All in Writing
Getting back in the saddle
Any day on two wheels is a good day, though I haven’t been on a bike in too many months. Before I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting MS last April I was an avid long-distance cycle tourer. I peddled Boston to Maine and Milan to Split.
A 500km trip through the Cotswolds and Wye Valley left me with impossibly numb, weak hands. And this left me unable to button a shirt or pinch open a clothes pin for several weeks. I wrote it off as cyclist’s palsy, but my neurologist says it was my first major relapse. I was most at home in the saddle of my bicycle, but MS has made me unsteady and unable to balance on a bike.
Share Your Story of Hope
It is a bold proclamation to say you are a purveyor of hope, especially in the face of a disease that’s often described as “the most common disabling neurological condition of young adults.”
And yet, Overcoming MS from its humble beginnings, as a list on George Jelinek’s refrigerator to the codified program that has helped thousands of people with MS live well, peddles hope by the boatload.
Finding purr-pose
As a child, my family always had cats as pets. We had a Russian blue named Mr Cat, a chocolate Siamese named Catpuccino and an American shorthair called Hobbes. When I moved out on my own, I adopted a former show rabbit named Chaplin and took in an abandoned kitten I named Morty.
The Library of Things
I am from the “heart of it all,” where single family homes are islands surrounded by oceans of grass. Where garages full of tools—park the car on the drive—hide away the lawn mower, smelling of gasoline and fresh-cut clippings. A wall of plastic tubs: Christmas lights, extension cords, boxes of rope, camping gear in rusacks too big to be practical and too sentimental to throw out. Bags of fertilizer and empty flower pots live beside bits and bobs saved “just in case,” because “you never know.” It’s easy to become a packrat when you’re not forced to make the ongoing decision about what to keep and what to chuck away.
The Coraniaid and The Birds of Rhiannon
Rhiannon laid on the grass grieving her grandmother’s passing. Each memory was painful, yet crystal clear in her mind.
As her tears fell, three birds circled while singing the most beautiful song. Were they a sign from beyond? Rhiannon listened; her grief was replaced with joy and bliss.
What did Gran sound like? What did she look like?
Interview with debut horror novelist David Blair
David Blair’s debut novel Firebug is out now from Wicked House Publishing. Set in the small town of Ferdinand, Idaho, the narrative follows college dropout Daniel Patrick (who has a perchance for pyromania and underachieving) as he uses his skills to track down a mysterious and deadly creature that’s wreaking havoc on the town.
Unholy Trinity: Cymru Trilogy
King Vortigern ordered his finest stone masons, iron workers and architects to build a fortress on a hill to watch for Saxon invaders. Each morning, the previous days’ work lay in ruins. Was it the enemy? Or magic? Some said the site was cursed; no building could stand on its precipice.
First Viewing
We missed our appointment after lingering at a fixer-upper full of possibilities, some magnificent, others terrifying. The agent made us wait outside. The old couple two doors down told us that he’d lived in the house since the 1940s. We didn’t know at the time that the couple would become our neighbors. The house had white walls and grey carpets (freshly steamed), skylight, chrome cooker, and views of the hills from the garden.
Here Comes The ...
I bought the carved wooden cane from Dagfields Crafts and Antiques in Nantwich. It was fancier than my everyday mobility aid, and I walked down the aisle with it. My wedding day was hot, with blue skies. I stood at the top of a flight of 23 steps down to the arbor my brother crafted, Lake Erie beyond. My father took the cane in his right hand, my arm in his left. Most of our guests hadn’t seen me in my new, less-able body. Smiling, radiant, in white lace, attempting to look natural, I silently recited, “don’t trip, don’t trip.”
Solstice
On the longest day
the sun dips beneath the lintels
on the Salisbury Plain
Up & Away
Silently rising
over the suspension bridge
hot air balloons fly
Devonshire Cream
wild ponies come
from Dartmoor to the back gate
for my kitchen scraps
Fruits d'Ephemera
the rockpools reveal
cockles, limpets, sea stars, clams
by high tide they’re gone
Poppies for a Glass Eye
I come from a long line of inventors
Or at least a few tinkerers, I think
My lineage is dappled with long hours
spent scheming in the shed,
dreaming in the garage,
convening ideas into the next greatest thing
The Bibliophile
My grandmother was named Better — just Betty — not Bethany, not Elisabeth
The wife of a methodist minister, she was a public school teacher
Instructing pupils with exceptional needs in a time when nothing much was expected of imbeciles
She had high standard for reading, for writing and showing proper manners
Her classroom library, hundreds of volumes, was passed on to me when she retired
The Moose Hunt
In Aroostook County, moose season comes around in September and goes on its merry way in October. Each hunter gets to fell one animal — if they have a moose tag. The chances are better if you opt for a cow, but most applicants want the antlers — a 6-foot trophy only produced by the bulls.
I moved to Wales from Chicago...
I met my British husband when I was teaching English in Laos and he was riding a motorbike around Southeast Asia. After two years of long distance dating, we decided to elope in Chicago, where I’d spent my 20s.
Ablution
The rocky banks for the Nam Song are dotted with women, girls, their buckets… dumping content on stones doubling as washboards. Barefoot and laughing — they slap, whack, splash.
I’m Still Coming to Terms With how Much MS has Changed me – And That’s Okay
I can’t jump right now. I can’t run, or even walk quickly. I can’t stand on one foot for more than a second or two — longer on a good day and not at all on a bad day.