It was harder for me to find a personal narrative than I expected. Perhaps it's because I'm not familiar enough with news sites to do more than wander semi-aimlessly, or maybe there's just a bit of a dry spell this week in the sources that first occurred to me. The interesting one I found was, of all places, in my home newspaper. (There's that word again.. home...)
I found this narrative in the Rocky Mountain News. The author is the garden columnist; a lot of meaning can be found in the simple, mundane things that she describes. Flowers. Teenage son. Nests, seeds, and the revival of Colorado after the desolate mountains of snow that buried them this winter. Maybe it will remind you of the nurturer in yourself or someone close to you.
It's Natural to Nurture: Maria Cote
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14 comments:
How interesting that you found a personal essay in a gardening column! What drew you to the piece? What did you find most engaging about her writing? What techniques did she use?
I love it when a piece of writing surprises me. You think you're getting a column about spring bulbs and you end up with a thoughtful reflection on mothering. Think about the different entry points to your own story. . . .
That’s a nice piece that you have selected. Maria Cote deals quite poetically with the departure of her last child and the loneliness she will have to cope with. I really like the metaphor she uses with the seasons. All the people go through the same steps in life, there’s a cool song in French that refers to this cycle of life, having children, raising them and them seeing them go away….In his song, the singer describes how the atmosphere of a house changes through time. He shows that as children have children, the cycle begins again and there’s always life in this place.
I like Virginie's idea of there always being life with the cycle of children having children - like plants in the seasonal cycle. After my sister and I left the house my mom started gardening all the time. But last year my sister had her first baby and my mom's gardening tools went back in the shed while she helped out with the baby. Cote does a good job of showing the personal emotion of this cycle without going overboard. I hate sappy kind of stories but this isn't too bad. She first shows this emotion when she sees her son and remembers his emergency room visits and wonders if he'll ever "fill out." She doesn't tell us she will miss her son, rather, she shows us how she loves him and how familiar she had gotten with him. At the end of the story cope uses an interesting technique by calling to her readers for their own stories/tips. Although this is a move that can probably only be pulled off by columnists, I like the personal attention she gives the reader.
Is anyone else really bothered that a new broswer window doesn't open when you click on a link to a story? I want to be able to refer back to the piece, but once I start my comment, I can't! Any who...
I would love to some day have a column like this, where life's seemingly insignficant moments get explicated and become a part of a larger, more universal human understanding. Motherhood. I don't know it yet, perhaps never will, but some how Cote got me thinking about life as change and cyclical. That makes me very excited about what writing can do to bring people together. Now I am getting all warm and fuzzy.
Nice piece.
This piece is tied together nicely with the thematic idea of seasons, rebirth, and growth. She uses poetic language and subject matter to express her love to nurture--at home and in the garden. The theme of growth is where this piece really succeeds. It's sweet, like the smell of roses, but to the more cynical reader, perhaps a bit too flowery.
This piece is tied together nicely with the thematic idea of seasons, rebirth, and growth. She uses poetic language and subject matter to express her love to nurture--at home and in the garden. The theme of growth is where this piece really succeeds. It's sweet, like the smell of roses, but to the more cynical reader, perhaps a bit too flowery.
This piece is tied together nicely with the thematic idea of seasons, rebirth, and growth. She uses poetic language and subject matter to express her love to nurture--at home and in the garden. The theme of growth is where this piece really succeeds. It's sweet, like the smell of roses, but to the more cynical reader, perhaps a bit too flowery.
Initially I must say I was pretty skeptical about reading an article in a gardening column, I thought I was in for a drag. This piece; however, was very interesting and really caught me off guard. It was pretty amazing how the author was able to rope me in with the story that went from a lazy gardener to a family in transition. It really made me think of my own mother who recently started working because my older sister had already moved out, and my brother was about to start college. I also like what Mike said about being a sappy story without overdoing it, see kept a good balance to make the story appealing to a wider audience.
I also felt it teetered on being too sentimental, but the author was able to keep it an interesting personal account. I also like how the author was able to "grow" (the pun was inevitable) in this article. When Marin discussed the proper way of approaching a personal piece, she said that it had to be a self exploration with the ending not known. In this piece I believe Cote is able to achieve this. In the beginning she states her inability to imagine spring gardening but moves through to conclude she needed it in order to nurture herself.
Personally I did not like this essay. It seemed that it took to long for the "story" to come out. I don't understand how she starts off talking about winter weather, to thinking about her son and how he has changed and how he is leaving to go off to college. Maybe I am just slow.I can understand some comparisons to her gardening with raising her children, but at the same time I felt like something was missing from the story. I can see how gardening has therapeutic benefits, but really, can gardening replace the feeling of being in an empty house, even if you are redirecting the nurturance? The plants and flowers are surely not going to speak back to you, tell you they love you, etc. So how does that work?
I was laughing the entire time I was reading this entry because I am positive that Maria Cole and my mother would get along great. From the very beginning of the article, I felt that Cole is in a very similar situation to my mother in her life. They both seem to be struggling with "empty nest syndrome," and the difficult change that occurs when their children begin to move on to college. They both keep themselves very busy with their work and their family and seem to be searching (successfully) to find outlets for stress. Both also have found gardening to be an almost theraputic solution to their issues, and find satisfaction in nurturing the plants and watching them grow, just as they have watched their children grow.
I also identified with the youngest child in Cole's work, as he has been thrust into the role of "being the sibling ambassador." As the youngest of five, I was not used to being the only sibling in the house until my brother left for college. It was interesting for me to notice the changing dynamics in the house as my parents and I adjusted to a quieter, and less crowded home.
I never would have guessed that I could connect as deeply with a gardening article as I did with this one. My mother tries to be an avid gardener but just never seems to have enough time. Along with that, I have a little brother who is the only child still at home and he too is very tall and skinny as well. I feel like the author did a wonderful job painting a picture of being stressed, but ultimately is able to find her R&R in her son's thoughtfulness. This story really hit home with me, I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed this piece simply because of the writers fearless style and sense. It seems that these days everyone concentrates so strongly on created compositions that sound scholarly and educated that they forget what it's like to have fun with your writing. She took some chances,wrote a bit unconventionally, had some fun, and I think pulled it off very nicely. One of those rare pieces in the news that i would read the whole way through.
The piece was short and sweet. Except I thought it took too long into the story to make full circle and connect her themes of gardening and motherhood. Being an article in the gardening column, her storytelling was appropriate. The piece should be mostly about gardening, and if I was a garderner who was reading this I would have thought it was pleasant to hear a little bit about how the craft is an influence in her life. It seems a good approach to a personal essay from this article as well as the one about persimmons is to take something other than yourself and write around it, devoloping "I" by showing how you relate to that subject.
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