STILL HERE THINKING OF YOU A Second Chance With Our Mothers
Follow the Writers
  • HOME
  • Book
  • Authors
  • Excerpts
  • "Moments of Being"
  • Reviews & Press
  • Readings & Events
  • Workshops
  • Purchase
  • Contact
  • Blog

All The Best

2/24/2021

0 Comments

 
We had moved from the city to Westchester two years earlier, and my editing job at the Big Apple Parents’ Paper had gone remote. I was occasionally contributing freelance articles – there was one about Lyme disease, I recall – and also writing for a local publication called The Pet Gazette (a round-up of doggie daycares, another of animal trainers). Sofie was 11, Ariel 8. I had just started seeing a therapist named Allison. 
 
During one session I was bemoaning the banal subjects I wrote about and the small-time caliber of the publications. Would I ever be published in something more reputable, I asked? To which Allison replied: “Have you ever taken a writing class?”
 
Upon arriving home, I picked up the mail and found a catalogue from the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts. I flipped to the literary section and found a memoir class starting the next week. Allison’s words in my mind, I signed up. The teacher? One Joan Potter. 
 
Before we moved, I had spent a two-year stint as the Parents’ Paper’s editor-in-chief, during which time I wrote a monthly column. I wrote about raising Sofie and Ariel; I told stories that were funny, or scary, or ridiculous – but always they were heartfelt. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was writing memoir. 
 
The first piece I wrote in Joan’s class was about spending weekends at my grandparents’ apartment as a child. I described opening the drawer in the night table between my grandparents’ twin beds and finding tangles of multicolored ribbons. I wrote it in third person. “Why are you calling yourself ‘she?’” Joan asked. 
 
I rewrote it using “I,” and then I wrote a piece about weather, and another about eating potato chips in the back seat of my parents’ car, my father fuming as we sat in traffic on the way to Cape Cod. The stories flowed from me, and they felt good. Although looking back at them now, I see they needed work. But I loved the class, and I loved sharing my stories with others.
 
I thrive on encouragement, and Joan was encouraging. “You should take my class at the Hudson Valley Writers Center,” she said one day. “The writers there are great.”
 
So I did, and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Now, more than two decades later – from classes, to our writing group, to “Still Here Thinking Of You,” all interspersed with regular sushi lunches – here we are. Thank you, Joan, and Happy Birthday!
​
 
                                                             ~Susan Hodara
0 Comments

Socially Distanced

5/25/2020

0 Comments

 
It was raining and dank when we scheduled Zoom cocktails with a friend for Saturday at 6. But then came the weekend weather report and, with it, an email: “It’s supposed to be beautiful,” it read. “Would you consider coming over to my backyard to have socially-distanced cocktails?”
 
After a momentary consultation with my husband, Paul, I declined. “We’re just not ready,” I wrote. But while the decision was quick, its aftereffects have lingered. 
 
When our self-isolation began, followed days later by the official lockdown, part of me was excited. Part of me loved that suddenly everything was called off. No longer did I have to arrange activities, buy tickets, make reservations, schedule appointments or head to the gym. I went into my calendar and gleefully hit delete, delete, delete – no excuses needed. 
 
Of course, before long, my calendar filled with Zoom this and Zoom that, and I have been grateful for every single one of those classes and visits and lunches and cocktails. They have been my connection – to my work, to my friends, to my family, to the world beyond my house. 
 
And yes, I complain: too much screen time, not enough human contact. I miss being in the room with people, observing the subtleties and depths that can only be sensed in person. 
 
The reason I said no to backyard cocktails wasn’t only my now-ingrained pandemic caution. It was a reluctance to give up some of what comes with an enforced lockdown. And acknowledging this reluctance has been fraught.
 
Here are a few of my conflicts:
 
• Maybe I won’t ever go back to the gym. I’ve been exercising daily, and, truth is, going swimming is a big production. 
 
• When I teach on Zoom, it doesn’t matter what the weather is. It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing from the waist down. And all of my students show up, and show up on time. 
 
• I like not having to drive anywhere. And I like knowing that if I did, there’d be no traffic.
 
• I relish the challenge of rationing food and supplies. You can’t argue with it economically and ecologically. And it suits my compulsive tendencies.
 
• And there’s something about those Zoom cocktails – the no-fuss, BYOB, no clean-up, hour-is-just-about-all-anyone-can-take – that I loathe to give up. 
 
Epilogue: We had our cocktails, and at the end, our friend said, “I hope that next time, we can do this in person.”
 
“I hope so, too,” I said.
 
But do I? 
 
 
​                                                            ~  Susan Hodara
0 Comments

    Authors:

    Vicki Addesso
    Susan Hodara
    Joan Potter 
    Lori Toppel

    Archives

    February 2021
    May 2020
    July 2019
    May 2018
    December 2016
    September 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013

    Categories:

    All
    Daughters
    Family
    Food
    Friends
    Joan Potter
    Lori Toppel
    Memory
    Mothers
    Self-isolation
    Susan Hodara
    Vicki Addesso
    Writing

    RSS Feed

    Picture
Copyright @ 2013 Still Here Thinking of You by Vicki Addesso, Susan Hodara, Joan Potter, and Lori Toppel