Category: Motherhood

Under a Sepia Sky

Terah Van DusenLeave a comment

Sunday

It was September 6, 2020. The sun appeared like an eraser tip in the sky – gray, muted and small. Usually in September the sun was a bright yellow beach ball shining down over our homestead halfway between Eugene and the Oregon coast. There were high winds. We never got high winds. Smoke appeared to be coming over the mountainside and our sheep were hunkered down in a huge heap out in the pasture. Within days, record wildfires would burn more acres of national forest land than had been burned in all the previous 36 years combined. They’d even give it a special name, the 2020 Labor Day Fires. But we didn’t know any of that yet.

When the smoke settled in and the electricity companies turned off the power, I closed and locked every single window and door in our manufactured home. I didn’t know if locking the windows made a difference, but our home wasn’t that airtight. It was something we struggled with in the winter. If we didn’t have a fire going in the woodstove, we woke up to temperatures near what it was outside.

Wildfires were burning on the other side of the valley. Flames licked up and down the McKenzie River corridor, people’s lives were in danger and farm animals were being transported to the fairgrounds.

“Why, mama?” Our child, who was barely verbal, asked me of the locked windows and doors. She wanted to run and play outside, like she had done during other moments of daylight in the summertime.

“Smoke,” was all I could respond.

Reading the news headlines was making me anxious, but I kept scrolling anyway.

“The Oregon Health Authority warned Saturday that wildfire smoke can exacerbate respiratory diseases, including Covid-19.” September 6, 2020 OPB.org

I retrieved two kerosene lanterns, wicks, and oil that I kept stashed for when the power went out, then set out to make a dinner of lemon and chicken on top of our woodstove. Years ago, a friend of ours had jokingly said that we were the couple he’d want to pair up with in an apocalypse. It was a nice thought, and far from the truth. How many millennials would actually fare well in a real, live apocalypse? That was the word that kept coming up, apocalypse.

On top of feeding, entertaining, and caring for our toddler, I was wondering how I would accomplish a Zoom conference the next day, type and submit an article for the paper, and how the helk we were going to care for all the farm animals given the current conditions.

If the smoke persisted, what would happen to the hundreds of chickens in our care? I stared out the window and feared the worst. I’d been working on a pastured poultry farm two summers prior and we’d suffered a few fatalities during a particularly smoky season. The smoke we were experiencing was already preceding that summer. The sky had been a strange shade of sepia for more than twenty-four hours. It was as if we were all stuck in a vintage photograph. But no one was using words like unprecedented or hazardous to describe the smoke just yet…that would come later.

In the morning, when the water ran out completely, I opened the cupboard where we kept roughly 10 gallons of emergency water in plastic jugs. My soon-to-be husband was working at another farm, his day job at that time, and Autumn was still asleep, so I carried three jugs of water out to our farm animals. Because there was no electricity, there was no pumping water into the water lines.

I watered the flock of sheep and quickly fixed up our chicken brooder, placing blankets over the top to replace their heat lamps. It was probably eighty degrees out, but little chicks need it to be closer to 95 degrees. I was relieved to see that the baby chicks still had one full waterer. I felt like crumbling under the stress, but instead I stepped outside the brooder and took a deep breath, with my hands cupped over my mouth to avoid the smoke.

I craned my neck looking at all the Douglas fir trees surrounding our property. They were towering over me. Dense forest everywhere. Suddenly, it was as if we were living in a matchbox, and all it would take was one spark. I’d lived in the forest for most of my life, but up until then I’d never feared it.

When my fiancé came home from work I was on edge, despite all the deep breathing. He gave me a quick, dry peck on the lips. We were running out of water from our “apocalypse” stash, I told him. He said he didn’t think watering the farm animals with water from our home stash had been such a good idea.

“You take care of the farm, and I’ll take care of Autumn,” I told him through gritted teeth.

Monday

On Monday, Labor Day, I’d been scheduled to pick up twenty 50lb bags of chicken feed from a mill fifty miles north of us, but on route in our minivan with Autumn in tow, the smoke, high winds and impending fires had me feeling unsafe. I explained all of that to the mill’s owner over the phone when I turned around halfway. It was clear he was less than impressed that I’d been unable to follow through. Tensions were high. What kind of farm wife was I?

After returning from work, my fiancé promptly left to purchase a generator. He was also going to pick up the chicken feed: my failed mission. He didn’t mention the massive water shortage issue. I knew he was dealing the best he could. It wasn’t his fault he’d been asked to pick vegetables all day in the smoke. He had a job to do. More than one. Same as me.

I paced around the house, looking out all the windows into the sepia haze. It was day two of no power, no water, and lots and lots of smoke. The sheep were grazing out in the pasture, though they didn’t appear to be eating. I felt horrible for them.

The week before, my biggest concern was catching the Coronavirus. This week I was mentally packing our go-bag. I wondered what other families were doing right then: fashioning air filters out of box fans, purchasing brand-new air filtration systems, watering their lawns and roofs. I felt like a sitting duck and I didn’t like the feeling. I was resentful that farming was demanding so much of my fiancé’s energy and time. I had Autumn to care for…and my own work deadlines to meet!

Thick, mucusy smoke was seeping in through the floorboards and flimsy doors. Our shared objective became to open and close the door as quickly as possible. There was our border collie, Cedar, who was coping with all of this as well.

