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Merle Huerta, an army chaplain's wife, is the mother of a blended family of thirteen children. During her husband's combat deployments, she co-authored articles appearing in the Jerusalem Post and National Review. She has a Master�s from Columbia University in Instructional Media and Technology and a Certificate in Nonfiction from The Writers Institute at CUNY. She lives at the U.S. Military Academy in New York. "Tuesday Mornings" is her first solo publication.
More from Merle Huerta
Literary Reflections Archives
Writing Prompt: All Things Edible, Random and Odd
By Merle Huerta
June 19, 2010
Each month, we post a writing prompt tied to the current month's essay.
Please email your responses of 500 words or less to lmreflections (at) literarymama (dot) com
with the words "writing prompt" in the subject line so that we know it's not an essay submission.
Submissions should be in the text of an email (please do not send attachments).
We will accept responses until the 15th of each month and offer our feedback
on each response privately before the end of the month. We hope you'll take
this opportunity to get inspired, share your work, and find community with other
writers! We'll post our favorites on our blog.
In this month's essay, Sheila Squillante describes the struggles she faces when she creates a narrative about her father.
"Whole conversations that I know my father and I had are more than murky. I can see us sitting in his car outside of my college dorm the warm spring day I had to leave, sobbing and ashamed, my suite full of girlfriends and get a 'psychiatric single room' in a dorm on the far side of campus. I remember the feel of the black felted seats under my worrying fingers, and an overwhelming, surprising sense that he understood the exact shape and depth of my pain. But what did we say? Add to this the fact that my father was a terse, quiet man who largely kept his mouth closed unless he had something 'important' to say, and what's left is, at best, a silhouette, a profile, a shadow. I want his words to fill the picture in and they are precisely what I don't have."
What memories would you piece together if you wrote a narrative of your father? Would it be a journey of smells, sounds, gestures, expressions, or a combination?
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