So I survived then, didn\u2019t I? In those harsh winter months?
\nI took up stamp collecting. Thinking. Traveling. Why? In harsh winter,
\n
\nmonths following weather of convertibles and zoology, she didn\u2019t say,
\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t you major in psychology?\u201d No, in harsh winter months
\n
\nshe also never said, \u201cLet\u2019s go to the gym, shoot some hoops.\u201d Her inimitable
\n handwriting in loops and insults, and we fought, always, in harsh winter.
\n
\nMonths left me floundering and flailing, desperately seeking love until
\nmy mother began ailing, the internal cancers peaking: finally, in harsh
\n
\nwinter months prevailed. She bellowed and snapped, but I found
\nmy territory and dreamed, then created a map in harsh winter months
\n
\nfilled with foreign stamps, chewed pencils, surrounded by tattered
\nbooks. The fiction and poetry of seasons, of icy harsh winter
\n
\nmonths when I made bread and cakes, burnt offerings, learning to cook,
\nslathering poetry like butter. How else to survive harsh winter months?
\n
\nI still wear the face of ordinary, make souffl\u00e9s, collect my postage,
\nand mail myself, A. Parker, to distant countries with harsh winter months.
\n
\n
\nAlysson B. Parker is a writer by passion but a secondary school teacher, freelance editor, and journalist by financial necessity. She has published work with Driftwood Press, The Binnacle, Northern New England Review, Ophelia Street, Scars, Kota, Deep South (New Zealand), A Room of Her Own, ExPat Lit, and other miscellaneous publications. A regular contributor to EnPointe magazine, she has lived in many different countries and a variety of funky situations, but right now she and her family \u2013 plus two cats and a mutt who should be paying rent \u2013 live north of Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I survived then, didn\u2019t I? In those harsh winter months? I took up stamp collecting. Thinking. Traveling. Why? In harsh winter, months following weather of convertibles and zoology, she didn\u2019t say, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you major in psychology?\u201d No, in harsh winter months she also never said, \u201cLet\u2019s go to the gym, shoot [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-2476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-lone-tree-yellowstone-by-anita-erdmann"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2481,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions\/2481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}