“Hey, behind you,” I whisper to my husband. “There’s a woman writing.”
We’re sitting along the wall in what I’m calling “our spot.” I seem to default here when I come in; the light is good and I’m out of the way from the main path. My husband finished his mocha coffee latte drink a few minutes ago and is checking something on his phone. I glance over his shoulder and see a woman writing.
I don’t know how I know that she’s writing something personal, but I do. Maybe it’s the slouch her shoulders, determined but relaxed. Maybe it’s the slow way her hand moves, the pause she makes, deliberate yet light and free. She’s focused but not intense. Is it a story? Journaling? A project?
I’m curious.
My husband half turns, that way, when you try to casually stare without being obvious. I’m staring directly at her. She doesn’t notice me.
“I can’t tell,” he says.
Neither can I, but it’s time to leave.
“I want to see,” I say.
The exit is behind me; there’s no reason for me to move in her direction. I stand up and shrug my coat on. I make my go-to excuse, and I say it loud enough so that if she was listening, she wouldn’t be suspicious.
“I’m going to use the bathroom before we leave.” That door is in front of me, so I can conveniently walk past the writing woman.
She is writing Thank You cards.
The cards are white, but they don’t have that white embossed shiny-matte, off-white texture of wedding cards. Her cards have Thank You in black, neutral font. The text is friendly and readable, not some flowery script but not a dull Garamond or Times New Roman. There’s a color design clustered in the center around Thank You–flowers, I think–but the style is neither masculine nor feminine. There’s a stack of cards next to her in a non-descript box with a flimsy plastic lid that you’d find in a Hallmark store. It looks like she’s writing with an ink pen, nothing fancy but higher quality than you’d get in an office supply store.
I see all of this in about 5 seconds, maybe 10. Staring can be creepy, and there’s no time to casually chat. I don’t want to disturb the magic. She’s intent and focused and fortunately doesn’t see me staring at her and the table full of notecards.
I walk out. I don’t bother to fake-stop in the bathroom.
I think of this now because it’s April, the month of so many things: National Poetry Month; Camp NaNoWriMo; National Rebuilding Month; Testicular Cancer Month, Autism Awareness Month, and National Card and Letter Writing Month.
I started writing letters to my friend about two months ago. These are notecards from Target $1 Spot. The 8 cards are all the same design with the word “Gratitude” on the front. I bought them because they’re a friendly peach color with matching envelopes.
So far, I’ve received no letters in return and I don’t expect any. I write as if we were talking side by side and, yes, I write them when I’m in coffee shops. These small cards aren’t intimidating because there’s only room for a thought or three, just short and fun. And now I discovered a whole movement.
There’s a campaign calledWrite_Onwhich distributed 10,000 free writing starter kits to encourage people to write a letter a day in April. I’m not a fan of setting daily deadlines; to me, it’s a setup for self-failure if you miss a day. Regardless, I signed up for and received one of the kits.
The six-card kit includes envelopes for mailing–as a papercrafter, I can say that including envelopes is the polite thing to do. There’s stationary with envelope, stickers, a colorful inspiration booklet and a gelly roll pen. I’m a writer. I like paper. I like pens. Any letter writing I do, once a day or not, spreads more joy than if I didn’t write at all.
I’ll never know what that woman was writing or thanking people for, but do I need to?
You drive by an intersection and take notice of a weathered and worn wooden cross poking up from the ground. Around it are faded silk flowers, some tattered stuffed animals, burnt candles, and remnants of hand-written notes that resisted being carried away by the wind. You know someone died in that spot and someone else has been grieving there.
During a vacation to Chile a couple years ago, I saw elaborate memorial structures placed alongside many of that beautiful country’s roads. The shoulders were sporadically adorned with what looked like tiny, dollhouse-sized churches. Some were wooden, but most were little concrete buildings built upon concrete foundations. Inside, there were framed photographs, crucifixes, printed prayers, figurines, and candles. Flowers flanked the outsides. One display was remarkably huge—about six-feet square, with a foot-high iron gate enclosing the entire display. That one was further from the road than others I’d viewed, and I’m guessing it was on private property. Each miniature building I drove past, however, seemed to be permanently affixed to the ground.
In Chile, an animita is a place where people mourn the deceased, petition for help, and give thanks for answered prayers.
I remember that as a teenager I watched old western movies. Whenever one of the good cowboys was shot to death, his comrades did all they could to bury him. If they were on the run and in a hurry, they quickly covered him in rocks. If given a little more time, they dug a shallow grave, covered the body in dirt, and marked the site with a makeshift cross.
