Under the Surface

It’s funny

How some things

Never leave 

The corner of your heart-


Like watching three women -

Mom, Grandma, and Great Grandma,

All shoulder to shoulder,

Eating oranges over the kitchen sink.


How it felt to fall asleep in the car

On long road trips,

Leaning against a cold window,

While rough and tumble landscape

Rushed by like a river.


A first kiss next to a dumpster

Behind the Polar Palace Ice Skating Rink,

Awkward, obligatory, and 

And not at all like I imagined.


Hearing my grandpa come into the room 

And yell, “Where’s my Laurie?  There’s my Laurie!”

He never spelled my name right,

But that’s OK.


Listening to the soundtrack 

Of A Star is Born over and over again.

Singing every Streisand song with a brush microphone

In my best friend’s living room.


Feeling the howl of a wolf,

Like a foghorn, 

Deep in my gut

Before I sighted his silhouette 

on a distant Lamar Valley ridge. 


Hiking in Yosemite 

with two girlfriends, 

But thinking about my true love

Back home,

And for the first time,

Knowing how it felt to be content.


Stopping for gas in Mojave,

And buying  bon bons.

When we were on the road again,

Throwing them out the window,

One by one,

For no reason at all

Except to laugh

And scream with delight.


Some things

Lie loosely buried

Under stacks of years, 

And months and weeks,

And days and minutes,

And never 

Go away.

Written under the influence of Eileen Spinelli’s poem, “Memories.”

The first and last stanza include borrowed lines from her poem.

Your Turn:

If you’ve got memories, you can write this poem. It’s a great writing invitation that’s fun for you and your kids. Try it.

To get started, ask yourself “What are three or four memories that never leave the corner of my heart?” Begin with a go-to memory that comes to mind first.

For example, one of my core memories is watching my mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother, eating oranges over the kitchen sink. This is a memory that finds its way into a lot of my writing, and it’s how I began this poem.

Let that memory inspire the next one.  This is a fun way to discover surprising and forgotten memories from your life. 

These categories might help you find more memories:

• Moments,

• Objects

• Places,

• People,

• Sayings,

• Smells, and

• Songs

To make this more than a list of memories, surround your recollections with a beginning and ending. You can create your own or borrow Spinelli’s beginning like I did:

It’s funny

How some things

Never leave

The corner of your heart-

You can also borrow this ending. The bolded words are Spinelli’s and the rest are mine:

Some things

Lie loosely buried

Under stacks of years,

And months and weeks,

And days and minutes,

And never

Go away.

Finally, to outrun your internal censor, I suggest doing this as a quickwrite. Set a timer for about ten minutes. Be accepting of whatever memories come to mind. Keep your pen moving. Don’t worry about punctuation or spelling, and don’t erase. If you get stuck, write I’m stuck I’m stuck I’m stuck until you aren’t. When you finish, you can cross out whatever you like.

Maybe you’ll surprise yourself by remembering and writing something unexpected. That’s when the writing process gets thrilling. And bonus: This is a writing invitation you can do over and over again. You'll never write the same piece twice, and it also serves as a list of story ideas that you could develop into longer pieces. 

Let me know how it goes in the comments!