April 3, 2026

I’m Rarely Alone in Here

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under creative writing, Family, growth, love, Photos, surviving, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Louie, the Silken Windhound, inspects a recently fallen tree after one of Mother Nature’s mood swings with high winds. Photo by the author.

It gets crowded sometimes in my world. My mother’s voice encouraging me to do what I do best. My dad yelling from the other room, “If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all!” I know he didn’t really mean it as cruelly as it sounded. But my 16-year-old self took it quite hard.

They’re both gone now. But even so, nearly 50 years later, those words still ring in my ears at times, feeding self-doubt as I make my way, once again a widow in the world.

Other voices laugh, whisper, encourage, and cry softly. Keith, my first love, encourages me to take the risks. “Fiji? Why not?” He said. “Sounds good to me!” And so our path was set to the South Pacific, thirty-five years ago, and yet still seems like yesterday. 

Then and now, he sometimes would give me a hard time about being compulsive about things… but I was too timid, really, back then. So bravado sometimes came out instead. Aging without him here beside me these last 14 years has changed a lot of that in me. 

But it has changed him, too. His sometimes harsh teasing in the past has become softer, more assertively encouraging. “Don’t let your own self-doubt, and that imposter syndrome, take you down.” I can hear him whisper gently, but firmly in my ear.

I miss him holding my hand. I miss his hugs that seemed to wrap around me like a shield against the world’s troubles.

Steve, only 10 months gone, walks with me on occasion. Like the distracted child, he is off learning new things, or catching up with old friends in the world gone by, beyond the liminal veil that keeps him just out of my reach. I miss him holding my hand. I miss his hugs that seemed to wrap around me like a shield against the world’s troubles.

But I hear him when he decides to pop up into my head. “Yes! That’s the way. Don’t forget to shim the ends out,” he says. “Be careful to check the length of that screw for that door!” he reminds me, as I begin to install new shades in the living room. Thankfully I understood his guidance, since the barebones instructions that came with the packaging didn’t mention anything. And the Youtube videos were even less helpful.

I walk around the sunlit yard, still cold as Springtime brings Mother Nature’s mood swings. Today 70 and warm, tomorrow freezing with snow, the next day a little warmer again but with a harsh driving wind. But then along comes a dreary grey cold rain… and my mood swings, too. 

And sometimes I just want to stay in bed all day.

Then the visitors come. And they tell me – “Rise and Shine, my girl!” 

“You’ve still got a lot of living left to do! So don’t waste a minute of the life you have! For soon enough, you’ll be on the other side when your time comes, whispering advice to those left behind.”

I pull the covers harder over my head.

copyright 2026 © Mara Jevera Fulmer

 

February 28, 2026

Jeweled Beads of Wisdom

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under beginnings, creative writing, Family, growth, love, magic, Photos, poetry, Travel, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Dawn view from the mountainside above San Martin de los Piramides, Mexico, 2006. Photo by author.

Each place is a step along the winding path that has brought me here to this hovel in the countryside, a widow twice over, the mother of grown children, step mother to those who would still have me after the last husband passed away. And grandmother to those I can still hug in person or across the miles through the miracle of FaceTime.

Each place still hangs with me, its whispering wisdom, magic, and spirit, for me to carry to the next stop along my way, though that path is still left to be charted.

I feel the intensity of my grandmother’s journey from Russia through Europe, to Cuba, waiting to get into the US, mourning her little’s brother’s death during their travels with her mother, yet trying to find her own identity as a youth in a foreign land, only to later learn their father was gone, too.

They betray the loss… of old ways, of deep knowledge.
Such Olmec wisdom of ancestors on full display,
yet we still think we’re so smart.

I feel the wind against my cheek on a cool Mexican morning, sunrise over the mountainside at 10,000 feet, shadowing my back, letting sun rays drift across the pyramids below. They betray the loss… of old ways, of deep knowledge. Such Olmec wisdom of ancestors on full display, yet we still think we’re so smart.

I feel the salt spray on my face as the boat takes the waves through the channel in the Fiji islands, the ripples and splashes concealing the beautiful corals and tropical fish that dance and sway in the currents below. I join their steely giant cohabitant as it slowly tilts its hammerhead eyes towards me. I let myself sink to the sandy bottom.

I feel the sun’s warmth on my cheeks on a cool Michigan fall day, the flickering lights making colorful autumn leaves shine like jewels against the stark blue skies, belying the hints of winter to come. The old post and beam workshop behind me is wrapped in grapevines, providing shade to my printing presses inside, awaiting my touch to create anew.

I carry all of these feels with me, their memories, the learned wisdom, worn around my heart like jeweled beads of wisdom. I carry it all, sharing with willing souls, and learning from beloved travelers who I meet along the way, as I remake this home anew.

– Mara Jevera Fulmer, February 10, 2026

Backyard view, Fall sunset in Michigan. Photo by author.

The above prose was expanded from a short writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.

 

January 30, 2026

Tuesdays and Thursdays

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under beginnings, death, grief, love, marriage, mourning, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Michigan fall sunset view from my back porch.

I thought I would break.

We’d just begun a new chapter of being just the two of us again, children grown, new challenges and opportunities… after 34 years together, like young newlyweds, the world would be our oyster again hiding the pearl we knew would glimmer and shine its lustrous colors upon us. I’d rushed back from an overseas trip only to find myself now in charge of your healthcare.

And then you were gone.

So abrupt, from diagnosis to death in less than three months.

Crushed, angry, resentful for you having left me right when the adventures were getting even more interesting than the 30+ years before!

I restarted my studies, knowing that if I just immersed myself in the work I could hide away from my grief, ignore the wound in my heart. But by Christmas, I sat crying on the side of the bed…

I just. want. a hug.

