On the day that you, fifteen, tell your mother you are sorry for saying words that hurt her, you will stand on the bottom tread but one of the hush-carpeted stairs that run through the middle of the two-story house. She will stand in the doorway to the blue dining room, which leads to the kitchen from which you’ve called her. She will furrow her brow, tilt her head, and say Thank you for saying that, then look down and wring her hands, or maybe a kitchen towel. Next, not meeting your eyes, she will heft a hurt into the air, heavy under the weight of double negative: This doesn’t mean you’re not still grounded.
You will understand that she did not understand. She will turn and walk back to the kitchen, or perhaps continue on through the foyer into the living room, circling through the house a different way to return from where she began; you will pad silently back up the stairs to finish out the hour of Stay in your bedroom and think about what you said, which you would have done, anyway, which you had been doing already, silent and dry-eyed under the burden of the hurt you had heaved at her first.
Four days after the passing of my father-in-law, my wife and I welcomed our foster son. He came to us at five months old, barely sitting up on his own, and deliciously full of baby rolls. Twenty months later, he left our home and went to live with his biological mother for the first time in his life. We were parents for almost two years, but that title was taken from us.
In fifth grade, our lunch periods were at different times. My best friend Samantha—Sam—ate while I had Social Studies. One day, I slipped out of class on a bathroom pass and into the cafeteria, where sound and color collided. I scanned the crowded room until the blur resolved into Sam—her thick black braid ending in a baby-pink scrunchie at the small of her back, a whole head shorter than everyone else at the long table. She squealed when she saw me, as if it had been years, not hours, since we’d last been together. Sam nudged the girl beside her, who slid over without question. I squeezed in, the other kids at the table shielding me from the lunchroom monitor as Sam and I whispered, knees pressed together. Having different lunch periods once felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
I laughed when they called to schedule it, when I put it in my calendar over the faint traces of where you’d been. I’m not surprised. This much I’ve learned about grief—that it’s cruel in how it compounds, strata over strata of reddened rock.
I was deceived by the feel of her supple cheek that day after she died. She was like a green limb reaching for the sun, severed at the whim of the wind, the tree’s canopy of little protection. When illicit Oxy’s calming wind blew into her veins did she suddenly realize what she consumed was coated in fentanyl poison? Was it like being in the eye of the hurricane where there is calm for a moment before chaos takes over or was it like floating away on her favorite pair of Nike Airs™?
I glanced at my cell and saw a confusing text from Dad: Does Shoshana know? We have to tell her. My gut seized. Something was wrong. My parents split when I was an infant but kept in touch, long after I grew estranged from my mother and extended family. Dad occasionally provided updates on their recent calamities. Surely, this was one of them. I called him. Nothing. C'mon. I called again and this time he picked up. No hellos.
My two young children, clad in neon swimsuits, danced around impatiently in the backyard, checking on the progress every now and then. Our new inflatable pool—turquoise and gray with an attached blow-up slide—was being filled with the garden hose; it was taking forever for any noticeable progress. It was mid-June and the Wisconsin weather was in the low 70’s; I wasn’t about to tell my kids that even when the pool had filled to an acceptable volume, the sun still had to heat the water, cold and sputtering from the spigot, and that it was likely to take days, not hours.
I stare into the camera, waiting for my cue. In the background, a shelf displays the brightly colored toys of my childhood, rendered in the fuzzy technicolor of a 1990s video recording. Next to me, a stuffed King Kong gazes off-screen.
I rush to the quai in the Gare de Lyon in Paris. Flinging my small case on the train, I jump on. Moments later the train pulls away along the track, heading to Nice.
Slumped in my seat, I can relax, breathe, and observe those already settled in my compartment. Business people, couples, and single travellers surround me. One small figure catches my eye—a lady in her early sixties, dressed in a double-breasted camel hair coat, green beret, and smart brown leather gloves. She is elegant, with red lipstick. The slight nervousness of her fidgeting hands is familiar.
The first time I knew my parents loved each other was when my father Hoovered ants off my mother’s precious Christmas cake. Granted, it’s no ordinary cake. It’s a fruitcake my British mother makes two months before the holidays, injecting it weekly with dark rum to keep it moist.
It is hours past my bedtime when my mother shakes me out of a deep sleep. I might be as young as eight or as old as ten, but in my memory, I am nine: the exact age when Mom is the center of my tiny universe. I don’t ask questions; I simply crawl out from underneath my Little Mermaid comforter and follow her up the stairs.
On the day that you, fifteen, tell your mother you are sorry for saying words that hurt her, you will stand on the bottom tread but one of the hush-carpeted stairs that run through the middle of the two-story house. She will stand in the doorway to the blue dining room, which leads to the kitchen from which you’ve called her. She will furrow her brow, tilt her head, and say Thank you for saying that, then look down and wring her hands, or maybe a kitchen towel. Next, not meeting your eyes, she will heft a hurt into the air, heavy under the weight of double negative: This doesn’t mean you’re not still grounded.
