Last Excerpt from Memoir Class

I don't remember this prompt - but this is all about my son - who I absolutely adore.  We tease him about this all of the time - and he is good natured about it.  He frequently feels "different" because he doesn't quite fit right in the world - but don't we all?

My son is incredibly brilliant.  I know most parents think this about their children, but I swear this is different.  He is technically a genius – his IQ is 165.  I only know this because the school tested him when he begged them to teach him Algebra when he was in kindergarten.  He had already mastered long division.

People think having a smart kid is the ideal, but what they don’t realize is that with all that intellect filling up his brain, my son lacks common sense.  Things that most people take for granted are incredibly difficult for my son to figure out.  Perhaps it is because he is too busy thinking smart thoughts to bother with them.

This manifested itself at an early age.  He would be so involved in building a mecca out of Legos or constructing a roller coaster with his Knex – that he would forget to go to the bathroom.  This resulted in many accidents.  It got to the point where he would be running for the bathroom at the last minute and everyone would dive out of the way lest they get sprayed.

As he got older, there were more things to do.  His mind needed to be constantly active.  We would take a five minute drive in the car and he would need to bring a book to read or a video game.  When he got his driver’s license, he got lost constantly because he had never paid attention to where he was going.  A trip to the store could take three hours and an entire tank of gas.

Excerpts from Memoir Class - Part 4

We had to write about one of our favorite pictures - again five minutes.  This one was written right after the September 11 piece so it was a little bit of a hard gear shift...

Andy lay on his back on the pink quilted blanket, his pudgy hands clutching the picture book.  His five year old face was scrunched up as he earnestly read the words out loud.  Beside him, Molly stared at the pictures in the books, too young to decipher anything but bright vivid colors.  For her, it was not about the story, but about being with her big brother.

He lay his blond head against her matching smaller one, giggling and laughing at the story- making all of the right voices at the proper time – a feat that was difficult for much older children but he did it with ease. 

Will all of the brother/sister moments be as precious as this one snapshot in time?  An innocent time before fights, hurt feelings and indifference enter the relationship?  When gender differences don’t matter?  When it is simply about enjoying each other’s company?

Molly reaches for her bottle and snuggles closer to her big brother.  She is six months old but he is already her hero – a place he will occupy for the rest of her life.  Precisely because of these precious, early moments of togetherness – of cuddling and giggling and sharing something they both love. 

Excerpts from Memoir Class - Part 3

Pretty obvious prompt - where were you on September 11? Again I only had 5 minutes so it ends abruptly.

It was a typical suburban mother morning.  I had gotten my son on his early morning bus and driven my daughter’s carpool to school.   I was bustling about the house doing the usual things when the phone rang.  “Something big just happened,” my husband said.  “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.”

I remember thinking it was odd that he would call.  I didn’t quite understand what he was saying.  “Ok, thanks for telling me,” I said.

I immediately went to our computer and tried to get on CNN.  The circuits were jammed and I kept watching the little hourglass swirling around aimlessly.  Randomly, just 10 days before I had declared our house a “no television zone” for the month of September.  The reasons why I did this are unclear to me now, but in that moment I felt it would be a betrayal to turn on the tv.

I kept watching the hourglass spin as I tried other news sites to no avail.  Realizing that my husband must be right – this was a big deal, I ran upstairs and flipped on Good Morning America. 

About a minute later the second plane hit.

Not long after that the tower fell.

I am not sure I even comprehended what that meant at the time – I just knew it was horrible and scary and sad.  I wanted to drive to my children’s schools and bring them home – a place that I considered safe. 

I sat in front of the news channel until noon – when I had to go to my daughter’s school to work “desk duty”.  This was supposed to add security to the school – monitoring outsiders and visitors from wandering about.  Considering the terrorist acts of the morning, this job seemed all the more ironic.  What security was I, a suburban mother, able to offer these children?

Excerpts from Memoir Class - Part 2

Another 5 minute prompt - no idea what we were supposed to write about but this is what came out - I think I was working on descriptions-I am not good at details.

You know the song “I wish we all could be California girls”.  Well, I am a California girl.  Never mind that I was technically born in Oregon and moved to Wisconsin at age 13.  At heart, I belong in California.

I spend the ages of 1-13 in the heart of Northern California.  Home of the redwood trees, the Pacific Ocean and the mission hills.  I have no idea if I have romanticized my time there but my memories tell me that I always loved it.

Yearly visits to Half Moon Bay for the annual pumpkin festival, waiting in a line of cars spiraling out of the valley for hours just to crawl among the pumpkins attempting to find the perfect fit.  Weekend visits to the Redwood forests to walk and hike among the towering trees.  Craning your neck so far back it hurt – trying to see the top of the 100 foot trees -straining to wrap your arms around the trunks wider than the car.