People have been memorializing the dead for centuries. Egyptian kings have their pyramids. In India, the Taj Mahal houses the body of an emperor’s beloved wife. Here in the United States, the wealthy erect mausoleums too, although they are admittedly much smaller. All of us will die, but only some of us will plan for our inevitable demise.
In the 1980s, a popular advertisement encouraged people to select the ingredients they wanted on their pizzas by answering: “What do you want on your Tombstone?” It made a normally serious topic light and fun . . . and, in particular, tasty. It was genius. The Tombstone Pizza Company name wasn’t easily forgotten, even all these years later. The ad worked in part because it made us face our own mortality for just a moment while we pondered how we wanted to be remembered. What would people say about us after our deaths?
Built in 1846, William Eddings Baynard’s mausoleum is the oldest standing structure on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Frankly, if we don’t convey careful instructions or plan ahead of time, we aren’t the ones who decide what goes on our pizza or what gets written on our own granite tombstones. Let’s hope that the immortalizing words associated with us end up being written by someone who abides by our wishes or at least likes us enough to say nice things.
You can learn a lot about a person by visiting his or her gravesite. For some reason, that fun isn’t high on the list of any of my friends and family. Rarely does anyone ever want to join me in a stroll through a graveyard. Yes, I’ve actually asked family and friends to do that, especially during travel to foreign countries. Most often, the closest I come to walking hallowed ground turns out to be nothing more than a chance drive-by encounter on the way to some other point of interest.
The one time my husband, his sister and her husband humored me, we delicately tip-toed around the fresh, loose soil of above-ground graves in a church cemetery on the Leeward Island of St. Kitts. We visited long enough for me to take several photos.
An eternal resting place on St. Kitts overlooks the Atlantic Ocean.
When I noticed that my companions weren’t walking alongside or trailing behind me, I realized that they didn’t share my curiosity over the differences in Kittitian burial customs from those in the United States. I saw that my family was lingering near our rental car and I figured it was time to go. We hopped back into the new Honda CRV. Then we accidentally drove over a metal industrial anchor of some sort. After incurring over two thousand dollars in repair costs to the rental car, certain relatives don’t want to stop at cemeteries with me anymore.
That’s one explanation for why I, more cautiously, poked around the internet this month and found a variety of interesting memorials to share with you.
Elijah Jefferson Bond, the patentee of the Ouija board, was buried in an unmarked grave at Maryland’s Green Mount Cemetery in 1921. Eighty-seven years later, a Ouija board collector, enthusiast, and expert, Robert Murch, successfully located Bond’s grave.
Games can’t be played forever, or can they? (Photo, courtesy of Ryan Schweitzer, via findagrave.com)
Murch obtained all the necessary permissions and funds needed to erect a memorial headstone. He commissioned a clever and befitting design to honor the deceased Mr. Bond. Bond’s once unmarked gravesite could have been permanently forgotten, but that’s unlikely to happen now that he has an intriguing monument.
Yet, I wonder: would Bond have chosen to rest beneath a granite version of a game that encourages conversations with dead people?
Someone is bound to ask him, via a Ouija board, although it won’t be me. I don’t want to open that creepy door to the spirit world.
Princess Diana is buried on a private island on her Spencer family’s property. A temple inscribed with her name faces the island. Her brother’s words memorialize her this way:
We give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to be able to call my sister. The unique, the complex, the extraordinary & irreplaceable Diana whose beauty both internal and external will never be extinguished from our minds.
I think all those complimentary words would be well-received by Diana. The temple, in my opinion, is a bit much, but she was a princess. Most people wouldn’t expect anything less than extravagance like that for a woman loved throughout the world.
Another ideal tribute honors author Walter Lord. His gravesite is identified by a stone bench, inscribed with the names of his best-selling books, one of which was A Night to Remember, about the sinking of the Titanic. The welcoming setting invites visitors to rest for a little while, maybe even with one of Lord’s popular books in hand.
President Richard Nixon began his presidency with words that were later placed on his tombstone. It’s intriguing that his grave is absent a lofty title or noteworthy achievement. Instead, there’s simply a humble quote: “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”
That’s a nice thought for us mere mortals to aspire to.
The land beneath the dome in Jerusalem is revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims, although for different religious reasons.
Covering a rock where Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to heaven is a shrine known as The Dome of the Rock. In Jerusalem, it stands out from all other buildings. There’s no mistaking the ornate memorial, topped in gold. During a trip I took to Israel in 2014 with my church-family, Christians were not welcome within the shrine’s doors, so we appreciated the splendor from afar.
