This week, in the last of four articles presenting writing generated from Writing It Real exercises, I have included the work of three subscribers who sent me results from the exercise I proposed in Remembering Your Birthdays, August 19, 2004.   After reading Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven, I felt certain that doing an exercise in which one recounted birthdays, past, present, future, one’s own and others, would yield not only good details, but emotional threads to explore in future writing.

Reading the passages sent in by Linda Krisch, JoEllen Moldoff, and Beth Einstein and my responses to each about looking for the essay or essays inside their exercise results, you’ll learn about ways to look into what you generate during free writes for direction concerning final essays.

Linda Krisch:

“My Take on Birthdays”

It’s almost 2:00 o’clock.  I know because everyone eats lunch at noon when it’s too hot to be outside; and they then parade past our bungalow with striped chairs and coolers to go swimming all afternoon.  This is my 7th birthday.  August is always expressively humid and that day was no exception.  My sisters are in the kitchen busy putting the leaf into the big oak table.  The sound of the heavy wood plunked into its place awakened Nanny from her nap.  “Linda, get yourself ready for your party!” Not exactly the peaches and cream–“I love you so much–here let me help you get ready” kind of tone.  I go into the little cubicle of a room where my favorite dress–my first loved dress was waiting for me.  It was a not quite tan, nor white dress with pennies pictured all over it.  Everywhere, shiny Lincoln images were looking at me.  The little dress with no sleeves had a beautiful pale green sash that tied in a big bow in the back. (Could Nanny have possibly tied that?)  It draped in little folds of material over my skinny frame.  I stand still fingering its softness as I look at my image. To this day, when I touch softened polished cotton cloth, I am transported back to being 7.

I hear the pop of the spring on top of the old green screen door open and the voices of my two friends, Betty Ann and Diane mix with my sisters, Donna and Nan, and my cousins, Peter and Billy.  “Shhh!” Everyone is pulling out chairs and getting party hats on–trying not to pinch their chins with the rubber band strap.  I hear the rasp of the wooden match strike on the box, and I am called in.  “Happy Birthday to you…” the singing and smiling faces tell me I AM SPECIAL.  I eat it up like the cupcakes before me.  I blow out the candles with a wish that this feeling will last all the time.

 It never does…

Sheila’s response:
Using the three-step response method in which I let the writer know what words and phrases stick with me, what feelings the writing brings up in me, and where I am interested to know more, I responded to Linda’s passages:

Velcro Words:  Details like, “then they parade past our bungalow with striped chairs and coolers,” “putting the leaf into the big oak table,” “Everywhere, shiny Lincoln images were looking at me,” “green sash that tied in a big bow in the back,” “Could Nanny have possibly tied that,” and “draped in little folds of material over my skinny frame” and “I eat it up like the cupcakes before me” stay with me.

The feelings I receive are ones of being tuned into the environment and the others in it, being pushed around and being fleetingly celebrated, feeling special for a short time.

I am certainly curious to know more about why this birthday celebration stands out and what it stands out from or whether it is brought up by fingering a certain cloth. Is she the youngest? Is being the youngest the cause of being celebrated only fleetingly?

I think the answers to the questions will come through in a revision.  My advice for delving in and constructing a personal essay from what the exercise generated is to start in the moment of dressing, showing Nanny dealing with the bow and putting in bits of dialog about what she says. The speaker can describe the dress and how she came to have it and who she knows is walking past her window, who the ones are who will come to the party and why the family is in a summer bungalow.  The speaker, at 7, is very observant about people and events and her own feelings and that will shine through even more in a longer version that allows for more detail and scene building.

I think the information about feeling uncelebrated might be given while the dressing is happening. The author can include details about how it usually goes with her sisters and cousins. Then she can show the candles and song. The line, “I eat it up like the cupcakes before me” makes a great ending.  We all identify with being the underdog and having a glimmer of what it feels like not to be and how we savor that feeling.

JoEllen Moldoff

“Birthdays”

October 28, 1942. I am born. The split in the family is mended. Aunts and uncles pass me around like a platter of turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. I am named after Joseph, my grandfather who sits on Grandma Rose’s dresser in a gold picture frame.  He remains forever forty-two.

I turn five.  The baby finally came. He’s in a crib in my parents’ room. Sometimes, when no one notices, I watch him sleep.

I turn eleven. I give a costume party for my friends.  I’m a flapper in a short pleated skirt with fringes, a low cut black blouse with sequins and high heels that click when I walk on the linoleum floor.  I wear bright red lipstick, rouge and earrings, which dangle like chandeliers. Around my head I tie a black velvet band with a feather. We listen to 45 rpms and do the Charleston.

