The Vietnam War changed my life, not that I went. Jeff Green was an early casualty. He was the son of my mother's close friend, Ann Green, and older brother of my friend, Marty Green. Jeff went into a bunker that had been tear-gassed. He had an allergic reaction and died. The bunker had been empty. I did not understand why he was there. Why was anyone there? It was barely in the news when I became disillusioned. I wore an anti-war button on my pea jacket. I was 19 and a sophomore in college. During those years my father worked for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army. My father told me that the war was never discussed over lunch at Army Mess No.1. The leadership in Saigon was full of corruption, Vietnamese generals who had been educated in France, even after it was no longer a colony. I was disillusioned with what was accepted as truth, with the unfairness of a military draft that could be avoided by going to college or failing the physical with bogus ailments. My college was half an hour from Grand Central Station. We went to Washington. We went to Draft Boards. We picketed and chanted. I was familiar with the Establishment because I had been brought up within it. When others went on about conspiracies and secret groups I knew that such they were unnecessary. Conspiracy is not needed when everyone agrees. I did not agree. I was disgusted. How could my father and his friends let so many young men go off to a war they had no business fighting. Our family was split over this. The wives in Washington hated the war, the fathers went to work. I repudiated the rationalizing. I wanted nothing to do with a life that accepted such moral compromise. Perhaps without the war I would have become a lawyer. My family is overflowing with them. Maybe I would have gone into politics. I had grown up among adults who wanted to serve their country. I saw how they ended up. I wanted to be a revolutionary. I had the critique down pat. I joined SDS when some Columbia students came to my college recruiting members.

About 1990 At some point, I decided to quit waiting for the future. I don't know how many books of wisdom I had read by then. Sufis, the Buddha, Don Juan, all have the same advice: Be present in the moment. I had a friend who had been briefly my lover. I barely remember the love making, except for an escapade in the Taco Bell parking lot. He was an innovative photographer on the cusp of a successful career. What I do remember is his fastidiousness, his using a paper napkin to pick up the salt shaker at a diner. He seemed to be a bit of a hypochondriac complaining, about little things like a sore in his mouth that wasn't healing. He kept touching it with his tongue and talking about it. He went to the dentist who sent him to a doctor, who sent him to a specialist, who sent him to someone at the UVA hospital, who sent him to Memorial Sloane Kettering because he was not a hypochondriac. He had malignant melanoma with life expectancy of nine to fifteen months. I was sad and frightened when we were together. It was as if there was a huge damp, ugly, grey cloud that enveloped us. Then, at some miraculous moment, I thought, "What is going on? He isn’t dead today. Save your mourning for the future.” He actually survived another nine years.

Hello Writers... How are you all on this last day of August/ Monday? Just remember the acronym of FINE is Fucked up, Isecure, Neurotic, and Emotional! 😂 So, how are you REALLY? 👹 👿 👰 Personally I heard a quote by Maya Angelou this morning that really helped me take some beautiful baby steps in the direction of self-forgiveness (below) 💓🙏💓 ✍️HOWEVER you're doing this week, I'd like to invite you to join me for two special writing workshops: Conversations with the Goddess on Tuesday, 9/1 at 2 PM EST and Right Now I Am on Friday, 9/4 at 11 AM EST. Click on the link to add directly to your calendar and for the zoom link! Both of these workshops are designed so we can use our pens as tools to pull our unconscious into consciousness. Big, scary, tumultuous ,wonderful stuff! The stuff of transformation and healing,. 👋I'd also love to welcome two of our newest members to the Writing Fire community... @Jennifer Spurgeon and @Lisa Loving. So glad you're here with us to share your voice and stories! These HAWT writers shared their writing....enjoy the 🔥 ❤️‍🔥 @Erin N and @Susan Buniva shared BEAUTIFUL excerpts from the pieces they wrote in the Convos w/the Goddess class last week, that you can read right here! ❤️‍🔥 @Cate Fitt has postedseveral wonderful original pieces, including My Mother's Nightgowns and Reflections on Listening and Writing.

We all remember my mother the same way, lying on the sofa, reading, a cigarette in her hand. My high school classmates loved that about her. She was so unlike their mothers and the other mothers they knew. She was always reading. My family was always reading. A typical family evening back then would be each of us sitting in the living room, all of us reading, heads down, away on solitary journeys to who knows where, to other people, times, and places. It wasn't that my mother was not interested in a social life or what people did for a living or any of that. It was more that she was not interested in the trappings of those things. Her lack of convention was not at all flamboyant. If you saw her, she only stood out for her lack of lady-like clothes and makeup.

(from about 2015) I am wearing the last of my mother's nightgowns. When I brought them home, I could hold the pile up to my face and breathe deeply of her lingering presence. They were the only nighties I wore for years, until one by one, they became ragged and torn beyond use. I don't know why the blue one lasted longest despite fraying cuffs and thinning fabric. These night gowns were my mother's final wardrobe.Her everyday wear when she had grown too frail to do more than walk with help from the pink recliner where she slept to the swivel chair by the table and television. She called it her command post, where she greeted her stream of caregivers and visitors, watched Jeopardy and cheered the UConn Lady Huskies basketball team. She reminded me of a baby bird the way her short silky hair stood up like pin feathers and her mouth would stay open from her attempts to breathe naturally.