The writing instructor’s house nestled on a woodsy hill overlooking an expanse of lawn. Eight students gathered in her cozy family room, and she opened with an introduction game. “Say your first name and something you like to do,” our instructor said, “whatever pops into your head first—other than writing.” She started the game: “My name is Linda, and I like to play bridge.” She pointed to another person in the circle. “My name is Janie, and I like to knit,” she said, pointing to the next person. In my head, I rehearsed each person’s spoken information while observing their visual features. “My name is Barbara, and I like to golf.” Barbara pointed to me. “My name is Carole, and I like to weed.” Weed? As a kid, my weeding looked more like foot-dragging, lethargy, malingering. Now I weed almost every morning—and look forward to it, to observe something new about myself. In an article in the February 2017 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, Jill McCorkle wrote, “I have often told my students that if you walk around with your eyes and ears open, you can’t possibly live long enough to write all of the potential stories you will glimpse along the way.” Weeding is walking around with my eyes and ears open, my nose and sense of touch, too. I observe where plants like to grow—both cultivated and volunteers—whether they are struggling or blooming, and when. Nearby rustling in the woods signals the presence of deer, a squirrel or some other creature. Drama? Fence lizards sun themselves on the rocks of the meadow path then dart onto a tree and disappear, camouflaged on the bark. “Aren’t you pretty,” I coo to the wood asters now in bloom. “No, you don’t,” I fuss at invasive stilt grass. “Keep growing, little Fothergilla, and you’ll be a good-sized bush someday.” I stroke the tender, dust-green leaves now turning yellow. Each morning offers new stories, new drama, depending on what I choose to observe. I'm selective because to observe everything would be like sitting in a large cafeteria, trying to see all the people, listen to their conversations, smell everything, taste, and touch. TMI. I weed out most detail in order to attend to what makes a story. Which characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution? I ask. Why do I like to weed? I love to observe nature’s spontaneity, improvisation, the dramatic blurting out. I love to nurture potential stories and cut others. To begin my day outside, observing God’s creation, pointing to each living thing, and saying, “Your turn.” “Our name is Zinnia,” the drama-red, pink, yellow, purple, and orange flowers say, “and we like to grow tall.”
I could talk about the time, way back, when I was warned not to chase my little brother around on slippery rocks, causing his fall, gashing his tiny knee, resulting in stitches. Or I could remember my big bro flattening me, a pre-teen, against the wall after I called him “FU*C*ER!”, resulting in a broken collarbone. Maybe tales of encounters with local police as a minor getting “booked” for multiple “arrests”, the underage drinker forcing sleeping parents awake to claim and retrieve an uncontrollable son. Or stories of gift-wrapped boxes flying in fits of rage, catapulted by our older brother on Christmas mornings, always a hard day for him. Suicide, divorce, death, drama. All families have drama, none are spared. But ever since early on, I decided to focus on fixing, the mending of bridges, the opposite of detonation. A kid trying to piece together unity whenever it frayed. I still do that today. The natural role of a middle child.
Many years ago, after witnessing people willingly invite and participate in rather destructive, pointless, and time-wasting, interactions, I disallowed elective drama in my life. It's come to my attention that I have expanded on the theme to the point of not perceiving things as dramatic if they are anything short of soul destroying. I often say,”Life is short, don't sweat the little stuff,” but my apparent gift to myself is considering all but the truly devastating to be little. I won't list the dreadful experiences I've endured, and there haven't been a lot but they were big, so in comparison I reflect on the lesser stressors as ironic, unfortunate, or even comical. I recently recounted a time I had to act fast to desperately encourage a mother goat to accept her newborn kid. It had fallen out of the birth hut on arrival. When replaced next to her, she rejected it. We quickly rubbed it with the afterbirth but she repeatedly pushed it away. After a few sleepless nights of bottle feeding every couple hours and nestling the little fella into a cardboard box in the warming oven, he became robust and the worries over his survival were over. Sure, that sounds full of drama, but I had only brought it up to share my primary recollection of how funny it was when he would try to suckle on the knees of our leather jeans.