Finally fourteen.  One more year, then high school.  My science teacher thinks I’m smart because I solved the riddle about what makes balloons in a bell jar fill up with air.   I have a crush on Joel Levine.  Miss Hansberry, our homeroom teacher wears black dresses and smells like old books in an attic.  We are rehearsing Stout Hearted Men for the Glee Club concert.  Most of the girls have breasts and their periods.  I worry I’ll never get mine.

I turn twenty. Senior year in college.  I am not pinned and I wonder if I will still be a virgin by the time I graduate.  Most of my friends have already gone all the way.  I have come close.

I turn twenty-six.  Dad died two weeks ago. He would have been 59 two days from my birthday. He bought me a dinette set last week for my new apartment, even though he disapproved of my living on my own.

I turn thirty-five.  Newly married woman. I get birthday cards from Stan’s grown children.  He paints a card for me with a poem inside.

I turn fifty. I thought I’d feel older. My friends give me a dinner party in New York.  The men talk about money. The women, about our work at school. I blow out the candles, read cards, open presents.  We drive home to the suburbs.

I turn fifty-eight.  No one knows I’ll be retiring in June.  I want to keep this secret until spring.  Twenty years is a long time. I feel sad to be leaving. Excited to be moving on.

I’ll turn sixty-two this year. I check the mirror for the signs.  A new wrinkle? Definitely more grey hair than yesterday.  I watch numbers on the scale get higher.  I swallow more pills.  “Stan,” I say to my husband, “when I look in the mirror I see my mother’s face.”  He says, “Soon you’ll see your grandmother’s face.”

Sheila’s response:
The phrases and images that stick with me include:  “The split in the family is mended,”  “Aunts and uncles pass me around like a platter of turkey at Thanksgiving dinner,” “who sits on Grandma Rose’s dresser in a gold picture frame,” “I’m a flapper in a short pleated skirt with fringes,” “high heels that click,” “dangle like chandeliers,” “black velvet band with a feather,” “We drive home to the suburbs.”

I definitely get the feeling of being a fun loving child who knew how to play and was happily received by the family despite their fighting.  I sense a flattening out of playfulness after the death of the father and during the suburban years, but maybe the details are just not included.

I have a lot of questions after reading JoEllen’s birthdays.  One of my curiosities concerns the twenty years on the job, which is a long time.  I’d like to learn something about that period in the writer’s life.  What were her relationships with colleagues? What did it mean to her not to tell them about her upcoming retirement?  I also wonder what would happen if the speaker filled us in on the years from birth to 11.  Did the family stay mended? Where there tensions? How did this affect the speaker or didn’t it? Did she develop play as a method of coping or was it just her nature to be playful?  What happened to her playfulness once she was an adult or a teen? How did she feel meeting the man she would marry? Did she finally feel caught up with the crowd? What did it mean that he was older with grown children? Did the speaker lose the opportunity to see children play like she had when she was growing up? Did that matter to her? Did being named for Grandfather Joseph affect the speaker’s life?

JoEllen has created wonderful threads by presenting many birthdays.  Although she might want to keep this chronological birthday construction and add more and more to each of the selected birthdays, I also think the threads she’s spun can become essays themselves.  One is about the family and the mending/splitting; one is about the father and losing him, one is about worrying about sexuality and growing up.  One is about marrying Stan (and that might allow the speaker to talk about the other issues, too).  One is about retiring and/or about a career.

How to start these essays if she takes them out of the birthday construction?  I can imagine one opening with the 11-year-old flapper, her dress and what she is enjoying. Who is there with her or downstairs? What is she thinking and wondering?  That essay might become one about her extended family or her father.  Another essay might start with the Glee Club rehearsing “Stout Hearted Men” and the speaker noticing the bodies of the other girls and the boys and wondering about her sexual life.  She can skip to a college club or class or singing event and write about her thoughts at that time.  She can tell us about meeting Stan.

Whether JoEllen adds to the passages she’s written or creates a series of essays (and they could all be structured according to birthdays if she wants to do that), she will be taking a vivid memory that is full of description and letting the emotion of the essay, the exploration it wants to make, radiate from the memory with all of its details and setting. More essays or longer passages in this one will allow her to delve into the emotional topics each memory brings.

Beth Einstein

“Five People You Meet In Heaven”

What a funny dream I am having. I seem to be in a long well lit corridor with a bunch of strangers. Some are younger than me and others are much older. We all seem to share one thing in common, a look of confusion on our faces. Oh yes now I remember, I was in my car driving down Broadway when I was hit by another car. I must have blacked out. Maybe I am in a hospital awaiting treatment, but nothing seems to hurt and I am not bleeding.

This isn’t a dream. Oh my GOD I am dead. This is the room where we all wait until a decision is made about where we are to go. My life is racing through my mind. Panic is setting in. Have I done more good than bad in my life? Am I going to Heaven to see my family?  All of a sudden a man calls my name. He is neatly dressed in a brown suit, white shirt and brown tie. Reminds me of my father somehow.

