Sunday Scribblings - Happy Endings

"You were foolish to expect this to work out," Angela told me, carefully folding my navy blue satin pajamas before placing them into the suitcase atop the pile of sweaters and skirts she had already pulled from the closet.   "There's never a happy ending in these situations...you should know that by now." I sat huddled at the foot of the bed, watching her work with her usual businesslike efficiency.  Angela and I had been friends since fourth grade, and even as children she would come to my house and organize my room while I sat moaning about my life - the teachers who didn't like me, the parents who overprotected me, the boys who used me.

"You have this fairy tale view of life, Tricia," she continued, turning her stern gaze toward my pathetic form.  "You expect that every man pays you the least attention or treats you remotely decently is going to be your Prince Charming."  Her expression softened into a smile, the kind you give a recalcitrant puppy who pees on the rug even though you've just taken her outside.  "Even married ones," she sighed.

It's true, I don't have great judgment when it comes to relationships.  I've fallen in love with the wrong men ever since I can remember, starting with Billy Tucker, that nasty little five year old who lived behind us, and who came to my house every day just so he could play my brother's computer games.  I was certain he loved me, and was crushed when I invited him to my birthday party and he just laughed in my face.  

And now I was packing up the remnants of my latest failure in love - or rather, my best friend was packing them for me - a year long relationship with a really super guy who conveniently neglected to tell me he was still married.

"I just want a life," I said, realizing that the words "like yours" were the implicit ending to the phrase.  Angela had a great husband who adored her, and seven year old twins who excelled at everything from soccer to chess.  Talk about happy endings.

She sat beside me and wrapped her arm affectionately around my shoulders.  "I understand," she said. "But you have to be realistic.  And your life doesn't have to be like mine," she continued. "Your happy ending could be something completely different."

I knew what was coming next.  Her familiar "you have so much talent and you're not using it" speech.  Angela was certain I was then next Pulitzer prize winning novelist, if only I would work at it a little harder. 

Who knows, I thought, maybe she's right.  She's been telling me as much ever since I read her my first short story, "The Black Room," a gothic potboiler penned at the tender age of 11. 

"Come on," she said, pulling me to my feet.  "Let's get you out of this apartment before Mr. Wonderful comes back.  You're coming to stay with me for a while.  I've got a room ready for you, and I'm going to lock you in every morning and not let you out until you've written 2000 words on that novel."

"I don't have a novel," I whined. 

"Then it's about time you started one," she told me, closing the door firmly behind us.  "Just make sure it has a happy ending."

for more happy endings, go here

Write On Wednesday-Where in the World Do You Come to the Page?

I love my back porch on summer mornings.  A soft breeze whispers through the evergreens, a chorus of birds serenade me with early morning wake up songs, no one else in the house is stirring  (not even Magic or Molly), and I can savor the solitude.  Still in pajamas and slippers, my first cup of coffee close at hand, I tuck my laptop under my arm, pile my books and notebook on a wicker side table, and settle into the chair.  It's a perfect place to write. Of course, I write in other places in the house.  I'm fortunate to have a "room of my own," with a writer's desk and large overstuffed chair (with extra wide arms perfect for propping up a laptop).  Most of the time, that's where my writing happens, seated at the desk or curled up in my chair.  There are bookstacks everywhere in that room, and though I keep cleaning them up, more seem to appear in their place.  Whether I'm writing blog posts, or book reviews, or even working on a short story, I seem to need bookstacks around. <smiles>

I'm nosy about writer's desks, aren't you?  There seems to be something magical about the places people write.   I readily admit to chills running down my spine when I stood in Virginia Woolf's study at Rodmell, and Charlotte Bronte's parlor in the parsonage at Haworth.   Every year, I purchase a copy of The Writer's Desk calendar - photographer Jill Krementz has made a study of writers and their desks, and has published a lovely coffee table sized book as well as these annual calendars. (See, I'm not the only nosy one!)  And it isn't just writer's desks that intrique me - it's all the "writuals" that are associated with the writing process. 

