My writing usually starts in the morning, before or right after breakfast. It comes in spurts so by the end of the day there have been several sit-downs and certainly as many revisions. The next morning I look at what survived the day before and more often than not, I reject it and start over. That is the case this morning and yesterday as well. It's a lot like fishing, you put the first fish in the bucket but later you think better, too small or the wrong species and you let it go.
At writer workshops, writer’s block comes up a lot. One strategy is to just start throwing words at the page, word after word, anything about anything. Soon your subconscious pushes back against the random nonsense and it sends you down one path or another. It often leaves you processing things you didn’t really want to run with. When provoked, my subconscious defaults to problems and issues that make for tedious writing and ho-hum reading. So I end up beating a dead horse until I can reload and start over. Even with isolation and distance, Covid-19 is a depressing distraction.
I watch the CBS morning show for news and the sound of a friendly voice. After 40 minutes or so, enough is enough. It can be overwhelming but they do a good job of mixing the hopeful with the grim. One self help expert recommended celebrating hopeful, uplifting memories. So I started trolling through my memory bank for long forgotten, uplifting bits and pieces. Rather than find fault and place blame, good stories seem a better option. Regardless who reads my stuff, I write it; good medicine.
It is true that what you took for granted when your kids were kids becomes priceless in reflection as you pause on this mortal journey. Thanksgiving, 1972; our twin boys were barely walking and their firstborn brother was 5. We went over the mountain to observe the holiday with my wife’s cousin in Salida, Colorado. Our part of the meal included a fresh baked pumpkin pie. For the trip it was strategically covered with clear plastic wrap and placed on the floor behind the front passenger seat. Our little car was crowded with my oldest boy behind me on the driver’s side, away from the pie; what could go wrong! On arrival we discovered a full footprint in the middle of the pie that perfectly matched my son’s new cowboy boot. Lucky, the damage was deep but superficial; it had dreadfully disfigured the pie but it could be repaired.
Cousin Walt and his wife Irma lived in a tenant residence on a ranch outside of town. Next to their long driveway there was a trout stocked pond. While the meal was being assembled Walt and I took the 5 year-old up to the pond with a Zebco 33 spincaast outfit, the simplest of all fish-catching schemes. Our mission was for the boy to catch his first fish. Long story short: after some practice casting and retrieving, we got a strike. The boy wrestled with the cranking, trying to control the rod. When he saw the two pound rainbow he stopped cranking, turned and started running toward the house, rod in hand, dragging the fish through the waist deep weeds and grass. We caught him in time to salvage the fish and get it on a stringer. Too late for the turkey day meal, it would be saved for another day.
It was traditional turkey and dressing but the meal itself was forgettable. When we came to dessert the pie with its facelift yielded everyone a token piece. But on the first bite we discovered an oversight in its making. The sugar had been left out. A sugarless pumpkin pie leaves a lot to be desired but we refused to concede. Add sugar. Sweeter but not like it would have been had it been cooked in with the crust. Then we added the whipped cream, lots of whipped cream. The kids ate it without complaining and we carried on about how tasty the turkey and dressing had been.
On our two hour drive home, the kids slept. We shared how good it was to spend the holiday with family and how beautiful the drive had been. The near calamity with the trout and the salvaged pie were not important enough to recount. But now, 47 years later, the fish and the pie are the priceless, precious memories I recall. Amen, I needed that.
In the USA, the Covid-19 death count topped 150,000 people yesterday, almost 3 times the number of fatalities in 11 years of the Viet Nam war. Then, the number was unthinkable and unacceptable. Currently our leadership takes lightly the big numbers choosing rather to play down the low percentage of total population. Coincidentally, of todays body count, a high, high percentage come from elderly seniors and people of color. The argument has been suggested that the old ones were going to die soon anyway. In Texas, a high level elected official used a wartime rationale to justify his politics, that we should be proud of grandparents who die of the virus for their sacrifice, saving the economy for their descendants. Just sayin’!
I didn’t need that. Next time I want to finish with more hope and less fact, something with a pause, something smileable. Helen Keller said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.” Then, Joseph Campbell added, “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” How do you move on when there is so much suffering? Leonard Cohen said and sang, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
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