Writers Are Watching You!

Writers are Watching You!

by Randy Brooker

I sat this weekend on the back deck of my parent’s house enjoying a meal and the breeze and the birdsong.  My grandmother was flipping through the pages of the latest “National Enquirer.”  She has started from the beginning three times since we sat down, and has stopped twice at the same ad for sparkly junk jewelry.  “Ooh, that’s nice.  Only $59.”

Dinner was spaghetti with dad’s homemade sauce, bread and butter, pickled beets.  I was feeling particularly nostalgic.  We always had pickled beets or dilly beans with spaghetti when I was a kid.  This was how we ate vegetables from the garden all winter long, and this was my comfort food.  

My grandmother had closed the “Enquirer” which had a picture of Donald Trump on the cover.  A look of disgust came over her face, as if she was seeing the cover for the first time.  “God, I can’t stand that man.”  This comment is proof to me that she still has lucid moments. In fact, she spent a lot of time that evening talking about my grandfather, their early life together, the different places they lived over the years.  It’s the recent, immediate stuff that she can’t seem to keep ahold of.  Again, waves of nostalgia and emotion swept over me.  I pondered the impermanence of life and the fact that I won’t be able to enjoy Dad’s homemade sauce or Grammie’s stories from the past forever.

Yet, I am a writer.  And being here at Plymouth State again at the National Writing Project in NH summer institute for teachers of writing puts me in that frame of mind more intensely than at any other time of year.  In my head, I began describing the scenery, thinking of how my description of the weather could change the tone of the scene.  I composed family histories in my head, dredging up snippets of memory.  I made up others, fictionalized them, made them more interesting.  I wondered what would happen in the story if lightning were to strike the deck right now.  I thought about the possibilities of a character in her late 80s with mild dementia.  I felt slightly guilty about all of this, but, as I have already admitted, I am a writer, and fodder for writing comes from everywhere.  

It’s good to be right here, right now, part of a community of writers.  I can write, tell my truths and my fictions and wonder what role I’ll play in the stories of others.