Events
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Upcoming

Mining for Gold: Journaling into a Deeper Life with Carol Henderson
June 24 – 28, 2013
Meredith College, Raleigh, NC

The description below is accurate though I want to let folks know that I’m completely changing the format this year–adding lots of new material and prompts. So if you’ve taken this workshop in the past two years you might want to consider coming back. It’s going to be different, still lots of fun–and lots of writing!

Keeping a journal is one of the most productive of all methods for reconsidering our world, preserving our experiences, and exploring our deepest selves. On the pages of a journal we can let our inner voices reign while we develop our writing skills. It’s through this kind of “deep diving” into creative projects that we find ways to tell our own life stories. Experience first-hand how journals can help us come to terms with our pasts, discover joy in the present, and transform our futures. Unlocking the full power of this multi-purpose tool, we’ll explore memory, point-of-view, dreams, life chapters, character portraits, poetry, dialogues with aspects of ourselves, and more. We’ll acquire new techniques to enliven our writing with fresh, new ways to view our lives and creative selves. And as always, since the emphasis is on process, not product, come prepared to write.
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL.
For more info or to be added to the waiting list, contact Ashley Hogan at Meredith:
hogana@meredith.edu

The Powerful Narrative: A Writing Workshop
Monday, September 16 – Friday September, 20, 2013
Wildacres Retreat Center, in the North Carolina mountains

What makes some stories “page turners” while others are quickly abandoned? We’re going to teach you. After many publications and years of working with writers, privately and in the classroom, Carol and Bill Henderson have developed a coordinated approach to teaching the principles that ignite all strongl writing. “The Powerful Narrative” looks at these key principles and shows you how to incorporate them into your own writing. Come prepared to write a lot and to generate exciting new material as well as a deeper command of what can make your work more powerful.
For more information and to register, contact Carol Henderson
cd.henderson@gmail.com
Registration information will be posted by June 1.

Carol’s schedule of weekly fall workshops will be posted soon.

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Recent

Farther Along: Writing Toward Reflection, Self-Awareness, and Healing

Carol Henderson Workshops LLC, Project Compassion, Duke Health and Home Care, Heartland Hospice, Hospice of Wake County, Chapel of the Cross Episcopal Church, Sandra Jarr, and the Inavale Foundation presented an exploration of how writing can help manage the pain of grief by awakening new personal awareness and offering transformational shifts in perspective in oneself and others. A day-long symposium for both lay people and professionals. Thursday, May 16, 2013.

Sandra Rogers (left), who checked Farther Along out of her local library 5 times, with Beverly Burton, the mother in the Farther Along group who organized the Salisbury symposium.

Symposium, Readings, and Panel Discussion
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Two events: 10 a.m.– 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Sponsored by The Michael Yang Foundation and hosted by the Literary Book Post, 110 S. Main St.
Salisbury, NC 28144

Some of the women who are part of the Farther Along group gathered with participants to write in the morning symposium and for readings and a panel discussion in the afternoon. Phyllis Keels of Salisbury wrote about the symposium: “The exercises, at first blush, seemed easy, but they were so much harder than I thought. Hard in a good way. They helped me process aspects of my daughter’s death in a new and healing way. Thank you for doing what you do. You are making a difference in people’s lives–namely mine.”

Those Who Shape Us:
Character Portraits of the Important People In Our Lives
April 19, 2013, 7-9 pm, April 20, 2013, 9-3
Cost $165.00
Raleigh NC (THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL)

In this workshop, we will learn to create full-blooded portraits of friends, family members, mentors, and ancestors, those we love, miss, admire––or those we hold in awe, fear, or even condemn.

Using a simple organizing structure, we will evoke the specific gestures, images, and dialogue to make our subjects seem to “jump off the page.” We will explore their quirks, passions, successes, failures, and moral imperatives. Through close observation, using both the child’s and adult’s point-of-view, we will gain new insight into ourselves by deepening our understanding of those whose presence in our lives has shaped us.

