Reverb 10 for December 2 – WRITING

Prompt: December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

Hmm…

Everything?

Being in nursing school has kept me from doing a lot of writing this year. When I am finished with my clinical logs and other assignments or after charting on patients all day, the last thing that I want to do is sit down at my laptop or pick up my journal and write some more. I have also realized that there are times where I avoid writing because I know that the act of bringing those thoughts forth from my head will force me to feel all of the unpleasant emotions that I may have been trying to shove deeper beneath the surface. This is especially true if I am thinking of writing about my father or a troublesome day with a particular patient. Though I have always been very articulate and comfortable with self-expression, I think that I have a fear of that expression at times. Fear that I will not be able to say what I really mean, that I will not be able to fully convey what I feel or be able to translate from the abstract emotion to a concrete sentence upon the page.

Can I eliminate it? Yes. As Nike has said for years, “just do it”. In 2011, there will be less thinking and self-critique and more writing.

Grandfather in the Corner

We wind the clock every Sunday because that’s what we’ve always done; pulling down on the metal chains to raise the heavy brass weights that keep the pendulum in motion for all time. I thought it was called a grandfather clock because of my father’s father. Thought that its dark wood harbored a long, illustrious family history. But it wasn’t so; my own father bought it somewhere  in New Jersey long after he’d left my grandfather in Virginia. He’d  have told me that it was too nice a clock for black people to have owned “back then”. That’s why it came to us after – after Richmond, Virginia and segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. It takes up residence in a corner of the dining room now. I don’t care so much about where it came from as I used to. What matters is that the broad-faced sun and sliver of moon rise and set over the roman numerals the way they’ve been doing all my life. The clock in the corner is nothing but dependable. It keeps memories of time for me now like he once did. I tick off the many moments in my life to its hourly gongs.  It sets the rhythm for the day, just like a heartbeat.

Something Someone Said

The word itself is weighted like an anvil that falls heavily, squarely, and hammers you into the ground in a single, swift stroke.  It is cavernous and dark, stretching on forever like a tunnel, except that there is no light at the end of its long length. It is deafening. It silences the rest of the sentence with a jet-engine roar. It is the moment at which hope is extinguished.

I saw his mouth forming the word cancer before I actually heard it. There is certain predictability in an oncologist’s presence. They do not bring tidings of comfort and joy.

Dad immediately said, as he always said, “Now, don’t go getting all upset.”