I ran into our neighbor, an avid outdoorsman, out near the water pump. “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life,” he said to me, cloaked in camo. It was true, he had a generator, and other fancy, survivalist-things. He pulled 5-gallon water containers out of the back of his full-sized truck while his four-year-old ran circles in the thick smoke.

I kept mentally packing my go-bag. Although our neighbor offered me one of his 5-gallon water jugs, my pride, or something, wouldn’t allow me to take it. Probably a stupid decision on my part. Had I taken it, it may have changed the trajectory of our next few days. It might have allowed our family to stay together.

It felt as if the disaster was throwing people into camps: Survivor. Dependent. First Responder. We were all reacting so differently to the stress of the wildfires–which were colliding with our already fragile psyches, beaten down after a year of pandemic isolation and political and social discord. The clock appeared to be ticking slower and slower. Of course it was just the numbers displayed on my cellphone screen that I was going by. I had to run my vehicle in order to charge it. My one source of information and communication never displayed more than two bars of charge at any given time.

I tried not to let my fear show as I nursed Autumn. I didn’t cry. I didn’t complain. At this stage I was still nursing up to forty hours per week. I silently scrolled the news on my phone, hoping my eyes didn’t reveal the anxiety building within me. I couldn’t yet admit that I felt abandoned by my partner due to his lack of communication. I couldn’t yet recognize that rooted deep down inside me was a resistance to trusting anyone for anything. Maybe if he knew all of that then he would have acted differently and communicated more. The lack of control I felt over the situation led me to spiral. Somewhere inside me the reaction to take flight began stirring.

“More than 120,000 people lose power across the Portland Metro area due to a rare and powerful windstorm.” September 7, 2020 KPTV.org

I thought of my college friends in Portland. Pictured them with all their scented candles lit in their apartments, their fur babies and houseplants. This was affecting all of us, I knew. Due to the refrigerator losing power, I’d dragged a large cooler into the kitchen that I’d filled with ice packs. Inside was a half-gallon of milk, yogurt, and some leftovers in glass Pyrex dishes. I looked out at the sepia haze, longing for the electricity it would take to power our two box fans. I knew when Autumn’s dad returned with the generator, it would be used primarily to power the freezers in the shop, containing all the meat he’d raised through his pastured poultry business.

It didn’t take long before I got to thinking about myself and Autumn independent of him. I thought about that quick, dry peck on the lips. I wasn’t crazy when I’d said, “You take care of the farm, and I’ll take care of Autumn.” Was I?

When I suggested packing a go-bag, I’d been met with an eye roll. I shook the image from my mind and retrieved a large plastic tote from the closet. I tipped it over on its side, letting gift bags and wrapping tissue fall to the floor. Autumn gleefully played with them while I placed the items inside the plastic tote from my mental go-bag list: diapers, wipes, three pairs of pants for each of us, three clean shirts for each of us, my laptop and charger, the lock box with our important family documents, a framed photo of my Grandma Peggy, a couple children’s books, and my memoir manuscript. Operating on instinct, I put our go-bag inside my Dodge Caravan, snug behind the driver’s seat. I placed half a dozen apples, a bunch of bananas, and a frozen jug of water from the freezer into the cooler with the other food and hoisted that out to the van, too.

Desperate for information, and though I didn’t recognize it at the time, for connection, I pulled up the news on my cellphone as it charged in my van. A headline from KATU 2 News in Eugene jumped out at me: We should expect loss of life from this fire.

I started the van several minutes before our departure, windows rolled up, cool air circulating throughout. Then I retrieved Autumn from the house. Because she wasn’t speaking much yet, I wasn’t entirely sure how she felt. But I tried to maintain my ordinary cheerfulness and act like everything was normal. My initial plan was to fill up eight of our 2-gallon water containers and then return to the farm. But a part of me just wasn’t committed to coming back. As we drove away, images of flickering flames on the other side of the valley filled my brain. I could see our neighbor and his son in the rearview mirror, but barely.

I had everything we needed if we took refuge some other place. Some place with water and power, I was thinking. Some place kind of wet. Driving west toward the town of Mapleton, away from the fire up the McKenzie River corridor, I realized I didn’t really want to go back to the farm. I just didn’t feel completely safe there. With my history of trauma, it was likely I’d been suffering from PTSD my entire life. Safety, mine and my child’s, came above all else. I’d learned there was no one I could really rely on but myself. I hated to think that my soon-to-be-husband might be unintentionally reinforcing that belief.

I remembered what I’d told him, “You take care of the farm, and I’ll take care of Autumn.”

I hoped he would understand, but naturally I was afraid he wouldn’t. I couldn’t quite identify what was happening inside of me—a combination of fear and hope. Fear of wildfires, hope for safety. It was fight or flight, and I was flying. My cooing, burbling baby girl came first. Somebody, somewhere, had to understand. I didn’t know if we were in real danger at the farm or not, but I wasn’t going to stick around, managing the oil lanterns and the meals single handedly, while missing out on work, to find out. And the smoke. It was all coming down to how airtight your home was. I suddenly thought of Dad in his modest cabin near the redwoods.

