Taking Root
Seventeen-year-old Delaney Moran is trying to make it on her own but panic attacks threaten to undermine her independence. Luella, a determined social worker, and Murray, the owner of a music store, want to help her but in doing so, they uncover a secret from her past.
My Writing Blog
Latest Posts
Thoughts on Writing
In one of the two writing groups I belong to, we rotate responsibility for sending out writing prompts in advance of our next monthly meeting. Typically, there are three or four choices with the last one being “whatever moves your pen.” Contemplating the prompts suggested for our upcoming meeting, I found myself thinking about the…
Land of Oz
Over the weekend, we took a drive out to the coast where my family has a memorial bench in honor of my parents. Sitting there, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I tried to imagine what my mother’s reaction would be to all the changes that have occurred in the fourteen years since she’s been gone. When…
Mothering
I once heard someone say that parenting a child is the toughest job in the world. I agree there were times when it wasn’t easy (so would my mother, and her mother). I’d have to add, though, that the rewards are endless. I feel so fortunate to reap them again as a grandmother! We used…
Other Writings
Thoughts on Fishing
My junior high school English teacher asked each of her students to find a poem and bring it to class. Flipping through the pages of my parents’ Viking Book of Poetry, I settled on “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. In exquisite detail, she portrays an ancient, grandfatherly fish that could fight no more. Old hooks and pieces of line were embedded in his jaw but what I remember most was the sadness and surrender she described in his eyes as she held him half out of the water alongside the boat, before letting him go. Her poem resonated with me in an almost visceral way because I’d often gone fishing alone or with my father.
Brenda Bellinger 