She was my sister-in-law and from the day I met her I knew I would need to be en gard! Her competitiveness knew no bounds and it was cloaked by her drama queen personality developed in her early teens. She was a force to contend with, was beautiful like Ava Gardner, with a dash of Bette Davis, Kathryn Hepburn and Rosalind Russell. When she entered a room, she would pause and wait until everyone’s attention was upon her and then sweep in with a smile and a twinkle in her eyes. Her professional life was spent in the “rag trade” as she called the world of fashion, so she had “style”. I remember her dramatic response when my daughter walked into her showroom in second hand clothes. "You may never enter this showroom looking like that."
Her sense of drama, however, was unsurpassed when dealing with the hospitalization of a family member. Her capacity to turn the entire hospital ward from the nurse’s station to the attending physician into putty, as she commanded all to give her relative the attention she thought they deserved was awesome! Upon her husband’s death I sort of inherited her as a responsibility. We had had some real fun times together over the years and I was happy to do this. I continued to do so during her remaining years until her death here in Spain. I miss her.
Though I’m an introvert, there’s something about performing on stage I find exhilarating. First, there’s all the work you put into preparing for a live event whose success hinges on so many cursory factors, from how you ate and slept the day before to the invisible dynamic between performer and spectator. Then the build-up of nervousness and excitement. How will it go? Am I – we – ready? Finally, it’s time. Waiting in the wings, you hear the muted murmurs of the audience. Your heart pounds as you take your mark. Curtain up, light the lights, and adrenaline rushes through every inch of your body. Electricity fills the air. Motions and words come automatically; you’ve practiced so much for this moment. Sometimes the limbs feel heavy, like moving in slow motion. Or your voice feels like it’s someone else’s, but at the same time it’s all you. Sometimes you miss a beat. Suddenly you feel detached, hyper-aware of everything and everyone Out There. What. To. Do? Snap out of it – the show must go on. And then, in a blink, it’s over. A wave of relief. The energy is spent. Back to normal – with a residual glow of pride: I did it!
I brought a kitten home, causing my mother to hyperventilate in her bedroom for the rest of the day. My father made jabs at my older sister's weight, which would repeatedly send her screaming and crying from the dinner table. As a teenager does, I came home from the mall wasted drunk. My mother raged, ripping at her hair, chucking a coffee mug at me as I stumbled to my room to hide from the drama. But drama was always there, hiding behind a corner, ready to jump out at any time. When it lives with you, drama becomes mundane.
The writing instructor’s house nestled on a woodsy hill overlooking an expanse of lawn. Eight students gathered in her cozy family room, and she opened with an introduction game. “Say your first name and something you like to do,” our instructor said, “whatever pops into your head first—other than writing.” She started the game: “My name is Linda, and I like to play bridge.” She pointed to another person in the circle. “My name is Janie, and I like to knit,” she said, pointing to the next person. In my head, I rehearsed each person’s spoken information while observing their visual features. “My name is Barbara, and I like to golf.” Barbara pointed to me. “My name is Carole, and I like to weed.” Weed? As a kid, my weeding looked more like foot-dragging, lethargy, malingering. Now I weed almost every morning—and look forward to it, to observe something new about myself. In an article in the February 2017 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, Jill McCorkle wrote, “I have often told my students that if you walk around with your eyes and ears open, you can’t possibly live long enough to write all of the potential stories you will glimpse along the way.” Weeding is walking around with my eyes and ears open, my nose and sense of touch, too. I observe where plants like to grow—both cultivated and volunteers—whether they are struggling or blooming, and when. Nearby rustling in the woods signals the presence of deer, a squirrel or some other creature. Drama? Fence lizards sun themselves on the rocks of the meadow path then dart onto a tree and disappear, camouflaged on the bark. “Aren’t you pretty,” I coo to the wood asters now in bloom. “No, you don’t,” I fuss at invasive stilt grass. “Keep growing, little Fothergilla, and you’ll be a good-sized bush someday.” I stroke the tender, dust-green leaves now turning yellow. Each morning offers new stories, new drama, depending on what I choose to observe. I'm selective because to observe everything would be like sitting in a large cafeteria, trying to see all the people, listen to their conversations, smell everything, taste, and touch. TMI. I weed out most detail in order to attend to what makes a story. Which characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution? I ask. Why do I like to weed? I love to observe nature’s spontaneity, improvisation, the dramatic blurting out. I love to nurture potential stories and cut others. To begin my day outside, observing God’s creation, pointing to each living thing, and saying, “Your turn.” “Our name is Zinnia,” the drama-red, pink, yellow, purple, and orange flowers say, “and we like to grow tall.”
