I'm featured!

I'm very pleased to be featured on Sandra's Writing Workshop Hop with my fiction piece, A Certain Shade of Blue, taken from the first chapter of my novel in progress. (And if my fellow bloggers raise enough clamor for more of the story, maybe I'll get an offer from a publisher--LOL!) Just kidding. At any rate, Sandra has encouraged me to go back into my long-dormant files and start working again on my second draft. Sandra, I appreciate it very much. Any more creative-writing bloggers want to join the Hop?

Notes from the Missing

I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I put up a new post on my blog other than fiction pieces. When I sat back and reviewed the month of June, I understood why.

So here, not necessarily in order, are the things that were occupying me this past month.

• Ran a 5K race (with my husband) as part of Rhode Island’s Gaspee Days celebration. Considering how out of shape I am and that I’ve never been a fast runner, I was satisfied with my time of 37:34. At least I didn’t stop and walk.

• Tried to start regular running again.

• Met a friend for lunch.

• Lectored for the first time since returning to our old church.

• Went on the Providence Preservation Society tour of houses on the East Side and of the historical cemetery in our neighborhood.

• Visited my father-in-law in Georgia for Father’s Day weekend. Stayed with my sister-in-law and her family. Saw our four nieces. Went to a AAA Gwinnett Braves baseball game. Took Dad out to breakfast and dinner for Father’s Day.

At baseball game

• Got caught in a thunderstorm while jogging.

• With a friend, visited another friend before she had knee surgery.

• Crocheted a prayer shawl for the friend before her surgery.

• Bought a new dishwasher and had it installed.

• Met with a kitchen remodeler about having a new floor and countertop installed and looked at floor tiles.

(red tile)

(gray tile)

• Had new front doors installed.

• Made up and sent out invitations for my mother’s 100^th birthday party in August.

• Finished the huge biography of van Gogh I’ve been reading.

• Celebrated the first day of summer by taking our dog to a neighborhood pizza place and sitting at an outdoor table.

• Made it through three very hot days (mid-90s) and still managed to get some work done.

• Finally started the garden and planted our window boxes.

• Went to a lecture on history of public houses (taverns) in Rhode Island at the Providence library.

 • Saw a concert by Manhattan Transfer.

• Attended a church prayer shawl ministry meeting.

• Visited my mother twice a week.

• Worked (why is this at the bottom of the list?)

 

Those are the tea leaves that went into my June teapot. When July and August are over, and I’m depressed about the end of the summer, I hope to look back over these things, smile at the memories, and enjoy a satisfying pot of summer tea.

How has your summer been so far?

A Certain Shade of Blue

Written for Sandra's Writing Workshop Hop

This is the beginning of chapter 1 of my novel-in-progress. I don't know if I have the formal first person quite right, but please let me know what you think!


----------------------------------------------------

On a warm early-June evening I walked slowly along the river, against the mild current that ripples it into the city, my hand dragging lazily along the rough surface of the balustrade.


Another gallery opening, another newly “discovered” local artist in his first exhibition here. Kyle usually gave me these shows to review; I was his most “mature” stringer, he said. “These college students don’t know a Picasso from a soup can yet. You’ve got a degree. You’re it, sweetheart.” I never told him I didn’t feel even up to the level of those students.

           

Here the river splits the street down its center. Traffic loops around it, flowing with and against the tide, on its way into and out of downtown. The river is below street level; to see it you need to look over the balustrade. I stopped and leaned on the edge of the concrete rail. The daytime warmth was leaking out of the stone now that the sun was setting. Gnats and mosquitos scattered in the air. A black ant zigzagged toward me, and I pulled my hand away till it disappeared over the opposite edge. Rush hour was over, and only the occasional car hummed past to ruffle the quietness.

My eyes followed the flow of the water toward downtown, where it spilled into an  urban pool within the circle of buildings. The lights were beginning to come on, and the reflections of the streetlamps glimmered in the water, floating and bobbing like white chrysanthemum petals in a Japanese watercolor.

Dusk—the time of day that reaches into your soul and pulls it so close to the surface that everything that touches it hurts.

My thirty-fifth birthday, a month ago. I’d let it pass by unmarked. Not because I dreaded getting older—I actually welcomed it—but because for the first time in my life I was completely alone.

