So I'm Thinking Of Writing A Story

I am sick today. That icky cold in my nose and soreness in my throat. And a burning behind my eyes that means I have a fever. Not like a raging fever. Just that a bit hotter you know that your body is trying to burn off whatever infection you have kind of fever.  

I was in Massachusetts this weekend. A very short trip. To go to my future daughter-in-law's bridal shower. It was fantastic!  And I flew in on the red eye on New Years Eve - well at 12:55 so really New Years day, but still in the night and getting into Boston in the morning. 

I took the trip with my daughter, which was wonderful. We travel really well together and had a lot of fun. We always do when we're together. Have fun.

I have this with all my kids. Which is really quite wonderful. They are now in that place in their life , and I am in that place in my life, where we are friends. It is a lovely thing to be dear friends with those beautiful beings that are also your kids. 

And so it was a great being with all my kids and my daughter-in-law to be and my parents and sister and her family, too. A busy weekend of shopping, and visiting and eating and then the bridal shower only to head back to the airport for the long flight home.

And now I am here. The quick trip along with a New Years Eve consisting of a lot of wine and sherry and sugar and not much sleep is why I feel like I feel now. Yucky.

And so, besides the ease in which I am sharing all the not so pleasant details of my cold and the oh so pleasant details of my weekend, I'm kind of an empty shell, void of creativity.  And so I thought I'd share the beginning of a story I am writing. Whether it's just what it is now, or becomes a short story or even a novel I haven't yet decided.  Right now it is just what it is. A beginning of something that doesn't yet know what it is.  

But I like it. I hope you do, too!

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I didn’t see him when I first walked into the park. I was focusing on the sky. It was that pink color that holds for just a second before turning to gold as the sun disappears behind the trees. So short a moment. My favorite time so it makes complete sense that it would be only an instant. A cruel metaphor of my life. Where everything glows and then the darkness hits. And with it all the disturbing creature  that nighttime brings.
 
I didn’t see him when I first walked in. But because I think about running into him all the time, he filled my mind as the night sky filled my eyes. I think constantly of how it would be. How he would be. What he would say. And I wonder if seeing him would create closure after so much time. Or, instead, reinforce the depth of loss that stays with me always.

Because there is no dimming of memory and pain. Not this time. I’m still right there.The pain is right with me. All the time. 
 
And so, because I was noticing the sky turning pink to gold to dark and thinking about what it would be like to run into him here in the park, I didn’t see him when I first walked in. But then I did.
 
He was sitting on a bench against the now inky sky. Reading a book. Squinting. As he always did when he read books. You’d think he’d finish up, as it was now dark. Or use his phone’s light to see more clearly. But even from a distance I could see that he was instead doing what he always did. Staying with the page even with the light now gone.

This is not surprising to me. He always did this. He would never think to turn on a light when the night hit the rooms of our home. Back then. When we had a home. He'd sit in the dark room, the book held a bit closer to his face - his beautiful face - and he would squint into the words. 

I thought he only did this when the light was lost.
 
But the, I noticed that he squinted like that all the time. Whenever he read something that he really liked. Always when he wrote something that he really liked. As though to see more clearly. As though to try and look into the words. See the truth that nestled beneath the words that covered the pages of another writer's words or his own, brilliant manuscripts..
 
HIs writing rarely had adjectives.
 
He was repulsed by language that camouflaged true meaning. Hated it. Anything that made the reader believe differently than what was real. It made his words sting. 
 
And it made me uncomfortable. I know he liked that.
 
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