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Word association prompt

I am continuing my 10 minutes of writing for 10 days challenge.

Today’s prompt: a list of 10 words is provided. With each word, write down the first unassociated word that pops into your brain. Choose 2 to 3 pairs of words. with each pair, free write to see how these words are associated in your brain.

cry furnace

Her eyes were itchy and raw and she looked miserable sitting there alone on the blanket. Tears speckled her cheeks. At this point, no one could tell where the hay fever reaction ended and the pitiful crying began. Her face was red and sweating like a cartoon furnace about to blow.

kitchen arthritis

Mother couldn’t stand for longer than a minute or so, but she still insisted on doing all the cooking herself. At least that’s what she said she was doing. I was required to stand post in the kitchen, passing her the ingredients, acting as sous chef, adding ingredients to the various pots and pans on the stove, while she leaned against the counter rubbing whatever arthritic joint was ailing her.

crow popsocket

From above, the shouts and screams of the playground were muted and the running and scampering of children revealed patterns like crop circles. The crow glided effortlessly on the airstream, waiting for recess to be over and the feast of forgotten Tupperware to begin. Almost directly below the crow, a teacher stood on the playground, eyes glazed over from lack of sleep, absentmindedly flicking at the popsocket on her phone and shivering in the late February rain.

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A Proposal

This was meant to be part of my 10 minutes in 10 days challenge, but this took me longer than 10 min to write.

Today’s prompt: Great stories have subtext. The story you write has a situation and then there is what is underneath.
How can you write the story to imply what is going on underneath without directly saying it?

Looking across the crowded food court, it seems unlikely they will find a table to themselves. Children run around between the diners, their thong shoes slapping against the marble flooring, shrieks and laughter echoing up to the vaulted glass ceiling. Munching mindlessly, patrons chat, check their phones, or stare blankly into space. Finally, Anna spots a table smack in the middle of the room and bee-lines toward it. Brian follows, balancing his tray full of both their meals.

Claiming the table, they quickly get comfortable and sort through the food. Fingers brushing together among the food containers, their expressions are sulky, lovelorn. Brian gives Anna a half-smile across the table.

“When do you want to get on the road?” Anna asks between bites of her burger.

Brian grimaces. “Around 4pm. Once I get back to the city I’ll have enough time to get dinner and prepare my stuff for work tomorrow.”

“I feel like you just got here.” Anna picks at her fries.

“This is not ideal.” Brian agrees, sighing.

They sit in silence for a moment, an idea hanging in the space between them. Yes, they agree, wordlessly.

“I don’t picture us doing this next year.” Anna ventures cautiously.

Brian looks into his paper cup, stirring the ice with his straw. “No… me neither.”

“We can start investigating, look into our options…” Anna lays her unfinished burger in its carton. She feels her heartbeat quicken, forgetting for a moment to draw breath. Brian focuses intently on the Formica, unable to meet Anna’s gaze.

“Well, we don’t really have options, do we?” Slowly, Brian raises his eyes to lock with Anna’s. They pause decisively.

“No…” Anna whispers. There are minutes of silence as they each build the courage to say what comes next.

“So, I guess we won’t be doing this next year then.” Brian puts his hand over Anna’s and they both look down at their intertwining fingers.

“I love you, Brian.”

“I love you too.”

For a moment longer they sit together in the cacophony of the mall, digesting the moment. Reluctantly noticing the time, Brian begins clearing the table and they stand up to make way for the next hungry couple. His hand lightly resting on her lower back, Brian follows Anna through the maze of tables towards the exit. Anna looks up into his face and smiles.

Outside, the relentless heat of the day is breaking and the long shadow of the mall blankets the couple as they walk to Brian’s car. Soon, they will say their goodbyes, more tearful and heartfelt than usual, overwhelmed as they are by the gravity of their decision.

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The Truth Is

This is a continuation of #10MIN10DAYS.

Today’s prompt: THE TRUTH IS. Just let your brain take you where it wants to go. You might write about the same truth the whole time or you may make a 2 mm shift of truth like a kaleidoscope. You may switch between several truths. Allow what comes.