I appeared calm but was acutely aware of the coniferous forest waving in the high winds all around us as I drove. Just one spark to ignite a spot fire. Maybe we’d head to northern California to ride out the storm, I was thinking. Shit, the Coronavirus. Not even family would want us showing up on their doorstep at a time like this. I kept driving toward Hwy 101 anyway, stopping in Mapleton to fill up the water, and call my closest cousin, Crystal, while Autumn napped in her car seat.

“No, girl, there’s fires down here, too,” Crystal informed me. “Interstate-5 is closed and it’s burning all between here and Medford.”

“What? Oh my god. But we’re coming down the coast,” I told her. “Do you think it’s any better in Crescent City?”

“The smoke isn’t any better in the Illinois Valley, but you can try Crescent City. I don’t even know if I could get to Crescent City if I wanted to. Hwy 199 might be closed, too,” she said, sounding as frightened as I was.

“What. The. Fuck. Do you guys have power at your house?”

“For now, but there’s talk of them shutting it off here in Grants Pass, too.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the smoke there? Is it bad?”

“It’s so bad. It’s been like a thick, hazy and orange for a couple of days. And it’s getting worse.”

“Yeah, here too. I just left the farm. We have no power and no water.”

“What? Where are you going? Are you all together?”

“No, we’re not. It’s just me and Autumn. I was thinking of driving to Crescent City, but now I’m not so sure.”

Ashes were falling on the windshield. My headlights were pointed toward the coast, and even in broad daylight, the ash looked like snow lightly falling. If I squinted my eyes, I could pretend it was Christmastime in Montana, where we went every winter to visit my in-laws. I just wanted to breathe, and I felt unanchored, so we drove toward the ocean, fifteen miles away. Before I started driving, my phone vibrated and lit up. A quick glance told me it was an email reminder of my upcoming Zoom conference for work. Knowing I was going to miss it, the best I could do was laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all.

Tuesday

September 9, 2020 “Thousands evacuated as ‘once in a generation’ wildfires burn through Oregon” -Washington Post

Aerial image of west coast wildfire smoke on September 9, 2020. Credit: SciTechDaily

Finding a hotel room had been a beast. There were no rooms available in Florence or Coos Bay, and there was a wildfire up north in Lincoln City, preventing us from driving anywhere but south. I’d called the Best Western Inn in Bandon and, fortunately, they had a room. It cost $200 before taxes but since I had no other options, I said we’d take it. I got a dog-friendly room, in case the rest of the family needed to take refuge there as well. The hotel was on the south end of town near a beach called Face Rock.

After dragging the cooler upstairs and settling into our hotel room, I opened my cell phone to check the wildfire news. A wildfire had ignited near us in Bandon (on the coast of all places!). They name it the North Bank Lane Fire. Fire officials were currently working to put out the blaze, which was 20% contained. The fire had started from a downed power line and had burned over 300 acres.

Meanwhile, the Holiday Farm Fire up the McKenzie River corridor was 0% contained and already 37,000 acres. The hazardous smoke had caused an air quality index of over 300 and rising in the Willamette Valley. On the coast, the AQI was 150, which is still considered unhealthy. One headline read that the air quality in western Oregon was worse than in Beijing. Aerial footage showed astounding images of plumes of wildfire smoke blanketing the west coast. I was shocked to see wildfires dotting entire mountain ranges in northern California and Oregon. The west was on fire and it was unprecedented in my lifetime.

Even though I knew there was a wildfire burning just a few short miles away, I felt safer than I had in days. Autumn and I quickly fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. Guilt tugged at my eyelids as I drifted off, and I tried to ignore it. I knew if it weren’t for my postal service union settlement money, none of this would have been possible. I thought I’d made the right decision coming to the coast and escaping the smoke, but I still wasn’t sure. My fiancé had been distant ever since I’d told him where we were.

Wednesday

To comfort and reassure myself, I analyzed the AQI information over my morning drip coffee. Children and the elderly were not supposed to be out in the hazardous air. I thought of my grandmother, who’d always been my closest confidant. I called her in Arizona to tell her about the craziness happening in Oregon. I let her know where we were and that we were safe.

“Yee-gads!” She responded. “That sounds absolutely awful. What about all those farm animals? Are they going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think about that, honestly. I’m on a deadline.”

I told her what I said about him taking care of the farm, and me taking care of Autumn. To my surprise, at the end of our conversation, she said she was proud of me. Something about my maternal instincts.

The things my grandmother was proud of sometimes came as a surprise to me. Like the time I got suspended for punching a girl in the nose during math class. That time, she was proud of me for standing up to a bully. The world wasn’t so black and white. It felt good to have someone on my side.

After the conversation with Grandma Peggy, Autumn and I ventured outside willingly for the first time in days. In the lobby, during check in, I’d learned that some people staying there had been misplaced due to wildfires. They were meant to be there. It was a last resort for them. For us, not so much. I didn’t want to let on that a wildfire hadn’t actually made it to our town. That we were just escaping the smoke.

We walked a narrow sandy path down to the shore. Above the sea, the sky wasn’t clear but the salty air was so satisfying that I ate it in gulps. It was like the ocean produced an atmosphere all its own. The freshness was a gift. Autumn didn’t act like she knew what was going on with the wildfires, but as she ran up and down the beach and for nearly an hour, I felt like maybe I had done something right. I felt like I had done something that made sense to me, even if it was a little privileged.

Autumn and another child social distancing amidst record wildfires and hazardous air.

