Two Great Writing Books and a Prompt

Whatever kind of flash you write, fiction or non, the Rose Metal Press offers a book full of essays on craft and beautiful writing that will feed your creativity. I’ve mentioned the Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction before: each time I open it, I bookmark pages and highlight and say yes, yes, yes.

Last Saturday, I met with my senior citizen friends for our creative writing class, and I read from Barbara Hurd’s essay in the Fieldguide, “Pauses:”

In music, a rest note can, by its command, make me lift my fingers. ‘Shh-and-shh,’ my piano teacher says as she counts out quarter-note rests, those squiggles on the score that look like weak-willed iron gates rethinking their prohibition to proceed. My hands hover over the keys; I listen as sound recedes; I’m poised and waiting. Yes, wait, I tell myself, out of habit; for inside such possibilities might be the world in abeyance, the music both gone and still here. . . . Wait. Linger. No need to rush.

Then, I presented the group with a prompt from Midge Raymond’s Everyday Writing that, in a way, corresponds with the idea suggested in Hurd’s essay:

Write about a time when something small – a chocolate bar, a smile from the right person at the right time, a martini – made you happy.

In other words, I asked them to write about a moment that caused them to take pause, to take note.

Around the table, one person read about the moment his two brothers, discharged from the war, saw each other for the first time in three years. Another person described the thrill, as a ten year old boy, of watching a man cut blocks of ice from atop his wagon, knowing he’d toss frozen chips to him and his friends waiting in the heat of the sun. I wrote about my son, how his pause in one moment filled my heart and stayed with me:

The life of a fifth grade boy is busy. With a flip of the light switch in the morning, the wheels are slow to start. But, once they get moving there is breakfast and the comics and where is the sports page and check the weather and do you know how cold it is in Fairbanks, Alaska? Can I wait in the car, Mom? I’m ready to go, I don’t want to be late for school, I don’t want to walk in with the first graders, can we go already? Mom!

I don’t move fast enough for my son. To add to the tension, his sister puts on her coat with such precision that we are always two minutes behind. By the time we reach school, my son has one hand on his backpack and one on the seatbelt release, and he is out the door and on the curb with barely a moment for me to say goodbye.

So it is especially important to note the day he jumped out of his seat, waved to me over his shoulder, and started to close the car door when he stopped. He turned back, then, and looked me in the eye. For a full second.

“Have a good day, Mom.”

Just like that.

He could have tossed the words over his shoulder, could have mumbled them under his breath. But he turned and looked at me, as if to be sure I was paying attention. To be sure.

Have a good day.

A simple and common farewell took on much more meaning in that second. It was puzzling and endearing, and I thought about it all day long.

These pauses in his day are rare, I know. So, I hold memories of them close; I sneak in my own unprompted affection in subtle ways: a pat on his knee, a kiss on the top of his head when he is deep into his morning cereal. And, when I can get away with it, I hold his hand; in the car, as I ask him about his day at school; on the couch, when I sit next to him briefly to see what show he and his sister are watching.

This holding of hands, it is usually fleeting. But he allows me that small gift, and it carries me.

When was the last time you were caught poised and waiting, and remembering? And, what happened?

Next month’s prompt (via Lisa Romeo’s Winter Writing Prompts Project): You look just like __________.