Summers filled with camping trips that included early morning clamming parties.  I never could quite dig fast enough at the bubbling sand to catch the fleeing clams – but I was good at pointing them out to my dad.  Wading in the tide pools, finding smelly starfish, shells and other creatures I just had to bring home with me despite my mother’s protests – only to be thrown away when I lost interest shortly thereafter.  The fun was in the finding- not the keeping.

Excerpts from Memoir Class

So I took a Memoir Writing Class this past Spring.  The class was horrible but at the end of each class we did a 10 minute writing prompt that sometimes resulted in surprising stories.  This one made me laugh because it allowed me to get in my 12 year old head and make the class laugh.  It was written in 5 minutes and I am resisting the urge to edit it…we had to remember people from our childhood and then pick one and start the story with “The last time I talked to _____.”  So here you go.

The last time I talked to Mike was the day we moved away.  His mother made him say goodbye to me.  It was awkward.

She told him to give me a hug – which he did.  Ironically it was our first hug.  She didn’t know that we had secretly been “going together” for over a year.  How could she?  We almost never spoke.

Our families were friends you see and Mike and I always liked to play hide and seek in the backyard with the other kids.  I had always had a crush on him, who wouldn’t with his blue eyes, blond hair and athletic soccer build.  All the girls at church did. 

Imagine my surprise when one night, in front of his younger brother Jeff, Mike asked me to “go with him”.  I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say.

“Call me tomorrow,” I choked out.

“I’m not allowed to talk on the phone,” he said.

He did call me the next day and I agreed to go out with him. 

And I don’t think I ever talked to him again.

Our families stopped hanging out suddenly – no idea why.  And I was so embarrassed to see him at church, I frequently stayed home “pretending” to be sick.

A year passed – sometime in there Mike won me a stuffed animal at Great America, and gave it to my mom because I wasn’t there.  I regret that to this day.

Then we moved away – and Mike and I never broke up.  But he did hug me.  Just that one time in front of our moms – awkward and shy and forced. 

That was the last time I talked to Mike.

The Dreaded Phone

I remember a day in the dark ages of my childhood where I loved to talk on the phone.  I had a special phone (looked vintage but was modern) and would talk for hours – until late into the night to lots of friends.  I even had one friend who I would regularly “watch” horror movies with while on the phone – he at his house tuned in to Friday the 13^th part 18 while I was at my house watching the same thing …the extra-long phone cord stretched through the kitchen and into the living room.

But I don’t call people anymore….almost never.  Now this is partially because of the wonderful invention of text messaging.  It is so much less threatening for me to send a text and get a response.  I can send texts while I am in a meeting at work, while at the movies or late at night.  As a lover of the written word this was the perfect discovery for me…I wish I had invented it.

But another more vulnerable reason why I don’t call people is due to years of built up rejection in my past that culminated in one very bizarre incident that happened almost seven years ago.  It is so funny how if you dig through the rubble of your past you can figure out the trigger that made you the way you are today.

The incident is so strange that to write about it seems silly.  You will wonder why I ever allowed this to happen in the first place.  How could I not have seen that this is crazy at the time?  That is another post…

I had a very good friend, probably one of the few best friends I have ever had.  I thought we were very close, but in hindsight I realized that the relationship was mostly about me listening to her and being there for her (another hallmark of my relationships I can get into at another time).  My friend moved away and we spent a lot of time on the phone. 

One weekend, something happened in my friend’s life and she was very upset.  I called her and left a message letting her know I was available if she wanted to talk.  She never called me back.  Two other times during the weekend I left her a message – just letting her know I was praying for her and thinking of her.  She sent me a text message very suddenly on Sunday saying one word…”Stop”.  

Very long story but apparently she had decided that she didn’t want to talk to anyone that weekend (not letting me know this of course) and was mad at me that I had crossed the boundary that she had made in her mind by calling her and leaving a message.  For the next several months, I didn’t call my friend…I let her call me. 

Right about this time, a lot of really hard things started happening in my life.  Crazy stuff like we had three suicides happen in our ministry in the same month.  Stuff that made me need to talk about me and have someone to lean on. 

I found someone else to talk to.

My friend told me she needed some space and that we could schedule a time to talk in a month – schedule it on the calendar because she needed to not worry that I was going to call her when she didn’t have “energy” to engage with me.

That was the end of our friendship.  I was able to be a grown up in the situation and let her know that the way she was engaging with me was not healthy or loving and if she would like to engage with me differently – I would love to continue our friendship but I was not going to allow her to treat me that way anymore.

