Lynne Hartke blog – Page 2 – WordServe Water Cooler

August 11, 2016July 18, 2016

Of Brussel Sprouts, Broccoli, and Disappointments

My mother and I didn’t know anything about brussel sprouts the spring we decided to plant them in the family garden, back when I was a girl. We planted an entire row in between the rows of peas and green beans. In the back of the garden we added several rows of tomatoes and pushed cucumber seeds into rounded mounds in the black earth. Mom bordered the garden with zinnias and marigolds and we waited for the fruit of our labors.

We expected the obvious–for the brussel sprouts to appear like broccoli crowns, right up top for all to see. And because we expected the obvious, we missed the fact that the sprouts were growing.

And growing.

And growing–there under the protecting leaves, hidden from sight.

We finally found them, no longer tender and sweet, but old and bitter. Mom grew up in the Depression, so there was no thought of throwing the brussel sprouts into the compost pit. She boiled them for dinner, where we kids gagged them down with large gulps of fresh milk and tears.

Mom never planted brussel sprouts again.

Which is the danger of disappointments and unfulfilled expectations.

It wasn’t until I moved away from home that I enjoyed the deliciousness of brussel sprouts bathed in olive oil and roasted garlic, an experience I almost missed because of the garden mishap.

This summer I had the grand idea of offering giveaways on my blog during the month of July. I anticipated interest, increased blog traffic, and multiple shares of the posts. Unfortunately broccoli results have yet to materialize.

But today I boxed up one of the giveaways to mail to a little girl who has brain cancer. I sent another gift to a woman whose husband recently died. She was nominated by a friend for the giveaway.

Brussel sprouts are growing this summer among the leaves of social media.

So let me ask you:

When things don’t turn out as you hoped, will you continue to plant new ideas? Try new things?

Or will you concentrate so hard looking for broccoli that you miss what may be growing in secret?

Lynne Hartke has her first book coming out with Revell in 2017. She writes about courage, beauty, and belonging to a loving God at http://www.lynnehartke.com. And brussel sprouts. Sometimes she writes about brussel sprouts. She and her husband live in Chandler, Arizona, located in the Sonoran Desert.

July 21, 2016June 21, 2016

What Are You Afraid to Write?

I stumbled into the creative writing class fresh out of cancer treatment, a 48-year-old woman uncertain of her future. I had vague ideas about writing, but I was not even sure who I was anymore.

Cancer had taken all my sentences and scrambled my story.

I didn’t introduce myself as a pastor’s wife. I was Lynne (with an e) on a level playing field with the other college students.

I soon discovered that wearing jeans and a t-shirt like everyone else in the room couldn’t quite cover my wounds. The students wrote of true love and vampires and distant galaxies far, far away and I stared at blank pages. They were 18 and 19. All passion and future.

I was scars. Battle-fatigued. Dried up. Old.

The college professor—a reader of dark stories—disliked pat phrases, cliches, and the status quo. As he stood in front of the class one day, he said:

“The purpose of writing is to put on paper what people cannot say… or are afraid to say.”

Suddenly I discovered I had words. There were lots of things I was afraid to say.

Would the cancer come back? Would I live to see my children grow up? What is the purpose of it all anyway? Where is God?

Maybe that is why I didn’t introduce myself as the pastor’s wife, a careful woman, who would never admit the tumult of doubt, pain, and questions.

So many questions.

I soon realized other students were busy writing too. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with things she was afraid to say.

After writing for ten minutes, we were invited to share what was on our pages.

A heavy-set young man offered to go first and shared about his heroin addiction. A young woman shared about a sexual assault. Another shared about a miscarriage. Another the death of her brother. Another his parents’ divorce.

The readers stepped cautiously into the full noonday sun, all squinty-eyed, with scrunched up faces, unsure, after living in silence for so long, of the reception in the light of day.

As we each emerged, we discovered something unexpected: we were no longer alone.

Writing is not about life in the suburbs and two perfect children and happily ever after. Ho hum. Pass the butter.

Writing—even from a Christian perspective—is about scars. Questions. Pain. Fear. Redemption is there, but not without struggle.

What are you afraid to write?

Lynne Hartke has a memoir coming out with Revell in 2017. She writes about courage, beauty and belonging at http://www.lynnehartke.com.

June 9, 2016June 1, 2016

Why Marriage (and writing) Needs a Third

“Two’s company, three’s a crowd,” we are told. But sometimes that is not true. Both in marriage and in writing.

Writers can’t just write about writing. It’s tedious. Not to mention boring to the non-writer.

Nouns, verbs, and prepositional phrases can only interest a person for so long, but put those same words in a story, and a writer has the ability to capture imagination.

Writers need a third thing–something “to gaze out at” according to author Natalie Goldberg in her book, Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir.

Sometimes the writer has no plan or control of what that third thing will be.

“We must find the third thing,” Goldberg writes. “And we cannot afford to be fussy. How a pothole is formed holds our interest. A kind of cheese, a license to own a beauty parlor, a felt slipper, someone’s toothache, all are fodder for our pen….”

Or staples. Staples can be the third.