That was okay with me. I had another, personally more meaningful, tomb to visit. This other one, known as the Garden Tomb, was literally fit for a king. Not because it was extravagant or ornate or covered in gold. It was none of those things. There was nothing fancy about this other tomb. It was simply a cold, barren cave with a hard, stone floor. It was a tomb that long ago may have been customized to accommodate Jesus’s body. Some people believe that the King of Kings was too tall for His borrowed burial space and it had to be chiselled and lengthened to accommodate His height. Others more simply acknowledge that the Garden Tomb’s characteristics match historical records of Jesus’s burial.
Either way, this place in Jerusalem is where people come to pay homage to Jesus and to pray. I entered the solemn tomb and stood with my pastor and his wife. My pastor was weeping. In that moment, I recalled the torture Jesus endured before His death. I cried too. If anyone deserved a shrine or a temple, it was God incarnate Who sacrificed His life for the redemption of my sin.
The Garden Tomb. (Photo, courtesy of Chris Bixby)
The grounds surrounding Jesus’s burial tomb are full of flowers and plants, and there are many sitting areas that inspire personal reflection and prayer. Nature’s beauty helps comfort us in our grief. But the stark reality is that we mere mortals die. Those left behind visit gravesites, leave flowers, tenderly care for the little plots of earth where our loved ones rest. We continue in conversation with those departed. Our greatest comfort, however, comes from knowing we’ll see them again.
Before His own death, Jesus predicted, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.” (Luke 18:31)
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!” (Luke 24:5-6)
Jesus has no tombstone that screams accolades. The most obvious hint of His importance, royalty, and divinity was added years after His burial place was discovered. Where a stone once blocked His tomb’s entrance is now a wooden door with an inscription: “He is Risen.”
Indeed. Conquering death is worth celebrating. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jesus’s words from John 20:29.)
Billy Joel had it right: it’s always been a matter of trust.
3:43pm
A strange little coffee shop that is, or was once, a restaurant. This place serves the typical coffees and latte espresso drinks, but it also offers a choice of real food, not just the token pastries. I ordered my sandwich and soup at the counter like I’m at fast food restaurant, but the staff delivers it to your table or booth. This place has booths. They look comfy, red leather-ish, but I’m at a four-person table. There’re just a few other people in here, so I don’t feel guilty taking up the room. I see the employees bussing other tables, a strange mix of customer service.
The guy behind me is the only other business-y person here. I know he’s a “professional” because he’s been on his cell phone since he arrived. I’ve refilled my coffee twice; he hasn’t stood up yet. Doesn’t he have to use the bathroom?
“My wife can tell you better….”
He’s got a small briefcase at his side with a thick black leather day planner of sorts. He wears a blue button-down shirt. A bag of chips with his sandwich, not baby carrots. An iced drink not hot, and a tablet-type laptop he’s working on.
“I’m a relationship guy myself….” I overhear.
I can tell that.
3:56pm
He finally hangs up his phone and walks away, leaving all of his stuff on the chair. He’s not careless; he’s natural.
There’s an unwritten code of trust in coffee shops—don’t touch other peoples’ stuff. It never crosses my mind to do anything like that. I guess he feels the same way. It’s also echo-y empty in here now, safety in no numbers. Regardless of how many people are in a room, I, leave my computer and my bags open while I stand, stretch or go to the restroom. I recently started putting my laptop monitor to sleep when I step away. Not that I’m writing secret recipes of potato chips, but I feel protective of my writing these days.
Being casual with my stuff does not mean stupid. I always carry my purse and cell phone when I walk out of site. My purse holds the important things in my life: car keys, wallet, Office Guys, writing journal and lip balm. After that, everything else is replaceable. Losing my current writing drafts, my photos, and those expensive power supply plugs would suck–especially since I haven’t backed up my work in months–but I don’t need to pack up and carry all my stuff when I walk 10 feet away.
I learned the potential danger of having my purse out of site years ago while grocery shopping in New Jersey. I was digging through a pile of apples when this guy walks up behind me. “You shouldn’t leave your purse unattended in your shopping cart,” he said, startling me. “Anyone could walk off with it.” Like he could have, I thought. I thanked him for that advice and continued shopping with my purse on my shoulder. Because of that, I always carry my driver’s license and credit cards close to me. My laptop and pens are worth money, but they’re really only valuable to me.
Is it because laptops are so cheap these days?
No, there’s just this hands-off vibe, this respect for other patrons. Haven’t found it in any other stores, food places or restaurants. Just coffee shops.