But that incident marked the last time I would call people just to chat or to catch up.  I stopped calling because I had been told that I was bothering people, interrupting their lives. 

And I believed it – maybe not consciously but deep down in the little girl parts of my soul.

Now since then I have had one particular friend who continues to remind me that real friendship is allowing people to interrupt your life to talk.  Real friendship is there for the other person when they are going through hard times – to listen.  Real friendship is a two way street – not all one sided.

She tells me this.  I believe her. 

But I still don’t call people. 

So I am working on this.  I am working on picking up the phone and calling someone if I think of them and want to say hi.   It doesn’t happen very often…so if you get a phone call from me – you will be one of the lucky few.

The Beating Heart (Revisited)

Written in 2005 - still one of my favorite pieces. 

The Beating Heart

Ruth sat very still in the chair, contemplating what she was about to do. Was she sure she really was ready to do this? It would be so much easier to continue doing life the way that she had been. She enjoyed being in control. She wouldn’t get hurt that way. Sure, it might get lonely, but that was endurable.

No.

She had lived alone for too long. It was time to trust. It was time to really live.

She carefully reached down to her chest and pulled.

Ouch.

That hurt more than she thought it would.

But she was determined and pulled harder and harder until at last she was holding her heart cradled in her hands. It pulsed and throbbed.

She stood up very slowly and gingerly began to walk across the room, taking care not to trip or bump into anything. After all, this was her heart, the core of her being and she didn’t want anything to happen to it.

In the corner was Tani, a girl that she had been getting to know in the past few weeks. She decided that she was ready to share her heart with Tani.

Ruth walked up and told Tani that she had a gift for her. When Tani looked up, Ruth held out her cupped hands with her beating heart.

Tani looked confused.

“This is the gift?” she said. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Ruth was crushed. She stood stock still for a few more minutes as Tani went back to what she had been doing. She didn’t even look up again.

Ruth went and sat down with her legs crossed on the opposite side of the room. Her heart had begun to bleed, oozing all down her arms and dripping onto her legs. At first she just let it bleed but after a while she recovered her strength enough to find a towel to wrap it in. She rocked back and forth, holding her heart.

Had she been wrong to offer Tani her heart? Was there something wrong with it? Was it ugly, deformed, too big, too small? If it had been different would Tani have taken it and loved it?

No.

Ruth knew that just because one person rejected her heart that did not mean that it had no value. “This is not truth,” she repeated over and over to herself.

While she was rocking and repeating her mantra, she was suddenly startled by a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Ella, a girl she barely knew.

“Excuse me,” said Ella. “What do you have there?” she gestured toward Ruth’s heart.

Ruth blinked back tears.

“It is my heart. I tried to give it to someone and they didn’t want it.”

”Can I have it?” said Ella kindly. “I promise I will take good care of it.”

”Are you sure?” Ruth said disbelievingly. “Why would you want to have it? I hardly know you.”

”I have been watching you. You are trustworthy. I want to be your friend.”

Ruth smiled and very carefully held out her heart. It was a little worse for wear. There were some rips in it and the towel that surrounded it was all bloody. But Ella didn’t seem to notice. She held it reverently.

And Ruth was happy. For the first time, someone cared for her. Someone understood the importance of being entrusted with her heart. She felt special. She felt loved.

Time went by. And it seemed as if the reverence in which Ella had held her heart was starting to fade. Sometimes she seemed as if it was a burden to be carrying Ruth’s heart around with her. She stopped cradling it in her arms and stuck it in her back pocket. Ruth didn’t like her heart being carried in such a careless manner. But she felt like she did not have a right to complain. After all, Ella had offered to take her gift.

One day, Ella suddenly decided to change her outfit. This new skirt had no back pocket. She stood for a moment holding Ruth’s heart in her hands. It was beating quieter now. It barely pulsed. It really didn’t look like much. What would it matter if she just threw it away?

She looked furtively over her shoulder and when she was sure no one was watching, she chucked the heart in the trash.

Then she left the room without looking back.

Ruth saw her walk away.

She noticed that she was not holding anything. And she wondered what had happened to her heart. Then she saw the shiny trash can and she knew.

Had she done something to make Ella throw it away? Was her heart so disposable that it could be tossed in the trash without a word of explanation?

There was an excruciating pain in her chest that brought her to her knees. For a while all she could do was lie there breathing heavily. The pain cut into the core of her being and she lay on the floor all through the dark night struggling for breath.

But then the morning came. And with it came hope.

She pulled herself to her knees and crawled towards the trashcan. It took her a long time and she had to stop and rest several times.

But finally she made it and looked inside. There was her heart, nestled among old banana peels and coffee grounds. It was bruised and bloody and she had a sneaking suspicion that it was dead.

