Hurried today - didn't have a chance to write - still working on that god awful IRS report! So, I'll cheat and copy here my creative writing from two weeks ago - my meetup.com creative writing group. If you like to write, come - join us! We meet in the backroom of Panera Bread in Evanston on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday's of each month. You can go to meetup.com and then search on "Evanston Creative Writing Group" and you'll find us. One exception is that we're having a VD cocktail party in early Feb in lieu of the 1st Wednesday. We usually get to do three pieces of writing, each about 15 minutes long (which isn't a lot of time to think of an idea, get it on paper and wrap it up before the bell goes off!) If we like what we write we read to the group. The group is peer led and the leader of the night gives the prompt suggestions.
Prompt#1 –( think of a room from your childhood and place a scene there)
There were usually eight of us for dinner – the five kids, two parents and 94 year-old Pop – his father, who moved in when I was about ten. What I remember about Pop is scanty – he spent most of his time sitting in his chair, smack dab in what used to be the study – converted to a first floor bedroom for him. In the morning he was assisted to his chair after a guided trip to the bathroom, nighttime urinal in hand.
When he first moved in he didn’t need so much help – he even cooked for himself – oatmeal usually. One morning he got adventurous and looked for something different. He found what looked like little hamburgers, wrapped in cellophane. Benny and I watched in astonishment and didn’t stop him from eating a Gainesburger – dog food.
Dinner was about all we observed in our hippy house – my mother’s only nod to her conventional upbringing. So, when we sat formally at the huge dining room table with the big ball and claw feet that could have easily sat twelve, we were expected to behave - napkins in our laps, “please pass” manners, appropriate conversation and never singing at the table for some reason.
He only took his place at the head opposite my mother once we were all seated and settled down. He always made us wait for him. We quieted as he glowered his way to his chair, typically grumbling about something, his eyes darting around the table for transgressions he could pounce on.
There were dinner manners for us and a different code for him. To this day, I never drink with a meal – we were not allowed to “wash our food down” – if we did, we were asked to leave the table, and because I was prone to forget, it was just easier to eschew liquids altogether at dinner. We weren’t allowed elbows on the table, he was. He chewed with his mouth open, we couldn’t. So forth and so on – hypocrisy.
We hated him. Luckily as soon as he bolted his food, he usually stormed out of the room. It was then that we could relax and try to be a happy family.
Prompt #2 – First line given
Spray filled the air as the waves crashed against the jagged rocks. Sandra curled her toes in the sand amazed they had made it. It had been touch and go to leave and years in the planning. Exhausted from driving all night, she stretched in the sun and lay in the sand – no blanket, just her rolled up windbreaker tucked behind her head for a pillow. She felt herself nodding off.
“Marie, don’t go far and watch Brian. Mommy is going to take a nap.” Marie was a little mother, sometimes more responsible than her own mother. Sandra smiled to remember another day at the beach when Marie was just three and a half and Brian, a baby who had just learned to sit . That was before things had gotten bad with Tom. Marie had ventured out waist deep into the lake. Brian was perched at the edge of the water, little waves lapping at his toes, each time bringing gales of laughter from the little beamish boy. That’s what Tom always called him – “my beamish boy.” When Marie turned her gaze back to shore, she was horrified to see Sandra and Tom in an embrace, kissing. Like a Baywatch babe she bolted to shore, arms pumping, to rescue her little brother from the shocking neglect of her parents.
“You must NEVER leave him like this!” she all but wept in fury. “He could have drowned!!”
Sandra awoke at the very moment it happened – uncanny. She could have slept through it and never known what happened to them, maybe thought they’d been abducted. With surreal groggy eyes, she watched her children perched on the ragged rock. They laughed as the waves crashed upon them, foam going everywhere. They laughed and smiled still as a gigantic unexpected wave enveloped them and sucked them out to sea. Their bodies were never recovered.
Prompt #3 first line given. (I do)
“I do,” I said while thinking “I don’t.” It was an out of body experience. I had no volition to stop the proceedings. And my “I do,” to my own ears it sounded like “I D-O-O-O.” – spoken like a basso bass – like a movie when the parent sees their child dart across the street and they slow the film and zoom in on the parents horror-struck face and their lips yelling, “N-o-o-o-o” – and then the slo mo of the bus swerving – the look on the kid’s face right before he’s hit.
“N-o-o-o, I don’t want to be married. I don’t want to be standing here in Allison lace, the baby sucked in with Spanx, hiding the bump.
Fred glowed. It was a great day for him – all that planning. When I’d told him I was pregnant he seemed so surprised, sad consternation. He said all the right things. “Do you want to keep it? I will support any decision you make.” He even offered to pay for an abortion.
Fred was the sweet brother, the one everyone loved – everyone that is except me. When Ted teased him, Fred took it – just looked the other way even though he was older than Ted by 15 minutes. Darkness and Light – that’s what their parents called them. I, of course, loved Darkness. Ted and I were peas in a pod – two bad kids who only loved one thing – each other. When he died, I wanted to go with him – wanted to rush into the burning barn, not so much as to save him, but to go with him. Fred held me back and Fred stayed with me, slowly earning my trust and affection.
If I hadn’t read his journal last night, I never would have believed it. Turns out he was darker than darkness. The fire – his doing. The baby – his doing. Deliberate holes punched in a condom.
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Sorry for the rush....I have some good ideas for tomorrow. No challenge today except to enjoy my writing (hopefully) and think about what it is that you do to nurture your own creativity!!!
Peace,
Sarah
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