Susan Hagen's Blog
RSS
Dec.21.2011
On winter mornings leading up to Christmas, I sometimes see the imprints of small cloven hooves breaking the frost on the lawn.
“The julebukk was here!” I hear my child’s heart cry, and I’m leaning over the red Formica table in our...
Continue Reading »
Oct.10.2011
I had it all. Five acres of redwood forest, meadows, mountain views, even a pond with lily pads and floating flowers. Perfect weather. My writing buddy's wooden cottage, hand-built, appointed with everything a writer might need. Plenty of coffee, food for four days, two dogs eager to lie on each...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Oct.01.2011
"When I grow up I want to be a professional wrestler. My name would be the Hurracain. I would be a legend."
So writes Jacy in an essay I found recently on Kid Writers, a blogspot where fourth graders from Oregon are testing their chops. As a class, about half of these young writers were born in...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Sep.02.2011
If you and your family choose any 9/11 TV special to watch this week, make it CNN's "Beyond Bravery: The Women of 9/11." And if you're a parent, teacher, or school official, take advantage of CNN's free downloadable Educator and Parent Discussion Guide.
Besides the fact that Entertainment...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Aug.04.2011
A few years before Mom's Alzheimer’s got really bad, I took my parents on a road trip to Monterey Bay for Christmas. Throughout the ride, my mother narrated the workings of the natural world as she viewed them through sticky nerve cells and tangles in her brain.
We pass by orchards barren of...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Jul.29.2011
We were strangers when we met, but after sharing ten years in the orbit of a post-9/11 world, I realized this week how deeply the 30 women we interviewed for our book have come to live in my heart. Twenty-two of them gathered on Monday at the World Trade Center site, now forever known as Ground...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Jul.28.2011
My Mom took her last breath two years ago today, a shallow one that barely moved her chest, and then she was gone. But here in the glass-fronted cabinet in my living room, I keep small artifacts of her life to take out and hold when I'm thinking of her.
Today I chose the tin measuring...
Continue Reading »
4 comments
Jul.27.2011
I got my annual mammogram, and the results came back clean. I said a little prayer for you in that space of cleanliness, the letter still in my hand, thinking about the staples in your chest and the year of treatment to come, about the birthright of our friendship, babies sharing a meal next...
Continue Reading »
3 comments
"She could talk the flowers off the wallpaper."”
—My mother
About Susan
I've been a writer all my life. As a child, I made my own greeting cards and wrote rhyming poetry to fit the occasion: "It's your birthday Dear Old Dad; remember all the hair you had?" When puberty hit, I wrote sappy poems and disguised the...
Connections