But she took it out and washed it off. She wrapped it carefully in bandages and sat down on the ground again. She sat there for a long time.

While she sat there, many people came up to her to check and see if she was okay. They sometimes stayed a while, not even talking sometimes, just being with her in her pain. Sometimes she told them the story of how she had first been rejected and then thrown away. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes the pain was so bad that she couldn’t feel at all.

All of the people who came and sat with Ruth encouraged her to try again.

“Not everyone is like Tani and Ella,” they said. “Yes, it will always be risky and it will sometimes hurt. But you need to keep trying.”

Ruth listened and accepted their hugs and thought a lot.

As she had been listening she noticed that her heart had started getting a little pinker and had barely started to beat again.

After some more time had passed she held it up to the light to see it more closely.

As she examined it she saw some scar tissue down towards the left.

“That was the rip from Tani,” she thought. And up on the top there were 4 huge gashes left by the ordeal with Ella. But the scar tissue seemed to have healed up and Ruth was glad that it was there to remind her of where she had been.

And her heart seemed to be beating stronger now than it had before.

“Maybe it is time now,” she thought. “Maybe I can handle trying again.”

She thought of all of the people who had been sitting with her the past few weeks. And as she did there were three faces that stayed in her mind. She scanned the room and saw them sitting at a table together.

Ruth began to take the bandages off of her heart. When it lay there exposed, she took a deep breath and stood up. And as she did, she felt a peace wash over her.

“Yes, this is scary. But this is right. This is how it is supposed to be,” she thought.

And she crossed the room to her friends with her heart in her outstretched hands.

A Gripping First Page

The assignment...write a first page that will cause people to want to keep reading.  This is what I wrote...

Drip…drip…drip…drip…

I have given up on figuring out where the sound was coming from.  My fingers were raw from tracing every inch of the rough concrete walls…trying to find the source of the steady, measured, drip…drip…drip…that echoed ridiculously loud in the confined space. 

How long had I been here?  With no light to perforate the darkness…I could not even be sure if it was day or night…or somewhere in between.  Did it even matter?

Drip…drip…drip…one thousand four…one thousand five…one thousand six…crap…I lost count again.  Why did I always lose count somewhere after one thousand?  Now I have to start over…you can do it.  Just keep it together for one more minute and then another minute.  Going crazy doesn’t help…and no one comes when you scream.  The screaming didn’t even drown out the incessant dripping…it amplified it somehow and echoes bounced back at me with physical force.

If someone would have told me about the dripping…the constant, crazy-making, annoying, incessant, LOUD dripping….would I have still done it?  Would the threat of a little drip kept me from this place?  I thought I was so strong.  I could withstand anything.  I was so much better than the rest of them.  They were murderers and thieves and drug addicts.  I thought getting away from them and being alone would give me some peace.

If I had only known the truth.  The truth that I still couldn’t believe.  How stupid I was to trust her.  What was I thinking?  Of escape…only escape.  I didn’t think beyond that.  And look where that got me. 

Drip…drip…drip…drip…drip.

Thoughts on Life and Death

I was thinking today about how unpredictable life can be and yet how hard I try to control it. I am very big on making plans and trying to make sure I get things done. But how quickly life can change. We all know that life can change in an instant, but it is so easy to forget it. Until something happens that shocks us into paying attention.

A couple I know just experienced such a shock. Their plans for the weekend were derailed yesterday. They both woke up in the morning, so glad for Friday after a long week of work, shuttling kids back and forth and all of the other mundane things that steal our time and cause stress. When the alarm went off in the morning, it was just another Friday. Ten minutes later, everything had changed.

Sometime in the night, their seventeen year old, very healthy, active and social son had died. He simply went to sleep and never woke up. There was no foul play, no suicidal acts. He simply felt like he was getting a cold, went to sleep and died. Just like that.

And now this family who was looking forward to a relaxing weekend are stricken with grief, dealing with funeral homes and talking about things like autopsies and caskets. They are dealing with grief stricken relatives, rumors from teenagers and their own numbness.

It is really incomprehensible to me to imagine such a scenario. And yet I know that death is always just around the corner. Just a sleepy driver, drunk teenager or slip in the bathtub away at any given moment. Why is it so easy to forget? Is it because we can't deal with the panic and worry that would be our reality if we lived this way?

I think it is because we can not possibly live like every moment is our last. It would be exhausting and we would never accomplish anything. I know I would never clean my house or go to the grocery store if I thought I would die tomorrow. What would be the point? This is not a practical way to live.

But we can live with intentionality. We can plan for our futures, get our responsibilities done and live with open hands. Because at any moment life can be snatched away from us.