owp05

4th paper -- A Study of Procrastination

Will I Ever Use the Exercise Bike?
Or
The Writing Process, My Style

My physical therapist tells me I should really get an exercise bike to keep any mobility in my knees.

I have an idea for a piece I’d like to (or need to) write.

I talk to my husband about my need for an exercise bike and he agrees with me. 

I let the idea set in the back of my brain for a good, long time.

I go out looking for an exercise bike.  I go to several stores and try out many styles and brands.

I begin to research on my subject.

I decide on the style and brand of exercise bike that would best suit my needs.

I spend more time mulling over my idea and letting the new
found information meld with previous thoughts.

I inform my husband of my choice of exercise bikes and ask him to pick it up.

I jot out an outline and write down phrases I have thought of.

I wait a few weeks.

I reread my outline and add to it, cross out other things, and rework my phrases.

I ask my husband why I don’t have the exercise bike yet.  Lengthy discussion ensues.

I write a rough draft.

We go out together to purchase the exercise bike.

I read my rough draft out loud and change things till they sound right to me.

Although purchased and paid for, I must wait for the exercise bike to be ordered and delivered to the store.

I read my revised draft to friends and listen to their input.

The exercise bike is delivered to the store.

I may have to do more research to check out suggestions from friends.

My husband picks up the exercise bike from the store and sets the still boxed item on the back deck.

I think about the friends’ suggestions and either make the changes or don’t.

My husband and daughter unbox and set up the exercise bike.

I try to leave my writing for a time and think about other things.

I try the exercise bike and find that I need batteries to use set programs and change the tension.

I go back to my writing. I reread and rewrite.

Batteries are installed and the exercise bike is ready.

I read this revision and I am satisfied with it (for now).

I begin to use the exercise bike!

I publish my writing!

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     I have found that I have many stories inside waiting, more or less patiently, for me to write them down.  I often attempt, in vain, to put them to paper in the sophisticated styles I love to read in other people's work.  The stories then feel uncomfortable, like a young girl made to wear a ruffly, lacy, itchy dress with black, shiny, pinchy shoes.  When I let a story out, in my plain but true voice, it just sounds right.  And we are both satisfied.

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Don't ask about the exercise bike.

3rd paper -- Gramma's Hands

    When she was about eighty, my gramma took a liking to my newly acquired acrylic nails.  Not one to be showy, she had never given much thought to her nails.  But now she said, "I wish I had pretty nails, too."  Her natural nails were thick and healthy.  They curved gracefully -- in others words-- perfect.

    The next day I returned with all the equipment to do her nails.  First, I gently brushed her nails with warm soapy water and dabbed them dry with one of her thick, soft, blue towels.  I clipped and filed and shaped each nail  till they were uniform in shape and length.  I applied the base coat of polish.  At this point I knew we had a problem.

    I had not noticed until now, but my gramma's hands were never still.  And even with my constant admonishing to "Keep still," and "Be careful or you'll smudge," she kept drumming her fingers.  "I'm sorry.  I'll try to hold still!" she promised, meaning every word.  But, as I soon found out, the finger drumming was a habit so deeply imbedded it was now beyond her control.  We continued on with the first coat of color -- a pale pink.  I held onto her wrists while that coat dried.  It was the first of many times I gently restrained her to protect the wet, fragile coats.  I continued to apply another coat of polish and the top coat, holding her wrists between each coat.

    As anyone who's had a friend do her nails knows, this is a highly social process.  We talked a lot during this session, me about my job and my children and she about her past.  I loved her stories!  Most of them were stories I had heard many times before.  But now, they were being told to me alone and that made them even more precious.  She told about her own father, who, after nearly 50 years, she still missed.   "He would have loved talking with you," she insisted.  Her story grew to encompass her brother and sister, her mother who she barely remembered, and the kind stepmother who helped raise her.  Oh, how I wish I could remember all the details!

    The day's manicure session ended with a hand massage with luxurious lotion and I bade her good-bye.  I saw her at church on Sunday proudly showing off her fancy fingers to all her friends and telling them how her granddaughter had done them up for her.  She was totally tickled!

    We had scheduled another manuicure for the next week.  I showed up with several colors from which she could choose --  the pale pink from the week before, a classy taupe, and an elegant, deep wine color named sangria.  After I removed the the pale pink polish and gently washed and dried her hands, she pulled out a bottle of very bright, in-your-face pink.  "I want to use this," she sheepishly admitted.

    "Gramma!" I exclaimed.  "You want me to put this hussy pink on your nails!?"

    She did indeed.  So for week after week after week, turning into almost two years, I did (and so often had to redo -- darn those hyperactive fingers of hers!) her nails in what we all called Hussy Pink.  She loved the color.  I loved the time I spent with her and the stories we shared and the bond that had grown deep and strong

2nd paper -- Mrs. Castle

         I met Mrs. Castle the first day of fourth grade at Longfellow Elementary.  She was old --somewhere between forty-five and death (my ability at nine years old to determine an adult’s age was poor, but in retrospect, I’d say she was about sixty). She was prim and proper and wearing a wool tweed suit. This in itself was quite unusual for
California in September.  But she also sported the neatest, tightest bun I had ever seen. Day in and day out her hairstyle never varied.  She would wear different suits but they were all wool tweed. 

