On a Wing and a Prayer–The Making of an Heirloom Book

Posted on May 6, 2026 by first person productions

Documentary filmmaker Gretta Wing Miller inherited letters and artifacts from her father’s military service as a pilot after both parents had passed away. Until that time, she did not know of these treasures’ existence. A labor of love for family, she carefully transcribed the letters, scanned the photos and envelopes and other memorabilia, and produced a digital book using Apple’s free word processing application, Pages. Pages allows users to write, design, and format books and export them directly in the EPUB format for publishing to Apple Books or other e-readers. Gretta then shared the digital book with family and friends.

But time passed, and Gretta began to wonder how she could get a physical copy of the 324-page book. To capture the feel of the time-aged envelopes, photographs, and newspaper clippings, she knew it needed to be printed in color–an expensive proposition with traditional printing.

I suggested she use Lulu.com, a print-on-demand service I have used with my clients. Print-on-demand services have the advantage of being affordable for print runs as small as one, but creators must choose from standard templates. Gretta was in luck–her 11 x 8.5 page size and desire for a spiral binding fit one of the templates Lulu offers. She uploaded her Apple Pages document and ordered printed copies. Now her family can page through their heirloom book in either digital or physical format.

Books have been around for nearly 2000 years. While the convenience and flexibility of digital publishing are important advances, when we think of treasures, we still think of objects we can hold in our hands.

Here are a few pages of Gretta’s book about her father, Richard Roy Miller, followed by the Introduction she wrote.

My dad is the first guy on the left.
Back cover: 3 yr old me with my dad’s Rolleiflex camera

Introduction

NANCY WING MILLER MARCH 30, 2015

“Take as much as you want, but eat all you take.”
 Chow line adage quoted often in the Miller household.

The father I knew, and that my siblings knew, was never a pilot, he was not a ‘war hero’. He always had a bad back, was always adventurous and fun to go places with. And, yes, addicted to alcohol.

I have known bits and pieces of this 3 year Air Corps story for most of my life, and in fact, my earliest visual memory is of the khaki shirtfront with the khaki tie tucked into the starched placket.

As a child, I did know of my father’s mid-air collision, although I called it his ‘plane crash’.

I read Jess Arnold’s Maxwell Post article many times, but it was only from the World War II Flight Training Museum Preservation Society (in Douglas, Ga.)  database that I learned that the other pilot was killed, and that his name was Lt. Michael A. Wood.

It was chilling to read his name in my father’s letters and hear him described as “my good friend.”

As I put this memoir together, I have been intrigued at how much this period had influenced my father in the rest of his life. He obviously loved to fly, and loved looking at the world from the air. Yet I can’t imagine him bombing and strafing.

He worked on many shows for American Turner’s in Detroit, but I did not know he had had so much Master of Ceremonies’ experience in Special Service.

My godfather is Ivan Tors (the creator of ‘Flipper’). He and my father had met in the Air Corps, and Tors predicted that I would go by the name of ‘Wing’ when I grew up. I did not know the extent of the big names from show business that he palled around with in the service.

I knew Harry Gorden and Marge Chase and Carl Sienel, but the only war story I heard from them was that Harry had been a prisoner in the war and didn’t like to talk about it, so don’t ask him anything. After the war he had gone over to talk to a buddy’s widow to tell her of her dead husband’s heroism, and that’s how he met Yvonne and they got married.

My father took me several times to flight lines at various airports. One time we climbed up into an open cockpit, me in the pilot seat with Dad teaching me how to pull the stick back to make the nose go up, and how the pedals worked the rudders to go left or right, and I remember asking him if this was the airplane he flew. He said, “No, but I wanted to.”

As we walked back across the tarmac, I asked him why he didn’t fly a plane now. I didn’t get an answer.

I remember standing on an observation deck at Willow Run Airport watching planes take off and land, smelling the jet fuel and exhaust fumes. My father told me that they built the war planes right in this factory and flew them out the door straight off to the war.

Transcribing these letters led me to wonderful archives that I didn’t know existed.

The World War II Flight Training Museum Preservation Society in Douglas, Georgia has a database of all the Cadets who trained there.

When I finished this memoir, I donated the original copies to the Center for American War Letters Archive at Chapman University in California.

I inherited these letters and artifacts only after both my parents had passed away, and until that time, I did not know of their existence, so I have had no opportunity to ask questions or get any more information than you will read here.

The photos add so much to the immediacy of the letters, and I guess my siblings and I will forgive Dad now for all the boring, endless minutes we had to stand posing for yet another photograph.