This workshop is open not only to experienced writers of all genres but also to those whose primary goal is to create legacies through writing: portraits in words of the people in their lives who matter.
Participation is limited to 12 people. Please make checks payable to Mamie Potter and mail to me at 3134 Eton Road, Raleigh, NC 27608. No registration forms are necessary. For info: mamiepotter@gmail.com

Writing Toward Healing: A Weekend of Writing Workshops
April 12 – 14 in Richmond, Virginia
sponsored by Noah’s Children

Creating Stories to Keep: Unearthing the Secrets of Powerful Narrative
March 15–16, 2013, Durham NC

A good story, like a good garden, cultivates the “wild permissiveness of the inner life” (poet Stanley Kunitz). In this two-day workshop, we will learn to give voice to our own wild inner lives through a series of craft exercises. From deep within us, we’ll pull stories we had no idea were there, and learn to mold them into narratives with energy and momentum. Come prepared to write a lot. Come expecting the unexpected. Come knowing you wilkl leave with a deeper feel for story anatomy–and plenty of robust material to work with. Open to writers of all genres and levels of experience, men and women.
Sponsored by RCWMS.

Comments from participants:

“When you’re in a workshop with Carol, you know you’re in good hands. You relax into writing and therefore write your best.” Sherryl Kleinman, Sociology Professor, UNC

“Carol brings heat and passion for writing and writers. I feel totally inpsired and encouraged, supported and quickened as a writer. She paced the combination of writing and reading beautifully and masterfully combined the teaching of craft with the unleashing of creativity.”
Neesa Moloney, neesathrives@gmail.com

“This was a workshop that was both safe and stretching, generous and supportive, low key but serious about the craft of writing. Highly recommended.”
Russell Colver

“This was my first writing workshop ever. It could not have been better. Carol is a writer’s dream. She is knowledgeable, funny, quick-witted, good-natured, real down-to-earth. I laughed. I cried. I wrote a lot. I had a blast.”
Rachel Kasmitis

Care Net Counseling invited us to offer a mini symposium as part of their annual meeting, at Winston-Salem, on Friday, November 16. In attendance were all the psychologists and staff from the organization.

Kathy Shoaf, a member of our group who had sought counseling through Care Net, told the 100 assembled attendees about her family’s positive experience working with Care Net.

I then led the assembled staff and psychologists in several writing exercises for their own personal enrichment and to use with their clients. We ended the afternoon with a panel discussion featuring members of our group on the role of writing in our healing journeys.

On Saturday, November 10, I led the second of two morning workshop at Hospice of Winston Salem, 9:30 – noon. We’re planning to offer a series of workshops again next fall.

On Sunday, November 11 several of us from Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers, read at McIntyre’s Books, in Pittsboro, NC, at 2 pm. We had a lively discussion after the reading.

I led an all-day symposium,”Farther Along: Writing Toward Healing” at Hospice Support of Fauquier County, Inc. VA, on Saturday, November 3. The symposium was based on principles I’ve written about in my book, Farther Along: the Writing Journey of 13 Bereaved Mothers.

Maritta Gotz and Gil Brooker of Hospice Support organized a seamless day in a beautiful venue. We all enjoyed the writing and readings. Special thanks to the women from our book, Farther Along, who helped out and sat on a panel about the role of writing in their healing journeys: Betsy Anderson (she lives nearby and initiated the workshop), Dottye Currin, Kay Windsor, and Peggy Clover.

Our generous sponsors included: Fauquier Bank, Randy Minter, Moser Funeral Home, Village Flowers, and Harris Teeter.

Friday-Sunday, October 26-28, 2012
I taught at a writing retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, for a privately invited group of women. We had a glorious time. This weekend the place will be covered in snow.

Saturday, October 6, 2012
I led an all-day “Writing Toward Healing” workshop in Richmond, Virginia, sponsored by Noah’s Children.

Thursday, October 11, 2012
I moderated a panel discussion at Hospice in Winston-Salem, on the benefits of reflective writing. The panel included members of the writing group I’ve led for the past 10 years–the women featured in my book, Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers.

