Laura Rink

Writer

Category: Memoir (Page 1 of 2)

Nobody Cares About Your Dead Relatives

March 18, 2025 / / 10 Comments

In the writing world the saying goes, nobody cares about your dead relatives. Or the living ones, for that matter. The fact that my Armenian grandmother was dear to me isn’t enough to endear her to readers. Saying my uncle gave me the best books for Christmas doesn’t keep a reader turning the pages. A reader doesn’t care that I got my interest in astrology from my great-aunt.

And yet I am writing a family memoir about some of my dead relatives, including my Armenian grandmother.

My grandmother and I shared a conviction that education helps form the foundation of a well-rounded, interesting, and fulfilled person. She urged me to marry a person who was college-educated because if not, what would we talk about? My grandmother was annoyed when my uncle gave me science fiction books Christmas after Christmas. Tsk-tsk, her tongue would click. Those aren’t the right kind of books for a young mind. I was thrilled with the sci-fi books and I don’t know whose reaction my uncle enjoyed more, a smile wide on his face. The books my grandmother gifted me? A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson when I was eight, and, when I was seventeen, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

My grandmother and I shared an idealism that the world could, and should, be a better place for all. She wrote letters to world leaders, including one in 1986 to Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, the Libyan dictator. She implored Ghaddafi to be an honest, strong, responsible leader, to make his nation prosper, and work for the PEACE OF THE WORLD.

My grandmother survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 which took one and a half million Armenian lives, men, women, and children. She was ten years old when the other Armenians in her village in Turkey were sent on a death march. She huddled with her family waiting for the knock on the door that would summon them to join the others. The knock never came.

When she was alive, my grandmother waved away my questions about her life in Turkey. Before I die, I hope to discover some answers, and turn those answers into a compelling story.

Nobody cares about my dead relatives? That is the challenge before me.

 

Haigazn Family circa 1914
Matilda, my grandmother, is the youngest

Delights and Joy: There’s a Difference

February 21, 2025 / / 10 Comments

Inspired by Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, I’ve kept a Daily Delights journal for the last two years. I wanted to do something different than being grateful at the end of the day. I wanted to note what made me smile or giggle, what lightened my heart, what delighted me. Each day gets one line. I write at least one delight, sometimes two or three. Some are obvious delights: owl on fence, walk in snow, massage. Others not so obvious: write (a struggle), started therapy, garden for hours. I keep the Daily Delights journal on my nightstand; it’s the first thing I do when I get in bed. When I travel, I write the delights on a notepad and tape the page into the journal afterwards. I’m delighted by my consistency in keeping this journal. There is room for another sixteen or so years in this leather-bound book.

As for my regular journal, which is a Word document on my computer, I write there irregularly and usually when life is hard, sad, depressing. So much so, I’ve added a note at the beginning.

Continue reading

Orbital Sunrises: A chance to revise sixteen times a day

January 27, 2025 / / 8 Comments

To my chagrin, this month’s blog started with a blank page. Usually I jot material that didn’t get used the month before into a new document. To which I’ll add ideas as they occur to me. That way, when I sit down to draft the blog in earnest, preliminary material is waiting to be shaped.

But this month, the first month of the new year, there was no waiting document titled January 2025, no preliminary words to consider, no potential energy on the page. This month on January 12th, I started with a blank page, which can be a little disheartening but look—already it isn’t blank. Sometimes the problem can become part of the solution.

Continue reading

NOVEMBER, A MONTH TO SWIM IN THE SEA

December 7, 2024 / / 6 Comments

“This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.” – Maya Angelou

 

This month, on November 6th, the citizens of the United States elected their next president. On November 8th, I left the country. I left my country for a planned trip to Central America.

In Central America, in the Caribbean Sea, I float. My heavy heart presses my body downward. Salted swells pitch me up. In a lullaby of lilting waves my body hovers, held in a melody of warm blue while at home a national symphony swells in a minor chord threatening to wreak major havoc. Havoc, what an odd word: n. widespread destruction; great confusion or disorder; v. lay waste to; devastate. Originally used in the phrase “cry havoc”: to give an army the order havoc. The order for plundering.