Is it the clientele? Does the cost of drinking expensive coffee give you higher morals? Are people too wrapped up in themselves, like Cell Phone Guy behind me? Maybe we’re all too intense on working that few can’t be bothered with thievery?
Is it the neighborhoods which coffee shops live in that breed safety? Even in a questionable strip mall like this one, where the coffee shop is on an exposed corner next to a European wax salon and a chain Mexican restaurant, I feel secure.
Is it exclusivity? Remember, this coffee costs money. People like Mr. Cell Phone can afford it. Even me, a freelance writer, I splurge for the luxury of space to write.
Is it chain store vs. Shop Local mentality? I would never leave my valuables in some McFastfood joint, for example, but I’m not threatened in coffee shops whether it’s an independent store, a local chain or a big name chain. I have no paranoid delusions, no sense that somebody’s watching me. There’s just something about the atmosphere, the expectation.
It really does come down to games, Dominos or not.
This afternoon is my writing time. I’m sitting at a table against the wall under the lamp shade so I have light to type by. I just finished two Americanos, light on steamed milk. The first Americano had a smidge of gingerbread syrup to spice up the holiday season, and the second was just straight up. You’d think I was a serious coffee drinker, but, really, I’m just a novice who latched onto some impressive-sounding coffee name. I feel like I belong here.
Tuscan Cafe: environmentally friendly
I’m gathering my laptop and notebook to leave when a guy and a boy walk in and sit at the small circular table by the window. From what I overhear, he seems to be a Big Brother to the 13-year-old 8th grader.
I’ve got plenty of room on my rectangular table for everything I have, so I stop packing up and pull out my journal to record the moment.
BB leans forward and asks, “How’s the relationship with you and your brothers?” That’s what makes me think Big Brother in the first place. That and the time is now 3:30pm, which is just after school.
I overhear BB say he likes that the boy plays Minecraft, that “…it’s a game that requires you to work as a team.” I don’t know the game, but I feel like I should. I’ve heard it enough in pop culture media. Note to self: look that up.
Now BB teaches the boy how to play Dominos. This is significant because last night I watched my Season 2 DVD set of Major Crimes. The last episode I saw is what I call the Lost Horizons episode. Tim Conway plays the episode’s main character, Howard. In one scene, he flirts with the female lead, Capt. Raydor, mentioning Dominos.
Howard: “I could teach you to play Dominos, but I, uh, don’t have my Dominos with me.”
Capt. Raydor: “I already know how to play Dominos.”
Howard: “I bet you do.”
At the same time, in another room, Lt. Provenza questions someone else who talks about Dominos.
Provenza says, “It always comes down to Dominos.”
So here I am, watching BB teach the boy to play. I don’t know how to play Dominos, actually. I know how to match numbers but not the rules of scoring. I also know how to stack them in a row so they all fall down. Who plays Dominos?
I half listen as I write and half watch without trying to stare directly at them. I want to hear BB explain how to play. The big window gives me an excuse to look in that direction. If we accidentally make eye contact, I can glance over at the bike chained to the tree or the church across the street or the cars driving by on Center Street. I could even turn my head to the left and stare at the long, roomy wooden table that divides the coffee shop into thirds.
Coffee drinks and games: together time
My husband and I play games in coffee shops, usually Yahtzee in various Starbucks. It’s a Travel Yahtzee game we, ironically, bought at Starbucks a few years ago when they promoted toys and activities among their products. We have Travel Scrabble from that time, and we’ve bought other portable games through the years. These are our “date nights” because we get out of the house, spend time together and drink coffee. A long table like that one would be roomy, but distant. We choose cozy tables like this one I’m at or the one the guys are sitting at now.
I miss any Dominos explanation over the mellow music playing overhead, but the discussion of games continues. BB: “I wasn’t good at Tetris when I was young.” Now I have a frame of reference of the guy’s age. He’s a child of the 80s.
Then BB asks: “Is that coffee making you tired?”
Boy: “Yeah.”
Thirteen years old and introduced to coffee. That’s our society today.
BB and boy wrap up their visit and pack up the chunky white tiles into a snap-close metal box. I never hear how to play Dominos, but the game box looks like it was the original BB had as a younger guy.
I’ve seen some people play games in coffee shops. Last week, at Miracle Coffee, two women had a pile of board games, they looked old, worn and well-loved. Gathering their games up when we arrived, they saw us pull out our Travel Yahtzee. We all got talking about board games. They may have mentioned that there is a Triple Yahtzee game out there, a game I vaguely remember, like maybe I had it as a kid. Maybe I still have it. I’ll look through my childhood toy box in the basement.