Friday, October 12, 2012
I led a similar panel in Charlotte, NC at KinderMourn

Saturday, October 13, 2012
I was back in Winston-Salem, at Hospice to lead a morning writing workshop, this one open to anyone suffering the loss of a loved one.

As these workshops continue, I hope you can join us. I will be listing future events here on my website. And be in touch if you’re interested in hosting a writing event in your community.

More updates soon!

February 5, 2013

As I stare at the jagged stumps of once-towering pines and hardwoods – graceful trees that shaded the road from summer’s heat, offered privacy to the neighboring homes, and created a verdant barrier against the massive Ambulatory Care Center and its parking lots – I tell myself: it could be worse.

As of today, a stand of young pines remains, but who knows for how long. Much of the jungly stories-high wisteria is gone. The little footpath that only pedestrians knew about – the steep hidden shortcut that wove from the road down into a magical dell before ascending at the ACC lot – will, no doubt, vanish.

It could be worse.

Let me explain. The Department of Transportation is widening a short stretch of South Columbia Street. For decades the Town Council battled the state DOT and the university over plans for this curvy, two-lane strip of road.

The town was adamant. We did not want the proposed five-lane highway the university and the hospital favored. Chancellor Michael Hooker agreed with the council and the result was a modest plan that would add a turning lane and improve pedestrian safety.

The town sighed. Relief. One entrance to Chapel Hill would maintain the character, charm, and an appropriate scale that Chapel Hill had traditionally stood for.

Then Chancellor Hooker died. His replacement, James Moeser, joined with UNC Hospitals officials to reopen negotiations for the mega-highway. Town officials and heroic neighborhood organizers repeatedly fought back – a David and Goliath struggle – and eventually won, for good.

Now, after many delays, Hooker’s original modified version is not only back on the table, it’s under way.

When completed, South Columbia Street will have a center turn lane and bus pullouts. We will have sidewalks and bike lanes on both sides of the road. And best of all, there will be no five-lane highway.

Walking home from town (full disclosure: my neighborhood will be affected), I look skyward and notice dozens of birds shrieking in the remaining trees, probably keening to each other over the destruction of their perches and homes.

I shout a reminder up to them. “It could be worse.”

What probably ultimately doomed the five-lane plan was the topographical impossibility of it – too much rock, too many tight curves, too many dips and valleys. Creating a big wide swath of pavement would have been an engineering nightmare.

Whatever. It’s not happening

Of course, if I had it my way, the road would have stayed just as it was. Preserve quaint, I say. There’s so little left. And let’s face it – the three months of disruption to public and private transportation this spring will be massive.

But I take some comfort in knowing (I hope it’s true) that the trees cleared as part of the project will be sold to a local sawmill and made into lumber. And there are other plusses. I will no longer have to shake a fist and honk at impatient motorists who cross the double yellow lines to pass the stopped bus – nearly creaming me as I turn out of my neighborhood. And thank goodness I won’t have to hover delicately behind defenseless cyclists hugging shoulder-less sections of road.

Commuters to the hospital and university may be disappointed with a traffic solution they view as minimal – daily travelers, of course, always want to get where they’re going as fast as possible. Well, their road time will be shorter. And I’m sorry, people, but we need to stop championing more highways and provide better public transportation. But that’s a column for another day.

For now, it’s all good … sort of. I look at the massive gnarled root balls, freshly yanked from the earth, and repeat my mantra: it could be worse.

Our recent reading at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC brought out over sixty people. We sold close to 50 books.

Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers has given us the privilege of sharing our stories and hearing those of others.

Several of the women featured in the book will be at the symposium I’m leading on Friday, Sept. 7, in Chapel Hill. Join us if you can.

The best way to keep up with our events–we’ve got readings and writing workshop and panel discussions planned all fall–is to check our “events” on our facebook page. Make sure to “like” our page too! Thanks.

Also check out our blog, where we post: our writings (current and past), photos, and keep up with our events.

We had an amazing launch party for Farther Along on Friday, August 10 at the Community Arts Center in Winston-Salem, NC. Over 300 folks showed up and we sold close to 200 books. I talked about the book––we’re calling it a memoir with a mission––and several of the women read. Pictured below are some of the surviving siblings. They had the chance to meet and connect.