Fucking first times, my therapist calls them. First holidays, significant occasions, anniversary of the death. The first time after you’ve lost someone, lost a child. It caught me off guard the first year, things that I didn’t expect took me to my knees. Easter, why did that leave me weeping, lashing out at everyone, feeling like a horrible failure? We weren’t religious and even if we were, Nel was most certainly not. She’d called me from prison the last Easter she was alive, Happy Easter! I tried to chirp at her. She stopped me mid-happy.
According to the United States Postal Service website, it’s illegal to send body parts through the mail.
“Heavily restricted,” is a better way to put it. You need the necessary permits, containers, a transport license from the American Association of Mortuary Shippers. There are rules involved, special restrictions; same goes for dry ice and lithium batteries. You can mail live bees, but not medical marijuana. Those thin, translucent lines that keep us from stuffing a toe into a manila envelope on the way to work.
For years, I kept my children’s teeth in a drawer. Wrapped in a rainbow silk, I tucked them behind the protection of scarves and mismatched socks. In preparation for a move to a new life, our belongings would sit in the liminal land of a storage unit. It didn’t feel right to put the bundle of teeth in the cardboard box behind bars.
You won’t ever know if she cried to herself over the dishes afterward, or if her chest clenched in some uncertainty over her response, or if her gaze softened in curiosity about what you, her daughter, might actually have meant when you said, Mom, I’m sorry. The two of you will never speak of this again. Over the years, you will forget word after word of almost constant kindness and care at her hands, but this one rebuff will haunt you. You won’t notice until your own children are eight and twelve-years-old how, on the one hand, you desire to receive their words like jewels, like fragile China teacups you would call beautiful and hold steady and never, ever drop—and, on the other, how easily you fail to listen to them when the time comes.
One day, when you are forty-five, you will be scrolling social media and will skim across the phrase, “For People with Dry Eyes.” You will misunderstand for a moment and think I want to read that article. But it isn’t an article, only an advertisement for medicated eye drops. No matter. The notion is locked in your psyche, and that evening, you will tell your husband how you have found yourself too distracted lately to look your youngest in the eye, and suddenly you’ll be sobbing, your cheeks soaked and softened in the salty flood. The moment on the stairs with your mom will return again, and you will notice for the first time where in the house you were standing that day when you were fifteen and meant what you said and your mother was hovering in the doorway, and how both of you even now are still on your way to where you are going.
-Rebecca Martin
This product gives you access to all four weeks of the workshop. Purchase one or more drop-in sessions here.
Build a habit in 20 sessions. In this 4 week workshop that meets Mondays through Fridays from 8:00-9:00 AM CST, we will focus on generating new writing—making headway on a current project, reviving an old project that’s been gathering dust, or writing based off of the daily prompts Leigh provides.
The first 45 minutes of class are a gentle, camera-off, silent writing session. The remaining 15 minutes are an opportunity to share excerpts of our work, reflect on progress made, and set intentions for the following day. Then we will read a passage together on the writing life and close each class with a new learning about habit formation. By the end of this course we’ll have a morning writing habit that is each our own to continue and build upon.
This listing is for an individual class. To purchase access for the full 4-week workshop, click here.
Build a habit in 20 sessions. In this 4 week workshop that meets Mondays through Fridays from 8:00-9:00 AM CST, we will focus on generating new writing—making headway on a current project, reviving an old project that’s been gathering dust, or writing based off of the daily prompts Leigh provides.
The first 45 minutes of class is a gentle, camera-off, silent writing session. The remaining 15 minutes are an opportunity to share excerpts of our work, reflect on progress made, and set intentions for the following day. Then we will read a passage together on the writing life and close each class with a new learning about habit formation. By the end of this course we’ll have a morning writing habit that is each our own to continue and build upon.
Many writers feel drawn to write about their lives but struggle with uncertainty: Why this story? Why now? And who is it really for? This workshop is designed to help writers move beyond doubt and toward clarity by focusing on the deeper meaning and purpose beneath their story.
In this interactive, craft-forward session, participants will be introduced to the Memoir Compass, a practical framework that helps writers articulate their motivation (why they are writing), mission (who the story serves), and message (what meaning or insight the story carries). Through guided reflection and writing exercises, participants will begin shaping a personal narrative rooted in intention rather than overwhelm.
This workshop is ideal for writers interested in memoir or personal narrative, as well as fiction writers drawing from lived experience, who want to move forward with greater confidence, focus, and direction.
Rebecca D. Martin is an autistic writer living in Virginia with her husband and two daughters. Her work has been published in the Curator, the Brevity blog, Proximity, and Isele, among others. She can be found at https://rebeccadmartin.substack.com/, where she talks about some of her favorite things, including poetry, houses, and neurodiversity. On Thursday, she feeds bearded dragons at her local nature center.
I am a mother and a daughter. But I was not mothered—at least not in any traditional sense. Five months after they met, my parents were married: She’d just turned twenty-one; he was six months younger. They bought a house with red stairs, a half-block from the beach in Santa Monica. Five years later, in 1970, they had me. But in March 1973 my mother divorced my father, and a few months later, she called to tell him that she was leaving me at her parents’ house in Berkeley. The next day, my maternal grandmother met my father at the Oakland airport with me in her arms. My mother cut off all communication with her family and friends.