The truth is I don’t want to go back to work. I’m scared of bringing home the negativity of my work environment and how stress will affect my mood around my baby. I have always taken the stresses of work too much to heart - I have no experience with keeping my work and personal life separate. It doesn’t help that my husband works at the same place I do and neither of us are good at compartmentalising our work stress.

I have been happier and less stressed during my year of maternity leave than I have been for as long as I can remember. My work environment has always found a way to get under my skin and anger and depress me. I am adamant that my work environment will not affect the happiness of my home, but I don’t trust that I will be able to keep the stress and emotions in check. But this is so important to me, more important than any petty, angry, annoying encounter I may have at work.

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What I noticed

For the next 10 days I am participating in a 10 minute writing challenge, so if anything seems unfinished, it very well might be!

Today’s prompt: Make a list of 10 things that you noticed about your day. Try to be as precise and sensory as possible and try to avoid metaphor. And then, at the end, connect those pieces together to make a story.

My daughter is tall enough to see out the window of the car.

I still don’t really understand the street geography of my city.

Talking to my husband while city driving is a complete waste of time. He is not listening because he is so stressed.

The building is a little grimey-looking. The glass in the front door has a chip above the hand plate. I feel a twinge of disappointment and I hope I am doing the right thing.

Waiting rooms are a make or break spot for impressing people. And bathrooms. I am impressed by this bathroom; it’s shiny, clean, recently renovated, modern, and well appointed with fancy tiles and faucets. I am impressed. I feel more relaxed and trusting.

The office is really big, far bigger than any other that I’ve seen in this city. The examination table has a hole for faces, as I would expect. A large, brown velvet pillow is lying on the table, a sheet of paper towel covering it.

There are a lot of cute toys throughout the office. It feels inviting.

She is gentle and kind, but she is also very analytical in her observations. She is assessing quickly and efficiently. Her examination notes a number of issues, some I knew, some I didn’t know I should worry about. My daughter is willing to lie on her tummy for the new lady, but only for so long.

My triumphant voice might be a little off-putting for a first meeting. I can’t help it though. I knew it, I KNEW IT. All this time, I was right.

When I’m angry, I go straight to crying. I really hate that. I can’t quite form all my thoughts yet, I’m so angry. And I’m disappointed. And I’m worried.

I noticed this so long ago and I spoke up so long ago and many people told me I imagined what I noticed. I notice that I need to trust what I see and feel.

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Right now…

For the next 10 days I am participating in a 10 minute writing challenge, so if anything seems unfinished, it very well might be!

Today’s prompt: Take 21 breaths and then set your timer. Write for 8 minutes starting with the sentence stem: Right now…

Right now I feel blissfully calm and alert. My body is hot from rowing, crunching and stretching. I am slightly sweaty and I am not overtired. I could have exercised harder, but right now, I am aware that I need to be careful and forgiving with my body.

Right now I am still recovering, but I’ve been on the recovery train for a while now. In four days, I will have been recovering for nine months, about as long as I was pregnant. My scar has long healed, but there are many unexpected ways that my body chose to let me know that I am not the same. Pains in joints that never used to be there, so much so that I was tested for rheumatoid arthritis (I don’t have it). So many things about pregnancy are a surprise - why is that, when as a species we cannot exist without pregnancy happening to at least one person we know?

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Letting go

For the next 10 days I am participating in a 10 minute writing challenge, so if anything seems unfinished, it very well might be!

Today’s prompt: What is something that you would normally throw away that could inspire a new creation today?

When my mother died, I kept a lot of things that were not really worth keeping. Notes with her handwriting, the pads from her Dr. Ho’s TENS unit, spice jars, and some of her shirts. It’s been 6 years and I still have some of that stuff, partly because I convince myself that they are still useful, but really because I can’t admit they are trash. Trash is smelly, rotting, easy to toss aside, and I can’t quite bring myself to count these things among the garbage.

This is especially true of my mother’s shirts; they are nothing special, just cheap things from Walmart or Winners, because my mother never spent much money on clothes for herself. Rayon with gaudy patterns, I can remember them draped over her fragile shoulders. Clothing of a loved one is hard to handle once they are gone, because when you held your loved one, you hugged the clothes too. You can still hug and hold the clothes. Letting them go is like letting go of that last hug.

I keep thinking I will do something with these shirts, add them to a quilt or turn them into cushion covers, but nothing has seemed quite right yet.