April 28, 2012

She’s backing out of her parking spot as you’re leaving the Carrboro Harris Teeter lot. Does she see you?

You hit your horn. She brakes hard, jolting to a stop, and pulls forward so you can get by. You glare as you pass her.

Of course. She’s talking on her phone.

Another scene: The light has turned but, not being a New York driver, you wait a polite moment. You do not sit on the horn the second you see green. Her head is down, the driver’s in the car in front of you.

You finally tap. “Beep. Beep.” She bolts up, glances at you in her rear view mirror, and accelerates into the intersection. She’s holding something in her right hand. Is it a phone?

Yes. She was in the middle of a text. At the next light she’ll add the last words and hit “send” or maybe up ahead on that long straight patch where the traffic always slows at school dismissal time.

I confess. She could be me. So could the woman backing out in the HT lot.

I talk while driving. I text while driving.

When the decision passed to ban cell use while driving in Chapel Hill, my Manhattan-based daughter texted me a humorous “Listen up, woman” message – which I read while driving.

Funny. Especially from a woman who spends all day texting and talking to her real estate clients from a car – a taxi and she’s in the backseat. The fact is, even though I’ve texted while driving for years, I always felt unsure about it. I imagine there are responsible people who know when and how to text and talk while driving. It’s just that I am not one of them.

I have to admit, once the ban becomes law, I’ll feel better. In fact, I’m weaning myself now.

But there are some aspects I don’t understand. It seems I’ll still be able to talk to my spouse and to my children.

One of the people I chat with most while driving is that daughter in Manhattan. Will our endless banter be legal? Or will only calls like this be permissible? “Do not answer the doorbell. I’ll be home soon.”

And what will I be able to discuss with my spouse: “I don’t know where you blue tooth is. Last time I saw it? On the kitchen counter, maybe this morning?”

Speaking of husbands, I imagine mine will want some new rules around our house too. The April 16th New Yorker features a cartoon with a man and woman sitting in their living room. The man says to the woman, “If anyone wants me, I’ll be right in front of your face while you’re furiously texting.”

My husband gets annoyed when we sit down for a cup of coffee or a cocktail and I’m “furiously texting.”

“But I’m almost finished,” I’ll say. “I just have to let this client know about our meeting.”

He’ll sigh and wander off to get his own phone. By the time he’s back, I’m finished, ready for conversation – the face-to-face kind – and he’s texting.

I also wonder about driving while talking to a passenger. My good friend and I were deep in conversation the other day. She was driving, I was riding shotgun, and had I not called out “red light!” she would have run it.

Some day cars will lock into a control strip in the highway allowing a remote controlled driving system to take over, like in the movie Minority Report. They first promised this back at the World’s Fair GM “Futurama” in 1939. But anything like that still seems a long way off, and I can’t say I’m sorry.

Giving up the phone in the car will sting, but I can do it.

I do have my limits, though. The day they outlaw listening to books on CD while driving, is the day I’ll have to put my foot down (as it were). But please don’t tell anybody: it’s really not safe.

December 21, 2011

I’m heading off to visit my father in Philadelphia, a pilgrimage I don’t make often enough.

These trips are exhausting though nothing much happens. Like an old dog, my 93-year-old dad sleeps – a lot. When he’s awake and has something to say, his voice is barely a whisper and his thoughts come out muddled.

But I’m hopeful this time. I’ve got something that just might jumpstart a coherent memory bank.

Let me explain. When he called recently (my sister did the dialing) the conversation began the way it usually does.

“I’m so glad to hear your voice, Daddy,” I said.

He mumbled something I couldn’t understand.

Instead of saying, “What?” I’ve learned to move on, to tell him something, anything. That day I picked up the book I was reading, “Unbroken: A World War ll Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption,” by Laura Hillenbrand. It’s about an American POW named Louie Zamperini, who, like my dad, was a track star and served in the Pacific.

“Dad,” I said. “Did you know a guy named Louie Zamperini when you were training out in California?”

