More From My Notebooks

I'm enjoying reading through my writing exercises. That word - exercise - conjurs up thoughts of arithmetic exercises or phonics exercises or the physical exercise we're encouraged to do every day. We writers need to exercise our writing muscles much like we exercise the muscles that keep us going.

The day's prompt was" The simplest things of all"  ... ready, set, go, write for ten minutes, keep the hand moving, no good, no bad.

and I wrote ...

What is simple, if I really think about it. Is it simple to make a cup of tea?

Perhaps if you have only a box of Red Rose tea bags in the cupboard and a kettle of boiling water on the stove. But here the simple task begins with choice. Herbal or black or green? Tea bags or loose tea. Where's the tea ball? Where's the tea kettle?

Then I hear her voice. "I had a little perforated spoon that had a hinge and a latch. Perfect for just one cup of tea. Do you know where that is? I could use it. All there is here is generic tea – not even Lipton or Tetley, some nondescript brand."

A simple cup of tea is now complicated by all that has gone before. In the back of the cupboard is a small round teapot. It's made of a white and blue speckled pottery and once had four footed mugs to match. One of the mugs remains today and it's in the cupboard with my rotating collection of mugs for coffee and tea.

The simple task of making a cup of tea ushers in the difficult task of sorting through the memories.

The teapot and mugs were a going-away gift from co-workers when we moved from Allentown back to the farm in 1976.  I wonder if Gaby is still alive, if her troubled marriage survived, if she ever lost that extra weight she carried with such shame. Louise, the one who named our photo-typesetting computer Horace, is gone now but the sound of her voice whispers in my ear.

Again, get back to the simple thing – a cup of tea.

End of 10 minutes. Pen down

 The following one was also in that notebook - not from writing practice but more as a journal entry.

"Dear President Trump,

Today my granddaughter and I went out to breakfast at a lovely little restaurant with outdoor seating as we're still in the midst of the pandemic you so badly handled in those darkest days of your presidency.

I asked that beautiful little nine-year-old what she'd write to you if she had the chance. She said the following to me: "President Trump, your behavior makes me feel absolutely farty. By that I mean smelly, foul, disgusting."

From My Notebooks

 Plumbing one of my writing notebooks today. Advice from writing guru Natalie Goldberg is to avoid reading what you've written for at least a year. I filled this notebook before I began to add the date at the top of the page but it's from this prompt: A favorite teacher ... ready, set go, write for ten minutes, keep the hand moving, no good, no bad.

Always my mind goes to Mrs. Austin, third grade, Charlotte's Web, the green hall. The smells of third graders - their lunch boxes and their mother's laundry soap and the chalk and the textbooks and the stuff the teacher sprinkled on the throw-up before the janitor got there.

She read to us every morning just after attendance was taken and milk money handed in. It was my favorite time of the school day. I was lost in the story right at school, at my desk. Toby Tyler who ran away to work in the circus; wonderful Wilbur and patient Charlotte and her babies and Fern, who leaned on the fence to watch and listen.

Mrs. Austin's voice was a little gravely and now I know it as a smoker's voice. She was slender and not as tall as Miss Edwards next door. She wore cardigans and wool skirts and sensible shoes and glasses with little wings on the brows.

She promised us she'd stand on her head if we all got our spelling words correct. This was a problem for me. I couldn't bear to think of her upended, skirt falling over her head and exposing her underpants.

At the beginning of the school year, it seemed impossible for there were always the kids who missed two or three words every time. But in the spring, spelling had improved or the words were easier and I began to worry again. I solved the problem by making sure I missed one word each time to save my dear teacher the embarrassment of exposure.