Dick’s father, Earl Miller, had passed away in 1934 of complications from rheumatic fever as a child. He had been a small-businessman: Miller Peanuts: Freshest in Town. (Miller Peanut Butter was reputed to be more popular in Detroit than the bigger brand Velvet according to Miller family mythology…)

With no pension or Social Security, Ruth Miller was forced to send her young daughter, Marilyn to live with her sister Marion and her husband Hazen Franz while she looked for employment.


A big part of Dick’s letters to his mother are spent trying to help solve some of the emotional and financial problems stemming from this heart-breaking separation.

© 2026 Gretta Wing Miller


Gretta Wing Miller has been a film & video editor and instructor since 1978, working mostly on documentary television series and specials, and independent projects. She has taught film editing at Hunter College (CUNY), Final Cut Pro tutorials, and Digital Filmmaking through the UW-Madison Education Outreach. As Downtown Dailies, we create documentary and advocacy video on local and regional issues for non-profits and independent artists.

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Another Day Comes, If I’m Lucky

Posted on April 29, 2026 by first person productions

By Carol Blatter

Carol described this as a “runaway story, or collage essay”–in other words an essay in which one thought prompts the next, the writer following in wonder at where the mind goes.

This huge truck, the longest truck I had ever remembered seeing in months, maybe years, pulled up next to our home. But, it did not come onto our driveway, that would have been a disaster, the truck was much too long to fit. On it was a mega-sized picture of an animal that after eating papers, the remains were flying all over, fitting for a shredding destruction mobile service.  Four boxes of clinical counseling charts and two boxes of miscellaneous house files, like old tax and medical records, were emptied and fed into the shredding machine. Remember when I was first licensed as a clinical social worker? Remember when I started seeing people? A long time ago.  

Anyway, about the boxes, clinical charts went through the machine, charts of individuals and families, poof, all gone, like death to people. Proof I was no longer a clinician. And death is getting closer, I lost two friends over a few months, poof, they were gone before they told me they were leaving. They just got up and left. I’m at the age when people, without my permission, leave. They die. Just like that, they leave. They die. And I’ll leave, too, I’ll die, and I won’t have any say in when it will happen. 

I was going to be an actress. That’s what I thought when I was a kid, after taking lessons for years, you know the kind that prepares you for the theater, acting, voice and diction, and dancing to help you move on stage, no klutzes, only actors who learned to move with grace and dignity. Grace and dignity, I can’t say that was me during those years, I was still a klutz, dancing helped, but not too much, I was who I was. Imagine I got here eighty-three years ago. My parents decided I had no say in entering life, and I’ll have no say in leaving it. Loss of control. I can’t control anything. Even getting up in the morning is beyond my control; it just happens. So I say a prayer thanking God for getting me up. 

Does God plan it, or is it dumb luck that I get up and even make it through the day? Carol died, not me, another Carol, she was sick. Colon cancer. She left behind two adult children, a third who disappeared and was never found, and five grandchildren. Fran died; she wasn’t sick, at least they didn’t think she was sick. She recovered from a hospital stay with pneumonia and was well, so she and her husband thought. Off to Florida for vacation, and in the wee hours one morning, she lay on the couch, her husband found her, and she expired. She left behind two adult children, they’re married and have children, yes, she had five grandchildren. I miss my friends. No one to call, chat, and share what’s happening in our lives. 

And the people I helped, I wonder what happened to them. Maybe they like themselves better. Maybe they like their spouses better. Maybe their kids are doing better. Less arguments. Less tumult. Less misery. What if things didn’t get better? I would feel sad. Many times I feel sad, and I don’t know why. Maybe getting older is scaring me and making me feel sad. Death may come at any time, and I will be taken. That’s scary. I’ll leave my husband, our daughter, our son-in-law, and our granddaughter behind. That’s our family, we’re small. I never wanted many children; one was enough. I never really liked kids, yes, I was a babysitter for many years, and I had to like kids then, and I needed the money for clothes so I saved my money from babysitting.

My parents are dead, my dad died of lung cancer at the young age of fifty-six, my mom died of atherosclerosis, plaque build up in the arteries of the heart, at age seventy-five and a half. Forty years ago, she died. Had her first heart attack at age forty-two, I was ten years old. I was scared she would die. I’ve outlived my parents, but outliving dad wasn’t difficult; he was so young when he died, and that’s because he was a smoker. If he hadn’t smoked or stopped years before, he would have lived into old age like others in his family. Never much of an earner. Never much of a Dad. Never had time or knew how to be a Dad. 