I could talk about the time, way back, when I was warned not to chase my little brother around on slippery rocks, causing his fall, gashing his tiny knee, resulting in stitches. Or I could remember my big bro flattening me, a pre-teen, against the wall after I called him “FU*C*ER!”, resulting in a broken collarbone. Maybe tales of encounters with local police as a minor getting “booked” for multiple “arrests”, the underage drinker forcing sleeping parents awake to claim and retrieve an uncontrollable son. Or stories of gift-wrapped boxes flying in fits of rage, catapulted by our older brother on Christmas mornings, always a hard day for him. Suicide, divorce, death, drama. All families have drama, none are spared. But ever since early on, I decided to focus on fixing, the mending of bridges, the opposite of detonation. A kid trying to piece together unity whenever it frayed. I still do that today. The natural role of a middle child.
Many years ago, after witnessing people willingly invite and participate in rather destructive, pointless, and time-wasting, interactions, I disallowed elective drama in my life. It's come to my attention that I have expanded on the theme to the point of not perceiving things as dramatic if they are anything short of soul destroying. I often say,”Life is short, don't sweat the little stuff,” but my apparent gift to myself is considering all but the truly devastating to be little. I won't list the dreadful experiences I've endured, and there haven't been a lot but they were big, so in comparison I reflect on the lesser stressors as ironic, unfortunate, or even comical. I recently recounted a time I had to act fast to desperately encourage a mother goat to accept her newborn kid. It had fallen out of the birth hut on arrival. When replaced next to her, she rejected it. We quickly rubbed it with the afterbirth but she repeatedly pushed it away. After a few sleepless nights of bottle feeding every couple hours and nestling the little fella into a cardboard box in the warming oven, he became robust and the worries over his survival were over. Sure, that sounds full of drama, but I had only brought it up to share my primary recollection of how funny it was when he would try to suckle on the knees of our leather jeans.
She was my sister-in-law and from the day I met her I knew I would need to be en gard! Her competitiveness knew no bounds and it was cloaked by her drama queen personality developed in her early teens. She was a force to contend with, was beautiful like Ava Gardner, with a dash of Bette Davis, Kathryn Hepburn and Rosalind Russell. When she entered a room, she would pause and wait until everyone’s attention was upon her and then sweep in with a smile and a twinkle in her eyes. Her professional life was spent in the “rag trade” as she called the world of fashion, so she had “style”. I remember her dramatic response when my daughter walked into her showroom in second hand clothes. "You may never enter this showroom looking like that."
Her sense of drama, however, was unsurpassed when dealing with the hospitalization of a family member. Her capacity to turn the entire hospital ward from the nurse’s station to the attending physician into putty, as she commanded all to give her relative the attention she thought they deserved was awesome! Upon her husband’s death I sort of inherited her as a responsibility. We had had some real fun times together over the years and I was happy to do this. I continued to do so during her remaining years until her death here in Spain. I miss her.
Though I’m an introvert, there’s something about performing on stage I find exhilarating. First, there’s all the work you put into preparing for a live event whose success hinges on so many cursory factors, from how you ate and slept the day before to the invisible dynamic between performer and spectator. Then the build-up of nervousness and excitement. How will it go? Am I – we – ready? Finally, it’s time. Waiting in the wings, you hear the muted murmurs of the audience. Your heart pounds as you take your mark. Curtain up, light the lights, and adrenaline rushes through every inch of your body. Electricity fills the air. Motions and words come automatically; you’ve practiced so much for this moment. Sometimes the limbs feel heavy, like moving in slow motion. Or your voice feels like it’s someone else’s, but at the same time it’s all you. Sometimes you miss a beat. Suddenly you feel detached, hyper-aware of everything and everyone Out There. What. To. Do? Snap out of it – the show must go on. And then, in a blink, it’s over. A wave of relief. The energy is spent. Back to normal – with a residual glow of pride: I did it!
I brought a kitten home, causing my mother to hyperventilate in her bedroom for the rest of the day. My father made jabs at my older sister's weight, which would repeatedly send her screaming and crying from the dinner table. As a teenager does, I came home from the mall wasted drunk. My mother raged, ripping at her hair, chucking a coffee mug at me as I stumbled to my room to hide from the drama. But drama was always there, hiding behind a corner, ready to jump out at any time. When it lives with you, drama becomes mundane.