries began to mingle freely, like party guests who discover they have a great deal in common despite having been issued very different dress codes." And I love the list of Things I do not want to forget. I am starting my own. And I am so excited to see the last week's video so I can watch it today!! I have a notebook for medical appointments. It is my medical appointments, my husband's, my mom's, lists and I am not sure what else. And thank you to this community for all your comments and supports last week. My mom came home on Wednesday. She is adjusting back to her facility. And I had more with my oncologist appointments, a scan and calls with my doctor. We have more plans to go forward with more scans and biopsies. I am grateful. And Thank you Suleika.
I love the idea of writing lists of things we don't want to forget. Beautiful idea!
Lists are wonderful tools, and we have the power to make them fun and helpful or overwhelming and unproductive.
To-do lists can become overwhelming. But they can also be fun, with just a little resourcefulness tapped from our sense of creativity, playfulness, and gamefulness.
I recently had an idea to rename my daily to-do list to a "Wish List" and call the activity of recording it (in a special, fun way) the "One to Ten Wishes Game". I record ten things I want to do on any given day. They can be specific, singular tasks or areas of activity, such as household chores, exercising, and similar activities. And when I tended to any of the wishes at least a little, I drew something around it.
Yesterday, it was the shape of an island, around which I drew seas and even a small whale, and marked the routes of little boats and ships between the islands as I went about my day from one activity to another. And each island got a little palm tree or house or something else drawn next to the task or wish taken care of or tended to. And today it is a bouquet. I love flowers, and International Women's Day seemed like a great theme to draw flowers on my to-do, no, wish list for today. :)
Thank you, Stacia! Reframing is such a powerful and fun practice. If you'd like to share the experiences you have while doing so, I'd love to hear them. I just shared a note with pictures of the islands and flowers I mentioned in the comment above, as well as the game plan and play from today with castles, if you want to see what it looks like.
Thank you, Jeanne! Yes, it is much more fun and sweeter than striking through a recording for a task. I once tried writing down the tasks on empty playing cards and created a card game around them. But the "One to Ten Wishes Game" with drawings is much more fun and also exciting to explore. Today, I have drawn a fortress, a castle, and a Baba Yaga house around some of my tasks, and tomorrow I am thinking of drawing planets and stars. I shared a note with pictures of these today, if you want to check them out.
I am in a place of not knowing what to say—being here, with you, Suleika, reading your lists, escaping into them, loving that first paragraph of yours so much. The originality of that image. Thank you, Suleika. Thank you, Carmen. You have built such a beautiful world here. I am honored to have stepped inside, a guest at this party. I'm still in my PJs on another misty day, waiting for the projector to yield a reel.
I’m going to start titling my lists - outlines for a future memoir for my children.
My next grocery list will be called: “First shopping trip after reading ‘Try royal jelly, propolis, and bee pollen for an added health- packed punch.’” 🐝
My list of bills this month will be called: “Who got paid and who didn’t after spending my bonus on new prescription glasses and sunglasses.”😎
Oh my! Why was I opening my laptop at 5am (really 4am thanks to the dreaded Daylight Savings Demon). When Suleika's email was at the top of my feed I knew I had to jump right in. "Lists"...oh I am not a list maker or keeper. My brain/mind swirl in spirals and circles so linear lists are foreign to me. They just do not seem to work...or so I thought. Then, her guest....Beth Kephart! Only one of my all time favorite writers! Ok, blank page...let's see what appears. 5 pages later I finally stopped. Wrote about a stack of clothes for donation, things on my dresser, and the stack of books on my bedside table. I reread what I wrote. The energy, the memory threads, the possibilities! Makes me giggle!
This version of listing connects to a memoir I am reading by Kim Hastreiter, a 70 year old culture afficionado who lives in Manhattan and has been in the midst of Manhattan life since the mid-seventies.
She collects- flea market stuff, work by creative friends, wonderful friends, and artifacts of her life- and has recently published a memoir centering her fifty plus years of collected stuff.
It made me look around at my last fifty years of things I still have, each thing with a clear story of what it meant and still means to me, and about me, if I still have it.
Normally I would wonder about a memoir anchored into a skeleton of photographs of stuff, but when Debbie Millman interviewed her I knew there would be something valuable there.