I am in good health with one exception. I’ve lost height, which I couldn’t afford to lose. I was always petite at 4’9″, and now I’m three inches shorter due to the fracture of vertebrae in my spine last year. I’m ashamed of the changes in my body. My breasts, diaphragm, and abdomen are all squished together. It’s hard to feel feminine. 

I don’t want to die. I want time with our granddaughter. She lives with her parents near DC, in MD. They make two visits to us a year. I’m tired of goodbyes. It’s because I’m old I have to say many goodbyes. To people. To my career. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die;. . .” Thankfully, I am still here. 

© 2026 Carol J. Wechsler Blatter

Carol J. Wechsler Blatter has contributed writings to The Gift of Long Life Personal Stories on the Aging Experience 2024 Birren Center Collection, Chaleur Press, Story Circle Network Journal, Story Circle Network Anthologies, Writing it Real anthologies, Jewish Literary Journal, Jewish Writing Project, New Millennium Writings, 101words.org, and poems to Story Circle Network’s Real Women Write and Covenant of the Generations by Women of Reform Judaism. She is a wife, mother, and a very proud grandmother, and a recently retired psychotherapist in private practice.

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Opening the Door to Memory

Posted on April 22, 2026 by first person productions

Learn how to follow your sentences into deeper territory

By Brenda Miller

True Stories Well Told is having a little “takeover” by the team of Sheila Bender and Brenda Miller to promote their writing retreat in Lake Garda next September, which I’ll be attending. You too?

Brenda posted this to her Substack on April 9th.

My new book, Love You, Bye: A Daughter’s Journey in Essays and Poems, officially debuts today! I’ve been a bundle of nerves, because this is truly the most intimate book I’ve written (in a long career of writing very personal work…) In this hybrid collection, I explore how my role as daughter shifts and evolves as I shepherd my parents to and through end-of-life.

In honor of my book’s birthday, and since we’re still in the Jewish holiday of Passover, I want to share with you the first piece in the collection, a flash essay called “Elijah”:

We’ve dipped the bitter herb in salt water and slathered our matzo in charoset. We’ve forked apart the tender matzo balls in their clear broth, and we’ve eaten the roast chicken. We’ve fingerprinted the plagues on our plates with grape juice. We’ve poured four cups of wine, and now a fifth.

My father rises from the table and opens the kitchen door.

At Passover we celebrate the way god protected us from his wrath, redirecting it instead to our enemies; by opening the door to the night, we say that we still, and always, believe in this divine protection. Even if we don’t believe. Even if we’re confused about why we ask for protection from the very force that threatens us. Even if our faith has diminished, we keep opening that door.

Or perhaps it is the front door. Or maybe we’re not in our own home at all, but at our cousin’s house, where the dining room is larger and the table big enough for 12. But I’d like to imagine it at our own table, the door open to the spring twilight, the nearly full moon. Elijah has his own place setting—with the fancy wine glass, encrusted in brass, brought out for the occasion, filled to the brim with Manishevitz sweet wine.

My father sits back down and calls for him: Elijah! Not a command, exactly, but a wheedling, a lure: Elijah! Come inside!

I don’t know what he looks like, Elijah. Most likely, your standard-issue prophet, with long beard and robe, a way of walking that makes every step intentional. Every year, I think I might glimpse him out the corner of my eye, an apparition slinking past, something you can’t witness directly. But I know it’s really not Elijah’s appearance that matters so much; it’s these few moments of waiting: the space between what we know for sure and what we can’t know at all.

In a few seconds, the table shakes and Elijah’s wine subsides a millimeter in the glass. We all clap, and my father laughs; he gets up to close the door tight against the night, but a wisp of Elijah’s presence remains.

Years later, now that my father is gone, I picture Elijah in my father’s flesh: with his wide grin, his dimples, his crooked teeth, his ha-ha-ha laugh. He bows his head—embodied and disembodied, pretends to drink to please us. And perhaps that’s what Elijah’s been all along: the ghost of all we love, come back to join us.

I wrote this little essay years ago, probably during Passover, zeroing in on the small details of the Passover seder. I’ve always remembered Elijah, not only at Passover, but anytime I leave a little food on my plate I say, jokingly, it’s “for Elijah,” and I kind of mean it.

I didn’t know where the essay was going until I got into it, and I let the details lead me somewhere new. I allowed myself to slow down, to be in that moment of waiting for the prophet to come inside, to feel that anticipation. The line “the space between what we know for sure and what we can’t know at all” emerged organically as I kept probing the “why” of the memory: Why do I remember this recurring ritual so clearly? What compels me to write about it? What makes the memory more than an anecdote?

These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves as we draft an autobiographical narrative. Without the “why” and some attempts at “because” the writing can remain on the surface and never find its deeper meaning.