Can rights be plundered? Can freedom? “First they came for”. . . . by now you’ve read the poem. Reread the poem. Red poem. Heart’s blood. Lifeblood. Right to live, to love, freedom to be one’s own self, freely.

Continue reading

OCTOBER, A MONTH WHEN I DO THINGS FOR MY FUTURE SELF

October 30, 2024 / / 4 Comments

This month I didn’t meet my short-term writing goals of chapter revision which means I won’t reach my long-term goal of having a complete draft of my Armenian family memoir finished before my sixtieth birthday in February. I’ve written before about what is needed to do the writing: time and headspace. This month both of those were in short supply as I prepared for, had, and recovered from a cardiac ablation, a medical procedure to put, hopefully, an end to my atrial fibrillation (AFib) episodes.

What I did do this month, I did for my future self. I gave my future self a shot at a better physical outcome, and I’m moving the goal posts on the timeframe for a complete draft.

Continue reading

SEPTEMBER, A MONTH OF CHANGES

October 5, 2024 / / 5 Comments

While August was a month in which to soak up the warmth and outdoor activity of the summer season, September was a month of seasonal changes, especially as the month drew to a close, including the temperature (dropping, a bit quickly this year it seems), leaves shifting their color palette (a pleasure of this season), and the outside focus (a last camping trip) turning inward (cue the list of indoor projects).

Of course, the autumn weather will often be inviting, there is still the list of outdoor tasks to complete, and that finally final mowing, but the slowing rhythm of the season felt in the later sunrise and earlier sunset draws me inward.

Continue reading

AUGUST, A MONTH TO TAKE A BREATH?

September 4, 2024 / / 9 Comments

If July was all about travel and community, from my MFA residency in Tacoma, WA to my family reunion in southern Oregon, August is all about staying home and walking in the forest. Even if that is not exactly how the month has gone.

While I did walk in the forest this month—we had a few visits from a Great Horned Owl—the past four weeks contained much more activity than merely idle strolls. The days filled with guests, a mural festival, a brews cruise, concerts, and caring for my mother as she recovers from knee surgery. I also got back to work on my Armenian family manuscript.

Continue reading

MAY, A MONTH OF FLOWERS

May 29, 2024 / / 13 Comments

April’s bounty, and showers, continue with this month’s collection of blossoms: pink columbine, purple rhododendron, red salvia, sweet woodruff, and the sweet perfume of lilacs and lilies of the valley . . . to name a few.

This month also marks a year since I began blogging again. Writing can be a lonely occupation, so thank you for following along with my writing journey, responding to my assorted wonderings, and gazing out my windows with me at the beauty that resides there. Your comments, suggestions, and questions have made me feel in community with each one of you. I look forward to continuing these conversations. (If you don’t already, please consider subscribing to my blog. Thanks!)

In addition, it’s been a year of tending to my health, including physical therapy and mental health therapy, and discovering I have a heart condition, atrial fibrillation, commonly referred to as AFib. Remember how tired I was in December? Part of being tired was three months of heart problems that I kept attributing to other things: anxiety, panic attacks, sleep deprivation, and dehydration. I have a cardiologist now, and medication, and some ongoing issues we’re still figuring out.

Continue reading

APRIL, A MONTH WITH TWO ANNIVERSARIES

April 24, 2024 / / 9 Comments

April showers bring May flowers, so the saying goes. In other words, endure April for the reward of May. Yet April offers its own bounty: cherry blossoms, swaths of tulips, and the unfurling of maple leaves, to name a few. April also brings those showers, tree pollen, and temperatures often more like winter than spring. April is an energetic month.

Work: I’m drawn to quotes that reframe the challenges of writing and alter my mindset in an expansive and helpful way. For example, here is a recent newsletter quote from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits:

“If you feel resistance before you begin, it’s usually procrastination and you need to get started.