Such a lovely prompt.. how wonderful to consider our lists as literary, a way of remembrance and of knowing ourselves. Dreams on paper written with my favorite Staedtler markers and the courage to write them down. This gives new meaning to my daughter’s statement “That’s the longest list I’ve ever seen Mom!” Lists as a witness to our days, our lives, our loves and in lyric to our songs. Your prompt is transformational. Thank you! 💕
Love the reflection and the prompt.. looking through my journals and Notes so many lists but now a different way to think about them so thank you. I am going to start a list of things I don’t want to forget about my mom who is 94 with dementia and dealing with a bit of a cold which as we all know can go either way.. thankful for this prompt 💕
I’m not sure how a person can function without a list. I would like to know the name of the 600 age book that you devoured, and of course I need this book for my “Books to Read” list
Oh how I resonated with this. I used to torment my little sister, who only ever wanted to play, by insisting we start by making lists of what we wanted to do. I still make lists constantly. It’s the only way to settle my mind, to safely park my thoughts so they don’t scatter into oblivion. I discovered a few years ago that a list could be a powerful literary device when I wrote in a fever dream of inspiration what is still my favorite piece of creative nonfiction, titled Salt. https://www.havehashad.com/web_features/salt
I made a grocery list once, and left it home. However, I had a roommate named Rita Bottomly who was a brilliant list maker. I was in awe of how she organized her life, while my life was catch as catch can. My plan was to live like Mehitabel the cat in Shinbone Alley. "Toujours Gai"---a tad impractical for the long haul--PS-lived with Rita at 19 and decades later still trucking.
I hope it’s ok to share this, what’s going on in the world today brings up old fears I had while my son was serving his country. I came across this poem I had written while he was in Afghanistan.
There's a soldier who stands,
In a cold and lonely desert sand,
With thoughts of family back home.
Dark and silent he’s all alone.
Strong and determined is his young face,
But his heart and his mind long to embrace
The loved ones he carries in his heart
The new comrades somewhere in the dark.
They said the mission was one of peace.
He waits with comrades for the gunfire to cease,
To finish his contract, and return to his life.
Propose to his girlfriend and make her his wife.
His tour of duty comes to a close.
He grips his suitcase of civilian clothes.
Not sure what to wear, or how to react,
To the family waiting for him to come back.
The day has arrived, they wait at the door.
His plane has touched on the tarmac floor.
He squares his shoulders, puts on a smile,
To embrace his family, he's not seen in a while.
I look in his young face and I wonder,
What those old eyes have seen torn asunder.
They hover with microphones, what will he say.
"Tell us in your words, son. What happened that day?"
As his words slowly fall, from his twisted face,
The tears he holds back, so not to disgrace,
The country he fought for, and rules he lived by,
Now ring empty, untrue, in this cold November sky.
The reporters are gone now, on to the next story.
He turns to face his family, and knows they are sorry.
Sorry for the boy who turned into this man,
That faces them now, as strong as he can.
He lays in his room, in his old childhood bed.
Too weary to absorb the things that were said.
He is asleep now, as his mother comes in,
Just to look at his face, in the moonlit din.
So many days and nights, she cried,
Prayed for his safety, and the soldiers that died!
The War is never over, more people will succumb,
To the memories that come after, the things that were done.
For now I can relax, and enjoy the scene.
My boy is back home, no longer a teen.
No young friends hangingout, he is all alone.
But my soldier is safe, they sent him back home!
I am trying to write again,
Words typically fail me when they are needed most -
Lovely and poignant❤️🪶
The war is never over; it never is. I am so glad your soldier is safe.
Beautiful, Colleen! So heartfelt and raw. Brought tears to my eyes. I’m happy your son is home and pray for his wellbeing.
This gripped my heart. Holding back the tears for the boys turned into men.
Praying for your boy.
Beautiful poem, love your boy
thank you, Laurie, for sharing your beautiful poem. i have two 'soldier-age' sons. it's honestly not hyperbole to say i feel deep in my heart that every young soldier, man or woman, is my child.
Hi Judith it’s actually my poem not Laurie’s
oh yes, of course. i must have just been looking at laurie's name as i was writing :-) it's such a beautiful poem my mind was elsewhere ❤️
Omg - I LOVE this prompt 😆!!! Suleika, I thought my notes app of lists was a record breaker nearing 100’s … I kneel before you Good Lady!!
I was really moved to consider that lists can be literary, a sign of something greater (your list of what you don’t want to forget is an essay itself). But what really moved me was this consideration of what our lists tell us about ourselves, particularly in what is crossed off and what remains. Ooommph!
I do agree, Sabrina. Suleika's list is a gorgeous record breaker. And I do think that living inside every list is a narrative, a tone, a mood.
I need to know the 600 page book that kept Suleika riveted until she finished it!