This week I decided to re-do my kitchen chairs. I can’t remember what fabric originally covered the chairs when my grandmother owned them. After my mom inherited the chairs, she covered them in a cream-colored fabric, material that was now showing years of stains:

Stains from family dinners of scalloped potatoes, ham, frozen peas, and orange jello served in goblets Mom and Dad received as gifts at their wedding in 1957.
Stains from years of grandchildren learning to eat cheerios with a spoon, but invariably milk dripped down toddler chins and pooled on the fabric.
Stains from card games around the table, with fingers needing to be wiped of popcorn grease, and the cushion serving as a giant napkin.

Decades of stains.

I flipped over the first chair, a testament to the importance of life around the table, to begin removing the material from the cushion. I encountered staples.

Many, many staples.

As I pulled them out, I began counting. Twenty…thirty…forty.

The kitchen table was soon covered with flying metal projectiles. Sixty…seventy…eighty.

I began to laugh. I knew, without being told, that although my mom selected the fabric, my dad was the one who stapled the material in place. Although neither was alive to ask, the unseen surface of the bottom of the cushion told the tale of a man who was legendary for taping the wrapping paper around Christmas presents so securely, that a knife or scissors was needed to open the package.

Mom was the project idea person. Dad was the implementer of the plan.

Like writers, Goldberg contends, couples also need something “to gaze out at” for time cannot always be spent looking face to face, but rather, also, side by side.

Projects were my parents’ third. As was family. And faith.

I pulled out the last remaining staples holding the dingy cream fabric. Eighty-five. Did the chair cushion really need eight-five staples to hold the material in place?

“What are you doing?” my husband asked, walking into the kitchen.

“I’m re-counting the staples,” I replied, a bit distracted as I remembered yesterday moments around a Christmas tree. (To his credit, he did not ask why I was re-counting staples.) “I wonder if I can write a blog about staples?”

“I think you have proven that you can write a blog about anything,” he said.

I smiled at the compliment, from a man who has lived with my writing third, not an interest he shares, but a gifting he gives me space to pursue–which in itself is one of our thirds.

Family. Faith. And applauding one another’s dreams. Each has given us something “to gaze out at.”

Eighty-five staples do not hold us, yet we walk side by side.

What is your third?

April 19, 2016April 11, 2016

Is That a Rattlesnake? – Writing From A Sense of Place

Welcome to my neighborhood. I live in a city, but I like to hike in the surrounding mountains in the Sonoran Desert.

Will you walk with me?

Before we go, I recommend packing the following things:

A small journal and two pens for writing simple notes that can be tidied later. One fast pen. And one slow pen. Just in case.
A phone and a pocket-size camera for taking photos of things to remember, including plants, lizards, insects, and birds that need identifying. And occasionally rattlesnakes.
Water. Plenty of water.
A snack. Writing and walking is always better with something delicious. I recommend a bagel with cream cheese, an orange, and a package of fruit snacks. Shaped like dinosaurs.

I like to leave early in the morning for a hike in South Mountain. We will walk until we find a flat rock with an unobstructed view in the middle of a cholla forest. We wait here for the dawning.

What sentences will you use to describe the horizon? What colors do you see? Orange? Yellow? How can you write about those colors without using those words?

I scribble in my journal:

I look for the planets that are visible this month in the pre-rising light, but only a fingernail moon shines down. The eastern sky is anthemed by the birds as peach caresses the low layer of clouds, veiling the sun until it bursts in a single golden shot.

A nearby ant hill is a scurry of activity, the residents in a hurry to harvest food before the rising of the molten heat.

A lime green bandaid emblazoned with super heroes lies in the dust.

What is blooming? What is distinct about this season? How will your reader know it is spring without you having to tell them?

The hillside flowers are monochromatic in hue. Lemon-gold poppies. The ditzy-blonde brittlebush that arrives early and stays late. The five-petaled blossoms on the creosote bush are no larger than a penny. No buds adorn the head of the gentleman saguaro, the giant cactus that waits to bloom last every year.

Who shares the morning? What do you hear?

A pack of coyotes join the morning bird song with yips and howls. I smile at the Sonoran Desert chorus but my rust-colored mutt unfurls her tail as she listens, warily, close to my legs.

A dad with three young sons shuffle by.

“How far are ya goin’?” we ask.

“As far as we can get,” the dad answers. They pass us full of adventure and youth-filled zeal, a single water bottle between them.

What do you touch?

A layer of dust coats my shoes. My hands. My khakis. My dog is a four-legged dust mop as she flops at my feet.

To our left is a vein of pink quartz that juts up from time to time throughout the mountain like the backbone of a dinosaur skeleton.

The fruit snacks!! Would you like a red one?

As I pull out the fruit snacks, I place my foot on a medium-sized boulder. A six-inch black tail disappears under the stone below my shoe. I jump back. A lizard? A snake? I feel no need to investigate.

What would I see in your neighborhood? What is unique about the place where you live? How would you set the scene with a strong sense of place?

Can I walk with you?

Lynne Hartke is under contract with Revell for a 2017 release of a nonfiction book about her experience with cancer. The Sonoran Desert in Arizona serves as a background for much of her writing.