That night I stayed up and wrote my article that was due at midnight. The writing came naturally. I wished I could sit there with my fingers pounding on the keys for days. Not only was writing a welcome distraction, it was also completely necessary. It simply had to happen, especially since I’d bounced on Monday’s Zoom meeting.

Thursday

Every day I called my fiancé to ask if we had any water on the farm yet. That would indicate whether we would go home or not. Even if there was no electricity and even if the AQI was still 500, I said we’d would return if there was water. Despite a good friend of mine quipping “Well, have fun,” over the phone, I knew we weren’t on vacation. We needed a fair amount of water to cover the basic washing, cleaning, food prep, and cooking back home. I needed something to work with. A couple five gallon jugs, something.

The whir of helicopters outside became a constant, no matter where you were in western Oregon. A good sound or a bad sound, I couldn’t decide. There were still bone dry weather conditions and gusty winds. Dad had been evacuated. The Red Cross put him and others up in a hotel in Crescent City.

September 10, 2020 “Wildfires have burned over 800 square miles in Oregon” –Wildfire Today

Being from northern California, wildfires weren’t foreign to me. But they weren’t commonplace, either. I remember as a kid the first night I got a glimpse into the terror that fires can present. Late at night at my grandmother’s house, we were watching a program that detailed the 1991 fires in Oakland, California. My grandmother fell asleep and I, scared straight, pulled my covers up to my chin. I was obsessively envisioning orange embers tapping at the windows. I was terrified.

Naturally, I’d already come up with an escape plan from our Bandon hotel room. I knew that from our hotel room to the beach was approximately 264 steps. One step equated to roughly one second. So in four minutes, with Autumn strapped snug in her Ergopack, we could escape to the beach via the trail. Half the time if we were running instead of walking. The beach, where there were lots of rocks and sand. The beach, where there were no trees. Going down this rabbit hole in my mind led me to envision the National Guard rescuing people off the coast of Oregon. They would take us all out on boats, where we would see our former homes, our former habitat, aflame. A scenario, I later learned, that was not far removed from what played out on the coast of Australia during their unprecedented brush fires just one year prior.

Friday

September 11, 2020 “At least six people dead, more missing in Oregon wildfires” –OPB.org

Because of the high cost of the hotel room I was in, after a few days, I called around and found a cheaper room at the Red Lion Inn in Coos Bay.

Coos Bay was closer to the farm, where there was still no water, and where the AQI was still off the fucking charts. Moving hotel rooms was an almost shocking thing to do during the pandemic, as the goal was to prevent as much contact with others as humanely possible. I wiped down all the surfaces myself when we entered the hotel room.  

The truth was, at this point I was probably more likely to bring harm to us by catching the Coronavirus, stepping on a jellyfish on our daily excursions to the beach, or getting t-boned coming out of a coffee hut. I vowed to start paying more attention to things other than the smoking woodlands all around us. I didn’t want to put us in unnecessary danger. I needed to get a grip, but all I could do was grip my cellphone and consume whatever I could online about the unprecedented wildfires. I couldn’t spell out “wildfires” in my journal without putting the word “unprecedented” before it.

If you know anything about Paradise, California, you know that in the span of forty-five minutes the town was in a grid lock of bumper-to-bumper traffic with about 30,000 residents trying to flee and the police department hanging up on people due to the volume of calls.

“If you fear for your safety, even if you’ve not been evacuated, you can leave, ma’am,” a police officer reportedly said.

One minute it was falling ash, the next minute it was all up in flames. School children were reporting falling, flaming branches on the playground. People had underestimated mother nature’s fiery roar.

No one could believe it, except maybe the climate scientists.

Credit: ESRI.com

Saturday

Most other farm families couldn’t afford what I was doing. Did that make it inherently bad? A girlfriend, who I’d spoken with on the phone, the one who’d said, “have fun,” was under the thumb of her long-term partner. She was scared too, I knew, and her kids would have really benefited from being able to run around on the beach like Autumn was. I invited them to stay in our room, but deep down I knew her partner wouldn’t “let” them. I also knew that domestic violence starts with being provided just enough to live by, but not enough to leave by.

Our world was quickly becoming divided by those who were going towards the flame, and those who were running from it. Me? I was clinging to a wet seashore. But I knew deep down that I was one who was built to go towards the flame, and that my newish role of mother was setting me apart. Whenever I could, I splayed my memoir pages out on the hotel room desk, revising furiously, as if the world were on fire. The guilt had me feeling like I should be “doing something.”

While she was sleeping, I stepped outside the hotel room door. I’d brought along my cannabis vape pen. I took a long drag, exhaled. The sky was still sepia-tinged. How strange it will look when it finally goes back to normal. Which it will, I assured myself. A blue heeler dog gulped at the air as he leaped and charged at birds in the parking lot. A cop car raced down the highway, sirens blaring. My body quickly reminded me how fragile my nerves were, jumping at the sound, which was so loud and so close. A single plastic bag floated in an algae-filled swimming pool below. I stared at it and thought of how void our current existence is of celebration. About how alive it is with fear. Then I stepped inside and logged onto Instagram, forgetting about the apocalypse for an hour or more, before calling the farm again to ask about the water status. I was wondering when we would return home. Wondering if it could ever be like it was before. If we could ever really go back.