“Louie,” my dad said, his voice suddenly crisp and loud. “Of course. We ran together.”

“And he served in the Pacific during the war Dad.”

“I know. I remember him. He was shot down. Survived in the water for weeks.”

Delighted by my father’s clarity, I named some Pacific islands from a map in the book. My father volunteered others.

He faded again, but at least synapses had fired.

When I visit I usually wheel Dad around the gardens of his retirement community. He’ll perk up at the names of flowers and trees and he enjoys listening to the birdcalls. My father was an avid gardener, an Olympic qualifying runner, a Princeton graduate, a WWII veteran, the father of three girls, and an unfulfilled public relations man. He’s been a widower for almost a year.

On this trip, it’s going to be cold and gray, probably not garden-gazing weather. He’ll want me to park him in front of the television by the nurses’ station.

“No, no!” he’ll say, sometimes shouting it, if I try to take him to his room so we can “talk.” He’d rather watch “Jeopardy,” old movies, sitcoms, cooking shows, whatever. Ironic for a man who forbade television, and insisted on family conversation, when his daughters were young.

This time, with “Unbroken,” I just might be able to lure him into his room, a lovely space with a portrait of his late wife, familiar furniture from my childhood, and lush plants.

My dad had served on the staff of Admiral Nimitz, whose title was Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. I now have a large photograph of the admiral – it used to hang in my father’s office – with an inscription by his boss, the admiral, thanking my father for his WWII service.

“Dad,” I’ll say. “Louie was also honored by Admiral Nimitz.”

Growing up, I paid little attention to the sagas my father told at dinner. I watched the candles burn and tried to remember to keep my elbows off the table. If I didn’t he would poke them with his fork, and it hurt. I would wait, stony faced, until all the plates were cleared and I felt safe to ask: “May I please be excused?” His answer wasn’t always “yes.”

Now all these decades later, I’m going to read to him from “Unbroken.” Hopeful he’ll remember some of his tales and tell me again. I want to hear what I was too scared and distracted to listen to when I was a little girl – those stories I never knew I’d want, some day, to know.

When I arrive he has just come out of the bath and I’m able to wheel him to his room without protest. I pull a chair up beside him and thumb through the book, showing him the accompanying photos and reading an occasional paragraph.

“POW’s, yes, there was Frank and …” he waves his arm, searching for more names. Other tidbits follow.

Then I read my dad the two-page preface. His face squishes up, his mouth turns down, and he begins to sob. He can’t stop.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I say. He places his long bony hands over the open book as though it were a sacred tome. His head nods up and down.

“Should I continue?”

“Yes,” he whispers. No more words come from him, but as I read he grabs my hand and squeezes, his head bobbing with recognition.

It is my turn now to tell him his story.

November 12, 2011

I’ve often been surprised by what I’ve found at UNC Hospitals.

As I headed in one morning, I saw a man balancing two large watermelons on his shoulders as he walked out the main entrance. I thought I was in a dream until I saw a farmer’s market going on in the lobby.

A volunteer recently told me about the new permanent labyrinth. We were standing in the entrance to the women’s hospital.

“It’s right out there,” she said, “between here and the street.” All I could see were cars, vans, people, entrance drives, and, beyond, parking decks.

“Really?” I said. “Right over there?”

“Yes, she said. “Trust me.”

She told me this was the ninth labyrinth to be built in a North Carolina medical center, that walking the paths has been shown to promote a sense of wellbeing and healing. The UNC labyrinth is modeled on the one built inside Chartres Cathedral in France.

I wove through the traffic and followed the sidewalk, stopping to read a plaque:

“An ancient meditation tool, which has found its place in the modern world. Most of the experiences that occur in the labyrinth are guided by a sacred wisdom, a creative intelligence that knows more about what we need than do our conscious selves.”

- The Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress

“Walk Pray Receive”

“To access the labyrinth continue down the sidewalk or enter the N.C. Cancer Hospital and take the elevators to the B level.”