 

            Her style of teaching mirrored her appearance. Mrs. Castle taught in a rigid, traditional manner. No insolence was allowed.  Slouching?  Not in her room!  Don't even think about chewing gum! There was no talking during work time. I don’t think anyone ever tried to talk out of turn to find out what would happen if someone did. None of us kids quite knew what to make of this slightly scary woman.

          And we didn't know how she felt about us.

         At first, all of us kids would go home and complain to our parents about Mrs. Castle, the witch. (I really thought that if there were such beings as witches, surely they would look like her – but without the tweed.) All the parents, however, liked her discipline and the high standards she set for us, my parents included. My mother would ask for specific incidents.  I told her how Mrs. Castle “cured” slouching by pulling students up by a single strand of hair. My mother asked if the students had, indeed, been slouching. I said, “Yes.” Mom asked if the students knew they were supposed to be sitting up straight. Again, I said, “Yes.” “Did the students know what would happen if they slouched?” “Yes,” I had to admit for the third time. Mom asked what I thought was unfair about it. Obviously, my classmates and I were going to get no support from home!

         Mrs. Castle continued to teach us all the things that fourth graders were supposed to learn. She also began to slip in things we would never have been able to get from our books. Mrs. Castle had had many adventures in her life and she used them to teach us. Her most recent adventure was having lived in Japanfor several years. So, naturally, she was now fluent in Japanese. This brought the total to six languages in which she was fluent.

 

A ritual we all looked forward to was Mrs. Castle reading out of chapter books to us every day after lunch.  We would sit in the warm, muggy room with the lights dimmed as she recounted the many adventures of Henry Huggins or Homer Price.  Many of us would rest our head on our desk as we listened, enthralled. 

         One boy in my class was Clarke. He wore old clothes, thick glasses, and came from a poor home. A few weeks into the school year, Clarke fell asleep as she read.  Everyone clamored to get Mrs. Castle's attention to point out this unforgivable transgression.  She merely hushed us and said, "He needs his sleep."

          You could have heard a pin drop. 

         We knew then that under all the wool tweed and the tight bun and for all her strictness, Mrs. Castle truly cared for each and every one of us.

         She was the best teacher I ever had.

1st paper -- Camping

Karen Lawrence

     In its glory days, it had been a training site for the rough, tough, U.S. Marine Corps.  U.S. Marines are by no means sissies and they don’t do frills.  So, even at its peak this place had none of the amenities such as flush toilets, paved roads, or drinking fountains.
  No.  This was not the place a sane person would go to recoup and relax.  But no one had ever called or thought of my father as sane. And so, the summer I was eleven, I found myself, with my family, on my way to the camping trip of a lifetime at, get this, Camp Cloudburst.
  Camp Cloudburst was located high in the California Sierra Mountains near the Nevada state line.  The air was so thin at this high altitude that when we unpacked a bag of marshmallows they filled the entire now-poofy package-- not unlike those infomercials for vacuum food storage systems.  Apparently, sufficient air was another “frill” the Marines had done without. 
    The place had running water—a stream.  There were pit toilets.  And, yes, there were also clouds that burst.  This was where my father had chosen to spend an entire week.
  The second day there, after we had dried everything out from the previous day’s “burst”, my father decided to take us kids fishing.  “Us kids” consisted of my sister, thirteen, my brother, seven, and me, still eleven. 
    We walked along the dirt road for about a half-mile.  My father carried the tackle box, my brother and sister each carried the poles, and I carried the jar of bait.  Salmon eggs. We turned left and began down a hill.  The word “hill”, in this instance, could be replaced by “sheer cliff”.  We moved as slowly and as carefully as possible.  My father would make his way down four or five feet and set himself.  We kids, in turn, would hurl ourselves towards him full of confidence that we would indeed be caught.  My father would then make sure we were secure where we were and repeat the whole process. 
    After a few repetitions, my father decided it would be easier if he handled all of the gear.  So he collected the poles from my brother and sister and asked for the bait from me.  I quite willingly obliged.  But I was on such a steep slope and my father was several feet downhill.  When I threw the salmon eggs to my father, I threw them level to me.  That made them way over my father’s head, and up stretched arms.  The jar of eggs rolled past the huge boulders my father had set himself against and on down, presumably, to the bottom of the “hill”.   
    My father did what any other father of the times would have done.  He left his children, his own flesh and blood, clinging to the side of the “hill” and went after the bait.  My brother and sister had made it a bit farther down than me.  They waited for my father to return in the shade of one the aforementioned boulders.  I, however, sat frozen with fear on the only level spot within my reach—an anthill.  Complete with ants.  In the sun.  There I sat for what seemed like hours, ants crawling all over me and biting me, twenty feet from the top and God only knows how many feet from the bottom. 
    My father eventually returned, without the eggs, to rescue us.  I don’t remember how he got us off the side of the “hill” or the walk back to camp.  I only remember falling asleep in the only place I felt safe—the car.  There I stayed for the rest of the day.