Goodbye Old Friend

I had to read the Facebook message from my college friend at least ten times before I understood what it said. It was only ten words long, but I couldn’t comprehend it and I didn’t want to believe it. But I knew the sender would never make a joke like this.

            Sad to hear that Terry W passed away from a heart attack on 12/1.

            Passed away. At forty two. I’ve lost an old friend and my heart’s a little sore tonight. I can’t picture Terry without a smile on his face. He never said anything negative about anything or anyone. We met in college when he wrote a play called “Vows” that became a student production.  I wanted to be a part of the production team, but there was already a Director, an Assistant Director, a Producer, and an Assistant Producer. Terry and Jim, the Director, said I could be “The Literary Consultant”. Mostly it meant I got to hang out with the cast and crew and get my name on the poster—and that a big deal for me.

            Terry and I got to know each other. We talked about writing a lot. That’s all I did in those days with my writing—talk about it. But he would always ask me if I had been writing and encourage me to actually put pen to paper. Even after he graduated and was in the Army he would send letters asking if I had been writing. I always had an excuse. It’s hard to get fired up about writing for pleasure when you’re an English major and there is so much required writing.

            When I was a sophomore, both of my parents found out they might not have jobs the following September. I was concerned about where my tuition check would come from and considered joining ROTC. Terry was in ROTC and did our country a great service by talking me out of joining. I think he knew I would make Private Benjamin look like General Macarthur. He said to me, “You know there’s no drama club in the Army, Right?”

            Like a lot of friends we fell out of touch after a while. But thanks to Facebook we reconnected a couple of years ago. I was glad to hear he had a job he loved and a wife he adored. He never talked about his wife without calling her “my beautiful wife Marie”.

            I could wish nothing more for my friend to have a life filled with friends, career success, and a wonderful marriage. Except more time.

Fiction Friday: Auld Lang Syne

The doorbell rang. Karen lifted herself off of the threadbare sofa. She hated moving. Her joints reminded her she wasn’t young any more.

Colleen carried a glittery green and white box decorated with a gold bow. No wonder she couldn’t open the door, Karen thought to herself. Usually they exchanged presents from the dollar store. It was probably a prank gift.

“Merry Christmas!”  Colleen shouted.

“Come in,” Karen muttered. “Take off your coat. The food just got here.”

Karen had set the kitchen table with her grandmother’s good china. There was no silver anymore. It had been sold long ago.

The women ate their Christmas Eve feast in silence. Neither had any family nearby. They had become friends out of convenience, living across the hall from each other.

“Time for presents!” Colleen announced.

“Let’s just scrape the plates first,” said Karen. “I don’t want to have to chisel egg foo young off these plates in the morning.”

“I’ll wash them when we’re done. It’s Christmas. We should enjoy ourselves a little. You sit. I’ll make us a drink.” 

“That may be the only way I can put up with your relentless cheerfulness.”

Colleen poured grocery store eggnog and a substantial dash of rum into mugs.

“This ought to take the edge off your grumpiness,” she said.

“Well, it’s a start,” Karen said. “You open your present first.”

Colleen reached into the candy striped gift bag and pulled out three paperback romance novels.
“Oh Karen! They’re wonderful. You spent too much!”

“My turn now. You looked like the cat that swallowed the canary when you brought that box in.”

She lifted the lid from the box. Below a pile of crumpled tissue paper, was an envelope taped to the bottom.

“It’s silly, but I couldn’t resist using that pretty box,” said Colleen.

Karen withdrew two large lottery scratch tickets from the envelope.

“Wow. These are the ten dollar tickets,” she said.

“I know you’d never spend that much on tickets yourself. But they say the payoff is bigger so I thought it would be fun for Christmas.”

Karen pulled out her lucky quarter. She savored scratching off each square.  Karen finished the first worthless ticket and moved on to the next. When she was done, there was no pay off.

“Oh Karen,” Colleen said. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Karen said counting the years of disappointing Christmases she had lived through. She looked out the window at the stars. But she couldn’t see them. The snow began to fall.

Today I’m linking up with Write on Edge. This week’s prompt was to write a story that begins with the phrase, “The doorbell rang” and ends with the phrase, “The snow began to fall”. We had a limit of 300 words. I didn’t manage to stick to the word limit, but I did succeed in cutting it down from over 600 words to 419. Karen is another character who has been floating around in my brain for some time. She was inspired by a strange experience I had with a customer. Karen has a lot to say. You’ll be hearing more from her in upcoming stories. 

Not Yet

            Something disturbing has been happening in my home lately. I am powerless to stop it. My children are getting older. I know you’re going to tell me that it’s inevitable. But why? I’m not getting any older, why do they have to? I know, I know, denial isn’t a river in Egypt.

