So- here is what followed.
A draft- a partial draft only- of Chapter One of what turned out to be Lunchtime at Mercy Kitchen: A Soup Kitchen Romance, a work in progress. LMK as I have nicknamed it has been sitting under the towel, in a great big bowl being LEFT ALONE for a while now, to let the yeast of time and space work on it. I will be picking it up again shortly to re-edit and shape it, hopefully with new eyes, now that it's been 'resting' a while. Here is a little taste:
Chapter 1
Ablutions
Rosalinda Renee Rabidoux paused in the midst of her getting-ready-for-work routine, to satisfy a need that had nothing to do with working. She padded across the thick, pale pink carpeting to her bedroom, stood on the small stool in her walk-in closet, and stretched to reach the top shelf for the clear Tupperware shoe box labeled “Fancy-Red” in her splashy curving Catholic school script. She opened the container, perched on the bed, and slipped the brand-new magenta pumps onto her perfectly pedicured feet. They were every bit as gorgeous as she had remembered. A purchase from one of her bus-shopping adventures in the city with Cheryl, they had been sitting in her closet like royalty-in-hiding, awaiting the proper festivities to make an entrance and to receive the adulation of the masses. Or that’s how they seemed to her.
The wondrous shade of the textured silk, a perfect balance between red and purple, the perfectly sewn swirls of tiny sequins in rose and red and silver, the heart-stopping four-inch heels. She even loved the elegant label and red satin lining concealed beneath her foot. The pumps perfectly fulfilled all her personal wardrobe requirements. Just slipping them on, she felt crowned, delicious, more alive.
She sashayed around her room, preening in the morning sunlight before a full-length oval mirror stand. A small woman who was soft and round in all the woman places, she was groomed to perfection, her hair, a fiery corona of spirals scarcely contained within a glittery clasp, her blue eyes accentuated with bold lining and subtle shading in lavender and plum. She wore a silky kimono covered with soft flowers as she held herself and moved with the music from the radio, imagining exactly how she wanted it to be when Ernie pulled her in close and danced her around the floor in these very shoes.
There was a dance coming up this fall, a full, fancy dress shindig, the Fall Foliage Festival Ball. And what Rosalinda had been daydreaming into life for a while now, had been sashaying around that dance floor with the newest object of her hopes and prayers, Ernie Crawford, the former construction worker who took care of buildings and people at her church, Our Lady of Mercy. Ernie attended to the old building like it was his own home, fixing and fussing over it, keeping everything in the church purring. He also ran Mercy Kitchen, the parish’s twice-weekly lunch program for the needy, with a steady hand.
Dancing in the morning sunlight, in her kimono and her fancy shoes, she could see, right there in her oval mirror, she and Ernie, wrapped together, every move of one mirroring the other, moving to the music. She could feel the warmth and excitement of the moment, see her radiant face, snuggled into Ernie’s chest, beaming back at her from the mirror.
Just then, in mid fantasy, she froze. She realized that she had no idea if Ernie could dance. In fact, had never seen him take to the dance floor at any event she could remember. She caught herself as a flicker of anxiety began to rear itself, then stopped it dead in its tracks. She refused to entertain any thoughts of discouragement. She had another half hour before she had to finish dressing, time for another French Vanilla iced coffee and some time to think out her next moves. She carefully returned the shoes to their box in the closet to await further instructions. Then she settled in at her counter, with coffee and pen, and and sat up a little taller, as she pictured Ernie looking positively edible in his going-to-the-ball clothes. Whether or not she’d ever laid eyes on the man’s dance moves, she had a ripple of womanly intuition that once Ernie slid his hand around her waist and pulled her toward him, the dancing would take care of itself.
From: Lunchtime at Mercy Kitchen: A Soup Kitchen Romance copyright 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Scribings I: A Berkshire Girl Takes Holy Orders
SCRIBINGS I
A Berkshire Girl Takes Holy Orders
You might ask where all this ScribeGirl business comes from.
How on earth a Berkshire girl, a person of the female persuasion, born into a serious, good, and, at one time, robust little mill town in Berkshire county, came to be a scribe. A scribe being one who, in service to some higher purpose, sits for endless hours taking down words with the single goal of getting them all recorded properly. Who listens carefully, and faithfully makes notes just in case anyone else is interested. A person who, at the same time is also reasonably busy with other endeavors- working full time as a therapist, courting & marrying in mid-life, and showing up for all the sundry needs and celebrations that bubble up in the life of a large and loving family. One who, as a young woman, kept many what might be called ‘diaries, ’ a practice that had ferried her across the rough patches of her life, but who never exactly saw it as a calling- just a way to complain on paper and to register whatever the current rune, or psychic, or self-help book might be telling her would fix her life. That was all the pre-scribe writing and it got more or less put on low flame once life became more tolerable and graduate school papers sucked all the juice out of the scribe.
Something happened then that changed everything. While deliriously enjoying the season of falling in love at 43, along with building a career and sharing all this with a most wonderful circle of friends and family, the unthinkable came to visit. In the form, as it seems wont to do, of cancer. Not as in mine. My own cancer had been dealt with at some length in the registering-of-tribulations portion of the journals.
This time the cancer came to my sister. My dearie younger sister, my ‘Irish twin,’ born just 13 months almost to the day, after I was brought home from the hospital. The person, who, all my life ever since then, was right here at my elbow, hiding with me from the mean little Venerini nuns during our abortive stint in nursery school, sharing a bedroom wallpapered floor to ceiling with Beatle photos - tho’ one wall, it must be said, was reserved for her shrine to Carl Yaztremski. My Oscar to her Felix.