The entire text then appeared in Spanish:

“Camine Rece Recibe”

I continued down the walkway, the labyrinth nestled into the steep bank to my left. A boy about 7 was sitting in the center of the large circle of stones.

“How long is it going to take me to get out?” he called to his father, who stood off to the side, a crying infant in his arms.

“Probably as long as it took you to go in,” the dad said.

“Not if I run,” the boy shouted.

He bolted up and raced back along the path, the sleeves of his oversized sweatshirt flapping at his sides like flags. I’ve walked labyrinths before, but I had never seen anyone run the entire path.

Landscaping around the labyrinth includes shrubs, grasses and memorial trees, some bearing wind chimes. A shady area, under a pedestrian overpass, offers plenty of wooden chairs, tables, and benches. Beyond that, a grassy section leads to the lower level of the cancer hospital.

I listened to the hammering of construction echo off the tall hospital buildings.

I heard the beeping of trucks backing up, car doors slamming. Two large cranes criss-crossed the sky, people strode or hobbled on sidewalks and overpasses. A motorcycle roared up Manning Drive.

Yet the labyrinth sat serene, almost hidden, right in the middle of all the commotion. It’s pleasing to the eye.

The path stones look like Chiclets or cobbles, in beige and gray. Unlike a piece of art admired from a distance, a labyrinth is created to be entered and walked. Some people crawl.

My boots crackled on bits of gravel as I walked. The path reminded me of thoughts – little short jaunts followed by hairpin curves and long uninterrupted stretches.

Unlike a maze, which is full of dead ends, the labyrinth leads you steadily onward.

In places, the path seems to be taking you in the wrong direction. This illusion is intentional; the journey seems preposterous, impossible.

As I walked, a one-sided cell phone conversation came at me from the overpass. A jackhammer drilled. Wind chimes tinkled.

Just keep going, I told myself. At the curves I admired the carefully crafted arches of stone. My breathing calmed. Then I was all the way in.

Looking around, I marveled at this sacred spot smack in the middle of the day and the fray — a place to stop and reflect and walk — or maybe even run — knowing the path will always deliver its followers to the center.

Carol Henderson is a writer and writing teacher.

With generous support from the Inavale Foundation and Project Compassion, I am offering a series of Reflective Writing Workshops for hospital staff, social workers, counselors, caregivers, and bereaved mothers. The bereaved mother workshop runs through October. Upcoming events include a symposium in Chapel Hill and reflective writing workshops at Hospice in Winston-Salem. Check back for more information.

My summer workshops are up and running. Email me to get on the waiting list for the fall.

I loved my workshop at this year’s Meredith College Summer Institute.

Women came from as far as Mexico and Michigan this year. What a terrific group. We’re hoping to meet again–in France. Here are my students:

And here are comments from a few of them:

“The week of journaling was deep, delicious fun. Carol led us through a dozen different journalin prompts and we wrote madly and wildly. The results were excellent: diverse pieces of writing, some funny, some poignant; all vivid, well-written and clear. Carol is a master teacher.”  –Judith Valerie (a teacher in Raleigh)

“Two years of boring myself with either non-writing, or writing I’d done numerous times before, ended with a one-week Journaling workshop led by Carol Henderson. Carol pushes without being pushy. She inspired me to inspire myself. Excellent week!”  –Lynn Doiron, (from Mexico)

“Carol covered so much information that I’ve been looking for–more of the “guts” to wrap my arms around and dissect and ruminate on–and I just fell in love with the group.” –Ann Ake (Raleigh)

My  annual weekend workshop with RCWMS happened at the end of March. We’ll offer another next March, 15 – 16.  Registration will open in January 2013.  Some comments from this year’s participants:

“Carol Henderson’s workshops always take me out of a writing rut. Her exercises, words of wisdom, and opportunity to write with others jumpstart my creativity, which lasts well beyond the workshop. I know I’m in the hands of a pro, one who is knowledgeable and humane. She makes everyone feel they can bring their whole beings into the room and take risks on paper.”
–Sheryl Kleinman, Professor of Sociology, UNC

“As always (many times now) Carol inspired, educated, and illuminated both me and my writing life.”
–Jenny Lewis, UNC Administrator

Bill and I are back from our annual Powerful Narrative Workshop, at Wildacres Retreat Center, in the stunning Blue Ridge mountains.