I could have ended with my father closing the door, with the line “a wisp of Elijah’s presence remains.” This image concludes the memory, wraps up the short “plot” of the piece. But it still doesn’t get at the deeper “Why?”

The simple phrase “Years later…” springboards me beyond anecdote and into the emotional heart of the piece. By allowing myself to leave the memory scene and time travel to the present day, the narrator can look back with gained experience and wisdom. Constructing this memory in the context of my father’s absence, I discover that Elijah stands for all our ghosts, the longing that perhaps they are just outside the door, waiting to be invited back in.

I didn’t plan this ending; I simply followed the sentences along the path they made. I allowed for uncertainty, the “perhaps,” acknowledging that all moments contain rich interpretations.

I chose this little essay as the first piece in my book because it is, in essence, an invitation. This book is so much about many thresholds we cross in life and in death; opening the door seemed a natural way to begin this exploration.

Try it yourself: Write a specific memory of a family ritual you know by heart, staying close to the sensory details. Then write “Years later…” and keep going — let the older narrator arrive with whatever she now knows. See what’s waiting outside the door.

***

I’ll be teaching a workshop with the marvelous Sheila Bender in Italy this fall. While there, we will do this kind of work: delving into our memories, seeing what they hold. We’ll practice asking “Why?” We’ll practice doing some time traveling. We’ll say “perhaps…” We’ll look for the small, sensory ways into our most authentic selves on the page. Please consider joining us!

© 2026 Brenda Miller

Brenda Miller is the author of six essay collections, and her work has received seven Pushcart prizes. She co-authored the textbook Tell it Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, and The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World. She is Professor Emerita of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Her newest book, Love You, Bye, a hybrid collection of poetry and prose, is forthcoming in 2026 from Skinner House Books.

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Poem for My Left Hand, Usually Auxiliary

Posted on April 15, 2026 by first person productions

By Sheila Bender

Image by ChatGPT prompted by Sheila’s poem.

True Stories Well Told is having a little “takeover” by the team of Sheila Bender and Brenda Miller to promote their writing retreat in Lake Garda next September, which I’ll be attending. You too?

Where do poems come from? Where does engaging prose come from? What do we do when we want to write but don’t feel inspired? These are the writer’s questions.

We want to write, but a blank page or a blank screen is intimidating. How to start? How to find the real subject of what we might write in a free write? How to listen to our first words on a page and follow them to a next draft and a next, until we feel satisfied (perhaps with guidance from a good writing group) with what we have learned about our experience in a way we can reach another’s mind and heart directly through the senses (primary experience rather than thinking)?

I am sharing a poem I wrote at one of the times I had an urge to write but not a “topic.” I began to look at my hands. In the background of this looking was most likely that my son, who had died in a snowboarding accident years before and who I thought about daily, of course, was left-handed. And my mother was in her late 80s and also left-handed. And I felt the callous on my left hand where my ring had rubbed for years against an adjacent finger. I can tell you this now as I reread the poem. At the time of writing, I was merely suddenly fascinated with my left hand and how I would describe it. Hence, the title—since I am right-handed examining my left hand was a novelty.

Poem for My Left Hand, Usually Auxiliary

For this poem, it will be primary—

the handedness of my son, gone now 15 years,

and handedness of my mother still here at 89,

my love for her clearer, I was going to say,

each year, but at our ages, accelerating

by the hour is more accurate.

Wedding band, age spots, veins a bumpy path

to the galaxies at each of my knuckles

and then between the digits, valleys,

quiet, storing reserves and resources.

***

What did I learn from this poem? That I am living with the sadness life brings but also with a certain pleasure in knowing that I could and would be able to face losses as I age. I was accepting life and honoring love. Now as I read what seems like a simple poem, I also feel its depth, like it is about being wedded to life and mortality.

I couldn’t have known this at first as I explored my left hand.

I am sharing this to help writers see that close observation and exploration of how we feel in any one moment guides in choosing images that yield writing whether we are aware of what we are doing or not yet aware.

Try it—look at something tangible that you usually overlook. Allow your words to come. Later, listen to the way your words speak to you and trim, or expand, to make this conversation your writing introduced experiential (taken in through the senses), allowing the images that have arrived to do the work.

***

Brenda Miller and I will be teaching a writers’ workshop the last week in September in Lake Garda, Italy. Together we will help attendees listen to what they draft in freewriting and what they have already drafted for mining the writing toward evocation and discovery, and to become unstuck in stuck places.  Take your writing to the next level whether you are new to writing or already published. For a video we made on how we teach and information about the workshop and meeting the group for travelling from Milan to Lake Garda, click here.

