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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 __________.

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From Writing Prompts to Props: Introducing Toshio Ninomiya

Great writers will always surprise you and leave you thinking of their stories long after you’ve reached the end. This is true of my friends at the Retirement Living Center, who came to our monthly writing class last Saturday with not only stories, but props in tow.

We wrote on cloth and memory, a prompt which drove them to search attics and storage rooms and the backs of closets. Each story they read was rich, absolutely. They filled the room with laughter and an amazing energy. I wish you could have been there.

As a “next best thing” to sitting at the table with me, I asked one of the readers if I could post his story. Toshio Ninomiya agreed. During his turn, Tosh prefaced his piece by saying, “In order to read my story, I have to put on this hat.” His eyes lit up then, and he cracked a mischievous smile. And, I thought, Oh my, this is gonna be good. Enjoy!

Old Hat

by Toshio Ninomiya

It’s a real old hat. I bought it for $2.50 about 70 years ago in San Francisco, just before I took a trip to Japan. Most men at that time wore hats and ties whenever they ventured into public areas, just as ladies wore hats and gloves. San Francisco was a very conservative and formal city at that time, unlike what it is today. I expected Japan to be even more rigid in the way its people dressed in western style.

I was sure it had hat stores in large cities, but I doubted most of them had English-speaking employees. I, on the other hand, didn’t know how to say hat in Japanese. I was glad I had the foresight to buy one beforehand.

I discovered in an English newspaper where I found a job, that everyone from the type setter to the managing editor wore a suit, tie and a hat. It was de rigueur, especially for a cub reporter who had to go out interviewing people, mostly foreigners to Japan.

That was just the beginning of the hat’s life history. The three years in Japan were nothing as far as it was concerned. It was the following decades of sitting on my head that took its toll, accompanying me from frigid Alaska to tropic Equador.

Eventually, it not longer had the sharp crease and the snappy brim that once provided a subtle touch of masculinity, male libido you might say, to its wearer.

The question then became what to do with it. It wasn’t like a pair of worn out shoes. It was my companion of many years, my alter ego. Consigning it to a garbage dump was unthinkable.

I made a decision to use it as my hat during fly fishing. Not only would it protect me from the elements, it would label me as a gentleman fisherman, unlike those who wear baseball type caps, that is, people of lower caste.

That too, came to past and the last four years it lay dormant in the storage room of Harwood Place, until yesterday. But from here on, it shall stay in my bedroom closet where I can take it out and put it on my head every once in a while, just for old time’s sake.

Tosh is a long-time member of the group and a published author, having had one of his pieces appear in Glimmer Train. I’m so grateful to him for sharing his work here and his stories with us at the table every month.

~

Next month’s prompt comes from Midge Raymond’s Everyday Writer:
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.

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Monthly Writing Prompt: Pathways to our Past

A heavy trunk with a broken lock takes up a good part of my attic space upstairs. Inside are remnants from my past: yearbooks, a folder full of dramatic poetry from the sixth grade, letters from my best friend the year she moved to Korea. More than letters and photos, though, there are shirts and a blanket and a costume I wore in my fourth-grade talent show. My kids call it the treasure chest; a sense of excitement fills the air each time I crack the lid. They love digging through my history.

At the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison a few weeks ago, I attended a presentation by Beverly Gordon on Cloth and Memory. She spoke about the power of textiles — from clothing, to handkerchiefs, to the blanket a child refuses to give up or (years later) a parent refuses to give away. Fabric holds memory, and “threads are pathways,” Gordon says, connecting the past to the present.

For years, a terry cloth shirt and pair of shorts has stayed buried in my trunk, has moved with me from house to apartment to house again. It’s gone the distance from Texas to Wisconsin. I wore the outfit when I was six or seven. Embroidered on the shirt is a pair of tennis rackets.

I never played tennis, but, for a short time, my parents did. My sisters and I would pile in the car with Mom and Dad on a warm Saturday and hit the courts. My father would teach my mother the art of the serve, the trick to the backhand, and my sisters and I would hit tennis balls along the backboard with badminton rackets. I wore that outfit often to those outings, and the terry cloth became my tangible reminder of those sunny afternoons: basking in the sunlight and in the sounds of my parent’s laughter. Pure bliss.

THE PROMPT

We save a favorite shirt, our mother’s scarf, our father’s hat that he wore on Sundays, because cloth connects us through time and place. Write about something of cloth that holds memory for you.