I’d tried a dance class, a restorative process where I could lose myself in the movements, and connect to my grandmother, a dancer in her own day. You never wanted to dance with me… though there was that one last time. But still, the movements and the music began to heal me.

I don’t bite except on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The dreams were so vivid that I looked forward to your visits. But the loneliness wouldn’t go away. Perhaps, if only there was someone, not one of our children, or friends, or anyone who knew you. Someone I could talk to who didn’t have your ghost to guide the conversations.

And then he reached out and I ignored him. Each week he’d check in. “I don’t bite except on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he wrote. And I finally couldn’t stifle the laugh. The nerve, I thought. So we wrote to each other, first just a couple of times a week, then every day, and then we’d talk all night.

“I wish I could dance with you, ya know,” he wrote offering to join me in a dance class when he visited. It became our connection. He was awful at it, and I loved him for it anyway.

As we shared our stories with each other I realized it wasn’t just my tears that were falling for the one I’d lost. He cried for it, too, a life of wonder and adventure that he hoped to build with me.

And then… we did.

The above prose was written as part of a 13-minute writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.

 

October 9, 2025

Waking Life

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under beginnings, death, Family, grief, love, marriage, mourning, surviving | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
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This continues my effort at catching up on reminiscences and memories from over the summer and early fall 2025.

Steve resting on a random office chair in the middle of the woods, Fall 2022.

Tuesday, 9/9/2025, 1:20 am

One of my favorite tunes came seeping through the haze of my sleep as I napped Monday afternoon, exhausted from being up so late the night before. I really NEEDED that nap.

Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill, 1977, hummed through as I caught the words. 

“I did not believe the information, just had to trust imagination, My heart going Boom-Boom-Boom”. “Son,” he said, “Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.”

Yet my dreams were unformed. Just the lyrics and tune floating through them.

“When illusion spin her net, I’m never where I wanna be. And liberty, she pirouette, When I think that I am free.

As the notes wafted through my dream state, my consciousness began to float upwards to just before wakefulness.

“Watched by empty silhouettes, Who close their eyes but still can see.
No one taught them etiquette. I will show another me.”

And then I saw him, standing in the woods, the golden colors of fall leaves surrounding him, just as he had been when we went on that hike before we discovered his cancer. But rather than sitting alone in an office chair in the middle of the forest, he was standing, looking back over his shoulder towards me and smiled.

“Today, I don’t need a replacement. I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant.
My heart going, “Boom-boom-boom”

He turned to his left and reached down to a very small child, a little boy, Richard. And somehow I knew it was the brother he’d never met, one who died as a young child, and who we discovered only when we went to write Steve’s obituary when we reviewed his mother Florence’s. 

As he looked back towards me, I asked him: “but where is your older brother, John?” The first born child of Florence and Charles James, John had died in an automobile accident when he was only 19 years old and it had devastated the family. 

And no sooner had I asked this question when a taller thin young man appeared beside Steve on his right side. Steve turned away and the three of them walked off into the forest.

‘”Hey,” I said, “You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.”’

And my eyes open to see his smiling face in the photo across from me.

Steve and Mara (author) wandering around the countryside.

 

September 30, 2025

Overcoming…

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under Art & Design, letterpress, love, marriage, Photos, surviving | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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This continues my effort at catching up on reminiscences and memories from over the summer 2025.

8/19/2025, Tuesday, 8:50 pm

Salvaged bench with casters added.

It was a big day in the print shop. I worked with wood. Does that make me a woodworker? Dunno.

But… I faced my fears and actually used the full-sized table saw, not just my smaller type saw that I like to use. More power tools and experiments with a Vicks bit to countersink some screws and nuts into a board.

The day’s results – I turned an old crappy bench into a rolling table to put beside my presses. AND even made a carry board for another letterpress tool. And better yet, I still have all ten fingers! I’d call the day a success!

Rouse Slug Cutter with new sturdy base.

Figured it might help to add context on that “overcoming my fear” thing regarding the table saw.

At around 7 yrs old, I remember my dad – a concert pianist – was working in his wood shop which was in the lower level of the house. He came upstairs and had blood around his lips and his hand wrapped in a bloody rag. He grabbed the car keys with his good hand and told me to stay with my friend and tell mom (who was out with her friend) that he went to the hospital. Turns out he’d nearly cut off his left index finger with the radial arm saw. The entire episode pretty much traumatized me for life, and ironically probably helped steer me towards marrying men who could actually WORK around these tools without losing pieces of themselves.

Although radial arm saws are rarely used these days, the closest I have feared as a result of this is the table saw with its blade that sneaks up above the surface, out of sight for a brief moment just before it can cut your hand in half… if you do something stupid like my dad tried to do. So ever since that time as a child, I feel this irrational fear that immediately takes me back to that time. 

So… I have to thank my husband Steve for encouraging me with the purchase of Hamilton Glider type saw that is basically a very small table saw (with a  guard). I love that little saw and have used it for far more than type. It gave me a bit more confidence for being around such blades.

I know this is all entirely ironic since with the passing of each husband, I have become the sole owner of a huge woodworking shop, and have always been around large and dangerous power tools. When Keith or later Steve would be using those tools, I’d wait just outside of their view until they hit the red “stop” button for fear of distracting them and possibly suffering the fate my father did. 

BTW, dad’s hand DID heal… though he never fully regained feeling in that finger, he still managed to play a mean piano.

So today, well, I marked up the board but could not fit it on the little type saw. I finally decided the time had come. I could do this… and I did! After nearly six decades.

Shop dogs Louie and Ralph.
 

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