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Meeting Greatness

I’m not sure why I was thinking about this today, but here is a story from my childhood.

When I was a child, my father was working in Saudi Arabia. For a few years, we flew back and forth across the Atlantic, living in Jeddah during the school year and flying back to Canada for every holiday.

On one of these trips, between New York and Jeddah, the flight attendant asked my parents if I would like to go with her up to first class to meet someone. I was five at the time and I couldn’t understand why my parents were so excited, but I went gladly when they urged me to go with the lady.

An important man was on our flight, on his way to make a pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca. He really liked children, so he asked the flight attendants to go and ask all the kids on the flight to come to his seat so he could meet and entertain them.

In first class, I joined a group of children gathered around a large Black man performing card tricks. I remember him holding a fanned out deck of cards to me and asking me to pick one. I very shyly picked a card; I don’t remember very much from the meeting, but I do remember him being very gentle and kind with me as I overcame my shyness with him. The man did the trick, everybody ooh-ed and ahh-ed appreciatively, and then I went back to my seat.

I can’t remember anything else about the meeting, but this little story became a very big deal in my house, because that was the day I met Muhammed Ali.

As I grew up, I understood that meeting Muhammed Ali seemed to be a big deal, but I didn’t think it was anything that extraordinary. A few years later, he came to my school to talk to the students about his conversion to Islam, so really most of my peers had “met” Muhammed Ali too (although I was actually close enough to touch his hand as I chose my card. None of the rest of them had that).

It wasn’t until about five years ago that I thought, “Holy shit! I met Muhammed Ali!” I was never a boxing fan, but I admire the work he did as an anti-racism activist and I understand how important he is as a 20th century icon. It’s been fun reliving this story more recently, now that I understand how fortunate I was to meet The Greatest.

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Haiku

1. The sensation

The core sits deep

Screwed tight within the muscle

Pain radiates throughout

2. The bath

Warm, salted water

Scented oil beads the surface

Lapping at my aches

3. The resignation

These pains abound here

Warning of advancing age

Mocking my last stand

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Son Cubano

I need sound around me constantly - some people will find my constant need for sound obnoxious, and others will just get it. I often find silence agitating and when I need to focus and think deeply about something, like with reading and writing, silence makes me quite anxious and I often cannot sustain focus. This caused me a lot problems when I was doing my undergrad degree and throughout those years I never found anything that helped me.

Mostly, to combat the silence of a room, I prefer talking to music: tv, audiobooks and podcasts. But I can’t listen to podcasts or audiobooks while reading or writing. I tried listening to different genres of music, but generally I would find music too distracting.

It wasn’t until 2018, when I was writing my MA thesis, that I discovered the perfect music for helping my concentration: Son Cubano! My husband had it on one day while I was working, and the next thing I knew I had completed pages of writing in half the time it would normally take me. With the music on, all my anxiety evaporated, my focus narrowed, and I was in the writing zone. I couldn’t believe it! The next day, I put the Spotify playlist on again and very quickly I got down to work - no procrastinating! - and wrote steadily for a couple hours. I’m not sure I could have completed my thesis and done as well as I did if I hadn’t stumbled across this magical music genre. To this day, Son Cubano still helps me with my writing - even report card writing!!! - to the point where, if I really don’t want to do my work, I will procrastinate putting the music on!

If you don’t know what Son Cubano is, then I’m sorry to say that I still don’t really know that much about the genre either. Literally, Son Cubano means “the Cuban Sound”, and the music has roots in Spanish and African Bantu musical traditions. I think the Buena Vista Social Club counts as Son Cubano, but don’t quote me on that. I have done a little digging on YouTube and Spotify to find playlists to listen to, but other than that, my knowledge of the genre would come from a Wikipedia page. One day I would love to hear some Son Cubano at a live concert, but that won’t be for a while still. Until then, I have lots of time to explore the music.