If you feel resistance after you begin, it’s usually feedback and you need to make adjustments.”

These days I do sit down and get started, because I’m eager to write this book about my Armenian family, to watch the shape emerge, morph, fall flat, and rise again. But it’s taken me a while to implement the second part of the quote. I’ll stare at paragraphs that aren’t working, as if time alone will somehow solve the problem. I’ll make line level edits as if tiny alterations can fix larger issues. (Sometimes they can.) But now I’ve realized a larger adjustment is often what is needed.

Continue reading

March, A Month To Spring Forward, Still

March 27, 2024 / / 2 Comments

The harbingers of spring continue this month, with azaleas, daffodils, and forsythia in full bloom, and maples, alders, and dogwood trees beginning to bud out. We have a mallard couple visiting our pond and a blush of robins spreads over the front field bobbing for worms.

Work: This month I’m poring over a ship manifest & port of arrival form, carbon copies of one great-aunt’s letters from the 1930s, and research on Battle Creek College, Michigan and the Montefiori Hospital in the Bronx, NYC. All that to help me reconstruct the story of how another great-aunt, Silvia (Sirvart) Haigazn, came to America in 1928, after surviving the Armenian Genocide, and subsequently established a new life for herself here. My struggles with this particular section are threefold.

Continue reading

JANUARY, A MONTH TOO SHORT AND TOO LONG

January 24, 2024 / / 7 Comments

January bears the burden of high expectations: A New Year! Resolutions! Winter projects! If last month I was tired, this month, the winter holidays behind me now, I felt ready to be productive—I will get so much done this month! And yet this month has flown by—is it really the 24th already?—and I have not gotten so much done. The too-long part of January isn’t an abundance of time for projects, but the endless dark and cold days. In Bellingham, we experienced negative temperatures for the first time in the twenty-six years we have lived here. I’m not a fan. Though comparatively it was interesting to experience twenty-three degrees as a comfortable temperature.

Work: In 2022, I set a goal to have my Armenian family manuscript completed and of publishable quality by my sixtieth birthday in February 2025. That goal felt reasonable and doable then. I set many intermediate goals. I moved those goalposts a few times. I have made progress but not as much as I’d hoped. Hence the high expectations for this January. And now I’m here, with only thirteen months left until I turn sixty. I’m not moving the goalposts this time, but I have altered the goal: a complete draft of decent quality, probably not ready for publication but ready for an editor, a fresh set of discerning eyes. To that end, I hope January, and February, continue to provide the perfect weather—dark, damp, and cold—to stay inside and write.

Do you set short- and long-term goals for your various projects? Any tips for helping to meet those goals? How do you feel about moving the goalposts or altering the goal itself?

Continue reading

Work, Wonder, and Windows

August 30, 2023 / / 10 Comments

Work: Have you heard the term micro prose? I recently took a class from Darien Hsu Gee, a fellow Rainier Writing Workshop alum, in which she illuminated the benefits of writing micro prose: pieces of 300 words or less. She is passionate about this form, and offered much practical advice and inspiration. The writing process she outlined included writing a first draft in ten minutes and then revising in two ten-minute sessions. The short timeframes makes this a flexible and doable practice. For me, this form will be a way to get difficult material down on the page in short bursts. For more information on micro prose, and free prompts, visit Darien’s website Writer-ish.com.

Tech update: On my website, the “subscribe to blog via email” is now available on mobile devices. After the blog post, scroll past the comment section, and at the very bottom is a place to put in your email and subscribe to my blog. Please let me know if that is not the case. I’m pleased that I figured this out on my own, though not thrilled at the number of hours I spent on it when I just needed to add a widget, which was obvious in hindsight and took mere minutes.

Continue reading

Work, Wonder, and Windows

June 29, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Welcome to my blog. First time here? Check out May’s blog for info on my intentions for this space.