Storytime: Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch

Terah Van Dusen2 Comments

I don’t do book reviews or ratings. If I loved a book, you’ll likely hear about it from me eventually. Rarely, my book hype might even venture into some different form, maybe even a story, which is exactly what happened here.

I was mostly finished reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s Reading the Waves when I spontaneously suggested to my family that we scratch our original Mother’s Day brunch plans in Eugene and drive to Heceta Beach instead. Spontaneity–a mother’s antidote to monotony. The decision was a full body knowing. Something you don’t question. Like when the month before Dad died, I suddenly announced that we’d be making an impromptu trip to see him. Quality time with Autumn’s grandpa. An overdue visit. We didn’t know it yet but—that would be our goodbye. Now I try to always follow my intuition.

Before driving forty miles northwest to Heceta Beach, I grabbed Lidia’s book, wrapped it in a silk scarf, and placed it in our picnic basket. Once there, Autumn and I began skipping rocks on the creek that spills into the Pacific. The rocks were black, round and flat. They were the perfect skipping rocks! Steve built a campfire in the sand, and we all ran barefoot on the beach. We explored the grottos underneath the lighthouse, examined the tidal pools for starfish, then sat around the fire making s’mores. Eventually I took out Lidia’s beautiful book to photograph it against the moody backdrop of sky, waves and sea. I figured that later, when I’d finished the remaining few pages, I’d have an image to share alongside my words about how much I loved the book. I took a couple photographs then walked back to the campfire.

Back at the farm, a nearly full flower moon in Scorpio shone through the bedroom window. I opened Reading the Waves, reading only for a page or two before the following words jumped out at me: The historic Cape Creek Bridge arches over the place where a creek and the ocean meet. If you are at the lip of the ocean and the arm of the creek, the bridge feels like it has your back.

At the lip of the ocean and the arm of the creek…In her new book, Lidia had written a whole page about the exact place we’d built our campfire and skipped rocks at the beach. The next day, I wrote her a letter and sent it to her PO box. Something about cosmic nudges, kinship, inner knowing, invisible threads, art, motherhood, and awe. Something about Heceta Beach.

Beautiful coincidences aside, first with The Chronology of Water and now with Reading the Waves, Lidia has breathed life into me through her work. It feels as if by writing her truths, she’s writing my truths, too. There are even parallels within parallels, stacked like little nesting dolls: our connection to Eugene, Oregon; our obsession with the underwater world and how it is one of the only places on earth we feel safe; our complicated family stories; our inherited misfittedness; our need for peace, for space, for quiet. But this isn’t about me, it isn’t personal…It’s just that every time I read a book that resonates with me on that level, it feels that way: personal. It makes me wonder if things aren’t connected on a mostly invisible realm existing just beyond our field of vision. Just beyond our willingness to believe in such magic.

The moment I began Reading the Waves, I got swept away. She writes of geographies lodged in our psyches, in our bones, even in our gait. She reminds me that although certain memories may be unforgettable, we can transform the rough ones into something smoother. Like with all the rocks she collects along the shore, stories too are destined to go through their own metamorphosis. Each one with a different history, color, and composite—best witnessed when illuminated underwater. This book feels to me, at least in part, about all the great loves in her life. About the wild forms intimacy takes. They are Lidia’s love stories, right when I needed them most. This book may feel like a return to The Chronology of Water for fans of Lidia’s early work. (Her unforgettable memoir was adapted into a film directed by Kristen Stewart which recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.) You can find Lidia’s latest book, Reading the Waves, at Powells Books and other national and local booksellers. She currently teaches writing workshops on the Oregon coast.

Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch
Heceta Beach, Oregon, May 2025

The Importance of Showing Mercy in Memoir

Terah Van Dusen9 Comments

Like all of us, I’ve always been of the belief that actions speak louder than words. But over the past several months, I’ve been thinking about how loud words do speak, particularly if you are a memoirist.

I’ve had many years of writing and publishing (mostly here on my blog) to teach me that those who are written about will read your words closely and they will take them to heart, naturally. I have also had the luxury–I humbly admit–of those characters showing me extreme grace and forgiveness.

My memoir writing journey began in my very early twenties, and because I knew virtually nothing about memoir, other than having read a couple of them, I approached my writing this way: I wrote everything about everyone and used all their real names.

Now, I look at my pages and I see the truth, yes. But I also look at those pages and see real live people with real live emotions, and I have to honor that. At this juncture, having written the meat of the story, and revised it several times over, I have a choice: Do I change names or soften the story? Do I painstakingly sort through and assign similar sounding names to key characters? Cousins, boyfriends and bosses? Or do I keep their names and speak as if they are there in the room with me: with honesty, integrity, and compassion?

Writers in the genre have all heard the same line, “If they didn’t want to be written about poorly, they shouldn’t have behaved badly.”

It’s a fine starting point, a line to help you get your pen moving across the page. But I am curious to hear from other aspiring memoirists if it’s that same sentiment they think of when crossing over the threshold into querying and publishing.

Because, after all, most books do not become overnight bestsellers. What if we memoirists, in the end, sell our books only to our family members. If your book subject matter, childhood trauma, wouldn’t make for some awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation, well I don’t know what would.