The past three years were a tunnel into which it seemed the whole of my life had been funneled. Three intense, eliminating years in which all my external supports had fallen away. But my regret wasn’t for that. It was for a part of me that hadn’t been born yet and might never be.

I stood with my eyes half closed, the melancholy of evening settling over me like a soft scarf. A warm breeze teased at my hair and rippled my skirt around my knees. In my squinting vision the dancing lights on the water stretched out and joined together, a white-gold undulating chain. The footprints of angels. Something my mother would have said. An instant of aching, and then a sudden lightness. The evening seemed to change character; on a gentle night like this it was possible to imagine that lives and fates could transform within a moment.

 I lifted my hands from the barrier and brushed off the tiny glasslike bits of gravel that had indented my skin. I turned away from the river, toward the building across the street, a nineteenth-century brick textile mill that had just been renovated as a center for the arts. It interested me more than the show being held there.

Tonight was the unveiling of the renovation and the opening of the new gallery, and much of Providence society was here. I snaked through the crowd toward the wine bar. I brushed against dresses with sequins and silk-fringed shawls, black evening jackets. Jewelry flashed from wrists and necks and earlobes. These were the people who could afford to buy the overpriced works of a narrowly known artist and hang them on the brightly painted walls of their twelve-room East Side mansions, telling all their friends that this painter was the Next Big Thing.

And here was I, in my simple unaccented rust-colored dress. The outsider, the one always trailing her fingertips in the stream of art, never fully immersed.

My glass of wine and I drifted along among the crowd, listening to the scatterings of laughter and conversation, enraptured by the light and color that flourished in this atrium like something organic. Dark red bricks along the floorline melted up the wall into dark green, lighter green, and finally a jewellike blue that ended at the ceiling. A stand of green and brown ficus trees. Cherrywood beams. A glass dome, a lancet window over a curving staircase that could have been a choir loft, the recessed lighting tumbling shafts of brightness down through the room—a cathedral designed for the worship of art. It was a building with a soul, I thought, and whoever had designed it was a true artist.

“…in her third year at Lincoln. Wants to go to Harvard Med. We were hoping for Brown, since we both went there.”

“At least she wants to go. Our Josh says he wants to spend two years—two--” the woman held up two fingers—“bumming around Europe. While he’s still young enough to enjoy it, he says. Didn’t that used to be our generation’s thing? I thought these kids cared more about their futures.”

“No,” one of the men said. “That was the ‘me generation.’ They’re up to what, Y now? Or have they gotten to Z already…?”

A tall, thin woman in a long brown muslin skirt and overblouse, wearing sandals and a costume-jewelry string of beads, her long black-and-gray hair in a ponytail that hung halfway down her back. “Well, with my investments and savings, I should be able to retire from law in about eight years and start my herb farm.”

Everyone had dreams. I was beginning to feel sad again.

A rustling in the room ran toward the far end, toward the dais and the grand piano being played by a tuxedoed man. Hustling through the crowd was the top of a head I recognized as the mayor’s. He would dedicate the building in the name of the philanthropist who’d donated most of the money for the renovation. Newspaper cameras were flashing; I moved back as other people began moving forward. Someone was speaking on the dais, but I couldn’t make out the words. I could see the mayor shaking hands with a large white-haired man, the philanthropist; then a third, younger man joined them, and the three shook hands while photographers snapped. The guests began to applaud, and the gaps in the crowd in front of me closed. I edged toward the entrance to the gallery.   

Written for Sandra's Writing Workshop Hop. This is the prologue to my novel-in-progress, originally written in third person, but I reworked it for this prompt and to see how it comes out. Any comments are very welcome.

_________________________________________________________

Oh, Toby, stop, I think hazily. He’s waked me again with his crying. Seems like he’s been crying since he was born, six months already. I’m so tired. I cover my ears with my pillow.

Then something shocks through my body; my eyes shoot open and I’m half sitting up. The scream shivers in my bones.

It wasn’t Toby. It wasn’t a dream. I know it was my mother.

I sit trembling as the screams subside to shrieking sobs. I creep out of bed, my legs trembling, my bare feet slipping on the cold wood. I get to the door between my room and my parents’ and try to stay quiet as I open it. White light slashes across the floor from the room beyond, Toby’s room. The door is wide open.

