Fridays, I write for fun. My long-time writing group has recently resumed in person get togethers. I use this time to put aside my ongoing projects and play. Often, I use the Poets and Writers weekly prompt, never knowing where it might head me.
This past week the prompt was: Write a story set during holiday festivities in which something unexpected occurs. Perhaps you might lean into elements of satire or the surreal to explore new dimensions of this familiar territory. This one stumped me. I stared at my open computer screen, staring out the window and tried to imagine the upcoming holidays. It’s been a long pandemic-filled year. Unexpected events occurred on a regular basis. It took me a while to wrap my wandering musing in response to the prompt, but when I did, what I wrote was not a fanciful story but a needed catharsis which I shared with my writing group, triggering heartfelt response from each of them. Together again, we were able to commiserate and share the impact of this year’s disconcerting events. This is what I wrote: I cut the last of the flowers in my garden this week. A few, I hung to dry. The rest fit into a small vase on my windowsill. Not an impressive haul. From my window, I watch colorful leaves parachute to the soggy ground where they land with a soft puff easily mistaken for the scabble of a small animal seeking shelter. Gimme shelter from the storm. Not a new sentiment, but a recurring one, especially this year. I am tired of talking about the pandemic. Pandemic or supply chain, whatever the excuse, life refuses to return to what we used to call normal. The grocery store shelves are sparsely stocked. It’s dark by dinner time and will be darker soon. My cats have taken their position in front of the fireplace, waiting for the warmth of a crackling fire even as the last days of Indian summer linger. The hummingbirds and butterflies have flown south. The squirrels are squirreling away their acorns. But the bats and owls who used flit in the night sky have been gone for several years now and are unlikely to return. And post pandemic, there are people who have disappeared from my life, either choosing to avoid crowds, or gone altogether, moving, dying, divorcing, changing jobs, leaving this neck of the woods, reevaluating their options. I have always appreciated the rhythm of the seasons changing. But more and more, it feels like a seismic shift is taking place, a redefinition of reality more profound than we can comprehend. Something new, if only we could understand it. Last Thanksgiving, we sat, just the two of us, at our less-than-festive Thanksgiving table. Angling the computer screen at our small turkey and chatting with our son over the internet, discussing pandemic statistics, the upcoming surge, the still pending vaccines. Now we are vaccinated, and the statistical curves seem to be heading in the right direction. We will gather with our son and his family this Thanksgiving, but with apprehension, the damage seemingly done. Over the past year, his family has taken a new shape. His home is a new house. Even as we admire the décor, we don’t trust that the virus is done with us. Every sniffle requires a test. Every trip inside, whether to a store or a restaurant or loved one’s house, is only safe behind a mask. A friend tells me NYC is back up and running. On the beaches of Florida, crowds eschew the restrictions that continue to hold me back. Unmasked, defiant, and unvaccinated, young people gather in large crowds demanding the right to live life as they please. Soon the holidays will arrive. The feasts and frantic shopping. The lights and carols and glare of department store neon lights beckoning late into the night. Will the holidays lure us, the hesitant ones, out of our shelters with the ringing of bells, the promises of an irresistible bargains? Will FedEx trucks, their driver’s in Santa suits, chug up my road stacked high with boxes of goodies, gifts we don’t need but want, want, want. Will we put on ten pounds and lift our champagne glasses, crow Happy New Year as we kiss our loved ones in the middle of one of the shortest nights’ of year? Why do I struggle to write this story? Why does satire seem inappropriate to this moment in time? Even surrealism seems insufficient, a disservice to any characters I might force to venture out with timid steps into this uncertain world. I fear for what they might find out there, as the countdown 10-9-8-7-6 -5-4-3-2…, as the crystal ball drops into a mash of inebriated celebrants and another year begins. The full link for the Poets and Writers prompt is: https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises. I’d love to see what it inspires you to write!
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