Work: Last October while reading Judith Kitchen’s The Circus Train, a novella-length essay in fragments about, to name a few, mortality, Samuel Beckett, and memory, I came across this line: “I like the phrase ‘time on your hands’ when you can actively hold it and feel its weight.” In that moment I was transported back thirty years to an experience that altered my perception of time. I grabbed a pen and a notebook, and wrote the first draft of “Twenty Seconds,” an essay out in the current issue of Two Hawks Quarterly.

What does the phrase “time on your hands” make you think about?

Continue reading

Work, Wonder, and Windows

June 14, 2023 / / 4 Comments

June 2023

Welcome to my blog. First time here? Check out last month’s blog for info on my intentions for this space.

Work: I’ve started on the next draft of my book, my untitled Armenian family memoir. The last draft I refused to begin with page one—I was sick of page one. I was sick of the beginning that might not even be the beginning, in the end. I picked a pivotal section on page 43 and sailed forth from there. Last week I landed on page 191 with new insights for global revisions, my main goal for that draft. I’ve returned to the beginning, and those new insights are helping me see what belongs here and what decidedly does not, and the fate of the rest of the beginning is uncertain at this point. As a person, I prefer the familiar, the known, the certain. As a writer, I’ve found the only way forward, for me, is to make peace with losing sight of the shore and trust that new lands will appear, eventually, on the horizon.

A helpful resource to take along on the drafting journey: Seven Drafts by Allison K Williams.

How do you tackle your drafts? Always from the beginning? Or do you jump around?

Continue reading

Work, Wonder, and Windows

May 24, 2023 / / 17 Comments

May 2023

One of my motivations to write is connecting with others, and that connection can’t begin until the work goes out into the world. As I am currently writing a book, it’s a long slog before that engagement can begin. So I’ve decided to reboot, revive, and recommit to my blog.

This blog will be loosely organized in three categories: Work, Wonder, and Windows. What I am up to with my writing; wonderings inspired by books, podcasts, articles, essays, anything really; and what I’m seeing out my window on my borrowed piece of the planet between the Salish Sea and the Cascade Mountains.

Work: I’m expanding my MFA creative nonfiction thesis into a book-length work about my relationships with my Armenian grandmother and her two sisters, and the silence surrounding their life in Turkey and how they survived the Armenian Genocide. I’ve published two essays related to this work: “Geraniums” at Complete Sentence and “Tante Silvia’s Flinch Cards” at The Keepthings.

Continue reading

REMEMBER YOUR TRAINING

September 19, 2019 / / 15 Comments

When, not if, you get tossed out of your boat in a rapid on a river, don’t panic. Hang onto the boat if you can, and with or without the boat, assume the floating lounge chair position: feet up, knees bent, and head back. Ride out the rapid and then, in calmer water, make your way over to the river’s edge.

I know this advice—my extended family has been rafting the Rogue River in inflatable kayaks for almost forty years. I email this advice as a safety reminder every two years in July right before the family gathers at Indian Mary Campground in Southern Oregon for seven days of game-playing, socializing, and floating down the river. I don’t know whether anyone reads my email but my be-prepared mentality compels me to send it.

Continue reading

I WRITE MEMOIR, PART I

September 3, 2017 / / 12 Comments

In the third grade, I read The Little House in the Big Woods series of books. You could write about your own life—what a revelation! I wanted to do that. But also, a disappointment—my life wasn’t as interesting as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s. Mine was a normal life. Two parents and two sisters, a house on a cul-de-sac, school a half-mile walk away.

Continue reading

SPEEDY

September 15, 2016 / / 8 Comments

The vet assures me our cat’s ill health is not my fault. Speedy, our thirteen-year-old tiger tabby, has lost over three pounds, has a urinary tract infection, bleeding gums, and failing kidneys. Cats are stoic, the vet continues, by the time you realize they are ill, they are at death’s door. Speedy is dying, and I’m pretty sure it is my fault.

Continue reading

« Older posts

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2025 Laura Rink

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