I see my mother next to Toby’s crib. She’s bent over against my father, who’s holding her up, his hands pressed into her back. A shocked, frightened hiccuping noise comes from my throat. My father looks back. Claire, go back to bed. His voice cracks. What’s the matter, Daddy? Just go back to your room, he says. I run back and curl up under the covers, shaking.

******

 

I’m still in my pajamas, sitting in Mrs. Lamontagne’s kitchen on the other side of the wall from our house. She gave me some warm milk and chocolate chip cookies, but I’m not hungry, and the chips look like they’re moving. Mrs. Lamontagne is chattering, as she always does, but tonight she sounds chittery, like a bird, nervous. Sounds are coming through the wall; I do and don’t want to hear them. Red lights are flashing in the street outside.

There’s a knock on the door. It’s Aunt Lucie. Why is she here in the middle of the night?

She and Mrs. Lamontagne whisper to each other, then she kneels and puts her arms around me. You’re coming to my house tonight, sweetheart. You can sleep with Delphine, OK? I don’t answer but let her take my hand, lead me out the back door, across the small yard and the one behind, through the chain-link gate, down a gravelly driveway to the next street and another block to Aunt Lucie’s house.

I’m lying in bed next to my cousin Delphine, who’s wide awake. What happened? Delphine asks. She is eight, two years older than me. I don’t know, I whisper, and I know my voice is shaky. I heard my mother saying your brother died, Delphine says. I lie sleepless, tears pooling in my eyes, trickling down my face into my mouth and my ears.

Blogging for Fun: Focus on This

Flowers

The Sad News and the Better

At the Memory Care Unit yesterday, I was sitting at my mother’s dinner table with her coffee, waiting for her to be brought out from her room. One on the CNAs we’re friendly with came over to me and said very softly, “Ruth passed away yesterday.”

I wrote about Ruth previously: she was the woman who thought my husband and I were her niece and nephew. I was shocked to hear this news, as she didn’t seem to be in ill health. It was a heart attack, the CNA said. I don’t know whether she died there in the unit or was taken to a hospital first, and I didn’t want to ask; as I wrote once, the staff protects the confidentiality of the residents and their families. She told me, she said, because she knew we were friendly with Ruth.

Ruth was a sweet, lovely lady who laughed a lot and always seemed to be happy. She enjoyed playing bingo and doing jigsaw puzzles, and she was very good at the latter. Every time we came in she would beam and call out, “There’s my nephew and niece” and beckon us to come over. My husband was happy to play along with her, answering her questions about other family members by saying we hadn’t seem them lately but thought they were doing well. We will miss her, but I hope that her belief that we were relatives made her a little happier in her last year of life. And I’m glad that she’s been released from the prison of her damaged mind and taken to a place where everything will be clear again.

Later the CNAs were talking with a new resident, a man who’s been there about a month, calling him “Dr. Jack.” One of them said to us, “Dr. Jack used to be a heart surgeon.” That took me aback. A heart surgeon, and where is all that knowledge and skill now? How many people’s lives did he save during his career? They will surely remember him, but he no longer does them, nor how his mind and hands performed medical miracles every day. It was another sad and scary reminder that this disease can happen to anyone, no matter how intelligent, no matter how much you used your mind and brain in your lifetime.

But we did get some positive news yesterday: the itching that has been plaguing my mother for the past couple of weeks seems to be subsiding. She had been scratching constantly, and her skin was red, torn, and mottled on her arms, face, and stomach. She’s had episodes of this in the past and needed a dermatologist’s care. This time the doctor didn’t prescribe medication but a regimen of over-the-counter preparations: Eucerin cream, Dove soap, Aveeno lotion. Fortunately it seems to be finally working.

And in this warm weather she’s been getting out into the garden to sit in the sunshine; she loves being outside. “We take them out in the morning, and she raises her face and closes her eyes and nods off,” one of the CNAs said. And when the garden starts to bloom again, it will warm her gardener’s heart to see the flowers and vegetables, to be in the warm free air after being confined inside all winter. And I’ll be grateful for the new rays of sunshine in her life.

