Essays on Childhood

Essay Project Deadlines – EXTENDED!

Elizabeth Gaucher — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:02:12 +0000

Been meaning to join this year’s project but thought you didn’t have time? Check out our new timeline! You now have until May 15, 2013, to get on board. The 2013 theme is “Wild Things.” Questions? edg@longridgeeditors.com.

http://essaysonchildhood.com/writing-guidelines-and-current-schedule/

Essays on Childhood: Wild Things | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:13:51 +0000

Over the past year, I’ve become fascinated with stories about childhood encounters with animals. It started with Julian Martin’s description of his grandmother clubbing, skinning, and cooking a groundhog; since then, it seems everywhere I turn I hear great stories about courage, life and death, love and affection, loyalty and hearbreak connected to children and animals.

What’s your story?

via Essays on Childhood: Wild Things | Esse Diem.

Alzheimer’s Strikes by Laura J. Little | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:31:44 +0000

Often, I was the one who stayed an hour or so with Grandma so that Dad could bathe, eat dinner, or pay bills. I had one job: Make sure Grandma did not leave the house. How ironic it was that going home to her meant leaving the house that she and my grandfather built forty years before. Her mind was trapped in a much earlier time.The road that she traveled to get home was a rutted dirt road populated by horses and buggies and the occasional car that moved aside whenever the driver saw someone walking along the road. She did not recognize that it was seventy years later; by now the road was a major U.S. highway, well-traveled by cars and tractor-trailers that would not see her walking in the middle of the road until it was too late.

via Alzheimer’s Strikes by Laura J. Little | Esse Diem.

How Esse Diem Purples: Announcing the Next Essays on Childhood Theme | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:55:33 +0000

via How Esse Diem Purples: Announcing the Next Essays on Childhood Theme | Esse Diem.

In a Man’s Voice: Outside by Brent Aikman | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:20:12 +0000

Ours was the third house to be built in the ‘new’ neighborhood. A subdivision of homes was being built in the woods. THE WOODS. We moved into the house in the fall, and I played in the woods around the house beginning then and through the winter. When I turned seven in April my mother sent me outside to play.

“No really, you have to go outside… and play… Go…”

So I went. Outside. Into THE WOODS.

via In a Man’s Voice: Outside by Brent Aikman | Esse Diem.

In a Man’s Voice: The Jersey by Vernon Wildy, Jr. | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:04:54 +0000

Middle school started to show me that football could put a boy at the top of the popularity totem pole. The players always seemed to have the prettiest girls talking to them and they got the most attention around school. That was especially true when game day arrived. The team members always had a tradition of wearing their jerseys at school all throughout that day. The school would be dotted with light blue jerseys bouncing around campus. Everybody got excited for the games, especially if they were playing at home. Those days we didn’t have to ride the school bus home. We could stay after school, watch the game, and have our parents pick us up after the game was over. But when you saw those blue jerseys around campus, they were not being worn by the players.

In a lot of cases, those jerseys were being worn by girls.

via In a Man’s Voice: The Jersey by Vernon Wildy, Jr. | Esse Diem.

Broken Shells by Melanie Bartol Jones | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 13:01:58 +0000

Once I strolled down the beach with my mom when I was a little girl. We were looking for shells after a long day of salty air and strong sun and my eyes were tired. To be honest, I did not really want to be there except my mom and I always looked for shells together and there was no where else to go. I kept staring at the grains of sand and could only find thin, cracked shells that had been tossed one too many times in the powerful arms of the ocean.

Although my mom did not want to pick those shells up, I thought they were the most beautiful ones. Their colors were the most vibrant and I imagined that if they could talk, the broken ones would have the most interesting story.

via Broken Shells by Melanie Bartol Jones | Esse Diem.

This World Is Not My Home by Jeremy Paden (part 8) | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:17:41 +0000

After a life spent wandering from place to place in service of the church, my wife, kids, and I now live an hour from Cane Ridge, the very spot where our movement began. For four years we’ve called Kentucky home. I’ll always long for the Caribbean, always feel like moving after a year or two, always think the only real mountains in this world are the Sangre de Cristos.

via This World Is Not My Home by Jeremy Paden (part 8) | Esse Diem.

This World Is Not My Home by Jeremy Paden (part 7) | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:58:26 +0000

Mom taught me to love saffron, cilantro, bread fruit. Taught me to cook, taught me only to barely ever follow a recipe, should instinct or lack of ingredients dictate otherwise. And she has passed on to me this love of food and cooking, this adventure into the world of the senses.

via This World Is Not My Home by Jeremy Paden (part 7) | Esse Diem.

This World Is Not My Home by Jeremy Paden (part 6) | Esse Diem

Elizabeth Gaucher — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:51:24 +0000

That summer I read Whitman, played bocce and drank beer with my grandfather, sat on the front porch and had conversations with my grandmother, dug fence posts, watered his pear trees, built a retaining wall, linseed oiled the wood on the adobe house, drove up to Chaco canyon to tour the ruins. I worked the land every day: hoeing, weeding, watering the trees. Both my grandfather and I ignored the hard fact that his pear orchard was a chimera. They never produced fruit; and, now, they are not there. But it was a lesson in tending a plot of land, in living in a place with a contentious history, in learning how to be both of these United States and something other.

via This World Is Not My Home by Jeremy Paden (part 6) | Esse Diem.