The one day this week the thunderclouds are nowhere to be seen is also the rare day that I am sick: coughing, can't swallow, body aches and pains. I try to shield my pleurisied eyes from the sun streaming through the window. Oh, the irony.
Anyway. I just started a writing class in crafting the short essay. Yeah, I know I write for a living, but almost never in first person. So it's kind of fun. We took part in a 10-15 minute writing exercise about a childhood summer memory or food. Here's what I wrote:
In those long, lazy summer days, while the other kids went to the beach, rode their bikes in aimless circles around the neighborhood, or played baseball in the park, I sat in front of a baby grand piano in a darkened living room, and practiced scales:
A major in gliding quarter notes.
A minor in brisk eighth notes.
B major in tripping sixteenth notes.
B minor in a mad dash of thirty-second notes up the keyboard and down again.
The small black metronome ticked a measured cadence, counterpoint to the next-door neighbors' kids in their cerulean-blue, over-chlorinated pool screaming: "MARCO! POLO! FISH OUT OF WATER!"
Then a series of splashes and giggles.
Sometimes they'd overhear me laboring over the keyboard and imitate me, singing: "La la la la la la la la la."
They'd call me, laughing, and tell me to come swimming with them. Three times out of four, I'd ignore them, grit my teeth, and soldier on.
But every once in a while, I'd throw on my swimsuit, brimming with freedom, and slam down the piano lid with a satisfying "whummp" on my way out the front door.
Your turn: What's one of your childhood summer memories?
They squish between your toes if you don't watch careful. Daddy sometimes told me when he mows the grass the plums squirt out from underneath like jam and land on his legs. His hairy legs would be like toast and that's gross because I hate hair in my food. Ever since that time Grandma's kitty stuck its head in the vanilla icecream box and I didn't see and I scooped out a bowlful and took a bite and it was all hair. Yuck!
ReplyDeleteBut I like that old tree and I can reach up over my head and pick plums. The skin doesn't like to let you through but when your teeth bite in, the skin finally lets go and makes your cheeks hurt with how sour it is. But the sweet part is right underneath, soft and warm, like mom's pies but not as sugary but good too. You can read up there, sitting in the branches between the shade. It hurts my butt if I don't take my pillow but that makes mom mad at me so I have to be real super mysterious like Harriet the Spy so she doesn't see me. She says it makes skid marks on the pillowcase from the tree trunk. But I guess I'd rather have skid marks on the pillow than scrapes on my legs, because that's what happens instead.
Harriet the Spy is my favorite to read and sometimes Nancy Drew but she isn't as mysterious as Harriet the Spy. Nancy Drew sometimes hangs out with those Hardy Boys and I think one's her boyfriend, or maybe they both are and that's why she never talks about her love life, so they don't find out about each other. You're only supposed to kiss one boy at a time. That's why mom married Daddy because she decided she only wanted to kiss him the rest of her life.
Grandma gave me Caddie Woodlawn and Anne of the Green Gables for Christmas and I think of the old time people, I like them better than Laura Ingalls Wilder even. I wish I could live back in those times because they didn't have to scrub the bathtub with the dirty ring around it every Saturday. They got to milk cows and make butter. It's called churning. I like the way that word feels in my mouth, churning. But they had to make their bed every day too like me, so I guess some things don't ever change.