© 2026 Sheila Bender

Sheila Bender founded WritingItReal in 2002 to facilitate those who write from personal experience. Her current books include Writing Personal Essays: Sharing and Shaping Your Life Experience and Since Then: Poems and Short Prose. She enjoys her role as an instructor for Women on Writing and Il Chiostro as well as with Writing It Real. You can learn about her at WritingItReal.com and sheilabender.substack.com.

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Publishing Opportunity?

Posted on April 8, 2026 by first person productions

Reposting for Sheila Bender of “Writing It Real”

from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

WE NEED YOUR HELP.

The aliens are coming. Or at least they told us they were.

They asked us for just one item: a written document from humanity.

This is the only thing they are going to read before they arrive.

We have no idea what the document should be, so we’re asking you.

Should we share a history of humanity? An introduction to your family? A science fiction story? A description of a sunset? A narrative from your life? A joke?

We’re not sure (yet), but we’d like your help. We’re giving $2,000 USD to the best submission. Second and third place get $250 each.

We’re going old school here. You’ll have to physically mail in your writing, and it needs to reach us before May 15, 2026.

Up for saving humanity? Enter your email and we will send you the instructions:


https://www.dearaliens.net/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Sarah White here. Sheila Bender is a fellow writing instructor and online friend. We’ll meet for the first time in Lake Garda next September, when I’m attending a writing retreat she and Brenda Miller are hosting. You know what would be cool? You joining us! Details below.

Have you ever dreamed of writing in Italy?
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The Agawa Canyon Day Trip

Posted on April 1, 2026 by first person productions

By Sarah White

Lake Superior Provincial Park, 1970: From left: My oldest brother Andy, Mother, and Father
Hiking: Father, Mother, me, brother Andy. Photos by brother Dave.

Whenever a weekend was coming up, and my parents thought the weather forecast looked good, my brothers and I would get the word: “Pack your pillowcase. You have an hour. We’re going camping.” That meant we needed to fit everything we thought we’d need in one pillowcase: clothes, underwear, pajamas, books, stuffed animals. Mother would take care of raincoats and sweatshirts, but anything else we might need was up to us.

While we stuffed our pillowcases, Mother pulled the big aluminum ice chest and the dry goods box from the shelves in the garage next to the big white station wagon–the shelf where all our family camping gear stood at the ready. She emptied the fridge into the ice chest and checked the supply of canned goods in the dry goods box. In an hour, we could be ready to go, the wayback filled with the cooler and dry goods box, and between them and the rear seat, a soft area made from the big rectangle that was our canvas tent, topped with the sleeping bags and foam mattress pads. Any child in need of a nap or just freedom from being squished in the middle of the back seat was welcome to lounge back there.

On top of the car went a little fiberglass boat filled with more gear and toys. Strapped on top of that were the folding chairs. Rolling down the highway, we probably looked like Okies headed west from the Dust Bowl.

If a weekend was all we had, we might head anywhere in Indiana or south across the Ohio River into Kentucky. Seems like campsite reservations were never a problem in those days, the mid-1960s.

Camping was when I liked my family the best. My brothers weren’t as mean to me. Mother and Father weren’t as tense. Nature was all around us, and we were the better for it.

Once a year in August, starting when I was six, we packed even more gear into the station wagon and headed north to Canada. The activities were roughly the same, but the boreal forest setting made my heart sing. I felt in my bones that this was where I belonged.

As the youngest of three, no one ever consulted me about anything. I was never offered a role in the planning or even asked my opinion about our camping life. It never dawned on me that I could, or should, have a say. That changed one day in August 1970 when I was nearly 14, I spoke up.

We were camped at Lake Superior Provincial Park, deep in the forest on the northern coast of Lake Superior. It was a spectacular setting, with inland lakes as well as the wild Superior shore, and miles of rocky trails crowded by blueberry bushes.

While camped for our usual two weeks, we enjoyed all our well-honed family rituals—the sandwiches and desserts made with the “quickie-pie” device, night walks to the shore to lie on our backs on the stony beach while Mother pointed out constellations with a flashlight, drives into town for groceries and laundromats to dry our soggy clothes and bedding after it rained.

Returning from one of these town trips, we stopped at the park gatehouse to read notices on a bulletin board. There, I saw an advertisement for the Agawa Canyon Train Excursion. It was a day trip, with several hours for picnicking and fishing between the outbound and return legs.

As we got back in the car, I said, “We should do this!” And for the only time I can remember, my voice was heard. Father and Mother agreed it sounded like a fun day trip, and the brothers didn’t raise objections.

