Names and Summer

The copies of the 6th annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Collection arrived, plain box, anticlimactic, really, but first thing I did, of course, was scan the contents page for my poems and my name. And what I noticed was my name, first and last, looked simple, ordinary, everyday.

Even my son said, “Mom, you should have used a middle initial or name or something.”

He was right; my plain, ordinary name looked out of place. Mine wasn’t the only name without a middle—something, name or initial, but, somehow, in print, my name looked sadly common. And I considered, strangely, for the first time, my name in print. How would I want my name to appear as author of a book, whether poetry or novel? Did I want to use my middle name, my maiden name, a pen name? I use a pseudonym for my blog. Should I use if for my other writing?

While I mulled this over I found my poems and read them—for the first time not hand-written or typed by me. All the words I so carefully chose, by sound and meaning, the exact order, line by line, in a font someone else picked, printed and sent out in the world.

I had several poems printed in my high school Pencraft (a literary book published each year) class, but I had a vote in everything from cover to paper to font and that was more years ago than I’ll say.

This time, with this book, I felt more detached, yet more invested. I, frankly, felt strange. Proud, but as if I relinquished—something. A lot like the minute your child says, I do, and you know your relationship with him has changed forever and maybe, you’re really not ready, but he is and so you open your hand—the one you had clutched in the folds of your dress.


I haven’t posted for two weeks and I would feel guilty, but I was—again—getting Tie-down Man ready to go out in the world. After sending it out to one agent, I got some feedback from a contest. Some of the comments rang true, of course, some didn’t, but I worked through the book to fix the minor problems and am getting it ready to go out again.

But that wasn’t all I was doing, of course. As I’ve said, I’m primary caregiver to an elderly parent and there’s been construction around her house which has given us a bit of a challenge, what with getting the garbage in and out, food in and out and the yard work.

Then, too, we tried to get our three boys together once before summer was over. We had hamburgers, potato salad, green salad and s’mores in the canyon one evening. Only two of our boys were able to get there, but we were grateful for that given all our schedules. My husband and I stayed overnight and had breakfast, too. It was a wonderful break in an, otherwise, frustrating and busy summer.

I needed the break, the cooler day, the sound of the breeze in the cottonwoods, the sound of the lake, the sandy beach, the smell of hamburgers cooking, the fire, the pine trees. And of course the s’mores. It is the absolute definition of summer, all packed full of memories and I don’t think a summer should go by without it.