Stephen King wrote Carrie and Salem's Lot "in the laundry room of a double wide trailer, pounding away on my wife's portable Olivetti typewriter and balancing a child's desk on my thighs."  He advises writers to "have a space of their own," a place with a door you are "willing to shut, telling the world and yourself you mean business."  (On Writing)  Conversely, Natalie Goldberg advises leaving home occasionally, going to a cafe or public place to write.  "It's good to change the scenery from time to time," she says, "because at home there is the telephone, the laundry, the refrigerator, the dishes to be washed, a letter carrier to be greeted. If you made the effort to get to a cafe, you can't leave as easily and go do something else, the way you can in your own home."  (Writing Down the Bones)

Awareness of place is important, not just because of nosy friends like me, but to set the stage for all the writing that you do.  Before you can convincingly relate a feeling of place to your reader, you must first feel it for youself.  If you're connected to the place you write in, Julia Cameron tells us, the "accumulation of details, the willingness to be specific and precise, the willingness to 'place' a piece of writing accurately in context - all these things make for writing the reader can connect to."  (The Right to Write) 

How about you?  Last week we talked about why  we come to the page, now I want to know where  you come to the page.  What's magical about your writing spot (or spots!)  Free write about the places you put pen to paper.  Post pictures if you can  - that would be even more fun!  (I can't because the battery in my camera is dead!)

Leave a comment  with the url  linking to your blog post, and we'll all come and spy on each other. <more smiles>

Where In the World Do You Come to the Page?

I love my back porch on summer mornings.  A soft breeze whispers through the evergreens, a chorus of birds serenade me with early morning wake up songs, no one else in the house is stirring  (not even Magic or Molly), and I can savor the solitude.  Still in pajamas and slippers, my first cup of coffee close at hand, I tuck my laptop under my arm, pile my books and notebook on a wicker side table, and settle into the chair.  It's a perfect place to write. Of course, I write in other places in the house.  I'm fortunate to have a "room of my own," with a writer's desk and large overstuffed chair (with extra wide arms perfect for propping up a laptop).  Most of the time, that's where my writing happens, seated at the desk or curled up in my chair.  There are bookstacks everywhere in that room, and though I keep cleaning them up, more seem to appear in their place.  Whether I'm writing blog posts, or book reviews, or even working on a short story, I seem to need bookstacks around. <smiles>

I'm nosy about writer's desks, aren't you?  There seems to be something magical about the places people write.   I readily admit to chills running down my spine when I stood in Virginia Woolf's study at Rodmell, and Charlotte Bronte's parlor in the parsonage at Haworth.   Every year, I purchase a copy of The Writer's Desk calendar - photographer Jill Krementz has made a study of writers and their desks, and has published a lovely coffee table sized book as well as these annual calendars. (See, I'm not the only nosy one!)  And it isn't just writer's desks that intrique me - it's all the "writuals" that are associated with the writing process. 

Stephen King wrote Carrie and Salem's Lot "in the laundry room of a double wide trailer, pounding away on my wife's portable Olivetti typewriter and balancing a child's desk on my thighs."  He advises writers to "have a space of their own," a place with a door you are "willing to shut, telling the world and yourself you mean business."  (On Writing)  Conversely, Natalie Goldberg advises leaving home occasionally, going to a cafe or public place to write.  "It's good to change the scenery from time to time," she says, "because at home there is the telephone, the laundry, the refrigerator, the dishes to be washed, a letter carrier to be greeted. If you made the effort to get to a cafe, you can't leave as easily and go do something else, the way you can in your own home."  (Writing Down the Bones)

Awareness of place is important, not just because of nosy friends like me, but to set the stage for all the writing that you do.  Before you can convincingly relate a feeling of place to your reader, you must first feel it for youself.  If you're connected to the place you write in, Julia Cameron tells us, the "accumulation of details, the willingness to be specific and precise, the willingness to 'place' a piece of writing accurately in context - all these things make for writing the reader can connect to."  (The Right to Write) 

How about you?  Last week we talked about why  we come to the page, now I want to know where  you come to the page.  What's magical about your writing spot (or spots!)  Free write about the places you put pen to paper.  Post pictures if you can  - that would be even more fun!  (I can't because the battery in my camera is dead!)

Leave a comment  with the url  linking to your blog post, and we'll all come and spy on each other. <more smiles>

By the Handful

A handful of blueberries, nestled in my open palm, small nuggets of sweetness washed and ready to sprinkle on a bowl of vanilla yogurt.  They were on sale today, and so I indulged in this rare treat, usually a dearer price than I care to pay.  As I shook them from their plastic container into my hand, I recalled another time when I held a palm full of blueberries.  These had been freshly picked, though, and I had eaten half again as many as I collected, unable to resist the allure of plucking them straight from the bush and popping them into my mouth.  It was 15 years ago this summer, I realized, shocked once again by the swift passage of time.  And I was with my mother in law at her home on the lake.