This was our third straight year at Wildacres, and we were fortunate to have what’s probably our best group yet.

The four days of the workshop passed as one continual high, with “aha” moments happening it seemed, every few minutes. Our writers, two of whom came all the way from Seattle, all report progress and breakthroughs. (One of them, Fabienne Worth, is pictured above.)

Here’s what one of our participants had to say:

“A true inspiration. Bill and Carol you certainly focused the dynamics and the chemistry that we brought to the workshop. That is an art.”
– Sandy Mason, Asheville, NC

Bill and I were delighted with the group, their responsiveness, and their creativity, and pleased to see them making so many connections both on and off the page. All of which proves to us that The Powerful Narrative really is powerful, and we can’t wait to offer the workshop again.

I continue to write once a month with the WriteGirls. Last summer I led, for the second year, a two-week day camp for the girls, one I think I would have enjoyed much more than the overnight camp I attended at age 12. At that Y camp, I had to be rescued during the swim test. I panicked because I couldn’t see or touch the bottom of the lake.

I would have loved to sit and write the way the girls do at this camp: no backstroke tests, no teams, no lanyards. The girls are eager to produce. They’re working on stories and novels and poems.

I asked them to write quickly about summer. Here are their impressions.

Julia: The air settles heavily on my shoulders, and I swirl to the floor in a tangled heap. The tepid linoleum offers little comfort. “Why me?” I ask the ceiling, thinking what a stupid question. The heat seems to be melting my reasoning as well as my skin. I live in North Carolina, after all, where the weather has mood swings more drastic than those of a 16-year-old girl. I close my eyes to the sun.

Brenna: Lemonade on ice cools with sweet, juicy sourness. Ah, perfect bliss and easy. My mother mixes sugar and powdered lemon in water to create the best summer drink, so thirst-quenching. Who knew that liquid happiness could come from a white plastic container, pre-powdered for our convenience.

Sabrina: Ocean, how I once loved you. Your waves, how cool and refreshing you were to me. But after one story by an author that shall remain unnamed, I no longer go near you. Never again will I be able to enjoy you. Not a pond or a lake, either. Nothing for me anymore but a pool.

Olivia: Outside the heat wilts the trees and the flowers bend their heads under the July sun. But I get to sink into the squishy couch cushions. The cool air of my basement lair surrounds me and I open the first in a large stack of books. Sighing comfortably, I dig in. This is my summer – devoid of heat and sweat.

Anonymous: You go on Sunday. Check-in is from one to five. You get your dorm assignment, your roommate, and your schedule. Then you have your first rehearsal. You’re independent all week, except at night, when your counselors take roll to make sure you’re still alive. Other than that you’re on your own. Freedom and music are what I like best about summer band camp.

It’s great to take a vacation

It doesn’t matter the location

To the beach where the sand castles loom

Only to fall when the waves seal their doom

It doesn’t matter where you go

Just do let your fragile heart grow.

- Eleanor

Sadie: First allow me to describe a tick bite. You reach down absentmindedly to scratch. Your fingers dig into your skin and you sigh with relish. But wait. What’s this? Your fingers have pulled off a wiggling black shape now stuck under your fingernail. You pry it out and kill it, perhaps pulling at its head or flushing it down the toilet. Over the next few days your skin bubbles and blisters. It turns a bright red and soon crusts up and bleeds. Finally it heals, leaving only a puckered pink scar.

Spitting out dark seeds

watermelon tastes so good

red and green and black.

Red and white and blue

fireworks crash in the air

lighting up the night.

- Mary

Kayla: Dancing, playing games, running around, screaming, laughing, sweating, swimming, sliding, drinking pink lemonade, eating ice cream, hamburgers and chips: these are summer parties. But then there are the annoying ticks and mosquitoes that suck your blood and the flies that get in your food. Still, party all summer.

[originally published in slightly altered form in the Chapel Hill News]