            My older son has a cell phone. He wants to walk home from the bus stop by himself. He watches “ICarly” because he has a crush on the blond girl. He calls me Mom and not Mommy. He doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, but works very hard to keep that from his little brother. When I want to kiss him on the top of his head, I have to stand on my toes. How did this happen? It was only ten minutes ago that I snapped this picture to use as a Christmas card:

2005. Really? It seems like ten minutes ago.

            A few weeks back, Owen and I were talking after school. He was throwing his jacket and backpack on the floor neatly hanging up his jacket and backpack and he said to me, “You know what’s a funny word Mom? Puberty.”

            “Did you talk about puberty in health class,” I asked him as I resisted the urge to put my hands over my ears and yell, “La la la I can’t hear you!”

            “No. I just think it’s fun to say… puberty, puberty, puberty, puberty,” he sang to a catchy little tune.

            “Do you know what that word means?” I asked.

            “No.”

            “It’s when your body starts to change from being a kid into an adult.”

            “Oh,” he said, clearly understanding the gravity of such a transition. “I guess I shouldn’t sing that song in school any more.”

           

I remember having a conversation with my mother when I was a little girl. I told her that I liked kittens, but I didn’t like full grown cats. She said something along the lines of, “You wouldn’t want to stay a baby forever, would you?” She was right of course. And of course I don’t want my kids to stay kids forever. I want them to have jobs they love and go to work on time. I want them to vote and do the right thing when nobody is looking. I want them to grow up and have families of their own.

            But not yet.

My "babies" 2011

Friday Fiction: Circling the Drain

            The swirling water going down the drain was purple, not brown as I expected. “Please God,” I whispered, “Don’t let me go from Marilyn Monroe to Violet Beauregard.”  When I looked in the mirror I saw that my hair was now a dull brown. It might be my natural color. I’ve been “check me out” platinum for so long I can’t remember. I don’t want to be checked out for a while. I just want to blend in.

Maybe Joey won’t follow me. Maybe he’ll just move one of his little chippies in for a while. She can play house with him and I’ll be safe. Maybe he’ll be relieved that I didn’t clean out the bank accounts and leave me alone.

            I put up with his shit for six years and Friday was it—the chippy that broke wifey’s back. I demanded to know where he was and what he was doing. I wasn’t going to let him buy me off with another trinket. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked before he hit me. Joey didn’t stick around long enough to hear the answer. He just left me on the floor. The sting on my face smelled like whiskey and cheap women.

            I put up with him sleeping around and coming home late. I got used to the nice house and the fancy car and the housekeeper. I liked getting my nails done and working out and shopping. But when I stood up and looked at my face—the back of his hand imprinted on my cheek I realized I was no better than one of his whores. I looked the other way while he screwed strippers so I could drive a nice car and live in a big house.

            I traded in all of his shiny tokens of apology for a handful of cash. I left the Lexus at the pawn shop and took a cab to the train station. I paid for a ticket to Chicago with my credit card. Then I walked four miles to the bus station and paid cash for a Grey Hound headed South. If he tries to follow me it won’t be easy.

  

This week we’d like you to write a piece about hair. It can be about you or one of your characters where hair figures prominently. Don’t just describe it. Use it as a vehicle to tell us something about your character, a situation, you and your life.

December First

            I’ve been involved with theatre since I was in the sixth grade. I turned 39 for the second time this year, so that’s a lot of plays. The only thing that every single one of those shows have in common is the feeling you get when it’s over. I call it post show blues—sort of post partum depression for actors and techies. No matter how good or bad a show is, no matter how difficult your director or fellow actors were, no matter how many challenges an actor faces in a production, he or she ends up being a hot mess the morning after a show closes. Some times we don’t even wait until the next morning. When I directed The Secret Garden last spring, I was a tower of Jell-O when my actors took their curtain call on our closing performance. The better the experience, the bluer the blues.

            I wondered if I would have the same feeling when I completed NaNoWriMo this week. I’m happy to say that this doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe part of it is that theatre is a collaboration of many people that we miss when a show is over. While I have gotten to know some of my NaNoWriMo participants, most of the people I collaborated with on this product are a product of my imagination. And they’re still tumbling around my brain. Besides, I feel an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. Even if the material I’ve written is far from being the great American novel. It is a complete story from beginning to end. It needs a lot of work. There are some major inconsistencies that must be dealt with. Most of the story takes place in the fall—except when characters are doing spring planting and making lambs out of cotton balls at preschool. Ahem. And of course, several of the characters changed their names midstream—sneaky bunch!

            In Stephen King’s marvelous book On Writing, he recommends letting a  manuscript sit for eight weeks before starting in on the editing process. All I can say is, Mr. King must have a much greater sense of self-control than I do. I’m itching to take a machete to my manuscript—or maybe just a red pencil. But I will try to let my novel rest for at least a couple of weeks. For now, I’ll catch up on my blog reading and writing, memorize my lines for The Odd Couple, and get my house ready for Christmas.