Shestories

When Shestories welcomed the 10,000^th reader earlier this year, I resolved to re-design the site.  Shestories holds my collection of essays, longer pieces, some poetry and, soon, a short story. The intent of the redesign is to give readers easier access to the form they most enjoy. If you are a return reader, I hope you like the new look. If this is your first visit, I hope you will revisit.

Robert Frost once said a poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.  Any piece of good writing is poetry, and good writing, whatever form, serves the same purpose. As a teen, I started writing, trying my hand at poetry first, grappling with the confusion both within me and around me. I eventually moved on to the essay, my natural form, and the form I most enjoy teaching to my students today.  I still dabble in poetry, and I spend hours on longer pieces of creative nonfiction, a form to which I was introduced while working on my MFA in creative writing.  I am currently working on a piece of fiction.  My hope is that after reading my attempts at a momentary stay against the confusion of the world, you yourself will put pen in hand and have a go.  For Mr. Frost also said that every poem he wrote solved something for him in life.  Surely, there is something you would like to sort out, too.

The essays fall into these four fields:

Journeys    If I am going to spend six hours on a plane, I better be in Ireland when I disembark, for this is the only place I know of worth the agony of air travel. However, sometimes I go elsewhere …..

Friends & Family   The youngest of seven children myself and the mother of two boys, I write about being a daughter, a sister, a mother, and a wife.  However, here I include friends who have served as family, living so much of my life far away from my own people.

Navy-Wife Life   My husband served in the United States Navy for 29 years. This involved numerous deployments, several places called home both  within the states and overseas,  one year totally on my own with two males in middle-school, and other odd experiences such as driving myself to the hospital for the delivery of our second child. Married to a sailor? Read on!

Students & Teachers   My day job is teaching English as a Second Language at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach, where I live.  In one class of fifteen students, there could be fifteen different first languages, fifteen different cultures.  However, each student is made of the same stuff: courage and determination. I continue to encounter a student or students who teach me valuable life-lessons.

Longform   These stories could not be told within the boundaries of an essay.  Arboretum is me searching for my roots, which I find.  Under the Banyan Tree is a Navy Wife Life story about Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And one Sunday morning I left Mass certain that I could never return. In  If Today You Hear My Voice, you can follow my journey back. Finally, Harmony, Bliss, and Exuberance attempts to answer the question of how to say goodbye to someone you love.

Fiction Come back another day…..I am still working on this!

One more thing – The calendar at the top of the side bar has been kept, as requested by my followers. This is another point of entry into Shestories, as most of what I write is tied to a day or a season. Click on Follow on the right to receive updates about Shestories.