Dear readers and writers, this week I want to give you a sense of what it’s like to be in one of my workshops, so I’m highlighting the voice of one of my participants. I’m honored to share my Substack this week with my very first collaborator, Laurie Pomeranz. Laurie and I have written together for several years now in my one day retreats, and more recently, in my Wednesday night workshop. To say that Laurie is a treasured member of the workshop would be an understatement; she always listens to others carefully and responds to their writing thoughtfully. And she is often the first person willing to read something vulnerable, trusting the group in the deepest way.
This post highlights a piece she recently wrote about her beloved pet, Stewie, a handsome Siamese cat. Stewie often sits next to Laurie as she writes with us on Wednesdays, and this night in particular, her musing about the prompt brought her attention to his purring presence by her side. What follows is her story about their first meeting. What I love about this piece is how it represents what Pat Schneider used to call, “turning a corner”: that moment when you are writing, you see something shine, and you decide to focus on that image. Pat wrote:
As soon as that something else appears at the edge of your consciousness, abandon the exercise, and keep writing what that inner vision offers.
Laurie models this beautifully for us here.
The prompt is called, “Grains of Sand,” and is a slideshow of exactly that, magnified under a powerful microscope. You can view that slideshow here.
Here’s what Laurie wrote in response, followed by a poem from May Sarton.
Looking at grains of sand under a microscope is like looking at what I imagine a strand of DNA would reveal. What’s the origin story, the components that make up a life, the clues to decode that reveal history, mysteries unseen to the eye? We can piece together colors and shapes and chemical properties of the elements, and tell a story about what used to be there, what broke down and degraded to become this particular pile of sand crystals, on this particular beach.
We can share what we know of our own human origin stories with each other, passed along via generations, oral history, and now affirmed or clarified with genetic testing.
But, what about you, my precious Stewie, my beloved feline? What is your origin story? Who did you come from? How did you end up being who you are? What happened to your parents and siblings? How did you find yourself cowering behind a parking garage median, covered in fleas and grease, just fourteen little ounces? Was your mama hit by a car on California Street? Did you see it? How did a gorgeous blue-eyed Seal Point Siamese kitty end up in the Whole Foods parking lot, hiding out, alone? I’ve been thinking a lot about your beginnings today, the 7th anniversary since you so unexpectedly entered my life and blew my heart open.
I was in a counseling session with a high school boy. There was a knock at the door. No one ever knocks on the door when I’m in session, because there is a note on the door saying that I’m in session and to please email me or come back soon. If someone was knocking, they really needed me. Something was up. So, I asked my student to forgive the interruption, and I got up to answer the door.
It was Drew, a Senior. He was more hyped than he even usually was. “Mrs. P! I’m so sorry to interrupt, but we need help and I didn’t know who to go to. I thought you could help. We just found a kitten, abandoned in the Whole Foods parking lot. What do we do? I left the guys there with the kitten and said I’d come ask you for help.”
I told Drew to run back to Whole Foods and stay with the kitten, and I’d be there in a few minutes, after I wrapped up my meeting.
Ten minutes later, another knock on the door. Another ask for forgiveness at the interruption. It was Drew, holding a cardboard box, containing an itsy bitsy filthy little fluff with baby blue eyes. He was so tiny in that cardboard box. Drew said, “We found this box, so we just brought him here.”
This kitten. He was caked with fleas and flea dirt, and he had what looked like black bike grease matted into his light gray fur. He weighed next to nothing. I told Drew I would call Animal Care and Control for advice, and make sure that this little baby was safe.
Within about ninety seconds, texts were going out, and the word was spreading that there was a kitten in Mrs. Pomeranz’s office. The room quickly filled with students, big high school boys, wanting to hold the kitten. Football players, wrestlers, kids who may look intimidating because of their height and heft, they were mushpots when it came to this kitten. They held him like a fragile little egg. My heart was double melting, from this precious creature that was now in my office, and these extraordinarily tender boys, who may act tough and full of bravado, but were turned into little boys with their teddy bears when they held this kitten. The school was called Stuart Hall, so we decided to name the kitty “Stewie.”
Stewie, who landed in my life, so utterly unexpected, and has become one of my greatest loves of all time.
New Year Resolve by May Sarton The time has come To stop allowing the clutter To clutter my mind Like dirty snow, Shove it off and find Clear time, clear water. Time for a change, Let silence in like a cat Who has sat at my door Neither wild nor strange Hoping for food from my store And shivering on the mat. Let silence in. She will rarely speak or mew, She will sleep on my bed And all I have ever been Either false or true Will live again in my head. For it is now or not As old age silts the stream, To shove away the clutter, To untie every knot, To take the time to dream, To come back to still water.
Laurie Hessen Pomeranz is a San Francisco-based psychotherapist. For 10 years she worked in HIV/AIDS care and hospice bereavement counseling, and for 20 years she was a high school counselor. She’s written with Laguna Writers since 2023.
Her stories have been published in the BAYS anthologies, The Day My Nipple Fell Off, Shivering in a Paper Gown, Agony and Absurdity: Adventures in Cancerland, and Coming to Terms. She’s also had stories published in Salon.com, The Mother Company, Wildfire, and the anthology, I Am with You: Love Letters to Cancer Patients, edited by Nancy Novak, Ph.D. and Barbara K. Richardson.
Laurie and her husband, Jeff, have been married for 27 years, and are parents to a fabulously adventurous 23 year old son. Together, the three of them love to explore the world, above and below water. She loves to write, sing and dance, travel, scuba dive, paint, cook and snuggle her kitties.