I’m a bit embarrassed that this energetic, sensual, percussive sound has such a boring effect on me. However, I was listening to a podcast today that made me feel a bit better about my relationship to this music. Conan O’Brian was talking to Kenan Thompson about writing comedy and Conan mentioned always needing to strum a guitar while he creates bits. They talked about overcoming “creative anxiety” an overstimulated feeling, when your brain is so active that you have to give it some stimulation so you can direct your energy to your creative task. This is exactly what I feel when I’m writing and exactly how listening to Son Cubano helps me - it’s like the rhythm of the music matches my jittery brainwaves and gets them dancing to the music, while the rest of my brain gets down to work. No other music has appropriately stimulated my brain this way, so it makes me giggle to think that part of my brain is down to party in Havana, while the rest of my brain is slicing or writing reports, or working on a literature review!

If anyone has any knowledge or recommendations or corrections to make regarding Son Cubano, please let me know! I’m curious to know if other Slicers have the same “creative anxiety”. How do you combat your creative jitters? What, if any, kinds of music do people listen to while writing?

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Birthing story vignette #2

I have been meaning to write about my daughter’s birth and my time in hospital. My hope is to write some of that birthing story for my SOL posts, but I will write them out of order as vignettes.

It was the second morning after my c-section. Physically, I felt pretty good, but I could feel my mood deteriorating. Lack of sleep, hormones dropping, and a life changing experience were having the expected effect, and I sat up in bed, randomly weeping. I looked over at my incredible daughter, freshly washed from her first bath, sleeping soundly in her bassinet, unaware of how profoundly I loved her.

Maybe it was that bath that had set me off crying.

The midwives had put my husband in charge, carefully guiding him through the process, showing him exactly how to cradle her in the water on one arm, while gently wiping her face and body, removing the last protective traces of vernix caseosa from her skin. He was learning a lot about how to care for her: he changed the first diaper; he bottle fed and burped her; he spent her first hour holding her skin-to-skin while I lay on the operating table as the surgeon stitched me back together. His involvement and love was everything I ever wanted - there was no way he was going to be a clueless Dad!

But I was having trouble breastfeeding, another complication that suggested my body was failing as a giver and nurturer of life. For my daughter’s birth, I lay strapped to a table, unable to hold her, unable to move, while nurses, doctors and my husband busied around, taking excellent care of her; I hadn’t been able to care for her in her first precious moments of life. In those following days, as I waited for my body to heal and my milk to come in, I was impatient and furious with myself for my maternal shortcomings.

And so, as her father was growing closer and connecting to his baby girl, I felt she was slipping away from me. This baby I had been waiting and waiting for, felt not so much here as already going. She was never, ever going to be as close to me as she once was, inside me. Each and every day of her life would separate us, bringing more people, more experiences, and more distance. Every moment of her absence from my arms felt like a further chipping away of my connection with her.

From bassinet to bed, the space between us, no more than four feet, felt suddenly cavernous. I burst into sobs.

At that moment, my OBGYN surgeon walked in: handsome, British, hair long and floppy due to Covid salon closures (my husband once remarked that the doctor was so handsome, he could play Hugh Grant in the movies). Doctor saw my teary face and grimaced.

“This is why I never usually come on day two” he began. “You’re hormones are giving you a terrible time. Is everything alright? Has she been alright?” he gestured to the baby.

“Yes, she’s wonderful,” I insisted. “It’s just that I wish she was still inside me.” My explanation was earnest and plaintive.

Doctor turned to my husband. “There’s just no pleasing some people, is there?” he joked; perhaps his response seems flippant and dismissive, but the tension broke and the three of us laughed. This man had seen me through 9 months of pregnancy, 36 hours of labour and a c-section. What was he going to do, put her back?

Before she was born, I worried I wouldn’t be able to love my baby as much as my friends loved their babies. After she was born I worried she wouldn’t love me or understand how much I loved her. For some reason, I didn’t consider just how much she would want to be with me.

They say that infants don’t know that their mother is a separate person from themselves - that makes sense to me because needing us is a matter of survival. What I didn’t expect was that being with me would not only bring her security and sustenance, but also joy.

Maybe that seems weird, but it’s true.

When I was pregnant, I was so focused on performing the superhuman elements of motherhood - the intensity of labour, the magic hour, the breastfeeding, the unending fatigue. I guess I expected motherhood to be filled with love through sacrifice and exhaustion. I forgot to think that, in being with me, my baby might just be happy and actually like me. And that joy and affection had nothing to do with all the “right” or “wrong” things I did at her birth.