#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Rain, heavy, and we have a pleasant, mushy walk, and I am on the phone for a bit, returning a call to a cousin, Jaye, I grew up with whom I haven't seen in years. She has called looking for my address. It seems her brother-in-law, Jim, has been going through his files and found a letter I had written to his late wife, Joyce, who passed away a few years ago. Apparently, it's a letter I sent to Joyce after the death of their sister Joan. It made him cry, Jim said, and he wanted me to have a copy of it. What sweet news; the idea that I moved Joyce in that letter then, and Jim now. It was lovely walking through the wet meadow by the edge of the river while reminiscing with Jaye about our childhood and teen years of summers spent on Laurel Lake, where she now occupies her mother's beloved cabin all summer long. I pledged a summer visit to Fitzwilliam in June to see her and dip my toes in Laurel Lake. (I have been working on a Laurel Lake poem.) 

Tonight, no walk after dinner. Instead, I lead my monthly monologue play lab online - the last of our six-month sessions. And I am moved so deeply by the progress these writers have made in shaping their stories for the stage, and for the way they have listened to and supported, appreciated and encouraged each other. This is the most powerful pleasure of my day - when each of them reads the script they're working on as if we've made an actual stage in cyberspace, where women's stories are in the center of the stage - dynamic, fresh, personal and universal. One of the writers shares how half-way through the play lab she hated the piece she was working on. The one that, tonight, we applauded, admired. She nailed it. Because she hung in past the I hate this stage. Being connected to writers growing, every day, I'm grateful.

All photos and text ©Kelly DuMar 2018