But here’s the thing, when it comes to me, the majority of those who have purchased the books I have self-published are not my family. I haven’t had a Thanksgiving with my mother, ever, and abandonment, whether comfortable or not, is central to my story. I cannot untangle myself from the truths and tell some other story. But maybe I can tell my story with a balance of both transparency and grace. Maybe. That’s what I hope for.

Back when I first started writing The Poetry of Place, long before it had a title, long before I’d changed my mother’s name to Moonbeam, and long before I started dragging my pages through critique group, it was all about the therapeutic benefits of memoir. I didn’t think of it in those terms back then, but looking back I’d really, really, really needed to exorcise my story. I was always a writer, from elementary school on up. So my story–once I finally realized it’s potential–became viable subject matter. And my intention morphed from the therapeutic benefits of writing to the creative challenge it presented: Writing a book worth reading.

So rather than “If they didn’t want to be written about poorly, they shouldn’t have behaved badly,” how about, “Hurt people hurt people.”

Most people agree with that statement, and I believe the message is being conveyed through my memoir. Therefor I cannot take responsibility, or blame, when expressing, in so many words, something that we all agree is true, that “hurt people hurt people.”

But that’s what it all comes down to, responsibly. Because memoirists aren’t just airing our dirty secrets, but in some cases the secrets of others, too. In turn we have the potential to create a significant portion of someone’s legacy. And that is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. Ever.

As I cross over the threshold into querying (that’s the long process of landing an agent or a book deal), and as I refine its final pages, imagining its bound version, I weigh my options. I am trying to strike a balance that honors both what I’ve endured, and protects the inherent innocence of those surrounding the story itself. Because none of us are perfect. Not even close. I think the most helpful advice I have heard is to be as hard on myself in the story as I am being on others. I assure you, given my nature, that my flaws will come across strongly in the final story. No matter what version you get.

Love (above all else),

Mama Bird

Surrendering to a Season of Change

Terah Van Dusen1 Comment

We woke up to rain. Big droplets clinging to the rhododendron and sunflowers outside the bedroom window. Every day on the weekend I ask myself the same thing: Should we stay home and clean, or leave and spend money?

It would be a stay home and clean kind of day.

Usually I welcome fall with open arms. If the fact that we named our daughter ‘Autumn’ is any indication…But this year I’m just not as warm to fall. The summer was long, and scorching. One of our farm cats perished in the 108 degree heat. More positively, we managed to get some family time in with loved ones. Long overdue visits and quality connections as we somehow managed to not even get the Coronavirus. Several times, I thought we had. This most recent time impacted A’s experience at preschool — she missed her first whole week. Over a cold. But we rolled with it. Rolling with it is just the way now. Things change all the time. With headlines like, “National Guard Deployed to Drive School Busses in Massachusetts” and “UN is seeking $606 Million in Emergency Aid for Afghanistan After Taliban Takeover,” we’re living in a totally new reality. Disappointments are common place. Ours are minor.

I started gardening this summer. With a lot of cooperation from my fiancé and our neighbors, a plot of food erected itself, now in view from our bedroom window, beyond the rhododendron and sunflowers. My life is layered and rich. We have tomatoes and peppers piling up in the kitchen, and are running out of freezer space. I’m going to miss the days of summer…stretching on and on. Brown shoulders. Blackberries. Golden sunsets.

With the rain, the environment feels to have shifted beyond its allotted amount while we slept. The moon when I last looked was half full — now it appears almost completely full. It is waxing and ready to shine. Last night, a coyote was howling — more like yelping — and it wouldn’t stop. I went outside to make sure it wasn’t down with the chickens, having a feast and tipping us off with its cries. Barefoot on the dry pale grass, it felt like no one was aware of this animal but me. It was ten o’ clock at night and everyone else was sleeping. I shone my cellphone flashlight in the general direction of the coyote — like what was that going to do? When I went back inside and crawled into bed, the yelping suddenly stopped.

Maybe the coyote doesn’t want summer to end, either.

This pandemic, hanging over us like a curse, feels just a little lighter in the summer. We can pretend that things are sunny, even when they’re not.

Then I came across this quote, which I felt echoed the changing season:

“Historically, the Waxing Gibbous Moon symbolized the concept of ‘final steps.’ It is a time of the month in which people strive to complete their projects, just as the moon strives to become full. As such, it represents the hardest part of the month for many people. How the Waxing Gibbous Moon behaves is instructional for our lives. For instance, it doesn’t require the hard work of change. Instead, it trusts nature and energies and always transitions to the full moon, without fail. Thus, we should try to do the same.”

The words were an antidote. Meant to counteract the insecurities I am currently feeling about Autumn being in preschool and, more specifically, my routine changing as a result of that. I used to be on the farm all the time, now I will be in town two days per week, minimum. A temporary sacrifice to provide Autumn with her Montessori preschool experience. I don’t want to give up my work-from-home life, but when quotes like the above one jump out at me, I’m sensing that I need to adapt. I need to have some faith that something good can come from being in town. (It just goes against my instincts. Hashtag hillbilly.)

I will leave you with this, “Through the unknown, we find the new.” If you, like me, are feeling negative about the future because you just can’t predict it; then what better time to attract the things–and places–that feel right to us? My life is a blank page, waiting to be filled with all the right things. Finally, at thirty five years old, I feel like I can trust myself to choose wisely what will ground me. No matter where I am.