And so the next day, we did it: boarded the train and rode through gorgeous scenery deep into the canyon. When the train stopped, we disembarked on the grass-carpeted valley floor. After a picnic lunch, Father got out his fishing gear and settled in beside the stream that gurgled through the narrow valley. The rest of us hiked up to the Lookout, a promontory approached by a trail that turned into 300 stair-steps. The view was magnificent—vast and empty of human structures, other than the toy-sized train on its tracks below and the picnic area beside it, where our fellow day-trippers were scattered about like tiny dolls. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Mother said. The brothers said nothing, but even so, I felt a silent “thank you” slide toward me. I felt as if I’d grown an inch.

For the first time I can remember, my family took direction from me. And as it turned out, that was the last time, as well. That was the last summer Canada camping trip. We three siblings were teenagers now, headed in new directions. But I’ve always treasured the memory of that day I got us to Agawa Canyon.

©2026 Sarah White

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On Writing Prompts

Posted on March 25, 2026 by first person productions

By Sandra Hurtes

This is the second of a two-part series. Last week, Sandra’s essay reflected her use of writing prompts to find a story she wanted to tell.

Browsing in Portugal

I love writing prompts. Someone else’s idea of what to write takes me away from the serious nature of memoir writing, which I’m often involved in. When I get too deep inside myself, I need to take a break and write something else. I recently noticed a course given by Narratively, advertised on Substack, “28 Days 28 Prompts,” $95.00. I was in.

Prompts arrived by email and were also on the Substack page by 6:15 a.m. I love to write in the morning when my thoughts are not yet diffused by a day’s events. Each prompt felt like a gift. As I read, I wondered, where will this ask me to go today? The prompt that generated my essay, “When the tour detours,” had to do with parenting. Readings that explored different viewpoints on the topic were included. In addition, there were two to three suggested entry points.

Since I’m not a parent, and my goal was to stray from memoir, finding my story took a bit of hide and seek. My Portugal vacation came to mind, specifically when I had been in the hotel bar, lost in a sea of parents. As one by one the achievements of kids and grandkids unfolded, I came face-to-face with an issue I often battled. (So much for avoiding memoir.) I have no children by choice and by chance. I have complicated feelings about that, but didn’t feel I had to explain that to the group. Yet, I wanted to be seen. I surprised myself when I spoke up and took the conversation in a different direction—that of being a born and bred New Yorker.

I wrote almost the entire essay in one hour. First, I wrote a draft, edited, then cut and pasted it onto the comment board where my classmates and teachers could read it. We didn’t critique one another. Rather, we pointed out what we liked and related to. It seemed every one of us had found our own way into the topic. In the 28 days, we formed a supportive virtual community.

I discovered I had a lot of untapped material inside myself. I also saw that I could write fast, which I never thought I could. Halfway through the month, I confidently skipped the draft phase and wrote straight on the comment board. I generated a lot of work in those 28 days and am currently turning my third draft into a completed essay. The prompt had to do with vacations. Since Portugal was taken, I sifted through my memories for fresh material and came up in Club Med 1980s…but that’s another story.

©2026 Sandra Hurtes

Sandra Hurtes is a writer and teacher living in New York. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Women in Judaism, and numerous other publications.

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When the Tour Detours

Posted on March 18, 2026 by first person productions

By Sandra Hurtes

This is the first of a two-part series. Next week, Sandra reflects on working with writing prompts, like the one that led to this essay.

Downtown Cascais
View from hotel

The pouring rain during my vacation in Portugal sent me and many others on my tour group to the hotel bar. We pulled up comfy chairs and formed a semi-circle around a coffee table. I was traveling alone and liked having the security of the tour group. There were people to talk to at almost all turns— on exploratory walks, during meals, on the van that ferried us around. But what to talk about when we were on our own, no tour director, no sightseeing, no scripted agenda?

Well, “the children,” of course. At least for this, shall we say, past middle-aged group. A gregarious gentleman set the tone. He described his son’s academic and athletic feats as if we knew the boy and could feel the thrill of his achievements. The son was offered scholarships to two Ivies. With a quick glance around the circle, I noted rapt attention on everyone’s face. Were they really interested? I wondered. Perhaps my growing unease didn’t show.

I stood and walked to the bar to place an order. I flirted with the bartender, who was much younger than I. It was harmless chatter that quelled my need for frivolous conversation. Back with my group, a mother traveling with her adult daughter spoke about her grandkids who had just WhatsApp’d her from a theme park. When she was back home, the kids would be waiting.

