writing the story that only i can write

This year in my Fiction class, we were offered a challenge: to write that story that only we can write. My professor knew such a story was in every one of us. That thing that only we can know about, that only we can make an empathetic experience out of. Now--it was a Fiction class so he didn't want a bunch of autobiographical stuff. We were expected to change a few things around, elaborate and exaggerate where needed, but all while still staying true to what about the story was uniquely "us".

And I took the challenge.

And I wrote about my divorce. And who it has made me.

I wrote the story back at the beginning of October. The very ending took place in winter, and I had to try and remember what my backyard looked like with snow. Then, two months later, we got  our big blizzard and I was able to take a photo of the exact scene I had written about from memory:

Here is the winter scene ending from my story "The Weight of What is Thrown" :

The snow finally stops mid-afternoon. There has to be at least a foot, settled with a deep, almost palatable quiet. It drifts high against the fence, follows the slant of the roof, ghosts the outline of the swing set. She watches the neighbor’s cat pick its way across the back yard, lifting and shaking its paws at each step. The still scattered pieces of patio furniture look startled and naked where the snow parts to reveal their wrought iron frames. Everything visible sags and adjusts beneath this sudden, added weight.


The walks will have to be shoveled, she thinks. That had always been his job. Not because she had demanded it or he had claimed it, it just was. She can barely remember the last time she held a snow shovel, though in the recollection of it her hands are very small. And she can feel no sensation of using it, just holding it.

Suddenly, more than anything, she wants to shovel snow.

She goes back into the family room and positions herself in front of the TV. “Put on your boots and coats, boys. Let’s go outside.” There are some complaints about their show not being over, about how cold it will be, but all three stand and make their way obediently toward the closet.



Stepping out the front door, she sinks nearly up to her knees before the snow compresses enough to bear her weight. At first, the boys walk directly behind her, waiting for her to make a print they can step into. Then Zachary gets brave enough to try on his own and his brothers follow, laughing as they lunge forward into the front yard, trying to stay upright.

The snow shovel is in the garage, hanging in a row with the rake, the hoe, the broom. She retrieves it and starts at the sidewalk in front of the house. The thin blade slices through the top layer of snow. She lifts and lets it slide down the incline of the shovel face. It has not gone deep enough to reach the cement so she digs in again. The next shovelful she places is mixed with slimy, now blackened leaves. The ones she’d left unraked in November. She plunges the shovel again, harder this time, and it goes straight to the concrete. The vibration of plastic scraping solid travels up her arms. Lift, drop.

Her wrists feel the strain first, shaking to steady the load. She keeps moving up the sidewalk, throwing the snow over the round of her shoulder. Her back hunched and rigid, sweat beneath her collar steaming into the frozen air. She has reached the driveway.

Her body tries to persuade her: “That is enough. It is time to stop now. We need to go lie down.” But she ignores it. Her strokes grow determined, wild—she tosses the powder high, the frost from it erupting in clouds of glitter and spark around her. The glare of absolute white, intensified by the unshielded sun, stings at her eyes until silvery discs begin to whir at the edges of her vision. Legs throb from hip to ankle. Lungs, stretched and iced, sharp-ache with each inhalation.

She pictures what her mother would look like doing this. Her mother--so capable. She could change the battery in the car, mend a hole in a shirt, replace shingles on the roof. Maybe it wasn’t done in a pretty way, but it was done. Suddenly, all the memories of the chaos and unrest of her childhood home merge and roll into a new one—the feeling of safety she had always had knowing her mother was there, knowing she would never give up. It was all safety. How had she not remembered that feeling before?

She’s nearly done now. Four more feet. Three. Two.

She reaches the front door, steadies herself against it with one hand. Breathless, she turns to survey all she has done. A clear path from beginning to end. She is smiling. Not a forced smile, but one she hasn’t felt in a long time. It stretches at the muscles in her face; pulls at her lips, numb from the cold.

The older boys are hoisting the head onto a squat snowman; Luke snapping low twigs off the crabapple tree to use as arms. The ground around them is rubbed with prints of snow angels. Elijah sees she is done. “Good job, Mom!” he calls, his brothers echoing the praise. She does a little bow for them.

There is nothing of the past in this moment, she realizes, no fearful future. Just the truth of clean, right-angles of concrete. Of the V of winter geese passing overhead, long sinews of their necks pulled pale and straight. Of the sky, cloudless and shockingly blue. Melting snow dripping off the roofline. The boys’ laughter. Her heart, bucking hard inside her chest, reminding her she is alive. She takes her children inside.

And there you go. There are the things I have learned for sure from my divorce: Not how to exist happily living and parenting on my own. Not how to wake up excited for each new day. Not how to provide for everyone. Not how to trust and fully love again. Not how to be patient. Not how to understand God's unique way of trying his children based on what is best for them. But how to live in a moment. How to suck out every drop of joy that it offers, independent of the past or future. How to push on even when I don't feel like it, because my boys need me, and they mean more to  me than any self-pity I might feel entitled to wallow in.

The rest of those lessons--the ones about providing and trusting and anticipation and understanding and loving--I'm sure will be learned in due time, too. I have already conquered bits and pieces of them, and I keep a place in my heart open for them to be learned as certainly as I have learned the lesson of the joy of the present.

All the best to you...in the moment. :)