Love,

Mama Bird

The Poetry of Place

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

After waiting a full five minutes for the lodge’s hot water to kick on in the shower, I wash my hair twice with 2-in-1 Shampoo and Conditioner. Autumn sits on the shower floor, folding and unfolding a damp washcloth. We are on a girl’s trip to track down Dad, who lives off-grid in Northern California.

Sometimes I don’t know if my writing frees or pains me, if it liberates me or holds me captive. We tried watching TV but turned it down to hear the creek outside–Patrick Creek–a tributary to the Smith. Now I bounce Autumn on my foot, trying to soothe her toddler boredom, and somehow keep my pen to paper, too. I’d say she can’t sit still, but the same would have to be true for me as well. (Proof: I couldn’t stay put on the farm this weekend. I simply woke with the urge to ramble home.)

I told myself it was justified to see Dad. Steve gave me his blessing, and then tried to suggest routes and game-plans. But I already had it mapped out in my mind; we’d get a hotel room closest to home. Hiouchi Motel or Patrick Creek Lodge.

The rooms at Patrick Creek Lodge have mission-style furniture and vaulted redwood ceilings. In the past I would have camped in the van or a tent or on my best friend’s couch in Crescent City. But motherhood and the pandemic has changed everything. Everything.

Driving south on the I-5, the words “Do whatever you have to do to feel alive” came to mind. So maybe that’s what this is really about, more than seeing Dad. It’s about feeling alive again.

—

I’d forgotten how when we travel, it upsets Autumn’s natural rhythm. She gets antsy and angsty and now she sits across from me indian-style on the white 70s-style bedspread. “Let’s talk,” she says so we talk about what’s outside the window: bushes, trees, lights, leaves. There are no other cars in the parking lot and I am uncertain if there is an overnight watch person or not. The friendly fellow who checked us in said he was “locking up and heading home for the night.”

A couple and a lady stumbled out of the bar around 7:30 p.m., piled into a full-sized pickup and drove south toward Gasquet (gas-gee). Other than that, crickets (metaphorically of course, because it’s winter in these woods). The temperature registered at 34 degrees but it was sunny and t-shirt weather all day. Of course we only got out at a rest stop somewhere near Riddle, Oregon.

Pacific madrone and redwoods, that’s what I came for. Other than to connect with Dad, the man who raised me. Pacific madrone with its smooth chopstick bark, the redwood groves already shooting up toward the sky, just seven or ten miles into California.

When the sun set we decided it would be best to surprise Dad first thing in the morning, rather than an hour or two after dusk. Dad, like me, is better in the morning. Freshest and sharpest and most optimistic. We both like to have our coffee, too.

As a girl, Dad took me to this very lodge once for breakfast. The waitress seated us by a window where we could watch Patrick Creek flow by. A small porcelain ramekin held strawberry and grape jelly packets. I chose grape jelly to smear on my sourdough toast, not because I liked grape best, but because there were just two choices: grape or strawberry. I knew that a better family, one that would come in next, would have a little girl or boy who would prefer strawberry, and that kids from better families always got what they wanted because of people like us. I knew that my going without kept everything in balance.

The grape jelly kind of tasted like the liquid cough syrup Dad sometimes had to force down my throat. He’d either pin me down on the cabin floor, knees holding down my kid-arms, or convince me that if I plugged my nose I couldn’t taste it, so then I’d just drink it myself. I hoped that kid enjoyed his strawberry jam, whoever he was. I was in heaven just with the butter alone and the creek flowing by.

Dad sometimes liked to elbow his way in to a class above our own–the ski lodge at Mt. Bachelor in Oregon, riding elevators in the business district in San Francisco, the fine dining restaurant in The Wharf where we ordered an appetizer, then sheepishly paid and left. Dad has a penchant for experiences he can’t quite afford, and if I am being honest, so do I. But at least it’s a penchant for experiences, not a penchant for things.

“What are we going to do tomorrow, mama?”

“Well, we are going to get up…”

“Use the restroom?”

“Yes, use the restroom.”

“And then what?”

“And then we are going to make mama some coffee and Autumn some breakfast.”

“Coffee? Brickfest?”

“Yep. And then we’re going to take a walk down to the creek. Patrick Creek.”

In my minds eye I can see the dirt path leading from the lodge, then along Patrick Creek, and under a bridge to where the creek forms a confluence with the middle fork of the Smith River. In a past life, before Autumn, I would make a pit stop here. The middle fork of the river meanders southeast through mossy canyon walls until it intersects with the south fork of the river. You head up the south fork, and that’s where I’m from. I was raised in a single-room cabin that burned down in a fire in the year 2010. Now Dad lives in a fifth-wheel his ex-girlfriend gave him.

“And then?” Autumn asks.

“And then, after our walk, we are going to see Grandpa Rob!”

“See Grandpa Rob?” Autumn repeats, in her high-pitched voice. It’s as if the higher pitched her voice, the more likely she will get an answer she’s satisfied with.

We haven’t seen Grandpa Rob since Father’s Day–five months ago–when we met up with him halfway between his home and ours and ate salmon bagel sandwiches on the bank of the Umpqua River. He didn’t eat much that day, and it worried me. But I am always worried about Dad: worried about him driving distracted, worried about him choosing nutritious over junk food, worried about the steel parts collecting on his property, worried about his future. But mainly, I’m worried that he’s sad, and that I had something to do with that sadness.

