Us (Writing on Napkins)

Great napkins of history: Laffer and Zandman's sketches of breakthrough ideas

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How many years ago had that been? Our Luanne would be fifty-three now. In truth, there was never any great spark between us. We went through the motions of love. Exchange our apartment for a house. Buy a dog after our baby died, as if that would help. As if a dachshund might entice me to forget the sweet way the top of her head had smelled, and the warmth of her tiny body at my breast. His colorless lips hung open slightly. Small grey hair sprouted from wide nostrils and spilled from his ears. Lines ran thin around his mouth and eyes, and deep across his neck. The blankets were wet at my legs.

Notes from Dad, Written on Napkins

It had happened quietly. A final release of urine while the organs inside his body shut down, like lights switching off in an old house at night, one, by one, by one. I left him to shower. The water felt good on my shoulders, and I adjusted the taps gradually until the stream was almost scalding.

I stood naked beneath the flow, watching the clouds of steam rise in the air. He mowed the grass, budgeted my grocery allowance, paid the bills, and came home to cold dinners, left on the stove long after the kids had reluctantly padded to bed. That was a long time ago. There would be no need of asking Walter for permission to spend money now. I could paint the house whatever color I wanted. I could sell the house if I wanted. Partitioned from the world like this, water raining on my back, it was easy to imagine Walter at the table, drinking coffee, turning the pages of his paper.

The memories came easy of him teaching our sons to ride their bikes on the road out front and to skate on the rink out back. No, I never loved him. Not in the way women loved men in the movies.

I could live without him now. We had never been soul mates. We argued more often than not. They all seemed trivial now. The boys would want to salvage some of his things. A few tokens to remember him by. What would they choose? She loved me like a daughter since the first time we met. She loved me effortlessly.

I could almost feel her sadness of his passing now. The comfort she might offer me if she was still here. The tightening of her arms around my body. What was this feeling constricting the bones in my ribcage? What was a woman supposed to feel, in the moments after her husband died? I never loved him the way he deserved. I never loved him the way he loved me. Clearing the fog from the mirror, I examined my reflection. Water dripped from my short white hair. My breasts hung heavily from my chest.

Yes, I was old. Just as old as Walter. And we had come down this road together. Blue ones, his favorite. I changed the bedding and put the put the soiled laundry in the washer downstairs after ensuring he looked comfortable, head propped up on a couple of pillows. This is how the EMTs would find him when they came. I puttered about the house, moving our glasses from the coffee table in the living room to the dishwasher and tidying the kitchen.

The phone rang once, twice, three times, breaking the sanctuary of silence to remind me of the outside world. The world waiting for me to say it. What were the boys doing now? Talking to their wives about their children and grandchildren? How could I tell them their father had died? I picked up my cell from the counter. A picture of Walter with our youngest great-grandchild lit the screen. The only girl in our family since Luanne. How Walter loved her. How he spoiled her. They would swarm and hover. It would be days before they expected our call, checking in to see they were well in their respective cities of Vancouver and Saskatoon.

The old oak tree stood strong and tall outside the kitchen window. We would bury Walter next to Luanne, next to her grey rotted coffin in the cemetery just out of town. But then, maybe Walter was already with our baby. With his parents, and mine. And maybe he was waiting for me. I let the cellphone timeout to black and padded down the hall. I lay on the bed beside him, clean and fresh, and ready. I work four nights a week. While the hellions are in school I edit Old Souls, which means the nights and weekends I do get to spend with the boys are typically quite busy.

My husband and I often pass like two ships in the night: This is our life. Her son was waiting at home. And instead of meeting his mother at the door, he was greeted by two police officers who took him to the hospital to meet his father. And all I can think of is my own beloved hellions opening the door to find two police officers with terrible news. The winds are going to blow. In fact, I can hear them now, railing against the front windows, growing in force. Tonight, we will be together, safe indoors with absolutely nowhere to go. Why oh, why did you ask her to write something when I have a much better story to tell?

Everyone else had been flown out to safety and I get thrown in jail. So, I get free and then have to make a run for it. Yes, she sends me out into the bush with a few bottles of water and minimal food how cruel is that?

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Not a bit of it. Not content with that in book 2 she has me searching for my foster child who just happens to have been captured by a radicalized terrorist group. She has a nasty habit of killing off all the people I love, and blows up my house and I lose everything, and I mean everything, even my name and my identity. And that reminds me.

And where is this paragon of virtue all this time you ask? Sitting comfortably at her dining room table tapping on her laptop without a care in the world. Apparently, this is the diet that helps her brainstorm yet more appalling scenarios. And what am I doing?

No one ever considers us. Do I mention being abandoned in the African bush with a 9 week-old baby? Meeting kings, presidents, international artists and peasants? Earning my living by writing after I got fired from my teaching post? Or what about that live radio broadcast with a bayonet digging into my neck?

You can meet up with Lucinda here: Web page — http: I have a free novella myBook. You can check it out here: Her sense of humor is dry and witty, and her Twitter alter-ego is a truly special brand of cut-throat hilarious. This post had me in stitches. She exists merely to be the public face of my sarcastic side.

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And since I talk to writers a lot on Twitter, she focuses on writing. Since her creation in July, she has tweeted times, according to that screenshot. Sometimes, the content overlaps a little. I thought we could use those instances for learning. And since Bad Writer says the opposite of what a writer should do, the lessons will be actual constructive things with her non-examples. View original post more words. Playing Video Games This may be a tad nontraditional, but I think video games have a tremendous positive impact on us.

Taking Showers For me, taking showers can spur on a lot of thinking and talking. Listen to New Music Music has a way of seeping into our souls without even realizing it. I hope this can help you get back on track for your writings. There is inspiration all around you; you just have to seek it. Last week I was stuck. The week before that, I got stuck.

Esquire's Cocktail Party: Stories Written on Napkins

They say everyone has a book in them, right? He remained warm a long time. In the last few years his joints creaked and popped as he rose from the bed. Not old enough, anyway. It had always seemed like there would be more time. How I hated Walter when he brought that dog home. Would these memories come as easy if I lived somewhere else?

The conditioner rinsed from my hair, I turned off the tap. I hesitated, listening to the last of the water trickle down the drain. I just recently realised the importance of that period I lived abroad, when I found the voice I wanted to communicate in through napkins.

Despite the language itself, all the wealth amongst which I lived in these 12 years in Africa was crucial for me to draw my poetry; everything is a reflex of what I have lived in some moment of my life. I like to say that my office is the bar, a privilege for few. Amazingly, I still feel a lot of pleasure in making them; I am still surprised with what I have to say.

Obviously, I will not force myself to create new napkins just to feed the big audience who follows me, I will always create based on my emotions. For every writer, the new and the challenging must always be encouraged. In the third, there will be a strong marriage between napkin and prose, with longer texts.

My idea is that these three books form a kind of pre-novel trilogy, keeping the visual side, of course, which is my brand. Maybe a mix of graphic novel with prose? The napkins photographed for this article ae taken from the two books already published, and that was not an easy process: To end a long Skype call in which the clock seemed to have stayed still, I decided to do some quick-fire questions that can reveal so much about someone:.

That people read more and value literature, because those who read know the infinity.

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