Classic board games have become “the thing” these days. The box designs look retro, but they’re all too new, looking fake. I believe in using authentic items. In scrapbooking, I use the real photo, scan a copy if it’s precious and irreplaceable. In mixed media art, I incorporate real tickets, tea bag tags, and cancelled stamps. Because of this, I prefer original game boxes that hold the authentic game.
Games are a good thing, old or new, especially if they bring us together.
It’s December, and I’m running around with holiday madness. I don’t have the time to remember my gift list let alone what I did or didn’t accomplish this year. In fact, if hadn’t written them down, I’d have forgotten I even had thoughts to change my world.
I don’t believe in resolutions. Too often they’re wishes without a specific plan for success. That’s why I embraced my writers’ group commitment to three Non-Resolutions for 2015. The challenge was to identify the “specific and concrete” steps to “improve yourself as a writer.” I did this thinking it a simple challenge something specific and easy it’s the end of the year, tis the season to look ahead while looking back. so I share my successes and failures in life, the universe and everything else.
How did I do? Let’s just say I take ownership of my actions and my non-actions. These were my commitments:
1.(A) Find an editor and (B) publish my memoir before June 2015.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Not even close. Every time I sat down to edit, thinking the book just needed some tweaking, I found a jumble of sentence fragments and missplelled words instead. I suspected that organizing the non-chronological series of vignettes was the problem. I came up with creative ways to procrastination. I read blog posts by fiction and nonfiction writers to learn how they handled organization. I read a memoir to see how it was organized. I found checklists to follow, but still my story didn’t flow.
That got me thinking about format and tools to ease my struggles. I purchased Scrivener, a software program has a “corkboard” to organize my thoughts and scenes so I can rearrange as often as needed with a swift swipe of my mouse. This is a useful procrastination, I told myself. I spent two weeks slugging through the detailed tutorial and then hit a snag with the program. I set it aside in frustration to continue after November’s NaNoWriMo. It’s December and is still untouched.
2.Explore at least one new book/genre and revisit an old favorite.
This was a flop. Aside from reading that one memoir early in the year, I didn’t finish another book.
I started what I presumed was “an old favorite” but it wasn’t as interesting as I remembered. I found a sci-fi book that both Mom and I read. I committed to read it at night, maybe not every night, but I put it and a spare pair of reading glasses on my nightstand for convenience. The only space available was at the edge, so the book is too far to reach, and my clumsy, ill-fitting dollar store glasses are awkward to wear. I have made reading more complicated than it should be.
3.Set aside time to journal at least once a month.
I accomplished this! I may have skipped weeks at a time, but I wrote more, that I know. That I feel. I mingled my thoughts with blog posts and ideas, sprinkled between to-do lists and notes from writers’ conferences and meetings. I rediscovered that I write more fluidly by hand, so I spent more time journaling just for the fun and love of writing on paper. Writing by hand is organic to me, so I will keep journaling.
Nothing is truly a failure. These commitments did not need to be complete, nor did they need to be completed for me to succeed. I learned about myself and gained some valuable perspectives and insights into my actions.
What did I learn?
I need to break my writing and editing tasks into smaller snippets and set a timer. Tell myself “Tuesday morning, research editors” and allot 27 minutes only. I’ll know at the end of the timer I’ll either need a break or feel inspired to keep working. It’s how I survived and won NaNoWriMo.
In 23, 27 or 33 minute segments, I wrote 50,721 words in the last 20 days of the months. I started on November 11, so this equaled 2500 words/day which for me was about 1 1/2 hours per day. That means I can find the time to write because I have the time when I’m not distracted by Major Crimes on TV or Angry Birds on my phone. I remind myself of this daily because not only is it motivating but because in the madness of the month, I discovered a 25,000-word story, a complete one that I can actually work with and interests me. I consider the purchase a distraction and a success. I can use Scrivener to organize this book as I edit to publish by the end of 2015, a swift spellbinding sequel to my initial Jimmy the Burglar book.
Getting back to my roots of handwriting gave me the opportunity to see what I was thinking. Words on paper, written by my hand, helped me focus on what I want to do with my writing. I will change the focus of my blog to include more writing, insights, interviews and inspiration. Posts on Deadwood Writers Voices may change. I want to entertain my readers, offer them something worthwhile, while writing topics that excite my passion and enthusiasm. I’m exploring what those topics may be.
As for reading books, I will purchase a better pair of reading glasses.
Tuscan Cafe