ME TOO!
Me three!!
Yes please, that title!
1. In one day find people smiling
2. Identify what else appears on people’s faces
3. Listen closely to voices nearby
4. Ask, am I pleased, displeased, neutral
5. Stop when geese fly honking overhead
6. Look for songbirds when they sing above my head
7. Look closely at the earth, any signs of Spring birthings, crocus, daffodil?
8. Wave in a gentle, friendly manner to nearby deer, especially when they look up and gaze my way
9. Wave to the bald eagle who sits near her nest, or when she perches on a favorite tree along the creek where I walk daily
10. Given it is still chilly outside, breathe deeply when I am walking and I suddenly smell someone’s burning wood for warmth, and possibly cooking
11. During my Sunset walks, gaze with deep appreciation at houses with lamps lit and warm inviting light appearing in windows
12. Recite my morning poem twice, coffee in hand, at the two windows in my living room, begin by saying good morning to this world, by saying “L’chaim Jesse”. 🏮
Live life as a poem unfolding one moment at a time, one word, one phrase, one line. Be a poem as it is created. As you are created, and creating.🏮
Be the poem you are creating. I absolutely love this, David.
Thank you, Beth. Rilke has a lovely line: “Before I was named, I belonged to you”(the Earth).
Hello All. I love today's writing. I love " The lists and the entries began to mingle freely, like party guests who discover they have a great deal in common despite having been issued very different dress codes." And I love the list of Things I do not want to forget. I am starting my own. And I am so excited to see the last week's video so I can watch it today!! I have a notebook for medical appointments. It is my medical appointments, my husband's, my mom's, lists and I am not sure what else. And thank you to this community for all your comments and supports last week. My mom came home on Wednesday. She is adjusting back to her facility. And I had more with my oncologist appointments, a scan and calls with my doctor. We have more plans to go forward with more scans and biopsies. I am grateful. And Thank you Suleika.
And the list of self appreciation to all that you donGina for yourself and other, add that to your list.😎
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Gina, on my list today is my hope for you — for your own body and soul, for those you love.
💕
I love the idea of writing lists of things we don't want to forget. Beautiful idea!
Lists are wonderful tools, and we have the power to make them fun and helpful or overwhelming and unproductive.
To-do lists can become overwhelming. But they can also be fun, with just a little resourcefulness tapped from our sense of creativity, playfulness, and gamefulness.
I recently had an idea to rename my daily to-do list to a "Wish List" and call the activity of recording it (in a special, fun way) the "One to Ten Wishes Game". I record ten things I want to do on any given day. They can be specific, singular tasks or areas of activity, such as household chores, exercising, and similar activities. And when I tended to any of the wishes at least a little, I drew something around it.
Yesterday, it was the shape of an island, around which I drew seas and even a small whale, and marked the routes of little boats and ships between the islands as I went about my day from one activity to another. And each island got a little palm tree or house or something else drawn next to the task or wish taken care of or tended to. And today it is a bouquet. I love flowers, and International Women's Day seemed like a great theme to draw flowers on my to-do, no, wish list for today. :)
Fabulous! I love wish list vs to do list!
Thank you, Ginger! The wish list sounds so much friendlier than a to-do list, doesn't it? :)
Great reframe! I’m definitely borrowing this practice ☺️
Thank you, Stacia! Reframing is such a powerful and fun practice. If you'd like to share the experiences you have while doing so, I'd love to hear them. I just shared a note with pictures of the islands and flowers I mentioned in the comment above, as well as the game plan and play from today with castles, if you want to see what it looks like.
This is super excellent.
I love the list becomes more beautiful as you move through it, more fun than a strike through!
Thank you, Jeanne! Yes, it is much more fun and sweeter than striking through a recording for a task. I once tried writing down the tasks on empty playing cards and created a card game around them. But the "One to Ten Wishes Game" with drawings is much more fun and also exciting to explore. Today, I have drawn a fortress, a castle, and a Baba Yaga house around some of my tasks, and tomorrow I am thinking of drawing planets and stars. I shared a note with pictures of these today, if you want to check them out.
Great ideas !!
Thank you, Gina! <3
Thank you very much, Beth!
I am in a place of not knowing what to say—being here, with you, Suleika, reading your lists, escaping into them, loving that first paragraph of yours so much. The originality of that image. Thank you, Suleika. Thank you, Carmen. You have built such a beautiful world here. I am honored to have stepped inside, a guest at this party. I'm still in my PJs on another misty day, waiting for the projector to yield a reel.