The seat close to a man traveling solo opened. In a whispered tone, I asked what he thought of the conversation. He said he didn’t mind. He had nephews and nieces, and he had never wanted his own children. That was the difference between us; I had wanted children, but my life hadn’t worked out that way. But then again, wasn’t I lucky for my capacity to converse on many topics simply because I had no children?

I was about to say, “So, where do you guys live? Anyone reading anything good?” But my mind did a 180, as I suddenly understood the shut-out feeling my mother had often spoken to me about. Around the swimming pool at her Florida condo, the women bragged about their grandkids, of which there were always a few visiting, splashing in the pool, impossible to not see. My parents were the only non-grandparents in the circle. My father played cards, and I doubt the talk was grandkids. But my mother, a gregarious and intelligent woman, was lonely among her peers. At that moment in the hotel bar, I wished that I could soothe her, tell her, “I know exactly how you feel, mom.”

I felt lonely, too, even after I turned the focus to myself. During a brief pause, I said, “I don’t have children. I’m not sure how to break in, what to say.” There was an even longer pause, but then, the wife of the braggiest man said, “I didn’t think of that. Tell us about yourself.” The stage was mine, and I fumbled for a while but found my footing once I said I was a born and bred New Yorker. Everyone related to New York—college years, theater trips, children living in Williamsburg—veering dangerously close to the children again—but wound back to a reminiscence about single days living in a tiny studio in the West Village.

I was happy when the rain stopped. I stepped outdoors with a few travel companions into the clean, fresh air. Downtown was a short walk away. We walked single file along a narrow bluff across the road. The view of the Atlantic Ocean’s crashing waves, one wave after another and another, was spectacular. Sudsy water rose and curled inside the waves. Rather than take out my camera, I memorized the natural wonder. I would call upon that image the next time loneliness took me over. I would remember, I was there.

©2026 Sandra Hurtes

Sandra Hurtes is a writer and teacher living in New York. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Women in Judaism, and numerous other publications.

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You Forgot Something

Posted on March 11, 2026 by first person productions

By Marlene Samuels

My son David and our friends’ son Giancarlo
David (4 weeks)

We’d read every book— about the experience, recovery, getting organized—plus had watched numerous documentaries. Four weeks before our life-changing event of becoming parents, our obstetrician encouraged us to register for Lamaze class taught by Nurse Practitioner Maureen McDougal, Chicago’s ultimate authority.

I was beginning my last trimester. Larry, my husband, and I were at least ten years older than every couple in the class except Maria and Enrico. The four of us hit it off immediately that first meeting. A May-December marriage, Enrico presented as an elegant gentleman. A successful architect from Italy, he was eighteen years Maria’s senior. He arrived to classes attired in his interpretation of casual: gray flannel slacks, cashmere blazer, silk shirt, ascot at his neck. We marveled that he felt comfortable for sitting on a floor mat to support Maria during our exercises. 

“Quickly, take your places, everyone!” Ordered Nurse Maureen, our distinguished instructor. She clapped her hands loudly as though calling kindergartners to order, one of her numerous annoying habits. “Folks, we’re on a schedule. Your babies aren’t!”

“Gentlemen, be seated on your mats, cradling your partner’s head in your lap. Remember, your job is to ensure her comfort!” We scrambled into position for our first exercise. Women awkwardly lowered themselves. “Men, no whining about leg cramps! Tough it out. You’re not the ones giving birth.” As we assumed our positions, Maureen shouted more commands.

“Okay, time for breathing practice. I must have undivided attention.” Everyone nodded. “First, we’ll exhale fully before deep breathing. Ready? Exhale! Now deep inhale! Hold for ten now, exhale slowly.” Maureen possessed the finesse of an army drill sergeant. By the end of our first class, she’d earned the moniker, “Lamaze Nazi.”

During week two, Maureen issued her three-minute warning to get into position. We’d barely returned to our mats following a fifteen-minute break when Maureen and my husband engaged in a stare-down, a death-glare really. He’d joked about focal-point exercises with Maria and Enrico, “I’ll bet Lamaze-breathing is like aspirin.” He whispered too loudly. “It works, but you have to believe.” They burst out laughing, actually guffawing. Larry inadvertently made eye contact with Maureen, who was hardly amused.

Sunday Lamaze classes became our weekly foursome ritual. After class, we’d go out for lunch. By our last session, Maria was too exhausted to eat out, and I focused only on changing into my Hawaiian muumuu. We had zero interest in food or socializing. “You’re due next week, right?” Asked Maria as we bid one another goodbye and good luck.

“How’d you remember?” I asked. “And you?”