We sit at his desk and review my life. I think to myself, “Have I been charitable enough?”  He has papers in a manila folder, which outline every year of my being on earth. He reads quietly for a while and then asks me where I think I should be sent. I have imagined this question over and over for so many years.

I look him straight in the eye and tell him that know I have made many mistakes in my life but that I truly believe that I have apologized to God and to the people I offended whenever possible. I believe that I am basically a good, caring person and should be sent to Heaven.

All of a sudden I am moving on a conveyor belt similar to those used in airports, and arrive at Gate One. I look around and members of my family are waiting for me. These are the people I have been thinking of for so many years. My father, my mother’s father, my brothers in law Frank and Bud and my Uncle Herbert are standing right in front of me with arms outstretched.

I don’t think I have ever been happier to see people in my life or should I say my afterlife. Each one represents a special place in my heart. My father died when I was twenty-three and had been ill for ten years before he died. He just walked out of the house one day and never came back. We had so many things left unsaid. His illness made him bitter and I guess I responded in kind. Now I will be able to correct that gap in our lives.

I never met my mother’s father but he was so beloved by all in the family that knew him I was overjoyed at the prospect of getting to know him. I just wanted to jump on my grandpa’s lap and tell him I loved him.

Frank and Bud, my husband’s brother-in-law and older brother were two of the most decent, kind loving men I had ever known. Every time we visited them in Upstate New York, New Mexico or in Florida we all had a marvelous time. They loved unconditionally, something I was not used to in my family. The party in heaven could begin with them but before it does I have to hug my Uncle Hebert, a man who loved and understood me at the worst time in my life.

We lived In Westchester, New York when my father had his stroke. My parents did not respond well to this problem and if it wasn’t for Uncle Herbert stepping up and taking over the reigns I don’t know how we would have survived. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude and finally now I can repay it.

Heaven is a place for forgiveness, new beginnings, joy and gratitude. I am so lucky to have finally found this out.

Sheila’s response:
Here’s a list of the phrases and images that stick with me:  “look him straight in the eye,” “I am basically a good, caring person and should be sent to heaven,” “people I have been thinking about for years,” “happier to see people in my life or should I say my afterlife,” “wanted to jump on Grandpa’s lap,” “loved unconditionally, something I was not used to in my life,” “the party in heaven could begin,” “Heaven is a place for forgiveness, new beginnings, joy and gratitude.”

I feel the love and enthusiasm the speaker has for these family members and the opportunity to get to know them now after a lifetime. I feel a sense of joy in the imagined meetings.  At the same time, I also feel that much is summarized about her experience and that I don’t get to know the people who were in her life as well as I would like to.

I enjoy the idea of heaven being a place for forgiveness, new beginnings and gratitude. I am eager to meet the five people waiting for the speaker at Gate One.

My curiosity is about the people she will see again, who are waiting, who make her feel part of a whole. I think that the speaker can create heaven on earth by writing about each of these people in more detail.  I think she might use a title that’s evocative (i.e. The Best Party I’ll Ever Have Will be At Gate One) to infuse energy into the essay from the very beginning.

To sustain that energy, she might open with the contrast between what she thought things would be like when she died and what she thinks now:

I used to think that the day I die, I’d wonder if I’ve done more good than bad in my life, if I have been charitable enough.  Now I think more about the day’s great opportunity. “Where do you think you should be sent?” he’ll say, the one at the desk reviewing my records. I plan to look him straight in the eye and tell him, “Heaven.”  I have apologized to God and to the people I have offended.  I have come to believe that heaven is a place for new beginnings.

Here’s how I imagine it:  All of a sudden I’ll be moving on a conveyor belt like those used in airports until I arrive at Gate One. My father, my mother’s father, my brothers-in-law Frank and Bud, and my Uncle Herbert are standing right in front of me with arms outstretched. I’ve been thinking about them for so many years.

I think the dream started the writer off on an exploration and evocation of people in her life.  As a reader, I find the speaker’s thoughts and her description of the people and what they’ve meant to her really interesting and so I have shortened in a way that takes the writing out of merely reporting a dream.  I’ve done this to help the speaker highlight the feelings and attitudes she holds:  that after apologies to God and others, there are new beginnings.

I wonder how the people she will meet at Gate One have been part of that path of apologies and new beginnings—have they been models for her? Has something healed in the family? I think there is a big story here that can be told through memories of these people. I think that by fully imagining them and what they bring to the gate party, this speaker will succeed in evoking not only the people and their lives and how they touched hers, but she will also conjure her own unfinished business and make a stab at completing some of it. And readers will get a sense of the party!

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When you generate material from exercises, let yourself freely do the exercise.  After a little time away from the material, read what you wrote and locate the images and phrases and dialog that really stand out for you.  Trust that by starting a new draft using these details in particular, the ones where you feel most lively and drawn in, you will be able to expand your exercise results into rewarding personal essays and vignettes.