I was planning on blogging about this anyway, but then I realized it fit this week's prompt beautifully...

A Home for Strangers

My husband and I spent the day yesterday helping to build a home for strangers.

 

Ever since I learned about Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity, I’ve been intrigued by the organization and wanted to volunteer with it, but somehow I never did.

 

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter working at a Habitat site in India. Photo from Habitat for Humanity website.

My husband’s company provides their employees with “service days,” on which they’re given a day's leave with pay to spend working in the community. He and several of his coworkers decided to work with Habitat for a day, and I, being self-employed and not needing anyone’s permission to take a day off, decided to go with him.

For those who don’t know, Habitat is a program that uses volunteer labor to build houses for low-income families. It isn’t a giveaway program; the homeowners are expected to be employed and to be able to make payments on an interest-free mortgage. They also are expected to contribute some of their own labor. The people from the local Habitat organization meet the future homeowners, but most of the volunteers don’t. They remain strangers to us.

~~~~~~~~~~

 

Unfortunately it was a cool, damp day when we arrived at the house at 8:30. Fortunately, we were scheduled to work inside. The frame of the house was complete and the outside walls all up, so we were protected from the elements, though it was a bit chilly inside. We all signed in (necessary for insurance purposes, we were told), and the volunteer supervisor split us up for different duties. Two women began putting up insulation, and my husband and I followed them, using tape to seal it to the studs and installing some of it ourselves. Others went to the second floor to nail up drywall, and two more of his coworkers used a circular saw to work on fitting a frame into a doorway.

After we finished with the insulation, the coordinator asked me and my husband to take utility knives and cut away large globs of insulating foam from the windows and wall joins so that drywall could be installed flush against the walls. “I know it’s a boring job,” he said, “but it has to be done.” That was all I needed to hear. I started going at the pieces of white and yellow foam with my knife. I began to get into a rhythm. It was a good job for an introvert--just me and my knife, close work to concentrate on, no need to try to make conversation with covolunteers or to return over and over to the coordinator to ask for something else to do. When I finished one section I just moved to another.

We broke for lunch, eating our home-packed sandwiches in the car. After lunch my husband headed upstairs to help with the drywall. I returned to my task, roaming the first floor with my knife, slicing around windows, on the edge of the ceiling, at corners where boards joined. I began to enjoy the repetitive rhythm. I heard footfalls and power tools upstairs, and the smell of wood and sawdust reminded me that I love the smell of wood and sawdust.

 

And as I moved through the not-yet-rooms, I tried to imagine what they might look like when the house was finished and the family moved in. The section in the back would be the kitchen. Where will the cabinets and counter go, the stove, the refrigerator? It looked big enough to be an eat-in; where will they put their table and chairs?

 

The house will be cute, I think; small but comfortable. The living room has several windows, and there’s a small enclosed foyer inside the front door with what looks to be a coat closet at the far end. The foyer should help keep some of the cold out in winter and also adds a little touch of elegance. I think there’s also going to be a lavette between the kitchen and the foyer; to my mind that’s a necessity. If you have more than one person living in a home, you need more than one bathroom--especially if one or more persons are female.

 

There are four bedrooms upstairs. I start picturing this as a family with three children, and I imagine the parents happily allowing the oldest one to choose the bedroom he or she wants. I imagine it’s a girl and that she’ll pick one overlooking the small backyard. Then the next oldest will pick. I remember how, when my family moved, I was allowed to choose my bedroom first as I was older than my brother. I try to picture where they will put their beds: facing the door? Looking out the window? What else will they have? Dressers, desks? What color will the walls be painted?

I don’t know anything about the strangers who will call this house their home. Yet in an odd way I don’t think that we’re doing this work for people we’ll never meet. Imagining them moving in, furnishing the house, putting away their belongings, makes me feel as though I know them. I feel like I want to visit them when they’re settled in and see how they fit into the house and how the house fits them.

And I feel like I’m discovering a bit of a stranger in myself—the part of me that really enjoys doing things to help people I don’t know: making prayer shawls, donating time and money to Alzheimer’s research, or working to help build houses. For one who has always been somewhat of a loner and a little afraid of meeting people, it’s been a great way for me to contribute something of value to the world. So I welcome my own stranger, and I look forward to getting to know her better.