It was our first trip to the lake after my father in law's death.  His illness had prevented any of us from traveling north that summer, or from properly opening the house.  Imagine our distress when we opened the front door and saw the roof over the family room had leaked, stagnant smelly water had soaked the carpet and furniture.  My mother in law burst into tears, unable to withstand this latest blow. 

"What in the world will I do now?" she cried, and I knew she wasn't speaking just about the damage to her home.

Knowing the trip would now take longer than the weekend we had planned, I agreed to stay on and help her while Jim and Brian returned home.  So for the first time in the 20 years we had known each other, the two of us were living together, without the buffer of our respective mates.

My mother in law was never an easy person to be with.  In the best of times, she was demanding, negative, and emotionally distant.  (My husband would add illogical and self-centered to that list as well.)  When Jim and I first met, she had quite an iron grip on his life, but he quickly began prying her fingers away, and the results weren't always pretty.    I knew she considered me the interloper, corrupting her precious only son and luring him away from his family.

But we got along all right, and, especially after Brian was born, I think she cared about me in her strange, remote sort of way.  We had grown closer during my father in law's last illness, as I had spent a good deal of time with them, talking to doctor's, arranging for care givers, driving her places she needed to go.

So those few days alone in the "place up north" weren't a terrible burden.   We fell into a routine, as people will.  She always got up early, for she was a woman who was perpetually busy, and one morning after Jim left, I looked out my window and glimpsed her behind the row of blueberry bushes growing along the border between the house and garden.  Quickly plucking fruit from the branches, she had nearly filled the large plastic bowl tucked under her left arm.  I slipped into my clothes and shoes, and stepped out the back door. 

"Are they sweet yet?" I asked.

She looked up, startled, I think, to see me up and dressed so early.  "Well," she admited, "I don't know.  I haven't tried one."

"For goodness sake," I chided her good naturedly, making my way through the thick, wet grass, "why don't you eat some?  It looks like there's plenty."  I pinched a fat navy blue berry from its stem and placed it in my mouth, letting my teeth sink into the musky flesh that somehow tastes just like the color blue should taste. 

"Mmmm," I said, quickly grabbing a few more and greedily gobbling them up.  "So good!"

Almost furtively, she placed a berry in her mouth, as if she weren't allowed to enjoy them, only pick and collect them for some future use.  She widened her eyes in surprise, and then delight, almost as a child would in discovering a surprise gift of candy.

"Oh, these are good!" she exclaimed.  "I don't think I've ever eaten them right off the bush like this." 

Such a small pleasure, denied to herself for whatever strange, perverse reason.  So we continued for a while, happily picking, eating, and occasionally tossing a few more berries into the bowl.  It became a ritual of our mornings, those moments in the berry patch, and we'd eat our fill, and then pick more to give to the neighbors.

During those few days that we spent together, cleaning things, buying new furniture and carpet, going through some of my father in law's things, the balance of power started to shift.  "Now what do you think?" she began to ask me, about everything from buying a sofa to ordering dinner at Ron's Restaurant.  And she'd take my advice, sometimes even acknowledging "what a good idea" it had been.

Today, as I taste my spoonful of store bought (alas!) blueberries, I think of her as she was earlier this afternoon when I visited her at Chestnut Village, the dementia care center where she lives.  Hunched on the sofa, legs crossed, her chin propped on prayerfully folded hands, she sits and dozes for hours.  Mary Alice, the lovely lady who leads activities, smiled at me, then came over and touched her lightly on the shoulder.

"Chris," she said, "we're taking some folks outside to play horseshoes.  Wouldn't you like to come?"

She looked over at me, eyebrows raised.  "What do you think?" she asked.

"I think you should go play," I said.  "It sounds like fun."

"Well, okay then!" she agreed readily, taking Mary Alice's hand to help her stand up.  I watched her totter unsteadily out of the room, my presence - my very existence, even - already forgotten. 

I always take a small gift when I visit, usually something sweet, like those tins of sugar cookies, or a package of Hershey Kisses. But next time,  I believe I'll take something different - perhaps a handful of blueberries would be nice.

Postscript

Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts about what brings them to the page.  I was enlightened and insprired by each one of you.  (A reminder that Write on Wednesday lasts all week, so if you decide to respond to the prompt anytime during then week, then feel free to do so.)

As a postscript to this week's WOW (Susan pointed out the aptness of the acronym),  here's a quote from I found this morning on Writing Time - it's from a man named Frank Smith.   I especially like the last two lines...

Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told, notes to be passed, recipes to be cooked, messages to be exchanged, memos to be circulated, announcements to be posted, bills to be collected, posters to be displayed and diaries to be concealed.

Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed.

Happy Writing!