Thank you, Beth!
Love this it’s cracked something open in me freed a log jam of thought and feeling giving it a familiar form and permission to flow
Stacia, to every fissure that yields light —
I’m going to start titling my lists - outlines for a future memoir for my children.
My next grocery list will be called: “First shopping trip after reading ‘Try royal jelly, propolis, and bee pollen for an added health- packed punch.’” 🐝
My list of bills this month will be called: “Who got paid and who didn’t after spending my bonus on new prescription glasses and sunglasses.”😎
Love this!
Julie, what a gift this future memoir will be!
❤️
Oh my! Why was I opening my laptop at 5am (really 4am thanks to the dreaded Daylight Savings Demon). When Suleika's email was at the top of my feed I knew I had to jump right in. "Lists"...oh I am not a list maker or keeper. My brain/mind swirl in spirals and circles so linear lists are foreign to me. They just do not seem to work...or so I thought. Then, her guest....Beth Kephart! Only one of my all time favorite writers! Ok, blank page...let's see what appears. 5 pages later I finally stopped. Wrote about a stack of clothes for donation, things on my dresser, and the stack of books on my bedside table. I reread what I wrote. The energy, the memory threads, the possibilities! Makes me giggle!
This version of listing connects to a memoir I am reading by Kim Hastreiter, a 70 year old culture afficionado who lives in Manhattan and has been in the midst of Manhattan life since the mid-seventies.
She collects- flea market stuff, work by creative friends, wonderful friends, and artifacts of her life- and has recently published a memoir centering her fifty plus years of collected stuff.
It made me look around at my last fifty years of things I still have, each thing with a clear story of what it meant and still means to me, and about me, if I still have it.
Normally I would wonder about a memoir anchored into a skeleton of photographs of stuff, but when Debbie Millman interviewed her I knew there would be something valuable there.
This sounds QUITE intriguing.
Hello, you. Thank you!
Such a lovely prompt.. how wonderful to consider our lists as literary, a way of remembrance and of knowing ourselves. Dreams on paper written with my favorite Staedtler markers and the courage to write them down. This gives new meaning to my daughter’s statement “That’s the longest list I’ve ever seen Mom!” Lists as a witness to our days, our lives, our loves and in lyric to our songs. Your prompt is transformational. Thank you! 💕
Yes~ me too and I am grateful.
She is an observer .. but she is not a list maker. She just gets it done! 🙂
I write it down and then get it done.
Amy, I love that your daughter is so near, so close, that she knows your lists and which ones reach Olympic proportions.
Thank you for helping me feel connected. I feel so lost at times. Bless this group.
I love being lost together!
This is such a beautiful group, where so much that is shared is both seen and felt.
Love the reflection and the prompt.. looking through my journals and Notes so many lists but now a different way to think about them so thank you. I am going to start a list of things I don’t want to forget about my mom who is 94 with dementia and dealing with a bit of a cold which as we all know can go either way.. thankful for this prompt 💕
Maureen, you will be so happy that you have done this. Things not to forget. Ever.
I’m not sure how a person can function without a list. I would like to know the name of the 600 age book that you devoured, and of course I need this book for my “Books to Read” list
Me too…books to read list..when I’ve read it I use ✔️next to it
Once read. I move it to my Books Read list. Both lists are in excel. That is my other list tool🤦♀️
Me too
I find that, the older I become, the more desperately in need of lists I am. Here I sit, in fact. One list to my left and another list to my right.
Oh how I resonated with this. I used to torment my little sister, who only ever wanted to play, by insisting we start by making lists of what we wanted to do. I still make lists constantly. It’s the only way to settle my mind, to safely park my thoughts so they don’t scatter into oblivion. I discovered a few years ago that a list could be a powerful literary device when I wrote in a fever dream of inspiration what is still my favorite piece of creative nonfiction, titled Salt. https://www.havehashad.com/web_features/salt
"It’s the only way to settle my mind, to safely park my thoughts so they don’t scatter into oblivion."
Yes! So well put.
Abby, I always love finding you wherever I find you. I wonder how you and your sister plan your time together these days — and, to Salt.
I made a grocery list once, and left it home. However, I had a roommate named Rita Bottomly who was a brilliant list maker. I was in awe of how she organized her life, while my life was catch as catch can. My plan was to live like Mehitabel the cat in Shinbone Alley. "Toujours Gai"---a tad impractical for the long haul--PS-lived with Rita at 19 and decades later still trucking.
Rita Bottomly has a most perfect name. This comment is like a work of flash nonfiction!