 “Two weeks, three days, but who’s counting? I have a great idea! Let’s have a reunion dinner at the end of June. We each should have had our babies, and we’ll be more than ready for adult company. Interested?” An ex-fitness trainer, Maria was that pregnant woman other pregnant women resented because, from any view but sideways, she didn’t look pregnant. I feared she’d be reunion-ready well before I was.

The last Friday of June, my phone rang. I grabbed it, my shrieking newborn flat against my chest. “Hey, Marlene,” the familiar voice said, “it’s Maria. Remember me?”“How couldn’t I?”

“So, whad’ya have?” She asked.   

“A boy, three weeks ago. You?”

“Same, two weeks ago. You up for getting out yet? My mom’s helping with Giancarlo so I’m actually getting some sleep.”

“I’d love to, but honestly, I’m not ready to leave David with anyone.”

“Of course you aren’t. So I’ll cook dinner, and you’ll all come over!” She sounded like a peppy, excited schoolgirl. “We have a porta-crib, so we’ll put the babies to sleep in the same room. My mother’s in our guest room next to the nursery. She insists she’ll take care of them.”

 “Wow, that sounds fantastic!” I could hardly believe her invitation.

“Does next Friday, six-thirty-ish work?”

 I hung up the phone with a new understanding of cabin fever. The prospect of socializing underscored that it would be the first time in months I’d wear clothes not designed by Omar-the-Tent-Maker.

We parked in their building’s garage. Nervously, I lifted our newborn from his car seat while Larry emptied our trunk of enough gear for a month abroad. We entered the lobby. The doorman called our friends, announcing our arrival. “I’ll key in their floor for you.” He said, holding the elevator doors. “You’re going to the penthouse.”

The elevator doors opened directly into their apartment. Elegantly dressed, Maria and Enrico were waiting. The instant Maria saw us, she giggled, “Hey, we’re grown-ups again!”

Their stark white living room’s ultra-contemporary furniture was a contradiction to Enrico’s reserved appearance. Touring the apartment, we admired the skyline from their penthouse. Simultaneously, we realized it was time to ready our newborns for bed. Remarkably,  both fell asleep immediately, and we repaired to the living room for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Next, Maria directed us into a narrow dining room where a massive black granite slab supported on six concrete pillars served as their dining-table.

“Marlene, sit there.” She said, pointing to the end of the table. “It’s the best view of Chicago at night.” I was mesmerized by the skyline from the fifty-fifth floor. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner, several wines, a pasta first course, Osso Buco, salad, then tiramisu. Next were cheeses and shots of Grappa. We laughed hysterically. We ate chocolates. We laughed some more. Maria proved an outstanding cook. 

After weeks stuck home with less sleep than either Larry or I needed, our evening out was an excellent break, but by eleven o’clock we were exhausted. “It’s gotten so late!” Larry said, consulting his watch. “We need to get going.”

“Such a brilliant idea and fabulous evening!” I gushed to our friends. “Next time, our house.” Enrico pressed the elevator’s call button while we chatted away. The doors opened. We hugged and kissed, Italian style — cheek to cheek to cheek— agreeing to get together soon. Larry and I stepped into the elevator, totally relaxed, given the evening’s food and wine.

Suddenly, horror hijacked Maria’s face. The elevator doors were closing and she shrieked, “Oh my god, you can’t leave! You forgot your baby!”

©2026 Marlene Samuels

Marlene holds a Ph.D., from University of Chicago. A research sociologist by training, she writes creative non-fiction by preference. Currently, she is completing her book entitled Ask Mr. Hitler: A Memoir Told In Short Story.  She is coauthor of The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival, and author of When Digital Isn’t Real: Fact-Finding Off-Line for Serious Writers. Her essays and stories have been published widely in anthologies, journals, and online.  (www.marlenesamuels.com)

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It’s that time again: “Throw me somethin’, Mister!”

Posted on March 3, 2026 by first person productions

Mardi Gras was three weeks ago, but I can still ask you to “Throw me somethin’, Mister,” as they say in the Big Easy.

This time one year ago, I was experiencing my first day in Ascoli Piceno, joining the people of the language school I was about to spend two weeks studying with, in a walkabout in Ascoli’s Carnevale.

In Ascoli, they don’t throw plastic trinkets–they toss “coriandoli”, paper confetti. But what I want you to throw me are your stories, true and well told.

That’s a writing technique called “borrowed interest” and I’m not ashamed to use it to fill the digital pages of this blog. I publish writing prompts, book reviews, and stories from my own life, but my favorite content is YOUR stories.

Here are the guidelines. Now throw me somethin’, Mr.,  Ms., whoever you are! Send your true life stories to sarah.white@firstpersonprod.com and I’ll consider them for publication here.

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