My little sister who later lived a few doors away with Wayne, the husband that I, in a burst of courage or madness, fixed her up with one New Year’s Eve, when they were both in danger of spending it alone. My sister who, more recently, came to take me by the hand to fetch me when I was, on a 90 degree August morning, late to my own wedding. Kathy, my sidekick, my confidante, my shopping buddy, my sister, was mortally sick. After endless walks at all hours in the wooded park near our home, sobbing to the trees and the wind, I was in desperate need of solace, of outlet, of distraction. That’s how it began. I had shyly, oh so shyly joined a creature called a cooperative artist studio in my new home in Boston. And there, Kate my coach, began to ask me: “Can you write about it, Maureen?”
We did a lot of playing then at the studio. Making plays with beans and feathers and fabrics and rocks. One object that kept turning up in my plays was a wicker basket filled with scraps of yarn. A basket of yarns. Kate handed it to me one day, and said “ Why don’t you take this home with you for a while?”
I had no idea what she meant, or why she made this suggestion. Only that around this time, living in a heightened state of holding opposites- the true bliss and blessing I was feeling in my personal life, and the shattering terror at the peril my sister and her family were in- I felt I needed something. Something bigger than myself, to contain all that was unfolding. I needed something to distract me, a place I could go in my mind where I could spin all I was feeling into something that would hearten me somehow to face, along with Kathy and Wayne, the battle ahead. A silly little romance, I thought to myself, thinking of the McCartney line about a silly little love song. I felt a surge of longing, for a story to contain the happiness that had fallen on me like grace, and to take me away for a bit from the overwhelming sadness and fear. So that when I needed to, which soon became pretty constantly, I would have heart to be there with her and for her.
And next thing I knew, I was standing in the shower when I heard the first line of a story. I dried off and got my pen. I listened carefully and started to scribe. Here is what began to show up.
A Berkshire Girl Takes Holy Orders
You might ask where all this ScribeGirl business comes from.
How on earth a Berkshire girl, a person of the female persuasion, born into a serious, good, and, at one time, robust little mill town in Berkshire county, came to be a scribe. A scribe being one who, in service to some higher purpose, sits for endless hours taking down words with the single goal of getting them all recorded properly. Who listens carefully, and faithfully makes notes just in case anyone else is interested. A person who, at the same time is also reasonably busy with other endeavors- working full time as a therapist, courting & marrying in mid-life, and showing up for all the sundry needs and celebrations that bubble up in the life of a large and loving family. One who, as a young woman, kept many what might be called ‘diaries, ’ a practice that had ferried her across the rough patches of her life, but who never exactly saw it as a calling- just a way to complain on paper and to register whatever the current rune, or psychic, or self-help book might be telling her would fix her life. That was all the pre-scribe writing and it got more or less put on low flame once life became more tolerable and graduate school papers sucked all the juice out of the scribe.
Something happened then that changed everything. While deliriously enjoying the season of falling in love at 43, along with building a career and sharing all this with a most wonderful circle of friends and family, the unthinkable came to visit. In the form, as it seems wont to do, of cancer. Not as in mine. My own cancer had been dealt with at some length in the registering-of-tribulations portion of the journals.
This time the cancer came to my sister. My dearie younger sister, my ‘Irish twin,’ born just 13 months almost to the day, after I was brought home from the hospital. The person, who, all my life ever since then, was right here at my elbow, hiding with me from the mean little Venerini nuns during our abortive stint in nursery school, sharing a bedroom wallpapered floor to ceiling with Beatle photos - tho’ one wall, it must be said, was reserved for her shrine to Carl Yaztremski. My Oscar to her Felix.
My little sister who later lived a few doors away with Wayne, the husband that I, in a burst of courage or madness, fixed her up with one New Year’s Eve, when they were both in danger of spending it alone. My sister who, more recently, came to take me by the hand to fetch me when I was, on a 90 degree August morning, late to my own wedding. Kathy, my sidekick, my confidante, my shopping buddy, my sister, was mortally sick. After endless walks at all hours in the wooded park near our home, sobbing to the trees and the wind, I was in desperate need of solace, of outlet, of distraction. That’s how it began. I had shyly, oh so shyly joined a creature called a cooperative artist studio in my new home in Boston. And there, Kate my coach, began to ask me: “Can you write about it, Maureen?”
We did a lot of playing then at the studio. Making plays with beans and feathers and fabrics and rocks. One object that kept turning up in my plays was a wicker basket filled with scraps of yarn. A basket of yarns. Kate handed it to me one day, and said “ Why don’t you take this home with you for a while?”
I had no idea what she meant, or why she made this suggestion. Only that around this time, living in a heightened state of holding opposites- the true bliss and blessing I was feeling in my personal life, and the shattering terror at the peril my sister and her family were in- I felt I needed something. Something bigger than myself, to contain all that was unfolding. I needed something to distract me, a place I could go in my mind where I could spin all I was feeling into something that would hearten me somehow to face, along with Kathy and Wayne, the battle ahead. A silly little romance, I thought to myself, thinking of the McCartney line about a silly little love song. I felt a surge of longing, for a story to contain the happiness that had fallen on me like grace, and to take me away for a bit from the overwhelming sadness and fear. So that when I needed to, which soon became pretty constantly, I would have heart to be there with her and for her.
And next thing I knew, I was standing in the shower when I heard the first line of a story. I dried off and got my pen. I listened carefully and started to scribe. Here is what began to show up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)