Autumn is snoring now. She is laying on her back, mouth slightly open, arms and legs splayed, sleeping off the day. Today was a big day. She said the word “California” and dealt with her mother’s impulsive need to “connect with her roots,” enduring what turned into a 4-hour drive. She kept asking for “Nana” and “Grandpa Norm,” her father’s folks who she is more acquainted with than Grandpa Rob. Dodging fallen granite from rock slides in the road, and manuevering corners I haven’t seen since my Aunt Dorothy’s memorial in March of 2018, I tried to explain, “No, honey, this is mama’s family. Mama has family too.”

“No, I wan’ see Nana.”

—

I don’t know what to expect in the morning. That’s the thing about mama’s family. It’s the reason we pulled back at dusk, instead of gunning it forward. In the past, I slept on riverbanks or friends couches, desperate to connect with my dad but not willing to endure his lifestyle off-the-grid, which due to his disability and a variety of factors, has degraded some through the years.

But my soft place to land has always been these hills, fog hanging in the treetops like ghosts, white fingers wrapped around the branches of the evergreens. This place hasn’t moved an inch since I left home. Oh, but it has. Things always shift. Even places. Especially river places. I’ll be lucky if I can still recognize myself in the mirrored reflection on the water.

I close my journal, place my writing pen beside it on the nightstand, and open up a new Sun Magazine. Barbara Kingsolver’s essay “The Only Real Story” jumps off the page:

“A world is looking over my shoulder as I write these words; my censors are bobcats and mountains. I have a place from which to tell my stories. So do you, I expect. We sing the song of our home because we are animals, and an animal is no better or wiser or safer than its habitat. Among the greatest of all gifts is to know our place.”

I didn’t know what to expect in the morning. I didn’t know that we would arrive just in time for coffee, and that Dad would pour me two steaming cups, before hitting the trails just outside the doorframe.

I didn’t know that Dad would be fine, not sad at all.

I didn’t know that we would hike the land of my youth until noon, with Autumn on his shoulders.

I didn’t know that we would crouch by the rivers and streams and say blessings.

I didn’t know that I would harvest bay laurel and Dad would locate a field of matsutake mushrooms.

I didn’t know that when no one was looking I would press my forehead into the earth, addicted to the feeling of the damp soil crushing into my third eye.

I didn’t know that Dad would go on and on about God, as he always does, and I would just gesture at the nature all around us as if to say, “Yeah, but…this.”

I didn’t know that it would all be intact: the land and the dad, just as I’d left them.

But somewhere deep in my bones, I did know.

Three generations in Rock Creek, California.
Three generations in Rock Creek, California. November 2020.

Love,

Mama Bird

Rhythms

Terah Van Dusen1 Comment

“Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m trying to get them all to live together. Farming and writing. Parenting and writing. The truth is: the adventure is real and I want to tell you about it. But through the years, I’ve separated the two (particularly farming and writing) in my mind. I’ve always had a tendency to do that when it comes to work…concerned that it takes away from my real job of writing.

But farming is our lifestyle. We live on a farm. We live on a farm we are growing. We are business owners—after four years in business, I can finally see that. I feel it. I have hope in it. So when I recently rebranded my blog “Mama Bird,” it’s because I know that my identity–as a mama and a farmer–is at the root of my story now. I can’t outrun it, I’ve tried.

There’s a whole lot I am figuring out, internally, about becoming a mama and farm wife and owner. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. It isn’t simple. It’s typically idyllic, but not always. As a farm wife and parent, I have a lot of domestic responsibilities. But does that pay? This feminist wants to know. The balancing act is sure to be at the heart of my writing.

It’s a season of trust for me, and has been since I’ve undergone such seismic changes: becoming a parent, getting engaged, starting a farm, coping with an ageing parent. I am 35 now (as of yesterday!) and my life barely resembles what it did ten years ago. An immature part of me clings to the idea of who she was and the vision of the life she has lost…but a larger part of me can see my life clearly as one that I’ve built with intention and now am at the center of. How do I articulate that feeling? What do I write about when I used to write about longing…for the life I now have? Do I still write about longing…or do I write about something else now? Do I write about maintaining?

Is maintaining as provocative as longing?

Writing doesn’t just make order of my feelings, it contains all of my life’s experiences—yoked. Or it should.

I enjoy raising animals: the monotonous, physical work, the rhythm of chick pick-up, chick-to-pasture, chicken-to-processor, our sustainable model of raising livestock, watching the rotation of poultry and ruminant out on the pasture, the changing of the seasons in the hollow, the nature of business ownership, the people.

I don’t enjoy mercy kills. When you raise thousands of animals in a year the reality of death, for every living being, becomes a starker picture. It brings to mind metaphor and regularly makes me want to grab my pen and write about it. I never thought I’d have to make the call to decapitate a baby chick or duckling, but it’s a semi-common occurrence, when an animal just isn’t thriving. I place Autumn out of sight of the chopping block whenever I raise my ax. I feel good that I can end the animal’s suffering. But I sometimes wonder if the chick might have made it had I left it alone (though I know intuitively that isn’t likely, and that I made the right choice).

I guess if I were to write about Now, it would be less about longing and more about building. And then rebuilding. Because if that isn’t at the heart of parenting, marriage and farming, I don’t know what is.

Love,

Mama Bird