Last week, Leigh Anne Eck sent an invitation to respond to a prompt, a party invitation, in which every participant leaves a quick-write bio patterned after Devon Gundry from Soul Pancake. Read more about the party invitation here.
Depending on when you met me, I would have been walking hand in hand with a black girl, my friend, because my parents never said that wasn’t ok, or I was playing in the woods becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder or jumping on the trampoline or into the swimming pool; you may have met a teenage educator wanting to change the world one kid at a time, or a girl writing daily in a diary, a young mother who learned to smock and sew in that order, a working mother driving in early dawn away from her family to teach 3rd graders. Depending on when you met me, you may have met a graduate student, a National Boards candidate, but if you met me today, you’d see MaMère in my eyes, falling in love all over again with babies and art.
As an Artist by Margaret
Reflections on the Teche 
This brings tears to my eyes. I can connect with just about every segment, but even if I couldn’t I could know you through this format of who you were at the junctures of your life.
Thanks. It was harder than I thought it would be.
As I was reading this I was looking for the roots of your writing, your poetry, and your love of words and wondering where it all began but I love your ending and your mother and your art.
I have started a draft of this format but it needs much more work and yes, even for a short piece, it takes work.
Fran, I was taking a different direction on this piece. It started out as my encounters with racism, but I felt it wasn’t saying what I wanted to say. Mamere is my grandmother name, French for “my mother”, and a common one in our area. It’s tougher to write than it seems.
My first effort was all about roles. Still thinking!
Welcome to the party! Sorry I am a little late!
Your writing has added a new dimension to this prompt. It is so deep, especially that first line. And then the ending – oh my heart!! I love the addition of “if you met me today.”
I LOVE this format! Somehow I missed the party. 😦
I feel like I met you when you were a gifted teacher, valuing one child at a time, poem by poem, heart by heart.
I love the intimacy and depth of these pieces, the glimpses of the significant moments in your life. I think I need to join the party, too!
[…] I’ve returned to this invitation three times, so it literally is time to act. Leigh Ann Eck issued an invitation to a party with an ID required here and in Margaret’s post here. […]
Love the circular way this goes. Beautiful memoir.