An exercise from Kate Hopper's online workshop

In January and February, a few of us participated in Kate Hopper's online workshop. As usual, it was very inspiring. Not only was it wonderful to read other members' writing, but it kickstarted all of us into writing every week, even when we didn't have time to write! We thought we would share one exercise that Kate set and what Mary Allison Tierney wrote in response.

Exercise: Three Scenes
Without thinking too much, I want you to make a list of vivid scenes from your life (vivid memories that happened in scene). Take ten minutes to list as many scenes as you can, then look over your list and circle the ones that have the most energy—either positive or negative. Pick three of those and write them in as much detail as possible. Imagine an essay that includes these three scenes, and think about the ways the scenes might be ordered for greatest effect. What might be the connective tissue—the threads that bind these scenes together? Do they need connective tissue? How do they speak to you? What do they say about you?

July 1972

Three girls in a row, exposed bellies down on the cool wood floor, tanned legs bent, chins elbow propped in hands, absorbed in the destruction of a small town by a giant scorpion. The afternoon creature feature on the black and white TV that my aunt has rolled out on the brass colored metal trolley is our after lunch pre nap indulgence. The Texas summer heat keeps us in the air-conditioned family room. The phone is ringing; the loud bell from the kitchen can be heard all over the sprawling ranch house. But we all ignore the bell. Finally the older cousin nudged her sister to get the phone. Groaning and stomping up the steps to the kitchen and a forced polite southern phone voice answer, then a yell ‘Aunt Janel had the baby!’ I pushed back to a sit. I don’t remember knowing that my mother was pregnant, or anticipating becoming a sister, just that my mother was in New Mexico and I was in Texas, like most summers. But this summer was different, because we were moving. I walked to the kitchen and took the receiver from my cousin.

August 1972

Our drive from Texas to pick up my mother and newborn sister in New Mexico and then get settled in Arizona was memorable because of the palm trees. This is my most vivid memory of arriving in Phoenix when I was 7. Long rows of tall thin palm trees that stretched down the street creating a vanishing point. I don’t remember a baby, but I do remember the rental house with the dark green painted windows that cranked open and waiting for the bus to my new school at the end of the street. Then just weeks later we moved to an apartment with a fountain in a courtyard and an accordion sliding door that separated one bedroom from the living room, and now I walked through a hole in the chain link fence in the back of the parking lot to my next new school. My aunt, with her fifth and youngest child, had driven her blue Ford station wagon back to Texas and now my Granny was staying with us help with the transition.

Summer 1974

We were moving around the corner, to a cheaper apartment, so we filled my mother’s Datsun station wagon over and over, loading then unloading. One of my cousins had come, I assume flown, from Texas to help. She was just sixteen and my mother taught her to drive a stick shift so she could help with our move. On one of our last nights in the nicer apartment, she took my friend and I swimming in the apartment pool. Some tenants upstairs complained that we were being too loud, although I can’t imagine what we were doing that could have been so disruptive. We were nine. My cousin pantomimed taking her top off and twirling it in the air, whooping “woo hoo!” then we ran shrieking back through the manicured hedges to the boxed up apartment.

Mary-Allison Tierney is a founding member of the Write On Mamas and photographer of same. Published in The Sun Magazine, The Marin Independent Journal and the Write On Mamas anthology, Mamas Write, 29 Tales of Truth, Wit & Grit.